Thursday, August 20, 2009

Usain Bolt celebrates setting his second World Record at the World Championships in Berlin.






BERLIN - Usain Bolt startled the world again.

The Jamaican sprinting great captured the 200-meter gold medal in 19.19 seconds Thursday, yet another world record.

His time in the 200 slashed 0.11 seconds off the mark he set last year at the Beijing Olympics and came four days after he broke his 100 record by the same margin.

"I am on my way to being a legend," said Bolt, who gritted his teeth and pointed to the clock as soon as his time flashed.

No one among the near capacity crowd at the 70,000-seat Olympic Stadium disagreed.

"If Queen Elizabeth knighthooded me and I would get the title Sir Usain Bolt, that would be very nice," Bolt said.

Bolt is now 5 for 5 in major sprint events. He won the gold in the 100, 200 and sprint relay in Beijing's Bird Nest, each time with a world record. Now he is one race away from doing likewise in Berlin.

"I was running my heart out," Bolt said. "I got my start right and that was the key."

Alonso Edward of Panama was second, a distant 0.62 seconds behind Bolt. Wallace Spearmon of the United States took bronze.

"Just coming out there, I'm just waiting for the lights to flash 'game over,' 'cause I felt like I was in a video game," said Shawn Crawford, who finished fourth. "That guy was moving - fast."

Bolt's spirits got a boost before the start when teammate Melaine Walker added the world title to her Olympic gold in the women's 400 hurdles, another success for the Caribbean island with outsized performances at the championships.

After defending champion Tyson Gay had withdrawn because of injury, Bolt's main competitor stood beyond the finish line - a huge track clock painted in the same colors as his Jamaican jersey.

With a new take on President Kennedy's famous Cold War quote "Ich bin ein Berliner," Bolt pleased the locals with a training jersey saying "Ich bin ein Berlino," referring to the bear mascot of the championships.

His running was even better than his show. From Lane 5, he gobbled up all opposition by the end of the curve, and then let loose those huge arms and legs in a whirl of unmatched speed.

Once across the line, he stuck out his tongue much in the manner of basketball great Michael Jordan.

Bolt took off his orange shoes, which had taken him though through eight races in six days, and he started celebrating on the eve of his 23rd birthday.

It was the first sultry evening in Berlin, with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, reminiscent of the warm night, exactly one year ago, in Beijing.

"I definitely showed people that my world records in Beijing were not a joke," Bolt said.

During warm ups, Bolt faked knocking out Spearmon, with the American happily playing along, taken in by the Bolt aura.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

He Tweeted from Iraq, but the mission was hardly top secret

Keith Olbermann

False

"Yes, this would be the same congressman (Rep. Pete Hoekstra) who last year Tweeted the whereabouts of a top-secret mission to Iraq."

Cash for Clunkers doesn't mean the government gets a peek

False

If you log into the government's Cash for Clunkers Web site (cars.gov) from your home computer, the government can "seize all of your personal and private" information, and track your computer activity.

No, the government isn't going to kill Granny


The health care reform bill "would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner."

Betsy McCaughey

Holdren never endorsed these ideas


John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."

Lungren says Obama would have government require a centenarian to get a pill, not a pacemaker

President Barack Obama suggested on national TV that the Democratic health care bill "will have government decide" that a healthy, 100-year-old woman in need of a pacemaker "should take a pain pill" instead

Dan Lungren on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 in a speech on the House floor

Lungren says Obama would have government require a centenarian to get a pill, not a pacemaker

Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican from California, says President Barack Obama's health care plan is so mixed up that the government would tell 100-year-old ladies who need pacemakers to take pain pills instead.

During a speech on the House floor on July 28, 2009, Lungren cited comments that Obama made in a TV special to suggest that Obama's plan was callous and bureaucratic.

"If we are being told that this week we have to make the decision as to whether or not the program we put forward will have government decide whether a 100-year-old woman who is in extraordinarily good health but needs a pacemaker ought to instead be told by the government that merely she should take a pain pill—as the president suggested on television not too long ago— then maybe we owe it to the American people to give ourselves sufficient time” to study this legislation further.

Lungren was referring to remarks Obama made during the ABC News' June 24 special, Questions for the President: Prescription for America, which was anchored by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

We went to the transcript of the event and found that Lungren is distorting Obama's words. While Obama did bring up the example of patients and their families possibly having to choose between a pill and a pacemaker at some point, he did it as a hypothetical example while emphasizing that the government’s role should be to provide background information so that patients and doctors can better sort through thorny, end-of-life issues.

The exchange began when Sawyer introduced Jane Sturm, who takes care of her mother, Hazel, now 105. When Hazel was 100, Sturm said, the doctor told her she needed a pacemaker. Both mother and daughter said they were game, but an arrhythmia specialist initially said no, before seeing Hazel’s “joy of life” in person.

Sturm asked the president, “Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, quality of life? Or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?”

After joking that he’d like to meet Sturm’s mother and “find out what she’s eating,” the president said, “I don't think that we can make judgments based on peoples' spirit. That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.”

After Gibson interjected with a comment about how money may not have been available for a pacemaker, Obama responded, “Well, and -- and that's absolutely true. And end-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. I don't want bureaucracies making those decisions, but understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. We don't always make those decisions explicitly. We often make those decisions by just letting people run out of money or making the deductibles so high or the out-of-pocket expenses so onerous that they just can't afford the care.”

Obama continued, “And all we're suggesting -- and we're not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care. A lot of that is going to have to be, we as a culture and as a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves. But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller. And those kinds of decisions between doctors and patients, and making sure that our incentives are not preventing those good decisions, and that -- that doctors and hospitals all are aligned for patient care, that's something we can achieve.”

Looking at the full transcript, it’s clear that Obama voluntarily brought up the example of having to choose between a surgery and a pill. But he did so as a hypothetical example of difficult decisions about medical treatment for older patients. He was not advocating, much less requiring, bureaucrats to make a potentially life-ending decision for a centenarian.

“I don’t want bureaucracies making those decisions,” Obama said.

One can be skeptical about whether Obama’s promises to keep the government out of doctor-patient decisionmaking will hold if health care legislation becomes a reality. But Lungren goes beyond that to distort what the president actually said. We rate Lungren’s claim False.





President Obama recieves 30 Death Threats a day!


Thirty Deaths threats a day is what our great President wakes up to in the Morning and briefed. That was very surprising to me for some reason. Even though I know the racial tension in America, I never would've imagined it possible. I didn't like some of the things President Bush did, but I'd never want him dead. That's the difference between Blacks and Whites, we're supposed to be so wild and savage like but who's been doing mostly all the killing in America? From lynchings to hangings you name it they've done it. I'm no way blinded by the trickery of people like this. Like the members of the republican party getting on t.v. every other day lying, purposely trying to scare the American people, and push President Obama's agenda back. There are allot of people who stand to lose out on capital they have been making hand over foot for century's. Quiet as kept The President Loves this country, and is doing everything in his power to get it back to the greatest nation in the world. Not an enemy to all. I thought we were a little further down the road then this in our race relations. It's a sad day in America! You Touch Him We Ride! This is the buzz on the street, everyone is screaming the same thing, from thugs to businessmen. This generation can see through the clouded minds generations before us were enslaved with. This is my opinion J. BrownTown, everyone is welcome here.