Teapot Tantrums

Peter DeFazio is the Problem ... Sid Leiken is the Answer

For years we've had Peter DeFazio for our district representative to Congress. Who does he support? His own interests, more than those of every Oregonian. He can't seem to decide whether to vote for Oregon, unless it will cost a lot of money ... he seems to have lost touch with what will benefit us.

In his defense, he did vote against the recent "economic stimulus package" ... but only because he thought the spending didn't go far enough! He doesn't seem to have any new ideas ... when I attended one of his town hall meetings this summer, he repeated the same tired Washington lines that all the other Democrats were repeating across the country. When he was asked questions about his liberal stances on policies and the ever-looming healthcare reform bill, he skirted the questions, repeated what he'd already said, danced around the issue. I have no doubt that he'll vote for it in the end, and if he were to vote against it, it would only be because he'd decided it was going to fail anyway and there would be no political problems voting against a doomed bill. Everything he does is politically calculated, done for expediency's sake.

Even his non-decision to run for another congressional term is based on political calculations. He's been rumored to have his eye of the Oregon governor's spot (God help us all ... Oregon in the hands of a "progressive" who's pretty much a socialist .. but then again, aren't they all pretty much these days?), but he can't be bothered to make a decision until he figures out the cost in political capital.

Why have local Republican voters so frequently supported Peter DeFazio with their votes in the past several years? When I was out doing door-to-door pamphlet drops a few years ago, several Republican voters told me "I know he's a Democrat, but you always know where he stands." Yeah....he always stands to the Left and makes it pretty clear. Perhaps these same voters would vote for a Republican who has fresh ideas, is willing to take risks on the behalf of *all* of his constituents for the betterment of his city (state), and is ready and willing to speak plainly and take a stand.

Sid Leiken, on the other hand, has declared himself and his interest in being our congressman from the 4th Congressional District outright. He's filed his papers and begun his campaign ... all the while fulfilling his duties as the mayor of Springfield. He's a man of integrity ... no matter how Democrats are trying to portray him in the media. Remember ... when a Democrat does something "questionable", the rest of them circle the wagons and defend the person tooth and nail, no matter the amount of guilt or the severity of charges .. for them we're expected to aside our consciences in favor of "bipartisanship" and "get along" ... think William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and a host of other Dems who have recently been shown to have ethical problems. The "offender" may be "investigated", but the investigation typically goes on into perpetuity with little more result than a slap on the wrist. The few times the Dem actually gets punishment/jail time is when someone is brave enough to take it to the next level ... we know that the "quick" ethics investigation of Charlie Rangel promised by House Speak Nancy Pelosi has been in the works for several years now, with new charges popping up practically every day.

Sid Leiken's offense? An accounting error. If a Democrat has an accounting error in their campaign, they pay the fine and move along and get to work. The newspapers don't make hay of it, their reputations aren't smeared ... Republicans don't typically work that way. When a Republican has an issue, however, the Democrats (local and national) are quick to portray the candidate as a crook of the worst kind. Sid Leiken has been accused by local Democrats of "money laundering" and it was portrayed that way in the local paper ... really??? It's a simple accounting error!

What is Sid Leiken's main crime to the local and state-level Democrats? He changed his political affiliation from Democrat to Republican a few years back, and Democrats hate a "traitor" (unless said traitor changes their affiliation from Republican to Democrat -- can you say "Arlen Spector"?). For this sin, and for daring to go up against a "beloved" Democrat House Representative, Sid Leiken is attacked horrible in the papers and his reputation called into question.

It's time to get a feel for the man who would challenge an avowed socialist (come on ... the guy's a proud member of the congressional progressive caucus, and everyone knows that the socialists started using the term "progressive" decades ago because people were concerned about socialism, and "who could be against progress??"). Check out Mayor Leiken's web page and get to know who Sid Leiken is and what he believes, where he stands on issues facing us today, and what he's accomplished as mayor.

Please give serious consideration to supporting Sid Leikin in his bid for Congress. He needs our help to get him there ... we need him representing us in Washington, DC.

How to Brainwash a Nation? We're Already In (or AT) the Third Stage!

People in the media will pooh-pooh observations by Conservatives and Republicans that there is an active plan at work to subvert our country with the goal of converting it to a Leninist/Marxist state. They can pooh-pooh this all day long if they like, but it's easy to see it if you bother to look objectively, which the media seems unable (or unwilling) to do ... perhaps because they're complicit?

Don't believe me? What would it take to convince you? Perhaps the words of someone who worked in the KGB, someone who actively worked to bring these conversions to pass? Someone who knows the goal and how it's easily achieved?

Remember, Kruschev said that the US would fall to communism without a shot being fired, but that it would fall from within. They (the Soviet Union, at the time) would feed us small amounts of communism at a time until 

Watch the video interview of a former KGB agent (originally broadcast in 1985), in which he lays out the four steps to subverting a culture to turn it to Leninism/Marxism ... People, we're obviously either at or primed for step 3 -- the Crisis portion of our program.

Then consider the words of a Townhall blogger from a year ago and see if you can pick out any truths. I sure can.

The ONLY thing I know and can be sure of is the fact that God is in control. Without that assurance, I would totally freak out and lose hope. I've read the book and, Thank God .. we win.

Back to Simplicity? You Might Want to Rethink That

A lot of people who hate corporations (make sure to say it with a sneer on your face so those around you will know you think of them as eeeeeeeebil) and the modern way of life say they'd like to go back to simpler, pre-corporate times. They would like to get back to "natural" things like eating only locally-grown foods, not killing animals for food, wearing only natural fibers, and the like.

These people are the same ones, a lot of times, that believe the government should take care of us all (benevolently, of course) with free health care (it's a *RIGHT* don't ya know), and making sure that *everything* is "equal".

Let's look at this. In the good old medieval days, people still worked for their sustenance, their shelter, their clothing. The kings (or let's call them the old-time government) didn't take care of them ... and those self-same kings or their lords (corporations?) still got their taxes, one way or another. The kings with lots of lords got the taxes from them, who got the taxes (or whatever) from the peasants ... 'course, you know they had to keep some for themselves, too, for the upkeep of the castle and lands that kept the peasants safe (or at least tried to).

If the peasants (that's you and me) had coinage, the lord got a percentage ('course, I understand that those taxes got hiked periodically, depending on whether the king had to fight a war or play host to another king) ... if the peasant had no coinage, they had to pay with the goods or harvest they produced with their hard labor and the sweat of their brow... and sometimes they were required to spend a certain amount of time in actual servitude to the king.

Oh, and that eating only locally-grown food thing .. let's just hope there isn't a drought or a blight or someone diverts your water (like the federal gov't has been known to do in Oregon and California in the past ten years ... in the name of helping the environment) ... good luck with that.

The king/lords didn't dole out clothing ... people raised fiber animals (oh, and cows and pigs, 'cause let's remember that people back then had no problem with wearing leather), which they used not only for fiber, but also for (eeeebil) meat to feed their families. (Remember, no contraception back in those days .. ever hear the old adage: The rich got richer and the poor got children?) I imagine that, if you were lucky enough to have some sheep, you sheared them, carded the wool, spun it, wove it, sewed it, and clothed your family. IF you were fortunate enough to have more than strictly what your family needed for a given season, you probably either put up extra for a leaner time when it wasn't as plentiful, or you took the extra and traded it to a neighbor who might have something you didn't. Leftists might call this the first "co-op" system ... I like to think of it as the first exercises in free trade.

The king/lord didn't give the peasants remember (that's you and me) food to keep your family healthy, the tools to grow said food, and weapons with which to keep your family safe. Nope! The peasants (remember who that is) had to grow their own food and be diligent about taking very good care of their crops, for without them they and their families would starve. The peasants had to fashion their tools out of whatever they could, possibly harnessing animal labor (remember, animals couldn't sue their "human companions" back in those days, as some in federal gov't would like to make "possible" in these days). If a peasant didn't have the right tools, he learned to make them, to make do with what he had, or traded with another neighbor for something the neighbor valued. (Again with the free trade??) And the weapons .... sticks, staffs, rocks ... whatever ... they weren't thought of as eeeeeebil, but rather as a necessity for keeping the family, the home, the goods, the crops, the animals ... safe ... from others who would like to take what wasn't theirs, to take what they hadn't worked for. (Wow, those people have been with us in one form or another for a very long time, haven't they??)

And then there was health care.

Let's see ... actually, there wasn't health care. And no one was "entitled" to health care. If you were fortunate enough to live near someone who knew something about the healing arts, about herbs and tonics, and basic first aid ('course, they didn't call it that back then, did they) ... you *might* be able to get help when Seamus broke his leg or Meg needed help delivering her baby ... (unless you were concerned about the healer being a witch [seems like most healers are noted as being women ... men being out growing crops and tending/raising livestock and such?], which might have sometimes been true, sometimes not).

There was little to no innovation in medicine in what is now considered the English-speaking world the until ... what? ... the 1700s-ish?? Samuel Hanhemann first proposed homeopathic remedies around 1796, which he developed through rigorous trials ... before things like homeopathy, people didn't have a *lot* of medicines to choose from. After the 1700s, I'm thinking medical advances started coming more rapidly ... but back in the medieval times, you were lucky to get someone who knew how to sew up a wound .. probably more likely to get a mustard plaster or poultice (or whatever) and a dirty bandage. Back then it wasn't even widely held that people should wash their hands or bathe, for pity's sake!

But to expect the king to send someone to your hovel to look at a splinter or tell you why you felt a certain way ... and let's be honest .. there was probably a lot of depression that "just was", and things got infected, and food spoiled and caused illness, and babies didn't all survive, and there was no CPR, and people died of "the fever" or "consumption", and people didn't all understand about sanitation.....

Everyday Life in the Middle Ages 

Average Lifespan Expectancies (scroll down to the table broken out by "ages")

An Introduction to the Middle Ages

Life might have been "simple", but it required hard work, perseverance, a sense of duty, and a willingness to be content with what you had, without demanding what you want or feel you need -- as your right, as your "due" -- from those who had more.

Maybe it's just me, but these leftists who cry out for a return to a simpler time, who decry (with a sneer) corporations, free trade, class systems, hard work, health care that costs something ... they're just crying out for a "simpler" time that was harsher in many ways, allowed for a lot less enjoyment of life, killed you faster, had a lot less security ... they're crying out for what's really just an earlier version of life today (minus faith, electronics and hygiene ... and a few other things).

If you like sci-fi books at all, I can recommend an interesting series ... "The Change Series" ... it's by S.M. Stirling, and takes place in the Pacific NorthWet (yes, I leave out the "s" because it's fun and unexpected, and it can be so wet here ... when we're not 20" below the average rainfall we should've had this year) and specifically most of the first three books takes place in the Willamette Valley, where I grew up.

Dies the Fire

The Protector's War

A Meeting at Corvallis

The Sunrise Lands

The Scourge of God

The Sword of the Lady

I've read the first five of the series (the sixth was to come out this Autumn, but I don't know if it's out yet), and they're well-written, but they can freak you out a bit sometimes (ok, they can freak *me* out a bit 'cause I can have a very vivid imagination). It's interesting to drive around the Willamette Valley and see where some of the incidents in the books take place and imagine what it might look like after "the change". They're interesting, but they're not gentle. A post-change world would not be easy.

If the leftists of the world think it would be so easy to go back to this "simpler" time, let them read through this series and get a taste for what that kind of change could be like, at least from the author's imagination. Maybe they could get the idea ... and then again, maybe I could wake up from this very odd dream that America has become.

Mandated Minimum Wage Hikes Have Hurt Teens, Others

Oregon started with the mandated minimum wage hikes several years ago. Our state's minimum wage is now at $8.40, with a mandated increase coming January 1.  Our state's unemployment numbers are among the highest in the nation. According to the Oregon Employment Department:

Oregon’s Employment Situation: August 2009
Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 12.2 percent in August from the revised July figure of 11.8 percent. Oregon’s unemployment rate has been close to 12 percent for the six month period March through August, following a steep run-up during the prior nine months. Oregon’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in August 2008.

The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 9.4 percent in July to 9.7 percent in August, its highest level in 26 years.

Whether you agree with mandatory hikes in the minimum wage, or whether you support a minimum wage (or not), the evidence has shown that these hikes have had a detrimental effect on our economy. The lower-wage jobs, which had traditionally been used as a jumping off point where people could get their act together, gain some skills and work experience that would translate to getting better jobs, or as a place to make ends meet while you went to school or needed extra money ... well, that concept has gone by the wayside.

I work for a payroll company, and I can tell you that employers don't just have to budget for increases in their hourly wage payouts. They also have to consider the withholding of both the employer *and* employee portions of FICA (Social Security to you and me) and Medicare (remember, that *other* thing we can't qualify for 'til we're old or disabled, are *required* to pay into, and probably *won't* be there when we're finally old enough ... or it will be a shadow of its former self), not to mention what they have to pay in for federal and state unemployment taxes ... and in places with public transportation systems, they likely have to pay in based on an employee's wages for that, too.

I wish I could break it down for you based on age demographics, but I don't know where to go for all that info. I know there are critics out there that will claim that lower wages hurt people and are just a way for "corporations" (remember to use a sneer on your face while you say it) to make money .. but remember that corporations are the entities that provide jobs, and jobs are what provide you with work that helps you *earn* your income ... provided that you aren't one of these twits that believes they shouldn't have to to work for anything and that government should just take care of you.

However, I can share with you what I found in the Wall Street Journal's Oct 3 article regarding teenagers and the July '09 increase in the federal minimum wage, which rose to $7.25.

The Young and the Jobless

The minimum wage hike has driven the wages of teen employees down to $0.00.

Yesterday's September labor market report was lousy by any measure, with 263,000 lost jobs and the jobless rate climbing to 9.8%. But for one group of Americans it was especially awful: the least skilled, especially young workers. Washington will deny the reality, and the media won't make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage.

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.

The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it's precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working.

As the minimum wage has risen, the gap between the overall unemployment rate and the teen rate has widened, as it did again last month. (See nearby chart.) The current Congress has spent billions of dollars—including $1.5 billion in the stimulus bill—on summer youth employment programs and job training. Yet the jobless numbers suggest that the minimum wage destroyed far more jobs than the government programs helped to create.

Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment. Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found "overwhelming" evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased. Whatever happened to President Obama's pledge to follow the science? Democrats prefer to cite a few outlier studies known to be methodologically flawed.

State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.

According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage. In other words, 98.9% of 40-hour-a-week workers earn more than the minimum. The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults. Minimum wage jobs are nearly all first-time or part-time jobs, and an estimated two of every three minimum wage workers get a pay raise within a year on the job.

Study after study reveals that there are long-term career benefits to working as a teenager and that these benefits go well beyond the pay that these youths receive. A study by researchers at Stanford found that those who do not work as teenagers have lower long-term wages and employability even after 10 years. A high-wage society can only come by making workers more productive, and by destroying starter jobs the minimum wage may reduce long-term earnings.

Another recent study across 17 OECD nations, also by Messrs. Neumark and Wascher, found a highly negative association between higher minimum wages and youth employment rates. But it also concluded that having a starter wage, well below the minimum, counteracts much of this negative jobs impact. If Congress won't suspend its recent minimum wage hike, it should at least create a teenage wage of $4 or $5 an hour to help put hundreds of thousands of teens back to work. White House chief economic adviser Larry Summers has endorsed this in the past. Without this change, expect the teen unemployment to remain very high for a long time.

The wonder of it all is that liberals still call "progressive" a policy that has driven the wages of hundreds of thousands of the lowest skilled workers down to $0.00.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12

My good friend and blogfather, Gullyborg of Resistance is Futile, posted his own piece, way ahead of the WSJ. Take a gander here and his follow-up observation here on what it will/might for coming elections.

Michael Moore Hates Capitalism

Michael Moore, stalwart defender of "the people", hates capitalism.

