Open Thread

CGar, COTD >>>>>>>>>
My birthday present that you never got me 🙂

“Obama had nothing to do with it.”

I wouldn’t quite say that.”

Neither Obama nor Bush had much to do with first round of bailouts (before the legislation – back when the Fed was acting under its interpretation of its existing authority). There were maybe 10 or 20 people who really made that happen. It was all very quick and under extreme duress and I doubt it can really be said that any politician pushed for the intervention.

Bush was president when the TARP legislation was signed. It had broad bipartisan support if memory serves. I don’t know if Senator Obama voted for it. He probably did given the election and all, but he can’t be called an architect of the legislation or anything like that. No one really understood it and everyone was scared. By the time the legislation was passed there was a much larger group of people running things than there was on the AIG/ Lehman/ Merrill weekend. Bush personally, and most of his cabinet, did not run the process. I know it is popular for lefties to blame bush for things and righties to blame obama for things, but neither is true here. I understand Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book on all of this is pretty good.

“I am wondering what y’all think about Mary McDonnell’s views on evolution, including that, if evolution were real, monkeys would be evolving into human beings before our very eyes. Discuss.”

My daughter got past this level of insight when she was five. She asked how the monkey mommy of the first human baby could understand what the baby was saying. I told her how evolution goes very slowly over many thousands of generations, we read a little picture book about it, and she got it.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent enough time on the OT to watch the reverse: humans evolving into all sorts of other animals right before my very eyes.

Legion, that post was a whole lot of nothing, regarding the health care bill. Health care is swallowing our economy and our government budget whole. Not because it is so good, but because it is so bad. I can well understand why the Obama administration took it on this year. It’s the elephant in the room. It needs a major overhaul, and it was time. Unfortunately in order to pass, it got messed with big time.

Bottom line is – we, as taxpayers pay big bucks to federal, state and local taxes to pay for health care, whether we have any or not. Why not fix a system that forces people into super expensive emergency rooms? Why not do something to prevent people from only going to doctors when they are at death’s door, and medical care is so much more invasive, much more expensive, and ultimately futile? Why not make all of the paperwork, etc more efficient? If we can cram 1000 songs into a device the size of a postage stamp, why can’t we have a state of the art medical database? Yes, tort reform is necessary, but so is reforming the stranglehold of powerful insurance companies that won’t insure those who need it most, and won’t pay for any techniques newer than bleeding and leeches. How about providing for the millions of people who cannot get insurance from their jobs, or cannot get insurance outside of those jobs either, because it costs too much? Or don’t have jobs or insurance?

Health care costs too much because it’s the most inefficient system around for a sizable faction of this country. Something needed to be done, and it was a good idea.