Mises Rode A Dinosaur
I was taking the railing off the stairway so that people could ascend and descend the stairs with greater efficiency when I heard a terrible crash outside, near the stop sign that I had taken down to enable motorists to drive according to rational self-interest. “A violation of market principles,” I cursed as I ran outside waving an unregulated firearm.
Natasha Richardson and "Medical Capital"
by William Anderson
Two cars had crashed due to government regulation, and one of the drivers was seriously hurt due to the onerous safety and fuel economy standards forced upon the auto industry. The other, sadly, had gone Galt.
In writing about socialist medical care like they have in Canada, one of my points has been that socialist systems tend to be undercapitalized, as in such a system, capital becomes a liability rather than an asset. For example, the county where I work has about 80,000 residents and has as many MRI machines as does Montreal, which has several million people living in the area.
“Ambulance…” said the injured driver, opening a new market. “Ambulance,” I affirmed, punching a number into my phone and showing it to him. The figure was high, but he was hardly in a position to be a chooser. “I know a hospital with three people and a dog in it,” I pitched, “and it has as many MRI machines as all of France. Look it up! Look it up on the Internet!”
One doctor has pointed out that it took close to three hours to drive Richardson from Mount Tremblant to the trauma center in Montreal because Quebec has no medical helicopter system, unlike the USA, where such helicopters are common.
We should not be surprised. In Canada, no medical device has the…
“No, four words: Taco Bell Fries Supreme. No, wait.”
We should not be surprised. In Canada, no medical device has the capability of producing an income, so hospitals and medical care facilities often lack what is common in this country. For example, if a hospital or medical practice here purchases an MRI, that machine is able to provide an income to the provider as patients use it.
However, because no one can charge medical consumers for anything in Canada, the decision to purchase an MRI machine is purely one of cost. Medical facilities have only so much money to use, and the purchase of a…
Oh, I can’t take it anymore. Mr. Anderson of the Mises Institute is clever, but clever as well are the Quebecians or residents of Quebec, for the long waiting times for non-emergency MRI access there — the ones that have been so happily described by the ideological opponents of national health care in the US, often to the exclusion of any other consideration or relevant statistic, and/or whilst yanking it into a Jergens-scented tube sock, or eating an entire pint of chocolate-dipped strawberries in the bathtub while talking on the phone, if female or oh look Adam has a new pair of glasses — where was I? Oh, right.
…Forcing market purists, as the world falls to bits around us all, to Shutty McUppington for a distributed average of .0002 seconds apiece so as to discover the plain and objective way in which this startling discovery — this also-having of Canada of private medical care for those able and willing to pay — really, if you’re intellectually honest about it, just further confirms what they were saying all along.
The rustling of socks, the splut-splut of the Jergens dispensers — can you hear them already?
For example, if a hospital or medical practice here purchases an MRI, that machine is able to provide an income to the provider as patients use it.
I’m waiting for the first wingnut to propose pay-MRI machines.
In Canada, no medical device has the capability of producing an income, so hospitals and medical care facilities often lack what is common in this country.
In which thread were the prospects of MRI pr0n raised? Ah fergit.
By the way, there are only three trauma centers in Montana. I’d be willing to bet that in the time it would take to fly a helicopter to an accident victim, and fly her back, you could drive to one and have her examined already.
Plus, you know, helicopters are not the optimal means of transport in really mountainous regions if the wind is up. Like say ski country.
Quebec’s REAL problem is, as acknowledged by practically everyone who has ever lived, ever, is that they don’t all speak English.
I hate Mises to pieces!
“the splut-splut of the Jergens dispensers”
Sheer poetry. I doff my cap to you, sir. And I don’t even wear one.
You know where else someone died?
NAZI GERMANY!
And yet Canada has a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate, even with all their MRI machines gone Galt!!! However, I bet their incidence of helmetless freak brain injuries in Quebecois ski-resorts is much higher than, say, Miami.
Oh, I love this game. Who wants to bet that the total cost of buying and using the helicopter is a huge net loss to almost any hospital? Me me me!
I suspect Mr. Anderson fell asleep while watching the recent Criterion DVD release of Magnificent Obsession, where the saintly Christ-like doctor dies because the authorities were using the only resusci-pulmonator atomic ray gun to revive irresponsible playboy Rock Hudson after his reckless speedboat accident. Mayhem, and Jane Wyman, ensues.
Then Mr.Anderson awoke from his fever dream and wrote this column.
The pseudio-Christian pulp fiction of Lloyd C. Douglas (not to mention the Technicolor delirium of Douglas Sirk) still packs a powerful punch.
In which thread were the prospects of MRI pr0n raised? Ah fergit.
Which thread? How about this one??!?
(forgive me, but the link will not embed).
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1596?view=long&pmid=10600954
Natasha Richardson and “Medical Capital”
Natasha Richardson and Universal Healthcare
And that’s just the question right there, isn’t it? What lesson should we derive from her tragic death?
Natasha Richardson and Obama’s Socialist Agenda?
Natasha Richardson and the Purloined Presidential Birth Certificate?
Natasha Richardson and the Homosexualist Agenda?
Also, what’s the deal with those socialist fire departments? Payment up front, I say.
Took a look at their homepage – looked like they took their coat of arms from the doodled-up cover of a 7th-grader’s Math folder.
So a helicopter ride might have saved “crucial moments”, proving that Canada’s healthcare system has failed? The doctor that this pud cites compares Quebec not to the US, but to the US *and the rest of Canada*, every other province of which does have these fancy aero-heli-copters.
Plus, the whole refusing-medical-treatment thing. That might have helped.
Of course, the WRONG lesson here would be mandating helmets, because you know who else wore helmets, the Wehrmacht that’s who, and because it’s a horrible imposition to mandate helmets, unless you’re the management of the ski area or their insurer, in which case it’s the invisible hand of the market protecting your skull from aggressors.
The real lesson, of course, is that it’s always a good time to use someone’s death to restate your ideological beliefs about health care.
What lesson should we derive from her tragic death?
Helmets are a good thing, was what I took away from it.
If only Ms. Richardson still had the Constitutionally-mandated right to drive a black car, none of this would have happened.
You kid about the fire departments, I suppose, but:
The U.S. Forest Service spent $127 million on private contractors to fight California wildfires in fiscal 2007.
In 2005, the insurance company AIG began offering wildfire protection services free to some customers who pay $10,000 in annual premiums or have homes valued at more than $1 million. Enrollment in the program more than doubled in the past year to 3,200 homes, AIG spokesman Peter Tulupman said.
(I do imagine those “counterparties” will not be bailed out in full by the US should their houses burn down).
I’m still looking for Natasha’s exact gravesite, but that’s okay. It will be all the sweeter after she’s ripened a bit more.
You kid about the fire departments, I suppose, but:
It wasn’t that long ago in America that the fire brigade was privately financed and even in competition with other brigades.
The most famous scene depicting this is the one from Gangs of New York, where one fire company put a box over a hydrant to prevent a rival brigade (who held the fire fighting contract on a building) from getting to the water, then negotiating a “fire sale” price on fighting the fire with the building owner.
I wonder how he’d work it if someone got hit by a meteor in Venezuala, or even better Taxachusetts.
Medivacs are a profit center? Really? The idea of using helicopters was created at the University of Maryland hospital, a state run institution. I’m pretty sure it was intended to save lives, not make money.
Best post opening ever.