This man has made millions off of like-minded people who are willing to spend their hard-earned (???) bucks to watch his movies tearing apart facets of our fine country. And he keeps churning them out, and his like-minded sheeple keep going in droves to see them. And now he's releasing Capitalism: A Love Story...

... and his like-minded sheeple will flock together to see his latest bit of "wisdom" ... without ever getting the irony.

If Michael Moore is so strongly anti-capitalist, shouldn't he pay everyone top dollar for their own good (not for their services) and distribute his movie for free and insist that people be allowed to view it for free?

Ah, but this limousine liberal needs those suckers patrons, doesn't he, or he'll be driving around in a beat up foreign car for real, instead of how he pretends to. This is a guy with a penthouse suite, a fancy driver, etc. who pretends to be one of us, "one of the little guys"...why do people believe it? Because they can't be bothered to actually find out what's behind what they believe.

Seasonal Flu Vaccine Makes H1N1 Hit More Likely? So Says Canadian CDC

The Globe and Mail up in Canada reports that a study's been done which shows people who get vaccinated for the seasonal flu vaccine could be twice as likely to contract the H1N1 (swine flu) virus than those who don't. 

On Sunday Quebec joined Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January, clearing the autumn months for health professionals to focus on vaccinating against H1N1, which is expected to the more severe influenza strain this season.

“By the time the H1N1 wave is over, there will be ample time to vaccinate for seasonal flu,” Dr. Rubinstein said.

B.C. is expected to announce a similar suspension during a press conference Monday morning.

It seems that the seasonal flu vaccine is still recommended for those 65 and older, due to immunities that would've been built up during the 1957 out break of swine flu.

Read the article and decide for yourself.

Overpaid Celebrities ... Yeah, We Should Take Them Seriously

If you can't get the irony in this YouTube video, there's no point in trying to convince you of anything.

I Thought This Was a Post-Racial Era - What Happened?

Democrats happened. No one brought up race in this whole thing when Barack Obama started running for president because everyone thought it was a good thing that a "melanin-enhanced" individual was running. (I use "melanin-enhanced" because I'm told there's a huge push to get the color "black" removed from speech in everything from science [black hole] to crayons [I have no idea what they'd replace it with], so untwist you knickers! -- I guess we can call him an African American 'cause his dad actually *was* from Africa, whereas the vast majority of the melanin-enhanced in the US have never been there, and many from this generation probably couldn't tell you where it is on the map.)

What I found interesting, though, is that everyone kinda acted like he was the very first melanin-enhanced person to run for president. He wasn't. And like the majority of his predecesors, he was a radical, too, but the media decided to ignore it this time, 'cause he was so charismatic (i.e. he reads well from a teleprompter).

But back to the beginning ... no one really cared about his race. No one mentioned it. People don't want to brign up the elephant in the room and have the invective of "raaaacist!" hurled in their faces, especially when they aren't.

But Barack Obama brought it up, accused Bill of racist motives in not supporting him, and it just mushroomed from there (well, it's only *partly* 'cause the American people are kept in the dark regarding the truths about this guy who's spent $1 or thereabouts to keep all records pertaining to him sealed and are fed a lot of bulls**t about him instead -- but maybe that's just me). He and his lackeys keep stoking the flames, feeding the fire -- in fact, ObaMao felt it necessary last night to point out to David Letterman that he had in fact, been a black man before the election. The problem is that he feels the need to make sure people remember that at every turn.

So, it falls to someone like Star Parker to help us understand why we're talking about race yet again. She knows what she's talking about, being a black woman herself, and one who spent time on welfare (read her book Uncle Sam's Plantation) and escaped that particular institution. Her post below was distributed by GOPUSA.com yesterday.

~~~~~~~~

Why We're Talking About Race -- Again
By Star Parker
September 21, 2009

The Democrats have lost the health care debate.

For months now, polls have been showing that Americans don't want the massive new government controls, regulations, taxes, and spending that Democrats are pushing.

Latest Gallup polling shows 60 percent saying that President Barack Obama's proposal will not expand health coverage without raising taxes on middle class Americans and without affecting the current quality of health care.

Forty three percent approve of how Obama is handling health care and 52 percent disapprove.

You would be hard pressed to find a Democrat or Republican who does not agree that we can improve how we deliver health care.

So the logical conclusion we'd expect now from well intentioned people would be that we go back to square one. We do what Obama promised but never did -- have a truly open, bi-partisan discussion, with all ideas are on the table, to generate the best possible product for the American people.

Why is this not happening? Because it's not about healthcare. It's about ideology.

Despite claims from our Democrat administration that it wants civility, it does not. It wants control.

This nation is already torn apart ideologically. In the last four months we've witnessed two cold-blooded ideologically motivated murders. An abortion doctor shot in a church and a pro-life demonstrator murdered in a drive-by shooting in front of a school.

There are fewer and fewer "self evident truths" about which we all agree.

The current charade to paint ideological differences with our president as racially motivated dangerously pours gasoline on the burning embers of our differences.

But this is what Democrats want. They have lost the health-care debate on substance, so they want to make it emotional. They want to intimidate. And nothing intimidates and polarizes like race.

Months ago they started the process of getting socialized medicine -- taking over one sixth of the American economy -- passed in a few short weeks. The deadlines and breathlessness were because they knew that if Americans got a chance to understand what they were trying to do there would be push back. Exactly what has happened.

When the President spoke recently before the joint session of Congress, he finished by asking that we replace "acrimony with civility." But in this same speech he characterized his opposition as fomenting a "partisan spectacle," of "scare tactics" and of "wild claims about a government takeover of health care."

Our smooth talking President reduced those who disagree with him to a bunch of clowns, incorporated not a single major reform idea coming from the opposition, and then accused Republicans of stifling "honest debate."

Is it any wonder that every freedom loving American is at wits end? And that Congressman Joe Wilson lost it when he yelled out "You lie."

To demonstrate the Obama team's interest in civility, immediately after the speech, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's foul-mouthed, take-no-prisoners chief of staff, "charged over to three Republicans," as reported by the Wall St. Journal, "demanding in a profanity-laced tirade that they force Mr. Wilson to apologize."

Cong. Jim Clyburn, third ranking House Democrat, and black caucus member, took the lead in getting a House vote to formally reprimand Wilson. According to Clyburn, "This is about the rules of the House."

But what rules does Clyburn really care about?

When asked in an interview where the Constitution gives the federal government authority to regulate health care delivery, Clyburn replied, "There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do."

Finally an honest Democrat. Clyburn pulled no punches that our Constitution, which is the basis of his authority, is irrelevant to him. That it's all about political thuggery.

Which is why we're now talking about race instead of health care.

---

Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org). She can be reached at parker(at)urbancure.org

Say It With Me: "Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism"

Um ... wait ... sorry, I forgot. That only applies if you're a D/L/L/M/S/C/A (Democrat/Liberal/Leftist/Marxist/Socialist/Communist/Anarchist) ... let's just say it's anyone that's *NOT* a C/C/R (Conservative/Christian/Republican) -- those people are supposed to sit down, shut up and play nice, or go in the corner and think about what they've been *accused* of having done.

Why is it that the non-C/C/R is supposed to be quiet ... and if they choose to speak up (having had quite enough, thanks very much) ... when the D/L/L/M/S/C/A has every right to say whatever they want (whether it's true or not) however they want (whether it's vitriol or "street theater") to whomever they want (whether it's old people they're trying to scare or young children or families) wherever they want (whether it's Code Pink and their ilk interrupting presidential speeches, or those of Republicans/Conservatives, or those who peacefully protest something the "true dissenters" support).

Michael Barone, a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, posits his observation, which was distributed by GOPUSA.com. I wonder if you agree with him. I think I do, and I'm not afraid of saying so.

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Strangers to Dissent, Liberals Try to Stifle It
By Michael Barone
September 21, 2009

It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled objections to major changes in public policy were just childish obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling "lies," employing "scare tactics" and playing "games." Unlike his predecessor, he sought to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down.

Now, no one likes criticism very much, and most politicians would prefer to have their colleagues and constituents meekly and gratefully agree with them on pretty much everything. And yes, Rep. Joe Wilson did seem to have broken the rules and standards of decorum of the House (though not of the British House of Commons) when he shouted, "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's speech.

But none of this justifies the charges, passed off as cool-headed analysis, that Obama's critics are motivated by racism. There are plenty of non-racist reasons to oppose (or to support) the Democrats' health care proposals.

I would submit that the president's call for an end to "bickering" and the charges of racism by some of his supporters are the natural reflex of people who are not used to hearing people disagree with them and who are determined to shut them up.

This comes naturally to liberals educated in our great colleges and universities, so many of which have speech codes whose primary aim is to prevent the expression of certain conservative ideas and which are commonly deployed for that purpose. (For examples, see the Website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends students of all political stripes.) Once the haven of free inquiry and expression, academia has become a swamp of stifling political correctness.

Similarly, the "mainstream media" -- the old-line broadcast networks, The New York Times, etc. -- present a politically correct picture of the world. The result is that liberals can live in a cocoon, an America in which seldom is heard a discouraging word. Conservatives, in contrast, find themselves constantly pummeled with liberal criticism, on campus, in news media, and in Hollywood TV and movies. They don't like it, but they've gotten used to it. Liberals aren't used to it and increasingly try to stamp it out.

"Mainstream media" try to help. In the past few weeks, we have seen textbook examples of how MSM have ignored news stories that reflected badly on the administration for which it has such warm feelings. It ignored the videos in which the White House "green jobs czar" proclaimed himself a "communist" and the "truther" petition he signed charging that George W. Bush may have allowed the Sept. 11 attacks.

It ignored the videos released on Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com showing ACORN employees offering to help a supposed pimp and prostitute evade taxes and employ 13- to 15-year-old prostitutes. It downplayed last spring's Tea Parties -- locally organized demonstrations against big government that attracted about a million people nationwide -- and downplayed the Tea Party throng at the Capitol and on the Mall Sept. 12.

Actually, "mainstream media" are doing their friends in the Obama administration and the Democratic Party no favors, at least in the long run. Obama comes from one-party Chicago, and the House Democrats' nine top leadership members and committee chairmen come from districts that voted on average 73 percent for Obama last fall. They need help in understanding the larger country they are seeking to govern, where nearly half voted the other way. Instead, they get the impression they can dismiss critics as racist or "Nazis" or as indulging in (as Sen. Harry Reid said) "evil-mongering."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned us that there's a danger that intense rhetoric can provoke violence, and no decent person wants to see harm come to our president or other leaders. But it's interesting that the two most violent incidents at this summer's town hall meetings came when a union thug beat up a 65-year-old black conservative in Missouri and when a liberal protester bit off part of a man's finger in California.

These incidents don't justify a conclusion that all liberals are violent. But they are more evidence that American liberals, unused to hearing dissent, have an impulse to shut it down.

---

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.

COPYRIGHT 2009 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

If It Looks Like a Duck...

Obama wants to call it an "individual mandate" for buying health insurance (to the tune of a $900 fine for a single and up to a $3,800 fine for a family of four if they don't provide evidence of a sufficient health insurance plan when they file their taxes) and says "I absolutely reject the notion" that it's a tax.

"A tax is when you take money involuntarily from people and use it for a public purpose" as noted by Greta van Susteren's guest tonight.

And when you have to report such a policy (or lack thereof) on your *tax return*, with the proceeds to be collected by the IRS or be penalized by the IRS ... THEN IT'S A FREAKING TAX!

So much for ObaMao's promise during his campaign that he would absolutely *not* increase taxes on those making under $250,000 a year ... wait, the it was $200,000 a year ... which, changed to $150,000 a year ... anyone know the threshold now? 

Notice in the video below how Obama condescendingly scolds George Stephanopolous for consulting Merriam Webster's Dictionary to get the most commonly-recognized definition of the word "tax" ... and he accused Stephanopolous of "stretching" to make his point because he had to look up the definition. Puhleeeze! Stephanopolous was attempting to make sure he wasn't misinterpreting the word or misapplying motives to Dear Leader.

As Greta pointed out, "on page 29 of Max Baucus's bill, it says "the consequences for not maintaining insurance would be an excise *tax*" ... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck ... well, you get the idea.

It's Only Radicals That Protest? Not Anymore!

I'm Not the Only One Who Sees It! Really!

No, I'm not the only one who sees the problems within ACORN and it's wide-spread web of corruption. I'm not the only one commenting on it. My "blogfather" Gullyborg has a good post up todayt with his observations and the outrage of why the media isn't covering this. Why the cricket chirps from the "'objective journalists"? Could it be that they're not objective anymore?

I'm re-reading the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (well, actually listening to it on my iPod so I can listen at work) and I just passed the part where Nicolae Carpathia has been named the President of the UN Security Council and has taken control of the vast majority of the media outlets ... seeing as how Obama is set to be Chair of the UN Security Council on nuclear disarmament, and how the media doesn't cover reality anymore (unless it's "reality TV" shows) ... why am I getting just a little nervous?

If he calls for voluntary destruction of 90% each countries weapons and voluntary donation of the other 10% to the UN for "peacekeeping", I'll soon be watching for the unsuccessful mass attack on Israel!

Yeah, you have to read the series to get the reference.

ACORN ... SEIU ... Apollo Alliance -- What Do They All Have In Common?

I'm not a Glenn Beck fan in the sense that I don't make a point to watch his show every day. I do believe that he makes some very salient points and talks about what others aren't talking about -- but should be.

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch, home early from a minor procedure in the doctor's office, and had Fox News on. Beck's show came on and he did the most interesting monologue using a blackboard (wait, is it raaaacist of me to say 'blackboard'?) and a diagram of the relationship between many organizations and their roots.

I wanted to share it with y'all and give you something to think about. If this doesn't give you a pause for concern, what exactly will it take?

Tea Party Protester Account: Recollections from a Former Leftist

Barbara Curtis was one of the original radicals, it seems. She was a hippie before it was cool to be one. She was a second-tier feminist (I think that's the term she used). Pro-women's right, pro-abortion, anti-government. She was about as leftist as they come, from her account.

Fast forward many years and many experiences later and the former liberal is now a conservative, Christian mother of 12 (9 biologically hers, 3 adopted). Her very inspiring account of attending the 9/12/09 Tea Party protest in Washington, DC is posted at Pajamas Media. Be sure to go there and read the comments:

A Former Radical Goes Back to the Future at the 9/12 March

September 15, 2009 - by Barbara Curtis

In 1967, I was the radical Alinsky wrote the rules for. On the political cutting edge, I’d been arguing with fellow students and coworkers for years about Vietnam, and my growing disgust with my country led me down many winding roads of anti-American thought. I was counterculture before there was a name for it, skipping my prom and graduation as “bourgeois,” going barefoot, braless, and unshaven, and collecting tattoos at the only place in town those days — a crummy hole-in-the-wall next to downtown D.C.’s Greyhound station.

Everything about me was about making a statement. And while it was pretty exciting for me as a young woman to create a new identity based on rejection of the status quo, for years I’d felt like I was alone.

Then suddenly I discovered I wasn’t.

On October 21, a crisp, clear D.C. day, I arrived with my boyfriend at my first anti-war protest and felt a thrill of belonging and hope. The Pentagon grounds were churning with 50,000 or so people like us — a curious conglomeration of serious anti-American academic types (like me) and sha-la-la-la-la-live-for-today potheads (like him). But the differences didn’t matter to us that day, which celebrated everything from putting flowers in National Guard rifles to taunting police until we were tear-gassed. The counterculture had a big umbrella, and we were all hippies at heart — eager to create a new world, whatever that might turn out to be. This day gave us a sense of unity, strength, and purpose.

I went on to help organize events — from the whimsical Ring Around the Capitol (sponsored by Another Mother for Peace) to the ultra-violent May Day, where we used our bodies to stop traffic on the bridges into D.C. Rallying cry: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

Through it all, to be honest, I felt a little ashamed that I wasn’t completely living up to my political ideals, which involved destroying the status quo. I was always a secret admirer of the most radical — people like Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers. But while they were busy blowing things up, I’d gotten married and had a baby — Samantha Sunshine. Still barefoot and braless, I kept up my counterculture credentials by dropping her in the college daycare center during the week and carrying her on my back for weekend demonstrations. While my heart yearned for solidarity with my most radical leftist comrades, my mother’s instinct to stay alive and out of jail prevailed.

I was also among the original second-wave feminists — fed up with the machismo of our political comrades — who made abortion the next battleground. As a mother, I became a sought-after spokeswoman for the right to “choice.” After all, an unwanted pregnancy at this point would interfere with my education; didn’t I have the right to get rid of a parasite growing in my body?

Flash forward forty years to find this mother of 12 (nine by birth, three by adoption) once again a political activist — but now for the conservative cause.

What happened? Life happened. A 1972 permanent pilgrimage to San Francisco, another baby (Jasmine Moondance), divorce, promiscuity/experimentation, abortion, drug addiction, welfare — all in accord with my proud leftist political banner. A 1980 move to Marin County, Alcoholics Anonymous, a second marriage, New Age spirituality, birth control failures, building a business, owning a home.

A 1987 born-again experience, homeschooling, a son with Down syndrome, a writing career, three adoptions, and finally in 2002 a cross country move with 24 native Californians (my husband, children, sons-in-law and grandchildren) to come back to the traditional values I’d rejected before.

Not much about my current life looks like anything like the me I used to be — other than a lingering weakness for retro hippie fashion. Oh, and the skin art now lumping me with tattoo-come-lately Baby Boomers rather than communicating my colorful past.

But the hopeful giddiness I felt last Saturday at the 9/12 Freedom March took me back 40 years. And what I observed — no matter how ignored or spun by the increasingly irrelevant dinosaur media — tells me that this spontaneous and improbable gathering of conservatives is just the beginning of a movement that in the end will be as culturally revolutionary as the Woodstock generation.

I’m not coming at this like some dry academic — tsk-tsking conservatives and pushing moderation — but as a proud and passionate veteran of the personal-is-the-political generation. My agenda here is to encourage conservatives of all stripes who gathered to speak truth to power in Washington and across the country last Saturday, last month, and last summer. My message is to keep up the good work. Don’t listen to what they say. Keep informed. Keep showing up. And watch our numbers grow.

This is just the beginning.

On the morning of September 12, I left for the march with my camera. Since every picture’s worth a thousand words, I thought that would be the easiest and fastest way to communicate what really took place.

But what was going to take place? How many people would show? Though in my gut — with the latest victories of the new media over the old (Van Jones, ACORN) — I felt momentum building, I was really just one person going without a group, a strategy, or a plan.

At the Dunn-Loring (VA) Metro station, I noted the nearly-full parking lot — unlikely on a Saturday — with many out-of-state cars, many sporting conservative bumper stickers. My hopes began to rise. I was not alone. The platform was filled with people of all ages, some carrying signs. No one quite knew how to ask each other: “Are you going to the march?” But as a reporter, I could and I did.

There was a young couple with three children from Centerville, VA, a middle-aged woman and her mother from Harrisonburg, PA, a couple from Texas — and many more.

No one I talked to — on that platform or throughout the day — had ever been to a protest, march, or demonstration of any kind. No one knew what to expect. All had sacrificed time, energy, and money to come to Washington. All had undertaken this adventure independently with the assumption that they might indeed be the only one showing up.

“But with everything that’s going on, I felt like I had no choice but to come,” was a theme I heard echoed throughout the day.

All seemed informed and concerned, but cheerful and optimistic. I knew this feeling from before — it begins when you move from concern to action. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, and as I discovered on September 12, particularly beautiful in people whose orientation toward their country is not revolution but recovery.

Not much about my current life looks like anything like the me I used to be — other than a lingering weakness for retro hippie fashion. Oh, and the skin art now lumping me with tattoo-come-lately Baby Boomers rather than communicating my colorful past.

But the hopeful giddiness I felt last Saturday at the 9/12 Freedom March took me back 40 years. And what I observed — no matter how ignored or spun by the increasingly irrelevant dinosaur media — tells me that this spontaneous and improbable gathering of conservatives is just the beginning of a movement that in the end will be as culturally revolutionary as the Woodstock generation.

I’m not coming at this like some dry academic — tsk-tsking conservatives and pushing moderation — but as a proud and passionate veteran of the personal-is-the-political generation. My agenda here is to encourage conservatives of all stripes who gathered to speak truth to power in Washington and across the country last Saturday, last month, and last summer. My message is to keep up the good work. Don’t listen to what they say. Keep informed. Keep showing up. And watch our numbers grow.

This is just the beginning.

On the morning of September 12, I left for the march with my camera. Since every picture’s worth a thousand words, I thought that would be the easiest and fastest way to communicate what really took place.

But what was going to take place? How many people would show? Though in my gut — with the latest victories of the new media over the old (Van Jones, ACORN) — I felt momentum building, I was really just one person going without a group, a strategy, or a plan.

At the Dunn-Loring (VA) Metro station, I noted the nearly-full parking lot — unlikely on a Saturday — with many out-of-state cars, many sporting conservative bumper stickers. My hopes began to rise. I was not alone. The platform was filled with people of all ages, some carrying signs. No one quite knew how to ask each other: “Are you going to the march?” But as a reporter, I could and I did.

There was a young couple with three children from Centerville, VA, a middle-aged woman and her mother from Harrisonburg, PA, a couple from Texas — and many more.

No one I talked to — on that platform or throughout the day — had ever been to a protest, march, or demonstration of any kind. No one knew what to expect. All had sacrificed time, energy, and money to come to Washington. All had undertaken this adventure independently with the assumption that they might indeed be the only one showing up.

“But with everything that’s going on, I felt like I had no choice but to come,” was a theme I heard echoed throughout the day.

All seemed informed and concerned, but cheerful and optimistic. I knew this feeling from before — it begins when you move from concern to action. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, and as I discovered on September 12, particularly beautiful in people whose orientation toward their country is not revolution but recovery.

Barbara Curtis is a wife, mother of 12, and author of nine books, including Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking About Social Issues with People Who Don't Think Like You. Visit her at www.barbaracurtis.com or at her blog www.MommyLife.net.

Tea Party Protester Account: A View From the Crowds

Many people who have never ventured out of their political comfort zones have decided that Enough Is Enough! Many got off their couches, and out of their offices, and out of their homeschool rooms and headed for Washington, DC to protest everything from ObamaCare, Commie Czars (hey, it was on their signs, but I do happen to agree), unread-yet-voted-for bills, and a host of other concerns.

Many people went to Washington, DC concerned about their safety, worried about the possibility of angry confrontations from Liberals/Leftists but brought their kids anyway because they thought it was a lesson to be learned.

Many people got the idea from listening to like-minded friends and family members, some from listening to inspiring talk-radio personalities, and many from just paying attention.

But people turned out by the thousands ... the tens of thousands ... and some (across the pond, of course) estimate attendance upwards of two million souls. (Why do we have to look to Europe to get unbiased and realistic coverage about something that happened on our own shores???)

Many people have decided to share their stories of September 12, 2009, when they attended the Tea Party Protest in Washington, DC. They've shared via interview, email, blog, Facebook and other networking sites. I wish I could've gone, but instead, I'll share with you what they've shared as their experiences.

This recollection by Kathy Garriott is posted over at The American Thinker, a great blog that I would heartily recommend as a consistent must-read.

What I Saw at the Revolution

By Kathy Garriott

"Do you think there'll be porta-potties?" Was the anxious question my husband asked.  He's in his fifties, after all. He asked about restroom facilities several days before we left for DC, and enjoined me to "find out on the internet" because he thinks I can find out anything on the internet.  It was from the various conservative blogs and forums that I haunt on the net that had inspired me to put together this trip to DC in the first place.  Like most tea-partiers, I am only loosely affiliated with any of the organizers.  I was anxious about restrooms, too, and anxious about the notorious summer heat and humidity of our nation's capitol.  I'm in my fifties, after all.  I knew the organizers of this event were not professionals (and I mean that in the nicest way) and things like adequate porta-potties might not have crossed their radar.

So we set off to DC with our supplies of poster-making materials and some folding camp chairs, umbrellas, trail mix, and basic first-aid.  If there were no restrooms, well, we'd just deal with that when we got there.  

We'd booked a hotel in the downtown area, and when we arrived a family with three small children was also checking in with some Tea Party paraphrenalia.  If they can face bringing three children under five to a political rally with the uncertain knowledge of available restrooms, I'd better stop whining.

The only preparation we had for this Tea Party were the downloaded  instructions: "We meet at Freedom Plaza between 9 and 11, then we march down Pennsylvania to our rally on Capitol Hill."  Getting up  late, we were on the street at 10 for the twenty-minute walk to Freedom Plaza, marked on our city map.  We started seeing other tea-partiers with their signs and flags, camp chairs slung over their shoulders and Uncle Sam fashions, and we walked together and spoke together without introduction like old alums from the same school.

"Heading to Freedom Plaza?"  asked the Rebels in Fanny Packs.  "Yep!"  We were headed west on F street,  roughly parallel to Pennsylvania Avenue.  Maps were consulted, we all had several, maps with earnest  orange and pink highlighting.  We were at 11th Street when we glanced  two blocks south toward Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped in shock.

A mass of humanity! a wave of signs and people! marched east, framed to our eyes between the tall shadows of the two blocks of buildings.  Husband asked, "Is that a different protest group going ahead of us?  There are always protests going on in DC."  Another said, "I see the yellow Gadsden flags.  That has to be the tea-party."  "But they weren't supposed to start the  march until after eleven o'clock!"

So we hung a sharp left and hurried to Pennsylvania Avenue.  When we reached the curb, we squinted north-eastward to see where the marchers started.  We knew that the march would start with costumed musicians in Revolutionary War gear playing Yankee Doodle.  No music.  There was nothing but a solid mass of people with signs as far as we could see, all the way to Capitol Hill.  We looked southwest, to where we had expected to assemble with speeches before the march: nothing but a thicket of protestors and signs across four lanes of Pennsylvania.

It was like the loudest, most jovial football pep rally you've ever seen, hundreds of thousands rooting for the beloved home team.  Every demonstrator was grinning wide and hoisting the most original, pithy, and often hilarious signage.  One marcher had contrived a life-size cardboard Obama at the podium, with two friends carrying teleprompters made out of plexi-glass--"promises, promises, promises" said one, and "lies, lies, lies" said the other.  People on the curb leaped out to photograph this work of genius, and the protestors all stopped good-naturedly to allow the recording.   "We're not the party of no.  We're the party of HELL, NO!"

But one of the most poignant signs was flaunted by a fledgling couple that were probably newlyweds.  "$800 Plane Ticket.  $300 Hotel Stay.  Marching for freedom--priceless."  DC is an expensive town to visit.  So many had dug deep into their pockets during a financial downturn to make an appearance. 

Husband and I just stood on the curb (we weren't supposed to stand on the sidewalk, and we are law-abiding partiers), laughing and yelling back at the protestors.  "Yay, Texas!  Yay, South Carolina!"  We couldn't stop reading the signs and calling encouragement long enough to join in the marching.  It was just too delightful to stand and watch the parade go by, even though we knew that the early marchers would get the plum spots close to the steps of the capitol, and probably conveniently close to the porta-potties.

While waving our flags and hollering, trying to save some of our voices for the actual rally, a young woman came to stand by me, probably in her early twenties and dressed smartly in good leather boots and a dashing shawl-sweater ensemble. I was the country bumpkin and she the urban sophisticate, but she was bashful and uncertain, and ventured a question to this woman in her fifties wearing a Life is Good t-shirt.  "But what about Freedom Plaza?"  said, worried, as if somehow she had transgressed. " Weren't we supposed to meet at Freedom Plaza before the march?  Why are they already out marching?" 

I found out the next day that at Freedom Plaza, the turnout had been too unmanageable to have the pre-march rally as planned; the Park Service (who would later refuse to give out any estimates of crowd size) demanded that they start the march an hour and a half early because the crowd had swarmed  too large for comfort.   After all, Freedom Plaza is very close to the White House.

There were now three of us, because the  woman seemed to want company and we liked having a young person to look after, watching the crowd go by for more than an hour.  At eleven-thirty, we decided to join in the march and ebullient bellowing.  "No more czars!"  "Enough is enough!"  The marchers paused front of a building with the first amendment engraved in the side, Congress shall make no law... to generate a handsome  noise about the threats to our freedom of speech.

When we got close to the Capitol, the crowd stopped for almost half an hour because there was a bottleneck of people finding their places in front of the capitol.  I noticed that in the parking lot was a reassuringly long row of porta-potties.  We eventually set up "camp" across the pond from the staging area, and really couldn't hear much of what was said.  An informal "parade of signs" marched around the pond, as people showed off their original artwork and slogans to the applause and cheers of  partiers.  The crowd was thick all around the pond, and I turned to look behind and gasped at more crowds that stretched toward the Washington Monument (and also saw the CNN bus sitting bravely in the thick of a partying humanity).  

So the young woman and I talked some politics.  Everyone around me was collaring some friendly stranger to talk politics:  to joyously, vociferously talk politics.  A small, elegant, elderly lady had flown in from San Francisco and told everyone of her low opinion of Nancy Pelosi's character and warned that she posed a  dire threat  to the welfare of the nation.  A man with an Oklahoma flag and a man with a Texas flag crossed the poles, like  military sabers at a wedding, and everyone joked about the two rivalrous states finding common cause.  There was no profanity.  (Well, there were several signs with One Big Ass Mistake, America, but it got no worse than that.)  People made a point of picking up litter, even some that had obviously been there a while.

Observing this, my young companion mentioned that everyone in her social set were "progessives" and that she had been dragged to a Green event.

"You should have seen the mess they left," said in disgust.  I concluded that she was a closeted conservative ready to Come Out but only beginning to figure out how to go about it.  She had decided to come to the Party at the last minute, had come alone, and had found her way to the Metro.

"It was filled with people with signs and flags. We packed in like sardines, but everyone was having such a good time."

Everyone, everyone in the crowds grinned big grins.  Joy.  You could feel the joy of people who have been distressed, even anguished, for over a year suddenly finding that they are not alone and that there is something they can do.   Not alone by a long shot!  We knew with our own eyes that there were hundreds of thousands of people, maybe as much as a million.  Tens of thousands would not have stretched across four lanes of Pennsylvania for hours!

The young woman departed with a hug, infected with the cheer of all those around the Capitol, and eventually the rally was over.

But not really.  The euphoria continued.  We joked with strangers about the dangerous "mob," --Put down that brick!--when we saw the first waste disposals with dozens of discarded signs stacked neatly next to the cans.  The cans overflowed, but upright empty water bottles  tidily circled the cans, to make for easy removal.    

We were relaxed on the Pennsylvania sidewalks now, filling them on both sides as we left. People talked on their cells as they walked.  One women, alone  like our campanion, shrieked happily into her phone, "No, I didn't mind being alone!  Because I wasn't alone!  Not for a single minute!"

And there was a luster to the eyes of the departing partiers.  I heard:  I'm so glad I came.  This was incredible.  I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  It was worth every penny.

And the restaurants were full of us, gauche in our Uncle Sam finery.  We greeted other partiers at their tables, partiers whose names we didn't know, to discuss plans for taking this to the next level.  I caught the sideways glances of chagrin from the urbane Townies.  We tipped the wait-staff well.

The only discouraging word was not all that discouraging.  As we ambled away from the Capitol, some youthful local man  with a soft round face and early balding scalp,  sporting the prerequisite wispy  uptown Van Dyke, muttered  in a high-pitched tone  that conveyed a kind of agonized sqeamishness, "These people need to get out of my city."

His city.  If he's listening, I'd like to tell him...

We'll be back.

Kathy Garriott is a housewife from the American South

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/what_i_saw_at_the_revolution.html

The Conservative Woodstock ... But Without the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N Roll

The LameStream Media likes to pretend "a few thousand" stragglers met up the mall carrying swastikas and being an "unruly" astroturf mob ... yeah, right. That's not how I see it when I look at pictures people have shared. The LSM likes to portray these people as horrible, racist, evil-mongering, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers ... hey ... not so!

Read the article at Looking at the Left and take a look at the horrible, unruly mob that attended (It could take a couple minutes to load 'cause there are *lots* of pictures of the hateful, angry, unruly mob -- so I've posted just a few for you here).

 

 

 

 

The Environmentally-Aware Leftists vs. the Environment-Hating Righties

Perhaps the EnviroWackos should learn to practice what they preach.

Courtesy of photos posted at Gateway Pundit, let's compare the picture of the the Washington DC mall after the Tea Party protesters left

 

with the view of the mall after the revellers celebrating Obama's inauguration left it.

 

 

Obama's Not the Only One Who's Been Lying!

For months now we've heard one Dem/Lib House Representative or Senator after another claim that there won't be one dime in the proposed health care bills that would provide for federally funded abortions. Those of us who take ... shall we say ... a "dim view" of abortion could've told you from the get-go that this was false. Those who belong to the culture of death have found ways to couch the language, to express themselves in what would seem to those "uneducated" in Lib-Speak to be perfectly reasonable words, a really, really good reason for abortion to be paid for by tax dollars, much of which was taken from those that believe abortion is a *bad* thing!

"That can't be so," you say. Think again, my friend. I think it's well-expressed in a "guest viewpoint" in the Register-Guard this morning. (The Register-Guard serves Oregon's Willamette Valley and a good portion of the rest of the state, too.)

