Friday, August 7. 2009
Via Driscoll:
“The government that’s big enough to give you free health care is big enough to tell you whether you can have a lemonade stand.”
India's population is 1.150 billion. It is predicted to surpass China's by 2030.
India has 600 billion farm animals.
 Toon via theo
How much time do men spend looking at women? Never, never try to tell me that women are not sex objects to men. And if they are more than that too, so much the better for all.
Cries of "Tyranny" in Tampa. Whether Left, Conservative, or Compromising, Americans never take crap from their politicians. A plea to push back when the union thugs show up on their busses.
And, as we predicted yesterday, invited unions fill Town Hall: regular folks locked out in St. Louis
Taking the dissident data base seriously: Powerline. I refuse to take it seriously. Steyn: See you in the database. Maloney: "I'm gonna report myself."
Sibelius to America: Don't sweat the details. Too complicated for the little people.
Bill Clinton had Hollywood arrange the reporting of his N Korea rescue. Why?
AARP has been co-opted by the Left for years. Now they do not want to hear from their members.
You can't make this stuff up: Cash for refrigerators. As for the Cash for Clunkers, read this and weep.
Just like the Russian subs off New York: Russian state security working with Hezbollah. Maybe a beer with Putin might encourage him to give up his nation's pursuit of their own power interests...
Hanson on Congress' new G-5s. 3 of them. God forbid members of Congress fly with the citizens. Citizens might want to talk to them.
Betsy begins:
If you ever doubted that teachers unions were interested mainly in protecting teacher salaries rather than what was best for the students, you should read these two examples of how the unions are trying to block worthy programs just because they are more concerned about their own paychecks.
Nothing wrong with teachers, or anybody else, wanting to make more money. Problem is that it's the peoples' involuntary money. I believe that public employee unions should be illegal (can you imagine the military unionizing?), and that nobody in a unionized job can be regarded as a professional. In fact, I believe that unions are pretty much obsolete today - a relic from the old and truly abusive company town industrial era when there was no effective labor market and minimal mobility.
Robin of Berkeley: How I became Conservative so fast.
Why the uproar? VHD:
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Prairie-Fire Anger. “The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling higher in generic surveys than are Democrats. Why the sudden uproar?”
From No Left Turns:
To the degree that this old post is on the mark, it suggests some of the reasons why things are getting tense just now. What if Americans are frustrated with the modern administrative/ bureacratic state, and the feeling that they can’t control it?
Re the death of John Hughes, an outtake from Ferris Bueller:
FERRIS:
My uncle went to Canada to protest the war, right? On the Fourth of July he was down with my aunt and he got drunk and told my Dad he felt guilty he didn't fight in Viet Nam. So I said, "What's the deal, Uncle Jeff? In wartime you want to be a pacifist and in peacetime you want to be a soldier. It took you twenty years to find out you don't believe in anything?"
(snaps his fingers)
Grounded. Just like that. Two weeks.
(pause)
Be careful when you deal with old hippies. They can be real touchy.
Powerline on energy:
If Russia, Cuba and others can drill off the coast of Florida, why can't we?
Thursday, August 6. 2009
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
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 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?
 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.
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?
Monday, August 3. 2009
Rep Doggett says the public protests about government medicine only reinforce his determination to pass it.
As Insty notes, it's happening all over the country, and I see no public push for this except from the politicians, who of course are wiser than us foolish little people who don't know what is best for us.
I opted out of being a Medicare "provider" several years ago. It saddened me, because I like working with seasoned citizens. However, they are now so accustomed to Medicare that the expectation that they should personally pay me for my time is anathema to many. Not to all, however. I have never refused to help a patient because of financial limits.
However, entitlements turn otherwise proud grey-haired adults into... what?
The last time I was accepting Medicare, they paid me around $70 for a lengthy office visit, less than my plumber charges me for the same thing. No disrespect for plumbers at all: I respect their skills very much.
But what really put me over the top was their paperwork. Being a sole practioner who donates 1/3 of her time to teaching and a charity clinic, I could never afford a trained "Coder" to do insurance forms for me for $65,000/year (or more).
Yet if I did the Medicare forms myself, I'd end up working for around $20/hr - spending more time on paperwork than seeing patients. Just check out the government manual for Medicare filing for doctors.
Bear in mind that a form-filling error is a potential felony. My plumber has no such problems.
