California Conservative

We are two men in our mid-40s living in Los Angeles County. We have been in a committed relationship since October of 1996. We have no plans to get married and we believe our domestic partnership papers are sufficient to protect our rights. The recent ballot measure about gay marriage has prompted this letter from two-otherwise reasonable people in our community.

Growing up as a boy, I (John) was raised in small rural, San Joaquin Valley town just south of Stockton, CA. I am the oldest of four boys; I was raised on a dairy farm and attended the same schools that my mother and father attended. We had many of the same teachers. My mother and father have been married for 47 years.

My three brothers and I were raised in a “born again” Christian home, just like my nine aunts and uncles, by my grandparents who lived down the dirt road. In 1984, I left home and joined the LAPD. Now retired after 23 years of service, I still live in Los Angeles County. A lot has changed since I left home.

In June, 1991, I came out of the closet publicly, on CNN, after (the Rodney King arrest). To say this public announcement caused my family hardship is an understatement. I did not talk with my father for over 3 years and during one argument we were on the verge of physical violence and nearly went to blows.

Thank God we worked things out.

Today and since 1996, my parents gladly welcome my domestic partner Robert into their home. We have slept together in my parents’ home, they sat next to him at my retirement party in June, and my father has encouraged us to adopt children. I have nothing but respect and love for my mother and father.

My three younger brothers all got married and had kids.

I am the only gay child.

When my brother lost his wife to a massive stroke in 2007, I was the first person they called for help - John the cop – the gay brother from LA.

When another brother lost his wife after a long illness this year, I was the first person called for help during the crises. My deceased sister-in-law and brother are loyal born-again Christians, yet my partner and I have been welcomed into their home. I felt it an utter privilege to speak publicly at my sister-in-law’s funeral and publicly applaud her loving personality.

Before my presentation, my mom made a simple request of me: “Please don’t mention Robert as your domestic partner – it will offend a lot of people in the church.”

I warmly smiled, hugged my mom, and said, “Sure thing Mom, no problem.”

I was glad she made this request because my desire to honor my loving sister-in-law was more important than some shitty “politically correct” gay term.

By now, I am certain militant people in the GLBT community are screaming and yelling at the notion I would give in to such a request. People like this in our community just don’t get the meaning of the word tolerance.

My partner, Robert, was raised in a Catholic home. His large family from Mexico remains strongly tied to their Catholic upbringing. Robert’s mother would attend mass two and three times a day if she could drive to the church.

She never learned how to drive.

While our relationship has never been openly discussed, his family has NEVER-EVER acted in an unkind way towards me. Most of the time they take steps - overt steps to include me into their family’s activities. Yes, they know we sleep together, but our relationship is a non-issue with them.

Now that Prop 8 has come up, various people in our circle of family and friends have been asking lots of questions to us about the ads they see on TV. One topic that has come up multiple times in my conversations is the image of the ultra anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose mockery of Christianity is legend in not only the gay community but mainstream society.

Dear Dr. Gallo:

I was thrilled to learn today that Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize for his important discovery of HIV (formerly called HTLV-3) several years back from that patient who had lymphadenopathy. It’s hard to imagine how Montagnier isolated it within one patient and not among others. He is either the luckiest scientist on the planet or the most brilliant.

At the same time, I am shocked that you could not share in his one-quarter (one-eighth) of the esteemed honor. After all, you were “co-discovers” of this terrible scourge that has killed millions of people (but no chimpanzees). Then again, Max Essex should also share in the honor for his tireless efforts to cure Leukemia in cats (one-twelfths?).

This is so embarrassingly awkward – and so totally unfair that you have been slighted in this breathtakingly conspicuous manner and denied your rightful place among the pantheon of great scientists who have saved millions of lives from these awful microbes. Clearly, the water they are drinking in Stockholm must be spiked with something because these Swedes have lost their marbles. Then again, one never knows what those Lutherans are thinking.

