Maggie's Farm

This is a post by guest writer Bruce Kesler:

Democrats are delirious with glee at their opportunity to impose a national health care regime that gets us closer to their ambition of government-run universal health care.

Their launch point is the 98 page outline issued by Senator Max Baucus.  Their point man is to be former Senator Tom Daschle, proposed as Secretary of Health and Human Resources, who has written of similar ambitions and is deemed to be able to wheel and deal toward that end.

Estimates of cost are in the area of $150-billion a year, and growing.  Since it shares many of the aspects of Massachusetts’ plan, which is costing double estimates, similar larger real costs can be expected.

Although only about 20-25% of the 47-million who are uninsured are actually US citizens in financial or underwriting need, let’s for the sake of this exercise use the 47-million number.

At an average monthly premium cost of $158, according to a recent study of actual individual premiums, that means $7.5 billion per month, or $90-billion a year.  Make that $250 a month, to include broader benefits that government typically requires in its plans, more health conditions due to guaranteed issue, and more elderly with community rating that averages their costs down while increasing costs for the younger, and you have $11.75 billion per month, or $141-billion a year.

Cut that back by even half, to eliminate benefits for illegal immigrants, for the legal ones whose sponsors are supposed to be responsible, and for those who can afford coverage but choose to go bare, and you’ve got an annual $70-billion program.

Assuming that Democrats are determined to further bust the federal budget and place us deeper in debt, paying or subsidizing the premiums of the truly needy uninsured would be cheaper than their favored schemes.  All that without a major disruption of the coverage, benefits, freedom of choice of everyone else, and without creating a huge new government bureaucracy that interferes with innovation in treatments or delivery.

So, is the Democrats’ goal increasing Americans’ access to health care?  Or is it increasing their own access to control over Americans, with the increased access to self-enrichment that comes from government programs?

Well-preserved Jurassic turtles found on Skye. They call it a missing link between land and aquatic turtles.

Today, we still have many species that do a little of both, like North America's wonderful Wood Turtle, which swims and hikes.

I have argued for decades that America is the least racist country in the world. By and large, only Americans on the right have believed, or at least had the courage to say this. Now that fact is obvious to virtually anyone with eyes to see.

Dennis Prager, via Attack Machine

From a hunting buddy and good Ducks Unlimited supporter:

Dear Maggie's:

We went goose hunting with Wild Goose Lodge in Prince Edward Island last week.  I wish I had a picture to show you of all the geese we killed (33 over the three days), but it was too dark by the time we finished hunting.  The weather was no good for goose hunting on two of the three days we hunted; too warm and no wind.  But, we had no complaints as the proprietor, Jim Duggan is a first class guy who goes out of his way to try and get everyone a good hunt.  The attached picture is from our last evenings’ banquet – started off with Malpeque Bay oysters (which in your correspondent’s humble opinion, are the best anywhere).  One of the hunters brought the wine – a Schramsberg sparkler which went great with the oysters.  Then, everyone had a 2.5-3 pound lobster, along with some homemade bread and potato salad.  On PEI, they serve their lobster cold, with lemon wedges and of course, butter.  We had a mix of whites to go with the lobster, including a chenin blanc from South Africa, which was in honor of your humble correspondent who had visited the winery while in S. Africa on safari several years ago.  Dessert was your choice of hot fudge or butterscotch sundae or blueberry pie.  One or two of the guests had a sundae and pie . . .

I must confess that I ate on the order of two dozen oysters and if I do so say myself, three lobsters.

An excellent time was had by all ten of us, including two of the folks whom had never been goose hunting.

Your Humble Correspondent,

J.

"Let her (Truth) and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"

December 9th will be John Milton's 400th birthday (1608-1674).

A poet, for sure. People are doing fun things like this to celebrate Paradise Lost written, as he said, "to justify the ways of God to men." (It was also likely written to express his disappointment in the Restoration.)

Milton's writings primarily�dealt with�religion. He was a Protestant and a supporter�of Cromwell. Milton was a college drop-out (hated college and hated the other kids), and spent two years thereafter educating himself.�His father was a successful London scrivener, and Milton helped manage the family's business interests.

I'd like to highlight his pamphleteering, with which he busied himself before he wrote his epic poems. In the 1630s and 40's there were no newspapers, no broadsheets. Mass retail printing was just getting going, and "newsbooks" were in the future. There was little knowledge about current events for the average person, nor was government comfortable with that idea.

If you had some money, though, you could publish your thoughts and sell them as pamphlets. Those having other opinions would publish their own pamphlets in response. Public discussion and debate would ensue. This was citizen journalism, and sort of a blogging model.

Referring to his motives for writing pamphlets, he said:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Milton's first well-known pamphlet was Divorce (1643), a provocative and�highly controversial theological defense of divorce. His views, it was said, would lead to social chaos. They referred to him as "The Divorcer,"�but he never did divorce. He was big on the modern notion of the "companionate marriage."

His best-known polemic today is Areopagitica (1644), written in defiance of, and as an attack on, government licensing laws on publication. (It was never a real speech.)

While often viewed today as a defense of freedom of speech (and most of his arguments tend that way), it was not written to propose free political speech: it was written to propose freedom of religious speech - freedom from government and church interference in seeking�God's truth. That was a distinctly Protestant view.�In his words:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

For those interested in Milton's life, I recommend the highly enjoyable new Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot by Anna Beer.

We had snow flurries yesterday morning.

It's about "hitting bottom." A remarkable personal testimony from Vanderleun, re-posted. One para from it:

I'd seen far too much of this scuzzy joint in the last few months and I was destined to see a lot more of it in the months to come. It was one of those 'great bad places' in American life; one of those spaces where they're selling, morning, noon and far into the night, eight kinds of despair on tap and a wide selection of numb on the shelves behind the bar; mixed, on-the-rocks, or "neat."

North America's Eastern Grey Squirrel is one adaptable critter. Here, in their native territory, I am happy to have them around - and so are the Red-tail hawks that eat them and keep their numbers down.

I think it's been a long time since American kids went out with their .22s to get a mess o' savory squirrel in the oak trees for the family stew-pot.

Like everybody else around here, my main problem with these crafty acrobats is that they eat me out of house and home on my bird-feeders. (Plus, these sneaky little terrorists almost blew me up when they chewed through the hose of my grill's propane tank.)

The ongoing war of brains continues at Maggie's Farm and, thus far, the Grey Squirrel still wins.

Here's some advice on Squirrel-proof bird feeders.

Wki has a good summary on the Eastern Grey Squirrel. Here, we have the black version too, but not many.

Interviews with Obama voters, via a piece at Gateway on the media's failures to inform voters about Obama. (By no means do I think all Obama voters are this poorly-informed, nor that Conservative voters are all well-informed.)

Still, I find this disturbing, but maybe it's the way it always is: