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I am really enjoying the thoughtful comments y’all have posting on the healthcare debate.  Both sides on this issue are making some valid points, and really that is what I’d like to see on the national level.  I certainly do not agree with Pelosi and the White House that the protesters constitute an angry un-American mob, but I don’t support tactics intended to drown out legitimate debate either.

You may have noticed that your comments sometimes don’t immediately appear.  For some reason, certain comments get captured in my moderation queue.  I try and check everyday and will release them for posting when I find them.  I do not edit, censor, delete, or otherwise modify any comment.  So have at it!

Speaking of commenters, where have you been Dennis? 

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Although I guess there might be a broad consensus that any limited health care resources would be wasted on me, once the inevitable rationing of health care takes hold, it just won’t pay to be old.  

Shannon Love sums up the situation nicely: 

So the Democrats have a problem convincing senior citizens that socialized medicine won’t diminish the already dubious quality of care they receive through Medicare. [h/t Instapundit]

Seniors no doubt base this suspicion in large part on their 50+ adult years of watching politicians over-promise and under-deliver. They probably remember back to 1965 when Medicare itself was sold as a cost-saving measure, and today we’re told it’s going to bankrupt the government unless we socialize 15% of the economy. They no doubt wonder how long it will be before Obama’s ideological descendants will tell us that Obama’s miracle plan is a disaster than can only be solved by more socialism.

Seniors have another reason to be nervous. Obama’s plan will put them in direct competition with everyone else for health care spending.

Right now we compartmentalize government health-care spending. We have one program for the poor (Medicaid) and one for the elderly (Medicare). Each is paid for by a separate flat tax on wages. The government doesn’t spend any money on health care for the middle class. This means that if the government spends more money on health care for the poor it doesn’t automatically mean they spend less on the elderly. More importantly, it means that when the government spends more on the poor or elderly it doesn’t directly mean middle-class families have less spent on them. Middle-class families might see their payroll taxes go up but they can compensate by trimming spending in all of their budget areas. Those taxes don’t come directly out of their health-care budgets. With the current system, health-care spending is a nonzero-sum game, i.e., spending more on one compartment does not automatically mean spending less on another compartment.

The elderly consume 70% of all health-care spending.[updated here and here] That means that when it comes to cost control they will bear the brunt of the burden. If we don’t cut spending on the elderly we can’t reduce costs without simply denying care for everyone else. When it comes down to a choice between spending on old people and children, the elderly know full well who we are going to pick.

You know, for those who deny this will be the ultimate result of Obamacare, there is ample evidence out there.  I take judicial notice of the fact that the British health care bureaucrats have decided that steriods are not a cost effective treatment for the elderly, essentially overriding the decision of physicians and relagting countless patients to a life of pain.  Closer to home, our beloved president is on record as saying the hip replacement received by his grandmother was not a wise use of medical resources.

So, for those of you who have chosen to live a healthy lifestyle all I can say is too bad for you.  It just won’t pay to grow old in the brave new world of “hope and change”.

In other (unrelated?) news, it seems The One is not faring to well in the polls of late. 

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet recorded. The President’s ratings first fell below 50% just a few weeks ago on July 25. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

Looks like those racist angry mobs engaging in un-American protests might be speaking on behalf of the majority. 

Let’s roll!

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Although I doubt anyone thinks of me as a “hipster”.  Whatever the hell that is.

“I sort of think the six-pack abs obsession got so prissy it stopped being masculine,” is how Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out, explains the emergence of the Ralph Kramden. What once seemed young and hot, for gay and straight men alike, now seems passé. Like manscaping, spray-on tans and other metrosexual affectations, having a belly one can bounce quarters off suggests that you may have too much time on your hands.

And I especially liked what Althouse had to say on her blog about it:

Why does there need to be any special reason for a man to have a potbelly? It’s the natural tendency. You only need a reason not to have a potbelly, and it needs to be good enough to offset the natural tendency.

