Do Canadians Enjoy Waiting for Health Care?
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By Bradley Doucet
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December 10, 2009 -- As the U.S. Senate argues about how best to take over the American health care industry, it is worth taking a look at how government health insurance works here in Canada, where I live. Judging from popular opinion, one would think Canadian health care was great. My fellow Canadians by and large love their single-payer, universal coverage, according to a recent Nanos Research poll. Fully 80 percent of the 1,005 Canadians interviewed support universal health care, with another ten percent supporting it somewhat. A mere five percent were opposed or somewhat opposed, with the remaining five percent unsure.
Yet these poll results are frankly surprising, because universal coverage in Canada comes at a high cost: long waiting lists. The free-market Fraser Institute's latest annual report on waiting lists was released on October 29, 2009. The study found that "waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed" was about 16 weeks this past year. While improved slightly from around 17 weeks the year before, this is still an awfully long time to wait, whether for cancer treatment (5 weeks), "elective" heart surgery (8 weeks), or brain surgery (33 weeks!). Patients also waited over 4 weeks for a CT scan and almost 9 weeks for an MRI.
To be fair, roughly one third of respondents in the Nanos poll mentioned above identified "waiting times for treatment / lack of accessibility" as our system's key weakness. Another 14 percent thought the fact that there are "not enough doctors, nurses and/or personnel" was its number one failing. Still, in spite of these defects, most Canadians support our system. Why aren't more Canadians more upset about having to wait for health care?
The Doctor Won't See You Shortly!
There are surely many reasons Canadians support our flawed system, warts and all. One of the foremost is that we really do want everyone to have access to health care. We have big hearts, and we can't stand the idea of someone going without just because he can't afford to pay. This is all well and good, even if we are a little misguided about how to reach this goal, as I will discuss below. But on the flip side—and far less flattering to our national self-image—many Canadians also can't stand the idea of someone jumping to the head of the queue just because he can afford to pay. Everyone must be equal, even if it means being equally miserable. Of course in reality, some people (i.e., those with pull) are much more equal than others. And notice how the existence of a queue is not even called into question by this line of thinking.
A truly voluntary society would allow individuals to make their own decisions about health care.
Some people, though, are probably unaware of just how long waiting times are. They may not know anyone who has been seriously ill of late, or they may know someone who got lucky and waited "only" four weeks for heart surgery instead of an average eight (or an above-average twelve).
Conversely, many of those who do realize how flawed our system is nonetheless believe that the alternative of free market care would be worse. They look south of the border, to the United States, and see a system that, while not as damaged as some maintain, has some very real problems. But strangely, they attribute these problems to the market. They ignore the fact that health care is one of the most regulated industries in the United States. Large parts of the system are already controlled by the government, providing coverage to the poor and elderly. More importantly, it is the American government itself that has caused the price of health insurance to skyrocket, although admittedly in somewhat convoluted ways. (See an earlier installment of this column for more details.) Personally, I blame our schools, which do a terrible job of educating students about how market competition efficiently lowers costs while raising quality and promoting innovation.
Toward a Voluntary Society
In addition to these economic misunderstandings, though, many Canadians have been seduced—with language about society and solidarity—into glossing over the moral issue of force. Taxation is force. Government-funded health care is health care at the point of a gun. It is more flattering to one's ego, however, to focus on one's generosity than to focus on how one is willing to force others to be generous, too. Some are willing to bite this bullet, saying that everyone has an obligation to help others. But by what right does one person impose unchosen obligations on another? I have never gotten a satisfactory answer to this question. Most people would rather just talk about something else.
Health insurance to cover unpredictable and expensive illnesses or injuries is generally a good thing to have. The important point here is that not all good things should be provided by government. In fact, when governments decide what is good for us, they prevent individuals from making their own individual decisions—for instance, decisions about how much and what specific kinds of insurance they want. More essentially, if every individual human being owns himself, then the initiation of force must be disallowed. Governments need to focus on their proper role, which is keeping the peace by defending the rights of individuals to live their lives as they see fit. Governments need to keep their hands off of everything else, lest they become guilty of the very harm they are entrusted to prevent: the initiation of force.
A truly voluntary society would not mandate what kinds of treatments must be covered by insurers, nor dictate that employers provide health coverage, nor subsidize employer-provided health care as against individual insurance, nor prevent interstate commerce—all measures that drive up the price of health insurance in the United States. A truly voluntary society would allow individuals to make their own decisions about health care, and about charitable giving. And a truly voluntary society would allow market actors to provide health care and health insurance. In so doing, that society would enjoy a system that was more flexible, more responsive, more affordable, more timely, and more innovative than any that currently exists anywhere on the planet. It would be both more just and more efficient, because unlike what we have been taught for millennia by just about every ethical system under the sun, the moral and the practical are actually one and the same. --
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Rachel Maddow: Fox Is All About Electing GOP, But MSNBC Has No Political Objective!
