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I just wanted to share this link with everyone, someone gave it to me and I think it's the neatest thing! It's a site that generates a video for your child, can include their name, upload pictures, etc. and is COMPLETELY FREE! As far as I know, there's no spam either, as I did not check the box to have more information on other stuff sent to me but you can choose either "nice" or "naughty" where the child will still have time to work towards nice but receives a reminder from Santa. The only thing a bit odd is...

If one makes a statement by the type of entrance one makes, then God made quite a statement with Jesus. Jesus was born, says the Bible, with a virginal conception—decidedly not in accord with the normal order of things. Then there was a host of angels who announced the birth to some startled shepherds with what will turn out to be ironic words: "Peace on earth!" For the first memorable political act after the birth of Immanuel—"God with us"—is the mass murder of infants preceded by the exile of the holy family. The first sign of God's coming leads to...

Muslims pray in the street during Friday prayers near the al-Quds mosque in Marseille Muslim groups have criticized a French Interior Ministry ban on praying in the streets of Paris as authorities hastily started the implementation of the ban before this week's Friday prayer.Interior Minister Claude Gueant earlier said his ministry has provided another place of worship for Muslims and that Muslim associations were on board. However, the Muslim community was not informed that the ban would be put into effect immediately. Speaking to French daily Le Figaro on Wednesday, Gueant warned that if people do not obey the new...

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan gave watchers a scare as she arrived at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Tuesday night, losing her balance and falling as she entered a room to hear first-term US Senator Marco Rubio (R.-Fla) speak.

Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found. Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment” claims the report, by an independent watchdog that advises the NHS. The Co-operation and Competition Panel says the tactic is one of a number used by managers that “excessively constrain” patients’ rights to choose where to be operated upon, and damage hospitals’ ability to compete for planned surgery. It claims unfair...

In March of 2010, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously said, "We have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it." Subsequent study of this leviathan legislation has brought some truly startling revelations to light; however, the establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will likely prove the most dangerous to our liberty. IPAB is a fifteen-member board, appointed by the president and charged with developing recommendations regarding procedures, medications, and spending priorities for Medicare and Medicaid. Ostensibly, the board members are to discover ways to implement the best practices,...

Nice. White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe bashed fiscal conservative Americans on FOX News Sunday this morning. Obama’s genius advisor told Chris Wallace, “Even your viewers,” should want compromise in Washington. What a clod.

Their requests have been rejected by regional health authorities who were accused of operating covert “blacklists” to restrict dozens of treatments to save money. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than 80 cases in which desperately sick NHS patients have been refused the cancer drugs their doctor sought, in the four months since a £200 million fund was introduced to stop health authorities rationing treatments. The fund was a key move by the Coalition so that those suffering from cancer would never again be refused drugs on grounds of cost.

Trespassing laws are to be used to evict elderly patients who ‘block’ hospital beds. Pensioners reluctant to go home – often because they are too frail or confused to cope on their own – will be given 48 hours to leave. If they refuse, NHS trusts will seek a court order for possession of their bed. The ‘bed-blockers’ could even be forced to pay the legal fees incurred. The extraordinary plans, which emerged on the day an official report accused the Health Service of betraying the elderly, were condemned as inhumane. Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association said: ‘This is...

Cats vs. Dogs. Who does it better? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Commonwealth Fund has another one of its surveys showing how health care in the U.S. is so much worse when compared with so many other nations. A debate on what health care system is best is well worth having. But it’s hard to take such a debate seriously when the senior vice president for the Commonwealth Fund, Cathy Schoen, makes remarks like this: The U.S. is the only country in the study where having health insurance doesn’t guarantee you access to health care or financial protection when you’re sick. This is avoidable — other countries have designed their insurance...

Health Reform: The left's favorite economist, who condemned others for saying ObamaCare would require death panels, now admits they are real and necessary. The way to control costs, he says, is death and taxes. Paul Krugman has long extolled the virtues of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence with the Orwellian acronym of NICE. Krugman has been anything but nice to NHS critics and those who've said that what have been called its "death panels" would be brought to America via ObamaCare. In a roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist...

Clint Eastwood, legendary actor and director, told Katie Couric that while President Obama is a "nice fella," he's "not a fan of what he's doing at the moment." During an interview about his latest film "Hereafter," Eastwood told Couric that the president is not "governing" and he's laying out lines in the hopes that people will believe him "so he can stay in his position." Eastwood, who was once the Mayor of Carmel, Calif., expressed his view on the political election process.

