Chinese wisdom ...
Woman asks:
If I sleep with 3 men, everyone calls me a slut.
But when a man sleeps with 10 girls, everyone calls him a real man. How come?
Chinese Man replies:
It's very simple.
Confucius say 'When one lock can be opened by 3 different keys, it's a bad lock.
But when one key can open 10 different locks, we call it a master key!'.
Now we know !!!
Woman asks:
If I sleep with 3 men, everyone calls me a slut.
But when a man sleeps with 10 girls, everyone calls him a real man. How come?
Chinese Man replies:
It's very simple.
Confucius say 'When one lock can be opened by 3 different keys, it's a bad lock.
But when one key can open 10 different locks, we call it a master key!'.
Now we know !!!
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Forget politics for a moment. Just look at Hillary as a mother and then think about the insensitivity and implications of her comments: "What difference does it make now."
My wife is two years from her surgery for breast cancer. Since that time we have learned of so many of her female friends who have had the same problem. Obama may have shoved something called an "Affordable Health Care Act" down our throats because Pelosi and Reid had the liberal votes to do so and then did not even read the monstrosity they voted in as the law of the land. Then The Roberts Courts decided it was legal under some circuitous stretching of the Commerce Clause and its enactment turned into an abysmal failure which could bring the entire insurance industry to its knees.
Obama withdrew 700 billion of annual funding from Medicare to finance his 'Affordable Health Program' which will prove unaffordable and , in the process, will leave Medicare vastly underfunded as well. Therefore, I suspect the health care of all Americans, including women who have or have had breast cancer care, will experience less medical care and yet, Liberals claim Conservatives have a war on women.
Do you think Obama gives a damn? Do you think he cares whose blood could be on his hands? "What Difference Does It Make" is the defining phrase of this administration.
Well it makes a difference to me and to those who drink tea and to those who believe we should not leave our debts to be paid by our kids and who do not believe America should apologize for its actions and who believe it is the obligation of every citizen to stand on their own two feet and make every effort to act responsibly and not become a ward of the state because liberals are willing to pay for you to become so.
We will speak out in 2014! You empty headed liberal hypocrites will hear us loud and clear. And when we throw many of your rascals out of office we will stand against what Obama is seeking to do to our nation and reverse the course toward America's decline. We are sick and tired of his brand of change, we are sick and tired of his divisive monarchical rule, we are sick and tired of his lies, we are sick and tired of his destroying our nation and it is not because of his color but because of his evil intent and incompetence! (See 1 below.)
Dick
Forget politics for a moment. Just look at Hillary as a mother and then think about the insensitivity and implications of her comments: "What difference does it make now."
My wife is two years from her surgery for breast cancer. Since that time we have learned of so many of her female friends who have had the same problem. Obama may have shoved something called an "Affordable Health Care Act" down our throats because Pelosi and Reid had the liberal votes to do so and then did not even read the monstrosity they voted in as the law of the land. Then The Roberts Courts decided it was legal under some circuitous stretching of the Commerce Clause and its enactment turned into an abysmal failure which could bring the entire insurance industry to its knees.
Obama withdrew 700 billion of annual funding from Medicare to finance his 'Affordable Health Program' which will prove unaffordable and , in the process, will leave Medicare vastly underfunded as well. Therefore, I suspect the health care of all Americans, including women who have or have had breast cancer care, will experience less medical care and yet, Liberals claim Conservatives have a war on women.
Do you think Obama gives a damn? Do you think he cares whose blood could be on his hands? "What Difference Does It Make" is the defining phrase of this administration.
Well it makes a difference to me and to those who drink tea and to those who believe we should not leave our debts to be paid by our kids and who do not believe America should apologize for its actions and who believe it is the obligation of every citizen to stand on their own two feet and make every effort to act responsibly and not become a ward of the state because liberals are willing to pay for you to become so.
We will speak out in 2014! You empty headed liberal hypocrites will hear us loud and clear. And when we throw many of your rascals out of office we will stand against what Obama is seeking to do to our nation and reverse the course toward America's decline. We are sick and tired of his brand of change, we are sick and tired of his divisive monarchical rule, we are sick and tired of his lies, we are sick and tired of his destroying our nation and it is not because of his color but because of his evil intent and incompetence! (See 1 below.)
