The Real Issue of Universal Health Care

The real issue in Universal Health Care is moral.

When I say MORAL, what do I mean? I mean the actions you take to live your life the best you can live it which in turns gives you more desire for life. These are moral actions and they do not come from just anywhere and they are not arbitrarily socially constructed. They come from the fact that you are a living being who must act to maintain your life.

My concern is not what Universal Health Care will do to your pocketbook. Of course it will be expensive - far more than Medicare. And that in itself can undermine a person. My concern here is what it will do to your motor, the engine of your energy that generates everything you do. What will it do to that?

It kills it. Drip, drip, drip. And it kills it at every level and in every person who is involved in government controlled health care. Even those who want it.

Why?

Because it places an arbitrary, irrational factor between you and your actions to achieve the health care you want to live and not physically/mentally suffer. That arbitrary factor is the government.

Why is it arbitrary?

Because its interests are not aligned with your interest in pursuing health care. To be alive, you must value. You must take actions that keep your life in existence. These are YOUR values.

Today you go to a doctor and he diagnoses your condition and prescribes one or more alternatives to help you. His interests are your interests.

But this isn't true with the government. It has a plan and a gun, force, to cause the result it wants. You will get whatever it decides you should get and it won't necessarily be what you want or what works. When the government controls anything, it is the law and politics which control how that will go.

The government drives you out of integrity with yourself. This will be Obama's scar on every soul in the country.

Speaking of politics, if you want corruption, universal health care will bring it in spades. Cronyism and bribes of all kinds and at every level of society will suddenly be abundant. What wouldn't you pay under the table for something that would save your life or relieve your suffering? And if you don't understand that there will be a kind of black market of those who will take bribes, I know you are crazy.

This gets no more clear than what the government plans to do with the elderly. (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) When you get to a certain age, you will have to set up all the paperwork for your final days. And the government will determine what it will give you in the way of care when the time comes. This does not have to match what you want, what a real medical doctor would recommend or you are willing to work for. It is completely arbitrary. For anyone who wants the best for their parents, their grandparents, their children and above all, themselves, this is bone-chilling in its lack of concern. (Some people are discussing this here.)

The day will come that you will not trust anyone in the government health care system. Once it is cut off from your interests, it will become a threat to your life. You will go to a quack in a back alley who you think is aligned with your interests before you subject yourself to someone you know is not aligned with your interests.

In this video which I have featured a number of times, the resignation of the people under the Canadian system is present for you to see. They accept it. Some make excuses for it. All they can do is whine. They don't demand better because it is useless to make such demands. Their moral fire is gone.

And this is what is going to happen to America if universal health care is passed. It will be the end of America as the home of the independent spirit.

What will be left? A moral grayness that is inconceivable to most Americans. It is the end of what you so take for granted being American. The bureaucracy will be so big and so all-powerful that most people will never be able to fight it. They will just give up. That's what I see in the Canadian video.

This will happen to every strata of society as well as the health care industry, except those who can escape it. The politicians have themselves insulated from this, of course.

It will happen to your doctor. Many will leave the profession. The Hippocratic Oath will no longer be operative as his ideal. It will happen to nurses too as they watch people waste and suffer pain before them because they cannot be treated as they would otherwise have been. It will happen to hospitals, ambulance drivers and secretaries as the evidence will accumulate that strips away the pretense of the universal health care plan.

Pretense?

Oh yes, pretense will become more important. Health care workers will be coached on how to "serve" and present themselves in a way that you can tolerate. This will become the new industry. All to maintain and grow the pretense.

Is it really a pretense? Yes. It was never intended to provide better health care. It can't. It was only intended to concentrate power in the hands of the government and to ride the wave of an immoral moral which says that it is your duty to take care of your neighbors. There is nothing that distinguishes this from that hideous institution of slavery that it took centuries for America to get clear of. There were plenty of reasons for it too, but it is no advance to make everyone slaves.

Has Obama become America's Jim Jones luring us to our death? It's the same immoral moral that he used. Hmmm.

Wake up!

Destroy the Economy to Save the Economy

Biden is explicit about it.

Where are the intelligent? Where are those that understand that the economy is an integrated whole? Where are those that understand that money stolen from those who have it and given to those who don't does not put money in the hands of the creators of businesses and jobs? Why is there so much emphasis put on the destruction of wealth and none on the principles to be be followed in order to create it?

Is this stupidity or intended? And who should pay rather than who will pay for this reversal of cause and effect?

Will someone please tell me where this has ever worked?

S e a of D e b t

The Coming Leadership Vacuum

I think Obama has just about worn out his rhetoric.

The things he is willing to say about how great universal health care is going to be, how it won't cost us anything, how it will save our economy, on and on, is over the top - WAY over the top. I can no longer listen to him without involuntary yelling BULLLL SHIT! There is simply no way he can have what he says come true except at a tremendous cost to America and to his authority in every way other than "he got it done" - if he does.

The cost will be in the results. The relationship with your doctor will be gone. The costs of health care will skyrocket because when it is free there are no brakes on its use. And with that, the clampdown necessarily will descend upon us. How that will look, I don't know. I just know that the quality we now have will decrease, and decrease, and decrease. Of course, those politicians got to get paid - they and their bedfellows. That part will increase. The best and the brightest in that industry will do something else more rewarding than being under the gun of an Emergency Room pace every day for the rest of their lives and not get paid enough in money or respect and appreciation.

Maybe that decreased quality will look like the English where they don't use anesthesia for dental work. Or maybe it will look like the Canadians where you have to wait at least a month for an MRI that may make the difference between living and dying. And if that isn't enough to gall you, your pet can get an MRI the next day because freedom and competition reign in pet health care. One thing that will happen is that old people will be flushed. They are not the productive ones doing most of the paying for the system. And speaking of paying, the wealthy will have moved their wealth elsewhere so it cannot be taxed and insofar as America is concerned, they will have gone Galt or maybe just "gone fishin'."

And health care is just a piece of it. Where are Obama's triumphs in foreign policy? Isn't democracy, the term he does use, meaningless unless people are free? Where was he when the dissidents of Iran were putting their lives at stake for freedom? Oh, I know, not meddling while desiring to shake the bloody hands of their dictators in what he hopes will be some agreement about nuclear weapons. Am I supposed to believe that if Iran's dictators tromp down the lives of their own people their agreements with us, Satin incarnate, will amount to anything?

I haven't heard any hosannas regarding his foreign policy ideas, have you? I see there are some Russians and some Arabs that don't think much of them or apparently, even of him. Now let's see, is that him as his role or him as a person? Maybe they smell the same thing I smell.

And where was he when Honduras realized that its leader was going to install himself as their dictator? When the people stood up to his actions, Obama supported the future dictator. Great. Obama is someone you want in your corner? Right? Wellll - not if freedom is at stake.

John Cox, 2009

From what it looks like, a recession which normally takes about two years to correct will likely last much longer - maybe ten years. Obama is doing all the same kinds of things FDR did to stretch that recession into ten years. Tell me that the best thing to do if you lose your job is to go out and borrow as much money as you can and spend it? Oh really?

And don't get me started on Cap and Trade and Gore's fantasy. Now that is a scam. I expect the Congress to fund, with billions, research and then a program to teach cows to not fart. On the other hand, maybe they will teach them how to light a fart.

At some point, Obama is going to be only a voice desperately trying to be listened to. The people will look elsewhere for leadership - real leadership - not this posturing kind of leadership. The leadership vacuum will then be manifest. How long until then? Not sure. But I am picking up a vibe.

Postmodern philosophy tells us that the truth is a social construction and that everything is political. Politics is how the truth is determined, they say. Obama thinks he is The Truth and The Way (that's why we and every other country around the world suffer his constant moralizing) and that he can control that social construction. To my way of thinking, he's a fool trying to control a fickle master, given his way of being. Much better to ground himself in reality and construct truth on that. It doesn't shift and suddenly wash out from under you.

Worrying about the consensus and leadership don't ride in the same boat. And this boat is headed for a vacuum in leadership.

John Cox, 2008

As painful as it is to watch this happening up close and personal, my hope is that it ends postmodernism and the socialist ideal forever. There are no good people nor right way to make socialism work. It is founded on a false premise. You simply cannot change a man to a being that will systematically sacrifice his own life without gutting him of his will to live or drive him into rebellion. And that is true even if he holds the ideal. I don't know of any Blacks in America touting the wonders of slavery. I don't expect them nor the Whites nor the Hispanics nor the Orientals nor any human being to be touting it this time around.

