RealClearPolitics - End to Two Grim Fairy Tales
Short and sweet, just read it. Teddy and Michael -- without all the false sugar coating.
Short and sweet, just read it. Teddy and Michael -- without all the false sugar coating.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Parsing Change
Michael Kinsley - Health Care: Americans Want Change While Keeping Status Quo - washingtonpost.com
Kinsley is a very smart guy, but the effect of being part of the "anointed elite" is somewhere between sad and humorous. Like the fish that finally thinks it is getting a handle on being wet, Kinsley is so unable to smack himself in the head and say "oh, it's all around me!" that one feels sorry and giggly all at the same time. It is the feeling that I suspect that Christians might get at the moment of death -- "Oh Wow, it's been obvious the whole time".
"To believe in your country's institutions is virtually unpatriotic". How much ink has been used on Abu Ghraib? "lies" about WMD? the "complete botching of Katrina"? The list could go on, but I believe that we just came out of 8 years of history where the institutions of the government were assailed on a daily basis as being completely corrupt and incompetent. I fully understand that the MSM and the Democrats INTENDED all that ire at the government to suddenly go away on the day the shining BO administration walked in the door, but is that really reasonable? Even the smartest of "smart bomb sniping" is going to have SOME collateral damage. I'd argue that the level of completely ridiculous lefty "carpet bombing" is going to have fallout for years to come!
If the US government was anything at all like the horror that has been portrayed for especially the last 4 years, it would be impossible to turn it around in many years. I happen to think that it was handed over in better shape than when the the semen stained oval office was handed over in 2001 without a whole lot of the furnishings, but I know the press and the Democrats have done all they can to convince us that that things have been in a horrible mess for 8 years.
Kinsley, journalists and the chattering classes in general REALLY believe "it's all in our minds", and "reality IS what THEY think it is". To THEM, on the day that BO took office, the horrible US government was transformed from a decrepit evil broken down hag into a beautiful shining maiden. I suspect to their minds, it looks something like what happens after Belle kisses the beast in "Beauty and the Beast" -- "the spell is broken" and the castle, help and all around is transformed from evil and ugly to good and beautiful in the twinkling of an eye.
Kinsley finds the idea that not everyone shares his view of a Fairy Godmother transformation to be "immature". Now that the evil Bush has been vanquished and we have entered the sunny rule of his lordship BO, why do the common vermin not scrape and bow as is befitting of the royalty that as now deigned to rule their "misinformed" and "immature" carcasses?
How indeed one might ask?
Kinsley is a very smart guy, but the effect of being part of the "anointed elite" is somewhere between sad and humorous. Like the fish that finally thinks it is getting a handle on being wet, Kinsley is so unable to smack himself in the head and say "oh, it's all around me!" that one feels sorry and giggly all at the same time. It is the feeling that I suspect that Christians might get at the moment of death -- "Oh Wow, it's been obvious the whole time".
The reason Americans have turned against health-care reform, afterAs he discusses later, "change" is abstract. People LOVE "change" when it is "whatever they are dreaming it is at the moment" -- it gets to be less positive if it is "change underwear with the guy on your right".
electing President Obama in part for promising it, is simple: Despite
protestations to the contrary, Americans don't like change.
Why does this happen? Some people (including me) say the voters are immature. Politicians (and those talk radio fellows again) are always telling them that they are wise and those folks in Washington are fools. Pollsters seek and validate their opinions on subjects they haven't bothered to learn anything about. Politicians drown them in benefits with no thought of how the bills will be paid. No wonder thatRemember how BO ran on what he was specifically going to do? Niether do I ... his platform was "Change!" ... and "Yes We Can!". It is hard to imagine a more vacuous platform than "change" and "yes we can". How about "Different" and "yes"??
citizens turn out like spoiled children.
But "immature" is a label, not an explanation. It's just a guess, but my own suspicion is that the raucous town hall meetings that blindsided pols and press alike reflect the voters' true feelings -- misinformed, perhaps, but sincere -- and their previous passionate demands for what they now passionately oppose -- in a word, "change" -- were empty ritual. Discontent verging on anger is almost the price of admission to our political culture these days. You're nobody if you're not furious at Congress and/or the media and/or your health care and/or the president. To believe in your country's institutions is virtually unpatriotic.
"To believe in your country's institutions is virtually unpatriotic". How much ink has been used on Abu Ghraib? "lies" about WMD? the "complete botching of Katrina"? The list could go on, but I believe that we just came out of 8 years of history where the institutions of the government were assailed on a daily basis as being completely corrupt and incompetent. I fully understand that the MSM and the Democrats INTENDED all that ire at the government to suddenly go away on the day the shining BO administration walked in the door, but is that really reasonable? Even the smartest of "smart bomb sniping" is going to have SOME collateral damage. I'd argue that the level of completely ridiculous lefty "carpet bombing" is going to have fallout for years to come!
If the US government was anything at all like the horror that has been portrayed for especially the last 4 years, it would be impossible to turn it around in many years. I happen to think that it was handed over in better shape than when the the semen stained oval office was handed over in 2001 without a whole lot of the furnishings, but I know the press and the Democrats have done all they can to convince us that that things have been in a horrible mess for 8 years.
Kinsley, journalists and the chattering classes in general REALLY believe "it's all in our minds", and "reality IS what THEY think it is". To THEM, on the day that BO took office, the horrible US government was transformed from a decrepit evil broken down hag into a beautiful shining maiden. I suspect to their minds, it looks something like what happens after Belle kisses the beast in "Beauty and the Beast" -- "the spell is broken" and the castle, help and all around is transformed from evil and ugly to good and beautiful in the twinkling of an eye.
