The Constitution and Me

The Supreme Court's involvement in the healthcare issue has become very interesting side show. One is tempted to say freak show.  Extremely strange and utterly irrational arguments are  being made even by the justices themselves.  I'm certain that everyone is heard the broccoli argument. Apparently, many otherwise rational people think that providing for health care for Americans is the same thing is ordering them to buy broccoli.  One is tempted to say that this argument is idiotic. However, it is more than that.  It is borderline insanity.

The argument only makes sense if one assumes that the government is not a necessary evil, but an unnecessary and even cancerous evil.  One can only assume that the radical right-wing justices believe in anarchy.  This would explain their irrational fear of government.

It should be noted here that I have said all along that the radical right-wing of the Republican Party is wrong to state that Obamacare, as they refer to it, is unconstitutional.  A law of this nature is new, so the question is open. 

This statement should be: We do not know if the law is constitutional or unconstitutional. We must test it in court and find out. 

I consider this law to be appallingly bad.  Since it is a radical right wing Republican law designed and created in one their private little think tanks, this is not surprising. Radical Republicans believe there is a private solution to every problem, but it is economically impossible to create an effectively functioning health care system which actually provides healthcare using a for-profit model. Private enterprise simply cannot perform this function.

Not long ago, Mr. Santorum was asked a question regarding our current system.  A college student was the questioner. The student said he didn't "think God appreciates the fact that we have 50,000 to 100,000 uninsured Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare every year," citing a 2009 study out of Harvard University.

"Dying?" Santorum answered before going back and forth about the validity of the study.  After all, who cares if tens of thousands of Americans die every year? At least, it doesn't matter as long as you can pretend that they didn't die. The game of pretend is utterly essential to the Republican worldview.

In spite of Mr. Santorum's reaction, I think most people would agree that Harvard University is not noted for its extremely inaccurate, politically motivated distribution of misinformation.

If those tens of thousands of Americans had had the good luck to have been born in Germany, Japan, Canada, or any other wealthy nation in the world, they would be alive today.  Sadly, they were born in America, a nation too poor to provide a national healthcare system to its citizens.

It ain't easy being poor. I guess we Americans better just get used to it.

From Facebook

From a speech by Rick Santorum:

"The dangers of carbon dioxide.  Tell that to a plant.  How dangerous carbon dioxide is."

OK.  Experiments prove that  too much carbon dioxide causes a plant to grow thin and weak.  It looks similar to etiolation and is similarly unhealthy.  Said plant is low in nutritive value to herbivores and unhealthy in general.

The idea that if a thing is necessary in moderation, it must be better in excess is typical of poor thought processes and a misunderstanding of the nature of reality.  For example, humans must have salt to live, but too much salt will poison a human, causing death.  Since Mr. Santorum despises facts and science, and has frequently demonstrated a contempt for reality, his inability to comprehend these facts is unsurprising.

However, we should ask ourselves, is it a good idea to have as our President a man who can't think straight?

Etiolation (pronounced /iːtɪəˈleɪʃən/) is a process in flowering plants grown in partial or complete absence of light.[1] It is characterized by long, weak stems; smaller, sparser leaves due to longer internodes; and a pale yellow color (chlorosis). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiolation