The Trick is not to get sick

I'm busy with end of the semester papers. So naturally, doing anything other than those papers is appealing.

A few quick thoughts on the health care bill in the Senate.

While I am glad the public option is being removed, it is obvious this bill is crap. Even without the public option, the insurance industry will be so heavily regulated that they will be de facto agents of the government. It will then be only a matter of time until direct government control of the health industry become de jure.

Why is it that Obama and the Democrats are at a brake-neck pace to pass this thing? I've heard that Obama wants to tout it for his State of the Union address next month. But still, every day that goes by shows support dwindling for Obama and his allies. So why push it all the harder? In reality, the Democrats are looking at the Euro-Canadian example and their last attempt at socialized health care in 1993. Unlike then, the Democrats can ram anything they want through the Congress, if they ignore the polls and are unified. So they really don't need any Republicans.

Second, what did they learn from Europe and Canada? Simple: once it is in place, it will be nearly impossible to go back. Neither Winston Churchill, nor Margaret Thatcher ended Britain's National Health Service. In Canada, there is an effort at some privatization, but not a tremendous push. In both countries, their medical conditions are atrocious. Months or even years go by before simple operations and procedures can happen. A recent article linked on Drudge showed the deplorable conditions for women giving birth in England. And yet, with their medical systems crashing, the people still won't get rid of the system.

This is what Obama knows. Once the legislation passes, it will only get bigger in the years to come. I weep for this country.

For those anti-war liberals that love this, remember the army neglect scandal at Walter Reed? You know, where the army wasn't supplying wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with the proper care needed? The hospital was run down, dirty, infested with rats, roaches and mold. Wounded soldiers had to fill out 2 dozen forms that no one understood for basic care. Parents of the soldiers had to put them on their insurance plans and take them to private facilities. Remember this travesty? You all loved to criticize Bush for this. But let me get this straight: after all that, you want to turn over the health care of nearly 300 million people to the same system of bureaucrats because it will make it better? Are you kidding me?!?!

I recently rewatched on YouTube the documentary, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. It is excellent. It concludes by talking the end of socialism and communism at the turn of the century. Unfortunately it is wrong. America had been on of the few countries in the world that escaped socialism's full fury, but it seems that we were merely late to the party. The documentary says that the tide of history had turned. I guess Obama didn't get the memo.

This just goes to show how much power and sway the federal government has. With maybe 1000 people, they can completely alter the direction and fundamental principles of society (I include the president and his advisors, 60 senators, a little over 200 representatives, and various other advisors, judges, etc.)

Socialism has never produced the results it says it will. And yet, after over century of failures, we are going to go down the path of a great socialist experiment. Isn't it the definition of insanity to try the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

But of course, the Obamunists are on a mission. I'm not sure if they even think it will work. They simply hate the current system so much that it must be altered. And if it won't work, at least everyone will be equally miserable. Plus, it will decrease the surplus popluation. Bah humbug!

I conclude with a quote from Samuel Gompers, the first president of the AFL and a staunch anti-socialist:
"I want to tell you, Socialists, that I have studied your philosophy; read your works upon economics, and not the meanest of them; studied your standard works, both in English and German -- have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, and know how you think and what you propose. I know, too, what you have up your sleeve. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility." (Vol. 6: SG to AFL Convention, Nov. 1903)

It's been a while...

Hi again. For yet another time, I've fallen behind in posting on the blog. Quite honestly, it's hard to get up the energy partially due to news:

First, I have moved away from Virginia (don't worry, the title isn't changing and I will always remain a Virginian at heart) to West Virginia. I know, I know, it's West Virginia. But I'm very glad to be here since I am now pursuing my PhD in history!

Second, I'm engaged! Her name is Maureen. She's conservative, Catholic, another classics/history person, and the best thing that's happened to me.

Hopefully, between wedding plans and grading undergrad quizzes, I will have time to make the occasional post.

