I don't get much time to do basic research.  Like you, I have a job.  The people who oppose us, this is their job. Fortunately, there are people who do have access to the resources I don't (or don't have time to hunt down) and who've had time to reason some of these issues out to their logical conclusions.  Remember, liberalism fears logic, since it easily exposes their game.

I heard a number of things on the radio tonight, specifically on Hugh Hewitt's show, that finally gave me the arguments I needed to make for some of the things Congressman Gonzalez has been saying in his "newsletters."

Argument 1: The United States is a wealthy nation.  If Canada, England, France and so on can afford to run centrally managed health care systems, why can't we?

Answer 1a: As I've been known to say, do the math.  The population of the US is estimated to be somewhat above 307 million humans.  According to a caller to Hugh's show, if we total all the humans in those three nations mentioned above, they reach just over 278 million.  Doesn't sound like much difference, does it?  Until you consider that no single nation in that list even approaches our  population load, and we're not talking about the difference between 278 and 300.  Million.  So, I looked them up.  Canada, call it 34 million. England, 49 million.  OK, call it 50 million. For France, call it 63 million.  Throw in the Netherlands...17 million.  She came in low. I get 164 million, even with rounding upward fairly generously.  Maybe she had newer numbers than I found on the internet, or I missed a nation or two. In the case of Canada, we are about to dump the equivalent of Canada's population on a Medicare system that's already very shaky.

Answer 1b: Let's face it. America's military is absolutely unbeatable on the field of battle.  We are the go-to guys and gals when you want something blown up right now.  We still struggle with asymmetric warfare, but right now that's because...well, that's not the point.  The point is, that kind of battlefield prowess didn't come cheap, and keeping it that way isn't getting any cheaper.  Ask Europe, when hundreds of Russian T-90S main battle tanks show up on their borders, who are they gonna call? Ghost-busters?

Argument 2: The stories of medical rationing in those nations are scare-ups invented by the Republicans to politicize health care.

Answer 2a: I have a dear, dear friend who lives in Canada.  Recently, she was ill with a respiratory issue of some sort.  Another friend took her to the hospital and she was being treated in minutes.  They sent her home with a supply of meds, all free of charge.  Except for the crushing tax rate. Don't misunderstand me.  I love my friend and I'd be devastated if anything happened to her.  But, what she experienced, in the scheme of things,, didn't cost  much.  No MRI's. No CT scans. No expensive, cutting edge medicines.  And she happens to live in a fairly sparsely populated area of the country.  Remember? 34/307, eleven percent of our total population.

Answer 2b: How many times do aged people need to be denied health care for it to be tragic?  Congress claims they will get their $500 million (one half trillion, folks) out of Medicare.  Who gets Medicare coverage? Mom, dad and the grandparents.  One of President Barack Obama's "czar's" is on record advocating that health care be triaged based on the patient's value to society. Under eighteen and over sixty and the rest of society has no real use for you.  But I'll bet the kids will want some say in that.

Argument 3: President Barack Obama only wants to cure the ills in the health care system; the high cost, the lack of portability, the exclusion of pre-existing illnesses and a few other hand-wringers tossed in for good measure.

Answer 3: Me too.  But I'd like to die in reasonable comfort when the Lord calls, not when society determines I am no longer sufficiently valued to keep alive. I also have to ask why the conservatives have been almost completely locked out of this process, with the exception of a very few who are in no position of have real impact, and whose input has been ignored? 

Why do we have the bouncing-demonization of the week? Doctors who perform unnecessary operations.  Oops...how about those evil corporate executives... Or the Republicans, who have no plan, even if we weren't ignoring it? Or George Bush (pick one)? Or the Astro-turf, swastika bearing screamers with blue hair at the Town Hall meetings? Or those dastardly, profit-grubbing insurance companies... Or Fox News?

It is the attacks by the Obama administration on the ordinary mechanisms of American politics that lead me to be distrustful of him and his.  He's made repeated attacks on the first amendment, from excluding reporters who weren't slobbering at the sight of him during the campaign to declaring Fox News to be the "opposition" today.

He's brought on upwards of thirty political managers, the "czars," who didn't endure the "advise and consent" of the Congress, about whom we know little, including much about what they are doing. The federal government now owns roughly one half of the automobile industry, with no sign that it intends to divest itself of that burden any time soon. 
Trust me, after the economic collapse, when Obama hollers "Jump!" the nation's financial institutions are yelling back, "How high?"

If, while blindfolded, I am presented with a soft flower, a sweet scent and sharp thorns, I don't have to be told the odds that it is a rose.

Keep those emails going, folks.  This one isn't over yet.  If they have to force it down our throats without any conservative support at all, then they own it. That frightens them.  Which brings up another question. 

If this is such a great idea, and they are so certain of that...why are we still arguing about it? Surely our benevolent rulers would have acted in our best interests, despite ourselves, by now.

I would surmise that I was not alone in feeling a little queasy about today, the 8th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. Throughout the day I kept checking the news sites to make sure nothing had blown up suddenly.  So far, at least, there have been no attacks.  The next few days will be an irritant to my paranoia bump too, but I'll just thank God for today and hope for the best for tomorrow.

You see, I think we are setting ourselves up for another successful attack—successful from their point of view.  President Barack Obama has been the poster boy for ambivalent behavior about WWIII. First he's going to empty Gitmo, then he can't, then he's going to use tribunals, then he's not. For a while even the use of the word "terrorism" is banned, then it returns, then it's gone, then... About the only thing he has done consistently is apologize to our enemies and alienate our oldest and most loyal allies.  Israel, England, Honduras, the list goes on and on. We've allowed the Hydra-Heads of State of the governments most likely to destroy us to be feted at the UN while leaving Israel to wonder if they are going to have to face a nuclear Iran alone. Israel's PM has openly referred to Barack Obama as an "arrogant youth." Russia's President patted Barack Obama on the head and left him looking like a chastened child after their recent meeting.

