A Nod To The Gods

In a result completely predicted here, as well as every other conservative site on the web, I could neither keep my insurance, nor my doctor. Obama and everyone on the Left lied. And instead of my preferred plan, which was affordable and worked perfectly for me but was made illegal, now under pain of law I am forced to purchase a piece of crap that covers nothing.

And they knew all that, and lied about it anyway, trusting Americans to be ‘stupid’ and believe their lies.

Dear Media. Psst. Pay deadly-close attention here, for this is nearly the whole game that lost it for you:

1) pols made statements about a new policy to help it pass.
2) policy passed.
3) public discovered the policy was not as described. In a really bad way.
4) pols laughed at the public for believing them in the first place.
5) public learned its lesson, and acted accordingly.

Media: remember who was cheerleading and protecting the politicians who were enacting ACA? Remember who was vilifying those making good faith arguments against it? Defaming them as racists? It was you. And we all remember being lied to by you, too.

When you weren’t simply mocking us.

And this is how you got Trump.

The media election freakout is awesome, because they did it to themselves.   here….

Specialists are paid high fees to perform procedures. One stent may generate a fee of $1000-$2000 for a cardiologist who orders it, costing the system over $30,000 for that one procedure. Costs for procedures such as hip replacements and colonoscopies are similarly excessive, far higher in this country than any others. Specialists are not required to discuss actual risks and benefits with patients, and typically self-refer patients for these lucrative procedures without any stipulation that they are medically superior to less expensive alternatives. Contrarily, a doctor like me who can spend similar time grappling with complex medical and social issues with my patients, steering them on a rational medical course that is individualized to their wants and needs, will earn a tiny fraction of that fee. That is why only 20 percent of medical students are entering primary care and we are becoming a nation of specialists. Similarly, hospitals are paid well only if they hospitalize their patients; home care does not help their bottom line.

This perverse use of health care dollars is not difficult to fix. Doctor fees for visits and procedures are determined by the Relative Value Scale Update Committee, or RUC: a 31-person committee within the American Medical Association (AMA) that is specialist dominated and meets without transparency to determine doctor pay. With a single law that committee can be dissolved and doctor pay can be normalized, so doctors who think and converse with their patients are paid equally to doctors who simply do. Similarly, insurance companies such as Medicare can start paying equally for home care and hospital care so that both are feasible options. It is time we stop encouraging unnecessary procedures and hospitalizations through our insurance payment system, and start encouraging optimal medical care. That is what lies at the heart of our health care crisis, and fixing it will not only save Medicare and the ACA, but will save a lot of lives and give patients more genuine choices about how they receive the best care possible.   here…

Just fix the damn mess. I would like to be able to afford individual health insurance at least once in my lifetime.

There is a video associated with this post, go to Aces place to get the context of his rant. His anger is well placed.

“Stabbing a bunch of people for not believing the same things that you do is the very definition of hatred and intolerance, yet you self-absorbed little shits dare project the guilt for this heinous act upon the rest of us? No. Here’s the deal. The disgusting piece of trash who attempted this slaughter was here in this country as a guest, funded by taxpayers like me who’ve been in the workforce for 20+ years. We literally rescued him and his family, and this is how he repaid us–by whining about oppression and microaggressions as he plotted a murderous act of terrorism against innocent people.

We will not let you make this about your self-centered agenda. This is not your show. Your callow sloganeering “thoughts” on tolerance, diversity, microaggressions and general butthurtedness are unwelcome at this time, precious snowflakes. Never, ever presume to lecture the rest of us again.”  Keep Reading….

Amen.

In fact, a big reason for the populist rumblings is the otherness of the people in charge of our societies. Turn on a television and the news is full of smug experts dismissively discussing the “white working class” and the “uneducated males” as if they were describing a trip to the African bush. There’s no way to make that sound good.

