Category: Politics

Health Insurance Bill Passes in the Senate

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This morning the health insurance legislation that has been on the table in the Senate passed with a 60-39 vote. Now the legislation must be merged with the bill that passed in the House in November. In reality, this is when the real “fun” begins.

For the most part, I do not think that most Americans understand the legislation or what it means for the government to provide health insurance to millions of its citizens. There is also a lack of understanding of the difference between healthcare and health insurance. Americans are not lacking healthcare, a number lack health insurance. Sure, it is semantics, but it is meaningful semantics. Stating that Americans lack healthcare, is making it sound like the states lack hospitals and we get our medical care from shaman hanging out in a forest.

My biggest hang-up with the legislation that passed actually has nothing to do with health part of the bill, but instead some of the provisions regarding how states will be allocated money and the inability to repeal the Medicare Advisory Board by a future Congress.

I will not go into the details about these things because they are complicated and I am not sure they will even make it into the merged bill. What I think people need to understand is that there has never been a guarantee on one’s health or on the ability to receive medical care on the cheap. Is the healthcare system broken? Yes. Can the healthcare system be fixed by having the government mandate changes and pass out cash? I highly doubt it. I would love to be proven wrong, but I just don’t see it happening.

Let’s remember that these are politicians at work. No matter what side of the argument that you are on, can we agree that most politicians do what they do to get reelected? Or that they want to stick to the party “line”? What this amounts to then is asking men, who have been self-serving for the most part, to start serving the people that they represent.

When we elect a Congressman we are electing someone that serves the people of that district. This doesn’t mean that the elected official has to do everything the people say, it means that the official needs to do what’s in the best interest of the people while listening to their constituents. So if a Congressman wants to vote for legislation but is getting loud opposition from their constituents, they shouldn’t vote for it. That was the way the system was meant to work but I am afraid it has fallen away from that into personal gain.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Keeping an Infamous Day, Infamous

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A military man can scarcely pride himself on having ‘smitten a sleeping enemy’; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Those words, spoken after the attack 68 years ago today, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. Yamamoto knew that even though he had partially disabled the naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, the resolve of the American people would strengthen their willingness to fight. Rather than relying on his advisor’s quick assessment from a strategic point of view, Yamomoto remembered his time at Harvard University to understand what was to come.

Pearl Harbor War Widows Go Into Military Work
Hollem, Howard R.,, photographer. Pearl Harbor widows have gone into war work to carry on the fight with a personal vengeance, Corpus Christi, Texas. Mrs. Virginia Young (right) whose husband was one of the first casualties of World War II, is a supervisor in the Assembly and Repairs Department of the Naval Air Base. Her job is to find convenient and comfortable living quarters for women workers from out of the state, like Ethel Mann, who operates an electric drill.

The ultimate sacrifice of 2,345 military personnel and 57 civilians would not be in vain.

Today is a day that our service men and women from World War II should be remembered, thanked, and admired. If you have children, teach them about today and the great sacrifice of a generation to insure that the United States prevailed and lived on.

Someone Donate a Dictionary to NBC

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Apparently the economy has hurt the folks at NBC so much that they cannot afford a dictionary. Or maybe their time is too valuable to actually look up a definition before speaking complete fallacies.

During a report on the recent ACORN scandal Norah O’Donnell of NBC News stated that the sting videos “might be viewed as entrapment”.

No, Norah, it can’t be because as the definition states, entrapment is when a law enforcement officer or government agent induces or encourages a person to commit a crime when that person expresses that they do not want to do so. Entrapment is based on who caused the encouragement for the act.

In these ACORN tapes it is clear that the encouragement was not by the “government agents” but instead with the ACORN volunteers.

What makes this wordplay even funnier is that NBC is also the producing network of the entrapment trainwreck called To Catch a Predator. There have been numerous claims of the show’s decoys being the first to suggest sex, meaning that a show acting in conjunction with the government crossed into the fuzzy area of entrapment.

[flash flashvars=”v=GdkUpruzSU”]http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf[/flash]

Civility

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Joe Wilson’s explosive comment during President Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress was inappropriate. He apologized, end of story. Right? Wrong.

His two words have caused an uproar on the internet, the television and the radio, diverting attention away from the real issue; Healthcare. One blogpost writes Wilson’s comments off as poor “civility” and claims such a virtue is not one at all:

Civility is one of our favorite fake virtues. Real virtues like kindness, charity, or honesty ask something of us—but civility is satisfied so long as we speak in a certain tone and refrain from using certain words. We might spread lies that lead to unnecessary war—but we do so politely. If we grind the faces of the poor into the dust—at least we do it with well-polished boots. We are a nation of wealth and taste.

Sure, it sounds like a decent argument on the surface, but the tactic here is to add language that again, distracts from the argument. Lies are lies are lies, no matter who spreads them. The disturbing part is the recent revelation that the two examples of where healthcare failed used by the President in his speech were embellished. Ok, so he didn’t tell the whole truth, but wait, that sounds familiar if you listen to the rhetoric on Bush’s Iraq policies.

