Obama and Robert Mugabe

[lockedfree]

This was taken from a post at another site: Discuss!


This is kind of important since Barack has a book out about his father. Dreams for my Father. A Story of Race and Inheritance, plus the views of those bozos at the Trinity Church aren't all that far removed from Mugabe. So really how far does the Apple fall from the Tree?

From the East African Journal by Barack H. Obama Sr.

"Problems Facing Our Socialism," published July, 1965 in the East African Journal, pp. 26-33.

1. Obama advocated the communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land, as part of a forced "development plan", an important element of his attack on the government's advocacy of private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)

2. Obama advocated the nationalization of "European" and "Asian" owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of these operations handed over to the "indigenous" black population. (pp. 32 -33)

3. Obama advocated dramatically increasing taxation on "the rich" even up to the 100% level, ...

4. Obama contrasts the ill-defined and weak-tea notion of "African Socialism" negatively with the well-defined ideology of "scientific socialism", communism. Obama views "African Socialism" pioneers like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only "a little" from the capitalist system. (p. 26)

5. Obama advocates an "active" rather than a "passive" program to achieve a classless society through the removal of economic disparities between black Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28) "While we welcome the idea of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others .. " (pp. 29-30) ...

8. Obama strongly supports the governments assertion of a "non-aligned" status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations aligned with the Soviet Union and China. (p. 26)
[More]

[Gaolee]

Barak Obama the younger hardly new his father. Chances are his opinions and his choices are a bit different from those made by his father in 1965. Unlike self-styled conservatives, Obama seems able to learn from experience.

Or maybe you are just trolling. If you are trolling, nicely done.

[lockedfree]

No trolling. Take a look at Canada to see the future of Obama's Health Care Plan. Now I realize there are some differences, mainly that Obama doesn't advocate outlawing private insurance while Canada did. Obama's plan is closer to Germany's actually but it will be interesting to see if Germany's health ends up in the same boat.

Or maybe Obama will pull a Clinton, which is to say gaining the presidency on a promise of Health Care Reform only to push it aside in favor of furthering the mass Globalization effort (NAFTA)

Anyhow on with the article:

Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
By DAVID GRATZER | Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:30 PM PT

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few.

But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades.

Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country.

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care.

Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies — defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain." Other provinces have followed Ontario's example.

Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures.

The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can't centrally plan their way to better health care.

A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards.

Declarations can't solve staffing shortages and the other rationing of care that occurs in government-run systems.

Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense."

As for the Republicans, simply criticizing Democratic health care proposals will not suffice — it's not 1994 anymore. And, while McCain's health care proposals hold promise of putting families in charge of their health care and perhaps even taming costs, McCain, at least so far, doesn't seem terribly interested in discussing health care on the campaign trail.

However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada's government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?

[Trash]

Didn't Gratzer get caught telling fibs about healthcare in other countries?

Check out this silly comment from the article:

"A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards."

How fucking stupid to state that "British patients should get ER care within four hours" means they need to WAIT for four hours. Give me a break.

[baldheadeddork]

Originally Posted by Trash

Didn't Gratzer get caught telling fibs about healthcare in other countries?

Yep.

Gratzer achieved international notoriety when Rudy Giuliani in his 2008 presidential campaign claimed

My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44%, under socialized medicine.

A City Journal article[1] written by Gratzer was the source for the claim, in which Gratzer had written

....if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out....The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation.

The claim was immediately denounced as wrong by the UK Health Secretary [2] who by tradition would not normally intervene in a US political matter. The statistics were then examined in more detail and found to be misleading.

According to cancer experts cited in fact check articles by the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, the St. Petersburg Times and its PolitiFact.com, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times, Giuliani's statistics were "false" and very "misleading" and his conclusions were complete "nonsense".[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly's PolitiFact.com said: "Rudy Giuliani used cancer statistics from a conservative journal to compare the U.S. and the U.K. but the stats are wrong and the underlying comparison is faulty at best."

The ad caused a stir in medical circles after the group that did the research issued a statement[10] condemning the misuse of its numbers.

“I find it personally distasteful to have Mr. Giuliani exploiting cancer patients to make a political statement,” said Andrew Vickers, associate attending research methodologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Vickers, who moved here from Britain several years ago, said Giuliani’s ad was irresponsible. “As a prominent individual who is a cancer survivor, I would think it’s more incumbent on him to be accurate in the way he uses cancer statistics,” he said.[6]

The Washington Post said: "The former New York mayor has had personal experience battling prostate cancer, but he's confused about the stats, according to several experts we consulted."

