Paper rapped over caning story
KUALA LUMPUR - THE Malaysian government has threatened action against the country's biggest English-language daily over an article criticising the caning of three Muslim women, an official said on Thursday.
The Home Ministry found the article published in The Star last Friday may threaten 'public order', said Abdul Razak Abdul Latif, a senior ministry official. The government threat against The Star is likely to fuel concerns that the government is succumbing to conservative Islamists who appear to be gaining influence in this Muslim-majority country.
In the opinion piece, The Star managing editor P. Gunasegaram, a non-Muslim, criticised the Feb 9 caning of three Muslim women for illicit sex, saying it undermined individual rights. The three became the first women to be caned in Malaysia, after an Islamic court found them guilty of having sex out of wedlock.
Mr Abdul Razak, the home ministry official, said the ministry faxed a letter on Wednesday to The Star, giving it 14 days to offer an apology and explanation before the ministry decides whether it will take any action, he said. Action could include revoking the paper's publishing license. All of the country's publications need to annually renew their printing licenses to operate.
Following complaints, The Star removed the article from its website and printed an apology on Wednesday, saying it was mindful that it needed to be sensitive to people's beliefs. 'We would like to categorically state that there was no intention to insult or offend Muslims with the article,' it said.
Mr Abdul Razak said the printed apology was not enough to settle the matter, and that Star would have to reply to the ministry's letter. -- AP
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Another Congressional attack on the health system you have...
AAFP Statement: Congressional Failure to Avert 21 Percent Medicare Cut Puts Elderly, Disabled at Risk
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, February 26, 2010
Attributable to:Lori Heim, MDPresidentAmerican Academy of Family Physicians“The American Academy of Family Physicians is deeply angered at congressional failure to avert the mandated 21.2 percent Medicare physician pay cut. This inaction — in the face of virtually universal calls by the medical community and advocates for Medicare beneficiaries — has put elderly and disabled patients at risk of losing access to care and imposed potentially devastating fiscal hardship on physicians. “America’s family physicians are already straining to make ends meet with Medicare payment rates that have fallen behind inflation. Now they are in a situation in which they must decide between seeing Medicare beneficiaries or putting their medical practices at serious financial risk. “With each delay since 2003 in addressing the sustainable growth rate formula on which Medicare physician payment is calculated, Congress has increased the cost of its ultimate reform. Now, citing the cost of averting the current law’s mandated payment reductions, Congress has failed to ensure that Medicare can provide America’s elderly and disabled patients with medical care when it is needed.
“Nearly one in four patients seen by family physicians is a Medicare beneficiary. Many of our members, especially in rural and medically underserved areas, are in small practices that have no margin to cover even a temporary reduction of this magnitude. The 21.2 percent reduction in Medicare payment will cripple family physicians’ ability to continue caring for this vulnerable group of Americans. “Without immediate action, Congress will renege on its promise of ensuring access to health care for their elderly and disabled constituents. The American Academy of Family Physicians calls on Congress to enact Medicare payment that helps keep doctors’ doors open and ensures access to care for millions of Americans who rely on Medicare.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, February 26, 2010
Attributable to:Lori Heim, MDPresidentAmerican Academy of Family Physicians“The American Academy of Family Physicians is deeply angered at congressional failure to avert the mandated 21.2 percent Medicare physician pay cut. This inaction — in the face of virtually universal calls by the medical community and advocates for Medicare beneficiaries — has put elderly and disabled patients at risk of losing access to care and imposed potentially devastating fiscal hardship on physicians. “America’s family physicians are already straining to make ends meet with Medicare payment rates that have fallen behind inflation. Now they are in a situation in which they must decide between seeing Medicare beneficiaries or putting their medical practices at serious financial risk. “With each delay since 2003 in addressing the sustainable growth rate formula on which Medicare physician payment is calculated, Congress has increased the cost of its ultimate reform. Now, citing the cost of averting the current law’s mandated payment reductions, Congress has failed to ensure that Medicare can provide America’s elderly and disabled patients with medical care when it is needed.
“Nearly one in four patients seen by family physicians is a Medicare beneficiary. Many of our members, especially in rural and medically underserved areas, are in small practices that have no margin to cover even a temporary reduction of this magnitude. The 21.2 percent reduction in Medicare payment will cripple family physicians’ ability to continue caring for this vulnerable group of Americans. “Without immediate action, Congress will renege on its promise of ensuring access to health care for their elderly and disabled constituents. The American Academy of Family Physicians calls on Congress to enact Medicare payment that helps keep doctors’ doors open and ensures access to care for millions of Americans who rely on Medicare.”
If you're on Medicare watch out for the disappearing doctor. If you're about to go on Medicare watch out for the lack of access to a doctor.
Anyone familiar with the downfall of the American auto industry will telll you that one of the key reasons quality deteriorated was the manufacturers squeezing the suppliers on cost to the point where the only way they could stay in business was to shortcut on quality. One of the measures of auto quality I've always personally used was hoses and belts. They're easy to see and tell quite a story if you know how to look. Today, it's a little harder with the engines being nearly totally covered. The hoses and belts on American cars have in the past required changing much more often then those on Toyota's and Lexus and Scion the cars I am most familiar with. I sold my last American car, actually a Ford pick up because a simple hose to the power brake booster had begun to leak. Not a problem except when I went to buy a replacement at the local dealer they told me the part was no longer available and I would have to replace the booster instead. Fortunately a kind parts woman rooted around in the leftover parts bin and found a replacement. Cost as I recall was less then a couple of bucks, the booster a couple of hundred. Once a manufacturer stops carrying simple parts for a vehicle it's time to say adios.
When the physicians start having trouble making ends meet they will either drop the patient or find other ways to cut services. I believe the intent of the Congress is to force everyone into government run clinics where you will be treated like customers at the DMV...take a number and wait even if you have an appointment. Unlike Cuba, doctors here are not yet slaves.
Democrat politicians helping their community, NOT.
Pols' 'charity' $acks Queens pee-wee football players
By MELISSA KLEIN and ISABEL VINCENT
They stiffed Queens kids, too.
More than $400,000 raised by a nonprofit started by Congressman Gregory Meeks and state Sen. Malcolm Smith was never given to the community they represent, including a youth football league that requested a donation, a Post investigation has found.
The Rosedale Jets Football Association went hat in hand to the New Direction Local Development Corp., hoping for a piece of a $250,000 grant that was to go to community groups.
The Jets dutifully submitted an application, hoping to get up to $25,000 to fix up their field. They never got a cent.
"They said they never received our application," said Gerald Karikari, an immigration lawyer and the football team's chief financial officer.
Karikari said the Rosedale Jets, a squad that mixes football and cheerleading with life lessons for 200 kids ages 7 to 13, is always struggling. It had to stop low-cost equipment rentals to players because it could not pay for refurbishing the helmets and protective pads.
Instead of helping the plucky pee-wee players, New Direction spent $405,000 on salaries, mysterious consultants, office expenses and meals, according to paperwork filed by the nonprofit. By 2008, $55,254 was left sitting in its bank account, untouched.
The Post has reported how the charity started by Meeks and Smith, both Queens Democrats, raised at least $31,000 for Hurricane Katrina victims but gave out hardly any of that money.
Yet the problems with New Direction are much broader. The group collected about $600,000 over seven years, but spent just under $200,000 -- 33 percent -- on community programs, according to its tax returns. And even that number is suspicious, as paperwork often lists a "cash donation" with no details as to where the money went.
For one year, $46,664 in cash grants is listed but never explained or even included in the total tally of money spent that year.
Among those few donations that are specified: a scholarship fund. The amount: $500.
By contrast, New Direction spent large sums of money on other things:
* Cynthia Allen, a former assistant district attorney in The Bronx, made $95,100 as president of New Direction in 2001 and 2002. In those two years, the group gave only $195 in an unspecified donation and spent the rest of its money on meetings, legal fees and other office expenses. Allen has not returned calls for comment.
* The $10,314 paid in legal fees in 2001 presumably went to Joan Flowers, a lawyer and former campaign treasurer for both Smith and Meeks, who drew up the incorporation papers for New Direction.
* In 2005, $37,925 was spent on "office expenses," even though New Direction didn't have an office -- it used the same address as Flowers' law practice. Smith later appointed Flowers to a $145,396-a-year Senate job after he became majority leader.
* "Independent contractors" were paid nearly $98,000 over six years. Who they are and what they did is not detailed.
* In 2007, $11,783 was spent on "meals and entertainment," more than any other donation the group made that year, including a listed $999 gift to Toys for Tots. The local Toys for Tots representative told The Post he had no record of a donation from New Direction.
Meeks and Smith both claim they are not responsible for the money, despite the fact that they started the nonprofit, are pictured accepting donations for the group, and stocked the board with cronies.
Now New Direction, which claimed its purpose was to promote community development in the Far Rockaway area, is under federal investigation following a series of Post reports.
The charity has collected $56,560 in taxpayer money since 2001, mostly state Senate "member items" sponsored by Smith.
But the single largest source of income for New Direction came from the International Airport Centers, which gave $250,000 in 2004 to quell opposition to a cargo center it built on part of a large tract near Kennedy Airport that local activists want to keep as a land preserve.
The New Direction tax forms show it gave out $80,870 in grants in 2004 but provide no details on who got the money. There is also no clue to where the remaining $170,000 went.
The Eastern Queens Alliance, which is spearheading the land-preserve effort, said it was supposed to get $25,000 but received a few thousand less after New Direction kept a slice for administrative fees.
By MELISSA KLEIN and ISABEL VINCENT
They stiffed Queens kids, too.
More than $400,000 raised by a nonprofit started by Congressman Gregory Meeks and state Sen. Malcolm Smith was never given to the community they represent, including a youth football league that requested a donation, a Post investigation has found.
The Rosedale Jets Football Association went hat in hand to the New Direction Local Development Corp., hoping for a piece of a $250,000 grant that was to go to community groups.
The Jets dutifully submitted an application, hoping to get up to $25,000 to fix up their field. They never got a cent.
"They said they never received our application," said Gerald Karikari, an immigration lawyer and the football team's chief financial officer.
Karikari said the Rosedale Jets, a squad that mixes football and cheerleading with life lessons for 200 kids ages 7 to 13, is always struggling. It had to stop low-cost equipment rentals to players because it could not pay for refurbishing the helmets and protective pads.
Instead of helping the plucky pee-wee players, New Direction spent $405,000 on salaries, mysterious consultants, office expenses and meals, according to paperwork filed by the nonprofit. By 2008, $55,254 was left sitting in its bank account, untouched.
The Post has reported how the charity started by Meeks and Smith, both Queens Democrats, raised at least $31,000 for Hurricane Katrina victims but gave out hardly any of that money.
Yet the problems with New Direction are much broader. The group collected about $600,000 over seven years, but spent just under $200,000 -- 33 percent -- on community programs, according to its tax returns. And even that number is suspicious, as paperwork often lists a "cash donation" with no details as to where the money went.
For one year, $46,664 in cash grants is listed but never explained or even included in the total tally of money spent that year.
Among those few donations that are specified: a scholarship fund. The amount: $500.
By contrast, New Direction spent large sums of money on other things:
* Cynthia Allen, a former assistant district attorney in The Bronx, made $95,100 as president of New Direction in 2001 and 2002. In those two years, the group gave only $195 in an unspecified donation and spent the rest of its money on meetings, legal fees and other office expenses. Allen has not returned calls for comment.
* The $10,314 paid in legal fees in 2001 presumably went to Joan Flowers, a lawyer and former campaign treasurer for both Smith and Meeks, who drew up the incorporation papers for New Direction.
* In 2005, $37,925 was spent on "office expenses," even though New Direction didn't have an office -- it used the same address as Flowers' law practice. Smith later appointed Flowers to a $145,396-a-year Senate job after he became majority leader.
* "Independent contractors" were paid nearly $98,000 over six years. Who they are and what they did is not detailed.
* In 2007, $11,783 was spent on "meals and entertainment," more than any other donation the group made that year, including a listed $999 gift to Toys for Tots. The local Toys for Tots representative told The Post he had no record of a donation from New Direction.
Meeks and Smith both claim they are not responsible for the money, despite the fact that they started the nonprofit, are pictured accepting donations for the group, and stocked the board with cronies.
Now New Direction, which claimed its purpose was to promote community development in the Far Rockaway area, is under federal investigation following a series of Post reports.
The charity has collected $56,560 in taxpayer money since 2001, mostly state Senate "member items" sponsored by Smith.
But the single largest source of income for New Direction came from the International Airport Centers, which gave $250,000 in 2004 to quell opposition to a cargo center it built on part of a large tract near Kennedy Airport that local activists want to keep as a land preserve.
The New Direction tax forms show it gave out $80,870 in grants in 2004 but provide no details on who got the money. There is also no clue to where the remaining $170,000 went.
The Eastern Queens Alliance, which is spearheading the land-preserve effort, said it was supposed to get $25,000 but received a few thousand less after New Direction kept a slice for administrative fees.
Putting the global warming myth facts in order
Whether you read Al Gore's NY Times opinion piece or not this will put into perspective the exposed errors in the global warming "science".
Considering the enormous impact global warming remedies would have on the world, it should be thought of a constructing a bridge. Before you trust your life to crossing a new bridge wouldn't it be prudent to require of the engineers that their design be free of serious errors in calculation? I think so.
