Massive amounts of interesting stuff out there *UPDATED (REPEATEDLY)*
Bookworm on Jul 15 2010 at 11:51 am | Filed under: Open Threads
[Since I'm repeatedly updating this post, I'm going to keep it at the top of the blog, at least for a while. There are other, newer posts below.]
What a morning for interesting reading (and, in my next post, I’ll put up the Watcher’s Council submissions, which are also great). Some of these links will provide the genesis, I hope, for longer posts but, right now, I just wanted to pass them on to you. In almost no particular order:
All the others are in no particular order. This one is today’s must read: Daniel Henninger argues strongly that Obama’s recess appointment of the ultra radical Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is “probably the most significant domestic-policy personnel decision in a generation. It is more important to the direction of the country than Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court.” Read it and weep.
Rich Lowry on the problem with the Obama administration’s suit against Arizona: “To make the case that the Arizona immigration law conflicts with, and therefore is preempted by, federal law, the Justice Department has to make an extraordinary claim — that the federal laws as written don’t matter so much.” Yup, that’s a problem.
Karl Rove writes about his biggest failure during the Bush years: failing to take seriously (and therefore to counteract seriously) the charge that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq.
The Marin IJ, a liberal paper in one of the bluest counties in America, grapples with the fact that Big Government stifles initiative and economic common sense.
Although England may be a lost cause, continental Europe’s sense of self-preservation may be kicking in when it comes to countering Islamism within its borders. The measures seem draconian to free Americans — no burqas, no minarets — but they recognize that Islamists are not interested in quietly living their lives. For them, burqas and minarets are weapons of war, just as surely as IEDs and suicide bombers.
In the eternal Roe v. Wade tug of war being fought at ground level, pro-abortion forces try to lift the isolation that the pro-life movement imposed on abortion providers (thereby reducing their numbers), and to reintegrate them in the medical mainstream (which presumably will increase their numbers and status).
Confederate Yankee has solid evidence that Leftists are crashing Tea Parties in an effort to create the illusion that the Tea Parties are racist. Our local Tea Party is wise to this strategy, and Tea Partiers come armed with “infiltrator” signs, that they point at party crashers.
(More to follow — and please consider this an Open Thread.)
UPDATE: As I promised, there’s more. Whether you’re pro-Life or pro-Choice, I think you will really appreciate Zombie’s take on Sharron Angle’s honesty and consistency when it comes to encouraging women who are pregnant as a result of rape to carry the child to term. Just as Zombie describes him/herself as “reluctantly pro-choice” I am “reluctantly pro-Life.” We’re both reluctant, I think, because we recognize the fact that, if you’re honest about either position, there’s a cruelty to the practical realities of that position, if it is carried out consistently.
UPDATE II: Another must-read, this time about Britain’s failed responses to the threat of radical Islam.
I was once pro-Choice, because I thought it was all about the woman, so I resigned myself to the fact that “zygotes” would die. Now that I’ve had children and can no longer pretend that a zygote isn’t still a human being, I have to support the child’s right to live, even though it may mean that women (and girls) have miserable choices. Sharron Angle has accepted those difficult choices — and her acceptance allows Zombie to look at the weaknesses inherent in the halfway arguments both sides try to make.
Related posts:
- A portmanteau post with all sorts of interesting stuff *UPDATED*
- Well, that’s an interesting point
- Footage that Israel shot, showing events on board the flotilla ship *UPDATED, REPEATEDLY*
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11 Responses to “Massive amounts of interesting stuff out there *UPDATED (REPEATEDLY)*”
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On the subject of Berwick.
He is a huge fan of Britian’s NHS. An interesting statistic (probably soon becoming a life or death reality for many Americans):
The survival rate for HEART ATTACKS and CANCER in Britian is the same as in the former Soviet Union (Eastern Europe).
I don’t know the statistics on heart attacks but for cancer, the survival rate IN THE US (5 year for most cancers) is almost DOUBLE that in Britain.
The wait time for a hip replacement is approximately 3 WEEKS in the US and 11 MONTHS in Britian.
If you have no major health problems (meaning you don’t need modern medicine) the NHS is great (as is no medical care, so why pay taxes for the NHS). If you have serious medical problems in Britain, they will, quite often, knowingly kill you (denying you chemo drugs used in US, denying you supportive care, such as an ICU, while you recover from an accident, heart attack, or major medical problem which would have allowed you to recover), even actively killing you by denying anyone they deem “due to die” even basic comforts, such as food and fluids.
