Health care = Ice Cream? Charles Krauthammer is an idiot

Re: "Onward, he said, regardless," by Charles Krauthammer, published on Michael Ryans's editorial page in the Augusta Chronicle on March 7th.

Using a ridiculous analogy, Charles Krauthammer compared the health care reform plan to the federal government giving out free ice cream.

He admits that, sure people would be in favor of free ice cream, but they would be against it, if the government regulated the delivery of ice cream with over 100 new boards and commissions.

Health care is a very complex issue. To frivolously compare it to a government giveaway of free ice cream is just stupid. I'd like to see him try to explain this analogy, in person, to a sick individual in the process of dying because they can't afford adequate medical care. Mr. Krauthammer ought to be ashamed of himself.

Furthermore, he repeated the conservative talking point of how Obama is "ramming" this down people's throats. Health care reform already passed by majority vote in the House and supermajority vote in the Senate. That's democracy, not forcing something down the people's throats.

Another tired talking point is that health care is 1/6th of the economy. It's a number I'm sick of hearing about. So what? The government already regulates 100% of the economy. Who cares if they add more regulations to 15% of it.

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I mostly agree with Mr. Ryan's lead editorial from March 7th--"Washington in Wonderland, as 'doomsday cycle' looms. However, as I've noted before, Mr. Ryan has no credibility on this issue because he's suggested an income tax moratorium. He's not serious about the deficit, if he thinks a zero income tax period is a good idea.

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Re: "Rangeling with corruption," from the March 8th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Mr. Ryan is quite hypocritical in this editorial which is mostly a whine about how the liberal media fails to point out often enough that Charles Rangel and other democratic crooks are democrats.

Mr. Ryan rightly points out that Charles Rangel is a crook for taking a free vacation at corporate expense to the Carribean. However, John McCain took a free vacation to Hawaii on the dime of the crooked savings and loan businesses circa 1990.

Mr. Ryan endorsed John McCain for president in 2008. He's got no grounds to criticize Charles Rangel now.

Michael Ryan Wonders if Common Sense will Prevail when He Has None Himself

Re: "Will common sense prevail?" from the February 7th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Once again, Mr. Ryan is freaked out about the budget deficit.  Yet, a few weeks ago, he suggested an income tax moratorium.  As I've written before, he has no credibility on this issue because he actually thinks eliminating taxes would be a viable policy.

It's true the U.S. government needs to reign in spending, but it's necessary to increase taxes as well to help balance the budget. Increasing taxes is politically unpopular, virtually dooming any political party that supports this as a method of reducing the deficit.  Until we get politicians with the guts to increase taxes and cut government spending, the budget will continue to spiral out of control.  

Note that Mr. Ryan mentions Social Security and Medicare as programs that cost too much, but he makes no mention of the illegal, immoral, and unnecessary war in Iraq.

Conservatives just have no integrity.  Helping out our fellow man is a waste of money, but blowing him to smithereens is untouchable spending and not even included in the official budget.  How obscene.  

The related editorial below Mr. Ryan's, written by Charles Krauthammer is entitled "The Great Peasant Revolt."  This is in reference to the Tea Party movement.  The Tea Party just paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to make a speech.  I doubt peasants can afford to pay that much just to hear a nervous schoolgirl criticize our president for having a good education which is what she did when she said, "We need a commander and chief, not a Harvard Lawyer."  The statement was received with cheers.

This quote and the positive response proves that Tea Party nuts think intelligence and education are bad things.

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Re: "Greedy union fat cats are behind first lady's anti-obesity campaign," by Michelle Malkin from the February 5th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Ms. Malkin writes about the "evils" of school lunches in this column.  She's critical of the SEIU, an organization that represents school cafeteria workers.  What's she afraid of--that a school cafeteria worker might make a dollar?

Ms. Malkin has no credibility whatsoever.  Mr. Ryan should be ashamed of himself for letting this ridiculous woman spew her stupid opinions on his page.

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Mr. Ryan has yet to retract his factually challenged column which I noted in my last blog entry. BTW, I contacted Alan English the managing editor of the news department.  He informed me that he has nothing to do with the editorial page, so I retract my statement suggesting he approves of Mr. Ryan's plagiarisms.

There.  I admitted I was wrong about something.

Will Michael Ryan?

Michael Ryan makes an Impractical Suggestion

Re: "Talk is cheap: lives are not," from the January 10th edition of the Augusta Chronicle."

This column is more evidence Mr. Ryan doesn't read his own newspaper because he makes a ridiculous, impractical suggestion. He states his outrage that every passenger on an airline is going to be scanned and writes, "Rather than assume everyone (sic) a terrorist , why don't we take some practical steps to protect ourselves? Such as: Put everyone on the terrorism 'watch list' on the 'no fly' list. If they're suspected of having terrorist sympathies, why let them fly?"