But, if your building a financial scam instead, well then errors are not very important.
A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC
The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.
The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.
But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.
All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.
Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.
In addition, we can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC's most shameless stunt of all – the notorious "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels. This was deemed necessary because, after the graph was made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report, it had been exposed as no more than a statistical illusion. (For a full account see Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion, and also my own book The Real Global Warming Disaster.)
In other words, in crucial respects the IPCC's 2007 report was no more than reckless propaganda, designed to panic the world's politicians into agreeing at Copenhagen in 2009 that we should all pay by far the largest single bill ever presented to the human race, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. And as we know, faced with the prospect of this financial and economic abyss, December's Copenhagen conference ended in shambles, with virtually nothing agreed.
What is staggering is the speed and the scale of the unravelling – assisted of course, just before Copenhagen, by "Climategate", the emails and computer codes leaked from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Their significance was the light they shone on the activities of a small group of British and US scientists at the heart of the IPCC, as they discussed ways of manipulating data to show the world warming faster than the evidence justified; fighting off legitimate requests for data from outside experts to hide their manipulations; and conspiring to silence their critics by excluding their work from scientific journals and the IPCC's 2007 report itself. (Again, a devastating analysis of this story has just been published by Stephen Mosher and Tom Fuller in Climategate: The CRUtape Letters).
Almost as revealing as the leaked documents themselves, however, was the recent interview given to the BBC by the CRU's suspended director, Dr Phil Jones, who has played a central role in the global warming scare for 20 years, not least as custodian of the most prestigious of the four global temperature records relied on by the IPCC. In his interview Jones seemed to be chucking overboard one key prop of warmest faith after another, as he admitted that the world might have been hotter during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago than it is today, that before any rise in CO2 levels temperatures rose faster between 1860 and 1880 than they have done in the past 30 years, and that in the past decade their trend has been falling rather than rising.
The implications of all this for the warming scare, as it has been presented to us over the past two decades, can scarcely be overestimated. The reputation of the IPCC is in shreds. And this is to say nothing of the personal reputation of the man who was the mastermind of its 2007 report, its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned. The so-called investigations into Climategate and Dr Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann seem like no more than empty establishment whitewashes. There is little reason to expect that the inquiry into the record of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri that is now being set up by the UN Environment Programme and the world's politicians will be very different.
Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way, hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global "carbon trading" market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions. Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd "carbon-saving" energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.
With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager "renewables" developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white "global warming" continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein's monster. It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Facing economic doom with humor
Stupidity guaranteed
By The Mogambo Guru
The phrase "end of the world as we know it" is not particularly significant to me because it is, literally, always true, because any progress at all, anywhere, means that tomorrow will never be like today, and so "the end of the world as we know it" can be extended to mean "and it will be better and better!" So, it is not very significant, especially when I get argumentative by being literal and obtuse about it, like now, which is my mood lately. But when you use the phrase "end of the world as we know it" in the metaphorical sense, meaning "some terrifying catastrophe, to the maximum, in spades", then it means something much uglier and catastrophic, which you already knew since I use the word "catastrophic" earlier in the sentence, teeming, as it does, with evil portents of ravenous beasts eating you and your family alive, your agonizing screams mixing with squawking vultures pecking hungrily at your liver, and the dead rising from their graves to pursue us endlessly so that they can eat our brains. Anyway, that's the way I have it figured, having distilled an entire lifetime of watching TV down into these kinds of little philosophical nuggets. And since I am by nature dyspeptic and paranoid about the inevitable, horrible result of a growing government, a growing class of people dependent on government, and a Federal Reserve constantly creating more and more money and credit to accommodate them both, I think that I understand the use of the "end of the world as we know it" in its most disturbing sense, because ruinous inflation in prices - the Grim Reaper of economics! - is thus inevitable. What to do? Well, the sad truth, that you learn as part of attaining True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME), is that nothing can be done, as proved by the One Freaking Fact (OFF) that if debts could be made to just disappear - poof! - by printing money, then everyone, and every country, would do it! And would always have done it! But nobody, and no country, has ever succeeded in printing money to pay their debts without causing hyperinflation in consumer prices, as the people rose up in revolt, the whole country disintegrated, it was a big mess and everything was ruined. This - this! - means that you should look deep, deep into my eyes so that you can see the Utter Mogambo Sincerity (UMS) in my eyes when I say that this means to everybody with one functioning brain cell that it Can't Be Done (CBD) simply by virtue of the fact that nobody in history has ever done it, although many, many, many people have tried everything they could think of to do it, including putting merchants to death for daring to raise their prices high enough to cover their inflating costs! This is one of the tried-and-true ways that governments ("desperate morons in charge!") seem to think will actually work, despite the obvious stupidity of it, and that is why I was shocked when I saw that President Barack Obama is endorsing legislation to prevent health insurance companies from raising prices! Unbelievable! Gaaaaahhhhh! As indicated by the sound effect in the "Gaaaaaahhhhh!", one can only manage a scream of Loud Mogambo Outrage (LMO) at the sheer, staggering, socialist stupidity of declaring prices, a sound not unlike the Freaking Sound Of Doom (FSOD) already ringing in your ears or you wouldn't be reading this, which is a clarion call, if ever there was one, to hie thyself, to make ready, the Mogambo Bunker Of I-Told-You-So (MBOITYS), because, brother, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did. And if you bought gold, silver and oil with a gasping, grasping, gluttony of greed, then, likewise, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did! Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.
By The Mogambo Guru
The phrase "end of the world as we know it" is not particularly significant to me because it is, literally, always true, because any progress at all, anywhere, means that tomorrow will never be like today, and so "the end of the world as we know it" can be extended to mean "and it will be better and better!" So, it is not very significant, especially when I get argumentative by being literal and obtuse about it, like now, which is my mood lately. But when you use the phrase "end of the world as we know it" in the metaphorical sense, meaning "some terrifying catastrophe, to the maximum, in spades", then it means something much uglier and catastrophic, which you already knew since I use the word "catastrophic" earlier in the sentence, teeming, as it does, with evil portents of ravenous beasts eating you and your family alive, your agonizing screams mixing with squawking vultures pecking hungrily at your liver, and the dead rising from their graves to pursue us endlessly so that they can eat our brains. Anyway, that's the way I have it figured, having distilled an entire lifetime of watching TV down into these kinds of little philosophical nuggets. And since I am by nature dyspeptic and paranoid about the inevitable, horrible result of a growing government, a growing class of people dependent on government, and a Federal Reserve constantly creating more and more money and credit to accommodate them both, I think that I understand the use of the "end of the world as we know it" in its most disturbing sense, because ruinous inflation in prices - the Grim Reaper of economics! - is thus inevitable. What to do? Well, the sad truth, that you learn as part of attaining True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME), is that nothing can be done, as proved by the One Freaking Fact (OFF) that if debts could be made to just disappear - poof! - by printing money, then everyone, and every country, would do it! And would always have done it! But nobody, and no country, has ever succeeded in printing money to pay their debts without causing hyperinflation in consumer prices, as the people rose up in revolt, the whole country disintegrated, it was a big mess and everything was ruined. This - this! - means that you should look deep, deep into my eyes so that you can see the Utter Mogambo Sincerity (UMS) in my eyes when I say that this means to everybody with one functioning brain cell that it Can't Be Done (CBD) simply by virtue of the fact that nobody in history has ever done it, although many, many, many people have tried everything they could think of to do it, including putting merchants to death for daring to raise their prices high enough to cover their inflating costs! This is one of the tried-and-true ways that governments ("desperate morons in charge!") seem to think will actually work, despite the obvious stupidity of it, and that is why I was shocked when I saw that President Barack Obama is endorsing legislation to prevent health insurance companies from raising prices! Unbelievable! Gaaaaahhhhh! As indicated by the sound effect in the "Gaaaaaahhhhh!", one can only manage a scream of Loud Mogambo Outrage (LMO) at the sheer, staggering, socialist stupidity of declaring prices, a sound not unlike the Freaking Sound Of Doom (FSOD) already ringing in your ears or you wouldn't be reading this, which is a clarion call, if ever there was one, to hie thyself, to make ready, the Mogambo Bunker Of I-Told-You-So (MBOITYS), because, brother, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did. And if you bought gold, silver and oil with a gasping, grasping, gluttony of greed, then, likewise, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did! Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.
The left and anarchists speak.
Late-night protest at UC Berkeley turns violent
While this is not new for this school, I wonder what makes these students think they are more entitled to scarce government funds then are the handicapped, blind, home bound and other truly needy people who need state help to survive.
It's time the students are asked the tough questions and not just given a pass. How much money will have to be spent to repair the damage they did? How much did the police response cost? There are cameras everywhere, it shouldn't be all that difficult to track down the miscreants and make them pay as well as making them do a year of community service. Don't break up the riot, capture the rioters.
This is not the only case where the self absorbed get away with causing societal damage. Recently a group of pranksters organised a huge pillow fight whic they took onto the Embarcadero not far from tyhe Ferry Building. For those not familiar with San Francisco the Embarcadero is a major traffic artery and the Ferry Building is a transit hub. From what I gathered their silliness caused a trafic jam that lasted about four hours. Once again, the police came and chased off the pillow brains while drivers and public tranit riders fumed. Why they are not arrested and made to pay a heavy fine like $5000 each is beyond me. If you break anyone of the myriad traffic laws with a car in the city the fines are quite heave, so how come these people get off free. I know it's a matter of freedom of speech but it's not a passive form of speech, it's destructive and should be treated accordingly.
One example of the unrealistic hype
The green jobs myth
From all that I've read so far about these smart meters is that they have been not-so-smart. There are numerous cases where the energy bills have inexplicably soared in houses where these meters have been installed.
How about for Congress? We know the DC government would never pass
House member proposes drug testing for lawmakers
By The Associated Press
Topeka — A House Republican responded to criticism of her bill requiring random drug testing of Kansans on state assistance by proposing an amendment mandating the 165 members of the Legislature undergo the same type of screening.
Rep. Kasha Kelley, R-Arkansas City, said Thursday the inclusion of legislators was a direct response to allegations her House-passed bill was a mean-spirited attempt to punish impoverished people.
"I have requested an amendment to add legislators to the list of elected officials required to pass drug screening," Kelley told members of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee.
The committee took no action on House Bill 2275, which was overwhelmingly passed during the 2009 legislative session by the House. The new requirement for legislators wasn't in the bill when adopted by the House.
Skepticism was the dominant feature of immediate reaction to Kelley's proposed amendment.
"She's serious?" said Sen. Roger Reitz, R-Manhattan. "For heaven's sake."
"You might think some legislators are on drugs given some of the things that happen in the Capitol," said House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence. "However, I don't think we need to resort to mandatory drug testing."
Sen. Jim Barnett, an Emporia Republican and chairman of the Senate health committee, said the state could improve monitoring of recipients in the state cash assistance programs without involving the 125 representatives and 40 senators in drug screening.
Under Kelley's original bill, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services would establish a testing program for recipients of Temporary Assistance to Families and General Assistance. About one-third of people in these programs, or 8,400 individuals, would be screened annually under the program Kelley outlined. The agency said the initiative would cost an estimated $1 million annually.
Somewhere between 8 percent and 12 percent would test positive for marijuana, cocaine, crack or some other illegal drug, officials said.
Those found to have ingested illegal substances the first and second time would be directed to treatment programs. Failure to complete treatment would result in loss of cash assistance benefits. A third positive test would trigger automatic termination from the state aid programs.
During testimony on the bill, the secretary of SRS denounced the three-strikes-and-you're-out bill.
"I would call myself an opponent," said SRS Secretary Don Jordan. "We believe we have an effective program in place."
Jordan said SRS had a well-developed system for determining which aid recipients were likely to be at high risk for involvement in illegal drugs. It doesn't involve laboratory evaluation of urine samples, he said, but does compel people in need of care to obtain treatment services.
"Implementing a formalized drug testing program will entail additional monitoring, tracking, sampling, recipient notification, and case coordination on the part of SRS staff and our treatment network," Jordan said.
Kelley said many legislators had received complaints from constituents who pointed to a perceived inequity of being required to pass drug tests for employment while people receiving tax dollars weren't held to the same standard. She said the underlying goal was to help people "emerge a victor over drugs, a more productive citizen, and — if children are involved — a better parent."
"Simply put," she said, "we must ensure that dollars are going for diapers and detergent instead of drugs. It's truly incumbent on us to stay focused on this issue."
By The Associated Press
Topeka — A House Republican responded to criticism of her bill requiring random drug testing of Kansans on state assistance by proposing an amendment mandating the 165 members of the Legislature undergo the same type of screening.
Rep. Kasha Kelley, R-Arkansas City, said Thursday the inclusion of legislators was a direct response to allegations her House-passed bill was a mean-spirited attempt to punish impoverished people.
"I have requested an amendment to add legislators to the list of elected officials required to pass drug screening," Kelley told members of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee.
The committee took no action on House Bill 2275, which was overwhelmingly passed during the 2009 legislative session by the House. The new requirement for legislators wasn't in the bill when adopted by the House.
Skepticism was the dominant feature of immediate reaction to Kelley's proposed amendment.
"She's serious?" said Sen. Roger Reitz, R-Manhattan. "For heaven's sake."
"You might think some legislators are on drugs given some of the things that happen in the Capitol," said House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence. "However, I don't think we need to resort to mandatory drug testing."
Sen. Jim Barnett, an Emporia Republican and chairman of the Senate health committee, said the state could improve monitoring of recipients in the state cash assistance programs without involving the 125 representatives and 40 senators in drug screening.
Under Kelley's original bill, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services would establish a testing program for recipients of Temporary Assistance to Families and General Assistance. About one-third of people in these programs, or 8,400 individuals, would be screened annually under the program Kelley outlined. The agency said the initiative would cost an estimated $1 million annually.
Somewhere between 8 percent and 12 percent would test positive for marijuana, cocaine, crack or some other illegal drug, officials said.
Those found to have ingested illegal substances the first and second time would be directed to treatment programs. Failure to complete treatment would result in loss of cash assistance benefits. A third positive test would trigger automatic termination from the state aid programs.
During testimony on the bill, the secretary of SRS denounced the three-strikes-and-you're-out bill.
"I would call myself an opponent," said SRS Secretary Don Jordan. "We believe we have an effective program in place."
Jordan said SRS had a well-developed system for determining which aid recipients were likely to be at high risk for involvement in illegal drugs. It doesn't involve laboratory evaluation of urine samples, he said, but does compel people in need of care to obtain treatment services.
"Implementing a formalized drug testing program will entail additional monitoring, tracking, sampling, recipient notification, and case coordination on the part of SRS staff and our treatment network," Jordan said.
Kelley said many legislators had received complaints from constituents who pointed to a perceived inequity of being required to pass drug tests for employment while people receiving tax dollars weren't held to the same standard. She said the underlying goal was to help people "emerge a victor over drugs, a more productive citizen, and — if children are involved — a better parent."
"Simply put," she said, "we must ensure that dollars are going for diapers and detergent instead of drugs. It's truly incumbent on us to stay focused on this issue."
It's one way to get the Democrats out of Congress.
Cuba's hell
Black Civil Rights Activist Murdered by Castro Regime
By Humberto Fontova
On Feb 23, black human rights activist Orlando Zapata-Tamayo died after an 83-day hunger strike and a series of savage beatings by his Castroite jailers/torturers.
Some background: Shortly after Jimmy Carter (famous for his "human rights"-flavored foreign policy as president) visited Castro in 2002, played baseball with him, and returned home proclaiming Castro "a committed egalitarian who despises any system in which one class or group of people lives much better than another," Zapata-Tamayo was beaten and arrested by Castro's police for the crime of "disobedience."
Castro's KGB/STASI-trained secret police had a point. Tamayo, a humble rural plumber and bricklayer, had studied the (smuggled) works of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi and had attempted some "civil disobedience" to protest the Stalinism imposed on Cuba by the Castro brothers, Che Guevara, and their Soviet puppeteers.
"This nigra's sure getting uppity!" decided Cuba's lily-white Stalinist rulers -- and they pounced. Samizdats smuggled out of Cuba by eye-witnesses report that while gleefully kicking and bludgeoning Tamayo, his Communist jailers yelled, "Worthless ni*ger! Worthless peasant!"
Tamayo's "disobedience" (against a regime hailed by "free spirits" from Johnny Depp to Bonnie Raitt) continued in proportion to his beatings and tortures. Tamayo remained (literally) "bloodied but unbowed." Even Amnesty International recognized his plight and designated him an official "Prisoner of Conscience." His exasperating defiance simply pushed the regime hailed by Jesse Jackson, Charles Rangel, and Danny Glover to more merciless beatings and to bump up his sentence to 36 years in Castro's dungeons.
A little perspective: After conviction for planting bombs in public places (by a judiciary process declared scrupulously fair by the attending international press and human rights organizations), Nelson Mandela got a lighter sentence than did Tamayo for a peaceful protest. Needless to add, the regime that jailed Mandela was universally embargoed and condemned -- and with particular virulence by the precise parties who hail Castro (who forbids any and all international human rights groups, observers, etc. from so much as setting foot in his fiefdom).
"There's one place where Fidel Castro stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in his love for human rights and liberty!" Thus gushed Nelson Mandela himself (!) in 1991.
Shortly after the Congressional Black Caucus visited with Raúl Castro last year and returned hailing him as "one of the most amazing human beings we've ever met! Castro is a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man!" the black human rights activist and Martin Luther King disciple Tamayo was beaten comatose by his Castroite jailers and left with a life-threatening fractured skull and subdural hematoma.
Eighty-three days ago, already injured perhaps beyond recovery (certainly so with Cuba's medical facilities) and hoping his death might alert a nauseatingly two-faced "international community" to the plight of Castro's subjects, Zapata-Tamayo declared a hunger strike.
"They finally murdered my son," wept Zapata-Tamayo's mother this Feb. 24 upon news of her son's death. "They finally got what they wanted. They ended the life of a fighter for human rights. My son was tortured. ... I want the world to demand the release of all the other prisoners of conscience and that this not happen again."
Mrs. Tamayo's son's body was delivered to her yesterday by Castro's secret police, who demanded that he be buried quickly and without fanfare. Castro's police have also blanketed Tamayo's rural hometown to further "emphasize" this last directive.
All press agencies that have earned a Havana bureau were very slow in reporting Tamayo's death (though a skinned knee or sprained toe in Guantánamo would have buzzed through all news wires within seconds.)
These agencies were very prompt, however, in reporting "President" Raúl Castro's official reaction. "We are really sorry about his death, a lamentable accident," said "President" Raúl Castro. "In half a century in Cuba there have been no extrajudicial killings. We haven't killed a single person. Here, there is no torture. Killings and torture only happen in Guantánamo."
Nary a hint of snark accompanied the reports by these Castro-approved reporters. "But how can anyone actually believe such bald-faced lies by Raúl Castro?" might be the reaction from folks with a modicum of education or common sense.
Well, I give you excerpts from an article dated 12/6/06 by one of these Castro-approved "reporters," Anthony Boadle of Reuters. "There are no credible reports of disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture in Cuba since the early 1960s, according to human rights groups."Just what "human rights groups" were consulted by this Castro-sanctioned reporter, he doesn't specify. But his concern with "extrajudicial killings" presents a thoroughly fascinating specimen of logic for a presumably educated gentleman. Applying it to other historical settings, we discover that the regimes responsible for the Great Terror and the Nuremberg Laws are preferable to the one responsible for the Kent State killings. The first two were perfectly "judicial," after all. The third was not.Indeed, Stalin's massacres were usually preceded by "trials" featuring detailed "confessions" from the "criminals," with cameras and reporters on hand lest anyone doubt these proceedings' scrupulously "judicial" nature.
The very trademark of a totalitarian regime is that its mass-murders, mass-jailings, and mass-larcenies are all perfectly "judicial," because every judge is a regime apparatchik. Any judge who temporizes over the rubber-stamping of a Communist regime decree disappears -- not just from his bench, but from the face of the earth. His former colleagues, or perhaps his successor, then sign the proper documentation, making his disappearance properly "judicial."
Furthermore, Castro's murder tally is not difficult to dig up. No need to consult the ravings of some "crackpot" scandal sheet from us "crackpot" Cuban-Americans. Simply open The Black Book of Communism, written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press, neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Here you'll find a tally of 14,000 Castroite murders by firing squad. "The facts and figures are irrefutable. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism," wrote the New York Times (no less!) about The Black Book of Communism.
The Cuba Archive project, headed by scholars Maria Werlau and the late Armando Lago, estimates the death toll from Castro's regime, including firing squads, prison beatings and deaths at sea while attempting escape, at slightly over 100,000. This project has been lauded by everyone from the Miami Herald to the Boston Globe (again, no right-wing outposts) to the Wall Street Journal.
Castro's chief hangman, Che Guevara, had laid down the rules very succinctly: "Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. We execute from revolutionary conviction."Now let's fast forward to that period Boadle assures us is untainted by any "extra-judicial killings." A 17-year-old named Orlando Travieso was armed with only a homemade paddle when he was machine-gunned to death in March 1991. His "crime," as spelled out perfectly judicially in Cuba's legal code, was trying to flee Cuba on a tiny raft. Loamis Gonzalez was fifteen when he was machine-gunned to death for the same "crime." The "criminal" Owen Delgado was fifteen when Castro's police dragged him out of the Ecuadorian Embassy where he sought asylum and clubbed him to death with rifle butts. Boadle will be pleased that these boys and thousands upon thousands of others who perished in similar fashion well after the early 1960s were all deemed "criminals" by Castro's judicial system.Angel Abreu and Jose Nicol were three, Gisele Borges and Caridad Leyva were four, and Cindy and Yolindis Rodriguez were two on July 17, 1994, when their mothers held them in a tight embrace on the deck of a tugboat. Castro's coast guard rammed the tugboat and water-cannoned them from their screaming mothers arms and into a turbulent sea to drown. Boadle will be pleased that Castro's regime ruled this -- quite judicially -- an "accident," exactly as they rule Tamayo's death.
May Orlando Zapata-Tamayo rest in peace, may his family accept our condolences, and may his murderers eventually face justice.
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books, including Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com
By Humberto Fontova
On Feb 23, black human rights activist Orlando Zapata-Tamayo died after an 83-day hunger strike and a series of savage beatings by his Castroite jailers/torturers.
Some background: Shortly after Jimmy Carter (famous for his "human rights"-flavored foreign policy as president) visited Castro in 2002, played baseball with him, and returned home proclaiming Castro "a committed egalitarian who despises any system in which one class or group of people lives much better than another," Zapata-Tamayo was beaten and arrested by Castro's police for the crime of "disobedience."
Castro's KGB/STASI-trained secret police had a point. Tamayo, a humble rural plumber and bricklayer, had studied the (smuggled) works of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi and had attempted some "civil disobedience" to protest the Stalinism imposed on Cuba by the Castro brothers, Che Guevara, and their Soviet puppeteers.
"This nigra's sure getting uppity!" decided Cuba's lily-white Stalinist rulers -- and they pounced. Samizdats smuggled out of Cuba by eye-witnesses report that while gleefully kicking and bludgeoning Tamayo, his Communist jailers yelled, "Worthless ni*ger! Worthless peasant!"
Tamayo's "disobedience" (against a regime hailed by "free spirits" from Johnny Depp to Bonnie Raitt) continued in proportion to his beatings and tortures. Tamayo remained (literally) "bloodied but unbowed." Even Amnesty International recognized his plight and designated him an official "Prisoner of Conscience." His exasperating defiance simply pushed the regime hailed by Jesse Jackson, Charles Rangel, and Danny Glover to more merciless beatings and to bump up his sentence to 36 years in Castro's dungeons.
A little perspective: After conviction for planting bombs in public places (by a judiciary process declared scrupulously fair by the attending international press and human rights organizations), Nelson Mandela got a lighter sentence than did Tamayo for a peaceful protest. Needless to add, the regime that jailed Mandela was universally embargoed and condemned -- and with particular virulence by the precise parties who hail Castro (who forbids any and all international human rights groups, observers, etc. from so much as setting foot in his fiefdom).
"There's one place where Fidel Castro stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in his love for human rights and liberty!" Thus gushed Nelson Mandela himself (!) in 1991.
Shortly after the Congressional Black Caucus visited with Raúl Castro last year and returned hailing him as "one of the most amazing human beings we've ever met! Castro is a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man!" the black human rights activist and Martin Luther King disciple Tamayo was beaten comatose by his Castroite jailers and left with a life-threatening fractured skull and subdural hematoma.
Eighty-three days ago, already injured perhaps beyond recovery (certainly so with Cuba's medical facilities) and hoping his death might alert a nauseatingly two-faced "international community" to the plight of Castro's subjects, Zapata-Tamayo declared a hunger strike.
"They finally murdered my son," wept Zapata-Tamayo's mother this Feb. 24 upon news of her son's death. "They finally got what they wanted. They ended the life of a fighter for human rights. My son was tortured. ... I want the world to demand the release of all the other prisoners of conscience and that this not happen again."
Mrs. Tamayo's son's body was delivered to her yesterday by Castro's secret police, who demanded that he be buried quickly and without fanfare. Castro's police have also blanketed Tamayo's rural hometown to further "emphasize" this last directive.
All press agencies that have earned a Havana bureau were very slow in reporting Tamayo's death (though a skinned knee or sprained toe in Guantánamo would have buzzed through all news wires within seconds.)
These agencies were very prompt, however, in reporting "President" Raúl Castro's official reaction. "We are really sorry about his death, a lamentable accident," said "President" Raúl Castro. "In half a century in Cuba there have been no extrajudicial killings. We haven't killed a single person. Here, there is no torture. Killings and torture only happen in Guantánamo."
Nary a hint of snark accompanied the reports by these Castro-approved reporters. "But how can anyone actually believe such bald-faced lies by Raúl Castro?" might be the reaction from folks with a modicum of education or common sense.
Well, I give you excerpts from an article dated 12/6/06 by one of these Castro-approved "reporters," Anthony Boadle of Reuters. "There are no credible reports of disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture in Cuba since the early 1960s, according to human rights groups."Just what "human rights groups" were consulted by this Castro-sanctioned reporter, he doesn't specify. But his concern with "extrajudicial killings" presents a thoroughly fascinating specimen of logic for a presumably educated gentleman. Applying it to other historical settings, we discover that the regimes responsible for the Great Terror and the Nuremberg Laws are preferable to the one responsible for the Kent State killings. The first two were perfectly "judicial," after all. The third was not.Indeed, Stalin's massacres were usually preceded by "trials" featuring detailed "confessions" from the "criminals," with cameras and reporters on hand lest anyone doubt these proceedings' scrupulously "judicial" nature.
