HRW CONDEMNS HAMAS ROCKET ATTACKS

This left-wing organization has actually come out against the Hamas. Considering that they earlier apologized for another terrorist in Nigeria, this is surprising. However, even in this case, it's important to pay careful attention:

The international watchdog organization Human Rights Watch came out with an unusually scathing attack against Hamas on Thursday, accusing the Islamic group of violating international law and committing war crimes for its indiscriminate rocket fire into Israeli territory.

"None of these rockets can be reliably aimed," the report stated. "Such weapons are inherently indiscriminate when directed towards densely populated areas.

"The absence of Israeli military forces in the areas struck by the rockets, as well as statements from the leaders of Hamas and other armed groups, indicate that many of these attacks are deliberately intended to strike Israeli civilians and civilian structures," the report continued. "Individuals who willfully authorize or carry out deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are committing war crimes."

Okay, what's reliability or accuracy got to do with this? And a challenging question: does it only count as a war crime when civilians are the target? I think there are some serious questions to be raised here if HRW is still trying to shroud the fact that Hamas is and has always been a terrorist organization. And indeed, further in the article:

"To justify the attacks as appropriate reprisals for Israeli military operations and the ongoing blockade against Gaza, and as a lawful response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza…the "laws of war" do not support these asserted justifications," the report stated.

While previous reports published by the organization have condemned Israeli abuses and "war crimes" against the Palestinians, the group emphasized in the most recent publication that such behavior cannot warrant reciprocal Palestinian action.

Now granted, they're right that these rocket attacks against civilians are not justified. However, that is exactly why these blockades were erected, and military operations were conducted. And they seem to have succeeded in obscuring and confusing all that. The JPost article also notes how they've resorted to the blood libel cliches, and that's something for which they should be condemned, not just for spreading lies against Israel, but also for obscuring violent crimes committed by Muslims.

BHO VOTER: "I FEEL LIKE I'VE BEEN PUNKED"

Graphic credit

Excerpt from an article which appeared above the fold in the front page of the Washington Post on August 5, 2009:

The coffee was still brewing when Chris Ann Cleland got her first reminder of the day that voting for Barack Obama might have been a mistake.

The Prince William County real estate agent was sitting at a long wooden table covered with paperwork. Her clients, a young couple who had brought their 2-week-old baby, were finalizing a short sale on a townhouse that they were anxious to unload, even if it meant ruining their credit, because they had maxed out their credit cards trying to make the payments.

For Cleland, it was another example -- one of many this day -- of the broken promises of a president who she thought would be different. Obama pledged to change a Washington culture that favored corporations and the connected and instead lift families such as the one sitting next to Cleland out of their economic funk. Rather, she said, Obama has backed billions of dollars to banks that continue to "act like they're broke" and started the country down a path that Cleland said she thinks will lead to more grief for the middle class.

"He's just not as advertised," she said. "Nothing's changed for the common guy. I feel like I've been punked."...

Ms. Cleland isn't the only voter with remorse covered in the WaPo article:

Stephanie Slater, 44, a neighbor of Cleland's who leans Republican, voted for Obama on the strength of his character and because of his positions on education, energy and health care. She recalled brimming with confidence after Obama's historic inaugural address.

"When he gave that speech that day, I was in awe. I was really inspired and thought, 'Wow, this is a guy who can do it,' " said Slater, a medical transcriptionist and mother of three.

But she has been disturbed by the large Wall Street bonuses that Obama doesn't seem to be able to halt and his inability to rein in credit card companies that raise rates even on those with good credit. Although she is trying to be patient, she said she is losing faith in the Democrats running Washington.

"Honestly, at this point, I have to say I'm worried. I haven't come across one person that seems to have been helped," she said. "If I don't see a spark, a light at the end of the tunnel, I may be voting Republican [for governor]."

In November, we Virginians will head to the polls to elect a new governor. The present governor, Tim Kaine, is a Democrat Obamabot and, according to the our state constitution, cannot succeed himself. Furthermore, this gubernatorial election is regarded by most as a barometer for the 2010 midterm elections.

Creigh Deeds, the Democratic Party's candidate for November, is walking a fine line and, overall, trying to distance himself from BHO's policies. And that strategy might work - except that BHO insists upon injecting himself into the race:

The president will make his first appearance in the campaign Thursday, when he headlines a fundraiser for R. Creigh Deeds (D) in McLean..."The mood is becoming just as lousy for the Democrats as it has been for us the last couple of years," said J. Kenneth Klinge, a longtime Virginia GOP strategist. "It's evening the playing field."

No matter where you live, keep an eye on this November's race for governor of Virginia.

Tonight's guaranteed Photoshopped

MESSAGE TO DEMS: IF YOU CAN'T STAND, THE HEAT, THEN DON'T SUPPORT OBAMACARE

OBAMA AND HIS COMRADES IN THE CONGRESS WANT TO RAM THIS CRAPPY SOCIALISTIC HEALTHCARE BILL DOWN OUR THROATS, BUT WE AIN'T SWALLOWING IT!

SPREAD THE WORD! POST THIS VIDEO!

BUDD SCHULBERG CROSSES OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE...

Budd Schulberg, Screenwriter, Dies at 95

Budd Schulberg, who wrote the award-winning screenplay for “On the Waterfront” and created a classic American archetype of naked ambition, Sammy Glick, in his novel “What Makes Sammy Run?,” died on Wednesday.

He was 95 and lived in the Brookside section of Westhampton Beach, N.Y.

... Mr. Schulberg also wrote journalism, short stories, novels and biographies. He collaborated with F. Scott Fitzgerald, arrested the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and named names before a Communist-hunting Congressional committee. But he was best known for writing some of the most famous lines in the history of the movies.

Some were delivered by Marlon Brando playing the longshoreman Terry Malloy in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront.” Malloy had lost a shot at a prizefighting title by taking a fall for easy money.

“I coulda been a contender,” Malloy tells his brother, Charley (Rod Steiger). “I coulda been somebody. Instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

The script, which won one of eight Oscars awarded to the film, bears echoes of Mr. Schulberg’s own political struggle: the film’s director, Elia Kazan, had also chosen to name names.

At one point Father Barry encourages the dockworkers to testify against the mob. In America, he says, there are “ways of fighting back.”

“Getting the facts to the public,” the priest continues. “Testifying for what is right against what is wrong. What’s ratting to them is telling the truth for you. Can’t you see that?”

Mr. Schulberg ... joined the Communist Party of the United States after he returned to Hollywood. “It didn’t take a genius to tell you that something was vitally wrong with the country,” he said in the 2006 interview, recalling his decision to join the party.

“The unemployment was all around us,” he said. “The bread lines and the apple sellers. I couldn’t help comparing that with my own family’s status, with my father; at one point he was making $11,000 a week. And I felt a shameful contrast between the haves and the have-nots very early.”

His romance with Communism ended six years later, when he quit the party after feeling pressure to bend his writing to fit its doctrines.

Mr. Schulberg had been identified as a party member in testimony before the House committee. Called to testify, he publicly named eight other Hollywood figures as members, including the screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. and the director Herbert Biberman.

They were two among the Hollywood 10 — witnesses who said the First Amendment gave them the right to think as they pleased and keep their silence before the committee. All were blacklisted and convicted of contempt of Congress. Losing their livelihoods, Lardner served a year in prison and Biberman six months.

In the turmoil of the Red Scare, Mr. Schulberg’s testimony was seen as a betrayal by many, an act of principle by others. The liberal consensus in Hollywood was that Lardner had acquitted himself more gracefully before the committee when asked if he had been a Communist: “I could answer it, but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning.”

In the 2006 interview... he said he had named names because the party represented a real threat to freedom of speech.

“They say that you testified against your friends, but once they supported the party against me, even though I did have some personal attachments, they were really no longer my friends,” he said. “And I felt that if they cared about real freedom of speech, they should have stood up for me when I was fighting the party.”

... After their joint success with “On the Waterfront,” Mr. Schulberg wrote and Mr. Kazan directed “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), one of the first films to weigh the political clout of television. Based on a Schulberg short story, the film depicts the transformation of a country singer, played by Andy Griffith, from power-drunk star into populist demagogue.

... “I’d like to be remembered as someone who used their ability as a novelist or as a dramatist to say the things he felt needed to be said about the society” while being “as entertaining as possible,” he said in the 2006 interview.

“Because if you don’t” entertain, he said, “nobody’s listening.”

A GREAT WRITER. ENTERTAINING. PRO-SOCIAL. TRUTHFUL.

AND WHEN HE AND KAZAN "RATTED" ON THE COMMIES THEY WERE DOING THE RIGHT THING.

RIP, BABY!

CONDOLENCES TO THE WHOLE SCHULBERG CLAN.

"Cash for Clunkers, Cuts for Missile Defense"

CLIFF MAY:

missile defense, a program that would benefit all Americans and our troops and allies overseas, has the support of 78% of Americans and in some polls near 90%; but funding is now being cut by $1.4 billion, with additional cuts down the road a real possibility — unless there is substantial pushback.

... With the threat from rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran increasing, with Pakistan swaying on a high wire, and with Russian subs cruising off our coasts, wouldn't it be nice to know we're putting in place a comprehensive, layered system (i.e. including space-based interceptors) that could stop missiles from reaching their intended victims — including those intended victims driving shiny new cars with better gas mileage and lower carbon footprints?

OBAMA: SOCIALISM AT HOME AND APPEASEMENT OVERSEAS: A RECIPE FOR DISASTER

YOU CAN EXHALE NOW: IT'S THE SUN, STUPID! (NOT CO2!)

YOU CAN EXHALE NOW:

MORE PROOF IT'S THE SUN - AND COSMIC RAYS AND NOT MAN-MADE C02.

VIA DESMOG ME.

AND A STUPID PERSON WAKES UP: MCCAIN SEES THE LIGHT; COMES OUT AGAINST WAXMAN-MARKEY.

IF OBAMACARE IS GOOD FOR HEALTH, THEN SO IS SNAKE OIL...

LAFFER: OBAMACARE WORSE THAN DOING NOTHING

VIA HOT AIR: ACCORDING TO LAFFER, OBAMA CARE IS...

... a $1 trillion increase in federal government health subsidies will accelerate health-care inflation, lead to continued growth in health-care expenditures, and diminish our economic growth even further. Despite these costs, some 30 million people will remain uninsured.

Implementing Mr. Obama’s reforms would literally be worse than doing nothing.

EXACTLY.

WHICH IS WHY WE NEED AM ADDITIONAL OATH OF OFFICE FOR ALL SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN:

A POLITICAL HIPPOCRATIC OATH, AND THE FIRSTEST MOSTEST IMPORTANT CLAUSE WOLD BE THIS:

"FIRST DO NO HARM."

THIS WOULD CUT DOWN ON A LOT OF THEIR "LEGISLATIN'" AND VIRTUALLY ELIMINATE ALL THE OVERLY LONG - 1000+ PAGE - BILLS THEY DON'T BOTHER TO READ.

BE A PATRIOT: JOIN OBAMA'S TONTON MACOUTE

CLICK PIC'S FOR FACTS. MORE HERE.





*******THURSDAY UPDATE: IT'S WORSE THAN YOU THINK!

Google censorship again

This time they have blocked the popular humor blog Wicked Thoughts. All is not lost, however, as the Mirror site is still updating regularly. I have no idea what the blocking is all about or if it will be permanent so do publicize the link to the mirror site.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Today: Thugs, Texts, Tasers & Pie-Eating Contests

Today's posts at Bob McCarty Writes cover a variety of topics, ranging from a California congressman telling a Chicago thug to "Back Off!" to a personal account of participation in a county fair pie-eating contest. In between those, you can read about a texting-while-driving summit and enjoy video of a new three-shot taser for use by law enforcement.

Enjoy them all here!

THE FRUITS OF OBAMA'S APPEASEMENT: FATAH... IRAN... RUSSIA

• OBAMA DITHERS AS IRAN WRITHES, AND THE BASIJI KILL HUNDREDS OF PROTESTORS; OBAMA RECOGNIZES THE ELECTION OF AHMADINEJAD AND THEY STAGE MASS SHOW TRIALS...

• OBAMA APPEASES THE ARABS - BOWING DOWN TO THE SAUDI KING, AND FATAH BIGSHOTS ANNOUNCE THEY WON'T EVER RECOGNIZE ISRAEL...

• OBAMA SENDS BJ CLINTON TO NORTH KOREA TO APOLOGIZE TO ONE OF THE WORST TYRANNIES IN HUMAN HISTORY JUST TO GET TWO AMERICANS OUT, AND KIM JONG IL GETS A PHOTO-OP OF A LIFETIME AND HIS REGIME GETS HUGE PROPAGANDA...

• OBAMA APPEASES THE RUSSIANS AND POOH-POOHS MISSILE DEFENSE, AND NOW RUSSIA PATROLS OUR EAST COAST WITH THEIR ATTACK SUBS!

THE FREE WORLD IS ALREADY DRAMATICALLY LESS SAFE BECAUSE OF OBAMA.

OBAMA IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE FREE WORLD.

DISSENT ACCORDINGLY.

VOTE GOP.

BUY AMMO.

IT AIN'T OVER: Iran’s opposition calls for inauguration protests

IT AIN'T OVER: DESPITE OBAMA DOING WHATEVER HE CAN GET AWAY WITH TO HELP AHMADINEJAD, IT AIN'T OVER:

MSNBC/AP: Iran’s opposition calls for inauguration protests

Backers of opposition candidate allege fraud in Ahmadinejad's re-election

Opposition groups called for protesters to prepare for a new round of street demonstrations Wednesday to coincide with the inauguration ceremony for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

DESPITE GIBBS AND OBAMA RECOGNISING AHMADINEJAD AS THE ELECTED PRESIDENT OF IRAN, TIME IS ON OUR SIDE:

• AHMADINEJAD WILL BE GONE IN TWO MONTHS - AND IT'S THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE SUPREME COUNCIL.

• WE'LL NEUTER OBAMA IN 2010.

REPORT: OBAMA TO BRING KSM TO ALEXANDRIA, VA FOR TRIAL

BREAKING NEWS: 9/11 Conspirators To Alexandria, Virginia

Military Families United has just learned that the President is planning to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and his co-conspirators to Alexandria, Virginia for trial. This decision is not only dangerous but risks the lives of the more than 12,000 people who live and work within a mile of the courthouse and jail, and it makes our nation’s capital ground zero for the next terrorist attack.

These terrorists have already implemented an attack that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC. It defies logic to relocate these terrorists a mere five miles from the Pentagon, a location where they have already hit.

We cannot allow this happen!

It's not too late to change the President's mind.

We need you to call the White House and tell the President to keep terrorists off of our soil.

We need you to send this email to all of your friends and family and ask them to take action by calling the White House or signing our online petition: www.DontFreeTerrorists.org.

Click here for petition.

WHOSE FUHREEEEEEEKIN' SIDE IS HE ON:

• Obama is screwing Israel

• and Honduras...

• and aiding the Palis and al Qaeda.

• AND HE JUST FUHREEEEEEKIN' RECOGNIZE AHMADINEJAD AS THE ELECTED LEADER OF IRAN!?!?!?

Cui bono? The enemy.

Dissent accordingly.

Vote GOP.

And buy ammo.

Mideast Peace Now!

Excerpt:

By Gene Schwimmer

Is it time for those who clamor for a Middle East peace to "declare victory and go home"? Two recent events in the region signal the answer. And that answer, resoundingly, unequivocally, is "yes."

In 2006, Hezb'allah crossed Israel's northern border and kidnapped two soldiers, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation that caused hundreds of deaths, billions of dollars of damage and came close to destroying Hezb'allah, who were literally saved by the bell when the "international community" combined with a hapless left-wing administration on the Israeli home front pressured the Israelis into halting their advance short of complete victory.

And yet, in the aftermath of that war -- a war that reduced parts of Lebanon to rubble; a war in which Hezb'allah failed to invade, let alone conquer, an inch of Israeli territory; a war in which, a Hezb'allah officer confessed to The Jerusalem Post that, had it continued only ten more days, "we all would have surrendered -- Hezb'allah, astonishingly, declared victory. Apparently, in the topsy-turvy milieu of whatever passes for logic in the Arab Middle East, one can do that (and among the Israel-hating Left, get away with it).

So the Israelis pulled out, a UN "peacekeeping force" came in and, as we who opposed ending the war without a clear victory predicted, Hezb'allah returned and not only replenished their rocket arsenal, but increased it fourfold.

But then, something important happened. Hezb'allah won 57 seats (out of 128) in Lebanon's recent parliamentary elections. And on July 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning to Lebanon (emphasis mine) "that Israel will hold the Lebanese government responsible for any attack launched from within the country's territory, including Hizbullah operations."

Israel-bashers who waited for the usual Hezb'allah bluster and threats were disappointed for none has been forthcoming. One might even go so far as to say that, after Netanyahu's warning, Nasrallah has become all hat and no camel, to the point that:

"[a] week after a group of 15 people carrying Lebanese and Hizbullah flags crossed into the Shaba Farms, the terror organization called on its followers... not to demonstrate in the area under Israeli control."

Also,

"top Hizbullah and Amal officials made a commitment to the UN envoy in Lebanon not to organize rallies along the border with Israel and to block any attempt to demonstrate there".

And at the same time, in the West Bank, according to Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "Seven months after Israel started a fierce three-week military campaign here to stop rockets from being fired on its southern communities, Hamas has suspended its use of rockets and shifted focus to winning support at home and abroad through cultural initiatives and public relations."

Of course, if Israel attacks Iran, all bets are off regarding Hezb'allah. But for now, all is quiet on the northern front. And the eastern front. And the southern front.

What does this sudden quietude along every inch of Israel's border with every one of her neighbors mean?

It means that now, today, amid all the "international community's" caterwauling about a supposed need for Israel to make substantial unilateral, self-endangering concessions "in the interest of Middle East peace, the chances of Israel being attacked by any of her neighbors right now is virtually nil. Which, in most people's definition, but especially in that of those who dwell in the Middle East and are familiar with the region's long and bloody history, means, there is peace.

Unnoticed, unheralded, not even reported, under their very upturned noses, the international community's professed goal of a peaceful Middle East, at least relative to Israel, has been achieved.

Peace, finally, has come to the Middle East, and it came not through Barack Obama's and the international community's (and Neville Chamberlain's) prescription of "negotiation" and appeasement, but through Ronald Reagan's -- and Franklin Roosevelt's; and Harry Truman's and, yes, Tony Blair's -- prescription of peace through strength and the resolve to stand forthright against one's enemies. (Even the only arguable exceptions, Israel's negotiated peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, came only after Israel's victory in the 1973 war.)

More HERE

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Liberty vs.Tyranny: Healthcare Edition

Mark Steyn lays out the only argument against socialized medicine that matters, and it has nothing to do with numbers, cost, accessibility, government inefficiency, lack of doctors, inevitably declining quality, or unsustainability. While all these elements present incontrovertible arguments against socialized medicine, this is ultimately about liberty. Before America all of humankind had always lived with someone's boot on its neck. Socialism is the government's boot on your neck, and it's inherently un-American. Read on.

Health care is a game-changer. The permanent game-changer. The pendulum will swing, and one day, despite their best efforts, the Republicans will return to power, and, in the right circumstances, the bailouts and cap-&-trade and Government Motors and much of the rest can be reversed. But the government annexation of health care will prove impossible to roll back. It alters the relationship between the citizen and the state and, once that transformation is effected, you can click your ruby slippers all you want but you’ll never get back to Kansas.

It's like Israel and the Arabs. They only have to win once, and if they do we're all pretty much toast.

Government-directed health care is a profound assault on the concept of citizenship. It deforms national politics very quickly, and ensures that henceforth elections are always fought on the left’s terms. I find it hard to believe President Obama and his chums haven’t looked at Canada and Europe and concluded that health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. He doesn’t say that, of course. He says his objective is to “control costs”. Which is the one thing that won’t happen. Even now, health care costs rise far faster under Medicare than in the private sector.

By the way, to accept that argument is to concede a lot of the turf: Why is the cost of my health care Barack Obama’s business? When he mused recently as to whether his dying grandmother had really needed her hip replacement, he gave the game away: Right now, if Gran’ma decides she doesn’t need the hip, that’s her business. Under a government system, it’s the state’s business – and they have to “allocate” “resources”, and frankly at your age your body’s not worth allocating to. Why give you a new hip when you’re getting up there and you’re gonna be kicking the bucket in a year or two or five or twenty?

[snip]

And, if you disagree, so what? In a free society, Mr Smith should be free to be excessively prudent and over-pay to be over-insured, and Mr Jones should be free to conclude that he wants to pay cash down and get the best price for his broken leg. But a government system usurps both Smith and Jones’ right to calculate their own best interests.

[snip]

“Morality” is always the justification...What’s so moral about relieving the citizen of responsibility for his own health care? If free citizens of the wealthiest societies in human history are not prepared to make provision for their own health, what other core responsibilities of functioning adulthood are they likely to forego? Oh, Smith and Jones can still be entrusted to make their own choices about which movie to rent from Netflix, or which breakfast cereal to eat. For the moment. But you’d be surprised how quickly the “right” to health care elides into the government’s right to tell you how to live in order to access that health care. A government-directed medical system can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state undertakes to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place – or declining to treat you if your persist in your deviancy: Smokers in Manchester, England have been refused treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk have been told they’re ineligible for hip and knee replacements...

Patricia Hewitt, the former Health Secretary, says there’s nothing wrong with the state forbidding treatment on the basis of “lifestyle choices”. And apparently the “pro-choice” types who jump up and down in the street demanding that you keep your rosaries off their ovaries are entirely relaxed about the government getting its bureaucratics all over your lymphatics.

Ultimately, it’s not the nationalization of health care but the nationalization of your body. Right now, if you want an MRI, it’s between you and your doctors. In a government-run system, if you want an MRI and you can’t get one, it’s the government’s fault. And the government should do something about it.

[snip]

So elections dwindle down to a sterile argument over how to “improve” the system: The left-of-center party usually pledges to throw money at it. The right-of-center party is less enthusiastic about that, which generally makes it suspect on the issue, so it settles on some formulation to the effect that it can “deliver” better “services” more “efficiently”. In other words, the only viable rationale for the right becomes its claim to be able to run the leftist state more smoothly than the left.

[snip]

The leaders of the two soi-disant “right-of-center” parties competing to see who can grovel most abjectly before the state monopoly. That’s the Republicans’ future if they collude in the governmentalization of health care – as Democrats well understand.

When health care is the government’s responsibility, it becomes its principal responsibility. Because the minute you make government the provider of health care, you ensure that, come election time, the electorate identifies “health” as its number one concern. Thus, in a democracy, the very fact of socialized medicine seduces the citizenry away from citizenship.

[snip]

But the acceptance of the principle that individual health is so complex its management can only be outsourced to the state is a concession no conservative should make. More than any other factor, it dramatically advances the statist logic for remorseless encroachments on self-determination. It’s incompatible with a republic of self-governing citizens. The state cannot guarantee against every adversity and, if it attempts to, it can only do so at an enormous cost to liberty. A society in which you’re free to choose your cable package, your iTunes downloads and who ululates the best on “American Idol” but in which the government takes care of peripheral stuff like your body is a society no longer truly free.

In a nanny state, big government becomes a kind of religion: the church as state. Tommy Douglas, the driving force between Canadian health care, tops polls of all-time greatest Canadians. In Britain, after the Tube bombings, Gordon Brown began mulling over the creation of what he called a “British equivalent of the US Fourth of July”, a new national holiday to bolster British identity. The Labour Party think-tank, the Fabian Society, and proposed that the new “British Day” should be July 5th, the day the National Health Service was created. Because the essence of contemporary British identity is waiting two years for a hip operation.

They can call it Dependence Day.

It's evil, wrong, un-American, and absolutely fascist. It has no business in my country. Obamacare must be destroyed in any form.

COMPARING FOOTPRINTS: NUKE VERSUS SOLAR & WIND

OBAMA HAS PAINTED HIMSELF AND THE DEMOCRATS INTO A CORNER WITH OBAMACARE

THIS IS HOW MOST AMERICANS FEEL ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS ON CONGRESS AND OBAMACARE:

• PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THE SO-CALLED HEATHCARE REFORM BILLS IN CONGRESS, AND THEY DON'T LIKE THEY WAY THE BILLS HAVE BEEN HANDLED. NOT AT ALL.
  

• IF THEY PASS A BILL ANYTHING LIKE WHAT THE HOUSE AND SENATE HAVE RELEASED SO FAR, THEN THERE'LL BE A HUMONGOUS BACKLASH AND DEMOCRAT INCUMBENTS WILL BE SEVERELY PUNISHED AT THE NEXT ELECTION. THEY KNOW THIS; SENATORS VIRTUALLY ADMIT IT.
  

• YET, IF OBAMA PASSES NOTHING, THEN IT'S ALSO A BIG DEFEAT...

• ... BUT ONLY A DEFEAT FOR HIM.

• I THINK THE COWARDLY SCUM IN CONGRESS WILL OPT TO SCREW OBAMA AND KILL OBAMACARE BEFORE THEY COMMIT SUICIDE.

IOW: ENOUGH DEMS IN CONGRESS ARE GONNA SAY TO OBAMA, WHATTYA MEAN "WE"!?

