That’s Right Nate

A lot of people listen to Rush Limbaugh to find out the scary news of what’s going on in this country.  I don’t do that.   Glenn Beck is far scarier.   Instead, I listen to Rush Limbaugh for inspiration.  His 20+ year battle against the liberal menace has inspired me countless times, but his show today made me proud to be an American.  When asked what he would do if Obama’s health care plan does pass, Limbaugh announced that he would move to Costa Rica.

At first, I was shocked at the loss of one of our national treasures, but the more I thought about it the more I understood Rush’s point.  As a radio talk show host, he’s forced to sit in a little studio for a good part of the day and he’s come to rely on a steady flow of prescription and non-prescription pain medication to get him through his day.   Any danger to that supply line is a danger to his livelihood and as such it makes sense to go to Costa Rica where his American dollars can keep him properly medicated.  It isn’t a question of patriotism as much as the right of Rush to earn a living.

I have been inspired by Rush myself.   I find myself getting a bit peckish for a Xanax from time to time and in the event Obama’s health care passes, I could risk a long wait for my Xanax as well as for my Nembutal, Mebaral, Valium, Librium, Tranxene, Halcion, BuSpar, and Horse Tranquilizer needs.  Following Rush’s example I started to look for a place to move to and desiring a warm climate and other white people.  I think I could be quite happy living in Guam and I will publicly go on record as saying in Obama’s Health Care passes, I will be leaving this country and moving to Guam instead.   I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I am so proud of my fellow gun owners for their united opposition to Obama’s health care proposals.   The Gun Owners of America group recently warned it’s 300,000 members that if the health care bill passes, the government could declare citizens medically unfit to carry a gun.   This is the same thing Hitler and the communists did, when we take away the rights of the mentally unbalanced to own firearms simply because they may have issues with rage or paranoia or may pose a threat to themselves or others, we lose our second amendment rights.   Executive Director of the group Larry Pratt called for resistance saying, “you end up having a gazillion people lose their gun rights because of some medical record that someone doesn’t like, where they say, ‘Oh, that might be a danger to their self or others.”

I cannot abide having these hard earned rights taken away from my fellow countrymen simply because they’re mentally unbalanced.   President James A. Garfield gave his life protecting the rights of the mentally unhinged to own firearms.   He was fatally shot by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881 when his assassin decided that God had commanded him to kill the ungrateful president who refused to hire him.   There are hundreds of thousands of people like me inspired by Garfield’s sacrifice who will not let it be in vain by taking away gun rights for the criminally insane.

The other reason that gun owners like myself oppose any kind of health care reform is because as private citizens we have to pay for not only a gun, but also for ammunition for that gun.  If we shoot somebody, it hardly seems fair that our tax dollars also pay to treat them for that gun shot wound.  In fact, since the reason you shoot somebody is to do harm to them, many of us would just as soon that the person we shoot not be able to get medical care in the first place.

Unfortunately, since the days of the Old West, medicine has improved greatly.   In those days, a belly shot was almost a sure death sentence.  Today, doctor’s are able to do a remarkable number of things to treat gun shot wounds and unfortunately, gun manufacturers have simply not kept up, especially in the area of causing infection.   This is definitely a call for both gun and ammunition manufacturers to step up their games.   If all gun shot wounds can be easily treated, do we really have the right to bear arms.

[We're very lucky tonight to have a guest column by Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) who is writing in praise of Senator Joe Lieberman (?-CN)]

I happen to be a great fan of Joe Lieberman.  I took some heat for this in 2000 when he was brainwashed by Al Gore and ran against our beloved President Bush.  I have to admit, I could even feel empathy for the many Democrats who were crestfallen at the thought of Joe being denied the Vice-Presidency in such a close election.    I’ve been a big fan of Joe Lieberman for nearly 20 years since he first won my heart as Willie on the television show Alf.  His deadpan, put upon, whining delivery has served him well as a Senator as well.

Though Joe is older now, I can attest that he looks like a man half his age in a spedo.  He’s living proof that with good living, you really don’t need health care.   Today, he took a lot of flack from his own party, or former party, or whatever the Democrats are when he announced he would not vote for a health care bill with the public option and in fact he wouldn’t even vote to end a filibuster unless the public option was removed from the legislation.

Joe’s problems with the public option is the same as my own:

1. The government cannot handle things like this efficiently and it would do a terrible job insuring people.
2. The public option will increase competition and lower the profit margins of insurance companies at a time when they can least afford it.
3. The public option will lead to communism by 2012.

Joe has said that he would to keep the rest of the bill and in 3 or 4 years revisit things to see if we might want to investigate the possibility of creating a trigger that if reached would possibly bring us the public option.   Without the public option, the current program will work to lower health care costs and insure people by fining people heavily if they don’t buy health insurance   This will help the insurance companies by increasing their profits and help the uninsured by making them by health care.