 Newsweek tells us to get ready for polyamory
How to save the economy. It's simple.
The city of Altinum discovered.
Scientists revolt against the warmening propagandists. A growing movement.
Ellen Degeneris digs deep. Anchoress
The decline of Britain. It begins:
Even in the decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed military might, its extraordinary relationship with America—all these things helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now all that is changing ...
Middle class tax hikes planned
I notice that AVI has listed us as "very smart people." Wrong. We are mostly distinctly middlebrow and intellectually lazy. Sippican is "very smart people."
Althouse on the weather:
I love that we are "warned" not to feel optimistic. How twisted we've become! It's like people are rooting for disaster.
In which the O admits plan to eliminate private insurance. Nothing but a power grab. It's the old story: Invent crisis, grab power from the people. As Tiger says:
If you do not believe conservatives who say that the "public option" is a trojan horse for a single-payer health care system, you're always free to believe the liberals. Obviously that's the reason for it. There is no other even theoretical justification that makes sense.
Related, a reader sends an op-ed from the Greenwich (CT) Time. A quote from it:
(iii) Overall Limitation For Unintentional Failures.--In the case of failures which are due to reasonable cause and not to willful neglect, the penalty assessed under subparagraph (A) for failures during any 1-year period shall not exceed the amount equal to the lesser of--
''(I) 10 percent of the aggregate amount paid or incurred by the employer (or predecessor employer) during the preceding 1-year period for group health plans, or
''(II) $500,000."
If you skimmed, shame on you. You're much like many lawmakers, for whom I, as a money manager and business owner, have a few questions:
- What is that $500,000 penalty all about?
- What problems are you trying to solve with this legislation? I was under the impression that we needed to A) insure the uninsured (it would help if we educate everyone who qualifies for Medicaid to sign up and include illegal aliens); B) get coverage for pre-existing conditions (we could negotiate with insurance companies); C) build a safety net for people who suffer financial ruin as a result of a catastrophic illness (buy everyone an excess major medical insurance policy).
- What's your rush, and what's your objective? To solve problems or to pass legislation before people ask questions?
- Are you seriously going to vote for this 1,000 page bill before you've read it? It is massive, the changes are monumental, the impact is surreal, and there is no way you can honestly tell your constituents that you have formulated a reasoned belief that this legislation is in the best interests of the people that you were elected to serve.
Basic assumptions: Are terrorists warriors or criminals? Moving Gitmo prisoners to Kansas.
How the White House is strong-arming the press
Anti-trust is obsolete. Indeed it is. One quote:
...by the time regulators can assess a technology market, the market has often moved on. Not long ago, Google was the upstart and the search leaders included names like AltaVista and Excite. “Regulatory intervention in the high-tech sector thwarts the natural evolution of the market,” argues Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Worse, it distorts the response of competitors. Antitrust investigations steer the market in unnatural directions, creating instabilities in entire industry sectors.”
The antitrust laws are anachronisms when applied to industries of constant innovation. Even theories about the role of antitrust were designed for the industrial era.
Health care town halls received with hostility
Cars, Bread, and now circuses too. Have we become sheep?
Infantile delusions. Samuelson on California, quoted at Betsy:
National parallels again seem apparent. Federal budget deficits -- reflecting the urge to spend and not tax -- predate the recession and, as baby boomers retire, will survive any recovery. Amazingly, the Obama administration would worsen the long-term outlook by expanding federal health insurance coverage. There's much mushy thinking about how we'll muddle through.
California has pioneered this sort of delusion. The presumption was that a dynamic economy would pay for expansive government. But California's relative economic performance has actually deteriorated. In the 1980s, the state's economy grew much faster than the national economy; annual growth averaged 5.1 percent vs. 3.1 percent nationally. In the present decade, the gap is smaller -- 2.9 percent versus 2.3 percent -- and much of the state's advantage reflects the unsustainable housing boom, of which California was the epicenter.
While I disagree with 96% of Obama's agenda, I think this whole birther thing is nonsense. Critique peoples' policies and their assumptions. Ad hominems and smears are disgusting, even though the Left has no problem with using them, for example, with the latest Palin smears (Gosh, they must be terrified of her). As Surber comments:
The Kenya certificate is a fake. The Hawai’i certificate is suspicious.
