Never forget.
What could be worse than socialized medicine: ask John Edwards.
Edward’s Vision: Nanny State With A Gun
John Edwards thinks he’s slicker than Penguin shit! This week, the sue-your-ass-off trial lawyer, former senator, and current presidential hopeful managed the near impossible: he made Hillary Care seem docile. This was not easy to do, considering that under Hillary Care if a private citizen, (i.e., someone not privileged and rich like senators and congressmen) hires a private doctor he or she would be committing a federal crime.
The British have socialized medicine, and a bit of a problem or two with it. For one thing, they can not provide the incentive for prospective medical personal to enter the field, therefore, they import a lot of doctors and medical technicians from the third world, with a predictable drop in the quality of care. Canada is much luckier. There, if you are on a waiting list for a life-saving procedure and the length of time till your appointment exceeds your predicted survival time (and assuming you have adequate financial resources) you can simply pop down to the United States and purchase the medical care you need.
The Brits are currently considering NHS Health Miles Cards to reward clean living, and if you fail to abide by the clean living standards, you can be denied public-funded medical care. Point would be awarded on the Health Miles Cards by such things as losing weight, giving up smoking, receiving immunisations or attending regular health screenings. It would work like a supermarket savings card, with one earning transferrable points that can apply to other public services, like being given priority for other benefits or jumping the queue for public housing. Oh, boy. I can’t wait till this comes to America. Well, if by some stastical fluke of the space/time spectrum former Senator John Edwards gets into the Oval Office, we may well wake up to just such a nightmare.
Leave it to John Edwards to make the British system of socialized medicine look good. “Edwards Care” would not only require that everyone be covered, but would also require everyone to get preventive care! He recently told a crowd at a political stump that, “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.” As an example, he said women would be required to have regular mammograms. (Fantasy sequence: “Ma’am, I’m here from the government, and I have a legal order allowing me to check your breasts. Please expose them . . . Now!. And you, sir. Stand back; bend over, and drop ‘em. Don’t think you can skip your annual proctology exam and get away with it.”)
Question: I’m wondering if this mandate would require regular mental health checkups for megalomaniacal politicians? That might make it worthwhile.
Thus, Edwards not only wants us to have universal health care from the cradle to the grave, but mandatory checkups; and this enforced by a government that has fallen apart at the seams on enforcement of border control, a government that would bring every man woman and child in America the same outstanding medical care our veterans receive via the Veteran’s Administration, all delivered with the same efficiency and economy as that provided by the United States Post Office.
Edwards is emphatic that every single American be covered (he may mean Meso and South Americans and Canadians as well, I’m not sure) and disparages all the other socialized medicine plans of other candidates. “Because,” he says, “if it (other plans) doesn’t they should be made to explain what child, what woman, what man in America is not worthy of health care.” (Well, I can think of a few Mr. Edwards – starting with sleazy politicians and slimy lawyers – call my office for a complete list) “Because in my view, everybody is worth health care.”
Edwards says his plan would cost a modest $120 billion a year (enough for about a million of his haircuts), paid for, of course, by ending President Bush’s tax cuts to people who make more than $200,000 per year. (Knowing the sneaky democrat manner of doing things, we might ask, does this include imputed income? Does it include income only, or static wealth?)
Here’s a put-your-money-where-your mouth-is morality question: why didn’t former senator Edwards send his wife to a ‘public’ health clinic, or a metro charity hospital, so she could receive the same care available to the poor in urban centers? The answer is as obvious as the 28,000 square foot mansion he’s building: equality is for the little people.
Here is a handy synopsis of Edwardsian hypocrisy, so you may consider the moral fiber of the man who wants to destroy the greatest medical system in history and turn America into the largest and most expensive nanny-state in the world. Do you want this blithering idiot deciding your future?
Edwards hypocrisy factoids for handy reference
Personal Grooming
A man of personal modesty: John’s hair dresser during the 2004 election cycle, a Mr. Torrenueva, said that though the average price was $400 per haircut, plus travel expenses, one haircut cost John $1,250! How many insurance premiums for the little people would that have covered? All I can say is, Thank God baby seal oil hasn’t been found to be good for hair! At least he’s not a greedy oil baron like George W. Bush.
