Sioux Nation

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Big Fur Hat
I've made a decision. After thoughtful reflection I've come to the conclusion that my life can have no greater purpose than to sacrifice it for the sake of another. But this sacrifice cannot be for some Jack Nobody. No, I am looking to lay my life down for a very specific type of person.


If you are a young person of privilege, perhaps the black sheep of your family, and have an alarming drinking problem and been thrown out of an ivy league university, you might be the person I am looking for! Oh, quick question, were you a legacy to that exclusive institution, despite the fact that you were a dim C student at a lesser school? This could be an important factor if I'm torn between two qualified applicants.


Are you an adulterer? You'll get special consideration if you are! Do you have multiple reckless driving citations? Good for you! Remember, the more unqualified you'd be for any other endeavor in life the more qualified you are for my purpose. So, make sure you adequately communicate just how loathsome you are.


Here's the deal. I want to be the catalyst that propels you into becoming a career politician. So... kill me. You heard me, murder me. It's the only way you can become a yea/nay voter right down your party line. Becoming a party hack requires an epiphany of epic proportions. And after you kill me you're going to have a lot of self-reflection. After all, your life of privilege will be in the balance. So you'll promise to devote every ounce of your brainpower into toeing your party line and trying not to kill anyone anymore. You'll still drink and cheat on your spouse, and maybe testify on behalf of a rapist, but by golly, you'll be alive and I'll be dead. And it will be soooooooo worth it.


In the last moments, as my life is being snuffed out, I can imagine you as the lion of the senate, thundering from the floor, questioning your political enemies ethics and morals. I'm getting a thrill up my leg just thinking about it. Call me, we'll go for a drive.


When I read Melissa Lafsky's piece in HuffPo I actually thought for a moment I was reading THE ONION. Her contention was that Mary Jo Kopechne, being what would be called a progressive today, might very well think (if her capacity to think wasn't snatched away by an irresponsible drunken coward) that it was "worth it" to be the catalyst (catalyst being another word for sacrificial homicide victim) for the re-making of Ted Kennedy. Did Lafsky ever consider for one moment that had Kopechne escaped from that death car, and learned that her "progressive hero" fled the scene, that she might have had an epiphany about left-wing morality? Of course she didn't. She was too busy writing the most inane, insulting and outrageous blather in order to, not only whitewash a despicable act, but to audaciously turn it into a positive. If you fall for this ridiculous propaganda, I have a Dike Bridge to sell ya.

Apologies to Rick Moran, who covered this topic well, from a different angle.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/the_crap_the_left_tries_to_ped_1.html

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Just incredible:
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=25894850

No wonder the left is so rabid with this kind of mindset

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Obama’s Troubles with Health Care

Prof. Peter Morici - 8/27/2009

Health care reform is in trouble, because President Obama and congressional leaders are not adequately addressing issues that trouble many Americans.

Speaker Pelosi and Health and Human Services Secretary Sabelius caution Americans to ignore terrorist claims about death panels. Reasonable enough—unseemly critics on both the right and the left seek to stir up unwarranted hysteria.

Sabelius defends end of life counseling from physicians as a benefit families need when facing difficult treatment choices for elderly relatives. However, what worries people is such counseling in the context of government rationing.

All health insurers ration care—private insurers in the United States and government run health services in Canada and Europe face tough choices and limited resources. U.S private insurers generally don’t deny or delay critical care that could cause death—officials implementing such a policy would land in jail.

Foreign public systems are noted for long waits for specialists and critical procedures like hip replacements and bypass surgery. In Sweden, for example, delays result in suffering and deaths that would not occur in the expensive, but more humane, U.S. system. No one is held accountable, the elderly are particularly vulnerable, and that is euthanasia, de facto if not de jure.

President Obama promises Americans they won’t lose private health insurance if they want to keep it. However, legislation moving through the House requires businesses to pay an 8 percent payroll tax if they don’t provide health care and creates a government-run alternative to private insurance. Moderate senators would like to create non-profit cooperatives instead but to gain support from liberals in congress, those non-profits would operate much like government agencies.

It won’t be long before businesses that pay employees an average of $50,000, or even $75,000, annually figure out it would be cheaper and easier to pay the tax than continue providing private insurance. Many people who work in small businesses would be forced by employers to purchase insurance from a government or non-profit agency. Most Americans don’t want to rely on the Post Office or the United Way for their health care.

Health care costs at least 50 percent more in the United States than in Canada and Western Europe, because of expensive malpractice suits, inefficient insurance company bureaucracies, comical inefficiencies and dangerously low standards at many hospitals, and doctor fees and drug prices much higher than abroad.

Early on President Obama gave the tort lawyers a pass, and is busy cutting deals with drug companies and other health care businesses that won’t appreciably bring down U.S. costs. That is why his health care reform will require one trillion dollars in new taxes.

The president promises to soak the rich to raise that cash, but he proposes to tax them for all his other initiatives too. Unless he wants all wealthy Americans to move to Switzerland, that is simply impossible.

Americans are losing patience. They want health care fixed but the president is not delivering what they want.
Prof. Peter Morici teaches at Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland.
http://globalpolitician.com/25854-obamacare-health-care v

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The Pelosi-Obama Deficits
Even $9 trillion might be too optimistic on current spending trends.


Earlier this year when President Obama was selling his first budget blueprint, he promised to end years of "borrow and spend" budgeting. Yesterday, reality struck.

Mr. Obama's White House and the Congressional Budget Office told us that current U.S. fiscal policy is "borrow and spend" on a hyperlink. The good news is the deficit for 2009 will be "only" $1.58 trillion, about $250 billion lower than expected thanks to less need for TARP funds. But the Obama fiscal plan envisions $9 trillion in new borrowing over the next decade, which is $2 trillion more debt than the White House predicted earlier this year. The 2010 deficit also rises by about as much as the 2009 deficit falls from January, so even the TARP windfall gets spent.


We've never fretted over budget deficits, at least if they finance tax cuts to promote growth or spending to win a war. But these deficit estimates are driven entirely by more domestic spending and already assume huge new tax increases. CBO predicts that debt held by the public as a share of GDP, which was 40.8% in 2008, will rise to 67.8% in 2019—and then keep climbing after that. CBO says this is "unsustainable," but even this forecast may be optimistic.

Here's why. Many of the current budget assumptions are laughably implausible. Both the White House and CBO predict that Congress will hold federal spending at the rate of inflation over the next decade. This is the same Democratic Congress that awarded a 47% increase in domestic discretionary spending in 2009 when counting stimulus funds. And the appropriations bills now speeding through Congress for 2010 serve up an 8% increase in domestic spending after inflation.

Another doozy is that Nancy Pelosi and friends are going to allow a one-third or more reduction in liberal priorities like Head Start, food stamps and child nutrition after 2011 when the stimulus expires. CBO actually has overall spending falling between 2009 and 2012, which is less likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth.

Federal revenues, which will hit a 40-year low of 14.9% of GDP this year, are expected to rise to 19.6% of GDP by 2014 and then 20.2% by 2019—which the CBO concedes is "high by historical standards." This implies some enormous tax increases.

CBO assumes that some 28 million middle-class tax filers will get hit by the alternative minimum tax, something Democrats say they won't let happen. CBO also assumes that all the Bush tax cuts disappear—not merely those for the rich, but those for lower and middle income families as well. So either the deficit is going to be about $1.3 trillion higher than Washington thinks, or out goes Mr. Obama's campaign promise of not taxing those who make less than $250,000.

A burst of sustained economic growth, which we'd love to see, would substantially boost tax revenues and reduce future debt. But there's nothing in the Obama budget that nurtures or rewards growth or small business. Most of the major policy initiatives, such as the $1 trillion cap-and-trade energy tax, are a drag on growth. Mr. Obama wants to raise capital gains, dividend and income tax rates, which will reduce risk taking, innovation and investment. The House health-care bill would impose an 8% payroll tax on millions of small business owners, which will destroy jobs.

The White House issued a statement yesterday that the President is "very concerned about these out-year deficits." But apparently not so concerned as to stop pushing for a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement that is conveniently not included in these latest budget forecasts.

The real fiscal crisis in Washington is that neither Congress nor the White House are offering any escape from these trillion-dollar deficits. Mr. Obama has not called for automatic and immediate spending cuts. He has not proposed eliminating hundreds of wasteful programs. To the contrary, the White House still hasn't ruled out another fiscal stimulus, as if a $1.6 trillion deficit isn't Keynesian stimulus enough. The Administration's celebrated scrub through the budget this summer identified $17 billion in agency savings. That's what Uncle Sam is borrowing every three days.

Obamanomics has turned into an unprecedented experiment in runaway government with no plan to pay for it, save, perhaps, for a big future toll on the middle class such as a value-added tax. White House budget director Peter Orszag promises that next year's budget will have a "plan to put the nation on a fiscally sustainable path." Hide the children.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574301043095303118.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#printMode

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3,900 stimulus checks went to prison inmates

The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to people who were in no position to use the money to help stimulate the economy: prison inmates.

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON —

The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to people who were in no position to use the money to help stimulate the economy: prison inmates.

The checks were part of the massive economic recovery package approved by Congress and President Barack Obama in February. About 52 million Social Security recipients, railroad retirees and those receiving Supplemental Security Income were eligible for the one-time checks.

Prison inmates are generally ineligible for federal benefits. However, 2,200 of the inmates who received checks got to keep them because, under the law, they were eligible, said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. They were eligible because they weren't incarcerated in any one of the three months before the recovery package was enacted.

"The law specified that any beneficiary eligible for a Social Security benefit during one of those months was eligible for the recovery payment," Lassiter said.

The other 1,700 checks? That was a mistake.

Checks were sent to those inmates because government records didn't accurately show they were in prison, Lassiter said. He said most of those checks were returned by the prisons.

"We are currently reviewing each of those cases to determine whether or not the recovery payment was due," Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said in a statement issued Wednesday evening. "Where we determine payment was not due, we will take aggressive action to recover each of these erroneous payments."

The Boston Herald first reported that the checks were sent to inmates.

The inspector general for the Social Security Administration is performing an audit to make sure no checks went to ineligible recipients, spokesman George E. Penn said.

The audit, which had already been planned, will examine whether checks incorrectly went to inmates, dead people, fugitive felons or people living outside the U.S., Penn said.

The $787 billion economic recovery package included $2 million for the inspector general to oversee the provisions handled by the Social Security Administration. The audit is part of those efforts, Penn said. There is no timetable for its conclusion.

The federal government processed $13 billion in stimulus payments. About $425,000 was incorrectly sent to inmates.

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Taxes paying for politics

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

White House political operatives have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Specifically, the Obama administration is using taxpayer funds for a political campaign to push government health care. There are clear lines that define appropriate behavior in politics. This is over the line.

