Commonwealth Citizen Soldiers - Hooah

The Associated Press reports the Virginia Army National Guard is at the highest troop levels in 14 years. Despite more than five years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, frequent deployments, and significant casualties, citizen soldiers of the Commonwealth of Virginia are signing up in record numbers for the Virginia National Guard. To all that have answered the call of their State now or in the past, Hooah.
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Suffolk Tornado - Amazing Photos

The Daily Press has more than 80 photos online of the devastation in Suffolk and Driver from yesterday's tornado. Our prayers and best wishes for the injured and those facing the cleanup and rebuilding ahead.
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Obama in Philadelphia: Capital Loss

In Philadelphia's debate Wednesday,"both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama said they would not raise taxes on middle class Americans — those making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year." Not minutes later though, in response to a question about the capital gains tax, Mr. Obama acknowledged his proposal to raise the capital gains tax rate to 28% from the current 15%. When confronted about the positive tax revenue effects of lowering the capital gains tax rate instead, Obama replied, "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness." Fairness? See more below the fold.

Mr. Obama believes that raising the capital gains tax rate would not raise revenue but would result in greater fairness. The fairness, we must suppose, would come from reducing the disparity between the income of the rich and the income of everyone else. The disparity would be reduced however only be reducing the income of those more well off. It would add absolutely no income to to those less well off. The fairness would only result from lower income folks feeling they are being treated more fairly even though they would have not a penny more in additional income. Worse the increase in the tax would decrease government income, preventing the delivery of additional services to lower income people as well. In fact it seems that, "[M]r Obama appears to have counted the (non-existent) proceeds of a higher tax on capital gains both for his healthcare plan and for an 85bn middle-class tax relief plan that he announced [in September 2007]."
Capital gains indeed.

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Science or Seance

I get more professional reading material than I can absorb in any one week. Sometimes though, articles attract my attention. If you are reading the Virginian Federalist, I suspect you read a lot of material with a healthy degree of sceptisism.

Two articles included in this weeks HFMA (Healthcare Financial Management)News reported some interesting, if suspect, data and remind us that we need to check both the source and methodology of any study or report before we can confirm either validity or application of that study or report.

The first of these articles was entitled:
Lots of Window Shopping, but Modest Consumer-Directed Health Plan Adoption: HSC Report

The synopis stated: "A study report released last week by the Center for Studying Health System Change suggests that although consumer-directed health plans--typically a high-deductible health plan accompanied by either a health reimbursement arrangement or health savings account--are being offered by a growing number of employers, enrollment in these products constituted just 5 percent of total enrollment in employer-sponsored health plans in 2007."

The Center for Studying Health System Change defines itself as a source of information about health care system financing for policy makers. Both the study report and the press release include the words modest adoption for Consumer Directed Health Plans. The study does not provide a definition of what kind of growth would constitute modest, and it provides no data on what the adoption rate was the previous year or any other year. If the penetration rate of this kind of plan only grew from 4 to 5 percent in a year it would constitute an annual growth rate of 20% per year which is not generally in the modest category.

The second article came with the title: Over Half of U.S. Physicians Support National Health Insurance, New Study Shows

The synopsis reported: "Reflecting a shift in thinking over the past five years among U.S. physicians, a new study shows that over half of them--59 percent--now support national health insurance. The findings reflect an increase of 10 percentage points in physician support for national health insurance since 2002, when a similar survey was conducted.

It was intersesting to note that the same "new study" came to the attention of Consumers for Health Care Choices (chcchoices.org). Greg Scandlen,in his Consumer Power Report #122 of April 3 (Not yet available on website, provides some interesting information on this "new study". Mr. Scandlen comments:
"Let's look instead at the "study" itself. This is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, it was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, but the content is available only to paid subscribers. Fortunately a friendly internist was able to send it to me. I opened up the file on my computer and was surprised to learn that it wasn't a "study" at all. It was a one-page letter to the editor. Now a letter has the distinct advantage of avoiding the peer review process that applies to published articles. It is also able to avoid including any embarrassing information about methodology."

"The letter was written by Aaron Carroll, MD and Ronald Ackerman, MD, both of the Indiana University School of Medicine. I don't know about Dr. Ackerman, but Dr. Carroll is a member of the board of directors of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), so is hardly an unbiased researcher. Interestingly, the Annals requires the disclosure of financial conflicts of interest, but not political conflicts or biases."

"The survey itself, though only summarized in the letter, apparently asks only two questions -- 1. In principle, do you support or oppose government legislation to establish national health insurance? And 2. Do you support achieving universal coverage through more incremental reforms? They sent this out to 5,000 physicians and got back 2,193 responses. So the sample was entirely self-selected. And who knows what their cover letter might have said? Coming from a leader of PNHP, it might have been calculated to infuriate physicians who believe in freedom, resulting in these doctors discarding the survey.

Mr. Scandlen's conclusion about the "new study" "So, there was absolutely nothing scientific about this. It was pure propaganda."

Application to Global Warming?
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Obama on MLK at Fort Wayne

Previously we analyzed Hillary's MLK Anniversay remarks at Memphis. It is now our turn to look at comments made by Mr. Obama on the same occasion but from Fort Wayne Indiana.

Mr. Obama's preamble is worth considering:

...today represents a tragic anniversary for our country. Through his faith, courage, and wisdom, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved an entire nation. He preached the gospel of brotherhood; of equality and justice. That's the cause for which he lived - and for which he died forty years ago today...

While the circumstances of Dr. King's assassination 40 years ago may have been tragic, Mr. Obama leaves us no clues as to why the anniversary this year is tragic. Although Dr. King was a powerful advocate of nonviolence, and an eloquent spokesman for brotherhood, equality, and justice, the gospel he preached was the Christian gospel familiar throughout the African American Baptist community. Though Dr. King might have given his life willingly if the occasion would have furthered the progress of his struggle as he expressed, "I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others", he was given no such choice standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Later in his remarks Mr. Obama noted:

This is the struggle that brought Dr. King to Memphis. It was a struggle for economic justice, for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life. Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one - that each was part of a larger struggle "for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity."

Indeed in the latter years of Dr. King's life the tenor of his campaigns shifted from racial equality to economic justice. It is in this context that we can see Mr. Obama's rhetoric as a continuation of Dr. King's trajectory from equal justice under law, to equality of results through government intervention. In Memphis it was for union recognition of government workers.

Mr. Obama makes the tie explicitly: But while those sanitation workers eventually got their union contract, the struggle for economic justice remains an unfinished part of the King legacy. Because the dream is still out of reach for too many Americans. Just this morning, it was announced that more Americans are unemployed now than at any time in years. And all across this country, families are facing rising costs, stagnant wages, and the terrible burden of losing a home.

To Mr. Obama, being unemployed is a matter of economic injustice. Facing rising costs is a matter of economic injustice. Having stagnant wages is a matter of economic injustice. Not being able to or not choosing to pay your mortgage is a matter of economic injustice.

While he invokes the words of Amos, "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream," Mr. Obama is unable to understand or express that justice consists of rendering to every man his due, and that the commandment to Adam was "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground". When Mr. Obama calls for economic justice he calls for bread without sweat.
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Hillary in Memphis

Hillary Clinton spoke in Memphis Tennessee April 4, observing the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. There were a number of curious items and references in her speech which may be worthy of examination.
Biographically Mrs. Clinton refers to an experience of meeting Dr. King in Chicago in 1962 when she was 14. While there is no reason to doubt this, it is curious in the context of her other political activity presented her biography.
Her biography notes that in 1961 she canvassed South Side Chicago on behalf of Richard Nixon finding evidence of electoral fraud (presumably by Democrats) and in 1964 she volunteered for Barry Goldwater. Her biography interprets this social justice diversion to the influence of her mother and Methodist Youth minister who apparently took her to see Dr. King.