The very trademark of a totalitarian regime is that its mass-murders, mass-jailings, and mass-larcenies are all perfectly "judicial," because every judge is a regime apparatchik. Any judge who temporizes over the rubber-stamping of a Communist regime decree disappears -- not just from his bench, but from the face of the earth. His former colleagues, or perhaps his successor, then sign the proper documentation, making his disappearance properly "judicial."
Furthermore, Castro's murder tally is not difficult to dig up. No need to consult the ravings of some "crackpot" scandal sheet from us "crackpot" Cuban-Americans. Simply open The Black Book of Communism, written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press, neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Here you'll find a tally of 14,000 Castroite murders by firing squad. "The facts and figures are irrefutable. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism," wrote the New York Times (no less!) about The Black Book of Communism.
The Cuba Archive project, headed by scholars Maria Werlau and the late Armando Lago, estimates the death toll from Castro's regime, including firing squads, prison beatings and deaths at sea while attempting escape, at slightly over 100,000. This project has been lauded by everyone from the Miami Herald to the Boston Globe (again, no right-wing outposts) to the Wall Street Journal.
Castro's chief hangman, Che Guevara, had laid down the rules very succinctly: "Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. We execute from revolutionary conviction."Now let's fast forward to that period Boadle assures us is untainted by any "extra-judicial killings." A 17-year-old named Orlando Travieso was armed with only a homemade paddle when he was machine-gunned to death in March 1991. His "crime," as spelled out perfectly judicially in Cuba's legal code, was trying to flee Cuba on a tiny raft. Loamis Gonzalez was fifteen when he was machine-gunned to death for the same "crime." The "criminal" Owen Delgado was fifteen when Castro's police dragged him out of the Ecuadorian Embassy where he sought asylum and clubbed him to death with rifle butts. Boadle will be pleased that these boys and thousands upon thousands of others who perished in similar fashion well after the early 1960s were all deemed "criminals" by Castro's judicial system.Angel Abreu and Jose Nicol were three, Gisele Borges and Caridad Leyva were four, and Cindy and Yolindis Rodriguez were two on July 17, 1994, when their mothers held them in a tight embrace on the deck of a tugboat. Castro's coast guard rammed the tugboat and water-cannoned them from their screaming mothers arms and into a turbulent sea to drown. Boadle will be pleased that Castro's regime ruled this -- quite judicially -- an "accident," exactly as they rule Tamayo's death.
May Orlando Zapata-Tamayo rest in peace, may his family accept our condolences, and may his murderers eventually face justice.
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books, including Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com
Friday, February 26, 2010
Paul Ryan for President
Paul Ryan does a great job ripping apart Obamacare, and pissing off Obama in the process:
There are two ways to look at this...
'Living wage' could be factor in govt contracts
First, it a sign of economic ignorance that is mind boggling.
What's a living wage, where and for who? Wanting something is not the same being able to make it so. Obama and friends. There are consequences of forcing artificial wages on the market: inflation, loss of jobs, market distortions, etc. It will not make The rules of economics change.
Second, this term will be used as a stick to beat reality based economists and politicians about the head and shoulders.
Leftist don't have to tell the truth. Remember, it's ends that count
Why Obama Hates Insurance Companies
It's puzzling: why don't more people notice that President Obama is a rather weird guy? When he describes his own experiences, they tend to be other-worldly. During the health summit today, Obama related one of his formative experiences with an insurance company; in this case, it was auto insurance:
OBAMA: ... You know, when I was -- when I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won't name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company, let's call it Acme Insurance in -- in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended, and I called up Acme and said, "You know, I'd like to see if I can get my car repaired." And they laughed at me over the phone.
Because really, this was set up not to actually provide insurance, what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn't serious insurance.
Now, it's one thing if you got an old beat-up car that you can't get fixed. It's another thing if your kid is sick or you've got breast cancer.
Obama's story passed without comment, but it made zero sense. What on earth was he talking about? He had car insurance; his vehicle was rear-ended; he called the insurance company to arrange for repairs; and they laughed at him because it "really wasn't serious insurance" even though it was "set up to meet the legal requirements." Huh?
Automobile insurance (like health insurance) is a heavily regulated industry. In some states, all auto insurance policies are required to include collision coverage. If the cost of the repairs exceeds the value of the "beat-up old car," you get the value of the car. In other states, liability insurance is required but collision coverage is optional. If you prefer to take your chances, you can choose to forgo collision coverage. Obama is a reasonably bright guy; is he telling us that he bought an insurance policy that didn't provide for repairs if he had an accident, but didn't know it?
Further, insurance companies can't just laugh at you over the telephone and say, "Tough luck, sucker. We don't pay our policyholders' claims." Doing so would expose the company to additional damages on top of its liability for repairs and, if repeated, could result in the company's being banned from writing coverage in the state in question.
I can think of three possible explanations for what happened to Obama, assuming his story wasn't a complete fabrication. First, he made a rational decision not to buy collision coverage on his vehicle. But in that case, he can hardly complain if his insurance company told him they didn't cover the damage to his car when he was rear-ended. Second, he could have bought auto insurance from a company that went bankrupt. But in that case, he wouldn't be out of luck, his claim would be picked up by a state fund. Third, he could have bought a high-deductible policy and the damage from being rear-ended was within his deductible. In general, buying high-deductible insurance is a good idea. If either 1) or 3) is correct, is Obama telling us that he is such a dope that the government should re-write his contracts so he can get a benefit he didn't pay for? Maybe so; he is a Democrat, after all.
The more we see of Barack Obama, the stranger he appears to be. Either that, or he is cynically making stuff up to play to an audience that is ignorant with respect to insurance, and much else.
It's puzzling: why don't more people notice that President Obama is a rather weird guy? When he describes his own experiences, they tend to be other-worldly. During the health summit today, Obama related one of his formative experiences with an insurance company; in this case, it was auto insurance:
OBAMA: ... You know, when I was -- when I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won't name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company, let's call it Acme Insurance in -- in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended, and I called up Acme and said, "You know, I'd like to see if I can get my car repaired." And they laughed at me over the phone.
Because really, this was set up not to actually provide insurance, what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn't serious insurance.
Now, it's one thing if you got an old beat-up car that you can't get fixed. It's another thing if your kid is sick or you've got breast cancer.
Obama's story passed without comment, but it made zero sense. What on earth was he talking about? He had car insurance; his vehicle was rear-ended; he called the insurance company to arrange for repairs; and they laughed at him because it "really wasn't serious insurance" even though it was "set up to meet the legal requirements." Huh?
Automobile insurance (like health insurance) is a heavily regulated industry. In some states, all auto insurance policies are required to include collision coverage. If the cost of the repairs exceeds the value of the "beat-up old car," you get the value of the car. In other states, liability insurance is required but collision coverage is optional. If you prefer to take your chances, you can choose to forgo collision coverage. Obama is a reasonably bright guy; is he telling us that he bought an insurance policy that didn't provide for repairs if he had an accident, but didn't know it?
Further, insurance companies can't just laugh at you over the telephone and say, "Tough luck, sucker. We don't pay our policyholders' claims." Doing so would expose the company to additional damages on top of its liability for repairs and, if repeated, could result in the company's being banned from writing coverage in the state in question.
I can think of three possible explanations for what happened to Obama, assuming his story wasn't a complete fabrication. First, he made a rational decision not to buy collision coverage on his vehicle. But in that case, he can hardly complain if his insurance company told him they didn't cover the damage to his car when he was rear-ended. Second, he could have bought auto insurance from a company that went bankrupt. But in that case, he wouldn't be out of luck, his claim would be picked up by a state fund. Third, he could have bought a high-deductible policy and the damage from being rear-ended was within his deductible. In general, buying high-deductible insurance is a good idea. If either 1) or 3) is correct, is Obama telling us that he is such a dope that the government should re-write his contracts so he can get a benefit he didn't pay for? Maybe so; he is a Democrat, after all.
The more we see of Barack Obama, the stranger he appears to be. Either that, or he is cynically making stuff up to play to an audience that is ignorant with respect to insurance, and much else.
Anybody doubt he's a serial liar.
Obama's story also shows that he is a lazy character. If your car is struck from behind you are entitled to get compensation from the car that hit you. Did he try to get his money for his car? This has always been the case even in Chicago. But, what good is a lie if you have to give all the facts.
I am so tired of Democrats using anecdotal stories for about absolutely everything. I turned off the Toyota hearings as soon as the first Democrat started with the sob story of some lady who was scared because her Lexus unexpectedly accelerated. No detailed information or testimony from any technician who may have looked at the car.
Ideologically purity required.
Air Force Retracted Invitation for Conservative Leader to Speak at Prayer Luncheon After He Criticized Obama's Position on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
When you cannot have diversity of opinion or state a position other then the one approved by the government you live in a totalitarian state and that is exactly what the Democrats and their allies have brought us.
More class from MSNBC
MSNBC's ED Schultz: Rip out Dick Cheney's heartRead more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33588.html#ixzz0gfexjYoG
Liberal talk show host Ed Schultz would like to take the heart of former Vice President Dick Cheney —who is recovering from his fifth heart attack — and “rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him.”
On his radio show Wednesday, Schultz mocked conservatives who have attacked him for going after the health of the former vice president.
“You’re damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football,” Schultz said in remarks recorded by the media blog Radio Equalizer. “We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him."
Schultz, host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC, said that he was glad Cheney “didn’t tip over” because “he is the new poster child for health care in this country.”
“How come Dick Cheney’s health care isn't being dropped?” Schultz asked. “Do you realize that if you had five heart attacks, hell, you wouldn't get past two heart attacks and they’d dump you.”
“But because you're a war criminal and because you are on the take from Halliburton ... you can get the best health care on the face of the earth,” Schultz said.Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33588.html#ixzz0gfesOOle
Liberal talk show host Ed Schultz would like to take the heart of former Vice President Dick Cheney —who is recovering from his fifth heart attack — and “rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him.”
On his radio show Wednesday, Schultz mocked conservatives who have attacked him for going after the health of the former vice president.
“You’re damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football,” Schultz said in remarks recorded by the media blog Radio Equalizer. “We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him."
Schultz, host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC, said that he was glad Cheney “didn’t tip over” because “he is the new poster child for health care in this country.”
“How come Dick Cheney’s health care isn't being dropped?” Schultz asked. “Do you realize that if you had five heart attacks, hell, you wouldn't get past two heart attacks and they’d dump you.”
“But because you're a war criminal and because you are on the take from Halliburton ... you can get the best health care on the face of the earth,” Schultz said.Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33588.html#ixzz0gfesOOle
Why not appoint a communist to a federal panel. It's the Obama way
Obama makes picks for debt commission
"Obama on Friday named David Cote, chief executive officer at Honeywell International, and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin to the panel. He also appointed Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and Ann Fudge, the former chief executive officer of Young & Rubicam Brands."
Democrat hypocrisy...
Shhhhh, Don't Tell Anyone — The Patriot Act Was Reauthorized
[Andy McCarthy]
After a lot of huffing and puffing, about the need to add more civil liberties protections to a law already teeming with them, the Democrat-controlled Senate quietly voted to extend the three Patriot Act provisions that would have expired without reauthorization. Although beating back Patriot and its sensible national security provisions has been a rallying cry for the Left, Senate Democrats agreed to a clean reauthorization on a voice-vote. The New York Times managed just a paragraph, culled from the AP wire, to report the extension. Why so quiet? There are a couple of reasons, I suspect, and Michelle Malkin — ever on the case — gives us both of them.
First, as Rep.Pete King (R-NY) points out, the Patriot Act surveillance measures were critical to the FBI's ability to break the case against Najibullah Zazi, who wanted to mark the eighth anniversary of 9/11 by bombing New York City. As I noted in a column earlier this week, the Obama administration is dubiously using the Zazi case as a testament to the effectiveness of the civilian justice system in countering "violent extremism" (wouldn't want to use the I-word or the T-word). So it's bad timing to be dumping on Patriot.
Second, Michelle adds, is the leadership of the anti-Patriot movement: CAIR. Who wouldn't want to be associated on a terrori "violent extremism "issue with a Muslim Brotherhood front, created for the purpose of promoting Hamas under the camouflage of "civil rights," that was recently alleged and shown to be a co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing case? Laughably, CAIR alleges that the Patriot Act is "undermining the integration" of the Muslim community in the U.S. The last thing CAIR is interested in is integrating the Muslim community. To the contrary, CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood groups pursue a strategy of voluntary apartheid, the goal of which is to set up Islamic enclaves living under sharia law — the very strategy that is now dis-integrating Europe.
In any event, kudos go not just to Pete King but to others, including Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who worked diligently to get Patriot re-authorized. Sen. Sessions put out this statement last night:
The PATRIOT Act is a bipartisan bill that has helped save countless lives by equipping our national security community with the tools it needs to keep America safe. Recent terror attacks, such as those at Ft. Hood and on Christmas Day, demonstrate just how severe of a threat we are facing. There is simply no reason to weaken the PATRIOT Act—and every reason not to. This extension keeps PATRIOT’s security measures in place and demonstrates that there is a growing recognition that these crucial provisions must be preserved. We are now one step closer to what is needed: a full, long-term reauthorization.
