Garbanzo Toons

The Humorous, the Not so Humorous, and the Downright Stupid

This is one of those things that I found humorous, but many white liberals would go to great lengths to try and explain why the writer of the piece is self-loathing and doesn't really get it. My question to them would be, who doesn't get it?

Thank you very, very much. You see us poor helpless inferior blacks (oh forgive me, I must be politically correct, "African Americans"), and you want to help us using your superior intellect. After all, we could not possibly succeed in this racist, homophobic and greedy country without your assistance.

I first met you guys in the 70s when I attended the prestigious Maryland Institute College of Art on a scholarship. A black kid from the ghetto, I found myself amongst white kids from well to do families. I worked a part-time job to cover my books and art supplies. You guys did not have to work.

And yet, I remember many conversations about how you would never bring a child into this "freaking world" and how "freaking screwed up" this "freaking country is". You told me how "freaking selfish" your "freaking parents" were and how they only cared about "freaking money". Then, you drove off in your convertible given to you be your "freaking parents" as I stood at the bus stop.

Yeah, you know you want to read the rest.

This, not as humorous article, is from the Detroit News. It explores the effects of the Obama-like health care reforms in Massachusetts. I believe that's a state or something like that, in the United States, so it should give a pretty good picture of what would happen to our nation should we be foolish enough to believe that a government medical bureaucracy would truly be in our best interest.

If you are curious about how President Barack Obama's health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts. In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.

Those reforms reveal that the Obama plan would mean higher health insurance premiums for millions, would reduce choice by eliminating both low-cost and comprehensive health plans, would encourage insurers to avoid the sick and would reduce the quality of care.

Massachusetts reduced its uninsured population by two-thirds -- yet the cost would be considered staggering, had state officials not done such a good job of hiding it.

Government lying about costs? Why that could never happen under the absolutely honest and totally transparent Obama administration!

Finally, Massachusetts shows where "ObamaCare" would ultimately lead: Officials are already laying the groundwork for government rationing.

As we all know, due to the unprecedented costs of Obamacare, there would have to be rationing. Not now, but down the road a week or two, after all good citizens have forgotten past promises of free medical care for all, a new crisis would be claimed due to - must I really say it? - rising health care costs. This crisis, as all crises, would only be solvable by more government and rationing health care - and it would be blamed on George Bush's failed policies.

The most sweeping provision in the Massachusetts reforms -- and the legislation before Congress -- is an "individual mandate" that makes health insurance compulsory. Massachusetts shows that such a mandate would oust millions from their low-cost health plans and force them to pay higher premiums.

The necessity of specifying what satisfies the mandate gives politicians enormous power to dictate the content of every American's health plan -- a power that health care providers inevitably capture and use to increase the required level of insurance.

In the three years since Massachusetts enacted its individual mandate, providers successfully lobbied to require 16 specific types of coverage under the mandate: prescription drugs, preventive care, diabetes self-management, drug-abuse treatment, early intervention for autism, hospice care, hormone replacement therapy, non-in-vitro fertility services, orthotics, prosthetics, telemedicine, testicular cancer, lay midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners and pediatric specialists.

The Massachusetts Legislature is considering more than 70 additional requirements.

Those requirements can increase premiums by 14 percent or more. Officials further increased premiums by imposing new limits on cost-sharing.

"The effect," writes the Boston Globe, "has been to provide more comprehensive insurance than in most other states but also to raise costs." Premiums are growing 21 to 46 percent faster than the national average, in part because Massachusetts' individual mandate has effectively outlawed affordable health plans.

Massachusetts long ago adopted another feature of the Obama plan: price controls that prohibit insurers from varying premiums based on a purchaser's health status. Those price controls further increase premiums for the young and healthy.

They also eliminate comprehensive health plans. Obama adviser David Cutler found that in Harvard University's price-controlled health insurance exchange, "adverse selection" or the attraction of the sickest patients caused premiums for the most comprehensive plan to rise until insurers eventually canceled it. Those price controls also encourage insurers to avoid the sick. And who can blame them, considering that the government is forcing them to sell a $50,000 policy for just $10,000?

And after all that, please tell me again how Capitalism and the free market are immoral and don't work. Oh, and there's more to the article. It's very informative, and probably something the Obama White House would want you to report as "fishy" information.

If the writer of this piece were a tiny bit smarter, she would understand the stupidity of what she wrote and posted on the Internet for all to see.

