tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89844991130196745362024-03-16T00:07:46.288-07:00Beers with DemoA blog for the unwashed and well-readDeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.comBlogger4884125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-44130436381716553982015-11-11T09:22:00.001-08:002015-11-11T09:22:09.521-08:00And Where a Salon Scribe Gets a Tad Out of His Swim Lane<br />
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Over the weekend, Salon writer, DAVID MASCIOTRA, caused quite a dust-up on social media with his own “salute to the troops” ahead of Veteran’s Day . Here is the headline, followed by the sub-headline and then followed by the first paragraph of the piece:<br />
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<blockquote><b>You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy</b><br />
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<i>It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must end<br />
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Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes</i>.”</blockquote><br />
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If you desire, you can read it in its entirety, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/09/you_dont_protect_my_freedom_our_childish_insistence_on_calling_soldiers_heroes_deadens_real_democracy/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow">here</a>.<br />
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The first thing that jumped out at us was the use of “forced” and “compulsory”. His definition of those words would be greatly at odds with ours and yours, we suppose, but if you are going to pen this on the weekend prior to Veteran’s Day, you’d be well-served to go big on hyperbole. And what we’ve seen on T.V. this weekend, mostly at sporting events, were expressions of thankfulness and gratitude, not worship. With respect to his definition of the word "worship", your mileage may vary. But, again, if you are going to go there, go big... and, of course, play the race card. <i>Always play the race card</i>.<br />
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So, let’s put semantics aside and dig right into this with a critique angle that originates from the American left, Saul Alinsky specifically, and which is rooted in using one’s own rules against them. Are you familiar with the term “mansplaining”? Wiki has got it covered here, but in short it is: "a man condescendingly explain[ing] something to female listeners".<br />
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And more expansively, it is the phenomena of the explainer knowing less about the subject than the explainee. Narrowing it down again, we’ve seen the term used most consistently in the abortion argument where men have no right to an opinion on the matter since they are biologically incapable of having one. <i>OK, then. So, what say you, Mr. Masciotra?</i> Oh, wait. Who cares what this guy has to say? He is the ideological heir of those who mocked and ridiculed the G.I.s and Marines returning home from Vietnam. The man despises the military as an institution so WTF right does he have on opining on the subject? By the rules of the left, his arguments are null and void from the start. <i>See how that works?</i><br />
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But shutting down dissent is no fun, right? Especially, when we can have more fun deconstructing his argument.<br />
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Maybe ol’ boy is pitching such a fit because he’s jealous. That’s right, jealous. Gallup has been tracking respect in/confidence in various American institutions for decades. Follow the link <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/Confidence-Institutions.aspx">here</a> and you’ll see the military has, over the years, been the most respected institution in America. And where would Masciotra’s profession(s) be? Newspapers, Television news, internet news, i.e., the mainstream media, are towards or right at the bottom of the heap. <br />
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Scroll down to the performances of the individual institutions over the years and you’ll see that the military’s numbers have remained steady where the public’s confidence in the media has eroded over time. So, perhaps having a 4th estate, the watchdog of democracy, that is so un-respected because the public lacks confidence they are doing their job is more deadening to real democracy than “worshipping” the troops.<br />
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The definition of “hero” is very much open to interpretation as it should be. One man’s hero may not be another’s and that’s completely fine. But here’s the thing Masciotra and his ilk don’t understand: Members of the most respected institution in the country will get the benefit of the doubt in this country’s cultural lexicon. And members of the least respected institutions in this country, the media hackeratti, of which he is a member, will not. <i>Sorry, Dave, no one likes you</i>.<br />
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Ancient societies passed along history and the pillars of that particular culture through story-telling and myth-making. The warriors of those societies were held up as models of physical bravery, courage and honor. There is a positive aspect to mythologizing the favorable aspects of society be they soldiers or not. Characters in our country’s past like, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and John Henry have been mythologized and made figuratively larger-than-life in an effort to strengthen a shared American cultural experience and to perhaps serve as an analogy to vastness of our country.<br />
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The vet = hero narrative is really no different. We’ve seen it a couple of times when we are out with my little brother and his family where he will have his 3 young children approach members of the Huntington Beach Fire Department to express their gratitude and thanks for the work they do that if it hasn’t already, may certainly in the future, put their limb and life in harm’s way. My little brother is mythologizing (having his children look up to) the best aspects of our culture through these men: sacrifice, courage and bravery being among them.<br />
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And almost identically, the vet = hero narrative mythologizes and makes larger-than-life its subject because a huge swath of the country of which Masciotra finds foreign, still believe these traits found in the men and women of the United States military, to be important to our country.<br />
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Let’s leave with this: Guys: when you were growing up, what did you play? “Army” or “crap-weasel columnist at a lefty rag”? Ladies: “Into whose arms do you wish to fall? A fireman’s (mustachio and all), or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1152&bih=626&q=david+masciotra&oq=David+Masci&gs_l=img.1.0.0l2j0i30l5j0i5i30j0i30j0i24.1537.4806.0.7971.11.11.0.0.0.0.264.1357.0j8j1.9.0....0...1.1.64.img..2.9.1351.huNNldg4NI0">David Masciotra</a>?<br />
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<i>A special Veterans’ Day shoutout to my two older brothers who also happen to be two of my favorite Cold War warriors who served with distinction and honor in this country’s nuclear sub fleet and the U.S. Army’s vaunted 82nd Airborne Division, respectively.</i><br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-80630700653656311392015-01-31T14:04:00.000-08:002015-01-31T14:04:56.969-08:00Football rules changes...? You've come to the right place<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvlFtfQxGuexSqjkqs7B4Y9qmEqn5Y7FTV5rI58nufjk88QAwuMYp1KA4Vh5_axso7CKv67UK6PqRRKAeBfYxBBYMUqojVTYY5sNhkRwuLZQLpjfg0kt4iSATHuURwSWvilM_NOIY4S6DZ/s1600/nfl-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvlFtfQxGuexSqjkqs7B4Y9qmEqn5Y7FTV5rI58nufjk88QAwuMYp1KA4Vh5_axso7CKv67UK6PqRRKAeBfYxBBYMUqojVTYY5sNhkRwuLZQLpjfg0kt4iSATHuURwSWvilM_NOIY4S6DZ/s400/nfl-logo.jpg" /></a></div><br />
There’s no denying that over the last few decades most all on-field rules changes made by the NFL have been exercises in increasing offense and scoring. This has created an arms race in a sense where the pendulum swings back and forth between the NFL offenses and NFL defenses whereby the offenses get aided by rules changes and the defenses counter with a combination of innovative schemes and superior athletes. To wit, for years, it’s been conventional wisdom that the best athletes in the world were in the NBA. Now days, we would add NFL defensive backs and possibly outside linebackers/rush ends into that mix <i>(you don’t think dudes like Richard Sherman, Darrelle Revis and J.J. Watt can ball a little?).</i><br />
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But to the rule changes…. They’ve become ridiculous. In addition to wanting to increase offensive excitement in the game, the competition committee (the group within the NFL responsible for on-field rules changes) now must address the issues of concussions when tweaking the rules of the game. This has resulted in, quite literally, a hands-off approach to defending receivers downfield and rushing the quarterback to the point that were an NFL fan from 1980 transported forward in time 35 years, he would scarcely recognize the game. And to be sure, this is not necessarily all bad: we understand the need to protect the players while they become bigger and faster as the game’s evolution demands it. And it’s also understandable that as NFL viewers/consumers, we, all bitching and grousing aside, adjust our expectations to what is and isn’t a penalty accordingly (i.e., do we watch any less football because you can’t lay a hand on the quarterback, anymore?).<br />
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There are, however, a few rule changes that we would like to see made that would, simultaneously, increase offense/scoring and/or offensive plays without having direct adverse impact on the defenses and defensive personnel.<br />
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They are as follows:<br />
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1) Decrease the width of the goal post: At this year’s Pro Bowl, it was decided that the width of the goal post would be decreased by 4 ft. and which resulted in Adam Vinatieri missing 2 35 yard extra points and 1 38 yard field goal. This is a good thing. Let’s face it: Place kickers are just too good. Hell, by their appearances these days, lots of them actually look like athletes and inclement weather aside, anything inside 45-50 yards is pretty much automatic. We actually think it should be decreased by 6 ft. but we’ll settle for 4 ft., for now. And do you know why? Do you know what’s fun? 4th downs. 4th downs are fun. Do you know what’s not? Field goals. Field goals suck. Let’s force head coaches and offensive coordinators to make the tough call and keep their offense on the field for a 4th and 2 from the 32 yard line going in instead of picking up the perfunctory 3 points. <br />
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2) One foot instead of two inbounds: Why this has not happened by now absolutely baffles us. One foot inbounds while possessing the ball has been the rule at the college level for as longs as we can remember and if you want to increase offense at the pro level without putting the defense at a distinct disadvantage, why must you have two feet inbounds? This is such a no-brainer. <i> C’mon, guys</i>. Hit the Easy Button – make this happen!<br />
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3) The Calvin Johnson Rule: Now known as the Dez Bryant Rule. Let’s face it. We were robbed of one of the greatest moments in NFL Playoff history in the divisional playoff game a few weeks back between the Packers and Cowboys because the referees made the, <i>we guess</i>, correct ruling on an NFL rule that no one really understands. Sorry, any rule that contains the verbage “…and then makes a move consistent with the game…” is a bad rule. If the receiver comes down with two feet (one foot? Please see above) and possession of the ball and is downed by contact… <i>it’s a catch</i>. Or as one wag put it: “If 25 drunk guys at the bar think it’s a catch… <i>it’s a catch.”</i><br />
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4) Football inflation: We won’t bother re-hashing any of the controversy surrounding an issue that has garnered more attention than perhaps it has deserved other than to say that both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, about 10 years ago, lobbied to have control of the footballs they were using for that particular game. As they were granted this concession, why not take it to the logical conclusion that they should be able to inflate/deflate the balls to whatever psi they desire? Honestly, does anyone really care to what pressure the footballs are inflated? We think not. And remember, this rule change does not put the defense at any specific disadvantage. This isn’t baseball where in a mano a mano matchup between the pitcher and the batter, the pitcher is at a significant advantage by “doctoring” the baseball. Besides, defensive backs have hands like snakes so it’s not going to matter anyway. <br />
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This simply makes it easier for the quarterback to throw the ball and for the receivers to catch it and for the running backs and receivers to hold on to it. <i>Or does it?</i> Ahhh… therein lies the rub: the quarterback will have to take into consideration the preferences of his receivers and backs… or… he doesn’t. All in all, if this rule change goes through, we don’t foresee the psi of the football moving much out of the league-mandated range of 12.5 – 13.5 psi as it is now. Just let the QBs do with their footballs what they want so we can eliminate silly controversies like DeflateGate.<br />
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We have some other proposed rules changes but we wanted to keep this list specific to increasing offense and excitement while not putting the defense at a specific disadvantage.<br />
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There you have it gang. Let us know what you think.<br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-74986053520404160032015-01-05T11:17:00.001-08:002015-01-05T11:17:34.700-08:00If we are going to get ahead of ourselves...<br />
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You’re loving this 4-team college football playoff format, aren’t you? You’ve been loving the weekly unveiling of the top 4 teams every Tuesday night that was must-see T.V. for East Coasters and must-listen radio/must-interwebbing for us work-a-daddies on the West Coast, yeah? And you totally ate-up those semi-final games on New Year’s Day, didn’t you? But you’re a greedy one, right? We know what you’re thinking, you dirty bird: Now, that you’ve wet your beak on this particular playoff format, you’re of the mind that if 4 teams are good, 8 is better. Did we feel you on that?<br />
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<i>Well, pump the breaks, there, champ.</i><br />
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There are certain logistical details within an 8-team format that need to be overcome, the chief amongst those being asking a college program’s fanbase to make plans for possibly 3 different road trips in a 2-3 week time span. <br />
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<i>A quick aside on the weekly unveiling show: face it, the real excitement isn’t who’s going to be #3, #2 or even who will be #1. The real excitement that kept you on edge every Tuesday afternoon/evening was who was going to be last one it at #4 and who was going to be first one out at #5. You think that same level of anticipation, that same level of buzz is going to carry over to finding out who is in at #8 and who is out at… #9? Just something to think about, there, oh greedy one.</i><br />
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This isn’t realistic and simply geometrically expanding the current format whereby the 2 semi-final games are played at a traditional bowl venue isn’t going to work. 1st round half-full or even three-quarters-full stadiums because fan bases aren’t willing to travel, possibly, coast-to-coast one week with the possibility of another road trip the following week is not going to fly with college and university big-wigs. <br />
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Not-at-capacity stadiums will suggest a lack of buzz and juice with the general public when, overall, momentum and the overall popularity of college football is undeniably on the upswing.<br />
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So, here’s what needs to happen in order to make the 8-team format work: First off, first round games will be played on the home turf of the higher seeds. So, the top 4 seeds will host the first round games against the 5-8 seeds. This guarantees sell-outs and gets things kicked off in front of rowdy partisan crowds. If you are worried about the lower-seeded team being at a disadvantage, well, yes, they are the lower seeded team and that’s pretty much how it works in every other sport. The moment the “playoff” button was hit, that ship set sail and non-traditional tweeks to the system will have to be made in order for an 8-team playoff to be sustainable. Trust us, a sold out game at the Coliseum or down south “between the hedges” will be great television.<br />
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OK, now for some normalcy or rather "new normalcy": the two semi-final games will be played at 2 of the 6 rotating bowl sites on New Year’s Day just as it is now. <i>Just as it is, now.</i> Perfect. This keeps everyone who matters on board and minimizes disruption to the current system that everyone, thus far, is pretty excited about.<br />
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Lastly, as we understand it, the national championship game goes to the highest bidder and as it stands, naturally, this year’s game will be played at Jerry’s World (Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys) there in Arlington, Texas outside of Dallas. Short of having it there every year (which would not be a bad thing – we’ll explain later), the college big-wigs would be well-served to keep the games at domes in the middle of the country, again, for travel/logistical reasons. We’re looking at you, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and Ford Field in Detroit.<br />
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Back to our modest proposal of a semi-permanent home in Arlington/Dallas for the national championship game: in expanding to an 8-team format before we've even finished up the inaugural 4-team playoff format, we are looking into the unknown and some assumptions need to be made and, again, as we see it, maximizing partisan crowd attendance has to be top priority. That’s why we went with home-field first round and Dallas for national championship game. Dallas provides a central location on the U.S. map that is <i>not-too-far</i> for any one particular program’s fan base and here is perhaps the best part: Dallas is pretty much the geographic center of America's college football fan base; it’s in the heart of Big 12 country, a reasonable drive west down Interstate 20 from SEC country and a 3-hour plane ride from much of an ascendant PAC-12 territory. What this means is you will be guaranteed a sell-out of college football fans that will create the right atmosphere for college football’s national championship game.<br />
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Of course, it probably already is a Super Bowl-like corporate junket, but boys can dream, can’t they?<br />
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We welcome any and all critiques and alternatives.<br />
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<b>*</b> Heisman Trophy winner and Oregon Duck QB, Marcus Mariota who will be taking on Ohio State on January 12 for the college football national championship.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-66055039964269124312014-12-23T12:31:00.002-08:002014-12-23T12:31:49.317-08:00Why hasn't the nation-wide gun control movement gained any real traction?<br />
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If you inclined to answer that it is due to the gobs of money the NRA spends on an annual basis to support or block legislation according to their favor and to do the same on political candidates, we won’t necessarily argue against that. Allow us, however, to offer up another reason that may have more actual influence than any money spent by the NRA: many gun control advocates and, in particular, the ones that have the most “voice” in that community are criminally incompetent.<br />
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One example that immediately comes to mind is our very own wunderkin Vice President, who in the aftermath of the Newtown school shooting, claimed he told his wife Jill that the proper way to deal with a home intruder is to go out on the back deck with the shot gun and fire off a few rounds. <br />
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<i>Uhhh… Joe? You bumbling stooge… that is against the law and may very well get you thrown in jail</i>. You see, it’s kind of tough to enact “sensible” gun control legislation when you don’t even have a grasp of the ones already on the book.<br />
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And then there was the time David Gregory of “Meet The Press” <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/26/david-gregory-police-investigation_n_2364637.html">brought a gun magazine on the set</a> for a debate with Wayne LaPierre of the NRA in contradiction to Washington D.C. law. You see, it’s kind of hard to take the gun-control set seriously when they hypocritical flout standing gun laws.<br />
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And most-recently we have an anti-gun PSA from a filmmaker <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOhBAH3zPA">Rejina Sancic</a> that really must be seen to be believed. Here it is:<br />
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<i>(If embed no worky, please click on link above)</i><br />
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We have it from very reliable sources what you just watched was not parody nor satire nor was it any sort of false flag operation designed to mock the lack of credibility of gun-grabbers… that was the real deal, gang. People much smarter on the topic of gun laws and gun safety can chime in but what is advocated here is stealing and carrying a firearm onto school grounds, both criminal offenses. Also, the young man’s trigger finger is hovering over the trigger as he puts the gun into his bag and when he sets the gun down on the desk of his teacher, the barrel of the gun is clearly pointed at the teacher, thus two gun safety 101 <i>no-nos</i> in 90 seconds.<br />
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We have a sick feeling in our gut that Sancic knew exactly what she was doing and has thusly deluded herself into believing that advocating unsafe and feloniously criminal behavior is justifiable as it serves “the greater good” of gun control. Sacrifices must be made at the altar of the collectivist religion of gun control, we suppose. The irony burns as it is gun control advocates that continually level the charge of “callousness” and “uncaring” at gun owners and 2nd amendment supporters with respect to the victims of gun violence.<br />
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<i>You see, it’s really, really tough to take gun-grabbers seriously when they advocate unsafe and criminal behavior for our nation’s young people.</i><br />
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In short, please get your s**t together before you begin preening and lecturing the rest of us upon whatever moral high ground you believe you stand.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-7760666323697424462014-11-10T16:52:00.000-08:002014-11-10T16:52:12.291-08:00And where a Salon writer wades into (for him) completely uncharted waters<br />
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Over the weekend, Salon writer, DAVID MASCIOTRA, caused quite a bit of dust-up on social media with his own “salute to the troops” ahead of Veteran’s Day . Here is the headline, followed by the sub-headline and then followed by the first paragraph of the piece.<br />
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<i><blockquote><b>You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy</b><br />
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It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must end<br />
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Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.”</blockquote><br />
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If you desire, you can read it in its entirety, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/09/you_dont_protect_my_freedom_our_childish_insistence_on_calling_soldiers_heroes_deadens_real_democracy/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow">here</a>.</i><br />
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The first thing that jumped out at us was the use of “forced” and “compulsory”. His definition of the words would be at odds with ours or else he would be in some sort of legal trouble outside of being roundly criticized on the internet. But, we suppose, if you are going to pen this on the weekend prior to Veteran’s Day, you’d be well-served to go big on hyperbole. And what we’ve seen on T.V. this weekend, mostly at sporting events, was expressions of thankfulness and gratitude, not worship. But, again, if you are going to go there, go big.<br />
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So, let’s put semantics aside and dig right into this with a critique angle that originates from the American left, Saul Alinsky specifically, and which is rooted in using one’s own arguments against them. Are you familiar with the term “mansplaining”? Wiki has got it covered <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining">here</a>, but in short it is: "a man condescendingly explain[ing] something to female listeners".<br />
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And more expansively, it is the phenomena of the explainer knowing less about the subject than the explainee. Narrowing it down again, we’ve seen the term used most consistently in the abortion argument where men have no right to an opinion on the matter since they are biologically incapable of having one. OK, then. So, what say you, Mr. Masciotra? Oh, wait. Who cares what this guy has to say? He is the ideological heir of those who spit on the G.I.s and Marines returning home from Vietnam. The man despises the military as an institution so WTF right does he have on even opining on the subject? By the logic of the left, his arguments are null and void from the start. See how that works?<br />
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But shutting down dissent is no fun, right? Especially when we can have more fun deconstructing his argument.<br />
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Maybe ol’ boy is pitching such a fit because he’s jealous. That’s right, jealous. Gallup has been tracking respect in/confidence in various American institutions for decades. Follow the link <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/Confidence-Institutions.aspx">here</a> and you’ll see the military has, over the years, been the most respected institution in America. And where would Masciotra’s profession(s) be? Newspapers, Television news, internet news, i.e., the mainstream media, are towards or right at the bottom of the heap. <br />
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Scroll down to the performances of the individual institutions over the years and you’ll see that the military’s numbers have remained steady where the public’s confidence in the media has eroded over time. So, perhaps having a 4th estate, the watchdog of democracy, that is so un-respected because the public lacks confidence they are doing their job is more deadening to real democracy than “worshipping” the troops.<br />
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The definition of “hero” is very much open to interpretation as it should be. One man’s hero may not be another’s and that’s fine. But here’s the thing Masciotra and his ilk don’t understand: Members of the most respected institution in the country will get the benefit of the doubt in this country’s cultural lexicon. And members of the least respected institutions in this country, the media hackeratti, of which he is a member, will not. Sorry, Dave, no one likes you.<br />
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Pre-historic societies passed along history and the pillars of that particular culture through story-telling and myth-making. Warriors were held up as models of physical bravery, courage and honor. There is a positive aspect to mythologizing the favorable aspects of society be they soldiers or not. Characters in our country’s past like, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and John Henry have been mythologized and made figuratively larger-than-life in an effort to strengthen a shared American cultural experience and to perhaps serve as an anology to vastness of our country.<br />
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The <i>vet = hero</i> narrative is really no different. We’ve seen it a couple of times when we are out with my little brother and his family where he will “force” his 3 young children to approach members of the Huntington Beach Fire Department to express their gratitude and thanks for the work they do that if it hasn’t already, may certainly in the future, put their limb and life in harm’s way. My little brother is mythologizing (making his children look up to) the best aspects of our culture through these men: sacrifice, courage and bravery being among them.<br />
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And almost identically, the <i>vet = hero</i> narrative mythologizes and makes larger-than-life its subject because a huge swath of the country of which Masciotra finds foreign, still believe these traits to be important to our country.<br />
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Let’s leave with this: Guys: when you were growing up, what did you play? “Army” or “crap-weasel columnist at a lefty rag”? Ladies: “Into whose arms do you wish to fall? A fireman’s (mustachio and all), or <a href="https://davidmasciotra.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/david-masiotra-c.jpg">David Masciotra</a>?<br />
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<b>*</b> Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas, Texas embraces Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr. during a Veterans Day commemoration in Dallas. Graunke lost a hand, a leg and and eye when he was injured by a bomb in Iraq.<br />
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<i>A special Veterans’ Day shoutout to my two older brothers who also happen to be two of my favorite Cold War warriors who served with distinction and honor in this country’s nuclear sub fleet and the U.S. Army’s vaunted 82nd Airborne Division, respectively.</i>Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-86390048652883224282014-04-19T11:47:00.001-07:002014-04-19T11:47:13.036-07:00Next, they came for the craft beer and you said nothing<br />
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Want to know how to goon up a perfectly good win-win situation for all participating parties? You get the federal government involved, that’s how.<br />
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will now be regulating the spent grains from the brewing process because of pet food or something.<br />
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<blockquote>For centuries, brewers have given or sold the leftover grain from the brewing process to local ranchers and dairy farmers for cattle feed. But new regulations proposed by <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/15/regulation-nation-breweries-fight-back-against-new-government-grain-rules/">the Food and Drug Administration threaten to end that relationship.</a> <br />
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"The whole brewing community was shocked about it," said Josh Deth, co-owner of Revolution Brewing in Chicago, Ill. <br />
Deth, whose title is "Chairman of the Party," says it's always been a great deal for both sides. The ranchers get the grain, and the brewers get those leftovers removed from their facilities for free. <br />
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"We're trading, giving something of value to each other and working it out. I think that's one of the really great things, and people really hate to see the government get involved in something where they can just as easily stay out of this." <br />
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Under the FDA's proposed regulations, so-called spent grains would be regulated the same as pet food. <br />
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Deth said the regulations would make it far too costly for him to prepare the grains to be passed along to farmers. The only remaining option would be sending it to a landfill, which would cost more than $100,000 a year.<br />
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That would be bad for dairy and cattle farmers like Jim Minich, who gets 30 tons of spent grain from Revolution Brewing each week. Not only does the grain save him more than $100,000 a year in feed costs, his 750 cows also produce more milk after chowing down on their "happy hour." <br />
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"I mean it's just basically grain and it's got a lot of yeast in it and it's wet, so it adds to the palatability of the feed so they eat more," he said. <br />
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The regulations are part of the FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act, a sweeping new food safety reform law signed by President Obama in 2011. According to the FDA, the purpose of the law is to improve the safety of animal food.</blockquote><br />
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And just like that, farmers like Minich will be adding $100,000/year to their operating costs and breweries like Revolution Brewing will be doing likewise all in the name of animal food safety?<br />
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In Placentia, California, this is known as a solution in search of a problem as the article readily explains.<br />
