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Ted Kennedy is dead. So is Noreen, the mother of one of my very best friends.

I sit here, and the question pops--unbidden and very unwanted--into my mind: which one of the two had more impact on my life? Ted Kennedy, through all of the policies he fought for, and the legislation he passed through the years, or the person who gave birth to a dear friend?

That I can even consider the question troubles me greatly. It should be a no-brainer--of course Noreen, through her daughter, has had an enormous impact on my life--all positive, by the way--daughter and husband are really among my dearest friends. Kennedy's legacy--for me, anyway--consists primarily of taking more money away from me on an annual basis and giving it to other people. What could I have done with the money Ted took from me? Would I be better off? Would others?

I guess they say "it's only money."

I feel more than a bit gulity that my mind turns to the political at a time like this.

God bless Ted, and Noreen, too. May you have the rest you both have earned.

We're supposed to believe that there are 45 million people in the U.S. who don't have health insurance through no fault of their own. That's the reason why it's a "crisis," right?

Not so fast.

Here are the facts, via the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute (both reporting data from the Census Bureau:

12 million people without health insurance are eligible for Medicaid and/or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) but haven't enrolled. Whose fault is that? Should you pay for their irresponsibility?

10 million people without health insurance are foreigners in the U.S. 4.4 million of those are here legally, and 5.6 million are here illegally. Should you pay for their irresponsibility?

19.6 million people without health insurance have incomes higher than 250% of the poverty level--$55,125 for a family of four. Should you pay for their poor household budgeting skills?

Is this a real crisis? Is this a panic attack on the part of the Democrats? Or is it a naked power grab to seize control of one sixth of the American economy?

Here's one thing we could do to "fix" health care--from Cato:

The current system excludes the value of employer-provided insurance from a worker's taxable income. However, workers purchasing health insurance on their own must do so with after-tax dollars. This provides a significant tilt toward employer-provided insurance. Workers should receive a standard deduction, a tax credit, or, better still, large Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for the purchase of health insurance, regardless of whether they receive it through their job or purchase it on their own.

We can then look at those people who may need some kind of subsidy to better afford insurance.

Some guy named Karl Denninger:

Let's be clear: These banksters have robbed well over $100 billion dollars from taxpayers and citizens via various schemes in the last decade. These scams have included securitizing loans that they either knew or should have known were laced with fraud, in some cases shorting them while selling them on to other people. It includes outrageously-complex and intentionally-obfuscated securities "packages" for municipalities which have resulted in huge losses for the town (and huge fees and profits for the bank.) It has included marketing "auction rate" securities which were claimed to be as liquid and safe as cash, when in fact nothing of the sort was true. The schemes and scams run the gamut but at their core was the intentional obfuscation of the true nature of the risk embedded in these instruments so that the dupe (that would be you, your town, your state) would wind up losing money all for their benefit: you would enter into a complex swap transaction you didn't understand, you'd buy a bubble house with an OptionARM after being told you "definitely" could refinance before payments would go up, your kid was sold an expensive educational loan package without being told that it was unable to be discharged in bankruptcy, you were given a credit card with 27 pages of fine print, and buried somewhere in there was vague language letting the company jack your interest rate to anything it wanted - including the 36% it did jack it to - if you missed an electric bill by three days.

Then, when the game of musical chairs ended and all this debt that could not possibly be paid off started to default these very same banksters went to Congress through Paulson and Bernanke, the chiefs of the bankster scam parade, and in my opinion literally committed economic terrorism: hand over $2 trillion dollars hiding all but $700 billion, or we detonate the entirety of the economy and everyone literally starves.

How does this differ from an old-fashioned Al-Quaida terrorist who calls in a nuclear bomb threat? "Hand over $2 trillion dollars or New York City will be vaporized."

Hmmmmm... sounds kinda like the same thing to me!

Now let's juxtapose this with the fact that every Congressperson took an oath to defend The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

So riddle me this my fellow Americans: How is it that Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, and both Presidents Bush and Obama are still free men instead of being housed at GITMO? How is it that on that fateful night in September of 2008 when Bernanke and Paulson "briefed" Congress and demanded $700 billion in ransom and a blank check to back-door an unlimited amount in "guarantees" and "pass-throughs" to their banking buddies the Sargeant At Arms was not immediately called to place these goons under arrest pending indictment and prosecution?

The next question is equally obvious and leads one down some pretty disturbing paths: If there is NOT ONE man or woman Congress who will discharge THEIR oath of office, is there anyone left in this country who took an identical oath that will?

The worst part is that it didn't end with payment of the ransom. No, the banks didn't come clean, they didn't clear their balance sheets, they didn't take their losses using the backstop they had managed to secure through threat of imminent economic doom.

On the contrary: They lied some more! They in fact lobbied Congress and had them bring pressure on FASB, threatening to legislate legalization of accounting fraud, and twisted FASB's arm into issuing what amounted to an executive order making legal any and all lies about asset valuation! We now know this happened because in point of fact the amount of loss that has been seen in the form of write-downs when banks fail has roughly doubled from last year to this, and these are not small numbers: we're talking about going from roughly 15% to roughly 35!

We need to rise up, march on Washington and clean out the stables, I think.

From xkcd

Yes, indeed, this really is how we do it, everyone. Trust me, I built a pretty good career out of doing this much of the time. OK, I also had the rare ability to actually read and comprehend technical manuals, but still, this is how we REALLY do it.

Also via Coyote Blog.

It seems like we're lectured on a daily basis how one industry or another is making "obscene profits."

Well?

From the Cato Institute

This is AVERAGE compensation, folks, including both salary and benefits. Remind me again who's making obscene profits?

I think the Government has plenty of money, don't you?

Hat tip: Coyote Blog.

The health care debate, summed up in a single statement:

"You know, what we're doing doesn't work. So, we should do MORE of it."

Go read this Atlantic article (which I previously posted on here. Hell, don't just read it. Memorize it.

Update: I'm promoting this to a "featured" article, so it will show up at the top of the articles for a while.

Update:A Modest Proposal from a physician:

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

There's an old saying: what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

The very act of hyphenation (i.e. something-American) strips the very humanity from those doing it, and from those to whom it is done.

I am an American. Period.

Hyphenation Is Racism.

Regarding Obama's bizarre swerve into muddling church and state (by the way, it's remarkable, isn't it how all of the sudden it's a religious imperative to enact a political agenda?), here's a few more passages from a book considered by many to be holy:

Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 11:2 When pride comes, then comes dishonor, But with the humble is wisdom.

Proverbs 18:12 Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, But humility goes before honor.

Jeremiah 49:16 "As for the terror of you, The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, O you who live in the clefts of the rock, Who occupy the height of the hill. Though you make your nest as high as an eagle's, I will bring you down from there," declares the LORD.

Obadiah 1:3 "The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, You who live in the clefts of the rock, In the loftiness of your dwelling place, Who say in your heart, 'Who will bring me down to earth?

Inspired by an Andrew Klavan post, where he says, in part:

Obama told the rebs (rabbis), “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.”

In response to this statement I would like to make a subtle theological point: No, we’re not. For those of you who aren’t versed in the finer points of theology, let me try to simplify that for you: No. We’re not. Or to put it even more simply: No. We. Are. Not.

It is not Obama's opponents who are risking the heights of pride and hubris. Most of us just want to be left alone, really. We're certainly not going around elevating ourselves to a point where we think we're God's partners. My vague recollection of Sunday School is that there's only one man who sits at the right hand of God, and it isn't Barack Hussein Obama.

You, too can check facts just like the AP does. Now, since you can't post an article from the AP or even, as far as I know, link to one without the AP wanting you to pay a bajillion dollars, you'll have to look for yourself for what Ace at Ace of Spades HQ says about it:

Here's what the AP's "fact check" would have looked like in the summer of 1974, if they were this in-the-bag for Richard Nixon:

POLLL: 70% of the public believes the President participated in, or was aware of, or even ordered the cover up of the Watergate burglary.

FACT: President Nixon says "I am not a crook." Next.

Uh, okay. Really jerked that one out of the park there, buddy.

It's crazy, but there is an unexpressed assumption (redundant, I know) lurking under the surface of the AP's "fact check."

That assumption: Obama, being our Savior, is of course incapable of lying. Like Superman.*

They really seem to believe this. Or seem to believe, at least, that you should believe it. I don't know how else to explain their apparent belief that Obama's unsupported, and often utterly contradicted, claims are to be taken as wholly authoritative on all issues of contention.

* Can't lie? Okay, he can lie, he just doesn't. Or at least not very often.

Denver Post has this thrilling story of a simian near-escape:

"He certainly wasn't any trouble," (a zoo spokeswoman) said. "He did exactly what we would have hoped he would do."

Charlie, a 12-year-old, was outside his pen only about three minutes, she said, and was never at risk of escaping or confronting visitors.