Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning 22: Justice is a class being taught by Michael Sandel at Harvard. Michael Gerson has an op-ed on it in the Washington Post.

I found the article very interesting, it lays down no this is right, this is wrong messages about the class. It discusses the effects and consequences of different reasonings and judgements.

An interesting article, go read it.

One of our Nation's Finest

Really Socked it to Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington's 3rd District...

If you haven't already seen the video here is a good link
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/marine-corp-veteran-at-town-hall.html

Go view and read the comments.

"Death Panels" by any other Name

The Strata Sphere blog has a good article by AJ Strata:

Update: Sarah Palin comes out again today, noting as I did, this is not about end-of-life consultations, it is about the core essence of any cheap, government run healthcare system - end update.

The liberals are now all up in arms because someone (i.e., Governor Sarah Palin) was finally able to label the core problem with any and all government run health care options. That label is “death panels”, and it is very appropriate and accurate, and is only marginally attached to end-of-life consultations.

Today’s liberal know-it-alls march around with the pompous, busy-body attitude reflecting a modern day inquisition. They tell everyone how to think, how to live, how to talk to each other, what myths to follow (global warming comes to mind). And if we lowly peasants violate these holy liberals we are chastised, attacked and can be punished under the law for our digressions from orthodoxy.

Interestingly, right now the opponents of the liberals’ government run dreams of conquest don’t need to theorize or extrapolate about the possible outcomes, because the UK clearly shows us all where a government run health care ‘option’ will lead us. What they are going through now, in terms of ‘cost savings’, is what ANY government controlled health spending program for individuals will end up. And realize, this is not about consultations – it is about cost savings (aka ‘cheap healthcare’, ‘affordable health care’, ‘universal access’, etc) and how the liberal inquisitors will chose the worthy......

So, how does the government save/not spend money on health care? Let’s hear from President Obama’s lead architect and advisor, in his own words (which he is today trying to deny are his words) on how this can be accomplished:
Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Read it all at the Strata Sphere (this is a long article and well worth reading) and go to the ABC news blog for all the quotes from Zeke Emanuel.

I heart Victor Davis Hanson

On Dishing It Out . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]

Via National Review Online

What is weird about the liberal hysteria to the obstreperous (and occasionally rude) town meetings is the complete amnesia about what constitutes reckless public discourse.

At one time not so long ago, those on the Left, and mainstream Democrats as well, apparently believed inflammatory language, Hitler parallels, and perverse expressions of real hatred were acceptable means to the noble end of discrediting the Bush presidency.

During the bleak days of Iraq, demonstrators carried swastikas and Hitler portraits of Bush habitually. Nicholson Baker wrote a novel in which characters are contemplating killing Bush. Films were praised imagining the assassination of the president. Michael Moore, courted by the Democratic elite, lamented that bin Laden on 9/11 had hit a blue state — and once compared the killers of Americans in Iraq to Minutemen. Go read it all, you'll love him, too.

“You are terrifying us.”

This from an editorial opinion piece by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal online.

And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who’ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs.

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”

This is from the middle of the editorial, read it all.

Saturday Morning Browsings

I'm trying to contain myself when it comes to posting every interesting thing I read so I will put several in this one. One of the sites I visit regularly in the morning is Lucianne.com. It is only links to articles from many sources because readers who have registered with that site are the ones who post them.
So here are some I'm reading from there this morning:

Congressman Admits: Congress Stupid By Matt Patterson from American Thinker.
It was an astonishing admission. Last week, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told an audience at the National Press Club that, not only had he not read the House health-care bill which would reorganize 1/6th of the U.S. economy, but that even if he had he would not have understood it:
"I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill.' What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?"

Health reform is in trouble by Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade
Here's a data point that should give liberals pause: There is no statistically significant difference between the proportion of Americans who think ill of Sarah Palin and the proportion of Americans who disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President.

Mail online from the UK, The Barack backlash: How Obama's presidency has gone from deity to doubtful By Max Hastings
On Thursday night, the most powerful man on earth spent 55 minutes of his priceless time simply sharing a beer with a police officer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard professor.
This minutely orchestrated media event was designed to rescue Barack Obama from the most idiotic, yet nonetheless damaging, row of his presidency.

