Man in a Hole

I like YouTube videos. There are many talented people, and those who can produce these little vignettes have my admiration. One of these days maybe I'll learn how to put together my own video. Well, probably not but a fun thought.

This video has a definite, timely message.

Happy Rosh Hashana!

Happy Jewish New Year

SHA-ALU SHALOM YIRUSHALAYIM
(Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem)

'SHA-ALU' means 'TO ASK'; that is, ask The Owner, Protector and Redeemer of the City of Jerusalem (God) that He would bring Shalom (Peace) to the Place and the People through the Prince of Peace (Jesus Christ).

What is the benefit to you or I if we pray for the peace of Jerusalem? In Psalms 122:6, God promises to prosper those who love Jerusalem. Therefore if you obey the LORD by praying for the peace of Jerusalem you actually are asking God to:

RESTORE - REDEEM - RETURN

Restore the Land of Israel, Redeem the Jewish people, and Return for His own through the Revelation of our Messiah, The LORD Jesus Christ.

The shofar is blown in celebration of Rosh Hashana. If you have never heard the blowing of the shofar just as it was in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, listen to this video:



To determine the exact time to blow the shofar, two people must be outside in the evening on both Friday and Saturday September 18 and 19. They must look west toward the sunset. When both can see the first sliver of the Moon on whichever day it happens, that is the moment the shofar is blown. The Torah says two witnesses need to see the first sliver of the moon and then it is confirmed to be the first of the month. This is why it is often said to be the day and hour no one knows.

Debt Road Trip

If ya'll liked the debt clock, get a load of this little video. This puts the national debt into perspectives we all can understand.



Are we there yet?

Girl Scouts Prepare

The Obama administration has teamed with the Girl Scout Council to create a new patch that you can read about here. In a nutshell, what the article says is that the US government "...wants to enlist its 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the effort to combat hurricanes, pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters. . . "This new preparedness patch will increase citizen preparedness and enhance our country's readiness for disasters," said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a statement." . . . "As a former Girl Scout, I know the 'Be Prepared' motto well, and I look forward to working with the Girl Scouts to spread the preparedness....."

I hope that parents don't point to the lesbian Janet Napolitano as the type of person girls should aspire to any more than they should promote pole dancing. Beyond that though is the larger issue of the government enlisting the youth of American to "combat" natural and man-made disasters. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around; that is, that the grown-ups are supposed to protect the kids during disasters?

It's not the first time that the youth have been summoned to work for the government. According to Wikipedia, "During the [first world] war, radio transmitters were regulated, and Scouts were called to look for unauthorized units. Scouts were used as message runners, coast watchers, and were to be alert for men who had not reported for duty. Over $352 million of war bonds were sold by Scouts along with $101 million War Saving Stamps. They collected fruit pits to be processed into charcoal for gas masks and inventoried black walnut trees for use as propellers and gun stocks. The War Garden program was intended for Scouts to raise food at home, but was only moderately successful."

Jonathon Blair said it so well, "[The progressive (communist)President] Woodrow Wilson enlisted the Boy Scouts as informers, sentries, and fund raisers. He also had them involved in the process of making military supplies..."

So, now President Obama is going to use the Girl Scouts in the same way. Obama is making a point of engaging and enlisting the youth of this country into servitude to whom? Surely he isn't going to post Girl Scouts on the coastline to blow back hurricanes. Has it dawned on anyone that Obama is looking for the youth (15+ years) vote now for the next election in 3 years. According to my teenage grand-daughters, nearly all the high school kids in their schools are supporters of Obama now.

Were you paying attention at all when President Obama announced his speech to the kids? It initially included a call for the kids to pledge their allegiance to him. It also included classroom worksheets to guide the kids into making their pledge. Due to the outrage and outcry of parents around the country he had to change his message and materials.

Wake up America.

Show-Off

This profound statement was uttered by former CIA terror expert Michael Scheuer in a Newmax interview here:

"My dad used to say, beware of men who like to show off in front of children. . ."



". . . And I think the president's discussion with schoolchildren [on Tuesday] is a good example of a man to beware of."

US Debt Clock

I found this rather interesting. Check out the credit card debt clock--it's actually going down not up. Americans are paying off debt. Amazing. Click the link below to see all the current numbers.

U.S. National Debt Clock

Government Run Health Care

Is it just me or does anyone else see the humor in this. . . The President said last night that his health care plan would be partially paid for by cutting $500 million in "waste and fraud" in the government run Medicare program.

Whoa there Mr. O. Health care reform aside, if you know that there is waste and fraud, why are you not fixing that problem separately? Why are you only willing to fix it if you get health care reform? Do you really expect us to believe that the government is going be able to run national health care better than they have run Medicare with all of its waste and fraud?

Earth Liberation Front??

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/57260622.html

SNOHOMISH, Wash. -- A piece of heavy equipment was used to topple two towers for Everett radio station KRKO, and the national Earth Liberation Front says their members are responsible..."Due to the health and environmental risks associated with radio waves emitted from the towers, we applaud this act by the ELF," Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the North American ELF Press Office, said in a prepared statement...Since its formation in 1996, the ELF has become well-known for highly publicized destructive actions against corporate efforts that it views as harmful to the environment. ELF, by its own estimate, has inflicted some $150 million in damage...The ELF has claimed responsibility for several arsons in the region, including a fire that destroyed the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2001.

How stupid is this?

