In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. I Thesselonians 5:18 (KJV) Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It is a day that we put aside to give thanks in our own unique way. Through whatever one's religion is. Or even if one does not have religion. It is one of the most American of American holidays. For me, as a Christian, the above from the Holy Bible is one that I try to have on my heart, no matter what. So to you and yours, from Right View From The Left Coast, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
"Its a shame that people can't come out and donate items that some of them have done for many years. It was a loving way in which people participated in this event."
Understand that the reason it is being done is because the city health department has after many years decided to be a supposed real health department. So they actually have a city environmental health director and her name is Lisa Frias. And oh is she working a fast track. For it is her that "discovered" this horrific lapse in judgement. Allowing people to participate by bringing actual home cooking to feed these people. Miss Frias was reviewing practices and found that because the home-cooked food was not prepared in an approved, regulated facility.
Hmm.
Maybe she should be working on the carts across the street at one of the city's parks that I have no idea if they prepare their food in an "approved" and "regulated" facility.
But back to this.
Miss Frias could not believe that people actually would do such a thing. Like make a full turkey and drive by the distribution point and hand them off to a volunteer. Read this:
"Quite honestly, I am surprised that for all these years nobody ever looked at this."
Oh wait, it gets better:
"It really took me by surprise. Are you kidding me that people really drive up and drop off turkeys?"
Uh, no. For if you know anything about this city, Pasadena, California, you would know that this has been a big deal for 37 years. As a city, we are very generous as noted in this article also in the Star-News. And these people, it wasn't just forking out cash. It was personal. A way for these people to really say that they cared in a tangible way.
The ball-dropping over the years was pretty much a shrug of the shoulders by the city health department director, Dr. Eric Walsh. His comment:
"I honestly can't say. I can only say that once it comes to our attention we tell them the best policies and procedures."
What a pass-the-buck tool you are Dr. Walsh.
Even Miss Frias could not say a time in 37 years that anyone, anyone has reported becoming sick due to eating at the Thanksgiving event. But that doesn't mean it was not prepared under unsanitary conditions and that is a point to be well taken.
But with no record of such things, wouldn't have been better to let the event go on as it has over the 37 years and dealt with it next year? Then people who have done their thing could have been more ready. And trust me, people will still go there tomorrow and be told that they cannot accept the food.
Well, you may ask, why am I so incensed by this? What have I done or do on Thanksgiving besides eat quite well?
Well, I help my church, Church Of Our Saviour in San Gabriel. We have an outreach center and an small mission church under our leadership. That is in El Monte. The church is Immanuel and the outreach center is Our Saviour Center including the Cleaver Wellness Clinic.
In fact, tonight Mrs. RVFTLC and I made 3 trays of mashed potatoes for the 1,000 people that we will be serving late tomorrow morning and afternoon. And we don't just make them. We take them and help serve the people. For many it will be the best meal of the week. Maybe the month. And it is all prepared by volunteers from the local Immanuel Episcopal Church and Church of Our Saviour. FTR, I just peeled 15 lbs of potatoes and Mrs. RVFTLC did the rest. OK I did a little mashing. But as this article points out, we have been doing this for years and no one has ever gotten sick. Really. And if they had, there is a wellness clinic on site that would have been able to provide a minimal amount of care.
So, what is the difference between Church of Our Saviour and Union Station Homeless Services? Church groups have an exemption from the California Retail Food Code.
And that moniker, the California Retail Food Code. Neither group is charging for the meal so how can it fall under a retail food code for one and not the other? Again, since this was found out recently, shouldn't Union Station be given at least a year reprieve so that they do not have to deprive people of doing something from their heart?
As noted by Julie Kelly, the rector's assistant, we need the food all year around. The Our Saviour Center is constantly looking for food. And they will not turn anyone away.
It is important that people but for one day of the year feel human. And while I have a lot of issues with the Episcopal Church, this is one thing that our parish does and does right. And yeah, I will promote it. And I will promote that those that wanted to help Union Station come over to Church of Our Saviour and help out our program. This is a big deal.
As I said in the headline and it is true.
Pasadena's idiocy is my church's gain.
