Meditation: Requiem for Polish Patriots

Eternal rest grant unto them them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they they rest in peace.

Amen.

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Related:

• Black box recording reveals "dramatic" ending for Polish president Kaczynski, at Ruby Slippers
• Lech Kaczynski: Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Poland's Tragedy Marks Another Tragedy (Updated)

What The Man Really Said About Income Taxes, Thank You Very Much

Word is circulating that President Obama only promised to limit income taxes, leaving other taxes as fair game. Incredibly, many people are trying to believe this, and, even worse, trying to convince others that it is true.

Brief history lesson, via theblogprof:

 

Update: LL over at Virtual Mirage pointed out:

A report from the House Ways & Means Committee's GOP members notes that, since January 2009, Congress and the president have enacted $670 billion in tax increases. That's $2,100 for each person in America. At least 14 of those tax hikes, the report says, break Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000. Roughly $316 billion of the tax hikes — 14 increases in all — hit middle-class families, the report says.

$2,100 tax increase per person in America. 

Another "promise kept"? Or another reason to laugh in your face?
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Related posts:

• He Who Laughs Last . . .
• Why April Is a Good Month For Work Serfs
• C'mon Zo, Tell Us What You Really Think!

He Who Laughs Last . . .

From Fox News, about our president, speaking in Miami:

Obama singled out the anti-tax tea party movement that fanned out across the country to hold demonstrations and rallies marking Tax Day. "I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes," the president said. "You would think they'd be saying thank you."

According to the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., who have been studying taxation in the U.S. since 1937, Americans actually spend more on taxes than on food, clothing, and housing combined.

Ah, November 2, 2010. I count the days.

Update. It is worth noting that, according to The Heritage Foundation (via There's My Two Cents), over the last 40 years the median American income rose by 29%, but federal spending rose by 242%.

Update. Just came across this at Feed Your ADHD. Definitely worth repeating.

First HE had us labeled as domestic terrorists, then he didn’t know we existed, then HE called us teabaggers, then HE acknowledged his destiny to be a one-term president -- and now HE is "amused" by us.

HE is amused by us? We are the reason Arlen Sphincter turned tail and joined his natural-born party when the backlash over his support of Zero’s $787 billion turtle tunnel bill threatened his re-election as a Republican, and we are now the reason Sphincter won’t even come close to winning his seat backScott Brown now sits in a seat formerly occupied for nearly half a century by a fat cretinous murdering drunkard whoring Democrat thief, the reason dirty Creigh Deeds was done in dirt cheap (a saying admittedly stolen from Pat Dollard), the reason New Jersey now has Gov. Chris Christie to rightfully gut it’s bloated government and eventually return power to the taxpayer, the reason sitting RINO Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will have to run as a Democrat-lite (an independent) to even have a chance at winning his battle to become a U.S. senator.

HE is amused by us? We’re the reason it took so long for HIM to get his precious signature – and likely final – achievement accomplished: Obamacare. We are the reason Obama needed to make the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback and the fake executive order preventing federal abortion funding just to squeak that monstrosity of freedom-grabbing piece of crap through by a Congresscriminal's nose.

HE is amused by us? We’re the reason (so far) that 17 clownish Zombiecrat Congresscriminals and 5 Zombiecrat Senators are retiring. We’re the reason the battle for the Senate on April 15, 2010, looked amazingly red and the current map of the potential November makeup of the House of Representatives that, only 18 months ago was bluer that Babe the Blue Ox’s balls, now looks like Iran nuked the entire friggin’ nation, not that The One would do anything about nuclear attacks, either.

HE is amused by us? We are the reason Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dickhead, Nevada) will lose in November, even with a third-party candidate running for his seat, why only a few supporters showed up to hear him recently speak in his hometown of Searchlight, where conversely thousands were drawn to hear Sarah Palin speak and where leftists threatened Andrew Breitbart.

Read the rest here.

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Related posts:

• Why April Is a Good Month For Work Serfs
• C'mon Zo, Tell Us What You Really Think!

Why April Is a Good Month For Work Serfs

When you look at it from a certain standpoint, April is an appropriate month to pay taxes. The reason? Every lick of work you've performed for pay since the first of the year, and then some, you've done to fill the coffers of your elected representatives to squander as they choose. No medieval serf could have done better.

This year, on average, every dime Americans earned before April 9 will be handed over to the government in taxes. That's on average. In some states, like Mississippi, taxpayers are done harvesting money for the Government by March 28th, and they can proceed to focus on feeding, clothing, and sheltering the people under under their own roofs. In other states, like New York, where I live, Joe and Jane Average will still be sweating on the Gov't Estate until April 23.

The Day you start earning money for your own needs and desires is broken down by state on the following map. (Click on map for a better view.)

Sound like a bargain with all that free (cough, cough) health care and all? Whoa. Hold on. You mean you'd like you know when you start working for yourself if you pay your end of this year's debt, too?

In that case, on average, you won't even start paying your own rent until May 17, an additional 38 days. Uh huh.

Thirty-eight days of extra work, this year, just to pay for this year's debt, which actually is a drop in the debt bucket.

Let's see, in New York State that would mean Joe and Jane Average will work until (calculating . . . ) June 2.

January 1 to June 2th. That's five full months.

Five months of the year devoted to fulfilling every wish of our elected representatives. If you live in New York State, that's more than 40% of your work life. Every stinking bit of work you did throughout January, February, March, April, May, and part of June just to cover whatever your elected officials think you should be paying for instead of what you're trying to pay for.

And if you don't live in New York State, it's nearly as bad.
 
Here's the breakdown from The Tax Foundation:

Five major categories of taxes dominate the tax burden. Individual income taxes—including federal, state and local—require 32 days' work. Payroll taxes take another 25 days' work. Sales and excise taxes, mostly state and local, take 15 days to pay off. Corporate income taxes take 8 days, and property taxes take 12. Americans will log 6 more days to pay other miscellaneous taxes, most notably including motor vehicle license taxes and severance taxes, and about half a day for estate taxes.

 Tired yet?

I am.

And that's not something I'll be forgetting when it comes to supporting the agendas of my local, state, and federal Gov't overseers.
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C'mon Zo, Tell Us What You Really Think!

Zo at his best.



H/t: teresamerica
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Religion of Peacer's Plans for Times Square and Grand Central Stations Revealed

You may remember the "Beauty Parlor Bomber," Najibullah Zazi, who was building bombs using hydrogen peroxide in a Denver, Colorado, suburb to use in New York City. Now details of his plan have been revealed.

When he was discovered by the FBI and NYPD, Zazi confessed that he and two of his Flushing High School buddies, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, went to Pakistan in August 2008 to join the the Taliban and fight against U.S. forces in Afghaistan. Once in Pakistan, the trio were soon off to Waziristan for training in how to make bombs and strap them on.

Object: to kill as many people as possible at the Times Square station and the Grand Central Terminal during rush hour. From the NY Daily News:

They would board trains on the 1, 2, 3 and 6 lines at rush hour and planned to position themselves in the middle of the packed trains to ensure the maximum carnage when they blew themselves up, sources said.

During Zazi's brief visit to Queens from his home in Denver last September, he rode the subway multiple times to the Grand Central and Wall St. stations, scouting where to best spread death and mayhem, the sources said.

Last month, two women killed 40 people and wounded many more when they blew themselves up on Moscow subways. Here's a photo of some New York City subway security after those attacks:

Meanwhile, another bomb plotter connected with Zazi has been picked up in Pakistan. He'll be in this country soon to face trial in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Zazi, who is scheduled to be sentenced on June 25, has been moved to a secret location. His high school buddies, Medunjanin and Ahmedzay, have pleaded not guilty.

Hat tip: Jihad Watch
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Lech Kaczynski: Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls

One statement that I often hear in my Little Corner of Progressive Paradise, usually pronounced with misplaced innocence, is, "What's wrong with socialism?"

You wouldn't have needed to explain that to most of the Poles who died in the conflagration that took the life of Lech Kaczynski and 87 other Polish dignitaries and relatives of the 22,000 Poles murdered by direct order of Stalin back in 1940 so that they wouldn't put up a fuss over losing their republic. Many of these were the very people who put their lives on the line to openly defy Soviet communism in Poland. I will write of only one today.

Lech Kaczynski was raised by parents who were resistance fighters in Poland during World War II, when that country was invaded simultaneously by National Socialist forces from the west and Marxist Communist forces from the east. At least 55 million deaths later, the Nazis were defeated, but the sacrifice was not enough to release Poland from Soviet terror. The Soviets murdered thousands of military prisoners (of which the Katyn massacre was a part) or sent them to gulags. In one year alone, more than a million Polish civilians were deported to northern Russia and Kazakhstan, most of whom died. A majority of the dead were children. All organized religions in Poland were persecuted, with clergy and religious teachers imprisoned and tortured for such offenses as not removing references to God from the walls of schoolrooms. All enterprises, including farms, were taken over by the state, and the Polish currency was abolished and replaced with Soviet currency.

What could possibly be wrong with socialism?

It is not surprising then, that Lech Kaczynski, Poland's third democratically elected president since the fall of communism in 1989, was a committed anti-Communist who followed in the footsteps of his friend, the legendary Lech Walesa, co-founder of the Soviet bloc's first trade union, Solidarity. When the idea of open opposition to communist dictatorship caught on in the Soviet bloc, the Soviet Union collapsed.

"I want good relations with Moscow," said Kaczynski, the former Solidarity activist, "but Russia has to recognize that Poland is no longer in its sphere of influence."

Putin must have loved to hear that.

It is not a surprise, then, that leftists detested Kaczynski.

Although Poland joined the European Union, Kaczynski was a Eurosceptic, because he believed more strongly in Polish independence than in the European Union. During the Russia-Georgia War, when Russia planned to annex two provinces of Georgia, he strongly denounced Russia. He called the confrontation between Georgia and Russia a "test of strength" in which "Russia showed the face it wanted to show--an imperial face."

Kaczynski saw Russia as "just the old Russia," not the "reset" Russia accepted by Obama. But, unlike Obama, Kacznyski knew Russia very well. He was a proponent of building alternative routes for oil and natural gas from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan to bypass Russia and thus break Russia's stranglehold on European energy supplies.  "We have to convince Russia," he said, "that the imperial era is over. . . . Those who were then appeasing Hitler were firmly convinced that they were right. Time showed something different."

He backed plans with the U.S. under George W. Bush to deploy 10 interceptor missiles on Polish territory, a plan which Russia hated. From Kaczynski's perspective, those missiles "would deepen the interest of the United States" in Poland. Obama later countermanded that agreement, in line with his usual treatment of American allies, like the UK, Israel, and India.

Even more annoying to leftists is Poland's own energy independence; while much of Europe depends on Russian pipeline gas, Poland draws on "its own plentiful domestic gas and enormous oil reserves." There "is even talk of Poland becoming a gas exporter to its Central European and Baltic northern neighbors." According to David Howell, former British Cabinet minister:

This in turn reinforces the opportunities for the whole of Europe to become increasingly self-sufficient in low-cost energy, and therefore far less reliant not only on Russia's arrogant gas monopoly, Gazprom, but also on the smoldering Middle East and other shaky and worrying sources of oil and gas round the world. Moscow's gas czars would then have to sell their gas eastward to China, Japan and other Asian customers for the best price they could secure.

To bring the necessary physical infrastructure into existence, of course, "would require EU leaders and officials to work for much simpler regulations and licensing procedures and much lighter taxation."

Simpler regulations and lighter taxation do not sound like the socialism I know. In contrast, Poland's fiscal policies enabled it to sidestep the current recession.

In terms of religious belief, Kaczynski was a double-edged thorn in the side of leftist politics. He stood up for his religious faith, and was a founder of Poland's conservative Catholic Law and Justice party, which was no friend to abortion or gay marriage. And, as William Jacobson pointed out, "Kaczynski also was a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as described in the Jerusalem Post." Jacobson's view:

A man who loved the United States, freedom for the individual, and the Jewish people. There are far too few such people in the world, and we just lost one of the best of them.

James Corum at the UK Telegraph agreed. "The death of President Lech Kaczynski and many Polish national leaders yesterday," he said, "is not only Poland’s loss — it’s also a loss for the Western democratic world."

I will add that it is a particular loss for the world to lose a political leader who knows whereof he speaks.

Kaczynski didn't pick up his political views from ideological textbooks painting rosy pictures of an idyllic world "unfettered" by responsibility, religion, and ambitious pursuit of happiness, but in a torturous cookpot of repression, anti-religion, and communal poverty--for those lucky enough to live through the experience.

And he came out of it with his moral compass intact.

Lech Kaczynski was the stalwart antithesis of the leftist ideal, and we have great need of such men. So, it is with profound sorrow that I ask not for whom the bell tolls . . . .


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Related: Poland's Tragedy Marks Another Tragedy

Poland's Tragedy Marks Another Tragedy (Updated)

Today, a tragic day for Poland. The country's President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife, Maria, and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died in a plane crash in thick fog in Smolensk, in western Russia. Among the 96 dead were 88 members of a Polish state delegation en route to memorial events marking the 70th anniversary of the execution of 22,000 Polish military officers, university students, physicians, writers, and others by the Soviet secret service. Many of these were massacred in a forest near Katyn. From Fox News:

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

[Update: 1:30 p.m. EST. Some of the people on board were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers' strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent Solidarity member.]

[Update: 5:00 p.m. EST. From Gazeta Wyborcza, via usspost.com,  more names of those lost: former president of Poland in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy chairman of parliament of Poland (and the presidential candidate for the social democratic SLD party),  Jerzy Szmajdzinski; Chancellery of the President, Wladyslaw Stasiak; President of the National Security Bureau of Poland, Aleksander Szczyglo;  Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrezj Kremer; Chief of Staff of the Polish Army, Franciszek Gągor; President of the National Bank of Poland, Slawomir Skrzypek; Commissioner for the Protection of Civil Rights, Janusz Kochanowski; the heads of the Polish Armed Forces, and dozens of members of Parliament. (some spelling corrected- QR)]

[Update: 7:00 p.m. EST. Also reported as lost: Jolanta Szymanek-Deresz, member of the praesidium of the party of European Socialists.]

[Update: 4/11/10, 5:30 p.m. EST. Another name: former deputy prime minister of Poland and campaigner for womens’ and gay rights, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka.]

Spared from the tragedy were Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, and his cabinet.

The country has begun a week of mourning.

Americans join Poland in their sorrow.

[Update. From Rosemerta, commenter at HotAir:

Condolences can be sent to:

His Excellency Robert Kupiecki, The Ambassador of Poland
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
2640 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20009

Phone: (202) 234 3800
Fax: (202) 328 6271

Proper mode of address (from InfoPlease):
On envelope: His/Her Excellency Fullname, The Ambassador of Placename
Salutation: Excellency or Dear Mr./Madam Ambassador

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Elections Have Consequences: More Reasons to Vote Out Democrats

It's about gerrymandering, the deliberate distortion of the borders of electoral districts to cause results that favor the party in power. Politicians like to redistrict in their own favor, which is one reason that it is so hard to defeat incumbents.

Remember that Congressional kookette from New York State who horrified the nation by proposing Demon Pass as a great way for Democrats to perform an end-run around the Constitution of the United States? Incredibly, Louise Slaughter was actually elected, by apparently somnambulant voters in the Buffalo and Rochester areas, to their shame.

Are there no conservative voters in these areas who would cast their votes more wisely? I think there are. But look at how carefully the inconvenient Republican voters were removed from Slaughter's district (marked in green) in a redistricting after the 1990 census. Since then she has been re-elected 7 times with no serious opposition and thus allowed to rise to the position of chair of the obviously important House Rules Committee.

Here's another cute district, this one in Illinois (not Obama's former district, but nearby), aimed a keeping Hispanic voters "together":

By the way, how did Barney Frank keep getting elected over and over again? No doubt the layout of his district in Massachusetts did him no harm:

Redistricting is conducted every 10 years following the census recount. Whoever is in charge in 2011 will be determining the likely outcome of future elections.

That means that upcoming Congressional elections won't be the only vitally important ones.

State elections will have very significant consequences as well.
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Who's Going to Pay for That, Did You Say?

Time-lapse picture of U.S. workers' ability to pay for Obama's Socialist Distopia:

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Breaking: Shoe Bomber Caught on DC to Denver Flight (Update: No Explosives Found, and More)

You can be "lighting your shoes on fire" on board a DC to Denver flight. You can be holding a diplomatic passport from Qatar. Your name can be Mohammed al Modadi. Air marshals can tackle you to the floor. Two jet fighters from Buckley Air Force Base can be scrambled to accompany the flight you are on after you are caught "lighting your shoes on fire."

All that is possible.

What is not possible is that you are a "militant Islamic extremist."

Ask the president. He knows.

Update: The FBI says no explosives were found in the diplomat’s shoes after he “allegedly" told air marshals, "I’m lighting my shoes on fire.” U.S. security officials say the statement may have been “sarcastic.”

Or maybe it was just a trial run.

No doubt there is diplomatic immunity for "sarcastic."

Cross-posted at Potluck.

Update 4/8/10: Founding Bloggers smells something more offensive than smoke from the "alleged" cigarette that Mohammed al Modadi "allegedly" was smoking in the restroom of that DC to Denver flight.

CBS reported that Qatar's U.S. ambassador, Ali Bin Fahad Al-Hajri, cautioned against a rush to judgment.  (H/t Jihad Watch)

If you're a Qatari ambassador, all you have to do is ask. In the Obama administration's non-rush to judgment, this "diplomat," who violated U.S. federal law at minimum and caused an airliner filled with more than 160 passengers and crew to be placed in the sights of the weapons of two jet fighters (with attendant expense), has been rushed back to his "embassy" in Washington. His name now is being reported as Mohammed al Madadi, not Modadi, as first reported. Here's his mug.

Update: From Jihad Watch:

Just a coincidence. Just a coincidence. Just a coincidence. Just a joke. Just a joke. Just a joke. "Qatar diplomat was to meet jailed terrorist," by Matthew Lee and P. Solomon Banda for The Associated Press, April 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON -- A Qatari diplomat was on his way to an official visit with an imprisoned al-Qaida sleeper agent when he touched off a bomb scare by slipping into an airline bathroom for a smoke, officials said Thursday as the diplomat prepared to leave the U.S. The diplomat, Mohammed Al-Madadi was going to meet Ali Al-Marri in prison, according to a State Department official and another person close to the matter. Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, is serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to support terrorism.

Al-Marri was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a sleeper agent researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

[snip]

Some air travelers at Denver International Airport Thursday were amazed that Al-Madadi would not be charged with anything. 

[snip]

But even without charges being pressed against him and without such a waiver, the U.S. could have moved to declare Al-Madadi "persona non grata" and expel him from the country. However, officials said they would not pursue this, given the close nature of U.S.-Qatari ties and the importance the country plays in the Middle East....

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Map of New York State Tax Day Tea Parties, 2010

The patriots at Gathering of Eagles:NY have posted this very helpful map of Tax Day Tea Parties planned in New York State. 

Green marks events planned for Thursday, April 15.  Blue marks events planned for Saturday, April 17. There are three Tea Party Express Stops in New York State this year, in Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany on April 12th and 13th.

Click here to access the Google Map with specifics on each location. If you zoom in on this map, you will see the Tea Party Express Stops marked in red (via correction by GOE:NY, thanks folks!).

Join your fellow patriots! Every voice counts!

If you are having a Tax Day Tea Party event that isn't listed, let Gathering of Eagles:NY know, and they'll update their map.

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Don't Tell Me You're Not Embarrassed by This

Need to recover? Watch George W's strike pitch at Yankee Stadium.

Update: Don't miss Snarky Bastard's report, "Obama Regime Appoints PitchingPrompter."

Hat tip: theblogprof
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More Derring-Do From Dems' Little Shop of Horrors

Entrepreneurs and employees take note: this news about new restrictions on startup businesses (if you can find anyone starting up businesses--aka employers--in the current climate) will grab your attention. Via Pundit and Pundette:

Angel investors don’t usually stay up at night worrying about Capitol Hill. But a financial reform bill proposed by Chris Dodd, the Democrat chairing the Senate Banking Committee, includes new restrictions on startups and angels.

Not surprisingly, investors aren’t happy about it, saying it’s “insane,” “frankly ridiculous,” and aims to “destroy Silicon Valley.”

There are three changes that should have a particular effect on angel investors, a catch-all category which includes everyone from friends and family members who invest in a startup, to unaffiliated wealthy individuals, to side investments made by venture capitalists acting on their own.

Oh, those people. The ones who invest in new technologies hot off the computer or fresh from the university laboratory, as the case may be. 

First, Dodd’s bill would require startups raising funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing. A second provision raises the wealth requirements for an “accredited investor” who can invest in startups — if the bill passes, investors would need assets of more than $2.3 million (up from $1 million) or income of more than $450,000 (up from $250,000). The third restriction removes the federal pre-emption allowing angel and venture financing in the United States to follow federal regulations, rather than face different rules between states.

According to Keith Rabois, “Anyone still need more evidence that Obama and the Democrats intend to destroy Silicon Valley and the dreams of entrepreneurs?”

Nope, nope, nope. Congress can't be letting new technologies escape into the free market. Who needs another Apple, Microsoft, Google, or youtube?

Apparently not Democrat politicians. Why would they? Silicon Valley makes possible enormous exchanges of information, like this little post about Connecticut Democrat, Chris Dodd. By the way, remember not to vote for Chris Dodd if you just love your little iPhone with all those cute and handy apps, and I know that you do. (My bad. Dodd has already decided not to run for re-election, reportedly. I guess he knew your phone call would be coming.)

Update: But you can use that iPhone to give Dodd a call and tell him what you think about not being able to get a job in a new tech company because he doesn't want too many people to invest in startups.

Washington : (202) 224-2823 | Hartford, CT: (860) 258-6940
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Easter Spells Out Beauty . . .

the rare beauty of new life.  

~S.D. Gordon

Happy Easter!

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Your Worst Suspicions . . . The Truth is Worse Than That!

Hop on over to Another Black Conservative to get the latest on how the press managed to report fabricate abuse heaped on black Congressmen by supposedly racist Tea Party protesters despite hundreds of hours of videotape evidence to the contrary.

A quick recap from Clifton:

We have Congressional Black Caucus members walking through a mob of protesters when they could have easily and safely taken the underground tunnels. Two of the Congressional Black Caucus members had video cameras in hand but no recording of the alleged racial slurs. Next we have a McClatchy reporter interviewing CBC members and publishing a story about the alleged incident in record speed. In addition the McClatchy reporter breaks the time space continuum and references sources from two articles that had yet to be published.

It's not every reporter who can write news stories about news events that haven't even happened yet.

That's almost better than writing news stories about news events that never happened, which any fool can do.

But not as good as reporting news events that were supposed to happen, but for some reason didn't work out as planned.
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Illinois Congressman Reads the Bill, But Not the Constitution (UPDATED)

Phil Hare (D-IL) came right out with it:



Phil Hare claims he read the bill 3 times.

Uh huh. 

Maybe this interview happened on April Fool's day, because if Hare actually read the the bill (3 times) at the rate of one page a minute, 24-7, with no meals, sleep, or bathroom breaks, it would take him 4.75 months. In other words, if he started yesterday, he would be finished on July 23rd, 2010.

If, however, he only read for 12 hours per day, it would take him until December 13, just in time to start his Christmas shopping.

Of course, being a busy Congressman, maybe he only has time to read the bill for 4 hours a day. In that case, it would take him until . . . about August 4, 2012, more than 2 years from now.

