Tuesday, August 4. 2009
St. James Church, Woodstock, Vermont.
Monday, August 3. 2009
Rep Doggett says the public protests about government medicine only reinforce his determination to pass it.
As Insty notes, it's happening all over the country, and I see no public push for this except from the politicians, who of course are wiser than us foolish little people who don't know what is best for us.
Italian TV talk show host (correction - Argentinian):
American TV talk show host:
I opted out of being a Medicare "provider" several years ago. It saddened me, because I like working with seasoned citizens. However, they are now so accustomed to Medicare that the expectation that they should personally pay me for my time is anathema to many. Not to all, however. I have never refused to help a patient because of financial limits.
However, entitlements turn otherwise proud grey-haired adults into... what?
The last time I was accepting Medicare, they paid me around $70 for a lengthy office visit, less than my plumber charges me for the same thing. No disrespect for plumbers at all: I respect their skills very much.
But what really put me over the top was their paperwork. Being a sole practioner who donates 1/3 of her time to teaching and a charity clinic, I could never afford a trained "Coder" to do insurance forms for me for $65,000/year (or more).
Yet if I did the Medicare forms myself, I'd end up working for around $20/hr - spending more time on paperwork than seeing patients. Just check out the government manual for Medicare filing for doctors.
Bear in mind that a form-filling error is a potential felony. My plumber has no such problems.
 Newsweek tells us to get ready for polyamory
How to save the economy. It's simple.
The city of Altinum discovered.
Scientists revolt against the warmening propagandists. A growing movement.
Ellen Degeneris digs deep. Anchoress
The decline of Britain. It begins:
Even in the decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed military might, its extraordinary relationship with America—all these things helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now all that is changing ...
Middle class tax hikes planned
I notice that AVI has listed us as "very smart people." Wrong. We are mostly distinctly middlebrow and intellectually lazy. Sippican is "very smart people."
Althouse on the weather:
I love that we are "warned" not to feel optimistic. How twisted we've become! It's like people are rooting for disaster.
In which the O admits plan to eliminate private insurance. Nothing but a power grab. It's the old story: Invent crisis, grab power from the people. As Tiger says:
If you do not believe conservatives who say that the "public option" is a trojan horse for a single-payer health care system, you're always free to believe the liberals. Obviously that's the reason for it. There is no other even theoretical justification that makes sense.
Related, a reader sends an op-ed from the Greenwich (CT) Time. A quote from it:
(iii) Overall Limitation For Unintentional Failures.--In the case of failures which are due to reasonable cause and not to willful neglect, the penalty assessed under subparagraph (A) for failures during any 1-year period shall not exceed the amount equal to the lesser of--
''(I) 10 percent of the aggregate amount paid or incurred by the employer (or predecessor employer) during the preceding 1-year period for group health plans, or
''(II) $500,000."
If you skimmed, shame on you. You're much like many lawmakers, for whom I, as a money manager and business owner, have a few questions:
- What is that $500,000 penalty all about?
- What problems are you trying to solve with this legislation? I was under the impression that we needed to A) insure the uninsured (it would help if we educate everyone who qualifies for Medicaid to sign up and include illegal aliens); B) get coverage for pre-existing conditions (we could negotiate with insurance companies); C) build a safety net for people who suffer financial ruin as a result of a catastrophic illness (buy everyone an excess major medical insurance policy).
- What's your rush, and what's your objective? To solve problems or to pass legislation before people ask questions?
- Are you seriously going to vote for this 1,000 page bill before you've read it? It is massive, the changes are monumental, the impact is surreal, and there is no way you can honestly tell your constituents that you have formulated a reasoned belief that this legislation is in the best interests of the people that you were elected to serve.
Basic assumptions: Are terrorists warriors or criminals? Moving Gitmo prisoners to Kansas.
How the White House is strong-arming the press
Anti-trust is obsolete. Indeed it is. One quote:
...by the time regulators can assess a technology market, the market has often moved on. Not long ago, Google was the upstart and the search leaders included names like AltaVista and Excite. “Regulatory intervention in the high-tech sector thwarts the natural evolution of the market,” argues Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Worse, it distorts the response of competitors. Antitrust investigations steer the market in unnatural directions, creating instabilities in entire industry sectors.”
The antitrust laws are anachronisms when applied to industries of constant innovation. Even theories about the role of antitrust were designed for the industrial era.
Health care town halls received with hostility
Cars, Bread, and now circuses too. Have we become sheep?
Infantile delusions. Samuelson on California, quoted at Betsy:
National parallels again seem apparent. Federal budget deficits -- reflecting the urge to spend and not tax -- predate the recession and, as baby boomers retire, will survive any recovery. Amazingly, the Obama administration would worsen the long-term outlook by expanding federal health insurance coverage. There's much mushy thinking about how we'll muddle through.