But in all the florid or scalpel-sharp prose, there's one constant: Peeking out from the center of the story is the matter of his playing a major part in the death of a 28-year-old woman.

Mary Jo wasn't a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan. She was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future -- granted, whenever someone dies young, people sermonize about how he had a "bright future" ahead of him -- but she actually did. She wasn't afraid to defy convention (28 and unmarried, oh the horror!) or create her own career path based on her talents. She lived in Georgetown (where I grew up) and loved the Red Sox (we'll forgive her for that). Then she got in a car driven by a 36-year-old senator with an alcohol problem and a cauldron full of demons, and wound up a controversial footnote in a dynasty.

We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it.

Yeah, I know. I had the same reaction. Did she really write that? I'm not going to try and delve into her twisted psyche. I'm sure plenty of others are hard at work doing that. I know everything I need to know about her, not only because of that quote, but because in the days since, she hasn't found it necessary to retract, apologize, or explain in any way her plumbing the depths of stupidity - all while inserting the obligatory slamming of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. She did forget to slam Bush. That must have been in a previous column.

Oh, and speaking of the dearly departed Big Eddy Kennedy, in an effort to humanize that larger-than-life senator, we were helpfully informed that he enjoyed Chappaquiddick jokes. How about that?

Labels: Detroit News, Obamacare, racism, Ted Kennedy

posted by Harry @ 8:34 PM 3 comments

My Representative Doesn't Represent Me Anymore

There was a time when I would have agreed with my elected congressional representative when he said garbage like this in his email newsletter.

On May 25, the House of Representatives voted 225 to 201 to approve legislation [H.R. 5429] opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Opponents of the bill underscored the fact that opening the Refuge to drilling would do nothing to bring down gasoline prices, since no Refuge oil would reach the market for at least ten years. They also objected to rewarding the oil industry when oil companies are posting record profits.

On his website, he continues in the same vein:

In 2005, the six largest oil companies reported $110 billion in profits. These profits will likely set a new record this year. The Majority's philosophy is that what's good for Exxon-Mobile is good for American consumers, but we have learned that this is not the case.

My question to my esteemed representative was, "why not let the oil companies use some of those record profits in the way they are intended, that is, by rewarding the hard working American consumer with a greater supply of oil? And why not let us buy our gasoline without, at the same time, sending record profits to the terror supporters in Saudi Arabia? Our oil companies actually invest and work to make their profits. The Middle East terror masters do nothing except sit on huge supplies of oil, which they would not even have access to, if not for "greedy" Western oil companies. Why condemn oil companies for powering our economy while giving the decadent, hypocritical Arab Oil Shieks a pass?"

He pretends to have a solution to our energy woes:

Yesterday, Representative Visclosky sought to offer a far-sighted amendment to the Energy and Water bill to provide $750 million to move the United States towards energy independence. This amendment would have made important investments in alternative energy, including ethanol and biofuels; renewable energy research and development, and energy efficiency. Yet, the Majority blocked the House from even considering this proposal.

We've been hearing about "alternative energy sources" for years. And some day, some of these new sources will be available on a large enough scale to actually do some good - except for nuclear energy, which is available today. If the scaremongers hadn't frightened us away from building the nuclear power plants that could power our cities, we'd be using clean, cheap nuclear energy today instead of dirty, dangerous coal and heating oil.

Instead we are left with empty energy promises and blatent green hypocracy like this from the Kennedys, who inherited their wealth and their disdain for us, the great unwashed.

Kennedy, a rabid green activist especially when it comes to other countries, showed up in the news last week to oppose a U.S. $700 million wind turbine farm in Nantucket Sound, located near Hyannis, home to the Kennedy family compound, among other stables for the rich and famous of the political left. Despite the emerging hypocrisy of course, as recently as this past weekend, Kennedy was back in Canada (in Montreal) to slam Canada’s record on the environment.

Forget the debate over whether wind turbines are economical or whether they might slaughter a few too many seagulls. It is sheer fun to watch Kennedy squirm in the face of 130 possible 40-storey windmills that might give clean, renewable energy for a couple of thousand homes in Martha’s Vineyard. The pleasure is acute given how Kennedy and his merry band of green activists warn Canadians not to put comfort, i.e., a job, ahead of environmental purity.

In the war between the Democrats and the oil companies, I'm solidly on the side of the oil companies. At least they are earning their money honestly by providing the consumer with a necessary product.

Labels: energy, environment, Oil, Ted Kennedy

posted by Harry @ 9:25 AM 0 comments