Solving The BOcare, Medical Care Crisis

http://www.hoover.org/research/how-cure-health-care-0

By the time you get to the end of this post, you will know how to fix the healthcare system.

This post is important -- we need a little background Friedman that PJ O'Rourke has enhanced to stick in our brains first relative to how money is spent. This is taken from his book "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards!"

I think we all intrinsically understand the preceding -- it makes a REAL difference whose money any person is spending and it makes a real difference who it is being spent on!

Now on to Milton Friedman on healthcare (I recommend you read the whole linked column, but I'm doing cliff notes here in case you are not going to). Milton has astutely observed that as technology has advanced in medicine, people in the developed world have paid more and more for health care, yet are generally less satisfied. Advances in technology in other areas (cars, tv, cell phones, the internet) have produced LOWER costs and GREATER satisfaction!

Rapid technological advances have occurred repeatedly since the Industrial Revolution—in agriculture, steam engines, railroads, telephones, electricity, automobiles, radio, television, and, most recently, computers and telecommunication. The other two features seem unique to medicine. It is true that spending initially increased after non-medical technical advances, but the fraction of national income spent did not increase dramatically after the initial phase of widespread acceptance. On the contrary, technological development lowered cost, so that the fraction of national income spent on food, transportation, communication, and much more has gone down, releasing resources to produce new products or services. Similarly, there seems no counterpart in these other areas to the rising dissatisfaction with the delivery of medical care.

So apparently, having 3rd parties -- employers, insurance companies and government buy our healthcare has provided us with a very expensive off color Yugo healthcare -- and we are surprised? But it's worse than that -- because government is involved.

Some years ago, the British physician Max Gammon, after an extensive study of the British system of socialized medicine, formulated what he called "the theory of bureaucratic displacement." He observed that in "a bureaucratic system . . . increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production. . . . Such systems will act rather like ‘black holes,’ in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources, and shrinking in terms of ‘emitted production.’" Gammon’s observations for the British system have their exact parallel in the partly socialized U.S. medical system. Here, too, input has been going up sharply relative to output.

Why is government different? It combines typical human hubris and incompetence with monopoly power -- in fact,  potentially total coercive power.  How to escape from this morass, now made much worse by BOcare? Well, the "perfect solution" would be:

The ideal way to do that would be to reverse past actions: repeal the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care; terminate Medicare and Medicaid; deregulate most insurance; and restrict the role of the government, preferably state and local rather than federal, to financing care for the hard cases. However, the vested interests that have grown up around the existing system, and the tyranny of the status quo, clearly make that solution not feasible politically. Yet it is worth stating the ideal as a guide to judging whether proposed incremental changes are in the right direction.

 So what does this all mean in simple easy to understand terms?

1. Like all goods, medical care WILL (and always has been) be "rationed" -- supply and demand are a form of rationing, as are long waits. The government decides on the waits, like having less MRI machines for the country than Mayo has with waits of 12 - 18 months. My wife would likely be a quad in Canada, but their healthy people LOVE their system! (the number of healthy people exceeds the number of sick people -- so socialized medicine is politically astute ...  note "insane evil pig" above )
   
2. 80/20 rule, 80%+ of medical care can be "WalMart, Target, Bloomies" levels of care -- basic physicals, high blood pressure, thyroid issues, diabetes, throat cultures, standard pregnancy/delivery -- People need to pay for 80% of their health care out of pocket, just like their groceries and gasoline.
   
   You buy the level you can afford when you are hurting -- and it is cheap because there is competition, and very limited liability. It is like buying normal groceries -- not steak, certainly not caviar. Just like when your car breaks or house needs a new roof, you either have savings to handle those "unexpected expenses", or you are forced to use credit. If you are really poor, you go seek state assistance, or to to the "medical shelf" (like the food shelf).
   
3. When really bad things happen -- cancer, trauma, heart attack, stroke, etc, "Cirrus Vision Medicine" kicks in -- note, I didn't say "Gulf Stream, Trump's plane, or Air Force One" level of medicine. The Cirrus Vision is a very advanced JET plane ... but it isn't "snotty". You can't afford the Cirrus level either, but just like fire insurance, you pay a premium for a policy so you are not RUINED ... it costs more than your fire insurance because the odds of you eventually getting bad sick are higher, and the care is going to cost more than replacing your house.
   
   You DO "notice it" -- Some number, say "20% of your net income" is yours to pay. Serious illness ought to be financially like having your home burn down -- a really bad thing (which it WILL be anyway, because serious health issues are MUCH more than just financial). 