Of course, here in the U.S., we’ve got medical helicopters, but we also have medical helicopter crashes . . . Whaddya gonna do?
Actually, a lot of medevac services are provided by for-profit operations. That’s perhaps part of the problem (see previous post).
Dude, this was fucking hilarious.
In Canada just try to get away with not wearing a helmet. ARMED MEN WILL COME TO YOUR DOOR!!!
The U.S. Forest Service spent $127 million on private contractors to fight California wildfires in fiscal 2007.
Well, it’s tough if you keep ’em on payroll waiting around for a wildfire to start. Think of the food bills.
What lesson should we derive from tragical death ?
I don’t want to sound all knowy it all , but …
First , not to get all side tracky , I used to have issues with my pants …
I never once took this as a problem
However there are those high faluutiny types who are known for their distinct cry
“Did you wash behind your ears ?”
“Did you brush your teeth ?”
“Did you clean up your room ?”
It is pretty apparent that though nice smelling and pretty to look at these creatures are just a late iteration of a Dodo type of slow moving food source .
Having learnt the habits of these creatures from the wild I can say they have ideas , crazy ideas . The apparent weakness being chocolate , they are easy to trap .
What can we learn from these weak chocolate tea creatures ?
Could they survive like the rugged dispensers of chocolate ?
Please join us again tomorrow for another exciting episode of Rubber and Glue
As much as I loathe siding with the Rockwell/Mises crowd, when the tax rate is so high in Canada–while often dismissed by US liberals as “well at least they have health care!”–there is less likelihood for disposable income that can be redirected for private health care when the need does arise to go around the system.
You can tax the hell out of people to provide money for care, but you can’t then turn around and say “Well, there are private options too!” when you’ve taken away so many people’s ability to pay via extraordinary taxation. To get around the extraordinarily long lines for things that come from free access, one must come up with considerable capital. In this scenario, ONLY the very well off can afford the immediate care that people with less income in the United States afford. Yes, the US system needs serious work, but let’s not pretend that Canada’s system is what we want.
Kinda weird, tho, that their purported egalitarian system is so easily gamed by elites.
Except, of course, that dead woman.
This isn’t funny. I’ve seen this same “Richardson was a martyr to socialized medicine” meme elsewhere, and it is simply despicable. Using a horrid tragedy to make a completely tangential political point is bad enough. Utterly distoring the facts is worse.
This asshole completely omits the fact that Richardson refused medical attention immediately after her head trauma, which is common in epidural bleeding, since the early symptoms are mild to nonexistent. The victim often assumes that it was just a knock on the head. That’s what led to the delay, not the eeeeevil deficiencies of eeeeeeeeeeevil socialism.
It used to just be funny the way wingnuts carried on like everyone was dropping dead in the streets from St. John’s to Vancouver for lack of decent medical care. It isn’t any more. Trying to score points off the corpse of a 45-year-old mother of two by distorting the circumstances of her demise is just foul.
What Bitter Scribe said. Not that we would expect anything better from contards.
Whew, epic post – and the title alone is gold pure enough to give wood to a Paultard.
Though I think my very favorite Mises joke on here was from D.A. (last line and footnote from this post).
There’s the conundrum — she refused medical treatment (which, if your skull is filling up with blood, will kill you before you or anyone else knows it), and even up here in liberal-fascist-socialist Soviet Canuckistan, they can’t force you to have medical treatment if you don’t want it. Funny, that.
Thanks, Doctor Missus M.
MRI pr0n could have saved Mary Immaculate Hospital.
How are you and the little one?
Did you hear? Obama uses a teleprompter!
So even if we accept for the sake of argument, that one death was caused by socialised medicine, how many were caused by the US private system?
What is the figure now? several thousand a year who die from complete lack of treatment? 4 figures at least, quite likely 5. How many more die from preventable diseases because they couldn’t afford to see the doctor until it got really bad?
I’m going to die one day. Given the choice, i’d rather die because I foolishly refused treatment, than die because I couldn’t afford to PAY for treatment. I can hardly imagine how degrading it must be to die because that life saving operation just cost too much. The US healthcare system is simply Dickensian.
This would be the most egregious use of death this week if it weren’t for those vile bastards who thought the deaths of children in that plane crash in Montana were okay because they were related to a man who owned some abortion clinics.
Did you hear? Obama uses a teleprompter!
Actually, it’s a socialist teleprompter. Looks the same to everyone else, but the president sees his words imprinted upon a hammer crossed with a sickle crossed with a swastika!
Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in Ste-Agathe does not specialize in head traumas, so her speedy transfer to Sacre Coeur Hospital in Montreal was critical, said Razek.
There’s your problem: SACRE COEUR!!!!~~!~@@!
Actually, according to this Yahoo article, it seems that Ms. Richardson had at least 3 instances of medical attention, and perhaps more. It’s not like Canada doesn’t have any health care.
A representative comment from the Mises thread, just for the fun sense of “””morality””” (with leventy billion more scare quotes):
“To posit a right to health care is to posit the right to command another man’s labor, another man’s wealth.”
Guess all the Drs must be men in this wingers parallel universe. Typical.
For me, the take-home moral of the story is that the late, lamented Ms. Richardson was a very wealthy woman, who could have afforded private care here in the states. If she were a poor person without medical benefits, the helicopter transportation would have bankrupted her family, regardless of the outcome of treatment.
I usually don’t engage in anecdote-slinging, but my favorite bartender in Brooklyn told me about an artist friend of hers who found a lump on his thigh. He knew something serious was afoot, but didn’t want to go to an ER because any subsequent insurance he obtained would stamp his file “pre-existing condition”, and he’d be screwed in perpetuity. He found a job that offered benefits, and watched in horror throughout the six month probation period as the lumps proliferated on his leg. He had over a dozen lymph nodes removed, and underwent aggressive chemo, when earlier intervention would have resulted in far better results.
This is the role of master and slave. It is odious and immoral.
If this commenter worked really hard for ten thousand years and took every possible advantage of every situation, this comment could have sounded 10% more pompous.
I wonder if he’d have the balls to repeat what he says here to Natasha Richardson’s children. I mean, obviously he wouldn’t say it to Liam Neeson, since Neeson is a grown man and sometimes they’re tall and scary. But the sons might be a different story, ever since Michelle Malkin proved preteens are all talk in a fight.
i read in comments over at malkin’s site “i think this calls for the stalking of her children. natasha richardson’s death doesn’t have to be in vain.”*
those children can teach the world a lesson, a lesson IN TERROR
*i didn’t read that there.
I have a random question.
I live in Northern Virginia, one of the wealthiest and most-connected regions in the country. I have good private insurance and can afford my medical bills.
Then why is it that it takes me THREE MONTHS to get an appointment with my family doctor, four months to see a specialist, and SIX MONTHS to see a frakkin’ DENTIST?
I hate to break it to the randoids out there, but if I’m going to have to wait that long to see a doctor anyway, it may as well be free.
Either that, or there are not enough greedy, self-interested John Galts out there who are looking to capitalize on what is obviously an open market.
My infant son was nine months old when he aspirated a little piece of something into his lung. We thought he had a cold at first. Then he stopped putting on weight. He was always coughing. He lost energy.