It's a basic precept that federal politicians can't use public resources to directly pay private organizations to engage in political campaigns. However, the Obama administration is doing just that. According to Fox News, the White House used taxpayer money to pay a private communications firm to send mass e-mails in support of the president's health care plan.

Contrary to Mr. Obama's promises of greater transparency, the White House has not released information about how much taxpayer money is being spent on these political e-mail blasts. The White House and the president's political organization, Organizing for America, also have refused to answer questions about who is getting these unsolicited e-mails and how the administration got their names.

Hundreds of people who received the e-mails have contacted Fox about them. The large number of recipients who contacted the network suggests that the pool of those who were sent the e-mails is very large. The e-mails were sent under senior presidential adviser David Axelrod's name and asked recipients to help challenge criticism of Mr. Obama's health care plan.

Most of the e-mail recipients have shown interest in the health care debate but apparently have not previously contacted the administration about the issue. This raises serious questions about why and how the government is collecting names of citizens based on their political interests.

The administration has had a rough August. Mr. Obama's approval rating dipped below 50 percent, and public anger over his health care plan is reaching the boiling point. It's understandable that Democrats are desperate and scrambling for ways to reverse their growing unpopularity. Using taxpayer dollars to push unwanted legislation will only further alienate voters.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/25/taxes-paying-for-politics/print/

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Swine Flu Freak Out

During the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama constantly accused President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and everyone else in the Bush administration of being "fear-mongers." The Bama charged them with stoking unnecessary fear about Islamic terror and with using that fear to drive national security policies the Bama thought unacceptable.

Now he's president, but the leopard hasn't changed his spots. He's used fear as a weapon to get his radical agenda through at every turn. If we didn't get the economic stimulus "right now," we'd be facing "another Great Depression," economic Armageddon, modern-day bread lines. If we didn't get cap and trade "right now," we'd all be barbequed by the sun and living in a sewer.

And now, the Bama's accusing generic Republicans (bummer for him that Bush is no longer available) of "fear-mongering" on health care. "They're trying to scare you," he has said. Actually, we're relaying the truth about his plan to socialize medicine, which will result in severe rationing, much poorer access and quality of care, higher costs, and yes, death panels to get you to kick the bucket (just ask the VA). That's not fear-mongering. That's telling the truth.

Now comes word that the Bama's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology is warning that when the H1N1 virus re-emerges this fall, it could claim 90,000 lives. Some doctors are already questioning that prediction, calling it "overblown."

But the point is not the prediction of swine flu deaths. The point is to stoke enough fear about it to quell the uproar about nationalized health care. It's to get the American people so freaked out about a possible pandemic that we drop our resistance to socialized medicine and embrace the government as our only savior in the face of a crazy virus.

Fear, fear, fear. At least when Bush talked about threats, the threats were real. When the Bama talks about threats, they're political creations to advance himself and his radical agenda.

Now we know what a real fear-monger looks like.
http://monicamemo.typepad.com/weblog/

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Sarah and the Death Panels
by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 08/21/2009 ET
Updated 08/21/2009 ET

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Of Sarah Palin it may be said: The lady knows how to frame an issue.

And while she has been fairly criticized for hyperbole about the end-of-life counselors in the House bill, she drew such attention to the provision that Democrats chose to dump it rather than debate it

And understandably so. For if Congress enacts universal health care coverage, we are undeniably headed for a medical system of rationed care that must inevitably deny care to some terminally ill and elderly, which will shorten their lives, perhaps by years. Consider:

Democrats call Medicare the model of government-run universal health care. But Medicare is a system whereby 140 million working Americans pay 2.9 percent of all wages and salaries into a fund to pay for health care for 42 million mostly older Americans. And Medicare is already going bust.

If Obamacare is passed, the cost of health care for today's 47 million uninsured will also land on those 140 million. And if Obama puts 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens on a "path to citizenship," as he promises, they, too, will have their health care provided by taxpayers.

Here is the crusher. The Census Bureau projects that, by 2050, the U.S. population will explode to 435 million. As most of these folks will be immigrants, their children and grandchildren, the cost of their heath care would also have to be largely born by middle-class and wealthy taxpayers.

Now factor this in.

In 2000, the average American male in a population of 300 million lived to 74; the average female to 80. But in 2050, the average male in a population of 435 million Americans will live to 80 and the average female to 86. And, according to U.N. figures, 21 percent of the U.S. population in 2050, some 91 million Americans, will be over 65, and 7.6 percent, or 33 million Americans, will be over 80 -- and consuming health care in ever-increasing measures.

Now if a primary purpose of Obamacare is to "bend the curve" of soaring health care costs, and half of those costs are incurred in the last six months of life, and the number of seniors will grow by scores of millions, how do you cut costs without rationing care?

And how do you ration care without denying millions of elderly and aged the prescriptions, procedures and operations they need to stay alive?

Consider two beloved Americans: Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Since he was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, Sen. Kennedy has had excellent care, including surgery and chemotherapy, which have kept him alive and, until very recently, active.

For a decade, President Reagan, because of round-the-clock care, lived with an Alzheimer's that had robbed him of his memory and left him unable to recognize his own family and close friends.

In the future, will a man of Kennedy's age, with brain cancer but without the means of offsetting his own health care costs, be kept alive, operated on, given chemotherapy -- by a government obsessed with cutting health care costs?

Will a bureaucracy desperate to cut costs keep alive for years the tens of thousands of destitute 80- and 90-year-old patients with Alzheimer's, as was done with Ronald Reagan?

What if, in 2050, Palin and her husband are not here. And 42-year-old Trig, with Down syndrome, has been in an institution for years, and the cost of his care and that of hundreds of thousands like him with Down syndrome is draining the resources of the health care system?

Will there not be voices softly suggesting a quiet and merciful end?

In Oregon, the law permits doctors to assist in the suicide of terminal patients who wish to end their lives. Let us assume numerous patients have Alzheimer's and, so, cannot be part of the decision to end their lives. Who then makes the decision to continue or end life? Would it be unfair to call the decision-makers in those cases a death panel?

Almost a third of all unborn babies in America have their lives terminated each year with the consent of their mothers. Fifty million since Roe v. Wade have never seen the light of day. For many, the quality of life now supersedes in value the sanctity of life. That is who we are.

Between 2012 and 2030, 74 million baby boomers will retire, cease to be the major contributors to Medicare and become the major drain on Medicare. How long will an overtaxed labor force in a de-Christianized America be wiling to pay the bill to keep all those aging boomers alive?

Rationed care is coming, and the death panels will not be far behind.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=33232

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Obama Has a 'Pony' for You
Even little kids know when they've been had.

Like the little girl in the bank commercial who gets a tiny plastic pony while the other little girl gets a real pony, and the little boy who gets the cardboard truck, most Americans think President Barack Obama is hiding behind the fine print in his incomprehensible health care plan.

It's why Obama's poll numbers are dropping faster than the faces of the kids in the commercials.

Obama's presidential approval index is now at minus 6; 32 percent strongly approve of him and 38 percent strongly disapprove. Since his inauguration, his job approval rating has sunk from 65 percent to 51 percent. Only 27 percent trust him with the economic crisis, according to Rasmussen daily tracking polls.

Like the guy in the commercials, if you don't ask, Obama won't tell. If you sign up for his government-run health care plan because he promises you a pony, I wouldn't load up on hay.

Recall that Obama assured Americans during the presidential campaign that he wouldn't "take away folks' guns." Despite his record of voting for every gun control bill that was introduced in the Illinois Senate, the majority voted for him.

He said the Second Amendment is a personal constitutional right. At the same time, he said that a District of Columbia law banning private possession of a handgun in the home was "constitutional." His first Supreme Court appointment, Sonia Sotomayor, ruled against Second Amendment rights every chance she got.

At the "Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency" last August, candidate Obama said, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian -- for me -- for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix." Obama also said he didn't support a constitutional amendment "with that definition" because marriage has "been a matter of state law. That has been our tradition."

Spoken like a true believer in plastic federalism.

The media continue to recite Obama's marriage mantra without question, even though he wants the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for purposes of federal law and protects the right of the states to do so, repealed.

He opposed California's Prop 8, which Californians enacted after homosexuals persuaded four members of the state supreme court to declare its statutory marriage law "unconstitutional." Speaking on MTV, Obama said "I would vote no on the proposition."

So much for "our tradition" of defining marriage under "state law."

Just as he promised the homosexual lobby when he was running for the U.S. Senate, Obama's Department of Justice is working to repeal DOMA at the same time that its "defending" it. Obama commented on brief: "This brief makes clear, however, that my administration believes that the act is discriminatory and should be repealed by Congress. I have long held that DOMA prevents (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) couples from being granted equal rights and benefits."

It's more Obama overload. Instead of opposing just the benefits section of DOMA, he wants the section defining marriage repealed as well. And that's from the man who says marriage is a "sacred union" with "God in the mix."

Unless you're okay with defending your life and home with a toy gun, and marriage means no more than a plastic ornament atop the cake, trusting Obama with your health care could be fatal.

When Obama says health care -- you're probably thinking life-saving surgery -- Obama is thinking pain killers. Think of it as health care based on the Jack Kevorkian model.

Obama said he was for a "single-payer universal health care plan" before he was against it:

I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House.

Even after the video clip from June 28, 2008, was exposed, Obama denied on Aug. 11, 2009, that he ever said he was "for a single-payer system." He made a "distinction between a universal plan versus a single-payer plan, because those are two different things."

Watch the clip again: "A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see."

He made no distinction. Who are you going to believe, Obama or your lying eyes and ears?

It's why Obama can't sell Americans on his signature issue despite all of his fear-mongering and demonizing of insurance companies. According to Rasmussen daily tracking polls:

* 54 percent say that passing no healthcare reform is better than passing a congressional plan.
* 51 percent fear government more than insurance companies.
* 57 percent are opposed to a single-payer system (government provides coverage for all), while 32 percent favor it.


Obama says "Over 45 million Americans-including over 8 million children-lack health insurance." His source, according to footnote five of "Barack Obama And Joe Biden's Plan To Lower Health Care Costs And Ensure Affordable, Accessible Health Coverage For All," is an August 2008 report by the Census Bureau. Obama has repeated the bogus figure at least four times.

Obama toys with truth because he's not used to anybody checking his sources.

The report states on page 19 that 45.7 million people in the United States do not have health insurance. According to page one, "The population represented (the population universe) is the civilian noninstitutionalized population living in the United States."

Obama counts people as Americans even if they came into the United States over a fence or through a tunnel. Inflating the numbers enhances the empathy-factor and paves the way for Obama to include illegal aliens in government healthcare.

Obama says private insurance companies can compete with a government-run insurance system. To bolster our confidence, he pointed to how well FedEx and UPS compete with the U.S. Postal Service. He said, "It's the Post Office that's always having the problems."

He probably thinks of it as postal workers acting stupidly.

