David Online

Forty million Americans. That’s the number of people in America who do not have health care as brandished about by the Democratic presidential front-runners in their quest to socialize our health care system. The number is, of course, totally false.

Every single person in the United States has access to health care at any time. Whether your name is Juan and you swam across the Rio Grande last night or your name is Poopsie and your family came across in the Mayflower, you can check into the nearest hospital and receive treatment.

There might be, however, be forty million of us without health insurance…at any given time. There are lots of reasons why one may not have health insurance. You could be in between jobs or just started a new job and insurance doesn’t kick in until next month. Maybe you’re young and healthy and choose not to purchase health insurance. Maybe you’re rich and can afford to self-pay so you don’t carry health insurance. We could go on and on as to why someone – at any particular given time – may, or may not, have health insurance.

What’s so interesting about that forty million number is that the Californians for Population Stabilization just released a report claiming there are 20 million to 38 million illegal immigrants in America; not the 12 million the federal government says.

Assuming illegal immigrants do not carry health insurance as a general rule, then using the lower figure of 20 million illegal immigrants, only 20 million American citizens then do not have health insurance. On the other hand, if we use the higher number, then for all intents and purposes Americans are virtually 100% covered.

This example is silly of course, but not much sillier than the forty million flourished about by advocates of universal health care and socialized medicine. Liberals use this number the same way they use the number of people in stuck in poverty – as if that too was a static number. The fact that differences in income are mostly explained by people’s differences in age, skills, discipline, drive, ambition, and productivity is never mentioned. Today’s poor are tomorrow’s middle class, and the day that’s high-income earners.

Liberals do not understand high income earners. Former Democratic House Speaker Dick Gephardt whined that high-income earners are “winners” in the lottery of life. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor calls high-income earners the “fortunate fifth.”

The high-income earners themselves say, “We worked our butts off to get here.”

Hillary Clinton told Seacoast-region voters at the forum that under her leadership “the country will achieve energy independence and confront global climate change with market-based and bold government action to cut carbon emissions and pollutants contributing to global warming.”

Barack Osama’s campaign would not release any specific policy proposals, but did say “he would lay out a bold energy plan that will allow America to lead in the world in combating global climate change.”

John Edwards outlined a bold plan for America to achieve energy independence and halt global warming. Under Edwards’ plan, “America can lead the world in stopping climate change, create 1 million new jobs in a new, clean energy economy and freeze our growing demand for electricity.”

Meanwhile back on earth, Professor Bjorn Lomborg writes in the Washington Post that, “All eyes are on Greenland’s melting glaciers as alarm about global warming spreads. This year, delegations of U.S. and European politicians have made pilgrimages to the fastest-moving glacier at Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes.”

“Curiously, something that’s rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today. Or that melt rates around Ilulissat were faster in the early part of the past century, according to a new study. And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat — perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.”

Environmental groups say that the only way to deal with the effects of global warming is to make drastic cuts in carbon emissions — a project that will cost the world trillions of dollars (the Kyoto Protocol alone would cost the U.S. $180 billion annually). That’s a hell of a lot of money to achieve very little.

Global Warming Guru Al Gore and his minions scoff that the IPCC (the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has severely underestimated the melting of glaciers, especially in Greenland. In fact, the IPCC has factored in the likely melt-off from Greenland, which has contributed a little over an inch to sea level rise in this century. Antarctica will actually accumulate ice rather than shedding it, making sea levels two inches lower by 2100.

That is disappointing news to us hoping to have beach front property in the next few years as promised by Al Gore.

But, wait a minute. The IPCC says we’re likely to see a 13-inch rise in sea levels by 2100 if we focus on economic development and ignore global warming. That 13-inch sea level rise is similar to what the world experienced in the past 150 years, but we’ll let that slide for now. On the other hand says the IPCC, if we spend trillions of dollars and focus on environmental concerns, and adopt hefty cuts in carbon emissions, we could cut that sea level rise by maybe 5 inches. The downside to that is that everyone will be poorer in 2100. And with less money to protect the land from the sea, cutting carbon emissions would mean that more dry land would be lost. Where? Well, in vulnerable regions like Micronesia, Tuvalu, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Maldives.

Apparently, the Statue of Liberty in New York City and my condo in Florida will still be on dry land.

The good news is that as sea levels rise, so will temperatures. Why are higher temperatures good? Because it is estimated that global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat related deaths each year, but at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.

The IPCC says that global warming will also claim lives in another way; increasing the number of people at risk of catching malaria by about 3% this century. According to the scientific models, implementing the Kyoto Protocol with its trillions of dollars of cost would reduce the malaria risk by just .02%. Lomborg says, on the other hand, we could spend $3 billion dollars annually on mosquito nets and medication and cut malaria incidence in half by the end of the decade.