Humble housing
According to the local tax assessor, the value of John’s new home, which contains slightly over 28,000 square feet and sits on a 102 acre estate, will exceed $6 million when the facility is completed. It will be the most valuable home in Orange County, North Carolina, and perhaps the largest, if you include the recreational building attached to the main living quarters. The recreation building will contain, in addition to a basketball court, a squash court, two stages, and a swimming pool, a bedroom, a kitchen, multiple bathrooms, a four-story tower, and a room designated humbly as “John’s Lounge.” But if you’re thinking of dropping in for a visit to “the people’s candidate, don’t bother. The estate has “no trespassing” signs warming intruders away. Oh, the humanity: “Signs, signs, everywhere a sign . . . . messing my mind.” Guess John’s hippie peace and love streak doesn’t run too deep.
Edwards The Greener – Your Money Ain’t Where Yo Mouth Is
John Edwards recently made a big deal of criticizing Americans for driving gas-guzzling SUVs, which are more or less directly responsible for starvation in Africa, depletion of sperm whales and depriving Antarctica of icebergs. (If you have asthma, blame an SUV). Unfortunately, someone then noted that the former senator owned at least two SUVs himself! Blushing boyishly at being caught with his hand in the hypocrisy cookie jar once again, Edwards did a quick consultation with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, then acknowledged that he does own a Ford Escape hybrid SUV, (a bastard in the SUV world) and a Chrysler Pacifica, which he’s had for years (As if that makes it okay? Why hasn’t he sold it? Holy fleet of ecology-hating SUVs John Kerry!).
Declaring that he will never again purchase an evil SUV, Edwards said, “I think all of us have to move, have to make progress. I’m not holyier-than-thou about this. … I’m like a lot of Americans, I see how serious this issue is and I want to address it myself and I want to help lead the nation in the right direction.”
Sub Prime loan foreclosures are bad . . . no, wait! . . .
While on the campaign trail Edwards constantly attacked subprime lenders, especially those who instituted foreclosure suits against Katrina victims. However, according to data uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, 34 Katrina victims/ homeowners faced foreclosure at the hands of Fortress Investment Group, LLC – and guess which beautifully coffered Presidential candidate has a modest 16 million invested in Fortress funds? Here’s a clue: It ain’t Hillary, baby.
John Edwards can always be counted on to do the right thing – once he’s exposed by the press.
After being confronted by the seeming anomaly between his political platitudes and his financial portfolio, Edward promised to divest himself of involvement in Fortress Investment Group, LLC, and to personally assist those victims who faced foreclosure from Fortress. “I intend to help these people,” the former North Carolina senator said. Perhaps he can find a little room for them in his 28,000 square foot mansion?
Now officially dictators
I was listening to NPR this morning (hey, they play classical music on Sunday morning), and I was shocked to hear something in a report on Mitt Romney’s campaign appearance in Miami. The reporter said that Romney was asked how he would deal with dictators in Latin America, dictators such as fidel castro and hugo chavez.
What? On NPR? Not Presidents castro and chavez, but dictators? After years of work, it would appear these two have finally made the NPR dictator list. evo still has work to do.
But it is still NPR. The anchor during Weekend Edition read a correction to a story that aired last week. The reporter said that the current Iraq war was the first time the National Guard had been deployed overseas since World War II. Even NPR had to admit this was in error and that the Guard had been deployed overseas to Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. If NPR made such a factual error regarding history, what other errors were in the report?
Oh, my. I’ve got to turn off NPR. They’re now doing a story about the Pueblo Indians – claiming that climate change drove them away. The reporter just said that archaeological evidence shows the Indians left behind a large number of turkey bones, suggesting that turkey made up a large part of the diet. Following the “climate change” there were mostly bones of wild animals. Doesn’t the reporter know that turkeys are wild – that domestic turkeys didn’t come along until turkeys were taken from America to Europe and domesticated there? Sigh, of course not.
The weirdos are out in mass again — possibly in anticipation of the next full moon, or planetary alignment, but more probably for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell Incident. Instinctively, on the WWW, these true-believers hover around UFO blog sites, feasting like buzzing flies on the latest issue of flapdoodle in an effort to fortify their tenuous and meandering philosophies of life. Maybe it’s all for the best. Hopefully their preoccupation with grays, shape-sifters from Sirius, government coverups, and how to get an earned-income-tax-credit so they can pay off their bail bondsman, buy a two-day supply of crack, and still have enough left to buy a used car, may keep them so busy they will forget to vote in the next election cycle! If so, we should all count our blessings.
