Our hospitals are compelled by law to treat illegal immigrants in their emergency rooms without charge. One after another, they are going bankrupt and closing their doors. Here is one example.

The Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield, New Jersey is a state-of-the-art facility with comprehensive coverage of diverse medical disciplines. It is the sort of resource that communities dream of having available for their emergencies as well as routine care. In addition to their many community wellness programs, they host New Jersey’s premier cancer center.

Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center is a 396-bed acute care facility that provides inpatient and outpatient services in all major medical specialties. Other specialized services include a complete array of cardiac services (including emergency angioplasty), a Bariatric Surgery Center, Vein Center, Lithotripsy Center,Wound Care Center, hemodialysis, home care, hospice and adult medical day care….

The Regional Cancer Center is committed to providing high quality care for people with cancer. The Center offers all the services needed to effectively identify and treat cancer, including state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment, surgery, medical oncology, neuro-oncology, radiation therapy, investigational trials, stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife), nursing care, counseling, nutritional support, discharge planning, outpatient services and hospice care.

But soon the Muhlenberg community safety net will be gone. The New Jersey Star Ledger reports:

Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center shutting its doors

Faced with mounting deficits caused mainly by insufficient state aid to cover all its uninsured patients, officials at Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in Plainfield plan to close the 130-year-old facility later this year….programs and services will be phased out during a “wind down” period before Muhlenberg finally stops admitting patients….

The decision to close the 396-bed Plainfield hospital was a “last resort” after an attempt to find a buyer failed, said John P. McGee, president and CEO of Solaris Health System, which owns the hospital. Muhlenberg, which also has 1,100 employees and 350 affiliated physicians, was put up for sale last November. Officials say they reached out to more than 60 potential buyers.

McGee said one reason for the lack of interest is economics: Muhlenberg will likely show a loss of $18 million for 2007.

The hospital – whose emergency room treats 35,000 patients a year – doled out some $15.4 million in uncompensated care last year, but received only $6.2 million from the state in charity care funding, spokesman Steven Weiss said.

Muhlenberg has also been treating a growing number of uninsured patients as well as undocumented patients, most of whom are not insured and do not qualify for charity care….

The data: $15.4 million uncompensated care  |  $6.2 million state reimbursement

The dilemma: Community loses health care facility  |  Taxpayers fund health care for aliens

We are caught in a vicious downward spiral. The liberals have allowed an estimated 20 million illegal aliens to invade our country, in the hopes of gaining a large voting bloc through amnesty. Those undocumented and uninsured individuals are destroying our health care systems economically. Once the health care is degraded, the liberals will use that fact as an argument to socialize medicine, which will reduce all health care to the lowest possible denominator.

Tail wag: Gayle Kesselman, New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control

“If this presidential thing doesn’t work out, Obama might consider joining the NASCAR circuit. It’s the only occupation we can think of where you win by turning faster to the left than anybody else.” ~~Investor’s Business Daily

“The Clintons have met their Waterloo but it’s not some doughty conservative warrior who gets to play Duke of Wellington, only some freshman pap peddler of liberal boilerplate whom no-one had heard of the day before yesterday.” ~~Mark Steyn

“The junior senator from New York is as spontaneous and emotion-laden as a space shuttle launch. It’s all planning, calculation and stage-management with the Clintons. She’s like the Tin Man in ‘The Wizard of Oz’: heartless, creaking her campaign joints and unable to prove the humanity voters want in a president.” ~~Jed Babbin

“McCain may seem unappealing when he’s debating policy with Mike Huckabee or even Mitt Romney. But let him start taking fire from Al Gore, Gloria Steinem, antiwar groups, environmental activists and teachers’ unions — not to mention The New York Times — and suddenly he will look lovelier than the Taj Mahal at sunset.” ~~Steve Chapman

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager said she will make a much better commander-in-chief than her rivals. She’s well schooled in the use of force. How many presidential candidates can honestly say that they have thrown a lamp at an important world leader?” ~~Argus Hamilton

Why doesn’t the mainstream media pick up on this stuff? Of course we all know the answer to that one. They’ve chosen this guy as the next president.

One year ago, Human Events published an article that revealed wild discrepancies between the narrative in Barack’s impassioned speechifying and the actual facts.

Obama Offers Wild Revision of His Own History
by Paul R. Hollrah  |  03/27/2007

Tuning in to C-SPAN recently, I found myself listening to a speech by Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Hussein Obama. He was standing at the pulpit of a black church in Selma….

…as he spoke, I found my B.S. alarm going off repeatedly. But I couldn’t quite figure out why until I actually read excerpts of his speech several days later. Here’s part of what he said:

“Something happened back here in Selma, Ala. Something happened in Birmingham that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called ‘ripples of hope all around the world.’ Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry, looking after somebody else’s children.

“When [black] men who had Ph.D.s decided ‘that’s enough’ and ‘we’re going to stand up for our dignity,’ that sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son. His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa, could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance….

“So the Kennedys decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

“This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great-great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves. But she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that, [in] the world as it has been, it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama, Jr., was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Ala.”

Okay, so what’s wrong with that? It all sounds good — but is it?

Obama told his audience that because some folks had the courage to “march across a bridge” in Selma, Ala., his mother, a white woman from Kansas, and his father, a black Muslim from Africa, took heart. It gave them the courage to get married and have a child. The problem with that characterization is that Barack Obama, Jr., was born Aug. 4, 1961, while the first of three marches across that bridge in Selma didn’t occur until March 7, 1965, almost four years after Obama was born.

