We offer you another excellent view on the Republican approach to health care by Washington Post’s Tom Toles.
About 50 leaders of the “tea party” movement will meet in Washington on Tuesday with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other top GOP honchos to discuss campaign strategies and conservative principles.
Tuesday’s meeting on Capitol Hill will mark the first time that a broad coalition of tea party organizers – who, let’s not forget – have railed against both the Democratic and the Republican establishments, will sit down and talk with GOP leaders. Top Republicans have been openly courting the organizers of the movement, looking to pick up their support before the November midterm elections.
Who are the “tea party” people? There have been all kinds of theories and statements about the movement, so it is probably time to clarify this issue a little.
The tea party movement emerged in early 2009 as a protest of President Obama’s economic policies and health-care agenda. It appears to be made up of hundreds of disparate regional groups, there doesn’t appear to be anything along the lines of a national leadership, and different organizers frequently have quarreled publicly about tactics, including at the inaugural, recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, where Sarah Palin became even more famous after the discovery that while she mocked President Obama’s use of a teleprompter, she actually had some simplistic notes scribbled on the palm of her hand.
Tea party participants have united around a conservative formula of smaller government, less federal spending and stronger national defense, but, despite rampant rumors, not all of them are Republicans. Many are registered independents and even disapprove of former president George W. Bush and the Republicans who controlled Congress in the mid-2000s just as much as they do of Obama and the current Democratic congressional leadership.
Although drinking hot tea might be considered anti-American by some, here in the land of iced tea and coffee, we certainly do hope that Michael Steele will have the presence of mind to actually serve some nice, hot tea during the meeting.
We’re not sure why the GOP Chairman Michael Steele keeps sending us emails, beginning with “Dear Fellow Republican”, but some of them, including the now seemingly defunct Weekly Trunk newsletter are usually pretty funny.
The GOP’s latest effort is Valentine’s Day greeting e-cards. The mailing says among other things:” This Valentine’s Day, show the most important Republicans, Democrats and Independents in your life how much they mean to you by sending them a GOP Valentine’s E-Card.”
The email continues:” Pass along a special message from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that they didn’t craft this Valentine’s card behind closed doors like they did with their government-run health care experiment.
Or let President Obama extend your sincerest wishes to a loved one by claiming he’s saved or created millions of Valentine’s – - (We really hate people, who use the so-called “m-dashes”. Stick to single hyphens, please.) just like his party has claimed that the wasteful, pork-filled stimulus bill has created or saved thousands, 1.5 million or 2 million jobs depending on which Obama Administration official you ask.”
The email of course ends with a plea for money. We wonder what is the money going to be used for…maybe for creating Valentine cards, or for planning to deny everything, blindly criticize and put roadblocks against everything that the president is trying to achieve?
And now let us reward you with a few of the GOP’s loving Valentine “creations”.
We certainly hope that your sweetheart will appreciate these cards, created with the usual, subtle and tasteful Republican touch 
Florida Governor Charlie Crist
It appears that despite the huge Haitian relief effort so far, the question of costs has stopped the transportation of critically ill, or injured Haitian patients to Florida hospitals.
Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist (don’t for a moment confuse him with Christ) has asked the federal government to help pay for care. A reasonable request on the surface, but cannot the money issue get taken care of afterward? In the meantime, people are dying for Crist’s sakes!
Just to think that this “compassionate conservative” is running for the U.S. Senate this year. To quote from Crist’s campaign website: ” Charlie Crist strongly opposes the health care legislation being debated in Congress. A government run health care system is not the answer to our nation’s health care needs but instead it is the typical answer of liberals and Democrats in Congress. The American people need a health care system that provides choice and access to quality health care at affordable costs. These health care opportunities are not found in the legislation championed by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.”
Another great champion of health care for everybody and of human rights in general. Phooey!!!
Our friends at BadGalsRadio have another take on this. Take a look.
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Update, January 31, 2010: “Late Sunday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was on track to resume by early Monday. The White House received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the U.S. and among its international partners for the patients.”
So, we didn’t have “additional medical capacity”? Is that a joke? A few hundred patients would have strained our “medical capacity”? Don’t give us that. It was an issue of money, all along. Another argument for reforming our health care industry – the most expensive anywhere.
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Here is an Associated Press story on the original subject:
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By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI – The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States because of an apparent cost dispute, though a doctor warned that some injured patients faced imminent death if the flights don’t resume.
The evacuations were temporarily suspended Wednesday, said Capt. Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command. The flights were halted a day after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist asked the federal government to help pay for care.
