The right to life does not stop at birth

On the evening of July 4, 2009, Eric De La Cruz died, killed by the patchwork U.S. "healthcare" system and its infuriating inability to provide a working system of healthcare for all Americans. This young man had a congenital heart defect which was quite solvable by a heart transplant, but because he was uninsured and Nevada Medicaid won't pay for transplants, he died.

233 years before Eric De La Cruz was killed by our "healthcare" system, some guys in Philadelphia wrote these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

Over 18,000 Eric De La Cruz's are killed by our "healthcare" system every year because of its refusal to pay for needed care for all Americans who need care. This is a slaughter of innocents, over six times the death toll of the 9/11 attacks PER YEAR. Clearly our "healthcare" industry is killing, slaughtering, tens of thousands of innocents per year guilty of nothing except being born poor or maybe not the brightest bulb in the chandelier or just plain unlucky, and has no intention to stop doing so. Whenever any industry infringes so baldly upon our inherent human right to life, it is completely within the realm of our founders' intents to have our government secure these rights, and if it does not do so, to change our government if necessary -- which we did, in November 2008, when we elected President Obama on a platform of healthcare reform and withdrawal from Iraq.

There are some people who say that the right to life is conditional -- that you have a right to life only if you have the ability to pay cash for your health care. There are others who say there is no such right because it is not listed in the Constitution of the United States of America, 9th Amendment of the Constitution nonwithstanding. This is utter nonsense. Rights are granted to us by our Creator, not by a piece of paper, and are absolute, not conditional, and the right to life is the most fundamental right without which all other rights are meaningless. When any entity infringes upon this most fundamental of our human rights, it is well within the provence of government as envisioned by our founding fathers to deal with this threat to our most fundamental human rights via whatever means are necessary -- which, in the case of our corrupt murderous health insurance industry, should with all fairness be the death penalty just as much as for any other mass murderer, but I'll settle for Medicare For All single-payer health insurance and let those bastards spend the rest of their lives begging for alms on streetcorners.

-- Badtux the Human Rights Penguin

Hilarious Honduras hypocrisy

It is hilarious that you see the same lefties who were blasting the Busheviks for their clear violations of the Constitution contort themselves to excuse Zelaya’s violations of the Honduran constitution because, well, because Zelaya was best buds and pals with Hugo Chavez so that must make him a good guy, huh? Makes you wonder if they were just playing partisan politics during the Bush years rather than having any real regard for the US Constitution…

As noted by several posts at Why Now, Zelaya was flown out of the country by the military immediately after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest for violating Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution. The military says they flew him out of the country rather than arrest him because they were afraid he was going to try to get his supporters to rescue him if they arrested him, resulting in bloodshed. Undoubtedly the military's act was illegal -- they only had legal authority to arrest him for refusing to leave the Executive Mansion after removing himself from office via Article 239, not to kidnap him and fly him out of the country -- but a "coup"?! Nonsense. Utter nonsense. If it were a coup, the military would be in charge. Reality is that they aren't -- the Vice President took charge as required by the Honduran Constitution, and constitutional rule continues in Honduras.

My take on it: The loony lefties defending Zelaya are hypocrites and morons, no different from the right-wingers who defended Bush. Zelaya was a rich boy who decided he wanted to be President and took Bush's dictum of "life would be easier if this were a dictatorship" seriously. Pal'ing around with Hugo Chavez doesn't make him somehow a "hero of the people", and blasting Honduras for taking their Constitution seriously and calling a legal removal of their President for violating their Constitution a "coup" just shows the intellectual bankruptcy of far too many on the loony left.

-- Badtux the Constitutional Penguin

I leave civilization for three days and...

Sarah Palin resigns as governor of Alaska? WTF?! Since when did a Republican resign just because of a measly little criminal investigation? Hell, Saint Ronald Reagan (bless his dark evil shriveled little heart) even *laughed* about doing illegal things to help the Contras, and suggested that Poindexter and Ollie North ought to be given medals! Now *that* is the proper Republican response to a criminal investigation... "F*ck the law", outright fist-pumpin' defiance.

This penguin is just open-beaked flabbergaped... though I suppose if you're Alaskan, you're pumping your fist in the air and shouting, "Yes! The bitch is gone!". Maybe now Alaska will quit being this weird insane area danglin' out in the wind like the balls of America, and go back to being this weird forgotten place that nobody really thinks about. Alaskans can hope, I guess.

-- Badtux the Astounded Penguin

And the latest wingnuttery is...

HEALTHCARE IS SLAVERY! Yes, that's right -- if all Americans are required to participate in a universal healthcare system like EVERY OTHER SINGLE ADVANCED NATION ON THE PLANET HAS, then it's SLAVERY!

