Why we should care about Haiti

Let's not forget this tragedy when the news cameras leave for the next big story. This was my site meter record for the last 30 days--people care about Haiti. The peak day was the 13th. When I posted a USGS map of the earthquake area of January 12, I got 36 hits on that entry the first hour--and most people stopped to read and click through to the source.


Page Views Dec. 16-Jan. 16

Total ...................... 456,967 (5+ years of blogging)
Average per Day ................ 438
Average per Visit .............. 1.4
This Week .................... 3,068

People care for the humanitarian reasons and terrible tragedies of families torn apart; hits came from all over the world. Also, we have a very large Haitian American population in the United States. They are restaurant owners, house painters, hospital staff, college students, academics, athletes, artists, musicians, etc. They are ambitious, driven-to-succeed people, and I'm guessing few are on welfare. We even have a community here in Columbus. There may be over 10,000 church and non-profit organizations with missions and aid societies in that tiny half-an-island nation, no bigger than Maryland. My guess (and that's all it is) is the combined resources of those groups and the Haitian immigrant communities sending money home exceed the federal government's aid--and the U.S. has poured more aid into Haiti's corrupt dictatorships and governments over the years than any other third world country. Each person who is on staff there or who has served on a mission team, like my husband, has talked about it and made other people care about Haiti. In two days, we personally got at least 10 inquiries from friends and relatives--first wanting to know if my husband was there, and second wanting to know if Ouanaminthe was hit. We had calls from Florida, Illinois, Texas, Ohio and one from a friend we hadn't heard from in 5 years.

However, we need to pay very close attention to the Haiti that existed before the earthquake and why there are so many pockets of aid. Haiti has no infrastructure--and that responsibility belongs to federal and local governments, whether elected, appointed or placed by outside forces. No road system, no public utilities for electric, water and sanitation, no army, no police force, no building codes, no zoning, no food inspection system, no banks and credit unions for the people, no public health system to vaccinate, floridate, or compensate, no middle class, no forests, no commercial farms, a public school system with an average of 100 students per class, no public library system, and no hope and change regardless of generations of black leaders. Top all that off with a powerful belief system in Voodoo which undergirds even the Christians. Think on that one as you holier than thou liberals tsk-tsk over what Pat Robertson said about a pact with the devil.

Conservatives and libertarians need to pay close attention, because right now they are the ones most critical of our government. (From 2001-2008 it was the liberals and progressives who were most critical--but nothing much has changed.) What part of this mess do you want to claim so that we can go back to lead in house paint, tainted meat, no vaccines, dirty water, rivers that catch on fire, dead zones in our lakes and rivers from chemical dumping, no programs for mentally ill and retarded children in the public schools, choking on cigarette smoke everywhere you went, cars that crumbled like paper at a 5 mph crash and no seat belts, no minorities or women in any position of authority, lack of career tracks for your daughters and sisters above secretary and school teacher, no protection for pensions, no Social Security, no unemployment benefits, no workers' compensation, no federal aid for disasters, no freedom to organize workers, no right to work without unions, no standards for your neighbor keeping up his property so yours doesn't deteriorate, etc.

And you liberals and progressives (no point addressing Marxists and Anarchists--you have a different agenda). Take a good look at what happens when you have an entire country where entreprenuership and free markets are completely discouraged through vicious tax laws that punish the poor and rich alike, but especially drive out the best and brightest. Take a look at a country where the ambitious and educated have to go elsewhere to even have a chance to support their families and enjoy a few of the benefits you take for granted. Take a look at a system built on who you know and who your family is. The ultimate of cronyism--and our Chicago crowd in DC is far worse now than the Texas cronyism during the Bush years in only 1/8 of the time. Look at a society where everyone has their hand out because that's the only way you can survive. Look at a country where nothing gets done without handsome bribes--not even unloading a container of desperately needed supplies for your medical mission--and then look at the Christmas Eve vote pushed through by Harry Reid and Barack Obama. It was impossible to pass that extremely unpopular health care bill without bribing a U.S. Senator! And we'll see the same thing with cap and trade over an equally phony AGW. Lies and Bribes. Do we want that? Look at style over substance the next time you are giddy over [using the words of Biden and Reid] a "light skinned, clean Negro" reading from a teleprompter. Have you ever browsed a photo gallery of Haiti's former leaders? My Goodness, a really smart stylish group of losers in big hats and fancy uniforms. Spoke pretty too--in four languages. Gave great parties. It means nothing. Wake up liberals, before you turn us into a third rate country with a glorious past.

