Archive for the ‘party politics’ Category

Death panels

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

No, Obama is not setting up death panels.  He is just creating rules that hospitals can only comply with if they quietly and unofficially have death panels for medicare patients.

If a hospital discharges a patient who lingers on for years sucking up lots of expensive services outside the hospital, the hospital is penalized.  If, however, the potentially expensive patient should conveniently croak while in hospital …

In a number of European countries, quite a lot of patients die “under deep sedation”– in other words, medically administered barbiturate overdose, murdered.

If the patient is dead of IV drug overdose with a drug clicker in his hand that controls the amount of fentanyl in the IV, then that is suicide or death by misadventure.

If the patient is dead of IV drug overdose with no clicker in his hand, murder.  And that is the way patients in Europe die when they die “under deep sedation”.

Pain control is morphine or fentanyl.  “Deep sedation” is lots of barbiturates.  Barbiturates are deadly in large doses.

Barbiturates are not to prevent pain, but to prevent the patient from making a fuss about his medical treatment, or making a fuss about dying – or from making a fuss about lack of medical treatment, lack of food, and lack of water, hence given with IV, but without clicker.

There are legitimate medical uses of barbiturates, typically to keep patients from making trouble when the doctor is giving them an examination that is painful and embarrassing, for example a colonoscopy.  But there are seldom legitimate reasons to give barbiturates to a patient lying in a hospital bed, and there are never legitimate reasons for a patient to die “under deep sedation” while lying in bed.  Yet somehow quite a lot European patients do die “under deep sedation”.

The usual procedure for extreme pain control is to give the patient a clicker, whereby the patient directly controls the level of morphine or fentanyl, up to a limit.  If no limit, this also gives the patient the option of voluntary euthanasia, by clicking hard enough.

“Sedation” means barbiturates, which means not controlling the patients pain, but rather controlling the patient.

These barbiturates are applied through the IV, without the patients knowledge, consent, or control, thus death during deep sedation is involuntary euthanasia: murder of the inconvenient and unwanted.

If the patient is dead with a lethal quantity of fentanyl inside him, and fentanyl clicker in his dead hand, obviously voluntary euthanasia or death by misadventure.

If the patient is dead with a lethal quantity of barbiturates inside him, the barbiturates administered by IV with no barbiturate clicker, obviously involuntary euthanasia:  murder.

“Deep sedation” is never given with a clicker, therefore always involuntary euthanasia, murder.  There is a lot of medical murder in Denmark and many other European countries, and now hospitals in the US have a compelling financial incentive to do the same with potentially expensive medicare patients, including medicare patients that have something expensive but not swiftly lethal wrong with them that will create endless expenses after they are discharged from hospital.

Governor Romneycare promises to be a better Obama

Monday, May 30th, 2011

Governor Romneycare is campaigning to be the Republican presidential candidate.  He tells us that:

Every turnaround has three rules. Focus, focus, focus. Focus on what’s most important, devote all your energy to that which is broken. … Instead of focusing his energy on the economy he delegated the stimulus to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and they built a stimulus which grew government jobs but didn’t grow private-sector jobs. And then he went to work on his real agenda. And that was cap and trade, to raise energy costs; card check to unionise at places of employment where the employees didn’t want unions; Obamacare, where the federal government takes over health-care; and regulatory reform relating to the financial services sector, which of course scared the heck out of anybody in the financial sector. He went to work on this agenda. And virtually every aspect of his agenda increased the degree of uncertainty that existed in the employment sector.

Employment is a means to an end:  We don’t need employment, we need productive employment.  The only thing the government can do to enable productive employment is to stop enabling unproductive employment. What you subsidize, you get more of. What you tax, you get less of. The taxpayer has massively subsidized the finance sector, and we now have far too many people employed in finance. Most of them need to lose their jobs.  The vast majority of them need to lose their jobs. (more…)

Obama’s Birth Certificate Forged

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

What Obama released is a composite photoshopped together from multiple documents.

Archive Index Systems spots undeniable photoshop artifacts in the released birth certificate.

The background text, from one certificate, is slightly curved, which is what you get if you scan some paper that is not perfectly flat – the document was scanned from a book, so near the book binding did not lie perfectly flat. The name of the hospital is not curved– so was not scanned from the same document. The name “Barack” has white around it, being lifted from a document without the birth certificate background, lifted from a document that is not a birth certificate. They should have hired me. I do much better forgeries than that. This is a crude and amateurish job – typical government work.

Herman Cain

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

The rest of the republican field is now acting as if Herman Cain is the man to beat, acting as if he is now the front runner for Republican candidate and president, which makes him the front runner for the moment, though it is a long way to go to the 2012 presidential elections.

