December 15, 2009
Climate change cultist cries over coral and corn
In the most absurd posting of the day, enviromoonbat Bill McKibbin (a guy who spells Earth with two As) explains how he sobbed at a church in Copenhagen… because of coral. And corn. And rocks.
This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I’m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen’s main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week. It was jammed, but I squeezed into a chair near the corner. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave the sermon; Desmond Tutu read the Psalm. Both were wonderful.
But my tears started before anyone said a word. As the service started, dozens choristers from around the world carried three things down the aisle and to the altar: pieces of dead coral bleached by hot ocean temperatures; stones uncovered by retreating glaciers; and small, shriveled ears of corn from drought-stricken parts of Africa. As I watched them go by, all I could think of was the people I’ve met in the last couple of years traveling the world: the people living in the valleys where those glaciers are disappearing, and the people downstream who have no backup plan for where their water is going to come from. The people who live on the islands surrounded by that coral, who depend on the reefs for the fish they eat, and to protect their homes from the waves. And the people, on every corner of the world, dealing with drought and flood, already unable to earn their daily bread in the places where their ancestors farmed for generations.
Those damned shriveled ears of corn. I’ve done everything I can think of, and millions of people around the world have joined us at 350.org in the most international campaign there ever was. But I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already; people are sitting tonight in their small homes trying to figure out how they’re going to make the maize meal they have stretch far enough to fill the tummies of the kids sitting there waiting for dinner. And that’s with 390 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. The latest numbers from the computer jockeys at Climate Interactive—a collaboration of Sustainability Institute, Sloan School of Management at MIT, and Ventana Systems, is that if all the national plans now on the table were adopted the planet in 2100 would have an atmosphere with 770 parts per million CO2. What then for coral, for glaciers, for corn. I didn’t do enough.
So I guess we’re blaming poverty and world hunger on global warming now, too? I guess that follows the same line of thinking that got Al Gore his Nobel Peace Prize, too — since global warming apparently causes war as well. Nevermind that Climategate has pretty much cemented what so many have suspected for so long, that the whole global warming cult is a scam, one engineered to manipulate people into getting more money and more control for the leaders of the cult. With global warming, there’s all kinds of money to be made and control to be exerted over people’s lives. Just look at cap and trade.
As I read the idiotic post above, I couldn’t help but think of this video:
The sheer ridiculousness of all of it astounds me. First of all, how does McKibben even know that the “dried up ears of corn” actually came from Africa? That the stones were uncovered by glaciers? Couldn’t someone have just, I don’t know, picked up a few rocks off the ground and said they were now exposed even though they used to be hidden by glaciers? And I’m curious. If these glaciers have all melted, then why is there such drought in Africa? Where does all the water go? I thought that if the glaciers melted, the oceans would rise and then flood every continent. Apparently Africa is exempt from this “fact”.
In any case, even if manmade global warming was real, who in their right mind is actually going to cry over a friggin’ rock? Or cry over a tree? You’ve got to be a little batty to cry hysterically at the mere sight of coral and corn. For heaven’s sake, we have enough wussy men in the world. Man up!
Fortunately, most adults won’t be impressed by the whiny emotionalism. That effects girls around the age of fifteen — and those who have the mentality of a fifteen-year-old girl (i.e., liberals and enviromoonbats). Most adults want to see the facts, not some girly man crying over a few ears of corn. And unfortunately for global warming cultists, the facts aren’t backing them up anymore. NASA found that ocean temperatures are cooling, not warming. Climategate showed us that scientists are manipulating the data to make the public believe global warming is actually taking place, when it isn’t. But that won’t stop this guy from crying over a few ears of corn and a couple pieces of coral.
Hat Tip: Ace of Spades
Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary or follow her on Twitter!
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Posted by Cassy Fiano in Global Warming, News, environmentalism at 9:33 pm | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
Indiana Elementary School Praises Allah: Allah is God Lyrics
by Maggie at Maggie’s Notebook
Danielle Thompson, the principal at Lantern Road Elementary school in Fishers, Indiana wanted to teach students inclusiveness to her students, and so the children in the school sang “Allah is God”. When it came to including Christians in the inclusive holiday program, the children sang “I didn’t know there was a little boy at the manger. What child is this? I’m not sure if there a little boy or not.” The inclusiviness at Lantern Road “included no other deity, other than Allah.”
According to the report, “the phrase was removed just before the performance” after protests. Does that mean “Allah is God” was removed but the mocking of the birth of Christ and the manger was not?
Micah Clark, executive director of the Indiana AFA, launched an Internet protest once he heard about the allegations. “What surprised me here is that we’ve had a secular scrubbing of Christmas for so long and the school apparently didn’t see the problem with kids singing to Allah,” he told FOX News Radio. “You won’t even mention Jesus and you’re going to force my child to sing about Allah?
In email correspondence the school initially defended the reference as a way to be inclusive of all religions. However, once complaints starting rolling in, school leaders decided to eliminate the Allah reference.
That drew the ire of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana. “It’s unfortunate if that was removed from the program just because of Islamophobic feelings,” Shariq Siddiqui told the Indianapolis Star.
Here are the lyrics of the praise to Allah:
“Allah is God, we recall at dawn,
Praying ‘til night during Ramadan
At this joyful time we pray happiness for you,
Allah be with you all your life through.”
Here are the lyrics for the Christian part of the program:
“I didn’t know there was a little boy at the manger. What child is this?
I’m not sure if there was a little boy or not.
Then why did you paint one on your nativity window?
I just thought if there was a little boy, I’d like to know exactly what he (sic) say.”
There are 542 little students, in grades Kindergarten through 4th at Lantern Road Elementary. The school’s website says they “welcome all parents to take an active role in their child’s education. That is just what David Hogan, the parent of a daughter in the second grade, did. She brought the lyrics home and he was stunned to know that his child had been praising Allah. How do you feel about the Islamification of your child, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, the neighbor next door? Are you as appalled as I?
Christmas is about Christ. Christmas has nothing to do with Islam.
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Posted by Maggie Thornton in Bald-face lies, Christmas, Education, Islam, Islamicfascism, News, religion at 6:37 pm | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |
White House Threatens to Close Offutt Air Force Base If Nelson Doesn’t Vote for Obamacare
Quite an explosive leak! I wonder how this will affect things? It is certainly a thuggish and dangerous thing for Obama to play with National Security over this craptacular idea of socialized medicine. Quite a desperate move.
According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line.
Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.” They are “threatening to close a base vital to national security for what?” asked the Senate staffer.
Indeed, Offutt is the headquarters for US Strategic Command, the successor to Strategic Air Command, and not by accident. STRATCOM was located in the middle of the country for strategic reasons. Its closure would be a massive blow to the economy of the state of Nebraska, but it would also be another example of this administration playing politics with our national security.
So much for the idea of Obama trying to save jobs and improve the economy!
Without Nelson’s vote, since all Republicans are still in line to oppose this, Reid is still left with 59 votes. So, some arm twisting is taking place. Nelson doesn’t want this bill to fund abortions so he is now being threatened, and national security along with him. How shameful this would be if Democrats felt shame.
The Obama administration has little left to use for leverage. Why not national security? After all, if we’re going to bring terrorists into Illinois, what does it matter if we put the US Strategic Command on wheels for a few years?
What a nightmare!
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Posted by Jay in Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Democrats, Dems In Charge: Now What?, Economy, Government corruption, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, National Security, News, President, Senate, Stupidity, Treason, extortion/blackmail, liberalism, military at 1:55 pm | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0) |
UN-Backed Goons Cause More Civilian Casualties Than Damage to Rebels in Congo
It’s tempting to cut moonbats slack, on the grounds that they simply have no clue because they spend their lives immersed in liberal propaganda. But even if you had no source of information other than progressive AP, you would know that a world run by the UN would not be a pleasant place to live. Here’s what our nascent global government has been up to in the Congo:
A U.N.-backed Congolese military operation to oust rebels from eastern Congo has caused more civilian casualties than damage to rebels, with more than 1,400 people deliberately killed over a nine-month period, human rights groups said Monday.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented “vicious and widespread” attacks against civilians by soldiers and rebels between January and September. Soldiers being fed and supplied with ammunition by the United Nations have killed civilians, gang-raped girls and cut the heads off some young men they accuse of being rebels or supporting the enemy, groups said.
“For every rebel combatant disarmed, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses have been burned and destroyed and 900 people have been forced to flee their homes,” British-based organization Oxfam said.
Human Rights Watch said it documented the killings of 732 civilians between January and September by the Congolese army and troops from neighboring Rwanda fighting alongside it. In the same period, it counted 701 civilians killed by the rebels they are fighting.
“Some victims were tied together before their throats were, according to one witness, ’slit like chickens.’ The majority of the victims were women, children, and the elderly,” the group said.
