Tea Party protestors rally against Obama’s socialized medicine proposal at the American Airlines sports center in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 5.

I want to tell you all about what happened to my wife, Sandi on Oct. 23.   She fainted while driving to work.   She managed to pull over and come to. I was talking with her on the phone when it happened.  I was terrified! She is a 70-year-old woman and very head strong.  She insisted on driving on to work.  I met her at the her work just as the EMT ambulance from Richardson, TX, got there.  They took her to the hospital emergency room of her choice, which was Presbyterian Hospital of Plano, TX.  They wheeled her into the ER and gave her an electro-cardiogram.  They checked her over for the possibility of a stroke.  Then — get this — they sent her right in for a brain scan.   She also got an x-ray, an IV, and a blood test.   The brain scan came up negative for stroke.  She walked out of the ER after three hours.   I was so relieved!

Now the clincher!   Her brother, who is a heavy boozer, DID have a stroke about two years ago. This man lost his speech and was partially paralyzed.  He lives in London, England, U.K.  The socialized medicine doctors in London told him he needed an emergency brain scan.  Then they told him that the brain scan would take up to four months!  He would have to go on a waiting list.  He had to go into a private health care facility to get the emergency brain scan.  The whole thing took about a week. During that week,  he was in agony.  He eventually partially recovered.

Now you decide which is the best health care system?   That’s not all.  The British socialized HC is a scandal.  I have compiled a list of newspaper articles on the terror of socialized medicine.  Just click HERE.

Before we throw away a working healthcare system, the best in the world, we should think very carefully, then keep what we have!

Just had a guy on Twitter claiming that 30% of every premium dollar goes to health-care insurance companies profits. So I figured I’d check out a couple of companies, via Morningstar Advisor Workstation.

Turns out that for 2008 and 2009 (so far), Humana had operating margins of 3.7% and 4.5% respectively — which provided a return on assets of 5.0% and 6.3%, and a return on equity of 15.3% and 18.2%. Not bad, but obscene? Give me a break.

Health Net, another “evil health insurance company” had operating margins of 1% and 1.1% for 2008 and 2009 to date — giving these bastards a whopping return on assets of 2% and 2.4% — and return on equity of 5.2% and 6.4%.

Bear in mind that they did, in actuality, turn a profit — a feat the Federal government has yet to replicate with Amtrak or the US Postal Service.

Perhaps my Twitter friend will point me towards this evil cabal of companies making 30% profits out of their revenues, as he claims. Somehow, I doubt it.

Thank goodness the Democrats rarely listen to her. But in a recent article on Salon, she makes a slew of good points – and asks a couple of searching questions.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. … It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

It was there for all to see. Those of us who are part of the mob, and helping drive the conversation online, could feel it in our bones. Too bad the Democrats, by and large, can’t seem to feel the populist anger that’s welling up all around them. Actually, it’s not too bad; the air has that 1994 smell to it, if you know what I mean.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

It’s easy — it hasn’t been about “people” in a long time, Camille. It’s about power. It’s about money. It’s about control. And it won’t end, ever, for them — because it’s all they know. The idealists of the 60’s are gone — either evolving into self-interested power-seekers, devolving into regular folks who just want to raise their families and make a living, or finally wised up and realized that the Republican or Libertarian Party is their true home.

I love the smell of 1994 in the morning. Smells like… victory. Some day, this regime is going to end.

Yesterday, the AP reported that

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs,” issued a statement of apology on Thursday. When asked on Friday whether President Barack Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration.”

Continues to work? Now that’s a ringing endorsement.

You mean entertainers like Beck and Olbermann are controversial on purpose? Who would have guessed?

‘course I don’t recall Olbermann having a problem with that movie about Bush getting assassinated — oh well.

Whole Foods still loves you, and they’re still a mass of gooey Leftists.

Today, on my way home from work, I stopped at the store to pick up some well-deserved barley-pop (they have a great selection) and ran into a friend of mine who works there.

Naturally, I had to stop and congratulate her on Whole Foods becoming the darlings of the Right Wing Conspiracy, with their CEO’s recent Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare“.

