Remember When Obama Was "Unaware of Tea Parties"?

Waaaay back on April 15, 2009.

I wonder if he's heard of them yet.

Washington, DC, crowd estimates: 1.2 million to 2 million.

Heh, heh, heh.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.
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White Slavery: No Problem for ACORN Offices (UPDATED)

New videos by a young filmmaker and a young journalist released by Glenn Beck at Fox News show ACORN's blasé attitude toward almost any kind of crime, including, sickeningly, white slaving children into prostitution. Posing as a pimp and a prostitute, the two went to ACORN's Baltimore office and Washington, DC office, where staffers at both locations offered to help them set up a brothel "and seek illegal benefits for 13 'very young girls' from El Salvador that [the] pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes."

Although huge amounts of tax monies are directed to ACORN on every government level, the organization gave plenty of advice to the purported criminals to help them avoid paying taxes.

ACORN and Obama have a long history of endorsing and supporting each other. Stanley Kurtz published some research on Obama's connections with ACORN at National Review Online:

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.

So along with the reservoir of political support that came to Obama through his close ties with Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, and other Chicago black churches, Chicago Acorn appears to have played a major role in Obama’s political advance. Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn." [emphasis mine]

Just in case you haven't seen these videos yet, here's a sample from Glenn Beck. The ACORN footage starts at about 5:30:

Maybe it's time to review the allocation to ACORN of tens of billions of dollars of political payback money currently hidden in the "stimulus package"?
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UPDATE:

From the Taxpayer March on DC
(and it's green, too!)

9/11: Remembering William J. Meehan

I am writing this tribute to William J. Meehan as part of Project 2,996, in which bloggers volunteer to remember the valuable lives of the people we lost on September 11, 2001.

Bill Meehan was a 49-year-old husband and father of three who lived in Darien, Connecticut, and who had had just moved his office to the World Trade Center in late August of 2001 because he was being asked more and more frequently to share his views of Wall Street on CNBC. Bill was chief market analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald, the country's largest bond firm, with more than 1,000 people working in four floors of the north tower.

I never knew Bill Meehan, but Amy Langfield did, and she wrote about him in a letter to her parents on September 18, the day she learned of his death. Amy had just returned to New York, where she reported on Wall Street matters for Reuters. Later, Amy published that letter in her blog, Amy's New York Notebook, on June 24, 2002, in a post entitled, "There's No Forgetting."

Here's some of what Amy wrote:

I used to talk to Bill Meehan nearly every morning when I was writing the market curtain-raiser for Reuters. He was often the first person I talked to in the mornings and always helped me get my bearings for the day. Super nice guy, always helpful, and had a good grasp of overall market conditions. I had to call analysts about 7:20 a.m. and find out what they thought the most important factors in the market would be that day -- there weren't that many people already in the office and on the ball by then, but Meehan was, and was [one of] only about five guys we knew who would bother to talk to reporters that early.

The New York Times had a few things to say about Bill Meeham too:

William J. Meehan liked to say he had the ideal job. "All he had to do was give an opinion," said his wife, Maureen. But when Mr. Meehan opined, Wall Street listened: he was chief market analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald.
The job was ideal if you did not mind rising at 4:30 a.m., which Mr. Meehan, 49, did to write his column for The Cantor Morning News, an online newsletter. He was a fixture on the proliferating financial shows and got to banter with Louis Rukeyser on "Wall Street Week."
A Meehan opinion was grounded in books. "He would read everything and anything," his wife recalled, "not just financial but also biographies and Harry Potter, too." He bought the early Potter books for his daughter, Katie -- and ended up reading them himself. But for a man who spent many a vacation day between hard covers, Mr. Meehan was also big on the Internet. "He was the first guy I knew to buy his Christmas tree online," said Steven Montano, The Morning News's managing editor.
Mr. Meehan initially worked for Cantor in Darien, Conn., where he lived, getting home in time to coach his three children in Little League, flag football and basketball. But in August, as his TV appearances became more frequent, he shifted to the World Trade Center.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Alkaban, a book that Bill Meehan might have read if he had lived, Dumbledore tells Harry, “‘You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him."

September 11, 2001, is a date that has been made sacred by the passing of so many. Every day since, many of us have been in need of somebody who died that day. In the days to come, America will continue to have much need of those we have lost, and we will profit much if we look inside ourselves to capture the lessons they would impart.
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Van Jones: It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings

She's got to belt it out good and loud, until the windowpanes rattle and the neighbors fall out of bed. And the fat lady doesn't sing until the whole story's been told.