Perhaps you will receive your long-overdue Nobel Prize for discovering HTLV-1 or HTLV-2, which caused millions of cases of Leukemia among innocent victims all over the atolls of Japan and the Caribbean.

If brilliant meteorologists can share their prize with Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter can share his prize with Yassar Arafat, Dr. Montagnier can certainly share his prize with you.

Your biggest admirer,

Clark Baker

This couragous woman has summed up my questions about Barak Obama:

“First of all, what country does Obama think he is running for president in? Why didn’t the media share the fact that immediately prior to the Obama arrival, they put on several free music concerts in order to get people to show up? Why go overseas and bash this country, apologize for this country? Why go work out at the Ritz instead of see wounded soldiers in a military hospital in Germany? Why cancel your visit and then blame it on the Pentagon when the fact of the matter is that the State Dept told Obama that he could visit but could not take cameras and the media for photo ops? Why go to Iraq and see that we are winning and the surge is working yet refuse to admit it to Catie Couric and say that even though we have succeeded, saving millions of lives both American, Allied, and Iraqi, that you would and do not support the surge? Why go on a fact finding trip and then after it all say that it didn’t change ANY of your views? Why, Obama, would you try to claim credit for Bush’s strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq? And why in the hell Obama would you be trapsing around the world pretending to be the president and insulting our military, giving the enemy credit for the success saying they “stood down”, and pandering to every group you see, when we, Americans, are suffering paying $4.00 + a gallon for gas?”

Last June, I posted this report about US hospitals and how many rely on fraud, preventable injuries and infections to patients to compensate for losses due to our government’s insistence that private hospitals treat and care for uninsured and underinsured citizens, indigents, and illegal aliens.

I learned how hospitals destroy good physicians and how predatory hospital chains like Tenet, Kaiser Permanente, and Adventist pressure local physicians already in successful private practice to join their groups. Those who refuse are targeted for sham peer review by corporate administrators and MDs who accuse non-compliant physicians as dangerous, incompetent, or disruptive. While a few tenacious victims expend their life savings to preserve their clinical privileges, others aren’t so lucky. Faced with the malicious and devastating loss of their medical careers, many take their own lives; which is what the health care corporations prefer anyway. To them, it’s only business – nothing personal.

I was never impressed by concerns about “the evils of big pharma.” I assumed that drugs are expensive because of the R & D that goes into finding cures for disease. Until now, I never imagined that some of those same drug companies would support junk science to fund researchers who would then produce expensive drugs that cause illness and disease around the world; or support junk legislation that would force healthy mothers and their children to take drugs that kill (under the threatened loss of child custody), and then use their subsequent sickness and mortality as evidence that a non-existent disease actually exists.

Such a scheme would have made Machiavelli weep with joy.

A New Investigation

I was not concerned about “big pharma” until my visit to Washington DC last May. I was there to meet with members of Semmelweis Society International (SSI). This is an impressive group of medical professionals – physicians, nurses, surgeons, medical and law school professors, and former CEOs of health care corporations. Because of my own experience with retaliation and my ongoing interest in US healthcare and sham peer review, I was interested to hear their stories directly from them.

I accompanied Gil Mileikowsky, MD, the OB/GYN who first explained sham peer to me in 2006. I spent five days with the members – all dedicated men and women who care deeply about the political corruption of healthcare and who risked their own careers to report fraud or abuse within the healthcare system. I recorded and edited their testimony, and posted this video after members testified before the US Congress and Senate. I was also honored to testify regarding my experience as an LAPD whistleblower.

Two recipients of the Semmelweis “Clean Hands Award” were reporter Celia Farber and molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, PhD. I had not heard of them before and knew nothing of their relationship to a little known controversy about HIV and AIDS.

After 28 years as an investigator, I consider myself pretty skeptical about things until I see proof. Most of my work today is pro bono, so I can pick and choose who I assist. Witnesses are expected to lie, but if I discover that a client has misrepresented facts or lied to me, I will usually drop the case. I’m fortunate to have the time, energy, and resources to help good people get out of undeservedly bad predicaments. Not all lawyers are like Mike Nifong or David Sotelo, and not all private investigators work like Anthony Pellicano. Without unbiased credibility, investigators are nothing more than a liability to their clients.

