Thursday, November 12, 2009

Are You Sick Yet?

Run for the hills, the Pandemic of SARS-Avian-West Nile-Swine Flu is coming and NOTHING can stop it! Didn't you hear, almost four thousand people have died from it. Of course nine times as many people have died from normal seasonal flu, but this is a PANDEMIC people. I know, I heard it on TV. I'm not exactly sure how bad a pandemic is, but it sounds an awful lot like epidemic, and I KNOW that is not good.

I think it is time we all turned off our TVs, throw away that rag called a newspaper, turn the dial from Rush to white noise, and get some distance from the insanity that has taken over the media, and apparently, the government and medical community. Every year it is a new disease that is coming to wipe us out. I suppose this is merely an extension of the "Fear Everything" society that developed post-911, but I am bored of it.

I am sorry but Swine flu lacks the sex appeal that something like an Ebola or Flesh-Eating disease. If the contaminated do not bleed out of their eyes or become rabid psychopaths, how am I supposed to get all worked up about it? What is the death rate on this thing? 1 in 100 000 or something so abstract I find it hard to take seriously. I am sure that those affected by this do not agree with me, but that does not change anything. Somewhere along the line people lost any rational link to risk management. Long odds are played as the apocolypse while very real and dire problems are downplayed.

This would make an interesting book were it not true.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A Supermajority of Wimps

Despite controlling the Executive and Legislative branches of government, the Democrats are incapable of doing what they promised. The blame can be spread around, but it is clear that there is a problem in the Democrat party.

President Obama can, and should, be blamed for engaging in the Health Reform campaign in an ass-backwards fashion. He should have started with an information campaign, to educate the populace on how wasteful the current system is, and how much more expensive it is projected to get in the near and long term. Educate people on the myriad examples of people who were denied coverage because of the most inane reasons. Those stories are coming out now, but they should have been part of the information campaign. It would have made it much more difficult for the Republicans to use the line "Do you want government bureaucrats making your healthcare decisions for you?", which they have been able to effectively do so far. The worst thing Obama did was to start the negotiations from a position of moderation. You start with everything you want under the sun, knowing that you will not get most of it. If you start with the bare minimum you are willing to accept you are guaranteed to get next to nothing.

The real culprits, though, are clearly the Democrat Senators and Representatives who will not vote for this much-needed (and popular) reform if it is anything close to real reform. These Senators and Representatives need to be singled out and the spotlight shone upon them. Come the next election the Democrat party should put large resources towards removing these people in the Primaries. Hurt them in the only way that makes sense; politically. Find good people who will run against them, and then provide huge funds from the party coffers (or whatever mechanism is legal), and have popular Democrats campaign for the challengers. Democrats like Joe Lieberman have proven that they are really Republicans in Democrat clothing. It is time to chase the conservatives out of the party, because they are creating a situation where a large percentage of the population has no voice at all, and the big-mouthed minority seems to get their way whether they win or lose an election.