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<blockquote>There's no record of spent grains causing any problems for cows or humans, though, according to Chris Thorne, a spokesman with the Beer Institute. <br />
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"We already meet or exceed the goals that the FDA would like us to see. So we see these regulatory procedures as completely unnecessary," Thorne told Fox News. <br />
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The FDA was flooded by comments from brewers, distillers and cow farmers when the proposed rule was announced. <br />
Responding to the outcry, the FDA said in a statement it is now looking to revise the language for the rule this summer before issuing a final decision sometime next year.<br />
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"We are working to develop regulations that are responsive to the concerns expressed, practical for businesses, and that also help ensure that food for animals is safe and will not cause injury to animals or humans," the FDA said.</blockquote><br />
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This represents a classic example of a sprawling federal bureaucracy looking to justify its existence by creating a make-work program, if you will, that accomplishes nothing but to the detriment of the dairy/cattle and brewing industries.<br />
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For you big government types, regulations are all fine and dandy when they don’t effect you. However, think of this completely unwarranted and unnecessary intrusion into a completely voluntary and mutually beneficial business arrangement the next time you are pedaling your fixie over to Toronado for a Pliny the Younger.<br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-13084202225347573412014-04-02T09:26:00.001-07:002014-04-02T09:26:26.745-07:00Mission Accomplished<br />
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At a Rose Garden presser yesterday, here’s the winner of the Washington Post’s “Lie of the Year” do a victory lap in claiming that the administration met its goal of signing up 7 million “enrollees” for the federal healthcare law (aka "ObamaCare) by the March 31st deadline.<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eowNuH7kXw8?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Of course, the administration that lied about being able to keep your plan and lied about being able to keep your doctor offers up no substantive data regarding this 7 million figure…. So, go ahead and spike the football, Preezy, we know you’re full of it.<br />
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The administration that from October 1st right up until yesterday was purposely vague as to the number of “enrollees” suddenly got purposely specific on the day after the sign-up deadline. <i>Weird.</i> Forgive our cynicism but if the goal had been 8.5 million or 10.2 million, we know damn well what number they would’ve pulled out of their collective asses for yesterday’s presser.<br />
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And about this term “enrollee” – what specifically does it mean? Again, no specifics from the White House because the only figure that matters is the number of people that have paid their premiums… a figure which the White House has been conveniently unable to provide.<br />
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Despite the gloating and happy talk from the President, folk who have taken the time to crunch the numbers tell a different story. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/18/coverage-expansion-fail-less-than-one-third-of-obamacare-exchange-enrollees-were-previously-uninsured/">A survey of insurers and other industry players</a> has shown that of those 7.1 million the administration is parading around, anywhere between 65-89% of them were <b>previously insured</b>. And the majority of those who previously had insurance signed up on the ObamaCare exchange because either their company dropped their coverage or their insurance plan was rendered illegal by ObamaCare.<br />
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After all this law has put us through for the last 4 years, in a nation of 350 million people, we are talking about insuring in the neighborhood of 2 million previously uninsured people with upwards of 45 million federal law-breakers still walking around out there scot-free. <i>Heckuva job, guys</i>.<br />
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<i>“The debate is over…”</i><br />
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A curiously undemocratic thing for the leader of the Democratic Party to say. Something like that is reserved for a person who knows he cannot debate his side on its own merits because the facts on the ground don’t support it. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also something said to us only by our parents while we were children, at least without getting heckled out of the room. And perhaps not coincidentally, that’s the same line used by the global warming book-cookers and decline-hiders.<br />
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We can only hope the President’s un-Presidential gloating doesn’t lead his fan boys and fan girls to <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/01/anti-obamacare-cancer-patient-attacked-by-reid-now-receiving-death-wishes-from-liberals/">engage in more “civility” and “tolerance” like the below</a>:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1RQ9_0ztwGLeuFBi5mvzQAh0NzQGa7Pnn_vGBDmGUVVROKRFd3mcoJttZWmDDRpOoFVNIvB3GWpu6zDvMH5h1xBLLBcPcXH-KkDpESc_ngEJqi5nJRcjOHh5cOmwyGsQFfEKvMC2KHLU/s1600/julie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1RQ9_0ztwGLeuFBi5mvzQAh0NzQGa7Pnn_vGBDmGUVVROKRFd3mcoJttZWmDDRpOoFVNIvB3GWpu6zDvMH5h1xBLLBcPcXH-KkDpESc_ngEJqi5nJRcjOHh5cOmwyGsQFfEKvMC2KHLU/s640/julie.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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What were we saying again about not having the facts on one's side?<br />
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As it stands currently, we will continue our fight in debating our side and happily subverting this law in any peaceful, legal and civil way we can.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-85054657418500048622014-03-29T11:39:00.000-07:002014-03-29T11:39:03.249-07:00Your California high-speed choo-choo update<br />
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Poor old Jerry Brown and his end-of-career legacy defining project, the high-speed rail project, just can’t seem to catch a break these days.<br />
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Amid <a href="http://beerswithdemo.blogspot.com/2014/01/your-california-high-speed-choo-choo.html">mounting legal problem</a>s thrown down by California Superior Court Judge Michael Kinney regarding the financing of the high-speed choo-choos, the project is now facing internal fire from their own peer review board over the travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.<br />
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From the L.A. Times and their high-speed rail beat writer Ralph Vartabedian:<br />
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<blockquote>Regularly scheduled service on California's bullet train system will not meet anticipated trip times of two hours and 40 minutes between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and are likely to take nearly a half-hour longer, a state Senate committee was told Thursday.<br />
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The faster trips were held out to voters in 2008 when they approved $9 billion in borrowing to help pay for the project. Since then, a series of political compromises and planning changes designed to keep the $68-billion line moving ahead have created slower track zones in urban areas.<br />
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But Louis Thompson, chairman of the High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, a state-sanctioned panel of outside experts, testified that "real world engineering issues" will cause schedules for regular service to exceed the target of two hours and 40 minutes. The state might be able to demonstrate a train that could make the trip that fast, but not on scheduled service, he told lawmakers. If public demand for the service supports additional investments, travel times could be improved after the currently planned system is built, he said.</blockquote><br />
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The article does not expand on to what specific “real world engineering issues” Thompson is referring but let’s just assume he’s talking about “stops”, as in “stops” to let fare-paying business embark and disembark the choo-choos.<br />
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This thing has become so politicized and such an albatross, we can imagine every blessed cow town out there in the Central Valley is demanding that if the choo-choos are going to be rolling through their jurisdiction, then by damned, they are going to be making a stop there.<br />
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And with every stop there is the inherent logistical inertia with respect to safely loading and unloading passengers that will have to be factored into that 2 hrs. and 40 minutes claim.<br />
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<i>But 2 hrs. and 40 minutes? </i> $68 billion (real world estimates put this project at nearly twice that, by the way, due to budgetary sorcery wrought by Brown’s cook crooks) to achieve a feat that can be accomplished in 50 minutes via aircraft out of Burbank to San Jose? And now the experts say it's going to take 30 minutes longer than that?<br />
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Back to the article:<br />
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<blockquote>Rail authority officials said after the hearing, held by the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, that they would meet the requirements of state law, but did not specifically say that trains would operate at the faster travel times. State law requirements may be open to legal interpretation. Language approved by voters says the system must be "designed to achieve" trip times of 2 hours and 40 minutes.</blockquote><br />
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Did you see what just happened there? The original voted-upon 2 hrs. and 40 minutes is now the <i>faster</i> time. <i>Peachy</i>.<br />
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The article ends by talking about Brown raiding the carbon emissions cap and trade fund to help finance the project, a mere pittance up against the $68-120 billion tab (in the 6 years since voters approved the project, they have yet to name one private source of funding which will be required to finance this boondoggle).<br />
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The largest public works project in the history of this country, which will of course, be powered by very conventional fossil fuels is receiving cap and trade dollars; an irony which we are sure is not lost on you.<br />
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As it stands, dear readers, yet another nail in the considerably-sized coffin of California’s high-speed choo-choos. We cheer on its staggering, stumble-drunk demise.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-91795735793464127472014-03-24T16:26:00.001-07:002014-03-24T16:26:28.392-07:00Farewell, England, we scarcely knew ye<br />
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Alternative headline: <i>Alternative fuel source gets a foothold in British hospitals</i><br />
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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, <i>“Ya know, eff it. We’re done here”</i>.<br />
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This is what the self-revocation process looks like for a member in good standing of Western Civilization.<br />
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Via KT of the Scratching Post who had <a href="http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2014/03/well-ill-bet-those-dead-luftwaffe.html?m=1">this to say</a> with respect to the following: <i>“.... it turns out there was no reason to Bomben auf Engelend after all. The British lion would eventually see the light.</i><br />
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From <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10717566/Aborted-babies-incinerated-to-heat-UK-hospitals.html">the Telegraph</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’<br />
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At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s Dispatches discovered.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.’<br />
Another ‘waste to energy’ facility at Ipswich Hospital, operated by a private contractor, incinerated 1,101 foetal remains between 2011 and 2013.<br />
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They were brought in from another hospital before being burned, generating energy for the hospital site. Ipswich Hospital itself disposes of remains by cremation.<br />
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“This practice is totally unacceptable,” said Dr Poulter.<br />
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“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.”</blockquote><br />
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<i>“totally unacceptable”... “Human Tissue Authority”</i><br />
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Charmed, we’re sure.<br />
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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<br />
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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.<br />
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Also, from <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10716844/Islamic-law-is-adopted-by-British-legal-chiefs.html">the Telegraph</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Nicholas Fluck, president of The Law Society, said the guidance would promote “good practice” in applying Islamic principles in the British legal system.<br />
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Because Balkanizing your country absolutely demands “good practice”.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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. <i> Did we not get this all straightened out?</i><br />
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<br />
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?<br />
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As it stands, right now, <i>peace out</i>, our cousins across the pond.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-86737046347650565052014-03-13T16:17:00.000-07:002014-03-13T16:17:02.703-07:00Technical bulletins: where horrible, no-good laws go to die<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jGBynzCwGkI/UyI6sNoII5I/AAAAAAAAMvo/7j73l6qsX5I/s1600/healthcare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jGBynzCwGkI/UyI6sNoII5I/AAAAAAAAMvo/7j73l6qsX5I/s400/healthcare.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<br />
B-Daddy over at The Liberator Today did <a href="http://theliberatortoday.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-whimper-not-bang-aca-quietly-repealed.html">a fine job of covering</a> that which we<br />
are about to here, below.<br />
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<br />
Recall, back in September of last year at the height of shutdown fever, the<br />
House passed a resolution that would've funded all government operations<br />
while suspending the individual mandate for one year. At the time, we<br />
thought that to be a very, very reasonable compromise. After all, there<br />
was every indication that the rollout of the ObamaCare online exchange on<br />
October 1st was not going to go smoothly so why not, legally, through the<br />
legislative process, allow both the tragically flawed website and its<br />
customers some more time to get up to speed?<br />
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<br />
Now, nearly six months after that, the individual mandate is about the only<br />
aspect of the law that has not been delayed or waived or exempted by<br />
executive fiat by the President himself. Yes, dear readers, it would<br />
appear that it is not those House Republican "hostage-takers" and<br />
"terrorists" rather President Barack Obama who is the biggest obstructionist<br />
to his own signature piece of legislation.<br />
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<br />
But what now of the individual mandate? Since the individual mandate is<br />
the lynchpin of the entire law (the mechanism by which to get young, healthy<br />
people to pay for the healthcare needs of the old and infirm), there was no<br />
way in hell anything was going to happen to it, right? Even if delaying the<br />
individual mandate made the most practical sense for everyone involved,<br />
there was no way that this administration was going to give in and thus give<br />
tacit acknowledgement that the Republicans were right back last September.<br />
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<br />
Well, in the regulatory equivalent of a Friday evening news dump, the law<br />
has once again been altered with dubious legality as an "out clause" of sorts<br />
has been added to the regulations concerning the individual mandate.<br />
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From the <a href="http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304250204579433312607325596?mobile=y">Wall Street Journal</a>... and we absolutely love the opening line:<br />
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<blockquote>ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their<br />
own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care<br />
Act-the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly<br />
excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance<br />
or else pay a tax penalty.<br />
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<br />
This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the<br />
Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth<br />
discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the<br />
mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to<br />
preserve some health plans that don't comply with ObamaCare benefit and<br />
redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.<br />
<br />
<br />
That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that<br />
casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be<br />
extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this<br />
second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans<br />
whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.</blockquote><br />
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You remember those cancellations, right? The<br />
<i>if-you-like-your-current-plan-you-can-keep-your-plan</i> cancellations? But we<br />
digress. Back in December, the administration, again by executive fiat,<br />
allowed those with cancelled plans to go back to their old "bad apple" and<br />
"sub-standard" plans from which they were to be saved by ObamaCare. Now,<br />
with minimal administrative effort, those people with cancelled plans will<br />
be exempted from the individual mandate.<br />
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<br />
Back to the article:<br />
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<blockquote>But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a<br />
new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your<br />
plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in<br />
the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your<br />
cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies<br />
unaffordable."<br />
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<br />
This lax standard-no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief-at least<br />
ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people<br />
can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you<br />
experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only<br />
requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to<br />
those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their<br />
prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an<br />
exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.<br />
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"documentation if possible" tells you all you need to know about how it is,<br />
or more precisely, how this isn't going to be enforced. How fitting,<br />
how perfect that this administration which treats with such pique and<br />
disdain the purposely difficult parameters for governing a constitutional<br />
republic would create something within their signature law that could aptly<br />
be called the "it's, <i>like</i>, too <i>haaaard"</i>, exemption.<br />
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<br />
To quote B-Daddy, “So, this is what victory over ObamaCare looks like”.<br />
<br />
So, what now? The administration has effectively gutted the requirements for the individual mandate so how is it that the rest of the law is supposed to remain financially stable?<br />
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<br />
What else to do to save this wretched law than to bail it out with massive tax-payer lump sums and subsidies for the health insurance lobby? It’s what they do best, in fact, it’s pretty much all they do.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-46817407592073217432014-03-08T11:27:00.001-08:002014-03-08T11:27:41.114-08:00What we've been tweeting<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XHtNrAhKccU/UxtryyOe7KI/AAAAAAAAMvU/FgURR4R4sJ8/s1600/twitter.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XHtNrAhKccU/UxtryyOe7KI/AAAAAAAAMvU/FgURR4R4sJ8/s400/twitter.png" /></a></div><br />
We apologize for the infrequency of posting here of late, a condition we will chalk up to a busy work schedule and the dog days of February and March where nothing happens, right?<br />
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We were able to get off some thoughts this past week via Twitter which we will share below:<br />
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Another day, Another constitutionally dubious unilateral executive order ObamaCare delay...<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt">http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt</a>. Preezy: if you like your "bad apple"/"sub-standard" plan that I originally banned, you can keep that plan. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440884533760516096">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt">http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt</a>. WaPo not even pretending anymore that this thing is not an unholy mess. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440883723639091200">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt">http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt</a> Intent behind newest delay is so transparent, WaPo doesn't even bother trying to bury it. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440994173252935680">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt">http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt</a> Remember all those crappy sub-standard healthcare plans <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a> was going to rescue you from? You can keep them.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440992944565129216">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Over to you, Senator Reid:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt">http://t.co/FUPjua9iPt</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> all these delays & exemptions proof of Americans lying about their <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a> horror stories, right?</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440886734201450496">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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So, the NFL is thinking of moving extra point tries back to the 25 yard line... color us skeptical:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/1a3ghp7OCl">http://t.co/1a3ghp7OCl</a>. On its face, this would appear 2 penalize northern and eastern non-dome teams. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFL&src=hash">#NFL</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Mad_Maxamillion">@Mad_Maxamillion</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Corey0Brien">@Corey0Brien</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440888594845024256">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"<a href="https://twitter.com/Corey0Brien">@Corey0Brien</a>: <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm">@deanriehm</a> solution in search of a problem? <a href="http://t.co/1a3ghp7OCl">http://t.co/1a3ghp7OCl</a>" Yep.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440848685329436672">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/PEaUkS4CE7">http://t.co/PEaUkS4CE7</a>. It just has a gimmicky, XFL vibe to it. 4 pts. for kicking ball into dragon's mouth? <a href="https://twitter.com/Corey0Brien">@Corey0Brien</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Mad_Maxamillion">@Mad_Maxamillion</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/440938250887499777">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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We don't care whose mug it is being plastered over this nation's flag but please tell us how this is good for a constitutional republic...? oh, that's right a <i>former</i> constitutional republic.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"<a href="https://twitter.com/lajouetreine">@lajouetreine</a>: <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ccot&src=hash">#ccot</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PJNET&src=hash">#PJNET</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tcot&src=hash">#tcot</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23oip&src=hash">#oip</a> <a href="http://t.co/WzyaJk9Zlf">http://t.co/WzyaJk9Zlf</a> <a href="http://t.co/Ty2kB6ZQ1G">pic.twitter.com/Ty2kB6ZQ1G</a>" Cults of personality worked so well last century.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441000697610264576">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<i>Dude...</i><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>RT <a href="https://twitter.com/gingging05">@gingging05</a> FROZEN! Another Arctic Blast has the U.S. side of Niagara Falls iced over again. <a href="http://t.co/iu158JH37Q">pic.twitter.com/iu158JH37Q</a></p>— Bryan May (@BMayNews10) <a href="https://twitter.com/BMayNews10/statuses/440978068958490624">March 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Some call it "growing in office" while we have some other choice terms for it:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/hb6BR3PUrP">http://t.co/hb6BR3PUrP</a> Wow. Check out what Senator Obama in '07 was saying about Bush's presidency in '14.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441034713960968193">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Chess champion on the inevitable ripple effect of botching the Syrian situation last year:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Don't ask about "consequences of inaction" on Ukraine when it is partly consequence of inaction in Syria. Inaction means always a next time.</p>— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/statuses/441278427711426560">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Internecine squabbles on the left over who was/wasn’t a true socialist, communist, Marxist, fascist… whatever and the explicit definitions of those terms make us all warm and fuzzy inside…<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/mrgeology">@mrgeology</a> Marxism, Socialism, Nazism, Communism, Maoism... all subverted the rights & liberties of the ind. to that of the state.. all bad</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441332530575204352">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/mrgeology">@mrgeology</a> ... in other words... semantics.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441332657750691841">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/mrgeology">@mrgeology</a> I have found that logic helpful when dealing with statist-apologists who argue "Well, Person 'X' wasn't a true 'Y'".</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441333266075754498">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<i>Yes!</i> A thousand times over.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual. -Calvin Coolidge <a href="http://t.co/gbn96SHHdl">pic.twitter.com/gbn96SHHdl</a></p>— Jeff Rakestraw (@RakestrawJeff) <a href="https://twitter.com/RakestrawJeff/statuses/441331150301429760">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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The (gun) control set obviously has issues with this concept.<br />
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So, the President wants to appoint a cop-killer advocate to the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department...<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/jtZrsBIUzl">http://t.co/jtZrsBIUzl</a> For being so pro-authoritarian, I'm fascinated with the liberal-left's hatred for the police. <a href="https://twitter.com/BDaddyLiberator">@BDaddyLiberator</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441355002003484673">March 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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It's getting to be that time of year...<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MarchMadnessMemories&src=hash">#MarchMadnessMemories</a> Watching in person Marvin O'Conner of St Joe's drop 29 n 2nd half n 2nd round loss 2 Stanford in '01 <a href="https://twitter.com/Mad_Maxamillion">@Mad_Maxamillion</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/441692591281537024">March 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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OK, that's it for today, gang. Catch you all later.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-7328846775417733912014-03-02T11:38:00.000-08:002014-03-02T11:38:07.289-08:00Hey, America!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F7T1b82o9CA/UxOIBoVSSPI/AAAAAAAAMvA/v6yPJvtv9ho/s1600/harry-reid-finger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F7T1b82o9CA/UxOIBoVSSPI/AAAAAAAAMvA/v6yPJvtv9ho/s640/harry-reid-finger.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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During the 2012 presidential campaign, Senate majority leader, Harry Ried, rather infamously accused the Republican nominee Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes for the previous ten years. This, of course, was based upon nothing. It was a shameless partisan smear that Reid has become famous for.<br />
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Reid was at it again this past week on the floor of the Senate essentially calling the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of American who had lost their healthcare coverage, had lost their doctor, had been denied treatment under ObamaCare or had seen the premiums sky-rocket… calling them liars.<br />
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In Reid’s <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/26/harry-reid-takes-to-the-senate-floor-to-tell-you-the-truth-about-all-those-obamacare-horror-stories/">own words</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>“Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they’re being told all over America,”</blockquote><br />
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<i>Unreal.</i> Never seen anything like this in our life: the 2nd most powerful person of a major political party calling the citizens of this country liars.<br />
The NRSC responded with this video…<br />
