Say Anything Blog

“Smack in the middle of a swine flu pandemic, not to mention a recession, these stringent new rules could not come at a worse time.”

Read and weep…

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/New-Limit-On-Junior-Doctors-Hours-Threatens-Chaos-Warn-Medics/Article/200908115351335?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15351335_New_Limit_On_Junior_Doctors_Hours_Threatens_Chaos%2C_Warn_Medics

For months now, RBB and RGraves have been engaging in the “unrepentant racist”/“my pet turd”
thing.

From my point of view, it has become pointless and needs to stop.  Maybe it’s just me.

What say you?  Yes?  No?  Butt Out?

I think both of these bloggers are big boys now and can stand whatever honest comments you choose to make.  As for me, I’m terribly, terribly vulnerable and easily hurt….

Cast your vote.

This, from today’s Washington Times…

Activists picket, feel betrayed by administration policies
By Stephen Dinan (Contact) | Thursday, July 30, 2009

Three years after President Obama marched alongside Hispanic and immigrant rights activists, they took to the streets Wednesday to march against him, saying he has betrayed them by embracing George W. Bush administration efforts to stem illegal immigration.

Activists marched in Los Angeles and picketed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s appearance in New York, angered over the administration’s recent embrace of an electronic verification system for employers and a program that allows local police to enforce immigration laws.

The protests erupted as a report by the Center for Immigration Studies says stepped-up enforcement since 2007 has helped cut the illegal immigrant population in the United States.

The group advocates the reduction of illegal immigration through strong enforcement measures.

The report, being released Thursday morning, says the illegal immigrant population peaked at 12.5 million in summer 2007, or just as Congress was debating a legalization program, but has since fallen to 10.8 million.

Steven A. Camarota and Karen Jensenius, the report’s authors, said the fact that legal immigration has not declined shows that enforcement, not the economy, is responsible for the decline in illegal immigrants.

Nice to know that something  is being done right by the Obama administration, even if probably unintentional.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/30/obama-loses-immigration-allies/

Dr. Ian Plimer, Adelaide University Geologist and outspoken critic of environmental pseudo-science and politics makes the news today…

Plimer presents the proposition that anthropogenic global warming is little more than a con trick on the public perpetrated by fundamentalist environmentalists and callously adopted by politicians and government officials who love nothing more than an issue that causes public anxiety.

While environmentalists for the most part draw their conclusions based on climate information gathered in the last few hundred years, geologists, Plimer says, have a time frame stretching back many thousands of millions of years.

The dynamic and changing character of the Earth’s climate has always been known by geologists. These changes are cyclical and random, he says. They are not caused or significantly affected by human behaviour.

Polar ice, for example, has been present on the Earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time, Plimer writes. Plus, animal extinctions are an entirely normal part of the Earth’s evolution.

Plimer gets especially upset about carbon dioxide, its role in Earth’s daily life and the supposed effects on climate of human manufacture of the gas. He says atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at the lowest levels it has been for 500 million years, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is only 0.001 per cent of the total amount of the chemical held in the oceans, surface rocks, soils and various life forms. Indeed, Plimer says carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a plant food. Plants eat carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen. Human activity, he says, contributes only the tiniest fraction to even the atmospheric presence of carbon dioxide.

There is no problem with global warming, Plimer says repeatedly. He points out that for humans periods of global warming have been times of abundance when civilization made leaps forward. Ice ages, in contrast, have been times when human development slowed or even declined.

The article is an easy read…

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Global+warming+religion+First+World+urban+elites/1835847/story.html

Poll: Reid Has Weak Approval, Re-Elect Numbers In Nevada
By Eric Kleefeld - May 19, 2009, 11:15AM
A new Mason-Dixon poll shows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with some very weak numbers in his home state of Nevada.

Only 38% of Nevadans have a favorable opinion of Reid, with a 50% unfavorable number. For his 2010 campaign, only 35% would vote to re-elect him, 17% would consider voting for a challenger, and 45% would definitely vote to replace him.

I don’t care if his opponent is a RINO, a pencil sharpener or a slug!  I will support ANY Republican who runs against him! Preferably a conservative, but I DON’T CARE!

Reid needs to spend his remaining time fishing with Tom Daschle.

PHOENIX—A Social Security Administration motivational management conference held at a high-end Valley resort last week cost $700,000, the SSA told the ABC15 Investigators.

Costs for the conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa included airfare, hotel entertainment, dancers, motivational speakers, and food, an administration official said.

A spokesperson outside the SSA’s Phoenix office declined to comment.

A spokesperson from the SSA’s regional office said the conference was essential, that teleconferencing was not an option, and that all 675 managers needed to meet in person.

The SSA provided ABC15 with a list of courses provided at the conference, which included “Techniques to Empower You,” “Mentoring the Generations,” and “Emotional Intelligence.”

Our hidden cameras captured hundreds of federal employees dancing in Phoenix on your dime, private dance recitals and paid motivational speakers.

There was also a trip to a local casino.

“What we want to know from the agency is, how much money did you spend?” said Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas. “Not just on rooms at night, but on travel and organizing the conference.”

Brady, who is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees the Social Security Administration, is describing the three day conference as “a bad use of our tax dollars.”

“It’s especially frustrating when you have people who truly are disabled who will wait years just to get their case heard and years more just to get a little help,” he said. “When they see the government and the agency wasting their money like this, I know it makes them angry and I know it really frustrates them.”

Social Security Regional Commissioner Peter Spencer told ABC News that staff members needed to learn how to reduce stress because of a growing number of death threats made against them.

As you read through this, take careful note that NO ONE quoted here suggests giving physicians the freedom to act on their own on behalf of their patients.  The solution - if there is to be one - will come solely from the Health Ministry.

Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough, a report says.
Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing.
But the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer.

Neil Betteridge, chief executive of the charity Arthritis Care, said: ‘The report echoes what people with rheumatoid arthritis have been telling Arthritis Care for years.

Health minister Ann Keen said: ‘We welcome this report and will consider it carefully before responding.’

”... will consider it…”!!

I recommend reading the whole article to understand the “national health-care” mindset.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1199714/A-9-month-wait-arthritis-treatment-Delay-mean-lifetime-agony-victims.html

This from today’s edition of the Washington Times: Seems two last-minute additions to the Stimulus Bill may actually be having some positive impact…

As debate rages over the impact of the $787 billion stimulus bill, a pair of relatively inexpensive programs that passed more as afterthoughts than as stimulus are having the most immediate impact on the economy, contributing to an expected rebound in growth this summer.

While much attention has focused on the lion’s share of funding that was aimed at maintaining spending on education, health care and infrastructure by the states, the provision that has been most visibly helpful is the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, an afterthought to the bill that has helped to steady the housing market by spurring sales of foreclosed and low-priced homes to first-time homebuyers.

Similarly, legislators who failed to include provisions to help the foundering U.S. auto industry in the original stimulus bill in February offered belated aid last month by passing a $1 billion “cash for clunkers” program that also is likely to provide a one-time boost to economic output this summer.

The combination of these two seemingly modest provisions has prompted some economists to project that the economy will enjoy at least one quarter of growth this summer.

The rest of the porkulus package?  Not so much…

BOSTON (July 10) - The artist who created the “Hope” poster of President Barack Obama was sentenced to two years of probation Friday after pleading guilty to three vandalism charges. Prosecutors dropped 11 other charges.
Shepard Fairey pleaded guilty in Boston Municipal Court to one charge of defacing property and two charges of wanton destruction of property under $250, all misdemeanors.

The 39-year-old Los Angeles street artist, who became famous for plastering his posters and stickers throughout cities, must pay $2,000 to a graffiti removal organization and cannot possess tagging materials — such as stickers or paste — in Boston except for authorized art installations. He also must tell officials when he plans to visit Suffolk County, where Boston is located.
“I think that people should be responsible about sharing their art, and that’s not a transition or an evolution of my philosophy,” Fairey said outside court. “Fortunately, I’m at a place in my career where I can get sanctioned spaces, so it’s not an issue that I’ll ever have to worry about again.”
Fairey was arrested in February when he was in Boston for an event kicking off a solo exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The arrest came three days after he failed to appear in court on a charge of placing a poster on a Boston electrical box in September 2000.
In the plea deal, Fairey admitted to the 2000 incident and two others this past January: placing a sticker on the back of a traffic sign and affixing a poster to a private condominium building.

No further information available.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

FOX NEWS RECORDS UNPRECEDENTED TOP 10 OUT OF 10 PROGRAMS IN CABLE NEWS FOR 2ND QUARTER… ON PACE TO BE NETWORK’S BEST YEAR EVER…

THE O’REILLY FACTOR 3,191,000
HANNITY 2,345,000
GLENN BECK 2,053,000
ON THE RECORD W/GRETA 1,950,000
SPECIAL REPORT W/BRET BAIER 1,889,000
FOX REPORT/SHEP SMITH 1,783,000
THE O’REILLY FACTOR (RPT) 1,579,000
AMERICA’S NEWSROOM BILL HEMMER & MEGYN KELLY 1,399,000
YOUR WORLD W/NEIL CAVUTO 1,389,000
STUDIO B W/SHEP SMITH 1,169,000

http://www.drudgereport.com

Pereze Hilton, whose real name is a far less glamorous Mario Lavandeira, has learned one of life’s more important and bitter lessons: claiming minority victim status doesn’t protect one from another group claiming minority victim status - as a punch to his face recently demonstrated.

