House Democrats were determined to pass any bill with a nice sounding name, such as “The Affordable Health Care for America Act”. Single payer, full Medicare for all was never on the table even though a majority of citizens, physicians and nurses support that far more efficient, free choice of health care professionals, system.
There are no effective cost containment or prevention measures in the bill. The public option is so weak it will be a receptacle for the sickest of patients among the meager number of people who qualify for its coverage. There are no provisions to reduce the number of people (100,000) who die annually from medical malpractice in hospitals.
Nor is there a major program to reduce the tens of billions of dollars that is stolen yearly out of Medicare from criminals inside and outside the medical profession.
The cover story in the November issue of the AARP Bulletin is on the elaborate but detectable schemes to swindle Medicare with phantom services, phony rentals of equipment, stolen Medicare numbers and the like. The author, Jay Weaver, writes: “So lucrative, and so low-risk, the FBI reports, that a number of cocaine dealers in Florida and California have switched from illicit drugs to Medicare fraud.”
Although more money is finally going for prosecutions, there is nowhere near enough for this corporate crime wave. Medicare’s office of Inspector General asserts that every dollar of law enforcement will save $17 of theft.
Computerized billing fraud and abuse takes anywhere from $250 billion to double that estimate by the General Accounting Office. (The GAO said ten percent of health care expenditures are going down the drain.) The reason why the estimates cover such a broad range, according to Professor Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard University, is that there are inadequate resources to document the huge hemorrhaging of the nation’s health care budget and come up with better data.
Apart from the impoverishment of the debate, there is the actual doing of harm. The bill, if enacted, doesn’t take effect until after the presidential elections in 2013, mostly to let the drug and health insurance industries adjust, though they can scarcely believe their good fortune at being delivered all those profitable customers paid for by taxpayers with scarcely any price restraints.
The American Journal of Public Health has just published a peer-reviewed study by Harvard physicians-researchers that estimates 45,000 Americans lose their lives yearly because they cannot afford health insurance to receive diagnosis and treatment. Strange how cool the House is to giving these fatalities a four year pass.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a leading single payer advocate, voted against this legislation for many reasons, most notably the Obama-driven omission of his amendment to clear the way legally for states to pass their own single payer laws. Several states, such as Pennsylvania, are in the process of moving legislation in this direction, but are concerned that the health insurers will claim federal pre-emption.
The victims of medical malpractice – estimated by the Institute of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health to be about 100,000 deaths a year – escaped having to overcome more hurdles before they have their full day in court. Helping to beat back the Republicans, who define “medical malpractice reform” as letting the negligent perpetrators get away with their lethal consequences, was Congressman Bruce Braley (D-IA).
Rising on the House floor he delivered a factual plea for patient safety. Hardly had he started to speak with Republicans started shouting “trial lawyer, trial lawyer” referring to his previous profession of representing wrongfully injured people before local juries in Iowa. This rare display of shouting by opponents was punctuated by one of their unleashed members rushing down the aisle shouting “You’ll pay for this.”
During this overall debate on the bill, Republicans stood up one by one, as prevaricatory dittoheads, to often scream and howl (like coyotes) that this is “a government takeover of one sixth of the economy,” “would destroy the economy,” “put 5.5 million people out of work,” “destroy the doctor-patient relationship,” “be a steamroller of socialism,” “force millions of seniors to lose their current health coverage” (meaning, Medicare?) and, in a passionate appeal to the Almighty, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) declared “God help us as the government takes over your day-to-day life.”
Never mind that this bill is just an expansion, however misdirected, of government health insurance designed to increase corporate profits and increase the corporate grip over the day-to-day decisions regarding who, when and how people get their health care or get their bills paid.
To top off the madness, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), an ever maturing political hermaphrodite, reneged on his assurance to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and imperiously announced on Fox News Sunday that “if the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote.”
For media-centric Joe, his motto seems to be “L’Senat c’est moi.”
Democratic Leadership Would Not Allow Votes on 11 Amendments Requiring Congressmen to Enroll in Gov’t-Run Health Plan
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Rules, which threw out more than 200 amendments proposed for HR 3962, including 11 that required Congress and other government officials to sign on to the same government-run health plan they want for the American people.
More than 200 amendments were rejected by the House Rules Committee ahead of Saturday's vote on the Democrats' health care bill, including 11 that would have required members of Congress and other government officials to be enrolled in the same federal insurance plan proposed for the American people.
Critics of the health care bill said they offered the 11 amendments – including some that would require the president, vice president, and Supreme Court justices to give up their Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) to enroll in the ‘public option’ or Medicaid – to showcase the problems with the massive legislation.
“If Congress forces our constituents into a public option plan over time, then members of Congress should be expected to do the same,” Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) told CNSNews.com.
The House Rules Committee attempt was the second time McKeon had tried to amend the Democrats’ health plan to include legislators in the public option.
“Democrats voted down a similar amendment, 21-18, in the Ways and Means Committee during the July markup of HR 3200,” McKeon said. “It became apparent then that Democrats are afraid of being put on a government-run health care program, but that fear does not extend to the welfare of their own constituents.”
The public option in the House bill would be a government health insurance agency run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and available through the federal Health Insurance Exchange.
“This is one of those classic hypocritical moments for the Democrats,” Matt Lavoie, spokesman for Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.), told CNSNews.com. “They simply don’t want to put up with the public option that they are preparing to inflict on the American public.”
But Vincent Morris, communications director for the Democrat-controlled House Rules Committee, told CNSNews.com that the amendments were rejected because no one, including Congress, will be forced to sign on to government-run health care.
“The reason we didn’t support those amendments is because the public option was created precisely to give the American people a choice between private and public [insurance], Morris said. “Given that all Americans have a choice about whether to join the public option, we thought it didn’t make any sense to force members of Congress to join.”
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said he proposed his amendment because the bill does not fix the problems with the already government-run Medicaid program. His amendment “would make members of Congress a mandatory covered population under Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid) without consideration of any other asset or qualification test.”
“This bill fails to address the problems with Medicaid and instead adds millions more Americans to the program,” Burgess told CNSNews.com. “Forcing members of Congress to walk a mile in the shoes of Medicaid patients I believe is the only way Congress will get serious about making the fundamental fixes to Medicaid that the program needs.”
Morris said Burgess’ amendment was rejected because it could hurt poor people.
“Medicaid is a federal-state program that provides low-income populations with health care,” Morris told CNSNews.com. “Democratic members strongly oppose any effort of diverting resources for the poor to themselves instead.
“If Medicaid resources are diverted to members of Congress, it could impact low-income Americans, and that’s why Democrats did not support the amendment,” Morris said.
But J. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) told CNSNews.com that by agreeing to be a part of the same system they are offering the American people, Democrats could send a message that they are confident that their bill will benefit Americans.
“If members of Congress and the White House administration truly believe that a government health care option will provide the same timely and quality care that private sector health insurance does, then they and their staffs should be required to enroll in this option,” Barrett said.
“If it is good enough for American families, then it is more than good enough for Washington bureaucrats,” he said. “Therefore, I decided to offer an amendment which would mandate all members of Congress, their staff, and administration officials to participate in the public option.”
He said HR 3962 has the same problems as the previously proposed bill, HR 3200.
“When H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was introduced, I was disappointed to find that many of the problems in the original bill had not been addressed or changed in any way,” Barrett said.
“While I adamantly oppose any kind of government-run health care option, I decided to offer several amendments which would address some of the most troubling provisions in this legislation, including an amendment that mandates all members of Congress, their staff, and administration officials to participate in the public option,” Barrett added.
Barrett added that the process that led up to the passage of HR 3962 was anything but bi-partisan.
'In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe ?'
Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, theNetherlands , at the Four Seasons, New York , introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem .
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic.. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.
First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe . Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .
The Europe you know is changing.
