Archive for the ‘We’re All Gonna Die’ Category
Gird Yer Loins, Government Run Health Care This Way Cometh
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009It’s a health-care palooza over at American Issues Project today, my column included. Here’s a snippet:
Here is my concern about the health care legislation: While people will start sifting through the details of the legislation, the most important message of all will likely get lost: With fewer employed people, with less tax revenue, America cannot afford the spending we are currently endeavoring. Adding another government program is state-icide.
In the case of health care, Americans are wise to keep the big picture. The minutia of these pieces of legislation will have some good and bad sounding ideas but it’s all irrelevant. Money must exist for these programs. And there isn’t any money.
Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, talks about government run health care and breast cancer:
Currently the United States leads the world in treating breast cancer. Women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it’s 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent. The European Network of Cancer Registries reported:
Breast cancer is also the most common cancer in females in Europe. It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were 350,000 new breast cancer cases in Europe, while the number of deaths from breast cancer was estimated at 130,000. Breast cancer is responsible for 26.5 percent of all new cancer cases among women in Europe, and 17.5 percent of cancer deaths.
In Britain, where they enjoy socialized medicine, breast cancer rates have soared by more than 80 percent in the past 30 years under their system. A big reason for this is early diagnosis. Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent). Women who develop breast cancer in Europe are four times more likely to be diagnosed when the tumor has spread and survival is less likely than are women in the US.
And finally, another American Issues writer John Beski compares Social Security at its formation and government-run health care now:
A few decades ago, some folks in the federal government decided that pretty much everybody was incapable of saving money: so incapable, in fact, that the government decided that it would force us all to save for our own retirement. So, since 1935, the government has taken some money out of each of our paychecks and saves it for us, so we won’t be poor when we retire. To be fair, a lot of people don’t save as much as they should, but some of the very basic problems inherent to the Social Security system mean that many of us may never again see the money that’s left out of our checks on pay day.
Social Security has been one of the biggest undertakings of the government in the past century, and at the present it will become insolvent and fail well before this humble writer is even close to retirement. Many of the underlying problems with Social Security would likely come up in any socialized health care system. The different circumstances of 1935 and 2009 account for much of the reason that Social Security is failing. When some politicians start crafting health care plans, they would do well to remember this fact and that they are not magical seers.
I’m Gay! I’m Hispanic! I’m Female! Meanwhile…..
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009So the Supreme Court of California upheld a law thus reinforcing the will of the people and that’s noteworthy only because the court has made such a consistent practice of making laws rather than interpreting them. There will be lawsuits. There will be outrage.
I don’t care.
So President Obama was utterly predictable and picked a Supreme Court nominee driven by identity politics that, SURPRISE!, helps him in his quest to mollify Hispanic voters since sweeping amnesty might be a tough sell since he’s also in bed with the unions–a triangulation that I’ve seen as a Democrat problem for quite some time. He was going to nominate a looney lib and she fits the bill quite nicely. It’s not about the law. It’s about me. Wheeeee!
I don’t care.
North Korea flexing it’s mentally ill muscle and conducting a sophisticated display of weaponry as a sales job on Memorial Day while the President plays his fiddle, I mean, plays a round of golf–now that I care about. A lot.
Iran sending a fleet of ships out while Israel girds herself for war while the President plays a round of golf–now that I care about. A lot.
Yes, I’m concerned that an activist will be on the Supreme Court, but I don’t see what can be done about it. Will the Senate Republicans mount the will to stop this nomination? Maybe.
Yes, the California Supreme Court made a weasely decision that kicks the problem down the road for the time being.
In the midst of this haggling, the world is on the edge of conflagration. Meanwhile, the president plays golf and issues weak statements. Who ever thought that a Supreme Court nominee could be a diversion but damn skippy if that’s not the case today.
When I look at the frenzy swirling around, I can’t help but to wonder about the confusion. It’s like trying to find one’s way in a sand storm. What really is the most important story? What will most likely change the course of history?
I fear that looking back, we’ll see the this time as a steady march toward chaos with the most important concerns ignored.
Don’t look now, but Swine Flu is spreading.
Jon Stewart’s Definition Of War Criminal
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009If you are sick to death of the moral equivalence crowd throwing around terms like “war criminal” and “torture” with feckless abandon, this video by Pajama’s Media’s Bill Whittle will be a soul-calming tonic. Have your children watch, too. This video educates the viewer about the power of group think (both historically and now) and the scourge that is calling evil good and good evil.
Why did we bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was it justified? Was Truman a war criminal? How about Abe Lincoln? How about Roosevelt?
Watch it here.
P.S. Ignore the 30 second promo at the beginning. Oy vey.
Swine Flu: Much Ado About Nothing?
Thursday, April 30th, 2009While it is very unlikely you’ll die from Swine, aka H1N1, Flu, it is very likely that you’ll die. [History lesson here.]
The odds are clearly stacked against all humans. None yet has escaped death. Most of us, though, when pressed, would like to live as long as possible. Even many who think that life is too difficult and escaping seems like a reasonable option, don’t really want to die. They just don’t want to live like they’re living.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, mud slides, tsunamis, earthquakes and things like pandemics go to the core of what it means to be human: the instinct to survive. And when a person is threatened, primal reactions stir that even rational people cannot fight, and probably shouldn’t.
I’m reminded of the leadership at Canter-Fitzgerald [CORRECTION: Canter-Fitzgerald was in the first tower above the crash where they could not be saved. The decision to go back to work occurred in the second tower, resulting in death.] faced with the terrifying reality that a plane tore through the building next door. The primal impulse at that point would be to run and to escape. It isn’t rational. It isn’t logical. But sometimes fleeing does ensure survival. Instead of being guided by their reptilian brain, these people stayed. Some submitted to friends or authorities against their better judgment. Some were too afraid to face their own terror and so ignored it. They intellectualized the situation. They died.
So, for all the glorification of the frontal lobe and human reasoning, humans survive today because their ancestors didn’t ignore their primal instincts to fight or flee a threat. Swine Flu is a threat. How serious a threat is Swine Flu? No one knows. How can they? This flu strain is new and it’s novelty, itself is terrifying. Could be a slate clearing pandemic like in the 1300s that was dismissed and then, six months later, killed half the world’s population?
Fact: Swine flu is spreading around the globe. It has now been found in every part of the United States. There are cases throughout Europe, South America, North America, Australia, and now, New Zealand.
Fact: This flu will not be contained. No one is willing to cut off commerce during these economical times. And even if it was, it takes only one person to spread it.
Fact: Quarantine works. Densely populated places like schools and military barracks make for easy spread of disease. It is sensible to quarantine people who have been infected or exposed.
Fact: People are stupid. Even people who should know better, will act irrationally. People who are overcome with fear will spread that fear with words and actions. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are filled with information…and misinformation.
Fact: You can help yourself. A person can do things for himself and his family to avoid the threats from disease. Wash hands. Get sleep. Eliminate sugars. Eat healthy. Exercise moderately.
Stay happy. Fear should be a short-lived emotion that saves a life. Chronic fear is both unhelpful and actually harmful to the immune system.
Also, as a practical matter, every family should have enough food to make it through a couple weeks. Anyone in Texas who has endured hurricanes knows it’s just good sense to keep extra food on hand. We are all too accustomed to having access to whatever we need whenever we need it. That’s a false comfort. When people freak out, or if a pandemic were to actually spread, guess what? Target workers aren’t going to be motivated to come to work in the service of the greater good. Plus, no one is going to want to go into public.
So, is the Swine Flu scare-worthy? My gut says no, no more than any other flu. But what do I know? Nothing more than anyone else spouting opinions. The fact is, no one knows yet, how this flu will manifest.
In absence of solid knowledge, we must follow our instinct for survival guided by our rational self-interest. We’re all going to die. Most likely, we will not from Swine Flu.
Since death and taxes are assured, I’d suggest that you prepare as best as you can for Swine Flu and focus the rest of your energy fighting taxes. There’s no doubt you’re going to die. And that you’ll be taxed to pay for this government expansion is beyond dispute. Make a difference where you can. Action will help mitigate the sense of helplessness when facing the unknown.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
Latest PJM Column: PETA’s Pet Slaughterhouse–UPDATED
Monday, March 30th, 2009Here’s an excerpt:
If animals are people and fish are kittens, then the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are genocidal tyrants. Once in PETA’s death clutch, few animals escape.
In Virginia, PETA takes the notion of killing with kindness literally: only seven animals found a home out of the 2,216 it cared for in 2008. Seven animals managed a reprieve; the rest were loved to death.
Please go read the whole thing.
UPDATED: Sign a petition to get PETA’s tax exempt status taken away.
China, North Korea, And Russia Work Together To Manipulate American Economy
Thursday, March 19th, 2009Now, did that grab your attention? Maybe this, from Big Hollywood will, too:
According to my Secret Service case agent, this was the first time anyone accused of possessing the Supernote went to trial. In the past, those caught entered guilty pleas. Liu, a Taiwanese national, decided to take his chances with the federal judicial system. With a twelve year sentence, he may now be re-thinking his decision to roll the dice in the Las Vegas federal courtroom. In one exhibit we played a video recording of an undercover meeting I had with one of Liu’s co-conspirators, Chao Tung Wu. Wu, believing me to be a criminal confederate, said on camera the money was manufactured in North Korea and distributed through the Russian embassy in Beijing. Expressing fears this might be some kind of “rip,” Wu suggested I travel with him to China and sit outside the embassy as he made the purchase. But even that tape failed to garner national media interest.
