time*treat's Blog

North American Army created without OK by Congress
U.S., Canada military ink deal to fight domestic emergencies

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.

The agreement, defined as a "Civil Assistance Plan", was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest.

... rest of article ...

I wonder with all the dozens of cable tv channels if this was on any of them.

And, in unrelated I-warned-you news, it now takes $1.50 to buy a Euro. WTG! 

I wrote a little bit about this before - Gov't mandated poisonings .. er.. vaccinations (look up 'vaccine')

If you want to know:
* what's making kids sicker (asthma, autism, "ADD")
* what's making 10 year olds today as large as teenagers of 20 years ago
* what's making puberty start (on average) years earlier than it used to
you can look into the antibiotics and growth hormones being put in livestock, and these mandated viruses .. er.. vaccines being put into our young people.

---

Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case in Federal Court - Now What?
After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.

The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff's identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.

The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal "Vaccine Court," was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the "defendant" in all Vaccine Court cases.

The child's claim against the government -- that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism -- was supposed to be one of three "test cases" for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.

Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and "concluded that compensation is appropriate."¹

The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).

Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of "relatedness;" insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and "watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination."

Seven months after vaccination, the patient was diagnosed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a leading neurologist at the Kennedy Krieger Children's Hospital Neurology Clinic, with "regressive encephalopathy (brain disease) with features consistent with autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development." The girl also met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) official criteria for autism.

In its written concession, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was "aggravated"² by her shots, and which ultimately resulted in an ASD diagnosis.

"The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder," the concession says, "which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD."

This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated³ for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.

In fact, the government's concession seems to raise more questions⁴ than it answers.

---

I've got a few questions, myself:
1. Who provides the 'appropriate compensation'?

2. If someone wrings a bureaucrat's neck, can they use his being an @$$#*!= (which was a pre-existing condition that they found aggravating) as a defense?

3. Does 'winning' mean she gets her health & sanity back as part of the settlement?

4. What will it take before people realize we need less gov't 'common good' in our health care than more?

Look at the price & quality of anything you use and compare those that are provided by the competitive marketplace to those 'provided' or regulated by decree.   

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56959

This explains why Obama aims for emotion rather than substance. If sensible people knew what they were gonna get, they'd be heating up the tar and getting out the feathers. This piece of dreck is called the "Global Poverty Act", which is appropriate since it would act to create global poverty.

For the blind defenders of communism, here's the links: Senate version S. 2433 & House Resolution H.R. 1302
The word 'treason' comes to mind ... along with some less polite words. Of course, there are people who think it's perfectly fine to take from the productive and give to those who produce nothing but more mouths they cannot feed. These same people also think that real wealth is a geographical phenomenon, that the West is 'rich' because of where we are, not what we have done. They would be the ones baffled by the last two vids I linked to.

In the socialists' version of "hope & equality", we are all rendered equally poor & wretched and hoping we don't starve to death.

---

Obama's sovereignty giveaway plan - by Phyllis Schlafly

Why are Republicans in Congress trying to help Barack Obama?

Republicans allowed a bill that carries his name, among nine others, to pass the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote last week – without any hearings. That means there was no roll-call vote so no member can be held accountable. The same bill passed the House by voice vote last year.

The Obama bill passed out of committee with the cooperation of the co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. A Rhodes scholar like former President Bill Clinton, Lugar has never seen a United Nations enhancement he didn't like.

Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas.

The bipartisan bill would require the president "to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day."

The bill's other co-sponsors include Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., Charles Hagel, R-Neb., and Robert Mendez, D-N.J.

We should be on guard any time politicians use the word "comprehensive," an umbrella word that always shades a lot of mischief. The notion that U.S. taxpayers should or could cut in half the number of people worldwide who live in poverty by 2015 is ridiculous.

The scariest phrase in the bill is "Millennium Development Goal." That refers to the declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly and Summit in 2000 (blessed by President Bill Clinton), which called for the "eradication of poverty" by "redistribution (of) wealth and land," cancellation of "the debts of developing countries," and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources" (from the United States to the rest of the world, of course).