California has pioneered this sort of delusion. The presumption was that a dynamic economy would pay for expansive government. But California's relative economic performance has actually deteriorated. In the 1980s, the state's economy grew much faster than the national economy; annual growth averaged 5.1 percent vs. 3.1 percent nationally. In the present decade, the gap is smaller -- 2.9 percent versus 2.3 percent -- and much of the state's advantage reflects the unsustainable housing boom, of which California was the epicenter.
While I disagree with 96% of Obama's agenda, I think this whole birther thing is nonsense. Critique peoples' policies and their assumptions. Ad hominems and smears are disgusting, even though the Left has no problem with using them, for example, with the latest Palin smears (Gosh, they must be terrified of her). As Surber comments:
The Kenya certificate is a fake. The Hawai’i certificate is suspicious.
There is only one Vulcan-clad logical conclusion: Barack Obama was never born.
Photos: These are popping up all over LA. LA?
Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
Sen. Jesse Helms (1921-2008), writing in 1959 on compromise in politics.
If America isn't about freedom from the State, then it isn't about anything except lovely landscapes - and money and malls, but most countries are about those things, more or less.
Sunday, August 2. 2009
A re-post from June 30, 2008. Sure is hard to believe that was one year ago, because it feels like yesterday.
 With TV, you are more-or-less forced to watch the thing because it tends to grab our passive brains. With blogs and newspapers, you can easily skip stuff you chose to ignore. So if I am boring you with my northern Italy travelogue posts, please skip over them. It's just fun for me to post the photos - and it motivates me to get them organized.
One day last week we took the train up to Domodossola to catch the regular Centovalli train (not the tourists' Lago Maggiore Express which doesn't do much stopping) through the Alps to Locarno, Switzerland, on the northern tip of Lago Maggiore.
It is our travel custom to make things complicated and to plan tight connections - and to thereby create adventures, memorable mishaps, stress, and close calls. The free-spirited Mrs. BD thrives on such things, but I do not. As it turns out, The Dylanologist loves to cut things close, too, and to dash off somewhere when he has a free 3 minutes to spare.
We got off the train halfway at the whistle-stop of Santa Maria Maggiore (nobody else got off) to take a hike in the Alps. We planned to hike up the mountains in a circle through the mountain hamlets of Toceno and Craveggia, and to arrive back down at Santa Maria Maggiore in time for the last train to Locarno, to arrive there with 16 minutes to find and to catch the last boat down Lake Maggiore to where we were staying in the cozy village of Baveno.
We are tireless and intrepid walkers, but we characteristically underestimated the distance of our hike as we always do, and did not expect the heat. No water, and no cafes open. But we did get to stumble into the rarely-visited Alpine village of Craveggia (pop. 730). Eventually, with ten minutes before the train and without knowing our exact location, we swallowed our pride and flagged down a passing house painter who happily and cheerfully got us to the station in his tiny two-door rattletrap car - just as the tiny train pulled into the tiny "Disney Italy" station.
No passport checks, by the way, training into Switzerland. We brought them anyway.
Here's a map showing the northern tip of Piedmont where it pushes into Switzerland. The Centovalli train runs on one track from Domodossola to Locarno, at the tip of the Lake, over fearsome gorges and hairy mountain cliffs.
Let's begin this photo tour, though, with this northern Italian lovely in a cafe on the old square of Domodossola, who our sneaky paparazzi Dylanologist photographed on my dare. I call that "La bella figura." Plenty of real blonds up there.
Travelogue of this side-trip with lots of photos below on continuation page -
Continue reading "The Centovalli Train, re-posted"
Quoted by our Pastor this morning, from a letter from a Christian martyr in Zimbabwe, quoted in Brennan Manning's (1996) The Signature of Jesus:
I'm part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit's power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made - I'm a disciple of his. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees and colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminance, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean in his presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power.
My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way rough, my companions are few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the enemy, pander at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go til he comes, give til I drop, preach til all know, and work til he stops me.
Much easier than cement for walkways and pavers: QuikKrete Jointing Sand. Great invention. Sweep it into the gaps, then mist with water and you have a hard sand/polymer bond that won't crack like cement, or grow weeds like stone dust.
It's about time something this easy was invented. I refurbished one of our slate walks with this stuff yesterday.
When you go to an Italian funeral, it's always "Too young, too young."
When you go to an Irish funeral, it's always "He had a good run. Let's have a drink."
Deacon Kevin McCormack, on 770's WABC religion radio program this morning
 The coming boom in tax shelters
What is wrong with AARP?
Southern Baptists take on New England. Welcome, friends. We are tired of the UCC and the Episcopalians. They do not seem to focus on God any more.
Does the O represent a new template? neoneo
Re our cold summer, from Surber:
Remember: Everything proves global warming.
And the only way to stop global warming is to tax the hell out of the American people.
It is intended to be stimulating
Why no medical tort reform?
