We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).
On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.
The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.
Making statistically valid generalizations about 1/6th of the US economy, health care, is difficult, at best, beyond saying we spend a lot.Even that generalization is suspect when viewed against what we get and what we can afford.When one disaggregates, focusing on specific elements, it’s even more difficult.There’s usually inadequate data, and erroneous or politically misleading conclusions drawn.But, as witness the House yesterday narrowly passing a 1300-page cap-and-trade energy bill, without even reading it, to regulate and tax almost the entire US economy, facts are easily left behind in favor of political power seeking and arm-twisting payoffs to individual legislators and their contributors.
So, let’s get real.
Tom Bevan, founder-editor of daily must-read RealClearPolitics, today writes “Busting the Administrative Cost Benefit Myth,” that a government-run plan would save spending by cutting administrative costs, based on a Heritage Foundation paper that “Medicare Administrative Costs Are Higher, Not Lower, Than for Private Insurance.” In short, because each Medicare claim is for a much higher amount than each private insurance claim, the percent of the dollar amount of total claims for mostly fixed administrative costs is lower in Medicare.If considered, instead, on administrative cost per number of claims processed, Medicare’s admin costs are higher than in private insurance.
The former head of Medicare and Medicaid and former US assistant secretary of health recently, similarly, took on this administrative cost myth in the Wall Street Journal, asking and answering “Is Government Health Insurance Cheap?”
But the comparison between public and private plans is a false comparison. Private insurance and public benefits are not the same business. For all its warts, private insurance tries to manage care. Medicare is mostly about paying the bills presented to it….
First, private insurers must build provider networks. These networks can include high-value providers and exclude low-quality providers. Except for certain circumstances, including criminal acts, Medicare is forbidden from excluding poor quality providers. It lets in everyone who signs up. So one question to ask is, will the public plan have Medicare's indifference to quality -- or invest in the cost of a network?
Second, private insurers must negotiate rates. Medicare just fixes prices using a statutory and regulatory scheme. And anyone who imagines a public plan would be less costly than private plans must keep the following issue front and center: In the many procedure categories where Medicare's statutory price does not cover full provider costs, shortfalls are shifted to private payers who end up subsidizing the public program. So, will a public plan negotiate rates or simply use fiat as a means of gaining subsidies from private insurance?
Third, private insurers must combat fraud -- or go out of business. Indeed, these payers have every incentive to invest in antifraud personnel and strategies down to the point where return and investment are equal. But anyone who thinks that a public plan could serve as a "yardstick" for the private sector needs to consider Medicare's dismal record with regard to fraud, waste and other abuse….
Fourth, private insurers must incur the administrative cost of marketing. Medicare, of course, does not need to market. A public plan competing with other alternatives would have to market itself to the public, and this means tax dollars used to advertise against private plans. Or the public plan could "compete" by using heavily subsidized marketing channels not available to private insurers, such as Social Security mailings, welfare offices, unemployment check stuffers, and the constellation of government-funded "advocacy organizations."
In a republican democracy, we elect officials in lieu of deciding everything in a mob all the time. But it's refreshing from time to time to petition these officials directly with our concerns. We must water the tree of liberty every once in a while, n'est-ce pas? They do in Santa Cruz, California, and they record it for our edification.
The one woman there assures us that she does not water the tree of liberty in public, though.
Here's a fun photo caption contest at Wizbang. Should not be hard on him, tho. I love to look at maps too.
The UK continues to be hopelessly insane. Banning welcome mats. Not welcome mats for uncontrolled immigration, though. As we always say, "Grow a couple, and fix your own dang country." The Brits could try one of these mats and see if it passes the nanny's muster:
Michelle O says she wants a "purpose." How about raising your kids, weeding your garden, doing the dishes, helping out your friends, playing some tennis, cleaning the house or - if that's not enough self-importance for a hungry ego, how about a real job in the private sector? Good, productive, difficult work in the private sector is the best thing anyone can do for their country - after military service, that is.
You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; But all the sea of sadness in my blood Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose, Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.
In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.
It is a ruin where the jackals rest, And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- A perfume swims about your naked breast!
Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!