I took him to our pediatrician almost every week. First they were cautious – said it was a cold, etc. We were persistent – we knew something was wrong. After about 1 1/2 months they did a forced exhalation X-ray – which is pretty traumatic on an infant (which is why they were cautious).
they discovered 2/3rds of one lung was blocked. They immediately took him to surgery and unblocked it. A follow-up surgery to get rid of some scar tissue about a year later, and now he’s 21 years old and very healthy.
I had good health insurance, from a union employer, at Group Health Cooperative (if any of you are familiar with them). The whole thing cost me $20 co-payment each visit. That’s all.
I think back and wonder what would have happened if I had had to worry about being able to afford even the pediatrician’s visits – or if I’d gone to clinics and saw different dr.’s each time – or if I’d, as Bush advised poor people, waited until it got really bad, before taking him to the emergency room. My kid would probably have been a sickly child, may have died, certainly would have ended up with health problems.
That’s why I thank God I have always been represented by a union, that fought to get me decent health insurance. Yep, I have one of the gold-plated policies that McCain wanted to tax. And I thank God for it.
Everyone should have access to the kind of decent, consistent, preventative care my son had. Everyone.
I have an idea for how poor people could have their socialised healthcare without being a drain on the economy!
So, if a poor person gets ill or injured, all they have to do is find a rich libertarian, and injure them twice as much. So either the libertarian pays for private treatment, spurring on the horsemen of the capitalist apocalypse, or a rich libertarian dies. Society wins either way!
Trying to score points off the corpse of a 45-year-old mother of two by distorting the circumstances of her demise is just foul.
Yes. Yes it is.
Foulness inherent in their nature.
I think it’s a feature, not a bug…
mikey
My father’s hospital bills have bankrupted my family. His latest bill: $80,000. He and my mother are now in danger of losing my childhood home. Already they cannot afford much in the way of food, and his prescriptions get more and more expensive. If he had been able to afford good preventative care on a trucker’s salary, and if he hadn’t swallowed the oh-so-compassionate-conservative line that a man seeking help is no man at all, he wouldn’t have been this sick in the first place. He got to take the fun helicopter ride once; we didn’t get Christmas for 2 years. He is now on unemployment because his heart will literally not support him enough to allow him to work even a light job. He hates himself deeply because Rush tells him poor people are disgusting and he is probably a lazy bastard for not working.
Needless to say, I have a hearty FUUUUUUUCK YOU for anyone who truly believes that we have the best of all possible healthcare systems, an even more enthusiastic FUCK OFF AND DIE for anyone who views health as a privilege for rich men only, and an extra-special OMG YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE PLEASE GO DIE IN A TIRE FIRE for the talking heads who sell this bullshit to the masses.
Sorry, I can be neither objective nor funny on this issue. Um….penis?
why is it that it takes me THREE MONTHS to get an appointment with my family doctor, four months to see a specialist, and SIX MONTHS to see a frakkin’ DENTIST?
My story above was 20 years ago and in a different part of the country where I am now.
I will tell you that now, here, I’ve experienced this a little. I can see my Dr. and my dentist OK, but the specialist thing – that’s a scheduling problem similar to yours.
The reason is, my health insurance (Aetna) has 2 plans, PPO and HMO, and fewer specialists have signed on to the HMO plan, because it pays them less. So, here, anyway, if you’re on the PPO, there are 12 specialists to choose from. If you’re on the HMO, there are 2. And one’s out on maternity leave.
Sorry, I can be neither objective nor funny on this issue.
I am so, so sorry.
“OMG YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE PLEASE GO DIE IN A TIRE FIRE” is really funny eruvande. righteous rage often is. my grandma’s end care bankrupted my family pretty much as well. that’s the system.
it used to be ok because my dad’s pension kicked ass (professor, TIAA-CREF, union!) but then it is pegged (not by my parent’s choice) to the dow. it resets every march 31st. this will be a really shitty year for them.
TIAA-CREF – yeah, that’s where a lot of my husband’s retirement….was.
To believe that one has a right to
healthcarelife and property is to believe that one has a claim on adoctor’s or nurse’spoliceman’s time. This is the role of master and slave. It is odious and immoral.Yes. It shore do.
And also
And also, PENIS
They still had the little spit toilets? Because little else has changed.
I doubt that I will stop hearing it for the next 72 hours… it was that good!
One thing these heartless whackos seem to forget that in the Brave New World of pay as you go they envision… who can pay 20k a crack for their turn at the MRI?
So then there will be five in the country and then it’s not handy anyway.
What a dumbass. Canada doesn’t have a socialized health care system. Canada’s system is a publicly funded, private service system. It would be more correct to say that Canada has a socialized health insurance system. One would think that a blogger “advancing the scholarship of liberty” would know that.
The point is that those MRI machines and other devices do indeed provide an income to hospitals contrary to what William Anderson believes. Here in the US we have so many MRI machines as well as other great gadgets and procedures that unneeded tests are done all the time. In fact, the better your health insurance the more unnecessary tests you get. Bloomberg recently had a story where they reported that unnecessary MRI and CT scans were costing insurance companies around $30 billion a year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aEXLaZPZ8o.U&refer=healthcare
This is also a problem in Canada as a study released last year showed that at least in Ontario unnecessary MRIs were common (not surprisingly mostly among higher income patients). How is that possible if there aren’t enough MRI machines in Canada? How is that possible if MRI machines can’t provide income for hospitals?
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1452435/cutting_back_on_unnecessary_mri_and_ct_scans_could_cut/index.html
Libertarians are some of the sloppiest thinkers I know.
So Anderson is not only grossly wrong, by citing this incident to flog dangerous falsehoods about health care, he’s also a huge asshole.
It’s reading garbage like Anderson’s post that makes me pray for The Quickening and, like, SOONEST.
My mother died last month because she was denied the basic medicine that she needed to survive. She was stone cold murdered to save someone a few bucks.
I’d like to hear some Randian cumstain say to my face that it was her fault for not being a better consumer.
I’ll bet that the counties that have longer life expectancies than the US also have longer waits for an MRI. This proves that getting an MRI quickly reduces life expectancy. And lack of pirates cause global warming.
Hoiw about this… the American health system sucks because every other developed country in the world has a longer life expectancy.
YOU should choose your doctor, YOU should choose what you are willing to pay for (even if its an MRI), not the government.
Period. End of STORY.
People might do stupid things, but freedom means the freedom to be stupid, also.
The government cannot allocate resources more effectively than a free market system.
The Soviets tried it, asked them how it worked out!
Learn from history, libs.
Especially if doctors are taking backhanders from the MRI clinics in order to refer people for MRIs when they complain of occasional headaches. After all, those things don’t pay for themselves.
You do choose your own doctor in Canada.
You don’t always choose your own doctor in the US and you certainly can’t choose to get an MRI if your Insurance Company denies payment for the test. The free market denies individuals the ability to do these things much more often than the gov’t does.
Just saying.
thedarkbackward: My deepest condolences.
It’s Called Freedom: People might do stupid things, but freedom means the freedom to be stupid, also.
Including the freedom to be stupid about matters of public policy.
And we’d have higher life expectancy if it wasn’t for the illegals and gang bangers dragging it down.
Do you trust THE STATE to have access to your most private, confidential records?
In fact, I am the most cherished freedom of wingnuts, Randroids and Bond villains.
“The government cannot allocate resources more effectively than a free market system.”
Depends on what you mean by “effectively”.
freedom means the freedom to be stupid, also.
AND A HEARTY THANK YOU TO ALL THE TROLLS WHO STOP BY TO DEMONSTRATE THIS REPEATEDLY.