Your tax dollar at work.
Human Rights Watch said that the 19,000 peacekeepers in Congo — the biggest U.N. force in the world — must “immediately cease all support to the current military operation” until it can ensure there are no violations of international humanitarian law. The group also called for the U.N. to find “a new approach to protect civilians.”
“The U.N. peacekeepers are being put in an appalling situation where they are supporting an army that is attacking its own population,” it said.
That is, when the peacekeepers aren’t attacking the population themselves.
By all means, let’s gradually turn over American sovereignty to these goons, through climate change treaties and stealthier attacks like the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s not right that only Africans should be butchered and raped for the greater glory of world government.
On a tip from scottthong. Hat tip: Gateway Pundit. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
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Posted by Van Helsing in Government corruption, Government tyranny, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, News, UN, terrorism at 12:44 pm | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
Godd@mmit, it’s good for the public!!!
Written by Susan Duclos:
The headline is a quote from a Democratic strategist that asked Byron York at Washington Examiner not to name him.
…..Even if there’s a strategic rationale for doing it, why are Democrats dead-set on hurting themselves?
“Because they think they know what’s best for the public,” the strategist said. “They think the facts are being distorted and the public’s being told a story that is not entirely true, and that they are in Congress to be leaders. And they are going to make the decision because Godd@mmit, it’s good for the public.”
That was the bottom line. Now to go back a little into the article, York mentions Real Clear Politics healthcare averages in the polls which shows that the public, according to the latest polls from different organizations, is against the current forms of Obamacare by 53.3 percent against to 38 percent for.
Using the latest polls from Gallup, Rasmussen, Fox, CNN, Quinnipiac and Ipsos/McClatchy, they take the numbers and average them.
The Breakdown
Gallup- 48 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 46 percent for.
Rasmussen- 56 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 40 percent for.
Fox News- 57 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 34 percent for.
CNN- 61 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 36 percent for.
Quinnipiac- 52 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 38 percent for.
Ipsos/McClatchy- 46 percent Opposed to Obamacare/ 34 percent for.
Each and every one of them shows the public opposed to the Democrats many Obamacare plans.
So, Byron York wanted to know why, with such an overwhelming oppositional rating from the American people, are Democrats willing to risk their majorities and in some cases, their careers, on such an unpopular plan?
He spoke to a Democratic strategist to get the answer.
Three different answers and three different assumed points of view, depending on whether it is the Senate Democrats, the House Democrats or the White House.
You have to look at the issue from three different Democratic perspectives: the House of Representatives, the White House and the Senate.
“In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we’ve waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best,” he said. “This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt.” In this view, losses are just the price of doing something great and historic. (The strategist also noted that it’s easy for Waxman and Pelosi to say that, since they come from safely liberal districts.)
“At the White House, the picture is slightly different,” he continued. “Their view is, ‘We’re all in on this, totally committed, and we don’t have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now.’”
“And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats — like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid — and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before.”
The conclusion and final parting shot from the Democratic strategist is the best analogy I have seen for Democrats willing to sacrifice their jobs and their majorities for a bill the public is overwhelmingly opposed to.
At that point — Republicans will love this — he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they’re guilty of something. “They’re in the bank, they’ve got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money.”
That’s it. Democrats are all in. They’re going through with it. Even if it kills them.
They are determined to pass something, anything, no matter how bad a bill it is, because they know what is best for you even if the majority of you do not agree.
Update by Jay: Rightwing Sparkle is on the same page:
What’s important now is to be able to say they did it. They can say they finally passed “comprehensive healthcare reform,” which will cost nearly $1 trillion over a decade. We still have the tax hikes and Medicare cuts in the bill, but no matter. They will jaw for weeks about how historic and important it is. Never mind that the majority of the American people are against it. That doesn’t matter to the Democrats, because they have always believed that they know best. They believe they know what the American people need more than the American people know themselves. At the very core of the Democrat’s belief system is their certainty that the American people are ignorant. They will never say it of course, but they feel it is their duty to provide for the masses, who can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves.
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Posted by Jay in Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, Democrats, Dems In Charge: Now What?, Fox News, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Healthcare, House, Nancy Pelosi, Nanny State, News, Polls, President, Senate, Socialism, Statism, Totalitarianism, Unconstitutional, liberalism at 11:57 am | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Second Grader Suspended For “Violent Drawing.” Can You Guess Of Whom?