Maybe he's found the perfect slogan for his government-run health care option: "When you absolutely, positively want to live overnight, trust the ones always having the problems."

Obama on the Second Amendment, marriage, and health care-it all makes sense if you're into plastic ponies and cardboard trucks.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obama_has_a_pony_for_you.html

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Defining The Pacifist Mind
October18, 2001
There are three constants controlling the workings of the pacifist mind.

The first is an inability to reason. Those who champion the catechism of non-confrontational response are incapable of comprehending logic or historical precedent. Their arguments on any given topic are based solely upon emotion, disregarding facts whenever they conflict with "feelings."

Second. Unable to confront real world problems — such as war — pacifists concoct vague dilemmas to assuage their feckless, hypocritical and desultory nature. They scream about stolen elections which were conducted fully within the parameters of constitutional guidelines. They whine about piddling issues such as the need for gun control, gay marriage ceremonies and hate crime laws. They cry over the wise utilization of natural resources, even as they drive hither and yon in their gas guzzling SUV's. Pacifists, being too vainglorious to acknowledge matters of true substance or a sense of nationalistic pride, engage in odd behaviors in an effort to divert attention from their absence of conviction. They have been known to live on the limbs of redwood trees as a protest against logging. They don funny costumes and wave signs. Frequently, in this part of the world, they proselytize the removal of ranchers and farmers from their homes in order to make room for a brucellosis carrying beast as obsolete as the passenger pigeon. To heck with those who work for a living. Mother Buffalo needs her free range jogging path.

These tactics of distraction are brought into play whenever the pacifists suspect others will see them for the idle and privileged incompetents which they are. Publicly, they call for a return to the simple life of unspoiled vistas, natural foods and homespun cloth. Privately, they reside in luxurious surroundings, sip champagne and sleep beneath cashmere sheets. Publicly, they are antediluvian Luddites. Privately, they are hedonistic libertines.

Third: Despite their talk of equality, tolerance and diversity, pacifists believe themselves superior in thought and action to those professing ideologies differing from their own. Tolerance ends when their "solutions" are exposed as self-indulgent and impotent. They don't actually abide by the tenets they so loudly affirm, but nonetheless climb the soapbox in the mistaken conclusion that such actions will garner them a reputation for altruism, magnanimity and humanitarianism.

Intellectually incapable of considering any idea save those hackneyed cliches which allow them to appear popular with their peer group of latte-swigging pseudo-socialites, pacifists speak incessantly of hate. They label repugnant and evil any idea with which they disagree. They inveigh mightily against racism, branding as bigoted those who would dare suggest approaches in opposition to their own. It's a childish and egocentric modus operandi, based upon an all encompassing insecurity, a pitiful attempt to philosophically align themselves with the corrupt politicians, bi-polar thespians and media darlings whom they idolize.

Many urban pacifists move to rural settings, and immediately attempt to force their views down the throats of the indigenous population. They view the locals as unenlightened hicks and inbred morons, unnecessary occupants of what they condescendingly refer to as "flyover country," the vast area between the east and west coasts. They are undeviating in their delusion that rural dwellers can't possibly have widespread contacts or be informed on world affairs. Fungus-toed yokels can't possibly comprehend socio-political scenarios with the acumen of those who have resided within the all knowing world of "Must See TV."

So, being a fungus-toed yokel, me no understand. It's a fact that state-sponsored, middle eastern terrorists have killed nearly 10,000 innocent Americans in the past few weeks. Judging by their words and actions, the pacifists are oblivious and uncaring of such atrocities. They seem to feel that if we just sit back and pretend the world is perfect, if we allow our allies to swing in the wind, if we all "JUST GET ALONG" then the murderers will leave us alone. They seem to feel that the American way of life, which has provided them with untold wealth and freedom, is a heinous and despicable entity. The pacifist does not wish us to respond too forcefully to those who would butcher us. They care about the lives of our enemies, almost as much as they care about themselves. Too bad they don't care about their neighbors or their nation with the same tenacity and resolve.

As I predicted a month back, we are now seeing the second tier of attacks. The biological wave is spreading, but what we have seen to date is only a tiny sample of what is to come. Unless we wish more American death, we must utterly obliterate the states that sponsor terrorism. There are some enemies with whom we can't bargain. They seek only one thing...our physical deaths and the death of American idealism. In light of such knowledge, the only solution is to let them know that we are willing to take their lives without so much as a second thought. It is both a logical and reasonable course.

For the pacifist though, logic and reason will always take a backseat to narcissistic sentiment and unfounded belief. The real world — a world at war — is too unsavory for their unpatriotic and morally relativistic attitude. It should not be contemplated or discussed except in the most vague and ambivalent manner, and any "inappropriate" voices, ideas or opinions should be silenced.

It's a contradiction the pacifist can never understand. In our present situation only the ultimate force will secure a lasting peace.

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Firms with Obama ties profit from health push
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 19, 6:08 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."

Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country's economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.

There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group's ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama's White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod's personal financial disclosure report.

A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.

"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that Axelrod has had no communications with Healthy Economy Now or with Americans for Stable Quality Care, and his payments aren't affected by the ad contracts. Axelrod's son, a salaried AKPD employee, doesn't work with either coalition "or stand to benefit from that work," LaBolt said.

"David Axelrod has fully complied with the toughest-ever ethics rules for administration officials, including divesting from AKPD before the administration began," LaBolt said.

Ken Johnson, a PhRMA senior vice president, said GMMB and AKPD were the only two firms working on the $24 million in ads. He declined to reveal how much each was paid beyond saying that each received a small percentage of the total. The coalition's campaign team decided to hire the two firms, he said.

"In a perfect world, it's a distraction we don't need right now, but these are very gifted consultants who have done very good work," Johnson said. "And it's also important to remember that at the end of the day, the coalition partners determine the message."

Healthy Economy Now spokesman Jeremy Van Ess said the two firms were hired because "they are the best at what they do. Period." The coalition didn't seek approval or direction on any of its activities from the White House, said Van Ess, a partner in a consulting firm that has worked on Democratic Senate election activities and a former speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

AKPD and GMMB both proudly proclaim their connections to Obama on their Web sites.

AKPD has a full page on Axelrod that includes pictures of Obama. In one photo, Obama hugs Plouffe on election night.

"We are deeply honored to have been part of Barack Obama's historic campaign to change America and the world," GMMB says on its Web site. GMMB's partners include Jim Margolis, a senior strategist for Obama's presidential campaign.

Both GMMB and AKPD also have worked for Democrats this year. The Democratic National Committee paid AKPD at least $106,000 for polling, media production, communication consulting and travel costs from February through April. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid GMMB roughly $75,000 from February through June for ads. And GMMB took in at least $9,000 this year from Senate leader Reid's political action committee for communications consulting.

___

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090819/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_consultants/print

[extelecom]

Floridians like protests and dislike Obama's health care plan, poll indicates

Mark Caputo
The Miami Herald
Floridians like the town hall protests over President Barack Obama's healthcare plan and disapprove more of the plan and the president himself, according to a new poll.

By big margins, Floridians say the protests are not "un-American" and they're far more worried about rising taxes and deficits than with the need for a healthcare plan, the new Quinnipiac University poll of 1,136 registered voters shows.

Since he began pushing the health plan, Obama's job-approval ratings have flatlined. For the first time in Florida, slightly more people disapprove of Obama's job performance than support it. The split: 48 to 47 percent.

Though that's well within the poll's error margin, it's a significant shift since June, when 58 percent of Floridians favored Obama's job performance in a Quinnipiac poll. Out of the five states Quinnipiac regularly polls, Florida is the first state to pan Obama's job performance.

By a large 71-23 percent margin, the poll shows, Floridians don't believe Obama's promise that his health plan won't add to the deficit.

"People were willing to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt. No longer," said Peter A. Brown, director of the Connecticut-based university's polling institute.

To read the complete article, visit www.miamiherald.com.

[extelecom]

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html#printMode

[extelecom]

If you really want people to see your posts you should "reply" to them instead of posting a new post.

Now piss off and go wine to your buddy so he can ban me from this thread for no reason with no warning like cowards do.
I have violated no board rules.

The truth sometimes hurts....

[extelecom]

Blue on Blue Mayhem

As The Bama's Orwellian health care vision goes down in a giant ball of flames, liberals are turning on each other. It's a scene we usually see among Republicans and conservatives: the circular firing squad.

Over the last week or so, the following left-wing zanies have attacked The Bama and the Democrats for being weak-kneed, directionless pansies:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Chris Matthews; The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson and Richard Cohen; and The New York Times's Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman. Perhaps the unkindest cuts of all are coming from "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart.

Conservatives have always been in revolt against the radical agenda of Team Bama. Most other Americans have awoken to find that this was not the kind of "change" they thought was coming. And now, liberals are in revolt because the agenda is getting watered down and abandoned.

Liberals are also beginning to realize that their Great Hope of a President is turning out to be a rather lame hack pol who doesn't know how to lead. As Jon Stewart has just said, the Bush Team led, even if liberals thought it was in the wrong direction. Team Bama talks itself into circles and has ended up paralyzed.

The Bama chose to leave most major legislation in the hands of the Far Left in Congress: Sister Pelosi, Brother Frank, et al commandeered the economic stimulus, now regarded by a vast majority of Americans as a total waste of a trillion dollars, the cap and trade fiasco, and now, health care. Whatever the Far Left touches turns to chaos, then to crap.

The Bama is one of them, of course, but his lack of leadership---on anything---shows that he's just a community organizer in way, way over his head.
http://monicamemo.typepad.com/weblog/

[bagwa-john]

You really have to be desperate to administer your propaganda toxin to a board with 4 member marks.

Doing your best to piss anybody off I guess.

You really do thrive on violent response.

Dare I say addict?

[extelecom]

IRS to be ObamaCare enforcer (Updated)
Thomas Lifson
What do you get when you cross health care with the IRS? Something very scary. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection explains that the IRS will getting reports of who has health care coverage, and enforcing taxes as part of the deal in both House and Senate versions.

The Senate bill imposes a new requirement that all persons who provide health care coverage to others must file a return with the IRS listing the names, addresses, social security numbers, and the coverage period for each person, and "such other information as the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] may prescribe." (Section 161(b) starting at page 107). The bill does not limit what information the Secretary may request, so it is conceivable and likely that information as to the nature of the coverage, the family members included, and other details will be reported to the IRS.

The House bill contains similar provisions in section 401(b) (at pp. 175-176).


Employers who don't offer coverage will be taxed, and that opens the door to the IRS as health care enforcer:

These reporting provisions would allow the IRS to cross-check income tax returns and health coverage filings, and withhold tax refunds or utilize other collection methods for persons who do not have coverage unless they can prove they have acceptable coverage from some other source. This is similar to the cross-checking the IRS does on income reported separately by the person making the payment and the taxpayer receiving the payment. But for the first time the IRS is not checking for income to tax, but for lack of health coverage.

