5 Ways You’re Going to Pay

1)Increase in the federal income tax rate
Sure, be a team player. Pick up that extra uncovered shift on the schedule. But don’t pick up too many, because the max federal tax rate is going to go up…probably to 39%. Especially for you really hardworking stiffs making more than $250K per year, it’s time to start doing the math before you work too hard and end up giving most of that extra shift to Uncle Sam.

Better think twice about buying those Thin Mints from the next door neighbor’s kid, or giving to the YMCA, United Way or any other charity. Why, because the amount of that contribution that you could deduct from your federal income taxes is going to go down, probably from 42 to 29 cents on the dollar. So much for give until it hurts, now it’s give until you bleed.

3)Bundling
“What the heck is bundling?” you ask. Bundling is going to be one of the key strategies to reduce federal expenditures on healthcare in the upcoming years. Here’s how this special trick is going to work. Instead of the government paying for each portion of a patient’s care (i.e. Hospital charge, radiologist charge, emergency physician charge during a single ED visit) the feds are going to come up with a single payment for an “episode of care”. They are then going to come up with a single payment (which you can bet is going to be less than the current sum of the parts), and then they are going to give it to one entity (probably the hospital). It will then be up to all of the participants to somehow divide the total payment. Gee, I wonder if the hospitals will just be nice and treat the ED docs as well as their radiologists, surgeons, cardiologists, hospitalists and every other specialty that will stake a claim for the money the hospital receives. This is where those years of schmoozing your hospital CEO and CFO will pay off. Oh, you haven’t been doing that? Too bad! Back of the line for you.

After 30 years of letting the insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies skim all the profits in healthcare while physicians were getting, at best 0-1% updates from Medicare, I’m not convinced that the AMA is really who I want representing me in the big healthcare debate. And now we’re supposed to believe that because the insurers, hospitals, big pharma and the AMA sent some flowery, Kumbaya, “we’re all in this together” letter to the President, docs aren’t still going to get the short end of the stick (or dollar in this case)? Haven’t those same for-profit groups been shafting docs all along? Why should they play nice now?

5)Tort Reform? Don’t hold your breath
Haven’t heard much talk about that in the healthcare reform debate, now have you? Probably not going to either. No, tort reform won’t be a big player in the healthcare debate, due in no small part to the historically friendly relationship between the powerful trial lawyer lobby and the democratic party. What we’ll get instead of a discussion of tort reform is a discussion about “more effective medicine.” That’s right, the federal government is going to do effectiveness research and tell us doctors what the “right” thing to do is, or at least what they will pay you for. But don’t worry, you probably won’t be immune from being sued even if you follow that standard.

Well, now that I’ve been a little ray of sunshine in your day, I’ll just leave you with a little quote so that you can go cry into your N95 mask when you go see the next patient with Swine/Avian/Gorilla Flu.In the words of the immortal Jack Nicholson as Marine Colonel Jessep: “You can’t handle the truth!” The truth is that emergency physicians do stand their post 24/7/365. We stand tall every day, night, weekend and holiday despite being puked on, spit on, and sworn at. And yet, the future of our specialty now rests in the hands of a few Washington bureaucrats who believe they know how to run the entire healthcare system from the Capitol steps. God help us all.

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE PLESE CLICK HERE

Lebanon post election

What is generally reported as a new direction for Lebanon based on  election results  is largely a media fabrication. None the less the pro Iran pro Syria coalition , which includes Hezbollah has suffered a political defeat. Don’t for a second confuse that with the reality that Hezbollah still maintains a strong military force estimated to be about  a division in size and  strength but we can at least  expect the political tone to change.
The loss that Obama suffered in this election is truly exemplary.  In just about every major speech that Obama has delivered he made sure to apologize to the world for whatever imagined evil his sick liberal mind thinks  that the US unleashed upon the world. Yet the Lebanese public, who the Obamunists tell us ,  listened to and memorized the Obama Cairo speech verbatim  turned their back on Iran and Syria and chose a more pro western pro America stance! They did  this in spite of the Obama drum beat of how evil America is!

