Clearing the air for Health care

The ground had barely stopped shaking on the island nation of Haiti before relief and support from around the world, but especially from the ever philanthropic United States citizenry, began pouring in like a tsunami. Politicians, with their hurricane force winds of hot air are expressing an appropriate amount of sympathy while posturing to garner additional points in re-election polls commensurate with their promised level of government assistance.

Following the advice of Rohm Emmanuel, no one it seems is willing to let this crisis go to waste. While legitimate fund raising is going on, thieves and con artists are raining a typhoon of scams down upon the big of heart and small of mind who want to help but don't realize most charities wouldn't use a long lost Facebook buddy to ask on their behalf. The not so Reverend Pat Robertson set off a tornado of controversy with his ill timed and absolutely cruel comments. His mouth should be washed out with Holy Water. Even the global warming, sorry global climate change, nuts have taken the Glovers off in an effort to stop their recent drought of support.


Actor Danny Glover provides yet another example of why those who make a living portraying other people should never be allowed to speak in public unless they've been handed a script and there is a bearded guy in a baseball cap sitting close by in a folding chair ready to yell "cut" the second they lose focus. Let's hope George's teleprompter has enough battery to make it through an entire telethon lest we be subject to extemporaneous Hollywood banter. Thankfully, the majority of Haitians won't be watching. They've suffered enough.

Not to be outdone by the generosity of the evil empire to the north, Fidel Castro wheezed orders from his permanent deathbed to temporarily rescind the no fly rules over Cuba to allow American relief planes to more quickly ferry victims from the poverty stricken island 90 miles to the south to modern medical facilities 90 miles to the north. It is compassion like this that puts you in the running for an elusive and difficult to win Nobel Peace Prize. Look out President Obama, your likely back to back victory is in danger.

I shouldn't make light of the grandiose offering by Cuba. Having to fly around the island adds an hour and a half to what could be a critical situation. I just wonder why we'd even ask permission. We should just fly over. I mean, by the time the pilots in the Cuban air force put down their Havana's and wind up the single prop, the patient would be in the recovery room. What I should question is the need for us to fly over the country at all?

Haiti, as mentioned, lies but 90 miles from Cuba's white sand beaches crowded with topless Canadians and Americans claiming to be Canadian who would be topless but can't commit to being as faux European as our neighbors to the north. So why don't we take those needing emergency medical treatment to this much closer bastion of medical science? Michael Moore, another of the modern liberal intelligentsia, in his highly fictionalized documentary Sicko showed us the modern, well stocked and pristine hospitals that only a government, a socialist one at that, can run. So why force critical patients to endure a flight twice as long as it needs to be? You'd think Fidel would be happy to nurse back to health some able bodied Haitians to replace the flood (whew, worked in one more natural disaster) of able bodied Cubans paddling to the Keys for a chance at a someday receiving socialized medicine here in Obama's America. The American health care system, if you've listened to the rhetoric from the very light skinned thin guy from Nevada recently, is crumbling faster than a Swedish clinic's floor under the weight of a Weight Watchers group meeting. So why are we going to further traumatize the poor Haitians by bringing them here? We can't even dispense pain pills right.

Am I as guilty of politicizing for the sake of possible persuasion, the suffering of a people who've already suffered under an oppressive government in Haiti as those whose motives I disdain? Perhaps. I don't mean to. Natural disasters have a way of exposing frailty in social structure as much as they do a frailty in infrastructure. We are still in a position in the United States to offer unparalleled assistance when tragedy strikes around the world. We are in this position because we've build an infrastructure on solid foundations and and economy and society on the foundations laid by our fore fathers. We are on the verge of experiencing a tectonic shift of monumental proportion with the passage of government run health care and even more social spending bills. If we aren't careful, we might be asking Cuba for permission to fly over on our way to greener climes of our own.

S2