Survey:

Half of primary-care doctors would QUIT medicine

With the election of The One, we have the promise of national health care. If the Senate gets a filibuster proof majority, we will have it soonest. Tom Daschle will be Health and Human Services Secretary; he prays at the altar of socialistic programs.
Keeping that in mind, peruse the following excerpts:

[A]…survey, released this week by the Physicians’ Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.

Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said…[]… because there’s too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies. And if that many physicians stopped practicing, that could be devastating to the health care industry.

With lower reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of malpractice insurance skyrocketing, these health professionals say it’s not worth running a practice and are changing careers. Others say they’re going into so-called boutique medicine, in which they charge patients a yearly fee up front and don’t take insurance.
And some like Pocinki are limiting the type of insurance they’ll take and the number of patients on Medicare and Medicaid. According to the foundation’s report, over a third of those surveyed have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients

One of President-elect Barack Obama’s health care promises is to provide a primary care physician for every American. But some health experts, including Pocinki, are skeptical.
“People who have insurance can’t find a doctor, so suddenly we are going to give insurance to a whole bunch of people who haven’t had it, without increasing the number of physicians?” he says. “It’s going to be a problem.”
(All emphasis mine)

Watch this disaster unfold. The alt-A-Sub-prime mortgage mess will be a triffle compared to this debacle.

The only blessing in this play is the fingerprints on this will be all Democrats and RINO’s. One can only hope that not too many die in the interregnum.

Millions of people are acquainted with Edward Hopper’s painting  “Nighthawks” (1942).  You wouldn’t conclude from this painting that Hopper was actually a lousy painter.  He never mastered the art of drawing; he had trouble depicting the human form (the lady nighthawk’s arms?) and was clumsy with perspective and composition .  

He excelled in his depiction of light and shadow, and above everything else, he wrapped most of his scenes in a warm, restorative blanket of melancholy. Clement Greenberg wrote in 1946  ”Hopper simply happens to be a bad painter.  But if he were a better painter, he would, most likely, not be so superior an artist”.  
 
Hopper turned his hand to scenes of the Cape, of Gloucester and other locales, but  his urban scenes pose the possibility that a brickfront walk-up with shear curtains over two open windows, a steam radiator, plaster walls and a few hardcover books could be a refuge from the clatter and cultural cannibalism of American life.  Or, you could sit on a chrome and leatherette stool at midnight and have a coffee without hearing a siren or the thundering speakers of a passing Acura with wheels like razor blades.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember places like the Nighthawk’s cafe. They existed everywhere  through the 1950’s; before the demons of urban renewal, flush with reformer’s gold and fanciful ideas about urban living, destroyed all of them, and most of everything else. Rustling up the inhabitants of the old neighborhoods, they herded them off to the soul-desolating brick and sheetrock iron maidens of ”the projects”. 

Now the third generation of these bereft pawns of progressive policy seek outlets in drugs and violence.   They have no refuge, no lonely personal place to restore themselves, no space to collect on the debts that progressive brutalism has imposed upon them.   A place to breathe without sighing.  We give them what we can, the tinsel of materialism and the fraudulent promises of more, and even more, education to force rational order from moral devastation.  It can’t be done.

We build mocking monuments to what we destroyed.  We gild the skulls and bones of the old cityscapes, scrub the surviving redbricks clean and lease the space to kitsch dealers.  We outfit malls and trendy shopping centers in the architectural image of the remembered store fronts, some of them even containing pieces of the real thing - retail Frankensteins, with a plinth here, a column there, and herringbone brick underfoot.    Disney does the same thing; the effect is fit only for children and undiscriminating adults.   

Everyone’s looking for a place to be alone, or to leave a mark in the hardening cement.  And something else they want, I think - a place free of cant, free of social commentary, free of the governing compulsions of reformers, free of a political class intending to service the contradictory demands of the spirit and the body, and a little silence that equals inaction on the part of our political masters.     

I expect to see a lot more of this as the progressive Obama years grind on.  Somehow the left thinks he can restore the good things we no longer have, and make us whole again.  By pressing hard enough, his beneficent state will turn ordinary human flesh into diamonds.   I guess we’ll find out.

Valerie Jarrett on Meet the Press used a rather unique word to describe Obama’s Inauguration in January.

I was under the impression the Revolutionary War put an end to this kind of nonsense requiring the hanging of some reluctant Tories.

Speaking to you from the Oval Throne Room

You were warned! Kneel Varlets.

This person has the reason. If you believe in gun control you’ll be on his side.

This is what Obama  believes. He said it; he voted this way and he’ll do it again.

All of the tax cut promises, starting at $250,000, are now down to $120,000 according to Gov Bill Richardson. They will have to be paid for somehow. Guess how?

About what hasn’t he lied? From the Aunt in Boston, to illicit campaign contributions (from the Aunt no less) he has evaded the truth with the help of the dying MSM.

He’ll be after your savings, IRA’s, then higher taxes on income so that those who wish not to work, the idle poor, can live like the working class.

The end result: the money and power winds up in Washington and everyone else are kulaks getting what ever the state decides one may have.

Yesterday was the day wished forgotten by that misbegotten collection of pseudo-economists we elected to congress and the Presidency.

Yes, in 2003,  Bush signed the bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress.

Greenspan cut interest rates to 1% to stimulate home ownership.

Amazing! That worked so well in the past five years, we’re going to do it again.

Whorehouse Harry Reid and his House Madam, Pelosi just pimped up another massive Viagra Bill for housing and Bush, on his spavined nag, signed it, as he rides off to Crawford.

Bernanke dropped rates to 1% again.

On Tuesday, we have an avowed communist (in his own words, he redistributed candy in first grade) who doesn’t know the difference between a dividend and a doughnut and someone who wasn’t smart enough to steer clear of the S&L debacle.

Did someone forget to change the reel in this movie?

Here’s Helga!

Ain’t it swell!

Not something to be taken lightly.

Obama will be tested within six months posited Biden, before dropping off the radar. Additionally, he pleaded for the populace not to judge the Obama Presidency harshly.

So what can happen? Will someone blow up the Sears Tower or release Sarin in the NY subway? Or will Obama pull all the troops out Of Iraq by the end of his first six months.I’ll bet the farm on that!

Here is the likely conclusion of this preference.

Immediately Al Sadr screeches for help from the Shi’a in Iran, Assuredly, they’ll be most happy to help butchering as many Sunnis as possible.

In the north, Turkey will clean up the border problem with the PKK, probably by relocating Turkey’s border somewhere south of Mosul. Why not have a war for oil; that’s more than existed in Armenia. Presumably, some ethnic cleansing is OK; if Obama’s Peoples Democratic Party says it is acceptable, then it is.

The Peoples Democratic Party will do what they did in 1972. The results will not be different.

With the eradication of Iraq, it’s a short march to Syria, consolidation of supply lines and then all out war on Israel. What do we do in this situation? Ask Pelosi and Reid. Ask Biden now. Obama stated his position a while ago.The U.S. creates more enemies and we become further isolated. Our enemies love this, both external and internal types.

The Middle East will explode with a excellent chance of becoming nuclear. What we’ll see is MAD in a small place, for starters. If you think Israel will go down alone, you are really dense.  Europe goes next; the Crusades will be a mere dot in history.

If anyone thinks Israel would listen to the US after we pull out of Iraq explain your reasoning. We already proved our word is worthless.

Losing a war has many repercussions.

Here’s the yet to be Socially Engineered kiddies.

They’ll just have to learn he’s spreading the wealth!

Not often you see them this big!

No, I didn’t get the photos mixed up!

DNC centerfold porn!

Obama is in the process of picking those he wishes to have in his Cabinet. The list below has leaked out as potential candidates are chosen for their “acumen” or patronage.

The Kumbaya Cabinet

Department of Agriculture–Secretary John Kerry

Department of Commerce–Secretary Charles Schumer

Department of Defense–Secretary John Murtha

Department of Education–Secretary Louis Farrakhan

Department of Energy– Secretary Albert Gore

Department of Health & Human Services–Secretary Nancy Keenan

Department of Homeland Security– Secretary Tony Lake

Department of Housing & Urban Development–Secretary Cynthia McKinney

Department of the Interior–Secretary Russ Feingold

Department of Justice–Attorney General Elliot Spitzer

Department of Labor–Secretary Jesse Jackson

Department of State–Secretary Madeline Albright

Department of Transportation–Secretary Ralph Nader

Department of the Treasury–Secretary George Soros

Department of Veterans Affairs
This Department closed to save money

Democrat pre-election promises (remember Obama spouting how patriotic he was) and how their memory works. You didn’t see these in the USA, Australia published them.

TheDonks care sooooo much!

This was published in Australia (sent to me by an Expat, sent me a big batch) giving a view of Obama as dome others see him. There’s more on the fool and other Donks too.

Ed G. Mann has this post on Fashions for the Obama Presidency. He doesn’t say it in those words but given Obama’s loathing for the 2ndAmendment…

In Mexico, shopping for the right thing to wear at the wrong end of a gun

[snip]
Some people are trying to get their hands on weapons, which are tightly regulated here but widely available on the black market. To some, bulletproof fashion is the logical next step. [snip]

He points out that the clothing is not designed for the kind of warfare that is breaking out in some parts of Mexico, where drug assassins have used rocket launchers and grenades to wipe out rivals. [snip]

Mann writes:
Of course, even in a bastion of democracy like Mexico, gun control keeps weapons out of the hands of the truly malignant: i.e. the cancerous law abiding. It always works so well.

If the haberdasher cannot guarantee safety against RPG’s and grenades, I should probably request a refund. At least use put the expense on your credit card so your estate can contest the charge.

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

Robert Heinlein

Lede in today’s NYT trumpets the flight of investors into “safe” places for parking money.
Like T-bills, which were paying about 1.5%, but now in demand, pay under 1%. Revisiting the golden age of the Weimar Republic, our fearless leaders busily reproduce history by fabricating the “Weimar T-bill” just in time to crush the economy ending 232 years of successful existence. After this last round of bailouts, the inflationary spiral will start.

As soon as these idiots realize they aren’t making any money in T-bills, out of the “safe” place the money comes and back into the market it goes where it is at risk.
NOW, where does the government get the money it is using to pay off the incurred debt? Remember no T-bills; does the government jack up the interest rate, which slows down the housing market or does it default on the debt?
Neither, the Treasury just prints more money, boosting inflation.
Oil is back over $100 a barrel. Food is not coming down in price, thanks to the clowns putting corn in gas tanks. Now the government is giving the taxpayer all the toxic debt and the fat cats their money back. We are the proud owners of some where north of a half trillion dollars of crap.
Personally, I rather see the fat bastards jump out windows after they lost everything.

Excerpt from Paper Money by “Adam Smith,” (George J.W. Goodman), pp. 57-62.

Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914.[snip]

Germany abandoned the gold backing of its currency in 1914. The war was expected to be short, so it was financed by government borrowing, not by savings and taxation. In Germany prices doubled between 1914 and 1919. [snip]

America is off the gold standard too since 1971. We’re on a system of fiat money. So much for full faith and credit, since that change, we too have become a debtor nation,

But the bourgeois habits were very strong. Ordinary citizens worked at their jobs, sent their children to school and worried about their grades, maneuvered for promotions and rejoiced when they got them, and generally expected things to get better. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18. There were complaints about the high cost of living. Professors and civil servants complained of getting squeezed. Factory workers pressed for wage increases. An underground economy developed, aided by a desire to beat the tax collector. [snip]

The nervous citizens of the Ruhr were already getting their money out of the currency and into real goods — diamonds, works of art, safe real estate. Now ordinary Germans began to get out of Marks and into real goods. [snip]

The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items — bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren’t safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn’t need and used them to barter — a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a “witches’ Sabbath” atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save, and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old. [snip]

Sound familiar? Put it on plastic, live for now. In debt to the eyeballs and no hope of paying it off.