Hey Coach – Take the Player off the Field

Democrats would never be a good sports team, whether in baseball, basketball or football.  They can’t play as a team because there are too many, “It’s all about ME” members on the team.

I’m sure you’ve all seen at some time or another a game being played where one or two players seem to think the only way to win is by taking control of the ball and not using other members of the team to get the job done.  Well, that’s been the Democratic Party for the past 9 years now.

It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House or who is in charge of the House and Senate, Democrats have tripped over their own feet so many times I begin to count how many.

When they fought against the wars during the Bush years, there was always a group of Democrats that would end up siding with the Republicans.  When it was about the prescription drug program, another group of Democrats would end up siding with the Republicans.  When it was about investigating the Bush administration over pre-war intelligence or claims of WMD in Iraq – again a small group of Democrats would side with the Republicans.

Now with the Health Care reform bills, once again there are a one or two Democrats that think the story is all about THEM, that THEY are the so-called hero’s of Americans by standing against any major changes to our health care system.

When I’ve been at a ballgame with a player or two doing this, I’ve yelled  the following…”Hey Coach, take them out of the game – or LOSE BIG TIME”.

Well coach (Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Barack Obama), it’s time to take these non-team players off the field or floor.  It’s been TIME for quite awhile now.

Insurance Companies: Must Provide for Pro-Bono Cases

You’ve probably heard of term that law firms use, “Pro-Bono” cases right?

Pro bono publico (usually shortened to pro bono) is a phrase derived from Latin meaning “for the public good”. The term is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service.

Well, the thought just occurred to me while thinking about the fact that the Health Care Reform bill currently being pushed in the Senate having no public option offered or a Medicare buy in for younger folks, why not require Insurance companies to provide a certain amount of pro-bono cases of their own?

“FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD”, all medical insurance providers must use a certain percentage of their profits toward providing free or very cheap insurance plans for families that are above the poverty rate but are less wealthy then a normal middle class family.

In exchange the insurance company will receive a tax deduction.

Let’s just take United Healthcare Group insurance company for example.  In July it was reported they profited by over $21.66 billion in just one quarter.  For the year that means they are making something like $86 billion dollars.  What if we required that 2% of all profits must be used to provide for, “pro-bono” cases?  Just imagine the amount of people that would benefit from this assistance?

To those that say that’s not fair requiring a private industry to do something with their profits…what about what’s in the House and Senate bills right now?  Remember the requirement that insurance companies must provide affordable insurance to everybody regardless of pre-existing health conditions?  What about forcing them to provide specific health insurance coverage for specific procedures or medicines?  The bills do both those things, remember?  How is my idea any different?

Ok you math geniuses out there, how many Americans could be covered by using this idea?  Lets say the family/person has to make less than $30-40 thousand a year to qualify to be a “pro-bono” case and all insurance companies have to provide at least 2% of their profits toward these kinds of cases.

Fight For Something – Test Them All

BARTOW, Fla. – James Bain used a cell phone for the first time Thursday, calling his elderly mother to tell her he had been freed after 35 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.

Mobile devices didn’t exist in 1974, the year he was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping a 9-year-old boy and raping him in a nearby field.

Neither did the sophisticated DNA testing that officials more recently used to determine he could not have been the rapist…

Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing helped this man and many more be a free.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 248 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release.

Perhaps it’s time we did something that was worth while, good and achievable.

President Obama should sign an executive order declaring that any and all prisoners, that have criminal cases where DNA could be tested to release a current prisoner, may request and receive immediate DNA testing done on their case’s evidence.  If the DNA proves the prisoner innocent, he or she shall receive a free defense attorney to take their case back to court.

If this requires hiring more DNA specialists, so be it.  Set the innocent free.

This makes me think of President Jack Kennedy’s assasin, Lee Harvey Oswald.  The bullets that shot the President back in 1964 and hit John Connally, wouldn’t they have Oswald’s DNA on them from where he loaded the rifle?  Wouldn’t his finger prints be on them?  What about the area he was supposedly shooting from, wouldn’t some of his DNA be there, a hair perhaps?

