Say Anything Blog

I’m not sure what other logical conclusion can be reached considering how the liberal Democrats have block every energy development that would alleviate our need for foreign oil.
From Gateway Pundit

Over the past 30 years:

Which party blocked the development of new sources of petroleum?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling in ANWR?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the coast of Florida?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the east coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the west coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked building oil refineries?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean nuclear energy production?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean coal production?-- Democrat

That’s about the complete list.  Oh, liberals do like wind power but not if it’s in a liberal state like California. i.e. wind turbines obstruct their scenic views.  Interestingly the state of Texas who has perhaps the least environmental restrictions has the most wind turbines.

From our friends at Gateway Pundit.

Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted “God Talk,” a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station’s charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved “exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity” in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

...Ward initially pleaded not guilty and said he had downloaded a few pornographic images over several weeks as research for a book on hypocrisy among Americans who preach morality in public.

I wonder how you-know-who missed this one.  You think it’s because Ward is a liberal??

You all are at least somewhat famllar with Gores film that predicted a huge increase in ocean levels flooding coastal cities and his other doomsday prophecies.  Well, the esteemed Walter Williams in Environmentalists’ wacky predictions writes that doomsday forecasts are nothing new.

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Read the whole thing.

The benefit and safety of flouride in our water system and in other products e.g. toothpaste has been hotly debated over the years.  This subject is revisted in WND’s Fluoride: Miracle drug or toxic-waste killer?

From Pennsylvania to Nebraska and from Europe to New Zealand, there is growing and fierce opposition to plans to fluoridate public drinking water, fueled by a battery of shocking new studies that seriously question a practice routine among U.S. municipalities for nearly the last 50 years

Although the American Dental Association and CDC are avid proponents of flouride there is a growing body of contrary evidence.

A study released in February by the Collaborative on Health and the Environments Learning and Development Disabilities Initiative found excessive ingestion of fluoride can decrease thyroid hormone levels. It also cited a recent Chinese study that links lower IQ levels in children with fluoridated drinking water.

In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences found the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum standard for fluoride of 4 milligrams per liter could cause health problems such as dental fluorosis and weakened bones over a lifetime of consumption.

The EPA’s Headquarters Professionals Union, made up of scientists, lawyers and other professionals, also now opposes community fluoridation.

In January, the New York State Dental Journal reported fluoride overexposure is resulting in children developing tooth disorders including white spots, brownish discoloration and pitting. It also warned children 6 months to 3 years should consume no more than ¼ of a gram of fluoride per day – the equivalent of one 8 ounce glass of water in a fluoridated community.

Sometime ago I read that flouride was a waste product from some manufacturing product and the flouride promotion as a dental aid was just a scheme for disposing of it.

The fluoride added to public drinking water is actually fluorosilic acid. It is described by critics as an industrial waste product. Supporters prefer to call it an industry byproduct. Most of it has come from Florida’s phosphate fertilizer industry.

So is flouride safe or not?  Although the government has confirmed its use, the government has been wrong before so it’s probably wise to limit ones exposure to flouride.

In 1965, a landmark year in the fluoridation debate, the federal government determined fluoride was safe in drinking water at levels as high as 4 ppm. Officially, that is still the government’s threshold of safety on the high side. Yet, in 2006, the National Research Council determined 4 ppm was unsafe and couldn’t assert with certitude that even half that level was safe.

On the basis of the NRC’s review, the Georgia-based Lillie Center last year filed an ethics complaint against the CDC Division of Oral Health. In its complaint the center charged the CDC with “mislead[ing] the public concerning the results of studies about harm from ingesting fluoride,” and “omit[ting] vital information in its information disseminated to the public concerning vulnerable population groups that are particularly susceptible to harm from fluoride.”

Read the whole thing.