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… and we responded on our own via Twitter:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/2DNm2XbO6I">http://t.co/2DNm2XbO6I</a> Harry Reid: the people in this article who are being denied health care coverage are all liars. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439126509924933633">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Got media bias?<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If GOP leader called cancer patients liars I have a funny feeling <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN">@cnn</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/msnbc">@msnbc</a> might cover it. Not so with <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/instapundit">@instapundit</a></p>— Clarence Whorley (@ClarenceWhorley) <a href="https://twitter.com/ClarenceWhorley/statuses/439030557083590656">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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#WarOnWomen<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FrTNb2csTQ">http://t.co/FrTNb2csTQ</a> Harry Reid: this Julia Turner broad is a liar. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439127271551410176">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Alleged pederast Harry Reid: Julie Boonstra is a liar. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WarOnWomen&src=hash">#WarOnWomen</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439130108155408384">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/4MmlVoQezr">http://t.co/4MmlVoQezr</a>. Harry Reid: Stephen Blackwood and his Mom are liars. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WarOnWomen&src=hash">#WarOnWomen</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439128156512202753">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/RepGaryPeters">@RepGaryPeters</a> : two perfect examples of how statists behave when they find out their law sucks. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a> h/t: <a href="https://twitter.com/EdMorrissey">@EdMorrissey</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439131578342858752">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<i>Remember... it's for the children!</i><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/rUNIkWn4UZ">http://t.co/rUNIkWn4UZ</a> Charges of pederasty against <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> probably "are untrue" but one can't take any chances. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SafetyFirst&src=hash">#SafetyFirst</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439205173215248384">February 28, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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People unable to uncancel their ObamaCare plans:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/n34eFiBxwk">http://t.co/n34eFiBxwk</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a>: "you can check out any time you want but you can never leave." Another one of <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> liars.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439469150906220544">February 28, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Nothing is more comforting to a cancer patient than the uncertainty & bureaucracy of Øcare. Except maybe being called a liar by Harry Reid.</p>— Lee Ritz, M.D. (@lee_ritz) <a href="https://twitter.com/lee_ritz/statuses/439409610395373568">February 28, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"<a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganCoalition">@ReaganCoalition</a>: Dr. To Harry Reid: Yes, Those ObamaCare Horror Stories Are True. Sorry. <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> thinks that doc is a liar, too.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439636400984449025">March 1, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Harry Reid, "a loathsome figure to be sure," is at it again practicing his own brand of McCarthyism. <a href="http://t.co/EHcrRqnoq7">http://t.co/EHcrRqnoq7</a></p>— Brit Hume (@brithume) <a href="https://twitter.com/brithume/statuses/439180791969767425">February 27, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/1R8Tt4Pvm0">http://t.co/1R8Tt4Pvm0</a> Some more folks that <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> thinks are liars. They're all over the place. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439796898442928131">March 1, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"<a href="https://twitter.com/E__Strobel">@E__Strobel</a>: BTW, my employer cut their contribution to our 401k citing increased costs due 2 0bamacare. <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorReid">@SenatorReid</a> thinks you're a liar</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/439951169981394945">March 2, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Congratulations to the Senator from the great state of Nevada: there is no more loathsome and contemptible person on the American political scene than Harry Reid.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-18480675697323351952014-02-22T12:30:00.000-08:002014-02-22T12:30:15.383-08:00Video clip of the day<br />
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<b>Alternate headline</b>: <i>One of these Minnesota pols is not like the others</i><br />
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<br />
Via Hot Air<br />
<br />
<br />
Just a friendly townhall in Mankato Minnesota with Senator Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Tim Walz and Rep. Collin Peterson talking the farm bill immigration and, of course, ObamaCare.<br />
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Skip to the 1:20 mark for pricelessness.<br />
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<script type='text/javascript' src='http://KEYC.images.worldnow.com/interface/js/WNVideo.js?rnd=24946;hostDomain=www.keyc.com;playerWidth=630;playerHeight=385;isShowIcon=true;clipId=9861297;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=fixed'></script><a href="http://www.keyc.com" title="KEYC - Mankato News, Weather, Sports -">KEYC - Mankato News, Weather, Sports -</a><br />
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<i>(Click on link below if embed no workie)</i><br />
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<blockquote><i><a href="http://www.keyc.com/story/24770657/mn-lawmakers-talk-farm-bill-aca-at-ag-symposium">The lawmakers fielded other questions as well</a>, talking debt and immigration reform, but it was the question about the struggling health care law that everyone in the audience wanted to see answered.<br />
<br />
The question: "I thought the Affordable Care Act would save $2500 per family. What happened?"<br />
<br />
After Sen. Klobuchar and Rep. Walz looked at each other, laughter broke out in the room.<br />
<br />
Rep. Peterson quickly picked up the microphone to say, "I voted 'no', so I'll let these guys handle that," to the applause of the crowd.<br />
<br />
Both Klobuchar and Walz said they were aware of the problems, and wanted to find ways to fix it.<br />
<br />
Walz says, "This health discussion has got to be broader, it's got to point out where there are weaknesses and failures, it's got to make sure we're not leaving people behind or distorting the system. But don't pretend there was some type of safe harbor before this where everything was just peachy keen."</i></blockquote><br />
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<br />
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<br />
<br />
Walz is simply echoing the law’s patron saint Nancy Pelosi who urged passage of ObamaCare so we could indeed point out the law’s many weaknesses and failures… weaknesses and failures like losing the health insurance plan you liked, losing the doctor you liked and those sky-rocketing premiums you don’t like.<br />
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Congratulations to the statists of the Democratic Party who’ve upended a flawed system that the vast majority of Americans were happy with and turned it into an unholy mess.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-61884471929133581312014-02-17T10:31:00.001-08:002014-02-17T10:31:25.886-08:00Video clip of the day<br />
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<i>Alternate headline</i>: <b>Syrian peace talks, pretty much the goat rope you expected.</b><br />
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If this doesn’t represent the biggest waste of time in the foreign policy department, we scarcely know what does.<br />
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Of course, a very public yet hollow threat of military force against the Assad regime in Syria last fall paints one-self into a corner whereby Vladimir Putin comes riding to the rescue in the form of engineering peace talks.<br />
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<br />
Wait. <i>What?</i> Secretary of State John Kerry expresses all the faux outrage he can muster yesterday when he decries the efforts of Syria, Hezbollah and Russia in thwarting the progress of the peace talks.<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dYVi427PxXI?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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From <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-kerry-accuses-syria-leader-bashar-assad-of-stonewalling-geneva-peace-talks/">CBS News</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of stonewalling in peace talks and called on Russia to push its ally to negotiate with opposition leaders.<br />
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"Right now, Bashar al-Assad has not engaged in the discussions along the promised and required standard that both Russia spoke up for and the regime spoke up for," Kerry said during a press conference in Jakarta with Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.<br />
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He said Assad's team "refused to open up one moment of discussion" of a transitional government to replace Assad's regime.<br />
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"It is very clear that Bashar Assad is trying to win this on the battlefield instead of coming to the negotiating table in good faith," Kerry said<br />
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Peace talks last week in Geneva ended with no progress toward breaking the impasse in the nearly 3-year-old conflict in Syria.<br />
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Kerry also had harsh words for Assad's allies in Moscow.<br />
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"Russia needs to be a part of the solution and not be contributing so many more weapons and so much more aid that they are in fact enabling Assad to double down," he said.</blockquote><br />
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Our "smart power" producing results as predictable as the sun rising in the East.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-19782376472466084232014-02-13T17:35:00.000-08:002014-02-13T17:35:08.710-08:00Your California high-speed choo-choo update<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkr6QE4HLhKuD-hhQLpxoKLnagaXA15RUTkmGWAlXlL5vV9Q9Q39tlJHnwbe3yINMcr4XL1k2ycszBsT6O1sLFANc6YwlqfxRudE739sONpBSNdakalWtzTvppVCa8Wsa7JnA5rWi69TDk/s1600/california-high-speed-rail-project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkr6QE4HLhKuD-hhQLpxoKLnagaXA15RUTkmGWAlXlL5vV9Q9Q39tlJHnwbe3yINMcr4XL1k2ycszBsT6O1sLFANc6YwlqfxRudE739sONpBSNdakalWtzTvppVCa8Wsa7JnA5rWi69TDk/s400/california-high-speed-rail-project.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
It must be comforting for statists to know that defenses of their failed<br />
progressive policies and programs like the Affordable Care Act and<br />
California's high-speed choo-choos no longer contain any of the old fig<br />
leaves about controlling costs, granting equal access or how good this or<br />
that will be for the environment. No, the mask has fallen, gratefully<br />
so, and now our big government betters can finally admit to their core<br />
philosophy and that's an undying love for authoritarianism.<br />
<br />
<br />
But first let's take the opening paragraph of <a href="http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79279245/">this article</a> penned by Tom<br />
Zoellner an associate professor of English at Chapman College up in Orange<br />
County for the Los Angeles Times:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Who doesn't love a train? Who cannot fail to be seduced by the most<br />
appealing vehicle in human history - the rail-induced sensuality of "Brief<br />
Encounter," the desperate heroism of engineer Casey Jones, the creative<br />
muscle of the Big Four railroad barons, the plucky fortitude of Thomas the<br />
Tank Engine and the Little Engine That Could, all wrapped up in gleaming,<br />
rocking steel, punctuated by a high, lonesome whistle?</blockquote><br />
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<br />
How can we harsh this when this is pretty much the defense of high-speed<br />
choo-choos we would expect to be given by an English major, a major of which<br />
qualifies him to speak expertly on the most expensive public works project<br />
in U.S. history.<br />
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<br />
Back to the article:<br />
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<br />
<blockquote>And yet California voters have been expressing morning-after regrets since<br />
they voted for Proposition 1A, which promised them a bullet train from Los<br />
Angeles to San Francisco. Backers said a Concorde-like fuselage would rocket<br />
us to the Bay Area in 21/2 hours and for the low, low fare of $55. A<br />
Disneyland ride for grown-ups! And did we mention that it's carbon-friendly?</blockquote><br />
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<br />
<br />
Invoking an amusement park is a charming touch but what is the inherent<br />
advantage to a 2-1/2 hour trip when the flight from L.A. to San Francisco is<br />
less than half that. 2-1/2 hours on anything, be it <i>Space Mountain</i> or <i>It's<br />
a Small Worl</i>d is about 2-1/4 hours too long. <br />
<br />
The carbon-friendly claim is<br />
dubious at best. The raw material manufactured and transported way out<br />
there in the Central Valley (where the first leg of the project will be<br />
built) will not be delivered on the backs of unicorns and, further, this<br />
claim appears to be blissfully ignorant to the fact that the overwhelming<br />
source of electricity is still coal and fossil fuels and will remain so for<br />
the foreseeable future.<br />
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<br />
More Zoellner:<br />
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<blockquote>The reality has proved more problematic. The California High-Speed Rail<br />
Authority stumbled first by promising a smooth construction schedule and a<br />
$32-billion price tag. The ensuing lawsuits and engineering revisions have<br />
fouled up the timeline and bumped up the price to the current reckoning of<br />
$67.6 billion (and it'll probably be more expensive than that). The rail<br />
authority's latest business plan assumes ever more riders and ever less<br />
revenue but still suggests the project will ultimately be self-sustaining.</blockquote><br />
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<br />
Zoellner misuses "probably" for "will" because as we all know that $68<br />
billion price tag is only for laying down the tracks and does not even include the<br />
stations/depots, electricity-delivering infrastructure or even the<br />
choo-choos themselves. <br />
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<br />
Zoellner then goes on to bemoan the rapid drop in<br />
popularity of the project over the years. There is a simple reason for<br />
this: the rail authority lies. They lie about the cost, they lie about<br />
the projected ridership, they lie about private funding of the project and<br />
they lie about how the construction contractors are chosen. They are liars.<br />
We simply don't know what other term to use. Please get back to us if you<br />
have a better one.<br />
<br />
Before getting into the litany of real world problems faced by high-speed<br />
choo-choos Zoellner offers up this gem:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<blockquote>And yet lessons from around the world provide some hope that this romance<br />
can be saved. High-speed rail systems generally cost far more than was<br />
promised, take longer to build than is logical, have multiple construction<br />
headaches and require tempestuous adjustments along the way. But once all<br />
the drama is over and the engines are keyed, high-speed trains mostly do<br />
outstanding work.<br />
</blockquote><br />
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<br />
Admittedly, when defending the indefensible, falling back on romance is our<br />
go-to as well.<br />
<br />
But here is where all pretenses of legality, abiding by the rule of law and<br />
general western-recognized trappings of a constitutional republic are cast<br />
aside because, <i>dammit</i>, what we really need is some authoritarian<br />
muscle-flexing:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote><b>Not enough Mussolini</b>. This is an unattractive lesson: Big trains like this<br />
get built with an autocratic touch. Japan's Shinkansen train went online in<br />
1964 after enormous domestic resistance only because of the bluster and<br />
persistence of an all-but-forgotten bureaucrat named Shinji Sogo, nicknamed<br />
Old Man Thunder by his underlings.<br />
<br />
So far in California, the high-speed rail authority has hemmed and hawed<br />
more than blustered. It planned for an early groundbreaking, to create a<br />
physical reality that would be hard to stop, but that's been a no go. Gov.<br />
Jerry Brown's two-fisted support for the bullet train, and his idea of<br />
diverting carbon cap-and-trade revenue for high-speed rail, is the kind of<br />
sharp-elbowed move that may be the only way a project like this could ever<br />
get built.<br />
<br />
The biggest persistence question is this: Will there be U.S. presidents for<br />
the next 15 years who, like Obama, will keep stimulus money flowing for the<br />
project, even through flying flak?</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i> Will there be a president whom for the next decade and a half will keep<br />
throwing tens of billions of dollars into a public works black hole because<br />
of a combination of political expediency (CA's elite statist class has gone<br />
all in on high-speed choo-choos - their very credibility counts not on this<br />
thing actually working, only that it gets built) and a religious-like<br />
fanaticism towards Keynesian economic stimulus.</i><br />
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<br />
<br />
As we alluded to before, when you are at the end of your rope and you have<br />
nowhere else to turn, a good bet to rally the troops is to invoke Thomas the<br />
Tank Engine and a brutal 20th century fascist dictator who was allied with<br />
one of the most evil regimes known to mankind. Hey, we didn't go Godwin's<br />
Law, Zoellner did.<br />
<br />
<br />
We imagine there was a sigh of relief when Zoellner typed Mussolini:<br />
<i> There, I said it.</i> It must feel good to out yourself with respect to a yen<br />
for unbridled and un-checked top-down authoritarianism as it's a<br />
characteristic we've known about the liberal-left for years now.<br />
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<br />
<br />
