Posted on 10/24/2004 6:54:31 AM PDT by finnigan2
Maybe I'm getting old. I've been covering politics for 53 years, and that's just since John Kerry's convention speech. I'm sick of this election, even before the Democratic Party's chad-diviners have managed to extend it to mid-December. These are serious times and the senator is not a serious man. And so we have a campaign that has a sharper position on Mary Cheney's lesbianism and the deficiencies of Laura Bush's curriculum vitae than on the central question of the age.
There are legitimate differences of opinion about the war, but they don't include Kerry's silly debater's points. On the one hand, the Tora borer drones that Bush "outsourced" the search for Osama bin Laden to the Afghans, though at the time he supported it ("It is the best way to protect our troops," he said in December 2001. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively."). But, on the other, he claims he's going to outsource Iraq to the French and the Germans, though neither of them wants anything to do with it.
As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.
But, even if he weren't, that's a frivolous reductive way of looking at this war. He's not a general or head of state; he can't sign an instrument of surrender, and make all the unpleasantness go away. The enemy is an ideology that appeals to various loose groupings from the Balkans to Indonesia, as well as to entrepreneurial free-lancers like the shooter who killed two people at LAX on July 4, 2002. If Kerry's oft-repeated "outsourcing Osama" crack is genuinely felt, it shows he doesn't get this war. And, if it's just cheapo point scoring, it's pathetic.
Almost everything falls into that category. Iraq's messy. So? What isn't? America has no Colonial Office, no political administrators with decades of experience in far-flung climes; its occupation of Iraq was learnt on the fly, because there was no other way. But the ludicrous defeatism over what's at worst a partial success is unbecoming to a great nation. If the present Democratic-media complex had been around earlier, America would never have mustered the will to win World War II or, come to that, the Revolutionary War. There would be no America. You'd be part of a Greater Canada, with Queen Elizabeth on your coins and government health care.
Speaking of which, if there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.
The war against the Islamists and the flu-shot business are really opposite sides of the same coin. I want Bush to win on Election Day because he's committed to this war and, as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be.'' The longer it gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their shriveled post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.
So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.
One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.
ROFLMAO!!!! I feel exactly the same way. While I desperately want GWB to win this electin, I also am desperate for this campaign to end. It's been excruciating.
Kerry is a communist, without a doubt. He never met a communist cause he could not support.
Not with a grain of salt...but not God's word either. You know how statistics work, and how difficult it is to get the numbers right. So there's dispute and always will be. In science they have a name for this phenomenon - experimental margin of error.
However, I wouldn't take that 75k example as typical. It defies common sense.
my brother-in-law is an adminstrator at a large hospital and they don't turn anyone away
No hospital emergency room anywhere turns away anyone. It's the law - Hill-Burton from the '50s and other stuff subsequently. But that doesn't contradict my statement about people suffering from lack of medical care. Showing up indigent at a big-city emergency room is no fun...and a lot of people didn't know you could do it. As the knowledge has become more widespread the pressure on hospitals has increased. At first, governments covered the shortfall with taxes but now - as that's becoming impossible - more and more hospitals are closing.
brilliant and important. Send it to everyone.
....The entitlement plantations are failing and no one sees.....
But you must understand that those who died were not me! I'm alive and well, I'm at peace, I have free health care and numerous other entitlements. My neighbors are wonderful educated refugees from all over the world and they bring such intellectual diversity to our community. Yada yada yada, me me me
5.56mm
A large part of the uninsured are also young people who don't feel the need to spend money on health insurance.
...and the only funny thing about that is that he still would have been full of crap.
There is a model of how healthcare should work. It is called cosmetic surgery. Since insurance companies usually don't pay for this, it is handled on a cash basis, for a fixed fee. There is an actual market system for plastic surgery and things like laser eye correction. Since it is a capitalist system, it is both affordable, and good quality. The problem with the rest of the healtcare system is that the gubmint has mucked up all financial reality.
THANK YOU, MR. STEYN!!!
Unfortunately it doesn't address the issue of how the poor, and much of the middle class, are to get medical service. The basic, underlying, irreduceable reality is that medical care is EXPENSIVE. No modern society will tolerate a situation in which some people drive Rolls' while others watch their children die of easily treatable, easily prevantable diseases because they can't afford to see a doctor.
Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely."
Why cant Bush simply incorporate this line into his speeches about drugs.
Back off! He's mine! (after his wife gets done with him)
"After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital."
You know, I've suspected this- that socialized healthcare would kill more people than the Iraq war. This gets us half way there with only a single cause.
BTT, this needs to be read by all
I think this is the best Steyn piece of all I've read.
And I too have believed binLaden to be dead for a few years at least. It's the Left who still needs him to be alive to function as a prop for one of their current campaign "arguments". There is simply no reason for him to be alive when he suddenly and mysteriously "stops" creating videos and making Jihad statements. He's dead. But, no irony here, it's the Left who still contends he's alive and so they've had to create him over as a Legendary Outlaw Underground Folk Hero, because, apparently he's THEIR kind of hero. That's just the way the equation works out.
Dealing with the poor is a problem for the gubmint, as they can't enforce any discipline on welfare recipients. For instance, drug use among the poor probably causes a signifigant part of their health problems, but the ACLU would wig out if we started mandating drug testing for them.
You are absolutely dead-on. Look at the laser eye correction industry right now. Remember a few short years ago when they only offered Radial Caratotomy for $10,000? Lasik is now available for a fraction of the cost, it's safer, better, and we're seeing new innovations all the time.
The market is truly the way to go!
Yep. I wish Republicans would do a better job of touting that as a model for what the healthcare system could be. I am sure that once the libs figure this out they will want to "reform" Big Lasik! You know it's unfair that illegal immigrants have to pay to have 20/20 vision or some such thing...
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