Archive for February, 2011
Union thugs show their ugly faces in Atlanta
This video was shot yesterday in downtown Atlanta. It was a clash between Tea Partiers and Goonion thugs (thanks for the new word zillaoftheresistance). Aren’t those union people so classy? I just love it when someone gives me the finger.
I’m so glad that my tax money goes to pay their salary.
Muslims chanting hate on a bus in France
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QzaVEwl_HQs]
Has this happened yet in the US? I haven’t heard any reports of it. Is this what’s coming to our country? I pray that we can stop it in it’s tracks. These people are outrageous.
They are the face of Satan.
Pure evil.
Monday Open Thread: February 28th, 2011
What’s on your minds this Monday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Boystown Oscar Watch Thread
The big Oscar night party is at Sidetrack here on Boystown. If you are watching the show, chime in with your thoughts.
Hundreds of young Muslim girls fear honor killings
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zxDC4c8n9oM]
This is so sad to me. There must be thousands of Muslim girls around the world who are trapped in their barbaric Islamic culture. Girls whose parents move them to the West for a better life yet expect them to adhere to the backward ways of their old country. What did they think would happen when their young daughters got a little taste of the freedom?
How many organizations are out there that can help the girls who want to escape?
Not enough.
You can take that job and shove it
With so many serious things happening in the world today….I thought this would add a little laughter to your day. This is a video of a baby laughing hysterically at her daddy ripping up a job rejection letter.
Happy Sunday!
Sunday Open Thread: February 27th, 2011
A large crowd anxiously awaits the unveiling of the new Obama statue.
What’s on your minds this Sunday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Socialized medicine? The fight for Baby Joseph.
Moe Maraachi and Baby Joseph
This is a story about baby Joseph Maraachi. He is a 13 month old Canadian boy who was born with a life threatening genetic disorder. He has been fighting for his life in a hospital in Ontario but the doctors have given him no chance to live so they want to remove his breathing tube so he can die. His parents are requesting that the doctors perform a tracheotomy so they can take him home to die. The hospital refused so the issue went to the courts and they ruled in the hospitals favor. Still…the parents refused to sign the consent to remove the breathing tube so they’re at a stand-off.
Here’s more of the story…
LONDON, Ontario, February 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One-year-old Joseph Maraachli of Windsor, Ontario will have his life support removed Monday at 10 am. after the Ontario Superior Court today rejected an appeal by the parents to bring him home where he can die under their care.
A leading anti-euthanasia advocate says the decision facilitates a system where doctors are authorized to force life and death decisions on patients, warning that this is, in fact, far worse than the “death panels” recently debated in the U.S. as part of the federal health care law.
“Monday at 10 am they will kill my baby,” Moe Maraachli, Joseph’s father, told LifeSiteNews shortly after the ruling. “There’s no more humanity. There’s no more chance. I’ve tried everything for him. No more appeals, nothing.”
“I asked them: why not send him to Windsor and let him die at home?” he continued. “They said they will give him injection, but I don’t want to.”
“I ask God, and maybe he breathe,” he added.
Joseph was taken to Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario in October where he was diagnosed with severe neurological issues. Doctors gave him no chance of recovery. Moe and his wife Sana have asked doctors to perform a tracheotomy so that they could take Joseph home, but the doctors refused, saying the procedure was too risky.
The Maraachlis’ daughter died from similar complications eight years ago, but in that case doctors performed a tracheotomy and she was able to die at home. Joseph’s parents want the same for him.
But in January, the Consent and Capacity Board of Ontario sided with the hospital, and a date for removing Joseph’s respirator was set. The family was able to hold it off by filing an appeal with the Superior Court.
Today, Superior Court Justice Helen Rady also sided with the hospital, saying that Joseph is in a permanent vegetative state with no brain stem reflex. She called it “a sad and difficult case,” according to the London Free Press, and ordered the hospital to allow the parents until Monday at 10 am. “to afford the family adequate time to say their goodbyes.”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, who has been communicating with the parents, emphasized that they aren’t pushing for extraordinary treatment, just asking to care for their dying child at home. “They’re arguing that the best way to do that is by doing a tracheotomy so the child can somewhat breathe on his own and care for him while he’s dying,” he explained.
