Archive for March, 2010
Five Creepiest Crimes No One Can Explain
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Gitmo Detainee Released
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010A suspected al Qaeda organizer once called “the highest value detainee” held at Guantanamo Bay was ordered released by a federal judge Monday.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was accused in the 9/11 Commission report of helping recruit Mohammed Atta and other members of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, who took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Military prosecutors suspected Mr. Slahi of links to other al Qaeda operations, and considered seeking the death penalty against him while preparing possible charges in 2003 and 2004.
Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted Mr. Slahi’s petition for habeas corpus, effectively finding that the government lacked legal grounds to hold him. The order was classified, although the court said it planned to release a redacted public version in coming weeks.
:
Brig. Gen. John Furlow, who helped lead a Pentagon-ordered probe of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, has testified that at one point Mr. Slahi was “the highest value detainee” at the site and “the key orchestrator of the al Qaeda cell in Europe.”Plans to try him by military commission were derailed after prosecutors learned Mr. Slahi had been subjected to a “special interrogation plan” involving weeks of physical and mental torment, including a death threat and a threat to bring Mr. Slahi’s mother to Guantanamo Bay where she could be gang-raped, officials said.
Although the treatment apparently induced Mr. Slahi’s compliance, the military prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch, determined that it constituted torture and that evidence it produced couldn’t lawfully be used against Mr. Slahi.
The Constitution: Strong enough to stop us from defending ourselves, but far too weak to suggest there may be shenanigans going down when Congress orders us to buy health insurance.
Elections have consequences.
How ObamaCare Hits Industry and Threatens Jobs
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Short answer?
We’re democrats. We make things more widely available by making it unworkable and expensive to provide them.
Longer answer here:
The people at Zoll Medical Corporation saw a ray of hope in January when Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts. Located in Chelmsford, 30 miles outside Boston, Zoll is the nation’s leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year. Back in January, as the Senate race was raging, both House and Senate Democrats wanted to impose a crippling new tax on the makers of medical devices, Zoll included, to help pay for Obamacare.
The total tax on the industry would be about $2 billion a year, or $20 billion over the next decade. Companies watched nervously as lawmakers pushed ahead, first the House and then the Senate. But then Brown was elected on the promise to be the crucial Republican vote to stop health care reform. For Zoll, things were looking up.
Not anymore. The bill passed by the House Sunday night contains a particularly damaging version of the $20 billion hit for the medical device industry, meaning Zoll and other medical device makers could well be headed for hard times.
“We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million and $10 million a year,” says Richard Packer, Zoll’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million.”
My letter to my senators, on a different subject which was the S&L bailouts Fannie/Freddie mess, politely inquired if the motto for the 111th Congress was “Our approach to any given problem is to make sure no one can earn any money providing a solution to it.” Now, I think I have my answer.
A somewhat less thoughtful deliberation takes place here:
Should We, The People try to strike the law down? Charles Krauthammer is not optimistic:
Neo-Neocon (hat tip to Gerard once again) provides a much needed sanity check:
I hear this defeatist attitude nearly everywhere. I could understand it if the nay-saying came from Democrats as a taunt, but it comes from Republicans as a lament. I disagree with the idea. One thing’s for sure, though—if most conservatives and Republicans have the same attitude as Krauthammer, it certainly won’t be repealed.
So I think this sort of talk needs to stop. Remember, there is no precedent for this bill and how it was passed against the will of the people, and we should not imagine that any precedent about not repealing entitlements would hold, either. As I’ve said several times, we are in uncharted waters. Let’s try not to lose our compass—and we may need our celestial navigation, as well.
Kruathammer and NN could both be right here. This is the flaw with American constitutional government; it is based on a theory that doesn’t really work. What happens if Congress passes a blatantly unconstitutional bill and then the President signs it? The theory is that it is eventually appealed, all the way up to the Supreme Court and SCOTUS will have the final word. All the stars in the heavens could line up for the unconstitutional law, The People could want it like the dickens, all the politicians who know where the bodies are buried want it…but the Constitution is not compatible with it, so out it goes.
Trouble is, this supposed “power” within our third branch of government to say so, has always been wielded out of political expediency. It was born that way, you know; Marbury vs. Madison. Chief Justice John Marshall found, in 1803, a perfectly wonderful excuse not to act.
So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.
If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.
This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions. It would declare that an act which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the Legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the Legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.
My point is that as brilliant and sound as the logic may be, the resulting power has never really been brandished to comfort the afflicted or afflict the comfortable. Perhaps during that string of decisions in the 1930’s, it got as close as it’ll ever come. But in 1937 we had the disaster with “The Switch in Time That Saved Nine,” in which the Supremes fell more properly in line with Roosevelt’s agenda to save their own necks, in deference to the political realities.
It is logically unsustainable, in my view, to declare in 1935 that the AAA lacks compatibility with the Constitution, and in 1937, that the NLRA somehow has it. There never has been any logical basis for this famous Switch-In-Time. It was all politics, and always has been; our judicial branch follows the Constitution, logic, common sense, reason — when it can afford to, and no more often than that. Krauthammer does have a point.
But Neo has a point too. Where politics matter, popularity also matters; and Roosevelt’s alphabet-soup nonsense was much, much more popular than Obama’s new health care framework.
It’s like a lottery ticket: Can’t guarantee you’ll win if ya buy one, but I can guarantee you won’t if you don’t. And besides, in logic, in spirit, the law is unconstitutional. Congress is making us buy something? To simply exist as a living thing, and therefore to be susceptible to illness, is “interstate commerce”?
If repealing it or striking it down is too complicated to even try to do, then I daresay the same must be said of anything that can be done by anyone in this country. What’s the point of any of it?
Update: You who are looking for hope, would be well-served by looking here I think.
Now We Find Out What’s In the Bill
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
Keep your eyes closed, Marion.
Stupak to Back Deal; Passage Appears Likely
Sunday, March 21st, 2010Stupak, from Menominee on the Upper Peninsula, said he and the others “stood on principle,” even if it meant bringing down the health care reform bill that most, if not all, of them otherwise supported.
