A true Leninoid...Obama

Read at The American Thinker:

It's weird for an American president to consider most of the American population "the enemy." This is not like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil getting together for drinks after a hard day of political infighting in Washington. This Rahm Emanuel's politics as Kill! Kill! Kill! Alinsky gave radicals the recipe for mob scapegoating, and admitted that yes, it was destructive and cruel, but tough noogies. Alinsky admired tough treatment of enemies, which is why he stayed friends with Frank Nitti, Chicago mobster and therefore a professional killer, drug runner, and career criminal.

Obama has openly said words approaching the famous line from The Untouchables: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." Alinsky and Capone would have toasted that one. So would Lenin. It strikes me as weird for an American president to think of domestic politics as all-out war -- especially given the reality of real enemies in the world who openly wish us ill.

Glenn Beck boycott

Haven't said much about the Beck boycott. Big Hollywood says it best here:

The irony here is that a “race based pressure group” is attacking someone who said he is against what he suspects is racism in Obama’s agenda. In other words, a race based group is attacking someone speaking out against racism. Who’s the racist here?

The left accuses anyone who critiques Obama of being a racist, regardless of their actual motives or the content of their argument. But if someone does that against Obama, well, they must be banned!

A Kennedy legacy

Read Mark Steyn. He says it all for the equity feminist: Link only.

The tea parties are the hope of the nation

Read former Jimmy Carter advisor Pat Caddell's words here at NRO...words for hope:

Caddell does see a glimmer of hope in the town-hall response to Obamacare. “The American people rose up,” he says, admiringly. “The fact of the matter is that the American people see the political class as in business for themselves. That’s what’s going on here. A tide is coming. The political process has tried to squeeze out any new, fresh blood, so it’s a revolt. People being called mobs by the DNC, Republicans pretending to be conservative — everyone’s saying, ‘Enough with this.’ The best thing the president could do is call a halt to this and have a Ronald Reagan moment.”

The Prince has died

as if you didn't know. And Mary Jo Kopechne is remembered. ...not.

Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

Expose on Michelle O's hair

hard hitting journalism at its best. It's not just that she's a female and therefore cares about her hair and how she looks. No. It's much more than that. The Adored One's mate's personal life choices have sociological and philosophical implications far beyond what one can imagine, white oppression being key to understanding these choices. Read it here at the always journalistically sound and never obsequious Time Magazine. Link only.

It ain't America no more!

Cuz that's what the cop says. Watch in disbelief as a tea party protester is told to get rid of his sign because it has a picture on it.

CIA under attack from Dems

Read it at the WSJ:

Yet Mr. Panetta can only do so much to reassure his troops. Faced with legal jeopardy, CIA staff will avoid intelligence-gathering risks, making it that much harder for the CIA director to succeed in his day job—protecting the country from harm. It will matter little that the president retained successful Bush-era counterterrorism programs if there is no intelligence-community will to implement them.

The Emergence of the Unruly Mob

THE EMERGENCE OF THE UNRULY MOB

So what inspires normally sedate hard-working citizens to rise up like an unruly mob, as the ruling class refers to them. Could it be the flagrant printing and spending of money for which this great nation has no basis? Could it be the issuance of imperial decrees to purchase airplanes to jet the gentility coast to coast and on junkets around the world? Could it be the building of a citizen army that dresses alike and obeys The One's commands at a whim? Could it be the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate "abuses" of dedicated CIA agents against murderous terrorists who want to murder us in our sleep?

Let's take a look on what the ruling class, the elite, the royals have to say in press releases, and then the reality of how they behave in their private moments or at town hall "listening" sessions. These comments were culled from websites and media reports.

It has become apparent that the ruling class is made up of not only legislators and executives but also the media.

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: HEALTH CARE

"I'm glad that so many are engaged….. If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. …And we will do this [remake health care] without adding to our deficit over the next decade…. ~ Barack Obama (CNN)

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~MSNBC

The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday.

~Jan Schakowsky (D-congressman)

[A man said]…a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single payer. …My single payer friends, he was right! The man was right

~Barack Obama

I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's gonna be some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out….I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care plan…

~Barack Obama

Nobody Is talking about some government takeover of health care!