Joe has once again shown himself to be a figure of integrity and courage.  A lot of people would have been scared to stand against the public option when like Lieberman, they were so heavily financed by the insurance industry.   I had the same problem just last year when I had to make the difficult decision of supporting the tobacco industry despite the fact that they heavily funded my campaign.  I made the right choice and went with my conscience the same way that Joe Lieberman has today.  This is truly what being a member of Congress is all about.

In my mind, I’ve been wrestling for sometime now with how to find an American alternative to the socialist public option health care that President Obama wants to force on us.  Thanks to bold and courageous Americans like Bill and Chelsea Caudle, I think I’ve found a solution.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bill worked for a plastics company before getting laid off from the job he had held for the past 20 years.   Unfortunately, his wife Chelsea was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.   At age 40, the family faced some tough choices.   With 3 children, one as young as 14 years old, the Caudles faced mounting medical bills and Bill knew what he had to do.  He enlisted in the United States Army.   As soon as he was processed at Fort Knox in Kentucky, Chelsea was able to start chemotherapy.  Bill had paved a way for patriotic Americans to get health care while saying “no” to socialism.

By joining the military, millions of uninsured in this country can be covered and at the same time we can preserve insurance company profits, which are so important to our nation’s economy.  It is estimated that there are over 45,000,000 uninsured in this country.   If only 5% of those people would join the military, that would give us another 2.25 million soldiers—that’s more than enough for our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Colombia, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.  Heck, that’s enough for us to invade Iceland for no apparent reason and still meet our commitments.   Best of all, with 45,000 dying every year from lack of insurance, the American public could stomach a very high casualty rate, knowing that a lot of the soldiers would have died anyway.

The ancient Romans guarded citizenship in a way that Americans should envy.   You couldn’t just become a Roman citizen.  One route to citizenship was joining the military.   Should we not guard our health care just as preciously?

Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka--the 37th Greatest Mormon of All-Time

It strikes me as absurd that liberals want to put down our health care system.   They complain that we pay more than any other country and our health care is only the 37th best in the world right behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia.   Well, that may be true, but is 37 bad?  Heck no.  The 37th best health care in the world is still world class.  When I was growing up a man by the name of Casey Kasem did a top 40 radio show and you know what, they played the 37th top song one time, just like the number one song.  Let’s not stop there though–Here are some other #37s.

The Billboard 37th hottest song right now is Uprising by Muse–I’m sure it’s great.

Rolling Stone rates Bob Marley and the Wailers’ No Woman No Cry as the 37th greatest song of all time.

Internet Movie Database users votes Taxi Driver as the 37th greatest movie of all time.

TV.COM rated CSI: NY as the 37th most popular show on television now.

The 37th greatest tv episode of all time is Chrylser Theatre’s “Kicks” from 1965.

Terry Kath of Chicago was named the 37th best rock guitarist by DigitalDreamdoor.com.

Topper Headon of The Clash was ranked the 37th best rock drummer by the same website.

In 1998 The Sporting News named Hank Greenberg as the 37th best baseball player of all-time.

The Sporting News called Deon Sanders the 37th greatest football player of all-time.

The 37th ranked college is The University of Maryland according to ULinks.com.

The 37th best restaurant in the world is Le Quartier Francais, South Africa according to San Pellegrino’s 2009 awards.

Beeradvocate.com rates Surly Brewing Company’s Furious as the 37th best beer in the world.

The 37th greatest Mormon is Jimmy “Super Fly” Snuka

The board of RandomHouse.com named The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder as the 37th greatest novel of all-time.

The 37th greatest television quote is  “…if it weren’t for you meddling kids! (The bad guy, “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”) according to TV Land.

So you see, if you intend to call our health care system anything less than world class, then you need to make the same comments about a whole lot of great things.  That’s why no matter what the liberals and democrats may claim, top 40 isn’t that bad at all.

Today the Senate Finance Committee defeated the public option in a double header 15-8 and 13-10.  This is great news for this country as the public option appears on it’s last legs.  Despite the best efforts of President Obama, only 2/3 of Americans favor the public option and only 3/4 of doctors are in favor of it.   Those numbers are even lower in the Southern United States where the country has it’s highest percentage of NASCAR related injuries.

This setback will hopefully kill the public option leaving us with a health care reform that will safeguard the interests of the insurance industry by mandating that people buy coverage or pay a very severe fine.   This is the type of reform that I believe everybody should be able to get behind.     The heroes of the day for the 1/3 of who oppose the public option were Democratic Senators Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, and Max Baucus who in statesmanlike fashion supported this country’s insurance industry over the powerful sick people lobby which continues to push for public funding.

Baucus said that his own bill without the public option, “is not easy on insurance companies.”  I am assuming that he is referring to all the people who insurance companies would now have to do paperwork for because his bill would mandate them buying insurance.   As many of these people are young twenty-somethings in good health, the insurance companies would probably be willing to do it.

At this time of economic uncertainty it really doesn’t make much sense for us to throw stones at the one industry in this country that is booming.   Last year, insurance companies made a 428% profit.  Can our economy afford to knock that down?  I don’t think so.

