(Ed. Note: People are still interested, so up this one goes)

What happens when you mix tax and spend liberalism with the Culture of Death:

Rep. Paul Tonko is a freshman Democrat from Albany, NY. He’s a typical non-descript eastern machine politician whose a robot for Obama and Pelosi and doesn’t have too many original thoughts. Earlier this week one of his top aides was flying to Washington from the district. She was accompanied by what appeared to be a special interest Washington DC lobbyist, who probably came to Albany to attend some type of big money golf, gambling, and cigars fundraiser for Tonko.

Anyway, unbeknownst to them, a hero of the conservative movement sat quietly behind them. It was impossible to avoid listening to their boisterous conversation, and Tonko’s aide didn’t disappoint.

Naturally, most of the banter dealt with the health care bill, and here are a few of the gems:

The two were talking about whether Tonko would even be given time to read the bill. She told the lobbyist, “well he pays me to read it for him”.

“[The] costliest part [of the Obama healthcare bill] will be the physician’s rate cut,” she said. Lots of political capital is going to be spent to get that through.

And, for the crowning glory, the aide feels that “probably the best part of the bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.”

Having recently gone through the deaths of my mother-in-law and father, I can advise the unwary of what hospice care is – “keep them comfortable until they die”. In my Dad’s case, this was easy – a chocolate shake and having cigarette in the afternoon. In my mother-in-laws case it was harder – she required morphine to keep the pain down as she passed away. The main thing to remember, though, is that not a single effort will be made to prolong life – hospice is where you go to die.

Now, don’t get me wrong – the people at Nathan Adelson hospice were spectacular. Sensitive, caring, helpful and clearly devoted to their profession. But they are not health care providers, even though some of them are doctors and nurses – they are “death care” providers. It is a given that if Obamacare once gets its claws in to us, the bureaucrats who run the thing will be eager to shove people off to hospice, as a bit of morphine is cheaper than a bypass surgery. It won’t be a matter of only sending the hopeless cases there (as it is now), but any case the system chooses not to pay for…and that decision will not be made by the patient or the doctor.

Outside the intrinsic injustice of single-payer (it is essentially the conscription of all health care professionals in to national service), the practical problem with it is that it is simply will not work. Human nature ensures that it will be a massive failure, even if it has a temporary benefit. The problem comes down to the fact that the people who run the system will not have any contact with the system’s customers (ie, the patients). They’ll be office-bound bureaucrats who will have a lot of calls upon their time and budgetary authority – and the least noisy call will be that of the patients. When it comes time for said bureaucrats to work out the budget, they have a choice such as: buy a new ultra-sound, or provide a pay raise to the administrative staff? Which do you think they’ll choose? In single-payer, the patient will always come dead last (unless you are juiced-in with the elite, then the model Michelle Obama helped create in Chicago will ensure there are facilities for the elite, while those bothersome poor people are shunted aside to other, substandard clinics).

It is an anti-human disaster in the making. To be generous to Obama and Co, let’s say they sincerely want to provide health care to everyone…but the way they are going about it ensures that the care will be expensive to the nation, sub-standard for the majority and anti-life in its overall effect. This must be stopped, period.

UPDATE: Texas may make a constitutional fight of it, if Obamacare is enacted.

This is a book I’m looking forward to reading:

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality.

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”.

I’m one of those deniers – I’ll state it again, just to be clear: Anthropogenic Global Warming is a hoax. The world got warmer, but we had nothing to do with it. Now its getting cooler (and I love the way global warming enthusiasts are insisting that the recent cooling trend doesn’t prove that global warming is ending…its like saying that the lack of water coming down from the sky doesn’t prove that its stopped raining) and we have nothing to do with that, either.

One of the good things about the global recession is that these green initiatives are foundering on the fact that people facing foreclosure and job losses are increasingly un-awed by the latest pronouncement of the Goron or His Highness, the Prince of Wales, that we’ve only got a little time left before we all die. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than bogus stories of breathing causing the world to die.

We’re going to experience a lot of bad things, all of them because we’ve been fools….

Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other. – Benjamin Franklin

And how are they doing it? This is how:

…The Chinese central bank has a significant advantage over the U.S. Federal Reserve. Chairman Ben Bernanke and his cohort may print a lot of money (and they did), but there’s almost nothing they can do to speed the velocity of money. They simply cannot force banks to lend without nationalizing them (and only the government-sponsored enterprises have been nationalized). They also cannot force corporations and consumers to spend. Since China isn’t a democracy, it doesn’t suffer these problems.

China’s communist government owns a large part of the money-creation and money-spending apparatus. Money supply therefore shot up 28.5 percent in June. Since it controls the banks, it can force them to lend, which it has also done.

Finally, China can force government-owned corporate entities to borrow and spend, and spend quickly itself. This isn’t some slow-moving, touchy-feely democracy…

…Why is China doing this? It doesn’t have the kind of social safety net one sees in the developed world, so it needs to keep its economy going at any cost. Millions of people have migrated to its cities, and now they’re hungry and unemployed. People without food or work tend to riot. To keep that from happening, the government is more than willing to artificially stimulate the economy, in the hopes of buying time until the global system stabilizes. It’s literally forcing banks to lend — which will create a huge pile of horrible loans on top of the ones they’ve originated over the last decade.

I put it a little differently – after the near-revolution of 1989, a unspoken deal was struck between China’s rulers and people: as long as economic growth continued, the people would rest content under their communist masters. If China’s economy shows collapse, the deal is off – and that is where I stand: China only seems like it hasn’t collapsed. It actually did, about 9 months ago by my best estimate.

Since then its been a mad scramble in China as the government shovels fiat money in to the economy and simply commands that growth continue at 8%…and who is the Chinese apparatchik who will dare present a report showing that Chinese GDP contracted last quarter? And who in China will actually state what China’s urban unemployment rate is? And which foreign investors – who are so deep in to China’s bogus financial structure they can’t get out – will actually shout “abandon ship”? In other words, we don’t know the full story of what is happening in China, and we won’t know until it all comes tumbling down.

China has massive over-capacity in manufacturing; it is honeycombed with bad debts made at the bidding of China’s ruling class; a great deal of its foreign exchange earnings are used to fund China’s absurd military build up; worst of all, China owns US bonds; a lot of them…they can’t sell them, lest their value collapse along with the US dollar and they can’t stop buying them for the same reason. But they can only buy them with money they make selling low-quality, sweated-labor manufactured goods. But the world is in economic recession and thus there simply is not – and will not be any time soon – the level of demand for Chinese goods necessary to keep the Chinese economy afloat. China can twist and turn and hope that the global economy rebounds, but that is a fool’s hope – with the rise in manufacturing capacity elsewhere in the Third World and lower wages plus greater productivity in recession-hit America, there never will be the demand for Chinese manufactured goods, as a percentage of global manufacturing, as there was in the palmy days of 2005. The party’s over, but China hasn’t admitted it, yet.

When the smash up comes, it will stun the world…because most of the chattering classes and the business class either doesn’t realize how bad off China is, or they are tools of Chinese economic propaganda and thus have a vested interest in making people believe that China is a good investment. As for what we can do – not a dratted thing. We’ll just have to watch, and hope a nuclear-armed revolution doesn’t break out.

Or, “how to sound like you’re talking tough, but you really ain’t“:

GREGORY: Did you mean to suggest that the U.S. is considering a nuclear umbrella that would say to nations in the Arab world that an attack on you, just like NATO or Japan is an attack on the United States, and the United States would retaliate?

CLINTON: Well, I think it’s clear that we’re trying to affect the internal calculus of the Iranian regime. You know, the Iranian government, which is facing its own challenges of legitimacy from its people, has to know that that a pursuit of nuclear weapons, something that our country along with our allies stand strongly against. We believe as a matter of policy it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. The G-8 came out with a very strong statement to that effect coming from Italy.

So we are united in our continuing commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we’re not going to let that happen.

First, we’re going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But your pursuit is futile, because we will never let Iran — nuclear-armed, not nuclear-armed, it is something that we view with great concern, and that’s why we’re doing everything we can to prevent that from ever happening.

GREGORY: All right, but let’s be specific. Are you talking about a nuclear umbrella?

CLINTON: We, we are, we are not talking in specifics, David, because, you know, that would come later, if at all. You know, my view is you hope for the best, you plan for the worst.