Rachael Maddow: What a guy! Clueless, but the epitome of a Moonbat! To top it off, there are many of those clueless "Left of Center" individuals that truly believe her! Of course, these are the folks who more likely than not depend upon Rache for their news.....
By Tim Graham | January 02, 2012 | 00:10
In an interview with Slate.com, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow unloaded the bizarre claim that Fox News is "operating with a political objective to elect Republican candidates," but MSNBC doesn't resemble that in any way.
"I think the thing that is underappreciated about MSNBC is that we don't really do anything as a company, that we all sorta get to do our own thing," she claimed. "There may be liberals on TV at MSNBC, but the network is not operating with a political objective."
I think that the new model in cable in news broadcasting is that when you hear a host talk, you are expecting that they are saying exactly what they believe...We are actually saying what we think. We are not playing a role. We are not being fake-objective. We are not being directed in political talking points in any way. That it's us. That means management has to be hands off with all of us, because in order for you to believe that The Rachel Maddow Show is saying what this person named Rachel Maddow believes, there can't be anybody else telling me what to say. So that's the rule with everybody. Everybody gets to say their own piece.
Slate's Jacob Weisberg unspooled the usual liberal attack line: "There's no Roger Ailes moving the chess pieces around with the goal of advancing the conservative cause, you know 'Glenn Beck, you're good for the cause,' 'Nope, you're not good for the cause any more. You're out.' He somehow ignored that MSNBC dumped Keith Olbermann (like Beck left Fox), or that all around Maddow, they've moved the chess pieces of Ed Schultz and Larry O'Donnell.
Maddow played along. "Yeah. That's exactly right. We are not, we, there may be liberals on TV at MSNBC, but the network is not operating with a political objective. Whereas Fox is operating with a political objective to elect Republican candidates, and particularly, to elect Republican candidates Roger Ailes likes. I think Roger Ailes is a really good TV executive, but their operation is essentially a political operation to elect Republicans."
Weisberg asked if the network was a propaganda channel and if liberal journalists should refuse to appear on Fox News and help it out, since it's apparently not real journalism (like Newsweek when Weisberg was there?) Maddow seemed to agree with that boycotting idea.
MADDOW: I don't think that the Republican Party calls Fox in the morning and tells Fox what to do. I think that Fox essentially starts broadcasting every day and the Republican Party takes their cues from them. I think that Roger Ailes is a Republican political operative, but that the arrows go from him out, not toward him. I can't imagine him taking direction from anybody. He doesn't need to. I mean, who's going to call him? Reince Priebus? [Laughter] Really? Tell Roger Ailes what to do? I don't think it works that way.
WEISBERG: It's the other way around.
MADDOW: Yeah. So you have to consider if you're going to make a decision to help Fox out, to get more people to watch them, and to validate what they do by being there, you have to decide if you want to be part of their project, and their project is to elect Republicans, and to move the Republican Party right on specific issues that Roger Ailes cares about, and Rupert Murdoch cares about.
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http://www.libertywillwin.com/node/3No --
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.....the forum for free & fair debate, Everyone welcome. Hate Obama's health care plan, tell us!
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Gingrich's run turned ideas like establishing a U.S. moon colony and
having school children work as janitors into front-page fodder. His
campaign descended into near farce last month when he was bitten in
the hand by a penguin during a visit to a zoo in St. Louis.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/02/us-usa-campaign-gingrich-idUSBRE8411CK20120502
'I would have been dead or in jail if Newt had won." - tedfan
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having school children work as janitors into front-page fodder. His
campaign descended into near farce last month when he was bitten in
the hand by a penguin during a visit to a zoo in St. Louis.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/02/us-usa-campaign-gingrich-idUSBRE8411CK20120502
'I would have been dead or in jail if Newt had won." - tedfan
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"Let us see. Incontrovertible truth: government has no resources of its own. Everything it has it takes from you and me or borrows. How does forcible extraction of private resources in the service of bigger bureaucracies and transfer payments cause new kinds of prosperity to come into existence? What you take, you have, but there is no turning stones into bread here.
"It's even worse than pure redistribution of wealth. It is actually destruction of wealth for government to rob and spend. This is because it is taking resources from highly valued uses to channel them into less-valuable uses. We know this because it would not happen absent the use of force. People's preferences for the use of resources are being overridden."
If Government Spends Less, Are We Sunk?
Jeffrey Tucker · May 2, 2012
Easy prediction: Congress will not cut spending. The hysteria in Washington is for naught, as usual. There will be no "austerity," at least not the kind brought on by cuts in government. Nor will there be curbs on the Fed. Our credit-drenched, phoney-money culture would never stand for it.
But let's just pretend that this fantasy did come true, for once. What would happen?
Try not to be intimidated by what the supposed experts say; rather, think about the following sentence using logic and critical intelligence: "Cutbacks in government spending… will eat into growth." This statement of seeming ironclad truth was pushed in an editorial in The New York Times. It is without argument or evidence, but it presumes the truth of the "fiscal multiplier effect."
Let us see. Incontrovertible truth: government has no resources of its own. Everything it has it takes from you and me or borrows. How does forcible extraction of private resources in the service of bigger bureaucracies and transfer payments cause new kinds of prosperity to come into existence? What you take, you have, but there is no turning stones into bread here.
It's even worse than pure redistribution of wealth. It is actually destruction of wealth for government to rob and spend. This is because it is taking resources from highly valued uses to channel them into less-valuable uses. We know this because it would not happen absent the use of force. People's preferences for the use of resources are being overridden.
How does that create or sustain prosperity? Of course, it doesn't. If it did, there would be no economic problem to solve, no need for savings and investment, no need for risk taking or economic calculation of profit and loss. To create prosperity, you would need only unleash the looter state. Absurd.
In fact, the opposite is true. Cuts in government spending release resources from less-valued uses into more-valued uses. It puts wealth back into the hands of private parties, in which it can be saved and invested with economic rationality. The Keynesians have it exactly backward. Defunding bureaucracies and transfer payments provides new and productive funding for entrepreneurs and wealth creation in the private sector.
And hey, this isn't just speculation. This is precisely what happened after World War II. FDR died and the political system went into full-scale upheaval. His successor, President Harry Truman, didn't have his stride, a congressional election produced unexpected results, many wartime controls were allowed to expire and, for a variety of reasons, the wartime leviathan began to melt away.
David Henderson beautifully illustrates the point:
Paul Samuelson, the leading American Keynesian, warned against dismantling wartime planning. He wrote in 1943 that such a plan would usher "in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced."
This was his prediction. Of course, the exact opposite occurred!
The most-spectacular thing concerns the reabsorption of military workers into civilian life. More than 10 million people who might have been unemployed found work. This was a readjustment that hardly anyone expected, and a fantastic tribute to the capacity of the market economy to deliver seeming miracles that defy all the predictions of disaster.
Again, Henderson writes:
Given this history, the prescription for our current troubles reverses all the conventional wisdom. Cut government spending dramatically. Cut taxes. Get rid of regulations and controls. In sum, free the economy! You can say it and prove it ten thousand times, but it makes no difference. A convinced Keynesian is a tough nut to crack.
http://lfb.org/today/if-government-spends-less-are-we-sunk/
"It's even worse than pure redistribution of wealth. It is actually destruction of wealth for government to rob and spend. This is because it is taking resources from highly valued uses to channel them into less-valuable uses. We know this because it would not happen absent the use of force. People's preferences for the use of resources are being overridden."
If Government Spends Less, Are We Sunk?
Jeffrey Tucker · May 2, 2012
Easy prediction: Congress will not cut spending. The hysteria in Washington is for naught, as usual. There will be no "austerity," at least not the kind brought on by cuts in government. Nor will there be curbs on the Fed. Our credit-drenched, phoney-money culture would never stand for it.
But let's just pretend that this fantasy did come true, for once. What would happen?
Try not to be intimidated by what the supposed experts say; rather, think about the following sentence using logic and critical intelligence: "Cutbacks in government spending… will eat into growth." This statement of seeming ironclad truth was pushed in an editorial in The New York Times. It is without argument or evidence, but it presumes the truth of the "fiscal multiplier effect."
Let us see. Incontrovertible truth: government has no resources of its own. Everything it has it takes from you and me or borrows. How does forcible extraction of private resources in the service of bigger bureaucracies and transfer payments cause new kinds of prosperity to come into existence? What you take, you have, but there is no turning stones into bread here.
It's even worse than pure redistribution of wealth. It is actually destruction of wealth for government to rob and spend. This is because it is taking resources from highly valued uses to channel them into less-valuable uses. We know this because it would not happen absent the use of force. People's preferences for the use of resources are being overridden.
How does that create or sustain prosperity? Of course, it doesn't. If it did, there would be no economic problem to solve, no need for savings and investment, no need for risk taking or economic calculation of profit and loss. To create prosperity, you would need only unleash the looter state. Absurd.
In fact, the opposite is true. Cuts in government spending release resources from less-valued uses into more-valued uses. It puts wealth back into the hands of private parties, in which it can be saved and invested with economic rationality. The Keynesians have it exactly backward. Defunding bureaucracies and transfer payments provides new and productive funding for entrepreneurs and wealth creation in the private sector.
