I am distracted this week, through having to oversee and assist with a spot of home renovation, and the launch of Book Six of the Luna City Chronicles – One Half Dozen of Luna City, which is available as of today in print, Kindle and other ebook formats – although by no means have I not paid attention to various news hiccups which caught my fleeting attention as they went past.
As a parent, I can’t help but be sympathetic and supportive of little Alfie Evans’ parents, whose medical situation was as heartbreaking as it was mysterious and likely terminal. Just as I cannot help being viciously cynical regarding the decision by hospital and National Health Service administrators to set the poor tot on the so-called Liverpool Care pathway. Over the strenuous objections of his parents, the church which his parents apparently belonged to, any number of advocates for the rights of parents – all life support cut off, including oxygen, nourishment and water, with the powers of the State and its police minions standing by to enforce the dictates of the state.
Death with Dignity, they call it – Death with Convenience is what I say. Being in the United States, I may say so without fear of plods in Liverpool and formerly-great Britain directing the Big Heavy Retaliatory Scowl at me, in response to my own disinclination to support a nebulous Ruling Class being able to pull the plug on the life of inconvenient plebs, even those who are only two years old and likely terminal anyway. Gaze upon my two middle fingers, chaps; and what if, as other commenters have asked, if the kids’ name had been Ali Edris … or Alfred Windsor? How does the police force in present-day Britain spend their days, when not threatening freedom of internet speech? Confiscating those nasty sharp knives, safeguarding the rights of Travelers to pillage and terrorize ordinary citizens, and turning a tactfully blind eye on Muslim rape gangs whoring out white girls, I guess.
The worst part of the Alfie Evans matter is that it would have cost the NHS nothing … save for face. Because their authority had been flouted, and that cannot be permitted, it seems. No one may escape the bony clutches of the NHS, especially once they have pronounced sentence upon a patient. It’s free medical care for everyone, you see; a great universal good for everyone … and if it’s not good enough for you, comrade, then what kind of socially-deviant wrecker are you, anyway?
Moving on … I see that the assembled company at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner conducted themselves in the manner which we have come to accept from them. Nice going, assembled geniuses of the anointed national media, having an alleged comic execute a sick burn of a guest at the head table – a woman whom those who really are members of the White House press pool must work with on an almost-daily basis! Well done, springing a perfectly vicious attack on a guest, and under circumstances where the target cannot really do anything in response. It was cruel, low, and not funny, and at least some of the audience present had the sense and decency to see that. I’d have thought better of them if they had walked out, but … nice of the WHCA to show their ass that way. That wasn’t a roast, that was an auto de fa. I wouldn’t be surprised if representatives of a GOP administration never show their face at the Washington Nerd Prom, ever again. Oh, and I have never, until now, heard of Michelle Wolf. Now that I have, I do not want to hear about her ever again. Your thoughts?
Yes.
This was murder, pure and simple.There was no reason not to let willing people try to help this baby, using their own resources, even if it was against very very long odds. Denying them the opportunity to do that and then refusing him any life support at all–murder. From the High Court all the way down.
Michelle killed it. Just perfect.
The entire media crap about children with very little chance to survive, being used to fit various agendas, makes me sick. You gonna make he or she suffer to fit your own narrative, no matter what the reality, and have a nice media circus as it happens. Its disgusting.
Well, she certainly killed the WHCA dinner, Penny. Possibly her own career.
Frankly, I’d rather that serious decisions about medical treatment of children be primarily left in the hands of their parents – including whether to pull the plug or not. That’s my narrative, Penny – and I’m sticking to it.
As an American with American health care, I guess you would know how cost might be a problem in most real life cases.
As for Michelle I’m going through MSM, laughing at their hypocritical horror, but hey YMMV. ;)
My Advanced Medical Directive says to withhold food but not water. There’s a special place in hell for anyone who makes a baby go through the horror of dying of thirst.
Conservatives would support, even if they didn’t necessarily agree, with a parent’s choice to withdraw extreme medical intervention. There comes a time we all have to face the inevitable. But liberals don’t return the favor, because this isn’t about health care, it’s about power, and these poor parents must be made to understand their place in society.
