This is such an amazing picture of a sandstorm in Iraq that I can't but think that it is faked. Love to know anyone's opinion.
The hypocricy of liberal positions is angering and amusing. Apparently, the 13 year-old girl has the maturity to abort a fetus. It is truly difficult to keep up with the contradictions in the arguments of the ACLU and liberal policy. Seventeen year-old individuals are too per se young to understand the consequences of murder and therefore can never be sentenced to death. People should be put to death if their lives are perceived as too miserable to continue. Thirteen year olds have the maturity to make medical decisions for themselves (ONLY IF IT IS ABORTION). I'll bet you Hillary will walk a fine line on this one.
The Bee again reveals its liberal cynacism in yesterday's editorial about pharmaceutical companies. The editorial stated the Bee editorist's approval with Kaiser Permanente Medical Group's recent initiation of conflict of interest rules that prevent doctors from accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies. Fine, no problem. But the Bee goes off on a tangent and accuses doctors of likely prescribing drugs that patients are aware of from advertising rather than perscribe what is in the patients best interests. What!
Specifically the Bee states, "Since doctors like to keep their patients happy, they end up prescribing heavily advertised medications, even if they may not be the best therapeutic choice." If the word "doctors" was changed to "blacks" or "jews", this would be considered as a generalization bordering on racism.
So according to the Bee the patients dictate the medicines they take, and whose fault is this? Well, the pharmaceutical companies of course. The Bee takes the swipe at doctors to get to the end point of the editorial, which is a slam on the pharmaceuticals: "[T]he the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America had the chutzpah to claim that drug industry advertising actually "empowers" patients, instead of misinforming them." Apparently, advertising is by definition misleading and does not empower the patients.
Perhaps the Bee would have the pharmaceutical companies empoyerment limited to those multi-page folded pieces of paper accompanying all medicines which contains details about the drugs in the smallest possible print. Everyone reads those. The editorial page writers did not explain why it stereotypes doctors to hapless boobs and the pharmaceutical industry advertising as always "misleading." It just makes the accusations as if they are obvious points.
The Night Writer has a good discussion on Charlotte Wyatt, the British infant ordered to die because the doctors are reasonably certain her quality of life is miserable. This is civility?
Victoria at Homeschool Mom Tips posted an article on the acceleration of African-Americans willing to homeschool their little ones and the possible reasons why. I'm thinking the quality of education at public schools has something to do with it.
Our military captured Zarqawi's laptop and found porn on it. Yee Haw. Winds of Change notes some other interesting things they found on his laptop.
The site Che-Mart is damn funny. Damn funny.
I believe Communists for Kerry found the first draft of a Time Magazine story on Pope Benny's election . . . or is it 'selection'? Commentary on MSM's cluelessness.
Friggin' colleges would tenure a bunyon if it was sufficiently anti-Bush. Dr. Jane Christensen (got that, she has her PhD) is an associate professor of political science at North Carolina Wesleyan College and she has a website promoting conspiracy theories on 9/11. Welcome to 2005: Conspiracy theories equate to academic discourse.
Beautiful Atrocities has the scoop on Air America's lineup. They could have hit it out of the park had they signed Harry Reid to host a show with a corpse about the finer points of public speaking.
File this under "With Friends Like This, . . . . ." Judge urges Saudi citizens to run off and help Iraqi resistance. . . . and he was chillin' with the Saudi's crown prince at the time.
New York Times editorial writers rewrite Iraq war history. Glenn & company point it out.
Crap. You're stranded on an island with a can of coke and a damn tobblerone candy bar. Plane crash destroyed your matches. Do not fear. You can make fire.
Ever wonder what happened to our former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbet? Yeah, me neither.
Rex Babin, the Sacramento Bee's house cartoonist, has a cartoon in today's Bee that falls in line with what anyone would expect out of him or the Bee regarding the Abu Ghraib scandal. As you recall, Iraqi prisoners were forced to endure embarassing situations. There was some inappropriate behavior to be sure, but largely this 'scandal' was quite a snooze. Babin is stating that the Army's recent report clearing top officials of any wrongdoing is essentially the Army sweeping the issue under the rug, so to speak. Heads must roll because of Abu Ghraib. Please.
Why is it that some things we try to decrease costs and wrangle as much efficiencies out of as possible, while other things "efficiency" is hardly a concern. Take Don Perata's recent comments that the California Democrats will try to increase taxes to boost education spending to the national average. Who will be subject to the new tax, well, the rich of course (dirty stinking rotten bastards, those rich).
