This guy James P. Pinkerton showed up in the Politico.com Arena with some perspectives on the healthcare debate that I found interesting. Hes been on fox news numerous times and worked in both the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, so it’s no secret that he shoots from the right hip. However, he sheds light on how the entire political debate is nether geared toward nor likely to produce any increase in the quality of care available right now (i.e. more cures, better treatments). In fact, it will probably stifle these innovations in the name of cost control. James writes:

“The fifth reason for the Democrat’s difficulty is the basic flaw in the intellectual model: “health insurance reform” is not the goal of most Americans. What the American people really want is cures. You don’t go to the doctor because you can, because the government has given you some card entitling you to low-tech care. Nor do you go to the doctor to show off the intellectual ingenuity of your health savings account. Instead, you go to the doctor to get better. Ask yourself: Where in the Obama pitch is there any discussion of actually curing anything? (One doesn’t hear much “cure talk” among Republicans, either, but they, being the minority, aren’t the issue right now. In the next Congress, or the one after that, they might regain the majority; we can revisit them then.) ”

“The story of 2009 is the apotheosis of the left-liberal idea–inflected by “Club of Rome”-ish environmentalism and residual enthusiasm for barefoot doctors–that we have enough health, or maybe even too much health. So don’t worry about the creation of health; in fact, the creation of new medicines needs to be restrained, in the name of “cost control. The main imperative is the redistribution of health, not the creation of health. “

Another interesting point is the difficulty of developing a welfare state in a multicultural society because they usually lack a sense of community. He writes:

“The broader issue crunching down on the Democrats is welfare-state liberalism vs. multiculturalism. As Harvard’s Robert Putnam has noted,along with many others, the communitarian ethos that upholds the welfare state is based substantially on ethnic trust and national commonality, and those bonds of affection and unity have a way of breaking down amidst multiculturalism. Welfare states thrive in homogenous countries, they are smaller and less expansive in heterogenous countries–and as for really heterogenous countries, well, they have a way of becoming ex-countries, viz. the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on. “

Read all of Mr. Pinkerton’s Arena posts here.

Last week, Politico.com posted this picture of Nancy Pelosi with the caption “Pelosi team locked and loaded to counter hypocrisy charges.” The allegations state that even though our distinguished speaker had spent the past 6 months deploring what she called “illegal interrogation techniques” used by the bush administration to solicit information from enemy combatants, she had known about the practice since 2003. Funny how she became militant about this issue only recently when it became politically expedient. Now usually I’m willing to give politicians the benefit the doubt, but her defense is LAUGHABLE. When a CIA document was released showing that Ms. Pelosi was briefed not once, but several times in 2003 on the methods used by our CIA operatives in the field, her team claimed that the document was false. Apparently she was only told that the Bush administration was considering the technique, but never specific accounts of it’s usage. Hmmmm, yea I find it hard to believe that a ranking member of the house intelligence committee was completely unaware about what was going on, not to mention the idea that a CIA staffer lied about what she was briefed on.

Come on people, this issue is utterly RIDICULOUS. How can we as a nation declare a practice that we conduct on our OWN NAVY SEALS and MILITARY PILOT TRAINEES as part of their training an act of torture? I mean seriously WTF. We’ve become so worried about violating the rights of our enemies that we’ve forgotten what it takes to defend our own.

A guy by the name of Greg Gutfeld offered a good example for some our liberal doo-gooders to think about. Imagine your sitting in a room with a CIA agent and an Arabic man who was plucked off the battlefield after he spent the last few years of his life killing American soldiers. Now, the agent turns to you and says, “This man has information about a bomb that could go off in the area where your spouse is working right now, however he refuses to give us its location. I can make him talk using a technique that will cause no permanate physical damage or we can just throw him in jail.” I don’t give a fuck who you are, your answer is going to be along lines “GO JACK BAUER ON HIS ASS.”

FYI I was naked the whole time I wrote this.