Okay, let's all go shopping for sh!t we don't need...

Congress has done just that, again. And, they promise that we'll learn to love what they got for us, with our credit card... and there are still people who say they aren't spending enough, aren't taking enough from "the rich". That would be anybody with a business, I guess. In their view, if we aren't "broke", we ought to be, before we quit spending on every pork project and Obamanation.

So, let me put this in simple terms: Mom and Dad have worked very hard to earn what little they've saved. They scrimped where they could, but occasionally got the odd luxury item, like a nice, large, high-definition television with every HD channel imaginable, like new wireless communications toys for the kids, like dinner out once a week and a vacation to distant shores every summer.

But, lately, they've found it a little more difficult to predict where their paychecks will come from, and how much they'll get when the checks arrive (after paying off the debts for all the little necessities and niceties, especially for the teenagers). And, they're a little worried that Grandma's not going to be able to take care of herself, pretty soon, so they might have to have her move in. Naturally, they look at their small savings, and consider using it as a down-payment on an added room, so Grandma can come stay with them.

Then, one day, the teenagers hack into the accounts and discover that, shockingly, after they had continually told the kids, "we can't afford to keep buying that stuff for you," the old fogeys actually have money! Jeez, there must be at least a couple thousand dollars to spare, in that account! So they demand that the parents give them all that cash so they can throw an awesome block party, to remain popular in their adolescent community, and require that the parents throw a rockin' house party every weekend until graduation, and maybe beyond, "and new kicks, too. And stuff." And, today, the parents say, "Well, gee, we can't just have your good times end, so, of course we'll give you all our cash. Here, take the credit cards, as well. We'll just go get another credit card or two, and take out bank loans when we have to pay for what we actually need..."

Nice going, "grownups in the room". See how well you do next November.

The more things change...

So, at auction on Sunday, I spent wildly on postcards (I know, I know -- you are shocked!), and also bought a flat of paper goods having nothing to do with postage, but irresistible to pass by. This is why:

front

back

approximately the same size as a certain standard Government-issued paper article upon which we are heavily dependent, these were published in 1936.

Here they are, cleaned up & converted to B&W images.

(Click on any image to embiggen.)

I think these require no comment. Unless you want to add your $0.02.

So, let me get this straight...

Am I to understand that it's okay for the government to tell me what I should and shouldn't eat (sody-pop, Big Mag, or whatever), even though it really affects only my own comfort; and the government can tell us what medical treatments are appropriate for hospice care (disallowing heroin, e.g. to those with pain which can only be treated with opiates and opioids); and the government can force private companies to fire employees, redistribute the proceeds from shares -- taking them from honest shareholders (many of them pensioners whose shares are part of their 401(k) ) and handing the money and controls to democrat pals in the unions; and the federal government thinks it can require private doctors and hospitals to perform operations which are, in their view, immoral, indecent and homicidal, and require private insurance companies to pay for the same; and the federal government thinks it can tell us what, where, and how to teach our children; and the federal government thinks it can put a knee-jerk ban on exploring and drilling for much-needed fossil fuels in the Gulf of Mexico, regardless of the safety records of those other companies whose drilling rights had already been federally- and state-approved; and the federal government is attempting to tell us what and how we can communicate via electronic media; and the local government has denied permission for a Greek Orthodox church which had stood near Ground Zero and was forced to move due to 9/11-related damage, to return to their original site, and we're told that's an appropriate decision; but when a bunch of in-your-face anti-U.S.-Constitution asshats who support terrorism and terrorists (and has the support of terrorist groups like Hamas) wants to build a middle-finger-flipped-at-decency, dance-on-the-graves-of-3000-murder-victims, "victory"-advertising mosque on hallowed ground in NYC while giving political lip-service to "tolerance", the administration says it's none of their business, or, more importantly, none of ours?

Tell me I'm just confused.

Question of logic, from my father, the Logician

So, Congress is proposing a tax on all these medical services and devices, in order to lower the cost of medical services and devices. Some of the items listed to be taxed are mentioned here.

Dad asks, "I don't understand... how does adding a tax lower the cost, again?"

