Health care as Waterloo? Give me a break!

There are good reasons to have some serious questions about health care reform as touted by the Obama administration. Such as its costs. Such ha-huge costs of reforming the system from the ground up. Some trillions of dollars is proposed to reduce waste, provide insurance and etc. I’d balk.  But, I sure wouldn’t play politics with people’s lives just because I (a Republican) just hate the fact that I am a minority in Congress, the Dems hold the majority and the president himself is a Dem.  I sure wouldn’t exploit the misery of patients who face the very real threat of bankruptcy just because of the escalating costs of health care alone in this nation.

Not unless I were a values challenged Republican member of Congress by the name of DeMint(?) who wants to use “health care reform” as an opportunity to get back at the damn Dem in the White House, the one who wishes to push “socialism” on the rest of us and of course “break him.”

Is that all the GOP can think to do these days?  Look for opportunities to “break” the people’s choice for president?  Then let me remind the dude of why exactly he is now among the minority.

Apparently it wasn’t “socialism” when big pharma and the major league insurance industry got the bulk of taxpayer funded “Medicare reform” while the GW administration was still in office.  Apparently, GOP in Congress didn’t really blink much of an eye when the GW administration lied to their collective faces about the ultimate cost of “Medicare reform.”  Nor did they waver in their conviction that big gvt can do great things (as long as it benefits big business after all) at the complexities of “Medicare reform” that wouldn’t have done that much to help any senior citizen who wasn’t wealthy enough to buy into it.  Well now, if it was going to cost billions to “reform” Medicare to the benefits of private enterprise; then it should come as no surprise that reforming an entire health care system would probably cost twice, maybe even 3 times as much.  But of course, the health insurance industry and big pharma aren’t the ones who necessarily get the benefits of such taxpayer funding this time.  Not if Obama wants to reorientate health care as “patient friendly.”  *shudder* That’s “socialism” that the gvt might actually be responsive to the people who demand something from it.  Can’t have that, can we now.

I can have serious questions about health care being brought under any form of gvt control.  But, as with public education; I don’t regard health care as a “consumer based” part of the “free market.”  The very fact that the GOP decided that health care could become a “for profit” type of business meant that a lot of things could happen that went wrong with the whole industry.  For example:  Insurance rates that go higher and higher.  Coverage that goes less and less.  Insurers who refuse to abide by their side of the business transaction when the prospective patient signs on the dotted line.  That is, actually pay out the necessary money when the patient gets sick or injured.  Only recently, did a fellow repeat his headaches of having to deal with insurance companies more into profits than actually doing what they were paid to do, actually provide insurance for the fellow who paid them good money for that very coverage.  Some companies were better than others.  It is because of this that health care reform could even be put on the table.

How about doctors that misdiagnose patients?  Or who won’t see you unless you have insurance money in hand?  Who can’t be bothered with providing “World Class Treatment” in a great many hospitals (where patients are known to die in the thousands each year from any number of complications)—with reference to a recent “patients united” ad?  That too would be cause to put health care reform on the table.

If I happen to have serious questions about Obama’s current plan, it is because he isn’t addressing what is crippling the system from the get-go and that is the attitude that there is a difference between being a patient and being a consumer.  No hospital is in the business of making a profit.  The money that they make from any patient able to pay the bill must go into staff, building upkeep, records, medical supplies, insurance, etc.  The idea that they must make a profit at the expense of the patient should be met with outrage.  Health care is not a business transaction.  It is not my buying a doctor’s prescription in which a $200 bottle of pills ultimately finds a large percentage of it in his, the pharmacist, the pharm company, the store that sells it, pockets.  It is not like a TV set, after all.  Once the pill bottle is emptied and must be refilled, that I am expected to again pay $200 for a refill.  $200 to keep my personal health semi-afloat.  What if I don’t have that $200 to spend?

