Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

Using tax dollars to buy votes from senators is typical in Senate health care oppression bill. Don't you love that Harry Reid is using our tax dollars taken from us by force to buy votes for a bill we don't want? This is a reminder that all our aristocrats care about, while they pretend to take principled stands when the cameras are rolling, is their own power. Nelson thinks this will enable him to win reelection even though he sold us down the river.

Excerpt from a doctor character in Atlas Shrugged portends what will happen in our health care system after government seizes it.

"[My skill] was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun."

That's my favorite line too.

It looks like if somebody can delay Sen. Lieberman from getting back to Washington, Democrats will fail to get this monstrosity passed on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas nd bad health to all.

"And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24."

By voting for Republicans and Democrats every election, surrendering our power on a daily basis to the most power-hungry, corrupt, self-serving monsters in America, the collective we did this to ourselves. In the choice between give me liberty or give me death, we chose death and Congress is going to give it to us on Christmas eve.

"From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it."

Does Obama believe that this bill is going to improve the lives of Americans? Absolutely not. Put this in the Obama is evil column. I'm going to write a widget to track these. I should start a website just for that.

"The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on."

And so on.

List of tax hikes in the Senate health care oppression bill. It's not small.

GLOBAL WARMING:

David Rockefeller calls for population control to fight global warming, showing that he's no supporter of free markets as liberals want us to think.

WAR:

If this is true, this decision is meaningless. In order for a person to be an enemy combatant, the US must be fighting a war declared by Congress in which case the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction. Not that any branch of government would ever limit its power to those enumerated in the Constitution.

POLITICS:

I've been calling to wipe every incumbent out of Congress for nearly two decades. I'm glad GOOOH finally joined the cause and are doing more about it than I ever did. Then again, maybe they got the idea from this blog. This is why we're not going to see a repeat of 1994. Nobody, not even the most die hard Republican voter, is looking forward to Republicans being in charge again. But gridlock is looking really good right now.

Embarrassing congressman Grayson, I hate that he's associated with the audit the Fed bill, wants to imprison woman for pretending to be a constituent of his and starting website critical of him. I don't know about imprisonment, but fraud is a crime. This shouldn't be a personal thing. He should leave her alone, but if she's pretending to be a constituent when she's not, she's committed fraud and the police should arrest her and end it. You can't have it both ways. Either profiting from lies is a crime (fraud) orAl Gore can rob us blind. I support the rule of law.

66 percent of Americans want a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes. Even 51 percent of Democrats. But based on what principle? This is the normal balance in the American electorate, the great libertarian mainstream of America, that the Republicans feed on while growing government at every opportunity. Is it OK to take 30 percent of our property by force? How about 20 percent? 10 percent? Is OK if voters voted to take money from others by force instead of having masked bandits do it? What's the difference? If we say 1 percent is OK, then we've surrendered all our freedom because there's no principle involved, Our government is all powerful but benevolent, and we're just slaves of our government and poorer slaves will use the vote to try and steal more money from the better off slaves to pad their own bank accounts. We know this is the inevitable result of democracy. We're living it.

Either our government has the power to seize our property by force or we're free. Both cannot be true. The US is not supposed to be a democracy. The Constitution defines the US government as a constitutional republic with severely limited powers. But because we voted for Republicans and Democrats instead of people who respect the Constitution as written, we're being consumed by the most dangerous form of government ever - democracy.

As a self-actualized libertarian, I've often enjoyed the tortured rationalizations played out on Mises.org of why we have the rights we do. No rationalization can explain our rights, though many come close. Our rights are natural. That's all there is to it. But violence is also natural to us. Forcing one's will on others is one of the most powerful instincts humans possess. I tend to base my libertarianism on natural rights, but I have to exorcise that conflict.

So I was wondering what libertarianism is in that context. Liberty is freedom of action including freedom of movement, expression, association, self-defense, etc. but excluding aggression against another except in defense of self or others. I decided that libertarianism is the search for a rationalization that justifies liberty. I used to think these rationalizations were cute and entertaining until I became bored with them, but I've decided they're a worthy endeavor since I've yet to see one that's satisfying. The crux is identifying at what point one's behavior becomes aggressive and justifies another's defense of self or other. I think framing the debate as I just did might be rationalization enough, though clearly no two people will ever agree on that boundary. I don't know that rationalizations including bodies, children, rights or anything else add anything to my position.

MISC:

H4P's apdesignco site is now an ftp site and lostpolitics is still unavailable, but at least something is moving.

Four out of four stars for Avatar. This guy might be biased.

New book exposes Lincoln.