Say Anything Blog

Steven M. Warshawsky

In the spring of 1993, shortly after her husband and political benefactor Bill Clinton took office as the nation’s 42nd president, Hillary Clinton delivered the commencement address at the University of Texas. In her speech, Hillary reiterated the theme that has been at the heart of her political vision from the start:

“We are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the great challenges facing all of us in the West.”

“Remolding society.” This is the terminology of a utopian socialist, one who seeks to remake society according to a narrow and dogmatic ideology that claims to eliminate injustice, poverty, and unhappiness, once and for all. Hillary’s ideology is an amalgam of New Left marxism and grievance feminism, the kind of unwholesome stew that is commonplace on elite college campuses.

Significantly, the term “remolding”—unlike such terms as “reform” or “renew”—reflects a sweeping rejection of society as it currently exists: family structure (too patriarchal), economic organization (favors the rich), social practices (discriminate against women and minorities), and so on. In other words, someone who believes that society needs to be “remolded” is someone who, at bottom, cannot see any good in the American way of life—and someone who, if she could, would radically change that way of life. Who doubts that this describes Hillary Clinton?

Lest anyone think that a more mature and experienced Hillary Clinton has tempered her political objective, consider her recent speech in Concord, New Hampshire, at an event over Labor Day weekend that her campaign titled “Change We Need.” In her speech, Hillary forthrightly declared: “I will bring my experience to the White House and begin to change our country starting on Day One.” That’s right: Change our country. As her official campaign website illustrates, Hillary means what she says.

Socialized Medicine

Returning to the cause celebre of her days as First Lady, Hillary’s official website proclaims that “America is ready for universal health care. Hillary has the vision and the experience to make it a reality.” Hillary’s plan for universal health care, i.e., socialized medicine, will nationalize—and ruin—approximately one-seventh of the U.S. economy. As night follows day, we will see shortages, rationing, waiting lists, deteriorating facilities, less research and development, fewer of our “best and brightest” going into medicine (and more doctors imported from third-world countries), and lower quality health care for most Americans (the richest citizens, including Bill and Hillary, will be able to obtain high-quality private care). This is what has happened in Great Britain under the National Health Service.

[...]

Sharply Limited Energy Consumption

After the health care industry, Hillary has set her sights on the energy industry, which literally drives the economy, indeed our entire way of life. Without plentiful, cheap energy—which, despite complaints about rising gas and heating oil prices, Americans continue to possess in relative abundance—it simply is not possible to live the kind of on-the-go, high-consumption, air-conditioned lives that Americans enjoy. Where does this energy come from? It primarily (85%) comes from fossil fuels, i.e., coal and oil and natural gas. Alternative energy sources, such as hydro, solar, wind, and biomass, cannot come close to fueling an advanced industrial and technological society like ours. Nuclear power, about which Hillary says she is “agnostic,” has been neglected for so long in this country (it only supplies 8% of our total energy needs) that it cannot be part of anything but a long-term solution. The bottom line is that if we do not burn lots and lots of fossil fuels, Americans cannot continue to enjoy their high quality of life.

[...]

“A Champion For Women”

Lastly, we should not forget that, after socialized medicine, the cause dearest to Hillary’s heart is using the power of government to enforce the “equality” of men and women in all areas of life, from the family and schools, to business and the military. The National Organization for Women has a kindred spirit in Hillary, whom NOW has endorsed for president.

Although Hillary claims to speak on behalf of all women, her brand of feminism is primarily designed for middle class and professional women who want to pursue “careers” without the hassles of children. Hence, Hillary supports an unlimited right to abortion. She supports “expanded access to family planning services, including for low-income women” (i.e., Hillary wants to encourage poor and minority women to “empower” themselves by having fewer children). She supports comprehensive child care and early education programs. She supports “a dedicated funding stream for age-appropriate, medically accurate, comprehensive sex education.” And she supports “giving new parents support and training to promote healthy development for their children.” In other words, Hillary wants to make it easier for working women to eschew the responsibilities of parenting, either by eliminating children altogether or by having the government take over the duty of raising them.

[...]

