Farewell, England, we scarcely knew ye

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Alternative headline: Alternative fuel source gets a foothold in British hospitals


England of Magna Carta, ending slave trade and ending worldwide tyranny via WW I and WW II fame has appeared to step aside and say, “Ya know, eff it. We’re done here”.

This is what the self-revocation process looks like for a member in good standing of Western Civilization.


Via KT of the Scratching Post who had this to say with respect to the following: “.... it turns out there was no reason to Bomben auf Engelend after all. The British lion would eventually see the light.


From the Telegraph:

The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.

Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat.

Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’

At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s Dispatches discovered.

The programme, which will air tonight, found that parents who lose children in early pregnancy were often treated without compassion and were not consulted about what they wanted to happen to the remains.

One of the country’s leading hospitals, Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, incinerated 797 babies below 13 weeks gestation at their own ‘waste to energy’ plant. The mothers were told the remains had been ‘cremated.’
Another ‘waste to energy’ facility at Ipswich Hospital, operated by a private contractor, incinerated 1,101 foetal remains between 2011 and 2013.

They were brought in from another hospital before being burned, generating energy for the hospital site. Ipswich Hospital itself disposes of remains by cremation.

“This practice is totally unacceptable,” said Dr Poulter.

“While the vast majority of hospitals are acting in the appropriate way, that must be the case for all hospitals and the Human Tissue Authority has now been asked to ensure that it acts on this issue without delay.”

“totally unacceptable”... “Human Tissue Authority”

Charmed, we’re sure.

We’re sure the global community will get properly exercised only when the British Health Ministry declares that the resulting embryonic tissue particulate is carcinogenic and a global-warming contributor as well



The second item as evidence of England stepping down from the world stage relates to Sharia law now being codified into British law and in this instance with respect to the writing of wills.


Also, from the Telegraph:

Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills.

Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.

The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs.

Anyone married in a church, or in a civil ceremony, could be excluded from succession under Sharia principles, which recognise only Muslim weddings for inheritance purposes.

Nicholas Fluck, president of The Law Society, said the guidance would promote “good practice” in applying Islamic principles in the British legal system.

Because Balkanizing your country absolutely demands “good practice”.



Western Civilization with it’s freedom of speech and religion, its property rights and equality-for-all features had a pretty good run and at one time Great Britain was at the forefront of that novel and rebellious movement.


All movements, however, have their arc and it would appear the fat and sclerotic Brits are exhibiting some defense-of-culture laziness and hastening the demise of its imperfect yet better-than-the-rest culture.


We are not fans of anti-Sharia legislation that we have seen pop up from time to time over the years. Like ridiculous flag-burning amendments, it comes across as cheap pandering.


Do we not have a culturally-approved standing code of laws as it is? And did we not fight a civil war for the fair and equal treatment of all citizens and then have it out all over again some 100 years later to further enhance civil rights guarantees. Did we not get this all straightened out?


However, when reality knocks and our English-speaking cousins are setting up a shadow or parallel legal system to the one that already exists, is anti-Sharia legislation worth a second look?


As it stands, right now, peace out, our cousins across the pond.

Not so random thought(s) of the day

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It seems we have been down this "You didn't build that" road before. Like, well over 200 years ago.

Via Ann Althouse:

Lord North: Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by colonists and yeomen who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.

George Washington: Without our consent, we reject your taxes.

Lord North: There are a lot of smart people out there in the New World. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking British subjects of the Crown out there.

Thomas Jefferson: Stop coercing us, Lord North. Your Acts are intolerable.

Lord North: If you yankees were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great King somewhere in your life. Some members of Parliament helped to create this unbelievable Royal Navy system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in French and Indian Wars and the East India Company.



Alexander Hamilton: The King is your king. He is only our king by our agreement.

Lord North: If you've got a medical practice or silver smithery or a cabinetmaking business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The printing press didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the printing press so that all the pamphleteers could make money off the printing press.

Sam Adams: Hey, Lord North, shove your Stamp Act where the sun don't set.

Lord North: All right, all right - everybody just calm down. In politics, we all tolerate a certain amount of spin. I understand these are the games that get played in political campaigns. Although when folks just, like, omit entire sentences of what you said, they start kind of splicing and dicing, you may have gone a little over the edge there, you pesky Americans.

