Hundreds Die Needlessly in British Healthcare

Waiting lists in Britian created by their bureaucratic, monopolistic healthcare system, causes hundreds to die each year. Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and all the other Democrats want to lead us down the same route.

BBC - Up to 500 heart patients die each year while they wait for potentially life-saving surgery, a report has said.

An editorial in the British Medical Association journal Heart said that the only way to prevent these deaths would be to perform the operations as soon as the heart condition was diagnosed.

This is what happens in the private sector, it said, but NHS patients are often put on a waiting list because of other pressures to health service resources.

Only an "enormous injection" of cash could change the situation.

However, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said it was inevitable that hospitals would have to prioritise treatments and prevention was just as important as surgery.

'Inevitable deaths'

Ben Bridgewater, a heart consultant at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, wrote the article.

He was reviewing the findings of two studies - one from New Zealand and one from Holland - both of which indicated that it was inevitable that some patients would die while waiting for surgery.

This was even true in New Zealand, where a thorough system of clinical assessment is supposed to ensure the patients who need treatment most get it first.

Doctors in the UK have long called for such a system to be introduced in the NHS.

But, because any waiting at all seemed to result in some additional deaths, immediate surgery was the only way to cut mortality.

He said: "This currently happens in the UK in the private sector but will not happen in the NHS without an enormous injection of resources."

Guns Defend Elderly (and Women)

The old man would have been dead if not for the gun. He would be dead if he was British. Of course, it'll never get a lot of press, so the average Joe never hears about when guns are used to defend people. Guns protect the weakest in society. A 93 year old can't use kung fu.


Cops: Man, 93, Shoots Violent Robber
Associated Press ^ | July 27,2007

EL DORADO, Ark. (AP) - An elderly man beaten unconscious by an assailant wielding a soda can awoke and shot the man during an attempted robbery, police said.

Willie Lee Hill, 93, told police he saw the robber while in his bedroom Wednesday night. Hill confronted the man and was struck at least 50 times, police said. He was knocked unconscious.

Covered in blood, Hill regained consciousness a short time later and pulled a .38-caliber handgun on his attacker. The suspect, Douglas B. Williams Jr., saw the gun and charged the man, who fired a bullet that struck Williams in the throat, police said.

"I got what I deserved," Williams, 24, told police when they arrived, officers said. Investigators reported finding, among other items, a Craftsman drill bit set, three pocket knives and two hearing aids inside his pockets.

Paramedics took Hill and Williams to the Medical Center of South Arkansas for treatment. Doctors sent Williams to the Louisiana State University Medical Center at Shreveport, where he was listed in critical condition Friday.

Employees at the Medical Center of South Arkansas refused to give Hill's condition or say if he'd been discharged from the hospital Friday, citing medical privacy laws.

Police plan to charge Williams with residential burglary, second- degree battery, theft of property and theft by receiving.

Borders' Opinion on Obama Book

Borders' thinks Obama 's book is fiction. Who are we do disagree

R.I.P. Doug Marlette

One of the few cartoonists, whose name I knew because of the above cartoon, to which he received a lot of death threats from the practitioners of the religion of peace.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Doug Marlette, the North Carolina-born cartoonist who won a Pulitzer Prize and created the popular strip "Kudzu," was killed in a car accident Tuesday morning in Mississippi, authorities said. He was 57.

Marlette, who joined the Tulsa (Okla.) World last year, was the passenger in the car, which struck a tree after skidding on a rain-slicked road, said John Garrison, the coroner in Mississippi's Marshall County.

Sicko and Britian's NHS

Michael Moore's Sicko portrays Britian's government run healthcare to be fabulous. However, he conviently leaves out all of Britian's healthcare problems. We've discussed the long lines and the rationing of care. In addition, there is also a decline in the quality of care itself. That means obsolete equipment and a decline in cleanliness. This decline has led to a radical rate of staph infections. Now, one in 10 patients get infected.

NY Times - When James Wollacott badly wrenched his knee while jumping on a trampoline in the back garden of his house, the healthy, athletic 20-year-old imagined a quick operation and a swift recuperation.

Instead, he spent three months in the hospital last year, bedridden and gravely ill, battling high fevers and a merciless staph infection. The infection was M.R.S.A., short for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as the ''superbug,'' and Mr. Wollacott picked it up when doctors inserted in his kneecap four titanium pins. ...


One in 10 patients contracts a staph infection while staying in England's hospitals, which rank among the oldest and most crowded in Western Europe. Because superbugs multiply easily in unhygienic surroundings, dirty hospital wards and unclean hands contribute to their spread from patient to patient....

In Britain, staph infections have taken root for several reasons. A number of hospitals were built decades ago and are not designed to isolate infected patients; few have single and double rooms. Instead, wards of six or eight people are common, and there are frequently not enough wash basins. The government is also under pressure to prune long waiting lists for elective procedures, a factor that has aggravated crowding and increased workloads.

''The average wait can be up to six or seven hours,'' Mrs. Rayner said. ''I'm not letting a man with an open wound sit in a ward with a room full of people, full of I-don't-know-what bugs.''

Mrs. Rayner caught a minor case of M.R.S.A. three years ago, when she was in the hospital for an operation on her knee. She has been in several hospitals for a variety of reasons since then, and says she is appalled by the filth and the hygiene practices. In one case, she watched dirt and dust pile up in the corner of a ward. Nurses and assistants did not always wash their hands. She had to call for a basin when she needed to vomit, and then the nurse ran off and left her alone.

Some hospitals do a better job than others. The problem is rare among England's handful of private hospitals, although those facilities seldom see the most vulnerable patients..."

I was a fanatic says former radical Islamist

Interesting confession from a former jihadi. I think politicians and actors should read and reread the statement where he says the people that blame British government for terrorist were doing their propaganda.


Daily Mail - When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.


By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.



Mohammed Sidique Khan met with the author on two separate occasions

Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.

And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.

Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.

The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.

For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.

But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

Diversity is in the Constitution

Justices are getting more blatant with their disregard for the Constitution. They used to at least have some circumvented explanation as to why something is Constitutional. Now, they are making up stuff. Since when is diversity in the Constitution, Mr Kennedy?

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

The districts "failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals," Roberts said.

Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy would not go as far as the other four conservative justices, saying in a concurring opinion that race may be a component of school plans designed to achieve diversity.
To the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted to foreclose the use of race in any circumstance, Kennedy said, "I disagree with that reasoning."

Yahoo Manipulates

The Yahoo Headline: Republicans block bill making it easier to form labor unions

What the bill does is eliminate the secret ballot of employees needed to unionize. A union is no harder to form with a secret ballot if the majority of employees are interested. The only way the bill makes it easier to form unions is that union officals can see who is voting against the union and intimidate them.

Yahoo makes it out to be that Republicans are mean.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would allow labor unions to organize workplaces without a secret ballot election.

Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to force consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, ending organized labor's chance to win its top legislative priority from Congress.

The bill would require employers to recognize unions after being presented union cards signed by a majority of eligible workers on their payrolls. Under current labor law, a company can demand a secret ballot election supervised by the federal government after being presented the union cards....