A huge hat tip to KT of <a href="http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/">The Scratching Post</a> for giving us the head's up on this and the following commentary on the current state of California politics:<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-10457770680311341302014-02-10T11:55:00.003-08:002014-02-10T11:55:46.216-08:00Omelets across America*<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PO8qRIeFXEM/UvkuR8iFwgI/AAAAAAAAMuY/bEzLYXJJn3A/s1600/omelet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PO8qRIeFXEM/UvkuR8iFwgI/AAAAAAAAMuY/bEzLYXJJn3A/s400/omelet.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<i>*One in an unfortunate series that takes a look at the human toll exacted by the Affordable Care Act and which flies in the face of glib statist rationalizations that the implementation of ObamaCare is akin to “… a few broken eggs…”</i><br />
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Good news: If your liked your pre-existing condition, it looks like you will be able to keep your pre-existing condition.<br />
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From <a href="http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sick-kids-denied-specialty-care-due-obamacare-washington_776030.html">KING5 TV</a> in Seattle:<br />
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<i><blockquote>"Administrators at Seattle Children's today said they predicted this would happen, and it's even worse than they expected," says the local news anchor. "Patients being denied specialty treatment at the hospital by insurance providers on the Washington health benefits exchange. Children's filed request on behalf of 125 of their patients. Of those, they say they got only 20 responses, eight of which were denials. Dr. Sandy Melzer says all this comes after reassurances of certain unique specialty cases would still be covered."<br />
<br />
Dr. Sandy Melzer says, "Well, some of the patients who were denied are ones who clearly would fall into that unique category. A two-year-old with new significant neck mass that was being evaluated for infection or malignancy, an older child with a chronic severe medical condition requiring multidisciplinary care here, a baby that had a skull abnormality."<br />
<br />
The anchor explains, "Children's went ahead and treated those cases anyway, but Dr. Melzer said they can't afford to keep doing that it way."</blockquote></i><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Another day, another broken promise. Don’t know about you but this all sounds rather death panel-y to us. <br />
<br />
<br />
Just wish there was someone around to warn about the massive disruptions to the medical care system that would be wrought by ObamaCare.<br />
<br />
<br />
Curious to know to what degree the parents of these children being denied care are experiencing buyer’s remorse if they voted for Obama back in 2008.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-20552164104710641992014-02-08T10:55:00.001-08:002014-02-08T10:55:23.607-08:00This Olympic moment<br />
.<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U0c58p2_IK0/UvZ8-cWdEiI/AAAAAAAAMuI/6fVuWGzh1KI/s1600/sochi2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U0c58p2_IK0/UvZ8-cWdEiI/AAAAAAAAMuI/6fVuWGzh1KI/s400/sochi2014.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>OK. OK… we get it.</i> It’s the Olympics and not only is it presentation of the Olympics, it is the presentation of the Olympics in a country like Russia where the major western broadcasting network, NBC, is going to do its best to dress up the more unsavory aspects of its host nation’s history.<br />
<br />
<br />
However, tens of millions of Kulaks and other citizenry slaughtered willfully or left to starve because of horrible governing policy and countless other dissidents and “counter-revolutionaries” shipped off to the Gulags to rot for eternity might have a different term for the period between 1917 and 1989 than a “pivotal experiment”.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
From the opening ceremonies as narrated by NBC:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Scoiwl0c_Sc?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
What was the 20th century but a case study in the evils of collectivism in whatever permutation or terminology be it Marxism, Stalinism, Communism, Fascism or Maoism…?<br />
<br />
<br />
From apologies to white-washing, the anti-anti-communists of this country and of the west continue to beclown themselves a quarter century after the true believers, themselves, pulled the plug on their wretched, de-humanizing and deadly “experiment”. <br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-67362703649611807482014-02-06T15:50:00.000-08:002014-02-06T15:50:06.093-08:00Hey, you, in the white... you're ready to be a poet, right?<br />
.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y7ygnMnLb4g/UvQckmykFoI/AAAAAAAAMt0/e18LOoQjHBY/s1600/nurse-and-elderly-patient.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y7ygnMnLb4g/UvQckmykFoI/AAAAAAAAMt0/e18LOoQjHBY/s640/nurse-and-elderly-patient.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
While we were out at sea, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office dropped this bombshell with respect to how the Affordable Care Act was going to effect the nation’s employment numbers.<br />
<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://www.mcknights.com/cbo-affordable-care-act-will-reduce-full-time-workforce-by-more-than-2-million-in-the-next-decade/article/332700/">McKnight News Service</a>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The full-time work force will lose roughly 2 million people overall by 2024 as a result of the Affordable Care Act, according to new figures from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report, released Tuesday, came one week after an expert told lawmakers that nursing home staff are among those most likely to have their hours reduced due to the ACA. <br />
<br />
The employer mandate places a total of 2.6 million workers at risk of reduced hours, according toChen's written Congressional testimony. This number is similar to the CBO's projection that the full-time workforce will lose 2.5 million workers. However, the budget office said this erosion will mostly be due to expanded insurance options, not the employer mandate.<br />
<br />
For example, <i>the availability of government-subsidized, low-cost health plans available through the online marketplaces might lead some workers to work less,</i> the CBO stated. This is because the premium subsidies decrease as the beneficiary's income increases.<br />
<br />
While there are “anecdotal reports” of employers limiting workers' hours, there is “no compelling evidence” that the ACA has caused an increase in part-time employment, according to the report. Still, critics of the employer mandate — and the ACA generally — seized on the CBO figures to support their arguments. The report doubled the CBO's 2010 estimate of how much the health law will reduce labor use. The new numbers are from new research and more in-depth analysis, according to the budget office.</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The White House and their allies immediately went into spin mode touting how all this actually liberated workers from “job-lock” and how people who normally would not leave their job for fear of losing their employer-based health insurance. <br />
<br />
<br />
Now, we suppose it’s terrific that people are able to pursue their dreams as an artist, a photographer or graphic designer but please also bear in mind that you will be subsidizing this job transition and most perniciously, from the italicized sentence above, we are now told it’s a good thing that your tax dollars will be going to subsidize economic inactivity.<br />
<br />
<br />
And for an economy that possesses the lowest labor participation rate in 40 years, the term “job-lock” is a particularly curious term. The term job-lock, in our thinking, would apply to better economic times when a job or career change would entail less risk… that risk, of course, being all your own. As it stands, currently, however, there are 10 of millions of Americans who wish they had this job-lock problem the administration and its water-carriers claim to be combating.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
To <i>Twitter</i>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/VRe28FpvE9">http://t.co/VRe28FpvE9</a> Last week: "lowest unemployment rate in years." Today: "Say, 2.5 million more unemployed is pretty freaking groovy!"</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/430887735851634688">February 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>CBO says 2m will stop working b/c of Obamacare. WH says this is good news. They've got more spin than a Maytag. <a href="http://t.co/Ci7xlkeEbC">http://t.co/Ci7xlkeEbC</a></p>— Allen West (@AllenWest) <a href="https://twitter.com/AllenWest/statuses/431083481196548097">February 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
Seriously. Can't have it both ways, so what's it going to be, guys?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Harry Reid (1/8/2014): "Being out of work is not only financial devastating – it’s heartbreaking." My how a CBO report changes things.</p>— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) <a href="https://twitter.com/seanmdav/statuses/431067931984658432">February 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>White House response to that CBO report is simply Orwellian. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23upisdown&src=hash">#upisdown</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/431087152890277888">February 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>White House spin: People not buying insurance = "commerce" People not working = "freedom" People buying their own contraception = "ban"</p>— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) <a href="https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/statuses/430794480187637760">February 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Of course they did. People telling us that food stamps are an economic stimulus are same ones telling us unemployment is a good thing. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ACA&src=hash">#ACA</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/431177638770520064">February 5, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Dave's Breakup Tips: tell the person you want to dump that you're liberating them from "sex block."</p>— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) <a href="https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/statuses/431475088659992577">February 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So, if unemployment drops at next jobs report, what will Dems say then? <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jobslock&src=hash">#jobslock</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/431492189122621440">February 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/JGreenDC">@JGreenDC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/instapundit">@instapundit</a> I never thought in my lifetime 1 major party would announce so casually that working is bad. This is surreal</p>— Brian Brown (@acebb20) <a href="https://twitter.com/acebb20/statuses/431472159458725888">February 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/cVlej60fWe">http://t.co/cVlej60fWe</a> Long-term, stable employment? Naw, man, don't be a square - that's just "job-lock", daddy-o.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/431456081185751040">February 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/LuOo35PqM4">http://t.co/LuOo35PqM4</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a>: codification of the welfare state.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/431472812176318464">February 6, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Those last couple of tweets reminded us of the mentality behind the rationalizations of this devastating CBO report. In the linked article, they talk specifically of how hard this will hit the nursing home work force where 7.5% will see their hours reduced.<br />
<br />
<br />
These folks aren’t the 50-something suburbanite with equity in his home and a nice 401(k) nest-egg where a career change would be viewed as a liberating aspect as he glides into retirement with both kids now out of the house and on their own. This is the Harvard faculty lounge worldview of this situation which pervades the White House. This, however, is not reality.<br />
<br />
<br />
This will impact, most forcefully, the working class like the nursing home workforce with a still-limited skill set and not yet much in the way of upward mobility. Living paycheck to paycheck and supporting families, they can ill-afford to be "liberated" from job-lock. The Harvard faculty lounge doesn’t want to be bothered with their well-being no matter how many of them are tending to the lounge’s yards, pools and children.<br />
<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-21005730992964689782014-02-04T17:21:00.002-08:002014-02-04T17:21:53.483-08:00Was it a bug or a feature?<br />
.<br />
<br />
We’ve often railed about the completely illiberal notion of forcing people, under the threat of a rectal exam by the IRS, to part with their hard-earned scratch to line the pockets of for-profit entities, in ObamaCare’s case, the health insurance industry.<br />
<br />
<br />
We may not be railing for too much longer if the following case of AETNA becomes a larger trend and Big Health simply drops out of ObamaCare.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Hello, single payer!</i><br />
<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101354183">CNBC</a>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC on Wednesday that Obamacare has failed to attract the uninsured, and he offered a scenario in which the insurance company could be forced to pull out of program.<br />
<br />
He said that so far, Obamacare has just shifted people who were insured in the individual market to the public exchanges where they could get a better deal on a subsidy for coverage. "We see only 11 percent of the population is actually people that were firmly uninsured that are now insured. So [it] didn't really eat into the uninsured population."</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Add to that it’s not the right type of uninsured. Indications are that there are simply not enough young healthy people signing up, the so-called young invincibles, who won’t be a drag on the healthcare system but whose money is needed to offset the cost of the old and sick. This is the adverse selection we have been talking about for years now.<br />
<br />
<br />
So what’s going to happen? Back to the article:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The company will be submitting Obamacare rates for 2015 on May 15.<br />
<br />
"Are they going to be double-digit [increases] or are we going to get beat up because they're double-digit or are we just going to have to pull out of the program?" Bertolini asked in a "Squawk Box" interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Those questions can't be answered until we see the population we have today. And we really don't have a good view on that."</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
Let us help out with that answer: <i>Yes</i>.<br />
<br />
We simply cannot wait until that May date and the shrieks of protestation and threatening language that will emanate from the White House and from the offices of Health and Human Services, and, in particular, the HMFIC of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius. This will be fun.<br />
<br />
<br />
More from AETNA’s honcho:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>For Obamacare to work better, it needs more flexibility and choice of insurance programs, Bertolini said. "We need to make it a lot more simpler for people. There needs to be more choice. When you get more choice, you make it more of a market and you get more people in the program."</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
You know, if only some people were around to warn that top-down, centralized planning would actually restrict choice and flexibility. Yes, Bertolini is certainly correct: getting the government out of the equation will greatly improve the situation but that horse is out of the barn with scant chance of corralling and returning it to its original locale. <i>We will forthwith refrain from the use of any other tortured analogies.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Years from now, when we look back at how it is we got to a single-payer system, we will ponder this: was it all part of the grand plan to design a federal healthcare system that after a few years or even a decade or two, simply imploded unable to hold up under its own weight or was it simply due to monumental incompetence and hubris thinking that the strings of 1/6th of the nation’s economy could effectively be pulled by the smartest kids in the room?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
.<br />
<b>Programming note:</b> we will be out of pocket for a few days but hope to be back up and running by Thursday or Friday.<br />
<br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-54318252831802641882014-02-02T08:10:00.000-08:002014-02-02T08:10:52.611-08:00Omelets Across America<br />
.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nEL7l7GDLPY/Uu5tkPcU7FI/AAAAAAAAMtg/LmQsk8Ji8GU/s1600/omelet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nEL7l7GDLPY/Uu5tkPcU7FI/AAAAAAAAMtg/LmQsk8Ji8GU/s400/omelet.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