The lefty position doesn’t even make sense here. They argue medical care is pointless because the baby is brain dead and also that any more care is just causing unnecessary pain. You can’t argue both, if you’re even pretending to be honest or consistent.
You can’t argue both, if you’re even pretending to be honest or consistent.
Logic only matters to the weak, who must argue their cases. When you have unaccountable power you don’t have to justify anything — inconsistency is a feature not a bug.
The purpose of torturing Alfie to death was to rub the faces of the proles in the the fact that the State owns them and that they live or die depending on the whims of the Party.
Sarge, we are in agreement.
I write a weekly column in a local paper, and I detailed the horror of it all as best I could. I have come to differ with you in only one point. The Brits are not “subjects”. They are Objects; to be used, abused, tortured, and expended for the joy and pleasure of the British equivalent of our Governing UniParty.
I thought there might be some hope that the Britain from which our civilization sprang to come back with Brexit. But their UniParty is killing it by ignoring it. There is no hope for Britain.
Three times in the last century we saved Britain; WW-I, WW-II, and the Cold War. They were a wasted effort, as they are determined to be destroyed. If, no when, the call for help comes again the answer must be “No”. And no refugees taken. If they will not stand for their own country and liberties, if they seek only to submit to one tyrant or another, let them. Ignore them, unless they pose a threat to us. If they do, destroy them. They are not our species.
For the record, I lost a stepson at 11 years old. He was born with a hereditary liver disease. Doctors fought to keep him alive, and at the end he was the longest surviving case of that disease diagnosed in infancy. In part because of what they learned from him, kids now survive the disease. The doctors, and the hospitals worked with us, and for a heartless capitalistic medical system, it was free.
If the government and the doctors had chosen to kill my boy, I could not have saved him. And it would have meant that those kids who live now, would not. But I can guarantee that when my boy and I were piped aboard Charon’s Ferry, we would have a large medical, judicial, and government honor guard of sideboys on the banks of the River Styx.
Those like the British who tolerate a government like that, those like Pengun who defend it, either do not value the lives of their families, have no loved ones, or take pleasure in the deaths of people. They have contempt for those of us who seek to preserve the lives of our loved ones. And they cannot comprehend that it is returned.
Jonathan…”Logic only matters to the weak, who must argue their cases. When you have unaccountable power you don’t have to justify anything
A very thirst prisoner in a concentration camp reached for an icicle. An SS guard told him he couldn’t have it. When the prisoner asked why, the response was:
“There is no WHY here”
PenGun: ” makes me sick”
I hope you don’t mind if I hope you don’t recover.
A taste of your own medicine, so to speak.
“I hope you don’t mind if I hope you don’t recover.”
This from an American doctor. ROTFLMFAO.
Ahem … can we keep the passion and wit in this thread somewhere above the level of a middle school playground? Thanks.
Try regulating your own numbers instead of bitching that the bullies are being bullies and the people being bullied are getting angry, Mom. Pen should have been banhammered a long time ago and you know it. All he does is foul the waters and lower the level of discourse, and you aid and abet the poisonous masturbating little son of a bitch by putting up with him.
I’ve been reading and occasionally commenting here for over 10 years. Pen Gun is a blight and an obvious poseur. He wants and needs attention. Why otherwise intelligent and learned people engage him is a complete mystery to me. Dan had the right idea years ago.
Lefties are shocked that Trump is throwing their adolescent outbursts right back in their faces so they’re doubling down. I think it’s entertaining. Meanwhile, Trump’s polling is getting better all the time and citizens are voting out the cultural Marxists the world over. It’s all good.
The NHS has been a scandal for 20 years. Somewhere, maybe here, someone commented that Thatcher did not try to end it. She did try to reform it with a program called “Fund holding.” This was a market type reform which allowed GPs to control the care their patients got. The GP had a record of how many procedures his patients got on average per year. He was allowed to elect to control those funds.
This gave the GP the opportunity to negotiate with hospitals for better rates and amenities, plus of course better communication with the GP. In America, I spent a lot of time writing letters and enclosing records to referring doctors so they Were kept up to date on their patients’ condition. That did not happen in the NHS.
