Failure all around, but great words

Health care. The Obama fiasco. Why, to fix what's wrong, did he want to take over what was working?

"The whole Obama era to date has been wasted in a historic, amateurish botch of the health-care issue. This began as a crusade for social justice — to cover the uninsured, whose numbers were suitably exaggerated, as most of them are people changing jobs from one health-insuring employer to another, or foreigners resident in this country, legally or otherwise, or the indigent, who are eligible for Medicaid." Conrad Black, a fan of FDR which I am not, continues here.

This writer uses magnificent phrases and words that I can't resist parsing:

• the president moved crisply
  
• hackneyed bunk
  
• political capital is evaporating
  
• create an appetite
  
• festooned every bill with pendulous payoffs [my favorite]
  
• a monstrosity of patronage and logrolling
  
• 2/3 of the stimulus is for dispersal closer to elections
  
• unemployment is knocking at the door of 10 percent
  
• [cap and trade] was based on the unproved Al Gore science-fiction vision of the environment
  
• politically hazardous reconciliation process
  
• [proposed tax increases] subject of an indecent amount of dissembling
  
• end America’s long reign as the world’s wealthiest per capita large country
  
• locked arms to over-empower the failed regulators
  
• sat mute as suet puddings [my second favorite]
  
• criminalization of policy differences
  
• neutered by the trial lawyers
  
• suborned by the dead hand of organized labor
  
• legislators are bound hand and foot to different special interests
  
• fable about huge numbers of people building windmills
  
• the world’s love for weak or at least misguidedly diffident American leaders
  
• the world’s most odious and hostile regimes, including those of Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and the Myanmar colonels
  
• Afghanistan has become a waffle
  
• [Biden] wants to fight the cave-dwelling terrorists of Waziristan from off-shore
  
• the political scientists of Hollywood
  
• [Peggy Noonan] briefly pixilated by Obamamania
  
• more of the same, only worse

"This president has achieved less in his first nine months than any incoming president since Warren Harding. It is not too late, but it looks now like the people will vote again for change, with increasing desperation, next year and in 2012. If the country does not get leadership equal to the scale of its problems, as it did in 1860 and 1932, the decline of America will move from a slope to a fall. This emperor still has no clothes, and it is not racism to notice it."

Did you know 4.0

But turn off the music--it will drive you crazy and you don't need it.

HT Rob Darrow

Obama gets this one next

What do you mean he's not a museum or a library? Does that matter in awards?

Has Anita called yet?

We used to have real enemies like the Soviet Union and al-Qaeda, now it's Fox News. The White House has declared war on opinions and views other than their own. Gibbsy says he's watched many stories on Fox he found "not to be true." I e-mailed him and asked him to be specific, but it bounced. It's transparently clear the WH doesn't wants questions.



There are several parts--you can find them.

Cadillac insurance? Do you have it?

I used to. I worked for Ohio State University, and you just couldn't beat the benefits (salary wasn't great, though). Some I never was able to use (although they were added into my salary deductions). My husband used to say that the reason he went into business for himself was "the wife got tenure, the children left home and the cat died." My job with health benefits saved us a bundle--not on health care, but on insurance. As a partner in his former firm Feinknopf Macioce and Schappa, he was not eligible for the group plan, so his insurance was bought with before-tax dollars before I got on board at OSU--about $6,000 a year 20 years ago.

President Obama promised in September on numerous talk shows and venues that if you loved your health insurance plan nothing would change. Of course, HE LIED, as he has lied about a lot of things (Obama lied; insurance died). The so called "cadillac" option will penalize people who have them, private or job related, by taxing them out of existence. Here are two examples. First the rich guy who is paying $20,000 a year for his insurance out of his own pocket.

"Mitch Stabbe has one of these plans. He's a lawyer in Washington, D.C. Through his firm, he gets a plan that has an annual premium of more than $20,000, which he pays for himself. Stabbe is a partner, and is considered self-employed, so the firm doesn't contribute to his health coverage.

Stabbe says that when he factors in deductibles and co-payments, the family ends up spending close to $30,000 a year on health care. "That's a nice chunk of change," he says. He believes it's worth it, because otherwise the family would have huge medical costs.

Stabbe's 18-year-old son Bryan has Crohn's disease, a chronic illness that attacks the digestive system. Bryan takes a weekly oral medication, and every five to six weeks, gets an infusion of a drug called Remicade. Without insurance, the infusions alone would cost around $40,000 a year."

