Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Someone DID read the bill!! Amazing… There may be hope for us yet.
Power & Control, Power & Control. Period. Full Stop.
And at this point in time the Socialists are staggeringly drunk on it. With good reason to be so.
I need to get one of those devices that keeps oneself from grinding teeth.
Gotta hand it to my two senators DeMint and Graham. They’re both mad as hogs you stuck with a poker and as Deddy used to say “never wrassle with a pig, you’ll both get dirty and only one will enjoy it”.
The fight at the food trough is jes beginning. Think Harry under-estimated his opponent.
Hell of a way to run a country. Meanwhile the rest of the country sleeps. Well maybe not – Tea Party now outpolls Democrats – could we see some stirring from the slumber.
I think the conference support should include language that it should be enacted into law and never be allowed to be repealed that Harry Reid should have to stand in the middle of the Las Vegas strip reading this bill in its entirity aloud for the next twenty years.
I would like to see Harry Reid forced to read the Bill at a place somewhere hot, though it would not be LV. Twenty years would be long enough for me though.
We are beginning to reap what was sown by John Dewey et al during the twenties. Our education system is in a beleaguered state, producing citizens who have never heard of the rule of law, nor have they studied or learned about our system of government.
Therefore we have lawyers running amok, giving no thought to what is written, only what they can get away with. And that is most anything, when the populace is constitutionally illiterate.
Then the Senate Dems insert language to make the “Independent Medical Advisory Board”, a panel of experts that will decide who gets what care or not, i.e. a death panel, completely independent of legislative oversight. Sure they won’t decide who lives or dies individually, at least at first. The death decisions will be based on your group value to the collective rather then a celebration of your individuality.
This is some serious Revenge of the Nerds.
Harry Reid probably thinks an ejection seat in a helicopter is a good idea too. My personal favorite is Obama saying that everybody who has read this bill thinks it is good for the US, when nobody had read the bill because it was locked in Harry’s office. Groucho Marx has to be spinning in his grave, because, he could have never thought this stuff up.
May this civilian ask a question of you sea lawyers and land lawyers about the provision in the Health Care Destruction bill which says that the death panel provision, and by implication all the Bill’s other provisions, can not be repealed by future Congresses?
Isn’t that unConstitional or something? I sure hope so, since the death panel thingy is designed just for me and every other person over 65. So that all the young layabouts can still get their Botox injections, accupuncture, and other essential medical procedures free.
Marianne
Marianne
I just re-read article I of the US Constitution and although I am no lawyer it doesn’t seem to address the subject. The Constitution is the founding document of our country and even it is changeable, a “living” document if you, by the amendment process. Considering that I’d be willing to bet that the concept of laws that can’t be repealed by latter congresses was thought to be so asinine that the founders either didn’t even consider the possibility someone would seriously attempt it, or simply felt it too stupid to bother having to stipulate against it.
Color me dense, but I think MM is right. Just as the Constitution doesn’t address the idea of making a law that can’t be repealed, it doesn’t deny the ability to repeal such a law either. Seems to me Harry is just blowing smoke. Imagine a future senate that wanted to repeal such a law. Does anyone think they’d respect this law any more than these folks respect the Constitution? Isn’t that Lex’s point? good luck with that Senator
You and Lex are right, Bill K. ANY Congress ANY time is going to do damn well what it pleases REGARDLESS of their own rules, statute law already on the books or what the words of Constitution say or case law says what the Constitution says. It always has and always will…
They have proved it time and again, over and over..
For the nth time from philosopher Lilly Tomlin: “I TRY to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.”
I only wonder if its being used as a pretext, should the bill pass with those sections unaltered in conference, to get some very liberal circuit court of appeals to rule in its favor when said future congress attempts to repeal it. It may be a lame attempt, and I can’t imagine it working. But in the same vein, the number of things I previously never imagined coming true have been doing so with alarming pace recently. Either way the far Left, of which Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are now assured a spot in the Hagiography, are thinking strategically/long term and going for broke. Even if this Bill, with all its massive increase of government control and country breaking financial implicaitons, doesn’t have a public option I predict it’s just the Trojan Horse for one. And I predict it will come through the bureaucracy the way the EPA recently declared the gas we breathe out on a daily basis dangerous to our health in an “-or else” approach to try to get cap and trade through.
