iPandora

Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech

President Obama is still hoping he gets health care socialized before fall gets much underway and the Democrat leadership is anxious to deliver their messiah something palatable (to him and them) before he spurns them and finds a new set of disciples.

The fight waged on through the summer in the halls of our elected representatives and the screens of our TVs as it seems nearly the entirety of the elite class of America seems to want this.

The idea of class and elitism is an entirely different rant for an entirely different day. However, suffice it to say, America as a whole has been enablers at the very least in this creation of a super class. A group of people who, contrary to the very bedrock ideas and ideals of American idealism, are listened to and admired for reasons not much different than the aristocracy and royalty of those whose chains we sloughed off many years ago. Because they’re glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives and are adulated and congratulated by a fawning and feeding media pandering to a fawning and frenzied populace.

But Congress has let out for the summer and those we’ve employed to carry out the duties layed before them by the Constitution and with the admonition to remain constrained by the same, are coming home for their brief stint in what little of real life they must put up with prior to returning to the insular Washington D.C. And in these times at home, in order to breath new life into the flagging support for their beloved leader’s socialized health care initiatives, they are having what are being laughingly called townhall meetings.

Seeking to conjure up visions of colonial American citizens coming together in their meeting houses while ignoring the fact those meeting houses were usually churches and usually presided over by their pastors, they are creating what they hope to be media ready events with lots of weepy sob stories about how insurance carriers have shafted and cheated and dropped and left people with insurmountable bills.

But they read wrong.

The events are being taken over by citizens concerned, not that insurers are cheating them, but that government will fail and this failure will hurt far too many people than can be forgiven.

In video after video, we’re seeing soldiers and seniors and wives and mothers, fathers and sons standing up and demanding their representatives show them where in the Constitution they find the justification to perform what will be an abominable failure. Demanding reasons why if we can’t trust to government to run even the boondoggled “Cash for Clunkers” program, why we’re to trust them with our health care.

And those citizens, spending they’re own time and money and effort to attend these media events, are being called “plants” of the insurance companies, trained goons of the Republican party.

If the idea of socializing health care is such a valid and reasonable and good idea, why won’t we accept and allow discussion, alternate ideas, and even criticism of this so perfect program?

We have a democratic republic as our form of government and society in America and there is great weight and significance in the acceptance and even promotion of alternate ideas and opinions different from our own. The divergence of ideas even insures the strength of the positions eventually taken, as they’ve had to bear the strain of testing against all comers.

To provoke dissent and accept criticism is a proud tradition in America. It is perhaps our greatest strength.

To stifle protest and dismiss digressing opinions is becoming scarily commonplace in this administration.

Yes, it was “unpatriotic” to protest the Patriot act. But there wasn’t a talking point memo being read by every major network anchor stating they were planned plants of the evil Democrat leadership. And even that suppression was for the most part unwarranted, unnecessary, and un-American.

And so I ask, where is the decency? Where is the acceptance of those truly American ideals of protest and dissent? Where is the reason surrounding what is becoming a most messy muddle of he-said’s and she-said’s.

It’s like the butter battle all over again.

Start dissenting, before it’s not just unappreciated.

…is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money

~Margaret Thatcher

H1N1 (swine) flu isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Gee, it’s just aweful when the bugbear doesn’t live up the trumped up claims the media seems to want us to believe.

The Illinois Public Health Director has not drunk the koolaid:

The Illinois Department of Public Health director told state lawmakers Tuesday that it’s important to remain vigilant in the face of the H1N1 flu virus, but fears of a pandemic flu are overblown.

“We have to keep these things in perspective, look at them rationally, know what the threat is and deal with it in a rational way. We know right now that this virus is acting very similarly to the regular seasonal flu,” said Dr. Damon T. Arnold, head of the state public health agency.

“At this juncture, this virus seems to be in a mild course,” Arnold said. “We’re recommending now that for routine cases you take care of yourself at home as you would for seasonal flu.”

As ShatteredChina wrote here earlier, fear is not a reasonable response to this flu.

Yet fear is a powerful tool. Those desiring power desire a fearful populace. When someone tells you to fear, they are seeking to gain power over you.

Fear not, we are told.

An unfearful populace is a strong populace. The Christian following the most frequent admonition of God is a person who cannot be lead by whim or desire of the power-hungry.

And the kids can go back to school now.

And big brother wishes we’d die younger.

Two reasons: It’s a sure fix for the Social Security cesspool, and they can adjust the artificial, age-graded stratifications of service wherein those with greater potential determined by mathematically “fair” judgments of age and expected longevity.

Just a few of the many benefits of the new socialized medicine system President Obama and the Democrats laid the groundwork for in the big spending bills they’ve been forcing us tax payers to swallow since he entered office:

• Reducing costs by “guiding” doctor decisions
• Doctors surrendering autonomy and learning to operate less like sole proprietors
• Establishes the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, whose goal would be to slow down new medications and techniques because these drive up costs
• Forcing the elderly to accept the realities of aging and surrendering certain advanced treatments

Betsy McCaughey says HillaryCare 2.0 (ObamaCare) will ruin your health, especially if you’re old.

It’s being sold as the solution to our current health care system. But with our current system, if the old were forced out of treatments that would improve their lives, there would be an uproaor. If the government says they can’t be treated, who is there to turn to?

It always starts as something good:

As elsewhere, the combination of an aging population and the increasing cost of new technologies has started to put immense pressure on the French health system. But the French system of compulsory insurance – something for which many Democratic leaders are calling in America – acted as a Trojan horse, allowing the government to seize control over increasing areas of health care.

When costs became a political issue, the government mounted a cost crackdown. But instead of eliminating inefficiencies through greater individual responsibility, broader choice and more competition, the French government did precisely the opposite: It sought to control costs by fiat – that is, by piling on more bureaucracy.

But don’t worry: the Obamessiah will look out for each of us with the personal care of his omnipotent eye.

Oh, and it’s also why Obama is for lawful, government funded, unlimited and unrestricted abortion: fewer of us the government has to support.

Some mornings I wish I didn’t peruse the news. Today was one of those mornings.

The stories were thick of people expecting things from the government, wanting the government to reach down and touch them, trying to get things through misuse of government power and responsibility.

The “big 3” are back in Washington, driving this time apparently for PR purposes, asking for more money. The proposed solutions generally include the government taking some significant stake in the companies. Everything from a “Car Czar” to enforced restructuring (which I would agree with IF I agreed with a bailout at all).

Then there are the world markets. Asian markets are quite happy the US government will step into the big brother mode again and prop up weak parts of the US economy.

And if you bail out the big guy, the little guy wants his piece of the pie too. In a small story blown big, Barack Obama has proven he really does care about the little guy and each individual American by themselves. He says the workers staging a ‘sit-in’ at a Chicago-area manufacturer are “absolutely right” in demanding not just their owed wages and normal severance pay but also pay for accrued vacation as that manufacturer has declared bankruptcy and is currently in liquidation proceedings.

Apparently Bank of America held the business credit lines for the company and refused to offer more credit as it saw the sales of the company plummetting.

The issues here, expounded upon by John and Cisco on the morning show on Chicago’s AM560, are these: What responsibility does BoA have after their own bailout and largess received from the government? And at what point should a bailed-out bank still be able to protect it’s assets by allowing truly faulty companies to fail.

The whole failure and bailout cycle is ferocious in that it is, more often than not, better to allow a company to die naturally than to prop up failed and faulty business models and management/labor relations.

My opinion? Because we’ve already got ourselves into this mess. The workers are justified in expecting a little bit of this themselves, but only what is justly owed. BoA should be admonished to extend enough credit to cover immediate owed wages to the workers with collateral being the amount the bank will recoup from the liquidation of the companies assets (I agree with John and Cisco here).

Jesse Jackson has likened the plight of these workers to that of the blacks during the civil rights movement.

That man has no shame. Willing to sell even his own birthright for another 15 minutes in the spotlight.

And both Obama and Jackson find an ally in the Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the International Socialist Organization.