MAMMOGRAM RADIOLOGIST
This is just one example of the Obamacare disaster. I hope women pay attention and act accordingly. Dr. Jill Vecchio, a Colorado Radiologist who is head of the Breast cancer section at Lutheran Hospital.
More from president ingrate. (See1a and 1b below.)
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An important event:
Federalist Society Atlanta Lawyers Chapter members and friends,
We wanted to make sure you were aware of two exciting events being held in March 2014 in Atlanta – a Constitutional Symposium being organized by State Bar of Georgia to mark the 225th anniversary of the US Constitution’s ratification, and a
Federalist Society breakfast event featuring one of its distinguished speakers. Both of these will be of great interest to our members, and we encourage you to put them both on your calendar. More information is provided below.
State Bar of Georgia Constitutional Symposium
The State Bar event, which will be held at the Westin Buckhead in Atlanta on March 12-14, 2014, will feature some of the most interesting and accomplished thinkers on the Constitution from around the country from academia, private practice and government service. Each panel is filled with luminaries who would be impressive to hear on any day let alone in one CLE, including:
Hon. Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court
David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Hon. Paul Clement, former US Solicitor General
Hon. Seth Waxman, former US Solicitor General
Professor Richard Epstein, New York University School of Law
Hon. Alex Kozinski, US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
Hon. Richard Posner, US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
There will also be many speakers familiar to our Federalist Society chapter, including Attorney General Sam Olens (who is speaking on a panel with the attorneys general of North Carolina and Colorado), chapter Board member Anne Lewis (who will re-enact the landmark Furman v. Georgia death penalty case) and Justice David Nahmias (one of the program’s co-chair).
We encourage you to review all the details of this first-rate program on the attached flyer and on the website for the event (http://www.iclega.org/programs/8450.html). Registration is now open and filling up.
Federalist Society event during Constitutional Symposium
We also encourage you to save the date for a breakfast event our Federalist Society chapter will be holding with one of the speakers at the Constitutional Symposium. We will be hosting UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh at 7:30 am on Thursday, March 13, 2014, at 7:30 am at Baker Donelson’s offices in Buckhead. The program will finish before the start of the day’s conference activities and is conveniently located near the Westin. RSVPs are not yet open for this program -- a separate notice with more details will be sent to you next month.
Adam Biegel
President, Atlanta Lawyers Chapter
Federalist Society
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1)Benghazi Testimony One Year Later: Hillary Clinton Declares
"What Difference Does It Make"
Today marks the one year anniversary of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the 2012 9/11 Benghazi terror attack. During that testimony Clinton infamously declared, "What difference does it make!" when pressed on how and why four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed. The Obama administration quickly said the incident was a result of a protest over an anti-Islam YouTube raging out of control but the evidence and witnesses declared the event a terrorist attack almost immediately after it happened. Last week, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report that determined the attack, and the deaths of four Americans, could have been prevented.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal late yesterday former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli (from July 31 to Dec. 7, 2012) Gregory Hicks, the last person to talk to Ambassador Stevens before he was killed, continued to express his frustration with the Obama administration's portrayal of the facts surrounding the attacks and recent accusations that Ambassador Stevens was responsible for his own death. After multiple threats, Ambassador Stevens repeatedly requested more security at the consulate and that security was repeatedly denied.
During congressional testimony last year, Hicks said the YouTube video was a "non-event" in Libya and said his jaw hit the floor when he learned the administration was blaming the attack on a video. Hicks, second-in-command to Stevens in Libya, was on the ground in Tripoli when the attack occurred andreported directly to Clinton immediately that the consulate was under attack. He never reported a protest.
"The only report that our mission made through every channel was that this was an attack," Hicks said. "No protest."
Since speaking out as a whistleblower about what happened in Benghazi, Hicks has faced retaliation from inside the State Department.
One year after Clinton's testimony on Benghazi we still have very few answers about what happened and the families of those who were killed are far from receiving closure. What difference does it make? A hell of a difference.