You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions ofEurope , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.
In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.
Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.
In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.
In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.
Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe . San Diego Universityrecently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.
The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in theNetherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.
Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.
Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I supportIsrael . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.
This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines , Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.
The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.
Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel , they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, theNetherlands , 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a danger greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome , Athens andJerusalem .
Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe , American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.
Please take the time to read and understand what is written here, Please send it to every free person that you know, it is so very important.
it sucks, but of course not for the reason mentally retarded conservatives claim
Everyone hates these half-assed Obama plans, however cons hate them for imaginary reasons
and normal people understand why they suck, they are catered to the rich and the established, investor class
it's so funny, cons and libs are both sick of Obama, but retardo cons still think their is "communism" in Obama's totally corporate friendly plans
it is amazing how fucking stupid conservatives are
and Carl Lee, the biggest loser, ditto-head sheep of them all, is hated yet keeps coming back on here for abuse
I wonder how muslims would feel if in the US a group forms to kill as many random innocent muslims as they kill our innocent people? Does anyone remember Los Pepe's in Columbia? It was a group of citizens that got together and started bombing Pablo Escobar's family members, associates and business interests in response to what he did to their society. Escobar quickly realized that he could not perform his vicious acts without retaliation certain to come and he never knew where Los Pepe's would strike next. Will the next Pepe's groups be in the US?
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and "ADVANCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH" and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony.....
Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the colonists, later together known to history as the Pilgrims, who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Almost half of the colonists were part of a separatist group seeking the freedom to practice Christianity according to their own determination and not the will of the English Church. It was signed on November 11, 1620 by 41 of the ship's more than one hundred passengers, in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.
Reasons for the Compact
The Mayflower was originally bound for the mouth of the Hudson River, in land granted in a patent from the Crown to the London Virginia Company. The decision was made instead to land farther north, in what is now Massachusetts. This inspired some of the "strangers" (colonists who were not members of the congregation of religious dissenters leading the expedition) to proclaim that since the settlement would not be made in the agreed-upon Virginia territory, they "would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them...."To prevent this, many of the other colonists decided to establish a government. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth (so named by Captain John Smith earlier) in November 1620. The settlers named their settlement "Plimouth" (also historically known as "Plimoth", an old English spelling of the name) after the major port city in Devon, England from which the Mayflower sailed.
The Mayflower Compact was based simultaneously upon a majoritarian model (even though the signers were not in the majority) and the settlers' allegiance to the king. It was in essence a social contract in which the settlers consented to follow the compact's rules and regulations for the sake of survival.]
The original document was lost, but the transcriptions in Mourt's Relation and William Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation are in agreement and accepted as accurate. Bradford's hand written manuscript is kept in a special vault at the State Library of Massachusetts. Bradford's transcription is as follows:
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620.
The 'dread sovereign' referred to in the document used the archaic definition of dread; meaning awe and reverence (for the King), not fear.
Signers
The following list of 41 male passengers who signed was supplied by Bradford's nephew Nathaniel Morton in his 1669 New England's Memorial. There are no surviving first-hand accounts of this information.[citation needed]
1. John Carver
2. William Bradford
3. Edward Winslow
4. William Brewster
5. Isaac Allerton
6. Miles Standish
7. John Alden
8. Samuel Fuller
9. Christopher Martin
10. William Mullins
11. William White
12. Richard Warren
13. John Howland
14. Stephen Hopkins
15. Edward Tilly
16. John Tilly
17. Francis Cooke ( [sic])
18. Thomas Rogers
19. Thomas Tinker
20. John Ridgdale
21. Edward Fuller
22. John Turner
23. Francis Eaton
24. James Chilton
25. John Craxton (sic)
26. John Billington
27. Joses Fletcher (sic)
28. John Goodman
29. Digery Priest (sic)
30. Thomas Williams
31. Gilbert Winslow
32. Edmund Margeson
33. Peter Brown
34. Richard Bitteridge (sic)
35. George Soule
36. Richard Clark (sic)
37. Richard Gardiner
38. John Allerton
39. Thomas English
40. Edward Doten (sic)
41. Edward Leister
The same list in the same order but with some corrections was provided by Thomas Prince in his 1736 A Chronological History of New-England in the form of Annals. Prince added the title Mr. to ten names, which he found in a list at the end of Governor Bradford's folio manuscript: Carver, Winslow, Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Samuel Fuller, Martin, Mullins, White, Warren, and Hopkins. He attributed the lack of Mr. Bradford to Bradford's modesty. He also added Capt. to Standish. He corrected the spelling of five names: John Crackston, Moses Fletcher, Degory Priest, Richard Briterige, and Ed Dotey. In addition, he spelled Francis Cook and Richard Clarke. However William Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation is definitive that both Francis Cooke and Richard Clarke both had an "e" at the end of their last name.
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
new york craigslist > manhattan > community > politics
Regardless. The Israeli position with the U.S. is a cross party line position with subtle nuance in approach. US. relationship to Israel is based on American strategic interests in that region, not because conservatives, Bush and Republicans are looking forward to Chanukah and Passover. Yeah right, the right wing driven by Christian fundamentalist embrace the bosom of Judiasm? Yeah they do, so long as they think we're coming home to their Christ the King.
Obama is best we can have at this time . If the fanatic angry Muslim world which we know is part of but certainly not representative of all Muslims, can't connect with this President, then how the hell will they will President Palin, Huckabee or Gingrich?
You're singular in your message and perspective. You probably think a Jew supporting Obama isn't a good Jew, doesn't get it or has been sold by an image.
How wrong you are. It's you that has been sold by this very narrow view of geopolitical diplomacy.
If you were right things would have improved during the last hurrah of the neo cons. They were made worse.
Don't assume that the 38 Democrats who voted against Nancy Pelosi's extremist version of health care reform wouldn't have supported it if their votes had been needed. The days before the final passage on Saturday were not filled with stirring appeals to get Democrats to back the bill so much as an auction to decide whom to let off the hook.
Knowing that the bill will likely be political suicide for any red state Democratic congressman, particularly if he is a freshman, the House leadership had to negotiate with its members to assure that the 38 defectors were the ones who needed political cover the most. That there would be 38 Democrats who would oppose the bill was preordained. Who they would be was the subject of negotiations right up to the wire.
Any real chance that the bill could have been defeated ended with the approval of the anti-abortion amendment. But there still remained the question of how to keep the marginal Democrats in Congress and the party in power.
The chicanery and deception that led up to the vote underscores the myth of the moderate Democrat. The entire Democratic caucus -- with pitifully few exceptions -- was committed to passing the health care bill. Had it needed all 258 Democrats to vote yes, the bill would have come awfully close.
But the Democratic margin in the House meant that the leaders did not need 258 Democrats, they only needed 219. So they let the most marginal among them off the hook, allowed them to vote against the bill, preserving their chances at re-election.
The real question facing the voters is whether they will be deceived by this sleight of hand in which moderate Democrats pretend that the bill was passed over their objections. Will the voters buy their claims that it became law despite their best efforts?
Once, the voters might have fallen for this trickery. But not now. The electorate is far too well informed to believe that any Democratic congressman really opposed this bill.
The days of the Democrats who live in red states and who let this bill pass -- whether they nominally voted for it or not -- are numbered and their political careers are about to come to an end. They could not and would not read the handwriting on the walls of New Jersey and Virginia, and are about to suffer the fate of their ancestors in 1994 who disregarded similar warnings
In the Senate, where 60 votes are needed, there can be no such shell games. All Democrats must report for duty for this bill to pass. So Sens. Lieberman, Bayh, Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Conrad, Dorgan, Tester, Baucus, Johnson and Hagan have a serious decision to make. They have no place to hide.
And should Harry Reid invoke the reconciliation option, he would face other defections from Democrats who realize that they, too, might one day be in the minority and need the filibuster to maintain their relevance in the future.