Fischer, David Hackett, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Collins, 1970). In only approximately 300 pages, Fischer surveys an immense amount of background historical literature to point out a comprehensive variety of analytical errors that many, if not most, historians commit. Fischer points out specific examples of faulty or sloppy reasoning in the work of even the most prominent historians, making it a useful book for beginning students of history. While this book presumably did not make Fischer popular with many of his peers, it should be noted that his contributions as a historian have not been limited simply to criticizing the work of others; since 1976, he has published a number of well-received books on other historical topics.
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democrats narrowly won a key test vote Friday on sweeping legislation to combat global warming and usher in a new era of cleaner energy. Republicans said the bill included "the largest tax increase in American history."
It doesn't "include" a tax increase - this entire wacky thing is a household and business energy tax, pure and simple. The lie that anyone other than households and businesses will end up paying it is ridiculous. It simply will be passed through to you in your utility bill. The O did promise during the campaign to make energy far more costly, and this is the beginning.
My own cynical view is that the "greeny" pose is just being used as a mask to suck more money out of the private economy into Washington. This bill does nothing for the environment - and Congress knows it.
I have read estimates that this will cost anywhere from $120-over $2000 per household per year, with plenty of geographical variation. I haven't seen any estimates about what it will cost businesses, but clearly that depends on your businesses' energy usage. If you have 1000 Costco stores to air condition, watch out.
If you wanted to design something to put the brakes on an economic recovery, this would be a fine plan.
Update:The dang thing passed in the House. I never thought it would. Note to self: never underestimate the Dems when they have a chance for a new tax. They are tricking the public: digging deeper into your pocket while making it look like greenie-virtue.
It would be stupid of pharma companies not to market their new products. They have bills to pay and investors to pay. You cannot fault them for it.
As a shrink (who does not have a primarily pharmacology practice, but uses meds whenever needed), I never use the newest medicines. I let other docs find out whether they have any advantages first, or any repellent side effects.
For Bipolar, I still think good old Lithium, a salt dug out of the ground which costs pennies, is the best, safest medicine. It works.
Mr. Pastor, tear down this church. Please. The building sucks and, trust me, God hates it too.
ObamaCare: Not inevitable. But they feel they have to pass something, or they will lose their momentum for their laundry list. Related: Who will run your medical care if the bill passes? (You can be certain it won't be practicing docs - it will be policy wonks and economists - the same geniuses who invented HMOs.) Related:
The primary problem for Democrats is not stakeholders.It’s the general public.They were told “reform” would leave them alone if they liked their coverage — and their premiums would go down too by $2500 per year.But the bills the Democrats in Congress are now writing will increase costs for people with insurance and shift tens of millions of them out of the employer plans they generally like.That’s not the deal they are expecting to be offered, and they aren’t likely to agree to it anytime soon.
Related: If you call everything a crisis, people begin to think the word means "one more issue we ought to think about some time. Viking:
Hysterical hyperbole of the day - Firedoglake: "The gravity of America's health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century's bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole..."
When did the US renounce "Leadership of the Free world"? The Left rarely speaks of freedom, or seems to value freedom, except when it's about abortion "choice." Otherwise, standing up for freedom is evil, un-nuanced cultural imperialism, right?
Self-censorship and the "see no Islam" mindset. Brussels J
Obama is willing to risk some political capital and credibility, but only on domestic pushes for socialism. The world knows he's a single-minded one-trick pony and views anything that occurs outside the headlong drive for socialism as an inconvenient "distraction" that does not need to be solved, but merely bumped off the front page.
The dictators and terrorists know this. Even US allies in socialistic Europe know this. The only people who don't seem to know this are the US media and the American public, which is largely shielded from these realizations by a severe underreportage of such "distractions."
Yes, we like Sanford, but have nothing worthwhile to say about his mess - other than to note what they're saying: "He wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail. He was humping the Argentinian tail."
President Obama refused to meet with the representative of the imprisoned in Cuba winners of the National Endowment for Democracy's annual Democracy Award as Presidents Clinton and Bush had others during their terms in office, or even issue a statement until the editors of the Washington Post chided him.