Freedom, Not Climate, is at Risk

I just wish more politicans were like this. Leave it to the Czechs who have finally found freedom to quickly see when people are trying to take it away. At the end there is a link to some Q&A he did with internet reader. I love his brashness.


Freedom, not climate, is at risk
By Vaclav Klaus

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Q&A with Klaus

•At a somewhat deeper methodological level, I have to say that market mechanism is nobody’s policy instrument. It reminds me of the old communist days again. The issue was: market or central planning. The central planners, however, wanted to have market – in their hands – as a policy instrument. Do we have to live under communism to understand that?

•To say that “the supporters of capitalism demand that they are free to dump their waste on their neighbours lawns without consequence” has the beauty of communist propaganda I had a chance to “enjoy” during the first 48 years of my life.

•It is very popular but cheap to blame “large world powers”. I don’t do it. I know many, very small European “powers” which are more environmentalist than most “large world powers”. The problem is that some politicians – of both large and small countries – are victims of environmentalism and use it for their own personal benefits.

•Environmentalism is indeed a vehicle for bringing us socialist government at the global level. Again, my life in communism makes me oversensitive in this respect. The argumentation of various environmentalists is very similar to what we used to know in the past.

•Environmentalism, not preservation of nature (and of environment), is a leftist ideology. Some people, who pretend to be on the right, bought into it as well – to my great regret.

•There are huge material (very pecuniary) and even bigger psychological incentives for politicians and their bureaucratic fellow-travellers to support environmentalism. It gives them power. This is exactly what they are searching for. It gives them power to organise, regulate, manipulate the rest of us. There is nothing altruistic in their environmentalist stances.

Darfur caused by Global Warming?

You've got to be kidding me. We finally got rid of Kofi, but now Ki-moonbat thinks the murder in Darfur is caused by global warming? Where do we get these guys?

In reality, it's a cop-out. He doesn't really want to deal with the problem. He doesn't want to tell Sudan are in violation of resolutions. He doesn't want to tell them that the jihad isn't acceptable.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.
"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

The Dyslexia Fraud?

I think are some who have legitimately had dyslexia, but it's been overdiagnosed for the said reasons. Adding to that list is probably ADD or ADHD. I'm sure there are some legimate cases of ADD, but it's overdiagnosed, because no one wants to say that someone is just a bad parent with a bratty kid. They blame a condition and medicate the child as a substitute for a swift kick in the ass.

Daily Mail - UK --Dyslexia is a social fig leaf used by middle-class parents who fear their children will be labelled as low achievers, a professor has claimed.

Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research.

"There is a huge stigma attached to low intelligence," he said.

"After years of working with parents, I have seen how they don't want their child to be considered lazy, thick or stupid.

"If they get called this medically diagnosed term, dyslexic, then it is a signal to all that it's not to do with intelligence."

He added: "There are all sorts of reasons why people don't read well but we can't determine why that is. Dyslexia, as a term, is becoming meaningless."

One in ten people in the UK - including 375,000 schoolchildren - has been diagnosed with dyslexia.

The condition is said to impair short-term memory and the ability to read, write, spell and do maths.

Supporters of the condition argue that dyslexics are intelligent people who have difficulties processing information and need extra help and time than others who are poor readers.

But Professor Elliott has claimed that the symptoms of dyslexia - such as clumsiness and letter reversal - are similar to those seen in those who simply cannot read.

He argues that the condition should be rediagnosed as a reading difficulty.

His comments provoked fury among dyslexia campaigners.

John Rack, head of research and development at the charity Dyslexia Action, denied that the disability was a middle-class phenomenon.

He told The Times: "There is ample evidence that dyslexia exists across the spectrum and the argument that there is no consistent means of identifying it is one cited by people who don't know enough about the subject."

However, other experts have suggested that parents are putting their children forward for reading ability assessments to "get them off the hook".

Dr Michael Rice, a dyslexia and literacy expert at Cambridge University, said: "There is a sense of justification when children are diagnosed.

"It gets them off the hook of great embarrassment and personal inadequacy."

According to Professor Elliott, dyslexic university students are gaining an unfair advantage by getting extra time for their studies and many are getting diagnosed simply to get up to £10,000 worth of equipment including laptops and extra books.

University lecturers have complained about students "milking the system" by pretending they have the condition.

One lecturer who teaches in the South-East said:

"On one degree course I teach, about one quarter of the students get help with their coursework and other assistance because they have this label. You become quite cynical."

The number of students who receive disability allowances at university has risen to a record 35,500 at a cost of £78.4million a year.

Immigration Amnesty Again

Last year around this time, we were having the same debate about amnesty for illegals. I wrote about how some Republicans want to treat labor as a commodity. Again, the amnesty is back. Bush has teamed with Kennedy to create a monsterous bill. For many conservatives, this is the last straw of support for Bush.

The Wall St. Journal's editorial board has been notably in favor of illegal immigration. Since the Wall St. Journal likes to talk about economics, we will put the debate in a language they can understand. The Wall Street Journal and some Republican politicans have ignored both the explicit and implicit costs of the amnesty bill.

Explicity, legalizing millions of unlawful aliens will increase costs to the rest of the American populace. This includes the added strain on health care facilities and our ailing social security system whom the illegals would have claims to.

Implicity, there is added risk to society when illegals with criminal records are also given citizenship. The US bureaucracy will also have a mere 24 hours to perform a background check on illegals applying for the Z-visa. Since it is unlikely that the system can properly do background checks in such short order for so many people, the risk of violent criminals obtaining visas will increase expotentially.

The immigration bill will also produce negative externalities. The 12.5 million illegals are a greater population than all but 5 of the large states. Large enclaves of Hispanic communities with little pressure to adopt American values will lead to the balkanization of America.

Finally, the often-quoted 12.5 million illegals could rapidly increase after the bill's passage. As the benefits for crossing the border illegally increase and the risks decrease, the supply of illegals will also increase.

The Velvet Mafia

So Bush's appointment to be surgeon general is causing "contreversy" because he wrote that being gay is unnatural and unhealthy.

Let's ask, is it natural? No. Is it healthy? The AIDS epidemic was widely spread, how?

As for his church activities, I thought a person’s religious beliefs and church activity was a personal choice and was not to be factored into his or her fitness for office?

I think at the end of the day Bush yanks the nominee because he is afraid of the Velvet Mafia.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James Holsinger, has come under fire from gay rights groups for voting to expel a lesbian pastor from the United Methodist Church and writing in 1991 that gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.

Also, Holsinger helped found a Methodist congregation that, according to gay rights activists, believes homosexuality is a matter of choice and can be "cured."...

Pre-empting Michael Moore

Instead of waiting to respond to Moore's new socialistmentary, two filmmakers made a documentary about the splendors of Canadian Healthcare:

The tagline, which I found humorous: "If you think healthcare is expensive, wait until it's free"

American problems: The ambulance ride wasn't covered.
Canadian problems: Dying from cancer because your surgery was repeatably postponed until it had become inoperable.