What's up with all the czars? h/t, Doug Ross
Why you do not want to get cancer in Europe
If Bush had an economy this bad, would he get this headline?
What does "Let me be clear" mean?
Revisiting Liar's Poker, with some thoughts about military officers. Volokh
Via Riehl, a blog by a few Marine Corps officer candidates. Cool. The responsibility they take on is mind-boggling.
Really good post on news, reporting blogs, Cronkite, etc., at Driscoll
Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.
Quoted at Viking:
...New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007 - while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index.
Generations of debt. Human Events
Dems re-do their sales pitch
Related: Families and Small Businesses to be Taxed to Pay for Health Reform
The obesity brouhaha: at WSJ, Obesity costs taxpayers. Freedom needs to include being fat, even if it is sometimes more offensive than free speech. Yes, one of the problems with getting government involved in medical care is that the State then has a financial interest in your life, and an excuse to try to control it. Thus checking kids' lunchboxes in the UK. Therefore,
thank you for saying this, Mr. Steyn:
...if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment,” governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed — by the Conservative party, alas — that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know . . . totalitarian?
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.
Is medical care a zero-sum game? From Pajamas:
Obama’s command seizure of one-sixth of the American economy is based on the assumption that medicine is a zero-sum game. The trouble is that Obama’s assumption is false — and destructive. It has been falsified by every single advance in human health since the Industrial Revolution. It’s simply not true that there is a fixed supply of medical care, one that cannot grow, become more effective, cost less, and make our lives better and longer. It is not true that my gain must be your loss.
Obama thinks the way Thomas Malthus did in 1798. But Malthus was wrong then, just like Obama is now. So here’s the question for every American. Under ObamaCare, when we really will have to divide up a Malthusian lockbox of federal money, how much will your life be worth?
Brussels Journal begins:
These are not happy days for Americans, particularly if raised on traditional American values of Northern European provenance. Conscientious work as redemptive virtue, thrift, self-reliance, self-restraint, Biblical ethical principles, modesty, high-minded civic culture, love of liberty, distrust of centralized power.
America’s ruling elite – once the embodiment of such values and now a putrid trench running from Wall Street to Madison Avenue to Washington DC to Hollywood -- has debauched and upended them as thoroughly as though it has been teleported directly from 3rd century Rome.
Photo: The Briar Bowl Tobacconist, 1950s. Maggie's Farm supports the responsible use and enjoyment of tobacco.
John 6:24-35
6:24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
6:25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?"
6:26 Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
6:27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal."
6:28 Then they said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?"
6:29 Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."
6:30 So they said to him, "What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?
6:31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
6:32 Then Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
6:33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
6:34 They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
6:35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
Saturday, August 1. 2009
 The latest evidence of warming: New York records its coolest summer thus far since 1903, with only one day over 85; Al Gore's hometown records coldest July in over 40 years; ocean temperatures continue to cool; snowstorms and bitter cold grip Argentina.
The one hot and sunny location? Seattle.
Ed. note: Regardless of the facts, everything that happens is due to climate change now. For examples, see articles at Science Daily. The heads of mice are shrinking!
Hanson at Overcoming Bias posts the graph below from the British Medical Journal. It says they looked at 2500 treatments, so I suspect this isn't just medicines. I'd like to see the list to determine whether it only included standard treatments like antibiotics for pneumonia or stents for coronary artery blockages, or whether it includes things like homeopathy and massage therapy.
I don't know what to make of the Terra Incognita of the 46% of "unknown effectiveness." I want to see the details.
Is the era of the small town over in America? Bookslut thinks so.
I'm not sure how "small" is defined. As readers know, I work in a city (Hartford), sleep in exurbia. Everybody needs places to be a bit anonymous - but not too anonymous.
At the least, you want your regular shopkeepers, bartenders, and maitre d's to know your name - but you can do that in both city and country when you find the places you like.
Photo: A small town in NH, c. 1890. Note the large scale elimination of trees from the hillsides, typical of the 1800s in New England. Firewood, charcoal, and lumbering, thus creating hillside pastures and driving the bear and moose up to Maine. Also note the fine streetside Elm trees, now all gone due to the Elm Tree Blight.
No CVS or Dunkin Donuts in evidence: how did people survive?
A friend of a friend emailed this photo of an either dead or pixillated fellow in his whitey-tightys in the early morning rain in NYC's financial district this week:
Jawa reports on a mass wedding, sponsored by Hamas, of what appear to be 450 pre-pubescent girls. You just have to put your multicultural hat on to appreciate the joy of this occasion.
Video on that second link. The AFP article mentioned nothing about the ages of the girls, but did report:
"We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness," Zahar told the men, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp.
Each groom received a present of 500 dollars from Hamas, which said its workers had also contributed five percent of their monthly salaries to add to the wedding gift.
These guys do not need to anticipate "When forty winters..."
When forty winters
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer, "This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
David Warren posted on this sonnet in July.
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