Just before taking the podium at a 4 p.m. news conference, the White House released the text of an executive order to be signed after the health care reform legislation is passed. It makes clear the president’s intention “to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that federal funds are not used for abortion services” and continues the current prohibition on taxpayer money being used for abortions known as the Hyde amendment.
Update: WTF??
Update 3/22/10: Double-WTF, and there it is.
[O]ver time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people…there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
“Is It Racist?”
Sunday, March 21st, 2010Hat tip to Nation of Cowards.
Z and A
Saturday, March 20th, 2010We’ve reached the end. Now what? Do we wrap back around to the beginning?
Of course we do. Can’t leave that dangling. Zooey Deschanel goes up against the skinny blond chick who started the whole thing, AnnaLynne McCord.
Hmmm…adorable hot pink ruffly dental floss bikini…versus blue shorts and argyle knee socks. Sun bunny meets preppy. A pair of beautiful thighs versus an entire gorgeous body.
Douglas Adams versus Aaron Spelling. A story with a manic-depressive robot versus some daytime soap for babies with a couple of James Dean wannabes. Hmmmm.
I think Zooey nails this one. Sorry AnnaLynne. It’s Zooey, so she’s two-fer-two in this contest now, having trounced Yasmine Bleeth last week.
Is that an elite crowd? Let’s see…who else comes out of this two-fer-two?
Xenia Seeberg beat Willa Ford on February 19 and Yasmine Bleeth on March 6.
Raquel Welch beat Pamela Hensley on 11/26/09 and Scarlett Johansson on 12/3/09.
Marisa Miller beat Leann Tweeden on 10/29/09 and Nadine Velasquez on 11/6/09.
Izabella Scorupco beat Holly Weber on 10/2/09 and Jessica Biel on 10/9/09.
Famke Janssen beat Erica Durance on 9/10/09 and Gemma Atkinson on 9/19/09.
Beyonce Knowles beat AnnaLynne McCord when we started this thing on 8/7/09 and took care of Carly Zucker on 8/20/09.
That makes seven. And because Carly is so gorgeous and we said at the time we felt bad about the whole thing, you know I think she deserves an honorable mention. That brings it up to eight.
Perfect for a tournament.
As the busy weekend permits, we shall have to affix some dates to this puppy.
Wonder who’s gonna come out on top.
More Disapprove of Obama Now Than of Bush in His Last Days
Saturday, March 20th, 2010Now that‘s an interesting statistic.
Bush’s numbers when he left office:
In the final full month of his Presidency, just 13% of American adults said they Strongly Approved of the way that George W. Bush performed his job as president. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapproved.
Obama’s numbers today:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove…
That coming our way via The Volokh Conspiracy who wonder:
Imagine how unpopular Obama would be if the press and the late night comedians (who are at least as important as the press) treated Obama as they treated Bush.
When you sacrifice everything else to be popular, you end up lacking even that. The rule works for all walks of life, all settings of human existence, all ages.
D’JEver Notice? LIV
Friday, March 19th, 2010Looks like, for the time being, it’s all about healthcare-healthcare-healthcare, and cap-n-trade cap-n-trade cap-n-trade. As soon as they’re all done “fixing” the former they’ll direct their energies toward the latter.
Some time ago, I wrote a letter to my oh-so-stylish wrinkled-up aging-hippie hardcore left-wing female senators, and I inquired of them courteously — because my curiosity was and is sincere — if the motto of the current Congress isn’t “Our approach to any given problem is to make sure no one can make a profit providing a solution to it”? There is no one particular phenomenon that inspires this observation of mine; it is a sumptuous buffet of events, actions and outlandish quotes. About S&L bailouts, about executive bonuses, about auto manufacturers, et al. The house fire may be put out, but if the fireman made a profit then this is a disaster. If the fire roars onward and engulfs a neighborhood, everything’s fine as long as neither the fireman nor anybody else is making any money. That is the real measure of success.
We see it right now in the health care debate. While I wait endlessly to see one more democrat march on to a stage and say something about bringing medicine and treatment to people who really need these things — remember when the air was thick with the catchphrases? It wasn’t that long ago — I have to listen to dire proclamations about the inadequacy of the status quo, things must change, because people are entering the medical field for the wrong reasons. To make a buck! That’s why we need this health care “plan.” Who cares what drugs are being invented. Who cares about the advance of technology. These positions are profitable and they should not be.
Anyway, sometime before the nation’s 234th birthday just a few short months from now, the health care thing will be resolved one way or the other. And then we will — most assuredly — move on to those awful carbon emissions heating up the planet. Of course we will. It will be July, and you know what happens in July; we’ll talk about the weather. This spot will have its warmest July 1st ever…that other spot will have its coolest. Both of these events will be disasters, and blamed squarely on you-know-what.
My d’Jever-Notice-moment is in regard to that particular issue. The “All’s Good As Long As We’re All Non-Profit” paradigm seems to sharply overturn, here. Carbon “vouchers,” the cap-and-trade “marketplace,” the “green jobs.” The good people who were just a few moments ago using profit as a perfect litmus test for shenanigans a-goin’ down, fervently believing that any and all free trade is evil by its very nature — suddenly they’re extolling the virtues of this plan or that plan, because “it makes good financial sense.” Suddenly I hear all these buzzwords that would not have worked before. Robust. Thriving. Bustling. Soaring. Employment. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Skyrocketing. Millions-and-billions. Investing.
Perhaps if those buzzwords were more popular within other topics, the economy would be looking a tad more cheerful right about now. Maybe, what we really need to do to make some money around here, is to simply…allow ourselves to.
Liberals Are More Evolved Than Conservatives
Friday, March 19th, 2010Liberals and atheists, that is. And their I.Q. is higher as well. Yeah that’s right, we got another one.
People who later admitted to being “not at all religious,” and who classified themselves as “very liberal” politically had higher IQ scores as teenagers than those who were “very religious” and “very conservative.”
The difference isn’t huge. Only 11 points, on average, separate the liberal from the conservative, for instance. But [researcher Satoshi] Kanazawa believes it’s significant.