~~~~~~~~

Reform bills would allow abortion at the public’s expense

By Gayle Atteberry

Appeared in print: Monday, Sep 14, 2009

---

Despite erroneous claims that abortion is not included in any of the proposed health care bills, passage of President Obama’s health care plan would result in the biggest expansion of abortion since Roe vs. Wade.

Until this last month, “abortion” was not specifically mentioned in any of the proposed health bills, allowing proponents to claim that abortion would not be covered in the final health plan.

Both the Senate and House bills call for the creation of a massive new federal health insurance plan called the “public plan,” which would be required to cover all “essential benefits.” According to multiple past administrative and legal interpretations of federal law, unless an abortion exclusion is explicitly written into the bill, abortion coverage will be included as an “essential benefit.”

For example, when the federal Medicaid statue was passed, the law did not mention abortion, but it was interpreted to require coverage of any abortion sought by a Medicaid-­eligible woman.

As the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said: “Because abortion fits within many of the mandatory categories, including ‘family planning,’ ‘outpatient services,’ ‘impatient services’ and ‘physicians services’ Medicaid covered medically necessary abortion between 1973 and 1976” (Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan vs. Engler, 1996). “Medically necessary” is a term understood by both abortion advocates and foes to include the broadest range of situations.

Therefore, the Hyde Amendment was adopted in 1977, which bans the use of federal funds for Medicaid abortions. The Hyde Amendment must be re-approved annually as a rider to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill.

Recognizing the ramifications of the term “essential benefits,” pro-life members of Congress attempted to add amendments to both the Senate and House health care bills to ban abortion from being included in the plans or to forbid federal money from paying for abortions. All such amendments were defeated by Democratic majorities on numerous committees.

After rejecting all pro-life amendments, the House Energy and Commerce Committee met July 30 and adopted the Capps Amendment. House Resolution 3200, with the Capps Amendment, creates a nationwide insurance plan run by the federal government, and the language explicitly authorizes the public option plan to cover all elective abortions.

In addition, the language would create a new program to provide federal subsidies to cover 27 million Americans to help them purchase health insurance (either private plans or the new federal public plan) that cover abortion. Abortionists would send bills to the federal insurance plan and receive payment from the federal Treasury. It is nonsense to pretend this scheme does not constitute federal subsidies for abortion.

Some say that the Hyde Amendment would forbid taxpayer funding of abortion. However, the Hyde Amendment applies only to Medicaid. An Aug. 5 article from The Associated Press headlined “Government insurance would allow coverage for abortion” addressed the Capps Amendment and its consequences:

“A law called the Hyde Amendment applies the restrictions to Medicaid, forcing states that cover abortion for low-income women to do so with their own money. … The health overhaul would create a stream of federal funding not covered by the restrictions.

“The new federal funds would take the form of subsidies for low- and middle-income people buying coverage through the health insurance exchange. Subsidies would be available for people to buy the public plan or private coverage.”

It gets worse. HR 3200 (Page 49) says that any state law that prevents an essential service (including abortion) will be overturned. The majority of states have laws restricting abortion in some way, such as parental notification, waiting periods and women’s right-to-know laws. These all would be overturned, leaving abortion-on-demand at public expense.

Roe vs. Wade gave women a “constitutional right” to an abortion for the entire nine months of her pregnancy. President Obama’s plan would now require every taxpayer to pay for it.

Gayle Atteberry of Eugene is executive director of Oregon Right to Life.

Joe Wilson Won't Apologize Again! (nor should he)

From The Hill:

Wilson 'not going to apologize again' despite threat of sanction

By Mike Soraghan - 09/13/09 09:43 AM ET

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said Sunday he will not apologize for his "You lie!" outburst, risking a sanction from the Democrats who run the House.

"I am not going to apologize again," Wilson said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." "I have apologized to the president. I believe that is sufficient."

Democratic leaders have said they will introduce a "resolution of disapproval" Monday or Tuesday unless Wilson formally apologizes on the House floor. The House returns Monday.

Wilson's outburst Wednesday night during Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress came after Obama said his healthcare plan would not cover illegal immigrants.

Wilson apologized to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday evening and, on Thursday, Obama said he accepted Wilson’s apology. Democratic lawmakers note that he was pressed to do so by Republican leaders.

Several House leaders and many rank-and-file Democrats pushed a reluctant House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday for some sanction against Wilson.

"There was a violation of the rules of the House," said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly. "It needs to be resolved by an apology or a resolution."

It is against House rules to impugn the integrity of the president when speaking on the floor or in committee meetings.

While not a formal censure or reprimand, the resolution, if passed as expected, would put Congress on record as condemning Wilson's conduct.

Wilson said he was coming off several large town hall meetings where constituents made clear they didn't like Obama's healthcare plan. He said his son told him he had a "town hall moment."

"I respect the president," Wilson said. "I would not do that again. I just felt so provoked. I would have said it differently if I had the time."

But he added, "I believe in truth," and said his outburst brought the issue to light and forced Democrats to alter their plan to address the illegal immigration issue.

Wilson said he values civility but is prepared to deal with the scolding on the floor.

"It's going to be tough for me," Wilson said. "I'm a civil person. I believe in civil debate on the floor."

He said Democrats are pushing the apology to distract from the real issues.

"Democrats are playing politics," Wilson said. "I believe in the truth. That was not the truth."

He also rejected an accusation by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Wilson's outburst stemmed from racial intolerance.

"No, no. I respect the president," Wilson told host Chris Wallace. He added that there is a relationship of sorts between their families, because his family and First Lady Michelle Obama's family hail from adjacent towns in South Carolina.

Wilson and his Democratic opponent Rob Miller have each reportedly raised more than $1 million in campaign contributions since the episode Wednesday night.

And Wilson was hailed as a hero at a taxpayer rally at the Capitol on Saturday, with speakers praising him, and many protesters waving signs reading "Joe Wilson for President."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, called the Wilson flap a "red herring," saying "there's no disagreements" on limiting health coverage to those in this country legally.

"The language will be clear" that they won't be covered, Sebelius said. "That will be very spelled out."

September 12 2009 Tea Party Protest/March on Washington DC

The leftists would have you believe that Obama & Co. had no idea there would be a protest of any size in town. His puppet Gibbs said he had "no idea people were coming to DC to be heard." Of course they knew! It's been in the works for months! The people whose business it is to know what's going on in DC on a day to day basis, those that prepare the "threat matrix" for the president (sorry, I feel he doesn't deserve capitalization) would obviously have known and, knowing, Obama did the disrespectful thing and left town so he could say, "Protesters? I didn't see any protesters! It's all lies! The people love me!"

Um .... yeah .....

Out of the other side of their liberal mouths (remember, that's how you tell they're lying ... when the lips are moving!) they will say there were no more than a few thousand protesters gathered on the mall. Word has it that, rather than getting pictures of the hundreds of thousands of gathered protesters, the liberal media made sure to get footage of small groups of stragglers so they portray it as a huge failure (similar to what actually happened to the last "million man" march).

Take a look at the time-lapsed footage and decide the truth for yourself.

~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~

Seems some on the Left are trying to say that the pictures from the Tea Party protest are fakes or are taken from another "event" like the procession from Ted Kennedy's funeral (supposedly because the flags are at half staff ... which they were from Friday 9/11 in honor of those who died in the 9/11 attacks) ... hmmm, so how to decide how many people were there? Let's go right to the source, the drawing released that shows how "they" put a quantity to the number of people who can fit in the Washington Mall, as they tried to quantify those that attended the inauguration in January. What do you think?

Washngton DC Tea Party Speech - Mike Pence

Yesterday hundreds of thousands of protesters (precisely how many hundreds is up to interpretation and political leaning -- personally, from the footage I've seen [and will link] I'm guesstimating it's *way* over a million ... but I can be obstinate like that) converged on Washington DC to protest the current health care bill and our government's continuing problem of taxing and spending without an end in sight. Although many celebrities who think they know something have tried to pass the gathering of Tea Party protesters off as "astroturf" (an artificial political movement put together by powerful organizations rather than a grassroots effort put together for average people with a common interest), there's no doubt in my mind that this is as grassroots as it gets!

For the record, why is it that Democrats/Liberals/Leftists seem to think they are the only ones with an authentic point of view and an authentic right to speak out against those things/people with which they don't agree???

