I Cogitate

Let's take you to President George W. Bush, on the road with his traveling revival show, selling his vision of Shangri-la. Do remember, this is the same person who thinks paradise is a ranch in Crawford, Texas:

Emancipator George: Oh, I'm going to let you create health savings accounts and your own social security. Freedom, freedom, here at last! The burdensome and heavy yoke of government thrown off! Ownership society is the gilded pathway to your salvation! Hallelujah! Step right up and drink the Kool-Aid, er, tonic...

What's that? Yeah, yeah, right, this does mostly benefit the very well off but c'mon, get yourself wealthy, this is America... you say don't have any money to set aside for YOUR very own accounts, well, just what's wrong with YOU? You say YOU'RE uninsured? YOU can't afford insurance? Lordy, lordy, lordy! Maybe we should check on just how hard-working YOU really are...Karl, call security, how in the hell did these moaners and groaners get past the screeners?

Okay, where were we? Oh yes, next, we're going to roll out the Safety Society. Bullets and bazookas in every garage. Just like Texas. An F-16 or a Bradley fighting vehicle in every neighborhood, you decide. See we give you CHOICES! Hallelujah! We're disbanding our armed forces. Collectivism just doesn't work. It's a failed premise. We are putting the safety of this country back in YOUR hands, where it should have been all along. You climb into your F-16 at 8 a.m. and you got the kids to school in 2, maybe 3 minutes. The benefits of freedom. Am I right? Power to the peons...people, I meant people! Can we get Barbra Sreisand up here to sing her famous song? We can't? Oh, she's inconvenienced. She's waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay. Here we are trying to empower all of you and the most famous singer of the lib'rals is vacationing and can't be bothered. 

Yessiree, we're heading down the Freedom Road. Come travel along with us. But lemme tell you, just like with the armed forces, we gonna free you up from even more. We won't be building no roads and highways anymore. We're going to let the great people of this country make the decisions to build their own roads. Plus, you'll get to patrol them with your Bradleys and wearin' your body armor. How about that for getting government off your backs and out of your lives? Same thing with national parks. It'll all be up to you 'cause you, you and you, well you're the marketplace and what a mighty fine marketplace you are, if I say so myself. We won't be bothering with any impediments to your right to fly, like those bothersome air traffic controllers. The marketplace will determine who is still flying at the end of the day. Who flies and who dies. Hallelujah!

My philosophy is stand tall, stand proud, stand alone. The power of one! Just look at my life as a fine, shining example. What's that? Uh, yes, the Bahrainis did buy me out of that scrape when my Arbusto oil company failed. But that's why...well that's why friends are good. Gotta have friends. Mucho friendos to you, my Hispanic supporters. You have friends don' t you? Of course you do. Then you'll be okay. My Daddy has lots of friends so when I wanted to protect the skies of Texas from the high-flyin' Viet Cong, well, he called some of his friends and, shazam, I be a pilot. When I wanted to buy me some baseball players, well, I formed a coalition-of-the-willing and the Texas Rangers were mine. Same thing with me as governor. When I got the itch to run Texas, my buddy Karl Rove, see, there's that friend thing again, well, he simply pointed out that my female opponent liked women. A lot. One whole heckuva lot. Well, I like women too, but I'm a most manly man.The good people of Texas spoke loud and proud. So, of course, I won.

My ol' buddy, Kenny Boy Lay, well, when he needed help, his friend and mine, your vice-president, Dick Cheney, jumped to give him a helping hand. We should help those who help themselves. Now, some say Kenny helped himself to too much of the treasury of California when them lib'rals out on the coast couldn't fire up their lahtay machines and their hot tubs were getting cool. Well, I know Kenny, Kenny Boy is too fine of a man to do an end run (Enron) around the law.

For those who have yet to see the light, who try to muzzle the burgeoning cry of liberty, who wish to impede the beacon of freedom I'm shining, well. lemme say this: (unbuttons and takes off shirt) see these nipples, hard and proud they are! We've gotten your opposing phone calls, your nasty letters, your harassing emails, your obscene faxes--all mealymouth blips on our grand march to freedom. So, drop dead. We don't look at 'em. They ain't even worth using in the White House outhouse. Don't even bother sending 'em. My words to those who try and stop me. Read my nips, no new faxes. Hallelujah!

It's those damn uncontrollable facts that keep popping up as banana peels for the Bushies. Reality has a way of doing that. Just when they think they've conquered and eliminated it, it's back. Sort of like cockroaches.

From the MSNBC web site, here is the opener on this story and link to the complete article:

Medical bills make up half of bankruptcies
Study finds most bankruptcy filers had health insurance
The Associated Press
Feb. 2, 2005

BOSTON - Costly illnesses trigger about half of all personal bankruptcies, and most of those who go bankrupt because of medical problems have health insurance, according to findings from a Harvard University study to be released Wednesday.

Researchers from Harvard’s law and medical schools said the findings underscore the inadequacy of many private insurance plans that offer worst-case catastrophic coverage, but little financial security for less severe illnesses.

“Unless you’re Bill Gates, you’re just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of medicine. “Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick.”

The study, to be published online Wednesday by the journal Health Affairs, distributed questionnaires to 1,771 bankruptcy filers in 2001 in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. That year, there were 1.46 million personal bankruptcies in the United States.

More than 900 of those questioned underwent more detailed interviews about their financial and medical circumstances for what the authors say is the first in-depth study of medical causes of personal bankruptcies, which have risen rapidly in recent years.

Illness and medical bills were cited as the cause, at least in part, for 46.2 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the study. Himmelstein said the figure rose to 54.5 percent when three other factors were counted as medical-related triggers for bankruptcies: births, deaths and pathological gambling addiction.

The study estimates medical-caused bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans each year, counting debtors and their dependents, including 700,000 children.

Most were insured...

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