UPDATE:
And if the following post does not drive you insane, Nanny-state soon to be former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants you to squeeze the trigger for gun control in between turkey and the annoying Obamacare advocate. UGH!
And for me, the lefty libs are, well my entire family, living or dead. Oh, I do have a secret Republican nephew, but he'll probably be working.
And no, I will not be spending Thanksgiving with my family. Part of the reason is the poison of politics. The other part is that in the past we all gather at my retired school teacher brother's home in San Diego. About a 100 mile drive and usually four hours to and fro.
But enough of my family drama.
Many of you will face the same fate Thursday and will, sadly, be unable to avoid having those lefty relatives bring up not just politics that you have no agreement about. But they well specifically bring up the dreaded Obamacare.
No folks, its not just about a website. Its about what an abject failure O-Care is and will be.
So how will these annoying relatives begin conversing with you, you crazy right-winger that they are really embarrassed that you are related?
Well, because they need the assistance, they will get their talking points right from the website Health Care For The Holidays.
I kid you not.
But to remind these robots, they also get this e-mail, provided that they get off Facebook and Twitter. And remember this from the second line of the letter.
"Chances are, folks at the dinner table look to you mostly as a voice of reason on the subject."
Oh, BTW, if you go to Health Care For The Holidays, you have to sign up for the details about conversing with us Neanderthals on the subject. I already get enough junk e-mail so no thank you. I did not sign up.
Now if you are a split gathering, or almost split politically, won't you kind of have a lot of people that do not look to the initiator of O-Care conversation as a "voice of reason" on the subject. I know I would not think that person is a voice of reason.
But if you get corralled by that annoying, probably college-age dim bulb of a relative that is getting in your face, Ace at The Ace Of Spades has some helpful retorts to verbally pummel that relative you won't invite back next Thanksgiving. Its helpful to have the back up, but because most of us knew that this would not work, we could probably do well enough on our own. Oh yeah, when you bring up your concern about the "death panels" that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin brought up, maybe you can steer them over to this from Mark Halperin from Time magazine. NOW the leftywhore media is telling us that it was right there in the legislation. In black and white. And he has the testes to say that the media should have been doing more investigative reporting on the subject. No, these Obama lapdogs were too busy shilling for the bill and in fact mocking Mrs. Palin for bringing the subject up at all. When your O-Care warrior relative stems and stammers, just walk away. Which you probably should have done in the first place.
I don't know. Call me old fashioned but when a family gets together usually for the one time of the year in such a setting, the last thing on my mind is bringing up politics and certainly not O-Care. You have more than likely debated these relatives on Facebook already. Why must people ruin what should be a happy occasion with such crap?
Because as some dude said on the perpetual campaign trail, you have to get in the faces of those that do not fall in line with the Obama agenda.
Oh yeah, why it was the Dear Leader, President Obama, himself and the First Lady, Michelle Obama telling acolytes that. And what better time to get in their faces than Thanksgiving? What better time to shill for O-Care? What better time to impugn your relatives and or friends for having "bad" health care coverage that they were perfectly happy with?
This is the poison of the left. That nothing is sacred or that there can be a truce on a day where there should be fun and happiness. No, they are so hell bent that they are so damn right on any and everything that they have to spout off. And get talking points to do so. Really Obamot, you have nothing else going on in your life that you can talk about with those relatives that you have not seen in a year or longer? You don't have a social life? A girlfriend, boyfriend or even a same-sex relationship that's worth talking about? A job? Anything else than shilling for a dude, a party and an idea that really does not give a crap about you? If that is the case, you lead the most pathetic life I know.
So as Mrs. RVFTLC and I visit friends this Thanksgiving, if there is a lib in the house (probably not because these are pretty conservative folks, but maybe have that lefty interloper), I do NOT want to talk about O-Care with my turkey. Now give me that drumstick!
Last Thursday, the Democrat-controlled senate under Majority Leader, Sen Harry Dingy Reid (D-Nev.) decided to finally use the long threatened on both sides "nuclear option" and ending the filibuster in regard to certain presidential appointments.
And yes, it is the straw that broke the camel's, or in this case the donkey's back for as even an erstwhile liberal reporter such as the Washington Post's Dana Milbank realizes that gee, the Republicans can use it when they become the majority party in the senate. That should be after the 2014 mid-term elections.
And as I noted the Republicans did threaten this in 2005 when the Democrats blocked quite a few of then President George W. Bush's judicial nominees. The Democrats, led by coinkidink then Senate minority leader Reid and a young first-term Democrat senator named Barack Hussein Obama, fought against the move. The whole threat came to a halt when Sens. John "F--- You" McCain (R-Az) and Lindsay Goober Graham (R-SC) worked out a deal to block the move to get some of the Bush nominees voted on by the whole senate.
Understand that the current filibuster is not the old Mr. Smith Goes To Washington where a senator stands up and says he is going to speak until he or she cannot do it any longer. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) had one of the lengthier old school filibusters in recent history lasting 12 hours and 52 minutes regarding the confirmation of John Brennan as the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Most filibusters are a senator objecting to a presidential nomination and forcing the senate to come up with 60 votes to break a filibuster. In fact until Sen. Dingy Reid pushed the button on the nuclear option, 60 votes were needed to pretty much pass most legislation in the senate.
So why is this such a big deal?
Well until senators were directly elected in each state starting in 1913, each state legislature elected senators for six-year terms. And before the 17th amendment allowing for the direct election of senators, the senate was a very slow and deliberative body. So the filibuster really made more sense after the direct elections of senators to slow things down legislatively so as to not be like the House of Representatives.
And that is what the Founding Fathers had in mind in creating a bicameral legislature. For the senate to not be a rubber stamp of the house. And to have the final say on such matters as presidential appointments whether it be to a federal court, a cabinet post or any other appointment in which the senate is required to vote on.
To most Americans, this is arcane stuff. Hell, most Americans do not even know what arcane means. But the fact is that in doing what Sen. Dingy Reid and the Democrats did last Thursday, they have created a monster.
Next year are the mid-term national elections. And lets stipulate that the Republicans take control of the senate and keep control of the house. By doing what Sen. Dingy Reid and the Democrats did, the House of Representatives in 2015 passes the bill to repeal Obamacare. Up to now the 40+ votes have been for naught as the senate has not even taken up any of the measures. The new majority leader of the senate, more than likely Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calls on the new majority to vote to change the rules that it only takes a majority to vote to repeal Obamacare. Oh, you will hear the riot act being read by Sen. Dingy Reid and all the Democrats how unprecedented it is, yada, yada, yada. Sen. McConnell will just refer back to this vote. And because it is about a rule change within the chamber, the minority party, the Democrats, can not do anything to stop it. It passes on a party-line vote and the senate votes for the first time to repeal Obamacare.
Of course the Dear Leader, President Obama will veto it. But that is not the point.
By setting this precedent, the Democrats have to realize that yes, it will come back to bite them and could be big time.
This will create the exact lack of bipartisanship that we see in the house. It will make the senate a glorified house of states or whatever one would want to call it. It will be used to create a rubber stamp for whatever the house should pass.
I know, a lot of people, and I have this in the back of my mind, think that the Republicans will not do such a thing. Because being a conservative party, they would like to go back to the old rules. But the rank and file will not let them. The people that will get elected to the senate, and should that make it a Republican majority, will want to see it happen. It will be a juggernaut that not even Sens. Graham and McCain could stop. Oh, Sen. Goober Graham is up for reelection next year and has some primary challengers. If one can break out of the pack and defeat Sen. Goober, one less to worry about. And Steven Hayward over at Powerline blog notes that this is a distinct possibility. That because of what the Democrats did in their desperation it will come back to bite them. And he noted the irony of Mr. Milbank thinking this was a bad idea. But it was the lonely voice of retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich) that I leave you with:
“Down the road — we don’t know how far down the road; we never know that in a democracy — but, down the road, the hard-won protections and benefits for our people’s health and welfare will be lost.”
Short sighted thinking for immediate political gain could mean in the end that a Republican senate can and will use this very nuclear weapon to deal with the excesses of liberalism in the United States once and for all.