Who has worse problems?

Selfish Tuberculosis Flyer

Some comments on the TB flyer:

1. He's an trial lawyer. He's probably sued many people for lesser negligence.
   
2. He knew the risk of possibly infecting many others with this. That other people on the flight could get infected with this horrible strain of TB, but he decided to ignore it.
   
3. If the man was so innocent, why did he try to sneak back into the US via Canada?
   
4. Was the wedding in Greece so important? He risked so many people so she could
   
5. He is trying to turn himself into a victim.
   
6. Bottom line: He's probably so narsassitc that he thinks he is above everyone else. One set of laws for everyone else, but he is exempt. Typical trial lawyer.

An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and said he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone.

"I feel awful," Andrew Speaker said, speaking through a mask with ABC's "Good Morning America" at his hospital room in Denver. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

"I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm."

Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he had TB before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told that he wasn't contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials said they would rather he didn't fly but didn't forbid it, he said.

.... Speaker, his new wife and her 8-year-old daughter were already in Europe when the CDC contacted him and told him to turn himself in immediately at a clinic there and not take another commercial flight.

Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.

"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and that was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."

Even though U.S. officials had put Speaker on a warning list, he caught a flight to Montreal and then drove across the U.S. border on May 24 at Champlain, N.Y. A border inspector who checked him disregarded a computer warning to stop Speaker, officials said Thursday.

Hillary shows her Socialist feathers & More Obamanomics

Usually Democrats like to hide how big of socialists they are. Clinton pronounce a vision for a "shared society." Clinton completely ignores the last 100 years and the effect of socialism on society. She probably thinks she can do it better. Some thoughts:

• "Fairness" is code for higher taxes. What is fair about punishing those who work and study by taxing away their income?A forgotten part of freedom is economic freedom. Being able to criticize your government is great, but it is not the only freedom. It's to be able to work where you want and to keep the money you make.
  
• Expanding the earned income tax credit -- is expanding a redistribution of wealth. Similar to "fairness".
  
• Adding government regulation -- that will drive up the cost of doing business in America and lead to more outsourcing. There's a reason why jobs are leaving California. It's because the government is so inhospitable to businesses.
  
• End tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas - You mean Clinton is going to cut corporate income tax? That's the tax break companies get from going overseas. Most US companies are forced to pay nearly 40% in corporate tax rates, the second highest in the world. Instead, they'd rather go elsewhere.

Milton Friedman said about John Kenneth Galbriath, a Keynesian (socialist for the lack of a better word) economist: "Many reformers -- Galbraith is not alone in this -- have as their basic objection to a free market that it frustrates them in achieving their reforms, because it enables people to have what they want, not what the reformers want. Hence every reformer has a strong tendency to be averse to a free market."

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity....

"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."... Clinton said she would reduce special breaks for corporations, eliminate tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.... Clinton also said she would help people save more money by expanding and simplifying the earned income tax credit; create new jobs by pursuing energy independence; and ensure that every American has affordable health insurance.

Obamanomics - Obama ignores economic truths. As prices go to zero, demand skyrockets. Then cost skyrockets even further. Then something must be done to regulate demand; enter bureaucracy. Then to keep the costs down, then price ceilings are created. Price ceilings lead to shortages. So you end up with Britian, where people ended up waiting for years for surgery and many people's cancer treatment gets delayed until it becomes untreated. (The right way to keep healthcare costs down isn't to let the old die). We have problems with healthcare as it, but it will not be solved via the government.

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Tuesday offered a plan to provide health care to millions of Americans and more affordable medical insurance, financed by tax increases on the wealthy.

Bemoaning a health care "cost crisis," Obama said it was unacceptable that 47 million are uninsured while others are struggling to pay their medical bills. He said the time is ripe for reforming the health care system despite an inability to do so in the past, most notably when rival

Obama's proposal would spend more money boosting technology in the health industry such as electronic record-keeping. His package would prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies and limit their profits. Obama said the typical consumer would save $2,500 a year on premiums.

Memorial Day Tribute

In Memory of Those Who Sacrificed Their Lives

How Can We Tax You More?

The Internet is to socialist's desire to tax as the Fountain of Youth was to Ponce De Leon. Luckily there seems to be enough people in both parties where the Net tax wouldn't have a real shot.

WASHINGTON--With only months left on a moratorium restricting state governments from taxing Internet access, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday began a debate over whether the ban should be made permanent or allowed to lapse.

At issue is the scheduled expiration on November 1 of a law, initially enacted in 1998, that says local governments generally cannot tax Internet access, including DSL (digital subscriber line), cable modem and BlackBerry-type wireless transmission services. The law also prohibits governments from taxing items sold online in a different manner than those sold at brick-and-mortar stores, but it does not deal with sales taxes on online shopping.

That's the way it should remain, some politicians said at a brief hearing here convened by a House of Representatives panel on commercial and administrative law.

"If we could liken the Internet to a mall, a place where you can go in and purchase goods and services, and also liken it to a library, a place where you can go and pull a book, pull a resource, and obtain some information, why would we tax a person upon entering a mall or why would we tax a person upon entering the library?" asked Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia.

Media's Most Recent Selective Journalism

Paris Hilton going to jail, Anna Nicole Smith, missing blondes in Aruba, and fake rapes at Duke are all stories you here about relentlessly. However, what about the savage double murder in Tennesse. Oops. Did the national media forget? Even Fox News?

Probably not, but I'll give you three guess why they weren't. MLK dreamed of a land where people were judged by the content of their character. It's serves no purpose in the harmony of whites and blacks if one side is treated differently, whether white or black. The media probably thinks "it's helping" by not reporting on a crime. However, a savage double homicide is a savage double homicide that deserves to be reported on regardless of the victims or purpetrators color of skin. It's insulting to the victims to ignore what happened.

The Politics of News: Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were out on a dinner date in Knoxville, Tenn., on January 6, when they were carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured, sexually mutilated, and killed.

Despite the press's taste for dramatic crimes, even crimes that do not involve missing blondes in Aruba, the story got almost no publicity. Conservative bloggers, who are beginning to buzz about the case, think they know why: the couple was white and the five suspects arrested in the case are black.

The mainstream press does not like to carry stories of black mayhem and white victims. First, there is the fear of stirring up more racism among Klansmen and neo-Nazis, as the Knoxville case has started to do. More importantly, the newsroom culture tends to view black-on-white crimes as responses to black oppression, and therefore not worth reporting. Whereas similar white-on-black crime is oppression itself, and thus crucially important to put before readers and viewers.

This classic newsroom double standard pops up again and again. A recent example is the "second rape case in Durham." In this eerie reversal of the Duke lacrosse story, a girl was allegedly raped in the bathroom of a Duke fraternity house during a party. North Carolina's News & Observer said the suspect being sought was in "his late teens or early 20s, about 6 foot 1 and wearing a do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans." However, the story failed to mention that the suspect was black, the alleged victim is white, and the fraternity, initially unnamed, is African-American.

