I've had comment spam before, always in the "Wow, I'm really interested in what you have to say. I'm only commenting so I can leave a link to my Web site." vein. I always delete it out of hand; I have no patience for shameless self-whoring. But this morning, I found I had a comment where someone was whoring ... actual whores. That's right; I had my first porn spammer. It's like I finally arrived!
Now where's the chemical shower?
While I would love to see this ...
[Sen. Tom Coburn] has threatened to invoke parliamentary rules to force the Senate clerk (or more likely, a team of clerks) to read the massive bill before the full Senate begins formal debate on the legislation.... I think it's far more likely Reid's 2,074-page bill will not be read. And that's a bad thing, for more reasons than I have space or patience to list, but the one that stands out to me the most right now is this:
The move is strictly according to Senate rules, which say any senator can demand a bill be read in its entirety before debate begins.
[A] monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run health plan. It’s right there beginning on line 11, page 122, section 1303, under “Actuarial Value of Optional Service Coverage.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.No.
Section 1303(a)(2)(C) describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run health plan and for those who are given an affordability credit to purchase insurance coverage that includes abortion through the Exchange. The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month.
If this passes, there's a good chance my employer will drop its coverage of its U.S. employees -- it's a Canadian company, and it will probably be glad we finally climbed on the universal healthcare bandwagon. One less thing for them to worry about in Toronto or wherever. But if when I can't afford the requisite personal coverage on my own, the only other option will be a government-subsidized plan -- and I would sooner go to jail than sign up for that. Not just because I believe it's a soul-sucking intrusion into personal liberty, but because I refuse to let my money subsidize the murder of infants in their mothers' wombs. I will not now, nor will I ever, willingly participate in such a program.
Molon labe, if you will.
UPDATE: This is a slightly edited version of this post; I had some rough language that I removed because it cheapened and distracted from my point.
"If your grandfather had been alive to see [Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor], he would have put a shoe through the TV." -- My mom
My grandpa did not spend three years blowing stuff up in the Pacific theatre so our president -- OUR PRESIDENT -- could bow before the monarch of a foreign country. Now, given that it is Japan, and a certain form of bow is their equivalent to our handshake, I would have had no problem had Obama bowed in that way. HOWEVER, he did not. It was a groveling, disgusting display of obsequiousness and sycophantic grubbing for approval; not the straight-backed forward lean of the formal Japanese greeting but the hunched stoop of a serial bootlicker. It was revolting. I quite literally recoiled when I saw the footage of the incident.
I am an American. That means I am equal to all, above no one, below no one. I make no bow to leaders, foreign or domestic; I look them in the eye and I offer them the same respect I offer to everyone else. I kneel only to my God. Before all others, I stand. And I will not put up with my president, the man who represents my interests at home and abroad, making a mockery of that spirit that makes us as a nation unique in history. I. Will. Not. Obama spit in the eye of every immigrant who came here to get away from that sort of foolishness, and he showed his contempt for our hard-earned freedom from the oppression of "divine" rulership. He is a craven, malignant narcissist, and when he's served his purpose his masters are going to step back and let him crash and fall. I just hope and pray that when he does, he doesn't take us with him.
Incidentally, this sort of ties in with yesterday's post, and with this column by John Hawkins, called "The Five Terrible Cruelties of Liberalism". It all comes down to the right to stand up and run your own life, taking the consequences as they come, without deference to or interference from another imperfect party. Millions the world over have fled monarchies and dictatorships for just that chance. For an American president to betray that right is more than just mere insult. It is blasphemy.
Via Og, a lesson in what people really want:
People everywhere have a reasonable fear and loathing of government gone wild with their wars and planned famines, concentration camps and exterminations, lost families and broken lives. But libertarians sometimes conclude from this that in escaping from Big Brother people are also seeking freedom.In other words, most people would rather be told what to do than decide for themselves.
Occasionally that’s true. A bad experience with government can leave one quite cynical about it.
