I’d just like to say

How right I was about the president’s correct choice to skip out on the UN”s conference on racism. 

Here’s how it went down:

Ahmadinejad did not fail to disappoint. He took this racism conference as an opportunity to lash out against Israel and the United States. He said that the Holocaust was a “pretext” for aggression, Israel is a “racist” nation and the Western world is responsible for the current financial crisis. He added that “world Zionism personifies racism.”

Folks, what else did you expect? This is nothing new. We know that this mad Muslim, Ahmadinejad, has about as many loose screws as Kim Jong-Il. And you expect this guy to engage in a lucid and constructive discussion on international race relations? If that doesn’t make you lose faith in the United Nations, I just don’t know what to tell you.

Some Western nations had the gonads to walk out on Ahmadinejad’s speech. Good. If Obama had been there, I would hope to Hillary that he would have done the same.

The only downside is that we’ll never know if he would have.  Would have liked to see it, but I wouldn’t have held my breath after the whole Summit of the Americas failure to make it a brouhaha we just saw.  But good job, Mr. Obama, for not getting us into that position in the first place.

Is it OK . . .

for me to find this picture from Instapundit

both utterly hilarious and sort of offensive and racist? 

Also, is it weird that the woman on the right looks just like my gyn if you add about 30 years?  Just curious.

Are there Consties lurking in your neighborhood?

A public service announcement from Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, courtesy of Iowahawk.

Thinking Shallowly About Healthcare

Timothy Noah has a piece in Slate where he attempts to “explore” the health care crisis, and, shockingly, “discovers” that the answer is the solution he’s favored all along- government control. 

If, as part of health care reform, the federal government were to create a new health insurance program to compete with private insurers—as candidate Obama called for during the presidential campaign—and if that plan were to provide the same payment levels as Medicare does, then the premiums families would pay to participate would be 30 percent to 40 percent less than those paid by families to participate in a comparable private plan. Medicare, because it represents about 20 percent of the entire health care market and because its administrative costs are about one-third those of private health insurers, is able to pay hospitals roughly 30 percent less than what private insurers pay and to pay doctors roughly 20 percent less.

(bolding mine)  So, who does Noah think is going to eat all of these costs that the government is not going to pay?  According to the American Hospital Association, Medicare payments have been falling in relation to the actual costs to hospitals of providing care, and in 2005, 65% of hospitals received less in Medicare payments than they put out in costs of providing the treatment.  Who picks up the slack on that now?  We do.  Does Noah really think that it would be sustainable increase those underpayments- by billions– while at the same time removing the private payers that subsidize the current underpayments? 

Not to mention the millions of doctors who are already opting out of the Medicare system, purely because the payments do not support the paperwork and time require.  Many areas already face shortages of certain specialists- this would surely compound the problem.

The very simplicity and directness of the public option is its biggest political liability. It’s a little too obvious that creating a new health insurance program would harm private insurers. The Lewin Group calculates that if, as Obama proposed during the campaign, large employers were excluded from participating in the plan, then private insurers would lose about 19 percent of their customers. If large employers were not excluded—and I see no logical reason why they should be—then private insurers would lose about 70 percent of their customers. To my mind, private insurers would be left with a solid boutique market (51 million people) for which they ought to be grateful. But, of course, private insurers can’t abide that possibility and will likely do everything in their power to eliminate the public option from health care reform.

Anybody got any guesses on how many businesses Timothy Noah has owned or run?  Wait, none?  What a surprise!  Imagine that you run an internet based magazine, lets call it, oh, “Mate” and the government tells you that it is going to take away 70 percent of your business, but you should be grateful for the amount that you have left.  Insurance companies hire a lot of people, for good jobs, with desks and benefits) that we want people to have in order to be productive citizens (I know, I used to work for one).  Now, lets go and tell around 70 percent of those employees that they no longer have those jobs, but hey, “we’re grateful for the customers that we still have.”

I’m going to have to agree with the president on this one

The Boston Globe has a piece criticizing Obama for refusing to attend the United Nation’s international conference on racism. 

