Say Anything Blog

By AMY LORENTZEN

TIPTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

[...]

“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.

[...]

Edwards, who has been criticized by some for calling on Americans to be willing to give up their SUVs while driving one, acknowledged Sunday that he owns a Ford Escape hybrid SUV, purchased within the year, and a Chrysler Pacificia, which he said he has had for years.

“I think all of us have to move, have to make progress,” he said. “I’m not holyier-than-thou about this. ... I’m like a lot of Americans, I see how serious this issue is and I want to address it myself and I want to help lead the nation in the right direction.”

[...]

Womb to the tomb; the perfect example of leftie totalitarianism.  I guess “choice” will only be for those who want to kill their babies.

As with all socialism, use of force is required to “make it work”.

Hat tip to wizbang!

For the techies (and others) who blog and comment here, this intriguing article describes a technology breakthrough in capacitive storage that allows an small automobile to travel 500 miles on a 5 second charge.

An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised “technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries,” meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

The device is basically a capacitor.

EEStor’s secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor’s proprietary material.The result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly

Capacitors are not considered to be long duration energy storage devices so this could be a monumental technological breakthrough.

Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors.

Of course, there is a lot of skepticism. 

Yet the speculation and skepticism have continued, fueled by the company’s original assertion of making batteries obsolete

However, the founders of the company have excellent credentials.

EEStor’s founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming EEStor in 2001. The two have acquired dozens of patents over two decades

And they have a customer that believes that their technology is real

."It’s a paradigm shift,” said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor’s invention. “The Achilles’ heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary.”

Technological breakthrough claims are often made that are not realized.  Even when a concept is proven in the laboratory, bringing it into production may be impractical.  This is definitely a ‘wait and see’ proposition.

In the introduction the authors state, “In fact, this book is a call for authenticity. True authenticity demands that we denounce acts in history in which innocent nonbelievers were slaughtered for the sole crime of being a nonbeliever. True authenticity demands that we confront and learn from dark chapters in the past.”

Amazon

Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam”, often used in the West to describe AKP [Turkey’s Justice and Development Party]and said, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

“Islam is Islam. Will this be discussed in the Western media? Will American and European analysts publicly take up the question of whether or not Erdogan is right, and what the implications might be if he is?

Or will they ignore this and continue to assume in all their analyses that the opposite is true, and to dismiss as “ideologues” or “Islamophobes” those who point out that influential Muslims like Erdogan are saying things like this?

Which course do you think they’ll choose?

Will Western leaders then begin discussing political Islam and its implications openly?

Or will they ignore this and continue to pretend that Islam has no inherent or traditional political character, or if it does, it is infinitely malleable anyway, and can be massaged without difficulty into something completely benign?

Which course do you think they’ll choose?”

Jihad Watch

Amazing…

An official state inspection of Arizona public schools reveals that many students are being taught English by Spanish-speaking teachers whose command of English is so poor that the officials can barely understand them.

The recent inspection revealed teachers providing instruction in Spanish instead of the legally required English, students unable to answer questions in English, and teachers’ instructions such as “Sometimes, you are not gonna know some.”

The results of the inspections were reported by the Arizona Republic, which concluded hundreds of students in the state are trying to learn English from teachers who don’t know the language.

The inspections found teachers who are unable to use English grammar and cannot pronounce English words. The “You are not gonna know” comment came from a Mesa teacher instructing a classroom filled with students trying to learn English.

From a Casa Grande Elementary District teacher came, “read me first how it was before,” and a Phoenix teacher at Creighton Elementary asked, “If you have problems, to who are you going to ask?”

State officials each year visit classrooms where children are learning English. Of the 32 school districts visited last year, there were problems at about one-third.

“Some teachers’ English was so poor that even state officials strained to understand them,” the assessment found. “At a dozen districts, evaluators found teachers who ignored state law and taught in Spanish.”

The visits, which lasted from one to three days, discovered teachers did not know grammar or pronunciation. “In one classroom, the teacher’s English was ‘labored and arduous.’ Other teachers were just difficult to understand. Some teachers pronounced ‘levels’ as ‘lebels’ and ‘much’ as ‘mush,’” the newspaper reported.

I’m not sure what to make out of this sordid mess but I don’t know how these incompetants could teach in this fashion without the knowledge of the school administrations.

I’m not a big supporter of Rudy Giuliani.  It has to do with his prosecution of so-called “junk bond king” Michael Milken, when Rudy was a US Attorney in NY.  But I have to admit that on terrorism and the nation’s economic and tax policies, two of the three most important issues in my view, Rudy has it exactly right.

Here’s Giuliani on taxes and the sub-prime mortgage “crisis” from a recent interview with US News and World Report:

Right now the president should be watching it very, very carefully, but what he should really be watching carefully is not only what’s happening in the housing market but the fundamentals of the American economy and making sure they’re all there and operating correctly. This would be a great time, if you wanted to stimulate the entire market, for Congress to agree to make the tax cuts permanent. You’d send a ripple effect of confidence through our markets that would be better than any bailout you could do for anybody. That would be bailing people out through strengthening the American economic system rather than weakening it.

And here’s his take on the current requirement that tax cuts must be “paid for” with cuts in federal expenditures:

I never ran out of budget cuts when I was mayor of New York City. ... A budget of that size [of the federal government], you can find budget cuts everywhere in the budget… I’ll give you one big one—42 percent of the federal workforce is coming up for retirement from now until 10 years from now, which would effectively be at the end of the next president’s term, if the president has two terms. You could not rehire half of them, and that would save you between $20 [billion] to $25 billion. It’s a good start, and it would also be a good discipline because we would get all these agencies to do what businesses have done. It would get all these agencies to do more with less and take advantage of new technologies.

My objection to Giuliani may be short-sighted and even petty, though it is shared by economist Don Luskin for one.  But I will certainly give the man his due.  He understands the economy and the economically philosophically sound reasons for lowering taxes.

Read the whole thing.

Homosexual activists are notable for their intolerance as they attempt to shove their agendas down the throats of the ‘straight’ majority.  Some evidence of this is brought out by the actions of admitted homosexualist Ian Mckellan who was Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings

British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality.

“Yes it is true,” responded McKellen in even tones.  “Its Leviticus 18:22 that I object to, or is it 22:18, I’ve always got to look it up.  Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination. And they, I think the punishment for an abomination was being stoned to death,” he said.

McKellen added, “I think it’s rather obscene and pornographic, and shouldn’t be there, so I remove it.”

Why would a homosexual resort to such tactics unless they found some truth in that bible passage that they couldn’t face?

J.R. Tolkien the creator of the Lord of Rings trilogy would probably taken exception to Mckellans actions.

Ironically, the genius behind the story which gave McKellen his current pedestal - J.R. Tolkien - held that homosexuality was a disorder and was a staunch defender of traditional Catholic teaching on sexual morality.

Tolkien’s thoughts on human sexuality are most clearly represented in his personal writings.  In Tolkein’s letter to his then-21 year old son Michael, he warned that illicit sexuality is one of the prime dangers for souls.  “The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject,” he wrote. 

Leviticus and other passages of the bible critical of homosexuality were written thousands of years ago.  Now if the homosexuals get their way, all of this will be censored.

(In leather jacket, on water skis, jumping shark!)

I have been pretty quiet about the whole Larry Craig Brouhaha. I don’t have a dog in that fight. I never knew who he was till this whole thing blew up.

Now I do.

I am somewhat disturbed by it all. I can’t tell you why. It’s like a bad movie. When the cops seem to be above board but something stinks. My skin crawls a bit. I think there may be more than meets the eye here.

First, let me say I am not a big fan of Minnesota and particularly Twin Cities law enforcement. I very much remember the child molestation charges leveled against some people who never did anything wrong in a daycare some years ago. That was typical Minnesota. There is a liberal self righteousness that exists that I am uncomfortable with. A witch hunt mentality among law enforcement people.

As I have watched this whole Larry Craig thing develop I’m no longer convinced he wasn’t entrapped. I have trolled the blogosphere and professional opinion for insight. There is no true consensus.

The Right Wing wants to show itself clean and perfect. They’re not. But that’s what they want to show.

I am as concerned over this whole thing as potential entrapment as I am over the sexual predator shows on NBC. I think something stinks about all that deal too. I want sexual predators in jail. I’m just not convinced we are catching predators but just stupid people entrapped by a clever scheme.

Color me sceptical.

Back to Larry Craig. I listened to and read his interview with the cop. I thought the cop was a bit overboard in his comments.

Here are several other opinions worth considering:

A guy who is convinced that this is all over but the shouting.

This guy thinks Crag was trapped in a sting operation and shouldn’t have been maybe.

This professor insists it’s NOT entrapment. My answer, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck I think you may have a duck on your hands.

This Woman insists it’s all hypocrisy and cultural drift
This College Girl thinks it’s kinda weird

The Best Take on all this in “Defense" of Larry Craig You really have to read this one.

Classical Values does a great review and linkology of the whole thing

Newsbusters (who I like) does a Why Do The Liberals Pile On review

I actually think the liberals on this one have been pretty evenhanded.

My real concern is what in the world are the Republicans thinking of in having the REP convention in The Twin Cities next summer? If I were a delegate I would hold it for the whole 5 days. You never know if the toe tapping sting squad is going to be watching.

How bout Sunny St. Charles? We promise not to ask or tell. Give up on MPLS/ST PAUL. They’re out to get you. On the other hand, if you come here, don’t tap your foot or wave your hand.

The Story appears here:

HILLIARD, Ohio (AP)—A high school student who tricked football fans from a crosstown rival into holding up signs that together spelled out, “We Suck,” was suspended for the prank, students said.