Kinsley finds the idea that not everyone shares his view of a Fairy Godmother transformation to be "immature". Now that the evil Bush has been vanquished and we have entered the sunny rule of his lordship BO, why do the common vermin not scrape and bow as is befitting of the royalty that as now deigned to rule their "misinformed" and "immature" carcasses?
How indeed one might ask?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Goodbye Harry?
SHERMAN FREDERICK: Enough is enough, Harry - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com
Seeing the oh so sanctimonious Senate Leader Tom Daschle go down in '04 was a political highlight. One would hope that nearly everyone in the nation would now agree after realizing he skimmed $5million off various groups after his boys the Democrats took control back in '06 and somehow he neglected to pay over $100K of taxes due on the loot!
Could it be that the "power and the glory" has gone to Harry Reid's head enough so that the fine folks of Nevada have had enough? One can only hope.
Seeing the oh so sanctimonious Senate Leader Tom Daschle go down in '04 was a political highlight. One would hope that nearly everyone in the nation would now agree after realizing he skimmed $5million off various groups after his boys the Democrats took control back in '06 and somehow he neglected to pay over $100K of taxes due on the loot!
Could it be that the "power and the glory" has gone to Harry Reid's head enough so that the fine folks of Nevada have had enough? One can only hope.
The Real Lincoln
The subject book by Thomas DiLorenzo brings home one point that is much worth the read. We are taught in school that "Lincoln saved the union" and he was "the great emancipator". Those two items are somewhat true, but vast oversimplifications.
The greatest insight of the book is that "the union" that was "saved" wasn't what used to be called "The United States". The cost of the civil war was that the idea of "rights moving from God to the people to the states to the federal government" was destroyed at gunpoint, and replaced with the idea that once a state, always a state, or we will deal out death until you get it right.
The right of secession is a MUST in a country where the rights come from the people! The America of our founders and of the Constitution they created would have allowed the South to secede peacefully. Lincoln could not, and in fact pushed the South to war with "The American Plan" -- 1). Central Banking 2) High Tariffs 3). Internal Improvements.
For the South, this meant that they paid all the tariffs and all the "improvements" (which were essentially payola for companies) ended up in the North.
As the author pointed out, slavery was ended peacefully all around the world, and prejudice against blacks was at least as strong and in many ways stronger in the north. Lincoln himself wanted to ship the blacks back to Africa and felt that the two races were never tended to coexist. Were the south to have seceded peacefully, it is quite likely that slavery would have been ended in a decade or two via compensation to owners or a scheme where the children of the slaves were freed on their 21st birthday. Having over 620K Americans die wasn't required to end slavery.
I was personally struck by some of the sentiment that I first experienced when we had some friends from southern Indiana that would have been just south of the Mason Dixon line. Going to public school in the north, the Civil War is cut and dried -- the North is just, the South is unjust, Lincoln is a hero, the war was the only way to end slavery, and everyone ought to be thankful that it was fought. Not so in the South. This book is a more academic look at the kinds of sentiments that many of the folks of the South still carry over 100 years since the war. Being on the losing side makes a difference.
In reading the book, one realizes how expensive the Civil War was not only in lives and treasure, but in the loss of liberty and autonomy of the states that may well have been an irrecoverable blow that will eventually completely destroy the liberty that the country was founded on.
The greatest insight of the book is that "the union" that was "saved" wasn't what used to be called "The United States". The cost of the civil war was that the idea of "rights moving from God to the people to the states to the federal government" was destroyed at gunpoint, and replaced with the idea that once a state, always a state, or we will deal out death until you get it right.
The right of secession is a MUST in a country where the rights come from the people! The America of our founders and of the Constitution they created would have allowed the South to secede peacefully. Lincoln could not, and in fact pushed the South to war with "The American Plan" -- 1). Central Banking 2) High Tariffs 3). Internal Improvements.
For the South, this meant that they paid all the tariffs and all the "improvements" (which were essentially payola for companies) ended up in the North.
As the author pointed out, slavery was ended peacefully all around the world, and prejudice against blacks was at least as strong and in many ways stronger in the north. Lincoln himself wanted to ship the blacks back to Africa and felt that the two races were never tended to coexist. Were the south to have seceded peacefully, it is quite likely that slavery would have been ended in a decade or two via compensation to owners or a scheme where the children of the slaves were freed on their 21st birthday. Having over 620K Americans die wasn't required to end slavery.
I was personally struck by some of the sentiment that I first experienced when we had some friends from southern Indiana that would have been just south of the Mason Dixon line. Going to public school in the north, the Civil War is cut and dried -- the North is just, the South is unjust, Lincoln is a hero, the war was the only way to end slavery, and everyone ought to be thankful that it was fought. Not so in the South. This book is a more academic look at the kinds of sentiments that many of the folks of the South still carry over 100 years since the war. Being on the losing side makes a difference.
In reading the book, one realizes how expensive the Civil War was not only in lives and treasure, but in the loss of liberty and autonomy of the states that may well have been an irrecoverable blow that will eventually completely destroy the liberty that the country was founded on.
Healthcare Protest
Went over to a health care protest in front of the local offices of Klobuchar and Walz (Senator, Representative) Friday. 50-100 folks, no chanting, very civil signs, one guy across the street doing a "counter protest". Ran into a guy I used to work with whose wife died of cancer a couple of years ago -- he has spent a good long time studying the issue / Canada / England and was what I would call "quietly passionate". He had gone over to Owatonna for a town meeting and said they had come in with a couple of union buses of folks. Folks were pretty angry that anyone that disagrees is "a nut" -- thought that seemed to be different from what the war was at this time last year, although the war seems "all better now" for some odd reason.
