One of the most interesting features alleged to be in the health-care bill now being considered in Congress is the one regarding the “end-of-life” conferences to be held by the aging with government officials as they “plan” the best way to die with the least amount of medical cost, thus saving the taxpayers money. This is important since the government (single-pay thing) will soon run the insurance companies out of business, once the bill is passed. No private enterprise can compete with taxpayer-funded government (those bottomless pockets) for very long, especially if it is restricted by law as to what it can and cannot create/insure.
So, what should be the interval between these conferences and at what age should the conferences begin? The threshold-age for membership in the former American Association of Retired Persons, now just known as AARP, is 50. This seems to be a reasonable time for the conferences to start, although people start dying, of course, as soon as they start living; however, conferences with those just recently out of the womb could try a bureaucrat’s patience. Even discussing such plans with a 30-something might evoke an obscene gesture and a few unkind words.
Perhaps it would be well to require five-year intervals between conferences in the beginning stages of the activity. Most 50-year-olds are not all that concerned about dying unless they walk the fast-lane of the Interstate to work each day, and by age 55 they probably will not have changed all that much…maybe even by 60, especially since medical science has provided substances to enable and urge men to chase the skirts until they die of heart attacks instead of old-age. Indeed, there are some rumormongers who insist that this is the reason Medicare covers Viagra and its clones. Early to chase…early to die…savings all around.
Of course, there are also substances available now to make the ladies of 60, 70, and 80 as “hot” as the ladies decades younger, though they are not advertised as frenetically as the similar ones for men. This means that the gals are now capable of chasing the Viagra-pumped men and thus putting themselves, also, in the senior-early-death category, something that government is anxious to enlarge. In a society souped-up by these substances, with so many old codgers chasing so many young dames and so many old dames chasing so many young gigolos lives can be dramatically shortened, an absolute windfall to the taxpayer, the smartest ones leaving the “hot-stuff” alone and thereby living longer but missing all the fun their colleagues are having while laughing at them and chasing death.
Indeed, old codgers may even chase old dames, especially if their eyesight is dimming – and vice versa, of course – so the possibilities for American homo sapiens running themselves into early graves are simply unlimited, all to the benefit of the taxpayers. So…five-year intervals (two conferences) until age 60 seem about right. Then, perhaps four-year intervals should be observed until about age 72, at which time three-year intervals might kick in until age 81, the average age at death of females in the U.S. The average for men is 78.
What should be the agenda for each conference? At least some things should always be discussed – diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, sex life (or lifelessness), medicines, medical checkups, and, of course, any plans for the when, how, and where of dying. The latter becomes increasingly important at age 81 for women, so the intervals between conferences after that should be about six months when that age is reached by them, and at age 78 for the men.
In the early conferences, especially not to show eagerness for a conferee’s early death, thus saving billions, as well as for recognizing that threats to life are not all that numerous, suggestions for good health could be emphasized, thus cutting down on predispositions toward various diseases that will cause huge costs later. Every conferee could be weighed and his/her body-mass determined, with fines levied upon those who are too heavy, thus disposing toward diabetes, for instance.
Blood-work could be done and dietary adjustments made in order to do away with cholesterol without using expensive statins. Anyone with a cholesterol reading above 200 could be sentenced to community service. These actions will give the conferences actual meaning, since the pocketbook is the most sensitive organism in any anatomy and TV-viewing critical to the happiness of the couch-potatoes. People with schizophrenia could be sentenced to watching horror movies, thus causing them to either snap out of it or be scared to death, either option being desirable.
In the later conferences, conferees might be encouraged to take up running by starting at three miles in 18 minutes. This would kill off a sizeable number, thus saving billions. Or, weight-lifting could be prescribed, sure to cause fatal hernias or broken necks as the barbells fall on the lifters. In the every-six-month conferences at the ages costing, according to the government, way too much money to keep folks alive for far too long, citizens could be required to write essays describing how pleasant life would be without aches, pains, and taxes, and why they should be excused for living so long. Or, they might be invited to down five fifths of Old Granddad in 15 minutes, with the undertaker waiting just outside.
These conferences might well be the single most cost-effective method of cutting medical costs. Indeed, offering payments, perhaps beginning at something like $10,000, to those who promise to die after living up $10,000 worth of the “good life” would save a trillion. Just one six-hour outpatient procedure in a hospital costs $10,000, not to mention the doctor’s take. Add another $5,000 to pay for a cremation, to spare the family the expense, and – VOILA! – the takers could number in the millions.
By all means, get health-care on the road to passage, especially with the end-of-life conferences.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
To CALIBRATE or not to CALIBRATE
The word is already catching on, and the commentators and pundits will soon be using it profusely, and all the more so because the messiah, aka President Obama, coined it in his famous second response to his own first response regarding the mental capacity of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police force, to wit, that the Cambridge police acted STUPIDLY with respect to the unwarranted (by the president’s calculation) arrest of Harvard guru Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Gates is director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. His only problem: breaking and entering into his own house, as noted by a witness.
Actually, the good professor didn’t have a PROBLEM. The word problem disappeared from polite – and even impolite – society years ago, when it was replaced by the softer term “issue.” “Problem” has such a rough edge to it, representing as it does…well, problems, which nearly always connote inconvenience regarding things, places, and people. The guy had a “problem” with his wife’s spending, so he cut up the credit cards. That sounds so, so harsh. So, the word police figured that the two actually just had an issue. Problems have to be solved, but issues can be negotiated or just plain forgotten, so when the wife got another card and the husband shot her dead, he didn’t solve a problem, just settled an issue.
The good professor whipped out his well-practiced tongue and laid some invective upon the police officer, which is what essentially caused his trip downtown. In other words, he had a mean-streak. But mean-streak is so…well, harsh. That kind of talk disappeared decades ago and was replaced by the word-tenderizers with the term “attitude.” The kid was mean as a snake and stomped his little sister, thus damning himself to “timeout,” which used to mean punishment, but fell into disrepute because punishment is so…well, harsh-sounding. The innocent kid just needed an attitude-adjustment. So, the good professor merely had an “attitude” and was introduced to a mild “timeout” for a bit of adjustment.
What is the new magic word? CALIBRATE! Calibrate is defined as “to standardize (as a measuring instrument) by determining the deviation from a standard so as to ascertain the proper correction factors; to adjust precisely for a particular function; to measure precisely; to measure against a standard” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th Edition). The president was quite straightforward in his initial judgment regarding the Cambridge police as being STUPID.
Ah…but even in this day of the politically correct worship of terms such as “diversity” and “multiculturalism” and “white-racism condemnation,” the prez brought down heaps of attitudes that resulted in piles of issues eventuating in the need to arm the president’s teleprompter with a proper response to what (gasp) appeared to be a racist (the arresting officer was – gasp – white) statement of the deepest profoundness. Since some say the term “stupidly” was unrehearsed and not even on the teleprompter, it displayed precisely the president’s racial bias.
The messiah’s response was to say that he should have CALIBRATED his response differently, i.e., that he should have measured his use of the word “stupidly” against a standard that would have allowed him to say exactly the same thing but not in an offensive way, thus removing the harshness of his answer and replacing it with a Rodney-King-can’t-we-all-just-get-along thing, meaning, of course, that the police were still actually stupid but that he should have said something like, “They acted in a mind-boggling way to correct a non-problem.”
The term “mind-boggling” is used every day and connotes an act defying intelligence (ignorance, craziness), but it’s so sweet-sounding when compared to the harsh STUPIDLY, and the innocent-sounding term “non-problem” connotes…well, “police stupidity” in not understanding that there was no problem or issue or need for a timeout downtown, in the first place. So, the same racist statement would be cleansed once CALIBRATION took place, and the prez would come out of the issue dressed in the proper coating of Teflon.