Hillary Loves The 70s

As Hillary’s campaign platform demonstrates, she seeks to return the country to 1970s-style liberalism, with its limitless faith in the power of government to create a “fair” society in a world characterized by ecological crisis, a zero-sum economy, and diminishing expectations. All of Hillary’s major domestic policy initiatives—socialized medicine, reduced energy consumption, mandating “equality” between the sexes—come straight from the Democratic playbook of that era.

This was the worldview that Ronald Reagan confronted and defeated more than twenty-five years ago. Reagan recognized that at the heart of contemporary liberalism lies a profound pessimism about the ability of ordinary Americans to manage their own lives in a responsible, productive, and decent manner. Reagan rejected this pessimism with every fiber of his being. This is what people really are referring to when they speak of Reagan’s “optimism.”

Hillary Clinton will never be mistaken for an optimist like Reagan. She clearly does not believe in the ability of the American people to govern their own lives, make their own decisions, and abide by the consequences of their actions. Turning Reagan’s famous aphorism on its head, Hillary believes that government is not the problem, it is the solution.

In 1980 the American people stood up and loudly proclaimed that they still believed in a country based on individual liberty, self-reliance, and limited government, however tattered those notions have become over the years. Hillary Clinton claims they now are “ready” for a new way. Indeed, I believe that the 2008 election will be a referendum, not on the War in Iraq, but on whether the future of this country lies in freedom or socialism. Let’s hope the American people make the right choice.

Read the whole thing.

The really frightening thing is that most Dems consider Hillary to be a “centrist”.

...not only does it drive up the price of that casual joint we all know you enjoy from time to time, but…

Did you know that in the neighborhood of 40% of the incarcerated population in the US are there for drug-related offenses? Really, they are. And 2.2 million are incarcerated. Way, way, way too many. I don’t want to pay for that. Do you? For stoners? Make sure, when you trumpet the virtues of all things Republican, here with all your ideological buddies, you make sure and declare how effing great it is that these ‘non-intrusionary’ ‘minimalists’ are wasting our money via the ‘War on Drugs’ in quantities that would make Bill Gates blush. Not only consider the prison expenses, consider also Bush’s support for terrorism in Columbia. This wasting would also fall under the rubric of ‘The War on Drugs’. But no, let’s mention none of that, meanwhile, let us distract ourselves by dissing on Holland (who’s prison population is probably not 40% drug offenders) for overtaxation. Meanwhile, Venezeula, who captures 90% of the northbound drugs from South America, the big flat country on the top of that continent, yes… we have stopped providing them funding to aid in the drug busts. And a quick read of the article on Columbia linked above will clue one in to the fact that our ‘allies’ in Columbia kill and steal to keep the drug trade alive. They, of course, get the money! Not only the drug money, they get our tax money too (and we don’t even get ‘discounts’ or anything).

Make drugs a tickable offense. Let’s earn money from drugs to pay for prison so we can isolate the real threats.

AKA: Dennis Kucinich campaigned in Fargo today!

from a communist hell report:

Dennis Kucinich brought his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to Fargo Tuesday. Despite a poor showing in the polls, the Ohio congressman believes he still has a shot at the party’s presidential nomination

A shot at the nomination? yeah, a shot in hell....

The piece continues with this gem from a local Fargo idiot:

Standing in the crowd, Deb Pullen says she plans to vote for Kucinich in the North Dakota caucus.

“I think he stands for all the issues that I think are important,” says Pullen. “I think he’s a very non-egotistical, sincere candidate, who really is a public servant.”

NON-EGOTISTICAL!!!!! Are you on fucking crack! This shit-fer-brains just waltzed around Syria, gave Assad a hummer, all the while giving the finger to the U.S.A. If that isn’t ego, I don’t know what is. Stupid twit.

Dyke-fer-Sure!

Sorry, I have to make this short as I have much work to do, but we’ll end with Dennis’ denial of reality:

Although he’s trailing in the polls in Iowa, Kucinich believes the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is far from over.
“I think that many people haven’t made up their minds. That’s certainly true in Iowa—that people, even at this late date, are still thinking about who they’re going to vote for. And so for those elections that are a few weeks off, there is plenty of time,”

MmmmHmmmm.

Thanks a bunch for this stain on humanity northern Ohio....stay home and don’t vote next time, mmmkayy?