A few of us walked into the offices and just asked "where were the Senator/Representative, when might they be in town?" we were told that information was not being given out due to "security". No coverage at all in the local paper on Saturday -- I recall a few years back that if they could get a couple of war protesters out, it was very newsworthy.
The media powers are doing their best to make anyone that disagrees with federal takeover of health care seem somewhere between "nuts and dangerous".
A few of us walked into the offices and just asked "where were the Senator/Representative, when might they be in town?" we were told that information was not being given out due to "security". No coverage at all in the local paper on Saturday -- I recall a few years back that if they could get a couple of war protesters out, it was very newsworthy.
The media powers are doing their best to make anyone that disagrees with federal takeover of health care seem somewhere between "nuts and dangerous".
Friday, August 28, 2009
How Disaster Happens
RealClearPolitics - Can Dems Rescue ObamaCare?
It is hard to say whether the BOcare debacle will be ended quite the way Krauthammer suggests here, but it will likely have similar results in any case.
It is hard to say whether the BOcare debacle will be ended quite the way Krauthammer suggests here, but it will likely have similar results in any case.
(5) Promise nothing but pleasure -- for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one -- Obamacare 2.0 -- promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick, and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.
What's not to like? If you have insurance, you'll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.
The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.
This "plan" is WAY more detailed than "Coverage for all, cheaper, better with more choice"!! This "plan" actually has something about HOW!!! But, like all things in this world that are "only pleasure" ....
Isn't there a catch? Of course, there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.
However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That's when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.
But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.
Government is a lot like drugs, smoking, gambling or other vices. When you "start", it seems "all good" -- it is just after you have been in it for awhile, realize how dependent you have become, how few other choices you now have, and how much power you have given up to your addiction, that you realize "they've got me". Then, as intended in the beginning, it is too late!!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Healthcare
Kennedy's dream is our inspiration :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Mary Mitchell
Working in a technical job and from time to time with people who have emigrated from Canada, England or other places to GET the health care they need, I'm often reminded of the difference between reality and emotion. Our feelings have very few limits -- reality has a good deal more.
That thought process seems like it is on the way to how we might reform health care in this country. Right now we ALL expect "Teddy Kennedy care", and indeed we all pay so even Teddy gets that level of care without having to take it from his own pocket. I like to call it "Private Jet Care". Virtually none of us can afford to have a Private Jet, yet all of us now expect to have health care that is the equivalent of a Private Jet. Unsurprisingly, providing everyone with that level of care -- insured or not, is EXTREMELY expensive. We complain about it pushing 20% of our GDP, but in many ways, it is surprising it isn't more.
My "goals" may be "simple". "Health care for all that is cheaper, higher quality and provides more choices". How can anyone disagree with that? How about with an investment plan that "has less risk, higher returns, and only invests in sustainable business"? Of say, a diet, where you can "eat the foods you want, when you want, and excise only when convienient to you and reach your target weight in less than a year".
The "simple" problem is the complete confusion of ends with means. I heard Amy Klobochar on MPR today from at the fair repeat more than once "covers all, less expensive, higher quality and adds to the choices that people have today". She said not a single word about "how", since in the real world were MEANS are a MAJOR part of reality, the devil is very much in those "details of how".
So the left this is a simple moral issue. Other countries that have only 10-30% of the population of the US "have it" (although there is precious little study of what "it" is other than the lable "universal health"). But they say that "we don't" -- because there are 47 million people without insurance. But wait -- insurance is a MEANS to PAY for healthcare! It isn't healthcare at all! Teddy Kennedy could have paid for his treatment out of pocket with EASE had he been uninsured! Had the poorest 77 year old in the country walked in to the same hospital as Teddy, they too would have gotten the same care. Only in a country with "universal health" would Kennedy have received care, but another 77 year old of less than top 1% wealth would not have.
We live in a supposed democracy where it is immoral to discuss how we pay for out health care because the left had decided so. Welcome to BO America.
Working in a technical job and from time to time with people who have emigrated from Canada, England or other places to GET the health care they need, I'm often reminded of the difference between reality and emotion. Our feelings have very few limits -- reality has a good deal more.
It is pretty simple.So what is "health care"? Were Kennedy in England and on their "universal" plan, the only treatment that he would have gotten for his brain cancer would have been hospice and pain relieving drugs. I'm assuming that the author of this column would consider that to be health care?As a country, we either believe that health care is a right or we don't.
So the "real issue" is simply "ensure that all Americans receive quality health care"? So which ones don't? The uninsured? I don't think so -- if they show up at clinics, they will get health care just like Teddy. What exactly is it that makes it "a disgrace"? In England, a person of less than Kennedy level extreme wealth would get hospice care only for the same cancer that felled Teddy. Is that decision a "death panel"? Yes and no. Hospice care only would have been $100's of K cheaper for Teddy, but he might not have been able to speak at the Democrat convention, or see BO elected. As a nation, we paid $100's of thousands of dollars for a very rich man to have a few more months of life. In England, **HE** would have had to pay, but 99% of us would not have gotten those months, because we could not afford them. I'd tend to argue that is reasonable -- but that is a major part of the shape of a REAL debate on health care.The raucous debates over a "public option," so-called "death panels" and "taxpayer sponsored abortions" are designed to obscure the real issue:
We live in the richest and most powerful country in the world, and we can't find the will or the compassion to ensure that all Americans receive quality health care.