Balbina Hwang of the Heritage Foundation believes the North Koreans produce about $250 million of the Supernotes per year. Various other investigations claim anywhere from $45 million to $1 billion in Supernotes are in circulation. Your guess is as good as mine. Since the flaws are invisible to the naked eye we have no idea what we may be holding in our wallets.
The world knows North Korea is a nation that relies upon criminal ventures such as counterfeiting, kidnapping, and drug distribution to maintain its solvency. Some believe the North Koreans are producing the Supernote to undermine our economy. One look at our current economic situation seems to show we don’t need outside help… maybe counterfeiting is no big deal.
Lorie Byrd has more and links to Oliver North who reported on this during the election:
On Jan. 26, 2006, in a White House news conference, President Bush asserted, “We are aggressively saying to the North Koreans don’t counterfeit our money.” A Congressional Research Service report two months later concluded, “At least $45 million in such supernotes of North Korean origin have been detected in circulation, and estimates are that the country earns from $15 to $25 million per year from counterfeiting.” Later that year, Hezbollah — a wholly owned subsidiary of the repressive regime in Tehran — began flooding Lebanon with supernotes. Thanks to Iran and North Korea, there may be billions in “phony Franklins” floating around the world. The bills also have turned up here at home.
Economic action precedes military action.
I’m guessing it will be more troublesome to get the economy righted if there are millions in counterfeits flooding the American market.
Iowahawk Saves The Environment
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Iowahawk’s got a list of many. Here are two of my favorites:
8. Go On a Random Killing Spree. The scientific debate is over: our current environmental mess is caused by an oversupply of human beings, and it’s high time we address these two-legged eco problems head on. Next time you’re on your way to a location shoot, do a little location shooting of your own – Biggie/Tupac style. Have the driver lower the tinted windows and pop a few caps on behalf of Mother Earth. Not only will you be doing the environment a good turn, it will earn you valuable youth market “street cred.”
9. Destroy The Entertainment Industry. Science shows that no single sector of the economy exemplifies America’s obscene energy waste more than show business. Witness the untold megatons of carbon released into the atmosphere every year by the production and consumption of entertainment, with no objective benefit to society. It all adds up to one gigantic, mindless, Earth-raping waste of time, and will take the commitment of progressive industry leaders like you to stop it. Before greenlighting any new project, make sure it contains at least 85% organic recycled preachy self-indulgence. By ridding your products of their dangerous popular appeal, you can keep the public where they belong — at home, with the TV off, playing eco-friendly board games like ‘Scrabble’ and ‘Mystery Date.’
There’s more environmental-friendly goodness at Iowahawk.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
Health Scare: Do You Want Tom Daschle Deciding Your Fate?
Thursday, January 15th, 2009What Tom Daschle wants to do to save his fellow Senators will hurt your health and your pocketbook. From the American Spectator:
But surely Congress, even under the control of the Democrats, would never stand for such a thing. Well, the tone of Daschle’s initial Senate hearing was not encouraging for those depending on the legislature to check the excesses of the executive branch. Even the New York Times found the hearing to be nauseatingly obsequious: “The hearing before a Senate health committee was mostly a love-fest as senators from both parties expressed admiration for their former Senate colleague…” In fact, part of Daschle’s strategy for gaining congressional support for his Federal Health Board is to provide his former colleagues with political cover. As he puts it in his book, “I suspect that most members of Congress would be glad to be rid of their responsibility for controversial health policy decisions.”
And, make no mistake about it, these “controversial decisions” will produce corpses. In fact, NICE has moved beyond mere denial of life-saving medication to gravely ill patients. It has also recommended that the NHS abandon the “rule of rescue,” which requires clinicians to treat dying patients without regard to cost. The Telegraph reports, “The NHS should not always attempt to save someone’s life if the cost is too much, the medical regulator [NICE] has ruled.” But how much is “too much”? What’s a life worth? You and I might think this question hard if not impossible to answer, but NICE is not encumbered by our limitations. It has actually assigned a monetary value to human life.
Right now, as imperfect as the system is, a doctor and patient decide health care decisions. Even those who are uninsured make these choices. They are tough ones. For example, a dying patient might decide to forgo care because he doesn’t want his family burdened after he is gone with excess bills. Or maybe a person doesn’t want to suffer for months. Or maybe a person will take the suffering because he has some goals to accomplish. Or perhaps there’s an experimental treatment that is worth trying. Now, insurance companies might resist paying for certain treatments, and they do. But they have liability issues to deal with if they refuse payment on care that would save a life. They can be sued. The government can’t.