So maybe he's rich enough to afford the huge tax increase he'll have to pay, but last year, there were a lot of people who thought they were rich. Then the sub-prime melt down; then Bernie Maddof, etc.

Now here's the not so rich family--a secretary and her disabled husband who doesn't work. They have what I used to have--health care through a college.

"Rusty and Deb Lovell live in Concord, N.H. Rusty had to stop working about a year ago and gets Social Security disability payments. Deb earns a little over $30,000 a year as a secretary at a community college.

But her job also comes with something almost as valuable as her salary — employee health coverage from the state of New Hampshire. Deb's share of the premium cost is $60 a month. Yet when combined with what the state contributes, the total premium for her family coverage ranks in the top 4 percent of premiums in the country.

The plan is negotiated by the state employees union, and Deb says the coverage is "so important to us that we have often negotiated for keeping our insurance and foregone raises year after year."

For the Lovells, the benefit has been priceless. Eight years ago, Rusty was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. . . Last year alone, Rusty's care cost more than $1 million. Because of their generous health insurance plan, the total cost for the Lovells came to $500 in co-payments. " Kaiser Health News

Remember, the basis for Obamacare is communal sharing, rationing of services and treatments, weighting care toward the younger members of the community instead of the elderly, with everybody being equal, and only using proven efficacious treatments. Obviously, it wouldn't be equal if the rich guy got to buy more than the state afforded a secretary, and they obviously aren't going to be able to offer Deb's insurance (top 4%) to everyone, so she'll have to be a good sport and not waste so much of health-care resources. The CBO says the government will be collecting $10 billion in "cadillac" revenue in just one year--that's why he can say it won't add to the deficit (HE LIES!). Remember, the taxes start a number of years before the changes take place, too.

I think there's a lot of college and university employees who are going to be surprised to be hit that that great leveling tax surcharge on their health insurance. A little pocket change left over is all they can hope for.

Blogger product endorsement

Alert the FTC--I'm about to do it again. Yesterday I bought an 8 oz. carton of Philadelphia spinach and artichoke cream cheese spread. Oh. My. Goodness. That's yummy. All gone.

New disclosure form

Medical journals are phasing in a standardized, more detailed disclosure form for their authors and researchers according to David Armstrong in the WSJ. And not just money, but possible personal biases--like religious and political affiliations.

"Editors of some of the world's top medical journals will soon begin to demand more stringent, uniform reporting of conflicts of interest by researchers.

The requirements will go beyond existing disclosure rules at many medical journals to include items such as financial relationships involving spouses, partners or minor children. Also required will be disclosure of nonfinancial conflicts, such as religious and political affiliations. Such disclosures are used in medical journals to alert readers to potential biases in research.

At least a dozen publications have agreed to use a new, standardized disclosure form, which will be phased in over the next several months."

I wonder how that will work? Comparing just the beliefs on abortion or euthanasia among Lutherans, Roman Catholics or Methodists, you’d see no hint that members of these groups agree on even some basics like when life begins or when it ends! Or if life even has value and worth after a certain age or disability, (see the President’s own health care czar, Ezekiel Emanuel). And politics? Is there really much difference between a Graham/Snowe and Reid/Pelosi?

Should an adopted child know the identity of his or her birth mother?

That was the title of a "forum" in the March 13, 1979 Family Circle magazine. Not much controversy about that today--the so-called "open adoption" trend has settled that for many people. Single mothers either abort or keep, depending on personal choice. So what were the points made in the bad old days of the so-called "closed" adoptions (and that's relatively new since many of these laws were put in place in the 1960s, replacing less formal agreements).

Ralph Maxfield, adult adoptee and adoptive parent: "I say absolutely not. Not all reunions follow the scripts for audience-pleasing TV specials. Many end in real-life pain and agony, as I well know. (Favored a medical and genetic information data bank to assist adoptees).

Betty Jean Lifton, journalist, authored "Twice Born; memoirs of an adopted daughter.": "We have the right to know who our birth parents are. To know your origins is a basic human need. Those who belittle this need usually know who their mothers and fathers are. They lack the empathy to understand what it's like to grow up surrounded by secrets, in ignorance of the genetic and social forces that brought you into existence."

Richard Zelinger, Children's Bureau of New Orleans: "An adoptee shouldn't know the identity of the birth parents unless there's a compelling necessity such as a serious medical problem. . . . it could destroy the adoption system. Adoptive parents would become mere custodians or at best foster parents."