I suspect this may be charisma envy. Obama has a lot of charisma, so Republicans are looking for someone with charisma. Herman Cain has more charisma than Obama, and more charisma than the rest of the republican field put together, though he is not as smart as the rest of the republican field, nor even as smart as the Obamessiah. Still, if you, unlike Obama, are not proposing to micromanage America, how much smarts do you need?

Does he have character, something that the Obamessiah conspicuously lacks? The democrats and the rest of the republican field are now putting his life under examination, so I suppose we shall soon learn about his character, or lack thereof.

It is a long, long way to the 2012 presidential elections, but they are Herman Cain’s to lose. A short while ago, the republicans had no candidate. Now they have a potential candidate and a plausible winner.

It will be an odd sight if in the 2012 presidential elections, we have two black candidates, one of them noticeably less bright than past presidents, and the other noticeably less bright than that. But if Herman Cain sticks to the program he is running on in the primaries, running on the American dream and American exceptionalism, he will be less bad than any recent president.

However, if he gets the nomination, he will probably swerve left, as the rest of the Tea Party has.

Conservative bloggers declare victory

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

According to Strata and others, the outcome of the budget negotiations (to reduce by one percent spending that was recently increased by by thirty percent) was a mighty victory.

By a vote of approximately ten to one, the US House of Representatives voted to continue at slightly lower speed on a course that leads to bankruptcy, hyperinflation, social collapse, and, if we are lucky, civil war in the next decade or two.

“Deep Cuts”

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Harry Reid, leader of the RepublicanDemocratic party in the Senate, attacks the Republican party because some far right extremists want to make “deep cuts” in government spending

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) accused Tea Party lawmakers of destroying budget negotiations

“We’ve tried to wait patiently for them … but our patience and the American people’s patience is wearing very thin,”

Tea Party Republicans are scrapping all the progress we have made and threatening to shut down the government if they do not get all of their extreme demands.

How extreme, I hear you ask, are these dreadfully extreme extremists?  How extreme are these “extreme demands

You may have heard that these horribly extreme extremists want to cut sixty one billion dollars off this years one thousand six hundred billion dollar deficit, so that spending will only increase by 1151 billion instead of 1200 billion.  That is what I had heard.

But the Office of Management and Budget has analyzed these dreadful cuts, these terribly deep cuts, these drastic cuts, and found that they are only nine billion dollars in this year, reducing our 1645 billion dollar deficit to a mere 1636 billion dollar deficit.  Most of the cuts consist of supposedly slightly slower growth in future years.

In short, it is a shadow battle.  The parties are only pretending to quarrel.  The difference between an elected Democrat, an elected Republican, and an elected Tea Party Republican, is imperceptibly slight.

In truth, expenditures are set by the permanent government, and the political parties have little power, and not much desire for actual power either.  Not only is Harry Reid a sell outtool of the Cathedral, but the major reason he is denouncing the Tea Party Republicans as extremists is to distract attention from the fact that they are just as much sell outs.

In theory, Obamacare cannot be implemented unless the House of Representatives votes to fund it.  It is a theory no one in the House of Representatives is much interested in testing.  In this sense, Obamacare is bipartisan – indeed tripartisan, since the Tea Party Republicans are not willing to stand up and pass a budget that refuses to fund all the things they supposedly oppose.

Mainstream media backs Romneycare for GOP presidential candidate

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Supposedly Romney, the creator of Romneycare, the medical system that inspired Obamacare, is the GOP’s best hope for defeating Obama.  So the mainstream media unanimously tells us.

Probably true, but there seems little point to such a “victory”.

At CPAC, Presidential Candidate Romneycare upbraids Obama for high unemployment, and all the press, the same press that worships Obama, the same press that goes weak at the knees at the sight of the great Obamessiah, cheers Presidential Candidate Romneycare to an echo.  Suddenly the press, who whom any truth about the great Obamessiah used to be the most vicious and depraved racism, thinks it is wonderfully inspiring for Presidential Candidate Romneycare to blame the great Obamessiah for unemployment.

So what would Presidential Candidate Romneycare have done about unemployment that differs from what Obama did?  Somehow he neglects to tell us.

You can tell who has the real power by whose job is permanent, and who can lose his job.  The public servants cannot lose their jobs.  Politicians are competing to be the Public Relations department of the permanent government.  This was most evident in the pitch made to CPAC by would-be Presidential Candidate Grinch: Gingrich calls for eliminating EPA, expanding domestic energy production

But, of course, he does not propose to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency.  He proposes to convert it into an agency that focuses on “science, technology, markets and incentives.”