Or…the president just didn’t know what CALIBRATE means when he used that term to attempt to sidestep the ISSUE and avoid seeming to have an ATTITUDE. But the truth is that he had – and still has – a PROBLEM in bad need of something besides a CALIBRATION!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Actually, the good professor didn’t have a PROBLEM. The word problem disappeared from polite – and even impolite – society years ago, when it was replaced by the softer term “issue.” “Problem” has such a rough edge to it, representing as it does…well, problems, which nearly always connote inconvenience regarding things, places, and people. The guy had a “problem” with his wife’s spending, so he cut up the credit cards. That sounds so, so harsh. So, the word police figured that the two actually just had an issue. Problems have to be solved, but issues can be negotiated or just plain forgotten, so when the wife got another card and the husband shot her dead, he didn’t solve a problem, just settled an issue.
The good professor whipped out his well-practiced tongue and laid some invective upon the police officer, which is what essentially caused his trip downtown. In other words, he had a mean-streak. But mean-streak is so…well, harsh. That kind of talk disappeared decades ago and was replaced by the word-tenderizers with the term “attitude.” The kid was mean as a snake and stomped his little sister, thus damning himself to “timeout,” which used to mean punishment, but fell into disrepute because punishment is so…well, harsh-sounding. The innocent kid just needed an attitude-adjustment. So, the good professor merely had an “attitude” and was introduced to a mild “timeout” for a bit of adjustment.
What is the new magic word? CALIBRATE! Calibrate is defined as “to standardize (as a measuring instrument) by determining the deviation from a standard so as to ascertain the proper correction factors; to adjust precisely for a particular function; to measure precisely; to measure against a standard” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th Edition). The president was quite straightforward in his initial judgment regarding the Cambridge police as being STUPID.
Ah…but even in this day of the politically correct worship of terms such as “diversity” and “multiculturalism” and “white-racism condemnation,” the prez brought down heaps of attitudes that resulted in piles of issues eventuating in the need to arm the president’s teleprompter with a proper response to what (gasp) appeared to be a racist (the arresting officer was – gasp – white) statement of the deepest profoundness. Since some say the term “stupidly” was unrehearsed and not even on the teleprompter, it displayed precisely the president’s racial bias.
The messiah’s response was to say that he should have CALIBRATED his response differently, i.e., that he should have measured his use of the word “stupidly” against a standard that would have allowed him to say exactly the same thing but not in an offensive way, thus removing the harshness of his answer and replacing it with a Rodney-King-can’t-we-all-just-get-along thing, meaning, of course, that the police were still actually stupid but that he should have said something like, “They acted in a mind-boggling way to correct a non-problem.”
The term “mind-boggling” is used every day and connotes an act defying intelligence (ignorance, craziness), but it’s so sweet-sounding when compared to the harsh STUPIDLY, and the innocent-sounding term “non-problem” connotes…well, “police stupidity” in not understanding that there was no problem or issue or need for a timeout downtown, in the first place. So, the same racist statement would be cleansed once CALIBRATION took place, and the prez would come out of the issue dressed in the proper coating of Teflon.
Or…the president just didn’t know what CALIBRATE means when he used that term to attempt to sidestep the ISSUE and avoid seeming to have an ATTITUDE. But the truth is that he had – and still has – a PROBLEM in bad need of something besides a CALIBRATION!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, July 27, 2009
DNC Memorandum #4
From the office of Governor Tim Kaine, convener, 27 July 2009
***Questions have been asked concerning the reason for changing the above title to Convener from Chairman, as noted in Mem #3, thus passing over the term Chairperson. The reason is simple: Representatives from the Green Party and PETA insisted that since it has been discovered that humans and animals share some of the same DNA, notably concerning hair, the possibility that animals could be traumatized and suffer discrimination by being left out of the party is un-American. Both groups are holding meetings in Chicago with the Dead Voters Association to determine a way to register animals, though it has been reported that chimps sponsored by the Log Cabin gang in the San Francisco zoo are demonstrating because the party symbols – jackasses and elephants – are even more discriminatory, notwithstanding their accuracy for democrats and republicans, respectively. Former convener Dr. Howard Dean has vehemently denied that he said he would run on a ticket of the Orangutan Party, claiming it to have more intelligence than dems or repubs, and that he will not say it again.
***Care is to be taken not to respond to questions concerning the recent assertion by the president that Cambridge policemen are stupid, at least until you have all the details. The official word is that the president either misread his teleprompter or that a republican operative hacked into the teleprompter with a blank line and the command that the president input his own description. The president thought that Cambridge is a card-game and was simply saying that policing a card game is stupid. The staffer at the bottled-water keg and non-trans-fat, non-hamburger (eating grease okay if Senator Biden does), non-hotdog, non-dairy-product-of-any-kind, non-chocolate, non-smoking (smoking okay if Obama lights up), veggie-fortified, yogurt-enhanced snack-bar and body-mass-chart, carbon-cap-graph, endangered-species-obituary-wall-chart, blue/red-state-map, and Bush-dart-board who said that the word stupid was at the wrong end of the equation has been sent for reeducation to Senator Durbin’s gulag in an Illinois swamp, where he will be taught not to be like American GIs, otherwise known to the senator as Storm Troopers of the Killing Fields, but to be fair, frank, and tender, like Rahm Emanuel, who has said he did not send a dead fish to Dr. Howard Dean and will not do it again.
***An award is in the planning stage for staffers who read within a week’s time the stimulus bill, energy bill, and health-care bill and then write a summary of their contents. None of these bills have been read by either House members or senators, though two have been passed by the House and one by the Senate. The legislators have made this request, claiming that their time and that of their staffs must be spent on fundraising and that even when they attempt reading the bills they don’t understand them anyway. The staffer who comes up with the best summary – unless it declares collective lunacy as some have claimed – will be given a DVD of the president singing the brand-new Democrat Party fight-song entitled We Won, the theme of the new movie by Michael Moore with the same title. His current movie, The Biblical Bombers Bivouac in Brotherly Bethlehem, featuring Pennsylvania Baptists grasping their shotguns, chanting Psalms and rousting illegal immigrants from the coal mines, is nearly finished.
***The president has requested a black/red/yellow/white-paper explaining why Latina women are better judges than white men and also explaining why national policy should be set in Appeals Courts, as current SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor has claimed. A requirement is that the term “empathy” be defined in legal terms, therefore making it the most important element in decisions about life and death…even baseball, since top democrat athletes feel that not enough empathy has been felt for ballplayers who have sacrificed their bodies using steroids in order to bring international importance to sports. NOTE: The president’s teleprompter has insisted on numerous occasions that he did not – repeat – DID NOT bounce the ball in front of the plate in throwing out that first pitch at the All-Star game. All of the camera angles were wrong.
***The rumor that the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright has been tapped to become the new Religion Czar is untrue, notwithstanding his now recognized superior sense of history (especially by the National Council of Churches) in determining that the Garden of Eden was actually in Kenya, not far from the president’s stepbrother’s mansion. Some consideration may be given to the Right Rev. Honorable Dr. Ayatollah Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, since neither the Protestants nor Catholics nor Jewish versions of the Faith include the sacred rite of Infidel-and-bad-girls-Beheading.
***Please be advised that Vice President Biden did not mean to say to the AARP that the government had to increase spending because it’s in bankruptcy. What he said he meant to say was that that the country needed to keep bankrupting in order to keep spending and giving away stimuli so that Latina women will feel the nation’s empathy toward them, thus enhancing the mental superiority they have over white men, who are always stingy, un-empathetic, unsympathetic, unintelligent, and un-cool. The Latina Women for Obama Club in El Paso has made the vice president its poster boy, naming him the embodiment of all those virtues.
