Please go read Doug Reich’s discussion about Obama as a thorough and complete pragmatist.

Obama is unable to generalize. He can only offer a rambling litany of disconnected concretes. [...]

No wonder he is frustrated. But his frustration is not moral or even political. It is epistemological. His mind, like the mind of most modern intellectuals, is wrecked. Without the ability to validly induce general concepts from observation, i.e., without the ability to reason, a man is reduced to the level of an animal. Such an approach would be like attempting to file papers without any categories.

A most excellent discussion.

Check out this telling post over at We Stand FIRM: Oh the taxes you’ll pay!

Edit: changed title to “New Taxes under ObamaCare” because these are just taxes under the health care reform bill and not other taxes that Obama may support.

Listen to Barack Obama tell you he ain’t your bitch and you can go buy your own pommes frites.

President Obama is being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

I know what you’re thinking. Dude has been here for about five seconds and hasn’t actually done anything. Well, according to the Novel Peace Prize Committee, you would be wrong for thinking that.

Sick, depraved, and wrong. What is wrong with you?

US President Barack Obama has sensationally won the Nobel Peace Prize, just nine months into his term, with the jury hailing his ”extraordinary” efforts in international diplomacy and to hasten nuclear disarmament.

…

”The Nobel committee has in particular looked at Obama’s vision and work towards a world without atomic weapons,” said Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the five-member committee. ”Obama has, as President, created a new climate in international politics.

”Multilateral diplomacy is again central, with emphasis on the role the United Nations and other international institutions should play,” Mr Jagland said. ”Dialogue and negotiations are the preferred method to solve even the most difficult international conflicts.”

Well, ok, then.  That clears it all up. The reason he is being awarded the prize is because he can both see and speak.

Even assuming he sees clearly, which is questionable given the people we’ve seen him talking to and the things he’s said about health care, and he’s able to really communicate what he sees, his “vision,” if you will, to the rest of the world, I am still of the mind that such efforts do not really constitute DOING something.  It’s not like he signed a law or gave Ahmadinejad the drubbing he deserves.

It wasn’t until the end of the article that I really understood the accomplishment for which this prize stands.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he was ”absolutely delighted” by the news. ”In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself.” [Emphasis added]

There you have it.  Basically, the Nobel Prize Committee sees President Obama  as a mirror to the world.  And from that vision of humanity we can only glean one clear truth: people are idiots.

This past weekend, I was thinking about how wildly idiotic the Obamacare plan is and the irony of the fact that our first black president is proposing legislation which will expand slavery in this country.

Let me explain: any time the government obliges people to cover some particular service, services like welfare, but also military, courts, police, roads, medical care, fire departments, schools, postal services, and all those other things, they are using the police powers of the state, complete with guns, bombs, and handcuffs, to compel use to support them in their needs and whims.

Tax payers are forced to work for the state.  We’re slaves. That’s all there is to it.  It does not matter whether the particular item is a legitimate function of government like police, courts, and military, or an illegitimate task like school lunch, Obamacare, or issuing licenses for dancing.  The fact that it is involuntary makes it a violation of your rights and as such you are a slave to the state.

But what I was musing over is that when people were enslaved in this country by their skin color, the collectivists who endorsed such depravity had a convenient means of identifying who is and is not a slave: skin color. But when the country grew enlightened and abolished slavery based on skin color. Unfortunately, the demand for slaves didn’t go away and there is a need for some sort of objective standard for telling the slaves apart from the free men.

So, I think it was really a perverse stroke of genius that the slavers decided to just make everyone into slaves.

This morning on HLN, Robin Meade used the phrase “campaign of misinformation” saying that the White House believes that is what is going on with regard to its misguided universal health insurance plan.  So, I Googled it and found that that is actually the phrase used by Democrats.

Now, I know that there are organizations out there who are fighting against this horrible idea that Democrats are trying to foist upon us, but in their response they seem to believe that there’s some grand cabal out there plotting against them — as if people wouldn’t possibly oppose the idea unless there were a dark band of miscreants telling them lies (LIES!) about this health insurance plan of theirs.

Paranoid much?

And what if that were the case?  So?  We have freedom of association in this country along with freedom of speech.  If someone wants to hang out with others who dislike government run health insurance and parrot each other in town halls, what of it?  It doesn’t make their arguments any more or less valid.

This is pretty common, though.  Commentators seem to put more stock in protests and outcries when they are percieved to be “grass roots” but reject them if there is any kind of larger organization behind it.  Rachel Maddow sneers at the Tea Parties for having the backing of larger political action groups.  Meanwhile, Republicans railed against Democratic protest groups during the Bush administration.

But here we are looking at the White House, the Obama Administration orchestrating some action to fight the alleged misinformation.  I dunno.  Strikes me as stupid.

TreyPeden@whitehouse Reality Check: I can keep mine and pay for yours, too! #healthcare

TreyPeden@whitehouse Reality Check: I can’t keep my insurance coverage if the coverage I want and enjoy is none at all. #healthcare

TreyPeden@whitehouse Reality Check: I wasn’t rationing, I was choosing a suitable portion for myself. Butt out! #healthcare

TreyPeden@whitehouse Reality Check: Care and insurance aren’t the same thing. #healthcare.

To: flag@whitehouse.gov

Dear President Obama and company

I have spotted some very fishy information out on the internet on this website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/. I found the website via one of the people I follow on Twitter.

First, there’s a video that says that our current system of health care involves “rationing” and then says that the proposed health care reform measures will eliminate rationing.  The way that the lady in that video (and Peter Singer in his recent Times article) uses the term “rationing” there is and always will be rationing of health care — and everything else.  (I hasten to point out that what you mean and what others mean by the term is not the same thing and I believe you know it.) The reason is because there simply is not infinite availability for any resource, including medical care.  Some people seem to perceive this simple fact of reality as a problem and now it appears that some not-so-bright individual is proposing to ignore it as a means of overcoming it.  John Adams would laugh in such an individual’s face, so I find it gobsmackingly audacious of you to allude to him while defending such an asinine proposal.

Second, and you should be proud of me for sitting through more of this blarney after the first point above, it is repeatedly asserted that I will be able to keep my current insurance and not obliged to join in the government-run plan.  The problem is that the introduction of a universal, tax payer-subsidized will have the effect of bankrupting existing insurance companies who will be obliged to set prices to compete with “free.” This means they will have to pass their costs on to someone and whereas the government can rely on covering its costs by ultimately billing the tax payer.  As a tax payer, this would mean that I would have to pay for my health care twice.  And what if I do not want health insurance at all and am happy with that option?  To say that I have the option of paying once or paying twice, but not to have the option of not paying at all is simply untrue, a lie.  This proposal is a change to my current health care.

Third, I do not believe President Obama intends to euthanize anyone, but I don’t see how it’s possible for him to be so stupid as to not realize it will happen.  As mentioned, medical care is not an infinite, cost-free resource. It has to be produced by individuals.  Individuals who have to get paid for their efforts.  The government cannot possibly continue to kite checks to our nation’s doctors and expect them to keep up with demand, which means the government will have to choose who gets care sometimes and who doesn’t.  Again, there aren’t an infinite number of doctors and medicine out there.

President Obama joked about people who opposed his new system while supporting programs like Medicare.  I don’t support Medicare, either, and it is part of the reason health insurance is expensive and unwieldy today, for the reasons I mentioned briefly above.  I think it is laughable that Obama decries the high cost of health care in America today while lauding and expanding the mechanisms which have driven up costs and stifled creativity in the field.  More than this, it is outrageous that anyone would call our current system a capitalistic or market system of health care when even the president recognizes programs like Medicare for what they are: government-run, socialized health insurance plans.

I’ll stop playing coy now: President Obama is either dishonest or dangerously stupid when it comes to America’s health care system.  His proposal is the most “fishy” thing on the internet about health care today.  I know he doesn’t care what I think.  I know he is impervious to evidence, logic, and reality.

What’s even worse is this request to have Americans report others to the White House for dissenting from President Obama’s ludicrous magical thinking on the matter.  It’s depraved and tyrannical.

So, if you’re really only interested in knowing who doesn’t agree with this idiocy, who speaks out against it, who defies President Obama’s naked grasping for power then put me on your list and know that I am proud to be among true patriots who recognize when their freedom is being threatened and speak out against it.

Patriotically

Trey Givens

Check out Gus van Horn’s letter, though.  It is damn good.

Update: I just realized that in my attempt to write my letter while at work, I made SEVERAL horrid mistakes.  Atrocious. Additions indicated in the above in italics.

I am developing an unhealthy obsession with these lunatics.

Found over at Joe.My.God.

I have an intense dislike for President Barack Obama.  It’s not that I think he’s a liar really, but I don’t believe pretty much anything that comes out of his mouth.  He could tell me it’s raining and I’d still look out the window to check.  The problem is more that I think he actually believes the offensive things things he says – - things about people needing to serve their country and enslaving doctors to the alleged needs of sick people.

I’m sure there are some cases where he’s just a big, fat liar but his delusions scare me more.

So, believe me when I tell you there are numerous reasons to dislike him both as a president and as a human being, but all this “birther” stuff is riDONKulous.

Seriously?

You may not have heard of this because it’s so absurd, so let me break it down for you.

Barack Obama’s mother is American and his father is Kenyan.  He was, in fact, born in Hawaii; however, there are many grown adults out there who claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and, therefore, is not qualified to be president.

Article II of the US Constitution says:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

It’s not at all clear to me why this requires someone be born within the US, but apparently it does.  (To my thinking, being born to an American is sufficient to be a citizen by birth.)

A birth certificate for Barack Obama exists.  It shows that he was born in Hawaii.  People have seen it.  There are newspaper announcements from Hawaii that show him being born there.  There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary.

But some people have put up a huge fuss about this saying that he wasn’t born in America.  I don’t get it.  These people are just crazy.

Do you know, according to Wikipedia, there is actually some doubt about whether or not John McCain was even born in the United States?  It’s true.  He was born in Panama.  Some people allege that it was on a “submarine base” but where’s the proof?  How do we know they aren’t lying?  Huh?  HUH?

These birther people are stupid twits.