Perata said that if the option is cutting social services or raising taxes, he will try to raise taxes. When there is no new source of funds except tax increases and cuts in other social services, why not try to wrangle savings by making the education system more efficient. So what if we don't spend as much as other states on education. It should always be a mission to maximize results and minimize costs. But, alas, trying to improve the efficiencies of the amazingly bloated education bureaucracy in this state may offend the unions. Can't do that now can we.
. . . .but would you listen, nooooo. Howard Dean must be stopped.
Device
Engineered for
Assassination and
Nullification
I can prove it here.
Exploding toads beats the monkeys on a bender story.
The evidence of unbelievable governmental ineptitude and/or amazing voter fraud is reaching monumental heights. Sound Politics keeps on top of the latest post-election battles in Washington State.
Very interesting article about PR firms in general, but also about the relationship between PR firms and journalists.
Coyote Blog summarizes the economic value of draft picks. I would like to see an economic analysis of couch patatoes watching the draft.
A British court ordered 18-month old to death even though her parents want her to live. No nuances here. Charlotte was born prematurely and weighed about one pound at birth. British doctors state that Charlotte's brain and other organs are seriously damaged and that she has no feelings other than pain.
This is a really tear-jerking situation. Read more about Charlotte here.
The Sacramento City Unified School District took voted to approve a labor agreement that would limit the kinds of construction companies that can bid on large construction projects. The agreement requires construction companies that do business with the school district to hire union workers or offer union benefits to their workers.
How financially responsible of them. The same clowns that scream about the underfunded school system are advocating that the school system pour unnecessary funds into construction costs. Is anyone seriously arguing that union workers will do a better job than non-union workers? No. After all, the vast majority of construction workers in this state are non-union. More money down a rat hole and students will be no better off.
The school board did not allow for ample debate and called for a vote before Trustee Rick Jennings had many questions unanswered about the risks and benefits of the agreement. No doubt the people advocating this agreement also blame Govenor Schwarzenegger for all the school budget woes.
Remember getting drunk in highschool. Phin does . . . kind of.
Howard Dean mimics Rush Limbaugh snorting drugs during a talk in Minneapolis. This is amazingly undignified and tacky. I couldn't be happier that this is the guy heading the Democratic Party.
When can you not be simply a spectator at a 'sport'? When that sport is illegal road racing in Sacramento. The city unanimously passed an ordinance making it illegal to be a spectator. I find this obscene, personally, and a violation of the First Amendment . . . . not that that ever stops lawmakers. The ordinance specifies a fine of $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for for subsequent violations. Any conviction could carry a jail term of up to six months.
Laws like this seem especially absurb considering that no person can be convicted of any offense whatsoever if they were walking along and so a baby drowing in a pool of water. It's true. You can stand and be a spectator at the baby's death. There is no law that requires the person in that instance to affirmatively take action. I happen to agree with the law. But being a spectator at a road race, your doing, or in this case 'not doing', anything is punishable. What the hell!?
Excellent post by Anticipatory Retaliation on the discrimination against a qualified conservative black woman in favor of a nobody with nothing. Heart of Canada has more details of the situation.
Alarming News discusses the economics of drug dealing. Maybe the Beamers they all drive are leased.
No further evidence is needed to prove that the Democrats are going to try to make inroads to the moderate votes and red states with the immigration issue. Maxine Waters is "sick" about the state of immigration. This will not help Southern California Democrats unless they come out against Waters. It also tells me that the Democrats may begin to shift their fake conviction on open borders in order to get in line with Hillary Clinton's immigration policy before Clinton announces a run for Pres in 2008.
Ollapodrida isn't falling for the grass roots revolution thing Gore is peddling with his new cable channel.
Headline news you really would like to see. Basil's Blog does it again.
Christ, in all the discussions throughout the years about helping the children we forgot the ones who really are dependent on others.
BBC's former Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn sympathizes with Syria and suicide bombers. How sweet. How tolerant.
La Shawn Barber notes that the NAACP flip-flops to conform their position on filibusters.
The Sacramento Bee displayed its usual liberal cheerleading bias recently when it posted a story on Air America by Bee Staff Writer J. Freedom du Lac entitled “Air America After a year, the liberal radio network is making waves.” It was an over-the-top puff piece about Air America.