Here's the calculation:

The bill is 2700 pages long (approximately).

2700 pages x 3 = 8100 pages.

At a page per minute, reading non-stop, 24/7,

8100 divided by 60 minutes per hour = 135 hours.

135 hours divided by 7 days per week = 19 weeks.

19 weeks divided by 4 weeks per month = 4.75 months

Reading half as fast (12 hours per day): 4.75 x 2 =  9.5 months

Reading at 1/3 of that pace (4 hours per day) 9.5 x 3 = 28.5 months = 2.36 years

It's easy to see why Hare expects his constituents to believe he read the bill, 3 times.

And that expectation certainly lends credence to his claim that he doesn't "worry about the Constitution."

Illinois voters in Springfield, Quincy, Macomb, Monmouth, Decatur, and Davenport, you know what to do. Or, at least your ancestors did, when they elected the Springfield lawyer known as Honest Abe to represent them in Congress.

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Update:

Thanks to Joe at Jo-Joe Politico for the following. Now Hare does about the Constitution.



This is Hare's take on the opponents of single-payer health care are disagreeable Republican louts. By all means, let us not be "disagreeable." Quietly permit your elected representatives tell you--and your fellow citizens--bald-faced lies. If you notice a big whopper of a lie, and, disagreeably, draw that lie to the representative's attention, give the guy plenty of room to storm out the door. Challenging your representative's view on the Constitutionality of his actions is fine, as long as it is helplessly "agreeable." It's only your Constitution at stake. (And, of course, your Constitution is in good hands--somebody else's hands.)

If, like me, you are still feeling "disagreeable" despite Phil Hare's admonition, you might like to read Who Cares? at Jo-Joe Politico or America's Quiet Anger at Political Junkie Mom.
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Christ Crucified between the Virgin and Nicodemus, Michelangelo Buonarroti, c 1552-54

Healthcare Breakdown: Deliberate Malice or Clueless Bungling?

Is the current administration deliberately destroying our healthcare system or are the folks in charge clueless bunglers? Considering the lead-shield transparency of the current administration, it stands to reason that the American public will turn to gossip for a bit of insight. And who better to whisper in our ears than The Prowler, writing for The American Spectator?

According to The Prowler, when the White House got wind that AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere, Verizon and other corporations were charging their books hundreds of millions of dollars (a billion dollars in the case of AT&T) in expenses caused by passage of ObamaCare, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett hit the phones "and attacked them for doing so." One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and "downright rude." A White House staffer gave this view: "These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. . . . It's BS."

The companies are taking the charges because in 2013 they will lose a tax deduction on tax-free government subsidies they have had when they give retirees a Medicare Part D prescription-drug reimbursement. Many of these companies have more than 100,000 retirees each. AT&T may have more than three-quarters of a million retirees to cover. 

"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill." [emphasis mine]

Next, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak decided to haul some of these "Republican CEOs" into Congressional hearings to investigate their "claims" that the new law "could adversely affect their company's ability to provide health insurance to their employees." Not "would affect," mind you, "could affect." As though the effect is some remote possibility.

Neither Waxman or Stupak -- who betrayed the pro-life community by negotiating for more than a week with the White House to ensure his vote on the health care bill -- had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individual citizens before they voted on the bill, says House Energy Democrat staff. "We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them," says  a staffer. "When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them.  They really believed this bill would immediately lower costs. They just didn't understand what they were voting on." [emphasis mine]

The American people have been trying to explain this bill to Congress for more than a year, and the Democrats still don't have any idea what kind of hell they've delivered to us. Of course, that's the generous view.

For this, most Americans bear shame. We have allowed Henry Waxman of California to exercise the power of Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And we have allowed Bart Stupak of Michigan to be Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel.

