Monday, March 22. 2010
So much for President Obama’s virtual colonoscopy, not approved as cost-effective for ordinary folks’ coverage. But, then Obama would have had to been out during a routine colonoscopy and VP Biden would have been President for an hour or two. Imagine how much worse that would have been! Senator Grassley tries to set matters right.
Grassley said, “It’s only fair and logical that top administration officials, who fought so hard for passage of this overhaul of America’s health care system, experience it themselves. If it’s as good as promised, they’ll know it first-hand. If there are problems, they’ll be able to really understand them, as they should.”
Grassley said the motivation for his amendments is simple: public officials who make the laws or lead efforts to have laws changed should live under those laws.
“This is the same principle that motivated me to pursue legislation over 20 years ago to apply civil rights, labor and employment laws to Congress,” Grassley said. Before President Clinton signed into law Grassley’s long-sought Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, Congress had routinely exempted itself.
The senior Congressional Committee and leadership staff who wrote the ObamaCare bills are also exempt from it.
The birthday dinner at Casa Gwynnie last night was some Redheads I shot in Manitoba in October. Every bit as flavorful as Canvasbacks. Roasted them on the grill, of course. Rare.
We have experienced one more giant step towards becoming a boring, worn-out, lazy, demoralized and weary European-style welfare state.
VDH at Pajamas begins:
President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan.
We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures.
No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we “are leveling the playing field” and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law.
And the smart and savvy Paul Ryan predicts the future. One quote:
What about the practical consequences of Obamacare? “Soon, we’ll see individual-market insurance companies go out of business and dump their people,” Ryan says. “Tax increases on capital are going to hurt the economy in 2011. These arbitrary Medicare cuts will adversely affect the providers and therefore their beneficiaries. You’ll have the Internal Revenue Service beefing up its enforcement of this new mandate, which people have no clue is coming. And you’re going to have employers dump employees in this exchange once it’s up and running — funneling everyone into a government-run rationing system. Then we’ll see a big spike in insurance rates, and the Democrats are going to wager that they can just blame the insurers for that, and therefore that means they will need to institute insurance price controls or have a public option. Our side is going to say, ‘Look at what you just did to ruin our health-care system,’ and focus on repeal.”
Same for me, Coyote: My Health Insurance Policy Just Became Illegal
We posted on the plight of the Mediterranean and Atlantic populations of the majestic Bluefin Tuna recently. The outcome is not good.
I like this one, from AVI. Been there myself, AVI.
From Steyn's "Deemocracy" in Action:
Investor's Business Daily argues that the "health" debate is really a proxy fight on the size and role of government. According to its poll, 64 percent of people think the federal government has "too much power." Correct. But a big chunk of that 64 percent voted less than 18 months ago for a man and a party explicitly committed to more government with more power, and they're living with the consequences.
Part of the fun in reading Steyn is imagining his voice speaking it. He writes like he talks.
Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.
GK Chesterton (h/t, Dr. Bob). Indeed. We alluded to that topic in our Two Americas on Saturday.
 If you've been away this weekend, please scroll down and catch up with Maggie's. Some good stuff there.
Steyn: Happy Dependence Day!
WSJ:
While the passage of ObamaCare marks a liberal triumph, its impact will play out over many years. We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care. As for the politics, the first verdict arrives in November.
Viking:
This country's inability to address runaway entitlement spending has left us with nearly $108 trillion in unfunded liabilities. These are promises the government cannot possibly meet but there is no political will to tell Americans they can't have their ice cream. Now we're about to dramatically expand the role of government at the very moment in time when we should be shrinking it.
It's mortifying.
Devastating non-trends in US Climate
Coulter: I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute
Sunday, March 21. 2010
AIPAC’s new president was a key donor to President Obama’s campaign.
At today’s AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, attended by over 7500 of the leading Jewish activists from all over the country, Lee Rosenberg repeatedly received standing ovations, saying:
In any relationship, mistakes are going to happen, and even the best of friends are going to disagree. Disagreements over policy between the United States and Israel -- between any two allies -- happen. That is a given. But how friends disagree, how they react when missteps occur, that can determine the nature of the relationship….
Ladies and gentlemen, let us be clear, the reluctant partner in this peace process is not Israel's elected leader Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The recalcitrant partner are the Palestinians and their leader -- President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Palestinians are bitterly divided between Hamas and Fatah -- that is a problem. The failure of President Abbas to end his nay-saying and come to the table for direct talks which Prime Minister Netanyahu has been committed to from the start -- that is a problem. The failure of the Arab world to begin normalizing its relationships with Israel -- that is a problem.
Obama has more than ‘splainen to do, as will Hillary Clinton when she speaks before the AIPAC Policy Conference tomorrow.
