MaxRedline

Oh Golly! Some Think A Billion And A Half Dollars May Be Too Much To Spend For 6.5 Miles Of Light Rail!

Really, there should be a "Duh!" heading.

As the late, great, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois once noted: "A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money".

Oddly, even in "transit friendly" Portland, the idea of spending a billion and a half dollars for a six and one-half mile light-rail line has got some newspaper editors thinking that it might not be such a "whoopie!" idea.  It's hard to believe, but there have actually been some calls to rein in the push for fixed-rail "crime trains" and step back a bit to consider what the metro area really needs.

It's long overdue.

Hillary Health Care

Well, of course, the Billary plan is modeled on the U.K. system - which is now recommending that the old and unhealthy should not be treated.

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.  Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Therein lies the problem:  you can't provide free health care to everyone, so you start making choices.  And you make those choices based upon your own prejudices.  Got an 80-year old who needs a hip replacement?  Let him or her die.  It's much less expensive, and who knows how much longer the old coot's going to last, anyway?  Hate fat people?  Well, it's easy enough to move them off the planet, then.  Hate smokers?  Folks with HIV?  Simple: deny treatment.

The USA has the best health care options the world has to offer.  It won't much longer, if Billary has anything to say about it.

There's another term that most appropriately describes the plan:  Eugenics.

It's Starting To Get Interesting

Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Obama, and despite a personal call from Bill, it looks as though Ted Kennedy is setting up to endorse Obama tomorrow.  That's a heavy rebuke.  Although Billary are now saying that the election is about people, not endorsements, that's kind of the point:  it seems that many, even in the power structure of the Democrat Potty, have tired of Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.  They're looking for change - and if there's one thing the Clinton tag-team can't provide, that's it.

On the Republican side, the Florida election boils down to a McCain/Romney decision.  McCain has won in open elections that permit independent and crossover votes, but that's not the case in Florida.  Whomever wins on the Republican side there wins big - and whoever doesn't, loses big.  There are no awards for second place.  If McCain can pull out a victory in Florida, he's got a good shot at securing the Republican nomination - which means that Republicans have drifted away from their original core beliefs in favor of a liberal or possibly centrist candidate.  That would imply that Republican core beliefs are simply incapable of winning an American election in the current climate.

Conventional wisdom seems to put McCain against Billary, and in that scenario, McCain has the upper hand in terms of credibility.  However, as the Lamestream media clearly is pushing for a McCain/Billary contest, it seems reasonable to hand them something entirely different.

McCain has no cash; Billary can get their hands on millions from any number of shady characters.

Romney doesn't have to deal with anybody, and so he can go his own way.  Looking at Romney vs. Obama, things are a lot different.  You want change?  That matchup is a clear shakeup.

Romney's not a true conservative.  But he's not McCain.  Obama's not "experienced" like Billary are.

And when even the Kennedys don't want another Billary presidency, something's up.

In Case You Missed The Memo

Global Warming is here, it's happening, it's all your fault, and all the polar bears are going to drown.  Thanks for watching; enjoy your weekend.

It's Not "Terrorism" Anymore

Nope.  Now, it's "anti-Islamic activity".

So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated "anti-Islamic activity." Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, unveiled the new brand name in a speech a few days ago. "There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief," she told her audience. "Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."

Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" – in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity."

If you've never read "1984", you should check it out.  "Newspeak" is becoming increasingly common, particularly in the EU.  And if you live in the Portland area, where politicians endlessly strive to spend billions of your tax dollars in an effort to make the area over in a more "Euro" flavor, you may have noticed that Newspeak is making rapid inroads around your community.

Union Thugs Greenlighted Again In Oregon

Rewriting the rules as usual, Oregon Secretary of State AlGore Bradberries has determined that the band of union thugs calling themselves "Our Oregon" aren't really a political action committee.  Oh, heck no - they're a "public benefit NPO".  Of course, if you happen to be an Oregon politician, then you can see how sending groups of red-shirted union thugs around the metropolitan area to "discourage" people from signing initiative petetions might constitute a "public benefit".  Hey, you don't want no "accident" should happen to ya, do ya?