~Barney Frank

I think if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer and that's the best way to reach single payer

~Barack Obama (bwahaha)

Right now…if a family care physician works with his or her physician to lose weight, modify diet, monitor whether they're taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated that's $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 immediately the surgeon is reimbursed.

…."Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. ... The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out,'

~Charles Lane (liberal WaPo columnist)

"Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they're in the [end of life] meeting, the bill does permit 'formulation' of a plug-pulling order right then and there," Lane explains.

~Nate Hentoff (columnist)

But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board… — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

~Roxana Mayer (graduate student in social work and an Obama delegate)

However, where we [US medical establishment] are deficient, we are, like, so poor almost nonexistent at treating preventative care. Um, I know because I'm a general practitioner, a dying breed. Um. And, and it's also due to the outcomes, we have poor outcomes that I don't understand why a developing country, why developed countries do so much better than us.

~Ezekiel Emanuel (medical advisor to the President)

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008)….medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . (JAMA, Feb. 27, 2008).

~Yahoo

Frustrated liberals have a question for President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers: Isn't it time the other guys gave a little ground on health care? What's the point of a bipartisan bill, they ask, if we're making all the concessions?

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: GOVERNMENT INTRUSION INTO PRIVATE LIFE

We need sensible safeguards that protect privacy in this dynamic new world."~ Barack Obama (privacy platform)

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Wired.com

All that data collected during the 2008 campaign now sits in databases controlled by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee, in addition to third-party vendors…

~Linda Douglass (WH spokesperson)

There is a lot of disinformation …..These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

~Fox News

The White House for the first time Sunday somewhat acknowledged that people across the country received unsolicited e-mails last week on health care from the administration, suggesting the problem on third-party groups it claimed placed the recipients’ names on the distribution list.

~Health Care Reform Bill (Community Transformation Grants-Be sure to read)

State and local government agency or national network of community-based organizations [such as ACORN] will be authorized to generate activities” to create “healthier school environments, including increasing healthy food options, physical activity opportunities, promotion of healthy lifestyle and prevention curricula, and activities to prevent chronic diseases.” …"Activities within the plan shall focus on (but not be limited to) ... (iv) assessing and implementing worksite wellness programming and incentives; (v) working to highlight healthy options at restaurants and other food venues; (vi) prioritizing strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, including social determinants of health..."

In a section entitled, “Community-Based Prevention Health Activities," the bill calls on grant recipients to measure weight loss, physical activity, smoking and other activities of people in the neighborhood. …the eligible entity [ACORN] shall, with respect to residents in the community, measure decreases in weight, increases in proper nutrition, increases in physical activity, decreases in tobacco use prevalence, other factors using community-specific data from the Behavioral Risk Surveillance Survey; and other factors as determined by the Secretary [at HHS].”

~McClatchey News Service

If you're planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you'd best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: WINNING AT ALL COSTS

"Whether we're Democrats or Republicans, surely there's got to be some capacity for us to work together…~Barack Obama

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Harry Reid

… we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary."

~Ezekiel Emanuel

….Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

~Craigslist (advert to pay pro health care reform demonstrators)

We need people like you—lots of people like you—to go out in communities around the country this summer and help make change happen. And you can earn money doing it. Earn $4,000-$6,000 this summer.

~Maxine Waters (D-CA)

"Not only are we going to do everything we can to organize and put pressure on the senators -- some of whom are Neanderthals -- we're going to say to the president, 'We want you to use every weapon in your basket in order to get those senators to do what they should be doing,' " Waters said.

~White House to Democrats

If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.

~Barack Obama

In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda.

~Obama (who was serving in Congress at the time the "mess" was created)

I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess."

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: GOVERNMENT COMPETENCE:

"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works --~Barack Obama

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Barack Obama

UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

~Carolyn Baum (Bloomberg)

What’s more, if the USPS is struggling to compete with private companies, as Obama implied, why introduce a government health-care option that would operate at the same disadvantage?....Impromptu Obamanomics is getting scarier by the day.