EVEN DOCTORS DON'T WANT TO BE SERFS OF THE STATE

NYTIMES:

Cuban doctors have been fleeing to South Florida since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, but the pace intensified after 2006, when the Department of Homeland Security began a program that allowed Cuban medical personnel “who study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government” to travel to the United States legally. The program has effectively turned a crowning achievement of Cuba’s foreign policy on its head.

In the 50 years since the revolution, Cuba has sent more than 185,000 health professionals on medical missions to at least 103 countries. About 31,000, most of them doctors, are in Venezuela, where they work in exchange for cheap oil and other trade benefits for the Cuban government.

And more are in the pipeline. Cuba’s official news agency reported that more than 25,000 health professionals graduated this year, “the largest graduation ever.”
But many doctors on the island are now vying to be tapped for an international mission, in part because they know that no matter where they are sent, they will be one step closer to a visa to the United States.

The missions have earned Cuba much recognition, goodwill and bargaining power. President Obama told reporters at the end of a recent hemispheric meeting in Trinidad that he found it “interesting” to learn from Latin American leaders “about the thousands of doctors from Cuba that are dispersed all throughout the region, and upon which many of these countries heavily depend.”

Yet for many Cuban doctors, who earn the equivalent of $25 a month, the lure of a life of freedom and opportunities in the United States is too strong to resist. And so these children of the revolution, educated by a Communist regime to reject capitalism and embrace socialism, have ended up in Miami, often tending to elderly Cubans who fled the island before they were born.

AWESOME! THEY'D RATHER LIVE FREE AND BE NURSES THAN BE DOCTORS FOR COMMIES! AWESOME!

IF THINGS WERE REALLY BETTER IN CUBA THEN THEY'D STAY!

This reminds me of a true story about a Russian emigre friend of mine. She was a child in Russia - the daughter of actors from a long LONG line of distinguished Russian actors. She managed to escape, coming to the USA. But she never managed to get a job in the theater. Her English wasn't good enough. Luckily for her her graphic art skills were good enough to enable her to be a successful designer/artist. She made good money. Married. Had a daughter.

When Gorbachev - in a desperate attempt to save socialism - opened up the USSR, she went back with her daughter.

She called her old boyfriend and arranged to meet him at the Post Office. (She sent her daughter to look at the old apartment building so she could be alone with him for the afternoon!) But he never showed up. She saw someone who might have been him - but who looked afraid to greet an obvious wealthy tourist in public ans shied away, disappearing back into the crowd. Her daughter returned with her own disappointment: she couldn't find the place, and when she asked people where the street was they replied - with Stalinist fear in their voices, "Why do you want to know?!

Later, she took her daughter back to the theater her family had acted in for generations. Once a Tsarist theater it had become a State Theater reduced to perform commie crap to empty houses. (Meanwhile, a coffee house around the corner put on Shakespeare plays in their basement to packed houses!) After the dreadful social realist play, she went back stage and introduced herself. To her amazement some of the older actors remembered her and were in awe of her family. They shared Vodka. And then they insisted on taking her out on to stage. The stage her family had ruled for generations. It was the stage she had appeared on a few times as a little girl - where she had always believed her dreams would come true- her dreams and her family's.

And you know what she felt as she stood there on that stage? With the spotlight turned on her and the memories and dreams pouring in on her, surrounding her - the imagined applause, the dreamed for critical raves --- you know what she felt?

She felt so lucky to be living in the USA and to be FREE.

Yes: she'd rather be free then live in the place where she thought her dreams would come true. Dreams that never came true.

She was glad she left her home, her native land - the stage where her dreams NEARLY came true - for a strange land where nothing was guaranteed except FREEDOM.

That's a guarantee now under threat.

Never take it for granted. The Russian and Cuban and Vietnamese emigres never do.

'Obamacare' Posts Feature Must-See Videos

Two worthwhile posts at Bob McCarty Writes feature videos every American should watch:

• Released yesterday, one video reveals the real objectives of President Barack Obama’s push for so-called health care reform (a.k.a., “Obamacare”). See it at Video Exposes Objectives of ‘Obamacare’; and
  

• The second video shows Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) receiving some unwelcome publicity. See it at Texans Protest ‘Obamacare’ in Austin.

Enjoy!

THE CASE FOR ANTI-FREEZE

Barry Rubin at the Gloria Center stresses why he is against freezing construction in existing Israeli "settlements", giving a couple of reasons why.