THE STEEL DEAL

HULK VERY ANGRY!!!

From the Associated Press ...

Los Angeles - The Walt Disney Co. is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E. Under the deal, which was announced Monday and is expected to close by the end of the year, Disney will acquire the rights to 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

 Disney CEO Robert Iger said Marvel's comic books, TV shows, movies and video games amounted to "a treasure trove of content." Iger said the deal would bring benefits like the ones Disney got from buying "Toy Story" creator Pixar Animation Studios Inc. for $7.4 billion in stock in 2006. "The acquisition of Marvel offers us a similar opportunity to advance our strategy," Iger said, and "to build a business that is stronger than the sum of its parts."

For Marvel, Iger said being in the Disney camp would mean better global distribution and better relationships with retailers to sell its products. Another storied comic book maker, DC Comics, has been under the wings of a major studio since 1969, when Warner Bros. bought the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Marvel Chairman Mort Handel called Disney "a perfect home for our great collection of characters."

One point of the deal is to help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel superheroes such as Iron Man in recent years. That contrasts with Disney's recent successes among young women with such fare as "Hannah Montana" and the Jonas Brothers.

 I used to sit cross-legged at the local grocery store reading all the latest comics on the way home from school every day. Such things were allowed when I was a kid and I would  sit until my legs went to sleep. Never read 'Archie' or 'Mickey Mouse' or any of those crappy things - I read the 'SUPER HEROES'. DC and Marvel. The Silver Surfer was my favorite.

This just pisses  me off.

Spread the word!

I have an idea - let's put all the old people in JAIL!

From the Daily Mail ...

Patients in Health Service hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warned yesterday. They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat. Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations.

Meanwhile, prisoners are enjoying carbohydrate-rich, low-fat foods which in many cases are better than they would have been eating on the outside. The Daily Mail has been highlighting the scandal of old people not being fed properly in hospital as part of its Dignity for the Elderly campaign. Hospital meals are often taken away untouched, because they are either unappetizing or are placed out of patients' reach.

  For those of you who have difficulty imagining the full implications of nationalized medicine aka 'single payer system', just think of your parents or grandparents standing in a prison mess hall line waiting for their health care.

Spread the word!

Now, they want to 'regulate' alcoholism.

From The Independent ...

People responsible for alcohol-related crime and anti-social behavior now face having new "booze Asbos" slapped on them. Drinking banning orders (BDOs) will be available to police and local authorities to protect the public from further drink-related offences. The orders will enable magistrates to impose conditions on individuals such as banning them from drinking in, or visiting, certain places. Breaches will be punishable with fines of up to £2,500. The orders can last for up to two years, although offenders can have them shortened by the successful completion of a "positive behavior intervention course".

Civil liberties campaigners attacked the new orders as a "gimmick" that failed to tackle the causes of offending. Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, said: "This new gimmick gives gimmicks a bad name. How many times can you recycle the broad powers in the Asbo first created 11 years ago? How many times can you spin a new 'crackdown' without tackling the causes of offending behavior? "It will be Jelly Bean Asbos for sugared-up kids next. Surely its time to call last orders on endless new legislation."

But Metropolitan Police Commander Simon O'Brien, who speaks for the Association Chief Police Officers on alcohol licensing, said the orders would help the police. "The minority of mostly young people whom these powers are aimed at are usually well known in particular areas or local hotspots and, where appropriate, these powers add to the toolbox of tactics to be drawn on in tackling these drunken and persistent offenders," he said.

Home Office minister Alan Campbell said: "These orders will stop those people who are well known to the authorities, licensees and often the communities where they live, from ruining lives and will make them face up to their destructive behavior. "If irresponsible drinkers do not accept support, these orders will ensure that they face some very real consequences."

 If destroying themselves, their families and everything else they cherish and hold dear isn't consequence enough, what makes the government think it will have more success? This is the quintessential fallacy of nanny statists and the underlying motivation for all elitists - they not only know better - they can do better than you for you and yours.

Spread the word!

Time to kick it up a notch - Fahrenheit 2010!

From  Rasmussen Report ...

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote. Just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.

While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators, voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected politicians in the House and Senate.

Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely gets reelected every two years. It’s a shock when any incumbent loses. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently heard in Washington, D.C. is that “people hate Congress but love their own congressman.”

When the Constitution was written, the nation’s founders expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms). For well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.

In the 20th century, turnover began to decline. As power and prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer and fewer members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, congressional turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever, and it has remained very low ever since.

  I see no evidence the Left is slowing up one iota and there's plenty to suggest they intend on manufacturing or using some event to impose total control over enough aspects of our country to prevent them from ever being voted out again.  I have been saying that for years. In fact, I assume they will do exactly that and it will become necessary for either the military and or the citizens to somehow wrest that control away from them. Make no mistake - we are witnessing a coup d'etat in the making and all it'll take to trigger the final phase is some obscure but suitably catastrophic event, be it manmade or natural. At this point, they are so desperate, they would use the slighest provocation to finalize their plans rather than risk facing the next election cycle. I am absolutely certain of that. No. Doubt. In. My. Mind. There should be no such uncertainty in yours. You must assume the worst, expect the worst and be prepared for the worst -  because if they can - the Left will do their worst to insure we never get another chance to throw them out of office. And yes, I include 90% of those who claim to be on the right. If we are so lucky to have a say another day, the first order of business should be term limits and to demand the Constitution be strictly enforced. I suggest a special forum be established to allow citizens to vote nationally their approval or disapproval of every major law currently on the books. Once that has been ascertained, it would require the three branches of government formulate changes to meet strict constitutionality. Period. Call it what you want, but those three branches have failed miserably to adhere to our founding document and show littles sign of altering course. Since they seem to be oblivious to our wishes and in defiance of our demands - it is incumbent upon us to force them to do so.

Spread the word!

Obamacare - Carpooling for Ambulance Chasers

From the BBC ...

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served. The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal against the ruling. He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the "death, destruction and terrorization" caused by God. Judge Marlon Polk said in his ruling that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed. "Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.

Mr Chambers cannot refile the suit but may appeal. Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted "widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants". He said he would carefully consider Judge Polk's ruling before deciding whether to appeal. The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience". "Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that "anyone can sue anyone else, even God".

 

  I posted about this loon in 2007. Ernie Chambers personifies much that is wrong with politics in America. The most casual inventory of Congress reveals that more than half those people have absolutely no business being elected except for their entertainment value and comedic relief. It's like watching the monkey house on CSPAN. But even a stark raving mad lunatic like Ernie Chambers can be right once in awhile. He could not be more right now. You all know I've been ranting about tort reform since I started this site. Think about this sobering statistic - lawsuits add at least 20% to cost of EVERYTHING. From the cost of baby shoes to brain surgery straight through the entire economy - litigation costs the average citizen more than taxation of all kinds. This fact is more important now than at any other time in our history. For the one single thing that would reduce health care costs the most and improve health care delivery to the most is tort reform. It is estimated that meaningful  tort reform - the capping of 'pain and suffering' awards, 'loser pays' and restricting the ability of shysters to gather class action lawsuits would save us all 250 billion dollars a year. A major share of that savings would be in health care. Yet, the subject is not even considered in any of the five Democrat proposals. Not one. You know why? Because lawyers give to Democrats 95% of the time and the amounts are staggering -  hundreds of millions of dollars. Not only that, there are more lawyers in Congress than any other occupation - those crooked bastards know  a good thing when they see it. In fact, the entire health care 'crisis' could be solved by instituting real tort reform and simply giving doctors significant tax deductions for rendering charitable care to the truly 'chronically uninsured' -  even illegal aliens. Congress would need do nothing else. End of problem. But first, to paraphrase Shakespeare, 'we must kill all the lawyers'.

Electing lawyers to Congress is like stocking the swimming pool with sharks.

         

Spread the word!

If we don't cause the end of the world by accident, we can always do it on purpose.

 

From the Times of London ...

The Royal Society is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions, spraying millions of tons of dust into the air, in an attempt to stave off climate change. The society will this week call for a global program of studies into geo-engineering - the manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming - as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool.

The intervention comes amid tension ahead of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Preliminary discussions have gone so badly that many scientists believe geo-engineering will be needed as a “plan B”. Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and a member of a Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, said dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions was known to cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space. “If I had a dollar for geo-engineering research I would put 90 cents of it into stratospheric aerosols and 10 cents into everything else,” said Caldeira.

The interest in so-called aerosols is linked to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The explosion blasted up to 20m tons of tiny sulphur particles into the air, cooling the planet by about 0.5C before they fell back to earth. The Royal Society is Britain’s premier science institution and its decision to take geo-engineering seriously is a measure of the desperation felt by scientists about climate change. Brian Launder, a professor at Manchester University, who is also on the working group, recently said that without CO2 reductions or geo-engineering “civilization as we know it will end within our grandchildren’s lifetime”. “The only rational scheme is to reduce the sunlight reaching Earth and to reflect back more of it,” he said.

Geeze, sound dire.  I don't know whether to dignify this bullshit with a comment or die laughing.

Maybe I'll watch a movie instead.

Spread the word!

Edward Kennedy Memorial Funereal Ceremonial Healthcare Rally Updates in Real Time

The most tasteful farewell to Ted Kennedy you'll see today.

I don't know, do you think it's too much?

Spread the word!
Click  the Dancing Pepper!

What's a guy gotta do to GO TO JAIL?

 

From the Wall Street Journal ...

When normal people happen to "find" their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you're Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth. Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee "amended" his 2007 financial disclosure form - to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel's net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

When you're a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama's health-care plan, we suppose it's easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you're crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock. Oh, and those vacant properties in Glassboro, in southern Jersey? Everybody in Manhattan tries not to think much about New Jersey, so those lots and their as-much-as-$15,000 value must also have slipped down the memory hole. (The New York Post reported yesterday that Mr. Rangel failed to pay property taxes for two of the lots, according to the county clerk's office.)

The Chairman probably isn't doing a lot of dining at KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell or Long John Silver's, either, which may explain why he didn't disclose the $1,001 to $15,000 in stock he owns in Yum Brands, the conglomerate that runs those chain restaurants. Compared to his undisclosed portfolio stake in PepsiCo - $15,001 to $50,000 - that's practically a rounding error. All lawmakers amend their financial reports from time to time, though rarely are the errors this extensive. Via email, a Rangel spokesman declined to offer details about how the errors occurred, noting that "Once the Ethics Committee completes its work, then we can answer questions in more detail." He added that Mr. Rangel is now "confident that his records have been subjected to an exhaustive and complete review, and that the amendments accurately reflect his financial interests."

If Charlie Rangel gets through this without being impeached, thrown out of the Congress, losing all federal pensions accrued after his military service and tossed into jail for a helluva long time, then there truly may be nothing else we can do, short of marching on Washington D.C. and various State capitols well-armed and with very bad intent.

Spread the word!

When you pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands.

Spread the word!