Free Medical Care for Everyone - Except Vets with Service-Connected Injuries?

Truly, sometimes I think we've reached a new low in stupid.

Obama is pushing a plan to get reimbursement for vet's treatment from - their private insurance companies. Yes, you read that right. Although the insurance company is a private entity, they may be held responsible for continued treatment of veterans' injuries.

Is Obama trying to get this year's Big Stupid Award?

Keep it up, O-Man - you're a real contender.

Nearing 200,000

I just noticed that the sitemeter is nearing the 200,000 mark. It's been great doing this, and I'm looking forward to the next 200,000 visits.

I found this post in the Jonah Goldberg archives; it's particularly apt now.

People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.

The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”

At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own.

What makes me sleep at night, even though our retirement accounts are plunging faster than a Reality-TV participant's sense of dignity?

My human capital - I have a Physics and Chemistry certification, and that is a speciality in high demand. If, God forbid, I could not teach, I have computer skills, experience in sales, and a willingness to tackle nearly any job - and a history of having done so, successfully. My husband has the same capital assets.

Many people are willing to "do anything". They earnestly ask for jobs, not being too particular about the conditions or pay. I admire their willingness to work.

Unfortunately, if their skills are limited to non-existent, they may not be able to compete. They lack the human capital assets of education, experience, and knowledge. Think about that when planning out your future.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I finally got my copy from Amazon. It's been re-issued in paperback, and, what the heck, I had an expiring gift certificate, it was almost as though it was meant to be...

The trouble is, I'm on page 58, and I see no way that I'll put it down until the end. I have inspectors coming tomorrow, to evaluate the program, and...I just don't know how I'll manage it.

The other book is Outliers, and I have enough sense to postpone opening it until the weekend.

Moving Minutes from the Moving Picture Institute

I found this link through the Volokh Conspiracy. The Moving Minutes contains scenes from film that support freedom, independence of thought, and the American Spirit.

Grand Times Watching the Elite Backtrack

Not apologize, you understand, for their ridiculous error, but hem, haw, and stutter in a futile effort to avoid saying:

I was wrong.

Does anyone remember the Fonz having that quirky trait? He was incapable of admitting imperfection (although NOT incapable of BEING imperfect).

Imagine. Chris Buckley (son of the late, famous conservative, William Buckley), and the Davids - Brooks and Gergen - all of the Elite (with a capital E), are, at last, acknowledging the - uh, what do you call it - error of their ways.

When they famously joined the Obama Bandwagon, stoutly insisting that "O" was merely a centrist, not a hard-leftist, they contributed to the collapse of the dim Republican hopes. MANY of the elite copied their flight from reality. It was simply TOO dreadful to contemplate the non-elite Palin family in the role of VP Photo Op.

Peter Robinson, in Forbes, covers the uncovering of their awakening.

"The strange thing," Buckley wrote last week after listening to Obama address Congress, "is that one feels almost unpatriotic, entertaining negative thoughts about Mr. Obama's grand plan. ... One thing is certain, however: Government is getting bigger and will stay bigger. Just remember ... that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away."

"Just remember"? Coming from someone who just remembered, the exhortation might strike a lot of people as rich. But never mind.

Read it in full - it vindicates many of the Obama-resistant non-elite.

We were right - they were bedazzled.

But, why? What was so terrible about the McCain-Palin ticket?

The second part.

From Thomas Sowell:

Governor Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union.
Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."

The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.

The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.

Before the first trial of Alger Hiss began, reporters who gathered at the courthouse informally sounded each other out as to which of them they believed, before any evidence had been presented. Most believed that Hiss was telling the truth and that it was Chambers who was lying.

More important, those reporters who believed that Chambers was telling the truth were immediately ostracized. None of this could have been based on the evidence for either side, for that evidence had not yet been presented in court.

For decades after Hiss was convicted and sent to federal prison, much of the media and the intelligentsia defended him. To this day, there is an Alger Hiss chair at Bard College.

As it happens, after I'd read so many conservative discussions about the Hiss trial, I became curious. I found a library copy of the Whittaker Chambers book, "Witness". While not great literature, it is engrossing. And, by the end, the weight of the evidence leads to belief.

It does, that is, if you, like me, are not that special breed, the elite.

Even the evidence from the vaults of Russian history, declassified after the collapse of the Soviet system and released in English, that supports Chambers testimony, will convince the elite. It will persuade the non-closed mind - it did persuade me.

BTW, if you don't know who Thomas Sowell is, check out his columns. I think you'll agree that he is an original thinker, and someone to watch.

Braveheart in Our Times

OMGolly, (I'm trying to cut out swearing for Lent, OK?) you have to see this Day by Day cartoon.

Warning: Don't be drinking coffee while viewing.

How Can They Call Themselves Catholic?

NOTE: I became aware of this situation via The Curt Jester's blog post.

Kathleen Sebelius is a governor who has openly, publicly, and overwhelmingly supported - even promoted - abortion as a preferred "choice".

She has been asked by her bishop NOT to present herself for Communion, due to her advocacy of abortion.

The 25 "Catholics" who support her nomination are apparently also the ones who defied the US bishops group to support pro-abortion candidate Obama. That group is examined here:

Catholics for the Common Good

Sebellius has had a long-time relationship with George Tiller, an abortionist who performs late-term abortions, and who has been investigated in the death of one of those patients. From Wikipedia:

the medical director of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Women's Health Care Services, which specializes in the provision of late-term procedures.

His clinic practices have been a subject of criminal investigation:

Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down Syndrome from Keller, Texas, died in January 2005 after a multi-day abortion procedure performed at Tiller's facility, though reports conflict as to whether the abortion was performed by Tiller himself or by LeRoy Carhart. Gilbert had been 28 weeks pregnant. The autopsy stated that Gilbert died of sepsis following the abortion.

Last time I checked into it, the mother having Down Syndrome doesn't qualify as a medical condition. In fact, in 2005, from the KS Dept. of Health, the mother's medical emergency wasn't a factor in ANY of the year's abortions. So, despite the arguable possibility that Ms. Gilbert had a heart problem (not unknown in Down Syndrome patients), that WASN'T the reason for the procedure. If it had been a reason, they would have listed it as an emergency. Which it wasn't.

Some stats available at this site (NOTE: haven't vetted the accuracy of them yet. Will do so later today)

From that site:

There also exists a common misconception that late-term abortions are limited to medical emergencies. Nothing could be further from the truth. From 1998 until 2000, only one out of the 1168 abortions that Tiller performed after viability was done during a medical emergency. Upwards of 97% of his late-term patients weren't even from Kansas—they flew in from other states to have abortions that they had scheduled in advance.

That statement would tend to negate any defense of Tiller as doing only medically necessary abortions. It would also explain how Sebellius could state that the Kansas abortion rate had gone down, if she discounted the out-of-staters from those statistics.

Why were those out-of-state abortions performed? [I'm adding the official KS web site for those stats.] According to the KS Dept. of Health,

The patient would suffer substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function if she were forced to continue the pregnancy.

Well, that ends that discussion, doesn't it? It certainly seems to, since only a heartless villain would cause that major damage to a woman when the remedy is so easy.

Well, again from the KS Dept. of Health, a downloadable pdf report for 2007. Click on it to enlarge.



NO Medical Emergency. Just the Financial Emergency - Doctor Tiller needs money.

And Tiller is a Major Donor to Sebelius.