Sen. Sessions, it should be noted, tried along with Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to get Patriot reauthorized for four years. In the event, it was only reauthorized for one. Obviously, Democrats decided the timing was bad now, but they'll be back yet again next year to try to gut the contested provisions.
That goes to show just how lunatic they are on security issues. To sensible people, there is absolutely nothing objectionable about the three Patriot powers in question. One is roving wiretaps, which criminal investigators have been using for years so that they don't need to get a new court order every time a suspect changes phones. Another is the business records provision — the Left sometimes calls it the "library records" provision even though library records are not mentioned in it — which simply allows national-security agents to collect information on terrorist suspects almost (but not quite) as easily as criminal investigators can. And finally, there is the "lone wolf" law (not part of the original Patriot Act but now tied to it), which allows agents to go after someone as to whom the evidence that he is a terrorist is strong but the evidence that he is tied to a known terrorist organization is weak.
You may ask: Why should there be any time-limits on the operation of these laws? Wouldn't we always want our agents to be able to do these things — a year from now, four years from now, or a hundred years from now? Good questions.
[Andy McCarthy]
After a lot of huffing and puffing, about the need to add more civil liberties protections to a law already teeming with them, the Democrat-controlled Senate quietly voted to extend the three Patriot Act provisions that would have expired without reauthorization. Although beating back Patriot and its sensible national security provisions has been a rallying cry for the Left, Senate Democrats agreed to a clean reauthorization on a voice-vote. The New York Times managed just a paragraph, culled from the AP wire, to report the extension. Why so quiet? There are a couple of reasons, I suspect, and Michelle Malkin — ever on the case — gives us both of them.
First, as Rep.Pete King (R-NY) points out, the Patriot Act surveillance measures were critical to the FBI's ability to break the case against Najibullah Zazi, who wanted to mark the eighth anniversary of 9/11 by bombing New York City. As I noted in a column earlier this week, the Obama administration is dubiously using the Zazi case as a testament to the effectiveness of the civilian justice system in countering "violent extremism" (wouldn't want to use the I-word or the T-word). So it's bad timing to be dumping on Patriot.
Second, Michelle adds, is the leadership of the anti-Patriot movement: CAIR. Who wouldn't want to be associated on a terrori "violent extremism "issue with a Muslim Brotherhood front, created for the purpose of promoting Hamas under the camouflage of "civil rights," that was recently alleged and shown to be a co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing case? Laughably, CAIR alleges that the Patriot Act is "undermining the integration" of the Muslim community in the U.S. The last thing CAIR is interested in is integrating the Muslim community. To the contrary, CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood groups pursue a strategy of voluntary apartheid, the goal of which is to set up Islamic enclaves living under sharia law — the very strategy that is now dis-integrating Europe.
In any event, kudos go not just to Pete King but to others, including Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who worked diligently to get Patriot re-authorized. Sen. Sessions put out this statement last night:
The PATRIOT Act is a bipartisan bill that has helped save countless lives by equipping our national security community with the tools it needs to keep America safe. Recent terror attacks, such as those at Ft. Hood and on Christmas Day, demonstrate just how severe of a threat we are facing. There is simply no reason to weaken the PATRIOT Act—and every reason not to. This extension keeps PATRIOT’s security measures in place and demonstrates that there is a growing recognition that these crucial provisions must be preserved. We are now one step closer to what is needed: a full, long-term reauthorization.
Sen. Sessions, it should be noted, tried along with Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to get Patriot reauthorized for four years. In the event, it was only reauthorized for one. Obviously, Democrats decided the timing was bad now, but they'll be back yet again next year to try to gut the contested provisions.
That goes to show just how lunatic they are on security issues. To sensible people, there is absolutely nothing objectionable about the three Patriot powers in question. One is roving wiretaps, which criminal investigators have been using for years so that they don't need to get a new court order every time a suspect changes phones. Another is the business records provision — the Left sometimes calls it the "library records" provision even though library records are not mentioned in it — which simply allows national-security agents to collect information on terrorist suspects almost (but not quite) as easily as criminal investigators can. And finally, there is the "lone wolf" law (not part of the original Patriot Act but now tied to it), which allows agents to go after someone as to whom the evidence that he is a terrorist is strong but the evidence that he is tied to a known terrorist organization is weak.
You may ask: Why should there be any time-limits on the operation of these laws? Wouldn't we always want our agents to be able to do these things — a year from now, four years from now, or a hundred years from now? Good questions.
Today's odd story
Wheelchair 'train bomb'
By JOHN DOYLE and TOM NAMAKO
A legless man being pushed in a wheelchair by two people managed to plant a crude explosive device at the 125th Street Metro-North train station yesterday afternoon, causing trains to be rerouted for two hours.
A canvas bag left near the waiting area contained a "pyrotechnic" with shotgun shells taped to it. The disabled man, Perry Roosevelt, 57, was arrested, along with one of the men with him.
By JOHN DOYLE and TOM NAMAKO
A legless man being pushed in a wheelchair by two people managed to plant a crude explosive device at the 125th Street Metro-North train station yesterday afternoon, causing trains to be rerouted for two hours.
A canvas bag left near the waiting area contained a "pyrotechnic" with shotgun shells taped to it. The disabled man, Perry Roosevelt, 57, was arrested, along with one of the men with him.
And, he even screws up doing nothing.
Joe Biden: It's easy being vice
There have been some tense moments during today's health care summit at the Blair House, but not for Vice President Joe Biden, it seems.
Just moments before the afternoon session got underway, C-SPAN's cameras picked up audio of Biden chatting casually with participants.
"It's easy being vice president — you don't have to do anything."
Whomever Biden was chatting with said, "It's like being the grandpa and not the parent."
"Yeah, that's it!" replied Biden.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney tells POLITICO that the vice president was "obviously joking, as any review of his schedule and responsibilities would make abundantly clear."
“In the last month, the vice president has, among many other things, made his fourth trip to Iraq since being elected, delivered a major speech on the administration’s non-proliferation agenda, produced a report on the Recovery Act’s first year to the president and played a key role in bringing about the president’s bi-partisan Fiscal Commission,” Carney said. “In the coming days and weeks, the vice president will deliver a first-year report from the Middle Class Task Force, which he chairs, and travel to the Middle East to meet with key leaders in the region.”
There have been some tense moments during today's health care summit at the Blair House, but not for Vice President Joe Biden, it seems.
Just moments before the afternoon session got underway, C-SPAN's cameras picked up audio of Biden chatting casually with participants.
"It's easy being vice president — you don't have to do anything."
Whomever Biden was chatting with said, "It's like being the grandpa and not the parent."
"Yeah, that's it!" replied Biden.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney tells POLITICO that the vice president was "obviously joking, as any review of his schedule and responsibilities would make abundantly clear."
“In the last month, the vice president has, among many other things, made his fourth trip to Iraq since being elected, delivered a major speech on the administration’s non-proliferation agenda, produced a report on the Recovery Act’s first year to the president and played a key role in bringing about the president’s bi-partisan Fiscal Commission,” Carney said. “In the coming days and weeks, the vice president will deliver a first-year report from the Middle Class Task Force, which he chairs, and travel to the Middle East to meet with key leaders in the region.”
CS&W is not surprised
With Mohamed ElBaradei out of the way, the truth can now be revealed about Iran's nuclear weapon programme
Has anyone else noticed that, now Mohamed AlBaradei is no longer in charge of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, we are suddenly seeing a more realistic assessment of what the Iranians are really up to with their nuclear programme?
For years the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the body responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme, has pulled its punches, even when confronted with the most glaring evidence that Iran was trying to mislead the West as to its true intentions. The reason for this was that the Egyptian-born Mr ElBaradei was desperate to avoid a conflict between the West and Iran, just as his close friend Hans Blix refused to hold Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to account for year’s of non-compliance with various U.N. resolutions.
Even when Mr ElBaradei’s inspection teams found traces of high enriched uranium in Iran – which can only be used to make nuclear weapons – he still instructed the agency to play down the significance of the findings.
Now that Mr ElBaradei is no longer with the IAEA, we are receiving a more sober assessment of what the Iranians are really up to. Its new report on Iran unequivocally accuses of Iran of carrying out work to build a nuclear bomb. Specifically it says that Tehran has now processed enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.
This is a startling – and important – departure from the IAEA’s more cautious assessments that were published when Mr ElBaradei was in charge, and begs the question just what he was playing at. Western diplomats say Mr ElBaradei was scarred by the Iraq experience, and did not want to make the same mistake with Iran.
To me this constitutes a dereliction of duty. Thanks to Mr ElBaradei, Iran is now much further advanced with its nuclear programme than it would have been had Mr ElBaradei allowed the real truth about Iran’s activities to be made public. And thanks to Mr ElBaradei’s policy of appeasement towards Iran, the world is now a far more dangerous place.
STOP PRESS: I hear Mr AlBaradei is letting it be known that, following his triumphant reign at the IAEA, he might be prepared to become Egypt’s next President! Pity the poor Egyptians!
Has anyone else noticed that, now Mohamed AlBaradei is no longer in charge of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, we are suddenly seeing a more realistic assessment of what the Iranians are really up to with their nuclear programme?
For years the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the body responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme, has pulled its punches, even when confronted with the most glaring evidence that Iran was trying to mislead the West as to its true intentions. The reason for this was that the Egyptian-born Mr ElBaradei was desperate to avoid a conflict between the West and Iran, just as his close friend Hans Blix refused to hold Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to account for year’s of non-compliance with various U.N. resolutions.
Even when Mr ElBaradei’s inspection teams found traces of high enriched uranium in Iran – which can only be used to make nuclear weapons – he still instructed the agency to play down the significance of the findings.
Now that Mr ElBaradei is no longer with the IAEA, we are receiving a more sober assessment of what the Iranians are really up to. Its new report on Iran unequivocally accuses of Iran of carrying out work to build a nuclear bomb. Specifically it says that Tehran has now processed enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.
This is a startling – and important – departure from the IAEA’s more cautious assessments that were published when Mr ElBaradei was in charge, and begs the question just what he was playing at. Western diplomats say Mr ElBaradei was scarred by the Iraq experience, and did not want to make the same mistake with Iran.
To me this constitutes a dereliction of duty. Thanks to Mr ElBaradei, Iran is now much further advanced with its nuclear programme than it would have been had Mr ElBaradei allowed the real truth about Iran’s activities to be made public. And thanks to Mr ElBaradei’s policy of appeasement towards Iran, the world is now a far more dangerous place.
STOP PRESS: I hear Mr AlBaradei is letting it be known that, following his triumphant reign at the IAEA, he might be prepared to become Egypt’s next President! Pity the poor Egyptians!
The EU funds a fifth column in Israel.
Terra Incognita: The European lobby in Israel
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN23/02/2010
The EU, realizing it cannot get Israel to change its laws through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby - through lavish funding of NGOs - to get Israel to bend.
Ever since the publication of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby there has been much talk of the "lobby." In England mainstream and respectable Channel 4 aired an entire program entitled Inside Britain's Israel Lobby which claimed the "lobby" "owns" the Conservative Party. Amidst all the talk of an Israel lobby in the West, people have ignored the growth of a lobby located in the Holy Land itself, the European lobby in Israel.The European Parliament adopted the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) in 1994. This was part of the European Union's broader belief that "democracy and human rights are universal values that should be vigorously promoted around the world." The initiative was supposed to promote democratization through the promotion of "fair and free" elections and mainstreaming "democratic values" through "accountability, transparency and equality."In 2007, a subtle change in the name of the EIDHR was made. The word "initiative" was changed to "instrument." This seemingly banal change may be a result of semantic arguments among EU staffers but it puts in words the increasingly meddlesome way the EU has chosen to work within Israel.The EU may have realized during the second intifada that its concerns were not being listened to. Perhaps they heeded the increasingly alarmist statements of Israelis themselves, such as former Haaretz editor David Landau who in 2007 told US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that the US needed to "rape" Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians. Regardless of the exact cause, in 2002 the European Union began lavishly funding non-governmental organizations in Israel. It claimed that it was doing this because of "the vital contribution made by NGOs to the promotion and protection of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law."Between 2002 and 2008, a total of $14 million was granted to various Israeli NGOs through the EIDHR. My investigation of the NGOs that received funding revealed that the lion's share of the money benefited two groups: Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. $5.5 million was directed specifically to causes for Palestinians such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's project "Building a Better Future: Empowering the Palestinian Residents of East Jerusalem to access their planning and house [sic] rights" which received $135,000. A further $7m. went specifically to programs that benefit only Israeli Arabs such as the al-Awna fund's "Master Plan for the Unrecognized Beduin Villages: Securing minority rights for housing and social services" which received $263,000. Even when the EIDHR funded programs for women it did so only for programs for Beduin or Israeli Arab women, except for a token $100,000 it gave to an organization called Isha le Isha (Woman to Woman) which helps fight women trafficking.There was not one cent directed specifically towards any of the numerous and diverse Jewish communities in Israel: Ethiopians, Russians, Yemenites, Persians or Jews from the Caucasus. The only mention of Jewish citizens as potential recipients was in a grant to the Mossawa Center, the advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel. It received $402,000 for a project that "aims to combat racism and transform inter-communal relations between target groups who include the Jewish majority, Arab minority and ethnic groups including the Russian, Ethiopian, Mizrahi and Reform Jewish communities."Around $73,000 was directed towards former IDF soldiers. It wasn't to help them with trauma or reward them for a "shared citizenship." It was to get them to "break the silence" about what they witnessed while in the army, to provide testimony that might lead to a process whereby European courts might put the soldiers or their officers on trial for war crimes. Of course that is not what Breaking the Silence stated for the public. They described their project as "personal encounters with former Israeli combat soldiers."THE EIDHR's "instrument" to affect Israeli policy is merely the tip of the iceberg. In its November 2009 report "Trojan Horse: The impact of European government funding for Israeli NGOs" NGO Monitor illustrated that individual European embassies in Israel and other EU projects give lavishly to Israeli NGOs, sometimes even making up the majority of their budgets. In fact "foreign-funded local NGOs are responsible for a significant portion of the petitions brought before the Israeli High Court of Justice," says the report.The EU, realizing it could not get Israel to change its laws through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby within Israel to get Israel to bend to the will of Europe.Israel's human rights organizations would counter that it is not important where their money comes from, their cause is just. It is also true that some Israeli human rights organizations view everything through the lens of the conflict, meaning they apply only for projects involving Palestinians or "Palestinian citizens of Israel" and don't have an interest in the rights of the Jewish population of the country.Shatil, which claims to help Ethiopian Jews, applied for $1m. for Beduin and $1m. "to educate and raise awareness among the Arab residents of Israel's five Jewish/Arab mixed cities" and nothing for the Ethiopians.The question is whether the EU funding of these organizations constitutes the creation of a shadow lobby. The EIDHR doesn't directly sue Israel on behalf of the freedom of movement of Palestinians. Instead it funds local NGOs that do. Furthermore the EIDHR sends $8.4m. in funding directly to NGOs in the Palestinian territories on top of the money it gives to Israeli NGOs whose projects only benefit Palestinians.In every other country in the world, the EIDHR directs its funding towards large-scale projects supporting "democracy" and "civil society." In Egypt it gave $10m. (2003-2008), none of which went specifically towards projects for the minority Coptic Christians.
