Maggie's Farm

Almost 20 years ago I bought my expensive recliner-from-heaven. I’m almost always in it to watch the 19-inch 30-year old TV in my office.  (I only go into the other room to watch thunderous soundtrack action movies on the 60-inch TV hooked up to speakers that rock the house. The house actually vibrated when I cranked up Godzilla stomping through NYC.)

Now I’ve got a new hero, and possible hobby.

The Duluth [Minnesota] News Tribune reports:

A Proctor man driving a motorized La-Z-Boy lounge chair hit a parked vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 62, pleaded guilty Monday in St. Louis County District Court to DWI in connection with the Aug. 31, 2008, incident in Proctor. There were no injuries.

According to the criminal complaint, Anderson drove his motorized chair into a vehicle parked near a Proctor bar. Anderson told police he was traveling from the Keyboard Lounge after consuming approximately eight or nine beers. His blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit to drive.

Anderson claimed he was driving the chair fine until a woman jumped on it and knocked the chair off course. He has one prior DWI conviction. He couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Proctor Deputy Police Chief Troy Foucault said the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. It has a stereo, cup holders and other custom options, including different power levels.

A National Hot Rod Racing Association sticker is posted on the chair’s head rest. The chair had a small steering wheel, about a third of the size of a golf cart’s, coming straight up from the middle of the La-Z-Boy.

Proctor City Prosecutor Ronald Envall said he charged Anderson under the portion of Minnesota law that makes it a crime to operate a self-propelled motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol or drugs. He declined further comment.

Anderson had to forfeit his motorized chair to Proctor police, who plan to auction it with other forfeited items, Foucault said.

This is the motorized La-Z-Boy chair that Dennis Anderson of Proctor was operating when he hit a parked vehicle in 2008. Anderson pleaded guilty to a DWI charge on Monday. (Submitted photo)

Here’s another photo I found of this hobby.

Just think of the pit groupies to co-enjoy this sport!

A Republican legislation-watcher emails this update on Democrats' arm-twisting:

Over the course of the debate on health care reform, a troubling pattern has emerged among the proponents of the various expensive proposals being pushed by the White House and congressional Democrats: a string of reports about strong-arm tactics being used against those who might dissent from, or even offer criticism of, Democrats’ health reform plans.  Senate Democrats in particular seem to be involved in these stories, and today it’s been revealed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not been shy in this regard, either.

According to a report in The Hill, “The White House and Democratic leaders are offering doctors a deal: They’ll freeze cuts in Medicare payments to doctors in exchange for doctors’ support of healthcare reform. At a meeting on Capitol Hill last week with nearly a dozen doctors groups, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the Senate would take up separate legislation to halt scheduled Medicare cuts in doctor payments over the next 10 years. In return, Reid made it clear that he expected their support for the broader healthcare bill, according to four sources in the meeting.” Further, The Hill reports, “‘They said they’re going to need our help in getting healthcare reform over the goal line and they expect our support,’ said a participant who represents doctors. ‘Reid, Baucus and Dodd. All three said the same thing: They want and expect our support.’”

Today’s news comes in the wake of a push from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to remove anti-trust exemptions for health insurers, which came right after health insurers began pointing to a study they commissioned showing that insurance premiums would increase under a proposal from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). Politico reported at the time, “Schumer’s push comes on the heels of a controversial industry-sponsored report released over the weekend that makes the case that insurance premiums will go up by as much as $4,000 per family by 2019 if the Senate Finance Committee legislation is signed into law. The release of that report by the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans sparked angry blowback from Democrats in both chambers.”

Prior to that, Baucus called in the Obama administration to slap a gag order on the insurer Humana, forbidding it and other companies from communicating about cuts to Medicare Advantage benefits that would result from some of the Democrat health care proposals. Stunningly, even The New York Times editorial page found fault with what it called a “ham-handed attempt to stop health insurers from warning buyers of private Medicare Advantage plans . . . .” The NYT writes, “The administration stepped in after Senator Max Baucus . . . charged that the industry was engaging in unfair scare tactics. But an inquiry by the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to stretch facts to the breaking point to make a weak case that the insurers were doing anything improper.”

And that followed a summer of strong-arm tactics from Baucus and others, as Brian Faughnan previously documented. These actions included Baucus staffers “pressuring hospitals and insurers to follow the lead of the pharmaceutical industry and pony up to help pay for health reform,” pressuring unions to drop ads criticizing Democrats for plans to tax insurance benefits, and even warning lobbyists not to attend meetings with Republicans about health care. A Democrat lobbyist said he was told such a meeting would “be viewed as a hostile act.”

What is it about health care reform that makes Democrats think they need to resort to such tactics as gag orders, strong-arming, and back room deals? Certainly, Americans remain skeptical of Democrat proposals on a trillion dollar experiment that we know will raise premiums, raise taxes, and cut Medicare. Perhaps Democrats would be better served addressing these fundamental flaws in their bills, instead of resorting to pressure tactics designed to discourage criticism.

It’s time for Jimmy Carter to take on Barack Obama on the issue of human rights.  I don’t expect that to happen but it is clearly called for.  Even Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve for Barack Obama to be called the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.  Barack Obama is worse.

I often surprise critics of Jimmy Carter’s presidency by reminding them he returned US foreign policy to an emphasis on human rights, and that laid a foundation for Ronald Reagan’s successes in reaffirming American dedication and actions to support those who  fought to stay freer and to ultimately dismantle the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.

Skipping Carter’s own excesses of idealism and grave mistakes in executing foreign policy, which led to many considering his presidency a disaster and voters rejecting him in 1980, and his descent into outright extremism since, read Jimmy Carter’s commencement speech at Notre Dame in 1977, for example.

I believe we can have a foreign policy that is democratic, that is based on fundamental values, and that uses power and influence, which we have, for humane purposes. We can also have a foreign policy that the American people both support and, for a change, know about and understand.

I have a quiet confidence in our own political system. Because we know that democracy works, we can reject the arguments of those rulers who deny human rights to their people….

First, we have reaffirmed America’s commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. In ancestry, religion, color, place of origin, and cultural background, we Americans are as diverse a nation as the world has even seen. No common mystique of blood or soil unites us. What draws us together, perhaps more than anything else, is a belief in human freedom. We want the world to know that our Nation stands for more than financial prosperity….

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

Nonetheless, we can already see dramatic, worldwide advances in the protection of the individual from the arbitrary power of the state. For us to ignore this trend would be to lose influence and moral authority in the world. To lead it will be to regain the moral stature that we once had.

The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous. I believe we are strong and influential and prosperous because we are free.

Throughout the world today, in free nations and in totalitarian countries as well, there is a preoccupation with the subject of human freedom, human rights. And I believe it is incumbent on us in this country to keep that discussion, that debate, that contention alive. No other country is as well-qualified as we to set an example. We have our own shortcomings and faults, and we should strive constantly and with courage to make sure that we are legitimately proud of what we have.

Compare that to Barack Obama’s virtual abandonment of human rights and to any pride in a generation of costly and brave resistance to the Soviet Union, and at least to most others who trampled human rights who weren’t necessary to that primary mission during the Cold War.

Brett Stephens summarizes Barack Obama’s abandonments, in China, Sudan, Iran, Burma, and now not even attending Germany’s celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, “a high-water mark in the march of human freedom.”  Obama’s dwindling defenders say he looks forward, not back, or that his vision of a humble US in harmony with other nations will encourage those hostile to be more cooperative.  So far, there’s been exactly the opposite result, as those determined to preserve and extend their despotism and influence are encouraged by US reticence and retreat-after-retreat from Obama’s prior pledges to be firm and resolute.  Stephens concludes:

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.

In the early days of the Cold War it was the moral courage of stout liberals, indeed many being former allies of socialism or communism, who defined the stark difference between the West’s essential core virtue and worth against those who continued to defend or kowtow to its enemies.  These men and women of integrity and grit were my early mentors, and led the free world's resistance to tyranny and repression.

Again, it is time for those with a sincere belief in their primary humanist motivations to stand and dispute the wayward Obama and those who are misled.

An example is the founder and former 20-year president of Human Rights Watch, critical of HRW’s one-sided myopia regarding the Middle East, who writes:

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies….

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

Obama isn’t about to listen to conservative critics, indeed he seeks to stifle them.  Perhaps he and his acolytes inexperienced in the great moral battles and sacrifices of the Cold War might listen to allies who know better.  These former liberal leaders owe that to their own integrity and legacy, or else cooperate in its demise.