Oh I know that a lot of people are going to hate what I am going to write. They will say how dare I write something like this on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That I write ill of the dead.
So I will start from that.
I was not born until July 29, 1964. Thus I have no personal knowledge of the day whatsoever.
This day is as good as any other day since we have been subjected to glowing assessments of the Kennedy presidency. So why not?
And most important is that the truth waits for no one. And that is what this post is about. The truth of the 35th president of the United States.
Let's start with the fact that Mr. Kennedy came from one of the most corrupt families in American history, the Kennedys.
From the old man himself, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who somehow became a business success using insider trading tactics and probably (although never proven but suspected) a bootlegger during the prohibition period. Oh, and he was the first chairman of the securities and exchange commission under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And suddenly, he found Jesus and started to enact regulations that he used earlier to get rich. In other words, as FDR said, it takes a crook to catch a crook. No truer words were spoken. And is it not interesting how he got into the liquor business literally after the repeal of the Prohibition amendment to the United States constitution? Makes me wonder if he was not indeed a bootlegger during prohibition. And Daddy Kennedy was a huge anti-Semite. He all but opposed the United States entering World War II. And constantly had choice things to say about Jews. But hey, that was the old man, right?
Oh yeah, in polite company we can't bring up these terrible things about old man Kennedy.
But I will.
And now for the real John F. Kennedy. Not the one that you are reading and hearing and watching incessantly this week. In the election of 1960, then Sen. Kennedy, the Democrat party nominee, defeated then Republican Vice-President Richard M. Nixon by a total of about 130,000 popular votes or 49.7% to 49.5% and with 303 electoral votes. There has long been suspicsion that a large part of that total were due to the corrupt Democrat machine of then Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey and an equally corrupt Democrat machine in rural Texas thanks to the Vice-Presidential nominee, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson. Many Republicans wanted Vice-President Nixon to contest the election due to at least perceived voting irregularities. But Vice-President Nixon did not do that because he did not want to put the nation through such an event. Mr. Nixon waited 12 years to inflict pain on the nation with the Watergate scandal. But that is for another day and time.
On domestic policy, one area in which President Kennedy deserves rightful credit is realizing that taxes were too high and revenues to the federal government too low. He was what amounted to the first supply-sider and he was correct. However, his was the first budget to top $100,000,000,000 and the first non-war, non-recession deficit. But because of the tax cuts, the economy did soar during much of his 1,000 days in office.
On civil rights, the record is kind of murky. When he had a chance to vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he did some roundabout ways to avoid tricky votes that did not offend the segregationist Southern Democrats that he would need to carry that region. As president he pursued stronger policies that led to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. But alas, he did not live to see that to fruition.
Which leads to the one thing that if it was what President Kennedy wanted, the Great Society, then he would have presided over the destruction of the American nuclear family, among many things.
The Great Society was a series of programs that centralized a slew of things under federal government control and funding. One aspect were programs that were supposed to end poverty in the United States and that added to the alphabet agencies that began under President Franklin Roosevelt. And there was the beginning of the increasing role of the federal government in higher education. Of course then the federal government began the road to socialized medicine with the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid.
Is this what President Kennedy really wanted? We will never know. We have to judge that on the results of programs passed by President Johnson.
On foreign policy, there President Kennedy was much better. But not perfect.
When he went along with President Eisenhower's plan to overthrow the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, that was a good sign. But the infamous Bay of Pigs ended up being a fiasco and not only did Castro survive but thrived on a heaping slop of American hatred to the still impoverished people of Cuba. It can not all be blamed on President Kennedy. But he did nothing to improve the plan that might have rid the Cuban people of the dictator, Castro.
But speaking of Castro and Red Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the biggest test of the Kennedy administration. And in reality it turned out to be a wash. The missiles were removed from Red Cuba. But also the United States removed missiles from Italy and Turkey. The strong response of President Kennedy in a naval blockade of Red Cuba can not and should not be diminished because no doubt it eventually averted nuclear war and led to the then Soviet Union to remove the missiles from Red Cuba.
And it was President Kennedy that set the stage for the proxy showdown with the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent Red China in Southeast Asia. No, despite what many of today's liberals want to believe that President Kennedy did not want to get in too deep in Vietnam but the reality is that he wanted to make a stand against the forces of communism right there. And in that regard President Johnson was carrying out President Kennedy's anti-communist policies.
The reality about President Kennedy is that his term was short and really hard to judge with truthfulness. And he was not and is not any kind of secular saint. He was a man that had flaws. Flaws that I chose not to address in this post because that is not relevant to the story of the 35th president.
We have to look honestly at the Kennedy administration and that is what I tried to do here.
And one more thing that is very, very important.
President Kennedy was assassinated by one man. A communist named Lee Harvey Oswald. There is no and was no conspiracy. That again has been perpetrated by the left because they can not come to grips that a communist killed their heir to FDR. But that is what happened.
Again, this is a post about truth and some of it is uncomfortable. But that is not the point. I want this to be a post of honesty, not to demean. I hope that is what I did.
Well that did not take all that long for MSNBC "journalist" Martin Bashir to apologize for his disgusting rant last Friday against the former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.
Yesterday Mr. Bashir went on the air at the lowest-rated show on the network, his own, to issue this apology to Mrs. Palin:
If you don't want to watch this British douchebrain's apology, here is a little bit of what he said:
"I wanted to take this opportunity to say sorry to Mrs. Palin, and to also offer an unreserved apology to her friends and family, her supporters, our viewers, anyone who heard what I said. My words were wholly unacceptable. They were neither accurate or fair.
Really?! You think?!
Yes, did you really think that Mrs. Palin was referencing slavery in the context of the slavery that plagued this nation for one and a half centuries?
It is not for me to accept the apology from Mr. Bashir or not. That is up to Mrs. Palin. But I do believe she will if she has not already.
The lesson here is that all of us, left or right, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican can learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
Hopefully the apology from Mr. Bashir is a start.
I know that I'm late to this one but I must ask why, why does the left still have a huge hate for the former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin? And not just Mrs. Palin, but conservative women in general?
Mrs. Palin resigned from the governorship in 2009. Since then she has a political action committee, backed some candidates that have won elections and lost elections. And she has been a political commentator on the Fox News Channel and she has been writing books. Not one book has been political in nature.
In fact, many people on both sides have to to the conclusion that Mrs. Palin is yesterday's news.
Yet in the land of the lefty fever-swamps, Mrs. Palin still draws the ire of some.
One those people is the lowest-rated host on the free-falling lefty outlet, MSNBC. And that is British "reporter", Martin Bashir.
Last Friday, Mr. Bashir "discussed" a recent speech from Mrs. Palin. In that speech, as reported in the Des Moines Register, Mrs. Palin said the following:
"Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When the money comes due-and this isn't racist, but it'll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to be beholden to a foreign master."
OK, yes, I will not be the first one who says this, but I think rather than invoking race, I would have said what it is. ECONOMIC slavery. Which what it almost is now. While Red China has not called it's note in, they can do so at any time. And it would be a disaster. It is part of the United States wallowing in $16,000,000,000,000+ in debt. Not deficit, but debt.
Well, Mr. Bashir decided to be the word police and went on a three-minute tirade for Mrs. Palin to dare use the s-word.
Here is what Mr. Bashir spent three minutes on:
OK, as Mr. Bashir went through obscure and painful slave history, he had a reason for it.
Before I write the point, if you have not watched the video, you need to watch the whole thing and right now.
Hopefully you have watched it.
So again, he went through a great deal of slave history to end his rant with this:
"When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn't just prove rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of disciplne from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate."
And what, what is that discipline?
Why uriniating and defecating in Mrs. Palin's mouth.
Of course, yes Mr. Bashir! Yeah, lets punish her because she said something that many a commentator and or even actual elected politicians have said about the crushing United States national debt? That to discuss the precarious nature of our economy and using the word slavery is now off limits in politically correct land. At least according to Mr. Bashir.
And again, if I were giving such a speech and or invoking the word slavery in this context, I would have said ECONOMIC slavery. But to lefty fever-swamp captains like Mr. Bashir, it still would not be cool.
And again, why does Mr. Bashir or anyone on the left care so much about Mrs. Palin if she is but a political has-been?
Why even when I shared this on Facebook, a nephew of mine who is one of the lefty Dems of the family, yet never comments on my shares or comments on current events had this reaction: I for one would be pleased to see someone defecate in Palin's mouth. Hell, she might even enjoy it! Those self hating conservatives are usually the ones with the sickest fetishes. Just sayin... Furthermore, for all the sh** that's come out of her mouth over the years, it wouldn't be the worst thing to give her a taste of her own medicine so to speak!
And then he added this:
Of all the conservatives to defend mark, I would think she would be at the bottom of the barrel
Well, we continued a little back and forth but here is a comment my nephew made that was revealing:
Come on, does anyone still take Palin seriously anymore?
How revealing. And I ask again, why oh why do those on the lefty fever-swamps take her seriously? Of course because deep down, they know that she does have a strong following and that is what they fear. That strong following will rise and want Mrs. Palin to run for office. Maybe senator from Alaska. Maybe even this time for president. And not one really knows what would happen in that scenario. Remember, Ronald Reagan made three runs for the White House before he was elected in 1980. And Mrs. Palin is not the only conservative woman to raise the ire of the lefty fever-swamps. Why last year I wrote this post in regards to the lefty fever-swamps and their hate, vicious hate, of conservative women. In the post I wrote about the conservative commentator S. E. Cupp, the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, and of course Mrs. Palin.
The reason I believe the fever-swamp left hates Mrs. Palin, Miss, Cupp, Gov. Haley and any other conservative woman is because they are actually the successes of what feminists fought for so long. But they are not radical in the sense that they want to hack babies. They don't think it is a tragedy to be married. They do not think that it is drudgery to have children. They do what they do and are still their for their families.
Your not a real gal unless you advocate free birth control. Abortion on demand right up to the ninth month and of course also paid for by taxpayers. And your really not a real gal unless you have a hate on men that are not emasculated. Strong traditional men, go away.
And while yes, some of these conservative women are not married or with families, they support the concept of traditional family and marriage between one man and one woman. And of course we know that makes them not real women.
So even though Sarah Palin is not all that politically active, every now and then she will pontificate on current events. And she will pay a price for daring, daring to speak as a conservative woman in the United States today.
OK, this letter is not from me at all, but the writer expresses what many of us who are pushing 50 believe that the millennial voters did by voting for the Dear Leader not once, but twice.
Sadly, many of those voters are now going to feel the wrath of the big government that they wished for. But here Kurt Schlichter in a pretty damning article has to tell these people, in that fatherly I told you so kind of way that you, you millennial voted for this so this is what you get.
And what do you get for wanting the vaunted Obamacare?
The bill.
And you know what? It is to eventually take care of those of us pushing 50 and beyond.
I guess I should thank you millennials. But wait! Your not going to buy that insurance policy that you fought for? Oh, because you are what, 23 years old and still living at home? You still are on your parents health care plans? If you're not living at home, you are actually out of college, working, hey maybe even married, you look and say WTF?! and figure, you can fork out $95 for the fine or one percent of your income, whichever is more. It is less than the bronze O-Care policy.
Anyhow, you millennials are too busy trying to figure out how you are gonna pay those student loans to worry about all that health care stuff, right?
Anyhow, Mr. Schlichter just nails it right here with this:
I have been told that being hard on you millennials will turn you against conservatism, that I should offer you a positive, hopeful message that avoids the touchy problem of your manifest stupidity. No. There's no sugar-coating it - your votes for Democrats have ensured that you are the first generation in American history that will fail to to exceed what their parents attained. Embracing liberalism was a stupid thing to do, done for the stupidest of reasons, and I will now let you subsidize my affluent lifestyle without a shred of guilt.
OUCH!
As I said this is what a father would do and say after trying to help stop a child from doing what is so wrong.
But here, here is where I not only agree but have come to the conclusion that college, college is not for everybody:
Your time in the indoctrination factories trained you in a form of "critical thinking" that is neither.
Spot on, Mr Schlicter!
