Right to Opine

Yet another reason the US should pull out of the UN and stop sinking your tax money in that disgraceful organization. The International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the UN, acknowledges that, among other dubious recipients, Iran & Syria received $55 million in funding for nuclear energy research. Our tax dollars provide “about a quarter of the budget.”

Of course the UN is rather egalitarian in its largess. According to the report,

there are no good countries and there are no bad countries.

As long as you don’t consider tyrranical regimes like Cuba, genocidal Sudan, or terrorist sponsors Iran & Syria “bad” countries.

After a brutal attack which left a man dead and his wife in serious condition in a hospital, the residents of a northern Virginia suburb held a march to…well, I’m not sure about the purpose exactly.

“We’re taking our neighborhood back,” said Lansdowne resident Beverly Bradford, who sent out a notice to residents last week calling for the gathering.

How they intended to achieve that goal wasn’t entirely clear. Marching with candles and flashlights is nice, but it doesn’t do anything to make your area safer. The goblins who perpetrate these kinds of beatings don’t really care how many verses of Kumbaya you sing even if, as in this case, you throw in an original verse for good measure.

Arm yourself. Get some good training and a CCW permit. Works better than candles and choruses.

Maybe I misjudged the man. Consider his take on the AIG executive bonuses:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday said taxpayer bailout recipient AIG would be forced to pay the government to compensate taxpayers for $165 million in employee bonuses as a condition for receiving a further $30 billion in government funds.

Let’s do the math. AIG pays the government back $165 million. The government gives AIG $30 billion. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Folks, we’re really screwed when the bright people Obama puts in his cabinet come up with stuff like this. Hold on. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Formula 1 racing is changing its championship system next season. Rather than relying on a strict points system, where the driver with the most consistent finishes takes the prize, the championship will be awarded to the driver with the most wins. How does this change the sport? In the words of “Formula One supremo” Bernie Ecclestone himself:

If you’re in the lead and I’m second, I’m not going to take the risk of falling off the circuit or doing something stupid to get two points. If I need a gold medal to win the championship, I will overtake.

In other words, under the points system drivers will drive safely. The new system will encourage them to do “something stupid” in order to get a win. Brilliant.

Over a 4 year period a hospital in the UK had around 400 unnecessary death due to horrendous emergency care. Per an inquiry into the outrage,

managers pursued targets at the detriment of patient care.

Targets, in this context, being financial targets set in order to keep costs down. This is what happens when medicine becomes more about cutting costs than treating patients. What else do you expect when the government runs the (increasingly expensive) show?

Gotta love the quotes from British politicians.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb, called for a “cultural change so that every part of this trust has open and transparent systems in place to ensure patient safety”.

and

Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone, said: “There have been systemic failures in the organisation and I have asked for resolute action to be taken.”

Mr. Lamb, that “cultural change” would be called the Hippocratic Oath. It makes the patient’s health a pretty darned high priority. There must be someone in the UK who’s heard of it.

Mr. Cash, how about this for “resolute action”: scrap socialized medicine. Otherwise you’ll just keep fighting this battle over and over again.

This is, of course, what you get when medical decisions are made by bureaucrats. Obama’s proposal for universal healthcare includes provisions for decisions regarding the availability and coverage for specific treatments. This will lead to denial of care and a reduction in the quality of healthcare we receive…just like we see in the UK.

For the last few weeks all we’ve heard from the President is that if we don’t pass his two gargantuan spending bills, our economy could decline to a point from which it would never recover. Now,

The president boldly declared that the national crisis is “not as bad as we think”

Uh, which is it? He pushed through a trillion dollars of largely wasteful and unnecessary spending because disaster was impending. If things aren’t really that bad, then what, exactly, was the motive for these massive bills? (Hint: many of us believe it begins with “S” and ends with “ocialism” which begins with your huge—no, massive—expansion of government.)

A disturbing number of teachers in the Washington, D.C., school district have been assaulted by students, including one who was held down on a desk and choked. Even a single such incident should be unacceptable, but administrators appear to be siding with the students, charging that the teachers are

distorting the situation to deflect attention from their own professional shortcomings.

…

Teachers who complain or eject too many students say they are tagged as weak in “classroom management” by administrators determined to keep a lid on behavior issues. Slade wrote in his guide to teachers that any instructor who refers students to his office every day “will risk placement on some type of improvement plan,” a probationary status such as the 90-day plan.

No mention is made of the consequences for students who are habitually disruptive. Teachers shouldn’t have to be child psychologists or trained juvenile behavior experts. So-called “classroom management” techniques are helpful in quashing chatter and minor misbehavior; they won’t help a teacher who’s having books thrown at them or being choked. Those acts are, legally, assault and should be prosecuted as such rather than swept under the rug.

Teachers wake up. The liberals you vote for are responsible for the conditions in which you work.

Of course that’s not what the headline reads, but it’s the underlying truth. Authorities in KS are warning college women of a possible serial rapist suspected of 13 rapes during school breaks over the past 8 years. All the usual precautions are urged, but of course we won’t allow these vulnerable young ladies to do the one thing that would significantly reduce their likelihood of becoming victims: arm themselves. That would be too logical (and effective).

You may recall a couple weeks ago the UK barred Dutch legislator Geert Wilders from entry because he is ostensibly a security threat, purveyor of hate, yada yada yada. Now they’re going to allow a spokesman for Hezbollah into the country to deliver a lecture. Go figure. Ban the critic of Islam, support the Islamic terrorist.

England, you’re getting the decrepit, decaying society you deserve. Sadly, I see too much of this happening here as well.

As in, gun control means hitting your target. There was another terrorist attack by a nutjob plowing a bulldozer through a couple police cars and into a bus full of schoolgirls. What slowed the goblin down long enough for the police to finish him off? A civilian taxi driver carrying a concealed handgun.

Self-defense works, folks, because even when the police are present, they sometimes can’t respond as quickly as an alert, armed civilian.