Dr. Thomas Harris, author "I'm OK, you're OK.": I lean towards not telling adoptees. . . the seeking discourages them from dealing with their real problems. Many adoptees feel that knowing . . . will solve problems of personal identity and self-esteem."

Dr. William F. Reynolds, professor of psychology, author "The American Father.": "Adopted children have as much interest in their roots as other children. The inability to get accurate answers about his or her origins adds to a dangerous and unhealthy mystery that increases the child's rage and anxiety about having been given up in the first place. It's easier and healthier to deal with the truth than with phantoms. He's not seeking another mother, but his own identify."

My own view is closest to Dr. Reynolds. Except, why call people over 18 "children?" These are adults! Who cares what the reason is--medical or curiosity or genealogical hobby? No one asks me when I write for my birth certificate. Why is there one tiny subset of Americans who are denied the right to have their real birth certificate? Why should the state legislators and social workers of the early 60s still be allowed to control the lives of people 35-50 years old based on whatever pressure groups or academic theories were popular then? I think the Ohio law was passed in 1963 or 1964.

ELCA sexuality report on page 1 of New York Times

Tamar Lewin wrote the article, "Lutherans to decide whether to sanction homosexual unions" which appeared on page A1 and and A13 of the New York Times, a newspaper not known for its religious articles. Of course, that was October 1993; Ms. Lewin reported that the group had been studying the problem for four years, which would take it back to, let's see, 20 years ago, 1989. If you've been following the painful story, where the majority of the members of ELCA was nibbled and sniggled to death by a tiny minority who volunteer for these long battles, you know that the final decision was made this past August.

She also said "The draft statement does not specifically recommend that the church allow homosexual marriage. Instead, it asks the 5.6 million Lutherans, who will be deciding the church's position over the next two years, to consider whether the church should recommend lifelong abstinence for homosexuals, tolerate homosexuality or affirmatively bless unions between people of the same sex . . ." but that it didn't recommend the first choice because that might harm gay and lesbian people and their families. She also said the draft affirmed traditional marriage, which I don't think the later drafts did--not sure they even mentioned male and female, husband and wife.

Lutheran congregations are pulling out and reforming in a variety of organizations--
Word Alone, Lutheran Core and Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ. Some Lutheran pastors and laypeople caught on very early creating these groups back in the early 90s. Some ALC congregations never joined ELCA back in 1988 merger with LCA and formed a small nationwide synod, and their numbers continue to grow and grow.

So if your church/denomination is going down this road, just get out now. Twenty years of talking, negotiating, compromising, and scripture twisting will get you where ELCA is now, divided and divorcing. The leadership of UALC (Upper Arlington Lutheran Church) has promised we will be leaving ELCA--but, as you can see, these things do take time.

Link to digitized article.

Maybe it's a little guilt about the Sami within their country

Facing mounting criticism for their noble choice: "Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to – I wouldn't say a safer world – but a world with less tension," Jagland said Tuesday."

Norway is a tiny country. It rates very high on all the social-cultural perks--usually at the top which liberals attribute to their confiscatory taxes and socialist government and not their shared gene pool. (I'm guessing if you examined Norwegian-Americans you'd get a similar result without socialsim.) I think they've even taken in a few dispossessed non-blonde, darker skinned people over the last 30 years, like Somalis and Vietnamese. Some have even decided to become members of the family (citizens)--but they were chosen for adoption. Illegal immigration and racial dust-ups aren't much of a problem there--so they can be smug when chosing peace prize winners who speak but don't do, because that's their way too. Unless of course, you look waaaay up north at the Sami culture within Norway's borders, a very ancient, indigenous, nomadic people who were living there centuries before the "Norwegians" and who prefer to ignore man made boundaries and move their herds across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. No, to those people (who have many dialects) they aren't so welcoming. Whether with good intentions or bad, as a result of all the efforts of the four countries in which they live, the Sami culture will soon be reduced to some pretty costumes in cultural museums and special representation in the various parliaments.

Wade Rathke

Not good for America; not good for the world.

"Wade Rathke said on the Fox show that when funding ran out for welfare rights [the way he made his living in the 1970s] he moved to Little Rock to start his own community organizing effort, based on that same sense of endless grievance. ACORN became skilled at moral gangsterism, shaking down governments and corporations for larger and larger amounts, making ever more ridiculous demands. (A former worker said on the show she became disillusioned when she realized ACORN was asking Sherwin-Williams for $1 billion as reparations for having manufactured lead-based paint. The money, of course, would go into ACORN's coffers.)