1a)Obama, the Ingrate
By Jeffrey Folks
The December jobs report was truly awful, with 74,000 non-farm jobs created and the labor-force participation rate at a 35-year low. Liberals -- the same bunch who insist that the climate is warming at an alarming rate -- were quick to point to cold weather as a factor discouraging job-creation. They also insisted that the jobs numbers are volatile and that they might be better next time. Of course, they might be worse.
Regardless, nothing can hide the fact that Obama's job-creation record has been a disaster. Having "focused like a laser" on job growth several times in the past, Obama reportedly plans to do so again in his State of the Union address on January 28.
Interestingly enough, jobs and the economy were the centerpiece of Obama's State of the Union speeches in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. And each year, the labor-participation rate and net number of jobs declined as a greater number of discouraged workers gave up than found jobs. For 2014, it's more of the same: empty words, a new initiative ("promise zones"), and no result.
Ironically, the only sector that has seen strong and persistent job growth since 2008 has been oil and gas. Ironic, because Obama has done all he can to slow domestic oil and gas production by expanding regulation, restricting leasing of federal lands, and proposing huge tax increases on the sector.
Given the magnitude of these numbers, and their importance in supporting spin-off jobs, one would expect the Obama administration to be solidly behind the shale drilling revolution. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The best one can say is that Obama has offered two cheers -- or maybe just one -- for natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to wind and solar, and no cheers at all for oil.
That's unfortunate, because it's oil even more than natural gas that is supporting current job-creation. As natural gas prices fell from $14 per mBtu to below $2 (recovering to the current level of around $4.50), energy companies shifted resources from gas exploration to oil. Most of the jobs now being created in the sector are linked to exploration and production in oil-rich areas such as the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, the Eagle Ford in south Texas, and the Permian Basin in west Texas.
This investment has resulted in a dramatic increase in domestic oil production, from 4.550 million barrels per day in October 2005 to 7.753 million barrels per day in October 2013. In fact, the U.S. has now passed Saudi Arabia as the largest producer of oil in the world.
What is the Obama administration's response to all of this? Inaction, and for the most part, silence. Oil remains the left's bogeyman, and Obama is not about to defy the left's irrational bias against oil.
While Obama has given lip service to increased use of natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal, he remains largely silent on the benefits of increased domestic oil production. A whitehouse.gov page that acknowledges the recent increase in domestic oil production nonetheless proclaims: "We can't drill our way to cheap gas prices," and "[m]ore domestic drilling will never meet our energy needs."
Those are mantras, not rational arguments. Obviously, we can drill our way to cheaper gas prices. We have done so over the past three years as domestic drilling has increased. And more domestic drilling will contribute the lion's share of U.S. energy needs well into the future, according to BP's "Energy Outlook 2035."
As the BP report makes clear, domestic oil production is and will continue to be one of the strongest sectors of the U.S. economy for decades to come. It will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs directly and support millions of others indirectly. Yet Obama can barely bring himself to utter the word "oil." And when he does, it's with the reminder that "we can't drill our way out."
What could the president do, aside from approving the northern section of the Keystone Xl pipeline, to spur domestic and North American oil production? He could begin by dropping his demand for $44 billion of new taxes on domestic oil and gas companies. That demand has been a staple of every one of Obama's State of the Union addresses, and no doubt it will be repeated again on January 28.
He might also end his attacks on energy company profits. On whitehouse.gov, the administration proclaims that "oil companies profit when Americans pay more at the pump." True -- and they lose money when gas prices decline, in line with the underlying price of oil. Apparently the president is not aware of the fact that oil prices do quite frequently decline, and that when they do, oil companies see their profits decline. Or is he just playing politics, thereby putting our energy future at risk?
If the president really were serious about job-creation, he would be cheering the explosive growth of domestic oil production. Instead, even as he takes credit for increased production, he attacks oil companies, proposes huge tax increases on them, and attempts to block new production through strict regulation of hydraulic fracturing and the slow-walking of federal drilling permits.
Instead of three cheers for domestic oil, Obama gives oil the Bronx cheer. But even this president must know that domestic oil and gas production is saving his bacon. Even as he parrots the left's irrational bias against oil, perhaps Obama will have enough sense not stand in the way of increased production in the future. One can only hope.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books on American politics and culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
1b)
The ObamaCare Carnival of Perverse Incentives
Cities with unfunded health-care commitments are getting ready to dump their retirees on the state exchanges.
