A grateful nation remembers … and offers thanks to all veterans.
Fax this …!
Chatted recently with an acquaintance who is, as the kids say, “hooked up” inside the Beltway – not officially, of course, but this dood has an insider’s knowledge and understanding of the way things work gubmint-wise. To jump directly to the point, he confirmed what I have long suspected – namely, that expressing opinions to our senators and representatives via email is pretty much a waste of time and bandwidth. None of them have generally available email addresses; instead, folks trying to communicate are forced to use a highly structured gubmint email “system” so cumbersome and inflexible that most simply find it too much trouble. They utilize such a system ostensibly to control spam and automated mass emailing, but I suspect the actual purpose is to limit unsolicited contact with their constituents.
Whether or not this is true, what is clear is that email is the least effective way to let them know what you think. Emails are batched (if they are even looked at) and farmed out to staffers for canned response. Telephone calls are the best since that requires a real live person (also usually a staffer) to actually pick up a phone and talk to you, but many of us have neither the time nor opportunity during regular business hours to place such calls.
So what to do? One word – “fax”. Virtually all congress critters have a fax line and the number is readily available on their web sites. And a fax, like a telephone, requires someone on the other end to actually perform a physical action – like walking over to the machine and retrieving a received fax. Optimally, someone will actually read it, though there is no guarantee of this.
There are tons of computer fax programs out there, ranging in price from free to a few dollars a month which allow one to fax directly from your trusty ‘puter to Senator Foghorn’s fax – all over the internet, and at no charge! Most of these programs allow mass faxing (which means sending the same message to multiple recipients quickly and easily), thus making communication with several members of congress at once a highly efficient process. I like the one called “MyFax” – it’s simple, effective and costs about $10 per month.
Let me give an example: last week I created a data base (using Excel) consisting of the name and fax number of each of the Blue Dog Democrats using their individual web sites (there are 52 of them – took about 30 minutes), and uploaded it to my fax program. I then wrote a letter asking them to vote against HR 3962 (Pelosi’s health care bill) and faxed it to each of them, using the aforementioned software. All 52 faxes were sent with the click of one button, and all but 4 of them went through in less than a minute. MyFax lets you know whether a fax you send was successfully sent or if it failed. Of the four that failed, 3 were busy, and 1 apparently has published a wrong number.
Obviously my valiant effort to defeat 3962 failed, but I am quite pleased to have found a route which allows me at least some small degree of timely access to the pols. If anyone has any other ideas/methods to expedite communication with the folks in Washington, please feel free to share them. Only through constant effort will we refute the arrogance of power that infests our leaders.
Be well.
Hosed … again
Last night the malignancy that is political party machinery delivered another in a series of body blows to our bleeding, tottering republic. The petulant duplicity of Republican party apparatchiks in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in concert with a well-oiled but equally treacherous Democrat organization, engineered the defeat of a conservative candidate (Doug Hoffman) who demonstrably represents the aspirations and goals of a significant majority of Americans.
Make no mistake – elections implemented under the rubric of political parties are no more a flawless measure of the public will than are polls. Both are subject to, in fact seem at times almost expressly designed for, manipulation and subornation by interests largely unrelated to what is good for or desired by the citizenry in general. And no better characterization of the modern political party exists than that – “interests largely unrelated to what is good for or desired by the citizenry in general.”
Those who stop by the Notebook even semi-regularly are likely aware of my galloping antipathy for the species Politicus partius, whether Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Constitutional, Green or Gollywobbles … they are all just different varieties of the same pestilence, and serve only narrow interests that bear little relevance or applicability to the common weal. Can there be any doubt that yesterday’s travesty in NY23 was the direct result of noxious party sleight-of-hand – cynical lubricity on the part of the Dems, coupled with a laughably misplaced Republican strategery? Newt, Steele et al were so intent on serving party ends that they failed to see the looming ambush being contrived by the other side. The result? Libs – 1, Liberty – 0. Thanks, guys.