When the suspect is not immediately apprehended, the public is usually told by police and the press to look out for someone fitting a particular description. But it does little good if reporters tell us that the man being sought has a small mole on the side of his neck and parts his hair in the middle if we don't know what color he is. Newsroom squeamishness about even mentioning blacks, gays, and women as perpetrators is quite high.

Later the News & Observer mentioned the racial angle, as it had to. But the national press wasn't interested. Once it became clear that the suspect was black, the story lost any chance of journalistic traction. Even the strangeness of a rape report so closely following the other Duke lacrosse story attracted no attention.

Won't He Just Die Already?

Wishing for someone's death isn't likely the kindest thing to do. However, there's a few people in this world for whom this would appropriate. One being, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who has brought death and misery upon this once prosporous nation with his Marxist economic policies and dictatorial rule (and the two always go hand-in-hand).

Look for similar things to happen in Venezuela and South Africa in the next 10 years.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate surged to an unprecedented 3,714 percent at the end of April, the official state newspaper reported Thursday, as the government set up a commission to try to bring prices down to single digit levels....
The Herald said that President Robert Mugabe on Monday signed into law regulations to enforce wage and price controls through "comprehensive price surveys and inspections," with a penalty of up to five years in jail for violators. The ultimate aim would be to bring inflation into single digits.

That means if you had 10,000 in savings a year ago, it's worth 270 today.

Note to Mugabe and the AP: price caps will not reduce inflation!

Has even the CIA lost common sense?

I read a quote in a Newsweek article about Iran, which bother me:

Newsweek: Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, has warned the Bush White House that cracking down too harshly on Iranian operatives in Iraq could spark a wider military confrontation with Iran.

Pretending like they aren't there will not make them go away. Allowing them to operate will result in more bombs killing our troops. I don't understand the head in the sand philosphy. The Iranians don't want a wider military confrontation. They threaten it, but in reality they want a slow bleed until the American public gets tired of the war and pulls out.

Embryonic Stem cells still show no progress.

Adult stem cells yet again show progress. You wouldn't know they were adult stem cells again...the media never makes the distinction for you.

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again. In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

Of course the House of Lords (the US Senate) voted to fund embryonic stem cell research which shows no progress. I have a major problem with government funded research regardless of hope. If there is no progress, private organizations will end funding for useless options. However, the government may keep throwing money at a failed therapy for political reasons. Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research only legitimizes the abortion industry.

WASHINGTON - A stubborn Senate voted Wednesday to ease restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, ignoring President Bush's threat of a second veto on legislation designed to lead to new medical treatments. The 63-34 vote was shy of the margin that would be needed to enact the measure over presidential opposition, despite gains made by supporters in last fall's elections.

"Not every day do we have the opportunity to vote to heal the sick," said Claire McCaskill (news, bio, voting record), D-Mo., a senator less than 100 days following a tough 2006 campaign in which the stem cell controversy played a particularly prominent role. "It is a noble cause," she added.

"We're going to use federal money, indirectly or directly, to destroy embryos," countered Sen. Tom Coburn (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla., echoing Bush's argument against the measure. Coburn said claims of imminent scientific breakthroughs from embryonic stem cell research are unsubstantiated and that adult stem cells have been shown to be useful in a variety of cases.

What's Wrong with Healthcare in America

Healthcare in America has gotten ridiculously expensive as I will demonstrate. The "easy" answer to go to government healthcare, like European countries, but this is a worse option.

So my wife went to the hospital to get 5 stitches in her knee. The stitches were sewn by an LPN (a not quite an RN). She also got a teatnus shot. This ended up costing $1320. This took less than 1/2 hour plus 1 1/2 hours waiting.

How on Earth does a half-hour work cost $1320?

To begin the first problem is that you don't know the price until you are done. I think the healthcare industry is the only industry where you do not know the price of something before you get the service. The receptionists "can't tell you." So you have no idea what you are going to be charged. You can't say, "$1320?! I'm going elsewhere!."

Most companies charge as a rate, about 2-3 times what the person is paid per hour. If you take your car to get the transmission fixed and they charge you $70/hr for labor, that means that the mechanic probably gets about $28/hr. Another $28-35 dollars go to overhead (receptionist), the rent, the lights, the accountant, etc. The small balance is profit. Even law firms generally charge 3 times what they pay their lawyers, and they have fancy furniture, expensive subscriptions to LexusNexus, etc.

How much can a shot of teatnus cost? When drug companies come out with a new medication, you can expect the price to be high because you have to pay for the drug development, along with all of the failed drugs. The teatnus vaccine, on the other hand, has been around for a long time. Thus it shouldn't be very expensive. Similarly, the swabs and alcohol should be minimal.

An LPN can't be that expensive. They only need 1 or 2 years of schooling, without any degrees. Hiring lesser trained employees, to do simpler tasks, should reduce the overall cost of healthcare. Perhaps they make $35 / hour. That would be over $65K/year if they worked their standard 36 hour weeks all year.

So if the shots and supplies cost a generous $50, that means the labor rate for an LPN is over $2500/hr. Even if you got billed for a full hour, that is still 36 times the hourly rate!

Now, I took my new kitten to the vet to get a checked out and get all of its shots for about $120. A vet sees the cat. While a vet is lower on a totem poll than a doctor, he requires a lot more school, and hence costs a lot more, than an LPN. So a vet can see a cat, give it shots, and run some other minor tests, for $120.

So the first question people reading this might have, is "Did insurance pay for it?" It shouldn't matter whether "insurance pays for it." (which is hasn't). You either pay for it then or pay for it in premiums... or your company pays for it in premiums which meanst they can't give you as good of a raise. Half the problem with healthcare is that some people don't see the cost directly as cash out of pocket, so they don't care. They only care when rates go up, but that is only at the end of the year. After a few weeks, they stop caring.

The problem is that there is little to regulate demand. If you only have a $25 copay, you might go to the doctor for every sniffle. Then the doctor might recommend an MRI. Since you are only paying $25, you say sure and get the MRI. This all gets billed to the insurance company who, in turn, raises your premiums.

Illegals and degenerates cost the system as well. This attitude would be considered, by some, as "mean" and "cheap." However, if you declare that other person should pay for someone else, that is not generosity. You can't spend other people's money and consider yourself generous. True generosity, would be donating your own money to charities which would pay for other's healthcare.

Lawsuits have also increased the cost of care. If a jury awards $48 million to someone, where do you think that money come from? However, there isn't much risk in doing stitches as there is in surgery. So, stitches, shouldn't carry any cost due to risk.

With government healthcare, it gets worse. It gets hard to regulate demand. Thus you have hypochondriacs who might get seen quickly, but someone who needs heart surgery waits for 18 months. Some have their cancer surgeries pushed back repeatedly until the cancer becomes unoperable. (That's the European way to reduce healthcare costs... let them die!) You also get a quality deteioration. If you compare American hospitals to those in Britian, you will see British hospitals are much dirtier, and have antique equipment.

So what to do?

Make people pay the first, perhaps, $1500 per year, of everything. Cover the rest. There is no reason why people should expect not to pay anything for their healthcare.