If I could've gone to DC to participate in the protest, I certainly would've love the opportunity. As it is, I've had to make do with reports from others. Here's a speech made by Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN):

~~~~~~~~~

September 12, 2009

Pence Remarks at the National Tea Party “March on Washington”

Washington, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks today at the National Tea Party “March on Washington:”

“I am Mike Pence.  I am from Indiana, and it is an honor to welcome the largest gathering of conservatives in American history to your nation’s capitol.

“There are some politicians who think of you people as astroturf.  Un-American.  I’ve got to be honest with you, after nine years of fighting runaway spending here on this hill, you people look like the cavalry to me.

“We stand together at a historic moment in the life of the conservative movement and in the life of this great country.  The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation.  How we as conservatives respond to these challenges, could determine whether America retains her place in the world as a beacon of freedom or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of socialism.

“While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and the conservative movement, I believe we are on the verge of a great American awakening.  And it will begin here and begin now and begin with you.

“This Administration and this Congress are getting a badly needed history lesson, starting with just what our founders meant by ‘consent of the governed.’  If silence is consent, it is now revoked.

“We the people, do not consent to runaway federal spending.  We the people, do not consent to the notion that we can borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing America.  And we the people, do not consent to government-run insurance that will cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have, and that will lead us to a government takeover of health care in this nation.

“This week, the president came to this hill and he gave one more speech about the same bad plan.   Mr. President, America doesn’t want another speech, we want another health care plan that is built on freedom.

“And we the people, do not consent to Members of Congress passing thousand-page bills without anybody ever reading them.  Members of Congress should be required to read ever major bill that Congress adopts.  I’ve got to be honest with you, I think Members of Congress should read major bills, but I’d be just as happy if some of them read this just a little more often – the Constitution of the United States.

“You know, there is a lot of good stuff in there and it reminds us that we are a nation led by the people, and not the elites and the bureaucrats and the politicians.  It reminds us that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people.

“And nowhere in our Constitution can you find the word ‘czar.’  It is time Washington, D.C. became a No Czar Zone.

“The American people are not happy. But it is not just about dollars and cents.  It is about who we are as a nation.

“As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it’s about whether ‘we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.’  My money is on the American people.  My money is on freedom.  My money is on the future.

“This great national Capitol is filled with memorials to freedom’s heroes.  Americans whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, lie the remains of Americans who paid freedom’s price so we could gather here today.  In their time, they did freedom’s work as citizens and patriots. Now it’s our turn. 

“Let us do as those great Americans we remember in this city have done before: let us stand and fight for freedom.  And if we hold the banner of freedom high, I believe with all my heart that the good and great people of this country will rally to our cause, we will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this Country back in 2012, so help us God.”

Single-Payer Healthcare for Native Americans a Big Bust

With a hat tip to the Northwest Republican blog, I invite you to watch a very informative video regarding the health care provided *by treaty* to the Native Americans throughout our country. Apparently a well-know adage is ... "Don't get sick after June" ... now I know why.

Dragnet Still Relevant!!! Sgt. Joe Friday Rocks!

Why We Need Government Healthcare NOW ... Finally Explained!

Waterboarding NEVER Helps! - Or Does It?

With another hat tip to Tom, here is a very interesting article on how Khalid Sheik Mohammed became *such* a very valuable asset ... after waterboarding, etc. [Which supposedly *never* works....]

Read the article at its source (Washington Post) or below and judge for yourself.

How a Detainee Became An Asset
Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

By Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 29, 2009

After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."

In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.

Speaking in English, Mohammed "seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group's plans, ideology and operatives," said one of two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified. "He'd even use a chalkboard at times."

These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.

"KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete," according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA's then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.

"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."

Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.

"During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time," he said.

Critics say waterboarding and other harsh methods are unacceptable regardless of their results, and those with detailed knowledge of the CIA's program say the existing assessments offer no scientific basis to draw conclusions about effectiveness.

"Democratic societies don't use torture under any circumstances. It is illegal and immoral," said Tom Parker, policy director for counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International. "This is a fool's argument in any event. There is no way to prove or disprove the counterfactual."

John L. Helgerson, the former CIA inspector general who investigated the agency's detention and interrogation program, said his work did not put him in "a position to reach definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods."

"Certain of the techniques seemed to have little effect, whereas waterboarding and sleep deprivation were the two most powerful techniques and elicited a lot of information," he said in an interview. "But we didn't have the time or resources to do a careful, systematic analysis of the use of particular techniques with particular individuals and independently confirm the quality of the information that came out."

After his capture, Mohammed first told his captors what he calculated they already knew.

"KSM almost immediately following his capture in March 2003 elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow airport," according to a document released by the CIA on Monday that summarizes the intelligence provided by Mohammed. The agency thinks he assumed that Ramzi Binalshibh, a Sept. 11 conspirator captured in September 2002, had already divulged the plan.

One former U.S. official with detailed knowledge of how the interrogations were carried out said Mohammed, like several other detainees, seemed to have decided that it was okay to stop resisting after he had endured a certain amount of pressure.

"Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them," said the former official, who requested anonymity because the events are still classified. "After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, 'I was tortured into cooperating.' "

Mohammed provided the CIA with an autobiographical statement, describing a rebellious childhood, his decision to join the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager, and his time in the United States as a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, from where he graduated in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

"KSM's limited and negative experience in the United States -- which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills -- almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist," according to the intelligence summary. "He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country."

Mohammed provided $1,000 to Ramzi Yousef, a nephew, to help him carry out the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. In 1994, he worked in the Philippines with Yousef, now serving a life sentence at the federal "supermax" prison in Colorado, on a failed plot to down 12 U.S. commercial aircraft over the Pacific.

Mohammed told interrogators it was in the Philippines that he first considered using planes as missiles to strike the United States. He took the idea to Osama bin Laden, who "at first demurred but changed his mind in late 1999," according to the summary.

Mohammed described plans to strike targets in Saudi Arabia, East Asia and the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, including using a network of Pakistanis "to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and the Brooklyn bridge in New York." Cross-referencing material from different detainees, and leveraging information from one to extract more detail from another, the CIA and FBI went on to round up operatives both in the United States and abroad.

"Detainees in mid-2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals -- many of who we had never heard of before -- that al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations," according to the CIA summary.

Mohammed told interrogators that after the Sept. 11 attacks, his "overriding priority" was to strike the United States, but that he "realized that a follow-on attack would be difficult because of security measures." Most of the plots, as a result, were "opportunistic and limited," according to the summary.

One former agency official recalled that Mohammed was once asked to write a summary of his knowledge about al-Qaeda's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist group had explored buying either an intact nuclear weapon or key components such as enriched uranium, although there is no evidence of significant progress on that front.

"He wrote us an essay" on al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions, the official said. "Not all of it was accurate, but it was quite extensive."

Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in "considerable detail the traits and profiles" that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

Mohammed was moved to the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006, and his loquaciousness is now largely confined to occasional appearances before a military commission. Back in his 86-square-foot cell at the secret Camp 7 at Guantanamo, he spends most of his waking hours in prayer, according to a source familiar with his confinement who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But Mohammed has not abandoned his intellectual pursuits. He requested a Bible for study in his cell, according to the source, in order to better understand his enemy.

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While I know it's an unpopular opinion, and I don't really care to debate it with anyone, I think that harsh interrogation techniques (short of beatings and the like) have their place in our intelligence arsenal. No, I wouldn't want to go through that myself, but then again ... I'm just a lowly right-wing extremist (according to Nancy Pelosi et al) because I dare to express an opinion opposite to what the current Powers That Be espouse. Who knows? Maybe I should be keeping a packed duffel bag ready for when they want to haul me off to a detention facility for being a "dissident". Whatever ... it's all in God's hands anyway.

Oh, and another thought ... sleep deprivation must be *very* effective because having slept with someone for many, many years who snores loud enough to be classified as a lumber mill ... well, let's just say that a sleep-deprived woman could be very dangerous. I know I sometimes felt I could go from zero to bitch in about 2.2 seconds!

Sen. Edward Kennedy -- Hero or Traitor?

Much has been made of the largely-lauded late Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA). "The Liberal Lion of the Senate."

Yes, he served in the Senate for nearly 50 years ... a seat which was largely bought by his family, seeing as he was the only surviving son of the four that his parents originally had.

This gentleman, however, was to my way of thinking not much of a gentleman at all. A serial womanizer who cheated often on his wife, once with deadly consequences. (Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.) Drinking problems and a womanizing history kinda put an end to his hopes for the White House (personally, I'm thanking God that legacy didn't continue). But he still had to get his way.

Being brought up a Roman Catholic in America at the time he was raised, you'd think the'd have been a bit more conservative, like his brother, the late President John F. Kennedy (RIP). Unfortunately, he took after his very liberal brother, the late Robert Kennedy, instead, and somehow became enamored with a lot of socialist/communist/Marxist ideals ... to the point that he "capitalized" on them to try to subvert the late President Ronald Reagan. To my way of thinking, that makes the late Teddy Kennedy more of a traitor than a hero.

(Makes me a bit embarassed to descend from a line that goes back to the Kennedy clan - lowland Scots - just in case I should be related to them.)

Read the Forbes Magazine online article at the source here.  Or just read it below (with a hat tip to my friend Tom for pointing out the article to me).

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

Peter Robinson, 08.28.09, 12:01 AM EDT
Considering the late senator's complete record requires digging into the USSR's archives.
pic

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."
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Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

Kennedy's motives? "Like other rational people," the memorandum explained, "[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations." But that high-minded concern represented only one of Kennedy's motives.

"Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988," the memorandum continued. "Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president."

Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov--the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring--at least in part to advance his own political prospects.

In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian's story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. "The media," Kengor says, "ignored the revelation."

"The document," Kengor continues, "has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I've ever dealt with as a scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery. Kennedy's office did not deny it."

Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever acted on the memorandum--within eight months, the Soviet leader would be dead--and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former senator's opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because Kennedy represented such a commanding figure--perhaps the most compelling liberal of our day--we need to consider his record in full.

Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.

When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong.

Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speechwriter, writes a weekly column for Forbes.

This Ain't America No More!

Or so says a police officer at Rep. Jim Moran's (D-VA) townhall meeting held in Reston, VA on Tuesday, August 25, 2009.

The protester is told to take his sign (with a picture of Obama on it) down ... eventually the officer tells him that if he doesn't keep the sign down, the protester will be charged with trespassing. Bear in mind that he's there with a bunch of other protesters, who also have signs ... but his is singled out. My guess is that this particular officer finds the sign offensive ....

Watch the video and try to keep your chin from hitting the floor...





Update: The guy's not a police officer ... he's a "school security officer", basically a rent-a-cop.

Medical Community Won't Take Swine Flu Vaccine

When the medical community chooses to opt out of participating in a large vaccination drive .... you know there's a problem. Many in the medical research and medical practice communities have come out and said that they will not agree to take the Swine Flu (H1N1) vaccine, and they are also urging their friends and family not to take it as well. Why?

Watch the video.


So now it remains to be seen whether the Homeland Security community will win out with mandatory/forced vaccinations or or whether cooler heads will prevail and we'll allow our citizens to make their own decisions.

Daniel Hannan, Please Come Now!

We need someone with Daniel Hannan's clear, concise thinking and expression in the US. He's doing his darndest to straighten things up there, so it's unlikely he'd come work on our problems, too. But he's very clear in his recommendations that we fight Obamacare and gives very good reasons.

Mandatory Detention of Your Children? Mandatory Vaccinations?

Oh, say it ain't so, but it's a definitely possibility. Many of us have been opining on these possibilities and others for some time now, and have been labeled as "nut burgers" and "conspiracy theorists" ... but it's time to pay attention people.

We're told that Tamiflu and Relenza are effective drugs to combat flu symptoms, but instead of making additional doses of these very effective drugs, time and money are being spent to come up with a vaccine that may or may not be effective in treating Swine Flu (officially labeld "H1N1", so as not to marginalize the porcine population). Why not go with what works? Remember back in 1976, when more people died from problems with the vaccine than died from the actual virus?

Well, it doesn't stop there? It's not just about making vaccine available and "urging" to population to get vaccinated. It goes far further and poses a far greater threat to our civil liberties.

A conference was held this past weekend on the "upcoming swine flu pandemic" ... there's every confidence in the media, the medical establishment and the government that this flu will be almost like the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918, and absolutely no chance (in their collective minds) that it could peter out like the Swine Flu that "spread" in the 1980s.

These same people are the ones that gauge every year which flu strains are "likely" to be the most active in any given flu season, make a piggy-back vaccine to hit the majority of them, and often are dead wrong.

But that's not taken into consideration. Nope, instead, they're going straight for the worst-case scenario, and making plans like no one in my lifetime would ever believe would be made in the U.S. -- heck, in the *world*.

Check out the following article and be sure to watch the YouTube video at the end:

Authorities Prepare To Seize Kids During Swine Flu Pandemic
International swine flu summit trains responders to enforce quarantines, mass vaccinations, deal with riots & unrest.

Authorities are preparing to seize children from schools, set up quarantines and morgues, conduct mass vaccinations, and deal with riots and unrest, according to an international swine flu summit recently held in Washington DC which was attended by distinguished scientists, industry leaders and top health officials from all over the globe.

A conference first discussed by this website three weeks ago has now taken place, with health authorities meeting at the end of last week to finalize response plans to a swine flu pandemic that has been all but guaranteed to occur this coming fall.

According to a PDF information leaflet released before the meeting, attendees were briefed on how to "conduct morgue operations," manage an interruption in food supplies and "manage panic caused by sudden disruption of services & interruptions in essential goods & services".

During a swine flu pandemic, their duties would also include dealing with civil disturbances, controlling and diffusing social unrest and public disorder, carrying out mass vaccination programs and enforcing quarantines, according to the conference documentation.

One of the most shocking modules of the conference deals with "School/University Pandemic Planning" and strongly implies that authorities will usurp parental rights over children in the event of a swine flu pandemic.

"Concurrent Breakout Session #10" outlines plans to "train teachers to screen for symptoms & know what to do when students / teachers fall ill," before then transporting ill students, which presumably means transporting them to quarantine zones with or without the consent of parents. The use of schools as "shelters" or quarantine centers is also mentioned.

As we have documented, authorities have been training to raid and remove children from schools during times of emergency for over a decade, mainly under the auspices of preparing for school shootings or during drug sweeps.

In October 2001, authorities swooped in to kidnap and remove 115 children from Heartland Christian Academy without a warrant. Children were forcibly loaded onto buses like criminals as they screamed for help in shocking scenes featured in Alex Jones' Road To Tyranny documentary.

Earlier this month we reported on how a Maine high school was taken over by the National Guard in a drill focused around riots during a mass vaccination program. In this scenario, the rioters were begging for the vaccine, but obviously the opposite is likely to be the case if a mandatory vaccination program is announced, if there are riots then they will consist of people refusing to take the shot.

A You Tube user posted the following video which covers some of the issues raised by the swine flu conference.

Proper hygiene will help, people, but it's time to seriously look into gathering an emergency stockpile of food for several weeks, just in case ... whatever else you choose to stockpile ... well, that's your call.

Over Half of Obama's Appointees Missing!

OK, what that really means is that half of the people that should've been appointed to key positions have not yet been appointed.

The excuse,as expressed by Hilary Clinton, "The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It's frustrating beyond words."

Well, maybe part of the problem is that so many of the prior appointees had major legal and ethical issues (can you say "tax cheats galore"?) and those doing the investigating and clearances have actually begun going through their background checks with the fine-tooth comb they should've used earlier???

Or maybe Obama's done the end run himself and that's why he's been appointing all the czars right and left, ones of whom the taxpayers had no say in the selection or placement, and whom are accountable to no one but Obama. Read for yourself the New York Times article (but remember to read with a jaded eye, 'cause this paper's hardly conservative friendly).

New Disease Discovered: George W. Bush-by-Proxy Syndrome

There is an amazing amount of dislike, nay *hatred*, leveled in the direction of our former president, George W. Bush. In the interest of fairness, I'll admit that I voted for him -- TWICE. While I didn't agree with *everything* he said and did, I thought he was a *very* good president -- until he went "squishy" there are the end and seemed to give up on free market principles. That really ticked me off!