As various members interacted with Farber and Duesberg, I learned that the HIV/AIDS issue had not been entirely resolved. Like Dr. Mileikowsky’s story about sham peer review, this sounded equally unbelievable.

When I returned to Los Angeles, several former members began to question the wisdom of presenting the awards to Farber and Duesberg. In response, SSI President (and neurosurgeon) Roland Chalifoux issued this press release to explain the rationale of the awards. But when two dissenters persisted, Dr. Chalifoux asked me to conduct an independent investigation of Ms. Farber and Prof. Duesberg, citing my investigative experience, independence, and almost complete lack of knowledge about HIV and AIDS.

I accepted the case.

Although I didn’t expect it at first, I was warned that I should expect attacks from the “other side.” I wasn’t sure what they meant but kept it in the back of my mind. It didn’t take me long to find out for myself. (more…)

On the Massachusetts border that joins with Connecticut and Rhode Island, the green woods and blue waters of Lake Chaubunagungamaug shimmer in the summer breeze. Turning northeast along Sutton Road, it’s easy to see why America’s first colonists settled in these gently rolling hills and tilled its fields. In the fall, the thick green forests turn into a kaleidoscope of rusty yellows, reds, and browns before the first snow falls. At Nipmuck Pond, you won’t notice that Sutton Road has become Cliff Road until it changes again to Joe Jenny Road.

Five generations of the Whittier Family have farmed in this part of America. Their prized Holsteins have grown to a herd of 350, and their milk is driven daily a few miles north to their processing plant in Shrewsbury, where it is bottled and sold fresh at their milk store. From cow to cup, the process takes two days, which means “farm fresh milk” to their loyal customers. The fruits, berries, and vegetables from the farm are used to make jams, jellies, and relishes that they sell during the summer months. Todd, Wayne, and Janice Whittier have good reason to be proud. What could be more American?

Last September, Boston doctors found listeria in a woman who arrived to deliver her baby. They notified the state health department, which added her name to a list of four area residents who had also been sickened. Of those listed, two died in June and October and a third died in November. Another pregnant woman miscarried but survived, as did the mother and her new baby.

Once investigators identified Whittier Farms as the source, the health department closed their Shrewsbury operation until investigators could find and remove the source of contamination.

If not for the independence of government funded health departments, it’s not hard to imagine the dangers we would face without them. One can also imagine the risks posed if businesses like these (and their lawyers) policed themselves.

In the case of hospitals, there is no such independent oversight. And unlike Whittier Farms, hospitals actually profit when they injure or kill patients.

In 2005, Harvard Professor Lucian L. Leape, M.D reported:

“In most industries, defects cost money and generate warrantee claims. In healthcare, perversely… physicians and hospitals can bill for the additional services that are needed when patients are injured by their mistakes.”

Harming patients isn’t the only way hospitals profit. The National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers $33 billion annually. In 2005, the Florida Attorney General filed civil racketeering charges against Tenet Healthcare to recover $1 billion. Although some individuals have been convicted, legislators are primarily responsible for forcing hospitals to treat indigent, uninsured, and illegal alien patients for votes. And when those hospitals compensate with alternative revenue streams, politicians feign disdain (if they show any interest at all).

In this video, the corporate director of this Florida hospital explains why hospitals must rely on creative ways to keep their hospitals open:

In 2001, we had an illegal alien as a patient in our hospital. He was there from 2001 through 2003. He had over $1.5 million in healthcare services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000… That case is not over. We have spent…$250,000 in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country.

(We) have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage. He has no family, no friends… His charges to date for almost two years is $1.5 million… we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times, we have contacted immigration and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We’re even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient…

In 2007, the Florida Hospital Association estimates that there was $100 million in costs for illegal patient care… right now I have six patients, illegal, undocumented patients, that we are seeing every three days for renal dialysis, for all of this… we have received no reimbursement… our healthcare costs are severely affected by this… A large percentage of the babies born at our facility are from illegal parents… we have tried repeatedly (to report illegal aliens to the authorities) and have been told they are only interested if a crime has been committed.

