November 2, 2018: Republicans Warn Socialized Medicine Will Kill Us - Climate Change Won't Harm Anyone

 

11/2/18: In a Massachusetts gubernatorial debate, incumbent Charlie Baker is asked to describe President Trump in three words. He chooses, “outrageous,” “disgraceful” and “divider.” 

And he’s the Republican.

 

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PRESIDENT TRUMP hasn’t said anything outrageous for several hours. So, he decides to announce that the Fourteenth Amendment is a disgrace and should be repealed and replaced. 

At another one of his rallies he tells a chanting crowd that granting citizenship to all children born in the United States is a “crazy, lunatic policy.” 

At the mention of immigrant babies, his adoring supporters begin chanting, “Lock them up! Lock them up!” 

(That’s a joke; but admit it, you weren’t sure.)

 

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MEANWHILE, two telling reports are released. The first is designed to scare ignorant Trump fans and green-lighted by some knot head at work in the White House. This report warns in chilling language that socialism is coming to America. If Democrats can’t be turned back on Election Day, they’re going to take away not only our guns, they’re going to commandeer our consumer goods. 

According to this taxpayer-funded waste of ink and paper, we’re going to end up like Venezuela. When we do, real GDP will be reduced “by at least 40 percent,” or by “$24,000 per year for the average person.” 

Also, forget those Nordic countries, like Finland and Sweden, which have socialist governments. Living like the Finns and Swedes would be terrible, and billionaires would suffer irreparable harm. And have we mentioned Karl Marx and Lenin? In this report, both are socialists, not communists, and the people who wrote the report hope you are too dumb to know socialists and communists are historic enemies.  No matter! Marx and Lenin and Bernie Sanders are out to get us! 

 

Socialist healthcare will kill us all! 

This waste of White House time and money warns that should the U.S. go to a system of socialized medicine, like the Nordic countries, we’re doomed. “Evidence on the productivity and effectiveness of single-payer [healthcare] systems,” the authors claim, “suggests that ‘Medicare for All’ would reduce both short- and long-run longevity and health [emphasis added] despite increasing somewhat the population with health insurance.” 

That is why, in Nordic nations, the suffering men and women of Iceland die off in droves, at an average age of 82.7 years. The people of the other Nordic nations are cut down in the cradle. Swedes are done for at 82.4 years, Norwegians at 81.2, Finns at 81.1, and Danes die in diapers, living an average age of 80.6 years.

On average, Finnish kids will live longer than American kids.

 

By comparison, we in America are free not to have health insurance, especially if we had pre-existing conditions (prior to Obamacare). We are free to live in a country where an estimated 17.2 percent of GDP goes for medical costs. Whereas costs in the following Nordic nations are lower: Denmark, (10.2 percent of GDP) and… 

Okay. Costs are much lower in all five Nordic nations. 

But you know what they say. You get what you pay for, and for a little extra, say five or ten thousand dollars more per person – and to make sure we live in a free country where White House staffers can write about socialist boogie men hiding under hospital beds – we get to live to, what, probably an average age of 90? Yes, the average American lives until the age of 79.3. 

WTF! You mean we pay more in America, by far, and we die younger? Yes, that is a plain fact.

 

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FAR LONGER, at 369 pages, and focusing on a very real threat to us all, whether we be socialists or ventriloquists, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine releases its own report, warning that time is running out to address the dangers of climate change. 

In this case we get true science, not the cow patties of fiction White House staffers just plopped all over the South Lawn. Scientists say efforts to reduce emissions, which Team Trump has been fighting, will no longer suffice. The technology necessary to capture carbon and remove it from the air must be developed. It will require a sustained government effort to fund new technology. Planting trees can help. Saving existing forests would be wise. Scientists also note that certain minerals, like peridotite (which this stupid blogger had never heard of before), can bind with carbon dioxide and convert gas to rock. In Oman, for instance, they have been studying ways to use that nation’s “vast mineral deposits for carbon removal.” 

You get the idea. There’s lots of complex science in this report; but this danger is vivid and real. 

You know that Trump won’t read a science report, unless it’s five paragraphs long and written in crayon.

July 31, 2019: You Might Want Government Regulations if You Fly on a Jet - or Need Insulin

 

7/31/19: The Wall Street Journal breaks the news. The FAA was aware of serious control problems after the first new Boeing 737 Max crashed in October 2018. All 189 passengers and crew aboard were killed.

 

Undelivered planes - the 737 Max.

The FAA was aware that it “didn’t take that much” for sensors to malfunction and repeatedly push the nose of the plane down. 

The FAA decided that airlines should warn pilots that a similar disaster was possible. Nothing more. 

This was done, as CNBC explains, “to give Boeing and regulators enough time to certify a permanent fix without removing planes from the sky.”

 

Unfortunately, in March 2019 a second 737 Max removed itself “from the sky,” nosing straight into the ground. 

All 157 passengers and crew died. 

Good work, then, Daniel K. Elwell, Trump’s choice to head the FAA until that second crash. And welcome, Stephen Dickson, Acting Director of the FAA till last week. Dickson was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 24, in a narrow 52-40 vote. Democrats mostly voted nay, after senators learned that while Dickson was senior vice president for flight operations at Delta, he was involved in a whistleblower case – and not in a good way. 

When a pilot named Karlene Pettit expressed safety concerns, she was removed from the cockpit. In retaliation, she claims she was ordered to undergo a psychiatric exam and failed. She was grounded for more than a year, “until outside experts overruled Delta’s hand-picked doctor and determined she was mentally fit to fly. She is now suing Delta in a Labor Department proceeding.”

 

The moral of the story: In Trumpistan government regulations are always bad and businesses should regulate themselves. 

Too bad if the passenger jet you’re on plows up some ground.

 

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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS leads constituents north, crossing the Canadian border, to get drugs! 

Heading for the nearest pharmacy, they purchase life-saving insulin that would cost $340 per vial in the United States. In Canada it sells for $32. Canada offers universal health care, which is “socialism” of the worst sort.