Our hope is — that’s why we’re engaged in the president’s policy of engagement toward Iran — is that Iran will understand why it is in their interest to go along with the consensus of the international community, which very clearly says you have rights and responsibilities; you have a right to pursue the peaceful use of civil nuclear power; you do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon; you do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control.

But there’s a lot that we can do with Iran if Iran accepts what is the international consensus. (emphasis added)

First off, Madam Secretary, it is absurd to talk of Iran not having a right to nuclear weapons. No nation has an intrinsic right to such horrific things – some nations have them, and some don’t. As a nuclear-armed nation the question for us always will be: do we want “Nation X” to obtain nuclear weapons? If you’re going to argue a point that Iran doesn’t have a right to the weapons, then Iran’s position in any negotiations will be to get us to agree that Iran does have a right to such weapons. We’ll be arguing in circles and making no progress. So, do we want a nuclear-armed Iran?

The official Obama Administration position is, “no” – but the statements of Secretary Clinton indicate we consider a nuclear-armed Iran a foregone conclusion unless the Iranians, by some chance, voluntarily agree to eschew such weapons, out of the goodness of their hearts (the same hearts which gun down young women in Iran’s streets, that is). We have just telegraphed, loud and clear, that we will not act to prevent Iran from obtaining such weapons…the talk of “we won’t allow” or “we will stop” is just mindless yammering right after anyone in the Obama Administration says, “What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we’re not going to let that happen”. What needed to be said is, “we will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and Iran should pay heed to our resolve and seek to make the best deal they can in return for their voluntary surrendering of the nuclear option”.

Once Iran has a nuke, they will inherently intimidate their neighbors and will inherently be able to project their power – these two things are the result of building nukes, not something you do with a nuke after you’ve built it. A nuclear armed Iran changes the power calculus in the middle east because the statements of Iran’s leaders cannot be ignored – while it might all be bluster, everyone will have to work on the assumption that they’re crazy enough to use them. And don’t think a “nuclear umbrella” will do much…no one in Saudi Arabia or Turkey is really going to think we’ll risk a nuclear counter attack on ourselves because Iran nuked Ankara or some other city. And the Israelis won’t care about it – a couple nukes over Israel means the end of Israel, period: Holocaust II. It wouldn’t even be cold comfort to think that after 5 million more are murdered the US will possibly nuke Tehran in response.

Clinton, speaking for Obama, has blown our chances of using something short of all out war to prevent an Iranian nuclear force. Nice job. No we’ll either get a nasty war in a couple years, or a generation of nuclear brinksmanship and even worse terror-sponsoring.

Goodness, I really hope this isn’t the case:

On today’s Fox News Sunday, presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted President Obama had been prepared to answer questions about the Henry Louis Gates arrest at his press conference last week. Bret Baier, filling in for regular host Chris Wallace, asked Gibbs, “Before Wednesday’s news conference, did you prepare [the president] for a question about Henry Gates’s arrest in Cambridge?”

“Well, look,” said Gibbs, “Let’s just say it’s safe to say we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly this was a topic that was, has been in the news . . .” He then went on to try to un-ring the bell by repeating the line that the president “hadn’t calibrated his words well,” and blah, blah, blah, beer at the White House, blah, blah, blah.

So now we know that President Obama didn’t properly “calculate” his words about the Cambridge police “acting stupidly” even after being prepared for such a question in advance. Thus is revealed the president’s tone deafness in failing to anticipate the backlash such an answer might provoke…

I’m getting concerned that we really did elect a smooth talking dunce – someone who is great on the stump and who looks good in a photo shoot, but can’t be trusted with a burnt out match. I’m looking for signs that Obama can think on his feet and can adjust his policies to changing reality. So far, I’m seeing no such thing.

As I ponder options and make preparations, many things bubble through the brain as regards the flaws in our way of doing business. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with:

1. Term limits – one term and you’re out. And then at least two years must elapse before you take another federal office.

2. Perhaps modify the terms of office – Representative to 4 years, Senator to 8 years, President to 6 years. Stagger House elections so only half the members are up ever two years.

3. Add 100 members to the House. We’ve been with 435 members for a century or so now – and a century ago our population was less than a third of what it is now. The House is supposed to be directly responsive to the will of the people, and I think that with districts approaching 690,000 residents, this is not possible.