And some observations on last night's opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games: outside of some cheeky moments involving Rowan Atkinson and the Queen Elizabeth/James Bond sequence, it was pretty much a snooze fest.



Oh, and you know we took notice of this from last night:





Hell, even the Chi-comms wouldn't use sick children doing tumbling routines on their hospital beds to propagandize a government program. Then again, forced sterilization and abortions would've cut down on the number of children needed so maybe they could've pulled it off.

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Things we all know but choose to ignore anyway

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News flash No. 1: People, particularly rich people who have the means to do so, will alter their behavior, acting upon their own self-interests, to avoid having to pay higher taxes... People just like Warren Buffet!


News flash No. 2: Higher tax rates do not necessarily bring in the anticipated revenue.




Quite unexpectedly, a higher marginal tax rate on the rich in England did not bring in the anticipated additional tax revenue.



From The Telegraph:

The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month in the first formal indication that the new 50p higher rate is not raising the expected amount of revenue.

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

Although the official statistics do not disclose how much money was paid at the 50p rate of tax, the figures indicate that it is falling short of the money the levy was expected to raise.

A Treasury source said the relatively poor revenues from self-assessment returns was partly down to highly-paid individuals arranging their affairs to avoid paying the 50p rate.

“It’s true that SA revenues are a bit disappointing — it’s still early, but it looks like there’s been quite a lot of forestalling and other manoeuvring to avoid the top rate,” said the source.

Manoeuvring... Arranging their affairs...

You better believe there was a whole lot of that going with the evil 1-percenters of England. Who wants to pay higher taxes? Warren Buffet, despite his calls for higher taxes on the rich, sure doesn't.

Why else would he pay himself a salary of only $100,000 while receiving the vast majority of his income from capital gains that gets taxed at a much lower rate (15%) than would income tax on, say, a $200,000 salary.

Buffet and his hypocritical "Millionaire Patriots" can certainly pay more in taxes should they so choose. They simply choose manoeuver not to do so.




We'll let New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, summarize this whole shamefully deceitful situation much better than we:

"Just a write a check and shut up."

heh.

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Your decline of Western civilization update

If you read nothing else today...


J. Christian Adams ties together the mob violence in England with what has been happening here in America over the summer.

We also now know the Mob has visited America in recent days and years.

Consider the Wisconsin State Fair last week. The 911 tapes reveal a nightmare. “We’re outside the Wisconsin State Fair and there’s a white guy being beaten up by about 100 black people,” the panicked caller cries. “They’re jumping on our cars. . . . My mom just got attacked by a black mob.” Multiple eyewitnesses describe white fairgoers being pulled from cars and beaten by the Mob, all black. The evidence establishes a strong presumption that race was a motivating factor in the attacks. This is America?

Like in England, the law is also failing the victims in Wisconsin. “My wife comes home with a fricking black eye, and you guys ain’t doin’ (expletive) about it?” another 911 caller complains. “You need to get the (expletive) riot squad over there and haul them off to jail.”

We know that something similar happened in the town of California, Pennsylvania this year. We know that Darnell Harding, a linebacker for the local college football team, and Toni Whiteleather, a defensive back, were charged with attacking Michael Chambers. Chambers was an innocent bystander who had the misfortune of running into the two athletes just before Harding, the linebacker, said he was going to “hit the first white person he saw.”

As in London, the law has failed Chambers. Prosecutors dropped the state hate crimes charges in June after they failed to subpoena the victim to give evidence for a preliminary hearing. The Obama administration has also failed Chambers, as we shall see.

The law has failed Marty Marshall and his Akron, Ohio, family. On the Fourth of July in 2009, he was watching fireworks in his front yard with his wife and children. A mob of 30 to 50 black teenagers went onto his property and beat up Marshall, his wife, his children and two adult male friends. “This is our world. This is a black world,” they taunted the injured victims. Marshall spent five nights hospitalized in critical care.

Of course there are federal hate crimes laws designed for these violent racially motivated attacks, right? But a law is only as good as the people enforcing it. The Justice Department under Eric Holder has little interest in bringing hate crimes charges to protect white victims. The corrupt dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, which I brought, made that plain.

The criminal section of the civil rights division has the responsibility to prosecute racially motivated violence. But Mark Kappelhoff, the chief of the criminal section of the civil rights division, is unlikely to act if the victims are white. He was angry that the DOJ enforced the law on behalf of white victims in the voting rights case of United States v. Ike Brown. According to the sworn testimony of former voting section chief Christopher Coates, Kappelhoff complained equal enforcement of the law to protect whites was causing problems with “its relations with civil rights groups.” He placed greater importance on political relations with civil rights groups than ending discrimination against white voters.

Selective application of hate crime laws are just one of the many, many things we hate about hate crime laws.

The longer they are on the books, the more the evidence mounts that whatever good intentions they started with, it's all too apparent they now are being used, not for justice, but rather to curry favor with favored political classes.



Adams finishes with this:

Whatever has fractured, whatever has failed, we need to discover and right it. Law, informed by a reverence for human dignity, has lifted our nation, our civilization, out of the darkness of history. The mayhem and violence we are witnessing provides a glimpse of an uncivilized age beyond our memory, before law ruled.

Perhaps the civilized will outnumber the uncivilized. Or, perhaps the burning and looting provides instead a preview of our future.

Sir Winston Churchill understood this. “Civilization will not last,” he said at the University of Bristol in 1938, “freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.”

That we have a President that contemptuously expelled this great man’s bust from the Oval Office only increases our task.

Some more (of other people's) thoughts on the riots in England

But first, we can't remember where we heard it or read it but it went a little something like this: "Everything in England is regulated except the crime."



And here's Secular Apostate on making nothing out of something (and in this case, quite a bit of something):

The anthem of these young people who make nothing out of something was penned by the unlamentably late Amy Winehouse:

I didn’t get a lot in class
But I know it don’t come in a shot glass
They tried to make me go to rehab
But I said ‘no, no, no’

And I can’t blame her for refusing re-habilitation.

Because she was deliberately de-habilitated, and she knew it. She was dehabilitated by a toxic politico-cultural brew of entitlement thinking, moral relativity, and reward for indolence and excess. By my lights, given her brazen drug abuse and public drunkenness, she should have been cooling her buns in jail. If she had been, she would be alive today. Instead, we have an outstanding natural talent, destroyed, rotting in the grave.

Yes, you can make nothing out of something.

For those of you in Placentia, California wondering just who the heck is Amy Winehouse, check it out:


Sober for a month now...





Related:

More, I do not want to encourage entitlements; I do not think a Republic can survive when those who pay little or no tax determine the size of government and the entitlements to the citizens. I do not want to encourage a society in which all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sins – or for his dinner, for that matter.

And when folks like Warren Buffet whine that the rich aren't paying their fair share, to what end is his whining? What assurances are built into place that increasing government revenue would actually go towards reducing the federal defecit? There isn't so please quit whining.

Some more thoughts on the British riots

We have been viewing the response to and the causes of the riots over in England through the narrow prism of an unwillingness to defend one's own property but our favorite moral scold, KT, has a somewhat different perspective on it. First, check out this video:




Here's KT:

The looters are all offense and the police are all defense. Because the police have no missile weapons and are too weighed down with armor to pursue their enemy, the looters can engage and disengage at will with absolutely no risk to themselves. The psychology of the mob changes the instant they realize this - at about 0:30. The problem isn't that one mob figured this out, it's that they all did or all will in the very near future.

This is what happens when you won't aggressively defend your culture.

(italics, ours)

Boom


There you have it. An unwillingness to defend one's property is merely symptomatic of a larger problem of an unwillingness to defend one's own culture.

And to those who would say the citizens and shop-owners don't have the means in which to defend themselves, that too is merely symptomatic of an unwillingness to defend one's culture.



Frank Miniter explains it wasn't always this way over in England:

For context, consider the “Tottenham Outrage” of 1909. Two men in Tottenham, armed with semi-automatic handguns, attempted to rob a payroll truck, but the guards resisted. After one robber fired his gun, police came running. The robbers fled on foot. The chase lasted two hours and covered about six miles as other officers and armed civilians pursued and engaged the robbers. One of the thieves committed suicide and the other later died in surgery. One officer and one civilian also were killed. The bravery of the officers and civilians prompted the creation of the Kings Police Medal and the funeral processions for the slain officer the civilian passed through streets lined with mournful Londoners. Those weren’t the kind of people who demonize police officers or take off their pants for thieves.

Contrast that with this, a young man in humiliation forced to strip down to his skivvies in order to give up his clothes to his tormentor.

Entitlement cultures and 2nd amendment rights are two concepts that seem to butt-up against one another, doesn't it seem?

We're out of time but in keeping with that theme, the best line we've heard thus far with respect to the riots comes from Say Uncle:

What’s the cause of the riot? I’m guessing lack of incoming fire.

Pax

Video clip of the day

What can baseball and Babe Ruth tell us about American exceptionalism? Well, if you're Bob Costas spinning yarns, apparently quite a bit.

Here's Costas at the beginning of the 4th episode of Ken Burns' epic Baseball.

You give me Babe Ruth over any king who has ever sat on a throne and I'll be happy with that trade.

And we're sure that any General Manager who has ever sat in a front office would be quite OK with that trade also.


Seriously, how cool was that?



Americans are not a race but rather a people bound by ideas. Ideas that reject royalty and embrace meritocracy. Ideas of the sort that we will not be governed by any man, no matter his lineage or stature, except by our consent. No consent? There's the door, pal.


Babe Ruth: the living embodiment of this country during the Roaring 20s was also the living embodiment of some other uniquely American ideas: that of (larger than) life, liberty (who said baseball players could only hit 10 homeruns a season?) and the pursuit of happiness ('cause who had more fun than The Babe?)



Tangentially related: An acquaintance of ours, a chap named Mark moved here from England in the early 80s to go to school and make his life and fortune. He became naturalized, met and married his wife, raised his family and has never left. He loves his adoptive country. He loves America, he's passionate about it and we love naturalized citizens like Mark who love this country. One day he asked us with a mild degree of indignation: "If I wanted to be President, I couldn't. Why is that? " We were speechless. Literally. Since nothing remotely resembling a rational justification was coming to mind, other than some well-intended, at the time, nativist impulses, we simply shrugged and shook our head.

This story wasn't even the main point of the post and, obviously, we've got far bigger things to worry about currently but as a parlor exercise, is it time (when that time comes) to re-visit that foreign-born restriction in the Constitution? We think it may be. Your thoughts and comments, as always, are welcome.



H/T: Max

Your decline of western civilization round-up

Fightback! 16,000 police ready to use plastic bullets keep a lid on London's looters


They're getting "ready"? Good to know.

Graham Reeves, 52, stood dumbstruck in front of the smoldering ruins of his family store, the House of Reeves on Croydon in south London. The store is a local landmark that had been run by his family for decades — he said his 80-year-old father was hysterical upon hearing the news.

"No one's stolen anything," Graham Reeves said. "They just burnt it down."

About 525 arrests have been made in London alone and dozens were arrested in other cities. The riots also claimed their first death — a 26-year-old found shot dead in a car.

"Why was nothing done to stop them?" said teacher Julia Adegoke. "More force should have been used."

One of the more depressing things about these riots is the way that the only thing that the Police can think of to say to us non-looters and non-arsonists is: "Don't join in" and "Let us handle it". If the bad guys start to torch your house, let them get on with it. If they attack your next door neighbour, don't join in on his side. Run away. Let the barbarians occupy and trash whatever territory they pick on and steal or destroy whatever property they want to.

There was a fascinating impromptu TV interview with some young citizens of Clapham last night, not "experts", just regular citizens, one of whom stated the opposite policy. Law abiding persons should get out of their houses, he said, en masse, and be ready to defend them.