While fraud leaves a paper trail, it’s much more difficult to prove that physicians deliberately or recklessly harmed patients.

For example, if Dr. Smith successfully treats you for a small cut, he might legitimately charge your insurance company $500. But if Dr. Smith uses improperly sterilized equipment (like those routinely used at this Tenant hospital), the subsequent infections, IV antibiotics, intensive care, and related costs permit hospitals to charge much more whether the patient survives or not. Essentially, the sicker a well-insured patient gets, the more hospitals can charge.

Tenet Healthcare’s Garden Grove Hospital knowingly used defective sterilizers for many months. “Flash” sterilizers are used to clean surgical instruments soiled during operations. These had repeatedly failed to kill resilient spores during repeated routine test runs. When hospital administrators instructed surgeon Charles Rosen how to explain the situation to federal inspectors, Rosen resigned and went straight to federal authorities.

“This information was being withheld from the very surgeons entrusted with care of the surgical patients,” Rosen complained in a 2000 resignation letter to then-hospital-CEO Mark Meyers. “Such behavior is beyond belief. I feel it is a deliberate attempt at cover-up for financial reasons.”

When LA’s Cedar Sinai Medical Center almost killed Dennis Quaid’s children last year, the hospital’s chief medical officer admitted the “preventable error.” The unprecedented admission had more to do with Quaid’s celebrity than the spokesman’s candor. Had Dennis Smith’s children been injured, the medical records would have likely disappeared into a lawyer’s briefcase until a settlement (with a solid non-disclosure statement attached) had been signed.

Although he has sued the drug company, Quaid has not yet sued Cedars. Whether he sues or not, malpractice lawsuits in California are capped too low to worry most California hospitals. The California Department of Public Health fined Cedars $25,000 which is, coincidentally, what the hospital typically charges insurance companies for two babies who spend one day in intensive care – a pittance designed to make Californians believe the agency performs any oversight.

Quaid has since created The Quaid Foundation to give patients a place to report medical errors. Unfortunately, non-disclosure statements prevent many disclosures. If Quaid partnered with physicians of Semmelweis Society International or the Alliance for Patient Safety, he would team with physicians who aren’t afraid of protecting patient rights.

After reviewing 37 million Medicare patients’ medical records, (e.g. patients over 65), Healthgrades reported that medical errors in hospitals kill 200,000 patients each year. They did not report what happened to patients younger than 65.

HCQIA

When restaurants poison diners, the local or state health department closes the business until the problems are fixed. But when hospitals harm patients, administrators close ranks, investigate themselves, and destroy physicians and nurses who talk.

This isn’t a new problem. When patients sued for unnecessary errors and complications before 1986, many assumed that former patients and their lawyers were maliciously shaking down hospitals for millions of dollars.

To protect healthcare managers, their own lawyers drafted legislation called the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) in 1986. HCQIA’s flaw (pronounced Hick-Wa) stems from the fundamental conflict of interest between the bill’s co-authors, corporate hospital attorneys Horty & Springer, and the patients they ostensibly protect. Predictably, the same lawyers rendered HCQIA unenforceable by inserting this subsection:

42 U.S.C. §11112 (b) (3): A professional review body’s failure to meet the conditions described in this subsection shall not, in itself, constitute failure to meet the standards of subsection (a) (3) of this section. (See page 20)

This section indemnifies hospitals and their own peer review boards from being liable for their own rules. So, for example, when Dr. Gil Mileikowsky agreed to assist a patient whose healthy fallopian tubes were removed by another physician without her consent, the hospital staged what many physicians call a “sham peer review.” By characterizing Dr. Mileikowsky as disruptive, the hospital suspended his clinical privileges and reported their decision to the National Practitioners Data Bank (NPDB), which effectively prevents physicians whose licenses have been suspended in one state from practicing in others.