Obama went on to tell his audience that the Kennedys — Jack and Bobby — decided to do an airlift. They would bring some young Africans over so that they could be educated and learn all about America. His grandfather heard that call and sent his son, Barack Obama, Sr., to America.

The problem with that scenario is that, having been born in August 1961, the future senator was not conceived until sometime in November 1960. So, if his African grandfather heard words that “sent a shout across oceans,” inspiring him to send his goat-herder son to America, it was not Democrat Jack Kennedy he heard, or his brother Bobby, it was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Alert researcher Paul R. Hollrah goes on to conclude:

Obama’s speech is reminiscent of Al Gore’s claim of having invented the Internet, Hillary Clinton’s claim of having been named after the first man to climb Mt. Everest (even though she was born five years and seven months before Sir Edmund climbed the mountain), and John Kerry’s imaginary trip to Cambodia….

It appears that Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is not the “fresh face” media sycophants like to describe him as. He’s just another in a long line of Democratic snake-oil salesmen.

Sources:

Human Events: Obama Offers Wild Revision of His Own History

Barrack Obama’s Speech to AME Church, Selma, AL

Wikipedia: Selma to Montgomery marches

Democratic congressman John Murtha (PA – 12th district) is the poster boy for what is wrong in Washington. In a showcase example of behavior that skates just this side of the line from prosecutable corruption, he is hosting a party tonight to extort contributions from lobbyists for firms that receive federal funding at his behest. The Washington Examiner reports:

Oink! Oink! Murtha’s porkfest

Rep. John Murtha is hosting a gala dinner tonight at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City for defense industry lobbyists who have received and who hope to receive millions of tax dollars via earmarks sponsored by the Pennsylvania Democrat.

Murtha is one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s closest allies and one of the leading earmarkers in Congress. Tickets for the “Evening with Jack and Joyce Murtha” dinner cost $1,500 per person. Murtha and cohorts like Rep. James Moran, D-Va., and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., have refined the earmark-for-a-contribution process to a fine art. A Roll Call investigation last year found, with assistance from Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Sunlight Foundation, that the three Democrats funneled millions of dollars in earmarks for firms whose executives then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their re-election campaigns….

RedState Blog has put out a call for protesters. They will take pictures of those who attend the party and post them on the Internet. Stay tuned!

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Less than two years ago, Murtha was quick to accept the accounts of hostile Iraqis over those of United States Marines about an incident in Haditha. MSNBC reported:

Lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children….

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true….

The Marine Corps issued a statement in response to Murtha’s remarks:

“There is an ongoing investigation; therefore, any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process. As soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made, we will make that information available to the public to the fullest extent allowable.”….

By last October, the Haditha story was falling apart. Newsweek reported:

Haditha Unraveled

Lt. Col. Paul Ware can be blunt. As the investigating officer in the Haditha affair, he has the job of assessing how strong a case the prosecution has against Marines suspected of killing 24 civilians after being ambushed two years ago in western Iraq. Haditha is the highest-profile atrocity case since the start of the war. For more than a year, prosecutors have assembled evidence against four shooters in Kilo Company, including Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 26. But in a painstaking, 37-page report written earlier this month and obtained by NEWSWEEK, Ware tells the military lawyers their case is weak: “The evidence is contradictory, the forensic analysis is limited and almost all the witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice.”

The Haditha case seems to be unraveling….the sinister reality of insurgents’ hiding among civilians in Iraq has complicated the case….

Murtha, of course, has never apologized for his notable clutch error — engaging his mouth before his brain was in gear.

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For unexplainable reasons, Murtha narrowly escaped indictment in the 1980 FBI sting operation called “Abdul scam,” or Abscam. One United States senator and six congressmen were convicted of soliciting bribes. Good coverage of the whole affair is provided by an article in The American Spectator:

Murtha and the FBI: The Director’s Cut

For more than 26 years, Congressman John P. “Jack” Murtha (D-Penn.) has not been truthful about his involvement in Abscam, court records and the complete video of his meeting with the FBI show….

Murtha has repeatedly maintained his innocence in the Abscam sting operation, even as recently as this year. However, his November 20, 1980 testimony in the trial of Congressmen Frank Thompson (D-N.J.) and John Murphy (D-N.Y.) and the FBI’s complete undercover video of his January 7, 1980 meeting with its agent and informant reveal a man showcasing his political influence and apparently tempted to take a $50,000 bribe. On the tape, Murtha appears eager to arrange his own, long-term deal with the supposed representatives of Arab sheiks, and to cut out Thompson and Murphy. His testimony reveals that after his January 7 meeting, he looked into helping the sheiks enter the country, rather than contacting the FBI or the Ethics Committee, of which he was a member….

If you have the stomach for a lot of sleaze, take the time to read all of this article. You can watch the undercover video from the FBI sting involving Murtha below:

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How, you may ask, did this fellow get elected to Congress and keep his seat for 32 years? A look at the map of the 12th Congressional District of Pennsylvania reveals all — and almost gives new meaning to the word “gerrymander.”