No, Marianne, the point of this measure is for you folks over 65, but it’s not about allowing us younger folks to still get our botox while you wait for a hip replacement to avoid hospice care and death. It’s about you dying and getting off the Social Security and Medicare rolls before we figure out the ponzi scheme broke and it takes 2/3rds of our income to pay for the promises a Congress made on our behalf a generation ago.
Seniors have scared Congress because they expect their entitlements (arguably which they have worked for, much like the military expect their benefits Congress has declared) and expect the youth to pay for them as promised, and they vote to that effect.
There aren’t enough youth. And of the youth most are mouth-breathers better capable of attending raves than ginning up the financial lucre that it takes to keep a parent independent, let alone fund a government program that should do the same.
But if the youth vote too, well, elections can be won and promises don’t mean a thing. The ponzi scheme broke, sucks to be you, the youth have spoken and they’ve spoken for Hope and Change.
The more I ponder the more I think this effort isn’t about health, it isn’t about care, it’s about votes. And removing older votes and inserting younger is perfect for a government that has to pay for the care of the older while enticing the younger to vote with promises of security and no taxes to pay for it.
Darn. Now I need a drink.
– Max
Just to think the worst, I betcha there was some consideration of how the old folks still remember times when this was a somewhat free country. Can’t have ‘em contaminating the minds of the yoots, or voting.
Best shuffle ‘em off quickly.
P.s. I just left a comment on Kristina Chew’s blog, on a post about the difficulties of transporting her autistic kid aboard an airliner these days. My comment was about how you don’t have to be an autie to have the modern airline experience drive you hoppin’ mad, and how flying was actually pleasant in the late 50s and early 60s, back when airports still smelled like gasoline and they only looked at you funny if you weren’t wearing a tie.
Prowler … I suspect you’re right about the “too stupid” thing. I just hope that today we’re not “too stupid” to solve this mess when cooler heads prevail — hopefully in 2010.
Marianne
Wahh! I don’t even own a rifle of an electoral caliber! And I’m too old and fragile to do guerrilla war in the hills! And there aren’t even any hills around here! (and I’m way way too old to be a guerrillero in the Everglades; there be gators and Burmese pythons out there!)
Well, P-AMDO, you’re correct insofar as your view that Harry baby and friend Nancy are going for broke. They are counting on inertia if nothing else to keep the main provisions of the bill to be substantially reduced. And of course seek to expand it by stealth under the radar to single payor as the attention-span of the public eventually turns elsewhere over time. But this is predicated on two things: 1) a more or less return to economic “normality” and 2) continued dominance by Democrats in Congress–in their their rightful place. This view and historic domination of Congress by Democrats is predicated on the fact that Democrats are like Communists–politics is all they know and they work at it it 24/7/365–unlike Republicans who have other lives and regard politics as a necessary evil at best. (Chris Mathews, in a rare moment of candor, once made this same comparison with Communists on his own show yrs ago. “I worked for Tip O’Neil, I should know,” he said.)
But, P-AMDO, I for one, believe that Reed, et al, have seriously mis-judged our precarious economic situation, and that failure to achieve (1) above will negate the process described in (2), above. Things are NOT “normal” and will not be for many years to come. As the stark reality of this “new normal” becomes apparent it is unlikely that Democrats will maintain their strangle-hold on the body politic. We may be at the high water mark of the leftist grip on the political apparatus–if not the cultural one (which is still continuing to increase unabated.) This sounds counterdictory, I know, but it is my opinion economic reality and the rising threat of Islam will soon over-take–over-power– even the considerable grip the left has on our schools and culture–even as this grip continues to tighten. This is because the left’s grip on our national culture is tolerated by the vast majority as ultimately perepherial, insignificant really, to their daily lives. When such things begin to affect their economic and financial reality middle America will cast aside such cultural “progressive” trappings as needless luxuries they can no longer afford.