And hey, this isn't just speculation. This is precisely what happened after World War II. FDR died and the political system went into full-scale upheaval. His successor, President Harry Truman, didn't have his stride, a congressional election produced unexpected results, many wartime controls were allowed to expire and, for a variety of reasons, the wartime leviathan began to melt away.
David Henderson beautifully illustrates the point:
- "In the four years from peak World War II spending in 1944 to 1948, the U.S. government cut spending by $72 billion a 75% reduction. It brought federal spending down from a peak of 44% of gross national product (GNP) in 1944 to only 8.9% in 1948, a drop of over 35 percentage points of GNP.
- "While government spending fell like a stone, federal tax revenues fell only a little, from a peak of $44.4 billion in 1945 to $39.7 billion in 1947 and $41.4 billion in 1948. In other words, from peak to trough, tax revenues fell by only $4.7 billion, or 10.6%. Yet the economy boomed. The unemployment rate, which was artificially low at the end of the war because many millions of workers had been drafted into the U.S. armed services, did increase. But during the years from 1945-48, it reached its peak at only 3.9% in 1946, and for the months from September 1945 to December 1948, the average unemployment rate was only 3.5%."
- "While government spending fell like a stone, federal tax revenues fell only a little, from a peak of $44.4 billion in 1945 to $39.7 billion in 1947 and $41.4 billion in 1948. In other words, from peak to trough, tax revenues fell by only $4.7 billion, or 10.6%. Yet the economy boomed. The unemployment rate, which was artificially low at the end of the war because many millions of workers had been drafted into the U.S. armed services, did increase. But during the years from 1945-48, it reached its peak at only 3.9% in 1946, and for the months from September 1945 to December 1948, the average unemployment rate was only 3.5%."
Paul Samuelson, the leading American Keynesian, warned against dismantling wartime planning. He wrote in 1943 that such a plan would usher "in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced."
This was his prediction. Of course, the exact opposite occurred!
The most-spectacular thing concerns the reabsorption of military workers into civilian life. More than 10 million people who might have been unemployed found work. This was a readjustment that hardly anyone expected, and a fantastic tribute to the capacity of the market economy to deliver seeming miracles that defy all the predictions of disaster.
Again, Henderson writes:
- "Indeed, in just the 11-month period between August 1945 and July 1946, the number of people in the U.S. military fell from 12 million to 2.7 million, a drop of 9.3 million. Over those same 11 months, civilian employment grew from 53.6 million to 57.8 million, an increase of 4.2 million people. The number of unemployed people did increase, rising from 0.8 million to 2.3 million, but with a civilian labor force of 60.1 million, the 2.3 million unemployed people implied an unemployment rate of only 3.8%."
Given this history, the prescription for our current troubles reverses all the conventional wisdom. Cut government spending dramatically. Cut taxes. Get rid of regulations and controls. In sum, free the economy! You can say it and prove it ten thousand times, but it makes no difference. A convinced Keynesian is a tough nut to crack.
http://lfb.org/today/if-government-spends-less-are-we-sunk/
Are Gay Men Welcome in the G.O.P.?
Posted by Alex Koppelman
For a little while there, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Presidential
nominee of the Grand Old Party, was going to have an openly gay man as
one of his campaign spokesmen. As of yesterday, that isn't true
anymore.
Richard Grenell, who'd worked in the Administration of the second
President Bush, was supposed to start his new job as a foreign-policy
spokesman for the Romney campaign yesterday. Instead, he resigned.
According to Jennifer Rubin, a blogger for the Washington Post who's
been a staunch Romney supporter, Grenell's resignation came as a
result of complaints social conservatives made about his hiring; that
had been going on ever since he joined the campaign, but, according to
Rubin, he decided to resign because he felt he was being kept "under
wraps."
It would be easy to react to Grenell's decision by saying, as Teddy
Goff, the digital director of Obama for America, did, "Today we
learned that in the year 2012, a Republican nominee for President
can't have a gay person as spokesman."
Easy—but wrong. The issue isn't sexuality, per se, but it does appear
to be about the degree of openness about sexuality—and about the
Romney campaign's continuing efforts to woo social conservatives. The
G.O.P. establishment has long tolerated gay men who were open to some
degree about their sexual orientation—their bosses knew, their
co-workers knew, their friends knew, their family knew, but the public
didn't. (Michelangelo Signorile once dubbed this sort of thing "the
glass closet"—in the closet, but with some people allowed to see in.)
Even Rick Santorum, back when he was a senator, had as his director of
communications Robert Traynham, a gay man who was reportedly out to
his boss for some time before he was publicly outed by the activist
Mike Rogers. There are plenty of other gay men working at high levels
in the Republican Party: Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Bush's
reëlection, and later the chairman of the Republican National
Committee, for instance. His sexuality was for years only barely
secret, though he didn't officially come out until a few years after
he left his post at the R.N.C. And, of course, Grenell himself worked
in the last Republican Administration.