Yes, we all have a lot to learn from Haiti, and yes, this tragedy will be politicized. The media who placed Obama in the White House are already trying to compare this aid to Katrina--another natural disaster made worse by ineffective government services at the city, state and federal levels. Let's wake up and get smart before it's too late.

ObamaCare Shocker

by Jay Printz at American Daughter, used with permission. See original for all hot links.

Recently decided tenth amendment cases support constitutional challenges to ObamaCare. Here is evidence that my battle in Printz v. United States was not in vain, as so many liberals would have you believe!


From FOXNews -- An Obamacare Shocker:

....there's another key provision in Obamacare that probably violates the Tenth Amendment: the state exchanges.

The Tenth Amendment went for so many years without being used to strike down any law that it came to be regarded as what is called a dead letter in the Constitution, meaning a provision that says some sort of obvious statement, but that isn't actually used by the courts for anything.

Then, in the 1990s, the Supreme Court shocked the legal world by striking down two laws for violating the Tenth Amendment. The first was New York v. United States in 1992, where the Court struck down a federal law requiring states to pass state laws for the disposal of radioactive waste, and to issue regulations for implementing those laws. Then in Printz v. United States in 1997, the Court struck down a provision of the Brady Act--a federal gun-control law--that required state and local law enforcement to run background checks on handgun purchasers.

From these two cases emerged the anti-commandeering principle, holding that the Tenth Amendment forbids the federal government from commandeering--or ordering--any branch of state government to do anything. The states are sovereign and answer only to their voters, not to Washington, D.C.

Therein lies the problem for the Senate's Obamacare bill. It requires each state to pass laws setting up a statewide non-profit insurance exchanges. It then requires the states to pass regulations for implementing those laws. And it further requires the states to dedicate staff and spend state money to administer those programs.

In most respects, this is a straight-out repeat of those 1992 and 1997 cases. The main difference is that Obamacare violates the anti-commandeering principle in a far more severe and egregious way than those previous laws ever did.

This is really stunning. If New York and Printz had been decided as far back as 1910, then maybe you could imagine Congress deciding to roll the dice with a completely new Supreme Court a century later. But these are recent cases with conservative outcomes, and the only difference is that the Court has become a bit more conservative then it was in the 1990s when it decided those two cases....

The only way the Dems can get around this is to drag out the constitutional challenges until Obama, in a second term as president, may have a chance to replace two conservative Supreme Court justices with liberals.

The American public must deny Obama a second term, and the certain destruction of states' rights.

[Jay Printz retired in 1999 after 26 years as a Montana Sheriff; he is a U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran. He served in 2004-2005 as an advisor to Iraqi national security forces. He brought a successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge against the "Brady Law" in the landmark case, Printz v. United States. Printz is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association.]

Friday Family Photo--The Weybrights

This is a very clever way to display as many people in a family tree as possible. Line the photos up on the cover. The woman who compiled this list, Elizabeth Miller Lane, wasn't even related--she just enjoyed doing genealogy and must have found all her own family! The fellow in the upper right hand corner, Jesse P. Weybright, is the one who got me interested in genealogy. He wrote a small book, "Genealogy of Martin Weybrecht; Weybright Waybright also Martin Waybright Highland County, Virginia 1800" in the mid-1930s and I inherited a copy from my grandmother, who had purchased a copy for each of her children. I was never able to figure out the numbering system of the generations, but fortunately, grandma made a few notes around 1938 before I was born--because her family was left out and she wrote them in. (I suspect grandpa got the inquiry from his cousin Jesse and he just tossed it--as 2nd cousin once removed James says, it's usually the women who keep track of these things.) If we were there, we'd be on p. 48, Vol. 2 Book II. Chapter 7, v. 7, sect. 8.

Do you hear it?