HERE’S A BIG BAG OF DICKS.
The Freedom to Be Stupid…said, “In fact, I am the most cherished freedom of wingnuts, Randroids and Bond villains.”
I’d love to see the Norman Rockwell painting to accompany this fifth freedom. Perhaps young Timmy helping Dad clear brush from the yard with an unguarded chainsaw?
Of course the sensible thing to do when every selfish, crackpot theory you’ve espoused has been exposed as a sorry chimera and caused untold damage and suffering is to repeat it again, only a little louder this time. Why would anyone point at you and laugh?
Do you trust THE STATE to have access to your most private, confidential records?
I’m so sorry, thedarkbackward.
That’s the kind of thing that can make a situation boil over.
Stop burning me, please.
I knew the straw man. The straw man was a friend of mine. And an actual president’s actual policies is no straw man.
Look, you guys. You’re just doing a crappy job of planning ahead.
You think you should take good care of yourselves, stay in shape, exercise, moderate your intake of drugs and alcohol, get preventative care and regular checkups. You see where you’re going wrong?
You’re going to live long enough to die hard and slow of some horrible, debilitating disease while the American for-profit health care system drains all your wealth until you have nothing.
Then they go ahead and let you die.
You’ve spent a number of years operating on the basis of really bad judgement, but it’s not too late, especially if you’re fairly young.
You’ve gotta quit all this responsible, moderate behavior NOW, before it’s too late. Stay up late – hell, couple hits of speed (steal the kid’s Ritalin – YOU’RE the one paying for it) will get you through the day. Couple/half dozen martinis at lunch, go home and eat a BIGASS steak, some pasta in butter cream sauce and a little salad soaked in a couple pints of full strength Ranch Dressing. Then stretch out on the sofa and watch some TV with a bottle of Tequila and a shot glass.
In the morning, sleep in. Hell, YOU’RE not up for a million dollar bonus. Don’t go to the gym. Get up when you’re ready, have a big plate of bacon, ham and eggs. Pop a couple more Ritalin and head to work. After work, get a gram of blow and hit the clubs. Don’t worry about the drinking – drive as fast as you can between bars, it reduces your exposure. Odds are you can find some floozy to bang you. NO! Put those condoms back on the shelf. What, are you TRYING to live forever? Don’t you GET how expensive that would be?
Now you’re getting it. No way you’re going to live long enough to have to deal with the slow rot of cancer. If you’d have started at fourteen like I did, and just lived as hard and stupid as you could, you wouldn’t find yourself in this pickle in your sixties.
I hope we’ve all learned something from this little conversation…
mikey
I’d say young Tim should be running to go help Dad, with chainsaw also running.
NOOOOOOOO not the trolls again!
I’m retired, libs.
You never defeated me. I served two terms. I got the war I wanted. I got most of my program passed, over your whiny objections.
Now I’m a free man. Suck on it and watch this drive!
I hope we’ve all learned something from this little conversation…
See, Mikey, here’s the little problem with your advice.
The trick is to kill yourself, not merely hurt yourself. Because merely hurting yourself runs into serious money.
I’d say young Tim should be running to go help Dad, with chainsaw also running.
That’s great on the stupidity part of the equation, but I’m not sure Norman was up to that much motion. He was a static kind of guy.
Of course, I’m making jokes because it does a nice job of deflecting my anger about healthcare and money. I can afford to provide a decent (not great, because they don’t exist anymore, but decent) program for my employees, but this motherfucking recession is killing me. And I’m not going to strip out that benefit, even though it costs more than our office rent and almost as much as our office admin’s salary. So if things keep getting worse, I can fire one of five people we’ve got or go for across-the-board pay cuts. Me and my partner would lose 20%, everyone else would lose 10% and it still sucks.
steal the kid’s Ritalin – YOU’RE the one paying for it
Try as I might, I cannot talk our young Doktorling into feigning the symptoms of ADD. Thus, no Ritalin prescription. She takes Epilim, but that’s not exactly a party pill.
I make you real mad don’t I libs?
P.S., I get paid more for one speech than 99% of you do for one year of work! Heheheheh.
I get paid more for one speech than 99% of you do for one year of work!
But you need every dime of it, George, to pay off the folks who’d otherwise spill the beans and put you away for the rest of your life.
I don’t live with Laura Bush, and my mom isn’t Babs.
On the whole, I feel I’m better off.
Wait, I thought the trolls were supposed to be pretending I was a tax’n’spend librul and they hated me all along, because they were Paleolithic Buchananites or whatever the fuck. If I were any more confused I’d be answering a question about mistakes I think I’ve made.
If the discussion hasn’t wandered too far off the subject of Medical Helicopter Services:
A long time ago, I used to work at Harborview Medical Center here in Seattle. This is where everything goes that no one else wants or can handle. Northwest Trauma Center, Northwest Burn Center, etc. etc. When I was there, people were being medevacced (sp?) there from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska every hour of every day and night.
If local, they were brought in by AirLift, a private, for-profit helicopter service. If from far afield, they’d be flown to Boeing Field and then Airlifted in.
Airlift would land them on a helipad at one corner of the building, where an ambulance had to pick them up and drive them around the corner to the Emergency Room, just so they could get a cut as well.
If a lumberjack or whatever got hurt too far up in the mountains for AirLift to get to with their fragile Agusta hummingbirds (remember the chopper in Jurassic Park? Apparently they have to all be painted the same color, too.) a MAST Huey from Fort Lewis would have to go pick them up. However, this took profit out of the pockets of deserving corporations, so as soon as Reagan got in, they mandated that MAST had to dump the patient in a schoolyard or something, so AirLift could charge for flying them in from there.
So the taxpayers pay and the patient pays. On the same mission. Free Market, my ass. It’s called Freedom can tonguejack my shitbox.
Also, PENIS!
Perhaps young Timmy helping Dad clear brush from the yard with an unguarded chainsaw?
How about Timmy and Dad using copious amounts of an accelerant to burn the brush away?
mikey, your ideas are intriguing, but, personally, I’d like a shot at being dignified and old.
Link guaranteed 100% 80s free.
Mikey, your ideas are intriguing, but you sound too busy to put out a newsletter.
mikey, your ideas are intriguing, but, personally, I’d like a shot at being dignified and old.
Link guaranteed 100% 80s free.
============================================
I spent much of collage listening to Jonathan Richmond!
P.S. Gradumacated in 1981.
My understanding is the McGill professor was saying there is not a Provincial, government-funded medevac system, not that there aren’t *any* emergency medical helicopter services in Quebec. There is at least one, AirMédic, a private non-profit(by choice, not law). And the province does own two planes for medical emergencies. Plus other provinces do have provincial emergency helicopters, so I’m at a loss what broad lessons we’re supposed to learn about “The Canadian Healthcare System.”
Umm Jonathan Richman. But you gnu that.
Gnu’s Not Unix.
Recursive Acronyms are Funny…
mikey
Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Stick with the Hurd, mikey.
There’s wolves and such as, out there.
A doctor is not required to give you his service for free, anymore than a grocery store should be required to give you bread for free.
Does GNU C rhyme with Lucy?
Remember, Ls&Gs, you can tune a file system, but you can’t Tuna Fish…
I’ll be here until Sunday, remember to tip your waitresses and compile your kernel with the -s option…
mikey
” So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?”
–Ayn Rand
Read it and understand it, libs. If you can!