For now, all Democrats should compare the results in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993 and in 2009.
In Virginia, in both years, an incumbent Democrat sat in the state house but was not permitted to run again. In both years, the Republican won the governorship by identical 58 percent to 41 percent margins.
In New Jersey, in both years, the incumbent Democratic governor sought another term and lost. In 1993, by 49 percent to 48 percent and in 2009 by 49 percent to 45 percent.
A prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations, cops said yesterday.
Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges.
McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school's theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.
The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.
McIntyre, who is known as "Mac" at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.
"The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise," bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. "I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me."
The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, "You don't hit a woman!"
"He knocked the glasses right off my face," said the man, who would only give his first name as "Shannon." "The punch came out of nowhere. Mac was talking to us about white privilege and what I was doing about it -- apparently I wasn't doing enough."
McIntyre had squabbled with Davis several weeks earlier over issues involving race, witnesses said. As soon as the professor threw the punch Friday, server Rob Dalton and another employee tossed him out.
"It was a real sucker punch," Dalton said. "Camille's a great lady, always nice to everybody, and doesn't deserve anything like this."
Davis was spotted wearing sunglasses yesterday to conceal the black eye. Reached at her Columbia office, she declined to comment on the alleged attack.
McIntyre was released without bail at his arraignment last night.
"It was a very unfortunate event," he said afterwards. "I didn't mean for it to explode the way it did."
he ran to the press about the monitoring of the emails
do the homework con. How do youthink the media knows about the emails? This dickess, traitor ran to the press
He should be arrested and impeached, he revealed FBI activity to the media.
Republicans are not interested in fighting terror, they are only interested in blaming "libs" and scoring political points
I know your a Republican and scared of your own failure. This idiot has leaked stuff 4 times now
all for cheap political points
He should be arrested, charged with treason, impeached immediately and hung in public
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2009-11-11, 9:29AM EST
Reply to: comm-rhhrs-1460940616@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Rep. Pete Hoekstra [R MI) leaked the fact that the FBI was monitoring the radical cleric in Yemen that the Ft Hood terrorist was emailing
now the cleric radical knows he was being monitored by the feds
brilliant.
I agree certain liberals do anything to deny that Islam sucks ass and breeds murder, the denial is astonishing. I'm really tired of the "few bad apples" and "don't jump to conclusions" crowd
however nobody seems to care that Rep. Pete Hoekstra fucked up big time revealing an FBI investigation on national television, now the whole world knows
Location: fucking cons, fuck everything up
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
I agree certain liberals do anything to deny that Islam sucks ass and breeds murder, the denial is astonishing. I'm really tired of the "few bad apples" and "don't jump to conclusions" crowd
One reads and hears with increasing disbelief and anger that we don't know the motive or motives of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who fired over 100 shots at his fellow American soldiers in order to murder and maim as many as possible. Hasan ended up allegedly murdering 13 people, but government and Army spokesmen and the mainstream media claim they just can't figure out why he did this. They are, however, certain that it was not an act of terrorism.
Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" article about Nidal Hasan was titled "When Soldiers Snap." The gist of the article was that Maj. Hasan had snapped -- even though he had never been in combat. He snapped in advance. Just two sentences in the article were devoted to the possibility that his motives were in any way relatable to his Muslim faith
As Chris Matthews put it, "it's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting." To Matthews, not only was it unclear if Hasan's Islamic faith was "the" factor, it was unclear if it was even "a" factor.
Likewise, on NPR, Tom Gjelten offered the novel explanation that Hasan, who has never been in combat, may have suffered from "pre-traumatic stress disorder" because he anticipated having traumatic distress. "Was he an example," Gjelten seriously asked, "of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?"
And on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera, said, "I don't know what motivates him ... as far as I know ... he's a sociopath; he's a criminal. He could have had a toothache and gone off because of that."
The deaths and maiming at Fort Hood are heartbreaking and angering. But ultimately far more injurious to America than the act of evil that caused those deaths and injuries is the massive self-deception American society engages in out of fear of being called bigoted, racist or "Islamaphobic."
Any American who is not prepared to lie to himself has reason to believe that Hasan's religious views were prominent, if not exclusive, factors for why he slaughtered fellow American soldiers. The motives appear as clear as any could be.
Chuck Medley, Fort Hood's director of Emergency Services, told Reuters that Hasan yelled "Allahu Akbar" -- the Arabic incantation of "Allah is the greatest" yelled by Islamic terrorists before they slaughter people -- just before the shooting,
Dr. Val Finnell told The Associated Press that he and other classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master's program with Hasan at the Uniformed Services University had complained about his comments, including that the war on terror was "a war against Islam."
Another classmate told the AP that he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the university. He also wrote to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an "intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology" in the ranks.
Other classmates who participated in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college said they, too, had complained to superiors about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's anti-American views, which included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution.
And ABC News now reports that Hasan had attempted to contact al-Qaida.
It is a given that the vast majority of American Muslims are loyal Americans. But that's not the only given.
It is equally a given that a certain percentage of Muslims in and outside of the military are Islamists who want Americans dead and America Muslim.
It does the majority of Muslims no favor to deny the existence of the minority. And Muslim Americans do themselves no favor by denying it. Unfortunately, Muslims are theoretically represented by groups like CAIR whose values are correctly seen by most Americans as suspect.
Americans are worried by the fact that there are Muslim Americans whose beliefs compel them to murder non-Muslim Americans. But what is even more worrisome is that American Muslim groups (and their supporters on the left) deny this.
The "Ugly Truth" General Discussion Board
Political
Republican
Democrat
Conservative
Liberal
Moderate
Religion
Conspiracy Theories
Aliens
Chemtrails
UFO's
Movie Reviews
Anything and Everything Goes
"U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around the United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas."
The Department of Homeland Security is in good company in its confusion. Gen. George Casey, the Army's top general, also worried that "this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." And President Obama cautioned against "jumping to conclusions."
The backlash trope is trotted out after every episode of terrorist violence. But it is as false as it is dangerous. This image of a nation on a hair trigger for violence against Muslims is a calumny. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, though millions were inflamed by grief and outrage, there was no broad-based "backlash" against Muslim Americans. There were a handful of crimes including the murder of a Sikh who may have been mistaken for a Muslim, a few broken windows, some insults, and some hurt feelings. But the overwhelming majority of Americans did not seek out scapegoats, nor engage in vigilantism.
The repeated invoction of this libel has had an effect, though. It has succeeded in intimidating many Americans about the proper bounds of discussion. Gen. Casey reinforces this timidity when he frets that "our diversity" may be a casualty of the attack at Fort Hood. He and the Obama administration are obscuring the real challenge Americans face.
Our challenge is not to transcend the demons of vengeance clawing at our souls. Our challenge is to deal intelligently with a threat that arises from religious convictions. Non-bigoted observers can see that while the vast majority of th world's Muslims are not extremists, a significant minority are. And it matters what people believe.
We don't like to pass judgment on others' religious convictions. That's fine. But when a religious belief spurs violence and mass murder, it becomes political, and it becomes a proper concern of the military and security services.
Worldwide, Muslims believing themselves to be advancing the faith have committed more than 14,000 acts of violence just since 9/11. You know the litany: Madrid, London, Bali, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Amman. The list is long and bloody -- and it includes many innocent Muslims.
Many hit home. In 2003, Hasan Akbar, a Muslim convert, rolled a grenade into the tent of his fellow soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. In June, Abdulhakim Muhammad, another convert, killed one Army recruiter and wounded another in Little Rock. Naveed Haq shot six women at the Seattle Jewish Federation office in 2006.
