Random Thoughts

Michael Moore has new movie out and it is a movie that is anti capitalism. Moore adds to his list of distorting films, F911 and Sicko (how much money did the anti capitalist make off them), with this movie about the evils of capitalism. But Moore will earn money from the movie. How is it possible for a person against capitalism to make money off his work? Yes, some folks will see it for free but Moore is in business to make money. He owns Halliburton and oil company stocks. Moore also does his post production work in Canada to avoid having to use union workers in the US and thus pays less for the service. Something tells me that his movie will not include these tid-bits about him.

Barack Obama said that we had to pass the stimulus bill now or we would get in a spiral from which we might not recover. We had to do it NOW.

Obama has been saying that we must pass health care reform (his takeover bill) NOW. He had a deadline of August but that came and went but he continues to say that it is imperative that we do this now. There is no time to wait, we must do it NOW. If it is so important to do NOW, why does it not take effect until 2013?

Interestingly, Obama took longer to decide on a family dog than he wants to allow for debate on the issues that he says we must do now.

The one thing that needs to be done NOW is resourcing our troops in Afghanistan. Health care takeover – NOW, read and respond to the troops request, not right now. Obama will push that off for a while as he takes time to study it. Can anyone explain why we don’t have time to read bills and why we must vote on them NOW but that we can delay the request of combat leaders until Obama has a chance to study it?

It has been 9 months since he took office. He talked about Afghanistan for several years before that. One would think he would have already put a plan in place but now, the man who said he would listen to commanders on the ground, is putting his request for more troops on hold.

Seems to me Obama is giving people a tobacco smoke enema. He has his priorities out of order.

Did you notice that a few thousand left wing morons protesting in Pittsburgh were unruly and had to be confronted by police? Did you notice that this small number of people made a mess and vandalized things? Did you notice how Obama said that compared to past G20 summits this one was tame and not well attended?

Did you notice that hundreds of thousands of protesters were in DC on 9/12 and none of them were arrested? Did you notice they left no trash and cleaned up after themselves? Obama did not notice them either claiming that he did not know about the protests. For that matter, the MSM ignored them. The MSM sure gave the G20 protesters a lot of air time though.

Left wing protesters and the 9-12 crowd. One group is good for America, the other is a bunch of lawbreakers who should be in jail. The people at the G20 should have been rounded up and sent to Gitmo (not because they protested but because they engaged in civil unrest that involved breaking the law and vandalized things while throwing rocks at police). They are fortunate they were not shot. Which means they are fortunate I was not in charge of the police there.

Did you notice that the Obama backed Pittsburgh Steelers are 1-2 so far this season?

The Census has added a question this year. They want to know if you and the people in your house are covered by insurance (and they list several kinds for you to indicate). Since Obama will fine or jail you for not having insurance, is it smart to answer this? Also, what does it have to do with the census and the provisions of the Constitution? For that matter, why do they need to know how many bathrooms I have?

I intend to answer only the questions that deal with the number of people in my family. The Constitution allows for the census to determine numbers of people for apportionment of representatives. There are no other provisions in there for all these other questions. If they want to know my income they can ask the IRS. If they want to know how many bathrooms (or other rooms) are in my house they can check with the county clerk who issued the building permit. If they want to know if I have health insurance they can suck wind because it is none of their business.

Anyone who answers all those questions is allowing them to usurp the Constitution.

As for census takers, they should be very careful about the questions they ask and about leaving when they are told to.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

Majority Of Those Polled Say Cancel The Stimulus

Rasmussen has a fresh new poll out that indicates 45% of Americans polled want the government to cancel the rest of the stimulus spending. 36% disagree with that and 20% don’t know. This is a drastic turn around from just 4 months ago when the massive package was passed.

At that time, my friend and frequent commenter, Adam told me that I was out of touch and that the majority supported this boondoggle. It has taken people a little bit of time to wake up to what many of us knew from the start but they are awakening. Now that they have had time to see how out of control spending is and how it will affect future generations they are not too happy with the package and want the government to end it.

The stimulus was not really a jobs creation package as much as it was a reason to spend money on countless pet projects, many of which will not create (or even save) one single job. There is spending for far too many items that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy and there are pay offs to political supporters. Most people polled do not think the stimulus will create jobs and most do not think it will be good for the economy:

However, only 31% of Americans believe the new government spending in the stimulus package creates new jobs. Forty-eight percent (48%) say the stimulus spending does not create jobs, and 21% are not sure.

Americans have mixed feelings about whether speeding up the new government spending in the stimulus package will help the economy. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the increased spending will be good for the economy, but 44% say it will be bad. Eight percent (8%) think it will have no impact.

Rahm Emanuel said not to let a good crisis go to waste and that is the philosophy of this administration but the public is slowly catching on and they are seeing this for what it really is; spending for the sake of spending.