In his Cairo recitation of the TOTUS speech Obama not once did he mention the word “TERRORISM”, not once did he indicate that Hezbollah is an organization to be shunned or marginalized , and yet the Lebanese people did just that.

Not once in that same performance did Obama ask that muslims turn away from the terrorist renegade states of Iran and Syria and embrace the west and America, and yet a majority of  the Lebanese public did just that. How about that?

Iran election

The election in Iran , to a significant extent,  a dog and pony show because the power is held by the mullahs and the ayatollah and they don’t change, is again an embarrassing loss for Obama!  No other current  leader in the free world has done more to raise Ahmadinejad’s stock than Obama! The latter’s assertion that he will “sit down” with that freak , gave Ahmadinijad the instant credibility he never had during the George W administration and yet he lost the election.

Again not once during the Cairo tap dance did Obama say word one about the upcoming election in Iran, not once did he encourage the people of  Iran to turn their back on Ahmadinijad, on the contrary! Obama’s line about giving them a hand if the fist something or other, and blah blah blah was if anything another attempt to engage and thus legitimize Ahmadinejad. Once again the Iranian people rejected the Obama attempts to raise Ahmadinejad to the rank of human being and it seems that they voted him out. Once again, in spite of the Obama, “America is Evil and I Apologize World Tour” the people of a muslim nation voted to have closer ties to America.

I bet that America polls better in Iran and Lebanon than we do in our own White House!

OK I found and added a High Def version of the pic, (just click the thumb and you’ll get it) As I mentioned below someone commented that these pics are usually taken in the morning or late after noon to get the best light. I am certainly not a pro on this but if you get a look at the pic – from AP- I have to agree. Why would they chose such an overcast day and this particular time to do this?

And to really get you rilled I added the current official Air Force One pic , of the plane flying over Mount Rushmore. Are you kidding me? You compare the two and then tell me that this isn’t all a snow job.

Original Post

So we pay over $300k for an amateurish photograph complete with window glare?

Is this some sort of practical joke that Obama is playing on us? Is he trying to tell the world that Americans are so stupid we’ll believe anything? I’ve learned long ago that when an administration is willing to have us consider them incompetent, they are doing that to hide a lot worse. So what, or whom, are they hiding inside our plane.

Someone commented that photo-ops are not done at midday and this pic proves them right. But, maybe we should cut the White House some slack here because the photographer behind this photo clearly isn’t a professional. I mean, if this is the best they got, can you imagine how bad the other ones are? Who took that picture and what was he using? A key-chain camera? For $328,000 we couldn’t pay someone for a little bit of a touch-up? Cosmo magically erases thigh cellulite on a weekly basis. How troublesome can a little window glare be?

Further I am really curious why this particular picture with the “picturesque” views of Staten Island was published as opposed to one with the majestic Manhattan or Jersey City skylines in the back ground? Could it be that the White House doesn’t want us to see all the little people scurrying about terrorized by the sight of a jumbo jet hading for a skyscraper. Or maybe the problem is that the terrorized masses are not in the pictures because there are no damn pictures!

WHO WAS ON THE PLANE ANYWAY?

Seriously what are they covering up? Who was going for a joy ride in our Air Force One?

How much of the $300K went to pay for the window glare in the upper right corner?

Oh shure the one above is better right?

The picture below taken with a cell phone looks better than the one which cost us $300k

This image was taken with a cell phone by Jason McLane.

Yesterday White House press secretary “Gibblet “claimed that he didn’t know the whereabouts of the pictures of Air Force One taken while the plane was buzzing Manhattan. Today it seems that they found at least one. Beloved leader Obama, has decided that he will share one picture with the people who forked over the $300k to pay for it. Aren’t we fortunate?
“One picture, that’s more than you peasants deserve”, is what some believed to have heard Gibbs mutter under his breath.

