We can spend our way out of a recession, right? And the deeper it gets, the more we need to spend, right?¹ Check out this video from Citizens Against Government Waste²

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Bailout, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Economy, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare, Integrity, National debt, Obama, pelosi, reid, Social Security, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

The Obama GrabTM

Everyone surely knows the whole body naked-scanning machines that TSA rushed into service at airports around the country immediately after the mid-term elections. These days they are impossible to miss while traveling.

If one were to wonder if safety was forgotten in the rush to field the machines as quickly as possible, here’s some food for thought:

• Boston TSA employees seem to be experiencing a higher than average rate of skin cancer¹
• FDA has not tested the full body scanners for safety²
• NIST has not tested the full body scanners for safety³
• additional action was recommended by the Johns Hopkins University to avoid exceeding the general public dose recommendation of 100 mrem per year⁴
• the units have areas where beam overshoot will expose bystanders to repeated doses; protective shields were recommended, but seem to not have been implemented⁵
• the systems were never studied for their cancer inducing properties using standard methods such as mutant mice⁶
• the often quoted comparison between cosmic background radiation received during flight and the scanning machines is inaccurate, because the energy levels of the radiation are orders of magnitude different⁷
• the dose estimations are likely to be inaccurate (too low), because the energy levels used concentrate more of the radiation in and near the skin, causing localized doses much higher than the “full body average”⁸

To be fair, the FDA responded to some of these issues⁹. Strangely, in the lengthy response nowhere does the FDA state that it studied the systems itself, or that the FDA has determined the systems to be safe. The response made reference to third party safety studies, but not only were these studies not performed on behalf of the FDA on the systems themselves, some of them pointed out issues that had not been addressed by the TSA¹⁰.

Further, a key study made by JHU was heavily redacted, making independent verification impossible. Not to mention that the characterization of the third party evaluations was at best questionable, as the FDA claimed NIST had provided “safety data”, when NIST states that it didn’t test the units for safety¹¹.

And last but not least, in a response to the FDA, it seems that the JHU report was inconsistent and in fact implies that the primary radiation was measured in a manner that provided a lower than actual reading¹².

Perhaps we should all just drive a car or resign ourselves to the Obama Grab^TM until we can all vote out the Dear Leader and his gang that brought us this multi-billion dollar skin cancer experiment.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Cancer, Cover-Up, DHS, Full Body Scanners, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Obama, Obama Grab, Radiation Dose, TSA Hide

Obama Motion - Uncovered

The corruption case for former Illinois governor Blagojevich is getting more interesting thanks to a PDF file snafu with a defense motion document.

While the judge has ordered certain topics to be kept under seal, it seems that someone chose to redact text ¹ by changing the background color of the text, rather than completely erasing the text.

Anyone with some experience with Adobe Acrobat can easily uncover the text, either by cutting and pasting it to another document, or by changing the text color back to what it would normally be.

We have attached a version of the PDF that shows the previously hidden parts of the document. However, we wanted to highlight the parts that had been erased, and instead of changing the document so that the previously hidden text looks normal, we chose to change the text color such that the redacted portion appear white on a black background.²

A revelation in the previously hidden parts of the document is that Blago alleges that he talked to Obama about the Senator seat shopping that landed him in his current predicament, in addition to other corrupt topics. Further, Blago claims that tapes and documents the government doesn’t want to produce to the defense prove his case.

What makes this interesting, is that if the tapes and documents are as damaging as Blago alleges, then Obama might be caught in a lie when he claimed to never have spoken with Blago about such topics.

It would be very interesting indeed, if Blago’s defense will turn into Obama’s version of the blue dress with spots.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Blagojevich, Buy-A-Senator, Ethics, Government Corruption, Illinois, Obama Hide

A musical break…¹

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

2010 Elections, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Congress, Constitution, Economy, Ethics, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Gun Control, Healthcare, Integrity, Kick The Bumbs Out, National debt, pelosi, reid, See You In November, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

These two sum it up nicely:¹

Day By Day, March 15, 2010

Day By Day, March 16, 2010

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Constitution, Economy, Ethics, Healthcare, Integrity, Obama, pelosi, reid, Taxes Hide

Hold Onto Your Wallet!

In yet another act of “unprecedented transparency”¹, the Democrats have driven a bill through Congress that has now been signed by Obama (D) to raise the Congressional Credit Card limit to a staggering $14.294 TRILLION without the benefit of CSPAN capturing a single second of the closed door discussions.²

The vote in the Senate was taken just in time before the newly baked Senator Brown (R) from Massachusetts were to be sworn in, since he might have forced actual debate on the issue. It was simply safer for Reid (D) to drive the vote while the Massachusetts state officers with (D)’s behind their names were doodling and claiming that it just takes time to create the necessary documentation for Brown (R) to be sworn into office.³ After all, even when the results are not contested, it’s important to dot those t’s and cross those i’s, especially when a guy with an (R) is the topic, and not someone with a (D), isn’t it?⁴

Those in the Senate with (D) behind their names even claimed to wait for Brown (R) for any important vote, such as that on healthcare.

It must be that the (D) people don’t think that agreeing to spend $1.9 TRILLION is not an important vote. Interestingly, if $1.9 TRILLION doesn’t make the cut, but a healthcare plan supposedly costing $1 TRILLION or thereabout does, then is that an indication that the REAL cost of the healthcare legislation is far beyond $1.9 TRILLION? Harry (D), Nancy (D), please explain.

As we reported previously⁵, this bill increases the national debt “limit” by more than it has ever been increased before, both as a percentage of the total, and as an absolute number. Not even during the dark days of World War 2 was such a dramatic increase necessary.

So what’s different? A looming 2010 Congressional election disaster for those with a (D) behind their names has Harry (D) and Nancy (D) running scared, and Obama (D) can’t help but agree. With Brown (R) in the Senate now, Reid (D) might not have been able to push this (D) looneylaw through Senate, or at least not without some semblance of debate.

Yesterday, following up on his transparency pledge, Obama (D) chose to leave those pesky cameras outside yet again, and proceeded to sign this monster into law. All hail the chief, the Congressional Credit Card is safe from those pesky guys with (R) behind their names.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Ethics, Healthcare, Integrity, National debt, Obama, pelosi, reid Hide

Reuters logo (with their image clarification standards applied)

Reuters seems to be extending beyond its historical role of adjusting images to suit the story.¹ Now the story itself, if not appropriate, will be withdrawn.

This happened to a somewhat embarrassing article for Obama, which showed some of the ways in which taxes for the middle class are increasing despite his protestations and promises to the contrary. Reuters replaced the story with a short notice that “The story Backdoor taxes to hit middle class has been withdrawn. A replacement story will run later in the week.“²

For the benefit of our readers we were able to store a copy for future generations to enjoy. Since the original story was redacted in its entirety, it is only appropriate that we quote it in its entirety: (more…)

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Don't Read My Lips, Ethics, Integrity, Obama, Obama Lies, Taxes Hide