Chain Up for Health Care Reform

In the health care debate, we're arguing over policy details for every special interest under the sun, but nobody is asking the basic question: "Does the US Constitution even authorize this?"

Of course it doesn't! The founding principles were all about individual liberty and freedom of choice. The health care reform bills currently under consideration in the legislature replace freedom of choice with taxation, mandates, penalties and rationing, when we need the exact opposite.

We're about to be enslaved, and we're arguing about the nature of the chains. Amazing.

Dr. Tim Ball on the Hacked CRU Emails

Well, well, well. Nothing to see here. Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for.



Falsified AGW data: outright fraud for political power and control. Al Gore, I hope you have plausible deniability (pun partially intended) -- you can say you were played for a fool. People would believe that. Otherwise, you should be ashamed. Very ashamed.

Now, I'm trying not to get my hopes up. There is still the remote possibility that the purloined papers are themselves a hoax. In that case, I guess we're back to the status quo: "Yes it is! Give me all your money!" "No it isn't! You can't make me!" Time will tell.

God and Government: Islam and West Are Incompatible

This article at American Thinker articulates a concern that I have had for a long time, namely, that the free excercise of Islam is incompatible with the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment:

Western policymakers and elites in government, academia, and the media suffer from an extraordinary ignorance about the true nature of Islam. This ignorance was on display following the murder of thirteen American troops at Fort Hood, Texas by Nidal Hasan, a devout Muslim who held the rank of Major in the U.S. Army. Hasan is said to have shouted "God is Great" in Arabic as he gunned down his unarmed fellow troops. (Continue reading...)

This is a very troubling situation, because we have a catch-22. If we allow free excercise of Islam, that involves invoking sharia law, which then violates the non-establishment clause. If we reject sharia law, then we violate free excercise. I think some of the founders were aware of this, but the number of Muslims in the colonies was zero to none, and the founders probably did not expect them to come here in large numbers for a very long time. Now the world is much smaller, and they're heeere... I guess this isn't a problem for many, because we've been ignoring the Constitution for so long that practically nobody knows much about it anymore. The fact that this significant little detail bothers me isn't important to most Americans, or our elected officials.

I Missed a Huge Opportunity Yesterday

Yesterday evening, I received a call from the Republican National Committee, asking for money to win in 2010. I hemmed and hawed about not having enough money left for donations, what with all of my other donations, and finally weasled out of it.

What I should have said: I will donate to the Republican party when you have purged the politicians from the party, and replaced them all with statesmen who want to reverse government spending and the concentration of power in central government. When the party represents liberty and the founding principles as embodied in the Constitution. When you replace social justice with liberty and justice for all. Please call me when you can assure me you have accomplished that. In the meantime, my hard earned dollars are going to the Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association.

I would say the same thing to a fundraiser for the Democrats too. Support for the fundamental principles of the Constitution should be the same for both parties.

Here's an Idea...

Yesterday, Barack Obama gave a short speech about an upcoming "Jobs Summit". He said that he welcomes any idea that will help create new jobs. Mr. Obama, here's my idea.

Letter to Lindsey Graham

Dear Senator Graham,

I saw you On the Record with Greta last night. When you said that you would require Nancy Pelosi to promise to leave out certain provisions of the house health care bill in order to pass the senate, well sir, my jaw just dropped.

I cannot believe that you are going to gamble our liberty on Nancy Pelosi keeping a promise! Nancy Pelosi takes no prisoners. She will agree to anything to get what she wants, and once she gets it, will do whatever benefits her agenda. She is a lot like Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein in that regard.

