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Something I've noticed: when many leftists make a claim, they tend to use as a source (when they cite a source at all) some leftwing blog entry or opinion piece.  Do you all realize that it's not terribly convincing to cite someone's opinion as a reference for anything?  I'm beginning to get the impression that you don't even realize that a website like, say, Center for American Progress, or Huffington Post, is biased to the left.  Do you just simply accept their claims uncritically?  Don't you realize that if you read only the Huffington Post website, you will get a biased view of events, which is not the same as reality?

Frankly it's irritating when I ask for a citation and I get some random guy's blog page.  That's not a citation, that is just some guy's opinion.  A proper citation is to an authoritative source, preferably in the primary literature.  If you claim that there are 78 billion trillion uninsured Americans and I challenge your claim, I really don't care that you are able to tell me that John Podesta also agrees with you.  I'd like some actual statistics please.

More than a few people have accurately observed that politics invariably turns into a a protection racket.  Note: None have made the point more enjoyably than the brilliant Mary Katharine Ham in this video.

In the Washington Examiner, Dr. Paul Hsieh (of Geekpress) points out that, even if they only intend to give people lower costs and more access, government tends to make offers that you can't refuse.  We already see this happening in health care, and more intervention will only exacerbate it - especially as the budget crunch becomes more a more immediate problem.

Suppose the mafia came to your town and forced everyone to purchase all their meals at mob-approved restaurants. The mafia would also select the menu items. [...]

Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an "acceptable" plan. Hence, this creates a magnet for special interests seeking to include their pet benefits on the required insurance menu.

Massachusetts residents must purchase numerous benefits that they may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, drug abuse therapy and chiropractor services. If you'd rather purchase low-cost catastrophic-only insurance without those options, tough luck. Mandatory insurance thus violates the individual's right to spend his own money for his benefit according to his best judgment. [...]

Like the mafia, Congress wants to make you an offer you can't refuse. At least the mafia doesn't pretend that it's acting for your own good.

There is no doubt that our current health care system is deeply flawed, and I accept that health care presents a genuinely wicked problem for both markets and democracies.  However, the more complex the attempted "solution", the more room there is for errors, unintended consequences, protectionism and rent-seeking. We have already seen the administration try to buy off doctors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and hospitals with legislative favors and protection. That's not an unusual error. That is how legislation works.

Current legislation may be a problem, but the biggest problems lay over the horizon where deficits and debt will force compromises and mandates driven more by public choice theory than public interest.

The greedy have a problem with the free market. When people are free to say no to spending their money the greedy are forced to give equal value for equal value. Trading is done without force.

Interventionism, which is a step towards socialism but does not place complete control of services or assets in the hands of the Government, Is by its nature more attractive to greed.

Take for example Cap N Trade; here we have a system which requires trade in carbon credits for an energy company to continue to provide a service. Nothing could be more alluring to people who idolize wealth; and people are lining up to exploit the need requirement that some will be forced in to trade.

Look at the national teachers union; Another example of trade by force; teachers are required to be members and fund the lobbying efforts of whatever the union wants to spend their membership funds on.

Examples of trade in the bible are done without force. “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead – Genesis 23:15”

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I’ve been looking for something else to write about. Some change from the distressing, embarrassing and depressing norm in the news in this country these days. I’d like to do something light and optimistic.

Sorry folks, just haven’t come across any Sugar Plum Fairies lately…unless you want to count Obama’s economic program…it’s for sure a fantasy, albeit a very dangerous one. I’d like, as well, to refer to him as Mr. President or President Obama, but somehow he just doesn’t match up with the honorific. He may be somebody’s  president but he’s not mine. Not by virtue of his actions towards the the military of this great country for which he shows great disregard and disdain.

Look at his face when he speaks of our military, or the WARS they have to fight on our behalf, or the mission they have been given. He lies, he lies all the time. His face and his body-language speak worlds about him… his disdain and dismissal of the American people despite his mealy-mouthed platitudes and empty promises. His megalomaniacal schemes, so tied to his massive self-aggrandizement. The perfect profile for a tyrant-in-waiting. The guy acts like a skinny Hugo Chavez.