A lot of this unfortunately assumes that we re-educate people on some of the basic facts of life that our political and educational system have hidden from us so they can shear us. 

1. "Single Payer" means that if you are a person that uses only public housing, public transportation, public health, etc today, you will likely LOVE it! If not -- like if you have your own home, car, etc, then you will also find that you need to have your own healthcare. You will pay dearly for the "public option", and THEN  unless you are REALLY wealthy, you will pay hyper-dearly for the "private option" that you actually use -- if you can afford it at all. Increasingly, many of us that bought into the old "American Dream" will finally fall into a frayed, stinking, 10-20 people to a ward slum of healthcare like the VA (the "public option" poster child), and find that we are dying in BOistan. 
2. Single Payer" isn't ... it is "paid by all taxpayers present and future". It is one stop lobbyist stop for those getting the money. They know who to pay off, take on junkets, provide good stuff for, etc. No need to deal with slimy "customers" (patients) anymore ... they are not paying anyway! If DC is happy, it's all good. If your business ever had a "large users group", imagine a "ONE users group"! How well did your business treat the customers that were not "large" compared to the big spenders? Imagine only a single real customer that determined your entire financial picture as a healthcare provider and you will start to get the idea. 
3. There is NO free lunch! Somebody is paying -- maybe not you, but somebody. Your neighbor, your kids, your grandkids, SOMEBODY (and likely not the "really rich guy" -- he has lawyers and tax accountants that he pays instead). When you don't understand that, most likely you AND everyone else is paying WAY more than you realize for your "free lunch", which is exactly the case for healthcare. "Free goods" are insanely expensive!
4. NEVER insure against losses that you can self-insure for! Yes, this means NEVER purchase the "extended warranty"! Assuming that the warranty is actually going to cover things that actually might happen (a BIG assumption!), someone is betting that they will make money by you purchasing the warranty, and they have LOTS more information than you have about the transaction and odds! Just like Vegas, they are "the house", and rule #1 is that the house wins! They have to, otherwise they would not be in business!
5. 
   Note, this applies DOUBLE to "don't have the (federal) government pay for people's food, car repairs, or basic medicine". The government is REALLY "the house", and they will take A LOT of pounds of your taxpaying flesh as they seek to pad their pockets and buy votes to stay in power! If government MUST be involved in chairity (it ought to be neighbors and churches), then it starts LOCALLY and as failure happens, the funding needs to take longer and longer expensive trips to the state and federal capitols so that 20-30-40 cents can return to do good deeds.
   
6. "The Government" is not "magic", and certainly not "god". Yes, it can promise to rob from your neighbor to give you things like healthcare, but it will also certainly charge a hefty fee for it's larceny "service". Since it is robbing though,  it WILL also rob from you, your children and your grandchildren as well. You asked it to be a robber, do you REALLY think it is going to be an "honest robber"?
7. Robbing for a "really good reason" is still robbery. If the reason is THAT good, reasonable people will want to invest in it, or even gift the money. The corruption engendered by deciding that it is morally OK to take money from others by force fits well with the "morality" that it is OK to take the life of another person for your own convenience. When you are willing to kill for convenience, or even allow such killing,  morality is over. (killing for convenience is another name for abortion -- as in the abortion of all moral standing, meaning that if you trust any person or organization (eg US Government) that supports abortion, you are insane and deserve whatever happens to you)
8. Once institutions are robbing people, there is no such thing as "reasonable", or "limited" because "institutions" ARE people  -- real imperfect standard issue people. Not "public servants", or some other sainted term. When your day to day job is robbing a set of people to hand the money to another set of people so they will keep you in power, you are going to want to keep some loot for yourself, and you will find a "legitimate" way ... or your union will.
   
   Since you have already convinced yourself that charging people vastly different rates based on income for redistribution is "moral", "progressive" even, it is much easier to see how you absolutely "deserve" a higher salary, cushy benefits like super health care yourself, full salary retirement at a young age "indexed for inflation", shorter work hours, more vacation, total job security, etc, etc) ... all of these are either "in" or "in sight" for unionized government workers see (AFSCME) 

The whole Friedman article is WELL worth reading. We COULD solve our healthcare issues in the next year or two -- I only hope that Trump and his advisors are looking at this sort of information! 

The Perfect Liberal Political Project

As Wisconsin Recount Finishes Up, $7M Finds 25 Votes for Hillary (Update: 131 Votes for Trump) | PJ Media:

For liberal efforts, $3.9 million is dirt cheap, and at least some good came out of it -- 131 extra votes for Trump!

