Enrique Morones, the founder of the group Border Angels was on FOX News Heartland program tonight, hosted by Blogger diva Michelle Malkin.
I missed the name of the other guest who was invited on the program, but he was invited to represent citizen groups like The Minuteman Project that are attempting to prevent illegal aliens from crossing the US border with Mexico.
In spite of media and “activist” predictions of disaster and destruction as a result of average Americans defending our territory, things have run very smoothly over the first week of the Minuteman mobilization that began last weekend.
I feel sorry for Senior Morones because in my estimation his last name—unfortunately close to the English word “Morons”—represents an apt description of his group’s public agenda.
Here’s my own somewhat wordy illustration of why their efforts are counterproductive:
Suppose I want to move to England. Rather than applying for a visa, packing my luggage, and buying an airline ticket, instead I choose to steal a 20’ fishing boat with a 40 gallon gas tank. As a result of insanity or stupidity or just plain desperation, I choose to bring along no food, no water, no cell phone, and no marine radio. I just start driving my little boat from St. Simons Island, due east across the Atlantic toward Europe.
Upon departing on my “grand immigration adventure,” I know that there are no gas stations in the middle of the ocean, that it will take days if not weeks to make the trip, and I’m liable to get hungry and thirsty after the first 12 hours has elapsed. Details be damned, I want to see the Queen and new Lady Boyles.
After about six hours I have covered a little over one hundred miles of ocean, the seas are getting rough, and I’m out of gas. Unless I was incredibly lucky and happened to be seen by another passing vessel, I would die a horrible death of dehydration, starvation, and drowning, or some combination thereof.
Since I’m a mean old middle aged white libertarian, there would be little note of my passing, except with my family and possibly in the local media.
If I were a potential “guest worker,” immigration activists like Senior Morones would be rushing to set up a new web site and start a campaign to raise funds to place gas cans in the middle of the ocean and supply buoys with containers of water and food to prevent my demise. They would be sponsoring rescue patrols to look for other boaters like me, trying to cross the Atlantic to that Utopia that the liberals call Europe.
Here is what his Web site says about what exactly Senior Morones’ group is doing:
"Founded by Enrique Morones in 2001, Border Angels is a non-profit organization supporting humanity. The organization consists of extraordinary volunteers who want to stop unnecessary deaths of individuals traveling through the Imperial Valley desert areas and the mountain areas surrounding San Diego County, as well as the areas located around the United States and Mexican border. The high percentage of unnecessary deaths have been results of extreme heat and cold weather conditions, in addition some have sadly been the results of racial-discrimination crimes.
Steps Needed To Be TakenSpring and Summer Months: With horrifically hot temperature conditions, three hundred and forty water stations are installed in the Imperial Valley Desert and surrounding areas. Temperatures reaching as high as 127 degrees, water is critical for survival. Volunteers maintain stations each weekend throughout the spring and summer months.
Fall and Winter Months: Critical life-saving stations are established throughout the San Diego Mountain areas. Winter clothing, food and water are placed in winter storage bins to help decrease negative health results from being exposed to the incredibly freezing temperature changes that exists in the San Diego County mountain areas during the Fall and Winter."
It’s not bad enough that we have millions of illegal potential “guest workers” streaming across the borders at the easy to cross areas where our immigration officials are concentrating their enforcement efforts, but Senior Morones is out there trying to make the inhospitable Imperial Valley an oasis for those IDIOTS THAT ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE BORDER IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT.
Ever heard of the concept of survival of the fittest?
I’ve got to go now and get in my boat to go look for some offshore gas and water buoys.
Wish me luck...
Sunday, April 10, 2005
They Put The "Mental" In Environmental
I’ve spent a couple of days wondering about and spent the past day fuming about the news headlines about Senator Barbara Boxer having a public temper tantrum about the Environmental Protection Agency’s CHEERS program.
Here is one highlight:
"On Thursday, Sens. Bill Nelson (search) of Florida and Barbara Boxer (search) of California expressed their "shock and disappointment" Thursday in Johnson's failure to stop the program.
They said that until he agrees to cancel the program, they're placing a hold on Johnson's nomination, preventing him from getting a vote on the Senate floor.
"If EPA can get away with testing babies, infants, then they can get away with anything when it comes to human testing of toxics," said Boxer, who added that when she questioned Johnson about the program and whether he would agree to cancel it, Johnson flatly refused.
"This is sick, it's a sick, sick thing," she said."
Even FOX news can't resist screwing up the reporting:
"Boxer and Nelson said the EPA's Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (search) offers to pay parents of a baby nearly $1,000 if they agree to expose their child to household pesticides over a two-year period. The study was being done in Duval County, Fla., in the Jacksonville area, a geographic location that appealed to the EPA because of its year-round use of indoor pesticides."
How many times do I have to say it? The idiot parents out there in "Anytown USA" are already spraying roach killer and Lysol and Ajax and you name it all over the place in their houses and the little rugrats are crawling through the poison residue on their way to getting a snack out of the dog's food dish. What is the matter with the EPA looking over their shoulders to see what is actually happening on a day to day basis and trying to figgure out what it might be doing to the kids?
But nooooo, that can't happen when there are political points to be scored.
You know the template--A Democratic Politician wants to keep their name in the media. Said Democratic politician from the same Democratic Party that promotes themselves as the official “Champions of all things Minority” goes out and kills a perfectly legitimate program designed to look at the effects of every day household chemicals on young children.
I had finally about cooled off on the subject, then I read what the “(dis)honorable” Ms. Boxer had to say today on her web site.
Here is what I wrote as an E-mail to “Ms.” Boxer this morning:
“Mrs. Boxer, I find your public misstatements about EPA director nominee Mr. Stephen Johnson and the EPA’s CHEERS program to be reprehensible. On your official Web site you are quoted as saying:
“I am very pleased that Mr. Johnson has recognized the gross error in judgement (sic) the EPA made when they concocted this immoral program to test pesticides on children.
The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harm’s way.
I will continue to oppose policies that lead to the testing of toxins on humans.”
In my opinion, the only “gross error in judgment” regarding this issue is the manner you and Florida Senator Nelson have misrepresented this program to a gullible media and the general public
The only “reprehensible idea” I find here is the disservice you and fellow Democrats are doing to your uninformed minority and immigrant constituents.
Mr. Johnson was not in fact conducting an “immoral program to test pesticides on children” as you have indicated.
As you should know, under the CHEERS program the EPA was simply requesting permission to enter a number of Florida homes to look for correlations between any potential illnesses and the chemicals the children were normally exposed to in their daily lives.
No one at the EPA, as you have suggested, was proposing that helpless toddlers be sprinkled and sprayed with toxins like DDT, cloradane, and dioxin while researchers stood by with a clipboard--watching the test subject spasm and die as a result of the study.
If anyone is placing children in harms way, it is the uninformed parents of the Duval County Florida children that either intentionally or un-intentionally use perfectly legal chemicals and pesticides like roach spray and household cleaners in their homes every day.
Perhaps the larger contributors to childhood illnesses of these types are partisan hacks like you and Senator Nelson that continue to demagogue and pander to immigrant and minority voters while intentionally harming their best interest in your deplorable efforts to score political points in the national media.
I, personally, cannot believe that you do not know the fallacy of your very public position in this matter.
If, in fact, you don’t know the truth, you are seriously misinformed and you need to hire some new staff to help you determine the facts before you again open your mouth on the public stage (not to mention hiring a Web staff that can spell the word “judgment.”)
It is truly a shame to see a US Senator conduct herself in the manner you choose.”
Can you believe that she actually came out and said what she said on her Web site? Here is a link to the EPA site telling what the CHEERS program actually was going to do.
All I know is that California Senator Barbara Boxer is a lying bitch, and I, for one, am calling her on it.
Senator Nelson got a similar letter.
Am I over reacting here? What do you think?
Here is one highlight:
"On Thursday, Sens. Bill Nelson (search) of Florida and Barbara Boxer (search) of California expressed their "shock and disappointment" Thursday in Johnson's failure to stop the program.
They said that until he agrees to cancel the program, they're placing a hold on Johnson's nomination, preventing him from getting a vote on the Senate floor.
"If EPA can get away with testing babies, infants, then they can get away with anything when it comes to human testing of toxics," said Boxer, who added that when she questioned Johnson about the program and whether he would agree to cancel it, Johnson flatly refused.
"This is sick, it's a sick, sick thing," she said."
Even FOX news can't resist screwing up the reporting:
"Boxer and Nelson said the EPA's Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (search) offers to pay parents of a baby nearly $1,000 if they agree to expose their child to household pesticides over a two-year period. The study was being done in Duval County, Fla., in the Jacksonville area, a geographic location that appealed to the EPA because of its year-round use of indoor pesticides."
How many times do I have to say it? The idiot parents out there in "Anytown USA" are already spraying roach killer and Lysol and Ajax and you name it all over the place in their houses and the little rugrats are crawling through the poison residue on their way to getting a snack out of the dog's food dish. What is the matter with the EPA looking over their shoulders to see what is actually happening on a day to day basis and trying to figgure out what it might be doing to the kids?
But nooooo, that can't happen when there are political points to be scored.
You know the template--A Democratic Politician wants to keep their name in the media. Said Democratic politician from the same Democratic Party that promotes themselves as the official “Champions of all things Minority” goes out and kills a perfectly legitimate program designed to look at the effects of every day household chemicals on young children.
I had finally about cooled off on the subject, then I read what the “(dis)honorable” Ms. Boxer had to say today on her web site.
Here is what I wrote as an E-mail to “Ms.” Boxer this morning:
“Mrs. Boxer, I find your public misstatements about EPA director nominee Mr. Stephen Johnson and the EPA’s CHEERS program to be reprehensible. On your official Web site you are quoted as saying:
“I am very pleased that Mr. Johnson has recognized the gross error in judgement (sic) the EPA made when they concocted this immoral program to test pesticides on children.
The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harm’s way.
I will continue to oppose policies that lead to the testing of toxins on humans.”
In my opinion, the only “gross error in judgment” regarding this issue is the manner you and Florida Senator Nelson have misrepresented this program to a gullible media and the general public
The only “reprehensible idea” I find here is the disservice you and fellow Democrats are doing to your uninformed minority and immigrant constituents.
Mr. Johnson was not in fact conducting an “immoral program to test pesticides on children” as you have indicated.
As you should know, under the CHEERS program the EPA was simply requesting permission to enter a number of Florida homes to look for correlations between any potential illnesses and the chemicals the children were normally exposed to in their daily lives.
No one at the EPA, as you have suggested, was proposing that helpless toddlers be sprinkled and sprayed with toxins like DDT, cloradane, and dioxin while researchers stood by with a clipboard--watching the test subject spasm and die as a result of the study.
If anyone is placing children in harms way, it is the uninformed parents of the Duval County Florida children that either intentionally or un-intentionally use perfectly legal chemicals and pesticides like roach spray and household cleaners in their homes every day.
Perhaps the larger contributors to childhood illnesses of these types are partisan hacks like you and Senator Nelson that continue to demagogue and pander to immigrant and minority voters while intentionally harming their best interest in your deplorable efforts to score political points in the national media.
I, personally, cannot believe that you do not know the fallacy of your very public position in this matter.
If, in fact, you don’t know the truth, you are seriously misinformed and you need to hire some new staff to help you determine the facts before you again open your mouth on the public stage (not to mention hiring a Web staff that can spell the word “judgment.”)
It is truly a shame to see a US Senator conduct herself in the manner you choose.”
Can you believe that she actually came out and said what she said on her Web site? Here is a link to the EPA site telling what the CHEERS program actually was going to do.
All I know is that California Senator Barbara Boxer is a lying bitch, and I, for one, am calling her on it.
Senator Nelson got a similar letter.
Am I over reacting here? What do you think?
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Throwing The Baby Out With The Bath Water
For those of my readers that don’t really know me, I’ll just be real blunt here.
I consider myself to be a blanking (fill in your own curse word) Rocket Scientist compared to most of the so called “experts” that form our national policy, write our laws, and whose opinions are thrown at the public through main stream news stories on a daily basis.
I wasn’t always the most dedicated student, but I did manage to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology after a stint at Georgia Tech and a number of years of night school at Southern Tech after I made the mistake of getting married and buying a house—thereby having to actually work for a living prior to finishing my degree.
I can fix almost anything you got that breaks and the things I don’t actually fix I can do research and understand how they work—I just choose to not spend the time learning the intricate details of things like magneto hydrodynamics and plasma field generation because at the ripe old age of 45 the economic cost versus benefit curve is not to my liking
The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are both egregious examples of how government and politics can emasculate an organization’s ability to actually accomplish anything involving any real science. Both organizations have been systematically invaded by hoards of over-educated, panty waist, bed wetting, leftist, liberal morons, many of them outright communists, whom use the organizations to attack America in general and our system of capitalism specifically.
If you ask the CDC, no American should ever be allowed to own a gun. What a bunch of idiot doctors and so-called scientists. But the CDC’s ineptness isn’t really my point this afternoon.
My head is spinning around about this Associated Press story about the EPA, aptly filed under the title of politics, not science.
EPA Cancels Controversial Pesticide Study
“The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency's new head.
Stephen Johnson, as EPA's acting administrator, ordered an end to the planned study, a reversal from the agency's position just a day earlier when it said it would await the advice of outside scientific experts.
The aim of the study, Johnson said, was to fill data gaps on children's exposure to household pesticides and chemicals. He suspended it last November after ethical questions were raised by scientists within EPA and by environmentalists.
Over the study's two years, EPA had planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., in what critics of the study noted was a low-income minority neighborhood….
(The) EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million "Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study" from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.
"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review. EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy," Johnson said Friday. "I am committed to ensuring that EPA's research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., in demanding the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson's nomination by President Bush.
Now think about this with me for just a minute. In spite of what the title says, do you really believe that the EPA and the American Chemical Council were planning on running down to south Florida and injecting black and Mexican children with DDT and Chlordane? Were they going to replace the parents table salt with Amdro Fire ant poison and sit back to see what happened?
Not no, but HELL NO….THEY WEREN’T GOING TO DO ANY SUCH THING.
The EPA was simply going to spend two years looking at the household chemicals already being used by these teenaged and other underprivileged minority parents in their homes in an effort to determine what effects, if any, they had on the kids.
It seems that Barbra Boxer and Bill Nelson are playing their normal partisan, bullshit games with confirmation of President Bush’s nominees, and they’re tossing in a liberal (excuse the pun) dose of political correctness for good measure.
What kills me is that the AP idiot reporters don’t have the guts or the ability to actually tell you what I just told you—that the EPA wasn’t going to poison kids. If the EPA was going to test mainly white kids on Sea Island, GA or in Beverly Hills, CA I suppose that the CHEERS study would have been OK, but studying minority children that already are disproportionately injured by home environmental risks is a no-no?
And here is the final thing that really got my blood boiling in this story:
Johnson, an EPA employee for a quarter-century and the first person with a science background to be nominated to lead the agency, has been acting administrator since Mike Leavitt left the agency in January to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. He was nominated in March.
You with me here?
STEPHEN JOHNSON IS THE FIRST PERSON WITH A SCIENCE BACKGROUND TO BE NOMINATED TO LEAD THE EPA……EVER.
Does that make any sense whatsoever?
What I want to know is--who the hell has been running the EPA the past 25 years, pastry chefs and wallpaper hangers? AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh GOD help us all…
I’ve got to go to the pool now and cool off..
I consider myself to be a blanking (fill in your own curse word) Rocket Scientist compared to most of the so called “experts” that form our national policy, write our laws, and whose opinions are thrown at the public through main stream news stories on a daily basis.
I wasn’t always the most dedicated student, but I did manage to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology after a stint at Georgia Tech and a number of years of night school at Southern Tech after I made the mistake of getting married and buying a house—thereby having to actually work for a living prior to finishing my degree.
I can fix almost anything you got that breaks and the things I don’t actually fix I can do research and understand how they work—I just choose to not spend the time learning the intricate details of things like magneto hydrodynamics and plasma field generation because at the ripe old age of 45 the economic cost versus benefit curve is not to my liking
The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are both egregious examples of how government and politics can emasculate an organization’s ability to actually accomplish anything involving any real science. Both organizations have been systematically invaded by hoards of over-educated, panty waist, bed wetting, leftist, liberal morons, many of them outright communists, whom use the organizations to attack America in general and our system of capitalism specifically.
If you ask the CDC, no American should ever be allowed to own a gun. What a bunch of idiot doctors and so-called scientists. But the CDC’s ineptness isn’t really my point this afternoon.
My head is spinning around about this Associated Press story about the EPA, aptly filed under the title of politics, not science.
EPA Cancels Controversial Pesticide Study
“The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency's new head.
Stephen Johnson, as EPA's acting administrator, ordered an end to the planned study, a reversal from the agency's position just a day earlier when it said it would await the advice of outside scientific experts.
The aim of the study, Johnson said, was to fill data gaps on children's exposure to household pesticides and chemicals. He suspended it last November after ethical questions were raised by scientists within EPA and by environmentalists.
Over the study's two years, EPA had planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., in what critics of the study noted was a low-income minority neighborhood….
(The) EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million "Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study" from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.
"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review. EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy," Johnson said Friday. "I am committed to ensuring that EPA's research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., in demanding the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson's nomination by President Bush.
Now think about this with me for just a minute. In spite of what the title says, do you really believe that the EPA and the American Chemical Council were planning on running down to south Florida and injecting black and Mexican children with DDT and Chlordane? Were they going to replace the parents table salt with Amdro Fire ant poison and sit back to see what happened?
Not no, but HELL NO….THEY WEREN’T GOING TO DO ANY SUCH THING.
The EPA was simply going to spend two years looking at the household chemicals already being used by these teenaged and other underprivileged minority parents in their homes in an effort to determine what effects, if any, they had on the kids.
It seems that Barbra Boxer and Bill Nelson are playing their normal partisan, bullshit games with confirmation of President Bush’s nominees, and they’re tossing in a liberal (excuse the pun) dose of political correctness for good measure.
What kills me is that the AP idiot reporters don’t have the guts or the ability to actually tell you what I just told you—that the EPA wasn’t going to poison kids. If the EPA was going to test mainly white kids on Sea Island, GA or in Beverly Hills, CA I suppose that the CHEERS study would have been OK, but studying minority children that already are disproportionately injured by home environmental risks is a no-no?
And here is the final thing that really got my blood boiling in this story:
Johnson, an EPA employee for a quarter-century and the first person with a science background to be nominated to lead the agency, has been acting administrator since Mike Leavitt left the agency in January to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. He was nominated in March.
You with me here?
STEPHEN JOHNSON IS THE FIRST PERSON WITH A SCIENCE BACKGROUND TO BE NOMINATED TO LEAD THE EPA……EVER.
Does that make any sense whatsoever?
What I want to know is--who the hell has been running the EPA the past 25 years, pastry chefs and wallpaper hangers? AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh GOD help us all…
I’ve got to go to the pool now and cool off..
Pooped of Public Pomposity
Between the "zoot suits" worn by the Swiss Royal guards at the Pope's funeral and the funky hats on all of the royal muckity mucks at Prince Charles and Lady Homewrecker...er..Camilla Parker Boyles wedding, I've about had it with displays of Public Pomposity this week.
I never thought I'd say this, but give me a good dose of some old fashoned Bush and Kerry bashing and a few swift boat veterans thrown in for good measure, please. If I see one more big purple hat or dude running around in elf shoes--I'm gonna puke.
I never thought I'd say this, but give me a good dose of some old fashoned Bush and Kerry bashing and a few swift boat veterans thrown in for good measure, please. If I see one more big purple hat or dude running around in elf shoes--I'm gonna puke.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Free Blogging
Blogger.com is driving me crazy. Apparently their server was down last night for a while because I had trouble publishing the Pork Post and I must have rewritten it three times before I finally gave up and went to bed.
Almost half the time I write a posting in the Blogger software I have trouble. I should know better and always use MS Word instead. I just can't justify paying Typepad or someone to host to the tune of $10.00 a month when I get MOST of what I need for free.
Almost half the time I write a posting in the Blogger software I have trouble. I should know better and always use MS Word instead. I just can't justify paying Typepad or someone to host to the tune of $10.00 a month when I get MOST of what I need for free.
Have You Got Your Fair Share?
Of what you might ask?
You know…GOVERNMENT PORK!
The Citizens Against Government Waste have just released their new 2005 Congressional Pig Book. Are you and your fellow state citizens getting your fair share?
Here is a listing of Federal spending by state. I’m proud to say that Georgia is number 49 out of 51. At first glance one might be inclined to say that Georgians should be angry at Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and that Glynn County should be voting Representative Jack Kingston out of office.
I’m proud that Georgia didn’t consume more of this indigestible “pork” than we did. While the national average for “pork spending” is $33.03, all of us rednecks in Georgia only gobbled up an average of $14.83 each.
I notice a couple of strange things about the basis of the survey. Why is it that the states with low populations like Alaska ($645,502,000), the District of Columbia ($257,171,000), and Hawaii ($573,926,000) were numbers 1, 2 and 3, while big states like California ($237,593,250) and Texas ($65,301,250) are numbers 50 and 51?
Perhaps the most telling statistic is that lowly West Virginia, land of Robert KKK “pretty pretty” Byrd, was the number four benefactor on the list, obtaining $398,622,250 of US tax dollars for its 1.8 million population. That works out to a little over $219 for every man, woman, and child in the coal mine state.
I remember that Byrd once funded the construction of a new FBI lab building in West Virginia (bearing his own name) and had to wait over a year to legislate funding to be able to actually afford to hire some people to work in the new facility. What a farce.
I’m not going to be as simplistic in thought as to suggest that such a method is possible, but if our Congress could keep federal spending on a per capita basis to that of Texas ($2.90) this year, the budget would be reduced by $8.85 trillion dollars from the current $9.7 trillion dollar level.
And by the way, isn’t it interesting that beleaguered House Speaker Tom Delay’s Texas is at the bottom of the list?
Can you say Democratic retaliation?
Just wondering…
You know…GOVERNMENT PORK!
The Citizens Against Government Waste have just released their new 2005 Congressional Pig Book. Are you and your fellow state citizens getting your fair share?
Here is a listing of Federal spending by state. I’m proud to say that Georgia is number 49 out of 51. At first glance one might be inclined to say that Georgians should be angry at Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and that Glynn County should be voting Representative Jack Kingston out of office.
I’m proud that Georgia didn’t consume more of this indigestible “pork” than we did. While the national average for “pork spending” is $33.03, all of us rednecks in Georgia only gobbled up an average of $14.83 each.
I notice a couple of strange things about the basis of the survey. Why is it that the states with low populations like Alaska ($645,502,000), the District of Columbia ($257,171,000), and Hawaii ($573,926,000) were numbers 1, 2 and 3, while big states like California ($237,593,250) and Texas ($65,301,250) are numbers 50 and 51?
Perhaps the most telling statistic is that lowly West Virginia, land of Robert KKK “pretty pretty” Byrd, was the number four benefactor on the list, obtaining $398,622,250 of US tax dollars for its 1.8 million population. That works out to a little over $219 for every man, woman, and child in the coal mine state.
I remember that Byrd once funded the construction of a new FBI lab building in West Virginia (bearing his own name) and had to wait over a year to legislate funding to be able to actually afford to hire some people to work in the new facility. What a farce.
I’m not going to be as simplistic in thought as to suggest that such a method is possible, but if our Congress could keep federal spending on a per capita basis to that of Texas ($2.90) this year, the budget would be reduced by $8.85 trillion dollars from the current $9.7 trillion dollar level.
And by the way, isn’t it interesting that beleaguered House Speaker Tom Delay’s Texas is at the bottom of the list?
Can you say Democratic retaliation?
Just wondering…
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Four Years Ago
I thought about posting about this for a while this week and I have been undecided. I've been sorta bummed out about it and thus the dearth of writing, but any way...here goes.
I grew up around fire. My family had a fireplace in our basement that we used regularly for heat and to provide "atmosphere" to our evening socializing. We had central heat and ultimately added a central air conditioning unit in the late 1960's, but the fireplace was a major feature of our home as I grew up.
My mother's father's house had three fireplaces, the house being built in the 1930's by hand from lumber cut and sawn off of his farm. As a child I remember the cold nights and the primary fireplace in his family room being a source of heat and community gathering when the family was there together.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and a friend of mine was the designated "troupe arson" because Mickey could light a fire better than anyone we knew. Fire is your friend when you are a kid and you're camping out and you need to get warm or cook dinner or need something to goof around with--within certain limitations.
I had a fireplace in my first two houses. I also had a chainsaw and I cut wood and stoked those fireplaces full and loved every minute of it until 1994. That was the year that I gave my ex-wife my second house and the fireplace. She could have cared less about my fireplace--but I loved it.
I have lived without my own fireplace ever since. I had a house since then, but I didn't have a fireplace...and I had a fire, and that caused a big problem. You see, I bought my third house in the summer of 1997 and happily lived there after my divorce until April 5, 2001 when I came home from work and my house had burned up.
If you have never experienced a house fire on an up close and personal basis, I hope you never have to because there is no way for you to understand what happens to your life. There was a police tape wrapped around it and there was water running down the driveway and almost everything I owned except my Snapper mower and my Webber Charcoal grill and my Nissan Maxima and the Chevy Suburban that I happened to be driving that day was toast.
Worst of all, the police want to talk to you and treat you like some kind of criminal because YOU are the number one suspect when your house burns down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the cause of my fire was obvious--a crappy, cheep, surge suppressor/power strip on my fancy smancy 110 watt per channel Bose surround sound TV system.
Never again.
Go in your home office, go in your bedrooms, go in your living rooms, and look at what you have plugged into the surge protectors and wall outlets. Do you have an "octopus" of electrical wires? DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME AND FIND YOUR FRONT DOOR CHOPPED IN AND POLICE TAPE ACROSS YOUR FRONT PORCH? Do you want to see everything you've worked for, possibly your plants and your pets, cooked into ashes?
No?
