Medicare Reimbursement Scam Defeated

The Senate on Wednesday blocked an expensive change to the way doctors are paid under Medicare over concern about the mounting deficit, in what Republicans called the first defeat for President Obama's health care plan...Democratic leaders had sought the 10-year, nearly $250 billion bill as a fix to the long-term Medicare problem, but without proposing a way to pay for it, they lost support from moderate Democrats...Senate Defeats Costly Medicare Fix, Jennifer Habberkorn and Kara Rowland, Washington Times, 10/22/2009

That's one scam down. Who knows how many more are to come? However, it appears that not all Democrats in the Senate are part of Rahm's Chicago gang.

Luther

John Kerry as International Relations Advisor: Secretary of State Clinton Must Love This

He's not a Cabinet member or an ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world....Kerry Finds Spot in Obama Circle, Laurie Kellman, Washington Times, 10/22/2009

It's quite a stretch to go from betraying your comrades to build your anti-war credentials, while avoiding war crimes charges yourself, to the Senate, to a losing Presidential candidacy which promised to give up in the war on terrorists in Iraq, to the role as an unconfirmed chief diplomat, or perhaps State Department Czar, for a White House devoted to unofficial means of forcing mandates on the United States and its citizens. Secretary Clinton, who is fast becoming the William Rogers of the Obama Administration -- i.e., a totem of foreign policy rather than a principal actor, might want to re-think her plan not to run for office again. If she really wants to play in the Washington power game, elective office might be a better choice than serving as the State Department's official blonde.

Luther

Iran: Another Dictator Endlessly Dying

The Obama Administration may have found its breakthrough in dealing with Iran, but not through its diplomatic engagement. Rumors are spreading in and outside of Iran that Supreme Leader Khamenei, who at 70 years old has been known to be in poor health, is in a coma or dead....Khamenei's Demise? Ryan Mauro, Frontpagemag.com, 10/22/09

Let's see. Castro started dying twenty-five years ago. Brezhnev died for almost a decade. Mao Tse-Tung, the mass murdering peasant so loved by the current White House Director of Communications, was believed to be dying for almost twenty years. North Korea's Kim Jong Il has been dying for decades. One suspects that part of the rationale behind Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in 1936 was an MI6 report that Uncle Adolf was fatally ill. It is always and forever the endless dying of dictators that has been presented as "hope and change" by weak, appeasing leaders in the West. Slapped stupid by the Iranian government in the effort to "reason together" with Teheran's mullahs, now the best the current White House occupant can offer is hope that change will come through yet another endlessly dying dictator?

Not that such wishful thinking is the unique province of the Left. The federal takeover of the medical economy has been dying since last August, at least according to Drudge.

Luther

Kingston NC: Blacks Can Only Judge Candidates by Party Label?

Obama's Justice Department has ruled against the actions of the town of Kingston, North Carolina. What did this town do that was so terrible? The residents voted overwhelmingly to eliminate partisan elections for mayor and city council members. The Justice Department stepped in and said, "Whoa! Wait just a second!" According to the Justice Department, blacks in Kinston must have the Democrat Party in order to elect their "candidate of choice."...Justice Department: Blacks Must Have Democrat Label to Know How to Vote

In essence, this intervention by the Department of Justice is on behalf of the profoundly racist idea that one race can't judge someone on the contents on his or her character, but on what label he or she wears.

You can't make this stuff up.

Luther

Edolphus Towns: Countrywide Scandal's Protection Enforcer

Some big name Democratic lawmakers as well as contributors would be embarrassed and possibly liable for ethics violations if the truth about the list of "VIP's" who benefited from overly generous mortgage terms offered by Countrywide Financial ever came out...So the number one job of House Oversight and Government Reform chairman Edolphus Towns is to try and bury the issue - just as it's the number one job of the ranking minority member Darrell Issa to try and bring it out into the open...The result? When the GOP tried to force a vote on the investigation during a mark up period, the Democrats refused to show up. And now they've locked the GOP out of the Committee room entirely....Dems running scared on Countrywide scandal, Rick Moran, American Thinker, 10/21/2009

When you elect thugs, bandits, and gangsters to Congress, this is what they do. They lie, cheat, attack, steal, and in general act more like John Gotti, Sr., than representatives of the people.

That rarest of endangered species in California, a Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa,is fighting to keep this latest version of transparency in government, as in transparent lies and coverups, from vanishing from public view. Support Rep. Issa. It's not about Republicans. It's about the integrity of Congress. Try not to smile as you read that.