Novum Imperium Romanum, Part I

I haven't posted in awhile. I will attempt to make up for it with a series of posts... well, at least three ;-)

Between the articles I've been reading daily and history books (The Climax of Rome by Michael Grant), I really want to on how I think this country is becoming the Roman Empire. Before I do that, I want to take the time with this post to say how I think this idea of us being Rome is in itself a phenomenon that never goes away. Plus, when used by the Left today, usually they're wrong and don't have a grasp of history.

First, I find it humorous that the Left under Bush the Younger thought us similar to the Roman Empire. Their mantra is that Western history is passe and that we don't need to study it. "There's nothing you can learn from studying the history of the West that you can't learn from anything else." Actually, according to liberals, the West is unique because of it's violent, bigoted, greedy history, etc. And of course this assumes that you want to study history at all, which as we all know is not that important anyway. We've advanced to a postmodern understanding of man where pretty much any discipline is valid: I know I learned life lessons when I studied the history of country music.

So rejecting history, why is it then that these same people turn to back to Rome? And they have: remember that phony Julius Caesar quote that made the email rounds in 2002 (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/caesar.asp)? Supposedly, Caesar or Shakespeare or whomever warned us about leaders (aka Bush) "who bang the drums of war"? It was totally ok to reference the classics then. Too bad Barbara Streisand never had one of her assistants actually check the veracity of that quote.

More recently there is the silly 2007 book, Are We Rome? by Cullen Murphy. One of the history adjuncts here at Marymount actually assigned this book to his European history survey course. (As a side note, this was a really stupid assignment. The students had to find a review in an American paper and compare it with one in a foreign paper for biases. Leaving aside the problem of how to find these articles, what does this have to do with the first half of the survey course of European history? It's not even an academic book.)

So why does the Rome analogy always come up? Well, first of all, there's a lot of debate as to why Rome collapsed. It took so long and there were so many factors that you can almost take any cause and make it appear to the main factor in Rome's decline: economics, military, environment, decadence, immigration, and the list goes on. I'm sure you could make Elvis impersonators the cause if you stretched it. There's little doubt what caused the Aztec or Nazi empires to collapse: conquest from the outside.

Second, everyone's heard of Rome. It permeates our culture; and not just classical buildings in DC. "Oh yeah, Bush was totally like Joaquin Phoenix from Gladiator." Nobody would really make a comparison to the collapse of the Hittite Empire (the who?).

So it's a standard trope that everyone uses, including the Left when it suits them. In my next installment, I will show how recent comparisons of Rome to our military were off the mark.

By the way, I want to conclude by acknowledging that the Right makes those same comparisons. Usually coming at it from the angle of immigration or decadence. I'm more sympathetic to that point of view, but every time Pat Buchanan makes a reference to our overstretched military antagonizing others like Rome, I gag a little.

Sir Orca?

Gordon Brown is making Ted Kennedy an honorary knight. Would that be for his long political career or amazing, Olympic swimming feat at Chappaquiddick?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkLvJheTU5ryjXjiiDoyIHbENt-AD96N7FU01

Mummies Redux and Another Sane Court Ruling

The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of Pleasant Grove, a city that had been sued by a fringe group that wanted it's founding rules placed next to the 10 Commandments in a park. This is very important and 9-0 ruling. I believed this is how the court would rule, but I never would've guessed that it would be unanimous. I like being pleasantly surprised. This is a great precedent: just because you have a right to say something doesn't mean that all of society must acknowledge your speech. This group can still go and worship in their pyramid with no hindrance from the government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/washington/26scotus.html?hp

Check out what I said when this case was on the docket: http://arlingtonline.blogspot.com/2008/11/mummies-10-commandments-and-supreme.html

A Sane Court Ruling

Let me start out by saying that I'm always reticent when a court makes a ruling on science. It's a little disconcerting that someone with a JD is now an expert on anything from particle physics to microbiology. That being said, finally a court has ruled that there is no connection between the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism. This has been a nut job conspiracy theory for years now. "Well, maybe mercury in the vaccine might have caused autism." And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt. No one has ever demonstrated why there would be a connection between the two.

As someone who has been around autistic and handicapped people all his life, I sympathize with these families. But most of them just wanted money, maybe to help their families, but still. This ruling was also a slam at the trial lawyers. And hopefully, there will be fewer people who do not vaccinate their children because of some pseudo-scientific rot gut.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2009/02/13/health-buzz-court-rules-on-vaccines-and-autism-and-other-health-news.html

Really? A center-right country?

So after Obama got elected, a lot of people said, "Yes, he did run on the left, but this is still a center-right country. There's only so much he can do." Well, I don't think we live in a center-right country anymore. I think we might finally be shifting to a center-left country, pseudo-European socialist country.

Consider this: in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected president, he ran as a "New Democrat" and stated that "the era of big government" is over. He even promised a middle class tax (once in office though, he enacted one of the largest peace time tax increases in history). He had left wing beliefs, but could only get elected as a centrist. Also recall that once in office, there was public outrage over many extraneous programs in the 1993 Budget Bill, for example the infamous "midnight basketball" program. These all told cost 10s of billions of dollars, more money back then... I guess a lot of money any time.

Now look at today. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, their fellow traveling Marxicrats are working on "stimulus" bill (a euphemism if there ever was one) that will cost somewhere around 900 billion dollars! And the price is still rising! And this is in addition to a $700 billion bailout just 6 months ago!!! There is no outcry from the public. Admittedly, the bill is not that popular according to some polls, but its hardly a backlash.

Obama openly ran as a socialist-esque, far left wing Democrat. His opponent, McCain, that monument to imbecility, tried to be a Neo Teddy Roosevelt. Very left and sort of left, those were our choices. Now that the Marxists are securely in power, we're going to see socialism like never before. How is it that we've gotten to the point where these were our choices in president? Ronald Reagan and Scoop Jackson they're not. Socialism is here again!

Who owns the Moon?

"The Moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them?"

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/081210-who-owns-moon.html

Wait, Illinois is corrupt?

I hope everyone's paying attention to the corruption charges against the Illinois governor. I'm sure I will write more on it later. For the moment, I will bring it to everyone's attention that Obama's campaign said they were meeting with the governor over who to nominate to Obama's old Senate. Now the are saying the previous statement from November was wrong. Hmm...
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/12/questions-arise.html

While I doubt Obama is directly involved with this, I hope I'm proved wrong. Clearly he associated with these people. So is this the change we've all been waiting for?

P.S. Supposedly candidate #5, the one Blago was trying to elicit bribes from for the senate seat, is Jesse Jackson's son. Like father, like son.

The Bailout... A Historical Perspective

This is fascinating. If you adjust all of these historical expenditures they pale in comparison to the Bailout. I personally think this 4.6 number is way too low.

"If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.

People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion"

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/25/bailout-costs-more-t.html

we hold the world ransom for... One Million Dollars!

First it was just a few billion, then $700 billion, then $1.2 trillion, now experts are estimating that the government will be spending all together 7.4 trillion dollars on this giant boondoggle of a bailout! That is half of the US GDP. http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/out-context/2008/Nov/24/fed-to-commit-74-trillion-in-loans/ How are we supposed to pay for all of this?  Everyone's getting in on the act.  The Big 3 automakers want their peice of the pie.  First it was $25 billion.  Two weeks later, it's $38 billion.  This is a huge amount of money, but compared to $7.4 trillion, what's another $38 billion drop in the bucket? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/02/AR2008120201600_pf.html

The fact that Bush and McCain are largely going along with these bailouts should indicate that they are not a traditional conservatives.  In fact, these bailouts are not a winning issue with the general public, at least not overwhelmingly.  Yet many Republicans support it as well as a majority of the Democrats.  Businesses like GM and AIG support these bailouts because they want to stay afloat without altering the status quo.  Remember, big businesses don't like capitalism and competition: once they are on top, the only way to go is down.

