Being Vegetarian Shrinks Brain

Becoming a vegetarian could be good for the planet, but it's bad for your brain. Scientists at England's Oxford University have found that vegetarians are six times more likely to have brain shrinkage than those who include meats in their diets. The cause could be a lack of vitamins. Vegetarians are more likely than meat-eaters to be deficient in vitamin B12, which is mainly found in meats, and a B12 deficiency is known to cause anemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Oxford researchers examined 107 people between the age of 61 and 87 using physical exams, memory tests and brain scans. When the same volunteers were retested five years later, those with the lowest amounts of B12 had the most brain atrophy. And here's the political twist -- you knew there had to be one, right? -- more liberals than conservatives are vegetarians. Ba-rump-bump!

Obama Claims Health Care Costs Will Be Reduced
 
Obama has secured the commitments of six major trade associations to reduce the cost of health care spending by 20% over the next 10 years. The groups involved say that the success of their commitments rests on the passage of Obama's health care reforms (well, of course they do -- they had a meeting with the president and he wants universal health care - besides, maybe they're afraid he might just take their companies over, too), but no concrete methods of reducing spending have been detailed (then, uh, how do they know they can reduce health care spending by 20% over the next 10 years?). Obama predicts cost savings of $2,500 a year for a family of four. Huh? If you don't yet have a plan (there's that pesky word again -- like with GITMO) and you therefore don't know if you can realize the 20% savings, how can you say that would result in savings of $2,500 for a family of four? Just because it sounds good? Guess so. It's something like Team Obama saying all the time that they will either create X-number of jobs or save X-number of jobs. Create, I can understand, because you can check to see how many they created, but saved gives me a problem, because it seems a lot like proving a negative. You know, like, here's how many we didn't lose. Again, huh? How do you know, even if you hadn't done whatever it was that you did, that you still wouldn't have lost them -- that they might have been saved, or survived, in spite of whatever you did? Just askin' - Just sayin'.

Obama's Budget

Consider these facts, compiled by the Institute for Policy Innovation: Under the Obama budget, the nonpartisan, non-ideological Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the national debt will soar over the next 10 years from 40 percent of GDP today to 82.4 percent. Obama's budget also states that total federal borrowing will grow by $2.7 trillion this year alone, an increase of 27 percent in one year! The budget Obama proposed for this year increases federal spending by an incredible 34 percent, just compared to the previous year, with a total of $4 trillion in federal spending, the highest ever.

Pelosi's Tuna

Star-Kist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district. Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi. Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock. Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa, employing 75% of the Samoan work force. In January 2007, when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage, thereby making Del Monte products less expensive than their competition's. In 2008, when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill for $33 million dollars for an "economic development credit in American Samoa." Can we all say "payback"? Or is that "payoff"? And Pelosi has called the Bush administration corrupt? Oh, please! So, remember to serve your next Star-Kist tuna dish with ample side dishes of hubris and hypocrisy, please. 

Napolitano Again

Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano recently declared that "...crossing the border illegally is not a crime per se." What? Makes me want to ask what part of "illegally" don't you understand? Or, if se didn't do it and it therefore wasn't per se, then who did it? I couldn't make this stuff up, folks. I'm just not that imaginative. Napolitano is definitely gaining on Biden for gaffes.....but I don't think she'll ever catch him. 

A little dated now, but still a goody -- my untiring communiques with my U.S. Representative and Senators

"I cannot believe you voted FOR the pork-laden Omnibus Act of 2009. At a time when our economy is struggling, at a time when President Obama has at least said he forswears earmarks, this legislation contained 8,500 - 9,000 of them, 60 percent by Democrats and 40 percent by Republicans. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

At least President Obama was ashamed enough about going back on his promise to eliminate earmarks that he signed it into law behind closed doors instead of at a public signing. I guess even he doesn't have that much hubris.

And why pass the Omnibus bill anyway? Why not just do a CR (Continuing Resolution) to fund the government for the rest of the year? The Democrats set up the current half-year funding requirement by only appropriating enough for the first half of the FY, probably in hopes that 'their guy' would be in the White House by the time it was time to fund the second half and with the intention of loading it up with pork in the process.

Shame on all of you who voted for this abomination of an Omnibus Act and shame on President Obama for not sticking to his word. He should have taken his red Sharpie and lined the pork spending out, vetoed the bill and sent it back to Congress. Shame on all of you who voted for this overblown and 'oink-ful' legislation."
 
Guess it's a good thing I didn't feel like telling them what I really thought, huh?

AIG 90% Bonus Tax

Here's a "barn burner" I sent my U.S. Representative, Gerry Connolly, back in March. I got an automated reply thanking me for my "interest," but I haven't seen much change in his performance since then, sad to say:

"Although you're still a freshman Congressman, your voting record so far is making clear that you vote lockstep along Democratic party lines and in keeping with Speaker Pelosi's desires. Your motto seems to be -- No independent thinking or action here, thank you!

Have you ever thought that maybe you were elected to be a Blue Dog Democrat? One with a little independence, one at least sometimes more concerned about his district, his state and his country than just his party?

Your voting for the targeted and punitive AIG 90% Bonus Tax is just the latest example of your Democratic party compliant ways and was an outrageously flagrant abuse and overreaching of the Congressional taxing authority.

Not only was it ex post facto, a bill of attainder, and therefore an unconstitutional overreach by Congress, it was also Democratic party political posturing of the most obvious and egregious kind -- done to appease the public that its Congress identified with its outrage and was doing something, as well as, and more pointedly, to obfuscate how many Democrats (at least Senator Dodd, Secretary Geithner, and some senior White House staffer, if not the President himself) were involved in allowing the AIG bonuses in the first place. You know, tucked away in that legislation which nobody read but Democrats produced and rushed to overwhelmingly vote for? Haste does sometimes make waste, or at least cause problems, doesn't it?

It's one thing to cast a populous vote "for the people," to symbolize the outrage of Americans over bonuses being paid to the very people who caused their companies to collapse and necessitated the use of taxpayer money to bail them out. But it's quite another thing to connive to vote as "cover" and "distraction" for mistakes your party made, and still quite another thing yet to ensure that such a vote is at least constitutional. You were elected to not only do the popular thing, your party's thing, but also the right thing, the legal thing, the constitutional thing. Your oath of office says so.

This is not a time in our country when simply going along to get along will suffice, Congressman. Increasingly, the American people are dissatisfied with their Congress, and not only the two major political parties but also individual Senators and Representatives are being tracked and examined. Accountability is not now expected of only your party but also of you personally.

We are watching, Congressman Connolly, and counting on you to do only the right things."

May 18, 2009

Representative Gerald Connolly
Independence Avenue and 1st Street, SE
Washington, DC 20515-4611

Dear Representative Connolly,

March 9, 2009 

Dear Mr. Fowler,

Thank you for contacting me with respect to expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and an increase in the tobacco tax. I appreciate your interest in this issue and your views are important to me. This expansion of SCHIP will extend health insurance to four million additional children. It is estimated that the increase in the tobacco tax will discourage 1.8 million individuals from starting to smoke, particularly teenagers and young adults. These advancements are particularly important since the United States is the only industrialized nation that fails to insure all its children. 

Whenever Congress considers expanding an existing program or adding a new program, I believe it is important to consider the short and long-term fiscal impacts of such action. After eight years of reckless fiscal management by the Bush administration, we must impose discipline on government spending. However, parsimony with health care spending can actually cost more in the long-run, as a lack of preventive care drives up costs for treatments that frequently come too late.

Once again, thank you for expressing your concern on this very important issue. While we do not agree about this particular issue, I appreciate the opportunity to hear from you and am sure there are many other issues on which we can find common ground. For more information on my views on other issues, please feel free to visit my website at http://connolly.house.gov.  

Sincerely,

Dear Congressman Connolly:

Thank you for your prompt reply, in which you said: "This expansion of SCHIP will extend health insurance to four million additional children." And I applaud that as a worthy goal. Who does not want poor children to have health care coverage?

However, if this expanded SCHIP still contained provisions requiring taxpayer dollars being given to families who didn't want such coverage, or families who made enough that they could pay for their own coverage, or to give federal funds to illegal immigrants up to the age of 30, like the version which then-President Bush correctly vetoed, then you have aided in achieving a worthy goal only at the unnecessary and wasteful expense -- again -- of the American taxpayer. Congress' charge is not only to spend our tax money but to spend it wisely, which means, in part, that it should not only be timely and necessary but also carefully targeted and controlled.

You also said: "Whenever Congress considers expanding an existing program or adding a new program, I believe it is important to consider the short and long-term fiscal impacts of such action."

Hear, hear! I totally agree. Would that the Obama Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress were taking more of that approach in our current economic crisis, rather than already spending more in deficits not only than President Bush did in eight years, while fighting a global war on two fronts and responding to Katrina and Gustav, as well as a few other things, but also more than all of our presidents have ever spent in our history.

Just as we cannot simply drill our way to energy independence, except perhaps temporarily (we must also consider and develop other, alternative energy sources), we also cannot simply spend our way out of the current recession, and especially not at the expense of staggering generational debt to our children and grandchildren. Remember, the watch words are supposed to be: Timely, targeted, transparent and temporary. 

Finally, you also said: "After eight years of reckless fiscal management by the Bush administration, we must impose discipline on government spending."

Well, Congressman, first of all, I didn't write you to only get partisan Democratic talking points back. But since you injected partisanship into it with that statement, I would ask you to read my penultimately previous two paragraphs again -- the ones about incurring generational debt and not being able to simply spend our way out of the current recession -- and then I would rhetorically ask you: Do you mean the eight years during which there were 52 months of unprecedented growth? Do you mean the President Bush who, starting in 2001, called on the Congress at least 17 times to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with not only a failure of Congress to act but, in fact, active opposition by Democrat Barney Frank in the House and Democrat Chris Dodd in the Senate? That eight years of "reckless fiscal management," during all of which the Congress either approved of presidentially requested spending or did not (because, as I'm sure you know, the president cannot spend one thin dime which Congress doesn't approve), and during the last two years of which Democrats totally controlled the national purse strings, with large majorities in both the House and Senate? Those eight years? That Bush administration?

Please get pass the talking points and partisanship and realize that, whatever Bush did or did not do, the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress now "own" the current economy -- and the responsibility to fix it. The constant references by President Obama and other Democrats to "the failed policies of the last eight years" are wearing thin and are definitely not bipartisan, something President Obama at least says he believes in. It is now up to President Obama and those of you in Congress to help our crippled economy recover. And I must say, so far, I am not impressed -- not with timely (haste makes waste, plus Secretary Geithner still has no plan), certainly not with targeted (massive spending all over the map and much of it pork), not with transparent (no major legislation passed or signed has yet been previously posted on the Internet, much less for the promised five days), and not with temporary (much of the spending either expands existing programs or funds new ones, and we all know how reluctant Congress is to stop something it's started).

Sincerely,

Colonel Charles Fowler
USA, RET
Lorton, VA