Of course, I’m refering to Obama. Not withstanding his extreme liberalism, I’ve never been comfortable with Obama as an ordinary human because his tightly choreographered presentations appeared too contrived and programmed.  The nagging question in my mind was ‘who is pulling the strings on this manikin?’.  Well, there may be others but the obvious choice is Obamas wife who may be more radical than Wright or any of his other close acquaintances.  Msrk Steyn who wrote this lengthy treatise of Michelle Obama has this to say

But the problem for the enigmatic Obama is that his wife gives every indication of broadly subscribing to the Reverend Wright’s world view, albeit without the profanity and accompanying pelvic thrusts.

Is it possible that Michelle devotion to Wright was the reason that they attended his church?  This mindset is brought out in Michelle’s Princeton undergraduate thesis

.“A separationist is more likely to have a realistic impression of the plight of the Black lower class because of the likelihood that a separationist is more closely associated with the Black lower class than are integrationist. By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”

Michelle in speechs has made other disconcerting and empty headed remarks

.“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America.”

In 2008, we are still a nation that is too divided. We live in isolation, and because of that isolation, we fear one another. We don’t know our neighbors, we don’t talk, we believe our pain is our own. We don’t realize that the struggles and challenges of all of us are the same.

Having this women as the first lady in the White House influencing the president should be additonal cause for concern if Obama gets elected.

Of course, I’m refering to Obama. Not withstanding his extreme liberalism, I’ve never been comfortable with Obama as an ordinary human because his tightly choreographered presentations appeared too contrived and programmed.  The nagging question in my mind was ‘who is pulling the strings on this manikin?’.  Well, there may be others but the obvious choice is Obamas wife who may be more radical than Wright or any of his other close acquaintances.  Msrk Steyn who wrote this lengthy treatise of Michelle Obama has this to say

But the problem for the enigmatic Obama is that his wife gives every indication of broadly subscribing to the Reverend Wright’s world view, albeit without the profanity and accompanying pelvic thrusts.

Is it possible that Michelle devotion to Wright was the reason that they attended his church?  This mindset is brought out in Michelle’s Princeton undergraduate thesis

.“A separationist is more likely to have a realistic impression of the plight of the Black lower class because of the likelihood that a separationist is more closely associated with the Black lower class than are integrationist. By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”

Michelle in speechs has made other disconcerting and empty headed remarks

.“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America.”

In 2008, we are still a nation that is too divided. We live in isolation, and because of that isolation, we fear one another. We don’t know our neighbors, we don’t talk, we believe our pain is our own. We don’t realize that the struggles and challenges of all of us are the same.

Having this women as the first lady in the White House influencing the president should be additonal cause for concern if Obama gets elected.

In the UK Daily Mail

Failed asylum seekers are sneaking out of Britain - because they are fed up with the poor healthcare and bad weather.

Scores have been caught trying to break past border controls in recent weeks, according to immigration staff.  The majority of those who have been found are from Afghanistan and Iraq, said Les Williams, a chief immigration officer for the UK Border Agency.

He said: “One thing we have noticed recently is people trying to leave the country.

“We cannot explain exactly why they are trying to go, but when some of these people were questioned they said they wanted to go to a warmer country as they are fed up with the English weather and fed up with their treatment on the NHS.”

For the reason given that some of these people might be criminals, the British government is trying to impede the exodus.

A spokesman for the Home Office added that they took any attempt to evade border control seriously, and were implementing “a hi-tech system for counting people in and out of the country”.

However, as critics point out, those who are found not to be criminals must have costly deportation proceedings begun against them.

Mark Wallace, campaign director for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “At a time when police are overstretched and taxpayers are paying far too much we are spending millions stopping these people leaving the country.

“It is lunacy and makes us even more of a laughing stock.”

Others claim failed asylum seekers leaving voluntarily is probably the best hope the Home Office has of clearing a backlog of 285,000 cases.

Some of the comments to this article would seem to show that many native Brits are in empathy with the people who want to leave.  A sampling:

One thing we have noticed recently is people trying to leave the country.” Crikey! They can’t stand Incapability Brown either.

It’s all part of Gordon’s cunning plan to get rid of asylum seekers.  Turn this country into a complete toilet and they’ll all go running home. You have to hand it to him, he’s trying his best, and succeeding.

Sounds very familiar… just the same reasons many Brits have left the UK

As if we don’t have enough substances on the drug prohibition list, the powers that be (which interestingly does not include the DEA, at least not yet) have singularly decided that the herb salvia divinorum needs to be banned.

From the Drug War Chronicle,

Aroused by videos of young people using salvia divinorum on YouTube and spurred on by law enforcement eager not to miss an opportunity, legislators across the country have this year been raising the alarm about the fast- and short-acting hallucinogenic herb, despite the lack of any evidence that its use is harmful. In the latest outbreaks of salvia mania, the South Carolina and Florida Houses have passed a bill to criminalize the plant, a Massachusetts town has banned it, and police in North Dakota—one of a handful of states where it is already illegal—announced their first salvia bust.

Some of you North Dakotans may be pleased (or alarmed) to know that your state is one of the front line leaders in the Drug War.

North Dakota law enforcement had its chance earlier this month, when they arrested a Bismarck man for possessing eight ounces of salvia leaf. (The drug is most commonly ingested by smoking salvia extracts, which are significantly more potent than the leaf.) Kenneth Rau has been charged with salvia possession with intent to deliver in what North Dakota cops believe is the state’s first salvia bust.

Now, they’re looking for more, Lt. Bob Haas of the Bismarck Police told WDAY-TV6 News. “It sure looks like there could be a market, based on the amount he had. This is the first we’ve seen of it.”

Even some towns and cities are getting in on the act.

The most recent is West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where city selectmen voted to ban the plant this week. Although Massachusetts is among the states considering action against the member of the mint family, the state was not moving fast enough for the West Bridgewater folks.

“What makes Salvia divinorum dangerous is that it has hallucinogenic properties like LSD and it can be purchased on the same Web site where you find Beanie Babies and baseball cards,” Selectman Matthew Albanese said. “I can’t imagine why the Drug Enforcement Agency has Salvia listed as a ‘drug/chemical of concern’ as opposed to a ‘controlled substance,’” Albanese said.

Albanese might have asked the DEA. The Chronicle did three weeks ago, and DEA spokesperson Rogene Waite told us that the agency is following procedure by evaluating eight factors listed in the Controlled Substances Act in determining whether or not to schedule a drug. Unlike Massachusetts selectman or various state legislatures, (this time at least) the DEA seems to actually be waiting for evidence before it acts.

One can only wait and wonder with chagrin what plant will be selected next to banned.  Perhaps broccoli which I don’t like anyway.  I used to smoke corn silk when I was young so that may be a prospect.  Imagining corn on the prohibited list illustrates the folly that the drug war has become.

This time the story is based on the national health dental care in the UK.  From the Daily Mail:

A grandmother performed her own tooth extractions in despair after being turned away by 12 dentists.

Elizabeth Green, 76, was in agony with two front teeth and after a fruitless search for an NHS practitioner, resorted to DIY.

Her case is the latest of many to highlight the dwindling availability of NHS dental treatment.

But you can get private sector dental care if you can afford it.

Mrs Green, a former chef, said it was made plain to her that if she could pay for treatment she would have been welcomed.

“I feel so angry,” she said. “I’ve worked all my life and paid taxes and then when I need help I can’t get it.”

As I have posted in comments before, I believe that any Republican presidential candidate is better than all of the Democratic candidates.  Many have griped that none of them are conservative enough and that may keep them away from the polls or cause them to vote for a 3rd party candidate.  However, as Jack Cashill writes in Thanks for the best GOP line-up ever, the current front runners are a better selection than in years pasts.

Cashill writes:

I am weary, Lord, of all the complaining and caterwauling, all the cranky e-mails that tell me Fred is too lazy and Rudy is too sleazy and John is too wily and Mitt is too wobbly and Mike is too cagey and Ron is too crazy and Duncan is too dreary and Tom is too Johnny-one-note.

And none of these Republicans, by some calculus or another, is conservative enough or charismatic enough, and all of them, alas, will come a cropper in the face of just about any Democrat not named Chris Dodd.

And this, Lord, is what I hear from my right-wing friends. I ask You, have they drunk so deeply of the mainstream Kool Aid that they lost their minds or at the very least their memories?

Do they not understand that this is best crop of candidates any party has put up in years, possibly ever?

Cashill then goes on to review the candidates from years past, the review being too length to post here.

Cashill then concludes with:

So thank you, Lord, for this and so very much more, especially for Hillary. Come Election Day, she will remind us all why, regardless of what we are, we are not Democrats.

Read the whole thing.

For several years the left have beaten the drum announcing that our reputations with foreign governments and countries is horrible strained because of the presidents policies.  This view was accenuated by anti-American protests here and abroad.  Like most left positions this ‘ugly’ American assertion is proving to be bilgewater.  From Britain, France Argue Which Is Closest U.S. Ally

Not to be outdone by President Sarkozy’s amorous overture to President Bush in Washington, Prime Minister Brown of Britain has used the first major foreign policy speech of his premiership to insist that Britain is America’s closest ally.

Mr. Sarkozy claimed during his visit to Washington last week that France, not Britain, is now America’s best friend and partner.

Mr. Brown, who has been portrayed on both sides of the Atlantic as having distanced himself from America to avoid the charge against his predecessor, Tony Blair, that he was Mr. Bush’s “poodle,” fought back last night, claiming in a speech at a banquet thrown by the lord mayor of the city of London that the French president’s bid to usurp Britain’s traditional place alongside America would not succeed.

”It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America,” Mr. Brown said. And, in a thinly veiled reference to France’s traditional dislike of America and its culture, he added, “I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, and I believe that our ties with America — founded on values we share — constitute our most important bilateral relationship.”

He welcomed France’s late conversion to the American cause and a similar newfound affection for America expressed by Chancellor Merkel of Germany in her visit to Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend.

There is a lot more to the article.  Read it all.

The WND article Soldiers fighting for U.S. become citizens clearly illustrates the true meaning of American citizenship.  It’s not for those who sneak across our borders to reap the benefits of our society without contributions on their part.  It’s not for those who ridicule our nation and slander our military.  American citizenship is only meaningful for those that appreciate the principles on which this country was built and are willing to give their all to preserve them.

For Veteran’s Day 2007, 178 U.S. military men and women serving in Iraq became citizens of the country for which they are fighting, the United States. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff made the trip to Iraq’s largest airbase to preside over the legalization ceremony of servicemen and women who traced their birthplaces to more than 53 nations scattered around the globe.

In 2004, President Bush signed into law an executive order to accelerate “naturalization during a period of hostility” for those who are serving in the American military. So far, more than 4,000 have become citizens under the new law, but up to 40,000 are eligible.

Marine Cpl. Tintu Parameswar, born in India, took advantage of the immigration fast-track while deployed to Iraq. The corporal has lived in the United States since the age of three, is currently on his second tour in Fallujah and serves with the 2nd Tank Battalion.

“There are more job opportunities,” the corporal said about his decision to become a citizen. He’d like to make a career out of the military and intends to re-enlist during this tour.

One applicant, Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Brownie with 82nd Airborne, 2nd Brigade out of Fort Bragg, N. C., was born in Alberta, Canada. After middle school, high school and now the Army, Daniel has lived in the United States for most of his life.

But how did this Canadian national feel about being in Iraq and serving a country where he did not have the right to vote?

“I support our mission, I signed up for this,” said Brownie. ”I wanted to be a part of something greater than myself.”

It’s a little publicized fact many Canadians crossed the border to enlist in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.

Of course, joining the American military meant the possibility of serving in a combat zone. Why not stay in Canada and join that service?

“I couldn’t stand up tall and tell people ‘I’m in the Canadian Army,’” he said. “I didn’t even know they had an army.”

Canadian military action is poorly viewed by a French and English-speaking public that gets nosebleeds just reading about the American military. So, how did Brownie come to have a different opinion about the American military machine?

“I love to be able to say I’m a part of the strongest military in the world.”

The staff sergeant actually re-enlisted on the 4th of July this year.

When asked his opinion on the current illegal immigration debate, he was straight-forward. ”I work in the Army and I have to go through the system, everyone else should go through the system too.”
The general opinion of the men and women who finally arrived at their destination after a long journey is that citizenship is something to be earned.

During the initial press conference before the naturalization ceremony, a reporter from Newsweek asked, “Has there been any evidence of people joining the military just to get citizenship?”

Chertoff and most of the members of the military in the room openly laughed. “There are far easier ways of doing it,” Brig. Gen. Couch said.

He’s right. Those who serve and risk their lives for a country not entirely their own have taken a harder test to naturalization than anyone else. Many servicemen killed in action have been posthumously granted citizenship.

“It’s a privilege to become an American,” said Brownie.

What American citizenship is all about..

Anyone with half a brain cell knows that human based global warming is a con job perpetrated by Algore and his minions but most don’t know the history beyond this hoax.  Now the UK Telegraph has documented the stages of deceit leading up to the current situation. 

No one can deny that in recent years the need to “save the planet” from global warming has become one of the most pervasive issues of our time. As Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, it poses “a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism”, warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.

Inevitably, many people have been bemused by this somewhat one-sided debate, imagining that if so many experts are agreed, then there must be something in it. But if we set the story of how this fear was promoted in the context of other scares before it, the parallels which emerge might leave any honest believer in global warming feeling uncomfortable.

The story of how the panic over climate change was pushed to the top of the international agenda falls into five main stages.

Stage one:

Stage one came in the 1970s when many scientists expressed alarm over what they saw as a disastrous change in the earth’s climate. Their fear was not of warming but global cooling, of “a new Ice Age”.

A scare is often set off - as we show in our book with other examples - when two things are observed together and scientists suggest one must have been caused by the other. In this case, thanks to readings commissioned by Dr Roger Revelle, a distinguished American oceanographer, it was observed that since the late 1950s levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere had been rising. Perhaps it was this increase that was causing the new warming in the 1980s?

Stage two:

Stage two of the story began in 1988 when, with remarkable speed, the global warming story was elevated into a ruling orthodoxy, partly due to hearings in Washington chaired by a youngish senator, Al Gore, who had studied under Dr Revelle in the 1960s.

But more importantly global warming hit centre stage because in 1988 the UN set up its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). Through a series of reports, the IPCC was to advance its cause in a rather unusual fashion. First it would commission as many as 1,500 experts to produce a huge scientific report, which might include all sorts of doubts and reservations. But this was to be prefaced by a Summary for Policymakers, drafted in consultation with governments and officials - essentially a political document - in which most of the caveats contained in the experts’ report would not appear.

Stage three:

Kyoto initiated stage three of the story, by formally committing governments to drastic reductions in their CO2 emissions. But the treaty still had to be ratified and this seemed a good way off, not least thanks to its rejection in 1997 by the US Senate, despite the best attempts of Mr Gore.

Not the least of his efforts was his bid to suppress an article co-authored by Dr Revelle just before his death. Gore didn’t want it to be known that his guru had urged that the global warming thesis should be viewed with more caution.

One of the greatest problems Gore and his allies faced at this time was the mass of evidence showing that in the past, global temperatures had been higher than in the late 20th century.

In 1998 came the answer they were looking for: a new temperature chart, devised by a young American physicist, Michael Mann. This became known as the “hockey stick” because it showed historic temperatures running in an almost flat line over the past 1,000 years, then suddenly flicking up at the end to record levels.

It is hard to recall any scientific thesis ever being so comprehensively discredited as the “hockey stick”. Yet the global warming juggernaut rolled on regardless, now led by the European Union.