Not satisfied to wreck everything he touches domestically, he’s off to Asia to grovel at the feet of more foreign leaders. BOWING before this Emperor and Empress of Japan. They are nice dignified people…but not deserving of genuflection from the ‘leader’ of the greatest country on earth. This is the second time His Irrelevance has done this you will recall. A head of state does not bow to a head of state…doesn’t this clown have a protocol chief? Or maybe the protocol chief is as feckless as he is. I have a private theory about why Barry consistently has to denigrate this country and abase himself in front of foreigners, who despise us more after he’s done than if he’d just stayed the hell home.

In a nutshell, (and no I’m not referring to Nancy-with-the-stapled-eyelids-Pelosi) it’s because he’s an EMPTY SUIT…literally, there’s no there, there. He doesn’t respect himself and so has no respect for others. He was kicked from pillar to post as a kid. What moral grounding he did get was from all the wrong places. He’s bitter and warped, he hates this country. He despises our Judeo-Christian principles. He is an admirer of a philosophy which seeks to destroy us and he seeks to ingratiate himself with others of that belief system, to have us believe that it is an ‘outreach’ to a peaceful religious philosophy when all evidence points to the contrary. He can’t understand why Americans aren’t rushing to embrace him, his warped and out of control Marxist Democratic party and his oppressive, destructive and repressive policies.

I am VERY impressed with the people of this greatest country on earth. The huge move towards Patriotism and Constitutional law that is sweeping this land from coast to coast is heartening and exciting. It is so much more than a political revival. It is America reasserting the values that our founders built into the foundations of this Republic. It’s Americans asserting America.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Yep, even the Politico has caught on.

President Obama takes heat on Afghan timing 

SHANGHAI, China – President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.

 

Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press had asked: “Can you explain to people watching and criticizing your deliberations what piece of information you're still lacking to make that call.”

Yep, just as President Reagan was  the "Great Communicator", our 44th President is the "Great Procrastinator" 

I note that a Google Search of "Obama" and "dithering" yielded 743,000 hits

I mean there was a single by the Lovin' Spoonful in 1966 that might be the theme song for the President's military "strategy"

The internet is a monopoly and needs to be regulated as such.  While individual users might see several available ISPs, the backbone is shared by all.  Therefore, government regulators have a legitimate interest in how it functions. 

Net Neutrality is the requirement that all internet traffic get the same priority.  Free speech advocates say that without net neutrality, large telecoms could slow or block traffic from left wing blogs, for example.  On the other side, telecoms argue that they need the ability to give important and low bandwidth internet functions like email and blog surfing priority over bandwidth hogs like peer to peer file sharing and high resolution video. 

This should be a solvable problem.  Free speech advocates and telecom engineers should be able to design a multi tiered  system that gives large files lower priority without regard to content.  Unfortunately, politicians on both sides are blocking a purely technical solution.  Democrats do not trust telecoms to remain content neutral.  Indeed, without vigilant regulation, that is a serious worry.

Conservatives argue against government involvement of any kind.  This ignores the fact that the internet began as and remains a government program.  It demonstrates that government sometimes can, in the words of President Reagan, “be here to help”.  By opposing all regulation, they force free speech advocates to fight any packet priority system at all. 

Republican rigidity on net neutrality harmful to a technological solution to the bandwidth issue.  It also gives the impression that Republicans are more concerned about large telecoms than freedom of speech.  How different things would look if Republicans championed an innovative technological solution with content guarantees.  No longer would the word “intertubes” be a universal code word for old Republican technological ignorance (Senator Stevens described the internet as being like a network of tubes.). 

The Wikipedia article on net neutrality is surprisingly balanced, with links to all sides of the issue.

I wrote about voter fraud at Right As Usual, linking to a site at The Next Right.

