Tuesday, August 4. 2009
More of the Dem's health care bill, in its own words.
The MSM is reporting nothing that is in this bill, and simply parroting the Dem talking points. We gotta read it ourselves.
 Dems losing the health care debate
Fun prank: The dissolving bikini
The spike in obesity, explained
Huge federal tax revenue drop. Solution? Raise taxes, of course. Says the WSJ today:
The Obama advisers are laying the groundwork for taxing the middle class while claiming the deficit made them do it.
An Ohio health care town hall.
I understand the Dem Plan B in our update. Regulate the insurance companies out of business, then the government can step in as savior. In Reagan's words:
If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Steyn:
In my weekend column, I write that government health care "redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists — to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs in every particular."
But don't worry, you'd be surprised how you get used to it.
Schumer: You will get new health care no matter what. Meaning, I suppose, whether you want it or not.
Thompson reports on a conference you probably missed:
...one can only tremble with regret at missing Richard Twine’s pithy contribution: Embodying Posthumanist Intersectionality and Resisting Transhumanist ‘Enhancement’ Through Feminist Veganism?
Monday, August 3. 2009
Rep Doggett says the public protests about government medicine only reinforce his determination to pass it.
As Insty notes, it's happening all over the country, and I see no public push for this except from the politicians, who of course are wiser than us foolish little people who don't know what is best for us.
I opted out of being a Medicare "provider" several years ago. It saddened me, because I like working with seasoned citizens. However, they are now so accustomed to Medicare that the expectation that they should personally pay me for my time is anathema to many. Not to all, however. I have never refused to help a patient because of financial limits.
However, entitlements turn otherwise proud grey-haired adults into... what?
The last time I was accepting Medicare, they paid me around $70 for a lengthy office visit, less than my plumber charges me for the same thing. No disrespect for plumbers at all: I respect their skills very much.
But what really put me over the top was their paperwork. Being a sole practioner who donates 1/3 of her time to teaching and a charity clinic, I could never afford a trained "Coder" to do insurance forms for me for $65,000/year (or more).
Yet if I did the Medicare forms myself, I'd end up working for around $20/hr - spending more time on paperwork than seeing patients. Just check out the government manual for Medicare filing for doctors.
Bear in mind that a form-filling error is a potential felony. My plumber has no such problems.
 Newsweek tells us to get ready for polyamory
How to save the economy. It's simple.
The city of Altinum discovered.
Scientists revolt against the warmening propagandists. A growing movement.
Ellen Degeneris digs deep. Anchoress
The decline of Britain. It begins:
Even in the decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed military might, its extraordinary relationship with America—all these things helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now all that is changing ...
Middle class tax hikes planned
I notice that AVI has listed us as "very smart people." Wrong. We are mostly distinctly middlebrow and intellectually lazy. Sippican is "very smart people."
Althouse on the weather:
I love that we are "warned" not to feel optimistic. How twisted we've become! It's like people are rooting for disaster.
In which the O admits plan to eliminate private insurance. Nothing but a power grab. It's the old story: Invent crisis, grab power from the people. As Tiger says:
If you do not believe conservatives who say that the "public option" is a trojan horse for a single-payer health care system, you're always free to believe the liberals. Obviously that's the reason for it. There is no other even theoretical justification that makes sense.
Related, a reader sends an op-ed from the Greenwich (CT) Time. A quote from it:
(iii) Overall Limitation For Unintentional Failures.--In the case of failures which are due to reasonable cause and not to willful neglect, the penalty assessed under subparagraph (A) for failures during any 1-year period shall not exceed the amount equal to the lesser of--
''(I) 10 percent of the aggregate amount paid or incurred by the employer (or predecessor employer) during the preceding 1-year period for group health plans, or
''(II) $500,000."
If you skimmed, shame on you. You're much like many lawmakers, for whom I, as a money manager and business owner, have a few questions:
- What is that $500,000 penalty all about?
- What problems are you trying to solve with this legislation? I was under the impression that we needed to A) insure the uninsured (it would help if we educate everyone who qualifies for Medicaid to sign up and include illegal aliens); B) get coverage for pre-existing conditions (we could negotiate with insurance companies); C) build a safety net for people who suffer financial ruin as a result of a catastrophic illness (buy everyone an excess major medical insurance policy).
