Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Obama administration, the congressional Democratic leadership, and their Liberal base have made a tactical decision to demonize health-insurance profits as part of their drive to force ObamaCare upon the United States of America.

In the heated words of a great and pissed-off American, Rep.  Joe Wilson (R-SC), “You Lie!” But mendacity is something that Americans have come to expect from the Leftists.

Let us look at the Market Caps and the Net Profit Margins of the segments of American industry that are related to healthcare. Let’s see where these supposedly obscene profits actually are.

From Yahoo Business – Quarterly Results as of October 9, 2009, limited to Healthcare Industry Segments:

As is usual and expected, reality does not bow to the will, whims, and/or delusions of President Obama and his Liberals. As you can see, those segments of the Healthcare industries that deal with health insurance operate at a mere 3 – 4% profit margin. I don’t think any sane person would consider 3 -4% as an obscene profit margin; most would consider it pathetic and wonder how and why the industry continued to exist.

Look at the bottom of the table and see what healthcare industry segments are failing. It’s not pretty and it will eventually hurt America severely.

Obama and his Liberals’ phantasmagoria also run afoul of the issue that health insurance makes up only a tiny fraction of the whole of the healthcare industry. The combined Market Cap of the health insurance segments are only $165.5 billion, which is a tiny 1.4% of the $11.47 Trillion – yes, Trillion – Healthcare industries’ total. It is unlikely to have much of an effect on the overall pricing of healthcare in America.

It’s easy to see where the obscene profits are and what is driving the increase in healthcare costs. Sadly, Obama and his Liberals are more interested in nationalizing health insurance than they are in real reform.

Back in October, 2002, when Barack Obama was a neophyte Senator from Illinois and attacking then President Bush’s attack upon the brutal and despotic regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Obama said that  he wasn’t against all wars; he was just opposed to dumb wars.

Now, truth be told, Obama’s outburst had more to do with scoring political points by attacking President Bush then with any firmly held convictions Obama might have possessed, but his point about “dumb wars” had a certain validity.

War is a dirty, bloody, horrific enterprise that should be undertaken, when possible, only after careful planning and with a clear goal and a exit strategy kept firmly in mind.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

— Sen. Barack H. Obama (D-IL)
October 2, 2002

It’s easy to argue that going into Iraq the second time was unneeded at that time, but harder to describe it as “dumb.” The operation was well-planned and we had clear objectives – though our exit strategy and the preconditions for such involved a time-frame that is largely unpalatable to the modern, “half-hour sitcom” format populace. It is also largely immaterial at this time; we’re pulling out of Iraq close to on schedule and the Administration that launched the war are no longer in power.

What About Afghanistan?

There’s a “dumb” war, if ever I saw one, and one that is growing more and more reminiscent of our protracted and ultimately failed engagement in Vietnam. What started out as a reasonably clear-cut punitive expedition by the US and NATO has become a quagmire.

General Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander of US & Allied Forces in Afghanistan, has pleaded for 40,000 more troops in order to prosecute the war there. President Obama and his administration seem very reluctant to provide those troops. The resulting schism between the US Military and the White House has become fodder for the media and various pundits.

For myself, I find this argument between the troops on the ground and the politicians in Washington D.C. to be ridiculous and a lethally stupid case of “putting the cart before the horse.” How can any decisions be made about the disposition of personnel and materiel before we have decided what the objective is?

What War Are We Fighting?

It’s rally a simple question and one that should have a relatively simple, if not necessarily easy, answer. I haven’t heard anyone – President Obama or Congress – provide that answer though.

• What are our strategic goals?
• What is the scope of our military’s mission?
• What constitutes the victory conditions?
• What is our exit strategy?

President Obama, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States of America, is required to answer those questions; that is his job. So far he hasn’t done so and every day our soldiers, allied Afghan militiamen, and even those who we’re currently fighting against are dying for no defined purpose whatsoever.

On one lone point I agree with what Obama said before he was elected President; I’m opposed to dumb war as well.

As all who read this blog know full well, I loath and despise President Obama and consider him and his followers to be the greatest threat to America that we as a nation have faced since our inception. That being said, it is still correct to give even your enemy his just due when he behaves with a certain modicum of honor.

President Obama’s Nobel Acceptance Speech

I would have preferred it if President Obama had declined the Nobel Committee’s fatuous and ill-conceived awarding to him of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, but that would not have been a reasonable expectation. Political concerns, both foreign and domestic, would have made refusing the Peace Prize a dangerous and reckless gamble. I am, for the most part, well satisfied by tenor – and tacit reproval of the Nobel Committee – of President Obama’s acceptance speech.

