The Sage Forge

Healthcare is such a big issue these days it is difficult to realize most of the people writing about it really are not touched by the consequences of the morass of the medical marketplace.  I am.  The ridiculous expense of medical insurance forced me out of the policy I was carrying for myself and my four children last month. (And, as of this writing I have not received a promised refund from World Insurance.)  What follows is a letter I wrote to my Congressman, Kevin Brady, on this issue.  It reflects some of my philosophy on the medical marketplace and what I thinkg government's role is in that marketplace.

Continue reading "Healthcare Open Letter to Kevin Brady" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (620) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a narrowly drawn 5 to 4 decision, upheld a 2003 federal law outlawing partial birth abortions.

Predictably this was both hailed and derided as an attack on Roe v. Wade.  Should it turn out to be so so much the better but, in point of fact, it simply accepts human revulsion at the torture killing of any animal, human or not. 

Continue reading "The Death Eaters" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 07:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, it's over. 

The result of a ridiculous trial after a fraudulent witchhunt investigation is that a man freely acknowledged by every person directly involved in the publication of the identity of Valerie Plame for NOT having been the source of the leak, INCLUDING THE ACTUAL LEAKER, has been convicted for crimes for which he would never have been investigated if Washington D.C. were run by anything other than power-mad mafiosi.

Patrick Fitzgerald, who would be under indictment himself for pursuing a fraudulent investigation and for official oppression in a sane world, gets political cover and the chance to prosper.

Scooter Libby loses his standing in the world and goes to jail.

It is a dark, dark time in America.  And this?  This is only the beginning.

Posted by emmerichjamison at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on Border Bungles from a few weeks ago. I have posted a question on my website homepage. "Is the Bush Administration involved in an effort (the original wording was 'criminal conspiracy') to cripple border enforcement?" It is an intentionally inflammatory question.

See: http://www.pardontheagents.com/ and: http://www.firesociety.com/article/10263/?src=105

Continue reading "More on Border Bungles" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Today on the web we find an article in the Washington Post which attempts to use herd mentality and flattery of an imagined consensus in the public to drive the U.S. out of Iraq.  This would, of course, do exactly what I have predicted for several months the Left has been attempting to do: Abandon Iraq so that millions could die in a carnage completely discrediting America as a world power.

See:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html

This is part and parcel of what I call leading with prejudice.

Continue reading "Leading With Prejudice" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

I got an e-mail with an article from Dr. Timothy Ball, a Canadian meteorologist who does not believe in human-induced global warming.  I read through the article and noted, as I often have recently, that the article spoke a lot of the psychology being applied to strong-arming the political process and stampeding the world's people toward drastic economic change.  This is all well and good.  Unfortunately it does not specifically refute the science on which the drivers of worldwide panic rest their case.

In short, this man's refutation, however much we may agree with his concerns, is nothing more than obfuscation.

Continue reading "Unscientific Method: The Global Warming Debate" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

In the summer of 1995 I wrote an article for the Huntsville Item about the then-current state of affairs in what was widely referred to as "PLAMEGATE" in the Washington-New York-Boston center of the known universe.  The issue at hand was who "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame.  The problem, as I saw it then, was that there so clearly was NO STORY.  Virtually all of Plame's aquaintances knew she worked for the CIA.  It was common knowledge, too, that she has been "under cover" (Her children even famously spouted off as much in the Boston Airport about the time this article was written.)

This is all current today because the only person indicted in the witchunt for a way to put Karl Rove in jail, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, is now on trial for perjury.  Was he the leaker?  No.  Everybody who does not depend on the network news shows or the front pages of a major liberal newspaper for their news now knows not only that Richard L. Armitage admitted in September that he was the leaker, but we now know that Plamegate special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald KNEW FROM DAY ONE that he was the leaker.  Libby's prosecution turns on whether he really remembered who first told him Valerie Plame was a spy and when or if he really forgot and misreported his first knowlege during the unnecessary investigation.

This blog is not just about whatever pops into my head.  It is about prejudice, bigotry, and how some people use those foibles to empower themselves.  I have stated that bigotry is the bias we can't see in the mirror.  That is an innocent form.  There is a form that is simply unmitigated evil, though, and this series of events is a clear case of a bigoted media mis-, dis-, and un-informing us for the sake of practicing and keeping power for themselves and their friends.

I re-print the article exactly as I first submitted it below.

Continue reading "Up in Plames" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on "Border Bungles" from yesterday a reader sent a link to an article on the Ramos and Campean convictions.  It is, to say the least, chilling.  Some people will be put off by the World Net Daily origin, but the fact of the matter is that one can follow up on its sources as easily as those of any other news outlet.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53873

My source for this article is on a campaign to warn people of the danger of a push to establish a North American Union, something like an E.U. common market for North America.  We will be looking further into this and will have more to say about it in the near future.

Posted by emmerichjamison at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Re:  http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009573

Daniel Henninger writes what we all need to hear about the national psychology of failure in today's column.  Read "Talking Ourselves Into Defeat".  I've said the same things a few times, but I get so angry over this stuff it comes out of me sounding like I'm beating on trash cans with a club.

