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.
I posted on the AMA's initial support of the Dem bill in the House, last week. I cannot imagine how a doc could support that thing if they care about their patients, their practices, and the huge advances American medicine has produced for the world over the past two generations. Not to mention the freedom factor which, for me, is right up there with high quality medicine in importance. Come to think of it, I hold freedom higher.
As I read it, the Dem's bill is a five-ten year plan to get the entire population on the government plan, which combines aspects of HMOs and of Medicaid - and to make docs essentially government agents. Treatments will need to be government-approved, and the whole thing will be cost-driven. (If you thought dealing with your HMO was bad, try dealing with 111 government agencies.) Furthermore, it contains the seeds (mainly punitive taxes) of destruction of medical innovation. Betsy McCaughey has some of the insidious details.
Support for Pelosi's reform bill is by no means unanimous in the medical community. On Friday, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) announced their opposition to the House bill.
“Overall," CNS President Dr. Gerald E. Rodts stated, in announcing the organization's opposition, "we believe this legislation will ultimately limit patient choice by putting the government between the doctor and the patient, which will interfere with vital patient care decisions. As it stands, this House bill could amount to a complete government takeover of healthcare.”
That's true. It will. The bill is cleverly back-loaded so that some of the positive things (like coverage of preexisting conditions) go into effect immediately, but the things people will hate go into effect after the next pres election. The Lefty Dems have always been long-distance runners on the road to Socialism and government control and planning. ("The deep swimmers of the Left," as I recall, was David Horowitz's term for it. I suspect that is what Obama and his team are.)
The hubris is astonishing. They want all of us working on their plantation - and they seem to believe that they are smarter than we, the people. Which they are definitely not.
As I have been saying, government is the most worrisome, powerful and dangerous special interest group in the country. In the end, all that we Conservatives have to offer voters is liberty. Many voters prefer their bowl of lentils (photo). It is a shame.
Update: AMA wimps out. Those docs sold their souls - and their patients' well-being - in exchange for protection of their paltry Medicare reimbursements. Pathetic.
There is a nagging fear among those who closely watch not only the economy but government policy that these nascent (recovery) economic forces might be murdered in their crib by the current administration.
Small-business men I met with this week tell me they are in a state of paralysis as they watch the debate over the health care "reform" bill wending its way through Congress. Lurking in its 1,502 pages (the Senate version) are provisions that will markedly raise their costs, and their personal taxes. So even as business gets better, they won't take on more staff because they can't figure out what it will cost them to do so.
Then there is the turmoil over all aspects of the financial services industries. The bonus brawl is the most widely publicized, with bankers somehow stunned that the public should resent their record takings after being bailed out by the government and, in cases such as Goldman Sachs, continuing to benefit from government guarantees of their debt.
More important, indecision on how to reform the financial sector continues to weigh on growth, as banks develop ever more stringent restrictions on credit availability while they wait to see who wins the battle between the Obama White House, which wants to give more power to the Fed, and the Congress, which wants to give the Treasury Department authority to close down any financial institution it deems unfit.
This is no small matter, as the at-least partly nonpolitical Fed is less likely than the completely political Treasury to move against an institution for purely partisan political reasons.
That is what I am hearing too. The government, in their infinite wisdom, is at war against economic growth. Ignorance, indifference, or by intent? They seem to focus on growth of the federal government, and little else.
I think I need a Bloody Bull with double vodka before I go out riding with She Who Must Be Obeyed now, to calm my nerves. The Lefties are finally getting to me.
Rahmed/rammed through. House narrowly and unilaterally passes government take-over of American medicine. If the Senate passes anything similar to this, our medical care will be in the hands of Washington politicians and the 111 bureaucracies the plan calls for. Damn scary - and so unnecessary.
In my view, it's like a move backwards to the 1930s. It's a throwback to the old, bloated, freedom-limiting social welfare statism that European nations are struggling to free themselves from today.
A NARROW SLIVER:
“One would think such an historic and noble action, as the Democrats
have styled it, would enjoy robust support from the full spectrum of
the House Democratic caucus. But in this case, only those who occupy
safe seats (or think they do) can be corralled. If Pelosi gets her 218
votes, it will be unprecedented. It is fair to say that never will a
piece of legislation this sweeping (and damaging) have been passed over
the opposition of so much of the electorate and on the votes of such a
narrow ideological slice of the governing class.”
Even Canadians must be worried today: they rely on America for their needed medical care.
The Dems who voted Nay did so with Pelosi permission once the votes were secured - to try to save their seats. Clever Dems. The bill contains payoffs, exemptions, and hand-outs to every Dem interest group that can be imagined, the least of which is that Federal employees including the politicians are exempt from the plan. Plus, of course, no malpractice reform.
12:38 As he taught, he said,
"Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted
with respect in the marketplaces,
12:39 and to have the best seats in the
synagogues and places of honor at banquets!
12:40 They devour widows'
houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the
greater condemnation."
12:41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and
watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large
sums.
12:42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which
are worth a penny.
12:43 Then he called his disciples and said to them,
"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are
contributing to the treasury.
12:44 For all of them have contributed out
of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had,
all she had to live on."
I still have some roses in bloom despite the hard frosts. The corner of the house protects these from the wind and keeps them warm. Some years I have been able to cut roses for Thanksgiving, but not in the recent years of global cooling.
This from someone who actually had/has PTSD, with good reason: he lost an arm to an IED.
I’m more than a little angry right now. Yes, I’m irate that some shitbag Major (“shitbag” is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that’s not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center….