“Liberalism”—which Kanazawa defines, in part, as caring about the well-being of vast numbers of people you’ll never meet—”is a very new thing for humans,” he said.
“Historically, humans cared about the welfare of immediate family and friends but not complete strangers.”
Well, I think there’s something to this. Changes in environmental pressures have caused a sort of social evolution that was not here previously. Only thing is, a “change” in pressure is not necessarily an increase. It can be a drop. Which means the genome is devolving…weakening. It has to meet fewer challenges. It’s bored.
This is evidenced by the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals, aptly demonstrated here. A conservative cares about whether he is confronting a particular challenge effectively. A liberal cares about whether he is confronting a particular challenge more fashionably, as interpreted by some third party, than the conservative. Whether the actual problem is solved in the end or not — he’s too distracted by these other considerations to notice.
Before you are effective, be approved-of. And in gauging whether or not your approval is sufficient, just compare it to the other guy’s.
James Lewis at The American Thinker is not being snookered by it, even for a moment.
[It’s] typical of the cultural Left today — and of its hopeless cravings to validate itself as being smarter, better-educated, and of course, more compassionate than those conservative throwbacks to a brute past. Somehow the Left always needs to boast, and like any other compulsive boaster, it is compensating for its own feelings of inferiority. I suspect that that’s the real inner nature of the Left: Most of its followers worry about their personal adequacy in life.
They certainly do seem to expend a whole lot more energy on relativism, and perceptions of others, compared to their conservative counterparts. If Kanazawa agrees with me that this is where our recent societal pressures are pushing us, and it would appear that he does, then IMO his research is valid. Our environment is descending into a pit of lethargy, distraction, despair and indulgence. Our push is to intoxicate our priorities, to become penny-wise and pound-foolish — to pursue our most vexing problems, in a manner that leads to all sorts of consequences other than a successful resolution. Our push is toward classic Bacchanalia. Yes, we are evolving in that direction. Our liberals first.
Hat tip to Dr. Sanity, via Maggie’s Farm.
STOVL F-35B
Friday, March 19th, 2010Hat tip to blogger friend Buck.
Wikipedia sez:
The Lift System is composed of a lift fan, drive shaft, two roll posts and a “Three Bearing Swivel Module” (3BSM). The 3BSM is a thrust vectoring nozzle which allows the main engine exhaust to be deflected downward at the tail of the aircraft. The lift fan near the front of the aircraft provides a counter-balancing thrust. Somewhat like a vertically mounted turbofan within the forward fuselage, the lift fan is powered by the engine’s low-pressure (LP) turbine via a drive shaft and gearbox. Roll control during slow flight is achieved by diverting pressurized air from the LP turbine through wing mounted thrust nozzles called Roll Posts.
Wonder how much fuel we’re burning up. I suppose if I start lusting after one, simply thinking about it will boost my carbon footprint and get my overlords all upset with me.
Cleaner Emissions Fail
Friday, March 19th, 2010
Via Moonbattery.
Ace is Worried
Friday, March 19th, 2010I am getting really worried, because if 222 Democrats voted for this unconstitutional, very-unpopular maneuver, doesn’t that mean that all 222 will also vote for the bill itself? Why vote for this if you’re not going to vote for that?
Technically Speaking: Drew notes that this wasn’t a vote on the Slaughter House Rule itself, but on a GOP motion to compel the House to not employ the Slaughter House Rule.
The Slaughter Rule is not yet actually implemented. But the motion to halt it was rejected.
Yes there are lots of possibilities open for phony posturing. But this was still an important vote because it’s the first hard signal about how many in the House are willing to use deem-and-pass. To actually fasten their names to it. So I’m worried along with Ace.
This was not a costless maneuver for them by any means. In fact, they just handed the Republicans the perfect campaign theme for 2010, while they have yet to realize any benefits from doing so.
As I said before, Mark Steyn nailed it. Completely. House and Senate seats are important to them…but delivering the “legislation” is more important than that, if & when the two are in conflict. It isn’t quite so much the legislation as the public mindset that comes with it. The prevailing way of looking at life.
The old “Haven’t Got the Luxury of Loving Freedom” attitude. Opportunity-over-security would be wonderful and titillating if I could afford to prioritize things that way, but I just cannot afford it. Mediocrity for me, as long as it’s delivered on demand, on time.
The spirit that made nothing great.
They want to get that promulgated and propagated. This is more important than anything. This is their mother’s-milk. They know, if they lose seats getting this accomplished, it’ll be a trivial matter to get those seats back again. Conservative spirit is about as useful as a pot without a bottom, in a nation of the helpless. So their eye is on the #1 job.
They are despair.
Update: Something from yesterday. To help cheer you up. Because it’s refreshing hearing a grown-up talk like a grown-up in these worrisome, worrisome times.
Bad Time to Fart
Friday, March 19th, 2010Helpful Dads Can Hurt Mom’s Self-Esteem
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Dads are helping out with childrearing more and more these days. The result can be both a boon and a letdown for super-moms, whose self-competence can take a hit when paired with husbands who are savvy caregivers, new research finds.
The findings reveal the fallout as women have entered the workplace in droves over recent decades, many of them leaving young children at home. One result is mothers have less time for care-giving. Past studies have shown working moms are torn between full-time careers and stay-at-home duties. And lately more diligent dads are helping out with the diaper-changing and other household duties.
But since mothers pride themselves on being just that – moms – their self-esteem can take a blow.
“While mothers are encouraged to join the workforce, socially constructed ideals of motherhood requires mothers to be primary caregivers,” said study researcher Takayuki Sasaki of the Osaka University of Commerce in Japan. “Thus, employed mothers may feel pressured to do more care-giving to ensure the survival of their feelings of self-competence, even though they may wish for fathers’ increased participation to lessen their burden.”
So it’s A) Men always have yet another excuse to be lazy. Or, B) Women never ever stop bitching no matter WHAT.
Or C) Science isn’t science if it shows a social problem is in remission; all disasters have to be growing, all the time, threatening to engulf us.