But for those Conservatives and Republicans out there that got angry at the Republican party because of their dislike for/discomfort with GWB, I hope you've taken a good look at our current president and realized how very much better we had it with GWB in office. Many, if not most of us, dislike his elitist attitudes and statements, his penchant for wanting to eat cake while the rest of us are eating gruel (ok, he likes $100-per-serving Wagyu beef while the rest of us are lucky to have hamburger), dislike the direction the current president is taking us, disagree with his policies, believe he's a racist (wait, maybe that's just me ... can that even be possible? After all, he's melanin-enhanced, rather than melanin-impoverished ... aren't only the melanin-impoverished racists???) But whatever we feel about the man's policies, direction, arrogance et al, no one I know wants him hurt in any way ... nor do we want any of the democrat leadership hurt. We want them voted legally out of office, but we don't want them hurt. The chaos and martyrdom are something no one should want, as that would give an even greater impetus to the leftists achieving what they want ... the dismantling of our current American society and political system. (Personally, I believe that if anything awful were to happy to our current president [God Forbid!], it would probably come from some covert person on the left trying to nudge things their way out of sympathy and manufactured rage.)

You'd think the people on the Left would be able to look at things calmly and rationally, and communicate them as dispassionately a I am, wouldn't you? After all *they* consider themselves to the be "enlightened" ones.

But no, those who sit on the Left of the ideological aisle from me hated George W. Bush with as much venom as it's possible to humanly muster and often wished him dead, expressed not only verbally, but also frequently expressed via signs and burning effigies.

But they aren't satisfied with vilifying GWB ... nope they have so much hatred for him that they have plenty left over to spill on others whom they distrust and want to destroy.

I think Andrew Breitbart expressed the problem quite adequately in his August 17, 2009 article:

BREITBART: George W. Bush-by-proxy syndrome

Andrew Breitbart

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn't do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don't do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.

Next were the Mormons.

Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.

Next, tax-day "tea party" attendees were "tea bagged."

Then there was a beauty contestant.

And a Cambridge cop, too.

And now we have town-hall "mobs."

Smile ... you've been "community organized."

When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.

This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.

The origins of manufactured "politics of personal destruction" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based "progressive" street agitator titled, "There Is Only the Fight."

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, "Rules for Radicals." In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

With the complicity of the mainstream media and abetted by George Soros' money and netroots nation, Mr. Bush never stood a chance.

But the more the virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective.

In fact, one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best.

Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim.

A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.

Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.

Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules - or double down on the old ones.

Worse yet, as his approval ratings descend rapidly - Rasmussen has him at 47 percent, the lowest of his presidency - angry citizens may be turning the tables on him, using Mr. Alinsky against him.

They won't have to "freeze" and "personalize" him either. He's got 3 1/2 years left with the klieg lights focused on him. And if Mr. Obama can't get the economy rolling and continues to demonize everyday folks for his failures, he will be further isolated from sympathy and even ridiculed.

Yes, it's cruel - and effective.

Ask Mr. Bush, the magnanimous guy who gave the new president a heartfelt hug the day he took office. He knows.

Boy, I wish I could see his famous smirk right about now. I always loved how much they hated that.

• Andrew Breitbart is publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. His latest endeavor, Big Hollywood (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com), is a group blog on Hollywood and politics from the center-right perspective.

Silent No More! It's Time to Stand Up and Speak Out!

God Bless the Marines! Semper Fi!

This guy, disabled vet, a Marine who still considers sacred the oath he took when he entered the military, addresses Clark County, Washington's Brian "Brown Shirts" Baird. (Yeah, Baird says he apologized for the "brown shirts" comment, but with so many other things done by Dems, it's likely only 'cause it was politically expedient for him to do so.)

Enjoy! If you haven't been to a town hall meeting in your area (or within driving distance) and one is coming up, please consider taking time out of your busy schedule (yes, *I* understand that we Conservatives & Republicans *work* for a living, and so can't get to the ones held during working hours ... thanks Dems for thoughtful scheduling!) and attend one. You might get a chance to as your Representative a pointed question or two.

I went to one of our local town halls and had a great question ready, but my ticket didn't get drawn, so I didn't get to ask it. I hope y'all have better luck!

There are those who believe every they see on the Internet. There are those that believe everything they see in the Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids. There are those that believe everything they see in the New York Times. There are some that believe everything they see on WorldNetDaily.com.

Personally, I don't believe everything I see, but rather prefer to read things and reason for myself, based on history, reasoning, common sense, known biases of the authors if I can trust what they've put in print.

That said, I may not agree with everything written by Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily.com, but I think there is particular merit to his 8/17/09 post. Especially in light of the fact that Leftists throw around the epithet "Nazi!" if they find out you're a Republican, if you challenge their assertions, or if they don't like the cut of your jib. They especially use it (oh, as much or more as they hurl "Raaacist!") if they run out of logical arguments. Heck, when they get tired of those two (which doesn't look to be any time soon), I fully expect them to start hurling around playground insults like "poopy head!!!".

Anyway, read the article for yourself and decide if the author has a good point. I sure do. After all ... the term "Nazi" was a German shorthand, of sorts, for "National Socialist" .... doesn't sound like a Christian Conservative Republican to me .... just sayin' ...........

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who most resembles 'Nazis'?  (link)

Exclusive: Joseph Farah warns, ignoring history would be repeating same sin from 1930s
Posted August 17, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Joseph Farah

This is going to be, shall we say, "a controversial column."

Outfits like the George Soros-subsidized Media Matters will have a field day with it – excerpting passages out of context, deliberately distorting the words I am carefully choosing and, in typical knee-jerk fashion, mocking its premise.

Cable TV propagandists posing as "newsmen" will hurl invectives and dub me as a villain for expressing my honest and candid opinions – all of which are based on reality and truth.

Lately, both sides of the political spectrum have suggested their political opponents resemble Nazis or fascists. Are both sides equally wrong?

Let's talk about "national socialism" – because that, indeed, is exactly what Barack Obama and his friends in the Congress are actively promoting and enacting in America today.

The very word "Nazi" is indeed an acronym for national socialism – the political and economic system Hitler infamously imposed on Germany in the 1930s. It was then and remains today, despite the denials of historical revisionists, a "left-wing" idea. All socialism is, by definition, a left-wing notion.

If the left-right political spectrum has any meaning, it is that those on the left tend to favor government intervention while those on the right favor non-government solutions to problems. That is the traditional and accepted definition – much as those on the left would like to blur that understanding.

National socialists, whether they seek to kill Jews or old people or the disabled or unborn babies, will always be national socialists – no matter what kind of lipstick they put on the pig.

Furthermore, people like our Founding Fathers, who sought to diffuse power because they understood its unchecked and unlimited centralization represented a grave threat to personal liberty represent the polar opposite of national socialists.

(Column continues below)

While it may be an overstatement to compare Obama with Hitler, it is even more far-fetched to characterize his political opponents as Nazis and fascists because they very clearly want to limit the size and scope of government – preferring that people be free to govern themselves to the greatest extent possible.

Obama has power. His opponents, for the most part, do not. Furthermore, Obama seeks to use his power to impose policies that have, like it or not, a striking resemblance to those Hitler promoted in the 1930s.

Like what?

• Abortion

• Infanticide

• Government deciding life-and-death issues in dispensing medical care for both older people and those with serious illnesses;

• Unfair treatment of Jews, in Obama's case, with regard to Middle East conflict;

• So-called public-private partnerships – blurring the line between government responsibilities and the private sector. This is one of the definitions of fascism;

• Picking winners and losers among corporations and the dispensing of government favors and punishments to them;

• Hiring and firing of supposedly private corporation executives;

• Attacking free expression;

• Secrecy

• Using taxpayer funds for the hiring of political partisans to "organize" communities and sign up new voters;

• Demonizing political opponents;

• Encouraging citizens to "rat out" friends, family members and others who oppose his policies;

• Keeping tabs on political opponents;

• Filling top government posts with like-minded political extremists who would normally be regarded as internal security threats;

• Ignoring the Constitution;

• Blaming his predecessor and the fundamentals of the American political and economic system for all the problems besetting the country;

I mean, I could go on and on. George W. Bush and other predecessors in the White House had their faults. Some of them did terrible things, showed incredibly bad judgment, made horrible mistakes. But I can think of no precedent for someone in the White House doing all of the above at once – all of which bear striking parallels to the leadership of infamous fascists such as Benito Mussolini and Hitler.

Worse, the leaders of his party and his acolytes in the media can see no danger posed by any of these policies. In fact, like good Germans, they blame the opposition in the most disgusting, vile ways – often unfairly accusing them of doing what they themselves do.

Why is it acceptable for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say American citizens attending congressional town halls are swastika-carrying thugs, but wrong for her political opponents to point out the similarities between her party's policies and those of Nazi Germany?

Why is it acceptable for Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury fame to compare those who want to see Barack Obama's birth certificate with Adolf Hitler, but wrong for his political opponents to point out the similarities between the way the president and Democratic Congress are attempting to squelch dissent and grab unchallenged, unchecked power and the way fascists of the past have?

Why is it acceptable to accuse Americans devoted to preserving their constitutional republic of resembling neo-Nazis, but wrong for those same Americans to point out the death-worshipping, eugenics-friendly notion of government health care rationing?

Am I calling Obama a little Hitler, a Nazi or a fascist?

I am saying American liberty faces very serious challenges from the country's own leadership – not from citizens who dissent against those policies. That's what happened in Weimar, Germany, too.

To ignore history would be to commit one of the same sins that was committed in the 1930s – and every time totalitarianism has reared its ugly head before or since.

The Goal of Socialize Medicine Is Nothing New

Everyone thinks Obama is some great communicator ... well, the guy reads well from a teleprompter, but that's just about it. Without it, he's nuthin' ...

Now the *real* Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, could communicate complex issues to the common man without talking down to him, could get his point across in a way that really resonated ... and it's part of the reason he won by landslides in *both* 1980 and 1984.

Listen to this YouTube video as he explains the problems with socialized medicine ... and realize that this issue has been with us for a *very* long time ... and it's not going away any time soon ... it failed back when Truman was president, and Hillary Clinton tried to foist it on us after her husband won the presidency, but we know the Socialists want us under thumb ... what a victory that would before them.

I really wish the idiots in DC would take a listen and really pay attention!!!

(hat tip to my friend Kathy)

Obama to Republicans: Stop Talking Now

He has an interesting memory ... has he forgotten that he spent a year and a half in Congress before he started running for President?? He forgets that he was *part* of the ones voting in things ... one of the guys who helped 'create the mess' ... maybe he needs to stop talking now, too?

Hillary Clinton On Patriotism

Warning -- the screeching might make your eyes and ears bleed.



Wouldn't it be novel if Liberals/Leftists thought this applied to *everyone* ... not just those that agree with *them*?!?!?!?

Dems! Tick Off the Old People At Your Own Risk!

ELDERLY SWING AGAINST OBAMA PLAN

By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann

08.11.2009

The most ominous signal yet for the Obama health care plan emerged in the poll by Scott Rasmussen released today. While public support for the plan fell to a new low (42% support, 53% oppose — down five points in two weeks), the elderly emerged as the strongest opposition group. Those over 65 rejected the plan by 39-56 while almost half — 46% — said they were “strongly opposed” to it.

The group that supports the plan most strongly is those likely to be least affected, voters under the age of thirty, 67% of whom support the proposals.

The Democratic Senators and Congressmen can well choose to ignore polls. Polls go up. Polls go down. They may figure that the public will have moved on by the time they run for re-election, particularly those Senators who are not up in 2010. With four or six years to go in their terms, they can afford a relaxed view of polling data.

But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot afford to ignore a massive defection in the ranks of the elderly, one of its key building blocks. Ever since the New Deal coalition was cobbled together by FDR, the elderly have been a major component. Worried about Republican designs on their Social Security, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

But the Obama proposals, which many see correctly as a major cut in Medicare, might be seminal in driving them en masse away from the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is built on six pillars — blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, union members, and the elderly. If legislation threatens one of those pillars, it threatens the stability of the entire partisan structure. And Obama’s health care reform seems to do just that.

With 40% of the savings in medical spending coming from Medicare, the senior citizens of America are coming to see the Obama proposals as an assault on their health care system. Since their needs are fully met by Medicare, they see no need for monkeying with the system and are highly suspicious of any changes. When they watch as their fellow seniors attend town meetings to protest to their Congressmen about these cuts and are labeled “un-American” for their pains, their alienation from the Democrats just grows.

The fissure Obama is driving between his party and the elderly will not soon heal. When the elderly change their voting habits, they tend to do so for a very, very long time. Even Senators who are up in

2012 or 2014 should worry that their votes for the Obama plan could doom their ability to attract elderly support.

As to the young people who back the plan, once they learn that they will have to pay steep premiums for health care coverage, whether they want to or not, their support is likely to cool. Under the bill, for example, those making $30,000 a year would have to pay up to 7% of their income in health insurance premiums before they could get a government subsidy. A $2,100 bill for such a young person might seem affordable to Obama, but perhaps not to them. Thus, the legislation may well come to be seen as a tax on the young, another of the key constituencies of the Democratic Party.

The cost of Obama’s health care changes just keeps growing — financially and politically.

Single-Payer Health Care Has Been the Goal All Along

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He's just telling you what he thinks you want to hear.

GA Congressman/Physician's Take on Health Care Bill

This is dated July 16, 2009 ... why have I not seen this before today??? This Representative from Georgia practiced medicine for 25 years, knows about patient care, the quality they need/deserve, and how the current health care bill will affect Americans, their children, and their grand children.

Please consider sharing this with your family and friends!

...

Exactly Who Are These Right-Wingers Who Oppose Obamacare??

 I know that “government officials” have tried to portray anyone who disagrees with them on Obamacare, etc. as “an angry mob” and accuses those that gather in protest as “having been gathered and orchestrated by GOP activist groups” … Not so. Those of us who disagree do so because we’ve thought out our positions. Those that are able to gather in protest may be doing so knowing that their paychecks are taking a hit ‘cause they’ve taken time off from work, or they may have been laid off, downsized or whatever. When Leftists gather and protest (sometimes very violently and with no respect for those they’re shouting down) they claim “dissent is the highest form of protest” and that we need to let them be in their attempt to “take down the man.”

When those on the Right gather and protest, we’re nothing but a paid-for angry mob trying to stir up trouble.

Perception and perspective are everything, aren’t they?

Just thought I’d share this interesting article I found at HotAir.com that explains “Who We Are”:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who We Are

posted at 8:48 am on August 6, 2009 by Doctor Zero
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

There seems to be a bit of confusion among Democrats about the nature of the opposition to their plans. Maybe I can help clear things up, by telling them a few things about us.

We’re not paid minions of any corporate interest or lobby. Most bloggers working to stop the Obama health-care disaster are like me, writing when they can find the time, because we care about the future of our country. The same is true of the people showing up at town hall meetings, and organizing rallies. Some of us are well-dressed in tailored suits. Others wear jeans and T-shirts. Most of us are dressed in what we wore to work.

Our support for a massive government program does not increase when you tell us we’re not allowed to ask questions about it.

We’re not racists. We’re also not racialists. We don’t think a wise Latina is inherently more qualified to do anything than a wise Asian woman, a wise white woman, or a wise white man. We’re tired of being fed excuses for high government offices staffed by anything but the best people for the job. There are too many high government offices, so we’d like some of Obama’s absurdly incompetent appointees to take their titles with them when they leave. We remember what it was like when we got rid of the Clinton mob, so we’ll be conducting inventories on the contents of those vacated offices, before we turn out the lights and pour cement in the locks.

We don’t like having to fight desperate battles to save our freedom and future from socialist politicians every ten or twenty years. We don’t like having our time wasted with trillion-dollar statist fantasies, when our government is already trillions of dollars in the red. We’re tired of checking the papers each day, to see which group of us has been targeted as enemies of the State. We’re growing impatient waiting for the Democrats to come up with ideas that don’t require their supporters to hate someone. We’ve had our fill of “progressives” who act as if we’re living in 1909, and none of their diseased policies have ever been tried before.

We believe government should be punished for failing to live up to the expectations of its citizens, not the other way around. We don’t think people who destroy thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in market value should get a pass because they meant well. We’ve had enough of dodging a massive State that wants to organize, subsidize, penalize, and divide us. We refuse to pay tithe to a religion we don’t support, including the official State religion of global warming. We demand honesty, humility, and transparency from our public servants, no matter how many elections they’ve won. We won’t settle for making the only important decisions about our futures in the voting booth, once every couple of years.

We don’t blame people for showing up to grab their share of a government handout. We blame the people who stole the money from the rest of us, and put it on the table for them. We don’t think respect for private property ends at a certain income level, or that only some people should be applauded for doing their best to get ahead in life. We believe in the power and righteousness of capitalism, the exchange of goods and services between free people acting in their own best interests. There is no moral substitute for it. Every other scheme for governing human affairs amounts to a few dominating some, to the applause of others. Our freedom is not for sale, and we reserve the right to defend it from theft.

We don’t invest our hopes in the government. It is beneath the dignity of free men and women to spend their days hoping a politician decides to provide for our needs. We face the future, not with passive and helpless “hope”, but with active and dynamic faith in ourselves, and our fellow Americans. We are opposed to a political class that tries to cultivate our hopes by showering us with fear. We don’t trust politicians with our fortunes, much less with our lives. In fact, we don’t trust politicians much at all… but we absolutely require them to trust us.