~Politics Daily

Last year, the Postal Service lost $2 billion. This year, it's lost $7 billion and is on track to continue that trajectory. Things are so dire that Postmaster General John E. Potter has requested permission from Congress to stop Saturday mail delivery.

~Washington Post (regarding Cash For Clunkers)

The National Automobile Dealers Association estimates that [auto] dealers have hundreds -- and in some cases thousands -- of applications pending that are "worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars."

"It is ludicrous at this point," Kitzmiller said. "We've got deals that are just sitting there waiting to be reviewed. The customer is gone, the car is gone, and you don't have your money."

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: VILIFYING AMERICAN CITIZENS
Do you really think that's thoughtful conversation? Do you really think that advances your argument? I thought you were thoughtful people here to have a conversation. I'm really disappointed at the level of response. ~ Barney Frank

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Sheila Jackson Lee (on being asked why she answered her cell phone during a constituent's question)

In Congress, we have to multitask.

~Cynthia Tucker (The Atlanta Constitution)

I think 45 to 65% of the people who appear at these groups are people who will never be comfortable with the idea of a black president.

~Barbara Boxer (Senator, CA.)

“Senator Boxer sought to paint the protesters as a well-dressed and well-rehearsed mob. “All of this is a diversion,” Boxer said. It is an attempt to “hurt our president and to change the Congress.”

~Senator Dick Durbin

Speaking to CNN's "State of the Union,"…"But [these town hall meetings are] clearly being orchestrated, and these folks have instructions"…

~MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson

"…what concerns me is in some of those townhall meetings such as in Missouri where there were jokes made about lynching, the word socialist is becoming a code word whether or not socialist is becoming the new N word."

~Barney Frank

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?…..Trying to have a conversation with you is like trying to have a conversation with the dining room table."

~Nancy Pelosi

"I'm a fan of disruptors."

~From Breitbart

A combative Obama also accused health insurance firms of holding sick Americans "hostage…"

~Nancy Pelosi

I think they are Astroturf.. carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."

~Harry Reid (The Hill)

Town hall protesters are "evil-mongers," …Such "evil-mongers" are using "lies, innuendo and rumor," to drown out rational debate.

~Hoyer, Pelosi, Reid, Durbin

Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.

~White House spokesman Bill Burton

People are showing up to events with swastikas, dressed up as Hitler, with signs invoking Nazi Germany…We are fully behind free speech."

~John Dingell (Rep. Michigan)

… the last time I had to confront something like this was when I voted for the civil rights bill and my opponent voted against it. At that time, we had a lotta Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets and other things runnin' around causin' trouble.

~ Nancy Pelosi (Politico)

Insurers are "immoral" "villains"

~ABC

Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.

~The Hill

There has been no increase in the number of security threats to President Barack Obama despite the contentious town hall meetings taking place around the country, according to the White House.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also said Friday there has been no change in the security precautions. "We haven't viewed any increase in threats, and there's been no change in any of that," Gibbs said.

~Jean Carnahan

In recent weeks we have seen disruptions at town halls, mob hysteria, arrests, death threats, and remarks that border on treason.

~Katie Couric

But we can't let fear and frankly ignorance - drown out the serious debate that needs to take place - about an issue that affects the lives of millions of people.

~Howard Dean

The Republicans, they have no interest in this Bill. They’re using the 1994 playbook. Let’s kill the bill and kill the president...... or, kill the president’s term.

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: DEIFYING OBAMA

To his European fans, Obama is the symbol of American renewal. They know three things about him. That he is young. That he is African-American. And that he has a Muslim name. ~CNN

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Alkhateeb (creator of the Obama joker poster, self professed liberal)

“After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ….From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

THE MYTHOLOGY CONTINUES

~Barack Obama

…this was the moment [Obama's election] when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…

~Barack Obama

A LIGHT WILL SHINE THROUGH THAT WINDOW, A BEAM OF LIGHT WILL COME DOWN UPON YOU, YOU WILL EXPERIENCE AN EPIPHANY ... AND YOU WILL SUDDENLY REALIZE THAT YOU MUST GO TO THE POLLS AND VOTE FOR OBAMA" -

~Evan Thomas (Newsweek)

"In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of GOD. He's going to bring all different sides together."

