I am sure it was a futile gesture, but he makes a compelling argument against the health care plan.
His opening point was good. The democrats, having control of the debate, have locked us into a yes or no argument. Either rape and pillage the system, or do nothing. All the various ideas in between, lost.
And they claim they want a bipartisan debate…
Here are an interesting pair of videos. The first is a fisking of a cartoon explanation of health care, filled with strawman arguments with no economic sense at all. The original is below it.
The author of the fisking actually went easy on him, I found dozens of other fallacies in his naive presentation. The cartoons were cute though….
Would you buy a shirt for your baby that had nipple tassels on it? One company is hoping you will.
ParentDish interviewed the designer behind TwistedTwee, which is selling t-shirts for babies and preschoolers that include nipple tassels, among other items.
The designer, Suzi Warren, told ParentDish via email that “The Nipple Tassel t-shirt was designed as a response to my own distaste at seeing mini versions of sexy clothes on young children. Five-year-olds wearing slashed mini skirts and boob tubes, little thumb-sucking Britneys.” I guess that’s like wearing blackface to protest racism? Mostly Warren is doing it to make money. At least I hope that’s why. If she honestly believes that this is an effective form of protest, I’d hate to think what she’d do with an issue like health care reform.
Personally, I think nipple tassels are tacky for anyone. If it’s a stripper, I mean, whatever. She’s a stripper. But otherwise it seems like a poor fashion choice.
The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling - toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.
Various birthdays have significant meaning, as they are transitions.
18 makes you an adult. 21 makes you a real adult.
25 marks your 1/4 century, the precursor to getting old.
30 marks the end of your wild ages. And 40, well at that point you are entering your dotage in some peoples minds such that many lie and claim to be 39 for a few years running.
And don’t start with 50.
So today was my birthday and it was….none of the above.
48 actually. And yet, even though it was not one of those traditionally intense days, I still found it a remarkable one.
This year has been a strange and remarkable year, what with my children scattering to the winds and my divorce looming. This birthday I had figured to be a low key, uneventful and forgotten one.
It was anything but, really.
I headed to my dad’s house on the Peninsula and expected a nice dinner and such, but instead it was a fairly wild day.
One thing stands for certain, how you feel about him and his legacy pretty much has a lot to do with which side of the aisle you stand on.
To many on the left, he was their lion, their champion, who fought tirelessly for what he believed in. To many on the right, he was a callous killer and alcoholic who used his power and prestige to escape justice for himself and his family.
Maybe both are right.
I watched a documentary on the Kennedy dynasty not long ago, and I recall one aspect very vividly: He was in a way portrayed as the runt of the litter, the hanger on who was in the shadows of his great brothers. In a way, he was. Joe was destined to greatness, but was heroically killed in WW2. JFK was to be the great one, and was on his way as president, until an assassin ended his career. Robert followed the same path as John, a little sooner. Not to mention losing a sister to a plane crash, as well.
I have no love for Ted Kennedy, and frankly have a hard time feeling more then general sorrow at his passing.
Yet, I have to remember that political convictions aside, he was still a person: a person with family, friends and beliefs.
I don’t care who he was, how liberal he was or what past sins continue to haunt his memory.
He died a lousy death. Brain tumors are not fun. His family watched him decline and suffer, and suffered with him. They deserve a little respect.
So I am forcing myself to stifle the monster inside and extend my sincere regrets to his family.
In this, maybe Sarah Palin summarized it best on her FaceBook page:
On the Passing of Senator Ted Kennedy:
I would like to extend our sympathies to the Kennedy family as we hear word about the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy. He believed in our country and fought passionately for his convictions. -Sarah Palin and family
Short, sweet and classy. Even Michelle Malkin, who bears him far more vitriol than I do, was subdued and respectful.
The US President’s criticism of the “mistake” added to a growing backlash against the Scottish decision to free the biggest mass murderer in British legal history on compassionate grounds.
Hours after the Scottish National Party administration in Edinburgh announced its decision to free him, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the only man convicted of the 1988 atrocity, flew home to a hero’s welcome in Tripoli.
I’m giving you the CBS clip because it includes interviews with families of the victims, but for a full minute’s worth of the “triumphant” mood on the ground in Libya, watch Cavuto. There’s nothing unusual about this, incidentally: Palestinians notoriously celebrated on 9/11 and Lebanese rejoiced at the release of Hezbollah child-killer Samir Kuntar. It’s one thing to welcome home a soldier who fought enemy combatants; these people welcome home terrorists who mass-murder civilians. Pure, unapologetic savagery. Exit quotation: “He has … reported a feeling of isolation–cultural, religious, social and language. He has a strong sense of family duty.”
And some mutter about the crazy conservatives also conveniently forgetting some of the gun toting demonstrators are FOR health care reform.
And then there is the whole notion of reform. If you protest the health care takeover you are against reform completely, but no one on the left apparently wants to admit there is a huge area of other options between do nothing and Government takeover.
John Mackey the CEO of Whole Foods runs an editorial detailing many of those options and now faces a boycott by liberals because he dares to suggest we can fix it without socialism.
Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.
A former coworker sent this to me, and I wanted to pass it on to you. The story contained about his wife Janette is completely true, I was at her funeral. Put the politics aside and make a difference.
Light the Night with Luke and help fight blood cancers
Here we are, more than halfway through summer and that means that the Light the Night walk is just around the corner. It is once again time to gather friends and family to Light the Night in honor of Janette and all of those who have been touched by cancer. This is the eighth year the J-Team will descend upon Greenlake and Ruston Way to show our support for all those who have been effected by cancer. Over the past 7 years the J-team has raised over $43,000 dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and every year I am touched by the number of people that walk and donate in support of this wonderful cause.
Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has the video evidence of the strategy used by Barack Obama to get a roomful of complacent supporters at his Portsmouth, New Hamsphire “town hall” yesterday. The group he launched, Organizing for America, had supporters bused into the event — and they went directly to the head of the line to get into the forum. It’s the quickest and most effective way to ensure that the President doesn’t have to answer any tougher questions than those about the “mean signs” of his opponents:
Andrew Malcolm says this shows a desperation in the administration, and that even with the White House organization, Obama’s losing on the ground:
While Obama’s poll popularity has slipped somewhat, the popularity of his keystone programs has slid dramatically. Now, we fully understand why the president set that early August deadline for a completed bill. His internal polls predicted the kind of coalescing opposition we’ve seen recently in congressional town halls around the country.
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