Then do remember this; there was a time when no pharm company advertised prescription medication.  Anything that did get televised was aspirin vs that other brand.  Mouthwash vs that other brand.  Nasal decongestants vs that other brand.  Stuff that could be bought off the shelf for temporary relief.  At that time as well, health care was far more affordable than it is now.  But then, patients weren’t buying “brand names” such as Cialis or ads for Viagra with money handed over for their prescription medication.  So, give me a break.

The Tale of Two Editorials…and comedians

Obama’s poll numbers are dropping! Obama’s poll numbers are dropping! If you are a new left Republican of course you would be dancing with joy that so soon (7 months now) of Obama entering office as president, he is already going through some very tough times as president.  However, I can expect Obama’s poll numbers to change with the flick of a light switch depending on whom you poll.  What I don’t expect, is that the American government reinvesting billions of dollars in this country with a trillion dollar deficit (as recently reported on the CBS News) to have an overnight or instant success in putting the economy back on track.  Won’t happen.  For anyone with a short term memory loss of the primary season 08; Obama said at the time (on his way to becoming president) that it took years to accomplish a wrecked economy and that it would take years to fix it.  But if you are a news media not in the tank for Obama (after all) and don’t want to refer to what the man said at the time and the facts as they existed then and now then you can do the following poll:  Did you want the stimulus plan to be instantly successful?  Yes Ο No Ο.  If you checked Yes then went on with the next caveat how do you feel about continued job losses?  Upon that would hinge whether or not Obama’s poll numbers would stay in the stratosphere or come down significantly.

What the news media who do such polls don’t wish to recall is that job losses were exceedingly high in this country over the last 8 years.  The jobs growth (?) reported by business interests to the federal gvt as well as the GDP (business profits but not worker productivity) was not one that benefited the American workforce nor those businesses that most depended upon the American consumer.  So, when you willingly go along with the propaganda put out by a Republican administration then there is no question that you can skew so called “random” polling of a few thousand individuals accordingly.  The economy started its downward slide for real (not with the dot com bubble burst) upon the discovery that Enron was exploiting greed and a lack of real regulation and proper oversight of its business dealing to literally cost businesses to go into a state of collapse.  Of creating energy prices so high, along with rolling black outs that greatly effected the state of California…  California wanted a timid Republican administration to do something about the looming Enron caused catastrophe.  But, GW bowed to the pressure of business interests and lobbyists and refused to act.  Veep Cheney was prepared to put the scandal plagued company on a preferred status of getting gvt handouts as part of an energy task force—taxpayer funded—package.  Perhaps if that package hadn’t come acropper at the hands of Congress, it might have prevented Enron’s financial collapse for a little while longer. But, it wouldn’t have prevented Enron from ultimately collapsing from its weight of pure greed…

But it isn’t the prior Republican administration that Cal Thomas wants to point to as “timid.”

However, without a doubt, Bill Maher had this in mind when (Comedy Central 13 July 2009) he had an hour long commentary about “The Decider” and the fact that not only did Congress become a wholy owned subsidiary of varied business companies esp. big pharma, but also the White House itself.  When you are a wholy owned subsidiary of the private sector you are indeed going to be timid in your dealings with them nor will you be decisive in acting on the behalf of the people being hurt by this same private sector.

Enron set the stage for the train wreck that the economy would become.  And it took all of 8 years before the economy reached the point where GW’s “base of support” got to feeling the pinch and a significant number of them simply did not vote for McCain by 4 November 2008.  A timid president is what we had the last time.  Yet, for all of his timidity he had remarkably high poll numbers didn’t he?  Well, if you knew who his “base” happened to be and where they lived, you could indeed keep his poll numbers artificially high, even as our timid president couldn’t be the decider to keep a nation economically healthy.  We could go to war in large part to keep business interests like Haliburton economically healthy.  We could drain the treasury of tax $$$ to fund two wars and keep the very wealthy and the most wealthiest of businesses rolling in even more dough.  We could encourage, couldn’t we, the arguments given by business interests that they simply “couldn’t compete” unless they hired all those illegal aliens or outsourced as much labor as possible, or even imported legal and far cheaper foreign labor.  But the unemployed pay no taxes.  And if they pay no taxes then the states are going to feel the pinch as to the services they can provide, the cut backs that will have to commence, the loss to education, public safety and public health just because of it.  Nor do the unemployed buy anything.  With the net result, that retail chains started suffering because of the drop in consumer spending.  Some small businesses went out of business.  Various mall owners started facing bankruptcy.  Our timid previous president wasn’t concerned with the actual GDP of profit losses that business suffered from because of the increasing lack of consumer buying.  He was all about fudging the numbers.  Of a very creative propaganda about where this nation economically stood when in fact no one could have in reality have been able to paint such a rosy picture.  Because to be actually decisive and tell the truth was a much too frightening prospect.