I remember September 11, 2001 as clearly as if it were actually today.  I am as upset and angry today as I was that day. But, apart from a few of my friends at work, I seem to be the only one who remembers that day.  As most of you know, I am a high school teacher. Even my seniors were only ten years old on that day.  I spoke to a few. They knew the adults around them were upset, but weren't sure why and, for most of them, life proceeded pretty much as it had before.

As a nation, we are forgetting. Our children aren't taught how their government was designed to work and we are prohibited, as teachers, from inculcating them in the values that made America great.  We act as if we are ashamed of our past and afraid of our future.  It has somehow become wrong to go boldly, confident we are right.  President Barack Obama and his ilk have focused us on what our nation did wrong rather than on the changes we've made toward our ideals. We've discovered that Barack Obama's passionate oratory is a thin shell covering a man who hates his nation and has no respect for its citizens. The liberal left has succeeded in making us look weak and now, be weak.
 
Recently, some ruckus was made about Barack Obama's move to make 9/11 into a generalized National Day of Remembrance.  Given holidays like President's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veteran's Day and all the plethora of Days we celebrate, I'm not sure I know what he wants us to remember since it certainly doesn't seem to be the attack on the Twin Towers.  I read that he called for volunteers to his Youth Service plan, a sort of low-cost Obama Youth in purple shirts.  Brown is so passe' this year.

I have a suggestion.  Let's call it our National Day of Reaffirmation, the day we all stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and rededicate ourselves to our founding principles, our on-going determination to make this land the safest, most innovative, most productive and most free in the world.  Make it the day when our President looks into a TV camera and reminds the architect of the 9/11 attack that we haven't forgotten him and that when we find him, we won't be carrying any handcuffs or reading him his rights. Make it a day for us to practice the steely-eyed gaze that once froze dictators in their tracks, promised to avenge cruelty and liberate the oppressed.

You've seen the look I mean. Clint Eastwood once bestowed that trademark look on a TV interviewer and so flustered the man he had to break for commercial while he regained his composure.  It's the same furrowed brow, narrowed eyes and snarling scowl we see on Joe Biden's face just before he says something stupid.

Next year's 9/11 will be the same span of time away from national elections as this one was.  Let us band together and make sure that our freshly conservative Congress will declare 9/11 to be the day we remind ourselves what our freedom really cost and declare that we will never again come so close to surrendering that freedom to the evil in white robes that promises nirvana if we'll just let them take us there. Let it be the day we tell the world we don't give a damn what they think, we are proud of ourselves, our history and our freedom.  Proud enough that we'll resume teaching our children how our government is designed to work, teaching our real history, warts and all, and teaching them that the future is bright, with ever more progress, ever more innovation, ever more prosperity, and ever more real, tangible freedom for every American.  Let it be the day that we promise our friends that they can rely upon us once again to remain real friends, not schizophrenic lunatics who change our political personality like teenage girls change boyfriends.

Finally, let it be the day that we promise our enemies that they are welcome to run their countries any way their people will tolerate, but if they harm one American, they harm us all—and they won't enjoy the response.  We can be that shining beacon of freedom in the world once again.

Let's call it, oh, how about 9/11? It doesn't matter what we call it.  It matters that we do it.

So, tomorrow, begin recruiting new people for this network.  Join the other conservative groups, send the email and sign the petitions.  Donate whatever you can spare to conservative candidates with real chances to defeat their liberal opponents and send the receipt to your favorite liberal politician as a kind of preliminary pink-slip.

We don't have much for which to thank Barack Obama, but his legacy will be that he reawakened the Sleeping Giant, the American people, energized and participating in their government—just like the Founders intended.

Susie thinks Mrs. Obama looked angry and speculated they'd had a fight.
Biden-Pelosi jumping jacks? Again.
 
Not a Republican stood. Eventually, President Barack Obama managed to say a few things they were willing to applaud.

President Barack Obama stated that we were the world's only wealthy democracy that didn't provide universal health care. 

My answer? We're also the only surviving democracy that is still producing innovative advances in medicine. Once the healthcare system is wrecked and the free market no longer exists for medical care, then all that research and innovation will cease.  In a very few years, we will no longer have the capacity to restart that research without considerable lead-time.  When students aren't motivated to enter medicine, we get no new doctors or researchers.

He claims that healthcare is THE deficit problem? The mind boggles. He forces through the largest spending bill in the world's history, let alone ours, and he thinks healthcare is causing his deficit?  He's completely disconnected from our Universe.

So, what is his plan?

Asks everyone to take part, to take responsibility.  I assume that means to shoulder the costs.

There's the same old "nothing in this plan" nonsense.  His words, taken literally, are true.  The bill does not force you off whatever plan you have.  It just makes it impossibly expensive for your employer to remain with your current carrier.  I can just imagine how quickly the state of Texas will be on the "public option."
 
What is going on here is instance after instance of set-ups that permit these things we fear by not forbidding them.  Nothing says they'll pay for abortions.  Nothing says they won't either.  Nothing says this committee will determine what and how much.  But the "Secretary" will act on those NON-MANDATORY recommendations and make them mandatory. I want to know which alternate reality permits the government to dictate which procedures will be provided and then claim that they won't be interfering with our relationship with our doctors?

We make police officers show cause when they make a traffic stop. Because we've given them the power and authority to make those stops—we want to be certain that power isn't abused.  This bill is one massive flight of unrestrained power.

These are the things he wants: pre-existing conditions must be covered, they can't drop you when sick, no caps on payouts (blink!) and caps on out-of-pocket charges.
Let's get real here.  No one likes these things.  They should not be capricious.  But, face it, insurance companies are in business to (gasp!) make money.  That's what a free market is all about.  Covering pre-existing conditions means they must accept people they know are going to cost more than they are paying in premiums. Forbidding the company from dropping patients once they are sick means that they are left open for massive fraud from patients with un-provable illnesses that are expensive but have no real basis in medicine.

