Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing...

Here's one more thing for Henry Louis Gates to be shot for...errr...consider. Via HotAir.

Guess that staged kegger in the Rose Garden was supposed to fix everything, huh? These are the jackasses who now run this country; they believe that human nature can be overcome by silly symbolism, and they obviously believe that only white men are racists.

Toasting Someone Who Will Soon Be Toast...

Re: This whole Keg Party at the White House thingy. I'd like to make the following statements:

1. This Professor Gates guy is an asshole. He's made a living selling his own hatreds and whining brand of self-pity as 'serious' scholarship. He's almost like the English stage actors who 'make their name' playing Lear or Hamlet at the Old Vic, and then continuously live in that motif, unaware of where the part ends and the individual begins. Henry Louis Gates is a product of his industry; like any good salesman, he's always working the angles.

Which is why I believe (but can't prove, natch) that when the police arrived at his door, he couldn't do the right thing and co-operate with them. No, no, no. He instead fell into character as the aggrieved black man, and when the defecation hit the ventilation, decided it was too good an opportunity to continue to peddle his brand of venomous stupidity. He's unaware that his is living in the past, while still having the wherewithal to remember how his present depends on his trotting out his tired act yet one more time. It's what his public wants.

2. This Sergeant Crowley fella has missed an opportunity. Sure, it's really nice to invite yourself to the White House for beer and an audience, but you could have made it so much more with a little imagination. This will not be, as the President hopes, a teachable moment or experience or whatever buzz-phrase he's trotted out for it, it will be a First-Class Dog-and-Pony-Show, complete with Potemkin-like expressions of solidarity and contrition, all contrived.

I'm not about to tell Sgt. Crowley his business, but if it were me, I would have asked for the following;

a) A public apology from both President Obama (for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, and for the insult to police officers everywhere) and Professor Gates (for being an uncooperative, unappreciative dipshit) before I set foot in Washington, D.C., and an assurance that the First Harridan...errr...First Lady, will have been safely airdropped anyplace three-days walk from Washington. Make certain that formerly-private citizen Lucia Whalen (the woman who made the original 911 call, and who is now being pilloried by your allies and fellow race-baiters for it), gets her own apologies, as well.

b) If you want your photo op, Mr. president, then I get to choose which media will be allowed inside to record the event, and then I choose the outlets I find the most trustworthy. I then get to approve whatever dispatch the White House Press Office decides to send out --before it sends it out. I also get to choose who is in the picture, excepting yourself, and Professor Gates.

c) I reserve the right to have my own cameraman record the event, so that I can call a press conference the day after to counter whatever administration-approved lies the Mainstream Media is ordered to tell afterwards.

Then I would happily toast every one's health, gladly.

Now, as to who will be 'toast' after this event.

Unfortunately, Henry Louis Gates will probably still be employed after this fiasco reaches it's crescendo. Parasites like this almost always survive even the worst results of their self-inflicted wounds. Just think about how many drunk drivers walk away from the SUV-wrapped-around-a-tree while all the passengers died or ended up cripples. This is, in a way, almost like a drunk-driving accident; Professor Gates acted irrationally, and put others at risk because he was selfish, arrogant and stupid. You don't agitate men who have guns and often-stressful jobs; that's often a recipe for disaster. The Professor is a very lucky man. He's lucky that the police officers that responded exercised restraint and acted professionally and responsibly. Otherwise, he might be laying on a slab in the morgue. He's been dinged, but the public will forget his name in very short order, and he will return to being Harvard's Number One Tenured Race Baiter.

Barack Obama will not be so fortunate.

I've told you before that the election of Barack Obama would lead to a certain phenomenon, where blacks would now assume that with one of their own at the top (and I wonder, how many of them would have ridiculed Obama as not being 'authentically black', or called him 'Oreo' for having a white mother -- before it seemed possible that he might actually win the election?), this gives them a license to do whatever the hell they please. I generalize; I don't expect all black folks to act with that lack of restraint, or leap to the illogical conclusion that they could, over would. There is, however, a certain subset of the black community that feels that not only is their right to act like retards, but that no one should call them on it. If you do, you get called 'racist'.

But I've come to the conclusion that Barack Obama has shot himself in the foot on this one. The man who advertised himself as someone capable of spanning the racial divide instead dove headlong into the chasm. He did something which resonates with certain blacks --back the Brother against The Man -- but that occurred simultaneously with something which resonates with far more people -- he acted, spoke,and passed judgement without having, by his own admission, the facts. The people who see that Barack Obama, the quick to judge, the uninformed, the one willing (some might say eager) to inject race into something he was ignorant of, speaks far louder about him to people with the same sense God gave to a guinea pig.

That's what's so troubling -- the willingness to make assumptions that can't be backed up by facts. It's already bit Obama on his posterior with regards to Unemployment, the so-called Stimulus, and now this 'Healthcare' monstrosity. It's almost as if he believes that whatever set of facts, or even whatever flight of imagination, he cooks up, makes it so. Professor Gates wasn't arrested because the police responded to a legitimate situation, and refused to co-operate, he must have been arrested because he was 'Racially Profiled'. The facts say otherwise, but in Obama's world, they don't matter. The only thing that matters is perception. That's what he's been selling the American Public his entire life, after all. I guess there's a little way-past-his-encore English stage actor in Obama, too.

The facade around Obama cracks daily, mostly because he's unable to communicate either the purposes or effects of his policies, but this incident took one of those cracks and widened and made it the Grand Canyon. Now we're talking about Reverend Wright again. And Michelle's "for the first time I'm proud of my country..." speech. And we're wondering if all that "Post-racial" nonsense was just that.

Barack Obama, if he hadn't already done so with his policies, has, with this action, ensured that he will be a one-term President. He could pass "Free Easter Eggs for Everyone" and "A Pot of Gold at the End of Every Rainbow" legislation, and none of it will matter now. President Obama has just ensured that the racial scabs which cover this country's wounds, will be continually picked at and torn off for the next three years. It's a process that might never end, even though part of his appeal was the hope (more false perception) that with his elevation to the White House, it might have.

I hope the President seriously considers that while he enjoys his Bud Light and generated-for-the-cameras-regular-guy-bonhomie.

Why Bureaucrats Should be Sterilized...

The day after tomorrow, I am to report to a government office for the purposes of re-establishing my identity so that I may be selected for a government job. Let me repeat that: re-establishing my identity.

You see, the government wants to make certain that I am who I claim to be. This despite the fact that when I took the test for this particular job, I was required to bring several pieces of identification (official documents), most of which the administrator on the scene at the time said wasn't necessary at the time. I was allowed to take the test (which was a total joke), and waited four months for the bureaucracy in question to contact me with the results of that test.

I passed. They wouldn't tell me my grade (they're 'not allowed' to give you the results of an exam that you took - I smell Affirmative Action), just that I had passed, and that someone would get back to me with additional details at some unspecified date.

Three months later, I'm contacted and told to report to a certain office for the purposes of re-establishing my identity. Not "come in, we have a job for you, and we'd like to discuss a few things". Not "congratulations, you're a member of the team". Not "we have an assignment for you". Just "bring all the stuff you brought before, which we told you we didn't care about."

Which leaves me with a bit of a problem.

Because some of the documents I brought with me that day had expiration dates (most official documents do). And they have passed. Now, that's my fault: I should have kept them up to date, granted. But now, I have to rush to re-establish or renew them, and alas, they are required now, as opposed to seven months ago when the agency in question said they were required, and which the admin then pooh-poohed.

This is where it really starts to get weird.

One of the documents I will need can only be obtained by presenting a valid (i.e. non-expired) piece of official identification. Which I no longer have. Another can only be replaced if I give the Federal Government two to four weeks to replace, and that's if I can prove who I am with a valid identification.

I am now in the unenviable position of having to obtain two pieces of legitimate documentation which require other legitimate (non-expired) documentation to even request. In other words, I have to depend upon the government to provide me with documents in order to get copies of the same documents (only valid copies), only the government says that the older-but-expired versions of those documents cannot be used for the purposes of obtaining new ones! And one of them might not even arrive for a month.

And this is for a government job.

Had someone done their job seven months ago, this would not have happened, notwithstanding my own oversight and stupidity.

Your government at work, not working, and creating more work for someone else.

And these people own GM, half the banks and want to run the health care system?

I'll let you know how this goes.

The Religion of Peace chimes in Again...

This via SmallDeadAnimals.com.

This excuse, that Arabs are not responsible for their personal failings, has been used before, and often, by others. It's been used to explain away political chaos and genocide in Africa and Asia. It has been used to brush off the frightening lack of responsibility in many minority communities here in the United States.

People are not responsible for living in terrible squalor, poverty, crime, fear and insecurity because of the racism/colonialism/prejudice/intolerance/neglect/exploitation/mis-understanding (take your pick) of OTHER PEOPLE who are not a part of the 'rightfully-aggrieved' suicide-Jihadi cult. The Islamic world is fucked up because the West made it so, they say. It's dangerously volatile because, despite enormous economic resources, people are poor, uneducated and deprived, they say. I read the above,and thought of something I had written in what now seems another life (bolded text inserted to make my points relevant to the present issue) :

"Many Hindus are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their culture suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

Many Buddhists the world over are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their cultures suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

Many Christians the world over are poor, deprived, illiterate, and their cultures suffered under colonialism, yet they do not go on killing sprees.

If poverty, deprivation, illiteracy, and the legacy of colonialism were the main causes of terrorism, then we'd see more terrorists from Bombay, Burma, and Budapest instead of Riyadh, Lahore and Aden.

The poverty/deprivation/illiteracy/colonialism connection does not wash since there are people in non-Muslim lands who suffer under the same (or even greater) deprivation who do not vent their frustrations by hijacking airliners and slamming them into office buildings.

Speaking of the 9/11 attack, the majority of the attackers in that plot were of distinctly middle-class backgrounds, many college-educated. Those 19 men were certainly not "poor, deprived and illiterate". More like "perverse, depraved and indecent".

What DOES cause Islamic terrorism is a culture in which every aspect of human activity, from which hand one wipes one's bottom with, to whom and how many wives one should marry, in which economic, social and political activity are strictly defined and proscribed, is dictated by the words of dead lunatic who created a guide for the world as he would like to have had it, and somehow managed to convince enough people that God told him that THIS is the way life is to be lived.

The lunatic was Mohammed, and the guide is the Koran. He is, in a metaphor most westerners would understand, that guy sitting at the corner stool in the local bar who muses "Wouldn't it be great, if...?", but who then managed to actually work up the ambition to make it so. Mohammed was like Norm from "Cheers"... only with a work ethic.

The first mistake Muslims make is to believe that Islam is a religion. It is not. It is a system by which every aspect of life is systematically controlled, and given a religious patina. It is a system that totalitarian systems of the West would have recognized easily, and which the worst of them (The Nazis and the USSR) certainly wished they could emulate. It was created by a very small, and otherwise-powerless man bent on revenge for slights both real and imagined, and used to enlist people to his cause of visiting revenge upon the people who had deprived, ridiculed and insulted him.

Much like Nazism and Soviet Communism, Islam cannot abide a rival system of belief or a foreign concept of personal freedoms divorced from it's own orthodoxy. No rival to Islam can be allowed to survive. It ruthlessly seeks out and destroys any rival system that poses a threat to it. Like Nazism and Communism, it denies the existence of human nature and believes that all human activity (and it's own eventual victory) is pre-ordained. It believes that human nature, when it does rear it's ugly head, can be controlled with violence or the threat of violence. It smothers the individual on behalf of the collective, which then serves and props the system up.

