From the Forbes’s article which attempts to persuade us that Obamacare really is chock full of puppy dogs and sunshine just as Obama promised: Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care. That sounds all well and good until you stop and think about it. Who decides what constitutes “underspending”? Ultimately, under Obamacare, prices will be driven up through inflation as outrageous hospital bills are presented as evidence along with insurance companies’s counter-proposals that they are “underspending”. ...

We respond to polished presentations like this: With this: I support traditional marriage but if I had to make a decision based solely on the testimonies above I’d have to side with the person who made an articulate case based on freedom.

[HT Brain Auten]

There are some excellent questions raised in this movie.

Many protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement have roundly denounced any and all forms of capitalism as the source of all our present ills. That’s one of the reasons they chose Wall Street as the place to make their angst known. But while they march and chant and propose lists of endless demands I can’t help but wonder, are those who are so outraged clear on who their enemy really is? ...

I was recently asked on Quora for my thoughts as a social conservative. Being a libertarian my answer was more or less that as long as I am afforded the freedom to disagree and openly criticize actions I consider to be immoral then I don’t mind affording others the ability to live in immoral (and irresponsible) ways. As part of my answer I mentioned the oppression of natural marriage proponents by homosexuals and was subsequently asked to provide evidence to substantiate my claim. ...

[From CNN] It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness. People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint. -Penn Jillette ...

I came across a Facebook friend’s post which declared “Right-wing commentator: Poor people voting is ‘un-American’” Since the liberals who were commenting on the story appeared to completely miss the point that the commentator was getting at, I decided to help them out: Oppression should be opposed regardless of who the oppressors are or who they happen to want to oppress. This goes for rich oppressing the poor through the purchasing of government favors with their dollars just as much as it does the poor oppressing the rich through the purchasing of government favors with their votes. ...

Can any sort of morality be sustained in the absence of a divine moral lawgiver from which an objective moral standard can be derived and to whom we are all accountable? Atheist philosopher Joel Marks argues in his piece that it cannot ( part 2), that the best atheists are left with is the subjective dislike of certain attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors. Here’s the conclusion for those of you who are pressed for time: ...

A bible-study companion of mine recently sent me Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism”. Here’s my response: Thanks for sending that over! I must admit I haven’t read much of Sartre, so the lecture you sent helped remedy that. I have a hard time differentiating existentialism from hedonism, something Sartre seems to acknowledge at least by accident when he talks about how existentialism got an early reputation for exalting man’s baser actions. ...