So, right away, I’m skeptical.  What do you really think would be accomplished at a UN Conference on racism?  The likelihood of this solving any actual problems seems slim indeed.  Even with low expectations in mind, the author still offers very little. 

President Barack Obama’s position on attending the conference translates roughly into: Do it our way or we won’t play. He has already gotten all references to Israel, to reparations for slavery, and to a proposed ban on speech defaming any religion dropped from the conference’s draft document. Yet, he is still unwilling to have the United States attend. Even if the administration bullies its way into getting its final points, it is not really a win for the United States.

“Do it our way or we won’t play.”  Yeah, I’m failing to see the problems there.  Moreover, Obama had them remove reference to Israel, reparations for slavery, and a proposed ban on speech defaming religion?  Our Obama?  Assuming we’re talking about the same person here, I’m very impressed.  Great job, Mr. President!

Despite the harm his threat of a boycott is doing, his administration continues its power play. State Department Spokesman Robert A. Wood said the United States would reengage in the conference only if its document meets our criteria. The main remaining objection is to a section reaffirming the declaration of the 2001 UN conference on racism.

That 2001 declaration contains statements many Israelis consider hostile. Obama seems to be adopting a policy of killing the messenger rather than dealing with the message.

Does the writer here really understand the phrase “killing the messenger?”  Usually that refers to a message that the messenger has no control over, not one that the “messenger” is specifically “reaffirming.” 

Meanwhile, the Black Caucus is trying to persuade the administration to attend, but without great success so far. In a meeting with State Department officials, the Caucus asked the obvious question: Why not just reject the parts of the document Obama cannot support, and go to the conference anyway? There is nothing radical about that.

So, I was thinking about going to a KKK rally.  I’ll just reject all the parts about inferiority of non-white races.  There’s nothing radical about that. 

“The first duty is to stop lying. Only then can any genuine attempt at settlement get under way.”

Christopher Hitchens discusses the highs, and lows, of President Obama’s recent European trip.

I have to give him credit for this one

This came in my Patriot Post humor newsletter:

You must love him

I was just listening to the radio and I am just amazed at the desperation to love Obama over the recent Naval-Somali Pirates crisis.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly glad that Obama did what he did here, but my understanding is this: He gave the go ahead to the Navy to do what they knew needed to be done- the Navy moved in a hosed the bastards and freed the good captain. 

 

The best credit that CNN gives the President is:

Obama had given standing orders for the military to take “decisive action” if Phillips was in “imminent danger,” Gortney said.

Fox discusses Obama’s role in a little more detail, but doesn’t really say that he did anything more:

 

President Obama twice authorized the military to rescue a U.S. captain held by Somali pirates and whose life appeared to be at risk.

A senior administration official told FOX News that Obama granted the authority on Friday and Saturday to use appropriate force to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. The Pentagon believed Phillips’ life was at risk both times, officials said.

MSNBC‘s story doesn’t credit Obama at all, but links an analysis that raves about his “no drama” leadership, but still provides no details of his actions besides the same as the others:

Obama’s quiet backstage decision to authorize the Defense Department to take necessary action if Capt. Richard Phillips’ life was in imminent danger gave a Navy commander the go-ahead to order snipers to fire on the pirates holding the cargo ship captain at gunpoint.

But the radio show that I was listening to, which, to be granted, is the always pretty nutty K-Town Connection, people were calling in and singing songs dedicated to Obama (no mention of the naval snipers), claiming that this was a day that they would treasure and remember and tell their grandchildren about, and the host claimed that it was the most proud that she had ever been of something that a president had done in her lifetime.

 

Really?  Really?  Like I said, Obama did well, I’m not saying he didn’t, but he didn’t actually do anything except give the OK.  He didn’t put any plans in place, he didn’t for a team that did anything, all he did was say go.  Was this really “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall“?   

 

Really?  Was this anywhere near on par with Clinton’s Welfare to Work reforms, or the unprecedented economic achievements of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s?  Really? 

 

Was this anywhere near the achievement of our military overthrowing Baghdad in mere weeks? 

 

Really?  Did it make you as proud as when the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was chased out of town and turned in to this guy:

 

?

