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.
Anybody who can handle 48 hours on, 24 hours off as an intern in a big city hospital for a year does not "crack under stress." On my busiest night, I by myself admitted 24 patients to the hospital from the ER. Only one died in the process that busy night, as I recall. An athletic 45 year-old diabetic dad with an MI. Some died shortly afterwards, though.
The worst night that I remember in the ER was a Saturday afternoon when two large families in small cars had a head-on in a parking lot. We had to separate the hopeless parents and kids from the others, fast. There were only two of us on duty. I think two or three kids and one parent survived.
Taking care of people with PTSD - if it even really exists as a "disease" - ain't nothin compared to that kind of work.
And that kind of medical work ain't nothin compared to combat.
The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.
“Simon & Schuster, believes that Beck has become the only author in history to ever have #1 New York Times bestsellers debut on these four different lists: hardcover fiction (The Christmas Sweater), hardcover nonfiction (Arguing with Idiots and An Inconvenient Book), nonfiction paperback (Glenn Beck’s Common Sense), and now with The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book, children’s picture books.”
If you don't like what we're offering, we'll give you more of it. Far more Americans oppose Obamacare than support it. Yet Democratic representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia said he "concluded" from last week's election that "we've got to pass health care .??.??. [and] give Democrats something to be excited about." It's "a matter of tangibles being delivered," said Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
"Tangibles." That captures it, doesn't it? Freedom is not a "tangible," is it?
Some insurance plans cover abortions? News to me. That's strange. Abortion is a totally elective procedure. Doc, I have a little growth in my uterus. What do "rights" have to do with freebies? I have the right to own guns, but not for the gummint to buy them for me.
Wrong side of what? The march to feudalism? Via NYT:
“This is an opportunity to do something as big as Social Security,” he added. “And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”
How is that Social Security working out? And never mind that private insurance is readily available. Tom Sowell asks:
What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?
Related: The fall of the wall didn't kill the Left. Big Government
The contortions people are going through to avoid the obvious reality that Major Hasan was a one-man Jihad are remarkable. Scott at Powerline identified his disorder: PISS. Why do Moslems get a pass on violence? Wizbang: Hasan worshipped with 9-11 hijackers. At Moonbattery, Moslems defend the Major. The world has gone mad.
Mr. Lieberman said that if news reports were true that Mr. Hasan had
turned to Islamic extremism, "the murder of these 13 people was a
terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most-destructive terrorist act
to be committed on American soil since 9/11."
Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.
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.
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?
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.
Big Al Gore, noted climate scientist, former VP of the USA, Nobel Laureate, budding Green Billionaire, owner of many large homes and SUVs, eater of meat, world-class carbon-emitter, and Man-Bear-Pig, clears CO2 of most of the blame.
Hmmm. What next? And blame for what? Life on earth would cease to exist without CO2.
'All men want is sex and for you to make them a sandwich.'
In that order. And a few cold Coronas, please, with lime.Some gratitude for the masculine attention and some snappy repartee are always welcome too.Don't forget the chips with the sandwich, and please turn on ESPN.
But he was right the first time about not being ready for the Oval Office. As president, he seems confused and a bit distant on the issues, leaving the details to congressional Democrats and an ever-growing number of “czars” while he golfs and launches attacks at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
Thanksgiving dinner for 8 for $20. WalMart. Plus other great deals there. h/t, Carpe Diem
Global income inequality is down. I guess that's a good thing. Income is good. It provides choices. We want everybody to be as rich as they want to be.
Health Care was a loser in Tuesday's elections. It does make me wonder why a new Pres would want to start out with hugely divisive issues and a combative style instead of with more widely popular issues, more modest steps, and the kind of conciliatory approach he brings to Putin, Chavez, and Iran.
The Associated Press screwed the pooch*, in multiple ways, in its reporting of the release by the JFK Presidential Library of previously classified recordings of President Kennedy's meetings in 1963 with advisors about Vietnam.The discussions involve the unauthorized cable from the State Department lending support to a coup against South Vietnam’s President Diem.
1. The JFK Presidential Library, administered by the National Archives, expressly admonishes in its press release:“Members of the media are cautioned against making historical conclusions based on the sound clips and transcript alone.”
The AP’s report, instead, leads with, “Newly released White House tapes from the Vietnam War era portray President John F. Kennedy wrestling over the fate of South Vietnam's strongman in a situation that appears to mirror President Barack Obama's quandary today in dealing with Afghanistan's shaky government.” The AP’s headline: “Tapes show Kennedy was conflicted over Saigon coup” My local newspaper one-upped the AP by changing the headline to “Like Obama with Afghanistan, Kennedy had issues with an ally.” (Sorry, the website for the San Diego Union-Tribune is still down, but once up you can find the link there.)
2. The AP report concludes with a sheer ignorance by its reporter, Barry Schweid: “The battlefield situation gradually worsened for South Vietnam and the United States, and the conflict drew to a close under President Richard M. Nixon. All U.S. ground troops were gone by March 1973, and the United States evacuated Saigon in April 1975.”