- What's your rush, and what's your objective? To solve problems or to pass legislation before people ask questions?
- Are you seriously going to vote for this 1,000 page bill before you've read it? It is massive, the changes are monumental, the impact is surreal, and there is no way you can honestly tell your constituents that you have formulated a reasoned belief that this legislation is in the best interests of the people that you were elected to serve.
Basic assumptions: Are terrorists warriors or criminals? Moving Gitmo prisoners to Kansas.
How the White House is strong-arming the press
Anti-trust is obsolete. Indeed it is. One quote:
...by the time regulators can assess a technology market, the market has often moved on. Not long ago, Google was the upstart and the search leaders included names like AltaVista and Excite. “Regulatory intervention in the high-tech sector thwarts the natural evolution of the market,” argues Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Worse, it distorts the response of competitors. Antitrust investigations steer the market in unnatural directions, creating instabilities in entire industry sectors.”
The antitrust laws are anachronisms when applied to industries of constant innovation. Even theories about the role of antitrust were designed for the industrial era.
Health care town halls received with hostility
Cars, Bread, and now circuses too. Have we become sheep?
Infantile delusions. Samuelson on California, quoted at Betsy:
National parallels again seem apparent. Federal budget deficits -- reflecting the urge to spend and not tax -- predate the recession and, as baby boomers retire, will survive any recovery. Amazingly, the Obama administration would worsen the long-term outlook by expanding federal health insurance coverage. There's much mushy thinking about how we'll muddle through.
California has pioneered this sort of delusion. The presumption was that a dynamic economy would pay for expansive government. But California's relative economic performance has actually deteriorated. In the 1980s, the state's economy grew much faster than the national economy; annual growth averaged 5.1 percent vs. 3.1 percent nationally. In the present decade, the gap is smaller -- 2.9 percent versus 2.3 percent -- and much of the state's advantage reflects the unsustainable housing boom, of which California was the epicenter.
While I disagree with 96% of Obama's agenda, I think this whole birther thing is nonsense. Critique peoples' policies and their assumptions. Ad hominems and smears are disgusting, even though the Left has no problem with using them, for example, with the latest Palin smears (Gosh, they must be terrified of her). As Surber comments:
The Kenya certificate is a fake. The Hawai’i certificate is suspicious.
There is only one Vulcan-clad logical conclusion: Barack Obama was never born.
Photos: These are popping up all over LA. LA?
Sunday, August 2. 2009
 The coming boom in tax shelters
What is wrong with AARP?
Southern Baptists take on New England. Welcome, friends. We are tired of the UCC and the Episcopalians. They do not seem to focus on God any more.
Does the O represent a new template? neoneo
Re our cold summer, from Surber:
Remember: Everything proves global warming.
And the only way to stop global warming is to tax the hell out of the American people.
It is intended to be stimulating
Why no medical tort reform?
What's up with all the czars? h/t, Doug Ross
Why you do not want to get cancer in Europe
If Bush had an economy this bad, would he get this headline?
What does "Let me be clear" mean?
Revisiting Liar's Poker, with some thoughts about military officers. Volokh
Via Riehl, a blog by a few Marine Corps officer candidates. Cool. The responsibility they take on is mind-boggling.
Really good post on news, reporting blogs, Cronkite, etc., at Driscoll
Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.
Quoted at Viking:
...New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007 - while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index.
Generations of debt. Human Events
Dems re-do their sales pitch
Related: Families and Small Businesses to be Taxed to Pay for Health Reform
The obesity brouhaha: at WSJ, Obesity costs taxpayers. Freedom needs to include being fat, even if it is sometimes more offensive than free speech. Yes, one of the problems with getting government involved in medical care is that the State then has a financial interest in your life, and an excuse to try to control it. Thus checking kids' lunchboxes in the UK. Therefore,
thank you for saying this, Mr. Steyn:
...if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment,” governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed — by the Conservative party, alas — that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know . . . totalitarian?