Yes, on the downside, faith in elections and the bar for challenging them has been reset to where even electoral landslides now have precedent for challenge. From the "liberal" view however, this is a very small thing as they are making extremely clear by asserting as well that the election was "hacked by the Russians"!  Establishing elections as unreliable is an important step on the "liberal" agenda of totalitarian rule.


'via Blog this'

BO Needs To Shut Up And Leave, Will He?

President Obama Promises Response To Russian Hacking In NPR Interview : NPR:

It started in from the left with W --  the idea he would create a fake crisis at the end of his term and hold on to power. During the W adminstration, something like 20% of Democrats believed that 9-11 was an "inside job" -- they were the "Truthers".  I actually ran into more than one of them, and the idea that W was a "Fascist" and would never allow elections again was common with them.

Unsurprisingly, this same sort of conspiracy theory about BO leaving office has arisen on the right, and I'm starting to wonder.

As I wrote about previously, why in the hell would any agency or ANYONE that wasn't thinking of nullifying a US election bring up theoretical Russian hacking AFTER the election? Especially if they made a big deal out of there being NO ISSUE prior to the election.

So now we have BO braying AFTER an election:

Obama said his goal is for a definitive White House report on the matter to be issued before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Say what? Were anyone to have ANY remaining confidence in the crony state of BOistan they would have EITHER investigated and dealt with this PRIOR to the election, or they would have kept it under wraps until AFTER January 20th!

I can't even imagine if at the end of the W administration BO had won in a similar electoral landslide, but W was "investigating China, Russia, Cuba, or ???" potentially having "hacked the election", with the "definitive report" due prior to inauguration no less!  The MSM would have gone TOTALLY crazy!! If such a thing had happened, they should have! The coronation of BO was a major league cause for MSM and left US celebration -- it was like Princess Di getting married!

This rotten stench has been around WAY too long!!!! Time for strong cleansing of the swamp with a REALLY good air freshner  -- and I'm starting to wonder if we don't actually need a little "authoritarianism"!

'via Blog this'

It's All Racism and Reparations

My President Was Black - The Atlantic:

The linked article is VERY long, rambling, and not worth the time to read. It was the impetus for the much shorter and to the point article that I covered here -- the seem is the same, racism and the need for reapartations.

Obama is unfailingly optimistic about the empathy and capabilities of the American people. His job necessitates this: “At some level what the people want to feel is that the person leading them sees the best in them,” he told me. But I found it interesting that that optimism does not extend to the possibility of the public’s accepting wisdoms—such as the moral logic of reparations—that the president, by his own account, has accepted for himself and is willing to teach his children.

For the "truly black", the ONLY possible answer is "reparations" -- the form of which is always unclear, but essentially the idea that the roles will be reversed. Blacks will be given "black privilige" in the same way they see the world as run today -- blacks will live in bigger houses, have more wealth, hold more prestigious positions, and whites will pay for it -- not as slaves, but at the point of the government gun as opposed to the slave masters whip.

It was hard to find a single paragraph to try to distill the rambling "evidence" of racism. I'd recommened reading my coverage og "Dog Whistle Politcs" -- the bottom line is that if you accept the racist label, you are a racist. If you do not, you are a worse racist!

That movement came into full bloom in the summer of 2015, with the candidacy of Donald Trump, a man who’d risen to political prominence by peddling the racist myth that the president was not American. It was birtherism—not trade, not jobs, not isolationism—that launched Trump’s foray into electoral politics. Having risen unexpectedly on this basis into the stratosphere of Republican politics, Trump spent the campaign freely and liberally trafficking in misogyny, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. And on November 8, 2016, he won election to the presidency. Historians will spend the next century analyzing how a country with such allegedly grand democratic traditions was, so swiftly and so easily, brought to the brink of fascism. But one needn’t stretch too far to conclude that an eight-year campaign of consistent and open racism aimed at the leader of the free world helped clear the way.

 I wasted my time on it -- no reason for anyone else to bother -- go look at "Know Your Whites" if you have time to waste.,



'via Blog this'

Little More Stadium Graft

U.S. Bank suite guests included longtime DFL activists, friends - StarTribune.com:



Let the little people watch it on TV -- while "The Party" elites sit in the luxury box.



There are a lot of swamps that need draining in this country -- and blue state MN is a mighty swampy swamp.





