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Freedom and health care

by To the Editor:
| September 10, 2014 2:26 PM

Freedom from government oppression, religious discrimination and political abuse has attracted millions to America and remains our most precious right.

Yet, in 2010, Barack Obama and Democrats in congress passed, without reading, the (Un)Affordable Care Act  by misrepresenting the terms of the bill,  bribing Senators, denying the House of Representatives the opportunity for amendments, and grossly underestimating the cost. This legislation robbed all Americans of a basic freedom: The right to choose whether or not to buy health insurance, and what kind of policy they could choose.

It imposes an escalating stiff penalty on those who don’t buy insurance and mandates what kind of insurance coverage they must buy. More than 16,000 new IRS agents are empowered to enforce the legislation by having access to everyone’s private financial information.

Despite claims by the president to the contrary, millions of Americans had their health care plans cancelled and lost their freedom to choose their physician. We need representatives in congress who will not take freedoms from all Americans to benefit only 7% of the population when reasonable alternatives have been proposed that have been ignored by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat) and the president. Healthcare reform does not require government control. When you vote this year, remember how important it is to protect your freedoms and vote for Steve Daines for Senator and Ryan Zinke for Congress. We deserve to have Congressional representatives we can count on to defend our rights and our freedoms.

Philip L. Barney, M.D.

Polson

Stolen water and the Kabuki

Wish I had something cute and funny to say today.  I don’t.  That’s probably not true, knowing me, but it has been completely overshadowed by the evil in this idyllic place; again.

Some of us ‘We The People’ attended yet another meeting in Missoula to watch the Kabuki theater of government as they continue their efforts to steal our water, our land and drive us out of western Montana, selling the Blue Gold to line their coffers and turning this place into another Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

What we found, was a pit full of snakes.  Snakes supposedly representing the US Dept of Justice, the US Dept of Interior, the State of MT and a confederated tribe of Indians.  They’ve changed a few players, but they’re still fielding the same teams.  What was missing?  Someone to represent the ~360,000 non-tribal citizens of Western Montana.

Nothing has changed over the past 2 1/2 years.  Nothing has changed since we defeated their efforts to sell us out, almost 1 1/2 years ago, with their “negotiated” Federal Reserve Water Rights Compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation.  They are still a pit full of snakes employing intimidation and bully tactics.  They are still spewing out the same venom.

You don’t talk to a snake.  You don’t reason with a snake.  You don’t negotiate with a snake.  Why would you even try?

I only know two ways to deal with a pit full of snakes, representing evil: pour gasoline down in the pit and throw in a lit match or stir and beat them with a stick until they turn on and kill each other.

Inconvenient Truth #78:

?You don’t deal with a snake.?

?“The Man and the Serpent” - or - The Farmer and the Viper”:?

A Countryman’s son by accident trod upon a Serpent’s tail, which turned and bit him so that he died. The father in a rage got his axe, and pursuing the Serpent, cut off part of its tail. So the Serpent in revenge began stinging several of the Farmer’s ?cattle and caused him severe loss.

Well, the Farmer thought it best to make it up with the Serpent, and brought food and honey to the mouth of its lair, and said to it: “Let’s forget and forgive; perhaps you were right to punish my son, and take vengeance on my cattle, but surely I was right in trying to revenge him; now that ? ?we are both satisfied why should not we be friends again?”

“No, no,” said the Serpent; “take away your gifts; you can never forget the death of your son, nor I the loss of my tail.”

Moral of Aesops Fable: Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten. Snakes have a nature that can only be ignored at your own peril.?

The Scorpion and the Frog is an animal fable that seems to have first emerged in 1954. On account of its dark morality, there have been many popular references since then in popular culture, including notable films, television shows, and books ?.

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, both would sink and the scorpion would drown.

The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature.

The fable is used to illustrate the position that no change can be made in the behavior of the fundamentally vicious. It is this moral that is also illustrated by Aesop’s fable of The Farmer and the Viper. ?

?Let’s read that again:  no change can be made in the behavior of the fundamentally vicious

Anyone who believes they can reason with, successfully negotiate with, or come to equitable terms with anyone representing a government - any government - is a fool.  Fools do not live long, full lives.

What we experienced yesterday should have come as no surprise to anyone?; nothing has changed.  We are simply reproving the commonly accepted definition of insanity.

Theses snakes will continue to do whatever they must, no holds barred, to achieve their goal.  You can’t break the law if your are, or represent, the law.  The end justifies the means.

WTH? was the look on the audiences face when the meeting adjourned.  I’m sorry, were you expecting these snakes, these scorpions, to have somehow gotten religion in the interim?

Nothing changed from our 2012 battle to stop this insanity getting through our state legislative session in 2013.

Nothing has changed since they put the politically aspiring senator from Lincoln county in charge of a “Water Policy Interim Committee” to study what went wrong when the insane Water Rights Compact didn’t make it through the session and now the government has decided to horn in on what it previously declared was a “private deal” between a “Sovereign, Foreign Government” (the tribes) and a Federally initiated Irrigation Project within that foreign governments “domestic borders”!

Is that not insanity?

Folks, it’s time to get a can of gas and some matches.  Has anyone but me ever heard the term “fight fire with fire”?  Has anyone ever heard of starting a “back fire” to put out a fire?

This is bigger than us.

They started the fight; we either man-up and finish it or we will be finished.  It just doesn’t get any simpler than that.  If you’re not in it for the long haul and lack the resolve to endure and attack and use whatever is available and necessary to fight and win this battle, get off the tracks.  I don’t do second place, ever.

?Michael Gale,

Ronan