His district includes:

• Part of Allegheny County
• Part of Armstrong County
• Part of Cambria County
• Part of Fayette County
• All of Greene County
• Part of Indiana County
• Part of Somerset County
• Part of Washington County
• And part of Westmoreland County

Just to show how minutely this district was sliced and diced, consider some of the fine detail from Washington County:

…Washington County consisting of the Cities of Monongahela and Washington and the Townships of Canton, Carroll Districts 2, 3 and 5, Chartiers Districts 3, 5, 6 and 7, East Bethlehem, Fallowfield Districts 1, 2 and 4, North Bethlehem, North Strabane Districts 2, and 3 (only blocks 3016, 3017, 4004, 4005, 4006, 4007, 4011, 4012, 4013 and 4015 of tract 745100), Somerset, South Strabane Districts 2, 4 and 5, Union, West Bethlehem; and West Pike Run and the Boroughs of Allenport, Beallsville, Bentleyville, California, Canonsburg Wards 2 and 3 (Division 1), Centerville, Charleroi Districts 1, 3 and 4, Coal Center, Cokeburg, Deemston, Donora, Dunlevy, East Washington District 2, Elco, Ellsworth, Finleyville, Houston, Long Branch, Marianna, New Eagle, North Charleroi, Roscoe, Speers, Stockdale, Twilight and West Brownsville.

As they say, the devil is in the details.

For a more detailed look at all the roads and towns, up close and personal, go here.

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Good sources:

RedState Blog: Paging all D.C.-Area RedStaters. You’re Invited to a Party

Murtha Must Go Blog

The Washington Examiner

The American Spectator

Americans for Prosperity

Three major national taxpayer watchdog groups are banding together to hold a rally outside U.S. Rep. John Murtha’s swanky fundraising dinner with pork-barrel-seeking defense lobbyists on Wednesday evening. Taxpayers plan to gather outside the upscale Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, to display their displeasure with Representative Murtha “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Citizens Against Government Waste

Citizens Against Government Waste today announced the final results of its online poll for the 2007 Porker of the Year. Rep. John “Jack” Murtha (D-Pa.) won in a landslide victory, receiving 63.4 percent of the vote….

Rep. Jack Murtha has long been known inside the Beltway for using threats, power plays, and backroom deals to control spending decisions. There is an area of the House floor known as “Murtha’s Corner,” where the legendary appropriator dispenses earmarks. The overwhelming vote for Porker of the Year vote shows that his shameful behavior is attracting attention throughout the country. The congressman inserts pork whenever he can to serve himself and his district. In fiscal year 2008, he brought home 72 pork projects worth $149.2 million….

President George W. Bush has been the recipient of the most concerted, hate-filled propaganda campaign ever launched against a sitting President. Washington’s bureaucracy has aided and abetted this outrageous Democrat offensive by conducting a deliberate intelligence misinformation and sabotage war. The mantras have been repeated so many times, they have insinuated themselves into our daily jargon. “There were no WMD,” Bush’s “misadventure in Iraq,” or “The President’s failed Iraq policy.” Or as someone recently said to me: “I just think he’s so stupid.”

Mention the name “Bush” and people bow and shake their heads. It is as though no one even wants to acknowledge we have a President by that name. Bumper stickers declare: “I Can’t Wait for 2008.” Many conservative pundits have participated in this pile-on. That the Bush presidency is an unmitigated disaster is a given even among conservatives who should know better.

There is nothing new in the pattern, except for its nonstop intensity. All recent Republican Presidents have faced overt hostility from the press and popular culture. And as their time got short, the vitriol always intensified. Reagan capitulated early, handing up sacrificial lambs during Iran/Contra and offering little support for one of the most qualified Judicial Nominees in our nation’s history, Robert Bork, who was forced to face an unprecedented wave of personal attacks without the support of the President who nominated him. In recalling the Reagan years, this is often overlooked.

In typical fashion, the Republican establishment has once again capitulated and completely surrendered the argument to its enemies. Many Republican Washington insiders see this as an act of self preservation. The cacophony of negative press stories drowns out any voice that does not follow their script. One becomes self-conscious and intimidated. Why say anything if to do so risks the mass media turning their merciless invective on you?

Also, Washington insiders live in Washington. They are trying to live dual lives: supporting a Party that stands for American values in a city that doesn’t want them, while simultaneously attending cocktail parties, joining clubs and sending their children to school with these same people. But what do they expect? Republicans, whether they earn it or not, represent the Party of principle, and are thus a threat to Washington’s deeply embedded culture of corruption. They will never have an easy time of it.

Recall the experience of liberal Senator Bob Packwood (R-OR). He was hailed by feminists for supporting their causes — until he made the mistake of groping one or two of them. Then the harpy brigade descended. For all the invective one would have thought he murdered babies. But lecherous Teddy keeps on groping while Bill Clinton gets a pass on rape. Packwood’s real error: he became a vulnerable Republican, and Democrats will always use the opportunity to rid themselves even of Republicans who vote their way — much better to have an always reliable fellow Democrat.

Every President has had his failings, and President Bush is no different, from his incomprehensible defense of illegal immigrants, the Medicare prescription drug program and his frustratingly suicidal habit of neither articulating nor defending his positions. But despite it all, I suggest to you that he deserves much more credit than he has been getting, even from those who should know better.

For example, we take for granted the fact that he hasn’t backpedaled on taxes. But why should we take it for granted? Reagan backpedaled. Bush’s father did in a big way. We forget that Bush was the first president with the guts to discard the insane Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, by which we were prevented from developing any effective missile defense for thirty years, while the Soviets blatantly cheated as they have on every other treaty we ever signed with them, and developed quite a sophisticated one.

We also discount the huge effect of his appointments to the federal bench. Supreme Court judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts will be with us for a while. A Newsmax article recently reported that, according to the Court’s Federal Judicial Center, Republican judicial appointments now outnumber Democrats’ 463 to 350. Bush has appointed 258 appellate judges, and unlike some Republican appointments in the past, most of his are solid conservatives. Seven of ten sitting judges on the crucial DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently overturned DC’s onerous handgun ban, are Republican appointments, three of those by G.W. Bush.