The trouble with "letting the Police do their job" is that in the precise spot in which you happen to live, or used to live, their job probably won't start, if it ever does start, for about a week. In the meantime, letting the Police do their job means letting the damn looters and arsonists do their job, without anyone laying a finger on them, laying a finger on them being illegal. This is a doomed policy. If most people are compelled by law to be only neutral bystanders in a war between themselves and barbarism, barbarism wins. The right to, at the very least, forceful self defence must now be insisted upon. The Police, as we advocates of the don't-disarm-the-victims-of-crime policy have been pointing out for decades, can't be everywhere. They cannot instantaneously attend every crime, and magically prevent it. Only the potential or actual victims of crime can sometimes immediately prevent or immediately punish crime, provided only that they not forbidden to.

Think those London shop-owners might be in the market for some heavily-armed L.A.-based Korean shop-owners.


The public safety trumping your-home-is-your-castle rationale reminds us of the lunacy of the Indiana Supreme Court ruling that residents must allow police to enter their residence even if the police do not have cause to enter the residence. Capitulation to the barbarians and capitulation to the state. At the end of the 4th amendment day, what really is the difference?



It's not about any spending cuts:

Of course the predator political class are going to use the behaviour of the predator social class they created to justify their continued existence... no surprise there.

But all it takes is a look at the footage or a walk down the right street if you live in London, to see that the thugs in question, with a Blackberry in one hand and wearing expensive trainers, are not doing this because "Haringey Council has lost £41m from its budget". Does anyone seriously think these rioters are doing what they are doing because their 'Youth Services' Danegeld was cut back?

Just look at this...

... these are the bastard children of Diane Abbott and David Cameron... and their lineage goes all the way back to Clement Attlee...and all the other members of the political class who created them as the Welfare State progressively hollowed out civil society. These are the product of the demon seed that was planted in 1945 and progressively watered ever more lavishly each year.

So yes, the largely fictitious 'cuts' are indeed to blame. Far far far too little and 20 years too late.

Wards of the state. Any sense of decency, self-reliance, self-worth and compassion gutted and hollowed-out by the promise of a blissful, worry-free statist utopia. Because perpetual dependency means never having to grow up.






And for a completely different take on the sacredness of property rights...

H/T: Instapundit

Your government-managed health care update

Do you all remember the outrageous claims of death panels being effectively built-in to ObamaCare? Take a read and tell us if any of this sounds familiar. From The Telegraph:

NHS managers are deliberately delaying operations as they wait for patients either to die or go private in order to save money, according to an official report.

Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found.

Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment” claims the report, by an independent watchdog that advises the NHS.

The Co-operation and Competition Panel says the tactic is one of a number used by managers that “excessively constrain” patients’ rights to choose where to be operated upon, and damage hospitals’ ability to compete for planned surgery.

It claims unfair practices are “endemic” in some areas of England and pose a “serious risk” to the Government’s drive to open up the health service to competition.

But managers, who are already rationing surgery for cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils, say they must restrict treatment as the NHS is under orders to make £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015.

Lord Carter of Coles, chairman of the panel, said: “Commissioners have a difficult job in the current financial climate, but patients’ rights are often being restricted without a valid and visible reason.”

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “It is outrageous that some primary care trusts are imposing minimum waiting times. The suggestion that it could save money because patients will remove themselves from the list by going private or dying is a callous and cynical manipulation of people’s lives and should not be tolerated.”

The article goes on to report that managers have restricted patients' rights to choose among four hospitals, including private hospitals, in order to balance their own books

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(italics, ours)

Call us crazy but it's hard to think that the whole dying thing is what you would call a voluntary feature of the British NHS.

And given the above, you would not be mistaken for holding a sneaking suspicion that Britain's single-payer health care system doesn't seem to have quite as much emphasis on health or care as you might think.

But good to know they have a private system, right? Well, a private system only if you can afford it. So, not only is one paying into the British NHS that covers all Britons, one is also paying out-of-pocket for treatment that NHS managers are denying.

And wasn't this two-tier system of haves and have-nots precisely what government-managed health care like NHS and ObamaCare supposed to eliminate? Wasn't ObamaCare supposed to be all about equal and affordable access for everyone? Yeah, we thought so, also.

Death panels? Nothing to see here - please move along.

Just a preview of things to come, folks.

Funny yet downright scary

Via W.C. Varones: World collapse explained in 3 minutes.

A mystery solved?

