Reflections From a Murky Pond

For most people, understanding Obama is not too easy. He’s largely a cypher wrapped, as the boy is, in mystery, misdirection, and conflicting actions and rhetoric. Fortunately, the National Review published a cover that sums up Obama perfectly and in a manner that is easily understandable.

Obama – Just Another Grifting Swindler

Yep! That’s Obama in a nutshell – just another grifting swindler, a street hustler relying on the facts that so many want something for nothing and that there’s a sucker born every minute.

Adam Smith was an 18th century Scottish moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy, and an important figure in the Enlightenment. He was a very wise man and helped shape much of the modern era’s thoughts upon the role of work and business in the world.

The Wisdom of Adam Smith

Sadly, Mr. Smith’s great wisdom has been largely lost, expunged from mainstream education by the Liberals and Progressives who’ve infiltrated the school systems and destroyed much of our children’s education.

There’s no room anymore for moral thought such has Adam Smith thought because the Liberals and Progressives indoctrinate all that they can in the belief that it is and should be out of benevolence that the makes provide for the eaters and takers and, if such largess can be voluntarily garnered, it must be coerced through fiat.

America, like all nations, is and always has been under threat from foreign powers. Like the peoples of all nations this is something that Americans are used to and something that they can deal with…or could deal with. Things has changed and the new threats to America are both existential and difficult to deal with.

The new threats aren’t military; they’re economic. They’re also not the run of the mill threat to international trade. No, the new threats to America are foreign governments choosing to punitively divest themselves of US sovereign debt and eliminating the use of the US Dollar as their nations’ reserve currency.

Russia has bluntly pointed this out.

MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti) – An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that authorities would issue general advice to dump US government bonds in the event of Russian companies and individuals being targeted by sanctions over events in Ukraine.

Sergei Glazyev said the United States would be the first to suffer in the event of any sanctions regime.

“The Americans are threatening Russia with sanctions and pulling the EU into a trade and economic war with Russia,” Glazyev said. “Most of the sanctions against Russia will bring harm to the United States itself, because as far as trade relations with the United States go, we don’t depend on them in any way.”

Glazyev noted that Russia is a creditor to the United States.

“We hold a decent amount of treasury bonds – more than $200 billion – and if the United States dares to freeze accounts of Russian businesses and citizens, we can no longer view America as a reliable partner,” he said. “We will encourage everybody to dump US Treasury bonds, get rid of dollars as an unreliable currency and leave the US market.”

Do not mistake me; in no way would I normally think this was a credible threat at this time. These are not, however, normal times and the Russian cultural psyche has proved itself willing to use “scorched earth” tactics. They’re also fairly strongly allied with China, who could both tolerate the damage to themselves from divesting themselves of US sovereign debt and eliminating the use of the US Dollar as their nations’ reserve currency. In point of fact, China would likely benefit from doing so in short-term. Hence, while the threat is not imminent, it is credible.

This, in all likelihood, isn’t going to happen. What is going to happen is that the Obama Regime will not push for sanctions against Russia for just about anything. And this, in turn, means less than it might since Europe’s flagging and vulnerable economy is dependent upon trade with Russia.

The important point is the threat is credible, extremely serious, and has been made. This not only shows the soft and flaccid underbelly of the America of the 21st century, it’s removes one of America’s greatest weapons, our trade.

One of the few things that we can count upon is that, if the Apocalypse isn’t instantaneous, the media will cover it.
 

 
Another things that we can count upon is that the MSM will not vary much in the coverage of the End Times from how they cover anything else.

There’s truly no denying that America has a fundamental problem with its expectations of its healthcare system. Similarly, there’s little rational denial of the fact that ObamaCare won’t improve this and will only matters worse.

So now, of course, we’re about to be saddled with the OCD-10.

OK, it’s actually the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, version 10), not the OCD-10, but it certainly looks to be an example of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder on the part of the World Health Organization (WHO). ICD-10 will increase the number of diagnostic available codes from approximately 17,000 in ICD-9 to over 155,000. If that’s not a case OCD, I don’t think I really want to know what it is.

There are many who wouldn’t this would be a problem, which is why a large part of why it’s been largely ignored outside of medical circles. The other reason being that the Lamestream Media is loath to add to the woes of Liberal politicians in an election year. Sadly, that ignorant majority is wrong; this is a problem, both financially and operationally.

For decades the US has used the WHO’s ICD as a way to standardize billing for medical procedures. Resultantly, medical practitioners have to use the proper codes in order to get reimbursed by health insurance companies or the government. These massive and largely nonsensical changes to the ICD will directly and adversely effect the operational efficiency of America’s entire healthcare industry.

ICD-10 Cost Estimates By AMA

According to the American Medical Association (AMA) the costs to medical practitioners in terms of physician productivity losses, payment disruptions, training, testing, and practice assessments, as well as the implementation itself will be staggering…and, not the least bit surprisingly, drastically higher than earlier estimates.

The markedly higher implementation costs for ICD-10 place a crushing burden on physicians, straining vital resources needed to invest in new health care delivery models and well-developed technology that promotes care coordination with real value to patients. Continuing to compel physicians to adopt this new coding structure threatens to disrupt innovations by diverting resources away from areas that are expected to help lower costs and improve the quality of care.

— Ardis Dee Hoven, MD
President, American Medical Association

In the end it will the American people seeking medical attention that will bear the burden of these regulation-imposed costs, both in direct increases in their medical costs and in the loss of medical access due to smaller practitioners being driven out of business, the reduction in medical advances, and the natural self-protection instincts of medical practitioners who may well take more conservative approaches is treatment rather than risk not being reimbursed in a timely fashion, or at all, for expensive, aggressive procedures.