He regularly sidetracks harmful legislation, despite his supposed “lame duck” status. He vetoed the Democrats “SCHIP” bill, (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) which would have granted free health inusrance to “children” over 21 years of age and increased coverage for people earning three times the poverty level. It was correctly identified as “back-door socialized medicine.” He got the worst parts of an ill-conceived Democrat energy bill removed by threatening a veto. And there are countless other similar actions that we either don’t notice or take for granted.

George W. Bush and the current crop of Congressional Republicans have been branded as “big spenders.” While they sadly have earned this label, don’t pin any hopes on Democrats for reversing the trend. For a good laugh, read my earlier article on Democrats much-ballyhooed and completely disingenuous restoration of PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) spending restrictions. Moreover, while Democrats vociferously harp on Bush deficits, by historical standards the deficit is small and declining. At $163 billion, the deficit now absorbs a mere 1.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), significantly lower than the historical average. But even at its 2004 high water mark, the deficit absorbed only 3.6 percent of GDP — less than the highest deficit of the Clinton presidency, 1993, which consumed 3.9 percent of GDP.

This is because, thanks partially to his tax cuts, we have had a robust economy for most of G.W. Bush’s two terms, despite the enormously recessionary impacts of the 9-11 attacks and the Dot-Com-driven stock market collapse in 1999. You wouldn’t know this to listen to the gloom and doom economic reporting by the mass media, however.

But Bush’s greatest failure, according to the partisan naysayers and a few hapless Republican fools, is his record on Iraq. I submit to you that his leadership as Commander in Chief, while imperfect, has been head and shoulders over any other President in recent history. Think back.

Lyndon Johnson’s disgracefully timid and incompetent micromanaging of the Vietnam War needlessly cost tens of thousands of young American lives. Rather than admit it and change, Johnson took his marbles and went home, resigning in disgrace. Following the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, Reagan impotently withdrew all U.S. forces, rather than face off the terrorist supporting states responsible: Syria and Iran. George H.W. Bush’s unwillingness to finish the job in Iraq further encouraged the world’s thugs to believe that they had nothing to fear from the United States.

Clinton’s ignoble blundering in Somalia and impotent gestures toward Iraq further cemented the reputation of American political leaders as feckless cowards. It was discovered in after action analysis that Clinton’s much ballyhooed air campaign against Yugoslavia, where a 30,000 ft. altitude insured pilot safety, destroyed only about 5 or 6 tanks, not the hundreds initially reported. (The rest were decoys.) Was Clinton really concerned about pilot safety, or did he just want to spare his communist friends any serious damage? Given his publicized contempt for the military and his many communist connections, I suspect the latter. In either case, his much vaunted air campaign was in fact an abject failure.

While George W. Bush has clearly made mistakes in his prosecution of the War in Iraq, he has, unlike other leaders, had the courage to admit and correct many of those mistakes. Halting the attack on Fallujah in the spring of 2004 was a mistake — corrected. Allowing the Madhi Army free rein was a mistake — corrected. The pre-Petraeus conventional approach, a mistake — corrected. Few political leaders in recent times have been willing to do this in any circumstance, let alone during a shooting war. And Bush’s unflinching determination to prosecute this war in the face of a relentless, overwhelmingly hostile, even seditious Western media campaign to discredit the entire effort, and treacherous, underhanded bureaucratic sabotage, may yet see this conflict to a successful conclusion.

We must stop and recognize that this tidal wave of negativity is manufactured relentlessly by our almost uniformly leftist, anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-American mass media (with a few notable exceptions), in collusion with the leftist Washington political establishment. Nothing any Republican does will ever satisfy them. Like the Iranians or North Koreans, they welcome Republican attempts at conciliation as a ripe opportunity to take further advantage. They will never like or agree with them. They want to destroy them. And they may well succeed in the upcoming election cycle if we don’t come to our senses.

And while some may be breathing easier with Hillary’s slide in the polls, I wouldn’t hold my breath. She is still the candidate to beat, and I have said since the beginning, as far as her electability is concerned, she is not even thinking about getting a majority of voters. Like her husband before her, she is counting on the entrance of a third party candidate to split the republican vote. As I predicted early on, I believe this will be New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Despite his earlier denials, Bloomberg is now making rumblings that he will, in fact, run.

Get it through your head and get over it! The next election cycle is critical to the survival of our Constitutional Republic. Whatever failings you see in our government and leaders, Republicans must come together and reassert the values they stand for: a strong America, lower taxes, limited government, individual rights, individual responsibility and a healthy, mature, decent culture — American values.

With all its failings the Republican Party is yet America’s last hope. We American citizens may not be able to rescue America from the un-Americans, but we should at least stop assisting them in our own defeat. We can start by acknowledging and defending the record of this American President and reaffirm our support for the Republican Party — no matter who the candidate is.

Check out this “Viva Obama” video.

Here’s a rough translation of the Spanish:

“Long Live Obama … for families united, secure, and with a health plan … a candidate fighting for our nation.”

WHICH NATION ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?

 

One common assumption about democracy is that the choice of an elected leader will represent the preference of the majority of the people governed. Let’s take a look at the last half-century of presidential elections to see how often this has been true in the United States …… never.

