Satan with Wings

I recently spent the day listening to talk radio and the gushings of many anonymous callers extolling Ted Kennedy's virtues ("He pinned the Purple Heart on me." "He saved my ill daughters life.", "He regularly goes to church." etc.) I was actually quite taken aback by the degree of adoration shown to Edward Moore Kennedy on his passing. But, this being Massachusetts, I was not shocked. After all he was returned to the Senate seven times by the voters here. However, to balance these kudos, there are many negatives that will hound Ted Kennedy well past his interment -- he "borked" Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas; he championed the legalizing of millions of illegal immigrants in 1965; he was a bosom buddy to the despots, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega; he abetted the drowning of a young lady and then lied about his actions; he sullied his Senate position with his boozing and his womanizing; he kept slicing the salami aiming toward socialized medicine, etc., etc. Despite all these failings, many in the Bay State still went aflutter as his shadow passed. He was affectionately known as the "lion of the Senate" but, as Rush Limbaugh recently said, yes, and "we were his prey."

So was he an angel or its doppelganger -- a seraph with horns or Satan with wings? Each of us will come down one one side or another of this question. But, I for one, can't bring myself to genuflect.

Wee Weed Up

Fast-growing small marijuana plants? Kindergarten slang for being upset? Wild growth of dandelions? Pissing up a rope? A room full of bed wetters? Exactly what did Barack Obama mean when he used this unfamiliar street vernacular (or, rather, scatological term), "wee weed up" see Barack Obama speaks? Didn't Jack Paar lose his job in 1960 by using the tame English bathroom term "WC' (water closet). Now, we have a President who can obliquely refer to our urinating without any repercussion. Oh, well ... if, during his campaign, he can slyly give the one-finger salute to Hillary Clinton and to John McCain without a public ripple, I guess he can insult his current opposition by questioning their bladder control.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Obama lied,

Granny died.

Protester's sign at Obama's Portsmouth, NH town meeting on revamping health care.

Robert Frost Favored Global Warming

"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday dear Barry.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday fearless leader.

Happy Birthday to you.

(kiss, kiss, kiss)

It's not Obama's 44th. It's his 48th.

Or is it? Maybe we need to see his birth certificate?

Big Brother ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The following is from the official White House website:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking you for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

If this doesn't send a chill up your spine, you are not alive.

Cash for Clunkers

One obvious effect of the government getting involved in free enterprise is run-away price inflation. Over the last twenty years the three areas of our economy that have experienced the greatest price increases have been higher education, real estate, and medicine -- all three areas where the government has insinuated itself to "help" things out.

In higher education, easy-to-get student loans, government scholarships, and faculty research grants have fattened to coffers of colleges and universities while at the same time caused tuitions and fees to skyrocket. The (previous) rapid increase in home prices can be directly attributed to the $500,000 family exclusion of capital gains tax on primary residence sales and the government's coercion of banks to finance mortgages to sub-prime borrowers. And, in health care, the tax-deductibility of company-paid health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and government-guaranteed health care to all Americans has also caused this sector of our economy to experience escalating costs far beyond the Consumer Price Index.

Now the government is pumping the new car sales market with its $4,500 "cash-for-clunkers" program. After quickly running through the first one billion of our grandchildren's money to pay for this feel-good program, Congress is ready to ante up another $2,0o0,000,000. And I predict that this will not be the end of such give-aways. Surely, our Washington solons will try to buy their way back into to office next year by continuing to pour money into this program. With what results? I safely predict that, before too long, automobile companies and dealers will increase the prices of their cars to sop up every last cent of this government largess ... creating yet another sector of our economy with out-of-control price inflation. Enough!! Let's all go back and read "Atlas Shrugged."

Revered to Reviled

Are talk radio and cable TV causing our nation to spin, once again, out of control? Have we forever lost all sense of decorum? With such mania do we effectively give the rest of the world the go-ahead to disrespect us ... at the same time they look to us to solve their problems? What is it in our national psyche that causes us to demonize our Presidents shortly after they take office? I, myself, am surely just as guilty as these image makers. And yet I am not too contrite about it. I have been annealed in the oven of "take-no-prisoners" politics. Yet, still I feel a tiny bit guilty for being so partisan.

