An Unhealthy Prescription

The House is debating its health care bill today. I urge all two of you who read my blog to write to your congressman to tell him what you think. This bill if passed will change what it means to be an American in profound ways and take us down a path I don't want to tread. Following is my brief note to Congressman Rick Larsen:

Dear Congressman Larsen, As the House is debating its health care bill I urge you to reconsider voting for the bill. It is an ill conceived piece of legislation that the majority of your constituents don't want. It's not that many of us don't want health care reform. We do. However, this 2000 page monstrosity, which I'm sure you have not read in its entirety, creates a massive new bureaucracy and burdens our future with trillions in debt in a way that will cripple our economy. There are better ways to control health care costs and to provide options for the non-insured and marginally insured. This bill is too expensive. It is ill conceived. It rewards special interests. It limits individual liberty and choice. It's the wrong bill at the wrong time. Please vote no.

Feelings

Feelings

I started out my morning with my usual Drudge fix and was stunned to see that Obama had won the Nobel Prize. I was even more stunned when I learned that the nominations for the prize had to be submitted by February. Obama would have been in office for just a month. Maybe this was an April Fools’ joke. What had Obama done prior to February 2009 that was worthy of being awarded the Nobel Prize? Were community-organizing lawyers such rare and valuable contributors to our society that they would even be considered for the prize? What was I missing? Had Obama qualified for the prize simply because he was able to get himself elected? It made no sense.

I thought that I truly must be some Neanderthal knuckle-dragging throwback like the mainstream press always accused conservatives of being. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Surely the stolid Norwegians had not been caught up in the magic of the Obama rhetoric. While it is true that blue blood hating, blue collar Harry Reid once said that Obama was a gifted orator (Mr. Obama graciously agreed with Harry that he indeed did have such a gift) surely, I thought, the gift had been lost in translation by the time it hit Norwegian ears.

Last week in Copenhagen, the IOC was under-whelmed and sent the President and his Chicago entourage packing. A former Danish IOC representative explained in the Berlingske Tidende that Mr. Obama’s five hour blitz was simply too business like and had not addressed the spirit and feeling the IOC had for the Olympic games. So last week Obama lost the games for Chicago for not having enough feeling for Olympic spirit.

Miraculously (would you expect anything else) things turned dramatically better for the president today. Still I could not understand why that was. Was the IOC just feeling sorry for our new President? That could be it. The Russians aren’t playing well with Obama. Neither are the Iranians despite a lovely speech by Mr. Obama earlier this year. The Chinese are seeking to establish a new reserve currency. Domestically Obama’s agenda for change has hit a snag due to a bunch of pitchfork wielding hate speaking Limbaugh zombies taking their elected officials to task.

Later in the day, the IOC seeming to anticipate my question explained that the prize had been given in anticipation of the things Obama hopes to do as opposed to what he has accomplished to date. This explanation suddenly gave me hope for a change in my own bottom line. I have some ideas on cold fusion (it involves a can of Coke a nail and two wires) and faster than light rocket engines that could change the world, as we know it. Could not the Nobel committee anticipate that I could use the $1.4 million prize to achieve limitless power and to reach out to the stars? What is Obama’s goal of emasculating the United States’ super power status (so that we can be just like Norway or Iceland) in comparison to my goal of providing cheap unlimited power to all of the peoples of earth? Obviously Obama’s goals are small potatoes compared to mine.

And yet it is finally clear to me that my goal of doing something concretely beneficial for humanity just won’t cut it with the Nobel folks. It is far better in the committee’s eyes to feel good about something or someone than to actually do something good for society. Feelings are so much easier to deal with than the hard and sometimes messy work of doing good deeds.

Like the old song says, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings …”

Curious Circumstances

It's curious. A couple of weeks ago, the Israeli press were hot and bothered by their Prime Minister's disappearance. It later turns out that Netanyahu had gone to Russia on a secret mission to see Putin. Then we get the news from the international atomic regulators that Iran (surprise surprise) really does have the capability to create nuclear weapons and very soon will have ICBMs to launch them to just about to any target in the world. Then the Iranian president (again) announces that the holocaust never happened and that Israel will soon no longer exist. Finally the other bookend to this interesting set of facts is the Obama administration's announcement that it is changing course on the Bush administration's decision to place missile interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. Putin then announces that Obama has made a brave decision. The Poles and Czechs rightly complain that they have been betrayed by America.