Year	Registered Voters	Voter Turnout	Winner Total	Popular Support
1960		63.5%	Kennedy – 49.7%	31.5%
1964	64.7%	62.0%	Johnson – 60.6%	37.6%
1968	70.1%	62.8%	Nixon – 43.4%	27.3%
1972	71.5%	57.1%	Nixon – 60.3%	34.4%
1976	71.7%	55.7%	Carter – 50.1%	27.9%
1980	70.8%	54.2%	Reagan – 50.8%	27.5%
1984	74.0%	55.2%	Reagan – 58.8%	32.5%
1988	72.8%	52.8%	Bush #1 – 53.4%	28.2%
1992	74.5%	58.1%	Clinton – 43.0%	25.0%
1996	78.5%	51.8%	Clinton – 49.2%	25.5%
2000	66.7%	57.0%	Bush #2 – 47.9%	27.3%
2004	70.1%	62.0%	Bush #2 – 51%	31.6%

From the total residential and expatriate population of the United States, those eligible to vote are that subset meeting the following qualifications:

• person is of voting age
• person is a legal citizen, by birth or naturalization
• person is not institutionalized, or has not had franchise revoked due to crime

From the pool of eligible voters, only a percentage make the effort to establish their bona fides with their local precinct and place their authorized signature in the voting records, becoming registered voters.

During an election, not all of the registered voters participate. The voter turnout fluctuates from year to year, but is usually higher during presidential election years than for those in-between years featuring only state or local races.

Authentic democracy occurs when two conditions are met:

• 100% of eligible citizens register to vote
• 100% of registered voters participate in an election

The table above shows, in effect, the degree to which the United States election process differs from real democracy due to civic laziness and voter apathy.

References:

An excellent research project is ongoing at George Mason University (GMU), Fairfax, Virginia under the auspices of Dr. Michael McDonald, Associate Professor, Department of Public and International Affairs. The United States Elections Project gives a detailed summary of relevant data for the years 1980 through 2006. More importantly, it shows that the apparent decline in voter participation reported by the United States Census Bureau results from their analytical methods, rather than actual voting patterns. Two important definitions from the GMU project:

VAP — The voting-age population is defined by the Bureau of the Census as everyone residing in the United States, age 18 and older. Before 1971, the voting-age population was age 21 and older.

VEP — The voting-eligible population is the population that is eligible to vote. Counted among the voting-age population are persons who are ineligible to vote, such as non-citizens, felons (depending on state law), and mentally incapacitated persons. Not counted are persons in the military or civilians living overseas.

The voting age population totals used in our study for the years 1960 and 1964 are from the U.S. Census Bureau report for those two years. The VAP totals used for the years 1968 through 2004 are from the U.S. Census Bureau Report Registration Rates in Presidential Election Years.

Prior to 1980 the difference between the voting age population and the number of eligible voters in any given presidential election year was less than one or two percent of the total population. Since separate official VEP numbers are not available for those years, we used VAP data as the basis of calculation. However, as the discrepancy began to grow rapidly with the onslaught of illegal immigration, we used the available VEP data from 1980 onward.

The eligible voter totals (in millions) for the years 1980 through 2004 used in our computations are from the GMU research. The registration totals (in millions) for the years 1964 through 1996 used in our computations are from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The registration totals compiled by the FEC for the year 1960 do not include sixteen states, and so we did not make a computation for that year. The voter turnout totals (in millions) for the years 1960 through 1996 are also from the FEC. Both the registration totals and the voter turnout totals for the years 2000 and 2004 are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The percent of eligible voters who did their civic duty and registered for each presidential election is computed by dividing the registration toal by the eligible voter total (or the VAP total prior to 1980). The percent of turnout is computed by dividing the turnout total by the eligible voter total.

The Winner Total percentages from 1960 through 2000 are taken from President Elect, the unofficial website of the United States Electoral College. They differ only slightly from the numbers given on another popular reference page, History Central, which is also often quoted.

The popular support for every president-elect represents the percentage of eligible voters who actuallly wanted that candidate to be president. It is computed by multiplying the percentage turnout by the percentage of votes garnered by the winner. In every case it is considerably less than half of the electorate. Contrary to media spin, the least popular president-elect in the last half-century was Bill Clinton, who was favored by only one quarter of the electorate in both of his successful bids for the office.

 

The Uninvited Ombudsman Report
by Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America
February 18, 2008

 

 

Contents:
(searchable by item number)

1- Heller Briefs Filed
2- Superbowl Deception Detected
3- SHOT Show Spectacular
4- Media Bias Worsening
5- Kucinich Announces Announcement
6- Natalee Holloway Again
7- Starving Fat People
8- Primary Results Arriving
9- Global Whining Chilled
10- Guest columnist Craig Cantoni –
Treat the president like the garbage man

STARTERS:

Can you beat me in this global whining test? I went 8 for 10. It’s a wonderful quick way to come up to speed on this important issue.

Corrections:

After three grillings by Congress, including humiliation by Senators Kennedy and Durbin, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to label waterboarding as torture, meaning it may not be strictly illegal, and could possibly be used by U.S. operatives. The Uninvited Ombudsman had said the technique, which involves getting a suspect safely but scarily wet to extract information, was not torture, then recanted when a public uproar (seven correspondents) and further research found one official source (out of five) that did in fact list the process as torture. It seems unlikely the debate will end anytime soon.