Nobody (outside of Washington DC) wants to hear a story that ends with the villain sneaking out of town at midnight, laying low for an indecently short period of time, and then quietly but lucratively re-emerging as, say, a lobbyist getting paid from a different pocket of the same suit, or even as a lefty lawyer writing legislation for a Congress that couldn't be bothered.

What kind of ending would that be? Boring and unsatisfying.

No, for the story to have any zing, the villain has to really and truly lose power. Add points for every disgraced crony he pulls down with him.

That's one reason why Americans are going to keep spreading the word about Van Jones.

This story is just not finished being told.

Did Jones take his midnight walk because he called Republicans "assholes," like the Obamatons would have us believe? Because he's an avowed Marxist/Leninist activist, which the Obamatons would rather not discuss?

Or was it because Commissar Jones had just been outed as an anti-American nut who told a rally that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks? Only a day after nearly 3,000 people were savagely, torturously murdered by Islamic jihadists in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, Jones went out of his way to rally with other "blame America first" speakers "against the threat of more US violence." There's video of the event, if you can bear to watch the loony revision of history by assorted "supporters of Palestine," "anarchists," and "socialists" in Oakland, California.

Written by an attendee at the rally, as reported by BizzyBlog:

A recurring theme of the speakers was the brutal violence committed by or supported by the United States government on a daily basis. "The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City," said Van Jones, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, who also warned against forthcoming violence by the Bush Administration. "The US cannot bomb its way out of this one. Safety at home requires justice abroad."

In a diverse international community shocked by recent world events, deep feelings about the United States government were expressed. A young Puerto Rican person said that "the belly of the beast had something back to eat." A young Filipino human rights activist said that "when we found out what kind of place got hit, we were kind of glad to see the Pentagon burning. But we also know that thousands of Puerto Ricans, Haitians and other workers were in those buildings." An African-American man who works on gentrification issues in West Oakland said that "we're always seeing Americans drop bombs on people. We watch the Vietnamese get bombed, Iraqis get bombed, Palestinians get bombed, now it has come home to roost." Japanese-Americans spoke about internment camps and the nuclear holocaust brought on by US militarism.

There's plenty more to the Van Jones story, and it's bound to get out. The question is: How many disgraced cronies will be written into the script before the curtain closes?

Hat tip: Yukio Ngaby at Critical Narrative
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10,000+ Chicago Area Tea Partiers Cause 2-Mile Backups on I-80

Illinois Review has reported that more than 10,000 Labor Day Tea Partiers converged in the Chicago area, jamming roads and highways. Traffic on I-80 was backed up for two miles from both the east and west.

The Tea Partiers had assembled to greet the arrival of the Tea Party Express from California, which made a stopover at New Lenox Municipal Complex on its way to Washington, DC, for the Taxpayer March to be held on September 12.

A national Tea Party Express entourage had to have Will County sheriff escort the bus into the Municipal complex, around the backed up traffic on I-80. The buses are a part of a 33-city national tour, headed for Washington DC on September 12.

According to the Tea Party Express--Official Tour Blog, the Sheriff's Office reported that a portion of Interstate 80 was shut down for traffic control due to "the massive influx of people." The protesters carried signs of protest against "the Obama Administration, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin."

In Obama's own stomping grounds!

Below, Dottie McQueen of Joliet had some good things to say:

Are you ready to tea party? Click here.

Hat tip to American Power; check out this site for great coverage of the Tea Party Express.

Labor Day Lament: Sixteen Tons

Written by Merle Travis, sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Labor Day Bonus: Pink Slip for Green Jobs Commissar Van Jones

The Obama administration and Commissar Jones finally succumbed to public inquiry about Jones's ideological qualifications for his job and the public outrage that followed. After the Obama administration released the news of Jones's resignation, the MSM got around to noticing a couple of smudges on his resume that already had much of America fuming. Among these, from ABC:

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the [Rodney King] verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."

Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm.

Obama's administration was so eager to tell American workers that Obama had put a self-avowed Marxist/Leninist activist in charge of a $30 billion budget for the stated purpose of creating so-called "green" jobs that they released Jones's resignation letter after midnight last night, that is, in the earliest possible hours of the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.

What, no prime time announcement speech by the president? Maybe his teleprompter took the long weekend off.

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Mediation: Londoners Hold Prayer Vigil for Maryam and Marzieh, Convicted of Being Christian

In the UK:

Women's Prayer Vigil for Maryam and Marzieh in Iranian Prison (Reprinted from CCFON)

Article Published: 4th September 2009

Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Esmailabadi are Iranian Christians who were imprisoned six months ago for converting to Christianity. Attieh Fard, a member of the Iranian Christian Fellowship who is fighting for the religious freedom in Iran, is encouraging Christians to come and pray for them and for the freedom of Christians in Iran, who are unjustly persecuted for their love of God. This will be a quiet prayer in silence and unity.

(Please see the CSW and The Guardian reports for the background of the story)

DATE: Saturday, 12 September 2009

TIME: 12.30pm – 9.30pm

VENUE: Outside Iranian Embassy at 16 Princes Gate, London, SW7 1PT‎ (nearest tube station South Kensington)

Please note: The prayer vigil is mainly for women (Strict white dress code: white dress covering your arms and legs, and a simple scarf to cover your hair). Men are welcome to come too, but would be asked to stand separately.

**********

In the US:

Americans can take action in support of Christians who live in the United States but suffer persecution for their religious beliefs. Rifqa Bary, a Sri Lankan teenager living in the U.S., appealed to a Florida Court for protection when her secret conversion from Islam to Christianity was discovered. Hers is an important case testing the American will to preserve what Thomas Jefferson called our most inalienable and sacred human right, freedom of religion.

An email to the Governor of Florida in support of Rifqa can help: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Governor Crist can also be reached by phone at (850) 488-7146 or by fax at (850) 487-0801.

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Related Posts:

• Aqsa, Amina, Sarah, Rand
  
• Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?
  
• Meditation: Maryam and Marzieh Face Death But Refuse to Renounce Christianity
• Meditation: Pray for the Release of Maryam and Marzieh
• Maryam and Marzieh: Convicted of Being Christian

1.9 Million Federal Workers Average $120,000 Per Year

Earlier this week, Obama made a big deal about his decision to reduce federal workers' cost-of-living pay hikes by a mere four tenths of one percent, from 2.4% to 2%. The president neglected to mention one or two little related facts of interest, brought out in an editorial in Investor's Business Daily, including that 1.9 million federal workers earn an average of $120,000 per year, almost double what is earned by their counterparts in the private sector:

According to the Cato Institute, average per-employee wages are far higher among federal civilian workers than private-sector workers. That gap is even wider, almost double, when total compensation, which includes health care and other benefits, is included.

State and local workers aren't doing too badly either. USA Today pointed out that:

Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour — $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31.

Across the nation, state budgets are going belly up, with 43 states facing shortfalls in 2009, and taxpayers are being driven to the wall. Of those enormous state budgets, 50% goes to pay state workers and, of that 50%, about one third pays worker benefits.

For every $1-an-hour pay increase [since 2002], public employees have gotten $1.17 in new benefits. Private workers have gotten just 58 cents in benefits for every $1 raise. The difference: Companies have ended most traditional pension plans and increased workers' share of health care costs. Government paid an average of $8,800 annually toward employee medical insurance. Private companies paid $4,100.

It's nice to know that those friendly folks at the IRS and the Green Jobs Commissariat will continue to enjoy good salaries and health care security, isn't it?
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Van Jones, Crack Addicts, and Philanthropy for Hip-Hop "Activists" (UPDATED)

Isn't it interesting that Van Jones, and the large group he is addressing in this video, have such obviously close knowledge of the behaviors of crack addicts?

This is the same Van Jones who wants "hip-hop" to become central to the social change the Obama administration is in the process of creating. Here is Jones' praise of Constant Elevation, a 2003 event in which a panel of hip-hop "youth activists" addressed an audience of "a few dozen representatives from some of the largest philanthropic foundations in the country":

This event makes it clear that the path of social change needs to go through youth culture, and therefore it needs to go through hip-hop. Once hip-hop becomes central to social change, the entire game will be changed.

Redstate wants to know "who 'suggested' Van Jones for his job, because "he or she has to go too."

Wouldn't you also like to know who put hip-hop "activists" in the same room as "a few dozen representatives of some of the largest philanthropic foundations in the country"?

Van Jones' advice to President Obama:

Using U.S. energy products to fuel the nation's economy, a "shameful" joke!

Making hip-hop "activists" central to critical national decisions, a must-do change, can't wait.