Then think about what you are connecting to the electrical circuits in your house and get some help if you have any doubts and don't end up like me that day, moving into a motel room, dragging along what few of your possessions you can scrounge out of the rubble, smelling of smoke and dripping soot and water, stinking up your car parked out in the parking lot.
It really sucks......don't let it happen to you...
OK?
I grew up around fire. My family had a fireplace in our basement that we used regularly for heat and to provide "atmosphere" to our evening socializing. We had central heat and ultimately added a central air conditioning unit in the late 1960's, but the fireplace was a major feature of our home as I grew up.
My mother's father's house had three fireplaces, the house being built in the 1930's by hand from lumber cut and sawn off of his farm. As a child I remember the cold nights and the primary fireplace in his family room being a source of heat and community gathering when the family was there together.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and a friend of mine was the designated "troupe arson" because Mickey could light a fire better than anyone we knew. Fire is your friend when you are a kid and you're camping out and you need to get warm or cook dinner or need something to goof around with--within certain limitations.
I had a fireplace in my first two houses. I also had a chainsaw and I cut wood and stoked those fireplaces full and loved every minute of it until 1994. That was the year that I gave my ex-wife my second house and the fireplace. She could have cared less about my fireplace--but I loved it.
I have lived without my own fireplace ever since. I had a house since then, but I didn't have a fireplace...and I had a fire, and that caused a big problem. You see, I bought my third house in the summer of 1997 and happily lived there after my divorce until April 5, 2001 when I came home from work and my house had burned up.
If you have never experienced a house fire on an up close and personal basis, I hope you never have to because there is no way for you to understand what happens to your life. There was a police tape wrapped around it and there was water running down the driveway and almost everything I owned except my Snapper mower and my Webber Charcoal grill and my Nissan Maxima and the Chevy Suburban that I happened to be driving that day was toast.
Worst of all, the police want to talk to you and treat you like some kind of criminal because YOU are the number one suspect when your house burns down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the cause of my fire was obvious--a crappy, cheep, surge suppressor/power strip on my fancy smancy 110 watt per channel Bose surround sound TV system.
Never again.
Go in your home office, go in your bedrooms, go in your living rooms, and look at what you have plugged into the surge protectors and wall outlets. Do you have an "octopus" of electrical wires? DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME AND FIND YOUR FRONT DOOR CHOPPED IN AND POLICE TAPE ACROSS YOUR FRONT PORCH? Do you want to see everything you've worked for, possibly your plants and your pets, cooked into ashes?
No?
Then think about what you are connecting to the electrical circuits in your house and get some help if you have any doubts and don't end up like me that day, moving into a motel room, dragging along what few of your possessions you can scrounge out of the rubble, smelling of smoke and dripping soot and water, stinking up your car parked out in the parking lot.
It really sucks......don't let it happen to you...
OK?
Friday, April 01, 2005
Plea BARGAN
A year in prison (not jail) and a $100,000 fine. That is what former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger could have gotten for each of his admitted crimes.
The details of the plea bargain (heavy, heavy, emphasis on BARGAN) were printed this morning:
"Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism.
Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.
The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, and then later lost them.
He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He recognizes what he did was wrong. . . . It was not inadvertent." "
So are you following me here?
Right in the middle of the so called “independent” 9/11 commission’s investigation, right in the middle of Richard Clark’s book publication impugning President Bush’s efforts and Condoleezza Rice’s knowledge of Al Quada, Berger and his magic pants and socks were removing unique, original copies of documents from the Clinton administration records:
"The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.
The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil. "
Who knows what Berger actually got away with destroying, but being the career security employee that he was, he definitely knew of the illegality of tampering with secure documents and the potential consequences of his actions, but this 59 year old man was willing to risk his reputation and career to do what he did to protect SOMEONE.
I wonder who that SOMEONE was?
Berger took five copies, of which he destroyed three.
Five times ten is 50 years. Five times $100,000 is $500,000.
Three times ten is 30 years, three times $100,000 is $300,000.
But Berger got 0 years and $10,000 on a misdemeaner, not a Felony, plus a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What I want to know is, how in the hell can we ever trust this man with a security clearance again?
This man was the Kerry campaign's national security consultant. He was in line to serve in the Kerry cabinet if the media had managed to get his sorry ass elected.
Like I said before, what a nice Plea BARGAN.
The details of the plea bargain (heavy, heavy, emphasis on BARGAN) were printed this morning:
"Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism.
Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.
The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, and then later lost them.
He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He recognizes what he did was wrong. . . . It was not inadvertent." "
So are you following me here?
Right in the middle of the so called “independent” 9/11 commission’s investigation, right in the middle of Richard Clark’s book publication impugning President Bush’s efforts and Condoleezza Rice’s knowledge of Al Quada, Berger and his magic pants and socks were removing unique, original copies of documents from the Clinton administration records:
"The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.
The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil. "
Who knows what Berger actually got away with destroying, but being the career security employee that he was, he definitely knew of the illegality of tampering with secure documents and the potential consequences of his actions, but this 59 year old man was willing to risk his reputation and career to do what he did to protect SOMEONE.
I wonder who that SOMEONE was?
Berger took five copies, of which he destroyed three.
Five times ten is 50 years. Five times $100,000 is $500,000.
Three times ten is 30 years, three times $100,000 is $300,000.
But Berger got 0 years and $10,000 on a misdemeaner, not a Felony, plus a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What I want to know is, how in the hell can we ever trust this man with a security clearance again?
This man was the Kerry campaign's national security consultant. He was in line to serve in the Kerry cabinet if the media had managed to get his sorry ass elected.
Like I said before, what a nice Plea BARGAN.
Another Government Cover-Up
Well, it’s official. Another Clinton administration official gets off with a slap on the wrist and the rest of us regular peon citizens continue to cower in the shadow of the US justice department.
“Former national security adviser Sandy Berger will plead guilty to taking classified material from the National Archives, a misdemeanor, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Berger is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.
The former Clinton administration official previously acknowledged he removed from the National Archives copies of documents about the government's anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents. He said he was reviewing the materials to help determine which Clinton administration documents to provide to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
He called the episode "an honest mistake," and denied criminal wrongdoing.”
This, of course, is complete bull based on what I read last summer. Do you go to the library and put copies of historic documents into your socks, underwear, coat pockets, and briefcase by accident, then walk out and take them home and cut them up with scissors while trimming your mustache?
I usually don’t have that problem.
Let’s review what Mr. Berger and his magic socks and pants were observed doing in a secure area of the National Archives, as reported by FOX News last summer:
"Berger testified publicly at one of the commission's hearings about the Clinton administration's approach to fighting terrorism.
Berger had ordered his counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, in early 2000 to write the after-action report and has publicly spoken about how the review brought to the forefront the realization that Al Qaeda had reached America's shores and required more attention.
The missing documents involve two or three draft versions of the report as it was being refined by the Clinton administration. The Archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
In the FBI search of his office, Berger also was found in possession of a small number of classified note cards containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s, but those are not a focal point of the current criminal probe, according to officials and lawyers.
Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.
Officials said Archive staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archive officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey.
Berger immediately returned all the notes he had taken, and conducted a search and located two copies of the classified documents on a messy desk in his office, Breuer said. An Archives official came to Berger's home to collect those documents but Berger couldn't locate the other missing copies, the lawyer said.
Breuer said Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes but also knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room was a "technical violation of Archive procedures, but it is not all clear to us this represents a violation of the law."
Justice officials have informed the Sept. 11 commission of the Berger incident and the nature of the documents in case commissioners had any concerns, officials said. The commission is expected to release its final report on Thursday."
I can’t find all of the news articles archived, but I remember reading that the National Archives staff became very suspicious when Berger repeatedly excused himself to make bathroom visits and acted suspiciously while reviewing the documents.
Now here is the kicker...
After jacking around with this for over a year, the government morons let Mr. Berger off easy.
Although the crime carries up to a year jail sentence and a $100,000 fine, they let him off with no jail time, a $10,000 fine, and a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What a total load of crap…
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The IRS Can Just Kiss It
It's that time of year again---you know---TAX TIME.
I wrestling with the forms for Pat and I and trying to do my civic duty to pony up "my fair share" of the fruits of our blood, sweat, and tears to give to the Imperial Federal Government and the State of Georgia.
I can't even say here in my own blog how much I hate the government tax system nor recount to you how much money I have spent through the years on accountants trying to keep myself and my businesses out of trouble with the IRS. Even with my best efforts and the accountants, I still have paid penalties and interest on past due taxes for honest mistakes.
The IRS loves looking at that seven year window of income and returns for errors and shenanigans that might yield extra cash for their coffers. If they catch you with "criminal intent," they can look back even further for additional taxes.
Here is a little gem that I just found out about. An acquantence told me that they hadn't filed a tax return in over five years. After looking into their tax situation, I found that they had OVER EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of returns coming.
You know what the IRS does when you don't file a return and they owe you money?
The bastards keep anything that isn't refunded within three years from the date the return was due, that's what. It's going to cost my acquantence over $4000.00.
You get what I'm saying here? If they had owed money the past six years to the IRS, the government would add interest and penalties easily doubling the amount and come roaring after their car and house and future wages, but since the government owes them money they just assess a 100% penalty and offer a great big old...
SCREW YOU MR. TAXPAYING CITIZEN
As my title said, THE IRS CAN JUST KISS IT
I wrestling with the forms for Pat and I and trying to do my civic duty to pony up "my fair share" of the fruits of our blood, sweat, and tears to give to the Imperial Federal Government and the State of Georgia.
I can't even say here in my own blog how much I hate the government tax system nor recount to you how much money I have spent through the years on accountants trying to keep myself and my businesses out of trouble with the IRS. Even with my best efforts and the accountants, I still have paid penalties and interest on past due taxes for honest mistakes.
The IRS loves looking at that seven year window of income and returns for errors and shenanigans that might yield extra cash for their coffers. If they catch you with "criminal intent," they can look back even further for additional taxes.
Here is a little gem that I just found out about. An acquantence told me that they hadn't filed a tax return in over five years. After looking into their tax situation, I found that they had OVER EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of returns coming.
You know what the IRS does when you don't file a return and they owe you money?
The bastards keep anything that isn't refunded within three years from the date the return was due, that's what. It's going to cost my acquantence over $4000.00.
You get what I'm saying here? If they had owed money the past six years to the IRS, the government would add interest and penalties easily doubling the amount and come roaring after their car and house and future wages, but since the government owes them money they just assess a 100% penalty and offer a great big old...
SCREW YOU MR. TAXPAYING CITIZEN
As my title said, THE IRS CAN JUST KISS IT
My Spammer has Bitten
As you may remember, a couple of days ago I responded to one of the many financial spams that is going around the internet.
I assumed the idenity of Vaginanal Rogers, a thirty two year old single mother of seven who has many problems in life, the least of which are financial.
Her Australian/Dutch friend now seems to be working in South Africa rather than Holland. She (Vaginanal) and I (Virgil) are a bit confused.
Watch as I respond to Mr. Wilson Dube with major computer illiteracy problems as well as dealing with the delima of not having a bank account into which he can deposit my lottery winnings (or steal my life savings.)
MR WILSON DUBE
AUSTRALIAN LOTTERY ORGANISATION
Mutual park
Jan Smuts Drive
Pinelands, Gauteng.7405 .
Phone: + 27 73-179- 0425.
Fax: 27 -11 -507 - 5811
Email:wilsondube_1234@yahoo.com
Website: www.ablottery.com
Attn: Winners,
Ref: 474061725/04,
Batch: 7056490902/188,
Winning No: GB8701/LPRC
We wish to bring to you notice that, the Zonal Board here in South Africa has gotten some information from the Head Office in Australia today and "a form" has been attached in this email for "verification".
Could you please note the following points below:
See the attached application in your email.
With your references identified, download the Application form in Word and fill out the form completely.
Please provide all information on the application as required.
Read all instructions carefully before you fill out the application.
Fill in all the details of your winning & Make sure all information is correct.
Be sure your application matches your resume.
Re-send the form through your email and by fax.
Please note that, this "application form" have to be submitted within 10 days before for processing & verifications.
Any forms received after this deadline cannot be guaranteed to be included in the batch of this lottery season and will be reported to the next panel meeting.
To verify that your application has been received and for any questions relating to winning, in which you filled in is very correct, please email your "Claim Agent" OR you may call the organization for notifications.
We are looking forward with a view to hearing from you soonest.
Congratulation.
Annnnnd...here is my response...
Dearest Mr. Dube,
I nearly wet my pants with excitment when I got your E-mail this afternoon. I've been staying up until all hours the past day and a half, chain smoking them unfiltered Camels and checking my E-mail every hour or so hoping to hear from you and finally I DID. I've developed a hacking cough and just have to cut back on my smoking, and now that I've heard from you I can rest easy.
I looked at the pretty attachment form you sent me, but I can't pull it up in our wordprocessor because our Wordstar program won't read the file. Mr. Biggins (the septic tank pumping guy) is coming by this afternoon and i was going to get him to look at this old Radio Shack TRS 80 computer and see if we had anything else on 5-1/4" floppy disk that might read your file.