There is only one Vulcan-clad logical conclusion: Barack Obama was never born.
Photos: These are popping up all over LA. LA?
Sunday, August 2. 2009
 The coming boom in tax shelters
What is wrong with AARP?
Southern Baptists take on New England. Welcome, friends. We are tired of the UCC and the Episcopalians. They do not seem to focus on God any more.
Does the O represent a new template? neoneo
Re our cold summer, from Surber:
Remember: Everything proves global warming.
And the only way to stop global warming is to tax the hell out of the American people.
It is intended to be stimulating
Why no medical tort reform?
What's up with all the czars? h/t, Doug Ross
Why you do not want to get cancer in Europe
If Bush had an economy this bad, would he get this headline?
What does "Let me be clear" mean?
Revisiting Liar's Poker, with some thoughts about military officers. Volokh
Via Riehl, a blog by a few Marine Corps officer candidates. Cool. The responsibility they take on is mind-boggling.
Really good post on news, reporting blogs, Cronkite, etc., at Driscoll
Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.
Quoted at Viking:
...New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007 - while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index.
Generations of debt. Human Events
Dems re-do their sales pitch
Related: Families and Small Businesses to be Taxed to Pay for Health Reform
The obesity brouhaha: at WSJ, Obesity costs taxpayers. Freedom needs to include being fat, even if it is sometimes more offensive than free speech. Yes, one of the problems with getting government involved in medical care is that the State then has a financial interest in your life, and an excuse to try to control it. Thus checking kids' lunchboxes in the UK. Therefore,
thank you for saying this, Mr. Steyn:
...if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment,” governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed — by the Conservative party, alas — that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know . . . totalitarian?
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.
Is medical care a zero-sum game? From Pajamas:
Obama’s command seizure of one-sixth of the American economy is based on the assumption that medicine is a zero-sum game. The trouble is that Obama’s assumption is false — and destructive. It has been falsified by every single advance in human health since the Industrial Revolution. It’s simply not true that there is a fixed supply of medical care, one that cannot grow, become more effective, cost less, and make our lives better and longer. It is not true that my gain must be your loss.
Obama thinks the way Thomas Malthus did in 1798. But Malthus was wrong then, just like Obama is now. So here’s the question for every American. Under ObamaCare, when we really will have to divide up a Malthusian lockbox of federal money, how much will your life be worth?
Brussels Journal begins:
These are not happy days for Americans, particularly if raised on traditional American values of Northern European provenance. Conscientious work as redemptive virtue, thrift, self-reliance, self-restraint, Biblical ethical principles, modesty, high-minded civic culture, love of liberty, distrust of centralized power.
America’s ruling elite – once the embodiment of such values and now a putrid trench running from Wall Street to Madison Avenue to Washington DC to Hollywood -- has debauched and upended them as thoroughly as though it has been teleported directly from 3rd century Rome.
Photo: The Briar Bowl Tobacconist, 1950s. Maggie's Farm supports the responsible use and enjoyment of tobacco.
Saturday, August 1. 2009
A friend of a friend emailed this photo of an either dead or pixillated fellow in his whitey-tightys in the early morning rain in NYC's financial district this week:
Jawa reports on a mass wedding, sponsored by Hamas, of what appear to be 450 pre-pubescent girls. You just have to put your multicultural hat on to appreciate the joy of this occasion.
Video on that second link. The AFP article mentioned nothing about the ages of the girls, but did report:
"We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness," Zahar told the men, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp.
Each groom received a present of 500 dollars from Hamas, which said its workers had also contributed five percent of their monthly salaries to add to the wedding gift.
These guys do not need to anticipate "When forty winters..."
Friday, July 31. 2009
From Insty, Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%. The problem there is that there are too many people with no skin in the game, and it turns most of the population into members of a cargo cult, awaiting the arrival of their magic goodies.
I am a flat-taxer: 13% on all income, for all. No deductions, no tax forms, no increases except temporarily in wartime.
Re Sen. Corker:
Corker says President Obama recently met with him, something he appreciates. But Corker doesn't think Obama "has his feet on the ground with regard to what appropriate health reform is." He adds, "And he personalizes everything, it's all, 'I, I, I.'" Corker suspects that for Obama "doing this with some massive bill is about politics...To him, it's about a political victory, not about doing what's in the long-term interest of citizens."
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