Gnooze - Hilary Backs Obama

Whirled News - California Congressman Compares Torture to Fraternity Hazing

In congressional hearings today on the role of the Justice Department in torture, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) insisted that what other people call torture is really like fraternity hazing.

“I do see here things that seem to be fraternity boy pranks and hazing pranks that I do not -- they might be unacceptable, but they certainly don't fit into the category of torture, which is the word that's been bandied around here,” he said.

Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Klonick reports that in his 13-minutes’ speaking time, Rohrabacher used a variation of the phrase “panties on the head” eight times.

In a press release later that day, the congressman’s office explained that Rohrabacher had not literally meant to compare waterboarding, enforced kneeling and standing in unnaturally painful positions, death threats, sensory deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures to fraternity boys wearing panties on their heads.

“The Representative was temporarily in the throes of an unconscious sadomasochistic eruption caused by all those torture stories and photographs,” the statement read, “And this caused him to misstate his real position. Rep. Rohrabacher in fact believes that what happened to prisoners was closer to fraternity boys having urine-soaked panties stuffed forcibly down their throat until they gagged uncontrollably.”

Gnooze - Clinton Fights On

Whirled News - Senator Clinton Revamps Campaign Strategy

A determined Senator Hillary Clinton today refused to drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and instead revamped her campaign strategy to focus on the upcoming West Virginia primary.

Appearing at a rally in Morgantown, West Virginia, the Senator announced, “This race is about something bigger than my ego. What’s bigger than that? It’s so big that I dare not speak Its name aloud, but y’all know what I mean.”

Sporting a new look, the Senator wore overalls and had two front teeth missing, and the newly energized candidate repeatedly poked her corncob pipe at the audience to emphasize her points.

“Ah’m a straight shooter,” she said. “My daddy taught me how to shoot straight when I was a little girl, and when ah’ve said in the past that ah’m for gun control, ah meant controlling yer aim. Ah represent the common folk. Mah opponent wants to make you pay more and more money for gasoline, but ah want to give you all a rebate this summer, and that’ll help you out no matter what the pointy-headed intellectuals in Washington say. And I say, let’s get the job done in Iraq, but let’s get the job done right.”

Later that day the Senator appeared at the University of Oregon, where another primary is scheduled later this month. Discarding her overalls and corncob pipe and appearing with new teeth, wearing a sensible business suit, and using a pointer, the Senator answered questions from the students and faculty.

Addressing the concerns of Oregonians about the deteriorating environment, the Senator noted that just the other day she had gone to Washington’s Zoo to look at the panders.

“We’ve got to do something to save them and everything else,” she said, “And I’m going to bring together the energy industry and common people to find a solution that balances economical and environmental concerns.”

Asked by a professor of Latin what her favorite book was, the Senator replied, “Pander’s Odes.”

And appealing for a more civil and calmer primary election, she decried “the panderonium that’s been taking place.”

Whirled News - President, Candidates Address Gasoline, Climate Crisis

A determined President Bush challenged Congress to deal with the soaring price of gasoline by insisting they approve drilling in Alaska and the construction of a string of new oil refineries across the country.

After a series of irrelevant questions, a Whirled News reporter asked the President whether these new initiatives weren’t in direct contradiction to his State of the Union speech in which he said that “America is addicted to oil.”

Several reporters stared in disbelief, and one was heard to mutter, “What kind of reporter does he think he is, asking questions like that?”

The President replied that his new proposals actually supported his warning that America was addicted to oil.

“We’ve got to make sure things get worse with our addiction first,” he said. “Only after our addicted nation touches the bottom will it seek the help it so desperately needs.”

In response to a follow-up question about how building new refineries would address the President’s environmental initiatives he proposed two weeks ago, reporters were heard asking each other, “What environmental initiatives? How are we supposed to remember what he said two weeks ago?”

The President, speaking over the confused murmurs, responded that the environmental initiatives he proposed were long-range proposals to be phased in decades from now when global warming becomes a serious problem, while the gasoline crisis was “as immediate and clear a present danger as another terrorist attack. The American people want their President to act boldly in times of crisis,” he insisted.

Meanwhile, Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain pushed their proposals for a temporary roll-back of the federal tax on gasoline this summer to help make gas more affordable.

Reiterating his campaign theme of straight, honest talk, McCain insisted, “As a candidate for President of the United States, I can do no less to address global warming and our energy crises.”

Senator Clinton, in supporting the temporary tax rollback, pointed out that, “This proves that I can make the tough decisions. It’s not easy to keep pandering for votes while you’re insisting that America needs a change from politics as usual,” she said.

She pointed out that by supporting her proposal, her opponent Barack Obama could “prove he was on the side of working Americans.”

Obama campaign officials responded that the temporary tax roll-back was merely a cosmetic sop, would accomplish nothing in the long-run, and in fact merely helped fuel the deeper global climate and energy crises. Ms. Clinton responded by announcing that she was considering Monica Lewinsky as her running mate. “We both know how to whore in order to get close to power,” she said.

The Gratitude Campaign

Another feel good moment brought to you by concerned civillians. We applaud, we applaud... but myabe it would have been cooler to have one called the "Gratitude Champagne" in which we buy our troops the good drink as opposed to the govenment issue sparkling cider.

On a serious note, here's the story behind this touching act of collective conscience. Check them out online: http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/

For the past several years as I've been traveling around the country, I've been
approaching soldiers in the airports and thanking them for serving for us. On
several occasions I have noticed that it felt a little awkward for both of us.
There are several reasons, some of which I am even just now learning as I
produce this film and talk to more soldiers. But they have always appreciated
being thanked, and I have always felt better having expressed my gratitude.

I started to think that it would be nice if civilians had a gesture or
sign that they could use to say "thank you" quickly and easily without even
having to approach. I did some research and found the sign that we are now
using.

Is this limited to the military? Not at all. If you look around
you I'm sure that you'll find lots of people who are serving their communities,
from local to global. If you appreciate their service, give them a sign. Say
"thank you."

Whirled News - White House Reveals Economic Plan

The Bush administration reacted boldly to the news that wholesale prices increased by 1.1 percent last month, the second largest increase in 33 years.

“Our economy is not experiencing inflation,” said chief economic spokesperson Buck Uberalles, “Like melting polar ice caps, our temporary economic downtown, and recent violence in Iraq, this is an anomalous spike that people are trying to turn into a crisis for political advantage.”

Uberalles acknowledged that the inflation spike, however temporary, did require government action to alleviate any short-lived suffering.

“Effective immediately,” he announced, “Supermarkets will begin passing out magnifying glasses and tweezers so that families will be able to more efficiently open increasingly downsized items like cereal boxes, candy bars, loaves of bread and milk cartons.”

He also presented optimistic government projections showing that the new packaging will “reduce stress on our nation’s landfills and conserve valuable resources.”

In addition, Uberalles revealed a proposed plan to provide every family with a wheelbarrow to cart armfuls of currency to supermarkets in order to buy a loaf of bread. The plan would be modeled after John McCain’s health care insurance plan, allowing every family who could afford one to buy it at a slight discount.

In response to objections that, like Senator McCain’s health insurance plan, this does nothing for the middle-class and poor, Uberalles pointed out that giving them wheelbarrows would be wasteful since they didn’t have the money anyway.

The Gay Republican #12 - John McCain - I Don't Love Them Hoes

As an eternal optimist (as good conservatives are), I’m resolved not to wallow in despair over John McCain’s looming nomination as the Republican presidential candidate. The fact that he secured the nomination, in large part, by wooing independents and liberals to cross over in the primaries and vote for him; it’s in the past, I’m over it.

There is no conservative in the race. John McCain is not one, and I say that based on pure common sense. Mitt Romney’s conservative credentials were challenged based on a few of the positions that he espoused during his stint as governor of Massachusetts, but the keen political observer ought to understand that the leadership he exhibited there – over a very liberal constituency – exemplifies the left-most sympathies of which he is capable. In other words, as governor of Massachusetts, we’ve seen Romney at his worst.

Inversely, John McCain is the senior senator of Arizona, a reliably red state. So for as long as we’ve been observing McCain’s US Senate career, we’ve seen him at his BEST… which still includes almost switching parties in 2004 to run as John Kerry’s VP.

So, John McCain is out. And since Barack Obama’s strongest demonstrated conviction to date is his loyalty to an angry black nationalist minister, I am left with the distasteful option of voting for Hillary Clinton in November. Hey: better to have ruinous Democrat policies implemented by a president with a (D) after her name than by a pandering media-whore “moderate” who didn’t earn his (R).

I’m not positive I’ll be able to stomach it; I may wimp out and write in Romney’s name on the ballot. But I’ve evaluated the situation and I have my plan. So, with that accomplished, it’s time to get back to the business of optimism.

If you’ve been watching the presidential campaign recently, dear reader, you know why I’m in such a good mood. There’s been almost no media focus recently on the sad state of Republican presidential candidate affairs. Rather, the lion’s share of the coverage has been dedicated to the bitter, bloody infighting among Democrats….

And it’s delicious!

Barack Obama’s preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, made headlines for about a week. Obama’s refusal to disown his pulpit-mounted purveyor of anti-American racial victimology gospel put a nice big crack in his “post-racial” image, and by extension, tarnished the shiny promise of racial-guilt absolution that a vote for Obama subliminally offered to his self-loathing white supporters.

And Hillary Clinton, who seems to have fallen out of favor with the press (Is it any surprise to find out that American journalists suffer from a raging epidemic of white guilt?) is finding herself subjected to the kind of anal exam usually reserved for Republicans. Imagine what a shock it was for her to have the press actually fact-check her story on Bosnia! She’s only one set of fake memos away from finding out what it’s like to sit on the other side of the aisle.

Obviously, I’d like to see this ugliness continue for as long as possible. The longer the Democrat nomination contest stays neck-and-neck, the better.