Kyle Garchar, a senior at Hilliard Davidson High School in suburban Columbus, said he spent about 20 hours over three days plotting the trick, which was captured on video and posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube. He said he was inspired by a similar prank pulled by Yale students in 2004, when Harvard fans were duped into holding up cards with the same message.

At the end of the video, Garchar wryly thanks the 800 Hilliard Darby High School supporters who raised the cards at the start of the third quarter during last Friday’s football game.

“It couldn’t have been done without you,” reads the closing frame of the video.

Garchar, 17, created a grid to plan how the message would be spelled out once fans in three sections held up either a black or white piece of construction paper.

Directions left on stadium seats instructed fans to check that the number listed on their papers matched their seat numbers. Darby supporters were told the message would read “Go Darby.”

A Happy Labor Day to all! 

U.S. Department of Labor

The History of Labor Day

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

Moralizing for me, but not for thee
By Jonah Goldberg

In the wake of the Larry Craig “Bathroomgate” story, some intrepid free-market-oriented bloggers came up with a novel solution to the problem of closeted gay conservatives indulging their carnal desires on the side. Gay sex offsets.

The same market-based approach is used by environmentally crapulent liberal celebrities all the time. They use private jets, drive around with big entourages and own numerous energy-sucking homes. To make amends, they purchase an indulgence in the form of “carbon offsets” - a contract whereby the equivalent amount of greenhouse gases are soaked up by newly planted trees and the like.

[...]

Since most on the left think Craig’s alleged sexual liaisons are perfectly benign, they shouldn’t object. “Who are we to judge?” and all that. Rather, the left claims it hates Craig’s hypocrisy, not his behavior.

[...]

One solution to the hypocrisy epidemic, of course, is to have no morals at all. You can’t violate your principles if you don’t have any. Another solution: simply define down your principles until they are conveniently consistent with your preferred lifestyle. My own perfect moral code would mandate a strict regimen of not enough exercise, too much scotch and a diet rich in cured meats. Men would be religiously barred from taking out the garbage until their wives told them no less than three times to do so. “Thou Shalt Not Shave More Than Thrice Monthly”: I’d never be a hypocrite if only the Bible gave us commandments like that.

But the left has another solution. Under its system, you can still be a moralizer. You can still tell people what to do and how to live. And, best of all, you can still fall short of your ideals personally while guiltlessly trying to use government to impose your moral vision on others. All you have to do is become a liberal moralizer.

Once you become a liberal, you can wax eloquent on the glories of the public schools while sending your kids to private school. You can wax prolix about the greedy rich while making a fortune on the side. You can even use the government to impose your values willy-nilly, from racial quotas and confiscatory tax rates to draconian environmental policies and sex-ed for grade-schoolers - all of which will paid for in part by people who disagree with you.

[...]

The point is simply this: Hypocrisy is bad, sure. But it’s a human failing that should fall upon the individual in question. What the left wants to do is use hypocrisy as a cudgel to declare that conservative ideals are categorically illegitimate because some conservatives fail to live up to them. But we all fail to live up to our ideals sometimes (just ask John Edwards, who wants get rid of everyone’s SUV, save the one in his driveway). That’s sort of why we call them “ideals.” Most of us don’t fall as far as Larry Craig seems to have fallen, but that’s not necessarily an indictment of his arguments, it’s an indictment of the man.

Read the whole thing.

Nothing is more hypocritical than an advocate of “gay rights” using gay smear for political purposes.

Gateway Pundits has this interesting article concerning scandal during Bill Clintons presidency and Hillary’s political compaigns.

Hillary and Bill already own all of the records for scandal from their first stint in office- the infamous Clinton Culture of Corruption Years:

* Number close to the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 44

* Number of convictions during his administration: 33

* Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61

* Number of imprisonments: 14

* Number of presidential impeachments: 1

* Number of independent counsel investigations: 7

* Number of congressional witnesses pleading the 5th Amendment: 72

* Number of witnesses fleeing the country to avoid testifying: 17

* Number of foreign witnesses who have declined interviews by investigative bodies: 19

The Clinton machine now holds the record for the administration with:

* The most number of convictions and guilty pleas

* The most number of cabinet members to come under criminal investigation

* The most number of witnesses to flee the country or refuse to testify

* The most number of key witnesses to die suddenly

* The greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions

* The greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad.

And, already the Clintons are looking at another major fundraising scandal in the face.

This is the Clinton legacy that will be brought back into the White House if Hillary is elected president. 


Read it all.

Just what we needed to spice up this election season—another activist judge who knows better than the rest of us:

The ruling by Judge Robert Hanson concluded that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and he ordered Polk County Recorder Tim Brien to issue marriage licenses to several gay couples.

Republicans just love it when they are handed a “wedge issue” on a silver platter…