However, Dr. Barth Green, a doctor involved in the relief effort in Port-au-Prince, warned that his patients needed to get to better hospitals.
“We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don’t Medevac them,” said Green, chairman of the University of Miami’s Global Institute for Community Health and Development.
At a temporary field hospital at Haiti’s international airport, set up with donations to Green’s institute, two men had already died of tetanus. Doctors said 5-year-old Betina Joseph faced a similar fate within 24 hours unless evacuated to a U.S. hospital where she can be put on a respirator.
The girl – infected with tetanus through a two-inch cut on her thigh – weakly shooed a fly buzzing around her face as her mother caressed her corn rows, apparently unaware that getting the girl out could mean life or death.
“If we can’t save her by getting her out right away, we won’t save her,” said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons staffing the field hospital.
“If we can’t save her by getting her out right away, we won’t save her,” said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons staffing the field hospital.
There were some states that would not accept patients who needed care in the U.S., and they could not be transported without a hospital to accept them, Aandahl said.
Aandahl declined to specify which states declined to accept patients, and he referred further questions to a Pentagon press office, where an after-hours answering service could not accept incoming messages Saturday.
Florida officials said Saturday that they were not aware of any hospital in the state refusing to take in the patients. However, in a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the governor said “Florida’s health care system is quickly reaching saturation, especially in the area of high level trauma care.”
Crist asked Sebelius to activate the National Disaster Medical System, which is typically used in domestic disasters and pays for victims’ care. His letter noted the state’s health care system was already stretched by the winter tourism season and annual “snowbird” migration. South Florida hospitals also were preparing for a surge in visitors for the NFL Pro Bowl on Sunday and the Super Bowl next weekend.
While in Tampa on Saturday, Crist said Florida’s Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon estimated the state’s costs had reached about $7 million.
Poor coordination and limited resources, not medical care costs, drove the governor’s request, said John Cherry, spokesman for the state Division of Emergency Management.
“We’ve made it clear that (the cost) is an issue we’ll deal with down the road,” he said.
Health officials say the medical flights landed without any advance notice, and the poor coordination may be keeping some survivors from getting the help they need, Cherry said. He cited the case of a burn victim flown earlier this week into Tampa, which is not equipped to treat those injuries.
Crist said his state remains committed to caring for injured earthquake victims and reuniting families, though he was reaching out to other states to help care for them as well.
As of Friday, the Florida Department of Health reported that 526 patients had been received at hospitals in the state: more than 400 in South Florida, 76 in the Orlando area and 37 in the Tampa area. Four burn victims were transported to North Carolina, Crist spokesman Sterling Ivey said.
“Recently we learned that federal planning is underway to move between 30-50 critically ill patients per day for an indefinite period of time,” Crist told Sebelius, saying Florida could not handle so many patients.
More than 135 patients remain hospitalized in South Florida, said Jeanne Eckes-Roper, the health and medical chairwoman of a state domestic security task force for the South Florida region.
She requested on Monday that new patients be taken elsewhere in Florida.
“We had to make sure we did not overwhelm our capacity,” she said. “We stand ready to take whatever the government wants to give us.”
Aandahl said no evacuation requests have been made by U.S. military medical facilities in Haiti, including the hospital ship the USNS Comfort, since the flights were suspended Wednesday.
There were only about a dozen medical evacuations by the U.S. military after the Jan. 12 earthquake, he said.
Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
From top left: Kue Bui for Newsweek; Andrew Hetherington / Redux; James Keyser / Time Life Pictures-Getty Images; Richard A. Bloom / Corbis; Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Gettty Images; Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images
Newsweek magazine has a very interesting and lengthy article, entitled “The Return of the Neocons” by David Margolick.
Here’s a short excerpt: “One prominent activist on the libertarian end of the party – who hates what he sees as their costly foreign – policy adventurism and the GOP electoral losses (i.e., the presidency and both houses of Congress) he attributes to them – calls them ‘parasites’: with little electoral power of their own, he claims, they have had to attach themselves to others, like George W. Bush. Comfortably ensconced behind a cloak of anonymity, he bristles, but also marvels, at their endurance and effectiveness, comparing them to ‘an infection that keeps coming back.’ “They’ve perfected this absolutely incredible thing: they announce who they are, how powerful they are, how influential they are, and get people to write articles about them,” he says. “But when their policies are perceived to have caused mass chaos, they don’t exist, they didn’t have anything to do with it, they weren’t there, and they get really snotty. And anyone who attacks them is anti-Semitic.”
Worth a read we think.
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