Doctors Dig In

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism

The bloggers at the Washington Post remind me of the pinheads behind the sort of “scientific” research that is often, small mercies, spoofed in the news. You know the kind. A controlled study found that men were more attracted to older women when the women were better looking than their younger counterparts. (Howard Stern before Sirius once read this “discovery” on air.)

The latest ObamaCare-related research revealed at WaPo concerns the unwillingness of doctors to be conscripted into the Gulag of ObamaCare.

The findings were published this afternoon in the journal Health Affairs. Accordingly, a state-by-state survey, looking at doctors’ willingness to accept Medicaid patients, found that “more than three in ten doctors – 31 percent – said no,” they would not be accepting new Medicaid patients.

The WaPo’s wide-eyed bloggers are shocked—shocked, I tell you—over this unintuitive outcome.

OMG.

That could mean that the states with the highest likelihood of expanding Medicaid might be those with the lower reimbursement rates – and fewer doctors willing to accept these patients by proxy.

Another Alice-in-Wonderland moment: California has a problem (really!!!). “1.8 million residents are expected to gain coverage – but fewer than 60 percent of providers accept new patients in the program.”

The WaPo’s brilliant conclusion: “Prior evidence suggests that physicians’ acceptance of Medicaid patients will increase as Medicaid payment rates increase.”

You don’t say!

WaPo, of course, is statism and cretinism personified. The solution to the lack of will to work for free: The money pot will provideth.

Not to worry. The Affordable Care Act provisions have it covered, the WaPo assures its readers. “The law increases Medicaid reimbursements for primary care doctors to match those of Medicare providers.”

As I said, it’s all in the money pot.

Since, of course, there is no bottomless money pot, interventionism invariably leads to socialization of the means of production. In the case of the physician caught in the maelstrom of ObamaCare, expect the doctor to be slowly conscripted in the service of those who claim his services for free.

UPDATED: Spoiled Sports, Tramp Stamps & Spectacular Speed

Aesthetics, America, Etiquette, Human Accomplishment, South-Africa, Sport

I spoke too soon about American sportsmanship.

McKayla Maroney didn’t look lost, as the Atlanta Journal described the sullen American gymnast. Rather, she looked sour, after botching her dismount “during the artistic gymnastics women’s vault final at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Sunday.” Romanian Sandra Izbasa, whose solid, but less dazzling, performance earned her the gold medal, approached Maroney and put her arms around her. The American stiffened, and looked daggers at Izbasa. The onus was on Maroney to congratulate the winner. Later on, when the time came to respond publicly, Maroney, predictably, suctioned herself to the camera and mouthed the right platitudes. “Supreme finesse” is how Salon’s correspondent characterized Maroney’s belated, phony show of manners.

But then Salon writers frequently create their own reality.

By contrast, Sanya Richards-Ross set the gold standard not only for speed in the women’s 400 meters, on Sunday, but in her gracious demeanor. Richards-Ross is flamboyant but fabulous, reminiscent of Flo Jo.

For a spontaneous, un-choreographed show of sportsmanship, look to Grenada’s Kirani James, not to McKayla Maroney. James, who took gold in the the men’s 400m final, run a qualifying race against “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, made his way to Pistorius, hugged the plucky double amputee and exchanged bibs with him.

As for the white leotard that practically dug-into and displayed the contours of Maroney’s crotch: Why?! The other girls wore dark colors that concealed their privates. Cringe-making too are the hugs and rubs the scantily clad gymnasts get from their male coaches. I’m not a complete prude, but that’s plain inappropriate and disgusting.

For ho couture, nothing beat the beach bims of volleyball. Misty May-Treanor, who is as rough as a man, displays a tart tat on her lower back. Real cheap. Here and here are images of the tramp stamps in progress.

Did you too predict the three medalist in the men’s 100-meter dash? It was a no- brainer: Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake of Jamaica, and our Justin Gatlin, spectacular sprinters all.

UPDATE, VIA FACEBOOK: AMM: Why, thanks. The only thing I know is track and field. I used to sprint as a youth, but, in those days, in Israel, it was hard to come by the funds to … buy spikes (the running shoes worn back when…). After racing bare-feet and breaking a toe, I sort of gave up on competing. Ah, regrets. I should have stuck it out. I still run 12 miles a week, but oh-so-slowly. If you have a teen girl; get her into running. You’ll have fewer ho problems (for which, face it, girls are notorious).