College has become nothing more than what radio talk-show host Dennis Prager calls Secular Seminaries.
While the majority that attend college really can care less about politics, most of those that are active are on the left. Very few are openly on the right. The professoriate, overwhelmingly left-wing even where one would think that politics don't matter. Very few open right-wing in the professoriate. So many of the don't care crowd are easy pickings for the lefties.
Thus that is why we have a current crop of lefties that seem to dominate among the millennials.
The bottom line from Mr. Schlichter and your humble blogger is that you reap what you sow.
And that is the point of this letter to remind those millennials that their vote has consequences.
Let me start this with a question.
If the president of the United States was, say Mitt Romney, and his signature piece of legislation was finally becoming law of the land, would people think that it is OK for his allies in, say the business community, were given grants to somehow get the administration's position in their advertisements.
Would you call this propaganda?
Of course the left sure would. It would just be how eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll business is.
But when it is the administration of the Dear Leader, President Obama, and a group gives grants to Hollywood writers and producers to make sure a positive message about the so-called Affordable Health Care Act in stories and plot lines, it is OK I guess. And that is what is being done.
The California Endowment is a private organization that recently granted $500,000 to provide "information" about what I will now call Obamacare, or shorthand O-Care to writers and producers so that they can tie it in to plot lines on primarily television shows. And just to be fair, they will not leave out the burgeoning Hispanic market too.
And Marvin Kaplan of the University of Southern California Norman Lear Center said that about the grant and what it is aimed to do:
"We know from research that when people watch entertainment television, even if they know its fiction, they tend to believe that the factual stuff is actually factual."
But sadly, people's idea of factual is stretched especially in regard to so-called reality shows. And I'm going to assume that while they are not supposedly scripted shows, you can bet that this will somehow find its way in. Trust me.
But my question remains.
Isn't this nothing but propaganda? And the people that should actually already know all about O-Care since they were all down with it really need aids for them to somehow just slip it in to some show?
Of course this is propaganda.
And while the California Foundation has a right to grant anyone they please, note the group is one of the most left-wing groups around, the Norman Lear Center. A group pre-disposed to favor O-Care.
And here is a comment from David Zingale, a California Endowment senior vice-president:
"We want them to get the facts. We don't believe the government alone can break through with those facts."
So will they really offer facts or what the administration wants to put out there? Well, according to Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, it better mention the warts and all of O-Care:
"If there are drawbacks and glitches and discontent, that should be part of the presentations. It should not be a place to propagandize; it should be a place to have honest, open discussion, wrinkles and all, flaws and all on health reform. Hollywood migh be airbrushing the president's core program, because they are close to the Democrats."
And Dr. Caplan supports O-Care. But he is honest enough to point out the obvious.
Nowhere like Hollyweird are there bigger supporters of the Democrats. There is more diversity among unionized workers than in Hollyweird.
While Dr. Caplan seems to get that O-Care has not had a stellar roll out, I think Mr. Kaplan with the Norman Lear Center is, well kind of buying the left wing's biggest assertion why the government must all but take over one third of the American economy:
"Public health is a common good. Public health is not a partisan issue. America needs to be healthy. People need to have access to health care. That's not a controversial statement."
Uh, Mr. Kaplan, I'm sorry but it is not only controversial but an outright lie.
The poor of the United States does have access to basic health care. There are free clinics. There are doctors that provide service for the poor often at their own expense. And yes, they can always go to an emergency room if they really need to. The rich can always get the very best health care. And no matter what they always will. The middle-class by and large have health insurance through their employers. And there is a substantial segment of the American population that obtains health care by buying individual policies. So to say that people do not have access to basic health care is a lie.
What has been done in the passage of O-Care is a massive redistribution of wealth to give uninsured people health insurance. That a poor person can pay for one of four types of plans that in the past they could not attain. That private insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions at the same rate as a healthy person. That parents can keep their children on their insurance until they are 26 years-old. That is that basics of O-Care.
To trust that somehow a grant to a very liberal-left group to help writers provide "facts" to the wonders of O-Care without the warts and all is a big, to huge bridge too far.
This is all but state-sponsored propaganda.