'via Blog this'

The Election Challenge Bar

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/12/lawsuits_against_the_electoral_college_why_not.html

In 1960, Richard Nixon could have challenged the elction results and most likely have won -- he did not, he felt that people losing faith in the election process would be "bad for the country".

In 2K, Al Gore challenged away -- and surprise, it lowered the faith of the public in elections and the presidency itself.

Fast forward to 2016. This election is an electoral landslide, but it is being challenged as no election of close to this level of win ever has been before. The new bar for the level at which an election is challengeable has been raised to basically "all elections can be legitimately challenged" -- AND, the the entire system is suspect due to "Russian Hacking".

I'm not sure anyone actually cares what is "good for BOistan", but if they did, the following paragraph would tell them that in some quarters, any sort of "good of the nation" is toally out of fashion!

There is no time like the present for liberal lawyers to start arguing creatively. If President Obama left us anything at all that’s currently irrevocable, it’s a federal bench that might be sympathetic to some of these claims. So at this point I am all for the Hail Marys and the tilting at windmills and whatever else progressives can do to gum up the machinery of normalization. Progressives have been known to argue among themselves about whether every last lawsuit is pragmatic or effective or counterproductive and crazy. This time, let’s litigate first and ask questions later. When in doubt, file it.

Knowing Your Whites

President Obama's Faith in White America is Misguided - The Atlantic:

A good article to understand the view of at least a significant number of blacks in BOistan.

In this milieu we, as a friend once described it, know our whites. To know our whites is to understand the psychology of white people and the elasticity of whiteness. It is to be intimate with some white persons but to critically withhold faith in white people categorically. It is to anticipate white people’s emotions and fears and grievances because their issues are singularly our problem. To know our whites is to survive without letting bitterness rot your soul.

No racism or stereotyping there! Or in the following -- turns out that whites got to BO.

White people’s attitudes, the contradictions of their racial identities and class consciousness, made Obama. Obama did not make them.

I think we get down to brass tacks in the following. "reparations" -- the sine qua non (essential condition, the required part) of "ending racism" in the US. "Somehow" giving the deserved upper hand to blacks because they "earned it" because of slavery.

My first black president seems to think that he can raise his daughters to believe in systemic racism without legitimizing the idea of systemic reparations.

My first black president seems to think he can have black cool without black burden. For all his intimacies with his white mother and white grandparents, my first black president doesn’t appear to know his whites.

Knowing your whites is knowing that they are dishonest, out for themselves, priviliged. Blacks on the other hand only want JUSTICE -- everything whites ever got was through corruption and privilege, so the only way for there to be justice is for the roles to essentially be reversed -- blacks have been earning whites living forever, while whites do nothing. It is time to for the reverse -- "reparations", which is synonymous with "justice".

So we come to the following assessment of "whiteness":

Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs.

Whiteness can't be changed -- and the only change that matters is REPARATIONS! That is what is embedded in the litany above -- reparations are reasonable, the truth is that that they are required, that is also the FACT ... they are a "native claim" (in an odd way).

My answer to this is to look at Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson, or even Barack Obama. It **IS** actually possible for blacks to make it in a "white man's world" -- but waiting for reparations isn't the way to do it. The WORST thing for blacks would be reparations -- it would be the black inner city X 1000. The more money that was showered on them, the worse their lives would become.

The sad part of all this is that Western Christian values -- personal responsibility, delayed gratification, stable families, belief in transcendent principles (and almost always God), classical education, etc, ACTUALLY WORK! Those values are fully colorblind -- both Abraham and Jesus were more black than white. Money and poverty are symptoms of ideas, ideas are the causal element.

Lots of luck spreading that message to the author of the linked column.

ia Blog this'

NY Times Truth, Trump Lost The Election

Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans - NYTimes.com:

This was the ad on FB today to purchase the NY Times. "Built on Paper, Based in Fact".

The NY Times was once at least real vs "fake" news. Extremely biased news, yes, but providing a view that had a connection with reality through the bias of the left. No more.

On Monday, members of the Electoral College will vote in Donald J. Trump as president. Though he lost the election by nearly three million votes and almost daily generates headlines about new scandals, the Democratic Party is doing little to stop him. If you’ve been asking yourself “Where are the Democrats?” you’re not alone.

The US, nor BOistan as of yet, has NEVER elected the president by nationwide popular vote. If we had, every election save maybe  1964, 1972, 1980, and 1984 would have been in nationwide recounts for months if not years.

Elections in the US have ALWAYS been run with the Electoral College (EC) system, and the candidates manage the campaign to win in the EC, not in the popular vote. Hillary's popular vote "win" and EC loss is proof that she mismanaged her campaign as she has everything else she ever touched.

In the NFL, the team with the highest number of points at the end of the game wins. The NY Times claim above is the same as a team that lost on points but had a greater time of possession for the game, claiming "they won".  The game would be played vastly differently if the rule was time of possession vs points scored for deciding victory. Elections would be run VERY differently if the popular vote was used to decide victory. Claiming that the popular vote is anything but meaningless is Fake News.

However, the insanity of the paragraph and column goes beyond that not so subtle point and points to the very heart of total liberal inconsistency. The claim of Hillary having "won" due to the popular vote is false BECAUSE we have an Electoral College, but that doesn't stop the liberal mind from saying -- so on one hand, we decry and refuse to accept the EC system, but on the other, we want to use that very system to overturn the election! The only thing consistent about liberal "thought" is the same as that of a two year olds "thinking" -- I want my way! End of story, period, full stop!

So the column continues with this fine paragraph

There’s no shortage of legal theories that could challenge Mr. Trump’s anointment, but they come from outsiders rather than the Democratic Party. Impassioned citizens have been pleading with electors to vote against Mr. Trump; law professors have argued that winner-take-all laws for electoral votes are unconstitutional; a small group, the Hamilton Electors, is attempting to free electors to vote their consciences; and a new theory has arisen that there is legal precedent for courts to give the election to Mrs. Clinton based on Russian interference. All of these efforts, along with the grass-roots protests, boycotts and petitions, have been happening without the Democratic Party. The most we’ve seen is a response to the C.I.A. revelations, but only with Republicans onboard to give Democrats bipartisan cover.

And we could look elsewhere in the MSM and likely the Times itself on the same day and see articles decrying "fake news", or the "post truth world". In fact, I entered the above, got into my car and headed for my workout with NPR on. They were in a full hour segment on "Fake News". Their advice? Listen to NPR and read the NY Times -- irony comes quick and thick in BOistan.

There is no longer a "paper of record". Yes, this is the "opinion page", but the editors of the NY Times think this is worthy of appearing in their paper. They don't see this as utter madness, but rather a "reasonable opinion".

If this "opinion" is taken seriously by a significant number of BOistanis, then violence will be the only way to transfer power away from the dominant party -- and make no mistake, "The Party" (TP-D) is STILL the dominant party. They own the bulk of the media, the vast federal bureaucracy, education, entertainment, and the bulk of the legal system.

Are we there yet? We are certainly close to that point for sure.

'via Blog this'

Star Whats?

Rogue One review: this is the first Star Wars movie to acknowledge the whole franchise is about war - Vox:

The headline says it all. Vox is a brilliant left wing intellectual site.

'via Blog this'

Welcome To Post Truth WaPo

If Nothing Is True, Then Everything Can Be False | RealClearPolitics:

The election of Donald Trump has seen the flowering of the post-truth landscape. Emotion outranks fact; believing makes it so. We are all Tinker Bell now. Clap if you believe in voter fraud. Clap if you doubt a human role in climate change.

The leftist  myths of no such thing as voter fraud (except in Detroit)  and doctrine of HUMAN CAUSED climate change are the gold standard in lefty "truth"?  It seems obvious that the left needs to stick with the doctrine that all truth is relative until they get enough power to make it absolute.

How about barking as opposed to clapping? I like that better.

In the WaPo universe, whatever they say is "true", and it really MUST be believed -- because to them, it IS "truth" ... which is synonymous with power in their dogma.

With facts passe, the next, inexorable move is to reduce all news to the same level of distrust and disbelief. If nothing is true, then everything can be false. So #pizzagate, the dangerously false accusation of a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton operatives, occupies the same diminished rung as a news report that fails to toe the official line.

Inside "The Party" (TP-D) bubble, "facts" have been passe for a very long time. "Narratives" have been king, and narratives have elements of truth and fiction interwoven to create a story that is highly plausible if you hear it enough. "The vast right wing conspiracy" of Hillary in the early 90's was one such narrative. I'll list a few here, but it the list is SO long and so deep that I'm likely missing some of the best examples.

"Bush Lied, People Died"? The fact that the  CIA said that WMD was a "Slam Dunk" was W's fault rather than the CIAs ... believing the CIA was a "lie" then, now what they say is gospel -- thus saith TP.

