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.
From Daniel Hannan: The World of English Freedoms - It's no accident that the English-speaking nations are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights, writes Daniel Hannan. A quote:
Wasn't the American) republic founded in a violent rejection of the British Empire? Didn't Paul Revere rouse a nation with his cry of "the British are coming"?
Actually, no. That would have been a remarkably odd thing to yell at a Massachusetts population that had never considered itself anything other than British (what the plucky Boston silversmith actually shouted was "The regulars are coming out!"). The American Founders were arguing not for the rejection but for the assertion of what they took to be their birthright as Englishmen. They were revolutionaries in the 18th-century sense of the word, whereby a revolution was understood to be a complete turn of the wheel: a setting upright of that which had been placed on its head.
I agree with Penn and Teller. Prohibition does nothing but create criminals. Fortunately, most people do not want to be druggies because it is a lousy plan for a good, wholesome, dignified, and productive life. If you want to be a druggie, that's your problem, but don't do it on my nickel.
Government is, for some reason, exempt from fraud claims. Works nicely for our moral and intellectual superiors in Washington to be insulated from their consequences. A good gig for glib low-lifes.
Many of the women who purport to speak for the modern woman sound as if testosterone were toxic. However, I wonder how many of them (the non-Lesbians, that is) would ever claim that they seek a husband who is timid, frail, non-physical, unforceful, indecisive, unauthoritative, unadventurous, passive rather than restless, and lacking in intellectual and sexual aggressiveness and vigor?
Just as the media and the White House knew and covered up the fact that ObamaCare would devastate the individual market, they know and are now covering up the fact that the Obama administration itself has predicted that once ObamaCare's employer mandate hits in about 14 months, tens of millions could lose the insurance President Obama relentlessly reassured them they could keep...
The "problems" with Obamacare - not including the tech failures - are not bugs, they are features. The strategic brilliance of it all is unfolding. 85% were satisfied with their medical care before, but watch that number drop fast with outcries for a government fix of the supposed government fix.
Athletes, especially football, basketball, boxers, wrestlers, etc. beat the heck out of eachother every day for fun and/or profit, so why are people upset about words?
If they didn't bully eachother, I'd wonder what was wrong with them. They are gladiators, not hypersensitive metrosexuals. We must all learn to be tolerant of differences, and that includes differences we might not like. Tolerance, not necessarily approval although I am all in favor of locker-room-style insults and degradation. It's normal and fun verbal sparring and generally a form of male bonding. "Your mother wears Army boots."
If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Remember the Democrat Convention last year, when we were assured that government is the only thing to which we all belong? This shows that liberals haven't made a dent in the most destructive kinds of poverty, i.e., mental and spiritual. Indeed, for the liberal, these impoverished states are mandatory -- sort of an inverted interpretation of Jesus's praise of the poor in spirit. "Blessed are the weakminded, for they shall inherit the state."
I have no doubt that Obama wishes Obamacare to do good. But that is no excuse! Indeed, we could call it culpable goodness, because there is probably nothing in the world that has caused as much death and destruction as misguided good.
I cannot confirm whether this is accurate, but a commenter at Ann Althouse noted this:
..."the "health care provider" (must) interrogate the "patient" at each appointment and record the results in the government database. (And the provider who doesn't get the data gets financially punished.) The mandated interrogation is about smoking, whether or not the patient is being beaten at home, with whom and how often the patient is having sex, and how many guns are in the patient's home "
That's a quote from Obamacare describing your "annual health exam."
Lying doesn't cover half of it.
My doctor is now a spy for the State? Give me a break. No patient go along with that, nor will any good doctor. Do we have to get paranoid about our doctors now?
Don't hold your breath. Their jobs are far too important to let truth get in the way of what they want to do for us. A sordid business, closely related to and affiliated with prostitution of every sort. A sorry bunch of losers in life, even when they win elections and get rich in the process.
Everybody knows that politicians lie and manipulate routinely, which is why most people view them as a necessary evil despite their endless claims of being our moral and intellectual superiors. It must be interesting to be in a sales job in which the product is insulated from either performance results or meaningful competition.
Today’s Democrats argue that, some deceptive language aside, President Obama had every right to implement his view of medical care for America, as well as other things, because he was elected twice having promised something of the sort. But, in 1974, Republicans could have argued that Nixon had been elected twice, the second time by the largest margin in US history, specifically to undo the 1960s. In fact, Nixon’s lies about what he knew of his subordinates’ misdeeds were entirely irrelevant to the purpose for which he had been elected. Why should the Republican constituencies who had worked so hard have given up on the Nixon Administration? Why did Barry Goldwater, Mr. conservative himself, go to the White House to tell Nixon he had to resign?