I was at Dartmouth at the time and was sent over as a consultant to help the GPs figure out how to negotiate and what they wanted in the way of feedback. It made large differences in spending and in better care.
Once Labour retuned to power, the program was cancelled.
PenGun is a troll and I don’t wish anyone ill but I do wish he was a little better class of troll. He has gone from garbage truck driver to computer scientist.
“He who pays the piper calls the tune.” I used to hear that saying from time to time when I was a kid but I’m not sure it ever made any sense to me – I wasn’t quite sure what the speaker was trying to say. But, oh my goodness, I surely do understand it now.
The National “Health” “Service” pays for your care and you will get exactly as much as they, in their infinite wisdom, say you can get. They are paying for the piper and they will decide what the tune will be played.
I am sure the NHS is so totally secure in its knowledge of its own virtue that the butchers who sit on the death panels sleep ever so soundly. It’s times like these that I wish there were such a thing as ghosts so they could be endlessly haunted as they so richly deserve.
And Capitalist Roader is right: it is entertaining watching lefty heads explode, and it’s hugely and delightfully entertaining to watch them keep doubling down on their political correctness.
If I were gone, Dearime left after being hounded, it would be a complete echo chamber here. Is that what you want?
The problem some of you have is I bring facts, and as we know facts are stupid things. I do not have religious blinders on, and making someone who will die soon from causes we can do nothing about, suffer for your agenda, I find awful. Let em’ die as peacefully as possible.
A medical system that takes care of everyone, like in my country, is different from a for profit one. It has to be, and its goals of complete coverage make its priorities different from your archaic system. That very many people in your country die and suffer from things treated routinely in mine, is just fact.
At least Pen doesn’t represent himself as something he’s not. There have been trolls at Bookworm that made the site almost unusable, asserting extreme right-wing positions (or what they think those positions might be) in an apparent attempt to discredit anyone not on the Left. Sort of a pathetic version of reductio ad absurdum.
“Dearime left after being hounded”
I don’t recall that. I see him at Cochran’s genetics blog.
A medical system that takes care of everyone, like in my country, is different from a for profit one
Natasha Richardson could not be reached for comment on Canada’s health care system that “takes care of everyone.”
Mike K you are a treasure.
You understand she smashed her head on a ski slope. She refused treatment repeatedly and left with her ski instructor. After she began to deteriorate she was taken to a hospital in Montreal. She was flown to New York after this.
That they did not have a helicopter for her journey to Montreal seems to be the center of most of the bafflegab.
I just realized she’s a celebrity for being related to one.
“I don’t recall that. I see him at Cochran’s genetics blog.”
Really. I watched it happen. He has not been back.
“You understand she smashed her head on a ski slope”
She was alert. Anyone who deals with trauma knows about the “lucid interval.”
A CT scan would have saved her life.
Your attempts to blame her are nauseating.
Looks like dearieme left because it got offended by an honest question https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56533.html#comment-1001803
“Your attempts to blame her are nauseating.”
They tried repeatedly to get her to take treatment. She refused repeatedly and left.
That’s the Canadian medical system at fault?
With great regard for Phil and Mike D, I hope PenGun will not get banned. Since I’m but a Chicagoboyz guest, that’s merely a request.
That wish does not spring from opposing banning per se. Sometimes editing/requesting civility/reminding of accepted standards for conversation does not suffice. Then banning alone enables an internet discussion group to continue.
Imho PenGun’s interactions have not reached the level of snottiness to warrant banning. They have often served to perfect and hone arguments.
I have fenced with PenGun. Imho I have scored the majority of the touche’s, maybe even nearly all. But not all of them. I appreciate hearing him. Even if he were correct in having an opposing opinion about the “score”, that would only enhance my concern for hearing him. Further fairness requires recognizing that many of the posts and accompanying comments involve non-trivial topics. Of course there will exist some breadth of comprehension and conclusion.
In other words, I think of PenGun as more than straw man or stalking horse.