Having an openly gay spokesman is something different, though, even at
a time when attitudes about issues like same-sex marriage have shifted
dramatically, as Anne Stringfield noted in her post yesterday about
North Carolina's Amendment 1. That's especially true for someone like
Mitt Romney. He's no Nixon going to China; his credentials as a
conservative are already suspect, and social-conservative groups saw
this as another sign that he can't really be trusted. It didn't help
that Grenell was outspoken about his sexuality and about his position
on same-sex marriage. The real irony: if Rick Santorum had been the
nominee, it might have been a different story.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/05/mitt-romney-spokesman-richard-grenell-resigns.html#ixzz1tkaXRZj4
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
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Posted by Alex Koppelman
For a little while there, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Presidential
nominee of the Grand Old Party, was going to have an openly gay man as
one of his campaign spokesmen. As of yesterday, that isn't true
anymore.
Richard Grenell, who'd worked in the Administration of the second
President Bush, was supposed to start his new job as a foreign-policy
spokesman for the Romney campaign yesterday. Instead, he resigned.
According to Jennifer Rubin, a blogger for the Washington Post who's
been a staunch Romney supporter, Grenell's resignation came as a
result of complaints social conservatives made about his hiring; that
had been going on ever since he joined the campaign, but, according to
Rubin, he decided to resign because he felt he was being kept "under
wraps."
It would be easy to react to Grenell's decision by saying, as Teddy
Goff, the digital director of Obama for America, did, "Today we
learned that in the year 2012, a Republican nominee for President
can't have a gay person as spokesman."
Easy—but wrong. The issue isn't sexuality, per se, but it does appear
to be about the degree of openness about sexuality—and about the
Romney campaign's continuing efforts to woo social conservatives. The
G.O.P. establishment has long tolerated gay men who were open to some
degree about their sexual orientation—their bosses knew, their
co-workers knew, their friends knew, their family knew, but the public
didn't. (Michelangelo Signorile once dubbed this sort of thing "the
glass closet"—in the closet, but with some people allowed to see in.)
Even Rick Santorum, back when he was a senator, had as his director of
communications Robert Traynham, a gay man who was reportedly out to
his boss for some time before he was publicly outed by the activist
Mike Rogers. There are plenty of other gay men working at high levels
in the Republican Party: Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Bush's
reëlection, and later the chairman of the Republican National
Committee, for instance. His sexuality was for years only barely
secret, though he didn't officially come out until a few years after
he left his post at the R.N.C. And, of course, Grenell himself worked
in the last Republican Administration.
Having an openly gay spokesman is something different, though, even at
a time when attitudes about issues like same-sex marriage have shifted
dramatically, as Anne Stringfield noted in her post yesterday about
North Carolina's Amendment 1. That's especially true for someone like
Mitt Romney. He's no Nixon going to China; his credentials as a
conservative are already suspect, and social-conservative groups saw
this as another sign that he can't really be trusted. It didn't help
that Grenell was outspoken about his sexuality and about his position
on same-sex marriage. The real irony: if Rick Santorum had been the
nominee, it might have been a different story.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/05/mitt-romney-spokesman-richard-grenell-resigns.html#ixzz1tkaXRZj4
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
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* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
Newt Gingrich Suspends Campaign, Doubts He Will Ever Be President of The Moon
'Goodnight Moon Colony' Bids Farewell To Newt Gingrich Campaign
With Newt Gingrich dropping out of the presidential race the United
States is sadly saying goodbye to its hopes of a moon colony. In order
to commemorate the sad occasion, Comedy Central has released a new
children's book, "Goodnight Moon Colony."
The Comedy Central introduced the book this morning, saying:
"Our storybook farewell to Newt Gingrich's campaign which we'll always
remember for its nuanced policy positions and bold vision of… ah,
screw it. We'll remember the moon colony thing."
Earlier this year Newt Gingrich promised that if he was made
president, America would have a colony base on the moon by the end of
his second term. Gingrich said:
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base
on the moon and it will be American… I will, as president, encourage
the introduction of the northwest ordinance for space to put a marker
down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we
want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard and together,
we're going to unleash the American people to build the country we
love."
The comment created a steady stream of jokes on programs like "The
Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "Saturday Night Live." Now that
Newt's ending his campaign, the writers at Comedy Central will have to
work a little harder for their material.
Here are some images from "Goodnight Moon Colony."
http://www.inquisitr.com/229037/goodnight-moon-colony-bids-farewell-to-newt-gingrich-campaign/
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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'Goodnight Moon Colony' Bids Farewell To Newt Gingrich Campaign
With Newt Gingrich dropping out of the presidential race the United
States is sadly saying goodbye to its hopes of a moon colony. In order
to commemorate the sad occasion, Comedy Central has released a new
children's book, "Goodnight Moon Colony."