Federal agents have thwarted planned terror attacks on Fort Dix, N.J., folded up a terror ring in Lackawanna, N.Y., and uncovered plots against the nation's financial centers, the World Bank, the Sears Tower, the New York subway system, the Los Angeles airport, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, 10 airliners landing in the U.S. (the liquid bomb plot), JFK airport, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., among others.
So shall we arrest all the Muslims in America? That's the caricature that is encouraged by the "backlash" peddlers. Obviously not. But what we must do is to discriminate -- that is, to make distinctions based on what kind of Islam Muslims embrace. We have created a climate in which members of the military were afraid to raise questions about the bald and blatant Islamist comments Major Nidal Hasan expressed over many years. He was overhead saying, "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square." He was caught proselytizing his patients. He argued frequently to colleagues that the U.S. was engaged in a "war against Islam."
Yet no one raised a red flag. Might be interpreted as anti-Muslim bigotry. And so the military took no action against a man who loudly advertised his extremist sympathies. Thirteen Americans paid for that with their lives. If any good were to come out of the Fort Hood massacre, it would be a new clarity about what we are fighting. Islamism is the enemy. Moderate Muslims are allies in the cause. We should no more shrink from confronting and battling Islamism than we would from any of the "isms" we destroyed in the 20th century. Muddled thinking and misplaced delicacy have proved deadly.
By now, the script should be disturbingly familiar. Whether in the Middle East, or increasingly in America, a fanatical Muslim blows up or goes on a shooting spree, killing many. This is quickly followed by "condemnations" from "Muslim civil rights groups," like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). We are then warned by the president and some newspaper editorials not to jump to conclusions, or to stereotype. Yasser Arafat wrote this script, which he used with great success throughout his bloody career as a terrorist.
Suddenly, the issue of gays in the military doesn't seem as important as jihadists in the military.
If you were an enemy of America, not only would you fight overseas and develop nuclear weapons (Iran), you would also engage in an even more effective strategy by striking at America's underbelly. This is our most vulnerable region because we now tolerate virtually everything, indulge in political correctness and subscribe to a bogus belief that if radical Islamists can see we mean them no harm, they will mean us no harm.
The federal government at all levels has hired and promoted Muslims to influential positions. It requires "sensitivity training" for federal employees, including those who work at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Last week, the House Judiciary Committee, dominated by liberal Democrats, defied the White House and removed from the USA Patriot Act a tool for tracking non-U.S. citizens in anti-terrorism investigations. As our enemies grow stronger and more emboldened, they see us becoming weaker and less committed.
No amount of evidence -- from Koran verses urging the killing of "infidels," to cries of "God is great," reportedly shouted by the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- will cure our self-deception. Sun Tzu famously wrote that all war is deception. But it takes two to deceive and the United States is behaving like a willing partner.
People claiming to know Hasan told interviewers he made frequent statements against the wars and the U.S. presence in Islamic countries. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, told reporters after he was briefed on the shootings that Hasan "took a lot of advanced training in shooting." Why would a psychiatrist need advanced training in shooting unless he believed in murder as therapy? Shouldn't that, coupled with his statements about "the aggressor" and other actions -- including his preference for Muslim clothing -- have alerted someone in authority that he might be a time bomb waiting to go off? Yes, absolutely. But who wants to jeopardize a career by raising such questions and becoming the target of "civil rights groups" and politically correct dupes? Intimidating Americans into silence when they know better is also a very effective strategy when fighting a war.
Sound minds not brainwashed by our own "re-educators" should have seen this coming. Though born in America to Jordanian immigrant parents, Hasan described himself as a "Palestinian." He got into trouble by attempting to proselytize some of his patients.
Most top federal agencies, including the Pentagon and DHS, now have offices of "civil liberties," offices recommended by the 9/11 Commission to focus on "outreach" to the Muslim community. In this, they follow efforts by the Bush administration, which dispatched Karen Hughes to tell Muslim women in Saudi Arabia that American women are so free they can drive their own cars. The Saudi women were not impressed.
It's one thing to be suckered by others. It's quite another to sucker yourself.
How much longer will we tolerate fighting this war as if it were a minor crime wave? Our enemies are fighting to win and they are fighting everywhere, including within our borders. People trained to appear nonthreatening, until the threat becomes obvious and it is too late to do anything about it, are infiltrating our government and society at every level.
It is irrelevant that some have put the number of radicalized Muslims worldwide at 10 percent. Even if that figure is accurate, one hundred million jihadists can cause a lot of damage, as they plot the destruction of Western democracies. Other wars have been won with far fewer soldiers and far fewer dupes.
Here's a US serviceman, a Muslim, who brings two privately owned handguns (a Glock and a .22 peashooter) onto a military base, and, while under fire, kills 13 and wounds 30. It would be the act of a superhuman to be able to accomplish a 50% kill rate while firing and reloading two handguns simultaneously in a firefight, while outnumbered against trained military personal on their own base.
Now, he's in a coma, and can't answer for himself. Very convenient.
The fallout? Muslims and privately owned firearms are demonized, the public is being whipped into one of its paranoid frenzies with emotionally charged TV reports and screaming headlines, the President is parroting his spin. And people, fearful that a "Muslim with ties to al-Qaeda" (as recent headlines howled) killed "our boys" on a military base on US soil, will practically beg for more of our freedoms to be taken away so we can have more "security."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2009-11-09, 6:18AM EST
Reply to: comm-hmrm9-1457636114@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Bill Cosby Reacts To Professor Gates' Arrest
From the president to everyday people, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the talk of the town.
Actor/comedian Bill Cosby cautioned people who weren't at the scene of the arrest from ...
Gates has powerful friends, Obama is one of them. ...
Even as more and more realize oppressive political correctness is damaging our nation and killing our people, we still hold ourselves hostage to it. We can't criticize Obama on his policy agenda without absurd accusations of racism, and now our authorities' first instinct after the mass murder at Fort Hood is to victimize the identified shooter -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- rather than to protect our soldiers.
The military is the last place we should expect political correctness to flourish. We recognize, after all, that our armed forces exist primarily to safeguard our national security, not as a laboratory for social experimentation. Or do we?
Forget "don't ask, don't tell" policy for now. I'm referring to the reaction of the Army's top brass to the Fort Hood slaughter in the news conference and television interviews following the shooting.
The first question to Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey (and Army Secretary John McHugh) was whether he believed "this was a wake-up call to the nation that the Army is simply too small to carry out the tasks that it's been given." "You've been having suicide rates that are off the charts," the reporter went on. "Your soldiers are under great stress from multiple deployments."
Our military manpower is a legitimate concern, but I think it would be more appropriate for this type of question to come up in the context of whether we have the troops necessary to perform our missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Instead, it surfaced in relation to whether an overly stretched Army might have contributed to causing this mass murder.
Instead of telling the questioner it's far-fetched, if not outright absurd, to suggest that a soldier committed multiple homicides because he was stressed from an overstretched Army, Gen. Casey dignified the question by responding that our Army has 70,000 more soldiers than it did five years ago and beaming about the Army's new "comprehensive soldier fitness" program, which helps soldiers build resilience and strength to deal with adversity.
A follow-up question was even worse. "Sir, some other counselors are saying this is just the tip of the iceberg. Suicide rates are now higher this year than they were last year. How concerned are you about this danger to recruits?"
Notice that the questioner's concern wasn't over the danger to soldiers of suicide murderers, but of suicide -- that is, what danger soldiers are to themselves as a result of military stress.
What are these people smoking? How lopsided has our thinking become that we view this murder through the prism of the shooter's stress and victimhood rather than focus on how to prevent such murders in the future? Besides, the shooter didn't commit suicide here.
Forget "don't ask, don't tell" policy for now. I'm referring to the reaction of the Army's top brass to the Fort Hood slaughter in the news conference and television interviews following the shooting.