These provisions should have people interested in privacy greatly concerned. While income information already is reported to the IRS, the IRS traditionally has not received personal health care information about individuals.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/irs_to_be_obamacare_enforcer.html

[extelecom]

ObamaCare Is All About Rationing
By MARTIN FELDSTEIN

Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama’s health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration's goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating "high cost, low-value treatments," by "implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt," and by "directly targeting individual providers . . . (and other) high-end outliers."

The president has emphasized the importance of limiting services to "health care that works." To identify such care, he provided more than $1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea. That could morph over time into a cost-control mechanism of the sort proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's original choice for White House health czar. Comparative effectiveness could become the vehicle for deciding whether each method of treatment provides enough of an improvement in health care to justify its cost.

In the British national health service, a government agency approves only those expensive treatments that add at least one Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) per £30,000 (about $49,685) of additional health-care spending. If a treatment costs more per QALY, the health service will not pay for it. The existence of such a program in the United States would not only deny lifesaving care but would also cast a pall over medical researchers who would fear that government experts might reject their discoveries as "too expensive."

One reason the Obama administration is prepared to use rationing to limit health care is to rein in the government's exploding health-care budget. Government now pays for nearly half of all health care in the U.S., primarily through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The White House predicts that the aging of the population and the current trend in health-care spending per beneficiary would cause government outlays for Medicare and Medicaid to rise to 15% of GDP by 2040 from 6% now. Paying those bills without raising taxes would require cutting other existing social spending programs and shelving the administration's plans for new government transfers and spending programs.

The rising cost of medical treatments would not be such a large burden on future budgets if the government reduced its share in the financing of health services. Raising the existing Medicare and Medicaid deductibles and coinsurance would slow the growth of these programs without resorting to rationing. Physicians and their patients would continue to decide which tests and other services they believe are worth the cost.

There is, of course, no reason why limiting outlays on Medicare and Medicaid requires cutting health services for the rest of the population. The idea that they must be cut in parallel is just an example of misplaced medical egalitarianism.

But budget considerations aside, health-economics experts agree that private health spending is too high because our tax rules lead to the wrong kind of insurance. Under existing law, employer payments for health insurance are deductible by the employer but are not included in the taxable income of the employee. While an extra $100 paid to someone who earns $45,000 a year will provide only about $60 of after-tax spendable cash, the employer could instead use that $100 to pay $100 of health-insurance premiums for that same individual. It is therefore not surprising that employers and employees have opted for very generous health insurance with very low copayment rates.

Since a typical 20% copayment rate means that an extra dollar of health services costs the patient only 20 cents at the time of care, patients and their doctors opt for excessive tests and other inappropriately expensive forms of care. The evidence on health-care demand implies that the current tax rules raise private health-care spending by as much as 35%.

The best solution to this problem of private overconsumption of health services would be to eliminate the tax rule that is causing the excessive insurance and the resulting rise in health spending. Alternatively, Congress could strengthen the incentives in the existing law for health savings accounts with high insurance copayments. Either way, the result would be more cost-conscious behavior that would lower health-care spending.

But unlike reductions in care achieved by government rationing, individuals with different preferences about health and about risk could buy the care that best suits their preferences. While we all want better health, the different choices that people make about such things as smoking, weight and exercise show that there are substantial differences in the priority that different people attach to health.

Although there has been some talk in Congress about limiting the current health-insurance exclusion, the administration has not supported the idea. The unions are particularly vehement in their opposition to any reduction in the tax subsidy for health insurance, since they regard their ability to negotiate comprehensive health insurance for their members as a major part of their raison d'être.

If changing the tax rule that leads to excessive health insurance is not going to happen, the relevant political choice is between government rationing and continued high levels of health-care spending. Rationing is bad policy. It forces individuals with different preferences to accept the same care. It also imposes an arbitrary cap on the future growth of spending instead of letting it evolve in response to changes in technology, tastes and income. In my judgment, rationing would be much worse than excessive care.

Those who worry about too much health care cite the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that health-care spending could rise to 30% of GDP in 2035 from 16% now. But during that 25-year period, GDP will rise to about $24 trillion from $14 trillion, implying that the GDP not spent on health will rise to $17 billion in 2035 from $12 billion now. So even if nothing else comes along to slow the growth of health spending during the next 25 years, there would still be a nearly 50% rise in income to spend on other things.

Like virtually every economist I know, I believe the right approach to limiting health spending is by reforming the tax rules. But if that is not going to happen, let's not destroy the high quality of the best of American health care by government rationing and misplaced egalitarianism.
—Mr. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, is a professor at Harvard and a member of The Wall Street Journal's board of contributors.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204683204574358233780260914.html

[extelecom]

Obama Goes Postal, Lands in Dead-Letter Office: Caroline Baum
Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” -- Barack Obama, Aug. 11, 2009

No institution has been the butt of more government- inefficiency jokes than the U.S. Postal Service. Maybe the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The only way the post office can stay in business is its government subsidy. The USPS lost $2.4 billion in the quarter ended in June and projects a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal 2009, outstanding debt of more than $10 billion and a cash shortfall of $1 billion. It was moved to intensive care -- the Government Accountability Office’s list of “high risk” cases - - last month and told to shape up. (It must be the only entity that hasn’t cashed in on TARP!)

That didn’t stop President Barack Obama from holding up the post office as an example at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last week.

When Obama compared the post office to UPS and FedEx, he was clearly hoping to assuage voter concerns about a public health-care option undercutting and eliminating private insurance.

What he did instead was conjure up visions of long lines and interminable waits. Why do we need or want a health-care system that works like the post office?

What’s more, if the USPS is struggling to compete with private companies, as Obama implied, why introduce a government health-care option that would operate at the same disadvantage?

Obama Unscripted

These are just two of the questions someone listening to the president’s health-insurance reform roadshow might want to ask.

Impromptu Obamanomics is getting scarier by the day. For all the president’s touted intelligence, his un-teleprompted comments reveal a basic misunderstanding of capitalist principles.

For example, asked at the Portsmouth town hall how private insurance companies can compete with the government, the president said the following:

“If the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining -- meaning taxpayers aren’t subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services and a good network of doctors, just like any other private insurer would do -- then I think private insurers should be able to compete.”

Self-sustaining? The public option? What has Obama been doing during those daily 40-minute economic briefings coordinated by uber-economic-adviser, Larry Summers?

Capitalism Explained

Government programs aren’t self-sustaining by definition. They’re subsidized by the taxpayer. If they were self-financed, we’d be off the hook.

Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com, put it this way in an Aug. 13 commentary on Mises.org:

“The only reason for a government service is precisely to provide financial support for an operation that is otherwise unsustainable, or else there would be no point in the government’s involvement at all.”

Rockwell sees no “economic reason for a government postal system” and would abolish it.

Of course, there’s the small matter of the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, grants Congress the power “to establish Post Offices and Post Roads.” A series of subsequent statutes gave the USPS a monopoly in the delivery of first-class mail. Congress thought that without such protection, private carriers would cherry-pick the high-profit routes and leave money-losing deliveries in remote areas to the post office. (In those days, the USPS covered most of its expenses with revenue.)

Less Bad Option

It was only through exemptions in the law that private carriers, such as UPS and FedEx, were allowed to compete in the delivery of overnight mail.

Short of a constitutional amendment or a waiver from Congress, we are stuck with the USPS.

But back to our storyline. Everyone makes a mistake or flubs a line when asked questions on the spot, including the president of the United States. We can overlook run-on sentences, subject and verb tense disagreement, even a memory lapse when it comes to facts and figures.

The proliferation of Obama’s gaffes and non sequiturs on health care has exceeded the allowable limit. He has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke.

The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact.

Neither option is good; ignorance is clearly preferable to the alternative.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&sid=aJ01reSCujDQ

[extelecom]

From 'Yes, We Can' to 'No! Don't!'
Obama turns out to be brilliant at becoming, not being, president.

*
By PEGGY NOONAN



Don't strain the system. Don't add to the national stress level. Don't pierce when you can envelop. Don't show even understandable indignation when you can show legitimate regard. Realize that the ties that bind still bind but have grown dryer and more worn with time. They need to be strengthened, not strained.

Govern knowing we are a big, strong, mighty nation, a colossus that is, however, like all highly complex, highly wired organisms, fragile, even at places quite delicate. Don't overburden or overexcite the system. America used to have fringes, one over here and the other over there. The fringes are growing. The fringes have their own networks. All sorts of forces exist to divide us. Try always to unite.

These are things one always wants people currently rising in government to know deep in their heads and hearts. They are the things the young, fierce staffers in any new White House, and the self-proclaimed ruthless pragmatists in this one, need to hear, be told or be reminded of.
***

The big, complicated, obscure, abstruse, unsettling and ultimately unhelpful health-care plans, proposals and ideas keep rolling out of Washington. Five bills, thousands of pages, "as it says on page 346, paragraph 3, subsection D." No one knows what will be passed, what will make its way through House-Senate "conference." They don't even know what the president wants, what his true agenda is. He never seems to be leveling, only talking. Everything's open to misdirection and exaggeration, and everything, people fear, will come down to some future bureaucrat's interpretation of paragraph 3, subsection D, part 22.

What a disaster this health-care debate is. It strains, stresses and pierces, it unnecessarily agitates and is doomed to be the cause of further agitation. Who doubts the final bill will be something between a pig in a poke and three-card Monte?

Which is too bad, because our health-care system actually needs to be made better.
***

There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't get much if anything. I don't know, but this is true: If he wins it, will be a victory not worth having. It will have cost too much. It has lessened the thing an admired president must have from the people, and that is trust.

It is divisive save in one respect. The Obama White House has done the near impossible: It has united the Republican Party. Social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians—they're all against the health-care schemes as presented so far. They're shoulder-to-shoulder at the barricade again.
***

The president's town-hall meeting on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., was supposed to be an antidote to the fractious town halls with members of Congress the past weeks. But it was not peaceful, only somnolent. Actually it was a bit of a disaster. It looked utterly stacked, with softball after softball thrown by awed and supportive citizens. When George W. Bush did town halls like that—full of people who'd applaud if he said tomorrow we bring democracy to Saturn—it was considered a mark of manipulation and insecurity. And it was. So was Mr. Obama's.

The first question was from a Democratic state representative from Dover named Peter Schmidt. He began, "One of the things you've been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you've been striving for bipartisanship."

"Right," the president purred. They were really holding his feet to the fire.

"My question is," Mr. Schmidt continued, "if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn't it time to just say, 'We're going to pass what the American people need and what they want without the Republicans'?"

Stop, Torquemada, stop!

The president said it would be nice to pass a bill in a "bipartisan fashion" but "the most important thing is getting it done for the American people."