This is hardly a unique sentiment. With the Republican nomination essentially decided, right-wing talk radio has been broadly encouraging its listeners to cross over and vote in the Democrat primaries. Usually for Hillary, since Obama is leading in pledged delegates.

And they’ve been doing it. States with recent and upcoming primaries, like Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania, have experienced record levels of new Democrat registrations. Callers to the Rush Limbaugh program gleefully announce their readiness and intent to cast their primary ballots for Clinton.

It must sting Democrats to know that people with no interest in their party’s well-being are playing an active role in picking their presidential nominee. Worse, in a close contest among actual Democrats, the conservative carpetbaggers are elevated to the powerful position of tie-breakers.

To quote Dave Chappelle’s Samuel Jackson character, “HOW’S IT TASTE, MOTHERFUCKER???????”

Needless to say, Democrat power men are scrambling to thwart the right’s giddy turnabout subversion of their primary process. The Democrat party of Ohio actually went so far as require that new Democrat registrants SIGN SOVIET-STYLE LOYALTY OATHS to the principles of the Democrat party before registering.

Hilariously absurd, both in terms of its ineffectiveness (Hillary won Ohio) and in its presupposition that the Democratic party actually has any principles to start with.

Even more amusing, Indiana Democrat Party Chairman Dan Parker announced a plan last week to combat crossover voters “with malicious intent.”

According to the Northwest Indiana Times, the plan works like this: Voters declare party affiliation in the spring primaries. Party officials stationed at the polling places can then check those voters against lists of past party declarations. Party officials can then CHALLENGE the voter’s party affiliation, at which point the voter can choose either to abstain from voting in the party’s primary, or the voter can sign an affidavit swearing that, in the last election, he voted mostly for the party’s regular nominated candidates.

This is so beautiful. Stalin, anyone?

PARTY OFFICIALS will be at the polling places to sniff out mischievous Republicans.
PROFILING! God, I wonder what they’ll be looking for. A clear-headed, sober expression? Good hygiene, perhaps? Evidence of employment?

Mischievous Indiana Republicans, take note: Go to your polling place on May 6th wearing a “Fuck Bush” T-shirt and some patchouli oil. Don’t wash your hair. Arrive between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM. Scowl incessantly. Screw up your ballot and request as many replacements as state law allows.

That oughta fool ‘em!

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane.

On October 20th, 2006, the Orange County offices and home of Tan Nguyen, Republican Candidate for California’s 47th Congressional District, were raided by the California Department of Justice. CalDOJ seized computers and documents as evidence to build a case that Nguyen had participated in a scheme to intimidate voters.

The case centered around a letter that had been mailed to recently-registered voters. Mailed primarily to houses with Latino surnames, it stated, in Spanish:

You are being sent this letter because you were recently registered to vote. If you are a citizen of the United States, we ask that you participate in the democratic process of voting. You are advised that, for those in this country illegally or those with green cards, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in imprisonment, and you will be deported for voting without having the right to do so.

(Several months later, CalDOJ found that there was no evidence to indicate
that Nguyen’s campaign intended to intimidate those legally entitled to vote.
The controversy at the time of the letter’s publication stemmed from the
English-to-Spanish translation of “those with green cards” to the word
“emigrado”, which idiomatically means “immigrants with work permits”, but was
simply translated back into the word “immigrant” in the copy of the letter cited
in press reports.)

SO… judging by history, the left feels that
“disenfranchisement” is such a touchy issue that warning illegal immigrants not
to vote constitutes intimidation so severe as to require a Justice
investigation. But now that the shoe is on the other foot, Democrat brownshirts
in Indiana will be on hand at the polls to challenge your “allegiance to the
party” and keep you from voting.

Just something to consider.

Whirled News - American Airlines Reluctantly Resumes Flying

American Airlines today announced that after cancelling over 3,000 flights last week, it was returning all its planes to full service tomorrow.

“Because we’d been losing money on every flight, it was great saving all that money by not flying,” a spokesperson said. “But we’ve milked this as long as we can.”

Officials pronounced the week-long voluntary grounding program an unqualified success.

“Not only did we save a few million bucks, but the public is blaming the FAA, not us, for all the flight cancellations,” the spokesperson said. “Thus, we expect even further dividends from our program down the road. Now the public will start putting pressure on the FAA to back off on their safety rules and regulations, and with those onerous obligations out of the way, we can continue to save even more money.”

Pointing to a cost-savings chart, the spokesperson explained that six months of reduced maintenance and safety checks would more than offset the cost of a crashed plane.

“Lawsuits from grieving and angry relatives may significantly erode the savings,” the spokesperson acknowledged, “But we’re trying to rush a bill through Congress that makes the airlines immune to such collateral damages. We believe that if the telecommunications industry can seek immunity for breaking the law by spying on Americans, we are certainly entitled to immunity for following new rules and regulations.”

Responding to critics who accused the airline of cynically blaming and pressuring the FAA in an attempt to save money, the spokesperson replied that what American did this past week “was in the great American tradition of responsible economic policy."

"We’re like the farmers who used to get paid for not growing crops,” he insisted. “We hope to become the new leading economic model for the airline industry and return to profitability by not flying more frequently.”