Unemployment continues to increase because the stimulus will not create many jobs, at least not enough to justify the expense.

What say you liberals who extolled the virtues of the stimulus and boasted about how people overwhelmingly supported it? Will you now have a change of heart because your fellow Americans want it ended?

You wanted me to climb on board because of majority support. Will you now jump off because the majority does not support?

Will you live by what you expect of others?

I expect to see Obama’s approval ratings start to decline in the near future.

Americans are waking up.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

Who Benefits From Swine Flu Hysteria?

Influenza type A H1N1 (Swine Flu) has affected fewer than 300 people worldwide and according to the World Health Organization there have been fewer than 10 deaths associated with that virus and yet the world is going nuts. Joe Biden is telling people not to travel by air or subway and there are all kinds of Swine Flu emergency operation centers popping up in states. Why are we going through all of this for a flu outbreak that is way smaller than the seasonal flu episodes and for a flu that seems to be rather mild when it runs its course?

Why is all this happening and who stands to gain from it?

For the past few years the scientists and the government folks have been looking at the Avian or Bird Flu. This has been the one they figured would be spreading among humans and killing lots of folks and it still might do that.

The Swine Flu popped up and they were not expecting it. This flu is a combination of human, avian, and swine viruses that got together in a pig host and replicated in RNA to become something different and something that could be transmitted from the animal host to the human and from human to human. The process where viruses get together and something new is created is known as an antigenic shift and the virus is sometimes referred to as a novel virus.

This caught people by surprise and the reaction (or over reaction) was because people were not expecting this and worried that it could lead to a huge number of deaths like those that occurred in 1918. But why the hype? Who benefits from all this?

The drug companies that make antivirals and vaccines stand to benefit. The research scientists who work on this stuff stand to get more work. The drug companies that will have to make more medicine to replace stockpiles stand to benefit.

The hype seems to be driven toward over reaction in order to gin up a huge response. Of course, Obama had to spend another billion dollars on this problem.

Keep in mind that only about 109 people in the US are confirmed as having the virus and many of them have already recovered. The course of the illness seems to be mild and it is not particularly debilitating. Nearly all of the people in the US had some contact with Mexico in that they either visited there, met up with someone who visited there or were exposed to someone who came from there. Mexico figures into nearly all the exposures in the US and even though the reports were that over 150 had died in Mexico the WHO says that the confirmed number is 7.

There is a belief that a lot of Mexicans got the flu but never sought medical care and they recovered without difficulty.

Still, the world is going nuts over fewer than 300 cases world wide. Some places are culling pigs, and some are restricting travel. People are afraid.

During the regular flu season we don’t close schools when one kid gets the flu and we don’t stand up flu emergency operations centers when 109 have been confirmed as having the virus (though no doubt more people have gotten sick). It usually takes quite a few before we become concerned. Keep in mind that 36,000 people die from the flu in the US each year and 200,000 are hospitalized. So I think we are going overboard on this flu.

I think that many companies will make money during another crisis we can’t let go to waste. I understand the scramble. They all had their eyes on avian flu and this one showed up out of nowhere.

When you see all the hype just keep in mind that this is a huge industry and flu is a big money maker. A lot of people make money in a “billions of dollars” business.

This is not to say we don’t need to be careful but I think we are getting all spun up over nothing.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

Swine Flu Diverts Attention

A great deal of attention has been given to the newest outbreak of the flu mostly because this is a strain that is not commonly associated with transmission among humans and there is no vaccine. While it is well and good to pay some attention to it one must wonder why all the CDC warnings and the elevations of threat levels. I certainly understand the travel restrictions but the reality is that there are only 40 confirmed US cases and no one in the US has died (as of this writing). Mexico has handled the issue fairly well and there have been just over 140 deaths in that country.

In the US each year about 36,000 people die from the flu and about 200,000 require hospitalization.

I think that the fervor over the flu is designed to take our attention away from the bad news that has come out lately. GM is getting rid of Pontiac (if you have a low mileage one put it away) and that will result in the loss of 21,000 manufacturing jobs. GM and Chrysler are preparing to file for bankruptcy and this will cause a lot of turmoil in the automotive industry. Ironically, Ford, the only one of the big three not to take bailout money, is doing OK, not great, but better than the others.

The Swine Flu scare is also a great cover for Congress who can work on passing more and more spending packages and enact things designed to give us universal health care coverage without the public debate. They can take advantage of this emergency to pass even more items to drive us ever closer to Socialism.