The question Americans have to ask is whether they want Tom Daschle to make these decisions for them or not. More likely, it will be one of his bureaucratic minions making the life and death decisions–like is happening in Britain. The American Spectator lays out how government controlled health care can be a cold, heartless master.
Just imagine the IRS deciding whether you live or die. Yeah, it’s not nice* to imagine.
The Economy Isn’t A Machine, It’s A Body
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Beware the “fixers”, the tinkerers, the fiddlers when it comes to the economy:
But the whole idea of fixing, running, regulating, designing, or modeling an economy rests on the notion that, if the right smart guys are at the rheostats, the economy can be ordered by intelligent design. But the economy is no mechanism. There is no mission control. Government cannot swoop down like a deus ex machina to explain the inexplicable and fix the unfixable. Why? Because the knowledge required to grasp each of the billions of actions, transactions and interconnections would fry the neural circuitry of a thousand Ben Bernankes. This is what F. A. Hayek called the knowledge problem. Knowledge, Hayek reminded us, is not concentrated among a few central authorities but is dispersed around society. That’s why bad unintended consequences follow government interventions like black swans.
A few economists have not succumbed to the “fix it” fixation. They know that society is not like a machine at all, but an ecosystem. Faster than you can say market fundamentalism, a Keynesian will scoff at this metaphor. But his favorite trope has helped to stagnate many an economy; making Rube Goldberg apparatuses out of means-ends networks, perversion out of productivity. As Czech President Vaclav Klaus wisely notes: “The market is indivisible; it cannot be an instrument at the hands of central planners.”
I’ve had more than one patient come to my office and say,”Fix me.” Oh, that it were so easy. I’d love for sick patients to have a reset button. I’d love for one adjustment to fix the whole system. Just as I bet every oncologist would love for every surgery to guarantee that the patient is “cured”. Bodies are more complex than that. So is the economy.
The economy, like a body, is a moving, breathing, changing organism responding to stresses in the environment. Many factors determine whether a body heals or dies and no doctor can magically create outcomes. A doctor can, of course, accelerate the process one way or another. But sometimes, even the best care won’t help a patient. Bad care can kill a healthy person, though. There are lots of ways to do harm to a person. That’s why the first rule of medicine is to do no harm.
Barack Obama’s advisers seem to think that the economy is some sort of car that just needs a tune-up or even a new engine and it will be all better. It’s not. Just as one man didn’t create the United States economy. One man, or ten, will not heal today’s economy. The American economy is it’s own life, with it’s own will. Too much meddling will make it sicker, not better. And the patient (all of us) have to want to get better, too. The government would do well to encourage the individuals who make up the economic body to make healthy choices. only then will the economy heal. Still, individuals make the choices.
More:
Today, those working at the frontiers of complexity science are beginning to apply Darwin’s insights to the social sciences, too. “[Economics in light of complexity] is based on the emergent behavior of systems rather than on the reductive study of them,” writes theorist Stuart Kaufmann. “It defies conventional mathematical treatments because it is not prestatable and is nonalgorithmic. Not surprisingly, most economists have so far resisted these ideas. Yet there can be little doubt that learning to apply these lessons from biology to technology will usher in a remarkable era of innovation and growth.” (Lest cries of ‘social darwinism’ go up, remember that we’re only talking about the functional aspects of an economic order, not whether a safety net is justified.)
There may come a point where biology can be reduced mathematically. I don’t know. Perhaps then, the economy will be able to be so reduced, too. Until that magic formula is found, policy makers need to stop acting like their non-stop interventions are making the difference. Forget spoiling the soup, they risk killing the patient.
H/T Instapundit
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
Business Owners: What To Do In A Crisis
Monday, December 1st, 2008Hey all, this isn’t a huge post. I’m just linking you through to Hugh Hewitt who has the whole thing, but I thought this was worthwhile enough to pass along. Having been through a couple Hurricanes, now, here is what I’ve discovered: The thing that is most needed is communication. The thing that goes out first is communication. If you can have back-up modes of communication, you can handle just about anything.
Here’s a sample from the list:
2. Start a Log, capturing time lines, significant events, persons, and exterior contacts and players.
I would also note that this step is important for families. You WILL forget what happened later. Our sense of time warps during stressful situations. A log helps. My log through the hurricane was my blog. Well, it was. And when I went back through and read it, I was shocked. Had I not keep track of the details, there is no way I’d remember it now. The only way to correct errors later is to remember events as they actually happened.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews and the Houston Chronicle.
