Tax dollars paying for hip hop artists

They fly them in from around the world. They're ambassadors of peace. Yeah. And CNN sees nothing askew with that.

Stimulus funds patching roads, not repairing bridges

Because it's faster to patch a road than actually fix an unsafe structure. And fast is what we want, mais non?

Of the 2,476 bridges scheduled to receive stimulus money so far, nearly half have passed inspections with high marks, according to federal data. Those 1,123 sound bridges received such high inspection ratings that they normally would not qualify for federal bridge money, yet they will share in more than $1.2 billion in stimulus money.

The wooden bridge built in 1900 carrying Harlan Springs Road in Berkeley County, W.Va., is one of the nation’s unsafe structures not being repaired. About 2,700 cars cross it every day. But with holes in the wooden deck and corroded railings and missing steel poles, only one car at a time can travel the 300-foot rickety span.

[SNIP]

Repaving or widening roads requires less planning and can be done quickly, which is why such projects account for 70 percent of the $17 billion in transportation stimulus money approved so far. Bridge projects represent 12 percent

Car dealers complain about govt administration

The "cash for clunkers" program has hit a few snags. One dealer mentioned this morning on WJR a significant problem is that the government requires that the clunker car be destroyed before the deal is finalized, but no deals have actually been finalized yet because the government is "overwhelmed" by the system they created, which puts the dealers at considerable risk. What if the government rejects a deal based on one of the numerous regulations that need to be followed and the buyer's old vehicle has already been destroyed? What happens then?

For the economy it's good news, but the government's miscalculation has some a little nervous.

"These are just the deals we have to submit tonight," Crestmont president Bill Strauss said while holding a stack of papers. He said the dealership has over $100,000 on the table.

"If they can't administer a program like this, I'd be a little concerned about my health insurance," car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.

Michelle O hires unprecedented number of personal staff

Frugal people who entered public service to sacrifice and serve the good of the people???Click here to read the article which lists the 22 attendants the First Lady needs to do her "job" (No mention of the hairdresser or personal trainer):

No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Ladyand she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.

[SNIP]

1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (CHIEF OF STAFF)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
5. Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY [SNIP]

Cash for clunkers already out of cash!

Two things--1) If these yoyos so underestimated the cash for clunkers program that they are already out of cash (supposed to run 4 months...done in 4 days), why would we trust them with health care? 2) It's obvious from the article that the government doesn't know what it's doing, considering that some people believe that the program is suspended and others don't. Link only.

Pro Constitution rally at Hood Park Saturday

BE THERE!!!

Pro-Constitution Rally

When

Saturday, August 1, 2009 11:00 AM

Where

Hood Park

105 West Front Street

Perrysburg OH 43551

Taxpayers fund lavish teachers conference

Learning skills to pass on to students in the classroom? By watching tennis? Lying around the pool?Ah, you say, but this is ARIZONA, not Ohio...No, this never happens in Ohio. Read about it here. Be sure to follow the link and watch the video of the partying:

PHOENIX -- For six days in July, hundreds of teachers from all across Arizona enjoyed an all-expense-paid visit to a four-star mountainside resort in Tucson.

There was a laundry list of classes offered at the conference, and teachers had the opportunity to learn critical skills to pass on to their students.

See the sessions offered at the conference

Sr citizens are "useless eaters who waste medical resources"

This is a blog comment on Obama's own website. Granted, anybody can say anything on blogs, but Obama's comments are monitored and numerous comments like this are scattered all over the blog. Follow this link to read the commentary. Other links are embedded in the quotation:

The Wall Street Journal reported (”Government Care’s Assault on Seniors,” July 23 2009) that Congressional legislation (H.R. 3200) will “reduce access to care, pressure the elderly to end their lives prematurely, and doom baby boomers to painful later years.” This is consistent with material on Barack Obama’s own Web site, Barackobama.com. It is to be remembered that all contributions are vetted by the site’s moderators, and material with which Obama’s staff does not agree is deleted. Barack Obama’s Web site approved numerous postings to the effect that the country’s senior citizens–and we will all be senior citizens some day unless we die first–are useless eaters whose access to medical services should be severely curtailed to save money. Here is one of the more egregious entries, and we doubt that it was really posted by a 79 year old woman with health problems