(Note: Commenters should realize the depth of the reality shock to liberal Jews, and other liberals, and accept it as one would anyone gaining sense, rather than using it as another opportunity to chastise past votes and donations, and remember that conservative Jews have been at the forefront of the conservative movement and reawakening.)
Our fathers and mothers, or grandfathers and grandmothers, were the “greatest generation” that took the world back from tyranny in WWII and from poverty after. Ask them, and they were just doing what was right.
Those who served in Vietnam and those who supported us took the world back from despair and, vets actually doing better than their age peers, built the prosperity of the ‘80s and ‘90s. We were just doing what was right.
Now, three generations who just did what was right will be joining with the next generation to just do what’s right.
Together, in the chilling dawn of the wake-up call that is the bankrupting powergrab sham that is ObamaCare and the sliming of integrity with which it has been pressed, with the abandonment of allies and the kowtowing to foes, the heavy prices will fall most upon them along with the rest of us.
“Damn Dems” will be the next greatest generation’s battle cry. A cross-generational battle cry.
BTW
This reminds me of this: It's not over 'til we say so.
Flag of the Resistance:
Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory:
Never before has the average American been treated to such a live-action view of the sordid politics necessary to push a deeply flawed bill to completion. It was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy that pulled ObamaCare to this point, and yesterday the same machinations pushed it across the finish line.
NYTs Understated: Legal and Political Fights Are Looming for Democrats
 Our sermon today was one of the ones I would have liked to have taught/preached myself, had I the ability and the calling.
(It followed one of our missions updates about the prison ministry we support (good stuff indeed, but as a friend said in our Lenten Lunch study group afterwards, "Can we be as sharing of Christ's love to our next-door neighbor with the BMW as we can to the sick, the despairing, and the folks in prison?")
The sermon seemed unusual to me in being a preaching against religion. Our Pastor, instead, held up the vision of the primacy of a personal relationship with God through Christ, bypassing much of what is often referred to as "religion." I suppose it was, in part, a preaching about the sins of piety, spiritual pride, righteousness, pro-forma ritual, and self-righteousness but I cannot do justice to the message.
A personal relationship with God through Christ...that sounds kind of ordinary, but I suppose I was ready to hear the "relationship" part in a new way. Less abstract; more felt. I understand how the "religion" part is meant to be a help in building, guiding, and maintaining the relationship, but it can be a hindrance too. Religion can easily become idolatry.
He spoke about how he has learned to tell when he is out of relationship with God by his reactions to life and people, and mentioned, interestingly, that having been raised and lived all his life as a Christian was a handicap to him as a Christian because he feels that he has never had the experience of being entirely out of relationship.
He was speaking on Luke 18:9:
He spoke also this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others.
"Two men went up into the temple to pray;
one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector.
The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this:
‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’
But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Am Thinker: Is Obama the new FDR?
Let's hope not, because he got everything worng.
This specimen plant is a contorted variant of a member of the Hazel/Filbert family. It is of most interest when its leaves are off because the dense foliage conceals most of the branches.
Mine is coming into bloom with its catkins right now:
John 12:1-8
12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,
12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"
12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Saturday, March 20. 2010
 One Longs For 1776, The Other For 1936. It is true.
When our Dr. Bliss writes on the topic, she tends to put it in terms of peoples' dependency and security wishes which are placed on government, while imagining government as an altruistic, caring, "ideal" parent (as if an ideal parent were a constantly gratifying one without realistic limits, who can make everything right), or Santa or a god.
I know what she means, but I do not think of these things in those terms. I think of it in terms of power. Governments tend to accumulate power. People who work in government tend to enjoy power and, for reasons I cannot comprehend, tend to think that they are smarter and wiser than us regular citizens. Unlike wealth, however, power is indeed a zero-sum game. Any power our federal government accumulates comes from your own personal supply of it, or your town's, or your state's.
Wise adults are not prodigal with their funds, nor should they be with their far more precious freedoms: our funds are got by labor, but our freedoms from external powers are given by God but got by blood. America is uniquely formed on the ideal of limited government and maximum individual freedom. What is idealized, so to speak, is the genius of the individual - not the ancient notion of the divinity of rulers and government and their powers.
America is not for sissies, and was never meant to be. She was designed for the brave, the bold, the resourceful, and the independent. Designed for the New Man of the Enlightenment, rather than for the weary and government-oppressed and controlled of the rest of the world. People who wanted a chance, not to be ruled and "governed" and "helped" by their betters.
That's why people came here from all over: to take their chances for their dreams in a New World of freedom from the Powers. But how much of their - our - depressing history came with them?
What if the founding idea was wrong? What if most humans are more serf-like, dependent, and willing to be ruled than our founders thought? Our founders, after all, were not exactly ordinary people (whatever "ordinary people" means - I've never met one).
How many Lefties would be standing at the 1775 Concord bridge today with a squirrel gun to resist a "tyranny" which was peanuts in comparison to an admittedly elected American government of today? This is why I write here on occasion about the danger of selling our birthright of freedom for a lousy bowl of lentils (not to disparage the lowly lentil - lentils with chopped carrots, shallots, etc makes a fine bed for a medium-rare breast of Ruffed Grouse with a generous drizzle of gibier sauce over it all).
This CS Lewis quote is always worth repeating:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Good Old CS saw it coming, didn't he?
By its built-in logic, Obamacare will cause the health care industry to go bankrupt within months.
This is entirely deliberate, and straight from the playbook: make such a mess that people beg for government help.
Weather adventures are great, but I will not be an idiot either. Since I already have a good gas line, I am finally installing one of these babies. Anything to keep Mrs. BD happy, and it turns out that she is no longer the rugged camper that she once was.
Re-posted from just one month ago -
"Jesus tells us that everything we had ever thought about how to approach God is wrong."
 After church yesterday, my Lenten study group listened to a DVD of Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, teach on the prodigal son. (We are using Keller's Prodigal God as our guide this Lent.)
Among other fascinating points, Keller observes that Jesus used the parable to depict two kinds of lost sons - the seemingly-"good" kind and the obviously-"bad" kind. The elder "good" son is crippled with the sins of spiritual pride and self-righteousness, and the younger is just an everyday rotten kid. However, Keller's main point in this regard is that neither son loved the father - they both focus on what they can get from the father (the inheritance in the elder's case, and a job in the prodigal's case) rather than on loving the father. They are lost because neither is in a loving relationship with the father.
Keller holds up a vision of a Christianity which consists of a transformative relationship of love and communion with Christ and God which is, as he puts it, "beyond morality and beyond religion." He invites us to be reborn in a loving relationship with the Father. The fruits of that - the "fruits of the Spirit" - may emerge after and be more than the "clanging cymbals" of empty, dutiful, or self-validating virtue.
I like this message because I have never directly associated Christianity as being centrally about doing "good" or being "good." Indeed, I sometimes think a good church sign might be "Sinners only, please." Good character and behavior are damn important in life and important to the people we are involved with, but not basic to Christianity. Being respectable, honest, dutiful, responsible, self-controlled, reliable people are primarily secular and/or psychological issues, despite Calvin.
In Christ's time, the Pharisees (represented by the elder brother) were scrupulous about doing the right thing but lost track of their relationship with God during their search for goodness and correctness. Christ gave them hell for their pursuit of rightousness and, famously and scandalously, chose to hang out with lepers, whores, tax-collectors and the like (the sinful younger brother who might, someday, have to recognize a need for redemption).
One of my comments in our group was in this vein:
"Seems to me that there are many rational, practical, mature caring adult, legal, narcissitic, relational, and emotional reasons to be a good and upright person in this world and to live a life of decency and honor, but getting on the Father's good side and getting the Father to do what we want is not one of them."
As one reviewer of Keller's book asks, "Which brother am I?" My private answer: "A bit of both and, I hope, a bit of loving son."
There's a trailer of Keller's DVD here.
Epigenetics: The limits of Darwinian evolution
Coburn: We won't permit deals for jobs for pols. Related: Lose the battle but win the war
Putin showing no respect for the O Admin
Van Jones: Tell me again - why is he at Princeton?
GOP candidate recruitment at Powerline:
A remarkable 31 of these candidates come from the medical professions, and 24 are doctors. Too bad the Democrats aren't trying to socialize the legal industry. Then lawyers would switch to the Republicans en masse, and return the GOP to its former glory.
AmeriCorps: Obama’s Scandal-Plagued Indoctrination Machine. Related: Admin restores full funding to ACORN
Human shields: Jules
Is this legal? Imagine if Bush...
Name that gull. Photo from a reader in CT, taken yesterday:
Friday, March 19. 2010
Caterpillar says Obamacare will cost you (the users and shareholders of this mighty American company) $100 million/yr.
If you have an opinion, email these folks in DC. Even if you think they are hopeless, let them know how you view things. It cannot hurt.
Readers know why I hate the Dem plan: It will make my privately-purchased, permanent, and inexpensive major medical policy illegal. Illegal. Who are these jokers in DC to make my insurance of choice illegal?
I do not want insurance to pay my doctor's bill when I have an ordinary bronchitis or an earache. I want it to cover me when I get hit by a truck and break 12 bones.
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We make the rules up as we go along...
