My take on the Padres-Dodgers #Basebrawl

A sports take, because knee-jerk reactions from a national media that is Los Angeles/Dodgers-centric get tiresome. My response to Sports on Earth columnist Gwen Knapp's "No Reason" post...

Gwen Knapp joins a crowded left field of sports media colleagues on the Dodgers' bandwagon who, in response to last night's brawl, are all running with the same lame "tale-of-the-tape" meme. To be fair, Carlos Quentin is a bull and Zack Greinke isn't. But that doesn't tell the whole story, especially when one factors in the damage that a well-located fastball can do.

Oh, and Q was not crowding the plate:

h/t to CJ Nitkowski for image

Unfortunately, Gwenn also fails to mention that the official Twitter feed for the Dodgers went trolling afterwards. Or what happened after the game, when the REAL adolescent, Matt Kemp, went looking for a fight...

Clayton Richard in #BeastMode

Quoting the original caption: Los Angeles Dodgers' Matt Kemp, left, is stopped by San Diego Padres' Clayton Richard when Kemp confronted the Padres' Carlos Quentin in the tunnel walk-way exiting Petco Park following the baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in which a brawl occurred when Quentin was hit by a pitch from the Dodgers' Zack Greinke in San Diego, Thursday, April 11, 2013. Greinke suffered a broken left collarbone in the brawl.(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

...which resulted in a San Diego police officer having to break up the confrontation brought on by Kemp:

More of Clayton Richard in #BeastMode

Quoting the original caption: A San Diego police officer arrives to break up a confrontation involving Los Angeles Dodgers' Matt Kemp, left, and San Diego Padres' Clayton Richard after Richard stopped Kemp when he confronted the Padres' Carlos Quentin in the tunnel walk-way exiting Petco Park following the baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in which a brawl occurred when Quentin was hit by a pitch from the Dodgers' Zack Greinke in San Diego, Thursday, April 11, 2013. Greinke suffered a broken left collarbone in the brawl. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

I'm a lifelong baseball fan -- I love the game. I recall a time when a home plate umpire rang up Matt Kemp on a called third strike that he didn't like. Kemp was in a rut (rare for him) and he WENT OFF. Now I've heard cursing before but Kemp was dropping F-bombs and was loud and vulgar all the way to the dugout... and he didn't stop there. He went on and on. It was cringe-worthy. The hundreds of fans within earshot would agree. I can't say that those who heard Kemp's tirade lost respect for him as a "professional" but I know that I did that day.

Back to point, how the Dodgers (didn't) handle themselves last night detracts from what should be a national celebration this Monday -- Jackie Robinson Day. It's a bad time for bad PR, especially with the anniversary of the brutal beating that the still-recovering Bryan Stow suffered in the Dodger's parking lot two years ago, and the Dodgers' former owner Frank McCourt still not having picked up the tab for Stow's mounting medical costs. But I guess that's a different topic that "sports writers" are afraid to touch.

To wrap this up, I'd argue that, besides Kemp, another person who acted without reason was Zack Greinke himself, who suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder. And taking on a bull by the horns didn't prove to be too smart, did it?

Related: What a #Basebrawl can do for a team...

Say No to Flo and Say No to Progressive!

The "Open Society" network that nazi-collaborator George Soros created launders money to tax-exempt foundations intent on destroying America. Whether it's their radical environmentalism, wide open national borders, or population control through euthanasia and infanticide, George Soros is the man behind the curtain.

Which brings us to another man, one who hides behind a mask... literally. His name is Peter B. Lewis.

Warning: "What you are about to read may disturb you."

Peter B. Lewis is Progressive Insurance Corporation's billionaire Chairman of the Board, a "good friend" of George Soros, and an admirer of Communist dictator Mao Tse-Tung.

Hoover's Handbook of American Business has described Lewis as a "functioning pot-head." Peter B. Lewis uses his Progressive wealth to promote drug use, including psychedelics, and finance Democrats, including Obama.

Peter B. Lewis corresponded with the UN to undermine US drug laws so that children would have access to pot. In 2000, he was busted by customs agents overseas for importing hashish.