The Poles and Czechs have every right to be concerned given Russia's reincarnated imperialism over the past few years. Last August's incursion into Georgia and the Russians' disputes with the Ukrainians understandably have the Poles and Czechs wondering if they are next in a re institution of a Soviet era type buffer between Russia and western Europe.

My first reaction to this set of circumstances was that the Obama administration was simply appeasing another autocratic state. It seems that is what liberals like to do since they so often profess being uncomfortable with the projection of power externally even though domestically they revel in it.

That being said, I wonder if something else is going on. My suspicious mind asks whether a deal was cut with Russia not to seriously interfere with an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear processing facilities. Netanyahu's secret meeting with Putin can really have no other explanation. Although Iran is almost a Russian client state, the Russians have to be concerned with a nuclear Iran to their south. It would be in Russia's long term interests to have a non-nuclear Iran even though the Russians effectively exploit Iran's conflict with the west over the issue. Could the Obama administration have exchanged the missile program that was such a huge irritant to the Russians for Russia's tacit approval for an Israeli strike on Iran?

If that is indeed what happened, then perhaps the Obama administration will have made its first adult foreign policy decision.

On the other hand, my speculation as to these curious circumstances may be completely off base. We may simply be seeing, once again, a 1938 type of appeasement of a quasi dictatorship which results in a betrayal of good friends in the name of achieving peace in our times. We all know how that turned out in 1939.

In any event, I think you will agree these are some curious circumstances.

A Big Fall

Summer is almost over. Next week people will be saying goodbye to summer and wondering how it went by so fast. Fall is already setting in based on the fall sunlight angles I've been noticing. There is kind of a special lighting that Fall has (when you can see the sun in Seattle) that I'm sure has to do with our latitude. Science aside it is beautiful and I enjoy the early part of Fall a lot.

This year, Fall has special significance. The nation will see whether its collective outrage over the President's and Congress' plan to assume control over the remainder of our nation's health care will have any effect on the implementation of that plan. The optimist in me hopes that the legislators have sensed their own political demise if they pass the bill. The pessimist in me understands that they probably have the votes needed to pass the House bill pretty much as is after conference committing with Senate. About 1/2 the nation is outraged with what is going on. 30% think the 50% opposing the bill are heartless backwater inbreds because they don't support the bill. Another 20% don't have a clue what is going on and couldn't care less if they did know. I wonder how those demographics will play out.

Reality is that we are on the cusp of becoming a nation that is different from what our founders intended. The 60's radicals have taken power. I hope this Fall is a big one because the collective wisdom of the American people prevails over the radical agenda. If it does not, then historians will mark this Fall as the beginning of the end of our constitutional republic.

I pray that we choose wisely.

It's All About Me

Two small books have taken the publishing world by storm over the last few weeks. One is Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny and the other is Glenn Beck's Common Sense. I have both books. They each provide interesting analysis on how we got into our present mess. Levin's book is a more scholarly approach than Beck's; however, Beck's book is a little more accessible. Essentially, however, these two guys are saying the same thing. Everyone should read both books because they provide excellent analytical frameworks to assess the current state of the world.

That being said, I was really bugged this afternoon when I heard Levin ranting over the fact that Beck and OReilly were alleging book sale numbers that were overstated. He was claiming that his book was outselling theirs and that jealousy was driving the other guys to overstate their book sale numbers.

Is that really all that Levin has to worry about? If he is really interested in preserving our liberty he should be grateful for the efforts of others trying to do the same thing. Who cares who is selling more books? The point is that a lot of good books are being sold and hopefully read. Whether Levin's book or Beck's book, each can educate about the uniqueness of the American experiment and warn of the dangers to which it is being subjected by the soft tyranny of progressive ideas.

Come on guys it's not about you. It's about all of us.

Small Things

I was trying a case today in a public building whose principle function is to dispense government funds to those who fall into the government's need net. However, the state and federal dispensing of other peoples' cash is not the topic of my rantings today. Rather my heartburn is over two posters taped to the walls at various locations in this government office. They were small posters. One was just 8 1/2 by 11. However, the posters' small size belied their capability to get me hugely ticked off.

