Braden's Corner Of The Net

Jason Altmire’s Newest Enemies

Braden — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:22:19 GMT

I can remember not too long ago local liberals in the Pittsburgh area were pushing hard for Jason Altmire via their blogs.
Now, Jason Almire is the enemy.

To that, I say this: You go Jason! Don’t cave to these imbeciles. Ever.

Seems to me the political choices liberals make never last too long after winning the election.
You liberals ever ask yourselves why?

Of course, you all will continue to vote Democrat, even when your choice candidate(s) eventually turn on you and bite you directly in the ass.
What does that tell you?

Check out some of the comments:

I cannot help but laugh.

I wonder if any of them can show me where in the United States of America Constitution it specifically says:

- “Provide for the general welfare"

- The Federal government should mandate wage and price controls on the free market

- The Federal government should require all employers and all Americans to participate in this Federally mandated plan which will impose up to 25% tax increase

- The Federal government should tell insurance companies it must provide abortion services options? Where does it say that the Federal government must provide grants to set up comprehensive school-based clinics where health professionals will provide contraceptives and abortion counseling without parental consent

If any of them can show me where in the Constitution it specifically says any of the above, I’ll donate my next full paycheck to the charity of their choice.

Nancy Pelosi – Buy A 15K Policy Or Face Jail Time

Braden — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:22:56 GMT

You either buy into our $15,000.00 policy, or go to jail!

What government control, right?

PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail

Friday, November 06, 2009

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

These people are power-hungry sonzabitches.
They have GOT to go in 2010.

Weren’t these the same people who accused the Republicans of being fascists?

Just sayin’

More Liberal Indoctrination Of Our Children

Braden — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:51:09 GMT

This is just plain sick.

I have nothing else more to say on it.

New Hate Crimes Law = Blunder

Braden — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:47:44 GMT

Star Parker gets it right:

President Barack Obama has signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Actually, he signed into law the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act tacked onto which was the hate crimes legislation.

Sen. Harry Reid, our brave Democratic majority leader, slipped the hate crimes bill into the defense authorization bill to avoid having to have our senators consider the controversial hate crimes bill on its own.

It's for good reason that our Democratic legislators wanted to hide under a rock while passing this terrible piece of legislation. It may help them with the far left wing of their party. But weakening and damaging our country is not something to be proud of. And that is exactly what this new hate crime law does.

The bill adds extra penalties to violent crimes when they are deemed motivated by gender, sexual orientation, or disabilities. It's the first major expansion of hate crimes legislation originally passed in 1968, targeted then to crimes aimed at race, color, religion, and national origin.

After signing this new law, Obama celebrated it by saying that in this nation we should "embrace our differences."

But law isn't about embracing our differences. It is about providing equal and non-arbitrary protection to all citizens.

Equal protection for every individual American under the law is what the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, passed after the Civil War, guarantees. That this nation takes this guarantee seriously -- that there are no classes of individuals treated differently under the law -- has been a justifiable obsession of blacks.

A society in which all life is not valued the same, where murder of one citizen is not the same as the murder of another citizen, is a horror that black Americans have known too well.

So it is a particular irony that this major expansion of the politicization of our law has been signed by our first black president.

What could it possibly mean that the penalty for the same act of violence -- for murder -- may be different depending on what might be deemed to be the motivation?

Can you imagine a football game where the penalty for roughing the passer is 20 yards rather than 15 yards if the referee concludes that the violence perpetrated was motivated because the quarterback was homosexual?

Is it not a sign of our own pathology that we now have codified that it is worse to murder a homosexual than someone who has committed adultery, even with your husband or wife, or who has slandered or robbed? Isn't the point murder?

Can we really believe that someone capable of murder is less likely to do so if the victim is a homosexual and the penalties are greater?

It should be clear that hate crime law has nothing to do with improving our law but rather with creating favored political classes. It is something that should be hateful to everyone who cares about a free society, and particularly hateful to those, such as blacks, who have been victimized by politicization of law.