The Gay Republican #11 - Liberals Ban Murder... Wait A Second!

I’d like to apologize to the readers for neglecting the column last week; I had some family obligations that took my attention. Specifically, my grandfather was in the hospital. I’ll spare you the most intimate, gory details of what happened to the old man, but I can’t resist the opportunity to touch on the state of health care in our nation, specifically in southern California.

Grandps was actually released from the hospital on Wednesday, but not because his problem was solved. They drained his bladder (for the first time in three days) and sent him home with a prescription for painkillers and a urine bag, pending surgery that was yet to be scheduled.

A Democrat would look at his predicament and conclude that the way to solve the problem is to expand Medicare or create some new entitlement. The liberal solution would be to legislate some new program or requirement, to address one specific, known problem or set of problems, and then to declare victory. Hooray; prostate patients, you need never worry again, because Medicare has bumped your affliction up on the priority list.

Big-hearted and well-intentioned, as most liberal ideas are, but foolish and counter-productive (as most liberal ideas are).

The real rub with America’s medical system is not a lack of guarantees of care, it’s the opposite. It’s an excess of guarantees, which are made by an organization (the government) that is nowhere near as efficient as fulfilling them as would be the free market.

Even the moderate intrusion of the government into the arena of health care that we have today distorts the market. Example: Medicare. The state takes over responsibility to pay for care for a huge demographic, and in doing so, it mandates that providers perform their services at whatever the state is willing to pay.

How many brains does it take to figure out that when you cap prices, all you do is guarantee that the best level of care that ANYBODY can get is the level of care that EVERYBODY can afford? Result: a shortage of providers.

And my granddad – who is not rich, but could definitely pay free-market rates for the care he needs – gets to sit at home for another three weeks, trying not to die while he waits for his scheduled surgery date.

Here’s another example, one that should speak to everybody in southern California who’s ever been in a car accident or sliced their hand open cutting an onion: Emergency rooms.

If you go to an emergency room, you cannot be denied care, even if you can’t pay. That’s the law. As a result, emergency rooms are the biggest money-losing departments of any hospital. And what happens when things become unprofitable? They go away. Emergency rooms close down. So even people who could afford to pay free-market rates for emergency care end up finding out – usually at the worst possible time – that it’s damn near impossible to get.

For all you “fairness” people out there, chew on this: the crippling distortion of the free market caused by creeping socialism is NOT FAIR to people who are willing and able to pay market prices.

Hey: If you’re some smug, “progressive” pseudo-intellectual driving around in a piece of shit Subaru with a four-footed Darwin fish on the back, think about that for a second. Shouldn’t “survival of the fittest” apply to economic quandaries as well??
______________________________________________________________________
This past Tuesday was April Fool’s day, and I saw an article in the Los Angeles Times that, at first glance, I could have sworn was a joke…

Until I read further.

In the words of David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer:

The Los Angeles City Council dropped plans Tuesday for a symbolic moratorium on
killing, deciding instead to use the upcoming anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.'s assassination to promote peace.

Council members had been
asked by a handful of activists to declare a 40-hour ban on murder and other
violence, a concept one critic quickly derided as "silliness."

“Silliness”? I understand that parliamentary etiquette requires civil language, but I think that a more appropriate descriptor for that idea is “complete fucking idiocy.”

A forty-hour ban on murder.
Call me a cynic, but don’t we already have an ongoing ban on murder? Isn’t that called “the LAW”?

This idea could only make sense to the same small brains who think that tightening gun controls – which only ever results in taking guns away from law-abiding people – will solve gun crime.

If you have a problem enforcing laws, then you need an enforcement solution. More legislation will not help.

"I'm sure that the people who are doing the killing will hear that the council
is calling for a moratorium and then cease and desist," said a sarcastic Joe
Hicks, a former executive director of the city's Human Relations Commission.
"It's more silliness from our wonderful City Council."

Councilman Tony
Cardenas responded angrily, telling his colleagues that a murder moratorium is
not silly at all.

"That's the kind of attitude that Martin Luther King
had to step over and step across to get the job done," he said.

I don’t even know what to say to that. If I were Dr. King, I would be insulted that some LA City Council half-wit had affixed my name and my legacy to such hollow stupidity.

Here’s an idea: how about the LA City Council impose on itself a forty-hour moratorium on demagoguery, meaningless symbolism, and waste?

Gnooze - Iraqi Militia Off The Street

Whirled News - White House Observes Earth Hour

As millions of people around the world turned off their lights for one hour starting at 8 PM, the Bush administration unexpectedly joined the world-wide observation of Earth Hour. At precisely 7:30, gangs of thugs fanned out from the Rose Garden into the Washington, DC area, gouging out the eyes of any environmentalists they came across.



“None of these namby-pamby one-hour measures for us,” said Vice President Dick Cheney. “We put out some of their lights for good.”

Between 8 and 9 PM, the White House Earth Hour Squad, as it was officially designated, pulled people out of hybrid cars and broke into houses with only candlelight showing through the windows, sticking their thumbs into people’s eyes and twisting.