~Lawrence Carter
It is powerful and significant on a spiritual level that there is the emergence of Barack Obama 40 years after the passing of Dr. King," said Carter. "No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger."

~Spike Lee

You'll have to measure time
by `Before Obama' and `After Obama ….It's an
exciting time to be alive now." ...Everything's going to be affected by this seismic change in the universe."

~Mark Mortford (SF Chronicle)
Many spiritually advanced people I know….identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve.

~Robert Gibbs:

…anyone could sign up for the free tickets through the White House Web site and said winners were picked "randomly by computer." "The president asked people to raise their hands and he picks on them," Gibbs told reporters,

~Julia Hall (randomly selected 11 year old daughter of Obama supporter and donor Kathleen Manning Hall)

"Um, as I was walking in the hall outside I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reform and health care. How do kids know what is true and why do people [SIC] want a new system that can help more of us?"

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS REGARDING ABORTION

"You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion. Not true. This is all, these are all fabrications that have been put out there…"~Barack Obama

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Zoe Loefgren

During a Monday town hall event, pro-abortion Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, acknowledged that the Congressional bills include abortion funding. "Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the healthcare plans available to Americans, and I think it should be," she said.

~US News & World Report
But it doesn't prevent "the public health insurance exchange….option from providing for or prohibiting coverage" of abortion. That means the public healthcare option could cover abortions that the government is currently barred from funding by way of the Hyde amendment, a rider to the annual health and human services appropriations bill that keeps Medicaid from funding abortion except in rare circumstances.

~Newsbusters

MSNBC's David Shuster today dismissed as "false" the fears of 50 percent of respondents that "tax dollars will help pay for abortions."

~Melody Barnes (director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council)
"Health reform, and our health reform efforts, are not intended to force Americans to purchase health insurance that includes coverage they don’t want, and they should be able to purchase coverage that reflects their values and basic needs."

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: GLOBAL WARMING

President Obama has said that the science of global warming is "beyond dispute," and therefore settled. ~ IBD

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan Detroit News)

"Climate change is very real," she confessed as she embraced cap and trade's massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. "Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.

ADMONITION FROM THE RULING CLASS RE: GOVT TRANSPARENCY

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. ~Barack Obama

AND YET REALITY BITES SO HARD

~Eric Massa (D-NY)

"I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful... I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them."

~Andrew Mitchell (Morning Joe)

They don't like what they're hearing. Now, they may not know what's good for them…

~Barbara Boxer (who was too busy promoting her book to hold town hall meetings)
Could you call me senator instead of ma'am? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. I'd appreciate it.

~John Conyers
“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’”….“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?”

~Claire McCaskill (Senator, Missouri)

You don't trust me?

CONCLUSION:

Government indeed has become transparent, Mr. President. We believe we see you all for what you are.

The Emergence of

Older people and babies go to the back of the line

Because either too much money or not enough has already been invested in those age brackets. Read about it here at the WSJ:

Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

They're watching Facebook

and MySpace and everything else:

Tax deadbeats are finding someone actually reads their MySpace and Facebook postings: the taxman.

State revenue agents have begun nabbing scofflaws by mining information posted on social-networking Web sites, from relocation announcements to professional profiles to financial boasts.

In Minnesota, authorities were able to levy back taxes on the wages of a long-sought tax evader after he announced on MySpace that he would be returning to his home town to work as a real-estate broker and gave his employer's name. The state collected several thousand dollars, the full amount due.

Moran's town hall becomes chaos

And not a more deserving individual around.

Rep. Jim Moran's town hall meeting descended into chaos Tuesday night as protestors clashed -- in one case violently -- with supporters of a broad federal health care expansion, leading the 8th District Democrat to angrily seek to evict some of the loudest demonstrators.

Moran and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean addressed a crowd of at least 2,500 at South Lakes High School in Reston, weathering hours of catcalls and heckling mixed with shouts from supporters.

