High School Student Ground and Pounds Common Core

Wow.



Hat tip goes to The Blaze.

Can't wait until Ethan Young's book comes out.

Keith Ellison to Hannity: I know you are, but what am I

I bet this wacko Congressman thinks he won this "argument". He seems to have taken the gig knowing that he was going to give this type of performance. It's sort of a throw everything at the enemy strategy and see if anything lands on him. The danger is that it makes you look stupid to anyone who has ever witnessed a real argument or debate.

By the way, our family sequestration party will be held on Friday, March 1. We will start serving bread and water at 11am. Remember to say the password to be allowed in, and bring a few spuds for the potato nudging contest.

We all know this about Emergency Rooms

We know it either intuitively or from experience. But here are the facts, presented by doctors who work in the ERs. However, maybe you prefer the opinions of DC Bureaucrats who wrote ObamaCare to those wearing the stethoscopes.

Hospital emergency rooms (ERs), the theory goes, get overcrowded because people without health insurance have no place else to go. But that's not the view of the doctors who staff those emergency departments, says NPR.

The real problem, according to a new survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians, isn't caused by people who don't have insurance -- it's caused by people who do, but still can't find a doctor to treat them.

• A full 97 percent of ER doctors who responded to the survey said they treated patients "daily" who have Medicaid (the federal-state health plan for the low-income), but who can't find a doctors who will accept their insurance.
• At the same time, 97 percent of ER doctors also said they treat patients daily who have private insurance and primary care doctors, but whose primary care doctors sent them to the emergency room for care.
• Apparently that's because the patient's need for care arose during a time when that private doctor's office was closed.
• Since these insured patients are more -- not less -- likely to use the emergency department, 89 percent of physicians in the survey said they believe the number of visits to emergency rooms will increase as the new health law is implemented.

Watch for construction crews increasing the size of ERs as well as building new Urgent Care facilities in a neighborhood near you. To reuse a Bushism, Heckuva job, Brownie.

The Benefactor Factor

Dennis Prager writes about how government entitlement programs and increasing dependency of the populace on them don't destroy only the economy, but also the virtue of gratitude. Excerpt:

What entitlements do, and what the transformation of entitlements into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait -- gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say "thank you." But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of "thank you," the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, "What more can I get?"

Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.

All too true.

In my opinion, another thing which sheds light on the dearth in gratitude among recipients is the impersonal nature of government assistance. At a soup kitchen you may see a smiling face presenting you with the gift of food, with many other volunteers scurrying about in the background to prepare the gift. But often the monetary assistance delivered to those being helped by Uncle Sam is in the form of mass-produced debit cards and checks chunked out by 3rd party processing centers. Some of these don't even say where they are from. They don't even have an official seal or an American flag on them. It's easy to see how this tends to engender an entitlement mentality. Actions speak louder than words, even Obama's applause lines.

But speaking of Obama's words, all this legislation he brags on seems to be moving entitlements to a new level of abstraction. Forcing insurance companies to cover "kids" up to 26 years old—and these companies will merely shrug and raise premiums—is an ingenious way to hide the entitlement and thus hide the fact that it is a gift from either parental guardians or taxpayers. Is as if liberal bureaucrats are saying "Don't thank us, just re-elect us and pay more taxes. We'll keep rigging the system for you."

Laughable

The espionage community must be absolutely aghast after hearing about the military ban on removable media. They must be shivering in their boots. How will they do their spying stuff without being allowed to possess criminal tools such as removable media? Excerpt:

According to the report, Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations issued a "Cyber Control Order" on Dec. 3 instructing airmen to immediately stop using removable media on the Defense Department's secret network. The other branches of the military have reportedly received similar directives.

The order is a response to the leaking of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and documents to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, which has come under international scrutiny for publishing the names of military and intelligence informants.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May and charged in connection with the leaks, allegedly downloaded classified materials to a CD disguised as a Lady Gaga album.

This is so laughable. Let's court martial soldiers for having a digital camera in their possession. Digital camera's, as you know, use removable media. Let's go through everyone's CD collection and listen to every disk to make sure it's authentic. Full cavity searches for mini SD cards? We're all in--I'll take the women's line, thanks.