In committee, Durbin (D-Ill.) asked, “What about the circumstances where the information would save lives, many lives, would that justify it?” Mukasey replied, “Those circumstances have not been set out,” dodging a harder answer. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a BBC interview on 2/12, said, “it would be absurd to say you couldn’t” include harsh methods if a bomb was about to go off and you held a person who knew the details. He mentioned “stick something under the fingernails” and face slapping, both of which meet the “inflict pain” aspect of torture that waterboarding does not.

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The new 2008 Traveler’s Guide to the Gun Laws of the 50 States is now available here!

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ALAN’S ON THE MOVE:

Feb. 23 – Mar. 2, 2008
Meet me at the Texas Concealed Handgun Assn. annual meeting in Kerrville exqqme1@yahoo.com, followed by a barnstorm through San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and ending in Dallas at the Texas State Rifle Assn. annual meeting.

Join author Chris Bird and me at a special event of the Second Amendment Academy at Lone Star College in Conroe, 2/25, 7 p.m., free admission.

Send me an email if you’d like to try to hook up along the way, at the meetings, or at the bigger ranges and stores — I plan to visit as many as I can.

March 18, 2008
Look for Cartridge Family Band member Bob Blackmer and me at the U.S. Supreme Court for the D.C. v. Heller Second Amendment case. We’ve got our plans in place to get in and observe the oral arguments on the most significant gun-rights case ever heard in the nation’s history. It’s the Roe v. Wade of gun rights. PLUS — We’ll have signs and participate in the media zoo expected on the courthouse steps. What would you put on a sheet of paper to hold up for the cameras?

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1- Heller Briefs Filed

The lamestream media told you:

Very little.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The amicus brief for Dick Heller (the pro-gun-rights side) in the D.C. gun-ban case is some of the best 2A reading available today — a brilliant, logical, thoroughly researched, easy-to-read 82 pages with every statement documented, largely to colonial-era sources. Dig this cite I had not seen before: “The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that . . . it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. . . .” Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Justice John Cartwright (June 5, 1824).

The pro-rights brief cites to many original sources from 200+ years ago. In contrast, the anti-rights brief cites most of its sources from the last few decades, when the whole you-have-no-rights malarkey was being fabricated from thin air. What pure joy to have this out in the open at last.

It brought a smile to my face when the anti-rights people made a tremendous point for their side by quoting Marbury v. Madison (1803), the ancient case that still controls many things today, and the pro-rights side said yes, but here’s the other half of that quote… and tore their argument to shreds! Did the antis think they wouldn’t get caught in the deception? All the words the antis like to bend and twist (keep, bear, militia, etc.) are carefully defined in their original context.

The list of who proposed and signed which briefs are almost as interesting as the authorities cited and the arguments made. The states of NY, HI, MD, MA, NJ (and PR) filed to deny your rights. So did the American Bar Assn., the NAACP, some usual suspects and the city of Chicago — because they know they’re next. Lead by Texas, 32 states filed in support of the Second Amendment, in addition to 40 state gun-rights groups and general rights groups of every description, except for the conspicuously absent ACLU.

Filed by Congress in support of 2A (with more signatories than any other Congressional amicus in history):

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/07-290_amicus_congress.pdf

Filed by Congress against 2A:

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/07-290_amicus_members_of_congress.pdf

Links to all the briefs (47 pro, 19 anti):

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/amicus-briefs-for-heller-available-in-guns-case/

Short summaries of the Court’s first 92 gun cases, from my co-authored book Supreme Court Gun Cases:

http://www.gunlaws.com/supreme.htm

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2- Superbowl Deception Detected

The lamestream media told you:

(Photo caption): Excited fans pour onto the Superbowl field for the Tom Petty halftime show.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

(Actual caption): Several thousand carefully pre-screened and rehearsed bused-in unpaid volunteers are ushered onto the field to give the impression of wildly exuberant fans at the Superbowl game.

Paying fans, even at ten grand a seat, don’t get to set foot on the field. The volunteers are bused-out as soon as the show ends, and do not get to see the game. But it helps create a fine cultural myth and the news media is complicit in the deception. Why let a little thing like honesty get in the way of a well-staged photo op.

The only reason the Uninvited Ombudsman knows about this is because he was going to apply for the job, but ended up working at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas instead. It is unknown if he could have jumped and acted that excited for that long to pass the audition. Note that no one ever has as much fun in real life as actors on TV, especially the ones cleaning the kitchen and bathroom tile.

In other news, it was one heck of a game.

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3- SHOT Show Spectacular

The lamestream media told you:

Nothing.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Seven hundred thousand square feet of space, tens of thousands of attendees from all over the world, nearly two thousand exhibitors in five halls so big you can’t see one end from the other, indoor exhibits built two stories high, mountains of weapons and arsenals of every description — high powered, rapid fire, extended capacity — assembled once again at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, and no controversy of any kind was evident.

No lamestream media was evident either, though trade press was abundant. Lamestream media could not cover the event, because it would show the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade (SHOT) industry as a regular business just like any other, which would violate news-media policy.

It’s a little smaller than the Consumer Electronics Show, and few items are as big ticket as the Barrett Jackson car auction, but it’s a multibillion dollar business with multimillion dollar deals on the floor, and no news coverage, unlike other big-time annual shows.

The most expensive item seen, aside from armored vehicles, helicopters, 18-wheeler self-contained ranges and stores, military miniguns and some of the women, were a set of four matched Perrazi shotguns for $440,000. The Uninvited Ombudsman actually held one in his hands. Carefully. Very carefully. Hey, it’s just a shotgun, I’d rather buy a house with that kind of money.