If you thought “Barack Obama,” nope. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore? Nope. Welcome to Taunton, Ma.
A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.
The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.
The child, whose name is being withheld to protect him, is a special needs student who is 8 years old. Think this will traumatize him? Well, yes. The story points out that he has had trouble going back to school after the suspension and mandatory counseling, and the school administrators have approved a transfer request to another school.
How did the sketch come about (which you can see at the link)?
The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.
I believe that he was on his way to understanding the true meaning of Christmas, that it is about Jesus (though, about his birth, not Crucifixion, of course.)
Any one want to make a bet on whether he would have been suspended had he drawn George Bush being crucified?
A valuable lesson in political correctness? I expect the ACLU to swoop in and protect free speech and religious expression pro bono any minute now.
Michelle Malkin provides some contrasting situations.
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Posted by William Teach in 1st Amendment, ACLU, Anti-Americanism, Anti-free speech, Christianity, Christmas, Church And State, Constitution, Education, Gov.Censorship, Government tyranny, Homeschooling, Illegal Activities, Nanny State, News, Political Correctness, Psychology, Social Engineering, Unconstitutional, Where's the ACLU, religion at 10:00 am | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (3) |
- Second Grader Suspended For “Violent Drawing.” Can You Guess Of Whom? | Wideawakes pinged this post.
- Incredible! Second Grader Suspended for Drawing 'Violent Picture' of Jesus Christ | The Lonely Conservative pinged this post.
- From the Dept. of ‘Overreact Much?’ | Political Byline pinged this post.
The Goracle’s Crystal Ball Lets Him Down Yet Again
So sad. The Times of London catches Al Gore making it up as he goes along. Not that this is anything unusual for Gore. His movie is full of lies and distortions and made up “facts.” He recently claimed the interior of the Earth was several million degrees. He is actually being sued by 30,000 scientists for global warming lies. However, let’s not forget his famous quote
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
In other words, lying is fine. Therefore we get lies. In the past, though, the media was loathe to call him out. Lately, the media has been more and more willing to expose the lies, hence
There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
But, see, there was a problem
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Let the spin begin!
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
A “conversation.” So, not actual proof, and Dr. Maslowski probably wouldn’t even remember the conversation, but
Dr Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.
He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this,” he said. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.”
Hmmm, care to go for Spin #2, Al? And you have to love the photo the Times of London used to headline the article.
Meanwhile, there is more violence continuing in the streets of Copenhagen by the climate change protesters.
Also, TFMo forwarded me a link this morning which contains 500 peer reviewed papers supporting skepticism. I’m going to start working my way through them.
Crossed at Pirate’s Cove
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Posted by William Teach in AGW hyposterics, Agenda based science, Bald-face lies, Europe, Fraud/misrepresentation, Global Warming, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Journalistic incompetence, Liberal Media/Bias, Nanny State, News, Science/pseudo-science, Social Engineering, Socialism, UN, liberalism, man-made science at 8:43 am | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
December 14, 2009
Senate Drops Medicare Buy-In Provision: Lieberman Victory
Let me try to summarize this briefly. Lieberman called Harry Reid’s bluff, and the Democrats’ desperation has been exposed. Obama actually got out of his chair and urged Harry to bribe Joe. Now the public option is gone but the bill is more likely to pass. But now, will the nutroots howl and the bill lose enough liberal votes to complicate things again? Or, are the democrats so desperate to pass anything with the word healthcare in it, they sell out? How will all of this affect next year’s elections? The House bill banned abortion funding, the Senate bill allows it. How do you think this will play out in the end?
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Posted by Jay in 10th Amendment, Abortion, Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Healthcare, House, Nanny State, News, President, Senate, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Unconstitutional at 9:53 pm | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |
A Message to Senators Landrieu and Reid form the Louisiana Tea Partiers
-By Warner Todd Huston
This past Saturday, hundreds of people gathered in the pouring rain in New Orleans, Louisiana, to tell Senator Harry Reid (D, Nev.) and Senator Mary Landrieu (D, Loius.). As you may know, Senator Reid was supposed to attend a fundraiser in New Orleans, but canceled his plans to attend when he started taking heat for “asking Republicans for the weekend off.” [The Hill Blog also covered this]
Once again we see Harry Reid’s hypocrisy. but the tea party folks won’t let him forget it! News is Reid is having trouble with his Nevada reelection bid, too. Wouldn’t it be grand if another Senate Majority Leader was Daschled!