“We decided to bring the central metaphor of our administration into concrete reality,” said a White House spokesperson.



Before leaving the houses, squad members turned on all lights, appliances and power bars, leaving residents groping blindly amid the noise and glare.



“It’s a win-win situation,” explained the Vice President. “We’ve actually increased next month’s average utility bills, which will help the utility companies’ bottom line. And the very environmentalists who tried to sabotage our nation’s economy are now going to have to pay those higher bills.”

Officials announced they were so pleased with the program’s success that they intend to implement it in other cities next year. Reminded that a new administration will be in control next year, a spokesperson for Vice President Cheney replied, “Don’t be so sure.”

Whirled News - Bush Administration Reveals Bold New Climate Change Plan

The Bush administration announced its long awaited plans to address global warming. Signifying the importance of the new proposal, Vice President Cheney, the most powerful man in the United States government, announced the bold new plan.

“We’re going to bomb the bejeezus out of Iran, Afghanistan, and a few other places which I do not intend to divulge in order to keep the terrorists guessing,” the Vice President announced. “The combined force of the unprecedented explosions will move the Earth a few degrees out of its present orbit, just farther enough from the sun to cool our temperature by two degrees Fahrenheit.”

Insisting that the Bush administration had learned a lesson about post-war planning, Mr. Cheney announced that the United States would immediately begin drilling for oil in Alaska and building a string of refineries across the country.

“We’re going to need more heating oil when our planet moves further away from the sun and starts cooling,” he said, and we’ll be ready for it.”

Stressing that the new environmental plan entailed even longer-range planning than the new oil drilling, Mr. Cheney also announced a $10 trillion contract to Raytheon to develop the next generation of nuclear bombs to move the Earth again 30 years from now when the increase in fossil fuel burning may necessitate another orbital readjustment. As part of the plan, Halliburton has been awarded a $1 trillion contract to build and maintain Raytheon City in the Mojave Desert, which will house the massive project.

“The new city will require water,” Mr. Cheney pointed out, “And so former Haliburton subsidiary Brown, Kellogg and Root will be awarded an $80 billion contract to build a pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Mojave Desert.”

Referring to critics, who have warned that the project will result in the draining of the Great Lakes, as “environmental alarmists,” Mr. Cheney pointed out that with Lakes Mead and Powell projected to dry up by 2021, the emerging dry basins will provide excellent holding areas for the newly arriving Great Lakes waters, a clear indication, he said, that God favors the administration’s plan.

Bush Girl - My Lil' Bush

The Gay Republican #8 - Health Care: Single Payer = Certain Death

A week has gone by and I still haven’t paid my narrative respects to Bill Buckley yet. Were he not such a homophobe (yet so eerily flitty at the same time, with his aristocratic airs), I’d feel bad about that. He did, after all, pave the way for the Reagan revolution, and for that the US owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.

This week’s column would also be a perfect place to dance on the rapidly-excavating political grave of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a.k.a. “The Sheriff of Wall Street”, a.k.a. “Client Nine”. But I’d rather deftly abstract from the former AG’s hooker habit by again explaining the difference between liberals and conservatives thus:

“Having principles means that it’s possible to run afoul of them; exposing you to charges of hypocrisy. Having no principles guarantees that you’ll never be a hypocrite. But you’ll always be a scumbag.”

In Spitzer’s current fix, he IS actually open to charges of hypocrisy, having nailed (figuratively speaking) prostitution rings during his tenure as the New York Attorney General. But those amoral social critics who focus only on the hypocrisy aspect completely miss the fact that, juxtaposed with the actual OFFENSE (the misconduct), the hypocrisy angle pales in comparison.

No, this week’s column is one that’s been percolating since seeing an ad for Hillary’s universal health care proposal last month. She seems to be locked in a war with Barack Obama over who can promise more on the matter of health care. And not just AVAILABILITY of care, no; COVERAGE.

Yes, if you are eligible for state-paid health care and you don’t sign up, there will be penalties. Criminal charges. Fines. Wage garnishments.

(Aside: I can’t help but wonder what the Christian Scientists think of this debate. Yes, the whole “no doctors” part of the faith seems a little kooky to me too, but so what? Have we actually reached the point in America where self-determination [i.e. “liberty”] has been subverted by the daddy-knows-best socialism of the vapid knee-jerk do-gooder majority? Isn’t that called “oppression”?)

At the end of the twat’s ad, the narrator says, “If you believe health care is America’s moral obligation, join her on Tuesday.”

And of course, the requisite, “I’m Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.”

Moral obligation, huh?

There aren’t sufficient expletives, either in number or brutality, to hurl at such twisted, backward thinking.

Nobody’s going to deny that health care is getting more expensive. And when prices spike, people whine; and when people whine in a democracy, blowhard politicians start squawking about fixing their problems for them. In truth, there are innumerable reasons for the increase in health care costs, almost none of which can be precisely targeted by legislation.