Does America have a true leader that can step into this vacuum? You know, the one that understands that America's Constitution was a breakthrough in human history that set forth the rights of the individual as primary and constructed the state to protect those rights? The one that understands the progress of human history and gets us back on the right track? Where is that leader?

Called on Race-Baiting

I'm posting this vid because it is the FIRST TIME I have seen a black man call out a Congressman on race-baiting. It's about time. I can't help but think that any self-respecting black person who has a mind quite capable of ascertaining facts and making his/her own choices is getting real tired of always being cloyingly categorized as nothing more than a member of collective called BLACK. This is evidence for how racist the Democratic Party really is. It USES blacks as a group whenever it needs to trot out its moral superiority. It’s disgusting. Here it is so clear that for Barbara Boxer, human beings are not ends themselves – only something to be USED for her purposes. Besides that she behaves like an agenda-driven Panzer. Wake up America.

If you are interested in this topic, you will enjoy a black man's post on the subject: Boxer vs. The Uppity Negro.

Are You Crazy?

Have Americans completely lost their minds?

America is the best producer of goods and services the world has ever known. Right now it has the best Health Care available for the most citizens of any place in the world. It produces more procedures and medicines and has more facilities to cure or ameliorate the ailments of mankind than anyplace else. There are some problems, but a poor person is rich in America compared to the poor around the world.

And you want to trade that for someone telling you what, how much and who you can go to for your health care? ARE YOU NUTS?

Every place that has GOVERNMENT Health Care must, by necessity, move to the lowest common denominator of health care. The GOVERNMENT harnesses, i.e., ENSLAVES, the doctors and all others in the system by refusing to pay them what they want and would otherwise get in a free market. The best ones leave the business. It controls the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical research so that you get what the GOVERNMENT wants to pass out. It controls the hospitals, it controls the nurses, it controls the ambulance services, it controls every bit and piece of an otherwise complex system with abundant options and practices. It chokes, i.e., asphyxiates, i.e., takes the breath of life away from every doctor, every nurse, every office, every prescription and drug producer, every ambulance service, every person in the industry with paperwork.

And for that reason it will kill people too. Yes, I said kill them - by deprivation, by neglect, by policies which will follow the book, not the needs of the patient.

It will destroy the doctor - patient relationship. You will be a cipher, not a person.

Because the demand for Health Care will go through the roof because it is FREE, which it isn’t, it will be rationed. You will not be able to get the very thing that may save your life. You will have to wait too long or it won’t be available. What you will get are excuses and delays and government policies. None of these will do a damn thing for you!

In the scarcity of Health Care that will be CAUSED by THE GOVERNMENT, guess who will be selected to suffer this scarcity the most? The old, the infirm, the handicapped – anyone who is determined by THE GOVERNMENT to not be in the mainstream of productive citizens doing the work that the GOVERNMENT considers valuable. Of course they will never say that. It will just happen by default. Since you do not get to choose your health care, the GOVERNMENT will make the decisions. And they don't know if you are a genius or an idiot, a producer or a moocher. Why would a bureaucrat care about those things that are not reflected in their numbers? There is no other possibility.

And because Health Care will be costly and scarce, you will be regulated regarding your own life. If you eat a Twinkie, followed to its ultimate conclusion, you will violate the law, can be fined or taken to jail or simply spurned. If you smoke a cigarette, you will violate the law and can be fined or taken to jail or refused treatment. You will be required to diet, to exercise, to sleep the right number of hours, to eat the right things, drink the right things, everything that THE GOVERNMENT says, by fiat, you must do to obtain its health care. It will use ladles of guilt and post millions of banners and signs that no one reads about how you are a good boy if you follow their instructions. It won't be like that you say? Not immediately, but the pressure will always be in that direction.

And have you seen the GOVERNMENT’S health care facilities? Take a look at the public facilities they have now. Go to your county health department’s waiting room, get in line in a dingy shabby room painted institution green and see how you like it. Or go to the veterans hospitals and watch the tired nurses, who will be on a GOVERNMENT pay scale along with the doctors and secretaries and all the other employees, complain about their job. Or go to the big public hospitals where you wonder why it is not as clean as your home?

When the GOVERNMENT controls everything, there won’t even be the attraction of security that the GOVERNMENT offers to its employees. With everyone employed by the GOVERNMENT that distinction won’t exist. It will be all about we HAVE TO. Whining will be elevated to an art form. This is the result of having no choice.

And are you aware that regimentation via GOVERNMENT control causes stupidity? If you don't think the I-don't-care attitude of government workers will not spill over into their care, you are really crazy. Livers will be accidentally removed, a wrong leg will be amputated, the anesthesiologist will accidentally kill your loved one instead of anesthetizing them. Simple procedures will become complicated and complicated ones will be incorrectly made simple. Instead of keeping their mind on the business at hand they will be thinking about their latest tweet or when they can get back to Facebook.

Here's a video interviewing ordinary people in Canada about their healthcare. And here is an interview with someone who lived under England's single-payer health care system. They don't even get Novocaine when their teeth are drilled.

This is your future. Are you willing to trade the riches that a free system which encourages superb service and good care in order to attract business FOR THIS? What are you thinking?

People do not get that Universal Health Care is a DIRECT ATTACK on them as human being. It attacks everything that gives rise to being human: your valuing nature as such, your particular values, your mind, your reason, your life and those you care about.

An American watching the above video can see how Canadians are no longer people in the full sense of the word. They have given up. They have ACCEPTED the system, its craziness, and their plight. They make excuses for it. Most Americans I know would have said, "Enough of this horseshit. I'm going some place else!"

ARE YOU CRAZY?

Health care is too costly, you say?

Then free it up. Allow more competition, not less. Allow it to meet more needs at all levels instead of less. Already health care is bound hand and foot with regulations that are completely unnecessary. I don’t remember anyone complaining about health care 60 years ago. You had the doctor you trusted and you went to him if you had a problem. You worked out the cost and paid it. Insurance was varied and available at any level you wanted it. If you want better and less costly health care, FREE IT UP! Freedom is the answer, not GOVERNMENT control and regulation.

Here is a conversation about getting the GOVERNMENT out of the way.

Freedom has always been the answer. It unleashes the human engine that produces a torrent of goods and services. It unleashes the ideas and production of the best minds as well as the lesser ones. It unleashes the entrepreneur. There is no waiting in freedom. If you want it, you think about it, you work for it and you pay for it. If you don’t want it, you don’t.

I can’t believe that people are willing to trade abundance for poverty, pennies for the gold they now have and could have more of. But apparently they are about to do so. What has gotten hold of you? Are we now to wear hair shirts for no reason except to prove we are suffering? Are the Liberals, the Progressives, among us as unenlightened as medieval Christians? We have to be gripped by some vast superstition.

When Obama, Reid and Pelosi give up their special government health care program and go stand in line in Canada as an ordinary citizen, I will believe they have something other than pure lies to say to us.

ARE YOU CRAZY?

STOP RIGHT NOW, AMERICA.

WAKE UP!

CALL AND WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND THE PRESIDENT NOW. NO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. ABSOLUTELY - NO! NO! NO!
ARE YOU CRAZY?

A Cartoon from 1934

Chicago Tribune
1934

Those unwilling to learn the lessons of the past
are condemned to repeat them.

An economic bubble takes an average of two years to correct itself - with one requirement: that the economy is free to make the correction. In the 30s, that correction was stretched to 10 years and even then it was not in the process of correcting itself. It was the war that drafted the unemployed (many to their death) and put the women and old folks to work.

A free economy designs itself to provide whatever the people in the economy need and are willing to work for. It is constantly correcting itself unless the government intervenes and thwarts the corrective process - the mechanism that led to the crash in 1929 and the collapse in 2008 as well as other bubbles between those times. The rational government action is to cut spending, get rid of onerous and irrational regulations, and sell off assets, all in order to lower taxes so that people can use their resources for productive effort. No one, including the individual, the county, the state or the country, can borrow and spend their way out of lost income. The way out is to create and produce some value that one can live on, either directly or through exchange with other people for the things one needs. Political freedom, including economic freedom, is the underlying requirement for this to occur.

Ask yourself: Is this happening now? If not, why not? And the answer is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Then socialism was an erroneous, but inspired ideal. Its failure was not perceived until the fall of the Berlin Wall whereupon the whole world could see the utter poverty, the imprisoned and tortured people who didn't agree with the system, the starving of millions and the massive waste of resources - all caused by government planning and control. Given that socialism is a failure, what is different now? The motive? Looks like it could be. So, what is the motive now?

