Justice and misplaced blame

Believe it or not, this is not a political post. It has to do with perceptions. This morning on my way to work, I was driving along fine with the cruise control on, just making my way. As i got closer to the stoplight, a car came up from a side street and triggered the light to go yellow, then red for me. I found myself thinking that the other driver who was crossing my street with his green light was a jerk, and then i stopped myself and thought about it. It used to be that lights on streets were just on a schedule, you could sometimes even "time" the lights so that you could glide through without ever hitting a red one. As a matter of fact, regardless of the cross traffic, if the light turned red on you, you always blamed the light. "Stupid Light" you would say. And you would wait your turn and go and forget about it all. Now we have the era of the sensor controlled light, which only turns red if another car has approached the intersection from the side street. Instead of blaming the light, like we used to, we now blame the other car for our delay in getting from A to B. Again, misplaced blame on the other driver, it isnt their fault that the light was triggered, they just wanted to get where they are going too. Just something I noticed on my way into work this morning.

This past weekend, justice was served to a driver of a Jeep Cherokee. On our way home on Saturday from my niece's 8th birthday party, we were overtaken and pretty much blown off the road by a guy driving a Jeep way too fast on Highway 37 just north of our home town. And you know how you always say, where's a cop when you need one? Well one showed up this time. A sheriff was driving his car on the opposite side of the road, and as soon as the Jeep went by, he made a U-turn, and began his pursuit. It didnt take long before that Jeep driver was seeing blue and red in his rear view, and as a side note, has anyone else noticed how much BRIGHTER those lights are now? As we drove past, justice was being served, much to our delight. It isnt often that you see it first-hand.

I call your bluff, Democrats

Echoing Michael Steele of the Republican National Committee, i say:

Democrats, if you think your plan is so great, vote on it. You have all the votes you need, there is no mathematical way the republicans can block it. If you are so convinced that this is great legislation and a good plan for America, VOTE ON IT. If all of you Democrats vote yes on this, it will pass. Period. So why the holdup? Lets see how well you do in your next election, considering that a majority of Americans oppose this idea. But that shouldnt matter to you, you have it within your power to just pass this on party lines. So i dare you, do it. Unless you are all just talk, and maybe not convinced, like most of America, that this is such a good idea.

DO IT, I DARE YOU.

WINSTON CHURCHILL - 1941 ... "They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7)

Boiling it down..

Most average people like me care about their fellow person, and would truly like to see everyone taken care of if they are truly sick or hurt. This is a given. I have extreme hatred for the politicians who i feel have taken advantage of the good and kind nature of the American people by using a supposed plan to take care of everyone as a vehicle to control our lives and monitor what we do. They move us into more of a "nanny state" by playing on our fears for our own health and the health of our fellow man, all the while using this shell game to keep our eyes off the real issues.

Were you aware there is a "pay czar"? This man, Kenneth Feinberg, was never elected to any office, yet he has the power to tell someone that they make too much money. Think of doctors, anyone who has taken college classes knows how expensive it is. Doctors expenses are far greater than the average college graduate. Many of these expenses are in loans that have to be paid back over years and years of hard work. And despite the demonizing of doctors by the left, saying that they perform "unnecessary surgeries" and do all sorts of other money-gouging tests on unsuspecting patients, does anyone remember groups like Doctors without Borders, or have seen doctors doing services well beyond the 9-5 hours that many other jobs require? These people are the cream of the crop of the worlds physicians, and as i have stated before, when you need serious medical care, the USA is where you go. Not France. Not Italy. Not the U.K. And certainly not Canada. So knowing all this, let me show you a possible general future situation:

The USA passes a Universal, "public option", Health Care bill.

Private Insurers, who actually have to PAY taxes and stockholders, collapse and are gone.

The pay czar dictates that doctors are paid too much for the system to bear, and cap the pay they may receive no matter what type of service they provide.

