Feb 11, 2009

The lazy student

A student learned he needed to sign up for one more class. He was basically a lazy person so he looked for an easy class. He selected a class called Bird Identification. It sounded easier than Underwater Sea Shell Painting.

The first day in Bird Identification class, the teacher handed out enlarged photos of bird legs to each student. The teacher then asked the students to identify the birds based on the bird leg photos.

The lazy student said, “that’s ridiculous, I can’t do that”. The teacher replied, “then I will give you a failing grade, what is your name?

The lazy student pulled his pant legs up above his knees and said, “you tell me”.

How will you spend your $7.70 per week tax break from stimulus?

If you are a wage-earner, the new stimulus package will give you 7.70 per week in the form of a tax break.

This tax credit was intended to be $9.60 per week. However, during negotiations by lawmakers the amount was reduced down to $7.70 per week.

That’s about enough to buy a Big Mac, fries and a Coke.

Just wondering how you plan to spend yours?

Link

Kids beaten and choked by staff in Chicago public schools

A report at the link below says that hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools.

Dave Savini, an investigator for Chicago channel 2, continues his ongoing investigation involving the illegal use of corporal punishment.

The [channel] 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student's neck

But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist.

Channel 2’s findings were reported to Chicago Public School CEO Arnie Duncan (pictured).

Duncan replied, “if someone hits a student, they are going to be fired. It's very, very simple.”

But that's not what happened under Duncan's watch.

Of the 568 verified cases, only 24 led to termination. Records show one teacher who quote "battered students for several years" was simply given a "warning" by the Board of Education.

Arne Duncan was selected by Barack Obama for his cabinet and is now Education Secretary.

Link

$timulus plan $hopping carts

The stimulus plan contains a host of “stocking stuffers” including $300 million for the government to purchase a fleet of "green" cars.

But the money won't just go to buy fuel-efficient hybrids such as the Ford Escape or Chevy Volt.

The cash also can be used to purchase NEV’s (neighborhood electric vehicles as shown below).



These NEVs, which resemble streamlined golf carts, scoot at up to 25 mph, operate on battery power and can be plugged into 110-volt outlets for charging.

There is a tax subsidy in the bill giving a 10 percent tax credit off the price of specified "low-speed" vehicles costing up to $40,000.

The bill does not appear to cap the total number of credits that a person or business could take.

Wonder how many government subsidized golf carts will be milling about in your neighborhood?

One Senate GOP aide fumed:

Americans who are not lucky enough to get a piece of the stimulus pie will at least be able to rest comfortably at night knowing that the guy who just fired them is gonna get a tax break on his new golf cart.

Link

Good parking lot attendant’s are hard to find

Republicans cut out of stimulus negotiations

Just to show how desperate the Democrats in congress are to pass their huge pork-laden bill they call a “stimulus” package, they are attempting to shove this $1.3 trillion spending bill through in the dead of the night without Republican input so floor action can take place in both chambers on Thursday.

Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.

The American people deserve to know that legislation that would comprise an amount equal to the entire discretionary budget of the United States of America is being crafted without a single House Republican in the room.

Never before has a political party been this heavy-handed, bullying and domineering in their efforts to cram a bill of this magnitude down taxpayers throats!

Link

Its OK to smile - really!


A man dressed as a traditional woman performs during a folk art performance that was part of the Lantern Festival, on the last day of the Chinese New Year.

Reuters photo via Time Magazine

It’s scary but don’t tell Aunt Matilda or Uncle Hank

The fine print that’s hidden deep in the stimulus bill is pretty scary but don’t tell Aunt Matilda and Uncle Hank.

They may need heart defibrillation when they realize what the man they voted for did to them.

That’s right, they voted for the Obama guy because they expected he would pay their mortgage and put gas in their car.

He won’t.

But he sure will curtail medical care for them!

They had better get their pacemakers now because it won’t be long before their doctor may be forced to refuse some medical procedures because of their age.

That’s right, the government would have the right to look over the shoulder of your doctor and dictate what can or can’t be done for patients in his (or her) care.

Here is a sampling of the gory details Tom Daschle (pictured) slipped into the bill that was never discussed in either the House or the Senate:

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

A board will approve or reject treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit.

Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid.

The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined! It will probably cost many times more to administer than the dollars saved by denying the middle-aged and elderly medical care because of their age.

