Saturday, August 18, 2007

Socialized Medicine the Hillary Way

 
This is London offers a sad and cautionary tale of HillaryCare:

...[A] Mother forced to give birth alone in toilet of 'flagship' NHS hospital...

A young mother had to deliver her own baby in the lavatory of a flagship hospital because there were no trained midwives available. Surveyor Catherine Brown had made the agonising decision to undergo a chemically-induced abortion after being told her 18-week pregnancy was risking her life.

But when the time came to give birth she was on an ear, nose and throat ward and had only her mother to help her through the ordeal. Her premature son Edward died in her arms minutes later... The traumatised mother-of-one said: "I just howled and howled. I remember sitting there looking at him and thinking, 'What do I do next?'. I just sat there on the toilet looking at my dead baby.

"It was dreadful - a terrible nightmare. Then I started crying my eyes out and repeating, 'I'm sorry baby, I'm so sorry'. I still can't believe the hospital had no trained staff who could help me...

If this is the kind of thing that occurs in a British 'flagship' hospital, one trembles to consider medical treatment in lesser facilities. And, lest you believe our neighbors to the north are any better, take time to review Canada's issues with HillaryCare.

Hat tip: The Astute Bloggers

"Gaza looks like Somalia"

 
Jonathan Schanzer, writing in The National Review, outlines the delightful transformation of Gaza by Hamas:

The Hamas terror organization that gained power through a violent coup in the Gaza Strip in June is now signaling that it will maintain its rule through a combination of violence, authoritarianism, and Islamism:

Forced Conversions. According to Fatah officials, ...a [Christian] teacher at Palestine University... was kidnapped two weeks ago by Hamas and forced to convert to Islam against her will... Other Christians now fear for their lives, and are making plans to flee.

Muzzling the Media. ...Hamas’s Executive Force (EF) prevented the distribution of three Fatah newspapers... [and] even took some of the newspapers’ circulation officials into custody... According to... Al-Jazeera, Hamas attacked two cameramen from the Abu Dhabi satellite television channel, and stormed the Gaza bureau of Al-Arabiya satellite channel... The EF has closed a pro-Fatah television station and radio station. In fact, Hamas now controls all electronic media in Gaza...

Beating Demonstrators. ...al-Jazeera... reports that the Hamas EF beat Fatah demonstrators on Monday when protestors chanted, “What is happening in Gaza is not acceptable,” and “What has happened to security and human rights?” ...Hamas has now banned unlicensed demonstrations...

Disintegration of Law. The armed wing of Hamas... reportedly seized legal documents from a lawyer that documented the confiscation of a car by Hamas. The militiamen took the lawyer’s affidavit at gunpoint... Similarly, when the EF recently stormed the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters... and “nationalized” it, the Federation could do nothing. Rule of law continues to deteriorate.

Killing Political Rivals. Hamas has attacked its rivals with utter brutality... some 160 Palestinians were killed, including 45 civilians, and 800 were wounded. Fatah accounted for most of the casualties in grisly violence that included summary executions, kneecapping, and throwing handcuffed prisoners from tall buildings...

Islamizing the Police. ...Hamas... has been beating demonstrators and banning free press held a teach-in two weeks ago on being a Muslim policeman... [the] notion of religious police smacks of the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which punished Afghanis for straying from sharia law.

Al Qaeda Links? In 2006, Hamas Interior Minister Said Sayyam stated that he would not order the arrests of operatives who carried out attacks against Israel. This was tantamount to an invitation for al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups to join Hamas... ...[Palestinian officials claim] that al-Qaeda maintains a presence in the West Bank and Gaza.

...under Hamas, as one New York Times reporter notes, “Gaza looks like Somalia: broken and ravenous.” ...This is the beginning of the Talibanization of Gaza, and the end of hope for the rule of law.

One almost pities the Palestinian citizenry. The lesson learned is a simple one: if you vote an autocratic group of Islamist thugs into office, don't expect your right to free elections to last any longer than a breath mint.

All that's missing from Gaza is a barren soccer field used for 'disciplinary justice'.

Hurricane Paul threatens to swamp Hillary's Campaign

 
WND has the latest details on one-time Spitzer ally Jim Nesfield's efforts to marshal bloggers to publicize the Clintons' forthcoming testimony in the Peter Paul case:

Wall Street whistleblower Jim Nesfield's Equal Justice Foundation features Peter Franklin Paul's fraud suit against the Clintons and the accompanying allegations against the New York senator.

"It's the No. 1 civil case in the country exposing an unprecedented array of frauds and obstruction of justice by the Clintons that the media refuses to report," Nesfield told WND.

In a year-long effort coinciding with the presidential campaign, Nesfield will try to mobilize a consortium of bloggers to "crash through" what he calls "the information blockade" created by U.S. Media. His aim, he says, is to "help educate the public about the facts of Hillary Clinton's misconduct as presented in Paul v. Clinton."

As WND reported, a California appeals court has set oral arguments for an appeal of Sen. Clinton's dismissal from a $17 million fraud case in which her husband already is a defendant.

Along with ruling whether the New York Democrat should also be a defendant in the case, the court will be asked to decide whether she committed a felony by soliciting campaign contributions of more than $1.2 million...

The Hillary Accountability Project has all of the details.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Bizarro Universe: Media Matters criticizes NY Times

 
One Skyy martini tonight doesn't come close to explaining this:

NY Times' Seelye falsely claimed Clinton favorable ratings "never climbed higher" than 50 percent...

...Katharine Q. Seelye falsely claimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton's "favorable ratings reached a peak of 50 [percent] in 1998 during her husband's impeachment. They have never climbed higher, as measured by The Times and CBS." In fact, a January 1999 CBS News poll found that Clinton had a favorable rating of 55 percent. Additionally, other polls from the same period found Clinton's favorable rating rising as high as 67 percent, and polls from other organizations show her favorable rating has topped 50 percent in 2007...

Whoa. Sounds like fodder for a federal investigation. Or at least, a 60 Minutes expose. Mike Wallace is still alive, isn't he?

Media Matters hammering the NY Times? What next, Sean Penn critiquing Rosie O'Donnell for being too conservative?

Where would they go if the US gets socialized medicine?

 
Prairie Pundit (hat tip: Larwyn):

A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, officials at a Great Falls hospital said Thursday. Karen Jepp of Calgary, Alberta, delivered... [four girls, who] were breathing without ventilators and listed in good condition Thursday.

...The Jepps drove 325 miles [from Canada] to Great Falls for the births because hospitals in Calgary were at capacity...

Michael Moore was unavailable for comment.

Dead Men Farming

 
The invaluable John Stossel:

From 1999 through 2005, the USDA "paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years." One dead farmer got more than $400,000 during those years...

The agricultural section of the U.S. code is nearly 1,800 pages... There's an easy way to avoid such absurdities: Abolish all farm subsidies... Why are taxpayers forced to pay farmers $25 billion a year? ...Last week, the New York Times reported that dairy farmers in New Zealand get along perfectly well without subsidies...

An amendment that would have withheld subsidies from farmers with incomes of $250,000 or more was rejected by the House... even rich nonfarmers have received subsidies -- among them the late Ken Lay of Enron; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; my ABC colleague Sam Donaldson; and banker David Rockefeller...

If the GOP wants to regain power in '08, it could start by slamming these ludicrous loopholes shut. Read the whole thing.

So you want to be a pro ballboy?

 
Good news, Kramer: there is no maximum age listed.

Prospective ballkids [Ed: note politically correct alteration of the universal "ballboy" term] should watch this year's workers, especially on Center Court, to see how they react to different score lines.

For example, when the cumulative score of a set is an odd number (1-0, 2-1, 3-0, 4-3, etc.), the tennis balls do not change sides. But when the score is an even number (1-1, 2-0, 3-3, 4-2, etc.), ballkids must roll the tennis balls from one backdrop to the other...

What the... ? I had no idea it was that complicated. Forget it.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

German scientists: 'We have broken speed of light'

 
The Telegraph reports shocking news:

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light... According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr. Gunter Nimtz and Dr. Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say that they carefully measured the shifting positions of Democrats -- on various issues such as the war on terror, Iraq, the 'surge', and earmarks -- to reach their conclusions.