The first question to Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey (and Army Secretary John McHugh) was whether he believed "this was a wake-up call to the nation that the Army is simply too small to carry out the tasks that it's been given." "You've been having suicide rates that are off the charts," the reporter went on. "Your soldiers are under great stress from multiple deployments."
Our military manpower is a legitimate concern, but I think it would be more appropriate for this type of question to come up in the context of whether we have the troops necessary to perform our missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Instead, it surfaced in relation to whether an overly stretched Army might have contributed to causing this mass murder.
Instead of telling the questioner it's far-fetched, if not outright absurd, to suggest that a soldier committed multiple homicides because he was stressed from an overstretched Army, Gen. Casey dignified the question by responding that our Army has 70,000 more soldiers than it did five years ago and beaming about the Army's new "comprehensive soldier fitness" program, which helps soldiers build resilience and strength to deal with adversity.
A follow-up question was even worse. "Sir, some other counselors are saying this is just the tip of the iceberg. Suicide rates are now higher this year than they were last year. How concerned are you about this danger to recruits?"
Notice that the questioner's concern wasn't over the danger to soldiers of suicide murderers, but of suicide -- that is, what danger soldiers are to themselves as a result of military stress.
The NY Times reported that NY State, desperate for cash, is pursuing tax debtors more aggressively than ever before, doubling the number of cases it is investigating and seeking to collect from delinquents. Those who aow big tim range from JPMorgan Chase to an out-of-business convenience store on the Bowery.
So why so long? Why was NY State allowing this delinquency? Were there kickbacks to elected officials? Was there even more corrpution beyond this?
STOP CUTTING SERVIOCES< STOP RAISING MASS TRANSIT< STOP TAXING THE LITTLE GUY
Remember the whole controversy over "death panels"-the idea, as President Obama dismissively put it, that greater government control over medicine would cause bureaucrats to "pull the plug on grandma"?
Well, for weeks now Britain's newspapers have been filled with articles about the National Health Service pulling the plug on grandma.
The latest is the story of a woman who had to fight her doctors for weeks after they withdrew care from her 80-year-old mother. According to the London Times:
Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics, and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.
Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.
Fenton's daughter describes the NHS system for dealing with very ill elderly patients as "a subterfuge for legalized euthanasia of the elderly." In other words, a death panel.
This is just the latest story. For some time, British newspapers are always filled with reports about the failures of the National Health Service, but the barrage has intensified in recent months. A sampling:
From the Daily Mail, October 13: "A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial 'death pathway.' Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year- old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water, and medication except painkillers. He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection."
From the same day's Daily Telegraph: "At around 4am on Monday, a friend of mine was woken by a call from the private care home in south-west London where her 98-year-old grandmother is resident.... 'She needs to go to hospital. Do you want that? Or would you prefer that we make her comfortable?' Befuddled by sleep, she didn't immediately grasp what was being asked of her.... Then, the chilling implication of the phone call filtered through-she was being asked whether her grandmother should be allowed to die.... My friend is reeling.... Had she really been asked to pronounce a possible death sentence on her grandmother, a woman with no underlying ailment other than old age?"
Most of the recent British stories concern the Liverpool Care Pathway, an NHS-approved system in which doctors are encouraged to withdraw medical support for patients they deem too infirm to live. But in early September, a group of doctors sent a letter to the Daily Telegraph arguing that "the scheme is causing a 'national crisis' in patient care.... 'Forecasting death is an inexact science,' they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death 'without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.'" Dr. Peter Hargreaves says, "What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying. It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking."
For an especially infuriating example of this "tick-box medicine"-which is not just applied to the old-see a heart-breaking report in the September 10 edition of the Daily Mail:
Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday. Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy-almost four months early. They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment. Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.
She was shocked to discover that another child, born in the US at 21 weeks and six days into her mother's pregnancy, had survived. Amillia Taylor was born in Florida in 2006 and celebrated her second birthday last October. She is the youngest premature baby to survive.
I understand that extremely premature babies have very low survival rates and a high risk of serious medical complications. But the decision about whether or how much to treat an infant should be made by the parents in consultation with their doctors-not according to the orders of some faceless medical board. Yet that's what happens when your doctor is reduced to just another bureaucrat ticking off boxes on government paperwork.
This is how an alleged "right" to government-provided health care leads to the denial of care. As government health-care budgets inevitably spiral out of control, hospitals find themselves with insufficient resources, so a centralized health-care bureaucracy tries to control costs by making sure patients are granted or denied care according to predetermined rules drafted by a medical rationing board. Britain has one, the National Institutes for Health and Clinical Excellence, known by the Orwellian acronym NICE--and President Obama wants to create a similar board in the US to provide "guidance" about which treatments are "cost-effective" and should be allowed.
In such a system, the patient has little or no control precisely because he is not the one paying the bills, so no one has to listen to him. That's what happens when people surrender their actual right to health-care, the right to contract for it privately with doctors and insurance companies, in exchange for an illusory "right" to whatever care the government chooses to provide-or withhold.
The British press may be roiled by this story, but you won't read about any of this in American newspapers. Hence, the current health-care debate has taken on a dramatic irony worthy of a great work of fiction. Just as America is debating whether to give the government a dominant role in health care, Britain is agonizing over the horrific consequences of just such a government-controlled system. But no one in America knows about this, because our press wants to pretend it doesn't exist.
In a good thriller, the protagonists would learn the real story just in time to save themselves from disaster. Perhaps Americans will find out what is happening in Britain in time to stop ObamaCare. But in a tragedy, knowledge of the future we can expect under government control would arrive too late, after we have already signed over our lives to the state.
Also, just because a "liberal" says President Bush doesn't like or care for black people, doesn't mean all liberals believe it or that its even TRUE!! Just because three liberals or three conservatives say something doesn't make it so.
The Bush Administration never thought there would be such need for an agency like FEMA, an agency in good standing when Bill Clinton was president. They were NOT good stewards of the government they reigned over for eight years and POLITICIZED EVERYTHING. They corrupted every agency they touched. They don't believe in good government so when they got into power, they made sure the government screwed up everything thanks to cronyism and nepotism and putting people into high office with little more than party loyalty as their credentials. G.W. Bush deserved all the scorn he got because he and his administration COULD have done better but didn't. Perhaps too busy with their Iraq Adventure.
* Section 7203 - misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
* Section 7201 - felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years." [page 3]
That anyone should face prison for not buying health insurance is simply incredible.
And how much will the stay-out-of-jail insurance cost? The Joint Committee noted that "according to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest-cost family non-group plan under HR 3862 (the Pelosi bill) would cost $15,000 by 2016."
Obama's bill only provides subsidies to help pay this enormous sum after families making about $45,000 have paid 8% of their income for insurance and after those earning a household income of about $65,000 have kicked in 12%.
The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that while the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill did not include criminal penalties, "The House Democrats' bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail."
Remember that simply buying catastrophic insurance, which may be all the young uninsured family needs, does not constitute having adequate insurance under the Obama bill. It has to be total, all inclusive insurance for one to avoid the penalties in the legislation. That is because Obama wants to use these premiums from the currently uninsured to subsidize his program.
So Ms. Pelosi is requiring Americans to pay these steep premiums, or a fine of 2.5% of their income for not doing so, or, potentially, go to prison!
Anyone who is familiar with the U.S. prison system can attest to the large number of people incarcerated for similar white collar offenses. That the House bill would treat failure to carry health insurance or pay the fine as tax evasion or willful nonpayment is amazing!
And where is the constitutional basis for requiring everyone to buy insurance? It is OK for a state to make drivers pay for automobile insurance. Driving is not a right, it is a privilege, and the state may regulate it by demanding insurance. Banks can require homeowners to buy insurance as a condition of their lending. But how does the federal government get the right to require a family to buy health insurance or face a civil penalty and, failing that, to face either a criminal fine or jail?