Thus I think PenGun’s “echo chamber” comment has some merit. I also find his depth of awareness on a variety of topics humbling specifically because I cannot fathom how, with that awareness, he has come to some of the conclusions he does. Sure, he provides entertaining example/proof that there can be people like him, helping me to acknowledge diversity. He also reminds me of the necessity of not thinking my own positions beyond critique. He helps me to ponder if others cannot fathom my conclusions, and, in that pondering, figure out how better to present reasons.
Sorry for a tardy reply on all this – busy renovating guest bathroom and launching a book.
The question of banning Penny or anyone else is really up to the individual contributors; I have had couple of really deeply obnoxious/insane commenters to my posts on Chicagoboyz whose comments got nuked, or amusingly edited, according to my whim. I don’t believe in wielding a big ban-hammer generally. This is not a university campus, nor is it an echo chamber. Think of Penny as something like a huge pothole in the middle of the road. Engage, or skip over, as you see fit or have the time and energy, but please try to rise above juvenile name-calling. I outgrew a middle school mentality five decades ago.
Ive been around here off and on for a decade or more, Pen, and you’ve NEVER struck me as anything but a PostModern Liberal troll.
I don’t want the place to be an echo chamber, but it’s pretty hard to find any sort of intelligent opposition when it comes to liberal ideas. Actual Classical Liberals, capable of making dectly teasoned, fact-based arguments, are pretty hard to find.
No, i don’t recall YOU *ever* demonstrating that capacity.
“decently reasoned”, in case it wasn’t obvious from context…
As to the benefits of the two medical systems, I’d much rather be broke and pleading for charity from random people and unexpected benefactors than from a freakin’ bureacrat any day.
For myself, I went in for a routine colonoscopy on Nov 6 of last year. They spotted a lump too large for casual removal. I was in the hospital with it being removed INSIDE 10 DAYS. I was out of the hospital the day before Thanksgiving, my colon now a semicolon. Biopsy reports it as Stage one, no further treatment (beyond extra checkups) required.
Had I been stuck with British or Canadian health care, it would have been 3 monshs to SEE a cancer doctor and another three to get the surgery… So right about NOW I would FINALLY ne having it removed, with an extra 18 weeks of growth and spreading opportunities.
>>>>>F***<<<<< your "free" healthcare.
It's got too high a price.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” ;)
Penny – don’t presume. You’re dancing on the thin edge of tolerance. MY tolerance.
Some reading material for PenGun.
Consider how things work north of the border. Canada effectively outlaws private insurance for medically necessary services—just as the Sanders plan would. Patients must wait months for routine procedures—a median of more than 21 weeks for treatment from a specialist after referral from a general practitioner.
These long waits aren’t due to a lack of funding. The cost of health insurance for the average Canadian family jumped 174% over the past two decades—nearly twice as fast as incomes and four times the rate of inflation.
Canadians are fed up with their “free” health care. Three in four believe they should have the right to pay for care privately if the wait they’re facing is longer than clinically recommended.
Actually, I think there are many private clinics now but they may not be evenly distributed,.
Oh Mike. A woman who has made a career of pushing corporate aims and once belonged to the Fraser Institute.
Hardly a person I would pay much attention to. Who said:
“When patients face no out-of-pocket costs at the doctor’s office or hospitals, they have no incentive to moderate their consumption of care or seek lower-cost providers. The only way for governments to control spending is to ration the supply of care.”
Our system is for everyone. All our common problems are solved quickly and usually quite cheaply. As we have universal health care we do face supplying that to everyone and face constraints on unusual problems because they are rare. Our general health is very good and certainly better that yours.
Pengun, the point about Natasha Richardson is that a CT or MRI scan was not readily available, because the Canadian system conserves funds by making patients wait for care and – relevant in Richardson’s case – by minimizing purchases of expensive equipment. She felt OK and refused treatment and afterwards, when she started showing symptoms of brain injury, it was too late. If she had been injured in a backwater resort area in the States it’s likely she would have been been given a CT scan routinely in the emergency department of the local hospital, and therefore likely that her injury would have been detected in time to save her. I think this was Mike’s point.
The Canadian system is probably adequate for “common problems” that are easy and inexpensive to treat, but woe betide the patient who needs urgent or expensive care for a painful or life-threatening problem.
Your system saves money by limiting everyone’s choices. You haven’t explained why that’s a good thing.