(The single most common employee comp fraud is back pain.  That's because it's easy to fake and impossible to disprove.)

No caps on payouts? Same argument.  Caps on oop charges? Still the same argument.  In addition, ordinary people are then ill-motivated to reconsider an emergency room visit for the common cold. 

No extra charge for testing? Where did that come from?  I've my share of health issues and I've never seen any sign of being charged "extra" for testing.

I don't have the answers for these problems.  I really don't.  I'm caught in the pre-existing condition trap.  It's not fun.  Real people come down with real illnesses that can cost millions of dollars to treat.  Every one is a tragedy.  Dropping a person who entered into the contract in good faith and then became ill is morally wrong, contractually wrong and damned well should be illegal. My argument would be the same for caps on total payouts.  My guess is that it's fairly rare, but I can easily imagine a person with chronic health problems running up a multi-million dollar bill.  That's the whole point in spreading the risk and allowing the insurance companies to compete nationally would seem likely to fix that. 

Capping oop? Well, with some protection against fraud, I'd be willing to force that one down their throats.  My point being, if you force the insurance industry into these conditions without some protection built in for their profit, they will soon be out of business...which I maintain is what the liberal left wants in the first place.

What the devil is this insurance exchange? I've read most of the bill and I have no idea what he means.  It looks to me like he's expecting a consortium of insurance companies to band together to provide a risk pool pro bono, i.e. at no charge.

For the really poor, the ones who can't afford the basic coverage, he wants tax credits "according to your need."  Shudder.  To each according to their needs... Where have we heard that before?

He wants to immediately offer low cost coverage? Really? Who will do that? My guess is we will. 

If you choose not to buy coverage, he wants to fine you. Everyone will be required to carry basic coverage. Excuse me.  If the government wants a check and they won't take no for an answer, that is a tax. So, you have a choice.  Buy the government supplied, inexpensive insurance, or buy the publicly offered, higher cost insurance.  Hmmm... let me think about that a minute. The carrot or the semi-auto pistol in the U.S. Marshall's fist? I think Barack Obama's got this financial incentive thing down pat.  Too bad he won't apply the idea to taxes.

Then the demonization began. His evil opponents, spreading lies and using scare tactics.  My God, they even read the bill!  How dare they!  About here he made some comment about it being a lie that the bill would cover illegal aliens. South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!"  Nancy Pelosi was apoplectic! That glare was worth the entire forty-eight minutes of rerun!  I understand he later apologized.  Frankly, I would have apologized for interrupting, but not for the accusation.

He pushes competition. There's the public option. He claims it would have to be self-supporting by premiums. Only 5% of the population would sign up. He didn't tell us that works out to fifteen million people.  Only 15,000,000 people.  Doesn't sound so hot, does it? Oh, and everyone else stays with their current, now more expensive, insurance.

There comes a flurry of claims and comments.  I had some trouble keeping up.  It would apply only to targeted areas or co-ops...of some kind. He wants Americans to have a choice. No bureaucrat will get between you and your doctor. He will not sign it if it adds to deficit. He will pay for it with savings from inside the current system, I presume he means Medicare and Medicaid.  That would be the $650 billion in cuts to Medicare? Sorry, Mom, Dad. Cut back on those pain meds to save money. Sorry you can't breathe. Don't worry. It'll be over soon.

At that point, I'm thinking, "You're going to have to re-write HR3200."

He goes on. None of Medicare trust to be spent. Commission to find waste and fraud. Prescription drug coverage. What are these changes? Why are we supposed to believe the government can effectively cure itself? He can't even start thhis speech on time. Wasn't AlGore supposed to root out waste and fraud during the Clinton Administration?  He did, didn't he? I mean between inventing the Internet and stuff.

Barack Obama wants to charge a surtax for Cadillac coverage. Suddenly, he skips over the problems of medical malpractice and, although he doesn't use the word, tort reform. Oh, we might let you experiment with it, but nothing serious.  No need to anger all those nice trial lawyers.

He claims the CBO comes in with $900 billion over 10 years. Much of it will be paid for by the wealthiest Americans. I had no idea I'd become wealthy.

Then he flips back and forth a couple of times, from good cop to bad cop and back again.  He wants to seek common ground. Strange...he won't meet with the Republican leadership.  Perhaps the ground is only common if he owns it? Then, he promises that if you indulge in more lying and fear-mongering, he'll call us out.  Say what?  Like, "C'mon, let's take this outside?"  A common bar brawl?  Or maybe IRS audits?  Visits from the ATF? More "fishy" data collection efforts?  What, precisely, is he going to do to me for telling the truth about his bill?

Back to good cop.  He tries to call this a moral issue. Doing this is a part of the character of America.  He sniffles a bit as he drags Ted Kennedy's poor wife back over the grief-coals.  The poor woman is actually crying.  What kind of man would put a grieving widow on national TV so soon after her husband dies?  He may have been a creep, but she obviously loved him.  Is that the character of America? Cruelty to widows?

They can't claim moral high ground on this. It is insane to accuse our side of wishing hardship on our fellow citizens.  We want these problems fixed too. In fact, we actually, really do want these things fixed, as opposed to an attempt to grab control of another eighteen percent of the economy and clear up this baby-boomer problem by encouraging them to die!

Barack Obama tells us that hard work should be rewarded.  That must be why they're going to tax the wealthiest Americans and charge them extra for having really good health insurance.  I wonder—is he going to pay that surcharge too? They want to have it both ways.

Back to bad cop.  He begins whining about the angry words.  He must mean the American citizens with the brazen nerve to disagree with him.  You know, the 1.3+ million citizens who signed that petition. Why, things have gotten so bad they can't even talk!  I guess that's why they won't even talk to the Republicans, or admit that our side has offered real suggestions that don't involve destroying an entire industry.