Not that there is any danger of a presidential candidate Grinch.  The Republican Party hates him for endorsing Scozzafava, from which act of treachery he can never recover, and the permanent government fears he is not sufficiently enthusiastic in his support for the permanent government.  Of the available enemies of the Republican Party, the permanent government has clearly and unambiguously decided it wants Presidential Candidate Romneycare, the Republican President that could best defend the most recent big expansion of government, Obamacare.

But suppose the universally despised Grinch, hated by both left and right, somehow got to implement his plan:  Trouble is that the Environmental Protection Agency  is composed entirely of anti capitalism environmentalist activists who think factories are simply sinful in themselves, that destroying jobs, any jobs, is an act of Godliness.  The Environmental Protection Agency is jobs for the lefty boys. Leftist activists got rewarded with permanent government jobs. You cannot remake it into a pro market organization. You have to shut down lefty government organizations, and if righty government organizations are to be created, they have to be created from scratch with  jobs for the rightists.    The fact that Grinch proposes conversion, rather than abolition, tells us that a President Grinch would be handing out even more jobs for the left wing boys, not jobs for the right wing boys, more rewards for left wing activists in the revolving door between government and activism.

If the president was the boss, or the president and congress was the boss, he could lay off agencies that were not performing, or were not going along with his agenda, the way  Chief Executive Officer, or Chief Executive Officer and the Board of a company can, and frequently does, lay off divisions that are not performing, or are merely not part of the Chief Executive Officer’s vision of what the company should be doing.

That this never happens, cannot happen, is just unthinkable, no matter how dreadfully an agency screws up, tells us who has the real power.

What would happen if the public elected officials that actually tried to exercise power?

President Reagan is often praised for overthrowing the Soviet Union, or contributing substantially to the overthrow of the Soviet Union, but most of what he did to overthrow the Soviet Union was moral pressure, threats, and inspiration, and much of what he actually did militarily to bleed the Soviet Union, to tie it down in more wars than it could afford, thereby depriving it of the power to intimidate its subjects, was illegal, and very nearly got him impeached, even though foreign policy is generally regarded as the one area where a president is actually allowed to do stuff.  His efforts to change things internally, to put an end to unpopular and expensive federal bureaucracies , simply had no effect, and if there was any danger of them having effect, then, since he was damn near impeached for attempting to implement the policy he was elected on against the Soviet Union, he surely would have been impeached had he implemented the internal policy he was elected on, of cutting unpopular government expenditures.

Who called the financial crisis before it happened?

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Among others, Ron Paul, in his speech to the house, proposing amendments to the laws that caused the crisis

… the government’s policy of diverting capital into housing creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.

The connection between the GSEs and the government helps isolate the GSEs’ managements from market discipline. This isolation from market discipline is the root cause of the mismanagement occurring at Fannie and Freddie …

I hope my colleagues join me in protecting taxpayers from having to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the housing bubble bursts.

… The flip side of regulatory capture is that mangers and owners of highly subsidized and regulated industries are more concerned with pleasing the regulators than with pleasing consumers or investors, since the industries know that investors will believe all is well if the regulator is happy. Thus, the regulator and the regulated industry may form a symbiosis where each looks out for the other’s interests while ignoring the concerns of investors. …

… the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. …

Needless to say, there was only one vote for addressing the looming financial crisis.  Looking at the tea party candidates, I think if the Tea party did a clean sweep, if every single congressman had belonged to the tea party, I think there would have been two or three votes for addressing the looming financial crisis.

How dumb is Obama?

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Obama is an affirmative action president.  Affirmative action people are always stupid, incompetent, and corrupt.  Is Obama stupid, incompetent and corrupt?

For corruption, observe that the infamous regulatory revolving door between Goldman and the Treasury continues to spin, even after the wall street financial system imploded, and similarly between Soros and the DoE. Perhaps Bush II was as corrupt as Obama, but Obama’s corruption is more conspicuous.

As for stupidity – well clearly, he is a lot smarter than the most affirmative action blacks, such as his ivy league wife, and a lot smarter than the average white.  But how does he compare with the elite?

Recently an anonymous person who we are told is a Washington insider told us

if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports.  That gets him interested.  You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off.  It’s really very strange.  I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right?  Ivy League and all that.  Well, that is not what I saw.  Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity.  When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”.  Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly.  I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite letdown when you actually hear him talking without the script.

No – I am not going to call him stupid.  He just doesn’t strike me as particularly smart.

Well, so says an anonymous informant that we are told is a Washington insider.