And that's where ACORN did itself in. It wasn't just an accident that the women in ACORN offices were willing to hand out advice on how to set up a brothel and dodge income taxes by claiming underage Central American prostitutes as dependents. ACORN simply doesn't produced good citizens. The organization is saturated with the sense that the world is one big shakedown and that anything you do to increase your share is justified."

Read the whole piece by a former welfare worker of the same era, William Tucker, The Real Problem with Acorn.

The Big Black Lie

"If you were told that you were about to meet a Conservative Firebrand… one who has been seen as a speaker and as a Master of Ceremonies at Tea Parties, who has appeared on the Hannity and Glen Beck shows on FOX, is a leader in the Tea Party Coalition, and has written a book critical of the Liberal Democrats; you would probably be a bit surprised when you were introduced to Kevin Jackson. You see, Kevin Jackson is a young and athletic, affable black man with an infectious smile and charming wit.

Notice that I didn’t say African-American. Jackson says he’s an AMERICAN. Not an “African-American”. At the 9-12 rally in Quincy , IL he stated that, while Africa is a beautiful place, with some of the most beautiful flora and fauna on the planet… he wouldn’t trade one acre of a free USA for all that is Africa !

Jackson’s new book, “The BIG Black Lie – How I Learned The Truth About The Democrat Party”, challenges the political stereotypes of race, and strongly makes the case that those why cry “Racism!” the most – the liberal left and the Democrat Party – are in fact the true home of racism in America today!" Doug Edelman

Kevin's blog The Black Sphere

Do not underestimate the power of the culture of death

"We’ve learned that what was unimaginable one day can become reality the next. Today, pressures for euthanasia are building; developments in biomedicine are occurring with such speed that they have outpaced reflection on their moral implications; experiments on human embryos are fostering a mentality that treats the lives of the weak as means to the ends of the strong; and the freedoms of religion and conscience are coming under increasing threat.

Thirty years ago, who could have imagined such a thing as partial-birth abortion! When I ask myself why so many people have been slow to realize how easily today’s atrocity can become tomorrow’s routine, one answer I come up with is that it was due in part to a failure to realize something very important about choice, namely that choices last.

Each time we make policy on abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic experimentation, we are changing the moral ecology of our country. We are either helping to build the culture of life or cooperating with the culture of death. It hasn’t helped that the elite media, the powerful foundations, the sex industry, and the vast profit-making abortion industry have done their best to disguise the truth of what was happening."
Mary Ann Glendon

Rush Limbaugh should sue

"MSNBC featured the "quote" earlier in the day on Morning Meeting. It can be traced to liberal author Jack Huberman, who featured the remark in his 2006 book 101 People Who are Really Screwing Up America. The tome is available on Google Books and the statement appears on page 232 with no air date mentioned. It’s also next to a "quote" in which the author asserts Limbaugh called for the Medal of Honor to be given to the assassin of Martin Luther King. Does anyone really believe that remark was ever uttered by Limbaugh?

Instead of asking for proof, co-host Tamron Hall repeated the line to columnist Stephen A. Smith: "Should a person who says there are merits with slavery be able to have this privilege of owning a team?"" NewsBusters

This slanderous remark has no source. It gets repeated over and over--if you google it you can find thousands. You don't think the Clintons would have found this back in the 90s to stop his attacks on them? The "real" media, the journalism degree people, keep repeating it and not checking. How does that make them any better than bloggers, or Glenn Beck who seem to be cleaning their clocks on real investigative journalism? Rush is an entertainer who wants to make an investment in a football team. Entertainers go after libelous slurs all the time. Go for it, Rush.

And btw, not that this has anything to do with NFL, but it is entertainment--is there anything Rush Limbaugh has said that can top the racist, misogynist, woman hating lyrics in hip-hop music? The singers may be black, but the investors, owners and buyers are mostly white.

If you have a disabled family member

Look Out! SEIU is coming after you! Read this Michelle Malkin expose of their infiltration of the home health care givers--no, not those people for whom it is a career--but the family members like the parents, sisters, brothers.

"As a mother of a 28 yr. old severely developmentally disabled son who lives at home, in Washington state, I know what SEIU has done here. There are 2 things that have directly affected us as caregivers for our son in the past 2 yrs. One is the deceptive initiative last Nov. that 70% of the voters passed, which increased training requirements for caregivers applying for a contract with the state beginning 2010. Parents would need to complete 12 hrs. of training which was originally only 6 hrs. ALL other caregivers, (part-time, sibling, other relative, career) would have to complete 75 hrs., which was originally only 28, in order to be contracted with the state. We fought this for several yrs. in bill form, and the persistence of the union won when they presented it to the people under the guise, “don’t you want your grandmother to have the best trained caregiver”, and not attaching a cost to the state, to the initiative. The Seattle Times was against the initiative, as was every other paper in the state, and after the initiative passed, the Times editorial read “Misguided Compassion”."

We've got czars and now a ukase (указ)

At PC Magazine Dan Costa comments on the new rules for bloggers--not magazines like his that give product recommendations all the time without disclosures.

"The FTC released guidelines designed to crackdown on the blogger payola—the risible practice of paying people to write favorable things about your products or company. As the editor who runs the Reviews team here at PCMag.com, I thought it would be worth my time to wade through the 81-page guide of regulations. After all, the penalty could be $11,000 per violation. Near as I can tell, the regulation will require every blogger to disclose payments, gifts, and professional interests for every tweet, post, or email that supports a given company. In other words, this mess of regulations misunderstands media, creates unenforceable rules, and, quite possibly, violates our First Amendment right to free speech."

I sometimes recommend products here--I think New York Honey Crisp are tastier than Michigan's, and neither as good as Minnesota's, and I love that wonderful face cream from J.R. Watkins, the reason people think I'm 68 instead of 70. But I don't carry ads, and no one has given me anything. I suspect that will make no difference if the government decides to shut down a blogger.

An ukase (указ) is an edict from a czar.

FTC guidelines

A lot of professional journalists (not covered) are also bloggers, and web 2.0 users of social media. Who pays the fine? And do we really need the FTC to sift through millions of facebook and youTube entries for unacknowledged product placement or misinformation.

Onion paraody--Obama talks with California fire

Some people thought the first announcement of the Nobel prize was an Onion parody. So they had to outdo themselves on this one to find something even more bizarre.


Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire

Michelle Malkin

I wonder why the Obama White House Lady didn't go after Malkin, whom African American Conservatives blog thinks inspired many political bloggers? Maybe because she's female and a minority?

"It is hard to measure the impact Michelle Malkin has had on the world of Internet political investigative journalism. She is not only the founder of her own site, michellemalkin.com, as well as the invaluable hotair.com site, but she has also been the inspiration of countless of other political sites. It is difficult to imagine that there would be a Newsmax, or a Smart Girl Politics, or even an African-American Conservatives, without the trailblazing of Ms. Malkin. She is to political blogging what Rush Limbaugh is to talk radio, and what William F. Buckley is to punditry. We are all in her debt."

And the reviewer of her latest book, Culture of Corruption, also brings up some questions.

I would have liked to have seen more attention paid to both Valerie Jarrett and George Soros, who, as Obama’s most trusted advisor, and primary source of funds, respectively, deserve much more scrutiny than received in this book. Perhaps this will be forthcoming it later editions. Michelle Malkin makes clear in the interview she granted to our site that she considers Culture of Corruption to be a work in progress.

Others might have liked to have seen more of a right-wing attack on Obama. But I don’t see this as a “Conservative” book per se. True, there are numerous examples of Ms. Malkin wearing her conservatism on her sleeve throughout the book; but at heart she is not a Conservative pundit, philosopher, nor a political partisan. She is not Mark Levin railing against the statists or Ann Coulter explaining how if Democrats had brains, they’d be Republicans.

This bill is a travesty

Life expectancy needs to be looked at within the context of the success rate of treatments. If you can't get treated because of rationing, or you're too old to fit into the comparative studies, or there have been no innovations for Alzheimer's or diabetes due to the death of free markets, it won't make any difference how many of those 10% not currently insured get it, or how many illegals you sign up for benefits.

HT Mary

Snowing out west already?

Boy that darn global warming!

My site meter is already showing hits on my frozen car door blog! It's only Columbus Day, October 12!

A Canadian blogger recommened this little gadget in the comments for a frozen car door. It's not very expensive and if it works would certainly be worth the investment ($4.00).