Hidden Cost to Socialized Medicine - Personal Privacy
An e-mail, "Crazy - But Maybe Not" hit my in-box. The text following the link to an ACLU scare video warned, "This is funny, but the scary part about it is that it's probably not too far away from being reality."
A "simulation" follows of how troubling ordering your favorite pizza may become. We see a mock "Pizza Palace" call-center computer screen with the text, "Detecting phone number... Detecting National ID...Loading record.."
We learn (along with the hungry caller) that Pizza Palace has his health records, detail of subscriptions and family information because they "just hooked into the system". The caller wants a double-meat pie and is informed that, based on his history of high cholesterol and blood pressure, he'll have to ante-up for the $20 surcharge and sign a waiver for associated health risks at time of delivery. That can be waived if he orders the bean-sprout covered pizza facsimile.
If we rely on the Nanny State to take care of us, you can count on that same Nanny collecting lots of personal information and imposing certain non-negotiable requirements on "the children"- which is all of us according to framers of the Nanny State. Want evidence? Check out John Edwards' ideas about government mandated doctor visits. Edwards has such silky locks, how could he be Big Brother?
The ACLU wanted me scared - but the scenario sounds right to me. There will be costs to "free" health care, count on it. When it's time to vote, I'll be casting mine for personal privacy, personal accountability, and keeping the government out of "managing" my health, thanks.
If we're so thick as a nation that we should ever adopt taxpayer-funded "Universal Health Care", you can expect this kind of trampling of personal privacy, after all, how can the govermment manage health without any personal information?
If "everybody" is going to be granted carte blanche with our tax dollars, we'll need to know when, how long, and at what intensity-level they're on the treadmill, as well as what food they're eating, how much and how late at night. And they'll need health metrics for each of us, like regular cholesterol, blood pressure, body-mass index, and urinalysis.
If there's to be any hope of making this pot-and-pizza-fueled massive federal social program work, they'll have to implement accountability measures to keep the whole system from going bankrupt. If you want in on the health gravy-train (an oxymoron?), you're going to have to show that you're taking care of yourself. Only fair isn't it? There are only so many tax dollars in the budget and it wouldn't be fair to let Twinkie King's quadruple bypass eat up the town Eagle Scout's annual check-up allowance, would it? Read the article at the link above for an eye-opener about obesity causing health-care cost hikes even larger than those caused by smoking or problem drinking.
The bright-side is, we don't have to turn over our health decisions to a bloated, federal bureaucracy. We don't need to super-size medicine, we need Healthcare Unplugged. Just each of us and our doctor. Doc takes care of us and is paid by us which means he works for us; not an HMO geared to profit stockholders. Isn't the job of doctors keeping us, not an investment portfolio, healthy? The bonus? Our private, personal information remains just that.
Look around. As a general rule, bigger is not better. Not big government, not big business. The bigger administrative bodies get, the less personal and responsive they become. Do we really want to take one of the most personal things in our lives - our own health - and make a gigantic federal bureaucracy responsible for it? When we need responsiveness, do we want to turn to the feds or to small, efficient, local organizations? When were you last "very satisfied" with the service you received from a federal agency? A state agency? See my point?
If you've read this far and still get all misty thinking nationalized health care is "the answer"consider the opinion of Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science, "We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care. Instead of letting people hire their own physicians and pay them, no one pays his or her own medical bills. Instead, there's a third party payment system. It is a communist system and it has a communist result...we've seen costs skyrocket. Nobody is happy: physicians don't like it, patients don't like it. Why? Because none of them are responsible for themselves. You no longer have a situation in which a patient chooses a physician, receives a service, gets charged, and pays for it. There is no direct relation between the patient and the physician. The physician is an employee of an insurance company or an employee of the government. Today, a third party pays the bills. As a result, no one who visits the doctor asks what the charge is going to be—somebody else is going to take care of that. The end result is third party payment and, worst of all, third party treatment.