As a last resort, I was thinking of going down to the Third Pentacostal Holliness church tonight for the Thursday night snake handling service and while I was there using the computer in the church office which my good friend Mildred Stumpjumper said was really fast. They bought it at a flea market with the money that my second stepdaddy left the church after he got run over by the pulpwood truck. They say it has a 1200 baud modem and a 20 meggabyte dohickey to save stuff on where we are still using an acoustic modem at our house. I think that a new computer might be in our future once we get our lottery money, and maybe I'll buy one for my mama and another one for the church.
Any way, I see on your form where you want my personal profile, but you only give me two lines to write down a lifetime of accomplishments. Nail artist, massage therapist, exotic dancer, newspaper delivery technician, culinary delivery, you name it I've done a little of it as I change jobs about every six months or so.
I'm going down to the bank this afternoon to see if they will forget about that time I got caught kiting checks I stole from the turpentine plant office and let me have my own savings account. Me and mama have just about paid off the money they said I mis-appropriated (whatever that means) and I can't elieve that they would be so mean spirited as to keep a lottery winner from having their own account. As a last resort, my mama's rich old third cousin Flussey Mae will probably let me put the money in her account. I'll ask her tonight at the snake handling.
I really look forward to answering all of your questions and getting things moving with the money transfer. Y'all take care now, you hear?
Your Friend
Vaginanal Rogers
I assumed the idenity of Vaginanal Rogers, a thirty two year old single mother of seven who has many problems in life, the least of which are financial.
Her Australian/Dutch friend now seems to be working in South Africa rather than Holland. She (Vaginanal) and I (Virgil) are a bit confused.
Watch as I respond to Mr. Wilson Dube with major computer illiteracy problems as well as dealing with the delima of not having a bank account into which he can deposit my lottery winnings (or steal my life savings.)
MR WILSON DUBE
AUSTRALIAN LOTTERY ORGANISATION
Mutual park
Jan Smuts Drive
Pinelands, Gauteng.7405 .
Phone: + 27 73-179- 0425.
Fax: 27 -11 -507 - 5811
Email:wilsondube_1234@yahoo.com
Website: www.ablottery.com
Attn: Winners,
Ref: 474061725/04,
Batch: 7056490902/188,
Winning No: GB8701/LPRC
We wish to bring to you notice that, the Zonal Board here in South Africa has gotten some information from the Head Office in Australia today and "a form" has been attached in this email for "verification".
Could you please note the following points below:
See the attached application in your email.
With your references identified, download the Application form in Word and fill out the form completely.
Please provide all information on the application as required.
Read all instructions carefully before you fill out the application.
Fill in all the details of your winning & Make sure all information is correct.
Be sure your application matches your resume.
Re-send the form through your email and by fax.
Please note that, this "application form" have to be submitted within 10 days before for processing & verifications.
Any forms received after this deadline cannot be guaranteed to be included in the batch of this lottery season and will be reported to the next panel meeting.
To verify that your application has been received and for any questions relating to winning, in which you filled in is very correct, please email your "Claim Agent" OR you may call the organization for notifications.
We are looking forward with a view to hearing from you soonest.
Congratulation.
Annnnnd...here is my response...
Dearest Mr. Dube,
I nearly wet my pants with excitment when I got your E-mail this afternoon. I've been staying up until all hours the past day and a half, chain smoking them unfiltered Camels and checking my E-mail every hour or so hoping to hear from you and finally I DID. I've developed a hacking cough and just have to cut back on my smoking, and now that I've heard from you I can rest easy.
I looked at the pretty attachment form you sent me, but I can't pull it up in our wordprocessor because our Wordstar program won't read the file. Mr. Biggins (the septic tank pumping guy) is coming by this afternoon and i was going to get him to look at this old Radio Shack TRS 80 computer and see if we had anything else on 5-1/4" floppy disk that might read your file.
As a last resort, I was thinking of going down to the Third Pentacostal Holliness church tonight for the Thursday night snake handling service and while I was there using the computer in the church office which my good friend Mildred Stumpjumper said was really fast. They bought it at a flea market with the money that my second stepdaddy left the church after he got run over by the pulpwood truck. They say it has a 1200 baud modem and a 20 meggabyte dohickey to save stuff on where we are still using an acoustic modem at our house. I think that a new computer might be in our future once we get our lottery money, and maybe I'll buy one for my mama and another one for the church.
Any way, I see on your form where you want my personal profile, but you only give me two lines to write down a lifetime of accomplishments. Nail artist, massage therapist, exotic dancer, newspaper delivery technician, culinary delivery, you name it I've done a little of it as I change jobs about every six months or so.
I'm going down to the bank this afternoon to see if they will forget about that time I got caught kiting checks I stole from the turpentine plant office and let me have my own savings account. Me and mama have just about paid off the money they said I mis-appropriated (whatever that means) and I can't elieve that they would be so mean spirited as to keep a lottery winner from having their own account. As a last resort, my mama's rich old third cousin Flussey Mae will probably let me put the money in her account. I'll ask her tonight at the snake handling.
I really look forward to answering all of your questions and getting things moving with the money transfer. Y'all take care now, you hear?
Your Friend
Vaginanal Rogers
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Intemperate Thoughts on Illegal Immigration
(No Trespassing)
Back in high school, in the middle of being bored and goofing off, my math and science curriculum was interrupted by the requirement that I take one year of a foreign language. This presented a bit of a dilemma for me, because I already hated having to study my own language—English—and now they were going to make me study how to write and speak some dang foreigner’s language?
You see, I thought that English class sucked. More specifically, I thought that English teachers sucked. I never once had an English teacher in high school or junior high school that could teach their way out of a wet paper bag. The only two we had in twelve years of free government school that seemed to give a damn was my fourth grade English teacher, Mrs. Ward and my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Colvin. Everyone loved Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Colvin.
In our school system, you had a choice of two languages. French and Spanish were the options. French seemed to be the more popular choice since a bunch of my peers started taking it in the eighth grade and many took three or four years worth, but I swear that at the end of all that education only two or three kids could say a sentence ten words long in French that actually made sense and would not cause a Parisian to burst in to hysterical laughter. “Par les vous my armpits smell like the subway in July se vous play?” or something like that was all most of them could manage to utter.
Since I had been to Juarez Mexico a couple of times with my family on vacation and survived, I decided that studying Spanish made more sense to me as our country shared a border with a Spanish speaking country. I’m sorry, but my brain is wired to do math and my language skills are a bit lacking, not to mention that my motivation to study language is off the Richter scale in the negative range. After one year of concatenating verbs (hablas, hablo, hablamamos….AHHHHHHHHH) I settled for a grade of B- and had a nervous break down. No more foreign language studies for me…
Never Ever.
So what the heck is the big doodling deal with our Imperial Federal government refusing to defend our borders and capture and deport the zillion Mexicans that have invaded over the past twenty-five years? I am pretty darn sure that if I went wandering into Mexico to set up shop as an engineer or flew down to Belize and hung out a contracting shingle that the local authorities would take note and expedite my return to my Yankee homeland within a few months if not days. So why can't we do the same with all of these maids, carpenters, and greens keepers that are flooding over our borders?
Now we hear that the government is belatedly sending 500 new border patrol agents into the field.
“NACO, Ariz. -- Federal officials yesterday said more than 500 new U.S. Border Patrol agents will be assigned along the U.S.-Mexico border in southeastern Arizona to combat illegal immigration and protect against potential terrorists.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said the plan will be announced today, just days before the start of a border vigil by an army of civilian volunteers angry about a lack of immigration enforcement by Congress and the Bush administration.
The DHS officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expect that as many as 150 agents will be dispatched to Arizona within the next few days and that the rest will be on the border by midsummer -- when most foreigners try to sneak into the country.
The move follows bipartisan criticism of President Bush's failure to fund 2,000 agents set out in the intelligence-overhaul bill that he signed in December. He has proposed funding for 210 new agents.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, immediately said the 500 new agents are not enough.”
I just don’t understand why our Federal government insists on not doing one of it’s fundamental constitutional duties. National defense and border protection is their job, not screwing around with Terri Schiavo and meddling with what consenting adults do in their bedrooms.
“White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday said the president thinks the country can do a better job of enforcing its borders through a guest-worker program that will allow the government to go after "those who are coming here for the wrong reason -- whether it's terrorists or people intent on criminal activity."
Guest-worker program? I have friends, Neil and Shelly, that are living here legally from South Africa. Neil has attended Grad School and works as a software programmer—legally—but his wife Shelly can’t work because her profession is childcare and she can’t get a work permit. This “Guest-worker” program is a slap in the face to people like Neil and Shelly that take the time and expense to move to the US through legal channels.
Then there is The Minuteman Project, founded by James Gilchrist. This group of citizen volunteers is mobilizing in Arizona on Friday of this week for the purpose of assisting in border patrol. Of course, rather than encouraging and supporting their activities, the Federal government is attempting to discourage and suppress the effort.
“Beginning this weekend, more than 1,000 volunteers will take part in a monthlong border vigil as part of the so-called Minuteman Project. They will focus on a 20-mile area of the San Pedro River Valley west of here, which has become one of the nation's most active corridors for illegal aliens.
The volunteers plan to patrol the border and notify the Border Patrol of the location of foreigners crossing into the United States illegally.
"This is what this protest is all about, enforcing the law," said Chris Simcox, one of the organizers of the Minuteman Project. "And that's why so many people have responded."
Mr. McClellan yesterday said the president "very clearly" addressed the debate over the Minuteman Project last week when he referred to the volunteers as vigilantes after a summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
“It's one thing if people are working along the border, simply to report suspicious activity, and that activity should be reported to the proper authorities -- the Department of Homeland Security officials, who are there to enforce our borders. If people are operating outside of the law, that cannot be tolerated," Mr. McClellan said.
Mr. Fox and other Mexican officials have said they fear that the volunteers will abuse the border crossers.
The volunteers, who will be monitored by various civil and human rights organizations, have been told not to confront the aliens. Although some of the volunteers will be armed, organizers have banned rifles and have threatened to send home anyone who causes a confrontation.”
Well isn’t that a fine kettle of fish. The government won’t defend our borders, and now they are threatening citizens who want to do the government’s job. The emphasis isn't on the lawbreakers, it's placed on the law abiding citizens who want to enforce the law.
Complete, total, crap...
Back in high school, in the middle of being bored and goofing off, my math and science curriculum was interrupted by the requirement that I take one year of a foreign language. This presented a bit of a dilemma for me, because I already hated having to study my own language—English—and now they were going to make me study how to write and speak some dang foreigner’s language?
You see, I thought that English class sucked. More specifically, I thought that English teachers sucked. I never once had an English teacher in high school or junior high school that could teach their way out of a wet paper bag. The only two we had in twelve years of free government school that seemed to give a damn was my fourth grade English teacher, Mrs. Ward and my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Colvin. Everyone loved Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Colvin.
In our school system, you had a choice of two languages. French and Spanish were the options. French seemed to be the more popular choice since a bunch of my peers started taking it in the eighth grade and many took three or four years worth, but I swear that at the end of all that education only two or three kids could say a sentence ten words long in French that actually made sense and would not cause a Parisian to burst in to hysterical laughter. “Par les vous my armpits smell like the subway in July se vous play?” or something like that was all most of them could manage to utter.
Since I had been to Juarez Mexico a couple of times with my family on vacation and survived, I decided that studying Spanish made more sense to me as our country shared a border with a Spanish speaking country. I’m sorry, but my brain is wired to do math and my language skills are a bit lacking, not to mention that my motivation to study language is off the Richter scale in the negative range. After one year of concatenating verbs (hablas, hablo, hablamamos….AHHHHHHHHH) I settled for a grade of B- and had a nervous break down. No more foreign language studies for me…
Never Ever.
So what the heck is the big doodling deal with our Imperial Federal government refusing to defend our borders and capture and deport the zillion Mexicans that have invaded over the past twenty-five years? I am pretty darn sure that if I went wandering into Mexico to set up shop as an engineer or flew down to Belize and hung out a contracting shingle that the local authorities would take note and expedite my return to my Yankee homeland within a few months if not days. So why can't we do the same with all of these maids, carpenters, and greens keepers that are flooding over our borders?
Now we hear that the government is belatedly sending 500 new border patrol agents into the field.
“NACO, Ariz. -- Federal officials yesterday said more than 500 new U.S. Border Patrol agents will be assigned along the U.S.-Mexico border in southeastern Arizona to combat illegal immigration and protect against potential terrorists.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said the plan will be announced today, just days before the start of a border vigil by an army of civilian volunteers angry about a lack of immigration enforcement by Congress and the Bush administration.
The DHS officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expect that as many as 150 agents will be dispatched to Arizona within the next few days and that the rest will be on the border by midsummer -- when most foreigners try to sneak into the country.
The move follows bipartisan criticism of President Bush's failure to fund 2,000 agents set out in the intelligence-overhaul bill that he signed in December. He has proposed funding for 210 new agents.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, immediately said the 500 new agents are not enough.”
I just don’t understand why our Federal government insists on not doing one of it’s fundamental constitutional duties. National defense and border protection is their job, not screwing around with Terri Schiavo and meddling with what consenting adults do in their bedrooms.
