Obama...I can get behind this campaign slogan!

Happy Fathers day

To all the dads out there, Happy Fathers day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for me, I will be enjoying a day of activities with my 5 children.

Man I love this gig!

Fight The Smears - The Political Jungle: Moonbats Beware

Fight The Smears - The Political Jungle: Moonbats Beware

Want to see what socialised medicine gets you?

Those of you thinking of voting for Barrack Hussein Obama should think twice about your willingness of accepting socialised medicine...nicely called Public health care in this article.

You have been warned

From the New York Slimes via Yahoo:

New York Times
Asia Pacific

Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions



Article Tools Sponsored By
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: June 13, 2008

AMAGASAKI, Japan — Japan, a country not known for its overweight people, has undertaken one of the most ambitious campaigns ever by a nation to slim down its citizenry.

A poster at a public health clinic in Japan reads, "Goodbye, metabo," a word associated with being overweight. The Japanese government is mounting an ambitious weight-loss campaign. More Photos »

Summoned by the city of Amagasaki one recent morning, Minoru Nogiri, 45, a flower shop owner, found himself lining up to have his waistline measured. With no visible paunch, he seemed to run little risk of being classified as overweight, or metabo, the preferred word in Japan these days.

But because the new state-prescribed limit for male waistlines is a strict 33.5 inches, he had anxiously measured himself at home a couple of days earlier. “I’m on the border,” he said.

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.

Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months.

To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country’s Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check.

The ministry also says that curbing widening waistlines will rein in a rapidly aging society’s ballooning health care costs, one of the most serious and politically delicate problems facing Japan today. Most Japanese are covered under public health care or through their work. Anger over a plan that would make those 75 and older pay more for health care brought a parliamentary censure motion Wednesday against Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, the first against a prime minister in the country’s postwar history.

But critics say that the government guidelines — especially the one about male waistlines — are simply too strict and that more than half of all men will be considered overweight. The effect, they say, will be to encourage overmedication and ultimately raise health care costs.

Yoichi Ogushi, a professor at Tokai University’s School of Medicine near Tokyo and an expert on public health, said that there was “no need at all” for the Japanese to lose weight.

“I don’t think the campaign will have any positive effect. Now if you did this in the United States, there would be benefits, since there are many Americans who weigh more than 100 kilograms,” or about 220 pounds, Mr. Ogushi said. “But the Japanese are so slender that they can’t afford to lose weight.”

Mr. Ogushi was actually a little harder on Americans than they deserved. A survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that the average waist size for Caucasian American men was 39 inches, a full inch lower than the 40-inch threshold established by the International Diabetes Federation. American women did not fare as well, with an average waist size of 36.5 inches, about two inches above their threshold of 34.6 inches. The differences in thresholds reflected variations in height and body type from Japanese men and women.

Comparable figures for the Japanese are sketchy since waistlines have not been measured officially in the past. But private research on thousands of Japanese indicates that the average male waistline falls just below the new government limit.

That fact, widely reported in the media, has heightened the anxiety in the nation’s health clinics.

In Amagasaki, a city in western Japan, officials have moved aggressively to measure waistlines in what the government calls special checkups. The city had to measure at least 65 percent of the 40- to 74-year-olds covered by public health insurance, an “extremely difficult” goal, acknowledged Midori Noguchi, a city official.

When his turn came, Mr. Nogiri, the flower shop owner, entered a booth where he bared his midriff, exposing a flat stomach with barely discernible love handles. A nurse wrapped a tape measure around his waist across his belly button: 33.6 inches, or 0.1 inch over the limit.

“Strikeout,” he said, defeat spreading across his face.

The campaign started a couple of years ago when the Health Ministry began beating the drums for a medical condition that few Japanese had ever heard of — metabolic syndrome — a collection of factors that heighten the risk of developing vascular disease and diabetes. Those include abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and high levels of blood glucose and cholesterol. In no time, the scary-sounding condition was popularly shortened to the funny-sounding metabo, and it has become the nation’s shorthand for overweight.

The mayor of one town in Mie, a prefecture near here, became so wrapped up in the anti-metabo campaign that he and six other town officials formed a weight-loss group called “The Seven Metabo Samurai.” That campaign ended abruptly after a 47-year-old member with a 39-inch waistline died of a heart attack while jogging.

Still, at a city gym in Amagasaki recently, dozens of residents — few of whom appeared overweight — danced to the city’s anti-metabo song, which warned against trouser buttons popping and flying away, “pyun-pyun-pyun!”

“Goodbye, metabolic. Let’s get our checkups together. Go! Go! Go!

Goodbye, metabolic. Don’t wait till you get sick. No! No! No!”

The word metabo has made it easier for health care providers to urge their patients to lose weight, said Dr. Yoshikuni Sakamoto, a physician in the employee health insurance union at Matsushita, which makes Panasonic products.

“Before we had to broach the issue with the word obesity, which definitely has a negative image,” Dr. Sakamoto said. “But metabo sounds much more inclusive.”

