Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments.
Let's start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care? The most usual reason given is because its...
Sometimes, when I hear about "disparities" and "inequities," I think of a disparity that applied directly to me-- the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan.
When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't even let me try out for...
After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust.
When that person is the President of the United States, the potential for disaster...
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.
That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to...
Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics.
The big trick for the president is to convince the public that...
Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and hysteria considered sufficient?
We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises the question as to why that calls for government-controlled...
As someone who was once rushed to a hospital in the middle of the night, because of taking a medication that millions of people take every day without the slightest problem, I have a special horror of life and death medical decisions being made by bureaucrats in Washington, about patients...
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to...
There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration.
The fact that they got away with...
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Different people have very different reactions to President Barack Obama. Those who listen to his rhetoric are often inspired, while those who follow what he actually does are often appalled.
New York and Chicago have both recently had their coldest June in generations. If...
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation-- that is, something outside the control of the...
The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop...
Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?
Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy...
When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is."
For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system. Because that's where the...
Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies...
Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.
The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He...
"Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.
To tell us, with a straight face,...
The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.
The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can...
There is so much for high school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information.
A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately, the...
It is a good reflection on Americans that they tend to be on the side of the underdog. But it is often hard to tell who is in fact the underdog, or why.
Many years ago, there was a big, lumbering catcher named Ernie Lombardi whose slowness afoot was legendary....
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Upon learning that the Constitution requires a president to be a natural born citizen, a college student said: "What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified than one born by C-section?"
Airlines that keep passengers trapped for hours in planes sitting on the...
Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
But you don't need a dictator to make you feel...
