Monday, October 19. 2009
Toon via Ace:
I happen to be the sort of person who wants to be free to buy - or not to buy - whatever insurance I want of whatever type I want - whether medical, homeowner's, flood, car or whatever.
I think of insurance as just one more free market product, like tomatoes or mattresses. All I ask for is a genuine free market, without government rules and regs (like the banning of interstate sales).
Thursday, October 15. 2009
It's good to know who the "key players" are. Thanks for the info, Bruce:
“Aetna participated (as the only invited insurer) in a discussion among a cross-section of key players in the health care debate: the trial bar, employers, unions, and an insurer. The convening authority was the senior staff from all three key House Committees.”
How dare I doubt that this group had my best interests at heart?
All the interest groups are trying to protect their piece of the national health care spending pie in the various legislative proposals. Tort lawyers, the largest contributors to Democrats, have succeeded beyond all others.
Tort reforms that reduce the costs of defensive medicine are off the table in all the legislation. Now, they want to increase their portion of the pie, by eliminating the right of insurers to recover from tort settlements the amount paid in claims. Claimants, thus, have increased motivation to sue, the possibility of suits and the awards increasing defensive medicine costs, and tort lawyers gain increased business.
Aetna is the closest “fellow traveler” among insurers to the advocates of ObamaCare, playing a delicate game of seeking like other insurers to increase premiums flowing to it from a mandate to have insurance while avoiding excess claims impact on increasing premiums, reducing private insurance due to guaranteed coverage without a mandate, while increasing the enrollment in a taxpayer subsidized government-plan.
So, alone among insurers, Aetna emailed me today (an independent employee benefits broker and consultant), “Aetna participated (as the only invited insurer) in a discussion among a cross-section of key players in the health care debate: the trial bar, employers, unions, and an insurer. The convening authority was the senior staff from all three key House Committees.” The subject: “The issue is whether the House bill should include a trial bar-supported provision to deny insurers (and union plans) the right to recover, from the insured, health care payments when the insured member has already received payment for the very same expense from a court award or settlement.” Guess what?: “The staff and the trial bar want this provision.”
Recovery by insurers or medical providers from tort awards is currently particular and complex in each state and federal jurisdiction. The tort lawyers aim is to in one fell swoop have their way, damn the costs to others than the fees to themselves and the double-payments to clients.
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform caps on settlements would reduce the federal costs of health care by $54-billion. The Associated Press concludes: “Even in the health care debate, that's real money.” But, the CBO report only touches on a small portion of the total cost of defensive medicine.
One of the leading doctor-bloggers (not hostile toward much of reforms) wrote in USA Today: “At $210 billion annually [according to various studies; about 9% of total health care spending], defensive medicine is one of the largest contributors to wasteful spending, and it can manifest in many forms: unnecessary CT scans, MRIs, cardiac testing and hospital admissions. A 2005 survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 93% of doctors reported practicing defensive medicine.”
The association of major insurers, America’s Health Care Plans (AHIP), finally launched a last-minute counter-attack the day before the Senate Finance Committee vote, to little avail. It will have even less influence in the legislation negotiations in Harry Reid’s office, only including Reid, Senator Dodd, Senator Baucus and the White House.
Tort lawyers' objectives and influence is clear. The rest of us are not adequately represented.
P.S.: Good discussion of the context.
 Candide (or is it Don Quixote?) goes out into the big world. But these Dems know nothing about Ketman:
Unfortunately, no one prepared Clinton for her trip by explaining the rules of ketman. This is an Oriental form of dissimulation first described by the 19th-century French ethnologist Count Gobineau and perfected, as it happens, by the Persians. According to Gobineau, the people of the East believe that, “He who is in possession of the truth must not expose his person, his relatives or his reputation to the blindness, the folly, the perversity or those whom it has pleased God to place in error.” In other word, he must hide his true beliefs.
How do you do a "reset" when the other guys are playing you for fools? These people are in so far over their heads. Relevant image above via Flares: http://yargb.blogspot.com/2009/10/when-don-quixotes-rule-world.html
The pitfalls of paternalism. Somin at Volokh. It's not a joke. If people want to be children, they will be treated as such.
Raul Castro on Socialism:
"Nobody, no individual nor country, can indefinitely spend more than she or he earns. Two plus two always adds up to four, never five," he said. "Within the conditions of our imperfect socialism, due to our own shortcomings, two plus two often adds up to three."
Reality is a bitch.