I just wish she had stopped there, because I could have done without this:

The fact is, it is more important for a man to fight the natural rounding of the belly than it is for a woman, because a round belly is feminizing. It speaks of fertility and pregnancy. The “pregnant man” has never been a good look.

You know, I’ve pretty much reached the point where I just accept my roundness.  Living in a country full of extraordinarilly thin people is balanced out somewhat by the large Buddhist population.  I mean, how many people can truthfully say they have the body of a God?

Yeah, yeah, six pack abs are ok too.  But why stop there?  I’ve got a freakin’ keg goin’ on here!

And I occasionally where shorts…

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It may come as a surprise to some, but I do not confine myself exclusively to the echo chamber of conservative punditry.  It can be painful at times delving into the irrationality of left-leaning viewpoints, but there are occasions where you encounter a perspective that reminds you there is still some common ground to be found.

Such was this case when I came across this column from Camille Paglia.  Ok, I had to grit my teeth through the parts where she expresses who love for Obama and takes the obligatory potshots at his predecessor.  But I found myself nodding in agreement as well with these viewpoints:

Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton’s megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn’t conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it’s the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan — it’s the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

What does either party stand for these days? Republican politicians, with their endless scandals, are hardly exemplars of traditional moral values. Nor have they generated new ideas for healthcare, except for medical savings accounts, which would be pathetically inadequate in a major crisis for anyone earning at or below a median income.

And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the “mob” — a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a “death panel” under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin’s shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate’s unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  We need more of this from the rational middle of the political spectrum.  Just as conservatives should not be defined by the lunatic fringe, liberals who refuse to toe the party line are worthy of acknowledgement and respect.

More of this please!

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I do tend to good-naturedly rag on our cousins up north, but it’s all in fun.  Having met several Canadians here in Korea I can honestly say that in many ways they are just like normal folks.  Ok, I’m ragging again.

But on a serious note, this article on some Canadian troops doing important work in Afghanistan reminded me that we are brothers-in-arms and I do appreciate and respect their service and sacrafice.

Some excerpts:

Dusk was closing fast on a patrol of Canadian soldiers as they cleared a sector of this bombed-out, abandoned village. Suddenly, the puttering of a motorbike was heard in the distance.

The sound came as a surprise. The motorcycle was the first non-military vehicle they had heard since they moved in three days earlier to set up a new outpost here, about six miles southwest of the provincial capital of Kandahar.

“Take cover, boys,” the patrol leader shouted, as he and two other soldiers ducked behind a high metal gate into the compound on the right.

With the near-constant shelling of artillery in the area over the previous days, it was a safe bet that the rider was not just passing through. Chinese-made Honda motorcycles are the Taliban’s favorite method of transporting fighters and supplies around the Afghan battlefield.

With the sound of the motorcycle now just outside, the patrol leader and two soldiers sprang from their hiding place and blocked the road.

Two men were on a red Honda less than 50 meters away. A third followed on a second motorcycle just behind them. The soldiers yelled for the men to stop. The men jumped from the motorcycles and began to run.

The Canadian soldiers opened fire. Two of the men dashed through a gate in a mud wall to the left and into a field before they were cut down by other troops. The third man died in a hail of fire before he even made it off the road. He fell face down in the dirt and did not move again. The fusillade had lasted less than 30 seconds.

As darkness fell, a team of combat engineers moved forward to check the motorcycles and the bodies of the three men for booby traps. There were none. The other soldiers cheered and bumped fists when the engineers announced had found a 60 mm mortar tube, a base plate and four high-explosive rounds. The three men had definitely been Taliban.

“It’s been a good day, huh?” a sergeant said. His name, like the others, is withheld because of task force ban on identifying troops who kill or injure insurgents or civilians.

“Yeah, they were probably going to fire those mortars on us,” said another soldier. “We assured ourselves of a good sleep tonight.”

11/August/2009

10/August/2009

06/August/2009

05/August/2009

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03/August/2009