Uhm, no, you stupid motherfuckers. French people are not slaves, they are free citizens of a social democracy, with full control over their government. Swedish people are not slaves, they are free citizens of a social democracy, with full control over their government. Jesus fucking Great Penguin, how motherfucking stupid do you have to be to think that EVERY OTHER SINGLE ADVANCED NATION is a nation of slaves?

Not only is it stupidity to the point of making anybody wonder whether these mouth-breathing cretins are operating on even half a deck, it's utterly and completely demeaning of the sufferings of those who DID suffer from slavery. You want to know what slavery is, you stupid motherfucking right wing cretins? Here's your motherfucking slavery for you: You see that? This poor sod got whipped to within an inch of his life because he was PROPERTY. He was OWNED. He had a MASTER who could do anything he wanted to him, and DID. Now *THAT* is slavery -- not being citizens of a free democracy who vote to give themselves universal healthcare. This motherfucker SUFFERED. How the fuck can these right wing cretins even CONSIDER healthcare to be the same motherfucking thing as being FLOGGED?!

You want some more slavery, you stupid right-wing motherfuckers? Here's some slavery for you: This is one of Stalin's gulags. Millions of people were enslaved at gunpoint and put to work on vast public works, and millions of them died. This is what slavery looks like -- you're motherfucking OWNED, and you do what you're told or the guards shoot your ass. Only the stupidest blindest most ignorant motherfuckers on this whole goddamned PLANET can say that healthcare is the same thing as the gulags. I'm not aware that anybody ever died because they received healthcare! Cretins!

I mean, look: here is slavery up close and personal: Being ripped from your home at gunpoint, and sold as PROPERTY... now *that* is slavery. Healthcare... not so. Anybody who thinks that HEALTHCARE is the same thing as that is demeaning the suffering of all the REAL victims of slavery and needs to be slapped across the face and whipped across the back like that first poor sod so he has some idea of what slavery REALLY is. And even then these right-wing motherfuckers are so goddamned stupid and so motherfucking EVIL that they STILL wouldn't get the goddamned point of just how stupid, how callous, how goddamned WRONG they are.

-- Badtux the Irate Penguin

And.. I'm BAACK!

Just back from Yosemite, which was beautiful as usual but too dadburned HOT. It was 75F even at 9500 feet, WTF is with that?! And the mosquitoes. My god, the mosquitoes! I was literally REEKING of DEET, yet they still managed to find places to suck blood from me! Left big welts on me, 'cause I'm allergic.

I see that the cats have been playing. I'd fuss at The Mighty Fang, but he is currently snuggled against me purring. Mencken managed to projectile-vomit into the space between the toilet seat and the toilet cover, making a nice squishy surface to sit upon if you have to take a dump.... I didn't know a cat could even DO that (projectile-vomit, that is). He's hiding right now, sulking I think.

So anyhow I'm back, I'm recharged, and I'm ready to kick wingnut ass some more. Hooyah!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

On Strike

We aren't guarding your blog anymore. Get back here and pet us, or we eat your blog.

Signed, The Cats.

Bah.

Bah humbug.Independence schmendence, where is that stupid penguin? He is supposed to brush me!

-- Mencken the Cat

Dick Cheney is a great patriot

[Note: Badtux is on vacation. This is a guest editorial by current guardian of blog.]

Dick Cheney has gotten a bum rap. He is protecting America from evil islamofacism! So there!

-- The Mighty Fang.

Birds don't like loud noises

I am going somewhere so that on the 4th of July, I'm well away from human beings and the loud noises they make that day. I may or may not leave the cats on guard here on the blog.

-- Badtux the Traveling Penguin

Independence Day

As we move towards the July 4 weekend, let us not forget the people for whom July 4 was not Independence Day, but, rather, subjugation and slavery day: Blacks and Native Americans. While it wasn't put into writing until 1787 when the Constitution was adopted (which made it clear that 'Slaves' and 'Indians' were not full human beings in the eyes of the founding fathers), it was abundantly clear on July 4, 1776, that the independence being fought for was not for them -- it was for white European males.

So it was, and so it continued for the next 190 years or so...

-- Badtux the History Penguin

The Bottomlands

I had a dream last night, a dream of childhood, a dream of the home where I grew up. I have this dream from time to time when things are looking risky in my life, when my job is precarious or I am uncertain what direction to go. It is not a dream that is pleasant, though. It is the Bottomlands trying to drag me back.

There is a foreign land just on the other side, on the other side of the tracks, the other side of the freeway, a land where dreams go to die and hope never rose, a land of trailer parks and rusty cars and dirty children playing in puddles of mud with broken toys. It is a land where the norms of behavior and dress that apply in America are unknown, a foreign land where nothing works the same, where the clan is the standard of life, "who's your people?" the first question you're asked. People can be kind there, or harsh, people are people, but life is harsh in general, with the only comforts of a life spent eking out a miserable living in a series of dead-end menial jobs (both legal and illegal) being mind-numbing drugs and television (pretty much the same in the end). These are the Bottomlands, where those from outside venture only reluctantly, and leave as swiftly as they can.