Luther

NY Congressional Race: RINO Scozzafava vs. Conservative Hoffman

Politicians like far-left New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava who have Republican congressional nominations handed to them by local GOP poobahs sometimes turn out to be lousy candidates...New York GOP leaders could have gone with Doug Hoffman, a...successful entrepreneur of...unquestioned conservative principles. Instead, they chose Scozzafava...endorsed in years past by ACORN's Working Families Party, and who supports the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda across the board, including Big Labor's Card Check proposal to abolish the secret ballot in workplace representation elections...Hoffman received the Conservative Party of New York endorsement and in the last three weeks his campaign has gone from nowhere to gangbusters...Siena Research Institute's latest survey...which finds a very tight race, with Democrat Bill Owens leading at 33 percent, Scozzafava at 29 percent, and Hoffman at 23 percent...No Wonder Scozzafava Called the Cops..., Mark Tapsott, Washington Examiner, 10/21/2009

New York is plagued by a fake two-party system. Republicans become that way by label changes about as subtle as the old Detroit annual model change. Make identical chassis. Call one a Chevy, another a Buick, another a Cadillac. Mike Bloomberg? A Democrat who changed parties to become Mayor. George Pataki? If you can tell the difference between wildly irresponsible spending under his administration and that of Gov. Paterson, let us know. In upstate and western New York, there still distinctions, but, as in this election, every effort is made to turn all heads in the same direction. Doug Hoffman is a real conservative, and is making this a very unique election in New York State. Hey, even the sainted Fiorello LaGuardia was a socialist.

Luther

Liverpool Care Pathway and ObamaCare: The Change You Wanted?

The Government is rolling out a new treatment pattern of palliative care into hospitals, nursing and residential homes. It is based on experience in a Liverpool hospice. If you tick all the right boxes in the Liverpool Care Pathway, the inevitable outcome of the consequent treatment is death...Dying Patients, Letters, UK Telegraph, 9/3/2009

Let's not mince words. The Liverpool Care Pathway adopted by Britain's National Health Service is euthanasia. Euthanasia is one of the species of mass murder practiced by human beings, mostly in the last 150 years, but in some views for as long as we've existed.

To recap, mass murder takes one of several forms: infanticide; genocide; euthanasia.

Infanticide, while universally scorned in a less populous time, has been largely legitimized in the last four decades in the form of either therapeutic, or individual choice, abortion: therapy for those raped or otherwise traumatized by pregnancy; individual choice for those who'd rather buck for promotion at work than take on the thankless job of parent. It is interesting that in areas where this is widely practiced, such as Europe, Japan, and the non-immigrant population of the United States, population growth has dipped far below replacement. The next fifty years in Europe, the United States and Japan will bear little resemblance to the past fifty. Those aborted will be replaced by those born overseas. New generations won't sit peaceably by while whole countries turn into populations of nursing home residents. There have also been philosophical explorations by such ethicists as Princeton's Peter Singer into the idea of post-natal abortion where a parent, disappointed by the outcome of reproduction, kills off a child.

The genocidal form of mass murder has recurred numerous times in the last century and a half, from the slaughter of six million Congolese by agents of Leopold the Second, to the Holocaust in 1940s Europe, to Kampuchea, and on to Rwanda. Elie Wiesel argued that the M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine of nuclear combat, established during the Nixon & Carter Administrations, was genocidal planning on a far larger scale than that of Auschwitz-Birkenau. While universally condemned, unlike individual abortions, genocides have always been a government's legal policy. While an individual can, on moral grounds, refuse to have an abortion, it is very difficult for a citizen to stop a government intent on murdering a whole population.

Euthanasia has always been presented as "beneficent" murder, the assisted, or unassisted, killing of individuals deemed to have lives too miserable to continue. Of the three traditional forms of mass murder, euthanasia is the one with the least associated guilt. After all, getting rid of the old and the infirm relieves caretakers, family, spouses and friends of the horror of looking after, visiting, or paying for the care of someone they once knew as young and whole and healthy. It also relieves insurance companies, or the state, of financial responsibilities for individuals whose futures are considered too expensive to maintain. In the Netherlands, and in Britain, there is obvious collusion between such private worries and public policy. Britain's NHS would never have been developed Liverpool Pathway without widespread, public support, however subtle or implicit. And it takes other forms. Treatments considered routine in the United States are routinely denied to patients over 70 in much of Europe. Be honest, EU; that's just another form of euthanasia as policy. If bypass surgery would keep someone alive, and it's denied as official policy in France, the state may fairly be considered as accomplice to murder if the patient dies for want of treatment. And yet, other than stories of medical tourists to the United States, we don't hear too much protest about this in the popular media. Indeed, during the summer of 2005, the hottest summer in sixty years in France, vacationers refused to respond to emergency messages about their parents and grandparents dying of heat exposure in un-air-conditioned nursing homes in the north. Between fifty and one hundred thousand elderly died of such causes that summer. It was hard to get vacationers to come home to even claim the bodies of their loved ones; their reservations on the Riviera were more valuable. In some cases, it's evident that human beings rather prefer euthanasia to, say, visiting Mom or Dad at the Home.