Then came a grade-school girl. "I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care" she said. Here one expected a gentle and avuncular riff on the wonderful and vivid expressions of agreement and disagreement to be seen in a vibrant democracy. But no. The president made a small grimace. "I've seen some of those signs," he said. There's been a "rumor" the House voted for "death panels" that will "pull the plug on grandma," but it's all a lie.

I'm glad he'd like psychiatric care included in future coverage, because after that answer, that child may need therapy.
***

The president seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics—the swift rise, the astute reading of a varied electorate—who is finding out day by day that he isn't actually all that good at it. In this sense he does seem reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, who was brilliant at becoming president but not being president. (Actually a lot of them are like that these days.)

Also, something odd. When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems . . . pretty slippery. In the town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery. When he took refuge in the small pieces of his argument, he lost the major threads; when he addressed the major threads, he seemed almost to be conceding that the specifics don't hold.

When you seem slippery both in the abstract and the particular, you are in trouble.
***
***

Looking back, a key domestic moment in this presidency occurred only eight days after his inauguration, when Mr. Obama won House passage of his stimulus bill. It was a bad bill—off point, porky and philosophically incoherent. He won 244-188, a rousing victory for a new president. But he won without a single Republican vote. That was the moment the new division took hold. The Democrats of the House pushed it through, and not one Republican, even those from swing districts, even those eager to work with the administration, could support it.

This, of course, was politics as usual. But in 2008 people voted against politics as usual.

It was a real lost opportunity. It marked the moment congressional Republicans felt free to be in full opposition. It gave congressional Democrats the impression that they were in full control, that no one could stop their train. And it was the moment the president, looking at the lay of the land, seemed to reveal he would not govern in a vaguely center-left way, as a unifying figure even if a beset one being beaten 'round the head by the left, but in a left way, without the modifying "center." Or at least as one who happily cedes to the left in Congress each day.

Things got all too vividly divided. It was a harbinger of the health-care debate.

I always now think of a good president as sitting at the big desk and reaching out with his long arms and holding on to the left, and holding on to the right, and trying mightily to hold it together, letting neither spin out of control, holding on for dear life. I wish we were seeing that. I don't think we are.

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html#printMode

[extelecom]

Populist Right Rising
by Patrick J. Buchanan
08/18/2009


What happened to the Age of Obama?

Glancing over the New York Times Book Review Sunday, one finds three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives -- columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.

At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O'Reilly's memoir.


No. 1 best-seller in paperback: Glenn Beck's "Common Sense."

Moreover, the altarpiece of the transformational presidency, universal health insurance, is on life support, as huge crowds pour into town hall meetings to denounce it. Responding to the protests, the Obamaites have dumped the end-of-life counselors (aka "Death Panels") and declared the government option expendable.

But what are we to make of these "evil-mongers" of Harry Reid's depiction, these "mobs" of "thugs" organized by K Street lobbyists and "right-wing extremists" who engage in "un-American" activity at town hall meetings? Surely, all Americans must detest them.

To the contrary. According to a Pew poll, by 61 percent to 34 percent, Americans think the protesters are behaving properly. Gallup found that by 34 percent to 21 percent Americans identify with them. For these folks at the town hall meetings are not overprivileged Ivy League brats seizing campus buildings and holding the dean hostage. They look and talk just like them.

What President Obama is losing is not the far right but the center of the country. Nor is this the first time liberals have misread America.

During the 1968 Democratic convention, liberals sided with the antiwar demonstrators in Grant Park. And the country sided with the Chicago cops who went into the park and gave them a good thrashing.

In 1969, the national press was writing that President Nixon must yield to the hundreds of thousands ringing the White House. Nixon went on national TV to call on the Silent Majority to stand by him.

They did, for four years.

One recalls Sen. Ed Muskie blurting out, after being crushed in the Florida primary by George Wallace, that he didn't know there were that many racists in Florida. That was the end of Ed. And in the fall, the Floridians flooded to Nixon, who did not insult them.

After Nixon rolled up his 49-state triumph, Pauline Kael, movie critic at the New Yorker, is said to have expressed disbelief: "I don't know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him."

George H.W. Bush never saw the rebellion of 1992 coming and watched Ross Perot waltz off with a third of his 1988 voters.

The anger in Middle America today looks much like what erupted in the NAFTA debate of 1993 and the amnesty debate of 2007.

The difference: Republican leaders stood with Washington then, for NAFTA and amnesty. This time, the party leaders are with the people, and should do the people's will.

Seven months into the Age of Obama, the GOP has been given an opportunity to regain the allegiance of the voters John McCain lost with his embrace of NAFTA and amnesty, and his dash to Washington to convince Republicans to give Hank Paulson $700 billion to bail out Wall Street.

For these protesters are not so much being drawn to the GOP as being driven to it. The manic assaults by Democrats and liberal commentators and columnists on the protesters as "un-American," "birthers," "racists," "mobs" and "evil-mongers" has enraged and united them and cost Obama much of his support in Middle America

Does the left not realize that, while four in five Republicans say the protesters are behaving appropriately, 64 percent of moderates and 40 percent of Democrats agree with those Republicans?

We are also learning that Republicans have not been hurt by their opposition to the stimulus bill or cap-and-trade. The country has come to agree with the GOP.

Nor was the party hurt when, by four to one, its senators voted against Ms. Affirmative Action, Sonia Sotomayor. Nor was it hurt by standing with Sgt. Crowley when Obama rushed to denounce the Cambridge cop for acting "stupidly" in arresting the Harvard professor who got in his face. Obama's support among Africans-Americans remains solid. His support among the white working and middle class is sinking.

Increasingly, Obama is being perceived as a man of the left and Republicans as the bulwark against a lurch to the left. Democrats may denounce Republicans as the Party of "No" -- but the nation seems to be saying "Yes" to the Party of "No."

In his new memoir, "Encounters," conservative scholar Dr. Paul Gottfried writes of a 1993 gathering, hosted by this writer, where libertarian legend Murray Rothbard, columnist Sam Francis and that founding father of postwar conservatism, Dr. Russell Kirk, went at it over the role of the populist right in the conservative movement.

Though they vehemently disagreed, each man represented an essential element of a center-right coalition. As for the protesters, surely Thomas Jefferson was more right than Harry Reid, when he wrote to James Madison, "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33181

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We all know Howard Dean is rabid, good of him to reaffirm he is a LIb. nutball...
A QUIET SCREAM

Former DNC Head Plays Games With Incendiary Language

Apparently, libtalkers aren't the only ones asserting that conservatives want Obama dead. After a week of reckless rhetoric from the left side of the dial, along comes Howard Dean to show them how it's really done!
As Dean suggests Senate Republicans want to "kill the bill and kill the president", listen for the former DNC chairman's less-than-sincere effort to step out of the dog-doo. Is this Dean Scream Volume II, the quiet version?

From today's Stephanie Miller Show, here's the clip and transcript:
STEPHANIE MILLER (1:29): I saw you (Howard Dean) on Keith Olbermann last night. You really do believe we’re going to have a public option.


HOWARD DEAN: At the end of the day, I think we will. First of all, the president is a very smart guy and he knows very well this can’t work without a public option. Secondly, you know he’s run into a rough patch in the Senate, mostly because of Democrats, honestly.

The Republicans, they have no interest in this Bill. They’re using the 1994 playbook. Let’s kill the bill and kill the president...... or, kill the president’s term. Although there are sort of angry people out there I get very nervous about this stuff. I don’t like it at all.

http://www.youtube.com/v/7m53NbKxmb4&hl=en&fs=1&

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Comrade Obama Puts Forth His Argument for the Healthcare Power Grab

No one is likely to mistake this joker for the Great Communicator:

http://www.youtube.com/v/SZ8L0RE2Axs&hl=en&fs=1&

Rahm, please get him back on his teleprompter. Other countries might be watching.

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Boxer could face re-election fight of her career against Fiorina
Democrat Barbara Boxer's quest for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate may give Californians a chance to pass judgment on Washington in the Obama era: Do voters approve of the early performance of the Democratic president and Congress? Or is it time to restore more power to Republicans, in this case to a controversial former Silicon Valley CEO making her first run for elective office?

What looks increasingly likely is that Boxer will be in for the re-election fight of her career. While she has yet to announce her candidacy, all signs point to a run by Republican Carly Fiorina, the charismatic ex-chief of Hewlett-Packard who was ousted from her job in 2005 and last year served as a top surrogate for John McCain's presidential bid.

Fiorina would bring a combination of traits to the race never faced before by Boxer: She is a woman with the wherewithal to pump millions of her own dollars into her candidacy and probably raise millions more from others. And historically, the election after a president first takes office has not been kind to the party in charge at the White House. Exhibit A is 1994, when Democrats lost control of Congress halfway into President Bill Clinton's first term.

In this case, analysts say, the 2010 California Senate election is expected to be at least partly a referendum on the policies of Obama and the Democratic Congress — from health care to immigration to climate change. And as chairman of the Senate committee shaping global warming legislation in the coming months, Boxer will have little distance from the president — for better or worse.

As Obama's fortunes go over the next 14 months, in other words, so might Boxer's.

"Like almost any Democrat, she carries the burden of the party that controls the White House and Congress and the voters' pleasure, or lack thereof, in what the Democratic majority produces," said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "And as the Senate takes up climate change, Boxer is in something of a hot seat as chairman of the committee. That could be a blessing and a curse."

Those uncertainties notwithstanding, Boxer enters the race a solid favorite, Duffy and others say. With three terms under her belt in the Senate — going on 18 years — Boxer, 68, is both a known quantity and a staunch Democrat in a state with a growing Democratic voter edge.

She is also known as an aggressive fundraiser and campaigner and will no doubt take the fight to Fiorina, 54, whose business career and personal background have never been subjected to the scrutiny of a statewide political campaign.

During last year's presidential race, Fiorina remarked that she is personally anti-abortion and defended companies, including H-P, that sent jobs overseas to take advantage of lower taxes. She was also forced to answer questions about the severance package she received — worth tens of millions of dollars — when she was ousted at H-P in 2005 after a stormy six-year run at the iconic Silicon Valley company.

Fiorina can expect questions about those issues, and many others, to rise to a crescendo if she jumps in the race. Boxer's camp already is characterizing Fiorina's views as "right wing."

"I've heard Carly Fiorina described as a moderate, but on a woman's right to choose, (she) is out of step with most California voters," said Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer's campaign consultant.

An aide to Fiorina declined to comment on anything related to a possible campaign other than to say that the former HP chief is seriously considering running, as she has been for months. Fiorina has put off a decision as she receives treatment for breast cancer, with which she was diagnosed earlier this year. She is reportedly recovering well.

Boxer is not without her own question marks. A staunch liberal, she appeals mainly to the Democratic base — rarely have her approval ratings topped 50 percent since she was first elected senator in 1993, according to the California Field Poll.

