Children and more

Some things I found on the internet...

More married couples with children identify themselves as Republican; more unmarried/separated/divorced individuals with children identify themselves as Democrat

More married couples without children identify themselves as Democrat.


http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=95

Where are the main differences between Republicans and Democrats?

Where >2:1 ratio exists favoring Democrats: those in poverty; atheists; Jewish; < than HS education; liberal; black

Where >2:1 ratio exists favoring Republicans: conservative; evangelical

Otherwise, by income, education, religion, age, and sex, there is no overwhelming difference.

This seems to blow the theory of Republicans being the party of the rich. It can be said though, that there is a perception that Republicans are not the party of those on welfare, but neither are the democrats (see prior post).

Welfare in America

The Kaiser foundation did this survey of public opinion.

http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/1001-welftbl.cfm

Li-blah-erals

Liberals see themselves as special people, able to see the world far more clearly than the narrow minded conservative. DocBrain went to some websites that defined the liberal philosophy. DocBrain did the heavy lifting and here are the main liberal points.

1. Be modern. It is just cool to be modern. (DocBrain, aka DocGadget, can go along with this)
2. The little guy is being screwed by the system. The solution: change the rules to favor the little guy. Make taxes, laws, and power structures favor the little guy. Disempower the rich and elite. If the old system can't do this, we need a new one. (DocBrain thinks about the movie "King Ralph" and wonders how the little guy will see the big picture. DocBrain also thinks about the blind justice statue and doubts that uncovering the left eye will make things right. DocBrain also notes that statistics on class mobility in the US suggests that the little guy often is the parent of the next big guy, and vice versa. Motivation to achieve personal best is good for all of us.)
3. Everyone should be able to live their live as they want as long as they don't harm anyone (OK, but riddle me this: why is it OK to be free to have AIDS and not tell your partner? This was a liberal issue in the early 1980s that never computed with DocBrain. )
4. All nations, working together, can achieve peace. You cannot get to peace through war. (DocBrain wonders how "peace" is defined, since there are many examples from history where peace followed war... in fact, that is all that history is! What we see, though, is triumph of one over another. It is always nice to see triumph without hot war, like Reagan brought us over the evil empire, but times and adversaries do not allow that in all cases, such as crazies like Hitler, and I suspect North Korea. There is no happy medium between freedom and fundamental Islam. We will not wind up in the middle somewhere, as fundamental Islam is opposed to #3 above. )

Except for #4, liberalism sounds a lot like the "Playboy Philosophy", which DocBrain read (OK, you caught me. DocBrain is lying. DocBrain did not know there was anything written in Playboy except "My turnoffs are people who hate cats and rainy days.")

DocBrain wonders which senses are most important. If a liberal smells a cigarette, he will go crazy. But why is it not right for a conservative to go crazy when he sees PDA between 2 guys? Both situations are in accordance with #3.

Being one of the little guys, DocBrain must now add meaning to his life and go to work.

(Mis)Managed Care

In the ideal world, you and your doctor would use the most modern techniques to record your health history, analyze your symptoms, determine what additional testing is needed, schedule and perform the testing, arrive at a diagnosis, and institute the most appropriate treatment for your condition. You might think this is the goal of your health care plan. You would be wrong.

Health plans take in money. They use some of that money to pay for care. The rest is used for salaries for non-health care personnel, advertising, real estate, executive salaries and perks, "retreats", and the like. The money spent on care is an expense, to be balanced against other factors.

In the realm of heath care, who or what is the problem? I suggest it is the illness or injury, not the patient, hospital or doctor. Health care insurers install all sorts of "games" to keep needed tests from being ordered and appropriate treatments from being administered. They create friction that slows the delivery of care. A persistent physician and patient can still usually get what they want, but only after expending time and effort. The insurer eventually relents and pays (after all, the insurer does not have a license to practice medicine). The considerable costs in pushing paper raises the cost of care without changing quality.

