Some of the pitfalls of John Edwards mandated universal health care have been discussed in DJ’s post yesterday. DJ does point out this plan has been tried in England, and it’s a disaster…

I suggest the overall discussions on this topic of forced probing by doctors, or it’s off to the Gulag with you! hasn’t hit on one of the most critical points…following the money. My “angle?” John Edwards is a lawyer, Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. So are about every other person in the top level of elected government. A “healthy” (pun intended, why, yes!) sum of money is made by the legal profession in suing people. They also do not collect a portion of the money awarded in judgments, either. Bill Bennett’s brother, when hosting Morning in America one day, when asked how much he charged an hour commented that it was a lot, but you should see the ratio of collected to uncollected fees.

Puzzle piece #2: Lawyers, when given a case, do what? They chase the “deep pockets.”

Puzzle piece #3: The Federal Government self-insures. We don’t pay Lloyd’s of London to protect against risk…we hope we’ll find the money “somewhere” when we need to pay off a successful award against faulty/negligent/criminal behavior by those employed by the Government.

See where I’m going? I hope so.

If all doctors and medical professionals become civil servants, you won’t be able to sue them, just as you cannot sue a Government official, who was acting in the capacity of a Government employee now. If the wrong mangled limb is amputated in the operating room after an accident, sue the Government. If you are given a prescription that causes you to have an allergic reaction, one noted in your medical history, sue the Government. If your baby is delivered wrong, sue the Government.

Unlike doctors, who can give all their assets, exhaust all their medical malpractice insurance, and still come up wanting in the money they owe you, the Government has the deepest pockets of all of us, and…it’s not like they will take off to Hong Kong if they don’t feel like paying. There will always be a physical address, and a civil servant you can harass until you get your claim paid, with the added benefit of being able to call your Congress critter to ask them to sick their staffers on the unlucky civil servant, overworked and underpaid, to make sure you get front of the line privileged treatment…

Oh, just forget that not only will we pay for each other’s health care, we will pay for every and all claims against the “universal Health Care” system, regardless of how unfounded and/or frivolous they may be. Sort of a bigger version of when you take your car into the shop with a mangled fender “Are you paying for it, or is this an insurance claim?” philosophy, except it will be the millions of smaller wallets that will suffer…after all, who could deny a compassionate response from the Government, when one of it’s citizens has been wronged?

Think about it. Lawyers will love it…sue crazy America will love it. Judges will be even more overworked, along with the entire court system…and all of that will be a very, very big boost to the legal profession. WhatI ask you not to think about is how the cost, astronomical as it will become, will be buried deep within the Federal Budget’s pages…a mere “drop in the bucket” we will be told, of the over all trillions we need to run the country…so open your checkbook, IRS will be coming to you soon.

Better take up the local diploma mill’s offer to get your degree in paralegal services now!

Next idea: Universal Legal Service. Yeah, like we’d have a snowball’s chance of getting that passed into law by a bunch of lawyers…

Post yer trackbacks here!

Not so much of a “sea story” today as a “war story” to put my context on some recent news….

The dispatch from the 5 NCOs in the 82nd Airborne Division was illuminating, but not necessarily in a complimentary light. The President and many other Government reports say the Surge is bringing results. The NCOs say they see daily problems. So, who’s telling the truth?

Both, I submit and here’s a little personal experience that leads me to this conclusion: I first became a pin cushion for the medics in 1962, in order to move overseas to Okinawa. Off my father packed us up for a two year adventure to see the world. We first lived just west of MCAS Futema, with a few families of Army sargents living next on the same street of a few concrete block houses. Thus began my “indoc” into military life. I played in the sugar cane fields and around the large above ground tombs, occasionally finding artifacts and ordnance left over from a massive conflict not quite 20 years past. We moved about a year later to live on Fort Buckner, housed amongst the Green Berets, the pride of John F, Kennedy.

From our association in these neighborhoods, and the concentrated presence of the military, I began to absorb the first person history of the war in Vietnam. Being in 3rd and 4th grades, I wasn’t much of a newspaper reader or news watcher, so the information came in listening to the adult discussions.

Back home we went for a few years, then off to Guam for 8th through 11th grades (67-71). More massive exposure to the military, this time the Navy and Air Force, with some Marines and Coast Guardsmen sprinkled in. BY now I had pretty much set my life study path on warfare and modern history, and, with the war in Vietnam being larger, I heard more, plus I watched the news and read the papers and news periodicals now. In Boy Scouts, and on sports teams, I had military men as leaders and coaches. I listened to their “war stories.” Being overseas in a large concentration of military bases also brought me “Stars and Stripes” newspapers.

The net result of this is I grew up in the middle of first person accounts of the conditions in Vietnam, from the Special Forces A_Teams, to the Marine who had a three crossbow bolts go past the tree trunk he was sitting against, all the while thinking more mosquitoes were swarming, until he turned to look. Add to that the DoD press of the “Stars and Stripes” generally putting a detailed, yet rosy face on the war, and ladled on top, the stateside media that seemed to tell a story much different than what I was getting from my “other sources.”

Were any of these sources not telling the truth? For the most part, they all told it as they saw it, albeit through the filters they each put on it.  No one author or story teller had access to the “big picture,” even if they claimed to.  Those filters, by default, cause even the most detailed oriented writer to miss the mark.  I believe most people actually comprehend this concept, they just don’t acknowledge it often when they voice their opinions.

My long term reaction? For several decades, I voraciously read all things on Vietnam I could come across. There are many stories and it’s not that they don’t match up, but they tell stories as varied as the direct, uniformed troop combat in I Corps, to the SEALs skulking about in the night among the Viet Cong controlled villages in the Mekong Delta.  To this day, it’s almost like three separate conflicts to me, due to this multi-facted exposure.

The NCOs provide a valuable first person view of the villages they walk, but they do not see all of the story, nor does any one else, yet all of the reports, in this war from bloggers, from bloggers become published authors, to guys with digital video cameras becoming movie producers, and then, those “standard” reporting sources. One day, when we have the time, and the dust has settled and tempers cooled by decades of reflection, we will have a better chance to see what really is happening now, as word of mouth and first person stories at the top, middle and lower levels come forth.

It would be foolish, as I’m sure many with military experience, and those with historical perspectives, to base the overall progress of the war on the reports of 5 well spoken non-commissioned officers, but we would also be foolish to not make significant note of the problems they face daily, indicating there is more good work to be done.

What if, just for speculative purposes, we formed a deliberative body of elected officials. We then chartered them to formulate procedures and processes by which we would manage our society. Next, we might, via our voices in print and in polls and via the ‘net, collectively indicate what we felt the most seriousness about, communicating to them our priorities. Then we agree to pay them for this work and we then get back to our work of construction buildings, laying asphalt, fixing power generation plants and downed bridges.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

But….what happens? This esteemed group, by their actions, decides they would rather divide up into smaller factions and adopt a philosophy or “anything EXCEPT what the opposition wants!” Oh, then they begin to demand that their solution is the only acceptable one, and everyone else MUST do as they say, or they will do nothing but lay constant roadblocks in the way or any other progress. And…don’t get me started on endless cycles of hearings to find some fault with circumstances you just don’t like.

And top it off, with many serious issues unresolved, the body decides to further endear themselves to the working man and women, by taking off from work in the high heat of August, after promising to get it all done when you come back.

Congress: you have to love their way of collecting a fat paycheck and racking up an incredible retirement benefit package, while still not getting significant issues taken care of…

Now, consider for a moment, could I have been describing the Iraqi legislature? The actions of their elected officials seems very much like the constant, infantile squabbling coming out of our own hallowed institutions of the Senate and the House.

Here’s the irony I see: If one of our strategies was to build up democratic governments in the Middle East, beginning with Iraq, I would submit we just might have become overly successful, but somehow, we have failed to see the outcome for what it is. The Iraqis went to the polls, as we did, voted in people who promised to tackle the many issues that “We the People” have confirmed are worthy of their attention, but what have they, like us, received in return for our statement of confidence at the ballot boxes? Lots of talk, lots of back-biting, lots of wasted energy and certainly, not any worthwhile decisions. Quite a striking parallel, I’d say.

To be fair, there have been some Iraqi politicians who have lost their lives going to work. I can’t say that for our elected representatives, nor would I wish it on any of them, but I do see how there is some degree of courage the Iraqi must muster that ours need not actually have to have to get to their offices daily.

I think that the Iraqi politicians have, for the most part, modeled themselves after what our “democracy” style of today represents, which is something more like a “ME!-ocracy,” (I think that may be my 4th original/phrase concoction) were the “I” or “Me” is the ultimate customer of the process and the rest of us are supposed to “eat cake” while also sometimes standing up and yelling “I want it MY WAY!” or “WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?!?!?!?!”

Maybe we expected that the Iraqis would have gone through a series of historical events of fiery oratory from modern day Jeffersons and Madisons and Washingtons and Henrys, and since that has not occurred, we don’t recognize they have skipped right over all of the hard work of getting it out on the floor, in speeches that will be recorded and repeated and quoted for centuries to come, then coming to a common ground, acceptable to the many, and from that unity of view, begin to take on the daily irritations of life, once the nation has a foundation.