Require hospitals to be more upfront with their charges. If you find out your trip to the doctor for a cold might cost you $400, you might wait and see if it gets better on its own. This will also keep the people who are hypochondriacs at bay.

However, you are still covered from the catostrophic accidents or cancer. So for every 1000 people there is 1,500,000 paid in to cover the big claims. At $1500, you can take advantage of risk pooling and handle this.

Allow for tax deductions, regardless of income, AMT, standard deduction, to charities that deal with healthcare. Have "accelerated deductions"... i.e, for every dollar you donate, you can deduct, a $1.25.

Of course, the big problem to overcome, is that many do not want real solutions. They want socialism, and government controlled healthcare.

Falklands, Round II?

Well, now that the British have been branded as weak over their hostage crisis, Argentina may try a 2nd go at getting the Falklands back.

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Argentina clung to its claim of sovereignty over Britain's Falkland Islands Monday as the two countries marked the 25th anniversary of their war over the small Atlantic islands.

Vice President Daniel Scioli reaffirmed the government's goal of winning control of the Falklands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas, in a speech before war veterans in Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city.

"The war has not changed the reality: the Malvinas are Argentine, they have always been and they always will be," Scioli said in the capital of Tierra del Fuego province, which would oversee the Malvinas.

"We will recover what is ours," he said at the main ceremony marking the anniversary, attended by hundreds of people. Scioli also urged Britain to sit down for negotiations on the islands.

Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said Argentina would continue pressing its case before international bodies.

"We will do so firmly," Taiana said in the southern city of Rio Grande, where thousands of people attended a vigil honoring fallen Argentine soldiers.

President Nestor Kirchner, who decided not to attend the Ushuaia ceremony, has made the Falklands claim a strategic part of his foreign policy since his 2003 election, telling the United Nations he would seek a peaceful track.

Argentina has stepped up pressure in the lead up to the war's anniversary.

Argentina unilaterally canceled a bilateral oil exploration agreement with Britain and announced sanctions against companies exploring in the disputed area.

As much as 60 billion barrels of crude lie in ocean-bed structures around the archipelago, which has been British since 1833.

Britain and Argentina waged a two month war after Argentina's military government, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, invaded the remote South Atlantic islands, 480 kilometers (300 miles) off its coast, on April 2, 1982.

More than 900 people died -- including 649 Argentine and 255 British troops and three islanders -- during air, land and sea hostilities.

Some 12,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) away, Britain's then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose "Iron Lady" reputation was forged during the crisis, sent in 110 ships and 28,000 military personnel to retake the islands and liberate the around 3,000 inhabitants.

Adult Stem Cells: 50342, Embryonic: 0

Adult stem cells have once again shown potential in creating a heart valve. This brings the score to Adult stem cells 50,342 to embryonic stem cells 0. Adult stem cells are taken from bone marrow. Embryonic stem cells are derived from mashing up a fetus. To date, embryonic stem cellsjavascript:void(0)
Publish have not produced a benefit to anything, but there are those who keep supporting it in a way to justify abortion.

Proponents of embryonic stem cell research like to blur the lines between the two. They like to pretend that opponents of embryonic stem cell research do not like all stem cell research. They dupe those who are vulnerable (i.e., Michael J Fox) to believe that a cure is just around the corner if only those evil conservatives would let them mash up a few more babies.

A British research team led by the world's leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years...

By using chemical and physical nudges, the scientists first coaxed stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. By placing these cells into scaffolds made of collagen, Dr Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor then grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. Later this year, that tissue will be implanted into animals - probably sheep or pigs - and monitored to see how well it works as part of a circulatory system.

Moronic Pelosi , Weak Bush

Nancy Pelosi is off to Syria. The White House is upset, but that is all. Foreign policy is in the realm of the Executive Branch. Why should a Congressman be allowed to visit a hostile foriegn country, who is supplying jihadis in Iraq with bombs.

The Secretary of State likely has a foreign policy strategy in dealing with Syria, and when Pelosi or Dodd or Kerry go to Syria, it usurps their authority. If Bush was a stronger leader, he should say "no," not "we don't like it." You can bet your bottom dollar that Pelosi would scream if Bush tried to do anything that is her job.

The Canada Free Press had a funny commentary on it:

Speaker Pelosi has left Washington, D.C., to visit Syria. That is the good news.

The bad news: She is coming back!

Pelosi's sojourn has gossipmongers and political pundits working overtime to answer the $60,000 question: Why?

Doesn't Pelosi realize that she has already done enough damage to the United States with her mind-numbing surrender?

Experts say Pelosi is probably going to Syria for one or more of the following reasons:
# Promote the Pelosi Doctrine for the middle east which calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush and the resurrection of Saddam Hussein, both on Easter Sunday;
# Explain the surrender bills passed in the House and the Senate, and to set a "Date Certain" for resolving all differences into a final bill that terrorists can live with;
# Celebrate First Quarter achievements with Islamofascist sponsors and get marching orders for 2nd Quarter;
# Offer the full time services of William J. Jefferson as Ethics and Banking adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Jefferson's salary and all living expenses to be paid by the DNC, provided Jefferson does not return to U.S. before the day after the elections on November 4, 2008;
# Formally apologize to Syria for the shameful behavior of the Bush administration with regard to 14 innocent Syrian musicians who were viscously harassed during a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Los Angeles in 2004. Pelosi will refer the Syrian government to the San Francisco chapter of the ACLU for further action.

As a gesture of goodwill, Pelosi will also offer to hire the 14 musicians (at minimum wage) to perform at the Gay Pride festivities in San Francisco on June 20;
# Get fitted for a Niqab, the traditional Muslim face wear for women, just in case the "Islam thing" takes hold in the U.S.
# Demonstrate her Islam-friendly politics by traveling with Rep. Keith Ellison, America's first and only Muslim elected to Congress. Pelosi plans to keep a detailed account of all racial profiling and other discrimination suffered by Ellison at airports, in bars, and on the plane in order to argue for repeal of the Patriot Act, and
# Fly in one of those cool 757 air force jets that the Air Force refuses to let her use for fund raising scams in San Francisco.

All in all, Pelosi's trip is good for America because while she is out of the country at least she is not making stupid "Tax and Surrender" laws!

Go, Nancy, Go.

Stay there, Nancy, Stay there!

Flying Imam Lawsuit

In reference to the bolded quote below, it's a move designed, to discourage travelers from speaking up. It should be obvious to every rational person that this was a stunt design to quiet people and companies from speaking up. I hope the FBI is investigating these frauds.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Six Muslim men removed from a plane last fall after being accused of suspicious behavior are suing not only the airline but the passengers who complained—a move some fear could discourage travelers from speaking up when they see something unusual.

The civil rights lawsuit, filed earlier this month, has so alarmed some lawyers that they are offering to defend the unnamed "John Doe" passengers free of charge. They say it is vital that the flying public be able to report suspicious behavior without fear of being dragged into court.

"When you drive up the road towards the airport, there's a big road sign that says, `Report suspicious behavior,'" said Gerry Nolting, a Minneapolis lawyer. "There's no disclaimer that adds, `But beware if you do that, you might get sued.'"