Hint: The Greater Good is not the motive. That is the cover, the drapes that soften the window so the unvarnished truth is not realized.

Think about it.

A Citizen's Letter to Her Senator

E. Let us not forget the examples of a not so distant past that illustrate very well the efficiency of free markets and the wastefulness and inefficiency of a controlled economy.

The Soviet Union, one of the greatest empires in the world, collapsed mostly due to economic reasons, due to the inability of the government to predict and control supply and demand or efficiently launch and promote innovations. I myself came from that unfortunate country to the United States in search of freedom, and it horrifies me to see my new home repeating the mistakes of my old one and slipping into the abyss of socialism. You don’t need terrorists or nuclear weapons to destroy a free country. All you have to do is to make the people of a free country embrace socialism and they will destroy themselves and their country.

If we look back at the history of the United States, in the 19th century we see how much private initiative had to do with real progress and technological advances, especially in the energy market. In the 19th century our energy market was developing, as Alex Epstein put it so well, literally with the speed of thought. A new idea was tried as soon as it was thought of, because there were no obstacles in the form of government regulations.

Back then people were afraid that as soon as they ran out of coal they would be doomed. There were many so called scientists and analysts trying to predict the end of the world due to the limited amount of resources. If back then the US government had stepped in and monopolized the energy market and had tried to regulate coal distribution and the production of candles and lighting oils, we would all still live in the dark ages. Yet we were lucky, because that was the time of truly free markets, and in search of profit many innovators came up with the ideas of how to use oil. Those ideas changed history, and we leaped into a new more advanced era because we had oil and knew how to use it.

Do not forget that before oil and before coal people had to use wood. And then coal was a major discovery. What if back then the governments tried to regulate wood distribution and stifled any new ideas about alternative sources of energy like coal?

And by the way, carbon dioxide is not a threat. Oceans produce more carbon dioxide than all humans together. CO2 is required for life and in different historic periods more CO2 usually meant more vegetation and more prosperity. And it is not a general consensus of the scientists that the Earth is warming, in fact there is new data that the Earth is actually cooling, One of the EPA scientists, Alan Carlin, tried to express these ideas to his superiors. However this information was suppressed. Doesn’t it look like a conspiracy directed to destroying the USA's independence and competitiveness? Here is an excerpt from the interview with Alan Carlin.

How about instead of regulating our energy sector the government deregulated it? What if we gave the initiative back to private entrepreneurs? Private businesses are always in search of profit and a competitive edge. If we get to the point where oil is no longer viable, the one who finds a better, cheaper and more efficient alternative source of energy will not only beat their competitors but solve another energy crisis problem for the rest of mankind.

A free human mind is always in search of solutions to problems. An enslaved human mind does not function that way. You may force slaves to do physical labor, but you can’t force a slave’s mind to work. It will always be inferior to the mind of a free man. American inventors have always been on top of the world precisely because they were free not only to come up with new ideas, but also to profit from them. No matter how many great scientists worked in the Soviet labor camps, American scientists could always beat them because they were free.

The Cap and Trade bill will enslave American scientists to a predetermined government-controlled paradigm. Instead of being truly free to exercise their minds and harvest the fruits of their labor, they will have to struggle through a limited amount of alternative energy choices (most of which are not economically viable) in their government-created jobs.

How much efficiency do you expect from that? Are you so naïve that you truly believe that this kind of arrangement can help America solve her energy problems? I fear that if we stifle the human mind, if we rob private companies of their profits in order to invest in dubious government enterprises, if we impoverish people through higher taxes and prices in order to force them to convert to more expensive and less efficient sources of energy, we will create more problems than we are now hoping to solve. It will put this country at a huge disadvantage compared to what is possible and to other countries. And what is worse than that is we will destroy private innovation that has always been a source of American wealth and prosperity.

Please, stop and think twice before you vote for any bill (this or any other) that will put private America in government chains. I believe that there are many other Americans who write petitions to you asking to support things like Cap and Trade or public healthcare. You have to remember that any such initiative will enslave one part of the population in order to serve the other part of the population. This is exactly the kind of democracy that our Founding Fathers were warning us against. When two wolves and a sheep decide what is for lunch the outcome is predictable. This country is a republic based on the rule of Law not the mob, and the Supreme Law of this country is the Constitution of the United States.

You have all taken an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, and these kinds of bills are in complete violation of this monumental document. Stop thinking that more government is the solution to our problems. Stop thinking that you can please the ignorant masses by giving in to their irrational desires while violating the Constitution and the rights of the minorities, with the smallest minority being an individual. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the Soviets. More government is the problem that is now leading America on this path to nowhere.

Take a stand for freedom, this is what all free Americans expect from you. Don’t sacrifice the American principles for the sake of keeping your seat in Congress. You have to care about justice - an authentic justice based in reality, not some idea that does not work and makes no sense. You have to care about freedom and principles. You have to care about the real values that this country is based on, even if the majority sometimes thinks otherwise.

Remember it was not the majority that founded this country and its laws. It was not the majority that made this country great. It will never be the majority!

You have to take a stand. Simply voting or not voting is not enough anymore. You have to take a real stand for protection of the Constitution of the United States, for protection of the American principles and values. You have to take a real stand for the protection of individual rights. These rights do not include a free house, or a guaranteed job, or free healthcare. You have to take a stand and make yourself heard, so that others can join you! We have to save this country and what you are doing now is not helping this cause. You have to take a stand for what is right, not for what is required by the expediency of the moment!

We The People of this great country, the United States of America, are watching you!

Elena Carter

[Elena is a Russian translator and a co-owner of a fitness facility, East Cobb Exercise Excellence in Marietta, GA.]

Private vs. Public Education

The Palin Episode

The news this past weekend featured Sarah Palin quitting her job as Governor of Alaska. What do you make of this?

She said that her being Governor has become a burden on the state. She, having run for national office, has incurred numerous lawsuits for which she has had to mount a defense. Apparently they all were ethics charges and I understand that all of them have been proven baseless. Nevertheless, this has cost Alaska millions of $s and her personally somewhere around a half million dollars.

I think she takes her oath of office seriously and I think she saw that it cost her and the state a lot for her to run for Vice President. With that past and this still mounting up, it makes sense that she would question whether she is fulfilling the purpose for which she took her oath of office.

At this point, I am taking her at her word.

All the facts behind her words could be checked out by any responsible news organization. I have not heard that they have been. All I hear are opinions and speculations as to her motives, her future, her character - whatever. None of it makes a damn bit of difference in my book.

If she lied about the facts, Sarah Palin is done.

If she told the truth about the facts, she struck a blow for honor.

Honor. Now there's something woefully lacking in our public life. I mean, where do you find anyone these days that honors the oath they took or the word they give?

In politics it's deuces wild. Reverend Wright encouraged us to buy into the cynicism that surrounds politicians. "Weeell, Barack is a politician. What do you expect?" The lowlife know that if you are cynical, they thrive.

I'm sure Palin has a purpose. Exactly what it is, I don't know.

I do know she electrified the Republicans and conservatives big time last year. That hasn't really gone away which is why I think the Left is still working overtime to destroy her any despicable way they can. Whether she can capitalize on the excitement she created, time will tell.

In the meantime I'm saying that Palin has some honor to her and I hope she can use that to bring honor to our political and cultural conversation.

I wish her the best.

(I'd like to give her a little coaching on her gravitas, but that's another story.)

And So It Goes When Things Are Upside Down

Why Are Things Upside Down?

[I posted this comment on the Ann Althouse website where she was taking on Maureen Dowd for blasting Palin.]

If you go to a basketball, football or baseball game, you go to see the game. You don't go to see the referees.

The government is supposed to be in the background making sure the players, the individuals in society, are playing the game according to the rules. Government only makes sense as a background activity.

Now the government is a foreground activity. Everything revolves around it. It changes the rules and the score at whim - whatever it wants to do, thinking only of itself, not its purpose.

Of course, MDowd is attracted to this reversal. The government is where the bullies hang out. They love it. And bullies are not nice nor fun people. Few like them, not even the other bullies.

Who wants to play on any team that gets jerked around in this way? Not me.

July 4, 2009

Don't you find it odd that our President, a master manipulator of symbol, and First Lady are spending our national birthday in Moscow, the country most associated with communism? Hmmm.

