I wasn’t fond of the McCain & Steele support, I am dubious over the rumors of a reality show, I was dismayed over her support of politically correct whitewashing of our language, I am REALLY dumbfounded over why Sarah Palin would go on Canadian television and talk about her families use of the Canadian socialist healthcare system. It is bad enough Mitt Romney basically created and implimented Obamacare, now we have another potential candidate who was using socialist medicine before (or while) being against it.

I dig Palin but this is the latest in a line of things that have really eroded my support for any future political run. Seriously now, the admission was unnecessary in general but asinine when we are trying to put an end to the socialist system here. I don’t care if it happened in the 1960’s or six days ago, what a silly thing to go on about now. Did she help any illegal immigrants across the border while she was getting care? If so, maybe we can hear about it while debating amnesty.

Letter written from Monticello by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823.

DEAR SIR,

– The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu!  jusque a quand’! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knolege of the existence of a god! This gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D’Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may for ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it’s parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it’s composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it’s distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it’s course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis. Some early Christians indeed have believed in the coeternal pre-existance of both the Creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect. That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleto, in these words `Deus ab aeterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum. Ab aeterno potuit producere mundum. — Si sol ab aeterno esset, lumen ab aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium. At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaeterna esse. Cujus sententiae est S. Thomas Theologorum primus’ Cardinal Toleta.

Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us that `God is a spirit.’ 4. John 24. but without defining what a spirit is {pneyma o Theos}. Down to the 3d. century we know that it was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our gross bodies. So says Origen. `Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’ These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says `appelatio {asomaton} apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita.’ So also Tertullian `quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in sua effigie.’ Tertullian. These two fathers were of the 3d. century. Calvin’s character of this supreme being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words, `{en arche en o logos, kai o logos en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos. `otos en en arche pros ton Theon. Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o gegonen}. Which truly translated means `in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made’. Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word {logos}. One of it’s legitimate meanings indeed is `a word.’ But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning `reason’, equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,’ the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

So much for your quotation of Calvin’s `mon dieu! jusqu’a quand’ in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than reluctance.

May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation `Well done, good and faithful servants.

Update: The cost of Michelle’s plans? $400 MILLION

The other day in her crusade against jelly bellies, Michelle Obama said childhood obesity is a threat to national security. Her reasoning? Obesity is now a major disqualifier for military service. No really, I cannot make this stuff up!

Let me start with the obvious. Her husband, who wants terrorists to have American citizen style rights, is a threat to national security, obesity is just another issue. Also NOT a threat to national security? Global warming, but that is a whole other post.

I am tired of this notion that every issue we face is an epidemic. Obesity is an issue, the black plague was an epidemic. A few years ago anorexia was considered by the left to be an epidemic, now it seems like a solution to the obesity issue.

How are we supposed to take our leaders, let alone doctors and scientists, seriously when they descend to this level of insanity? A few studies and some news articles with faulty reasoning get published and the establishment runs around screaming about the end of the world. Then we waste billions fighting something that is governed by personal choice, never actually solve the problem and move onto the next thing.

I have to throw some honesty in here. I just lost a family member a few weeks ago who struggled with their weight. A gastric bypass only delayed the inevitable and they were found dead, unexpectedly, from a heart attack. Having battled diabetes and other ailments related to weight, it was not hard to figure out what had happened.

It wasn’t the eating. McDonald’s did not force their way into their stomach. It wasn’t from lack of education about calories or scorn from society. There were deeply rooted reasons why they ate and for whatever reason, the solution did not come.

They made a choice. It wasn’t the job of the government to step in and force their hand. Family tried that, friends tried that. Doctors and others tried that. In the end, we all are responsible for ourselves.

Children are the only beings largely not responsible for their own actions and their parents, again, must make the choice. It is not the job of the federal government to step in for these parents.

State and local government already play a large role in the life of children’s through education. They fail miserably as surrogates. Government, in many areas, cannot get 50% of their schools to graduate. Why would we ever expand their responsibilities when they do such a terrible job with their current workload?