Illinois voters, here's your watch list

These guys who ostensibly represent the taxpayers of Illinois in the House of Representatives all voted against defunding the corrupt body known as ACORN:

Danny Davis, (D)

Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D)

Bobby Rush, (D)

Jan Schakowsky, (D)

There's a midterm election coming. These crooks and their ilk can be outnumbered and entirely negated, if enough people of reason run and vote. Pass the word.

Birthers are half-right

President Obama needs to release his original birth certificate for complete public examination. I don't think, though, that it will change or even remotely challenge the legitimacy of his presidency -- I think his actions will do that on their own.

No, I believe Barack Obama needs to release his actual, verifiable, original birth certificate because he and his entire party promised the country that they would have the most ethical, the most transparent administration in American history, or something to that effect. The operative word was "transparency", however it was phrased. And, yet, everything and then some has been kept behind closed doors. We don't know with whom he's meeting, we don't know whose advice he follows (remember, Bill Ayers is "just a guy in the neighborhood", and Rev. Wright is "not the man I know"), and we don't know anything about his actual personal past. Every other president -- indeed, this past generation, every candidate -- has been expected to open up his history for close examination. We even, I believe, have George W. Bush and William J. Clinton's grade school report cards to peruse for our entertainment. We certainly got the play-by-play of their colorectal exams.

For all that the media and the far left made hay of the Bush administration's desire for secrecy when meeting with non-governmental advisors, when dealing with international terrorists, and so on, that administration, by comparison, is a bunch of grotesque exhibitionists. The "most transparent administration ever" needs to release Obama's birth certificate, college transcripts, bank records, real estate transactions, legal case history, alliances with organizations, and anything else which might give the public an inkling as to his track record.

Of course, as long as Obama continues to hold out, he can take delight in feeding suspicions, and, in the process, making those who demand transparency from him look as nutty as the birthers.

Where is the media on this? Complicit, of course. They aid him in selling the entire of the conservative half of the nation as neocon crazies, by airing those at events who foam at the mouth, without covering the many thousands more who are simple, ordinary Americans objecting to a radical reworking of their heretofore largely successful system, objecting to a radical escalation of government controls, objecting to the subsequent radical escalation of the deficit and debt. The media demonizes middle America, Obama encourages this, and they wonder why ratings continue to slip. I'd say that was pretty transparent.

If this is how government medicine works...

Last evening, I received a call from my friend exSailorette, who, having recently had a knee replacement, had suffered from an unusual sort of pain lower in her leg, so had gone to the emergency room at the Veterans Hospital in Iowa City last week.

Now, this is no small thing. We live approximately two hours over open, corn-lined interstate highway away from Iowa City. It's a miserably uncomfortable drive even when you're feeling happy, healthy, and in the mood for a drive. When you're in pain and sitting in a wheelchair... well, you get the picture.

So she went to the VA and they looked her over, told her she had a clot in her lower leg (a "DVT"). They gave her a couple of prescriptions and sent her home, saying that the drugs should break it up, but if she still had problems, she could check herself in to Galesburg's Cottage Hospital, since it's only 25 minutes from home, and they could handle any immediate need. A few days later, the pain was still severe, so she took the drive to Cottage. That was yesterday. The doctor there ran a few tests and discovered that the clot in her leg had not reduced at all in size, and that it was a serious problem. He indicated she needed to be admitted for observation and treatment, ASAP, and made arrangements for her to be seen in Iowa City.

In fact, he was so adamant that she needed to be admitted, he suggested she be taken by ambulance for the journey.

She's had that happen once before.

At that time, she was all alone in the back of the bus for two and a half hours, dropped off at the VA emergency admissions, and, after brief exam, told to go home. At four o'clock in the morning, two hours' drive from anybody she knew with a car.

So she called me. I'm taking antihistamines, so I'm in no condition to drive, but I can keep talking to somebody, if that person needs conversation to keep him awake while driving. exSailorette said her nephew could drive the length of the trip, with company, so I packed up my immediate needs and went with her.

We got to the VA emergency room at roughly 8 p.m.

They took her in for exam almost immediately. At 11:15, she was back out in the waiting room, being given instructions on administering her own abdominal injections of coumadin, twice daily, at home. In other words, she's really at risk by civilian standards, and must be admitted for treatment and observation due to a dangerous clot, but the government doctor says, "go home and stab yourself in the gut twice daily and come back later if you still don't feel any better."