In fact, the battlefield situation, after the governing and combat chaos spawned by the US backed 1963 coup against Diem, stabilized and, indeed, markedly improved after the almost total decimation of the Viet Cong during and after Tet ’68, then under President Nixon’s turning command over to General Abrams (see here) whose direction reduced the North Vietnamese forces to barely subsisting across the borders in sanctuaries, then with US logistics and airpower backing it up the South Vietnamese Army roundly defeating the North Vietnamese invasion of 1972.It was the post-Watergate abandonment of US pledges to supply airpower and arms to South Vietnam, perpetrated by the liberal majority that got control of the US Congress, that led to the downfall of South Vietnam to the massive invasion from North Vietnam in 1975.
3. In between, the AP doesn’t bother to mention that JFK’s Ambassador to Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, in the recordings released says, “my view is that there is no one that I know of who can – who has a reasonably good prospect of holding this fragmented, divided country together except Diem.”Many careful scholars of Vietnam have documented that Diem was falsely portrayed by some influentials in the media and within the US government’s advisors. The coup unleashed years of governmental instability and weakness within Vietnam, requiring heavier US commitment of troops to hold and reverse the unleashed downslide in South Vietnam’s defenses. (See, for example, here.)
4. President Kennedy, in the period in these tapes, is not in favor of the coup unleashed by his State Department.In effect, though, he at least ultimately acquiesced.
In no substantive way does the situation in Vietnam during the 1960’s parallel that in Afghanistan today, except in the muddled thinking within our White House and Congress, poor MSM reporting, and the American people’s declining confidence in and tolerance for unsuccessful half-way measures.
After my morning prayers, and thanks for Republican victories in yesterday’s elections that may help stop the ObamaCare obomination in its tracks, I picked up my morning newspaper and on page 3 read the article, “Move to put spiritual care in health bill.”(Sorry, my local newspaper’s website is down for overhaul, but here’sthe complete wire service dispatch.)
This is exactly one of the absurdities that argues against ObamaCare or most further government takeover of healthcare.Special interests intrude their mandates, and costs, on us all, even with little justification outside their mustered political power.
One of the battles in Congress is over a provision of the House ObamaCare bill that would require insurers to pay for prayer treatments as for other medical treatments.It was proposed by a Republican congressman, whose district includes PrincipiaCollege, a Christian Scientist school.
There’s some evidence that a patient’s morale affects their recovery.There’s some evidence that prayer can improve a patient’s morale.There’s, also, much more evidence that prayer will not cure most ailments and, indeed, there are sufficient studies that substituting prayer for proven scientific medicine can prolong or worsen serious ailments that otherwise could be alleviated or cured.
I, personally, like the saner holistic approach to medicine, to add proper diet, exercise, some vitamins, and yoga to one’s health regimen.And, I pray.But, to require that medical insurance cover these is insane, and costly, crowding out the core scientific medicine that is essential. Many who are uninsured are, thus, priced out of coverage due to the costs of mandates for usually lesser effective treatments, like chiropractry or acupuncture or massage, being added into insurance. Further, adding in very expensive in vitro fertilization, as desirable as it may be for those infertile to enjoy having children, is similarly counterproductive to our main concerns about improving health care.If they want children, pay for it, or accept your fate.There is not a legal nor moral obligation for taxpayers or others who buy insurance to buy children for them.
This argument in Congress over whether to include insurance coverage for prayer is an absurd but indicative example of what we can expect when special interest government runs health care.
Addendum: The above are just a few more examples of some of the points that The B made in his Insurance Freedom post this week. It is, indeed, insane. Furthermore, I never heard of paying for prayer. Prayer is one of the few things that remains free and untaxed.
Addendum: Christian Science practioners do charge. Other "clergy" may and will, as well, if they can get paid by insurance.
BTW, see my comment below about which "mandate" I'd like to have in my insurance!
We are disappointed that Hoffman lost in NY 23. Surprised, too. The "meaning" of these elections will be spun to death. Ace notes that the O managed one big win in Maine.
WSJ: Obama and the Liberal Paradigm. "The sheep are quite capable of looking out for themselves. Someone tell the Democrats."
We sheep would be even more capable if the gummint would leave us alone.
Health Care Bill postponed further. That's good. This bill is antiquated New Deal entitlement: government-heavy baloney. Regressive - not Progressive.
Britain has had a government-run medical system for more than half a century and it has to import doctors, including some from Third World countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors' income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences.
I do not think this is a racial thing. I think it's an effect of urban one-party governmental cultures of corruption. A generation or two ago, it would have been Irish pols - but nobody expected integrity in pols then.
Politico terms it an "uncivil war." I think it's just what parties do to figure out what they are about. It's healthy. Parties should debate and contain conflict.
The contortions people are going through to avoid the obvious reality that Major Hasan was a one-man Jihad are remarkable. Scott at Powerline identified his disorder: 
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 
Is this