Stage four:

In 2004, thanks to a highly dubious deal between the EU and Putin’s Russia, stage four of the story began when the Kyoto treaty was finally ratified.

In the past three years, we have seen the EU announcing every kind of measure geared to fighting climate change, from building ever more highly-subsidised wind turbines, to a commitment that by 2050 it will have reduced carbon emissions by 60 per cent. This is a pledge that could only be met by such a massive reduction in living standards that it is impossible to see the peoples of Europe accepting it.

All this frenzy has rested on the assumption that global temperatures will continue to rise in tandem with CO2 and that, unless mankind takes drastic action, our planet is faced with the apocalypse so vividly described by Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

Stage five:

Yet recently, stage five of the story has seen all sorts of question marks being raised over Gore’s alleged consensus. For instance, he claimed that by the end of this century world sea levels will have risen by 20 ft when even the IPCC in its latest report, only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches.There is also of course the harsh reality that, wholly unaffected by Kyoto, the economies of China and India are now expanding at nearly 10 per cent a year, with China likely to be emitting more CO2 than the US within two years.

More serious, however, has been all the evidence accumulating to show that, despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels, global temperatures in the years since 1998 have no longer been rising and may soon even be falling.

The article concludes:

If global warming does turn out to have been a scare like all the others, it will certainly represent as great a collective flight from reality as history has ever recorded

From Brits in record numbers go abroad for health care

More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year, the London Sunday Telegraph reported, a number that is forecast to rise to 200,000 by 2010.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. According to the survey conducted by Treatment Abroad, “health tourists” from the UK travel to 48 countries.

Costs for the NHS have risen due to increased bureaucracy that prevents nurses from seeing patients and increased compensation to general practitioners that have seen their earnings rise over 50 percent in the last three years.

Health tourists are courted on the Internet by foreign doctors and hospitals that offer consultations online or with agents in the UK. Cost of a heart-bypass operation in India, including the flight and hotel, are less than half what the same would cost at a private British hospital. The shortage of dentists in Britain is being met by dentists in Hungary.

“The confidence that the public has in NHS hospitals has been shattered by the growth of hospital infections and this government’s failure to make a real commitment to tackling it,” said Katherine Murphy, of the Patients’ Association. “People are simply frightened of going to NHS hospitals, so I am not surprised the numbers going abroad are increasing so rapidly. My fear is that most people can’t afford to have private treatment – whether in this country or abroad.”

Yep, National Health Care is the solution for free health care for everybody.

I’ve not been happy with the idea of natural causes for the California fires.  Natural fire cause are almost always lightening strikes which are very unlikely in an area suffering from drought.  Additionally fires that spontaneusly start in several different areas are always suspected to be caused by arson.  But were the alleged arsonists Islamic terrorists?  Well, according to the WND article, there is a distinct possibility.  From California fires spark suspicion of terror again

California authorities have confirmed some of the wildfires that have triggered the evacuation of about a million people and burned 1,600 structures with damages at more than $1 billion were set deliberately, and a terror watch organization says the circumstances match terror plans the FBI alerted law enforcement to several years ago.

“In 2003 an FBI memo alerted law enforcement agencies that an al-Qaida terrorist being held in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States,”

Terrorist related arsons have been reported in France and are a frequent occurence in Israel.

In blazes across Europe that year, there was evidence terrorists may have contributed. Authorities said after fires swept through the Moures mountains near the French Riviera, investigators found Molotov cocktails – gasoline bombs – at the ignition point for fires that killed at least four and destroyed 50 homes.

In fact, Arab terrorists in Israel have started dozens of major forest fires over the years.

As far back as 1988, Israeli police caught more than a dozen Palestinian adults in the act of setting fires, while other Arabs confessed to arson after arrest. Some fires followed specific calls by underground Arab terrorists. A leaflet issued by the Palestinian uprising’s underground leadership called for “the destruction and burning of the enemy’s properties, industry and agriculture.”