The Bozeman Tea Party group is organizing an event on November 6, 2009, and put out the following email:
EVENT NOTICE, FRIDAY, NOV. 6th, 12 PM NOON
OPPOSE HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER
Visit the offices of Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus. Protest House and Senate health care bills. Bills are rapidly moving through committees of both houses. Now is the time to voice your concern.
When: November 6, 2009. 12:00 noon- 1:00 p.m.
Where: Avant Courier Building
1 E Main Street, Suite 202
Bozeman, MT 59715
Details: Bring a sign. Bring a letter. Or, simply come.Are you alarmed by acts of Congress? Does liberal health care reform make you angry?
Are you perturbed to hear that ” ‘reform’ will double or triple premium prices”? (WSJ)
Do you sense that this bill and others are an erosion of founding principles of
* self-reliance
* individual liberty
* freedom to contract
* freedom to be left alone
* and freedom from onerous government exactions?Does the vanity and heavy-handedness of Pelosi, Reid and Obama leave you incredulous?
We are planning to make our displeasure felt, our dissatisfaction heard, by the field staff of senators Tester and Baucus this coming Friday. Please join us.
Give your lunch hour to let your voice be heard.
These officials should know of our dissatisfaction, discontent and state of perturbation even if we don’t change their vote.
They must know!
We must not stand by mute while this catastrophic legislation gets imposed on us.
My top reasons for opposing health care reform as presently formulated:
* Fails to deliver its promise of universal coverage while lowering costs (The Impossible Dream. Duh.)
* Disproportionately expropriates from young adults
* Breaks Montana’s state budget by piling costs on Medicaid
* Forces individuals to buy something, a seemingly unconstitutional requirement
* Expands incessant government meddling in personal affairs
* Increases my costs, decreases my choicesReminder: When: November 6, 2009, noon hour. Where: Senator Jon Tester’s office: Avant Courier Building, 1 E. Main St., Suite 202. Bozeman. We will walk the two blocks to Baucus’ office after meeting with Mr. Tester’s staff.
It’s not a bad sentiment, and organizing a protest is a nice way to spend a Friday, even if futile. Much of the email captures the fears, real and imagined, of the right wing of government oppression. It’s kind of where they live, how they think.
Most of it is hyperbole meant to inflame passions, and can be dismissed as such. One line is pure manipulation:
Are you perturbed to hear that ” ‘reform’ will double or triple premium prices”? (WSJ)
In reality, the “double” or “triple” was lifted from an opinion piece by Kim Strassel in which she cites nameless “insurers” who supposedly put forth that figure. Wording it the way they did in this email makes it appear as though it was actual WSJ reporting that produced the number. That’s misleading.
Anyway, I think we can make common cause with these folks, and perhaps should attend the rally as well. They say the proposed legislation forces individuals to buy something, a seemingly unconstitutional requirement. I agree – if government were simply to issue the insurance itself as part of its single payer program, there would be no constitutional issues, since it falls under the General Welfare clause. But forcing people to buy overpriced products from private companies is, in my view, odious and hopefully unconstitutional.
Piece of Mindful 
I have been searching for the Fauxlex post where we went into discussion about the (non-existent) “Dino Hoax”. I couldn’t find it, maybe it has been taken down completely. So I post it here as it is about Bozeman.
There is however a Fossil Hoax; certain, mainly big, fossils are faked, while smaller remains are most likely real (I have seen bones and eggs attributed to dinosaurs in the field, inside the formation).
This example seems utterly fake to me, just like many other fossils from the Hell Creek Formation in the Williston Basin of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_Dinosaurs
The chance 2 enormous dinosaurs are caught in the act and the Trike having a “more than 98 % completeness” is already extremely low, though in a volcanic lake it could happen under special circumstances.
However, the Hell Creek Formation is a fluvial and deltaic formation.
Anyone having been at rivers or deltas (I was born in a major one) knows how dynamic these environments are. How could such a “Dueling Dinosaur pair” ever fossilize like that?
In the lush regimes of the Cretaceous it should be teeming with scavengers who would transport bones over a larger area, even if the geological processes (floodings, river dynamics*, etc.) wouldn’t do that already.
The arbitrary line drawn by Eric “Flat Earth Guru” Dubay is wrong, as many suspicious examples of non-dinosaur fossils show, but there definitely is an incentive (money, fame, recognition among fellow paleontologists) to fake those large complete fossils.
If this were really 2 dinos in their dying moments, “entangled” with each other AND the most complete Triceratops ever found, it would be easy to sell because of its uniqueness.
Mark your agendas, Montanans!
*river dynamics:
I plan to have a dedicated Mollycast about fossil fakery, anyone who wants to join, send me an email and we make it happen.
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