And the left has been too clever by half in it’s attempt to use the bureaucracy of the EPA and the courts to pull and end-run past the legislature. They have left the way open to court challenges as to the scientific basis upon which by law the EPA must use in making it’s decisions. This will provide access to key climate data thru the discovery process that could never be obtained by FOIA requests, etc., and provide a public forum to debate climate science heretofore totally unavailable–forcing the MSM to cover material presented in what will inevitably be highly contentious and publicized court proceedings it has so far managed to sequester/ignore. Thus I view the EPA gambit as ultimately a fatal overreach that will boomerang on the left.
Virg
I think, and pray, you’re right; But, if you’ll forgive me and allow a few minutes to b*tch as I’ve been doing recently, as a relatively young person for this blog: Good Grief! Do we really have to go through all the harm the Left will cause in the short to medium term? Like most Americans I think I’ve worked pretty hard, and perhaps, sadly, unlike most Americans I’ve deferred gratification and saved money like crazy so that one day I can send kids to college, give them the opportunities I enjoyed, etc. And NOT have to ask the public to pay for it. I’ve been blessed to be in that position but it still required sacrifice and discipline to take advantage of it. Now, financially speaking at least, I wonder how much my savings will be worth after all is said and done. If I’ll be put on a net worth level just a tiny bit above a lot of my peers whom I know have been, frankly, completely irresponsible in their schooling (majoring in useless crap and spending seven years to get their bachelors in it because they were just screwing and drinking instead of actually learning anything, let alone a job skill), and even less responsible in their spending vs. saving habits. People who had the exact same opportunity I did and CHOSE to act as they did. All in the name of “justice.”
I truly do hope that you’re right and people will wake up. By that I don’t mean everyone should think like me because I’m admittedly pretty conservative, and admittedly not always right. But what gets to me is that this fascination with socialism and collectivism in the West comes at a time when the fall of the Soviet Union is in living memory of most of us breathing, with all the immiserating, morally corrupting, and even murderous effect of such thinking laid bare on continent sized display for all to see. This toying with Leftist ideas might have been somehow forgivable a few decades in the future when people will only read of the failure of statism in textbooks that bored them half to death (Latin, with its six time-tenses would actually work for this sentence . . .), but twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? It’s disheartening.
Prowler, in my post above, I was actually quite serious, and bitter, and, yes, disheartened, though I tried to make it seem light-hearted. With my age (I’ll be 60 pretty soon), my neural weirdness, my employment history, the lack of decent jobs around here even in good times, not to mention the theft of my inheritance, I’m pretty much screwed. Now we have this new program, guaranteed to make everything even much worse. That’s a large part of why I drink as much as I do.
JTG/
YOU drink more than *I* do?!!! The mind reels…..
JTG
Hey, my prayers are with you and hope we can do something law abiding first to un-do this disaster in the making. But I think I agree with you on certain things. I’ve felt things about my governmnet I’ve never felt before recently, and posted elsewhere in reply to someone (without being able to muster the humor you are generously able to despite everything) that if Texas seceded to maintain at least one libertarian/conservative nation in the world I would seriously consider “emigrating” there.
Again, best of luck out there in Florida.
Does anyone remember if Texas still has the right to split up into five states so that it’ll have 10 senators vice just two? Thought that was one of the conditions used to entice the Republic of Texas into the Union. Surely the Austin States would elect two democrat senators, but I’m guessing the other four would be red more often than not . . .
I hear there are contract companies looking to hire in Af. Maybe I’ll hire on and get my ass shot off, and not have to worry about it anymore. Revolution here, revolution there. I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore.
PS Except that there I’m more likely to be able to shoot back at the bastards…