It violently rejects the idea that authority can and should be challenged if the human race is to advance in any meaningful way. As a result, the Islamic world, from all intellectual, artistic, economic, political, historical, scientific and cultural standpoints, is stunted. Nothing happens in the Islamic world that is not subject to the relentless scrutiny of religious orthodoxy. No potential threat to the status quo ante (the rule of the Imam, or the select elite backed by or in league with the Imams) is allowed to survive; the full force of religion (and often religion backed by the police or military power of the state) typically being brought to bear upon it, whether it is the concept of interest-bearing loans, women's rights (or even a woman's basic humanity) , the power of the press, or Brittney Spears' belly-button on the television screen. If you doubt this, just recall that music (which leads to dancing!), television (which might actually inform the people or show them images that will lead them astray) and a free press (which might actually incite the people against the Imams) were all banned in Afghanistan. Note that most Islamic equivalents of said media in most other Arab/Islamic countries are strictly controlled and censored by religious bodies operating under government auspices. Just recall that the first printing press in the Islamic world was not sanctioned by the Ottoman Empire until 1825, and even then it was only allowed to print the Koran.

Why? Because Islam is allergic to ideas. It is especially allergic to any idea which the Koran does not specifically address. The reaction, when this eventuality occurs, is not to revise or reconcile the dogma (which is the standard Judeo-Christian practice regarding conflicts between doctrine and progress)to new circumstances, but to destroy the offending concept and make it outlaw.

If you need a graphic example of just how stunted and culturally-retarded Islamic society is, we need only look at the toolbox of the modern, Islamic terrorist; intercontinental airliners, flight schools, cell phones, the Internet, chemical explosives, international funds transfer, credit cards, the AK-47, the battlefield artillery rocket, the short-range ballistic missile, videotape, broadcast television (Al' Jazeera) and mass media, and last, but not least, the boxcutters used by the 9/11 hijackers -- are all Western inventions. These are all the result of a robust scientific, economic and cultural experimentation which was created under a system of secular rationalism.

What did the Islamic world provide? Nineteen lunatics willing to die.

So, in the end, the poverty the Islamic world struggles under is not one of financial resources; it is a poverty of the mind. The deprivation is suffers is not one of material goods and comfort; but a spiritual one. The illiteracy it contends with is not caused by a lack of books and people educated to read them; the stratification of it's political and social forms is not a legacy of colonialism; it is an inability to reconcile modernity with an outdated orthodoxy with which the underlying desert nomad culture is too frightened to deviate from.

The first step in the liberation of the Islamic world is not to tear down the West, but to break free of it's own, self-imposed, mental chains."

Perhaps if these "100 Arab Scholars" (I'll bet majority of them were educated in Europe and the United States, by the way) could convince their people to look inwards instead of searching for scapegoats, there would be no more poor, deprived, illiterate suicide bombers at all. But there I go, applying logic again.

I should know better by now...

Of Roommates and Rectal Thermometers...

For some reason this analogy just happened to enter my mind, Lord knows from where, but it sorta-kinda makes a weird sense, if you think about it. I probably should have thought it out a bit more before committing it to the blog, but sometimes the Cesspool of Consciousness demands that something be written before it haunts the inside of your skull forever.

The American Republic is like a house in which four people live. They're complete strangers to one another, but they have this arrangement between them to live together as best they can, and so long as the rent is payed, and they equitably split the chores around the house, they will try to leave each other alone. The point here is that living together is a matter of convenience.

In the medicine cabinet of this house shared by four friendly strangers is a rectal thermometer. Most homes, I assume, have one. They're rather handy, sometimes.

The first Roommate is content to leave the thermometer alone, unless he or one of his roommates is obviously ill, at which point, he'll use it if he has to. The act of using a rectal thermometer upon another is slightly gross, embarrassing, and can be construed as being an imposition without sufficient cause. He is content to leave the rectal thermometer in the medicine cabinet, unused, except in direst emergency, an emergency which he fervently prays never arrives. He'll do his part in that emergency, but he'd rather hang around his own room, doing his own thing, and have as little contact with the other Roommates as possible. Especially if it means staying away from their asses.