So the irony of it all comes in many words and actions, with our own elected officials, who have yet to complete some important bills, for one the annually written (SURPRISE! – It happens every year!) Defense funding bills, moan and complain that the Iraqi parliament will take the month of August off for not only vacation, but because it’s so darn hot. Our elected reps make such remarks, while wiping the sweat from their brows, claiming Global Warming has made Washington, DC hot this same August (like so many other Augusts before), then they hop on their jets and beat feet out of town for…yes, “vacation”….Maybe they somehow justify theirs as superior to the time off of the Iraqis because they will be out at fund raising events, which, is their main work, so they are really not on vacation in their mind. Nice rationalization, but what they consider work is merely an investment in their future in a job where they can decide their own priorities and not perform, with little fear of being called to account for a lack of measurable results.

Note to Iraqis who might be reading this: You’d be better served studying our history before the late 60’s – early 70’s “flower children” brought their “do your own thing” mentality to the halls of government.

One more ironic point: I bet we could never get the libs to stand up and say “Hey! Time to bring the troops home in VICTORY because we have given them democracy! The Iraqi politicians are just like us, and we’re a democracy: Do nothing, lazy, power hungry, entrenched careerists, on vacation in August with nothing accomplished for all the pay, in it only for ourselves! Hooray for America!”

I found the Global Defense Group blog via a comment on Acute Politics (written by an Active Duty Soldier currently completing his tour in Iraq). Scanning the GDG site quickly, it looks like there’s some interesting posts on three, and also I noted they are looking for help, in the form of authors and other technical support.

Contributors are the key to the success of Global Defense Group.
It is the members of the community who bring this site to life, and without the contributors GDG would be little more than a bunch of buttons on a web page.
GDG is always on the prowl for qualified “authors”, and if you have experience in any of the following areas, we encourage you to contact us about becoming a contributor to the blogs, databases or media archives:

* Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism
* Cyber-Terrorism, Hacking and Internet Security
* Domestic Politics and, in particular, Political Activism
* Military/Insurgency Tactics and Military History
* Homeland Security and Law Enforcement
* Digital Video/Audio/Podcast Production
* Border Security and Illegal Immigration
* Diplomacy and International Law
* WMD and Nuclear Proliferation
* Islam and The Q’uran (Arabic and Farsi translators wanted!)
* The Constitution and United States Law
* Political Satire and Political Cartooning
* Global Economics and The Oil Industry
* Middle East History and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

In addition to the specialized fields listed above, GDG is also looking for dedicated individuals to help with the daily operations of the site. While these people will not be in “the lime light”, their contributions will be essential for the efficient and continued operation of the site.
Some of these areas are:

* Maintaining the Events Calendar
* Research and Documentation
* Forum and Chat Room Moderation
* Maintaining Image and Video Archives
* Site Promotion and Recruitment
* Coordination and Correspondence
* Video and Podcast Production
* Editing and Publishing
* Legal Protection
* More Research and Documentation

The individuals who perform these tasks will be given “Author” access or higher, depending upon the access required for each job. Members will be selected to fill these important roles based on a variety of factors, including availability, expertise, and an ability to work and communicate with others.

Sounds like some of the readers here might be able to lend a hand over there….

Also: Don’t miss Teflon Don’s (Acute Politics Blogger) short but wonderfully written post: Beauty in the Dirt. He has a way with words to rival some of the best novelists, yet he speaks about the real world around him…

A little levity in all the stories of fabrication from Dr. Sanity:

BEAUCHAMP AT THE BAT
The Outlook was quite brilliant for The New Republic rag:
The polls were in their favor, and the public will had sagged.
But when Bush didn’t falter, as Petraeus led the surge,
A sickly silence fell upon those moonbats on the verge.

A straggling few got up and wailed deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only one more Abu Ghraib could be brought to light–
They’d put up even money, that we’d lose all will to fight.

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance that they could count on that.
Then from a thousand leftist throats there rose a lusty yell;
The New Republic had a piece that claim the war was hell!

There was ease in Beauchamp’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in his raw expose, and a smile on TNR’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he staunchly stood by his claims,
No leftist in the crowd could doubt they’d near-achieved their aims.

A million eyes were on him as he told his tragic story;
The defeatists all applauded as he defamed his Unit’s glory.
And as commanders searched to see if Beauchamp’s tales were true,
They nonetheless were heralded; and those with doubts were few.

From TNR editors there came a muffled roar,
“How can you even doubt us?” they all cried, “We verified as before!”
“He’s just a courageous soldier with great moral authority!”
And its likely they’d a-sainted him; but that was not to be.

“Fraud!” cried his comrades, and the echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Beauchamp and the leftist crowd was awed.
John Murtha’s face grew stern and cold, and they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Beauchamp had found support in the weakest links again.

Now the sneer is gone from TNR, though the left’s still filled with hate;
Their lofty goal of surrendering will surely have to wait.
Because right now the truth is out, and and they have to let it go,
Because too many people realize, and too many people know….

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Moonbat land- mighty Beauchamp has struck out.

UPDATE: It seems he probably was suffering from Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder!
– Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:24 AM Comments (9) | Trackback (0)

H/T: Little Green Footballs reader pat.

Oh, and not to worry. IT seems the entire story “Shock Troops” has been removed, without explanation from The New Republic website. Interesting, but certainly not unbelievable.

Subtitle: The Dove becomes the Hawk, when the opportunity to make brownie points exists…

Presidential candidate, Barak Obama (D), has a plan. BZ for coming forward with something instead of criticisms, butjfk nailed it: I’m too stoopid to understand such well educated people such as Barak:

Obama might send troops into Pakistan

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
[…]

Let me get this straight: He was courageous enough to vote against going to Iraq, and he will sit down with dictators and thugs who oppose us, but threatens invasion of a country, which, has it’s internal struggles, but is generally an ally in the larger endeavor.

Am I missing something? Send the military to get the internal policy of a nation who is helping us, yet, crawl to the feet of those who specifically state they are trying to kill as many of us as they can….

This certainly would set a new low water mark for American foreign diplomacy. I can see it now: We pull out and let the manics run wild and murder, yet we punish those trying to help us for not helping in the way we think they should be.

Boy, you think they hate Bush? Wait until we and they both are on the receiving end of this immature, blustering, plainly idiotic effort. We won’t have a single ally left on the face of the planet…but maybe that’s what “they” are angling for.

I guess it’s his plan to say he’s gonna get OBL, because GWB couldn’t manage to do it (but, then again, WJC had sniper scopes on OBL and couldn’t be bothered to issue the orders and save the pain caused in the subsequent years). I would say BO has an exceptionally limited understanding of the very conflict we are engaged in. Getting OBL isn’t going to stop the many deadly incidents of the of the distributed network of sudden and not so sudden jihadis. Picking off OBL and parading the pictures of his cold dead body, at this point, is likely to cause a major flare up of the problems we’re having now. Keeping him in hole in the side of a wind and snow swept mountain has effectively decapitated his leadership role, significantly reducing the scope and deadliness of future attacks around the world, let alone here at home.

So, here we go: In order to skunk his only significant political rival, Hillary, he will speak as though he is the President and telegraph a message I’m sure all the rest of the world, who is at least marginally of wholly on our side, to cringe, while the enemy, far in the mountains, smiles upon their good fortune that the Republicans abrogated their responsibility to really lead this country….

But, hey, I’m unedumacted, what do I know? I bet Obama doesn’t realize a lot of foreign money isn’t coming his way, at least via normal channels. Now it will have to come by caravan in small unmarked bills from SW Asia. It will take a lot longer to get here.

H/T: Andi posting on Milblogs

Can’t find it on the web yet, but the news on radio about 30 minutes ago said the judge decided to award $8M to the 15 families of the USS COLE (DDG-67) casualties in their case against the government of Sudan.

Report said the request was $100M. I’m sure details will be around the MSM/net soon…

Update 7/26/2007: Here’s a story, but not from a “big” MSM outlet. Hmmm…

Corrections: 17 families, not 15 and the original demand was $105M

That title is something driven home by studies at the Naval War College. Between history and politics under the personal microscope, that was a powerful message, for, you never know when you’ll have to live by it (or, as you will see, answer up to your opposing behaviors regarding the topic you yourself brought up).

In skydiving, we used to know “the ‘one eye’ (camera) don’t lie.” In the age of the Internet, the old stuff you publish has a bad habit of being uncovered in a few quick keystrokes:

Note to James Webb (D-VA): Pay attention to what you said in 1995.

James Webb and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had their dust-up last Sunday Morning. James Webb admonished his fellow senator to not put political words in the mouths of the troops (Oh, then he quoted some poll that supported us getting out saying the troops are like the population is their sentiments about the war – I most strongly find that out of place).