Where GW stood on domestic matters, you can be just as certain that he was equally timid on foreign policy as well.  Whether it had to do with Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.  He could take us to war, all right; but he kept shifting the goal posts on decisively dealing with any of the above nations in a non war capacity.  Only a timid president would do that.

So, where did Thomas come up with the idea that Obama was “timid” in attempting to keep his well-known campaign promises as a matter of foreign policy?  To put it bluntly, Thomas hates the fact that there isn’t now a GOP for president.  That’s the main crux of his argument.  But would a hypothetical President McCain have done a better job?  Not if he agreed with GW 90% or better during the primary season.  And only followed in the footsteps of the previous timid president.  But, McCain wouldn’t have been attacked for 1.) Doing too much.  2.) Not doing too much.  3.) Spending too much.  4.) Not spending enough.  5.) Having the wrong foreign policy.  6.) Not having the wrong foreign policy.  7.) Trying to fix what is broken with the potential for a trillion dollar deficit.  8.) Refusing to fix what is broken just because of a potential for a trillion dollar deficit.  Unless you happen to be a “liberal” of course.  Everyone else, happy to have a Republican in the highest office in the land would have floated on past what went wrong and what went right about his administration.

Barney Frank was on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”  He explained the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco that ultimately fringe Republicans wanted to hang on him and other Democrats during the primary season and during the general election campaign.  Seems that the GOP wanted Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to finance subprime lending to guarantee home ownership for people who actually couldn’t have afforded that type of mortgage to begin with. He wanted Fannie and Freddie to stick with affordable renting.  So, let us put it bluntly, that if Frank is correct in what he said, then the collapse of housing, Countrywide, banks, and the rise of foreclosures in this nation (after all, part of the taxes taken in by the state comes from property as well) can now be handed entirely to the GOP.  The people who seemed to have fully wrecked the free market they were supposed to be fully in love with.

Kinsley being published a day before Thomas (Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington) had quite an argument about what Obama should do to push for health care reform.  Begin only reforming and in small chunks that which was most affordable and therefore most palatable to Congress.

Then again, when watching Bill Maher on Comedy Central last night; he had quite a stand up routine on big pharma.  Correct as far as it goes that big pharma seems hell bent on producing pills these days that might kill you before they can cure you.  And inventing diseases in order to push the pill onto the market.  And inventing those highly spendy national ads to push the pills for diseases that most doctors might never have heard of.  And requiring of the consuming public that they knew better what their symptoms were and therefore should ask their doctor if the recently advertised pill was right for them.  Shouldn’t the doctor tell me?  That was one thing I could find myself in complete agreement with Maher over, ask your undertaker if ___________________ is right for you.

Kinsley did not get into discussing how big pharma could control costs.  Quit introducing fad pills that creates more medical problems than it solves.  Quit advertising those fad pills that results in people getting sick and dying for having taken them.  Of course not.  But a percentage of out of control health care has to do with people seeking profits long before they consider actually helping people with their products.  Let’s put it bluntly, health care as a “free market” attitude isn’t going to put health first.  Nor will costs be controlled while $$$ are at stake.  A lot more would have to be changed than say replacing a faucet on a leaky pipe while the water gushes somewhere else.  Or putting pipe fittings here and there willy nilly.  Attitudes have to change, for the health care system to begin to function again.