Why the hell is this flea circus that we call an administration refusing to show us the pics? Is this a joke? How can these freaks justify releasing top secret CIA documents and yet we can’t know who was on our plane on a flight that we paid for which flew over our city? WTF?

Here is what the Obama administration thinks its OK to make public.

1) Secret CIA interrogation precedures.

2) Names and addresses of law abiding private citizens who are guilty of nothing but trying to make a good living

3) Report indicating that white Christians who oppose abortion, taxes and Obama will be put on the terrorist watch list

Here is what the Obama administration choses to maintain as top secret

1) Pictures from the Air Force One plane that buzzed NYC , not just exterior but also pics from inside the plane

2) Roster of passangers who were on the aircraft.

3) Tapes of pilot to tower conversations during the flight

4) The Obama birth certificate

5) The Obama passport

6) The Obama Columbia University year book picture

7) The Obama Columbia University school transcript.

Can you imagine if Bush had done this?

Its not hard to see how the idiotic decision to have “Air Force One get pictures with the Statue of Liberty” (just writing it I have to shake my head in disbelief at how absurd this was) spawned so many conspiracy theories. Some are more plausible than others and I have my own hypothesis and suppositions but that’s all they are. I’ve heard the gamut from the “Rogue pilot trying to warn us of the government’s plan” to “wealthy donors, maybe even Soros , getting a complimentary ride at our expense”.

So while everyone out there is content to put out these theories I will put forth a solution.

As we have no proof of any of this you can chose to believe either or dismiss either and your life will probably not change all that much. However isn’t this supposed to be the Open Administration?
Well, if it is then this can be easily solved. I understand, mostly from reading the Internet LOL, that all such photo-op flights are also used as perks and rewards to staffers and some of the B-list donors and their families who may not otherwise get a chance to fly on Air Force One.

To quell the theories and quite frankly because the White House owes us , at least us “New Yorkers”, a more thorough explanation of this debacle the list of the passengers on that Air Force One flight should be published. So the “open administration” should release the passenger list of those who got a ride on the plane. Sure that can all be doctored but if there is a cover up it will eventually come out.

Lets face it how can we have any confidence in a President that has no clue where his own dam plane is going or who is on it?

There’s one other thing. This was allegedly a “photo-op” so lets see the photos! The F-16 chase plane could not possibly take pictures from its vantage point so there had to be another plane somewhere taking the pictures. I see no evidence of it in any of the videos or pics that were taken of this incident. So lets have the White House publish the pics, after all it cost us over $300K to have them taken at least we should get to see them.

. If the Administration does that then and all these conspiracy theories will go away…unless of course..

But I have one question for the Manchild.

What the hell did he win for the United States of America?

Did he open up new markets? Did he win  new military commitments ? Did he win new intelligence agreements? Trade concessions?  Anything?
WHAT THE HELL DID THIS CLOWN GET FOR US?

Did we just spend a fortune to send him and his racist militant wife all the way to Europe and he just gave the damn store away? It sure seems so!

The fool actually issued the statement that  “we’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.”

Barry  you don’t even know that they are laughing at you.  Laughing at you in Europe that is, in Asia the North  Koreans saw how spineless you are and are launching what will be one of many missiles.

Barry you have copmpromised world security. Your weekness will bring about untold misery and soon. It seems that the Japanese will be the first to experince the fruit of your unmatched leadership prowess but they won’t be the last.

The only thing that America has to apologize for is for electing you.

World wide they are rolling with laughter at the Manchild’s gift to the Queen Mother.

Made in China

Made in the USA

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Fresh off the now infamous gift exchange with Gordon Brown, in which priceless treasures were answered with a stack of DVD’s which apparently don’t even play on Pal-Secam – you figure out who gave what to whom- Obama has bestowed upon the Queen an Ipod.