CIA under attack--security is compromised

Read what Victoria Toensing has to say at NRO about the lawyers who are now being investigated, even though their work prevented attack on this nation, including a planned attack on Los Angeles. The damage being done is permanent and lasting.

“All volunteers step forward. We have a person in custody who is high-ranking al-Qaeda. He taunts that an attack on United States soil is imminent but laughs mockingly when we ask for specifics. We need interrogators.” Such was the threat in the summer of 2002 when the CIA asked the Justice Department for guidance on what its personnel could do to get such information from captured al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubdayah.

Since then, the lawyers who stepped forward to provide carefully structured counsel have been criminally investigated and told that, even if they are not prosecuted, their conduct will be turned over to their state bars. The interrogators who stepped forward were promised in early spring by President Obama that, even if they erred in judgment while protecting our country, the president would rather “move forward.” However, in late summer, they are under criminal scrutiny.

Dems pay astro-turfers to demonstrate

Thousands of dollars and thousands of people to demonstrate FOR govt run health care. They are doing what they SAY the tea partyers are doing. Read about it here:

Faced with a souring public mood on health care reform, Democrats and their supporters are launching a national grassroots push Wednesday to show lawmakers that the majority of Americans still support overhauling the system.

Reform supporters are planning to hold more than 500 events between Wednesday and when lawmakers return to Washington Sept. 8, ranging from neighborhood organized phone banks to professionally staffed rallies with hundreds of people.

Bullies in Washington

Read at the Washington Times.

Government coercion is becoming standard operating procedure in the nation's capital.

The White House threatened financial institutions with ruin by selectively enforcing regulations unless they agreed to take government bailout money. Similar threats were used to force financial institutions to let the government own part of their stock. Those same institutions were forced to take losses on the bonds they held in General Motors and Chrysler. It was only a matter of time until similar intimidating behavior was employed in the health care debate.

VA hospital didn't sterilize equipment

Consequently numerous vets have contracted terminal diseases. Ugh. This is what we're in for. Read about it at The Washington Post.

Cash for clunker---appliances

Yes, it's true. We're going for frigs and stoves now. Read about it here. Link only.

It's a good time to be a terrorist

According to PowerLine. Read it here. Ugh. This is despicable, in combination with the Lockerbie situation and the possible appointment of a special prosecutor to stop "Jack Bauer" from getting info from people who want to murder us in our beds. READ:

But the most important victory for terrorists and their supporters consists of the Obama administration's moves to deprive our intelligence agencies of key means through which to obtain information from captured terrorists. This ongoing process receives another boost today with the release of the CIA Inspector General's report that terrorist detainees were abused in CIA custody.

More bogus projects for stimulus funds

Yeah, we thought it sounded "fishy." Read about it at the NY Post. Some of the elements of the sex project include:

* Examine "barriers to correct condom use" at Indiana University, at a cost of $221,000.

* Study "hookups" among adolescents at Syracuse University. Study's cost: $219,000.

*Evaluate "drug use as a sex enhancer" in an analysis of "high-risk community sex networks" at the University of Illinois, Chicago. That study will cost $123,000.

Vets told they had fatal disease

Ugh. Imagine this happening on a national level. Wait. We don't have to imagine it. It happened.

At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease.

One of the leaders of a Gulf War veterans group says panicked veterans from Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyominghave contacted the group about the error.

Feds after your garage sale

Yes, it's true. If your garage sale has toys, you'd better be sure to go back as much as 10 years into recall notices because you could be breaking the law by selling that....toy. Read about it here: Link only.

More disciplined=less health care

Notice how delicately Politico puts the dilemma....iow, the general public will NEVER receive the kind of health care Ted Kennedy gets:

The uncomfortable truth, according to health care experts, is that most concepts about lowering health care costs involve patients and care-givers becoming more disciplined about resisting the kinds of aggressive medical treatments Kennedy has pursued to battle his brain tumor.

By these lights, the problem is not that too few Americans have access to the kind of care that Kennedy is receiving. The problem is that too many Americans avail themselves of expensive treatments that may extend lives at the margins but have low prospects of actually saving them.