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With the addition of Google Gadgets you have an almost unlimited number of ways to customize your page. Basically it seems like anything you could add to your iGoogle page could be included here as well. They also include some site specific gadgets like text boxes and other utilities. Combine the gadgets with Google Apps and even more customization is available. You can add a calendar to your page with the ability to control access in almost any way you want. You can link to documents. You can create forms where user entry is stored in a Google Docs spread sheet for your personal use or to be displayed on the page. The possibilities are almost endless and there is a great community springing up in the help sections of Google to explore as many of them as possible.
For the webmasters out there you can tie your sites into Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools very easily. Creating a Google Apps account (Standard edition is free and Premier edition is $50/user) gives you one central location to manage your site, email, docs, and calendar in a very effective collaborative environment. You can very simply add users and set their privileges to full access, just viewing, or almost anywhere in between. You can make your sites world viewable or viewable by invitation only. Google will even help you set up your own URL for a small fee ($10 if your URL isn't already taken), Google has partnered with GoDaddy.com to provide this service.
The long and the short here is that Google Sites is a very simple and fast way to get a basic site up and running and Google Apps can give you a much more well rounded solution that even seasoned webmasters might be impressed with.
( WIKIPedia Breakdown! )
So I guess you could best classify me as a socially liberal republican? Or maybe I am a republicrat? demoblican? Who knows...
By the way, these thoughts were spawned after reading that Iowa is the latest state to legalize same sex marriage.
The Pros
- People will smoke less.
- The money is going to a good cause I have no trouble supporting, health care for kids. I think a lot of kids suffer from second had smoke so in some ways it is only fair that the smokers help pay for their care.
The Cons
- It's a tax increase. And, I might add that Obama said that for something like 95% of Americans there wouldn't be any of those...
- It's self defeating in the sense that if people stop smoking as the tax gets further out of control, less money will come in and the tax will have to be raised again to keep a consistent level of funding for the projects sustained by tobacco taxes.
- It unfairly targets the poor? I heard this one on the radio on my way to class and I am not sure I buy it, or at least I am not sure I care in this case. Sure, more poor people smoke, but they don't have to and they are the ones who most likely can least afford to... I guess the best I can say is that it unfairly targets the stupid?
- It takes advantage of people with an addiction. This is one I can get behind, I would say most smokers are addicted to cigarettes and it seems kind of underhanded to profit from people's addiction. I am pretty sure there are some companies out there that we give a lot of crap to about that...
- It's a vice tax. I debated putting this in the pro's since I don't think it is a good thing to drink (at least in excessive amounts) and smoke, but really, that isn't for the government to decide in my opinion. If I want to drink I should be allowed, but those pot smokers are evil, law-breaking, vandals! So I guess really where do you draw the line? McDonald's cheese burgers are bad for you too!
In the end definitely more Cons than Pros... So I think I am against, well... vice taxes in general. I think smoking is a vile habit that when done in public shows a horrible disregard for the health and comfort of those around the smoker, but that doesn't mean it should be taxed like this.
God knows I am not all that good at this... I tend to just go off the deep end at times, so sure I am right, they are wrong, and they have to admit it! So this is advice for myself, and I'm working on it. But I hear conversations around me in school, work, etc where people who disagree just part ways to go find someone more pleasant to talk to. I say talk to, not with, because these people aren't looking for a discussion they are looking for reinforcement. I think this is the mental equivalent to coasting down hill. The more you do it the harder it is to see the side streets (alternative points of view) and the faster you go the harder it is to change course (your opinion).
So I guess my goals are to try to listen more, talk less, and to stop mentally coasting down hill.
In prepared remarks Monday, Obama said, "The pain being felt in places that rely on our auto industry is not the fault of our workers... And it is not the fault of all the families and communities that supported manufacturing plants throughout the generations... Rather, it is a failure of leadership."
I think this is typical Obama. Blame management and ignore the UAW who was a big supporter of his campaign...
I think leadership was lacking, but I also think the UAW (and by extension, the workers) had something to do with it as well. This Wikipedia link talks about some of the criticisms of the UAW policy and some of the changes they have made to address the situation. A little above the criticism section is some information about auto workers wages.