So let us look at evidence whose veracity is easier to check:

We all know of his stumbles such as telling us that America has 57 states, and pronouncing corpsman “corpse man”, but I am a very smart guy, and have done worse, and if I chide him on such things, will probably do something equally dimwitted in the same article as I chide him.

But I can fluently give a speech on complex topics from brief notes.  Sarah Palin can fluently give a speech on complex topics from brief notes.  Obama falls apart without a teleprompter.  Without a teleprompter, he keeps it simple, and if lured onto complexity, starts to sound black.

So, not stupid, but stupid by elite standards.

Intelligence is not the only requirement for a president.  Blacks generally have more charisma than whites, more style, and are better able to think on their feet.  Obama has more charisma and style than any major white politician, but now that the hype has faded away, it is apparent that he has not got much charisma and style by black standards.  By black standards he is a bit of a nerd.  Compare and contrast with most of the black republican candidates in recent mid terms.  Most of them have lots of charisma.  Blacks are also good at thinking on their feet, street smarts.  Obama’s ability to think on his feet is impressive.  When the presidential seal fell off the podium, he ad libbed “It does not matter, you all know who I am” – but on more complex topics, considerably less impressive.  Again, the Black Tea partiers gave a dazzling demonstration of ad libbing and thinking on their feet, considerably more impressive than that given by Obama.  By black standards, Obama’s ability to think on his feet is not all that impressive.

It looks to me that Obama was selected as the whitest possible black, rather than the black best qualified as a political candidate, that he was selected to prove there is no difference between whites and blacks, to prove that affirmative action does not give the results it so obviously does give.  If you were selecting the black best qualified to win, you would come up with someone with a lot more charisma and street smarts than Obama, even at the cost of being a little bit dumber, you would come up with some one like the Tea Party candidates.  Instead, they came up with someone as much as possible like a member of our very white elite, our very very white elite, the whitest possible dark skinned black.

Yes, Obama is a Muslim.

Friday, November 5th, 2010

I  doubt Obama believes in anything, not in God, not even the evidence of the senses – but to be officially a Muslim, you have to publicly pronounce the Shahada:  “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”.  Obama did as a child, and recently repeated in public as an adult.  To cease to be a Muslim, you have to publicly reject that proposition, which he has not done, or publicly accept a contrary proposition, such as “Jesus is Lord”, which he has not done.

To be officially Christian, you have to be baptized in the name of Jesus, and call Jesus “Lord”, which Obama has not done, nor has his “Christian” pastor, the Reverend Wright, done.

As for what I am:  I think that Mohammed was a mass murdering pedophile rapist who made up all that stuff about angels telling him the word of God.   I think Jesus was making an honest and sincere effort to reform Judaism into a more peaceable faith, both for the general good and to protect Jews from getting squished by Romans, but the evasiveness of his prophecies reveal him to be a mortal.

“Nation shall rise against Nation, and Kingdom against Kingdom”.   And verily I tell unto you bears shall shit in the woods.

Jesus’ prophecies for the fall of Jerusalem and temple were only marginally more impressive.  He did not give an approximate date, nor tell us that the Romans would be the ones to do it – thereby keeping his ass covered against the possibility that Rome would fall before Jerusalem did – which ass covering reveals him to be a mortal, though it also suggests the books of the New Testament were written up before seventy AD.  If they had been written up after the fall of Jerusalem, his prophecies probably would have been sharpened up a bit by the chroniclers.  The argument that the New Testament must have been written after seventy AD is people irrationally hostile to Christianity going overboard in their desire to piss on Christianity.  To cast doubt on Christianity, you merely have to cast doubt on the proposition that Jesus lives, not on the proposition that Jesus lived.  The argument that the books of the bible were written long after the ministry of Jesus is an effort to disprove the existence of Jesus the man, which effort is silly – there is plenty of historical evidence that Jesus lived, preached, was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and stayed dead.

What I do believe in is that our senses give us straightforward access to reality as it really is, to things in themselves, that we are not trapped in Plato’s cave because we can reach through the windows and break things apart to see what they are really made of, that with due care and competence, categories and concepts can be and should be constructed to correspond to the likeness and origins of particular things, reflecting commonalities between particular examples of real things.  I believe that all words are defined by pointing at examples, or defined by other words that were defined by pointing at examples, that children rightly learn the meaning of words from the examples pointed at by their mothers, and that the ultimate authority of what words mean is the type examples provided by mothers and fairy tales to children – thus words mean what children think they mean, and not what ideologues and philosophers say they mean, that language, reality and the connection between language and reality are what children think they are.

While Obama is a Muslim, I not only doubt that he believes in Allah, but doubt that he believes that reality exists external to himself, or that words have any definite meaning.