Tort abuse, yes. Shysters like John Edwards, who make their livelihoods by convincing 12 ignorant people at a time that the soul of a pitiably handicapped palsy baby is inside of him, asking them to award multi-million dollar damages to his/her onerously burdened parents.

(These millions, by the way, are punitives against a doctor who “failed” to recommend a caesarian section, despite the fact that there’s no scientific evidence that a caesarian section surgery would have lessened the odds of the child having cerebral palsy.)

That money comes from somewhere; a malpractice insurer, probably, which pushes up malpractice insurance rates, which pushes up health care costs.

And then, from tort abuse, springs the subsequent problem of “defensive medicine.” Doctors who are afraid of being sued for malpractice by Democratic presidential candidates are tempted to over-treat the maladies they confront, out of fear of a lawsuit. But health care is already expensive; too much health care is way too expensive.

There’s also the uninsured, of course. By virtue of living in the US – even today, without any federal universal healthcare mandate – you have access to health care on an emergency basis. If you go to an emergency room with an emergency condition, the hospital cannot turn you away. The hospital can send you a bill for $10,000 after your treatment, but in the vast majority of cases, it’s turnip blood. So those losses become built into the price of care for people who actually pay for it.

In addition, a particularly annoying angle to the problem of the uninsured is the VOLUNTARILY uninsured: people who can afford health insurance but choose not to purchase it, knowing that emergency care cannot be denied if needed. I actually mentioned this glaring irresponsibility to my socialist ex-boyfriend, who made a respectable wage as a contract employee, but chose a flashy car and thrice-weekly trips to O-Bar over health care.

He replied, “Well, if I had to go to the emergency room, I’d pay for it.”

“Really? You live check to check, but if you got in a car wreck and the bills totaled to $50,000, you’d have the cash to just fork over?”

(The Romney plan – coverage mandates, with subsidies for the insolvent – would have fixed his little pink wagon… but I digress.)

On top of the uninsured, though, there’s a counterintuitive problem: the insured themselves.

Insurance is a tricky business. Carrying insurance results in a disconnect between the policyholder’s consumption and his responsibility to pay for it. So the temptation is to consume more than he otherwise would.
“I could take the five minute consultation and the prescription, but ‘just to be on the safe side’ I’ll get an MRI. The bill’s getting sent to Aetna anyway.”

(The economic term for this psychological effect of pooling demands and costs is “reciprocal externality”, but I won’t bore you with why.)

Clearly, the reciprocal externality problem (like the defensive medicine problem) results in people receiving more than the “optimal” level of care. Demand is artificially multiplied, which pushes up prices.

“But wait, how can you ever say ‘no,’ to more health care? Aren’t people healthier when they receive more health care? What is this blasphemy about an ‘optimal level of care’? It’s HEALTH CARE! We should have as much as we need, whenever we need it!”

…And THAT sentiment, dear reader, is the real root problem with health care costs. Health care has become an entitlement. We want it, we think we deserve it, so to hell with the cost. And in the economic equation, when cost isn’t a factor, the quantity demanded is as much as people can stuff themselves with.

Health care, however, isn’t really an entitlement. That’s right, I said it: Health care is not a “human right.” And the proof is in the fact that it’s a moving target. If your “human rights” didn’t entitle you to a Polio vaccine or an AZT prescription before they were invented, how do those same rights entitle you to those things just because they now exist?

Do you really think you have an open-ended claim on society that it take care of you by its best possible efforts? You selfish fuck!

(And to you left-wing folk who consider yourselves benevolent for your big-hearted socialism: do you really think that you have the right to use the force of the state to check-jack American taxpayers for the purposes of your hegemonic brand of compulsory charity? You self-congratulatory douchebags!)

The entitlement mentality is a manifestation of the “necessity creep” phenomenon: Polite society frowns on telling people that they don’t actually “need” something that they claim they do. So we used to “need” food, clothing, and shelter. Now, we “need” vacations and hair color and True Religion Jeans.

But, level of necessity notwithstanding, just because you “need” something, does that mean it’s OWED to you?

And before you say, “Yes”, consider this: I’d bet a clear majority of voters in Los Angeles County would say that they “need” a car. And cars are expensive. Does that mean that the government should provide cars to them?

The head-scratcher about the entitlement mentality, though, is that it’s actually a product of our affluence. (So much for the myths of Scrooge and Mr. Potter.) My reference a few weeks back to the middle class of yesteryear being dirt poor compared to the middle class today holds true. As we get richer, we feel entitled to more and better. And health care, at the level we receive it in the US, is a luxury good, which means we want more of it as we get richer.

So, as our incomes increase, not only do we spend more on health care, we spend a greater fraction of those incomes on it. We consume more health care per capita in real terms than ever before.

…Is that actually a problem though?

Honestly, is it?

Certainly the other issues I listed above, and some others I neglected, ought to be addressed. Tort reform legislation, maybe, and new health care options, like the Definity plan I have, which are designed to encourage the procurement of necessary care, and to cover the beneficiary in the case of a catastrophe, but to discourage frivolous overspending.