4. Break up some of the States in to smaller entities. California with nearly 37,000,000 people has two Senators. Vermont with 621,000 people has two Senators. It makes sense that a Vermont Senator can represent the whole State as it is a fairly compact unit where most citizens share the same general concerns. Do the concerns of San Francisco even remotely resemble the concerns of Santa Ana? The concerns of Los Angeles, are they even in the same ballbark as those of Daly City? Such modifications would, of course, require State consent, but common sense dictates that the people of California north of San Francisco/Sacramento would prefer Senators committed to Northern California rather than beholden to groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco directly hostile to the aspirations of the people of Northern California.

5. All legislation coming to the President must be contained on no more than 10 type-written, 8.5×11 inch pages. If it takes more than ten pages to tell what you’re doing, it shouldn’t be done.

6. Make it illegal to be in fact or in form a lobbyists without a clear declaration of such employment. Allow no lobbyists to reside within 100 miles of Washington, DC.

7. End all pensions and health benefits for elected officials.

8. Remove all controls on campaign donations and expenditures. Make it illegal to expend money on a political campaign more than 180 days prior to the election.

9. With the National Guard essentially the ready reserve of the active military, States lack a military force at their disposal in case of emergency (when the emergency comes, it is very likely that the US government will call up the Guard, leaving the State with, perhaps, insufficient military resources) – create State militias made up of older men and women (preferably former service members) who can never be used outside of US territory, but who can backstop the Guard when it is called to active duty and provide an armed security force for static defense (such as guarding ports, airports, bridges, tunnels, etc during a time of external threat to America, itself).

10. Make it illegal for the federal government to ever take more than 30% of a person’s annual income.

What would you add, take away or modify?

Should we ever force a good thing to happen?

…if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion. – F A Hayek

That we weren’t supposed to worry about and it was all just a big nothing? Well, perhaps not:

In a disturbing new projection, health officials say up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.

The estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are roughly twice the number of those who catch flu in a normal season and add greater weight to hurried efforts to get a new vaccine ready for the fall flu season.

Swine flu has already hit the United States harder than any other nation, but it has struck something of a glancing blow that’s more surprising than devastating. The virus has killed about 300 Americans, and experts believe it has sickened more than 1 million, comparable to a seasonal flu with the weird ability to keep spreading in the summer.

Health officials say flu cases may explode in the fall, when schools open and become germ factories, and the new estimates dramatize the need to have vaccines and other measures in place.

A world health official said the first vaccines are expected in September and October. The United States expects to begin testing on some volunteers in August, with 160 million doses ready in October.

That last bit is “if we get it right and if the bloody thing doens’t mutate”. You know how some times we’re “cautiously optimistic”? Well, I’m cautiously quite concerned over this – if we don’t get a handle on it, then the fall might be a long, miserable season this year.

Interesting and revolting story over at Pajamas Media:

…Earlier this month, British conductor Sir Edward Downes, 85, traveled to Dignitas — the Zurich-based suicide clinic — with his wife Joan, 74, who had terminal cancer. Sir Edward was frail, with failing eyesight and hearing, but not terminally ill. After fifty-four years of marriage, the couple drank a fatal draft of poison and “fell asleep” for the last time, holding hands across the bed. Their son described his parents’ last moments as “very calm and civilized.” Who could object to that? Surely, in a civilized society, everyone has the right to a calm death. Dignitas has found a gap in the market, and countries like the UK, where assisted suicide is illegal, should get with the program.

The founder of Dignitas, human rights lawyer Ludwig Minelli, sees nothing wrong with making his product available to as many people as possible. His motives are noble: death is a “human right without conditions” and a “marvelous possibility.” Besides, if people stick around needlessly, they cost the taxpayer money. Jenny McCartney writes in the Telegraph:

[He] offered an economic argument for the efficiency of his clinic. “For every 50 suicide attempts we have one suicide and the others are failing, with huge costs to the National Health Service.”

Forty-nine people still alive because they didn’t use a professional? That is failure indeed. Mr. Minelli has missed a marketing trick here. Just think of all the money that is wasted at The Samaritans, training staff to talk people out of suicide. They could be replaced by a recorded message saying: “Suicidal? Don’t botch it. Phone Dignitas — stone dead or your money back. Two for one offer — spouse goes free.” And unlike most products, there will be no need for an after-sales service…

…In seeing death as a right, Minelli is not alone. Blogging as Bradlaugh, John Derbyshire writes:

I have never been very clear about the religious objections to suicide and assisted suicide. The only time I tackled a religious colleague about it he launched into a “slippery slope” argument. Well, I suppose some slopes are slippery, and some aren’t. I can’t see this one as being particularly slippery.

I disagree. There has been some slippage already. From helping a terminally ill person kill himself before he becomes incapacitated, Dignitas has slithered down to dispatching the frail and sad.

Derbyshire either unfortunately ran in to a believer who hadn’t thought the matter through, or he dismissed the argument out of hand and characterizes it as “slippery slope”, as that seems to be a weak argument. Its not, of course – it is the argument; once admit the exception, and the exception becomes the rule.

Divorce is so common nowadays that it isn’t really remarked upon as a thing in itself – we talk about how divorce can have an ill effect on children and other effects of divorce, but the fact of divorce is taken as a given. Its no big deal in society if someone gets a divorce. Used to not be that way – in fact, a divorce was a gigantic scandal and, at times, led to utter social destruction for both parties to the divorce. People would go to all sorts of lengths to avoid divorce – including mutual winking at each others affairs…divorce was so rare and scandalous that adultery was considered a lower risk! What happened? We admitted the exception, and it became the rule.

Back when the concept of liberalizing divorce laws came up, the assertion was that it was only needed for the exceptions to the rule against divorce. Certainly, marriage was for life and no valid marriage should be broken up – but what about those cases where something really horrible is happening? A man beating his wife routinely and/or engaging in extra-marital affairs was used as the prop for the straw man – who would be so heartless as to condemn a poor woman to such a marriage just to adhere to a musty, old rule which only Christian cranks took seriously? From what I understand, a least a version of the “slippery slope” argument was marshaled against liberal divorce laws. Such arguments were calmly ignored because everyone knows who weak the “slippery slope” argument is.

Fast forward, and here we are today with nearly half of all marriages ending in divorce and in some communities marriage has been so degraded as a concept that vast majorities of couples never bother with a wedding before entering in to a household and producing children. And this only begins to note the social pathologies subsequent to liberal divorce laws. Divorce has been a sociological catastrophe – and taught us (a) don’t tinker with the sanctity of marriage and (b) don’t take that first step on a slippery slope.

Assisted suicide is not the first step on the slippery slope. Its the fourth or fifth step. The first step was the legalization of birth control. You see, either life is worthwhile, or its not. Once you admit the exception to this (“who would be heartless enough to force a couple to have a child when they aren’t ‘ready’?” – its ok to cut off this aspect of human life, because its just this one, little thing and we’re just being reasonable), the rest follows like a train running down hill. We now practically admit that life is only good if its perfect – when a person has sufficient wealth and health to do as they please whenever they please to do it. Once this level of perfection is gone, life is not worthwhile – or, at least, not as worthwhile as it used to be and so birth control, abortion, euthanasia, infanticide.

If life is not inherently valuable, then it is contingent upon our pleasing those around us. The final stop on this road to perdition is a society where people are not allowed to live if they don’t fit a certain set of parameters determined by others for what constitutes a worthwhile life. You can want to live in such a society, I don’t want to. Life is far to wonderful an adventure for me to want to give it up because some pseudo-intellectual pinhead decides I’m not living as well as he thinks I should prefer. It is the ultimate act of a coward to kill one’s self – someone who is afraid to live life, all of life, is someone who kills themselves. I will take what God gives me – if it is pain and suffering, I’ll endure because this, too, shall pass. I’d rather not have the pain and suffering, of course, but it is not for me to rule all events.

Life or death – the choice has always lain before us since the Fall. Death, of course, stalks the land – all of us will die, in the by and by. But we can rule our fate in this much – we can, if we wish, take despair as our guide and take our own lives in consequence. But even as we exercise that sovereign choice to die, we are actually abdicating that authority and turning in to slaves of the flesh – people doubly doomed. Choose life is not just a slogan: it is the fountainhead of wisdom.