Mandela's motives

If you read conservative blogs, you will be aware by now that the idolatry of Nelson Mandela that you see in the mainstream media is far from universally shared.  The fact is that Mandela was always a Communist and was a very active terrorist in his youth  -- which is why the Boer regime imprisoned him in a high security prison for 27 years.  A relatively mild "alternative" account of Mandela is here.  And even after he became President, he maintained cordial relations with such charmers as Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro.

So how come he managed the transition from white rule to black rule so peacefully?  Why did he not act out the hostility which he expressed for all his life?  Nobody seems to answer that.  They just see the years of his Presidency as the manifestation of a "great soul", which he clearly was not.  A great hater, maybe.

I think the answer is obvious and I am a little bemused that it once again seems to fall to me to identify the elephant in the room.  The answer is that he knew what a tough lot the Boers are and was afraid of them.  After what the Boers did to the British Empire, a rabble of blacks would have been a snack for them.  After all in the Apartheid years the South African police force was quite small relative to population.  The Boers did not need much to suppress back discontent.

And Mandela was right to fear the Boers.  They still held all the levers of power in South Africa  -- police, army, bureaucracy, media etc.  Had they been energized to act in response to extensive violence encouraged by the new black regime, there can be no doubt that the violence would have been decisively crushed and only a semblance of black rule would have continued.

The peaceful Mandela was a coward, not a great soul.  But cowardice was probably wise in the circumstances

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Gun charges against George Zimmerman dropped, media hardest hit

It was reported almost from the very beginning that George Zimmerman’s most recent girlfriend was just as erratic as the previous women in his life, and the Daily Mail now confirms it:

    George Zimmerman’s girlfriend has dropped charges against him just weeks after she claimed he pointed a shotgun at her and smashed her stuff, and now she even wants him back, it has emerged.

    Samantha Scheibe called 911 in November, telling operators Zimmerman was brandishing a weapon during an argument and that she feared for her life. He was charged with a felony aggravated assault charge among other charges.

    He is now asking to have conditions of his bail modified so he can resume contact with Scheibe, who, according to court documents filed by Zimmerman’s attorney, gave a sworn statement that read: ‘I do not want George Zimmerman charged.’

    Zimmerman, 30, had been barred from contacting the 27-year-old blonde after he posted $9,000 bond. He was also forced to give up his guns and wear a GPS monitor.

    According to ABC News, Scheibe says in a new affidavit, dated December 6, ‘When I was being questioned by police I felt very intimidated…I believe that the police misinterpreted me and that I may have misspoken about certain facts in my statement to police.’

    Scheibe went on to say in the statement that Zimmerman ‘never pointed a gun at or toward my face in a threatening manner’ and that ‘I want to be with George.’

Tomorrow, I’ll be expecting a revelation that Zimmerman is actually a Koch Brothers-created cyborg designed to cause Piers Morgan to have a stroke, which Morgan will likely have once he discovers that Zimmerman will soon have his trio of handguns, his Kel-Tec KSG shotgun, and his AR-15 in his posession.

SOURCE

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More Physicians Are Refusing to Accept Any Third Party payment

A small but growing number of physicians are not accepting government insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and are even refusing to accept patients’ private insurance, according to Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Orient says the transition to a business model in which patients agree to pay doctors directly for the health care services they provide started before Obamacare was passed, but that the new law has accelerated the trend, especially among AAPS’ 4,000 or so members.

AAPS is the conservative alternative to the much larger American Medical Association (AMA), which endorsed Obamacare while AAPS opposed it.

“They like the freedom,” Orient, a Tucson-based internist, told CNSNews.com. “They don’t like third parties telling them why they can’t do what’s best for their patients. They’re tired of the constant threats of audits and prosecution, and they don’t like being owed money by government programs and many insurance programs.

“But the biggest complaint I hear is that they are tired of fighting people who don’t have a clue, and don’t even know how to spell the procedure they want to perform,” Orient added. “It just devours time and sometimes puts the patient’s life at risk.”

Some physicians never signed up with managed care insurance plans in the first place because the reimbursement levels didn’t cover their costs, she said.

But now even doctors who “agreed to accept the crumbs, whatever compensation the government or the insurance companies decide to send them,” are having second thoughts as the costs of practicing medicine continues to climb and government regulations become even more onerous.

“I get several calls a week from doctors seeking advice on how to opt out,” Orient told CNSNews.com. “They tell me that they either have to go out of business or go back to the old-fashioned practice of charging for their services.”