A few weeks into October when the ObamaCare roll-out disaster was unfolding<br />
before this nation's eyes, a liberal friend commented to us that the abysmal<br />
state of the front end of the ObamaCare online exchanges was akin to<br />
breaking a few eggs. <br />
<br />
<br />
As we lumber on into February, the focus has gone<br />
from the website glitches to just how many people have "enrolled". Yes, we<br />
are using air quotes as this term is rather nebulous and the term that<br />
should really be applicable here is <i>"who the hell has actually been able to<br />
pay their first premium?"</i> That's the only thing that counts. No one<br />
rides for free or words to that effect.<br />
<br />
<br />
As it stands, however, from the figures that have been released to media<br />
outlets, it appears that the majority of enrollees that the administration<br />
is claiming have signed up for ObamaCare <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/18/most-obamacare-enrollees-already-have-health-plans-report-says/">were previously insured</a>, i.e., the<br />
reason they have signed up for ObamaCare is that their previous insurance<br />
plan was cancelled. In fact, one report finds that <a href="http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304149404579326992266662838?mobile=y">only 11% of enrollees<br />
were previously uninsured</a>. This flies directly in the face of two of the<br />
central justifications for ObamaCare: insuring the uninsured and, of<br />
course, if you liked your current health insurance plan, you could keep<br />
that plan.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh, but back to those broken eggs which as you read above are piling up at<br />
an alarming rate. Let's put a human face on this disaster of a law and<br />
take a look at what ObamaCare means to everyday people like these at this<br />
automotive repair shop in Pittsburgh.<br />
<br />
We'll just call this sort of thing <i>Omelets Across America</i>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Ugh.</i> Cannot embed video but it can be seen <a href="http://www.wtae.com/news/health/small-business-employees-react-to-life-changes-necessitated-by-affordable-care-act/-/9680940/24184630/-/gc8u8s/-/index.html">here</a>. We've added the transcript below:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><blockquote>Outside Simonetta’s Collision and Car Care in McKeesport, it's a frigid 2 degrees.<br />
<br />
Inside, Gary Simonetta's employees are getting ready for a meeting he’s been dreading for months.<br />
<br />
“What I have here is the benefits sheet from last year. What you were on in 2013," said Charles Moore, co-owner of Triangle Benefits Service and the broker who has handled the company's group health insurance for 19 years. "Here is the new plan we had to switch to that takes into account the Obamacare regulations.”<br />
<br />
For the first time, employees were finding out how the Affordable Care Act will affect their medical coverage and how much they'll pay for it.<br />
<br />
<br />
Last year’s 6 percent premium increase has now exploded to an average 32 percent jump.<br />
<br />
"That 32 percent increase includes increasing the deductible, as well to try and get something modestly priced,” Moore explained.<br />
<br />
Jeff and Dave used to have a $1,250 deductible. Since Obamacare went into effect, it's now jumped 60 percent to $2,000.<br />
<br />
That's nothing compared with Brian, Christy and Judy who have kids. They'll pay twice that at $4,000.<br />
<br />
"This was the best option we could find," Moore said.<br />
<br />
Co-pays are up too.<br />
<br />
Pediatric dental and vision exams are covered -- a bonus for some employees, but not for others. Generic drugs are also significantly cheaper.<br />
<br />
Employees took time weighing in on what they thought of their new deal.<br />
<br />
"The deductible is terrible," said Dave, a 47-year-old with no kids. "I mean, how many people can come up with that deductible money if they go into the emergency room?"<br />
<br />
His monthly premium goes up modestly by $50.<br />
<br />
Christy's not so lucky. The monthly premium for the mother of two jumps $260, or 30 percent.<br />
<br />
"Eight-hundred and $95 a month for health insurance, that's coming out of my pocket," she said. "That's a house payment for most people."<br />
<br />
Brian actually saves $77 a month, but the 39-year-old with one child said he can't afford his new $4,000 family deductible.<br />
<br />
"It's going to be a pretty big hit in the pocket," he said.<br />
And 42-year-old Jeff's in the same boat.<br />
<br />
“They call it the affordable health plan," he said. "There's nothing affordable about it. I can't afford it."<br />
<br />
Jeff's new premium is only $28 more a month.<br />
<br />
But he said he'll have to suck it up if he ever gets hurt because his new deductible is too much.<br />
<br />
"Wake up, America. This isn't acceptable. It's not acceptable," he said.<br />
<br />
But it's Judy, the 53-year-old mother of one, who gets hit the worst.<br />
<br />
Her premium goes up from $929 a month to $1,316 – 42-percent increase added to her new $4,000 deductible.<br />
<br />
"How do you add all that together?" she asked.<br />
<br />
"What are you going to do?” questioned Channel 4 Action News anchor Wendy Bell.<br />
<br />
“I don't know,” she replied with tears in her eyes.<br />
With tears in her eyes, Judy responds slowly... "I don't know."<br />
<br />
Back in the shop, Simonetta has his own worries. His monthly premium just jumped $584.<br />
<br />
"The small business is the heart of America. How's that going to affect everybody? It's not good," Simonetta said.<br />
And Moore, the broker, agrees.<br />
<br />
"One size does not fit all in medical insurance. And unfortunately, that's one of the big down sides to the Affordable Care Act," he said.<br />
<br />
Downsides that leave Judy wondering if she can afford to ever get sick.<br />
<br />
"I don't know how President Obama thinks he's helping us," she said. "Because we can't afford this. We can't afford to pay these co-pays, to pay these deductibles, on what we're making."</blockquote></i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
That all kind of sucks, huh? <br />
<br />
<br />
And all this time we thought the Affordable Care Act was just cover for the ability to soak the rich. Boy, were we wrong. Turns out it was also a clever ruse to soak the working class like these folks. Well, to borrow a well-worn progressive phrase, <i>"Equality for All?"</i><br />
<br />
<br />
To ease your conscience, don't think of them as people, rather eggs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-74661685384446679212014-01-28T17:24:00.000-08:002014-01-28T17:24:35.691-08:00Slouching towards a Banana Republic (cont.)<br />
.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KvvIHgNpFiA/UuhWl26882I/AAAAAAAAMtM/gnYgNRmbnsI/s1600/IRS2.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KvvIHgNpFiA/UuhWl26882I/AAAAAAAAMtM/gnYgNRmbnsI/s640/IRS2.png" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Just a reminder, gang: this rogue, thuggish agency that from all evidence has served (<i>is serving?</i>) as the President’s and Democratic Party’s sic’em dogs will be the enforcement wing of the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare.<br />
<br />
<br />
And do note that the President, when news of IRS targeting of conservative groups first broke, went from doing his “no one is more outraged than me” schtick to inferring it was a “phony scandal” in just six short months.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Stonewalling… it’s what they do.<br />
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<br />
From <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/012714-687790-irs-is-the-worsening-emblem-of-big-dirty-government.htm?p=full">Investors Business Daily</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>The IRS is stonewalling two congressional committees over new evidence it illegally targeted dissidents, this time citing employee confidentiality. If this means zero accountability for abuse of power, it's time for new laws.<br />
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Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party candidate from a few years ago, may not be everyone's cup, but she was spot-on when she told the Washington Times on Sunday: "Unless this is all exposed, unless every level of inappropriateness and corruption is exposed, I certainly won't be the last person to be politically intimidated like this."<br />
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Back in 2010, as she campaigned for a Senate seat in Delaware, O'Donnell's private tax records were leaked by the IRS to her political opponents and phony claims about her tax liabilities were leaked to the press, all in a sleazy subterranean effort to keep her from winning that election.<br />
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And by remarkable coincidence, that was done by the same agency that has since admitted to targeting Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status, harassing them with insanely intrusive questions and delaying their applications for years at a time — all to repress political groups disliked by President Obama, who made it clear his administration considered them "terrorists."<br />
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And let's not forget that Joe the Plumber's tax records were leaked in 2008 and conservative Commentary magazine was targeted for a "corruption" probe in 2009. Now Chuck Heath Jr., brother of Tea Party manque Sarah Palin, has declared on his Facebook page that their father was "horribly harassed" six times beginning in 2008, after 50 years of faithfully paying his taxes without a single IRS inquiry.</blockquote><br />
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Please bear in mind that no one, repeat, no one has been held accountable for this criminal behavior. Lois Lerner, the woman central to the targeting, merely resigned with all her retirement benefits intact and full military honors in a manner of speaking.<br />
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And the reason for stonewalling? The IRS is claiming “employee confidentiality”. Yeah. We’ll bet. Because exposing the operating practices of the IRS is apparently sacred ground when it comes to how it is they come to harass and intimidate conservative groups.<br />
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The IRS needs to be abolished. Our fellow travelers on the right can bitch and moan about the NEA all they want but that's small potatoes and more importantly, no one is forcing us to the <i><a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1203&bih=616&q=piss+christ&oq=piss+christ&gs_l=img.3..0l8j0i5l2.3586.5600.0.6881.11.11.0.0.0.0.173.1027.8j3.11.0....0...1ac.1.32.img..0.11.1023.UJtUQkw4qes">Piss Christ</a></i> exhibit. Dealing with the IRS, however, is an involuntary exercise.<br />
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Of all the <strike>scandals</strike> crises surrounding this administration, not one better illustrates the naked aggression and top-down abuse of power starting from within the administration than this one.<br />
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Time for a national sales tax... we're open to any and all suggestions that would effectively replace this abusive institution.<br />
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<i>Next stop, Zimbabwe.</i><br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-79940304124468104362014-01-26T11:21:00.001-08:002014-01-26T11:21:35.628-08:00Can we please talk about the last guy?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinp5ghyphenhyphenAfsnlYGXQVIaeWyFMV7yZb1CDdgSvS5CGgUa8j107imfCl3mramDaVY09qRYicxVqLWps0X-Xy0MjO73eQItXRqw4BNk6yA5dWdm2p5v9kOjUVgCOBJlJXoMV7U5kdU89pPVgzZ/s1600/nakoula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinp5ghyphenhyphenAfsnlYGXQVIaeWyFMV7yZb1CDdgSvS5CGgUa8j107imfCl3mramDaVY09qRYicxVqLWps0X-Xy0MjO73eQItXRqw4BNk6yA5dWdm2p5v9kOjUVgCOBJlJXoMV7U5kdU89pPVgzZ/s640/nakoula.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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They blamed the Benghazi attack on a crappy Youtube video trailer and then threw the guy who made it in jail after frog-marching him blind-folded from his home in the dead of night, “escorted” by a gaggle of L.A. county sheriff deputies.<br />
They later recanted this lie but the damage had been done. 4 dead brave Americans, a schlep left to rot in jail, whom to date, remains the only person the administration has “held accountable” for this disaster.<br />
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Author and filmmaker of a book and corresponding movie critical of this regime and which was the 2nd most successful political movie of all-time <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/nyregion/dinesh-dsouza-is-charged-with-using-straw-donors-to-give-to-a-campaign.html?_r=0">is indicted on the charge of illegal campaign contributions</a>.<br />
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Looks like the regime will soon have two filmmakers behind bars.<br />
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Conservative guerilla videographer, James O'Keefe, is accusing <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/23/conservative-activist-okeefe-claims-cuomo-targeting-his-group/">the Cuomo administration of harrassing his group</a> by seeking subpoenas of his group's documents. Cuomo recently stated that conservative viewpoints were not welcome in New York state.<br />
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<i>Do I hear three?</i><br />
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President Dronestrike has himself a kill list which he once claimed he could use against civilians here on American soil until he was called out on it by Rand Paul and Ted Cruz after which Attorney General, Eric Holder feebly contended that <i>maybe, kinda, pinky-swear sorta</i> the President does not hold such powers.<br />
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President Dronestrike makes a laughably pathetic speech on the NSA reforms he claims he is going to implement which will do nothing to fundamentally alter the warrantless gathering of the private data of U.S. citizens. Subsequent to that, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/23/independent-federal-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-collection-program-should/">an independent oversight panel found that the NSA data sweeps have been illegal and should end immediately</a>. The White House, of course, rejects these finding.<br />
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The Justice Department that spied on 20 AP journalists and Fox News Reporter James Rosen in separate incidents is being investigated by… the head of the Justice Department, that worthless hack, Eric Holder.<br />
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And holding form, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who repeatedly lied to Congress about the scope and depth of the NSA domestic spying program will be investigated by, you guessed it, James Clapper.<br />
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Targeting and harassment of conservative groups by the enforcement wing of the Democratic Party, the IRS...? They’re on it. At least they brought in a completely unbiased 3rd party to do this investigation… <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/obama-donor-leading-justice-departments-irs-investigation/2014/01/09/980c010a-796a-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html">an Obama campaign donor</a>.<br />
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But please tell us again about waterboarding and the firing of District Attorneys.<br />
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The chump in the Oval Office makes Richard Nixon look like a rank amateur.<br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-39750362027494063892014-01-25T10:29:00.003-08:002014-01-25T10:29:38.223-08:00So, that's what they're really saying<br />
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It's the weekend before the Super Bowl so that, unfortunately, means no football. To the good, however, it also means we won't have to hear about your fantasy football team.<br />
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To that end, we're hitting the easy button and posting Bad Lip Reading's take on the 2014 NFL season.<br />
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<i>Enjoy.</i><br />
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/rRqKYXcL-2U?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-3389865890391292132014-01-21T17:47:00.001-08:002014-01-21T17:47:09.405-08:00Video clip of the day<br />
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<b>Recruiting celebrities for your pet cause</b>:<br />
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<blockquote><i>Pro</i>: name recognition which isn’t to be confused with credibility but, whatever, name recognition.<br />
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<i>Con</i>: an uncanny propensity for said celebrity to say stupid s**t.</blockquote><br />