He just wants to proceed without acrimony.  "Stop fighting with me. Give up and let me do it to you!"

Afterward, I had to listen to Bill O'Reilly discuss the speech.  A couple of things occurred to me, or were mentioned during the discussion.  One thing comes to mind, and one of the Congressmen mentioned it as well.  Which section of the Constitution permits the Federal government to require its citizens to carry some basic minimum of insurance?  The states get to do this.  Their constitutions (or equivalent) permit this for things like auto insurance. 

And...it finally dawned on me why the "end of life" stuff is in the bill, and why it's added to the Social Security Act.  When last I wrote about that, it seemed benign.  Now, it's possibly the most insidious part of the entire thousand page monstrosity.  They want to pay doctors to do this counseling.  They want to encourage doctors to encourage us to die without putting up too much of a fuss!

When O'Reilly challenged Axelrod to allow interstate competition, he tried to blame Bush for not doing it and when that didn't work, he tried to claim the rules preventing it are a state issue. So, Bush is evil for not doing what Axelrod thinks the federal government can't do? I wonder what Rod Serling from the "Twilight Zone" would have thought of that logic? The government can force every insurance company to cover pre-existing conditions but can't insist on states allowing inter-region competition?

Nothing has changed, folks.  President Barack Obama just spent forty-eight minutes telling us that the fight isn't over.

Of all the things a politician could do, when it happened, I was perhaps more offended by Teddy Kennedy's murder of Mary Jo Kopechne by abandoning her to drown in the cold, dark waters of Chappaquiddick.  I do believe I would have been far more forgiving if he'd simply shot her and called it a day.

However, I also believe the Universe is a just place and my guess is that Mary Jo was permitted to meet Teddy again the other night.  Sadly, the real tragedy is the thousands of liquor dealers now destitute with Teddy's removal from the market.

I realize I'm being small minded and perhaps even un-Christian.  But I also believe that murder, even if the truth really was simply blind, stupid, arrogant, staggering drunkenness, is unforgivable and that the citizens of Massachusetts repeatedly reelected him to that seat was a crime forced upon the rest of us.  Furthermore, we all get to channel-surf this weekend, looking for some program that isn't blubbering about this man's demise.  Plant him, offer up his soul to God's justice and let's move on.  My condolences to his family, especially the ones who had to live with him all those years.  Look out, Arnold.  I sense a Constitutional Amendment coming on.  No one is safe.  Not even Jon Jon.
Do you suppose it would be rude to erupt in laughter the next time some nitwit Democrat insists we should pass ObamaCare because Teddy died?

Now that I have that off my mind, I think Hugh Hewitt may be onto something. As I understand it, he tossed off a comment that people could donate $10 to Senator Reid's opponent in the coming 2010 race, and then forward the electronic receipt to Sen. Reid along with a straightforward explanation that the donation is a consequence of the Senator's support for the ObamaCare bill. Thousands upon thousands of checks later, he opines that Reid may have reason to be concerned.

Apparently, Hugh agrees with me (only a hell of a lot more efficiently!) that the way to a Democrat's heart is by causing them to worry about their job.  He has now added a House seat to the effort, that of Congresswoman Betsy Markey, also running a close race with a Republican opponent.  I think it's a great idea and I would urge you to spend $20 in a way that's likely to be the best, most focused pair of sawbucks you'll ever  find.  You can pick up the thread at http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/

You may recall my Uncle Alex's warning about ATF agents barging into innocent people's homes on the scent of multiple gun purchases.  His advice is to never, ever allow a Federal agent into your home, especially without a properly executed warrant the describes specifically the weapons in which they are interested and why they want to see them.  If you can, offer to meet them in your lawyer's office with the indicated weapons, rather than permit them access to your home.  My sense is that it is much like allowing an officer to search your car.  Once the permission is given, he may "see" what he needs to see.  Furthermore, if you believe you may be subject to one of these impromptu searches, instruct your family in what to do if they are confronted by these people.

Apparently, ATF is conducting these searches in response to the suggestion that evil Americans are smuggling weapons into Mexico to destabilize their peaceful drug smuggling operations.

Even if we can't beat people like Prince Charley in "secure" Democratic enclaves, we can make them nervous.  Miracles have happened in political races before.  A fella named Dewey comes to mind.  Keep showering them with emails and keep an open mind for ideas that will work better than this one has so far.

Never give up.  Never surrender.  It is our country and we will take it back.

Film at eleven... 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the CAN,

Sorry about the lull.  Those of you who are teachers know what the last few days of a school year are like.  Then, selfishly, I took a few days to rest.

I'm sure you've been watching the news and thinking about ongoing events.  Here are a couple of things that are on my mind.

The President's push to get his health care reform, although we don't yet know for certain what that reform is, are terribly worrisome, especially if you're sneaking past middle age.  We do have rumors and leaks.  That information forms a picture that eventually leads to the end of the private insurance company and a single-payer government-run package made mandatory for every American.  

I know I don't need to warn you of this, but listen carefully to the words the Democratic Socialists use to describe the plan.  There has been mention of fines to be levied for failing to enroll in the plan.  There's the words and there is the practical result.  A fine for failing to comply is just another way of telling you that the act is mandatory and the penalty for failing to comply with the law is a fine.  In this case, since they intend for this to apply to every American, it is also a tax.

A little like that "voluntary" income tax system we all pay into...and face fines for failing to pay up on a timely basis and in which, if we push hard enough, we get to greet an armed US Marshall at our door one fine … night.

If health care is taken fully out of the free market system, consider the result.  

No more research effort into new drugs.  The rigid "market" in a single-payer system wouldn't produce the return on investment needed to finance such research.  Consider this: we are the only place left of the planet with an economy that can support that research.  If it stops here, it stops every where.  If, like me, you are holding on for a cure for what ails you, well, never mind.