Infanticide, genocide, and euthanasia are the principal species of mass murder. The government, that is to say, you and the elected officials you put in Washington, have approved the first method long ago, and are openly talking about approving the third as part of medical reform. Is that the change you voted for?

Luther

Chicago Style in Washington: Mao-loving Dunn versus Chris Wallace, FOX

The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."..."She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."..."Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."...White House Escalates War on Fox News, FOXNews.com, 10/19/2009

Chris Wallace is a very fine reporter and more than fairminded. But, he obviously doesn't understand the Chicago style employed by the Mao-loving Anita Dunn, Director of White House Communications. In Chicago, if you allege that an alderman has stolen money, the alderman responds by accusing you of being a child abuser, a rapist, or, worse, of having written critically about the Mayor. The issue of the original accusation is never addressed. That would be telling.

Luther

Obama's Mao-Loving Director of Communications: "We Control Media"

President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference..."Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," said Dunn....White House Boasts: We 'Control' Media, Aaron Klein, WorldNet Daily, 10/19/2009

Hey, Anita Dunn is certainly consistent. If you're going to praise Chairman Mao, you might as well emulate his totalitarian government as well. What next? Little villages with happy people in pinafores talking about free health care?

Luther

Abandoning Pop Culture?

I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture?...Confessions of a Cultural Drop-Out, Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media, 10/19/2009

Former NEA Chairman Dana Gioia often made the point in his talks around the country that high culture, whether that produced by Euripides, Poussin, or Wynton Marsalis, was enjoyed, at most, by a few percent of the population. The vast proportion of people, in any age, never paid much attention to great plays, magnificent paintings, or challenging music. We were fortunate, Gioia would remark, that in each era a few carried on and developed, and a few more enjoyed, artistic traditions.

It is tempting to resign in the face of the utter onslaught of popular culture. Hugely amplified by technology, whether electronic amps, television, satellites, radio, cable, it seems to be omnipresent. But, as Victor Davis Hanson suggests, there is an old, reliable means to avoid the barely literate production of pop songwriters, moviemakers, and the endless hash-slinging of the Internet. Ignore them, or pay closer to attention to the fact that high culture is being distributed in much the same way. Modern segment marketing, in fact, encourages this.

Few ever go to Lincoln Center, but there are thousands of classical and jazz music streams on the Internet. Not that many people go to repertory theaters and movie houses. You don't have to. Almost any film ever made is available, as Hanson notes, on DVD. Almost anything of quality written in English is available in either inexpensively printed books, on the online Gutenberg Project, or on university and other electronic text outlets. You can sit on top of a mountain and order a book for your reading device, including thousands, if not tens of thousands, unavailable in any brick and mortar bookstore. Indeed, one of the great advantages for those who appreciate high culture is its easy availability using the same media as that dominated (financially) by pop culture.

The real lesson here is that old standby: if you don't like the program, change the channel.

Luther

As Water Reaches the Boat Deck, California Adds More Regulations

San Franciscans must be truly idle, and ruled by a devilishly cunning imp, to be hoodwinked into squandering any of their existence rooting around in their own garbage...A more intrusive regime for the simple act of discarding something could hardly be devised. There will be...three color-coded bins into which garbage must be classified, as it is assessed for compostability and recyclability. This is more than enough to flummox the average left-coast high school grad...This government-in-your-garbage ordinance is in response to a self-inflicted wound. It is deemed necessary in order to comply with the city's self-imposed goal of 75% recycling by 2010, as a waypoint to zero waste by 2020...One consequence that was apparently not intended is how much more expedient it is to throw garbage onto the street instead of into the correct aperture in your suite of trash receptacles. Already 80% of the millions of pounds of trash on the beaches, in storm drains and rivers, is washed off the land....Compost Conserved, Lifetime Wasted, Jeremy Haddock, American Thinker, 10/19/2009

Mr. Haddock evidently doesn't understand how things work. In the world of the Left, bankruptcy and policy failure matter very little. What's important is that, as you sip chardonnay and nibble bris at the garbage dump, you feel superior. California's "politicians" would have stood at the rail on the Titanic demanding that steerage class passengers refrain from throwing deck chairs into the Atlantic to hang onto when the ship went down.

