Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Medicare loses $375 million to fraudulent billings by a single physician

Dr. Jacques Roy, a Dallas-area physician, has reportedly been living well off your tax dollars. He has been indicted "for allegedly bilking Medicare for nearly $375 million in billings for nonexistent home healthcare services." The LA Times explains how his scheme worked:
Under the alleged fraud scheme, the doctor and his office manager in DeSoto, Texas, Teri Sivils, who was also charged, allegedly sent healthcare “recruiters” door-to-door asking residents to sign forms that contained the doctor’s electronic signature and stated that he had seen the residents professionally for medical services he never provided.

They also allegedly dispatched more “recruiters” to a homeless shelter in Dallas, paying $50 to every street person they coaxed from a nearby parking lot and signed him up on the bogus forms.

The long-running ruse allegedly began in 2006 and over five years collected more Medicare beneficiaries than any other medical practice in the United States.
If Pres. Obama and the Democrats have their way, the whole health care system will be run this sloppily.

PREVIOUSLY on medicare:
Medicare spent $2.2 million on penis enlargers
Screwy medicare regulations causing drug shortages
Preview of Obamacare: Doctors abandoning Medicare

PREVIOUSLY on Obamacare:
Obama Admin defunds a piece of Obamacare
Government health care is something to die for
AP: Obamacare increasingly unpopular
Obamacare forcing Boeing to cut back employee healthcare coverage
Special privileges: McDonald's and 29 other companies get waivers from Obamacare
Obamacare threatens health coverage for fast-food workers
ObamaCare threatens child-only insurance
Medical insurance prices rising due to ObamaCare
Obamacare endangers student health
Obama's health care and economic policies explained
Obamacare may raise insurance costs by 54%
Harvard economist explains why Obamacare will raise premiums
HHS says Obamacare will cause costs to go up and cause employers to drop coverage
The dawning of the reality of Obamacare
Consumers outsmart Massachusetts' version of Obamacare
Obamacare threatens high tech jobs
Obamacare and trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates
The fraud of Obamacare, as seen from the left
Pelosi: Pass Obamacare so artists can quit their day jobs
Britain's Obamacare: Hospital patient dies of thirst as nurses ignore his pleas for water
Nobel Laureate economist explains why socialized medicine always fails
Rep. Ryan explains the dishonesty of Obamacare economics

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Whistleblower exposes Obama junk science

Against intense local opposition, the Obama administration wants to demolish three dams on the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, California. Low-cost clean hydroelectricity as well as water for irrigation would be lost if the dams were removed. Removal of the dams would also cause chaos for ranchers, homeowners, and small business who live and work in the downstream of the dams. Despite this, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been trying to force dam removal for the supposed benefit of some salmon and steelhead spawning habitat.

Now, Prof. Paul R. Houser of George Mason University alleges that the administration's plan is all based on junk science. In his role as science advisor to the Bureau of Reclamation, he was closely involved in the project. He has filed a formal complaint (PDF) alleging "intentional falsification" and "intentional . . . compromise of scientific and scholarly integrity." In particular, he says that, under orders from Ken Salazar, the department produced a "summary" report that "intentionally distorts and generally presents a biased view of the Klamath River dam removal benefits." In particular, he alleges:
  • The summary section on Chinook Salmon recovery projects an 81.4 percent recovery, but says nothing about the nine contingencies summarized in the June 13, 2011, Klamath River Expert Panel Final Report: Scientific Assessment of Two Dam Removal Alternatives on Chinook Salmon report that could completely negate this projected recovery . . . .
  • The summary states that "Coho salmon reclaim 68 miles of habitat", but says nothing about the April 25, 2011 statement in the Klamath River Expert Panel Final Report: Scientific Assessment of Two Dam Removal Alternatives on Coho Salmon and Steelhead that "the difference between the Proposed Action and Current Conditions is expected to be small, especially in the short term (0-10 years after dam removal)." . . . .
  • The summary states that dam removal will likely reduce salmon disease, but does not properly state its uncertainty [which is] very high".
  • The summary also spins an optimistic outlook for Steelhead trout, providing access to 420 miles of historical habitat. However, the April 25, 2011 Klamath River Expert Panel Final Report: Scientific Assessment of Two Dam Removal Alternatives on Coho Salmon and Steelhead states that this success would be dependent on effective implementation of the proposed and related actions [e.g.Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)]; whereas ineffective implementation would result in no detectable response.
The changes, Prof. Houser alleges, report only the positive while distorting or falsifying the science.

You can read more about Prof. Houser's extensive qualifications here. Congress has not yet approved Salazar's plan. With luck, they will block it entirely.

UPDATE: Over a month, later, the MSM is catching up: the Daily Caller has a story on this scandal here.

Hat tip: Leonard

WELCOME to readers of Michael Savage, GatewayPundit, QuiteNormal, TalkStraight, TunnelWall, ImpeachObamaToday, DaleyGator, Tea Party for California, Cornwall Alliance, Armstrong, TheTownCrier, Support Rural America, The Persistent Patriots, and DorkFishExpress.

PREVIOUSLY on politicized science:
Politicized Science, the delta smelt, and California farmers
EPA uses phony peer review
National Academy of Sciences warns EPA on junk science
The failed science of environmentalism
Federal Judge rejects Federal enviromental "science" as "arbititrary and capricious"
The politicization of medical research funding
2 more examples of politicized science: Gulf oiil spill and California's air regulations
AIDS advocates distorted science
Politicized science of crime statistics
Politicization of medical science
Bee colony collapse disorder: the cause is whatever your politics say it is
Ozone hole and politics

Obama on cleaning up

From LMAObama:
Our President is likely referring to this mess:
Obama either doesn't understand or doesn't care that it will take generations to pay off the debt that he will have accumulated in just four years.

How much debt is Obama piling up? Following Obama's projected budget, the debt, as a fraction of GDP, is shown here in red:
For reference, a national debt of 100% of GDP or more is generally considered a danger sign. Under Obama's plan, Social Security and Medicare will soon run out of money. Rep. Ryan has proposed an alternative plan under which the deficits decline as shown in green. Democrats, of course, find his plan outrageous.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Affirmative action fail

A US Department of Education study, "Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2008" (PDF), examined graduation rates from 4-year institutions by race/ethnicity (see Table 5):

Grad. Ethnicity
rate
66.1% Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander
59.3% White
46.5% Hispanic or Latino
38.9% Black or African American
37.9% American Indian or Alaska  Native
A liberal would look at these statistics and declare that colleges and universities are racist. A more reasonable conclusion would be that the "beneficiaries" of affirmative action do not benefit: they end up in schools for which they are not qualified and drop-out. Whichever explanation you accept, affirmative action is not working.

PREVIOUSLY on affirmative action:
Affirmative action backfire
California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
Justice Scalia on the incoherence of Affirmative Action law
For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
Liberals oppose even research on the issue of whether affirmative action works
High school implements race-based punishments for misbehavior

Stanford: California households owe an average $30,500 for unfunded public employee pension debt

From Daniel Borenstein of the San Jose Mercury News:
The average California household's share of the debt for underfunded state and local government employee pensions omes to about $30,500.

Stanford University studies released last week and in December for the first time aggregate public pension shortfalls statewide. Using moderate assumptions about future investment returns, the unfunded liability is about $379 billion.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Occupy movement demands banks provide free money

In San Francisco, the Occupy movement is outraged. They protested yesterday at the San Francisco home of a Wells Fargo Bank's CEO. Wells Fargo loans money to people. The Occupy movement is outraged that Wells Fargo expects those people to pay it back.

The protesters held signs claiming "they get rich, we lose our homes." That protesters think banks get "rich" from nonperforming loans which have to be foreclosed shows just little the Occupiers understand banking.

One of the groups protesting was Occupy Bernal of the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. This anguished protester asks "Wells Fargo keep out of Bernal":

Anyone who doesn't want to deal with Wells Fargo shouldn't take money from them. If you accept money from a bank, don't be surprised that they will want it paid back. Do these Bernal residents really find that so difficult to understand?

The groups nominally organizing this protest were Occupy Bernal, Occupy SF Housing, and ACCE. However, a look at some of the signs and even the bullhorn shows support from Socialist Workers and PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation).

The photo above is excerpted from the collection of photographs of this protest at Fund47.

RELATED: Occupy Denver throws urine at Denver police. Billed as a "F*** the police" rally, some in the Occupy Denver movement defend themselves with the claim that the rally was 'unofficial.'