I would have to say, with the UAW and some of the labor union conflicts in the KC area recently, I am not a huge fan of unions these days since it seems like they are holding their employers hostage with the threat of strike. But, on the whole I don't know a lot about labor unions or their history. I do wonder if they have outlived their usefulness at this point as the conditions that led to their necessity seem to be long past and maybe irrelevant in todays world? Or maybe the problem is that the leadership of the UAW is too far separated from the true views of the average worker? Anyone who knows more feel free to fill me in or point me to some good reading material!
After looking at the this article on the UAW web site they state that the average worker gets about $28/hour which comes out to $58,240 a year. That seems a little high to me given the average salary of say a programmer or other technical positions I am familiar with, and on top of that they receive some fairly unheard of benefits from what I understand. But as stated in the article linked above, they are working to remedy the situation it is just going to take years and a lot of tax payer money! In the end though, I am glad the article ended with the following paragraph:
"Make no mistake: The argument over a proposed rescue package is complicated, in no small part because over the years both management and labor made some truly awful decisions while postponing the inevitable reckoning with economic reality. And even if the government does provide money, it's a tough call whether restructuring should proceed with or without a formal bankruptcy filing. Either way, yet more downsizing is inevitable."
Obama's site on Health Care
Obama's Health Care FAQ
Obama's Health Care Plan
I also looked and some different census data and polls to verify some of the numbers on people without health care, total health care costs, etc. I found them all with really simple Google searches.
The Article
I started looking into Obama’s health care plan expecting to hate, disagree with, and ridicule every word. Much to my surprise, however; I actually agree with a surprising portion of the ideas outlined in the bill, but (perhaps predictably) I still disagree with the bill as a whole. This health care plan seems to have taken some quality ideas and used them to advance a political agenda that possesses more popularity than sense.
The first thing I would like to point out that this healthcare plan is presented as a $50-$65 billion initiative to provide health care to the uninsured, to help small businesses provide health care if needed, invest in electronic health care IS, and other smaller initiatives. Depending on who you believe, last year anywhere from 15%-33% of Americans spent at least some time without health care. Total health care spending last year was around $2.2 trillion. So, using my impressive mathematical skills, I have calculated that it should cost around $330 billon to $726 billion to provide the care specified before any of the expected savings. $10 billion is going to electronic health care technology, so on the low end Obama is expecting $275 billion (83% cost reduction) and on the high end $686 billion (94% cost reduction) to make this plan only cost $50-$65 billion. I call BS on this and for the rest of this exercise I am assuming the plan is going to cost around $300 billion and most likely much more.
The next opinion I got from reading this bill is there are basically three classes of health care participants that are targeted by this bill. (1) Those that don’t have health care and would only use it for emergencies even if they had it, (2) Those that don’t have health care and would use it for preventative care, and (3) Those that don’t have health care and are in desperate need due to some health condition. For everyone else the only thing that would change is the money you spent for everyone else’s health care. The point is, if you already have health care through an employer nothing really changes for you.
Now if you belong to the first group, thanks for wasting tax payer money! You will be getting free health care but won’t be contributing to any of the savings the plan hopes to generate to make the plan even remotely fundable. In the FAQ on the Obama Health Care Plan it is stated the plan will realize “tremendous” savings within the health care system to help fund the plan, and these savings come mainly from the benefits of preventative care. The rest of the funding will come from allowing the Bush tax cuts on people earning over $250,000 per year to expire. Now consider most people earning over $250,000 a year in the U.S. are small business owners who create the majority of the jobs, and the easiest way to come up with the extra money is to just not hire someone they otherwise would have hired. Don’t worry, the person they don’t hire won’t have a job but at least he will have health care… The other thing these small businesses might do if they earn right around $250,000 a year is manipulate their income a little bit to earn just under $250,000 a year which is a fairly simple exercise in accounting.
Now if you are a member of the second group I believe there is a good possibility a government program is the right answer and I even believe in some of Obama’s ideas. I’ve read many studies that say preventative care has a great chance at reducing the likelihood of sever illness or health issues in the future, and it is these severe health issues that burn through the dollars! 5% of people using health care account for 49% of total health care spending, and $1.7 trillion a year is spent on treatment for chronic conditions many of which onset could be delayed and/or overall treatment costs could be reduced by preventative care. Currently preventative health care accounts for about 4 cents out of every dollar spent in health care, or $80 billion dollars total, so let’s say we spend $160 billion to expand preventative care (about half of what is currently planned) and see if we gain the benefits expected. If it succeeds then, depending on the state of the industry, then there is potential for expanding the program. But, under the current plan Obama is not waiting, he is spending the money before he has realized any of the savings he requires to fund his program, and there is no guarantee those savings will materialize let alone in the amount the plan requires. The feasibility of Obama’s health care plan is dependent on the size of this second group of people and the savings realized due to the benefits of preventative care. This is important, if this second group of people is too small or the benefits of preventative care don’t materialize the plan will have a huge funding problem and you can guess where the money will come from in that case…. More taxes… Now, preventative care is not the only source of savings Obama is counting on (I will talk about those more in a bit) but it is the crucial one.
The last group, those with existing health problems and no health care coverage, is addressed only by saying pre-existing conditions cannot prevent coverage and through the expansion of disease management programs. This group of people accounts for $1.7 trillion (77%) of health care spending and they aren’t going anywhere. Even if preventative care lowers costs it won’t do it tomorrow. These people will still require coverage. The real question is, how many of those without coverage fall into this category? If the number is large (i.e. larger than those in group two) then implementing this plan will increase spending rather than realize any savings.
So, where are the other areas Obama expects to see savings? These savings are predicted to come from the use of electronic health information system technologies and attacking “anti-competitive” business practices in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
I agree that electronic health information system technologies are a great idea! Let’s do it! All we need to do is define how it will work, create standards, get the infrastructure in place, retrain doctors and other staff, get the current back log of paper records keyed in… the list goes on and on and on. It is not impossible, and it needs to be done, but none of the specifics have even been hinted at. On top of that, there are many companies out there that are working on exactly this problem, and it isn’t easy. They have already spent billions with no solid standard emerging. Is $10 billion enough? I seriously doubt it. Can this be done in 4 years? I seriously doubt it. Will this result in any savings short term? Absolutely NO! Will this result in any savings long term? 100% yes!
Now, as for “anti-competitive” business practices, let’s start with the insurance industry. First thing to consider here is health insurance is a misnomer. The concept of insurance implies a chance expenses will not be realized, and the “risk” of a claim can be mitigated by having a sufficiently large customer base paying premiums. Now in the current health insurance industry, the insurers are insuring many fixed costs. They know you are going to have doctor’s visits, check ups, and all these general expenses and they have to pass those costs down to their customers or they don’t make money and they don’t stay in business. They are providing health care, not insurance. Now under Obama’s plan they cannot turn someone away due to a pre-existing condition. In this situation a risk has already been realized, the person is sick, and this becomes another fixed cost. How does the insurer pay for this? They have two options, (1) charge the sick person more or (2) charge everyone else more. So, even if Obama creates more competition and lowers profits in the insurance industry which has the potential to collapse the industry, he is still going to raise costs (or at the very least not lower them) by increasing insurance companies fixed costs. Now let’s take this a step further, if the health care industry becomes so competitive that profit becomes non-existent then businesses will leave the industry and take their money elsewhere. Who does that leave to provide health care? The government.
The pharmaceuticals, though; those guys are evil! I mean they make money hand over fist right? So in Obama’s plan says we need to import “safe” drugs from overseas to lower costs. This is stupid on so many levels it is mind boggling. First and foremost, how do we know these are safe drugs? The FDA has no power in these other countries! With out a huge investment in oversight how can we guarantee the safety of drugs? We haven’t been able to do it in the past that is for sure! Second, this ignores how pharmaceuticals work. They have extremely large investments in R&D that more often than not do not pay off. The R&D that results in an effective drug must generate a HUGE profit to pay for all of the R&D spending that led nowhere. If you undercut their profit, you hinder future research, and long term over all health care suffers. Third, other countries have undercut US pharmaceuticals in a similar fashion forcing them to lower prices, so what had to happen for these companies to continue to fund their research? They had to raise prices in the US. Yes, pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, sometimes, but they also take on very large amounts of risk. Obama says people have a right to what they produce independent of any compensation they might receive for their product. That is another way to say slavery and all that will happen is businesses will leave the industry and take their money elsewhere.
The Obama team does not seem to understand that if you take all the fun (money) out of the game (industry) the players (investors) will take their ball (money) and go home (invest somewhere else). How does that improve health care in the US?
So time for an overview, I agree with (but did not necessarily discuss above) the following:
- Preventative care should be available to all, but we need to define what preventative care means.
- Electronic health information systems should be implemented.
- Malpractice law and insurance should be reworked.
- Hospitals should be required to collect and report quality health care data (transparency is a good thing).
I disagree with (but again did not necessarily discuss above) the following:
- The estimated cost of the proposed plan. Obama is dreaming!
- The estimated/assumed savings of the proposed plan. Obama is REALLY dreaming!
- Forcing health insurance companies to accept pre-existing conditions unconditionally.
- Undercutting profits in the pharmaceutical industry
- Providing comprehensive health care to everyone
This is what I think will happen under the current plan:
- Initially small businesses will suffer due to increased taxes, or they will limit growth and manipulate income to avoid the taxes.
- The plan will be horribly under funded for the first year and then more taxes will be raised to make up for the deficiency.
- Electronic health information systems investments will be the first to get cut as funding gets tight.
- Profitability in the insurance industry will plummet as the government creates unfair competition and companies will start to go under.
- Profitability in the pharmaceutical industry will plummet as other countries will import cheap versions of drugs developed in the US and companies will start to go under.
- As pharmaceuticals go out of business spending in R&D will drop and improvements in health care will stagnate.
- As the health care industry falters the government will be “forced” to step in and pick up the slack at the tax payers expense.
This is how I would do it:
- Start off with an increase in the investment for preventative health care and the most effective disease management programs.
- Fund this with stimulus money. We are printing so much of it might as well use some of it for creating effective jobs in the health care industry.
- Create a health care record standard with the help of major players in the industry and enforce it. Let the companies who know what they are doing run with it.
- Create a schedule for hospitals receiving any federal money to work towards electronic processing over the next 10 years or what ever is deemed realistic by industry experts. And provide certain levels of stimulus money to help fund the conversion if needed.
- Allow pharmaceuticals to depreciate their R&D expenses rather than writing them off. The proportion that is depreciable will scale based on the effectiveness of their R&D program (i.e. the health benefits per dollar spend in R&D) and their participation in price negotiations with large health insurance parties such as Medicare and Medicaid.
If we did it my way this is what I would expect to see:
- Some savings due to preventative health care and disease management programs, and a slow trend of stagnating or decreasing overall health care spending over the next decade.
- Decreased costs in hospitals over the next decade as they fully integrate with electronic systems.
- A boom in the electronic health information system industry
- Lower drug prices as pharmaceutical companies benefit from the tax savings realized from depreciating R&D expenses. This will happen due to competition, one company will lower prices to undercut the rest, and the rest will have to follow.
- Increase in R&D spending due to new tax benefits and higher quality medication as a result.
- Decrease in health insurance costs as we remove the fixed costs associated with the industry. Again, normal competition will enforce this.
Some final thoughts:
- If you can afford health insurance and choose not to purchase it you deserve what you get.
- If you can’t afford health insurance and you do not take advantage of current government funded care programs you most likely deserve what you get.
- Society does have a responsibility to help care for those who cannot care for themselves, and very few people fall into this category.
- There is no such thing as a right to health care, just like there is no such thing as a right to a house or car.
- From the little I know about McCain’s program I think it might have been worse than Obama’s…
It wasn't until my wife mentioned earlier she had seen birds flying around the wreath that was hanging on our door that it occured to us there might have been more to the situation than I initially thought. Sure enough, in the wreath was a nest containing three small blue eggs. I was so sure that the bird was too stupid to fly through a door to save its life (I'm not sure my cat would have known what to do with the bird had it caught it, but you never know) I failed to consider it might have a reason to risk staying. I was thinking in terms of a bird in the house and never even considered the wreath that was hanging on the door just outside.
I have a tendency to be very confident in my opinions and ideas. I wanted to write about people generally being to lazy or afraid to do the right thing and how that mindset in many ways led to our current economic situation, but all I can really think about right now is that I spent 15 minutes last night scaring a momma-bird away from her eggs and was happy to do it because I though I understood the situation without having all the facts. I don't see a way I could have gotten the bird out of the house differently, but I would have had a lot more sympathy for the bird had I known.
I didn't really have any news to tie this to until taffy23110 sent me the following NY Times article containing a letter to Mr. Liddy (AIG CEO) from one of his execs, Jake DeSantis. Jake does a good job of showing the wreath on the door so to speak...
In addition, how do you recognize "self" in others? How do you know the person you met 10 years ago is the same person today? Part of it (I would guess as this is beyond the scope of the article) is the way they look, sound, gesture, and so on. Is the only addition to the purely physical observations the shared memories that tell you how that person should act? How do you recognize the "self" in someone else?
Take it one step further. When does a person stop being their "self"? When can you say that person is no longer the person you knew because everything that made them... them... is gone?