The Comedy Central introduced the book this morning, saying:
"Our storybook farewell to Newt Gingrich's campaign which we'll always
remember for its nuanced policy positions and bold vision of… ah,
screw it. We'll remember the moon colony thing."
Earlier this year Newt Gingrich promised that if he was made
president, America would have a colony base on the moon by the end of
his second term. Gingrich said:
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base
on the moon and it will be American… I will, as president, encourage
the introduction of the northwest ordinance for space to put a marker
down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we
want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard and together,
we're going to unleash the American people to build the country we
love."
The comment created a steady stream of jokes on programs like "The
Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "Saturday Night Live." Now that
Newt's ending his campaign, the writers at Comedy Central will have to
work a little harder for their material.
Here are some images from "Goodnight Moon Colony."
http://www.inquisitr.com/229037/goodnight-moon-colony-bids-farewell-to-newt-gingrich-campaign/
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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Because the commie in the RED HOUSE…is using it as his NEW SLOGAN!!
I should have copied and pasted it yesterday!!! WELCOME TO AMERIKA!!! STILL THINK WE ARE THE HOME
OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE? MORE LIKE THE SENSORED AND THE ASLEEP!
John just informed me!
Just heard that the Obama staff and supporters have successfully strong armed Wikipedia into deleting all the "Forward" references to communism.
JK
Forward (Obama-Biden Campaign Slogan)
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.On April 30th, 2012 the 2012 Obama-Biden campaign announced the slogan "Forward"[1].
1. ^ http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/04/30/151719139/obama-forward-video-presidents-re-election-argument-in-nutshell
Obama 'Forward' Video: President's Case For Re-Election In A Nutshell
Categories: 2012, White House
06:15 pm
April 30, 2012
by Frank James
A video released Monday by President Obama's re-election campaign looks a whole lot like an abridged version of something you might expect to see in a prime-time slot at the Democratic National Convention.
The video titled "Forward" distills much of Obama's argument for his re-election. It opens with news footage meant to recall how truly perilous was the state of the economy leading into his election, then leads into his achievements in office — the economic stimulus, health-care reform, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden, among them.
YouTube MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THIS PIECE OF CRAP! Good news is this is 7 minutes long…so where is he going to run this? Not on TV!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WbQe-wVK9E&feature=player_embedded
And in case any voters have forgotten, the video seeks to remind them of the near unanimous opposition of congressional Republicans to most of Obama's agenda.
Towards the end, a list of what the administration views as its successes flashes serially on the screen, ended by words sure to chill many of his opponents: "But there's still more to do."
As part of the official Republican response to the video, the Republican National Committee employed a Twitter hashtag "stumbling #forward" and issued a release with the headline: "With No Record To Run On, The Obama Campaign Is Selling The Promise Of A Better Tomorrow Based On The Policies Failing Us Today"
SOURCE: ^ http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/04/30/151719139/obama-forward-video-presidents-re-election-argument-in-nutshell
Victoria Baer
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"It does not take a majority to prevail…but a rather irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." ~Samuel Adams
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So You Want To Own a Gun
Posted By Bob Owens On April 15, 2012
PJ Media actually hit me with a pretty tall order with what appeared to be a simple suggestion for an article: a step-by-step process for those who know absolutely nada about guns yet want to arm themselves.
My immediate response — "Sure, I'll get right on it" — was tempered roughly .00093 nanoseconds later by the realization of the task ahead of me.
Getting a gun — especially the first one — is a pretty big deal.
For those of us who grow up in "gun cultures" where firearms are merely another tool and fact of life, getting your first gun may consist of getting a pint-sized .22-caliber single shot rifle almost as long as you are tall when you are a child. It is a simple and expected rite of passage that is a mark of growing expectations, trust, and new-found maturity.
We're generally accompanied by an experienced and patient relative — a father, grandfather, aunt, or older sibling — and the time we spend with those first firearms fills us with nostalgia in later years. The adventures spent afield plinking at cans and paper targets or hunting is remembered as much or more for the bonding and the fellowship as it is for the experience of shooting a gun itself.
Over time, if we have good and patient instructors, we learn and apply the rules of gun safety religiously, develop an appreciation for the joy of marksmanship, and find a reverence and respect for nature that those who choose to remove themselves from the circle of life will never know. It is the sort of upbringing I experienced with my father. It is similar to the stories captured by fellow North Carolinian Robert Ruark in The Old Man and the Boy, his much-loved classic.
For those of us who come into knowing firearms this way, guns are pleasant touchstones connecting the past, present, and future. Many others have found similar if more transient first impressions about guns at summer camps or with scouting or similar youth groups, and they either chose to pursue their passion later in life or to hold the experiences as a fond memory.