Vote only once, please. Well, okay maybe more than once…
Glengarry Glen (Cong)Ress
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Ah, this is good. Hope David Mamet is crying in his beer about this. The always-excellent Iowahawk:
Rahm
Put. That iPhone. Down. The Coffee Party’s for closers. You think I’m fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I’m here from fucking downtown. I’m here from Barack and Andy Stern. And I’m here on a fucking mission of mercy. Your fucking name’s fucking Hoyer? You fucking call yourself a fucking salesman you fucking son of a fuck?Pete
Nice fucking vocabulary, you fucking fuck. We don’t gotta sit here and listen to this shit.Rahm
You certainly don’t pal, ’cause the good news is – you’re fired. You’re all fucking fired if you miss that vote quota. The bad news is – you’ve got, all of you’ve got just seven months to get re-elected starting tonight. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. “Cause we’re adding a little something to this bill’s vote contest. As you all know first prize is a genuine leather upholstered committee chair. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is ambassadorship to Belgium. Fourth prize is YOU’RE FIRED. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got seats. Andy paid good money for those seats, get their names and sell them. If you can’t close this you can’t close shit. You ARE shit. Hit the bricks pal, and beat it ’cause you are going OUT. And there won’t be a lobbying operation in this town that will hire you.Steny
The polls are weak.Rahm
The polls are weak? Fucking polls are weak. You’re weak. I’ve been in this business 25 years…Barney Frank
Who the hell are you?Rahm
Fuck you. That’s who I am. You know why, mister? You drove a fucking Buick to get here. I drove a half million dollar bulletproof Secret Service Escalade. THAT’S my name. And your name is you are wanting. You can’t play in this game, you can’t close them – go home and tell your pollster your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this congress: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you fucking faggots? A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. C-B-S. Create. Bullshit. Sob stories. C-N-N. Cocksuckers. Need. News footage. M-S-N-B-C. Might. Soon. Need. Bailout. Cash.
“I’m Very Good At Back Flips”
Thursday, March 18th, 2010This hits the spot. HDB stands for High-Drama Bitch…and I like seeing HDBs treated the way HDBs should. Especially mildly annoying Star Wars characters. “Why are you in freak mode?”
“I see you have gotten barbeque sauce on my bathrobe.” “You have done that yourself!” Hehe.
McChrystal Disagrees with Holder
Thursday, March 18th, 2010The General would like bin Laden alive.
“The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden,’’ Mr. Holder said, responding to hypothetical questions from Republicans about whether the Obama administration would try Mr. bin Laden in a civilian or military court.
:
General McChrystal was subsequently asked during a Pentagon briefing by telephone from Afghanistan on Wednesday if the military had given up on catching an alive Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. The general expressed surprise at the question.“Wow, no,’’ General McChrystal responded. “If Osama bin Laden comes inside Afghanistan, we would certainly go after trying to capture him alive and bring him to justice.’’
Holder is just whacked out on this thing. He must be smoking something.
Times get good and times get bad, people become more concerned with freedom and then they become more concerned with security. They trust conservatives more in one year and then they trust the liberals more in another year.
But this is something about liberals that I think always makes people queasy. Most people, anyway.
It is this notion that you have what I would call “swollen” rights. Rights brought to you by the evil sticky black slimy stuff. Any dispute that arises from you having these rights, shall be adjudicated in your favor. Every single doubt shall be resolved to your benefit. And if anyone utters a peep of protest their career shall be ended, to make an example out of them for others.
But that the rights are situational. Yeah, I’m making a reference here to abortion…you have the right to have your vote “counted” even though you are too stupid to know what’s going on or to get to the polling place by yourself…womb-to-tomb healthcare…to work at Hooter’s even if you’re a man. To send the cop packing even though it’s known you have a stash, because you happen to have gotten it all flushed before he broke the door down. To an electric scooter if you’re fat and lazy. To join a union and get the same six weeks of paid vacation someone else has. But only if you cross that finish line. If you’re still in your momma’s belly, then that means you don’t even exist yet. Then, you can forget about even the most fundamental human rights…nevermind your six weeks of vacation. Forget about all of it. It’s situational.
This is where Holder’s going with UBL. The terrorist mastermind, according to Holder doctrine as I understand it, would have a great big ol’ smorgasbord of rights. If he made it back here. But it ain’t gonna happen.
Holder sees our primary enemy, it seems to me, as an unborn fetus. Osama has all these “rights” that are all to be arbitrated in his favor…that are swollen. But situational. He is entitled to the creme de la creme, but can be deprived of just the basics. If certain events do not happen. It all depends on that. Complete extremism on one side if the events do not happen, complete extremism on the other side if they do. It changes the class of the person we are talking about.
I don’t see this as an American ideal, and I think most people agree with me about that. At least, more people agree with me than with our Attorney General; rights, along with privileges, are determined at any given time by what a person has done as well as by what a person is.
According to that, then, his trial and sentencing would be about as quick as that scene in TimeCop. You know…Jean-Claude saves that guy from falling in 1929 by taking him back to the present, they find him guilty, he’s sent back into mid-fall to go crashy crashy and be just another fallen despondent investor. About that quick.
There’s something in the Eighth Amendment that makes that unconstitutional? Point out the passage, please. Word for word, letter for letter.
One Hundred Most Conservative-Friendly Counties
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Morgan cannot retire, goes the conventional wisdom, for there is no place. He wants to wake up to the salty smell of the ocean and the roar of the pounding surf. But he also wants to haul his beer bottles out to his backyard, and turn them into glass confetti by means of some personal sidearm whose caliber begins with the number 3. On a whim.
The liberal hippies have taken over the coastlines. So with just two requirements poor Morgan has ruled out everything.
It would appear, from this list, that perhaps this is not the case. When the time comes I’m too gray and wrinkly and big-eared to be seen in an office, this could be handy information to have.
Bang bang.
He Had it Comin’
Thursday, March 18th, 2010The excitement takes place from 0:35 to 0:37, and if you step along frame by frame you’ll see the girl doesn’t even flinch. I think that’s so great. Hoodlum.
