George Rebane

Most of us watched some of the political theater from the Blair House yesterday.  As predicted, at least by those who took a day off from lying, the event didn’t go anywhere.  It might have made some of the slow students think that Obamacare is just starting out from somewhere in the ideological middle, and that little sleight of hand may have been worth the effort.  But in the end it’s going to come down to whether the Titanic Trio will opt for a ‘reconciliation’ vote that would pass this landmark legislation with a simple partisan majority.

The latest polls tell us that about 57% of Americans think the federal government has already and continues to reduce our freedoms.  53+% don’t like the Democrats’ approach to healthcare reform.  In response Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) voices the mantra of the progressive elitists, “Sometimes decisions have to come from Washington.”  Sometimes??!!

The bugaboo still happens to be the evil health insurance industry that keeps increasing healthcare costs and making obscene profits.  Future historians will see America’s acceptance of this nonsense as an unmistakable sign of the nation’s downfall.  Here’s an industry with a profit margin of about 3.3% – down in the cutthroat grocery store range – and no one blinks at the accusations.  These are the guys who have to make the right bets of premiums against payoffs so that they can stay in business.  They don’t set the intrinsic costs of delivering healthcare, that is done primarily by government agencies and our resident legion of tort lawyers.  If the insurance companies were making all that money, how come their stocks are going nowhere?  And why is no one yelling at the soft drink companies with profit margins in the upper teens?

I also got a giggle out of UN’s IPCC now openly talking about having to straighten out its act and start mending its public image.  Listening to the local true believers rail against Climategate, you’d think the whole thing of science fraud was cooked up right here in Nevada County.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so either, some of us just saw this ‘science’ train wreck coming sooner than others.

Speaking of locals, there’s a blogger here who thinks he really is the source of outside news to our neck of the woods.  I did my morning news round-up that includes a number of widespread sources and read on the Washington Post that the hard left has started the Coffee Cup Coalition (also here) as a response to the Tea Party Patriots.  There will be a lot more to say about that in the coming days, but my fancy was tickled by the local blogger’s ire on Russ Steele’s NC Media Watch which also picked this up, apparently from the local blogger who was irked by not being credited for what? being the first one to read the Washington Post?

Meanwhile, I’m going to use this rainy windy day to prepare for the TechTest2010 seminars that I am conducting for the high school seniors preparing for this merit scholarship exam on 27 March at NUHS (juniors are advised to take the test for practice).  The two-hour seminars will be tomorrow and next Saturday 6 March also at NUHS.  The amount of stuff these young scholars have to know would make your head spin.  But someone has to get educated up so they can work and pay for all that good stuff that we’re entitled to from Washington.  Some things are lookin’ up!