A recent blog by Frank Warren, concerning a Today Show interview with two UFO celebs, Stanton Friedman and Dr. Jesse Marcel (hit the names on your search engines for histories, if needed) was a typical screed on the subject. The author pouts in print about the disdain in which the honorable subject of UFOs was treated. If this sort of disrespect is allowed to pass, what next? Someone on a major TV program questioning the validity of Global Warming (or, now, yawn, the more ubiquitous and irrefutable ‘climate change’)? A cartoon of Allah? Bush, Cheney, Haliburton and company getting away with 911?
For those of you out there who may be mildly interested in the topic of Roswell, or the extremes of human belief systems, the blog is here.
(Warning: this blog may be injurious to your critical thinking faculties)
First, he criticizes the program host for using the term “UFO believers.”
My response to his point-of-view is as follows:
Your aversion to the word ‘believer’s used in conjunction with UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) is understandable and defensible on terms of logic; however, I’d like to point out a greater logic fault from the UFO (adherents? if not believers) and that is using the acronym UFO as if it connotes spaceships, i.e., a mechanical device that obeys the known laws of physics (and astrophysics) and has arrived on earth via a trip from extra-planetary source (if not from another star system). UFO does not mean spaceship, hence, if someone asks me if I believe in UFOs (unidentified objects flying in the sky) and I say yes, they assume I believe in spaceships arriving on earth; conversely, if I say no, they jump to the erroneous assumption that I do not believe in spaceship from other worlds arriving on earth, so therefore I don’t believe in the possibility of other civilizations existing in the vastness of the cosmos. So, UFO believers, remove the 2 X 4 from your own eye before you try to extract the dust mote from someone else’s. Just because I do not believe the current evidence supports the ETH does not mean I don’t believe that other civilizations are scattered throughout the vast cosmos!
He next complains because the program didn’t include a comprehensive history, or synopsis, of the UFO experience. Now, regarding the program’s failure in prefacing the interview of Friedman and company with a historic perspective on UFOs, two things are apparent: 1) any child or adult in any industrial society (the ones who would be receiving the program you’re talking about) is full to the brim of the “history” of UFOs. Yet another regurgitated history of UFOs is definitely not needed. 2) You mention the history of UFOs starting in 1947. This shows a non-objective presumption on your part. The aerial phenomena of unidentified objects in the sky has a long history that precedes the 1940’s by hundreds of years and includes wheels of fire and chariots in the sky, to sailing vessels leisurely navigating through the sky in grand and impossible airships ambling through the clouds of nineteenth Century America. Your selectiveness is borne of either inexcusable ignorance or unpardonable hubris.
Dr. Jesse Marcel’s father was with the military and was an on site responder to the Roswell Incident. He brought home a few small pieces of the debris and let his wife and son examine it. Dr. Jesse Marcel adds nothing of substantive value to the Roswell story. In fact, his story is just another layer of misinformation that obscures the facts and supports the myth. As a child he saw a strip of metal with some signs on it (all Roswell followers know Marcel’s story, so I won’t recap it here). Now, supposedly, he has managed to recalled the spaceship writing exactly and has reproduced the characters for a book he’s selling. Ah hem, a moment here: a childhood memory of a few minutes viewing of a strange language — be it alien starship writing, ancient Hebrew, Chinese ideograms, or Egyptian hieroglyphics — is not a basis for perfect replication of the characters more than FIVE DECADES LATER! And, if, as I strongly suspect, Dr. Marcel had his memory ‘enhanced’ by the use of ‘regressive’ hypnosis, I rest my case. Anyone who has done the least bit of research knows that so-called recovered memories are fabrications created to please the hypnotic inductor and conform to the premise of his questioning. What the subconscious mind doesn’t recall, it readily creates for the hypnotist. Life is fascinating and mysterious enough with everyday reality, and there are paradoxes aplenty out there for us to ponder. But the idea of little aliens who, after having developed sufficient technology to design and build a machine capable of crossing interplanetary (much less interstellar) distances suddenly going stupid and crashing into the earth, is utterly laughable. Even our primitive technology has already developed the means of using radar and computer controlled flight. Do you think a race capable of crossing the stars to the earth with pinpoint accuracy would not have a flight technology at least on a parallel to ours?