Daily news sites

See the gull?

Sometimes I feel like the bird in the picture above. See 'em off to the right on top of the rock? With storm clouds above and all alone facing a sea of change.  That is the Oregon Coast where I live. I am surrounded by both the rugged producers of the land and sea, the fishing and crabbing and the lumber producers ... all intermingled with a wildly incompetent government and well dispersed able bodied disabled people.  After spending $300 million in federal tax payer dollars they only signed up 44 people though November. It is beyond comprehension (article here).

Back to the pictures.

If you look close at this Spouting Horn below (as they are called) you can see that same bird, that very same bird in front of the spout. I'd swear on my Aunt Sally's grave that is the same bird.


That makes my point, why would you believe me? Yet liberals want you to believe in them despite the immense evidence of corruption and incompetence.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Constitution and a government that is bound by it. I respect many in the service such as the great men and women of our civilian forces like the seamen on this boat. These are by in large respectful, honorable and in general "great Americans".  But there is sooo much more to our corrupt and incompetent government than the people on the front lines of duty.

http://youtu.be/xCllwXbwQAg
Click for video of a wild boat ride.






New Jersey a Greece "wanna be"

Younger people today need to be shown the difference between freedom and a slave state. Conservatives need to demonstrate good vs. bad. Show it, show the results, cause and effect, it is all around us. Perhaps best demonstrated by comparisons between industry categories including "vacation destinations". I pointed it out before the hotel room tax is the initiator of a much bigger problem. Here is another example; In New Jersey this past month the state  tourism agency bemoaned how they started marketing too late and the results were a sever drop in tourism to the Jersey Shore this past summer. Why is the government even involved?  Isn't that what Greece did? Yes!

Think about it, the agency with millions and millions of Tax payer dollars and their response to their admitted failure is in effect, we'll do better next year.

What a disgusting bunch New Jersey has become. First off they let some bureaucracy control them through the tax payer funded marketing apparatus which is a den of cronies and incompetence. Then they accept the agencies excuses and promises. What a miserable state of affairs.  In a free market there would in the first place be a bunch of companies involved and independent of each other and there would be no excuses but there would be new contracts.

This is an excellent way to showcase what is wrong with centralized government management.

Go further do not support freedom stifling New Jersey in any way, certainly they don't deserve your vacation dollars. It is ranked at the bottom in so many important categories and components for freedom that it should be shunned not supported.


http://youtu.be/xCllwXbwQAg
Click for video of a killer boat ride.

Saratogian  reports a special-education teacher has been removed from the classroom after infuriating parents with a Facebook post saying she was about to enter a meeting with “crazy parents” to discuss an autistic student whom the teacher describes as a “hot mess.”

The teacher, Suzanne Hutton, said she was looking forward to ”hitting happy hour” after work.

Hutton led a class of seven children with autism at Howard Wood Elementary School in Torrance, Calif. The swiftness with which the district took action in her case underscores how quickly a social-media blunder can backfire in an age where every private person has a public platform.

A few minutes before 9 a.m. on Dec. 5, Hutton was about to enter a meeting with parents to discuss their child’s Individualized Education Program, which amounts to a plan that spells out learning objectives and documents the progress of special-education students. Widely known as IEPs, the plans are a staple of the special-education experience and require regular meetings involving teachers, attorneys, administrators and parents.
Before ducking into the meeting, she updated her Facebook status.

By 9:15 a.m., parents of another child in the class had screen-grabbed the post and emailed it to Jacqueline Williams, Torrance Unified School District’s director of special education. By the time the meeting ended, an attorney who represents the school district had seen the email and forwarded it to human resources, according to one of the parents who’d been monitoring the teacher’s posts. The next morning, Hutton was removed from the classroom.

“You cross the line when you call a student severely impacted with autism a ‘hot mess,’ ” said the mother of a child in the class who asked not to be identified. “And she’s not just saying that to friends after work. She’s saying this on a completely public, open forum, where anyone can go see it.”

More here

LitchfieldCounty Times reports Litchfield resident Richard Doyle, a teacher at The Taft School, pleaded guilty Monday to the receipt and distribution of child pornography, according to a release by the U.S. Department of Justice. Doyle, 64, was a teacher at The Taft School in Watertown at the time of his arrest in December 2012.