"When you introduce screening and early detection into the equation, the survival statistics become meaningless," said Howard Parnes, chief of the Prostate Cancer Research Group at the National Cancer Institute. "You are identifying many people who would not otherwise be diagnosed."

"You can't say that it's better to have prostate cancer here or in some other country," with a developed health care system, said Brantley Thrasher, chairman of the Department of Urology at the University of Kansas, who also serves as a spokesman for the American Urological Association.[11]

Princeton University economist Paul Krugman said that Giuliani's statistics were "just wrong" and "scare tactics," and accused Giuliani of "simply lying" by calling Democratic presidential candidates' health care proposals "socialized medicine."[12]

An unrepentant Gratzer later defended the claim: "The mayor is right."

Krugman and others have compared statistical apples to oranges. My 44% figure, replicated by economist John Goodman and others, looks at a snapshot in time, based on decade-old OECD data; Krugman's 74% is a five-year relative survival rate from government sources today.[13]

Annenberg's FactCheck.org found no merit in Gratzer's response:

Marie Diener-West, professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Gratzer's attempts to calculate cancer survival rates were “inappropriate” and “very misleading."

Peter Albertsen, professor and chief of urology at the University of Connecticut Health Center, called Gratzer's calculations a “very dangerous thing to do” and “complete nonsense.”[4]

Nor did The Washington Post, which awarded Giuliani and Gratzer's response the same "Four Pinocchios" rating (reserved for "whoppers")[14] it awarded Giuliani and Gratzer's original claim:

"You would get an F in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins if you did that calculation," said Johns Hopkins professor Gerard Anderson, whose 2000 study "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data"[15] has been cited by Gratzer as a source for his statistics.

Five-year prostate cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Britain but, according to Howard Parnes of the National Cancer Institute, this is largely a statistical illusion.

Both Anderson and Parnes say that it is impossible, on the basis of the available data, to conclude that Americans have a significantly better chance of surviving prostate cancer than Britons.

We have invited the Giuliani campaign to name a reputable prostate cancer researcher or epidemiologist who will publicly endorse the candidate's claim. They have not so far responded.[16]

In December 2007, The New York Times public editor wrote, "Fact-checking the candidates has long been an important part of campaign coverage," but that:

To be most useful, fact-checking needs to be timely. In October, Giuliani incorrectly claimed that the prostate cancer survival rate in England, under the “socialized medicine” he falsely implied Democrats favor, was only 44 percent, compared with 82 percent in the United States. The Times initially said the number for England was “in dispute,” though it provided all the necessary information for a reader to conclude it was wrong. It wasn’t until Friday that the newspaper declared the statistic a “false statement.”[7]

At the end of 2007, Giuliani and Gratzer's claims won awards from The Washington Post as one of "the top ten fibs of the year" and from The Times as one of "the worst junk stats of 2007," with the Post noting Giuliani's "campaign has been unable to produce a single prostate cancer researcher who agrees with him," and the Times describing Giuliani and Gratzer's claims as "innumerate."[8][9]

(If by "telling fibs" you mean lying your motherfucking ass off...).

Good catch.

[lockedfree]

How fucking stupid to state that "British patients should get ER care within four hours" means they need to WAIT for four hours. Give me a break.

I interpreted that snippet differently: as stating that wait times are typically longer than 4 hours and they were having patients wait in the ambulance as a way of saying "the clock doesnt start till they enter the front door"

[Trash]

Originally Posted by lockedfree

I interpreted that snippet differently: as stating that wait times are typically longer than 4 hours and they were having patients wait in the ambulance as a way of saying "the clock doesnt start till they enter the front door"

Yes I see your point.

[bumblebee]

If you have to wait 4 hours at the ER in Tallahassee Memorial...you've jumped the line...avg wait here is 6 hours during the 6a to 6p shift

[636blurr]

Oh I would comment on Obama but Im probably just a "typical white person" so why bother.

[baldheadeddork]

Originally Posted by 636blurr

Oh I would comment on Obama but Im probably just a "typical white person" so why bother.

No, thankfully, you are not typical.

[Gaolee]

Is any of us typical? I doubt it.

[flylooper]

Jesus, this it typical of the kind of shit we're going to be seeing all the way to election day.

The problem with the internet is that is gives bullshit just as loud a voice as the truth. In fact, maybe louder.

I'd like to see a direct quote from a Canadian (which can be attested to) in which the Canadian says he prefers the American system of health care to his own.

[Baldrick]

Best of luck on that one...

[jim schmidt]

1. Taken from what site?
2. What if its a complete fabrication?