Medary.com

From the book Power in the People by Felix Morley, as linked by Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

Arbitrary power in a democracy may be just as great a menace to liberty as the outright tyranny of a dictatorship.

That would be highly amusing, I think.

CNN on Condoleeza Rice:

To skeptics in search of a political home, the GOP's image has devolved into that of a minority collection of name-calling, "no"-saying, backward-looking, talk-show bullying cranks -- a definition gleefully perpetuated by Democratic pols. So next time the eloquent and elegant figure of Condoleezza Rice strides onto a stage, GOP strategists worried about their party's future should pull out their notebooks.

Condi and the 'Cuda. Fire and Ice.

A boy can dream.

On September 23, 2006, I posted:

Bill Clinton says that the Bush Administration "didn't try" to get Bin Laden in the eight months prior to the 9//11 attack:

"But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said when asked whether he had failed to fully anticipate bin Laden's danger. "They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed."

Sure, Bill. And Gore's ill-conceived Florida chad fiasco (did you know that not a single actual vote count or recount in Florida in 2000 showed Gore ahead?), the sabotage of the transition from the Clinton to the Bush Administrations, and the general attitude of surly anti-Bushism from the out-of-control CIA and State Departments had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bush Administration's difficulties taking over anti-terrorism operations from the Clinton Administration.

You know, at some point the finger-pointing has to stop. But it's obvious that the Democrats generally and Bill Clinton in particular never learned to share in pre-school. If they don't have control of the ball, they want to make sure no one else has it, either.

You don't like Bush. We get it. But in your inchoate rage against the current sitting President, your fevered opposition has spilled over our national borders to be eagerly consumed by the likes of Ahmadenijad, Chavez, bin Laden, and the reactionary enemies of freedom and liberty throughout the world.

Does the phrase "aid and comfort to the enemy" ring a bell?

Think about the "comfort" part for a while, in the context of the Iranian President's and the Venzuelan lunatic's comfortable anti-Americanism rhetoric in New York this week.

It might have been about Bush at one time. It isn't any more. You have made George W. Bush the Alfred Dreyfus of our age, guilty mainly of not being a radical leftist. To you, this is treason, and nothing else, not even patriotism, matters.

J'accuse.

All afternoon, I've been sitting here, working my way through the web sites I downloaded from my Google Reader list this morning.

I'm not all the way through yet.

There's so much going on, and so little of it good for anyone, except Obama and his cronies.

This is, of course, a tactic on the part of the gang of collectivists and authoritarians who now hold all of the reins of power in the United States. Call it "flood the zone," call it the Cloward-Piven Strategy, call it being nibbled to death by ducks if you want. But simple freedom is now under attack from so many directions that it's getting difficult to be aware of all of the attacks any more.

I can easily see how most people will just tune things out, shrug and say "well, I'm sure it will all work out OK in the end." The problem is that collectivism never, ever works out well in the end. At best, the wealth of millions is squandered and destroyed for quixotic social programs which attempt to change the core of human behavior. At worst, people die. Lots of people.

So far, we're headed straight for the best case scenario I just mentioned--the mere collective impoverishment of the country to benefit the few who hold power and those who help them stay there. I don't want to live in a country like that.

Now that I've (I hope) sufficiently depressed and/or dismayed you, here's the list of the stuff I really don't want to read any more, but taken together paint a very, very disturbing picture of where this country is being taken by the Democrat leadership in Washington. I've tried to extract a single sentence or three from each of the articles (after the Read More, if you're on the main Medary.com page):

I really, really hate reading things like this. Peter Schiff, writing in Reason magazine:

The Federal Reserve's monetary base statistics show that in the last year the money in circulation has increased far faster than at any other point in American history. Thus, by the dictionary definition, we have inflation. But prices have been relatively stable because downward recessionary pressures are currently counterbalancing the upward pressures of the expanded money supply.

The new money has been largely parked in financial institutions. Thanks to government prodding and aggressive stimuli, it will soon be showered on the economy at large.When the tide rolls in, there will be more money chasing fewer goods. (Recessions reduce the supply of things.) The result: higher prices.

The government clings to the fantasy that it will be able to "mop up" this excess liquidity before the business end of inflation kicks in, effectively taking money back out of circulation. Good luck with that. Recent history clearly shows that the authorities have no political will to dispense tough medicine."Removing liquidity"would require either much higher interest rates or a severe curtailment of credit. But politicians believe that credit is the "lifeblood" of our economy. President Barack Obama himself has said so. If the Fed was unwilling to raise interest rates substantially in the middle years of this decade, when the economy seemed healthy, how can we expect it to do so now?

So, we hear today that the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low for now. But in the same breath they say that the economy is improving.

Inflation, here we come.

And who gets hurt by inflation? Everyone--but those at the bottom of the economic ladder most of all, and those on fixed incomes. They are the ones who are least able to pay higher prices, because they are the ones who have the least "discretionary income" and the least ability to move investments (if they even have any investments) into defensive investments against inflation.