But, look: if we achieve greater wealth than prior generations, and therefore desire to be healthier than prior generations… It seems to me that we should also expect to have to pay for it.

Plainly, the government can’t afford to be the sole payor for a moving-target expense whose cost is growing at, what, four times the rate of GDP? More?

It doesn’t take a genius to see that, despite the PLURry fantasy of free hospital stays and nobody ever being refused care, if the government takes over health care, it will end up being rationed.

It’ll be an insidious form of rationing, though. Sure, we’ll feel the squeeze when we walk into a DMV-reminiscent “take-a-number” office to get a checkup, but what we won’t see are the IMPROVEMENTS to the field of medicine that we’re foregoing by moving health care out of the private realm.

In realistic terms, it’s relatively cheap to take the existing body of medical knowledge and apply it to a group of beneficiary citizens. What’s expensive is to blaze new trails: building the FIRST C-T scan machine; producing the FIRST antiretroviral pill; performing the FIRST lung transplant. What incentive would the state have to invent new, cutting-edge treatments, if the only result is that the public will have a new claim on the government to pay for them to receive it??

The moving target stops moving.

In a “lite” sense, the rationing of care is already happening, as I learned in my brief stint in health care finance. The company for which I worked performs kidney dialysis, and under federal law, End-Stage Renal Disease qualifies the victim for Medicare (but only after a waiting period of about three years if he/she already has his own private insurance). As a result, something like 75% of the company’s patients were Medicare patients, and Medicare’s set reimbursement rate per treatment was about $200. Unfortunately, that reimbursement rate fell at or below our provider cost (depending on medication levels), which meant that we only broke even, or even LOST MONEY on 75% of our patients. Medicare can’t afford to pay any more though, so with government reimbursement rates not improving, the only way the company could keep the doors open was to SOAK people who carried actual private insurance.

The company actually maintained a VERY important team (of which I was an occasional part) in the corporate office dedicated to figuring out how to stay in business under this scheme. How long does an average patient stay on dialysis? For how much of that time does the patient carry private insurance? And what kind of insurance? We broke down payors by every conceivable variable, looking for ways to make our forecasts more accurate: by state, by metropolitan area, HMOs vs. EPOs vs. PPOs, and on and on.

The company was actually very healthy while I was there, after coming back from the brink of bankruptcy in 2000. But imagine what would happen if a new drug were invented that extended the dialyzed life expectancy from seven years to ten: We’d have to soak private insurers even worse.

And that’s the road to hell. Private insurers grow unprofitable and close down, and then private providers (being reimbursed only at unprofitable government rates) become unprofitable and close down, and the government takes over responsibility for care provision as well.
So now, instead of paying for our own health care (a moving-target luxury good), we demand it from the state, which – in its signature bureaucratic fashion – hemms and haws and rations care; and as an ancillary “fuck-you,” does a lousy, bureaucratic job providing it.

Take away competition, and consumers lose.

We would all love to believe that health care providers are a benevolent group of people; that they do what they do out of a selfless love for humanity, and that if only food and rent and HBO were free, they would practice their arts gratis. (Oh, and that the people who manufacture the syringes and design the CAT Scan machines and develop new medicines are all similarly munificent, too.)

But we would be disastrously wrong. Do you really think that we’d have the same quality of health care in the US if we relied on the “Patch Adams” free clinic model? What kind of absurd thinking does it take to expect doctors to go to school for a decade, and then slave away for a few more sleepless years of gruntwork as interns, if their only reward at the end were to be allowed to do the same tortuous work for the rest of their lives, except with nobody looking over their shoulders?

No, in a capitalist system, the way we encourage people to go about pursuits that benefit us (like medicine) is with money. Which means that health care will cost money to its consumers. “Translating lives into dollars” is an ugly business (who wants to be the prick who does the math on when we can expect dialysis patients to die?) but it’s the bridge that has to be made when lives are on the line in a capitalist system.

Capitalism itself is still a good system; and here’s why: It redirects natural human greed toward a generally positive result: prosperity. This is in stark contrast to socialism, which redirects apocryphal human benevolence toward an elusive positive result: equality.

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m an optimist and I believe that humanity is basically good. I have greater faith, though, in a system that cooperates with self-interest than in one that works against it. Because as big-hearted as humans might be when they’re full, generosity takes a back seat to eating when they’re hungry, and there will always be hungry people.

To quote Winston Churchill, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Ask yourself this; which system is better: A) one where everybody shares a small pie fairly equally, or B) one where everybody shares a large pie unequally, but 80% of the people have a bigger slice than the people who are sharing the smaller pie?

If you answered A, would your answer change if you knew that the other 20% hadn’t contributed anything to bake the pie, or had possibly even refused a slice when it was offered?

If you still answered A, would your answer change if you knew that the smaller pie also grew more slowly than the large one? (Think of the children!)

Just remember that the next time you hear Hillary or Barack (or John, GODDAMMIT) sing the praises of the single-payor model

Whirled News - Outcry Against Negative Campaigning Grows

A new voice joined the criticism of ex-Obama aide Samantha Power for calling Senator Hillary Clinton a “monster."

“Calling Senator Clinton a monster is a deep personal insult to me,” said Ben Chapman, who donned a rubber suit to play the creature from the black lagoon in the 1954 horror movie of the same name.

“It propagates the false stereotype of monsters as creatures who will do anything to take over and win, when in fact most of us monsters were really just misunderstood and were trying to protect our own turf.”

Chapman did however concede one similarity between Senator Clinton and him. “I too had a devil of time squeezing into my outfit each day,” he said.

Obama also gained a vote of confidence from a former Clinton White House worker, who decried Senator Clinton’s, “Who will answer the phone at 3 AM?” ad. “When she was First Lady, Hillary had no idea what was going on in the White House at 3 AM,” said Monica Lewinsky.

Despite the apparent backlash against the Clinton barrage of negative campaigning, Obama campaign officials expressed concern.

“Some people might say that this ultimately makes him a more attractive candidate, but Obama’s really getting his ears pinned back,” said an aide to the Illinois Senator.

Obama officials promised that the Senator would begin responding more aggressively to the Clinton negative campaigning but acknowledged that fashioning a counterattack is difficult.

“They’ve borrowed a page from the George Bush playbook,” he pointed out. “His father did it and he’s been doing it too. You attack viciously, either directly or sneakily, and then the moment your opponent responds in kind, you cry foul and accuse him of playing dirty. We just have to help the American people realize that this is yet another example of what little real difference there is between Bush and Clinton campaigning—hey, I just did it!” he exclaimed.

In other news, President Bush once again denied that the economy is in recession.

“I’ve never lied to the American people about anything,” he asserted, “And I always accept responsibility for any mistakes I make. So let me say this again. We’re winning in Iraq and Afghanistan, our enemies are growing weaker, and our country is growing stronger, but our economy has hit a temporary slowdown. We’re still driving along this fine road, but we’ve hit a little mud patch is all. We just need to stay in the car and keep going, while anyone who tries to climb out and try something else is going to get splattered with mud. Tell your Congressmen to make my tax cuts for the rich permanent, or else this temporary slowdown will turn into something worse and it’ll be all Congress’s fault. And just think about those rebate checks you’ll be getting. Thanks to Congress falling quickly in line with my economic stimulus package, those checks will be arriving in time to still buy a full tank of gas and filter even more money of that new money we’ve just printed toward the upper 2 percent of our wealthiest citizens. After all, they’re the ones--not government—that’ll make this whole thing work.”

Gnooze - Hilary Hearts Ohio

Whirled News - God Expresses Despair Over Presidential Primaries

A visibly exhausted God lapsed into a rare moment of despair today at His press conference following last night’s presidential primaries.

“With these latest results, it’s looking like this campaign is going to drag on forever,” He said, “And until everyone stops talking about all these other issues, no one’s going to do anything about global warming. Because of hundreds of extra tons of hydrocarbon emissions in the atmosphere, Atlas has retired with crippling bursitis, and I’ve had to take over for him. Honest to Me, I can’t hold off this global warming all by Myself much longer.”

Reporters tried to cheer Him up by pointing out that at least the Republican nominee was decided, but God saw little good news in that.

“That alter kaker McCain may not live until the November election,” He said, “and that will put everything right back to people talking about all these other things again.”

Informed of God’s comments, Republican presumptive nominee John McCain said, “While I would never disagree with anything God says, my friends, I would point out to Him that unless we uphold our honor in Iraq, stay the course and prevail, it’s irrelevant whether the entire world ecosystem collapses. Would you rather live in a world in which Al-Qaeda is on the loose? They thrive in hot weather and barren deserts.”

The Democratic nominees also respectfully disagreed with God.

“Oh, I’m sure God will save us and leave me time to focus on other issues that will garner me votes,” said Senator Hillary Clinton. “If I can do things like fit into my pants suits and transubstantiate my vote on Iraq, He can stop global warming.”

Senator Barack Obama’s office also issued a statement, expressing his concern for God.

“God’s statements today, lacking His usual grandiloquence, show how exhausted He is,” he said. “But let me assure every one of you that I intend to carry my own oration forward into the future until such time as He is able to extend His oratorical glory to all of us once again and unite us all in common mission. And even if the pace of global warming is now happening faster than most scientists predicted, change is what we’re all about, isn’t it? My fellow Americans, we must never change out of fear but we must never fear to change.”

Reflecting His growing despair, twice during His press conference, God tried to focus on good news but both times veered toward darkness again.

“At least last night’s results knocked Crazy Mike out of the race,” He said at one point. “But he may be back as a Vice Presidential candidate, and he’s one of those guys who thinks responsibility for everything rests on Me.”

Later in the conference, God momentarily expressed optimism about Ralph Nader entering the race.

“There’s the only guy who will stand up to corporate interests and meaningfully implement alternate energy,” He said. “But even if this Nader guy somehow gets elected and sets up windmills all across the country, a year later he’s likely to start knocking them down with his lance.”

Gnooze - US Imposes More Sanctions on Iran

Gnooze - Nader Goes To Washington