Dojo Info 2/16/10

1. Obama Adviser Says the Pope is ‘Hurting People in the Name of Jesus’
   Harry Knox must have a massive set of stones. Wow.
2. Millionaire gives away fortune which made him miserable
   “The love of money is the root of many kinds of evil.”
3. Ford’s Fusion pulls ahead of the hybrid pack
   Uh oh! So what will all those Prius worshipers do now?
4. How Christian Were the Founders?
   Well I guess that depends. Do you you want to believe the documents from that period? Or those written (revisionist) recently? Care to wager where the New York Times comes out on this?
5. Billy Gillispie is ready to resume his career
   Gillispie wasn’t a good fit at Kentucky but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good basketball coach. The question becomes can he remove the harmful influences of his personal life and get back to the business of basketball.

Dojo Info 1/27/10

1. UK 7-year-old raises tens of thousands for Haiti
   Only thing cooler than this would be if the 7-year-old was a student at UK.
2. Dutch adoption plane airlifts 106 Haitian kids
   I’m sure there are other countries doing the same thing. Awesome!
3. CBS Faces Pro-Abortion Pressure to Scrap Pro-Life Ad Featuring Tim Tebow
   If you want to present a differing opinion, buy an ad. This is America after all. But hey, NBC censored free speech last year, what’s to stop CBS from doing it this year?
4. Rock Band 3 in the works
   No real “news” as everyone already knows they’re working on what comes next but I’m anxious for a new release. Not sure that Project Natal would work for this, would it?
5. Obama Jinxes No. 1 Kentucky
   I’m sure our kids didn’t need to get their big heads any larger but what can you do when the President calls. Not a good game for Kentucky.

Dojo Info

1. The Roy Williams Excuse: “I’m From the Mountains”
   The UNC Coach through out a fan of their opponent because he yelled, “Hey Deon, don’t miss it!” Seriously. He hides his arrogance well, I must say.
2. Google phone looks ‘supersharp’
   Competition is a good thing. Why our government wants to reduce capitalism is a tragedy.
3. Boycott Nike
   With Nike’s promise to continue using Tiger Woods as their spokesman after his dozen-odd adulteries means the Boycott Nike movement just added some new supporters.
4. Obama Summons Divided Dems as Health Care Deal Hangs in Balance
   Things are being dropped because the American people want them dropped. I hope it’s clear to everyone that Obama wants something anything passed by the end of the year regardless of whether it’s a good idea?!?
5. Louisville KY Homes for Sale
   The number of single-family homes for sale in Louisville has dropped from 9,421 a month ago to currently 7,405. Who says we’re in a housing depression? Well, actually we still are for every segment except first-time homebuyers who are picking up the slack.

Dojo Info 9/10/09

1. The Death Book for Veterans
   So one way the Obama Administration believes it can solve the healthcare process is by “encouraging” veterans to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order. Funny. Veterans are typically Conservative voters, right? Hmm….
2. Get a new PlayStation 3 Slim for $199.99
   Holy price drops Batman!
3. T-Mobile unveils pay-as-you-go Android phone
   Android is starting to draw me in. How much longer can I hold out before punching my ticket?
4. Hands on with The Beatles: Rock Band
   As much as I love RB, I never could get into the Beatles. To me, they’re the most overrated band of all time.
5. Wozniacki to meet Wickmayer in semis
   Melanie Oudin went farther than anyone thought. I hope this means the U.S. Women will be getting another title contender.

Dojo Info 9/3/09

1. NFL bans tweeting before, during, after games
   Beware the Overlord! Why don’t they just take it up on a case-by-case basis?
2. GoogleVoice for military families
   I keep hearing good stuff about this. I need to check it out.
3. Old Dude Gives Move On The Finger, … Literally!
   I can’t believe the media hasn’t made this a bigger story. This is insane!!
4. Camelot Was A Liberal Delusion
   The revisionist historians started before the time of death was even called. Ted Kennedy was certainly a politician but to somehow manufacture that he was a good politician is a farse.
5. Al Qaeda Tells Obama He’s Going to Hell
   They might actually have this one right.
6. Boycotting the Boycotters
   “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” (via Thunderstruck)

Dojo Info 8/31/09

1. Microsoft drops price of Xbox 360 Elite, kills Pro
   This might be timely given that ours didn’t turn on yesterday… then it did. Early warning system?
2. What if I were Rick Pitino’s pastor?
   Very thoughtful and well-written response by Paster Prather.
3. Mr Anonymous – Some Gal A Move
   Mr Anonymous is jeep who’s great but has gone a bit reggae.
4. China’s BYD to bring electric cars to U.S. in 2010
   That’s really going to help our trade deficit. </sarcasm>
5. Debate Shows How Little Obama Understands
   People who live their working lives in the government sector think that government is always the answer. People who live their lives working in the private sector think that the private sector holds the answer. Who’s impartial opinion can we believe? I feel pretty good about John Stossel.