Mr. Friedman's book Free To Choose is a must-read in understanding the economic choices we must make to preserve Freedom for ourselves and future generations.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
God's SEAL: Mother Teresa
"...the body can take damn near anything. It's the mind that needs training. Can you handle injustice? Can you cope with unfairness and teremendous setbacks? Can you come back with your jaw set, determined, swearing to God you will never quit? That's what we're looking for." - Reno Alberto, Instructor, U.S. Navy / SEALS
In an August 24, 2007 New York Daily News article Mother Teresa was said to have"...spent her last 50 years secretly struggling with doubts about her faith", based on her letters. She requested that they be destroyed but they have been preserved by the Catholic Church and are published in a new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light .
A few quotes give a sense of the intensity of her struggle.
"If there be God - please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul,"
"There is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work,'" she wrote in 1953.
She referred to Jesus as "the Absent One" as he seemingly disappeared after speaking to her in visions and conversations in 1946. She was 36 and a convent teacher riding on a train in India. Christ spoke to her directly, saying, "Come be My light."
To hang on doggedly through feelings of abandonment, doubt and emptiness, to complete her mission when it would have been understandable to give up is proof of a remarkable Faith and toughness. The SEALS are looking for this kind of toughness. So is someone else.
"...the body can take damn near anything. It's the mind that needs training. Can you handle injustice? Can you cope with unfairness and teremendous setbacks? Can you come back with your jaw set, determined, swearing to God you will never quit? That's what we're looking for." - Reno Alberto, Instructor, U.S. Navy / SEALS
In an August 24, 2007 New York Daily News article Mother Teresa was said to have"...spent her last 50 years secretly struggling with doubts about her faith", based on her letters. She requested that they be destroyed but they have been preserved by the Catholic Church and are published in a new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light .
A few quotes give a sense of the intensity of her struggle.
"If there be God - please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul,"
"There is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work,'" she wrote in 1953.
She referred to Jesus as "the Absent One" as he seemingly disappeared after speaking to her in visions and conversations in 1946. She was 36 and a convent teacher riding on a train in India. Christ spoke to her directly, saying, "Come be My light."
To hang on doggedly through feelings of abandonment, doubt and emptiness, to complete her mission when it would have been understandable to give up is proof of a remarkable Faith and toughness. The SEALS are looking for this kind of toughness. So is someone else.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Doubts?Talking with a friend, the subject of historical evidence outside the New Testament for Jesus' existence came up. She said that since the Romans kept meticulous records (and she was unaware of any documenting Him) He must not have existed. Rather Jesus was a mythical invention of a people who longed deeply for God among them.
There are historical references to Jesus outside the New Testament. A 1-minute Google search will tell you that. Some of the best by historian Flavius Josephus are recognized by scholars to have been corrupted in part over the centuries. There is consensus by experts of both Ancient and Biblical History that Josephus did write about Jesus. The likely corruption is the statement that Jesus "was the Christ" - something that Josephus, a Jewish historian, would not have said or he would be known as a Christian historian.
With modern perspective and most of the world familiar with Jesus and His teachings it seems unfathomable that the Romans wouldn't have documented His life more fully. But in proper historical context, a poor, Jewish carpenter's son in this forgotten corner of a sprawling empire; who was killed for His teachings at the demand not of Romans, but of His people (the local Jewish leaders) would not have drawn the attention of contemporary Roman historians.
There's also documentation of Christian martyrs who held to their belief in Christ and His teachings right up to death by crucifixion, being eaten by wild animals, burning, etc... Would any of us today so stubbornly uphold faith in a myth? If you answer no, why would they? What would have made them different?
Another point that intrigued me as I researched the historicity of Jesus is this. Some historians observe that while proof of Christ's existence in the form of historical writings is thin, we actually know more about His ideas that we do about those of Alexander the Great.
What stirred me as we talked was not a desire as a Christian to evangelize but alarm at the sheer untruth. When we begin to assume things on important questions without taking a single minute to educate ourselves, to discover that there are historical, non-biblical accounts of Him as a real person, we are in trouble.
Question all you like whether Jesus was who He said He was, whether or not He has been a positive influence on humanity or the value of His teachings. But don't say that he never existed without knocking the dust off of your mouse pad. That is a knowable fact.
There are historical references to Jesus outside the New Testament. A 1-minute Google search will tell you that. Some of the best by historian Flavius Josephus are recognized by scholars to have been corrupted in part over the centuries. There is consensus by experts of both Ancient and Biblical History that Josephus did write about Jesus. The likely corruption is the statement that Jesus "was the Christ" - something that Josephus, a Jewish historian, would not have said or he would be known as a Christian historian.