If you are a man, and getting' on in years, know that there is a much better than even chance that you will have prostate cancer, eventually.  In England and Canada, if you are more than 65 years of age and have prostate cancer, the state will not treat the disease.  You are no longer within their cost-benefit parameters.  Get into your 70's and heart disease and cancer in general fall off the chart as well.  One wonders if the Democratic Socialists aren't planning on fixing their Social Security woes by letting us die off as quickly as possible.

On the same cost-benefit issue, consider the cost of devices like CT scanners and other, more sophisticated machines coming along.  These things are expensive.  If the single-payer system can't support new drug research, why are we to believe it will support new hardware or even technique research?  Or, suppose the Democratic Socialists fix that by offering big grants to the university system. (That's where much of this research takes place now, but the building and implementation of these machines is pure free market capitalism.)  The research might get done, but the money to build, buy and install  these devices will not be present.  Unless, of course, the government takes on the task of financing that as well.  Say bye-bye to yet another chunk of the free economy.

Certainly our letters and emails to our Representatives can help, but the real voting block whose ox is about to be gored are your doctors.  Please, on your next visit to one of your doctors, talk to them about this.  Tell them of your concerns.  (OK, terrors.) Ask them to pressure the AMA to take a direct and firm stance in  opposition to this health care catastrophe.  And urge them to write letters of their own.

You might even urge them to contact us.

For more information, check out Docs4patientcare.org

Our Heavenly Father,

My President is ashamed to pray to you in public, for fear of offending our enemies.  I am not. Like my nation's Founding Fathers, I know from whence freedom flows, and I am grateful.  Once, my nation writhed in a spasm of blood and ended the obscenity of slavery.  I am grateful.  Twice, my nation spilled its blood to help free the rest of the world from despots they'd appeased into existence.  I am grateful, Lord.  For almost sixty years my nation stood with its allies against a creeping political entity that claimed to free all while enslaving each.  I am grateful.

It is true we have sinned.  We have never made any claim to perfection.  It is also true we then confessed our sin and reaffirmed our intent never to repeat that sin, but to uplift those about us.  Suddenly, we have sinned, and no act of the past or future will ever exculpate that sin, except the sacrifice of our national integrity.  I don't know what we did wrong, Lord, but my President apologizes to a world that doesn't remember what it owes my fathers, and You.  He is ashamed because we were successful, and creative, and free.  

Suddenly, Lord, my own leaders have begun to resemble the monsters my nation bled to defeat time and time again.  The lie that the common man can be freed by punishing a few is being heard again, only this time, it is here.  A nation that was once uplifted by creativity, innovation and the simple right to keep the fruits of our labors is now fearful and hateful of those very same things.  Success is inequality and a desire to keep what we earn is selfish.  What was once a government of, by and for the people is now of, by and for the government.

I do not pray for rescue from the events of the time.  I know that this is my responsibility, and that of my fellow citizens.  I pray for the restoration to my leaders of the values that created this nation, made it free and proud, and once promised to make the world itself more prosperous and free than it had ever known.  I pray that you will restore to my President the pride in a people and a nation that have done so much good.  Let him not fear us.  Let him instead unleash us.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen.

I'm 54 years old.  I've been politically active at one level or another since I was a Junior in high school.  OK, I backed Nixon, but everyone deserves one or two mistakes.  Gimme a break!  I was fifteen.  The thing is, I can't recall seeing sequences of events quite like the ones we've experienced lately.

Oh, we were terribly upset by President Clinton.  We saw a similar run-up in the prices of firearms and even then, in the infancy of the Internet, the message boards were alive with "the sky is falling" traffic, much like today.  I participated in letter generation campaigns at gun shows and kept a small circle of friends informed about firearms related issues.

Well, that all worked out OK.  We picked up an assault rifle "ban" that was largely symbolic (Thank God liberals don't know anything about guns!) and a Brady waiting period bill that turned out to be a fairly minor irritant.  The point is, we survived it.  Clinton governed more-or-less from the center and he never told us directly that he intended to take the country to the left.

President Barack Obama has done, and said, many things that are, all by themselves, terribly worrisome.  He told us he would raise taxes.  He told us he would hasten the surrender in Iraq.  He told us he would be Caspar Milquetoast to Iraq and North Korea.  He's already hinting at getting involved in Darfur.  He told us he would be pro-abortion. He told us he intended to "revamp health care" in America.  All this, and more, he told us directly.

What worries me more are the clues—the little things, the single items that, taken by themselves are just the stuff of over-active imaginations and excessively paranoid mind-sets, put, like a murder mystery, together, point to murder most foul.

When he was asked about Second Amendment Rights during the campaign, he dithered about and eventually allowed as how further restrictions on gun rights could be subject to legal challenge.  That could be taken as the understatement of a trained lawyer.  Or it could be taken as the comments  of a person who isn't terribly constrained by the Constitution.

Toward the end of the campaign, he suddenly ejected several reporters from his airplane on the premise that he needed space for other reporters more favorable to his cause.  OK.  It was his airplane (in the sense of belonging to the campaign) and who got to ride it was certainly within his rights to determine.  But his willingness to make that change suggested another amendment in the Bill of Rights that he did seem to feel a need to support in spirit or by the letter.

There are still lingering doubts about President Barack Obama's citizenship despite constant attempts to marginalize the argument itself and bury the issue under loud cries of "Conspiracy!" as if the volume alone was enough to kill the issue.  Yet, if there is nothing to it, why not simply produce the document?  I have a difficult time imagining a matter of principle being worth this much argument.   It leaves one to wonder.  The solution would be so easy.

At the very end of the campaign, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the campaign via the Internet, almost none of which could be traced to the donors and queries about which were met with a sort of snippy "we don't have to and you can't make us!" attitude.