The six imams were taken off a Phoenix-bound US Airways flight on Nov. 20 while returning home from a conference of Islamic clerics in Minneapolis.

Other passengers had gotten nervous when the men were seen praying and chanting in Arabic as they waited to board. Some passengers also said that the men spoke of Saddam Hussein and cursed the United States; that they requested seat belt extenders with heavy buckles and stowed them under their seats; that they were moving about and conferring with each other during boarding; and that they sat separately in seats scattered through the cabin.

Britian's Poor Public Reaction is Appauling

The Daily Mail had an article on the current hostage crisis in Iran. Among other things to note, is that the one woman hostage, has been seperated from the group, stripped of her uniform, and forced to wear Islamic headwear.

However, I was quite shocked at some of the online comments. Some think the Chamberlainesque "it wouldn't of happened if hadn't invaded Iraq." Some even more ludicrious are the commenters who think its a grand plot to start a war with Iran.

So Iran is complicate in the conspiracy for them to get invaded? No one forced Iran to kidnap the sailors, parade them on TV, or strip the woman of her uniform. Even if the British sailors strayed into Iranian waters a wee bit, a rationale response would be for the Iranians to announce that they were in Iranian waters and escort them back to the border. The Iranian response is like a shop owner shooting a customer if they shoplifted a pack of gum.

Is it a cynical ploy to start a war with Iran? Someone needs to speak up before the two B's stir up another hornets nest! - Fyodor, Congleton

The sailors crisis is "very serious" says Blair, what does he think we are thinking that they are just having an away day? We know it's damn well serious just as we know if it weren't for him and his bosom buddy george they would not be there in the first place. - Rose Howard, England

Blair calls the detention of the sailors as unjustified and wrong. Does the same not apply to the Guantanamo detainees? These double standards do not help the situation. Justice is a universal thing and does not just apply to one small group.- Eb, England


This smells of deliberate provocation. I'm sure Bliar will be doing anything to scupper a peaceful resolution. They must be rubbing their hands in Israel. - Stuart, Manchester, England

This is a plot between the two "Bs" to start a war with Iran. Let them put themselves up as hostages so that the war does not start as if it does then God help us all. - Ron Turner, Blackpool Lancs

Let's hope the Iranians don't follow the US example and keep them locked up for years without trial. Best way out is a 'cold war' type solution, we swap them for the five Iranians currently held prisoner in Iraq. - Andrew, UK

Someone get a straight jacket and take Blair away before he and his crony Bush start WW3. - Kate, Newcastle

Or else what? An excuse to invade Iran? - Cww, Ipswich

If B'liar won't go himself, perhaps he can send his children then he would know how other parents are feeling since he got this country into the mess it is in now? - Carol, Chalfont St. Peter.

Thankfully there is some sanity left. However, 99% of Britian should be outraged, not 50%:

If the diplomacy fails, what next? Iran wants to trade these British personnel for the Iranians seized in Iraq. This, if it happens will leave the UK soldiers everywhere forever exposed to kidnap, so should we deal with terrorists/blackmailers? I work in Iraq, and the Iranians have already de facto taken over here, our wonderful leaders gave this country to them on a plate, simply because they are not sophiscated voters, they vote according to religion and tribe, so they have an Iranian back Government. This Iranian Government can affect whether we have fuel for cars or heating for homes, if they were not in this powerful position, they would never attack the Royal Navy outside their waters, and the RN would not of watched it happen from HMS Cornwall. Iran has to be dealt with one day, and it's better to do this before that get anything nuclear at all in my opinion. - Steve, Maidstone, Kent

I pray that the West will wake up, but I have all but given up on Western Europe. I do believe that Iran could behead these fine people and show the video at the UN General Assembly, and France and Germany would huff that, "This type of thing is regretable and could lead to serious repurcusions." Islamo-fascim is real and coming to a street corner near you. - Doug, Jacksonville, FL USA

Ostrich syndrome will prevail - England has lost its "nuts" - a toothless bulldog - lots of noise but no bite! - Ali, Mustapha Sho'Fti, Hydrabad, AE

When I was a student at London University, I could never quite understand why more than 50% of my fellow students were foreigners. I had some particularly good friends from Iran, but at the same time could never understand the sense in letting them attend courses in Nuclear Engineering. Today, the UK is full of Iranians - and it just seem very strange to me the situation the UK finds itself in. I don't think we can give our leaders the label clever - Anon, Hamburg, Germany

What did you expect with two lame ducks, Blair and Bush? Perhaps if the sailors had the right equipment the attack could have been avoided. Why was HMS Cornwall there if it did nothing or was to late to help. Shame on you again. Is this what happens when girlie-men run governments? - Mike, London

Britian's Naval Embarrasement

Back in January, Britian had devised a plan that would have prevented the HMS Cornwall's sailors from being shanghai'd, but the plan wasn't implement soon enough. That plan was to cut the size of the Royal Navy in half. Those ships scheduled to become razor blades would have included the HMS Cornwall
Right now, besides support ships, they have 2 small carriers, 25 destroyers and frigates, and 13 submarines. However, if you don't have a Navy, you can never get your sailors kidnapped and they can't be paraded on Iranian TV.

While Tony Blair has been a solid ally of the US, he has systematically been dismantling his armed forces. A oft-heard opinion in Britian is "well who is going to invade Britian?" No one is going to be landing troops in Southhampton, but the British are losing their ability to project power. A third world despot could blow a bomb in London, take credit for it, and not fear an invasion.

The British are a long way from the days of the Horatio Nelson. Here are some quotes of his, which are as applicable today as they were then:

Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. This is Iran right now. They are causing all sorts of problems in Iraq, yet they are not recognized as an enemy. That is the formula for failure. It was in Korea and Vietnam.

Our country will, I believe, sooner forgive an officer for attacking an enemy than for letting it alone. - This is the attitude the CO of the Cornwall should have taken. Whilst it was against the British's "Rules of Engagement", sometimes the rules must be broken.

If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

Gentlemen, when the enemy is committed to a mistake we must not interrupt him too soon.

Why Have a Navy If You Are Not Willing to Use It?

Robert Frost once eloquently said, "A liberal is someone too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." Handcuffed by political correctness, the British navy did nothing. Why have a Navy if you are not willing to use it? The British are along way from WWII and soured the sacrifies of brave soldiers such as Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas

The captain of the HMS Cornwall is Commodore Nick Lambert, a more modern sort. He did nothing as six Iranian speedboats seized the boarding party from his ship as they were leaving the freighter they had inspected in Iraqi territorial waters.

The 14 men and one woman have been taken to Tehran, where the mullahs are threatening to try them as spies.

U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Erik Horner, executive officer of the USS Underwood, which shares patrol duty in the Shatt al Arab with the HMS Cornwall, expressed surprise that the British let their sailors and marines be taken without a fight.

"U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self defense, but also an obligation to self defense," LtCdr Horner told the British newspaper the Independent. "Our reaction was 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?'