We do not regard America as the sole country on Earth that should be forbidden from taking pride in its history, traditions, and achievements. We reject the notion that celebrating our traditions is an automatic insult to anyone else. We owe absolutely no apologies to murderous dictators or unelected tyrants, and we care little for their feelings. We believe there are many lessons to be learned from our history, by all the people of the world, and we cannot teach those lessons if we allow ourselves to be shamed into silence. We will never hesitate to call evil by its proper name, or give evil men good reasons to fear us.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a lot of work to do. There’s an election coming up next year.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

 

Be sure to take a look through the comments.

Cash for Clunkers -- Time to Trade It In for Common Sense

The "Cash for Clunkers" program has been in effect for all of about 2 months 1 month, taking effect something like the week being heavily talked about around the time we got our new Jeep. Although we didn't qualify for it (not only did we "buy too early", but the Jeep doesn't get significantly better mileage than the Expedition did), many people do or would. Under the terms of the program, the first qualification level gets the consumer a $3,500 credit toward the purchase of their new vehicle, and the second level (which requires even higher increase in mileage from the old car to the new one) would net the consumer a $4,500 credit.

I've had concerns about this program, likening it to a problem like the housing "crisis" (albeit on a smaller scale) in which people bought more than they could actually afford. Here they had a car that ran, but might've wanted to trade up, but maybe couldn't afford it because of a lack of a down payment, or the payments would be too high. But with this credit, perhaps they could get that new car, perhaps a Toyota "Pious" or some other high-priced car. Maybe their previous car was paid off, and now they will be responsible for car payments again. In these wonky economic times, we must each take stock of our own financial stability and determine for ourselves the risks we're willing to take ... but some of us might not have taken out that car loan without this incentive. Consumers are trusting that this program will help them.

But it could be a plus for the car dealership, a huge number of whom have been looking forward to the increased sales they have anticipated this program would bring in. Many (if not most) have increased their advertising buys and built up campaigns around this program and new car buyers it would bring in.

Personally, I don't believe that the government should be in the business of trying to influence people's purchasing decisions ... of course, I don't believe they should be in the banking or automotive industries, either, nor do I believe they should be trying to get into the health care industry ... but that's neither here nor there. I don't make the decisions. I just find out things and try to share them with my friends and those who stumble here as the result of a whim or an ill-placed keystroke or mouse click.

... But look what I found out this evening on the Fox Business site, after my friend Christa mentioned that she's seen something about it *very* recently ...

My favorite parts? "the allocation of $1 billion for the program averaged out to just 12.5 vehicles per dealer, which given the program’s popularity, didn’t seem to be enough." and "It is believed that any deals submitted through midnight Thursday night will be honored."

'Cash for Clunkers' Program Suspended as Cash Runs Out (Link)

Joanna Ossinger and Jeff Flock

FOXBusiness - Thursday, July 30, 2009

The U.S. government has reportedly suspended the “Cash for Clunkers” program, which may have proven to be too popular for its own good.

A House leadership staffer told FOX Business on Thursday that House members are being informed by the Department of Transportation that the program is either out of money or will be by the time the current deals are processed.

A White House official said that "we are working tonight to assess the situation facing what is obviously an incredibly popular program. Auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that all valid CARS transactions that have taken place to date will be honored."

It is believed that any deals submitted through midnight Thursday night will be honored.

As FOX Business’s Brian Sullivan reported on Wednesday, the allocation of $1 billion for the program averaged out to just 12.5 vehicles per dealer, which given the program’s popularity, didn’t seem to be enough.

“Cash for Clunkers,” officially the Car Allowance Rebate System, gives money to people who trade in certain qualified vehicles and buy vehicles that are more fuel-efficient. The traded-in cars aren’t able to be re-sold -- their engines must be rendered unusable by the dealers.

The program’s Web site said as of Thursday evening that $779 million remained in the program, with $75 million remaining for CAT3 trucks.

There were signs Wednesday evening that the CARS program might gain new life.

The Department of Transportation said it’s “not suspending” the CARS program, but is instead working with the White House and Congress to try to fund the program to meet demand.

And Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of the original authors of the CARS program, pledged to work with the Obama Administration to make sure the program continues.

--FOX Business's Peter Barnes and FOX News's Chad Pergram contributed to this article.

Just imagine what these self same idiots will do with our health care. Can't you just see the following taking place?

DOCTOR:  "I'm sorry ... we were going to fund your operation ... we really meant to ... and you're not too old or a member of our political opposition and you don't partake in anything we don't approve of or anything like that ... we just don't have the money anymore. ... Can I interest you in a pain killer and some end of life counseling instead? NEXT!"

Global Warming: The Debate Hasn't Yet Been Had

How can you really say "the debate's over" as Al Gore and his cronies have, unless you allow both sides of the issue to be heard? If you're corrupt and have a stake in the "carbon credit market" like Al Gore does, it's easy, as long as you bluster long enough and loud enough and do your level best to discredit anyone who disagrees with you ... no matter how sound your opposition's science is. Then you make a "documentary" so full of lies and scare mongering that is freaks out the weak minded, socially narcoleptic sheep who appear unable to think for themselves (and wins a Nobel Peace Prize for this travesty over the work by a woman who risked her life to save the lives of thousands of Jewish children during the Holocaust) ... and you keep trying to shut down any opposition that dares rear it's dissenting head.

But, people, the debate's not over. There is more and more evidence that the global warming alarmists are dead wrong, refuse to admit it, and still crave funding to continue perpetrating this fraud on the people of the entire world. The more you can keep people afraid, keep them so petrified that the cry of "we must *do something* and we must *do it NOW*" results in a populace willing to do anything, give any amount to whoever is claiming to do the thing that will "save us all" that they do it without thinking critically.

Today I give you a well-reasoned article regarding the global warming alarmists, how their sciences is flawed and based on an alternate reality, and why you shouldn't believe them.

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Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years

Posted By Rachel Alexander On July 27, 2009 at 8:30 am

S. Fred Singer, a climate physicist, and Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, have written the definitive book about global warming. They carefully explain the complexities and facts so the average person can understand. It is true the earth goes through warming phases, but they are cyclical and not manmade. Climate change is not a dramatic event but something as regular and dull as grass growing. A close look at the evidence reveals that climate change is probably due to variations in the sun’s radiation – sunspots. Global warmings and coolings have occurred regularly about every 1,500 years. The earth’s temperature increased in the early 20th century, before most man-made emissions began, but stopped increasing in the latter half of the century when man-made emissions were highest.

Higher levels of CO2 are not responsible for the current warming trend. Satellite and high-altitude weather balloon data confirm that the lower atmosphere is not trapping lots of additional heat due to higher CO2 concentrations. It is earth’s surface that is warming, and it is warming more rapidly than the lower atmosphere where the CO2 is accumulating.

Global warming alarmists assume that the increase in CO2 is also due to an increase in water vapor. Water vapor makes up about 60% of the natural greenhouse effect, with CO2 only making up about 20%. Minor gases including ozone, nitrous oxide, and methane make up the remaining 20%. If there was only an increase in CO2, the difference in temperature would be miniscule, so alarmists are forced to assume that water vapor is increasing too. North Dakota state climatologist John Bluemle has stated that doubling CO2 levels would have a miniscule effect on temperature. It is true that warmer air can hold more water vapor. But there is no evidence that the water vapor is remaining in the air – contributing to the greenhouse effect - or whether it is raining down more quickly.

Antarctic ice cores reveal that there is a close correlation between CO2 levels and the earth’s temperatures throughout the last three ice ages including global warmings. However, CO2 levels have lagged behind the global warmings by about 800 years, evidence that CO2 is not the causal factor. According to Hulburtus Fischer, an environmental physicist, and his research team from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, when the ocean warms, it releases CO2, stimulating more plant and tree growth. As the vegetation absorbs the additional CO2, it becomes lusher and bigger in size. This process takes approximately 800 years. So in reality, whenever earth’s temperatures have risen, things have improved on earth. A two degrees Celsius change would result in more beneficial conditions than now. “The Romans, Chinese and Medieval Europeans all tell us that the last two warming phases of the 1,500 cycle were prosperous times for humanity…The prosperity of the Medieval Warming is apparent to us today through the beautiful castles and cathedrals of Europe, which date mainly from that period. How could these have been built if the warmings were accompanied by the flooding, epidemics of malaria, massive famine, and constant storms assumed by the gloomy advocates of man-made warming?”

Unlike the computer simulation models environmental alarmists rely upon to create artificial worst-case scenarios, evidence shows that the earth has done a pretty good job regulating its atmospheric temperatures. Studies done by NASA’s Goddard Space Center and a NASA-MIT study in 2001 led by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen found that the ocean’s surface temperature always remains at 28-30 degrees Celsius due to self-regulation. When the temperature rises, more water evaporates into the air, which in turn creates more clouds that send cool, dry downdrafts of air that lower the sea temperature. “When the clouds deposit the increased moisture from that rapid evaporation on polar ice caps and glaciers around the world, the ice caps and glaciers will actually grow unless the local temperatures are warm enough to increase local melting.”

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is responsible for much of the global warming alarmism. It has been highly criticized by genuine scientific organizations like the International Union for Quanternary Research (INQUA). INQUA is a 75-year old scientific think tank that researches global environmental and climate changes throughout history. INQUA asserts that the IPCC ignored the scientists who produced most of the data and observations on sea level science, substituting computer models which produce “the falsification of scientific observational facts.”

The IPCC and its simulated computer models cannot explain why the earth became colder between 1940-1975. The frequently cited landmark 1996 global warming report issued by the IPCC simply omitted the portions contributed by scientists which expressed skepticism about global warming, instead relying principally upon the writings of global alarmist extremists like scientist Ben Santer of the U.S. government’s Lawrence Livermore National Library. Sentences like this were deleted from the report by Santer, “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”

There is plenty of evidence indicating that the earth has not been warming in recent years. The Indian Ocean’s level was higher between 1900-1970 than it is today. The Maldives, 1,200 islands which sit in the Indian Ocean, are 20-30 cm lower today than they were in 1970. Lester R. Brown, an agricultural economist who has made wrong predictions about world famines since the 1960s, claims that First World countries are flooding the Pacific Islands due to greenhouse gases from power plants. In reality, since 1993, the island of Tuvalu has seen ocean levels decrease by four inches.

The environmental extremists’ simulated computer models can be manipulated to generate any outcome wished. They are even further askew considering they are based on thermometers located in urban areas where there is a concrete jungle effect, increasing temperatures and overstating surface temperature increases by as much as 40 percent. Using the models’ conclusions, there should have been a rise of several degrees Celsius at the poles since 1940. In reality, the temperature at both poles has been decreasing. Temperatures at and near the North and South poles are lower than they were in 1930. This is evidence the Greenhouse Theory is not correct, because manmade emissions began dramatically increasing around 1940. In fact, 97% of the Antarctic has been cooling since the mid-1960’s. Alarmists point to the 3% that is warming because that is where most of the scientists and thermometers are, and it reinforces their Greenhouse Theory.

If the earth warms, wetlands won’t dry up. They will simply move slightly upslope, as they have in years past when the climate warmed. Similarly, animals will change locations and relocate to areas most conducive to their habitat. By the time Arctic regions have warmed enough to shift penguins and polar bears around, they will begin cooling again and the animals will shift back to their previous habitats, without causing any extinction. Glaciers also naturally shift around, which includes both retreating and growing. Physicist and meteorologist professor Johann Oerlemans of Utrecth University in the Netherlands produced a graph in 2001 which showed that the major glaciers of the world started to shrink around 1850, but by 1940 only half of them were still shrinking, and many of them had started to grow again.

The U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol was little more than a scam designed to punish wealthier countries. It did not enforce restrictions upon big developing countries like China and India, which refused to sign it. The only evidence provided for the Protocol was that the temperature of the earth had increased by .6 Celsius over the last century (conveniently omitting that the increases had mostly been during the first forty years of the century), along with simulated computer models that created any conclusions chosen to be programmed.

Global warming extremists like to point to the “Scientists Statement on Global Climatic Disruption” petition from the group Ozone Action as evidence that a majority of scientists believe manmade global warming is occurring. It was signed by 2,611 scientists worldwide in 1996 and sent to President Clinton. But according to Citizens for a Sound Economy, only about 10 percent of the signers had degrees in fields related to climate science – about 260 signers total. The signers included landscape architects, psychologists, a traditionally trained Chinese doctor, and a gynecologist.

On the other hand, these extremists ignore the Oregon Petition, which was signed by more than 17,000 scientists and expressed doubt about man-made global warming. More than 2,600 of its signers have climate science credentials. Global warming extremists tried to discredit it by saying a few of the signers were fake names, but there were only a few and were probably planted there by extremists in order to later discredit the petition.

In 2001, the IPCC issued a report that included a “hockey stick” graph showing global warming trends since the year 1000. The graph eliminated the Little Ice Age which occurred during the 17th and 19th centuries, and exaggerated the increase in global warming in the 20th century, making it appear as if this was the highest hike in global warming in the past 1000 years. This graph was discredited when it was pointed out that the earth’s warming in the early 15th century greatly exceeded any warming in the 20th century.

There was also a greater warming at the beginning of the last 1000 years. About the time the Vikings discovered Newfoundland, they also discovered “Vinland,” so named in 1001 A.S. due to the widespread growth of grape vines. This area has remained too cold to sustain grape vines, even up until today when environmental extremists tell us we are experiencing a dramatic increase in global warming unprecedented in the last 1000 years.

Sallie Baliunus, an astrophysicist with a degree from Harvard, and Willie Soon, also an astrophysicist, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, looked at 102 studies which analyzed whether the 20th century was the warmest, and found that 78% of them did not. Another four studies found that the earliest part of the 20th century was the warmest – before most manmade CO2 emissions.

Global warming alarmists warn that animal species will die out as the earth warms. In reality, not a single species has become extinct due to the .6 percent increase in the earth’s temperature over the past 150 years. Most alarmists point to a single species they claim has become extinct due to global warming, the Golden Toad of Costa Rica. In reality, the toad became extinct due to clearing by natives of the lowlands it inhabited. Overall, there are less species becoming extinct today than in the past. The United Nations Environmental Program issued a report in 2002 which found that the world lost only half as many major species during the last 30 years of the 20th century as it did during the last 30 years of the 19th century.

The artificial divide set up by global warming extremists between the underdeveloped countries and First World developed countries falsely portrays industrialized countries as the ones responsible for air pollution. The environmental movement uses an emotional argument to make people feel guilty about its wealth. In reality, “richer people have f children, feed themselves with much less land per capital, gradually but largely reduce industrial pollution, generally plant more trees than they cut, do most of the research on environmental preservation, and make most of the investments in actual conservation.” Whereas “primitive peoples have never ‘lived in harmony with nature’ as the urban legend would have us believe. They have, instead, exploited nature unsustainably because their populations always crept upward to the absolute limits of their resources – and then beyond…today [they] practice slash-and burn farming, cook and heat with wood from trees they don’t replant….”

Global warming alarmists never discuss using nuclear power, the only non-CO2 producing energy alternative that would be a cost-effective alternative to today’s energy uses. Unfortunately, activist lawsuits have driven up the costs of nuclear regulation. It is possible however; France currently gets about ¾ of its energy from nuclear reactors. Many of the environmentalists’ proposed energy solutions wouldn’t work. For example, to convert energy use to rely upon windmills, a landmass the size of South Africa would have to be cleared of all forests in order to install enough windmills. And that wouldn’t even cover the cloudy/windless/high-wind days.

There will always be environmental alarmists. In 1975, environmental alarmists warned that the earth was cooling. The National Academy of Scientists issued a report claiming “…a finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years…”

It’s better to look at rocks, fossils, and sediment cores as more reliable predictors of climate temperature than simulated computer models. They reveal that there is a correlation between variations in the sun’s irradiation and the earth’s temperature. When there are larger sunspots, the earth’s temperature increases, and visa versa. In addition, some of the increased temperatures may be artificially due to urban heat islands, since the vast majority of higher temperatures have been reported in industrialized areas.

The authors conclude:

Human society should attempt to put binding constraints on human emissions of greenhouse gases only if the advocates of man-made warming can demonstrate three things:

1. That the greenhouse gases are certain to raise global temperatures significantly higher than they rose during previous natural climate warming cycles;
2. That the warming would severely harm human welfare and the ecology;
3. That rational human actions could actually forestall such overheating.

To date, the advocates of man-made warming have not been able to meet any of these minimum requirements. The IPCC’s claim to have found the ‘human fingerprint’ in the Modern Warming was bogus when Ben Santer first altered the science chapter in the IPCC’s 1996 report, and it remains bogus today. No one has been able to distinguish natural from man-made warming.

Support Obamacare...If You Want a Good Scare

Ok, I realize I haven't posted in quite some time, but it's mostly been because I was tired of having to fend off a couple people who feel compelled to try to pick fights with anything and everything I post.

But I just couldn't refrain from posting the following from RightSoup.com on some of the provisions of the Obamacare bill that The One has been trying to rush through Congress before they "have a chance" to read through all of it. This is getting lots of exposure across the Internet, so I'm hoping beyond hope that people will start forwarding it to their Representatives and Senators, calling to attention the things that they could be "inadvertently" be shoving down the collective throats of our citizenry.

People, read through the following and see what a travesty of "reform" this piece of trash would be to our country. It's pretty obvious to anyone with an ounce of discernment why The One was trying to rush this through before the August recess ... and it's pretty obvious to those same of us that our Representatives and Senators would be claiming on bended knee "....but, but, but .... we didn't *know* ... we didn't mean to ..."

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Since the "journalists" haven't read the 1,000 plus page long ObamaCare bill and all they want you to believe is that President Obama is going to give everyone free cotton candy and ponies, then, due to their media malpractice, you may not know about the following atrocities in the Bill:

“Pg 22 of the Health Care Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self-insure!!

Pg 30 Sec 123- THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

Pg 29 lines 4-16 - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!!

Pg 42 - The “Health Choices Commissioner” will choose your HC Benefits for you. You have no choice!