We'd better pay a lot more attention to whom we give power over our laws lives, while we still have the chance.
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Related posts:

• More ObamaCare Fallout: It Gets Worse and Worse
• The ObamaCare War on Doctors: NJ Physicians Strike Back
• What Will Big Govt Do With Your Medical Records?
• Govt Care For All Means a Shorter Life for You
• More About the War on America's Doctors
• Slaughterhouse for American Medicine: It's War on Doctors
• What If ObamaCare Were A Sick Patient in Canada?
• Hurting? Wait Until ObamaCare Stops Paying for Anesthesia

How Many Blacks Consider Themselves Part of the Tea Party?

Wax Lips, always a good read, presents an interesting analysis of the membership of the Tea Party, guaranteed to send shivers up the spines of Democrat politicians in Congress (if they had spines).

Recently, Althouse published some results of a Quinnipiac poll revealing the demographics of the Tea Party movement, as follows:

74 percent are Republicans or independent voters leaning Republican;
16 percent are Democrats or independent voters leaning Democratic;
5 percent are solidly independent;
45 percent are men;
55 percent are women;
88 percent are white;
77 percent voted for Sen. John McCain in 2008;
15 percent voted for President Barack Obama.

Wax Lips has a politically astute aunt who commented on this poll thusly:

The report which accompanies the poll tells us that, “at this stage” the Tea Party movement is a “minority group” consisting “mainly” of white Republicans; a minority group, we are told, roughly the size of the African-American electorate. This fact, presented in a seemingly dismissive manner, is staggering. The African-American electorate is a highly sought after voting block which was, by all accounts, responsible for assuring Obama’s 2008 victory. That the Tea Party movement is a voting block of equal size deserves serious attention.

I am likewise amazed that the Assistant Director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute so completely misses the significance of the demographics. Describing a movement in opposition to the current (Democratic) leadership in Washington as “mostly made up of people who consider themselves Republican” completely misses (deliberately hides?) the significance of the fact that one out of every five Tea Party participants is a Democrat.

Likewise, a movement which is “mainly white”, in a country where 77% of the population is, in fact, white, is hardly newsworthy. What *is* newsworthy, is that 6% of the participants in the Tea Party movement are black. Think about that. Blacks comprise a mere 1% of the Republican Party. One might expect, then, a movement made up “mainly” of Republicans to be, at best, 1% black. Yet, a full 6% of the Tea Party movement is black. That’s quite a difference.

In fact, looking at it from a different angle, blacks make up 12% of the total US population. It would be unrealistic to expect a full 12% of the Tea Party movement to be black, given that election results indicate nearly 95% of all black voters voted for Obama. This would lead us to expect 11.4% of the US population (that is, 95% of the black population) to be pro-Obama blacks, and a mere 0.6% of the total population to be blacks critical of the president and his policies. Yet, the number of black participants in the Tea Party movement, at 6%, turns out to be significantly larger than that. Larger, in fact, by a factor of 10. That is an amazing statistic, especially in light of the continuous efforts to describe the Tea Party movement as racist.

Excellent observations, Auntie. Let's see if I got this straight. Obama is losing support among blacks, a surprising number of whom are part of the Tea Party.

After reading Auntie's analysis, I went back to the Quinnipiac poll and checked out the results. My reading of the results under the category of "Race" is that 11% of people who consider themselves part of the Tea Party" are non-hispanic Blacks. That's a mighty close reflection of the percentage of Blacks in the total US population (12%). (Auntie, if I've gotten this wrong, please correct me!)

If either the 6% or 11% figure is anywhere near accurate, it's easy to see why the Democrats would go out of their way to portray the Tea Party movement as a collection of dangerous racist Whites perfectly capable of spitting on Black leaders. Democrats must be worryingly aware that the survival of their supremacy depends on discouraging as many Black people as possible from claiming their Conservative roots, and their smears on the Tea Party are also calculated to increase the pressure on Black Conservatives to keep their mouths shut. That won't be too easy. One problem with this charade is that it's been tried so often that nearly everyone in the country caught on to it long ago.

My prediction: It won't work nearly as well as the Democrats hope. Desperate measures seldom do, especially hollow ones. And what could be more hollow than protestations by Democrat Congressional fat cats that they care about the welfare of ordinary Americans struggling to hold things together in a failing economy?
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