One last thing.....HOW in thee HELL did this happen?!

Is she sane, are they a match made in Heaven, or both equally as stupid?
MrsKucinich

I wonder if the carpet matches the drapes. :>

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1137942531/bclid1155327332/bctid1166648867

The following won’t be of much interest to non-Christians, in fact it will seem like the mindless chattering of a religious fanatic. So, all atheists, agnostics and non-Christians can make better use of their time and go back to other matters.

For those interested: Russian President Putin has made a move to name his own successor next year, he has been doing a lot of saber rattling lately and now he is parading his new Vacuum Bomb, a vacuum device capable of emitting shockwaves as powerful as a nuclear weapon, the main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature.

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High School Bans American Flag



Tuesday, Sep 11, 2007 - 11:56 PM Updated: 07:03 AM



SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C. – On the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, students at one high school were not allowed to wear clothes with an American Flag.

Under a new school rule, students at Hobbton High School are not allowed to wear items with flags, from any country, including the United States.



The new rule stems from a controversy over students wearing shirts bearing flags of other countries.



Gayle Langston said her daughter, Jessica, was told to remove her stars and stripes t-shirt.



“Today she wanted to wear her shirt, and I had to tell her no,” said Langston. “She didn’t like it at all because I knew it would get her in trouble. Of all days, 9/11, she could not wear her American Flag shirt.”



The superintendent of schools in Sampson County calls the situation unfortunate, but says educators didn’t want to be forced to pick and choose which flags should be permissible.

Now why would any parent tolerate such an anti-American policy disguised as “fairness”?  Wouldn’t it be great if the students all showed up to school in flag appearal?  Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see parents stand up for what is right? 

Soon we will hear cries of “free speech” from liberal bloggers, the MSM, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the ACLU, and democrat elected officials, right?  Well liberal SABer’s, you’re up first, lets hear it.

Don’t hold your breathe conservatives.

UPDATE!!

SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C – A North Carolina High School that came under national attention over their rule that prohibited students from wearing items with the American flag, or any flag from other countries, has lifted the ban.

Superintendent Dr. L. Stewart Hobbs, Jr said they have lifted the ban on flags and “from this point on, all dress code changes will be made at the school board level.”

Hobbs said the county has a dress code policy in place and says individual school dress codes are not allowed.

He adds that principals cannot make a policy that exceeds the board policy, "The principal acted in good faith and said no flags."

According to Hobbs, the policy all stems from information from law enforcement of gangs wearing foreign flags as gang symbols and the board does have a policy to prevent gang signs in schools.

He said they are just as patriotic as other Americans flying the flag over the school, saying the pledge and have planned to have Constitution day at the school next week.

Under the previous rule, students at Hobbton High School were not allowed to wear items with flags, from any country, including the United States.

The board will be meeting with school attorneys to look into the issue further.

Well well, looks like another liberal can't stand the heat of "national attention". Chalk one up for the good guys.

James Lewis

For the yapping dogs of defeat:

The Left thinks Iraq is a killing field for Americans. Actually, it is a killing field for our enemies, at a very great but vitally important sacrifice. That reflects a grand strategy, tailored to the peculiar nature of the global terror threat.

You don’t shoot poisonous fire-ants with a BB gun; you just set an ant trap. Ant colonies are highly “distributed” biological societies, much like the world-wide web. They can’t be killed with a BB or a pressure hose; even pouring flaming gasoline on an ant hill won’t work.

Instead, you destroy ant colonies by attracting hungry ants to a chemical bait, and then kill them all in one small place. Ant traps work. 

That’s the Bush strategy in Iraq. Al Qaeda isn’t centralized, with big cities or steel industries like Nazi Germany. So you can’t destroy the enemy by hunting them one by one.  Rather, you bait a trap—provoke them to come to you, and make sure they don’t get out alive.

Iraq is a trap for Al Qaeda. Our mere presence in the heart of the Osama’s Caliphate-To-Be draws them like ants to sugar. General Petraeus just reported that

“...in the past 8 months, we have considerably reduced the areas in which Al Qaeda enjoyed sanctuary. We have also neutralized 5 media cells, detained the senior Iraqi leader of Al Qaeda-Iraq, and killed or captured nearly 100 other key leaders and some 2,500 rank-and-file fighters. Al Qaeda is certainly not defeated; however, it is off balance and we are pursuing its leaders and operators aggressively.”