The Millennium project is monitored by Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University economist. In 2005, he presented then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan with a 3,000-page report based on the research of 265 so-called poverty specialists.

Sachs' document criticized the United States for giving only $16.3 billion a year in global anti-poverty aid. He argued that we should spend an additional $30 billion a year to reach the 0.7 percent target the U.N. set for the United Sates in 2000.

Sachs says that the only way to force the United States to commit that much money is by a global tax, such as a tax on fossil fuels. Empowering the United Nations to impose a direct international tax on Americans has been a U.N. goal ever since the 1995 Copenhagen Summit embraced the so-called Tobin Tax.

By adopting the Millennium Goals in 2000, the U.N. escalated its demands to impose international taxes. Specifically, the Millennium called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection – oil, natural gas, coal," "fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

It doesn't bother U.N. sycophants that most U.S. handouts go into the hands of corrupt dictators who hate us and vote against us in the U.N., and that only 30 percent of American foreign aid ever reaches the poor. U.N. bureaucrats accuse the United States of being "stingy" in its handouts to underdeveloped countries.

There is much more to the Millennium Goals than merely extorting more money from U.S. taxpayers. The goals set forth a comprehensive plan to put the United States under U.N. global governance.

These goals include a "standing peace force" (i.e., a U.N. standing army), a "U.N. Arms Register" of all small arms and light weapons, "peace education" covering "all levels from preschool through university," and "political control of the global economy." The goals call for implementing all U.N. treaties that the United States has never ratified, all of which set up U.N. monitoring committees to compromise U.S. sovereignty.

To achieve this level of control over U.S. domestic law, the plan calls for "strengthening the United Nations for the 21st century" by "eliminating" the veto and permanent membership in the Security Council. The goal is to reduce U.S. influence to one out of 192 nations, so we would have merely the same vote as Cuba.

The Global Poverty Act would be a giant step toward the Millennium Goals of global governance and international taxes on Americans. Tell your senators to kill this un-American bill.

An update from the other fascist-state ...

Roadside cameras that detect BLOOD will catch lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes

Motorists will be targeted by a new generation of road cameras which work out how many people are in a car by measuring the amount of bodily fluid it contains. The latest snooping device on the nation's roads aims to penalise lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes, and is part of a Government effort to combat congestion at busy times. The cameras work by sending an infrared beam through the windscreen of vehicles which detects the unique make-up of blood and water content in human skin.

The system's inventors believe it will catch out motorists who try to fool existing CCTV road cameras by placing mannequins in passenger seats or fixing photographs to windscreens. It will at first be used to police car-sharing lanes in Leeds, but councils across the country have already expressed an interest in using them. Professor John Tyrer, who headed the Loughborough University team which created the device, said it would reduce congestion.

"It allows you to automatically count people," he said. "That pools through to the congestion charging, so they can charge differently or reduce the rates dramatically if you've got more people in the cars." But motoring organisations claim the cameras are a further intrusion on private lives and say car-sharing lanes – which are already in operation in Birmingham and Leeds and are being built on the M1 in Hertfordshire – do not work.

AA president Edmund King said: "Most of us work flexible hours. We don't go to work or come home from work at the same time. "Car-sharing lanes are incredibly difficult to enforce and, if not many people use them, they're actually a waste of road capacity." Roads Minister Rosie Winterton said last night she encouraged "innovative solutions" to the problems created by congestion.

---

infrared beam - that wouldn't happen to be laser would it? No chance of eye damage from that, eh?

As one person put it ... (More) "persecution of motorists - they never asked for nor wanted bus lanes or multi-occupancy lanes, but they are forced upon them, with draconian measures used to enforce them. If only burglars, muggers and other criminals were pursued with as much vigour, Britain's streets would be much safer for us all."

...but then, who would ru(i)n the country?

Two vids that will either turn on a light over your head or totally baffle you.
I think they are both great over coffee.
They articulate what many people feel but cannot always convey in words.

The Philosophy of Liberty 8:14 (great animation) - total opposite of current society

The Men of the Mind 9:03 (John Galt speaks, pt9) - knowledge of Atlas Shrugged, optional

Lou Dobbs asks a few questions about the superhighway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uWScCy5oj8 Strange.
My congressman told us this thing didn't exist and there were no plans to build it. Hmmm. Sounds like a wall I once heard about in a place called Berlin. 

Of course TX Gov. Rick Perry has his fingers in the pie. The same Rick Perry who, last year at this time, executive ordered an experimental vaccine for school aged girls. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16948093/from/RS.4/

That's a whole other blog entry. If one of your kids dies because you gave him too much cough syrup, your others will be 'removed' and you'll be seeing the inside of a court room. If your kid gets sick (think long-term retardation) or dies as the result of some mandated vaccine, all the expenses and/or grief are yours. Big Pharma has seen fit to secure immunity from prosecution (unless some big shot's kid gets sick). Health care should not be left up to HMOs, big drug companies, and government bureaucrats.

I'll have the roasted Eminent Domain, with the (obligatory) side order of HillaryCare, only bake half of it, and butter it with some of that class-envy. Also, a glass of Shrinking Dollar chardonnay, rancid. Oh, I almost forgot, some foreclosure fries. Here is my Internal Travel Document, to show I am worthy. 

 

The kids did good yesterday.

The goal for a certain congressional race in the 14th district of Texas was $400,000. The day started off with about $330,000 raised for the quarter. The kids blew the doors off on Monday. Over $450,000 added in a single day, more than doubling the campaigns goal and total. They also added another $78 grand to the presidential campaign. Donations at both sites are still rolling in, this morning.

It seems there are a good number of people left in America who do not wish to be fenced in, by the promise of "free corn" (or healthcare), like so many wild pigs. We know what eventually happens to the pigs.

excerpts from

Finnish Roma and Ministry of Interior knew of influx of Central European beggars in advance (10th, Jan. 2008)

http://www.hs.fi/english/archive/2008/1
http://www.hs.fi/english/print/1135233174574 (printable)

"This comes as no surprise. We knew to expect something like this" says Sarita Friman-Korpela, Secretary of RONK, the Advisory Board on Romani Affairs in Finland.
      She is commenting on the question of the Roma from Eastern Europe who have (taken) up positions on the streets of Helsinki with begging bowls in front of them.
      "The Roma in Romania and Bulgaria are living in abject poverty. Years ago we said that if nothing is done about their conditions, as soon as the borders are opened [via EU membership], something like this will happen."
     
The Advisory Board on Romani Affairs in Finland will be discussing the beggars at the beginning of February, when the board will meet for the first time under its new membership.
      Nevertheless, Friman-Korpela says that on the individual level, the finnish Roma have already had plenty to say about the mendicants, who have been causing consternation among Helsinki residents and a certain amount of frustration for the authorities. The Roma have had identical concerns.
...
     
"The first thing that should be done would be to determine what their intentions are. If they really want to settle here, get a home and a job, then they should immediately get in touch with local Roma organisations, for instance with a view to learning the language", says Friman-Korpela.
...
      "This is one of the knock-on effects of the free movement of people under the EU system", observes Esko Ruokonen from the Ministry of the Interior.
...
      The fact that there have been signs that the begging is organised is one aspect that has caused particular concern. "If people are being forced by someone to go out into the cold streets and down on their knees with a begging-bowl, we might be getting close to something like human trafficking", comments Ruokonen.
      Whilst the whole matter has been troublesome for the local population, while the beggars are not actually committing any form of crime under finnish legislation, there is little that (anyone) can do about it.
      About the only response is to withhold alms. As Pertti Visunen of the Ministry of the Interior's Immigration Department observed, "If the Finns stopped giving to them, they would stop coming."

 

---

(Ah, but wait, some of them are committing crime. It's just that the police have a short memory) from
http://www.hs.fi/english/archive/2007/11
http://www.hs.fi/english/print/1135231940761 (printable) we learn

Helsinki police find stolen goods in van used by Romanian beggars (19th, Nov. 2007)

Three Romanian flower sellers remanded in custody

Police in Helsinki recently conducted a search in a van that at least some of the Romanians who have been begging on the city's streets have used as a place to sleep.
      The search yielded a number of stolen mobile telephones, cameras, music players, and at least one GPS car navigator. Petri Juvonen of the Helsinki police say that some of the goods were wrapped in paper and taped beneath the ceiling panels of the vehicles.
      Police arrested four Romanian citizens, three of whom were later remanded in custody by Helsinki District Court on suspicion of theft.
      Those arrested included one woman about 60 years of age and two men of about 30, one of whom is the son of the older woman. All three had sold flowers on the centre of Helsinki. Juvonen says that all three could face two months of pretrial detention*.
     
Previously, the police had thought that Romanian beggars and flower pedlars had not been involved in crime. "We had thought that they operate in their own sectors. However, now it seems that they all do everything - that is, that theft is linked with begging and the selling of flowers", Juvonen says.
      He would not estimate how many Romanian beggars there might be in the Helsinki region now. Pictures taken by the recovered cameras suggest that there could be many more people involved than those that would fit into the two vans inspected by the police.
      Juvonen noted that Romanian beggars and flower sellers have been appearing in Helsinki regularly in the summer; previously they have not stayed in this country into the autumn months.
      Police say that previously, only women linked with Romanian pickpocket gangs were involved in theft. "Now both men and women are involved", Juvonen says.
      In addition, the group has been travelling through Southern Finland, and has been in this country for a long time. The first arrived in May.
      Juvonen says that increased vigilance is the only way that the Helsinki Police can stop begging linked with criminal activity.
      "The risk of arrest and punishment should be so big that they would not find it worthwhile to come to Finland or stay here."
     
However, the head of the investigation unit of the Aliens' Police, Jaakko Heinilä, suspects that begging and criminal activities linked with it have come to Finland to stay.
      He says that expulsion from the country will be considered for the Romanians that are now being held.

---

*two months of pretrial detention - I presume that includes a warm bed & food. A step up from a van, I'd think.

King Henry the First produced sticks of polished wood, with notches cut along one edge to signify the denominations. The stick was then split full length so each piece still had a record of the notches.

The King kept one half for proof against counterfeiting, and then spent the other half into the market place where it would continue to circulate as money.

Because only Tally Sticks were accepted by Henry for payment of taxes, there was a built in demand for them, which gave people confidence to accept these as money.

He could have used anything really, so long as the people agreed it had value, and his willingness to accept these sticks as legal tender made it easy for the people to agree. Money is only as valuable as peoples faith in it, and without that faith even today's money is just paper.

The tally stick system worked really well for 726 years. It was the most successful form of currency in recent history and the British Empire was actually built under the Tally Stick system, but how is it that most of us are not aware of its existence?

Perhaps the fact that in 1694 the Bank of England at its formation attacked the Tally Stick System gives us a clue as to why most of us have never heard of them. They realised it was money outside the power of the money changers, (the very thing King Henry had intended).

What better way to eliminate the vital faith people had in this rival currency than to pretend it simply never existed and not discuss it. That seems to be what happened when the first shareholder's in the Bank of England bought their original shares with notched pieces of wood and retired the system. You heard correctly, they bought shares. The Bank of England was set up as a privately owned bank through investors buying shares. Even the Banks resent nationalisation is not what it at first may appear, as its independent resources unceasingly multiply and dividends continue to be produced for its shareholder's.

These investors, who's names were kept secret, were meant to invest one and a quarter million pounds, but only three quarters of a million was received when it was chartered in 1694.

It then began to lend out many times more than it had in reserve, collecting interest on the lot.

This is not something you could just impose on people without preparation. The money changers needed to created the climate to make the formation of this private concern seem acceptable.

Here's how they did it.

With King Henry VIII relaxing the Usury Laws in the 1500's, the money changers flooded the market with their gold and silver coins becoming richer by the minute.

The English Revolution of 1642 was financed by the money changers backing Oliver Cromwell's successful attempt to purge the parliament and kill King Charles. What followed was 50 years of costly wars. Costly to those fighting them and profitable to those financing them.

So profitable that it allowed the money changers to take over a square mile of property still known as the City of London, which remains one of the three main financial centres in the world today.

The 50 years of war left England in financial ruin. The government officials went begging for loans from guess who, and the deal proposed resulted in a government sanctioned, privately owned bank which could produce money from nothing, essentially legally counterfeiting a national currency for private gain.

---

"If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe that the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) (who would, today, be labeled a 'kook' and a 'flake' even as hundreds of thousands face foreclosure or the 'chance' to refinance into 40yr & 50yr mortgages.)

 

http://www.rationalreview.com/content/41839

Clinton might garnish wages to socialize health care
Source: ABC News
Posted on 02.03.08 by Thomas L. Knapp

“Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., this morning left open the possibility that, if elected, her government would garnish the wages of people who didn’t comply* with her health care plan. ‘We will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it’s that or it’s some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments,’ Clinton said in an appearance on ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos.’ Clinton went on to say, though, that such mechanisms would not include penalties. ‘They don’t have to pay fines … We want them to have insurance. We want it to be affordable. And what I have said is that there are a number of ways of doing that. Now, there’s not just one way of getting to that.’” [editor’s note: Actually, there IS just one way of getting to that. It’s called “the free market” - TLK] (02/03/08)

 

 *emphasis mine. After 8 yrs of square dancing, we now face goose-stepping.
 

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/?storyID=11410

The rumblings of a food crisis 

As China and India turn to meat, food prices are soaring, writes Philip Delves Broughton
With Indians now gobbling down pizzas, the Chinese pounding the table for Big Macs, and corn being turned into bio-fuel, the world's food supplies are in their worst shape for 35 years.

Prices of everything from milk and corn to beef and coffee are at record highs. Wheat stores are the lowest they have been since 1980. Add to that the effects of climate change, shifting production around the world, and you have what the United Nations' World Food Programme is calling "the perfect storm for the world's hungry".

Even the not-so-hungry are feeling it. In Britain, the prices of a pint of milk and a loaf of bread have risen by more than 10 per cent in the past year, far more than inflation. It is estimated that the price of the average Christmas lunch in 2007 was 14 per cent higher than in 2006, and only a fraction of that was down to Jamie Oliver sending people out to buy more expensive organic food.

Italians have been abandoning pasta over the past 18 months in response to the sharp rise in its cost. In Mexico City late last year, thousands marched in protest at the shocking price of the corn they use to make tortillas.

Leading up to Russia's legislative elections in December, Vladimir Putin imposed price freezes on basic foodstuffs to keep a sudden rise in prices from sullying his party's easy victory. In the past few months, food riots have occurred around the world, from Morocco to Senegal and Yemen.

In Europe, the EU has suspended the usual 10 per cent set-aside for 2008. Normally farmers would be paid not to farm 10 per cent of their land as a way of controlling supply and maintaining prices. This year, they must cultivate all of their land.

The rise in basic food prices has also strengthened the case for abolishing the subsidies paid to European, mostly French, farmers. For many years, low agricultural commodity prices were offered as justification for the subsidies. With prices now hitting record highs, the argument for artificial price supports is gone.

It has been so long since the world faced food shortages - since the early 1970s - that some wonder if we are mentally prepared for such a crisis. Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is doing all he can to raise the alarm. He says there is now "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food".

Wealthy countries are better able to adapt, through technology and more efficient production and delivery. Poor countries, however, inevitably come last to the rice bowl and will soon likely find it either empty, or crammed with goods they cannot afford.

In India and China, eating habits have been transformed by rising prosperity. Consumers who once shopped at small local stores and markets now graze down the aisles of supermarkets, loading their trolleys with frozen ice cream, yoghurts and milk, which were once far harder to come by. For the first time in its history, India is no longer self-sufficient in milk, and the consumption of dairy products is expected to treble in the next four years. Even Hinduism, with its insistence on a vegetarian diet, has suffered as Indian meat consumption has risen by 40 per cent in the past 15 years.

The high price of energy has also taken its toll, driving up the price of feed and fertilisers which are made using oil and natural gas-related products.

In the United States, the environmentalists must also shoulder some blame. Millions of acres of American farmland are now subsidised by the federal government to produce corn for ethanol, a clean bio-fuel, rather than for food, even though Brazil makes ethanol far more cheaply from sugar cane. Just to complete the insanity, the US places a heavy tariff on Brazilian ethanol to protect its farmers.

From now on, though, the protectionists will have to act with the sound of the world's stomach growling in their ears. 

---

note: This is not the fault of fat people in Mississippi

 

When they came for the smokers ...
When they came for the fatties...

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/4524

Mississippi Legislature Introduces Bill that Would Ban Restaurants from Serving the Obese

With nearly one-third of the population of Mississippi now classified as "obese", the state is understandably concerned about encouraging its residents to start shedding some pounds. A group of legislators in Mississippi have introduced a new bill that takes aim at solving this issue - HB 282, which would make it illegal for restaurants to serve fat people.

According to HB 282, the health department could revoke the health dept. license of any restaurant, fast-food or otherwise, if it is caught serving food to anyone who meets the department's criteria of being "obese."

    "Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor."

The bill would also require the State Department of Health to distribute materials to dining establishments that would define what an obese person is. The US Government defines an obese person as someone with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or above, although it is not yet clear whether Mississippi would use that as their template for what defines "obese".
Mississippi has long found itself topping lists of the country's fattest states, and has one of the highest death rates from cardiovascular disease, of which obesity is a risk factor. But will making it illegal to serve food to those who are obese truly combat the state's weight problem?

Hungry people will eat, and if a restaurant won't serve them, there's always the grocery store. Should we expect another similar bill soon outlining what the obese are permitted to purchase at grocery stores as well?  

---

I have long said going after the smokers was not about smoking, it is about getting people acclimated to gov't running (or ruining) their lives. Oops, there I go not appreciating what is done for my own good, again.

I was once at a show where a hypnotist had someone who, upon his stating some phrase, believed that the ceiling above the audience was on fire or in imminent danger of collapsing. We, in the crowd, found this quite amusing as they hysterically tried to warn us of what danger we were in. So ... what happens when the ceiling really is about on fire and it's the crowd that is hypnotized?

Not quite a year ago, Benn Steil, over at the CFR, through its publishing wing Foreign Affairs, wrote a very long article that essentially calls for the end of national currencies. The guys over at WND did a nice job summerizing it. (Don't worry, links are coming)

Here is the CFR summary, in their own words:
The End of National Currency
Author: Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics
May/June 2007
Foreign Affairs

Global financial instability has sparked a surge in "monetary nationalism" -- the idea that countries must make and control their own currencies. But globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination, a cause of financial crises and geopolitical tension. The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn. 

• WorldNetDaily Article
• Benn Steil's Bio
• Council on Foreign Relations ~ Summary
• Council on Foreign Relations ~ Full Paper

 

 

---

There's this perverse logic in the world that people who come up with dangerous or freedom* reducing policies are less evil than the people who point out that those policies are dangerous or reduce freedom. If I post the links without adding much commentary (such as how little I trust any gov't to maintain the value of paper money) maybe I can avoid being called a bigot or worse (well, don't ask me, I don't know what it has to do with anything, either). Nah, I'll get called names, anyway. I'll keep writing, as I realize some people know they need a little more info than "duck-and-cover". For other people, everything is a "conspiracy theory", until the talking heads tell them it's been signed into law.

*Freedom in the old sense (back when more people had sense) of you have the right to swing your arm in as much as it doesn't interfere with the other guy's nose.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nbook127.xml
(The British Pound is currently trading for about 2 US dollars) 

Christopher Booker's Notebook
By Christopher Booker
EU plans to see our economy blown away

It was appropriate that, just as our MPs were voting last week to hand over yet more of the power to run this country in the EU treaty, the EU itself should be unveiling easily the most ambitious example yet of how it uses the powers we have already given away. The proposals for "fighting climate change" announced on Wednesday by an array of EU commissioners make Stalin's Five-Year Plans look like a model of practical politics.

Few might guess, from the two-dimensional reporting of these plans in the media, just what a gamble with Europe's future we are undertaking - spending trillions of pounds for a highly dubious return, at a devastating cost to all our economies.

The targets Britain will be legally committed to reach within 12 years fall under three main headings. Firstly, that 15 per cent of our energy should come from renewable sources such as wind (currently 1 per cent). Secondly, that 10 per cent of our transport fuel should be biofuels. Thirdly, that we accept a more draconian version of the "emissions trading scheme" that is already adding up to 12 per cent to our electricity bills.

The most prominent proposal is that which will require Britain to build up to 20,000 more wind turbines, including the 7,000 offshore giants announced by the Government before Christmas. To build two turbines a day, nearly as high as the Eiffel Tower, is inconceivable. What is also never explained is their astronomic cost.

At £2 million per megawatt of "capacity" (according to the Carbon Trust), the bill for the Government's 33 gigawatts (Gw) would be £66 billion (and even that, as was admitted in a recent parliamentary answer, doesn't include an extra £10 billion needed to connect the turbines to the grid). But the actual output of these turbines, because of the wind's unreliability, would be barely a third of their capacity. The resulting 11Gw could be produced by just seven new "carbon-free" nuclear power stations, at a quarter of the cost.

The EU's plans for "renewables" do not include nuclear energy. Worse, they take no account of the back-up needed for when the wind is not blowing - which would require Britain to have 33Gw of capacity constantly available from conventional power stations.

The same drawbacks apply to the huge increase in onshore turbines, covering thousands of square miles of countryside. They are only made viable by the vast hidden subsidies that wind energy receives, through our electricity bills. These make power from turbines (including the cost of back-up) between two and three times more expensive than that from conventional sources.

This is crazy enough, but the EU's policy on biofuels is even more so. The costs - up to £50 billion by 2020 - would, as the EU's own scientific experts have just advised, "outweigh the benefits". To grow the crops needed to meet the target would require all the farmland the EU currently uses to grow food, at a time when world food prices are soaring. Even Friends of the Earth have called on the EU to abandon its obsession with biofuels. Yet the Commission presses on regardless.

As for the "emissions trading scheme" (a system originating with the Kyoto Protocol, whereby businesses can buy or sell "carbon credits", supposedly to allow market forces to ensure that targets are met), the Commission last week predicted that by 2020 this could be raising £38 billion a year from electricity users. Of this, £6.5 billion a year would be paid by the UK, equating to £260 for every household in the country.

The Commission itself predicts, in recently leaked documents, that this will have major consequences for the EU's economy, and that heavy industries, such as steel, aluminium, chemicals and cement, will have to raise their prices substantially, some by as much as 48 per cent. Yet when it was pointed out that this will put EU industries at a competitive disadvantage, the Commission's only response was to suggest tariffs on imports from countries such as China or America that are not signed up to Kyoto.

It looks like the most expensive economic suicide note in history. But just as alarming is how little this madness has been exposed to informed analysis. It seems, finally, that the price we pay for membership of the EU and the price of our obsession with global warming are about to become very painfully synonymous. And no one seems to have noticed.

The British are finding out what their politicians really sold them out to, under the guise of "trade agreements". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siweqKqqoZs

The USA is on this path. The current odds that we will stay on this path over the next four years is 5 in 6 (83.3%), down from 7 in 8 (87.5%) a week ago. It's not much, but it's an improvement. NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, GATT, WTO, etc. are just harmless "trade agreements", aren't they?

---

"The theory of democracy is that the voters know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

Apparently, this is what the voters in Flory-duh "deserve":
McCain (who's not so up on his heads of state) and
Clinton who both acknowledges and denies saying "it makes a lot of sense" to give illegals a drivers license in the space of 2 mins. And then says again, "it makes a lot of sense". Gotcha!