Adding insult to injury, a number of Gay groups have sided with his attackers.

Mario Lavandeira, the mean-spirited impresario behind the celebrity- obsessed mega-Web site PerezHilton.com, was left scratching his pink-tinged pompadour last week, wondering aloud in a campy cry-baby YouTube classic why, after being physically assaulted in public, he is now universally scorned and widely considered the villain of an incident that left him appropriately “black eyed.”

Aside from the basic rules of karma, here’s why: The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the “rock-paper-scissors” game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

Even though it is obviously worse to punch someone in the face than to hurl an inartful slur, Mr. Lavandeira made the fatal mistake of choosing to verbally berate a man with darker skin than he. By the next day, the event was publicized around the world and Will.I.Am and Mr. Molina were being universally treated as heroes.

Which leads us to the greater story that is not being told: “Perez Hilton” is suffering the delayed effects of what he did last month to former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean.

While Mr. Lavandeira was busy plotting and executing the Christian beauty contestant’s downfall, much of America was silently taking account of the beauty contest judge’s relentlessness in destroying a woman whose crime was politely expressing the same opinion on gay marriage held by the president for whom Mr. Lavandeira campaigned.

Mr. Lavandeira was not satisfied with simply making sure Miss Prejean lost the Miss USA pageant. He needed to humiliate and destroy her publicly. He not only called her a term used to describe a female dog but also used a word that, by comparison, is akin to a nuclear attack. Yet no media outrage followed.

Mr. Lavandeira has used his sexual orientation as a shield to deflect criticism. But in the process he has hurt the cause of gay rights. That is why the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation took the Black Eyed Peas’ side. When GLAAD is at the forefront of a movement that actively scorns “hate” - or, as the bumper stickers call it, H8 - it’s impossible to defend the behavior of a gay activist who so actively practices it.

If as a society we are to continue making strides towards tolerance of all people, GLAAD has taken an admirable step in condemning hate’s most avid practitioner of hateful speech. While the Black Eyed Peas showed us that we can fight fire with fire, “Perez Hilton” has exposed the paradox of the activist left’s tolerance movement: You can’t fight H8 with H8.

Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy… ehr… gal?  gay?  Whatever…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/29/15-minutes-of-h8-the-rise-and-fall-of-perez-hilton/?feat=home_headlines

Philadelphia Judge Willis W. Berry Jr. broke the law by running a real estate business out of his court office for more than a decade, a state disciplinary tribunal ruled yesterday.

The finding that Berry committed theft of services was the strongest criticism in a harsh report that concluded that the veteran criminal court judge had put the judiciary in “disrepute.”

The Court of Judicial Discipline said Berry had operated a string of North Philadelphia apartments “with absolutely no overhead” by using court computers, telephones, fax machines, envelopes, postage, file cabinets, and the labor of his secretary - and sticking taxpayers with the tab.

To make matters worse, the panel said, the Common Pleas Court judge was a kind of slumlord, pocketing rent from derelict apartments marred by scores of code and safety violations that went uncorrected for years. Those problems were first described in an Inquirer investigation in 2007.

Berry’s behavior amounted to “a flagrant, open disregard for the dignity of judicial office,” the court found.

The judge’s misuse of court resources was brazen, it said. “The misappropriation is broad, bold, and impossible to overlook,” the panel found.

Berry, 66, a Democrat, was first elected to the court in 1995. He ran unsuccessfully for the state Supreme Court in 2007. He is paid $161,850 annually.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20090626_Phila__judge_broke_the_law__panel_rules.html

CHICAGO—A federal appeals court has denied Gary political power broker Jewell Harris Sr.‘s appeal of his 6-year prison sentence for fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an error in calculating Harris’ prison term on six counts of fraud and money laundering was balanced by a second, unrelated error.

The court also found that federal corrections officials had correctly figured the amount Harris bilked from the city.

Harris, a former state legislator who became a political adviser to numerous Gary politicians as well as Lake County and East Chicago officials, also made millions through a trucking company that enjoyed a near-monopoly

In 2001, prosecutors say Harris billed both a construction company and the city for hauling work for the U.S. Steel Yard baseball stadium in Gary.

The final price for the stadium was double the $22 million proposal passed by the City Council, and Harris improperly collected $1.5 million from the double-billing.

Of course, the news source somehow failed to mention that Harris was a democrat power-player in Gary/Chicago politics.

INDIANA ELECTION COMMISSION JANUARY 24, 2002 MINUTES
Democratic Party); Mr. Jewell G. Harris, Sr.,

http://www.post-trib.com/news/1640163,jewell.article