Read all these links by clicking on each one and peruse many more at Lucianne.com

Funny but True

I got this in an email from a friend. Probably a lot of you have seen it before, I had not. I don't know where it started or whether it actually happened, but here it is. Enjoy!

RECENT VIRGINIA CHURCH SERVICE SERMON

Gen 47: 13-27

Good morning, brothers and sisters; it's always a delight to see the pews crowded on Sunday morning, and so eager to get into God's Word. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to the 47th chapter of Genesis; we'll begin our reading at verse 13, and go through verse 27.

Brother Ray, would you stand and read that great passage for us?...(reading)... Thank you for that fine reading, Brother Ray..

So we see that economic hard times fell upon Egypt , and the people turned to the government of Pharaoh to deal with this for them. And Pharaoh nationalized the grain harvest, and placed the grain in great storehouses that he had built. So the people brought their money to Pharaoh, like a great tax increase, and gave it all to him willingly in return for grain.

And this went on until their money ran out, and they were hungry again. So when they went to Pharaoh after that, they brought their livestock - their cattle, their horses, their sheep, and their donkey - to barter for grain, and verse 17 says that only took them through the end of that year.

But the famine wasn't over, was it? So the next year, the people came before Pharaoh and admitted they had nothing left, except their land and their own lives. "There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh."
So they surrendered their homes, their land, and their real estate to Pharaoh's government, and Then sold themselves into slavery to him, in return for grain.

What can we learn from this, brothers and sisters? That turning to the government instead of to God to be our provider in hard times only leads to slavery? Yes.
That the only reason government wants to be our provider is to also become our master? Yes.
But look how that passage ends, brothers and sisters! Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt , in the land of Goshen . And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly." God provided for His people, just as He always has! They didn't end up giving all their possessions to the government, no, it says they gained possessions!
But I also tell you a great truth today, and an ominous one. We see the same thing happening today - the government today wants to "share the wealth" once again, to take it from us and redistribute it back to us. It wants to take control of healthcare, just as it has taken control of education, and ration it back to us, and when government rations it, then government decides who gets it, and how much, and what kind. And if we go along with it, and do it willingly, then we will wind up no differently than the people of Egypt did four thousand years ago - as slaves to the government, and as slaves to our leaders.
What Mr. Obama's government is doing now is no different from what Pharaoh's government did then, and it will end the same.. And a lot of people like to call Mr. Obama a "Messiah," don't they? Is he a Messiah? A savior?
Didn't the Egyptians say, after Pharaoh made them his slaves, "You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh"?
Well, I tell you this - I know the Messiah; the Messiah is a friend of mine; and Mr. Obama is no Messiah!
No, brothers and sisters, if Mr. Obama is a character from the Bible, then he is Pharaoh.
Bow with me in prayer, if you will.
Lord, You alone are worthy to be served, and we rely on You, and You alone. We confess that the government is not our deliverer, and never rightly will be. We read in the eighth chapter of 1 Samuel, when Samuel warned the people of what a ruler would do, where it says "And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day." And Lord, we acknowledge that day has come. We cry out to you because of the ruler that we have chosen for ourselves as a nation..Lord, we pray for this nation. We pray for revival, and we pray for deliverance from those who would be our masters. Give us hearts to seek You and hands to serve You, and protect Your people from the atrocities of Pharaoh's government.

In God we Trust

Monday Morning Links

Stumbling governors spell trouble for Dems according to Michael Barone at Townhall.com

With polls showing a drop in Barack Obama's job rating and sinking support for the Democrats' health care plans, there is evidence of collateral damage where you might not expect to find it: in the standing of Democratic governors. Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell suddenly is getting negative job ratings in both the Quinnipiac University and the Franklin & Marshall College polls -- his lowest marks in seven years as governor. Ohio's Ted Strickland, who has spent most of his first term working amicably with Republican legislators, scores less than 50 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll and has only tenuous leads over two Republicans, John Kasich and Mike DeWine, who may run against him next year.

An interesting read on the coming elections.

Congressional Health Care Not Free- from Cleveland Plain Dealer

WASHINGTON -- It is repeated so often that many Americans believe it: Congress gets free or extremely low-cost, gold-plated health care.