***The Berlin Bonanza celebration on Saturday, commemorating President Obama’s invasion and capture of Berlin on 25 July 2008, was a huge success. The “I’m a Different Kind of American” contest was won by a staffer in blackface doing the Mississippi Shuffle and who shall remain nameless until rewarded with a trip to…yep, Berlin. The “Apology” contest was won by a staffer who screamed for forgiveness for condemning the Malmedy Massacre of December 1944, when German troops slaughtered 81 unarmed American POWs. He claimed the machine-gunners were hungry and needed the Americans’ K-rations…perfectly reasonable. The “We Won” contest was won by a staffer dressed as the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and screaming “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, U-S-A is devil’s lackey.” Each will be given an autographed DVD of the president’s trip, complete with the showing of teeny-boppers attacking the platform.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
***Questions have been asked concerning the reason for changing the above title to Convener from Chairman, as noted in Mem #3, thus passing over the term Chairperson. The reason is simple: Representatives from the Green Party and PETA insisted that since it has been discovered that humans and animals share some of the same DNA, notably concerning hair, the possibility that animals could be traumatized and suffer discrimination by being left out of the party is un-American. Both groups are holding meetings in Chicago with the Dead Voters Association to determine a way to register animals, though it has been reported that chimps sponsored by the Log Cabin gang in the San Francisco zoo are demonstrating because the party symbols – jackasses and elephants – are even more discriminatory, notwithstanding their accuracy for democrats and republicans, respectively. Former convener Dr. Howard Dean has vehemently denied that he said he would run on a ticket of the Orangutan Party, claiming it to have more intelligence than dems or repubs, and that he will not say it again.
***Care is to be taken not to respond to questions concerning the recent assertion by the president that Cambridge policemen are stupid, at least until you have all the details. The official word is that the president either misread his teleprompter or that a republican operative hacked into the teleprompter with a blank line and the command that the president input his own description. The president thought that Cambridge is a card-game and was simply saying that policing a card game is stupid. The staffer at the bottled-water keg and non-trans-fat, non-hamburger (eating grease okay if Senator Biden does), non-hotdog, non-dairy-product-of-any-kind, non-chocolate, non-smoking (smoking okay if Obama lights up), veggie-fortified, yogurt-enhanced snack-bar and body-mass-chart, carbon-cap-graph, endangered-species-obituary-wall-chart, blue/red-state-map, and Bush-dart-board who said that the word stupid was at the wrong end of the equation has been sent for reeducation to Senator Durbin’s gulag in an Illinois swamp, where he will be taught not to be like American GIs, otherwise known to the senator as Storm Troopers of the Killing Fields, but to be fair, frank, and tender, like Rahm Emanuel, who has said he did not send a dead fish to Dr. Howard Dean and will not do it again.
***An award is in the planning stage for staffers who read within a week’s time the stimulus bill, energy bill, and health-care bill and then write a summary of their contents. None of these bills have been read by either House members or senators, though two have been passed by the House and one by the Senate. The legislators have made this request, claiming that their time and that of their staffs must be spent on fundraising and that even when they attempt reading the bills they don’t understand them anyway. The staffer who comes up with the best summary – unless it declares collective lunacy as some have claimed – will be given a DVD of the president singing the brand-new Democrat Party fight-song entitled We Won, the theme of the new movie by Michael Moore with the same title. His current movie, The Biblical Bombers Bivouac in Brotherly Bethlehem, featuring Pennsylvania Baptists grasping their shotguns, chanting Psalms and rousting illegal immigrants from the coal mines, is nearly finished.
***The president has requested a black/red/yellow/white-paper explaining why Latina women are better judges than white men and also explaining why national policy should be set in Appeals Courts, as current SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor has claimed. A requirement is that the term “empathy” be defined in legal terms, therefore making it the most important element in decisions about life and death…even baseball, since top democrat athletes feel that not enough empathy has been felt for ballplayers who have sacrificed their bodies using steroids in order to bring international importance to sports. NOTE: The president’s teleprompter has insisted on numerous occasions that he did not – repeat – DID NOT bounce the ball in front of the plate in throwing out that first pitch at the All-Star game. All of the camera angles were wrong.
***The rumor that the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright has been tapped to become the new Religion Czar is untrue, notwithstanding his now recognized superior sense of history (especially by the National Council of Churches) in determining that the Garden of Eden was actually in Kenya, not far from the president’s stepbrother’s mansion. Some consideration may be given to the Right Rev. Honorable Dr. Ayatollah Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, since neither the Protestants nor Catholics nor Jewish versions of the Faith include the sacred rite of Infidel-and-bad-girls-Beheading.
***Please be advised that Vice President Biden did not mean to say to the AARP that the government had to increase spending because it’s in bankruptcy. What he said he meant to say was that that the country needed to keep bankrupting in order to keep spending and giving away stimuli so that Latina women will feel the nation’s empathy toward them, thus enhancing the mental superiority they have over white men, who are always stingy, un-empathetic, unsympathetic, unintelligent, and un-cool. The Latina Women for Obama Club in El Paso has made the vice president its poster boy, naming him the embodiment of all those virtues.
***The Berlin Bonanza celebration on Saturday, commemorating President Obama’s invasion and capture of Berlin on 25 July 2008, was a huge success. The “I’m a Different Kind of American” contest was won by a staffer in blackface doing the Mississippi Shuffle and who shall remain nameless until rewarded with a trip to…yep, Berlin. The “Apology” contest was won by a staffer who screamed for forgiveness for condemning the Malmedy Massacre of December 1944, when German troops slaughtered 81 unarmed American POWs. He claimed the machine-gunners were hungry and needed the Americans’ K-rations…perfectly reasonable. The “We Won” contest was won by a staffer dressed as the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and screaming “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, U-S-A is devil’s lackey.” Each will be given an autographed DVD of the president’s trip, complete with the showing of teeny-boppers attacking the platform.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, July 24, 2009
Chandler in the Dock
Crunch time is here for Kentucky’s Sixth-District congressman, Ben Chandler. Already on the record as having voted on an energy bill nobody, including himself, had read, when, indeed, on the night before the vote, 300 pages nobody had read were added to the bill nobody had read, he’s now supporting a so-called health-care bill nobody has read that is actually a health-wreck curse on a nation already in the throes of economic agony.
The tragedy about the energy vote is that Chandler is so ignorant of the facts concerning climate-change that he brings disgrace to the office. No congressman should be that dumb, especially one representing the sensible people of the Sixth District. It is now abundantly clear that CO2, besides not making the earth warmer, is actually a necessary substance to sustaining life. He’s swallowed the KOOL-AID of the United Nations IPCC that people – especially people in the United States – are killing the Earth.
The United Nations is the place where the United States is hated with a purple passion, and the representatives from everything from a substantial nation like France to nations jerked around by a multitude of tinhorn dictators like Venezuelan monster Hugo Chavez vent their spleen upon Uncle Sam with regularity. The IPCC doomsday report is a crock and every credible weather scientist knows it, and a number have spoken out in this country and in other parts of the world.
Chandler, apparently oblivious to this or simply unaware of it, has voted for this country to tax its people to death (carbon/caps legislation) while the worst polluters in the world – India and China – do absolutely nothing and are not required by even the Kyoto Treaty they support to lift a finger toward cutting down so-called greenhouse-gas emissions. They just lick their chops and wait to gobble up more U.S. industry as U.S. companies go bankrupt, operating with one hand tied behind their backs with this legislation, which, thankfully, the Senate will probably shoot down.
Now, Chandler, by his own admission, has STRUGGLED with his support of a health bill that changes every day, meaning that he never knows what’s in it. Even fellow democrats, until now completely cowed by the Obama/Pelosi Mafioso, are beginning to understand that these two people and their minions intend to completely wreck a health-care system in which 87% of the people have health insurance and the medical system itself is far and away the best in the world.
There’s no excuse for this blind following of people who, if they aren’t just simply as dumb as gourds, are consciously intent on bringing this country down to a level of socialism that will be the worst in the world. The president, who admitted in his news conference of the 22nd that he didn’t know all the details, said he meant for the Congress to put his plan in place, though he doesn’t have a plan…just an idea. Imagine…a committee of 535 putting a non-plan in place.
This is Bill/Hillary of 1993 all over again…a bureaucracy guaranteed to make slaves of the people by controlling their very health, with some sort of czar – or is it “commissioner” now – to make decisions about who lives and who dies or whether or not they have substantial quality of life.