Advice Barack Obama is paying him for, using our tax dollars, of course.

Video via Redstate, via Hot Air Pundit, via @seanhackbarth.
Hip-hop quote via Gateway Pundit, via commenter Photosynthesis.
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UPDATE: Who put hip-hop "activists" in the same room with foundation reps? Grantmakers in the Arts provides a list of organizations:

Several sponsors and collaborators helped make Constant Elevation possible: California Council for the Humanities, California Fund for Youth Organizing, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, The James Irvine Foundation, Northern California Grantmakers, Open Society Institute, The San Francisco Foundation, Tides Foundation, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Idolatry and Indoctrination: The Socialist Twins

Are Obama's robotic followers in the Dept. of Education so innocently enamored of the guy that they can't imagine anyone not being "inspired" by the prospect of their child being required to read a worshipful biography (such as Barack Obama, Son of Promise, Child of Hope), then listen to Obama speak, then join a classroom discussion of his merits, and, for homework, write a self-examination of his or her ability to conform to Obama's desires?

Or is Obama's upcoming televised pop quiz for American children just one more jackbootfall on our current Democrat-induced forced-march to socialism?

The answer doesn't really matter. Both idolatry and indoctrination are enemies of independence, as every American used to know.

A prominent feature of all totalitarian states is the required use of textbooks praising the leader to the skies. Textbooks published in North Korea under Kim Jong Il, for example, are heavy on fantastic biographies of that "respected leader," featuring cut-aways like "Thank You, the Great Leader Marshall Kim Jong Il" for fictitious services like helping the Allied Forces win World War II. Textbooks published in Iraq under Iraq's "beloved" Saddam Hussein, were filled with "reverential references to the former dictator or his Baath political party," prompting one educator to suggest that Western students studying Iraq be asked to consider, "What are the drawbacks of linking patriotism to a single leader?"

I find it very interesting that our nation's Dept. of Education didn't stop to ask that question before writing teacher guides to Obama's indoctrination hour for children.

It is remarkable that our federally funded hive of education specialists had no difficulty inventing teacher guides for a text that the teachers can't yet access because, presumably, it will remain a work in progress by Obama's administration until its political utility can be fully appreciated and exploited. It is also interesting that, less than a week before the required viewing, the teacher guides are still under revision because they are so abhorrent to so many Americans.

It also is interesting that Obama, non-too-modestly (or courteously) has chosen to interrupt many American children's first day of school for his address. We can hope that the younger children will have had a chance to settle down and that the older children will have had the opportunity to find their seats and meet their teachers before Obama begins his noon lecture.

Non-obamatons aren't sure whether to keep their kids home during the president's schoolchildren indoctrination hour, have their children sent to a study hall instead, or join their kids in their classrooms to keep overly idolatrous teachers from reinforcing the message that the only good child is an obamaton.

Many parents are phoning their schools, school superintendents, and school boards to express their alarm that respect for a two-party system in the United States no longer exists as a practical consideration in the minds of American educators.

Whether school boards and superintendents pass that test or not, it is obvious that observance of a two-party system definitely will occur in voting booths across the country, including voting booths in which school boards are elected.
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Tea Party Express!

Wow.

Check out the schedule here: teapartyexpress.org

Hat tip: American Power
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Aqsa, Amina, Sarah, Rand . . .

The four pretty teenagers pictured above, ages 16 to 18, all were victims of so-called "honor killings" committed by their fathers. In two of the murders, the fathers were assisted by another family member. In the other two murders, another family member blamed the girls for their own deaths.

Above, from left to right: Aqsa Parvez, strangled to death in Ontario for refusing to wear a veil to school; Amina and Sarah Said, shot to death in Texas on suspicion of dating non-Muslims; Rand Abdel-Qader, strangled and stabbed to death in Iraq for talking to a British soldier.

In a recent interview at FrontPage, Pamela Geller, the founder, editor, and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com, discussed the sensational case of another Muslim teenager, Rifqa Bary, 17 years old, who fled on a bus from Ohio to Florida to apply for Court protection from honor killing. Rifqa's offense: converting to Christianity.

Rifqa Bary, who recently turned seventeen, converted to Christianity from Islam – bringing upon herself Islam’s death sentence for those who leave Islam. When she was questioned by a news reporter, she spoke with the voice of every girl murdered in the name of Islamic "honor" [video here]. You could hear Amina and Sarah, Aqsa and Rand. The bitter cries that no one heard. Rifqa pleads for herself but she cries for all Muslim girls who are oppressed and subjugated.