The little people, the ones that the Democrats constantly say they want to help, are the ones who get screwed the worst by inflation.

Inflation like Jimmy Carter's in the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember what the 1970's were like. Disco was the least of the problems with that accursed decade.

The time bomb is ticking. Do Obama and his band of merry collectivists know enough basic economics to avoid a replay--or worse--of the "stagflation" of the Carter era? I wouldn't bet on it. Judging from the drunken orgy of deficit spending that Washington has been on since the bank crisis that threw the election to Obama and the disastrous TARP bank bailout, it appears very much like our political leaders--sadly, in both major parties--think that money just appears magically out of nowhere, whenever they want it to appear, and in whatever amount they want to spend.

"Tax the Rich!" they say. Because rich people are too stupid to move their assets around so that they won't have to pay additional taxes!. Yeah, that's a plan. Because stupid people are often the richest ones. If the rich people you know hang out in Hollywood or in Washington, you might come to that conclusion, I guess.

"Wring out the waste and inefficiency in government programs!" they say. Sure. If that was so easy to do, it would have been done by now, don't you think? If Ronald Reagan couldn't manage to disband the Department of Education, and we can't manage to cut PBS, NPR, and the NEA free from the government teat, where exactly will such "savings" come from?

There's only one place where all of that money will come from, one way or another.

It's going to come from the person you look at in the mirror every morning.

How's that hope and change working out for you?

Are you scared yet?

You should be.

From the book Power in the People by Felix Morley, as linked by Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

Arbitrary power in a democracy may be just as great a menace to liberty as the outright tyranny of a dictatorship.

On September 21, 2007, I wrote:

I've thought for a while now that one of the biggest problems with health care is the concept of insurance--private or public (Medicare).

John Stossel:

America's health-care problem is not that some people lack insurance, it is that 250 million Americans do have it.

You have to understand something right from the start. We Americans got hooked on health insurance because the government did the insurance companies a favor during World War II. Wartime wage controls prohibited cash raises, so employers started giving noncash benefits like health insurance to attract workers. The tax code helped this along by treating employer-based health insurance more favorably than coverage you buy yourself. And state governments have made things worse by mandating coverage many people would never buy for themselves.

That's the root of our problem. No one wants to pay for his own medical care. "Let the insurance company pay for it." But since companies pay, they demand a say in what treatments are—and are not—permitted. Who can blame them?

Then who can blame people for feeling frustrated that they aren't in control of their medical care? Maybe we need to rethink how we pay for less-than-catastrophic illnesses so people can regain control. The system creates perverse incentives for everyone. Government mandates are good at doing things like that.

Steering people to buy lots of health insurance is bad policy. Insurance is a necessary evil. We need it to protect us from the big risks--things most of us can't afford to pay for, like a serious illness, a major car accident, or a house fire.

But insurance is a lousy way to pay for things. You premiums go not just to pay for medical care, but also for fraud, paperwork, and insurance company employee salaries. This is bad for you, and bad for doctors.

(Emphasis mine)

We need to break ourselves of the habit of paying for routine health care with insurance, and reserve insurance for catastrophic care and for serious chronic conditions.

I've neglected the "Sections" area over there on the left side of the screen. But I also had an idea--"those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

Since this iteration of Medary.com went live on February 21, 2005, a lot as happened. A lot.

So, I've decided, as an occasional feature here, to go back into the archives and present some "golden oldies," posts I've made about various things which, in my very, very humble opinion, have stood the test of time.

That's what the sections One Year Ago, Two Years Ago, Three Years Ago, and Four Years Ago are all about. Now, since I'm just starting this little project, those sections are pretty empty right now. But they'll fill up, soon enough.

It will be an interesting adventure for me personally, as I'll be seeing how my thoughts have evolved--or have remained consistent--over these past few years. And i'm taking you along for the ride, too.

I think that all sides of the political spectrum can probably agree that we don't really want to repeat what has happened in the last four years. So, let's try to learn together.

OK, they call it Five health care promises Obama won't keep but "it's the thought that counts," isn't it?

The five promises:

1. No Individual Mandate
2. Complete Transparency
3. Enable the Government to Directly Negotiate Drug Prices
4. Allow Drug Importation
5. Lower Premiums by $2,500 for a Family of Four

If you couldn't believe Obama's promises then, what makes you think you can believe what he promises now?

Meanwhile, Social Security is about to go into the red. Just like George W. Bush said it would--and got blasted by Congressional Democrats for trying to actually fix the problem.

Maybe we should figure out how to pay for all of the bloated government "entitlement" programs we have now--or figure out how to update them so that they won't bankrupt this country--before we create the Mother of All Entitlements in health care, and before the Chinese completely cut off their lending to us?

Hmmm?

From the book Power in the People by Felix Morley, as linked by Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

Although the democratic ideal encourages individualism, the actual operation of a democratic system produces a centralization of power hostile to self-reliance.