Tidbits

A few items at random, just to feel like a blogger again for a few minutes.

• We had to read Night for a theology class, so as to confront the strongest argument for the death  of God. I've always thought of Elie Wiesel as an atheist therefore. I somehow missed the fact that Night was part of a trilogy: Night, Dawn, Light, and that Wiesel was a devout Jew. Does everyone know this but me?  Discovered this because of an article from Wiesel's son about what kind of father he was. 

• As Instapundit would say, "Faster, please." Apparently a doctor in Cambridge is on the verge of a cure for MS.  But what is this throw-away line in the story about loads of people with MS in the UK going without treatment? I thought single-payer medicine was the bees knees? 

• Singing is good for you. 

• Why did no one tell me about Wallace Stegner? Someone chose his Crossing to Safety for book club and the writing is exquisite. Crossing was his last novel, written in old age. I'm now reading his first novel, Angle of Repose. Both are an exploration of the dynamics of marriage and friendship quite unlike anything I've ever read, and beautifully expressed. He can capture a tone of voice or the look on someone's face just so.  Stegner taught at U. Wisconsin and Harvard before settling at Stanford, where he founded its creative writing program and taught a number of prominent writers. I liked this from when he was doing his book tour for Crossing: 

Mr. Stegner said he finds himself rereading the work of his former students Wendell Berry, Robert Stone, Larry McMurtry and Ernest Gaines - ''old writing fellows who have become effective writers. I had a sense as they were coming through my class that I was seeing American literature before it was in print.''

These Are The Days of Miracles & Wonders

The full story is behind a paywall unfortunately, but this is wonderful.

Curtsy: ninme's twitter, RT-ing @thetimes

Aha! Alternate source.

Strong Sign You Need to Re-think Your Life

When you refer to these gals, the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose mission is to serve the elderly poor in impoverished neighborhoods, as "threatening." 

As in:

“The administration must now deal with this latest threat to the nation’s health care law: these ladies, the Little Sister of the Poor.” 

Joanne McPortland, (a sensible Liberal & recently-returned-Catholic) rightly calls this kind of thing the "noveau Know-Nothingism." Here (as noted yesterday in my Twitter feed), she smacks down a frankly bigoted piece from US News denouncing Sonia Sotomayor, who is turning out not to be such a wise Latina in the Left's mind after all. And that because she simply wanted to give a fair hearing to the Ladies in the picture before forcing them to pay for abortions and sterilizations. 

Actually the Anchoress does the best smackdown and the piece, but I highlight McPortland's because she does us all the favor of uncovering a highly relevant letter of Thomas Jefferson to Ursuline nuns at the time of the Louisiana Purchase.  The nuns had fled the French Revolution and, knowing Jefferson to be a fan of it, were worried what might happen to their apostolates. He hand-wrote them the following letter (McPortland's post has a link to the .pdf so you can see his handwriting!):

I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein you express anxiety for the property vested in your institution by the former governments of Louisiana.
The principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it will be preserved to you, sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.
Whatever the diversity of shade may appear in the religious opinions of our fellow citizens, the charitable objects of your institution cannot be indifferent to any; and its furtherance of the wholesome purposes of society, by training up its younger members in the way they should go, cannot fail to ensure it the patronage of the government it is under.
Be assured it will meet all the protection which my office can give it.
I salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect.

And that, my friends, is how a genuinely liberal Democrat -- as opposed to a Progressive tyrant-- treats a nun.

I also like McPortland's post for its spunky close for the benefit of US News and its genuinely bigoted author:

please don’t dismiss this as Catholics crying persecution. We’re not stupid. We know the difference between persecution and ignorant, rabble-rousing bigotry. We will pray for those around the world experiencing the former, but by damn we will not stand for the latter.

Happy New Year To Me

The feel-good stories of the turn of the year.

#3 Global warming activists go to Pole to prove ice is melting, get stuck in ice too thick for ice cutters.

#2 Justice Sotomayor issues a stay of Obamacare's abortifacient mandate. Just until tomorrow maybe, but it's hard to be the Justice who closes down the Little Sisters of the Poor.

#1 In the Grey Lady today, Michael Moore compelled to say:

Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful.

It's not really a good story in that he's just pushing for a single-payer system, which has been the purpose of this whole exercise all along, he tries to blame the debacle on Mitt Romney, and he insists that Obamacare is actually good in spite of being awful. But today I'm just going to savor the fact that a major story in the New York Times admits that Obamacare is awful and that the reason it's awful is that it has never had anything to do with helping the working poor, but has always been an exercise in Crony Capitalism -- the very thing Pope Francis denounces so harshly in Evangelii Gaudium, by the way-- of the first water. More on that later.

Grey Lady Accidentally Stumbles Into Some Truth

In spite of his contentious reading of Catholic teaching and Pope Francis' intent (everyone spins this pope, no one actually listens to him or tries to understand what he's getting at), an op-ed contributor to the NYT tells the truth about Catholic work for the poor world-wide.

I almost stopped reading when he opened with this now-shibboleth:

In less than a year in office, Pope Francis has certainly stirred things up. Eschewing the papal palace to live in a simple apartment...

Please. Anyone who says that reveals immediately he knows nothing about the Vatican or Pope Francis. The papal apartment is a simple apartment. It is not a palace, not luxurious, and Pope Francis' reason for eschewing it has nothing to do with poverty or simplicity. It has to do with the fact that he is an extrovert, he doesn't do well in solitude (not to mention a vowed religious, not a secular priest like all the popes of the past century), so he needs a community.

Don't take my word for it. Pope Francis has stated this repeatedly. Here's but one instance:

I need a community. And you can tell this by the fact that I am here in Santa Marta. At the time of the conclave I lived in Room 207. (The rooms were assigned by drawing lots.) This room where we are now was a guest room. I chose to live here, in Room 201, because when I took possession of the papal apartment, inside myself I distinctly heard a ‘no.’ The papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace is not luxurious. It is old, tastefully decorated and large, but not luxurious. But in the end it is like an inverted funnel. It is big and spacious, but the entrance is really tight. People can come only in dribs and drabs, and I cannot live without people. I need to live my life with others [emphasis mine].

As soon as anyone drags out the "he's rejecting the luxury of the other popes" trope, you know that person is either dishonest or hasn't read even one of the pope's most famous interviews.

Notwithstanding this less than auspicious opening, I persevered to find two worthwhile points in the midst of a lot of hoary cliches about the Church.

First, surveying the social encyclicals of the various popes, he correctly discerns Pope Francis hasn't said anything new (he's only said it more emphatically, and with personal anecdotes) -- and reminds us that even Leo XIII, now a favorite of conservative Catholics for his defense of private property, was denounced as a socialist when Rerum Novarum was first released.

He also does us the service of reminding people how much good the Church does:

In some African countries, as much as half of basic education and health services are provided by the church. Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world distribute about a third of all the antiretroviral drugs received by people living with H.I.V. and AIDS, and in India, where Catholics are no more than 2 percent of the population, the church is the second-largest care provider in this area after the government.

He adds this, though he can't resist a dig:

As a result of its work in basic health and education — and despite its obtuse views on birth control — in the last 50 years the church has probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other civic institution in history.  

Well, okay, I'll take it. At least he can give credit where it's due. But the committed secularist author might profitably ask himself two questions.

1) Whether the Church's capacity to lift people out of poverty might not be tied to its "obtuse" morality? Earlier in the piece he's told us:

The educational role of the church in the developing world has been powerful and often controversial. “All we want is a labor force,” a colonial governor lamented to missionaries in Madagascar a century ago, “and you’re turning them into human beings.” 

Might not sexual continence have something to do with being a human being? That very telling quotation gets at the heart of Pope Francis' program. He wants attention to the poor, but the poor as human persons with individual dignity, equal in dignity to the wealthy; not the poor as childish and dependent -- a "project" to assuage the consciences of wealthier people. That kind of aid to the poor is merely a transaction, not charity, Pope Francis said in a recent audience.