I feel a draft…
mikey
Jesus christ.
Can’t we automate the disemvowler?
Gad…
mikey
You could set it to key on the string “libs” and you’d be totally safe.
Just sayin…
mikey
Do you even understand that Rand quote, Mikey?
Of course not.
I bet you’re a moocher. Sucking off the public teat. Stupid government employee! Worthless parasite.
I’m with mikey.
Disemvowelment now, for the future!
You could set it to key on the string “libs” and you’d be totally safe.
That is worth doing, but it wouldn’t get rid of this troll. This goofy creature has shown some ability to adapt. Especially after promising to stop changing its name to avoid piefilters.
Disemvowelment today, disemvowelment tomorrow, disemvowelment forever!
That would be the love of money.
I wonder what randroids are going to trade with each other in their miraculous alloy-land…
It’s syntax is unmistakable. I wonder if you could go off that…..! Smarter pie filters. That’s what we need.
What Radix Malorum just said — ‘cupiditas’ ? ‘money’.
I like this word “moocher”. It has a real 1930s retro feel and should be used more often.
I’m pretty sure money is made by federal mints. Do you want me to double check?
So you think that money is the root of all evil?
Actually, the original of the quote to which she alludes is “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”
Nurtz. Darn you quick people, darn you all to heck.
When I go to bed at night, I usually find a Federal Mint on my pillow…
Yum…
mikey
Funny post. Dead wrong on the merits on several crucial points, but huge style points. Great writing is why I keep reading despite the roundly wrong opinions.
Money is a tool for which to uniform the barter economy system. Rand is a windbag. That is all.
I’ve heard that the original quote is “Greed is the root of all evil”, not money.
“Medical care properly viewed is a responsibility – not a right. To posit a right to health care is to posit the right to command another man’s labor, another man’s wealth.”
Okay, it’s not a right, it’s just a wise allocation of our resources. And the government doesn’t “owe” me health care any more than it “owes” the health insurance companies a system that allows them to make huge profits at the expense of of reasonable health care for all citizens. If the government is allowed to collect taxes and give them to Northrop for munitions, it can also give taxes to doctors.
And the IRS doesn’t take taxes at gunpoint. But they could. Just the same as the government protects property rights with force.
Seed is the root of all weevil.
You know what I’ve often wondered about?
With this glorifimucationing of free market and products and all, I wonder what the Randoids think of people who make big money for things like product endorsement; getting paid fees for showing up at parties; getting huge – or not so huge (I’m looking at you, Alberto Gonzales) speaker fees to stand in front of a crowd and blab.
I mean, if the public employees who are right now smoothing asphalt outside my window are moochers, what’s Paris Hilton? What’s the people who think up logos and trademarks? What’s the guy who does market research to determine that next year we’re going to wear high-waisted jeans?
Tigrismus:
If you prefer the NIV it becomes “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”.
Though it matters very little to me, as I prefer not to pay any mind to tribal sky-God religions.
So are you an actual anarcho-capitalist because I never did understand the economic model for that system, like what do you use as money? Leaves?
I was taking the railing off the stairway so that people could ascend and descend the stairs with greater efficiency when I heard a terrible crash outside, near the stop sign that I had taken down to enable motorists to drive according to rational self-interest. “A violation of market principles,” I cursed as I ran outside waving an unregulated firearm.
This is so perfect in its trueness it needs to be inscribed on a plaque on Wall Street.
“I’m pretty sure money is made by federal mints. Do you want me to double check?”
This is part of the problem. What we have isn’t really money. They’re Federal Reserve Notes. Completely worthless paper backed by the Fed (which was instituted by the lib President Wilson, BTW).
REAL money would be issued by PRIVATE BANKS and backed by GOLD, SILVER, and/or PLATINUM. This would have real value.
That’s the kind of money Rand was referring too, which is the kind of money we had until the mid-20th Century.
Ever wonder why our “money” isn’t worth as much in the 2000s as it was in the 1950s? There’s your answer! The Federal Reserve!
Attention annoying motherfuckers:
If you quote the words of the fucking idiots that I have “killed” in my browser, you are defeating my “kill”.
STOP it. NOW!
If you want to argue with idiots, fine, do it and I can just killfile you too.
But if you just repeat their words, you are the SAME as them.
And as such, an asshole…
mikey
OH, you’re one of those people.
I’ll trade you one pretty rock for a mammoth haunch.
“I’m pretty sure money is made by federal mints. Do you want me to double check?”
This is part of the problem. What we have isn’t really money. They’re Federal Reserve Notes. Completely worthless paper backed by the Fed (which was instituted by the lib President Wilson, BTW).
REAL money would be issued by PRIVATE BANKS and backed by GOLD, SILVER, and/or PLATINUM. This would have real value.
That’s the kind of money Rand was referring too, which is the kind of money we had until the mid-20th Century.
Ever wonder why our “money” isn’t worth as much in the 2000s as it was in the 1950s? There’s your answer! The Federal Reserve!
(YOU NEED TO LEAR THIS TOO, “MIKEY”).
I’d love to see the Norman Rockwell painting to accompany this fifth freedom. Perhaps young
TimmyJenna helping Dad “clear brush“ from the yard withan unguarded chainsawa open bottle of Wild Turkey?Fixative.
While my dad was between jobs during the mid 70s recession, she rationed our healthcare. She waited until my dad had been working at his new job for a year and was finally eligible for insurance before she went to the doctor to get the lumps in her breast examined.
So my family wasn’t bankrupted by my mom’s cancer. All it cost us was 4 grueling years of fighting with the HMO and watching my mom die slowly.
But her Chemo meds only cost $20 a refill!
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure Federal reserve notes were backed by gold and not on the international market until the 70s when liberal Richard Nixon took the country off the gold standard. But fine blame Wilson for all inflation EVER.
1. Germany doesn’t have socialized medical care.
2. Germany doesn’t even have single-payer insurance.
3. Lots of American dentists are basically money-grabbing pieces of shit. There’s a reason why the fiance in Friends who dumped Rachel and screwed her bridesmaid was cast as an orthodontist. It’s because people are disposed to assume that dental professionals are cunts.
All caps – check
Too many exclamation marks – check
Stupid ideas – check
Annoying condescension – check
Repeating itself, as if anyone gave a shit – check
OK, this one’s made the list. Kill file it.
Mikey –
I’ve got some theories you need to Macbeth.
N__B
Btw, Canada’s public health care system is being gradually destroyed by successive governments. It used to be superb until shitty right-leaning gov’ts started cutting back transfer payments and funding and made stupid decisions like limiting the number of doctors and nurses who could graduate. We’ve endured monstrous policy decisions over the past 15-20 years and if people are waiting longer for service because of a doctor and hospital shortage, this is all the government’s doing.
As far as Natasha Richardson’s situation is concerned, she refused assistance which was offered (paramedics were on the scene), went back to her hotel room and collapsed is my understanding. I question the paramedics accepting her refusal. They could have insisted she go to the hospital. Not sure what happened there, but anyway, yes our system is being eroded by wingnut politicians who get the most benefits of all Canadians from the public health care system i.e. the taxpayers foot the bill for them and they don’t contribute one dime to it. Would private health care loving wingnuts move to the US and pay thousands in insurance fees? No. But that hasn’t stopped them from opening the door to US health insurance companies and privatizing non medical health services like cleaning, food prep, security – all of which has gone to shit because these private companies employ low wage slaves who aren’t properly trained and have to work two jobs to survive.