Today at Coffee Spills I blogged about a young man I thought must be watching Mad Men on TV. I don't watch the show, but it's making an impact on men's fashion.

Mad Men theme and Autumn Leaves.

How are your kidneys?

"House and Senate Democrat leaders, and President Obama, argue that they can "pay for" health insurance "reform" by cutting $500 billion from Medicare spending over the next decade—largely through arbitrary reimbursement cuts,— without reducing the quality of care delivered to beneficiaries.

Yet, in January, 2011, Medicare will implement a new payment system for patients receiving dialysis for end stage kidney disease that will severely ration care to this vulnerable (and largely minority) population based on equally arbitrary payment reductions. These patients will be the unfortunate canary in the Medicare coal mine: "reform" legislation will expose millions of Medicare patients to rationing and reduced quality of care." Read the whole story at Medical Progress Today.

But bring out the violins for illegal aliens who need dialysis back in Mexico! NYT story. If you read far enough, you'll see Mexico's present (lower costs, but private pay) is our future.

Style vs. Substance

Although I think even his most ardent supporters are tiring of his whining, finger pointing, and stalling this item on style vs. substance is still important.

Rasmussen Reports (Michael Barone) - "The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance. Obama enthusiasts seem to have been motivated by a yearning for a rapturous, nuanced leader. Send that terrible tyrant with his tortured sentences and moral certitude back to Texas and install The One in the White House, and all would be well.

"In contrast, the tea party protesters, many of them as fractious and loudmouthed as [New York Times Columnist David] Brooks thinks, are interested in substantive political issues. They decry the dangers of expanding the national debt, increasing government spending and putting government in command of the health care sector." Barone's article here

I can't remember a time when Democrats weren't contemptuous of Republican leaders--I certainly believed Ronald Reagan was just a dumb movie star who read lines when I was a Democrat. That's all I heard from the media and my colleagues. And how many times did you see Bush portrayed as a knuckle dragging, cowboy cartoon with huge ears? And unfortunately, like small children who are abused and grow up doubting their abilities, many RINOs behave as they are told they believe. The Harry Reid racism flap is just the latest of letting the Democrats set the agenda. Everyone in both parties knows he isn't a racist, but they also know there's a double standard for what can be said, thought or acted upon. Without a moment's reflection, our President can blast the Cambridge police as racist, but waits 3 days to say anything about terrorists. The time to wring the Reid comment out and hang it out to dry is the next time a Republican says macaca or water buffalo and the Democrats scream RACIST! Then rally the troops. Go after speech codes that do nothing but divide. Reid should go down in history for the comfort he gave our enemies during time of war not for using the word "Negro," which many people still use, or calling Obama light skinned, which he is because his mother was white teenager impregnated by an older married man and who didn't have an abortion.

When women use steroids

they look like men in drag. Those are not natural female faces. They look like sextuplets. Same long jaws, high foreheads, elongated noses--and probably the ears too if we could see them. The breasts look like soccer balls. My husband said, "Who would want to come home to that?" Nice shoes, though.

Latest map on Haiti Earthquake

Click to enlarge. USGS M7 Haiti Earthquake of January 12. Shows earthquakes of the last 100 years, and historic earthquakes and tsunamis since 1492.

Earthquake glossary

HT Mary Scott, Geology Library, OSU

Thursday Thirteen--Thrift shop buys

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on Alicia Kan giving up her executive look wardrobe for a more relaxed look. She sold her designer clothes and reinvented herself. Three years ago I lost 20 lbs. and since I already had an old wardrobe (retired in 2000) and didn't need anything new, I discovered The Discovery Shop, a resale thrift shop that supports cancer research. I found much more than clothing. Here are some of my favorite buys:

1) Silverplate flatware, Reed and Barton 1776, service for 8, with all the serving pieces, $35. I use this set for every day and thoroughly enjoy it.

2) Soup bowls to match my fine china. Not the exact pattern, but close enough that I won't have to pay $50.00 a piece to buy them. I have Countess pattern in Syracuse China, and the bowls are King's Court, Wedding Band pattern. $4.00 each.



3) A CD of Urbie Green and Umpteen Trombones. I used to play trombone and this CD is fabulous! $1.00




4) Two beautiful Christmas cups, $1.00 each. Dunoon Stoneware Scotland, Jane Brookshaw (she has a series).

5) At least 5 pair of dress khaki slacks for my son to wear to work, $4 each. All name brands and in good condition.

6) Jeans and cotton slacks for my husband to wear for Haiti mission work; then they leave their clothes there. Some were better than his own. $3-5.00 each.

7) Numerous pairs of lined wool slacks, made in USA, with natural waist fit, already professionally shortened with dry cleaning tags still attached. Various sizes as my weight changed. Average cost $5.00 each.

8) Pendleton pants suit, tan tweed, short jacket, fitted waist, lined slacks. $25.

9) London Fog raincoat, zip liner, $10.

10) White dress pants suit, summer. $25.

11) Coleman, light weight zip front jacket, blue and gray, for my husband. $5.

12) Cat's Meow buildings, 2 bookstores and a library, $3 each.

13) Talbot and Coldwater Creek jeans--black velveteen, pink, red, charcoal gray, olive, burgundy, all new with tags. Natural waist, some with a bit of lycra or little extra fabric for eased fit in hips and legs for the "mature" woman. Average price $4-5. Anyone need red size 8 jeans? Too tight now. Won't zip. Can't sit.
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Coakley and Obama's fat cats and special interests

An editorial in today's WSJ points out how cozy Democrats are with Big Health. They occasionally appear for whip lashing by the Administration, but right now they are needed to "fill Teddy's seat." This Massachusetts race is certainly getting strange. I'm for Brown. I'm part of the right wing rich fat cat conspiracy (DNC ads) that sent him money.

"Amid a Beltway panic, the health lobby is riding to the rescue of the Massachusetts liberal, whose defeat in the special Senate race next Tuesday could deny Democrats the 60th vote for ObamaCare and thus maybe spare the U.S. health system from the coming damage.

As first reported by Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner, the host committee for the fundraiser at Pennsylvania Avenue's Sonoma Restaurant includes lobbyists for Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis and sundry other drug companies that have been among the biggest of ObamaCare's corporate sponsors. Other hosts—who have raised at least $10,000 for Ms. Coakley—include representatives from UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana and other insurers. As far as we can tell, the insurance industry claims to oppose ObamaCare's current incarnation.

Naturally, lobbyists from America's Health Insurance Plans and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major trade groups, were on hand too. Money follows power in Washington, obviously, though this example seems especially inexplicable given that Ms. Coakley's GOP opponent, state senator Scott Brown, may be the last chance to defuse the health-care doomsday machine. But maybe someone in the press corps will bother to mention this episode the next time President Obama takes aim at the "special interests" he claims are opposing his agenda."

Does he have anything to say about dark skinned Muslims who shoot up military bases and hide bombs in their underwear?

It seems the Obama Administration is fearful of the word "terrorist," unless it's not connected with Muslims or non-white ethnic groups. This may be the most racist appointee yet. Obama thought the power of his charisma and personality would calm things down--even the Norwegians thought so--gave him a useless peace prize for doing nothing. But he continues to appoint crooks, cheats, marxists, losers and racists. This guy Southers used his FBI position to snoop on his ex-wife. I'd put that in the Geithner tax cheating category. It would certainly have stopped a Bush appointee.

I was looking at the "World News" section of the paper yesterday. . .

1) Militants attack crude oil pipe line in Africa
2) Togolese soccer squad attacked and killed in Angola
3) Afghan blast kills U.K. journalist and U.S. Marines and photographer injured.
4) Chavez devaluing their currency--dismantling the middle class.
5) Argentin constitutional crisis threatens Central banks--ripple effect at our Fed.
6) Merkel leadership under attack
7) Northern Ireland rocked by sex + money scandal.
8) 3 Palestinian militants were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
9) Australians are in trouble in China for commercial crimes and in Vietnam for fuel-hedging trades.
10) Beijing cracking down on dissidents who are using the Internet.

No, the world hasn't changed yet. Not much hope either.

Miss me yet?

From John Hawkins at RightWing News.

Yet, horrible approval rating and terrible messaging aside, Bush was a much better, more competent, and skilled President than Obama. That's even the case if you set aside ideological issues.