This wasn't the first time my friend had encountered this particular doctor in admissions. Six years ago, she suffered from congestive heart failure, and the doctor dismissed her without a proper exam, saying in effect that, since she had sleep apnea, and she was overweight, she obviously lacked the discipline to wear the CPAP to breathe at rest. He did nothing about her rapid weight gain, nothing about ordering a sleep study, offered no constructive advice at all, and sent her home to die.

This time, he sent her home to stab herself repeatedly in the gut and/or die.

How many people are actually capable of jabbing a needle into their own abdomens? Wait -- let me try that again. How many people, knowing from experience earlier in the day how extremely painful it is to take injections to the abdomen, will voluntarily do that to themselves not just once afterwards but twice daily for two weeks minimum?

I wouldn't go there, and my friend, for all her endurance with back, leg and other pain, was not exactly relishing the idea. (In fact, she still wasn't sure she could do it, as she thought about it all the way home.)

She was given a handful of prescriptions to fill, and directed to the Walgreen's store a half mile away.

This is a woman in pain. Real pain. Imediate pain. And they send her first to get a couple of boxes of hypodermic needles filled with blood thinner, and then drive two hours home again. In pain. And at real medical risk. And, did I mention she's in serious pain?

We waited at Walgreen's for the lone pharmacist to deal with a pair of idiots, then to fumble through the handling of my friend's simple scrip, before getting back into her van and heading back across the Mississippi river to home. Two hours away.

We got back at 1:45 a.m.

I haven't heard from my friend yet today. She knows that, if she has to go back to IA City, either I will be with her, or my mother will. But, quite frankly, I hope she goes to Galesburg as an emergency patient and they give her the material she needs to sue the pants off the anal aperture who sent her home last night.


If this is how government medicine works, and that's what President Obama wants, please leave me out of it. I'd rather die on my own terms than by advice of a sphincter on the government payroll.

Is the media worm turning?

From the AP today:

Obama pledges to slash deficit — after increase

Is this a sign that the MSM are waking from the enchantment, is the honeymoon over? Can it be?

Or is it just a single voice in the wilderness they call "journalism"?

Maybe it's only a tease, to make us believe the MSM can be unbiased about their Saviour...

Latest big Dem supporter served papers

According to FOXNews, Sir Robert Allen Stanford, the man suspected of having swindled buzillions of dollars from investors, thus making Bernie Madoff look a piker, has been found in Virginia and has been served. The Feds are ordering him to appear, to a'splain wha' hap' to $8 billion in certificates of deposit.

But the best part of the article is the third graf, where it says this:

The 58-year-old holds duel citizenship in Barbuda and Antigua (where he was knighted in 2006).

Note: he has duel citizenship. Do we have anybody else in this country who can challenge him, then? I mean, it would be quite another thing if he had dual citizenship, because then he'd have a second country to flee to. But, no! It would seem by this language he's going to be required to defend his position, either at fifteen paces or with the sword, instead of in court. And I didn't think we had such citizenships here, at least not since before Aaron Burr's day.

Nevertheless, it's nice to see the Feds are on the ball, at long last. Next, we get to see if the MSM mentions his close ties to and support for the Democratic Party's high Muckamucks. I'm betting it will be on the same day Roland Burris voluntarily steps down from the Senate because he truly recognizes it's the right thing to do. That will be a few months after they start cross-country skiing in hell.

Now the rest of the US gets the Chicago treatment

The politics of hopey-changey looks more and more every day like the politics of corruptocrats. Obama learned quite a few things in Chicago politics, including the value of gerrymandering. Otherwise, why would he have made the outrageous move of the US Census from the Dept. of Commerce to the grubby little mitts of Rahm Emmanuel?

So, for those of you who had no idea what it felt like to be excluded from the election process by virtue of being a Republican in a district fiddled until you were just barely overpowered and outnumbered by Democrat union bosses... welcome to my world. The rest of the country is about to learn what downstate Illinois has been living through for a multitude of decades.

Your tax dollars subsidizing Hollywood

Technically, it's a tax cut - no stimulus, no actual help hiring the unemployed -- it's just a gift from the Democrats to the propaganda machine that keeps promoting them against national interests. That is to say, Congress is readying itself to give a quarter of a billion dollars in tax subsidies to one of the richest, most successful industries in the country.