[I got the news that they were in Moscow this weekend here. But as I was returning from the grocery this evening, I heard he was leaving for Moscow tonight, Sunday. I may be wrong for blasting him for his timing. I will clear this up as the facts become clear.][When I got up Monday, a picture of O and M in Russia was on Drudge. Since Russia is 8 hours ahead of WDC, this meant they had to leave at least 24 hours ahead and most likely more. Probably left on the 4th.]

by Bosch Fawstin

Never have I been so spiritually touched by the gaiety and exuberance of this year's fireworks. For those brief moments, the economic slump and Obama's poor-mouth attitude regarding America were gone. Come to think of it, I think it was good he left OUR country this weekend.

Here We Go Again

[This written in 1943.]

“It is generally recognized that mankind has achieved, since its rise from savagery, a miraculous progress in the realm of its material culture – and none whatever in the realm of its ethics. Our homes are superior to the cave of the Neanderthal man, but our morals are no better than his – worse, if anything, for we do not have his excuse for ignorance. There is no act of inhumanity which he perpetrated and which we do not perpetrate, except that he did not possess our exquisite means of perpetrating it and he could never equal our present scale. In a recently published book (The Spirit of Enterprise by Edgard M. Queeny), the author – intent upon a hymn to human progress – spends five pages describing man’s material triumphs. Then he adds: “Our morals have come a long way too. The mere thought of a feast on a loose piece of human flesh, which to the Bushmen brings mouth-watering longing, is to us horrid and nauseating.” This is all he can offers, without equivocation, for ten thousand years of man’s spiritual growth. And even this claim is open to question, because cannibalism occurred in Soviet Russia in the famines of 1921 and 1933, and God only knows or can bear the sight of what is occurring in Europe now.

“Why has man displayed such magnificent capacity for progress in the material realm and yet remained stagnant on the level of savagery in his spiritual stature? This discrepancy has been recognized, decried, deplored denounced by everyone. It has never been explained. Countless explanations of evil and remedies for it have been offered through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them cured or explained anything.

“Yet that which mankind holds as its moral ideal has been known and accepted for centuries. The basic principle of men’s morality has not changed since the beginning of recorded history. Under their superficial differences of symbolism, ritual and metaphysical justification, all great ethical systems from the Orient up, all religions, all human schools of thought have held a single moral axiom; the idea of selflessness. That which proceeds from love of self is evil; that which proceeds from love of others is good. Self-sacrifice, self-denial and self-renunciation have ever been considered the essence of virtue. In no other matter has mankind held to such total unity, so completely and for so long. Altruism is the doctrine which holds that man must live for others and place others above self. Humanity has proclaimed its moral ideal unanimously. It has never been questioned. It has always been the ideal of altruism. [Later in this chapter, AR notes that the cultures of ancient Greece and capitalist America were at least partial exceptions to this rule. ed.]

“This ideal has never been reached. In spite of its statement and restatement, in every land, in every age, in every language, in spite of its professed acceptance by all, mankind’s history has not been a growing record of benevolence, justice and brother-love, but an accelerating progression of horror, cruelty, and shame. Baffled, men have accepted the explanation that man is essentially evil; man is weak and imperfect; he doesn’t want to do good. The noble ideal of altruism is never quite to be achieved, only approximated; man is immoral by nature.

“But look back at mankind’s record. Every major horror of history was perpetrated – not by reason of and in the name of that which men held as evil, that is , selfishness – but through, by, for and in the name of an altruistic purpose. The Inquisition. Religious wars. Civil wars. The French Revolution. The German Revolution. The Russian Revolution. No act of selfishness has ever equaled the carnages perpetrated by disciples of altruism. Nor has any egoist ever roused masses of fanatical followers by enjoining them to go out to fight for his personal gain. Every leader gathered men through the slogans of a selfless purpose, through the plea for this self-sacrifice to a high altruistic goal: the salvation of others’ souls, the spread of enlightenment, the common good of their state.

“It is said that self-seeking hypocrites used these virtuous sentiments to delude their followers and achieve personal ends. Doubtless, there have been such and a great many of them. But they never caused the bloody terrors caused by the purest 'idealists.' The worst butchers were the most sincere. Robespierre asked and wished nothing for himself. Lenin asked and wished nothing for himself. But the record of Attila is that of an amateur compared to theirs. At the apex of every great tragedy of mankind there stands the figure of an incorruptible altruist. Yet, after every disaster men have said: 'The ideal was right, but Robespierre was the wrong man to put it into practice,' (of Torquemada, or Cromwell, or Lenin, or Hitler, or Stalin) and have gone on to try it again. [Watch The Triumph of the Will and notice how sincere Hitler is when he expresses his ideal for all the German people. SCB]

“But what is one to think of creatures who are willing, century after century, to bear every form of agony, every kind of martyrdom, for the sake of that which they consider their moral ideal? Are they creatures devoid of moral instinct? Is not the determination to act according to one’s conception of right, no matter what the price, precisely the attribute of a high moral sense? Men have been robbed, enslaved, tortured, slaughtered in the name of altruism. They have accepted, forgiven, and borne it, because their ideal demanded it of them. The price they have paid in unspeakable suffering should have granted them, at least, a badge of virtue.

“But the nature of their ideal has robbed them even of this earned honor.

“A true premise, once accepted, leads to a greater truth and a clearer knowledge with each subsequent step deduced from it. A false premise leads to a greater falsehood and a blacker evil, until, followed to its ultimate conclusion, it brings total destruction, as it must. The spiritual tragedy of mankind has now reached this last step. The spectacle of horror which the world presents at this moment has never been equaled and cannot be surpassed. This is the end of the blind alley of men’s thinking. And there is no way out – save all the way back, to the beginning, to the first principle which permitted men to be led into this.

“The ideal of altruism has now taken its ultimate toll. We are the witnesses of its climax. We see mankind destroying itself before our eyes. We see the price it is paying. We glance back at its history and we see the prince it has paid. But we look on and say: 'This noble ideal is beyond human nature, because men are imperfect and evil.'

“Isn’t it time to stop and to question that noble ideal instead?”

[This was written by Ayn Rand, September 4, 1943, in the middle of WWII. The source for this excerpt is Journals of Ayn Rand. This writing was never published in this form during her lifetime. It became the basis of Atlas Shrugged and the final form of her philosophy. After the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, she worked to present her philosophy in non-fiction form and published many books and articles to that effect. Fifty two years after Atlas Shrugged published in 1957, people are looking for a new philosophical basis for human action and the organization of society. Many can see that the United States is now poised to be the last great country to topple into this same abyss.

Ayn Rand's ideas are no less true today. We are in the grip of a major call to this same destructive ideal carried out by his dictatorship in the form of Barack Obama. Socialism and dictatorship fail wherever tried. But it is not socialism per se that has his words live for people. It is this horrible, stinking moral ideal which has been spread through every institution and church. The attempt to achieve it will not achieve it.

But I don't think that Obama cares to achieve it. His actions belie his rhetoric. He does care to use what you erroneously consider the best within you to mold you to his power. This is how he keeps his motives invisible to the unquestioning masses.

It is the moral ideal that is false as an ideal. People are not inherently evil. They possess free will and choose whether to be right or wrong, good or evil.

A person who is called to make a difference for other people as his primary motivation for living in the world is called by this error. It is not the proper call to goodness. No.

You do that which you want your life to be comprised of, present the results of your work, and when someone wants what you have to offer, he will buy it and accept it – of his own free will. He doesn't have to accept YOU. You've done that already if your moral base is correct. But this motivation depends on what Rand later calls the Virtue of Selfishness.

America has a fairly strong grasp of rational self-interest, rational egoism. Dont' let that go.

To hell, I say, with the sonorous siren song of Barack Obama. SCB]

US Representatives - Who Voted YES for Cap and Trade

Before I get to the list of YES voters, here is John Boehner's speech before the House beginning a little over an hour before the vote. Clearly Henry Waxman wanted to cut Boehner's speech several times.

Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3, Clip 4, Clip 5.