“White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday said the president thinks the country can do a better job of enforcing its borders through a guest-worker program that will allow the government to go after "those who are coming here for the wrong reason -- whether it's terrorists or people intent on criminal activity."
Guest-worker program? I have friends, Neil and Shelly, that are living here legally from South Africa. Neil has attended Grad School and works as a software programmer—legally—but his wife Shelly can’t work because her profession is childcare and she can’t get a work permit. This “Guest-worker” program is a slap in the face to people like Neil and Shelly that take the time and expense to move to the US through legal channels.
Then there is The Minuteman Project, founded by James Gilchrist. This group of citizen volunteers is mobilizing in Arizona on Friday of this week for the purpose of assisting in border patrol. Of course, rather than encouraging and supporting their activities, the Federal government is attempting to discourage and suppress the effort.
“Beginning this weekend, more than 1,000 volunteers will take part in a monthlong border vigil as part of the so-called Minuteman Project. They will focus on a 20-mile area of the San Pedro River Valley west of here, which has become one of the nation's most active corridors for illegal aliens.
The volunteers plan to patrol the border and notify the Border Patrol of the location of foreigners crossing into the United States illegally.
"This is what this protest is all about, enforcing the law," said Chris Simcox, one of the organizers of the Minuteman Project. "And that's why so many people have responded."
Mr. McClellan yesterday said the president "very clearly" addressed the debate over the Minuteman Project last week when he referred to the volunteers as vigilantes after a summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
“It's one thing if people are working along the border, simply to report suspicious activity, and that activity should be reported to the proper authorities -- the Department of Homeland Security officials, who are there to enforce our borders. If people are operating outside of the law, that cannot be tolerated," Mr. McClellan said.
Mr. Fox and other Mexican officials have said they fear that the volunteers will abuse the border crossers.
The volunteers, who will be monitored by various civil and human rights organizations, have been told not to confront the aliens. Although some of the volunteers will be armed, organizers have banned rifles and have threatened to send home anyone who causes a confrontation.”
Well isn’t that a fine kettle of fish. The government won’t defend our borders, and now they are threatening citizens who want to do the government’s job. The emphasis isn't on the lawbreakers, it's placed on the law abiding citizens who want to enforce the law.
Complete, total, crap...
More Fun With Spammers
I didn’t come up with this idea on my own. I used to either ignore these type E-mails or write a nasty reply and forget about the spammer. Steve over at Hog On Ice has an elaborate soap opera going with some financial spammers that features several characters he made up and the outcome is hilarious.
I decided to start my own spammer soap opera and see if I can out spam the spammers. I got this gem yesterday…
FROM THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS AWARD DEPARTMENT,
Date: 02/01/05,
Ref: 474061725/04,
Batch: 7056490902/188,
Winning No: GB8701/LPRC
CONGRATULATIONS
Sir/Madam,
We are delighted to inform you of your prize release on the 2nd January
2005 from the Australian International Lottery program.
Your name "email address" was attached to ticket number; 47061725
07056490902 serial number 7741137002 09/06/2004 This batch draws the
lucky numbers as follows 2-9-22-23-24-30 bonus number 5, which consequently
won the lottery in the second category.
You hereby have been approved lump sum pay of US$500,000.00 (FIVE
HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) in cash credit file ref: ILP/HW 474061725/04 from the
total cash prize of US16, 000,000.00 shared amongst sixteen lucky winners,
based on their category.
All participants "email address" were selected through a computer
balloting system drawn form Nine hundred thousand names from Canada, Australia,
United States, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceanic as part of our
international promotions program which is conducted annually.
This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by some multinational companies
as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities
where they have operational base.
Further more your "email address" falls within our European
Representative office in Amsterdam, Holland. As indicated in your play coupon and your
prize of US$500,000.00 will be released to you from this regional
branch office in Amsterdam.
We hope with part of your prize, you will participate in our end of
year high stakes for US$1.3 Billion international draw.
Please do contact: Mr.wilson dube for the processing of your file and
also before send any mail please do call him for notification first and
please do not disclose any of your information to any body to avoid double
claim until the money finally get into your bank account good luck.
MR. WILSON DUBE
ALB MUTUAL LOTTERY ORGANISATION
Phone: 27-73-179- 0425.
Fax: +27-11-507- 5811
Email:wilsondube_1234@yahoo.com
ALB MUTUAL ORGANISATION
UNIVERSAL BUILDING,176-180 PARK HURST
BALFOUR-UNITE 1440
GAUTENG 2001.
Please quote your reference, batch and winning number which can be
found on the top left corner of this notification as well as your full names and
address to help locate your file easily.
For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this information
confidential from the public until your claim is processed and your
prize released to you.
This is part of our security protocol to avoid dual claiming and
unwarranted taking advantage of this program by non-participant or unofficial
personnel.
Note, all winnings MUST be claimed with a specified date; otherwise
YOUR PRIZE will be returned as UNCLAIMED and eventually donated to charity.
Congratulations once again on your winnings!
Best Regards
Mrs.SUZAN DAVIES.
(Co-ordinator).
Assuming the idenity of a thirty two year old single mother of seven, here is what I wrote back…
My Dear Mr Dube,
I am excitedly contacting you at the request of Mrs. Suzan Davies regarding winning number GB8701/LPRC.
Is it really true that I have won?
Oh, please, please tell me that it's so as me and my family needs this money so very badly. Things are not going well for us here in Glynn County Georgia. You see, my father and brother are both in the county jail, falsely accused of running an internet child pornography distribution network and my poor mother is in the hospital recovering from a stroke she had when the police broke into her trailer to arrest my fourteen year old sister for running a meth lab in the basement.
My kids are also driving me crazy and costing me tons of money. My two older boys (Josh is 12 and Mikey is 11) were kicked out of middle school for operating a cock fighting operation in the vo-ag building and my oldest girl Missy (13) went and got herself pregnant by that awful Lester Biggins that runs the Septic Tank Pump-out service. My other four little angels are too young to be incarcerated but the costs of day-care and sitters eats up almost everything I earn on working my second job on the paper route.
It is all I can do to collect myself to go to work each afternoon at the truck stop and I just don't earn enough money as a waitress to pay all of these lawyers and doctors bills. I keep trying to win extra money at wet T-shirt competitions and amateur night at the local strip club, but I'm afraid that my appeal to men has been slightly reduced as a result of the double mastectomy I had last year. Men are such short sighted pigs, you know. Maybe I'll use some of my winnings to buy some implants and new nipples so I can win some of them contests.
Any way, I could certainly use this lottery money and I promise to put it to good use. I look forward to hearing from you about how I can claim my winnings.
Your Friend,
Vaginanal Rogers
P.S. If I send you some money, can you get me some of them wooden shoes you wear there in Holland?
I decided to start my own spammer soap opera and see if I can out spam the spammers. I got this gem yesterday…
FROM THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS AWARD DEPARTMENT,
Date: 02/01/05,
Ref: 474061725/04,
Batch: 7056490902/188,
Winning No: GB8701/LPRC
CONGRATULATIONS
Sir/Madam,
We are delighted to inform you of your prize release on the 2nd January
2005 from the Australian International Lottery program.
Your name "email address" was attached to ticket number; 47061725
07056490902 serial number 7741137002 09/06/2004 This batch draws the
lucky numbers as follows 2-9-22-23-24-30 bonus number 5, which consequently
won the lottery in the second category.
You hereby have been approved lump sum pay of US$500,000.00 (FIVE
HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) in cash credit file ref: ILP/HW 474061725/04 from the
total cash prize of US16, 000,000.00 shared amongst sixteen lucky winners,
based on their category.
All participants "email address" were selected through a computer
balloting system drawn form Nine hundred thousand names from Canada, Australia,
United States, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceanic as part of our
international promotions program which is conducted annually.
This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by some multinational companies
as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities
where they have operational base.
Further more your "email address" falls within our European
Representative office in Amsterdam, Holland. As indicated in your play coupon and your
prize of US$500,000.00 will be released to you from this regional
branch office in Amsterdam.
We hope with part of your prize, you will participate in our end of
year high stakes for US$1.3 Billion international draw.
Please do contact: Mr.wilson dube for the processing of your file and
also before send any mail please do call him for notification first and
please do not disclose any of your information to any body to avoid double
claim until the money finally get into your bank account good luck.
MR. WILSON DUBE
ALB MUTUAL LOTTERY ORGANISATION
Phone: 27-73-179- 0425.
Fax: +27-11-507- 5811
Email:wilsondube_1234@yahoo.com
ALB MUTUAL ORGANISATION
UNIVERSAL BUILDING,176-180 PARK HURST
BALFOUR-UNITE 1440
GAUTENG 2001.
Please quote your reference, batch and winning number which can be
found on the top left corner of this notification as well as your full names and
address to help locate your file easily.
For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this information
confidential from the public until your claim is processed and your
prize released to you.
This is part of our security protocol to avoid dual claiming and
unwarranted taking advantage of this program by non-participant or unofficial
personnel.
Note, all winnings MUST be claimed with a specified date; otherwise
YOUR PRIZE will be returned as UNCLAIMED and eventually donated to charity.
Congratulations once again on your winnings!
Best Regards
Mrs.SUZAN DAVIES.
(Co-ordinator).
Assuming the idenity of a thirty two year old single mother of seven, here is what I wrote back…
My Dear Mr Dube,
I am excitedly contacting you at the request of Mrs. Suzan Davies regarding winning number GB8701/LPRC.
Is it really true that I have won?
Oh, please, please tell me that it's so as me and my family needs this money so very badly. Things are not going well for us here in Glynn County Georgia. You see, my father and brother are both in the county jail, falsely accused of running an internet child pornography distribution network and my poor mother is in the hospital recovering from a stroke she had when the police broke into her trailer to arrest my fourteen year old sister for running a meth lab in the basement.
My kids are also driving me crazy and costing me tons of money. My two older boys (Josh is 12 and Mikey is 11) were kicked out of middle school for operating a cock fighting operation in the vo-ag building and my oldest girl Missy (13) went and got herself pregnant by that awful Lester Biggins that runs the Septic Tank Pump-out service. My other four little angels are too young to be incarcerated but the costs of day-care and sitters eats up almost everything I earn on working my second job on the paper route.
It is all I can do to collect myself to go to work each afternoon at the truck stop and I just don't earn enough money as a waitress to pay all of these lawyers and doctors bills. I keep trying to win extra money at wet T-shirt competitions and amateur night at the local strip club, but I'm afraid that my appeal to men has been slightly reduced as a result of the double mastectomy I had last year. Men are such short sighted pigs, you know. Maybe I'll use some of my winnings to buy some implants and new nipples so I can win some of them contests.
Any way, I could certainly use this lottery money and I promise to put it to good use. I look forward to hearing from you about how I can claim my winnings.
Your Friend,
Vaginanal Rogers
P.S. If I send you some money, can you get me some of them wooden shoes you wear there in Holland?
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Everyone Talks About The Weather
(But No One Ever Does Anything About It)
I'm sorry that the posting has been slow recently, but Pat and I have been visiting my Mom in South Alabama for Easter. We did the seven hour drive from the Georgia coast through the "pecan region" of South Georga and into the "Wiregrass" region of Alabama on Friday--in wonderful 77 degree sunny weather.
According to the forcast, we were planning on enjoying beautiful weather with only a slight chance of rain on Sunday. Monday is suposed to be clear.
Besides being limited by a slow dial-up internet connection, we've spent Saturday afternoon and all of last night listening to the NOAA Weather Radio warning us of severe thunderstorms so we couldn't even "dial-up" most of the time for fear of lightening damaging the computer. To make matters worse, the approaching thunderstorms coming in from the southwest blocked the signal on the Direct TV Satellite system so we couldn't even look at The Weather Channel to see what was threatening us.
About 1:00 PM Saturday it started thundering and caused me to stop work cleaning and repairing gutters on my Mother's house. At 1:30 PM the thunderstorm arrived with high wind and a three or four minute hailstorm featuring golfball size hail. My mother's car and truck were in the garage and Pat's Mustang was safely tucked in the carport on the shop building, but my sister's Expedition and my Uncle's minivan were sitting in the driveway uncovered. Both vehcles sustaned damage to the hoods and roofs. My mother's clean beautiful yards were filled with debris beat off of the trees by the hail stones. The Azaleas that were partially in bloom had most of the open blooms knocked off. Immediately after the storm the air smelled like a Christmas tree farm as a result of the pine needles broken off the pinetrees.
I'm sorry that the posting has been slow recently, but Pat and I have been visiting my Mom in South Alabama for Easter. We did the seven hour drive from the Georgia coast through the "pecan region" of South Georga and into the "Wiregrass" region of Alabama on Friday--in wonderful 77 degree sunny weather.
According to the forcast, we were planning on enjoying beautiful weather with only a slight chance of rain on Sunday. Monday is suposed to be clear.
Besides being limited by a slow dial-up internet connection, we've spent Saturday afternoon and all of last night listening to the NOAA Weather Radio warning us of severe thunderstorms so we couldn't even "dial-up" most of the time for fear of lightening damaging the computer. To make matters worse, the approaching thunderstorms coming in from the southwest blocked the signal on the Direct TV Satellite system so we couldn't even look at The Weather Channel to see what was threatening us.
