No Need for Macho Guys if you have a Single Payer Health Care System

A Wall Street Journal article discussed a study that took place in Europe with 4,000 participants. The study’s hypothesis was that European women, who have a far superior health care system to the U.S. do not prefer the macho-type guy whereas the U.S. women prefer a more macho man due to our inferior health care system.

Here is an exerpt written up in the Proceedings for the Royal Society: Biological Sciences found.

“To a person unfamiliar with the field of evolutionary psychology, this may sound a little far-fetched. How is it even possible to link a woman's masculinity preferences to the health of her nation? The answer begins with the theory of sexual selection. It goes that women are the choosier sex because they take on most of the risk and burden of reproduction and child rearing. While a man can sleep around with 100 women in a year's time and have 100 kids, a woman who sleeps with 100 men in a year will only have one baby (barring multiples). She has more at stake in each pregnancy. Therefore, it is in her best interest to at least choose a high-quality mate. And one of the hallmarks of a quality male is good health.”

The article also goes on to say that the U.S. health care system ranks 20th out of the 30 countries looked at, and in the study’s estimate the U.S. is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world. And I quote the article, “After all this is the country of James Dean and Clint Eastwood.”

So in a nutshell if you have a single payer health care system in your country you like wimpy guys because you do not need to have some cave man type protect you from a Laissez Faire health care system.

I wrote a response to the Wall Street Journal article:

A recent Variety article asked the question, "Where did America's tough guys go?" It goes on: “Not so long ago Hollywood’s male stars were men’s men. Think John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Steve McQueen..

And Variety continues…

"These days, studios are hard-pressed to find home-grown traditional male leads to carry their pictures. Their star rosters include countless boy-men who, even after they turn 40, are less than credible macho movie actors.” If box office is an indicator, with a random sampling of millions, then it is the European countries with their current health care system sending strong, handsome macho actors to Hollywood to replace the tough, macho leading men of the past.

My conclusion: Women do not want just a male in good health. Natural selection has shown that the most beautiful feathers, loudest roar, and most importantly the guy most capable of hunting and gathering and fighting are what women have wanted since cave men and women first went into the light. I know, I know, in this age of enlightenment for women we hunt and gather right along with the men, as well we should, but it doesn’t change any of the dynamics. The conclusion of the Royal Society article should have been that single payor health care goes along with living in a society that will take care of ‘their people’ from cradle to grave, and it doesn’t matter how macho the guys in the country are. No hunting and gathering necessary. Just the highest alcoholism rates in the world.

My second conclusion: How are the mental health care systems in the countries the actually paid for a study like this?

Obama v. Israel

OK, where is the outrage in this country over the treatment of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu? Perhaps it is because the Jewish community in the U.S. is so entrenched in their support of President Obama that they have blinders on to what is happening to the U.S. - Middle East policies. 78% of the Jewish community voted for President Obama. Are those 78% unwilling to take a critical look at the President’s actions?

The excerpts below are from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and can be read in its entirety at Haaretz.com. The comments are even more of a puzzlement. Again the media in Israel is left-leaning in the political spectrum and anti-Netanyahu even in the face of more aggressive Arab actions towards Israel after what looked to the Arab world like a U.S. President taking an anti-Israel foreign policy position.

Haaretz writes:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior partner Ehud Barak returned from Washington yesterday, leaving behind a deep crisis with the world's most powerful country and Israel's greatest friend. U.S. President Barack Obama asked that Netanyahu give him unequivocal answers to his administration's demands, in order to begin indirect talks and advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The demands include a complete freeze on settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.”

Haaretz then shows their political stance:

“The choice here is between continued construction in East Jerusalem during the negotiations and Israel's future as a secure, democratic and Jewish state. A deterioration in relations with the U.S. administration is taking place at the peak of international efforts to block Iran and strengthen the axis of moderate Arab states. In the unnecessary fight with the United States, an essential ally for Israel, the Netanyahu government is showing itself to be the most extremist and dangerous in the country's history.”

An “unnecessary fight with the United States”? Netanyahu is the bad guy?

Obama has traveled to Saudi Arabia and kissed the hand of a Saudi Prince, but he hasn’t taken the time to visit Israel, the only friend of the U.S. in the Middle East. Now he has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel by not even extending his hand to Netanyahu either in greeting or in farewell. He certainly didn’t bow and kiss the Prime Minister’s hand, and actually cut off their meeting so that Obama could go have dinner – not even inviting Netanyahu to break bread. Netanyahu was allowed to leave through the front door of the White House this visit, though, which is better than leaving out the back door by way of the trash cans as he did after the last visit. At the White House there were no questions with the press, no photos of smiling faces, no State dinners, none of the pomp that took place with all of the Arab leaders that visited President Obama.