The most unusual exhibit was samples from a find in a Nepal arsenal, remnants of the British East India Trading Company, with 55,000 firearms. They’re now all in the U.S. after several years of effort, including piles of original U.S. colonial-era Brown Bess muskets, all available for sale.

http://www.ima-usa.com

Among the most clever new products was Shock Knife, a combat-training tool shaped like a knife with a zapper for an edge. Blackwater Int’l., reviled in the “news” media but saving lives in Iraq and around the world, had a huge booth and recruitment videos on big screens, which switched over to the big game just in time when the beer kegs arrived. Artist Wayne McLoughlin offered to paint your name onto a poster for “America’s Cheapest Ammunition — It Usually Works.” In the background, a bear is chewing on the remnants of a hunter’s clothes.

Here was American enterprise at its finest, new products of incredibly clever design and advancement, entrepreneurship in unbridled fine array, the buzz and hustle of free markets unlike anywhere else on Earth, and no news media.

All these guns and there’s no crime, no death, no controversy. It’s just good healthy business, and after incessant media pounding, that was just plain weird.

The picture painted by the media is so perverse, so negative, so deadly and crime ridden, that to see this show with so many fine upstanding people, from business suits to gilley suits, casual dress to corporate uniforms, babes bursting from show costumes to your basic bubbas shopping for their businesses, the disjoint between the publicly promoted image of guns and the reality was hard to reconcile. The bias and distortion of the media shined from a brightly lit pedestal.

The show themes are familiar and pervasive — law enforcement, personal safety, hunting for food, military protection, convenience in the outdoors, high performance for competitors, gear for everyone, every manufacturer’s entire handgun and long gun line out in the open for touchy feely examination, and no media.

That’s probably a good thing. Because knowing their sorry ways, they would use this show as a way to make everything look bad. Despite the obvious reality to the contrary, they would immorally make us seem evil instead of righteous, ignoring the fact that guns are why America is still free.

http://www.shotshow.com

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4- Media Bias Worsening

The lamestream media told you:

Literally nothing.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The Media Research Center’s latest analysis of network TV “news” finds that, for the first seven months of 2007, ABC, CBS and NBC ran 650 stories on homicides involving firearms. They balanced this with stories of guns saving people from crime — twice — for a ratio of 325 to one against the public.

Criminologists have repeatedly found that guns are used to prevent crimes far more often than to commit crimes. Of 13 scholarly studies on the issue, depending on time frames and the set of respondents asked, guns stop crime between 700,000 and 3.4 million times every year.

The networks’ distortion of truth on the subject is reprehensible, especially as public stewards of government-monopoly licenses to broadcast. They could not be reached for comment.

Efforts to have the Society of Professional Journalists address such ethical abuse have been fruitless — and I’ve been trying for years. My latest article on the matter was turned down as “too controversial.” Go figure.

In other news, MRC’s study revealed the networks give double the time to Democrat candidates and promote the liberal agenda. See the report, or add your name to the petition demanding equal time:

http://www.grassfire.net/406/petition.asp?PID=15518814&NID=1

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5- Kucinich Announces Announcement

The lamestream media told you:

Dennis Kucinich announced on Jan. 24 that he would announce on Jan. 25 that he was quitting his bid for the White House, according to an unbylined article by the Associated Press, taken from an interview in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The practice of announcing upcoming announcements should prompt ridicule, but is now reported with a straight face by “reporters” who quote each others’ stories. It does allow media to run the same story twice, helping to fill space. Kucinich, viewed as a left-wing extremist by left-wing extremists but treated kindly by the left-wing press, used a page from mainstream politics by announcing his upcoming announcement. Leading experts suggest it may be better than the practice of asking friends to anonymously leak leaks, because it is less dishonest.

Earlier in the week, AP reports “he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his reelection.” How much he raised, or what happened to the money, went unreported.

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6- Natalee Holloway Again

The lamestream media told you:

New evidence has re-opened the Natalee Holloway case, the Alabama teen who disappeared three years ago during a high school graduation vacation in Aruba. The usual suspects, players, locations, fact-free details, blah blah blah and more after these messages.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

At last count, FBI figures indicated there are at least 51,000 active missing-person cases open in the United States. The public doesn’t know this because it is concealed by “news” media that only has room for one missing teenager from 2005.

By failing to cover real cases and focusing incessantly on a single, old, overworked, overseas, sensational, mysterious, unsolved case of an attractive blonde teenaged white girl, the media deceives the public about safety, and the threat abductions and disappearances pose to the average Page Nine reader (and the rest of the country). It is unknown whether increased public gun possession would help lower the alarming rate of disappearances.

Tens of thousands of people go missing annually, some through foul play, some skipping out on debts, troubles, spouses, kids, parents, responsibility, and some from preventable accidents. Some are heinous murders with the bodies never found, so they end up listed simply as missing. Please drop a note to your local “news” outlet today, thanking them for keeping you informed. Permission to circulate this Page Nine news brief is, as always, gladly granted.

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7- Starving Fat People

The lamestream media told you:

Mississippi lawmakers have introduced a bill to prevent any state-licensed restaurant from serving food to obese people. News reporters uniformly mocked Mississippi, the legislators, called the bill dead on arrival, and used images to mock fat people.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Reporters uniformly failed to call for charges against legislators who propose bills which they have absolutely no shred of legitimate authority to introduce. If the esteemed Fourth Estate doesn’t hold officials accountable, who will?