But as uncomfortable as it is for outsiders to venture into the forbidding realms of the Bottomlands, so it is for the denizen of the Bottomlands who quests outward, who finds a way past the barriers both social and physical put around the Bottomlands into the foreign land outside, who puts on some of the outer vestiges of the foreign land he finds himself and pretends to be just another person living the American dream. For this person, life is always precarious. What if he says the wrong thing, behaves the wrong way, somehow lets it be known that he does not, in fact, belong in this strange land he finds himself in? So he makes sure only a few trusted people can ever get close enough to notice the cracks in the facade, and hopes that the tightrope he walks never breaks and that he never wobbles and falls. Because there are no nets when you come from the Bottomlands. There is only the fall, and the Bottomlands pulling you in once again.

When times get rough, or uncertain, or something is disturbing me, I have that dream, that dream of childhood. And then it crashes in once again, that ugly realization that I try not to remember: the Bottomlands are jealous that I escaped. All it takes is one, only one mistake... and the Bottomlands are waiting there for me.

-- Badtux the Pensive Penguin

Faggot-knockin' is the new nigger-knockin'

I grew up in a "cop shop". Most of my friends were cops' kids. A good many of my dad's friends were cops. These were mostly big burly Irishmen whose balls, like, clanged when they walked. They didn't need all this fancy-ass taser crap to deal with the general public, and they didn't need to carry submachine guns to deal with common criminals. Hell, they didn't even wear flak jackets in case a criminal shot them, disdaining them as too hot and heavy and not effective enough to be useful. There was no less crime back then -- crime rates today are pretty much the same as they were when I was a kid, the hump created by the Baby Boomers has settled back down -- they just had balls, and didn't need all that wuss crap to do their jobs. Cops just ain't like that nowdays.

One thing that hasn't changed since then, though, was the fact that these big bastards were bigoted as hell. They boasted of going "nigger-knockin'" in the black neighborhoods to "keep the niggers in their place". When the police commissioner ordered them to invade a black church where a service was being held for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and beat the parishioners, they not only did it without hesitation, they laughed about it afterwards... Hey Julius, did you see that pickinini's eyes when I whapped his momma across the face with my nightstick? Little nigger looked like a fuckin' owl, didn't he!

So when I hear that the Fort Worth PD raided a gay bar and beat the crap out of its patrons, I'm not surprised at all. Because gays are the new nigger, to be hated and detested and kept from marrying the person they love in order to preserve the "purity" of the institution of marriage. The wonder is not that the Fort Worth cops did this. The wonder is that they don't do it more often.

-- Badtux the Cop-observin' Penguin

Thought for the day

Medicare single-payer "socialist" healthcare for old people has been around for 40 years now. Funny, I haven't noticed that Medicare has made me any less free.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Hot (pant! pant!)

It was 95F outside this afternoon, no weather for a penguin that's for sure. But out in it I was, because my Jeep has developed a shimmy at 45mph and I was trying to track it down (more details on MotoTux later). Man, this big bowl of ice cream that I just snarfed down sure hit the spot!

Now on to health care...

I've looked at the House bill fairly carefully now. It has a lot of good stuff in it. Here are the highlights:

1. Ends the various end-arounds that health insurers used to avoid having to actually pay for the health care that we pay them for -- no more rescission, no more pre-existing condition exclusions, no more arbitrary denials of care w/o recourse to a robust ombudsman.
2. Has a robust public option that uses Medicare funding as a carrot to get providers to participate in it. That solves most of my problem w/the notion of the public option being useless because no providers would accept it. This should also drive the private insurers to either lower their rates or provide better service, since they will no longer be able to compete based on being monopolies to which people have no real alternative.
3. It solves the problem of not all poor people being eligible for Medicaid by expanding Medicaid to cover all w/less than 133% poverty level.
4. It solves the problem of the working poor above that income level not being able to afford health insurance by a) taxing employers who don't provide health care insurance meeting minimal Federal standards, and then b) using the tax to fund subsidies for the working poor.
5. Solves the problem of private insurance being horribly expensive compared to group insurance by creating a new group for all those not currently covered by group insurance, and then requiring anybody who wishes to write insurance for individuals to participate in this group instead, much as multiple private insurers can participate in an employer's group plan.
6. Ends health care discrimination against women, older people, sick people, and people with pre-existing conditions. Everybody the same age gets the same rates, and insurance is must-issue -- an insurer cannot turn you down for any reason. 64 year olds can be charged only 2x what 18 year olds are charged, thereby spreading the cost of insurance more evenly amongst the age groups.
7. Ends "lifetime benefit limits" that are used to kick people with expensive conditions out of the health insurance system.
8. Mandates to end the "deadbeat problem" where I am paying not only for my health care, but also for the health care of the uninsured too (due to write-offs of uncollectible bills they run up at the ER etc., which in turn raises rates for the rest of us). Combined with the subsidies for the working poor and lower middle class, the expanded private coverage pool, and expanded Medicaid, this should basically mean everybody has health coverage.

