Monthly Archives: August 2009
You Find Obama Buyer’s Remorse In The Oddest Places
Don’t be drinking no coffee or grape soda when you watching this:
UPDATE – 9/5/2009: Welcome Cold Fury readers! Feel free to browse about our humble collection of writings, many of which are devoted to the blandiosity of the great O and his retinue of best and brightest.
The Fraudulent Federal Reserve System
I found this to be a disturbing read:
The Record of the Federal Reserve
Money quote:
In other words, the value of the dollar remained extremely stable for 150 years, the Fed was created in order to “stabilize the value of the dollar,” and the result has been a 95% devaluation of the dollar in less than 100 years following its creation.
Dave’s Quote of the Day
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
- Thomas Sowell
“It Ain’t America No More”
This has my blood BOILING!
Easy for me to say, but he should have let himself be arrested, then sued the $#^! out of the police force for wrongful prosecution.
No Apologies is coming soon…
As you probably well know, I have been working on my book, No Apologies: In Defense of Common Sense and the Conservative Ideology since last November. It is finally coming together and should be released and ready for purchase just in time for Christmas. Here is a little teaser; a list of the chapter titles for your enjoyment. All the chapters that were once former columns have been rewritten and updated and much of the book is new material as well. It should run about 45 chapters and 325 pages once it is completely finished. The price will be in the fairly reasonable range of around $15.00 per copy. It will be self-published through lulu.com. I already have a number pre-sold as well as a number of bloggers and authors committed to promoting and/or reviewing it when the time comes. Damien, Eric and THB all are quoted at one time or another. I think I know what you really need for Christmas this year…
Another view on the passing of Kennedy
Considering the late senator’s complete record requires digging into the USSR’s archives.
Video: Krauthammer says Dean “speaks the truth”…via Hot Air blog
How foolish was Howard Dean’s admission that the Democrats lack the testicular fortitude to offer tort reform as part of ObamaCare? Every opponent of ObamaCare now has a handy sound bite to press the demand for tort reform as a show-stopper — and clearly paint the Democratic Party as a mouthpiece for trial lawyers. Charles Krauthammer used the clip to damn Dean and the Democrats with the faint praise of Dean’s “truth”, as Townhall’s Greg Hengler catches:”
The twisted path of fate
In November of the year 2000 I read an obituary that appeared in the national section of the local paper. I instantly recognized the name Lyon Sprague de Camp (November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) but not for the reasons offered in the nice salute to his life that a reporter had authored. Instead it was for his role in a twisted chain of events and people that had changed history and influenced the lives of countless others over more than half a century. This is a synopsis of the story I told my wife that day.
The Lion Passes
Our heroes are people and people are flawed. — Randy K. Milholland, author
As Steve reported, the great Democratic senator Edward M. Kennedy has died. He leaves behind a legacy of historical dimensions.
Edward Kennedy Passes Away at age 77: Breaking News
Just Breaking: Senator Edward Kennedy has passed away.
Obama’s Fourth Lawless Corruption
Obama’s Democratic-run Washington has perfected many political tactics, but none so much as the big government shakedown. Politico reports that:
House Democrats are probing the nation’s largest insurance companies for lavish spending, demanding reams of compensation data and schedules of retreats and conferences.
Letters sent to 52 insurance companies by Democratic leaders demand extensive documents for an examination of “extensive compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry.” The letters set a deadline of Sept. 14 for the documents.
The Washington Times points out the problem with this.
The pharmaceutical industry — which is putting up between $150 million and $200 million to promote government health care — isn’t being forced to provide this information. Neither is anyone else. The only firms being targeted for investigation are those in a sector openly fighting reform.
The thuggishness continues.
Go Barney!
I’m not sure if this is making the rounds on the right side of Blogistan, so here’s Barney Frank treating some LaRouche nutjob with all of the respect she deserves:
You may love or hate his politics, but you must admit that Barney is definitely unique, and I’m glad he’s on my side.
We’ll miss you Bob
I grew up watching Bob Novak on Crossfire and have always enjoyed his dry sense of humor and straight forward view of Western Civilization. He’ll be missed.
Robert Novak 1931-2009
Novak’s Friends Offer Tributes
Bob Novak – A Giant of Journalism
It’s Hard to Feign Interest in August
So in honor of the townhalls being held throughout our great nation…
Update: Just for fun, and since I’ve got nothing else, here’s the best piece of presidential trivia I have read in years (I know I need a life, but I also know that every one of our bloggers will love it).
Saturday Night Rock (Montana Style): Foreigner- Jukebox Hero
Visiting Montana this week. Have heard this on the radio a few times here and really makes me feel like I am home.
How much for those tires? You are #@%%#%^ kidding me right?
I know this cat, ok it is me, but please don’t tell anyone, that needed some new wheelchair tires. This is his story. He has a million of them.
The tires on my manual wheelchair were bald. I have two chairs, one power (no, do not call it electric please) and one manual. That is important as we shall see. My power chair was $17,000.00 and paid for by private insurance. My manual chair was donated to me by the private rehabilitation hospital I stayed at for five months. My private insurer would only pay for one chair at a time. That is what the contract says – don’t ya know! I had Colorado Medicaid and Medicare but they will not pay for the “luxury” of a second chair. Someday I will tell you just what Medicare will pay for when it comes to wheelchairs (we already have mentioned commode chairs on another thread).
Anyway, after decades of handling thousands of SCIs and TBIs the dedicated therapists, doctors and nurses at my hospital decided it would not be good for patients to be without a “luxury” backup chair. Of course what do they know really? I mean the clerks at Medicare understand that effective treatment is to leave that patient in bed to soil themselves (yes I do have an issue with that), so what is the problem with leaving them in bed for days or weeks while the primary chair is fixed? I mean the silly therapists, doctors and nurses think skin sores, UTIs, painful spasms and a horrible quality of life that being confined to bed means is important. Medicare knows that saving $2000.00 on a chair is what is known as effective rationing of a scarce resource.
Your messenger’s quote of the day. Or Obama knows nothing about health care! Or how to invalidate your opponents position with snark!
OK! OK! OK! I am going to be witty here!
By being mistaken Michelle’s husband Barry proves he is a know nothing fool.
At the town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Obama said, “We have the AARP onboard because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” He added, “AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.”
But Tom Nelson, AARP’s chief operating officer, said, “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”
This proves his position is just plain wrong. Hey – Do you think this guffaw causing ooops statement might lead to anal and scat jokes about the man on Sadly, No! ?
As my friend Andre said…
The Defiant One’s Quote of the Day
“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” – Investor’s Business Daily editorial on the need to stop health care reform. It’s like they’re not even trying.
Update: I feel better. IBD deleted the sentence in question, and issued a correction today, and it is just all sorts of awesome… “Editor’s Note: This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK.” Keep up the great work, guys.
In Portsmouth Today The Traffic Was Horrible For Some Reason
And the decommissioned air base (also in Portsmouth, NH) the Beast works at was crawling with what his dad called “Straight Poopers” and Military Police. It took an extra half hour to get to work over at the Fed complex. At some point a motorcade screamed by. The Beast was reminded of the day last fall when some nutball ran amok at the Hillary campaign headquarters three miles from his house, right before the NH primary. The Beast was unable to get home so he liveblogged the standoff from a bar in the neighboring town of Dover. The best bit of that event was the fact that all the cops were too busy to bother him when he navigated home around midnight. Plus, Red Hook ISB drafts, usually $3 a glass during happy hour, was extended til closing for all the other strandees.
Did something important happen today in Portsmouth?
Madonna Cover: Prime French Piece O’ Tail Sunday
Alizee – it must be jelly because jam don’t shake like that…
For Andre
The Dems To Open The Can O’ Worms?
The Democrat’s war against the CIA ramps up, according to the L.A. Times (via Drudge), with word that U.S. Attorney General Eric “Nation Of Cowards” Holder is on the verge of appointing a prosecutor to investigate the CIA for alleged “torture” during the Bush regime:
Reporting from Washington — U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.
A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
You bet it’s going to be ‘narrow in scope’ – too many Dems implicated early on, and we don’t want a repeat of the whole Pelosi oopsie moment from earlier in the year. do we?
The next graph is the fun one, though:
Current and former CIA and Justice Department officials who have firsthand knowledge of the interrogation files contend that criminal convictions will be difficult to obtain because the quality of evidence is poor and the legal underpinnings have never been tested.
