Saturday, April 01, 2006

700 TON MESSAGE FOR IRAN AND NORTH KOREA

The Pentagon plans to explode a 700-ton conventional bomb on June 2 at the Nevada atomic test site as part of a military program to develop weapons for destroying underground enemy bunkers.

The blast will be one of the largest bomb tests since the end of the Cold War. ... Defense Intelligence Agency and Central Intelligence Agency officials have testified that potential adversaries such as North Korea and Iran increasingly burrow their secret weapons and command centers into well-protected underground bunkers.


The June explosion "represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem" of destroying underground bunkers, Tegnelia said.
If they don't get the message now, we will send it again - next time via AIR MAIL!

A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Recently, The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the UK - a professional docotr's organization in the UK - took a public position AGAINST giving medical care to extremely premature babies - babies gestated less than 25 weeks when born. BBC:
Early babies dubbed bed blockers

A row has broken out after experts described the costly treatment of very premature babies as "bed blocking". A report by the birth specialists' professional body said the care of sicker babies was compromising services for healthier babies and their mothers.

Costs must be considered as experts became able to save more and more earlier babies, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists added. ... The RCOG report to the Nuffield Council on Bio-ethics said:
"Some weight should be given to economic considerations as there is a real issue in neo-natal units of 'bed blocking'; whereby women have to be transferred in labour to other units, compromising both their and their babies' care. "One of the problems of the 'success' of neonatal intensive care is that the practitioners are always pushing the boundaries. "There has been a constant need to expand numbers of cots to cover the increasing tendency to try and rescue baby at lower and lower gestations."
President of the Royal College of Paediatrics Professor Alan Craft said many paediatricians would support moves to bring in a model followed in the Netherlands of no active intervention for these very early babies. ...

Pressure group Patient Concern said the attitude of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists towards premature babies would horrify potential parents.


The group's co-director Joyce Robins said: "Babies born at 24 weeks have nearly a 40% chance of survival. What is the next step? Withholding treatment from anyone with cancer, heart or respiratory disease who has only a 40% chance of a worthwhile life?

"Once we have doctors marking people for life or death on this inhumane basis, we shall find ourselves in a terrifying society."
ER UM.... they're not JUST doctors; in the UK - because medicine is SOCIALIZED - they're the GOVERNMENT, and they often try to save the GOVERNMENT money. And because a SOCIALIZED healthcare system means RATIONING care, it also means that the GOVERNMENT picks "winner & losers" and even puts its OWN INTEREST into the equation. This bit of news PROVES that doctors are willing to ration care to save the government money.

The proposal to withhold care to save money is an IMMORAL PROPOSAL. But if socialists REALLY want to save money, then I suggest [sarcastically!] that we can solve our HEALTHCARE, MEDICARE, MEDICAID and SOCIAL SECURITY problems all at once and very easily: we need only pass a mandate (that's Left-speak for pass a law) that would do THREE THINGS:
(1) make it ILLEGAL to give ANY MEDICAL CARE to anyone over 70;

(2) make it illegal to give any medical care to any baby gestated less than 25 weeks;

and (3) make it illegal for people below the poverty line to have children.
Right now, most people get most of their medical care in the last few years of their life - and for most of us that's after we're 70.

Our increased longevity is one reason that Social Security is goiung bankrupt: When it was designed in the 1930's the retirement age and the average life-span were BOTH 65, so Soc Sec didn't have many long-payouts then; now it does!

But, if we made it ILLEGAL to giove healthcare to people overe 70 - and just let OLD PEOPLE DIE - then instead of a deficit we'd have a surplus - in Soc. Sec. AND Medicare! YUP: We would reap a double saving: We'd save tons of Soc. Sec and tons of Medicare. What good are old people anyhow: they are unproductive, and besides they're no longer "with-it" or hip. Also: let's raise the age of retirement to 70! WE SAVE EVEN MORE!

And by making it illegal for poor people to have children we can effectively end poverty in a generation! (Heck: we should probably just EUTHANIZE people on their 70th birthday - it would save the government money and keep real estate prices low! Old people are just taking uo space that young people need! And preemies are not worth the time or money!) [SARCASM OFF!]

Each of these immoral proposals are the logical extension of socialism. And things like this happen in China where they practice infanticide and forced abortions to keep the population "under control."

BUSH, SUV'S AND MPG: MORE BOGUS REGULATIONS

The "liberal" Bush Adminstration - which claimed we are "addicted to imported gas" - recently annouced the biggest increase in MPG requirments for SUV's. They're requiring that US automakers raise the AVERAGE MPG ratings of their SUV FLEETS.

This cannot have ANY possible effect on US consumption of gas. People purchase cars - and SUV's - according to their own needs and these purchases DO NOT "mirror" the fleets AT ALL!

Look at it this way: if each US automaker only made 2 SUV's - one which got 40 MPG and one which got 10 MPG, then their fleet average would be within the goal set by Bush - 25 MPG (for 2011!).


However, if consumers only buy the 10 MPG SUV, then this new regulation would have ZERO EFFECT. Free people buy what they want; this is THE MARKETPLACE. And the MARKETPLACE determines what our "national" gasoline usage is; it is NOT and can NEVER BE determined by the government setting fleet averages.

That's why this type of regulation is nothing more than phony posturing by demagogues - in this case Liberal Green ones. People who applaud this kind of regualtory misadventure are fools.

CHIRAC CAPITULATES TO THE LEFTIST RIOTERS

After the The Paris Intifada, the cowardly French capitulated to the Muslim banlieue gangs - gangs made up of mostly unassimliated immigrant thugs. Now, THE FRENCH HAVE NOW PROVEN THAT THEY ARE SUCH DAMN COWARDS, THEY'LL EVEN SURRENDER TO THEMSELVES:
Contentious French labor law to be modified -
MarketWatch:
French President Jacques Chirac on Friday night said the government's highly contested new youth labor law, known as CPE, would be applied despite mounting opposition it. Originally, the law aimed to make it easier for employers to hire people under 26 by allowing them to dimiss them at the end of a two-year period without cause. In the face of recent strikes that have paralyzed universities and transport networks, Chirac, however, made significant concessions. In one of the most highly anticipated televised addresses of his presidency, he said he would cut the trial period during which employees could be summarily dismissed from two years to one. He also said employers would have to give a reason for the lay off.
Chirac and Villepin have TOTALLY CAVED IN TO THE SOCIALIST RIOTERS! What a JOKE! If Sarkozy isn't elected - or if he is, but DOESN'T SUCCEED in Angloi-zing France - the republique will, in only a decade or so, certainly resemble Turkey and Egypt more than Luxembourg or Switzerland: it will continue to have very high unemployment and be mostly MUSLIM.

The Eiffel Tower will become a muezzin serving the Mosque de Notre Dame!

OVERSIGHT, "CHECKS & BALANCES" AND CENSURING BUSH

I got a chance to watch some of the CENSURE HEARINGS tonight on C-SPAN - you know the hearings that FEINGOLD forced on us, and in which he called JOHN DEAN of Watergate INFAMY - (who by the way is hardly an unbiased witness: he wrote a book calling for the impeachment of Bush BEFORE the NSA stuff became public!).

Here's the GIST of the whole dang "NSA-Censure" controversy:


Lefties like Feingold - (and even some LIBERALS LIKE SPECTOR) - think that the president should NOT have "gone around" the FISA Court for his "NSA International Terrorist Intercept Program." They believe this because they think that the way Bush did it was WITHOUT enough CHECKS & BALANCES or OVERSIGHT; they think that the FISA process is more of a CHECK on presidential authority.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Here's why:
The FISA process requires that the POTUS (through his AG) need ONLY get approval from ONE SINGLE SOLITARY APPOINTED JUDGE IN TOTAL SECRET, and this only has to be renewed every 90 days.

The process which Bush used for this program entails informing EIGHT (8!) ELECTED CONGRESSMEN IN BOTH HOUSES EVERY 45 DAYS!
This means that by ANY LOGICAL MEASURE, the specific way that Bush has authorized the NSA to go about their interceptions means the program actually has MORE CHECK & BALANCES than if he had been using the FISA process!

I REPEAT:
FISA process = secretly telling ONE (1) appointed judge every NINETY (90) days.

Bush told EIGHT (8) ELECTED Congressman every FOPRTY-FIVE (45) days.


By my reckoning, the way Bush went about it SIXTEEN (16) times MORE OVERSIGHT than if he had used the regular old vanilla FISA process - (which is, BTW, a process he has used MORE than any other president - PROVING he is not shy about using it when he thinks it's correct to do so).
The people who assert that "KING GEORGE", er um Bush, "usurped" UNCHECKED secret powers under the cloak of "national security" argue as if the program was unchecked (which is NOT true - it has MORE checks!), and as if we were NOT at war (not true - we are!), and as if the POTUS was NOT the Commander-in-Chief (he is!).

They
are Leftists & Liberal poseurs, partisan hacks, and demagogues trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. They should be TOTALLY ignored on this issue. MORE HERE AND HERE. And more here, too. And here.