Yeah, nothing says America like “Made in China”

For the libits who wonder what gift “W” brought to the queen, it was a lovely bronze replica of the statue that welcomes visitors to the national Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth Texas, titled “High Desert Princess.” Enough said.

“Confirmed: The Obamas are Tacky,

Tasteless, and Cheap The gifting gaffes roll on. First you had a cheap set of American movie DVDs that couldn’t be played in England and now, when meeting the Queen of England,” American Digest

by Raymond K. Paden

The old man walked slowly through the dry, fallen leaves of autumn, his practiced eye automatically choosing the bare and stony places in the trail for his feet. There was scarcely a sound as he passed, though his left knee was stiff with scar tissue. He grunted occasionally as the tight sinews pulled. Damn chainsaw, he thought.

Behind him, the boy shuffled along, trying to imitate his grandfather, but unable to mimic the silent motion that the old man had learned during countless winter days upon this wooded mountain in pursuit of game. He’s fifteen years old, the old man thought. Plenty old enough to be learning. But that was another time, another America. His mind drifted, and he saw himself, a fifteen-year-old boy following in the footsteps of his own grandfather, clutching a twelve gauge in his trembling hands as they tracked a wounded whitetail.

The leg was hurting worse now, and he slowed his pace a bit. Plenty of time. It should have been my own son here with me now, the old man thought sadly. But Jason had no interest, no understanding. He cared for nothing but pounding on the keys of that damned computer terminal. He knew nothing about the woods, or where food came from…or freedom. And that’s my fault, isn’t it?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3sl4TAcL10]

The old man stopped and held up his hand, motioning for the boy to look. In the small clearing ahead, the deer stood motionless, watching them. It was a scraggly buck, underfed and sickly, but the boy’s eyes lit up with excitement. It had been many years since they had seen even a single whitetail here on the mountain. After the hunting had stopped, the population had exploded. The deer had eaten the mountain almost bare until erosion had become a serious problem in some places. That following winter, three starving does had wandered into the old man’s yard, trying to eat the bark off of his pecan trees, and he had wished the “animal rights” fanatics could have been there then. It was against the law, but old man knew a higher law, and he took an axe into the yard and killed the starving beasts. They did not have the strength to run.

The buck finally turned and loped away, and they continued down the trail to the river. When they came to the “Big Oak,” the old man turned and pushed through the heavy brush beside the trail and the boy followed, wordlessly. The old man knew that Thomas was curious about their leaving the trail, but the boy had learned to move silently (well, almost) and that meant no talking. When they came to “Coffin Rock,” the old man sat down upon it and motioned for the boy to join him.

“You see this rock, shaped like a casket?” the old man asked. “Yes sir.” The old man smiled. The boy was respectful and polite. He loved the outdoors, too. Everything a man could ask in a grandson ….or a son.

“I want you to remember this place, and what I’m about to tell you. A lot of it isn’t going to make any sense to you, but it’s important and one day you’ll understand it well enough. The old man paused. Now that he was here, he didn’t really know where to start.

“Before you were born,” he began at last, “this country was different. I’ve told you about hunting, about how everybody who obeyed the law could own guns. A man could speak out, anywhere, without worrying about whether he’d get back home or not. School was different, too. A man could send his kids to a church school, or a private school, or even teach them at home. But even in the public schools, they didn’t spend all their time trying to brainwash you like they do at yours now.” The old man paused, and was silent for many minutes. The boy was still, watching a chipmunk scavenging beside a fallen tree below them.

“Things don’t ever happen all at once, boy. They just sort of sneak up on you. Sure, we knew guns were important; we just didn’t think it would ever happen in America. But we had to do something about crime, they said. It was a crisis. Everything was a crisis! It was a drug crisis, or a terrorism crisis, or street crime, or gang crime. Even a ‘health care’ crisis was an excuse to take away a little more of our rights.” The old man turned to look at his grandson.

