I Call BS!

In California the just-passed proposition amending the constitution to allow gays to marry has met with stiff resistance from backwards religious conservatives.

Anti-gay extremists have assaulted a college freshman for wearing an anti-gay marriage T-shirt. The girl suffered a concussion.

A gay marriage supporter was arrested at an anti-gay rally for wearing a T-shirt saying “Gay marriage - Yes!” The gay-hating crowd was so enraged by the blatant racism that the police told the gay marriage supporter to leave in order to keep the peace. He was arrested when he refused.

An eighth grade girl bravely wore a pro-gay marriage shirt to her conservative school and was verbally assaulted all day - called stupid, told she shouldn’t be wearing a shirt like that, even told to “go die!”

Anti-gay bigots have even targeted individual businesses for demonstrations and boycotts because they supported the gay marriage amendment.

This is tolerance? This censorship and lack of respect for diversity?

Aren’t we all hurt, isn’t our entire political system hurt, when citizens are not free to express their opinions…without fear of tribunal, intimidation and boycott? Aren’t we all threatened when purity of orthodoxy…becomes a requirement for social inclusion?

The stage is being set … for intolerance.

A friend of mine E-mailed me that

“…president Bush’s socializing of the
failing banks was just Socialism Lite, and as such is a problem for America
and for the Republican party.”

Quite frankly, if there were a political solution to the (attitudinal-disunity)
spiritual problems confronting us today, we’d have found the answer long ago…

But I see the underlying disunity as crippling to America… people unable or unwilling
to UNITE on larger ideals and work backward to a mutually-acceptable action,
leads to the fractured, ignorant state we observe today.

Republicans, RINO, Paullians, libertarians, Greens, neo-conservatives
…and…
PUMA-Democrats, Marxists, Democrats, left-leaning liberals, crazed LLL, Koslings…

I’ve tested the waters at a couple blogs, re: New Party, and there’s
some-but-little support for such an idea. Pitting this Part against that Part
is no longer the way to lead/conduct a nation.

In addition, Obama and his lying, dissembling friends appear to be preparing
to go for the jugular, with fistfulls of Executive Orders being prepared for Day 1,
as if Executive Orders are all he needs to “RULE” America!

I am no less disturbed today than when I wrote that Constitutional essay:
We (Americans) have become the people our parents warned us against!
(and my father fought in Europe & Korea to defend us against, and I fought in Korea
to defend us against!) How can we, today, PROTECT the Constitution from
the Obama-Change team?

With free speech stifled, and no independent reporting media,
the Happy Learning Camps are only weeks away.

“You MUST learn to be sensitive
to the feewings of others! You MUST put the greater good above all else!
There are NO INDIVIDUALS at Camp Happy Learning! None! THAT type of thinking
got us into these terrible problems in the first place! Conform!”

Where have we seen THAT before?

G

/for more on What Ails Republicans, click here.

The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect wildlife in the US .

Animals that were formerly self-sufficient are now showing signs of belonging to the Democratic Party…
as they have apparently learned to just sit and wait for the government to step in and provide
for their care and sustenance. This photo is of a Democrat black bear in Montana nicknamed …

‘Bearack Obama’

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is touting a health care reform plan that sounds very familiar. It includes:

The 2006 Massachusetts health care reform plan “expanded the state’s Medicaid program, offered qualified residents financial assistance to purchase insurance, created a new state agency to connect residents with affordable plans and - perhaps the most talked-about change - required all residents with access to affordable coverage to enroll in a plan or incur financial penalties. For employers with more than 10 employees, the law requires that those who do not make a “fair and reasonable” contribution toward worker health coverage, pay up to $295 per employee per year into a state fund.”

And how is that plan working out for Massachusetts?

Well, strictly in terms of coercing encouraging people to get insurance it has been a great success.

Among adults with incomes below 300 percent of the poverty level, the study found uninsurance dropped by almost 11 percentage points, and among adults at less than 100 percent of the poverty level - those eligible for fully subsidized coverage - uninsurance rates dropped by more than two-thirds.

That’s pretty impressive. At least until you compare it to the problems the plan is facing:

And the future is looking a little scary:

The only REAL solution to the health care crisis is to allow the free market to work freely.

Get employers out of the equation - there is NO reason why we should be limited to whatever few (often inferior) healthcare plans are offered by our employers. There is NO reason why our employers should be held responsible for our health insurance (think of it this way…would it make sense for your only affordable option for car insurance to be whatever two or three plans your employer signs up for? Giving you NO choices regarding the amount of your deductible, the amount of coverage, or the areas of coverage, and therefore NO choice regarding the amount of the premium or the reputation of the insurance company?)

