I Saw into the Future

We were standing inline at the Post Office today. Friday morning, 10am. A line of twelve people. Two clerks. Both moving as slow as molasses on a cold morning. I thought this is what government control of health care will look like. On Friday’s, I suppose the doctors and nurses will wear their union t-shirts.

I Finally Understand the Attraction

I have been pondering all year trying to understand the attraction one-third of US citizens have for some form of statist. I get it that bleeding hearts want all to be treated fairly. I understand those who want to exercise power through the state. But, I never understood what was in it for the rest.

After reading Bret Stevens review of “Last Exit to Utopia", I got it. They are masochists and need to be hurt. They want the pain that statist brings. That is something I can understand.

Now when you encounter a hard-core liberal, you can ask them if they view themselves as progressives wanting to make the world a better place through regulations and sacrifice, aspire to be like Pol Pot or if they are closet  masochists who want to feel the boot of tyranny.

Below is part of the review, with the key points in bold. If you want to read the whole review, you can find it here.

 

“Last Exit to Utopia" was first published in France nearly a decade ago. It concerns itself primarily with the failure of much of the French left to come to grips with the collapse of communism and the exposure of its innumerable crimes. The events and debates under its review date mainly to the 1990s, and its author died in 2006.

Yet the book, at last available in English in this fine translation, ought to command close attention because it was written by Jean-François Revel, who deserves to be ranked as the pre-eminent French political philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. What's more, the book's themes continue to resonate today, when murderous ideologies still compete for legitimacy and "enlightened" understanding by the Western intelligentsia.

Revel's great subject was totalitarianism, not just its practice but also its intellectual methods, deceits and disturbing psychological attractions. In books such as "The Totalitarian Temptation" (1976) and "How Democracies Perish" (1983), he dissected the mind-set of Western intellectuals who, living in democracies, found much to admire in gulag countries like the Soviet Union and Cuba and much to detest in free ones—the U.S. most of all.

Why was that? "The totalitarian phenomenon," Revel observed years ago, "is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or—much more mysteriously—to submit to it."

The tipping point, in Revel's view, was the publication in 1997 of "The Black Book of Communism," an 800-page compendium of the serial barbarities of communist regimes from China and Ethiopia to Russia and Cambodia. This massive scholarly undertaking, meticulous in its research and incontrovertible in its findings, was instantly greeted with fury by much of the French intelligentsia, which refused to accept that its own eyes-wide-shut apologetics for the likes of Mao, Mengistu, Stalin and Pol Pot were no less a form of complicity in mass murder than Holocaust denial.

….. Revel acidly writes: "Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not."

Quip for the Day

DENNIS MILLER ON WH PARTY CRASHERS: NICE TO SEE OBAMA DIDN’T BOW TO THEM

What does one trillion dollars look like?

Take a look here.

That was an easy and informative post.

Random Rants

It’s really difficult for me to say on theme here as it seems our rights and liberties are being thrown under the bus daily. If not Congress, then judges or un-elected bureaucrats.

Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman has predicted that the government will be involved in shaping the future for struggling U.S. media organizations. I guess the struggling ones support the liberal line? Not FOX news.

He went to say that quality journalism is essential to U.S. democracy and eventually government would have to help resolve the problems caused by a failing business model.

Somewhere in there I smell censorship.

             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It will probably take a mushroom cloud over some American city before some Obama supporters wake up. Even so, the true believers among the survivors will probably say that this was all George Bush's fault. Thomas Sowell

             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What I like best about Sarah is that she gets the progressives so wound up and foaming at the mouth.

 

Our Government ‘Creates’ Jobs? That’ll Be the Day

The economist Alan Blinder thinks government can create jobs.  If that were so then Russia, Cuba and North Korea would be economic powerhouses.

Only entrepreneurs create jobs by risking career and capital to start and build businesses that employ people to make useful things and provide needed services.

By contrast, the government and the unions destroy jobs. Currently, the mean government salary is fully twice the mean private-sector salary. That means every government job destroys or displaces two private-sector jobs. Greedy unions destroyed GM, Detroit and Michigan. Unions destroyed California and at least eight other states. And yet Mr. Blinder suggests expanding the public-sector employment that is so loved by unions and the Democrats they own.

Even Worse Than Carter

When Barry was elected, my hope was that he would be no worse than Carter. He has far exceeded Carter in trying to destroy the US.