Alabama
(4-3 Republican)

Alaska
(1 Republican)

Arizona
(5-3 Democratic)
• 4. Ed Pastor (D) Yes
• 7. Raúl M. Grijalva (D) Yes
• 8. Gabrielle Giffords (D) Yes

Arkansas
(3-1 Democratic)
• 2. Vic Snyder (D) Yes

California
(33-19 Democratic, 1 vacancy)
• 1. Mike Thompson (D) Yes
• 5. Doris Matsui (D) Yes
• 6. Lynn Woolsey (D) Yes
• 7. George Miller (D) Yes
• 8. Nancy Pelosi (D) Yes
• 9. Barbara Lee (D) Yes
• 10. Ellen Tauscher (D) Yes
• 11. Jerry McNerney (D) Yes
• 12. Jackie Speier (D) Yes
• 14. Anna Eshoo (D) Yes
• 15. Mike Honda (D) Yes
• 16. Zoe Lofgren (D) Yes
• 17. Sam Farr (D) Yes
• 18. Dennis Cardoza (D) Yes
• 23. Lois Capps (D) Yes
• 27. Brad Sherman (D) Yes
• 28. Howard Berman (D) Yes
• 29. Adam Schiff (D) Yes
• 30. Henry Waxman (D) Yes
• 31. Xavier Becerra (D) Yes
• 33. Diane Watson (D) Yes
• 34. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D) Yes
• 35. Maxine Waters (D) Yes
• 36. Jane Harman (D) Yes
• 37. Laura Richardson (D) Yes
• 38. Grace Napolitano (D) Yes
• 39. Linda Sánchez (D) Yes
• 43. Joe Baca (D) Yes
• 45. Mary Bono Mack (R) Yes
• 47. Loretta Sanchez (D) Yes
• 51. Bob Filner (D) Yes
• 53. Susan Davis (D) Yes

Colorado
(5-2 Democratic)
• 1. Diana DeGette (D) Yes
• 2. Jared Polis (D) Yes
• 4. Betsy Markey (D) Yes
• 7. Ed Perlmutter (D) Yes

Connecticut
(5 Democrats)
• 1. John Larson (D) Yes
• 2. Joe Courtney (D) Yes
• 3. Rosa DeLauro (D) Yes
• 4. Jim Himes (D) Yes
• 5. Chris Murphy (D) Yes

Delaware
(1 Republican)
• At-large. Michael N. Castle (R) Yes

Florida
(15-10 Republican)
• 2. Allen Boyd (D) Yes
• 3. Corrine Brown (D) Yes
• 8. Alan Grayson (D) Yes
• 11. Kathy Castor (D) Yes
• 17. Kendrick Meek (D) Yes
• 19. Robert Wexler (D) Yes
• 20. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) Yes
• 22. Ron Klein (D) Yes
• 24. Suzanne Kosmas (D) Yes

Georgia
(7-6 Republican)
• 2. Sanford Bishop (D) Yes
• 4. Hank Johnson (D) Yes
• 5. John Lewis (D) Yes
• 13. David Scott (D) Yes

Hawaii
(2 Democrats)
• 1. Neil Abercrombie (D) Yes
• 2. Mazie Hirono (D) Yes

Idaho
(1-1 Split)

Illinois
(12-7 Democratic)
• 1. Bobby Rush (D) Yes
• 2. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D) Yes
• 3. Dan Lipinski (D) Yes
• 4. Luis Gutierrez (D) Yes
• 5. Michael Quigley (D) Yes
• 7. Danny K. Davis (D) Yes
• 8. Melissa Bean (D) Yes
• 9. Janice D. Schakowsky (D) Yes
• 10. Mark Steven Kirk (R) Yes
• 11. Debbie Halvorson (D) Yes
• 17. Philip Hare (D) Yes

Indiana
(5-4 Democratic)
• 7. André Carson (D) Yes
• 9. Baron Hill (D) Yes

Iowa
(3-2 Democratic)
• 1. Bruce Braley (D) Yes
• 2. David Loebsack (D) Yes
• 3. Leonard Boswell (D) Yes

Kansas
(3-1 Republican)
• 3. Dennis Moore (D) Yes

Kentucky
(4-2 Republican)
• 3. John Yarmuth (D) Yes
• 6. Ben Chandler (D) Yes

Louisiana
(6-1 Republican)

Maine
(2 Democrats)
• 1. Chellie Pingree (D) Yes
• 2. Mike Michaud (D) Yes

Maryland
(7-1 Democratic)
• 1. Frank Kratovil (D) Yes
• 2. Dutch Ruppersberger (D) Yes
• 3. John Sarbanes (D) Yes
• 4. Donna Edwards (D) Yes
• 5. Steny Hoyer (D) Yes
• 7. Elijah Cummings (D) Yes
• 8. Chris Van Hollen (D) Yes

Massachusetts
(10 Democrats)
• 1. John Olver (D) Yes
• 2. Richard Neal (D) Yes
• 3. Jim McGovern (D) Yes
• 4. Barney Frank (D) Yes
• 5. Niki Tsongas (D) Yes
• 6. John Tierney (D) Yes
• 7. Ed Markey (D) Yes
• 8. Mike Capuano (D) Yes
• 9. Stephen Lynch (D) Yes
• 10. Bill Delahunt (D) Yes

Michigan
(8-7 Democratic)
• 1. Bart Stupak (D) Yes
• 5. Dale E. Kildee (D) Yes
• 7. Mark Schauer (D) Yes
• 9. Gary Peters (D) Yes
• 12. Sander Levin (D) Yes
• 13. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D) Yes
• 14. John Conyers Jr. (D) Yes
• 15. John Dingell (D) Yes

Minnesota
(5-3 Democratic)
• 1. Tim Walz (D) Yes
• 4. Betty McCollum (D) Yes
• 5. Keith Ellison (D) Yes
• 7. Collin Peterson (D) Yes
• 8. Jim Oberstar (D) Yes

Mississippi
(3-1 Democratic)
• 2. Bennie Thompson (D) Yes

Missouri
(5-4 Republican)
• 1. William Lacy Clay, Jr. (D) Yes
• 3. Russ Carnahan (D) Yes
• 4. Ike Skelton (D) Yes
• 5. Emanuel Cleaver (D) Yes

Montana
(1 Republican)

Nebraska
(3 Republicans)

Nevada
(2-1 Democratic)
• 1. Shelley Berkley (D) Yes
• 3. Dina Titus (D) Yes

New Hampshire
(2 Democrats)
• 1. Carol Shea-Porter (D) Yes
• 2. Paul Hodes (D) Yes

New Jersey
(8-5 Democratic)
• 1. Rob Andrews (D) Yes
• 2. Frank LoBiondo (R) Yes
• 3. John Adler (D) Yes
• 4. Chris Smith (R) Yes
• 6. Frank Pallone (D) Yes
• 7. Leonard Lance (R) Yes
• 8. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D) Yes
• 9. Steve Rothman (D) Yes
• 10. Donald M. Payne (D) Yes
• 12. Rush D. Holt Jr. (D) Yes
• 13. Albio Sires (D) Yes

New Mexico
(3 Democrats)
• 1. Martin Heinrich (D) Yes
• 2. Harry Teague (D) Yes
• 3. Ben R. Luján (D) Yes

New York
(26-3 Democratic)
• 1. Tim Bishop (D) Yes
• 2. Steve Israel (D) Yes
• 4. Carolyn McCarthy (D) Yes
• 5. Gary Ackerman (D) Yes
• 6. Gregory W. Meeks (D) Yes
• 7. Joseph Crowley (D) Yes
• 8. Jerrold Nadler (D) Yes
• 9. Anthony D. Weiner (D) Yes
• 10. Ed Towns (D) Yes
• 11. Yvette D. Clarke (D) Yes
• 12. Nydia Velázquez (D) Yes
• 13. Michael McMahon (D) Yes
• 14. Carolyn B. Maloney (D) Yes
• 15. Charles B. Rangel (D) Yes
• 16. José Serrano (D) Yes
• 17. Eliot L. Engel (D) Yes
• 18. Nita Lowey (D) Yes
• 19. John Hall (D) Yes
• 20. Scott Murphy (D) Yes
• 21. Paul Tonko (D) Yes
• 22. Maurice Hinchey (D) Yes
• 23. John M. McHugh (R) Yes
• 25. Dan Maffei (D) Yes
• 27. Brian Higgins (D) Yes
• 28. Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D) Yes

North Carolina
(8-5 Democratic)
• 1. G. K. Butterfield (D) Yes
• 2. Bob Etheridge (D) Yes
• 4. David Price (D) Yes
• 11. Heath Shuler (D) Yes
• 12. Mel Watt (D) Yes
• 13. Brad Miller (D) Yes

North Dakota
(1 Democrat)