Anyhow, Mark Levin was doing some reading of a 1995 essay on his show last night:

About a year ago I made a presentation to a group of high-powered account executives at one of the world’s largest investment banks. My speech discussed Vietnam’s current demographics, its economic future, and the desirability of doing business there. During the question-and-answer period I was challenged by a gentlemen of about my age who had never been to Vietnam and who in his youth had obviously been opposed to the war. Why, he asked rather snidely, would I want to do business with the communists when I had tried to kill them as a Marine? Where was my consistency of thought? And indeed why did we even fight a war if they were so keen to do business with us?

I answered by pointing out that I have always believed in the strength of the culture and people of Vietnam, that the conditions now emerging in that country are approaching, however slowly, what I and others wanted to see twenty-five years ago; and that it was the communist government’s actions, not American intransigence, which had held back the country during the last two decades.

Before the next question was asked, I was interrupted by another million-dollar-a-year man, who it turned out was a Yale graduate and an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He had become so angry from old memories that his face was on fire.
[…]

Oh, and it gets better. Here’s the entire editorial, written by a Vietnam combat vet, and he’s pretty angry at the “elites.”

Yep, you saw, if you took that jump, who wrote it.

I am left to wonder what the promised political pay off is on the table for such an opposing presentation last Sunday…

Jack Army, in the sandbox, posts (in two parts), a letter he received. He did ask one of his Iraqi counterparts to write what he thought. The letter talks to us. Worth the read. I doubt you’ll ever see this grace the media of anything even remotely related to the MSM:

I asked an Iraqi I know to write a letter to Americans. I told him he should write whatever he wants. Specifically, I said, “if you could say anything you wanted to the American people, what would it be?” He wrote a letter and was very passionate when giving it to me. I could tell that he had agonized over this letter, what he wanted to say and how best to say it. He speaks English well but has a little difficulty writing it. I wanted to give you his words without any help from my, but I did edit slightly only to make a few confusing sentences a little more understandable. Because he wrote such a long letter, I broke it into two parts. Below is part one. My Iraqi friend is eager for feedback. I promised him that I would share any comments about his letter with him. So, feel free to address your comments to him. Unfortunately, for security reasons, I cannot tell you much about this fine man, but I can tell you that I admire him for what he does and his dedication to Iraq.

This is what he wrote:

To my brothers and sisters all over the world,

Hi, I am in individual Iraqi, I can only express my own ideas about what is going on in this whole situation and I am very sure that the majority of Iraqis have the same idea.
[…]

Part I and part II, in their entirety, at Jack Army’s blog.

Read it there, before you don’t know you never saw it in the “news.”

P.E.T.A. eats its own. NO MEAT FOR YOU TODAY!!!!! Jerry Sienfeld, contact your nearest P.E.T.A. Chapter, I think there’s a consulting/stand up gig in it for you.

On 6/28/07 at the Democratic Debate, Hillary comments that we’re holding a lot of non-violent offenders in prisons and we need to get them out and figure a better way to handle it. On 7/02/07, she decries the use of Constitutionally appointed Presidential powers over the topic of a man sentenced for lying. Ironic on many levels: If lying is no longer non-violent, has she been living with a violent man? As someone who has had a close, personal relationship with a man who used the very same provisions during his time as President….and a lot more than 80 some times…more like around 400, to include someone convicted of trafficking and selling weapons silencers.

OK, many years ago, an Army Officer said something the media excoriated him for during the Vietnam War. The Live Earth is now of the mind to “Make carbon in order to reduce it.” Funny, throw a concert on each continent (I guess they haven’t figured out that ticket sales in Africa and India might not cover the expenses). Sure, mega-wattage for amplifiers, lights and associated electrical systems during the concert, heating and cooling for the performers and their massive entourages, not to mention people up and going somewhere they might never have traveled to, just because they will feel better about helping the cause, while stomping all over the virgin land mass of Antarctica. Crazy idea. What about raising funds by just passing the word and bringing people on board with your cause. Maybe they’re afraid of getting nailed by anti-SPAM laws of the Federal Government.

And, the capstone of the week: Humans using more than our fair share of solar energy. Scary. I wonder if they calculated from the number of people turning their skin to leather on the beaches of the world. And….if some snail darter isn’t inland where I might be, am O supposed to package up the sunlight raining down and ship it to someone living near a pond, so they can release the energy over the water and let the darter get some quality rays?

Geez…it’s getting nutty out here, but I will draw the line at providing free cars to lemmings. They’ll only take a one way trip to the nearest cliff and careen over it, no matter what they tell you about their plans for the day.