The Nossiter Net
The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by Josh Nossiter
The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by Josh Nossiter
| The Nossiter Net is cast to snare some of the riper rascalities of the day. Comments? Send a letter to the editor. |
| Features |
| Last Words |
| Now a Member of the Worldwide Communities of Blogs at Blogwise.com |
| VOL. IV, No. 110 |
| Dear Goldman Sachs |
Hope for Health Reform
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Depressed by the news lately? There's plenty of cause.
Health care reform derailed. Afghanistan going badly.
Bailed-out bankers bathing in megabucks, again.
Joblessness and crime on the rise, education and civility
on the decline. Central America's a mess. So is most of
Africa. Europe's social fabric is fraying. Asia has
typhoons, nasty dictators, nuclear rogue states. Even
Antarctica, which you'd think would benefit from being
uninhabited, has problems since it's apparently melting.
But if you look hard enough there's reason to be
perfectly cheerful about the state of old Terra right
now. Consider:
At first blush those folks screaming and yelling at health
care town halls are mighty depressing. How ignorant,
wrong-headed, and just plain imbecilic can people be?
Apparently these people think a country that spends
more on health care than any other yet ranks thirty-
seventh in the WHO rankings, that has more than forty
million citizens without any health insurance at all, thirty
percent of whose health costs are spent on
administration instead of care, and whose medical and
insurance industries enjoy obscene profits while millions
of households go bankrupt from medical bills, has an
excellent system.
They've convinced themselves that the Medicare and
Medicaid and Social Security programs they cherish
have nothing to do with the federal government they
profess to abhor. They believe that their constitutional
rights and civil liberties will be infringed by universal
medical care. True, they have been manipulated and
misled and lied to by a powerful and utterly
unscrupulous alliance of corrupt politicians and self-
serving industrialists. But these are supposed to be
sentient beings after all, with free will, at least
rudimentary literacy, and reasoning ability of an order
higher than sheep. However degenerate they have
become, they are still technically human. There is really
no excuse.
But there is some hope for these abject fellow citizens.
They seem to travel in organized packs. Many of them
are armed with handguns and rifles and assault
weapons. A significant percentage of crimes committed
with firearms involve offenders and victims who are
intimates or at least associates. There is therefore every
possibility that many of them will shoot each other in
statistically meaningful numbers.
©Joshua C. Nossiter, 2009
* * * * *
A NOTE TO READERS ***Update***
Another three week plus hiatus, from April 30th until May 23rd, again
due to Yahoo Geocities dismal service.
There was nothing new at The Nossiter Net between March 3rd and
April 26th, 2007, nearly eight weeks. The reason: tech sabotage.
Yahoo Geocities, the host for this site, denied access for the entire
period. At one point, they even managed to lose all the files. In many
discussions with Yahoo staff, no clear explanation was forthcoming.
No one seemed able to fix the problem. Ruling out the possibility of
Dubbya’s revenge, I finally wrote to Mr. Terry Semel, Chairman and
CEO of Yahoo! Inc and described the ordeal the page had undergone
since the beginning of March. A week later, a helpful Yahooo engineer
named Jason called. He had my letter before him. Though he couldn’t
do the repairs on on the spot, he promised a fix by the next day. That
was April 26th, nearly two months after shutting me down in the first
place.
The Nossiter Net apologizes, which is more than I can say for Yahoo
Geocities.
Health care reform derailed. Afghanistan going badly.
Bailed-out bankers bathing in megabucks, again.
Joblessness and crime on the rise, education and civility
on the decline. Central America's a mess. So is most of
Africa. Europe's social fabric is fraying. Asia has
typhoons, nasty dictators, nuclear rogue states. Even
Antarctica, which you'd think would benefit from being
uninhabited, has problems since it's apparently melting.
But if you look hard enough there's reason to be
perfectly cheerful about the state of old Terra right
now. Consider:
At first blush those folks screaming and yelling at health
care town halls are mighty depressing. How ignorant,
wrong-headed, and just plain imbecilic can people be?
Apparently these people think a country that spends
more on health care than any other yet ranks thirty-
seventh in the WHO rankings, that has more than forty
million citizens without any health insurance at all, thirty
percent of whose health costs are spent on
administration instead of care, and whose medical and
insurance industries enjoy obscene profits while millions
of households go bankrupt from medical bills, has an
excellent system.
They've convinced themselves that the Medicare and
Medicaid and Social Security programs they cherish
have nothing to do with the federal government they
profess to abhor. They believe that their constitutional
rights and civil liberties will be infringed by universal
medical care. True, they have been manipulated and
misled and lied to by a powerful and utterly
unscrupulous alliance of corrupt politicians and self-
serving industrialists. But these are supposed to be
sentient beings after all, with free will, at least
rudimentary literacy, and reasoning ability of an order
higher than sheep. However degenerate they have
become, they are still technically human. There is really
no excuse.
But there is some hope for these abject fellow citizens.
They seem to travel in organized packs. Many of them
are armed with handguns and rifles and assault
weapons. A significant percentage of crimes committed
with firearms involve offenders and victims who are
intimates or at least associates. There is therefore every
possibility that many of them will shoot each other in
statistically meaningful numbers.
©Joshua C. Nossiter, 2009
* * * * *
A NOTE TO READERS ***Update***
Another three week plus hiatus, from April 30th until May 23rd, again
due to Yahoo Geocities dismal service.
There was nothing new at The Nossiter Net between March 3rd and
April 26th, 2007, nearly eight weeks. The reason: tech sabotage.
Yahoo Geocities, the host for this site, denied access for the entire
period. At one point, they even managed to lose all the files. In many
discussions with Yahoo staff, no clear explanation was forthcoming.
No one seemed able to fix the problem. Ruling out the possibility of
Dubbya’s revenge, I finally wrote to Mr. Terry Semel, Chairman and
CEO of Yahoo! Inc and described the ordeal the page had undergone
since the beginning of March. A week later, a helpful Yahooo engineer
named Jason called. He had my letter before him. Though he couldn’t
do the repairs on on the spot, he promised a fix by the next day. That
was April 26th, nearly two months after shutting me down in the first
place.
The Nossiter Net apologizes, which is more than I can say for Yahoo
Geocities.