I have tried hard this year to be tolerant of liberals. But, I have lost that battle. They are the enemy of all I believe. They have destroyed this country, not just for me, but for my grand kids. I want nothing to do with anyone that voted for Obama. OK, tying them over an anthill would be fun.

Now for Pelosi, strip her and leave her in the Routt National Forest during prime mosquito season.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

At some point, Obama may conclude that the vast President jet, the opulence of the Presidency, the power and influence at his fingertips, all that national wealth and more were not created by Acorn, community organizing, Michelle’s legal brilliance, Axelrod’s savvy advice, or Emanuel’s crassness, or by claiming that doctors needlessly take out tonsils and amputate limbs, or in general by sonorous tones promising to give someone vast amounts of someone else’s money, but rather through preserving a climate of freedom, respect for continuity and tradition, and government non-intrusion into the market place that encourage people to try to go into business and retain some of their profits — as recompense for getting up on Saturday morning at 6AM to get down to open the dry cleaning store, or borrowing one’s net worth to open a new stationary outlet, or staying late till 7PM to do a crown, or gambling that the new $500,000 crane will pay for itself in 5 years, or going under someone’s house on a Sunday to unclog the toilet.

These are the most interesting of times: we are witnessing nothing less than an attempt in just 10 months to reinvent the United States at home and abroad into something it never was, led by someone who, the more soothing, comforting, and melodic his speech-making, the more bruising, cut-throat, and ruthless the act that follows.

So it’s like we’re living in the late Roman Republic…

Here’s An Idea of What To Do With KSM

Bret Stevens is one sharp cookie. He writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs every week. The Journal’s offices overlook Ground Zero, which gives them a perspective on that event that the rest of us don’t have. His solution of what to do with KSM et. al. fits my demented mind perfectly.

I have long thought it would be a good idea to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices to lower Manhattan. In my concept, the men would be taken by helicopter to a height of about 1,000 feet over Ground Zero and pushed out the door, so that they, too, could experience what so many of their victims did in the awful final flickering seconds of their lives.

And since al Qaeda intended the attacks as a spectacle for the benefit of its would-be recruits, I'd give al Jazeera the exclusive TV rights.

If you want to read the whole article, Two Ground Zero’s.

Improved Health Care?

New Improved Health Care is proposed and is it good?  A  government task force said most women do not need a  mammogram until they are in their 50's and then only every two years.  It also stated that doctor's do not need to show patients how to do self-breast exams because they do no good.  That was the news that came out of China a couple of years ago. 

Now Barack Obama is president and has the Obamacare program which will help everyone, cost everyone less money and give everyone better care.  I take exception to that on a very personal basis - I had breast cancer on 2002.  For years I had mammograms and I had three biopsies that were benign.  Prior to the 2002 mammogram I thought about canceling  because nothing had ever been found, but decided to go ahead with the exam.  If I had been required to wait because it wasn't “my year” for the exam, I don't know if I would be alive today.  The cancer, although small, had metastasized into my first lymph node.  Another year could have been deadly.

The American Cancer Society and the Susan Komen Foundation are against abandoning annual exams.  Why aren't women up in arms against yet another Obama stupid decision?

On a different health care note :  Obama says that his improved healthcare will cut fraud and waste.  I have trouble with this statement.  I have heard about "fraud & waste" ever since Medicare and Medicaid were put into effect by Democrats.  My questions is why doesn't he just cut this fraud and waste since he seems to know how to do it - if his Obamacare doesn't pass, then will he  let "fraud & waste" continue!

 

Don opines: If national health care was a good deal, Congress would not have exempted themselves from it.

Choice and Competition

Please excuse my infrequent posts. While I never promised a steady diet of inspiring words, the events that have unfolded over the last few months chip away more and more of our freedom.

I don’t want to turn this Blog into a rant and rave cave, though it would be easy for me to do. I would rather to keep it positive.

With that in mind, here is an article on how the little nation of Singapore handles health care. They do it with choice and competition, rather than regulations and oversight. This is the direction we should be headed, not more into the mouth of the dragon.

What Singapore Can Teach the White House

I Can Not Make This Up

Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not “progressives.” They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Now we find out about Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer.