With modern perspective and most of the world familiar with Jesus and His teachings it seems unfathomable that the Romans wouldn't have documented His life more fully. But in proper historical context, a poor, Jewish carpenter's son in this forgotten corner of a sprawling empire; who was killed for His teachings at the demand not of Romans, but of His people (the local Jewish leaders) would not have drawn the attention of contemporary Roman historians.
There's also documentation of Christian martyrs who held to their belief in Christ and His teachings right up to death by crucifixion, being eaten by wild animals, burning, etc... Would any of us today so stubbornly uphold faith in a myth? If you answer no, why would they? What would have made them different?
Another point that intrigued me as I researched the historicity of Jesus is this. Some historians observe that while proof of Christ's existence in the form of historical writings is thin, we actually know more about His ideas that we do about those of Alexander the Great.
What stirred me as we talked was not a desire as a Christian to evangelize but alarm at the sheer untruth. When we begin to assume things on important questions without taking a single minute to educate ourselves, to discover that there are historical, non-biblical accounts of Him as a real person, we are in trouble.
Question all you like whether Jesus was who He said He was, whether or not He has been a positive influence on humanity or the value of His teachings. But don't say that he never existed without knocking the dust off of your mouse pad. That is a knowable fact.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Global Warming vs. "Death to America!!!"
by Thomas, contibutor
I was shopping for sunscreen for my little boy on a day trip to the mountains and the only open store was this little hippie giftshop next to a hotel. Purchasing sunscreen is something that my wife and I do even though we don't know the science behind why we do it or how good sunscreen actually is for the human body. Barbara the shopkeeper was a tarot card reader and intuitive healer, and the customer next to me in line happened to mention that she was from Anchorage.
Just making friendly conversation, I asked if it was as cold in Alaska as people in the continental U.S. might think. Her response was a compelling description about the reality of climate change over the past 35 years. She said, "you really see global warming more when you get closer to the poles. That is certainly true in Anchorage. In the early 1970s when I moved there, we had frequent winter temperature readings below negative 30, now it is rare to go below negative 15!"
Since it was my turn to pay for the sunscreen I missed the opportunity to ask her this question:
"Were you aware that in 1972 when you moved to Anchorage, Newsweek was running articles about the coming "Ice Age" due to lower than normal temperatures?" This point has been made by Conservative pundits in recent years and, even though it is true, it doesn't appear in Newsweek or any other mainstream or left-leaning news source.
Some thoughts to ponder:
- Global warming was seen as a gradual threat until after the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. The scientific data that supported the current climate change theory was around well before September 11th, 2001, so why the hysteria now? What is different after 9-11, George W. Bush's election and re-election and our country's "failure" to sign any kind of Kyoto-esque treaty since 2000? What has changed in the body of scientific data on global warming that supports the Left's oft-portrayed and widely accepted fantasy that a single, cataclysmic event is destined to destroy life on all continents if we don't change our carbon emitting ways.
- Hollywood has given us several movies where the new Godzilla is a 200 foot wall of water surging into our front yard or high-rise condo, and it is really being portrayed as a kind of self-inflicted nuclear doomsday. Remove the world leader pushing the red button from your Cold War mental video file and instead picture a soccer mom starting her SUV in the garage. After 39 million simultaneous events that produced carbon emissions, her action becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back or, as we would say in the 21st Century, the carbon emission that destroys the world's delicate ecological balance.
- Perhaps the reason for this nuclear holocaust approach to publicizing global warming is as much political as scientific. In spite of 9-11 being an embarassment to George W. Bush and western traditionalists, it gave the West a concrete, common enemy and it gave Bush & Company political leverage with the American voter who feared another terrorist attack. Conservatives are tougher on Islamic Jihad than liberals because liberals political messaging and position is fairly consistent from one generation to the next. Increase taxes for public services, limit the power of capitalism and promote racial harmony through multicultural tolerance - It doesn't exactly make you shake in your Hezbollah headband. This phenomenon is not limited to American politics either. The trans-atlantic brand of progressive socialism that clearly dominates journalistic reporting in all Western nations has no focal point as long as the voters in those nations have a common enemy more vile than successful capitalists.