Thomas, one of his last comments had to do with the “timidity” of the current president that would allow this country’s economy to go into another wreck.  It hasn’t recovered from the first one.  Nor will it, for awhile.  But while Thomas wants to hang the economy as an Albatross on Obama’s neck, Frank had this to say as well, just how much the GOP were opposed to the extra 40 billion going to the states…  Yeah, the GOP timidity in actually doing anything at all for the people who put them in office.  Sorry, everything can’t be blamed on the current president.

Too many letters, too little thinking

In both the Spokesman-Review and the Coeur d’Alene Press were letters that were either hilarious, irrational, silly or literally beyond the pale. So to try to make sense of it, a little need to discuss them here.

You can’t help laughing at the particular irony of two letters running in two different papers where the main theme is taking scripture out of context in order to “prove” something.  Deborah Solomon is right that you shouldn’t take scripture out of context and ignore those verses in the bible that don’t fit with your world view.  (The same argument that ought to apply to any number of anti-abortion screeds.)  However, in the Press letters is one Jason Hopkins who routinely takes scripture out of context to “prove” that not only is the bible the first word on science, but that it also predicts current scientific laws.  I actually highly doubt that it does anything of the sort.  After all, it wasn’t all that long ago in decades when those of anti-evolutionary views (anti-science to the rest of us) misread the book of Job to “prove” that dinosaurs existed in Old Testament text, as did wooly mammoths.  Uh, excuse me?  But there is no proof that wooly mammoths ever existed in the Middle East since their last known place of appearance is in the Arctic, currently covered by deep glacial ice.  And the Arctic wasn’t exactly known to exist during the time of Job.  On the other hand, it wouldn’t be too surprising if a dinosaur bone popped up in the middle east, as it had in Asia and also in the Americas.  And perhaps on the basis of finding such bones, then the myth of the Leviathan would have been born.  But, only in one scripture out of one book is the Leviathan ever mentioned.  And that is where God chides Job over his presumptions of thinking he can shake a fist at The Lord because of the ills that currently afflict him.  It has nothing to do with either proving or disproving Darwin’s theories.  And meanwhile, “all things are possible with God,” is utterly ignored.  So, Mr. Hopkins takes partial scriptural quotes to “prove” thermodynamics and other current scientific theory.  Making the argument that God’s law is the basis for current scientific theory.  But if I were to turn to each scripture he mentions and read in context, I highly doubt that the scriptures would have “proven” what he claims.

Let’s put it bluntly, that what we now regard as the laws of thermodynamics and others known to exist in the current scientific understanding of things inclusive of the physical universe; scientists did not turn to scripture.  No, they turned to testing, physical observation and etc.  Galileo only physically observed the stars in order to conclude that our solar system in heliocentric—the Earth travels around the sun.  God’s scripture did not tell him that.  Newton watched an apple drop from the tree.  He came up with the theory of gravity.  The bible never addressed gravity.

So, here is a challenge for the readership:  What does each scripture really say put in context with preceding and following scripture?  Isaiah 34:4 and? Hebrew 1:12 and? Job 26:10 and? 28:5 and? 38:24 and? (Remembering that the book of Job was in reality his shaking his fist at God because of what God allowed the devil to do in inflicting injury on Job in order to test his faith.  Now how did that become a serious scientific document?)  Eccliastics 1:6 and?  Jerimiah 33:22 and? Amos 9:6 the water cycle discovered 3 centuries ago.  Which is interesting since that scripture was written some thousands of years prior to that particular discovery; and?  Hebrew 1:11 and?  Hebrew 11:3 and? Coll:17 ???  Now there’s a real pattern here, wouldn’t you say?  A letter writer who jumps from one diverse scripture to another to “prove” what scriptures taken in context wouldn’t be proving at all.  The bible is all about moral authority and guidance toward a more civilized society.  That has absolutely nothing to do with scientific discovery.