It’s no wonder Mr. Obama want’s this bill passed as soon as possible - before people really know what is in the bill.

Link

Feb 10, 2009

TV drug ads

(click on cartoon to enlarge)

FBI raids lobbying firm with ties to Congressman Murtha

The FBI raided the offices of a PMA Group, a powerful lobbying firm with close ties to John Murtha (pictured), a long-time Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania.

PMA Group spokesman Patrick Dorton confirmed the raid in a statement Monday afternoon.

"Government representatives did come to the PMA offices," Dorton said. "They requested a number of different kinds of information. The firm is cooperating with their requests."


It is unclear whether Murtha is a target of the federal investigation. However, Murtha has reportedly directed more than $100 million in earmarks (pork) to the Kuchera firms.

Term limits would prevent Congressmen like Murtha from corrupting the US House of Representatives decade after decade.

Link

Get out of jail free cards for up to 57,000 California inmates

Judges in California have a simple solution to prison overcrowding - dump up to 57,000 inmates out on the streets.



A report at the link below says judges in California back a one-third reduction in state prison population.

A panel of three federal judges, saying overcrowding in state prisons has deprived inmates of their right to adequate healthcare, tentatively ruled Monday that the state must reduce the population in those lockups by as many as 57,000 people.

The judges issued the decision after a trial in two long-running cases brought by inmates to protest the state of medical and mental healthcare in the prisons.

How many will be put out onto the streets of your city?

Chances are they won’t release violent murderers. On the other hand, you can bet the prisoners to be released didn’t receive their sentences for singing too loudly in the choir.

Link

Venice Skull sculpture made of scrap metal



This skull sculpture is outside the Venice Modern Art Museum in Venice, Italy. It was made entirely of metal cans and buckets and other miscellaneous scrap metal.

The Obama stimulus plan may damage your health

Republican Senators have been questioning whether the Obama stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion.

These provisions are the handiwork of Tom Daschle (pictured), who would have been in charge of the Health and Human Services Department until it was discovered he was a big-time tax cheat.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health!

The bill’s health rules will affect every individual in the United States.

Medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

Fine - but here comes the scary part. The federal government will tell your doctor what he can and can’t do for you!

The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions!

According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

The article at the link below goes on with more gory details.

Older people and those who are overweight will have fewer medical services available to them.

Britain already has some of these rules in place but they have had full socialized medicine for many years.

Barack Hussein Obama is catching up with the UK in one big leap and not enough of our lawmakers in Washington are trying to stop this travesty.

Link

Feb 9, 2009

Sri Lanka Independence Day



Members of the Sri Lanka Army Pioneer Corps. march during the island nation's 61st Independence Day celebrations.

Stealing 400,000 quarters isn’t easy

Gary Stone Jr. was the head of the New Castle, Pennsylvania parking authority.

He has been accused of stealing more than $100,000 from parking meters.

County officials say the 33-year-old New Castle resident reported that the meters collected $342 for all of 2006 and 2007.

When police took over the meter collections for the first time last year, they took in more than $54,000.

Stone has been arraigned on theft charges.

Link

Actor Val Kilmer may run for NM Governor

Actor Val Kilmer (pictured) is pondering running for governor of New Mexico in 2010, when Democrat Bill Richardson's second term ends.


Kilmer, 49, grew up in Los Angeles but has called New Mexico home for more than two decades.

A Kilmer candidacy could throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled Democratic machine of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, who's already running for the job.

Kilmer said if he ran it wouldn't have to be a conventional campaign. While the actor decides, he's getting out and about and has been listening to people - something he says he's pretty good at.

In the report at the link below, Kilmer sounds about as arrogant as many other Hollywood actors. He boasted, "If I run, I'm going to be the next governor."

Perhaps Kilmer thinks a conventional campaign wouldn’t be necessary. Maybe he is counting on his fame as an actor to get him elected.

Kilmer's screen credits include Batman in "Batman Forever" in 1995, brash fighter pilot Lt. Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky in the 1986 hit "Top Gun," and rock icon Jim Morrison in the 1991 Oliver Stone film, "The Doors."

I didn’t see any of the films listed above. However, I thought Kilmer gave a good, strong performance in the 1993 movie Tombstone where he played the ailing dentist-turned-gunfighter Doc Holliday.