Most of the Qaeda fighters come from Saudi Arabia and other breeding grounds. Now that the Sunni tribes are turning against them, they are more exposed and hunted than ever before. Wars are fluid and unpredictable, but no one can imagine that Al Qaeda is happy with its victories since 9/11.

[...]

The fact is that we are drastically weakening or destroying our terror-supporting enemies: Saddam is dead, Al Qaeda is being degraded, the Taliban are hemorrhaging, and the Mullahs are surrounded.

Yet all the know-nothings think there is no strategy for Iraq.

There’s even a clever ironic twist in terms of domestic politics, because our liberals are constantly screaming Defeat! Defeat! Defeat!  That message of weakness and vulnerability inspires more and more of our enemies to come to Iraq and join in the bloody slaughter of Americans.

But when they get there, they discover they’ve been suckered. It’s not the Americans who are taking a beating, but the jihadis who fell for the headlines and who listen to the American Left. So even our malicious liberals end up encouraging the enemy to go to Iraq to die.

As President Harry Truman did, George W. Bush recognized the stakes, set in place the right strategy, and was vilified by critics as stupid. But good poker players like Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush know that you don’t show your cards too soon, just to make people think you’re smart.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, this is the real reason the lefties want us to cut and run from Iraq.

Oh my.

Not content with bundled contributions in a Hsu, the front running democRAT has resorted to a convicted criminal and disbarred lawyer as one of her three primary counselors on foreign affairs:

A Sandy Burglar Comeback?
Jonathan Adler, September 10, 2007 at 9:37pm

In a report on the efforts of Democratic presidential candidates to attract the “best and brightest” policy advisors for their campaigns, Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsh reports that former national security advisor and document pilferer Sandy Berger is one of the three foreign policy experts most relied upon by Senator Hillary Clinton in her White House bid. No word on whether he would have a White House position — or security clearance — in a potential Clinton Administration.

Oh my.

Someone who stole highly classified documents from the National Archives, then destroyed them (as per his own allocution) is one of three primary counselors on foreign affairs and national security to the leading Democratic candidate for the Presidency....

The mind bogles…

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The list of liberal Democrats opposed to voter identification cards is both long and loud.

“I am shocked that this Commission has decided to take us several giant steps back in the march for voting rights by recommending a national ID requirement for voters.  This would inevitably disenfranchise minority voters and the most vulnerable among us—those who live in poverty and the elderly.”

- Democrat John Conyers responding to the recommendations of the Baker-Carter Commission.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this bill is tantamount to a 21st century poll tax.  It would disenfranchise large numbers of legal voters and disproportionately affect elderly people with disabilities, rural voters students, racial and ethnic minorities, and low income voters.  Indeed, that may be its purpose.

-Democrat Representative Steny Hoyer speaking on the House floor.

At the state level as well as nationally, Democrats have made a near-religious crusade out of efforts to thwart any attempt at requiring voters to legally establish their true identity prior to voting.  In Georgia, liberal Democrats, so-called “civil rights groups”, and of course, the ACLU, have spent 5 years challenging every GOP effort to contain voter fraud by requiring a simple picture ID.

In 2005, 25 leftwing special interest groups, including Common Cause, People for the American Way, ACORN, Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, ACLU, Rock the Vote, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights all added their endorsements to a formal statement opposing federal legislation requiring voter ID’s

Now, if there’s one thing we can count on from liberal Democrats, its hypocrisy.  So it comes as no great surprise that the Left Coast’s most flagrant, straight liberal, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome heartily endorsed this proposal by Tom Ammiano, a SF Supervisor:

San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano is drafting legislation to create a city identification card for immigrants unable to get traditional ID cards, a move likely to anger advocates of tougher immigration enforcement.

The cards would be accepted by all city agencies and organizations that receive city funding.
Ammiano plans to introduce the legislation within a couple of weeks. He also is trying to persuade financial institutions to allow residents to use the cards to open accounts.

