Apologies/short hiatus

Sorry for the lack of posts.  We have begun our student teaching practicum, and that experience is currently consuming nearly all of our energies, at least until we get into more of a routine.

New stuff when we get time.

Great company

The Communist Party USA has already announced that they are endorsing President Obama for reelection in 2012, despite their stated bitter disappointment in his not pushing harder in his first term for such promised goodies as single-payer government-controlled health care and "card-check" legislation designed to eliminate the secret ballot when workers are voting whether or not to unionize:

"Wrote [CPUSA Chairman Sam] Webb: 'Neither party is anti-capitalist, but they aren't identical either. Differences exist at the levels of policy and social composition. And despite the many frustrations of the past two years, the election of Barack Obama was historic and gave space to struggle for a people's agenda.'"

Chairman Mao himself couldn't have come up with more flowery propaganda.

The Commies are clearly salivating at the prospect of an Obama second term, one in which the president would no longer have to care about winning elections or pacifying moderate voters but instead would be free to fully advocate for advancing the Great Leap Forward agenda of such mentors of his as Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers.

Remember the people who desperately need the current president to remain in office when contemplating your own ballot.

Here comes the slippery slope

"WASHINGTON – Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores.

The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women's preventive care under President Barack Obama's health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual "well-woman" physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services."

We will first stipulate that having some of these services made more available to women will most likely result in a net benefit for both them as well as society in general.

That's not the point.  

Lots of things would be of great use to people if the government were to force private companies to give them away for free - cars, computers, you name it.  That doesn't happen, of course, because the Constitution does not give the .gov that redistributive power.  Similarly, nowhere in that document is a provision giving the Feds the authority to force people to buy products (such as health coverage) they may not wish to own or the ability to tell those firms which of their wares they must give away instead of charge for, as we hope the Supreme Court will eventually point out.

We predict that this is just the first in a long series of coverage mandates, and that sly Washington bureaucrats will slowly and patiently deem more and more items to be vital and necessary over time until everything is eventually provided gratis.  And then we'll be Great Britain, where operations for such things as cataracts, hip replacements and tonsillitis are now deemed to be "non-urgent" and thus denied until the patient basically can no longer see, walk or swallow.

Of course, there really is no free ride, as the first article notes:

"Although the new women's preventive services will be free of any additional charge to patients, somebody will have to pay."

Dig deep, peasant.

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

There are at least three Apple stores in Kunming, China that appear to be complete fakes.

That certainly is taking goods piracy to an entirely new level.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 57

So that if we happen to be strolling around Denver, Colorado with a date and are accosted by the gang of feral youth there which is currently amusing themselves by bashing couples in the head with baseball bats and robbing them of their possessions, we will be able to successfully defend ourselves against their brutal assault.

"The attackers are 'not nice people,' [Denver Police spokesman Sonny] Jackson said."

That's one heck of an understatement.

Those thugs are still on the loose, Denver residents, and the cops can't be everywhere.  Protect yourselves accordingly.

A curious silence

Former New York Times reporter Janny Scott has written a biography of Barack Obama's mother in which Scott definitively proves that Dear Leader lied right through his teeth in the 2008 presidential campaign when he claimed that Ann Dunham had been denied health insurance reimbursement during her ultimately fatal battle with cancer.  Rather, Dunham had been fully covered and all treatment expenses were paid save for her deductibles and other uncovered costs.  The only apparent disagreement between Dunham and any insurance entity, according to Scott, was with a different company which refused to pay disability coverage for her living expenses because it considered her condition to be pre-existing. 

Those updated facts make for quite a bit different of a tale than what was presented by candidate and President Obama as the poster story of a horribly broken health-care system, which is probably why he didn't bother to mention them whilst ramming his Ponzi scheme through Congress.

Strangely enough, Ms. Scott has been declining to talk further with reporters about her work despite repeated requests for interviews.  Now, when was the last time anyone remembers a book author refusing free publicity, especially as the usual end result is more books being sold?  One naturally wonders if perhaps some of Scott's former colleagues at the Times convinced her to go back on the monolithic pro-Obama reservation before more damage could be done to their false idol.

Another crime foiled without a shot by a lawfully-owned firearm

77-year-old Congressman Leonard Boswell, D-IA, and his family successfully fought off an armed intruder who confronted them at their rural Iowa farmhouse last Saturday night.

The attacker had apparently rang the doorbell and when Boswell's daughter answered pointed a gun at her and demanded money.  The congressman then intervened, grabbing the gun and wrestling the thug to the ground.  Meanwhile, Boswell's 22-year-old grandson alertly grabbed a loaded shotgun from another room and chased the suspect into a nearby field, where he managed to escape.  He is currently being sought by police.

Another example of a successful defensive gun usage by law-abiding citizens that won't make the official stats because (thankfully) no shots were fired.  Tell us again how these events never happen, Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center, especially to an older person who probably would have eventually lost the physical battle with his presumably much younger assailant.

We imagine Congressman Boswell is one Democrat who will flatly refuse to support the recently proposed gun-control bill, introduced by some comrades in his own party as a knee-jerk reaction to the federal "Project Gunwalker" scandal, that seeks to criminalize and punish acts which are already quite illegal.  A new law, of course, that if passed wouldn't apply to the stunningly incompetent management of the BATFE, which seems to be directly responsible for allowing a significant percentage of recent cross-border gun smuggling to take place without interdiction for crass political reasons.

Remember, Decatur County residents, the alleged suspect in Saturday's incident remains at large and most likely even more desperate, and may soon target another local residence in that remote area at some point.  Please prepare accordingly.