On page 4A of this same newspaper there's an article entitled, "Experts say Watch Lists a Flawed Tool." The U.S. has hundreds of thousands of people on its watch list, and according to this article, the British have a million people on their watch list. Of these, 99.99% have nothing to do with terrorism and most of the balance have never been convicted of any terrorist related activity. Most are on the list because they're muslim and have similar sounding names as terrorist suspects. Some politicians have even accidentally been put on watch lists. Imagine the chaos and lawsuits that would result, if these innocent people were prevented from getting on a passenger jet. Moreover, these violates the principle Mr. Ryan seems so outraged about--the inconvenience to innocent passengers. Apparently, Mr. Ryan also forgets that in America people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Not only is this evidence that Mr. Ryan doesn't read his own newspaper, but other comments suggest he doesn't even read the syndicated editorials that appear next to his unsigned ones. Mr. Ryan wrote, "Rather than accept the obvious reality that we're at war with radical Muslims, the vast majority of them young males, we will continue scanning grandma for explosives. Fact is, grandma might want to update her unmentionables: Soon she'll be subject to even more privacy invasions with full-body scanners that strip her bare." Mr. Ryan obviously didn't read Charles Krauthammer's column--the one right next to his own--because Mr. Krauthammer writes, "...Obama did get somewhat serious about the Christmas Day attack. First, he instituted high-level special screening for passengers from 14 countries, the vast majority of which are Muslim with significant Islamist elements. This is the first rational step away from today's idiotic random screening..."

So Mr. Ryan proves his ignorance again. The U.S. is moving more toward a focused profiling of potential terrorists, according to Mr. Krauthammer (no fan of Obama).

The first paragraph of Mr. Ryan's column is more evidence he doesn't read other pundits that appear on his own editorial page. Mr. Ryan wrote that President Obama "finally" admitted we're at war with terrorists. As I noted a few blog entries ago, www.politifact.com rated this claim that Obama wouldn't admit we were at war with terrorists as a "pants on fire lie," but it wasn't necessary for Mr. Ryan to read this website to recognize this lie--Eugene Robinson wrote a column debunking this falsehood last week...a few days before Mr. Ryan plagiarized Dick Cheney by repeating this lie.

Mr. Ryan also joined the chorus of conservative critics demanding that President Obama find a scapegoat for the nearly disastrous Christmas Day attempted attack. President Obama is right not to make the politically convenient decision to blame some individual within the U.S. government unfairly for a mistake made by authorities in the Netherlands.

More Hysteria from Michael Ryan

Re: "If anyone's ill, it's apologists," from the November 12th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

The whole premise of Mr. Ryan's opinion piece is false. Nobody is apologizing for Nidal Hasan, the man who allegedly shot 30 people at Fort Hood, killing 13. Mr. Ryan uses the tragic shooting as an excuse to hysterically attack what he thinks is political correctness. Mr. Ryan flatly denies the possiblity that Hasan was mentally ill and tells us with absolute certainty that it was a "pre-meditated, cold, calculated, and carefully executed act of Islamic terrorism on American soil."

There are a couple of points I find disgusting with his statement. First of all, Mr. Ryan knows nothing about mental illness. He's not a doctor and he's not an academic who has studied mental illness. Some of Hasan's colleagues did express their concerns that Hasan may have been mentally ill. Second of all, there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism. To stick the adjective of Islamic on the noun, terrorism, is simply bigoted rhetoric and has no place in a public newspaper. When a Christian man beats his wife to death, we don't call it an act of Christian terrorism. Why should a person's religion be attached to his behavior? There have been other mass shootings in the military committed by Christians. Nobody referred to these acts as "Christian terrorism."

Mr. Ryan also shows once again that he needs to read his own newspaper because he wrote that "Reports say Hasan had 10 to 20 contacts with a top al-Qaida recruiter..." No, he didn't. AP reports published by the Augusta Chronicle say there's no evidence the radical cleric Hasan sent emails to was a member of al-Qaida. To make that claim is slanderous. According to the FBI, the emails did not give any indication that Hasan was going to go on a shooting spree.

There's no way anyone could've predicted that an army psychiatrist would go psycho. For conservatives to claim that failure to prevent this was due to political correctness is a ridiculous stretch.

Mr. Ryan wrote that Hasan gave a lecture in which he said, "if you don't believe (in Islam) you're condemned to hell..."

I'm agnostic but take my wife to a Christian church because she's disabled and can't attend without my help. More than one person who goes to that church has told me I'm going to hell because I don't believe in Christianity. Does that make them a terrorist threat?

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Today, Mr. Ryan ran a column by Charles Krauthammer, a regular Fox News contributor whose ideas Mr. Ryan frequently rips off. Recently, conservatives have been claiming a big victory in the off year elections because they won two governorships. But they fell further behind in the House of Representatives. I wouldn't call falling further behind in the House a victory.

In "They myth of 2008--demolished," Mr. Krauthammer claims the election was an aberration, not a big FDR re-alignment. It's too early to know for sure, but I wouldn't rush to judgement over one off year election when nobody votes. If we had high voter turn out, republicans would lose big time in every election everywhere. The only reason they won two governorships this time, was because nobody shows up for off year elections.

He also repeats the oft-cited poll that shows conservatives outnumber liberals by 2-1. This poll is B.S. When push comes to shove, the U.S. is a liberal socialist country. Even when republicans had control of all three branches of government, they didn't dare take away Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and food stamps--all liberal socialist programs.