Other factors do not bode well for Boxer. A fierce critic of George W. Bush, she won't have the former president to kick around anymore. On the flip side, Obama will not be atop the ticket to boost Democratic turnout. And the type of bare-knuckle campaigning Boxer has embraced in the past against male opponents may be trickier to pull off against Fiorina. (Republican state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has already entered the Senate race but likely would be overwhelmed by Fiorina's fundraising advantage.)

At a more fundamental level, political analysts say Fiorina almost certainly would be a more formidable challenger than Boxer has faced before.

The senator "has been somewhat fortunate in the past in drawing candidates who are ... often too conservative" for California's left-of-center electorate, said Bruce Cain, director of the UC Washington Center. "That has allowed her to win her races without a great deal of trouble."
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13095441?nclick_check=1

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Global Warming ate my data

* Track this topic
* Print story

We've lost the numbers: CRU responds to FOIA requests

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in Environment, 13th August 2009 14:35 GMT

Jump starting your application security initiatives with The Register and HP

The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.

The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection - except to hand-picked academics - for several years. Instead, it releases a processed version, in gridded form. NASA maintains its own (GISSTEMP), but the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC. So any errors in CRU cascade around the world, and become part of "the science".

Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

In 2007, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, CRU initially said it didn't have to fulfil the requests because "Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites".

Now it's citing confidentiality agreements with Denmark, Spain, Bahrain and our own Mystic Met Office. Others may exist, CRU says in a statement, but it might have lost them because it moved offices. Or they were made verbally, and nobody at CRU wrote them down.

As for the raw station data,

"We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."

Canadian statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre, who has been asking for the data set for years, says he isn't impressed by the excuses. McIntyre obtained raw data when it was accidentally left on an FTP server last month. Since then, CRU has battened down the hatches, and purged its FTP directories lest any more raw data escapes and falls into the wrong hands.

McIntyre says he doesn't expect any significant surprises after analysing the raw data, but believes that reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific principle, and so raw data and methods should be disclosed. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/

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NY shopkeeper who defended store recounts shooting

By VERENA DOBNIK (AP) – 14 hours ago

NEW YORK — The sidewalk outside the Harlem store still was smeared with blood Friday, and the glass on the door still was blown out.

Above the entrance, someone had scribbled the words, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

Less than 24 hours after a deadly showdown at the shop worthy of a Clint Eastwood script, Charles "Gus" Augusto Jr. entered his store — oblivious of the inscription taken from Dante's "Inferno."

The 72-year-old wholesaler of commercial restaurant equipment had been up all night, questioned by police about how he'd drawn a shotgun and killed two of four armed robbery suspects who entered his Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame store Thursday afternoon.

Two of the young men died on the street. Two remained hospitalized in stable condition with gunshot wounds.

When they walked in at about 3 p.m. and confronted Augusto with guns, "I didn't want to shoot them," he said, sitting bleary-eyed in his dusty, windowless warehouse, with a fly swatter hanging above his head.

He said the bandits drew their handguns, yelling, "Where's the money? Where's the money?"

They pistol-whipped a worker and waved a weapon at a cashier's face, he said.

"There is no money," Augusto said he told them. "Go home."

Stashed away nearby was the 12-gauge shotgun he bought decades ago and said he had never used since a test-fire. He reached for it when he sensed one of the men was about to shoot, and pulled the trigger once.

"I hoped after the first shot they would go away," he said.

When they didn't, continuing to menace his employees, he fired again, and again.

Police said one of the men collapsed and died outside the door, just feet from a Baptist church.

"He died in the hands of God," said a neighborhood resident, Vincent Gayle, pointing to the blood-spattered pavement by the church. "But what goes around comes around."

Another fatally wounded suspect managed to cross the street, leaving a trail of blood before he collapsed. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital, police said.

More blood led police to the other two suspects, who were arrested and taken to the hospital. Charges against them were pending.

Police said Augusto didn't have a required permit for the weapon used in the headline-grabbing shooting the Daily News called a "Pump-Action Ending."

But he was a victim, police said, and no charges had been filed on Friday.

"I'd rather not have done it," Augusto said, "and I'm sad for those mothers who have no sons."

On Friday, pedestrians were still sidestepping pools of blood along Augusto's block on West 125th Street, a short walk from Bill Clinton's Harlem office.

Reactions to the shooting were mixed.

Frida Rodriguez called it "a sad day" for the neighborhood.

Augusto "was defending his work, his business, so you could perceive that as being heroic," she said. "But on the other hand, these kids died."

The shopkeeper was coy when asked whether, with his shotgun confiscated, he had a backup.

"I'm not going to tell you that," he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j5brmrW2P3eECKuZzWaRt-WBEW0QD9A2UV9O2

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Palin Wins
If she's dim and Obama is brilliant, how did he lose the argument to her?

By JAMES TARANTO

The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.

A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.

President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well:

A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing.

The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of healthcare legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." . . .

The Palin claim about "death panels" was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the healthcare overhaul are misinformed.

You have to love that last bit. The fearless, independent journalists of the Los Angeles Times justify their assertion that the Palin claim was "widely discredited" with an appeal to authority--the authority of the White House, which is to say, the other side in the debate. One suspects the breathtaking inadequacy of this argument would have been obvious to Times reporters Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac if George W. Bush were still president. And of course this appears in a story about how the Senate was persuaded to act in accord with Palin's position--which doesn't prove that position right but does show that it is widely (though, to be sure, not universally) credited.
Podcast

James Taranto on Palin and the "death panel" debate.

One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350400852801602.html#printMode

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Operation Coffee Cup was a campaign conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) during the late 1950s and early 1960s in opposition to the Democrats' plans to extend Social Security to include socialized medicine for the elderly, later known as Medicare. As part of the plan, doctors' wives would organize coffee meetings in an attempt to convince acquaintances to write letters to Congress opposing the program. The operation received support from Ronald Reagan, who in 1961 produced the LP record Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine for the AMA, outlining arguments against what he called "socialized medicine". This record would be played at the coffee meetings.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan from the 1961 album during the 2008 Vice-Presidential debate, "It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Coffee_Cup

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How to Influence a Liberal (But Not a Lunatic)
By Robin of Berkeley
My Open Letter to Liberals sparked some concerns from readers that I had returned to the warm embrace of Mr. Rogers. Several kind souls even offered to spirit me away to safer pastures, sort of like a conservative witness protection program.

I can understand why it might have looked like I relapsed, perhaps by inhaling too much medical marijuana. But truly, there's a method to my madness.

I get it; evil exists, and it's running rampant all over the country and spreading like wildfire. The meanest, most sociopathic fringes of the far left have been set loose, like rabid beasts unleashed from a cage, and they're sinking their diseased fangs into conservatives. And there's more people foaming at the mouth every day.

But this is part of the Left's plan: Keep conservatives so agitated that we can't tell the nice liberals from the maniacs. There's a term for it in psychotherapy: hypervigilance, and it's associated with trauma. I don't know about you, but the constant cruelty, combined with the real threat of communism, is making me feel pretty traumatized these days.

But it's a particularly maniacal method that commies use: set their dogs on us so we feel persecuted (because -- hello? -- we are being persecuted). Then discredit, ridicule, and label us "paranoid." It's sick, it's vicious, and it's all part of their game plan.

So I'm not writing for the brain dead and the possessed. I deal with them sparingly and only for a darn good fee for a 50 minute hour.

But there have got to be others out there like me, with the potential to see the light. Yes, there are countless subhumans, but their mouths are bigger than their numbers. I was heartened that there were even two thoughtful liberals among the postings to my Open Letter. While I didn't necessarily agree with their views, I was pleased they were tuning in to AT, and that they were expressing themselves respectfully.

I'm reaching out to those liberals who haven't lost their marbles yet. So I want to roll out the welcome mat to: Hillary supporters and other Democrats who chose Obama as their second choice; conservatives who punished Republicans but didn't bargain on Marxism; Ron Paul supporters who are looking for safe harbor; centrists who voted for Obama but are alarmed by the extreme left turn; and Obama supporters who liked him but now are having buyer's remorse.

As a therapist, I foster change. So I'm trying out in the cyberworld what helps my clients. For instance, here are some techniques:

1. Tailoring my words to the audience. I used a phrase like trauma in my open letter because that's a word on liberals' radar.

2. Engaging people: If I make them feel comfortable via empathy, they may stay awhile and start listening.

3. Zooming in on common bonds: I referred to experiences that unite all people, such as the search for happiness and our mortality.

4. Acting in unexpected ways: Liberals assume I'll be all snarky. If I'm not like this, it's harder for them to dismiss me.

5. Externalizing the problem: This is a handy technique borrowed from narrative therapy. If people don't feel blamed, they're more likely to change. So in my piece, I cited big government as our common foe, rather than point fingers at Obama and the Democrats.

6. Cultivate doubt: Spot the vulnerability and plant seeds of uncertainty. As an example, I was speaking to a colleague who depends on health insurance for his private practice. I expressed skepticism that ObamaCare will keep paying for therapy. (The look on his face: priceless.) Creating doubt can be as simple as a mystified look or a well placed "Really," as in, "Oh, you still believe in Obama's stimulus plan. Really?"

Another handy trick: instill doubt by making people feel separate, isolated. We are pack animals and most of us don't like to feel alone in a crowd.

So when an acquaintance made a nasty crack about Palin, I looked puzzled, then said, "Oh, you don't like her? I do." When she recovered from shock, she sputtered, "I don't know anyone who likes her." I answered, again appearing bewildered, as though I'd never heard an anti-Sarah crack in all my life, "Really? Everyone I know respects her. Did you know that she's one of the few successful women politicians who got there on her own?" To her credit, she backed off and apologized (Yay! There's at least one liberal out there who is operating on all cylinders!)

6. Storytelling: This is a great technique culled from the master hypnotherapist, Milton Erikson. (There's much talk that the left has used hypnosis on us for decades, so it's time we get in on the game.) Erikson would subtly influence his clients through subliminal methods like storytelling. Rather than confront a client's defenses, he'd meander in and out of their unconscious, like a graceful ballerina. For instance, with his son who suffered from a chronic illness, he'd tell stories about a hardy tree outside his son's window, using the tree as a metaphor for overcoming great adversity.

So, here's how I used it with a friend who was waxing rhapsodic about Obama's stimulus bill. Rather than challenge her, which would have started a no-win argument, I listened, then we chatted about something else, and then I said the following:

I've been thinking a lot about my parents; they died four years ago this month. I didn't appreciate them much as a kid, but now I really do. It blows me away how my grandparents arrived here from Tsarist Russia dirt poor to only face horrendous prejudice and poverty. But they literally kissed the ground when they got off the boat at Ellis Island. There was no government assistance back then. The Jews helped each other, just as all the immigrants did.