I don’t have a problem per se with articles that stay away from criticism and are intended to emphasize the view point of the subject. However, the article included statistics and analysis of Air America’s success without even so much as a hint that it was doing poorly. In fact, the article appears to have been intended to give the reader the impression that it is actually doing very well. The truth is that Air America is doing horribly.
Brian Maloney discusses the most recent ratings here. Michelle Malkin occassionaly discusses Air America, like here. Based on the information posted on Air America’s website, I figured out that most of the 51 markets that it is located in are tiny markets. Ten of the markets Air America is in are not even ranked by Arbitron. Note that Casper, WY is the last ranked market (#293) measured by Arbitron.
The following are the number of stations (on the right) hosting Air America in the top radio markets (on the left).
1-10 = 7
1-25 = 15
1-50 = 22
1-100 = 28
1-293 = 41
unranked = 10
Soros is gathering the millionaires to open the money spigots in order to fund Democratic think-tanks (an oxymoron, but more moron than oxy).
According to Washington Republicans, Rossi should have won the Washington State governor's race by 100 votes. But I guess the Democrats "count every vote" mantra extends to felons and the undead. Soundpolitics has been covering the post-election hoo-hah very thoroughly. Michelle Malkin has some on this.
Rosenblog has a discussion on the Master's Degree program of the Activism and Social Change Program at The New College, an accredited institution in San Francisco. That's right, burning bras and flags on the quad is now worthy of academic recognition just like aeronautical engineering.
As if you need more evidence that the Democrats in the Golden State are aggressively imposing universal health care through incrementalism, I point you to Exhibit A for today.
Exhibit A is Assembly Bill 1698, pushed by Assembly Speaker Fabio Nunez, which would ban health plans from removing dependent children from their insurance rolls until their 26th birthday.
The Sacramento Bee noted that "Núñez's staff is uncertain whether AB 1698 would affect state coffers." In the very next sentence the Bee states that "the state would absorb costs to renew state employee coverage for an unknown number of dependent children, perhaps 10,000 or fewer, who were dropped from family plans recently at age 23." Got that. The people pushing the bill are not sure what the effect on the state coffers will be, but they are certain that the state will be absorbing the costs to renew employee coverage. Are the editors at the Bee asleep at the wheel?
You would think that legislators would be interested in knowing the cost of such a proposal before it moves out of committee. Nope. It was approved by the Health Committee in the Assembly. Hold on to your wallets.
Is this the seventh sign of the apocalypse?
UPDATE: They are pervs too.
The trolls of the Democratic Underground are off to a predictable start in their reaction to the new Pope. Confederate Yankee has summed it up so far.
William Jensen Cottrell was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in firebombing SUV’s in Southern California. Judge R. Gary Klausner rejected Cottrell's plea for leniency and said that Cottrell had engaged in domestic terrorism and that it was pure luck that no one was killed in the arson attacks.
As you may or may not recall, Cottrell firebombed some SUVs with a few other people in the name of the Earth Liberation Front and spraypainted SUVs with the phrases "polluter" and "smog machine." Well, Cottrell testified against his accomplices, who are still at large, and he has since been disavowed by the Earth Liberation Prisoner’s Support Group for doing so. (I’m not making this up). Word of advice though William: Watch your polluter while you're in prison.
Rob Reiner is stoking the fires of tax increases on the rich (because you know, taxing the rich has no side effects that will detrimentally affect the state) by his new initiative to fund universal preschool. According to the Sacramento Bee, Meathead's proposal would impose a "1.7 percent tax hike on individuals with taxable income topping $400,000 and couples exceeding $800,000. That means people earning $500,000 a year would pay an additional $8,500 in income taxes while couples with combined income of $1 million would pay $17,000. It would require approval by a simple majority."
Like last year's proposal that the rich would be responsible for mental health, this proposal that the rich are responsible for preschool is very obscene. The disparate treatment of high income earners in this state reminds me of the jaw-dropping statistic that the top four hundred income earners in the nation pay approximately 1.8 percent of the tax revenue. And its the rich that are accused of living on the backs of the poor!
Of course the Sacramento Bee categorized the future preschool envisioned by Reiner as "free," i.e., no cost. This is of course a lie, just as anything funded by taxes is not free, but merely unpriced.
Finally I have figured enough about Movable Type to get going. Welcome. This blog used to be named Sac Bee Watch. No more. Blogger was too frustrating. Now that I have been inducted into the MuNu Blog Collective I can expect great things to happen, money, fame, chicks, smaller waistline . . . . .
Hope everyone enjoys the blog.