Doyle, a theater and film teacher at Taft, a prestigious private, co-ed, prep school for high school students, was placed on administrative leave after his arrest. A school spokesperson was not immediately available for comment on Doyle’s current employment status. Doyle began working at the school in 1989 and was also involved in community theaters around the region, including the Warner Theatre in Torrington and the Landmark Community Theatre in Thomaston.

“This defendant received thousands of images portraying the sexual abuse of children,” U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly is quoted as saying in the release. “The fact that this heinous crime was committed by a teacher, whose profession is committed to the well-being of children, makes it especially disturbing. I commend the FBI and the Connecticut Child Exploitation Task Force for investigating this matter, and the work they do every day to investigate these crimes and protect children.”

Taft’s assistant business manager, Susan Henebry, previously said in a statement, “there is no indication, at this time, that any of our students were involved or at risk at any time.”

The release cites court documents and statements made in court stating that in October 2012, police logged into a publicly available internet file sharing program and found images of child pornography in shared directories that Doyle maintained. On Dec. 4, 2012 the FBI executed a search warrant of Doyle’s Litchfield home. Doyle was arrested and admitted to obtaining and trading child pornography over the internet for at least two years, using a peer-to-peer program.

More here

The following chart shows the industrial production of durable goods divided by the industrial production of nondurable goods.


Click to enlarge.

Yay! New record! To infinity and beyond!

As seen in the chart, nothing bad ever happens when we buy too many durable goods (dotcom and housing bubble hangovers notwithstanding). It's the first thing they teach us in Central Banking School. When in doubt, buy them out!

Sleep Country USA: Get 36 Months Interest Free Financing!


Yes! I'm sleeping like a baby just thinking about all that interest-free debt!

31 Ways to Get Your Baby to Sleep and Stay Asleep


Surely zero interest rate policies can force me to sleep well though. Right?


Damn. There's no mention of highly speculative environments. Sigh.



Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

Obamacare Is Just The First Step
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*********************

As much as I would like to stop talking about, writing about, and/or hearing about OBAMACARE, I just can't escape it.  I suspect you have found yourself as exasperated as I am. If not, certainly, you soon shall be.

See -- it's going to get worse. 

The hellish scheme that is Obamacare is set to destroy America's economy as well as the finest healthcare system in the world.

Just think.  We have only just begun the chain reaction of one blunder after another.  But Wait!  What if these are not blunders?   Well, not ALL of them.  Stay with me and I'll try to explain.  

Next year, when Americans learn they have no insurance when the get sick and have to visit a doctor or hospital,  there are going to be even more Americans disillusioned with this massive takeover of the American economy and even more troubling -- the realization that their very lives are in the hands of a bunch of people in Washington who, after spending millions of taxpayer dollars,  can't even make a website on the Internet work.  

We're in trouble, folks ... serious trouble.

Conservatives absolutely must keep the spotlight on the catastrophe of Obamacare for the next eleven months.   It is the Achilles Heel of Obama and the Democratic Party.  They wrote it, they voted it into a bill, and Obama signed it into law.  The republicans had nothing to do with it... save to fight it every step of the way and continue to wage warfare against it to this very day.

Obama and the democrats OWN Obamacare.   (Yes, I know the MsM, the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, is currently in the midst of a throttle-to-the-wall all out drive to indoctrinate the America public in such a manner as to successfully remove Obama's name from the healthcare law so as to absolve Obama from any responsibility for it. That's why you now hear, read, and see it referred to as the "Affordable Care Act."  

I spent several decades in the advertising business and it is clear to me that this is pure R & R  "run and repeat." It was borrowed from the Nazi's propaganda machine:  "Tell a lie loud enough -- and long enough -- and folks will eventually believe it.")

Conservatives must match the passion of the Mainstream Media and fight back with an equally passionate campaign to see that Americans never forget that Obamacare is the brainchild of Obama -- and -- that the Democratic Party gave birth to the spawn from hell. 

Democrats must have their noses publicly "rubbed in it" at every opportunity.

Americans must be reminded, and often, that Obamacare is socialized medicine.   No less than Vladimir Lenin said : "Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State."   Some have taken to referring to it as "semi-socialism."  There is no such thing.  Its akin to being "a little pregnant," or "slightly dead."

In earlier commentaries we have told you that Obamacare was designed to fail.   I still believe that.  The idea, as I see it, was to establish Obamacare, and have it fail, but fail with millions "hooked" on it so there would be a clamor from the public for a national healthcare system to replace the failed Obamacare system. 

