Have we taken leave of our senses? We have a card caring intellectual showing us there is no relationship between brains and maturity. Apparently anybody can act like a meathead. I would expect more of a man of his station in life.
We have a cop that has been trained to the point that he teaches the exact type of sensitivity that was called for in this situation that ended up past his tipping point.
And the leader of the free world making a boneheaded comment that any lawyer is taught better than in law school 101. Instead of a simple mea culpa he is unable to accept personal responsibility and blames the “media frenzy”.
It’s strange to me that racism appears to be a one way street in America. It was the white cop that was accused here even though there was also an African American cop involved in the event and arrest. He is also corroborating the Sergeant’s side of the story although that’s not getting much news play. Looks to me that the argument can easily be made that the real racism is on the other foot.
Now the most powerful man in America has nothing better to do with his time than to mediate between the parties. Huston, we have a problem.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
My Democrat Friends We're Right After all!
Much as it pains me to say this, I have to admit it - my Democrat friends were right.
They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation's hope would deteriorate, and sure enough there has been a 20 point drop in the Consumer Confidence Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the Bush administration.
They told me if I voted for McCain, the US would become more deeply embroiled in the Middle East, and now, tens of thousands of additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan.
My Democrat Party friends told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and sure enough unemployment is exceeding 9.5% and the stimulus packages implemented has sent the stock market lower than at any time since the Islamic Terrorists attacks of 9-11.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "crooks" in high ranking positions in Federal government and sure enough, several recent cabinet nominees and Senate appointments revealed resumes of scandal, bribery and tax fraud.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "Pork at the trough" in Federal government and sure enough, 9,500 "Pork Barrel Earmarks" showed up in bills passed by Congress since January 2009....
I was also told by my Democrat friends that if I voted for McCain, we would see more deficit spending in Washington D.C. , and sure enough, Obama has spent more in just 30 days than all other Presidents together - in the entire history of the good old USA.
Well, I voted for McCain in November and my Democrat friends were right, all of their predictions have come true!
They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation's hope would deteriorate, and sure enough there has been a 20 point drop in the Consumer Confidence Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the Bush administration.
They told me if I voted for McCain, the US would become more deeply embroiled in the Middle East, and now, tens of thousands of additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan.
My Democrat Party friends told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and sure enough unemployment is exceeding 9.5% and the stimulus packages implemented has sent the stock market lower than at any time since the Islamic Terrorists attacks of 9-11.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "crooks" in high ranking positions in Federal government and sure enough, several recent cabinet nominees and Senate appointments revealed resumes of scandal, bribery and tax fraud.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "Pork at the trough" in Federal government and sure enough, 9,500 "Pork Barrel Earmarks" showed up in bills passed by Congress since January 2009....
I was also told by my Democrat friends that if I voted for McCain, we would see more deficit spending in Washington D.C. , and sure enough, Obama has spent more in just 30 days than all other Presidents together - in the entire history of the good old USA.
Well, I voted for McCain in November and my Democrat friends were right, all of their predictions have come true!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
History of The Department of Energy
First, let me say, the new plan is we cannot drill the oil we have and must buy our oil from others. What if, we used only or mostly our oil, while we really pushed alternate energy.
MAYBE THE GOVERNMENT CAN HELP US DO IT.
Absolutely the funniest joke ever......ON US!!!
• Let it sink in.
• Quietly we go like sheep to slaughter.
Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ..... during the Carter Administration?
• Anybody?
• Anything?
• No?
• Didn't think so !
Bottom line .. we've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency..the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember.
Ready?
It was very simple.. and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate...
The 'Department of Energy' was instituted on August 4,1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. Hey, pretty efficient, huh?????
AND NOW IT'S 2009, 32 YEARS LATER... AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT$24.2 + BILLION A YEAR IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!
THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY "WHAT WAS I THINKING?"
MAYBE THE GOVERNMENT CAN HELP US DO IT.
Absolutely the funniest joke ever......ON US!!!
• Let it sink in.
• Quietly we go like sheep to slaughter.
Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ..... during the Carter Administration?
• Anybody?
• Anything?
• No?
• Didn't think so !
Bottom line .. we've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency..the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember.
Ready?
It was very simple.. and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate...
The 'Department of Energy' was instituted on August 4,1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. Hey, pretty efficient, huh?????
AND NOW IT'S 2009, 32 YEARS LATER... AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT$24.2 + BILLION A YEAR IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!
THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY "WHAT WAS I THINKING?"
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Is This How Obama Is Going To Cut Health Care Costs?
Say it ain't so, Mr. President . . .
Citing the U.K. as an example, Mr Obama praised them for spending half (or less) than we do on health care. How do they do it you might ask, try their National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence ( another progressive code word(S) for "you're gonna get screwed again").