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Friday, February 24, 2012

Obama's "green energy" program leaves behind toxic sludge

The Washington Times reports that Solyndra LLC, the Obama-supported but now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, has left behind "barrels of unknown chemicals and lead-contaminated equipment."  In court, the company is arguing with its former landlord over who will pay for cleanup.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

$6 gas


After three years of Obama's publicly attacking, delaying, and denying permits for oil projects, whether drilling or pipelines, gas prices are way up. CBS, however, does not see fit to mention Obama at all in its article (screen grab above) on $6/gallon gas.

If you have a long memory (that is, if you are not a liberal), then you remember when every rise in gas prices was the fault of the evil-Bush-Cheney-Haliburton conspiracy as, for example, in this Bloomberg article from 2004:

Curiously, when gas prices fluctuated down under Pres. Bush, the MSM did not see that as reason to cast doubt on the evil-conspiracy theories.

Newsbusters reports that there were four times more stories on gas price rises under Bush than Obama and the MSM was 15 times more likely to mention Bush in such as story then than they are to mention Obama in a gas-price story now.

The MSM is what it is.

FLASHBACK: DNC Chief Wasserman Schultz Rails Against Bush For $3-Gallon Gas… But then, consistency is merely for little minds.

City makes large protest signs into criminal offense

In the city of San Mateo, California, violations of city code which had been mere infractions can now be charged as criminal (misdemeanor) offenses and punished with jail time.  The San Mateo Daily Journal reports:
Going forward, any violators of city code can either face an infraction or misdemeanor. Misdemeanors, however, will only be issued by police officers or the Harbor Patrol Master and infractions can be issued by a wide range of city workers including building and fire inspectors. The penalty for an infraction will be a simple fine while the penalty for a misdemeanor could land the violator in jail. . . . .

Gardeners with noisy leaf blowers or protesters with signs too big could now face criminal charges based on a police officer’s discretion, a fact that does not sit well with [City Councilman Robert] Ross.  [Emph. added]

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Liberal insanity

Racism hypocrisy at the New York Times

Newsbusters reports (h/t LegalInsurrection):
Veteran New York Times media reporter David Carr’s Monday column self-righteously attacked an unfortunate headline on an ESPN mobile website, “Chink in the Armor,” that was widely interpreted as a purposeful slur on the ethnicity of benchwarmer-turned-NBA-sensation Jeremy Lin: “Media Hype For Lin Stumbles On Race.”

Giving no benefit of the doubt to the ESPN editor, who has since been fired, Carr declared the headline one of myriad “underlying racist tropes that still lurk in the id of American sports journalism.” This lecture comes from a reporter who last year characterized Midwesterners as folks with “low-sloping foreheads,” akin to cavemen. [Emph. added]


PREVIOUSLY on the subject of liberal hypocrisy:
Chimichanga and racism hypocrisy
A liberal's core beliefs are surprisingly malleable
Private equity firm hypocrisy at the Obama campaign
Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy
President Obama preaches Tolerance
Dem attack against lobbyists is led by a Dem lobbyist
Minimum wage and hypocrisy
UN humanitarian hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrisy at the UN Climate Change conference
Dems, taxes, and hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrite of the day: movie director James Cameron
Liberal gay bashing
Poster child hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrisy: Supermodel Gisele and Prince Charles
Eco-hypocrisy: Barack Obama
Eco-hypocrisy: Nancy Pelosi
The ever-increasing energy use of Al Gore's mansion
With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming
Edwards' hypocrisy on the poor
HuffPost blogger projects enviro-hypocrisy

Media hypocrisy

In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn observes:
When Mr. Obama used a prayer breakfast earlier this month to suggest that the Gospel of Luke was a call for raising taxes on the wealthy, the press corps yawned. When Mr. Santorum complained about the "phony theology" behind the president's worldview, suddenly it landed on every front page and lead every news show.
The MSM is what it is.

Germany's supply-side policy victories

Why is Germany experiencing solid economic growth while America suffers stagnation? Donald Luskin and Lorcan Kelly, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explain:
Starting in 2003, Germany under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder began to implement a program of long-term structural reform called "Agenda 2010." The idea was to transform Germany into an economy where business has an incentive to invest, and where labor has an incentive—and an opportunity—to work. This was pro-growth reform that would be very familiar to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

The centerpiece were labor-market reforms designed by a former human-resources executive at Volkswagen AG. The power of unions and craft guilds was curtailed, making it easier for unskilled youth to enter the job market and easier for employers to hire and fire at will. Germany's lavish unemployment benefits were sharply cut back. An unemployed person in social-democratic Germany today can draw benefits for only about half as long as his counterpart in capitalist America.

