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“The examples we hear from people with narrowed minds  try to make us believe that only the ones who have made it are entitled to what they earn (and all of it).”

“[F]reedom, if it is to work well, requires not only strong moral standards but moral standards of a particular kind, and that it is possible in a free society for moral standards to grow up which, if they become general, will destroy freedom and with it the basis of all moral values.”  – F.A. Hayek    (H/T: Cafe Hayek)

The title, obviously, are two of the Ten Commandments.  The second is from a Letter to the Editor from a well known Leftist in my local area (Laconia Daily Sun, 10/22/56, after the jump).  The third was a cautionary note by Hayek from 1961.  Unfortunately, it seems that the last has been ignored, the first has been mightly scorned, and all we have left is is a willingness to steal from others.

Such old notions of morality – don’t steal, don’t covet –

Sidenote:  I do wonder how many of the unchurched would even know the true meaning of the word “covet”?

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Steve brought us the plight of 3 month pregnant Jennifer Harris to us.  Seemingly, she had the TANSTAAFL moment when she got the bill from her brand new OppressiveCare policy (emphasis mine):

Now [Jennifer] Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

“It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

Jennifer Harris at least has the ability to pay the 262% increase in premiums that the Democrat’s forward looking vision for health care has delivered unto us. Well, I assume she does. She lives in California. $80K/year doesn’t buy as much in the PRC as other parts of the country.

She has come smack right up to that ill-named notion of “Free Money” up close and personal – nothing concerning money is “free”.  Too bad that doesn’t happen more often – that the decisions and votes made by greedy Politicians aren’t brought home more often so that “producers and earners” can watch their hard earned money waft out their doors and windows.  That sense of “someone else will pay” is going to hurt a whole lot more people people just because Obama and Progressives DO wish to hurt others by redistributing their hard earned Private Property.  Folks like Jennifer Harris (and Bernadette Loesch of Laconia) are going to quickly learn that Progressives (like Willy Sutton before them) are now reaching to where the real money is – the middle class (Sutton merely picked on banks; at least he was honest about his thieving ways). 

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Earlier today I received an interactive phone poll from Norwalk, IA and it was clear that somebody was polling for the upcoming Congressional Republican primary race here in CD-1. All the regular blather of “if you feel strongly about this issue, press 1….” and the like.  Most of us have hung up on these kinds of things, especially near the END of the race (even we political junkies have a breaking point).  This one, however, I took to the end and found one thing kinda strange.

It was clear that the two announced candidates were part of this – and one “rumored” one:

1. Frank Guinta
2. Dan Innis
3. Jeff Chidester.

I can see the first two, but who (heh!) would be looking to ascertain Jeff’s strength in the race?  Either of the first two to see if Jeff is a credible risk (if so, make sure that they pronounce Jeff’s last name correctly)?  Now add this:

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Well, I’ve been blogging about this for a while now – the Establishment Republicans are bound and determined to ‘take out” the insurgency known as the TEA Party and  “take back” their Party (and apparently, continue to cozy up and just be the Jr. Partners in running the Welfare State).  From Big Government (emphasis mine):

GOP Establishment Signals Primary Fight Against Tea Party Favorite Mike Lee

On Tuesday, 79-year old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), now serving his seventh term in the Senate, signaled that he and other members of the Republican establishment are likely to encourage a primary challenge to first term Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

Lee upset former Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the 2010 Utah Republican primary convention in the Tea Party’s first major primary win over a Republican establishment politician.

Hatch told the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio that “[i]t’s time now… for Lee and other tea party Republicans to be ‘rehabilitated’ for refusing to pass a budget bill needed to keep the government operating unless money for the act better known as Obamacare was removed.”

I don’t care who are you – close proximity to power over time creates a craving to hold onto that power – nd 42 years (7 X 6) is an awful long time.  Plenty of time to have been corrupted by that power and be transformed from a “young gun Republican” to an old “DCcrat”. 

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This really works and will only take you about ten seconds!!!   Do the math and the final number will exactly match your favorite movie.   I am very good at math, so I did it in my head, then on paper, and finally on a calculator just to confirm my numerical capabilities.   Each time I got the same answer, and sure enough it IS my very favorite movie EVER!

DO NOT cheat. DO YOUR math, THEN compare the results to the list of movies at the bottom.   You will be AMAZED at how scary true and accurate this test is

1. Pick a number from 1-9.

2. Multiply that number by 3.

3. Add 3.

4. Multiply by 3 again.

5. Your total will be a two digit number. Add the first and second digits together to find your favorite movie (of all time) in the list of 17 movies below:

Movie List:

1. Gone With the Wind

2. E.T.

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(Image H/T: Liberal Logic 101)

A “fundamental transformation”, he said.  Determined Weakness, he “policied”.  Free rides, he decreed.  Now, more people are in the National Cart than there are pulling or pulling:

Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov’t Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers

Daniel Greenfield over at Frontpage Mag has his take on what ails the GOP.  Like Steve, like me, he sees what’s wrong and the inertia that stands in the way to start winning again.  A few excerpts (emphasis mine):

If you don’t fight, you can’t win. That’s what the Party of Lincoln, a party that tested its mettle in a devastating national conflict, has forgotten. Instead it has become a party of good losers who would rather lose easy than fight hard.

The Republican Party.  Its genesis was in taking on the mantle of Abolition – the task of eliminating slavery.  A long fight.  A bloody fight.  A fight that tore the country apart.  But a fight it willingly took on for the end was a most precious thing – Freedom.  Now?  It seems that the conviction to do the hard things, to achieve that Freedom goal again, has gone limp.  Why?  Spirit – or the lack thereof.  That ‘fire in the belly” – has it been replaced by complacency or hubris?  Or both?

The GOP would like to win without fighting. It wants to wait for the voters to come around and recognize that it’s the better choice because it compromises.

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