It's purely coincidental that a prominent player in the thuggery public benefit activities has been Oregon governor Mrs. Bill Clinton's Teddy Kulongoski's official mouthpiece since shortly after the last election.

Illegal Aliens: Eligible For Paid Family Leave?

Well, why not?  Is there anything they don't get while illegally in our country?  In Washington state, there's a real possibility that illegal aliens may receive paid "family leave".

In the meantime, Oklahoma's showing the rest of the USA that illegals can - and will - self-deport if given sufficient incentive:

"I feel like I'm in some kind of Nazi country where if they see your color, you'll be stopped," said Maria Sanchez, a 22-year-old student who is looking to leave Oklahoma rather than risk waiting the seven years it will take to get her papers. "I can't work, I can't study, I can't go out, there's no point of me staying here."

Maria, we don't care what you call us.  If you're here illegally (as it appears you are), we'd like to give you a choice:  self-deport or face arrest.

Tom Cruise Better Find A Couch To Jump Up And Down On

It's official:  it's war.  This should be fun to watch unfold.

It's Been 40 years.

Yep, 40 years ago, a guy named Paul Ehrlich (who is still employed at Stanford University) scared everyone to death with his timeless tome, "The Population Bomb".  By now, Earth's human population was supposed to have largely died out, and we were all - those remnants left, anyway - suriving today only because of a strong, top-down governmental system that decided who would reproduce (and when), who would be sterilized, and who would be subjected to eugenic removal.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Armageddon: not one of the tenured professor's doom-and-gloom "predictions" panned out.  Oh, he got a lot of press, back in the day, and everybody was in a panic.  But that was 40 years ago.

30 years ago, the panic had shifted to "Global Cooling" - and by now, glaciers were "predicted" to cover the surface of the globe, even extending to the equator.  As was the case with Ehrlich's "population bomb", this latest march to Armageddon was entirely due to human activity.

But a funny thing happened along the way: none of the doom-and-gloom "predictions" panned out.  Oh, it got a lot of press, and everybody was in a panic over global cooling.  But that was 30 years ago.

20 years ago, after publication of "Since Silent Spring", everybody got into a panic over pesticides such as DDT.  Once again, human activity was responsible for destroying the planet, we were all gonna die, and so on.  It got a lot of press, and at this point, even Hollywood stars were drawn into the events - as though a Hollywood star somehow had a firm grasp upon science.  Meryl Streep cried in testimony before Congress as she claimed that Alar on apples was going to kill us all.  Very touching.

Of course, that was 20 years ago, and today we recognize that Alar never killed anybody, and that 30 million humans needlessly died of malaria because we banned the use of DDT.  Today, DDT is back in use, but it's not a huge issue because we've been there and done that already.  Nope, today, we have different things to get into a tizzy over.

Global warming: it's all your fault and we're all gonna die.  It's been getting lots of press, of course, and nowadays politicians are joining Hollywood actors in deciding the "science" of Global warming.  At this point, science has largely been removed from the discussion, which despite US restrictions regarding the blending of church and state, has now become in essence a New Religion.  The language invoked among media and in governmental circles is clear in its theological dogma:  those who dare to disagree that global warming events are entirely or largely due to human causes are routienly labeled as "deniers" or as "unbelievers"; transforming the issue from a scientific discussion into a purely religious battle.

Governmental agencies will not award grants to scientists who wish to probe the claims set forth by the adherents of the religion, and politicians at federal, state, regional, and local levels routinely set policy based not upon science, but upon the tenets set forth in the religion.  Although in the US it is supposed to be unconstitutional for the state to establish a religion of any sort, it is clear from all present indicators that this provision has been trampled.

We've Known All Along...

And suddenly, it appears that other folks are finally beginning to wake up and smell the...hmmm, that smell ain't coffee.  We've known all along that the candidacy of Billary for the Democrat nomination is all about pulling an end-run around the U.S. Constitution and its amendments:  it is no more and no less than an effort to gain Bill a third term as U.S. President.  Presumably, there's more stuff to be stolen from the White House; they must not have had enough time to grab all the goodies they wanted before they left the last time.  Amusingly, it seems to have taken many on the left quite a bit of time to come up to speed on the concept.  But when even Vanity Fair takes note of the game, it's a safe bet that the Clinton tag-team's been busted.