"These individuals seem to have espoused diametrically opposed opinions simultaneously, which would be the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between two prisms that stood a yard apart:

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences... For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving... The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles and John Kerry to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of, other than the Democrats' rapidly shifting positions."

Theresa Heinz Kerry was unavailable for comment.

"My monthly iPhone bill: $5,086.66"

 
On July 9th, I noted the bizarre 'fine print' required by AT&T for the iPhone. On August 4th, the first reports of the inevitable horror stories arrived: the $3,000 monthly iPhone bill, for instance.

Adam Aronson's got a story to top 'em all. That screaming you hear in the distance is this poor jamoke.

I am typing this from the floor right now... I am in complete shock... I finally got my first online bill from AT&T yesterday and it came to $5,086.66!!

Have I gone insane? Did they append that $6.66 at the end of the bill just to screw with me?

After a near heart attack I called AT&T to find out what had happened.... Well as you may have guessed by now these are all charges for using the edge network while roaming internationally (in England). No phone calls mind you just data. According to AT&T that's at a rate of $2cents per K! WTF? Why don't you rape me and my whole family while you're at it? From all you can use for $20 bucks a month to $2cents per K?! $20 per web-page? Are you INSANE?

That's like charging you $2cents per molecule of gas for you car! I was taken aback that I was charged at all for this, I mean doesn't my plan include all you can use data? And don't you have to call the cell company to activate overseas usage in advance? ...Well that's what I had thought (it's how all my previous carriers handled overseas roaming) but apparently 4 months ago AT&T quietly changed their policy...

This sort of vicious, predatory, and monopolistic behavior is precisely why the FCC should have forced wholesaling requirements on the winner of the 700MHz spectrum to ensure vigorous competition. Oh, that's right. I forgot that Kevin Martin has his own agenda, which coincidentally seems to align with that of the telcos.

Show of hands

 
It's fun for the whole family! (hat tip: Don Surber)

I laughed. I cried. This game changed my life.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Duct Tape Bandit Robs Liquor Store

 
WSAZ (Huntington, WV) has exclusive details of a shocking robbery:

Robbery is a serious problem for retail stores across our region. But the employees of Shamrock Liquors in Ashland, Kentucky, can't stop laughing about what happened last Friday at the store along 13th street.

Police say Kasey Kazee walked in to the store with duct tape wrapped around his head to conceal his face.

Fortunately, store manager Bill Steele had some duct tape of his own. Steel had a wooden club wrapped with duct tape that eventually sent the suspect fleeing the store.

Store employee Craig Miller says he chased Kazee to the parking lot, tackled him and held him in a choke positiion until police arrived. An unidentified customer also helped.

Kazee said in a jailhouse interview today police got the wrong man and Kazee says he has no memory of going in to the liquor store.

He also says he has no memory of police removing the duct tape.

We asked Kazee how he could deny being the duct tape bandit even though police have photos showing Kazee with the duct tape on and then a photo where Kazee's face is revealed.

Kazee looked straight at the camera and said, "Do I look like the duct tape bandit to you?"

Miller says Kazee also had a t-shirt pulled up around his head during the robbery attempt.

Miller says it reminded him of the "Cornholio" character from the "Beavis and Butthead" cartoon.

Steele says Kazee did get away with two rolls of change before Steele could grab his club. Police found much of that change in the parking lot.

Kazee also mentioned that he voted for John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

NPR's Itchy and Scratchy tag-team the GOP

 
Think it's tough for a mainstream media broadcast outlet to continuously bash the GOP? Of course not, that's been table stakes for the MSM since Al Gore was demoted from VP to head global-warming alarmist in 2000.

But how about a broadcast outlet that can seamlessly slam Republicans during a sci-fi book review and a sports segment, respectively? Tall order, eh? Well, not for NPR, my friends.

Itchy and Scratchy, or as I like to call them, James Rollins and Frank Deford, pulled off this magnificent trick in a matter of hours. Deford neatly tied his brand of Bush Derangement Syndrome into his weekly sports segment.

