Living in Babylon

Here is a must-read summary of the plethora of new "gun control" bills the dems are trying to push through the legislature.

The worst ones are a more strict ban on so-called "Assault weapons" than the 1994-2004 Clinton Gun Ban (which we counted down to and celebrated the sunset of on this blog), and on ownership of .50 cal rifles. Conveniently, neither bill has been given a number yet, so the public can't look them up or search for them. Both bills include a provision for current owners of such firearms to maintain ownership, but this would include:

- registering the firearm with local police
- undergoing yet ANOTHER background check (us gun owners to way too familiar with these) - for an unspecified fee.
- renewing your registration and doing yet ANOTHER background check YEARLY after that.
- and the best part: Law enforcement agencies are allowed to conduct
an annual inspection of your home to ensure you are “safely and
securely” storing the assault weapon or .50 BMG rifle properly (no
definition of “safely and securely” is given).

Hopefully that last part will kill these bills if they ever get anywhere, heaven forbid.

Us gun owners need to keep being super-vigilant and active in the process until this current legislative session (and assault on our 2nd amendment rights) mercifully comes to an end on April 24th.
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I don't blog very often anymore, so I know this is a little late, but this is my take (and tribute) to Howard Dean being the chairman of the DNC.

I still just cannot believe that he is the chairman of the DNC. I mean, Terry McAwful was bad enough, but this is, to be honest, almost too good to be true. Dean is such an angry, dare I say, hate-filled man, and to have him as the head of your political party?! This is rich.

I honestly can't see this helping them in any way. He will serve to alienate broad swaths of the DNC faithful across the country simply because of his anger. Why, he hasn't been on the job very long and he has already accused Republicans of being evil......actually, here's my favorite excerpt from this story:

"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."

And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."

I love that sentence where he accuses "those right wingers" of being intolerant! LOL....

He'll move the party farther left, which definitely won't help them. But on the plus side, it will be pretty entertaining to watch, in the same sense that you can't take your eyes off a train wreck.

Finally, here's my tribute to Howard Dean, and "the scream". These little clips and remixes of the scream put to music are pretty funny:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/dean_outkast.mp3
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/dean_insane.mp3
http://www.mostlynothing.com/files/deantwilightzone.wav
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The democrat-controlled Washington state legislature (and almost undeniably illegally-gotten Governor's seat) is starting to make me uneasy already.

Not only is there a bill that would allow human cloning research to be done in the state (so long as they kill the clone before it would be born if it were a normal baby), but now there's this other bill to REQUIRE businesses employing over 50 people to provide health insurance for ALL employees.

Here is an article about it. The target of this legislation is, of course, Wal-Mart. Yes, the notorious human rights abuser is at it again. This time, even though they offer 8 different health insurance plans, the cheapest of which only costs employees $40/month, that's not good enough.

Some Wal-Mart employees say they can't afford the $40/month for health insurance, so the bleeding heart liberals see a chance to force businesses to give away money, and we all know they never turn opportunities like that down. They want to force these large companies to cover ALL employees' health care, OR, to pay an equivalent amount into the Washington Basic Health Plan.

It's estimated to cost WA state businesses about $1.6 billion, but the state mentions that that estimate was given by a business who received funding from opponents of the measure....oh, as opposed to the estimates from the State, who are proponents of the measure, and the ones who would be getting the equivalent of another tax windfall if it passed???
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I just read this article today in the Seattle Times and was astonished. I've been preaching that the way to solve the whole health insurance mess is to just not have health insurance. That without health insurance, the cost of doing business for doctors would go down a LOT. Less staffing costs, less paperwork, etc. At the same time, you wouldn't see these inflated rates being charged, since the doctors don't need to play the game of getting 100% of what they need while only being paid 60% of what they charge.

Well, surprise, surprise. The free-market system works! There is a pharmacy in Lynnwood that is cash-only. No insurance at all is accepted, billed, anything. The pharmacy reports that this has decreased their staffing costs alone by 30%, and the prescription drugs there are priced competitively with the prices in Canada.

Of course, there is the predictable grumbling from the Insurance Commissioner, where, "The insurance commissioner is considering new regulations for such practices", a spokeswoman said. Of course. God forbid that anything run TOO efficiently for the government bureaucrats to make sense of it.

And of course the obligatory reference to "low-income people" not being able to afford a doctor on retainer through a cash-only basis, etc. (is someone forcing "low-income people" to do this? I must've missed that part...)

Anyway, it's nice to see that a few people are going against the flow of big insurance, and the free-market system is prevailing yet again.
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Back on Jan. 10, 2005, I e-mailed my two Representatives. I live in the 44th district of Snohomish County. Both of our Representatives are Democrats. Funny thing is, our district voted for Rossi by 54.1% (Thank you, Dinocrats!)

Here is the text of what I sent to my representatives:

Dear Mr. Lovick/Dunshee, I am one of your constituents, and I have seen enough indications of irregularities that I do not believe Gregoire was legitimately elected. I do not think that the vote should be certified. I believe that the only way to restore public confidence in the election system and that the correct person was indeed elected Governor (no matter whoit turns out to be) is to hold a re-vote.

Our district, the 44th district, voted for Rossi overall, by 54.1%, and I truly believe that betraying the will of your constituents by certifying this greatly troubled and highly suspect election could lead to your losing your next election, because your constituents will not forget. Please vote the will of your constituency.

...and my name, etc. I immediately received a reply from Lovick's people saying that they received my e-mail and care about what I have to say. (I wish I had saved that e-mail, though it was pretty useless).

Only 17 days later (and over 2 weeks after Gregoirovich's certification) I got a response from Hans Dunshee. Not bad for Government work, eh? :)

Here is the full text of the e-mail I received from Mr. Dunshee on Jan. 27th (I'm not sure why it was formatted this way, but I'm posting it as I received it):

Scott,

First let me apologize for this "canned" message. I've had over 50
messages to me about this important topic.
I have spent many, many hours thinking about this. It is not yet time
for us to act. Our state's framers were populists who distrusted too
much power in one place. They didn't want the Legislature to manhandle
the other two branches of government, so they took power away from the
House and Senate and gave it to the secretary of state and our courts.
Dino Rossi is filing a lawsuit and taking his case to the courts. That's
the right decision for him. It'll wind up in the Supreme Court, and if
the court finds evidence of fraud or conspiracy, I'll be the first to
vote for a new election. Confidence in the integrity of the voting
process is very important to me. I will be working hard to ensure all
the changes are made to our election system so that these types of
questions don't arise again and we are better prepared.
It would be wrong to turn this into a political circus by having the
Legislature try to grab the power to pick a governor - or any other
office we choose. That's a very dangerous step. I voted to honor the
founding fathers and respect that separation of powers. We need to
protect our system of checks and balances so no single branch of
government can run amok.
No matter what the outcome, I am excited to get to work to create good
paying jobs, give a world-class education to every child and make health
care more affordable for all of us.
Thank you for taking the time to write. I enjoy hearing from citizens
back home and look forward to hearing from you again.

Sincerely,
Hans Dunshee

I just thought I'd share this with you because it's not entirely as bas as I expected. He actually prefers that the election contest be heard by the Supreme Court, and NOT the legislature. In fact, he says that would be a political circus. It is slightly troubling that he "...spent many, many hours thinking about this" to come to that conclusion, but I'll let it slide.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this letter with you all. I've forwarded it on to John Carlson and the Rossi campaign, because I know the Rossi campaign is looking for instances of Democratic officials saying the Legislature is the wrong place for the election contest to be heard.

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That's right, scrap that rusty junk heap. I just read a brilliant article by Alex Epstein from the Ayn Rand institute which conveys my thoughts on the subject much more coherently than I ever could. The author sums up how social security works in one great sentence:

The rational and responsible are shackled and throttled for the sake of the irrational and irresponsible.

That's it in a nutshell. Well said. Here is the article.

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It seems that outgoing Gov. Gary Locke and other liberal legislators have come up with a brilliant plan to tax doctors more. Wait. Let me be more specific. They want to give doctors who see medicaid patients a pay raise, and they're going to steal from the doctors who don't see those patients to pay for it.

Yup. The usual class warfare/envy crap they love so much. You see, it seems that the medicaid program typically pays only 45-65% of what medicare and other government health care programs pay (and even less than private insurance). Since doctors and clinics were essentially losing money treating medicaid patients, many of them stopped doing so, which has increased the demand on the remaining doctors who do see these patients.

So, what solution for this problem do the democrats come up with?? Rather than providing incentives, changing the program or its requirements for eligibility, or anything substantive, they go for the usual. Let's tax the evil doctors who don't see these patients, and give the proceeds to the wonderfully altruistic doctors who do! That way, we can FORCE everyone to be altruistic, right into bankruptcy!!

Ok, so I got a little carried away. But that's essentially it. They think pollution and the ozone layer are the most important transportation issues imaginable. So how do they address the issue? By taxing gasoline in a futile effort to change habits, forcing car makers to make much more efficient cars (and a lot more expensive - guaranteeing the less efficient cars will be on the roads longer), etc...This is no different. This will only encourage more doctors to vote with their feet and move to other states. Gee, how will that affect the demand for patients to be seen, geniuses??

Oh, and here is the article.
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Step 1. Deny
Step 2. Deny
Step 3. Obstruct

It seems that we've reached the critical third step in her strategy. The Gregoire team has gone from denying that there were enough illegal votes/fraud to nullify the election to actively seeking to "throw out" the Rossi case in Chelan County.

Here is one story about it.

Fraudoire says the Legislature (solidly liberal democrats, mind you) is the correct place to contest an election. Never mind that state law says it isn't...can you think of a LESS objective place to settle an election? Even RINO Sam Reed agrees the courts are the correct place to contest an election.

Basically, they're trying to stop the fact-finding process, and don't want King County to send the evidence that will be requested, etc. Typical from a liberal. On the one hand, praise the election as "a model to the rest of the nation" or whatever she said, and on the other, block any attempt for open scrutiny to get to the bottom of what actually happened.
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Though it went largely unreported, President George W. Bush declared Sunday, Jan 16, 2005 to be "National Sanctity of Human Life" day. Read the proclamation here. It's definitely a must-read, and may I say once again how glad I am to have a man of such character and resolve and Godliness in the White House?!
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