Forged documents to "prove" that W's boss when he was in the guard didn't like him? Well, Dan Rather lost his job -- nuff said. W was STILL not a good guardsman  according the the MSM -- not that it matters, but it did to them. The whole W guard thing was complete fake news.

Benghazi was caused by a movie? "What difference, at this point, does it make"? The media just reports that straight up -- no reason to claim that Hillary is somehow "post truth". Same thing with her long list of lies on the email. Nobody PROVED they were lies -- er, well, the FBI said they were lies, but not indictable, so really the same thing as truth if you are TP - in the old "pre-Trump post-truth" world.

"If you like your health insurance you can keep it"? Nothing untruthful there!

Ask the Rolling Stone about the veracity of the Virginia rapes that they and the entire MSM went bonkers on.

I could keep writing forever -- "truth" has been dead in the MSM and the US government for a good long while --  they just hate seeing it come home to roost. This is not new in any sense to readers of this blog -- that WaPo now sees it, but only sees one of the hands clapping, is somewhat new, but completely unsurprising.















'via Blog this'

Trump vs Fidel, False Left and Right Personified

https://spectator.org/frightened-by-trump-inspired-by-fidel/

I find that contrast is a great way to understand the vast differences in world view -- Trump vs Fidel is a great opportunity. The top linked article is an  example of those contrasts.

Here, Roger Cohen, a NY Times columnist who has savaged Trump sings the praises of Fidel.

Fidel. A single word suffices to evoke the man who descended from the Sierra Maestra with his ragtag army to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, purge Cuba of American domination, proclaim the empowerment of the poor, and embody Latin America’s thirst for an end to government by the pampered coteries of imperialism.

Here Cohen talks of the joys of "the left".

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how, as Communist forces loyal to Ho Chi Minh advanced towards victory in Vietnam in 1975, his protagonist “longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the Left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for.”

One of Castro's many "achievements" accorting to the US press was lowering heart disease through famine and fuel shortages, causing his island prisoners to eat less and excercise more!

The food shortage was severe enough that per-person calorie consumption dropped to about 2,400 calories a day in the 1990s, and typical adults lost about 10 pounds. At the same time, they had to exercise more by walking or riding bikes instead of taking buses. The number of Cubans meeting exercise guidelines climbed to an impressive 80 percent.

Even a famine is cause for admiration when the dictator is Fidel!

Fidel was responsible for at least 10's of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees -- some of the people that fled Cuba no doubt helped Trump take Florida.

The key differences between "left and right" jump out here, and (as always) the confusion created by the wartime propaganda making Hitler and Nazi Germany "right", when in fact they were LEFT as all dictatorial and totalitarian regimes are -- the spectrum would better be called "Control vs Chaos" vs "Left and Right" (covered in detail here).

While the MSM in the US has been unremittingly disparaging of Trump, they at best can mount tepid criticism of Fidel. The closing paragraph of the Cohen article is an example.

Fidel was a flawed giant. By the end the only idea of his still standing was the anti-American nationalism taken on by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. However, this is certainly not the moment to say his stand for the disinherited of the earth was unimportant. Nor, at a time when the United States has elected a charlatan as president, is it the moment to overlook the fact that Fidel was a serious and uncorrupt politician. Nor to leave unsaid the suffering he inflicted.

 For contrast, here is his article claiming Trump a sociopath. No explanation required on why Fido was a "serious and uncorrupt politician". From the left, mass murder does not corrupt you ... but surprisingly, living a hidden luxury lifestyle and being worth $900 million doesn't either! As we have discovered many times, being left means being incorruptible!

The themes that come out through a lot of the writing are:

1. The evil of historical America. Fidel thumbed his nose at America the capitalist/imperialist unjust nation. Putting America in "it's place" made Castro a hero to the left -- no matter the cost to his people. BO established relations between BOistan and Cuba at the end -- a victory for Fido.
   
2. The vision of the masses as "children" -- unable to care for themselves, they need a "strong man" to guide them -- "properly". But if that strong man is not a doctrinaire leftist, he becomes "dangerous", like Trump.
   
   It is here where the left/right dichotomy has some complexity. The ORIGINAL left / right of the French Revolution had "Church / monarchy" on the RIGHT, with "revolution" on the left. As I make clear in the "Left/Right" blog post linked above, my choice of the terms "Control vs Chaos" is obviously imperfect -- as any selection of a single axis to describe the complexities of ideology is bound to be.
   
   Religion is part of "natural" (in my world view). We are created with a spiritual hole to be properly filled by God -- on the left, that hole is filled by the state and leftist ideology. At the time of the French Revolution, the understanding of the "Natural Order" included God, The Church, and The Crown, "natural" was equal to "right" and thus included the church and state.
   