Posted by emmerichjamison at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Re:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070124/bs_afp/useconomybudget_070124203818

The report referenced above shows the budget deficit narrowing dramatically in spite of huge increases in Federal spending and what the Democratic Party once referred to as catastrophic reductions in revenues (i.e., tax cuts).  How does this happen?  It's not hard to understand, really. 

People who worship false idols can't comprehend reality.  Now, there is a perfectly rational explanation for their picture of the world.  One can trace all the dots and make the picture come out the same way every time.  If the founding premise of their world view is false, however, the whole structure will be wrong.  No matter how compellingly logical it may seem.

The false idol of the Democratic Party is money.  If you can pass out money you have something.  If you can take money home from some organization, government program, job, or criminal enterprise you have self respect.  Listen between the lines and you will hear this idol being extolled left and right by Democrats.

Soon you will be hearing of the efforts of Democrats to raise taxes on "the rich" to "increase government revenues".  When they are successful at raising taxes there will be a short term increase in revenues soon offset by slowdowns in the economy- which will be blamed on "the rich".

Continue reading "The Mammonites" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

It was a long session writing yesterday's entry so I didn't get a look at the news until late, meaning that if you want to see Vinod Khosla's article on alternatives to oil and the energy and political rationales for pursuing them you'll have to find a print version of yesterday's (Tuesday, Jan. 23) Wall Street Journal and go to the editorial page.  I can't claim, because I don't have the readership, that others are hopping on my bandwagon.  Compare Khosla's article with "An Inexclusive Truth" from Jan. 19th, though, and you'll see other minds interested in the same sorts of things. 

Continue reading "In The News- The War on Oil" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Many, well make that nearly all, of you do not know that from about the year 800 A.D. to about the year 1150A.D. the Earth was warmer than it is today. Yes, warmer even than today.  There were vineyards growing wine grapes north of London in that time, something done nowhere on the British Isles today.  Someone with a keen ear to the ground of history will note something else about that period that has been poorly taught  from the English-speaking perspective.  It was a time during which a people disciplined into efficiency by a harsh environment were permitted by a period of unaccustomed plenty to impose that skill on their neighbors.  In doing so they revolutionized European government.  They also provided for us an object lesson in what government really always threatens to become- the only formally sanctioned criminal activity.

Continue reading "Crime and Government" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Re: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009541

In prior comments on Charles Murray's series of articles about education and intelligence  on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal one could easily have assumed I simply have it in for Murray and everything he has to say.  Not so.  Today's article (the last in a series of three) is a case in point. 

Murray states that the very intelligent should be held up as having particular responsibility in the world, noting that people with I.Q.s in excess of 120 dominate the processes that shape our culture.  This group represents the top ten percent of the distribution of intelligence in the population.  Furthermore he holds that this group, because they CAN learn more, should have more challenging educations.  They should, at least sometimes, be set apart, gifted schooled with gifted.  They should be required, Murray says, to take coursework in which they are pushed beyond their capacities, and, thus, forced to see as few of them do, the limits of their gifts.

Continue reading "In the News- Murray on Intelligence and Responsibility" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Re: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009535

Yesterday's post dealt with concerns over Charles Murray's column in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal which stated, in essence, that we are excessively obsessed as a culture with the difficulty of educating people he believes to be unable to fully benefit from such education.  In today's column, the second of a three-part series, Murray goes on to make an argument with what I consider more merit, but one that still bears a troublingly elitist stamp.

Continue reading "In the News- Murray on Vocational School" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Re:  http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009531

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page contains an article by Charles Murray (part one of a three-part series to be concluded on Thursday) which should be of note to everyone interested in education and opportunity, not merely in America, but in the whole world.  Murray will be remembered as one of the authors of "The Bell Curve" which, thirteen years ago, ignited a firestorm of debate over the subject of Intelligence and the educability of the masses.  Today's article takes up the gauntlet once more with arguments that, on the face of them seem both well reasoned and scientifically supported.

Such is the danger of misapplied science.

Continue reading "In the News- Intelligence and Education" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

Industrial hemp in America? Maybe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070115/ap_on_fe_st/farm_scene

Industrial hemp production has been resisted by government agencies such as the DEA on the purported grounds that it could be used to hide production of marijuana. On the face of it this seems a rather remarkable claim in that hemp is grown at very high latitudes, such as in Europe and Canada, and intoxicating forms of marijuana appear not to do well in those climates. Furthermore, the farmer attempting to make such a use of camouflage would risk detection from different rates of growth and would risk contamination of both his products through cross-pollenation.

Continue reading "In the News" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Emmerich Jamison

It occurred to me someone might ask the question, "What do you mean by 'Sage Forge'?"

First of all the name has a great feel to it.  Second, it runs deep.

Last night President Bush announced a revision of his strategy in Iraq.  He's had to do this because what he has been doing has not worked as he had hoped it would.  That is because he has been trying to prove that he was better than his enemies, not enemies in Iraq, enemies here at home.

From the first days of "compassionate conservatism", back in 1998 the people he has been trying to beat have been so-called "Liberals" and their perceived opinion of so-called "Conservatives".  From that day to this the thing that, above all other things, George Bush the younger has seemed totally convinced of is that there was little use in having a heartfelt discussion with all the American people on how our values are better served by his philosopies.  The press is a bunch of liberals.  Why discuss anything with them?

Continue reading "Sage Forge Blog 2" »

Posted by emmerichjamison at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)