When it comes to Gabe Iacobi and his long lament over the new cap and trade legislation:  taxes, taxes, taxes.  But is every small business a polluting industry?  Precisely, one that must fall under new clean air standards?  No.  But it doesn’t stop Mr. Iacobi from engaging in the hysterical broad brush of how much cap and trade legislation would “burden” even non polluting small businesses.  And then engages in the typical hyperbole of how much “going green” would ultimately cost energy consumers.  Uh, has anyone taken note of the twisty flourescent bulbs that have entered the stores in the last few years?  You can literally replace an ordinary light bulb with one that saves energy…  And then can do any other the following:  reproduces natural sunlight, reproduces natural daylight, replicates ordinary house lights.  If you aren’t consuming as much energy (that comes primarily from polluting industries) how would your energy costs go up?  Only if the energy (and polluting) company (such as Avista) insists on raising the costs of operation because it isn’t getting the energy consumption profits from the ratepayers that it wants.  And that is after advertising how to cut the costs of energy (and therefore carbon) use.  Obviously, the studies (inclusive of that from the radical Heritage Foundation) that Mr. Iacobi sites, are going to have their political axes to grind.  The Heritage Foundation in particular will oppose clean air standards promoted by the Dem majority Congress and the Dem president Barack H. Obama.  So?  Bet the next generation however is able to breath a little easier.

Next on the list; Donna Lopez threw a particularly nasty fit at Fiona Gressler for daring to question why the Kootenai County area of Idaho even held a “TEA Party.”  Ms. Lopez’ initial response was that Ms. Gressler didn’t have a right to her opinion.  Now however, Ms. Lopez “apologizes” for presuming that (among other things) she had a right to her opinion!  Let’s put it bluntly, as belittling, demeaning and etc. as before while engaging in yet another nasty attack.  Only now, Ms. Lopez has made herself utterly ridiculous for having done so.  As for Vermont Trotter, I highly doubt that Sarah Palin (soon to be former Guv of Alaska) would ever compare herself to Michael Jackson—an entertainer.  But that didn’t stop Mr. Trotter from doing so.

Randall Jones of the Spokesman-Review:  People knew before they put Obama into office that he would “tax” health care.  Indeed, it was part of his health care proposals while he was running for the White House.  Yes, they did elect him, didn’t they?  He shares his fears of “energy taxes” with Mr. Iacobi.  However, the National Sales Tax wasn’t something mentioned by Obama or the Democrats; but it was the brain child of the “conservatives” Mr. Jones loves to make common cause with.  But it’s “wrong now” if it is adopted by the Dems.  In his great hurry to trash the opposition, Mr. Jones isn’t doing a lot of thinking.

W.C. Miller doesn’t like it that the current administration is trying to “spend us out of debt.”  Well, true enough.  However, why wasn’t he berating the last administration for spending us into debt?  He wants to berate the current administration for ignoring bankruptcy laws and etc. (while trying to get major corporations back on their feet) but fails to berate the last one for ignoring something more major, such as constitutional law.

When it comes to public school policies, in what way has “any” administration “dummied down” math?  Any administration can propose educational standards such as when GW proposed No Child Left Behind and then used that “standard” as an attempt to destroy the public school system; but, what goes on in the public schools as a consequence of the latest political fad where children become nothing more than experiments instead of students, that is the problem of that school district and must be resolved there.

And while he does have some “good points” about high school students, his letter simply rambles from one topic to another rather than being concise.  But here is the laugh riot that comes at the end of his letter, “The government exists only to preserve life and personal and property rights, execute judgment and punish wrongdoing.”  ↔ Got a question for this guy, when was the last time he heard, government is the problem and not the solution?  Reagan.  Essentially, gvt:  loves it, hates it.

