Obama is clearly in the campaign mode.  He displays here that he cares little for the victims of his Muslim brother’s killing spree. (more)

Fox News channel has reported:

• Hasan’s father was from a village in Palestine.  
• He stood on a table and shot down into cubicles in the processing center
• He can be turned over to Texas authorities to be prosecuted.  (Bring back “Ole Sparky”!)
• Hasan has been a Muslim from birth.
• Investigators are looking into Hasan’s computer and his connections.

Meanwhile, the London Guardian newspaper reports that a unpublished U.N. report states that the Iranians have tested a nuclear warhead.  (more)

Obama came to the presidency with no experience other than being  a community organizer.  When will be start being the leader of the Free World and stop campaigning?

Is this the face of evil?

In 1993, I got very angry at my legislator for not returning my phone calls about a bill he was proposing in the legislature. So angry, in fact, that I decided he wasn’t going to run unopposed again in 1994. I beat him in a Democrat university town, and beat him again two years later. Turns out it was the perfect time to be going after the liberals — and that time is upon us again.

If you or someone you know is interested in running for office, I would recommend a number of preliminary steps — and I will be blogging about them over the next bit. Not anyone can run for office successfully — but if there was a time that was ripe for real conservatives to run for their local councils, legislatures, or even Congress against either Democrats or RINOs, this is that time.

Watch this space for more on how I did it (with a lot of help from my friends and family) — and for what to avoid after you actually take the steps to get running. If you’re interested in running for office, I would be happy to give you whatever advice and counsel I have to offer — RINOs need not apply (although my definition of a RINO is probably a lot more narrow than most of my conservative friends).

Now the clincher!   Her brother, who is a heavy boozer, DID have a stroke about two years ago. This man lost his speech and was partially paralyzed.  He lives in London, England, U.K.  The socialized medicine doctors in London told him he needed an emergency brain scan.  Then they told him that the brain scan would take up to four months!  He would have to go on a waiting list.  He had to go into a private health care facility to get the emergency brain scan.  The whole thing took about a week. During that week,  he was in agony.  He eventually partially recovered.

Now you decide which is the best health care system?   That’s not all.  The British socialized HC is a scandal.  I have compiled a list of newspaper articles on the terror of socialized medicine.  Just click HERE.

Before we throw away a working healthcare system, the best in the world, we should think very carefully, then keep what we have!

But wait!  Sen. Snowe is a RINO, a Republican in Name ONLY.  This is the same senator who was elected in 1994  when the Republicans swept both houses of Congress.  Little thanks did she have for the Republican agenda.  She voted against the resolution that would have sent impeached and failed President Bill Clinton packing.  After that “victory” Clinton invited Snowe to the White House for an “After the Impeachment” Victory Party.

Snowe is not the first Maine senator to be out of step with the times.  In the 1950’s Maine had a notable GOP Senator in Margaret Chase Smith.   Chase Smith has the distinction of being the first woman whose name was put up for nomination for president of the United States.  That was the year that the Republicans embraced Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater for president.

Chase Smith is also the author of the little known Declaration of Conscience in June 1, 1950.  Her declaration was a reaction to the Red Scare.   One of the leaders in Congress was her fellow senator, Joseph McCarthy.

Chase Smith unveiled her Declaration of Conscience on the floor of the Senate.  It declared:

• The right to criticize;
• The right to hold an unpopular belief;
• The right to protest;
• The right to independent thought.

Her Declaration was debated for a while, but her timing was terrible.  Only 24 days later, the North Korean Army launched an invasion across the 38th parallel and started the Korean War.  No one cared about the Chase Smith’s epistle after that.

Chase Smith’s seat eventually went over to Maine’s other senator, Susan Collins.   She, incidentally,  is the other RINO in the senate.

The Real conservative of that era and of all eras remains Goldwater.   What would he say today?

