Crazy and Crazier

Crazy and Crazier

The word “crazy” may be one of those pejorative but vivid descriptions such as “stupid,” “queer,” and “idiot” which are verboten by the PC Police but for which the English language cries out as needed and proper. There are, of course, levels of crazy and applying the word does involve a degree of subjectivity but some situations and people can be described in no better way.

Take Massachusetts and its health care insurance reform of 2006. Proposed by then-Governor Mitt Romney, a presumptive Republican presidential candidate in 2012, the program is a semi-disaster much like Britain’s venerable, bankrupt National Health Service. Yet both systems were used as models for Obamacare.

The latest medical news from the Bay State is foreboding.

In the midst of a nationwide physician shortage which is expected to grow worse after Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014 as fearful doctors leave the profession or take early retirement, Massachusetts is leading the way and foreshadowing the medical futures of most Americans. We must say most because the Democrat congress that enacted the Obamacare monstrosity and hundreds of unions and favored institutions are exempted from its strictures.

Meanwhile, up in Romneyland, where the former governor exploded health care demands with so-called universal coverage, “by cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days:” http://bit.ly/lJJZtK

As that report by Fox News concludes, ”Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can’t actually see a doctor?” Good point, Fox! Is it any wonder Obama hates them? They tell the truth.

Demonstrating that craziness is not confined to the Bay State and D.C., the IFC, a branch of the World Bank, both of which are largely funded by American taxpayers, approved “a $26 million loan to build a luxury hotel in Ghana . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4284)

Uncle Teddy, Liberal Lion, Rake, Snake

Uncle Teddy, Liberal Lion, Rake, Snake

You can lead a guy out of a tidal channel but you can’t make him drink.

That makes as much sense as sanctifying a murderer and treating him as God’s gift to America. I refer, of course, to the late Sen. Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy.

Before I’m accused of gross insensitivity and needless abuse for telling the truth about Uncle Teddy, it should be noted that barely a year after the liberal lion passed from this mortal world to the Great Beyond–and 40 years after he sent Mary Jo Kopechne on that journey– failed liberal President Jimmy Carter lambasted him as “irresponsible,” ”abusive,” and spiteful in an interview with CBS’ Lesley Stahl: http://tiny.cc/73zrr

The truth should be an improvement on that harsh evaluation, even if it is not. Now, true, Ted was never convicted of murdering 28 year old Mary Jo. He merely got drunk, drove off the Dike Bridge into Chappaquiddick’s Poucha Pond, and swam away to save his own life and political career. In Kennedy’s Massachusetts, that’s totally forgivable.

Also forgivable as perfectly in character is that, according to just de-classified FBI files, Ted rented a brothel while on an official visit to Chile in 1961 and invited one of his chauffeurs to participate in the night’s debauchery. If nothing else, Ted was always Ted.

What can’t be forgiven the Lion of the Senate is the revelation in those files that Kennedy didn’t just satisfy his lustful besottment on that excursion. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3776)

Bargain Basement Medicine in Massachusetts

Bargain Basement Medicine in Massachusetts

Patient: ”Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: ”Well, don’t do that!” (old medicine, simplified)

Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Well, if you do that, I can’t do much for you since you’ve already cost too much this month. Maybe come back next month and I’ll see what I can do. And, if you must be hospitalized, I know this nice, cheap hospital I can send you to.” (new Massachusetts medicine, simplified)

Fear not, though, it’s all good in the Bay State: “Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts says its new system of paying doctors a fixed amount per patient improved care during the first year, contrary to critics’ fears that patients would be harmed.”

Its “new system” is saving BC/BS of MA a ton of money but that fact has absolutely no bearing on the results of its 2009 new system evaluation. The aim of the pilot program was to cut the annual rate of medical cost increases from 10-12% to 5-6% and, Eureka, it’s working!

The proof is in the paying: “Doctors at Signature Healthcare in Brockton reduced avoidable emergency room visits 25 percent, from 2,249 in 2008 to 1,685 in 2009, saving $300,000 in payments to hospitals. . . Doctors in the alternative contract also reduced hospital readmissions, saving $1.8 million, while readmissions among patients of other doctors grew,” according to Blue Cross calculations.

That’s the good news, good news for BC/BS of MA. The bad news is reserved for doctors and patients: “Doctors who have agreed to the ‘alternative quality contract’ are paid a set monthly fee per patient, adjusted for how healthy the patient is, regardless of how many tests, appointments, and procedures the patient gets.” In other words, physicians are compensated with that set fee for the care they render no matter how much care is necessary or rendered. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3480)

Contrarian News

Contrarian News

An investment contrarian is one who invests against the trends. If the market is headed upwards–a rarity these days–a contrarian will sell and vice versa. Contrarian news likewise moves in the opposite direction of prevailing trends and as such is more newsworthy than conventional news.