“I don’t get it. There’s nothing here that I get. It makes no sense,” he said. “What is in this for the hospital and the doctor? Why would they bother doing this?”
“Is it that they want to simply say, we have control?” he asked. “If it’s about their control, then we’re in serious trouble. They now control when someone lives and when someone dies, and who makes those decisions, and how those decisions are made.”
Schadenberg said the court appears to be saying that hospitals and doctors can make decisions for patients whether they like it or not. “It’s worse than the death panel concept that’s being debated in the US. It really is, it’s much worse,” he said. “They’re saying ‘we will decide’, they’re not even going to converse with you. ‘We have the weight of the Court, we have the financial bearing of a massive government institution to be able to force this on you.’”
“That has serious repercussions, because you simply cannot trust the moral authority of the health care institution or the doctors,” he added.
“It’s the hospitals and the doctors once again usurping their power over the people,” he said. “That’s what’s happening. And they have significant power – they have the money and the courts behind them. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s leading pro-life organization, called the situation “appalling.” “I don’t understand it. Do doctors’ rights now trump parental rights?” he asked. “And what about the right of the child to die in the loving arms of his parents at home?”
Is this what is known as a “death panel”?
Why wouldn’t the hospital let the parents take him home to die?
John McCain ranked as most conservative senator? Really?
Senator John McCain
According to the National Journal, John McCain is one of the most conservative senators in the senate.
The politician who once best exemplified the idea of a “maverick” independent has shifted so far to the right that he is now tied for the title of the Senate’s most conservative member, according to National Journal’s 2010 vote ratings.
According to a comprehensive examination of 96 Senate votes taken in 2010, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., along with seven of his colleagues, voted most often on the conservative side. His 89.7 composite conservative score ties him with stalwarts like Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and gives him a more conservative score than Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
McCain’s shift is emblematic of the Republican Party’s shift rightward and of the profound changes that NJ’s latest Vote Ratings reveal in Congress. A detailed analysis, including an interactive chart that will allow readers to examine and manipulate the data, will be available tomorrow.
In the early part of this decade, McCain was far closer to the ideological middle of the chamber. From 2002 to 2006, he bounced between the 44th- and 49th-most conservative member, giving him the maverick title. His 89.7 composite conservative score is the farthest to the right of any year he has served in the Senate. In past National Journal vote ratings, McCain has come close only once–in 1994, his 89.2 composite conservative score made him the eighth-most conservative member of the Senate.
When McCain began preparing for a presidential bid in 2006, he was the 46th-most conservative member of the Senate (because he was on the campaign trail, McCain missed too many votes in 2007 and 2008 to be given a rating). Then-Sen. Barack Obama, meanwhile, began his campaign at the far left end of the political spectrum. National Journal ranked Obama the Senate’s most liberal member in 2007, a year when he was launching his 2008 presidential bid.
Because he was a senator known for working across the aisle with liberal Democratic senators such as the late Edward Kennedy and the recently defeated Russ Feingold, there was some speculation that McCain, after losing to Obama in 2008, might become a key ally for the new president. Instead, McCain became one of Obama’s fiercest critics, more likely to be standing alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., (a one-time adversary of McCain on campaign finance) than with any Democrat.
McCain’s conversion from Senate centrist to one of the chamber’s most conservative members came in a year that brought him a tough primary challenge from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. Hayworth zeroed in on McCain’s advocacy of campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform to portray him as too moderate for Arizona Republicans. McCain moved right on immigration and said little about campaign finance in a year when his party benefited from a huge influx of funds from donors who took advantage of a loophole in the tax code to make campaign contributions without disclosing their identity.
Though McCain’s latest NJ ranking is a stark contrast with his past record, the senator’s spokeswoman, Brooke Buchanan, said his ideology has not changed. “But I can assure you,” she added, “the legislative agenda in the Senate sure has.”
The 10 most conservative members of the Senate include:
RANK/NAME CCS*
1. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) 89.7
1. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) 89.7
1. John Cornyn (R-Texas) 89.7
1. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) 89.7
1. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) 89.7
1. John McCain (R-Ariz.) 89.7
1. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) 89.7
1. John Thune (R-S.D.) 89.7
9. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) 87.3
10. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) 86.8
I guess it all depends on which way the wind is blowing.
Saturday Open Thread: February 26th, 2011
(h/t Moonbattery)
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
