If a Libertarian...

It's been a while, eh?

I found this on another blog and thought I'd post it here. It's spot on in so many ways that I would be remiss not to disseminate it.

If a Libertarian doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a Liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a Libertarian is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a Liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a Libertarian is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a Liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a Libertarian is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A Liberal wonders who is going to take care of the them.

If a Libertarian doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a Libertarian is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A Liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.

If a Libertarian decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A Liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a Libertarian reads this, he'll forward it so his friends know how to vote in November!
A Liberal will delete it because he's "offended."

As far as I'm concerned, when the word "Liberal" is invoked above it includes all who are not Libertarian, or at least strongly leaning that way. You may disagree, as is your right; I won't secretly wish for The Powers That Be to silence you.

Take care.
DAL357

P.S. On the same blog, I spied this quote which, we can only hope, comes to pass eventually; I'm not sure how it couldn't:

The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy. –- Nick Nuessle

Now that's teamwork!

Here we go. How coincidental is this news story, you know, with more government meddling into healthcare in the offing? Not very coincidental at all. This is part of what will likely become a blitz of stories by the MSM meant to soften resistance to what will essentially be ever-increasing controls and restrictions on healthcare. Isn't teamwork, in this case the MSM and government, great?

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Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: study
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track.

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a statement.

"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he added.

The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare for the elderly and disabled and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the population with no coverage.

The researchers and some consumer advocates said the study showed the proposals under the most serious consideration are unlikely to help many Americans. They are pressing for a so-called single payer plan, in which one agency, usually the government, coordinates health coverage.

"Expanding private insurance and calling it health reform will fail to prevent financial catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Americans every year," Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen said in a statement.

About 170 million people get health insurance through an employer but President Barack Obama says soaring healthcare costs hurt the economy and force businesses to drop medical insurance for their workers.

CANCELED COVERAGE

"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the report reads.

Obama told Congress Wednesday he was open to making mandatory health insurance part of the overhaul.

Neither Congress nor Obama are considering the kind of single-payer plan advocated by Public Citizen, Himmelstein and his colleague Dr. Steffie Woolhandler.

"We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the uninsured isn't enough.

"Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy."

The researchers studied 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy between January and April in 2007, before the current recession began.

They used public bankruptcy court records and surveyed 1,032 people by telephone.

"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote.

"Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations."

The researchers, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007.

Patients with multiple sclerosis paid a mean of $34,167 out of pocket in 2007, diabetics paid $26,971, and those with injuries paid $25,096, the researchers found.

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I'll paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke here: If you think U.S. healthcare is expensive now, what 'til the government gets involved to make it more affordable.

I believe that government intervention at all levels is already the reason healthcare costs have become so outrageous. To drink more of that Kool-aid is asking for even more problems.

This subject, more than anything else the government does, reminds me of the wisdom of the saying "Government: A disease masquerading as its own cure."

Take care.
DAL357

Swine flu update

Update: SHUT THE HE** UP ABOUT THIS MEDIA-DRIVEN NON EVENT!!! It's obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain that this is NOT the population-reducing pandemic that's been predicted for decades by sci-fi writers and epidemiologists, at least not yet. If the virus goes into hiding, morphs into something more deadly, then resurfaces during the next cold-and-flu season, we'll have something to worry about. But those are BIG ifs. In the meantime, try to refocus on how we're all getting bent over a barrel by a government run amok, elected by a people who are willfully deaf, dumb, and blind, for this flu thing is most assuredly an attempt to distract you from the real epidemic: venal politicians and the idiots who elect them.

Take care.
DAL357

Lies, damn lies, and plastic surgery

Below you'll find a link to a site I view from time to time probably for the same reason most people slow down when they drive past car wrecks: morbid curiosity.

And what, pray tell, is this site? It's named Awful Plastic Surgery and it's chock-full of before-and-after photos of the (usually) rich and famous. These delusional folks actually believe so much in the fantasy image the media has built up of them they desperately try to preserve it through surgical intervention. It almost never works, at least according to the photos on this site.

Many years ago, it must have been in the early '70s, I heard a pithy little observation that said, "You're only young once. After that, you just think you are." What a pity, apparently, that these people, as well as most other people who go under the knife for cosmetic surgery, never learned this.

My message to these people: Look, I'm not unsympathetic to your perceived plight, but you really just need to get over yourselves. Aging, mentally and physically, is a part of life, and the only way to stop it is to die. Sure, you should do the best with what you have (through natural means: diet, exercise, clothing, make-up, etc.) but, with rare exception, anything that draws blood or involves injections is nothing more than paying homage to narcissism. And, again with rare exception, anything that draws blood or involves injections will leave you looking not quite right, perhaps freakishly so. One other bit of advice: eschew all forms of pop culture and its incessant trumpeting of its definition of beauty. This will work wonders for pulling you out of yourself and seeing the big picture and where you fit in it.

Take care.
DAL357

P.S. BTW, the before/after photo above is not from Awful Plastic Surgery, I just thought this was a good representation of what can be accomplished through natural means. In her case, just a little make-up turned her from plain to exceptional.

My tip for mankind

We're all adults here, right? If you don't indulge in the following practice at least once in a while, I'd be stunned. Now I have empirical evidence as to why you should just stop it.

Would you like to gain the upper hand on that bane of mankind's existence, the common cold? Simply do the following: Do not, under any circumstances, pick your nose, or put any of your digits near your nostrils.

NEVER, EVER.

Even if you've just thoroughly washed your hands and underneath your nails, you can't ever be sure that each and every cold-causing microbe is gone, so don't do the digital-nasal probe. Use tissues or toilet paper (preferably unused) to clear/clean your nose, and nothing else.

Without going into all of the details, I decided to do this last fall, and except for a very minor scratchy throat this spring, I did not get sick last winter, even though my son got several colds during the same period.

No need to thank me; I'm happy to help. Try it yourself and see the difference.

Take care.
DAL357

Intelligent boobs

Study shows breast-fed children are smarter.

Here's a headline that's popped up before on a subject that's been out there for a few years now. My wife and I happened to believe in the benefits of breast-feeding before our son was born and said wife undertook that labor of love for 18 months. We are both glad she did. Our son is now smarter than his parents (just ask him), even though he is a mere 7 years old. Seriously, though, he is doing really well in (charter) school and his observations on some of the absurdities of life surprise me for a child of his age. (Don't ask me to recount one because I can't remember one off of the top of my head; I wasn't breast-fed, obviously.)

Of course, this doesn't mean that a child without the potential for intelligence in the first place can become a genius if he's attached to a teat for the first year or so of his life, but every little bit helps. The story goes on to point out that mothers who do breast-feed their babies tend to be more involved in their children's upbringing, so that might explain at least part of the disparity between breast-fed and non-breast-fed babies.

But I have a feeling that the main reason is the perfect nutrition human breast milk provides for a human baby. It gives everything in precise amounts a growing infant needs and nothing he doesn't (assuming, of course, the mother eats a balanced diet and doesn't use drugs/alcohol while nursing). Cow's milk is for calves, and it doesn't fit the human baby nearly as well as mother's milk. Only a bunch of over-educated fools (those educated beyond their intelligence) could believe otherwise. And don't even get me started on that chemist's concoction known as formula.

One other benefit I've read about over the years is the lower incidence of breast cancer among women who have breast-fed their children. This only makes sense, as that's what they're there for, contrary to the popular notion that breasts exists for men to salivate over and rate. Speaking anecdotally, my own mother did not breast-feed any of her three children--although she wanted to try it my father forbade it, mainly because he thought it was low-class(!)--and she ended up dying of breast cancer at the relatively young age of 64. Whether or not this was related to eschewing nursing, no one can say definitively.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see any downside at all to breast-feeding, with the possible exception of the convenience factor, which a good breast pump and a little planning can alleviate. Let's hope more women take up this vital part of child care; we sure as hell could use all the smart people we can get in this world. Lord knows there are more than enough dumb ones around, and they seem to be multiplying exponentially, to the detriment of the species.

Take care.

DAL357