The Everly Brothers were part of my growing up. Phil Everly died today in California. He will be missed. For those of you who remember the Everly Brothers fondly, here’s a memory from ReelinInTheYears66:
Condolences to his family.
RIP Phil Everly
Monthly Archives: January 2014
What Kind Of People Are We Dealing With?
Reuters is now claiming that the story below is not true. It may or may not be, but it is worrisome that the world community’s opinion of Kim Jong Un is such that the story was believed.
Last week a Singapore Newspaper reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his uncle Jang Song Thaek, the No. 2 man in North Korea, by throwing him and his five top aides into a cage with 120 starving dogs. That is barbaric.
Aside from that, the execution is a problem for relations between North Korea and China.
The article reports:
First, China’s own security is at risk. The erratic and ruthless behaviour of Mr Kim Jong Un suggests that China should not underrate the likelihood of a nuclear threat from Pyongyang.
The Internet version of the Global Times carried an article last Monday by Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of Nanjing Greater Military Region, saying that the recent incident showed North Korea had become increasingly provocative and was getting out of (Chinese) control. He urged a complete reassessment of security threats originating from that direction.
Second, China’s political and strategic influence on the Korean peninsula has been drastically reduced. China was widely considered to be able to rein in the unruly Kim regime, thus acting as a force for peace in the region. But it now appears China’s influence over its neighbour is close to zero.
China needs to learn an important lesson from this–when you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas!
A Website That Doesn’t Allow Change
Once you sign up for ObamaCare on the website, you are locked into your current marital status, family size, and profile forever–there is no way to make adjustments if a new baby arrives in your family, if a family member dies, or if you lose or change your job. You cannot edit your profile once your insurer is chosen.
Breitbart.com is reporting the following today:
The Associated Press is out with a report this morning that pregnant women have an entirely new set of headaches to expect from their ACA-triggered coverage, namely, that HealthCare.gov is not designed to accept any changes in status that would include or exclude a person from coverage. When a baby is born, there is no way for parents to notify the federal government that the baby now exists and needs coverage.
There is also no way to notify the federal government of marriage or divorce, of a death in the family, or of a new job or loss of a job.
The website allows one to open a profile, but not to edit it once an insurer is chosen. All of these changes could potentially affect those insured or open new options for coverage from different insurers or types of insurance. They may also result in higher premiums or more expensive coverage. These would all be options and possibilities if HealthCare.gov had any way of editing one’s information on the page.
What a mess.
A Backdoor Approach To Gun Control
At some point you have to ask yourself why the Obama Administration and the political left are so desperate to separate Americans from their guns. Statistics show that the cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest crime rates, and criminals do not obey gun laws anyway. There is no logical reason to take guns away from Americans, yet the left seems convinced that the Second Amendment doesn’t really mean what it says and that Americans are not smart enough or stable enough to own guns. Well, the left is at it again.
The Daily Caller posted an article today about President Obama’s two new executive actions that would expand the government’s access to mental health records when doing background checks on gun buyers. Now admittedly that sounds like a good idea, and if you looked into the backgrounds of some of the recent acts of gun violence and who committed them, it might make sense. But wait–there’s more. In every case of a shooter (from the Arizona shooter who shot Representative Giffords to the Colorado theater shooter to the Newtown Connecticut shooter), there was more than enough evidence that the shooter was mentally ill long before the shooting incident. The government would not have to have access to anyone’s mental health records–the people around the shooters could have easily alerted local police to the danger.
The problem was not the background check, the problem was a society not willing to put the mentally ill in mental institutions. In the case of Newtown Connecticut, the mother of the shooter was going through the process of having her son committed. The process took long enough for the son to find out and shoot his mother to prevent being committed.
The article at the Daily Caller describes the two Executive Orders:
It (the first order) modifies the HIPAA Privacy Rule to allow institutions “to disclose to the NICS the identities of persons prohibited by federal law from possessing or receiving a firearm for reasons related to mental health.”
The other executive action, issued by the Department of Justice, clarifies what exactly in someone’s mental health history would prohibit them from owning or purchasing a gun. Persons who fall under the category of “adjudicated as a mental defective” and “committed to a mental institution” include those who are “incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect; persons lacking mental responsibility or deemed insane; and persons found guilty but mentally ill, regardless of whether these determinations are made by a state, local, federal or military court,” as well as “a person committed to involuntary inpatient or outpatient treatment.”
There are some concerns with these Executive Orders. There is a basic danger in allowing the government to be involved in any way in determining a person’s mental health. Is the next step declaring members of the Tea Party mentally unstable?
In April 2009, I posted an article (rightwinggranny.com) detailing a government program targeting veterans as unstable. The article stated:
“The aim of the FBI’s effort with the Defense Department, which was rolled into the Vigilant Eagle program, is to “share information regarding Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans whose involvement in white supremacy and/or militia sovereign citizen extremist groups poses a domestic terrorism threat,” according to the Feb. 23 FBI memo.”
Our returning veterans are not a threat. They do not represent a domestic terrorism threat. However, the government, at its whim, can declare them as such. At this point in history, I am opposed to anything that limits the rights of Americans to own guns–there are too many freedoms being infringed upon by our government right now, and I think the Second Amendment is more important than it has ever been.
A Short And Sensible Piece Of Legislation From The House Of Representatives
The website of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform posted an article today about a bill introduced into the House of Representatives by Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that would implement a modified six-day delivery schedule for the U. S. Postal Service and repeal reductions in military pensions made by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013.
The article reports:
“This legislation will restore Cost-of-Living Adjustments for our military retirees and not only replace the savings but nearly triple them– saving $17 billion over 10 years according to conservative USPS estimates,” said Chairman Issa. “This common sense reform will help restore the cash-strapped Postal Service to long-term solvency and is supported by the President and key Congressional leaders in both chambers.”
USPS is forced to deliver paper mail, like bills and advertisements, six days a week by an unfunded mandate included in annual appropriations legislation. If the mandate is lifted, the Postmaster General has announced that USPS would modify its current delivery schedule to deliver packages 6 days a week and paper mail 5 days a week. Express and priority mail delivery would not change, and post offices would remain open on Saturdays.
Chairman Issa recently outlined the benefits of ending the unfunded mandate in a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.)
The text of the bill can be found at Congress.gov.
Thank you, Representative Issa.
Medical Care For America’s Aging Population Just Took A Step Backwards
As America‘s population has aged, we have been blessed by some of the best medical care in the world. We have had cataract surgery, hip replacements, knee replacements, etc. We have essentially become bionic as we have had failing parts replaced. Unfortunately, that is changing with ObamaCare–simply as a matter of economics.
Accuracy in Media is reporting today that due to ObamaCare, seniors will not get the care they need:
On Oct. 1, 2012 the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients. It will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations.
These are the five procedures that have transformed aging for older Americans. They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes due to arthritis, cataracts and heart disease. Now they lead active lives.
But the Obama administration is undoing that progress. By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama health law will make these procedures hard to get and less safe.
The Obama health law creates two new entitlements for people under age 65 – subsidies to buy private health plans and a vast expansion of Medicaid. More than half the cost of these entitlements is paid for by cutting what hospitals, doctors, hospice care, home care and Advantage plans are paid to care for seniors.
ObamaCare may provide all Americans with insurance (assuming that they sign up for ObamaCare), but unfortunately it does not provide Americans with quality health care or access to the doctors and care that they need.
The article concludes:
In addition to the across-the-board cuts, the Obama administration will now impose a new measure on hospitals: “Medicare spending per beneficiary.” Hospitals that spend the least on seniors get bonus points, and higher-spending hospitals get demerits.
Hospitals will even be penalized for care consumed up to 30 days after patients are discharged, for example, for outpatient physical therapy following a hip or knee replacement.
There are ways to control Medicare spending, such as inching up the eligibility age or asking well-off seniors to pay more. Forcing hospitals to skimp on care is deadly.
Research sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (Annals of Internal Medicine, February 2011) shows that heart attack patients at the lowest-spending hospitals are 19% more likely to die than patients of the same age at higher-spending hospitals. Yet the Obama health law pushes all hospitals to imitate the lowest spending ones.
Ignore the political rhetoric and look at the scientific evidence. The Medicare cuts in the Obama health law will end Medicare as we’ve known it and doom seniors to painful aging and shorter lives.
Is this what the Democrats in Congress who passed ObamaCare wanted?
Don’t Panic–Here’s The Picture
As a major snowstorm bears down on the northeastern United States and a bunch of scientists and tourists are stuck in unusually thick ice in Antarctica, the U.K. Telegraph proclaims that the earth is warming faster than ever.
The rebuttal can be found at wattsupwiththat in an article entitled, “IPCC silently slashes its global warming predictions in the ARS final draft.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Assessment Reports on Science (ARS).
The article at wattsupwiththat reports:
In the second draft of the Fifth Assessment Report it had broadly agreed with the models that the world will warm by 0.4 to 1.0 Cº from 2016-2035 against 1986-2005. But in the final draft it quietly cut the 30-year projection to 0.3-0.7 Cº, saying the warming is more likely to be at the lower end of the range [equivalent to about 0.4 Cº over 30 years]. If that rate continued till 2100, global warming this century could be as little as 1.3 Cº.
A graph in the article explains the problem with the old model on global warming:
Unfortunately, global warming science has become more about obtaining funds for studies and about redistribution of wealth. I think when we finally look at global warming objectively (if we ever do), we will be amazed at how easily we were deceived.
Happy New Year!
Melbourne New Year 2014 (Photo credit: PreciousBytes)