Under the current system doctors and patients alike are held hostage by the insurance company, who really calls all the shots. Under universal health care doctors and patients are held hostage by the government, who would really call all the shots. Only in a truly free relationship, where patients can choose their own medical plans, their own doctors, their own course of care, and how much they are willing to pay for it, and where doctors make their medical choices based on what is best for their patients, where they can choose how many patients to care for and what to charge for their services, can the market truly work as it’s supposed to.

Certainly there should be regulations to protect patients from unscrupulous doctors, standards for medical care, and safety nets for the needy. But those objectives can be achieved without creating another government behemoth that will inevitably go the same route as Social Security and Medicare into an unaffordable and unwieldy money pit that is the epitome of inefficiency.

From the IBD article:

The Obamas discourage work in the private sector. “Don’t go into corporate America,” Michelle has exhorted youth. “Work for the community. Be social workers.” Shun the “money culture,” Barack added. “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”

“If you commit to serving your community,” he pledged in his Denver acceptance speech, “we will make sure you can afford a college education.” So, go through government to go to college, and then go back into government.

While it may be laudable to seek to help the whole as well as the individual, yet the individual only has direct sovereign CONTROL over The Individual! Hence America’s historic and current strength: The individual ‘pursuit of happiness’, ‘pursuit of excellence’!

The emboldened bit up there, “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation,” is pure Marxism, and as such we here must call “BS!” on it. More than 100 years of collective attempts to collectively conjure social freedom has resulted in horrendous injustices on a massive scale approaching 100 MILLION deaths in the previous century!

No, Obama, our collective salvation depends upon INDIVIDUALS CHOOSING to do their individual best, for the greater good, with justice and freedom for all.

Grumpy

From Junkfood Science we learn [all emphasis added]:

Compulsory medication and monitoring of diets and lifestyles by the State is now a reality for workers in Alabama who are older or have certain genetic physical characteristics.

Despite efforts to paint this in rosy euphemisms, under a new plan just approved by Alabama’s State Employees’ Insurance Board, if workers don’t agree to be subjected to lifestyle and health screening and blood tests for specific hereditary characteristics, they will be penalized $25 a month or be denied health insurance coverage.

Healthcare decisions will no longer be those for individuals and their personal healthcare providers to make. Workers found to have high BMIs, cholesterol levels, glucose levels, or blood pressures will be required to enroll into wellness programs with their integrated disease management, along with weight loss targeting those with BMIs ≥35, and be given one year to improve, or be penalized $25/month. Those who are thin and have approved numbers will be exempt.

According to the State Employee’s Insurance Board, the program, which will cost taxpayers $1.6 million next year alone, is about improving health and saving insurance costs for the State.

And it gets worse:

The requisite employee “wellness” and weight loss programs have not proven long-term effectiveness, but to put employees at increased risks. Nor to they actually lower healthcare costs. Achieving ideal numbers invariably requires prescription medications and other invasive measures, especially, as has been shown, for those over age 50.

In reality, these health risk factors are primarily measures of genetics and aging, and hence, using them is discriminatory, but hiding behind euphemisms of being about promoting healthy lifestyles.

The full article is here. It will be interesting to watch this progress. Perhaps abject failures of nanny state health care programs in Alabama and Massachusetts will finally get more people to question the wisdom of universal health care.

Sacramento CPS report in child death was altered

In the 16 days between the time 4-year-old Jahmaurae Allen was beaten to death and Sacramento Child Protective Services publicly released portions of its records, the case file was altered to change the original finding in the case, The Bee has learned.

One early version of the report from the social worker, who began handling an allegation of abuse involving the 4-year-old on June 19, described the allegation as “unfounded,” two sources who read the document told The Bee this week.

Another early version obtained by The Bee described the allegation of abuse of the little boy as “inconclusive.”

But the portions released by CPS to The Bee this week under a new public records law do not reflect either of those findings. Instead, those files indicate the allegation of abuse was “substantiated,” a finding listed as “effective 7/21/08″ – the day Jahmaurae was beaten to death, allegedly by his mother’s boyfriend…

…Robert Wilson, executive director of Sacramento Child Advocates, said Friday he “would sure be interested to see how CPS explains” the different versions of the case file. His office, whose attorneys represent children in dependency court, received the same version from CPS that The Bee was given this week.

Fellmeth, a former prosecutor, said the California government code makes it a criminal offense to alter a public record – even if that record won’t be given to the public. “You’re not supposed to be altering, period,” he said.

The proper way to make changes in public documents is to “overlay, or add the correction – not subtract or erase or alter.”

“You don’t create a new reality,” he said.