Didn’t Obama oppose this stuff early on? It really makes you wonder what’s going on here, or at least who is actually in charge down there in D.C…
The last time the Dems tried this kind of selective release of info (meaning only the stuff that made Bush look bad) a whole series of embarrassing leaks came out alongside it. Maybe they think that this time they can control the focus, but the Beast thinks it’s unlikely.
Remember, he who troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind. And that wind’s blowing harder every day.
Dave’s Quote of the Day
In reference to the White House strategy of turning supporters into snitches when they see “fishy” information about the health care debate.
”The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it. There’s also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can’t try to rewrite history by pretending it didn’t receive anything. If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute.”
- Judge Andrew Napolitano
So what’s my job description again?
Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do…
Want to be an “internment/resettlement specialist” with the National Guard? Now is your chance. Interning who? Resettling who? No one seems to know… including the National Guard. Confused? So is everyone else.
The National Guard wants you.. 31E – INTERNMENT / RESETTLEMENT SPECIALIST
Interestingly enough, WND claims Officials at the state and federal National Guard levels told WND they were unaware of the program, although one officer speculated it could be intended for soldiers trained in the U.S. and dispatched overseas to “detention facilities.” From the national level, WND was told, officials were unaware of any such “internment facilities” at which there could be jobs to be available.
It makes you wonder if all those formerly mythical but, well, maybe they do exist but probably for a good reason, large military detention centers throughout the US may actually, really exist if the National Guard is recruiting people to run them. Go figure. I guess I just report and you can decide. Now what happens to me again when I don’t comply with handing my daughters over for mandatory service to the state or refuse my swine flu shot again? I can’t recall.
The Defiant One’s Quote of the Day
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” -Sarah Palin, via her Facebook page
She was ready to be president. Damien told me so.
Penn and Teller — Patriotism
Surprised this is over two years old and I haven’t seen it till now.
Maybe it’s been posted on ConClub before, dunno. Haven’t been following y’all for that long 
Seems as appropriate today as ever.
R.I.P. John Hughes
John Hughes’ films seemed to capture the essence of growing up in the 80′s.
At the time, and to the older critics of the day, Hughes’s ability to offer a slice of teen life without scripted and contrived drama didn’t seem all that special. But for the generation of young people who grew up watching Molly Ringwald blow out candles and Ally Sheedy recoil during detention, the lack of obvious plot was the whole point…
From Ringwald’s patented pout to Ferris Bueller’s unapologetic truancy, the beauty of a Hughes movie was the way it reflected the languid teen spirit without moral judgment.
I feel lucky to have grown up during the 70s and 80s. My generation may be the last generation of kids who enjoy the innocence of youth…before the explosion of all things media. Thank you John Hughes for putting it all on film.
Update: For an insight into John Hughes the man, take the time to read this blog post from Allison Byrne Fields.
Tonight, when I heard the news that John had died, I cried. I cried hard. (And I’m crying again.) I cried for a man who loved his friends, who loved his family, who loved to write and for a man who took the time to make a little girl believe that, if she had something to say, someone would listen.
Thank you, John Hughes. I love you for what you did to make me who I am.
Is Charles Schumer giving us an example of “talking out of both sides of your mouth”?
Democrats May Bypass Republicans on Health Plan, Schumer Says
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) — Senate Democrats may decide to pass a U.S. health-care overhaul without Republican support if some opposition lawmakers don’t agree to a plan by mid-September, Senator Charles Schumer said.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus set a Sept. 15 deadline for getting a bipartisan agreement among six senators on the panel who are negotiating a deal.
“If we cannot produce a bipartisan solution by then, you have to wonder if the Republicans would ever be willing to agree to anything,” Schumer said on a conference call with reporters yesterday. “We will enact health-care reform by the end of the year. If the Republicans are not able to produce an agreement, we will have contingencies in play.” Read the rest of this entry
Even in Dana Pico’s own “City of the Lost” – Philadelphia, they understand Obama’s vision on health care all too well.
Audience Shouts Down Sebelius, Specter at Health Care Town Hall in Philadelphia
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got a preview Sunday of the tough sell lawmakers will face over health care reforms.
Among those at odds with the officials touting the $1 trillion, 10-year plan was a woman who earned loud applause when she said she doesn’t want Washington interfering with her health care choices.
“I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Medicare is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, no,” she said.