Bureaucrats, become gods (at least in their own minds), deciding who lives and dies in Britian. Families have to forcibly remove their loved ones to their homes to prevent them dying from dehyration and starvation. Nurses threatent to call the police over families bringing food or offering water to loved ones who are ”due to die.”
These are not scare stories, these are the realities of the situation under beaucratic medicine. It may be cost effective but it may not seem like such a savings if it is you, or a loved one, condemned to die by the beaureacrats.
To disclose my bias: I was given a year to live and it was recommended I seek no treatment by small town physicians after a cancer diagnosis. I sought out aggressive treatment and am alive 3 years later and now expected to live “many” more years (in the words of my physician). I would have been the victim of ignorance of the latest medical advances on the part of out-of-date physicians here in the US. In England, my treatment is explicitly forbidden by the NHS to save money. In the US, my “aggressive” (at the time) treatment is now standard of care. Am I worth the investment our society has made in my survival? That is a matter of opinion, but it cost less than Pelosi’s bar bill for her private plane per year.
The NHS (and similar schemes) do not affect the care of our “masters” (note the recent uproar about Canadian politicians coming to the US for care). It will, however, affect the lives of middle class Americans who will be allowed to pay for health care for every dead beat in America (legal and illegal alike), thus preventing them from being able to afford the best health care for themselves.
Death panels are real in Britian and will be coming soon to the US.
I ran across an article yesterday that stated that Berwick was previously the head of some board…I’m sorry, I don’t remember what board … and that as a result, he had a contract that stipulated that he and his wife would have prepaid health care for the rest of their lives. No National Health Care for them – the hypocrites. The value was considered to be somewhere in the neighborhoos of $120,000. Not a bad perk.
I’ll try to find the article…
“…as a result, he had a contract that stipulated that he and his wife would have prepaid health care for the rest of their lives”.
Well, of course, suek. Just like Congress, the New Aristocracy should not be expected to live as the rest of us serfs.
The New Aristocracy is too valuable to lose! Like Israelis, a 100 serfs for one Aristocrat wouldn’t be good enough of a trade.
garyp
comment:
May you live until 120, which is my way of saying keep well, stay well and the doctor, who told you otherwise can go to whatever rhymes with ‘well’. Your personal story only reinforces the importance of a) having a choice and b) the importance of being self responsible.
With so many bad stories and headlines, I thought the ‘diminished-dhimmi’ would bring some sense of relief. Would it be appropriate to send a thank you note to Judge Koeltl? WARNING: If you have an appetite, eat first before viewing her photo.
A judge had resentenced a 70-year-old civil rights lawyer to 10 years in prison for letting a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his radical followers.
Federal Judge John Koeltl sentenced Lynne Stewart in Manhattan after she pleaded with him to reimpose the two-year, four-month sentence he had originally given her in 2006. She said she has been diminished since her November imprisonment.
An appeals court had ordered a new sentencing, saying the judge needed to consider whether she committed perjury. Koeltl says she did and he says she lacked remorse after her first sentencing.
AP
Lynne Stewart
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose a sentence of at least 15 years.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/attorney_who_helped_terrorist_gets_PYGIvliTgsFfDjH8DWkVTJ#ixzz0tnLomkSn
Here it is…at AT. Interestingly enough, the article didn’t show up when I did a search. I “sort of” remembered that it was at AT, but had to do a search there to find it.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/health_care_rationing_advocate.html
Institute for Health Care Improvement, a nonprofit health care charitable organization he created.
Charitable, indeed and exactly where did those nonprofit funds come from to fund the Mrs. & Mrs. for a lifetime?
Time to do a bit of sleuthing.
I’ve done just a brief connect the dots (a lot of them are in Mass. but not all)
Donald Berwick connected to Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, connected to Atul Gawande, African National Congress connected to New American Foundation and my fav… connected to Bill Clinton Presidential campaign.
And to think the letters KGB used to make me shudder in my youth.
http://www.muckety.com/Atul-A-Gawande/188991.muckety
Sadie, you might want to send this to Andrew Breitbart or Atlas Shrugged if you think it has merit.
On the KGB, we all feel discomfort at encountering unknown and powerful foes. That is, of course, until we begin to gain their powers and understand that it is not equivalent to invulnerability.
Splendid idea, Y – think I will.
The site connects current and past connections and I find it to be a useful tool, particularly when an odd name pops up.