We have relationships with a minister that hates America and a modern
ne're-do-well who's tried to blow up America, yet no one able to reach an American majority seems willing to discuss them.  While this is simmering, You-Tube acquires videos of school children singing the praises of the Great Barack Obama.  I actually got a phone call from my terrified in-laws—who lived through the early days of Adolf Hitler and who had electric chills running down their spines at the sight of innocent children chanting the praises of a nation's soon-to-be-leader.  My in-laws mentioned the words "appeasement" in the same sentences as North Korea and Iran.  They could see a parallel.

Then President Barack Obama sweeps into office with the biggest inaugural blow-out in history, a sort of liberal kegger the likes of which we've never seen before.  So begins the fabled one hundred days.  The troubling thing is that it's become the time of one hundred lies.  The promises of transparency and openness only apply when the President deems it advantageous to brag about.  In quick succession, we have a trillion dollar bailout bill that no one has read, possibly even now.  Presidential order follows Presidential order, a quasi-legal fiction that both parties have used since World War II, but still have the apparent force of law.  Have you seen a list?  I haven't.  

In the course of ramming through that stimulus bill, somehow huge bonuses to corporate executives were carefully protected, then damned in quick succession while Congress feigned shock and President Barack Obama held his counsel until confronted, responding with a snippy comment about wanting to know what he's talking about before commenting...on a bill written by his party.  In response to this arranged outrage, the House passes a bill that is blatantly unconstitutional as a bill of attainder and an ex poste' facto law to punish those evil executives, while no mention is made of the Congress that created the regulations over the last thirty years which precipitated the collapse in the first place.

The new budget, in an environment free of earmarks, contains thousands upon thousands of "investments" we somehow committed to during that "other man's" Presidency.  Another promise bites the dust, along with the one about not raising taxes on we wee folk at the other end of the scale, the ones whose retirements went down  the drain, when he raised taxes on tobacco by nearly sixty-two percent.  It doesn't matter how you feel about smoking, you can't possibly argue that only people making more than $150,000 annually are smokers.

Suddenly we have this plethora of czars.  You might remember that this is a Russian word for emperor or king, an autocratic ruler.  We've had drug czars and this czar and that czar for quite some time now.  I haven't much liked it, but it's never seemed so wide-spread, or ominous as it does these days.  Today we suddenly have a border czar to go with the car czar the bailout czar and the bank czar.  This isn't the People's Republic of anything.  It is a representative republic.  At least for the moment.

Finally, though I doubt if this is exhaustive, we have two reports released by agencies either hired or directly employed by the Department of Homeland Security.  One, at the state level, warns that conservatives who supported certain right-wing Presidential candidates might represent a source of terrorism concerns.  Better razor off that NRA sticker, my friends.  Then, today, we get a report that suggests that returning veterans, the one group of people for whom it's possible to argue have really earned the rights in that collection of ten, might be a source of terrorism concerns.  And the people marching in the tea parties. And folks who don't like President Barack Obama might be racists.  Soon, conservatism will be spelled with four letters.

It's all in the clues.  One at a time.  One little slice at a time.  One bank, one car maker, one hospital...

I, finally, come to my point.  You've all seen the "sky is falling, send this to everybody" emails that claim the US Marshals are about to bash down your door and confiscate your Daddy's M1911A1.  Do you know where those emails originate?  I don't either.  But if I wanted to demonize a class of people who might be willing to defend the Constitution, you know, like soldiers, passing about incendiary material like that might be a good way to do it.  We've all had those thoughts.  No...nightmares.  I suspect President Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi worry about it a good bit as well.  

But we must never, never, NEVER threaten anything even remotely like their fears.  Our system of government provides legitimate ways of battling out this conflict between capitalism and socialism.  We agreed to abide by those rules.  At least our word should mean something.  

We must never, never, NEVER participate in hysterical "sky-is-falling" emails.  These things, no matter where they originate, only provide the means by which conservatives will be hung.  We must not allow ourselves to be marginalized as kooks.

Already the liberal press is preparing to describe the tea parties as the actions of fringe groups and, maybe, a source for terrorism concerns.  After all, Tim McVeigh was a veteran. Many of these tea party participants will be veterans.  The tea parties are unfocused, satisfying, but ultimately a vulnerability.

We absolutely must get organized.  We absolutely must use our right to be heard.  We absolutely must keep our heads about us.

I happened to see something on TV last night that aroused my curiosity. Understand that I'm working from Wikipedia here, so I'm trying to remove most of the "opinion" and just stick with the facts of the events reported.  Especially with a topic like this, the contributers to the article may, just may, have an agenda of their own.

The parallels I'm about to describe aren't tightly coupled everywhere along the line, but the points of congruence were enough to send a chill down my spine.  If this gets noticed, I'll be accused of comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler.  So?  Our President is responsible for his own behavior, not me.  For the record, I  am only reporting the events of the late 1930's that culminated in the creation of the Nazi state and the beginning of the Second World War.

History repeats.

In 1930, Germany had been hit with a serious economic depression, driven in part because of the crushing debt the nation owed resulting from World War I. The Weimar Republic, in charge since the end of the war, wasn't very stable and was being vigorously opposed by what Wiki calls "right-wing conservatives." It adds that this included monarchists, people advocating the return of the monarchy. In addition, the Communist Party and the National Socialists (we call them NAZIS today) were applying pressure to the government.

To give the devil his due, you have to recall that this idea of a parliamentary republic was a fairly new thing in Europe and many citizens would have been far more comfortable with a monarch simply because this was something they were familiar with. The more authoritative forms of government represented stability to these people.

Eventually, the "Grand Coalition," a sort of tenuous collection of squabbling but generally "in agreement" parties, collapsed. The government changed leadership several times and each change brought about a more authoritarian version than the last. Many of the policies of the president were implemented by "emergency decrees," what we would call Presidential Orders.

The general trend in the government was for budget cuts and financial parsimoniousness, which earned it few friends. Hitler, on the other hand, appealed to the military through a court case he involved himself in that resulted in the military acquiring permission to be involved in politics. In today's American military, while each member has the right to vote as they wish, they are restricted from active campaigning or other participation that might be embarrassing to the CIC. Hitler's efforts appealed to the farmers, the veterans and the "middle class." Keep in mind, what they called "middle class," we would call grinding poverty. Unemployment was very high for the time.

Hitler was not born in Germany. He was, in fact, Austrian and thereby ineligible to run for election to national German offices. However, he managed to get himself appointed to some minor job in Brunswick, Germany. Back then, the state could award citizenship and the appointment made Hitler a German citizen.  Now, he could run against Hindenburg for the Chancellorship.  

If you skim the list of groups that supported Hindenburg, they are nearly all described as groups we would recognize today as either conservative or communist.  The adjectives used are uniformly "fringe" and "right wing."   Odd the perspective history seems to offer.  One remarkable thing about Hitler's campaign was that he used an airplane to travel from city to city to do his campaigning, a tactic that was virtually unheard of at the time.  To make the comparison, Hitler's campaign was aided by his shrewd exploitation of what was, for the time, cutting edge technology, enabling him to reach hugely greater numbers of people in less time than his opponent.

As it happens, Hitler lost to Hindenburg, but the effort established him as a viable candidate.  Hindenburg was getting elderly and beginning to lose his health.  Like many politicians, as he felt his grasp loosening, he reacted by further tightening his rule, further alienating both his political supporters and the people.  When Hindenburg had finally managed to anger his cabinet sufficiently, they all resigned, forcing yet another round of elections.  This time the Nazi party became the majority party in the Reichstag, their equivalent of our House of Representatives.

At this point, Hitler demanded he be made Chancellor.  Hindenburg, still President,  refused.  The argument resulted in yet another round of elections after a "no confidence" vote.  In a series of political maneuvers that were amazing in their scale, and unheard of today, Hitler finally ended up on the right end of a coalition of groups that appointed him to the Chancellorship.  The job is the equivalent of the Prime Minister in other parliamentary governments.  

No modern parliamentary government would permit the same rapid-fire elections until the desired result was achieved.  The result would be unstable and perceived  as unfair.  Modern parliamentary governments have safe-guards built into their ruling documents that prevent this sort of vote-counting/re-counting behavior.  To be fair, I'm skimming a great deal of detail of these events that have no parallel today.

As it happens, one of Hitler's friends, a man named Göring was made the interior minister of Prussia, placing him squarely in charge of the largest police force in the country.  This would come in handy later.

The political infighting continued as Hitler's opponents tried to regain their majority in the Reichstag.  Hitler successfully fended off each attempt and was eventually able to persuade Hindenburg to call for yet another round of elections, dissolving the government yet again.  But, before the new elections could be held, someone set fire to the Reichstag building itself.  The equivalent would be to set fire to the White House.

A Dutch independent communist was arrested for the crime.  Communists in general were blamed for the insult and on the next day martial law was declared.  As a practical matter, it was all over except for the supporting legislation.  There came the "Night of a Thousand Knives."  Just under one hundred of Hitler's opponents woke up dead, their throats cut during the night.  The survivors took the hint.

Now, none of this has happened to us.  We have not had a charismatic leader emerge from obscurity to become President by exploiting cutting edge communications technology.  The United States is not experiencing a depression of anything like the scale faced by Germany and we are not carrying, proportionally, anything like the massive, crushing debt owed by Germany to basically hostile foreign powers.  

While the German government of the time was raising taxes and tightening regulations, we are spending huge amounts of borrowed money to prop up failing businesses and stimulate the economy.  As Hindenburg's government began to lose its grip, they tightened their political and governmental grip, extending their powers into previously unexplored areas.  We, on the other hand, have tremendous honesty and open transparency in this new government.  There has been no legislating by Presidential Order.  We can trust our leadership to do exactly what they say they will do.

There has been no serious question about President Barack Obama's citizenship and we have not had vote-count after vote-count until the challenging party obtained the desired result.  The majority party is still permitting the participation of the minority party and there has been no demonization of the opposite side.  

More importantly, we have not had any sort of triggering act of terrorism that would give an unscrupulous government an excuse to suspend the ordinary rights of the citizenry.  Our intelligence community is strong, secure and robust.  The new administration has appointed competent, confident leadership and we are secure from attack.  

I am absolutely certain that President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress respect the Constitution and would never dream of usurping power in the face of an attack, no matter how grievous the provocation.

A number of years ago, I worked for a major health care insurer, one that owned businesses vertically from the insurance to the delivery, i.e. they offered the insurance and ran the hospitals and clinics that delivered the services.

While working for these people (I was a programmer.) my wife was injured in an automobile accident.  As a young married couple, this was our first experience with a major medical issue as adults.  In very short order I discovered three horrible truths—truths that will doom any effort by the government to alter the health care delivery system in any significant way, given the economics and political will, that would be to our benefit.

Truth one: Insurance companies are not in the business of paying claims.  The function of an insurance company is to collect their payments, invest that cash in the market, or commodities, or whatever they think is making the most money at the moment, and delay paying out any claims as long as possible to increase their "float" on your payments.  They are making money with your money and hoping you stay healthy long enough for them to maximize the return on their protection money.

Truth two: Insurance companies not only have no internal loyalty, they actually engage in actively cheating their various internal divisions.   The hospital run by the same company that runs the insurance division will over-charge and fraudulently bill the insurance division, knowing that the difference in cash will eventually be made up by the increase in premiums or in rejected claims. (We sorry, but that isn't covered...) They are perfectly safe in doing this.  It's rather like having your wife sign your paycheck with your name.  It's not like you're going to complain.

