6th May 2014, 05:20 pm
Obama biographer: “The World seems to disappoint him…”
6th May 2014, 04:48 pm
Recently I’ve been burned over links to and quotes from Alex Jones and Infowars. Like many libertarians and conservatives my primary (but not only) news feed comes from the Drudge Report, and Drudge Report has taken to quoting and linking to Jones and his site.
Bob Owens, writing for BearingArms.com points out the facts behind the government’s ammunition purchases that have fed numerous conspiracy theories picked up by Infowars and published by Drudge.
While I don’t think the President has the best interests of the Republic at heart at all, the reality of the matter is that federal ammunition purchases have declined during the Obama Administration. They simply have large agencies to support, and the round count of the ammo purchases when spread out across agencies amounts to a training allotment on a per agent basis. The military ammunition market is separate from the civilian ammunition market… unless Lake City Army Ammunition Plant has surplus ammunition to sell back to the market (which it does from time to time), or specialized units need small batches of specialized ammunition for testing and deployment.
I’m not sure why Drudge has sullied his reputation by supporting a 9-11 Truther like Alex Jones. Cliff Kincaid, writing for America’s Survival, lays out the extravagant claims made by Jones picked up by Drudge, paying close attention to the Bundy Standoff that Jones made into an issue that Drudge amplified. Now Bundy’s racist comments have made his supporters backtrack, and allowed the MSM to beat them and anyone else opposed to this president with the racist cudgel.
There are plenty of reasons to distrust the government and dislike the current president, so we don’t need to go making stuff up. Besides I’m a white guy of Slav descent and likely the descendant of slaves not of slave owners. I’m not all that keen on those who think slavery was a good thing for anyone at any time.
5th May 2014, 03:46 pm
The leader of Boko Haram is threatening to sell the 200 girls his outfit abducted from their boarding school 3 weeks ago into slavery.
“Some people should die. That’s just unconscious knowledge,” – Pigs in Zen, Jane’s Addiction.
4th May 2014, 09:19 pm
That’s the punch line from this Economist article.
American interest in the outside world has ebbed and flowed throughout its history. We are now in an ebbing phase, and I’m not convinced that the GOP will produce and internationalist candidate to buck the trend rather than a neo-isolationist like Rand Paul. It’s interesting to watch the world squirm though, especially the freeloading Europeans (the British excepted).
1st May 2014, 07:43 am
Scott W. Atlas, writing at the Wall Street Journal, warns about the coming two-tiered medical system.
About one-third of primary-care physicians and one-fourth of specialists have already completely closed their practices to Medicaid patients. Over 52% of physicians have already limited the access that Medicare patients have to their practices, or are planning to, according to a 2012 survey by Merritt Hawkins for the Physicians Foundation. More doctors than ever already refuse Medicaid and Medicare due to inadequate payments for care, and that trend will only accelerate as government lowers reimbursements.
In order to cut costs insurance plans are narrowing their networks, removing access to the best hospitals in the country (including Barnes Hospital in my hometown.)
For cancer care, the overwhelming majority of America’s best hospitals in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network—including MD Anderson Cancer Center of Houston, New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance uniting doctors from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s—are not covered in most of their states’ exchange plans.
Elements of this are already in place. The best paying jobs on physician job boards are “closed practices” run by large companies for their employees, or concierge practices that do not accept insurance.
Meanwhile, concierge practices are increasing rapidly, as patients who can afford it, along with many top doctors, rush to avoid the problems of an increasingly restrictive health system. The American Academy of Private Physicians estimates that there are now about 4,400 concierge physicians, 30% more than last year. In a recent Merritt Hawkins survey, about 7% to 10% of physicians planned to transition to concierge or cash-only practices in the next one to three years. With doctors already spending 22% of their time on nonclinical paperwork, they will find more government intrusion under ObamaCare regulations taking even more time away from patient care.
Moving towards socialized medicine inevitably leads to a two-tiered system. Having lived for 5 years under socialized medicine in Japan, I’ve seen the both tiers, and the quality of care diverged significantly between them to the point where we chose a private hospital for the birth of The Kid. The only question will be whether the quality of care good enough for the vast majority of Americans, or the care will stagnate and decline as the best and brightest health care providers move into the higher-paying private practices and hospitals.