The second Roommate is absolutely enthralled by the rectal thermometer. She loves it because it represents something, surety, accuracy, a sense of security that if someone in the house has a fever, she will be able to use it to divine that someone does indeed have a higher-than-normal temperature, and then take all sorts of actions. She likes to take actions. All the time. She's the sort of Roommate that leaves little notes on people's pillows to remind them to pick up their socks, and draws little smiley-faces on the note. She knows that if, indeed, one of her Roommates look sick, she'll be the first to get to that rectal thermometer and use it, and prove herself to be a really useful and valuable housemate.

The third Roommate is unaware there is a rectal thermometer in the house. In fact, he doesn't even know what a rectal thermometer is, or even what it's used for. He's managed to scrape by in life without ever having to use a rectal thermometer or have one used upon him. In fact, he probably doesn't even know what a fever is, and how someone obtains one. If it were left up to him, and one of his Roommates was sick, he might watch someone else use that rectal thermometer, but only because once the concept was explained to him it sounded pretty neat. But he'd otherwise be as useful as teats on a bull during the entire process, except maybe to giggle and snigger and offer play-by-play analysis in single-syllable words. And then he'd go back to wonering about who is leaving notes with smiley faces upon his pillow.

The fourth Roommate is the one who one days asks "Excuse me; does anyone know why this thermometer tastes so funny?"

Anyways, that's the beginning of the idea. I'll elaborate on it more as I think about it. I'm sure there's some nugget of universal truth in it. Somewhere.

People We Don't Want Too Many Of...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was recently interviewed by one of those thoroughly professional journalism people in regards to the circus that is Sotomayor, when she let slip a very disturbing little gem which will probably be remembered forever. In fact, it might be the only thing ever uttered by Justice Ginsburg which will be remembered at all.

Speaking on Roe v. Wade, Madam Justice told the so-called reporter who asked her about the landmark usurpation of State and Congressional authority by a renegade Court that she was under the impression that the real purpose of Roe was (paraphrasing here) "to control certain populations which we don't want too many of..."

The reporter, probably too shocked by what she'd just heard, failed to ask the logical follow-up question; "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?", oh sorry, I mean "Did you have a particular population in mind, Madam Justice"?

I'm only assuming that she (the reporter) was shocked. What's more likely is that her finely-honed journalistic skill set (ripping things off the Internet without confirmation or attribution, making shit up to fit your argument, making false attacks against conservatives, learning where the free coffee and donuts are) was insufficient to cope with such an earth-shattering revelation of what one of America's most powerful judges thinks about the value of human life....especially if it belongs to a person we "don't want too many of."

Since the Justice didn't elaborate, and the reporter was somehow prevented (probably by a brain tumor) from asking for clarification, let me take a stab at filling in the list of people we supposedly don't want, and which Roe was probably intended to "control" according to Madam Justice;

Blacks.
Hispanics.
The Handicapped.
The Mentally Ill.
Criminals.
Christians.
Republicans.
Rich White Heterosexual Patrician Males (specifically).
Men (in general)

For those of you who are not familiar with the Eugenics Movement which was a hallmark of Progressive thinking in this country during the early part of the last century, this is the point.
The Eugenicists held that people, like dogs, cows or racehorses, could be bred to produce superior specimens (what the Nazis would call Ubermenchen, or Supermen) who exhibit what the Eugenicists considered the finest traits of the human race. Things like intelligence, strength, athleticism, artistic sense, according to this theory, could be bred into successive generations of human beings until we were all 'perfect'.

Traits that were undesirable: propensity to disease, deformities, anti-social behavior, ignorance would be 'bred out' of the human race, by the process of sterilizing those who possessed those traits, or in the extreme, killing them. This is Darwinism taken to it's extreme. It resulted in the Lynchburg and Tuskeegee experiments in this country -- where people were forcibly sterilized, given forced abortions, and then 'hospitalized' for many years (some for the remainder of their lives) to keep them from 'polluting' the gene pool -- that's when they weren't actually experimented on by so-called scientists. In Nazi Germany, it led to the creation of special 'baby farms' where children created by the union of the men of the SS and German women willing to breed in service to the state, were raised in government-run orphanages to create the next generation of Aryan Supersoldiers for the Third Reich.

They were programs intended to perfect mankind by either removing the worst genetic material by isolation from the 'breeding stock', or surgical prevention of conception, and by only allowing those deemed best equipped to reproduce. Many of them actually handed out breeding licenses, and in some cases, arrest for a particular crime might entail an automatic sentence of sterilization, or remand to specifically be studied (read; experimented upon) by scientists.

The counterpart (and logical conclusion) to those programs was, unfortunately, the horror of the Nazi concentration and death camps, which aimed to not just annihilate the Jews as the object of Nazi obsession and hatred, but the Jews as a source of DNA which the Nazis believed 'polluted' the superior races of Europe.

Good to know that Justice Ginsburg (who I have to believe probably knows at least one Holocaust survivor) believes that American law is intended to produce genocide; under the guise of 'reproductive rights', according to her, the actual purpose of Roe was deny those same rights to those deemed unworthy by the State, or at least by a future State being run by 'Progressives'.
Nice.

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has a thing or two to say on the subject.

Update: Apparently YesWeCan's new "Science Czar" wrote a book advocating this very shit 40 years ago! Here's the dirt on the despicable John Holder, courtesy of the National Examiner.

Some Thoughts on Sotomayor...

The dog and pony show which is a Senate Confirmation Hearing on Judge Sonia Sotomator began in earnest yesterday. They shouldn't bother, as her appointment is foregone conclusion in the sense that democrats (small 'd' intentional) have the votes to confirm her in any case. The only obstacle to confirmation now is if it was found that she had done something really heinous, like ruled that people have the right to BBQ puppies in public in full "Village People" get-up with fireworks shooting out of their asses, in front of a gas station.

The abortion questions 'conservatives' (small 'c' intentional) will probably ask are moot; the Supreme Court usurped the power of both Congress and the states when it ruled in Roe v. Wade, and since the results of that power grab have been a postive boon for both parties, don't expect the question to actually be resolved in these hearings (although the Senators will kick it about to buff up their own street cred to their constituencies). Besides, we all know that there is now too much invested in the decision for anyone to actually talk seriously about the Supreme Court reversing itself; it will never happen. The Court will not reverse it's decision and pop the bubble of infallibility and reverence with which the institution is held by the legal profession (itself a den of whores), and neither party will submit to the Federalist soultion --putting the abortion question to a straight up-and-down vote in state legislatures -- because both sides manipulate the question for political gain (and money, as well as organized voting blocs) as it suits their purposes. And they do it too damned well.

Instead, I would concentrate on scoring a rhetorical point which might have an effect on the voting public despite her confirmation. It's that "Wise Latina" comment.

Her apologists have pooh-poohed it as an off-the-cuff remark which may represent a personal belief, but which does not translate to a 'core judicial philosophy', but I say 'bullshit'. She's on reconrd as having said it something like five, seven or 3thirty-one times, depending on who you believe. Anyone who says such things repeatedly (especially in prepared speeches!) doesn't do so because it's a random thought; they say it because they either truly believe it, or it's the sort of 'apply anywhere bullshit' which all politicians (and judges, unfortunately, are politicians, too) carelessly fling around to sport their political bona-fides.

In which case, Sonia Sotomayor is either under the impression that it is a true statement, which makes it a racist statement. Or, she's a liar who will say whatever is required of her depending on her audience, possessed of a stockpile of well-turned-politically-correct pablum to throw at them when required.