Regrettably, the Act is ineffective because it relies on corporate hospital executives to report errors and complications that they profit from.

For example, two physicians in one small Tenet facility generated $40 million/year in revenues from patients they subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures. As in all cases, the protections that patients relied on depended upon; 1) the hospital executives who profit financially from unnecessary procedures, errors and complications, and 2) the physicians who were responsible for such misconduct.

Examples of failures to fulfill HCQIA’s intent by corporate hospital executives have been reported by CBS News, The Street, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and AMA Voice.

Examples of failures to fulfill the HCQIA’s intent by physicians are found in Medical Economics, the Pittsburg Post Gazette, Time, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Although small businesses and entrepreneurs have been the driving force behind the growth of the US economy, the US healthcare system has regressed into one that does not permit competition.

Because competition tends to reduce consumer costs, Dr. Mileikowsky reports that hospital law firms consider staff physicians who compete as “problem physicians.” Horty Springer’s hostility toward independent private physicians is demonstrated throughout their seminars, courses, and audiotapes that can be purchased on their website.

Hospital lawyers have developed a methodology and vernacular for controlling physicians, patients, and other advocates who report incidents to outside agencies or agree to testify on behalf of patients/victims of medical negligence. Their preferred strategy is to destroy the physician by discrediting him or her as disruptive, crazy, impaired, incompetent, or an imminent danger. Horty Springer also trains hospital administrators how to protect themselves from physicians who report dangerous conditions or patients who are killed or injured by recklessness or incompetence (whistleblowers).

Harvard economist Kip Viscusi estimates that the value of one human life is somewhere between four- and nine million dollars. If multiplied by Healthgrade’s “200,000 patients who die each year”, the loss to the US economy can be estimated somewhere between $800 billion and $1.8 trillion, annually.

Based on 152 published peer review articles, the Nutrition Institute of America, concludes that medical mistakes kill 784,000 people annually.

In 2006, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons unanimously passed resolutions to correct these issues. The time for US legislators to correct these mistakes is long overdue.

If you do not want your hospital to harm you or your loved ones for profit, call your local representatives and demand their support of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

(More info here, here, and here)

“I know, Officer - you jus’ stopping’ me ‘cause I’m BLAAACK!”

Cops hear it every day, and although millions of hours and tax dollars are wasted each year to disprove false allegations, many blacks (and guilt-ridden whites) consider the non-existence of racial profiling as proof of an institutional cover-up that corroborates its existence.

Who needs more proof than that?

Trial lawyer Merrick Bobb, who faked portions of the Christopher Commission Report, blames “… the impossibly high burden of proof…” for the exoneration of the falsely accused. While Bobb may have forgotten the need for evidence, he ignores facts that show officers stopping blacks and Latinos at rates that are consistent with (or lower than) high Latino and black crime statistics.

How many innocent white people does he think the LAPD should shake down before LA cops can question these suspects? Because they are overwhelmingly black and Latino, Bobb says these “patterns demand a response” without explaining that taxpayers will waste millions more on trial lawyers like himself who profit by corrupting our police departments.

While most Americans easily dismiss Bobb and Mack’s arguments, we had no idea that millions of black Americans actually believe that our “genocidal government” created the AIDS virus in a laboratory to control black populations – or where such rumors came from – until Barak Obama introduced us to his “spiritual advisor”. Because police officers are the most prominent representatives of America’s “oppressive government,” it’s hard for some criminal suspects to not defend their bad behavior by initiating false complaints when arrested.

Cops who tire of the physical and political risks that come with stopping black suspects often move to safer (and more appreciative) neighborhoods. While those who serve within LA’s toughest areas are rewarded spiritually, they also risk being labeled as problem officers after their third false complaint. And if that complaint arrives during his third year of service, he may spend the next 27 doing everything he can to avoid criminals who might make a fourth (frustrated rookies call them drones). To trial lawyers like Bobb, benchwarmers who generate no complaints make better cops than those who foul out after four quarters of triple-doubles. After a while, cops ask themselves why they don’t simply ignore black criminals - The pay’s the same so why take unnecessary risks?