It is just more proof that neither side is better than the other and they both have their share of crooks, liars, and whackjobs. Trying to claim moral high ground on the basis of political ideology is about as dumb as looking into a gas can with a lighter. Your politics may be shaped by your morals but loose blanket statements on issues doesn’t pass the muster test. If you believe in virtues, then you have to abide by all. It’s not some moral buffet where virtues can be cherry picked when they suit a purpose.

So maybe it’s time to forget civility and try kindness, humility, temperance, charity, patience, diligence, chastity, and justice. I’m sure that out of those eight civility will become a given.

Education and the Silent Trillion

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Behind all of the healthcare debates and save-face moments lies another policy proposal that is quietly making its way through the House. The Obama administration is proposing to increase its current 20% share of the student-loan origination market to 80% by July 1, 2010 and letting the remaining public sector 20% just fade away.

For decades, federally backed student loans were the most common way to borrow for college. Money was raised in the private sector, loans made and the private institutions paid a fee to the government for each loan. In return, the government covered most of the defaults which in turn, allowed the private lenders to make a regulated return. All of that changed in 2007 when Congress legislated a return so low that no private lender could make a profit holding the assets.

The administration is claiming that this will save $87 billion but there are discrepancies that the Congressional Budget Office says really only mean $47 billion in savings. Long story short, be prepared for the default rates to skyrocket and for more students to suffer as they come out of college and realize missing a single payment could cost them dearly.

Education for all! [that can afford it]

If Soros Can Organize, So Can Others

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It is interesting to see the different stories on all of the town hall protests and the fact that there are organizations and websites supporting some of them. George Soros does the same thing, using different companies and websites to support Democratic causes and politicians, yet none of the media outlets seem to care.

In all honesty it does not matter if organizations back either side, different causes require different funding.

Let’s focus on the facts of the different versions of the bill that are out there and worry less about the “noise”. And by that I mean not focusing on stories about possible militia movements motivated by racism in the U.S.

Update: It appears that some of the protesters that are bringing offensive signs to town halls are actually Soros plants.

Aren’t There More Important Things in the World?

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The protests against David Letterman in New York City make me a chuckle; Sure what he said about Palin’s daughter and A-Rod was in poor taste, but to take time out of your day to go yell at the building where he works seems a bit over the top, don’t you think? Even funnier are the protesters protesting the protest, of course they turn it into a political opportunity rather than a look at what was said as being inappropriate.

Yet, halfway around the world people are protesting and dying for change in their country. Seems like our priorities are out of whack. We’re worried about whether restaurants should be serving trans fats while Iranians are being told they are not allowed to gather in public places. Let’s get our priorities in order and worry about the things that matter, which, I’m sorry to say, do not include what talking heads say on television.

D-Day – 65 Years Later

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Today marks the anniversary of the turning point on the Western Front during WWII. Some will say that the battles in North Africa marked the turning point and others will reply with mentions of Sicily and Salerno, but the truth of the matter is, the events that took place on June 6, 1944, from the beachheads to the hedgerows, changed the course of the war to a direction from which the Axis powers could not recover.

Watching the ceremonies that took place today in France made my eyes water. I saw war veterans being stopped in the street and asked for their autographs, being treated like royalty, and being thanked. The news station interviewed some of them and their humbleness was unbelievable, most explained that they were just doing their part and that the ones who deserve our thanks are the ones who did not come back. Those who paid the ultimate price do deserve our gratitude, but the ones who lived through the war deserve to know that their  hard work is not unnoticed and was not in vain.

The generation that stormed the beaches that morning is slowly dying, we need to thank them and take as much time as we can to know their stories.

June 6, 1944 changed history. Americans, British, Canadians, French, and Australians stormed the beaches of Normandy and parachuted into places like Merville and Ranville. They fought for every inch of beach and in doing so, started a chain reaction to overthrow the evil that had infected Europe.

Cybersecurity Bill Too Vague?

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In most American households the internet has quickly become the source of news, information, and in some cases, communication. So, the bill introduced by John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and Republican Olympia Snowe from Maine is surprising because it gives the ultimate authority over the U.S. internet infrastructure to the President, allowing him to turn off access if need be. There is certainly a need for control when a virus or DDoS attack threatens government systems but the vague language of the bill appears to give more control than necessary.

The purpose of a Denial of Service attack is to take a website down by overwhelming it with [fake] traffic. If the government’s intent is to prevent such take downs by simply unplugging the website, then they are fulfilling the goal of the attack, even if it is by proxy. Sure, there are other reasons to take a site or portion of the internet down, as in the case of viruses being programmed to steal important data off of government machines, but the take down should be limited in scope. By painting with a wide brush the writer’s of this bill have given too much power to a single person, rather than focusing on addressing threats, it lays out triage techniques to combat the issue.

There is more in the bill as well, including starting a scholarship program for Federal IT workers. You can read the bill in its entirety below.

0402 Rockefeller Cyber Security Bill