Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

Reid to retire in 2010?

It’s a rumor, to be sure.  With poll numbers like these, who can blame him?  Good grief, how it must chap Harry’s defeatist posterior that he ranks below Dubya and Rush in his own state!

October 16, 2007 Posted by | polls, Reid | 1 Comment

Brits pulling their own teeth, thanks to socialized medicine

And leftards want to bring this to America?  No thanks!  From Hot Air:

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.

Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers…

[A] lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment…

Almost half of all dentists — 45 percent — said they no longer take NHS patients, while 41 percent said they had an “excessive” workload. Twenty-nine percent said their clinic had problems recruiting or retaining dentists.

“These findings indicate that the NHS dental system is letting many patients down very badly,” said Grant.

Here’s basically the same article published seven months ago in the Daily Mail, just to illustrate how slow things are to change in the public model. It’s chock full of excerptable nuggets but I’ll settle for this: “Having an NHS dentist should be viewed as an aspiration rather than a reality.” 

When the Goron and his ilk say that universal health care is a right, does that mean we have the right to have other people subsidize us pulling our own choppers out of our pieholes?  The Euros have their socialist panacea called “universal care”, and they’re more than welcome to it.

October 16, 2007 Posted by | economic ignorance, Euros, socialism | 2 Comments

Moonbat hostess Rhodes mugged by wingnut her dog

Sorry, moonbats…this cannot be blamed on George W. Bush.  From LGF:

Loony leftist Air America radio host Randi Rhodes was allegedly mugged Sunday night in New York outside her apartment, and the cast and crew of Air America already know who to blame.

Jon Elliott was extremely agitated when he reported on the incident. He opened his show by saying “it is with sadness that tonight I inform you that my Air America colleague Randi Rhodes was assaulted last night while walking her dog near her New York City home.”

Pointing out that Rhodes was wearing a jogging suit and displayed no purse or jewelry, Elliott speculated that “this does not appear to me to be a standard grab the money and run mugging.”

“Is this an attempt by the right wing hate machine to silence one of our own,” he asked. “Are we threatening them. Are they afraid that we’re winning. (Yes, bankrupt radio networks with a dozen nationwide listeners must be winning! – Ed.) Are they trying to silence intimidate us.”

Some of blog posters also expressed concerns that the attack on Rhodes was hate crime. Other posters warned that we need more facts before any judgements are made.

When has that stopped you in the past?

Never.  And this time is no different:

Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today.

Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy.
…
Rhodes’ lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she’s not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a “hate crime.” 

The pain of an unrealized conspiracy theory (much like every other conspiracy theory those tinfoil nutters have) is probably much worse than the pain of this Yorkie-induced dental work that Randi “let’s off the prez…hey, what’s the Secret Service doing here?” Rhodes will have to endure.

October 16, 2007 Posted by | Air America, moonbats | 6 Comments

Pelosi sabotaging war efforts

Feel free to question her and her ilk’s patriotism.  From Thomas Sowell:

With all the problems facing this country, both in Iraq and at home, why is Congress spending time trying to pass a resolution condemning the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago?

Make no mistake about it, that massacre of hundreds of thousands — perhaps a million or more — Armenians was one of the worst atrocities in all of history.

As with the later Holocaust against the Jews, it was not considered sufficient to kill innocent victims. They were first put through soul-scarring dehumanization in whatever sadistic ways occurred to those who carried out these atrocities.

Historians need to make us aware of such things. But why are politicians suddenly trying to pass Congressional resolutions about these events, long after all those involved are dead and after the Ottoman Empire in which all these things happened no longer exists?

The short answer is irresponsible politics.

People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire — and at subsequent governments in Turkey which have refused to acknowledge or accept historical responsibility for the mass atrocities that took place on their soil.

But the sudden interest of Congressional Democrats in this issue goes beyond trying to pick up some votes.

They want a resolution to condemn what happened as “genocide” — a word that provokes instant anger among today’s Turks, since genocide means a deliberate government policy aimed at exterminating a whole people, as distinguished from horrors growing out of a widespread breakdown of law and order in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to scholars rather than politicians.

If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.

Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.

Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.

There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are American troops within Iraq.

Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show its displeasure over Congress’ raising this issue. The Turks may or may not stop at that.

In this touchy situation, why stir up a hornet’s nest over something in the past that neither we nor anybody else can do anything about today?