Three contrarian news views:

Bullying Can Be a Good Thing: Just about every student K-12 has either been a bully, been bullied, or has witnessed the fine art of bullying up close and personal.

Bullies and bullying have become popular buzzwords in educational circles in recent years as if they were new phenomena. Programs and seminars have been introduced to combat the evil of one kid or a bunch of kids intimidating or physically harming a weaker victim.

Now comes a study out of England, a British study of American children 11 and 12, which shows that being bullied can be advantageous to the pre-pubescent set. A prime requisite for the bullied is that they resist the intimidation and fight back in one way or another. In that eventuality, they gain respect and a sense of maturity. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1711)

Coakley vs. Brown: Updates

Coakley vs. Brown: Updates

What?? Me worry??

Complacent Martha or is it Marcia: Somehow, it doesn’t seem that Massachusetts A.G. is awfully worried about her Tuesday match-up with State Sen. Scott Brown for “the Kennedy seat” in the United States Senate.

For one thing, she’s staged a lackluster, non-campaign as if she knew from the start she would end up a loser even though, at the start, she seemed a shoo-in to head to D.C. to be that crucial 60th vote for Obamacare. (That assumes Harry Reid doesn’t pull an end run and goes to the reconciliation ploy needing only 51 Democrats to foist that obamanation on the American people.)

For another thing, Martha Coakley really seems as if she doesn’t want the job.

As Brian McGrory writes for Boston.com in an article titled, “Race Is in a Spinout,” despite her claims to have traveled the state meeting tremendous people, “If she did, it was under the cover of darkness, with an assumed name . . . Literally, she all but vanished. She refused to debate on TV unless it was exactly on her terms. She went days without venturing out in public:” http://bit.ly/8qLU4S

Not exactly the best way to win a seat in the Senate.

A Kennedy Weighs In: A scion of the Kennedy clan doesn’t seem too worried either, not even concerned enough to get her name straight.

Speaking to reporters after President Obama tried to rally the troops and dragging out the worn-out Bush card to blame GWB for every problem in the universe, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D. R.I) repeatedly referred to “Marcia Coakley,” . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1432)

Coakley vs. Brown, the Very Special Election

Coakley vs. Brown, the Very Special Election

Most readers are well aware that Tuesday’s Coakley-Brown contest in Massachusetts is The Big One, Elizabeth–as Fred Sanford used to say, and it actually is the biggest horse race since Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973.

That happens to be one year after the last Republican won a senate seat in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Thirty-seven years is a long time for one political party to have a lock on any state’s seats in the United States Senate but on Tuesday that string just may be broken.

On a political level, it’s the most important race since the one that ended on November 4th, 2008.

In 2009, Virginians and New Jerseyians sent duplicate messages to Washington concerning what happened last November. If they didn’t say they made a mistake, they did the next best thing by making it vividly clear that they still favored change they could believe in but the antithesis of the change Obama had promised.

In essence, after a year of seeing what Obama was plotting and perpetrating, those good citizens of Virginia and New Jersey said, “We want none of it! Not Obama’s incredible deficits that our kids and grandkids will be paying in perpetuity, not the multi-billion dollar bailouts, not the Obamacare scheme to nationalize health care, not the bowing and scraping to kings, emperors, and sheiks by an American president!”

They had enough after less than a year and on January 19th, the electorate in the Bay State will get their chance to protest, to just say no, to register their opposition to Obamanomics, to Obamacare, to the abomination America has witnessed over the last 12 months simply by pulling the lever or pressing a button for Scott Brown in the special election to determine who assumes “the Kennedy seat” in the United States Senate or who gets to sit in the peoples’ seat in the United States Senate.

The choice is pretty simple, really. Continue the Massachusetts status quo by sending party hack Martha Coakley to Washington to continue mind-numbing fiscal insanity and divisive politics or send the president and his congress another message of dissent.

Rarely has there been a time that demanded an infusion of new, revivifying blood into D.C. and to the nation, rarely has there been a better time to quote Howard Beale’s plea in ”Network” that we stick our heads out windows and scream, ”We’re fed up and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

That may be a tad extreme but the times are extreme.

Just two months ago, little known Massachusetts Republican State Senator Scott Brown, labeled “a hunk” by Monica Crowley yesterday, had as much chance of toppling the Democrat machine and Ms. Coakley as Ronald Reagan . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1430)

Ladies' Rooms in Massachusetts

The De-Sexualization of Massachusetts’ Potties

Okay, I concede there’s a certain inequity in the availability of public bathroom facilities in America. That inequity and the pressing issue of gender-specific lavatories is being addressed by our federal, local and state governments.