Chandler, apparently hopelessly uneducated about the consequences of this plan even though all he has to do is look over the Canadian border to see them, is on board, having survived his STRUGGLE. What he needs to do is to take two aspirin, get a good night’s sleep, and start using his brain instead of playing politics. He may be taking his seat for granted – and why not in this democrat district – but he may regret not taking the high road, come next year.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The tragedy about the energy vote is that Chandler is so ignorant of the facts concerning climate-change that he brings disgrace to the office. No congressman should be that dumb, especially one representing the sensible people of the Sixth District. It is now abundantly clear that CO2, besides not making the earth warmer, is actually a necessary substance to sustaining life. He’s swallowed the KOOL-AID of the United Nations IPCC that people – especially people in the United States – are killing the Earth.
The United Nations is the place where the United States is hated with a purple passion, and the representatives from everything from a substantial nation like France to nations jerked around by a multitude of tinhorn dictators like Venezuelan monster Hugo Chavez vent their spleen upon Uncle Sam with regularity. The IPCC doomsday report is a crock and every credible weather scientist knows it, and a number have spoken out in this country and in other parts of the world.
Chandler, apparently oblivious to this or simply unaware of it, has voted for this country to tax its people to death (carbon/caps legislation) while the worst polluters in the world – India and China – do absolutely nothing and are not required by even the Kyoto Treaty they support to lift a finger toward cutting down so-called greenhouse-gas emissions. They just lick their chops and wait to gobble up more U.S. industry as U.S. companies go bankrupt, operating with one hand tied behind their backs with this legislation, which, thankfully, the Senate will probably shoot down.
Now, Chandler, by his own admission, has STRUGGLED with his support of a health bill that changes every day, meaning that he never knows what’s in it. Even fellow democrats, until now completely cowed by the Obama/Pelosi Mafioso, are beginning to understand that these two people and their minions intend to completely wreck a health-care system in which 87% of the people have health insurance and the medical system itself is far and away the best in the world.
There’s no excuse for this blind following of people who, if they aren’t just simply as dumb as gourds, are consciously intent on bringing this country down to a level of socialism that will be the worst in the world. The president, who admitted in his news conference of the 22nd that he didn’t know all the details, said he meant for the Congress to put his plan in place, though he doesn’t have a plan…just an idea. Imagine…a committee of 535 putting a non-plan in place.
This is Bill/Hillary of 1993 all over again…a bureaucracy guaranteed to make slaves of the people by controlling their very health, with some sort of czar – or is it “commissioner” now – to make decisions about who lives and who dies or whether or not they have substantial quality of life.
Chandler, apparently hopelessly uneducated about the consequences of this plan even though all he has to do is look over the Canadian border to see them, is on board, having survived his STRUGGLE. What he needs to do is to take two aspirin, get a good night’s sleep, and start using his brain instead of playing politics. He may be taking his seat for granted – and why not in this democrat district – but he may regret not taking the high road, come next year.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, July 23, 2009
News Conference as CAMPAIGN
After having virtually sworn never to suffer through another one, I watched the president’s “news conference” on the 22nd. There were few questions (no time) since Obama stretched each non-answer to the limit, so full of himself was he that he, perhaps inadvertently, just rambled. He has given a new eloquence to the elongated elocution of the word and.
Obviously, he had no idea of what was in the health bill in the House and made it plain that it was up to the Congress to develop his ideas into law…a committee of 435? Egad! Neither do the House members have an idea because they haven’t read the bill yet, not that it matters since it changes every day. They passed the stimulus bill (just the democrats, actually) without having read that $787 billion worth of pork-barrel, either. Ditto for the energy bill, which had hundreds of pages added during the night before the vote was held and was well over a thousand all told, if memory serves. Hopefully, the Senate will take some time on all these measures and make some sense out of what the president is trying to do, assuming there’s any logic, to begin with.
The entire wasted evening was devoted to health-care, with absolutely nothing new to report, so the exercise was by way of campaigning for something the public is now rapidly turning against, if the polls are correct. We still remember Hillary’s “schematic,” featuring the unfathomable maze a patient had to figure out and traverse to get to a doctor or hospital, and have also seen the “schematic” for what is said to be in the current House bill, with layers of bureaucracy forming a barrier between the ailing and the helping. Scary!
The thing the insiders never get around to is the fact that close to 87% of Americans already have health insurance, assuming the uninsured at 40 million. Republicans have tried in vain to make corrections in health delivery, but democrats, Obama in the forefront in his Senate votes, have blocked everything. One good adjustment would involve cutting down (okay, capping) awards for pain and suffering, which can’t be quantified financially anyway. This would drive down insurance costs significantly, but the Congress is made up primarily of lawyers, so that won’t happen. The ABA is the spine of the Democrat Party, inhabited by the main pigs at the trough. There’s no argument with insurance companies having to pay actual costs for medical procedures, but to be skinned for something that cannot be priced is unthinkable.
The objective of Obamessiah and his minions is to get complete control of the health industry, which would amount to 17% of the entire economy. Already owning about half or more of the auto industry and owning or controlling the nation’s largest financial institutions, as well as Freddie/Fannie, and the Federal Reserve, the government aims to soon own enough of the economy to actually own the people.
Obama’s problem is that he doesn’t realize that the country is not made up entirely of simpletons, but is made up of people who pay attention to the socialized medicine of all other countries and understand that this is not the way to go and never will be. Even he understands that his “reform” has no chance of passage in the near term and that, as the facts come out little by little, no possibility, at least in its present alleged form, of being passed at all – shades of Hillary and her mountains of bureaucracy and red-tape a la Russia or England and especially Canada, right next door, where waiting lines for treatment force those who can afford it to come to this country. Those who can’t are simply told to “just eat cake” and live with misery until they can get help or die, whichever comes first.
I’m a blue-collar retiree. The medical expenses, including the multiplicity of insurance premiums, I incurred in 2008 amounted to 31% of the entire household income. I should LOVE dreaming of government control – the single-payer thing. I don’t, even though nearly a third of what I get goes for medicine, doctors and the like. Socialized anything kills it dead in its tracks. Once the incentive for individuals getting ahead is destroyed, the system is destroyed.
The president waxed passionate at the end of the fiasco, with obviously planted questions, especially the last one from a fellow Chicagoan. Admitting that he didn’t know all the actual details and that the person involved was a friend, he accused the police in Cambridge, Mass., of “acting stupidly” and made the incident, as he has others, into a racial thing. Disgusting!
Obamessiah promised a transformation of government when he was campaigning, and now the elements of that transformation are seen in spades. Bankrupt the nation through whatever means, including government-controlled health-care, and – VOILA! – the government will own the people. The fat cats at the top will be the beneficiaries, and one wonders how long it will take for the government to implode, as the Soviet empire did 20 years ago, when it couldn’t match the U.S. in spending.
Vice President Biden said recently, "We have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." That just about says it all.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Obviously, he had no idea of what was in the health bill in the House and made it plain that it was up to the Congress to develop his ideas into law…a committee of 435? Egad! Neither do the House members have an idea because they haven’t read the bill yet, not that it matters since it changes every day. They passed the stimulus bill (just the democrats, actually) without having read that $787 billion worth of pork-barrel, either. Ditto for the energy bill, which had hundreds of pages added during the night before the vote was held and was well over a thousand all told, if memory serves. Hopefully, the Senate will take some time on all these measures and make some sense out of what the president is trying to do, assuming there’s any logic, to begin with.
The entire wasted evening was devoted to health-care, with absolutely nothing new to report, so the exercise was by way of campaigning for something the public is now rapidly turning against, if the polls are correct. We still remember Hillary’s “schematic,” featuring the unfathomable maze a patient had to figure out and traverse to get to a doctor or hospital, and have also seen the “schematic” for what is said to be in the current House bill, with layers of bureaucracy forming a barrier between the ailing and the helping. Scary!
The thing the insiders never get around to is the fact that close to 87% of Americans already have health insurance, assuming the uninsured at 40 million. Republicans have tried in vain to make corrections in health delivery, but democrats, Obama in the forefront in his Senate votes, have blocked everything. One good adjustment would involve cutting down (okay, capping) awards for pain and suffering, which can’t be quantified financially anyway. This would drive down insurance costs significantly, but the Congress is made up primarily of lawyers, so that won’t happen. The ABA is the spine of the Democrat Party, inhabited by the main pigs at the trough. There’s no argument with insurance companies having to pay actual costs for medical procedures, but to be skinned for something that cannot be priced is unthinkable.