False allegations don’t hurt cops as much as the communities they try to serve. Some officers learn to avoid contact with black suspects, leaving vulnerable black communities to deal with them alone, unarmed and undefended. Crime and neglect further strain and dispirit these neighborhoods, where locals congregate on Sunday mornings to hear preachers blame white people (e.g., Republicans) for their sorrows.

Forty years after Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) convinced Americans to pay single black girls to have fatherless babies, his neglected offspring continues to join gangs while “locked down” inside Democrat-controlled public schools. After decades of neglect and disillusionment, some seek spiritual comfort. If lucky, they find someone like Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. If not, someone like Rev. Jeremiah Wright finds them.

Celebrated by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) in 2005, black theology requires pastors to convince their congregants that black people “must struggle daily under the burden of white oppression.” Democrats rely on activists like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Jeremiah Wright to spread this message to foment racial disharmony and distrust to control the black vote. Few Americans considered that until now.

For more than three decades, Jeremiah Wright screamed FIRE in his crowded theater. But when America’s magical Negro introduced us to his spiritual advisor, even liberal Democrats choked on the hypocrisy. Wright backtracked a little at the National Press Club, blunting his government-AIDS fable with a vaguer US Government “is capable of anything.”

After years of sermons that routinely violated the Third and Ninth Commandments before thousands of susceptive parishioners, Wright’s theological and political peers are now expressing frustration not because of Wright’s abhorrent performances, but because of his willingness to enunciate his unrepentant bigotry days before the upcoming primaries. Wright tried to wrap himself in the skirts of “the black church” and found that embarrassed blacks and guilt-ridden whites were unwilling to defend him.

Pastor John of LA’s First AME Church was not hurt or disgusted by Wright’s sermons, but that “one of the most historic political campaigns in the nation’s history could be derailed by this pastor who has been needlessly callous, careless and insensitive in his remarks” – implying that they are true and would’ve been okay AFTER Barak Obama’s undeserved election.

Now that Jeremiah Wright has shown us the inside of black theology churches and how he ignores black-on-black crime to sell the voodoo of white-on-black racism, it’s easier to understand where someone like LAPD Police Commissioner John Mack and Merrick Bobb learned that white LA cops routinely engage in racial profiling. Mack attends the First AME Church.

Because Mack is a major player in LA’s racial politics, we can assume that he’s not subject to customary delusions of his co-parishioners. If so, it’s hard to imagine why he would deliberately spread false tales to his vulnerable constituents – unless to destabilize and influence his constituents in support of LA’s other corrupt political leaders – and trial lawyers like Bobb who profit from these beliefs.

In this effort, Mack and his peers are not unlike the foremen who once managed field slaves. Mack was flummoxed not by the non-existence of racial profiling within the LAPD, but by the fact that he might one day be forced to choose between reality and the witches’ brew of black theology.

God bless Jeremiah Wright!

For all his faults, he was the only man in America who could have arrested the presidential hopes of the smooth-talking Marxist from Hawaii. Wright’s God-given gift to do and say exactly the wrong thing at the right time transcends all human understanding, making Hillary and her husband look almost normal.

Like a cat burglar’s yappy Pomeranian, Wright doesn’t know when to shut up. Padding through a sleeping household at 3 AM, Obama’s free-spirited ankle-biter isn’t afraid to bark at the family mastiff, or his Bible-clinging-gun-toting owner.

Who could blame them?

While the Harvard-lawyer studied Wright’s genius of convincing Chicago’s poorest and most vulnerable families to drop their welfare and beer money in his offertory plate, Obama gave Wright the political legitimacy that his moral incompetence regularly subtracted. Wright baptized Obama with the black authenticity that his white mother and Harvard could not give him. Together, Trinity became the blackface Obama needed for his political minstrel show.