Turns out that for 2008 and 2009 (so far), Humana had operating margins of 3.7% and 4.5% respectively — which provided a return on assets of 5.0% and 6.3%, and a return on equity of 15.3% and 18.2%. Not bad, but obscene? Give me a break.

Health Net, another “evil health insurance company” had operating margins of 1% and 1.1% for 2008 and 2009 to date — giving these bastards a whopping return on assets of 2% and 2.4% — and return on equity of 5.2% and 6.4%.

Bear in mind that they did, in actuality, turn a profit — a feat the Federal government has yet to replicate with Amtrak or the US Postal Service.

Perhaps my Twitter friend will point me towards this evil cabal of companies making 30% profits out of their revenues, as he claims. Somehow, I doubt it.

It could be hard to type that way, but we’ll see.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. … It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

It was there for all to see. Those of us who are part of the mob, and helping drive the conversation online, could feel it in our bones. Too bad the Democrats, by and large, can’t seem to feel the populist anger that’s welling up all around them. Actually, it’s not too bad; the air has that 1994 smell to it, if you know what I mean.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

It’s easy — it hasn’t been about “people” in a long time, Camille. It’s about power. It’s about money. It’s about control. And it won’t end, ever, for them — because it’s all they know. The idealists of the 60’s are gone — either evolving into self-interested power-seekers, devolving into regular folks who just want to raise their families and make a living, or finally wised up and realized that the Republican or Libertarian Party is their true home.

I love the smell of 1994 in the morning. Smells like… victory. Some day, this regime is going to end.

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs,” issued a statement of apology on Thursday. When asked on Friday whether President Barack Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration.”

Continues to work? Now that’s a ringing endorsement.

I use quotation marks as, against an airplane, she might as well have simply been throwing rocks.

‘course I don’t recall Olbermann having a problem with that movie about Bush getting assassinated — oh well.

Today, on my way home from work, I stopped at the store to pick up some well-deserved barley-pop (they have a great selection) and ran into a friend of mine who works there.

Naturally, I had to stop and congratulate her on Whole Foods becoming the darlings of the Right Wing Conspiracy, with their CEO’s recent Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare“.

She said “I just KNEW you were going to come in and give me a hassle about that!” and laughed. She then proceeded to give me a copy of a letter they are issuing to any offended Lefty who comes by to bitch about Whole Foods falling off the Obamawagon.

Here are a few excerpts:

As you are probably aware, John Mackey wrote an Op/Ed piece that was published in the WSJ earlier this week … John’s intent was to express his personal opinions – not those of Whole Food Market team members or our company as a whole. Still, it’s very clear that John’s piece offended some of our customers, other members of the communities we serve, and some of our team members as well.

We offer you a sincere apology.

Whole Foods Market has no official position on the issue. That said, we have attempted to be part of the solution in health care reform for many years by providing innovative health care options to our team members. We believe that our high deductible medical insurance plan coupled with a company-funded HSA is an excellent way to empower team members to make their own health care choices.

John wanted to share our experience with others through his Op/Ed piece. He believes that the specific ideas he put forward would improve access and cost of health care for more people. Because our plan has held down overal costs (relative to other plans), WFM has been able to pay 100% of the premiums for our full-time team members — about 89% of our workforce…

WFM has a 30-year track record of caring about our customers, team members and communites. From local loan programs to salary caps, from donations to non-profits to funding the Whole Planet Foundation, our innovative programs are created and designed by team members who care about their fellow citizens…

In other words, we’re still the wacky, quirky, Lefty folks you buy your arugula from, so don’t stop shopping here. Just because WE solved the healthcare problem for OUR employees in no way means that we don’t support socialized medicine for the rest of you suckers. Unless you take ours away; that would be bad. We think.

Since tens of you visit each week, I thought I’d put in the effort to make it a little less gloomy than the old “Lemmings” theme, that and brown isn’t a very popular color of late, thanks to Barbara Box-o-rocks. Oh, sorry, SENATOR Box-o-rocks. Sorry, I forgot how hard you worked to “earn” that title by smearing Hershensohn so slimely. I’m sure that took the wind out of your sails and all.

