Overall, the bill empowers government bureaucrats, and de-empowers physicians. That can’t possibly be good for American healthcare.

One of the jobs of the Senate is to keep Bad bills from getting through. Think about it. Think about all of the highly contentious, arbitrary, partisan issues we have and have had that basically split the country down the middle. And think about the other possibilities of a simple majority rule.

The Senate serves as the bad-bill-block by allowing endless debate on the issues. So really serious stuff might take years to hammer out, and unfair stuff won’t get through at all, because you can’t take a vote until everyone is done debating or there are 60 votes to proceed. Blocking a vote by purposely making an endless case is called the filibuster.

In the old days, the filibuster actually involved a guy speaking for hours and hours until enough supporters for the bill dwindled out the door – killing any successful vote for it. But later, a general agreement was made that a filibuster would just be called and you wouldn’t have to perform the bladder/bowel exhibition.

Certain bills can’t be mulled over for years though, like the yearly budget. And often painful cuts and other adjustments need to be made to keep the national debt under control. I mean, seriously – think what a simply majority would do to the deficit! So in 1974 they came up with reconciliation.

“A reconciliation instruction (Budget Reconciliation) is a provision in a budget resolution directing one or more committees to submit legislation changing existing law in order to bring spending, revenues, or the debt-limit into conformity with the budget resolution. The instructions specify the committees to which they apply, indicate the appropriate dollar changes to be achieved, and usually provide a deadline by which the legislation is to be reported or submitted.”

-         U.S. Senate: Reference Home > Glossary > Reconciliation instruction

And what reconciliation basically does is limit debate to 20 hours, eliminating the filibuster option for the minority. That way, despite screams from the minority, President Romney can eliminate gay marriage and welfare while President Palin makes abortion illegal and  institutes Manifest Destiny and subsequently military service to fulfill it.

So you might wonder how – how in the world can Pelosi pass healthcare reform with reconciliation –an obvious budget specific special exception? Well – simple: Congress includes reconciliation instructions in the budget directing certain committees – like the health, financial, or labor committees – to produce healthcare reform legislation that will hit certain spending targets by a certain deadline. This legislation is then stapled to the omnibus bill and sent to the floor for 20 hours of debate followed by a simple up or down vote.

This is crazy right? This is a huge nightmare waiting to happen. We aren’t the first to realize such a reasonable method to keep the cookie jar safe could be perverted into rationalizing that anything can be called a cookie.

That’s why in 1985 the Byrd rule was added, which imposed a set of rules for the reconciliation process, limiting what it can reconcile to legislation that principally affects federal revenues. A tax cut: yes. Some welfare reform: sure. A new Federal holiday: nope. But this leaves a bit of ambiguity – I guess; especially after Nancy Pelosi blows your record amount of political capital in your first six months in office and leaves you wrapped to a particularly nasty bill like Ahab to his wale.

The Byrd rule states that legislation is unfit for reconciliation if it “produce[s] changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision.”  The trouble here though is that “merely incidental” and “provision” aren’t defined. So weather or not something’s affect on Federal revenues is “merely incidental” – like regulating insurers, creating a public plan, or funding abortions – is up to the Senate parliamentarian – an arbitrary referee.

Sen. Robert Byrd is now 92. He says the process was intended for deficit reduction and using it for health reform or cap and trade is an outrage that must be resisted.

But others make the nearsighted argument that health reform and cap n’ trade are deficit reducers. Or they make the argument that, if budget matters are too important to be constrained by normal Senate rules shouldn’t saving live and saving the planet also be exceptions?

Yeah – sure. Good thinking stupid.

I think the main mistake they made was starting with the biggest most Liberal bill you can imagine, including fighting to keep language that many feel will allow for Federally funded abortion. And you know; I might have supported the original bill. Like I’ve said, if I couldn’t count and didn’t know any 20^th century history, I’d probably be on the Liberal side. The reason I generally hate Liberal thinking is because so many of their ideas are lofty and fundamentally flawed. They don’t work. Hey, yeah, let’s buy everyone a house and pay for healthcare.

“Nether do Conservative ideas,” – Not true – Conservatives generally want to maintain ideas that have been and are currently working – the ones that built our mighty nation. Liberals point to the few people for whom the system isn’t working, forwhatever reason, and use that as a reason for social upheaval. You know what I’m talking about. Those assholes can’t go a day without reading a letter supposedly from someone in some gravely unfortunate situation healthcare wise.

The original healthcare bill might have worked. At least the Dem’s own optimistic and rosy numbers worked out. But since then, to get Democrats to vote for the thing – yeah, it was that Liberal – they had to hack all the things to death that were supposed to pay for it, like the Cadillac plan tax.

So now this bill is just a big pile of unfunded partisan garbage, garbage that Obama wants to pass for little other reason than to score a perceived victory. If his reasons, or the reasons for the congressional Dems, were anything but, they would have pried this fist-size piece of crap out of their mouths and bitten off a rational piece we can thoughtfully chew and swallow without Historical abuse of something that was originally created to keep a solvent budget.

And the real danger here is the precedence. Reconciliation is for budget adjustments, not creating new bureaucracies. It has a lot of other rules too they’re working to get around. FFS… Don’t these hippies remember a few years ago when they were praising the Republicans who refused to use Reconciliation for some stuff Bush wanted?

Historical and proud. Historical and Proud. The bill’s gona pass, it’s historical and proud.

Rare earths are becoming very important in the latest technologies like military equipment, hybrid motors, nickel metal hydride batteries, and flat screen televisions.  The problem is China is the only country the processes these metals.  They do most of the mining and then separate the metals into uses.  They own 90% of the market share.  Furthermore, China has announced that they are cutting back exports as internal demand rises.