To the Democrat Party, Wright and Obama were invaluable in their control of Southside Chicago’s black voters. Like the Islamic theologians who blame Jews for the miseries of their primivitized flock, Trinity and similar pseudo-Christian scams that target vulnerable blacks throughout America have replaced the impolite tactics once used to control them by using Islam’s more nuanced forms of indoctrination. Instead of terrorizing “wayward Negroes” with white hoods and flaming crosses, Democrats now empower talented herdsmen like Wright to corral, feed, and provoke their livestock into blaming Republicans for the Democrat Party’s historical and political sins – and, of course, voting for more Democrats.

The problem with this minstrel show is that Wright doesn’t know how or when to shut up. Except for America’s loneliest moonbats, most Americans would be too embarrassed to spread lies about HIV and 9/11 – especially after being publicly pantsed by the facts. But after decades of audacity that comes from the corruption of ignorance, white guilt, affirmative action, and moral relativism, Wright has returned for more, while Obama tries to figure out a polite way to stop the yapping Pomeranian from humping his political legs.

While Wright insists that his marginalization is an attack on the black church, it’s hard to find real Christians who are willing to back his claims with more noise than a December cricket. Christian churches are not black or white, and any defense of Wright will likely come from Hamas, Jimmy Carter, or secularists who loathe real Judeo-Christian values.

The blowback Wright now sees isn’t an attack on the “Black Church,” but rather the convulsed nausea from mainstream Americans, black and white, who recognize Wright’s scam for what it is. Whether he knows it or not, Jeremiah Wright has saved America from his own dispiriting progeny.

The Lord works in mysterious ways – God Bless Jeremiah Wright!

I won’t run for president, but I ran for State Assembly in 2006. I’ve answered questions at political forums and speeches. I’ve testified in court and sworn depositions as an expert witness more than 500 times. I’ve been asked tough questions and answered them all.

Even on this blog, when someone coherently challenges something I’ve written, I always respond. I’ve found that the problem doesn’t stem from my answer, but from the questioner’s refusal to understand them.

Some questions are unfair. For example, “Do you still beat your wife?” is a “loaded question”. The NO-answer resolves the present allegation but leaves the implied past behavior.

During this week’s debate, BHO was asked about his pastor and both BHO and HRC were asked about their association with terrorists. The questions are not tough in an algebraic sense, but because their answers require an admission of guilt. And because they are true, our embarrassed Affirmative Action candidates have the audacity to blame the media for finally asking some uncomfortable questions about their morality, virtue, and patriotism.

Mark Twain said that “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” The candidates’ (and their supporters’) hostility stems not from media unfairness, but from what they don’t want to say and what their supporters don’t want to hear.

More here

For those who wonder why the networks and newspapers are dying, look no further than pseudo-journalists like Rachel Uranga. Her report this week about the LAPD’s recent murder spree reminded me of the biker who saves a girl from being eaten by a lion:

… the lion grabbed her by the cuff of her jacket and tried to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumped off his bike, ran to the cage and hit the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumped back and let go of the girl. The biker then took her to her terrified parents, who thanked him endlessly.

A reporter saw the whole scene and, addressing the biker, said, ‘Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life.’

‘Why, it was nothing,’ said the biker, really. The lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger and reacted the right way.’

‘I noticed a patch on your jacket,’ said the journalist.

‘Yes, I ride with an Israeli motorcycle club,’ the biker replied.

‘Well, I’ll make sure this won’t go unnoticed. I’m a journalist with the Times, and tomorrow’s paper will have this on the front page.’

The following morning the biker bought the paper to see if it indeed brought out the news of his actions. On the front page was the headline:

ISRAELI GANG MEMBER ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

In 1999, Uranga was asked:

Q: What are your future goals?
A: To win the Pulitzer (laughs). Just kidding. I don’t care.
Q: Why not?
A: Because I just really want to be able to do the bigger stories I have in my mind.

Like real cops, REAL journalists report stories – they don’t come to work with stories they have in their minds. But while Rafael Perez (also an affirmative action hire) went to prison for creating stories, Rachel is a rising star at the Daily News.