About 1:00 PM Saturday it started thundering and caused me to stop work cleaning and repairing gutters on my Mother's house. At 1:30 PM the thunderstorm arrived with high wind and a three or four minute hailstorm featuring golfball size hail. My mother's car and truck were in the garage and Pat's Mustang was safely tucked in the carport on the shop building, but my sister's Expedition and my Uncle's minivan were sitting in the driveway uncovered. Both vehcles sustaned damage to the hoods and roofs. My mother's clean beautiful yards were filled with debris beat off of the trees by the hail stones. The Azaleas that were partially in bloom had most of the open blooms knocked off. Immediately after the storm the air smelled like a Christmas tree farm as a result of the pine needles broken off the pinetrees.
It rained on and off all last night and we awoke at 5:00 AM to another severe thunderstorm warning. So much for attending Easter Sunrise Services in town. I talked my family out of going since water was standing 3" deep across the driveway an the girls' dress shoes would have been full by the time they got into the church.
I cooked bacon, eggs, cheese grits, and homemade biscuits for the crowd and had everyone fed by seven AM.
It's starting to thunder again now so I have to log off.
As my title said, everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Fool Me Once, Shame on You
(Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me)
I live and breath to bust the chops of so called “professional journalists” when they’re caught not doing their job vetting sources and verifying the veracity of the stories which they deliver to their readers.
I am extremely agitated right now at the prospect of the government and the FEC making efforts to protect the rights of these “professional journalists” to publish any crap they see fit to publish while at the same time limiting my right to free speech in my blog when it comes to political issues. As I have said before, spending a few years getting an engineering degree doesn’t make me a rocket scientist any more than having a journalism degree makes everything that one of these morons writes happen to contain any truth.
Having said all of that, I regret to inform you that the mainstream media is at it again. It seems that ABC learned nothing from CBS’s and Dan Rather’s glorious adventure into the world of basing news stories on unverified anonymous documents.
This time the document in question is a supposed memo listing so called “Republican talking points” relating to the Terri Schiavo legislation enacted by the US Congress last Sunday evening. As usual, the guys over at Powerline are all over it, but I have to wade in myself because fighting and exposing media bias is my favorite topic in the whole wide world right now.
First question. How stupid do these “professional journalists” think that we are? Here is the full wording of the “Republican talking points memo” as reported on Monday after being “leaked’ by an anonymous source to the Rawstory web site and provided to ABC news:
Exclusive
GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo
Memo, Obtained by ABC News, Was Circulated Among Senate Republicans
March 21, 2005 — The following memo listing talking points on the Terri Schiavo case was circulated among Republican senators on the floor of the Senate.
This is an exact, full copy of the document obtained exclusively by ABC News and first reported Friday, March 18, 2005, by Linda Douglass on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings."
S. 529, The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act
Teri (sic) Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.
The Senate needs to act this week, before the Budget Act is pending business, or Terri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.
This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.
The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment."
There is an exemption for a proceeding "which no party disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the withholding or or (sic) withdrawl (sic) of food and fluids or medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."
Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision, withholding or withdrawl (sic) of food fluids or medical treatment under applicable state law."
This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.
I don’t know about you, but I find many details of this memo to be troubling.
First of all, the “memo” is unsigned and written on plain paper without the US Senate letterhead. Why would that happen if it wasn’t fake? Can I draft up my own memo containing my own talking points and fax it up to the Senate and forward a copy to ABC News? Would the Senate be obligated to distribute it?
Then there is the little detail that the Senate bill number is wrong. It’s S.539, not S.529. The legislation was ultimately passed as S. 686. I know that the media has trouble being bothered with little things like DETAILS, but how the hell are we expected to believe that this piece of trash paper is authentic when something as important as the Senate Bill Number is WRONG? Sheeshhh!
Next, the idiot that wrote this “talking points memo” can’t spell worth a damn. Notice that the name of the woman, Terri Schiavo is misspelled “Teri.” In addition, everywhere the text contains the word (sic) there is another grammatical or spelling error like “withdrawl.” Something that has not been pointed out in other blogs that stands out to me is the grammatical error in the seventh paragraph where the phrase “valid under applicably law that…” Say what?
After lighting the fire under a minor uproar over the “Republican’s using Terri as a political football,” now ABC is backing off according to Powerline:
“the memo discussed a republican bill and was distributed to repulbican senators. That's what we reported. we are obviously not going to divulge our multiple sources. I appeciate your questions, but believe you are approaching this from the wrong end. We asked numerous sources - all confirmed that senators had received the memo in conjunction with one of the bills on the floor. For three days none of those sources has given us any reason to think there is more to the memo than a particularly naked expression of the politics of Shivo case.”
So what if multiple “sources” sent the same forged document to ABC. How much time did ABC spend looking into the details and verifying where the document came from?
I know that I might appear to be “picking nits” when it comes to bringing this whole issue up, but I continue to insist that we can’t believe a damn thing that is printed in the newspaper and broadcast on TV as long as crap like this is happening.
Please join me in demanding change.
I live and breath to bust the chops of so called “professional journalists” when they’re caught not doing their job vetting sources and verifying the veracity of the stories which they deliver to their readers.
I am extremely agitated right now at the prospect of the government and the FEC making efforts to protect the rights of these “professional journalists” to publish any crap they see fit to publish while at the same time limiting my right to free speech in my blog when it comes to political issues. As I have said before, spending a few years getting an engineering degree doesn’t make me a rocket scientist any more than having a journalism degree makes everything that one of these morons writes happen to contain any truth.
Having said all of that, I regret to inform you that the mainstream media is at it again. It seems that ABC learned nothing from CBS’s and Dan Rather’s glorious adventure into the world of basing news stories on unverified anonymous documents.
This time the document in question is a supposed memo listing so called “Republican talking points” relating to the Terri Schiavo legislation enacted by the US Congress last Sunday evening. As usual, the guys over at Powerline are all over it, but I have to wade in myself because fighting and exposing media bias is my favorite topic in the whole wide world right now.
First question. How stupid do these “professional journalists” think that we are? Here is the full wording of the “Republican talking points memo” as reported on Monday after being “leaked’ by an anonymous source to the Rawstory web site and provided to ABC news:
Exclusive
GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo
Memo, Obtained by ABC News, Was Circulated Among Senate Republicans
March 21, 2005 — The following memo listing talking points on the Terri Schiavo case was circulated among Republican senators on the floor of the Senate.
This is an exact, full copy of the document obtained exclusively by ABC News and first reported Friday, March 18, 2005, by Linda Douglass on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings."
S. 529, The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act
Teri (sic) Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.
The Senate needs to act this week, before the Budget Act is pending business, or Terri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.
This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.
The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment."
There is an exemption for a proceeding "which no party disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the withholding or or (sic) withdrawl (sic) of food and fluids or medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."
Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision, withholding or withdrawl (sic) of food fluids or medical treatment under applicable state law."
This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.
I don’t know about you, but I find many details of this memo to be troubling.
First of all, the “memo” is unsigned and written on plain paper without the US Senate letterhead. Why would that happen if it wasn’t fake? Can I draft up my own memo containing my own talking points and fax it up to the Senate and forward a copy to ABC News? Would the Senate be obligated to distribute it?
Then there is the little detail that the Senate bill number is wrong. It’s S.539, not S.529. The legislation was ultimately passed as S. 686. I know that the media has trouble being bothered with little things like DETAILS, but how the hell are we expected to believe that this piece of trash paper is authentic when something as important as the Senate Bill Number is WRONG? Sheeshhh!
Next, the idiot that wrote this “talking points memo” can’t spell worth a damn. Notice that the name of the woman, Terri Schiavo is misspelled “Teri.” In addition, everywhere the text contains the word (sic) there is another grammatical or spelling error like “withdrawl.” Something that has not been pointed out in other blogs that stands out to me is the grammatical error in the seventh paragraph where the phrase “valid under applicably law that…” Say what?
After lighting the fire under a minor uproar over the “Republican’s using Terri as a political football,” now ABC is backing off according to Powerline:
“the memo discussed a republican bill and was distributed to repulbican senators. That's what we reported. we are obviously not going to divulge our multiple sources. I appeciate your questions, but believe you are approaching this from the wrong end. We asked numerous sources - all confirmed that senators had received the memo in conjunction with one of the bills on the floor. For three days none of those sources has given us any reason to think there is more to the memo than a particularly naked expression of the politics of Shivo case.”
So what if multiple “sources” sent the same forged document to ABC. How much time did ABC spend looking into the details and verifying where the document came from?
I know that I might appear to be “picking nits” when it comes to bringing this whole issue up, but I continue to insist that we can’t believe a damn thing that is printed in the newspaper and broadcast on TV as long as crap like this is happening.
Please join me in demanding change.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Calling A Spade A Spade
Look at this story from the Associated Press:
Baghdad Shopkeepers Kill Three Militants
By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shopkeepers and residents on one of Baghdad's main streets pulled out their own guns Tuesday and killed three insurgents when hooded men began shooting at passers-by, giving a rare victory to civilians increasingly frustrated by the violence bleeding Iraq."
Imagine that you are a reporter standing on the street in beautiful downtown Anywhere USA. Three men wearing hooded sweatshirts walk out on the street and start shooting at passers-by and another bystander getss out his .50 AE Desert Eagle Pistol and pulls a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry maneuver on the “insurgents” sorry flea-bitten asses.
When you write your story for the local fish wrapper/birdcage liner newspaper full of wedding announcements and death notices, how the hell do you expect to get away calling these potential murderers “insurgents?”
Does America call Timothy McVey an “Insurgent.?” Does America accept that the “Native American” Neo-Nazi that killed his grandparents and shot up his high school this week can be defined as an “insurgent?”
I’m sorry, but I learned to spell and I own a dictionary and I’m really tired of the “media” redefining the meaning of words and using inaccurate wording to describe the actions of people committing crimes like MURDER and ASSAULT.
These idiots that call themselves journalists should all have their feeding and hydration tubes removed, and then be forced to take a nice warm Clorox enema in an effort to cleanse their minds and spirits.
Baghdad Shopkeepers Kill Three Militants
By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shopkeepers and residents on one of Baghdad's main streets pulled out their own guns Tuesday and killed three insurgents when hooded men began shooting at passers-by, giving a rare victory to civilians increasingly frustrated by the violence bleeding Iraq."
Imagine that you are a reporter standing on the street in beautiful downtown Anywhere USA. Three men wearing hooded sweatshirts walk out on the street and start shooting at passers-by and another bystander getss out his .50 AE Desert Eagle Pistol and pulls a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry maneuver on the “insurgents” sorry flea-bitten asses.
When you write your story for the local fish wrapper/birdcage liner newspaper full of wedding announcements and death notices, how the hell do you expect to get away calling these potential murderers “insurgents?”
Does America call Timothy McVey an “Insurgent.?” Does America accept that the “Native American” Neo-Nazi that killed his grandparents and shot up his high school this week can be defined as an “insurgent?”
I’m sorry, but I learned to spell and I own a dictionary and I’m really tired of the “media” redefining the meaning of words and using inaccurate wording to describe the actions of people committing crimes like MURDER and ASSAULT.
These idiots that call themselves journalists should all have their feeding and hydration tubes removed, and then be forced to take a nice warm Clorox enema in an effort to cleanse their minds and spirits.
A Moment of Silence For Terri Schiavo
I really don’t know what to say about the fiasco surrounding Terri Schiavo—thus my silence to date.
I smell a really stinky rat (her husband possibly?) or rats (the Florida court system possibly?) in the woodpile somewhere, but I can’t at this point discern enough detail to add substantially to the national dialogue.
Everyone seems to be forming their opinion on the issue on a pro-life/choice and Republican/Democrat basis. How the heck the issue of abortion came creeping into this situation is beyond my comprehension. Private family issues like the life or death of a disabled loved one should never be reduced to the level of personal political affiliation.
Our country was founded based on the concept of separation of powers and was endowed with a system of checks and balances. The executive and legislative branches of our government were always overtly political in their nature, but the judicial branch was in theory supposed to rise above political interests to interpret the US Constitution and the subsequent laws passed by the executive and legislative branch in a fair and evenhanded basis. I said “in theory” because I am afraid that our local, state, and federal judiciary train has jumped off of the tracks and the Terri Schiavo Fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg of a morass of unintended consequences that are going to arise as a result of the judicial failures of the past forty or fifty years. What a complete and total fatal train wreck we are witnessing in Florida.
I have a great deal of compassion for families that deal with the day-to-day realities of fellow family members suffering from the consequences of birth defects or health related disabilities. Regardless of whether a loved one cannot walk “normally”, talk “normally”, is blind, is hearing impaired (what we used to call blind, deaf, or “dumb”), or is severely mentally disabled in some other manner—the examples of love and caring exhibited by most humans far outweighs the abusive examples shown on television for the purposes of so-called “entertainment.”
Both sides of my family has been blessed with both good health and at least average intelligence, although some, like me, have squandered a great deal of our God given talent in search of things like the perfect beach, the perfect sunset, and the perfect Rum Cocktail. I admit, however, that I have a severe problem with the local court system, our national Congress, or the President (regardless of whether I voted for him or not) getting involved with life and death decisions regarding my family members.