2) What provides the impulse for Catholics to care for the poor? In an excerpt above, the author cites the fact that the Church is the second largest health care provider in India, though Catholics are only 2% of the population.  Something similar is true in the U.S. Catholics are a minority, but 30% of Americans needing hospital care are treated in Catholic hospitals. 15% of hospital beds in the US are in Catholic institutions -- and of those, 1/3 are the only hospitals available in rural communities. The author wants to support Catholic work with the poor in spite of Catholic teaching -- and this is the line the Obama administration is taking with its HHS mandate: you can keep serving, but you have to drop your moral code and your beliefs. But is there any reason to think the powerful drive to serve the poor would outlast the destruction of Catholic belief and morality?

Healthcare Ration Once Again Increased!

The President has in effect repealed Obamacare, as the WSJ documents here. Under the pressure of complaints from millions of people left without insurance because Obamacare's regulations cancelled the plans they were on while replacing them with a) nothing, because the malfunctioning "marketplace" made it impossible to connect with any plan or b) nothing, because they could not afford the massively higher deductibles and massively higher premiums, the President has swept aside the individual mandate. Not for everyone, just for those who lost their insurance because of Obamacare.

So merry Christmas. If ObamaCare's benefit and income redistribution requirements made your old, cheaper, better health plan illegal, you now have the option of going without coverage without the government taking your money as punishment. You can also claim the tautological consolation of an ObamaCare hardship exemption due to ObamaCare itself.

It's mildly good news for those people that they now (temporarily!) won't be fined for not having what the government destroyed, and do read the whole piece, which shows how since Obamacare depends upon those fees, it is in essence destroyed now.

By my count, the only part of the law that now stands is the rule that businessmen and religious institutions that object to paying for their employees' abortions, abortifacient drugs, lifestyle-choice sterilizations and gender reassignment surgeries must do so. Everything is negotiable in the law EXCEPT the principle that the deeply held convictions of the majority of Americans MUST be compromised as the price of doing business, because the business of America is sexual license.

You know what's also not destroyed? The new "principle" by which we accept the President's ability on a whim to apply laws selectively, such that there is no equality before the law --regulators decide who the law applies to and who it doesn't. Apparently there's no right of contract, either, since the President and his regulators first decided what product insurance companies could offer and cancelled old products, then mandated people must buy the new plans, then when people couldn't pay, the government said the cancelled plans could continue but for an unspecified amount of time -- there's no law or predictability in that, there's just the whim of the tyrant.

You can recover from a bad law and a bad economy. I don't know that there's any coming back from the wholesale destruction of the bedrock principles of civilization -- at least not in a people supine for such infractions.

Update: Meanwhile, The Formerly Grey Lady reports as breaking news  --the product of new analysis!-- what critics of Obamacare said all along. New Health Law Frustrates Many In Middle Class (if by "frustrates" they mean "royally screws")

The Signer-Uppers Can't Sign Up Either

Went to the drug store for packing tape. A guy's at the entrance signing people up for the Affordable Care Act. Immediately he starts getting questions from people who have tried to sign up but can't. His matter-of-fact response: "Yeah, I was trying to use my i.d. to compare plans for people but now it rejects my i.d. and I can't get in either."

I was a little unclear what service he was offering if he was himself unable to access the site. But he's standing there, boy howdy.

If You Like Your Free Market, You Can Keep It

Andrew McCarthy lays out the "failure" of Obamacare. Read the whole thing for the step-by-step (the current failure is planned -- maybe not the website, but the booting of everyone who self-insures out of their programs-- but here's the conclusion.

The manufactured financial crisis will be portrayed as a demonstration that exchanges based on the assumption that individuals will take responsibility for their own “private” insurance arrangements do not work. It will be time to solve the crisis by a seamless transition — there’s that word again — to a fully socialized health-care system, now overtly controlled by the government. “Free” health care for everyone — with all the substandard treatment, absurd wait times, and rationing that entails — will be supported by a few “tweaks” to our progressive tax system . . . no more unwieldy, unpredictable premium payments.

Watch that Jon Stewart interview with Sebelius again (I wrote about it here) and see before your eyes that is exactly what is being set up. 

Give The President What He Needs

...to destroy himself and his Obamacare.

OMG, Republicans. When your political enemy is flailing, don't rescue him. Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster. WaPo knows it, and Bill Clinton and others are stating it all but openly. There is every reason to believe that come January, millions more people will be uninsured than before the law took place and people hate it and recognize that the President knew this would happen --people losing their insurance plans is a necessary step in getting them into Obamacare-- and straight-up lied about it for years.

Sen. Landrieu has proposed a "fix" that will kill the program, as that link above explains. (Or here's an explanation from the Conservative perspective -- either way.)

For the love of all that is holy, GOP-ers, do NOT oppose the Landrieu bill and propose your own alternative as this article says you are doing. If you do, the President will go the American people and claim, "We're trying to fix it, and Republicans don't want to help you at all."

Shut up, behave in gentleman-like manner, and tell the President, "Whatever you want to do to make good on your promise people can keep their plans, we will give you, as long as it doesn't raise taxes and government doesn't subsidize insurance companies, we are with you."

The Dems passed Obamacare without a single GOP vote, let them own it fully.  For once in your paltry, self-centered little lives, focus on people and families and not on your friends at the insurance companies  -- who were all eager to belly up to the Obamacare cronyism trough. Let everyone lie in the bed they made and just defend little people.

You are not going to do anything serious about Obamacare until you retake the Senate and/or the Presidency. Focus!

 Image shamelessly pinched from American Digest

Update: Different point, but I am too lazy to do a separate post, and it's still about Obamacare. In this case, how they're trying to sell it to young people (at least in Colorado) with a revolting series of ads. So revolting that even the local Planned Parenthood assumed they were parody. Simcha Fisher with good commentary on that.

most amazing of all?  These ads are not fake. Not satire.  Not a mean-spirited dig meant to rub dirt in the wounds of real people with real needs.
Planned Parenthood of Colorado, however, assumed they were. 
They indignantly sputtered on Twitter:

Unfortunate that anti-obamacare folks are #slutshaming #women who use #birthcontrol  #GotInsurance #ThanksObamacare http://twitpic.com/dkxrep

So there we are, folks.  Things have gotten so awful that even the awful people can't tell if the other awful people are being awful on purpose in a good, compassionate, progressive awful way, or in the old-fashioned, mocking, whatevershaming awful way, because THEY'RE JUST ALL SO AWFUL.  Oh, sorry, am I awfulpersonshaming?  Am I moronshaming? Hey, give me a break.  It's been a tough year, and I'll take what I can get.
Race to the bottom, folks.  If you're lucky, you'll only be paying 300% more for your insurance when you hit the floor.

Worst case scenario? Obamacare is repealed by 2014 so the Dems have a chance to win re-election. Best case scenario? It stays and destroys our healthcare system and closes all Catholic hospitals (because what no one has focused on is there's not just the HHS mandate, there's also the massive regulatory burden on not-for-profit hospitals that is going to kill them all anyway, even if we win the right not to pay for anyone's abortion or casual sex in court).  Then a series of free clinics run by nuns will spring up in response to exactly the same kinds of needs that sparked Christians to create the very first hospitals -- and there will be a vocations boom because people will see that they are needed and want to give themselves out of love. And in 50 years, a re-birth of freedom!

Grandfather's Clause

The Official Cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds & I are collaborating on a song.  Here it is so far (subject to further tinkering).

My Grandfather's Clause
(With apologies to Henry Clay Work)

That Grandfather Clause was too large for the bill
So it stayed on the cutting room floor;
1000's of regs in the new ACA
But it couldn't take a single reg more.

I signed up on the morn that health-care-dot-gov was born;
Or at least, I most dutif'lly tried.
But the page. Stopped. Never-to-load-again
And my health plan died.

90 days on Obamacare
(tic toc, tic toc)
I'm not getting anywhere
(tic toc, tic toc)
The page. Stopped. Never-to-load again
And my health plan died.