- September 11th, the Madrid Train Bombings and other events around the world demonstrate the willingness of Jihadists to kill others and themselves. But are their objectives understood by the Left? Not if the Left believes that global warming is the eminent threat to civilization and that jihadis just need hugs, dialogue and understanding.
- If you subscribe to a news magazine or watch a news network that spends more than 50% of its doomsday coverage on climate change, there is a very good chance you've never heard of the movie, Obsession (for a preview, check out http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/). This is because Obsession is about the single greatest threat to America and the West...besides global warming. In spite of a significant consensus of scientists who agree that the Earth's temperatures are trending warmer due to human activities, there are dissenters who hold significant positions in the global scientific community, notably climatological experts.
-In contrast to those scientists, Jihadists who dress alike, cover their faces, stand in rows and chant "Death to America" repeatedly, their arms outstretched, are the guys who seem to agree with one another about where their movement is headed. Their disciples number in the tens of millions and their mission is very clear: Restore the Caliphate (strict Muslim rule by Sharia Law across all of the Islamic World), the end of the nation of Israel and death to America and the West.
-If you want to help the environment go ahead and follow the three R's: reduce, reuse and recycle. If you prefer to deal with the biggest threat to us and our children, watch the movie Obsession or at least the flim trailer. Here's the beauty: You can do both.
by Thomas, contibutor
I was shopping for sunscreen for my little boy on a day trip to the mountains and the only open store was this little hippie giftshop next to a hotel. Purchasing sunscreen is something that my wife and I do even though we don't know the science behind why we do it or how good sunscreen actually is for the human body. Barbara the shopkeeper was a tarot card reader and intuitive healer, and the customer next to me in line happened to mention that she was from Anchorage.
Just making friendly conversation, I asked if it was as cold in Alaska as people in the continental U.S. might think. Her response was a compelling description about the reality of climate change over the past 35 years. She said, "you really see global warming more when you get closer to the poles. That is certainly true in Anchorage. In the early 1970s when I moved there, we had frequent winter temperature readings below negative 30, now it is rare to go below negative 15!"
Since it was my turn to pay for the sunscreen I missed the opportunity to ask her this question:
"Were you aware that in 1972 when you moved to Anchorage, Newsweek was running articles about the coming "Ice Age" due to lower than normal temperatures?" This point has been made by Conservative pundits in recent years and, even though it is true, it doesn't appear in Newsweek or any other mainstream or left-leaning news source.
Some thoughts to ponder:
- Global warming was seen as a gradual threat until after the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. The scientific data that supported the current climate change theory was around well before September 11th, 2001, so why the hysteria now? What is different after 9-11, George W. Bush's election and re-election and our country's "failure" to sign any kind of Kyoto-esque treaty since 2000? What has changed in the body of scientific data on global warming that supports the Left's oft-portrayed and widely accepted fantasy that a single, cataclysmic event is destined to destroy life on all continents if we don't change our carbon emitting ways.
- Hollywood has given us several movies where the new Godzilla is a 200 foot wall of water surging into our front yard or high-rise condo, and it is really being portrayed as a kind of self-inflicted nuclear doomsday. Remove the world leader pushing the red button from your Cold War mental video file and instead picture a soccer mom starting her SUV in the garage. After 39 million simultaneous events that produced carbon emissions, her action becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back or, as we would say in the 21st Century, the carbon emission that destroys the world's delicate ecological balance.
- Perhaps the reason for this nuclear holocaust approach to publicizing global warming is as much political as scientific. In spite of 9-11 being an embarassment to George W. Bush and western traditionalists, it gave the West a concrete, common enemy and it gave Bush & Company political leverage with the American voter who feared another terrorist attack. Conservatives are tougher on Islamic Jihad than liberals because liberals political messaging and position is fairly consistent from one generation to the next. Increase taxes for public services, limit the power of capitalism and promote racial harmony through multicultural tolerance - It doesn't exactly make you shake in your Hezbollah headband. This phenomenon is not limited to American politics either. The trans-atlantic brand of progressive socialism that clearly dominates journalistic reporting in all Western nations has no focal point as long as the voters in those nations have a common enemy more vile than successful capitalists.
- September 11th, the Madrid Train Bombings and other events around the world demonstrate the willingness of Jihadists to kill others and themselves. But are their objectives understood by the Left? Not if the Left believes that global warming is the eminent threat to civilization and that jihadis just need hugs, dialogue and understanding.
- If you subscribe to a news magazine or watch a news network that spends more than 50% of its doomsday coverage on climate change, there is a very good chance you've never heard of the movie, Obsession (for a preview, check out http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/). This is because Obsession is about the single greatest threat to America and the West...besides global warming. In spite of a significant consensus of scientists who agree that the Earth's temperatures are trending warmer due to human activities, there are dissenters who hold significant positions in the global scientific community, notably climatological experts.
-In contrast to those scientists, Jihadists who dress alike, cover their faces, stand in rows and chant "Death to America" repeatedly, their arms outstretched, are the guys who seem to agree with one another about where their movement is headed. Their disciples number in the tens of millions and their mission is very clear: Restore the Caliphate (strict Muslim rule by Sharia Law across all of the Islamic World), the end of the nation of Israel and death to America and the West.
-If you want to help the environment go ahead and follow the three R's: reduce, reuse and recycle. If you prefer to deal with the biggest threat to us and our children, watch the movie Obsession or at least the flim trailer. Here's the beauty: You can do both.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Fairness Doctrine for PBS?
Bill Moyers Journal piece on PBS, "Katrina Revisited" (August 17th, 2007) featured Mike Tidwell (author and environmental activist) and Melissa Harris-Lacewell (Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton)to discuss New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina to present.
The PBS web-site describes the segment saying, "Bill Moyers gets two views on what the disaster and its aftermath says about American culture and values." Nevermind that both views are from left-leaning liberal partisans. There is diversity here. Don't you see? It doesn't matter that they think the same thing, share the same assumptions and lack of curiosity about other points of view, there are three different Democrat points-of-view including Moyers, what more diversity could you ask for?
Is this fair use of taxpayer dollars and citizen-owned airwaves? There was no Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams or Newt Gingrich to provide a classic liberal, market-based perspective on dealing with the aftermath of Katrina. Why? Afraid some Americans might find their ideas compelling? Or they might pose a question you can't answer? I suspect both.
If the issue of the Fairness Doctrine comes up anytime soon, I propose we apply it. But not just to radio. To PBS, to the New York Times, to CNN. It is time for fairness. To quote John Kerry, "BRING IT ON!"
Several things were striking in this PBS show. First, the assumption by host and guests that all responsibility is at the federal level. Second, Tidwell assumed a zero-sum game where funds are allocated to Katrina relief or fighting Islamic radicals. He stated that the feds could have done better, but Bush instead spent $30 billion in the same year on Iraq. Paraphrasing, he said, "if Iraq's number one export were broccoli, we wouldn't be there."
Moyers doesn't even blink. It doesn't dawn on him to ask:
a) Aren't the Democratic Mayor and state Governor at least as responsible for their constituencies as the Republican President?
b) Where's the oil you say we went to Iraq for. What of the pre-invasion bipartisan consensus reflected in the unanimous Senate passage and signing by President Clinton of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 that stated, "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime"? Had President Clinton followed-through in 1998, might we have been finished with Iraq and ready to deal with Katrina?
c) Can't a nation of our size and wealth deal with both National Security issues and natural disasters? Isn't Islamic Jihad a threat more serious to the entire nation than one hurricane? Are you aware the $30 billion went to efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The Princeton Associate Professor weighed in saying that poor folks in New Orleans have a "right" to live in a city built below sea-level in a river delta known to flood with reqularity. After all, rich people build houses in all kinds of pretty but dangerous places like barrier islands and sea-cliff coastlines in earthquake land.
What didn't Moyers ask? He didn't ask if anyone, rich or poor, has a "right" to live in the known path of natural disaster and be bailed out by U.S. taxpayers. He doesn't point out that most "rich" people worked their tails off for what they've earned and tend to have healthy insurance policies for their precarious perches.
Harris-Lacewell continued saying Progressive Democrats should have stepped into the breach and proven that they're equipped to deal with the battered poor but didn't.
The thing that was so painful was that she said it as if this was an aberration. Hey Progressives, in case you're idea poor, I'll give one to you for FREE! Big, federal government isn't the answer. Particularly "Progressive" big government. Look at history. Think. Learn. Washington bureaucrats of any party will never care as much, understand as well, or be as vested in local communities as, well, local communities. So guess where you should put most of your tax resources and responsibility? Yes, that it. State and local government. Just like the founders designed it.
Forget progression. Liberals need to become more familiar with the founding ideas, basic economics, and history. And how about getting progressive about a diversity of ideas and viewpoints? Isn't that the fairness we should expect from public television?
Bill Moyers Journal piece on PBS, "Katrina Revisited" (August 17th, 2007) featured Mike Tidwell (author and environmental activist) and Melissa Harris-Lacewell (Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton)to discuss New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina to present.
The PBS web-site describes the segment saying, "Bill Moyers gets two views on what the disaster and its aftermath says about American culture and values." Nevermind that both views are from left-leaning liberal partisans. There is diversity here. Don't you see? It doesn't matter that they think the same thing, share the same assumptions and lack of curiosity about other points of view, there are three different Democrat points-of-view including Moyers, what more diversity could you ask for?
Is this fair use of taxpayer dollars and citizen-owned airwaves? There was no Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams or Newt Gingrich to provide a classic liberal, market-based perspective on dealing with the aftermath of Katrina. Why? Afraid some Americans might find their ideas compelling? Or they might pose a question you can't answer? I suspect both.
If the issue of the Fairness Doctrine comes up anytime soon, I propose we apply it. But not just to radio. To PBS, to the New York Times, to CNN. It is time for fairness. To quote John Kerry, "BRING IT ON!"
Several things were striking in this PBS show. First, the assumption by host and guests that all responsibility is at the federal level. Second, Tidwell assumed a zero-sum game where funds are allocated to Katrina relief or fighting Islamic radicals. He stated that the feds could have done better, but Bush instead spent $30 billion in the same year on Iraq. Paraphrasing, he said, "if Iraq's number one export were broccoli, we wouldn't be there."
Moyers doesn't even blink. It doesn't dawn on him to ask:
a) Aren't the Democratic Mayor and state Governor at least as responsible for their constituencies as the Republican President?
b) Where's the oil you say we went to Iraq for. What of the pre-invasion bipartisan consensus reflected in the unanimous Senate passage and signing by President Clinton of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 that stated, "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime"? Had President Clinton followed-through in 1998, might we have been finished with Iraq and ready to deal with Katrina?
c) Can't a nation of our size and wealth deal with both National Security issues and natural disasters? Isn't Islamic Jihad a threat more serious to the entire nation than one hurricane? Are you aware the $30 billion went to efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The Princeton Associate Professor weighed in saying that poor folks in New Orleans have a "right" to live in a city built below sea-level in a river delta known to flood with reqularity. After all, rich people build houses in all kinds of pretty but dangerous places like barrier islands and sea-cliff coastlines in earthquake land.
What didn't Moyers ask? He didn't ask if anyone, rich or poor, has a "right" to live in the known path of natural disaster and be bailed out by U.S. taxpayers. He doesn't point out that most "rich" people worked their tails off for what they've earned and tend to have healthy insurance policies for their precarious perches.
Harris-Lacewell continued saying Progressive Democrats should have stepped into the breach and proven that they're equipped to deal with the battered poor but didn't.
The thing that was so painful was that she said it as if this was an aberration. Hey Progressives, in case you're idea poor, I'll give one to you for FREE! Big, federal government isn't the answer. Particularly "Progressive" big government. Look at history. Think. Learn. Washington bureaucrats of any party will never care as much, understand as well, or be as vested in local communities as, well, local communities. So guess where you should put most of your tax resources and responsibility? Yes, that it. State and local government. Just like the founders designed it.
Forget progression. Liberals need to become more familiar with the founding ideas, basic economics, and history. And how about getting progressive about a diversity of ideas and viewpoints? Isn't that the fairness we should expect from public television?
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Just Some Crazies on the Fringe
A friend returned from his business trip in L.A. and related a conversation he had regarding Israel.