Message to Cuba's democratic opposition: We don't have time for you….They, like the beleaguered pro-democracy movements of Venezuela and Nicaragua, are hoping that the American president will focus his policy on supporting them. Yet for now, Mr. Obama's diplomacy is clearly centered on their oppressors.
We should have been warned during the campaign by Obama’s passivity toward the Russian invasion of Georgia that he’d continue it toward Latin America’s and now Iran’s oppressors.
Another clue comes from that the image of Che Guevara, icon to ignorant T-shirt wearers as a symbol of change rather than as a psychopathic murderer, served as the model for the Obama campaign’s “Change” poster.This T-shirt contest melded the two.
The reviewer of Theodore Draper’s seminal 1965 tome on Castro’s Revolution, in the left-leaning New York Review Of Books no less, pointed out how this psychology works, prescient to President Obama formatively molded by the moral myopia behind the Che iconography:
There is in the United States a school of thought which refuses to recognize that the anti-American policies of a foreign ruler might be motivated by anything so crude as a desire to increase his own power at the expense of the United States. They fail to understand that even in the unlikely event of Washington never making a foreign policy mistake, the sheer wealth and power of the United States would still inevitably arouse the antagonism and cupidity of some. Their invariable explanation for the hostility of a foreign ruler is that the U.S. must have made a mistake—and in their view, it is always the same mistake: lack of trust in that ruler's good intentions, misinterpretation of his legitimate measures of self-defense, and unwillingness to assist him in the promotion of his social reforms. In each individual case, the argument appears convincing to many people. One has to hear it repeated over and over again on different occasions to realize the utter innocence of the underlying assumption—namely that the Stalins, Maos, Khrushchevs, Castros of this world are benevolent, peaceloving social reformers who would be happy to concentrate on raising the living standard of their peoples if only wicked Uncle Sam and his gang of reactionary allies would permit them to do so.
A TV LOW POINT: Turned on the TV to see Geraldo interviewing Tommy Mottola about Michael Jackson’s death. In the background, footage of the body being delivered to the coroner’s office by helicopter. Glad to see Fox is keeping us up on what’s really important, the night before a big cap-and-trade vote in Congress, while revolution simmers in Iran, and people are trying to nationalize healthcare.
Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."
Mrs. Barrister has given up her interest in politics. She says the Repubs blew their chance when they had Bush, the Senate and the House, and will get no more chances for the forseeable future. When the Repubs stand for freedom, it comes out sounding like a mean parent saying "No" - unless you have a talented communicator who believes in what he is saying.
Here's a summary of her gloomy thoughts:
- The Dems gave $4-8 billion of tax dollars to ACORN two months ago as part of the "stimulus." How can Repubs compete with that kind of money?
- The Dems will make 6-10 million illegal immigrants citizens. How are you going to compete with those numbers?
- Immigration at the turn of the century brought in millions lacking in the individualistic traditions and in the Protestant ethic that founded the country (including some of her relatives). They never really "got it." Since then, it's been about money and security - not freedom - and FDR made that idea permanent.
- As Newt warned years ago, once you have government medicine it's all over. It will all be arguments about "gimme more," and your very life will be in the hands of the State.
- The family was the foundational cultural institution of America and the foundational transmitter of culture. It's dying rapidly now, statistically. 70% of black kids born outside marriage, 23% of white kids. TV shows make jokes about how only gays and Republicans get married any more. This leaves women hoping that the State will be their reliable husband to protect them and to help raise their kids.
From my perspective, the Dem national agenda is as follows:
1. Pay off supporters (done, in part, via the "Stimulus") 2. Raise middle-class taxes big-time via "Climate" excuse for tax on energy 3. Socialize medicine 4. Amnesty for all illegals 5. Tax the "rich" so they stop feeling so independent 6. Nationalize K-12 education
If passed, it would be the biggest tax in US history. Which is why the Dems are so intent on it. Climate has zip to do with it.
They want your money. They always do. They should have it, because they are so much smarter, wiser, more altruistic, and more deeply caring than I am, clinging here as I do in abject, helpless ignorance to my guns and Bible and my land and my (now paltry) life savings, and trusting in God, my own and my wife's resourcefulness, and trusting in the American spirit instead of in Pelosi, Rangel, Reid, Waxman, Obama, and all of the other buffoons and sleazes in DC.