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Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Conservatism, Conservatives, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Elections, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Healthcare, Liberal World, News, Senate, Tea Party/Protests, Video, liberalism at 7:50 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
The 5th Annual Christmas Carnival
OK bloggers! If you have a post about Christmas please include it in this years Christmas Carnival! No political posts or advertisements!
The deadline for submissions will be Tuesday, 22 December, and I plan to post the Carnival no later than 3 p.m., ET, on Christmas Eve. Hopefully, I’ll get it up by the 23rd, but I like to give myself that extra time just in case something crazy happens.
I will NOT be using the Blog Carnival tool for entries this year. Please send ALL submissions directly to cathousechat -AT- gmail-dot-com, and use CARNIVAL in the subject line. In the body of the post, please include the permalink to your post, as well as the trackback URL if you want me to send one when the Carnival is posted. Please also give a brief (one or two sentence) description of the post, and what category I should put it in.
Go over to Kat’s House for all the details!
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Posted by Jay in Christmas, Holidays, Internet at 3:16 pm | Comment (1) | Trackback (1) |
- CatHouse Chat: Announcing the Carnival of Christmas, 2009...
Obama Says He Gives ‘Better Gifts’? Don’t Ask the Brits About That One
-By Warner Todd Huston
On yet another appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, President Barack Obama broke his own arm patting himself on the back telling the talk show maven that he gives better gifts than he gets. As Chicago’s Lynn Sweet reports, “When it comes to gifts, President Obama says he gives ‘nicer stuff that I get,’ an assertion disputed by First Lady Michelle Obama.”
Barack had better hope that no one shows this episode to the Brits because they would fall off their easy chairs in laughter over Obama’s ill-considered claims. After the Obama’s perpetrated “giftgate” back in March, the Brits would beg to differ that Barack Obama gives good gifts.
The Obamas, Barack and Michelle both, pretty much diplomatically botched the March visit of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife. Oddly enough, the U.S. Old Media seemed uninterested in the story that was a hot topic in England, a story that left many Brits a bit miffed at the Obamas. It wasn’t just bad gifts that marred the visit, either.
As the visit of the national leader of our closest ally began, the President informed the Brits that he wouldn’t be attending the joint press conference that was planned to be held once PM Brown’s plane touched down. This threw the visiting delegation into a tizzy leaving them scrambling to explain the sudden change in plans to the folks back home. Still, meetings were had and things smoothed out. Eventually the visit seemed to right itself… then came the Obama’s gift gaffes.
It is well understood that visiting diplomatic delegations come bearing gifts and gift giving is returned in like fashion by the host country. It is an ages old human practice in diplomacy after all. Usually the gifts are valuable, representative of the products of the nations involved, or at least symbolic of the history of those nations.
For his part, PM Brown gave two symbolic gifts and one that expressed national pride. Brown came bearing a pen holder carved from the timbers of the sister ship of that which gave the wood to create the famous “Resolute Desk,” the desk that has been in America’s charge since 1880. He also gave Obama the framed commission for that famous ship, the HMS Resolute. His third gift was a seven-volume biography of one of England’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill.
So, what did President Obama give the British PM? What soaring history, expression of friendship or national pride did Obama bestow on the leader of our closest ally? Well, he gave the British PM 25 movies on DVD. Yeah, that’s it. Brown gave a symbolic gift like the pen holder fashioned from a famous British warship and Obama apparently responded by sending a staffer to WalMart to pick up a few quick movies.
How thoughtful Obama was… or not.
And I’m not the only one to scoff at this thoughtless gift. The entire British press was up in arms. Many in Britain saw this as entirely gauche and indicative of the low esteem in which the Obama’s hold all of England.
Worse, no one is 100% sure that Obama was smart enough to know that DVDs made in America don’t play on European DVD players. American DVDs are created in the “Region One” format while those in Europe play in “Region Two” format. A U.S. DVD just won’t play on a machine made for the British market.
Not to be out done in tastelessness by her husband, Michelle got into the act, too. Mrs. Brown came bearing two outfits for the Obama girls from Topshop, one of Britain’s trendiest women’s wear retail outlets. In return, Michelle apparently had a staffer run down to a Washington gift shop and grab two toy Marine One helicopter models for the Brown’s boys.
Class all the way, huh?
All of that was on top of the snub of the Brits that Obama tossed off immediately upon entering office. One of his first official acts was to summarily return to the Brits the generous gift of the most famous bust of Winston Churchill that had sat in the Oval Office since the attacks on 9/11.
This threw British diplomats into a tizzy really blindsiding them. Even when they reiterated that Obama could keep the generous gift to the American people, he rejected it without comment leaving the Brits at a loss for words. So much for that claim that Obama was going to improve our relations with “the world” once he took office. So far, all he’s done is tell our enemies he’s their friend and carelessly wave off our actual friends.
Of course, the U.S. media did not report the outrage felt in England last March and likely, it won’t notice if the Brits look askance at Obama’s newest claim to be the second coming of Old Saint Nick himself.
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Posted by Warner Todd Huston in Bald-face lies, Barack Obama, Christmas, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Europe, Fiscal Responsibility, Government, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Journalistic Malpractice, Liberal Media/Bias, Liberal World, Michelle Obama, News, President, Stupidity, liberalism at 1:39 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Science, Smoking, Healthcare, All Prove Gov’t Can’t be Trusted
-By Warner Todd Huston
Just sit back and let big daddy government show you the way. The Democrat Party is assuring us that they know better because they have science, educated people, doctors, all that “expertise” in their control and further more they “care” about us all and they want us to know that they’d never do anything to lead us astray.
If you feel like the con is about to begin, you are right.
Of course, we don’t need mere suspicion to divine that the Democrats are liars. We can look at what government and Democrats have already done in several related areas — science, smoking and healthcare — to prove that this newest attempt to “help” us is based on lies, smoke and mirrors.
Let us begin with science. In two areas we see the failure that Democrats perpetuate even with science as their justification: global warming and healthcare.
We are all by now familiar with the lies that global warming is based upon as revealed by the scheming to hide failure of the science that went on behind the scenes with the email correspondence of the “scientists” at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The science went from settled “consensus” to “ClimateGate” in only a matter of weeks. Yet governments all across the globe have based their policies on these lies. Total failure.
A second example is healthcare. We are told that government is using only the most proficient science for its healthcare decisions. It’s what’s best, what’s needed, what will keep us healthy. Democrats say they know better, they know how to keep us alive. So, let’s take a look at some of the top “scientific” medicine that they are going to include in Obamacare.
Early this month we learned that Obamacare will include such quack medical practices as acupuncture, vitamins, or things like bee-pollen pills.
Were these non-scientific, pseudo medical practices included in Obamacare because science dictated it? No, they were included because of lobbying and/or because some non medically trained politician that wouldn’t know science from a hole in his head decided to add it to the bill and no one with a lick of sense tried to stop him from doing it. And it isn’t just the new federally mandated program now being debated in Congress that this has happened to. Every state that has a state controlled healthcare plan has these sort of unscientific additions to them.
In fact, this is inevitable. Once politicians get involved in a thing that thing quickly devolves from logic or science to mere politics and will always end up as a pay off to who ever has the most cash to donate to the politicians. That’s why they call it politics.
Finally, we can use the smoking controversy as exhibit A in the case against government.
Remember how for decades we’ve been told that the tobacco companies are evil and that they must pay to help us all kick the habit? Remember how the sharks gathered for a financial feeding frenzy at which government was the top shark? Remember also how the tobacco companies got raked over the coals by the legal system and have been paying billions of dollars to governments all across the country ever since? Finally, remember how that money is supposed to be used for stop smoking campaigns, health education, and medical care for folks so stupid as not to have known that smoking was dangerous to their health?
As it happens all that money that the various state governments are greedily vacuuming up from those evil tobacco companies isn’t going for the purpose that government claimed it needed it for. In fact, what little money went to actually help “victims” of tobacco has been steadily going down.
The states are collecting record amounts of revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but have cut funding for programs to reduce tobacco use by more than 15 percent in the past year, according to a report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.
Of the $5.1 billion in stolen “revenue” taken in by the states to help these so-called victims of tobacco, only 2.3 percent has been used for the purpose all those government officials so sternly told us that they needed it for. Where did the rest go? To where ever and whatever governments wanted to use it for.
According to the GAO, millions of dollars of tobacco settlement money has been used by the various states for infrastructure, schools, general purpose funds, to shore up budget shortfalls, or for debt service on securitized funds. Employing its penchant as a master of understatements, the GAO said of these wasted funds that the “States are exercising their flexibility to use tobacco settlement payments for a wide variety of activities.” Ya think?
Now let us review. We have government getting caught basing policy on the falsified science of global warming and then trying to cover it up. We have money, lobbying and the whim of untrained politicians influencing what sort of medical procedures government will cover instead of basing those decisions on medical science. And we have punitive government taxation and confiscatory legal decisions to bleed tobacco companies in order to fund anti-smoking healthcare and educational polices but government isn’t using the money for those purposes and is instead spending it on all sorts of policies unrelated to tobacco.
And you want these people to take care of your health?
It would be the height of foolishness to allow government to take over our healthcare with the abomination that is Obamacare. Government has not earned this new right by its careful husbanding of its resources in any other area. They’ve ignored science, ignored medical science, and stolen money from programs meant to help its citizens and instead used those funds for political favors and wild-eyed spending.
America, the facts are in. Government cannot be trusted. Speak up and defeat Obamacare because it truly is your own life you could save.
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Posted by Warner Todd Huston in AGW hyposterics, Activist Judges, Agenda based science, Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Barack Obama, Congress, Delusional Dupes and DUmmies, Democrats, Economy, Fiscal Responsibility, Fraud/misrepresentation, Global Warming, Government, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Healthcare, House, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Judicial Tyranny, Liberal World, Nanny State, News, Politics As Usual, Science/pseudo-science, Senate, Social Engineering, Socialism, Taxes, Unequal taxation, environmentalism, liberalism, man-made science, political opportunism, transparency/accountability at 1:36 pm | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |
Judge Decrees That ACORN Thugs Will Keep Getting Your Money
As progressives consolidate the totalitarian power they’ve been dreaming of since the dark days of Woodrow Wilson, the legislative branch becomes increasingly irrelevant. Power is now in the hands of unelected bureaucrats like the ecofascists staffing the EPA and appallingly arrogant left-wing judges. For example, after the Giles/O’Keefe videos shamed Congress into pretending it would shut off the spigot pouring our money into ACORN, the judiciary was quick to defend the radical left’s shock troops:
The U.S. government’s move this fall to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Friday, handing the embattled group a legal victory.
Unconstitutional. How strange that word must taste in the mouths of moonbats, who proclaim that the Constitution is a “living document” that says whatever you want it to say at any given moment.
U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued the preliminary injunction against the government, saying it’s in the public’s interest for the organization to continue receiving federal funding. …
Gershon said in her ruling that ACORN had raised a “fundamental issue of separation of powers. They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or even administrative, process adjudicating guilt.”
If it’s punishment not to be handed other people’s money, how come I’m being punished? I never got a trial! I want free fortunes too!
The farce that currently serves us for a political system is a transition period between the constitutional republic of the past and the totalitarian oligarchy that is already coming into view.
On tips from John L and batman. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
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Posted by Van Helsing in ACORN, Activist Judges, Attorney malpractice/ethics, Congress, Judicial Impeachment, Judicial Tyranny, News, Separation of Powers, Totalitarianism, U.S. Constitution, Unconstitutional, liberalism at 12:19 pm | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |
Reid’s Obamcare Compromise Runs Into Stumbling Block
He can’t get the 60 votes he needs for cloture. One major stumbling block is Lieberman:
In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.
The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.
But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.
Why this is a surprise is anyone’s guess. Lieberman has held the same position from the get go. This isn’t stopping the left from acting like it’s a surprise though. But, Lieberman isn’t the only one standing in the way of this government expansion over our private lives. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has his doubts too:
Mr. Nelson said he wanted to know the cost of the Medicare buy-in. “I am concerned that it’s the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option,” he said.
It doesn’t look like they will be able to ram this through by Christmas like they hoped. If it goes into the election year, it could hurt many Democrats and their chances for re-election. It’s not a popular idea with the American people. This election year isn’t looking good for the Democrats, especially factoring in the President’s approval rating dropping like a rock.
It sounds as if this entire bill has become an abortion. Reid gave up the public option and still got no closer to cloture. If the CBO comes back with the obvious conclusion — that expanding Medicare will make it more costly, explode the deficit, and make those $500 billion in cuts disappear — Reid may never get back to any government expansion.
Reid is in panic mode! John Hawkins has an anonymous Senate aide saying Obamacare is going to January and has less than a 50% chance of passage.
Meanwhile, other crap is bound to hit the fan soon!
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Posted by Jay in Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Healthcare, Nanny State, News, Senate, Socialism, Unconstitutional at 11:44 am | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (2) |
- Rush and RedState Pick Up Story: McConnell Rows GOP And Country Up The Creek And Throws Away The Paddle. | The Substratum pinged this post.