A number of places in the world have these metals: the US, Canada, China, Africa, and Australia.  There are a few US companies that own mines and only one Western company, NEO Material Technologies of Canada, has any expertise in processing/separating these metals (they have a facility in China).  The US companies are all privately owned, so that takes away some incentive to buy stock in one of these companies.

My thoughts are that Western companies in this area are going to make a lot of money over the next few years.  Part of mewishes I could go out and join them, make them more efficient, and then buy out competition like Rockefeller did with Southern Oil.  Part of me wants to go prospect land and buy it.  Most of me just wants to invest in these companies and let them do the hard work while I build rockets.

More of me wants to explore.  Sometimes I wish it was the 1600’s and there was still a lot of land to explore and claim for the crown (or George Washington).  Unexplored land now only resides in space – which is terribly expensive.  There are many explored lands in the world though that have not seen many people even today, like northen michigan.  A lot of this land holds many secrets to be discovered and something inside of me desires to be the one to discover those secrets.

It occurs to me that I have many many interests in life: explosives, rockets, space, politics, exploration, running a business, music, triathlons, investing, theology, writing, teaching/coaching, geology, military, and probably some more.  I have organized my life around many of those things, tried my hand at all of them, did poorly in some, and have succeeded in others.  Do I stay where I am or venture out into something else?  What is next for me?

“From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place,” Hanks says. “How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-nolte/2010/03/09/tom-hanks-america-wants-annihilate-terrorists-because-they-re-different#ixzz0hqLjDEmT

That’s just plain stupid. The Japanese were set on building an empire, which required consolidating Pacific Asia, which meant controlling the Pacific, which meant removing the US and Allied Navies. Their plan was to deliver one mighty blow at Perl harbor – one that would cripple the US forces in the Pacific bad enough that we couldn’t recover. But the screwed up. All the aircraft carries weren’t in port yet. Within days we had many of the sunken ships floating again. And the attack lit a fire under America’s ass which had her turning our war ships to fast to name.

The reason we called the Japanese racist names is the same reason we’ve given names to all our enemies: It makes killing them less personal – which isn’t bad. Calling German boys “Krauts” didn’t remove some moral block that caused death. Calling German boys “Krauts” just made it easier for our boys to stomach what they had to do, which was rescue a foreign land from a sadistic tyrant by killing his followers.

Because we live differently??? FFS Tom, WWII was about two empires taking over their regions of the globe while the greatest empire stood around watching. Few things in history are as clear cut as the causes of WWII. You’re buddy FDR kept us out until we HAD to go in all the way. If we would have thrown in with the British after old Adolf strolled into Belgium – the term “World War” would mercifully be a fictional phrase – you stupid ass.

General George S. Patton’s Speach, Somewhere in England, 5 June 1944

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.

You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call “chicken shit drilling.” That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who’s not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn’t be here. You are ready for what’s to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you’re not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we’re going up against. By God, I do.

My men don’t surrender, and I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That’s not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don’t think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the ‘G.I. Shits.’

Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, Sir.’ I asked, ‘Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?’ He answered, ‘Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!’ Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.

And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts.

Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.

Don’t forget, you men don’t know that I’m here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this Army. I’m not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.’ We want to get the hell over there.” The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don’t dig foxholes. I don’t want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don’t give the enemy time to dig one either. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.

War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!

I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position.’ We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON’T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, ‘Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a- Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!’

“That is all.”

I’m not sure if private insurance will start paying doctors less if this bill passes. The way I understand it, private insurance companies pay more because of competition. They want patients to buy their insurance; doctors won’t accept insurance that doesn’t pay them well; they pay well so doctors will accept their insurance and patients will buy it. It gets more complicated with insurance through an employer, but that’s the basic idea. Hospitals and doctors accept medicare for a number of reasons, but I can’t remember them right now. A lot of it is pure human compassion.

As far as the federal government requiring physicians to accept a specific type of insurance…they’d better have paid for my fucking medical school if they’re going to do that. They didn’t, so they can suck it if they make that demand. We have the monopoly on medical knowledge and skill in this country. That’s a lot of FUCK YOU power. We’d unleash it on any democratic or republican if necessary.

Recent studies have found that theobromine, a compound found in cocoa solids, is more effective as a cough suppressant than prescription codeine. This compound suppresses the “itch” signal from the nerve in the back of the throat that causes the cough reflex. It is possible to get an effective dose (1 g, though 0.5 g may be sufficient)^[20] from 50g of dark chocolate, which contains 2 to 10 times more cacao than milk chocolate. Cocoa powder contains roughly 0.1 g per tablespoon (5g).^[21] Theobromine was also free from side effects in the blind tests.^[22]

Click here for full article…

In short, the northen congressmen did not want more pro-slavery land belonging to the US, so we stopped at California, Texas, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico (Oregon Territory too, but that was anti-slavery).

As to the success, just look at the junior officer’s names. You might recognize some of them as the Who’s Who of the Civil War: Ulysses Grant, Robert E Lee, McClellan, Sherman, and others. Yeah, no surprise we kicked serious ass. With those men we could have taken Europe had we not fought each other.

There is a silly test you can take to see where you fall on this chart, nolanchart.com Although it isn’t a fair test. I fell just on the Libertarian side of the line between it and Conservative. I have a feeling the guy who made this was Libertarian. Just take the survey (test) and you’ll know what I mean.

Or take this as an example, one of four choices:

Government involvement is necessary where private industry can’t do the job all by itself. As an example, agricultural subsidies should continue to support small farmers.

I totally agree that it’s the Federal government’s job to do the things private industry CAN’T do. But ffs – subsidizing small farms isn’t an example of this at all! Try interstate highways, national reserve (money and oil) standing army…