Look out America, this is what socialised medicine is all about.

Socialism places equality above all else. Before prosperity. Before freedom. Before choice. Before people's preferences.

Socialised medicine isn't about helping the poor, but rather about tying the hands of the rest of society.

In Britain, the National Health Service reveals its nasty stripes in this telling encounter:

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That principle was illustrated by the case of Debbie Hirst, a British woman with metastasized breast cancer who in 2007 was denied access to a commonly used drug on the grounds that it was too expensive.

When Hirst decided to raise money to pay for the drug on her own, she was told that doing so would make her ineligible for further treatment by the National Health Service. According to The New York Times, “Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.” The right to health care is so important, it seems, that it can nullify itself.

Here's the elephant in the room

The Global Financial Crisis has not yet begun.

The US dollar, the world's reserve currency and supposedly every central bankers favorite store of wealth, is backed by enormouse debt, and a house of cards waiting to collapse.

It won't be long till the slow Japanese style deflationary slump kicks in as the debt burden continues to grow.

Nothing can go up forever, and eventually something's gotta give. Either the people cut their spending and repay their debts, or the government prints money like Zimbabwe and destroys the currency to keep them spending.

Mike Shedlock has the following post about an interesting Forbes article on the issue nobody in Washington wants to talk about:

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Not too long ago, a billion dollars in a governmental budget was a lot of money. Then we got into hundreds of billions. People understood that this was a lot, just because of all the zeros. Now, unfortunately, the number has become small: the world "trillion," as in $1.2 trillion for health care reform, seems so tiny. But it has 12 zeroes behind it, which is so easy to forget.

The total public debt is now at 141% of GDP. That puts the United States in some elite company--only Japan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe are higher. That's only the start. Add household debt (highest in the world at 99% of GDP) and corporate debt (highest in the world at 317% of GDP, not even counting off-balance-sheet swaps and derivatives) and our total debt is 557% of GDP. Less than three years ago our total indebtedness crossed 500% of GDP for the first time."

Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.

The world has not seen such debt levels in modern history. This debt is not serviceable. Imagine that total debt is 557% of GDP, without considering entitlements. The interest on the debt will consume all the tax revenues of the country in the not-too-distant future. Then there will be no way out but to create more debt in order to finance the old debt.

An essay worth reading

The House that Uncle Sam Built is surely going to be an enthralling and worthwhile 20-page essay for me and my followers, with the following sharp and insightful opening paragraph:

The theme of “The House that Uncle Sam Built: The Untold Story of the Great Recession of 2008” is that government policy, not a failure of free markets, caused the economic trauma we have been experiencing. We do not live in a free market. We live in a mixed economy. The mixture
varies by industry. Technology is primarily free. Financial Services is primarily government. It is not surprising that the most government regulated and controlled segment of the economy, financial services, experienced the biggest problems. These problems were created by actions
by the Federal Reserve combined with government housing policy (especially the government- sponsored enterprises - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). Misguided government interference in the market is the real culprit in laying the foundation for the Great Recession.

Click here to download the entire essay.

Little Green Fanatics

Heh..

Charles Johnson has finally confessed and written a post titled "Why I parted ways with The Right"

After 2 years of leftist hysteria, and alienating all his collegeagues on the Right, he finally acknowledges his changing philosophy.

And what better way to prove his stripes with a post that actually attacks the ClimateGate scandal as a criminal conspiracy ... by the hackers and climate skeptics !

Well at least he's half right there.. better than his average batting record.

For a closer look at his political wingnuttery and environmental fanatacism:

... the CRU theft was a criminal attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen climate summit, and the entire right wing blogosphere is complicit in the crime.

Gee was Charles Johnson this angry about the hacked emails of Sarah Palin ?

All thats left is for me to ask - Whats next ? Will LGF be cheering Castro and Chavez, Keynesian economics, the UN and other idols of the left ?