[snip]

“You guys don’t understand,” Rifqa said. “Islam is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this."

[snip]

This is the front line – right in Florida. While our finest young Americans engage in hard fought battles on the front lines of the global jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel is on the front lines of the global jihad in the Middle East, Muslim women all over the world are on the front lines in the war against Islamic jihad. The battlefield is their homes. They live their lives in abject terror in homemade concentration camps.

Rifqa Bary’s life hangs in the balance. The West should do everything in its power to save her.

[snip]

When Muslim girls like Rifqa Bary, the most courageous girl in America, see what happened to Amina and Sarah Said, Aqsa Parvez, and so many others, they're forced to live out their sentence in their homemade concentration camps, because they see that there is no escape. If the West will not stand up for its values, its own unalienable rights, then these girls have no chance.

Do you have any idea how many Muslim girls are watching, and watching very closely, the case of Rifqa Bary? She represents their hope of freedom. That's why the Islamists want to kill her. If she succeeds, she will give other Muslim girls hope. That is why we must do everything we can to support her and other Muslim girls in danger of honor killing, by building shelters, creating an underground railroad, and supporting their attempts to be free.

Rifqa Bary goes before a Florida judge this coming Thursday, September 3. She is praying that the judge does not return her to her Sri Lankan parents, who have been living and doing business in Ohio but have now made preparations to leave the country.

Rifqa is not alone in fearing death for converting to Christianity. As I write this post, Maryam and Marzieh, two young Iranian women, are languishing in an Iranian jail, facing the death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity.

An email to the Governor of Florida in support of Rifqa can help: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Governor Crist can also be reached by phone at (850) 488-7146 or by fax at (850) 487-0801.

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Related Posts:

• Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?
  
• Meditation: Maryam and Marzieh Face Death But Refuse to Renounce Christianity
• Meditation: Pray for the Release of Maryam and Marzieh
• Maryam and Marzieh: Convicted of Being Christian

Who Do These Congress People Think They Are? Citizens Dissed in NH

New Hampshire Rep Carol Shea-Porter, who made her name as an anti-war activist, stuck it to her constituents big time at her town hall meeting (if you could call it that), this weekend.

Then she had a retired NYC patrol officer thrown out for "challenging the presence of union enforcers" in the room:

And then she taunted the retired officer on his way out.

Nice work, lady. I wonder how much longer the citizens of New Hampshire are planning to pay for your salary and luxury health-care benefits.

Live free or die.


Hat tip: American Power.
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Meditation: The Homecoming of Sgt. 1st Class John C. Beale

Georgia. Inspiring.

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Health & Tax Privacy: Gone for Good Under Gov't Health Care Takeover

Thought the Bill of Rights protected your privacy? In the Obama Nation?

You may not be aware of it, but the $838 billion so-called "stimulus" bill, rushed through Congress without a reading, mandated the publication of every American's medical records to the national "electronic health record." In practice, that means our health records will be turned over--without our consent--to more than 600,000 covered entities, plus their employees. (And we were assured that bill was about the economy.)

Now HR 3200, if passed, will mandate that the IRS give out whatever information regulators desire about every American's tax records. Thanks to Declan McCullagh at CBS for the following heads-up:

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for "affordability credits."

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details -- there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable -- to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify "affordability credits."

Think you can protect your tax information by not signing up for Gov't Health Care? No such luck. The government wants everybody's tax information, just in case some people don't apply for Gov't Care.

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.

I have no idea how this mandate will apply to the people who currently don't have to file income tax forms because their incomes are too low for the IRS to bother with. Maybe they'll have to start filing, for their own good, of course.

Over at the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank and presumably no fan of Obamacare), Tom Giovanetti argues that: "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years.

Question: With hundreds of thousands of government agencies and, obviously, millions of their employees and contractors' employees having access to every American's identity, medical, and tax records, how many laptops will hold big chunks of that information? How many of those laptops will be lost or stolen?

Question: If a health care entity outsources its record keeping to a firm in, say, India, does that mean our individual health and tax records (including social security numbers) will become available for international phishing expeditions, not just the domestic kind?

Question: What if community organizations like ACORN are enlisted to help people apply for or receive medical services? How deep into our general population will the information get?