Actually, I’m not against a “public option” — we already have one, and it’s called Medicaid — a program that ensures that the poorest and least insurable among us are covered in the health care system.

Seems to me that there are four simple things we can do to improve health care in this country:

1. Tort reform — limit punitive damages, and require arbitration before awarding people like John Edwards tens of millions of dollars paid by doctors and hospitals for malpractice insurance. The money freed up could easily amount to billions in savings to the current system, making insurance and services more affordable.

2. Create “assigned risk” pools, not unlike how car insurance works, to handle people with pre-existing conditions. We could even throw some money at subsidizing the programs, set up on the state level.

3. To cover those not already covered by Medicaid (some studies report that quite a few people who are currently “uninsured” don’t even realize that they qualify for Medicaid), up the income eligibility levels to allow more people who can’t afford private insurance to be covered. At the same time, expand Medicaid to cover wellness issues such as regular checkups, health education, smoking cessation and substance abuse treatment.

4. Once we’ve done the above, require everyone to have a basic basket of health insurance. This would spread the costs over those people who have “chosen” not to have health insurance because they are perhaps young and healthy, but could afford health insurance. We require all drivers to have liability insurance; we should do the same with health care, since more and more it’s being deemed an essential “right” (although I hate using that word), and at the very least is not refused to anyone at the emergency room. Free riders who are able to help pay should do just that.

Next, let’s see how we can make Medicaid and Medicare more efficient and effective before spreading these systems over the whole thing. Let’s keep the government from competing via subsidies to the “public option” against a system that 80% of it’s customers are happy with. Once we’ve accomplished the above four items, and we wait a couple years, we can guage the results and see what else we should do.

Creating a gigantic government bureaucracy to solve a problem that is only a problem for a minority of the populace, when it could be helped greatly by a combination of tweaking the way we do things and subsidizing our most needful citizens, makes a lot more sense to me than blowing up what we have and moving to the so-called “public option.”

Thoughts?

Not only do they get gold-plated healthcare, while designing an East German system for the rest of us, they apparently aren’t subject to the same insider-trading rules that the rest of us are under.

According to Politifact,

Thomas Newkirk, a partner with the law firm Jenner and Block, told us that indeed there’s some uncertainty about how insider trading rules impact members of Congress and their staff.

For example, in 2001, a financial consultant meeting with the Treasury Department learned that the department planned to kill off the 30-year bond. In turn, the consultant tipped off traders at Goldman Sachs who proceeded to use that information to make the firm lots of money. It was considered insider trading because the consultant knew he was not supposed to release the information, Newkirk said. Federal regulators settled with Goldman Sachs and the consultant for about $10.3 million in September 2003.

But with members of Congress, it’s different. Unless lawmakers have some express confidentiality agreement — whether it’s in writing or in word — they can do whatever they want with the information they obtain on Capitol Hill, Newkirk said.

Bruce Carton, a former Senior Counsel with the SEC’s enforcement division and current editor of Securities Docket, agreed there is uncertainty about the rules. “Insider trading depends on some kind of duty. You can steal information, but unless you have some sort of duty of confidentiality to it, you’re not going to be held liable,” Carton said.

Right now, there is no duty of conflict for Congress, their staff or executive branch employees, he said.

Hey I have an idea : How about a Pulitzer to the writer or writers who actually get off their arses and investigate what is probably the scandal of the century just waiting to be discovered?

HT and for further analysis go to Redstate.com.

Anyhow, the poll was conducted the last week of July, and it’s not pretty if it’s any kind of trend:

Is Barack Obama too liberal? 54% of likely voters said yes.

Will Barack Obama raise your taxes? 54% of likely voters said yes.

Does Barack Obama promise things that sound good but won’t be able to get them done? 53% of likely voters said yes.

Is Barack Obama a “big spender”? 65% of likely voters said yes.

Source (see page 5)