Our two greatest American leaders, Washington and Lincoln, were exceptionally tall, and right up until the end of the American century — the tall century — it was unusual for the shorter presidential candidate ever to win. Indeed, given what a mess of things the shorter choice, George W. Bush, has made of his presidency in the fat century, Hillary Clinton's main obstacle may not be that she's a woman, but that she's shorter than most men.

Not enough of a non-sequiter for you? In a review of the book Invasion of the Body Snatchers, author James Rollins out-bloviated Deford:

Finney has the audacity to suggest that it takes only one person to stand up against an overwhelming tide, whether it's against the invasion of Pod People, the witch-hunts of Joe McCarthy — or the slow dismantling of our civil liberties today... It takes only one person. It was an important message then, and it's just as important now.

Adding this irrelevant political spin into completely unrelated op-eds takes talent -- gen-u-ine, barking moonbat-style talent!

When we also consider NPR hacks Rehm, Schorr, and Pinkwater -- who have never evinced a conservative sentiment in their many decades of service on the public dole -- and you get a real argument for the Fairness Doctrine. After all, we taxpayers foot the bill for NPR. It's only fair both sides of the aisle are represented.

Hypocrite Watch (starring the entire Democratic Party)

 
I'll go slow, so even Democrats can follow.

* Democrats harshly criticize the president for not adhering to all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

* In the largest restructuring of the government since World War II, the President creates the Department of Homeland Security to better coordinate the protection and response capabilities of the Federal government.

* The DHS announces its decision to use spy satellites to examine ports and critical infrastructure from space to identify vulnerabilities. To address civil liberties concerns, the head of intel operations for DHS has ordered a team of lawyers to review requests for access or use of the system.

* Predictably, liberal blogs explode in outrage. Prediction: within 48 hours, a cadre of elite Democratic leaders (Clinton, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, for instance) will pillory the administration for violating civil liberties. And the ACLU will blow a gasket rushing a brief to a like-minded judge such as Anna "Instant Appeal" Taylor.

So, to recap, Democrats played politics after 9/11 by slamming the President for carefully implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Bush then implements the guidance of the bi-partisan commission, which includes securing US ports and infrastructure via the country's satellites. Democrats, playing partisan politics again, pretend that they weren't in favor of the commission's recommendations and hammer Bush again.

When it comes to the Oscar award for hypocrisy, Democrats are a lock to win for the 120th time in the last 124 years.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Just wondering...

 
Would it be okay for you to break into an empty home because you wanted a nicer place to stay?

Would it be reasonable for you to break into a family's home because they had a spare bedroom and might be looking for a full-time nanny?

Would it be acceptable to crash a party at the Playboy mansion because Hef had plenty of extra food, drink and some really cute females?

Would it be fair to sneak into the local YMCA to work out because you didn't want the hassle of siging up and paying a membership fee?

Would it be justifiable to sneak onto a large corporate campus because they had advertised some jobs in the paper?

Would it be advisable to allow millions of non-citizens to enter the country without sanction, while paying for their health-care and use of public services?

* * *

I'm just wondering how that line gets drawn by folks like Hillary Clinton?

The Last 48 Hours of Democratic "Realism"

 
In the last 48 hours...

* Iran's president went on record as saying, "there is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam over mankind... [and] the world is on verge of a great upheaval."

* Hamas' child television star, Saraa Barhoum, helpfully indoctrinated a new generation of homicide bombers, telling kids she hopes to be a "martyr" (code-word for exploding civilian-killer), “It’s something to be proud of. Every Palestinian citizen hopes to be a martyr.”
* Doctors in Scotland have been banned from eating lunch at their desk "in case it offends their Muslim colleagues."
* A would-be homicide bomber prematurely exsplatulated -- blowing himself up -- but fortunately failed to kill a bus full of tourists in Morocco.
* In Gaza, Hamas terrorists beat residents to a bloody pulp. The crime? Chanting "we want freedom."
* Hamas childrens' television taught kids how to have fun by torturing animals.

* In Jakarta, Indonesia, 70,000 members of a Muslim group gathered to call for the establishment of a "global caliphate (Islamic rule) to govern the world" and listened to fiery speeches saying it was "time for the caliphate to reign."