The objective of Obamessiah and his minions is to get complete control of the health industry, which would amount to 17% of the entire economy. Already owning about half or more of the auto industry and owning or controlling the nation’s largest financial institutions, as well as Freddie/Fannie, and the Federal Reserve, the government aims to soon own enough of the economy to actually own the people.
Obama’s problem is that he doesn’t realize that the country is not made up entirely of simpletons, but is made up of people who pay attention to the socialized medicine of all other countries and understand that this is not the way to go and never will be. Even he understands that his “reform” has no chance of passage in the near term and that, as the facts come out little by little, no possibility, at least in its present alleged form, of being passed at all – shades of Hillary and her mountains of bureaucracy and red-tape a la Russia or England and especially Canada, right next door, where waiting lines for treatment force those who can afford it to come to this country. Those who can’t are simply told to “just eat cake” and live with misery until they can get help or die, whichever comes first.
I’m a blue-collar retiree. The medical expenses, including the multiplicity of insurance premiums, I incurred in 2008 amounted to 31% of the entire household income. I should LOVE dreaming of government control – the single-payer thing. I don’t, even though nearly a third of what I get goes for medicine, doctors and the like. Socialized anything kills it dead in its tracks. Once the incentive for individuals getting ahead is destroyed, the system is destroyed.
The president waxed passionate at the end of the fiasco, with obviously planted questions, especially the last one from a fellow Chicagoan. Admitting that he didn’t know all the actual details and that the person involved was a friend, he accused the police in Cambridge, Mass., of “acting stupidly” and made the incident, as he has others, into a racial thing. Disgusting!
Obamessiah promised a transformation of government when he was campaigning, and now the elements of that transformation are seen in spades. Bankrupt the nation through whatever means, including government-controlled health-care, and – VOILA! – the government will own the people. The fat cats at the top will be the beneficiaries, and one wonders how long it will take for the government to implode, as the Soviet empire did 20 years ago, when it couldn’t match the U.S. in spending.
Vice President Biden said recently, "We have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." That just about says it all.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
American Ayatollah?
This is the lead paragraph in a Fox News report of 20 July: Roughly 500 members of Hizb ut-Tahrir — a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — met inside a Hilton hotel in Oak Lawn, Ill., to host "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam." The meeting took place on Sunday, the 19th. This group is banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries, as well as Germany and Russia, and its history is a bloody one.
One of the group’s speakers said, "Free market, organization, capitalization — all has failed and brought disaster to America." These were titles of lectures at the meeting: "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," "The Global Rise of Islam," and the "Role of Muslims in America." The meeting was a recruiting tool, as the group attempts to organize more Muslims in the U.S.
This is the group’s ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes: "If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it." Sound familiar, in light of 9/11? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now a resident of Guantanamo, was the mastermind behind that slaughter. This should give an idea of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s actual intent, the building up of an effective jihad bunch of killers of women and children. This is understood in Europe in spades. The global rise of Islam is being seen now as owing its success to the sharp blade of the scimitar, not clichés about brotherhood.
However, the second paragraph above is worth noting in connection with what’s happening in this country. Hizb ut-Tahrir shares the view of the Obama administration, to wit, that capitalism is doomed to fail. Result: the administration is undertaking every conceivable effort to effect its own doctrine – failure. It’s well on its way to success in bringing about the dissolution of the “American way of life.” In this regard, it’s worth noting that Obama was born as a Muslim and lived the most formative years of his life – the earliest – in a Muslim household, first that of his father in Hawaii and then that of his stepfather in Indonesia, before being shipped off by his mother to grow up in Hawaii.
It isn’t politically correct to talk about this, but his Islamic background is instructive. Added to that background were his years listening to a frenetic anti-American, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, whose most famous declaration was “God damn America,” and one of whose main objectives is reparations to blacks for perceived abuse by whites. Wright’s close relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is also instructive. He accompanied Farrakhan on a trip to visit Libya’s butcher-strong-man Muammar Qaddafi in 1984. Qaddafi figured, of course, in the Pan-Am 103 crash in 1988, killing 270, for which he has finally admitted responsibility.
The blade of the scimitar won’t work in bringing down the U.S. – at least not yet. Undermining capitalism is quite another matter, bloodless at first, but who knows what the final upshot will be? Destroying completely the nation’s ability to compete in the world market is fundamental to the destruction of capitalism, a main ingredient being massive unemployment in this country.
Destroying the market-driven practices of the banks and other financial institutions drives the private entrepreneur out of business – or will drive him out, once the government entirely owns the banking system, refusing consistently now to lend money, notwithstanding the unbelievable infusions of tax money into totally private institutions. The government already owns huge segments of that system, the result of the “bank bailout” voodoo economics of last September.
The Treasury Secretary, an admitted tax-cheat, has – or will have – the authority to shut down any business he deems un-viable. This is the antithesis of capitalism, which has driven this country to the pinnacle of world economics. Countries such as China, Germany, and Russia are now laughing at the U.S. situation and wondering how Obamessiah ever got hold of the most successful country in history in order to totally wreck it.
Anyone noticing Obama’s recent speeches and press conferences can see the arrogance one might expect of an imam who holds his Muslim followers in the palm of his hand. Obama has declared just when the Congress will carry out HIS plan for health-care, no later than the August recess, insisting that without time-lines nothing will be accomplished. Without even reading the bill, the democrats – not republicans – put the “stimulus package” in place, the willy-nilly spending of $787 billion, handed out here and there in pork-barrel fashion and stopping the jobs hemorrhaging not at all. The messiah said it had to be done…so it was done, case closed. The fact that it’s a monumental failure is of no consequence. The hopelessly gullible house democrats passed an energy bill no legislator had read. The ayatollah had spoken! “Off with your head and be done with it!”
The government is majority owner of General Motors – something $50 billion or so of taxpayer money could buy, then shut down thousands of profitable dealerships employing a huge work force. It owns a substantial segment of Chrysler, using huge infusions of taxpayer money, again shutting down thousands of dealerships that were making money and, of course, putting both companies into bankruptcy in order to take over. It is poised to go into direct competition with private health-care insurers – using taxpayer money – and thus drive them out of business, forcing citizens to have their health-care needs decided by bureaucrats, not themselves and their doctors.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So…is Obama’s Muslim background coming to the fore…or not? His system is designed to enlist enough voters in the “taking group” to elect people who will pass legislation to let the “takers” plunder the “producer group.” This is socialism that leads inevitably toward communism, and that’s when the storm-trooper’s heel grinds out government for the fat cats (such as in the Soviet model), the devil take the hindmost.
Is Hizb ut-Tahrir the new Democrat Party? You betcha!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
One of the group’s speakers said, "Free market, organization, capitalization — all has failed and brought disaster to America." These were titles of lectures at the meeting: "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," "The Global Rise of Islam," and the "Role of Muslims in America." The meeting was a recruiting tool, as the group attempts to organize more Muslims in the U.S.
This is the group’s ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes: "If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it." Sound familiar, in light of 9/11? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now a resident of Guantanamo, was the mastermind behind that slaughter. This should give an idea of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s actual intent, the building up of an effective jihad bunch of killers of women and children. This is understood in Europe in spades. The global rise of Islam is being seen now as owing its success to the sharp blade of the scimitar, not clichés about brotherhood.
However, the second paragraph above is worth noting in connection with what’s happening in this country. Hizb ut-Tahrir shares the view of the Obama administration, to wit, that capitalism is doomed to fail. Result: the administration is undertaking every conceivable effort to effect its own doctrine – failure. It’s well on its way to success in bringing about the dissolution of the “American way of life.” In this regard, it’s worth noting that Obama was born as a Muslim and lived the most formative years of his life – the earliest – in a Muslim household, first that of his father in Hawaii and then that of his stepfather in Indonesia, before being shipped off by his mother to grow up in Hawaii.
It isn’t politically correct to talk about this, but his Islamic background is instructive. Added to that background were his years listening to a frenetic anti-American, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, whose most famous declaration was “God damn America,” and one of whose main objectives is reparations to blacks for perceived abuse by whites. Wright’s close relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is also instructive. He accompanied Farrakhan on a trip to visit Libya’s butcher-strong-man Muammar Qaddafi in 1984. Qaddafi figured, of course, in the Pan-Am 103 crash in 1988, killing 270, for which he has finally admitted responsibility.
The blade of the scimitar won’t work in bringing down the U.S. – at least not yet. Undermining capitalism is quite another matter, bloodless at first, but who knows what the final upshot will be? Destroying completely the nation’s ability to compete in the world market is fundamental to the destruction of capitalism, a main ingredient being massive unemployment in this country.
Destroying the market-driven practices of the banks and other financial institutions drives the private entrepreneur out of business – or will drive him out, once the government entirely owns the banking system, refusing consistently now to lend money, notwithstanding the unbelievable infusions of tax money into totally private institutions. The government already owns huge segments of that system, the result of the “bank bailout” voodoo economics of last September.
The Treasury Secretary, an admitted tax-cheat, has – or will have – the authority to shut down any business he deems un-viable. This is the antithesis of capitalism, which has driven this country to the pinnacle of world economics. Countries such as China, Germany, and Russia are now laughing at the U.S. situation and wondering how Obamessiah ever got hold of the most successful country in history in order to totally wreck it.
Anyone noticing Obama’s recent speeches and press conferences can see the arrogance one might expect of an imam who holds his Muslim followers in the palm of his hand. Obama has declared just when the Congress will carry out HIS plan for health-care, no later than the August recess, insisting that without time-lines nothing will be accomplished. Without even reading the bill, the democrats – not republicans – put the “stimulus package” in place, the willy-nilly spending of $787 billion, handed out here and there in pork-barrel fashion and stopping the jobs hemorrhaging not at all. The messiah said it had to be done…so it was done, case closed. The fact that it’s a monumental failure is of no consequence. The hopelessly gullible house democrats passed an energy bill no legislator had read. The ayatollah had spoken! “Off with your head and be done with it!”
The government is majority owner of General Motors – something $50 billion or so of taxpayer money could buy, then shut down thousands of profitable dealerships employing a huge work force. It owns a substantial segment of Chrysler, using huge infusions of taxpayer money, again shutting down thousands of dealerships that were making money and, of course, putting both companies into bankruptcy in order to take over. It is poised to go into direct competition with private health-care insurers – using taxpayer money – and thus drive them out of business, forcing citizens to have their health-care needs decided by bureaucrats, not themselves and their doctors.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So…is Obama’s Muslim background coming to the fore…or not? His system is designed to enlist enough voters in the “taking group” to elect people who will pass legislation to let the “takers” plunder the “producer group.” This is socialism that leads inevitably toward communism, and that’s when the storm-trooper’s heel grinds out government for the fat cats (such as in the Soviet model), the devil take the hindmost.
Is Hizb ut-Tahrir the new Democrat Party? You betcha!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Czars...the New Duma!
The going thing in Washington these days is the “Czar Game.” So far, President Obamessiah has appointed 33 czars to take over parts of the government and report directly to him, thus bypassing all the Cabinet secretaries, who also report directly to him. The term “czar” is defined as “one having great power or authority” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th edition). Twenty of the first 21 or so appointments were Jewish, though there’s nothing wrong with that, and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God Damn America) Wright whined recently that these Jews proscribe his access to the prez. The good cleric (inspirer of Audacity of Hope) has accused Israel of being in cahoots with the mischief-makers of 9/11, so maybe his protégé’s advisers figure he might blow them all to Kingdom Come if allowed on the premises. So…shalom, Jerry babe!
Well…the czars all do things that are within the responsibilities of the Cabinet secretaries, but they’re also highly-placed government officials, about which the Constitution requires the advice and consent of the Senate. This means that the Senate – acting about as fast as molasses pours at the Arctic Circle – would have to delve into the backgrounds of all these folks, and that could take eons of time. The dems would have to contrive ways to make the czars all appear as innocent as the new-blown snow while the repubs would dig up every smidgeon of dirt that could be found, going back at least a half-century. So…what’s the Great Deliverer to do in order to run the government right out of the White House? Just sign an executive order and VOILA!…a czar-star is born. Eat your heart out, senators, while you wonder how all this happened so fast.
Czars are bound to not come cheaply, of course, but the cost of having prez-ordained geniuses running the government is simply calculated to be whatever the public can bear, which in this case has no limit, since the country’s running on empty now anyway. Printing a few more billions is no problem to pay these keepers of the torch of freedom as they further the country’s descent into socialism. Having to depend on the Cabinet secretaries also takes time, and theirs is too valuable to be devoted to things such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, things that can just tie up a State Secretary for…well, hours. Now that Kim Jong Il has fired off some more missiles, there will have to be a 34th czar to take care of North Korea, since Secretary Clinton is probably tied up with helping Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez invade Honduras and sugar the gasoline in every service-station.
So…how much? Treasury Secretary Geithner makes $191,300 per year, explaining why, of course, he just can’t pay his taxes for those other two years he cheated the government out of (that statute of limitations thing, doncha know?). Since, like Geithner, the czars report directly to “He who walks on water,” they are bound to make as much. Of course, there are perks, like that valuable health benefit (has just received its own czar to administer), pensions, etc. Maybe something like $200,000 per czar would be a very conservative estimate of czar-cost, and this doesn’t even include travel expenses, glitzy hotels, meals at $100 per entrée, but who’s counting anyway? This means that just the basics come to some $6,600,000 per year, a small price to pay for the best brains in the land.
The rumor is that there will soon be an “Apology Czar,” since some of the president’s apologies for this nation’s existence (in places like the Middle East) have upset dear friends of the nation, like Iran’s newly reelected (what a laugh!) President Ahmadinejad. Then, there are the episodes of Obamessiah not genuflecting properly before either King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (origin of 15 hijackers) or Venezuelan King Hugo. The first exercise for the new czar is rumored to be a proper apology to Fidel Castro for GM’s and Chrysler’s not sending parts for the Chevys and Dodges, circa the 1950s-60s. The car-czar (Rattner by name) will no doubt take care of this problem…maybe even send over a 1970 recently-overhauled Caddie. After all, though he’s never run an auto company, he is the auto expert and is already making plans to force the auto-makers to build cars that run on wind-power and get 5,000 miles to the gust.
So…let’s hear it for the new czars! In the land of the free and the home of the brave and the con of the czars, a new age is about to begin. The voters will still vote but the czars will inhabit the White House, and this will make the Russians happy, since they will then see their number one nemesis traveling down the same path that they took to oblivion. Who knows? Perhaps the czars will institutionalize themselves into the State Duma, thus completing Obamessiah’s total control of everything from Cheerios to Chevrolets.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Well…the czars all do things that are within the responsibilities of the Cabinet secretaries, but they’re also highly-placed government officials, about which the Constitution requires the advice and consent of the Senate. This means that the Senate – acting about as fast as molasses pours at the Arctic Circle – would have to delve into the backgrounds of all these folks, and that could take eons of time. The dems would have to contrive ways to make the czars all appear as innocent as the new-blown snow while the repubs would dig up every smidgeon of dirt that could be found, going back at least a half-century. So…what’s the Great Deliverer to do in order to run the government right out of the White House? Just sign an executive order and VOILA!…a czar-star is born. Eat your heart out, senators, while you wonder how all this happened so fast.
Czars are bound to not come cheaply, of course, but the cost of having prez-ordained geniuses running the government is simply calculated to be whatever the public can bear, which in this case has no limit, since the country’s running on empty now anyway. Printing a few more billions is no problem to pay these keepers of the torch of freedom as they further the country’s descent into socialism. Having to depend on the Cabinet secretaries also takes time, and theirs is too valuable to be devoted to things such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, things that can just tie up a State Secretary for…well, hours. Now that Kim Jong Il has fired off some more missiles, there will have to be a 34th czar to take care of North Korea, since Secretary Clinton is probably tied up with helping Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez invade Honduras and sugar the gasoline in every service-station.