“They ever let you read a thing called the Constitution down there at your school?” The boy solemnly shook his head. “Well, the Fourth Amendment’s still in there. It says there won’t be any unreasonable searches and seizures. It says you’re safe in your own home.” The old man shrugged. “That had to go. It was a crisis! They could kick your door open any time, day or night, and come in with guns blazing if they thought you had drugs …or later, guns. Oh, at first it was just registration — to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals! But that didn’t work, of course, and then later when they wanted to take ‘em they knew where to look. They banned ‘assault rifles’, and then ‘sniper rifles’, and ‘Saturday night specials.’ Everything you saw on the TV or in the movies was against us. God knows the news people were! And the schools were teaching our kids that nobody needed guns anymore. We tried to take a stand, but we felt like the whole face of our country had changed and we were left outside.”

“Me and a friend of mine, when we saw what was happening, we came and built a secret place up here on the mountain. A place where we could put our guns until we needed them. We figured some day Americans would remember what it was like to be free, and what kind of price we had to pay for that freedom. So we hid our guns instead of losing them.”

“One fellow I knew disagreed. He said we ought to use our guns now and stand up to the government. Said that the colonists had fought for their freedom when the British tried to disarm them at Lexington and Concord. Well, he and a lot of others died in what your history books call the ‘Tax Revolt of 1998,’ but son, it wasn’t the revolt that caused the repeal of the Second Amendment like your history book says. The Second Amendment was already gone long before they ever repealed it. The rest of us thought we were doing the right thing by waiting. I hope to God we were right.”

“You see, Thomas. It isn’t government that makes a man free. In the end, governments always do just the opposite. They gobble up freedom like hungry pigs. You have to have laws to keep the worst in men under control, but at the same time the people have to have guns, too, in order to keep the government itself under control. In our country, the people were supposed to be the final authority of the law, but that was a long time ago. Once the guns were gone, there was no reason for those who run the government to give a damn about laws and constitutional rights and such. They just did what they pleased and anyone who spoke out…well, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“It took a long time to collect up all the millions of firearms that were in private hands. The government created a whole new agency to see to it. There were rewards for turning your friends in, too. Drug dealers and murderers were set free after two or three years in prison, but possession of a gun would get you mandatory life behind bars with no parole.

“I don’t know how they found out about me, probably knew I’d been a hunter all those years, or maybe somebody turned me in. They picked me up on suspicion and took me down to the federal building.”

“Son, those guys did everything they could think of to me. Kept me locked up in this little room for hours, no food, no water. They kept coming in, asking me where the guns were. ‘What guns?’ I said. Whenever I’d doze off, they’d come crashing in, yelling and hollering. I got to where I didn’t know which end was up. I’d say I wanted my lawyer and they’d laugh. ‘Lawyers are for criminals’, they said. ‘You’ll get a lawyer after we get the guns.’ What’s so funny is, I know they thought they were doing the right thing. They were fighting crime!”

“When I got home I found Ruth sitting in the middle of the living room floor, crying her eyes out. The house was a shambles. While I was down there, they’d come out and took our house apart. Didn’t need a search warrant, they said. National emergency! Gun crisis! Your grandma tried to call our preacher and they ripped the phone off the wall. Told her that they’d go easy on me if she just told them where I kept my guns.” The old man laughed. “She told them to go to hell.” He stared into the distance for a moment as his laughter faded.

“They wouldn’t tell her about me, where I was or anything, that whole time. She said that she’d thought I was dead. She never got over that day, and she died the next December.”

“They’ve been watching me ever since, off and on. I guess there’s not much for them to do anymore, now that all the guns are gone. Plenty of time to watch one foolish old man.” He paused. Beside him, the boy stared at the stone beneath his feet.

