Zen Teachings

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me for the path is narrow. In fact, just leave me the Hell alone. 

2. Sex is like air. It's not that important unless you aren't getting any.

3. No one is listening until you fart. 

4. Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else. 

5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet. 

6.. If you think nobody cares whether you're alive or dead, try missing a couple of payments. 

7. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. 

8. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you. 

9. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. 

10. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it. 

11. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. 

12. Some days you are the dog, some days you are the tree. 

13. Don't worry, it only seems kinky the first time. 

14. Good judgment comes from bad experience ... And most of that comes from bad judgment. 

15. A closed mouth gathers no foot. 

16. There are two excellent theories for arguing with women. Neither one works. 

17. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving. 

18. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 

19. We are born naked, wet and hungry, and get slapped on our ass... Then things just keep getting worse. 

20. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

How It Is With Ignorance

Nothing is worse than active ignorance.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson (1865 - 1959)

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
George Eliot (1819 - 1880)

It is better to confess ignorance than provide it.
Homer Hickam

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.
Saint Jerome (374 AD - 419 AD)

Ignorance doesn't kill you, but it makes you sweat a lot.

What you don't know can't hurt you.

You must not enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is a very simple and effective one: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

The greatest ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw  (1856-1950)

Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?
Bill Watterson

Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience.
 
It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge.

To change one's mind is rather a sign of prudence than ignorance.
Spanish Proverb

Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
Bob Hope (1903-2003)

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
Confucius (551-479 BC)


Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but ignorance is a close second.
Tom Carroll

You Should Be Able To Fire People - Like Romney

WHO WOULDN'T ENJOY FIRING THESE PEOPLE?

January 11, 2012

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney got into trouble for saying, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." To comprehend why the political class reacted as if Romney had just praised Hitler, you must understand that his critics live in a world in which no one can ever be fired -- a world known as "the government." 

(And a tip for you Washington types: Just because a person became rich without working for government doesn't mean he is "Wall Street." A venture capital firm in Boston that tries to rescue businesses headed for bankruptcy, for example, is not "Wall Street.") 

Romney's statement about being able to fire people was an arrow directed straight to the heart of Obamacare. (By the way, arrows to the heart are not covered by Obamacare.) 

Talking about insurance providers, he said: 

"I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me."

Obamacare, you will recall, will be administered by the same people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will operate under the same self-paced, self-evaluated work rules that have made government offices the envy of efficiency specialists everywhere. 

And no one will be able to fire them -- unless they're caught doing something truly vile and criminal, such as stealing from patients in nursing homes. 

Oops, I take that back: Government employees who rob the elderly also can't be fired. 

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, after a spate of burglaries at a veterans hospital in California several years ago, authorities set up video cameras to catch the perpetrators. In short order, nurse's aide Linda Riccitelli was videotaped sneaking into the room of 93-year-old Raymond Germain as he slept, sticking her hand into his dresser drawer and stealing the bait money that had been left there. 

Riccitelli was fired and a burglary prosecution initiated. A few years later, the California Personnel Board rescinded her firing and awarded her three-years back pay. The board dismissed the videotape of Riccitelli stealing the money as "circumstantial." (The criminal prosecution was also dropped after Germain died.) 

But surely we'll be able to fire a government employee who commits a physical assault on a mentally disturbed patient? No, wrong again. 

Psychiatric technician Gregory Powell was working at a government center for the mentally retarded when he hit a severely disturbed individual with a shoe so hard that the impression of the shoe's sole was visible on the victim three hours later. A psychologist who witnessed the attack said the patient was cowering on the couch before being struck. 

Powell was fired, but, again, the California Personnel Board ordered him rehired. 

Now, let's turn to New York City and look for any clues about why it might be the highest-taxed city in the nation. 

For years, the New York City school budget included $35 million to $65 million a year to place hundreds of teachers in "rubber rooms," after they had committed such serious offenses that they were barred from classrooms. Teachers accused of raping students sat in rooms doing no work all day, still collecting government paychecks because they couldn't be fired. 

After an uproar over the rubber rooms a few years ago, Michael Bloomberg got rid of the rooms. But the teachers still can't be fired.

Wherever there is government, there is malfeasance and criminality -- and government employees who can never be fired. 

In 2010, 33 employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission -- half making $100,000 to $200,000 per year -- were found to have spent most of their workdays downloading Internet pornography over a five-year period. (Thank goodness there were no financial shenanigans going on then, so the SEC guys had plenty of time on their hands.) 

One, a senior lawyer at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., admitted to spending eight hours a day looking at Internet pornography, sometimes even "working" through his lunch hour. Another admitted watching up to five hours a day of pornography in his office. (Would that Bernie Madoff had posted naked photos of himself online!) 

Not one of the porn-surfing employees of the SEC was fired. 

In 2009, the inspector general of the National Science Foundation was forced to abandon an investigation of grant fraud when he stumbled across dozens of NSF employees, including senior management, surfing pornographic websites on government computers during working hours. 

A senior official who had spent 331 workdays talking to fully or partially nude women online was allowed to resign (but was not fired). I hope they gave him his computer as a parting gift. 

The others kept their jobs -- including an NSF employee who had downloaded hundreds of pornographic videos and pictures and even developed pornographic PowerPoint slide shows. (And you thought PowerPoint presentations were always boring.) 

They weren't fired or even embarrassed. One appealed his 10-day suspension, complaining that it was too severe. The government refused to release any of their names. 

These are the people who are going to be controlling your access to medical services if Obamacare isn't repealed. There will be only one insurance provider, and you won't be able to switch, even if the service is lousy (and it will be). 

Obamacare employees will spend their days surfing pornography, instead of approving your heart operation. They can steal from you and even physically assault you. And they can never be fired. 

That's one gargantuan difference with "Romneycare" right there: If you don't like what your insurer is doing in Massachusetts, you can get a new one. 

Now, wouldn't you like to be able to fire people who provide services to you? 

COPYRIGHT 2012 ANN COULTER 
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK 
1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500 

How It Is With Romneycare

THREE CHEERS FOR ROMNEYCARE!

February 1, 2012

If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles -- as it was at the time. 

It's not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In 2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4 percent of all health care expenditures in the country. 

Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the Democrats' piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry. 

In November 2004, for example, libertarian Ronald Bailey praised mandated private health insurance in Reason magazine, saying that it "could preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion." 

A leading conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, helped design Romneycare, and its health care analyst, Bob Moffit, flew to Boston for the bill signing. 

Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not business or government, the primary purchasers of health care. 

The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate -- including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy's seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by pledging to be the "41st vote against Obamacare." 

But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area -- health care -- and can be nicknamed (politician's name plus "care"), Romney's health care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about "Romneycare-gate"?) 

As The New York Times put it, "Mr. Romney's bellicose opposition to 'Obamacare' is an almost comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there." This is like saying state school-choice plans are "the same idea" as the Department of Education. 

One difference between the health care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not. True, Obamacare's unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called "the Constitution"!) 

As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws -- including laws banning contraception -- without violating the Constitution. That document places strict limits on what Congress can do, not what the states can do. Romney, incidentally, has always said his plan would be a bad idea nationally. 

The only reason the "individual mandate" has become a malediction is because the legal argument against Obamacare is that Congress has no constitutional authority to force citizens to buy a particular product. 

The legal briefs opposing Obamacare argue that someone sitting at home, minding his own business, is not engaged in "commerce ... among the several states," and, therefore, Congress has no authority under the Commerce Clause to force people to buy insurance. 

No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance. 

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive. 

There's no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today's world to equip themselves with health insurance. 

The hyperventilating over government-mandated health insurance confuses a legal argument with a policy objection. 

If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional, but it wouldn't be the godawful train wreck that it is. It wouldn't even be the godawful train wreck that high-speed rail is. 

It would not be a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar federal program micromanaging every aspect of health care in America with enormous, unresponsive federal bureaucracies manned by no-show public-sector union members enforcing a mountain of regulations that will bankrupt the country and destroy medical care, as liberals scratch their heads and wonder why Obamacare is costing 20 times more than they expected and doctors are leaving the profession in droves for more lucrative careers, such as video store clerk. 

Nothing good has ever come of a 2,000-page bill. 

There's not much governors can do about the collectivist mess Congress has made of health care in this country. They are mere functionaries in the federal government's health care Leviathan. 

A governor can't repeal or expand the federal tax break given to companies that pay their employees' health insurance premiums -- a tax break denied the self-employed and self-insured. 

A governor can't order the IRS to start recognizing tax deductions for individual health savings accounts. 

A governor can't repeal the 1946 federal law essentially requiring hospitals to provide free medical services to all comers, thus dumping a free-rider problem on the states. 

It was precisely this free-rider problem that Romneycare was designed to address in the only way a governor can. In addition to mandating that everyone purchase health insurance, Romneycare used the $1.2 billion that the state was already spending on medical care for the uninsured to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance for those who couldn't afford it. 

What went wrong with Romneycare wasn't a problem in the bill, but a problem in Massachusetts: Democrats. 

First, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature set the threshold for receiving a subsidy so that it included people making just below the median income in the United States, a policy known as "redistribution of income." For more on this policy, see "Marx, Karl." 

Then, liberals destroyed the group-rate, "no frills" private insurance plans allowed under Romneycare (i.e. the only kind of health insurance a normal person would want to buy, but which is banned in most states) by adding dozens of state mandates, including requiring insurers to cover chiropractors and in vitro fertilization -- a policy known as "pandering to lobbyists." 

For more on "pandering" and "lobbyists," see "Gingrich, Newt." (Yes, that's an actual person's name.) 

Romney's critics, such as Rick Santorum, charge that the governor should have known that Democrats would wreck whatever reforms he attempted. 

They have, but no more than they would have wrecked health care in Massachusetts without Romneycare. Democrats could use a sunny day as an excuse to destroy the free market, redistribute income and pander to lobbyists. Does that mean Republicans should never try to reform anything and start denouncing sunny days? 

Santorum has boasted of his role in passing welfare reform in the 1990s. You know what the Democrats' 2009 stimulus bill dismantled? That's right: the welfare reform that passed in the 1990s. 

The problem isn't health insurance mandates. The problem isn't Romneycare. The problem isn't welfare reform. The problem is Democrats. 

COPYRIGHT 2012 ANN COULTER 
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK 
1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500

Words to Live By

PARAPROSDOKIANS: (Winston Churchill loved them.) Here is the definition: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." For example,"Where there is a will, I want to be in it," is a type of paraprosdokian.

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.


2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.


3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.


4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.


5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.


6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left..


7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.


8. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.


9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.


10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.


11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.


12. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'DOCTOR.'


13. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.


14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.


15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.


16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.


17. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.


18. Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.


19. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.


20. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.


21. You're never too old to learn something stupid.


22. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.


23. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.


24. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.


25. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.


26. Where there's a will, there are  relatives.


27. Tell them what they want to hear and promptly do something else.