Well Said

More on the doctor that posted it here.

The Tide Begins To Turn

Democrat Martha Coakley has just conceded the Massachusetts senate race to Republican Scott Brown. After almost 47 years as "Teddy Kennedy's seat" a Republican now takes over in time to deny the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority and possibly stop the Obamacare monstrosity. How sweet the irony.

And now the fun really begins.

The Wise Man Speaks

Krauthammer on Obamacare:

"At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health-care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge."

A Statement Of Principles

I am a huge fan of Maggie's Farm and suggest that you read it routinely in case you do not already do so. This should give you an excellent idea of what to expect there:

People ask me why we seem so predictably and boringly preoccupied with the health care and climate change issues.

There is a simple answer: Those are the two topics which are currently being exploited to the max by Leftist totalitarian-minded folks, who believe themselves to be our moral and intellectual superiors, in their endless efforts to control our lives and to chip away at our freedom and our dignity as sturdy, intelligent, competent, free-thinking adults and families in a free nation with (semi-) free markets.

In history, the battles against central powers were fought on different fronts and, in the future, they will be fought on new fronts that have not been concocted yet in the Gramscian and Alinskian laboratories. It will never end. If Stalin's holocausts didn't end it, if the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't end it, if the evidence of Cuba and North Korea didn't end it, if Pol Pot didn't end it, if the turn of China and Russia to Capitalism didn't end it, if the countless failures of centralized control economies didn't end it, if the attempts to turn Euroland back to free markets and greater freedom didn't end it, if the pathetic return of Euroland to an imperial EU doesn't end it, if the countless failures of hugely-expensive but failed yet immortal government programs didn't end it, then nothing will ever end this battle.

Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game. It is in the nature of governments, which we fully accept as necessary evils, to accumulate power and funds from the citizens - and to regard citizens as children or as subjects. This seems to be something that occurs regardless of the form of government. Some people seem born to seek power over others, some wish to be security-minded subjects, and others simply seek mastery of their own lives. We prefer the latter pursuit, with God's grace, while fully aware that this mortal life we hold so dear may be often full of sound and fury, but signifying little in the end beyond our relationships with the Deity, our family, and our friends.

Without wanting to sound or to be grandiose, people like us at Maggie's and similar sites aim to be perpetual revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, Tea Party Indians, Tom Paines; the minor heirs of our heroic forefathers, attempting to stay true to their ideals of the dominion of individuals seeking their own goals without the oppressive weight of an intrusive government. At least, that is what we aspire to be in our small way.

Individual freedom in relation to the State is close to sacred to us. We pay the State dues to protect us from external enemies and from internal criminals, for justice under law, plus for just a few other minor things. Otherwise, we want to be left alone and to take care of ourselves as best we can in a culture in which every person exercises their morals, their integrity, and their concern for their neighbor by the Golden Rule.

Live and let live, but don't tread on me.

We demand that individual freedom and liberty be part of every political equation - a Constant, like Avogadro's Number. The Constitutional Amendments lX and X remain real and valid to us - delusional though we may be.

We at Maggie's do not even feel entirely comfortable with the notion of "rights." We dislike and distrust the use of the word "rights" in America. In our view, the worthy subject of discussion is that of government powers and their prescribed limits. We the people need no "rights," as the US was conceived. We are free human beings. Free to fail, free to speak, free to do stupid things, free to take risks, free to succeed in our goals - if we have any- free to do almost any damn thing we want to. Yes, maybe we are crazy idealists and maybe we are foolish rubes who produce nothing but superficial cant and pointless rant.

However unheard a voice we at Maggie's may be in the big world, we will use it to resist insidious political maneuvers and manipulations until we turn senile or die - or run out of things to say.

If the latter comes first, we'll cheerfully turn our focus purely on things like shotguns and recipes and wildlife and fishing and salt marshes and architecture and history and philosophy and art and pretty girls and boats and travelogues and God and all of the other joyful, interesting, and delightful things in life.

By the way, if you have friends who might like Maggie's, email our link around. We do not like to be cybersluts (hmm - maybe we do), but we do not want people who might enjoy our eclectic offerings to be deprived of our humble efforts. Let people know that we exist, because our readership is our only reward for our enjoyable efforts here on ye olde Farm.

Doing so would be the finest Christmas present for us.

Put Me On An Ice Floe Now

This defeats the entire reason to have insurance - no one wants to get financially wiped out by a medical crisis. Have these people completely lost their minds?

From The Plum Line:

The internet is buzzing today with the news that Harry Reid quietly inserted a loophole in the Senate health care bill that would let insurance companies put limits on medical care for folks struggling with costly illnesses — angering patient advocates, and in apparent violation of a promise made by Obama this fall.

But in an email to me, Reid’s spokesperson defended the move, arguing it was necessary to hold down premiums.

The news started making the rounds this morning after the Associated Press reported that a “tweak” to the Senate bill had been made, weakening a provision originally banning such limits. Advocates for patients protested that such a ban is a key consumer protection.

The current bill would allow insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care — provided those limits are not “unreasonable,” a term the legislation doesn’t define.

This seems at odds with Obama’s impassioned rhetoric on the issue. As Jane Hamsher notes, Obama vowed in August to stop insurance companies from placing “some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime,” because “no one should go broke because they get sick.”

Asked for comment, Reid spokesman Jim Manley justified the shift in an email:

“We are concerned that banning all annual limits, regardless of whether services are voluntary, could lead to higher premiums. We continue to work with experts on how best to accomplish our goals of preventing insurance companies from imposing arbitrary coverage limits while providing the premium relief American families need and deserve.”

Given Obama’s previous tough talk on the issue, the shift could create a bit of a headache for the White House, and it seems unlikely that such a politically sensitive move would have been made without tacit or overt White House approval. More when I learn it.