The lower photo shows Kilmer as he appeared in the movie Tombstone.

Link

Russian jets obsolete and unable to fly

Is this proof that Russia is a paper tiger? Maybe most of Russia’s bluff and bluster is just that - bluff and bluster.

Teddy Roosevelt’s advice was talk softly and carry a big stick. Did Putin get it backwards?

About a third of all Russian fighter jets should be written off as obsolete, as they are unable to fly, the business daily, Kommersant, reported yesterday.

Russia grounded all of its MiG-29 fighter jets last December after two crashed near the same airfield in Siberia in as many months. One pilot died.



The photo above shows an eye-catching MIG-29 jet fighter that appears to be anything but obsolete and unable to fly. The plane is performing at the 47th Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, north of Paris, Wednesday June 20, 2007.

Link

Senator Inhofe: Bill 93% spending only 7% stimulation

From the website of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK):

The bill is 93% spending and only 7% stimulation.

Over the past few days I have fought to include more in the way of real stimulus through higher percentage of infrastructure and defense spending, while working to cut much of the typical government waste often found in a bill of this size.

Link

The last one to leave Michigan please turn out the lights

Michigan is getting recognition - as the state with the highest percentage of outbound migration.

Michigan saw the nation’s most outbound migration in 2008, with 67.1 percent of interstate moves heading out, according to a migration study released last week.

This is the third year in a row that Michigan has received the dubious honor.

United Van Lines has been tracking this data since 1977, and it would appear that before too long, Michigan’s largest employer will be United Van Lines — so it’s not all bad news.

Governor Jennifer Granholm (pictured) is one of the architects of an economy so bad that Detroit’s honorary economic sister-city of Bangladesh has disowned them.

Is that what qualified her to sit on Obama’s Economic Advisory board?

Link

Feb 8, 2009

Walk in today to get your wheelchair

How effective are direct-to-consumer drug ads?

Pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars each year on direct to consumer ads since the Food and Drug Administration removed restrictions in 1997.

The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world where direct-to-consumer advertising is permitted.

Chances are if you suffer from insomnia, high cholesterol or allergies you have seen a TV ad for a prescription medication that promises relief.



A new study appears to show that all those direct-to-consumer ads for prescription drugs to treat such conditions have much less effect than previously thought, a finding that could be bad news for pharmaceutical companies.

Debate about the practice has exploded, too. Drug companies argue that advertising medications provides an important public health service by alerting consumers to potentially undiagnosed, or undertreated, disorders.

Some doctors and health advocates, on the other hand, argue that ads entice patients to insist on unnecessary or ineffective drugs and to forgo healthy lifestyle changes that might obviate the need for drugs in the first place.

More here.

Obama invites Hamas terrorists to our shores!

By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees.

The "presidential determination" which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on January 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on February 4.

In his first three weeks in office Barack Hussein Obama has (1) apologized to Arabs on Arab television, (2) announced the closing of Guantánamo, (3) issued an executive order allowing Palestinians - hundreds of thousands with Hamas terrorist ties - to flood our shores, (4) wants all charges dropped for a bomber of the USS Cole and (5) scrapped the National Security Council which was established right after World War II.

This news would surprise and even outrage a lot of people, however, most will never know because the main stream media is reluctant to prominently report news that would show Obama in a poor light.

We never dreamed that a community organizer from the south part of Chicago would go this far in such a short time!

Link here and here.

Congressional Budget Office: Obama stimulus harmful

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

Barack Obama and Democrat lawmakers claim otherwise.

Obama has tried to bully and even mock his critics rather than answer them. In his “I won” attitude, he is determined to get the pork-laden bill passed no matter what.

Link

Economic stimulus pork

America will see one crisis after another

A report at the link below says:

We interrupt this financial crisis to bring you a gargantuan federal power grab masquerading as an economic stimulus.

Tell me, does the following sound at all familiar?

We've got to act. Now! There's no time for debate. We're on the precipice. We're staring into the abyss. The government has to spend BIG and it has to spend FAST, before it's too late!

Remember when Joe Biden told us during the campaign that the Obama administration would have a crisis.

Apparently the plan is to make this into a crisis and use it to get things they want that they couldn't have gotten from people who weren't frightened.

We are being threatened that if this pork-laden bill does not pass immediately there will be a "national catastrophe!"

Link