   Our founders separated church and state and allowed freedom of religion in what they saw as a "center-right" nation ... enough control to prevent chaos, but with the "divine right of kings" severed. The people gained power in the form of a democratic Constitutional Republic with a strict Constitution, separation of powers, and a number of anti-democratic measures to prevent shifting to toward democracy and the tyranny of the masses.
   

The MSM sees no danger in moving left continuously, and ideally by force -- you WILL bake a cake, you WILL let this man in the woman's locker room!, you WILL only contribute politically as we decree!.  Even slowing the slide to totalitarianism is seen as "fascist", thus the hatred of Trump. It is an article of faith for the left that "the masses" lack the intelligence and maturity to "make correct choices" without largely state controlled media, massive educational indoctrination, and  demagogic leaders like BO or Fidel -- thus, Trump must be destroyed at all costs. 

Republicans Win Secret Senate Race

Louisiana Runoff: Republican Wins Final Senate Race Of 2016 In Louisiana Runoff : NPR:

John Kennedy returns to the Senate -- as a Republican. I was trying to find this on my news this AM and had to just google it -- perhaps the Russians hacked the media reporting on this one.


'via Blog this'

30, 60, 90

My father is little over a month short of 30 years older than me and we had his birthday celebration on his birthday, the 21st. He was in fine fettle, even though it really looked like we were going to lose him due to prostate cancer / urinary tract blockages, surgeries, etc this last spring. He bounced back and was able to eat an amazing amount of pizza and homemade ice cream at his party. Based on my data and my mom's roommate at the nursing home that lived to 102, I'm pretty sure that pizza is essentially the fountain of youth.

Readers of this blog know that I am blessed and cursed with a pretty decent memory. I remember well the 30-60 party back in '86 when I turned 30 and dad was about to turn 60. I was 8 years into my IBM career, married a little over a year and still childless, that would not change until March of '88.  The Challenger had exploded in January. It was the year that Iran Contra showed up and the media was certain they could finally get Reagan.

At IBM, business was good -- the IBM PC was still king, although the seeds of demise were visible. The Intel 386 processor started shipping that year, but IBM did not create a machine using it as it had hung it's hat and OS/2, the ill fated OS originally developed "in partnership" with Microsoft, on the 286. OS/2 was "a big deal" at IBM in '86 -- and would never really be a big deal anywhere else.

My Dad seemed pretty old at 60 from the perspective of 30 -- but he was still vigorous and running his farm. His two brothers and their wives were doing well, now all gone including my mom, his sister in Rockford lives on. We joked that I had been 1/30th his age when I was born, but then I was 1/2 his age -- I'd "gained" to being 2/3rds his age at this point. Fractions had been hard for him in school, and they remained so throughout his life (unless he has an epiphany in his 90's !).

Lived fractions show a reality however -- it is BOTH a relative and absolute world. Thirty years remains 30 years, as the length of both lives extend, the relative difference shrinks. If we were blessed or cursed with 300 year lifespans, I could attain 90% of my fathers age. A 30 year old has a hard time imagining long life to be a curse, a 60 year old sees that potential, a 90 year old is well aware of that reality.

Thirty, sixty, ninety are just numbers, and in our modern world, quite small numbers. "70" was a big number in biblical times -- 70x7 was a stand-in for infinity. It doesn't seem so big from 60, neither does 90, and that is impossible to understand from 30. At 30, the amount of time to 60 seemed INFINITE! It was twice my age, and the last time my age had doubled, from 15-30 seemed like FOREVER. From 60, I'd say that in "perceived time", 30-60 seems somewhat shorter than from 15-30 seemed from 30. Thirty to 90 seems shorter still.

I came close to losing my wife in my 60th year, and although her recovery is miraculous, her injury has been life changing for both of us and shows both the fragility of life, and the need to always be grateful for what you have! It only takes a second to be paralyzed ... or gone, and a second is still short at 30, 60,  or 90!

Thanksgiving was spent with family in West Bend, and at our lake place. I've come to love the "home away from home". It is familiar and "home" now, yet very different, in a way that "just going away for a few days" can't be -- it continues to become a place of solitude and reflection as well as a source of new memories with family and friends. It is easy to understand why presidents have their "retreats".