It is a disgrace.
That thought process seems like it is on the way to how we might reform health care in this country. Right now we ALL expect "Teddy Kennedy care", and indeed we all pay so even Teddy gets that level of care without having to take it from his own pocket. I like to call it "Private Jet Care". Virtually none of us can afford to have a Private Jet, yet all of us now expect to have health care that is the equivalent of a Private Jet. Unsurprisingly, providing everyone with that level of care -- insured or not, is EXTREMELY expensive. We complain about it pushing 20% of our GDP, but in many ways, it is surprising it isn't more.
Being liberal means being "morally pure" where it counts for liberals. The fact that some conservatives and Christians may have "morals" about whom one can sleep with, drowning your secretary, helping your nephew get away with rape and other mundane things like that is "chilling", "full of hypocricy" or "turning the clock back to tghe 19th century". If one espouses liberal principles, one can hold the wealth of a Kennedy or a Kerry and be 100% free from the charge of hypocracy. Being liberal is a "matter of the heart", and only foul conservatives would somehow imply that not all matters of the heart can be conjured in the real world.Frankly, some of the arguments against health care reform that are made by ordinary people sound hard-hearted.
How did we get to the place where so many of us think that health care reform boils down to paying the medical bills of "those" people who are "shooting each other" or who are "immigrants."
Ironically, it won't be "those" people who won't get treatment when they need it.
My "goals" may be "simple". "Health care for all that is cheaper, higher quality and provides more choices". How can anyone disagree with that? How about with an investment plan that "has less risk, higher returns, and only invests in sustainable business"? Of say, a diet, where you can "eat the foods you want, when you want, and excise only when convienient to you and reach your target weight in less than a year".
The "simple" problem is the complete confusion of ends with means. I heard Amy Klobochar on MPR today from at the fair repeat more than once "covers all, less expensive, higher quality and adds to the choices that people have today". She said not a single word about "how", since in the real world were MEANS are a MAJOR part of reality, the devil is very much in those "details of how".
So the left this is a simple moral issue. Other countries that have only 10-30% of the population of the US "have it" (although there is precious little study of what "it" is other than the lable "universal health"). But they say that "we don't" -- because there are 47 million people without insurance. But wait -- insurance is a MEANS to PAY for healthcare! It isn't healthcare at all! Teddy Kennedy could have paid for his treatment out of pocket with EASE had he been uninsured! Had the poorest 77 year old in the country walked in to the same hospital as Teddy, they too would have gotten the same care. Only in a country with "universal health" would Kennedy have received care, but another 77 year old of less than top 1% wealth would not have.
We live in a supposed democracy where it is immoral to discuss how we pay for out health care because the left had decided so. Welcome to BO America.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Sorry, Not Safe
Marc Thiessen: Obama Versus the CIA - WSJ.com
We are 16 days away from knowing for sure that the Bush policies made us safer than the Clinton policies. We know what happened on September 11, 2001. Our MSM and the Democrats told us over and over that "The policies of George Bush make us less safe", yet there as not been an attack on US soil since 9/11/2001. If the MSM and the Democrats were correct, there needs to be an attack at least as significant as 9/11 in the next 16 days, otherwise, they "lied" (in the same way as Bush "lied" about WMD).
Is BO making us less safe? I think so, the only thing I disagree with in the paragraphs below is that we will be sorry in 10 years. I'm sorry already, I think we all will be sorry in less than 4 years.
We are 16 days away from knowing for sure that the Bush policies made us safer than the Clinton policies. We know what happened on September 11, 2001. Our MSM and the Democrats told us over and over that "The policies of George Bush make us less safe", yet there as not been an attack on US soil since 9/11/2001. If the MSM and the Democrats were correct, there needs to be an attack at least as significant as 9/11 in the next 16 days, otherwise, they "lied" (in the same way as Bush "lied" about WMD).
Is BO making us less safe? I think so, the only thing I disagree with in the paragraphs below is that we will be sorry in 10 years. I'm sorry already, I think we all will be sorry in less than 4 years.
Can you even IMAGINE the outcry had the Bush administration started investigations into the Slick Willie WH?Now Attorney General Eric Holder, a political appointee, is overruling the decisions of career Justice Department officials and appointing a special prosecutor. If the Bush administration had done the same thing to its predecessor, the mainstream media would be howling.
The decision to prosecute will have a devastating effect on the intelligence community—pushing the agency back into a risk-averse, pre-Sept. 11, 2001, mentality. Indeed, the IG report itself indicates that agency officials knew this day was coming. "One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some 'wanted list' to appear before the World Court. . . . Another said, 'Ten years from now, we're going to be sorry we're doing this . . . [but] it has to be done.'"
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
BO Like Which President? Carter
Fouad Ajami: Obama’s Summer of Discontent - WSJ.com
Good article here is the section that points out that BO clearly isn't some great heroic figure as the MSM and a bunch of folks in his spell held him out to be:
Good article here is the section that points out that BO clearly isn't some great heroic figure as the MSM and a bunch of folks in his spell held him out to be:
The Obama devotees were the victims of their own belief in political magic. The devotees could not make up their minds. In a newly minted U.S. senator from Illinois, they saw the embodiment of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama was tall and thin and from Illinois, and the historic campaign was launched out of Springfield. The oath of office was taken on the Lincoln Bible. Like FDR, he had a huge economic challenge, and he better get it done, repair and streamline the economy in his "first hundred days." Like JFK, he was young and stylish, with a young family.
I suspect that by the time we are done here, Carter will seem like a MUCH better President than BO.
Freedom vs Free Stuff
RealClearPolitics - The Great Escape
I saw a little PJ O'Rourke video the other day where he said something like the following in his forever humorous style "Americans love freedom, as in Ronald Reagan -- Freedom to make money, spend money, get rich, get stupid, etc. But, Americans also love "free stuff" ala Obama -- free healthcare, free education, free hou, etc. Since Americans (like all people), hate Responsibility, work and stuff like that, when tend to forget after awhile that free stuff costs a lot in individual freedom -- to make money, spend money, etc, and they swing back the other way. Right now, they are intent on getting a lot of free stuff."
The following is from the Sowell article:
I saw a little PJ O'Rourke video the other day where he said something like the following in his forever humorous style "Americans love freedom, as in Ronald Reagan -- Freedom to make money, spend money, get rich, get stupid, etc. But, Americans also love "free stuff" ala Obama -- free healthcare, free education, free hou, etc. Since Americans (like all people), hate Responsibility, work and stuff like that, when tend to forget after awhile that free stuff costs a lot in individual freedom -- to make money, spend money, etc, and they swing back the other way. Right now, they are intent on getting a lot of free stuff."
The following is from the Sowell article:
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation-- that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved.
Education is usually discussed in terms of the money spent on it, the teaching methods used, class sizes or the way the whole system is organized. Students are discussed largely as passive recipients of good or bad education.
Much like students, BO assumes that he can treat the US population, economy, world business, foreign countries, etc as "objects" that will predictably respond to his various nostrums. All the world is a stage for the "director", BO to move the parts around on as he sees fit. Ah, what a fine production it is!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Loony As a Way of Life
Op-Ed Columnist - The Guns of August - NYTimes.com
Note this is not from some fringe rag or wingnut blog, this is from the NYT. Mr Rich is convinced that any minor whiff of thought that doesn't agree with the lefty view of the world means that we are on the verge of armed conflict. He doesn't say what we ought to DO about this horror, but it is implied in various columns that confiscation of weapons, controls on any group that is somehow identified as "right wing", maybe "education" (forced?) ... it is all very fuzzy, but at least to Mr Rich, we have a "Clear and Present Danger".
Oddly, I'm sure he has probably "forgotten" that Reagan was actually shot and easily could have died, Gerald Ford was shot AT by ex-Manson follower Squeaky Frome -- but in true lefty fashion, she missed entirely (thankfully). My point here would be that while Rich seems to think that violence is an affliction only of the right, any sort of perusal of the facts is going to make that case hard to support.
Bell wrote this fine analysis in '62, but the panic on the left that somebody still thinks differently from them is just as great. JFK was shot by a Castro supporter that had visited the USSR -- not PRECISELY what one might call a "right wing attack". Sirhan Sirhan claimed that he shot RFK because of his support for Israel -- Sirhan was born in Palestine. James Earl Ray was a poor repeat criminal with no identified ideology. I must admit that there is some strong evidence that the 1979 swimming rabbit that attacked Carter in GA was a member of a radical fringe militia group -- so I'll grant him one!
Note also how it is somehow "the right" that can't handle "change". One might argue that globalization, the internet, the end of the USSR and much of the various technical revolutions had much more to do with "the right" than with the left. Is it simply because Rich is certain that "left = smart, right = stupid" that he is convinced of the right's inability to deal with complexity? I know a whole bunch of guys that Rich would call "rightists" that design and code operating system software for a living -- is that less complex than writing bad opinion for the NY Times?
Can a rational person look at the facts of the past 50 years and conclude that there is any significant danger from the right in this country? The war protests, the campus bombings, the race riots in cities, union violence and rampant crime. What of that is a phenomenon of "the right"? Sure, there is Timothy McVeigh and some abortion doctor killings. So the "right" is going to have some crackpots as well. In many ways, Rich ought to be saying "Thank God" -- if Timothy McVeigh didn't exist, it was almost getting to the point that the left ought to have faked him in order to keep them from looking bad!
Of course, how can you really look bad when you have the NYT on your side!
Note this is not from some fringe rag or wingnut blog, this is from the NYT. Mr Rich is convinced that any minor whiff of thought that doesn't agree with the lefty view of the world means that we are on the verge of armed conflict. He doesn't say what we ought to DO about this horror, but it is implied in various columns that confiscation of weapons, controls on any group that is somehow identified as "right wing", maybe "education" (forced?) ... it is all very fuzzy, but at least to Mr Rich, we have a "Clear and Present Danger".
Oddly, I'm sure he has probably "forgotten" that Reagan was actually shot and easily could have died, Gerald Ford was shot AT by ex-Manson follower Squeaky Frome -- but in true lefty fashion, she missed entirely (thankfully). My point here would be that while Rich seems to think that violence is an affliction only of the right, any sort of perusal of the facts is going to make that case hard to support.
No, the biggest contributor to this resurgence of radicalism remains panic in some precincts about a new era of cultural and demographic change. As the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”
Bell wrote this fine analysis in '62, but the panic on the left that somebody still thinks differently from them is just as great. JFK was shot by a Castro supporter that had visited the USSR -- not PRECISELY what one might call a "right wing attack". Sirhan Sirhan claimed that he shot RFK because of his support for Israel -- Sirhan was born in Palestine. James Earl Ray was a poor repeat criminal with no identified ideology. I must admit that there is some strong evidence that the 1979 swimming rabbit that attacked Carter in GA was a member of a radical fringe militia group -- so I'll grant him one!
Note also how it is somehow "the right" that can't handle "change". One might argue that globalization, the internet, the end of the USSR and much of the various technical revolutions had much more to do with "the right" than with the left. Is it simply because Rich is certain that "left = smart, right = stupid" that he is convinced of the right's inability to deal with complexity? I know a whole bunch of guys that Rich would call "rightists" that design and code operating system software for a living -- is that less complex than writing bad opinion for the NY Times?
Can a rational person look at the facts of the past 50 years and conclude that there is any significant danger from the right in this country? The war protests, the campus bombings, the race riots in cities, union violence and rampant crime. What of that is a phenomenon of "the right"? Sure, there is Timothy McVeigh and some abortion doctor killings. So the "right" is going to have some crackpots as well. In many ways, Rich ought to be saying "Thank God" -- if Timothy McVeigh didn't exist, it was almost getting to the point that the left ought to have faked him in order to keep them from looking bad!
Of course, how can you really look bad when you have the NYT on your side!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Open Conspiracy, Cloward Piven
CHANDLER: The Cloward-Piven strategy - Washington Times
This a good little article that does some "connecting the dots" on ACORN, BO, and Cloward-Piven. I covered Cloward-Piven here. How much is BO following this? One can never tell for sure, but I'm pretty sure he is well aware of it and one of the reasons that he is very cavilier about making policy choices that are highly likely to destroy the fabric of America is because he sees America as basically a "racist, imperialist, war oriented, unfair, bully that has had things going it's way for way too long for a lot of damage to the rest of the world and the environment".
While complete destruction of America and having it "bombed back to the stone age" may not be his specific agenda, he finds the country as he found it to be completely unacceptable -- the TOP priority is "change". The content of that "change" is extremely secondary.
How democratic nations are destroyed is sadly almost too predictable. Sadly, our founders were well aware of this, so VERY explicitly created a nation that WAS NOT a "Democracy", but rather a Representative Republic -- unfortunately, our aristocracy became an elite. Think of the aristocracy as having real skin in the future of the Nation -- wealth, family history, connection and subsctiption to the American ideals. They are examples of "what it means to be an American". If they allow the nation to be destroyed, they lose what they cherish, they are one with the nation, they look to the nation to give them a form of immortality. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin -- they were all part of the American aristocracy. If America descends into a tribal third world look alike, those names will be lost to history.
Think of "the elite" as academic, noveau rich, the famous, the chattering classes -- their card is CURRENT "influence and power". Hitler is still well known and would be even if Germany ceased to exist. It isn't important for Einstein, Gates, Buffet, Michael Jackson or even Thoreau that America continue to exist in any recognizable form -- their names are "world names", like BO, they are "citizens of the world", not primarily "Americans".
So is BO TRYING to "overload and reset"? I don't believe so, but I do believe that he would see that outcome as much more positive than the horror of a largely "unchanged America". He did not run on the greatness of America, he ran on "Hope and Change". While he did very very little to specify what either of those meant, I think we can assume he thought that "hope" was lacking and that things needed to be more different than the same (change). The country had become too democratic, so the masses were taken in by the most dangerous president in US history so far. We are in grave peril.
This a good little article that does some "connecting the dots" on ACORN, BO, and Cloward-Piven. I covered Cloward-Piven here. How much is BO following this? One can never tell for sure, but I'm pretty sure he is well aware of it and one of the reasons that he is very cavilier about making policy choices that are highly likely to destroy the fabric of America is because he sees America as basically a "racist, imperialist, war oriented, unfair, bully that has had things going it's way for way too long for a lot of damage to the rest of the world and the environment".
While complete destruction of America and having it "bombed back to the stone age" may not be his specific agenda, he finds the country as he found it to be completely unacceptable -- the TOP priority is "change". The content of that "change" is extremely secondary.
How democratic nations are destroyed is sadly almost too predictable. Sadly, our founders were well aware of this, so VERY explicitly created a nation that WAS NOT a "Democracy", but rather a Representative Republic -- unfortunately, our aristocracy became an elite. Think of the aristocracy as having real skin in the future of the Nation -- wealth, family history, connection and subsctiption to the American ideals. They are examples of "what it means to be an American". If they allow the nation to be destroyed, they lose what they cherish, they are one with the nation, they look to the nation to give them a form of immortality. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin -- they were all part of the American aristocracy. If America descends into a tribal third world look alike, those names will be lost to history.
Think of "the elite" as academic, noveau rich, the famous, the chattering classes -- their card is CURRENT "influence and power". Hitler is still well known and would be even if Germany ceased to exist. It isn't important for Einstein, Gates, Buffet, Michael Jackson or even Thoreau that America continue to exist in any recognizable form -- their names are "world names", like BO, they are "citizens of the world", not primarily "Americans".
So is BO TRYING to "overload and reset"? I don't believe so, but I do believe that he would see that outcome as much more positive than the horror of a largely "unchanged America". He did not run on the greatness of America, he ran on "Hope and Change". While he did very very little to specify what either of those meant, I think we can assume he thought that "hope" was lacking and that things needed to be more different than the same (change). The country had become too democratic, so the masses were taken in by the most dangerous president in US history so far. We are in grave peril.
