Colorado Right

u-BOT 5 is a robot designed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts. It was made to help old people should something happen to them. Its capabilities include “picking up small objects, dialing 911 and even using a stethoscope to check vitals.” It packs a webcam, microphone, LCD touchscreen, WiFi, and could potentially be used to make virtual housecalls . As you can see from the picture, if you ever fall and can’t get up there’s nothing to fear when uBOT-5 is near. He’ll just wheel himself over and, uh, kidney punch you with his little ball-hands.

Let’s see - how about the one where a poor pregnant woman was denied care and both she and her baby died?

Sen. Hillary Clinton will stop telling an emotional story about a uninsured pregnant woman who died after being denied medical care, Clinton’s campaign said.

In the story, Clinton describes a woman from rural Ohio who was making minimum wage at a local pizza shop. The woman, who was uninsured, became pregnant.

Clinton said the woman ran into trouble and went to a hospital in a nearby county but was denied treatment because she couldn’t afford a $100 payment.

In her speeches, Clinton said the woman later was taken to the hospital by ambulance and lost the baby. The young woman was then taken by helicopter to a Columbus hospital where she died of complications.

Just one little problem with all that of course:

Hospital Chief Executive Officer Rick Castrop in a statement said, “we reviewed the medical and patient accounts of the patient” after she was named in a newspaper story about Clinton’s stump speech.

“There is no indication that she was ever denied medical care at any time, for any reason. We clearly reject any perception that we ever denied any care to this woman.”

A hospital spokesperson confirmed to CNN the woman had insurance. She said the hospital decided to come forward after people in the community began to question if they had denied her care.

Its always so horrible when people start checking up on these things. I really think the issue is that the Clintons could always get away with this before because the media would hide it for them. Now a) the media is for Obama and b) independent fact checkers can get their stories out via the web.

But the excuse given is “we got told this and didn’t have any reason to disbelieve it”.
Isn’t this what they accuse President Bush of doing with the Iraq War intelligence?

However, the real whopper of the weekend is this one:

Clinton told a convention of Democrats in North Dakota when her tax forms were made public: “Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people. As a matter of fact my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House by doing what he loves most - talking to people.”

Surprise? You and ex-President Pantsdown have been grubbing for every penny for years. I don’t care if you earned the money - I wish you had earned twice as much. It depresses me that there are enough idiots who will willingly pay you two to lie to them, but that’s another story. Just don’t tell us you are “surprised”.

She is stiffing caterers, lighting companies, and all kinds of companies.  Are the health insurance bills for all her campaign workers being paid?  Inquiring minds what to know.  Especially since she is threatening to throw people in jail if they don’t buy health insurance from HER.

Of course, her health care is paid for by taxpayers.  If anything were to happen Walter Reed would open its loving arms and give her anything she wanted.  I wonder if her campaign staff would be forced to go to emergency rooms to wait?

Or maybe she’s just waiting to make this happen:

In an extensive interview on health policy on Wednesday, Clinton, a Democrat from New York, said she would like to cap health insurance premiums at 5 percent to 10 percent of income.

It would then be the responsibility of all her employees to fend for themselves, right Senator?

A interesting internal email has surfaced - well, interesting only in the fact that is re-affirms the CNN bias:

From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance

Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Allison

From the wonderful House of Eratosthenes:

People want, as the Obamamaniacs tell us, “change.” I say, go for it. Fight terrorism with a universal healthcare plan. Go ahead and make it prohibitively and artificially expensive to hire new people to a business or, God forbid, start a new business. Give ALL the money and power to our trial lawyers. Take all our guns away and punish violent crime with a finger-waggling and wrist-slapping or two, if you punish it at all. Pay criminals money to not misbehave. Negotiate with tyrants around the world — no exceptions. Let me know how that works out.

I encourage you to read the whole article - a very well thought-out defense of conservatism in a time of McCain.  Does America need to be shown just how illogical, impractical, and self-defeating liberalism is every generation?

Do we need to just shut up and do what the Republican Party elders tell us to - regardless of whether it is good for the country or not?  Just because Obambi and the Hildebeast would be so much worse?

Its going to be an interesting 2008.

Here’s an interesting proposition mooted from the UK:

Last week, an intriguing proposition was mooted by Government minister Dawn Primarolo.

Teenage girls, she said, could be steered towards what is described as “long-term contraception”.

This is now possible thanks to the development of contraceptive jabs and implants which can last up to five years.

In other words, there is a way of effectively sterilising girls for a lengthy period of time.

At what age? Well, doesn’t 12 until 17 sound rather sensible?

Its the underlying assumption that I find most despicable. Do you own your body? Or does the government? After all, the UK government “gives” you absolutely 100% free health care. (Just don’t look too closely at what you actually get). So if the government is responsible for your health care, does that mean it should be able to control your actions and bodily functions?

This is just an extension of the thought process that treatment for smokers and fat people and sick old people costs too much and should be curtailed. Why not keep these young sluts from having babies? Just look at the positive outcomes:

• fewer abortions - theoretically
• no welfare payments for those illegitimate rug rats
• lots of time for these teenagers to practice sex without getting pregnant so they will be experienced, available, and willing
• less maternity health costs paid for by the all-knowing and kind government

While this might be considered some sort of hypothetical trial balloon to demonstrate absurdity - do you really think that there aren’t some government planners who are actually planning for this action? Of course, no one would actually try and implement mass sterilization, would they?

But remember that doctors organizations and government bureaucrats now consider it safe to say that some people should not be treated because of the choices they have made in their life.  20 years ago, would the average citizen believe that this would be considered mainstream thought?  Its funny that all the liberal hysteria about loss of freedoms completely misses the fact that the biggest loss will be coming as the “gift” of government.

Remember that this free Obambi-care or Hillarycare will change the basic standing between government and citizens. Once you give responsibility for your health care to government, government will own you and your actions.

So should governments encourage people to eat twinkies and smoke?

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

”It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. ”But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

And this really brings into sharp relief an interesting point about turning the responsibility over health care to a government.  While the initial jabber about universal healthcare is how wonderful it will be that no one has to worry about getting sick because the all-knowing Big Brother will take care of everyone - once you screw up the system and get government running  it, the focus becomes COST!  As in - holy crap this free health care costs tons of money.  And if we only have 25% of the population carrying everybody else, the productive ones will finally balk.

So it becomes a cost-benefit analysis - as in just how much cost can we shave off these silly people who are going to die anyway in order to keep the productive ones happy.  And government bureaucrats are really good at a) screwing over people who aren’t government bureaucrats and b) responding to political pressure.  So whoever screams the loudest gets the health care and the peasants are sent off to watch TV and die quietly in the corner.

Which this interesting little snippet in the story illustrates:

”This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.