You, too, should have a problem with this type of government intervention and intrusion.
While the judicial situation is of our own making, the influence on Terri’s medical treatment should give us all a vivid example of the total failure and uselessness of Government when it comes to helping us manage our day-to-day lives. We have let our government intrude incrementally into our business over the years, but the current fiasco provides proof that we absolutely cannot rely on government to make these decisions for us.
Fifteen years ago I wrote two very important documents. I drafted a Living Will and a Power of Attorney for Medical Care. Both documents are lost somewhere in the filing cabinets and Safe Deposit boxes of my past life, but I intend to remedy that situation IMMEDIATELY.
I’m afraid that it is really too late for Terri Schiavo to benefit from the public outcry on her behalf, but I suggest that Terri’s legacy should be that of influencing millions of Americans to spend the time to put their wishes regarding extraordinary healthcare decisions IN WRITING.
In addition, make sure that your immediate family members know what your wishes are and that legal copies of your documents are available for use by your healthcare facilities. This is often a problem because you can’t predict that you will be severely injured in an auto accident in a rental car in Chicago when you live in South Georgia. That’s why informing your family and properly preparing and registering your documents is so important.
Our Imperial State and Federal Governments will literally kill you with kindness and compassion. They take over a third of your money, but I say that you shouldn’t let them end up taking your life.
I smell a really stinky rat (her husband possibly?) or rats (the Florida court system possibly?) in the woodpile somewhere, but I can’t at this point discern enough detail to add substantially to the national dialogue.
Everyone seems to be forming their opinion on the issue on a pro-life/choice and Republican/Democrat basis. How the heck the issue of abortion came creeping into this situation is beyond my comprehension. Private family issues like the life or death of a disabled loved one should never be reduced to the level of personal political affiliation.
Our country was founded based on the concept of separation of powers and was endowed with a system of checks and balances. The executive and legislative branches of our government were always overtly political in their nature, but the judicial branch was in theory supposed to rise above political interests to interpret the US Constitution and the subsequent laws passed by the executive and legislative branch in a fair and evenhanded basis. I said “in theory” because I am afraid that our local, state, and federal judiciary train has jumped off of the tracks and the Terri Schiavo Fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg of a morass of unintended consequences that are going to arise as a result of the judicial failures of the past forty or fifty years. What a complete and total fatal train wreck we are witnessing in Florida.
I have a great deal of compassion for families that deal with the day-to-day realities of fellow family members suffering from the consequences of birth defects or health related disabilities. Regardless of whether a loved one cannot walk “normally”, talk “normally”, is blind, is hearing impaired (what we used to call blind, deaf, or “dumb”), or is severely mentally disabled in some other manner—the examples of love and caring exhibited by most humans far outweighs the abusive examples shown on television for the purposes of so-called “entertainment.”
Both sides of my family has been blessed with both good health and at least average intelligence, although some, like me, have squandered a great deal of our God given talent in search of things like the perfect beach, the perfect sunset, and the perfect Rum Cocktail. I admit, however, that I have a severe problem with the local court system, our national Congress, or the President (regardless of whether I voted for him or not) getting involved with life and death decisions regarding my family members.
You, too, should have a problem with this type of government intervention and intrusion.
While the judicial situation is of our own making, the influence on Terri’s medical treatment should give us all a vivid example of the total failure and uselessness of Government when it comes to helping us manage our day-to-day lives. We have let our government intrude incrementally into our business over the years, but the current fiasco provides proof that we absolutely cannot rely on government to make these decisions for us.
Fifteen years ago I wrote two very important documents. I drafted a Living Will and a Power of Attorney for Medical Care. Both documents are lost somewhere in the filing cabinets and Safe Deposit boxes of my past life, but I intend to remedy that situation IMMEDIATELY.
I’m afraid that it is really too late for Terri Schiavo to benefit from the public outcry on her behalf, but I suggest that Terri’s legacy should be that of influencing millions of Americans to spend the time to put their wishes regarding extraordinary healthcare decisions IN WRITING.
In addition, make sure that your immediate family members know what your wishes are and that legal copies of your documents are available for use by your healthcare facilities. This is often a problem because you can’t predict that you will be severely injured in an auto accident in a rental car in Chicago when you live in South Georgia. That’s why informing your family and properly preparing and registering your documents is so important.
Our Imperial State and Federal Governments will literally kill you with kindness and compassion. They take over a third of your money, but I say that you shouldn’t let them end up taking your life.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
HillaryCare Preview--Part II
Back in October I wrote a posting called HillaryCare Preview about the flue vaccine shortage. What a bust that story really turned out to be. The medical officials and media managed to scare the heck out of a few gullible citizens, but by in large, other than revealing the fact that government meddling in the process had caused a supply shortage, and thanks to a relatively mild flue season, the final result was “much ado about nothing.”
Government involvement in healthcare at any level is historically a problem. Grand intentions and far reaching promises soon dissolve into a quagmire of expensive bureaucratic red tape, ultimately delivering more paperwork than doing any actual healing.
We have all heard about how wonderful things are in Europe and Canada with their Socialized medicine. You just walk into a clinic, get your healthcare “du jour,” and stroll out the door confident in the knowledge that the government is picking up your tab. But take a look at this story about Canadian healthcare.
“TORONTO - A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies."
The patient wasn't dead, according to the doctor who showed the letter to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. But there are many Canadians who claim the long wait for the test and the frigid formality of the letter are indicative of a health system badly in need of emergency care."
Can you imagine being in the position of needing something as simple as an EKG and having to wait three months to get it? I am certain that I could call a doctor right now and have one scheduled not later than this Friday. Yes it would cost me $500, but if I need it, I need it and our present healthcare system can supply it because there are probably twenty five EKG machines in every county of Georgia.
Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.”
"It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government.
My girl Pat tore a piece of cartilage in her left knee last October. Within three weeks she had the condition diagnosed with X-Rays and a MRI and had the outpatient surgery done at a local sports clinic. Total cost—about $5,000. Out of pocket expense—about $1000, and worth every damn cent. Of course, this didn’t include the $200 per month that she pays for private health insurance, for the past 22 years she has worked at her company, something that many Americans feel that they are entitled to at zero cost. That attitude really galls me.
You see, the problem is, there is no such thing as “zero cost” medical care. Somebody has to pay, even if the government gets in the middle and tells you that it is free. Look at the Canadians situation…
"The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The system is going broke, says the federation, which campaigns for tax reform and private enterprise in health care.
It calculates that at present rates, Ontario will be spending 85 percent of its budget on health care by 2035. "We can't afford a state monopoly on health care anymore," says Tasha Kheiriddin, Ontario director of the federation. "We have to examine private alternatives as well."
Is this where you want to see us go here in the US? I damn sure don’t. And for those of you out there that are self-insured or are wealthy enough to think that you will just bypass the system, you can forget about it if Hillary gets her way. Imagine having the money to pay for your own healthcare, but the government making it illegal for you to pay the doctor outside the “government system?” That provision was buried in Hillary Clinton’s 1992 Universal Healthcare proposal. They wanted to put doctors in jail for accepting private funding, and cut off your ability to get treatment if you were caught going around the rules.
In 1984 Parliament passed the Canada Health Act, which affirmed the federal government's commitment to provide mostly free health care to all, including the 200,000 immigrants arriving each year. The system is called Medicare (no relation to Medicare in the United States).
Despite the financial burden, Canadians value their Medicare as a marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States, where some 45 million Americans lack health insurance.
Notice the emphasis on lacking “health insurance,” not lacking “health care.” So what is the big damn doodling deal here? I know that you might be getting tired of me using this statement, but looking at the Constitution of the United States, nowhere in it do I find the words “Life, Liberty, and free unlimited access to state of the art medical treatment.” It just isn’t there. And I seriously doubt the 45 million number. Who did that census? Probably the proponents of the “Universal Healthcare” idea.
I am so tired of hearing this refrain. The only healthcare crisis we have here in the US is the imaginary one created by the media and the Democrats. Yes costs are rising faster than inflation, but technology and new forms of treatment are advancing faster than inflation also. Today a bottle of 100 generic aspirin costs a buck and one half. Twenty-five years ago I bet it cost two or three dollars. Where is the crisis here? Can’t afford Tylenol or Advil? Buy Aspirin, you ungrateful moron.
"Canada does not have fully nationalized health care; its doctors are in private practice and send their bills to the government for reimbursement.
"That doctor doesn't have to worry about how you're going to pay the bill," said Deber. "He knows that his bill will be paid, so there's absolutely nothing to stop any doctor from treating anyone."
Deber acknowledges problems in the system, but believes most Canadians get the care they need. She said the federal government should attach more strings to its annual lump-sum allocations to the provinces so that tax dollars are better spent on preventive care and improvements in working conditions for health-care professionals...
Meanwhile, the average wait for surgical or specialist treatment is nearly 18 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a right-wing public policy think tank in Vancouver. A Fraser study last year said the average wait for an orthopedic surgeon was more than nine months.
So if Pat and I lived in Canada, she would most likely still be limping around with a brace on her bad left knee. The lack of medical care would probably have severely limited her ability to make her weekly trips to Chicago and could have cost her her position with her company. A torn cartilage turns into unemployment, and on and on and on...
And in the time since she got her surgery done in November last year, how many Americans would have died waiting three months for an EKG?
Government involvement in healthcare at any level is historically a problem. Grand intentions and far reaching promises soon dissolve into a quagmire of expensive bureaucratic red tape, ultimately delivering more paperwork than doing any actual healing.
We have all heard about how wonderful things are in Europe and Canada with their Socialized medicine. You just walk into a clinic, get your healthcare “du jour,” and stroll out the door confident in the knowledge that the government is picking up your tab. But take a look at this story about Canadian healthcare.
“TORONTO - A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies."
The patient wasn't dead, according to the doctor who showed the letter to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. But there are many Canadians who claim the long wait for the test and the frigid formality of the letter are indicative of a health system badly in need of emergency care."
Can you imagine being in the position of needing something as simple as an EKG and having to wait three months to get it? I am certain that I could call a doctor right now and have one scheduled not later than this Friday. Yes it would cost me $500, but if I need it, I need it and our present healthcare system can supply it because there are probably twenty five EKG machines in every county of Georgia.
Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.”
"It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government.
My girl Pat tore a piece of cartilage in her left knee last October. Within three weeks she had the condition diagnosed with X-Rays and a MRI and had the outpatient surgery done at a local sports clinic. Total cost—about $5,000. Out of pocket expense—about $1000, and worth every damn cent. Of course, this didn’t include the $200 per month that she pays for private health insurance, for the past 22 years she has worked at her company, something that many Americans feel that they are entitled to at zero cost. That attitude really galls me.
You see, the problem is, there is no such thing as “zero cost” medical care. Somebody has to pay, even if the government gets in the middle and tells you that it is free. Look at the Canadians situation…
"The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The system is going broke, says the federation, which campaigns for tax reform and private enterprise in health care.
It calculates that at present rates, Ontario will be spending 85 percent of its budget on health care by 2035. "We can't afford a state monopoly on health care anymore," says Tasha Kheiriddin, Ontario director of the federation. "We have to examine private alternatives as well."
Is this where you want to see us go here in the US? I damn sure don’t. And for those of you out there that are self-insured or are wealthy enough to think that you will just bypass the system, you can forget about it if Hillary gets her way. Imagine having the money to pay for your own healthcare, but the government making it illegal for you to pay the doctor outside the “government system?” That provision was buried in Hillary Clinton’s 1992 Universal Healthcare proposal. They wanted to put doctors in jail for accepting private funding, and cut off your ability to get treatment if you were caught going around the rules.
In 1984 Parliament passed the Canada Health Act, which affirmed the federal government's commitment to provide mostly free health care to all, including the 200,000 immigrants arriving each year. The system is called Medicare (no relation to Medicare in the United States).
Despite the financial burden, Canadians value their Medicare as a marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States, where some 45 million Americans lack health insurance.
Notice the emphasis on lacking “health insurance,” not lacking “health care.” So what is the big damn doodling deal here? I know that you might be getting tired of me using this statement, but looking at the Constitution of the United States, nowhere in it do I find the words “Life, Liberty, and free unlimited access to state of the art medical treatment.” It just isn’t there. And I seriously doubt the 45 million number. Who did that census? Probably the proponents of the “Universal Healthcare” idea.
I am so tired of hearing this refrain. The only healthcare crisis we have here in the US is the imaginary one created by the media and the Democrats. Yes costs are rising faster than inflation, but technology and new forms of treatment are advancing faster than inflation also. Today a bottle of 100 generic aspirin costs a buck and one half. Twenty-five years ago I bet it cost two or three dollars. Where is the crisis here? Can’t afford Tylenol or Advil? Buy Aspirin, you ungrateful moron.
"Canada does not have fully nationalized health care; its doctors are in private practice and send their bills to the government for reimbursement.
"That doctor doesn't have to worry about how you're going to pay the bill," said Deber. "He knows that his bill will be paid, so there's absolutely nothing to stop any doctor from treating anyone."
Deber acknowledges problems in the system, but believes most Canadians get the care they need. She said the federal government should attach more strings to its annual lump-sum allocations to the provinces so that tax dollars are better spent on preventive care and improvements in working conditions for health-care professionals...
Meanwhile, the average wait for surgical or specialist treatment is nearly 18 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a right-wing public policy think tank in Vancouver. A Fraser study last year said the average wait for an orthopedic surgeon was more than nine months.
So if Pat and I lived in Canada, she would most likely still be limping around with a brace on her bad left knee. The lack of medical care would probably have severely limited her ability to make her weekly trips to Chicago and could have cost her her position with her company. A torn cartilage turns into unemployment, and on and on and on...
And in the time since she got her surgery done in November last year, how many Americans would have died waiting three months for an EKG?
I've Won The Lottery
(Fun with Internet Spammers)
I received this E-Mail Today:
FROM THE DESK OF BARRISTERS CHRIS CRUX KRUGER
PRIVATE BARRISTERS/SOLICITORS AND LEGAL ATTORNEY
GoodDay,
Your name and your e-mail address came up in a random draw conducted by
our law firm, Micheal Ben Law Chambers, My name is BARRISTER CHRIS
CRUX KRUGER esq. A personal attorney to our late client Mr. James Harrison
who worked for an oil firm. Mr. James Harrison a well known Philanthropist,
before he died, he made a Will in our law firm stating that $1.0M (one
million U.S. dollars only) should be donated to any Philanthropist of
our choice overseas.
We have made a random draw and your name and e-mail address was picked
as the beneficiary to this Will. I am particularly interested in
securing this money from the Bank, because they have issued a notice
instructing us to produce the beneficiary of this Will within two weeks
which happens to be you or else the money will be credited to the Government
treasury as per law here. It is my utmost desire to execute the Will of
our late client. You are required to contact me immediately to start
the process of transferring this money to any of your designated
official account. I urge you to contact me immediately for further details
bearing in mind that the Bank has given us a date limit. Please act
fast.
Contact me via my email address as follows:
Email: barristercrux3@ny.com
This is to assure you that this is risk free, but for the purposes of
confidentiality, further discussion on this matter shall be by phone.
You should therefore do well to send me your mobile number so that we
can discuss further on the intending transfer.
Congratulation,
Regards.
BARRISTER CHRIS CRUX KRUGER {Esq.}
Here is my response:
Dearest Barrister Chris Kruger,
I don’t know how to describe to you my excitement in receiving your recent correspondence. Not that I don’t in the same moment lament the demise of Mr. Harrison whom I never had the opportunity to meet, but your communications came at a most opportune time.
You see, my own dear Aunt Flussy, my only living relative, has been suffering from a terminal case of Gout in her big toe and has exhausted all of our financial resources in the past year, spending most of our money betting on NASCAR races and on the purchase of a new set of cosmetic implants for her pet pig, “Piggly Wiggly”.
When I told Aunt Flu about us winning your random drawing, she literally leapt off of the sofa bed in the living room of our trailer home, hobbled across the kitchen, and nearly knocked my deer head off the wall with her crutches in her excitement. Of course, she was sorta mad at first because she thought that calling us a philanthropist was an insult, but when I explained that the word didn’t involve drugs or bodily excretory functions, she was OK.
Aunty Flu has contacted her brother, Uncle Jerm, who is coming in on the bus tomorrow morning and will be bringing with him his prepaid cellphone that he is charging up with extra minutes at the local Seven-Eleven.
We will let you know the phone number as soon as he gets it turned back on and we look forward to helping you in this wonderful endeavor.
Oye Como Va, Senior.
Viagra Rodregez, III
I received this E-Mail Today:
FROM THE DESK OF BARRISTERS CHRIS CRUX KRUGER
PRIVATE BARRISTERS/SOLICITORS AND LEGAL ATTORNEY
GoodDay,
Your name and your e-mail address came up in a random draw conducted by
our law firm, Micheal Ben Law Chambers, My name is BARRISTER CHRIS
CRUX KRUGER esq. A personal attorney to our late client Mr. James Harrison
who worked for an oil firm. Mr. James Harrison a well known Philanthropist,
before he died, he made a Will in our law firm stating that $1.0M (one
million U.S. dollars only) should be donated to any Philanthropist of
our choice overseas.
We have made a random draw and your name and e-mail address was picked
as the beneficiary to this Will. I am particularly interested in
securing this money from the Bank, because they have issued a notice
instructing us to produce the beneficiary of this Will within two weeks
which happens to be you or else the money will be credited to the Government
treasury as per law here. It is my utmost desire to execute the Will of
our late client. You are required to contact me immediately to start
the process of transferring this money to any of your designated
official account. I urge you to contact me immediately for further details
bearing in mind that the Bank has given us a date limit. Please act
fast.
Contact me via my email address as follows:
Email: barristercrux3@ny.com
This is to assure you that this is risk free, but for the purposes of
confidentiality, further discussion on this matter shall be by phone.
You should therefore do well to send me your mobile number so that we
can discuss further on the intending transfer.
Congratulation,
Regards.
BARRISTER CHRIS CRUX KRUGER {Esq.}
Here is my response:
Dearest Barrister Chris Kruger,
I don’t know how to describe to you my excitement in receiving your recent correspondence. Not that I don’t in the same moment lament the demise of Mr. Harrison whom I never had the opportunity to meet, but your communications came at a most opportune time.
You see, my own dear Aunt Flussy, my only living relative, has been suffering from a terminal case of Gout in her big toe and has exhausted all of our financial resources in the past year, spending most of our money betting on NASCAR races and on the purchase of a new set of cosmetic implants for her pet pig, “Piggly Wiggly”.
When I told Aunt Flu about us winning your random drawing, she literally leapt off of the sofa bed in the living room of our trailer home, hobbled across the kitchen, and nearly knocked my deer head off the wall with her crutches in her excitement. Of course, she was sorta mad at first because she thought that calling us a philanthropist was an insult, but when I explained that the word didn’t involve drugs or bodily excretory functions, she was OK.
Aunty Flu has contacted her brother, Uncle Jerm, who is coming in on the bus tomorrow morning and will be bringing with him his prepaid cellphone that he is charging up with extra minutes at the local Seven-Eleven.
We will let you know the phone number as soon as he gets it turned back on and we look forward to helping you in this wonderful endeavor.
Oye Como Va, Senior.
Viagra Rodregez, III
Sunday, March 20, 2005
There's More To Life
(Than a 50’ Ethernet Cable)
Ahem....I have an announcement to make...
WE HAVE WIRELESS INTERNET ON ST. SIMONS ISLAND.
Our condo was built in the dark ages of TV and telecommunications in the early 1970’s. All of the old farts and miscellaneous geezers that have lived here before us were apparently happy with two TV’s and two telephones, because that’s how many connections to the outside world were included in the building when we moved in.
Since Pat’s office was in the other end of the building from the primary CATV jack in the master bedroom, we have spent a year living with a 50’ CAT5 cable connected to our cable modem and spanning through the living room and kitchen, across the sun porch, and into the second bedroom home office. The cable also presented a tripping hazard when we used Pat’s Dell notebook on the weekends in the living room and we’ve about wore the connectors on each end out plugging and unplugging endlessly over the past 12 months. I have become an expert at jumping rope using the cable as a rope.
I’ve been relegated to dragging around a 25’ phone line from the wall phone jack in the kitchen to my old Dell laptop on weekdays when Pat was working in town and dialing up at 45 Kbaud when she was out of town because I was too cheep and lazy to do anything like install a router/wireless network. I verged on having a nervous breakdown several times each week making the transition from 100 Mbaud to 45Kbaud. We considered using two Dixie cups and a really long string as an intercom, but I just couldn’t fathom one more wire in my life to stumble over.
The real reason for the delay in installing a wireless network was my concern about standards and desire to not compromise speed in the process. Why have a cable modem if your network and router cuts the speed by half to two-thirds? Why pay $300 for a network when a $30 cable provides a fast yet unelloquent solution? OK, OK, maybe I was just cheep.
Much of my trouble has been remedied this week with the installation of a Linksys WRT54GS 802.11g wireless router. I dumped the Voice Over IP idea for the time being when I found out I could add it in the future for free (they give away the hardware when you sign up for the service.) It only took me about four hours to get the hardware installed and figure out how to clone our MAC address. $130 with rebates—such a deal.
This stuff isn’t intuitive to a non-network geek like myself since the people that write the instructions seem to think everyone already knows the meaning of all of the acronyms and the cable company just throws a cable modem in your front door and runs for the hills. It didn’t help that the cable modem had been installed 365 days and several million-brain cells ago.
The real pain in the arse was the fact that Pat’s company Dell doesn’t have a CD drive because her old boss KEPT it when they fired him before she inherited the machine. Naturally you had to connect to the Internet through the cable modem and router to do the installation and the CD drive on my old Dell was of no use whatsoever. I was ready to throw both computers and the new hardware out in the parking lot about ten minutes after I started installation. I turned my attention to cooking dinner and after dining on Blue Cheese Stuffed Hamburgers and crispy homemade potato chips, I approached the project with renewed enthusiasm. I surfed over to the Linksys website and managed to find a copy of the installation software that I could download.
The router was up and running in about fifteen minutes after pulling the software off of the web. The wireless card in my notebook was another situation entirely. I got it installed easy enough with 128 bit WEP encryption, changed the network SSID, turned off the broadcast feature, sat back and...nothing. I could find the access point and I had a good signal, but the Internet was nowhere to be found. The Adelphia web site was of no help, but I found a really good article on the Linksys site about setting up multiple computers with an Adelphia cable modem. Once I found the article, it only took about another fifteen minutes before I had an Internet connection with no wires. I walked outside the front door and froze my butt off (it’s 45 degrees tonight) and checked my E-mail just for the heck of it.
In the words of Martin Luther King…free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.
Ahem....I have an announcement to make...
WE HAVE WIRELESS INTERNET ON ST. SIMONS ISLAND.
Our condo was built in the dark ages of TV and telecommunications in the early 1970’s. All of the old farts and miscellaneous geezers that have lived here before us were apparently happy with two TV’s and two telephones, because that’s how many connections to the outside world were included in the building when we moved in.
Since Pat’s office was in the other end of the building from the primary CATV jack in the master bedroom, we have spent a year living with a 50’ CAT5 cable connected to our cable modem and spanning through the living room and kitchen, across the sun porch, and into the second bedroom home office. The cable also presented a tripping hazard when we used Pat’s Dell notebook on the weekends in the living room and we’ve about wore the connectors on each end out plugging and unplugging endlessly over the past 12 months. I have become an expert at jumping rope using the cable as a rope.
I’ve been relegated to dragging around a 25’ phone line from the wall phone jack in the kitchen to my old Dell laptop on weekdays when Pat was working in town and dialing up at 45 Kbaud when she was out of town because I was too cheep and lazy to do anything like install a router/wireless network. I verged on having a nervous breakdown several times each week making the transition from 100 Mbaud to 45Kbaud. We considered using two Dixie cups and a really long string as an intercom, but I just couldn’t fathom one more wire in my life to stumble over.
The real reason for the delay in installing a wireless network was my concern about standards and desire to not compromise speed in the process. Why have a cable modem if your network and router cuts the speed by half to two-thirds? Why pay $300 for a network when a $30 cable provides a fast yet unelloquent solution? OK, OK, maybe I was just cheep.
Much of my trouble has been remedied this week with the installation of a Linksys WRT54GS 802.11g wireless router. I dumped the Voice Over IP idea for the time being when I found out I could add it in the future for free (they give away the hardware when you sign up for the service.) It only took me about four hours to get the hardware installed and figure out how to clone our MAC address. $130 with rebates—such a deal.
This stuff isn’t intuitive to a non-network geek like myself since the people that write the instructions seem to think everyone already knows the meaning of all of the acronyms and the cable company just throws a cable modem in your front door and runs for the hills. It didn’t help that the cable modem had been installed 365 days and several million-brain cells ago.
The real pain in the arse was the fact that Pat’s company Dell doesn’t have a CD drive because her old boss KEPT it when they fired him before she inherited the machine. Naturally you had to connect to the Internet through the cable modem and router to do the installation and the CD drive on my old Dell was of no use whatsoever. I was ready to throw both computers and the new hardware out in the parking lot about ten minutes after I started installation. I turned my attention to cooking dinner and after dining on Blue Cheese Stuffed Hamburgers and crispy homemade potato chips, I approached the project with renewed enthusiasm. I surfed over to the Linksys website and managed to find a copy of the installation software that I could download.
The router was up and running in about fifteen minutes after pulling the software off of the web. The wireless card in my notebook was another situation entirely. I got it installed easy enough with 128 bit WEP encryption, changed the network SSID, turned off the broadcast feature, sat back and...nothing. I could find the access point and I had a good signal, but the Internet was nowhere to be found. The Adelphia web site was of no help, but I found a really good article on the Linksys site about setting up multiple computers with an Adelphia cable modem. Once I found the article, it only took about another fifteen minutes before I had an Internet connection with no wires. I walked outside the front door and froze my butt off (it’s 45 degrees tonight) and checked my E-mail just for the heck of it.
In the words of Martin Luther King…free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.