Ohio
(10-8 Democratic)
• 1. Steve Driehaus (D) Yes
• 9. Marcy Kaptur (D) Yes (A very big pig. See here. A rose by any other name is a bribe.)
• 11. Marcia Fudge (D) Yes
• 13. Betty Sutton (D) Yes
• 15. Mary Jo Kilroy (D) Yes
• 16. John Boccieri (D) Yes
• 17. Tim Ryan (D) Yes
• 18. Zack Space (D) Yes

Oklahoma
(4-1 Republican)

Oregon
(4-1 Democratic)
• 1. David Wu (D) Yes
• 3. Earl Blumenauer (D) Yes
• 5. Kurt Schrader (D) Yes

Pennsylvania
(12-7 Democratic)
• 1. Bob Brady (D) Yes
• 2. Chaka Fattah (D) Yes
• 7. Joe Sestak (D) Yes
• 8. Patrick Murphy (D) Yes
• 11. Paul E. Kanjorski (D) Yes
• 12. John Murtha (D) Yes
• 13. Allyson Schwartz (D) Yes
• 14. Michael F. Doyle (D) Yes

Rhode Island
(2 Democrats)
• 1. Patrick J. Kennedy (D) Yes
• 2. James Langevin (D) Yes

South Carolina
(4-2 Republican)
• 5. John Spratt (D) Yes
• 6. Jim Clyburn (D) Yes

South Dakota
(1 Democrat)

Tennessee
(5-4 Democratic)
• 5. Jim Cooper (D) Yes
• 6. Bart Gordon (D) Yes
• 9. Steve Cohen (D) Yes

Texas
(20-12 Republican)
• 9. Al Green (D) Yes
• 15. Rubén Hinojosa (D) Yes
• 16. Silvestre Reyes (D) Yes
• 18. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D) Yes
• 20. Charlie Gonzalez (D) Yes
• 25. Lloyd Doggett (D) Yes
• 28. Henry Cuellar (D) Yes
• 29. Gene Green (D) Yes
• 30. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) Yes

Utah
(2-1 Republican)

Vermont
(1 Democrat)
• At-large. Peter Welch (D) Yes

Virginia
(6-5 Democratic)
• 3. Robert C. Scott (D) Yes
• 5. Tom Perriello (D) Yes
• 8. Jim Moran (D) Yes
• 9. Rick Boucher (D) Yes
• 11. Gerry Connolly (D) Yes

Washington
(6-3 Democratic)
• 1. Jay Inslee (D) Yes
• 2. Rick Larsen (D) Yes
• 3. Brian Baird (D) Yes
• 6. Norm Dicks (D) Yes
• 7. Jim McDermott (D) Yes
• 8. Dave Reichert (R) Yes
• 9. Adam Smith (D) Yes

West Virginia
(2-1 Democratic)

Wisconsin
(5-3 Democratic)
• 2. Tammy Baldwin (D) Yes
• 3. Ron Kind (D) Yes
• 4. Gwen Moore (D) Yes
• 7. Dave Obey (D) Yes
• 8. Steve Kagen (D) Yes

Wyoming
(1 Republican)

Our Gangster Government

The Terror of Living Under the Bus

Obama was silent.

He said nothing that would support the people of Iran that could be heard around the world. Apparently he tweeted and twittered today to let the people know that he was not wanting them to get hurt. (I can see him doing this on his tiptoes.) Oh, how sweet the tweet.

Why didn't Obama stand for freedom early on? Everyone knows that the Khomenei regime is a vicious theocratic dictatorship fronted by Ahmadinejad. Was it that he wanted to deal with the regime to talk them out of nuclear missiles and that would be his big legacy?

His silence showed me was he would throw an entire nation of innocent people under the bus. For what? Power and adulation. "Screw 'em. I'd rather deal with a dictator anytime." Could there be anything else? Not from what I've seen. Let's see if he can parlay a tweet into world leadership.

His sweet little tweet was his hedge against an ominous future when it looks like his man in Iran is going to show his colors as the true Nazi he is. Anyone that has a hint of a brain knows that whatever deal he might cut with that thug Khomenei, if it should come to that, is worthless. Neville Chamberlain learned that.

So are Obama's plans toast? Doesn't look like he can win. And given his feeble brainpower when it comes to morality, he never could have won.

Don't tell me he wanted to keep the dialogue open. That's a ruse. Bullies like Iran's leadership are always wanting to talk. They are parasites, after all. They have to find blood to live on. Kim Jong-il has done a remarkable job of that. He suckers blood out of us only to up the ante on his threats when he gets hungry.

Where does that leave us? Well, under the bus. Or more aptly, in the back seat of Thelma and Louise's Thunderbird convertible. If we let Obama get away with this, that is where we deserve to be.

Already he has shown that he is a bully at home. He's commandeered business after business in the name of an emergency only to make sure that his supporters are taken care of by stripping bonafide contract holders of their property and their rightful due. He's supported ACORN which is known to be working overtime to stuff the ballot box, by seeing to it that they are well funded. He called them (the pitchforks) out to harrass AIG employees when he wanted to make his point on TV that "regular people" didn't like Wall Street. He's spent the US into oblivion. Now he wants to control industry through cap and trade, or its substitute, EPA regulators. And he plans to tell us what to eat and drink and every other manner of behavior because he will be paying for our healthcare. Throw the doctors under the bus for that. They are mere slaves.

He promised change. I'm choking on it.

Meanwhile he's swatting flies and turning the corridors of the White House into a skateboard park.

thepeoplescube.com

drudgereport.com

This is the Thelma and Louise presidency. The terror is palpable here in the back seat. But, like the people on that fated commandeered flight that ended up in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11, the fear turns to determination once we declare, "This shall be, not that."

And we'd better declare it soon because when we go over the cliff, we will hear his shrill glee. And there will be no freeze-frame ending.

The Revenge of Affirmative Action

Suppose I tell you that you can achieve being a doctor or a lawyer or even a President. Suppose you are a minority. We know you have had a rough time being black, Latino or a woman. How would you like a break? Even though you cannot pass our normal standards for a student at this university, we are going to let you in. We think you, if you study, will do OK and be able to get started. Besides, we will feel better. Maybe you will become a doctor or a lawyer or even a President.

By one standard, the social one, so the argument goes, this sounds good. “It’s a way for our society, for us as a whole, a group, to make up for the past. No matter if none of ‘us’ had slaves or was ever ‘mean’ to a woman or a Latino. It’s just right that we do this. It’s social justice.”

(I’m not going to go into the metaphysical, epistemological and moral fallacies of collectivism in this article. Suffice it to say that people come in the form of individuals, not groups. To claim anything true about human beings as a group in the realms open to their choices is false. It is his conceptual faculty and volition that distinguish him as human being.)

By another standard, the professional one, this is not good. If a person takes the bait of the bounties of affirmative action, he does so knowing that he is not up to par measured by the standards of that profession or the university training him for that profession. There is nothing hidden about this. He may be dazzled by the surface, but he ingests a plug of poison hidden deep beneath the surface if he accepts it.

It is possible that such a person could take the bait in one of three ways. He could think this an authentic opportunity to be what he always wanted to be and measure himself by the standards of the profession of his choice. He would have to be very clear to do this. He would have to work diligently to honestly succeed – by his own ability - to measure up to those standards. He would want to be measured by those standards.

Or, he could be cynical and play it for all it is worth, exploiting the “fruits” of these relaxed standards all the way to the top.

Or, he might not be too smart and try to float.

Six or eight months ago I read an article about individuals, members of a minority, who wanted to be doctors, lawyers and other professionals and failed. They took out large loans for their education. But they accepted the seductive fruit of Affirmative Action. They found themselves behind the bulk of the students, generally hung out with the people in the same situation, and never measured up to the qualifications for their profession. They failed the bar exam or the exams to get into med school. They thought they were OK by what they were told in school, but where the rubber met the road, they failed.

They didn’t like being behind the curve, dropped out and found something else to do. Many of them over a $100,000 in debt couldn’t pay back the loans and ended up caring less because they felt trapped and cheated. They either went bankrupt or tried to get out of their obligation. They found themselves cynical, broke as well as broken, and damn angry.

But there were others who went on with their work where the standards for brain surgery or the rigors of preparing a legal case did not apply. They ended up in the humanities. The humanities have no intellectually rigorous course of preparation. Although they may have had to meet the requirements of their professors, often those were not too tough. Every specialized course of study in those subjects is not objective and thus intellectually bankrupt - from philosophy to sociology to psychology to political “science”, and many others. (Note: Objectivism is the only philosophy I’ve found that is rigorous. And I’m not the only one who has responded to it. People are responding to it in droves, driven by the increasingly apparent consequences of our unworkable society and lack of viable explanations in the humanities.)