The most recent Congressional Budget Office study finds that a strong public option would save $85 billion more than a system that uses triggers like the Blue Dog Democrats would prefer.    The key is that a strong public option would be tied to medicare rates and would only pay doctors about 5% over what they make treating medicare patients.  The strong public option would save $110 billion dollars compared to $25 billion for the weaker plan.

The comments section of Ezra Klein’s article in today’s Washington Post Online was filled with angry reaction today as people pointed out that a public option was unfair to doctors.   Readers posted comments like “how about we just put guns to doctors heads and force them to perform surgery on us? That’d probably save even more money, no???” and “does CBO also give statistics as to how many doctors would shut their doors with this reimbursement??”.   To me this is the real beauty of the conservative movement in this country—caring about the less fortunate even when they won’t stand up for themselves.    We have frequently gone to bat for insurance companies and now we’re coming to the aid of doctors even though 73% of doctors are in favor of the public option.

It is imperative for us to stand up for these doctors’ rights against their wishes not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because the other 27% of doctors who prefer no public option, could close up their practices and either go back home to whatever country they came from or leave medicine for some other more lucrative field.   As a country, let’s agree to stand up for the rights of doctors no matter how much they oppose us doing so.

Chicago is extremely lucky to have two major newspapers in both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.   They are both world class journalistic institutions filled with thought provoking opinion and brilliant journalism, I bet.  Lynn Sweet, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, made quite a name for herself by asking about the Henry Louis Gates arrest at a health care press conference.  Now she’s broken a huge scandal by catching Barack Obama in a bold faced health care lie.

It seems that on his current health care tour, President Obama has been telling the story of Otto Raddatz whose insurance company canceled Raddatz’s policy when he needed it the most, in chemotherapy for stage IV non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer.  The insurance company canceled Mr. Raddatz’s policy because he had a pre-existing condition – gallstones.   The fact that Raddatz was unaware of the gallstones and that they were unrelated to the cancer is moot.

What Obama was saying before Ms. Sweet busted him was, “One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.”

This is simply not true.   Mr. Raddatz did not die because of the insurance company canceling his coverage.   Getting his coverage was restored was as simple as having his sister Peggy Raddatz, a successful attorney, continually hound the Illinois Attorney General until she could get the attorney general to file an appeal, then after it was rejected the first time submit a second appeal.  When Mr. Raddatz eventually did die, it was not the result of the interruption in his insurance coverage and probably was unrelated to constantly fighting his insurance company for the last 4 years of his life.

For shame President Obama.   Our system worked exactly the way it’s intended to.   Anybody with a relative or friend who is a high priced attorney willing to doggedly pursue their case, can get the medical care they need.   I first saw this story on the front page of AOL today.   I’m proud that Chicago has the type of journalist who will doggedly pursue the truth.  Yes, it is true that 45,000 people die every year in this country because of a lack of health coverage, but look how many live.  Isn’t that really what health care is all about.

7:02 – I really like the parade of sick people.  That’s class.

7:06 – Oh Congressman Kimble.  I don’t think Hillary was expecting tongue when she kissed you.   That’s not going to go over well.

7:13 – Ah, the President found the parade of sick people

7:15 – Hmm, what was in the over sized envelopes he gave Pelosi and Biden? The real death panel info?

7:18 – Starting with a pledge to find Sarah Palin work is very bipartisan

7:20 – Did Obama just say he was determined to be the last President? Glenn Beck was right.

7:21 – My TV just switched to the X-Files. Oh wait, that’s John Dingell

7:29 – Bipartisan is the best ideas from the Democrats and the best ideas from Olympia Snowe

7:32 – This sounds like socialism to me

7:35 – Wow! John McCain has such a heartwarming smile

7:37 – I went to a Presidential news conference and a town hall broke out

7:40 – Congressman Kimble just confessed he was the heckler.

7:47 I will not sign a plan that makes Senator Grassley smile.

7:53 – Tort reform is how they keep medical costs so low in Texas and Missouri

7:55 – I think there’s an auction going on.  Somebody just made a bid.

8:03 – An awful lot of indoctrinating tonight.

8:07 – Good that the Republicans are going back to Louisiana for the Rebuttal.  Jindahl went so well.  This guy is a pretty dynamic speaker.

Recently, Michelle Bachman made a statement that has caused a great deal of concern.   She is normally a very gifted public speaker known for her pro-Americanism, but in this case I urge you not to follow her. “This cannot pass,” Michele told the crowd in Denver this week,  “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

She went on to add an elegant flourish rejecting Obama’s health care initiatives by decrying, “Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom. And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up and take this one on.”

While I wholeheartedly agree that we must protect freedom’s guts from Obama, every year it is estimated 1 million people commit suicide.  For many people it is because they are listening to heavy metal music, are living a homosexual lifestyle, playing video games, or just  live in a country with rationed health care, but for many other people serious depression can cause them to believe there is no hope.   Please do not sacrifice yourself to oppose Obama’s health care initiatives.  There are other ways to do it.  If you or somebody you know is considering slitting your wrists please visit http://www.sprc.org/.