Japan has yet to acknowledge its atrocities from the Second World War. Yet the Congress of the United States does not try to make worldwide pariahs of today’s Japanese, most of whom were not even born when those atrocities occurred.

Even fewer, if any, Turks who took part in attacks on Armenians during the First World War are likely to still be alive.

Too many Democrats in Congress have gotten into the habit of treating the Iraq war as President Bush’s war — and therefore fair game for political tactics making it harder for him to conduct that war.

In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said that an American victory in Iraq “would be a real big problem for us” in the 2008 elections.

Unwilling to take responsibility for ending the war by cutting off the money to fight it, as many of their supporters want them to, Congressional Democrats have instead tried to sabotage the prospects of victory by seeking to micro-manage the deployment of troops, delaying the passing of appropriations — and now this genocide resolution that is the latest, and perhaps lowest, of these tactics.

But hey…they “support the troops”, right?

October 16, 2007 Posted by | defeatism, Iraq, Pelosi, shameful, treason | 4 Comments

More kiddie human shields, just as irrelevant as ever

Not content with having embarrassed themselves by picking a middle-income family with three late-model gas guzzlers and nearly $500k in assets (to go along with four kids in private school) as a poster family for needing to expand S-CHIP, the Dems one-upped themselves.  They pick another child (this one is two years old) to trot out for their shameful emotional (and not factual) plea to grow the imperial federal government.

Enter Bethany Wilkerson: 

Now meet Bethany Wilkerson, the latest youngster enlisted by congressional Democrats or their allies to help build support for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Having suffered from heart failure as an infant, USAction says, the Florida toddler would not be alive today but for the government-funded program for moderate-income families not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

Now Bethany is scheduled to speak at a Capitol Hill rally Tuesday evening, according to a release this morning by Americans United For Change.

There was no word on what the 2-year-old plans to say. But she joins a flurry of 11th-hour activity in advance of the attempt by House Democrats on Thursday to override Bush’s veto of legislation to expand coverage to 4 million more children at a cost of $35 billion over five years. 

There’s just a slight problem here: the Wilkersons are already covered by S-CHIP today!  In other words, Bush’s veto has exactly zero impacton them!  Hell, the Wilkersons aren’t even arguing for the expansion of S-CHIP at all, so aside from their beautiful child being used as another human shield by the left, why are we seeing the Wilkersons in the first place?

Notes the Right Wing Nut House:

Funny how we don’t see any poster families who are 400% above the poverty level being pushed forward as examples of the kinds of people the $35 billion expansion of S-CHIP will help. Why not? Since the original parameters of the S-CHIP program enjoys the overwhelming support of Congress and the President, why trot forward families like the Frosts and the Wilkersons who qualify under the current rules? Why not bring to the fore those families at the high end of the expansion requirements and let the American people decide if they want to subsidize insurance for them?

The answer is obvious; a family living 400% above poverty are not as sympathetic as those, like the Wilkerson’s, who couldn’t get by without S-CHIP. In fact, pushing forward people who make more than 40% of all the families in America as the poster family for S-CHIP expansion would probably torpedo the bill then and there.

…The Democrats just don’t have a clue about the true nature of the opposition to their S-CHIP expansion. For that, they would have to give a fig about the tradeoffs we make between dependency and freedom every time they get some not so bright idea about “helping” those who can usually be counted on to help themselves.

You know with certainty that a big government power grab is unneeded when those who argue for it cannot even produce one single family to show why said power grab is even necessary.  With this S-CHIP expansion debate, the left is 0-for-2: a family with the means of procuring their own inexpensive health care plan (the Frosts), and a family that is already being served by the S-CHIP plan (the Wilkersons).

Care to try again, you shameless loathsome b#stards?

October 16, 2007 Posted by | big government, economic ignorance, shameful, socialism | 1 Comment

Hilldawg: Snoop on political opponents, not on terrorists

Nice to see Her Highness has her priorities straight. From The Hill:

Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.

Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate this fall as congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation allowing electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.

Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.

In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.

“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.”

A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.”
…
“Every president should save those powers for limited, critical situations,” said Clinton, according to a copy of the speech posted on her campaign website.

Those “limited, critical situations” include preventing her hubby’s next bimbo eruption, but do not include listening to terrorist phone calls. Brilliant.

October 16, 2007 Posted by | Hillary, hypocrisy | 3 Comments

   

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