Luther

Health "Care": More on Obama/Biden Saving the Middle Class

None of the new distortions that the Senate health-care bill will layer onto the already-distorted tax code have received the attention they deserve, but in particular its effects on marginal tax rates could use scrutiny. Incredibly, for those with lower incomes, ObamaCare will impose a penalty as high as 34% on . . . work...ObamaCare's Tax on Work, Editorial, Wall Street Journal, 10/18/2009

In the old days in Brooklyn, "taking care" of somebody meant one of several things: a) an uncooperative local gang leader would get his knees busted with a baseball bat; b) an uncooperative store owner would get his or her knees busted with a baseball bat; or c) one of the above would be assassinated for failing to cooperate after getting his or her knees busted. This was a model in Chicago as well.

The definition of health "care" seems similar for the Administration whose Vice President said "we're going to save the middle class". If you take a benefit away from someone who has earned it, then force he or she to take something worse that they don't want, then force them to pay more taxes, and threaten to throw them into jail if they don't obey, what kind of "salvation" is that? Sounds more like John Gotti than Jesus to this writer.

Luther

Can't Get a Date? Might Soon Be No Problem

Scientists at the University of Toronto found that by genetically tweaking fruit flies so they failed to produce a particular type of pheromone or odour, it turned them irresistible to their species...They discovered that when the pheromone was removed, it created a "sexual tsunami" where the bugs proved attractive to one another, regardless of sex.... Scientists Create Sexual 'Tsunami', UK Telegraph, Chris Irvine, 10/15/2009

Hey, great news for aging (or hideous) metrosexuals! Expect dosages of this to be included in the Democrat Health Plan. What patient will care if denied coronary bypass surgery?

Luther

California Saves World from LCD Screens

The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions...LA Times, Mark Lifsher, 10/15/2009

Let's see. California won't develop its own offshore oil and inland natural gas resources, but it's going to ban LCD TVs of a certain size because they use "too much" energy. There's a certain logic to these two things. However, most manufacturers' new sets already meet, or soon will meet, the proposed new standards for energy use by large screen televisions in California. Perhaps the new rules serve the same purpose as banning energy development -- good public relations to present to those voters who contribute to the Sierra Club.

Luther

Army Funds for Weapons Diverted to Earmarks?

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis...Washington Times, Shaun Waterman, October 15, 2009

Sure glad that the U.S. Senate Democrats are rallying behind our troops in Afghanistan.

Luther

Not Making Chinese Bondholders Think Twice?

Having gone through what has to be the worst non-wartime fiscal year in American history, Obama and the geniuses in control of Congress want to impose de facto energy taxes euphemistically referred to as “cap and trade” on almost anything that emits carbon, take over the health care system (because they have done so well with Social Security and Medicare), and impose a frightening array of other tax increases and new taxes that will almost definitely not yield the amounts predicted. All items noted would further pummel an already staggering economy...We’re surrounded by either fools or knaves...The support for the “knave” alternative is becoming more compelling. People who are serious about their desire for an economic recovery simply don’t do the things they have done and don’t propose the things they are proposing. What they want are things you would expect from the government of a banana republic, not the supposed leader of the free world....Seeing Red Ink, Tom Blumer, Pajamas Media, 10/15/09

What's more amazing is the apparent, silent approval of Chinese buyers of American t-bills. Trillions in red ink here means trillions of devalued dollars there. Or is it that what's common reporting in the Asia Times every day about Chinese $anxiety doesn't pass muster in American news outlets? Don't expect to find out from Chris Matthews. You could try FOX. It's not radio....

Luther

Heene Family Robinson: Hoaxing the Hoaxters?

Just a brief comment on this hot air balloon farce:

It gave this writer a great deal of pleasure to see the Heene family make fools of those who seem to think their profession is making fools of us.

Luther

Nobel for Obama: You have GOT to be kidding!

There's no need for a weblink on this post. By now, anyone who has any contact with what passes for news these days knows that the Nobel Prize Committee, in its infinite wisdumb, has awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to none other than The One, U.S. President Barack Obama.

In case you could never quite believe that the non-science Nobel awards (i.e., Peace Prize, Literature Prize) are almost always based on the prize winner's association with socialism, you can now rest easy. This year's Peace Prize has been awarded to a man who, quite literally, has had:

• no actual career
• no accomplishments
• no foreign policy victories
• no domestic victories
• only 9 months in office, and
• no effect on the real world at all to date, unless you count the negative return of his Chicago Olympics pitch, smashed down by the IOC the very next day

Or unless you credit his election as President last year as an accomplishment.

