Come visit us at our new web site: www.interestingitems.org Leave your thoughts, comments and opinions. We look forward to hearing from you. Interesting Items Alex Gimarc [email protected] Monday Nov 21, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Springtime 2. IPO 3. Prop 8 4. Penn State 5. Ohio 6. Avastin 7. BLM 1. Springtime. I am an unabashed fan of Mel Brooks. Saw Blazing Saddles in a theater nearly 40 years ago and almost hurt myself laughing. A few years ago, he brought The Producers back to cinema. It had been playing on Broadway as a musical for years. The remake was one of the few remakes of a move that was as good as or better than the original. For the few that haven’t seen it, The Producers is about a scam to make money from a flop. The goal was to close opening night. They purchased a play called Springtime for Hitler, mostly because it was the worst thing they’d ever seen. Unfortunately, the audience thought it was a comedy and loved it. The movies completely ridiculed the Germans and Nazis. 1968 was only 23 years after WWII, about a generation. And it took a Jewish comedian – Mel Brooks – to do the deed. It got me thinking about our current difficulties with Islam and the Religion of Endless Offense. Someday, somehow, somewhere, there is going to be another movie made about the life of Mohammed. It will do to Islam what Springtime for Hitler did to the Nazis. The South Park guys got started with a few episodes showing Mohammed. Comedy Central wimped out and buried them. This ridicule can’t come soon enough. Here’s a You Tube of Springtime for Hitler. Great stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNXj-SCx5dY 2. IPO. Did you know that insider trading laws do not apply to members of congress? Did you know that congresscritters trade stock right before legislation is passed or killed? Apparently the law does not apply to the elite, particularly democrats. Last week, 60 Minutes, of all people, ran a piece about Nancy Pelosi profiting from credit card legislation she pushed through the House in 2008. March 2008, her husband purchased $2 million worth of Initial Public Offering (IPO) shares in Visa. IPOs are hugely popular, as they allow buy-in at very low prices and cash out very quickly with large gains as the stock prices are bid to whatever the marketplace thinks they ought to trade at. The problem with allowing members of congress to trade in IPOs of things they write legislation for is that they profit from their insider knowledge. This is why the vast majority of democrats who enter office as middle class Americans come out of congress as multi-millionaires. They trade on their inside knowledge and they write legislation to ensure it happens time after time after time. Pelosi is only the most recent high profile example. Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government has more about this: http://biggovernment.com/mikeflynn/2011/11/14/wait-how-did-pelosi-get-in-on-the-visa-ipo/ 3. Prop 8. The gay marriage wars continued on in California last week with an interesting ruling out of the California Supreme Court. The background in this is important. California voters passed Prop. 22 in 2000. This defined marriage in the state as a union between one man and one woman. Gay rights advocates sued and the California Supremes tossed it in 2008. That November, during the Obama landslide in CA, voters passed Prop 8 which reinstated the ban on gay marriage. Gay rights people in CA found a homosexual federal judge named Walker (Bush 41 appointee) who presided over the case. CA Attorney General (at the time) Jerry Brown and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to defend the Proposition in federal court, so that job was left to the supporters of the proposition. Of course, Walker found that it was also unconstitutional. But he also did something far more insidious, in his opinion he wrote that backers of a ballot initiative did not have standing to defend the very initiative they brought in front of the voters in federal court. The proponents appealed Walker’s expected and outrageous ruling. The Ninth Circus sent them to the CA Supreme Court to determine if they had standing to defend the initiative. The CA Supremes by a unanimous ruling determined that they did, defending the ability of CA voters to bring ballot initiatives and defend them in court in CA. They did not do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Rather, they know that this sword cuts both ways, and will destroy the ability of leftists to bring ballot initiatives before the voters in the future. The case will now be appealed to the Ninth Circus and eventually to the SCOTUS. Judge Walker should have recused himself from the case, as he is in a long term, committed homosexual relationship. But he chose to defend his sexual preferences rather than the laws of the United States of America and the Constitution that he swore an oath to defend. He should be ashamed of himself and should be impeached and removed from office. More on this from Big Lizards: http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/constitutional_maunderings/supreme_beings/ 4. Penn State. Limbaugh took a call last week about the Penn State pedophilia investigation. The caller and Limbaugh discussed the elephant in the room with the criminal activity. It is not only pedophilia. It is homosexual sex with young boys and young men. There are rumors out there that the (Jerry Sandusky) non-profit was being used as a procurement ring for homosexual donors. I hope there is no truth to these rumors, for if true, things will get very ugly indeed. 5. Ohio. Obama’s war on energy production continued last week with the USDA delaying a lease sale in the Wayne National Forest in Ohio. The mineral lease sale was to give access to shale natural gas. Total jobs put on hold for yet another six months are 204,000 by 2015. The excuse given by USDA was that only a couple hundred jobs would be delayed, but environmental concerns with frac-ing in the Utica shale overrode all concerns with lack of jobs in Ohio. In every single decision regarding energy, the Obama administration defers to the environmentalists. Article from the Washington Examiner can be found here: http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-usda-delays-shale-drilling-200k-jobs 6. Avastin. In a not unexpected ruling, Obama’s FDA determined that the anti-cancer drug Avastin was no longer approved for treatment of breast cancer. The excuse given by the FDA was that the drug is ineffective for that sort of cancer. Avastin continues to be approved for colon and other cancers. Yet doctors keep prescribing it for treatment of breast cancer because it is the best available drug. This decision is simply the first of what will be tens of thousands of future decisions to not cover expensive medicines (and Avastin is hugely expensive) as a cost savings technique for Medicare / Medicaid. This is rationing. It is what we will get with ObamaCare. The FDA has become simply another tool to keep drugs and medicines off the marketplace. Rather than encouraging manufacturers to develop newer, less expensive, and more effective drugs, they stand in the way and keep effective drugs for some patients off the market. This is what the democrats have given us when they passed ObamaCare. This is an awful decision that is not supported by either the scientific literature or medical experience. It is all about saving money. 7. BLM. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing new rules that will remove recreational shooters from public lands. The excuse given for this new assault on gun owners is safety, as recreational shooting does not play well with other uses of public lands (according to the Obama BLM). Of course this is complete rot, and simply the Obama administration picking a fight with firearms owners, hunters and recreational shooters. Article can be found here: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/11/16/obama-pushing-shooters-off-public-lands More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. 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