I rarely mention politics on the blog for the sole purpose that I don’t much care for it. I have an extremely low opinion of both parties and those who toe the party line unquestionably. Today, I’ve made an exception with two brief topics – Health Care and Budget & Debt.
1. Health Care
Q: What would you say to Hawaiians who say ‘I have government mandated health care and I love it’?’
A: They have that?
The Daily Show visited Hawaii while the Republican National Congress was having their little shindig there. Since the biggest topic of the time was Health Care and how the Republicans were so concerned that the government could not possibly manage it, the Daily Show asked them how they responded to Hawaii having 40 years of government mandated health care. Here’s the video (7 minutes long). At the risk of sounding like an ass, being Republican should be considered a pre-existing condition for these morons.
Here’s another question – Why the F**k is a show on Comedy Central asking this question and not NBC or CBS or FOX or whatever? Seriously.
2. Budget & Debt
Debt is growing out of control. We got to get it under control. So it’s up to the President, right? Well…maybe not. The New York Times has this very cool graph that shows what the budget is for 2010 and 2011. It also shows what the Mandatory Spending is (i.e. – the things the President cannot cut by law).
In 2011, the budget is 3.69 trillion dollars. Of that, 2.4+ trillion dollars is considered untouchable*. About half the remainder is Defense spending which pretty much no one will touch since it’s practically political suicide.
Yeah, this ain’t coming under control any time soon.
* I may be slightly off on my numbers but we’re in the general neighborhood. And I don’t think this takes into account Iraq/Afghanistan.
Moose and Ink 