Let us not forget Al Gore’s polar bears. You know the one – the little cartoon animated polar bear seen in “An Inconvenient Truth”, swimming for its life, unable to find an ice floe. Al Gore and the Kyoto Protocol would save just one bear a year. Yet every year, hunters kill between 300 and 500 polar bears, according to the World Conservation Union. Lomborg says outlawing this slaughter would be cheap and easy – and much more effective than anything Al Gore, the IPCC, or Kyoto could do.

The Kyoto Protocol has been a farce from the beginning. Even President Bill Clinton knew it was when it was formed during his administration. It was so flawed Clinton didn’t even submit to Congress for a vote. And just to make sure he didn’t, the Senate unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution that stated the United States would not be bound by a Kyoto Treaty that exempted China, India, and every other developing nation in the world.

In 1992, the wealthy nations as opposed to the developing nations defined by Kyoto, promised to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. By 2000, instead of cutting emissions, the emission output grew by 12%. Before that though, they met again in 1997 and this time promised to cut emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by 2010. As it looks right now in 2007, those emissions are on track to be 25% greater again.

Lomborg says that we must accept the fact that climate change is real and that we’ve helped cause it. What Lomborg objects to is the hysteria surrounding it. To some people – Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Edwards and Obama – cutting carbon emissions has become the answer, regardless of the question. Cutting carbon emissions has become the “generational message.” But shouldn’t we implement the most efficient policies first, he asks?

Combating the climate challenges facing the planet such as malaria, more heat deaths, declining polar bear populations, often require far simpler and far less costly measures than carbon cuts. And we also need to remember the 21^st century is just beginning and will present many other challenges for which we will need low-cost solutions.

The Copenhagen Consensus of 2004 brought together the world’s top economists together to determine not only where we can do good, but at what cost, and to rank the best things for the world to do first. The top priorities they came up with are dealing with infectious diseases, malnutrition, agricultural research, and first-world access to third-world agriculture.

Global warming? The panel placed global warming near the bottom of the list citing “the costs far exceed the benefits.”  

At a campaign stop in Iowa, Hillary Clinton got into a verbal spat with an Iowa voter who questioned her on her recent vote to call Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Randall Rolph, a registered Democrat, asked Hillary why he should support her candidacy when she did not appear to have leaned any lessons from having voted to authorize force in Iraq.

Hillary first thanked him, then instead of cackling with laughter as she usually does when asked a difficult question, she accused him of having been fed the information, saying, “obviously somebody sent [it] to you.”

Rolph snapped right back. “I take exception. This is my own research.”

“Well then, let me finish telling you…” Clinton screeched in that high-pitched voice of hers.

“Nobody sent that, and I am offended you would say that,” Rolph countered right back.

Realizing her blunder, Hillary backed off and apologized to Mr. Rolph. In her usual patronizing manner, Hillary said she respected his research but there were two versions of the bill and she had opposed the earlier version that had harsher language.

“I voted against the resolution before I voted for it,” said Hillary. No, she didn’t say that. I made that part up.

Following the verbal altercation, Mr. Rolph fumed, “It was an insult. It was basically calling me stupid. That I can’t think on my own. That I don’t have the ability to research or come up with a coherent or concrete thought on my own. How dare she!”

Liberals like Hillary Clinton are always astounded to learn that Americans who live in the fly-over country between New York and California are not as stupid as liberals believe they are. It apparently amazed Hillary Clinton that Mr. Rolph knew her voting record. So astonished was Hillary, that she accused him of being a “plant.”

Rolph said he would not be supporting Hillary Clinton for president.

President Bill Clinton’s former National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who stole and destroyed highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Berger admitted to and was convicted of stealing documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. Berger stuffed the documents in his socks and down his pants before spiriting them out of the building. The documents Sandy Berger stole were written by White House counter terrorism czar Richard Clarke and were a “tough review” of the Clinton administration’s shortcomings in dealing with terrorism.

Upon being caught, Berger panicked and told reporters and the American people that he had made “an honest mistake” by “inadvertently” taking the documents. Since the documents painted a very unflattering picture of the Clinton administration, Bill Clinton immediately vouched for Sandy Berger’s lie.

Berger was convicted, fined $50,000, placed on probation for two years, and stripped of his security clearance for three years.

Berger was an adviser in a similar role with the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004 when the story broke. Sensibly, John Kerry fired the thief.

In politically correct speech, Hillary Clinton’s hiring of Sandy Berger is raising eyebrows even among Clinton admirers. Out here in the hinterland, we’re wondering just how stupid is that?

Case Western Law professor Jonathan Adler, with eyebrows raised, said, “It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” Raising his eyebrow even higher, he added, “If Senator Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, at some point she will begin to receive national security briefings that will include sensitive information. At such a point, continuing to keep Berger on board as a key advisor, where he might have access to sensitive material, would be beyond incomprehensible.”

The larger question though is; if candidate Clinton will hire a convicted national security thief as a national security advisor, what kind of people would President Clinton hire?