The progressive movement sees Peter B. Lewis as their champion -- he's a major player/backer for hard-left, anti-American organizations and extreme Leftist causes including the since-morphed ACORN, the Campaign for America's Future, the Center for American Progress, the Democracy Alliance, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org, militant pro-homosexual organizations, SEIU, the Tides Foundation, and the various "Occupy Movement" fronts.

The message that Lewis's money buys ends up in "mainstream" media by design. But it's not just the insidious narrative being pushed by "the news" or all of those ditzy Flo commercials -- it's the funding that Lewis provides for the Left's never-ending culture war against our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Here's a pre-2008 election video that follows some of that money...

Peter B. Lewis's son Jonathan, from a divorced marriage, once described the closeness of the Lewis-Soros financial collusion as being "like a married couple." Lewis is against teachers being tested for drugs, and is leveraging what public support there is for the decriminalization of marijuana to achieve these "progressive" goals: The further "dumbing down" of America's youth, and the infusion of cash that revenue collectors will receive if/when the government legalizes (taxes) pot. In other words, it's a win-win for the Left... more low information voters and a bigger government-bloated stash.

Final note: The "ditziness" of Progressive Insurance's Flo may come from Peter B. Lewis himself -- he's appeared at a city council meeting tricked out in his Lone Ranger outfit. (He has a football field-length yacht of the same name -- a place he once got caught using as a stash for his drugs.)

But it's Lewis's actions that mark him as more than an eccentric billionaire -- he's a danger to the republic. It's time to say no to Flo and say no to Progressive!


Links...
Peter B. Lewis -- Discover the Networks
From 2003: Who is Peter Lewis? (audio/text)
From 2005: Peter B. Lewis: "Aviator" of the Left?
From 2007: C-SPAN Video (41:09) Phil Kent talks about Foundations of Betrayal: How the Liberal Super-Rich Undermine America

Related...
Whether it's the "black box" mandate, Government Motors' OnStar, or Progressive's new "Snapshot" device, Big Brother is watching...
Ed Arnold: "...the Snapshot device is a tattletale. [It] records the time of day and speed per second one drives. Progressive... uses the time of day and speed to calculate the number of miles a customer drives, as well as how often the driver slams on the brakes."
Progressive's 'Snapshot' device worries consumer advocacy group

Another reason to say no to Progressive, from last year...
Matt Fisher: "Carrying Progressive insurance and getting into an accident does not entitle you to the value of your insurance policy. It just pisses off Progressive's lawyers... At the trial, the guy who killed my sister was defended by Progressive's legal team.... If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy."
My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

Matt's heartrending story became international news:
'My dead sister paid for Progressive to defend driver who killed her': Outrage at insurance company's efforts to avoid paying claim

Will Obamacare be a future Cause of Death?

***UPDATES***

Obamacare architect: It's "beyond comprehension" — after bad start, "will only get worse"

Ethicist's Stunning Challenge: Why Wait Until a Patient Is Dead to Harvest Organs

In the future, the day may come when, God Forbid, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" is listed as a Cause of Death, i.e., they died of Obamacare. Liberals wanting to "self check-out" (and not eat a bullet) may even get the choice of getting their ticket punched before boarding/PERMANENTLY CHECKING OUT in a G-LOC (G-force induced Loss of Consciousness), courtesy of their local George Soros-franchised "euthanasia" roller coaster.
**WARNING** The following video is disturbing...

The Left could then have their organs harvested/"recycled"/sold to the highest bidder.

Don't think horrors such as this can't happen. "Bioethicist" Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, MD, PhD, brother of former White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm, acted as Special Adviser on Health Care to Obama, assisting him and the White House's Office of Management and Budget on how to spend billions of our taxpayer dollars on health care. Dr. Zeke also argued for an organ allocation system he coined "The Complete Lives System" (Google it and CRINGE -- it seems straight out of Soylent Green and reads like it came from no doctor any of us ever knew nor one who took the Hippocratic Oath).

Then again, Dr. Zeke's career started in the isolated world of Academic Medicine before moving on to the Public Sector and into the White House, where he was able to affect HIS kind of policy change and practice HIS kind of medicine, Obamacare, because he had the President's ear... literally. The only thing missing from this checksum zero equation is the marshaling of the soon-to-be-dead for vote casting and signing their estates away... to The State.

h/t to "90Ninety Miles From Tyranny" for image

The following articles and news stories just begin to touch on the tyranny that is Obamacare...

Top Ten ObamaCare Horror Stories the Media Is Covering Up
John Nolte: Because the mainstream media lobbied every bit as hard as Obama to win passage of ObamaCare, they are every bit as invested in doing whatever is necessary to see that it is perceived as a success. Unfortunately for Americans who expect truth from their media, this means the media are having to manufacture a false reality that says ObamaCare is, to steal a phrase, "doing fine."

The top ten, "in no particular order..."

1. Millions are and will lose the insurance Obama promised they could keep. Because ObamaCare forces employers to offer expensive Cadillac plans but also offers the option of paying a fine for not providing health insurance that can be cheaper than providing it, between seven and twenty million Americans are likely to lose their health insurance coverage according to the Congressional Budget Office. The original estimate was closer to four million.

2. The cost of healthcare premiums is about to further skyrocket. Premium costs have already exploded, but that is a slow-motion explosion. In the near future, we could see costs double or worse. Naturally, these costs will hit an already burdened middle class hardest.

3. Lost jobs. Lost jobs.  

The Federal Reserve's March beige book on economic activity noted that businesses "cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff."

Meanwhile, human resources consulting firm Adecco found that half of the small businesses it surveyed in January either plan to cut their workforce, not hire new workers, or shift to part-time or temporary help because of ObamaCare.

4. Potential doctor shortages that will mean rationing. The healthcare industry is already a bureaucratic quagmire. ObamaCare is about to add steroids. As the profession becomes tyrannized by government, the talented people currently practicing medicine plan to get out sooner than expected. Who knows how many will choose not to get in.

Doctor shortages lead to the nightmare known as rationed care. Here's an unsettling example already being practiced.

5. Somewhere around $800 billion in tax increases will hit America's middle class. This added burden will not only further oppress a middle class already reeling from a drop in wages over the last few years, but could damage the overall economy.

6. Inflation, the cruelest tax on the poor. When businesses get socked with added costs brought about by higher taxes and burdensome government mandates, they pass those costs along to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

7. Added bureaucracy. Even those Obama lapdogs over at the Washington Post's Wonk Blog are admitting that applying for health care is about to get more burdensome than the byzantine paperwork involved in buying a home.

8. To cut costs or to avoid having to provide insurance, workers on the economic margins are already losing hours, which means a lower paycheck. There are a million sad stories in ObamaVille; here are just a few of them.

9. ObamaCare is projected to add $6.2 TRILLION to a deficit the GAO has already declared "unsustainable." That's "trillion" with a "t".

10. More taxes than currently estimated are likely to hit because of situations like this one.

Obamacare is Crumbling

Phil Kerpen: "Obamacare is falling apart before our eyes. The long-term care insurance program known as the CLASS ACT was deemed financially unworkable and shut down by the administration’s own actuaries. Taxpayer-funded health care cooperatives never got off the ground and were shut down in the fiscal cliff deal. Last month the federal Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan stopped accepting enrollment applications." Continue reading...

TIME: Obamacare incompetence 'really bad sign'...

Joe Klein: "Let me try to understand this: The key incentive for small businesses to support Obamacare was that they would be able to shop for the best deals in health care super-stores—called exchanges. The Administration has had 3 years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so.

This is a really bad sign."

Tens of thousands Obamacare 'navigators' to be hired

Paul Bedard: Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as "navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 will be paid up to $48 an hour, more than six times the federal minimum wage of $7.25, according to new regulations issued Wednesday.

CNN Reports On Rising Health Care Premiums Due To Obamacare

Wolf Blitzer: "Here's a question, were Americans misled about the cost of Obamacare? The president has long pledged that his health care law would reduce premiums and raise benefits. Now the Obama administration is conceding that some people, yes, some people will have to pay more, potentially even a lot more for health insurance coverage."

And there is this...

Why Obamacare Offers Voter Registration

David Catron: ...it should be obvious to the meanest intelligence that PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] is, and always has been, a vote-buying scheme. And what's the use of a vote-buying scheme that doesn't steer potential Democrats to voter registration forms?

A genuine health care reform law would not contain provisions that virtually guarantee huge increases in health insurance premiums. Yet, this is such a predictable effect of Obamacare that even Kathleen the Terrible no longer bothers to deny it. Last week, Sebelius admitted that a lot of people will see their premiums rise: "These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market." Health "reform," you may recall, was supposed to decrease costs.

Nor would genuine health care reform reduce access to health care. Obamacare will allegedly introduce tens of millions of new patients into the health system, yet many physicians are so put off by its intrusiveness that they plan to retire. Thomas Hemphill reports that "nearly one-third of all physicians will retire by 2020; many of them undoubtedly encouraged by the Affordable Care Acts restrictions on personal autonomy, bureaucratic regulation, and diminished job satisfaction." Obamacare will, that is, exacerbate the physician shortage.

During the health care debate, survey after survey showed that the two things Americans wanted most from reform were increased access and lower cost. Obamacare gave us precisely the reverse. Continue reading...

Pelosi, wielding a super-size gavel, laughs on her way to the Obamacare vote.

The maze that is Obamacare (click to enlarge, though it won't help)

The video below features an excerpt from a 2008 speech by Obama's former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, speaking to a British audience about why he favors government-run health care:

Donald Berwick: "Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."

Of course, the great Ronald Reagan warned us about the evils of socialized medicine fifty years ago...

Flashback: In 1961, Ronald Reagan, then a private citizen, joined the American Medical Association in opposing the Democrat Party's attempt to shove socialized medicine down the American people's throat. Reagan's warning is even more relevant today. 

"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project... Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it." ~Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan's 1961 Coffeecup speech – full text

The following ties in with Reagan's warning about socialism, i.e., the federal government not only telling us what doctor we can see, but quite possibly, in accordance with their central plan, telling us what our children can study:

Five Devastating Effects Obamacare Will Have on Young Adults
Alyene Senger: A provision neatly tucked into the massive health care law is an effective nationalization of the student loan industry. Obamacare ends government subsidies to private lenders and puts the federal government in charge of originating and servicing federally backed student loans. As almost anyone is eligible for a student loan, Heritage's Lindsey Burke explains that "these policies only exacerbate the college cost crisis, continuing a vicious cycle whereby college costs rise in tandem with ever-increasing federal subsidies... Colleges will once again be able to increase costs, and students with easy access to low-interest loans will once again be able to pay." Continue reading...

Alyene Senger closes out her article with this: "Obamacare’s negative impact on young Americans is just one of many reasons the law should be repealed."

Thank God for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is trying to do just that: "The American people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and get less. That's why we're here because we're saying let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. Let's not do that! Let's love people, let's care about people. Let's repeal it now while we can."

With news that Obamacare is already in trouble, with insurance exchanges being delayed an entire year, and Medicare not paying for diagnostic tests, and now thousands of patients being turned away from cancer clinics -- all because Obama pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare to fund his Obamacare, it's obvious that, even before full implementation, Obamacare must meet a quick and timely death... or it will be the death of the Republic.

Let's wrap this up with a "Free Obamacare Pink Slip Notice," courtesy of Doug Ross: "As a public service for businesses impacted by Obamacare's Byzantine maze of penalties, fees, taxes, mandates and other regulations that will require you to shed workers, our enterprising Cub Reporter Biff Spackle offers the following Semi-Official Obamacare Pink Slip."

Doug says, "Feel free to reproduce anywhere, anytime as a reminder to the drones that they may want to think before they vote next time around. That is, if there is a next time."

Related links...
George Soros’ Social Agenda for America
George Soros -- Discover the Networks
The Project on Death in America