With that "stimulus" or "bailout" in mind, I'm thinking that, since we're all taxpayers, we now become part-owners of the studios, so we should be able to go into the nearest cinema, sit down and watch a show without paying for anything but what we pick up at the concession stand. Maybe not every week, but shouldn't we be able to catch at least one free blockbuster per taxpayer, this year? After all, you've paid for it already.

Of course, the problem with this plan is that we first have to find a flick they've produced which we want to see. So far, those pickings are pretty slim.


Update: Well, that didn't take long. It looks as though this particular little gift has been removed from the Generational Theft Act already. Dang, and I was so hoping to see a crappy blockbuster show this year....

Democrats: the party for the workers

They're for the workers in the same way the weasel is for the hens. Give us all your eggs.

House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

I like that. Everybody who is already saving for retirement -- you know, the ones who take the future seriously -- will be penalized in favor of supporting everybody else. Nice. Naturally, I'll be first in line to stop looking for real employment and draw from somebody else's paycheck.

Thanking you in advance for my early retirement.

HT: lgf

Do-nothing Congress does nothing... and accomplishes something

Drill, baby, drill!

The drilling ban has been allowed to expire. Yippeeee!

R-E-S-Pee-E-C-T

Just a little bit of respect for our troops, that's all any right-minded freedom-minded person expects of our government.

Apparently, that's too much to ask of the Democrats in Congress, this week.

According to the WSJ, Harry "All Is Lost" Reid and Carl Levin put their pointy little heads together to block a very simple "thank you" to the troops in Iraq:

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin teamed up to block a vote on a bipartisan resolution "recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq" and thanking our men and women in uniform for their efforts.

Please note from above: Carl Levin is the Armed Services Chairman. So, for him -- and the rest of the Democrats, regardless of the responsibility of their positions -- partisanship comes ahead of respecting our men and women in uniform.

Why am I not surprised?

Dodd impressive in his hypocrisy

This morning, I suffered through the first few minutes of Good Morning America, as Senators Shelby and Dodd tried to explain to Diane Sawyer what was going on in the financial world today (banking failures, bailouts, etc.)

The moment I had to turn off the tube rather than frighten the cats and the neighborhood with screams of fury came when Dodd had the unmitigated gall to say this:

This was avoidable. This did not have to happen. Where were the cops on the beat? Where were the regulators? When these loans were made they did nothing.

Uh, Chris, you're the head of the Senate Banking Committee. You're the cops. Where were you? Taking money from the very same people who were making those risky loans. You and Obama and a dozen other Democrats who now cry the loudest about the mess the industry is in were the ones who profited most in government from the industry's fudging data over the past decade and change. It was, indeed, the do-nothing Democratic Congress which helped make this mess as bad as it is. It was a Democrat in the White House who started this mess of manure sliding downhill in the first place:

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans.

Dodd's cries now sound like the call of a fireman who sets his own house ablaze and then complains that the fire department didn't do enough to prevent the place from burning down.

Legless man wants to start a**-kicking contest

According to the ABC political blog Political Radar, Rep Conyers is attempting to command an appearance before his personal tribunal by the Lord of Darkness:

ABC News' Jack Date, Theresa Cook and Jason Ryan Report: The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former senior Bush advisor Karl Rove, a panel spokesman tells ABC News.

Further,

In a letter sent Wednesday to Chairman Conyers, Rove's attorney Robert Luskin said, "the decision about when, where, and what a former assistant to the President may testify about raises issues of executive privilege and separation of powers that Mr. Rove does not control."

Rove had already received a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the same subject, which is being litigated. In his letter to Conyers, Luskin wrote, "it is hard to see what this [subpoena] will accomplish, apart from a Groundhog Day replay of the same issues that are already the subject of litigation."

Luskin's letter also called into question Conyers motives and intentions, referring to his "reported remarks about the need for 'someone' to 'kick his [Rove's] ass.'"

It seems to me, if you lack even a leg on which to stand, threatening to kick any part of another's anatomy is not exactly going to scare him. Especially if he has all the powers of the netherworld at his disposal....

Puff, puff, puff...