Sorry, ma’am.
All I’ve got is a big hunk of Hadrisaur pelvis with a fossilized .375 H&H Magnum slug embedded in it. Are you getting the point here? Plus a couple of magnetic monopoles in my sock drawer.
But I don’t have a Mammoth haunch. Sounds like good eating…
mikey
The point is not whether or not you believe or she believed in a Sky Fairy, it’s that she muffed the quote she bases her “words of wisdom” on.
What “real” i.e. intrinsic value do gold, etc. have? Can you eat or wear them, use them to make tools or shelter yourself? Their value is not based on usefulness but scarcity, and is predicated on the belief they will continue to be scarce.
Oh God, the libertarian trolls are back. With their pseudo-orotund pronouncements about “men” and “parasites,” and their simmering adolescent view of “society,” and their pumped-up, 99-Cent Store contempt for those (ie, essentially the entire human race) who they think aren’t as nobly and courageously self-sufficient as they are in their imaginations.
Thank god Rand didn’t have children. With acolytes like these, why bother giving birth to a brood of intellectual and emotional juvenile delinquents?
And the Terminix guy doesn’t come for another week. Well, without assholes, whom would we make fun of?
Gold? Silver? Platinum?
It’s not REAL money unless it’s backed by WEAPONS-GRADE URANIUM.
What we have isn’t really money. They’re Federal Reserve Notes. Completely worthless paper backed by the Fed (which was instituted by the lib President Wilson, BTW).
I have a theory few seem willing to test: ignore the troll(s) and they will soon grow bored and find other pastures to defecate in.
Ignore means do not respond, pretend they aren’t there.
Thank god Rand didn’t have children.
Children are parasitical. There is no place for them in Rand’s philosophy or in her literary output.
Hey Lesley! Does it feel good now that’s it is a black dick up your pooper?
I swear Obama is doing 99% of the same shit Bush did, but you don’t care cause OMG!!! HE’S BLK!!
Damn, some of these, may I say it, FUCKERS kind of judge harshly.
1903 was a kind of a weird time.
We were trying to figure out who we were, and where we fit in the world, while Russia was falling apart and Europe was a total disaster.
And let’s face it, the American government couldn’t ride herd (hurd?) on the fast n loose “captains of industry” who were making money on trains, on banannas, on tobacco, on corn.
I did pretty good, and my instincts were also pretty good. But there were a lot of forces arrayed against my agenda, and they had more money and power than the American Government.
Honestly, don’t you people have history books?
We didn’t acquit ourselves particularly well, but the descent into savage bloodletting that was the 20th century cannot be laid entirely at our feet…
You got us into WWI for no reason at all, Wilson.
Go fuck yourself hard with an iron rod. Up your ass.
P.S. In case you didn’t figure this out, Versailles was in EPIC FAIL!
PLEASE listen to Lesley.
Let’s give it a go.
What would be the downside?
mikey
I know ALL about “down” sides!
A boring ass comments page would be the downside.
Anarcho-Capitalist, can you explain how property rights would be protected in anarcho-capitalist system,since I know you have so thoroughly thought this through.
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
I also like when THE FOOL goes UP on the DOOOOOWNSTROKE!
OH YEAH!
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
Hope you Randholes enjoy plowing those tax-free fields. Endlessly. In the oppressive heat of the unyielding sun. Then, finally, you’ll be able to barter something that actually has worth.
Easy.
There would be private, market-provided security and/or justice agencies that would compete for your business.
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
Mikey’s Mom has been banned.
Also, he logged on from
DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
The idea that there is more than one troll is quaint.
Disemvowelment is the answer.
What’s the question?
What would prevent those agencies from commiting atrocities and extortion since they’re pretty much going to be the ones with all the weapons. And if you say competing security firms you’re pretty much saying you support warlordism so long as you throw LLC on the back of your gang.
Hola, tintin.
Tequila shooters, on the Haus!
I am about to disemvowel the troll who just attempted to spoof me, aka “The Authentic”. I really wonder why the first thing he did when he went to the local Starbucks was to log onto the DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
I’ve got Patron!
Oh, you poor thing. You’ve been huffing paint cans out in the ally haven’t you?
Tonguejack my DON’T THINK ABOUT THE FOOL’S UP ON THE DOWNSTROKE TECHNIQUE!
I got the AM radio on!
Which is why I read P.J. O’Rourke. Met him once a few years ago, when he did his regular guest shot on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” (on the parasitically socialist NPR network) at UC Berkeley (birthplace of the DFHs, in the Socialist Republic of Californistan.) Nice guy. I asked him why he didn’t take any shots at the glaringly obvious target that Bush had become. He said he had taken many shots at mocking social conservatives (true enough) but that Bush simply didn’t need any help from him in that department. I heard him say recently that the financial corporations that got us into this mess should be “regulated until their eyeballs bleed,” if I recall the quote correctly.
Thunder. Ouch. That’s entirely WRONG.
Here’s what what that one sounds like with the right girl and the right drugs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjrr3D486bk
Road Runner Road Runner!
Sorry, but JJ owns that song….
mikey
I hear you, G. My wife went into severe and sudden pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome in week twenty-eight of her pregnancy. We went from “get your wife in the hospital so we can run some tests” to “congratulations, it’s a girl” in the span of twelve hours.
My daughter spent 81 days in neo natal intensive care. Her medical bills, as paid by our insurance: about three quarters of a million dollars. We paid: about a thousand bucks, because we had her moved from the hospital where she was delivered to one closer to us once she was somewhat stable.
I will never look at health insurance the same way again.
Why do all these trolls think there has to be a market-based solution to life, lest we all be administered thimerosal intravenously by Baphomet himself? gawd, just move to the gulch, already.
I’m as big a Joan Jett fan as anyone, mikey.
But Jonathan Richman wrote the book...
Oh, I get it. Street gangs.
We already have that in Oakland. Hell, they don’t even pay taxes. And boy, do they ever compete for the business of providing you “protection.”
They also have going concerns in providing pharmaceuticals, weaponry, and high-end electronics on the free, unregulated market.
Now, if only those jack-booted government thugs called the “Oakland Police” would just get out of the way and let unfettered capitalism bloom, East Oakland would be a libertarian paradise!
“Now, if only those jack-booted government thugs called the “Oakland Police” would just get out of the way and let unfettered capitalism bloom, East Oakland would be a libertarian paradise!”
Heh. Indeed!
The more reading I do, the more heartless the total free market arguments about health care seem and the more some sort of universal health care seems like a good idea. It’s hard to relate to people who have suffered because they don’t have care, but on an emotional level the arguments have force.
There would be private, market-provided security and/or justice agencies that would compete for your business.
If you can’t afford to pay the police, you don’t deserve to retain your property!
Puke Plan for Teh Future™!1!
If you can’t afford to pay the police, you don’t deserve to retain your property! would get private charity.
FTFY, lib.
Roast Mammoth Haunch with Purple Beetles
Ingredients:
One mammoth haunch, dead
Two heaping handfuls of purple beetles, alive
One .375 H&H Magnum slug optional
An appropriate amount of dry vermouth
One bag pork rinds, opened
If haunch has not been removed, remove haunch from dead mammoth. (if applicable) remove .375 slug from mammoth haunch. Retain for garnish. Place haunch and beetles in giant aluminum centrifuge. Add an appropriate amount of dry vermouth. Stomp on bag of pork rinds. Singing “Stomp them Rinds (Grapes)” by Mel Tillis is not optional. Centrifuge haunch, beetles and vermouth until slender. Or weapons-grade uranium. Pour contents onto serving tray. Top with crushed pork rinds. Add garnish. Feeds six neanderthals with violent stomachs.