So long as any member of a minority accepts the premise of affirmative action, he accepts one thing: I am inferior. He has to embrace being the victim and this seals his fate. He is done; doomed.

Burnishing the stories and wounds of victimhood, he never can achieve his independent, authentic self nor the fruits of such a crucial achievement. Either he is the master of his own fate or the victim of his circumstances. And those states of mind are mutually exclusive. Like the drawing of the vase which transforms into two faces, the mind cannot see nor be present to both at once. It’s one or the other. Choose.

Unless he is able to throw aside that premise and refuse to advance except by his own work and achievement, he is done. And necessarily by accepting the premise of inferiority and victimhood, he is going to end up angry and want revenge. Why wouldn’t he? Anyone who had accepted such a premise would. It can be no other way. He will end up blaming the successful, the capable, those who achieve and if he is to maintain his worldview, he must bring them down.

Culturally, we are reaping the consequences this thinking now - in spades - via the Presidency of Barack Obama. Now everyone is going to get what it is to be a victim as the President seeks to carry out his beliefs to their bitter end. (Notice how he holds the victim up as the reason for all of his actions.) In the populous, the anger is growing. Committed to this course, this will not end well.

Barack Obama knows he has a gift. He’s said so and revels in it. And he thinks he is going to negate the plug of poison he swallowed years ago. How? By forcing everyone to swallow that poison plug so that his inexcusable sin which negated his worth to himself becomes invisible - to him.

Barack knows well how to speak to invoke the moral basis that keeps this idea in place. He is not a force for the lessening of racism nor any form of victimhood. (Note his choice of Sotomeyer, a confirmed “ethnicist” who wants to judge cases, not by the consequences of a man’s actions, but by his irrelevant circumstances.) He is a force for its increase. Instead of advocating standards and ideals which are consistent with man’s necessity to make judgments about reality and produce values, he’s wholesale turning the world upside down.

Because of the wreckage caused by this idea, which is widely accepted in the culture, he is attempting to redistribute wealth based on it. He is attempting to take America down to size so that it be no better, no stronger, no more capable than the least capable countries on the planet. Just as the standards declined and became increasingly worthless at the universities that instituted Affirmative Action, now those low standards are going to be instituted everywhere – BY FORCE.

If you cannot afford a house, Obama will see to it that you get one. If you cannot pay your debts, Obama will see to it that you can get help. If you cannot survive as a business, Obama will keep you afloat. If you cannot decide what to do in your business, call him. Wherever reality intrudes, he will intervene and protect you from the consequences. This is Obama’s professed mission.

His foreign policy and his economic policies here at home are a testament to this idea. If the idea of Affirmative Action is to really work, then the standards must be relaxed. Obama’s method? FORCE them to relax!

This is the method that led to the Fannie and Freddie fiasco. This is the method that sourced the failure of our biggest banks. This is the method that set up GM and Chrysler for ruination. This is the method that has made health care and consequently, health insurance expensive. This is the method that has made our schools a cesspool of non-learning. The list is already long and is growing at a terrifying pace. And it the method, FORCE, that is growing at a terrifying pace.

Except for the force instituted by the government, none of the current financial mess would nor could have happened. Human life, left alone, sorts out the bad ideas and decisions as it must to survive. It’s correct them or die.

The free market never fails. It is always correcting its mistakes. But, soon this will be impossible - by rational, above-board civil means, that is.

Some of us have said that if we get universal healthcare, we will probably go to the post office for brain surgery. That is a laughable exaggeration, but in essence it is true. That is the end of the road for erasing standards.

Barack Obama is a smart man – smart in one sense. He knows how to use rhetoric to manipulate the system to his ends. This is why he has no problem calling businessman to the White House and telling them it is his gift, his capability as a manipulator that protects them from the pitchforks. (Of course they only have to thank him for his powers and succumb to his dictates.) This is why he has no problem bankrolling permanent community organizers and rabble rousers, the pitchforks, which he can call out whenever he wants to bring pressure against his intransigent enemies. This is why he has no problem taking wealth from Chrysler investors and simply giving it to his supporters, the unions.

And it is also why he can combine contradictions in one sentence as if they make sense.

He is so delusional about his powers, that he thinks he can alter the absolute of reality around the globe. He is wrong. But he believes it.

Questioning, thinking people don’t buy it. Peace cannot be obtained by a man who INITIATES force to cause it and Obama has that record here at home. The people who enjoy his rhetoric and don’t ask questions, hope. True to this level of superficiality, they think it is so nice that Michelle planted a garden..

Obama forgets one thing. He is invested 100% in his particular form of flight. Like Icarus who fashioned wings of wax, Obama soars high in the sky. In the thrill of his flight, Icarus forgot his wings were made of wax. Flying too close to the sun, they melted. “Holy damn! REALITY?” He plummeted to his death.

When a man says "I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." after he had commandeered AIG, GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rending them un-free to act in the market, anyone who is thinking says “What? How can you say that?” Obama isn’t bothered by this. Affirmative Action showed him the way.

When he decided he was going to become a politician he wanted power. He schooled himself in what it was to have power. Then he decided to run for President. He wanted to really have power, the ultimate power. Now he could FORCE his ideas on society. And by his actions we see his deepest motive - unadulterated hatred of the best mankind has to offer: Creativity, production, authentic values, and a life to live for - and all in the name of a pseudo-virtue, "You shall give to the poor at all costs, including the destruction of the engine of life and wealth."

Cowardice as Foreign Policy

There was a story that circulated some years back about thugs who attacked a woman on the streets of Brooklyn. No one tried to stop the crime in the making; no one said anything nor did anything other than watch or turn away. The story was important as an barometer of the moral stature of our society. Many thought it was an outrage that no one could think of anything to distract the thugs or offer the woman encouragement in her battle. Everyone except for the victim (and she may have been) was a moral coward in this situation.

This is not to say that it was their duty to get into the fray. It wasn't. But there are many things that could be done when a life and death struggle of an innocent person with a thug is happening that would have worked to stop their crime. I guess the onlookers could explain away their passiveness as "I didn't want to meddle." Would anyone accept that explanation?

So I see the moral character of Obama clearly now. He's a coward. He has so many opportunities to stand for freedom, for democracy and give encouragement to the millions of people in Iran and around the globe who want it. But did he. No. Not a drip. His remarks would just as soon support a dictatorship - as if the people would want that which they obviously don't - or a democracy. Sovereignty to Obama means whoever is leading the country regardless of how he got there or how he maintains his control. Obama doesn't choose to display any distinctions in this area. Hmmm. I wonder why?

Hannah Arendt, noted author of The Life of the Mind and The Origins of Totalitarianism, attended the Nazi war trials. She said she was amazed how ordinary and thoughtless these handmaidens to atrocity were. "Not my job." "Not my worry." "I didn't know." No concern about life and what was happening at all.

This is Obama. He doesn't get it and he is thoughtless when it comes to important values. Moral cowardice packaged as seeming "fairness' is our foreign policy. I know this because I have seen it before. He bypassed opportunities to stand for real freedom, rather than give it lip service for the believers back home, in Europe and in South America.

And he doesn't stand for it here either. When dealing with Americans, he becomes the bully. He negates contracts as if they mean nothing for their owners and the rule of law only to give the benefits of the spoils of his winning in November to his supporters. He plans to summarily fire an IG who is investigating fraud and theft in a particular government program that he wants to use to benefit his supporters. He forced banks to take money so he could get control of them when they didn't need it or want it. This list is getting very long. The gays are chafing and the doctors are next in line.

He's not passive at home. He's too directed for that. Ask yourself what he is up to.

Overseas, he is a wuss. At home he is a thug. Always, he is a master manipulator and unless you are good an disentangling what he says, you think it sounds good. My assessment is that it is all a very, very toxic waste.

Anyone who wants to hear his rhetoric like it is the voice of God is free to do so. He always is quick to have the lamb lay down with the lion and the tides smooth out. I expect him to advocate creationism if he thinks it will get him a vote.

A friend got so excited about the demonstrations in Iran because she felt it was because of Obama's Cairo speech. Maybe, but I don't think so. It's not likely that a speech, especially one as tepid and "beautiful" as he delivered, a little over a week before an election could alter it and move millions to march in the streets.