So that's the good stuff with the bill. So what's the bad stuff?

1. Creates two new bureaucracies -- the bureaucracy for the new public option, and the bureaucracy to manage the private group coverage pool. This is going to cost money.
2. The tax on employers who are not currently providing health insurance for their workers is going to be inadequate to cover the cost of the subsidies. This is going to require a general tax increase to handle the subsidy problem.
3. The experience with MassCare shows that this is a massive give-away of public funds to the private insurers if the "public option" is eviscerated by either making its benefits too low or eliminating it altogether.
4. Maintains the multiple "healthcare ghettos" (Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare, VA, S-CHIP, ...) that allow pitting one group of healthcare recipients against another in competition for scarce healthcare funds. This nation has had plenty of experience with Separate But Equal in the past, and it works no better for healthcare than it worked for education. The least politically powerful group -- blacks in the segregation era, or the poor in today's era -- always end up the losers despite all the protestations of great intentions. If we are not all part of same healthcare system, we cannot work together to solve its problems -- we end up divided against each other instead.
5. Because it does not improve the overall efficiency of the healthcare system, overall healthcare costs will *not* go down. Those of us who are insured will see our insurance costs go down somewhat, but this will be offset by the "deadbeat tax" on employers that do not provide insurance, and by the increased taxes necessary for the subsidies for the working poor and lower middle classes. In short, I, personally, will be paying less out of pocket for my healthcare, but the nation as a whole will still be paying an unsustainable 16.5% of its GDP for healthcare. The inability to drive down costs is inherent in the fragmented nature of our healthcare funding system. For example, the C-section rate has risen to over 30% because doctors get paid more if the woman gets a C-section, thus they automatically do a C-section if there's even a hint of distress. Yet this actually harms women rather than helps them, because recover from C-section is much longer than recovery from natural childbirth and has much greater chance of complications. But without a central body that coalesces all this information and can use it to stop doctors from "gaming" the system for more money, there's no way to know which doctors are doing this, much less stop them from doing it.

To sum it all up: The House proposal solves the access problem, but not the costs problem. While insurance rates are likely to go down due to the competition from the public option, the fragmented funding system will still not have sufficient clout to force providers to quit providing frivolous and unnecessary care, and thus overall health care costs will not change, just some of it will shift from insurance premiums to taxes (the higher taxes needed for the insurance subsidies).

The fundamental problem of our health care system -- that it is currently sucking up 16.5% of our GDP and is thus economically unsustainable -- thus remains with ObamaCare. ObamaCare is a great half-step towards where we need to be -- universal and affordable health care for all -- but it is only a half step. Given the realities of the current U.S. healthcare system, it is unclear whether anything other than single-payer Medicare For All would ever have the clout to be able to drive health care spending down to where it needs to be in order to be fiscally sustainable for the United States. There is a reason why every single-payer system on the planet spends less and is more efficient than the US healthcare system: those economies of scale simply do not, and never can, apply to a fragmented multi-ghetto'ed health care system where providers can pit one ghetto against another in order to milk the system for profit. Only if we're all in the same system -- rich, poor, and middle-class alike -- will We The People have the clout to take on this $2.3 TRILLION dollar healthcare industry in America and put it in its place.

-- Badtux the Healthcare System

It is fuggin' *hot* over here

This penguin took a nice little 4 hour hike today that turned into a 6 hour hike. The reason? It's *hot* here in Sodom By The Bay. As in, when I cranked my Jeep to come home, the thermometer said 102F (granted, that's because the Jeep was sittin' in the sun, but so was I!). And that was at 2800 feet elevation in the coast mountains!

So anyhow, heat slows me down quite a bit, since getting rid of heat is kinda hard for me. I end up taking my time, not blasting away, in order to keep from overheating. And of course drink water and Gatorade powder. 3 liters lasted the whole trip thankfully.

So anyhow, I'm tired. I'll leave you with this thought: Democracy is 10 wolves and 10,000 sheep voting on what's for dinner (since most of the American people are sheep, baaaa!). Learn to like eating grass.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Friday Guest Cat Blogging

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Oh well, at least he saved someone from the horrors of eating that greasy fatty pizza...

-- Badtux the Pizza-chompin' Penguin