The tough penalties in the House bill are designed to keep insurance companies from opposing the bill. It was the relaxation of these penalties in the Senate Finance Committee version of the legislation that led the companies to reverse field and come out in opposition to the legislation. The insurance companies want to see their coffers swell when tens of millions of new customers are required to buy insurance. The more draconian the penalties for failing to pay them large sums of money to pad their bottom lines, the better.
The more you read this bill, the worse it gets.
Help us spread the word that this is Un-Constitutional and Un-American!
In the hours following the shooting at Ft. Hood, President Obama demonstrated resolute apathy to the greatest issue of our time. His callous and apathetic beliefs caused some rather unbecoming behavior for a United States President. And worse yet the American people are the one's who will suffer... And they noticed.
Roughly two and a half hours after the shooting that took the lives of American service personnel, on American soil, President Obama was scheduled to deliver a speech to a Tribal Nations Conference being sponsored by the U.S. Government. Once the President was told of the Ft. Hood shooting, the White House team made the decision to go forward with the conference and that the President would deliver his previously prepared remarks.
Once the President was given the stage, the news networks of the world zoomed in on the otherwise little-noticed conference. The President spent several minutes at the beginning of his time giving introductory remarks. He gave "shout-outs" to his "homies" in the crowd. He also apparently attributed a Congressional Medal of Honor to someone in the room. The only problem being that the man in question had not in fact ever received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Eventually he turned his remarks to the violence of the afternoon and laid some less than "Obama-esque" sentiment on the gathered crowd and the watching networks.
But the rank and sophomoric way he began the speech was off-putting. Commentators for NBC even wrote in shock at the President's lack of protocol, sensitivity, or even awareness of the pain the nation was feeling at that moment roughly two hours after the drama began.
But if all that was merely an innocent mistake by an increasingly wet-behind-the-ears rookie some nine months after taking office, what was to be revealed within the hour would be stomach churning.
In his remarks President Obama called for everyone to remain calm and to not jump to conclusions about the cause, rationale, and motivation behind the shooting incident.
Evidently what President Obama meant was for the average American to disengage their mind from the truth his lying eyes and ears easily showed them.
Within the hour Stephen Hayes reported on "the panel" on Fox News' Special Report that sources inside the Obama administration's FBI leadership had confirmed that the investigation was not to be giving any discussion to the possible merits of connecting the shooting at Ft. Hood to terrorism.
Incredible...
A man yells, "Allah Akbar" before unloading his weapon, after posting repeatedly on pro-terrorist web-sites for months, and had been ranting about not being forced to serve in Iraq nor Afghanistan because he objected to the purposes of the U.S. Military in those regions, but his connections to terrorism were not to be "considered."
How could such a posture come about in the FBI? We real Americans would like to know.
Only a day previous the President demonstrated that he had genuine perception problems as it related to another concept: freedom.
After Prime Minister Angela Merckel's gracious visit the Obama administration went out of their way to publicize the fact that the President would have no part in recognizing the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Berlin Wall of course represented everything America stood in opposition to, and it was an American President and not a Soviet agent that ultimately caused it to fall. So why wouldn't President Obama wish to do the simple act of honor to his OWN nation and the cause of liberty universally and pay homage to a date the unified the German people after many years of separation?
Perhaps it very simply boils down to the fact that this President does not make a distinction between a free state, and an enslaved one. Perhaps this President does not believe that life under Soviet cruelty was something we should pronounce a judgment about. Perhaps this is also the reason he sees little difference between the dictators in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and countries that seek to live under self-determination, democracy, independence, and liberty.
I believe that in our President's way of thinking there is no moral distinction between America, our service men and women, our citizens, and the masses gathered at the university of Cairo in Egypt. It was in that speech after all that he equated the values of Islam and America as one and the same. He calls us one of the largest Muslim nations on earth. (We are 80th on that list.)
If President Obama cannot see the value of the freedoms we cherish, why not throw some "shout outs" in light of national suffering?
After all we're not considering it a terrorist attack... right?
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, "shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting." Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR [1], "the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said." The Washington Post [2] agreed: "The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment." The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that "there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab."
Yet there was, and what's more, Major Hasan's motive was perfectly clear -- but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened - and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.
Nidal Malik Hasan was born in Virginia but didn't think of himself as an American: on a form he filled out at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, he gave his nationality not as "American" but as "Palestinian." A mosque official found that curious, saying: "I don't know why he listed Palestinian. He was not born in Palestine."
He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and has a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. While there, NPR reports, Hasan was "put on probation early in his postgraduate work" and was "disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues."
He was a staff psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before transferring to Fort Hood earlier this year. While at Walter Reed, he was a "very devout" member of and daily visitor to the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring. Faizul Khan, a former imam at the Center, expressed puzzlement over Hasan's murders: "To know something like this happened, I don't know what got into his mind. There was nothing extremist in his questions. He never showed any frustration....He never showed any remorse or wish for vengeance on anybody."
So he identified himself as Palestinian and was a devout Muslim - so what? These things, of course, have no significance if one assumes that Islam is a Religion of Peace and that when a devout Muslim reads the Koran's many injunctions to wage war against unbelievers, he knows that they have no force or applicability for today's world. Unfortunately, all too many Muslims around the world demonstrate in both their words and their deeds that they take such injunctions quite seriously. And Nidal Hasan gave some indications that he may have been among them.
On May 20, 2009, a man giving his name as "NidalHasan" posted this defense of suicide bombing [3] (all spelling and grammar as it is in the original):
There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.
Of course, it may not be the same Nidal Hasan. But there is more. One of his former colleagues, Col. Terry Lee, recalled Hasan saying statements to the effect of "Muslims have the right to rise up against the U.S. military"; "Muslims have a right to stand up against the aggressors"; and even speaking favorably about people who "strap bombs on themselves and go into Times Square."
Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it's noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past. In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: "Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve 'maximum carnage' on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division."
And Hasan's murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.
That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: "I'm gonna do it....It doesn't matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn't matter. Or I die, doesn't matter, I'm doing it in the name of Allah." Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, "They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing."
“... America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings...”
Those remarks were uttered by President Barack Obama on June 4th of this year. And I wish I could believe that they were accurate.
Obama was, of course, speaking at Cairo University, and making good on his campaign promise of “delivering a speech from the capitol of a Muslim nation.”
Yet, despite the immense power of Obama’s oratory skills (and his incredible confidence in his skills), he nonetheless appears to be merely human, and does not seem to possess the supernatural ability to “speak things into existence.”
Thus, Obama simply declaring that America and Islam “overlap,” and that Muslims and Americans share “common principles of justice and progress,” does not guarantee that this “sharing” and “overlapping” actually occur.
By now, the horrific profile of Army Major Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is widely known. And despite President Obama insisting that we must not “jump to conclusions” about this American Muslim man, the picture is still horrifying: an American soldier who openly disagreed with the policies of two American Presidents (the “Hawk” George W. Bush and the “Dove” Barack Obama), who complained about deployments, and made “outlandish statements” against his nation and its government, was nonetheless allowed to rise through the ranks of the U.S. Army.
The obvious question – the “elephant in the living room,” to use a term from the world of family psychology – is “why was this kind of behavior tolerated and apparently overlooked?” And the only obvious answer, at least at this point, is simply “because he is a Muslim.”
Our government and our President will make their “conclusions” when they make them. The rest of us who are private citizens and who want our unique American style of human freedom to continue, must begin communicating clearly, and honestly, about the Islamic problem in our midst. And that means getting beyond the “kid glove” approach we typically utilize in speaking about minority groups, and being willing to speak the truth about Muslims – even if that results in “hurt feelings” for some, or cries of "intolerance" from others.