We may have finally figured out the answer to a question that has been vexing us for years now?: After being thoroughly disproven and discredited time after time and in case after case, what exactly has been the draw of statism/collectivism?

Alas, we think we may have found it?


Over in the UK this past week, we see how the President uses the zombifying powers of extolling the virtues of the nanny state to put some of his audience into a stupor as the gentleman on the left at :45 will attest.



So, is that it? Does droning on and on about how your fate and well-being is somehow not fully your responsibility a cause for a drool-inducing and passive obedience to the state? If so, beware then, citizens, of the language of collectivism even from the mouths of semi-skilled orators as we have seen demonstrated here.

Mark Steyn and math

But first, a related slice-of-life in England article for context:

MIDDLESBROUGH, England — It is by far the largest employer in town, accounting for one out of every two jobs. Its workers are teachers, doctors, museum curators and social workers whose salaries range from £21,000 to £210,000 a year.

The employer is the government, and the responsibility of its 17,000 employees here has been to work the levers of Britain’s expansive welfare state. Now, for the first time in a generation, this public colossus is shrinking — threatened by rising levels of government debt and the political bent of the Conservative Party government — and many of the jobs are being cut.

Throughout Britain, austerity will result in many thousands of lost public jobs, compounding the blow from reduced entitlements. But the cuts will be most keenly felt across the iron and steel belt of this country’s depressed northeast, in places like Middlesbrough, which in many ways is a British version of Detroit.

And now, Mark Steyn trying to clue in a person to the obvious:

Still, on balance I prefer the class-war thugs trashing the joint, who at least have the courage of their convictions. The “nice” people bussed in from the shires struck me as some of the most stupid people I’ve ever met anywhere on the planet. One elderly lady from Yorkshire told me she was there because her grandson’s university fees were likely to go up. I was in a cranky mood because I hadn’t had my coffee. “You can protest all you like,” I said. “But this country’s broke, so all you’re doing is postponing its reacquaintanceship with reality, and ensuring that your grandson and his contemporaries are going to be stuck with the tab because you guys spent their future.” I pointed out that in her part of the world – northern England – as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the state accounts for three-quarters of the economy. And it’s still not enough for the likes of her and her pals.

All the rioting in the world is not going to make budget deficits and unsustainable entitlement obligations disappear. The math will prevail in the end.

Radio KBwD is on the air

So just why do the end of songs fade out instead of coming to an abrupt end?

Well, if you've got a good ending to the song then use it?

Aside from musicians' writer's blocks regarding nice, neat and efficient ways to wrap-up songs, the reasons vary but a consensus emerges when it comes to pop music when it started getting played regularly on the radio in the 50s. Quite simply, it signalled to the DJ that the song was about to end so he would have time to put another disc on the turntable while introducing it or cut to commercial.

With that in mind, we'd like to feature a song that has probably one of the most famous fade-outs of all time... that to everyone's sheer delight fades back in again before fading once more to end the song.

Ladies and Gentlemen, from Tupelo, Mississippi via Memphis, Tennessee, it's Elvis Presley performing "Suspicious Minds".





(note: Word around the campfire is that Elvis was singing with such passion at the first designed fade-out, the singers decided to pick it up again, giving the song one more minute of life.)





And this being Christmas Eve, we're in the giving spirit and want to feature a second song that also fades-out twice.

Ladies and Gentlemen, from Manchester, England, it's The Smiths performing "That Joke isn't Funny Anymore".




No word if it was Morrissey's impassioned singing the convinced Johnny Marr and the rest of the band to keep the song rolling.

Quote of the day

OK, we've got Elton. Who's up for another conservo-libertarian British musician mascot?

Johnny Rotten, anyone?

I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews [sic]. If Elvis-f-ing-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated.

Johnny Lydon, formerly of the seminal British punk band, The Sex Pistols, got off that epic bit of smack with regard to his gig in Tel Aviv later this month with his current band, Public Image Ltd., and the boycotts of Israel by other musicians.

With that in mind, let's hit up YouTube for some 80s nostalgia and some anti- Elvis-f-ing-Costello (sorry, Elvis) sentiment.

Folks, Johnny Lydon and Public Image Ltd. performing "Rise".