* * *

Now consider:

* Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's first campaign commercial didn't mention extremism or terrorism. Not one word.
* The CNN/YouTube Democratic debate did not field a single question on extremism or terrorism. Not one question.
* The mainstream media completely ignored these events and blissfully obliged Democrats who can't come to grips with the growing threats to America.

Welcome to the world of Democratic "realism."

Line o' the day: If we can save even one baby seal...

 
D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt." Lockwood noted that he "had [just] read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."

                                                      --John McCaslin, Washington Times (hat tip: Don Surber)

Monday, August 13, 2007

Exclusive: Hillary's first TV ad debuts

 
Hillary's running her first ad. It's pretty compelling. Here's an exclusive first-look.

Mrs. Clinton: As I travel around America, I hear from so many people who feel like they’re just invisible to their government.

Voice Over: Hillary Clinton has spent her life standing up for people others don’t see. People like the Chinese Military, who bought sensitive missile technology from her husband in exchange for campaign donations. Or people like FALN terrorists, who were offered clemency by Bill Clinton in support of his wife's run at the Senate.

Mrs. Clinton: You know, if you’re a family of illegal immigrants that is struggling, and you don’t have health care, you are invisible to the system. But you won't be invisible to me. If you're an illegal immigrant, I support a quick path to citizenship and national in-state tuition for your kids.

Mrs. Clinton: If you’re a single mom whose family disintegrated due to our party's "Great Society" approach to welfare dependency, well, we're sorry. We'll try and get it right this time. Even though you're invisible, I guess.

Mrs. Clinton: And I never thought I would see that our soldiers would be treated as though they were invisible as well. When our leaders declare the "war is lost" and demoralize our troops... when our talking points are indistinguishable from the terrorists... well, we have a major problem.

Granted, those are the Democratic Party's issues, but I'm no cookie-cutter Democrat. I'm a woman. Hear me roar.

Mrs. Clinton: Americans from all walks of life across our country may be invisible to this President, but they’re not invisible to me and they won’t be invisible to the next President of the United States.

Mrs. Clinton: I will, however, ignore trivial issues like terrorism and madmen with nukes...

...those kinds of things will be invisible to me.

Mrs. Clinton: I’m Hillary Clinton and I approve this message.

Voice Over: If exposure to Hillary Clinton's voice results in a condition known as priapism, please contact your medical professional immediately.

What liberal bias?

 
My wife just came downstairs and said, "you've got to check out Google News."

Interesting how this particular headline found its way to the top o' the heap with a paltry 1,525 alternatives available.

Shocka: a useful ad insertion technology

 
I generally despise sites that allow server-side insertion of advertisements by letting ad networks hyperlink "relevant" phrases. Usually the phrases are about as relevant as the yips of a coyote. That said, this particular site and advertiser turn out to be a pretty good combination.

In this example, the server-side hyperlinking picked up the term Novell. The advertiser -- Microsoft's search engine -- then extended the phrase to Novell Software and provided a ready-to-run search. Note the "Images" tab; the only thing missing is a "News" choice. In any case, I've got to give Vibrant, or Microsoft, or whomever really came up with the platform and search-engine integration idea some credit. It actually approaches that elusive "usefulness" characteristic that is missing from about 98% of web ads.

I think PETA needs to visit the Palestinian Territories

 
James Lewis at The American Thinker points us to Palestinian Media Watch and some pretty disturbing imagery.

The latest episode of a popular Hamas children's TV show features its main character cruelly swinging cats by their tails and throwing stones at caged lions in the Gaza zoo...

The episode of Tomorrow's Pioneers features a costumed adult playing Nahool the Bee at the zoo, tormenting domestic cats and lions. The lions become so enraged by the abuse that one of them repeatedly tries to attack Nahool.

Lewis asks what Hamas is trying to teach Palestinian kids: "The uses of sadism? How to be heartless and cruel, as practice for killing Israeli kittens? Or just blood sport entertainment?"

Let me guess. PETA and the rest of the American left will remain utterly and completely silent.