It is time for those, especially in Europe, who speak about a "Jewish/Israel" lobby to recognize that for eight years Europe has directed a concerted effort towards establishing a European lobby in Israel that discriminates against its Jewish population and supports some radical NGOs.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN23/02/2010
The EU, realizing it cannot get Israel to change its laws through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby - through lavish funding of NGOs - to get Israel to bend.
Ever since the publication of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby there has been much talk of the "lobby." In England mainstream and respectable Channel 4 aired an entire program entitled Inside Britain's Israel Lobby which claimed the "lobby" "owns" the Conservative Party. Amidst all the talk of an Israel lobby in the West, people have ignored the growth of a lobby located in the Holy Land itself, the European lobby in Israel.The European Parliament adopted the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) in 1994. This was part of the European Union's broader belief that "democracy and human rights are universal values that should be vigorously promoted around the world." The initiative was supposed to promote democratization through the promotion of "fair and free" elections and mainstreaming "democratic values" through "accountability, transparency and equality."In 2007, a subtle change in the name of the EIDHR was made. The word "initiative" was changed to "instrument." This seemingly banal change may be a result of semantic arguments among EU staffers but it puts in words the increasingly meddlesome way the EU has chosen to work within Israel.The EU may have realized during the second intifada that its concerns were not being listened to. Perhaps they heeded the increasingly alarmist statements of Israelis themselves, such as former Haaretz editor David Landau who in 2007 told US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that the US needed to "rape" Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians. Regardless of the exact cause, in 2002 the European Union began lavishly funding non-governmental organizations in Israel. It claimed that it was doing this because of "the vital contribution made by NGOs to the promotion and protection of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law."Between 2002 and 2008, a total of $14 million was granted to various Israeli NGOs through the EIDHR. My investigation of the NGOs that received funding revealed that the lion's share of the money benefited two groups: Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. $5.5 million was directed specifically to causes for Palestinians such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's project "Building a Better Future: Empowering the Palestinian Residents of East Jerusalem to access their planning and house [sic] rights" which received $135,000. A further $7m. went specifically to programs that benefit only Israeli Arabs such as the al-Awna fund's "Master Plan for the Unrecognized Beduin Villages: Securing minority rights for housing and social services" which received $263,000. Even when the EIDHR funded programs for women it did so only for programs for Beduin or Israeli Arab women, except for a token $100,000 it gave to an organization called Isha le Isha (Woman to Woman) which helps fight women trafficking.There was not one cent directed specifically towards any of the numerous and diverse Jewish communities in Israel: Ethiopians, Russians, Yemenites, Persians or Jews from the Caucasus. The only mention of Jewish citizens as potential recipients was in a grant to the Mossawa Center, the advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel. It received $402,000 for a project that "aims to combat racism and transform inter-communal relations between target groups who include the Jewish majority, Arab minority and ethnic groups including the Russian, Ethiopian, Mizrahi and Reform Jewish communities."Around $73,000 was directed towards former IDF soldiers. It wasn't to help them with trauma or reward them for a "shared citizenship." It was to get them to "break the silence" about what they witnessed while in the army, to provide testimony that might lead to a process whereby European courts might put the soldiers or their officers on trial for war crimes. Of course that is not what Breaking the Silence stated for the public. They described their project as "personal encounters with former Israeli combat soldiers."THE EIDHR's "instrument" to affect Israeli policy is merely the tip of the iceberg. In its November 2009 report "Trojan Horse: The impact of European government funding for Israeli NGOs" NGO Monitor illustrated that individual European embassies in Israel and other EU projects give lavishly to Israeli NGOs, sometimes even making up the majority of their budgets. In fact "foreign-funded local NGOs are responsible for a significant portion of the petitions brought before the Israeli High Court of Justice," says the report.The EU, realizing it could not get Israel to change its laws through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby within Israel to get Israel to bend to the will of Europe.Israel's human rights organizations would counter that it is not important where their money comes from, their cause is just. It is also true that some Israeli human rights organizations view everything through the lens of the conflict, meaning they apply only for projects involving Palestinians or "Palestinian citizens of Israel" and don't have an interest in the rights of the Jewish population of the country.Shatil, which claims to help Ethiopian Jews, applied for $1m. for Beduin and $1m. "to educate and raise awareness among the Arab residents of Israel's five Jewish/Arab mixed cities" and nothing for the Ethiopians.The question is whether the EU funding of these organizations constitutes the creation of a shadow lobby. The EIDHR doesn't directly sue Israel on behalf of the freedom of movement of Palestinians. Instead it funds local NGOs that do. Furthermore the EIDHR sends $8.4m. in funding directly to NGOs in the Palestinian territories on top of the money it gives to Israeli NGOs whose projects only benefit Palestinians.In every other country in the world, the EIDHR directs its funding towards large-scale projects supporting "democracy" and "civil society." In Egypt it gave $10m. (2003-2008), none of which went specifically towards projects for the minority Coptic Christians.
It is time for those, especially in Europe, who speak about a "Jewish/Israel" lobby to recognize that for eight years Europe has directed a concerted effort towards establishing a European lobby in Israel that discriminates against its Jewish population and supports some radical NGOs.
No kidding. CNN is pretty left so even they can't hide the story.
CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights
From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser
Fifty-six percent of Americans say the government poses an immediate threat to individual rights and freedoms.
Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.
According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.
From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser
Fifty-six percent of Americans say the government poses an immediate threat to individual rights and freedoms.
Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.
According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.
Does this sound like what an American President should sound like?
Obama change: bringing banana republic dictator mentality to the US.
Obama At Health Care Summit: "I Don't Count My Time Because I'm The President"
Obama At Health Care Summit: "I Don't Count My Time Because I'm The President"
How to Debate a Climate Fraud Denier
John O'Sullivan explains:
On another website I’ve been engaged in a brusque debate with an evangelizing global warming doomsayer–the type that Dr. John Costella, expert science analyst of the leaked CRY emails, aptly terms,’ climate fraud denier.’ Quickly, to counter my scientific arguments he turned to personalizing the matter. I was called ‘obsessive’ and a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ I was then challenged to justify why I knew better than ’97.5% of all climate scientists.’
Here was my reply:
I am a legal advocate, totally unpaid in relation to fighting these climate criminals. I have litigated against government corruption for over a decade in the U.S. federal Court Second Circuit as well as the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Appeal Court and Division of Human Rights. I have insight plus I still haven’t lost a case. If that makes me ‘obsessive’ about fighting corruption then count me in.
I am 100% in support of conservation, recycling and prudent use of natural resources. I have close friends who were former members of environment groups until those organizations became heavily politicized in the early 1990’s.
I argue the free market has been most adept at taking care of the supply and demand issues over dwindling fossil fuels. Fuel price rises compel us to conserve regardless of unnecessary government policy. Nationalized industries have an appalling history of waste and inefficiency. Common sense tells us if a commodity becomes more rare it goes up in price, so we become more precious about it. Technological development occurs best in a free market economy so we do not need big government to force us to ‘go green.’
Many so-called green energy alternatives are uneconomic and futile e.g. wind turbines use vast amounts of copper, are wholly unreliable plus extremely expensive to build and maintain. Without huge government subsidies no one would touch them. France runs on 80% nuclear power most efficiently and happily. Nuclear power is the only practicable long-term solution for national base energy loads.
Humans are NOT heating up the planet. Simply check the two oldest and most reliable ground RAW temp records in the world: the CET (England) and the Central European Record (Prague). These prove that for the past several hundred years global warming has been occurring naturally at a rate of 0.25 C per century, entirely normal for the Holocene interglacial period in which we live.
Indeed, the warming blip that climate scaremongers get all hot about is that time from 1975-98, which compares neatly with those entirely natural yet similar blips of 1860-80 and 1910-40 and which no climatologist attributes to human emissions. Therefore, we see no human climate-forcing signal.
The truth is in the science. Science is about facts, not a show of hands. The complexity of climate involves a multiplicity of scientific disciplines. Yet climate scientists have had to rely on a small core of a mere two dozen or so ‘elite’ climate scientists who are responsible for the ‘homogenized’ temp data sets produced from a central WMO source. That is where the fraud lies.
Government agencies GHCN, NOAA and CRU have been artificially heating up the numbers to show a warming signal; they call it ‘homogenisation.’ Independent analysts have now exposed the fraud of homogenization of climate data. The raw data so far examined proves that older temperatures have been pushed down, while recent temperatures have been ramped up–that’s fraud.
Hundreds of honorable climate scientists have been fed the faked numbers so that they have been duped for years, en masse. This is why independent auditors, for the past seven years, have tried to have access to how the homogenization process was done by those few crooks. But they have been declined. Why?
From the leaked Climategate emails we learn that this crooked elite rigged the peer-review process and also admitted to ‘fudging’ the data to ‘hide the decline.’ Until discredited Professor Phil Jones of CRU admitted to the BBC that there has been ‘no statistically significant’ temperature rise since 1995, the world had been continuously fed the lie that the temperatures were rising at a ‘catastrophic’ rate.
I have analyzed the leaked emails from CRU, and in my opinion they prove a conspiracy to commit fraud. This is the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time. Bernie Madoff is a small fry by comparison. That is why 16 major climate actions have just hit the US courts. The truth is out and the game is up. I care not whether you ‘believe’ in global warming or not–the task of legal advocates, like me, as for honorable scientists, is to work with the facts.
I am actively lobbying the UK police and Attorney General to bring criminal charges against Jones et al. I can assure you, on the lower quantum of proof in civil courts, the likes of Al Gore, Jones, Mann, Hansen, etc. will be fined and made bankrupt. But we need their kind behind bars–they have wasted over $50 billion of taxpayer’s money already. Even this corrupt UK government had to admit that Freedom Of Information (FOI) requests were criminally refused as per ICO investigations. Only self-serving politicians continue to obstruct justice. But as they see their political constituency dwindle they, too, will soon capitulate to facts and reason.
Carbon trading was going to make billions for a select few. That investment bubble has now burst. Climategate has irrevocably changed history. The proposed carbon economy was intended as a global wealth redistribution scheme and green taxes were the thread to sew together all nations into a one world government. Read the Copenhagen Draft Treaty–it spells out in black and white the plan for a new world socialist order–no elected representatives for you, no democracy! Read it, and then try telling me I’m a conspiracy theorist. Just be thankful climate skeptics saved you from that dystopia.
People Didn't Seem To Like Obama's Performance
Rasmussen's poll results for this morning are not pretty. Even though they are conducted over a three day period and only one of those days covers the healthcare summit, Obama took a major hit. He is down to a -20 difference between those that strongly approve and strongly disapprove of him. I guess being arrogant and degrading when people are letting you know legitimate concerns doesn't sell well.
Obama Refuses to Back UK in Falkland Island Dispute
He must really hate all of our friends. Check out the statement by the State Department:
I'm sure they will remember that the next time we need their help.
We are aware not only of the current situation but also of the history, but our position remains one of neutrality. The US recognises de facto UK administration of the islands but takes no position on the sovereignty claims of either party.