It is not just a matter of aesthetics. Even if you can somehow knock the smug off these people and give them a respectful vocabulary, they are still left trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. For instance, patriotism and multiculturalism can never coexist. The former assumes a set of value judgments based on nationality and ethnicity. The latter explicitly rejects those values. In fact, multiculturalism is nothing more than the nullification of patriotism and nationalism. There’s no squaring that circle.     Keep Reading…..

Like they say, first you have to admit there’s a problem.

Actually, they have a plan that is quite workable, both here and in Europe. CIA contractor James Mitchell, author of the forthcoming book Enhanced Interrogation, learned about it first hand from 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was very informative between his waterboarding and his lawyering up at Club Gitmo. Via Washington Examiner:

He said the terror attacks were good, but the “practical” way to defeat America was through immigration and by outbreeding non-Muslims. He said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States, taking advantage of the welfare system to support themselves while they spread their jihadi message. They will wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws for protection, ratchet up acceptance of Sharia law, and then, only when they were strong enough, rise up and violently impose Sharia from within. He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people eventually would become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.

“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck to us for slaughter.”

Keep Reading….

Being a frugal old man, I’ve taken to doing my grocery shopping at Walmart.  I used to grocery shop at Target, but since they decided to take sides in thekulturkampf, I no longer favor them with my business – seems the least I could do.  But, I gotta tell you – sometimes Walmart is just too much of a blast of 21st Century America, right in the face:  an endless collection of fat, tattooed women with gangs of loud, hyper children, pulling overloaded grocery carts toward the checkout.  Other than me, I’m absolutely sure no one in the store is paying for their own groceries.  Critical, disapproving old white man that I am, I’m always wondering “how many different fathers spawned that brood?”  And “why do you have children you can’t afford to feed?”  And “don’t you have any self-respect?”  And “have you ever held a job?”  Never before, in the history of the world, have there been so many fat, poor people.  Never before, in the history of the world, have there been so many fat, poor people talking on cell phones they don’t pay for.

I grew up in pre-ironic, pre-racial healing America, in the 1950s, in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.  It was a high-trust, wonderful place to live – shopping centers, golf courses and the sound of sprinklers.  Women stayed home, by and large, and raised the family – dads worked.  Kids were everywhere and no one wore a bike helmet.  Ike was in the White House.  The sky was blue.  It was fabulous.  I went to a high school with 2500 other kids.  The school had a principal, two assistant principals, a nurse and three ladies who worked in the office – no metal detectors, no cops, no trouble to speak of.  I’m not even sure the principal had a four-year degree.  If he did, it was from some cow-college in North Dakota.  We laughed at him (behind his back) because his first name was Milo.  But Milo certainly wasn’t confused about what his job was.  School was orderly and fun.  Everyone got a decent education in the basics (and then some) and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.  Teachers were not called educators.  Lunch was 30 cents.

           And then my generation took over.           Here…

Politicians and the media is milking the “Fake News” narrative for as much juice as they can squeeze. Still in denial to the fact that it wasn’t “fake news” that won the election, it was the candidates they ran. Yet they still insist that a poorly educated gullible class of white people fell for all of this supposed fake information.
I don’t know what’s more insulting, the fact the liberal elites and their media really believe this, or they think they can trick their own minions into believing it.

“There are also serious problems with the evidence BuzzFeed presents. As Timothy Carney points out at the Washington Examiner, the “real news” that Silverman uses for comparison are, in many cases, opinion pieces from liberal columnists. The top “real” stories — which BuzzFeed presented in a graphic to compare against the top “fake” stories — consist of four anti-Trump opinion pieces and a racy exposé of Melania Trump’s nude modeling from two decades ago.

That didn’t stop others in the media from making the leap from bad analysis to causal connections with absolutely no evidence in support of it. The New York Times began running news stories on the pernicious influence of “fake news,” and even President Obama used it as an opportunity to lecture about the dangers it presents to democracy.”

“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not,” Obama intoned from Berlin, “and particularly in an age of social media when so many people are getting their information in sound bites and off their phones, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.”    Keep Reading…