Enter single payer healthcare. 

"A single-payer health care system is one in which a single-entity -- the government -- collects almost all of the revenue for and pays almost all of the bills for the health care system."  SOURCE:  http://www.freemarketcure.com/singlepayermyths.php  

(Understand when we say "the government pays,"  we mean YOU and I pay, as taxpayers, through higher taxes.)

Many on the political left insist that with single-payer healthcare everyone has healthcare.  The truth is that everyone WILL have insurance, but -- NOT EVERYONE WILL HAVE HEALTHCARE!

Single payer systems limit your access to healthcare. Obamacare will also, but not to the degree that a single payer system will.

If you think the threat of healthcare rationing with Obamacare was/is frightening, take a look at what single payer healthcare systems inevitably bring.  Consider this: 

"While the government in a single-payer system will pay for everyone's health care, it limits the access to health care. In a single-payer system, citizens often believe that "the government" is paying for their health care. When people perceive that someone else is paying for something, they tend to over-use it. In a single-payer health care system, people over-use health care. This puts strain on government health care budgets, and to contain costs governments must ration care.

Governments in a single-payer system ration care using waiting lists for surgery and diagnostic procedures and by canceling surgeries. As the Canadian Supreme Court said upon ruling unconstitutional a Quebec law that banned private health care, "access to a waiting list is not access to health care." SOURCE: http://www.freemarketcure.com/singlepayermyths.php

If Obamacare is not successfully repealed THIS is what America has to look forward to. 

Already, the socialists in our government are pushing their plans for a single payer system for America along.  Notable sponsors, as well,  purportedly from the political right, such as former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, are already publicly calling for a single payer system for America. 

Speaking at a prostate cancer survivors breakfast just days ago, Gen Powell said:  "I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing,” Powell said at the Dec. 5 event. “I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life.”

Every country I’ve visited, every developed country, they have universal health care … I think universal health care is one of the things we should really be focused on,” Powell said. “Whether it’s Obamacare, or son of Obamacare, I don’t care. As long as we get it done."  SOURCE:   http://americanlibertypac.com/2013/12/colin-powell-wants-u-s-to-work-toward-single-payer-health-care/#sthash.YfsVpf9M.dpuf

Its coming, gentle reader.

Like a small pebble dislodged from a towering mountain side begins its roll to the valley floor below, it will inevitably shake other rocks and debris loose to tumble with it until it becomes  an avalanche.  That's what the political left, the American socialists, are counting on.

We knew this would happen, indeed, we knew it was/is the game plan for a universal healthcare system in America even before Obamacare became a twinkle in Obama's eye.  It is incrementalism on the part of the "socialcrats."  They achieve their goals a tiny bit at a time -- in small increments.  It is slow, but guess what?  In the end -- they win.

Still don't take me seriously?  Well, consider this:  "Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the American Health Security Act of 2013 on Monday (December 9th, 2013), which would require states to create their own single-payer insurance systems. A House version was introduced in March by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash."   SOURCE:  http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/10/colin-powell-endorses-single-payer-health-care

It pains me to report to you, dear reader, that Obamacare is just the first step.   As I said above:  It WILL get worse.

J. D. Longstreet

              I know it is bold and it is loud!

CNN reports Ho ho -- huh?

The family of an African-American high school student in New Mexico says he's crushed after a teacher questioned why he was wearing Santa garb during a school holiday dress-up day last week, CNN affiliate KOAT reported.

The teacher told Christopher Rougier, a freshman at Cleveland High School, that he couldn't be Santa because Santa is white, the student's father, Michael, told KOAT.

"He was embarrassed," he told the station.

Now, his son doesn't want anything to do with Christmas.

Michael Rougier said the teacher called his wife to apologize, but that's not enough.

"He needs to be fired," Rougier told KOAT. "For him to make a comment like that, there has to be at a minimum prejudice in him, and we don't have room for that."

Kim Vesely, the director of Rio Rancho Public Schools, released a statement to media about the incident.

"This situation involves a teacher recently hired by Cleveland High who made -- and admits he made -- a stupid mistake," the director said. "The remark was inappropriate and should not have been made. The teacher feels very badly about what occurred. He self-reported the incident to the principal and has apologized to the student and to the student's parent. Appropriate disciplinary action has been taken."

I’m not bothered what color Santa is. It really doesn’t matter.