I also think it’s surprisingly gutsy to inform the world and the Nobel Committee that you’re pushing ahead with a drawn-out war – Afghanistan in this case – during your Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

President Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for being America’s First Black President.  The Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden and the Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway seemed to be as enamored of the curiosity of a Black being POTUS as the rest of the world was in the wake of Obama’s election. I can think of no other rationale for a Committee of five persons elected by the Norwegian Parliament – called the Stortinget – to award President Obama the prize, such as it is.

This is when the puling Obama followers start raving that I’m a racist. 😉 That’s OK; they’re not deserving of having their opinions given any credence by myself of any other American.

I’m not going to bother going into whether or not President Obama – or the TOTUS – has done anything to-date  deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s an opinion that will undoubtedly vary between people depending upon what they hold as important, deeds or words and projected aspirations. That debate is utterly meaningless in the larger scope of things and completely immaterial to Obama’s receiving of the Nobel Prize.

What is important is that President Obama had done absolutely nothing to deserve the Nobel Peace Price, other than being a Black man who was a successful politician in America, at the time of his nomination for the prize.

To be considered eligible for an award, it is necessary to be nominated in writing by a person competent to make such a nomination. A personal application for an award shall not be considered.

Competence to submit nominations shall be incumbent on representatives, domestic as well as foreign, of the field of culture in question, in conformity with detailed regulations issued by the prize-awarding body.

Each year the prize adjudication shall embrace such nominations as have been submitted during the preceding twelve months up to February 1. If, in addition to the prize for the current year, the prize-awarding body has at its disposal prize money reserved under §5, the question of the award of the prize for the current year shall be decided before a decision is made concerning the amount reserved from the preceding year.

— Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, § 7

Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 and formally took office on January, 20, 2009. The nomination, from a qualified source, had to be submitted to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo before February 1, 2009. That would give a window of 11 days between President Obama Inauguration and the deadline for his nomination for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

11 Days!

What did President Obama do in those 11 days other than get settled into his new office? Did he do anything during the first two weeks he was in office that furthered the cause of Peace at all? The answers are respectively nothing and  no; President Obama achieved nothing to promoted Peace during those 11 days nor did he even attempt to do so.  It would be totally ridiculous to have expected him or any other POTUS to have done so.

But… Barack Obama did manage to, as a self-identified Black man, to get elected as the 44th President of the United States. I am forced to conclude that the Nobel Committee has awarded President Obama the 2009  Nobel Prize For Race.

On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done

This is the latest book – it’s actually more of a monologue – by Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s new Regulatory Czar. In it Obama’s new chief of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs calls for the end of free speech in this new, Internet Age.

This is, due to Sunstein’s new job, cause for worry.

In his monologue Sunstein contends that rumors threaten democracy by undermining public confidence in government, though he admits in the opening pages of On Rumors that there is no good definition for what constitutes a rumor.

What can we do to protect ourselves against the harmful effects of false rumors? As we shall see, part of the answer lies in recognizing that a ‘chilling effect’ on those who would spread destructive falsehood can be an excellent idea.

~*~

There is no settled definition of rumor, and I will not attempt to offer one here.

— Cass Sunstein
On Rumors, Pg 5

Mr. Sunstein admits that there is no adequate definition of rumor that he could use in his treatise, but wants the government to enact a “chilling effect” on rumors on the Internet – as a start no doubt. Later in work he claims that he is not calling for censorship, but thinks that there’s too much freedom of speech on the Internet.

Any marketplace requires standards and ground rules; no market can operate as a free-for-all. It is not obvious that the current regulatory system for free speech — the current setting of chill — is the one that we would or should choose for the Internet era.

— Cass Sunstein
On Rumors, Pg 78

That “setting of chill” within the current regulatory system for free speech was defined in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, a document that Cass Sunstein is obviously not particularly fond of.

It should also be noted that Sunstein contextualized his work with references to Obama’s campaign and the work was little more than a threat against Conservative websites.

Since President Obama installed Sunstein in a position to carry out that threat, Sunstein must be classed as a clear and present danger to America’s liberty and freedom of speech.

When the man that President Obama hand-picked to head the agency in the federal government that reviews draft regulations under Executive Order 12866 and develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistical policy is afraid of freedom of speech – especially on the internet, the seeds of tyranny have been well and truly planted – in the fecund soil of Obama’s government.

It seems that President Obama has found in Cass Sunstein the perfect Hierophant for his Ministry of Truth. One is forced to wonder, if one is American, how long we have before Inquisition begins.