Meanwhile, in other news, New York is seeking to ban menus if state-required dietary information isn’t included. Authority to regulate menus doesn’t appear to be within the limited powers delegated to elected officials in the Big Apple any more than Mississippi can ban fat people from chowing down in public. No word yet on how fat you would have to be before the public eating ban would apply, or how on-site testing would be done.

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8- Primary Results Arriving

The lamestream media told you:

Sen. Barack Obama has just won the CNN poll shows that Hillary Clinton will not find but the three delegates from have now decided that Barack will Hillary blah blah blah and according to Dennis Kucinich, himself a former candidate might according to Republican strategist said John McCain who has infuriated the three networks are predicting blah blah gag.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The Uninvited Ombudsman has noticed, as other intelligent observers have also noted, that once you read the primary results on the scroll at the bottom of the “news” channel screens, everything else the “news” channels present is meaningless drivel and unsubstantiated opinion that simply doesn’t matter. Thirty-five seconds of reading the scroll is sufficient to garner any actual news. Viewership continues to drop for reasons which remain a mystery, according to People magazine and Variety.

Whether America needs a partially Muslim-trained, black-nationalist-church attending half Kenyan with a rich voice in the White House has not been addressed in recent interviews with the candidate, along with any other meaningful issues of the various wannabees. For questions that ought to be asked, aside from those found in any high school history text book prior to 1960, see The Liberty Poll,

http://www.gunlaws.com/the%20liberty%20poll.htm

The snopes.com website both confirms and denies that Barack Hussein Obama, son of Barack Hussein Obama, was a student of a somewhat Muslim school in predominantly Muslim Indonesia for four years.

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9- Global Whining Chilled

The lamestream media told you:

Violent snowstorms are blanketing the northeast again and have been blamed for at least 15 deaths. This follows snow and ice storms that have crippled the Midwest, the Pacific northwest, northern states and even the usually warm south, with power lost for hundreds of thousands, people trapped in their homes and roads impassable for days.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

For reasons that remain unclear, global whining has not been blamed for the unusually ferocious cold weather lasting quite late in the season. In other news, the hurricane season ended months ago (Nov. 30 is the official end date) with no news coverage of the missing but gleefully anticipated global-whining-related destruction and devastation. Experts had predicted unprecedented activity. In contrast, the 2006 season, also predicted to be massive, ended without a single hurricane touching U.S. shores, according to usually reliable sources at CNN.

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10 – We should treat the president like the garbage man
By guest columnist Craig J. Cantoni

Do we cheer the garbage man for doing his necessary but filthy job? Do we revere septic tank cleaners for doing their necessary but smelly work? Do we honor undertakers with statues in the public square for doing their necessary but creepy work?

Of course not.

Then why do we cheer, revere and honor politicians for doing their necessary but filthy, smelly and creepy work? Why is Washington D.C. cluttered with statues and monuments to them but not to the garbage man, the septic tank cleaner and the undertaker?

You might answer that a monument like the Lincoln Memorial is important because it honors Lincoln for freeing the slaves and keeping the Union together. Good answer, if it were true. Actually, thousand of Americans died to free the slaves and keep the union together. Contrary to what we were brainwashed to believe as kids, Lincoln doesn’t deserve a bigger monument than any of them. (Then there is the issue of whether the Civil War truly was unavoidable and whether the horror of slavery would have ended on its own without the tragedy of war and the subsequent tragedy of Jim Crow.)

The garbage man, the septic tank cleaner and the undertaker are necessary to stop the spread of pestilence. Politicians are necessary to stop us from using clubs to resolve our differences, but, as history shows, they often stir our primitive passions to club other tribes over imagined differences. All of these occupations reflect the dark side of human existence, but only the job of politician requires deceit, hypocrisy and egomania.

Is that something to celebrate and honor?

The Founders understood that government is a necessary evil. That makes the representatives of government a necessary evil. As such, it’s important to select them carefully, to keep a close eye on them, and to limit their job description to protecting life, liberty and property. But honor them?

The best way to limit politicians’ lust for power is to treat them like the garbage man. That means selecting mentally balanced people for the job, recognizing the necessity of their work, and firing them when they deviate from their job description. It doesn’t mean erecting statues and monuments to them and crossing the street to gawk at them if they are in our neighborhood.

Imagine how much better the nation would be if a president came to town and no one showed up to pay homage or to demonstrate subservience by playing “Hail to the Chief” when Air Force One arrives, as if this is a tribal chieftain and the subjects are in loin cloths with bones through their noses. After all, we don’t play “Hail to the Garbage Man” when he exits the garbage truck.

In such a nation, the job of president would attract people with humility and normal egos. It would not attract the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain — all of whom want to remake the world in their likeness instead of restricting themselves to protecting life, liberty and property.

The closest I’ve come to such a nation was a business trip to Iceland years ago. As my host was driving around Reykjavik and showing me the sights, he pointed to a non-descript building that resembled a large suburban ranch house. “That’s the office of the prime minister,” he said. “Would you like to go in and meet him?” he asked as nonchalantly as if he were asking me to meet his garbage man.

“Just walk in and meet him?” I responded incredulously. Like other Americans, I had gotten so used to treating politicians better than garbage men that I couldn’t imagine such a thing.

I’ve since placed my childhood notions about presidents and other politicians where they belong: in the garbage can of bad ideas.

An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

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See the official Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics here.
Compare it to the news you see every day.

Thanks for reading!
Alan Korwin
The Uninvited Ombudsman

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Do you want your next President to wear the hijab?

Or a Kenyan tribal chieftan’s garb?