In order to actually have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you have to go through some sort of traumatic event(s) to have “post stress.” Can therapists be emotionally troubled by the things they hear from patients? Yes. But you cannot catch PTSD from someone. It's not the fucking swine flu.
I cannot tell you how angry I am right now as a former patient of Walter Reed. It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for people to use his time there as an excuse for what he has done. It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for all the wonderful people there who help soldiers every single day. Some of the most kind, caring, and noble people I have ever met in my entire life work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center day in and day out helping wounded Soldiers like me.
To fallaciously say this guy has PTSD from his time at Walter Reed as an excuse for opening fire on a group of innocent Soldiers is beyond reckless. It's an absolute slap in the face for every caregiver and every wounded warrior who ever set foot on Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
BTW, here's a column I wrote at Military.com a few years ago about PTSD, based on a study that even the NYTs called "authoritative."
Scott Johnson, at PowerLine blog, sums up the reaction among apologists/deludists re: Hasan as "PISS", post Islamic stress syndrome.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
There is nothing in the world like a USMC Drill Sargeant. The three guys here are great, but the third and final guy is the most musical. I could run all day listening to that.
The truth leaks out on health care. Powerline. Not only do the Dems want to cover abortions - a truly elective procedure - they want to cover sex change operations. On my nickel? Of course, boob jobs would be fine with me...
ROBERT REICH: Forget healthcare, focus on employment. “Obama’s focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration’s efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.”
Problem is, the only way to make jobs would be to cut taxes and spending.
November ’08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ’09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.
PTSD by Proxy? Plus the video of the Major in a minimart.
"In a fast-breaking development comes word that agents of the Attorney’s General office in Louisiana have raided ACORN’s offices in New Orleans. ACORN’s New Orleans was, for decades, the headquarters of the national community organizing association"
"This may be the toughest employment situation we've seen in the postwar era," Mark Gertler, an economics professor at New York University, said in an interview earlier this week.
Who would hire a new employee if you don't know how the Dems will screw you? How can you make a business plan?
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way; For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. No matter then although my foot did stand Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee; For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, As soon as think the place where he would be. But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought, To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, But that so much of earth and water wrought, I must attend time's leisure with my moan; Receiving nought by elements so slow But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
November 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, put up by the communist rulers in 1961 to stem the drain from behind the Iron Curtain of those to whom freedom meant everything.There was widespread shock throughout the West at the end of the Cold War, which seemed endless, costly and perhaps unwinnable, and the fall of the existential threat of communism and its terrible toll on mankind, which to some seemed impervious or even eventually triumphant.
As we look around the world today, a melancholy spectacle greets our gaze. The Soviet Union is no more, but a minatory if diminished Russia has taken its place. A possibly nuclear Iran. A confirmed nuclear North Korea and Pakistan. Preposterous anti-American strongmen like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. An increasingly rampant threat of Islamofascism. The enemies of freedom and the West are more numerous than ever. It is here that the two deepest lessons of the Berlin Wall lie. First, that tyranny frankly confronted can be defeated. But, second, that the victory of freedom is never final: it must always be renewed not only through our willingness to acknowledge and struggle against evil, but also through a forthright proclamation of our own founding principles. It is this last requirement of freedom that seems most difficult for Western intellectuals. To quote Kolakowski once more, there is “one Great Cause that has persisted more or less intact throughout the past decades in the Leftist mentality: the loathing of democratic countries. Allegiances changed, but if there was something enduring in Leftist politics, it was this: in any conflict between a tyrannical and democratic country, the tyrants were right and democracy wrong.” One would have thought that the admonitory tale of the Berlin Wall would provide an incontrovertible disabusement. Alas, it is a lesson we have yet to absorb.
President Obama is too disinterested, and occupied accomplishing nothing, to attend the 20th anniversary celebration in Berlin.
P.S.: Here's another rumination on 1989 and another fall.
Those who don't remember, or who never learned about communism, might want to read this short essay.
I have been thinking about the wishes we have about ourselves, and about how we deal with our disappointments in ourselves and our perceived shortcomings.
Here are some of the things I have heard from people:
I wish I were...
taller shorter more beautiful and sexy stronger more handsome richer blonde blue-eyed green-eyed more outgoing more inner-directed more charismatic a better athlete smarter better at math more popular more disciplined less fearful better at memorization better at focusing less neurotic more confident more courageous more authoritative skinnier able to relax more energetic more knowledgeable less naive less cynical less of a manipulator more interesting less of an asshole less self-centered more self-interested more adventurous less reckless and impulsive less boring darker-skinned lighter-skinned bigger smaller bigger-breasted smaller-breasted bigger-penised quicker to orgasm (women) slower to orgasm (men) younger bigger-assed smaller-assed better at (fill in the blank)
The list could go on and on. It is not human to be too pleased with oneself unless one is delusional on some level. God, and our Moms, and Mr. Rogers might like us just as we are, but we generally do not.
Why would we? Love would not be as special, as miraculous, otherwise.
What would the world be like if we could all design ourselves - besides being filled with rich 6'3" guys with 3-foot johnsons and rich 5'6" skinny blondes with perfect - but generously so - boobs? All with 160 IQs and charming personalities.
Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good
and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view.
Apparently our posting of that Taylor Swift YouTube was just too much. Our unofficial Maggie's "Youth Of Today" Czar suggested Peacebone from Animal Collective. Stick with it, says she:
I posted on the AMA's initial support of the Dem bill in the House, last week. I cannot imagine how a doc could support that thing if they care about their patients, their practices, and the huge advances American medicine has produced for the world over the past two generations. Not to mention the freedom factor which, for me, is right up there with high quality medicine in importance. Come to think of it, I hold freedom higher.
The Right Wing Prof 