My friends need not worry about fake journalists like Uranga any longer. The mainstream (aka dinosaur) media (MM) is being replaced by the Internet and cable news. Real journalists, like Daily News alum Michelle Malkin, successfully compete with their former employers. We are no longer forced to rely on Walter Cronkite to tell us “That’s the way it is…” Bloggers forced CBS to dump Cronkite progeny Dan Rather and the NYT is going the way of Air America. We now have choices.

My news sources:

I read the Times and Daily News for free on the Internet and watch/TIVO Fox News from 3-6 PM PST. Although the former rag LA Weekly still hawks vaginal rejuvenation, call girls, and “medical” marijuana, their journalism is usually more solid than LA’s MM.

Besides Malkin, giants like Drudge, Breitbart, or local bloggers like Patterico (a deputy LA County DA) and Mayor Sam provide free alternative stories that would horrify the mainstream mediocrity. And if those outlets are too unsophisticated for you, bona fide geniuses like UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh or Townhall columnists like Thomas Sowell are also available, free for the reading. We don’t need Uranga, Rather, or Cronkite – they need us.

So don’t let Uranga or her ilk upset you. She’d never make it on her own, and her employers can’t make it without your monthly subscriptions. And if you need to sell your car or find a puppy, there’s always Craigslist.

Fourteen years ago, I received an unforgettable telephone call:

“Officer Baker?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m Charlton Heston.”

My heart jumped – Moses was on the line!

“I heard about your case,” he began, “and after some checking with friends around town and in the LAPD, I have come to the conclusion that you were screwed… I have instructed my lawyers to provide for you any assistance that you may need to appeal your case.”

MY CASE stemmed from false charges filed against me after I questioned the legitimacy of criminal charges brought against police officers whose brutality was required by then-Mayor Tom Bradley’s civilian Police Commission. Although I had no excessive force complaints or history, I was criminally charged with beating a pedestrian during an arrest (no injuries) weeks after publishing a Daily News op-ed about the LAPD’s brutal use-of-force policies.

It’s hard to explain what being wrongly convicted is like. There’s no easy way to tell prospective employers that I was convicted - but it was a bum rap. They don’t care. The LAPD fired me despite their knowledge of my innocence, leaving me with two children, a mortgage, and few prospects. So when Charlton Heston called me on that spring day in 1994, he lifted my spirits in ways that no one else could.

A few months later, the Superior Court reversed my conviction and cited Judge Veronica McBeth and prosecutor David Sotelo for judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. But instead of being disbarred like Mike Nifong, Sotelo was rewarded with an appointment to the Superior Court Bench. (His affiliation with Warren Christopher and La Raza continues today.)

I returned to the LAPD in 1994 and retired in 2000.

Today, I spend my days writing, mentoring, and helping other wrongly accused defendants. My kids are grown and married, and I am happy, healthy and honored to live within a mile of the Heston’s home.

Charlton Heston, who marched with Martin Luther King before Democrats hijacked his dream, was deeply concerned about civil rights issues. One reporter wrote:

In late years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his NRA work, he campaigned for Republican presidential and congressional candidates and against affirmative action. He resigned from Actors Equity, claiming the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play a Eurasian role in “Miss Saigon” was “obscenely racist.”

He attacked CNN’s telecasts from Baghdad as “sowing doubts” about the allied effort in the 1990-91 Gulf War. At a Time Warner stockholders meeting, he castigated the company for releasing an Ice-T album that purportedly encouraged cop killing.

Heston wrote in “In the Arena” that he was proud of what he did “though now I’ll surely never be offered another film by Warners, nor get a good review in Time. On the other hand, I doubt I’ll get a traffic ticket very soon.”

He would not and did not.

As good as my life it today, a day does not pass when I don’t thank God and Heston for his hand when I needed him. God blessed him, his friends, family, and his community with love, grace, virtue, and courage that so many in Hollywood abhor today.

Goodbye, my friend. I pray that you find your well-deserved place in Heaven.