I'm sure they will remember that the next time we need their help.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Another silly statement from a watermelon group
The economic logic of the EDF is as flawed as the global warming myth. The real subtext of the EDF position is that "authoritarian capitalism" is the way to go. The government should choose the winners and losers and the EDF and friends should sit at the deciding table.
Notice how they ignore the polltion in Chinese cities.
China: Bigger, badder and greener than the U.S.?Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/China-Bigger-badder-and-greener-than-the-US-85389657.html#ixzz0gb6CqcUL
China, one of the most polluted countries on Earth, “is already beating the U.S. to clean energy jobs,” gushes Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defense Fund, and “is quickly becoming the global powerhouse in clean energy manufacturing and innovation, dwarfing the efforts of America.”Guess whose fault that is?Not EDF and its fellow travelers, who have spent decades pushing for crippling environmental regulations that make it all but impossible for American manufacturers to turn a profit.It’s Congress’ fault for not imposing a limit on CO2!“If the U.S. puts a limit on carbon pollution from dirtier sources of energy, we will send a clear signal to the marketplace that will unleash a massive wave of private investment in clean energy that would allow us to compete with the Chinese. Only when American policy creates a profit motive for investors, inventors and entrepreneurs, will we have a chance to win the race,” Kriendler added.So if the U.S. imposes what amounts to a $9.4 trillion energy tax on American companies by 2035, as The Heritage Foundation estimates, while China continues to spew out as much pollution as it damn well pleases, we will somehow beat them economically by creating more “ green” jobs than they do.Who believes this rot?President Obama, for one. On Wednesday, he told the Business Roundtable: “A competitive America is also an America that finally has a smart energy policy. We know there is no silver bullet here – that to reduce our dependence on oil and the damage caused by climate change, we need more production, more efficiency, and more incentives for clean energy. “But to truly transition to a clean energy economy, I’ve also said that we need to put a price on carbon pollution …”Memo to EDF and Obama: China is the “Saudi Arabia of Solar” only because it plans to sell slightly less expensive solar panels to clueless Americans and Europeans like you. It’s already in the process of taking all the “green” manufacturing jobs away.The irony is that environmentalists don’t seem to care if windmills, lithium batteries, plug-in hybrids and other renewable energy fads they champion are made in China, which by their own standards should have been shut down by the EPA a long time ago.
Just the people you want to administer the health care system
Report: E-Verify misses half of illegal workers
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer Suzanne Gamboa, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The system Congress and the Obama administration want employers to use to help curb illegal immigration is failing to catch more than half of the unauthorized workers it checks, a research company has found.
The online tool E-Verify, now used voluntarily by employers, wrongly clears illegal workers about 54 percent of the time, according to Westat, a research company that evaluated the system for the Homeland Security Department. E-Verify missed so many illegal workers mainly because it can't detect identity fraud, Westat said.
"Clearly it means it's not doing its No. 1 job well enough," said Marc Rosenblum, a researcher at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
E-Verify allows employers to run a worker's information against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security databases to check whether the person is permitted to work in the U.S. The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers who hire people here illegally a central part of its immigration enforcement policy, and there are expectations that some Republicans in Congress will try in coming weeks to make E-Verify mandatory.
Much of the criticism of E-Verify has focused on whether U.S. citizens and legal immigrants with permission to work were falsely flagged as illegal workers. Immigration officials have been taking steps to improve such inaccuracies. Westat reported that 93 percent of the cases checked were legal workers who were accurately identified on first try. Another .7 percent were legal workers who initially were rejected.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, testifying in a House hearing on her agency's proposed budget Thursday, said she doubts the 54 percent inaccuracy rate for illegal workers. She said things are being added to the system to root out identity fraud.
"E-Verify is absolutely where we are going in terms of incentivizing employers and making sure we are using a legal work force," Napolitano said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is writing the Democrats' immigration bill and has fought expanding E-Verify because of its flaws, said Wednesday that the fact that E-Verify was inaccurate so often shows that it is not an adequate tool.
"This is a wake-up call to anyone who thinks E-Verify is an effective remedy to stop the hiring of illegal immigrants," Schumer said.
A worker verification process like E-Verify is considered essential for any immigration overhaul proposal to have a chance of approval in Congress.
Westat's report, completed in December using data from 2008, was quietly posted on Homeland Security's Web site Jan. 28 along with a summary that pointed out E-Verify is accurate "almost half of the time."
"While not perfect, it is important to note that E-Verify is much more effective" than the paper forms used by most employers, the summary said.
Rosenblum, who has studied E-Verify, said Westat's evaluation shows it doesn't make sense to substantially expand and invest in E-Verify without fixing the identity theft problem.
Bill Wright, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency has created an anti-immigrant identity fraud unit in Buffalo, N.Y., to address the issue.
The agency, part of the Homeland Security Department, is developing a way for people to screen themselves through E-Verify so they can show potential employers they can work legally.
About 184,000 of the nation's 7 million to 8 million employers are using E-Verify, according to the Homeland Security Department.
Congress gave DHS about $100 million to spend on E-Verify in its 2010 budget.
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer Suzanne Gamboa, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The system Congress and the Obama administration want employers to use to help curb illegal immigration is failing to catch more than half of the unauthorized workers it checks, a research company has found.
The online tool E-Verify, now used voluntarily by employers, wrongly clears illegal workers about 54 percent of the time, according to Westat, a research company that evaluated the system for the Homeland Security Department. E-Verify missed so many illegal workers mainly because it can't detect identity fraud, Westat said.
"Clearly it means it's not doing its No. 1 job well enough," said Marc Rosenblum, a researcher at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
E-Verify allows employers to run a worker's information against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security databases to check whether the person is permitted to work in the U.S. The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers who hire people here illegally a central part of its immigration enforcement policy, and there are expectations that some Republicans in Congress will try in coming weeks to make E-Verify mandatory.
Much of the criticism of E-Verify has focused on whether U.S. citizens and legal immigrants with permission to work were falsely flagged as illegal workers. Immigration officials have been taking steps to improve such inaccuracies. Westat reported that 93 percent of the cases checked were legal workers who were accurately identified on first try. Another .7 percent were legal workers who initially were rejected.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, testifying in a House hearing on her agency's proposed budget Thursday, said she doubts the 54 percent inaccuracy rate for illegal workers. She said things are being added to the system to root out identity fraud.
"E-Verify is absolutely where we are going in terms of incentivizing employers and making sure we are using a legal work force," Napolitano said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is writing the Democrats' immigration bill and has fought expanding E-Verify because of its flaws, said Wednesday that the fact that E-Verify was inaccurate so often shows that it is not an adequate tool.
"This is a wake-up call to anyone who thinks E-Verify is an effective remedy to stop the hiring of illegal immigrants," Schumer said.
A worker verification process like E-Verify is considered essential for any immigration overhaul proposal to have a chance of approval in Congress.
Westat's report, completed in December using data from 2008, was quietly posted on Homeland Security's Web site Jan. 28 along with a summary that pointed out E-Verify is accurate "almost half of the time."
"While not perfect, it is important to note that E-Verify is much more effective" than the paper forms used by most employers, the summary said.
Rosenblum, who has studied E-Verify, said Westat's evaluation shows it doesn't make sense to substantially expand and invest in E-Verify without fixing the identity theft problem.
Bill Wright, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency has created an anti-immigrant identity fraud unit in Buffalo, N.Y., to address the issue.
The agency, part of the Homeland Security Department, is developing a way for people to screen themselves through E-Verify so they can show potential employers they can work legally.
About 184,000 of the nation's 7 million to 8 million employers are using E-Verify, according to the Homeland Security Department.
Congress gave DHS about $100 million to spend on E-Verify in its 2010 budget.
A breath of fresh educational air
Follow the rules, comrades ... or else
var collab_title = 'Follow the rules, comrades ... or else';
By DAVID BALLCorrespondent
Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Stephany Fournier, an 11th-grader at Pine View School, did not want to punish her fellow classmates, but it had to be done. They defied the law.
"I'm normally a nice person, but I have to be really firm with these people," Stephany said. "They must come in, sit down and write this line on paper, front and back."
The line: "I will serve the glorious East German state better."
The students copied it repeatedly after watching a propaganda film depicting the evils of Western culture.
The drill was part of a history lesson taken to an elaborate level Tuesday at Pine View, where Stephany and the rest of the 2,000 students participated in an interactive lesson commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
"This was a project of the history club, and their idea was that students should really have an idea of what it was like to live in a communist state," said social studies teacher Patricia Johnston, who helped organize the project and served as the lead "comrade."
Students, with the help of a local landscaping company, erected a nearly 100-foot paper replica of the Berlin wall, complete with graffiti. It stood across the middle of the campus to mimic the concrete wall that separated communist East Germany from capitalist West Germany from 1961 to the end of 1989.
On the west side, students could walk around, socialize and behave as they normally do.
But on the east side, students could only walk on sidewalks, wear approved clothing (no hats, for instance) and had to behave in an orderly, controlled fashion.
Propaganda posters with phrases like "technology is unnecessary and degrades intelligence" lined the hallways, and gazebos and other recreation areas were marked as "unnecessary installations."
Teachers on the East German side taught lessons from a communist perspective.
As an East German general, Stephany gathered intelligence from other officers and handed out punishment to enemies of the state.
She looked the part, wearing a black business suit and black stockings, heels and dark eyeliner. Hundreds of other students wore military jackets -- and sometimes complete uniforms -- with red arm bands signifying their communist allegiance.
"I looked up 'communist women's fashions of the day' online," Stephany said. "The women all had pale faces and red lipstick. You had to look cold and imposing."
Most of the day's activities were at the wall itself and the five checkpoints where students could cross.
Students were given passports that were stamped as they crossed; illegal crossings and other disobedience was recorded in the passports.
"Although we really can't show them exactly what it was like, we want to show that the east was more strict," said student Marine Robbins, who commanded a checkpoint. "We've had quite a few people that have been belligerent and just don't agree at all with the simulation."
Marine said some students protested the project, including setting up Facebook pages to rally the opposition. But Marine said the protests actually simulated similar efforts during the real German struggle and made the entire exercise more authentic.
Most students followed protocol and said they learned more than in a regular classroom assignment. Ninth-grader Joe Polarr was arrested several times for walking on the grass, wearing a hat and not pulling back his long hair -- basically just being Joe Polarr on a normal school day.
"I'm not trying to get arrested, really. I'm just trying to get lunch," Polarr said. East Germany would not have been a great place to live in, he said.
var collab_title = 'Follow the rules, comrades ... or else';
By DAVID BALLCorrespondent
Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Stephany Fournier, an 11th-grader at Pine View School, did not want to punish her fellow classmates, but it had to be done. They defied the law.
"I'm normally a nice person, but I have to be really firm with these people," Stephany said. "They must come in, sit down and write this line on paper, front and back."
The line: "I will serve the glorious East German state better."
The students copied it repeatedly after watching a propaganda film depicting the evils of Western culture.
The drill was part of a history lesson taken to an elaborate level Tuesday at Pine View, where Stephany and the rest of the 2,000 students participated in an interactive lesson commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
"This was a project of the history club, and their idea was that students should really have an idea of what it was like to live in a communist state," said social studies teacher Patricia Johnston, who helped organize the project and served as the lead "comrade."
Students, with the help of a local landscaping company, erected a nearly 100-foot paper replica of the Berlin wall, complete with graffiti. It stood across the middle of the campus to mimic the concrete wall that separated communist East Germany from capitalist West Germany from 1961 to the end of 1989.
On the west side, students could walk around, socialize and behave as they normally do.
But on the east side, students could only walk on sidewalks, wear approved clothing (no hats, for instance) and had to behave in an orderly, controlled fashion.
Propaganda posters with phrases like "technology is unnecessary and degrades intelligence" lined the hallways, and gazebos and other recreation areas were marked as "unnecessary installations."
Teachers on the East German side taught lessons from a communist perspective.
As an East German general, Stephany gathered intelligence from other officers and handed out punishment to enemies of the state.
She looked the part, wearing a black business suit and black stockings, heels and dark eyeliner. Hundreds of other students wore military jackets -- and sometimes complete uniforms -- with red arm bands signifying their communist allegiance.
"I looked up 'communist women's fashions of the day' online," Stephany said. "The women all had pale faces and red lipstick. You had to look cold and imposing."
Most of the day's activities were at the wall itself and the five checkpoints where students could cross.
Students were given passports that were stamped as they crossed; illegal crossings and other disobedience was recorded in the passports.
"Although we really can't show them exactly what it was like, we want to show that the east was more strict," said student Marine Robbins, who commanded a checkpoint. "We've had quite a few people that have been belligerent and just don't agree at all with the simulation."
Marine said some students protested the project, including setting up Facebook pages to rally the opposition. But Marine said the protests actually simulated similar efforts during the real German struggle and made the entire exercise more authentic.
Most students followed protocol and said they learned more than in a regular classroom assignment. Ninth-grader Joe Polarr was arrested several times for walking on the grass, wearing a hat and not pulling back his long hair -- basically just being Joe Polarr on a normal school day.
"I'm not trying to get arrested, really. I'm just trying to get lunch," Polarr said. East Germany would not have been a great place to live in, he said.
Bring it on...the attack of the lemmings
I'm all for free speech so let them call. What is disturbing is the Chavezista thugs mentality of the Democrats, Will government organized street mobs be next.