In addition, Germany rejected Obama's Keynesian stimulus ideas for a more sane fiscal policy.

It has come to this: European socialists know more about making free markets work than our American president.

PREVIOUSLY on Obamanomics:
The Obama first term debt: $70,000 per family
Obamanomics: maximize the uncertainty
Obamanomics: its intellectual foundations explained
Strangling business is no way to create jobs
CEOs to Obama: Get out of the way!
Survey of CEOs: Obamanomics is still the problem

Saturday, February 18, 2012

OccupyFail: Corporations as people

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision affirming that corporations have free speech rights continues to rankle the left. At last Thursday night's Obama fundraiser protest in San Francisco, I saw this sign held by a man from Occupy San Jose:
"I'll believe Corp's are people when [San Jose] City Hall evicts one"
I explained to the protester that corporations are evicted if they don't pay their rent. That was news to him.

On the same theme, there is this sign from Occupy San Francisco (photo taken last October):
"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one! -- I am the 99%"
Of course, corporations are executed, mercilessly, all the time: it is called Chapter 7 (liquidation).

At times, when dealing with people, logic is just irrelevant. In this case, in my opinion, the Occupy crowd is not expressing a legal theory about corporations; they are expressing emotional frustration with life. If conservatives/libertarians are going to respond effectively to their points, we need to address the emotion and not the logic.

PREVIOUSLY on the Occupy Wall Street movement:
Occupy Wall Street analyzes the Greek debt problem
"Occupy CPAC" protesters paid $60/day
Occupy Portland mob smashes windows
Occupy Portland blocks bridge, causes massive traffic jam
Occupy Oakland: the devolution
Occupy Portland explains its rape policy
News media report on terrorists and patriots
Occupy Portland protester loses it in front of KGW news
Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy
A Visit to Occupy San Francisco: photo essay
Occupy Oakland and Marxism: a video

Friday, February 17, 2012

Tea Party Protests Obama in San Francisco

San Francisco's Nob Hill was home to many of the famous 19th century "robber barons," the crony capitalists of their day. So it is natural that Pres. Obama would hold fundraisers there. Thursday (yesterday) afternoon, he was at the Marc Hopkins Hotel, a luxury hotel named after a railroad robber baron. In the evening he moved to Nob Hill Masonic Center. The San Francisco Police allowed protesters to assemble along the opposite side of California Street with one section for the Tea Party and one for left-wingers. Hundreds arrived for the Tea Party, seen here standing in front of Grace Cathedral:Here is another view of the Tea Partiers:
The nun, shown above checking text messages on her cell phone, was among those outraged by Obama's decision to require churches to provide abortifacients to their employees.

Good liberals were, of course, incensed that Gov. Brewer would have the audacity to wag her finger at Obama last month. At the San Francisco Weekly, one local reporter, Erin Sherbert, responded with a piece headlined:
Obama Coming to San Francisco, Where Nobody Will Wag Their Fingers in His Face
Naturally, the SF Bay Area Patriots responded by making the theme for this rally to be "wag your finger" at Obama. The red plastic fingers seen below were labeled "Nobama":
The crowd on the Tea Party side, as seen above, was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. The left/liberal/occupy side of the gates was less well attended:
There was a brief flurry of activity on the left side when the pro-marijuana protesters arrived:
By the smell of it, they had been partying before hand. They left not long after they arrived. One can only speculate that, suffering from a case of the munchies, they had to go in search of food.

The occupy group was represented, for example, by this man:
Lastly, this woman, from the Tea Party side, tells Obama to "keep your (lack of) morality off my church":
This protest was organized by the San Francisco Bay Area Patriots and supported by the North Bay Patriots (Marin County) and MyLiberty (San Mateo County).

For many more photos of this event, see Fund47.

Welcome to readers of GatewayPundit, Instapundit, FoxNewsNation, DailyPundit, MelanieMorgan, TheWeepingEagle, IHateTheMedia, Human Events, RCFox, A Shepherd's Voice, AskMarion, The Crawdad Hole, 2012NevadaCounty, The Clue Meter, AmericanPatriots, KnowledgeCreatesPower, CornHusker4Palin, and Gig Harbor Scene.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Racism hypocrisy

Val Prieto writes (hat tip: Instapundit):

So, leftist WaPo Columnist Dana Milbank "inadvertently" mocks latinos by stating "The Chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos." And subsequently Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina tweets that this is "the line of the day" and the twitterverse is afire. Lots of Hispanic folks on the right side of the aisle are insulted by not just the insensitivity of the original remark, but the supporting tweet by none other the the President's Campaign manger.

