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Red Tide

Something Has To Give

The Other McCain has a piece up that soberly points out that other nations have sacrificed their national defense capabilities in the name of national health care, and he's scored it with a familiar undertone: that we are going to all die, or at least end up with children who speak Japanese German Chinese Arabic, if we give up even a single nickel in military spending.

It's the exact same technique the left uses to protect their entitlements - scaring people into believing that we can't possibly survive without at least one wing of the government being every bit as big and as bloated as it is.

It's a pathetically intellectually dishonest argument, part of the tired old "right vs left" pretend paradigm that keeps government fat and happy. 

See, in that paradigm, there are only two choices. Somebody somewhere is going to kill us - that's a non-debatable given. We only get to decide if the infection is going to come from a damned dirty Muslim or a damned dirty needle. 

And that makes sense to some people.

Isn't that the worst part though - that people actually believe it?  These great leaders, the politically powerful philosophers who have been absolutely wrong about everything for the past 15 years, (except, of course, about how to win elections), spew this nonsense and the majority of the voters lap it up and then savagely spit it back out at anybody who dares suggest there might need to be some compromises across the spending board.  It really should make us wonder how many fellow Americans actually have at least a mild case of undiagnosed paranoia. (Ironically, I suppose that could work in favor of the national health care fear mongers - at least until the medications kick in.)

As for Europe, it's perfectly obvious that those other nations would not have had the luxury of sacrificing their militaries if we weren't so happy to let them use ours.   They get the greatest deal in the world - we subsidize their defense by putting our troops there, we subsidize their medical systems by subsidizing research and providing drugs for less than cost, and then we send them staggering amounts of financial aid when their systems start showing signs of collapse. 

Remember, we're considered the crazy loose cannons for continuing to call out a party - our party -  that pretends to be standing firm against socialism while simultaneously acting as socialism's largest enabler, because that makes sense to some people who believe that we have to fight "unseen threats." (Maybe the government should sudsidize nightlights - they seemed to work wonders on the "unseen threats" in my world.)

And now this bizarre assertion that  we have to fight socialized medicine here, so we can subsidize it abroad, especially because it works so well....Seriously, in what world does that make sense?  

There are a myriad of reasons to oppose federal control of the health care system, and I don't intend to get into that here. But if the Republicans honestly think the "don't make us give up our military to fund health care," talking point is going to win them any converts, they're even more out of touch with reality than I would have guessed, and they're going to lose Middle America, just like they did in 2006. 

And I'll be right here saying, "We told you so," because hey - I'm a snob like that.

Red Tide

Red Tide

Red Tide

Red Tide

 

Red Tide... I'm Baaa-aack!

 

Red Tide

In Honour of James - Red Tide

I am very fond of the Red Tide cartoons of our esteemed contributor James.

James, you might find this interesting:

Surprisingly, the red water seen sweeping towards the beach in the photo above is entirely natural, and the result of a very often harmful onset of Algal Bloom; a phenomenon in which algae accumulate in a body of water to such a degree that its colour actually changes. Visually stunning, but potentially dangerous.

The source.