He struck up a conversation with a Cuban-cigar smoking man who stressed that smoking it was legal, he just couldn't sell it. After that legalism, he began talking about Israel. "The most beautiful country you've ever seen", he said. He then talked about what is going on in and just outside Israel, you know, Hezbollah and Hamas launching rocket attacks on civillian centers, continuing to receive financing from Iran, etc...
The man commented on these Islamicists (so-called "few crazies on the fringe" by both mainstream media and the blogosphere), "tomorrow, they're coming after me. After that, they're coming after you."
The one bit of solace we've been offered and embraced is the now-old saw, "it's just a few nuts on the fringe".
How serious can the threat be if it's "just a few" people who've lost their minds and become obsessed with bringing about a one-world caliphate under Islam and sharia law?
Well, in a leadership seminar packed with other productive insights, we were related a story demonstrating the principle that there is a critical 2-3% of a population of social animals, including people, that shapes the whole culture. The story was of monkeys on a Japanese island. They ate a local variety of potato. One day, a young monkey rolled her potato down the beach and into the ocean. She retrieved it and ate it. Over the next few days, a few of her close monkey-friends began imitating the behavior and repeating (apparently salty, raw spuds are up their alley). Over time, it became the way that this species of monkey ate their potatoes throughout the island chain. All due to the influence of a goofy fringe.
The lesson: Group culture, in companies and nations is shaped and guided by very small, influential, committed groups as opposed to large, group meetings and consensus.
I leave you with a quote used frequently to encourage young, concerned environmentalists to engage in political action and social change. As you read it, consider the jihadists level of commitment.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
and consider this http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/trailer-12min.php
A friend returned from his business trip in L.A. and related a conversation he had regarding Israel.
He struck up a conversation with a Cuban-cigar smoking man who stressed that smoking it was legal, he just couldn't sell it. After that legalism, he began talking about Israel. "The most beautiful country you've ever seen", he said. He then talked about what is going on in and just outside Israel, you know, Hezbollah and Hamas launching rocket attacks on civillian centers, continuing to receive financing from Iran, etc...
The man commented on these Islamicists (so-called "few crazies on the fringe" by both mainstream media and the blogosphere), "tomorrow, they're coming after me. After that, they're coming after you."
The one bit of solace we've been offered and embraced is the now-old saw, "it's just a few nuts on the fringe".
How serious can the threat be if it's "just a few" people who've lost their minds and become obsessed with bringing about a one-world caliphate under Islam and sharia law?
Well, in a leadership seminar packed with other productive insights, we were related a story demonstrating the principle that there is a critical 2-3% of a population of social animals, including people, that shapes the whole culture. The story was of monkeys on a Japanese island. They ate a local variety of potato. One day, a young monkey rolled her potato down the beach and into the ocean. She retrieved it and ate it. Over the next few days, a few of her close monkey-friends began imitating the behavior and repeating (apparently salty, raw spuds are up their alley). Over time, it became the way that this species of monkey ate their potatoes throughout the island chain. All due to the influence of a goofy fringe.
The lesson: Group culture, in companies and nations is shaped and guided by very small, influential, committed groups as opposed to large, group meetings and consensus.
I leave you with a quote used frequently to encourage young, concerned environmentalists to engage in political action and social change. As you read it, consider the jihadists level of commitment.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
and consider this http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/trailer-12min.php
Monday, July 03, 2006
America the Beautiful - The Other Verses
O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine.words by: Katherine L. Bates, 1859-1929. Music: Samuel A. Ward, 1848-1903
This Independence Day, I'll remember the price paid and the risks taken to create our path to freedom - which still draws people from all over the world. I'm thankful too for those heroes, past and present, who did and do risk their lives without question for the rest of us, for a dream.
The more I learn of our history, the greater the awareness of the miracle of our nation. Even with its many imperfections, it is peerless in this world, worthy of our loyalty, and deserving of the benefit of the doubt.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine.words by: Katherine L. Bates, 1859-1929. Music: Samuel A. Ward, 1848-1903
This Independence Day, I'll remember the price paid and the risks taken to create our path to freedom - which still draws people from all over the world. I'm thankful too for those heroes, past and present, who did and do risk their lives without question for the rest of us, for a dream.
The more I learn of our history, the greater the awareness of the miracle of our nation. Even with its many imperfections, it is peerless in this world, worthy of our loyalty, and deserving of the benefit of the doubt.
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