At least Russell Brown managed to mention a military coup in his letter about the now ousted Honduran Prez Zelaya.  The guy who wanted the Honduran Congress to rewrite the constitution so that he could serve more than one term.  The answer, he could be forced out of the country by way of a military coup.  I wouldn’t have any idea whether he was “power mad,” a “puppet” of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez, or even if he was a member of an alliance of international “Communists and Socialists.”  But I do know that Mr. Brown could look a little closer to home and the last administration for a power mad president who went well beyond constitutional constraints and who’s blind followers wouldn’t have minded seeing a rewrite of the Constitution to enable him to serve yet another term.  GW Bush.

While condemning Obama as other prior writers had done; you get the impression that neither does Brown put a lot of thought into his letter.  Would this country be all that accepting if a president asked for a rewrite of the U.S. Constitution so that he could serve more than two terms with the idea that it would be put to a vote by the American people… Only, Congress calls on the U.S. Military to stage a coup against that member of its gvt?  I highly doubt it.  Mr. Brown isn’t exactly holding forth on the sad situation in the Honduras as all that supportive of a democracy.  While arguing contrarily that it is!!!

Maybe Mr. Brown would like to see the same thing happen in this nation where the man he hates the most attained the highest office in a free and fair election with a majority support of the people.  And that is why he’d regard a military coup as “pro democracy” and “anti-communist.”  Who can say?  However, history being any guide, no military coup has ever been pro-democratic in nature.

The Ricci case

Call it the tale of two editorials;  Charles Krauthammer dismisses much of the affirmative action argument that lay behind Justice Sotomayor’s decision in the Ricci firefighter testing program and Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post apparently did some research.

These days, I tend to take much of Krauthammer’s arguments with a grain of salt.  But I do find it down right laughable that he would argue “racial discrimination” to ameliorate racial discrimination:  IE Affirmative Action.  Just in case Mr. Krauthammer forgot, but Affirmative Action as it was originally proposed was to end discrimination against this nation’s minorities; discrimnatory practices that were put into place by the white majority in power.  Since Affirmative Action was put into place, the challenges to it have entirely come from people (white) claiming to be “victims” of Affirmative Action discrimnatory policies.  Ahhhh, you mean, they actually have to compete with racial minorities now?  That education, employment, etc. is no longer an exclusive club for whites only?  Isn’t that so sad.  Well, excuse me, but there are many reasons why I am not now a Harvard graduate as someone who is mostly Caucasian.  But I don’t regard “racial discrimination” as the sole reason why I never attended Harvard.  Call it instead; the lack of money to attend such a prestigious university.  But, after that intentionally off the wall aside; but Caucasians in this society have always had far more opportunities to advance further in this society than minorities.  And it was always their choice to either make good or to be losers instead.  If you are a minority however, you might make good if someone gives you a hand up.  But if someone instead slams the door of opportunity in your face; you are more than likely to not do so at all.

And thus, the Milloy Washington Post column.  The author goes to great lengths to describe the sort of discrimnatory practices that lie behind the tests that apparently minority firefighters couldn’t pass and therefore wanted tossed out.  Discrimnatory tests that on the other hand, Krauthammer declared did not exist owing to the “impartiality” based on race of the various testing boards.  Really?

Remember the tale of the 3 blind men trying to describe an elephant?  One found his way to the elephant’s tale and described that the elephant must be a rope.  The second blind man found one of his legs and disagreed.  The elephant was a tree trunk!  The third blind man found the elephant’s trunk and described it accordingly.  But of course, being blind; it was totally impossible for each blind man to see the entire creature.  We can excuse the blind for not having the capacity to “see” everything.  But can we excuse partisan blindness that refuses to see everything?  There is one thing that I have to applaud Milloy for as to his final thoughtful analysis of the white fire truck and the minority fire truck.  Both that stop at the corner because that is where the fire is.  Both that must work together to put the fire out.

On the other hand; Krauthammer’s concept of “color blindness” is to assure that minorities can’t really compete or whites will simply run and whine to some government authority—mainly SCOTUS—for “unfair treatment.”

You have to wonder if Krauthammer has “come a long way.”