How about going all the way back to the Abraham Lincoln assassination by John Wilkest Booth.  Do we still have any evidence from that killing that DNA would prove Booth innocent of the killing?

Wow!  Wouldn’t it be breaking news if DNA were to prove a case like one of those was wrong?

Seriously however, as many cases/prisoners that this group has argued for and helped to free, this surely proves that our court system needs to take a step or two back and recheck those cases/prisoners– that just may have been wrongly accused.

Colbert Report: For He’s a Jowly Good Fellow

As usual Colbert tells it like it is.

What if Emails Prove Guilt?

WASHINGTON — Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days’ worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.

The two private groups – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive – said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

It will be years before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails because they will now go through the National Archives’ process for releasing presidential and agency records. Presidential records of the Bush administration won’t be available until 2014 at the earliest…

Normally I’d understand where these emails would be given to the National Archives; but if any were to prove that the President or anyone else in the Bush administration had committed a crime, could the attorney general use that evidence to prosecute that person(s)?

As many times members of the Bush administration were accused of possible crimes, even war crimes, does the Attorney general have the right to seize these emails for investigation?

Anybody know?

If these emails are simply ignored for another 4 years, wouldn’t the statue of limitations kick in by then so that if a crime had been committed, it would be too late to use the emails as proof.

I sincerely hope the Obama administration demands that they be ‘checked out’ before releasing to archives.

Obama Admin: “U.S. Not long term shareholder”

NEW YORK - Citigroup Inc. said Monday it is repaying $20 billion in bailout money it received from the Treasury Department, in an effort to reduce government influence over the banking giant. The government will also sell its stake in the company…

The government gave it $45 billion in loans and agreed to protect losses on nearly $300 billion in risky investments…

“We are pleased that Citigroup is moving ahead with plans to pay the taxpayers back. Treasury has repeatedly stated that the United States never intended to be a long term shareholder in private companies,” the Treasury Department said in a statement…

Citi is selling $20.5 billion in stock and debt to repay the government. It only has to pay back $20 billion because the remaining $25 billion was converted into a 34 percent ownership stake in the bank earlier this year. The government plans to sell that entire stake — which has risen in value by more than 20 percent — during the next year.

The loss-sharing agreement will also end as part of the plan…

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. quickly paid back the money they received because it carried restrictions such as caps on executive pay and dividends.

Citi’s announcement comes just days after Bank of America Corp. completed the repayment of $45 billion it received as part of TARP…

Wells Fargo is now the last large national bank that hasn’t paid back the government…

TARP recipients have so far paid back $116 billion. That’s out of a total of $453 billion that the government extended to banks, insurers, automakers and other companies under the program…

The government stands to earn about $5.7 billion in profit by selling its portion of Citi shares, based on Friday’s closing price of $3.95.

Well, well, well, it appears those nasayers that accused the Obama administration of being socialist and wanting complete control of private companies are stepping on their tongues now.  Whoops!

Dick Morris: Fox News Contributor

To keep its leverage over the economy intact, the Obama administration is refusing to let banks and other companies give back the TARP money until they pass a financial “stress test.”

Nominally, the government justifies this procedure by saying that it does not want companies to become fully private prematurely and then need more help later on. But don’t believe it.

They want to keep the TARP money in the banks so they can have a reason and rationale to control them.

Larry Kudlow:

TARP has morphed into a command-and-control economic tool used by the Obama administration to exercise unpredicted intervention into the American economy.

Gerald P. O’Driscoll: Cato at Liberty

Second, and even more disturbing: it appears that the Obama Administration wants to control the financial sector in order to gain control over what Lenin called the “Commanding Heights” of the U.S. economy:

These are just a few of the so called experts telling Americans that the Obama administration just wants to ‘control’ our economy.

I’m not claiming to be an expert in economics, not even close to it; but with these companies paying tax payers back the money they were loaned it sure appears the Tarp money was used for the purpose the Bush and Obama administrations had intended — sustain the companies long enough to get past the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Gitmo Prisoners in Illinois: So What!