Friction is that which slows down progress and gums up the works. It is friction which causes armies to lose wars. Friction slowed delivery of aid to New Orleans. Friction is the ploy of bureaucrats. At best, it makes people adhere to yesterday's algorithms of care; at worst, it delays and obfuscates needed care leading to more disability and suffering.

No good rant should be without a solution. Managed care organizations should focus on mining their vast data banks to determine methods of care most likely to succeed and use this in an educational way. Rather than denying a test or a treatment, consider requiring longitudinal data collection. This data, combined with that from other caregivers and patients, can be used to create a knowledge base for education and for developing armor against those who attack the health care providers for failure to provide all that is wanted.

Managed care, in its current iteration, is as much part of the problem as disease or trauma.

Doing the right thing is always cheaper in the long run.

Free to be equal

BrotherBrain had this interesting take on the future of politics: liberals will soon come out against freedom as a "dirty" word.

Wait a minute, you say. Aren't liberals those who are for freedom? Well, no. Not really. They are for equality, which is a completely different thing.

Freedom is the ability to use your talents and resources as you will. Certainly, your freedom is limited by reality (the rules of math and science) and practicality (see prior posts). Your freedom is also legitimately limited by the rules of the land, but how intrusive should these rules be? When should the common good trump your freedom?

Liberals see inequality as a reason to trump your freedom. Perhaps you might agree with inequality of opportunity. You may even agree with inequality of money for equal results. But, would you take it to the next level? Inequality of money for any effort, job or result? Inequality of talent?

Here is my challenge to a liberal who is contemplating equality as being the be all and end all: medical science cannot yet make people smarter, more talented, or more driven to succeed; medical science cannot restore functioning limbs to those who have none, nor sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf. We can, however, do the opposite. We can cut away brain sections and body parts and take the brightest and most gifted persons and make them no different than the least of us. In the spirit of equality, DocBrain will help pay for any prominent liberal who wants to shrink his/her brain and body down to the abilities of the least of us. DocBrain will be pleased to help this equalization process.

No one can tell me what to do

There are three things about life: freedom, principle and practicality. Failure to understand how these are connected causes all kinds of trouble for people.

Freedom is the ability to do or think as you want. But, are you really free? It depends upon what you value.

Principles fall into categories, from the most strong to the least. Mathematical principles are the strongest and apparently transcend reality. We cannot even imagine putting two objects next to two other objects and not having 4 objects. So, math is about as solid as principles get. Next comes physics. It seems pretty reasonable and can predict what we will see. Next comes the biological sciences, sociology, the political sciences, and finally rules of social behavior.

Practicality is how the use of money, time and effort plays against the concepts of freedom and principle.

So, in principle, you could build a new pyramid in Egypt (no mathematical, physical or insurmountable political constraint). Since I can imagine it, I am free to do so. But, practically speaking, where would I get the money, time, resources, and people to do this? How would I find out who's palms need greased? What about long term maintenance? This is where freedom comes into conflict with principle.

The latest conflict in Pittsburgh is about wearing a motorcycle helmet. Biological statistics note the frequency at which motorcycles collide with larger objects. Physics notes the force of impact and the ability of soft tissue and bone to withstand such forces. Practicality indicates that you could lose your life and your career. But the legal principle is that you are allowed to go without a helmet and you can imagine doing so. But, you can also imagine walking in space without a spacesuit. No law yet against doing just that.

Here is what I say: you are always free to do what you can imagine, but don't try to challenge the laws of mathematics, physics, or biology. You will lose the math and physics challenge and statistically may lose the biology challenge.

In the early 1980s, there was a decision not to universally test and quarantine people with AIDS as it would interfere with political principle. When, surprise, more and more people got AIDS, we wrung our hands in anguish. The principle of contagion, a biological principle, supercedes political principle by a long shot. Just goes to show how even our politicians can be led astray by a belief in their own pseudo-freedom. Practically, we have had to spend a lot of money, sweat and tears because of thumbing our nose to the principle of contagion.

So, when you think you are free, you really aren't unless you have taken principle and practicality into account.