Things I’m unable to comprehend:
Greeting Cards
I’ve never understood why greeting cards are so expensive. It’s a folded piece of cardboard with flowers or kittens on the front and inside something deeply deep, like “Happy Birthday” or “Thinking of You.”
Wife Trophy recently bought two such samples of sentimental rubbish, pink envelopes included.
Total cost: $9.58.
I went to the Ukiah post office to mail the cards, one to Israel and one to Italy, stood in line a short while, and the ever-cheerful Steve took out a red rubber stamp that said “International Mail” and sold me two stamps.
Two envelopes that will travel around the world?
Total cost: $3.60.
Maybe this is A) Why the post office is forced to raise the price of domestic stamps twice a month, or else B) suggests congressional hearings on why rapacious CEOs of Big Card are overdue. (Reverse A&B)
Medical Care Ratings
We read and hear that our medical care system ranks last on this list, worst on another list, and 69th on a list I just consulted. The chart says the USA is far behind such health care utopias as Cuba (27th), Uruguay (35) and Uzbekistan (49). I don’t understand this.
Do you know anyone who would prefer cardio treatment in Armenia (68) to UCSF, or Mayo Clinic? Or hip and knee replacement surgery anywhere but Willits, CA? These lists are nonsense unless we consider the corollary, which everyone always does:
The United States is Number One in medical costs. Highest anywhere! Most expensive in the world! Can it be true?
Let’s put on our tinfoil thinking caps, dim the lights and figure it out. Why does health care cost so much in America?
ANSWER: Because we’re wealthy. We have big lots of much more money and we spend it on fancier cars than people in Qatar (#38) and buy more expensive vacations, houses and liquor than lucky people living on Mars.
And we spend lots of our vast wealth on health care, much of it optional or cosmetic. Also, thanks to the pure genius of the Affordable Care Act, we have coverage (and we pay dearly for this coverage) for free transgender surgeries, all OBGYN needs, including for men, and lots of other medical services the primitive health systems in Singapore (No. 1) have yet to adopt.
Our death rates are too high? Why not allow fentanyl smugglers to invade other countries with open borders and watch their suicide rates skyrocket? Plus, because we’re wealthy, many people die in car wrecks. This is rare in Cambodia. (Go sue Big Vehicle.)
Americans eat enormous amounts of food, much of which isn’t very healthy, so they get obese and they die. Rarely a problem in Bangladesh.
Bottom Line: In the USA if you break your leg, you carefully consider your options, and ultimately decide to go to the ER and have it fixed.
In Venezuela if you break your leg, you carefully consider your options, and ultimately decide to spend the rest of your life limping.
Joy And Cheer At A Murder
Leftists are in full chortle mode since the CEO of a major health care organization was shot to death on a Manhattan sidewalk.
Ho ho, and whoop-ti-doo!
From Elizabeth Warren and campus clowns down to Mendo’s proudest progressives the tone has been festive, marinated in a dank stew of class envy soaked in hatred and violence. Oh how jolly, (Less so for his surviving children, brothers, wife during the Christmas season.)
But he deserved it, you say. He (was) rich and our health care stinks and to slay the man is to strike a blow for freedom and fire a warning shot to all who would trample upon the oppressed. Is that your argument? Well then.
If a lawyer gets a Not Guilty verdict for someone who obviously did the crime (think O.J.) would you cheer on a lynch mob to hang Johnny Cochrane?
Suppose Governor Jerry Brown promises a high speed ‘Bullet Train” to LA, counts the votes, collects the money, cancels the project and hurries back to his Sacramento mansion. What would be more fun: Quick execution or slow grisly torture? Live on CNN or full-length film by Martin Scorsese?
Haven’t we been through this before? Learn anything? JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Weather Underground, John Lennon?
Mr. Dylan: “And here I sit so patiently / Trying to find what price / You have to pay to get out of / Going through all these things twice.”
Don’t ask the price. We can’t afford it.
Though I am not ready to give up on our economic system, I would say the origin of the problems you address is poorly regulated capitalism.
Starts with sending greeting cards to genocidal murderers.
Seems to forget Switzerland exists. Wealthier per capita, but with universal health care via private mandate. Half the price with superior outcomes. And they still have bad drug problems. The neighborhood where I sometimes stay in Zurich has mostly blue porch lights. (If you know, you know.)
People on both sides of the silly and childish left/right spectrum have lionized Luigi Mangione. Comparing Thompson to MLK, Malcolm X, or John Lennon? Also silly, and disingenuous.
Ends with a quote from a famous genocidal Zionist.