Puke Plan for Teh Future™!1!
This is great news for the Republicans. As Rep. Mike Pence said today, “Now it may be progress that our plan is being attacked.”
Of course, attacked in actuality means laughed at. See, for example, the lamentations of the Breitbart.
now he’s 21 years old and very healthy.
g, watch out, could be trouble!!
Repeat after me, everybody…Canada does not have socialized medicine.
The doctors don’t work for the government. The hospitals aren’t owned by the government. Medical clinics are not owned by the government. (In the provinces with medical helicopers, like the ones that land regularly on the roof of the hospital where my wife works, the helicopers ARE owned by the government. And yes, they are free to those unfortunate enough to need them.)
In Canada the government PAYS for heathcare. It doesn’t run it. Obviously though, because they are paying, the feds and provinces have a lot of say.
Anyone in Canada who wants to go elsewhere for medical treatment is free to do so. Don’t want to wait 6 months for a new hip? No problem, just shuffle off to Buffalo and get it done. The government will pay the American hospital what it would have paid a Canadian hospital to do the job.
As most Canadians live no more than 2 hours from the American border, that means they have the choice of American health care at American prices.
Which are MUCH higher than Canadian prices, cause, gotta make a profit, ya know?
As for the MRI thing, lemme tell you a story.
An unemployed relative had terrible headaches.
He went to the doctor.
The doctor sent him to a specialist IMMEADIATELY.
The specialist sent him for a MRI IMMEADIATLY.
After reviewing the MRI he was scheduled for brain surgery IMMEADIATLY.
A tumer was removed and he is now a contributing member of society.
Now, I wonder Mr Anderson, how do you think he’d be doing if he was American? Better, or dead?
I call plagiarism. Anarcho-troll’s vision of a perfect de-mooched society is stolen straight from Pohl & Kornbluth’s “The Space Merchants”.
Penis helmets have not saved a single life.
Shorter mikey:
Live fast, die whenever, & leave a hideous, decaying before death corpse.
Yes!!!
Sure you say that Mr Johnson violated your mother with an outboard motor while eating your children but Mr Johnson’s large stack of mammoth haunches says that we can’t fucking hear you.
For an ounce of gold flake we may notice you long enough to tell you to move along. you should seriously consider that offer.
Interesting (?) fact: Total population of Canada is 34 million. Total population of California is more than that: 37 million. Canada only consists of about 10-people deep at the border with the US. Maybe they should space them out every thousand miles or so and make everything equally obtainable by everybody.
This post just flat-out pwns.
As a resident of the CSSR, that mega-link paragraph had me giggling like a giddy schoolgirl – an ugly spectacle to be sure, but most enjoyable for yours truly.
Usually I’d look askance at mere anecdotal evidence – but in the case of US health-care, those “mere anecdotes” are so abundant as to be nearly universal – in the absence of a documented National Bullshit Act with a death-penalty, the case for Epic Suck is strong enough to meet the need for rigor required for physics, let alone social science. I dread going to the US for just that reason, & I bet there’s a lot of people from Canada & Europe who feel the same.
Socialist, capitalist or animist, NO health-care system can help a care-refuser unless it includes deputized attendants with Tasers. Anderson is another rider on that wingnut crazy-train, & I think we all know which line that locomotive runs on.
So even if we accept for the sake of argument, that one death was caused by socialised medicine, how many were caused by the US private system?
(waves arms wildly) Ooooh, ooooh! I know that one! I know that one! Pick me!
The three leading causes of death in the United States, based on the raw numbers and not segmented by age or other characteristics (which means that the majority of the deaths are gonna be caused by old, or relatively old, people) are, in order:
1. Heart disease – including acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), congestive heart failure (the pump just gives up, for any one or more of many possible reasons), sudden fatal arrythmia (a relatively small number, but it’s still the heart), myocarditis, etc.
2. Cancer – all types, from smoldering lymphomas to watermelon-sized solid tumors to those ugly lesions on your creepy Uncle Ernie’s nose.
3. Stroke – aka ‘brain attack.’
Everybody should know these, or at least not be surprised by their appearance on this short list. And, yes, we could trace a huge percentage of all these deaths to lifestyle/behavioral causes like eating too much fatty food and calories, slouching like slugs on the couch in front of the teevee, smoking those cigarettes and swilling that beer/wine/Zima/cheap bourbon. But those are all subjects for another discussion.
Now, who can tell me what is the 4th leading cause of death in these here United States? Anybody?
(theme song from Jeopardy plays in background)
OK, time’s up.
The 4th leading cause of death in these here United States is…hospitalization.
That’s right. Going to the hospital is only less fatal than heart disease, cancer, or stroke.
Hospitals kill people by giving them infections of the urinary tract, lungs, blood, or surgical wounds that they didn’t have before coming to the hospital. People die from being given the wrong medications, or an incorrect dose of the right medication; they die by being dropped on their heads as they’re transferred from the operating table back to their beds or onto a stretcher; they die from blood clots that develop in their legs, then break off and lodge in one of the arteries leading into their lungs.
And I’m just getting started.
But, hey, helicopter rides are fun!
What a fucking ninny:
backed by GOLD, SILVER, and/or PLATINUM.
And after your anarcho-crapitalist system of rugged individuals has worked perfectly & produced & created wealth, bla bla bla, how does the static amount of precious minerals reflect or BACK all the new wealth that’s magically appeared, because the frontier never closed & there are still several continents w/o white people on them to exploit?
Don’t bother answering, cretin, I’ve answered for you.
Hell, Bouffant, I’m playing with the house’s money!
mikey
‘snarkle–
I believe it. I used to date someone who worked at Bellevue in NYC. She said something like, you’d be amazed at how many deaths or complications are “iatrogenic,” ie, the result of fucking *being in the hospital.*
From Dr. Kildare to Ben Casey to E.R. to House: we think we know, but we don’t.
And uck-fay oo-yay to the trolls, BTW. HTH!
I think it was Warren Buffet who pointed out the stupidity of
1. Paying someone to dig a hole to get the gold out of the ground.
2. Paying someone else to dig a different hole to store to the gold in.
3. Paying someone else to stand watch on the hole we dug to stick the gold in.
But, hey, helicopter rides are fun!
Actually, no.
No, they aren’t…
mikey
Helicopters scare me. Too many moving parts.
A lot of things have to go wrong to make an airplane stop flying. A lot of things have to go right before a helicopter will fly.
Paddy Chayefski’s The Hospital. Masterpiece in general, and in specific shows a patient killed by misdiagnosis and lack of attention.
All of my most frightening memories (that don’t include my ex wife) start with a helicopter ride.
I have learned the fundamental truth. Get on a helicopter, people will try to kill you until you get on a helicopter and go home.
Why? I don’t know. Why is it connected to helicopters? Because, clearly, helicopters are evil. They are the way they take you to the place where they try to kill you for no reason at all.
Helicopters are NOT your friends…
mikey
What about Herky?