Via Boortz.
The Baier Interview
Thursday, March 18th, 2010I stopped watching the YouTube clips. It isn’t my fatigue with political figures, although it is partly that…I’ve had jobs before where I had to sit down and talk to important people. People highly placed enough that one would expect them to have had coaching and grooming and training on how to change a subject when you find it desirable to change the subject. People who would be motivated to change the subject by what I had to ask them.
Got a bellyful of this already. Enough to last me a few lifetimes. Maybe that’s why I despise democrat politicians so much.
From all I’ve been able to skim over, it seems Don Surber‘s conclusion agrees with mine. Baier did an adequate job pressing a question against an important official who didn’t want to answer it. President Sort-Of-God opted for the ol’ “The People Don’t Care About The Process Now Let Me Talk About What’s Really Important” approach.
Hint for Obama: Blogger friend Rick cares about the process, as do I, and…well, who knows how many.
From the clips I’m hearing on the radio, Obama did a sufficiently decent job of weaseling out of this thing in such a way that the mentally flaccid will fail to notice His weaseling. Hopefully, your average middle-of-the-road folks will come away thinking…you know what, from what I’m hearing I do care somewhat about the process. This seems wrong. And I don’t know if I trust someone who passively denies having an opinion about it. I think I need a better answer.
We shall see.
I’m left thinking back on a column by Noemie Emery I have in my files.
Denial is a river that runs through the White House, where the denizens are in the grip of two major delusions: One, that the country really wants really expensive big government, and two, that Obama is “sort of like God.”
Since early last spring, they’ve been waging a fight with the reality principle, convincing themselves (and fewer and fewer in the larger political universe) that in the very next speech, Obama will recapture that old campaign magic. If people don’t like what they’re doing, the way to regain and to hold their affection was to give them much more of the same.
In the face of plummeting polls, stunning upsets in blue states, and gathering dread among Democrats, they carry on as if the year 2009 never happened, and they were back with their mandate and magical candidate, who was declared a success before he even took office.
Conservatism was dead, the age of big government being over was itself over, and we were all socialists. And if we weren’t at the beginning, Obama would talk us around.
:
On March 4, Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland explained the administration’s rationale for its renewed health care offensive: “The reason … we have the moral authority to do this is Massachusetts was just an act of God,” she related. “We had that seat; we got profoundly unlucky. … This election wasn’t scheduled to happen normally, so we shouldn’t allow this to knock us off course.”Peggy Noonan says there have recently been “interventions” (the term for when loved ones send you to the Betty Ford Clinic), as in “So-and-so tried an intervention with the president, and it didn’t work.” David Gergen said Obama reminded him of the old joke about how many psychiatrists were needed in changing a light bulb.
The President does seem to be in need of something. An actual intervention? Perhaps something along those lines…
He still seems so polished and smooth, so sonorous.
You know, it really isn’t His problem, it’s ours. There is something deep inside our programming that makes us think when we hear a person explaining something calmly, that person must have a plan. And, that if there’s a plan somewhere, everything’s going to be alright regardless of what the plan is supposed to do.
Both ideas are mistaken. Correct now & then, but no more often than a random-chance decision.
“Hoodlums”
Thursday, March 18th, 2010This is a dust-up from last week, but it’s worth talking about:
“So much time is taken up with addressing hoodlums, with kids who don’t want to be in school. We are talking about a small number of children.” — Janet Clark, Pinellas School Board chairwoman
Ever since school started this year, John Hancock Middle School in St. Petersburg, Florida has become more noteworthy for school brawls than academic excellence. Indeed, with over 60 arrests this year, the school gained a reputation as a hotbed of juvenile violence. One teacher openly wondered if it will take a death to get those in charge to do something to establish a safe and secure learning environment. What to do has been foremost on Ms. Clark’s mind.
As one former Washington DC bureaucrat can attest, it’s not what you say, but rather what other people think you’ve said that matters.
Stop!
That, to me, right there, is what is ridiculous about this. And you know who is reviewing this? Nobody. You know who owns that standard, who is ready to take the credit for putting it up…to say “yes, I am me, and I think that’s a swell idea”? Nobody.
It is the way it is. Don’t question it. You know why? Because it makes untalented people very powerful.
Just imagine historians studying this seventy-five years from now. They’ll have YouTube…they’ll have all kinds of electronic archives full of digitized news clippings, visual aids for sexual harassment courses.
What do those courses say?
“These standards and guidelines are put in place to ensure a more comfortable working environment for everyone.”
And…
“The important thing to keep in mind, is that it is not the intention of the person who spoke that matters — what matters, according to our rules, is how it was perceived by the person who complained.”
Get the impression this is one of those situations in which the word “everyone” doesn’t quite have the same meaning as you’d expect it to? Someone’s a ninny — just go with it, because you know if you round up a thousand people, one or two are going to be a ninny who complains about just freakin’ everything —
And the ninny sets his or her sites on you because of something you said. Aw you didn’t mean it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s up to the emotional vibrato emanating from the person who received (or overheard). That person is God, according to these rules that are owned by nobody. The ninny. Ninnies have godlike powers now.
That’s what happened here:
The outrage was initially voiced by some fellow members of the school board. Mary Brown, one of those members, had this to say about Clark’s use of the word hoodlum:
“They might be disruptive. They might be in gangs. They might be many things, but they are not hoodlums. I feel that that statement showed insensitivity to our children, and it certainly did not offer good guidance to our staff.”
Now Ms. Clark is getting blasted fellow board members, community activists and from the local NAACP chapter. Kobina Bantushango of a group calling itself the Uhurus says the word is racist and Clark, who is white, must step down.
Is the word racist? Well…
According to Michael Adams an academic who has studied slang, the word has no racial connotations, at least in its original and formal dictionary definition.
Stop it again. Right there. Yes, I know the next statement qualifies this…and I don’t care. Etymology says no, history says no, dictionary says no.
On my planet, Earth, that settles it. Not because my skin is white, but because I have red blood. Because I’m a non-weird non-alien human creature who cares about facts. That’s why you don’t want reckless folks like me making the rules I guess.