Not so long ago, Democrats demanded, to a chorus of weeping and gnashing of teeth, that Americans respect the privacy of likely or known terrorists communicating with likely or known terrorists abroad. Result: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court located in Washington, D.C. reviews any such privacy intrusions before they happen to determine their necessity.

But what about protecting the preference of mere U.S. citizens to give or withhold their consent for widespread government sharing of their most private and personal information, information that could easily end up being used for sinister non-medical reasons like, say, identity theft, not to mention political intrigue?

So far I haven't detected even one Democrat's crocodile tear. What are American Democrats thinking?
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Obamanomics: Union Handed Control of Federal Bank

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

- Milton Friedman

Back in December, Time asked: "Will Obama Deliver for Organized Labor?"

I'd say they should have their answer by now.

From Investors Business Daily:

The New York Fed is the primus inter pares, the first among equals, of all the Fed banks. It is the bank that executes the Fed board's will in the marketplace. It is the on-site regulator of Wall Street, playing, as its Web site says, "a leadership role in monetary policy, financial supervision and the payments system." Now it's headed by a union shill.

Surprised?

[Denis Hughes, president of the AFL-CIO in New York] has no significant finance experience. Nor does his educational background — "Brother Hughes," as the AFL-CIO's Web site calls him, has a B.S. degree from the Harry Van Arsdale School of Labor Studies at Empire State College — reassure us.

Of greater concern is his career as a bought-and-paid-for union official and political operative. The New York Fed chairmanship is hardly a place for a person whose entire career has been spent fighting and strong-arming the very people he'll now be regulating.

As American Thinker editor Ed Lasky put it, Hughes is someone "who may be more schooled in extracting concessions from corporate America than the intricacies of high finance."

[snip]

Putting this key Fed bank in the hands of a person whose experience suggests a bred-in-the-bone hostility to capitalism strikes us as bizarre at best and dangerous at worst. And it bears the unmistakable imprint of the White House. Just last week we wrote about plans to elevate former United Steelworkers adviser Ron Bloom from head of the auto task force to "industrial policy czar."

Putting so many union people in powerful positions of economic policymaking is a recipe for disaster. Since 1955, the share of the workers belonging to unions has plunged from 33% to about 11%. Still, though increasingly unpopular, unions have helped wreck two major industries: autos and steel. Not much of a track record.

But now, through politics, unions are getting rewarded with control of the economy — a very bad omen for American capitalism.

Did you pay your union dues today?

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The Sick Truth V: Medical Technology Under Gov't Health Care

Congress has cloaked the proposed workings of the government takeover of health care in as much secrecy as possible.

Not that they went to a lot of trouble to do it.

Much of what Gov't Care is meant to do was hidden in plain sight in over 1,000 pages of HR 3200 text that Democrats believed would never be read by themselves or anyone, particularly if they succeeded in passing that bill within an Obama-mandated period of 2 weeks. More of the secret life of ObamaCare was hidden in the Senate's nearly 900 page committee draft.

The assumption that Americans wouldn't bother to inquire about how "rebuilt" health care would affect them was a bit premature, and more and more of us are poring over these documents as each day goes by.

These bills are difficult to digest; the more Americans learn about ObamaCare, the more questions we have.

A very important group was not consulted about "rebuilding" American health care: practicing physicians. The operative word here is practicing. I am not referring to elitist euthanasia proponents in the Obama administration who have concluded that society must be improved by various methods that will effectively shorten the lives of the elderly and the disabled of every age, even our honored disabled veterans. I am referring to doctors who do the hard work of saving and extending people's lives and helping the sick and injured recover and, if those patients cannot recover, offer them as much comfort as possible in their last months and days. In other words, doctors who respect life and people's desire to keep on living to the very end.

One by one, Americans are realizing that they are coming to a time when they need to explain that their human desire to stay alive is not only perfectly natural, but also honorable. Life is sacred, most of us believe, and the belief that life is sacred was a prime motivator for the authors of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

A centerpiece of American medicine has been our medical technologies and equipment. Under ObamaCare, who will be deciding which medical facilities have high-tech diagnostic and treatment equipment? Who will be deciding who gets to be treated with that life-saving equipment?

Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., writing at Labvirus.com has drawn back the curtain on what awaits those of us in need of medical technology after it becomes rationed under ObamaCare:

Let’s say I practice at a hospital that does not have a scanner. The only one allowed in town is at the medical university. My patient needs a scan rather urgently. Under the Obama plan, I would first have to apply to the regional government office for permission to see if there is really a need-and, of course, I will be speaking to a young person with no knowledge of neurosurgery. They search the long list of indications and finally agree-that is, after a number of phone calls and endless pleading.