I am 79, on Medicare and have several medical problems. We need some transparency on this issue. I strongly support Health Care Reform, but measures that cut costs and cover most citizens will be very hard to sell, and so far Obama hasn’t much stomach for fights. We must have less choice for end-of-life patients, and probably a measure of rationing for everyone (”No, you can’t have that test” and to a clinic “No you can’t have that machine. Only three per state allowed.” I assume the various panels at work are looking at best practice in France, Germany, Norway, and others.

Health choices czar

Yeah, that's right. To make your "choices" for you. Read about it at the Heritage Foundation. The more we learn about these health care bills being proposed (and most likely passed), the scarier it becomes.

The Health Choices Commissioner will decide what services health insurance must cover, and under what conditions. These choice (“standards”) will apply to both employer-sponsored insurance and insurance purchased through the Health Insurance Exchange, which will be operated by the Health Choices Administration. There will be no other legal way to buy health insurance. There will, however, be a “Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman” to provide you with “assistance” in “choosing a qualified health benefits plan in which to enroll” – from among the plan or plans the Commissioner has already chosen, of course.

In choosing what services your health plan will cover, the Health Choices Commissioner will be required to consult with various entities, such as State attorneys general, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, “other appropriate federal agencies,” and Indian tribes. However, Commissioner will not be required to consult with patients (except for Indian tribes), doctors, or other health care providers.

Thousands of stimulus $$ used for porno, foolish projects

Little did the taxpayers know they voted to spend "stimulus" $$ THIS way. Michelle Malkin has the story. Follow this link. Be sure to follow the link to the FNC video:

Stimulus money for the National Endowment for the Arts is supposed to be “restricted specifically to job preservation. ”

But a look at the list of NEA stimulus projects reveals that the money is being used instead for sexual titillation. Fox News reported on some of the eye-opening projects here.

Straight from the National Endowment for the Arts website, you can check out the list for yourselves. Highlights:

· $50,000 to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia. The Center’s website is spotlighting “the Emperor’s New Clothes” described as an “… interactive adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes” in which the “tailors are crafty foxes, the prime minister is a near-sighted camel, the councilor is a befuddled old walrus, and the Emperor is a pig” that is “big and pink and loves to dress up in fancy clothes.”

Dems in trouble

Of course, it would help if the opposition party had something to offer. Is anybody listening to the tea parties??? Link only

Burke Badenhop

And now for some completely unpolitical news. Hometown favorite and Perrysburg graduate Burke Badenhop is a pitcher with the Florida Marlins; he can be found here on video, defending a teammate at a Dodgers game. Lots more video of Burke at this website. Go, Burke!

In the seventh inning on Sunday at Dodger Stadium, Badenhop struck Hudson near the right hip with a 90-mph fastball. Because warnings were issued an inning earlier by home-plate umpire Bob Davidson, both Badenhop and Gonzalez were ejected.

Tempers began to simmer in the sixth inning when Dodgers reliever Jeff Weaver plunked Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez in the back of his left shoulder with a 90-mph fastball. One pitch earlier, Weaver buzzed a fastball up and in on Ramirez.

Govt health care signers won't sign themselves up for govt health care

This is too disgusting. If they want to control health care for all of us, then they should be subjected to the same health care. But they won't do it. They are now saying the reason they don't have to sign up for govt health care is that their health care plan (exclusive) is a "model" for government health care. No kiddin.' A model we'll never see.

“Americans know that there’s a disconnect between the American people and Congress,” Fleming continued. “Congress and Washington in general have become sort of a ruling elite. We have a bad habit of passing laws that subject the population to all sorts of problems and headaches, yet we exempt ourselves. So I think it’s time the American people hold Congress accountable. If Congress thinks that there should be a public plan, which would effectually lead to Canadian-style/United Kingdom-style socialized medicine, then they should be the first to sign up for it.”

Since he is intimately familiar with health insurance, and having recently signed up for his Congressional benefits, I asked Fleming talked about claims Democrat members were making from the House floor yesterday that their health care bill would offer the same plans that a member of Congress gets to choose from.

An excuse for taxation

Interesting perspective on anthropogenic warming. Part of a natural cycle....and a new religion?

 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.

Tea Party Express Tour Schedule

Go here for the schedule. Nothing for Perrysburg yet.

America waking up?

Ben Stein thinks so: 

The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.

Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.

$100 million cuts made by government!!!!!!!

I know! It's hard to believe, isn't it? I don't suppose there're any MORE cuts that could be made? 

The U.S. Forest Service will save $1.8 million this year by ceasing to re-paint vehicles as soon as they are purchased – probably a good idea. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services canceled a meeting in Australia, saving $36,000. The Bureau of Reclamation’s Pacific Northwest office will get rid of its airplane for a quick $845,000.

The Justice and Treasury departments will turn off their computers at night.

Justice will encourage double-sided printing at the copy machine, and DOJ appears to have discovered Expedia and Travelocity. For a cool $4 million, government lawyers will start making travel arrangements online rather than through travel agents.

How much is a trillion$

Twinkie nazis are on the march

Note the hectoring tone of this article. Botox, soda pop...we're going to build a substantive permanent health care program on THIS? Now it's my Twinkies they're after: 

Link only

What good's reading the bill?

Asks Conyers, a member of Congress, if you need 2 days and 2 lawyers. This is truly the laziest greediest Congress in history. 

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

 

Obama advisors: no health care for the disabled

Hard to believe, but it's true. Read it here:

 Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Ohio trends away from big govt

Read about it here:

A couple of years ago, Ohio unquestionably was trending Democrat, according to Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. That was apparent, he said, in the composition of the 2008 electorate and in polling completed even early this year.

Things have changed. Ohio's recession now seems to be owned by Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, whose handling of the state’s budget did little to instill confidence in voters that he has a plan to get the state back on track.

Joe the plumber goes to tea parties

Apparently Joe is making the rounds to the tea parties. Read about it here: Link only.

Newsweek: Obama "mangled" facts

I guess he didn't lie or anything. Just mangled facts. Read it at Newsweek: Link only.

Tea Party Express is on the move!

President's health advisors want to cut Medicare

A truly discouraging report on the health care issue: 

But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

Health care bill encourages euthanasia

Read about it here: 

"One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.

The bill calls for the recommendation of "palliative care and hospice" in the mandatory counseling sessions, which is pain relief as patients die.

The House bill requires "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title."

The measure also recommends a discussion on "the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration," which suggests that elderly patients could be advised not to receive it, which would hasten death

Michigan desperate for jobs-wants Gitmo prisoners

Read about it here: Link only.

Orwellian speak required

Ugh. Things are nasty when you can't even call it like it is.

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the secretary of the House Republican Conference and a former District Court Judge, is having his messages to constituents censored by Democrats on the Franking Commission.  Republicans are no longer allowed to use the words “government run health care” in the communications to their constituents.

Carter received an email from the Franking Commission informing him of the censorship.  

Tea Party Theme

Obama blames Repubs for spending when none voted for it

Read about it at Gateway Pundit. Unbelievable.

Dems funnel billions to criminal group ACORN

Read about it at IBD: Link only.

Health care contact list

If you are interested in contacting someone in government about the health care debacle, here is a convenient list of numbers and contacts. Follow this link to go directly to the page:

I just received this contact list for those interested in telling the White House, their Representatives, and Senators what they think of the proposed health care legislation:

Washington's effort to overhaul the nation's health care system has generated an intense debate among lawmakers, policy makers and health care providers. If you want to express your opinion too, here is a list of key players involved and how to contact them.

The White House: (202) 456-1111 or send an e-mail at www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Michigan turns on itself

Look at what the ruling elite has come up with in Michigan to encourage businesses to stay. The article is called Will the Last Employers to Leave Michigan Please Turn Off the Lights? Click here to read the article.

The brainstorms the Democrats are proposing include:

"Hiking the minimum wage to $10 an hour for all workers.

• Imposing a blanket moratorium on home foreclosures for 12 months.
• Cutting utility rates 20% across the board.
• Requiring all employers to provide health care to their employees.
• Hiking, by $100 a week, and extending, for six months, unemployment benefits.

The ruin of the west

Ambrose Evans Pritchard has the perspective. Read it here: 

The Fed's doctrine – New Keynesian Synthesis – has let it down time and again in this long saga, and there is scant evidence that Fed officials recognise the fact. As for the European Central Bank, it has let private loan growth contract this summer.

The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us.

My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin.

Illegal aliens get free health care in US

Michelle Malkin has the story at Town Hall: 

At a time when Democratic leaders are pushing rationed care in a world of limited resources, Americans might wonder where the call for shared sacrifice is from illegal immigrant patients like those in Los Angeles getting free liver and kidney transplants at UCLA Medical Center. "I'm just mad," illegal alien Jose Lopez told the Los Angeles Times last year after receiving two taxpayer-subsidized liver transplants while impatiently awaiting approval for state health insurance.

Now, multiply that sense of entitlement by 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants. Welcome to the open-borders Obamacare nightmare.

More on cap and tax

American Issues Project has the scoop on MORE, still MORE, requirements of the new cap and tax the Senate is trying to pass. You didn't reckon on the Democratic Party's desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life. Click this link to go back to American Issues for the article:

Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the"Building Energy Performance Labeling Program". It's section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.

But what does that have to do with current homeowners like you? Well, I'm glad you asked. You're certainly not off the hook, no way, no how. Here's what the Democrats have planned for you. The program requires that states label their buildings so that we can all know how efficient every building (that includes residential and non-residential buildings) is and it requires that the information be made public. To that end, the bill suggests a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building, including:

Ridesharing Aug 1

Anyone interested? This is from Ohio Liberty Council:

We've created a meetup website for you to collaborate and share carpooling/busing information in your county for transportation to the Saturday, August 1st Ohio Liber-TEA Party at the Ohio Statehouse at 2PM.  There is a discussion for each county already started.  Just find your county and collaborate!

http://www.meetup.com/Ohio-Liber-TEA-Party-Rideshare/messages/boards/

Enough with the birther/nirther controversy

Lots of people are excited about the prospect of Obama being a citizen of Kenya and not the US. Strangely, one of the first things Obama did when he got into office was to forbid the disclosure of any of his personal documents (transparency? hello?). The video of a confrontation between Mike Castle and the nirthers has made the rounds on YouTube. However, RedState has an interesting perspective on the birther/nirther movement. What good does it do to flail against this issue, considering that nothing will ever, ever come of it? Read about it here: 

I really have no interest in debating the merits of this particular conspiracy theory in this post.  Therefore, I will posit, for the sake of argument, that the basic premise of the birther movement is correct.  Obama was born in Kenya and is not a “natural born citizen.”  Okay.  Now what?  What on earth do the birthers think will be done about it?

Do you people suppose that the Supreme Court will somehow order President Obama out of office?  I will bet you $100, and give you 1000:1 odds that that will never, ever happen.  They will decline to even entertain such a case.  I don’t think anyone in the country has standing to bring it, and even if they do, the Courts will prudentially decline to hear the case as a political question.  Book it, the courts are not getting involved in this; the place where we sort out the citizenship thing is at the ballot box and you already lost that fight.

Not good enough for them

Unbelievable, what's happening. The health care plan they are foisting off on us isn't good enough for them.  Link only

The liberal suicide march

David Brooks: Link only.