FIRE: Victory for Free Speech as College of William & Mary Dumps Speech Codes, Earns ‘Green Light’ Rating
We love FIRE. Please consider them for your end of year donations.
The new America? People are learning from Washington: "Everybody was like, 'I still want my free stuff,' and that started the riot," he said. Related at Betsy: The reality facing the money-for-nothing crowd
Glenn Beck VOGUE puts on blackface and nobody cares
Wall Street Journal surpasses USA Today as No. 1
Dems now represent the rich zip codes. So much for the "evil rich Repubs."
The Baucus plan would bankrupt the states. Say, how's that plan working out in Massachusetts?
From The Mind Boggles at Am Spectator:
It behooves us instead to take a moment to marvel at the insanity of the process we have allowed to steer the fate of the Republic.
Think about this. We have decisions made about matters desperately close to home, affecting our health and wealth, our lives and livelihoods, and by whom? A group of Senators, fairly capable people, farm the work out to aides of whom we know nothing. Who are these people and how is their capability determined, their efficiency measured, their accuracy gauged? The work produced by these ciphers in their crypts is hardly understood by the legislators, then subject to manipulation by jurists. It seems unimaginable that your life and mine may be offered as human sacrifices to the meddling of these wizards of Oz hiding behind their curtains.
More on the topic of covering the field with slime -
The media war on the smart and charming Liz Cheney
Steyn on Rush:
...the geniuses at Media Matters say: You want chapter-and-verse on those "Slavery was great/Give James Earl Ray the Medal of Honor" quotes? Okay, here's some stuff Limbaugh has said about Obama...
The race deck is all trump cards:
Step One: You can't say that. It's racist.
So you don't. Next:
Step Two: You're using "code language".
As I always say, "code language" is code language for "I’m inventing what you really meant to say because the actual quote doesn’t quite do the job for me." Still, you steer clear of "code language". So then:
Step Three: We'll just concoct it out of whole cloth, and, after running for a week with "Slavery Advocate Wants Medal Of Honor For MLK Killer", our fact-checkers will confirm the accuracy of that statement by citing something you said about Donovan McNabb or Obama's economic policy. Close enough.
PS Can Rush buy the St Louis Rams if he gets Roman Polanski to front the deal?
Powerline's post on the topic, Rush is Out, included this pic from CNN with a totally manufactured Rush quote. This kind of thing is dangerous stuff, besides being immoral, unethical, and despicable:
Dear Sweden or Finland or wherever: Thanks so much for sending along the handsome coaster. Please forgive us for taking so long to send our regards, but we'd really only been living here for a few weeks when it showed up, and we were a little unsure what to do with the thing. I'm just an intern here, and new on the job, so I don't get to decide anything. But there was something spiffy-looking about the package the little gold candy dish -- or whatever it is supposed to be -- came in, and I couldn't help myself, and kept fishing it out of the trash no matter how many Czars came by my desk and round-filed it while yelling at me to get back to editing Rush Limbaugh's Wikipedia page. I asked Adele, the girl that's been here the longest, what I should do with your merit badge, but she told me that anything that showed up for our first year here, whether it's an oil painting, a North Korean nuke, or a recession, should just get forwarded to the Texan fellow that used to live here, because nothing could be really addressed to us yet. Our new boss is still trying to finish up some work he had left over when he quit his job as a Chicago Alderman or something, and he's in Denmark at a trade show, still handing out his old business cards until they run out. Adele's old and still an intern, and the catty girls say she couldn't even get Clinton to grope her, so I just sort of brushed it off and kept the neato emblem thing here. It says here there's some kind of money that goes with your disk with the picture of Andrew Sullivan on it, but that makes me sort of suspicious. 1.4 million dollars it says here, but maybe that's a typo and you guys meant yen or kronos or Canadian dollars or those big stone rings or whatever you guys use instead of real money with Presidents on it. I'm sorry, you sound like nice people, but it smacks of a "You May Already Be A Winner" letter that's addressed to: Occupant. My mom told me Ed McMahon is dead, and the days of a man showing up at your house with a big cardboard check for no reason are long past, and we should all be suspicious of anyone that promises you money for doing nothing. Besides, ever since we hired Acorn to do the census, we had to keep way more than that in small unmarked bills in my desk, and I don't want you sending me any more. There's barely room for my Carmex, Post-It notes, and all my Apple gear as it is. Tell you what: why don't you split up the money and send a little to every person in America. None of us are good at math here, so I'm not sure how much that would be, exactly. I even asked my only friend here, little Timmy from Treasury, to figure it out, but he says carrying the zeros gets him every time. Timmy's nice and told me not to worry about the exact figure, somehow the President will end up with every penny of it eventually. Thanks so much, Amanda from the secretarial pool.