Exhibit 1

Posted on a window of a family planning office was a picture of a couple dressed in 50s style clothing chastely walking hand in hand. The poster simply said, "Times have Changed."

They most certainly have. This family planning adverstisment was clearly mocking traditional morality. We can each have our opinions on that issue. However, the point of my rant is that here I was standing in a State-run money and service dispensary in front of a family planning office sporting a state sponsored advertisement encouraging and approving the out of wedlock sex that produces the pregnant consequences that form the reason for that office's existence. State money encouraging dysfunctional behavior. Make sense?

Exhibit 2

Sitting in the small conference room, where we were having our proceeding, there was a small poster on the wall. I didn't notice it at first. However as my attention to the case drifted, I looked at the poster and noted it depicted two daddies with two children. The poster also depicted two women walking arm in arm. The tag line on the poster was something like "We are Diverse But We Are Also the Same." The poster then noted it had been sponsored by a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite organization. My purpose is not to get into an argument regarding gay/ straight lifestyle pros and cons. I have friends and business acquaintances of all persuasions and I wish to give no offense. However, as with Exhibit 1, here was a poster espousing family structures that are admittedly non-traditional (at least so far in most cultures) being posted in a public place thereby implying state sanction of the non-traditional family structures.

So what's my point to this other than my usual rantings and ravings about dysfunctional personal conduct and the dissolution of traditional family structures? Just this. Some branches of the Government are vested in encouraging dysfunctional behavior to ensure that they have a never ending client base for their services. A lot of government employees' livelihoods depend on dysfunctional personal behaviors and non-traditional family structures.

I suspect the only thing that would have put the icing on the cake for me, today, would have been to find a state lottery sales office in the same building next to the office providing services to problem gamblers.

I guess just like any other business, the government has the right to advertise and entice its citizens to engage in conduct that ultimately leads to dependency on government services. The only grim satisfaction in all of this is that some our state agencies are effectively using capitalist marketing techniques to sell their services.

Now, if only we could get them to turn a profit.

First Word

I have finally decided to leap into the world of blogging. This foray into another time consumer is not done lightly. I have plenty of things on my plate to keep me busy. Nor am I in need of a creative outlet. I have plenty of those. Rather I need a means to express myself regarding my political and social observations that so often cause mumblings and mutterings that many of my family and friends probably assume are signs of early onset dementia.

Even as a kid I have always been fascinated with the news, world events, history and politics. Never in my 53 years; however, have I been so concerned about the fate of my country. The United States is on edge of a transformation into a society rigidly controlled by central authority whose goal it is to control most aspects of our economy and more importantly control the everyday choices we make as individuals. This is not a sudden transformation. Rather it has been on going for over the past 100 years. With the last national election, progressives / socialists/ statists (whatever the flavor) have finally gained power. The political leadership is attempting to erase what it is that makes America exceptional in its quest for a egalitarian utopia in which everyone but leadership are equally mediocre and equally without hope for something better.

I will always remember a train ride I had in Germany in the 1970s. A member of the German Bundestag was riding in our compartment with us. As we talked about the world the Soviet Union came up. The German parliamentarian expressed his preference for living in West Germany rather in Soviet dominated East Germany. He said that he preferred the illusion of freedom that the west offered compared with the reality of oppression under Soviet rule. While I agreed with him that illusory freedom was better than real oppression I felt sorry for him that he was so cynical about the real freedom that he had. As an American then, I had a hard time relating to his cynicism. I really believed then that I had real freedom or perhaps liberty. America is a unique land in which the people grant its government limited authority rather than in other lands where the state grants limited freedoms. That is a critical fundamental difference in the United States that I think is often not known or forgotten.

Therefore, the purpose of UnCommon Sense (to steal Thomas Paine's title) is to vent my concerns about the current state of our nation. I can promise no original thoughts in this blog and most certainly you will see echoes and concerns that are reflections of commentary from folks much smarter than I. However, I think we all need to be engaging in political conversation at a time when the course of our nation is at a fateful crossroad.

Please feel free to vent as well.