How Stupid Are They?
Rook has an unbelievable find in Blinded By The Right.
I backtracked to find the original Investor’s Business Daily editorial which says:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
That would be Professor Stephen Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and the distinguished research chair at Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
He was born in Oxford, England and went to university at Oxford and Cambridge. The treatment for his ALS is through the National Health Service of the United Kingdom. His DECTalk voice synthesizer [a museum piece, BTW] may have an American accent, but his natural voice was Oxbridge.
15 comments
oh. my. gosh.
that has got to be the apex of stupid.
.-= last blog ..[for reference] =-.
Yeah, I think everybody has covered that one today. If stupidity were water, today’s GOP would be the Pacific Ocean.
– Badtux the Head-shakin’ Penguin
Wow. Please don’t tell me that sane people are buying this?? And just when one thinks the GOP can’t get any more insane.
What Badtux said.
I am gobsmacked.
The other amazing part is how many right wing media sources have quoted it. I had to go back through a couple of layers to get to the original.
IBD isn’t the Wall Street Journal, but it is read and quoted as a source.
This sort of explains their general problem with science – they don’t know who the heavy hitters are in the scientific world.
OT: Have a relative who worked for DEC a while ago, and they included the use of the DECTalk module by Prof. Hawkins in their advertising.
Kryten, we are dealing with people who honestly, in their very bones, believe that ignorance is a virtue. The Shrubbery was sold to the people by the media as a “real American” because he was dumber than a brick. He played dressed up, and was considered “heroic” or something.
You can’t have a debate in this country, because one side just wants to yell.
this story will have weight and effect because the target audience won’t or can’t fact check it. It’s a done deal and a very clever piece of propaganda it is. It has infected the target audience and that is all that was intended.
.-= last blog ..Next Insanity Please =-.
Oh, boy, this is just too good…..
Bryan, many of these people are actually PROUD of being ignorant. They are the ones who will argue that you don’t need college and that education is overrated.
I smell a post of my own coming on…..
Fallenmonk, when you can’t get people to understand that Medicare is a government health insurance program, there is no way they’ll understand this point. When a benefit to pay for a consultation to prepare a living will morphs into a government death panel, there is no hope for reason.
Moi, they are being told that they are victims, and everything bad that happens is because of someone else. Their paranoia is fed by demagogues and they don’t even attempt reason.
yeah, well, the democrats brought the ‘death consultations’ problems on themselves. all that worship of the dartmouth atlas and how the greedy old people in miami and mcallen are sucking up all the medical care and not leaving enough for the rest of us and how if the old people would just use 1/3 less medicare than they are, why that’s fix all our problems!
.-= last blog ..Dominoes 7 [and last] =-.
You have been reading Samuel in the Corrente comments again. Take a deep breathe and walk the dog.
What amazes me is how efficiency Medicare works given all of the road blocks that Congress has put in its way over the years, like the prohibition against negotiating for drug prices in Part D, and the inability to refuse payment for quackery, which is at the heart of the recent arrests in Miami for fraud. In several cases they were billing for useless therapy, and then not providing it. If they had provided the useless therapy they would have been safe, but they got greedy.
The Democrats are in trouble because they don’t actually have a plan that might be defensible. If they said Medicare for All, their problems would disappear for the most part, but they don’t have the spine for a real fight.
nope, not me, other than just enough to dash off a few of my standard replies to a few standard libertarian talking points, just because i can.
no, i saw this coming a long time ago. you’re right that they don’t have a defensible plan, but surely you can’t have missed all the rah-rah around atul gawande’s new yorker piece? but the dems [or perhaps their surrogates] have been talking up the ‘greedy old people’ theme for ages now, long before that piece was written.
.-= last blog ..Dominoes 7 [and last] =-.
and yeah, the dog wants to go out too. 🙂
I don’t guess it occurs to anyone that people have been putting off treatment until they get Medicare because they can’t afford to go to a doctor without it.
Oh, I’m sorry, that involves logic, and politics and logic don’t mix.
If he hasn’t already, my older brother will be dumping his current health insurance for Medicare because it will save him major bucks as he wait for his retirement account to come back from the dead and he can actually retire.
The message I got from the New Yorker piece was something I’ve always known, some doctors are greedy low-lifes who generate extra work for themselves and their friends. There is nothing about the health care system that even vaguely resembles a free market. I’ve seen more than one example where I though an organized crime prosecution was more correct than a malpractice suit.
I don’t understand why these folks shouting at the town hall meetings are acting on behalf of the health care industry. Fear I suppose. But that also tells me that the health care industry is getting very scared. They have turned up the volume so loud all they can do now is instill panic in people. And the more people panic the less they think. If they ever bothered to think at all.
And what is wrong with end of life counseling? Most people don’t want to think about it but it needs to be done. Unless you want someone else to make the decision for you, you need to know your options and your rights, and write it all down. Maybe they don’t think they are going to die. 😈
If I hadn’t already had a personal experience in the end of life battle of a first cousin, the Terri Schiavo zoo would have convinced me to have written a living will. The mess with my cousin got my Mother involved with Hospice, which is the route my Father took, to die at home without people poking, prodding, and annoying you.
I can’t understand why anyone would want to be turned into a “lab rat” at the end of their lives.
Seeing all of these people who looked like they are on Medicare raising all kinds of hell, is just pathological. These people are seriously delusional and need more lithium and/or Thorazine. They don’t need cops at these events, they need a crew from Animal Planet with nets and tranquilizer darts. Alas, Steve Irwin died too young, because we really need him at these events.