Thursday, August 6. 2009
The New York Times continues its blind adoration of the Obamas in featuring the trip by Michelle and the girls to a local Washington, D.C. hamburger restaurant. Funny that the NYT doesn’t mention the contradiction to the president’s program for the rest of us, to curb childhood obesity. Another example of what’s supposedly good for us gooses is not good for that gander. We at Maggies Farm love good meats, but don't care for fatheads.
First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, stepped out of the Executive Mansion on Thursday for a hearty lunch of burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes at Good Stuff Eatery, a restaurant near Capitol Hill. It was Mrs. Obama’s second trip to the restaurant – she dined there in May — and a first for her girls.
The restaurant, which specializes in burgers, served the first family cheeseburgers and its President Obama burger, which comes with horseradish mayo, red onion marmalade, crumbled blue cheese and bacon. (Several members of Mrs. Obama’s staff also joined the Obamas for lunch.)
They also sipped milkshakes – including vanilla, chocolate, toasted marshmallow and the decadent Milky Way malt (with butterscotch, hot fudge, malt balls, custard and whipped cream.)
Here’s a photo of the serving. (Note the greasy fries and napkin.)
Apparently, Michelle didn’t get the message from hubby that reducing the widespread (pun intended) obesity problem among children is a key goal of the president’s program for America. As the Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late July:
“President Obama and I are committed to delivering a health care system that provides all Americans with better quality and lower costs. And fighting obesity is at the heart of both of these goals,” Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a conference at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.
With obesity reduction as the main goal, Sebelius said the Obama administration will “require” health insurance plans to cover some weight loss programs.
Congress appropriated $1 billion for prevention and wellness as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus law). On Tuesday, Sebelius announced that most of the money will be spent on a prevention initiative developed by the CDC and the Office of Public Health and Science.
“We aren’t ready to officially announce this initiative, but we expect that a significant amount of the money will go to help states and communities attack obesity and other public health challenges,” Sebelius said in remarks prepared for a CDC-sponsored “Weight of the Nation” conference.
“Reducing obesity -- especially for children -- would be one of the biggest steps we could take towards this better health future.”
In one of President Obama’s first acts in office he signed the expanded SCHIP legislation, saying, "We’ll have made the single largest investment in prevention and wellness in history – tackling problems like smoking and obesity, and helping people live longer, healthier lives…. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task."
It seems that reviews of the restaurant available on the first page of a web search by its name reveals how unhealthy the menu, if the NYTs cared to look. A typical comment: “I felt like a huge greaseball after eating my dinner. Like oil ooozed out of my skinpores.”
President Obama should speak with his wife before siccing his paid labor goons (an example here from Michelle Malkin, and more at Gateway Pundit) on everyday Americans rebelling against his false pieties.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin steers us to this: “Fellow patrons [at the restaurant] had their cellphones temporarily confiscated to prevent pictures from being taken” of the Obamas’ healthy meal of hamburger hypocrisy, nor any aeoli sauce dripping on Michelle’s $540 Lanvin designer sneakers, if worn to other places than food banks for the poor (just to motivate them to work harder, of course).
Dems call on the tough guys to deal with the Brooks Brothers mob. Isn't it called "astroturfing" when you bus in organized groups - and pay them for a day's work?
Now I see why the DNC falsely accused the protesters and questioners yesterday - and again today. It was to provide some cover for their astroturf plans. They will bus in their ACORN geniuses too (who are notably supported by billions in government funds) along with the union thugs.
Truth is, those who have been showing up in the Town Halls thus far have been regular people who are worried about government plans, and who have gotten to the meetings under their own steam and without a day's pay.
 We all know well that a collection of lies, deceptions, half-truths, fear, and cynical manipulation are what passes for a soul in many politicians.
Still, the bald-faced lying about the Dem health scheme has reached new lows.
1. Pelosi claims protesters are carrying swastikas. They are? What a jackass.
2. Did you notice that, just like with Global Warming, it's not Health Care Reform this week. Now it's Health Insurance Reform. Less scary, I guess, but the same bill.
3. The Director of the DNC included this assertion in his email about dealing with the "mobs":
These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.
That is 100% baloney.
4. Senator accuses WH of assembling an enemies list.
5. The coming middle-class tax hikes for medical coverage. Henninger:
Every policy wonk in America may have known this was always an everybody-into-the-pool proposal, and Mr. Obama has talked himself blue saying people could stay with the insurance they’ve got or the doctor they’ve got, “if you’re happy with that” and don’t like the public option.