So…how much? Treasury Secretary Geithner makes $191,300 per year, explaining why, of course, he just can’t pay his taxes for those other two years he cheated the government out of (that statute of limitations thing, doncha know?). Since, like Geithner, the czars report directly to “He who walks on water,” they are bound to make as much. Of course, there are perks, like that valuable health benefit (has just received its own czar to administer), pensions, etc. Maybe something like $200,000 per czar would be a very conservative estimate of czar-cost, and this doesn’t even include travel expenses, glitzy hotels, meals at $100 per entrée, but who’s counting anyway? This means that just the basics come to some $6,600,000 per year, a small price to pay for the best brains in the land.
The rumor is that there will soon be an “Apology Czar,” since some of the president’s apologies for this nation’s existence (in places like the Middle East) have upset dear friends of the nation, like Iran’s newly reelected (what a laugh!) President Ahmadinejad. Then, there are the episodes of Obamessiah not genuflecting properly before either King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (origin of 15 hijackers) or Venezuelan King Hugo. The first exercise for the new czar is rumored to be a proper apology to Fidel Castro for GM’s and Chrysler’s not sending parts for the Chevys and Dodges, circa the 1950s-60s. The car-czar (Rattner by name) will no doubt take care of this problem…maybe even send over a 1970 recently-overhauled Caddie. After all, though he’s never run an auto company, he is the auto expert and is already making plans to force the auto-makers to build cars that run on wind-power and get 5,000 miles to the gust.
So…let’s hear it for the new czars! In the land of the free and the home of the brave and the con of the czars, a new age is about to begin. The voters will still vote but the czars will inhabit the White House, and this will make the Russians happy, since they will then see their number one nemesis traveling down the same path that they took to oblivion. Who knows? Perhaps the czars will institutionalize themselves into the State Duma, thus completing Obamessiah’s total control of everything from Cheerios to Chevrolets.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Tyranny & the Fourth!
Coincidentally, the document that declared the independence of the United States was officially sanctioned on 04 July 1776 in Philadelphia and the turning-point battle of the Civil War that preserved the resulting Union was fought on 04 July 1863 at Gettysburg. Thus, in the span of little more than one average lifetime as measured by today’s standards, the nation was founded and saved. Actually, the Constitution was officially ratified in 1788 and the first president and first Congress officially took office and “founded” the nation in 1789, so the actual birth and salvation of the new country took place in the span of just one lifetime.
The Revolutionary War had been on for more than a year when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 were battles that took many lives. By the end of the day, British troops had lost 273 soldiers, while the Colonists lost only 94. Eighteen of these Colonists had died during the battle at Lexington. The Revolutionary War had begun. So…the nation was birthed and saved through the shedding of much blood. An estimated 25,000 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the eight-year Revolutionary War, and an incredible 624,000 died in military action during the four-year Civil War, nearly half of all deaths in all the wars in which this country has engaged.
Nearly all the deaths and all the many times more in number of the wounded have occurred in the never-ending battle against tyranny of one kind or another, whether the despicable despotism of the British in the 1770s or inculcated by monster dictator Adolf Hitler in the 1930s-40s or the tyranny of terrorism inflicted upon this country on 09 September 2001 by monster Muslim Osama bin Laden. The battles against tyranny will never end, and the major – almost only – bulwark against tyranny today is the United States, to which the nations of the world look to be the international stabilizer.
Tyranny
The muffled sound of drum and fife
And musketry in mortal strife
And voices raised in anger, pain,
Or mourning those among the slain
Are sensed when contemplating still
The carnage of a Bunker Hill,
When only battles - bloody, fierce -
The wall of tyranny could pierce.
Then comes to mind the gory scenes
From Queenston Heights to New Orleans
When tyranny again was banned
Upon the sea, upon the land;
And one can sense again the sound
When roaring cannons shook the ground
And mortal men...to make men free...
Would enter immortality.
On Shiloh’s bloody ground that day
They died with valor in full sway,
Or Gettysburg...Chancellorsville,
Where brothers each might brother kill;
One hears the massive, tragic groan
As tens of thousands would atone
- With blood - for hated slavery...
The vilest form of tyranny.
When jaded beasts oppress the poor
And close to them sweet freedom’s door,
It falls upon the free...the strong
Throughout the world to right this wrong;
At Santiago, brave men fell,
And San Juan Hill became a hell,
But men who found eternity
Gained entry scourging tyranny.
Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood,
Where thousands died, but others stood
Their ground with blood and sweat and fears,
And buried comrades through their tears;
And one can sense the frightful sounds
Of tanks and planes emitting rounds
From lethal, modern weaponry
To end the threat of tyranny.
To end the threat of tyranny? -
Ah...no...remember Normandy,
Or Iwo Jima, Anzio,
Where once again the blood must flow;
And one may close the eyes and see
And hear the mighty guns at sea
And wonder why it all must be...
But knows deep down...end tyranny.
So listen!...hear the muffled roar
Of new jet planes now bound for war,
Of new invasions from the sea,
The dying fighting tyranny;
And names like Inchon, Pork Chop Hill,
And Bloody Ridge - remembered still -
Assault the mind, yet augur peace,
In hope that tyranny will cease.
But hope, though strong, has little worth
As long as despots roam the earth,
As long as beasts whose prime resource
Is tyranny...forge brutal force;
So listen...as the jungle screams,
And those who die are shorn of dreams
At Pleiku, Khe Sanh, and Da Nang,
Where flags from coffins daily hang.
No…evil tyranny survives,
Each generation robbed of lives
Attempting to wipe out its curse,
Each war the next one to rehearse;
Recall the battle in the sand -
Exploding missiles as they land
On Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Iraq,
Mad tyranny again to block.
As in most centuries before,
The twenty-first begins with war
When evil men in Allah’s name
Torch innocents in jet-fuel flame;
Their leaders learn that they will pay
In Afghan mountains day by day,
Or in Iraqi towns and sand
An awesome price when good men stand.
************
In tranquil fields throughout the world,
Our dead are marked by flags unfurled,
Or marked by nature’s restless waves,
Beneath the seas in timeless graves;
Yes, thus it is, and thus will be...
Until God’s final, terse decree...
But until then, now strong and free,
The decent must kill tyranny.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The Revolutionary War had been on for more than a year when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 were battles that took many lives. By the end of the day, British troops had lost 273 soldiers, while the Colonists lost only 94. Eighteen of these Colonists had died during the battle at Lexington. The Revolutionary War had begun. So…the nation was birthed and saved through the shedding of much blood. An estimated 25,000 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the eight-year Revolutionary War, and an incredible 624,000 died in military action during the four-year Civil War, nearly half of all deaths in all the wars in which this country has engaged.
Nearly all the deaths and all the many times more in number of the wounded have occurred in the never-ending battle against tyranny of one kind or another, whether the despicable despotism of the British in the 1770s or inculcated by monster dictator Adolf Hitler in the 1930s-40s or the tyranny of terrorism inflicted upon this country on 09 September 2001 by monster Muslim Osama bin Laden. The battles against tyranny will never end, and the major – almost only – bulwark against tyranny today is the United States, to which the nations of the world look to be the international stabilizer.
Tyranny
The muffled sound of drum and fife
And musketry in mortal strife
And voices raised in anger, pain,
Or mourning those among the slain
Are sensed when contemplating still
The carnage of a Bunker Hill,
When only battles - bloody, fierce -
The wall of tyranny could pierce.
Then comes to mind the gory scenes
From Queenston Heights to New Orleans
When tyranny again was banned
Upon the sea, upon the land;
And one can sense again the sound
When roaring cannons shook the ground
And mortal men...to make men free...
Would enter immortality.