Medicine: After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug. Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for. It begins. It didn't take long for the health care philosophy of Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and an appointee we have labeled a "one-man death panel," to have an effect. Berwick is an admirer of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence, with the Orwellian-acronym NICE. "NICE," Berwick has said, "is extremely effective...

But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948. The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished. In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted...

This week, the Coalition will offer an example of how coping with an economic crisis may serve a reforming purpose. Having to cut back the power and the expenditure of the state will provide a rationale for dismantling the monolithic, bureaucratic monster that the NHS has become. In his health White Paper, Andrew Lansley will apparently propose sweeping away the command-and-control structure in which clinical decisions are taken and hospital procedures commissioned by Primary Care Trust administrators, rather than by general practitioners who actually come face-to-face with people in need of medical help.... The US government, meanwhile, is galloping doggedly...

Health Care: The president recess-appoints a fan of rationing and Britain's National Health Service to direct one-third of American health care. Why does the administration want his views hidden from scrutiny? 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." That's what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, told a National Institutes of Health publication a year ago, when he was just president and CEO of the Institute for Health Care Improvement. Such views were to be...

Why would Ahmadinejad take him seriously when even Karzai flips him the finger? "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," said Osama bin Laden many years ago, "by nature they will like the strong horse." The world does not see President Obama as the strong horse. The new President wished to reposition his nation by forswearing American power: he thought that made him the nice horse; everyone else looked on it as a self-gelding operation -- or, as last week's U.S. News & World Report headlined it, "World sees Obama as incompetent and amateur." If the Taliban...

Why would Ahmadinejad take him seriously when even Karzai flips him the finger? In 1939, Capt. Peter Sanders, serving with the Tochi scouts on the Afghan-Indian border, was blown up by a Waziri booby trap and lost his right arm. Shortly afterwards, he accepted an invitation to lunch from the tribesman who’d planted the bomb. Awfully decent of the chap, and not a bad spread, all things considered. Not everyone cares for the old stiff upper lip: “I spit on your British phlegm!” as the Khazi of Kalabar remarked in what remains the seminal work on Afghanistan, Carry on up...

Medicine: The administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid is a fan of Britain's National Health Service and rationing services. He believes in less discretion for your doctor, more power for your government. 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open" is what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, said in an interview published in Biotechnology Healthcare in June 2009. The question is whether the Senate will confirm Berwick with open eyes. Berwick says: "NICE is...

With the presidential ink not quite dry on the health overhaul legislation, Republicans and their conservative allies promise to repeal it. That could prove a long battle, one that could stretch out for years. But opponents of the administration's plan should take heart. One of its main proposals is on the cusp of being repealed. Not here in America, but across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom. With health costs spiraling, one of the core ideas of the White House's health takeover is the creation of an independent body of experts to steer clinical decisions. IPAB, the Independent Payments Advisory...

Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has a history of support for government rationing of health care resources on cost grounds. He has spoken favorably about Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which denies patients access to life-saving treatments the National Health Service (NHS) deems too expensive. The American people should have their eyes open to the ramifications of NICE-style rationing in the United States as part of Democrats’ brave new health care world:

Thirty-four of 39 school budgets in the county were defeated. School districts spending plans were massacred at the polls during the annual school elections Tuesday as voters used the ballot box to vent their frustrations about higher taxes. According to unofficial results at press time, only five of 39 school district budgets were passed, a 12 percent approval rate, the lowest this decade and possibly longer. The only other time this decade that fewer than half the budgets failed was in 2006 when only 17 of 39 budgets won approval. School officials said the results were not surprising given the...

Still wondering why we are resisting socialized medicine? We are resisting it because it does have a tendency to kill people. Over the last few weeks, we have chronicled the NHS in the UK, and its record on killing British citizens. Here is the latest installment, courtesy of the Daily Mail. "Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday. The rationing body NICE has failed to keep a promise to make more life-extending drugs available. Treatments used widely in the U.S. and Europe have been rejected on grounds...

Buzz and bullets: Gun fans cheer Starbucks' policy Sunday, February 28, 2010 E-mail this story | Print Bookmark and Share By GREG BLUESTEIN (AP) -- Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. He says the firearm drew a double-take from at least one customer, Welch's foray into the coffeehouse was part of an effort by some gun owners to exercise and advertise their rights in states that allow people to openly carry firearms. Even in some "open carry" states, businesses are allowed to ban...

video at the link.