The British officials who established NICE claimed that it was a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. Health ministers are setting up NICE designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere.
NICE has now become a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain NICE reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS.
Here's some frightening examples:
NICE removed two drugs from their approved list, Lapatinib and Sutent. They prolong life of those with forms of breast and stomach cancer.
They also ruled against drugs that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients.
Peter Littlejohns, NICE's public health director, said that "there is a limited pot of money,"and the money might be better spent elsewhere. Nice guy . . . Very thoughtful and empathetic.
The board also restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration. Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, only about 20% that needed it, then they are only going to allow it in ONE EYE!. Go blind in the other! We don't care! Thanks again Peter Littlejohns. Let's nominate him for humanitarian of the Year.
Wait . . . . It gets better.
NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer's drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued loudly that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not "cost effective" in early stages. See a pattern here?
Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis;
Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and
lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma.
Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.
Folks, the list goes on:
Including denying pap smears for all women under 25. Restrictions on surgical procedures such as back pain surgery and fertility treatments.
They even have a dollar formula for the end of life that says it cannot cost more than $22,000 per 6 months or you are denied and get to die! Wow! that's enlightened. also, That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn't adjust for either overall or medical inflation. The last six months of life are a particularly difficult moral issue because that is when most health-care spending occurs. But who would you rather have making decisions about whether a treatment is worth the price -- the combination of you, your doctor and a private insurer, or a government board that cuts everyone off at $22,000?
It comes as no surprise that Britain has the lowest cancer survival rate in all of Europe.
Needless to say the savings is being overwhelmed by the cost of the law suits, and people are still suffering and dying.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats claim that they can expand the care to millions of Americans, while saving money and improving the quality of care. It can't be done. The inevitable result of their plan will be a NICE board that will tell millions of Americans that they are too young, or too old, or too sick to be worth paying to care for. And that may well be the future of American health care.
Have a nice day.
Citing the U.K. as an example, Mr Obama praised them for spending half (or less) than we do on health care. How do they do it you might ask, try their National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence ( another progressive code word(S) for "you're gonna get screwed again").
The British officials who established NICE claimed that it was a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. Health ministers are setting up NICE designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere.
NICE has now become a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain NICE reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS.
Here's some frightening examples:
NICE removed two drugs from their approved list, Lapatinib and Sutent. They prolong life of those with forms of breast and stomach cancer.
They also ruled against drugs that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients.
Peter Littlejohns, NICE's public health director, said that "there is a limited pot of money,"and the money might be better spent elsewhere. Nice guy . . . Very thoughtful and empathetic.
The board also restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration. Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, only about 20% that needed it, then they are only going to allow it in ONE EYE!. Go blind in the other! We don't care! Thanks again Peter Littlejohns. Let's nominate him for humanitarian of the Year.
Wait . . . . It gets better.
NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer's drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued loudly that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not "cost effective" in early stages. See a pattern here?
Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis;
Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and
lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma.
Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.
Folks, the list goes on:
Including denying pap smears for all women under 25. Restrictions on surgical procedures such as back pain surgery and fertility treatments.
They even have a dollar formula for the end of life that says it cannot cost more than $22,000 per 6 months or you are denied and get to die! Wow! that's enlightened. also, That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn't adjust for either overall or medical inflation. The last six months of life are a particularly difficult moral issue because that is when most health-care spending occurs. But who would you rather have making decisions about whether a treatment is worth the price -- the combination of you, your doctor and a private insurer, or a government board that cuts everyone off at $22,000?
It comes as no surprise that Britain has the lowest cancer survival rate in all of Europe.
Needless to say the savings is being overwhelmed by the cost of the law suits, and people are still suffering and dying.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats claim that they can expand the care to millions of Americans, while saving money and improving the quality of care. It can't be done. The inevitable result of their plan will be a NICE board that will tell millions of Americans that they are too young, or too old, or too sick to be worth paying to care for. And that may well be the future of American health care.
And if you think things are any better in Canada, think again. The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada .
It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. There were NO medivac helicopters anywhere near the ski resort.
If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today.
In the United States, we have medical evacuation helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes. It took them 8 HOURS to drive her down a mountain to a facility. Aparently THEY couldn't help her . . . They sent her to New Your. And by then . . . Well, we all know the rest of the story.
Have a nice day.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More on Climate Change . . . You Just Can't Ignore it.
No climate debate? Yes, there is
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 1, 2009
IN HIS weekly address on Saturday, President Obama saluted the House of Representatives for passing Waxman-Markey, the gargantuan energy-rationing bill that would amount to the largest tax increase in the nation's history. It would do so by making virtually everything that depends on energy -- which is virtually everything -- more expensive.