I can understand why some of us would be insulted. The remarks are definitely insensitive. But there are two things which insult me even more than these statements.

First, the abject hypocrisy of the left, with their holier than thou bullshit with regards to racial and ethnic issues, who have, whether through silence or excuses, defended Milbank and Messina.

Second, and most importantly, the silence from most of our "liberal" Latino brothers and sisters, who have almost collectively stuck their tails between their legs and hidden in a corner and ignored these blatant acts of racial discrimination. As if ignoring this will make it any less egregious or any less insulting or any less real.

Alinsky teaches (PDF) that:
"The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution."
In this case, that means that a perceived racial insult is the issue only when it is useful for attacking Republicans.

Logical consistency is important to conservatives/libertarians. The left has no such limitation.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin explains it this way:
The P.C. police, as always, are P.C. only when it’s P.E. — politically expedient.
PREVIOUSLY on the subject of liberal hypocrisy:
A liberal's core beliefs are surprisingly malleable
Private equity firm hypocrisy at the Obama campaign
Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy
President Obama preaches Tolerance
Dem attack against lobbyists is led by a Dem lobbyist
Minimum wage and hypocrisy
UN humanitarian hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrisy at the UN Climate Change conference
Dems, taxes, and hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrite of the day: movie director James Cameron
Liberal gay bashing
Poster child hypocrisy
Eco-hypocrisy: Supermodel Gisele and Prince Charles
Eco-hypocrisy: Barack Obama
Eco-hypocrisy: Nancy Pelosi
The ever-increasing energy use of Al Gore's mansion
With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming
Edwards' hypocrisy on the poor
HuffPost blogger projects enviro-hypocrisy

Occupy Wall Street analyzes the Greek debt problem

At OccupyWallStreet.Org, they are outraged by the unpopular austerity measures being forced on the Greek government:
Wages are to be cut by more than 20 percent, thousands of civil servants will be laid off, and vital social programs will be severely cut. These laws punish the Greek 99% to repay the debts of the ruling class. The government has sold out sovereignty, the poor, and the working class in the interest of foreign creditors and the demands of the 1%. Bankers continue to make millions and corporations pay fewer taxes. The rest of society, having done nothing wrong, is being punished for the failures of the market. [Emph. added]
Is Greece bankrupt because of "the debts of the ruling class"? No. It is bankrupt because of the debts of the Greek government. What has the Greek government been spending its money on? You can find the data (in English fortunately) at the Greek Ministry of Finance. Their 2009 budget is here (PDF). On page 10, there is a helpful pie chart (click on the chart to enlarge):

Greece is bankrupt because it has been spending money that it doesn't have on "health and social policy," "education," and all the other things that left-wing governments spend money on. It is bankrupt because it is a socialist government and it has run out of "other people's money" to spend.

Occupy Wall Street is too busy hating on the "1%" to realize that Greece's problems were caused by politicians buying votes from the "99%".

Social justice defined

From Thomas Sowell:
What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Obama first term debt: $70,000 per family

At the Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Anderson examines Pres. Obama's newly released budget
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion — or $5,170,000,000,000.00.

To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that works out to just over $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.

I doubt that very many voters would think that they have received $70.000 in value from Obama's deficit spending.  Add to that that his deficits bring the day of reckoning on Social Security and Medicare ever closer and the pain that Obamanomics will cause is clear to see.

The above assumes that Obama's budget numbers are honest which, in all likelihood, they are not.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Samuel L. Jackson explains how to vote

Not many Democrats feel this free to admit that they are racist (from the NY Post):
Samuel L. Jackson said he voted for President Obama because of his color: “I voted for Barack because he was black. ’Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them,” the actor says in an outspoken interview in the March issue of Ebony. Jackson sounds off on his feelings for Obama to writer Kevin Powell, saying: “That’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama’s] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me. In the end, he’s a politician. I just hoped he would do some of what he said he was gonna do. I know politicians say [bleep]; they lie. ’Cuz they want to get elected.” Repeatedly using the N-word, Jackson added that Obama’s philosophical presence had been universally appealing: “When it comes down to it, they wouldn’t have elected a [bleep]. Because, what’s a [bleep]? A [bleep] is scary. Obama ain’t scary at all. [Bleeps] don’t have beers at the White House. [Bleeps] don’t let some white dude, while you in the middle of a speech, call [him] a liar. A [bleep] would have stopped the meeting right there and said, ‘Who the [bleep] said that?’ I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years, ’cuz he ain’t gotta worry about getting re-elected.”
PREVIOUSLY on the subject of liberals' obsession with group identity:
For liberals, everything is about race, gender, or class
Identity group politics in dispute
Dem Gov says Dem primary voters are sexist and racist
What is the victim status of your identity group?
Dems urged to vote their gender
Liberal logic of group identity

