How did America become the Nanny State that it is?  

We’ve got bureaucrats and politicians telling us, the we the people, what to do, how to do it, and when and where to do it, continually, day in and day out they’re instructing the country on something of grave importance.   I imagine that many Americans will not go to work, nor send their kids off to the public school indoctrination centers without checking the latest instructions and warnings from the local, or the national news networks first. 

The chief nanny spoke to America last night congratulating himself on his first 100 days, and the assistant nanny had a word or two to say also, but then had to come back and correct his first words.   He backed off.   But it’s still an important message for all of us.   If it’s good for his own family, it must be good enough for the 306 million rest of us.  He, that Joe Biden fellow, the nanny in charge of public attitude and comfort, said that he would not recommend taking commercial air flights, nor would it be a good idea to travel by subway either.  

Why?  

Well, it seems to him, that riding in a plane or subway would put oneself in danger of catching a flu like virus from some unaware sicko riding along in those same closed in conditions.   You should wear a mask, wash your hands between sneezes, cover your mouth during a cough (leave the mask on if you’ve got one), stay home from work if you’re sick and keep the kids home from school if they are sick.  

Putting the sarcasm aside for a bit, the World Health Organization says it’s not yet a pandemic, but it could become one as 8 people have died from the flu called swine, and there are 257 confirmed cases worldwide.

Compared to previous years, this is a non issue . . . but the year is not over yet . . . it could develop . . . into a real pandemic . . . but then, it might not . . . so, listen to nanny. . . everyday for updates.

No word yet from the airline industry for their response.   Private industry, workers care about not having passengers to care for.

No word yet from the subway system of the various cities.   Government industry, workers don’t care about not having passengers to care for.

Thank You Mr. VP. 

I’m so glad we’ve got a VP who is so concerned for us citizens, and non–citizens too, that he’s willing to interrupt his monopoly game with lobbyists to inform us all of what to do.  

How did America ever expand and grow without news warnings every hour on the hour. . . if not more often.

NEWS ALERT. 

A THUNDERSTORM IS BREWING OVER THE KANSAS WESTERN PLAINS AND ALL WAGON TRAINS HEADING IN THAT DIRECTION SHOULD SEEK COVER.  THERE COULD BE HAIL THE SIZE OF GOLF BALLS, WHICH WOULD DEVASTATE YOUR CANVAS COVERING AND SPOOK THE HORSES.   AVOID THE AREA.

Why is it that the laws making it a crime to commit assault and battery, murder, stealing and other crimes against individuals are needed to be upgraded based on the perceived motive of the perpetrator against the victim.  They’re called "hate crimes."   It’s still a crime, and when proven guilty, the aggressor will go to prison and serve his/her sentence.   Battery is still a crime, it’s morally wrong to intentionally physically hurt or harm another, so why do the liberals see the need to make it more of a crime to physically harm a person of a certain sex, or as the progressives enjoy redefining Webster, of a particular sexual orientation, as if a persons physical sex can be "oriented."  

Morality is now relative according to who is being victimized. 

If there is one columnist over the past several years who has opened my eyes to the basics, the core, the roots underlining the glue that holds this society, or any society together, that columnist is Walter Williams.  I was a blind liberal, but now I see.  

Today Walter Williams has one of his best. 

"How laws have replaced civility."

A civilized society’s first line of defense is not the law, police and courts but customs, traditions and moral values. Behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. The failure to fully transmit values and traditions to subsequent generations represents one of the failings of the so-called greatest generation.

Behavior accepted as the norm today would have been seen as despicable yesteryear.    Continue reading . . .

Thank You Mr. Williams.

I remember those days when if a teen ager got pregnant, the parents would have been shamed and the kid would have been removed from that school and her friends would never hear of or see that young person again.   That shame was a very effective deterrent to teen age sex.   In our "enlightened" age, society has done away with effectiveness in favor of not offending their "self-esteem."   The thinking was: "They’re going to do it anyway, so we might as well provide them a "safe" way to do it, and then instruct them how and pass out the condoms.

That’s only generated more and more teen age pregnancies, which then has only created more and more need for open abortions to give the kid their life back to do it some more. . . this time maybe taking the necessary precautions . . . which sometimes fail to work as hoped . . . so back to class for more instructions.   And the parents agree to a time out corner and give the kid some more condoms, not once calling it despicable behavior.

We are so "enlightened" that it stinks of stupid.

You’ve got to hand it to Obama as he takes care of his own.  He digs back into his past relationships while organizing communities, and getting uplifted in that church, and he never forgets the buddies from Chicago.    Soon, we just might see Rod Blagojevich, who was kind of buddy buddy to Obama, appointed as integrity czar.  

But the newest appointment is that of Cass Sunstein, an old friend from the University of Chicago Law School, who is ready to hammer those of us that use the Internet for gathering our news information rather than from the liberal main stream press and MSNBC etc.    Sunstein "has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period."

"Sunstein also has argued in his prolific literary works that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing."

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government," he wrote. "Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name."   Continue reading . . .

Here, read that again.  This joker believes that when individuals have limitless choices, it’s not in their best interest.  Sunstein would rather the government make your choices for you as you just might screw up and make a wrong choice, you might listen to the wrong people, you might associate with the wrong people, you might purchase the wrong dinner from a menu featuring 25 different items, you might, you might, you might.   You might cause a problem that the government would have to clean up.    What’s a little lost freedom here and there for a sense of security?

Sunstein is also ready to grant the president the power to shut down the Internet for 24 hours if need be.  

For all the lefties out there, they too believe this is a good thing, and they are willing to sacrifice some personal freedoms for more government control.  

Will America survive another 265 days of just this year, and then 1095 days till January 20th, 2013?

It’s kind of traditional for the press to give the newly elected president a rating for the first 100 days occupying the White House.   I skip over what the press is saying as I don’t care what some journalist or editor sitting in high rise offices have to say, and I certainly don’t let that biased mainstream press form my opinions . . . on the first 100 days of Obama, or anything else for that matter. 

Ok, so the Obama family has a first dog, the girls are going to a private school, and the first lady has the first garden next to the first swing set.   This makes Barack a family man for all of us to admire.

What has he done?   It might have been his first order of business,  the promised release of prisoners of war from the soon to be closed down terrorist detention center.   So now we know where he stands as far as the threat of terrorism upon Americans.   That should scare all of us. Along those same lines he has declared the war on terror to be an overseas contingency operation.   When and if we ever get hit again in these lands, the conflict will be called a homeland contingency operation, similar to what his appointee, Janet Napolitano as head whip for DHS, called for right-wing extremists to fess up as the feds are watching.

He signed the fate of our children’s and grandchildren’s tax obligations before they even get a chance drive a car, and is working on getting cars larger than the Smart Car off the roads by 2025.   His signatures went on the stimulus bill, the nicely called fair pay act of Lily Ledbetter, and raising the taxes on tobacco to fund children’s health care hoping that not too many people would quit smoking. 

Obama has been mentioned as a rock star, a messiah and a male model for Vanity Fare or Oprah.

His politics are another story, echoing what the Soros funded group over there at DailyKos, MoveON, Albert the Gore and progressive socialists in heat are putting on the monitor that he reads from, as we found out that his off the cuff answers to reporters questions and remarks are as bad as the um’s and ah’s of George W. 

That’s what we’ve got.   100 days of new age, new world, new beginnings to the changes Americans said they believed in.   What’s left is 265 days of 2009, and then counting off the 1095 days left after that until a new inauguration coronation.  Each day will be a new change that many former believers are now questioning the wisdom of changes for changes sake.

What’s missing is the constitution.

The move is on full speed ahead for the federal government to take over our nations health care.  

This week-end, Congressional leaders along with the White House honchos, republicans excluded, are jamming out the final details, without any republican input into the details of Obama’s $3.5 trillion budget bill.   Did I mention there’s no republican input into this bill.  Part of that budget is $600 billion directed for health care reform.  But looking at the details, some say the figure would reach twice that amount, as the feds are usually always wrong when it comes to estimating budget expenditures.   Anyway, the push is on from Obama and democrats holding the power to reform our health care system, and that’s a good plan according to those same ones, who pay no attention to history.