 

Really?  As proud making school available to girls in Afganistan? 

 

And that’s just shit that’s happened in my lifetime- most of it since I reached the age of majority.  Priorities? 

 

 

 

“This is the face of government health care. This is the fate of us all with universal health care.”

I’ve heard a number of pundits point to the VA as a model for the socialized health care system that they believe that we in this country so desperately need.  This scares the pants off me.  Now, to be fair, I’m certain that most anyone advocating universal health care probably also thinks “Eww. . . yucky” when the subject of our brave young men and women in the military comes up, so it’s not like they’ve actually ever spoken to someone who’s gone through VA health care. 

I’ve spent a good amount of time working in disabilty (private insurance and Social Security), so I’ve had the fine opportunity to wade through the medical records of disabled veterans, and it is not something that I would wish on my worst enemy.  Simon Jester has a description of his experiences, and they match the observations of what my claimants experienced to a tee:

I am a disabled veteran.  (And, no, the nature of my injuries is not open for discussion.) I served in Desert Storm. I spent the last three years of my enlistment undergoing physical therapy and taking drugs that would get me arrested if not prescribed by a Navy doctor.  I spent four years after being discharged under the care of the VA hospital in Birmingham, AL.  I never saw the same VA doc twice in a row.  It took months just to get a test scheduled, months more to get the results.  I actually lost a job once because I told my boss if I don’t go to B’ham next week it would take four months to get another appointment, and he told me I couldn’t have the day off.  During those four years, I was given experimental drugs by an intern who was doing a study and couldn’t get volunteers at a civilian hospital or a prison.  I was given a pain drug that was a THC derivative so powerful that I couldn’t function through the hallucinations.  The VA sent me powerful narcotics through the US mail that were stolen from my mailbox and not replaced.  The VA required me to use private insurance or cash to pay for some of my drugs, but thankfully none of my treatments.

And I never got any better.

Not until I went cold turkey on my meds (with the resulting psychotic episode) and saved enough to go to a private doctor and pay her cash instead.

The VA had no agenda here.  They weren’t deliberately trying to make my life miserable. They just didn’t care.  They are trying to handle a gigantic mass of patients, some of whom cannot be fixed without surgery that they don’t have the budget to perform.  They have to deal daily with patients who may not have finished high school, might be senile due to old age, could be drug addled or mind melted from illicit drugs or alcohol.  So they are forced by neccessity to treat every single one of their patients the exact same way.  They are forced to assume that anyone who comes through their doors is the lowest common denominator just to save themselves some precious time for the next 50 burned out old vets who come through the door today. We won’t even discuss the psychiatric problems some of these guys have and the dearth of programs to help.  (Hint to the VA: sometimes the problem you are treating is not in the body, but in the mind. The extra ten seconds you spend with your patient might tell you that.)

And the VA has to have rules like this just to get through the day.  They have to make sure that some of their more emotionally or psychically damaged patients are protected from the vultures who make up our American press corps.   But it seems like a man who can get up and address a public forum is probably capable enough to make his own decisions regarding talking to a reproter after the town hall.  It is simple math though; there is not enough time in the day to make rational and individual decisions regarding patients, so the VA, by default, has to stop anything that isn’t in their little rule book.

Now, think about the number of vets out there.  Now compare that to the number of American citizens that a true universal health care program would have to cover.  Sort of gives you sad face, huh?

My talents and contributions, not my lovelies, are “a particular incentive to welcome my assistance”

Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is upset that the government is not spoon-feeding assistance to organizations that want bailout funds and have minority and women owned firms as partners.  (HT: Nealz Nuze)

Waters, a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, said she appreciated that the Treasury officials were responding to concerns raised by the Congressional Black Caucus. But she said Treasury should be required to give priority to firms that include minority and women owned firms as partners.

“Even under the updated guidelines, the burden remains on minority- and women-owned businesses to find willing partners among a select group of very large asset managers who do not have a particular incentive to welcome their assistance,” Waters said.

I don’t want a bailout in the first place, and I certainly don’t want a priority bailout based on my vagina.