But as soon as most people get away from the jackboots as often as not they miss the softer side of tyranny: the guaranteed jobs, room and board, the socialized medicine, the lowered expectations.
So if one belongs to a power elite seeking global government, the first lesson learned from the twentieth century was different strokes for different folks.
A year or two ago I reread most of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One thing that struck me, that I had never noticed as a child, was just how capable her parents were: They took their family west to several homesteads, where the father built houses with his bare hands and the mother made and preserved almost everything they needed. They relied on no one for most things, and what things they couldn't make or find themselves they paid good money for, up front. They had a horror of being "beholden" to anyone for anything. The idea of Uncle Sugar stepping in with a handout wasn't even on the table, and they would have considered the offer a grave insult, to be accepted only with deep shame if it wasn't automatically refused out of hand. Assistance in times of need was accepted from neighbors, but always with the determination that it would be repaid. It's what used to be the quintessential American spirit, the drive to do for ones' self and to make it without demanding help from anyone else. To demand help from the government, short of community defense and large-scale land management, wasn't even considered.
Unfortunately, that seems to be a trait now unique to our nation and culture. Even in this country, you can see the differences between communities: NOLA vs. Biloxi, for instance. While the former was screaming from the rooftops for someone to come and help them, the latter just rolled up their sleeves and got to work themselves. The difference, frankly, is that NOLA was/is populated by a bunch of welfare wonders, while Biloxi is not. (Yes, I said it and I put it on the Internet -- and don't give me crap about it, either. I bled helping to put that city back together.)
It's the same with Europe and Canada -- they need our military and free-market healthcare as a back-up plan for when their own crappy systems fail. We're the only thing that lets most of the rest of the world live the way it does; without us being us, the planet would be even more in the crapper. And yet the powers that currently be are determined to take us apart at the seams and sew us back together so that we're just like everybody else. And when that happens, there won't be anywhere for everyone to go.
America is and always has been the square peg in a round world. What we want is not what they want. What we dream about is not what they dream about.In other words, keep acing those math tests so we keep our scores up -- but stop breaking the curve. You're making the other kids feel bad.
But they have a problem. They need us.
Individualists are the geese laying golden eggs.
They don’t want us dead. They want us compliant.
Besides, I can't help feeling that I've heard this story before.
Man, I am not happy with how Chapter Thirteen turned out. I was in a rush, and it shows. The second half is major weak sauce. I gotta work on that. On to Chapter Fourteen!
UPDATE: You may notice I have posted an updated version of Chapter Thirteen. I couldn't stand the crap ending and I had to rewrite it anyway to move onto the next chapter. So I did 2,700 words tonight. But I broke 30,000! Woohoo!
The other day at the store, I refused a bag, saying I would carry my purchase in my purse instead. The cashier (an earnest young man) commended me for thinking of the environment. Without looking up from the debit/credit pad, I replied "Screw the environment. Polar bears killed my father." (They didn't; he's alive and well. But still.) Lived on that one for a week, I did ...
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Luckily, I don't have it, knock on wood.
Today marks the publication of Chapter Eleven, which I feel is a wicked cliffhanger, which makes me rub my hands and laugh maniacally because I know what's going to happen next, but you suckers have to wait until Monday. Bwa ha ha ha.
*ahem*
I also direct your attention to the appearance of the Traveling Shovel of Death, which is something of a NaNoWriMo injoke that pretends to be a tradition. Legend has it that no matter what kind of story you're writing, once you hear of the shovel it finds a way to appear somewhere in your tale. I can certainly vouch for this fact, as I had no plans to include any shovels (of Death or otherwise) prior to being told of the TSoD's existence. I feel very proud of myself for having worked it in there, as well as like somewhat of fate's meat puppet -- I didn't seem to have much choice in the matter when it came down to it.
24,107 words as of last night -- I'm almost to the halfway point, and ahead of schedule! Excelsior!