Then a report like this one comes out to remind us of the shape of government run health care.

VA patient tests HIV-positive after clinic mistake

The VA hospitals are run by the federal government.   They’ve always been under the gun for something, for some mishap, for many abuses to our veterans, and for the condition the VA hospitals are maintained.

Not only do our troops deserve better, but all Americans deserve better.

Our politicians have a blind eye to the Canadian system, to the system in the UK, to the health system anywhere else that is controlled by the government.  But our officials are better.  But our politicians will not make the same mistakes when setting up a one size fits all health program geared to Americans.

Right.   Yea, sure, they will.   And there is an island about to be made in the middle Pacific that could be yours.

Go ahead support and back up the OBAMA plan so you can save a few bucks on your doctor’s visits (when he’ll be able to see you) and save on the responsibility of taking care of yourself.   Don’t complain about the waits, the poor service, about some bureaucrat deciding that a certain procedure you need is not cost effective.

There is already a shortage of doctors, so where are all of the new doctors that will be needed to fill the vacancies coming from, when the young are not continuing on toward primary care?

What’s broken about the current system?   Why the need to change it?

You have learned to take care of your own needs and make your own decisions about auto insurance and home owner insurance, so why should health care be any different?   You agree to a certain level of catastrophic coverage for a certain monthly premium, and you know up front what cosmetic damages the insurance company will pay for, and what must come out of your pocket.   How many companies did you interview before picking your current agency?   How many bids did you get?   Are you a safe driver?   What’s your risk factor?

If the health care industry was set free of governmental red-tape and bureaucratic intrusion, then a similar competitive program would emerge.

That’s how Washington could help the most.   Get the heck out of the way.  

Term Limits.  

You either believe or you don’t.   You believe that the use of interrogations, and that includes the use of what is deemed to be torture, in order to extract secret information from prisoners is necessary and proper to prevent further attacks upon this country, is either "right or wrong."

Is your mind already made up?  Nothing can change it.   Most of us are like that, operating from pre-conceived notions gathered by bits and pieces here and there, salted with our own desires for our country to follow some sort of honorable principle.   Perhaps some sort of new-age social-psycho higher ground position such as how we now look upon disciplining a two year old.  Sit the kid down, reason with him and tell him that Mommy did not like what he did and if he does it again he’ll have to sit in the time out corner.   

Here’s our problem.  The newspeak of: no one can really say that a certain behavior is "wrong" anymore, as "right and wrong" are a matter of one’s own heart and feelings. 

The gooders on the left think that a captured terrorist will give up secret information if we just sit him down in a straight back chair, give him a Starbucks latte without the foam and promise him he can have it really foaming high if he tells us what we want to know.

Marc Thiessen has put the debate to rest in his article in National Review.   As Albert the Gore says: there is a consensus, so it is settled and the debate can be declared over, and all those who still deny these findings are nothing but right-wing radical zealots who would never believe my inconvenient truths anyway.   So it is with torture of those who would do us all harm, only there are some fundamental truths in what Marc writes.  The debate is over. 

“Most people who oppose these techniques want to be able to say: I don’t want my country doing this – which is a purely honorable position – and they didn’t work anyway.  That back half of the sentence isn’t true.  The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer.  It really did work.”  The West Coast Plot: An "Inconvenient Truth"    [Marc Thiessen]

In our present day culture, only the left has the luxury of declaring a debatable issue as being over.  And that’s not right.

Does this about sum up our differences?

How many church goers does it take to change a light bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1 – Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal: 10 – One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None – Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None – Candles only.

Baptists: At least 15 – One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3 – One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Mormons: 5 – One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians: We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists: Undetermined – Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene: 6 – One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None – Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Amish: — What’s a light bulb?

Respectfully copied from WND "joke of the day".

"Once you are desensitized to nudity, is a little simulated drowning all that much worse?"  So goes the byline of the Newsweek article, about the current media and left wing political debate about torture and the methods used for extracting information from our "detainees" at that closed down bay in Cuba.  

