Category Archives: Big Thoughts

Dead Elephants

Posted on by

Q: How do you make a dead elephant float?
A: You take a dead elephant, two tons of chocolate ice-cream, a ton of bananas…

We know you can’t make a dead elephant float without bacterial action but any number of Rabid Righties thought a death scare was the way to derail ObamaCare.

Gundersen Lutheran in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the medical trend to make sure patients get the end of life they want. The hospital has been trying to force Medicare to pay the docs when they help patients with that planning. H.R. 3200 incorporated it.

Sarah Palin made that into the “Death Panels” in H.R. 3200 and it has been a rallying cry against any kind of health care reform ever since.

“It’s really distressing,” hospital official Bud Hammes told MSNBC. “These things need to be addressed.”

When you spread false information, you give up the right to thwap the other guy for propagating falsehoods.

My friend Dino sent around the Windfall Tax on Retirement Income rant a couple of days ago.

Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys where I reside. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.

“What’s neat about this is the way Snopes dismisses it with a series of rhetorical tributaries and sly spins and then tosses in billionaire Warren Buffet as a strawman. Snopes is right that Pelosi probably did not say these exact words–even though they are in quotes,” he wrote, “but that is not the point. The point is that she demonstrates it daily in her actions from the floor and prolly implied it directly in her rhetoric.”

“Pelosi probably did not say these exact words,” he wrote. “That is not the point…”

Sorry, Dino, but that is exactly the point.

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi is anything but and she has proven that over and over. Unfortunately, Dino has joined her club. Prevaricating, obfuscating, misdirecting, diverting, and pretending all add up to lying. When Liberals lie to advance their cause, it makes them liars and gives us ammunition to use against them. When Conservatives lie because they think it is for a good cause, it makes them liars, too.

Lying not only gives the other guy ammunition to use against you, it makes it impossible to believe or respect the liar.

Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: From stamping out forest fires.

Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: From stamping out flaming ducks.

I’ve always hoped I was the elephant but days like this I feel like a sitting duck.

Change

Posted on by

FaceTwitSpace has a Universal Healthcare Poll running this week. As of this writing, over 107,148 other people have voted on the question, “Are you in favor of a Government run healthcare system.”

My vote was ‘Hell, No!’

This Health Care argument has nothing to do with health. After all, all the people who will vote on it will not be covered by it.

It’s about the money. And power.

If you can drive the private insurers and private providers out of the market, whatever is left controls who lives and who dies. If you have private insurance, you can change insurers if you don’t like your coverage. If the government says “You must have insurance and you must get it from us,” they put you in jail if you change insurers.

That’s Change We Can Believe In.

If you can drive the private insurers and private providers out of the market, TWO TRILLION more dollars end up in Washington. Each and every year. Except next year when it will be more. And the year after when it will be more still more.

Trillion.

That’s Change We Can Believe In.

President Obama told the nation Wednesday night that we must “change the health care system to reduce the costs and restore the economy.” That is exactly correct. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama did not say another word about reducing the cost of service or restoring the economy; he spent his news conference time on changing the health care system to one run by Uncle Sam’s bureaucrats instead of one run by insurance bureaucrats. That doesn’t fix the problem. It just changes its location. Two trillion more dollars change hands from the private sector to go to Washington. That is exactly wrong.

That’s Change We CAN’T Believe In.

Pundits have said that new Administration’s need to stack accomplishments during the first 100 days is the reason for the rush to ObamaCare. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is critical that the Administration fast track Universal Health Care through immediately, just as they did the “Stimulus Pack” and the theft of the auto industry and their concessionist international diplomacy and the bank bailout that somehow forgot to make any mortgage money available and the 100 days/100 press conferences.

Why is it critical? Because even Congress would rebel if they actually read the bills.

That’s No Change At All.

Independence Day

Posted on by

Here’s a revolutionary idea.

Independence Day commemorates our declaration of independence from the King of England. The revolution officially began two days earlier when the Second Continental Congress approved the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain, a resolution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in June. After voting for independence on June 2, Congress debated and revised the Declaration itself for two days and approved it on July 4.

In the centuries since, only the current Congress has moved with anywhere near the speed, since the current Congress has passed trillions of dollars of spending on millions of pages of bills in less than 100 days.

The Declaration of Independence fits on one page.

In Peoria just one hundred fifty-five years ago Rep. Abraham Lincoln said,

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.” … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. … Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.

Lincoln spoke of the enslavement of persons. Today our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust by a government that would enslave We the People, taking more and more of our rights and our land and our life’s blood to its own purpose.

Two hundred thirty-one years ago today, General George Washington marked July 4 with a double ration of rum and an artillery salute for the soldiers who fought off the foreign monarchy that did enslave us. Now it is time to mark July 4 with a double ration of electoral salute to those who would be the modern monarchy of government.


When Pigs Fly. Or Something.

Posted on by

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court overturned gay marriage in the Land of Fruits and Nuts last week. Meanwhile the, um, corn-fed Iowans upheld gay marriage last month.

That seems more than odd.

Five states (Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont) have legalized gay marriage. More than 40 states explicitly ban it.

California has an unusually strong direct democracy. Voters can decide almost any question via propositions and state constitutional amendments. Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, passed in November.

The California Supremes upheld that Prop 8 was a permissible amendment to the constitution. “The measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term marriage for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law…”

California is not alone in changing its constitution on a whim. Florida had six constitutional amendments on the November ballot.

I generally favor direct action by an electorate. Every citizen votes directly in the classic New England Town Meeting. That works well but it is worth remembering that when the majority tries to teach a pig to sing, that majority ought not also be able to legislate the pig’s pleasure.

It is time states like California and Florida learn that a state Constitution may be a living document but it ought not be one that sways in every breeze. Oh yeah, and that pigs don’t like to sing.

[apologies to Robert A. Heinlein]

Memorial Day

Posted on by

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

“Holiday” is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. holiday means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for an moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and died to protect us from those who would kill us.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women and would kill their own. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did and die they will.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words. And you get to read them.