This Is Why Government Health Care Won’t Work

In the past, people who hiked in the wilderness were aware of its dangers and prepared themselves accordingly. If they got in trouble, they relied on themselves to get out of it. But technology changed that.

Personal locator beacons, which send distress signals to government satellites, became available in the early 1980s, but at a price exceeding $1,200. They have been legal for the public to use since 2003, and in the last year the price has fallen to less than $100 for devices that send alerts to a company, which then calls local law enforcement.

OK, so hikers can now avail themselves of emergency services at the touch of a button, which is life-saving for someone who gets seriously injured on a back-country trail.

But the unintended consequence has been that the definition of “emergency” has been dumbed down to what would previously have been called  “inconvenience.” One group of hikers in the Grand Canyone hit the panic button because the water they found “tasted salty.” A woman in California hit the panic button because she was afraid of thunderstorms. In these cases, and others, emergency teams had to be dispatched by helicopters at a cost of thousands of dollars.

The same thing happens with socialized health care. If individuals are no longer responsible for their health care costs, things like common colds and hangnails become medical emergencies.

Also, experts say that the existence of emergency locator beacons make inexperienced hikers more willing to take risks than they would have been otherwise. The same will be true when health care is socialized.

And forcing insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions is going to be disastrous to, because now people can sign up for health insurance after they are diagnosed with cancer, or AIDS, and as a result, everyone else’s premiums will have to go up to cover them.

By understanding human nature, and seeing how it plays out vis-a-vis situations like personal locator beacons, it is possible to predict the unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies.

Lost in the woods? Just scramble emergency services.

Real Stimulus

Obama is out flagging his failed Stimulus, bragging about how it is creating jobs … except for the 17 million American who are out of work. And the Democrats are considering yet another Spendulus.

One Republican alternative to the spendulus was to suspend the personal income tax fox six months to one year (which would actually have cost *less* than the spendulus). I send somewhere North of $3,000 a month into DC. If I had had $18,000 of extra income this year, I could have…

"Hey! That idea would Giverbackerjerbs!"

• Done two significant home improvement projects, employing not only contractors, but those who supplied the contractors with materials, or
• Paid off my car and my student loans, raising my disposable income for the next three years, or
• Bought more guns, consumer electronics, clothes, furniture, and/or other goods that would have generated retail and production jobs. Any of which would have generated jobs.

Imagine the effect multiplied by 200,000,000.

Cry “Racist!” And Let Slip the Coons of War

Tammy Bruce is a “pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic feminist,” who sometimes subs for right-wing radio diva Laura Ingraham. Like most sane people, Tammy Bruce woke up to the news that President Dumdum had won the Nobel Peace Prize and thought it was a The Onion gag. And she blogged about it in a post titled “I Just Opened a Box of Cracker Jack. Guess What the Prize Was?

“[T]he new prize in the box of Cracker Jack is, that’s right, the Nobel Peace Prize!”

It was accompanied by this photo of ‘Rocky,’ a raccoon that has taken up residence outside her Los Angeles home.

Naturally, leftist heads began popping like so many balloons.

Really? A coon? Is this where we’re at now? Because this sort of stuff isn’t coded speech, it’s not a dog whistle or faux-irony … it’s flat-out, no-apologies, bottom-of-the-barrel, peckerwood racism. Coming from a supposedly mainstream, ‘mugged-by-reality’ class of political commentator.

Alas, there remains no cure for stupid.

How do you like me now, Sadly No?

Weapons-Grade Feminist Crazy

David Thompson has waded into the fever swamps of radical feminism and profiled the very deep thoughts of one Ms. Margaret Jamison; a lesbian separatist and blogger who has some very interesting and progressive ideas on heterosexuality and child rearing.

Ms Jamison is a lesbian feminist who defines rape as “all penile intercourse” on grounds that, “there is something wrong with this notion that a woman’s ‘consent’ is what separates a rapist from a non-rapist.” When not insisting that “all heterosex is rape,” Jamison’s thoughts turn a little too readily to the subject of harming children: “I believe male infanticide to be a better option than the current circumstances. I think it’s better than what we’ve got.”

That’s right, she advocates for women to kill their male babies. Her attitude is not entirely unheard of in the lesbian separatist community, where even pre-pubescent boys and male toddlers are despised.

But even that’s not enough for Ms. Jamison. Ms. Jamison doesn’t just hate men, she hates women who like men. In her deranged mind, a woman who touches a man — or even one who uses (Ahem) “tools” to simulate male contact — is “tainted,” and has no place in her Utopian lesbian sisterhood. From the perspective of an unenlightened non-progressive, she may come across as rather extreme on the point:

If I had a daughter, I would show her exactly what separatism meant. I would let her know that feminist separatists would prefer that I had aborted her rather than raise her in a household where I was married to her father.

The question I’ve got is why Obama hasn’t appointed Margaret Jamison “Marriage and Family” Czar.