Obama to fund Islamist extremism

Reuters reports:
The White House announced plans on Monday to help "Arab Spring" countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years -- $1.3 billion -- despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

Wherever there are enemies to comfort or allies to alienate, Obama will be there.

Related: Obama is paying for Taliban office in Qatar.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of President Obama's foreign policy problems:
Amateur hour at the White House
Alienating allies, II
Obama's go-it-alone foreign policy
Obama abandons Eastern Europe
Appeasing enemies
Attacking your allies
Dissing an ally
Stalinists strongly approve of Obama.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Why conservatives don't trust Romney

Byron York reviews Gov. Romney's speech to CPAC:
He began by joking that he never read Burke or Hayek in college.  "When I was your age, you could have told me they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers," Romney told the students in the crowd.  Instead, Romney said, "My path to conservatism came from my family, my faith, and my life's work."
While liberalism is an emotion, conservatism is a philosophy.  A person who does not appreciate philosophy will not reliably distinguish between approaches to governing which history has shown to succeed and those which are merely politically convenient at the moment.  Romney may have, by Massachusetts' standards at least, conservative instincts.  But, he will never be a conservative.

Medicare spent $2.2 million on penis enlargers

AP reports:
An Illinois man was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in Rhode Island to more than three years in prison for shipping unwanted penis enlargers to diabetes patients as part of a larger fraud scheme that prosecutors say bilked $2.2 million from Medicare over four years.
The fraudster, Gary Winner, bought toys at adult stores for as little as $26 each, repackaged them with information sheets claiming that they helped "bladder control, urinary flow and prostate comfort," and then charged Medicare an average of $284 each. The government spent $2.2 million on the devices before someone discovered a problem.

Soon, the government will be running your healthcare too.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Whitney Houston, RIP

While others cover Whitney Houston's amazing voice and her contribution to pop music, I will just note here that she was a victim of left-wing racism: because her singing appealed to a broad audience, she was accused of not being "black enough." The AP reports:

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like [Aretha] Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them." [Emph. added]

Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!

The online newsmagazine Gawker reports that conservatives are racists:

The reporter writes that he "can't understand the lyrics" but that doesn't stop him from hurling accusations of racism.

The video in questions was done by comedian Steven Crowder working with Chris Loesch. Steven Crowder, in revolutionary garb, points to his pants as he uses the word "knickers":

As the election approaches this fall, we can expect the MSM to produce an unending stream of such baseless accusations of racism.

Hat tip: Instapundit and BigJournalism.

The dark ages v. civilization

Writing in Ynet news last December, Guy Bechor describes an under-reported event:
Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East.

The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East, based on the work of generations of western researchers. Most of the artifacts were lost forever, burned or looted.

In the West, it is easy to assume to that every values knowledge and civilization and the benefits thereof. It is not so.

Friday, February 10, 2012

"Occupy CPAC" protesters paid $60/day

Michelle Fields at the Daily Caller interviewed an Occupy CPAC protester. He explained that Sheet Metal Workers Local 100 offered unemployed union members $60 to protest at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The protesters didn't know what CPAC was.

Hat tip: Instapundit, National Review, and TheCollegeFix.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

A liberal's core beliefs are surprisingly malleable

Prof. Glenn Reynolds writes:
CHANGE: Oh my: Majorities of liberal Democrats now support drone strikes, keeping Gitmo open.

It’s as if all that international-law, humanitarian, have-you-no-decency crap was just . . . crap. And partisan crap at that.

No secret, but nice to make it clear. To all the people who were yammering about this in 2007-2008: Don’t waste my time in the future. Or yours.

For liberals, it is important to express self-righteous moral indignation. Their feeling of moral superiority is to be taken seriously. The underlying issue is irrelevant.