At least 100 physicians attend workshops and seminars AAPS sponsors twice a year on the subject. Former AAPS president Dr. Juliette Madrigal-Dersch, who started her cash-only practice in Texas 11 years ago, tells fellow physicians that she has more time and flexibility to spend with patients and is actually better compensated for it, even after offering a discount for “teachers and preachers” and free care for cancer patients.

“I see billionaires and migrant workers, and everybody gets the same care,” she says.

She charges $15 for a CBC (complete blood count), while the tax-subsidized “charity hospital” down the street charges $79. Medicare reimbursement is just $3.50 for the same test.

Madrigal-Dersch says that by not having to deal with third-party payers, she is able to establish “a true doctor-patient relationship,” enabling her to provide better care. For example, she says one of her patients would probably have died waiting for the Veteran’s Administration to approve an MRI for her brain tumor.

In June, the association’s website added a sample document AAPS members can use to opt out of Medicare.

“Once CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] unleashes its dreaded new program of ‘private auditors’ to shake down physicians in the Medicare program, far more physicians will likely opt out – and even more will wish they had,” the AAPS website states. It also includes a state-by-state list of physicians who have already done so.

Doctors who stop accepting insurance typically lose patients and experience a drop in income, Orient said. Some never recover the revenue, but because they don’t have to pay people to process insurance claims, their overhead costs also decrease.  “Before too long, they often find the move very positive financially as well as professionally because they are working less and making more money,” she pointed out.

“I hope that this will spread,” she added. “Obamacare is turning the nation’s health care system into a Third World experience, just like the website. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

SOURCE

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Knockout Game Goes right

In an apparent case of the “Knockout Game” gone wrong, new video shows a man attempting to hit a girl and knock her down, but his plan backfires when the woman hits him back.

The incident, which reportedly happened in a Las Vegas shopping mall, shows the woman retaliate as soon as she is hit by the man. She starts to beat him on the head when another man, who is reported to be her boyfriend, runs back to try to break it up when he realizes that the guy hit her.

“You hit a girl?” the apparent boyfriend asks before springing into defense mode and helping the woman beat the man. People are watching the incident unfold, asking what happened, before the woman and her boyfriend angrily walk away.

The man who had originally hit the woman is seen, at the end of the video, lying on the ground in the fetal position with a bloody nose. Since being posted to World Star Hip Hop yesterday, the video has already garnered over a million views and about 4,300 comments.

SOURCE

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Obama’s class warfare claptrap

On Dec. 4, President Barack Obama in a major speech on economic policy spoke of “a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain.”

He thinks it is income inequality that is holding back regular Americans. But for that to even be a problem, many Americans would first need an income.

Yet according to the latest job numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, folks are not even entering the labor force (i.e. looking for work), let alone finding jobs at the rate needed to significantly improve labor market conditions.

That is the real problem with the Obama economy. Not fairness, but simply the lack of opportunity.

Since 2009, the civilian non-institutional population aged 25 to 64 has increased by 4.2 million. The workforce, however, has not grown to match the population increase. Those working or looking for work shrank by 165,000.

For that reason, the so-called unemployment rate for that age category has dropped from 7.4 percent to 5.7 percent, and yet the participation rate in the workforce has dropped from 79.1 percent to 76.9 percent.

Mind you, this excludes those over the age of 65 to eliminate any doubt that declining labor participation is because of Baby Boomers retiring en masse. They are not.

If anything, seniors are working longer.

Labor participation (i.e. working or looking for work) among those 65 years and older has increased from 17.3 percent to 18.6 percent, meaning seniors are actually working longer, a theme certainly borne out by data.

There are 1.7 million more seniors are working today than in 2009, a 27 percent increase. For comparison, those working aged 25 to 64 increased by just 2 million, a 1.75 percent increase.

While the fact that 2 million aged 25 to 64 found jobs may seem like good news, relative to 2009’s 73.2 percent employment population ratio, it should have more like 3 million found jobs.

In simple terms, these means almost 1 million people in their prime earning years are not participating in the economy.

That is an alarming statement on current labor market conditions.

So, with all due respect to Obama’s screed against income inequality, that is not what is wrong with the economy. It is his assault on America’s private job-creation engine, and the failure to recover from the financial crisis.

Between Obamacare, the EPA, and bailing out financial institutions, Obama has done more to destroy middle income jobs while protecting the super wealthy than anyone and now wants to everyone to believe has a solution to the very inequality for which he is responsible.

If Obama truly wants to jumpstart an economy that will create jobs at all, he should immediately rescind those same EPA regulations, Obamacare mandates, and job-killing bailouts that divert resources from productive activities to government bonds.

In short, he should get the government out of the way and out of the class warfare business.

SOURCE

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