The biggest gift came from Swift herself. The singer has donated $250,000 to schools around the country that she's either attended or worked with. The money will pay teachers' salaries as well as buy books and fund various educational programs. "Something I wanted to do at the end of this amazing year and especially on my birthday was give back to something I really believe in, which is education," says Swift. "The schools that I went to and the amazing people I got to learn from really turned me into who I am, and I wanted to give back."

Tens of thousands of osteoporosis sufferers will be denied drugs unless their condition worsens, the NHS medicines rationing body has ruled after a year long legal battle. Campaigners branded the decision 'unethical' and called for the guidance to be reviewed next year. Patients with the disease, which causes the bones to thin and become brittle and prone to fracture, will have fewer treatment options if they do not respond to the first drug, it was argued. The original guidance was issued in October last year and since then the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence has been embroiled in...

11/23/2009 US Foreign Policy Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage By Gabor Steingart AP US President Barack Obama is back in the US after an Asian trip that produced few results. When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming. There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home. US President Barack Obama...

By Richard Knox In his full-bore battle against brain cancer, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy resorted to treatment many consider experimental -- proton beam radiation therapy. Sen. Kennedy returns to Senate last year after treatment for brain cancer. Medicare pays for it. But his death leaves open a slew of questions about the costly treatment, which delivers high doses of radiation to tumor cells while largely sparing healthy tissue from damage. Did it do him any good? Should Medicare (or private insurers) pay for the unproven treatment? And most politically fraught, should Kennedy's legacy issue -- universal health care -- include...

How much is one additional year of your life worth? Or one more year of life for your father or your wife? For your child? In Great Britain, the government has settled on a number: $45,000. That’s how much a government commission with the Orwellian acronym NICE has decided British government-run health care will pay for one additional year of life for a British subject. Think it could never happen here? Then you need to pay closer attention to what Washington is planning for your health care.

Health Care: There might not be a "death panel," as Sarah Palin described it, but federal bureaucrats will be making end-of-life decisions. That's why state-run medicine is a leading cause of death in Britain and Canada.A post on the former Alaska governor's Facebook page has caused a stir by discussing openly what many privately fear and something we have written about. End-of-life counseling and efforts to measure cost-effectiveness of treatment will combine in a perfect storm to ration care in a way that lets the government decide who lives and who dies. "The America I know and love is not...

Rationing: In the recesses of the House health care "reform" bill is a provision for end-of-life counseling for seniors. Don't worry, granny, they're from the government and they're here to help.At a town hall meeting at AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by a woman from North Carolina if it was true "that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die." At first, the president joked that not enough government workers existed to ask the elderly how they wanted to die. The idea, he said, was to...

This is my first posting and I aplogize that it is a vanity. But every morning I get up at 5:30 and check into what is happening on FR. My wife appears at about 6:30 and asks what's going on. After a few minutes of me railing, she always asks if there are any "fluffy bunny" stories. Normally, I would consider a perp getting shot, a fluffy bunny story, she is looking for something different. Stories about baby pink elephants are good. Srories about an old WW2 vet getting his H/S diploma are good. So could the FR team help...

GRAPHIC footage of a youth's brutal bashing at a train station shows three attackers taking turns to kick him in the head. Detectives investigating the vicious assault say they are appalled by the level of violence, which left the 23-year-old man from Sunshine in Melbourne's west with serious head injuries. The man was beaten even after he handed over the backpack that appeared to be the motive behind the gang-attack.

For anyone who doubted that NICE people don't exist, here is their website. NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, is the organization in the UK that sets the guidelines on healthcare rationing for the NHS. Look around the site. See what you find. You'll find quite a bit. Like this gem which I found under Implementation Tools, Costing Tools, CG24 Lung cancer: costing template (England).Click here to go directly to the source. Check out in the first column, second row of the chart..."cost of futile surgery avoided". Note that while the analysis does mention how they can...

After the Mumbai jihad there was a response of "Do good deeds." The Jews of Chabad (the sect that had its members tortured to death) asked for Jews to do "mitzvahs," good works. A yoga group that had some of its members killed believes that love will triumph. Then Deepak Chopra weighed in with his "think good thoughts" campaign. Chopra's effort has the "magic" of if a million people pledge to think good thoughts the world will change for peace. All of these efforts may be summarized by one phrase: Be Nice.

Comity artist, John McCain, told a nice little lady at one of his townhall meetings standing up to state she was afraid of Obama becoming president that, ’Senator Obama is a nice family man, a good man whom McCain would not be afraid of to be president.’ Sorry, that’s just stupidity, not comity. Barack ’ACORN’ Obama is not a nice man, he’s a nightmare for the Republic. Barack Obama is not a nice family man, he‘s a proven liar. A nice man doesn't work legislatively to protect infanticide in Illinois. A nice man doesn't train and fund an army committing...