While we're at it, let's also ban guns to stop violent crime. Banning things always works so well.

David Warren: "Insofar as we are adults, we have never required comprehensive daycare"

Now here's a Tea Party-friendly man north of the border with a great prescription, eh. Excerpt:

The closest thing I can see to hope is currently invested in the tea party movement of the U.S. Notwithstanding the slanders heaped upon it, this movement is good-willed, riot-free, indeed situationally non-urban, and under the leadership of basically sane people. Of course, there is no guarantee that any movement devoted to genuine political change can remain so, under the inevitable provocations.

But something must be done, and here is the closest thing, anywhere in the West, to a political movement committed to the only measure that can possibly save us from riding over that cliff. Merely slowing down won't do it.

That measure is, quite frankly, the complete dismantlement of the Nanny State, and the restoration of the status quo ante -- governments focused on the provision of national defence, and domestically on the machinery of law and order. Full stop.

"Mandatory Volunteers"

This newest product of the Hope and Change newspeakers reminds me of the beginning of one of my favorite films, 12 Monkeys. The scene is an underground prison on a post-apocalyptic Earth where experiments are being performed by a fascist dictatorship comprised of scientists upon unwilling "volunteers". Bruce Willis plays James Cole, the next in the unfortunate line.

Guard: Volunteer duty!
James Cole: I didn't volunteer.
Guard: You causing trouble again?
James Cole: No, no trouble.

Click it for the sound. Funny. Well, the idea of "volunteer duty" was funny to us until the fascist regime controlling "higher" education is engaging in a similar misuse of the word volunteer in the real world. It's depressing to read through, especially this part:

The potential for interfering with particular colleges' religious and moral visions is vast. Should a Catholic college be obliged to give community-service credit to a student who volunteers for Planned Parenthood? Conversely, how would the politically liberal professors and deans at secular colleges feel about their students' working for an organization opposed to same-sex marriage? Allowing college administrators or federal regulators to draw up lists of which volunteer activities are acceptable and which are not would create serious constitutional and other legal problems.

Great. More "wars" to fight on campus. Here's the conclusion:

The most cogent argument, however, against removing the volunariness from volunteer work is that it undercuts the very idea of volunteering: the free gift of one's time and service to benefit the community as a whole. Volunteering is a good thing--and increasing numbers of college students agree. As Molly Corbett pointed out in her letter, 6.7 million college students volunteered in 2008, up from 4.2 million in 2000. But volunteering isn't for everyone, certainly not for low-income students with family responsibilities and perhaps not for many middle-income students as well. Nonetheless, making community service mandatory as a condition for graduation is currently a trend at high schools, and it's clear that many members of Congress think mandatory community service might be good for college students as well. The Treasury and Education departments have the power to say no to this bad idea, however, and they should listen to the college administrators and others who oppose it.

Nothing like taking the virtue out of human activity. Who enjoys that the most? "At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

Gimme some good times, bro!

IBD on VAT. Excerpt:

It's been estimated that a 5% VAT would generate $250 billion in annual revenues. So to get rid of the $1 trillion annual deficits expected through 2020 would require a value-added tax of 20%. And that's in addition to all the taxes we already pay at every level of government. Such a tax burden would kill innovation, jobs and economic growth. Our economy would be more like those of the stagnant, debt-ridden European Union, where the VAT averages close to 20%.

A Chamber of Commerce study suggests that spending in countries with a VAT grows 45% faster than in non-VAT countries. A VAT, it seems, emboldens money-drunk politicians to spend even more on expanding the welfare state.

That's why, as unpopular as it is, Democratic politicians in the White House and Congress can't quite let go of the idea. White House spokesmen have insisted no VAT is in the cards, but President Obama on Wednesday left the door open, saying, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

This tax ain't gonna just "trickle down" either. It's going to hit people at the bottom like sacks of bricks.

Steyn on Obama's Incentivizing of Bureaucracy

Now that I've provided a lame excuse for being behind, here's a very funny yet scary Steyn piece which you probably already read reflecting on Obama's SOTU. Excerpt:

In the past 60 years, the size of America's state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it's still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine.

Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured or marketed any product other than himself. So, quite reasonably, he sees government dependency as the natural order of things.

And in his college-loan plan he's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck and a loser. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness.

This is borne out by all the anecdotes I'm hearing. A friend who is a controller for a medical devices firm was helping me paint trim at the new house. He said "We have a complete hiring freeze on. We have no idea what is going to happen with the health care bill which will effect our sales strategy and outlook and our benefits package. Obama doesn't have any understanding of economics. All my siblings who voted for him are having regrets now." Another friend I have in management said about the same thing, except he has had to take a 5% pay cut. The uncertainty is keeping everything stagnant.


Well, there is one certainty: tax rates will go up at some point.

Ollie North: Obama is "Man of the Fear"

Here's a good rundown of Barack Obama's historic fear-mongering in his first year as President. Excerpt:

Nine days after his Inaugural address, the President said: “These urgent dangers to our national and economic security are compounded by the long-term threat of climate change, which, if left unchecked, could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.”

On February 4, 2009, speaking of the urgent need to “stimulate” the economy through massive government spending and debt, Obama told us, “We know that even if we do everything we should, this crisis was years in the making, and it will take more than weeks or months to turn things around. But make no mistake: A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future. Millions more jobs will be lost. More businesses will be shuttered. More dreams will be deferred.”

Five days later, in Elkhart, Indiana, he warned of dire damage if he was not given “the tools” he needs to “fix” our problems: “Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, all across the country. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse.”

By June 17, the President was hyping the catastrophic consequences of failing to enact more onerous government controls on the U.S. economy: “millions of people have had their lives profoundly disrupted by developments in the financial system, most severely in our recent crisis. These aren't just numbers on a ledger. This is a child's chance to get an education. This is a family's ability to pay their bills or stay in their homes. This is the right of our seniors to retire with dignity and security and respect. These are American dreams, and we should not accept a system that consistently puts them in danger.”

The presidential fright-mongering continues unabated. On September 9, he boldly promised a Joint Session of Congress, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” He then threatened, “if we do nothing…our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result.”

Along the same lines, I've been thinking about how the vague and lofty Obama campaign promise to unite everybody in the country and be "post-partisan" will be served by passing his small "s" single-payer health care system. After all, pro-lifers like me will get to finance abortions across the not-so-fruited plain and the radical envirofreaks will get to finance healthcare for my family of seven while we devour resources like bulemic locusts. Everyone will have so much to be happy about, and we'll all give the Big Guy an A minus during his next appearance on an Oprah-clone show.

Byron York on the 9/12 Protest

It's good. Liked this paragraph:

Some people were animated by a single issue -- health care, taxes, the Second Amendment. But in dozens of interviews with marchers, the picture that emerged was of people who believe things are racing out of control along a whole range of fronts in Washington, and that no one is representing their interests. Obama and the Democrats in Congress, they believe, are simply pushing too hard on too many things. It's unlikely that there would have been a rally this size just about the stimulus, or just about cap-and-trade, or just about the takeovers of the auto companies, or even health care. But put them all together, and there is an enormous and growing fear that Obama and his allies are rushing to wreck the system.

I think it is sort of the beginning of a new coalition, and I'm glad to see that some big GOP dudes, like Jim DeMint, are taking note here. I'm like Dr. Dunch in York's story; albeit I've always been interested in politics, going to Canton for the Tea Party Express stop was my first time at an event like that. It's not really my favorite type of event, but like Senator DeMint, the absence on greasy, unbathed weirdos and the presence of regular Americans is the first thing I noticed.

York notes that some of these folks supported and voted for Obama because they didn't realize how far left he would end up trying to push the country.

Their attitudes toward Obama himself are complicated. No one I met expressed hatred for the President. A few had voted for him, and others, like Christy Smith, said they were deeply moved when he was elected. Many others opposed him all along. But now, the predominant mood is deep distrust. They believe Obama will raise their taxes, that he will blow up the health care system, that he will weaken America's defenses.

Since I mentioned the Canton, OH Tea Party, here are a few signs I photographed at the event.


Obamacare = Sub-prime Health Care


Obamacare is the Clunker!


The Constitution: The other document they didn't read.


2012?

League of American Voters Ad