The government thinks you’re stupid, or at least ignorant.
This isn’t just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It’s simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren’t equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, the federal government’s portfolio could have easily fit in a file folder: maintain an army and navy, a few federal courts, the post office, the patent office, and maybe a dozen or two other pretty obvious things.
Now, the file folder of things the federal government does is much bigger.
Read the entire brief post. It is in the government's interest to keep us all ignorant, poor, weak, and unresourceful serfs on the government plantation. That is not American, it's European or worse. Even "colonial." If your taxes approach 40%, you are a serf of the State. Feudalism endures and the bank accounts of the mandarins grow fat.
Typically, serfs in England owed 30-50% of their production to the Lord, who in turn owed some fraction of that, plus soldiers when needed, to the King.
That is, excepting those who hit 100 on the dot as I probably do. The government must do something about this social injustice. For starters, they could make assortative mating illegal. It's all about Equality. All Americans must be at 100 (except our Government Masters, who are always the Smartest People in the World in the same way that the North Korean leaders are).
That came up because I did not know that household helpers make so much money these days. I do not think that a good butler, lady's maid, or estate manager would have a below-average IQ. These can be complex tasks which require juggling many topics. Who remembers the butler from Upstairs, Downstairs? He was good, the realistic adult in the family, the central role. And what about Jeeves?
OK, well perhaps a scullery maid would not need an average IQ but nobody in America has a scullery maid. In America, even the immigrant dishwashers have big ambitions, and rightly so.
She has some paranoid ideas but I'm sure her memories are accurate. I suspect that Barry's being gay and doing drugs only adds to his David Bowie-style rock star image. Who cares? It's just interesting that there is nothing real there, on the surface, but, again, who cares? People did not elect a friend.
A colleague at work confided in me, over beers, that he and his girl started out with nudist cruises but have "graduated" to "Lifestyle" Cruising. I had never heard of this.
Nudism cruises are fairly sedate, it seems, but for "Lifestyle" the organizers charter a cruise boat for a few days of an orgiastic circus.
Lose your inhibitions, etc., I suppose. It does not sound like a New England Yankee sort of thing. They make you bring a heterosexual date for sharing. I don't think these things exist for gays, but who knows?
And for what? Eighty-five percent of Americans were happy with their health care before Obamacare, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index — higher than almost any other product or service polled, with even Amazon coming in at 88 percent satisfaction. Even uninsured Americans were as satisfied with their health care as Canadians were with their national health care.
If Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68%) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014.
One comment: It's not "health care," it's "medical care," and it's not even "medical care" - it's medical insurance. People want valuable stuff for free. That will never happen. I am still waiting for my free legal care.
One more link. Somebody put this together for laughs: My Cancellation
I have missed meaningful paper gains in the past year by being out of equities. I must be a lousy gambler. I steer clear of casinos. Zero Hedge explains what I have been seeing this year: The worse the economic numbers are, the higher the markets go. That's because lousy real numbers make the Fed afraid of quitting QE (which they should have done more than a year ago) and want to print money like crazy.
The American Psychiatric Association is confused about the PC answer to that question. It must be difficult to be both multiculturally-sensitive and yet PC in the American way, given that pedophilia seems quite accepted in Muslim areas along with recreational homosexuality, rape, etc.
Trading is not investing, but people make money doing it. This is a fascinating view of a growing part of Wall St. and world markets, and interesting people too. (H/T Exposing Wall Street's Hidden "Code")
Just imagine federally-managed and controlled legal insurance. After all, legal access and justice is a real right. At Jacobson:
The great Obamacare reform is turning into the great thrust of tens of millions of people onto Medicaid.
The problem is, fewer and fewer doctors are willing to take Medicaid patients because the reimbursements are so low.
I have met numerous doctors who tell me they either refuse Medicaid patients or restrict them because the reimbursements do not cover their costs. They also double and triple book, because so many Medicaid patients who make appointments don’t show up. As to Medicare the payments currently are bearable, but only because private insurance payments for other patients make up the shortfall.
Increasingly, doctors are abandoning the government payment train wreck, and going all cash or some hybrid. This all was foreseeable and was foreseen.
The millions of new Medicaid patients will have insurance, just no doctors to see them. That is a feature, not a glitch, to those who want single payer. Obamacare is proceeding accordingly to plan.
Socialism requires government force.A key tactic is to break and disrupt things,and then to jump in with a forced plan to fix it.
It's interesting that, in most of the discussion of medical care, the source of the heavy costs are neglected: expensive procedures and hospital care at the end of life. An office visit to an internist or family practitioner is still inexpensive.
Via 
Image of Obamacare ad via