Truth three: Insurance companies have no shred of loyalty to their own employees.  I eventually left the company because I was being asked to write code that I felt was at best morally wrong if not actually illegal.

Apart from Truth Three, the first two are the principle reason why the liberal administration wants into the insurance business.  The profit potential is enormous.  If ever an organization was better prepared to tie actions up in red tape and senseless delays, it is the Federal government.  If ever an organization was better prepared to pointedly ignore the right hand's actions while wringing the left, it is the Federal government.

Even supposing an honest effort to pay claims, an insurance scheme is predicated on the basic idea that the consumer is betting they will become ill and need the insurance before they pay the equivalent amount in premiums.  The insurance company is depending upon having a customer population that is, by percentage, healthy enough that most of the customer base loses that bet.  The healthy ones pay for the sick ones.

That may have been a good bet at one time, on both sides, in the beginning.  However, today, one trip to the ER can cost tens of thousands of dollars.  Even a short hospital stay will do the same.  In only one encounter with illness a customer will obligate the insurance company to many times what that company will ever collect in payments from that customer.  Almost every family will have at least one birth in their lifetimes.  As we "boomers" age, so rises the certainty that we will win that bet—big time.  Most of us are far beyond the Maker's original design parameters and the cost of maintaining our lives is growing rapidly.

Without the cheating; baring enormous expansions in "risk base," i.e. membership numbers, thus making more healthy customers available to pay for the sick ones; without the government willing to step in and assume those costs, the insurance industry is doomed.  Think about it. 

Ask yourself...why does the government want to extend insurance coverage (and thus premiums) to ever broader classes of citizens?  Did you happen to notice the huge increase in the tax on tobacco?  That was justified as a means of paying for extended health care coverage for children.  If the government begins paying for the health care costs, they will do what any business does when the cost of doing business rises—they will pass the cost along to the consumer.  In this case, who is the consumer? 

April 15th ring a bell?

I keep an eye on the FoxNews web site during the day.  Items flash by and often, if you don't catch it while it's at the top of the "Breaking News" heap, you miss it.  Three items passed by today that have me concerned.

A news item written by Joshua Miller on FoxNews.com:  Mr. Miller reports on a government information collection agency called a fusion center in Missouri.  It is called the Missouri Information Analysis Center. It is one of up to 70 such centers throughout the United States.  As I understand this article, these centers are run by the Department of Homeland Security.   

These centers were set up to prevent a repeat of the failure of internal police agencies to realize the threat posed by the 9/11 hijackers.  OK...that part is  good.  However, the downside is that these kinds of things sometimes get into areas we'd rather not for lack of anything better to do.  What I mean by that is that these efforts find themselves looking about for something to do to justify their continued existence.

A report leaked from this agency reveals that certain behaviors might be used to identify persons who could be terrorists.  For example, if you have a Ron Paul sticker on your bumper, or if you supported Chuck Baldwin or Bob Barr, third party candidates for president, you might belong to a militia movement.  If you are anti-abortion or if you believe in theories that end up with a socialist America, you might belong to a militia.  If you are in possession of material from the Constitutional Party, the Campaign for Liberty, or the Libertarian Party, you might belong to a militia.

I intend to complain.  Oddly enough, the ACLU will be right there with me.  Their national security policy counsel, Michael German is quoted as saying the report "crosses the line."

I am terrified that President Barack Obama's agenda might lead exactly there.  This is why I am so determined to keep writing and keep urging you to write, and collect others to write, to do everything we can to prevent this horrible eventuality.  There is, somewhere, a line I will not cross.

In another report by Lee Ross, also on FoxNews, Democrat Barney Frank remarked that he hoped no challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act reach the Supreme Court while "that homophobe Antonin Scalia" has too many assenting votes on the current Court.

Rep. Frank makes no secret of his sexual orientation.  He is gay.  We discovered this years back when his partner was arrested for providing, well, services for pay out of Rep. Frank's apartment in D.C.  Rep. Frank is chairman of the House Banking committee, the architect of much of the current economic meltdown.  Now he has spoken out against a Supreme Court Justice in a particularly nasty and vile way.  Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't care that Rep. Frank is gay.  I didn't want to know in the first place.  Justice Scalia dissented in a 2003 case that overturned consensual sodomy laws in the U.S.  That makes him a homophobe.

This is just one more instance of the liberal tactic of screaming epithets instead of arguing issues.  It's ugly.  It's inappropriate to a member of the House.  Rep. Frank lives in a rock and he's throwing glass houses.

 In a story by the AP (no writer attributed) President Barack Obama has finally outlined its energy program that draws on the stimulus package, using $39 billion from the DOE and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy.

This sounds great.  There are a couple of facets of this that concern me.  Obama's campaign (remember, before he was President) was pushing for "clean coal" technology.  No such thing exists.  Never has.  Very unlikely it ever will.  

The other concern, apart from issues of competency, is that the announcement includes the comment that they want to invest billions in research, not only into renewable energy sources, but efforts to reduce climate change.  That is cap-and-trade.  Today, the EPA declared greenhouse gases to be a hazard to human life.  Step one for cap-and-trade.

Much of our economic woes are the result of the creation of an industry that was trading in a commodity that didn't exist, i.e. the packaging of low-interest mortgages and the changes, up and down, of their perceived values over time as the notes are paid off.  Our economy nearly chugged off the proverbial cliff-face because of trading in a non-existent investment device.  Paperwork.

Cap-and-trade is the same idea.  A company that sequesters, i.e. that takes carbon from the environment, gets vouchers in return, which they can then sell, at some market value, to industries that introduce carbon into the environment.  Take a quick guess as to who gets to pay for those vouchers when your electric company needs more.  Now you have another market busily trading money on the value of something that doesn't exist and can't be quantified in any reasonable way.

That's enough for one night, folks.

Time is short.  Keep writing those letters.  Keep trying to get new members for the network.  Do whatever you can to stop the theft of our country.