This lady’s comments remind me of the saying – “Socialized Medicine – Delivered with the efficiency of the Motor Vehicle Department, with the compassion of the IRS.”
I believe in effective and efficient universal coverage. I do not like the costly patchwork that we have now. I believe in portability. Our established policy of tying health coverage to a job is just simply wrong. I believe that exclusions and denials based on “uninsurabilty” should be abolished. Group rates based on the law of large numbers can effectively control the cost of insurance to individuals (premiums), and the exposure that insurance companies have through equal distribution of risk. Out of pocket expenses can be reduced by choice through elective coverage as is the case now with many group and individual policies.
We will need the government to force insure the percentage of the population that can afford coverage but does not carry it. Let the Populist-Libertarian-Luddites (PLL’s) complain all they want, but we already pay the uninsured’s health costs as a society. Those that can pay should regardless of how likely their potential loss is.
Health care is a form of welfare for part of society already. The government should on a needs basis pay the premiums in a private plan that is distributed equally among providers for those unable to pay for it themselves. Before my PLL friends complain about “them people will be taking my money and stuff”, keep in mind that they already do. This coverage should extend to legal and illegal alike. We again already pay for this. This would be a formal acknowledgement – yes - but also more efficient.
Abolish Medicare and Medicaid. They do not work well. They can not be tweaked to be more efficient. Get the government out of the health provider business and make the insurance industry pull the load they were designed to pull. There is nothing scarce about health care at all. It is not a “precious resource”. It is a commodity that we have plenty of. If we remove government interference in the market AND institute simple but effective insurance reforms we can control costs. The curve can be bent. Just not by the government.
The “Government Option” and the Single Payer system with its resultant socialized medicine is neither needed nor preferred. Sometimes ‘da peop’le get it right.
ADD: An excellent article on Medicaid in City Journal today. Make sure to read “The Making New York’s Private Health Insurance More Affordable” blurb at the end. There is plenty of money in the system, multiples of the funds required in fact. The key is to get rid of the hybrid system.
All-American summer
Just a few shots of some summertime activities. It’s good to be a teacher because I can take quick trips that other desk jockeys don’t have the luxury of doing. I labelled the pictures but you have to drag your mouse across the photo to see the label. We were able to do quite a bit for not a lot of money. In June we went to Cody, Wyoming and Yellowstone. And in July we camped twice and had a family gathering in Breckenridge, CO.
I’ve learned a few things this summer as the kids get older: 1) I like the age 13 about as much as I like camping in the rain. 2) When kids compete over who gets to mow, you’ve done something right. 3) I suck at playing and teaching golf. My boy is funny because he thinks when we go golfing he is competing against me. I have tried to convince him that the battle is not with me but with himself. I know how Obi-Wan or Yoda must have felt. 4) Kids love to fish, and my kids like stream fishing better than lake fishing. 5) I will one day look back at these pictures and wish to God I had it all back this way.
Life is good!
“If it comes, it comes….”
I think baseball broadcaster Gary Matthews is trying to explain something about how a hitter should stay on the ball instead of getting out in front of it, but it doesn’t really come across that way.
Shooting with the apple of my eye
We had originally gone “herping” (searching for snakes, lizards, toads etc.) and ended up stopping and shooting a few rounds last Sunday. This was Alexandria’s first time shooting a firearm and she did just fine for being the ‘girly-girl’ that she is. My father made me shoot my first pistol at about age five or six which I still remember rather vividly. She’s twelve and a half at the moment so I figured it was about time. I believe having children who are at least aware of and educated about firearms is important and makes them more respectful and understanding of them in the long run.
Starsailor- All The Plans
I can’t believe I’ve never listened to a song by Starsailor before now. If you have the time, check out some of their back catalog on Youtube.
The Sage
Steve
E the Wise
DFV the Scribe
hairybeast
Mo K.
Sting the Away
Rudy
Voice of Reason
Anthony Rogers
Vérité
Isaiah's Cry
danagall
Hal Jordan
The Rat
Aquinas Shrugged
jackcurtis
a west texas view
pino
Cultural Limits
Regalo Di Spine
Tokyo Tengu
Short Little Rebel
AWOL Civilization
SeePamBlog
rogueoperator
provider4many
jimmullen1
thomaspaine2nd
badoracle
ljponders
weeicemon
Daniella Nicole