Even before Tokyo’s directives, Matsushita had focused on its employees’ weight during annual checkups. Last summer, Akio Inoue, 30, an engineer carrying 238 pounds on a 5-foot-7 frame, was told by a company doctor to lose weight or take medication for his high blood pressure. After dieting, he was down to 182 pounds, but his waistline was still more than one inch over the state-approved limit.

With the new law, Matsushita has to measure the waistlines of not only its employees but also of their families and retirees. As part of its intensifying efforts, the company has started giving its employees “metabo check” towels that double as tape measures.

“Nobody will want to be singled out as metabo,” Kimiko Shigeno, a company nurse, said of the campaign. “It’ll have the same effect as non-smoking campaigns where smokers are now looked at disapprovingly.”

Companies like Matsushita must measure the waistlines of at least 80 percent of their employees. Furthermore, they must get 10 percent of those deemed metabolic to lose weight by 2012, and 25 percent of them to lose weight by 2015.

NEC, Japan’s largest maker of personal computers, said that if it failed to meet its targets, it could incur as much as $19 million in penalties. The company has decided to nip metabo in the bud by starting to measure the waistlines of all its employees over 30 years old and by sponsoring metabo education days for the employees’ families.

Some experts say the government’s guidelines on everything from waistlines to blood pressure are so strict that meeting, or exceeding, those targets will be impossible. They say that the government’s real goal is to shift health care costs onto the private sector.

Dr. Minoru Yamakado, an official at the Japan Society of Ningen Dock, an association of doctors who administer physical exams, said he endorsed the government’s campaign and its focus on preventive medicine.

But he said that the government’s real priority should be to reduce smoking rates, which remain among the highest among advanced nations, in large part because of Japan’s powerful tobacco lobby.

“Smoking is even one of the causes of metabolic syndrome,” he said. “So if you’re worried about metabo, stopping people from smoking should be your top priority.”

Despite misgivings, though, Japan is pushing ahead.

Kizashi Ohama, an official in Matsuyama, a city that has also acted aggressively against metabo, said he would leave the debate over the campaign’s merits to experts and health officials in Tokyo.

At Matsuyama’s public health clinic, Kinichiro Ichikawa, 62, said the government-approved 33.5-inch male waistline was “severe.” He is 5-foot-4, weighs only 134 pounds and knows no one who is overweight.

“Japan shouldn’t be making such a fuss about this,” he said before going off to have his waistline measured.

But on a shopping strip here, Kenzo Nagata, 73, a toy store owner, said he had ignored a letter summoning him to a so-called special checkup. His waistline was no one’s business but his own, he said, though he volunteered that, at 32.7 inches, it fell safely below the limit. He planned to disregard the second notice that the city was scheduled to mail to the recalcitrant.

“I’m not going,” he said. “I don’t think that concerns me.”

__________________________

Give em 33.5 inches, and they will take a mile...or your money, or whatever it takes for the "feel good" socialists to think that they are better than you are by making YOU abide by their lifestyle or metabolic rate.

Government interference in your private life: Check
Financial penalties for something the government has no business being in: Check
Someone else dictating your life for you? : Check

Sounds socialist to me.

You suck Obama, hide in a hole somewhere, will you?

Mudkitty Is Now Official - The Political Jungle: Moonbats Beware

Mudkitty Is Now Official - The Political Jungle: Moonbats Beware

And as if to illustrate what one looks like:

Meathead

Gay Pride Father's Day Weekend

Every year in Bisbee, we have what is known as 'Gay Pride Weekend'. Ok, fine, no big deal. Bisbee is a more left than right, more gay than straight kinda town. Last year and this year, it has specifically been advertised as being "on Father's Day Weekend". As a straight woman, married to a straight man, something about this offends me. I have no problem with people being gay or what have you, but why does this event have to be on Father's Day weekend? I realize there are fathers out there who, after having children, decided they were gay or they adopted children, but which is more important to you, being a father or being gay? Two celebrations are always better than one anyway. To me though, I don't feel like I can go into town this weekend if I want to celebrate Father's Day without the gay identifier overshadowing it all.

On another note, last year's 'Gay Pride Weekend' went a little over the top. Bisbee is a pretty weird place to begin with, especially after dark and on Halloween (that's another story), but sponsoring S&M events for the Gay Pride attendees to participate in is rather tasteless. If you don't want to be seen as a freak by society, then don't emphasize it. Keep your sexual habits and tastes in the home. This goes for straight people, too, so don't think I'm singling anyone out here.

The best thing about this year's 'Gay Pride Weekend' is the exhibition of the Aids quilt. I remember seeing this quilt sometime in the 1990's, so it must be huge by now. The pieces are displayed separately and will be in various locations around town. I suggest everyone check this out as a reminder that Aids has not been cured, only made tolerable by modern medicine.

