Red and Yellow?

Did I just hear it right that the Empire State Building is celebrating the rise of Communist China by lighting their building with Red and Yellow lights? What's next the celebration of the rise of the Soviet Union?

An Open Letter to National Public Radio

This morning your news people described the current government of Honduras as de facto. Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the word. "Without being officially established" is not how you should describe the constitutionally selected President Micheletti. Ex-President Zelaya attempted to hold a non-binding referendum. Congress and the Supreme Court OF HONDURAS had deemed the plebiscite unconstitutional and prohibited the execution of such poll. The armed forces of Honduras arrested Zelaya, at his home, on the morning of June 28, 2009, the date of the scheduled vote, which the military chief had refused to coordinate. Per order of the country's Supreme Court Zelaya was held in an airbase outside Tegucigalpa before being flown to San José, Costa Rica. Roberto Micheletti, the former President of the Honduran Congress and a member of the same party as Zelaya, was sworn in as President by the National Congress on the afternoon of Sunday June 28 for a term that ends on January 1, 2010. Democratic elections are to be held in Honduras in November. So you all tell us what, in this process, has not been "officially established."

As an aside the government of the United States says it will not recognize the November elections and Zelaya should be allowed to resume his postition as dictator, excuse me, President. We can sleep well knowing that Hugo Chavez approves of the United States position on the matter as do all other dictators in South America.

OK, So the UN is at it Again

OK,

So the UN is chastising Israel again for violating the human rights of the Hamas. Forget Sudan. Forget North Korea. Forget Burma. Forget Iran. This is it, folks. Israel has become a singular axis of evil.

Human Rights Watch, World Report, January, 2009 (Washington, DC) – “The incoming Obama administration will need to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years.” They went on, “Today, the most energetic diplomacy on human rights comes from such places as Algiers, Cairo, and Islamabad, with backing from Beijing and Moscow.”

Soooooo forget the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. The human rights watchers have told it like it is….good guys are China and Moscow and Egypt and Algeria…bad guys are the United States and Israel.

Even Presidential Advisor Brzezinski had a comment about Israeli jets attacking nuclear facilities in Iran: “Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not.”

Sooooo the United States will not only go back on its word to install a missile defense shield in eastern Europe we will install our jet fighters as a last line in the defense of Iran.

To quote someone who has a better handle on what is currently going on with our government let’s call on Alice in Wonderland: “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nonthing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

Yes, Alice. It appears we have all fallen down the rabbit hole.

Response to a Wall Street Journal Article on Conservatism Winning the Battle on Health Care

Gee and here I thought Conservatism was dead. Just goes to show ya...

Perhaps the reason that the Democrats are so disjointed is because they know that if they 'tell it like it is' to the citizens of this country regarding health care they would be in even more trouble than they are now? Perhaps they realize that having Obama on TV every day and saying the same 'nothing' is getting tiresome even for the most loyal of Democrats? Perhaps the idea that the President and Congress would be on a different health care plan than whatever Congress comes up with for the rest of us might be a reason that the general public are angry?

You left out the most important reason for the disgruntled citizens of this country, whether Republicans or Democrats, and it doesn't have anything to do with Limbaugh or Beck. The people in the White House don't realize that the people outside the beltway are not stupid and shouldn't be taken for granted. WE DON’T WANT TO BE PUSHED AROUND OR TOLD WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO LIVE! Obama said the he won the election so he can do what he wants. That is hogwash and we know it. That is not how this country works and the more the President stomps up and down like a spoiled child to try to get his way on health care the more opposition he will see. The country does not work that way. Checks and balances don’t work that way. And the Constitution was definitely not designed to work that way.

The folks up for re-election next year had better check their poll numbers and realize that this isn't Canada, or Britain, or Cuba, or Venezuela. This is the United States of America.


Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said:

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial…The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Political Economy

Murphy’s Law of policy making: The costs of economic policy are always higher than promised and the benefits are always lower. Actually it wasn’t Murphy but Phaedrus, 2000 years ago, that made the observation.

How will a government run health care system benefit consumers of medical services? Let’s look at the track record of our government in the past when they attempted to modify the behavior of the citizens in this country.

Back in the 1970’s there was a gasoline shortage due to a so-called energy crisis. OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), the oil cartel, succeeded in raising the prices of petroleum products – including gasoline – to record-high levels. Consumers reacted by conserving their use of gasoline. What did the government do? Congress responded by enacting legislation mandating energy conservation as the law of the land. One of these laws was the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard. It required each passenger car sold in the U.S. must meet a federally mandated fuel economy standard.