Obama campaign arm focuses on talk radio
The Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America has quietly launched an initiative aimed at making Obama supporters' voices heard on the largely conservative airwaves.
"The fate of health reform has been a focus of debate in living rooms and offices, on TV and online — and on talk radio. And since millions of folks turn to talk radio as a trusted source of news and opinions, we need to make sure OFA supporters are calling in with a pro-reform message," says the introduction to the online tool.
The online tool presents users with a radio show discussing political topics, to which supporters can listen live, and the phone number for that station, for when health care comes up. It also offers tips for callers and talking points on the issue.
My quick sampling produced Christian radio, a local talk station in Buffalo, and the syndicated talk shows of Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Sean Hannity — who will no doubt be thrilled with their new, liberal callers.
Supporters are then encouraged to report back on their encounters.
TechPresident's Nancy Scola writes that the program is a product of a new push inside the organization to develop new software tools to give supporters "achievable, tangible tasks to do that fit into the nooks and crannies of their day to day lives."
Great Quote from Lamar Alexander at Healthcare Summit
"If you take away all the profits from all the insurance companies, you'll be able to pay for about 2 days worth of healthcare for the country."
--Lamar Alexander at the healthcare summit
Of course when the camera cut to Obama he had that look of disdain he gets when someone says something he doesn't like.
--Lamar Alexander at the healthcare summit
Of course when the camera cut to Obama he had that look of disdain he gets when someone says something he doesn't like.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Obama's Attacks on Israel Have Only Brought Americans Closer to Israel
Obama has been no friend to Israel since he came into office. So it really is amazing how Americans are now more supportive of Israel than they have been in 20 years (since scuds were raining down on Tel Aviv). He really doesn't understand how Americans think, does he?:
The graph below is also interesting. It appears that most of the surge has come from Republicans 85% of whom now support Israel and Independents, 60% oh whom support Israel. It's funny how liberal Jews constantly think of Republicans as anti-semites when its the Democrats who are the ones who are least likely to support Israel:
The graph below is also interesting. It appears that most of the surge has come from Republicans 85% of whom now support Israel and Independents, 60% oh whom support Israel. It's funny how liberal Jews constantly think of Republicans as anti-semites when its the Democrats who are the ones who are least likely to support Israel:
Reconciliation Issues
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) sees some major issues with using reconciliation on Obamacare.
"I don't know of any way, I don't know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes," said Conrad, who would be a central figure on the Senate floor if Democrats embark on the complicated process. "I don't know how you would deal with the scoring. I don't know how I could look you in the eye and say this package reduces the deficit. It's kind of got the cart before the horse."
When reminded that House Democrats don't want to do health care in that order, Conrad said bluntly: "Fine, then it's dead."
You thought Bill Clinton was bad...
Obama Giving U.S. R&D to China
By Howard Richman, Raymond Richman, and Jesse Richman
The United States and China are involved in a trade war, the outcome of which will determine who gets America's remaining manufacturing industries and research and development centers. The Chinese are actively fighting; President Obama is actively talking.
The Chinese government fired a huge broadside in December when it issued new rules requiring that American corporations doing business in China move their research and development centers and patents to China as a condition for selling goods and services to the Chinese government.
Nineteen trade groups that represent America's largest corporations responded with a January 29 letter to several U.S. government officials. Here is a selection:
Of most immediate concern are new rules issued by the Chinese government in November to establish a national catalogue of products to receive significant preferences for government procurement. Among the criteria for eligibility for the catalogue is that the products contain intellectual property that is developed and owned in China and that any associated trademarks are originally registered in China. This represents an unprecedented use of domestic intellectual property as a market-access condition and makes it nearly impossible for the products of American companies to qualify unless they are prepared to establish Chinese brands and transfer their research and development of new products to China.
These organizations concluded their letter with the following request:
We respectfully request that your agencies make this issue in particular a strategic priority in your bilateral economic engagement with China; develop, in consultation with the business community and like-minded foreign governments, a strong, fully coordinated response to the Chinese government; and raise this issue with your Chinese counterparts in all appropriate unilateral and bilateral settings and forums.
The Wall Street Journal reported on February 16 ("U.S. Expected to Press China on Yuan") that in response, the Obama administration took the following action:
In an unusually broad response, U.S. officials from several government agencies have approached the Chinese to relay concern over the proposed rules, according to people familiar with the situation. "We are expressing our serious concerns with all appropriate counterparts in the Chinese government," said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
However, the Obama administration has not responded with anything stronger than an expression of concern. A commentary by Kendra Marr in The Politico ("White House takes tougher tone with China") reports Peterson Institute for International Economics Senior Fellow Nicholas R. Lardy saying that the Obama administration's "tougher tone" with China is mainly for public consumption":
For now, however, these moves are just "trying to head off critics in Congress who think the administration is lying down in front of the Chinese,' Lardy said.
The Peterson Institute is an international economics think-tank with close ties to the Obama administration. This is not the first time that they have approvingly pointed out that Obama's tough trade rhetoric is phony. Just after President Obama was elected, Senior Fellow Gary Hufbauer correctly told Reuters:
As strong as Obama's [campaign] rhetoric on China has been, he'll probably moderate his stance as president to head off any bill that opens the door for "an avalanche of countervailing duty cases."
The February 16 Wall Street Journal story reported that the Peterson Institute currently advises multilateral diplomacy at June's G-20 meeting:
"If the administration is going to be serious about putting pressure on China, it has to be multilateral," said Nicholas R. Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who pointed to the G-20 meeting in June as an important forum where Obama can rally world support against Chinese practices.
Lardy hopes that President Obama gets another communiqué passed in June like the ineffective one the G-20 passed at their September meeting, which urged "adequate and balanced global demand." But China, so far, has been very good at resisting international peer pressure.
Perhaps Obama is afraid to take action against Chinese mercantilism (the strategy of maximizing exports and minimizing imports) for fear of losing the Chinese loans that help finance his budget deficits, which are projected by some to total over a trillion dollars per year throughout his presidency. The Chinese hinted that they might stop financing the U.S. budget deficits when they sold $34 billion of U.S. Treasury Bonds in December.
When the Chinese government sells U.S. Treasury Bonds, it tends to drive up the interest rates that the U.S. government pays, but the effect is muted if China simply moves money from one U.S. asset to another. The fact that the dollar-yuan exchange rate hasn't changed in nineteen months shows that the Chinese government is still converting its trade surplus with the U.S. (more than $200 billion in 2009) into dollar assets. It has not wanted to diminish the value of the dollar relative to the yuan because that would raise the prices of Chinese goods to Americans and reduce the prices of U.S. goods to the Chinese.
The U.S. government should not fear Chinese threats to bring about a dollar collapse today. With the Greeks making sure that the euro does not provide an immediate threat to the dollar, the Chinese government would probably not be able to cause a dollar collapse now even if it wanted to. And there is little chance that China will dump the dollar while America still has lots of industry and research and development left that China wants to steal. If it were to crash the dollar, it would cause investment in the U.S. manufacturing sector to come roaring back, which would wreck its plans. The U.S. should, however, fear the Chinese government's threats to bring about a dollar collapse in the future.
That future is becoming clear. Now we are losing our good-paying blue collar manufacturing jobs to China because of our unwillingness to require balanced trade. Soon we will lose our good-paying white collar research and development jobs to China because of our unwillingness to require balanced trade. When the dollar collapse comes, we will have nothing left but agriculture, service industries, and scrapyards.
But this grim future can still be avoided if we are willing to invoke the WTO rule which lets trade deficit countries require balanced trade. For example, we could impose a tariff on Chinese products in proportion to the trade deficit. When the U.S. trade deficit with China goes up, the tariff rate goes up; when the trade deficit goes down, the tariff rate goes down. When trade reaches approximate balance, the tariff disappears. If the Chinese government continues to exclude American products from its markets, it would be excluding Chinese products from American markets. A proposal by Warren Buffet to use import certificates to balance trade would work in about the same way.
But President Obama's solution has been just to take a "tougher tone" in order to keep Congress from acting. The United States and China are fighting a trade war which will determine America's economic future, and we don't yet know which side President Obama is on.
By Howard Richman, Raymond Richman, and Jesse Richman
The United States and China are involved in a trade war, the outcome of which will determine who gets America's remaining manufacturing industries and research and development centers. The Chinese are actively fighting; President Obama is actively talking.
The Chinese government fired a huge broadside in December when it issued new rules requiring that American corporations doing business in China move their research and development centers and patents to China as a condition for selling goods and services to the Chinese government.
Nineteen trade groups that represent America's largest corporations responded with a January 29 letter to several U.S. government officials. Here is a selection:
Of most immediate concern are new rules issued by the Chinese government in November to establish a national catalogue of products to receive significant preferences for government procurement. Among the criteria for eligibility for the catalogue is that the products contain intellectual property that is developed and owned in China and that any associated trademarks are originally registered in China. This represents an unprecedented use of domestic intellectual property as a market-access condition and makes it nearly impossible for the products of American companies to qualify unless they are prepared to establish Chinese brands and transfer their research and development of new products to China.
These organizations concluded their letter with the following request:
We respectfully request that your agencies make this issue in particular a strategic priority in your bilateral economic engagement with China; develop, in consultation with the business community and like-minded foreign governments, a strong, fully coordinated response to the Chinese government; and raise this issue with your Chinese counterparts in all appropriate unilateral and bilateral settings and forums.
The Wall Street Journal reported on February 16 ("U.S. Expected to Press China on Yuan") that in response, the Obama administration took the following action:
In an unusually broad response, U.S. officials from several government agencies have approached the Chinese to relay concern over the proposed rules, according to people familiar with the situation. "We are expressing our serious concerns with all appropriate counterparts in the Chinese government," said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
However, the Obama administration has not responded with anything stronger than an expression of concern. A commentary by Kendra Marr in The Politico ("White House takes tougher tone with China") reports Peterson Institute for International Economics Senior Fellow Nicholas R. Lardy saying that the Obama administration's "tougher tone" with China is mainly for public consumption":
For now, however, these moves are just "trying to head off critics in Congress who think the administration is lying down in front of the Chinese,' Lardy said.
The Peterson Institute is an international economics think-tank with close ties to the Obama administration. This is not the first time that they have approvingly pointed out that Obama's tough trade rhetoric is phony. Just after President Obama was elected, Senior Fellow Gary Hufbauer correctly told Reuters:
As strong as Obama's [campaign] rhetoric on China has been, he'll probably moderate his stance as president to head off any bill that opens the door for "an avalanche of countervailing duty cases."
The February 16 Wall Street Journal story reported that the Peterson Institute currently advises multilateral diplomacy at June's G-20 meeting:
"If the administration is going to be serious about putting pressure on China, it has to be multilateral," said Nicholas R. Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who pointed to the G-20 meeting in June as an important forum where Obama can rally world support against Chinese practices.
Lardy hopes that President Obama gets another communiqué passed in June like the ineffective one the G-20 passed at their September meeting, which urged "adequate and balanced global demand." But China, so far, has been very good at resisting international peer pressure.
Perhaps Obama is afraid to take action against Chinese mercantilism (the strategy of maximizing exports and minimizing imports) for fear of losing the Chinese loans that help finance his budget deficits, which are projected by some to total over a trillion dollars per year throughout his presidency. The Chinese hinted that they might stop financing the U.S. budget deficits when they sold $34 billion of U.S. Treasury Bonds in December.
When the Chinese government sells U.S. Treasury Bonds, it tends to drive up the interest rates that the U.S. government pays, but the effect is muted if China simply moves money from one U.S. asset to another. The fact that the dollar-yuan exchange rate hasn't changed in nineteen months shows that the Chinese government is still converting its trade surplus with the U.S. (more than $200 billion in 2009) into dollar assets. It has not wanted to diminish the value of the dollar relative to the yuan because that would raise the prices of Chinese goods to Americans and reduce the prices of U.S. goods to the Chinese.
The U.S. government should not fear Chinese threats to bring about a dollar collapse today. With the Greeks making sure that the euro does not provide an immediate threat to the dollar, the Chinese government would probably not be able to cause a dollar collapse now even if it wanted to. And there is little chance that China will dump the dollar while America still has lots of industry and research and development left that China wants to steal. If it were to crash the dollar, it would cause investment in the U.S. manufacturing sector to come roaring back, which would wreck its plans. The U.S. should, however, fear the Chinese government's threats to bring about a dollar collapse in the future.
That future is becoming clear. Now we are losing our good-paying blue collar manufacturing jobs to China because of our unwillingness to require balanced trade. Soon we will lose our good-paying white collar research and development jobs to China because of our unwillingness to require balanced trade. When the dollar collapse comes, we will have nothing left but agriculture, service industries, and scrapyards.
But this grim future can still be avoided if we are willing to invoke the WTO rule which lets trade deficit countries require balanced trade. For example, we could impose a tariff on Chinese products in proportion to the trade deficit. When the U.S. trade deficit with China goes up, the tariff rate goes up; when the trade deficit goes down, the tariff rate goes down. When trade reaches approximate balance, the tariff disappears. If the Chinese government continues to exclude American products from its markets, it would be excluding Chinese products from American markets. A proposal by Warren Buffet to use import certificates to balance trade would work in about the same way.
But President Obama's solution has been just to take a "tougher tone" in order to keep Congress from acting. The United States and China are fighting a trade war which will determine America's economic future, and we don't yet know which side President Obama is on.