Or are such images legitimate political commentary for which a cure isn't necessary?

Talk About Racial Profiling

Come on Dog Days

With all this cool weather and rain I am looking forward to the dog days of summer ... and my lawn burning out.

A Global-Warming Denier

Pride and Prejudice

To exhibit prejudice one must "pre-judge" situations or people. Prejudice is not the forming of some generalizations after observing "n" people or situations. One can and does naturally form stereotypes in ones mind through our life experiences. This is often characterized by the unthinking as prejudice. But what is true prejudice is when one applies such a stereotype in the n+1st case. This is what is unfair and biased.

Now suppose that you have seen many rowdy English soccer fans on TV and conclude that English soccer fans tend to be hooligans, even dangerous. Then suppose next you meet an English soccer fan on a London bus. Can you assume that this individual should be avoided at all cost? Unless there is other damming evidence, I would clearly say "no" as this is exhibiting prejudice.

Now, last night President Obama made two unfortunate observations about the Cambridge police officer (Sgt. Crowley) who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates in the contra temps at the Professor's home last week. Obama first said, "without knowing all the facts," that this police officer "acted stupidly". This may or may not have been the case. Certainly, he could have been a tad more diplomatic. But then Obama went on to say that there is a long history of blacks and Latinos being profiled by the police in this country ... implying that Sgt. Crowley was also profiling Professor Gates because he is black. I do believe that profiling probably does exist in this country to whatever degree (probably diminishing).

But President Obama's comment was clearly prejudicial because he applied what may have been his valid generalization to this n+1st case "without knowing all the facts." This is not the kind of nuanced behavior one expects to see in our President.

Health-care Rx

I'm beginning to believe (no, I know) that Congress and this administration are a bunch of doofuses ... witness their (independent of their political party) feeble and/or self-serving attempts to solve our health-care costs problem. First, I have an issue with the premise that our medical costs are "spiraling out of control." Fifteen years ago national heath-care costs represented 14% of GNP and today they are just over 17% of GNP. Wow!! Let's destroy our economy and our way of life for a three percentage point growth in health care costs over fifteen years.

But, OK, I will concede that we can't let this trend continue forever and therefore the major thrust of "health-care reform" should be cost containment and (hopefully) rollback ... not expanded standard health-care insurance coverage (which, by the fact that it inserts a government middleman into the existing process, is sure to be more expensive.)

There seems to me a number of obvious solutions for containing or reducing the cost of health care in this country:

1) Eliminate emergency room (E.R.) health care -- indigent outpatient clinics need to be opened in hospitals with appointments required, a minimum payment requirement (say $20?), and reasonable Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements. (This is the way it was 50 years ago.) Non-emergency medical treatment should not be permitted in E.R.s.

2) Tort reform -- today many doctors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in medical malpractice insurance. This money must be made up in patient fees and, often, in dubious other practices (non-required tests) which compromise the integrity of many medical practitioners. We also need to eliminate lawyers' advertising on TV (which once was the case prior to the tsunami of litigious medical bonanzas, such as John Edwards reveled in)

3) Pooled major-medical insurance -- there should be made available a centralized comprehensive major-medical insurance provider separated from standard medical insurance. It can be private (preferred) or public, but should be so large as to spread the risk of medical catastrophes over virtually the entire population of this country. It would be available for individuals to purchase, but HMOs and other health insurance companies could re-insure through this entity (at a cheaper cost) the major-medical portion of their existing coverage.

4) Huge pooled drug purchasing at cheaper prices -- separated from normal medical insurance. Can be done privately (preferred) or publicly (like the current Medicare/Medicaid drug offerings). HMOs and other health insurance companies could take advantage of this consortium to reduce the drug purchasing costs of their health coverage. We should also eliminate all prescribed-drug ads on television (like it used to be). This would help reduce the cost of drug marketing to the pharmaceutical companies which might help offset the gross margin pressure forced by the cheaper prices engendered by this pooled purchasing.