It must be because I am stupid. Perhaps I am, because when I commented to the supermarket check-out girl yesterday about all of the cold and rain, she authoritatively informed me that it was due to climate change. At first, I thought she was kidding.
"Were you out there praying in the garden?" Mrs. BD asked me later. "No." I said. "I was watching ants."
I spent around a half hour on Satuday afternoon sitting in the dirt watching ants. Few things can be more absorbing. (Or maybe I should say that everything in life can be absorbing if you sit for a minute.)
In doing final garden clean-up, I had to move a big old 4X4 garden edger to another spot and, naturally, uncovered a black ant nest full of eggs or pupae - I think pupae because you could see something inside the egg-like shape.
Almost instantly, the worker ants (both the big ones and the little) and the soldier ants grabbed an egg and ran for cover, scattering in all directions. After about 5 minutes, each ant with egg in mandible headed over to the right, over a rock and into a hole in a pile of garden mulch. In about 15 minutes, every one of around 200 eggs had been carried off to safety by a line or marching ants, back and forth like Chinese coolies.
Ants are said to represent 18-25% of the animal biomass of the planet - higher in the tropics. There is nothing as adaptible as the family Formicidae. They are hymenoptera - evolved from wasps, and all still have tiny stingers.
Ant social behavior is interesting, but their specialization, their physical specialization, and their chemical communication is more so.
Bird Dog - Spent Friday morning fishing for striped bass with Pops and Mother's cousin. Caught our limit of six fish greater than 28 inches in about five hours. We fished out of Groton (and off Fisher's Island), aboard "The Otter" with Captain Bruce of www.captainbrucesportfishing.com.
The weather turned out fine, with moderate swells and no rain. Limited visibility kept most other boats in port. We trolled surgical hose with sandworms and our largest fish was 26 pounds, caught by Pops. We had three more striped bass, too small to keep and one bluefish, which Pops claims he will make into fishcakes.
With the 25+ pounds of filets, a great time was had by all.
Our blogfriend Gerard at American Digest has a story to tell, and tells it. All writers know what it is to retreat into a world of your own making inside your head. What if it was all you had?
I'd be building the world's worst sandcastle on the beach in Balboa
as my father and uncle tossed a football back and forth on the hot
sand. I'd be waking up in the back seat of our 1951 Chevy and seeing my
grandparents' faces pressed against the glass as the first snow I'd
ever seen fell softly behind them in the twilight. I'd be with my first
wife on my wedding night at the Pierre. I'd be at my job on the better
days. I'd be in a taxi in New York going downtown at three in the
morning making all the lights. I'd go back to a warm field in a
California twilight and listen to the breath and laughter of a young
girl heard once and never again. I'd sit in the sun in front of a
rose-covered cottage in Big Sur. I'd be laughing on the Spanish Stairs
or weaving drunk along a cliff road on Hydra under a bronze moon and
above a wine-dark sea. I'd be high up in a hotel in Paris looking down
at the Seine in the rain. I'd hold my one-year-old daughter over my
head while lying on the grass in the Boston Public gardens in the
spring and see her face framed with cherry blossoms. Those and a
million other rooms in my Palace of Memory I'd visit over and over
again until they all ran together in a blur as the train, accelerating,
finally left the station and leapt towards the stars and beyond and,
finally forgetting all of that, I saw for a fleeting moment the mystery
complete.
The first wheels were not used for transportation.
Evidence indicates they were created to serve as potter’s wheels around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia—300 years before someone figured out to use them for chariots.
The ancient Greeks invented Western philosophy…and the wheelbarrow.
Researchers believe that the wheelbarrow first appeared in classical Greece, sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C., then sprung up in China four centuries later and ended up in medieval Europe, perhaps by way of Byzantium or the Islamic world. Although wheelbarrows were expensive to purchase, they could pay for themselves in just 3 or 4 days in terms of labor savings.
Wood tennis racquets 
THE EYES OF BEAUTY 
"Green jobs" 
From