Obamacare Waivers Explode to 729 from 222 Since December 2010

Can we still say "explode"?

We've gone from 1.5 million to 2.2 million Americans on waivers in under two months.

The new health care law applies to fewer and fewer Americans because specially privileged groups seek and get waivers from the requirements. Which is to say that healthcare inequality under Obamacare is a growing problem.

How much you wanna bet under Obamacare the specially privileged never reach 85%, the proportion of Americans who had private health insurance before the law was passed and wanted to keep it? Which is to say that more Americans will lack "desirable" coverage because of Obamacare than will have lacked it before it (15%).

View the burgeoning list here.

Hu Jintao Embraces Lang Lang for White House Propaganda Coup

From Nicholas Eberstadt for The American, here:

But what, exactly, is this “gorgeous” and “beautiful” (Hu’s words) tune that so entranced China’s visiting leadership?

“My Motherland” is not a “Chinese song” in any ordinary meaning of the term. Instead, it is a Mao-era propaganda classic: the theme from "Triangle Hill" (Shangganling), a film in which heroic Chinese forces fight, kill, and eventually beat Americans in pitched battle during the Korean War.

“My Motherland” epitomizes the “Resist America, Aid [North] Korea” campaign that Beijing embraced during and after the Korean War. It celebrates Sino-American enmity.

Wikipedia Lang Lang Article Softened 'Jackal' to 'Wolves' for Political Reasons

Here's a screen shot of the Wikipedia discussion of the Lang Lang article between Arilang and Jim101 late on the night of January 23.

Arilang initiates the discussion saying he thinks the article will contribute to a "political storm" for Obama.

He immediately focuses on the word translated "jackal" from the song Lang Lang played at the White House state dinner for Hu. He seems to accept it as the natural translation (as do most unbiased observers), but he notices the new change of the translation in various places to "wolves" and asks Jim101 about it, obviously because he thinks Jim101 is responsible.

Jim101 admits he uses sources for posting which conform to translations which are guided by "the Chinese perception" of the US:  

Jim101 appears to have foreign loyalties, and a political axe to grind as heavy as the one he thinks Glenn Beck carries.

Lang Lang and "Jackals": Famous 1951 North Korean Novella by Han Sorya Vilifying USA, Celebrates Unpredictable Spontaneous Outbursts and Fits of Rage

According to BR Myers for The New York Times in May 2003, reproduced here:

In North Korea, the people's spontaneity is seen as one of the country's greatest strengths.

North Korean novels and movies often show the hero casting off the restraints of his book learning in a fit of wild, sometimes suicidal rage against the Japanese or American enemy. This political culture induces officials to tolerate a high level of violence in daily life; North Korean refugees attest that fistfights are the accepted way for men and women to settle even minor differences. While communism was always an internationalist movement, juche (literally, self-reliance) sees the world in ethnic terms. North Korean propaganda makes no distinction between American capitalists and American workers; the entire "Yankee" race is presented as inherently evil, degenerate and ugly. Dictionaries and textbooks suggest that Americans be described with bestial attributes ("snout" for nose, for example).

The central villain of Han Sorya's novella "Jackals" (1951), the country's most enduring work of fiction, tells of an American child who beats a Korean boy so brutally that he ends up in a hospital -- where he is murdered by the American's missionary parents. Since the South Korean government began pursuing its policy of rapprochement, the North's ethnocentric world view has become even more stark; the United States is now presented as being exclusively responsible for all tensions on the peninsula.

This propaganda appears to be effective even among North Koreans opposed to the rule of Kim Jong Il. When I visited a resettlement center for refugees near Seoul last year, many of those to whom I was introduced as an American recoiled in terror or glared at me in hatred.

Yeah, that song that Lang Lang played for Obama, with the lyrics about the jackal, that's just a complete coincidence! And totally innocuous and lacking in any cultural specificity whatsoever!

Han Sorya's 1951 'Jackals' is about an American missionary who deliberately kills a Korean boy by injecting him with germs.

(image source here)

Super Bowl "Unmanned Helicopters" is Code for DHS Spy Drones

The NBC DFW affiliate reports here:

Arlington Police have acquired some new equipment with homeland security grants including unmanned helicopters to watch over the stadium site [for the Super Bowl].

That's code for DraganFlyers, provided by DraganFly Innovations, Inc., teeny tiny little spy drones which look like little remote control toy helicopters but have sophisticated camera capabilities, as described here:

These Colors Don't Run: Reload!

The "America is a Jackal/Wolf" Metaphor is a Popular North Korean Trope

(source here)

Lang Lang Strikes a Chord: "Do Not Forget the American Jackals!"

North Korean War Propaganda

Lang Lang's choice of music at the White House state dinner for Chinese Paramount Leader Hu Jintao included an extremely popular Chinese patriotic song with these lyrics, in which "jackal" refers to America, which would be recognized by most every Chinese:

Great mountains, great rivers and an amazing place

Every road is flat and wide

When friends are here, there is fine wine

But if the jackal comes

What greets it is the hunting rifle

(source for poster above)

Lang Lang's Double Insult: Double Because We Didn't Know It

From The Epoch Times, here:

At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.” ... “In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the US,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who had in China been a doctor in the Chinese military. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating.”

Here's a screenshot of the Wikipedia entry, before someone changes it:

Let's send Lang Lang back back to China where he belongs. The president can go with him.

Police in Colorado Use Draganflyer Spy Drone

According to The Washington Post, here:

"Not since the Taser has a technology promised so much for law enforcement," said Ben Miller of the Mesa County Sheriff's Office, which has used its drone, called a Draganflyer, to search for missing persons after receiving emergency authorization from the FAA.

From the company website here:

Carried in a backpack, ready for flight in minutes.

"At hover the Draganflyer X6 produces less than (approx.) 65dB of sound at one meter (3 feet), and less than (approx.) 60dB at three meters (9 feet)."

Used under very cold conditions at accident scene.

This unit was made ready for deployment under very cold conditions in the front seat of a police car.

Police in Austin, Texas, Deploy WASP to Reconnoiter Suspect's House

Story here in The Washington Post:

So the Texas agents did what no state or local law enforcement agency had done before in a high-risk operation: They launched a drone. A bird-size device called a Wasp floated hundreds of feet into the sky and instantly beamed live video to agents on the ground. The SWAT team stormed the house and arrested the suspect. ... Among state and local agencies, the Texas Department of Public Safety has been the most active user of drones for high-risk operations. Since the search outside Austin [in 2009] ... the agency has run six operations with drones, all near the southern border, where officers conducted surveillance of drug and human traffickers. ... In a 1986 Supreme Court case, justices were asked whether a police department violated constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure after it flew a small plane above the back yard of a man suspected of growing marijuana. The court ruled that "the Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways at this altitude to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye."

WASPs are made by AeroVironment, Inc.

You will have nowhere to hide from the tyranny, unless you stop it now.

Obama: When Life Begins Was "Above My Pay Grade"

But not now:

Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women's health and reproductive freedom 

[at the expense of someone else's life],

and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters

[like buying health insurance, giving food and water to the chronically hospitalized, eating hamburgers and french fries for lunch, smoking cigarettes around your kids, spanking them, purchasing and using trigger locks . . . and once upon a time selling your slaves' children to the highest bidder].

I am committed to protecting this constitutional right


[except for the aborted child]

[which by the way was never intended by the framers of the 14th Amendment, but I digress].

I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption

[all of which are an intrusion on private family matters].

And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams

[except for fatherhood and the right also to kill their unborn children].

-- Barack Insane Obama, January 22, 2011, here

In August of 2008, here, deciding when a baby is entitled to human rights was above his pay grade.

Obviously it isn't now. A baby isn't entitled to protections. A father isn't either. Only a woman is. That's what Obama is all about, not equality of rights, but special rights for protected classes of human beings. And that makes him no different than the slave holders of the past. 

Obama: "Punished With a Baby"

"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include -- which should include abstinence education and teaching the children -- teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual."

"But it should also include -- it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old."

"I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."


-- Barack Obama, March, 2008, quoted here

They applauded for that in Pennsylvania (here).

Philadelphia: Abortion Hellhole

Where eugenics is wrapped in feminist clothing.

The details here are unspeakable, like Birkenau.

We kid ourselves that our indifference is different than Philadelphia's. Our silence is complicity.

List of Elected Democrats Reported to be Packing Pistols

Rep. Steve Cohen, D (TN-9), here

Sen. Jim Webb, D (VA), here

List of Elected Republicans Reported to be Packing Pistols

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R (UT-3), here

Rep. Allen West, R (FL-22), here

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R (TN-7), here

Rep. Steve Womack, R (AR-3), here

Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R (TX-19), here

Pistol Packing US Representatives in North Carolina

Is your representative armed and dangerous?

Representative Renee Ellmers (R, NC-2) and Representative Heath Shuler (D, NC-11) both pack heat, according to this story from an NBC affiliate.

Now that's what I call self-government!

Competition is Always an Act of Aggression

Pat McIlheran of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel likes the new governor's welcome signs at the borders and crafts this little gem at the end, aimed, like the signs, at the higher tax regimes in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan:

"Competition is always an act of aggression toward systems that can survive only by coercion."

Full story here.

While Obama spent at least $9 million on signs bragging about stimulus projects, the new Wisconsin governor spent about $1,500 on 20 signs which advertize Wisconsin is open for business. And the best part may be that the new signs cover up the spot where the former governor's name appears.

Democrats' Map Targeting Republicans (with targets) in 2009 Still in Evidence on Facebook

Here's the link, and here's a good history of the story at Verum Serum.

closeup

Long Term Gold Chart 1975-2010

$200 gold in 1975 should be closer to $800 in 2010 when adjusted for inflation using CPI.