In a speech before high school students last June, Dunn spoke passionately about her two favorite political philosophers, “the two people I turn to most” for answers to important questions like “how to do things that have never been done before.” Who are these paragons? One was Mother Teresa. Dunn didn’t have much to say about her. Most of her enthusiasm was lavished upon her other favorite fount of political wisdom: Mao Tse-Tung.

Mao Tse-Tung! That would be the deviant monster who engineered the mass murder of anywhere from 50 to over 100 million people.

                *******************************************

And from the community organizer himself

Barack Obama, in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

They Don’t know Jack Shit

They don’t know jack shit and they have a vote. The trouble with a democracy is that the unwashed have a vote. They are uninformed, yet they have a vote. Nothing new - some Greek courageous generals lost their lives when the unwashed voted to condemn them.

Americans Flunk News Quiz

Affordable Anything

After political crusades for "affordable housing" ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many of the same politicians are now carrying on a crusade for "affordable health care." But what you can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything.

Again, what you can pay has nothing to do with the production cost. I can afford to pay $20,000 for a new 42 foot Fountain, a go faster than hell boat. Regrettably, that would not buy the engines.

Refusing to pay the actual costs means that you are just not going to continue getting the same quantity and quality-- regardless of what any politician says or how well he says it.

Steve Wynn said

Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history.  For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody.  The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for their labor -- whether it's you and I, or anybody else.  The people that are paying the price for this juggernaut of federal spending are the middle class and the working class of America.

Quote for the Day

Remember when the progressives used to complain that President Bush was "distracted" from Afghanistan by Iraq? If the U.S. is attacked by terrorists on Obama's watch, it may be written that Americans died because we had an insurance salesman when we needed a commander in chief.

JAMES TARANTO

Healthcare Grab and Unions

We all know that a good healthcare system can be improved by increased competition, tort reform, tax credits for catastrophic insurance plans, deregulation, etc.

But Obamacare is not really about medicine. It is rather aimed at absorbing more of the private sector — once more, to create a vast new constituency of government workers and beneficiaries, to ensure an equality of result in treatment and access, and to replace private health insurers with public bureaucrats.

Do you want an autonomous family practitioner, entrepreneurial, keen to adapt to patient needs and tastes, juggling 10 employees and a 2-million-dollar family practice budget, grossing $400,000 a year in profits, highly opinionated and self-reliant, using his profits once in a while to ski or buy a BMW — or have him transmogrified into a GS-something, at $100,000 a year, with government benefits, unionized, docile, and waiting to go home when his shift at the dreary government clinic ends, wearing his doctor union T-shirt to work and eager to vote in politicians who ensure him lifetime tenure, generous retirement packages, and guaranteed pay raises?

I had wondered what was pushing healthcare “reform”, now I see it’s the prospect of more union dues.

Loss of the right to do nothing

In his speech to a joint session of Congress last night, the president offered what presumably was meant to sound like an innocuous, or at least reasonable, analogy:

Unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek--especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions--just can't be achieved. And that's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance--just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.

First, in fact, no state requires individuals to carry auto insurance. The owner of a car, which may be either an individual or a corporate entity, is required to carry insurance as a condition for a government permit allowing the car to be driven on public roads. Individual drivers, of course, are also required to obtain a government license, which requires fulfilling other conditions.

Second, insurance rates are set based on risk. It would be great to purchase property insurance AFTER a hurricane damaged your home. Oh wait, Mississippi tried that after Katrina.

Obama, the Mortal

I enjoy reading Charles Krauthammer.  I hope you will find this article to be worthy of your time.

If I recall correctly, you have to “register” to read articles from the Washington Post. I use Meltmail for such purposes. I also have my browser, Chrome, save the password.

Obama, the Mortal

Old News on Islamic Terrorism

Americans are now focused on the liberals attempting to capture control of healthcare. They have been after this for over a century. It is the most important domestic item of my lifetime and if they get control, it will probably limit my lifetime.

However, this is taking our collective eyes off the more important issue. Our freedom being threatened from outside our borders.

I want to share with you some thoughts that are decades, even centuries old. After reading them, I suggest you will think they could have been written this week.

"The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam:

"I studied the Quran a great deal.  I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.  So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself."

And a newer one:

It’s about Islam and Allah, it’s NOT about Israel, oil, voting, cartoons, unemployment, American television, globalization, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the occupation of Iraq or any other material or psychological cause other than the one spiritual cause the enemy keeps telling us over and over guides and justifies his actions and has guided and justified the wars of Islam for fourteen centuries.

VDH 09/06

Obama and ‘Redistributive Change’

This is off the theme of this Blog. But, thought it well worth the time to read.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson082909.html

While I agree with VDH point, I think it goes farther. The spending frenzy has another purpose. If the US is broke, it’s bonds rated with Mexico’s, then the liberals/statists know the US will no longer be a world power. Game and Match.

National Health Care

Mr Wattson had no choice in health care.

 

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.

Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.

But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

Mark Wattson, 35, from Swindon may have been the victim of botched surgery after he had to have his appendix removed twice
To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured  -  a potentially fatal complication.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.

Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.

'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.
'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.

'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"

'I feel that if the surgery had been done correctly in the first place I wouldn't be in the mess I am today. I'm disgusted by the whole experience.'

Mr Wattson first went under the knife on July 7 after experiencing severe abdominal pain for several weeks. He was discharged but exactly a month later he had to dial 999 after collapsing in agony.

Mr Wattson was readmitted to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon after his appendix ruptured
Following the second operation his incision became infected and he was admitted to hospital for a third time for treatment.

He said: 'I had a temporary job at a sports shop but when I took in two medical certificates saying I had my appendix out twice they didn't believe me.

'Now I'm helpless. I can't go out and find a job, I can't go to interviews, I can barely walk and am in constant pain. Before the first operation they told me I had to have my appendix removed and when I woke up afterwards they said it had been a complete success.

'But then I keeled over in agony one month later and when they did some tests at the hospital we could see the appendix was still there on the scans.

'As far as I was aware they took my appendix out and no one told me any different.

'I have no idea what they did take out, but I want to find out what went wrong.'

A spokesman for Great Western Hospital confirmed that a representative had met Mr Wattson and that an investigation had been started.

He was unable to confirm what, if anything, was removed in the first operation.

Paul Gearing, deputy general manager for general surgery at Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, said: 'We are unable to comment on individual cases.

'However, we would like to apologise if Mr Wattson felt dissatisfied with the care he received at Great Western Hospital.'

Talking to a Liberal

A year or so back, we were having a conversation with another couple. I don’t recall what the innocuous remark was, but it infuriated the other woman, who called us names and stormed off. I was going to say something to her, but her partner said it would be a waste of time. I reflected on it and decided they must be like James Carville and Mary Matlin.

I guess I need to re-read Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal”.

Liberals have always had a problem debating with conservatives. They don’t really understand conservatives’ attraction to individualism and honor and responsibility enough to be able to come up with coherent responses when people say they want low taxes and a small government. All liberals know is that they are very smart, and everyone else is very dumb for not seeing how smart they are and that they should run everything. So they come up with childish name-calling, such as “conservatives are greedy” and “conservatives are evil” to try and shut up what they don’t understand. And they find there is nothing better than the cry of “racism.”

Recipe for Tyranny

Rose Friedman, who passed away this week, writing with her husband Milton in their 1980 book "Free to Choose":

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

Ochlocracy

I read to learn and I have learned a lot from an author I discovered a few years back, Victor Davis Hanson. We have read all of his books. I have even read Thucydides, because he wrote an introduction to the translation. Since he is eminently knowledgeable in Greek history, he readily sees the contrasts and comparisons with modern governments and culture. I seldom read one of his articles without learning a new word.

In the article below, my new word was ochlocracy. Which is government by mob.

[Did you know you can obtain the definition of any word through Google. Try it. Type Define:ochlocracy in the address bar of your browser. One of the selections should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy]

Now armed with this new knowledge, you are prepared to read Our Ongoing Catharsis. Which gives some hope that that is a way out of the current crisis.

Evil Mongers

Ronald Regan called the Soviet’s an Evil Empire and was lambasted for it. George W. Bush termed North Korea, Iraq and Iran an “Axis of Evil” and was denounced and parodied for doing so. Harry Reid calls Americans "evil mongers" and gets no rebuke.

A Personal Note

I have been a reader of the Wall Street Journal since I was 25. The title of this Blog comes directly from the base philosophy of the Journal for over 100 years - "free people and free markets." More than anything else I have read, it has molded my views. Through it’s pages I have been exposed to many opinions and always facts.

That’s all I wanted to say. I leave you with two quotes that are meaningful to me.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. - Daniel P. Moynihan

"Don't believe the man who tells you there are two sides to every question. There is only one side to the truth."

William Peter Hamilton, one of the first men to hold the job of editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Workable Health Care

This is John Mackey’s, the CEO of Whole Foods model for healthcare. It makes sense to me.

 

* Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

* Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.

* Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

* Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.

* Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

* Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.

* Enact Medicare reform.

* Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Here’s the bottom line, as stated by Mackey:

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

The solution is to make them responsible by giving them that responsibility, not having government further usurp it and make decisions for them. The most fundamental aspect of freedom and liberty is individual responsibility. The system we have now, as well as the one that is being proposed, works against that fundamental requirement and thereby lessens both our freedom and our liberty.

This isn’t just about health care – its about our freedom.

Poor Joe

I stole this from The QandQ Online Magazine 

 

Michael Moore has a post on his blog from someone named John Gray entitled, “A Day In The Life Of Joe Middle-Class Republican” in which Gray attempts to make the point that all good things we enjoy in life flow from government and liberals. It begins like this:

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

And so on. Gil Guillory answers Gray’s assertions in a comment at the Mises blog:

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He makes it with a machine he could not possibly have made himself. He does not know where it was made, or how it works, and may not care. He does not know the people that planted, cultivated, harvested, dried, roasted, packaged, freighted, warehoused, distributed, marketed, or retailed his coffee, and may not care. The company that insures the manufacturer of the coffee machine required that it meet certain safety guidelines, as established by the private insurance-company-funded Underwriters Laboratory. Joe has seen the UL mark, but is not really sure what it’s for or how it protects him. He doesn’t clearly understand why greedy businessmen might be interested in a safe product. All of this was made possible by libertarians who fought for and won the legal right to free trade.

He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water which he bought from Ozarka, because the local government monopoly of water supply bears the comforting designation of “accepted” and also tastes funny.

Sam Bostap also answers the post:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with bottled water because he knows that the municipal water system supplies water that occasionally has e coli and other natural organisms that will make him ill–after all his mother died from drinking water that was polluted by sewage after a heavy rain. Joe tried to sue, but was told that the city had sovereign immunity from such suits as a result of state law. If the water he pours from the bottle he bought at Safeway is polluted, he knows he can sue the manufacturer and collect big, so he feels pretty sure that it’s clean.

Joe grinds his coffee beans carefully because they’re very expensive as a result of the U.S. government-enforced international coffee cartel that exists to protect the jobs of coffee importers–heavy campaign contributers to Congress. He’s also careful about how much sugar he puts in his coffee because it costs seven times the world price of sugar as a result of the U.S. government imposed import restrictions on sugar to protect the domestic sugar beet and sugar cane industry.

I

Liberalism has become a philosophy of Western suicide

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
Thomas Jefferson

The nicest thing I can say about liberals is that they never grew up. They live in never-never land and see the government as a fairy godmother that provides for all.

Whatever else distinguishes JFK's “New Frontier” or LBJ's “Great Society” from Barack Obama's "New Foundation," this too is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard, from an administration convinced it can apply technocratic, top-down solutions to huge and unpredictable systems -- the banking, auto and health-care industries, for instance, or the climate. These are people deeply impressed by their own smarts, the ones for whom the phrase "the best and the brightest" has been scrubbed of its intended irony.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, undertaken by liberals, has ever advanced civilization or improved the lot of those to whom the largesse was intended.

If I were cynical, I would believe the goal of the current administration is to “bankrupt” the Treasury, to make us into a second-rate country like other socialistic countries - a weak country that would never embarrass the progressives sense of equality.

One of the prices of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to government, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether "change," "universal health care" or "social justice."

What we believe:

We believe in free markets and free men.

We believe that the only legitimate purposes of a federal government are to:
- Protect us from threats within and outside of our borders.
- Maintain a stable currency.

- We believe there is good and evil.
- We believe that free people do not war with free people.
- We believe that the promotion of democracy in other countries protects us from external threats.

My Reason for this Blog

I have resisted putting my own thoughts in the Blogosphere, as I don't have anything original to say. Others say it much better than I do and I will refer you to their work from time-to-time.

It's sure not to change the minds of those that I view as the internal enemy of United States - liberals - as they do not listen. Their minds are made up.

That leaves for a reason a place to vent.