The next step is that I have to have transportation approved from my hospital to the anointed scanning center. More haggling, searching the thousand of pages of regulations and hanging on the line waiting to be transferred to the next bureaucrat in charge of transportation ensues. Finally, all of this is approved. But then I discover that the waiting list at the university is very long and my patient will have to wait behind the university’s urgent cases. Meanwhile my patient is deteriorating steadily. No amount of pleading will move the process forward-it all falls on deaf ears. I know this because I have experience similar frustrations, even with the limited regulations in place now.

If my patient is still alive, they are finally transferred to the regional scanning center, where they spend hours waiting in the hallways to be scanned. Then I have to arrange for them to be transported back to my hospital. Now, the report for the scan will take days or even weeks to be read, since the doctor reading the scan will have a stack of scans to review from his own institution as well as all surrounding hospitals and doctor’s offices. This is how it works in Canada and England.

The only reason the Canadian system survives is because the medical system in the United States cares for many of their really sick patients. The US scanners in the boarder states work overtime scanning Canadian patients because the wait to be scanned in Canada is so long. We act as the Canadian government’s relief valve, but then what is going to happen when we are strapped with a similar system?

Not to worry, though. There will be scanners at prestigious university hospitals, like the Harvard Medical School, available for the use of Barack Obama's academic friends and supporters (if not for Cambridge cops and their families).

And, without doubt, there will be scanners dotting the landscape of Washington, D.C.
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Related:

• The Sick Truth IV: Congress Cooks the Health Care Books
• The Sick Truth III: Restricting Health Care for People with Special Needs
• The Sick Truth II: Health Care Goes From Bad to Worse (UPDATED)
  
• The Sick Truth: Health Bill Makes Private Insurance Illegal!

Obama's Debt Plan: Send $1.6 Billion to China Every Week!

Yesterday, the White House told the nation that Obama's spending binge will raise the national debt by more than $9 trillion, almost doubling our nation's debt burden.

Well, they didn't exactly say "Obama's spending binge," but we know one when we see one.

Today, the national debt is about $11.7 trillion. Adding the $9.1 trillion Obama debt (that the White House admits to) will bring our debt to $20.8 trillion in only 10 years.

That's breathtakingly fast work in only 7 months in office: Obama and his Democrat majority have already doubled the debt expenditures made by 42 previous presidents and 110 previous 2-year sessions of Congressional pork-seeking politicians!

What is the interest on our national debt? Today, according to Stuart Varney of Fox News, we pay about $50 billion interest on every trillion. Let's see, $12 trillion ($11.7 trillion rounded up) x $50 billion equals $600 billion per year.

How much of that goes to China? Again, according to Varney, a mere $800 million per week. That's just the interest on our debt to China! Somehow we'll also have to pay back the principal.

Say, for a rough calculation, that we double that $800 million figure to approximate our weekly interest payments to China in 10 years. (In the real world, with rising interest and interest rates, this figure could be expected to be higher.) That means we'll be sending China more than $1.6 billion every week. In interest only.

Can Americans really work that hard and maintain any semblance of our quality of life?

Democrats are already arguing that this huge debt creates just one more reason to pass ObamaCare, which they claim will lower health costs.

I wouldn't be too quick to believe that. After all, $2 trillion of the $9 trillion increased debt load will be a direct result of ObamaCare.

$9.1 trillion. In the Obama view, that's chump change, in a world where Americans are the chumps.

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Gov't Health Care: VA Sends Death Sentence Letter to 1200 Veterans (Oops!)

I know none of us can wait to be part of a nationalized gov't health care takeover in which this can happen:

At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease.

The disease in question is Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotropic lateral sclerosis), named after the Yankee great who succumbed to it in 1941. In cases of ALS, the nerve cells of the brain and spine weaken and die, leading to paralysis and, eventually, death.

Denise Nichols, the vice president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, says the VA is blaming a coding error for the mistake.

Oops.

Those single-payer VA departments are notoriously difficult to contact, and I'm sure most of these veterans were on the hot seat for a good long time until they were able to ascertain that they had received the letters by mistake.

That's one kind of mistake. I'm sure we can all think of other kinds of gov't care mistakes that would be a lot more permanent.

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