Pole Dancing Dolls

These dolls were actually found on a store toy shelf. Is this really a good role model for our daughters? Good grief, can't we just let little girls be princesses, cowgirls, and nurses? Would the manufacturer allow his daughters to play with these?

Back to Lockerbie

How is it that President Obama is "outraged" about Scotland caving to the demands of Great Britain (for an oil deal) and releasing the Libyan killer al-Megrahi so he can return home for humanitarian reasons--yet--the President sees nothing wrong with releasing prisoners of war detained at Gitmo?

Self-serving outrage and a double standard?



Facts are now coming to the surface that the Obama administration was informed of al-Megrahi release before it happened. What a farce.

TEOTWAWKI

You'd have to be living a sheltered life if you weren't aware of the all the recent hype over the year 2012 and impeding doom predicted by pundits and new age soothsayers. The title word above (pronounced tea ought walkie) has been coined from that hype by using the acronym for "The End Of The World As We Know It." Really? The end of the world?

The Mayan calendar and the likes of Nostradamus don't predict 2012 as the end of the world. Yet, Hollywood films over the past 20 years or so sure have and numerous TV shows as well. All predicting disasters or an epic battle. Good vs evil, God vs Satan, nuclear war, natural disasters, asteroids, Planet X (the mysterious Nibiru), angels vs demons, vampires vs whatever vs witches, and gamma ray bursts from a star going super nova. Watch out Mad Max, here we come. Makes my head hurt.

What is the cause of all this hubbub?

It seems that there is no single human cause. Scientists have alarmed the public over potential, possible disasters emanating from outer space for a while now. The green movement has claimed that man will destroy his environment any day now. The Muslims are preparing for the return of the Mahdi who will usher in a new world where everyone will either become Muslim or die. Last October, the Jews reformed the sanhedrin, a court of 71 rabbis which had been dormant since ca 400 AD, just to deal with a new religious phenomenon--Noahides and other end time pressing issues i.e. the rebuilding of the temple.

Secular humanist sure seem to be busy. The thing is that they can only predict events, not the outcome or result. All of them seem to be pushing the belief that there is only one hope for mankind. They say that unless we all allow the United Nations to take control allowing the world's people to unite creating a one world government, there is NO hope.

Excuse me? I disagree. I have hope in something far greater than anything that feeble mankind can create. I have the Blessed Hope.

John Stossel on Health Care

Health Care Advisor Blames Hippocratic Oath for Overuse of Medical Care

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html
Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief
Friday, August 28, 2009
By: BETSY MCCAUGHEY - online.wsj.com

White House health-care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the 'overuse' of medical care.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare. Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.

"Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" The Lancet, January 31, 2009

The Reaper Curve: Ezekiel Emanuel used the above chart in a Lancet article to illustrate the ages on which health spending should be focused.



Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007).

Of course, patients hope their doctors will have that single-minded devotion. But Dr. Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care." One sign of progress he sees: "the progression in end-of-life care mentality from 'do everything' to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible." (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

"In the next decade every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources. There is no consensus about what substantive principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations," he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 19, 2002. Yet Dr. Emanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line.

"You can't avoid these questions," Dr. Emanuel said in an Aug. 16 Washington Post interview. "We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions."

Dr. Emanuel argues that to make such decisions, the focus cannot be only on the worth of the individual. He proposes adding the communitarian perspective to ensure that medical resources will be allocated in a way that keeps society going: "Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.

"However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated (see Dr. Emanuel's chart nearby).

Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

To reduce health-insurance costs, Dr. Emanuel argues that insurance companies should pay for new treatments only when the evidence demonstrates that the drug will work for most patients. He says the "major contributor" to rapid increases in health spending is "the constant introduction of new medical technologies, including new drugs, devices, and procedures. . . . With very few exceptions, both public and private insurers in the United States cover and pay for any beneficial new technology without considering its cost. . . ." He writes that one drug "used to treat metastatic colon cancer, extends medial survival for an additional two to five months, at a cost of approximately $50,000 for an average course of therapy." (JAMA, June 13, 2007).

Medians, of course, obscure the individual cases where the drug significantly extended or saved a life. Dr. Emanuel says the United States should erect a decision-making body similar to the United Kingdom's rationing body—the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)—to slow the adoption of new medications and set limits on how much will be paid to lengthen a life.

Dr. Emanuel's assessment of American medical care is summed up in a Nov. 23, 2008, Washington Post op-ed he co-authored: "The United States is No. 1 in only one sense: the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag behind many developed nations on virtually every health statistic you can name."

This is untrue, though sadly it's parroted at town-hall meetings across the country. Moreover, it's an odd factual error coming from an oncologist. According to an August 2009 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, patients diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. have a better chance of surviving the disease than anywhere else. The World Health Organization also rates the U.S. No. 1 out of 191 countries for responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient. That attention to the individual is imperiled by Dr. Emanuel's views.

Dr. Emanuel has fought for a government takeover of health care for over a decade. In 1993, he urged that President Bill Clinton impose a wage and price freeze on health care to force parties to the table. "The desire to be rid of the freeze will do much to concentrate the mind," he wrote with another author in a Feb. 8, 1993, Washington Post op-ed. Now he recommends arm-twisting Chicago style. "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda," he wrote last Nov. 16 in the Health Care Watch Blog. "If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

If this isn't talking about rationing and "death panels" I don't know what it is talking about. This the kind of language that is being inserted into the health care bills.