Interesting side note: Neuroscience apparently has little to say on the subject, but the article hinted that what it did say did not exactly point to the existence of a "self." I'm not sure I really care what science has to say on this point as I consider it fairly introspective and I am not sure how it can be measured in a way that can be scientifically interpreted... But, what would it mean to you if science proved "self" does not exist except maybe in our imaginations?
Alright, I didn't add this to my rant yesterday because I thought I must be misunderstanding the situation... But I was listening to the Glen Beck show last night and watching some other news and found that others were having the same thoughts. The Federal Reserve printed $1 trillion to buy treasury bonds... They printed money to loan to them selves and on which they will pay themselves interest? I wonder what kind of interest rate they are giving themselves? How do those bonds even pay out? Are they planing on trying to take that money out of circulation when the bonds are due? This seems really crazy to me and maybe someone else can explain it better?
This is like me loaning myself $100 with the understanding I was going to pay myself back $102 in a year. Where do I get the money to pay the interest? I could always borrow from someone else (taxes?) or I could just loan myself a little bit more money (print it?) if I had to.
I don't like printing money like this. Obama already wants to spend trillions in his next budget (fat chance on that!), we've already sold our souls to the Chinese and other nations to fund stimulus and other plans, and now we print money like this! Not too long ago some higher ups in China expressed concern about how much debt the US had sold them and the future value of that debt. Obama got up and basically said "Hey! We're America, we're good for it" and I guess one way to make sure we are is to start printing money. Now if I were the Chinese I would still be pretty pissed since the dollar I get now is worth significantly less than it would have been before the printing presses fired up.
How do you know the dollar is worth less? Well one indicator is that the value of an ounce of gold rose 3% in a day. Gold is where you put your money when you think the dollar is losing value. It's kind of a throw back to the gold standard in ways since this investment strategy assumes that the value of gold (and some other commodities) is close to static. Basically gold retains its value against the paper currencies by dropping in price when the currency gains in value and rising in price when the currency loses value. So, basically the market said the dollar is worth something like 3% less now. We owe (as of Jan 2009) $3.072 trillion in debt to other countries, and now that $3.072 trillion is really worth only $2.98 trillion (and probably less than that if you look at the dollar compared to other currencies) so these countries lost $92 billion in value in one day. I would say China and the other countries we sold debt to are right to be concerned.
The other risk here is inflation with in the United States. Other countries that have tried this (Germany and Zimbabwe are the ones I hear mentioned most often) threw themselves into periods of hyper-inflation. You might remember seeing pictures in history class of times in Germany not long after WWII where people had wheelbarrows of money they hoped would be enough to buy a loaf of bread? That is the result of hyper-inflation and it is this kind of debt that causes it! Do you remember discussion on this issue? Did the American people even have a chance to consider if the Federal Reserve printing this money was a good idea? Nope, we just heard about it in the news after the fact. I hope this isn't the transparency that Obama promised us...
If you want to get scared about the amount of government debt in the US, here are some highlights from Wikipedia-United States public debt:
- The national debt equates to $30,400 per person U.S. population, or $60,100 per head of the U.S. working population, as of February 2008.
- In 2003 $318 billion was spent on interest payments servicing the debt, out of a total tax revenue of $1.95 trillion-- that is, 16.3% of total tax revenue.
- The US debt in the hands of foreign governments was 25% of the total in 2007 and almost 28% in June 2008.
- U.S. Treasury statistics indicate that, at the end of 2006, foreigners held 44% of federal debt held by the public. About 66% of that 44% was held by the central banks of other countries, in particular the central banks of Japan and China
"March 19, 2009
The House voted 328-93 to approve a bill imposing 90% taxes on employee bonuses from firms bailed out by taxpayers.
The bill would tax bonuses paid by firms that received more than $5 billion from the TARP. The Senate is working on its own plan to try to recoup bonuses.
The House bill is a response to the furor over millions in retention bonuses paid by AIG."
This is a tragedy, and a misuse of law.
1) This moronic bill will most likely be overturned by the supreme court as unconstitutional. You can't single people out like this and use the IRS to punish people.
2) This sort of thing undermines the value of contract law. The Gov specifically said these contracts were valid when handing out money and now they are going back on their word in an apparent effort to appease the mob.
3) It is $160+ million!!! Less then one tenth of a percent of the money AIG received! Surely we have something better to whine about!
4) There are valid reasons for paying out those bonuses. It's not like these execs sat in their dark offices cackling over the economic mayhem they were planing! And, they are the most qualified people out there to help clean up the mess they made. Like it or not AIG probably needs them right now.
5) Paying these bonuses is the right thing to do. We may not like it, but they met the terms of their contract so they get their money. period. It's the law.
I find this whole situation disgusting. I can't even believe some of the things politicians are saying about this issue. They are basically threatening the lives of these executives. Don't believe me, go look! At least one has suggested they might be better off committing suicide...
Like I said, disgusting. Any American who supports this bill should be ashamed of themselves!
The thing about it all that pisses me off the most is that when the economy naturally turns around, and it will, Obama will point to his craptastic stimulus package that probably made things worst rather than better and say "See, it worked" and while every intelligent person in the US will face-palm the masses will swarm to their messiah...
On the flip side of the coin, though; I am not sure McCain would have done much better...
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A VIEW FROM ACROSS THE POND
What follows is an interesting article written for the London Daily Mail by Peter Hitchens, a famous British author and journalist, and interestingly a political independent. We certainly don't manage our affairs in the US in accordance with Brit opinion, but it's always a good idea to know of the opinion of others previously proven of merit; he prompts valid questions of both liberals and conservatives.
He was in the USA on election night and wrote of his impressions. Like him or laugh at him, Hitchens remains popular throughout the world because many citizens of the globe think as he does. Some of you will nod your heads in agreement as you read it; others will frown; and still others will do both.
Let's all hope that Mr. Hitchens' "wave goodbye to America" is premature.
"The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth "
London Daily Mail
Peter Hitchens
10 November 2008
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernize Heaven and Hell - or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilization. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something. I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama's victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books, and Obama calendars, and if there isn't yet a children's picture version of his story, there soon will be. Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular savior, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America's Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton's stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to. Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan He really did talk about a 'new dawn', and a 'timeless creed' (which was 'yes, we can'). He proclaimed that 'change has come'. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review , he doesn't know what 'enormity' means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr. Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home!).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated - but rather hesitant - invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will - 'Yes, we can'. They were supposed to thunder 'Yes, we can!' back at him, but they just wouldn't join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He'd have been better off bursting into 'I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony' which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidized slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King - in schools, streets, neighborhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joints. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr. Obama's election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it didn't. Mr. Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lots of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination program aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn't get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them. And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn't vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington, DC the night of the election. America's beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street - which runs due north from the White House - the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one, which is in many ways much more important.
I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan. As I walked, I crossed another of Washington 's secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique. These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America's conservative party - the Republicans - to fight on the cultural and moral fronts. They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
I would have to mess with a few unsuspecting doctors if I had this operation :)
Thanks!
Last week... or maybe the week before... Amanda and I went to see Richard Dawkins speak out at KU and it was a pretty good time! I enjoyed his speech, agreed with some of what he said, and needed to think a little more about other things. If you ever have a chance to see him speak it is fun if for no other reason than an audience question and answer afterwards! After the speech I went out and looked for some of his books, but the couple places I went were all sold out. So I hopped on Amazon and picked up "The God Delusion" and "The Blind Watchmaker" which I think Mark recomended to me a long time ago and I had forgotten about until now. The books just arrived the other day, and I havent had a chance to start either... I think I will start with "The Blind Watchmaker"...
On the subject of my health, things have been getting better. My hip is feeling great and it takes a lot of effort not to treat it like normal again, at least at times... Then there are times when I have to retrain myself on how to walk up stairs normally... I've spent the last 3-4 months doing this little hop step up stairs that it is hard to stop doing it now! My back also feels a lot better, it still hurts, but the constant hurt is much less with new meds. And to top it all off my chest doesn't wake me up as soon as the pain killers wear off now so I think it is getting better as well. The doctor said he hasn't ruled out AS yet, which is frustrating, but that it might still show up on the xrays at a later date. But if it does that means it will be caught at the earliest possible time and my doctor seems very optamistic about treatment if that is the case.
Conclusions... Long distance running is probably no good for me any more, it will most likely just aggrevate my hip and/or back. I've been warned away from Martial Arts as well, but he says that isn't as much of a risk, so I will probably back that down to twice a week once everything is good agina... I'm hoping that I can still lift weights and use my rowing machine. Doc says that shouldn't be too much of a problem. But at least at this point there is progress...