“Anyway, I figure that, one day, America will come to her senses. Our men will need those guns and they’ll be ready. We cleaned them and sealed them up good; they’ll last for years. Maybe it won’t be in your lifetime, Thomas. Maybe one day you’ll be sitting here with your son or grandson. Tell him about me, boy. Tell him about the way I said America used to be.” The old man stood, his bad leg shaking unsteadily beneath him.

“You see the way this stone points? You follow that line one hundred feet down the hill and you’ll find a big round rock. It looks like it’s buried solid, but one man with a good prybar can lift it, and there’s a concrete tunnel right under there that goes back into the hill.”

The old man stood, watching as the sun eased toward the ridge, coloring the sky and the world red. Below them, the river still splashed among the stones, as it had for a million years. It’s still going, the old man thought. There’ll be someone left to carry on for me when I’m gone. It was harder to walk back. He felt old and purposeless now, and it would be easier, he knew, to give in to that aching heaviness in his left lung that had begun to trouble him more and more. Damn cigarettes, he thought. His leg hurt, and the boy silently came up beside him and supported him as they started down the last mile toward the house. How quiet he walks, the old man thought. He’s learned well.

It was almost dark when the boy walked in. His father looked up from his paper. “Did you and your granddad have a nice walk?”

“Yes,” the boy answered, opening the refrigerator. “You can call Agent Goodwin tomorrow. Gramps finally showed me where it is.”

Click here to read the sequel

It’s a good thing that the Obama administration is telling us that they will be the most open and transparent administration ever, for how else would we know?
Apparently, that openness is somewhat selective.

No I am not referring to matters of national security like disclosing ongoing secret intelligence operations or outing covert CIA agents as the NY Times has done repeatedly in the past eight years.

The administration won’t disclose which bank took funds

No, this administration simply refuses to tell us how the heck they are spending our money! Yesterday the Fed refused to disclose which banks took our money, much less what exactly it is that they did with it. Imagine if the Bush White House were the ones who refused to disseminate this information?

The drive-by media doesn’t care

Why isn’t the whole country up in arms over this? Fox Business is the only outlet that filled a suit against the Treasury Department “over failure to provide information on the bailout funds or respond to FBN’s expedited requests filed under the FOIA.” We are talking about two different things here, but money is money especially when its our money.
Why is FBN the only one making ANY inquiry? The great, free and democratic press of America doesn’t care anymore?

The Administration has “stigmatized” banks at every turn

And just how does the administration justify talking out of both sides of its mouth? Well, according to them, disclosing which banks took our money and for what purpose would “stigmatize” the banks who received the funds.

Ahhh … Would it stigmatize the banks more, less or the same as when Obama said :

“You’ve got a set of banks that have not been as transparent as we need… “

Or how about this quote delivered in March ‘o8 at Copper Union by the then presidential hopeful:

“Too often we’ve excused and even embraced an ethic of greed, corner cutting, insider dealing, things that have always threatened the long-term stability of our economic system.”

Didn’t that that stigmatize banks?
I see, so transparency is bad unless its good and up is down and the truth is whatever Oabama wants it to be.

Joe Biden speaks openly behind “transparent” doors

OK. Let’s not give Obama all the credit.

Plugs Biden has also just written a historic chapter in the annals of the Transparent Administration. So as to further cement the administration’s “Openess Policy” Biden went and spoke to one of the biggest unions in the world, the infamous AFL-CIO – behind closed doors! Iguess Biden thought the doors were transparent.

Now let’s face it, no one really cares or takes seriously whatever the junior half of the Gaffe-O-Matic team had to say to the AFL-CIO. It probably was just Yabadabadoo and “we’ll give you more taxpayer money” or some other such brilliant Biden pearl of wisdom. Nonetheless it’s good to see Biden embracing the spirit of openness.

More and more it looks like nothing this administration says can be trusted or even taken seriously and we are but a few short weeks into what promises to be a long and excruciating journey.

Fasten your seat belts and keep the bucket close by.