Megan McA: Is health care reform falling apart?
Tax the sick: Obama's new plan. Maybe people would rather die than pay the taxes.
Betsy: Phony budget promises. Everybody knows they're phony.
Related from Sowell: Magic Numbers in Politics
Jules has a plan to either never die, or at least to be prepared for combat.
Applause when Robert Reich mentions letting old people die. Sheesh.
Over my dead body. Home Depot's Bernie Marcus:
...when it comes to the government's health care program, Marcus said, "I see a very bleak future for health care in the United States, if we pass government controlled health care. The Congress, the federal workers do not participate. This is for you and for me. I mean come on, give me a break will you, please."
Love this. A Viking quote:
This is why I like engineers more than I like politicians. Engineers live in the real world. What they design has to actually function as advertised. So they don’t promise an airplane that is extremely fast, extremely fuel efficient, extremely quiet, and extremely safe. Those goals, each desirable individually, are mutually incompatible given the laws of physics. Politicians live in the political world and need only make sure that the bridges they build and the aircraft they design don’t crash in ruins before the next election. So they blithely ignore the laws of economics and human nature in designing programs. The political press corps equally pretends these laws don’t exist.
Precisely. All through this debate on the mother of all entitlements, nobody has acknowledged the elephant in the room that we're already locked into a mountain of debt due to exploding spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. So the Senate Finance Committee makes up stories to pretend the money is there but it's already been spent ten-times-to-Sunday.
Wednesday, October 14. 2009
"Just what is it about the functioning of the government that makes you want to entrust them with your medical care when you get sick?"
That's what I have been hearing people asking.
A good analysis. Jay Tea begins his Headless Snake post:
There's an old saying: "when you want to kill a snake, cut off its head." It's turning out that that doesn't exactly hold true in politics.
I'm finding the current political struggles going on tremendously entertaining. The Democrats have managed to pretty much seize power at the federal level, and have shown very little clue on how to handle the role reversal. It's been a very, very long time since they haven't been the minority in at least one respect, and they've forgotten how to govern.
Their old model simply doesn't work. The old way was to find the leadership of the opposition and focus their attacks on him or them, making them the embodiment of what they opposed, and then tearing that down by proxy.
That can't work now, because there is a schism in their opponents -- and there is no clearly defined leadership.
Read the whole thing. The Repubs are wise to keep their heads low for a while, at least as long as the Left seems to be in process of destroying the Dem party.
So who does the Left have to attack in a target-poor environment? Just the talking heads - the "call 'em like they see 'em" folks. Thus the recent attempted muggings of non-politicians like Rush, Glenn Beck, FOX, Sean, a blogger like Michelle Malkin - and now even Liz Cheney. Plus ex-pols who aren't running for office, like Palin.
Woops. Forgot to mention Michael Steele's obvious racism. An Uncle Tom, ya know?
I bet they wish they had somebody like Newt to smear again.
Addendum - re smearing and sliming
From Legal Insurrection:
The point of this tactic is to repeat accusations frequently enough that fiction and reality merge in the public consciousness. And on the internet, all you have to do is repeatedly put someone's name in close proximity to the inflammatory words, so that the search engines associate the name and the accusation.
And it works.
Yes it does. Just ask Chris Christie. If you haven't heard, he has a fat ass.
Re Liberal self-censorship, Am. Thinker begins:
When the BBC finally ‘fessed up last week to the Global Warming Fraud -- without admitting how much they aided and abetted the scam over ten years or more -- a liberal gent I know was shocked. He had sort of gritted his teeth and tolerated my skepticism over the years, but he never wanted to judge the whole fraudulent business for himself, although he had plenty of qualifications to do so. But this fraud was obvious. You had to want to close your eyes not to see it. I say that with all appreciation to the scientists and bloggers like Anthony Watt, who doggedly did the hard work of double-checking the fraud.
And via the WSJ re “Whoops apocalypse,” or perhaps it’s a case of “whoops not the apocalypse.”
We have been warning about the coming ice age. Drudge this morning:
Heavy snow expected in PA...
Chicago record breaking cold continues...
Montana records fall...
CHILL MAP...
FORECASTS BLOWN: '09 Atlantic hurricane season quietest in decade...
