Maggie's Farm

This from someone who actually had/has PTSD, with good reason: he lost an arm to an IED.

I’m more than a little angry right now.  Yes, I’m irate that some shitbag Major (“shitbag” is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that’s not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center….

In order to actually have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you have to go through some sort of traumatic event(s) to have “post stress.” Can therapists be emotionally troubled by the things they hear from patients? Yes.  But you cannot catch PTSD from someone.  It's not the fucking swine flu.

I cannot tell you how angry I am right now as a former patient of Walter Reed.  It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for people to use his time there as an excuse for what he has done.  It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for all the wonderful people there who help soldiers every single day.  Some of the most kind, caring, and noble people I have ever met in my entire life work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center day in and day out helping wounded Soldiers like me.

To fallaciously say this guy has PTSD from his time at Walter Reed as an excuse for opening fire on a group of innocent Soldiers is beyond reckless.  It's an absolute slap in the face for every caregiver and every wounded warrior who ever set foot on Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

BTW, here's a column I wrote at Military.com a few years ago about PTSD, based on a study that even the NYTs called "authoritative."

This is weird, but  interesting!

fi  yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed  tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht  I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of  the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it  dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny  iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.  The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by  istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot  slpeling was ipmorantt!

November 9 marks the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, put up by the communist rulers in 1961 to stem the drain from behind the Iron Curtain of those to whom freedom meant everything.  There was widespread shock throughout the West at the end of the Cold War, which seemed endless, costly and perhaps unwinnable, and the fall of the existential threat of communism and its terrible toll on mankind, which to some seemed impervious or even eventually triumphant.

Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, writes about “Tyranny Set In Stone: Why We Must Not Forget The Lessons Of Berlin.”

As we look around the world today, a melancholy spectacle greets our gaze. The Soviet Union is no more, but a minatory if diminished Russia has taken its place. A possibly nuclear Iran. A confirmed nuclear North Korea and Pakistan. Preposterous anti-American strongmen like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. An increasingly rampant threat of Islamofascism. The enemies of freedom and the West are more numerous than ever. It is here that the two deepest lessons of the Berlin Wall lie. First, that tyranny frankly confronted can be defeated. But, second, that the victory of freedom is never final: it must always be renewed not only through our willingness to acknowledge and struggle against evil, but also through a forthright proclamation of our own founding principles. It is this last requirement of freedom that seems most difficult for Western intellectuals. To quote Kolakowski once more, there is “one Great Cause that has persisted more or less intact throughout the past decades in the Leftist mentality: the loathing of democratic countries. Allegiances changed, but if there was something enduring in Leftist politics, it was this: in any conflict between a tyrannical and democratic country, the tyrants were right and democracy wrong.” One would have thought that the admonitory tale of the Berlin Wall would provide an incontrovertible disabusement. Alas, it is a lesson we have yet to absorb.

President Obama is too disinterested, and occupied accomplishing nothing, to attend the 20th anniversary celebration in Berlin.

P.S.: Here's another rumination on 1989 and another fall.

Those who don't remember, or who never learned about communism, might want to read this short essay.

It's not a real commercial, but still...

The Congressional Budget Office’s initial analysis of the Republican alternative to Obama/PelosiCare is striking.  Lowered federal deficit, lowered premiums, more freedom of choice, less government intrusion into medicine and peoples’ personal lives, support for health care and savings innovations (including cutting the huge costs of “defensive medicine” by having tort reform – which the tort lawyer funded Democrats conveniently left out), and increased and easier coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

This op-ed and the CBO Director’s transmittal letter briefly sums it up; the full CBO analysis is here. According to the CBO, less of those called uninsured, although in actuality only about a quarter are citizens truly needy, would be covered than under  ObamaCare.  Many of those actually needy would be covered, and others already insured would better afford keeping their coverage. This is at a savings of $1+ trillion, and our freedoms, and the ability of our world-leading health care innovations to not be stifled.

Sounds like a real choice, right? Throw out the baby with the dirty water, a la ObamaCare, or provide a proper cleansing.  Not with this heavily Democrat Congress.  But, wait and work for 2010 to correct that.

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.

* http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch [edit] Verb

1. to screw up; to fail in dramatic and ignominious fashion

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’s the 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 Principia College, 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!

Why the heck should anyone care about how health insurance agents will fare under ObamaCare?

Under the House bill, for example, the Small Business Administration will help businesses and individuals figure out how to obtain affordable coverage.  (The bill provision is titled, “Assistance for Small Employers.”)  Health insurance agents are not precluded from providing advice.  But, the SBA will be allowed to bypass agents.