Age is both a blessing and a curse, but only the living of the years really allows that to sink in. It is one of the pieces of wisdom that can't be obtained from books. We inherently understand the blessing, although the wonderful blessing of grandchildren takes living to understand. The curse is also obvious by 60 -- loved ones have passed from this vale of tears by this point, and the rate of passing in those you know starts to accelerate. You see heaven filling with loved and familiar faces, and your prayers for those who ignore or reject the infinite become more fervent.

Then there is the infirmity -- sometimes arriving suddenly as in a fall that injures your spine or a stroke. Sometimes in a diagnosis -- cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. Sometimes it is in the growing circle of the younger that you love. When you were a child, mom, dad and siblings were "your world". You may have lost a childhood friend, but probably not. Sure, losing a grandparent, aunt or uncle was hard, but "normal" too -- the "natural way of things".

As you age in the "old style family", you have in-laws, the in-laws have parents, children, grandchildren, close friends. Your "risk set" is expanding with children / grandchildren for you and others as well. When you were young, visits to hospital or funeral home tended to be rare -- for me, my maternal grandfather's funeral at age 9 is my earliest recollection of sad death. My paternal grandfather passed away before such things registered.

Now, increasingly, there is nearly always someone in your family or acquaintance in hospital or nursing home. Visitations and funerals for co-workers, church friends etc become increasingly frequent. You need to be retired to go to all the funerals and to visit those shut-in even if you are blessed with good health yourself!

As time passes, each lived age "is what it is". When we are young we have plans, dreams ... demands and "rights" even -- at least the we believe so when young. Stand next to (or in) enough hospital beds, next to enough graves, and the message of lived reality becomes ever stronger. We are dust, and to dust we shall return -- as you breath your last, Grace is your only hope -- and neither it, nor anything else are your "right".

We are not in charge of our own next breath -- nor that of any we love. Science is also not in charge, nor government, nor anything in this earthly coil.  We live for a moment in the infinite, and we all have some belief as to the ultimate meaning or lack of meaning in that.

By Grace, I believe in a continuation of the eternal kingdom of God through Christ Jesus. In your belief, maybe a cold cruel random universe and annihilation. Some ignore it, but we are all really all truly and eternally equal in the fact of death!

30, 60, 90 -- all infinitesimal next to eternity. Lord Jesus, thank you for this measure of life, and thank you infinitely more for the gift of eternity, offered so beautifully as the original Christmas gift!

The Media, Democrat, Union Monolith In MN

American Experiment Files Complaint: Star Tribune "Reporter" Chris Serres - American Experiment:

This gets a little long, but the bottom line is pretty simple:

Yet he failed to mention that SEIU was taking a full 3 percent of gross wages in union dues, up to $948 dollars a year, from PCAs who signed a union card (or had one signed for them). Wouldn’t a reporter concerned about PCAs ask the SEIU why their union dues were so high?

The Star Trib, Democrats, and union leadership are "in cahoots" in MN to gather funds from "Personal Care Attendants" (PCAs) who they managed to get unionized -- and which many of them would like to get out of!

So if that interests you, then it is a worthy read of cronyism between the Star Trib, Democrats and union organizers -- but what else is new?

'via Blog this'

BO, Ellison, Nation of Islam

Power Line has been bringing back some of the long buried past of potential head of the DNC, Keith Ellison. For those not in the know, the Nation of Islam is unabashedly and often violently  anti Semitic and anti-white.

This is Ellison’s big lie. Ellison agitated on behalf of the Nation of Islam for at least 10 years. He peddled the requisite hate and conspiracy theories that are essential elements of its attraction. As Ellison himself wrote in his 2014 memoir: “In the NOI, if you’re not angry in opposition to some group of people (whites, Jews, so-called ‘sellout’ blacks), you don’t have religion.” 

Ellison was in the NOI. He had the religion, big time. Ellison’s involvement with the NOI extended from his days as a student at the University of Minnesota Law School until some time before his first successful run for public office in 2002. Ellison’s involvement with the Nation of Islam was long and intense.

Louis Farrakhan, Malcom X, Elijah Muhammad ... and at least in spirit and sometimes, as in the Million Man March, body as well -- BO.

What Makes Obama Run? | Feature | Chicago Reader: "Obama took time off from attending campaign coffees to attend October's Million Man March in Washington, D.C. His experiences there only reinforced his reasons for jumping into politics."

What we have seen during the election and will no doubt see during the Trump administration is a constant effort to link "Trumpism" with white supremacist movements.

On the flip side, even direct association with much larger extremist movements like NOI by blacks is soft pedaled and excused.


'via Blog this'