I've never heard that Muslims are committed to getting along or world peace. Have you? I've heard that if you are a non-Mulsim, you have one of three choices: death, slavery or second class status. That's it. Whereas Americans hear Obama in a Christian framework, I don't think Muslims do.

How about this idea? Could two democratic countries flanking Iran have anything to do with it? Whereas before, Iran was one of three dictatorships in that subregion of the Mideast - Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran -now it is the only one. Hmm. Can't consider that one. It's associated with none other than the hated Bush.

Rationality is not a strong suit with many Americans. Unquestioned feelings and finding someone to follow are. This tells me something about them, not something about the truth or rightness of Obama's words.

To get to that, one must think. But most would not know where to start. Opinions: 100; Valid conclusions 0.

The Moral and Economic Arguments Against Government Health Care and For Freedom in Health Care

This is a really great video that gets to the heart of the matter in arguing against Government Health Care. This issue is, I think, the most important issue that must be defeated if we are to retain our private, individual lives in any meaning of the term.

The argument which almost no one will confront is the altruist argument - that you should be concerned about your nameless neighbor's health, that he must be taken care of, and you should feel guilty if you don't. If you can handle that argument emotionally and intellectually, then it will be possible to win this fight.

I suggest you bookmark this link when you get it up on your computer screen. Given our culture, you have to remember the access point to making it and you need to be able to ask the questions which will bring up their false reasons. At that point, you can highlight it and offer the counter argument and benefits of freedom.

If you want to know what this health care is ultimately going to look like, go to your county public health clinic and ask for an appointment. (They especially like treating STDs since they can be a public health problem. If you have arthritis or heart trouble, don't bother.) Contrary to all of the ballyhoo on Government Health Care, the truth is that you will suffer health care rationing and lost time waiting in lines to get it. The plans used in Great Britain and Canada are a disaster.

No one remembers that Progressivism is based largely in eugenics, the science which sought to perfect the human race. Progressivism began in 1890 and ran for 30 to 40 years. And Progressivism is the doctrine to which modern Democrats owe their allegiance. Hillary openly named it. Obama said, "I'm not a socialist; I prefer to be called a Progressive."

When the government controls people's lives it decides who lives and dies. Naturally it will make sense to make those choices based on some criteria and that criteria will be eugenics or political patronage. What you want will be lost along with the free market in health care.

We already see the push toward the Nanny State - where the government tells us what to eat and that we must exercise and on and on. It will pass laws "encouraging" this behavior making it prohibitive to eat what we would prefer and generally enjoy our lives as we see fit. This pernicious government activity is where we are headed and Government Health Care is the big, big access to gaining this control.

And never forget: Hitler's atrocities were based on eugenics.

Some Thoughts

Everything alive grows from the inside out. An acorn sits in a fertile environment, puts out roots and then grows a shoot upward. That sprouts leaf and limb until one day it is a mighty oak fulfilling its purpose in its mature form. The same with a human fetus.

The same principle applies to all living things and products of living things. Even a creation of a living thing such as an invention, a poem or a painting grows from the seed of an idea until it is an expression of the vision gestated within. Anyone who creates knows that something isn't right and is wooden if one attempts to force a form upon it from the outside. It grows from the inside out. Frank Lloyd Wright new this and advocated it his entire life.

This same principle is true of societies. One man puts down roots and makes a life. Another moves nearby and they get to know each other. Pretty soon they trade with each other. This happens one man after another until a community has developed. The Constitution of the United States allowed this and that is why we grew into a might expression of liberty.

The reason I and a growing number of others so object to Obama is because he is trying to form the society from the outside in. This is his meaning of "change." He's seeking to impose his will on the country, and even the world, by force and threat. This violates the principle of life which means he is in violation of life. It is not how life works. Life cannot grow and prosper this way.

Is this why totalitarian societies and dictatorships fail? They turn the life principle inside out and it does not work? They reverse cause and effect?

Notice how politics is always concerned with the appearance of things. It is concerned with the outside, not the inside. Politicians are notorious for saying any damn thing to get elected or keep people approving them all the while pulling one shenanigan after another. And this is why thinking people don't trust most of them. Simple, when you think about it. They aren't concerned with the inside, the underlying truth of their ideas and the structure for implementing them. They just get the gun out and force it, like a square peg in a round hole, and don't respond to the nature of things and how they work.

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I feel sorry for blacks who are beginning to see that Obama is not the man they fell in love with. They pinned hope and happiness on this man.

You can see this in Juan Williams, who often appears on a panel during the last 20 minutes of the Fox Political News program at 6:00 p.m. He so wants Obama to succeed that he twists himself into a pretzel to find an explanation that gives him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes he has to just own that what Obama is saying or doing doesn't work. He looks pained and it is painful to watch.

It must be like falling in love with someone that you realize isn't good for you. It's hard to let go because the love was so delicious in the beginning that you let him into your heart.

I know what it is to be caught in this kind of bind. It's distinctly human.

Never underestimate the power of superficial qualities.

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I'm so tired of the argument that says Terrorists are the way they are because they are poor or uneducated and therefore we should cut them slack. We should feel empathy for them. This argument has also been made about blacks because of slave ancestors and the poor in general in this country.

This is so lame. The main reason it is so lame is that does not attribute these people as fully human. It doesn't treat them as though they also use their minds, albeit maybe poorly, inconsistently and for irrational values, to achieve the values, rational or not, that they want.

This reasoning doesn't treat people as though they possess choice. You do not have to be educated or rich to understand what work is or honesty is or honoring someone's property is. Those morals are in every society no matter how primitive.

Let's stop the pretense and the arrogance of acting like these people are not people. They are. They know how to build bombs for God's sake! They can learn to operate within the same principles that you and I live by. Treat them so and this will instantly bring them into the community of human beings.

The foreign policy and government programs that are justified for this reason are a disgrace and demoralize human beings everywhere. Get over its already!

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I think America is living through a Reign of Terror. No, not the terror of tanks and machine guns turned on the people. Rather the terror of "change" covered by a velvet mouth.

The terror is the stripping of people of responsibility - breaking the link between cause and effect, between the actions one takes and the consequences that follow - information that is vital to human survival, let alone a country's.

Obama is replacing it with a new criteria: Do you love me? Will you follow my dictates? Don't forget, "I am kind."

NO? OUT!!!

"You shall be relegated to the realm of non-humans."

The first salvo was the meeting with bankers where Obama pulled the old protection racket tactic. "I'm the only thing between you and the pitchforks. Do as I say."

There are so many of these examples that I don't remember them all. One was the court dismissing accountability of the states to clean up their voter registration list and prevent illegal voting. The court negated two attempts and gave a pass, except for a tiny slap on a thug's fingers ("Don't carry your night stick and guard the voting booth through 2012"), to intimidation at the voting booth.

All of this coupled with the growth and discovery of the rampant illegal actions of ACORN and his continued support of ACORN tells me that he is up to destroying the validity of the democratic process.

Then he arbitrarily stripped the holders of primary debt in Chrysler of their rights. He stole their property and gave it to the unions - all for political patronage. In that action, he destroyed the principle of peaceful agreements among men and used his gun to get his way. This is not justice. This is nothing except goddammed thuggery. Pure and simple.

Today O fired an Americorp Inspector General. He does not have that power because the IG is designed to be above politics and inspect according to principle and objective evidence. He fired him anyway.

He urges great speed in passing the laws he wants and fosters these bills not even getting read or put out for public discussion.

Yesterday I read that the strategy for his beloved healthcare plan is to work out the details in secret, print it and then pass it before the public has time to review it. Railroading is his modus operandi. (Congress, including my local representative, John Lewis, is just as culpable in this kind of politics.)

He also has Sotomayer on rails insofar as that is possible.

For these reasons alone, where he is overturning the purpose and means of Finance, Law and Legality, Voting, Industrialization primarily in the Auto Industry, the Medical industry, Education and many other sectors of our society, Obama is a menace.

Ingenuous is not a strong enough word for Obama's character and actions. He hates America and the principle it was founded on.

Many Americans are feeling like they are experiencing the battered wife syndrome. Obama at home bashes Americans and the basics of American life and abroad apologizes for his "wife's" behavior all the while sucking up to every thug out there. All in the name of peace and calling forth a dialogue.

The syndrome goes on because people want to believe him. "Maybe he will be nice next time." "Maybe he will honor me next time." We are learning that he doesn't and he won't.