Abortions Covered by Obamacare

It’s a sad state of affairs that mankind has come to this. Human life should be so easy to eliminate.

For those of you keeping track, the number of proofs that abortion is included in the health care overhaul officially hit seven yesterday at a townhall meeting in San Jose, California. House Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) did a fine job of making FRC’s case after a member of the audience specifically asked about the abortion mandate. The text of the exchange follows.

QUESTION: “[This is a ] health care plan that is covering abortion, which we know that over 90% of abortions are purely elective, not medically necessary. Why is this being covered when abortion is clearly not health care?” (Applause).
REP. LOFGREN: “[This is a] basic benefit plan developed by, um, health professionals… Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the health care plans available to Americans, and I think it should be.”

Obama Interview: End of Life & Healthcare

From the piece After the Great Recession by David Leonhardt.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —

LEONHARDT: Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: … Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall. So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart. I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life – that would be pretty upsetting.

LEONHARDT: And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you – how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

If 80% of costs come at End of Life then you better believe there will be a government “panel” that will determine which treatments are covered and which aren’t. With no competition, things will quickly become wildly expensive.

Tell your representatives to oppose the government takeover of healthcare or someday… you could be on the receiving end of news you don’t want to hear.

Obama Pushes Healthcare Takeover Against Public Opinion

This stuff is maddening. There’s never been a large United States program that was later scrapped. If Obama succeeds in pushing the healthcare legislation, that in the most conservative estimates is $1,000,000,000,000, then you can bet our economy will accelerate into a dangerous tailspin.

I have more thoughts, but can’t articulate as well as like Tony Perkins.

President Obama had hoped to celebrate his 48th birthday with a trillion dollar gift from Congress: a final bill authorizing his administration to seize control of the American health care system. Instead, his legislation is dead-locked, the public is outraged, and his team seems to be trying to prevent their liberal foot soldiers from retreating on the biggest domestic policy package in recent memory. Public resistance is a foreign idea for this President, who has managed to coast along for five months without focused opposition. Even his staff seems flustered, unsure how to respond in an increasingly hostile environment.

So far, no one seems to accept the cold, hard reality that the President’s health care plan is wildly unpopular. Instead, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs blames the national protest on an old standby: the vast right-wing conspiracy. He said K Street lobbyists were organizing the raucous town halls, where “angry mobs” are disrupting the “honest” conversations that Democrats are trying to have in their home districts. It’s “manufactured anger,” he told reporters yesterday. The Democratic National Committee echoed the spin, saying, “The Republicans and their allied groups… are inciting… a small number of rabid right-wing extremists…”

When the Left protested the war with graffiti on the Capitol steps, it was “civic engagement.” When conservatives ask questions about what’s included in health care “reform,” it’s orchestrated thuggery. As Michelle Malkin points out, “The DNC’s definition of ‘thoughtful’: Sitting silent about the lack of transparency, deliberation, truth in numbers…on the ObamaCare plan. The DNC definition of incitement: Asking out loud, ‘How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash for Clunkers?’” Isn’t inciting the heartland exactly what then-candidate Obama prescribed last September? Blogger Ed Morrissey pulled a quote from his campaign that demonstrates just how disingenuous the administration is. To make a case for his candidacy, Obama told supporters to get aggressive. “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Obviously the President’s rules of engagement–like his theories on tolerance and speech–are a one-way street, open only to liberals.

The atrocious part is that he’s purposefully lying about the idea than anyone will get to keep their doctors under the government plan. Employers will dump everyone into the government plan because it’ll be cheaper. Rationed healthcare will be just part of the nightmare. Has the government ever done anything efficiently? No.

Bottom line: Government Healthcare = Fewer Choices, Lower Quality, Higher Cost

If it weren’t so scary it’d be hilarious.

Obama’s First 100 Days

Like most politicians, Obama says one thing but does another. His “change” is merely the way he marketed himself.

He’s really just another big-government liberal and his actions speak far more loudly than his words.

Dojo Info 4/9/09

1. Dream draft McCoughtry with first pick
   The UofL women made it to the final game only to get crushed by powerhouse UConn. The reason they made it that far was the new coach and Angel McCoughtry. What a season. Congrats to Angel!
2. BlackBerry App World has landed
   It’ll be touch to match the iStore for slick, ease-of-use.
3. Citizen grand jury indicts Obama
   I’m certainly no lawyer (thank God) but wouldn’t all of this go away if Obama simply supplied his birth certificate? What possible reason would he have to not publish it if he had one?
4. Project PUMA by GM and Segway
   The Segway car? Hmm….
5. The End of Christian America
   Sad but true. It began with Abington School District v. Schempp in 1963 and atheists and their partners have been working to remove God from American society ever since.

Abortion Activists: The Most Radical Among Us

Promoting death. Simply (and accurately) stated, that’s what abortion activists are doing. Making the deaths of innocents easier and with less guilt. In my opinion, this is evil.