Bush was more transparent, worked better with the other side, was a much more skilled diplomat, had a much better idea of what government could accomplish, and was several orders of magnitude more honest.

Bush was not a great President. On the domestic front, he wasn't even a good one. He also did great damage to the Republican Party by being so stubborn, obtuse, and by making so little effort to get his message out.

But, all that said: When you get beyond the hyperbole and polling data, it's Obama, not Bush, who suffers when the two men are compared.

He lost support of his party because of amnesty, and caving on AGW, and spending like a drunken Democrat, but he'll go down in history as a much better President.

An instant ice age

Puts man made global warming and industrial pollution into perspective, doesn't it? We can't hold a candle to natural disasters. From the University of Illinois LAS News:

"A new study provides “incontrovertible evidence” that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, researchers report.

The volcano ejected an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, leaving a crater (now the world’s largest volcanic lake) that is 100 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide. Ash from the event has been found in India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the South China Sea.

The bright ash reflected sunlight off the landscape, and volcanic sulfur aerosols impeded solar radiation for six years, initiating an “Instant Ice Age” that—according to evidence in ice cores taken in Greenland—lasted about 1,800 years.

During this instant ice age, temperatures dropped by as much as 16 degrees centigrade (28 degrees Fahrenheit), says University of Illinois anthropology professor Stanley Ambrose, a principal investigator on the new study with professor Martin A.J. Williams, of the University of Adelaide. Williams, who discovered a layer of Toba ash in central India in 1980, led the research."

Did you know that the warming cooling cycle research on the earth's temperature had been gradually removed from Wikipedia by global warming fundamentalists?

Ouanaminthe is safe

There has been a terrible earthquake in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. We received an e-mail last night from our UALC pastor in Haiti, that Ouanaminthe is safe. They felt it, but there is no damage. "Everyone is fine," he reported. Video of the school and medical clinic we support (the young man with the Akron t-shirt is Frandy, who has spent time with us, and you briefly see Zeke also). My husband goes again in February and is so anxious to get back--he loves the Haitian people.

People of all political stripes in the U.S. need to look hard at Haiti; conservatives for what happens when government provides nothing--not police, not electricity, not safe water, not postal service, not roads; liberals for what happens when aid from non-profits and other countries goes to line the pockets and decorate the palaces of corrupt, mini-Africa type despots and dictators year after year--nothing makes it to the people.

Update: a bus loaded with medical personal and supplies left Ouanaminthe on Friday for Port au Prince with the intention to give away the supplies and find their students who were studying in the area and return with any of their townspeople who wanted to come home. The good news today was they accomplished this and are safe!

Attention Black Caucus

Still wearing your Che t-shirts? Swooning over all those wonderful medical benefits Castro doles out ala Michael Moore's propaganda pics?

"Afro-Cubans officially make up 62 percent of the Cuban population and possibly 70 percent. Afro-Cubans “are experiencing strong and growing instances of racism on the island, with their 25-odd civil rights movements reporting a wide range of discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion and access to Cuba’s socialized medicine and educational system,” according to the U.S. State Department." Read article by Matt Hentoff, Rampant racism in Cuba

HT SafeLibraries

$787 Billion in Stimulus, Zero Jobs “Created or Saved”

Are we surprised? You only have to read the history of the 1930s to know what was going to happen. It's one thing to sprinkle a little fairy dust to get people shopping again; it's another to pour billions into "shovel ready" projects that were already on the books, or into zip codes that don't exist. When does government "create" jobs, except when it increases unemployment and needs to add red tape and bureaucracy to its own rolls?

"The problem with infrastructure spending as stimulus, and really government spending as stimulus, is that Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another. Businesses are telling pollsters that among the biggest reasons they are not creating jobs is the prospect of new tax and regulatory burdens. A better solution to reduce unemployment is to simplify and reduce the barriers to business success." The Foundry Blog

And the sluggish economy is definitely linked to the Democrats' obsession with passing health care, no matter what, no matter how, no matter how many businesses go under, no matter when, but right now is what they prefer.