With fewer glitches to deter them, millions of Americans are now logging on to theObamaCare health-insurance-exchange websites. When they get there, many are discovering some unpleasant surprises:
The deductibles are higher than what most people are used to, the networks of doctors and hospitals are skimpier (in some cases much skimpier), and lifesaving drugs are often not on the insurers' formularies. Even after the government's income-based subsidies are taken into account, the premiums are often higher than what people previously paid.
Why is this happening? Because the new law gives insurance buyers and sellers perverse incentives to behave in ways that create these problems. Things will only get more out of whack as more and more unhealthy people enter a system designed to be paid for by premiums from healthy people.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the benefits insurers must offer are strictly regulated. The law piles on benefits for which everyone must have coverage, whether they could ever use the benefits or not. At the same time, insurers set their own premiums and choose their own networks of doctors and hospitals.
To keep premiums as low as possible, the insurers are offering very narrow networks, often leaving out the best doctors and the best hospitals. In September, the Los Angeles Times reported that Blue Shield will have only about half the doctors in its exchange plan as it has in its traditional plan. One of the exchange plans in Colorado includes only a single Denver hospital, the one that usually treats Medicaid patients.
Narrow networks can be good or bad. Wal-Mart WMT -0.52% has selected a half-dozen centers of excellence around the country for its employees, places carefully chosen for their high quality and low costs. The exchange health plans, by contrast, appear to care only about cost. They are offering low fees—sometimes even lower than the rock-bottom fees Medicaid pays health-care providers—and accepting only those providers who will take them.
Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers are required to charge the same premium rate to anyone who wants to sign up, regardless of health status; and they are required to accept anyone who applies. This means that to make ends meet they must overcharge the healthy and undercharge the sick. It also means insurers have strong incentives to attract the healthy (on whom they make a profit) and avoid the sick (on whom they incur losses) by, in effect, making their plans less appealing to the sick.
Here's how they seem to be doing it: In structuring the plans they offer on the ObamaCareexchanges, the insurers apparently assumed that the healthy will choose the plan they buy based on its price, while ignoring other features of the plan. It makes sense: If I am healthy why wouldn't I shop for the lowest price? If I later develop cancer, I can move to a plan that has the best cancer care. By law, these plans will be prohibited from charging me more than the premium paid by a healthy enrollee.
Insurers also assume that people who already are ill or otherwise expect to use a lot of health care pay much closer attention to the cost of deductibles and which doctors and hospitals are in the insurer's network. To have any hope of balancing their books, insurers must then attract the maximum number of customers who are likely to stay healthy and thus not use so much of the care they paid for, while unhealthy people in effect use more than they paid for. This is why most plans are apparently designed to attract people willing to overlook high deductibles and less access to health care in return for lower premiums.
Yet no matter how narrow the provider network, health plans are going to cost more if they enroll more people with above-average health-care costs. And that is what is about to happen.
For some years, the federal government and some states have operated and subsidized risk pools. These allowed the chronically ill and other high-cost people who were "uninsurable" to purchase insurance for the same premium healthy people pay. Under ObamaCare, however, the pools are due to shut down and send their enrollees to the exchanges, where the above-average cost of their care will be implicitly borne by higher premiums charged to everyone enrolled in the plans.
To make matters worse, cities and towns with unfunded health-care commitments are getting ready to dump their retirees on the state exchanges. Since retirees are above-average age, they have above-average expected costs. The city of Detroit, for example, is planning to dump the costs of about 10,000 retirees on the Michigan exchange.
Then there are the job-lock employees—people who are working only to get health insurance because they are uninsurable in the individual market. Under ObamaCare, their incentive will be to quit their jobs and head to the exchanges.
In sum: A lot of high-cost patients are about to enroll through the exchanges. This will force up premiums further for all other buyers.
At some point, politicians of both parties will realize that we can do better than this. That will require a real market for health insurance with premiums that reflect real risks. There is a role for government in helping people with severe health problems. That is why risk pools exist. What we didn't need was to destroy the market for the many in order to give aid to the few.
Mr. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis and the author of "Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis" (Independent Institute, 2012).
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