A lot of people simply don’t believe this. How come? White House adviser David Axelrod said this week, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.” It could be they’ve already thought about that. For many people, the first six Obama months already have been an unsettling Dantesque tour through levels of government “help” they never knew existed.
Rove comments re those taxes:
The House version of Mr. Obama’s health-care—excuse me, “health-insurance”—reform already has four taxes that will largely be paid by people making less than $250,000 a year. There’s $8.2 billion in taxes for using health savings accounts and other tax-free medical savings vehicles to purchase over-the-counter drugs. There’s an 8% tax on employers who don’t offer insurance: The Congressional Budget Office says workers in those businesses would pay the $163 billion cost via lost wages.
There’s a 2.5% “Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable Health Care Coverage” in the House bill that applies to people who either don’t have insurance or whose policies the government deems inadequate. Finally, there’s a $2 billion “Comparative Effectiveness Research Tax” on all private and “public option” insurance policies.
If some version of ObamaCare is passed, the president will break his tax pledge several more times while adding trillions to the deficit, dismantling the best elements of our health-care system and slashing Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.
The level of hysteria, it is clear to me, comes from the rare opportunity for the Left to nationalize - and thus to politicize - a giant sector of the economy, and one which is closest to peoples' hearts. If they blow it again, the chance may not return for another 20 years. And yet they have already blown it, because their bill is an atrocity.
 Over-tax a city, and over-union an industry - and this is what you get. Detroit's feral houses.
Global warming skepticism is now defined as a psychological ailment. Sheesh.
Sad days at the University of Texas
Racism redefined. Pajamas. They have to re-define it - or admit that racism is a thing of the past.
The mythology of cash for clunkers. Furthermore, it increases the prices of used cars.
No kidding. Reuters:
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found 52 percent of voters disapprove of Obama's handling of healthcare while 39 percent approve. That was a shift from 46 percent approval against 42 percent disapproval in a July 1 survey.
Gotta pass it before anybody knows what's in it.
Meanwhile, the DNC released an ad "Enough of the Mob." That mob would be me. A bit surprising, but the mobs are also out in Massachusetts. (Confession: Maggie's Farm is paid millions by the Insurance Cartel and the RNC to oppose Socialism. We do it for the $.)
The resistance grows. Am Thinker. It begins:
Spontaneous, uncoordinated, passionate -- citizen resistance to Obama socialism grows by the day.
America is no stranger to resistance. The nation was born from citizen resistance that had mixed support among the colonists. About one in five was loyal to the King. Some of the bitterest fighting in the American Revolution was between Loyalists and Patriots. And all of it was between Americans in the Civil War. We know how to resist.
Dino:
Everything about Obamacare seems to have a taint of dishonesty. The true objectives of its proponents are concealed for the most part. And Frank’s explanation for how it can be financed is ludicrous. Heaven help us!
Never in the MSM: Obamacare will replace Medicare
Honoring the disgusting Mary Robinson
Carbon footprints are for the little people
The O tells ACORN to argue with their neighbors and to get in peoples' faces. Nice.
Americans need to sacrifice more for the common good. At Politico. So my 50% to the Feds and New York isn't enough? Not to mention my charity contributions...
Insty:
NO FEARMONGERING HERE! New DNC ad: Mobs of right-wing lunatics want to feast on your flesh.
Plus this: “No need for outrage, though. Instead, celebrate the fact that even with a Democratic president, a filibuster-proof Congress, and the lure of ‘free’ ice cream in the form of socialized medicine, the left’s somehow managed to turn ObamaCare into a clusterfark of such epic proportions that their health-care message has now actually been reduced to ‘Don’t listen to the Republicans — they’re crazy.’”
Thank goodness we elected a “post-partisan” President!
 Via Protein:
If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop with the dissent and let us run your life.
Wednesday, August 5. 2009
Stanford University update, at Driscoll. This is all on their parents' hard-earned nickel, of course, but I suppose children must be children until reality makes them grow up.
Mandatory military service, as in Israel, might help, though.
 "Positive Psychology," an intellectual fad for the masses. These people talk about "happiness interventions." It's nuts, if you ask me, but I guess it attracts research grant money. Nobody has the wisdom to tell anyone else how to be happy, and anyone who purports to do so is a fool. A commenter to that article posted this:
A lifetime of happiness no man alive could bear it, it would be hell on earth. Bernard Shaw.