Why not vote the bill down unconditionally, and take another run at it? We do need health care reform in this country (but it is NOT the highest priority -- think economy and energy instead). To be effective and protect our liberty, health care reform should be the EXACT OPPOSITE of the house bill! Here are my suggestions:

• NO Government Takeover of Health Care
• NO Public Option or co-ops or government run "exchanges" of any kind
• NO Mandates
• NO Vote for Cloture or other sleazy methods of getting the bill passed (i.e. reconciliation or attaching it as an amendment to another bill)
• YES to totally eliminating barriers to buying health insurance across state lines
• YES to real tort reform
• YES to genuinely decreasing the mandates on health insurance companies and policies so that smaller, more flexible companies and policies are allowed exist and compete
• YES to allowing everyone to claim tax credits for providing health insurance, from corporations to small businesses to those that are self employed
• YES to cracking open the potential of Health Savings Accounts (HSA's) by increasing the ceiling on maximum donations that each person can make each year
• YES to cafeteria style choices for all individuals or businesses, so that each consumer is at liberty to choose the insurance that he/she wants to pay for and meets their personal needs
• YES to allowing real freedom of choice for consumers who want to purchase high deductible policies in combination with an HSA or catastrophic policy
• YES to cutting out waste and fraud by VERIFYING the citizenship of everyone who receives an entitlement benefit
• YES to transparency and accountability - we want the entire bill, in its final legislative language put online for at least 72 hours prior to voting, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office being completed at least 72 hours before any voting is allowed to take place

Note that Nancy Pelosi DID NOT live up to her promise to give We the People 72 hours to read the bill before the house vote.

Sincerely,
Karl Uppiano

Science vs. Religion

Science and Religion Are Not Incompatible, They Are Orthogonal.

The title “Science vs. Religion” uses “vs.” in the mathematical sense: science and religion plotted on perpendicular axes on a chart. Science and religion are not incompatible, they are orthogonal. In mathematics and linear algebra, orthogonality refers to two perpendicular coordinate systems or sets whose dot product is zero. That is, one space does not project onto the other. This may seem restrictive, but taken together, the single-dimensional x- and y-axes form a much richer space: a two-dimensional plane. Science and religion complement each other in the same way.

Letter to Congressman Larsen

Dear Congressman Larsen,

I just received your missive about your vote on the health care bill. In it, you state that the status quo is unacceptable. Perhaps it is, but did you really have to introduce a whole new garganuan bureaucracy, complete with mandates and penalties for private citizens? Why not this:

• NO Government Takeover of Health Care
• NO Public Option or co-ops or government run "exchanges" of any kind
• NO Mandates
• NO Vote for Cloture or other sleazy methods of getting the bill passed (i.e. reconciliation or attaching it as an amendment to another bill)
• YES to totally eliminating barriers to buying health insurance across state lines
• YES to real tort reform
• YES to genuinely decreasing the mandates on health insurance companies and policies so that smaller, more flexible companies and policies are allowed exist and compete
• YES to allowing everyone to claim tax credits for providing health insurance, from corporations to small businesses to those that are self employed
• YES to cracking open the potential of Health Savings Accounts (HSA's) by increasing the ceiling on maximum donations that each person can make each year
• YES to cafeteria style choices for all individuals or businesses, so that each consumer is at liberty to choose the insurance that he/she wants to pay for and meets their personal needs
• YES to allowing real freedom of choice for consumers who want to purchase high deductible policies in combination with an HSA or catastrophic policy
• YES to cutting out waste and fraud by VERIFYING the citizenship of everyone who receives an entitlement benefit
• YES to transparency and accountability - we want the entire bill, in its final legislative language put online for at least 72 hours prior to voting, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office being completed at least 72 hours before any voting is allowed to take place

I do think it is a little odd that health care suddenly became the cause du jour when we have much more pressing needs (e.g., recession, energy costs). Nobody was clamoring for health care reform. It just rode in with the statist takeover in 2006 and 2008.

You're a nice guy and all, but you obviously do not understand the founding principles at all (or perhaps you're a progressive who rejects them). Either way, my task is clear: To do everything possible in my power to legally make sure you never work in this town after 2010. I can't wait to campaign, donate, and vote.

What if We Said This Today, and Meant It?

Replace "King of Great Britain" with "President, and Congress, and Supreme Court of These United States", and then say this:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The founders considered natural law ("laws of nature, and of nature's God") to be self-evident. Those natural laws included life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (to name three; most of them are enshrined in our Bill of Rights).

Now, 233 years later, hardly anybody even knows what natural law is, or what rights it represents. The founders considered these rights inalienable, because they are part of the natural universe; they're not any government's to grant or infringe. Any government that attempts it, is working against nature -- including human nature. Misery is the result, regardless of good intentions.