“There is a large community who contribute, and there are not a lot of safeguards around their (immigration) status, their peace of mind and their ability to participate,” Ammiano said, adding that the card would be available to all people living in San Francisco regardless of their immigration status.

Ammiano said the impetus for the city cards came from the immigrant community, which asked for his help. Illegal immigrants who are victims or witnesses of crime often do not report the incident because they have no identification and fear deportation. Identification also is needed for many services, such as city health care.
San Francisco already has a sanctuary policy for immigrants, which means no city agency, including the police, will assist the federal government to deport people. So-called sanctuary cities have become a major issue among Republican presidential candidates…

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been resolute in defending San Francisco’s sanctuary status, and on Thursday his spokesman said Newsom supports Ammiano’s idea for a card, which could be used for libraries, golf courses, public transportation and other services.

So, liberals who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of American sovereignty, refuse to support efforts to secure our nation’s borders, who actively oppose efforts to ensure the integrity of our most basic political process, voting, are now going to redouble their efforts to make US taxpayer-funded services available to those whose very presence here is a violation of American law.

Talk about hypocrisy!  ID cards for legal voters?  No way!  But for illegal aliens to get bank accounts, library services, parking, taxpayer paid healthcare, and of course, golf… for these things liberal Democrats are only too eager to endorse the use of ID cards.

Over the weekend a flier from a local furniture store came in the mail. It seems that they will be having a big clearance sale on September 11 this year. I know Americans have a habit of thoroughly commercializing every holiday and every day of rememberance but isn’t it a bit early to be doing this to 9/11? I’m really not interested in remembering those who died that day buy going on a shopping spree. Are you?

As I searched for images to include in this post I became unexpectedly emotional. The photo of Father Mychal Judge’s body being carried away from ground zero had me sobbing as if I were watching the towers fall for the first time.



Father Judge “Out of the wreckage of the south tower, first responders carry the body of Father Mychal Judge, the FDNY chaplain, to St. Peter’s Church. (Photograph by Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)”

I have always found photos of those running to the scene to help and those working to save lives that day and the crater in the earth that is all that is left of United flight 93 most moving.

WTC Photo Gallery











The Pentagon,

September 11, 2001 Images and Time Line







Shanksville, Flight 93 Photos

James Lewis

In Memoriam

In the endless Summer of Love there is no 9/11. And to tens of millions of dreamy folk on the Left, the Summer of Love never stopped.  For those people there is no dangerous Ahmadi-Nejad in Tehran, threatening a fiery new holocaust for Tel Aviv and Washington, DC. There is no nuclear proliferation by mad little mass-murdering Kim Jong Il. There is no Osama Bin Laden stirring up terror cells around the world—just a poor, confused man somewhere in the mysterious, deeply spiritual East, whom we have offended in some terrible way.

For the Dreamy Left there is no history, and no fundamental human conflict. There was no Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor half a century ago—except as a terrible misunderstanding, because our parents and grandparents were just so ignorant and racist in that benighted time. There was never a Cold War, there is no necessary war ever, there is no human value worth fighting for. We have transcended all that by our saintly morality and good will. History was mostly a big misunderstanding. Reality is only an agreement. Peace and Love are forever and ever, and nobody has to do anything to make it so, except to wish for it hard enough. If everybody wants it, it will be so.

For decades I’ve seen the bumper stickers: “Visualize World Peace,” “If you think it, it will happen.” What I never really grasped is that millions of reality-impaired people actually believe that. Last summer, the good people at “World Jump Day”

“plan to shift the orbit of planet Earth in order to ‘stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogenous climate.’ They were going to achieve this by having 600 million people jump up in the air at the same time.”

I blush to say this, but I think I know those people. They’re my liberal friends. They think wars happen because Americans are evil—not because we were attacked by the Emperor cult of bushido Japan, or war was declared on us by the Hitler fanatics of Nazi Germany. Or, least of all, by Soviet imperialism, the greatest peace-loving movement on earth. Or by Osama Bin Laden. They are the people who are convinced today that if only the United States left Iraq, there would be peace, and that Saddam Hussein wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin got it exactly right: “The West are wishful thinkers. We will give them what they want to think.” It worked like a charm for the Soviets for more than seven decades, in spite of all the known horrors. The Left simply extends an open invitation to con artists and sociopaths everywhere, and guess what? They come buzzing around like fat flies to horse droppings.  Where are you, Charlie Trie, and Norman Hsu?  Where are you Bill Clinton and the Reverend Jim Jones? Come and get it!

