Blog
The following is from Harper's yesterday;
I just wish every American would read this article, written by a 22 year CIA man assigned as chief of the bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris.? It opposes everything we regularly hear on FOX news and Hannity, and out of the president's mouth, but that's what's most significant about it.? I only highlighted below what I consider the most impacting statement.? I encourage you to read it all and forward it to all your neoconservative friends.
In the long run, we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There's our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world?s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies. The deal we made with Qadaffi in Libya looks like hypocrisy: we'll make peace with a brutal dictator if it gets us oil. President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn't recognize that people have different definitions of democracy. Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term ?Islamofascism??but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state. We don't have a strategy because we don't have a clue about what motivates our enemies.
(Thanks to LewRockwell.com for the link)
Thanks to LewRockwell.com Blog for the link to this fine article.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-outsource30jul30,0,2330630.story?coll=la-home-headlines
U.S. Employers Look Offshore for Healthcare
Carl Garrett of Leicester, N.C., will fly to a state-of-the-art New Delhi hospital in September for surgeries to remove gallstones and to fix an overworn rotator cuff. His employer, Blue Ridge Paper Products Inc. of Canton, N.C., will pay for it all, including airfare for Garrett and his fiancee. The company also will give Garrett a share of the expected savings, up to $10,000, when he returns.
Could this be the beginning of the end of the US medical-industrial complex ?? I know I'd rather spend the balance of a gall stone operation kickin' it at the beach rather than have some hospital administrator or doctor do it for me.
Garrett chose to go abroad rather than have the operations locally, where he would have paid thousands of dollars in deductibles and co-pays.? "I think it is a great thing," the 60-year-old technician said. "Maybe it will drive down prices [of surgeries] here in the U.S."? Blue Ridge, which employs 2,000 and funds its own health plan, began studying the idea out of frustration with rising rates at local hospitals, company officials said. Blue Ridge's healthcare costs have doubled in the last five years, to about $9,500 a year per employee.
Competition in the medical industry.? Imagine that !? My guess is that the US government will have none of this.? The AMA will lobby with big buck to "save the US citizenry from foreign butchers."
"The hospitals have a monopoly. They don't care, because where else are patients going to go?" said benefits director Bonnie Blackley. "Well, we are going to go to India."
U.S. hospital operators say that doesn't bode well for them.? "This is not the solution," said California Hospital Assn. spokeswoman Jan Emerson. "In fact, this could make problems worse."? Hospitals must deal with rising costs just like other parts of the healthcare system, she said, and California hospitals lost $6.65 billion last year caring for the uninsured. Hospitals rely on paying, well-insured patients to keep them afloat in the face of costly government regulations and low-paying government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, she said.? Exporting the best-paying patients, she said, "will only add to the woes of the entire healthcare system."
Does this say it all or what ?? May I live for the day when I have a flexible medical insurance that will pay for affordable, overseas medical services.
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Big day tomorrow:? PA Clean Sweep will publicly announce a cadre of candidates that will oppose the incumbent house members in Pennsylvania's legislature.? Read all about it here.
PACleanSweep will make history next week when it introduces over 70 candidates for the Pennsylvania General Assembly in the Capitol Rotunda. The non-partisan grassroots organization has been working to raise, interview and approve challengers to incumbent lawmakers across the Commonwealth since it was founded last July.
"A revolution is about to begin in Pennsylvania," said Russ Diamond, PACleanSweep founder and chair, "and this group of candidates is just the opening salvo. We have a backlog of candidates who are seeking our support. Each is committed to the restoration of honor, dignity and integrity to a legislature which has become self- serving, unresponsive and out of touch with ordinary citizens."
"There are currently over 140 candidates who have signed our declaration, and we continue to receive new declarations in the mail every day. There's no telling how many will be in the field for the May 16th primary."
Fallout from last year's pay raise debacle has sparked citizen action, voter outrage, an unprecedented legislative reversal and the defeat of a Supreme Court justice - a Pennsylvania first. PACleanSweep hopes to raise the largest number of legislative challengers in recent history.
The PA people have GOT to make this happen in a big way.? This historic event (general elections) could send shockwaves throughout the other states if it does.
From MorningStar News:
PULSE: KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co. (HAL) , said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.
From cnn.com today:
"Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon. Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. "You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview."
So-ooo, what's the next step ?
1) Admit that we can't contain the insurgency, that the?battle plan is flawed and therefore we need to pullout right away (won't happen).
2) Declare victory, pull out and bask in our national greatness? (may happen)
3) Re-Institute the draft and continue battling around the globe until terr'rism is wiped out from the face of the planet. (I'd love to see him try)
4) "Stay the course" and let the casualties accumulate, at least until just before the 2008 presidential elections.? (most likely)
I was speechless when I read this article by Jeff Greenhut of the OCRegister:
SACRAMENTO ? There's a reason for the old cliche that if you like to eat sausages or have any respect for a nation's laws, you ought not see either one being made. I've never toured a slaughterhouse, but I have watched a few legislative sessions, most recently last week in Sacramento. It was an ugly sight, watching legislators ram through hundreds of bills in the final four days before recess.?? But the ugliness goes deeper than the messiness of sausage-making: Those who control the legislative process (i.e., Sacramento Democrats) seem to have no concept of the nation's founding principles, such as limited government, personal responsibility, the rule of law, free enterprise. Even when they quote the founding fathers, they know only the words and not the meanings.
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I think I'd rather watch sausages being made.
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Earlier this month the state Senate's dictatorial Appropriations Committee chairwoman, Democrat Carole Migden of San Francisco, marched over to the Assembly floor to watch a vote on her bill to add new regulatory requirements for cosmetic manufacturers.? With the bill one vote shy of passage, she went to Republican Guy Houston's desk and pushed the "yes" button so that a vote would be electronically recorded. The normally mild-mannered Assemblyman Bob Huff, the Diamond Bar Republican who sits next to Houston, saw this and had to push Migden's arm away, then undo the vote. Huff told me that Migden's excuse - that she thought the desk was a Democrat's - is bogus. She has a reputation for doing this, he said, and even if it had been a Democrat's desk, a senator has no right to cast a vote in the Assembly chambers. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer said Migden might have committed a felony, although he argued for a reprimand rather than prosecution. Even that's unlikely, since Midgen is chairwoman of the committee that dispenses the cash.
?I just lost my lunch...
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In all this, American constitutional ideals of limited government, due process, private property and other individual rights, and economic freedom are abandoned by Democratic state legislators, who seem rather to have substituted a set of their own guiding principles: There is no aspect of your life, no matter how petty or personal, that should be off-limits from the meddling of government, outside of sexual matters.
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I'm sure sexual matters is somehow covered in the patriot act.
Un - believable !
Today's Philadelphia Inquirer details the following:
HARRISBURG - Gov. Rendell is expected today to call for a special legislative session to find a way to deliver property-tax relief, a problem that has plagued homeowners and confounded politicians for decades.
I'm guessing this is more "Fast Eddie" tax relief - the kind where we pay more taxes and have less choices.
A year ago, Harrisburg legalized slot machines, with a portion of the profits earmarked for school districts to reduce the reliance on property taxes. Known as Act 72, the legislation allowed school districts to decide whether they wanted to sign up for the new dollars.? But only a fifth of the state's 501 school boards voted to participate by the May 31 deadline.? On Monday, Rendell announced his fall legislative agenda, but never mentioned a special session. He said only that he would push to change a key component of Act 72 by making school-district participation mandatory.
Now you've gotta love that: Put the proposition up for vote.? It's voted down OVERWHELMINGLY.? So...the obvious solution is to eliminate the vote and coerce instead.? Now I understand why this guy has such a reputation a?"get it done" guy.
The special session could provide a welcome diversion for legislators under attack from constituents for raising their own salaries in July.? "It's wonderful that they are springing to action when the public pressure is on them," said Russ Diamond, founder of the citizens' group PACleanSweep.? Boscola said she did not believe that the governor's announcement was intended to deflect attention from the controversy, but she pointed out a simple political reality: All 203 House seats and half of the 50 Senate seats are on the ballot next year.? "The time is ripe," Boscola said. "And property-tax reform is the 800-pound gorilla in the room."
You heard it: 228 PA congressional seats are up for grabs.? Let's get 'em out.
China plans unmanned moon mission by 2007
If any of us are concerned that an invigorated Chinese economy may overtake productivity levels of our own, fear no more, or perhaps just less. It seems the Chinese government is finding creative new ways to waste national financial resources, in much the same ways the US historically has. Their decision to pursue a moonshot guarantees that crucial resources will be misdirected into dead-end research that will benefit nobody other than state-run institutions - perhaps a Chinese version of NASA ?
What's the chances anyone will be held responsible for this ??? 9 BILLION unaccounted for...
WASHINGTON???The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145848,00.html
"Grades" for BMIs Are Likely to Fail
The ongoing battle against childhood obesity may see a new front: the report card.? Texas state Senator Leticia Van de Putte introduced a bill (SB 205) that would require all Texas school districts to print students' body mass indices (BMIs) on report cards sent to parents
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.499/news_detail.asp
Sometimes I can't believe my eyes.? Now, who gets to determine what an adequate BMI is and isn't?