NICE, France: In patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), immunosuppressive therapy followed by autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation elicited high response rates and improved quality of life for up to 6 years. The results of the study were presented here at the 18th Meeting of the European Neurological Society (ENS) by Tatiana Ionova, MD, PhD, Department of Haematology, Pirogov National Medical Surgical Center, Moscow, Russia. During the last decade, high-dose immunosuppressive therapy followed by autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation has been used with increasing frequency as a therapeutic option for patients with MS. "The aim of the study was to assess...

The economics of nice folks A basic tenet of economics is that people always behave selfishly, or as the 18th century philosopher economist David Hume put it, "every man ought to be supposed to be a knave." But what if some people aren't always knaves? Sam Bowles argues in Science June 20 that economics will get it wrong then, sometimes badly so. He points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage...

This is one of the kindest things I've ever experienced. I have no way to know who sent it, but there is a kind soul working in the dead letter office of the US postal service. Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Larry Stewart, a millionaire who became known as Secret Santa for his habit of roaming the streets each December and anonymously handing money to people, died Friday. He was 58. Stewart died from complications from esophageal cancer, said Jackson County Sheriff Tom Phillips, a longtime friend. Stewart, who spent 26 years giving a total $1.3 million, gained international attention in November when he revealed himself as Secret Santa. He was diagnosed in April with cancer, and said he wanted to use his celebrity to inspire other people to take random kindness seriously. "That's what we're here...

Our northern neighbor thinks being all multicultural and sucking up to the United Nations will keep the terrorists away. Think again. A FEW YEARS AGO I wrote a cover story for National Review with the subtle and nuanced title, "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." It caused quite a stir up there. My argument at the time was that Canada needed to be slapped out of its delusions and forced to stand up for itself in ways other than the Potemkin courage it shows in "standing up" to the United States. Had I thought of it at the time, maybe...

They help create an hour-glass figure — tucking in the waist, enhancing the cleavage and lending a slimmer, sexier look to the feminine form. Corsets have been in fashion since time immemorial. They were a rage in the Renaissance period and continued to be a hit in the Victorian era, when the desire to reduce the waist and exaggerate the bustline made them popular, mainly as lingerie. Today, corsets are back in fashion with a bang, but with a difference. They’re being paraded down the catwalks and flaunted by modern brides as tops and blouses, teamed with skirts, lehngas and...

THIS HEAT must be frying brains at City Hall. How else to explain the banning of Miss Universe from Nathan Phillips Square? Yes, you read that right. Natalie Glebova, 23, Toronto's own queen of the world, was to star at the Tastes of Thailand festival on the weekend. The Thais are very big on Natalie. She won the Miss Universe title in Bangkok seven weeks ago. Thailand made her an honorary ambassador. Beauty pageants may have waned here. But Miss Universe is mobbed on many streets of the world. And she is from Jarvis and Carlton, for crying out loud....

The municipal drama that plays out each day in City Hall has a reliable cast of characters, their daily arrival as inevitable as budget deficits and comptroller reports. There are the lawmakers on the east side of the building, the mayor on the west, and the lobbyists, advocates and reporters sprinkled throughout. They join with the rest of the powerful and the seeking and the perpetually aggrieved who descend on city government each day. And then there is the challah lady. Soft spoken and unassuming, she strides up the steps of City Hall each week with a few toasty loaves...

WHAT A DAY!

Bush2000 to Try Being Nice for One Week It's an experiment. What the Hell...

NICE, France (Reuters) - A bomb has exploded at an air forces barracks in the French Riviera city of Nice, at a building targeted in past attacks linked to separatists from the unruly Mediterranean isle of Corsica, a local prefect says. Local government prefect Pierre Breuil confirmed that the explosion was caused by a bomb. The explosion wounded a woman guarding a school beside the barracks and shattered windows in the area around the building, witnesses on the scene said on Friday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Last July, Corsican separatists, who regularly target state buildings on their...

Suspicious explosions hit government buildings in France Paris-AP -- Two French government buildings have been rocked by explosions today in Nice (NEES). At least 16 people were slightly hurt, including a police officer. One person was hospitalized for observation. The explosions hit the Treasury and Customs buildings, shattering windows for 150 yards and destroying several shops and parked cars. The second one happened soon after firefighters arrived. No word yet if they were bombs, but the French finance minister seems to think so. He says the explosions resulted from "cowardly attacks." Local officials say they're not ruling out any leads,...