So when the world turns out to be different from dreamland and 9/11 happens in front of our eyes, somebody else has to be blamed. Because God is Love and Love is Love and Reality is Love. If that’s not true, it’s because of the evil people. (Like Republicans and neocons, and fat white middle-aged men with Southern accents and cruel faces, and mean people in military uniforms like in the Hollywood movies ... and you know what they’re really like. Kluxers in sheets, every single one of ‘em. You can tell just by looking at them.)

[...]

Read the whole thing; it’s all good.

Hate-filled lefties explained.

Can’t possibly do this justice other than to say a must read from Michael Toten on the Anbar Awakening.

It really drives through the point that only the Iraqis can actually win in Iraq, we can’t do it for them.  Though we certainly can do a lot of the heavy lifting as this photo of an Iraqi child’s artwork, lifted from Toten’s article, suggests



As Michael observes, the sword is Iraqi and the muscle American.

Being a student at a high school in Bismarck, I get a little insight into how Bismarck Public Schools spends its money. In addition to implementing a John Edwards-esque food restriction program last year, the school district also apparently has too much money on their hands, so they decided to pay this guy $10,000 to show off his dance moves to all teens in the city of Bismarck. Now, to be fair, the guy did the whole motivational speaker thing by telling us his life story, but did we really need to bring in an internationally known speaker who gets a five figure salary in 10 hours? I can name many speakers here in Bismarck who could have done a better job and for about 1/4 of the price. Does it really matter whether a national or a local speaker puts half the city’s teens to sleep? Not really. Its obvious, though, that the school district really wasn’t looking to save any money. Maybe the teachers just wanted to see a 40 year old man shaking his rear end in front of 1,000 students?

Every time I read about our political campaigns and the obscene special interest money that is involved, I think of one of my favorite lines from a Bob Dylan song: “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Even though poll after poll shows that over three-quarters of the American people believe that raising campaign money from Washington lobbyists is unacceptable, the practice continues.

With some very important issues facing us, it is naive to think that money will not play a part in the decision making. For example, our health care system is in need of huge overhaul, and money from the health care industry is flowing into the coffers of the candidates: For the first half of 2007, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, senator from New York and the leading fund-raiser, collected $63.1 million, of which $1.7 million, or 2.7%, was from the health sector . Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the second-leading fund-raiser among the Democratic candidates, collected $58.9 million; $1.2 million, or 2.1%, was from the health sector. Republican candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the leading Republican fund-raiser, collected $44.4 million, including $1.4 million, or 3.1%, from the health sector. Rudolph Giuliani, the second-leading fund-raiser among the Republican candidates and the former mayor of New York City, raised $35.6 million, including nearly $900,000, or 2.5%, from the health sector. Is it surprising that all of the candidates except Kucinich are moving away from the idea of single tier health insurance?

Perhaps hope is on the way with a new proposal called the Senate Fair Elections Now Act recently introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter. Representatives John Tierney of Massachusetts, along with Representatives Raul Grijalva and Todd Platts, introduced companion legislation in the House. Under this bipartisan proposal, candidates raise a large number of small donations to show their credibility with the public and then qualify for a set amount of public money for their campaigns. The legislation is modeled after clean-election laws in seven states, including Arizona and Maine, where the systems have been running well for four election cycles. (Massachusetts had a similar law, but it was repealed.)

Until then we can only monitor our representatives campaign coffers. Here is a web that will help you with the information.
http://www.cleanupwashington.org/sii/
CleanUpWashington.org - Under the Influence

Mothers always have to take one for their kids. All through out history mothers have been held responsible for the outcome of their children’s lives. If anything ever went wrong it was because mom screwed up somewhere. For a very long time it was the official belief of the scientific and medical community that mothers caused autism in their children by not loving them enough. These days I hear people say, with regards to autism, things like, “At least we’re not blaming the mothers any more.” Actually, we still do and I don’t think we ever really stopped.