But even that's a stretch if you think about it. It would be tough to lose against a guy, in this post-TV era, who looks old enough to be your great-grandfather tethered to a vice-presidential running mate doomed from the get-go by a massive smear campaign engineered by the greatest slander artists of our time.

Add to this a near 100%, 24/7 PR campaign mounted by the massive media combine, the East Coast Liberal Establishment, all professors, all unions, nearly all of Hollywood, and George Soros' endless fountain of money, and you have an electoral train that's incapable of being stopped.

Eight years of mindless and endless Bush hatred on the part of the elites only further greased the skids in Obama's favor. An unknown space alien could have one last year's election with this kind of backing. Wait a minute--isn't that exactly what happened?

The utter worthlessness of the Nobel Peace Prize is now fully exposed in case most of you haven't figured this out. This year's prize was not awarded on the basis of any accomplishments at all. If you think about it, actually, the award wasn't even for Obama. It was for the American people who, after their lunatic years supporting Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, have finally come to their senses. They've elected a true, unreconstructed socialist fully acceptable to our betters, Europe's smug, upper class elites. It was a symbolic thing. America has finally grown up and come to its senses. And the Nobel Eurocrats have vetted it so it must be so.

Europe can now relax, secure in the knowledge that Americans have seen the light and will allow a socialist government to take over their lives, ruin their economy, and leave themselves to the tender mercies of any oil or nuclear-armed foe who chooses to dictate their future. To hell with rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, and brash, cowboy diplomacy where the guys in the red, white, and blue hats are always the good guys. We can at last join the Euros and hang our heads in collective post-colonialist shame and helplessness.

That's the way the Euros have lived pretty much since the dawn of the 20th century. And it's what the Eurocrats have always wanted for us. It's always pissed them off that their own rejects sailed over here and built a much better country based on freedom of opportunity, not class structure. Now maybe we can just accept our fate as yet another has-been empire.

And it is for this that a grateful Nobel Committee has awarded Barack Obama its now entirely meaningless Surrender Prize. Disgusting. But somehow, not much of a surprise.

Chicago Loses!

No, not the White Sox, the Cubbies, the Bears, the Bulls, or the Blackhawks. The Windy City itself. Just a day after debasing himself (again) by pitching the International Olympic Committee on the virtues of Chicago as an Olympic site, the Olympic pooh-bahs have eliminated Chicago and Tokyo from consideration.

Thousands of people gathered in downtown Chicago stood in stunned silence Friday after watching the International Olympic Committee choose someone else for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

AP

The vote in Copenhagen was carried on huge television screens in the Daley Center, set up to carry what many had hoped would be approval of Chicago to host the games.

Instead, Chicago was bounced in the first round of voting. An audible gasp could be heard from the crowd. Many stood for a few minutes, staring at the screen, and at least one flung his hands into the air in a crude gesture toward the TV screen.

So much for "Yes We Can!"

Guess that's some of the strange new respect we continue to get from around the globe now that the hated Bushitler is gone.

It's funny how this popped up the day I got back to blogging. It's trivial in itself, but is a microcosm of the unfolding disaster that is this Administration. I'll be coming up with numerous posts over the next few days catching you up on my views as to what's behind what's been going on while I've been gone.

Bloggers MIA

Holy cow, we've been gone a long time!

Unfortunately for moi, it's been for what's been the usual reason for the past 2 years--the loss of our 4th and final surviving parental unit, Mrs. P's dad, Harry, at the ripe old age of 95. The end came quite suddenly in mid-August.

We've been pretty busy with wrapping up the odds and ends of both "Greatest Generation" families now for quite some time. Work still needs to be done. But now that all the old timers have gone on to their rewards, I guess it's now time for the current generation to pick up the slack and make something of ourselves before our own curtains ring down on the last act.

As I get back to the blog, I note with rue that the current administration is turning out to be every bit the Marxists that I knew them to be I'm also amused to see that pretty much all the rich smart guys, particularly in New York City's financial community, who bankrolled these unreconstructed Stalinists are having second thoughts. What a concept.

East Coast elitists love to think they're smarter than the rest of us. But as Forrest Gump told us, "Stupid is as stupid does." Now the Royal Smart Guys and the rest of the American voters who lemminged to the polls last fall have got a far worse situation than they did with Bush. So maybe it's time HazZzmat stepped back in and started helping out with the counter-revolution before it's too late.

I'm actually really glad for their sake that all four of our hardworking parental units won't be around to view the gory workout of this mess. Stay tuned.