To be totally frank, the public potty problem in America should be less an issue for governments than it is an issue for America’s fair sex.

Let’s be honest here. Guys use those potties almost as often as girls. But we tend to just do our business, hopefully wash and dry our hands, and then move on.

You ladies may have more “technical” challenges but you also tend to use bathroom breaks as an opportunity to gossip, apply make-up, and generally employ ladies’ rooms as venues for mini-social events.

Is it any wonder those ladies’ rooms have long lines, are backed up, (no pun intended), whereas the boys are usually back in their seats enjoying the game or show long before their dates or significant others?

Well, fear not, ladies! Equity is on the way, at least in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which, with California out there on the Left Coast, invariably leads the way toward more liberality throughout our land.

The Bay State is definitely running with the potty ball, so to speak, outpacing the Golden State by far!

On July 14th, a hearing was held at the State House in Boston to consider a “transgender” law, aka the potty bill, which would permit people to choose which public bathrooms they would like to use regardless of their gender. . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

LIBERAL PRIORITIES

PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES

From MassResistance.org:

Budget crisis brings massive cuts in MA state programs - but $700,000 for homosexual programs in schools remains “sacred cow” of politicians. We need to change that!

It’s a time like this when you realize the incredible power the homosexual movement has over our top elected officials.

Massachusetts is in an unprecedented budget crisis. Millions of dollars for programs and services are being cut. But the state’s top elected officials refuse to budge on the $700,000 of your money that’s going to homosexual programs in the public schools. (In October it was lowered slightly from $850,000. That’s still obscenely high — ANY amount is too much — and a huge weapon for homosexual activists in schools. And we hear they’re getting the rest of the money from another government source.)

What is being cut instead?

Massachusetts has a $1.5 billion budget shortfall - and it’s growing. On Tuesday a new estimate predicts the deficit will rise to $2.1 billion by the middle of next year.

Two months ago the budget slashing began. Here are some of the cuts, highlighted in recent news reports, that the Governor and Legislature have made to programs and services in Massachusetts:

1,000 jobs from state payroll.
Head Start pre-school programs ($1 million)
Opiate addiction treatment facilities ($5 million)
Infant immunization facilities ($5 million)
Job training programs ($9 million)
Senior home care services ($3.9 million)
Beach preservation efforts ($368,000)
Aid for thousands of children in homeless families ($250,000)
Help for ex-prisoners re-entering society ($200,000)
Funding for University of Mass. system ($24 million)
Closing four state mental health institutions: $80 million annually.
Plus: Cutting state aid to cities and towns. Last month, House Speaker DiMasi announced that all Massachusetts cities and towns will probably get a 10% cut in local aid - a total of $530 million. All this is in addition to are raising corporate taxes in Massachusetts by more than $400 million (which will affect businesses staying here).

From state website: October list of cuts by the Governor

Politicians claim “Everything’s on the table”

Things have gotten so bad in recent weeks that the phrase “Everything’s on the table” is being thrown around a lot by top politicians. But is that really true in this case? We decided to find out.

Last week, Senate President Therese Murray was quoted in the Boston Globe saying “Everything’s on the table. Things are that bad.”


The bottom line right now, the homosexual lobby pretty much owns the State House. The list of politicians who’ve caved in is quite amazing. It’s pretty clear that the funding for homosexual activism in the public schools - as hideous and destructive as it is - isn’t going to get cut, even as every other program gets slashed to nothing. This will continue unless “something terrible” is done, as Margaret Thatcher used to say. (And she would do it!)

What to do?

At the very least, letting them know we’re outraged is always tremendously important. They need to hear from citizens. They need to know that we’re never going to give up. These are the legislative leaders who are protecting the funding.

Governor Deval Patrick - 617-725-4005

Senate President Therese Murray - 617-722-1500

House Speaker Sal DiMasi - 617-722-2500

Senate Ways & Means Chairman Steven Panagiotakos - 617-722-1630

House Ways & Means Chairman Robert Deleo - 617-722-2990

Need to build momentum

Every time we’ve beaten the homosexual lobby, it’s because we played to our strength. Their strength is money, influence, and the media. Our strength is large numbers of people. We plan to organize thousands of more people this year. That’s the only thing we’ve concluded is going to stop this. And as Margaret Thatcher would say, maybe we need to make a more “terrible” impression on them than the homosexual lobby does.


(For a companion piece, see next article on how New York State is handling its budgetary crisis. Hint: As a sister “liberal state,” there’s not much difference: http://genelalor.com/.)