Ace nails it. An extended quote:
Socialism never attends a party without an escort of coercive state behavior. It is a historic fact -- indeed, an economic fact -- that as the state seeks to regulate and control more and more economic activity, they must, of course, control more and more human activity.And then of course there's this. And this. And that's all for Friday, because I want to enjoy my weekend. See you 'round the bunker, friends.
Economic activity is human activity, after all. Economics is not somehow divorced from humanity. Economic choices are not made of their own volition, passive-voice, without an actor. People make economic choices -- and socialism demands an ever-increasing control over those choices, and therefore the people who make those choices. (Or, more accurately: formerly made those choices.)
Furthermore, apart from the basic definitional aspect of socialism that requires a loss of freedom in exchange, supposedly, for economic security: Socialism has almost never worked as intended, but rather creates new problems and new poverties and new ways to exploit the system (black markets, for one); socialism therefore always requires even additional laws against once-unobjectionable and perfectly-legal behavior. In other words, not only does socialism require a small buy-in, in the form of loss of freedom, but it is always accompanied by unplanned-for (?) additional losses of freedom to "correct" for all the systematic irrationalities and distortions it creates.
And then it gets even worse after that, because it always fails, whenever it's been attempted, and the newly-empowered state will fight to survive, as any organism does, and any organism is willing to do an awful lot of violence when its very existence is threatened.
Chapter Nine is up! And it sucks eggs, because I'm sick of the whole thing and want to quit. But that happens every year at the 10-day mark, and if I can muscle through it I'll make it to the end. I've already hit the 1/3 mark for my word count, so really I just have to hold out 'til I hit 35,000 words. Once you round the horn on that one, it gets so much easier.
I also have a pile of unwashed dishes in my sink, and I've had short nights every night so far this week. I'm cranky and I deeply resent my characters for existing. I want nothing more than to throw myself on the floor and whine "Whyyyyyyyy am I doing this?" over and over for an hour, solid. I won't, but it's about that time.
NaNoWriMo is an ugly, ugly thing. Wouldn't trade it for the world.
In the spirit of my post about cap & trade, I present this sick-making editorial outlining some of the many nasty tidbits in the healthcare bill passed by the House on Saturday. Right off the bat, we get this gem:
• Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a "qualified plan." If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a "grace period" to switch you to a "qualified plan," meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there's no grace period. You'll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit.The next two bullet points outline how much these plans have to cost (it's a good 17 percent of pretax income in all but low-income cases), and that the terms of "acceptible plans" will literally be penciled in after the fact. You have to buy in, and then they tell you what you bought.
'Scuse me while I vomit for a while. It gets better (for certain values of "better"): Medicare gets gutted like a fresh fish, and there are provisions to send funding to squishy "community" programs and affirmative-action crap for nursing schools. Oh, and there's a good chance you could end up with a physician's assistant instead of an actual, you know, physician as your primary healthcare provider. But it's all free! Doesn't that sound like fun?
If you're still not convinced that this is a bad thing -- if you're all for government intervention, high taxes and the requisite economic stagnation, as long as everybody gets their unicorn -- let Caleb over at Gun Nuts put you some knowledge. The problem he notes is the same I spoke of in my recent "tax things Peter Singer doesn't approve of" post. The more control government has over something, the more it can dictate what each of us does in our day-to-day lives. Only instead of the traditional jackboots and batons, this latest go-round is opting for the more subtle "put it on a high shelf and lock up the stepstool" approach. Too much freedom means that people have the options to make mistakes, you see. And we can't have that.
A couple more years of this, I'll be sitting under my table with a blanket and a baseball bat, eating beans out of the can and wondering aloud where America went. I left it right there in the backyard, I swear ...
Dangit, forgot the recipe. My sister came by for the evening and we played Scrabble, and I completely spaced it. (I regret nothing!) So I'll just put it up tonight next month then, shall I?
NaNoWriMo ate my soul!