You’ve gotta quit all this responsible, moderate behavior NOW, before it’s too late. Stay up late – hell, couple hits of speed (steal the kid’s Ritalin – YOU’RE the one paying for it) will get you through the day. Couple/half dozen martinis at lunch, go home and eat a BIGASS steak, some pasta in butter cream sauce and a little salad soaked in a couple pints of full strength Ranch Dressing. Then stretch out on the sofa and watch some TV with a bottle of Tequila and a shot glass.
your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter…
Of course, several very funny people said that before I did.
But hey, I was busy drinking Sprecher Oktoberfest and arguing politics with my son. Can’t spend all my time here, I’m not a troll.
Get on a helicopter, people will try to kill you until you get on a helicopter and go home.
I hope the manufacturers of the Martin Jetpack are aware of this operational problem.
OT?: For true comedy gold, check this baby(pdf file) out!
Yet another example of GOP genius in action – a national budget without ANY hard numbers! ZOMGWTFBBQ!!1!eleventy-one!! Lowers taxes, curbs spending, creates jobs, controls debt … & it’s a floor-wax too!
Coming soon – the wheelless Goopermobile & wingless Gooperplane!
So, instead of “never get off the boat” one should just skip that step and “never get on the helicopter!”
This is pretty awe-inspiring.
In gratitude for the recipe above:
Tossed Swamp-Eel with Horrible Toasted Clotted Creams
Ingredients:
3 pounds furthest swamp-eel, dried
2 cans freedom-loving clotted cream, jellied
1 Manchego cheese, hypothetically French
5 sticks biblical thresher shark thorax, pickled
5 pints garlic
4 cans basil
Pick over the ingredients absurdly and discard excess clay. Place the swamp-eel into a small saucepan. Use a food processor to combine the Manchego cheese with the clotted cream. Stuff the resulting potion into the swamp-eel. Find some evaporated milk and drink it. Roast the thresher shark thorax, garlic, and the basil. Spread the latter combination on to the former. Toss as if your ancestor depends on it. Serves 11 enemies with fabulous stomachs.
Sounds delish, RB.
But how much better, with pure emu oil?!
I watched the lamentations of the Breitbart but I abruptly closed the tab when he claimed that in his kids’ Westwood public school the PC Marxists have changed St. Patrick’s Day to Potato Day. Yeah, sure they have. Like they celebrated it in the first place. Although I guess his kids might have told him that to please him.
The Adam Yoshida mention above got me to wondering what he’s up to. No activity on his blog lately so I looked him up on Facebook. He’s been busy campaigning for Prime Minister but it seems that his Oliver Hardy haircut and slave labor schemes were not what the voters were looking for. Huh.
there would be private, market-provided security and/or justice agencies that would compete
Yeah, I bet the competition would be pretty exciting. Like the Gambino/Bollano family competition.
or maybe what’s going on in Juarez today.
Bubba, you don’t expose your offspring to that do you? That’s the most frightening of the entire railroad engines/harbor boats/Jay Jay the Jet Plane machines w/ human faces group.
Indeed, is Herky from Jay Jay?
Only the dickmaster can hand out bountiful bowls of dicks, ZRM. You know who I am talking about.
Emu oil- that’s like VO5 for the hoary albino freedom rock jam kicking-out engaged set.
Mises was an architect previous to his career as an economist
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
ARARARARARARARARARARAR
ARARARARARARARARARARAR
I don’t got no pickled biblical thresher shark thorax. S’all right to use plain?
Jesus mercy, all these horror stories make me so glad I live in the socialist hellhole of Australiastan, and not the free world paradise of the US.
All you folks with the harrowing personal tales, I feel for you. And I can’t understand how anyone could be so blinkered philistine pig-ignorant as to attempt to justify a system that allows people to die horribly if they don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. A system that demands that people be allowed to profit both from your illness and from your attempts to protect yourself from bankruptcy and homelessness in the event of illness.
Waiting months, for doctors?!? I gripe if I have to wait more than a week. Ten thousand dollars a year for health insurance? When I had health insurance, the extra-posh-with-all-the-trimmings plan was only about one thousand. And it’s not like we have surgery of the saw-and-bucket-of-pitch variety, either, as some wankers would probably claim (because that’s what ‘socialised medicine’ must have, obviously, since it can’t be as good as the might US).
Jesus. How can you people manage there? You poor buggers.
So you think that money is the root of all evil?
Nope.
As the Bible correctly said, and Rand gravely misquotes, “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”
By the way, when does Wilma Flintstone’s Cookbook come out in print?
I have learned the fundamental truth. Get on a helicopter, people will try to kill you until you get on a helicopter and go home.
“They heard the hum of the motors,
They counted the rotors,
And waited for us to arrive…
So they could charge us based on the market for emergency medical care, on the assumption we’d rather face bankruptcy than death”
Goodnight Saigon, 2009 remix.
You rang?
Scene: A small town bank in America, 1830
Citizen: Hi, I’d like to exchange these bank notes of yours for some gold.
Bank Employee: Oh? Is there a problem?
Citizen: Well, yes. See, I went to a guy to buy a new plow for the upcoming planting season, and I tried to pay for it with your bank notes. But he said that your bank sucks and that he won’t take your notes. So I figure he’ll take hard currency instead. I have some in your bank, so if you could get it for me…
Bank Employee: Ah, well, see…there’s a little problem with that.
Citizen: What problem? These notes are backed by specie, right?
Bank Employee: Yes, of course.
Citizen: Why can’t you give me any? My money is in this bank.
Bank Employee: (nervous laughter) Uh, well, you know the economy hasn’t been all that great around here, and some folks got nervous and thought we weren’t dependable, so they won’t take our notes. Then a whole bunch of our customers came here and wanted their gold and silver. Said they couldn’t buy anything without it. But, ahem, it seems that we loaned a bunch of money and issued way more bank notes than we could redeem with gold and silver.
Citizen: So now what happens?
Bank Employee: We’ve suspended specie payments.
Citizen: So that means what?
Bank Employee: You’re not getting any gold for those notes.
Citizen: But it’s my money! You can’t do that!
Bank Employee: Uh, well, it’s not your money anymore…
Bank Employee puts “Next Window Please” sign in front of him and goes to the back of the bank.
End scene
More Libertarian stories like this one. Loved it.
My question is — if we were to go back on some kind of commodity-backed currency, gold would be a pretty crappy choice, since a) we’d be dependent on other countries for money supply and b) gold has way more industrial uses now than it did even in the 1970s, when Nixon shitcanned the gold standard.
Does anyone have an actual, legitimate reason for the gold standard, or is it all based on economic ignorance?
I read an article saying that, if the US went back on the gold standard, people would trade gold as a substitute for trading dollars, meaning that everything that affects the price of the dollar (the health of the US economy, speculative trading, etc.) would affect the gold price.
Do you trust THE STATE to have access to your most private, confidential records?
Actually, yes. Up here in Canada, they generally do a good job of keeping them private and confidential; hell, we even have federal and provincial-level privacy commissioners to hold them accountable to us, the taxpaying citizens. Who are paying them, among other things, to keep our medical records out of the hands of those other than our doctors and ourselves. Just as we are paying them to make sure our doctors (chosen by us!) get paid whatever the going rate is for treating us…
It’s the corporations I don’t trust. Especially those big on profit. Most particularly those who make it off people’s medical conditions. You may have seen them; they advertise Viagra and all its clones on your “freedom”-loving TV channels all the time.