Unfortunately, as our culture urbanizes and suburbanizes, and woodlands and fields fall prey to mall sprawl and McMansions, the first impressions many of us get of firearms don't come with gentle guidance. All too often, it comes through the crime reports on the evening news, the bloodied visages of victims of a tyrant's military oppression, or the heart-rending stories of suicides, murders, and accidents. This is compounded by ever-more-bloody Hollywood entertainment and video games that promote the most shocking and puerile use of weapons imaginable. We've become acculturated to view guns as malevolent occupying entities that have the power to thrust bloodlust upon us simply by picking them up, or as booby traps that will go off unexpectedly at the slightest touch. As a result of this cultural brainwashing, it is sometimes more difficult to get adults to act rationally around guns than children.
Despite these manufactured fears, gun ownership in the U.S. is now at its highest level in history [1]. Obviously, even the saturated biases of media aren't all influencing.
So you're interested in getting your first gun. Where should you start? First, you need to know what you plan to do with it.
Unfortunately, many first-time shooters feel pressured into buying their first firearm by the circumstance of fear. When I worked behind the gun counter as a salesman at a sporting goods chain, many of my first-time customers were young couples that had recently experienced a burglary or a similar "wake-up call" when a crime shattered the illusion of safety they had in their neighborhood.
This is not the best time to to buy a weapon. When you're emotional, you tend to latch on to the first thing that might possibly provide something that approximates a good answer to your problem. That leads to buyer's remorse. Nevertheless, if you have reason to fear an immediate crime from a specific source, just about any firearm is better than none.
In this specific unfortunate circumstance, I would try to guide the customer to a reasonably priced weapon that provides a balance of defensive firepower, practical accuracy, and user safety. At the time and in my long-gun-only chain, that choice was often either a .410 or a 20-gauge "youth and ladies" shotgun. The specific caliber, action, and configuration depended upon the specific characteristics of the users.
I tended to steer physically infirm or petite shooters towards the .410 because of the reduced recoil and lighter weight frame. I have a friend who is 6 feet tall and 240 pounds man and has severe carpal tunnel syndrome. He can't hang on to a gun with any noticeable recoil. The .410 would be the better option for him or for many people with similar maladies. I typically recommended the 20-gauge for other users, as it would provide an adequate mix of stopping power, inherent accuracy, and safety. I'd then try to tailor the ammunition to their specific living arrangements. If they lived in apartment buildings or densely packed urban housing, I'd generally suggest larger "game load" shot sizes used for hunting rabbits. If they lived in the suburbs, where there is a little more of a space buffer between homes, I'd recommend lower velocity duck hunting or turkey hunting loads. Unless a couple lived alone (no kids or pets) in a rural area, I almost never recommended the "conventional wisdom" defensive loading of buckshot, as the stout recoil, deafening indoor blast, and risk of overpenetration was too great of a risk.
Fortunately, most people won't find themselves in such a stressful position when contemplating their first gun purchases. Instead, they will be able to go find out what is best for their needs in a more relaxed and contemplative manner.
It returns to that first essential question: What do you you want to be able to do with your gun?
Are you going to buy it and a box of ammo and stick it in the back of the closet for "just in case"? Or are you going to buy a gun because shooting looks like a lot of fun? Do you intend to shoot socially, maybe even in some sort of shooting sport or competition? Are you looking at weapons because of an uncertain economic future? Are you a fledgling collector looking for a historical piece? Are you fascinated by marksmanship?
Congratulations! Any or all of these reasons (and hundreds more) are great reasons for starting down the path to gun ownership, which we'll begin tackling in more detail in the next installment.
Also read:
Bunkers, Food, Armor: Disaster Prep Hits Mainstream [2]
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/so-you-want-to-own-a-gun/
URLs in this post:
[1] highest level in history: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/midwest/view/20120406obama_factor_keeps_ammunition_factory_humming/
[2] Bunkers, Food, Armor: Disaster Prep Hits Mainstream: http://pjmedia.com/blog/bunkers-food-armor-disaster-prep-hits-mainstream/
So You Want To Own a Gun (Part Two)
Posted By Bob Owens On April 27, 2012 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 38 Comments
With our initial installment [1], we discussed how people come about wanting to own their own firearm, and the pivotal question for all first-time purchasers: "What do you want to be able to do with your gun?"
The answers are as varied as the people considering gun ownership. You may want to be able to protect yourself and others in an insecure world; you may be nurturing a desire to master the skill of marksmanship. Possibly, the competitor in you desires to push yourself and to excel in one of many shooting sports. Or maybe, it's just: "That looks fun and I want to do it."
You know what? That's perfect. As long as you want to do it safely.