Related: Michael Walsh writes: "One of the problems the Right consistently has in dealing with the Left is its touching credulity in their stated motives, instead of assessing their genuine objectives."

See also Ace of Spades' essay on moral indignation, racism, and liberal hypocrisy.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Occupy Portland mob smashes windows

(Language warning: liberals speaking)

Chants include "no justice, no peace, fu*k the police!," "all cops are bastards, I see a pig," and "hey, hey, ho, ho, America has got to go!"

The video catches a liberal smashing the window of the Genoa Restaurant. Later, a car window is smashed. Another member of the mob pulls trash cans to the street and dumps them.

Monday, February 06, 2012

How liberalism damages the economy

The city of San Francisco has a lot of advantages, principally climate and beautiful geography. If you are a would-be business owner who wants to bring jobs and services to the city, SF's biggest disadvantage is the city government. The New York Times reviews one woman's effort to open an ice cream shop in beautiful San Francisco:
Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.

“It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”

Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.

Hat tip: Instapundit and BoingBoing.

The Kennedy Style

Mimi Alford, a teenage mistress of President Kennedy, describes partying with him at Bing Crosby's desert ranch:
“I was sitting next to him in the living room when a handful of yellow capsules — most likely amyl nitrate, commonly known as poppers — was offered up by one of the guests. The president asked me if I wanted to try the drug, which stimulated the heart but also purportedly enhanced sex. I said no, but he just went ahead and popped the capsule and held it under my nose.”

He didn’t try it himself.

“This was a new sensation, and it frightened me,” Mimi recalls. “I panicked and ran crying from the room.”

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Conservatives do it better

While I was standing in a TEA Party in San Francisco in October 2009, a liberal started a conversation with me. In addition to defending government medicine, he told me repeatedly that liberals have better sex than conservatives. As evidence of his sexual prowess, he explained that he has himself checked once a month for venereal diseases.

Now, Investor's Business Daily reports on a newly released Match.com survey about sex and political affiliation:

The finding: Republicans have the highest rate of orgasm of any group in the report. Especially conservative Republicans. No wonder those tea partiers always look so happy.

In fact, a majority of self-identified conservatives reported that during sex they reach orgasm just about every single time. . . . .

Such a high conservative orgasm rate compares with only 40% reported success for liberal Democrats who, being liberal, talk openly forever about subjects like sex to affirm their liberality.

That makes sense. Certainly, if you had good sex, you wouldn't stand on street corners bragging to strangers about how frequently you test yourself for VD.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Experience is our most valuable teacher, but only if we are willing to learn from it

In the (UK) Telegraph, Janet Daley writes:
The failure of communism should have been, after all, not just a turning point in geo-political power – the ending of the Cold War and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact – but in modern thinking about the state and its relationship to the economy, about collectivism vs individualism, and about public vs private power. Where was the discussion, the trenchant analysis, or the fundamental debate about how and why the collectivist solutions failed, which should have been so pervasive that it would have percolated down from the educated classes to the bright 18-year-olds? Fascism is so thoroughly (and, of course, rightly) repudiated that even the use of the word as a casual slur is considered slanderous, while communism, which enslaved more people for longer (and also committed mass murder), is regarded with almost sentimental condescension.
So why do so many of the world's leaders and thinkers behave as if there were no lessons to learn from the failures of the 20th century?  With over a hundred million people having died as a result of national socialism and international socialism, don't we owe it to them to learn from their sacrifice?

The most common answer that I hear from liberals is that socialism failed because "the wrong people were in charge."  This, of course,  misses the point: in any system involving human beings, there will always be times when the "wrong people" are in charge.  Any sensible system  should be designed to withstand that.  As documented by the Federalist Papers, the US Constitution was drafted by people who understood this well.  Liberals, leftists, socialists, and communists have never understood this or even acknowledged it as a legitimate topic for discussion.  John Hinderaker explains:
[Leftism] has always been based, for the most part, on hate and envy. So when Communism was conclusively proved to be a failure, leftists (including not only leftists in politics, but more important, leftists in the media and in academia) didn’t change their minds or admit their mistake. For in their eyes, while there may have been disappointment, there was no mistake. Their resentments and hatreds remained.
Liberalism is not a philosophy.  It is an emotion.