How about the sad and pathetic recent murder of a 16-year-old Christian black honor student in Chicago by four teenage thugs, also black?

A hate crime?

Black on black homicides are tearing up our inner cities. Hate crimes?

The social breakdown that produces the disproportionate violence in black America is the product of the same moral relativism and politicization of law that has produced hate crime bills.

We already have a source, which instructs against murder and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But this has been banned from our schools and our public spaces.

So once again, in what is becoming our Godless nation, we mistake the disease for the cure.

And once again, Americans are asleep at the switch.

Happy Halloween

Braden — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:53:31 GMT

A very Happy Halloween to all of my readers!
Be safe!

Click here for a blast from the past.
(converted from vinyl LP)

“Death Panel” Survives Latest House Health Care Bill

Braden — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Watch out, Grandma!
You will be told it’s time to die when the Government tells you it’s too expensive to keep you alive.

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON -- It's alive.

The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to "death panels" for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday.

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger. Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at the time a lead negotiator on health care legislation, told constituents at a town hall meeting they had good reason to question the proposal.

"I don't have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family," he said. "We should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

Thursday, the sponsor of the provision said the barrage of criticism may have actually helped.

"There is nothing more basic than giving someone the option of speaking with their doctor about how they want to be treated in the case of an emergency," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. "I think the outrageous and vindictive attacks may have backfired to help raise awareness about this problem, which is why it's been kept in the bill."

The legislation would allow Medicare to pay for a counseling session with a doctor or clinical professional once every five years. The bill calls for such sessions to be "completely" voluntary, and prohibits the encouragement or promotion of suicide or assisted suicide.

The counseling provision is supported by doctors' groups and AARP, the seniors' lobby. It was not included in health care bills passed by two Senate committees.

Once again, what country are we living in again?
It’s ok to kill babies and now Grandma too!

These people make me want to vomit.

Nancy Pelosi’s “Public Option Health Option” Unveiling Closed To Public

Braden — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:29:43 GMT

How exactly does that work?

So much for government transparency, right?
Freedom Of The Press? What’s that?

So much for “Draining the swamp” right Nancy?

The hubris of the woman on the right just boils my blood.

RSVP? What the hell?
What country are we living in again?

We have GOT to vote these arrogant anti-American imbeciles out of office.
There’s absolutely no question.

Give Up Your Meat Eating Habits Already!

Braden — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:09:30 GMT

Why?

According to Lord Stern you should give up meat because by doing so, you’ll save the planet.

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

What about all the stuff vegetarians eat? If we all went vegetarian, wouldn’t we be emitting the same copious amounts of greenhouse gasses as cows did in the first place? Last time I checked, eating lots of vegetables are a guaranteed avenue of future farting. Wait! I know how to solve this! Let’s kill all of the cows.

I don’t buy this “go vegan to save the planet” claptrap. Our ancestors raised livestock and never got sick from excessive cow farts. The entire “save the planet” movement is getting absolutely ridiculous. I’m telling you, these people are a bunch of screwballs.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was “desperately needed” to secure a deal.

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,” he added.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.

Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: “Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It’s not a view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.”

On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day — the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organization.

Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.”

Gee, that’s not a biased opinion, coming from someone at the “Vegetarian Society.” Nope, no bias there!

I don’t have a problem with those who make the decision to not eat meat. That’s their choice. I do, however, have a problem with them using the “go vegan to save the planet like the rest of us” stupidity.

Listen, don’t tell me what I can and cannot eat. I happen to love a good 12 ounce slap of beef grilled up medium rare. Just walk it through the kitchen. That’s how I like it.

The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century.

When was the last time the UN was right about anything?
Enough said.

What’s next? Mass genocide in order to save the planet?
(You heard it here first, I guarantee you some environmental whacko will suggest it)

Political Humor – Part IV

Braden — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:00:00 GMT

From a coworker.

More Autumn Photography

Braden — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:01:13 GMT

Click here to view.
Here’s a sampling of what you’ll see: