Ways in Which Real Life is Like a Dystopian Science Fiction Novel, Part 2 of Infinity

Your Department of Homeland Security has developed mobile security gateways housed in tractor-trailers that deploy to public events to "establish or supplement security facilities at points of entry." Sensors inside the gateways scan individuals for "behavioral and physiological indications or malintent--or, the intent or desire to cause harm." Someone who plans to blow people up may tend to show certain behavioral traits, say fidgeting, or physiological traits, say an elevated pulse. These sensors would monitor such things. Of course, if you just happen to be nervous, say because you're surrounded by scary cops, dogs, guns, and probes--or you're a petty drug dealer--or you're late on your mortgage payments--and you set off the sensors, that's not a problem! Just step through the door for your interrogation and search, and if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

This is NOT designed to detect weapons. It is NOT designed to verify your identity. Large facilities already have security in place for that sort of thing. This is new. The video says in the very first sentence: "Physiological and behavioral screening technologies." The government intends to READ YOUR MIND.

I'm sure most people will breeze through these things with no problems. They might even think it's kind of neat. But the thing is, I'm worried about getting through them myself. Because when I find myself surrounded by physical reality of the police state, when I realize that we are slaves paying the cost of our own slavery, I get very angry. I've always mustered my best poker face in that kind of situation. What am I to do now? How can I hide my ill-will toward my government when they can read my very thoughts?

Ron Paul for President

Ways in Which Real Life is Like a Dystopian Science Fiction Novel, Part 1 of Infinity

There is a plant. When a person burns the flowers and leaves of this plant and inhales the resulting smoke, the person's brain chemistry is altered, often pleasurably. Said activity is against the law. If someone is suspected of said activity, people enter the home of that person. If that person drops to the ground fast enough, he has the privilege of going on living locked in a small room. If not, the other people use complicated pieces of metal that they carry to fire other, smaller pieces of metal into the person's body, killing him instantly.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/06/17/las-vegas-cop-killing-of-father-to-be-in-pot-raid-reemphasizes-need-for-marijuana-legalization/

Obama is a corporatist, not a socialist

Where's your liberal leader now?

Obama's executive order that he attached to the health care bill that bans federal funds for abortion also provides for $50 million per year for abstinence-based sex education. What century is this?

Well, at least he spends money liberally, even if he doesn't govern liberally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olpB-9Niu8M

Opt out of: two-party politics; left-right paradigms.

Jim Rogers: "The U.S. Government long bond is a bubble."

Jim Rogers, as far as I can tell, is the smartest man in the world.  It's in the way he speaks.

Rogers says Treasury bonds are a bubble.
If he's right, Treasury bond prices will drop.
If prices drop, rates will go up.
If rates go up, interest payments on the national debt go up.
If payments go up, the rate of new borrowing goes up--unless and until spending is cut or taxes are raised.

For you, this may mean higher taxes, fewer government services, greater national debt, and bad performance from your retirement savings.



Opt Out of:  Borrow-and-spend politics; personal exposure to US bonds.

Ben Bernanke: "Central Banking is an Art" (that is, not a science)

Bernanke: "You need some system to set the money supply... Every major country in the world uses a central bank, which must make some decision about the money supply."
Ron Paul: "But then there's no good information for the investor, unfortunately."

Health care reform proposals are a tax on being healthy

For as long as health care reform has been in the news in its current incarnation, I've been silently opposed to it on principle, certain that somewhere in the thousands of pages of legislation would be at least one provision that I regarded as incompatible with common sense and basic morality, and a non-starter.

Actually, I was aware of one such provision from the beginning: the individual mandate.  This says that every person must purchase health insurance or pay a fine.  Obama claimed to oppose the individual mandate during his campaign; after all, you can't solve the problem of homelessness by requiring everyone to buy a house.  It's too bad he changed his mind.

But the individual mandate is a gimme.  It is obviously nonsense despite the fact that it almost certainly will be a provision of anything that is signed into law.  I knew I must dig deeper and find something more substantive, more offensive, more asinine to serve as my reason for opposing health care reform.  It took me about 15 minutes of reading.

As background, be aware that the House of Representatives and the Senate have each passed a health care reform bill.  The differences between the bills must be resolved by a joint House-Senate committee, and the full House and Senate must then vote on the committee resolution.  This is the sticking point because the Senate Democrats may not have enough votes for passage now that Ted Kennedy has been replaced by Scott Brown.

The offensive and asinine thing that I found in both the House bill and the Senate bill, which I have never seen mentioned in anything I have read or heard about this debate, is this: health insurance companies will be prohibited from considering your medical history when determining your premium rate.  This means that the guy who exercises and eats vegetables, and is healthy because of it, will pay not one cent less than the guy who watches television and eats potato chips, and is sick because of it (all other factors being equal).

This is how Congress proposes to make health care "affordable": by outlawing the common-sense idea that those who exhibit a tendency to get sick should pay more for health insurance.  Of course, it will make health insurance more affordable--for sick people.  It will also make it less affordable for healthy people.  So health insurance for sick people will not be subsidized by the government or taxpayer at large, or the insurance companies, or future taxpayers paying down the national debt.  It will be subsidized by healthy people.  This is a tax on being healthy and a subsidy on being sick.

In the Senate bill, I also found this gem: variance in insurance premiums on the basis of age and tobacco use will still be allowed, but limited to ratios of 3 to 1 and 1.5 to 1, respectively.  This means that a 100-year-old cannot pay more than 3 times as much as an 18-year-old, and a smoker cannot pay more than 1.5 times as much as a nonsmoker.  Instead of teams of statisticians with advanced degrees determining how much premiums should vary for such people, a handful of Congressmen have predetermined those numbers.  These are taxes on being young and tobacco-free and subsidies on being old and smoking.

We don't make people who build houses on hills pay the same thing for flood insurance as those who build houses on the beach.  We don't make 30-year-olds pay the same thing for life insurance as 80-year-olds.  Such policies would defy common sense, as do the proposals I've described, which may yet become law.