Doctors leave the USA -or- stop practicing medicine -and/or- fewer and fewer new doctors come out of college, because of all the paperwork, oversight, and no incentive for success

Some would say that this is an impossible future, why, just look at the NHS in the U.K., or the vaunted French system. I do not believe that either of those systems encompass the vast amount of people that our system will cover. The French and U.K. systems are already under serious criticism by their populace, and in France there is a private co-pay system in place because the costs are just too high for the government alone.

In conclusion, I know this has been long winded for a boildown, but if you want to see the real wizard behind the curtain, please look at my previous columns, because the true end result of this has NOTHING to do with Health, and everything to do with controlling your life. Because Liberals do not think you are smart enough to do that without them.

The Death Panels are real, despite the stupid name..

Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and one of Obama’s health-care advisors, wrote in a January 2009 white paper that health care should be rationed in a way that “promot[es] and reward[s] social usefulness.” He said age could play a factor in determining who can and cannot access health-care resources.

Emanuel also wrote, “[S]ervices provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens [in the body politic] are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Obama addressed this too, saying, “Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. … And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

We will spend money we don’t have to pay for health care, or we will prioritize who gets treatment. It is an inevitable fact of life that the more the government outlays to keep you alive, the more your life becomes subject to a cost/benefit analysis.

The heart of the debate isnt Health Care..

For any of you who actually think the Health Care debate is actually about health care, please take a moment to think about it. This is more than getting everyone insured. This is about simply controlling everything in your life. But lets start with Health Care. Why do the liberal Democrats want to control health care? it is a way to control what you do on a day to day basis. If you make up your own mind, you dont need them and that is something they just cannot understand or deal with. Take for example the current "extra" taxes being levied and considered in several cities on soda with sugar in it. Citing "obesity concerns" and "health care costs for overweight people", they want to add up to 20% on the price of a regular Coke or Pepsi. But this is just a vehicle to eventually tell you what you can and cannot eat, by citing things like cancer studies (many of which have been proven to be flawed) on different substances like coffee, ect. In fact, i have heard coffee called both a killer and a savior. Universal Health care gives them the option and ability to completely regulate and govern and watch what you do. I point to pages 58 and 59 in HR3200, where you will have to give the government access to your bank accounts, which should certainly send up a red flag to anyone interested in keeping their privacy.
The government wants to continue down this road by telling you what car you can drive, because if we dont drive a tiny car powered by laptop batteries, the polar caps will melt and the world will end. They do this in a variety of ways, first by demonizing the people who drive anything larger than a Malibu. Second, they refuse to allow oil drilling in the most lucrative and oil-rich area of the country, the Alaskan ANWR. This means we must further depend on middle east oil, which considering the volatile nature of the region, means that at some point the supply could be compromised. And lets not forget Cash For Clunkers, the plan to get all those evil vehicles off the road. 425 auto dealers in New York are pulling out of the program because they have NOT BEEN PAID for the cars they have destroyed in the name of this program. How in the world can anyone believe that this entity can efficiently run anything?
President Obama has stated publicly that he wants to put the coal industry out of business. How many people work in the coal industry? For that matter, since he took office, what has the unemployment rate done but go up? I honestly think this is what the Liberal establishment wants. Yes, they WANT high unemployment. If you are out of work, and jobs are tough to come by, along comes Uncle Sugar with a great new FREE health insurance plan. If enough people are out of work, this will be a great incentive for them to be okay with a government takeover of the Health care industry. Thankfully many people are not buying the idea, unemployed or not. But the roots go far deeper. Our country is on an out of control spending spree the likes of which it has never seen. Without public outcry, the leaders of this deficit ballooning crew would have already purchased the $500 billion in private planes they wanted all on the earning ability of people who wont be born for 20 years!
I have rambled on enough about this i am sure, so i will just close with this. No matter what "report" comes out that says that our health care is like #37 in the world or some horse-hockey like that, one fact is clear and undeniable. People from every country in the world come to the USA when they need the best cardio/neuro care, and I have yet to hear of americans journeying to Paris or Rome or Toronto when they need a procedure done. Think about it, everyone in the world knows that the best health care is in the USA.....except the people in the USA.

Message for Democrats hoping to win an election...

• Stop spending money that we don’t have.
• Stop using the courts to steal wins you can’t get at the voting booth.
• Stop pretending that you can make us all rich by making some of us poorer.
• Stop ignoring foreign affairs.
• Stop acting like you’re above us all.

And, finally:

• Stop calling us ‘un-American’ and ‘traitors’ when we disagree with you.

What Government Health Care will be like:

Thousands of surgeries may be cut in Metro Vancouver due to government underfunding, leaked paper

BY DARAH HANSEN, VANCOUVER SUNAUGUST 18, 2009

St. Paul's Hospital cardiologists peform a heart procedure.

Photograph by: ..., Vancouver Sun file

VANCOUVER — Vancouver patients needing neurosurgery, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures can expect to wait longer for care, NDP health critic Adrian Dix said Monday.

Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.

“This hasn’t been announced by the health authority … but these cuts are coming,” Dix said, citing figures gleaned from a leaked executive summary of “proposed VCH surgical reductions.”

The health authority confirmed the document is genuine, but said it represents ideas only.

“It is a planning document. It has not been approved or implemented,” said spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.

Dr. Brian Brodie, president of the BC Medical Association, called the proposed surgical cuts “a nightmare.”

“Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery? I just can’t think of a worse place,” Brodie said.

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, and 11 other specialized areas.

As many of 112 full-time jobs — including 13 anesthesiologist positions — would be affected by the reductions, the document says.

“Clearly this will impact the capacity of the health-care system to provide care, not just now but in the future,” Dix said.

Further reductions in surgeries are scheduled during the Olympics, when the health authority plans to close approximately a third of its operating rooms.

Two weeks ago, Dix released a Fraser Health Authority draft communications plan listing proposed clinical care cuts, including a 10-per-cent cut in elective surgeries and longer waits for MRI scans.

The move comes after the province acknowledged all health authorities together will be forced to cut staff, limit some services and increase fees to find $360 million in savings during the current fiscal year.

In all, Fraser Health is looking at a $160-million funding shortfall.

D’Angelo said Vancouver Coastal’s deficit is closer to $90 million — almost a third of which ($23 million) has already been absorbed through reductions in non-clinical administration efficiencies.

Vancouver Coastal performed 67,000 surgeries last year, an increase of 6,500 surgeries over 2007.

“What has now happened is that now our wait times are about 25 per cent lower than the provincial average,” D’Angelo said. “We have put a dent in that wait list.”

Brodie acknowledged surgical waiting times have dropped significantly in recent years, particularly for patients needing hip and joint replacements.

He said the proposed cuts threaten those advancements.

“It sounds like we are going backwards here,” he said.

Total health spending in British Columbia was $15.7 billion this year, up about four per cent over last year’s total of 15.1 billion, according to figures provided by the ministry of health.

Health Minister Kevin Falcon was unavailable for comment Monday on the proposed health-care cuts. A ministry spokesman said Falcon is away on his honeymoon until the end of August.

Elsewhere in British Columbia, the province will look to replace the head of the Interior Health Authority, Murray Ramsden, after he announced he will step down at the end of the year.

Ramsden has said his decision to retire is not related to financial problems faced by the authority.

Hump day crapfest

Just a short post today. I am in the process of reloading all of the files and programs my work computer once had on it. Yesterday morning it decided that it wanted to forget all of my work and files and settings and do its own thing. I instituted some tough love, and said NO YOU WONT and had the hard drive wiped. Luckily, i kept a backup set of files. Now we will do the dance of getting back to where we were.

Co-ops are Public Option by another name

The following is from www.redstate.com:

"You are going to hear a lot of talk in the coming weeks about co-ops. The Obama administration is signaling that the “public option” may not be needed in the healthcare plan.

They are retreating to “co-ops”. Friends, a cooperative healthcare device is the public option just with a better poll tested name.

Francis noted this morning that “co-ops … will be functionally indistinguishable from a public option because they will similarly benefit from free capital, grabbed from the taxpayers.” In other words, the referee will begin playing the game and, like with the public option, co-ops will kill off private insurance.

The White House says this is to introduce competition into the market. Here’s a big rule in life, though: government cannot compete with private business when government is also writing the rules.

As Francis noted:

These people aren’t proposing to introduce competition at all. They’re proposing to introduce supply. (If Obama, Pelosi and Waxman actually reasoned that too much supply makes prices fall, they can each have a gold star.)

But the market isn’t adding new supply today, because none is needed. Indeed, if it were legal to produce new lower-cost products without some of the features mandated by current laws, the market would produce that supply overnight.

Do not believe that the public option is going away. Do not believe that the Democrats are going to give up on universal healthcare. They are not. They are going to change the language and keep the same goal and plan. It may take them longer, but they will continue pushing forward.

Now we are at the hour of danger. Republicans, wanting to appear reasonable, might cut a deal and go with co-ops. If they do, they are voting for a government take over of healthcare.

Keep the pressure up."

Medicare and Medicaid are for all intensive purposes broke. The federal lending institutions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are in shambles, even the vaunted "cash for clunkers" program was underfunded and is now becoming detrimental to charity organizations that depend on vehicle donations. In my, Jim Mansell's, humble opinion, i do not believe that many of the regular people who want health care reform want it for nefarious reasons. These are good people who just have either had difficult experiences with health insurance companies or just want everyone taken care of because they have a heart of gold. That is a given. There are a few average citizens of the USA that want something for nothing, free health care, because they think that they wont have to pay for it. This is insanity, because there is never anything that doesnt come with a cost in one way or another. Canada right now is having major issues with its system, and the latest news is that people in Canada want it changed because it is not working the way it should. In France, they have a Universal Health care, but it is supplemented by private insurances, and even with all that, peoples cost per capita arent any less than what we pay. The U.K. has a system that looks sound on the outside, but if you are beyond a certain age, or income level, you do not get cortizone shots for pain because it is just not "cost effective".

Bottom line for me is this. Neither the previous administrations, nor this one, have shown ME any reason why they should be entrusted with such a complex mechanism as the health care of such a large nation as this. To me, it looks like nothing more than putting control in the hands of people who cannot even keep their own states from going into the red ink. As Margaret Thatcher put it quite succinctly, "Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money". It also stifles the desire for quality of service and care, and reduces the incentive for improvement.

Monday in the heartland

This morning i begin typing this with a strange pulsing in my right arm. I thought the desk was vibrating, then i thought maybe we were having some sort of earthquake, then i realized it was a muscle spasm. Muscle spasms are weird, right? I mean, not ALL of your muscles get them, otherwise there would be a lot of guys doing business meetings suddenly very embarrassed, while the flagpole was going up, then down then up, then down. And you never hear of anyone whose HEAD started pulsing all on its own. Usually its just some arm or leg muscle that starts twitching, and since we feel it before we see it, we spaz out like some sort of mental patient, wiggling our extremeties around and sometimes even asking people "you see that?", which of course they never do.

I get to work this morning, and usually there is some sort of fallout or issue from the weekend from our customers, most of whom are suppliers for Toyota. This morning however, was peaceful with the only message from our IT guy giving us directions on how to access our voicemail from home. As if i would ever bother to do THAT. I get enough of this place while i am here, and pardon me if it isnt "team spirit", but i have been hung out to dry enough times here where i work when i am AT work. I try and leave this place behind mentally the second i leave.