It turns out a fish does need a bicycle, so it can run down all the men while yelling, “Die, Penis-Bearers, Die!”

Diversity Is Strength Is Crap

“Diversity is strength,” the left likes to chant. “America’s greatness comes from our diversity,” they chant.  Some would argue that the freedom to allow anyone to go as far and as high as their hard work, talent, and ambition can take them is at the heart of our success as a nation. The left says, no, our success as a nation depends on bean-counting to make sure people of different skin colors, sexes, sexual orientations, mental disorders, or whatever, are equally represented.

But at the same time, the left is giddy over the thought of the United States being reduced to a second-rate power by China, a country that demands rigid conformity and is rather devoid of racial diversity.  (And as anyone who spent time in  China will attest, their attitudes toward blacks make David Duke look like Alan Alda.)

Which would tend to make one suspect that this diversity thing may not really be the key to national greatness after all. Or, at least, that the left doesn’t really believe that BS.

India, on the other hand, is very diverse culturally, ethnically, and religiously. But, as a democracy, it is not nearly so admired by the left. In fact, as Hillary and Joe Biden have shown us, cracking ethnic jokes at the expense of the subcontinent is perfectly acceptable.

There aren't a lot of black people in China.

The Safe Schools Czar Leaves Some Answering Machine Messages

The following messages were left by Obama Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings on the answering machine of his local paperboy.

Dear Reader Receives Booby Prize for Not Winning the Olympics

The Nobel Committee has truly beclowned itself this time. The Peace Prize has meant nothing since 1994 when it was awarded to Yasser Arafat to reward his lifelong pursuit of Jew-killing. In times since, it has been awarded to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore for their lifelong pursuit of not being George W. Bush. Now, it’s been awarded to Barack Hussein Obama for his lifelong pursuit of being Barack Hussein Obama.

The Times Online has noticed the “Life imitates the Onion” quality of awarding a Nobel Prize to an over-rated narcissist who has accomplished Jack Squat.

The prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

No kidding. But I doubt Obama’s silly little cult will see it this way. They also think Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, and for the same reason, because he is ‘The One.’ I am sure the next verse in the Schoolchildren’s hymn to Obama is being written as we speak. They should give him an Oscar, too, for that matter. Because he has made just as many contributions to film as he has to World Peace.

As a bonus, let’s consider who the Nobel Committee considered less worthy than Barack Hussein Obama to receive to Nobel Peace Prize:

• Chinese Human Rights Activist Hu Jia – imprisoned for campaigning for human rights in the PRC, not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.
• Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. — not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. (Not to mention the symbolic value of awarding a Chinese dissident on the 20th Anniversary of the Tianenmen Square Massacre.
• Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute has built nearly 80 schools, especially for girls, in remote areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years – not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama
• Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who risks his life by advocating interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims, also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama
• Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur and is apparently also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama

Not the only pile of crap to win a Nobel Peace Prize

The Obama Presidency in Six Words

“You fukked up. You trusted us.”  -

Hat Tip: GayPatriot

Most Psychobabble Is Crap

Cracked magazine presents an interesting survey of six commonly believed psychobabble truths, and why they’re all crap.

6. “If You Let Your Anger Out, You’ll Feel Better!”

5. “Just Believe in Yourself, and You’ll Succeed!”

4. “Cult Members are Stupid, Gullible Sheep!”

3. “Advertisers Use Subliminal Messages to Make Us Do Things!”

2. Lie Detector Tests Work

1. Homophobes are secretly gay

Number Five is the really destructive.  “Progressive” educators have preached for years that kids had to have “self-esteem” in order to succeed, so they worked overtime working to get kids who were otherwise losers to feel good about themselves. It actually makes the problem worse:

Research shows kids who have an inflated sense of self-worth become aggressive when their sense of superiority is called into question.

In other words: Loser + Self Esteem = Bully.

Not a good way to deal with internalized homophobia, dude.

Bitter, grumpy, elderly hippie Marxist douchebag Garrison Keillor… who has made millions swilling at the taxpayer trough via NPR where he hosts an unfunny show wherein liberal “sophisiticates” indulge their stereotypes of small-town rubes — thinks Republicans should be excluded from receiving health care in hopes that they will all die.

Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

That would be the same deficit he wants to add trillions to via ObamaCare.

But as I thought about it, his plan could work. Let’s let the Republicans and conservatives have their own health care system, and liberals and Democrats will have their own. The Democrats can have the single-payer, DMV-style health care system of their dreams. They can wait two years for an angioplasty and, BTW, have their taxes doubled to pay for it.

In the Republican system, we’ll let those who need insurance purchase it on an open market and tailor their coverage to their needs. We’ll have a reasonable amount of regulation to ensure the insurance companies honor the contracts they make. And we’ll let Republicans deduct the cost of their health care from their taxes.

We’ll see which system works better.

The Quality of Service under ObamaCare may leave something to be desired

Hat Tip: AoSHQ