The Obama Administration has shown that it is a smoke and mirrors operation. They manufacture one crisis after another in order to tire people and wear them down. Then they can keep passing stuff unnoticed and before you know it, BAM, we have all these expensive things and even greater tax burdens. The economy was a crisis that we had to act upon immediately or we might not recover. Then it was not as bad as he thought. Of course, he came to that conclusion after spending a couple of TRILLION dollars to fix the spiraling economy. The stimulus will not kick in for some time. We are seeing some signs of working out of the economic downturn now. This means that things are turning around before the stimulus has had a chance to affect things. If we had done very little or nothing we would be turning around and we would have saved a couple of TRILLION dollars.

But Democrats had an “emergency” to exploit. Let us not forget that George Bush helped put this in motion. I did not agree with it then and I don’t agree with it now. I think the difference is Bush was making an honest attempt to fix things and not taking advantage of the situation. Obama is taking advantage of the problem to nationalize the banks and take over companies.

The Swine Flu, as of right now, is not a cause for alarm (just as Obama said). It is something we should keep an eye on and we should take the basic steps to prevent transmission of the disease. The number one way to do that is to wash your hands. Wash them frequently and the transmission of disease will be drastically reduced. Your mother told you to wash your hands for a reason.

The flu comes each year and makes a lot of people sick and it kills quite a few. These Swine flu reports might be sentinel events indicating a larger problem ahead. We need to keep track but we also need not lose sight of what is going on around us with regard to our politicians.

They will use this “emergency” to their advantage as long as we let them get away with it.

The CDC is tracking the outbreak and has a sign up for Swine Flu updates. There is also good information about the disease and what you can do to reduce your risk. Take the time to read it but don’t let the flu take your focus away. We can worry when it looks like this will become more widespread. Let’s keep an eye on it but let’s keep in mind that thousands get sick from the flu at any one time during flu season and they don’t go bananas like they are right now. This could certainly get worse but as it stands right now, it is a minor outbreak.

The sleight of hand artist The Amazing Obama wants you to look away.

How do the open borders folks feel now? ILLEGALS with swine flu could walk into this country at anytime undetected and spread the disease. This is what you get when you don’t uphold the law.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

American Jews Voted Against Israel’s Interests

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that National Union chairman Ya’acov “Ketzele” Katz sent a letter to Rahm Emanuel telling him not to forget his Jewish roots. This comes after Emanuel had an exchange with an unidentified American Jewish leader in which:

Katz claims that in a private meeting with the unnamed leader, Emanuel said, “In the next four years, there will be a peace agreement with the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it does not matter to us who is the prime minister.”

Isn’t that just wonderful? Who is the United States to tell Israel there will be a two state solution when Israel opposes that? The United States has no right to tell another country what they will and will not do. However, this administration is anti Semitic and does not have Israel’s best interests at heart.

Obama pals around bowing to Kings and rubbing elbows with Muslims while ignoring Israel and his Chief of Staff is right there with him.

Katz should not be surprised that an American Jew like Emanuel would turn his back on Israel. Many American Jews have done the exact same thing. It was well known that Obama was no friend of Israel and he indicated that things would be done differently should he happen to win. It should have been blindingly obvious by the company Obama kept (and still keeps) that he was anti Semitic. He is friends with Louis Farrakhan as is his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright and both preach hatred. Farrakhan definitely hates the Jews and blames all the world’s ills on them. Obama has people working for him who are not in favor of doing anything to help Israel. The writing was on the wall during the campaign.

And yet, American Jews voted in huge numbers for Obama. The Jews in Israel did not want him to win but those who live here, by and large, voted for him which means they voted against Israel. Not all Jews voted for Obama but I know many who did and the statistics show they went for Obama in huge numbers.

So why would Katz think any differently about Emanuel? Why would he believe that reminding Emanuel of his Jewish roots would make a difference? The people in Obama’s administration are anti Israel and into appeasing the Muslim thugs who want to wipe that country off the map.

I guess he only meets unconditionally with our enemies.

Think Obama cares about Israel?

Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs is reporting:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday canceled his plans to attend the upcoming AIPAC summit, after it became clear that US President Barack Obama would not meet him during the conference. [originally reported in the Jerusalem Post]

Obama was busy last week shaking hands and playing kissy face with Hugo Chavez whose government has been accused of anti-Semitism. The way Chavez pals around with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries should cause concern for all Venezuelan Jews.

Looking past that one has to ask why was Obama able to make nice with the thugs in South America but can’t make time for Netanyahu? Why can Obama go on his apologize for America tour in Europe but not meet with Netanyahu? Why is it he can bow down to Middle Eastern kings and hob nob with Muslim leaders but he cannot meet with Netanyahu?

Israel has always been a good friend to the United States and she remained our friend while Bill Clinton was whizzing all over them and telling them it was raining. Israel has always counted on US reciprocation of that friendship.

Unfortunately, they are not seeing that with the Obama administration.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]