The president didn't describe the legislation in those terms on Saturday, but he made no bones about it last year. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, he calmly explained how cap-and-trade -- the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey -- would work:
Actually, there hasn't been any for 10 years
"Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it. . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers."
In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can," he told the Chronicle. "It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
The justification for inflicting all this financial misery, of course, is the onrushing catastrophe of human-induced global warming -- a catastrophe that can be prevented only if we abandon the carbon-based fuels on which most of the prosperity and productivity of modern life depend. But what if that looming catastrophe isn't real? What if climate change has little or nothing to do with human activity? What if enacting cap-and-trade means incurring excruciating costs in exchange for infinitesimal benefits?
Hush, says Obama. Don't ask such questions. And don't listen to anyone who does. "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy," he declared in his Saturday remarks. "It's happening."
No debate? The president, like Humphrey Bogart, must have been misinformed. The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years, and not only in America. "In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming," Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal the other day. "In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. . . . Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the 'new religion.'"
Closer to home, the noted physicist Hal Lewis (emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara) e-mails me a copy of a statement he and several fellow scientists, including physicists Will Happer and Robert Austin of Princton,Laurence Gould of the University of Hartford, and climate scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT, have sent to Congress. "The sky is not falling," they write. Far from warming, "the Earth has been cooling for 10 years" -- a trend that "was notpredicted by the alarmists' computer models."
Fortune magazine recently profiled veteran climatologist John Christy, a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and co-author of the American Geophysical Union's 2003 statement on climate change. With his green credentials, Fortune observed, Christy is the warm-mongers' "worst nightmare -- an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good."
No one who cares about the environment or the nation's economic well-being should take it on faith that climate change is a crisis, or that drastic changes to the economy are essential to "save the planet." Hundreds of scientists reject the alarmist narrative. For non-experts, a steadily-widening shelf of excellent books surveys the data in laymen's terms and exposes the weaknesses in the doomsday scenario -- among others, Climate Confusion by Roy W. Spencer, Climate of Fearby Thomas Gale Moore, Taken by Storm, by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, and Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.
If the case for a war on carbon dioxide were unassailable, no one would have to warn against debating it. The 212 House members who voted against Waxman-Markey last week plainly don't believe the matter is settled. They're right.
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 1, 2009
IN HIS weekly address on Saturday, President Obama saluted the House of Representatives for passing Waxman-Markey, the gargantuan energy-rationing bill that would amount to the largest tax increase in the nation's history. It would do so by making virtually everything that depends on energy -- which is virtually everything -- more expensive.
The president didn't describe the legislation in those terms on Saturday, but he made no bones about it last year. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, he calmly explained how cap-and-trade -- the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey -- would work:
Actually, there hasn't been any for 10 years
"Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it. . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers."
In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can," he told the Chronicle. "It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
The justification for inflicting all this financial misery, of course, is the onrushing catastrophe of human-induced global warming -- a catastrophe that can be prevented only if we abandon the carbon-based fuels on which most of the prosperity and productivity of modern life depend. But what if that looming catastrophe isn't real? What if climate change has little or nothing to do with human activity? What if enacting cap-and-trade means incurring excruciating costs in exchange for infinitesimal benefits?
Hush, says Obama. Don't ask such questions. And don't listen to anyone who does. "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy," he declared in his Saturday remarks. "It's happening."
No debate? The president, like Humphrey Bogart, must have been misinformed. The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years, and not only in America. "In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming," Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal the other day. "In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. . . . Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the 'new religion.'"
Closer to home, the noted physicist Hal Lewis (emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara) e-mails me a copy of a statement he and several fellow scientists, including physicists Will Happer and Robert Austin of Princton,Laurence Gould of the University of Hartford, and climate scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT, have sent to Congress. "The sky is not falling," they write. Far from warming, "the Earth has been cooling for 10 years" -- a trend that "was notpredicted by the alarmists' computer models."
Fortune magazine recently profiled veteran climatologist John Christy, a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and co-author of the American Geophysical Union's 2003 statement on climate change. With his green credentials, Fortune observed, Christy is the warm-mongers' "worst nightmare -- an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good."
No one who cares about the environment or the nation's economic well-being should take it on faith that climate change is a crisis, or that drastic changes to the economy are essential to "save the planet." Hundreds of scientists reject the alarmist narrative. For non-experts, a steadily-widening shelf of excellent books surveys the data in laymen's terms and exposes the weaknesses in the doomsday scenario -- among others, Climate Confusion by Roy W. Spencer, Climate of Fearby Thomas Gale Moore, Taken by Storm, by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, and Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.
If the case for a war on carbon dioxide were unassailable, no one would have to warn against debating it. The 212 House members who voted against Waxman-Markey last week plainly don't believe the matter is settled. They're right.
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