Paging Dr. Berwick

It would appear that Dr. Donald Berwick's (President Obama's pick to head Medicare and Medicaid) beloved British health care system is in some trouble.

Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.

How would you describe what is happening in the paragraph above? We think it's reasonable to assume given the language that is used and given the specific action that is taken to achieve the desired result, what is happening in that paragraph is "rationing".

Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”.

Eye surgery could delay hip operations An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.

* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.

* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.

* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.

* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.

* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.

* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

Again, rationing, delays, cuts, job losses, cost-cutting programs, reduction (of services), closure(s), not our words but theirs used to describe the inevitable results of government-managed health care.

When you declare particular goods and services as a right, why should it surprise anybody when those rights to which everyone is entitled start costing far more than they would if they were subject to market forces?

The nerve of the British pols to start denying British citizens their "rights".

Perhaps the Senate confirmation hearings for Dr. Berwick will provide the appropriate platform to get his reaction to what is happening over in England and to explain how it is the same thing will not be happening over here.

Your (semi-)daily World Cup update

OK. We're lazy. Sue us.

We're almost out the door for the Germany vs. Argentina match so just consider this an open thread to express any and all opinions as seen fit.

Exit question: Do we pull for Germany as a matter of heritage or Argentina because their coach, Diego Maradona is... well, let's just say that win or lose, if we picked up the paper tomorrow and found out Maradona was arrested in his hotel room with 4 strippers and a mound of coke on the coffee table, we would not be surprised.

It's all family viewing from here on out, though:

Here's Maradona's infamous "Hand of God" goal against England in the quarters of the '86 World Cup.




And against that same England in the same match, his "Goal of the Century".

Mission Accomplished!

Now we're beginning to understand from where all those totally bitchin' ideas hatched by Center for American Progress and MoveOn.org were originating.

F.B.I. agents who had tracked a Russian spy ring for more than a decade moved quickly to roll up the network after learning that one of the suspected spies was planning to fly out of the United States on Sunday night, according to two American officials familiar with the case.

Mr. Metsos is accused of being a money man in the case, collecting cash from a Russian official assigned to the United Nations and delivering it to others in the ring, who were accused of spending years living undercover in American cities and suburbs, posing as ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about schools and apologizing for noisy teenagers. Their purpose, according to prosecutors, was to patiently penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.”

(italics, ours)

Porkulus, cap and trade, ObamaCare, Wall St. reform, the apology tour, the gulf oil spill response, Iran's inevitable nuclear program, the Russian "reset" and our current deplorable relations with long-standing allies like Great Britain and Israel... whew! That many accomplishments doesn't come without some outside help, apparently.

Congratulations, Oh Russian spies on a mission nearly perfectly executed.

Europe continues to kiss free speech good-bye

It seems that Great Britain has a little “context” dust-up of their own. British TV Channel 4, as part of a year-long investigation, featured in a program some remarks made by the preachers of the Religion of Peace inside their mosques.

The police, after initially investigating some of the individuals featured in the program, turned their sights on Channel 4. The police claimed that Channel 4 was taking the comments out of context and thus may have been possibly guilty of stirring up racial hatred.

Channel 4 stuck to their guns and eventually got a public retraction and apology from the police and prosecutors. Story here.

And this all points to the stupidity and ultimately the danger of these so-called “hate speech laws”. The very ambiguity of the letter and intent of these types of laws allows for their twisting and abuse. Similar to slimy operatives in Canada that post hate comments on websites of which they disagree in order to get those same sites investigated by various Canadian human rights commissions, the very hatred and intolerance that Channel 4 was exposing was turned right back around on them by the (thought) police as inciting hatred, themselves.

And actress, Brigitte Bardot has been fined once again by the French government for “inciting racial hatred”. Bardot, an animal rights activist wrote a letter to then-French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that Muslims should stun animals before slaughtering them during the Aid al-Kabir holiday.

“I’ve had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, and destroying our country by imposing their ways.”

She wrote to prosecutors: “I’m sickened by how anti-racist groups are harassing me.” We would like to challenge her description of these groups.

She was fined 12,000 pounds but considering about whom she was running this smack, we believe she got off easy.

Embrace the hatred of hate crime laws.