Happiness is nothing more than good health and bad memory. Albert Schweitzer
To be stupid, selfish and have a good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking all is lost. Flaubert
I have posted on the subject here and here and also our Do Americans expect too much from marriage? (and I still think happiness is a dumb subject. It's what I call "psycho-utopianism").
Funny how disparate posts can seem to come together. Our Sowell quote yesterday captured it: The universe, or reality, was not designed to make people happy. But if you are one of those people who view happiness as a sociological phenomenon, see neoneo today on dystopias.
I am more inclined to the negativity proposed in our link to Nyquist this morning. One quote from him:
Chapter 3 should be titled “The Virtue of Guilt.” If you haven’t done anything bad in recent weeks or months, consider what you presently have in mind. You are wicked by nature, so you are guilty by nature. Therefore, it is appropriate to feel guilty. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Don’t be slipshod and weak. Suck in your gut and make a new start. Guilt is the stick across your back sent to make you better. Is guilt unpleasant? It’s supposed to be, and it better be. Feel guilty often, and have plenty of regrets. People who have no regrets are dangerous. They will suck you in and suck you down.
I do not know much about what Psychologists do or study. I do know what Psychiatrists try to do, which is to relieve disability and unreasonable pain. That can be difficult enough. Worrying about "happiness" isn't my problem. I happen to be reasonably happy right now, but I will not be in ten minutes when I attack my pile of bills and paperwork.
Megan McA takes on Ezra Klein. America generates 90% of the new medicines for the world. There must be a reason for that. The reason is the mind-boggling creativity and inventiveness of free-market capitalism.
The famous Sokol essay was published in 1996. It was just blather, but the "adventurous" editors couldn't tell. Maybe "adventurous" is a euphemism for not knowing what you are doing.
 The Admin requests that all send the names of sites and organizations you wish to denounce to flag@whitehouse.gov. Enemies of The People?
Being a loyal ObamaMinion, obediently following the directions of our Great One, I am sending this email as requested to the White House to report naysayers. I have criticized the various plans for ObamaCare, even though I am not fully aware of all their details since their drafters have protected me from seeing their thousands of pages of tiny-type, thus shielding me and my eyes from strain and saving medical costs as promised. My decades of experience and earned credentials in health care are, obviously, brainwashing me from grasping the opportunity to pay more for less. I won’t name names of my fellow critics at Maggies Farm, with similar claims to expertise, who use pseudonyms to either hide that they are secretly receiving large stipends from lobbyists or that they really don’t exist and have spent years constructing elaborate covers. In full spirit of cooperation I must also inform on my wife, raised under state-directed health care in Europe, who refuses to wait months for treatment of her ailments as she was raised to and for not using cheaper outmoded medicines, instead quickly going to the doctor here and using more advanced drugs. Similarly, I must denounce my sons for asking whether I will be there for them even though I am an older Dad whose coming senior medical costs may be more expensive than a taxpayer rebate on trading in the old car I would leave for them so they can have a new one. Heil Obama!
Editor's note: Details on Health Care Snitches at Moonbattery. Should Maggie's be on the White House shit list? I doubt it: we're not important enuf. But we will try to keep the truth coming, as best we can.
Image from Wizbang, who finds it creepy. I wonder what's with all the ghosts, and also what's up with the merging of the medical caduceus with the Obama logo? Is Obama supposed to be my doctor now, or WTH?
 The smaller ones are best for indoors, but the larger helos are good outdoors, as long as it isn't too breezy.
Rechargable lipo batteries, with recharger.
Link here.
 Viking (whence Lucy image): "You got duped, America. Snookered, tricked, suckered, pwn3d."
Related from Ace: Reverse Reagan: Obama Will Blow Up the Deficit So Enormously Even Conservatives Will Beg Him to Raise Taxes, to Stave off Fiscal Ruin
Simple solution to jet lag. h/t, ?
The strange story of America's First Lady
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Appalling
Dynamite: The Power of Negative Thinking, from Nyquist.
Nutmeggers can form their own militias. Cool.
Those Russian subs are testing the O. They wanted to be detected.
Mea culpa: I used the cash for clunkers
Surber:
Six of the Top 10 sellers in the Cash For Clunkers program are Toyotas, Hyundais and Hondas. You know, cars made in America. They have plants here. In fact, Toyota makes engines in Buffalo, W.Va., that it was selling to Pontiac.
Grocery Reform:
His health care plan at least temporarily stymied in Congress, President Obama announced today that he would mount a 27-city tour to promote his new nutrition reform program, dubbed America’s Affordable Grocery Choices Act.
Guidance Counselor in Chief: The O wants everybody to go to college. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Woops, I almost forgot. It's not dumb: cheap money for college is political payback to academia.
Gore Effect:
Global temps have fallen .74F since Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006.
At IBD:
Could Obama have been elected president without promising not to raise taxes on the middle class? Would Americans have trusted him with the highest office in the land if he had proposed replacing all private health insurance with a Euro-style, socialistic, single-payer system?
As Ben Stein put it in his American Spectator diary, "The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust . . . wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith."
How to participate in the government medicine debate. Hewitt
Government medicine: How it becomes a political football. Medicaid in NY: City Journal
"I am home with a bad case of poison ivy, so I had time to read 500 pages of the health care bill."
A book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. Review at Front Page
Tuesday, August 4. 2009
Their problem, from Dem Blame Game Keeps Backfiring:
No one expects the Democrats to have a crystal ball, but they do expect them to have some basic answers. With something as big as changing a system that makes up 18 percent of our economy, it's hard to be precise-- because no one really knows exactly how it will unfold.
The most concrete answers, unfortunately for the Democrats, have come from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO warns that the House bill will cost over $1 trillion dollars for the first ten years, that it will only cover a fraction of the uninsured, and that taxes are likely to be raised across the board.
Those bombshells sounded an alarm across the country. Instead of being comforted, Americans became uneasy. They started showing up in droves at town hall meetings, calling their Congressman, paying more attention to the debate, and raising more questions.
Instead of trying to answer the questions on the merits, many Democrats lashed out at anyone who dared suggest the proposal wasn't ready for prime time. They started blaming others for their predicament.
The wealthier the country, the more people value their health. Call it narcissistic, or call it smart - it's what most people want - more life, and more functional life. Hence knee replacements and coronary artery stents for all. What's wrong with that? As everybody says, "All you have is your health."
Nobody wants their health - or their disease - in the hands of politicians.
Levin is our Patrick Henry, ferocious in his defence of freedom. h/t, Reaganite:
More of the Dem's health care bill, in its own words.
The MSM is reporting nothing that is in this bill, and simply parroting the Dem talking points. We gotta read it ourselves.
This classic Abbot and Costello routine (finally, somebody put it on youTube) reminds me of how the Left reacts if you say the word "Palin." Or "Bush," for that matter.
 A family farmer in Missouri defends "industrial agriculture" against critiques by non-farmers like Michael Pollan. One quote:
...farmers have reasons for their actions, and society should listen to them as we embark upon this reappraisal of our agricultural system. I use chemicals and diesel fuel to accomplish the tasks my grandfather used to do with sweat, and I use a computer instead of a lined notebook and a pencil, but I'm still farming the same land he did 80 years ago, and the fund of knowledge that our family has accumulated about our small part of Missouri is valuable. And everything I know and I have learned tells me this: we have to farm "industrially" to feed the world, and by using those "industrial" tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.
Much of the criticisms of modern agriculture are, in my view, sentimental rather than realistic. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, "organic" foods have no advantage whatsoever. Food is food, and we are blessed to have enough of it to get fat.
Related, at Reason: A food elitist strikes back
We have a couple of Pee Wee Hydrangeas in our compact front entry garden, which is part shade. They are the dwarf form of the big Oakleaf Hydrangea, and are not too easy to find.
I highly recommend them for shrub/perennial borders. Like everything else, they take several years to reach their full size (which is around 3'x3' or 4X4). Ours are in full bloom right now:
'Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.'
Anon.
The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem."
If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and-- more important-- ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.
Thomas Sowell, in today's Utopia vs Freedom
Dems losing the health care debate
Fun prank: The dissolving bikini
The spike in obesity, explained
Huge federal tax revenue drop. Solution? Raise taxes, of course. Says the WSJ today:
The Obama advisers are laying the groundwork for taxing the middle class while claiming the deficit made them do it.
An Ohio health care town hall.
I understand the Dem Plan B in our update. Regulate the insurance companies out of business, then the government can step in as savior. In Reagan's words:
If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Steyn:
In my weekend column, I write that government health care "redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists — to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs in every particular."
But don't worry, you'd be surprised how you get used to it.
Schumer: You will get new health care no matter what. Meaning, I suppose, whether you want it or not.
Thompson reports on a conference you probably missed:
...one can only tremble with regret at missing Richard Twine’s pithy contribution: Embodying Posthumanist Intersectionality and Resisting Transhumanist ‘Enhancement’ Through Feminist Veganism?
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