That grandfather clause was a promise O made

To give cover to the House and the Senate

And Nancy Pelos' said, "We must pass this bill

'Cuz we'd like to find out what is in it."

It was truly a shock when I learned I'd lose my doc,

Still I won't say the  president lied;

But my plan. stopped. never to start again

and my healthcare died.

90 days on Obamacare

(tic toc, tic toc) Etc......

Sebelius said that my plan was no good,

Though it treated my cancer for years.

Now that I'm dropped, I don't know what to do--

In short, it's the sum of all fears.

Cuz' my oncologist has been stricken from the list

And there is nowhere else to apply;

I am dropped. flat. can't-get-treated-again

Since my old plan died.

Stanford U 's now denied to me

(Tic-toc tic-toc)

And Cal University

(Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc)

I'm dropped. Short. Can't-get-treated-again.

Cause my old plan died.

When You've Lost Ezra Klein....

If I weren't feeling lazy, I would cut and paste some of the incredibly depressing posts my friends are putting up about Obamacare these days. All summer long it was about premiums going up. This week all of a sudden people are posting that their insurance has disappeared.

But I am a lazy American and that will have to wait. Meanwhile, I could KISS Ezra Klein for this piece in WaPo about the Obamacare roll-out and how it is decidedly not a mere computer glitch that is fouling things. Here's the wind-up:

As Sarah Kliff and I wrote in our overview of the health-care launch's technical issues, the challenges right now can be grouped into three broad categories: problems with the consumer experience on the HealthCare.gov Web site, problems with the eligibility system, and problems with the hand-off to insurers.
The problems with the Web site are the difficulties consumers are facing when they try to log on and shop for insurance coverage. These problems -- error messages, site timeouts, difficulty logging in to an account -- make it hard for an individual to buy coverage through the marketplace. They are the reason why some people have made upward of 20 attempts at purchasing a plan. These are the problems that are being fixed fastest and that are the least serious.
The eligibility problems strike when consumers send in their information and the government's computer systems tell them whether they're eligible for Medicaid, health insurance subsidies or nothing at all. The system is returning incorrect data for many applicants -- meaning they might be eligible for Medicaid and not know it, or they might think they have subsidies that will later be revoked.
The insurance problems are seen by the insurance companies. Health plans are supposed to get a report when someone uses HealthCare.gov to buy their health insurance policy. Those reports are full of inaccurate data, such as the wrong address, or are being sent in duplicate. (One insurance company reported getting one of these reports, known as an “834 transmission,” that said one individual had three spouses. This person was not, for the record, a polygamist.) And it's not just private insurers: The federal system is also failing to sign people up for Medicaid.
No one quite knows the extent of the problems in each of these areas. No one knows how long it will be until all these systems are working tolerably well. No one has any idea how long it'll be until they're working smoothly. And if that was all this was -- a multi-month delay and a lot of frustration and problems for people trying to sign up for health care -- that would be bad enough. That would be a story worth covering aggressively and constantly until the problems cleared up.

Those are just the site problems. There's way more. But here's the line I find smoochable:

one privilege the insured and well-off have is to excuse the terrible quality of services the government routinely delivers to the poor. Too often, the press ignores -- or simply never knows -- the pain and trouble of interfacing with government bureaucracies that the poor struggle with daily. That can allow the problems in those bureaucracies to fester.

THANK you! That is precisely why social justice Catholics often drive me crazy. Not because I don't share their dedication to preferential option for the poor, but because it's the rare advocate for government programs who gives a hoot how those programs actually treat the poor once the funds have been voted -- and once they have been, it becomes "cruel" to raise any questions, no matter much the poor suffer and are degraded by government programs too big to serve well. We call ourselves Catholic, but really everyone's a Kantian -- prioritizing good intentions over actual results. If we could manage to have an honest conversation about that -- forget about politics, just in Catholic circles to start, and then branch out to politics-- that would be really exciting and would do so much real good for the poor. Someone tell this guy, please.

Rush Falls For It? Obamacare Is NOT A Market-Based System

My portion of the internet is crowing over this supposedly tough interview Jon Stewart did with Sec. Sebelius about the less than stellar roll-out of Obamacare. Supposedly Rush Limbaugh praised the interview -- that clip's everywhere too.  I haven't listened to the latter, but c'mon, people!

That is not a tough interview. That is what is called a set-up. From the very beginning of the healthcare reform process, everyone on the nationalized medicine side has said outright that they'd prefer a single payer system.

What is happening now is that everyone but everyone knows Obamacare is a train wreck (a Dem senator's words) and they are trying to claim the disaster is the fault of the "free market." As if Obamacare had anything to do with freedom or markets.

So what's happening in the clip above is that Stewart shows that Obamacare is a trainwreck and calls for a single payer system, and Sebelius, wink-wink, gamely tries to defend her program, says the word "market" about a thousand times, but then "called on it,"  smiles and says, well, this is the best we could do when our hands are tied because SOME PEOPLE ("the crazies," as Stewart styles them) insist on a free market system. This is the best the FREE MARKET can do.

Why do you think Sebelius agreed to sit for this interview, if not to spread the message that free markets don't work and precisely BECAUSE Obamacare is a failure, we MUST go to single payer?

Total bollux all the way around. People, don't let them get away with branding Obamacare as a product of the free market system. Do not.

I Finally Know What an Eyetooth Is

Science is awesome. And creepy. Blind Man Regains Sight After Science Implants A Tooth in His Eye.

in December of 2012, Tibbetts underwent groundbreaking surgery called “Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis,” which constructs a new eye using a plastic lens and one of Tibbetts’s own teeth. They drill a tiny hole into the tooth, insert the lens into the hole, and then insert the whole tooth into the eye socket. If the retina is still functioning, the patient can see through the tooth-lens window – and the body will never reject it, since the tooth belonged to the patient in the first place.

Obama Breaks The Unions As No Conservative Ever Could

Read the text of the scathing letter the Teamsters & two other major unions just sent Reid & Gramma about Obamacare. Opening lines:

When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.

It gets better.

First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.

Second, millions of Americans are covered by non-profit health insurance plans like the ones in which most of our members participate. These non-profit plans are governed jointly by unions and companies under the Taft-Hartley Act. Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans.

What these geniuses have just figured out after four years is that Obamacare leaves them with no benefits packages to negotiate, and thus no reason for anyone to join them. Whoopsie!

Edward Snowden Didn't Mention This

The NSA isn't keeping half the tabs on you Kathleen Sebelius is. And she's sharing your info with the IRS, HUD, the Peace Corps (?!) and other state and local agencies.

All your privacy are belong to us!

Update: I was just thinking further about this and it occurred to me the same folks who think this is okay:

"The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic," noted Stephen Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor.

(Hey! Don't worry, we won't misuse your info! Why would you think that, Adoptive Parent who weighs 155 lbs. and whose Christianity threatens the Republic #577-0?)

These are the same folks who think it's intrusive to ask people to show an i.d. when they vote.

Nothing Can Be Done

By Ramirez, shamelessly pinched from here.

The country appears to be imploding. 

• The IRS has had to apologize for targeting Conservative groups for auditing (though it's not being forthcoming about how high-level the policy was).
• David Stockman predicts doom and while many of his specific policy recommendations are somewhat rubbish, there's this: 

These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.
....
It would require, finally, benching the Fed’s central planners, and restoring the central bank’s original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism.

That, of course, will never happen because there are trillions of dollars of assets, from Shanghai skyscrapers to Fortune 1000 stocks to the latest housing market “recovery,” artificially propped up by the Fed’s interest-rate repression. The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.