People are talking about this newly leaked memo stating that President Obama has authorized the Gitmo prisoners to be moved to the Thompson prison about 150 miles west of Chicago Illinois.  Everybody is freaking out about it.

I say why get freaked out about a few accused terrorists being incarcerated in a prison when we have American men and women (could be a neighbor of yours or mine) right here in the good old U.S. running freely and plotting to kill their fellow citizens?

Did you read about these men caught in Pakistan?

ISLAMABAD – Five young Americans detained in Pakistan over alleged terrorist links will most likely be deported, a local police chief said Friday.

The men have allegedly told investigators they tried to connect with al-Qaida-linked militant groups in Pakistan and were intending to cross the border into Afghanistan and fight U.S. troops there.

The men were said to have used the social networking site Facebook and Internet video site YouTube to try to connect with extremist groups in Pakistan. When they arrived in Pakistan, they took that effort to the street.

They were reported missing by their families in the Washington, D.C., area a week ago after one of them left behind a farewell video showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended.

Pakistani police detained them this week — along with one of their fathers — in Sargodha, a town in the eastern province of Punjab.

So no, my friends, I’m not worried about those Gitmo prisoners being moved to a secure prison in Illinois.  I’m more worried about who’s living next door to me perhaps plotting to kill me and my family.

SHEBA: My Best Friend

I just lost my best friend yesterday.  Forgive me for expressing my love to her here on my site; but I miss her so much already and feel like sharing that love with you all.

She was the smartest dog I’ve ever had the privilege to have known and shared time on this earth with.

She had only one fault and that was her devoted love for me and my mother.

During her last dream she had in our home, you could tell by her movements of her legs that she was running.  She was most likely chasing a rabbit.  I pray that she’s doing just that now…running freely after any darn animal or toy she wants –to her hearts content.

Sheba had a bad heart, allergies, bad knees and ear troubles all her life.  She’d been deaf for probably a year or so because of those ear problems.

Just about 3 weeks ago, she suddenly went blind.  Many dogs can live a happy life with no hearing or no site; but having neither was making Sheba lose her spirit,  you could see it in the way she acted.

She was running into things and would get lost in the back yard.  I’d find her standing in front of a tree or the wrong side of the house or just facing a swing set…lost. Sometimes she couldn’t even find her food or water.  She needed my help constantly to even get around.

Because of my own physical limitations, picking her up or bending over constantly was wearing me down.

I had to give her up because the good Lord refused to relieve her of her suffering.  The doctors said they wouldn’t let me do it if they didn’t think it was the right thing to do; but that doesn’t make it any easier for me.

I pray she will forgive me for giving up on her because of my own  weaknesses.  I also pray that someday she and I will play with Squeaky once again.

I love you Sheba and miss you with all my heart sweety.

Obama: Acceptance Speech of Nobel Peace Prize

To begin with, I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force.  I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.  Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t…

Furthermore, America — in fact, no nation — can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified…

Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war.  That is what makes us different from those whom we fight.  That is a source of our strength.  That is why I prohibited torture.  That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed.  And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.  And we honor — we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard…

First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior — for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something.  Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable… (more…)

Right Wingers Vision of Truth

A friend of mine sent this via email today:

On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment courtesy of Republican Tom Coburn that would require all Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan. It took me less than a minute to sign up to require our congressmen and senators to drink at the same trough! Three cheers for Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana !

Congressman John Fleming ( Louisiana physician) has proposed an amendment that would require congressmen and senators to take the same healthcare plan they force on us (under proposed legislation they are curiously exempt).

Congressman Fleming is encouraging people to go on his Website and sign his petition (very simple – just first, last and email). I have immediately done just that at: http://fleming.house.gov/index.html

Please urge as many people as you can to do the same!

If Congress forces this on the American people, the Congressmen should have to accept the same level of health care for themselves and their families. To do otherwise is the height of hypocrisy!

Please pass this on!!