On my way to work this morning, i noticed the moon. It was looking especially beautiful, just a sliver showing and I could almost see the dark side. I truly wonder if the future holds for us a possibility of getting back there, it is less and less likely with the current administration. I think if we would have found something of earth shattering interest on either the Moon or on Mars, we would already be there or on the way. Fact is, there just isnt anything valuable for us on either place. It makes me sad though, because so many of my childhood fantasies and games were based on the idea of people becoming space travelers. Oh, well. Thats what growing up is all about.

Some important things my friend Julie-Ann found..

"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy
out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another
person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to
anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody
else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work
because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other
half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is
going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of
the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
Adrian Rogers, 1931

annoyances

What are some of your annoyances..? The guy I work with has his phone set to ring 999 times before it goes to voicemail, and leaves for lunch early. I really must kill him soon...LOL

TGIF

Happy Friday to you all! I was heartened to hear a few things this morning, and a few others disturbed me. First of all, the news that the congressional email system got trashed because it was overloaded is good news, no matter which side of the Health Care debate you fall on. What it means is that people are contacting the representatives they put in charge there, and reminding them that they are NOT the sheriffs of Nottingham, they are there to do the will of and whats best for thier districts. And even though every liberal rag out there has some sort of story about how the "death panels" are not real, false, never happened, Palin's crazy, ect., for some reason they are taking that very thing out of the bill. Right now, my mom is in the hospital. She has to go there probably every couple weeks in part because she has had some internal issues, but also because she smoked herself into barely enough lung capacity to live. She has problems with her sodium levels going up and down, and swelling in her extremeties, and overall, she requires some care. Under this "plan", i am not sure if she would have been considered "valuable" enough to society to continue providing care to. So i kind of take this debate personally. My own belief at this time is that this bill or any bill like it is not going to pass. If you were a congressman/woman in your first term, you would have to be an idiot not to see the groundswell of anger at this. But we shall see.

I read something very disturbing today, apparently the air traffic controller who was supposed to be watching the area where the small plane crashed into the helicopter in New York was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone when it happened. Between this and the operator that was texting his girlfriend when the commuter trains crashed, i am not sure society can handle this technology. I pass people driving every day who are swerving all over the road because they are tappity tap texting while driving. I know a bit about technology and know that if we can design some of these phones with voice recognition technology so that you can say "call home" and it knows what you said, why not make it so you can say "start text message" and then just dictate it? then send it? All while keeping your eyes on the road? It doesnt seem to be much of a stretch, or rocket science. For people like Air Traffic Controllers, a cell blocker in the control room is what they need. You can find these things online for less than $50, and you can even get ones to take to the movies in case you are crazy enough to go on a Friday night when all the teens are out, texting themselves stupid during the movie. I find that a scene of a movie is not helped by someone next to you writing War and Peace on their cell phone. Especially if they havent turned off the key sounds, so you hear nothing but beep beep boop beep boop through the whole thing.

Anyway, wasnt going to rant, but it is morning, my neck is killing me, and i need more caffiene. Loves.

Plasma

You know, sometimes i have to admit, i try and make myself out to be some sort of noble guy because i donate plasma twice a week. Truth be told, i really just enjoy the $50 i get for sitting in a chair for 2 hours. I am going to watch the 7th episode of the third season of Dexter today, and maybe see whats going on in FB land as well. Next post will be tomorrow, TGIF post!

And i am linked...

Okay, thanks to Di Stephens page on Facebook, i now use the same blogging stuff as Michelle Malkin, which puts me in good company.

First post

Okay, this is a piss-poor excuse for a blog at the moment. But i am confident it will get better as i go along. I will add some tweaks and stuff to make it more interesting, more interactive. At least i hope i will. Any ideas or gadgets anyone thinks i should put in here, your suggestions are of course welcome. You can always hit up the ole Joker at:

stewpedaso@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you all as time goes by. I am going to try and figure out how to link this blog to my FB acct....

Welcome and First Post

Okay, this is just to set this thing up.