Perhaps this is what Obama meant when he pledged last June in Cairo that his administration would mean “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” Perhaps the President hasn't seen the shouts of "death to Americans" being chanted around the Muslim world by Islamic fundamentalists.

U.S. v. Lopez and Health Care

I do not believe that the Supreme Court of these United States will allow the health care law to pass scrutiny and be deemed Constitutional. Initially, the constitutional argument focused on the requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. The federal government has Constitutionally-limited power. Congress can only do what the Constitution specifically authorizes it to do and requiring people to have health insurance is not one of their enumerated powers. But in the past the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted certain congressional powers extremely broadly – such as finding an ‘individual’s right to privacy’, so who knows what their ruling might be.

What does the Constitution say Congress has the right to do under the umbrella of Interstate Commerce – which is what the Dems are going to use as Constitutional authority granted to them to run a national health care system?

First, Congress may regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce.
Second, Congress is empowered to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in Interstate Commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities;

Finally, Congress's commerce authority includes the power to regulate those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce (i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce).

In the Supreme Court ruling in The United States v. Lopez in 1995 new limits were placed on Congress’ commerce power. A 12th grade high school student brought a concealed .38 revolver and bullets to school and was confronted by school officials. He admitted to having the gun and was charged with violating Congress’ Gun Free School Zones Act. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that ‘the Act was unconstitutional on the basis that the Gun Free law was beyond the power of Congress to regulate control over our public schools.’

The government’s principal argument was that someone with a firearm in a school would lead to violent crime, which would affect general economic conditions, causes damage and creates expense, and raises insurance costs all of which are spread throughout the economy. The government also argued that the presence of firearms would scare the students, inhibit learning, and would keep tourists from travelling ‘Interstate’ to the area the school was in which would weaken the nation’s economic health.

The Supreme Court found that supporting the government in this matter would open the doors to the federal government regulating ANY activity despite its connection to interstate commerce. What would prevent Congress from regulating any activity that might bear on a person’s economic productivity? Or, as with the current health care bill, would allow Congress to interfere with an individual’s right to choose how they want to take care of their own health care.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the U.S. v Lopez argued that allowing Congress to regulate intrastate noncommercial activity under the Commerce Clause would confer on Congress a general ‘police power’ over the entire nation.

11%, 8%, and 78%

I am not one to put too much credit in a poll but when poll after poll is coming up with statistics showing how truly angry the majority of the population of this country are the polls really cannot be ignored.

11% and 8%.

It is worth putting the above percentages by themselves in an incomplete sentence to highlight the numbers. These are the current approval ratings for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid respectively. These numbers come from CBS News, definitely not ideologically right-leaning news organization.

Another day and two new polls showing the American people are strongly against the health care plan President Obama signed into law. According to CNN, 59% of Americans oppose President Obama's plan. And according to CBS News, 48% of Americans oppose the plan (with 33% in strong opposition) compared to only 37% who support it (with only 13% in strong support). Digging deeper into the CBS poll, we find that 76% of Americans disapprove of how Congress is handling its job on health care, 46% think Congress has spent too much time on health care, and 49% believe the rules and procedures used in Congress to get the current health care bill passed have been mostly unfair.

78%.

That is the percentage of Americans polled that think ALL members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate should be replaced. It will be an interesting election in November.

The 'Evil' Makers of Cheerios

Last year the Food and Drug Administration decided that the manufacturer of Cheerios should not boast about some of the cereal's health benefits. "We have determined [Cheerios] is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug," the FDA said in a letter to General Mills. A drug? Like Cocaine? By this logic, consumers would need a prescription to buy a box of the oats.

So this is why the FDA doesn’t have the time or personnel to approve the long list of lifesaving drugs that are waiting in limbo for the OK for use by the public.

The FDA has lost three federal court decisions challenging its restrictive labeling policies. the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that it was "skeptical the government could demonstrate with empirical evidence" that health claims made with appropriate disclaimers would "bewilder" consumers, as the FDA claimed.

I am bewildered.

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Kudos to CNBC in their use of the Huffington Post as a reliable source of information on what is going on in our government and the financial institutions in this country. Of ALL of the news sources available to them, AP, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, they chose ‘comedy central.’