Thursday, June 23, 2011

Quote of the Day

Fareed Zakaria hits the nail right on the head in "How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality":

[...] We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

In theory, you can't get your head up your own ass, but in practice it sure works for Repugs.

5 comments:

Fixer said...

I don't think they have to practice. To me, it looks like they were born with the skillz.

Sarge said...

Was at the VA waiting to see the oncologist last week, waiting room scene.

The news was on CNN, CNBC, or FOX, I can't ever really tell them apart anymore, but I was really listening to people talking in the waiting room.

Couple of WWII vets were expressing joy at the death of bin Laden, figured a few others needed to be assasinated in the name of freedom, that the WIKILEAKS people should be hanged in their cells for the sake of our free society and the love of Jesus, etc.

But one of them said something when the financial news came on: that until he enlisted during WWII he'd rode the rods, did itinerent work, and most of that time, literally, didn't have the wherewithall to bless himself with a cup of coffee.
Since the end of WWII, no matter how hard up he had been, he could reach in his pocket and find enough.

But in the last ten years things had changed.
He still had enough, but if he bought the coffee, he'd have to do without something else. And maybe, before he died, he'd be back to not having the money for a simple cup of coffee if the spirit moved him to drink one.

He may have been right, I'd hate to find out that he was.

But the talking heads and the spivs from the "Markets" and the corporations on the screen were saying some things about the bailout, necessity, blah blah blah, and it hit me, I was sitting waiting to see a doctor to stop what these entities were encouraged to do.

A cell necessary for my survival experiences a "change", goes all out for itself.
It grows for the sake of growth, multipies, takes resources necessary for the rest of the body, cares not that the more it takes the more the body that supports it, that it is a "part of" will be weakened and then die due to its depradations. It cares not about the pain, debilitation and weakness of anything else as long as it can grab the energy and resourses to grow unchecked, colonise and exploit other body systems. True, it will die when I do, but it doesn't matter to it, only taking as much as it can for as long as it can.
As I heard the speculators, traders, CEOs say, "It's what we do". No thought for anything else.
Only difference between them and a cancer is they figure they can buy their way out of the "organism" that they've wrecked for their own gain.

Maybe they ought to treat those people with Interferon. Wouldn't stop them, but knowing it was making them sick and miserable would give me some satisfaction.

Anonymous said...

My God, Sarge, I had never thought of it in those terms but you are exactly right!

Jay in N.C.

BTW.. How are you doing? I was thinking of you a few days ago when a new drug for melanoma was in the news.

Sarge said...

Hanging in, doing my best, being annoying... the usual ;-)!

Thanks for asking, how's by you?

Anonymous said...

Things are good here in the mountains. We're even getting a little rain this summer. I always have 2-3 pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds but this year I'm mobbed! I had my usual three pair and then about 10 days ago, the mob showed up and I'm going through 1 1/2 gallons of sugar water a day and have a minor fortune invested in additional feeders. I can't figure out why a big swarm of h-birds showed up in a group one morning.

I keep thinking about the knobs/balls on the oxen horns and how they "set" the ox's head. I also think about you turning down a chance to milk a camel. Where were you and the camels?

Jay in N.C.

P.S. I just had to tell somebody about the h-birds. :)