I'm planning to take a personal day off next year, and do my part to monitor the polling stations.  I know that vacation days are precious, but so it our right of selecting our representatives in government.

Do you believe that there is a need for reform of our health care insurance system? If not, why, and if so, what form would you like it to take?

Here is my take, stated as simply as possible.

1) The current system is unsustainable, on four levels.

• a) too many people cannot get health insurance (pre-existing conditions) or cannot afford it
• b) insurance company practices, like rescissions after years of paying premiums, are indefensible
• c) insurance premiums are rising much faster than inflation or income, which means (a) is just going to get worse
• d) our health care costs more than any other country, without producing commensurate increases in outcomes; without reform these costs are going to continue to rise

2) There is no free-market solution to this problem. Sound-bites like shopping across state lines and tort-reform are nonsensical non-answers.

3) Given that the private sector is failing, spectacularly, I'm happy to have the government intervene.

4) Currently, the ER, which cannot turn people away, is the primary care provider for million. If there is going to be reform, there are only two ways to fix this and to prevent free-riders: the mandate, or the wallet biopsy. I prefer the mandate, as I think the wallet biopsy is just too much to ask of medical professionals.

Yesterday chemjeff posted a blog entry characterizing HCR as enforced charity. I think that charity has nothing to do with it. I think the issue is the strain on our economy caused by spiraling healthcare costs.

What Will You Do, If Our Existence as the LORD GOD”s Tolerant English Speaking Red, Yellow, Black and White Judeo-Christian Nation, of One People, Out of Many People, Ends?  It will end if we do not stop Obama and his thugs.  His infestation of ‘Anti Anything Godly and Good for the USA’ is the ‘God Damn America’ Party of thugs who hates Our LORD GOD, Our Nation and Our Way of Life.

Red, Yellow, Black and White We Are Precious in GOD’S SIGHT, JESUS Loves the Children of the World.   www.troopusa.org  twitter.com/WorriedGranny  

blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm

www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5gfKew4vYLdAejdsWBQvaT0G2OFjQD9BV5JKO0

U.S. President Barack Obama bows as he is greeted by Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko as he arrives at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

There is nothing here for the ‘enlightened’ progressive class in this, except perhaps poetic justice of a sort. They are about to be ground under the heel of an insatiable government in pursuit of a fanciful and totally unattainable poly-nirvana, along with the rest of us proles…or at least that’s how they see us. They just haven’t figured it out yet. Their heads are still stuck too far in the clouds, but reality is going to come knocking in a big way very soon.

This economic engine of ours is coughing and sputtering like a poorly tuned motor…and getting just about as good mileage out of the fuel which powers it. We’re not talking about the liberals’ other favorite mythical beast, energy, here. We’re talking about the greatest asset this country has. We’re talking about its people. We are talking about jobs. We are talking about an INSANELY obsessed government, totally and completely out of control, hell bent on destroying whatever economic power still resides in the people and the greatest driver in this or any economy, small business, entrepreneurship, and private investment.

The elite leftist is a creature of infinite contravention, espousing an ideology which by its very nature destroys that which produces the means that permits that  intellectual disconnect.

The rest of us see things in a much simpler context. We see our homes, our children, our livelihoods, our savings and our futures threatened by an unresponsive, irresponsible and punitive government in contravention of the very laws that frame its scope of governance. We have only the recourse left to us by the Constitution as a law-abiding people. At least for now. We have the ballot box and the ability to change the direction of the government and the country.

There IS a political sea-change taking place out there now, as an ANGRY and aroused citizenry become aware and educated to the depth and breadth of the betrayal of our trust by a rabidly left-leaning and TYRANNICAL CABAL within the highest reaches of our government.

There will be a huge reckoning in the elections of 2010. I don’t think the DeMarxists could moderate or change course now if they wanted too. They are like a truck on a steep grade which has lost it’s brakes. Fortunately for us, they are about to run into the wall of the American people.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009