A health insurance agent is required to complete initial and regular formal training courses in the subject (including ethics), pass initial and periodic tests, and are screened by their state and by insurance companies for criminal or personal conduct (including declaring bankruptcy) that may negatively affect their reliability to be licensed to provide agent services.  In addition, through professional associations, through insurer education programs, through self-study, and through competitive pressures, health agents stay current on the latest laws and offerings from various insurers.  Furthermore, almost all health insurance agents are independent businesses or work for independent agencies, not beholden to the insurers but to their customers.  Importantly, individuals, small and larger businesses have priorities more important and pressing than becoming experts in health insurance or its interactions with other laws or aspects of their primary concerns, and heavily depend upon qualified, trusted health insurance agents.  Lastly, many health insurance agents have extensive credentials and experience.  For example, I attained earned, tested, rigorous certifications – Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), Registered Employee Benefits Concultant (REBC), Registered Health Underwriter (RHU), Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) – that, along with other experiences outside health insurance (I was a senior financial and business operations exec for Fortune 100 and small companies for 15-years before becoming a health insurance agent) and years of experience as a health insurance agent (I’ve been at it for two-decades). This delivers wide-ranging values to my clients and of the interactions of their health insurance with their broader business, regulatory and financial affairs.

Does anyone expect the staff hired or created by the SBA to have this independence, experience or training?  If so, get real!

Surely, there are some health insurance agents who are lesser or incompetent, or who are crooked, or who steer some business toward favored insurers for added volume bonuses.  However, the less competent exist in a highly competitive market, where they lose business to the more energetic and competent in delivering value to clients.  The crooked or shady are winnowed out similarly plus by stiff regulations and prosecutions.

This is just another aspect of the losses that individuals and businesses will suffer under ObamaCare.

A leading expert and opponent of Obamacare, Grace-Marie Turner, writes in the New York Post:

The 1,990-page bill the House leadership unveiled Thursday would impose a dizzying barrage of new regulations on employers, and force them to either provide government-specified health insurance or pay a penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll.

Even firms that now provide health benefits get slammed -- since that coverage may not meet the government's definition of "acceptable." …

The head of the National Federation of Independent Business, Dan Danner, said the reform bill's huge cost "will ultimately come out of small business owners' pockets and prohibit them from growing, investing in their business and hiring new employees." …

The pain continues: The bill would also subject businesses and employees to a bigger, hidden tax -- a shifting of costs from public to private payers.

The legislation would expand Medicaid -- the joint federal/state program designed to insure low-income Americans -- to cover another 15 million people. But Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals are well below market rates -- and often below their costs of providing care.

A study by the independent actuarial firm Milliman Inc. concluded that families with employer-based health insurance already pay $1,788 a year in hidden taxes to compensate for underpayments by government programs. That figure will plainly grow under the House bill.

For a final blow, the bill imposes surcharges on high-income individuals that will certainly hit many small business owners -- who pay business taxes through their personal-income tax forms.

Also, read The Worst Bill Ever.

For disclosure, I’m nearing retirement, and have shrunk my successful business.  I am not going to directly suffer as a health insurance agent or small businessman, although I will as a taxpayer and as someone who cares about quality health care for myself and others if ObamaCare passes.

It was reported earlier today, here and here, that the machine-picked liberal Republican candidate whose poor polling -– and lack of support from Republicans -- led to her withdrawal from the race threw her support to the Democrat instead of to the Republican who challenged her – Doug Hoffman.  Hoffman is polling neck-and-neck with the Democrat for this upstate New York Congressional seat.  The outcome of this race will send an important signal to Washington waverers about what should be their upcoming congressional votes affecting the course of our country.

Congressman Darrel Issa just sent out an interesting and telling email about how important Obama sees this election:

Astonishingly, the Republican nominee in the special election has dropped out, and endorsed the Democrat! Just hours before she endorsed the Democrat, she received calls from Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. She also received calls from the Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senator Chuck Schumer. Was Scozzafava promised something in return for her endorsement of the Democrat? Time will tell.

Issa says,

Volunteers continue to pour into upstate New York, but we are short of funds to pay for their transportation, lodging and meals. This race has turned into an all out battle between the White House and the conservative base of the Republican Party. Apparently all tactics are on the table.

Issa asks that urgent contributions be made via his own Political Action Committee to help elect conservative Republican Doug Hoffman, send the White House and Congressional Democrats the message that we’ve had enough of their ruinous tax-and-spend-and control our lives, send Republican hacks in Washington the message that truer Republican principles and support are required, and not let Obama and Emanuel run the Republican Party.

Instead of sending your contributions via Issa, send them directly to Doug Hoffman’s campaign.  The link is here to donate and to learn more about Hoffman.

We already know that Obama-style politics is payola politics, trying to buy off votes and power with our taxes and earnings. Say ENOUGH!