The unwillingness (or perhaps it’s a matter of inability) to speak the truth on these matters is often painfully apparent in both local and national media. Several days before Major Hasan became a mass murderer, a series of misconstrued, soft-pedaled press conferences and news reports unfolded in Phoenix, Arizona about a man who murdered his own daughter by running over her with his Jeep suv.
Faleh Hassan Almaleki, an immigrant from Iraq living in the Phoenix suburb of Peoria, had become angry about his 20 year old daughter Noor Almaleki. Noor had set-up accounts for herself on Myspace.com and Facebook.com, had posted “alluring” photos of herself on a webpage for aspiring actresses and models, and was living with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s mom. This all meant that Noor had become “too westernized” for the tastes of her Muslim father, so Faleh Hassan Almaleki ran over his daughter (along with the boyfriend’s mom) as a means of committing an “honor killing.”
Before dying, Noor was hospitalized and remained in a coma for several days. And just like the Muslim men we have seen on video recordings who hide their identities with masks when beheading “infidels,” Faleh Hassan Almaleki sought to “hide” by fleeing the country after he ran over his daughter.
Immediately after the incident, the Peoria police department briefed the local media. And in what seemed to be an overarching attempt to avoid saying anything that may have cast the Muslim father in a bad light, it was explained that the motive for the crime appeared to have centered on the fact that the daughter was living in such a way that she was inconsistent with “her family’s values.” Shortly thereafter, the statewide Arizona Republic newspaper published a report entitled “Lifestyle May Have Put Woman In Hospital.”
A 20 year-old woman in Arizona who was in pursuit of a job, a college degree, and a husband of her own choosing was murdered by her own dad. Yet, law enforcement and media professionals, perhaps in an attempt to express “tolerance” or to show respect for the “diversity” of Islam, were suggesting that Noor’s choices and “lifestyle” were to blame for her death.
Generally speaking, American non-Muslim fathers don’t run over their children with their cars and call it “honorable.” And American non-Muslim military personnel don’t intentionally kill their fellow soldiers. There is a pattern of very dangerous, deadly behavior with Muslims in America and around the world.
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge, education or awareness.
There are many people today who know little or nothing about the U.S. Constitution. There are many who know little or nothing of U.S. history, let alone world history. There are many who know little or nothing about central banks, and how they are used to steal our wealth.
There are many who buy into the glossed-over news of the day. There are many who take at face value the words of the elected class, the pundits and main stream media talking heads and printed headlines.
There are many who buy into the party line of their preferred political party. There are many who blindly believe the various political parties have a platform on which they base their actions and agendas and are committed to following through on those policies. There are many who believe the president, senator or representative they elected has in their hearts the best interests of the people they supposedly serve.
There are many who are ignorant.
It’s not all their fault—particularly the younger generations. Their education system has been corrupted by 1960s radicalism—the same radicalism that has infected our government.
Public education has become a sad joke. Its downward slide accelerated with the passage of “No Child Left Behind.” None are left behind because none are allowed to get ahead. The intelligent children are left languishing and fending for themselves while extra resources are devoted to those unable to keep up.
In speaking with a seventh grader recently I asked what he had been studying in his U.S. history class. Well, we spent about 20 minutes on World War II, then several class periods on how the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics, was the reply.
In class they watched Miracle, the 2004 movie about the team and its victory.
How backward is that? Twenty minutes spent learning about a six-year war spawned from the feckless, irresponsible and dastardly policies of the elected and ruling classes that resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 62 million and 79 million people worldwide. Several class periods on a three-hour hockey game that gave Americans a temporarily thrilling victory over a Cold War foe at the tail end of four moribund years of Jimmy Carterism.
Even the seventh grader was perplexed by his teacher’s decision.
Also glossed over in his class was more than 230 years of American history.
Is it any wonder there is so much ignorance?
Lack of understanding of the founding of our great country has led us to where we are now. Lack of understanding of the origins of the Federal Reserve—and other government attempts to establish a central bank—has led us to where we are now. Lack of understanding of the causes of Great Depression and the misguided (deliberately or unintentionally) attempts to head it off, and how government policies affected the country’s financial health for years has led us to where we are now. Lack of understanding of how a president’s policies can affect a country has led us to where we are now.
Where are we now? In an economic pit of our own making—suffering the aftereffects of a Fed-created bubble that spurred individuals and businesses to borrow and spend like there was no tomorrow. Now there may not be one.
Where are we now? Exacerbating the problem by dumping money out of helicopters in an attempt to stop it—at least that’s what the elected class tells us they’re trying to do. It’s a policy enacted by a supposed conservative, George W. Bush, and perpetuated on a grander scale by Barack Obama.
Where are we now? Watching as the elected class finds more ways to spend more money and steal the wealth of the individuals through massive tax hikes under the guise of healthcare reform.
Where are we now? Waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of Cap and Trade, which amounts to more taxes and more spending.
Where are we now? Enduring the Obama presidency, which equals Jimmy Carter to the second power.
Sadly, many are ready to go full steam ahead with such policies.
Never mind that the elected class isn’t even considering whether such things are Constitutional. Forcing Americans to buy a product—health insurance—is okay with the elected class.
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer said it’s permissible under the general welfare clause of the Constitution. Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told the press the president wasn’t even considering whether it was constitutional and no one had brought it up.
Don’t think the elected class is ignorant. They’re not. They know exactly what they’re doing—stealing your wealth and your liberty.
Never mind whether it’s Constitutional, says the elected class. We know what’s best for you.
Never mind whether it’s Constitutional, it’s free, say the ignorant.
Our healthcare system is in terrible shape, we need to have competition, says the elected class. Government can do it better than the free market can.
Yeah. With the compassion of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the efficiency of the Post Office.
Where are we now… really? Many are sitting in front of the television watching Simon Cowell or anxiously awaiting the result of who is getting kicked off the island next or watching some stars in a dance contest.
Some are waking up. The Tea Parties demonstrate that.
But too many are ignorant. And apparently they’re ready to accept anything as long as it’s “free.”
Here is a big fat notice to The United States Attorney (Mr. Letten), The State Attorney General for Louisiana and the Times Picayune:
Start looking into the Connections Acorn had with HUD, hint they are in the same office building here in New Orleans, HANO and the City assessors office for New Orleans. What you will find are a whole lot of people stealing a whole lot of our money and it isn't just a few but a lot.
Big question for Mr. Letten: Do you have enough jail space for all these assholes at Acorn, HUD , Hano and the City of New Orleans. If not, start building and get a head start.
Your friend from Coliseum Real Estate, Inc. formerly known as the Uptown Rapists False charges provided by Spencer Livingston of Acorn
On a cold, overcast December afternoon in 2004, I briefly met the Viktor Yuschenko, the Ukrainian President.
He had been treated for poisoning at a hospital in Döbling and when he was released, he held a press conference surrounded by doctors and attended by scores of journalists.
Yuschenko stood there barely saying a word, looking haggard and with a bluish pallor: his face was pock marked and his hair was an unnatural colour; his eyes were full of mistrust and fear even though the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic held few threats.
Five years on, this shattered looking individual, who was once the head of a pro democracy movement, is about to proclaim himself a dictator.
Ukraine is the first country to come under the control of the WHO and the UN under the International Health Regulations 2005, and the reality is that Yuschenko and his Prime Minister Julia Timoschenko are just carrying out the orders from WHO and the UN when they suspend civic rights and democracy under the pretext of fighting a pandemic emergency.
Whatever is left of freedom in the Ukraine is about to be extinguished.
Elections in January are set to be suspended.
Demonstrations have been banned.
Political opponents have been prohibited from travelling inside areas put under quarantine.
Borders have been partly closed already.
Critics of a mass vaccination campaign are facing criminal prosecution and goal.
Huge swathes of land have been put under quarantine.