Reuben Grossberg of Pepper Pike, a structural engineer and former project manager for an architectural firm, certainly thought it was true, arguably with good reason, because Congress has done almost nothing to knock it down.
"I want the same quality of health care as the politicians get, and I don't want to have to pay any more for it," Grossberg, 63, said in an interview last week when President Barack Obama was flying to Cleveland and Congress struggled to craft a trillion-dollar health reform package.
Problem is, the belief that Congress gets cheap-but-Cadillac-quality health benefits is a myth. Some members of Congress, in fact, pay higher premiums for their health plans than they would if privately employed. Read it all to get the whole story, they do pay premiums, sometimes very high premiums.

The Abortion Debate - Slate has an article I'm not sure how to take.

I notice they quote themselves quite often and that is okay.... but it is also opinion. Read it and see what you think. It is titled Culture of Death - the rightwing assault on abortion reduction. I have a nephew who is adopting a yet to be born baby, just so you know where I come down on a lot of this.

A new fault line has opened in the abortion debate. The fight is no longer between pro-lifers and pro-choicers. It's between militants and pragmatists.While some extremists have been raising hell and shooting doctors, pragmatists have been hashing out common-ground legislation. Their latest bill, introduced Thursday, is the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act. If that sounds like a jumble of ideas from both sides, it's because lots of bargaining went into it. Among other things, pro-choicers got money for contraception and sex education. Pro-lifers got abstinence-friendly curriculum, a bigger adoption tax credit, and financial support for women who continue their pregnancies.

Tennessee Tried a type of Obama Healthcare

Real Clear Politics has an article showing a Tennessee attempt at health care that was very much like the Democrats would like us to have. Via the Strata-Sphere blog:

The genesis of TennCare has many parallels to the situation in which we find ourselves today. It was a public option plan designed to save money and expand coverage. In the early 1990s, Tennessee was facing rising costs in its Medicaid program. TennCare was designed to replace Medicaid with managed care and use the promised savings to expand coverage. By 1998, TennCare swelled to cover 1.2 million people. Private business dropped coverage for employees and forced them onto state rolls. By 2002 enrollment had swelled to 1.4 million people and forced Tennessee’s Governor to raise taxes and ultimately propose an entirely new state income tax to cover the unforeseen costs. Governor Bredesen was ultimately forced to dramatically restructure a program he has since called “a disaster”. By 2006 Bredesen had disenrolled nearly 200,000 people and slashed benefits.

Go read what the Strata-sphere has to say and the whole story at Real Clear Politics

Are we "Reapeating the Mistakes of Japan's Lost Decade?"

An editorial in the Washington Examiner says we are.

Here's something that ought to scare the daylights out of everybody: After Japan's stock and real estate markets collapsed in 1991, government officials made a series of disastrous policy decisions that prevented the world's second largest economy from recovering for more than a decade. Starting with the closing months of the Bush administration and continuing now with President Obama, America is making the exact same mistakes today.

Read it all, it looks as though we are making the same serious mistakes.

I Just Want to Be Mundane.

Antonia Senior in the Telegraph on the dangers the idealistic.

Ideologies often credit man with either more nobility or more venality than he deserves. In reality he is a mundane creature. He wants a home for himself and those he loves, stocked with food. And he wants to have the right to control his own destiny, own his own stuff, and to acquire more if he can without interference or fear of imminent death. Such low-level acquisitive desires support high concepts: property rights and the rule of law, without which there would be no foundation for democracy.

My desire to live a free, mundane life is a fundamental cog in our messy, glorious, capitalist democracy. It is built on millions of such small entrenched postitions. Red-filtered, my desires are despicable and bourgeois and must be beaten out of me with indoctrination or force. Green-filtered, my small desires are despicable acts of ecological vandalism. My house is a carbon factory. My desire to travel, to own stuff, to eat meat, to procreate, to heat my house, to shower for a really, really long time; all are evil.

I agree with this article, it simply reinforces my understanding of the nature of humanity. Most of us are mundane. We wish for peace and quite to go about our simple daily routines, which are mostly meaningless to everyone but those closest to us. We just want to get by....and in the United States, we just want to get by happily.