Whatever your specific interest, there are several ways to ease yourself into the world of shooting if this is your first experience with firearms. The path I'd recommend to inexperienced shooters starts with a formal beginner's class. These classes focus on demystifying the mechanics of firearms while simultaneously imparting the essential rules of gun safety.
The NRA's Home Firearm Safety course is a great non-shooting foundational class that aspires to impart "basic knowledge, skills, and to explain the attitude necessary for the safe handling and storage of firearms and ammunition in the home." It's like the classroom portion of driver's ed — such a class starts you off on the right path, putting safety first. Even if you later decide that you don't want to own a gun, you leave prepared with knowledge of gun safety, and that's never a bad thing. In an ideal world, every novice would take such a basic gun safety course (either the recommended NRA course or something comparable).
Next, ideally you would spend some range time with a friendly, knowledgeable, and patient instructor who has various firearms for you to try out and is willing to show you how firearms work and teach you basic shooting techniques.
You might be surprised to find your own circle of friends could lead to contact with someone who may be able to satisfy some or all of those goals. If you don't find such a shooting buddy, you can find gun ranges in most civilized parts of the country, where you can rent firearms (particularly handguns) and try them out.
Firearms are built with different goals in mind, and no one gun can do all things. At this point, you need to start narrowing down your goals and individual circumstances, as these are ultimately going to inform the purchase of your first gun.
If your eventual goal is to obtain a concealed carry permit or to obtain a handgun for personal protection or sport, the course of action I'd suggest is to first look at a handgun chambered in .22 Long Rifle (.22 LR). The .22 LR is an inexpensive, low recoil, and relatively quiet cartridge that allows shooters of every skill level to focus on the fundamental skills of shooting without being distracted by the kick or noise of larger-caliber weapons. I'd advise trying out both revolvers and semi-automatic pistols to decide which appeals to you, which feels more comfortable in your hand, and which has controls that you can manipulate.
At this point, you may notice a very loud wailing and gnashing of teeth around you. In all likelihood, that is the multitude of handgun shooters crying out in anguish at the mention of ".22 LR" in any proximity to a discussion of concealed carry and defensive handguns. Their complaints are not without merit — the conventional wisdom is that the smallest acceptable cartridge for self-defense is a .380 ACP in a pistol or a .38 Special in a revolver. I'm not disagreeing with that sentiment at all.
I'm suggesting you'll learn faster, and often without imparting many bad habits you have to overcome later, if you learn your fundamentals with a .22 handgun. It's all about the fundamentals. Even advanced courses boil down to learning to use the fundamentals more efficiently to promote accurate shooting. As former Delta Force operator and noted weapons trainer Larry Vickers [2] has noted: "Speed is fine. Accuracy is final."
If your goal is to learn to use a long-arm for anything other than wingshooting, I'm going to make a similar, and unsurprising, recommendation. Semi-automatic or bolt-action (your preference) .22 LR rifles are a ridiculously inexpensive entry into firearms ownership, with decent quality new rifles retailing for $200 or less, and used rifles for even less than that. Unlike most other rifles, rifles chambered in .22 LR are also welcome on many "pistol only" ranges that don't have the ability to safely contain centerfire rifles. Again, practice is key. So where do you get the training you need in order to learn the fundamentals?
While is is often abused as a political punching bag, the National Rifle Association does a marvelous job of firearms education with the Home Firearms Safety course, and then their hands-on "FIRST Steps" and "Basic" series of classes [3] for owners of rifles, pistols, and shotguns. They also have a well-regarded hunter safety program that is required in many states to get a hunting license. In general, these NRA courses are the McDonald's of firearms instruction: you're going to get the same basic ingredients prepared the same way, and you'll find them almost everywhere. For what they offer as foundational courses rooted in safety, they are hard to beat.
A very useful rifle-specific alternative to NRA rifle training is Project Appleseed [4], which is a combination of rifle marksmanship training and American heritage that welcomes rifle shooters of any stripe, and is designed around a course of fire tailored to those carrying magazine-fed .22 LR semiautomatics.
We're talking foundational shooting, which probably is disconcerting news to someone interested in whether their first pistol should be either X or Y. Your first gun should be one that you can use to master the fundamentals. After you've fired a few thousand rounds downrange, you'll have a better idea of who you are as a shooter and will be able to make a more informed decision on what will satisfy your particular needs.
Of course, merely buying a gun doesn't make you a shooter any more than buying a car makes you a NASCAR driver. In our next installment, we'll talk specifically about gun and purpose-specific training.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/so-you-want-to-own-a-gun-part-two/
URLs in this post:
[1] initial installment: http://pjmedia.com/blog/so-you-want-to-own-a-gun/
[2] Larry Vickers: http://vickerstactical.com/tactical-tips/accuracy/
[3] series of classes: http://www.nrainstructors.org/CourseCatalog.aspx
[4] Project Appleseed: http://www.appleseedinfo.org/
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