While I'm trying to catch my breath after walking a couple of dogs, I'm going to ask all my friends in Illinois to take advantage of this last day of good will between smokers and the rest of us... starting the day after tomorrow, the law says there is top be no smoking in public places or private businesses.

Quite frankly, while my wheezy, miserable lungs are happy about the result, the rest of me is less than impressed with the method. Well, that's not quite frank enough, but my mother occasionally reads my blog, and I'm not inclined to subject her to the sort of language struggling to trip past my guardian fingertips and onto the key pad.

I'll be glad when I can go to the local public house of a Thursday for Open Microphone night. Who knows? I may even participate, this year. I have a kazoo, and I know how to use it. I'm also told that my friend/sister (extended family gets complicated) Elke's bird, Pippin, likes my singing... That (and a whole lot of money when I win the lottery) ought to get me a recording contract.

But kazoo azide, just where do the jackasses in Springfield get off "protecting" me from second-hand smoke, when, as yet, they've not exhausted every other non-nanny-state option, first? Did they allow, say, insurance companies to actually jack up rates for smokers, for health, fire, and liability? Did they do the same for businesses which permit smoking on their premises? Did they, perhaps, introduce city/county/state fees for fire protection, community clinics, etc., in which businesses which do not allow smoking get a cut rate? Did they really try anything, honestly, at all, before they decided smokers are not human and, therefore, have no rights? Of course not.

So, all of my friends who smoke, puff like crazy throughout tomorrow, for on Tuesday we will fume without tobacco.

"Papa, what's chutzpah?"

I heard the word "chutzpah" for the first time when I was in grade school, and asked what it meant. At the time, I didn't quite understand the "orphan plea" explanation, so it was later explained:

A bully beat up another person so badly that he had to go to the hospital. While the person was being treated for his injuries, the doctors discovered the poor battered soul had cancer in its early stages. The person was treated and cured.

The bully took credit for saving the person's life by forcing him into the hospital in the first place. That's chutzpah.

Hmmm. Sounds familar. Harry Reid takes credit for Rush Limbaugh's successful fund-raiser....

Durbin has a DREAM: America's nightmare

I hadn't been paying much attention to the latest shenanigans of IL's senior Senator, mostly because almost everything coming out of his mouth is an embarrassment to the state. Unfortunately, this little gem of a project he has going can't be ignored, no matter how little attention the MSM wants to pay to it.

Each day, the idea of another IL constitutional convention -- and the potential amendment setting up term limits and killing gerrymandering -- sounds better and better to me.

HT: Ace

IL Constitutional Convention proposed

I heard it mentioned for the first time last night when I was drifting off to sleep watching the local news... for the life of me, I can't recall the context, other than that one prominent Democrats is in support of it (but for why I know not).

Naturally, hearing that one of this could occur in the near future, I decided to look it up. There isn't much info on it, right now. In fact, I could only find one site which had devoted any bandwidth to it at all, and the "con-con" is its raison d'etre, it seems.

All in all, though, seeing as how our levels of satisfaction with our state government have hit a low not seen in my lifetime (which puts it right about at the founding of the state, I think), I'm wondering if pressing for a change in the constitution might not be a bad thing. After all, according to this illinoisconcon site, one of the biggest changes would be an end to the frustrating jerrymandered arrangements which put our district squarely in the pocket of the RockIslandMolineMilan union pockets, and we end up having very little say.

Also proposed is a term limit amendment, and that suits me fine. It wouldn't be bad, though, to draft it so that, if (by some miracle) we got a representative we genuinely trusted and who did a world of good for Forgottonia, we could keep re-electing him by an overriding majority vote (say, a two-thirds-plus one vote -- or some such -- majority in the primaries).

It seems to me we changed our state Constitution when I was in grade school (was it 1970?). Do we really need to keep rewriting it every thirty-some years? Granted, the likelihood is, we won't change anything substantial... so the question arises: who will pay for the convention? Seems to me, it's a state taxpayer-funded event, and it didn't clear out corruption last time, so what makes them think that a state-funded event to clean the state will work in this new century... which leads me tho believe even the idea of a "con-con" results in it being a plain con (not scam. just negative. although...).

Still, the idea has appeal. D'you think we could use it to kick all the bums out?