A look into the future:  the Health Administration Bureau!  The speed of FEMA, the effectiveness of the Immigration Service, and the compassion of the IRS!

Via LRC:

Among the countless horrors our Dear Leader wants to visit upon us with his health care “reform” bill is this: ”grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents, and adults through the use of evidence-based interventions. States may use funds to implement interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force, such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers, or home visits.”

“The bill lists eight specific ways that states may use federal grant money to carry out immunization-promoting ‘interventions.’ Method ‘E’ calls for ‘home visits’ which can include ‘provision of immunizations.’”

In other words, whether you want your kids (or yourself) to receive certain vaccines, the state can forcibly administer them in your home.

Anyone think that Big Pharma won’t back this bill 100 percent?

The DC Police Chief is upset about an iphone application where users can share information about police traffic stops and speed cameras, or in other words, to help people avoid the mini police state, which has 290 cameras in the DC area, which makes up a whopping 10% of all traffic cameras in the entire country. I say good for the people who use the iphone application to avoid getting nickel and dimed by the growing surveillance society.

How will it do that? (My son’s background can be found here.)

By removing the private insurance option from anyone who changes jobs and seeks individual policies:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

As I’ve described before, my son has a very tricky condition that will most assuredlyt require absolutely top-flight neurosurgeons to retain as much functionality as possible through life.  As my wife and I both work in IT and I float in and out of the consulting realm, individual insurance availability is essential to us to get those top-flight doctors.  And there is certainly no guarantee that my son will be able to get adequate coverage on his own, since the government is taking the same approach it has taken with education by ‘dumbing down’ the coverage.

Add to this the fact that a huge part of the tax burden for this will fall on the doctors themselves, as part of the ‘rich’ category (which we’ll all end up joining, as current policies produce hyperinflation that will render $250K an average salary).  several of these top doctors are refugees from other socialized systems who camer to this country to prosper; they very easily could pick up and leave as we socialize this one.

So, by the time my son faces his make or break surgeries (hopefully, several years from now), this current bill very likely will reduce his options and the available quality of the surgeons.  And that could very easily land him in a wheechair , in a diaper and a permanent feeding tube implanted.  Nothing makes the government insistance in meddling with what currently is working for many of us more personal than that.

Global Warming: Scientists’ Best Predictions May Be Wrong

Scientists are now distancing themselves further from their own climate models. Now they’re saying they don’t even know how much earth’s climate is affected by carbon emissions.

You can read about the science community’s Michael Jackson-esque moon-walk here.

Here’s another article published Nov 2008.

But in spite of the questionable data on global warming and the admission by scientists that their climate models are “do-do”, it may not be enough to prevent passage of the Cap and Trade Climate bill.

Today Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) questioned Judge Sonia Sotomayor about the 2nd Amendment. She defended her stance on the Second Amendment saying “it applies to Federal Government regulation.” She went on to say that in Maloney the question was, “was that right incorporated against the states?” She then claimed that in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court had said, “it’s not. So it’s not fundamental in that legal doctrine sense. That was the court’s holding.” I think she thought she could pull that one over on us, but Coburn was versed on the case and he didn’t let her get away with it. He asked, “Did the Supreme Court say that it definitely was not or did they just fail to rule on it?” Sotomayor began to back pedal and Coburn pointed out that “there’s a very big difference there.” In fact, Heller, held that local laws cannot violate the Second Amendment, only regulate for the purposes of public safety.

– READ ON –

Peter Schiff who is looking to run against Chris Dodd (Leech-Mass.) will be using early donations to gauge if he wants to go all the way. His e-mail:

“My decision to run is largely dependent on the level of early support and contributions I receive from people like you,” he wrote in the e-mail. Recent polling, he said, has convinced him the race is “winnable,” and “now it’s up to the people to show their support because no candidate can win this race alone.”

Andrew Schiff, Peter’s brother and spokesman, [told] CQ last month. “We’re attracting a lot of very fervent believers,” he said. “The question is whether or not this will all resonate with the voters of Connecticut.”