The feel good media is feeling a bit better by hashing over the Abu Ghraib scenes and creating a stretched comparison to the waterboarding and sleep deprivations of the terrorists we captured during the war on terror.   But now that the war on terror is officially over, the left feels compelled to put a guilt trip on America for the "inhumane" treatments of the "overseas contingency operation" forced detainees being held previously at Guantanamo.

"And once you are desensitized to hoodings and nudity, is a little simulated drowning or being bounced off a wall really all that much worse?"

For a moment there, I thought Newsweek was talking about Hollywood and the trashy stuff on prime time that has desensitized America.

Obama started this new round by his release of secret memos from the Bush efforts to stop any more attacks upon Americans here at home.   The motivation is nothing more than another round of "go get Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld" and a few more and drag their reputations in the mud again and again, and if possible imprison them all, so that liberals and democrats would appear to playing on a higher moral level than holy angels themselves.  

There’s always another side of the story, which Obama and his Soros funded bunch leave out.  The information purposely left under cover are the memos that show the results that those methods of extracting information from terrorists in custody.   Information which led the CIA and the military to prevent a similar to 9/11 attack on Los Angeles.

And of course to liberals, results don’t matter, the fact that thousand of lives have probably been saved by the information secured does not matter. 

Now, what ever happened to that Geneva Convention which determined that prisoners of war should be treated humanely if they were in uniform identifying them with the army of the enemy?

Have any of the terrorists been wearing a uniform while picking off our soldiers who held off firing because our rules demanded identifying possible combatants as really enemies?   You know the answer to that and so do the liberals, but getting Bush and Cheney is more important.

One of the comments left on the Newsweek article says it all.

Posted By: hogwash5 @ 04/25/2009 1:16:12 PM

THe rest ot the world must be laughing at us histerically. Are you kidding me? Hazing at American Universities used to be harsher than some of the suggested tortures i.e. confinment in a box with an insect; being naked…I venture to say that if you had asked prior to Abu Ghrab what torture is most Americans would have said: a hot poker up the ass; cutting your fingers off one by one ; bamboo under the fingernails etc.; taking an eye one at a time…What a joke the press have made of the methods used by our people to extract information for the sake of saving the lives of our people…!! I remember in Vietnam when the enemy would kill villagers cut their abdomens open and stuff their own HEADS inside their body cavities then the bodies would be displayed in order to exact compliance of the Vietnamese in an area…Now that’s torture….!!

Any bets that the Obama plan of negotiating and pleading with terrorists to put on uniforms in Afghanistan will save American’s lives.  

The attitude of our elected representatives in the House, who sit on the  the House Energy and Commerce committee, is that Gore must be given special honors as the most credible of any possible living witness to appear before this select group.    It’s the committee’s responsibility to find out why and what we should do to combat the supposed threat of a climatic disaster of a hockey stick falling over and disturbing the furthering of the Clean Air Act regulations.

According to a report just out, UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was at first invited to testify in a joint appearance with Gore at the hearings, but then his name was scratched at the last minute.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed ‘celebrity’ as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The “celebrity” witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats’ “celebrity” with an unnamed “celebrity” of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution.   Climate Depot

Lord Monckton is quite the fellow.  “As a contributor to the IPCC’s 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate’s alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year’s Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.”    Continue reading . . .

Henry Waxman, as the head chair of the committee is the odd fellow by not standing up to Gore and telling the squirt that if we invited Monckton to testify, then he is going to have his say also.

Former senator Joe Biden, isn’t he a VP for someone, has suggested to lawmakers that they spend $300 million buying fuel efficient cars for States and Cities across the country.  

"We’re going to put Recovery Act dollars to work deploying cleaner, greener vehicles in cities and towns across the nation that will cut costs, reduce pollution and create the jobs that will drive our economic recovery," he said.

But there’s a catch.   The states and cities must match 1/2 the amount of the federal welfare check.

There went the $100 million Obama promised to cut out of the agency budgets.

Put them all in a Smart Car, then all of America can easily identify the government workers.  Painted all white with no frills.  Equality all around, fairness for all.   Have they tried to make a Smart Car Limo?  Biden may want one.