Bernie Quigley wrote an arresting piece a few days ago plumping for the establishment of a national Conservative Party. Sadly, like so many others, he runs afoul of his own infatuation with “party as end-in-itself” and winds up stomping his own thoroughly laudable premise into oblivion. “Political parties are exclusively about packaging” he correctly notes, but then immediately conflates the wrapping of the package with its contents, trumpeting “a Palin/Perry ticket on the Conservative Party in 2012 would really wake things up.” I have no particular problem with a “Palin/Perry” ticket, but swaddling it in the smothering shroud of political party-dom, Conservative or any other, would almost certainly bleed off most of the vitality and cachet of such a bold effort. Let’s remember what the Republican Party gadgetry did for Sarah Palin during her last outing.
A commenter over on the American Thinker today has it right, stating, “… a political party is not where our loyalty should be invested, it is in individual freedom and liberty.” Precisely. From where I stand, the most significant result of last night’s exercise in party-directed suffrage was that Nancy Pelosi’s majority is today a bit larger. Does anyone feel better?
Be well.
“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Naah – it’s Doug”
Lots of heavy breathing and leg-tingling these days among the blogs and commentators over what is being touted as the impending (and, some would say, inevitable) efflorescence of “real conservatism” in a heretofore little-known congressional district nestled into the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Douglas Hoffman, an accountant running as a third-party “Conservative”, appears likely to defeat his Democrat opponent for the 23NY District House seat after the Republican dropped out of the race … and endorsed the Democrat! You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Politics generally has finally morphed into a real-life version of a Magritte painting … a discontinuous gruel of nonsense images and surreal misrepresentations of reality.
Overlooking the festering goofiness of this electoral terpsichore for a moment, we could perhaps focus on what, for want of a better term, I call the “so what? -ness” of the situation. Does anyone really think that one pencil-necked CPA with born-again conservatism just welling up within him actually represents the genesis of effective reform of a political system whose baseness tends to persist like the stench of a cheap cigar? Not bleedin’ likely, Nigel.
Moreover, a conservative, whether of Republican, Democrat, or Rosicrucian persuasion, being elected in NY23 is not exactly a stop-the-presses development – can we all stop huzzahing at least long enough to remember that conservatives have held this seat since before Reconstruction?
We could also pause to reflect that folks in that neck of the woods tend to raise extra-party contrariness to high art – recall that just across the state line to the east those fusty Vermonters have for years continued to send Bernie Saunders (an avowed, often apoplectic, Socialist) to Washington.
So – twitch and quiver all you want folks, but you might as well move along … nothing to see here … just one more permutation in the often confusing, sometimes bizarre, but always entertaining kaleidoscopic world of American politics.
To close, let me quote from John Steinbeck, who understood and elegantly expressed the folly, the sheer ineptitude, of the political process:
“We wonder whether in the present pattern the pieces are not straining to fall out of line; whether the paradoxes of our times are not finally mounting to a conclusion of ridiculousness that will make the whole structure collapse. For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership.” [The Log From The Sea Of Cortez]
Be well.
A new look for the Third?
At the risk of being accused of rushing the season a bit, I would present a few thoughts about the young woman who is challenging Adrian Smith for the Congressional seat in Nebraska’s 3rd District – one Rebekah Davis.
Detailed information concerning Ms. Davis’ bio and positions is a little thin at this point; a visit to her website reveals the usual vanilla professions of belief in “God, Mom and Apple Pie” boiler plate that sells so well out here in the Third. She “believes in the value and need for a strong, vibrant and profitable family farmer and rancher based agriculture that drives our rural economy” (who doesn’t?), as well as claiming the mantle of “fiscal conservative” who “believes that small business and small manufacturing are necessary to business development in rural communities” (what’s not to like?). She also “supports preserving Social Security” – the usual sop to the geezer demographic.
She thinks education is a good thing, supports “a 100% domestic energy policy“, “respects the sanctity of life from conception to natural death“, “supports the right of citizens to carry firearms for personal protection and recreation“, agrees that veterans’ benefits should be supported and enhanced, and “believes the surge [in Iraq] was a success and supports similar efforts in Afghanistan.”
Addressing environmental issues, she states that “[c]onservation is best achieved by education, economic incentives and voluntary landowner participation”. Not sure ‘zactly what that means, but OK … she doesn’t sound like a tree-hugger.
So far, so good … in fact, one is tempted to wonder why she isn’t running as a conservative Republican. But wait! (as Ron Popeil is fond of saying) … There’s more!
Foreign policy – Davis sees “international collaboration as a cornerstone of effective domestic defense. In a world of uncertainty, strengthening ties with allies while maintaining autonomy is pivotal.” I dunno – sounds a little Obamanistic (Mea culpa! Mea culpa!) and wishy-washy …. “International collaboration” is too often lib-speak for appeasement.
Health care: She is “open to a government-sponsored public option or cooperative that would compete with the private sector without undermining it“. This is standard Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi double-talk. In reality, there is no “government-sponsored public option or cooperative” that would not undermine the private sector – and Ms. Davis should know that.
Illegal immigration: “Davis has worked to assure the integrity of our borders while maintaining a welcoming presence for new Americans.” Trying to sell the concept of “maintaining a welcoming presence” for illegals out here in the Third could well prove to be a task of Herculean proportion. Good luck with that, Rebekah.
Taxes: She’s a little blurry here – supports “statutory pay-as-you-go rules, which would mandate that any new spending or tax cuts be offset so as to be deficit neutral and keep the budget in balance“. Does that mean she supports increased taxes? Hard to judge from this statement. Traditionally, when Dems start using phrases like “pay-as-you-go” and “deficit neutral”, my first instinct is to put my hand over my wallet.
Finally, there are at least two other questions concerning Davis’ candidacy that I find intriguing, but her official campaign website does not address either:
1) A few short years ago (2006) the Third was subjected to the electoral depredations of another Yale refugee who, in almost Arthurian fashion, emerged magically from the wilds of Blaine county and tried to foist his faux Nebraska-ness on what he took to be a foolish and undiscerning citizenry. Two years later, he compounded his transgression by trying to pettifog the entire state in a run for the Senate. Suffice it to say that neither attempt ended well for this callow Galahad – and perhaps the most significant residue of his cynical campaigns is the bad taste left in the mouths of most Thirders for those perceived as interlopers. While it is true that Davis’ Sand Hills bona fides seem somewhat more robust than those of young master Kleeb (despite several years in absentia in Indiana, Connecticut as well as other eastern and overseas enclaves), one wonders exactly how (or if) she intends to address this problem. Make no mistake, Rebekah – it will be a steep hill to climb.
2) I am also curious about Ms. Davis’ position, as a card-carrying member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America clergy, concerning the ELCA’s recent vote at their annual meeting in Minneapolis to allow people involved in same-gender relationships into their clergy. The move has caused a dramatic split among Lutherans all over the country, and promises to remain a divisive issue within that denomination for a long time to come.
If Davis enthusiastically embraces the move, it could bode ill for her electoral chances in the Third District, where, let us recall, the people voted more than 80% in favor of a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage only a few years ago. I realize that allowing gay couples into the clergy and sanctioning same-sex marriage are not precisely the same thing, but certainly the overwhelming support for the constitutional ban must be viewed as at least an indicator of Third attitudes toward officially consecrating homosexual relationships in any venue. Should she come out in support of the ELCA’s official position, I don’t much like her chances out here.
I am sending a draft of this piece to Ms. Davis for her comment (if any) and will report her response should one be forthcoming.
Be well.
Take two hospitals and call me in the morning …
One of the fundamental tenets, indeed perhaps the doctrinal apotheosis, of modern conservatism is the seamless interaction of the co-principles of laissez faire and free markets. Committed Misesians (such as yours truly) would rather gnaw off one of our own gristly appendages than forsake our constitutional devotion to the teachings of old Ludwig and his star pupil Freddie Hayek. Almost before we were eating solid food, we learned that “trickle-down” meant something more significant than a damp diaper, and that a penny saved made less sense than a penny invested. So it is … umm … interesting that, right here in my own pastoral purview, we have been presented with a classic opportunity to measure the strength and substance of our sacred dogma within the laboratory of real honest-to-Bastiat human experience. And with a generous slice of current controversy (“health care” … argh!) in the bargain.
What am I talking about?
Very recently a group of local physicians announced plans to build a brand new $20,000,000 for-profit hospital right here in Kearney. They are waaaay beyond the “intentions” stage; architects have been hired, investors have committed, land has been contracted – this effort appears, as Grandpa used to say, to be a goin’ Jesse.
The group (according to news reports made up of “from 20 to 70″ docs) is upset with the management of the local hospital (Good Samaritan Health Systems), alleging that GSHS has been unresponsive to the medical staff needs in several technical and administrative areas. You can read about some of their specific concerns in the link above.
Good Sam has long been known out here on the prairie as a center of medical excellence; not many towns of some 30,000 folks boast a physician population of nearly 150, and medical facilities that include open-heart surgery, MRI, radiation oncology, and a Level II trauma center. It must be noted, however, that its reputation has suffered somewhat over the last several years – especially since they were taken over by a large multi-state corporation called Catholic Health Initiatives, whose area hospitals include St. Francis in Grand Island, and St. Elizabeth’s in Lincoln. Whisperings of degraded services, cavalier patient care, and widespread employee disgruntlement have surfaced repeatedly over the last several years.
Even though I spent nearly four decades working at GSHS, I take no position on the merits of the dissatisfied group’s concerns because I have no information other than that available through the usual news sources. Having said that, it is interesting that, within days of the docs’ announcement, CHI held a presser and announced that they were committing $65,000,000 to a long term program of improving and enlarging their current GSHS facilities. Less charitable observers than myself might view this as little more than a cynical counter-tactic.
Motivations and local cat-fights aside, what this provides is a facet of medical care long missing in these environs – competition. If we free-market samurai are correct, and if the protagonists in this medical econo-drama are even passably competent, Kearney and the surrounding area should quickly be the beneficiary of better and more cost-effective care. Will it happen? I dunno … but you can be sure there are a lot of interested bystanders out here in Navel City.
Be well.
Revenge of the Geezers
My Daddy (whose wisdom, you may have noticed, I resurrect on a fairly regular schedule) used to say that the only thing less desirable than growing old was not growing old. As a tad, I always thought Pappy was just being silly and/or cryptic, but as I find myself wallowing in decrepitude, his meaning takes on more … well … meaning. It comes to this – old age ain’t much, but it’s all us Grey Ones have – and I dang well resent efforts by anyone, especially some grinning neomarxist fool in the White House, to make it less tolerable than it naturally is. And I intend to fight back.
For those who have been in a coma for the past several months, or are irremediably liberal, or just plain dense (all of which are essentially the same thing), know that the various proposed Obamopathies (otherwise known as ‘Health Care Reform’ bills) all contain, along with a laundry list of other treacheries, provisions that will materially gut the Medicare program – to the tune of something like 400 to 500 billion big ones, depending upon which permutation you analyze. That’s a lot of glucose meters, stents, hip replacements, and colonoscopies friends. It’s time to act.
As a starter, how about this: if the Obamanizer and his gang of leftist trogs carry through with their just-announced plan to bribe all us geezers with a $250 check, I swear on my just-opened bottle of Metamucil that I will immediately send that money to DickMorris.com, who has mounted a virulent campaign to defeat Obamacare and is currently seeking donations to support that effort – and I encourage other seasoned citizens to do likewise. Yeah, I know … Morris is a bit of a slickster, but he is almost preternaturally adept at assaying and moving public opinion on a very large scale. Let me put it this way – if you or yours had been horribly wronged, would you seek justice from a social worker … or from Don Corleone? Me too …. However, if you’re just too put off by Morris, there are a raft of other efforts out there working valiantly to slay the Health Care Reform beast before he devours us; find one you’re comfortable with and support it … with Obama’s check.
Besides … wouldn’t there be something deliciously poetic about using this cynical influence-buying scheme to bury Obama’s ham-handed attempt to not only take over health care but to fund it largely by disenfranchising those who have contributed longest? As the kids say …”Swee-eet!”
Be well
Nuthin’ up my sleeve …
For most of my nearly threescore and ten I have been fascinated by illusionists (we always called them ‘magicians’) and their mind-bending tricks and stunts. I have seen Lance Burton’s magnificent sleight-of-hand, I’ve gaped as Siegfried and Roy made white tigers and elephants disappear … I even remember David Copperfield dematerializing the Statue of Liberty in front of a television audience of millions. Heady stuff, and weighty tribute to the skills of those entertainment wizards … but small beer indeed when compared with the thaumaturgical movable feast (also known as ‘health care reform’) currently being brandished by the One and his toadys.
The single most useful tool in the successful illusionist’s bag is misdirection. While he has us staring open-mouthed at a grand gesture with his left hand (or at a gorgeous scantily clad assistant), his right is busy making the mischief that will astound us a few seconds later. It should come as no surprise that this precise strategy also works well for selling snake oil, hustling that 42-24-36 homewrecker just down the bar from you, or trying to pass intrinsically unpalatable legislation – and no one knows this better than B. H. Obama, Harry the Heep, Plastic Nancy and their crew of scrofulites.
They are adept at keeping our attentions and energies focused on meaningless sparklies (like “the public option” – what the hell does that mean anyway?) while artfully slipping dozens (hundreds?) of unremarked yet thoroughly outrageous provisions into their several (5 at last count) legislative salmagundis.
Look for instance at the Senate Finance Committee bill passed out of committee this week with loud trumpets, dancing, cheering and flinging of camel dung high into the air. Everyone was so excited that the hated ‘public option’ had been excised from the bill’s innards that almost no one noticed the rest of the putrescence contained within this truly abominable senatorial chef-d’oeuvre.
Fortunately for the less perceptive among us, Karl Rove did notice and wrote an excellent piece yesterday in the WSJ detailing many of the bill’s more execrable features. I urge everyone to read and digest Rove’s analysis in its entirety; I will only here provide a few paraphrased bullet points to whet your appetite.
* the bill imposes stiff taxes and benefit cuts immediately, but new spending, i.e., the promised increased level of health care, does not begin until 2015 and is not fully operational until 2017. So the costs are dramatically front-loaded while the derived benefit lags by five or more years.
* the assumption is made that employers who cease employee coverage will increase worker paychecks by an amount equal to what they had spent on health care, thus replacing a nontaxable event (providing health insurance) with a taxable one (increasing worker paychecks), magically producing $83 billion in revenues (yeah, right). Without these phantom revenues, the bill adds billions to the federal deficit in the first decade.
* The CBO report estimates that receipts from the 40% excise tax bill would levy on “Cadillac” insurance policies “would grow by roughly 10 percent to 15 percent” a year after 2019. Rove rightly calls this nonsense, noting if you tax something heavily you’ll get less of it. If this tax is enacted, there will be fewer Cadillac plans—and hence less revenue.
* CBO Director Elmendorf admitted that the $500 billion in tax hikes would be passed onto consumers, jacking up insurance premiums.
* the bill expands Medicaid which will shift a big chunk of the federal health-care tab to states. States already pick up an average of 47% of Medicaid’s costs – and expanding it will force states to spend even more.
* there are $400 billion in Medicare benefit cuts.
There is more – much more – in Rove’s piece; if you are at all concerned about the future of health care in America, you owe it to yourself and to your country to study it carefully.
I’ll end today with the same mantra I have been chanting for weeks and months: forget the words “public option”; they represent a chimera, a meaningless fabrication designed specifically for the misdirection of We The People. Any broad health care “reform” legislation – any at all – places us firmly on a path which leads inexorably to single-payer, government-controlled health care. We cannot, we must not, let that occur.
Be well.
There you go again …
Here at the Notebook we try to refrain from providing publicity/notoriety to any of the welter of lefty websites and blogs that crud up the internet like digital barnacles. Occasionally however, some of these shriekers stray so far off the reservation of common sense and decency that they must be shooed back before they hurt themselves or others. Case in point, a recent post over at the Neener-Neener Network (I usually don’t link to demagogic sinkholes but I’ll make an exception this one time) purporting to describe a recent Tea Party held in western Nebraska.
I address the following to the author:
In your description of the Tea Party you failed to mention the part where we all put on our brown shirts, goose-stepped around a bon-fire of books we don’t like, sacrificed a couple of live puppies and swore eternal fealty to Ba’al.
As you note in your post, there is indeed something “very ugly at work here” – but it doesn’t involve Adrian Smith and the Republican Party. Instead, it derives directly from a mindset that drives such despicable actions as your intentional misrepresentation of an entirely legal and commendable grass roots gathering of people whose sole purpose was to make known their dissatisfaction with and mistrust of a federal government that is hurtling out of control.
