This We Shall Remember

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

The Freshman

Actually, my status is that of a Sophomore. Over 64 credits, and not an associate's degree to my name. Ah, well...

Today marked the end of my first full week of class (I have a Saturday math class) and I'm overwhelmed. I have an excuse, though. You see, I haven't attended school in nearly 20 years!

I am the same age or perhaps a squeak older than my professors. Knowing this I thought I would feel out of place among the other students. I'm doing fairly well in that arena. There is at least one other student in one of my four classes who is roughly my age or perhaps a squeak younger.

Regarding the more traditional students, I'm getting used to the pink, blue, and purple hair. Also, the tattoos are becoming less jarring to me. It's the piercings I'm having trouble with. I see the posts, and pegs, and the round things, and the big, gaping holes in ears and all I can do is force myself to stop thinking: What is pierced underneath their clothing?

So, that's the reason I haven't posted anything lately: it's life interrupted by college. If nothing else, I should develop better upper body strength from toting my books around!

Good night and sweet dreams, my friends,

The Ever Studious Flitter

Death Panels: Is There Any Truth to the Rumors?

The following article was was published in the

New York Post on August 17, 2009.

It's All A Death Panel: The Truth About Obamacare

by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.

Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care systemwide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections...)

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Quotes from Samuel Adams

The Constitution

shall never be construed...to prevent the people of the United States

who are
peaceable citizens

from keeping their own arms.

If ever a time should come, when

vain and aspiring men

shall possess the highest seats in Government,

our country will stand in need of its

experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty,

the tranquility of servitude greater than the

animating contest for freedom . . .

Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you.

May your chains set lightly upon you

and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant

pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

What has commonly been called rebellion

has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition of the

lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.

It does not require a majority to prevail,

but rather an irate, tireless minority

keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

Kim Jong-il and the Ill-Advised Journalists

Yesterday while I had a mouthful, my orthodontist commented, "Did you hear the journalists were released from North Korea?" I said, "A hund oow hinuss heehing narr inni hurs lace." [Translation: They had no business being there in the first place.] She was a tad put out by that and said, "Well, North Korea had no business sentencing them to 12 years of hard labor."

Excuse me? No business? Regardless of my views of North Korea in general and Kim Jong-il in particular, the last time I checked, North Korea was, and I assume still is a sovereign nation. As such, they have every right to govern themselves, create laws, and conduct their political business as the country (i.e. the ruling regime) sees fit. Granted, their existence has been problematic for most of the world for nearly six decades. That, however, does not diminish their rights.

The journalists displayed the height of stupidity by attempting illegal entry into North Korea. Firstly, Kim Jong-il -- who is internationally known for human rights violations -- controls all the media in his country. The last thing he'd want is more unflattering journalistic attention brought to bear against him and his abuses. Secondly, considering all of his recent nuclear saber rattling, having something substantial to hold over the United States would have been -- and turned out to be -- politically judicious for North Korea's Dear Leader.

If the two women thought they could sneak in and then yell, "We're American citizens!" to get themselves out, they were sadly mistaken. Their arrogance, and that of Current TV, the news organization co-founded by Al Gore that employs them, put their lives in imminent danger. It also gave the Unites States a black eye.

What were the concessions former president Bill Clinton offered to North Korea on the behest of the Obama Administration for the release of these two ill-advised journalists?

Personally, I'd have left them there for 24 months, which is roughly the standard amount of time our military members spend during deployment to the Middle East. Think about that.

Always willing to express my opinion,

Flitter

Just Say No to Obamacare

Don't want a Washington bureaucrat coming between you and your healthcare? Not willing to bet your life on hope and change? Neither am I. Knowledge is the weapon we must wield to defeat the draconian plans President Obama and his administration are trying to force-feed the taxpaying public; a plan endorsed by the sycophantic mainstream media; a plan Congress would exempt themselves from. It's not good enough for them but okie-dokie for rank-and-file Americans.

This is the same gang whose forecast for the Cash for Clunkers program was dead wrong. The funds dried up in a matter of days, when it was projected to run from July through November. Now, they're preparing to sink another $2 billion [of our money] into the program to further subsidize the auto industry [a huge chunk of which the government owns].

Do you still believe that the government would be able to provide health care faster, cheaper and better than the private sector? Who do you think would win the WWE World Tag Team Championship of UPS versus USPS? Wake up, America!

The following column was published in The Washington Post on July 31, 2009.

Obamacare: The Coming Retreat by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Yesterday, Barack Obama was God. Today, he's fallen from grace, the magic gone, his health care reform dead. If you believed the first idiocy -- and half the mainstream media did -- you'll believe the second. Don't believe either.

Conventional wisdom always makes straight-line projections. They are always wrong. Yes, Obama's aura has diminished, in part because of overweening overexposure. But by year's end he will emerge with something he can call health care reform. The Democrats in Congress will pass it because they must. Otherwise, they'll have slain their own savior in his first year in office.

But that bill will look nothing like the massive reform Obama originally intended. The beginning of the retreat was signaled by Obama's curious reference -- made five times -- to "health-insurance reform" in his July 22 news conference.

Reforming the health care system is dead. Cause of death? Blunt trauma administered not by Republicans, not even by Blue Dog Democrats, but by the green eyeshades at the Congressional Budget Office.

Three blows:

(1) On June 16, the CBO determined that the Senate Finance Committee bill would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, delivering a sticker shock that was near fatal.

(2) Five weeks later, the CBO gave its verdict on the Independent Medicare Advisory Council, Dr. Obama's latest miracle cure, conjured up at the last minute to save Obamacare from fiscal ruin, and consisting of a committee of medical experts highly empowered to make Medicare cuts.

The CBO said that IMAC would do nothing, trimming costs by perhaps 0.2 percent. A 0.2 percent cut is not a solution; it's a punch line.

(3) The final blow came last Sunday when the CBO euthanized the Obama "out years" myth. The administration's argument had been: Sure, Obamacare will initially increase costs and deficits. But it pays for itself in the long run because it bends the curve downward in coming decades.

The CBO put in writing the obvious: In its second decade, Obamacare significantly bends the curve upward -- increasing deficits even more than in the first decade.

This is obvious because Obama's own first-decade numbers were built on arithmetic trickery. New taxes to support the health care plan begin in 2011, but the benefits part of the program doesn't fully kick in until 2015. That excess revenue is, of course, one time only. It makes the first decade numbers look artificially low, but once you pass 2015, the yearly deficits become larger and eternal.

Three CBO strikes and you're out cold. Though it must be admitted that the White House itself added to the farcical nature of its frantic and futile cost-cutting when budget director Peter Orszag held a three-hour brainstorming session with Senate Finance Committee aides trying to find ways to save. "At one point," reports The Wall Street Journal, "they flipped through the tax code, looking for ideas." Looking for ideas? Months into the president's health care drive and just days before his deadline for Congress to pass real legislation? You gonna give this gang the power to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy?

Not likely. Whatever structural reforms dribble out of Congress before the August recess will likely not survive the year. In the end, Obama will have to settle for something very modest. And indeed it will be health-insurance reform.

To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no pre-existing condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.

Nirvana. But wouldn't this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.

Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the U.S.; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.

* * * * * *

As a veteran and military spouse, I am intimately familiar with government-provided health care. Here is a quick example of what my friends and neighbors might expect to experience if we allow the Obama Administration unfettered control of American medicine and access to our medical records.

I have been in San Antonio since October 2008, however I have not been able to see my primary healthcare provider. There is usually a two month wait, so I request any provider available. That interferes with refilling my prescriptions because the requirement is that my primary must review my 'scripts at least annually.

With respect to those prescriptions, several years ago I was taken off an anti-inflammatory. The medication is expensive, so the military was forced to develop strict parameters for prescribing it. I fell outside of those parameters. They put me, instead, on an OTC-type anti-inflammatory. As a result, I spent nearly two years in pain, having to use a cane, often unable to hobble to the bathroom before having an accident. Depends became my best friend. At the time, I wasn't yet 50.

Luckily one of the non-primary providers I saw decided to buck the system. He placed me back on the prohibited med and doubled my dosage. I am now nearly pain-free and have retired my cane. However, I live with the fear that, once I am able to get an appointment with my primary, I will again be removed from the medication that makes my life bearable.

Is this what you really want, America? If we fall victim to socialized medicine, my story will be an everyday occurrence for everyone. Everyone, that is, except the president and members of congress.

Seeking truth, justice, and the rapidly disappearing American way,

Flitter

Sadness

On Thursday, our friend died. He was mowing the yard outside his parsonage in a little farming community when he was stung by a wasp. No one knew he was allergic to wasp stings, least of all he. Our friend was able to get to the parsonage where he told his wife he didn't feel well, then collapsed. She performed CPR until the first responders arrived. Sadly, modern medicine was simply not enough.

He came to the service of God later in life. Perhaps it was the tragedy of the of the Murrah Building bombing, where both he and Hubbs lost friends and acquaintances. Perhaps it had always been in him. But whatever it was that inspired him to become a minister, it took hold and stayed with him.

We travel back to Oklahoma City tomorrow for the funeral on Monday. Our friend will be memorialized where he was born and raised, another little farming community southwest of OKC. The place Hubbs was raised. They had been friends since grade school.

With your forbearance, I would ask that you pray to whomever you hold sacred or holy. Pray for the family of a good man. A man who gave up a tidy retirement in a career he was already vested in, to preach and minister to the spiritual needs of farmers and ranchers out in the middle of nowhere.

After studying and serving several churches, he was ordained as an Elder of the church just this year, but his was a life and a calling that he had loved with the quiet passion of someone who had preached the Word for decades. His was a kind and gentle soul, and the world is a colder place without his warmth. His passing is deeply grieved, and he shall be missed by all who knew and loved him.

Thank you,

Flitter