Chris Matthews appear to hope somebody will shoot Rush Limbaugh...with a CO2 cartridge? What? I find this disturbing, if not sick - if not incendiary. We have never said anything like that about anybody, and would never want to.
I guess dissent and principled disagreement is no longer the highest form of patriotism. Furthermore, I thought debate about ideas was a healthy, wonderful, American thing. Not when the Dems are in power, I guess.
I still wonder where all the hatred is coming from.
 Aussies hoard incandescent bulbs.
The WH's war against FOX
The Dem war against Rush: State-Run Media Scum Smear Rush Using Fabricated Quotes. Says Steyn: Prove you never said it. But Rush is rightly contemplating legal action.
As a long-time Rush listener, I can state that Rush has no trace of racism. What he does is to refuse to condescend or pander to anybody. Is that considered racism these days?
The Dem dirty political fights this season
Dems: We don't need no steenkin' ethics
Villainous: E.J. Dionne Explains Angry White Men to Blue America
Who's on the hook for the growing state and municipal pension messes?
Blankley: Washington is nuts:
That's right. The federal government is giving the "green light" for the country to drive to the poorhouse -- and drive there, I would argue, by way of the lunatic asylum. Are they nuts?
Sen Mitch McConnell on the Baucus bill:
"The fact is, this proposal will never come before the Senate. But what we do know is that the bill written behind closed doors here in the Capitol will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar Washington takeover. We know it will slash a half-trillion dollars from seniors’ Medicare, add new taxes and raise premiums. That’s not reform.”
WSJ: The Baucus bill is nothing but a huge middle-class tax bill
From Powerline:
It probably never occurred to the Russians that a U.S. president would come to power hoping to "reset" relations with Russian on some basis other than the hard bargain and the "trust but verify" mentality. Yet this is precisely what has fallen into the Kremlin's lap. From what I've heard, the Russian elites can neither believe their good fortune nor hide their amusement.
Tuesday, October 13. 2009
In considering the motivations of Maine Senator Olympia Snowe’s decision to vote in the Senate Finance Committee in favor of sending its unwritten healthcare bill to the full Senate one should understand that aside from any other reasons Maine would benefit.
Snowe has teeter-tottered, basically desiring an expansion of government health care programs, but the decisive factor may well be that she is a Senator from Maine. Regardless of her political stripe, the best explanation of Senator Snowe’s vote is she wants to bring home the dollars from other states’ taxpayers to provide medical coverage to the voters in her state.
Some of Maine’s latest statistics:
Maine is a gross receiver of $1.41 of federal spending for each dollar of federal taxes paid from the state’s taxpayers.
Maine, however, has one of the highest state and local tax burdens among the states.
Maine’s business tax climate is among the least attractive.
Maine’s Dirigo Health, its attempt at universal health care, is a failure, as in other states. The percent uninsured in Maine did not budge under Dirigo. Dirigo contains a “public” option, which didn’t work, so Senator Snowe has opposed one. She, however, has pushed in the Senate Finance Committee to reduce the penalty for not buying insurance, which together with the guarantee of coverage regardless of health condition will result in increased premiums to those who are insured and make a subsidized government plan more attractive. Similarly, the taxpayers' or overall costs of the expansion aren’t primary to her.
Politico has a discussion of the leverage Senator Snowe may obtain from her vote. Some of those in favor of a more extreme bill fear that. They needn’t, as now that she has voted in the Finance Committee, her voice can and will be ignored by the Democrat leadership patching up whatever they wish to move forward. That will likely include some sort of sub rosa “public” plan.
Others notice the bailout of Maine's failed Dirigo, at the expense of other states. Instapundit wonders "Payola?"
 Afghan Pop. Watch the Afghan Star trailer.
From John yesterday re Columbus Day:
Speaking of Columbus, the Associated Press finds that the boldest explorer in world history did not have quite the same sensibilities as a liberal 21st century schoolmarm. This apparently surprises some.
Is mass transit really green? Probably not, but could you imagine NYC without trains, buses and subways? It just wouldn't work.
Nuclear weapons deserve the Nobel Peace prize
Most ominous graph of the day
So how many properties does Charlie Rangel own?
This kid definitely needs Reform School
Businessman Steve Wynn takes on Michigan Gov.
A fine Driscoll essay: Man’s Crisis Of Identity In The Latter Half Of The 20th Century
Parents & Kids Protest Obama, Democrats & The Teachers' Unions: PJTV Video
Oh great: Obama to SEIU: "Now the Time Has Come For Us to Do It All Across the Country - We Are Going to Paint the Nation Purple With SEIU"
Instructing monsters to be monsters. Am Thinker
Jules:
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn whines that Fox acts as a “wing of the Republican Party.” No complaints about the rest of the White House Press Corps acting as a Democratic high-rise condo development, though.
John at Powerline says of the Dem medical reform "this isn't reform, it is stupidity." I disagree. I believe it is a medium-to-long-term strategy to raise prices to drive people to the government plantation. Trouble is, people will blame the insurance companies instead of the government. The Dems have not really made a secret of their clever but deceptive strategy to achieve government control. Graph from Powerline:
Monday, October 12. 2009
This is the plan - to drive private insurance out of business so we can be relieved of the burden of making our own choices.
The insurers have finally caught on to the Dem strategy.
Yes, at the very least the Dem reform will drive costs far higher in the short term. That is, insofar as anybody knows what the heck is in it.
One thing we do know is that insurance creep will be part of it. Not only will we lose the choice of major medical, or to be self-insured, but we'll end up paying for sex change operations, abortions, hair transplants and massage therapy.
Here's the Dem war against the specialists.
The most insulting thing about this whole mess, however, is that the taxes for it begin right away - but the program doesn't begin until after the next Pres election. Hmmm.
MarketWatch.
In fact, it was won by these guys.
Interesting change of heart, from Afghanistan -
LETTER FROM THE ROAD, #37
Rabia Elizabeth Roberts, October, 2009
Kabul: armed guards, machine guns and sand bags at every intersection and at the door to my guest house - open sewers and fecal dust - traffic jams of SUVs, military convoys, bicycles and pedestrians – six-story buildings amidst crumbling houses and filthy refugee encampments - men, lots of men everywhere, and street children. The women on the streets are conservatively dressed (no skin showing) with big scarves. About a quarter of them wear the signature blue head-to-toe burqa.
I have come to Kabul because I want to experience for myself what is happening here, eight years after the U.S. ousted the Taliban. I have spent the past 40 years of my life protesting war and working for peace in conflict areas. I don’t believe that killing leads to peace.
I came here as part of a small peace delegation of mostly women who share my conviction that President Obama must not send more troops and should set a timeline for withdrawal of the 60,000 that are here.
But now - after seven intense days and nights of interviews and meetings in Kabul - I no longer have that conviction.
Continue reading "Letter from a Peace Activist"
Aren't most folks working today? Scroll down and catch up with our posts from the weekend.
 Darn good point from Powerline: "Any government medicine system suffers from a fatal contradiction: health care is a "right," but a right that must be rationed."
Former Dem Senator Bob Kerry (via Gateway's post on Sen. Feinstein):
On vision, President Obama is very inspiring. He has given moderates in Muslim countries room to move by speaking to them directly and respectfully, while at the same time continuing to wage an aggressive and necessary battle against radical Islamists who have declared war on the U.S. However, he has made too many apologies. And at this point, his strategy is too naïve and has too little coherence to be called a strategy. If the issue of foreign policy had been more important in his presidential campaign—and therefore important to the electorate—I might be more critical. And if I weren't a supporter, my judgment would be harsher. But in this realm, I'm still hoping for improvement.
Insty wonders
COULD MONTY PYTHON BE MADE in today’s Britain?
And as Mark Steyn puts it:
As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful - particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.
Surber:
Al Gore’s big question is paper or plastic.
I don’t have time for this fool.
A brief history of the prevention of tyranny. Doug Ross. One quote:
The French nobleman and legal expert Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, studied the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. He believed that a properly designed government, in order to prevent tyranny, would require three branches of government. He wrote, "If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since 'constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power' . This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government... [to prevent any one] from acting tyrannically."
Want more to read? Try Federalist #42
Sunday, October 11. 2009
 What's the #1 reason women want sex? (Hint: Same thing guys would say)
The last days of the polymath?
The action of the journalists was to shut down the journalist and defend the politician
What's the matter with you, Sen. Graham? It's a political hoax, you bozo.
CBO: Malpractice reform would save 40 billion
CBO: Finance Plan Would Save $81 Billion - by raising taxes like crazy on everything, by cutting Medicare - and by one other trick
Related: Massachusetts Is like health-care hell for one universal health care advocate
Related: The health care bill - which doesn't even exist yet - will go unread and unreadable
Too old for medical care? Brit Docs leave old lady to starve
Banning the bulb? Not too smart
Related: Record cold kills playoff game. The Ice Age is coming. How often do we have to warn y'all?
Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors
Obama wins Miss World 2009
On Chavez' side? Why won't the O support Hondauran elections?
Saturday, October 10. 2009
The bank everybody seems to love to hate - because they're so smart.
Friday, October 9. 2009
One of my dearest, longest and most respected friends has stared more deeply and widely into the dark side of reality than anyone. We just discussed my “Davy Crockett attitude” toward President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. My way of being is to find reasons to smile in the face of challenges. I, also, believe this travesty further removes him from the ability of serious-minded people to support him.
My friend is qualified to be less sanguine: he served as a combat advisor in Vietnam, a MSM war correspondent in SE Asia, a refugee worker for the Cambodians who could escape massacre, became a Catholic priest, served at the Vatican, is currently a challenging professor of philosophy at a major college, and continues his priestly ministering.
Here’s what my friend has to say about what he titles “Taliban Peace Prize For Obama.” (My friend chooses to withhold his name from this post, so as not to intrude politics into his classroom or ministry.)
Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is an even more political act than giving it to Arafat. More shrewd as well.
The Nobel committee hopes to influence Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. Now that he is an internationally recognized man of peace, he is not going to order a surge in Afhanistan. McChrystal won't get the troops he says he needs.
The White House has been preparing this ground for weeks, suggesting that since Al Qaeda is now weak a Taliban return to power needn't worry us. We can live with that, they say off the record. The great military thinkers Joe Biden, John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod have developed a long-range John Murtha strategy that will operate along the lines of a video game: if you see movement on the screen, push a button.
And with the Taliban back in power, we won't have to worry about messy elections. But what about those who fought with us? What has the Taliban in store for them? If Afghanistan were not a land-locked country, we could expect thousands of boat people.
But not to worry. When asked about a possible bloodbath following a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, Obama said he didn't really have a problem with it and its possibility should not determine policy. He won't have a problem with it in Afghanistan either. After all, we've been told, Afghanistan, like Vietnam or Iraq before the surge, was always unwinnable. We'll accept a certain number of refugees to help ease the short-term sting of conscience over betraying an allly. But as with all vices, repetition makes the practice easier. This won't be the first time we've betrayed an ally.
It will destoy the military, of course, but by the time that becomes clear Obama will have passed from the scene.
Also read this on Obama's attitude toward bloodbath in Iraq, and this commentary on the political award to President Obama.
1. Everyone should start their day with a good laugh, it scientifically proven to lead to better attitudes toward whatever we do, which is scientifically proven to lead to better results;
2. Because I can’t find any other commenter who believes he deserved it, it’s heartening that we can unite around common-sense;
3. Since none can justify it, commenters on other candidates for the 2010 congressional and 2012 presidential election may be more honest about those who run on empty records and words;
4. President Obama’s preparation for and delivery of an acceptance speech may distract him from doing more to weaken the US and allies and reward foes, thus furthering peace;
5. President Obama no longer actually has to do anything to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, which may reduce he further worsening the outcomes of the measures already taken, thus furthering peace;
6. All those living in countries wracked by conflict and those in countries where they are oppressed can relax instead of fighting or standing up, knowing that hope is enough to be rewarded for accomplishing nothing, thus furthering peace;
7. The Nobel Prize will fit in nicely to the new White House décor alongside the Obama chosen faux painting;
8. Displaying encouraging honesty, President Obama says “ ‘I do not feel I deserve to be in the company’ of previous winners, ‘transformative figures who've been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.’ ”
9. I can look forward to President Obama’s picture officially being hung alongside Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho’s.
10. The 50-year old childhood book I have of Nobel Peace Prize speeches that inspire by the winners’ track-records will rise in value. Perhaps, President Obama will use the prize money to buy it from me.
For those interested, here’s the Nobel Peace Prize announcement. Here’s some of those considered less deserving by the Nobel committee. The faux painting honored by being chosen to grace the White House. President Obama’s acceptance comments, including no comment about what he plans to do with the $1.4-million prize money – my hope should be adequate, right? The New York Times, of course, struggles to find foreigners who are diplomatically complimentary, but finds few. Nonetheless, the New York Times coverage is predictably laudatory of "Imagine". Struggling to draft my Happy Face list, I finally found someone on the Left able to find a reason to favor of the Prize choice as a repudiation of President Bush. Since this diverges from other leading Left commenters, who find it absurd and undeserved, we can look forward to they ignoring their prior words as they once again shamelessly find excuses to extol the sagacity hidden to everyone else. To prolong your Happy Face, don't click on Memeorandum for the outpouring of incredulity.
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