In the end the ISSUE of obesity will solve itself. People will either eat less, their bodies will adapt to what they are eating or they will die. If individual private organizations want to spend their time running PR campaigns and heaping scorn on people who eat too much, great have at it. This is not, however, the domain of the government and it is NOT by any means an epidemic. Trust me, at the rate this economy is tanking and the rest of the world keeps gearing up for a battle, liberals will go back to worrying about the population starving soon enough. Then we can look back upon this moment when people were fat and miserable longingly, just like many in D.C. are no doubt currently looking at the multiple feet of snow and wishing for a little Global Warming.

Yesterday I had to undergo a medical procedure. While I don’t want to discuss too much about what I needed done (don’t worry, I am fine) I do want to say that my experience at the hospital was absolutely amazing. I continually say that our insurance companies, doctors, nurses, technicians and  their staffs deserve endless praise. THANK GOD I live in the United States of America and shame on the people who continually bash the wonderful people who work in our medical system. Not only was every nurse, technician and worker I ran into genuinely pleasant and helpful, the technology being employed was awesome.

My wife was called repeatedly on her cell phone, in the hospital, and given updates while I was in surgery. She was given a code to follow my progress on massive TV screens that let her know where I was in the hospital at any given moment from admittance to discharge. At every step they would confirm my identity, my procedure, my allergies etc. and they went out of their way to explain to me what was going on, what tools they would be using, and they almost gave me no time in following up today at home. I was asleep when they called to check in the first time.

Rochester General Hospital is simply a great place and has a wonderful staff. I am so thankful they cared for me and I know it is not an isolated experience. I have had other family treated there for more serious ailments than mine and the service was just as wonderful.

Are their problems with our Health Care system? Of course! But in total I have amazing confidence and have been continually awestruck at the level of competence and almost magical ability to both save and add to the quality of life that is generated from our system and the people who provide care. I am so grateful to everyone who spent so much time making me feel comfortable and cared for. I won’t soon forget it!

Well the Senate just passed its version of health care intervention. Now the two houses come together to loot the nation with a joint bill. Merry Christmas, the country is bankrupt.

Bill Kristol, telling it like it is on FOX News Sunday!

Bill Kristol: I think the odds are that they will succeed in the suicide mission they are engaged on. For the first time in US history the bill will pass on a purely partisan vote a massive piece of legislation that is manifestly unpopular. Good luck. Good luck selling it. (Found via Gateway Pundit)

Breaking: Senator Ben Nelson appears to have secured money for his state in return for his support of Health Care reform. The Senator is now saying he will support the bill and Harry Reid has filed additional pages to the bill that will give money to the States of Democrat holdouts including Lieberman and Nelson.

Will place more info in this post as it comes out. Obamacare and the further destruction of our economy seems within reach.

The massive government intervention in health care bill, barreling toward passage in the Senate, is a wrecking ball I do not want to accept as any part of our law. With that said, the wrecking ball is slightly less weighty thanks to the loss of a single payer system, public option, and the Medicare compromise that was being floated not long ago. Liberals are outraged with Joe Lieberman, whom the White House and Senator Harry Reid bent over to appease. Soon conservatives will find themselves outraged with Lieberman too, as he will undoubtedly vote for this bill.

The only good to come of this bill, which I strongly believe will help destroy our economy and health system, is that it is also working hard to destroy Obama. Sure, once it is passed, his acolytes will race to call it a triumph. With a non-existent legislative agenda (job killing stimulus aside), year one of his presidency was a waste of time and a lot of money with little to make liberals happy. His escalation of the Afghanistan War and embrace of the Patriot Act haven’t helped. The loss of a public option in any bill and an apparent lack of will to fight at all for it, well, say goodbye to the left.

We now have a health care reform that won’t go very far in reforming health care. A few more people might get covered, yes, but it will be far from universal and far from achieving the liberal goals of a true takeover. Worse, every bit of evidence from the negotiations suggest it is still a massive payout to the very corporations liberals have vilified for years. This is exactly the kind of middle-of-the-road, don’t-really-embrace-a-side, create-yet-another-agency, program we would expect from the Bush administration. Where is the agent of change?