Peter Schiff’s Tuesday e-mail was a bit less cautious. He pledged to “answer the call,” if he finds ample support for a campaign over the coming weeks. “However, if the public sentiment for my run is not there, I will return the contributions,” he promised.

I dont really watch the all star game anymore. I don’t need to spend all that time to find out what we’ve known the last 13 years — the NL is inferior. So I had to read about it from other people:

Did you catch Obama at the baseball All-Star Game last night? Why does the State have to interject itself into everything that I enjoy? Last Night, the All-Star game was pathetic: Obama in the announcer’s booth, a picture of the capitol building cut into the center field grass, and replicas of the statue of liberty adorning in Cardinals uniform.

I’m pretty sure it has never been that bad in previous years. But I guess the state needs everyone to know for sure now that they are the greatest thing ever, especially since they will soon be running healthcare, the auto industry, the financial sector, etc. Moreso since the Commander in Thief/Emperor/Chairman was attending.

The soldier who refused to show for deployment because Obama “hasn’t proven his eligibility for office” has had his orders revoked. Here’s the tidbit here.

As for others, my assessment is also born from comments Sotomayor made during a 2001 lecture at the University of California-Berkeley. Referring to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s saying that

a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,

Sotomayor said,

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

If these comments were made by a white man being wiser than a Latino woman, he would be forced to withdraw his nomination. He would be skewered in the press. Today, (July 14, 2009) during her hearings she acknowledged this to Sen Lindsey Graham:

GRAHAM: But do you understand, ma’am, that if I had said anything like that, and my reasoning was that I’m trying to inspire somebody, they would have had my head? Do you understand that?

SOTOMAYOR: I do understand how those words could be taken that way, particularly if read in isolation.

GRAHAM: Well, I don’t know how else you could take that. If Lindsey Graham said that I will make a better senator than X, because of my experience as a Caucasian male makes me better able to represent the people of South Carolina, and my opponent was a minority, it would make national news, and it should.

Having said that, I am not going to judge you by that one statement. I just hope you’ll appreciate the world in which we live in, that you can say those things, meaning to inspire somebody, and still have a chance to get on the Supreme Court.

Others could not remotely come close to that statement and survive. Whether that’s right or wrong, I think that’s a fact.

GRAHAM: Does that make sense to you?

SOTOMAYOR: It does. And I would hope that we’ve come in America to the place where we can look at a statement that could be misunderstood, and consider it in the context of the person’s life.

Then there is the matter of Sotomayor’s recent decision in the reverse discrimination case of of Ricci v. DeStefano. Sotomayor and two other judges ruled against white firefighters who argued they were passed over for promotion because of their race.

Her ruling was recently overturned by the same Supreme Court on which she hopes to preside. The Supreme Court ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that she endorsed as an appeals court judge.

In a 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS found that New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results.decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

Next, there are the comments Sotomayor made at a Duke University School of Law panel four years ago, saying these remarks show she is a liberal activist.

“All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is, court of appeals is where policy is made,” Sotomayor said then.

It is common knowledge the courts enforce the laws and should never forge policy from the bench in pursuit of a personal agenda.

Reflecting on that fact she attempted a moon walk by saying, “And… I know this is on tape, and I should never say that, because we don’t make law, I know. … I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it,” she added.

Busted.

As a country we are either for or against racism in all its forms. I have been around long enough to have seen that racism is without cultural and racial bounds; it transcends all.

If we find ourselves willing to give Sotomayor the life time seat on the Supreme Court then we should be prepared to accept the nomination of any of the following:

Mohandas Gandhi:
“Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the Kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension…the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, pp. 244-245)

On his description of black inmates: “Only a degree removed from the animal.” Also, “Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.” – Mar. 7, 1908 (Reference: CWMG, Vol VIII, pp. 135-136)

Nelson Mandela: Belonged to a terrorist organisation and is believed to have sanctioned many terrorist plots against innocent Blacks and Whites in South Africa

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Again, we are either advocates of racism or not. If we decide as a country we are not advocates then without exception there is no room on the Supreme Court for the likes of Ms. Sotomayor.

The choice is that simple.

Personally, I would rather not associate myself with racists by supporting their endeavors in whatever form that takes. Therefore, I cannot support a racists lest I be called one myself.