5) No elective medical procedures should be paid for by health insurance companies. The cost of such things a liposuction, breast augmentation, etc. should be entirely borne by the recipient. This would cut back on many of these self-indulgent medical costs.

6) More program options for standard (non-major) medical insurance coverage. Families of two person (such as retired couples) should not be forced into a "family" category with young married couples with higher premiums than are justified.

7) Cutoffs for the tax-deductibility of gold-plated medical insurance premiums -- companies (and government entities such as Congress) should not provide (and pay for) employees tax-deductible health insurance whose premiums exceed a maximum level (say $20,000 per year per family). Those plans exceeding that level would incur a tax liability to the recipient

8) Eliminate from Medicaid and Medicare coverage the following groups -- prisoners (2.3 million), illegal immigrants (12 million), Americans living abroad (6.6 million), and millionaires (40,000).

9) All non-major-medical doctor or hospital visits and prescription drugs that are covered by standard medical insurance should have a co-pay of at least 5% of the cost to the provider. This would encourage better economic decision-making (such as switching to generic drugs and eschewing non-required tests) on the part of insured recipients.

R.I.P.

Of the two famous brothers, Frank McCourt, the kindly teacher, patient mentor and compelling storyteller, and Malachy McCourt, the irascible blaggard, gold smuggler and unrepentant Communist, it was Frank who had to run out of oxygen first. Such is the pathos and fickleness of the Irish experience.

A Sotomayor Snippet

Yesterday, on a local talk show, a sincere-sounding woman called in with some first-hand experiences with Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I realize that her comments are anecdotal, but, to me, they struck home given what we already know about the judge.

It seems that this caller was, at one time, a federal prosecutor and had to argue a case in front of Judge Sotomayor. She was warned ahead of time by her compatriots that this judge was not easy on government prosecutors (usually favoring the plaintiff). Quite to the contrary, this prosecutor (with a Hispanic if not Puerto-Rican-sounding surname) was treated quite deferentially by Judge Sotomayor and prevailed in most of her points.

At the end of the day, in an unusual move, Judge Sotomayor called this lawyer to her bench and asked her quietly if she were Puerto Rican. This woman responded that no, this was her married name as her husband was Puerto Rican. After this exchange, Judge Sotomayor's demeanor changed 180 degrees and, in all future arguments in front of her, this prosecutor received the treatment she was originally expecting.

The Ayatollah is a Neocon?

Zbigniew Brzezinski was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for about the twentieth time since his daughter Mika took over as co-host (with Joe Scarborough). As always, he opined mainly about world geopolitics concentrating on, or course, Iran. During this pedantic pontificating he labeled the Ayatollah (or, as Obama calls him, "Supreme Leader") and his henchmen as “Iranian neocons” … not just once but numerous times. This sly semantics of the left unfortunately went unchallenged by the former Republican Representative from Florida, Joe Scarborough, and, more understandingly, the rest of this show’s mostly left-leaning talking heads (including Boston's erstwhile plagiarist, Mike Barnicle). Now, if the MSNBCers can get away with this linguistic slight-of-hand once, they will surely try to drum this notion into the heads of the few thousand viewers that they draw to their other left-wing propaganda podia-ists – Chris Mathews, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann. I also predict that we will eventually see this smear hung on the neocons by network television, CNN, and most of the print media. Now, here are the things that an alert Joe Scarborough should have said the first time Zbigniew uttered this insidious affront:

- our neocons did not impose a religious agenda on the U.S.
- our neocons did not brutally repress political speech or civilian assembly
- our neocons were freely elected … not governing as a result of a political coup
- our neocons had no private army (such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Quds)
- our neocons did not censor the media nor exile foreign correspondents
- our neocons did not sponsor worldwide terrorist activity
- our neocons did not threaten to annihilate Israel (or even the Axis of Evil)
- as far as I know, our neocons did not murder their political enemies

Finally, one should always remember that Zbigniew Brzezinski was our National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter … when we made such a dog’s breakfast out of our relations with Iran. He just might still have a hidden-agenda reason to deflect criticism from his own historic failings.

See No Evil

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has killed a domestic spy satellite program that would have been used ”to provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.” See: No Eyes in the Sky To me, this is one more indication that the Obama administration does not have our nation’s security as its top-of-mind issue. Add this to the list of other administration backtracks that reduce our nation’s ability to combat radical-Islamic terrorism:

- the announced year-end closing of Gitmo,
- the release of top-secret terrorist interrogation memos,
- the relocating al-Qaeda Uighur terrorists to Bermuda and Palau,
- the reading of Miranda-rights to terrorists captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan,
- and Obama’s ho-hum attitude to a terrorist’s killing of an Army recruiter in Little Rock.

I wonder how much more dismantling is still to occur to the anti-terrorism battlements that were erected by the Bush administration. And this bothers me … it bothers me quite a bit.

Boondoggle Glitch

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been quarantined in China after being exposed to the swine flu. See: Asian Boondoggle. Why do mayors and their entourages (too often including wives) indulge themselves in these obviously fake economic missions? (Boston’s mayor ,“Mumbles” Menino, has also had his share of expense-paid vacations, see Menino Italy Trip and Menino S.A. Trip ). Mayor Nagin will be out of office within the year. See: Last Days. Therefore, I suspect, any possible benefit that he can squeeze from his current boondoggle will be quickly dissipated once he is gone.

Perhaps, if the main-stream media were doing their jobs, they would grill these pols upon their return from such expensive “economic missions” to ascertain exactly what had been accomplished ... and then do follow-up stories.

Dr. Spock

Many of my dewy eyed friends, raised on Dr. Spock’s permissive, non-judgmental teachings, believe that Barack Obama has the magic formula for world peace (as demonstrated in his Cairo speech – all nations are created equal, kind words will conquer all, and nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of the U.S. are a menace.) This passivity contrasts with Ronald Reagan’s active message of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” This difference is especially telling when one compares Obama governing style with his rhetoric. He said in Cairo (and pledged on the campaign trail) that governments should be transparent, yet the opaqueness and reach of what his regime is actually doing is stunning. He also said there that “any world order that elevates one nation over another will fail”. This is the ultimate in non-judgmental pap … and a very dangerous notion that mirrors his (and many other liberal's) knee-jerk, hate-America-first attitude. To have thought that we were no better than Germany during World War II would have eliminated any incentive for us to stop this totalitarian menace. And to think that the United States is today on an equal moral footing with North Korea is nothing more than bubble-headed sophism.

For a man, with such rhetorical gifts, to have such anti-American and deep-seated Spockian ideals is truly dangerous … particularly when he lives in the White House.

Don’t Do as I Do ...

Barack Obama was recently interviewed by the BBC in which he said, "The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose [our] values on another country with a different history and a different culture," I, for one, think this statement is exquisitely ironic considering the fact that Obama feels no compunction about imposing his far left-leaning values, born of a different culture and history, on his own nation. See: Pravda

My Hero, Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter has pretty much headed my manure list for quite a few years ... but this week he went a long way toward redeeming himself. He testified in front of John Kerry's Energy Committee. After a bit of typical self-engrandizement and boring side trips, he said a few things that caused me to sit up and smile:

1) He was and is in favor of the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain
2) He is very much in favor of nuclear power plants as the chief hope in solving our future energy needs
3) When he commanded a nuclear submarine, they had to replace their nuclear fuel every few years. Now the nuclear carrier George H.W. Bush can go its entire life without replenishing its nuclear fuel. This advancement in nuclear technology bodes very well for the efficiency of any future nuclear power plants [which we may yet have the good sense to build -- my add].

I Googled for these remarks and found this article in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank. Take a gander and see if you can find this info anywhere cited ... as another example of main-stream media bias: MSM Bias

I also was visiting Los Alamos, NM this PM and discovered the following facts:
- If you live within 5 miles of a coal powered power plant, you will receive about 0.3 rems of radiation exposure per year (out of a total average exposure of about 200 rems per year)
- If you live within 5 miles of a nuclear powered power plant, you will receive only about 0.1 rems of radiation exposure per year!
- The greatest contributor of radiation exposure to the average person is medical and dental x-rays ... followed by radon gas.