Friday, April 15, 2005
Fafblog weighs in on the debate over national healthcare:
Fafblog Without Borders
So a lotta people been talkin about universal health care lately. "Oh, why don't we have universal health care." "Oh, American health care is so bad." "Oh, please I need medicine." No, I am sorry, stay away! If we gave you universal health care you would just spend it all on booze and prescription drugs.
Well other countries might have better health care, but at what cost? At the cost of freedom, that's what - the freedom squeezed from their lives by their all-powerful government healthbots. And freedom is the best medicine, right next to laughter and actual medicine! That's why me an Giblets founded Fafblog Without Borders to go bring urgent medical-grade freedom to the poor an uninsured around the world.
Today we're treatin a patient with a tumor - a malignant communist tumor tryin to nationalize his freedom cells! Giblets bombards it into submission with a stunning kazoo rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while I attack it with laissez faire economics. Success! In no time at all he's up on his feet an eatin a healthy broth of boiled flags. I give him a prescription for eagles an tell him to take two a day.
Across the street the french Médecins Sans Frontières show up. "Socialized medicine!" says Giblets. "Vive la révolution!" says the french. They grab a guy with heart disease an start operatin on him: redistributin his wealth, controllin the means a production. He's just gettin worse! We try to resuscitate him by stickin a couple SUPPORT OUR TROOPS stickers on his forehead but the french shoo us away. The patient goes into cardiac arrent! One of em shoots a passin czar but it doesn't seem to help an the patient dies on accounta Socialism Doesn't Work. When will society learn!
Tomorrow we will end malaria in Africa with a buncha tax cuts an Fourth of July sparklers.
I would tell you to read the whole thing, but I have just quoted the whole thing. So, I will tell you to go read this, which is also very funny. And this, which is absolutely brilliant (but then, I've always been a HUGE Smasher of Things fan, so I'm biased).
4/15/2005
Thursday, April 07, 2005
What is Iraq? There is no way that this is not a good thing. Kurds dancing in the streets to celebrate their prominent role in the new Iraqi government is a powerful indicator of a popular perception of legitimacy. Kurdish secession has been considered a great danger by many, given the fact that the Kurds are only "Iraqis" by dint of a well-known, if bibulous, Englishman. If the Iraqi Kurds are buying into the central government, a whole host of bad outcomes may be averted. I am not talking only about appeasing Turkey (though that is a valuable gain indeed); something more significant is in play - given the history, this is at least a gesture towards a stamp of legitimacy on the notion of Iraq as a nation outside of the colonial whim of the English, the viciously imposed national identity of the Baathists, and the clumsy, violent liberation theology of the Americans. Such a nationalism has good and bad outcomes, but all of the possibilities stemming from full Kurdish participation in the national government are better than the possibilities implied by their refusal.
I notice also that the vagaries of Blogger have caused my 3/30 post, which I previously believed to be lost forever, to reappear. It's not much of a post, really, and events have clearly overtaken it, but completists may wish to read it, directly below this one.
4/07/2005
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