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.
Is medical care a zero-sum game? From Pajamas:
Obama’s command seizure of one-sixth of the American economy is based on the assumption that medicine is a zero-sum game. The trouble is that Obama’s assumption is false — and destructive. It has been falsified by every single advance in human health since the Industrial Revolution. It’s simply not true that there is a fixed supply of medical care, one that cannot grow, become more effective, cost less, and make our lives better and longer. It is not true that my gain must be your loss.
Obama thinks the way Thomas Malthus did in 1798. But Malthus was wrong then, just like Obama is now. So here’s the question for every American. Under ObamaCare, when we really will have to divide up a Malthusian lockbox of federal money, how much will your life be worth?
Brussels Journal begins:
These are not happy days for Americans, particularly if raised on traditional American values of Northern European provenance. Conscientious work as redemptive virtue, thrift, self-reliance, self-restraint, Biblical ethical principles, modesty, high-minded civic culture, love of liberty, distrust of centralized power.
America’s ruling elite – once the embodiment of such values and now a putrid trench running from Wall Street to Madison Avenue to Washington DC to Hollywood -- has debauched and upended them as thoroughly as though it has been teleported directly from 3rd century Rome.
Photo: The Briar Bowl Tobacconist, 1950s. Maggie's Farm supports the responsible use and enjoyment of tobacco.
Saturday, August 1. 2009
A friend of a friend emailed this photo of an either dead or pixillated fellow in his whitey-tightys in the early morning rain in NYC's financial district this week:
Jawa reports on a mass wedding, sponsored by Hamas, of what appear to be 450 pre-pubescent girls. You just have to put your multicultural hat on to appreciate the joy of this occasion.
Video on that second link. The AFP article mentioned nothing about the ages of the girls, but did report:
"We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness," Zahar told the men, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp.
Each groom received a present of 500 dollars from Hamas, which said its workers had also contributed five percent of their monthly salaries to add to the wedding gift.
These guys do not need to anticipate "When forty winters..."
Friday, July 31. 2009
From Insty, Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%. The problem there is that there are too many people with no skin in the game, and it turns most of the population into members of a cargo cult, awaiting the arrival of their magic goodies.
I am a flat-taxer: 13% on all income, for all. No deductions, no tax forms, no increases except temporarily in wartime.
Re Sen. Corker:
Corker says President Obama recently met with him, something he appreciates. But Corker doesn't think Obama "has his feet on the ground with regard to what appropriate health reform is." He adds, "And he personalizes everything, it's all, 'I, I, I.'" Corker suspects that for Obama "doing this with some massive bill is about politics...To him, it's about a political victory, not about doing what's in the long-term interest of citizens."
Photo is a Smart Car
Betsy McCaughey's website, Defend Your Healthcare. She has read all of the bills.
Related, Krauthammer says it's a tactical retreat, not a defeat
How computer high-frequency trading makes it all more fair for all of us. Back in my youth, I remember how Wall Street worried that the introduction of the telephone would ruin trading - meaning the profits of traders.
It costs a lot to survive your heart attack. Do we care?
Henry Allingham died.
Waxman and Pelosi: Imperfect Together. WSJ
How the elderly are leading the fight against Obamacare
Golf tournament fails to cure Crohn's Disease, once again. It begins:
Area man Josh Mulders reports that the four-man charity scramble he attended on Thursday of this week at The StoneLedge Links of the Pine Point Country Club at Tall Oaks Gated Preserve Community failed to eradicate Crohn's Disease for the second straight year. Mr. Mulders reports that in addition to failing to find a cure for "some sort of disease or something," the tournament failed to meet many other expectations of the participants. "This place sucks, and the open bar only has well drinks," he said.
A federal subsidy for "community organizers." Good grief. How about subsidizing some young producers instead of the professional parasites?
Town Hall meetings are the new venue to emote
Newspeak in Venezuela. Speech is dangerous for dictators. Related: Laws against blasphemy return to Ireland
More on the Repub insurance reform plan. For one thing, it doesn't damage medicare.
Barney Frank says: "I think if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer, and that's the best way to reach single payer."
Via Wizbang:
Obama isn't telling the truth when he is trying to sell this thing.
Thursday, July 30. 2009
 I am headed for the beach and the healthy icy-cold salt water for the weekend. Beach scenery by Theo, who has tons of good stuff posted.
A. Elmer Crowell's Cape Cod decoys
Dalrymple: There is no right to health care.
Population of illegals is dropping
Why you ought to be able to buy a kidney. h/t, Cafe Hayek
Do as the Green Gods say, not as they do
Organic food isn't "healthy." h/t, Dr. Helen. We've been saying that for years. It's magical thinking, and a goofy fad.
The O's Science Czar wants to give trees legal standing. The guy needs to get back on his meds.
Our friend Sipp is featured in Cottages and Bungalows magazine - a magazine without which our truant Dylanologist cannot do.
Repubs unveil their own medical insurance plan
Peggy Noonan: Americans say slow down the hopey-changey
Drudge notes that this is the 12th Obama Time Magazine cover photo in 12 months. Maybe they are reading the polls.
Another prominent limo Lib has second thoughts. h/t, Riehl
Reason TV: The case against college as an entitlement
No, every other developed nation does not have government medical care
Related, from Neo-neo:
America is not in favor of the solution they want, or the one Obama is offering. That may not matter to them—after all, they know better than stupid Americans, and we should be wanting what our intellectual and moral superiors on the Left think we should want. But it is certainly a fact that, despite the 2008 election results, America has still not turned sufficiently to the Left for most of these people.
And Obama has been foundering of late as a leader. This should be completely unsurprising—after all, if you look at his history, why would he be a leader?
Related: Paul Krugman blows it (video). h/t, Insty. No, Canadians do not like their medical system. Nor do the people of Massachusetts: they have a mess up there.
From Marginal Rev:
If insurance companies do avoid covering people who are "likely to need care," this suggests that the uninsured are unhealthy. But 60% of the uninsured are in excellent health (Table 10) (In fact, overall the uninsured are only slightly less healthy than the insured).
To be sure, this doesn't mean that being uninsured is not a problem but, contra Paul, it does mean that insurance companies would be willing to cover most of the uninsured at the same rates as the insured if the uninsured could or would pay those rates. In Paul's story there is a market failure, in the latter story health insurance is expensive and some people don't buy it. The difference matters because the wrong diagnosis will almost surely lead to the wrong treatment.
People like Paul see market failure everywhere.
Related: Pelosi says insurance companies are "the villains." Language like that is born of desperation.
Related, from Luskin:
WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD WE EVER DO THIS? I don't think a majority should be able to vote to disposess a minority in any circumstance -- including to force that minority to pay other people's health care insurance costs against their will. But according to the latest polls, doing so isn't even what the majority wants. So why are we even considering doing this?
You know why, Dan. Power and control.
Krauthammer:
Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law. Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.
In neither the House draft nor the various Senate drafts of health care legislation can one find any tort reform. According to reliable sources, the excess costs of “defensive medicine” due to providers’ fear of law suits is 9-10% of our total national health care spending. Just capping punitive damages has led to a 3.4% reduction in per capita health care spending in those states with caps. In California, with a cap, malpractice premium increases have been 75% lower than nationally, and claimants collect in 1/3rd the time as elsewhere.
President Obama promised the AMA convention that he would support reasonable tort reform. So far, he like Waldo cannot be found on this issue. Patients do have a right to justice when due. Tort attorneys do not have a right to a cornucopia of claims.
News reports have followed the health industry players involvement in the legislative drafting, but nothing has been reported about tort lawyer lobbying. Perhaps they don’t have to lobby, as about half of Congressmen and Senators are lawyers, and only a very few are doctors.
On the other hand, if government runs all health care, try suing it. Ha!
Oh! Did I forget to mention that in the 2008 elections 76% of lawyers contributions went to Democrats, and 84% so far in the run-up to the 2010 elections?
And, Oh My! Then there's this move in Congress of a $1.6-billion tax break for lawyers. Just what we need, having the government make it easier for lawyers to launch more frivolous or speculative cases.
 Like Massachusetts, Maine decided to try its own government medical insurance plan. Betsy recounts the grim outcome of that effort.
It's not your grandfather's Maine anymore. 23% of the state is on Medicaid - which is welfare. Whatever happened to the gritty, independent New Englanders? And why don't they pack up the U-Haul and move to Texas, where there are jobs, low taxes, and opportunities?
Nobody imagines that a good job market will ever return to Maine with their current politics, taxation, and increasingly decadent culture. What are the people waiting for?
Some new disturbing info about ACORN (which recently has been the recipient of how many billions of "stimulus" money, and which is supposed to be part of taking the next census).
This needs to be stopped. This is creepy.
 First they came for the hamburgers
Canada no longer has free speech
At Volokh:
Judge Richard Posner thinks the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 goes overboard in trying to protect consumers from themselves. Better to treat them — us — as "consenting adults."
Why do people in government think we citizens are idiots? ...but maybe we are, if we voted for these jokers.
From Dr. Bob:
What is it with these so-called policy gurus? Knowing little or nothing about how health care really works, they haul out the bromides and throw around statistics based on taking small numbers and projecting them across large populations, to come up with scary percentages which then echo around the web and inside the hollow heads of the parrots in media newsrooms. Oh, and our politicians then use this crapola to formulate policies, which always end up having massive unintended consequences and which never achieve the results promised. Newt’s a pretty bright guy — generally a far better idea man than a politician — but he’s whiffing at softballs thrown slowly, by and large, with this one.
So what’s my gripe? Where do I begin? How about at the beginning?
Kaus:
Here's a safe political prediction: Despite all the innovative e-mobilization and ad campaigns and town halls and community organizing, the August recess will not produce any effective groundswell of popular support for Obama's health care reform.
Joe Biden has me scratching my head. Powerline
Are the Dems in trouble in 2010?
Prof Gates happy for a chance to play the Race Card. John Stewart. Related: MSM covers for Gates
Related: Prof Gates has a summer home in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, which is the village the O wanted to vacation in too. Many do not know that Oak Bluffs has been a favored summer spot for affluent black Americans for a century. Martha's Vineyard also still has a good population of Wampanoag indians, mostly in the Gay Head area.
More on the obesity ridiculousness. Q&O
In which Dan Rather beclowns himself
“Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?" Driscoll
Wednesday, July 29. 2009
How many people really imagine that Presidents and Washington have power over the economy?
Governments, of course, only really have power to damage economies. Economies have lives of their own, following their own natural laws like weather. Even the Almighty Fed is very limited in what it can do.
Still, people seem to think that Presidents are somehow responsible, and I suppose that is because politicians seek any advantage, no matter how insincere.
Neither Bush nor Obama are responsible for the recession. It's called a "business cycle." People are blaming Obama now, and the O is trying to blame Bush. It's all stupid boob bait.
Besides cycles, what has the power to damage economies is government intervention like taxation, deficits, subsidizing of failing businesses, and regulation. Those things hobble economies, holding them back from what they naturally want to do (which is to produce things, including labor, and to price them), and I have no doubt that businesses have been worrying about what the Dems might do to hobble them.
Lefties always seem to love wealth and money, but to have contempt for those who create those things. Most of the very wealthy people I know are Dems or "Independents."
I posed this question to a very nice, well-intentioned but scientifically-illiterate Greenie lady I sat next to at dinner on Saturday night:
"What if there really is scary global warming, but it turns out it isn't caused by man, but instead by natural variation from other factors that are too complex to be understood? Then what?"
There was no reply. Her brain appeared to short-circuit.
I am a fun dinner companion.
Our Constitution begins:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
From the earliest days of our Republic, we’ve considered and argued ways to improve its representation of citizens. We are a Republic, of elected representatives, not a direct Democracy (except in some states with direct initiatives to be voted upon).
In either case, legislation voted upon by legislators or directly by voters, the complexity of the issues at hand and of the language to express it, compounded by the number of pages of fine print, the confounding interactions, and the many unknowns, makes the task of understanding and judging often Herculean, Solomonic and Einsteinian all at once.
The strength, wisdom and knowledge of Hercules, Solomon and Einstein are simultaneously required when considering thousands of pages of tiny-type recasting 1/6th of the US economy and 100% of the health care received by 100% of our citizens. Put health care legislation together with the rushed economic legislation of the past 6-months, and we’re talking about 1/4th of the US economy recast. Add in the changes in tax code to come to pay for it all and you’re well past ˝ the US economy remodeled. Literally everyone in the US, and indirectly most of the world, will be directly and seriously affected.
We’ve toyed with various adjustments, some legislated and some voluntary (usually obeyed only at the convenient whim and self-interest of elected representatives) to increase the deliberation and independence of legislators, and allow the public time and information to weigh in. For the most part, they’ve failed or been inadequate.
Not that they will be the ending solution, I’ll propose some more to bolster our and our legislators’ ability to make sounder decisions:
1. All members of legislative committees, entrusted by other legislative members with the detail evaluation of legislation, must attend all open and closed door meetings. That leads to wider and more careful deliberation. This duty is paramount over prestigious memberships in too many committees to be able to perform adequately in each.
2. All legislation must be publicly published on the Internet in full at least several weeks before detail hearings, to allow even minimal familiarity by those affected, the more knowledgeable, and by the public who has the right to transparency in order to know.
3. All legislative committee hearings must hear from an equal number of experts chosen by each political party, regardless of the weighting of party membership on the committee, to increase the likelihood of more information and views being heard.
4. All the members of each legislative committee must vote and publicly explain their vote.
5. All legislation funding or affecting more than one agency of government must either be broken down into its components for separate votes or be held for vote in the next biannual Congress once the public vote weighs in indirectly on the information received from hearings and legislators’ positions.
Yes, these reforms may slow some legislation, but experience with untoward consequences of haste and shadows makes that a positive result. Yes, these reforms will shift the workload of legislators toward deeper involvement with the details of legislation, the benefits of that being evident. Yes, true crises may require quick action at times, and if so there’s nothing to stop wise legislators from breaking such legislation into more carefully constructed and deliberated parts.
Yes, we can have a more perfect Union, more perfect Republic, closer to Democracy and to the capabilities of Hercules, Solomon and Einstein.
Steyn wonders Isn't it Islamophobic to characterize Palestinians as homophobic?
Insane: A European Working Time Directive. How do people put up with this BS? Doctors work when they have to. That's what doctors do. That's what all vigorous people do, except for Euro-weenies. I sure hope their rules do not apply to farmers, shop-keepers, or entrepreneurs.
Now I understand: they permit morons to vote in California. Video. h/t, Neptunus
How can you have a medical insurance poll when only 6 people in the US know what's in the bill? Are people taking it on faith? Gotta love this line:
Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory!
No laughing out loud at Dr. Obama. It's a cartoon, for heaven's sake. Woops, I forgot. The Moslems made cartoons dangerous. I feel sorry for that neurosurgeon, who was just having a little fun.
Bruce Walker at Am Thinker asks Is the O's Presidency unraveling?
Tuesday, July 28. 2009
 One year ago, I parked my car (legally - no No Parking signs) on the side of the road to eat my take-out Thai lunch as a break from the office, while admiring a lot full of fancy used cars.
Cop pulls up behind, turns on flasher. "What are you doing here?"
"Eating my lunch and looking at the pretty cars, officer."
"License and registration, please."
"OK. Here they are." (Goes back to his car to check it all, then returns)
"You need to move along."
"WTF? F-you. I'm an attorney, and I am doing nothing wrong. What's the matter? Didn't get any last night, ahole?" "All right, Officer."
I happen to be white. Policing happens to everybody, and sometimes it is a damn annoyance and ridiculous. I decided not to send a letter of complaint, because they might be on the lookout for my gold-plated Rolls 5 year-old Lexus sedan after that. You have to use your brains: cops are your employees, and they are pros, but also pricks sometimes.
As an attorney, when a police officer stops you and says "I smell alcohol on your breath. Have you been drinking?" the correct response is never "Officer, I see powdered sugar on your chin. Have you been eating jelly donuts?"
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