I urge everyone exposed to your poisonous post to be sure to read the referenced article in the Gering Courier (titled, appropriately, “Adrian Smith: Conservatives winning health-care debate” … guess what – he’s right!), so they can get a much more accurate picture of what actually occurred at the Wyobraska Tea Party.
You cherry-picked and edited your quotes with consummate skill; a particularly nice touch was the phony juxtaposition of the quote from a lady noting that the people need to stop Obama’s governmental take-over of virtually every aspect of our lives, and the raffling of a rifle (which was a simple fund-raising project). You managed to make it sound as though the two events were simultaneous and obviously animated by mindless Conservative blood-lust, when indeed they were related only in your fevered liberal mind.
This type of garbage is yellow blogalism at its worst, and you should be ashamed of yourself. If you wish to attack Republican politicians and policies, then do so honestly, with reason and relevant fact, not scurrilous ad hominem, sly innuendo and deceitful editing.
With tactics like this it is no wonder your side has so much trouble finding robust candidates or mounting anything resembling an effective campaign in western and central Nebraska. I wonder if Rebekah Davis really understands what she has associated herself with, having signed on with your bunch? Again, shame on you.
The rest of you … be well.
Begging your pardon …
Time for my biannual semiannual regular occasional BTQ rant – BTQ being an acronym I derived from the first letter of each of the three words of the most frequently misused cliche in the English (or any other) language. This shamelessly abused chestnut is of course, Beg The Question.
Properly understood, ‘begging the question’ is a logical fallacy (also known as petitio principii, or “assuming the initial point“) wherein the proposition to be proved is assumed or contained, either implicitly or explicitly, in the original premise. To give a simple example: She is very beautiful (conclusion) because she is absolutely gorgeous (premise). Begging the question is very similar to the fallacy of circular reasoning (circulus in probando) but is not precisely the same; circular reasoning involves both the premise and the conclusion utilizing the same internal logical referent(s), whereas BTQ, in Aristotle’s words ,”is proving what is not self-evident by means of itself…either because predicates which are identical belong to the same subject, or because the same predicate belongs to subjects which are identical.”
Detection of BTQ can be tricky; as Welton notes in his A Manual of Logic, “Such fallacies may not be immediately obvious in English because the English language has so many synonyms; one way to beg the question is to make a statement first in concrete terms, then in abstract ones, or vice-versa“. Here’s another example: “Jack Daniels makes me drunk because it has an inebriating quality.”
OK – that’s how BTQ is properly used … here is how it most assuredly should not be used. It should not be used to replace the phrase “raise the question.” Ever. Period. If you want to say something like “His sneaky demeanor raises the question of what he is up to”, then say that. His sneaky manner does not “beg the question” of what his motives are. While her noticeably expanding waistline may well cause us to wonder if motherhood is in her near future, her protruding paunch never, never “begs the question” of her potentially enceinte state.
Here are several examples of the misuse of BTQ from sources that should know better, found in a hasty and utterly unscientific Yahoo search of about ten minutes duration:
“Which begs the question, was the previously reported “amount of nearly $1 million” completely true? “
“It cannot be comforting for Republicans to look out at 100,000 plus people on the Washington mall, who should all be part of their natural constituency, booing any mention of their last presidential candidate and cheering speeches that proclaim their movement is not “Republican”. This begs the question: “Why isn’t it?”"
“As if the Times needed any more blows to its allegedly still-existing journalistic integrity, this one can’t help but beg the question of who at the White House put pressure on the Times to do what it did.”
“Boldly going where no T-Shirt has gone before, this shirt begs the question, Tribbles…the other white Meat?”
“Referendum begs the question of our future in EU” (Headline!)
“This begs the question of why Terry would attack Pelosi over a measure supported by 60% of his fellow Republicans.”
“Now this is irony that begs the question, what was Mr. Peacemaker President thinking?”
The single instance I came across in which the BTQ usage was correct was from an atheist organization’s website – I disagree of course with the writer’s final position, but he/she clearly understands what the fallacy of begging the questions means … and how to use/interpret it.
“Most dictionaries use language that presupposes the existence of “God” as fact, and describes an atheist as one who denies (the presupposed fact) of God’s existence. This definition Begs the Question and is biased in favor of the theistic position.”
All of which raises the question – how about we all be a little more careful in the future with our BTQ’s?
Be well.