"Congressional "reforms" of the American health delivery system have gone through dozens of versions. The separate bills passed by the House and Senate worry small businesses, in particular. They fear their labor costs will increase because of mandates to spend much more on health insurance for their employees. The resulting reluctance of small businesses to invest, expand and hire harms households as well, because it slows the creation of new jobs and the growth of labor incomes." WSJ Uncertainty and the slow recovery

Got Milk--cutest website

The Got Milk website had me just staring at all the activity and listening to the upbeat, but calming music. Like a horse jogging on a treadmill. A lot of thought and money goes into marketing campaigns. This is so cute, I almost forgot I went there for a recipe. In fact, I had to look a bit, but click on the blender icon on the lower left, and you'll find absolutely wonderful milk drinks that look and sound like what you might get at one of those upscale juice bars at a trendy health/exercise spa.

Take care of your bones. And don't forget Vitamin D!

Monday Memories--The Chemise

The clothing and hair shapes and styles of the late fifties were harbingers of the changes we would see in the early 60s--blousy and bouffant. Especially after the beautiful, young Jackie Kennedy led the way. My mother was a good seamstress, so I wanted something I’d seen in Mademoiselle magazine, and although I don’t have the pattern, the above photo from the April 1958 issue is similar. Also similar is that teenagers regardless of the era are pretty bossy and careless about other’s time commitments, especially their mothers!

April 8, 1958

Dear Family,

[other stuff about my sister Carol and me visiting at Easter]

Mother: If you look on page 102 of the April Mademoiselle I think you'll find a good idea for the chemise pattern. I still need an outfit I can wear for school, but that combination would be darling for good.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

April 17, 1958

Dear Ones,

I'm still waiting for my new sheath and chemise.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

April 21, 1958

Dear Ones,

I received my package and really went wild. I love the yellow chemise. That material is wonderful for spring skirts. Mom, could you get some more for 2 or 3 straight skirts--brown or green?

In less than 2 weeks, Mom found the magazine, the style, the fabric, made it and shipped it to my college in Indiana. And before she could catch her breath, I was asking for more!

This was excerpted from my sewing blog, Memory Patterns, with stories of crafts, quilts, doll clothes, formals, housecoats, aprons, etc. And I wasn't even a good seamstress!

Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster

I started to read the bizarre account in New York Magazine of John Edwards and his wife, and what was really going on during the last presidential campaign, but finally just had to stop. Whether it is gossip, sleaze or half-truths, it was too sick. You can almost see how a candidate can become a megalomaniac, and his wife might be a shrew-- "abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending, crazywoman"--considering what she'd been through (although it appears she was that way before), but I kept wondering, "Why do the staff put up with it? Why would they want people like this running a hot dog stand, let alone our country?" So I gave up, not on the Edwards, who seem to deserve each other, but on their campaign staff. It would seem megalomania is contagious.

Harry Reid shouldn't resign

That was a stupid remark he made about Obama--about him being light skinned and talking white to be acceptable to whites (or was that talking black to be acceptable to blacks--he did both, you know). He told the truth, and many people black and white have said essentially the same thing especially before he became the clear front runner. No, kick old Harry out for being stupid, for being a traitor when speaking against the war saying the war was lost and giving aid to the enemy, for the illegal cornhusker bribe--but I don't think he's a racist. Is there a double standard? Absolutely. They kicked Trent Lott's butt for a lot less, and remember the macaca guy--no one even knew what that was so how could it be racist? Harry's just a man of his era--he thinks African Americans are "Negroes" and useful for political purposes as long as they don't leave the Democratic plantation or cause too much trouble. This is just one more crisis for Rahm Emanuel to manage.

Update on why Reid should resign for being a crook, not a racist: "While you passed out Christmas gifts to loved ones, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed out Christmas bonuses via the passing of the Senate health care bill -- what I call perpetual pork, gifts that keep on giving, unlike those familiar single hits at the public trough. He initiated a new frontier in pork barrel politics. His corrupt and creative diversions included giving out Medicaid and Medicare credits like another round of pork projects. . . And all the costs haven't even been calculated yet because the bribery isn't over. The House and Senate leaders will hold private negotiations this month to merge the Senate's $871 billion health care bill and the House's $1 trillion bill." Read more from Chuck Norris, If the Price is Right HT Bill L.