PG 50 Section 152- HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.

Pg 53- Severability (KEY GEM)

“If any provision of the Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected.”

Pg 58 - Govt will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!

Pg 59 lines 21-24- Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer

PG 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community organizations (ACORN).

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange to bring private HC plans under Govt control.

PG 84 Sec 203 - Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the Exchange

PG 85 Line 7 - Specs for Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!

PG 91 Lines 4-7- Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example: Translation for illegal aliens

Pg 95 Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals. for Govt HC plan.

PG 85 Line 7 - Specs of Benefit Levels For Plans. #AARP members- Your Health care WILL be rationed

PG 102 Lines 12-18- Medicaid-Eligible Individual will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.

pg 124 lines 24-25 No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Govt Monopoly.

pg 127 Lines 1-16- RE: Doctors- The Govt will tell YOU what you can make.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto-enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE

Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer w/ payroll $400k & above who doesn’t provide public option pays 8% tax on all payroll.

PG 150 Lines 9-13- Biz w payroll between 251k & 400k who doesn’t provide pub. opt pays 2-6% tax on all payroll

Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesn’t have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Pg 170 Lines 1-3 Any NONRESIDENT Alien is EXEMPT from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)

Pg 195 -Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans financial/personal records

PG 203 Line 14-15- “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it actualy says that.

Pg 239 Line 14-24-Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor will be affected. Expendable.

Pg 241 Line 6-8- Doctors, doesn’t matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same.

PG 253 Line 10-18 Govt sets value of Dr’s time, professional judgment, etc. Literally sets the value of humans.

PG 265 Sec 1131-Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries

PG 268 Sec 1141- Fed Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

PG 272 SEC. 1145- TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!

Page 280 Sec 1151- The Govt will penalize hospitals for what Govt deems “preventable re-admissions.”

Pg 298 Lines 9-11- Doctors, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a readmission? Govt will penalize you.

Pg 317 L 13-20- OMG!! PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Drs. what/how much they can own.

Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

pg 321 2-13: Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input required. Can you say ACORN?!!

Pg335 Lines 16-25, Pg 336-339 - Govt mandates establishment of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.

Pg 341 Lines 3-9: Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Adv Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan

Pg 354 Sec 1177 - Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people! WTF. My sister has downs syndrome!!

Pg 379 Sec 1191- Govt creates more bureaucracy - “Telehealth Advisory Committee.” Can you say HC by phone?

PG 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates “Advanced Care Planning Consultations.”

PG 425 the Federal Government will require EVERYONE who is on Social Security to undergo a counseling session every 5 years with the objective being that they will explain to them just how to end their own life earlier.

Pg 425 Lines 17-19: Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!

PG 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death.

PG 427 Lines 15-24: Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends.

Pg 429 Lines 1-9: An “advanced care planning consult” will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates

PG 429 Lines 10-12: “advanced care consultation” may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from the Government.

Pg 429 Lines 13-25 - The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.

PG 430 Lines 11-15- The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life.

Pg 469 - Community Based Home Medical Services = Non profit organizations. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?

Page 472 Lines 14-17: PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORG. 1 monthly payment to a community-based org. Like ACORN?

PG 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage.

Pg 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, rationing those services.”

PG 502 Section 1181 Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research Established. - Hello Big Brother - Literally.

PG 502 Line 5-18 Government builds the “Center” to conduct, support, & synthesize research to define our HealthCare Services.

PG 503 Line 13-19 Government will build registries and data networks from YOUR electronic medical records.

PG 503 Line 21-25 Government may secure data directly from any department or agency of the US including your data.

PG 504 Line 6-10 The “Center” will collect data both published & unpublished (that means public & your private info)

PG 506 Line 19-21 The Center will recommend policies that would allow for public access of data

PG 518 Line 21-25 The Commission will have input from HealthCare consumer reps - Can you say unions & ACORN?

PG 524 18-22 Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund set up. More taxes for ALL.

PG 525-620 deals with the Government basically taking over nursing homes,

PGs 525-620 deals with the Govt basically taking over nursing homes,long-term care facilities (think assisted living) through regulations of the facilities, the owners of sd facilities, the employees of sd facilities and even the land owners of that sd facilities reside on. Additionally as you read these 90+ pages you can come to the conclusion that any Health related svcs will be determined and rationed by the Govt for our senior citizens and others in nursing homes. This one post should do enough to raise awareness of the control the Govt is exerting over the older population of American citizens.

PG 620 Line 1-9 The Government will define, prioritize, and nationalize your Health Care Services.

PG 621 Lines 20-25 Government will define what Quality means in HealthCare. Since when does Government know about quality?

PG 622 Lines 2-9 To pay for the quality Standards Government will transfer $$ from to other Government Trust Funds. More Taxes.

PG 624 “Quality” measures shall be designed to assess outcomes & functional status of patients.

G 628 Section 1443 Government will give “Multi-Stake Holders” Pre-Rule Making input into Selection of “Quality” Measures.

PG 630 9-24/631 1-9 Those Multi-stake holder groups including Unions & groups like ACORN deciding HealthCare quality.

PG 632 Lines 14-25 The Government may implement any “Quality measure” of HealthCare Services as they see fit.

PG 633 14-25/ 634 1-9 The Secretary may issue non-endorsed “Quality Measures” for Physician Services & Dialysis Services.

PG 635 - 653 Physicians Payments Sunshine Provision - Government wants to shine sunlight on Docs but not Government.

PG 654-659 Public Reporting on Health Care-Associated Infections - Looks okay.

PG 660-671 Doctors in Residency - Government will tell you where your residency will be, thus where you’ll live.

PG 676-686 Government will regulate hospitals in EVERY aspect of residency programs, including teaching hospitals.

PG 686-700 Increased Funding to Fight Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. You mean the Government with an $18 mil website?

PGs 701-704 Section 1619 If your part of HealthCare plan that isn’t in Government HealthCare Exchange but you qualify for Federal aid, no payment.

705-709 SEC. 1128 If Secretary gets complaints (ACORN) on HealthCare provider or supplier, Government can do background check.

G 711 Lines 8-14 The Secretary has broad powers to deny HealthCare providers/suppliers admittance into HealthCare Exchange.

Pg 719-720 Section 1637 ANY Doctor who orders durable medical equipment or home medical services MUST be enrolled in Medicare.

PG 722 Section 1639 Government Mandates Doctors must have face-to-face with patient to certify patient for Home Health Services.

PG 724 Lines 16-22 Government reserves right to apply face-to-face certification for patient to ANY other HealthCare service.

PG 724 23-25 PG 725 1-5 The same Government certifications will apply to medicaid & CHIP (your kids) Pg 735 lines 16-25 For law enforcement purposes, the Secretary of Health & Human Services will give Attorney General access to ALL data.

PG 740-757 Government sets guidelines for subsidizing the uninsured (That’s your tax dollars peeps) Pg 757-762 Fed Government will shift burden of payments to Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) to States. (Taxes)

Page 763 1-8 No DS/EA hospitals will be paid unless they provide services without regard to national origin Pg 765 Section 1711 Government will require Preventative Services including vaccines. (Choice?)

Pg 768 Section 1713 Government - Nurse Home Visitation Services (Hello union paybacks)

Pg 769 3-5 Nurse Home Visit Services - “increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.” Government Abortions anyone?

Pg 769 11-14 Nurse Home Visit Services include-economic self-sufficiency, employment advancement, school-readiness.

Pg 769 3-5 Nurse Home Visit Services - “increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.” Government ABORTIONS anyone?

Pg 770 SEC 1714 Federal Government mandates eligibility for State Family Planning Services. Say abortion & State Sovereign.

Pg 789-797 Government will set & mandate drug prices, controlling which drugs will brought to market. Bye innovation

Pgs 797-800 SEC. 1744 PAYMENTS for grad medical education. The government will now control Drs education. PG 801 Sec 1751 The Government will decide which Health care conditions will be paid. Say RATION!

Pg 810 SEC. 1759. Billing Agents, clearinghouses, etc. required to register. Government takes over private payment system.

Page 820-824 Sec 1801 Government will identify individuals ineligible for subsidies. Will access all personal finances.

Pg 824-829 SEC. 1802. Government Sets up Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund. Another tax black hole.

PG 829-833 Government will impose a fee on ALL private health insurance plans including self insured to pay for Trust Fund!

PG 835 11-13 fees imposed by Government for Trust Fund shall be treated as if they were taxes.

838-840 Government will design & implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids & families expecting kids.

PG 844-845 This Home Visitation Program includes Government coming into your house & telling you how to parent!!!

Pg 859 Government will establish a Public Health Fund at a cost of $88,800,000,000. Yes thats Billion.

PG 865 to 876 The NHS Corps is a program where Drs. perform mandatory HealthCare for 2 years for part loan repayment.

PG 876-892 The Government takes over the education of our Medical students and Drs.

PG 898 The Government will establish a Public Health Workforce Corps. to ensure supply of public health professionals.

PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of officers of Regular & Reserve Corps of Service.

898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of civilian employees of the U.S. as Secretary deems.

PG 900 The Public Health Workforce Corps includes veterinarians.

901 The Public Health Workforce Corps WILL include commissioned Regular & Reserve Officers. HealthCare Draft?

PG 910 The Government will develop, build & run Public Health Training Centers.

PG 913-914 Government starts a HealthCare affirmative action program thru guise of diversity scholarships.

PG 915 SEC. 2251. Government MANDATES Cultural & linguistic competency training for HealthCare professionals.

Pg 932 The Government will establish Preventative & Wellness Trust fund - intial cost of $30,800,000,000-Billion.

PG 935 21-22 Government will identify specific goals & objectives for prevention & wellness activities. Control You!!

PG 936 Government will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards” Tell me what to eat?

PG 942 Lines 22-25 More Government? Offices of Surgeon General -Public Health Services, Minority Health, Women’s Health - THIS MEANS TAX DOLLARS USED TO PAY FOR ALL ABORTIONS.

PG 950- 980 BIG Government core public health infrastructure includes workforce capacity, lab systems; health information systems, etc

PG 993 Government will establish school based health clinics. Your kids wont have a chance.

PG 994 School Based Health Clinic will be integrated into the school environment. Say Government Brainwash!

PG 1001 The Government will establish a National Medical Device Registry. Will you be tracked?

PG 1003 9-11 National Medical Dev Reg ‘‘(iii) other postmarket device surveillance activities” you WILL be tracked.

PG 1018 States give up some of their State Sovereignty.

PEOPLE, THIS IS IT. YOU CAN NO LONGER IGNORE THIS BLATANT TAKEOVER OF OUR COUNTRY.

This is not about health-care, it is about the POWER OF THE STATE. I beg you if you’ve never read Animal Farm, 1984 and Atlas Shrugged please, please, do.

IT IS TIME TO TAKE TO THE STREETS.

God help us all.

Continue reading to learn about the racial preferences mandated by the bill.

The Democrats’ health care bill creates a very significant financial incentive for medical schools and other entities to lower admission standards for “individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups” if that is what it takes to have the winning “demonstrated record”.

On page 879-880, the bill states that the Secretary of Health and Human Services:

“shall make grants to, or enter into contracts with, eligible entities . . . to operate a professional training program in the field of family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, or geriatrics, to provide financial assistance and traineeships and fellowships to those students, interns, residents or physicians who plan to work in or teach in the field of family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, or geriatrics.”

On page 881-882 the bill states:

“In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . Training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds.”

On page 883 the bill states:
“The Secretary shall make grants to, or enter into contracts with, eligible entities . . . to operate or participate in an established primary care residency training program, which may include-(A) planning and developing curricula; (B) recruitment and training of residents; and (C) retention of faculty.”

On page 884-885 the bill states:

“In awarding grants and contracts . . . the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of training . . . individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds . . . .”

On page 887-889 the bill states that the

“Secretary shall make grants to, or enter into contracts with, eligible entities . . . to operate a professional training program for oral health professionals, to provide financial assistance and traineeships and fellowships to those professionals who plan to work in or teach general, pediatric, or public health dentistry, or dental hygiene, to establish, maintain, or improve academic administrative units (including departments, divisions, or other appropriate units) in the specialties of general, pediatric, or public health dentistry, to operate a loan repayment program for full-time faculty in a program of general, pediatric, or public health dentistry.”

On page 889-890 the bill states:

“In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . Training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds.”

On page 908-909 the bill states: “The Secretary shall award grants and contracts to eligible entities” to do the same things for the field of public health as the Secretary can do for dentistry.

On page 909 the bill states:

“In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . Training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Jon Voight: Stop the False Prophet, Obama

Way to go, Mr. Voight!

First Amendment Right For All? Think Again!

As Michelle Malkin says on her blog, this is the camel's nose under the tent. It starts out as what lobbyists can say, but the Obama Administration's trying to expand it to "anyone else exerting influence on the process."

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White House pushing to gag stimulus critics

By Michelle Malkin  •  May 30, 2009 10:03 AM

Caution: Obama gangland tactics at work.

In keeping with his past campaign tactics to shut critics up through brute force, the White House appears to be taking steps to crack down on critics of the trillion-dollar porkulus law.

Is anyone surprised? Mark Tapscott at the Examiner reports:

A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus project has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It’s a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.

Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog by Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President on Ethics and Government Reform (emphasis added):

“First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.

Writes Tapscott:

The key passage is the reference to expanding regulation from registered lobbyists to “anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.”

This is the Camel’s nose under the tent…

Ever use the phrase, "The last time I looked, *this* was America!" ...?

Well, I don't know about you, but with the ever-increasing heavy-handed tactics by the Obama Administration, it seems like America is morphing in front of my eyes into something more and more resembling a totalitarian state ... it's just a matter or time.

I hardly recognize America anymore.

One Step At a Time

Sent to me via email from my mom today, I think you'll get a kick out of this. Apparently it first appeared in February '09.

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THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.

DIVORCE AGREEMENT

American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
 
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
 

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood ..

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag. 

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you can’t answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheehan, Barbara Streisand, &
Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S.  And we won't have to press 1 for English.

Socialism and Secularism Suck

At least that's what Dennis Prager says in the following article, which was forwarded to me by our very smart Uncle Stan.

Socialism and Secularism Suck Vitality Out of Society

by Dennis Prager
Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Outside of politics, sports, and popular entertainment, how many living Germans, or French, or Austrians, or even Brits can you name?

Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen.

This is particularly meaningful given how different the answer would have been had you asked anyone the same question between just 80 and 120 years ago -- and certainly before that. A plethora of world-renowned names would have flowed.

Obvious examples would include (in alphabetical order): Brecht, Buber, Cezanne, Chekhov, Curie, Debussy, Eiffel, Einstein, Freud, Hesse, Kafka, Mahler, Mann, Marconi, Pasteur, Porsche, Proust, Somerset Maugham, Strauss, Stravinsky, Tolstoy, Zeppelin, Zola.

Not to mention the European immortals who lived within the century before them: Mozart, Beethoven, Dostoevsky, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Manet, Monet, Hugo and Van Gogh, to name only a few.

What has happened?

What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe’s creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren’t many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.

The issues that preoccupy most Europeans are overwhelmingly material ones: How many hours per week will I have to work? How much annual vacation time will I have? How many social benefits can I preserve (or increase)? How can my country avoid fighting against anyone or for anyone?

Why has this happened?

There are two reasons: secularism and socialism (aka the welfare state).

Either one alone sucks much of the life out of society. Together they are likely to be lethal.

Even if one holds that religion is false, only a dogmatic and irrational secularist can deny that it was religion in the Western world that provided the impetus or backdrop for nearly all the uniquely great art, literature, economic and even scientific advances of the West. Even the irreligious were forced to deal with religious themes -- if only in expressing rebellion against them.

Religion in the West raised all the great questions of life: Why are we here? Is there purpose to existence? Were we deliberately made? Is there something after death? Are morals objective or only a matter of personal preference? Do rights come from the state or from the Creator?

And religion gave positive responses: We are here because a benevolent God made us. There is, therefore, ultimate purpose to life. Good and evil are real. Death is not the end. Human rights are inherent since they come from God. And so on.

Secularism drains all this out of life. No one made us. Death is the end. We are no more significant than any other creatures. We are all the results of mere coincidence. Make up your own meaning (existentialism) because life has none. Good and evil are merely euphemisms for “I like” and “I dislike.”

Thus, when religion dies in a country, creativity wanes. For example, while Christian Russia was backward in many ways, it still gave the world Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky. Once Christianity was suppressed, if not killed, in Russia, that country became a cultural wasteland (with a few exceptions like Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn, the latter a devout Christian). It is true that this was largely the result of Lenin, Stalin and Communism; but even where Communism did not take over, the decline of religion in Europe meant a decline in human creativity -- except for nihilistic and/or absurd isms, which have greatly increased. As G. K. Chesterton noted at the end of the 19th century, when people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. One not only thinks of the violent isms: Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Maoism, and Nazism, but of all the non-violent isms that have become substitute religions – e.g., feminism, environmentalism, and socialism.

The state sucks out creativity and dynamism just as much as secularism does. Why do anything for yourself when the state will do it for you? Why take care of others when the state will do it for you? Why have ambition when the state is there to ensure that few or no individuals are rewarded more than others?

America has been the center of energy and creativity in almost every area of life because it has remained far more religious than any other industrialized Western democracy and because it has rejected the welfare state social model.

Which is why so many are so worried about President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party’s desire to transform -- in their apt wording -- America into a secular welfare state. The greatest engine of moral, religious, economic, scientific, and industrial dynamism is being starved of its fuel. The bigger the state, the smaller its people.