Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Hey lets have national heathcare here too!

Posted: January 19, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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This story from London was bad enough:

Officials from the South London NHS Trust have apologised to the family of Derek Sauter, who later died in hospital of pneumonia.

The 60-year-old did not receive a “proper and professional standard of care” when he was admitted with a chest infection in June 2008.

A formal investigation is being conducted into his death, after it was found his oxygen levels went unchecked for 11 hours and were 35% lower than recommended.

But this in comments was particularly interesting:

The problem was, when I noted what they did wrong, my boss quickly got with me to tell me that the hospitals do not like change on their reports. Basically, I found that the hospitals would break the contract with my employer if I gave them bad scores…and get another third party to cover their ass. Basically my job was fake, and I had to give out fake scores so I quit. The things I saw were unimaginable. How educated doctors and nurses could act that way is unbelievable.

This is just a blog comment and one would need to investigate to find how reliable this is, but consider. If a company worried about its bottom line is willing to play with data (and I’m sure our friends on the left would certainly concede that possibility) imagine how much more an inspector for a government agency empowered to direct millions of dollars of taxpayer funds or to affect the political future of someone who votes on said appropriations?

Repeat that nationwide and you get the picture.

One year ago today Massachusetts elected Scott Brown…

Posted: January 19, 2011 by datechguy in congress, economy, opinion/news, politics
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…in an attempt to stop Obamacare. In a broadcast by 73wire with Stacy McCain and Ali Akbar (Brown’s new media guy) we talked about the healthcare bill and there was an interesting exchange. I stressed how important this election was because it was necessary to stop obamacare BEFORE it was passed prompting the following:

Ali: “And if it does pass, we will repeal it!”

DaTechGuy: “No we won’t.”

It was very telling that Ali (who is a really smart young man) didn’t argue the point with me and changed the subject.

Well Scott won, but the democrats realizing that the only chance to get the bill passed now was for the house to pass the version that had already gone through the senate did so avoiding both a conference and the chance of a filibuster.

So the repeal bill is now coming up and we will find out who was right. I think Ali knows the its very hard to repeal a law once passed. He knows businesses and government have already adjusted their plans based on it. A lot of favors were done for a lot of people in that bill and those lobbyists who had those favors inserted want them preserved. Most importantly as a rule it’s easier to stop something than to do something in congress. A determined minority and frustrate the majority every time.

Yet there are real reasons to think he might be right. The left and the media are declaring that effort dead and phony but are doing their best to discourage this vote. If my original thought was right why would they bother? After all the senate is still a majority democratic institution. Very little chance on any change there is there?

The dirty little secret is until the house passes this bill the senate doesn’t have to even pretend to care, but once it IS passed than it is before the Senate. There are quite a few democratic senators who are in a tough spot. They either ran against Obamacare (WV) live in states where it is unpopular (MO) or face uphill reelection fights (Va). The retirement announcement of Kent Conrad in ND actually hurts the repeal effort because he can now vote to preserve it while the democrat who does run in his state can claim opposition.

However there is another factor involved. Every single democratic senator was the deciding vote to the passage of Obamacare this means that every vulnerable senator on the democratic side has that vote hanging around their neck. Those senators desperate to retain their seats and the power and privileges thereof will not want to run on Obamacare. A repeal vote would give them a chance to vote against it saying they’ve “reconsidered”.

Harry Reid might, in order to increase the chance of holding his senate majority allow a vote. If a democrat filibuster blocks it then vulnerable dems can clam they voted against said filibuster and if he allows it to reach the floor he can either “Fishbait Miller” the vote (let the three most vulnerable dems vote against it) or allow it to pass and let the president veto it.

This is the position that the White House least wants to be in. The president casting a very prominent vote to preserve a law that he pushed for against popular opinion. This would be a great gift to Republicans going into 2012 and represents (along with the rising price of gas and oil and high unemployment) the best chance for this president to lose re-election.

This is the importance of the house vote. It turns 2012 into a referendum on Obamacare. The closer these actions come to election day 2012 the worse the situation gets for democrats. The second best move for them would be to allow a Senate vote ASAP and get this whole thing over with early. The best option for democrats? That I’m not saying until the day after the presidential election.

Obamacare will not be repealed before the 2012 election but this vote might be the first step to insuring its repeal with a new person in the White House.

What a phony headline on Obamacare

Posted: January 19, 2011 by datechguy in congress, media, opinion/news, politics
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I look at this headline and laugh at the intellectual weakness of it:

Bill Frist: Health Care Is ‘Law Of The Land,’ GOP Should Drop Repeal And Build On It

How weak an argument is that? Think about the variations:

John C. Calhoun: Slavery is the ‘Law of The Land,’ GOP Should Drop Repeal attempt and Build on it

Or how about this?

Herman Eugene Talmadge: Separate but equal is the law of the land (Plessy v Ferguson), the GOP should drop civil rights bills and Build on it

I can do this all day.

Considering how the left/media insists that this is not going to make a difference since the senate won’t repeal it they are fighting awful hard to keep this vote from happening in the house. They fear this vote for a reason.

Oh and the easiest way to be liked by the MSM is to be a republican in opposition to republicans.

The reality of the 60’s

Posted: January 18, 2011 by datechguy in culture, opinion/news
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There is a lot of talk about how the 60’s was the summer of love and all the great stuff that came from it. Virginia Ironside had a different memory:

To be honest, I mainly remember the 60s as an endless round of miserable promiscuity, a time when often it seemed easier and, believe it or not, more polite, to sleep with a man than to chuck him out of your flat. I recall a complete stranger once slipping into bed beside me when I was staying in an all-male household in Oxford, and feeling so baffled about what the right thing was to do that I let him have sex with me; I remember being got drunk by a grossly fat tabloid newspaper journalist and taken back to a flat belonging to a friend of his to which he had a key, being subjected to what would now be described as rape, and still thinking it was my fault for accepting so much wine. I remember going out to dinner with a young lawyer who inveigled me back to his flat saying he’d got to pick something up before he could take me home, and then suggested we have sex. ‘Oh no,’ I said feebly. ‘I’m too tired.’ ‘Oh, go on,’ he replied. ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes.’ So I did.

You mean to say that all of that bit about fornication in Christianity and waiting till marriage although religious might have a non religious benefit? Who woulda thunk it. And who would have ever thought that if you give men, who naturally want sex, particular young men no reason for restraint they will show none. Her conclusion:

After a decade of sleeping around pretty indiscriminately, girls of the 60s eventually became fairly jaded about sex. It took me years to discover that continual sex with different partners is, with very few exceptions, joyless, uncomfortable and humiliating, and it’s only now I’m older that I’ve discovered that one of the ingredients of a good sex life is, at the very least, a grain of affection between the two partners involved.

In the rush to reject traditional Christianity a lot of people did a lot of damage to themselves. My advice, find a nice young man who goes to Church and warn your daughters of making it too easy. People tend to rise to the level of expectations that you set for them so let’s make the exceptions high.

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