After surveying the struggle Dr. King was engaged in Mrs. Clinton makes this assertion:

Because of him, after 219 years and 43 presidents who have been white men, this next generation will grow up taking for granted that a woman or an African American can be President of the United States of America.

The assertion's conclusion is self-serving on its face, placing "a woman" before an African American as the beneficiaries of Dr. King's struggle. What is unclear is her reference to the the "next" generation who will
take for granted a woman or black president. She places this next generation in the context of 219 years from Washington's inauguration in 1789. Is this next generation to be born now? Does it consist of those just reaching voting age this year. She describes the next generation in the future tense, those who will grow up. By default she would consign all preceding generations, including current voters, as not growing up taking for granted that a woman or a black man can be president. And by transmutation from the general to the specific she implies that a generation taking for granted that a woman or a black man can be president would elect Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama specifically to be president.

Mrs. Clinton then moved on to provide the usual socialist litany of "solutions to make America what it can and should be." Her litany includes: good jobs, respecting the role of the American labor movement, addressing the scourge of poverty, schools worthy of children, Supreme Court justices who will uphold Brown versus Board of Education, quality affordable health care, ending the war, etc.

Her mention of Supreme Court justices in this context is interesting. Although she provides no specifics, I make the assumption that she refers to a decision of the Supreme Court (Justice Robert's opinion, Associate Justices Alito and Scalia, and Kennedy concurring) that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student's race. Her implication is to establish another litmus test for Supreme Court appointments of Brown vs. Board of Education to Roe vs. Wade. This is precisely the issue that impels conservatives into the arms of those who would seek only to appoint justices committed to the constitution itself and not to any particular political doctrine.

Mrs. Clinton concludes here speech with:

Whether we are oppressed by tyranny, poverty, war or discrimination, that faith, that determination to keep fighting, working, building and believing has and always will carry us forward as long as we remember and as long as we remain committed to fulfilling Dr. King's legacy and dream.

It would be interesting to know which description of oppression, tyranny, poverty war or discrimination Mrs. Clinton ascribes to herself.





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Who’s the REAL Conspiracy Theorist?

Barack Obama is taking some heat for statements made by his pastor that are controversial to say the least. Many of these are conspirator in nature. Many of Obama’s pastor’s statements refer to various conspiracies. I am sure you have seen most of them. As an example, Dr. Wright blamed the US Government for using HIV as a population control. These statements are obviously inflammatory. And if they were actually made by Obama himself would surely disqualify him from running the nation.

However this is not the case. Obama is not a conspiracy theorist. However, the evidence is building that Hillary Clinton is actually the conspiracy theorist. As I have noted before in “Hillary Clinton Facts – ‘Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,’” Clinton actually blamed the Right for her husband’s infidelity. In fact she called it a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Here again are her statements:



Now she “misspoke” about being under attack in Bosnia. So now everyone is out to get her?


So who is the real conspiracy theorist? Read More. . . .

Hillary, World's Fastest (Mis)Speaker

Explaining her misspoken comments about Bosnia, our heroine, Mrs. Clinton remarked:

"I went to 80 countries, you know,” she said. “I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

A Wikipedia article on the speed of human speech notes that:

even auctioneers can only speak at about 250 wpm

If we assume that Hillary's claim to speak millions of words a day is just one million words, then at an auctioneers speed of 250 words per minute, she speaks for only 66 hours and 40 minutes per day. This may explain her earlier comments on being sleep deprived. Alternately, if she talks for a mere 20 hours a day, allowing for sleep, eating and comfort breaks, this provides us with an approximate and astonishing speech rate of 833 words per minute for every waking moment, or just under 14 words per second. Perhaps she only sustains this rate while under sniper attack. Read More. . . .