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And speaking of which… hey, did you hear the one where Canadian rocker, Neil Young compared the Alberta oil sands development to Hiroshima and Nagasaki?<br />
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Here’s Canadian Broadcast Corporation commentator, Rex Murphy, taking Young to task for his callous stupidity and just being plain wrong-headed in his criticisms of the Fort McMurray project. <br />
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<iframe width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4DcnyBdlwQ4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Murphy makes a point we’ve been screaming about for years: who better to drill, frack and mine for rare earths than us North Americans. For all the overheated rhetoric they’ve employed over the years, perhaps the greatest benefit the greenies have provided is to make straight shooters of the rest of us.<br />
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<blockquote><i>Dude, if we don’t get this mess cleaned up, Mom is going to absolutely flip out when she gets home</i>.</blockquote><br />
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Mom, you see, won’t be coming home any time soon, if at all, in places like China, Russia and far-flung and remote places in Africa where any semblance of environmental responsibility and humane working conditions are pretty-much non-existent if not simply unenforced. <br />
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Who’s has the technology and conscience to go after proven energy sources better than us (and our Canadian friends, of course)? <br />
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<i>Fun ironic drilling fact: our struggling recovery has been propped up in a big way by that which our President has exhibited the most extreme hostility towards.</i><br />
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And despite his dunderheadedness, we’ve always loved Neil Young’s music so we will leave with a totally underrated gem from his 1989 album <i>Freedom</i>: “No More”.<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pvu4RS9qYAY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8984499113019674536.post-12838774545745673322014-01-20T15:10:00.001-08:002014-01-20T15:10:57.113-08:00What we and others have been tweeting<br />
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Seattle Seahawk stud cornerback and righteous smack-talker, Richard Sherman, was definitely ready for his close-up last night for America after the ‘hawks beat the Niners 23-17 in the NFC conference championship game.<br />
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Here’s Sherm after the game with Fox’s Erin Andrews:<br />
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Twitter and other social media outlets went bonkers almost immediately criticizing Sherman for his brashness and crassness.<br />
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<i>Ummm…</i>. You stick a microphone in Richard Sherman’s face right after an amazingly emotional roller coaster of a game and you are going to get Richard Sherman. America was apparently unaware of this phenomena.<br />
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All this really was reminisce of the whole Phil Robertson/Duck Dynasty kerfuffle of a few weeks back: wow… you think a rural, southern, evangelical Christian might not be down with gay marriage or homosexuality in general? <i>Shocking.</i><br />
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And in the same vein, how absolutely boring would the NFL be if everyone gave interviews like Peyton Manning.<br />
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Anyway…<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Awww... look at America acting like they're getting their first dose of Richard Sherman. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFLPlayoffs&src=hash">#NFLPlayoffs</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Mad_Maxamillion">@Mad_Maxamillion</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Corey0Brien">@Corey0Brien</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425112822184284160">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/Psudrozz">@Psudrozz</a> It was Richard Sherman being Richard Sherman. If you like him, you loved it. If you don't... yeah. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23awesomeness&src=hash">#awesomeness</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425114223241228288">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Diva much? <i>And...?</i><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Why are people expecting the wide receivers of the defense to behave/speak any differently? <a href="https://twitter.com/Mad_Maxamillion">@Mad_Maxamillion</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Psudrozz">@Psudrozz</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFLPlayoffs&src=hash">#NFLPlayoffs</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425120068104507392">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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And in terms of media freaking out...<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Right now, Richard Sherman is football equivalent of Chris Christie. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFLPlayoffs&src=hash">#NFLPlayoffs</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFL&src=hash">#NFL</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OhMyGod&src=hash">#OhMyGod</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425125203115376641">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Can’t help but think that many of the same people that decry the banalities and clichés of your typical sports interview, were absolutely hammering Sherman for cutting against the grain and actually providing some entertainment.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>My liking both Peyton Manning and Richard Sherman do not involve mutually exclusive concepts. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NFLPlayoffs&src=hash">#NFLPlayoffs</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425305512914087936">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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We admire Peyton for his humility and down-to-earthedness, why can’t we like Richard Sherman for baring a personality that is in direct opposition to that?<br />
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And as the healthcare world turns…<i> same ol’, same ol’…</i><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/tqOlNJVc4b">http://t.co/tqOlNJVc4b</a> Yet another delay to a portion of the healthcare law. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23clueless&src=hash">#clueless</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23spastic&src=hash">#spastic</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424793375871475712">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/tqOlNJVc4b">http://t.co/tqOlNJVc4b</a> "...A spokesperson for the IRS said..." pretty much all you need to know about <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424792249499541504">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"<a href="https://twitter.com/RufusKings1776">@RufusKings1776</a>: “Where Congress isn’t acting, I’ll act on my own." ~B. Obama 1/18/14 The whole sep. of powers thing is lost on the idiot</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425115213180846080">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Across the pond, England threw some hapless schmuck in jail for saying mean stuff on social media. Remember, gang, we can’t get too caught up in American exceptionalism – we need to look, also, to our European cousins for things like healthcare and not-so-free speech.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/RbQBhVNYsS">http://t.co/RbQBhVNYsS</a> Before long, we'll be the only western industrialized nation to not throw it's citizens in jail for saying dumb s**t.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424787868062453760">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/zErn6JRF7u">http://t.co/zErn6JRF7u</a> ... or why it is I hate "hate speech" laws. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23freespeech&src=hash">#freespeech</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424267521462513665">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/zErn6JRF7u">http://t.co/zErn6JRF7u</a> If you can be "incited to hatred", perhaps it is you that has the problem. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23freespeech&src=hash">#freespeech</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424266192178515969">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Oh, and then there was that awesome article from Salon.com<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE">http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE</a> To the dim bulbs <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a> free speech = government sanctioned/controlled speech. It worked so well last century.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424628467347369984">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE">http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE</a> "social justice committees"... let me help you out <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a>... "brown shirts" Fixed!</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424630486174941184">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE">http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE</a> Hi <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a>, you do realize that in the world you advocate, your dumb article doesn't get published, right?</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424632929675788288">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE">http://t.co/6kTGOrGhNE</a> Having said that, I will fight tooth and nail for <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a> right to publish their dumb anti-free speech articles.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424633539158503424">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a> in your world I will make sure "social justice committee" gives u a well-deserved enema. Why? Well, just because. See how that works?</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424637987129798656">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Related: our feckless mainstream media…<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/IGVSYjBwwJ">http://t.co/IGVSYjBwwJ</a> Hi, <a href="https://twitter.com/Salon">@Salon</a>. This is what your state-approved media looks like.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424726513829675008">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Texas Governor Rick Perry told his citizens that pro-choice folks aren’t welcome in Texas. Naw… you knew we were pulling your leg. New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo on the other hand…<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/HzgRITf9rQ">http://t.co/HzgRITf9rQ</a> I (heart) doucebags telling people where and where not they are welcome. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23progressives&src=hash">#progressives</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424588135859625984">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/rqPymbfWva">http://t.co/rqPymbfWva</a> You are not welcome at "Bull" Cuomo's lunch counter. <a href="https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog">@iowahawkblog</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424588692087263232">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If you want to live in NY, you have to agree w/ Gov Cuomo? What an arrogant, undemocratic mindset. <a href="http://t.co/uzYZDjKNgv">http://t.co/uzYZDjKNgv</a></p>— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) <a href="https://twitter.com/secupp/statuses/424591421690380288">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So, Governor Cuomo, we haven't done this sort of thing in this country in a while. What's your preference? Rubber bullets or fire hoses?</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424597001951383552">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Damn. We forgot about the German Shepherd option<br />
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Our liberal/"progressive" friends are addicted to the cult of personality and refuse to acknowledge the following:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>It's clear after 5+ years that by "fundamentally transforming" this country, he meant further entrenching the crony, corporatist status quo.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424266918577467392">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Selling a crappy law and the politics of weird:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/FwNtrCCAWm">http://t.co/FwNtrCCAWm</a> Government propaganda with a end-of-times vibe to it. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ObamaCare&src=hash">#ObamaCare</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424256276378292225">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Big #NSA speech on Friday by the President…<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Shorter Obama: “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it were for that meddling Edward Snowden."</p>— Jason Pye (@jaseliberty) <a href="https://twitter.com/jaseliberty/statuses/424217036386865152">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>"NSA and other intelligence agencies are our neighbors and our friends."~Barack Obama 1/17/14 Your friends are spying on you. Not creepy...</p>— RufusKings1776 (@RufusKings1776) <a href="https://twitter.com/RufusKings1776/statuses/424246824132571136">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/JkYMX0UiGn">http://t.co/JkYMX0UiGn</a> "... it was full of muted sound and absent fury, and meant mostly nothing." <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash">#NSA</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424251740834119680">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/lfGc0Tn2F9">http://t.co/lfGc0Tn2F9</a> No way he wanted a "national conversation" abt this. He's only doing the absolute min. because he got caught. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash">#NSA</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424254736708014080">January 17, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/IN1BpyMLmb">http://t.co/IN1BpyMLmb</a> Because nothing says "trust me" like a speech on Friday. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash">#NSA</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424798110263435264">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So, we're you re-assured by Preezy's NSA speech yesterday? Yeah, me neither.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424639867599847424">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Lying about something as trivial as not ever meeting one's uncle is small potatoes... right up until one makes that <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NSA&src=hash">#NSA</a> speech. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23liar&src=hash">#liar</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424641025110335488">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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In case you haven’t been paying attention, the new church ladies and nanny-staters are on the left:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/sHQbu5B7PI">http://t.co/sHQbu5B7PI</a>. Here's some more of that diversity of opinion I am told progressives value so much.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424676978470297600">January 18, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/wdejcJUVF5">http://t.co/wdejcJUVF5</a>. This must be some more of that progressive diversity of opinion I keep hearing about. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fracking&src=hash">#fracking</a></p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425306576908746752">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/pqjqK6hPaX">http://t.co/pqjqK6hPaX</a>. The religiosity of the left: dissent and diversity of thought will not be tolerated. Heretics will be burned</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/424724526564261889">January 19, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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And, finally, ladies and gentlemen, the gift that keeps giving: our Vice President, Joe Biden: <br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/y3Qzrd6sXL">http://t.co/y3Qzrd6sXL</a> All attempts to parody or caricature Joe Biden fail miserably in the face of reality.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425333563420979200">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="http://t.co/y3Qzrd6sXL">http://t.co/y3Qzrd6sXL</a> Because all great southern statesmen owe a debt of gratitude to Delaware or RI or wherever the hell Biden is from.</p>— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) <a href="https://twitter.com/deanriehm/statuses/425333349234655233">January 20, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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Deanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02448369692335981936noreply@blogger.com0