My grandparents raised their children in conditions that would be considered impoverished today but they never complained. My parents were also so grateful for the little they had, and they just loved this country. Sometimes I feel so ashamed of later generations. We have light years more than they ever did, and yet we always want more; we never say thanks. I wish my parents were around so I can tell how grateful I am to them and the sacrifices they made.

Then, as I observed my friend's utter incredulity and confusion, I changed the subject.

Think subtlety won't do the trick? The Left has managed to put half the country in a mass hypnotic trance using these strategies.

7. Last but not least: Allowing people to safe face. People will not change if they feel stupid or ashamed, even if the truth smacks them in the face. Robert McNamara elucidates this principle in the documentary, The Fog of War. According to him, the planet was saved because JFK permitted Khrushchev to remove missiles from Cuba on his own volition, thereby preserving Khrushchev's image.

For instance, if I say, "What in the world made you vote for Obama? Didn't you see all the warning signs," the person will get defensive and dig in his or her heels. But if instead I remark, "I think the media has been negligent in giving us the honest facts about Obama," or, "I remember voting for so and so and being sorry about it afterwards," then you help them save face.

So these are some of my therapeutic trade secrets. Is it a pipe dream to think I can sway a wavering liberal? Perhaps.

But I keep reflecting on a story about Suzuki Roshi, a beloved Buddhist teacher in the 60's. He was giving a talk and declared, "Life is impossible." A student raised his hand and asked, "If life is impossible, how do we do it?" Suzuki responded, "You do it every day.'"

So I'll keep trying to make a difference even if it sometimes feels utterly futile and impossible. But that's what the hoodlums want us to believe, isn't it?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/how_to_influence_a_liberal_but.html

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OBAMA



The word is, President Barack Obama now plays golf almost every weekend, an unlike former presidents, he takes no “gimmees,” no “mulligans,” and he writes down the true score, even if it's a ten or eleven. The Congressional Budget Office said, "Obama ought to try that policy out when he's talking about the cost of health care."

http://www.examiner.com/x-10338-Lewis-County-Political-Satire-Examiner~y2009m8d13-Lou-Dobbs-Former-Vermont-Governor-Howard-Dean-Stake-In-His-Heart

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AARP Corrects False Obama Claim

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Poll: Obama Approval Rating Drops to 47 Percent

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Healthcare bill dissected page by page
August 12, 2009

Peter Fleckenstein, a blogger and former Marine from Phoenix, is going through the ObamaCare bill page by page and highlighting the provisions he finds there.

Clearly, Fleckenstein has struck a nerve. His list, originally published as a series of Twitter posts, has gone viral via e-mail. Within days, the liberal fascists published his personal information on Twitter as a means to silence him. Fleckenstein promises legal action.

It's easy to see why the liberals are tripping over themselves to suppress the information Fleckenstein unearthed. At its best, the information Fleckenstein culled from the bowels of the ObamaCare bill are absurd. When you really understand what the ObamaCare bill is and what Congress and Obama are trying to do with it, however, it turns from absurd to nearly terrifying.

Information has been taken from different sources for formatting purposes but verified back to Fleckenstein' s original work. Fleckenstein' s blog is here: http://blog.flecksoflife.com/


. Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
. Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
. Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
. Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
. Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
. Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
. Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
. Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)
. Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
. Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
. Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
. Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
. Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
. Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
. Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
. Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
. Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.
. Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll
. Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll
. Page 167: Any individual who doesn't' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
. Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).
. Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
. Page 203: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." Yes, it really says that.
. Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected."
. Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)
. Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc.
. Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.
. Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.
. Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
. Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
. Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
. Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!
. Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
. Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on "community" input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.
. Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
. Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.
. Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.
. Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).
. Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
. Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.
. Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
. Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
. Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
. Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
. Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.
. Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.
. Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
. Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.
* PG 502 Line 5-18 Government builds the "Center" to conduct, support, & synthesize research to define our HealthCare Services.
* PG 502 Section 1181 Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research Established. - Hello Big Brother - Literally.
* 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.
* 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 services 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.
* PG 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.
* PG 705-709 SEC. 1128 If Secretary gets complaints (ACORN) on HealthCare provider or supplier, Government can do background check.
* PG 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 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 724 Lines 16-22 Government reserves right to apply face-to-face certification for patient to ANY other HealthCare service.
* 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)
* PG 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 - Nursing Home Visitation Services (Hello union paybacks)
* Pg 769 11-14 Nurseing Home Visit Services include-economic self-sufficiency, employment advancement, school-readiness.
* Pg 769 3-5 Nursing 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. Goodbye 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.
* PG 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.
* Pg 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 civilian employees of the U.S. as Secretary deems.
* PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of officers of Regular & Reserve Corps of Service.
* PG 900 The Public Health Workforce Corps includes veterinarians.
* PG 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 - initial 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.
* 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 won't have a chance.
* PG 994 School Based Health Clinics 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.
http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2009/090812/webonlynews.html

[fuagf]

Big quake to strike Sydney? Scientists wonder
(Agencies) Updated: 2004-07-20 02:43

Australia is shaken by about 200 tremours each year, but most register only about 3 on
the Richter scale and usually occur in the outback, scaring a few birds and kangaroos.

But scientists say a major earthquake could strike Australia's largest city Sydney,
population 4.5 million. Even a moderate quake could cause devastation and death.

The strongest quake on record in Australia registered about 6.9 on the Richter scale, matching
the strength of Japan's Kobe earthquake in January 1995 that killed more than 6,400 people.

"Large earthquakes have occurred in sparsely populated areas. You can't discount that
possibility, that a large earthquake might occur in the Sydney area,' said Phil Cummins,
head of the earthquake hazard team at the government agency Geoscience Australia.

In fact, every five years or so a potentially disastrous earthquake of 6.0 or more on
the Richter scale rocks Australia and a quake as high as 7 is expected to occur every 100 years.

And scientists say the larger quakes are more likely to hit the edges
of the Australian continent where the vast majority of the population lives.

Australia's most damaging earthquake, a moderate 5.6 on the Richter scale, occurred in December 1989. The quake struck
the coastal coal-mining city of Newcastle, killing 13 people, injuring 130 and causing insured losses of nearly A$1 billion
(US$733 million). Total estimated losses were A$4 billion (US$2.9 billion), including uninsured losses, damage to infrastructure
and community disruption, according to Emergency Management Australia, a government disaster management body.

Newcastle, with a population of more than 300,000, is about 140 kilometres north of Sydney.

Earthquakes, brushfires, cyclones and floods have the potential to cause havoc in Australia and the largest exposure
to most of these risks is Sydney, given its status as the country's centre of commerce and large population.

In the world of earthquakes, risk analysts play what they call "the
catastrophe game" to figure out the odds of a quake hitting a city like Sydney.

There is only a small chance of a major earthquake striking Australia's eastern seaboard.
But, as the Newcastle quake showed, they can happen and can cause extensive damage.

The frequency of earthquakes is lower in Australia than in its Asia-Pacific neighbours
because the continent sits on the Indo-Australian tectonic plate, rather than on a volatile edge.

Earthquakes are most common where different tectonic plates meet, for example in earthquake-
prone New Zealand to the southeast, which straddles the Indo-Australian and Pacific Plates.

Intraplate earthquakes, like those in Australia and continental North America, are less common and do not follow a
pattern. They can also feel more violent, because intraplate earthquakes generally occur closer to the earth's surface.

When a large earthquake occurs within 10 km of the Earth's surface, the fault may
rupture through the rocks that make up the Earth's surface and open up a long jagged rent.

Australia has had five such fault breakages in the past 30 years, more than any other country.

All five are in remote areas away from major population centres.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/20/content_349759.htm

Ummm, it's a bit worse than i'd understood down here.

[fuagf]

Sounds like your niece is a considerate young lady and that your mother will be just fine.

"She can get the phone company on them and the police dept on them, if its both kinds."

Of course. When you mentioned all the telephone harassment earlier i'd wondered
why the phone co. and or the police hadn't been involved. The best way to go.

Whoa! Settle old earth nobody wants any earthquakes. Ever. Guess the happening is beyond our control. lol

Another earthquake shakes Melbourne
Australian Associated Press

"I thought the roof was falling in but the floor was shaking too and I could feel
the vibration coming up from under the couch." .. Eltham resident Caroline Hamilton

A 4.5 magnitude earthquake has been felt in Melbourne and eastern Victoria, 12 days after a similar tremor.

The tremor occurred about 5km northeast of Korumburra,
100km southeast of Melbourne, at 4.28pm (AEDT) on Wednesday.

The epicentre is in the same area of an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter scale which hit on March 6.

The Seismology Research Centre said an aftershock sequence is expected to continue.

There have been no reports of damage and it is unlikely an earthquake of this
magnitude and depth will cause any significant damage, the centre's website said.

State Emergency Service (SES) spokesman Alan Briggs said while there had been no reports of any damage,
anyone facing any problems should turn off all gas, electricity and water and call emergency services.

Eltham resident Caroline Hamilton felt the jolt at her home in Melbourne's east.

"I was at home in my living room, sitting on the couch, when I became aware of
my roof shaking like there was a gigantic person up there running around," she said.

"At first I thought the roof was falling in but the floor was shaking
too and I could feel the vibration coming up from under the couch.

"I wouldn't say it was terrifying but it was quite unsettling."

Associate Professor Malcolm Wallace from Melbourne University's school of
earth sciences said the tremor was likely an aftershock from the March 6 quake.

He said it was normal for smaller tremors to be felt after an
earthquake as stress on fault lines was dispersed from the epicentre.

"If it was from the same area it probably is related to that fairly large one a while ago," Dr Wallace said.

He said Victorians could expect more aftershocks but it was unlikely the tremor was a sign of a bigger earthquake to come.

"I don't think it's the prelude to a big earthquake.

"We probably have the same probability now of having a big earthquake as there always has been.

"There's not been any huge ones historically, in written records, but from
the geological record it does appear that there's been some large earthquakes."

Dr Wallace said those large earthquakes had not occurred for thousands of years.

And while there was a possibility Victoria would again be hit by a big earthquake it was impossible to predict.

http://www.livenews.com.au/Article/Index/197525?channel=home
///////////////////////
We all have I have more reasons than one not wanting Just felt a nice little shaker of a quake.
maybe 3.0 no more. oh, earthquake cam is on the tele. Centered in south bay. That's unusual.
Couldn't've been strong if it was centered here. 4.3 Thousand Oaks. That's why it was mild here.

We're lucky earthquakes are very infrequent about here and have never seen an earthquake cam of tv.

Australia's most damaging earthquake, a moderate 5.6 on the Richter scale, occurred in December 1989. The quake struck
the coastal coal-mining city of Newcastle, killing 13 people, injuring 130 and causing insured losses of nearly A$1 billion
(US$733 million). Total estimated losses were A$4 billion (US$2.9 billion), including uninsured losses, damage to infrastructure
and community disruption, according to Emergency Management Australia, a government disaster management body.

see reply

[bagwa-john]

my mom called one of my sister's old friends who works the in the local fire department to give him the sad news and he had already heard it from my niece.