The question is why do Democrats, the party of the people, support these massive bailouts of Big Business?  Simple: it expands the governments power and influence.  The government on a scale not seen since the Great Society or the New Deal.  The Democrats will be essentially nationalizing these industries.  The federal government will be the not so silent partner of these industries.  Do you want to put your money in the First Bank of Nancy Pelosi?  Or how about drive a car that was designed by Barney Frank's staffer?  We are becoming more socialist with every passing day.  We have the most left-wing president in history and he hasn't even taken office yet?

Unbelievable.  The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of us.

P.S.  We have to remember that this $7.4 trillion is only the beginning of government spending: do you think his great new health care system will be free?  Think again.  Trillions more dollars down the tube.

P.P.S. How to pay for it all: the New Obama Tax Plan.  1) How much did you make last year?  2) Send it to the IRS.  3) All hail Obama!

Mummies, The 10 Commandments and the Supreme Court

Just to bring this to everybody's attention. The Supreme Court has taken up a 1st Amendment Case. This should be a slam dunk: the founding law of the Judeo-Christian tradition versus a handful of kooks. But knowing the court, who knows how it will end up. Probably it will depend on how Kennedy is feeling that day. One can only guess how things will be after Obama starts putting people on the court.

By the way, this cult/religion is freaky. They "worship" in a copper pyramid to commune with aliens!

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTTkrm6CpJFGMARRfQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBjdmNoOTVjBHBvcwMyBHNlYwNzcg--/SIG=13hd5gvld/EXP=1227635302/**http%3a//www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/12/supremecourt-constitutionandcivilliberties-summum

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=6292080&page=1

The Legacy of W, Bush the Younger

Jonah Goldberg assesses the current situation within the GOP (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjIxMTJkOTZmMTY0YTExYzRjNWNhNGMzZDZkY2I2ODg=). There are now two camps: the reformers and the traditionalists. In their struggle for dominance within the party, they have to explain/account for 8 years of George W. Bush.

On the one hand, Bush did a lot of good for the conservative movement. He cut taxes, nominated two great Supreme Court justices, toppled a murderous dictator, and prevented another 9/11-type terrorist attack. On the other hand, the federal budget has grown exponentially with laws like No Child Left Behind and the new Medicare benefits, Republicans have lost control of Congress, he tried to pass a disastrous immigration reform bill, and the most left wing president in recent political history has been elected.

Now certainly we can’t lay all this at the feet of Bush. Congressional Republicans did a darn good job of shooting themselves in the foot. McCain was a born loser. The only reason most conservatives voted for him was because he wasn’t the other guy. I would’ve voted for an inanimate carbon rod over Obama.

Right now, the conservative movement has shattered among into its disparate groups: Rockefeller Republicans, big business, social conservatives, and libertarians (aka the tin foil helmet crowd). Is this permanent? Probably not. Just four years ago, people were discussing the decline of the Democrat Party. The fact is, this fracture is partially Bush’s fault.

Bush’s style has been largely one of accommodation. Did you know he let Sen. Ted “I-didn’t-kill-Mary Jo Kopechne” Kennedy write No Child Left Behind? He’s had nothing but praise for Nancy Pelosi when she became Speaker, even though she’ll criticize him all day long. Just recently after meeting with Prez elect Obama (with no aides present), Bush was shocked when details of this private meeting where leaked (http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2008/11/11/20081111_204529_flashbol.htm). Bush never did learn how to deal with his opponents.

About this Blog

So this is the first entry in my blog. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how much time I will have to devote to it. Lately I've felt the need to rant quite a lot and I'm hoping this will be good for venting.

So the name: The Arlington Line was the string of forts and defenses that were built on the Virginia side of the Potomac to defend Washington, DC during the Civil War. I am very interested local and Civil War history and this describes me: a Southerner with Northern sensibilities (or maybe vice versa?)

"You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'There is a price we will not pay.' There is a point beyond which they must not advance." -Ronald Reagan