She said “I just KNEW you were going to come in and give me a hassle about that!” and laughed. She then proceeded to give me a copy of a letter they are issuing to any offended Lefty who comes by to bitch about Whole Foods falling off the Obamawagon.

Here are a few excerpts:

As you are probably aware, John Mackey wrote an Op/Ed piece that was published in the WSJ earlier this week … John’s intent was to express his personal opinions – not those of Whole Food Market team members or our company as a whole. Still, it’s very clear that John’s piece offended some of our customers, other members of the communities we serve, and some of our team members as well.

We offer you a sincere apology.

Whole Foods Market has no official position on the issue. That said, we have attempted to be part of the solution in health care reform for many years by providing innovative health care options to our team members. We believe that our high deductible medical insurance plan coupled with a company-funded HSA is an excellent way to empower team members to make their own health care choices.

John wanted to share our experience with others through his Op/Ed piece. He believes that the specific ideas he put forward would improve access and cost of health care for more people. Because our plan has held down overal costs (relative to other plans), WFM has been able to pay 100% of the premiums for our full-time team members — about 89% of our workforce…

WFM has a 30-year track record of caring about our customers, team members and communites. From local loan programs to salary caps, from donations to non-profits to funding the Whole Planet Foundation, our innovative programs are created and designed by team members who care about their fellow citizens…

In other words, we’re still the wacky, quirky, Lefty folks you buy your arugula from, so don’t stop shopping here. Just because WE solved the healthcare problem for OUR employees in no way means that we don’t support socialized medicine for the rest of you suckers. Unless you take ours away; that would be bad. We think.

I’m guessing we won’t be hearing about this poll from CNN any time soon — because it’s got some lousy news for BO. But it was conducted among likely voters, by James Carville’s Democracy Corps (I would post a direct link to their site but my virus software detected something horrible there — perhaps it was something fishy I should pass along to the White House)…

HT and for further analysis go to Redstate.com.

Anyhow, the poll was conducted the last week of July, and it’s not pretty if it’s any kind of trend:

Is Barack Obama too liberal? 54% of likely voters said yes.

Will Barack Obama raise your taxes? 54% of likely voters said yes.

Does Barack Obama promise things that sound good but won’t be able to get them done? 53% of likely voters said yes.

Is Barack Obama a “big spender”? 65% of likely voters said yes.

Source (see page 5)

Time to put on your Obama Joker masks and head for the town hall meeting to let your Congresscritter know what you think of Obamacized “health care”. Wouldn’t that be grand? I’d love to see the YouTube of THOSE meetings.

That is all.

I distinctly heard Obama say “Now, I don’t like big government” in his speech last night — but it’s not showing up in the transcripts.

Talk about chutzpah.

CNSNews.com – Cher: Republican Rule Almost ‘Killed Me’.

If only we’d held on a little longer… sigh

’nuff said.

Official: Performance czar withdraws candidacy.

President Obama is having the darnedest time finding cabinet members who aren’t tax cheats. In this latest round of idiocy, Ms. Killefer, who used to be all over catching high-profile tax evaders at the Treasury, actually was stupid enough to have gotten to the point that the IRS filed a LIEN on her HOME.

Folks, the IRS doesn’t file a lien on your home until it’s the last possible thing they can do — and THEN she waited another 6 months or so to pay it off. Note that a lien is good for a 100 pt reduction in your FICO score.

Then we have Tom Daschle, who’s so stupid that he doesn’t know that compensation is taxed regardless of whether it’s cash or not, and Tim Geithner, a financial genius so important to the economic recovery that (even though he signed papers acknowledging that he needed to pay self-employment taxes on his IMF salary, he totally blew it off — and that’s not something that’s easy to do in TurboTax; you have to actually try) he’s still a keeper for Obama.

Course, with the apparent lack of compliance amongst Democrat officialdom, there’s no doubt that we’re going to need hefty tax increases, real soon.

Woowoo.

Thanks, Obama. Your coronation is going to destroy the planet.

According to the Institute for Liberty,

It would take the average US household 57,598 years to produce a carbon footprint equal to that of the new president’s housewarming party.

So, the incoming greenies have no problem with shamelessly contributing to the destruction of life on earth in the pursuit of celebrating the ascension of The One.

Nice.

And what will you do when he does it?