Anyway. It seems this story has a happy ending. Ms. Clark responds:
“I am not going to resign or step down and I don’t even think I’m going to apologize for using the word. We can’t continue making excuses when children don’t behave and disrupt the educational environment for teachers and students. That’s all I can say on that matter.”
Pretty awesome. It would have been better if Ms. Clark lashed out directly at the “Could Be Construed As” standard…just so future historians will see someone had something to say about it and we weren’t all so willingly living under a cadre of lawyers. In my mind that’s what this story is all about. Not black-and-white, not hoodlums, not dictionaries. That absurd standard we got going because we somehow thought our lawyers weren’t quite rich enough and our society wasn’t quite unstable enough. The idea that has no owner. The standard that has no signatory, because no one will fasten a name worth defending to something so patently absurd.
But if nobody else is doing that, I guess I can’t expect her to. That’ll have to be left up to relatively anonymous bloggers rattling away on their minibooks, in their underwear, on the living room couch, early in the morning.
That revolution is going to be an ugly one. Hope I live long enough to see it. The “Could Be Construed As” standard. It will be rated alongside the Spanish Inquisition, drawing-and-quartering, ducking stools and Roman crucifixions.
No offense intended to Spanish Inquisition people or Roman crucifixion people out there. Go construe somewhere else.
Thirty Warning Signs You’re the Office Bitch Everyone Complains About
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010Not mine. And a whole year of dust sitting on it.
But damn well worth it.
30. Domestic violence counselors make one exception for your husband.
29. Your hair fluctuates between Donna Reed and Cult.
28. You expect everyone to be one time, except for yourself.
27. Your nose is so far above your forehead, you risk drowning when it rains.
26. You offer the use of staples, paper and other office supplies, and then complain when someone uses them.
25. When the boss is on vacation, your weekly “visits” increase to five a day.
24. When you use the phrase, “the boss is concerned…,” it’s preceded by you telling the boss your concern.
23. You consider Kleenex a personal extravagance that shouldn’t be purchased with office funds, yet the $20,000 leather couch is a work expense.
22. You refer to your boss as your “work husband.”
21. You’re so anal retentive, office chairs vanish when you sit on them.
20. You host a birthday lunch for the boss, and invite no one else.
19. In the kitchen, you refer to Martha Stewart as “that novice.”
18. When coworkers use the restroom, they say “I had to take a (insert name here.)
17. You believe your so pure, you’re one shade away from translucence.
16. You have no children, caring spouse or social life, yet you find everyone else pathetic.
15. No one responds to your emails.
14. A wild night for you is bingo past 10 p.m.
13. The month of December is set-aside for you to coordinate the one-hour Christmas party.
12. You use the phrase, “I love her to death, but…”
11. The first person you call for a tech issue is the office douche that everyone complains about.
10. You masturbate to Beanie Babies.
9. If you were my dog, I’d have you put to sleep.
8. You a have a list of what you consider “rancid foods” that no one is allowed to eat.
7. Your best friends are your mother and cat.
6. You compliment someone’s outfit, only when you hate it.
5. You believe co-workers are fascinated by your menopause and hysterectomy stories.
4. You’re the only person in the office who knows what a “scone” is.
3. If this were elementary school, you’d be what’s known as the Tattle-Tale.
2. You relate to more than ten items on this list.
1. You haven’t realized you’re “just a secretary.” Face it, you’ve peaked.
“Feel Young Again”
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010“A Medicator Wants Everyone Else to be a Medicator”
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010The title is taken from the post previous.
Blogger friend Buck was admiring a cartoon about the democrat party being ready to commit suicide to get their cowpie of a health care bill through. I consider the situation to be a tad bit more complicated; to bottom-line it into a single sentence, I ask the reader to think on an America with a “public” health care plan installed — what kind of conservative movement thrives therein? Is it something we’d recognize today? Something closer to colonial times, right before the Revolution? Or something rather like “Conservatives” and “Labour” over in the UK?
Rules affect the mindset of a people who live under them. Dependency-based rules foster a dependency-based mindset. We are currently witnessing the slow death of independent spirit — within the world, for this is its last stand — and it is a homicide. Architects do not care how many other Architects there are, but a Medicator wants everyone else to be a Medicator.
And then the lefty-leaning George-Bush-hating anti-war Canuck with the dark curly bangs, KC, makes my point for me. On purpose. From Mark Steyn, via here:
So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that “now is the hour when we must seize the moment,” the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.
Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?
Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture.
It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.
I could be wrong, but I have the impression this point went sailing over the head of our friend in New Mexico. Yes, come next year the democrat party might very well be whittled down to a representation of a hundred seats, or fewer still, in the lower chamber of our Congress. Could very well be.
But the party labels are but a means to an end. The representation in Congress is but a means to an end.
They want to transform this society. They have not hidden this intent, ever, not one single time. They have been out-and-proud about this.
When they talk about how much they love this country, they’re saying not a single word about what the country is today or what she has been in the past. They are speaking of the love a sculptor has for a blob of clay, or a painter has for a blank canvas. They want to turn the country into something the country presently is not…and then they will love that. That is what they mean when they say that.
They are controlling people. And yet, paradoxically, the kindest thing you can do for them is to deprive them of this control. With control comes responsibility, and they do not have any affinity for that at all. They just don’t look down the road very far. It is their nature; they are impulsive, addictive types.
Architects and Medicators
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010It’s the source of all the arguing we ever do, especially now, because all thinking adults fall into one camp or another. And each individual further ensconces himself into his chosen role every time he does more thinking.
Defined originally here.
What follows are supplements to that.
1. Architects are not concerned about whether someone else possesses more wealth than they do. Their concern over whether someone else possesses more skill, begins and ends on the question of whether or not that other person can help them in some way, and whether there may be low-hanging fruit for them in the self-improvement department.
Medicators don’t want anybody else to have something they don’t have, be it skill or money. Jealousy is a common failing for the Medicator. They easily fall prey to “Tall Poppy” syndrome.
2. Architects see the entire universe as an assembly of parts, each of which in turn can be further dissembled into smaller parts. Eventually you get down to atomic parts that cannot be divided any further. As these parts interact with each other, you have an explanation for every single other thing that happens. Events have a cause-and-effect relationship with one another. Objects have a my-state-affects-your-state relationship with one another. Objects and events are not synonymous, it’s more like: Object, plus object, plus time, equals event.
Medicators see the entire universe as a situation. Objects within the situation are not separable from other objects, unless you’re casting an object as a catalyst for something that is good or bad. And when that happens, “object” and “event” are functionally synonymous. Neither is terribly complex, they’re just beneficial, damaging, or some other synonyms of those. George W. Bush makes bad things happen, Barack Obama causes “hope.”
3. Because Architects see all things as an assembly of other things, when a complex device is not working properly they want to break it down, find out which component is faulty, and fix or replace it. Then they want to put it all back together again and watch it begin a second functional life.
Medicators evaluate complex mechanisms in bulk. If the entire assembly does not work as it should, they infer that each piece of it must be contaminated by whatever flaw is inside, and their tendency is to counsel toward replacing all of it. If this does not happen, they get frustrated.
4. Observing a system set up by someone else, an Architect is rather unconcerned about how it works inside unless it shows signs of holding a solution to some vexing problem the Architect has been trying to solve. If he perceives that much to be the case, he’ll want to take it apart and study it.
A Medicator is distressed by signs that the system works internally in a way different from the way he would have designed it; interestingly, if the system achieves objectives outside the Medicator’s design potential, he is unconcerned with this. He wants things to be built the way he would have built them, even if this means they could do fewer things.
5. Consensus holds very little meaning for the Architect, who sees it as simply a component within the human social condition, which in turn is just another component within the universe. He does not see group agreement as any kind of a lodestar. To him, group decisions may be right or they may be wrong. If they’re wrong, he wants to use what’s right and he doesn’t care who wanted to do it the other way.
Medicators assign far greater meaning to group consensus. They are distressed by proposals that would challenge it or deviate from it. Mistakes made by Medicators are often traced to excessive weight being attached to the consensus.
6. Architects are deficient in perceiving the group consensus as it is being formed. These people are often the last in the room to figure out where it is headed as it is evolves. They are generally sluggish in figuring out what is going on around them. Architects are far more likely to miss a social engagement because they have been working on a project.
Medicators, on the other hand, are especially adept at perceiving the group consensus. This is often, but by no means always, because they are taking on a role in driving it as it evolves. They “grok,” which means to observe something and then bond with it, until the distinction is lost between whether the observer is manipulating the observed or vice-versa. When you watch a Medicator interact with his environment, the governing principle is Heisenberg.
7. Architects tend to have tin ears. They are often caught in situations in which what they say might be welcome on some other occasion with a different emotional overtone, but is not appealing in the moment because their timing is off. Wherever an Architect has ultimately distinguished himself as being somewhat competent in this area, it is the culmination of many years of puzzle-solving, with the peers around him being the puzzle; it isn’t the genuine emotional empathy it appears to be.
Medicators are more in tune with the emotional tenor of the setting. If they err in the timing of some remark or another, they demonstrate gifts as they self-correct from this, diminishing their social losses and enhancing their social gains.
8. Architects, being more in tune with the cause-and-effect nature of the phenomena around them, are more at ease with assuming responsibility for the correctness of a certain course of action. They view any research into the political ramifications of such decisions as an unwelcome hassle.
Medicators place much greater weight on the decisions of others. They regard decisions in a much better light if someone has already done the same thing. They are not good at blazing new trails and are highly uncomfortable trying.
9. Architects tend to see property and wealth as compensation for time, services or goods. Consequently, they see an unusually high personal accumulation of wealth as a sign of productivity, efficiency, or possibly theft.
Medicators do not see material property as a metric. Their tendency is to envision wealth as a desirable commodity that is distributed randomly. They see a distribution that should have taken place, and another distribution that really did take place — these two are always different.
10. An Architect decides what to do, from one minute to the next, as the culmination of some logical thought process involving tasks yet incomplete, the block of uninterrupted time anticipated to be available, and a schedule of priorities. Unexpected interruptions upset them. If the non-discretionary expense of time (job or chore) has already been completed, the Architect may indulge in a recreation. The recreation always involves building something.
Medicators decide what to do according to a more emotional process. There is “work” and there is “play”; play is preferred, but overruled if the work is urgent or has been neglected for too long. If nothing is overdue, the Medicator is far more likely to play. Play does not involve building anything.
11. An Architect is unlikely to suffer from an addiction because he doesn’t possess the requisite sensitivity to his own emotional profile to feel the temporary benefits of abusing something.
Medicators are highly likely to form addictions, usually of all likes and kinds: Substance, alcohol, co-dependent relationships, sex, an engaging video game, etc. That’s what they do. They medicate.
12. An Architect’s free time will all be channeled into one project, which will live onward until it achieves the point of evolution he had in mind for it at the beginning, or until he tires of it. If he does not have the resources to attend to this, he will spend the free time on something that might expand his understanding of the task at hand.
A Medicator’s free time will be channeled into something entertaining or emotionally uplifting. It is a hallmark of the Medicator to feel withdrawal symptoms if some singular favorite activity — which remains a consistent attachment, across decades — is not partaken within some amount of time. This activity is an activity of ritual, sometimes involving score-keeping. It is non-edifying. This is the “medicating.”
13. Architects rarely “Tweet.” Many of them have yet to figure out Twitter.
Medicators pretty much live there.
14. An Architect expects an arbitration or judgment to be decided by the applicable laws and the circumstances of the case.
A Medicator is more likely to root for the underdog. He will defend, and even champion, a case with an illogical outcome so long as the outcome is favorable to the party for which he feels the greater empathy.
15. To an Architect, building something that does not work is the same as starting to build something and giving up; which is the same as never even bothering to start. Intentions don’t mean very much to an Architect.
Medicators care about intentions over outcome. Perception is as important as reality, and in some cases more important than reality. They are often caught “remembering” some grand effort to have been a raging success when history recalls it to have been a dismal failure.
16. Architects believe there is some connection between what happens to a person, and what the person did or didn’t do to make it happen or keep it from happening. If the connection is not immediately evident, they believe with some diligent research it will soon become obvious. Architects see people as products of individual actions.
Medicators do not recognize such a connection between deeds and events — they even remain skeptical when hard evidence is presented to this effect. They see events as more-or-less random and disconnected from a person’s actions, and people as fortunate-or-unfortunate beings of randomness that coincide with these events.
17. Because Architects are more inextricably connected to reality, they do not see too many options available when a lecture is given to a student and the student cannot pay attention. You can lower your assessment of the child’s maturity, discipline, and grasp of the subject matter; you can kick his ass. You can wait for him to get older and try it later.
Medicators medicate. Even your relationship to your own brain is a collision of randomness, which if an unfortunate one, can and should be remedied. Prescribe some goop for the child and try again.
18. Evaluating a job candidate, an Architect would like to present a difficult problem and observe him trying to solve it. He considers everything else a waste of time.
The Medicator would like to know that a third party has assessed the candidate to be capable of completing some class of tasks. He does not care who this third party is, exactly, nor is he too concerned about whether the tasks at which the candidate is deemed competent, coincide much with the work that has to be done. Certifications, degrees, and the like, will absolutely dazzle him. He is not evaluating ability to perform, he is evaluating ability to bond on an emotional level with virtual strangers.
19. An Architect who votes for a candidate wants someone with values like his, and a good sense of judgment. Ideally, he would like a clone of himself, who has time to serve in the stated position that he does not have.
A Medicator does not want someone like himself in the position; he wants someone much, much better.
20. An Architect doesn’t particularly care how many other Architects there are.
A Medicator wants everyone else to be a Medicator. Convert or die.
“Please Give…”
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Hat tip to Daphne, who has some of the wittiest commenters.
Americans Losing Faith in the American Dream
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010But it must be alright, because white folk are losing faith faster than anyone. Yay!
The study of 1,022 American adults by Xavier University found broad agreement that the American Dream – which respondents defined themselves – is harder to achieve now than it has been in the past, and will be even harder for the next generation.
The data shows that “people are losing faith” in the idea that they can achieve whatever they set their mind to, said a release put out by Xavier’s Institute for Politics and the American Dream.
But outlooks were most grim among white respondents – only 29 percent of whites surveyed said the American Dream was in good condition, compared with 48 percent who said it is in bad condition.
Among black Americans, 39 percent were optimistic about achieving the American Dream, with 35 percent pessimistic. Latinos were optimistic by a 37 percent to 36 percent margin, and non-white’s were positive by 36 percent to 35 percent.
Internet Grew 20% More Hateful in 2009
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010A report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Tolerance shows that terrorists and hate groups are turning to Facebook and Twitter in greater numbers, and that the Internet got 20% nastier last year.
The report, based on some 11,500 problematic Web sites, social networks , chat forums, twitter posts, other Internet postings, found that hate-filled language is increasingly filling social networks. In compiling it, researchers for the Wiesenthal center found such disturbing online content as video footage showing bomb-making instructions and hate games — including one about bombing Haitian earthquake victims.
The report found a 20% increase to 11,500 in hate-filled social networks, Web sites, forums, blogs, Twitter feeds, and so on (up from 10,000 last year). It notes that beyond its role in our social lives, the Internet often acts as the incubator and validator of dangerous conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 and organ theft.
The FBI, Homeland Security, the military and joint terrorism task forces use this report worldwide.
Fellow Right Wing News contributor William Teach, from Pirate’s Cove, challenges Alan in the comments, to help out the campaign to pull Islamic fundamentalist videos off of YouTube and other spots…which might help pull that troubling metric down toward pre-Obama levels.
Wonder if he’ll get a response?
The Slaughter Option
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Best explanation I’ve seen of it yet. How do you get the monstrosity of a health care bill through the two houses of Congress, when you don’t have the votes to do it?
Under the “reconciliation” process that began yesterday afternoon, the House is supposed to approve the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill and then use “sidecar” amendments to fix the things it doesn’t like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process.
But Mrs. Pelosi & Co. fear they lack the votes in the House to pass an identical Senate bill, even with the promise of these reconciliation fixes. House Members hate the thought of going on record voting for the Cornhusker kickback and other special-interest bribes that were added to get this mess through the Senate, as well as the new tax on high-cost insurance plans that Big Labor hates.
So at the Speaker’s command, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what’s known as a “self-executing rule,” also known as a “hereby rule.” Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.
Democrats would thus send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature even as they claimed to oppose the same Senate bill. They would be declaring themselves to be for and against the Senate bill in the same vote.
So it isn’t about bringing health care services to people who need them, and it isn’t about responding to The Will of the People, Consent of the Governed, or any of that.
Back to the Architects and Medicators paradigm. People who bristle at the idea of being dependent on someone else, by & large really don’t care how others choose to live their lives; but people who adapt more easily to the idea of becoming human cattle, overall want everyone else to be as dependent on someone else as they are. Architects do not care how many other Architects there are but Medicators want everyone else to be a Medicator.
That really is what this is all about.
I’ve been hearing lately that the democrat party wants to commit “suicide” to pass this turkey of a bill — if the Slaughter Option, Reconciliation, whatever it takes, leads to some kind of bloodletting in November, well then the democrats say Bring It On. So they’re invoking a kamikaze attack against the American principles of freedom, liberty and independence.
That isn’t really what this is. You aren’t going to see a new wild exuberance for Republicans as a result of this. There is a reason we don’t want a health care system like this in America, and the reason is that laws like this have a deep and profound impact on the people who come under them. It changes the way they think. You cannot declare yourself independent of a government that is in charge of authorizing your next dose of blood clotting medication, or heart attack pills, or No-Doze.
It would fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between government and governed. That is why they want it. And once that relationship is so changed, it won’t be that hard to get back in again if you’re a democrat. To a nation of zombies, it would be second nature: Need my stuff. Put this guy in. He go get me my stuff.