Chance of a shut down?

Reports in the news say that there is a good chance of a Federal Government shutdown on Tuesday.

One might suspect that it would constitute an interesting experience. Kind of like when you undergo one of those rare power grid failures and discover that you can actually live a few hours without electricity, and that there are stars in the sky at night.

But if the stars do become visible, so to speak, don’t expect there not to be some price.

The shrieks of the client class, their political patrons (i.e., Democrat masters), and the usual collaborationist media fascists, will be deafening. They will obviously do everything they can to spoil the experience, much like someone who in a fit of jealous pique deliberately sets off a car alarm at a picnic:

“Grandma will die! Don’t you love your Social Security collecting parents? Don’t you love my Social Security collecting parents? Irresponsible! It’s money you owe because we have made the commitment in your name! Homophobes! Bigots! Hypocrites! You wouldn’t let Swedish Bikini Team Babe socialists die for lack of your sacrifices! What, you say you might if they didn’t ‘reform’? Neanderthal!!!”

In other good news, a cold snap may end the mosquito problem this season too. Though we all may feel some chilliness as a result. “Bracing”, I’d choose to call it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If these events come to pass, the price will be well worth it in either case.

Will Obama Care “collapse of its own accord”?

 

 

A Question: Why is it expected by some that so-called Obama Care will collapse of its own accord, when its designers and promoters recognize no limits to their ability to coerce or draw upon you in order to fund and prop it up?

How exactly does that work?

Is there some length to which the progressives currently threatening social violence if their ill-begotten and legally bastard dream of punitive equity is not endowed, will henceforth refuse to go?

Is there some extractive limit beyond which, those who nonchalantly admit they recognize no limits, will not legislatively trespass if their spawn appears undernourished?

For those who think so, what real world evidence do they have to support this hope?

 

Fascist Democrats .. Or is it Stalinist?

 

The news headlines are recently filled with references to political partisanship and hard feelings in this country being elevated to a level not seen since the Civil War or its aftermath.

I think that any such characterization amounts to a modest overstatement.

But I also think that the reaction of those on the left to having their status quo , their notion of a settled situation challenged, leaves both some reason for thinking it so and for little doubt as to the fact that many on the left do see it in those terms, and speak as though some kind of social violence is immanent if anyone dare continue to offer them political resistance.

Of course when they regularly subverted the system using the formal liberties and procedural rules afforded to them by that very same system, they were exercising a sacred political right.

Now however, when the elected legislative representatives of some section of the people with whom they are not in sympathy, exercise their parliamentary rights, and do their duty by their constituents, the progressives cry “Treason!”

Conservatives, many years ago during the Cold War did label certain communist subversives and sympathizers as treasonous. In doing so they were morally and sometimes legally indicting them for cooperating with foreign powers in the active subversion of our regime of liberty; in the subversion of our constitutional polity, as the defenders of our freedoms would have described it.

Now however, “treason” has been redefined by the left as political and parliamentary opposition to their aims and “accomplishments”; and charges of treason are leveled at those who merely persist in defending our principles of limited government through normal and constitutional channels of political participation.

If then, there is anyone escalating us toward a mood of violence, it is the progressive class in this country, which plainly feels that although anything may be done or undone by them to anyone else with perfect moral and political legitimacy, nothing they do politically may be undone or even devalued by anyone else, lest a charge of treason – traditionally a capital crime you will recall – be leveled.

This astounding casualness with which they invoke treason and invite violence would be breathtaking to behold if we hadn’t been all along expecting them to  do something like this once they got to the levers of political power; and, when in reaction to their consistent overreach, some portion of the population, morally contemptuous of their collectivist liberty killing schemes, refused to be quieted and to roll over politically.

Jennifer Granholm, Harry Reid, and many others in the Democrat Party mainstream casually level charges of treason and terrorism, not at persons who conspire to betray their country and the lives of its people into the hands of a foreign and hostile power, but at persons who merely wish and work to preserve their natural rights, and their heritage of liberty.

Thus, much as the Stalinists’ once did, present day Democrats charge those who merely do not cooperate sufficiently as being treasonously guilty of “wrecking” or “reaction” or “sabotage”.

That this is in fact what their more ardent rank and file followers do also think, can probably be fairly represented through this quote from someone many of us already know – a certain Mr. Perry Hood, a self-described political activist and “progressive” from Delaware.

According to Perry, Senator Cruz is guilty of “sabotaging a law”.

I for one did not know that such an act on the part of a legally acting legislator was even possible.

But there you are. To them the defining axiom is apparently that “What the Progressive Will hath enjoined upon your back, let no man put asunder”. Or be judged treasonous.

Observe further. Rallying the mob for a little extralegal action, Hood rails regarding Ted Cruz,

“Let us run this Senator out of the country back to where he came from, Canada, both literally and figuratively.“

We presume Mr. Hood knows what “literally” means when he uses the word. And also what literally running out of the country a citizen and elected legislator who has the enthusiastic support of millions of his fellow citizens might mean in the way of civil violence.

Nonetheless …

Murderous hatred, groundless and unprecedented charges of treason over perfectly legal and parliamentary privileges having nothing whatsoever to do with foreign powers or allegiances, a cynical and hypocritical nativism, incitements to violence and extrajudicial lynch mob activities: But you see it’s ok when it’s progressives are promoting it. All in a credentialed progressive’s day’s work.

The irony of progressives additionally going on to morally indict Cruz on the grounds of some supposed physical resemblance he bears to their bete´ noire´, (puns intended) the Cold Warrior Senator Joe McCarthy, is almost too precious to even contemplate.

That he, whom they accused then and still today accuse of being morally shameless in the pursuit of his political ends, is left looking like the altar boy he once was when seen in comparison to them,  is both predictably, and tellingly, lost on them.

The sensitive Chris Matthews for instance, whose very legs tingle to the sound of Obama”s voice, speaks ominously regarding what he imagines is the appeal of Cruz’s ultra-male “black Irish looks” … to those fanatics addicted to individual freedoms.

Ryan, Cruz, and possibly even Rubio, condemned by progressive political activists as being “Guilty by phenotype”.

What can be next? An open “Kill the Boer” campaign cheer-led by Chris Matthews,  Harry Reid, and David Axelrod?

If this unhinged rhetoric were atypical of the left it could be shrugged off. But unfortunately, this insane vitriol has increasingly become their mainstream voice in recent years.

Thus, no observations will be offered up here today about the difficulties of living cooperatively with people having fundamentally differing or antithetical value systems and life ways. No ringing of alarms today about what is quite possibly upcoming if these progressives don’t somehow get a grip on themselves and their emotions. And no need for me to extensively document the explosive malice and homicidal resentment they emit like projectile vomit when frustrated. The mess is everywhere you look.

I just want to say, “God help us, truly, with what we are likely to face in dealing with these people in the not too distant future …”

 

Baffled Democrat senators receive testimony on Obama Care Ver.CCXIV

“Freedom”. It’s an obsolete word the meaning of which is obscure to us.

The “Constitution” you say?

Pay for our own what?

In the matter of Obama Care

I’m working today and while doing so I’ve been accessing the Internet.

I don’t know why exactly, but possibly because after hearing about the House Republican’s courageous act of defunding Obama Care, I glanced at one of Perry Hood’s typically puling exercises in social justice pimping.

I then decided to revisit and review the fact situation premises underlying the arguments we’ve all seen concerning “national” health care costs by doing a couple of searches. Just for the sake of Auld Lang Syne …

My first search was on the topic of uncompensated emergency care. I Googled: “Percentage of US health care expenditures on uncompensated emergency room treatment”.

There, in the results window I found links that informed me that emergency room treatment accounted for only about 2 cents of every dollar expended on medical treatment in the United States.

“Main Points

Emergency care represents less than 2 percent of the nation’s $2.4 trillion in health care expenditures while covering 136 million people a year.i ii
Emergency departments are open 24 hours a day and provide “one-stop shopping” with all the hospital’s resources – such as diagnostic testing and consultation by other medical specialists – in one place.
The most pressing economic issue in emergency medicine is uncompensated care: the lack of adequate reimbursement for emergency medical care has led to the closure of hundreds of emergency departments.
The focus on preventing so-called “non-urgent” ER visits distracts policymakers from the real cost savings in reducing hospital admissions.
Emergency departments are critical to our communities and must be adequately funded.”

We also learn that,

“About half of all emergency services go uncompensated, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).iv The typical ER treats 1 in 5 patients without insurance or a clear method for reimbursement. The CDC reported that 19 percent of all emergency patients in 2009 were uninsured.”

and

“Nearly half (44 percent) of emergency physicians responding to a poll say fear of lawsuits is the biggest challenge to cutting emergency department costs. More than half (53 percent) say this fear is the main reason for ordering the number of tests they do.viii Every additional diagnostic test adds to the overall cost of care.”

See also this American College of Emergency Physicians link

So, at first glance anyway, only about 20 percent of 2 percent of the money spent in the US on medical treatment is spent on the uninsureds’ emergency room treatment. Though, this burden is costly enough, and damaging enough, to the facilities treating these patients.

Next I began to check on structural issues related to demographics. Say for example, on the cost of behavioral problems to the US economy. But that was not really a fruitful avenue. We learn of course that fat kids are a large (pun intended) and growing (same) problem and that they will likely experience a host of chronic conditions which will eventually …

Oh. Yeah, “Chronic care”

Wonder what that costs “us” as a portion of what “we” spend?

Google: “Chronic condition expenses as a percentage of American medical costs”

And this my friends really set me back on my heels. I couldn’t believe it. Though I cannot now explain why I hadn’t known it earlier.

We debate insurance reform, and malpractice reform, and we talk of defensive medicine. But what are the real causes of this social phenomenon are we being held political hostage to? Is it really primarily due to greedy doctors and profiteering insurance companies,  inflated drug costs, scheming lawyers, and proliferating defensive medicine?

We speak in terms of “social costs”. What of social use? Is the demand itself unreal? What of actual use and spending, and of who is doing the using and spending?

Well, while,

” … Half of the population spends little or nothing on health care …”

it turns out that,

” … 5 percent of the population spends almost half of the total amount [spent]…”

What? How can this be? Feeling dizzy too? But why should we stop there when there is so much more to learn …

” … In 2002, the 5 percent of the U.S.community (civilian noninstitutionalized) population that spent the most on health care accounted for 49 percent of overall U.S. health care spending …”

” … the 50 percent of the population with the lowest expenses accounted for only 3 percent of overall U.S. medical spending, with annual medical spending below $664 per person. … those in the top 5 percent spent, on average, more than 17 times as much per personas those in the bottom 50 percent of spenders”

” … The elderly (age 65 and over) made up around 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2002, but they consumed 36 percent of total U.S. personal health care expenses. The average health care expense in 2002 was $11,089 per year for elderly people but only $3,352 per year for working-age people (ages 19-64 …”

” … people in the highest 5 percent of the distribution of medical expenses were 11 times as likely to be in fair or poor physical health as people in the bottom half of that distribution (45 percent vs. 4 percent) …”

” … 21 percent of people in the top 5 percent [those with the highest medical expenses] were in fair or poor mental health, compared with 3 percent of people in the bottom 50 percent [of medical expenses]”

Chronic, crazy, (and a modest percentage of the) elderly account for half of that infamous 16 percent or so of the GDP being spent on health care. This then is half of the “crisis” that has been driving a formerly free people into the clutches of an Obama Care mandate, and toward the degraded status of “Property of the State”.

I’m going to quit writing now; before I say something really, really cruel …

You can read and judge for yourself. As for me, I am done researching for today.

Oh you can bet your bottom dollar on this though. Once the government really gets its say, and those figures are considered, as they already have been by many in the Single Payer system movement, there will be death panels.

And what will the left do? That is to say the same left that earlier mocked Palin?

They will shrug and ask, “What did you fools expect?”

Fools! I am the Lido and you will do as I command!

In Memory 2001 & 2012

Sorry Algore – It’s Global COOLING

Well look at this. Brit Scientists say the Arctic Ice Cap grew this summer and is larger in coverage than a year ago. I, myself said this can’t be true. Algore has said for years there will be no Artic Ocean Ice. I said to myself, The Telegraph from London must be wrong. They’re posting a story that is against the Religion of GLOWBALL Warming. I thought, I must research this. NOAA maintains a site on Artic Ocean Ice, I must research this story since I’m a Warming Skeptic, and therefore WRONG. But here is the story, and below are two charts showing ice on Sept. 7, 2012 and 2013

THE TELEGRAPH

Global warming? No, actually we’re cooling, claim scientists
A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling.
By Hayley Dixon

9:55AM BST 08 Sep 2013

There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, they equivalent of almost a million square miles.

In a rebound from 2012’s record low an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html

Ice 9/7/2012

Ice 9/7/2013

I know the Glowball Warming Fanatics won’t believe it, so check it yourself http://www.natice.noaa.gov/Products_On_Demand/pod.html