Yes we will have a mandate that every citizen MUST purchase health care. It will be followed by a Supreme Court challenge and HOPEFULLY some states, read Texas, pulling an Andrew Jackson, “Now let [Obama] enforce it!”

While it is guaranteed most of those who are outraged will never go Republican, many will sit home in 2010. Liberals outraged at another Democrat embracing the center, won’t ride the wave of enthusiasm and astronomical expectations they did in 2008. Meanwhile, those on the left like Howard Dean who are expressing their outrage now face the bitter wrath of a White House looking to score a political win.

Democrats can TRY to pass immigration reform in 2010, good luck. They can TRY to move on the environment, good riddance. They can TRY to pass anything resembling a socialist agenda, but the weight of an impending election and Blue Dog Democrats ready to revolt won’t let them.

The shattering of the Democrat Party begins. Welcome to 2005 before the embrace of the Blue Dogs. Same as it ever was!

Republican defeat in 2006 and 2008 had many reasons. The biggest of which was the Party’s embrace of moderation at the expense of principal. The liberal win came from the opposite, the Party’s embrace of conservatism. It was the road Bill Clinton’s 2006 victory was built upon. The reality is this. In America, there are more of us who believe in liberty and values than those who believe in socialism. In 2006 and 2008, the Republicans had embraced socialism while Obama talked vague and the Dems elected DINO’s. The lesson for 2010 & 2012 is simple, death to the RINO, rebirth of America.

I adore Democrats for embracing what they are, big spending, anti-American, anti-Constitution, socialists. Obama knows he can only be what he is for so long before facing defeat. Socialists, welcome to defeat! I know this bill will destroy our Health Care just as I knew the stimulus would kill our economy and jobs. Many will suffer, that is regrettable, but at least most of the Republican Party will make a stand and not vote to support it. We will have a mandate in 2010 and 2012, to do the opposite of what the Democrats and the previous Congress under the Republicans have done. We will have a mandate to get back to our roots, to stop spending, start cutting, and revive the era of Reagan, Jackson, Jefferson, and Washington.

2010 and 2012 can bring our Party back where we belong and send socialism back to Satin’s brain, the place from which it was spawned.

Our Christmas gift is the United States of America as envisioned by the founders, returned to us a little worn and battered, but nowhere near broken. The country is ours again, and we can be optimistic that the best is yet to come. Why? Because we have been here before, we saw under Jimmy Carter what socialism reaped and under the better days of Bill Clinton what a Democrat willing to embrace conservatism can reward. We know, from Ronald Reagan, that the glory of the Republic cannot be stopped, that every War can be won. We know from Jackson that the debt can be paid, from Jefferson that appeasement is never an option, from Washington that intervention at the expense of long-term national prosperity or dignity is not a righteous choice. America is down, but not out, and our mission is clear. We have been handed a gift, the implosion of the Democrat Party and the proof that socialism is always a losing cause.

Thank you socialists, liberals, Marxists and the Democrat Party, for proving as always that if you give a progressive a gun, they will sooner or later shoot themselves in the face. They will take a few down with them, but suicide has always been and will always be the path of the left.

Update:
Obama buddy SEIU leader Andy Stern not happy with Senate bill.

TV leftist nutjob Keith Olbermann also calling for bill to be killed

Every now and again, a liberal will make an argument that is striking in stupidity even for a liberal. More often than not, it is made from Senator Barbara Boxer or some other representative from California. During debate over the Nelson health care amendment, that would limit government funding of abortion, Boxer made a very odd statement.

“We don’t tell men that if they want to make sure their, can buy insurance coverage through their pharmaceutical plan for Viagra that they can’t do it. No, we don’t do that, and I wouldn’t support that. It would be wrong. Well, it’s wrong to single out women and to say to women of this country, they can’t use their own private funds to purchase insurance that covers the whole range of reproductive health care,” Boxer said on the Senate floor. (From the Examiner)

This is one of those, “where do I begin” reactions, so I am going to limit it to just one of many lines of thought. What level of insanity must you reach to believe that if the government doesn’t fund a procedure, a citizen is being denied that procedure. From what I can tell, Boxer is asserting that choosing to have an abortion and choosing to have someone else pick up the tab for that abortion, are both the same right.