•  Even Harry Reid has figured out that Obamacare is "a train wreck." Meanwhile, the HHS Secretary who brought us Obamacare's death panels doesn't understand how they work . Update: Sen. Baucus retiring because of Obamacare.
• Kermit Gosnell, a particularly gruesome abortionist, is on trial for murdering babies born alive and criminal neglect of a woman that led to her death. In testimony that is too gruesome to read, his staffers have testified that he or they "snipped" (meaning, killed with scissors after they were born alive) hundreds of babies over the years. He also didn't sterilize instruments and thus spread STDs to patients, refused anesthesia to minority clients, and forced women with second thoughts into abortions. ABC's Terry Moran called him (in a tweet) the "most successful mass murderer in American history," but the press can't be bothered to tell the story.  Well....now they are, a little, after pro-lifers campaigned relentlessly. But the story is yucky, and everyone knows the reason the press doesn't cover it is because it's a little too much like every other abortion clinic. As Senator Boxer recently admitted, scoring against her own goal. 
• Pro-immigration Republicans are joining in the Left's crucifixion of an honest researcher. 
• And the press has finally discovered Benghazi (when you lose ABC.....)  -- a shameful episode in which through utter incompetence the State Dept. allowed a fine public servant and his security team to die needlessly and then callously lied about it and tried to discredit the chief whistle blower. Even the Washington Post now outright says the White House explanation is a lie. In a free and functioning America, that would be impeachment bait, but no one is going to impeach the first black president, especially not when he has "President Joe Biden" as an ace in the hole. 

Nothing can be done. Which leads me to The Official Cartoonist's latest, w/ apologies to Lew, Stept & Tobias. Here's a taste, and then click over to sing the whole thing to yourself.

Come Solyndra, I can guarantee a loan
Comes the Beltway, I can criticize the tone
Come Benghazi? Nothing could be done.
Come vacation, Michelle. can take a separate plane
Come Joe Biden, I can leave him on the train
Come Benghazi, Nothing could be done.

Stand down Brother.
What difference does it make?
I’ll blame u-tube
While I campaign at your wake.

Brian Terry? There’s privilege to invoke
Eat a canine? I can always make a joke.
Come Benghazi? Nothing could be done.

Through, The Roofers

The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers officially calls for repeal of Obamacare. Whoa, Nellie!

One of the concerns for the union is the cap on “lifetime medical bill payouts.” Currently, the roofers’ plan guarantees that active members won’t pay more than $2 million over the course of their lives for medical bills (it’s $50,000 for retired members). The ACA mandates that plans remove these caps. It also requires that all plans offer minimum benefits, and the union’s coverage would have to become more expensive to fulfill that requirement. Pile on a new fee charged to every enrollee and an excise tax that will hit some plans in 2018, and you have a union running for the hills as fast as it can.

Now that they're finding out what's in it....

Ben Carson for President!

The Most Awesome & Accomplished American Alive Today spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, and had some alternatives to Obama-care.

Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give them a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account [HSA] to which money can be contributed pre-tax from the time you’re born to the time you die.”
Carson went on to say that accounts should be passed on to family members, so “there’s nobody talking about death panels,” in an obvious reference to the much debated “panels” discussed during negotiations and after passage of ACA.
Regarding those who cannot afford health insurance, Carson suggested, “We can make contributions to their HSA each month,” he said, adding, “we already have this huge pot of money; instead of sending it to some bureaucracy let’s put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care.”

If only folks who actually work in the field -- as opposed to the abortion lobby-- had been consulted.

Update: Watch the whole speech.

Fine. I Guess I'll Just Die, Then.*

*Here is me blowing off steam after wasting hours for a task that ought to take 6 minutes. I am relieving feelings of frustration, not intending to worry anyone or stir sympathies.

So, I'm sick. Respiratory something or other. Bronchitis, pneumonia, whooping cough....something. No one knows, but I've been coughing uncontrollably since late August. Generally healthy as a horse, I never go to doctors because ever since the great health care reform of the 1990s which gave us our HMO/PPO system, it generally takes longer to get a referral to the doctor you actually need to see than it does to just stick it out and get well on your own.

But this time, exhausted from coughing and the Jewish hypochondriac side of my gene pool having been sloshed awake, I broke down and saw someone. Did the antibiotic thing, got an inhaler to help with uncontrollable spasms of coughing. Yesterday I went again since I'm not really better. Stronger antibiotics, two other drugs, and a chest x-ray were prescribed and therein lies the tale.