Environmentalism vs. Anti-semitism

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel is offering to connect 22 Palestinian villages to its sewage pipe and water treatment system.   Currently, their sewage flows into the aquifer and surface streams.  All but one of the villages refused.  Israel had hoped "that donor countries would agree to only
continue giving the villages financial support if they agree to connect to the
sewage pipeline" but they won't help either.  Apparently, anti-semitism is a much stronger force than environmentalism.

More here.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

How many private sector jobs were created?

Everyone is excited about the new employment numbers and the increase of 243,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January.  Does that mean that there are 243,000 more jobs now?  Not actually.  Joyn Crudele at the NY Post explains:
Those 243,000 jobs are the total after seasonal adjustments.

The question you should be asking is, what’s the un-tampered-with number before the adjustment?

Glad you asked. The Labor Department reported a loss of 2,689,000 jobs in January.

Did you catch that? Because the Labor Dept. expected a loss of nearly 3 million jobs but only 2.7 million jobs were lost, it reports a job gain. Now, "seasonal adjustments" are, in principle, a good thing.  When you allow for how the running "seasonal adjustments" have never been very accurate, the adjusted number has little meaning.

Oakland riots continue

The "Occupy Oakland" crowd again battled police earlier this week. The protesters throw rocks and bottles. The police respond with rubber bullets, tear gas, and smoke bombs. This video was taken January 28 by an Occupy sympathizer:

The videographer, "brettnchis," explains that the protesters were trying "to take the Henry J Kaiser building" and, in the process, tore down a fence. Estimates are that the Occupy protests have cost the city of Oakland over $3 million.

It is just like the TEA party, right?

PREVIOUSLY on the Occupy Wall Street movement:
Occupy Portland blocks bridge, causes massive traffic jam
Occupy Oakland: the devolution
Occupy Portland explains its rape policy
News media report on terrorists and patriots
Occupy Portland protester loses it in front of KGW news
Occupy Portland and Michael Moore's hypocrisy
A Visit to Occupy San Francisco: photo essay
Occupy Oakland and Marxism: a video

Are public schools succeeding?

Austin interviews students at a Washington State high school. Sample:
Question: "Do you know the vice president of The United States?"

Answer: "I don't know who it it's, it's, it's somebody....Bin Ladin."
Watch also as the students expound on how many states there are in the US. Rather than cry, try to laugh:

Public schools: your tax dollars at work.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
Paradox: student test scores improve after school budgets are cut
The great minds of the Ivy League
Study: teacher's unions are bad for education
Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
Teaching self-esteem backfires
Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
LA pays teachers not to teach
What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
Obama promises to throw money at schools
How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Environmentalism inspires more murders

The International Business Times reports:
A 15-year-old boy from Hong Kong stabbed his mother and sister to death because he apparently believed that there were way too many people in the world, and that fewer people would be more environment-friendly, the South China Morning Post reported.
How many more will have to die for this failed ideology?

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Updating the Declaration's list of grievances

The US revolution was inspired by England's abuse of power and the US Declaration of Independence contains a list of such grievances. How do they compare with the abuses of power by the current Federal government and by Pres. Obama's administration in particular?

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

Update: Considering Obamacare and new punitive "environmental" regulations, the original text holds today.

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

Update: "For unnecessarily delaying approval Colombia, Panama, and Korea Free Trade Agreements."

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

Update: "For depriving us in many cases of the benefit of trial or even judicial review of governmental confiscations of land." [Think Sackett v. EPA]

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

Update: Think Obamacare and the Obama administration's various attacks on religion (such as on religious employment and requiring churches to pay for abortions) and no change to the original text is needed.

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

Update: "For arbitrarily declaring the US Senate in recess so that he could appoint unpopular administrators to positions of unprecedented power."

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

Update: "He has provided aid and comfort to domestic insurrectionist ["Occupy Wall Street"] and endeavoured to provide arms to foreign drug cartels who are known for merciless slaughter of Americans and foreigners alike."

Dem. Rep. says Rep. Allen West resembles a hyena

After that racist insult, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) also claims Rep. Allen West (R-FL) is "not representative of the African-American community" and, therefore, what West says "is of little or no consequence."

What does it mean to "represent your race"? Is it now fair game in the liberal playbook to compare African-Americans to hyenas?

PREVIOUSLY on racism:
Is it racist to require a photo ID to buy drain cleaner?
California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
Occupy Portland protesters hurl racist taunts an African American
Democrat: "Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men"
The subtleties of White Privilege
Racist cupcakes
Is witch doctor image racist?
Obama ally: "I hate white people...."
“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."
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