Listen to a couple of these quotes:

“The argument that women who become pregnant have in some sense consented to the pregnancy belies reality…and others who are the inevitable losers in the contraceptive lottery no more ‘consent’ to pregnancy than pedestrians ‘consent’ to being struck by drunk drivers.’”

Is there a break with reality there? What a poor example.

“The woman is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends. Thus, abortion restrictions ‘reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers.’”

The state? The state didn’t “lure” her into having sex. If she should be upset with someone, it should be pop culture with glorifies sex as society’s highest goal. Ok, just one more.

“Statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.”

Right. Forced. We should just change the laws of nature so that sex can never result in a human life and then this person might be happy. Curious who said these outrageous things? The answer is Dawn Johnsen. President Obama just appointed her to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.

I think a moment of prayer would be worthwhile. Then head over to the SBA List and join the fight to protect the unborn innocents.

Dojo Info 3/30/09

1. Study Says Playing Shooters Improves Vision
   That’s why I play them. ;^)
2. Pearl Jam’s “Ten” DLC arrives just in time to play along with Matt Cameron
   There are some good tunes on that album. Heh, I said album. Kids today are like… “Whaaaa?”
3. President Obama’s Final Four revealed
   If I’m going to criticize the President for things I don’t like, it’s only fair to compliment him on the positives. I really like how he’s not not taking sides and honestly filling out his NCAA bracket. He’s bucking the politically correct stance of staying above the fray. If only he’d show some restraint with the government’s new mega-spending mindset.
4. Skype for iPhone: It’s official
   Doesn’t it seem like AT&T would be fighting this? Every day that goes by makes me want to get an iPhone. And I call myself a geek… sheesh…
5. Twitter still has no business model, and that’s OK
   Is our world upside down or what?

Pluripotent Stem Cells Avoid Need for Embryos

I am Pro-Life. I am alive. I like being alive. You probably do too. I don’t think I know a single person who wishes they weren’t (at least openly).

An embryo is a form of human life. Who knows when the soul is introduced, but it’s still life and, in my opinion, life is sacred.

There’s much ado about Obama’s reversal of current law that makes growing and harvesting stem cells from human embryos legal again. Apparently scientists cheered! Of course, the AP makes it sound like all scientists, but that’s expected from their slanted view of the world.

Here’s the thing, embryos aren’t the only way to get stem cells. All we hear from the mainstream media is how great stem cells are. No one is disputing that! We all agree that stem cells are good. But what we don’t hear from the press is that scientists already know how to get stem cells from adults and there is a new technology where scientists can create pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from adults.

This new research uses ordinary adult body cells – like skin cells – and, with some added growth factors, prompts them to become embryonic-like stem cells. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) have the flexibility (pluripotency) of embryonic stem cells without the moral problems of destroying human life. [link]

In fact, this research has been extremely promising for some time now. So why the silence? It’s truly troubling that this technology is out there and it seems that the press is purposefully leaving it out.

From the Washington Post:

In the new work, Nagy and his colleagues in Toronto and at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland instead used a sequence of DNA known as a transposon, which can insert itself into the genetic machinery of a cell. In this case, the researchers used a transposon called “piggyBac” to carry four genes that can transform mouse and human embryonic skin cells into iPS cells. After the conversion took place, the researchers removed the added DNA from the transformed cells using a specific enzyme.

“PiggyBac carries the four genes into the cells and reprograms the cells into stem cells. After they have reprogrammed the cells, they are no longer required, and in fact they are dangerous,” Nagy said. “After they do their job they can be removed seamlessly, with no trace left behind. The ability for seamless removal opens up a huge possibility.”

The process isn’t finalized but a breakthrough occurred just this week. You’d think the potential being what it is, that all research monies would go towards this methodology rather than one that grows human embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them and harvesting their parts.

Dojo Info 3/3/09

1. Sri Lankan players injured in Pakistan
   “At least a dozen men attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers Tuesday ahead of a match in Pakistan, wounding seven players, an umpire and an assistant coach. Six policemen and a driver were killed in the brazen assault on South Asia’s most beloved sport.” And here I thought some Kentucky basketball fans were crazy.
2. $500-a-day fine for posting Constitution
   The government takes more rights from individuals as America moves closer and closer to socialism.
3. Data about Obama’s helicopter breached via P2P?
   Is it possible Obama wants his “data” breached so he’ll have more ammunition for coming out against free markets? I can hear him now, “We need to protect our sensitive information to keep our enemies gaining the advantage.”
4. Verizon Wireless goes official with the LG Versa
   I think I’d have to hold this phone in my hands to tell if having a detachable keyboard is a good idea.
5. Health Workers’ ‘Conscience’ Rule Set to Be Voided
   “The debate centers on a Bush administration regulation, enacted in December, that cuts off federal funding for thousands of state and local governments, hospitals, health plans, clinics and other entities if they do not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists or other employees who refuse to participate in care they feel violates their personal, moral or religious beliefs.” The government flexes more muscle by telling us they’ll decide what’s right and wrong.