He didn't know how my niece had gotten his number, my mom filled in it came from my sister's cell phone.

He asked when the services were happening, and my mom told him the twisted story.

His head did the same thing mine did. Pooofffft. He's hated that dude since he first met him like we did.

She filled in more blanks and a totally went ballistic.

The good news is, if my mom receives harassment from either of them, there are plenty of local fire department rough assed dudes who'd love for an excuse to work him over.
Whoa! Just felt a nice little shaker of a quake. maybe 3.0 no more. oh, earthquake cam is on the tele. Centered in south bay. That's unusual. Couldn't've been strong if it was centered here. 4.3 Thousand Oaks. That's why it was mild here.

Her message machine is full according to her neighbors hearing her phone ring off the hook for days. She's been in Virginia with my youngest sister.
I hope its harassment calls or even better threatening calls.
She can get the phone company on them and the police dept on them, if its both kinds.

More crap to put into this chicken shit's file.

My mom's friend in the fire dept says he gives him three weeks because he runs from problems. He'll be running broke! heh heh.

The wheel of karma doesn't miss anything.

[fuagf]

Figured it was .. sounds a bad nasty man .. sounds good you're right .. my father died in New Westminster ..
(smaller city outside of Vancouver) .. at his funeral one of my sisters read out something i had sent .. during
his funeral i had a few drinks with him in Sydney ..the sister who read out my message carried Dad's ashes
around for 2-3 years in the boot of her car and we spread them in the Fraser River about 100 meters from ..



.. where the floating casino is docked.

This is a quay shot where my sister lives .. looking from the casino down toward her place ..



there are smallish townhouses tucked under the left of the taller buildings .. the promenade with many flowers runs quite further down .. looked for a better shot but .. anyway she is there when not in the place he designed and built with friends at ..



Whistler .. BC ..

Yep .. lol .. rather ..



than ..



Have a HAPPY time at the funeral John. All the best.

[bagwa-john]

It was heat of the moment. the asshole is playing games for any excuse to pull a suit on someone so he walks around with a major chip on his shoulder hoping someone will touch him in anger.
some people are just ugly hoping you're the one who loses control. Unfortunately, it makes the environment near them toxic as hell.
He and my niece have already sent my youngest sister so much hate filled text messages she had to change her phone number. He's hacked both of my sisters' (including the one deceased) myspace pages and has been posting vile stuff. She had to close her pages down, but he still continues to post vile things on my other sister's myspace page.
Haven't seen any of it, don't have a space there.
All of us decided on an absentee service. Ya actually don't need to be where the body is to honor someone's memory. nice and peaceful.
Their money will run out since they aren't living on my sister's disability anymore. The niece only makes 300 a week. With a kid, their priorities will have to change, so cell phones and internet access will be too expensive.
not to mention where the hell they're going to live next.
life is about to catch up to him and my niece, shame about the great niece having to go through it with them. I hear she's a really intelligent 6 year old.

and his kid. What a guy.

[fuagf]

The decision to go or not is yours and shouldn't be affected by anything he says.

If you do decide to go you should be and am guessing you
would be in control of your own head enough not to end up in jail.

It's a sad fact that everybody in live suffers the loss of someone close to them, but only those overly captive
to emotion, or to some archaic clan family thing or to a tradition, would kill another if in your situation.

Being captive to anything must be tough. John most here would feel empathy for
you in this situation. Nobody you know would like to see you go up for murder.

If you did comment murder most others would say, that's sad, wish he hadn't but he did so will just have to cop the result.

In NSW just now there is concern about the increasing number of kids taking knives to school.

This morning I heard a radio interview with a Father who runs an Outreach program, he told one story of how his organization had been told that there was a gang of about 30 walking a suburb looking for two young kids who had done nothing
real serious but had upset these idiots. Two young woman from his organization went to the suburb, grabbed the kids
and took them to safety. The kids allegedly said that it was wonderful to feel safe after being scared for so long.

He told another story of a little guy about 46 kg who had been bullied for so long he finally
fought back and killed on of the bullies. The Father said that the kid had been charged, not
sure if convicted or not but i remember thinking what of 'self defence' so he may have been.

Life goes on. The kid is, convicted or not, in deep shit. No future in that.

Ask yourself the question. After the funeral, for the rest of my life, how will i feel .. if i go? .. if i don't go?

Works for me. I would never let something as you describe influence my decision to go or not.

[bagwa-john]

This arrogant asshole told my sister that she, my mom, and anybodyelse(me) weren't welcomed at the "service" he was going to schedule. I told my mother I wasn't going earlier, but this dictate from this brick of shit makes me want to spend the money for a plane ticket, assuming we'd know when it actually was going to happen.

Monkey brain is a bitch.

No sonofawastedspacebitch tells me I can't attend my own sister's funeral.

I know if I go I'll end up end jail whether I actually succeed in breaking his 400 pound back or not. Better make the first effort count. At least I'd be able to say I'm in for unarmed murder.

I met this bastard years ago, and told my sister after the fact he wasn't welcomed in our house anymore. I should have broken something when he insulted me on my own property. My sister had to go into the house and throw up from the heat of the exchange.
But, the republicans have us over the barrel, we're the civilized ones and we're supposed to suck dick and like it, whenever they whip it out.

Their version of the liberals turning the other cheek so they can slap that one with their dick too.

Don't worry, some bigtime asshole sonofabitch will cross my path someday with that rightwing chip on his shoulder and I'll happily try to kill him and take the sentence.


AND, he's giving my niece children.

perfect republican vile waste of space.

yep. I talk a good story, but I'm on a rolling boil with hate.

Too many years of it.

Someday some bastard will cash the check.


The icing on the cake....

the phrase """liberal media""".

A phrase designed to invoke the hate response from what is left of the thinking population. Even Air America is under rightwing censorship.

These bastards are actually trying to inspire a second civil war.

I'm a liberal with several guns I'm not giving up.

come and fucking get me.

I can hear a whole chorus laughing like hell. They've done their jobs.

I'm just another liberal springloaded to an anger response delivered by those who hide behind their threat of lawsuits due to assault.

We're way past that point.

Shoot to kill.

I'll go down for murder. Fuck it.

[fuagf]

Thanks for sharing that John. Sad story.

Sounds like the police should be involved
in more ways and more places than one.

Hope you can make a positive contribution
towards future protection of others.

Think good it helps. Be well. Am to bed now.

Good luck and thank you very much
again for telling me of the situation.

[bagwa-john]

She passed this morning.

My other sister drove up to stay with her so she wouldn't be by herself. After she passed my sister called the family of our deceased, and when her piece of wasted shit space husband came to the hospital he actually blew off at my sister and assaulted her with a strangle attempt behind closed door so there weren't any witnesses except those who heard my sister scream. He needs his shins beated with a bat. He assaulted the sister who just died too. She didn't want to live there anymore. I think my niece who is living with him (ugly sick story there) is being abused as well. I figure my great niece is next. I told my sister when she called in hysterics to file an assault charge on him. Hospital attendants saw the marks on her neck. Hospital security helped her write it up.

Mean people suck.

[fuagf]

John, that's terrible news .. very sorry to hear it ..

In context why try to make anybody disbelief or believe?
If it's working and only positive why change i agree.

Question, wonder and nudge, tickle a little bit, with no agenda. Just to do feels ok.
Agree why change what works on the individual front. What right have i to push another?

How do i know if they 'think' they understand or not or if they know or don't
know? How can i think i 'understand' better unless i'm being arrogant?

Questions just here, not for answering, just here.

Whatever happens then or when feels right.

Just back from a swim which costs for any hours if you
wanted to less than the price of one pub schooner.

No question of better bounce for the buck.

Very sad news, John. Extra best wishes to all.

[bagwa-john]

You don't have to do a public response. I know where you are with the topic. Between you and wallrus, I'm not casting another pearl to be crushed under foot. for the record, I'm not all that hot on Kristnamurti now either, but thirty years ago he and Joel goldsmith made sense.

Is it better to make someone disbelieve what is working for them, or just let them go with what they "think" they understand?

I think I'm about done over here, but I'm sure I'll be proven wrong on that account as well.

Too bad.

Sister is on morphine drip now.

would have been 50 next month.

[bagwa-john]

The Light fills the Universe whether I believe it or not.

It is not a mental construct, it is mental access.
Every Star fills all space with its particular energy spectrum, seen and unseen. Radio astronomy proves that.

The Universe is not a vacuum. IT is filled with a dynamic refined Plasma which connects every thing within it.

We have access to IT through a Mental tool.

Acknowledging ITs presence happens in the mental awareness.

Make believe = make be alive. energy follows thought.

Every little part of our existence is alive, electrons, atoms, compounds, tissues, consciousness, all the way up the line.

The Beings who live in the plasmas of Space probably are as far ahead of us as we are ahead of river rocks.

Intelligence exists in every level of this magnificent creation.

on a saddening note,
one of my sisters slipped into a deep coma today from a septic infection which has been whittling at her since last June. The nurses at the nursing home actually told my mother they were going to send her to a homeless shelter since her insurance company had denied paying most of her medical bills.

She's been bedbound for months. She went coma this morning. Her fucking husband and her own daughter kicked her to the curb months ago,(they've been screwing around for years and the prick she was married to has a daughter by his own step daughter), actually still married to. I can't go to the funeral when it happens in the near future. She isn't deceased yet, but the thought of looking at these pieces of wasted space who kicked my sister to the curb is beyond my present state of acceptance. They actually told my sister when she dies that someone ELSE would would be responsible for her burial, that they weren't going to participate.

That about sums up the world in a nutshell with respect to most people.

That just about defines what ugly means.

I sat with her in my mind in the Light and gave her my best hugs tonight when I heard she was in a coma.
In the last few months when I called her I told her it was just to sit with her on the phone and put my arm around her. There wasn't much to say. "so how are you doing?" to a bed bound person just doesn't seem to be a good question.

The saga about her in that freaking hospital since her various surgeries, since LAST JUNE! has been a tale about how they killed her.

Who the hell do you sue? Who gets the money if the courts here even decide to hear the case?

We're so screwed. We're on our own. We have to take responsibility for our own health because our big money bought government has agreed to help kill us with the chem trails, and water chemicals, and food additives.

We


have


nothing


but


our

own

intelligence to help us through this assault.

[Mt. Blanc]

just an abyss.....

[biomanbaba]

thinking like that is reffered to a CAPITULATION.....and when you see it....you are looking at a bottom

[Mt. Blanc]

Its clear to many...we are all fukked!

[biomanbaba]

it would help if the sec treas stopped stroking his xxxx and did something about the zombie banks

[biomanbaba]

you are right in a sense.....it stops the RISE in unemployment
numbers and that will move markets