UPDATED: USA, USA…

America, Human Accomplishment, Russia, Socialism, Sport

Not even the central planners that run the Olympics could suppress excellence and effort. (In its pursuit of egalitarianism, the Olympics rules committee decreed that “only two members of each team can advance to the all-around, meaning that even if one team is predominant above all others it can only have equal representation in the all-around at best.”)

Although America’s superb athletes may come short in many track and field events, our athletes have dominated the Olympics in the sports that count: gymnastics and swimming. (Who cares about ping-pong?) An American, Carmelita Jeter, became the second fastest woman in the world, winning silver in the 100 meter dash. The Jamaicans are unbeatable; gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce a fierce runner.

I confess that the magnificent, down-to-earth Missy Franklin and team swim America charmed me more so than our bionic gymnasts. I am of the old-fashioned mindset that appreciates gymnastics when it balances the artistic and athletic elements. (The Russians still accomplish that, but they’ve lost their stamina.) Still, what amazing athletes these young women are and how impressive is each one’s quest for excellence. (Aly Raisman was my favorite.)

And what does one say about that meteor Michael Phelps? The way he brought home the 4×100-meter medley relay, tonight!!! Supernova.

Comedian Lily Tomlin once said that “98 percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy 2 percent that get all the publicity. But then – we elected them.”

This lousy minority is the inescapable obsession of the weekly columnist. That’s why it’s so nice, for two weeks every two years – to shunt the kleptocracy to the sidelines, revealing it as the freak show it truly is.

For once, we can look to the unabashed individualism instantiated in the eager young faces, the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory.

Go USA. And well done.

UPDATE (Aug. 5): I’m awe struck. So should you be. What a strong, strategic marathon Ethiopia’s Tiki Gelana ran. She set “an Olympic record while winning the event in 2:23:07, fending off Kenya’s Priscah Jeptoo by five seconds.” Anyone who races through a marathon is my hero. That race is mind over matter. I was pleased to see Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova of Russia, who came third in 2:23:29, doggedly hold on to her position in the leading pack.

UPDATED: Hillary’s Next Blood-Inspired Hoedown (Knownothings)

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Islam, Middle East, The State

“Hillary’s Next Blood-Inspired Hoedown“ is the current column, now on RT. Here’s an excerpt:

“If you care about Rebels the world over, as Senators John McCain, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham think you ought to, consider the fate of one brave rebel. Stacked as they are with The Dictator’s judges, the courts in this Rebel’s country want to place him behind bars for shooting a predator on his property. Ursus arctos horribilis is a wild and extremely dangerous carnivore that thrives in the northwestern parts of this dictator’s dominion.

The tribesman is guilty of no more than aggressively repelling from human habitat a creature that had become brazen, making itself at home near the man’s six young children, as they frolicked.

It used to be that the country’s tribesmen instilled fear in encroaching beasts, animal and human. But due to decades of cultural and legal emasculation, under a succession of like-minded dictators, the queered men folk are no longer licensed to protect home and hearth. If they do, they risk losing their liberty.

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Our rebel’s plight would never be popularized by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, or the rest of America’s journalistic priesthood. For he is an American, one among many.

‘Jeremy M. Hill, 33, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing a grizzly bear with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border.’

At least five of Mr. Hill’s six young kids, ranging in age from 14 years to ten months, were home when their dad killed a brown bear that had gone after penned pigs that the kids had been raising.

I wonder how many Syrian rebels or regulars President Bashar al-Assad has arrested for shooting wild animals that had threatened their families.

If given the choice, this scribe would choose the absolute right to defend life and property over the democratic vote, any day.

Fighters for the family and the farm are never “rebels.” Or so Senators McCain, Lieberman and Graham would impatiently insist. Wresting dominion over the distributive state: now that’s the defining battle of an “authentic” freedom fighter.

Speaking of our Syrian soul-mates, the Free Syria Army, aka, “The Rebels.” By now you’ve viewed their handiwork. Purity of arms is not exactly their military or moral motto. …”

The complete column, “Hillary’s Next Blood-Inspired Hoedown,” can be read on RT.

Also available from WND is my book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

The paperback edition features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. Order it from WND. (Read the editorial reviews.)

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UPDATE (Aug. 3): As to the state of knowledge in the West about Syria, the TLS reviewer alluded to in the column concludes:

In the end these disparate groups are united by two things: fear and ignorance. They are caught between a state media that lies and a foreign media with its own biases, which relies on unverifiable YouTube videos. The general conclusion is that no one in Syria knows what is going on, either inside or outside their own neighbourhoods. It is therefore a strange kind of enlightenment that this book offers, but probably an accurate one.