On Shiloh’s bloody ground that day
They died with valor in full sway,
Or Gettysburg...Chancellorsville,
Where brothers each might brother kill;
One hears the massive, tragic groan
As tens of thousands would atone
- With blood - for hated slavery...
The vilest form of tyranny.
When jaded beasts oppress the poor
And close to them sweet freedom’s door,
It falls upon the free...the strong
Throughout the world to right this wrong;
At Santiago, brave men fell,
And San Juan Hill became a hell,
But men who found eternity
Gained entry scourging tyranny.
Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood,
Where thousands died, but others stood
Their ground with blood and sweat and fears,
And buried comrades through their tears;
And one can sense the frightful sounds
Of tanks and planes emitting rounds
From lethal, modern weaponry
To end the threat of tyranny.
To end the threat of tyranny? -
Ah...no...remember Normandy,
Or Iwo Jima, Anzio,
Where once again the blood must flow;
And one may close the eyes and see
And hear the mighty guns at sea
And wonder why it all must be...
But knows deep down...end tyranny.
So listen!...hear the muffled roar
Of new jet planes now bound for war,
Of new invasions from the sea,
The dying fighting tyranny;
And names like Inchon, Pork Chop Hill,
And Bloody Ridge - remembered still -
Assault the mind, yet augur peace,
In hope that tyranny will cease.
But hope, though strong, has little worth
As long as despots roam the earth,
As long as beasts whose prime resource
Is tyranny...forge brutal force;
So listen...as the jungle screams,
And those who die are shorn of dreams
At Pleiku, Khe Sanh, and Da Nang,
Where flags from coffins daily hang.
No…evil tyranny survives,
Each generation robbed of lives
Attempting to wipe out its curse,
Each war the next one to rehearse;
Recall the battle in the sand -
Exploding missiles as they land
On Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Iraq,
Mad tyranny again to block.
As in most centuries before,
The twenty-first begins with war
When evil men in Allah’s name
Torch innocents in jet-fuel flame;
Their leaders learn that they will pay
In Afghan mountains day by day,
Or in Iraqi towns and sand
An awesome price when good men stand.
************
In tranquil fields throughout the world,
Our dead are marked by flags unfurled,
Or marked by nature’s restless waves,
Beneath the seas in timeless graves;
Yes, thus it is, and thus will be...
Until God’s final, terse decree...
But until then, now strong and free,
The decent must kill tyranny.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Another Shoe Has Dropped!
Well…surprise, surprise…the other shoe – or perhaps better – ANOTHER shoe has dropped in Kentucky’s ongoing “Year of the Scandal.” This time, it’s the Kentucky Association of Counties, and the Lexington Herald-Leader is to be thanked for yet another expose. This should be a “Pulitzer” year for the paper.
So…five top executives managed to do away with almost $600,000 in just two years. Everything from barrels of liquor to the girlie clubs to fancy and expensive “working luncheons” at “selected” bistros to exotic trips here and yon to just keep abreast of the latest (gasp) happenings in the care and feeding of counties. Not only are these charlatans way, way overpaid in the first place, but they ought to start right now coughing up hard cash for the perks they STOLE on the taxpayers’ dime.
Imagine! – nearly $200,000 for meals in two years – almost $275 per day. Do these people ever eat at home? Nearly $17,000 for game tickets, golf and souvenirs! Are these parasites so underpaid in their six-figure salaries that they can’t even pay their way into a ballgame? In one month, more than $7,200 was dropped at one restaurant in Lexington – but, hey, these guys are located in Frankfort. They also ran up thousands in meals in other restaurants in Lexington and Louisville. These guys have offices, but they do their business (with the aid of plenty of alcohol) in lavish working lunches, apparently.
Three of the four airport honchos saw the light and resigned post-haste earlier this year. They managed to squander $600,000 in three years, but the five KACO operators wasted nearly $600,000 in just two years. The airport thieves are probably still waiting to see if criminality is in the wind. The same should be true for KACO leeches, and they ought to resign or be fired before the sun goes down…no ifs, ands, or buts.
Complicit in these raids on public funds are the boards that are supposed to know what’s going on. Instead, at least some of their members enter into the game themselves…go on the trips, take spouses, etc. Indeed, the Kentucky League of Cities honchos had the RIGHT to take their spouses along on the jaunts. Three officials managed to spend $300,000 on meals, travel, etc., in just three years. Indeed, some $20,000 in meals was dropped at the restaurant owned by the League director’s husband. Talk about graft! The lady who was/is the head of that board didn’t even know the amount of the director’s salary, which had just been jacked up to way over $300,000 a year. The League director oughtta be outta there right now.
Okay…a relatively small amount of these essentially rip-off numbers was bona fide. The Library honcho and her staff managed to get in on the goodies, too, and it seems that the going thing in all these enterprises is to give out credit cards like dealing pinochle hands, with the added advantage of almost no accounting. It’s crazy but these pilferers understand that the public is collectively as dumb as a gourd and deserves to be ripped-off.
The boards that are supposed to oversee these shenanigans might as well not exist. They’re put into place through the grand Kentucky modus operandi known as cronyism, pure and simple. They understand their jobs to involve…well, nothing. They’re not paid, after all, so why should they put any effort toward control or even knowledge of what is connected to their positions? Just join in the fun! Don’t rock the boat! It’s disgusting, and these paid-official-leeches should be gone, rules put into place, and board members informed that with the privilege of the position comes the responsibility – love it or leave it!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
So…five top executives managed to do away with almost $600,000 in just two years. Everything from barrels of liquor to the girlie clubs to fancy and expensive “working luncheons” at “selected” bistros to exotic trips here and yon to just keep abreast of the latest (gasp) happenings in the care and feeding of counties. Not only are these charlatans way, way overpaid in the first place, but they ought to start right now coughing up hard cash for the perks they STOLE on the taxpayers’ dime.
Imagine! – nearly $200,000 for meals in two years – almost $275 per day. Do these people ever eat at home? Nearly $17,000 for game tickets, golf and souvenirs! Are these parasites so underpaid in their six-figure salaries that they can’t even pay their way into a ballgame? In one month, more than $7,200 was dropped at one restaurant in Lexington – but, hey, these guys are located in Frankfort. They also ran up thousands in meals in other restaurants in Lexington and Louisville. These guys have offices, but they do their business (with the aid of plenty of alcohol) in lavish working lunches, apparently.
Three of the four airport honchos saw the light and resigned post-haste earlier this year. They managed to squander $600,000 in three years, but the five KACO operators wasted nearly $600,000 in just two years. The airport thieves are probably still waiting to see if criminality is in the wind. The same should be true for KACO leeches, and they ought to resign or be fired before the sun goes down…no ifs, ands, or buts.
Complicit in these raids on public funds are the boards that are supposed to know what’s going on. Instead, at least some of their members enter into the game themselves…go on the trips, take spouses, etc. Indeed, the Kentucky League of Cities honchos had the RIGHT to take their spouses along on the jaunts. Three officials managed to spend $300,000 on meals, travel, etc., in just three years. Indeed, some $20,000 in meals was dropped at the restaurant owned by the League director’s husband. Talk about graft! The lady who was/is the head of that board didn’t even know the amount of the director’s salary, which had just been jacked up to way over $300,000 a year. The League director oughtta be outta there right now.
Okay…a relatively small amount of these essentially rip-off numbers was bona fide. The Library honcho and her staff managed to get in on the goodies, too, and it seems that the going thing in all these enterprises is to give out credit cards like dealing pinochle hands, with the added advantage of almost no accounting. It’s crazy but these pilferers understand that the public is collectively as dumb as a gourd and deserves to be ripped-off.
The boards that are supposed to oversee these shenanigans might as well not exist. They’re put into place through the grand Kentucky modus operandi known as cronyism, pure and simple. They understand their jobs to involve…well, nothing. They’re not paid, after all, so why should they put any effort toward control or even knowledge of what is connected to their positions? Just join in the fun! Don’t rock the boat! It’s disgusting, and these paid-official-leeches should be gone, rules put into place, and board members informed that with the privilege of the position comes the responsibility – love it or leave it!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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