RIP Officer Erik Hite

Wounded Tucson police officer dies; suspect's bond set at $2.5M
Injured deputies identified
By Alexis Huicochea
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.02.2008

Tucson Police Department Officer Erik Hite died Monday at 12:53 p.m., a day after being shot by a gunman who led area law enforcement officials on an hour-long cross-town chase that injured two Pima County deputies, a Tucson Police Department official said. Hite had remained on life support since the shooting as his family gathered in Tucson.

The man who shot him, David Nickolas Delich, 25, is being held on four counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm and two counts of discharging a firearm at a structure, according to a Pima County jail official.

Prosecutors had requested that bond for Delich be set at $5 million, but a city court judge set bail at $2.5 million. Delich's next court appearance has been set for June 12 at 1:30 p.m.

Pima County Sheriff deputies Eric Cervantez and Tory Schwartz also were shot during the pursuit but have since been released from University Medical Center, said Deputy Dawn Hanke, an agency spokeswoman.

Tucson attorney Brick Storts, is representing Delich in the case.

The shooting spree spanned 20 miles from Tucson’s far Northwest Side to the far Northeast Side.

Authorities gave the following account:

The shooting spree began shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday when a man law enforcement identified as Delich fired into houses in the 8400 block of North Placita de la Manzana, near North Shannon and West Cortaro Farms roads. It ended more than an hour later and nearly 20 miles to the east, when officers stopped the suspect on Catalina Highway and arrested him.

The 911 calls about a camo-clad man shooting into houses started coming into the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 9:49 a.m.

As deputies arrived, the suspect fled in a 1988 red Ford Mustang. Nobody was injured in the initial shootings.

A sheriff’s deputy spotted the suspect a few miles away, at North Oracle Road and West Magee Road, and began chasing him. Near Oracle and West Ina Road, the suspect fired, hitting the Deputy Cervantez in the right shoulder.

Despite being hit, Cervantez continued the chase south on Oracle but lost track of the suspect near Oracle and West River Road.

Deputies working on the East Side picked him up again near East River and North Swan roads. A chase continued with several officers trailing the red Mustang, including Tucson police officers who got involved after seeing the suspect near Udall Park.

As they drove east on East Tanque Verde Road, the suspect fired at officers three times: at Tanque Verde bridge and East Wrightstown Road; at Tanque Verde and North Castle Rock Drive; and Tanque Verde and North Jeanette Avenue.

No one was hit.

Farther ahead, west of North Houghton Road on Tanque Verde, officers laid down stop sticks. Before he hit them, Delich made an abrupt left turn, heading north on to a side street called North Tomahawk Trail.

At 10:27 a.m., as Tucson police officers approached, Delich shot Officer Hite, hitting him once in the head. The shooter’s move at this spot was calculated, said Tucson Police Chief Richard Miranda.

“From what preliminary information I have, I’m going to say it bluntly that Officer Hite was ambushed,” Miranda said Sunday. “There was some thought behind what the shooter did.”

Hite was flown by helicopter to University Medical Center.

Delich was able to flee again after shooting Hite and headed north up Catalina Highway. They found him again driving up Catalina Highway on the way to Mount Lemmon.

At milepost 1.5, he shot at Deputy Schwartz, grazing him in the head.

At about 11 a.m., more than an hour after the incident began, Delich pulled off the road near the Molino Basin campground and gave up. He was arrested and taken into custody.

Investigators don’t know why Delich went on the shooting spree, but Miranda said preliminary information indicates the houses he fired at and the officers he shot were not targeted, but rather random targets.

They found several weapons and large amounts of ammunition in the Mustang, he said.
They characterized the weapon he used as an assault rifle but declined to name the exact type. They haven’t estimated yet how many rounds he fired.

Some of his shots came from inside the Mustang, and others were fired from outside the car, Miranda said. The three law-enforcement officers who were struck were in their vehicles at the time, he said.

Pima County Sheriff’s records show the department has had contact with Delich in the past, Miranda said, but Tucson police have not. Former classmates said he attended Sabino High School, and Miranda said he still has a Pima County address.

A background check shows that Delich has been arrested on criminal trespassing, a marijuana violation and possession of drug paraphernalia. He has not spent any time in Arizona prisons.

Hite is a four-year veteran of the department and a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Miranda said. He is the father of a baby girl who is not yet 1 year old as well as a grown son who serves in the military, Miranda said.

Hite is the first local law-enforcement officer killed in the line of duty since August 10, 2005, when Pima County Sheriff's Deputy Timothy D. Graham was killed after he and another man fell into traffic on Ajo Way as they tried to subdue a third man.

The last Tucson Police Department officer to die in the line of duty was Officer Patrick Hardesty, who was shot to death while chasing a hit-and-run suspect.

Cervantez has been with the Sheriff’s Department for 7 months and has been placed on medical leave. Schwartz has been with the agency for 8 years, Hanke said.

_____________________________________

All I can add to this is....in this case I fully and wholeheartedly support the death penalty