- The Not-So-Obamacare Compromise :: YankMcCain.com pinged this post.
The Senate health care bill has a strange loophole in it…
What was that about no rationing? Death panels being an exaggeration?
It turns out that there’s a funny little loophole in the Senate health care bill. This loophole would allow insurers to place limits on medical expenses to treat costly illnesses — you know, like cancer and stuff.
A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.
The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.
As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.
… “The primary purpose of insurance is to protect people against catastrophic loss,” Finan said. “If you put a limit on benefits, by definition it’s going to affect people who are dealing with catastrophic loss.” The cost of cancer treatment can exceed $100,000 a year.
Under the health care bills in Congress, the major expansion of health insurance coverage won’t take place until three to four years after enactment. Democrats have touted a series of consumer protections as immediate benefits Americans will secure through the legislation. Both the Senate and House bills, for example, ban lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage.
But Finan said the change in the Senate bill essentially invalidates the legislation’s ban on lifetime limits.
“If you can have annual limits, saying there’s no lifetime limits becomes meaningless,” he said. A patient battling aggressive disease in its later stages could conceivably exhaust insurance benefits in the course of a year.
I believe we can call this the first step towards rationing.
Someone who is battling an aggressive form of cancer — like, for instance, pancreatic cancer — may not even have a year. So if they run out of insurance benefits in a few months because the treatment they need is a rarer form of cancer treatment (which usually means more costly), then they have that much less of a chance to live. Telling someone they are only allowed a limited amount of money to fight “costly illnesses” is dangerous and frankly, wrong. You cannot put a price on someone’s life.
What’s worse, apparently the people who decide what the benefits cut-off will be are merely “administration officials”. So government bureaucrats will get to decide how much money you get to use in your fight against cancer? Does anyone really want Obama’s administration officials deciding how much money you get if you get diagnosed with brain cancer, or get in a car accident and end up needing costly surgeries to save your life?
We would inevitably be seeing cases like this one, with patients being denied treatment — and heaven forbid doctor-assisted suicide is an option, because if it is, the government will have no problem paying for you to hurry up and die. The Oregon Health Plan does just that, and explained why they won’t pay for treatment, but will pay for you to die:
Dr. Walter Shaffer, medical director of the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, which administers the Oregon Health Plan, attempted to defend the health plan’s decision. “We can’t cover everything for everyone,” he said. “We try to come up with polices that provide the most good for the most people.” Shaffer then addressed a priority list that had been developed to ration health care. “There’s some desire on the part of the framers of this list to not cover treatments that are futile,” he said, “or where the potential benefit to the patient is minimal in relation to the expense of providing the care.”
That’s exactly what we will see happen if Obama’s government run health care passes. You can see the proof in the fact that the Senate is willing to let anonymous bureaucrats decide how much money is allowed to be spent on treatment for unnamed costly illnesses. Some bureaucrat who isn’t a doctor, who doesn’t know you, and doesn’t want to waste money on your pathetic life will decide that you don’t deserve treatment, because to them, it is futile. If you get a brain tumor, and treatment is too expensive, then they won’t care if that treatment is your only chance to live. Your life is worth nothing to them. Why should they care? Treating cancer can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month. Letting you just waste away and die costs nothing.
Thankfully, opposition to this monstrosity is rising. Rasmussen is reporting that 56% of voters now oppose the health care bill, with 46% strongly opposing it. This is compared to the 19% of voters who strongly favor it, and only 38% of voters who favor it at all. Opposition is at its highest ever, while support is at its lowest. More and more Democrats are feeling the pressure and are refusing to vote for it. Harry Reid is getting more and more desperate, but if the public keeps getting information about this bill, they’re just going to like it less and less.
After all, who on Earth wants rationed health care? No one wants to fear that if they get cancer, they won’t be able to get the best quality treatment available because the health care reform that was passed screwed them. But that’s exactly what will happen. It’s why members of Congress have conveniently made it so that they are exempt from participating in the health care reform. It’s simple. They don’t want to have to suffer under rationed health care, but it’s perfectly fine for us, isn’t it?
Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!
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Posted by Cassy Fiano in Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, Culture of Death, Democrats, Despotism, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Government tyranny, Healthcare, House, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Medical Malpractice/ethics, Nancy Pelosi, Nanny State, News, President, Senate, Socialism, Taxes, Totalitarianism, Unconstitutional, liberalism at 11:42 am | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) |
