Want to help someone with their medical bills?

http://www.osborneink.com/2009/12/donations-drive.html

It seems that girlfriend's mother of another blogger was in a very bad wreck at the end of November. The woman is still recovering at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. We're all counting out blessings that she's alive, despite severe injuries. She won't be home until the week of Christmas. The woman was also supposed to start a new job the day after the accident. She had spent months looking for this position while unemployed and has very little savings left -- the accident literally could not have happened at a worse time. Now, she's discussing long-term disability, which means at the age of 55 she could be at the end of her working years.

They will appreciate any help you can give.

There is a God!

The Senate Tuesday afternoon voted 54-45 to kill Sen. Ben Nelson's amendment to the health-care overhaul legislation that would have banned the use of federal taxpayer money for abortions.

Thank you, Blue Gal for getting me the News about this!

Maybe the US isn't that far gone. Although, I have serious worries when I read the works of the keyboard warriors on the internet.

Why do I call them gun cretins?

Not all gun owners are gun cretins.

Take Me, believe it or not, I own guns and believe they are dangerous items that need to be regulated and work toward that goal.

On the other hand, there is a small minority of irresponsible idiots out there who see a hint of regulation and do all sorts of stupid things. For some reason "gun rights" is the ultimate wedge issue that can get people to support positions which are a threat to their economic interests.

It seems that the group Gun Owners of America has been hunting for a way into the health care debate for three months.

I have been waiting for that shoe to fall.

My predicition is that people will eventually get sick of all this talk of gun rights and irresponsible gun owners. It would be nice if this blog were a wake up call to the gun cretins, but that's hoping for way too much.

More likely this would be a resource to counter the "bumper Sticker" arguments along with Doug Henigan's book Lethal Logic.

"Gun rights" do not trump people's rights to live healthy and safe lives. Guns do not make a society safe.

Richard Nixon a liberal?

What is the US becoming? Somehow the topic of US health care came up at dinner last night. It seems that Richard Nixon proposed a comprehensive health care plan in 1974!:

Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care.

Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.

Three years ago, I proposed a major health insurance program to the Congress, seeking to guarantee adequate financing of health care on a nationwide basis. That proposal generated widespread discussion and useful debate. But no legislation reached my desk.
--Richard Nixon

I found it worrying when I watched a documentary and saw some of the programs Nixon brought about, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, which would now be decried as socialist!

What is going on with United States Politics?

The US Health System Is Way Better Than Europe's -- If You Don't Count Gunshots and Auto Accidents

Ever wonder why those people are showing up with firearms at meetings where Health Care reform is being discussed?

No phrase is bandied around more in the gun debate than “freedom of the individual”. When it comes to most dangerous products such as handguns, automatic weapons and other things specifically designed to kill people, I believe control is necessary, not least because the failure to deal with such violent devices often means that other freedoms must be curtailed.


TPM LiveWire
Ensign: Our Health System Is Way Better Than Europe's -- If You Don't Count Gunshots and Auto Accidents
Rachel Slajda | September 29, 2009, 12:48PM

In the Senate Finance Committee debate on health care reform this afternoon, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) brought up what he thought was a very good point: If you don't count injuries from guns or car accidents, the U.S. health care system actually provides better outcomes than those in European and other industrialized countries.

"Are you aware that if you take out gun accidents and auto accidents, that the United States actually is better than those other countries?" Ensign said. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) had been citing the health care systems of France, Germany, Japan and Canada as more effective, but with lower costs.

"But that doesn't have anything to do with health care. Auto accidents don't have anything to do with h--," Ensign said, cutting himself off. "I mean we're just a much more mobile society. ... We drive our cars a lot more, they do public transportation. So you have to compare health care system with health care system."

"The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire." From International Correlation between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide.' Professor Martin Killias, May 1993.

Gun Deaths - International Comparisons

from The Gun Control Network
Gun deaths per 100,000 population (for the year indicated): SROLL DOWN AS I CAN'T FIGURE OUT TABLES!

	Homicide	Suicide	Other (inc Accident)
USA(2001)	3.98	5.92	0.36
Italy (1997)	0.81	1.1	0.07
Switzerland(1998)	0.50	5.8	0.10
Canada(2002)	0.4	2.0	0.04
Finland (2003)	0.35	4.45	0.10
Australia (2001)	0.24	1.34	0.10
France (2001)	0.21	3.4	0.49
England/Wales(2002)	0.15	0.2	0.03
Scotland(2002)	0.06	0.2	0.02
Japan(2002)	0.02	0.04	0

Data taken from Cukier and Sidel (2006) The Global Gun Epidemic. Praeger Security International. Westport.


Figure produced by IANSA (International Action Network on Small Arms) and taken from their recent presentation Gun Violence: The Global Crisis.

An Interesting take on healthcare

I'll be the first to say that there should have been some form of single payer health care in the US for a long time. Not having health care has been an economic drain that I would say has contributed to the collapse of the US economy along with the debt based economic system.



I have to admit a great frustration with US politics. It seems that the lunatics have taken over. Although, I would argue that happened with the reaction to the Revenue Act of 1764.

The United States is a Democracy in the most perjorative form of the word.

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. James Madison, The Federalist No. 10, 22 Nov 1787

Rep. Barney Frank addressed this situation quite eloquently "it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."

Frustrate their politics!