The Prevention Scam
Charles Krauthammer - Preventive Care Isn't the Magic Bullet for Health Care Costs - washingtonpost.com
Like most things in BOworld, his claims that "prevention saves money" are pure lies. Note that these are REAL LIES as opposed to fake lies like "Bush lied about WMD". Every intelligence service in the world was certain Saddam had WMD, it was common knowledge. When common knowledge turns out to be wrong, it is just wrong -- nobody "lied" about the world being flat, they were just WRONG. If BO doesn't know that spending a lot of money on thousands of people for preventative care costs more, he is is such a fool that he should resign -- if he does know and keeps saying it, then he ought to forced from office because he is a liar.
Should we do prevention? Sure, but we need to be aware that it costs money -- as to many things, so it is a TRADEOFF, not a panacea. The real world has very few panaceas -- BOworld seems to be loaded with them.
Like most things in BOworld, his claims that "prevention saves money" are pure lies. Note that these are REAL LIES as opposed to fake lies like "Bush lied about WMD". Every intelligence service in the world was certain Saddam had WMD, it was common knowledge. When common knowledge turns out to be wrong, it is just wrong -- nobody "lied" about the world being flat, they were just WRONG. If BO doesn't know that spending a lot of money on thousands of people for preventative care costs more, he is is such a fool that he should resign -- if he does know and keeps saying it, then he ought to forced from office because he is a liar.
That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality? In Obamaworld, as explained by the president in his Tuesday town hall, if we pour money into primary care for diabetics instead of giving surgeons "$30,000, $40,000, $50,000" for a later amputation -- a whopper that misrepresents the surgeon's fee by a factor of at least 30 -- "that will save us money." Back on Earth, a rigorous study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. That's because prevention applied to large populations is very expensive, as shown by another report Elmendorf cites, a definitive review in the New England Journal of Medicine of hundreds of studies that found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.
Should we do prevention? Sure, but we need to be aware that it costs money -- as to many things, so it is a TRADEOFF, not a panacea. The real world has very few panaceas -- BOworld seems to be loaded with them.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
When Giants Fall
The subject book by Michael Panzner is an orgy of doom and gloom, but the reasons why along with any potential for escape are cloudy at best.
Why is all of this coming upon us? There is no one clear reason, but here is an example :
Again, the guy is clearly no neocon -- two terms of George Bush may well have been what killed America! Certainly not a very robust nation, in that merely ONE horrible President, even with the very able 2-year assistance of a fully Democratic congress could irreparably destroy the nation. Think of it -- we survived the '60s and '70s ... Bay of Pigs, the massacre at My Lai -- is killing women and children in cold blood worse than harassing Iraqi prisoners? the loss of 50K lives in Vietnam in complete ignominious defeat, assassinations of two Kennedy's and MLK, Watergate, the economy running to 20+ % inflation and 13%+ unemployment --- BUT, we were brought down by two wars in which we have lost less than 10K soldiers and which at this writing, there seems to be every prospect that we will win both of them!!! Wow.
I'm not so sure the guy is wrong, but I think it has a lot more to do with "America" than it does with Bush -- for the first time in my lifetime, the MSM / elite in this country decided that they so thoroughly hated a president that there were no boundaries on how they would attack him. It is reminiscent of diseases like arthritis or MS where the immune system goes nuts and attacks the body. Humans are designed to live in groups of 250 people or less, and we are wired to do whatever it takes to "maintain enough status to breed" (and to protect our families / offspring) within that group. When the leadership of "our group" identifies someone in the group as "unclean/beneath contempt/outcast", it is well documented that we are "wired" to "pile on" -- it is too late for that one, the only way to save ourselves is to "go with the group".
I think our mass media has crossed a boundary where for most Americans it supercedes whatever their "actual group" is (work, family, church, etc) and the level of disparagement of Bush made him our "ultimate pariah". Oddly, mankind seems to have evolved an odd type of creature sometimes called an "iconoclast" -- which I prefer to call "Moose". I feel most comfortable far outside of the "common wisdom" because I find nearly all common wisdom to just be "popular foolishness".
The rest of the world is well enough wired to our media that the spectacle of a supposedly great nation completely turning on a leader that they had elected a mere two years before in a growing economy with no major policy changes was simply too much to maintain any respect for. When that sudden change of heart was coupled with a radical shift to the left in '06, most of the world validly saw us as just plain nuts. But I digress, this guy thinks it is "Bush" -- and that is a popular view.
Whatever the reason, he is convinced that the age of the unipolar US dominated globe is over, and as the US itself descends into financial, industrial and military ruin, the squabbling for leadership among China, Russia, Europe, Venezuela, etc will speed the worldwide decline.
In many ways, this book is like one of those reality chase videos on TV where the fleeing car is driving erratically and very fast, with an ever tightening police pursuit -- it becomes certain that there will be a bad crash at the end, but it is impossible to see how to prevent it. Our vehicle "made impact" in '06 when we put the drunken Democrats in charge of Congress, and in '08 when we handed the wheel to the Kenyan Obozo, we drove off the cliff of unknown height and now we just await the sudden stop at the bottom.
Oh, if you are feeling happy and wonder what depression is like, it will work! I wish there was a little less truth in it.
"For many Americans, the years ahead will be nothing short of a Modern Dark Ages, where each day brings forth fresh anxieties, unfamiliar risks, and a deep sense of foreboding ..."He does go on to assert that an "enlightened few" that have things firmly in grasp could do well, but after reading the book, I'd have to say that other than being a survivalist with some buried gold, he is short on advice for how the "enlightened" might get along.
Why is all of this coming upon us? There is no one clear reason, but here is an example :
"Now though, the circumstances that have made the United States a beacon of light and the economic and cultural agenda setter over the course of many decades are changing. Many blame the disastrous military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the newfound acceptance of barbaric torture techniques and scandals like the mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, others put it down to a general sense of arrogance, of unilateral decision making and hubristic exceptionalism, especially during the two terms that President George W. Bush was in office."