I'm not certain which it is. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt here, conditioning that benefit with the personal impression that she seems to be both an opportnist who has learned to use her gender and heritage for her personal advantage, and that's she's probably dumber than dogshit, but very well-rehearsed in the ways of political crapspeak. I'm certain that outside the political and legal realms, she probably makes a mean arroz con pollo and is probably a very pleasant woman (I do have to give her credit for having a wonderful smile, which conveys friendliness and warmth, like grandma used to).

That having been said, I'm not certain she's really a good choice, but perhaps merely the least-worse.

If It Quacks Like a Duck...

Does anyone still assume that President Obambi wants to fix the economy? There's a stimulus bill which has stimulated nothing. The takeover of the the banks which are still not lending. Taking over GM to ensure that the Autoworkers (those warriors of capitalism!) get their welfare-disguised-as-paycheck. Then heturns his attention to health care 'reform', which will not generate amny revenue, and looks as if it will require more borrowing, and Cap-and-Trade, which will burden American business with higher energy costs and leave them vulnerable to foreign competition.

They still have done nothing to shore up the dollar, and forget anything approaching budget cuts. Don't forget 23 new 'czars' with attendant, and overlapping, federal bureaucracies attached.
This guiy is not about to fix anything; his modus operandi is about making people ever-more dependant upon the government.

Even democrats (small 'd' intentional) know that if you wish to stimulate economic growth, you take the decisions about money out of the hands of the Congresscritters, and slash taxes across the board and let the people decide how to invest the savings, cutting out several layers of government red tape.

See you all in the government cheese line! Hopenchange, indeed...

Of Pots and Kettles, Part XXVI

Read this speech by President Odickhead to the Parliament of Ghana, and then try to maintain a straight face...and your blood pressure.

Talk about sheer gall!

Does no one in the White House have even the slightest bit of respect for the intelligence of anyone in this country?

Now You Know Why There's a 'Health Care' Problem...

Megan McArdle in the Atlantic takes on the Health Care issue, explaining just why a government-run plan is simply the rationing of resources, and does not improve anyone's quality of life. The article itself, to me anyways, is dry and a rehash of everything I already knew, but what makes this remarkable is the Comments section, where one poster actually had the unmitigated audacity to actually type this:

"...Oh, and I forgot to say, they billed my insurance 40,000 for 4 days in the hospital, and my insurance company made me pay 4,000 dollars of it. That is 1000 dollars a day for my hospital stay, even though I HAD INSURANCE!!!! (I am a grad student living on 1400 a month.)
Nobodies' assets are safe under our current system. It just costs whatever they think they can confiscate from you..."

And therein is the problem! This deluded woman's insurance company shelled out $36,000 to save her life, and restore her to health, but that $4,000 (a mere 10% of the total cost!) that she is asked to pay is an undue burden, approaching an unfair confiscation of her assets!

Look, I've had my own problems with the insurance companies in the past, but this is a very petty complaint, indeed,

But it is indicative of the mentality of many who scream 'Health Care Crisis' summed up very nicely. The poor naif is a 'grad student' (like this is supposed to impress me? She's basically a dictator in training, if you ask me, and the sense of entitlement just fairly oozes out of that revelation. I hope she's a grad student in something useful, like engineering, or chain-saw juggling, and not one of those Gender Studies faux-PhD's), living on a fixed income (probably a stipend paid for by the taxpayers who support her university). She's probably receiving financial aid, too. Her whole lifestyle may have been subsidized by the taxpayer during her academic career, so why shouldn't it also cover that last 4k?

This same mentality is prevalent in all other wards of the state -- welfare recipients, Social Security recipients and Public Unions: they have a lifestyle subsidized by the state in one way or another, and probably receive much more in compensation from society than they ever really contributed to it (this is especially true of the so-called Greatest Generation of Social Security recipients, and the Welfare-as-family-tradition section of the so-called poor). So why shouldn't government go whole hog and save them that last 10% of the bill?

The 'debate' is not about Health Care. It's not about access, cost or quality. It's about people who don't perform useful work getting something for free , and having it established as a 'right'.