But there are those who believe they are born for great things. They are born to change the world. This can be good; slavery was ended in the western world. I've always supposed that those good and impassioned people that lead the way on slavery turned next to achohol and the temperance movement which in turn lead to prohibition which of course gave us the Kennedys. Now how sad is that.

Via Instapundit.

Columnist asks, "Who's the Narcissist?"

Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade asked this question and then answered it for us.

IN HIS hit piece on Sarah Palin for Vanity Fair, Todd Purdum wrote: "More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - 'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy' - and thought it fit her perfectly."

He then responds to Todd Purdum and paints Obama as the narcissist.
I'm not going to lift the whole article but you must read it.

Nothing on the "Gates Gate" Here

It is almost as constant on TV as the death of Micheal Jackson so I won't be linking or commenting any more than this about the big flap of stupidity over it. It was not even worth mentioning at a presidential news conference, I think it was a setup question that turned into something way beyond what President Obama expected. As we would expect of him he has walked it back and is probably really kicking himself for all the bad publicity. All the political talk and television shows have kicked it around endlessly and I, who am but a lowly housewife, find it above my pay grade and frankly a really tasteless piece of news.
So this is it for what I will say or link to about it.

Truth Will Out

David Brooks is not known for being the strongest conservative in the world but he is still touted as one by the MSM. Newsbusters has a link to a Wall Street Journal article called The Conversation where he and liberal columnist Gail Collins have a public "conversation." In it he admits

"At the moment, I feel politically closer to Barack Obama than to House Minority Leader John Boehner (and that’s even while being greatly exercised about the current health care bills). "

Very interesting - follow the link to read the whole thing at Newsbusters. David Brooks hasn't shown any conservative attributes for a long, long time.

Peggy Noonan Finally Noticed

She has an article in today's Wall Street Journal online in which she says:

His news conference the other night was bad. He was filibustery and spinny and gave long and largely unfollowable answers that seemed aimed at limiting the number of questions asked and running out the clock. You don’t do that when you’re fully confident. Far more seriously, he didn’t seem to be telling the truth. We need to create a new national health-care program in order to cut down on government spending? Who would believe that? Would anybody?

It makes you wonder where she has been these last two years. Oh, I know, with the other elites from the MSM.

Wednesday morning links

Lighting revolution forecast by some scientist....

.gallium nitride (GaN), is already used for some lighting applications such as camera flashes, bicycle lights, mobile phones and interior lighting for buses, trains and planes. Click to read the whole thing.

Anguish Across the Globe As Obama Rolls Back American Influence
From Townhall columnist and blogger Ben Shapiro a black scenario of N Korean and Iraqi prisoners who have no hope of relief from America.

Arrogance by John Stossel on the Real Clear Politics site

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Go read it all and browse the Real Clear Politics site.

On Gun Rights from the Washington Post

South Dakota Sen. John Thune will step into the national spotlight today when the Senate votes on his measure that would allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines.

Real Clear Politics has more on Obamacare by Michael Tanner: The Three Big Lies

The Wall Street Journal: Senate Kills Funds for F-22 Fighters, I haven't followed the F-22 situation enough to comment on it but you will probably want to read this.

Politico says "Americans Getting Big Dose of President Obama in an article by Carol Lee.

He’s been in office only six months, but already there’s a strong sense of déjà vu around the way Americans are seeing and hearing from President Barack Obama.

The president keeps returning to the same communications tactics over and over, and all the pages of his PR playbook have one thing in common: a big dose of Obama.

His prime-time news conference Wednesday night, one of the standbys, brings his total to four. That’s the same number that George W. Bush did — in eight years as president.

An Email from Don Durand

Let me tell you this: today I am feeling better about the health situation. He's lost for the Aug 1 deadline. That's the result of pressure from all of us on the congressmen. That's what I mean by numbers counting.

His numbers are falling and so is the confidence level.
Put that in the blog if you can from me.

One other thing, there was a proposal in the original health plan to include the congress and the senate and it was turned down. How does that make you feel. "it's good for you, but not good enough for me"!

Conservative Regards'
Don