The office referred me to a local lab for the x-ray. Mr. W. reminded me to call and check they take our insurance (which is top of the line -- Mr. W. works for Congress and this is a choice from the menu of the Congressional exchange.) Wait a LONG time on the phone queue to find out No, they do not.

Call the doctor's office. Wait a LONG time on the phone queue to ask them to please refer me to another lab, one that takes my insurance. Okay, it's faxed over: go!

2nd lab calls as I'm getting into the car: we don't take your insurance. In fact, only three labs in the entire County do. You should tell your doctor.

Call the insurance company. LONG wait in the phone queue. Please find me a lab actually compatible with your requirements, because clearly my doctor can't.  Gives me a choice of three labs not in my county and nowhere nearby. Surely that can't be right.

Go on-line to investigate myself. Find a lab that appears to be compatible. It's far away and trafficky to get there, but at least it's in the state.

Call lab #3 to confirm they take my insurance. LONG wait in the phone queue. They do.

Call doctor's office to have them FAX the referral to the new lab. LONG wait in the phone queue to ask. "We'll take care of it right away."

Go on line to get directions. Meanwhile, Doctor's office calls to say they need the new lab's FAX #, but they can't get through on the phone line to ask for it. It's on me to find the FAX # and call.

Google lab #3 and find the FAX #.

Call the doctor's office. LONG wait in the phone queue to give them the fax # of the new lab. And by the way, have I mentioned that every single one of these phone calls begins (after the LONG wait in the queue) with a new person asking my date of birth, my insurance, my policy #, the nature of my complaint?

This entire process took so long that the labs all closed for the day in the three hours it took to just get a simple referral faxed to a lab.

The utter disinterest in helping the sick lady get her x-ray is not only frustrating, it's disheartening. The moreso when there are several labs that could do this minutes away and I'd be so much better off if I just had a referral and could take it to any local lab and pay on a fee-for-services basis. Or -- what about the old days, when the doctor could do the x-ray in his office?

This is the state of things under what is still a basically private insurance system thanks to the PPO model. I can't wait until we add infinite layers of bureaucracy and unfire-able government employees to the mix.

Although if under Obamacare they just tell me outright I'm not allowed to have a chest x-ray,  it might be an improvement. At least I wouldn't be so damned frustrated I could spit.

See why I never go to doctors?

Rats! Your Surgery's Cancelled

Rat infestation in the surgery caused the cancellation of operations at a hospital in Britain. I think the story rather buries the lede, however. Later on we find:

Separately at the beginning of October, it emerged almost 80 breast cancer patients were being recalled by King's Mill Hospital after being given inaccurate test results.
About 120 women were given false negative results which meant some of them would have benefited from treatment different to what they were given.

False negatives? So 120 women may die of breast cancer --or at least have a much bigger fight on their hands-- thanks to incompetence at this hospital?

By all means, tell us first about the rat! Who the hell cares? It's only women. 

Well, that's not fair. I suppose the breast cancer story is old and they reported it back in October. Besides, false breast cancer negatives from the NHS are common, as we learn from this 2010 story.

Christine Hullock from Penrith was told she did not have cancer in April. Months later she had two operations including a mastectomy.
In total 16 women have been treated for breast cancer after being called back for further assessment at North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust.
The trust's breast screening programme was suspended in July.
Three radiologists have been told they should not return to work until they have had more training.

Awesome! Not one ill-trained radiologist who through some fluke got through the system, but three! How many radiologists do we suppose were on staff? If the program was suspended, that suggests the entire radiology staff was incompetent, no?

I bet all those women dying of cancer are grateful for their free birth control,  and think it's a benefit well worth cutting back on radiology training. So I am back to: who the hell cares, it's only women!

Curtsy: Powerline, which comments:

With President Obama’s re-election, it is generally assumed that Obamacare is here to stay. Which means that pretty soon, your health care will be run incompetently, like the postal service, and with an agenda, like the EPA and the Department of Energy.