God tells Herman Cain to run for President

From the National Journal we learn that God has told yet another candidate to run for President:

Herman Cain, whose campaign could use some redemption in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, told a crowd of young Republicans on Saturday that God convinced him to run for president and that he “prayed and prayed and prayed” about it.
What is "blasphemy?" According to Wikipedia:

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things.

It seems to me, then, that  it is blasphemy for any mere human being to claim to understand what “God” wants. Really, Herman? Though you are a human animal equipped with a 3-pound brain, you are able to understand what is typically purported to be omniscience and omnipotence? This arrogance–blasphemy–is all-too-common these days.  Herman Cain is one of many politicians who claim to know what “God” wants, and each of them claims that God wants him or her to run.   It sounds like God is confused.  Or more likely, it sounds like many of the candidates running for President are pathologically manipulative blasphemers.

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The purported “free market”

Glenn Greenwald's comments regarding the vague terms that control our public policy provoked me to revisit the extremely vague term, "free market."   “Free market” is a prime example of a vague term that is used for formulating anti-public policy. It is routinely suggested by our alleged leaders that “free market” refers to the freedom to choose where to spend one’s money. On a day to day basis, this idea seems reasonable.  It evokes the image of people selecting fruits and vegetables at an open-air produce market. Modern "free market” policies extend far beyond individual buying decisions, however. In practice, government policies favoring the “free market” prohibit government from “freely” governing.  “Free market” policies allow those with large amounts of money to usurp government policy.  Policies that favor a wide-open "free market" take political power from ordinary citizens and hand that power to govern to large private for-profit corporations and wealthy individuals. “Free market” is a clever phrase for those who want an economic market that amounts to a baseball game without umpires, a market where corporations “freely” monopolize entire industries by scooping up the competitors, immunizing themselves from liability by buying favorable new laws, jacking up the prices and then giving the consumers the “freedom” to buy from among limited high-priced options.  Modern "free market" policies give financially powerful entities the "freedom" to operate free of any government oversight, and the "freedom" to tell consumers to take-it-or-leave-it. [More . . . ]

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Anonymous corporation brings suit

We have now moved from the absurd to the surreal. An anonymous corporation has brought suit against the CPSC to keep an incident report in the CPSC database confidential.  Even without suits like this secret suit, the public does not have full access to the CSPC database: SaferProducts.gov.

A report issued by the Government Accountability Office in October found that 5,464 complaints had been filed by consumers through SaferProducts.org as of July 7. Only 1,847 were published to the database; many reports weren’t published because they were deemed incomplete, or involved products or services outside the agency’s jurisdiction.
"Incomplete?" What does THAT mean? I'd sure like to know more about those rejected reports--two out of every three being filed--that are not being made public, and "trust us" doesn't give me any confidence that they are being rejected for valid reasons. But it all got even more concerning when an anonymous corporation brought its sealed suit attempting to keep a CPSC complaint against it confidential.

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The long history of socialized medicine

As reported by Forbes Magazine:

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance. Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

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