Socialist Worker has strived to be a source of information like no other, presenting a socialist analysis of the events and forces that have shaped today’s world and sharing the voices of those involved in the many efforts to try to change that world. As a result, SW has always gravitated to the stories of struggle that rarely, if ever, appear in the mainstream media–the coal miners in Kentucky fighting for their rights, the South African workers and students who toppled apartheid, the young women and men who stood up to corporate globalization in the streets of Seattle, the veterans and active-duty soldiers resisting the U.S. war for oil and empire in Iraq.

Strange bed-fellows indeed. Not that it would surprise anybody who bothered researching and learning the truth prior to Election day.

But you can smile, and mean it, and affect more people than you know. If you know me you know I like to smile. A lot. It’s just so much more fun to smile than otherwise.

So when studies are showing that being happy affects more than your immediate circle of acquaintances, but can affect people up to 3 degrees removed from the original happy person, I became very happy.

Are you happier now? It’s because I am. And so are your friends.

I’ve read several articles thanks to links from bloggers and news pages which claim that the ‘first’ Thanksgiving was nothing but the orgies of Europeans occupying the homes and tilling the fields of the deceased tribes of Native Americans killed by disease brought by previous settlers.

I do not dispute the fact that lack of understanding regarding disease and its transmission and the dangers of introducing societies to new bacteria and germs without proper inoculation contributed to great sickness and death of the Native Americans. But do we judge history for what we know or for what they knew?

Are we to be judged for our lack of understanding about something which lead, through that ignorance, to some loss, or for the fact that we attempt to mitigate the loss and mend the ill where we encounter it?

But beyond that.

I’ve read the entirety of the journal of William Bradford, governor of the colony at Plymouth. In the evidence fields that is called a primary source. There are few sources indeed which would countermand his testimony and then only with a preponderence of testimony sharply contradictory to his own.

And yet even the stories I read in the enlightened media were stretches and extentions of certain facts to the exclusion of others and themselves did not contradict the crux of the history laid down by Bradford.

Yes, many of the Native Americans in the area of Plymouth were wiped out by disease just prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims. Yes, the Plymouth settlers used the fallow-lying fields and empty shelters of the deceased Native Americans to aid them in their survival. I think from our posh couches and deep cushions we are unable to relate to the deep fear of the complete unknown and the pain of true hunger experienced by those brave adventurers and we judge them be a standard we, even with our comforts and conveniences would not judge ourselves by given a situation not half so bad as they experienced.

What were they to do with the empty and waiting fields and shelters? Out of principle were they to dig fresh fields beside the fallow ones and out of misguided respect leave the tents of the Natives standing as empty monuments to a culture they had little to do directly with damaging?

I think not.

And moving to a different tack: In the face of the socialist pushes of our government, is it not telling that even with such paltry feed at a few kernels of corn and with the ethics of a strong religious faith, the early pilgrims, laboring undering a falsly hopeful system of common holdings and cooperative farming were falling prey to the exact same lethargy which would so cripple the vastly wealthy Russion communist experiment.

The reasons were there: doing right and acute starvation. The resources were there: a fertile land and skilled and willing workers. And yet, when they did not directly control the resources of production nor own the fruits of their own labors these men and women worked without will or vigor and many lives were lost.

If we cannot accept the facts of history when the controvert our own closely held presuppositions regarding the nature of the world, is there any hope for us to learn from the mistakes of our forebearers?

When the truth is not accepted, do we have a chance?

First, the Duh!

Gay men get HIV, and they’re getting it faster. 12% faster, says a new CDC report.

And of course, to remind those hotheads whose brains have boiled out: HIV is the disease the US Government released in Africa to desimate the black population.

The rest of us know it’s transmitted by homosexual relations between men. And that it’s not bias or bigotry that caused it, but pride, willful ignorance, and the natural result of an unnatural act.

Now the Interesting Stuff

Investor’s Business Daily reports that an architect the the Canadian socialized health-care system, that one we hear is so incredible and worthy of emulation from the leftist socialist running for POTUS, has had a change of heart:

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says (Claude) Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Counteracting the tales of woe and terror which are peppering the debate south of our northern border, the IBD tells a tale of truth which ought to give those considering the proposed socialized utopia pause:

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

Because she’s a woman, and it’s her ovaries, it’s a real tear-jerker.

No, the point is that the capitalistic, profit-based system provides better care to a greater number of people with two primary reasons:

1. The costs cause people to evaluate themselves whether they really need that procedure, freeing the system from a glut of unnecessary and frivolous procedures.
2. Those same costs entice more skilled labor and research and development into medical/technological advances, enhancing quality and quantity of available care.

Read more at IBD.

Republican ‘”Obama”, Only With History And Substance’ Jindal takes the hard line

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has actually accomplished things in his life, was outraged over the Supreme Court’s liberal judges finding the death penalty is not applicable or valid for use in extreme cases of child rape, so he signed a bill allowing chemical castration in certain specific cases of rape and sexual abuse.

Sponsored by Democrat Senator Nick Gautreaux of Meaux, LA, arguments surrounding the bill were mostly on scope and effect, rather than validity and right.

It sounds like, unlike the members state houses in many of the states, the members of the Louisiana State House are a group who actually have backbones connected to their brains.

Does the truth we find in this humor scare anyone else?

I’ve had the following images floating around on my computer for a while, waiting for me to actually post them. It seems to me, in their attempt to paint the liberal and Democrat as the loving, caring, truly human leadership, anybody with a mind will recognize the fallacies and dangers of the blanket statements made in this children’s book.

Children reading this book will be cursed with the feeling there is actual truth to be found in the ideas. They will accept without thinking the lies of socialism and liberal socio-political theory and practice.

Read and weep for America.

What parent wants their children to hurt?

What parent tries to protect the children from the pains of life?

What parent can?

Laudable.

But given the current state of Political-Business relations, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say: “Democrats give the Police Officers’ and Firefighters’ Unions the tools they need to keep dead weight and stupid policies in place hampering the heroes efforts, abilities, skills, and desires to serve as they are called”?

And I would want my children to go to those war-zones, indoctrination facilities, stupid-makers, great-levellers of the people they call schools?

I know what they mean is that we can all go to college. But 1) where is that a constitutional right or a universal requirement, and 2) aren’t there plenty of great colleges for cheap?

There are plenty of jobs in which one can work their way up to a comfortable level of pay which require no college. And the government has neither interest nor right to take money from those who aren’t going to college to give to those who are.

Maybe if there were less “free” money floating around from the government, the cost of education would come down, and only those dedicated and intelligent people would stay in teaching as it became less of a lucrative career option.

Democrats are government, not Mommy. This is a legitimate role for Mommy, not government.

To the extent that Democrats seek to usurp this role, they confuse the nature of society and culture. This is immoral.

Pompous, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal do-gooders!

Show me someone who believes this and I’ll show you someone certifiably insane.

First, there is no proof the Earth is “sick” with Global warming. There is proof there are regular and natural cycles of warming and cooling, and there is not proof we are even in a warming cycle.

Second, the temerity of the writer and those who agree with him in assuming a political party which has existed a mere 200 years has the might to enact significant change in an entire planet which they believe has existed 4.5 Billion years.

Someone call the nice men in white coats.

False.

The truth is, Democrats make sure schools cannot fire bad teachers. Democrats make sure children know all about condoms and how to have sex with each other, leaving it to the parents to teach reading and writing and true morals.

Individually, Democrats are generally caring people. But are they busy loving people to hell?

UPDATE:

These are not parodies, these are selections from one of two books for children:

Why Mommy Is A Democrat & Why Daddy Is A Democrat

Germany

American feminists tend to be firmly in the anti-war camp these days, and firmly against any attempt to stop radicalized Islam taking over countries and cultures in it’s quest for world domination. A female world leader who has actually accomplished something beside marry ‘Slick’ Willy, Andrea Merkel, has begun championing a cause modern American feminists would likely faint over.

Japan

A popular praise of Japan is it’s extremely low murder rate. Now, I’m not one to naturally jump to splitting hairs and such, but apparently we should be speaking of Japan’s extremely low reported murder rate.

America

United Kingdom

Note: I am posting this article in whole because the blog it belongs to apparently is completely off-line or dead, neither of which cases make me happy. The original article was here, written by Dave of Out of Ergyng, but the link, when I checked, was dead.

**Update: Apparently the blog was just down for a bit. It’s now up, and I’m glad for that.**

The concern of the emergency services for health and safety rules has cost a boy his life. James Poynton collapsed on a beach near Liverpool. First his parents were told an ambulance wouldn’t be sent until they could be sure of the spelling of the nearest road. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedic didn’t run to his rescue. She walked. She didn’t want to be out of breath. According to the Daily Mail:

A spokesman for North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust confirmed that its staff generally would not run on uneven ground as they were carrying heavy equipment and might not be able to carry out resuscitation if they were out of breath.

But for those Americans looking forward to Hillary Clinton’s vision of socialise medicine (okay, you probably aren’t reading this blog if you do), there’s more to this story. His mother had been told the day before he died that his heart condition was non-urgent, so he wouldn’t be seen. The letter offering him an MRI scan at a future date arrived the day after he died.

Everywhere But Malibu Beach

Apparently beautiful women are smarter. But I already knew that. After all, the most beautiful woman in the world likes me, and she’s brilliant too.

Something I’ve struggled with for sometime is the efficacy of my various efforts over the years to save our struggling culture and reform the hearts and minds of people I meet.

Is political maneuvering the best way to change the culture? No, I don’t believe it is.

Can getting people to vote for the right person and the right bill save America and the world? Yes, it can, and this work is vital to the continued survival of America, but the task is too big, the mountain of the people is overwhelming.

I’m no pessimist. And nearly everyone who calls themselves “realists” are actually pessimists. I’m an idealist and an optimist, but when I consider all the issues that face our nation, the crime, gangs, abortion, encroaching socialism, homosexuality and alternative lifestyles, white collar crime, the media and entertainment culture, and all the other things in modern life which are not all good, they are all dependent on one another. Abortion feeds a culture of irresponsibility among men which supports pornography and crime which feeds a lack of self-control which feeds abuse of women which feeds abortion. And that is by no means a closed loop, causality goes both ways and is not limited to the small pool of ills mentioned.

But the causality for ill and evil are such a tangled and sturdy web that there is precious little chance for the fixing of one issue to “stick” and remain.

Political change can only change the outside, the mask. You can legislate right conduct but you cannot legislate right thought, and it is evil to try.

Instead, you need to balance the political change with a greater work of salvation. Only by Christ entering hearts and minds and reforming the dross and dregs found therein can there for any meaningful change significant enough to affect each and every issue in that person.

Political action is necessary and vital, but the work of Christ is first and foremost a work of the heart. Only by redeeming the hearts of those in the culture can we redeem the culture.

Every person may and each person must follow God’s calling in their lives where they are. Sometimes God calls one to leave where they are and follow Him in acts of more public or visible sacrifice. But the greatest mission for each of us is to, where we are, work to redeem those around us. For by doing this we can redeem the hearts AND the culture.

The effective campaign will seek not to win the hearts, but to change them. And the greater and more effective change is always found in the work of Christ.

I saw an article today in which Hillary Clinton said the following:

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society. I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

She was referring specifically to big, bad businesses that get tax breaks, ship jobs overseas and pay their top employees millions of dollars.

I agree with her. Not because I believe in socialism and a nanny state, but because I do not believe politicians should pick the winners and losers in a community, including businesses. Rather, the government should ensure a level playing field on which all can compete.

What are government subsidies?

Government subsidies are carrots officials dangle in front of businesses to get them to locate in a specific place. There are three primary arguments in favor of this approach.

When a business locates in a specific location it 1) creates jobs to build the infrastructure to support the business (buildings, roads, etc.), it 2) creates jobs to run the business, and it 3) creates revenue for the local government by generating taxes.

Often, business incentives come in the form of waiving building fees, which for big businesses, are in the millions of dollars. Other times, such as for professional sports facilities, the government sells bonds.

Government officials rationalize these handouts in three ways.

First, they argue that they don’t have the money in their bank accounts right now, so they aren’t actually loosing or giving the business money.

Second, they argue that primary and secondary taxes (property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes) paid by the new business will generate enough revenue to make up for the loss in income.

Third, public officials argue that if they don’t offer a good enough incentive, neighboring jurisdictions will and they will not get any new revenue.

These arguments do not stand up to scrutiny and I will explain why tomorrow. Again, public officials should not be in the business of picking the winners and losers in a community.