Plans are in the works for the forced vaccination of people with a toxic and untested swine flu vaccine. The US government is planning to send nearly a million doses of the jab. a substance classified as a bioweapon, to the Ukraine by early December…..
Pregnant women and children are the first to be given the jab which Yuschenko using the twisted logic and lies worthy of the Nazi Propagandist Josef Goebbels has said must be administered to them to “protect their health”.
Eurolab appears to be the diagnostic department of the German scandal-hit coporate giant Siemens in yet another private government partnership. http://clinic.eurolab.ua/en/eurolab/
Yuschenko has justified implementing martial law on behalf of WHO by the sudden appearance of a pneumonic plague in the western part of the Ukraine that appears to be artificially engineered.
There have been reports of planes spraying towns before the appearance of the plague. WHO was part of an exercise on plague bioterrorism just a month before the actual plague appeared. Baxter has a facility in the Ukraine.
WHO and the international corporate crime syndicate that fund them, may have decided that they could not go ahead with their plan to trigger a pandemic in Europe and the USA because the public awareness of the dangers of the vaccine jab has become too great, not least as a result of WHO and Baxter being caught contaminating 72 kilos of vaccine material with the live bird flu virus in February.
Miniscule numbers of people have gone to take the swine flu vaccine across Europe. In Sweden the numbers might also be as low as a few thousand because the government only counts how many doses of the swine flu have been distributed (1.4 million) and not how many jabs have actually been given.
The Ukraine may, therefore, have seemed like a better place to test their model and carry out their plan of generating a plague, panic, confusion, declaring a mutated virus, inserting the virus into vaccines, and waging biological warfare against defenceless civilian population eventually using Ukraine’s own army and military through a forced vaccination programme.
Expect WHO, which is examining the Ukrainian mystery virus, to announce the swine flu has morphed into the bird flu to spread panic. This will be an excuse for WHO to insert the live bird flu virus into vaccines, and so spread the pandemic even further.
WHO has been preparing for years for a bird flu pandemic, after all. The bird flu is an artificial lab virus reconstructed from the Spanish Flu pandemic virus by US scientists in a bioweapons lab.
The Austrian corporate media – controlled by the same corporate crime syndicate that pull the strings of WHO – are preparing the people here for the idea that the pandemic could soon spread. Five flights a day land from Kiev and there are no precautions to test infected people in place, pipes an Austrian newspaper.
How long until the Austrian newspapers declare the plague or bird flu has reached Austria? How long until we see the attempt by the government at the brutal implementation of martial law preceding forced vaccinations and quarantines?
The number of police and private security forces patrolling on the streets in Austria has certainly increased dramatically recently. There are even uniformed, private security guards now patrolling Vienna University’s libraries, something totally new. Extra police have been put in the airports and border crossings. The army command structure has been centralized.
Special army units based in Korneuburg, the same place where Baxter has its facilities, have bene practicing pandemic emergency exercises and quarantining patients in hospitals.
The Austrian government is facing protests from students and an ecomonic collapse engineered by the corporate crime syndicate that funds big pharma and WHO. The government has saddled the Austrians with huge debts to the banks that will suck out of the economy huge amounts of money leaving even less for students, pensioners as Depression comparable with the 30s approaches.
The evidence of crimes committed by members of the government is so great that if the Justice Minister Claudia Bandion Ortner were not herself so corrupt, then most of the parliament would be in goal.
How long until the Austrian government, corrupted to the core, threatens people with martial law under the pretext of a pandemic to avoid having to face accountability for their crimes?
How long until WHO and UN officials following the orders of the banksters and pharma companies take over the health service and the police and mandate forced vaccinations and quarantines in Austria?
With a bridgehead in western Europe for their pandemic plans, WHO could then attempt the same tricks in other countries as in Austria.
This bill will cost the American people over a trillion dollars. It will add to the debt that our children and grandchildren that have not even been born will be expected to pay.
Voters need to make sure they hold all 220 accountable in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Get the names Of all 220 Representatives that voted for the radical health care bill:
I sent multiple invites to fight with you to your email, you never responded, you're a pussy.
Alll flaggers are pussies!!
Fucking hilarious, you're still here thinking you're making a difference.
Impotent LIBtards!!!!!!
3 months till the boy king's ratings are beyond repair.
carter and obama, worst ever!!!
Fucking losssseeeerrrsss.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go see how CA is doing.
Oh, that's right, they're BK because they are run by LIBtards!!!! LMAO
President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur
Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.
Did the president's team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on -- and the initial words coming out of their president's mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
It must have been disappointing for many politically aware Democrats, still reeling from the election two days before. The New Jersey gubernatorial vote had already demonstrated that the president and his political team couldn't produce a winning outcome in a state very friendly to Democrats (and where the president won by 15 points one year ago). And now this? Congressional Democrats must wonder if a White House that has burdened them with a too-heavy policy agenda over the last year has a strong enough political operation to help push that agenda through.
If the president's communications apparatus can't inform -- and protect -- their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president's party and supporters.
All the president's men (and women) fell down on the job Thursday. And Democrats across the country have real reason to panic.
The event will be our 39th city added for November 14, 2009. It will be held from 12 noon - 2pm at 100 South Clinton St. 'James Hanley Federal Building'
Bring your American flags and signs opposing illegal immigration and Amnesty.
To organize your town or to show your support visit www.AgainstAmnesty.com
Arab and Muslim countries had overcome Western opposition in the adoption of a resolution endorsing the report by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which focuses on the Israeli assault last winter on Gaza.
Ms. Bayefsky said four guards confiscated two UN passes the organization had issued to her as director of Touro Law Center's Institute on Human Rights and The Holocaust, and removed her from the building after questioning her.
"I am quite sure that if I had congratulated the United Nations, no one would have said anything," said Ms. Bayefsky, who was unable to get her credentials reinstated after spending more than two hours drafting a request at the UN last night.
UN-based blogger Matt Lee said Mr. Mansour, after being told a "pro-Israel non-governmental organization" had spoken at the microphone, asked: "Did we capture them?"
Mr. Lee said he spoke with Mr. Mansour after the guards had led Ms. Bayefsky away, and security officials were unable to confirm last night whether they had acted of their own accord, or in response to a complaint.
Mr. Treki's spokesman, Jean Victor Nkolo, said Ms. Bayefsky was "not authorized at all" to use the mike.
"This is a stakeout for member states and for the General Assembly," he said. "NGOs and private individuals have nothing to do there. Period."
Mr. Nkolo dismissed suggestions Ms. Bayefsky would have felt free to approach the microphone on grounds that other similarly accredited organizations have done so in the past.
Human Rights Watch's Steve Crawshaw spoke there in 2007 as he complimented the assembly on a widely cheered human rights decision, Mr. Lee's innercitypress.com Website notes. Actress Mia Farrow, an activist against Sudanese actions in Darfur, also spoke at a microphone generally used by diplomats, addressing reporters outside the UN Security Council this year.
Ms. Bayesfky herself had previously spoken at the microphone following the UN's Human Rights council elections, without incident.
The drama unfolded less than two weeks after UN guards faced criticism for allowing a man disguised as Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland "Colonel" Sanders to enter the complex and pose for publicity pictures.
Ms. Bayefsky had offered her assessment of the resolution, which gives both Israel and the Palestinians three months to launch "independent credible investigations" into alleged war crimes outlined in the Goldstone report.
Part of her focus was on Hamas, which controls Gaza, but which most western countries list as a terrorist organization. "The idea that ... a terrorist organization is going to decide for itself whether or not it violates the rule of law is something that, I think, no serious democratic society will take seriously," she said.
"You just have to ask yourselves whether this process has done anything in terms of bolstering the credibility of the United Nations."
Little more than half of the assembly's 192 members approved the resolution, which passed 114 in favour, 18 against (including Canada), with 44 abstentions.