These days the blame mom attitude has become perhaps a bit more subtle but it is there none the less. Today more than a few argue (quite vehemently) that autism is caused by vaccinations and/or toxins in food and the environment. The implication of this belief is, to me, obvious. If your child has autism it’s your fault for vaccinating your child, it’s your fault for eating the wrong kinds of food during pregnancy and/or while nursing, it’s your fault for not breastfeeding enough or at all. With the rise of various alternative treatments and miracle “cures” we can also add to the list that it’s the parents’ fault, usually mom’s, that a child is autistic because they aren’t trying all of these new methods to “cure” or “recover*” their child.

This, Preventing Autism: An Emerging Hypothesis, is nothing more than the old refrigerator mom theory with a new suit of clothes on. Please note that dad, the author and presumably the source of this new hypothesis, had zero hoops to jump through in order to “prevent” autism in his child.

I found the disturbing post above through Left Brain/Right Brain who has some interesting comments on it.

*A pet peeve of mine with people who make claims about recovering children from autism. Those kids were never lost. They were right in front of you waiting for you to understand and accept them.

Sam of Uncle Sam’s Cabin.

Suitably Flip took a tour of NYC looking for addresses of Norman Hsu’s businesses and couldn’t find a one!

I decided to take a stroll this evening and pop in on a few of Hsu’s businesses.  My simple goal: to find any evidence of their existence.

Among the various companies associated with Hsu on campaign finance disclosures, there appeared to be three addresses in midtown worth visiting: 110 West 40th Street (James Stone, Ltd.), 1431 Broadway (Components, Ltd.), and 571 7th Avenue (also Components, Ltd.).

So having officially gone 0/3, this field trip - much like Wednesday’s - yielded precisely diddly.  And of course, that wasn’t terribly surprising.  It’s not in doubt, after all, that Norman Hsu is a seasoned crook and a con man with extensive shady business dealings.
But the legitimacy of these companies - not just their existence, but their cash flow generation - is central to a crucial unresolved question.  Were the huge sums of money Hsu raised from the likes of the Paws in San Francisco, the Sus on Long Island, and the Lees in Queens and Mount Carmel (sums which wound up in the coffers of Hsu’s favored Democratic candidates and committees) authentic contributions made by those individuals, some of whom - most notably Winkle Paw and Paul Su - list one of Hsu’s companies as their employer?  Or has Hsu been using these associates to illegally funnel extra cash to these candidates and committees in order to sidestep contribution limits?

If Hsu’s businesses are fictitious (or if they’re no more than shell entities or mail drops), then it becomes even tougher to suspend disbelief over whether the lofty contributions made by employees or officers of these fictitious companies are on the level.  The extra layer of Hsu taint that then spreads to Hsu’s fundraising associates makes it difficult to imagine how a candidate or committee could justify not returning the entirety of Hsu’s circumspect bundling.

In Hillary Clinton’s case, that’s the difference between giving up $23,600 (which she’s agreed to do) and $174,000.  (Actually, her grand total is now a ways north of $174k and still climbing, but I haven’t had a chance to error-check, format, and post the newest data update yet.) All told, Hsu’s suspicious bundling more than doubles the aggregate sketchy funds, from $787 thousand to $1.6 million (and rising).

Imagine the following dialogue:

Hello, My name is Bill Gates and I’d like to contribute some cash to your campaign.

Thank you, Mr. Gates! By the way, what is it that you do for a living?

I run a modest software company.

Very nice! Maybe someday, if some computer related legislation comes before us, I’ll look for your input to make sure I’m acting in the best interests of all my constituents!

Now, consider this conversation:

Hello, My name is Bill Hsu and I’d like to contribute some cash to your campaign.

Thank you, Mr. Hsu! By the way, what is it that you do for a living?

I run a modest political contribution company.

Very nice! Maybe someday, if some legislation comes before us related to whatever it is you do, I’ll look for your input to make sure I’m acting in the best interests of all my constituents! But for now, I have zero interest in finding out anything further! At least until your check clears the bank!

Wouldn’t it be nice if our politicians bothered to find out if their really big donors actually did business in our country?

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