Again, the guy is clearly no neocon -- two terms of George Bush may well have been what killed America! Certainly not a very robust nation, in that merely ONE horrible President, even with the very able 2-year assistance of a fully Democratic congress could irreparably destroy the nation. Think of it -- we survived the '60s and '70s ... Bay of Pigs, the massacre at My Lai -- is killing women and children in cold blood worse than harassing Iraqi prisoners? the loss of 50K lives in Vietnam in complete ignominious defeat, assassinations of two Kennedy's and MLK, Watergate, the economy running to 20+ % inflation and 13%+ unemployment --- BUT, we were brought down by two wars in which we have lost less than 10K soldiers and which at this writing, there seems to be every prospect that we will win both of them!!! Wow.
I'm not so sure the guy is wrong, but I think it has a lot more to do with "America" than it does with Bush -- for the first time in my lifetime, the MSM / elite in this country decided that they so thoroughly hated a president that there were no boundaries on how they would attack him. It is reminiscent of diseases like arthritis or MS where the immune system goes nuts and attacks the body. Humans are designed to live in groups of 250 people or less, and we are wired to do whatever it takes to "maintain enough status to breed" (and to protect our families / offspring) within that group. When the leadership of "our group" identifies someone in the group as "unclean/beneath contempt/outcast", it is well documented that we are "wired" to "pile on" -- it is too late for that one, the only way to save ourselves is to "go with the group".
I think our mass media has crossed a boundary where for most Americans it supercedes whatever their "actual group" is (work, family, church, etc) and the level of disparagement of Bush made him our "ultimate pariah". Oddly, mankind seems to have evolved an odd type of creature sometimes called an "iconoclast" -- which I prefer to call "Moose". I feel most comfortable far outside of the "common wisdom" because I find nearly all common wisdom to just be "popular foolishness".
The rest of the world is well enough wired to our media that the spectacle of a supposedly great nation completely turning on a leader that they had elected a mere two years before in a growing economy with no major policy changes was simply too much to maintain any respect for. When that sudden change of heart was coupled with a radical shift to the left in '06, most of the world validly saw us as just plain nuts. But I digress, this guy thinks it is "Bush" -- and that is a popular view.
Whatever the reason, he is convinced that the age of the unipolar US dominated globe is over, and as the US itself descends into financial, industrial and military ruin, the squabbling for leadership among China, Russia, Europe, Venezuela, etc will speed the worldwide decline.
"Worries and resentments over falling wages, surging unemployment, and the widening gap between righ and poor will also rouse nationalistic, protectionist, and xenophobic hostility. Throughout the world there will be a push for tighter borders and controls on the flow of people, goods, and capital. Immigrants and foreigners will become scapegoats for domestic ills. Meanwhile, a variety of home-grown woes will stir up social unrest, triggering obstructive and antagonistic responses. In many cases, governments will implement ill-conceived policies, including hyperinflationary expansion of the money supply, which will engender further instability. Enfeebled nations will see the reins of power commandeered by populists or tyrants. Some will tap the destructive energy of old rivalries or demonize wealthier rivals, including the United States."Here is a little quote from a guy named JR Nyquist that I found interesting:
As it happens, men are not global creatures. They speak a specific language, relate to a specific culture, and share specific historical experiences. Although it may sound enlightened to say that we are "all one", it is nonetheless untrue. We are not one. We are individuals with individual traits and attachments. What attaches me to the globe is nothing compared to the reality of language, culture, family and tribe. Every individual has a motherland and a mother tongue. There are national sentiments and national interests.Very well put -- and for BO, that is KENYA and the Luo Tribe!!!
"To cynical observers, the 1973 publication of "Small is Beautiful" market the peak of hysteria about the limits to growth. ... Perhaps it is ironic that despite decades of apparent evidence to the contrary, Schumacher's vision of the future has not disappeared from view."Welcome back to the age of malaise! Economic freedom inspires risk taking and innovation which provides growth that breaks down the old "limits to growth". There is a strange paradox that for the "liberal" that finds any restriction on sexual behavior from marriage to sticking with the opposite sex or same species to be restrictive beyond belief, the idea that folks ought to be able to labor at the job of their choosing and keep most of the money they make is scandalous beyond belief!! The "cynics" are the ones that believe that the human mind and ingenuity is unlimited, and of tremendously more importance than the supposed "limits to growth". Potentially, if the average liberal spent 1/10th as much brainpower on new economic horizons as opposed to new sexual horizons, the malaise could be subdued!!
"After years of ever-growing profits, easing regulations, and a yawning gap between the incomes of workers and those at the top, political and social pressures will force the pendulum back the other way. The result will be increasing taxes on businesses and their overseers, restrictive legislation and political interference, tougher rules on governance and executive compensation and pressure for payoffs and handouts ... "And the result? Well, less for everyone of course!!
In many ways, this book is like one of those reality chase videos on TV where the fleeing car is driving erratically and very fast, with an ever tightening police pursuit -- it becomes certain that there will be a bad crash at the end, but it is impossible to see how to prevent it. Our vehicle "made impact" in '06 when we put the drunken Democrats in charge of Congress, and in '08 when we handed the wheel to the Kenyan Obozo, we drove off the cliff of unknown height and now we just await the sudden stop at the bottom.
Oh, if you are feeling happy and wonder what depression is like, it will work! I wish there was a little less truth in it.
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