In essence, the Nelson amendment was an attempt to stop taxpayers from paying for abortion. Boxer’s argument that the amendment was saying women could not “use their own private funds to purchase insurance” is a flat out lie. Of course a woman can use her OWN FUNDS to purchase private insurance. Actually we conservatives would absolutely love it if she used her funds to purchase private insurance. If all of the uninsured used their OWN FUNDS to purchase insurance, we wouldn’t have a need for a public option and we wouldn’t be arguing over most of this health care reform.

Boxer doesn’t want a woman to use her OWN FUNDS though, she is talking about taxpayers footing the bill. So with that in mind, Boxer is suggesting that if the nation doesn’t use OUR FUNDS to pay for abortion, we are somehow denying women an abortion.

Think of it this way, if a stranger knocked on my door and asked me to fund her abortion, and I said no, would I be denying her an abortion? Of course not. Yet if we add a middle man to the mix, the federal government, why is it different? If the woman sent a representative of the federal government to my door and asked me to pay for the abortion, and I said no, I am not denying her the procedure.

Women have the ability to go out and buy a private health insurance plan that covers abortion. They can simply take the money and get an abortion too. They can even utilize one of the many liberal funded programs that will find a way for her to get the abortion regardless of cost. They do not have the right to make me pay for it. Frankly the country as a whole doesn’t have the right to make me pay for anyones health insurance.

Additionally, Boxer’s comparison somehow makes me believe that she also thinks Viagra is a right. If a man walked up to my door and asked me to pay for his erection, I would probably punch him in the face and call the police. So you have my answer on whether denying him the money, is denying him the right.

Abortion and erections are just two of the things I don’t think I should be paying for with my taxes. Arguing that by not paying for them, I am denying someones rights, is arguing against the Constitution and against my own individual liberty. It is my own choice to decide when I am my brothers keeper and what that means, not the federal governments unless it deals with War, national contagion, etc.

I have to admit that as a human being I have a crush on Sarah Palin. The woman is a dynamo and an amazing example for women. As a politician and the future Representative of the Party, well the jury is still out. She will rise or fall based on her ability. That ability needs to be further tested. With that said, she gained MAJOR points with me by shucking Party for principal this week, taking sides with the conservative candidate in NY-23 while the GOP itself and some of the major contenders for 2010 fell apart.

First and foremost, Newt Gingrich. While he is floating the notion of running for President, he basically sunk any tiny remaining morsel of respect I had for him. An adulterer and ravenous self promoter whose character defects are endless, and whose personal style often emulates the smug and condescending tone of the left, he is often a very tuff man to support. He sometimes has amazing ideas, he often has terrible ideas. You never quite know which Newt you are going to get. In NY-23, we got the loyal Party man without principal. His decision to back a pro-choice, socialist loved and ACORN loving RINO was terrible. His justification that we must submit to the will of local Party decisions and silence our opposition was even worse.

Two other figures are looming large in my mind though because right or wrong at least Newt took a stand. In a moment that could be defining, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have disappeared from sight. Neither will go out on a limb for either candidate. The future of the Republican Party is being waged in NY-23 between conservatives and Party leaders. Where is Huckabee? Where is Romney?

I also gained respect for Fred Thompson who also weighed in on this race. Huckabee, Romney and Newt have made it clear they are looking to run in 2010 and Palin has made it clear she wants some kind of future. Thompson, I have no idea where he will be in the coming years, with that said he weighed in early and chose conservatism over Party. Kudos to him!

It is time to draw distinctions, time to find real leaders who stand for something. Huckabee and Romney seem repeatedly to be on the outside looking in on conservatives. Wanting desperately to court them and show off their credibility, but abandoning them or attacking when it is deemed politically expedient. They are politicians, this I know, so they are not to be trusted. With that said, they could at least do what is truly politically right and reach out to what is the majority of America.