Conserving gas is a good thing, just like low priced health care is a good thing. But what are the costs associated with government involvement? With their CAFÉ standards auto manufacturers began to build smaller, lighter cars, cars that were more easily damaged in accidents and more costly to repair. They also began to design engines that were less responsive and more difficult to repair as well, making the operation of the newer vehicles more expensive for consumers to operate.

But the costs of the CAFÉ standards are measured not just in terms of the dollars and cents of reduced economic efficiency but also in terms of the people whose lives are lost when they are involved in accidents. For every 500-pound decrease in weight of a vehicle the percentage of fatalities in that vehicle goes up 14%. That translates to an increase of 3,000 deaths every year in automobile accidents and 15,000 serious non-fatal accidents per year.

And what did the consumers do? They began purchasing pickup trucks and SUV’s. By 2002 the market share for SUV’s and other light trucks had reached fully 50 percent of the 17 million passenger vehicles. And with the addition of the SUV’s that used a great deal more gas than the smaller fuel-efficient cars they also posed a greater risk to the smaller cars on the road.

But why was the law originally enacted? It would have been much more efficient to tax gasoline to drive usage of the product down and protect the environment. The structure of the law, though, suggested a different motive by our government. The CAFÉ standards looked at domestic and foreign cars differently, and directly insulated the U.S. auto industry from the rigors of foreign competition.

So what is going to happen to the health care system in this country when the President and Congress try again to control what is consumed by it’s citizens – this time timely medical treatment and choices for doctors and hospitals? I don’t believe it will get that far. There is one all-important goal to politicians in this country right now and it isn’t the altruistic ideal of health care for everyone, it is to get re-elected. They know that the people of this country from across the political spectrum have found their voices and will take their anger and exasperation to the polls next year.

And the next time a SUV or mini-van takes your parking place just remember: Their owners are just trying to prevent Congress from killing you to save jobs in Detroit.

AND IN THE HEADLINES THIS MONTH...

Mississippi police use taser and handcuffs on wayward emu

Naked man holds drunken intruder at gunpoint

Massachusetts postal worker admits to stealing 30,000 DVD’s

SC cheerleader hunts and kills 10 foot long alligator

Football game called when sinkhole opens

SC mayor orders no chase policy for police

Zombies march for charity

Woman in golf cart charged with DWI

NJ may ban chain link fences

Pissed off Virginia police aim to flush out urinal thieves

Obama will not sign a health care bill that adds one dime to the deficit

Government builds the Center for Comparative Effectiveness

Research to conduct, support and synthesize research to define our health care services

Government will build registries and data networks from medical records AND The Attorney General will have access to all medical records

There will be mandated Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards

U.S. to act on Climate

And

Government will increase funding to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse

What's in a Rule Book? "That which we call a rose..."

Let’s talk baseball. I am a Dodger fan and have been for a very long time – just to set the record straight. So Manny Ramirez is up at the plate. The Dodgers are playing the Diamondbacks. The Dodgers are attempting to stay ahead of the Colorado Rockies (my husband’s favorite team) in the race to the pennant for their division. Every game at this point in the season is crucial. Ramirez strikes out and tosses the bat down in frustration and while reaching to pick it up the umpire says, “You are out of here.” Thrown out of the game. Thrown out of the game in the second inning? What is going on here? Where is the rule book?

Baseball Rule Book in Summation

Throwing the bat on a swing

Young players quite often let go of the bat during or after a swing and sometimes hit another player. There is no rule that covers this situation. It is a safety issue and may be handled under the authority of rule 9.01(c) which gives the umpire authority to rule on anything not specifically covered in the rules.

Quite often I hear that umpires call the batter out for doing this. Sometimes it is after a warning and sometimes without. This is not correct. The defense hasn't earned an out. The batter should be called out, only if the throwing of the bat interfered with an attempted play by the defense.

Where does out mean eject from the game?


Now let’s talk the U.S. Government. Since when is the rule book thrown out, especially by the Supreme Court, the highest Court in the United States. According to the Supreme Court’s own ‘rulebook’ under Part One, Rule Four, Sessions and Quorum: Open sessions of the Court are held beginning at 10 a.m. on the first Monday in October of each year, and thereafter as announced by the Court. Today is the ninth day of September, 2009, and it is a Wednesday and the Court is meeting to discuss campaign finance reform. If the highest Court in the land has thrown out their own rule book just how much confidence should ‘We the People’ have in our government as a whole?