... Former British first sea lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, compared British "de-escalatory" rules and U.S. Navy rules of engagement, which spell out the obligation to self-defense."Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight, we Brits try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were effectively able to be captured and taken away," "

The British are so sophisticated that they are willing to be captured than fire back. Firing back when you are about to be kidnapped is a long way from "sinking everything in sight"... and the British deserve an Admiral that knows the difference.

Flying Imams

Well the flying imams are back and now they are suing U.S. Air. Getting kicked off a plane for acting like the 9/11 terrorists is "extreme harm" according to one of the incredible flying imams.

U.S. Air Customer Relations

I called and emailed my support. I suggest others do so as well.

Is Sanity Starting to Enter the Global Warming Debate?

Well written and well said. I had to post the whole thing before ABC realized they posted an anti-global warming hysteria article.

I love the term ecocondria.

March 9, 2007 — From the Babylon of Gilgamesh to the post-Eden of Noah, every age has viewed climate change cataclysmically, as retribution for human greed and sinfulness.

In the 1970s, the fear was "global cooling." The Christian Science Monitor then declaimed, "Warning: Earth's climate is changing faster than even experts expect," while The New York Times announced, "A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable." Sound familiar? Global warming represents the latest doom-laden "crisis," one demanding sacrifice to Gaia for our wicked fossil-fuel-driven ways.

But neither history nor science bolsters such an apocalyptic faith.

Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Outside the tropics, variability should decrease in a warmer world. If this is a "crisis," then the world is in permanent "crisis," but will be less prone to "crisis" with warming.

Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimeters per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological).

The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous.

So, does the claim that humans are the primary cause of recent warming imply "crisis"? The impact on temperature per unit CO2 goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of human-induced greenhouse gases does not relate directly to emission rate, nor even to CO2 levels, but rather to the radiative (or greenhouse) impact. Doubling CO2 is a convenient benchmark. It is claimed, on the basis of computer models, that this should lead to 1.1 - 6.4 C warming.

What is rarely noted is that we are already three-quarters of the way into this in terms of radiative forcing, but we have only witnessed a 0.6 (+/-0.2) C rise, and there is no reason to suppose that all of this is due to humans.

Indeed the system requires no external driver to fluctuate by a fraction of a degree because of ocean disequilibrium with the atmosphere. There are also alternative drivers relating to cosmic rays, the sun, water vapor and clouds. Moreover, it is worth remembering that modelers even find it difficult to account for the medieval warm period.

Our so-called "crisis" is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections.

But does it matter if global warming is a "crisis" or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment?

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

The global warming "crisis" is misguided. In hubristically seeking to "control" climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that "doing something" (emitting gases) at the margins and "not doing something" (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.

We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The "crisis" is the global warming political agenda, not climate change.

Philip Stott is an Emeritus Professor from the University of London, UK. For the last 18 years he was the editor of the Journal of Biogeography. For more information about the debate series, go to www.iq2us.org

Global Warming = All About the Tax

The real goal of the global warming proponents is to tax. The US has a bustling economy and there are people who want some of the money while simultaneously slow down the US economy.

Holdren, however, says even these measure will achieve very little unless they are accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. "We don't think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach," he said.

The United States is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, but is not a party to the cap and trade system contained in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Gas Guzzling Gore

Gore's house uses a lot more energy. No suprise here, but seeing some hard numbers is interesting. They didn't even touch the amount of extra fuel consumed by Gore's flying on a private jet. The Gore camp will say that they purchased "carbon credits," which essentially is a undisclosed payment to an undisclosed organization, which does absolutely nothing to stop what they say is the cause of global warming. For all the global warming fanactics, while a carbon credit may help them sleep at night (or buffer them politically), it doesn't stop what they think is causing global warming.

From Drudge Report:
Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

Obamanomics

Be all things to all people. Say anything to get popular. Thomas Sowell runs a great critique:


"...Senator Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then.


He thinks higher teacher pay is the answer to the abysmal failures of our education system, which is already far more expensive than the education provided in countries whose students have for decades consistently outperformed ours on international tests.

Senator Obama is for making college "affordable," as if he has never considered that government subsidies push up tuition, just as government subsidies push up agricultural prices, the price of medical care and other prices.

He is also for "alternative fuels," without the slightest thought about the prices of those fuels or the implications of those prices. All this is the old liberal agenda from years past, old wine in new bottles, a new face with old ideas that have been tried and failed repeatedly over the past generation.

Senator Obama is not unique among politicians who want to control prices, as if that is controlling the underlying reality behind the prices.

There is much current political interest in so-called "predatory lending" — the charging of high interest rates for loans to poor people or to people with low credit ratings.

Nothing will be easier politically than passing laws to limit interest rates or make it harder for lenders to recover their money — and nothing will cause credit to dry up faster to low-income people, forcing some of them to have to turn to illegal loan sharks, who have their own methods of collecting.

The underlying reality that politicians do not want to face is that here, too, prices convey a reality that is not subject to political control. That reality is that it is far riskier to lend to some people than to others...."

They Aren't Barbarians!!!

While the Middle East has taken front stage in the world, some people lament that the major contribution to the world by those in the Middle East is the fact they happened to be sitting on oil. They didn't know how to use oil or get it out of the ground, but it is underneath where they are sitting. Without the oil, there would be no money for bombs and terror networks. They would be as unimportant to world politics as Madagascar.

In order to convince the world that they aren't barbarians... an opinion which has been brought on by continued acts of depravity and terrorism, beheading of civilians, the subjugation of women, the stoning of gays, etc... some outlets try to convince us that the Muslim world is enlightened. The British government created a factually and logically incorrect exhibit called 1001 Muslim inventions.

Now Reuters wants us to believe that some mosaic pattern in a mosque is a mathematical breakthrough. What is a breakthrough? The American Heritage dictionary defines it as "A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology." So what further progress was achieved by this mosaic? What was the benefit of breakthrough?

Let's give an example of a real breakthrough: Michael Faraday found that electric run through a wire, will create a rotating magnetic field around it. This breakthrough led to the electric motor, which we use in countless places.

Medieval Muslims made stunning math breakthroughMagnificently sophisticated geometric patterns in medieval Islamic architecture indicate their designers achieved a mathematical breakthrough 500 years earlier than Western scholars, scientists said on Thursday.

By the 15th century, decorative tile patterns on these masterpieces of Islamic architecture reached such complexity that a small number boasted what seem to be "quasicrystalline" designs, Harvard University's Peter Lu and Princeton University's Paul Steinhardt wrote in the journal Science.

Only in the 1970s did British mathematician and cosmologist Roger Penrose become the first to describe these geometric designs in the West. Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.

"Oh, it's absolutely stunning," Lu said in an interview. "They made tilings that reflect mathematics that were so sophisticated that we didn't figure it out until the last 20 or 30 years."

While Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, Islamic culture flourished beginning in the 7th century, with achievements over numerous centuries in mathematics, medicine, engineering, ceramics, art, textiles, architecture and other areas.

Why I Could Never Vote For McCain, reason #2312

I could never vote for anyone who takes global warming seriously. I expect it from the media and the environwackos, but not people who want to be president. The junk science of global warming allows government to put extra regulation on business. It could be used to create new taxes. All in the name of "saving the planet."

US senator Joe Lieberman forecast that the US Congress would enact a law on cutting emissions by the end of next year, possibly this year.

And presidential candidate John McCain, who is co-sponsoring climate legislation with Mr Lieberman, was emphatic on the need for new initiatives.

"I am convinced that we have reached the tipping point and that the Congress of the United States will act, with the agreement of the administration," he told the forum.

... The climate debate is over, said US presidential candidate John McCain.

Turmoil in Venezeula Continues

Chavez's Venezuela is descending into a dictatorship. Of course this gets minimal media attention because Chavez is a darling of the left. Price controls cause shortages. Anyone interested in national healthcare should read this.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez threatened Wednesday to nationalize any privately owned supermarkets and food storage facilities caught hoarding inventories or violating price controls imposed on basic goods.
Accusing private companies of hoarding beef and other foods, Chavez warned supermarket owners and distributors that he would nationalize their facilities as soon as they gave him "an excuse." ...

Industry officials blame shortages on price controls that oblige retailers to sell at a loss, while the government claims unscrupulous speculators, including supermarket owners and distributors, have been hoarding food to boost prices. Venezuela's consumer protection agency and National Guard have raided warehouses and confiscated tons of food they say vendors were unwilling to sell at the official price.

Jose Luis Betancourt, president of Venezuela's main business chamber, said Chavez's threat carried serious implications for the private sector.

"This is a veiled threat against any company, any business owner, any investor, any citizen," Betancourt told Globovision TV station.

Example of Bias in the Media #346231

So this blogger for Edwards says a lot of nasty things about Catholics, among others, and she gets canned. However, in typical spin, the AP labels her "targeted". Now if a blogger for a Republican trashed Mohammed, and he got canned, what would the headline be?

Targeted blogger quits Edwards campaign
RALEIGH, N.C. - One of the chief campaign bloggers for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Monday after conservative critics raised questions about her history of provocative online messages.

Amanda Marcotte posted on her personal blog, Pandagon, that the criticism "was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." Marcotte said she resigned from her position Monday, and that her resignation was accepted by the campaign.

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, confirmed that Marcotte was "no longer working for the campaign." She declined additional comment.

Mininum Wage Hikes Cause Layoffs

Mininum wage hikes are sold to the public as businesses being mean and unfair to the poor working guy. Let's all feel better about ourselves, because we voted in a raise for someone else. Socialist politicans claim that a man can't support a family of four on mininum wage. However, mininum wage applies to everyone, including teenagers. So when the cost of labor for a certain job gets too high, there are layoffs. Instead of giving teenagers jobs where they can learn to hold a job and make some spending money, now can't because of our rhetoric about evil corporations.

Oh, for the days when Arizona's high school students could roll pizza dough, sweep up sticky floors in theaters or scoop ice cream without worrying about ballot initiatives affecting their earning power.

That's certainly not the case under the state's new minimum-wage law that went into effect last month.

Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they're cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees. And teens are among the first workers to go.


The Employment Policies Institute in Washington, which opposed the recent increases, cited 2003 data by Federal Reserve economists showing a 10 percent increase caused a 2 percent to 3 percent decrease in employment.

It also cited comments by notedeconomist Milton Friedman, who maintained that high teen unemployment rates were largely the result of minimum-wage laws...AZ Central

Will the Real Conservative Please Stand Up?

Although he is far behind in the polls, California Representative Duncan Hunter is the only real conservative in the race. Guiliani is against guns and is pro-abortion. McCain is all over the place. Mitt Romney is phoney. His George Romney was also a Rockefeller Republican. One thing I learned from the Bushes, despite initial packaging, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Duncan Hunter is a Vietnam Vet and an unabashed conservative in California. He's a conservative's conservative. He's not like Romney trying to suck up to conservatives after years of playing the liberal card.

Price Regulation Leads to Shortages Example #52,356.

The old saying goes “The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.” Countries have tried fixing prices for decades and the result is the same... shortages. This time, Hugo Chavez's socialist populism is causing food shortages in Venezuela.

The same product at a lower price will generate higher demand.
Producers aren't going to create something that they must sell at a loss. If it costs me $200 to raise a pig (shots, feed, etc) but I only can sell it for $150, why raise the pig?

In the US we don't see it with food as much, but we do see it in housing. Rent control has left NY with high rent prices and housing shortages. The builder could tear down an old building and build a taller building with more units (thus adding to the city's housing capacity), but if the builder can't charge enough to recover his costs, he'll never build it.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

President Hugo Chavez's administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price.

Major private supermarkets suspended sales of beef earlier this week after one chain was shut down for 48 hours for pricing meat above government-set levels, but an agreement reached with the government on Wednesday night promises to return meat to empty refrigerator shelves.

Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.

Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the last four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

"Shortages have increased significantly as well as violations of price controls," Central Bank director Domingo Maza Zavala told the Venezuelan broadcaster Union Radio on Thursday. "The difference between real market prices and controlled prices is very high."

Most items can still be found, but only by paying a hefty markup at grocery stores or on the black market. A glance at prices in several Caracas supermarkets this week showed milk, ground coffee, cheese and beans selling between 30 percent to 60 percent above regulated prices.

The state runs a nationwide network of subsidized food stores, but in recent months some items have become increasingly hard to find.

At a giant outdoor market held last weekend by the government to address the problems, a street vendor crushed raw sugar cane to sell juice to weary shoppers waiting in line to buy sugar.

"They say there are no shortages, but I'm not finding anything in the stores," grumbled Ana Diaz, a 70-year-old housewife who after eight hours, had managed to fill a bag with chicken, milk, vegetable oil and sugar bought at official prices. "There's a problem somewhere, and it needs to be fixed."

Gonzalo Asuaje, president of the meat processors association Afrigo, said that costs and demand have surged but in four years the government has barely raised the price of beef, which now stands at $1.82 per pound. Simply getting beef to retailers now costs $2.41 per pound without including any markup, he said.

"They want to sell it at the same price the cattle breeder gets for his cow," he said. "It's impossible."

After a meeting with government officials Wednesday, supermarkets association head Luis Rodriguez told the TV channel Globovision that beef and chicken will be available at regulated prices within two to three days. He did not say whether the government would be subsidizing sales or if negotiations on price controls would continue.

The government has urged Venezuelans to refrain from panic buying and is looking to imports to help.

Jorge Alvarado, trade secretary at the Bolivian Embassy in Caracas, told the state news agency that Venezuela's government plans to import 330 tons of Bolivian beef next week, eventually bringing that to 11,000 tons a year. It also plans to import 8,250 tons of beans, chicken, soybeans and cooking oil, Alvarado said.

Government officials dismiss any problems with price controls, while state TV has begun running tickers urging the public to "denounce the hoarders and speculators" through a toll-free phone number.

"The weight of the law will be felt, and we demand punishment," Information Minister Willian Lara said Wednesday