2009 ends with terrorism and health care bill

COLUMBUS: The Senate passed their version of the health care bill on Christmas Eve. Then President Obama went home for the holidays. We can’t honestly complain about that, even if it is in Hawaii. He probably figured he would lay on the beach for a week and read all 2000 pages of the bill.

Well, his peaceful vacation was abruptly interrupted on Christmas Day  by a terrorist who tried to kill nearly 300 by blowing up an airplane over Detroit. With all we have learned about this radical Muslim since then, the President is sure to be fuming mad at his Homeland Security folks. He was known to be a potential terrorist, England had withdrawn his Visa months ago, he paid cash for a one-way ticket from Nigeria, had no luggage, and his Dad had warned our Embassy about his son’s terrorist views. Only excuse I can figure is the dad’s warning came by email from his Nigerian bank, and nobody dared to open it.

When he was dragged off the plane, instead of being turned over to the CIA for interrogation, they took him to a hospital for treatment and gave him a defense lawyer.

Since this is the last of 52 Weekly Comments for 2009, I’ll end with some wisdom from Will Rogers on the economy, a health care plan, and horse trading for votes in Congress.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“In case anyone happens to ask you, this is a pretty tough Depression… (The problem is) everybody wants to solve it and nobody wants to work at anything else. I believe if it was announced that it couldn’t be solved, they would go back to working on their own problems, and maybe first thing we knew we would be doing pretty good.
In fact I think just the announcement of the fact that it couldn’t be solved would be a blessing. Everybody feels better when you really know even the worst. It’s this uncertainty of not knowing that’s a worrying us more than the actual discomforts of it.
I will bet you one thing, I bet you in the next Presidential race, you won’t get candidates coming out saying they can fix it. They have learned their lesson. The most that will be said in the next campaign platform of either party will be: ‘Now boys, we are going to try and check it, but we are not saying we will, but we will promise you this, we are not going to let it spread any more than we can possibly help.'” WA #569, Nov. 19, 1933

 “To me the greatest thing they (Dr. Charles Mayo, Mayo Clinic) have done is the system of charging everyone in proportion to what they can pay. All Doctors should make enough out of those who are well able to pay, to be able to do all work for the poor free.  That is one thing that a poor person should never be even expected to pay for is medical attention…  Your Doctor bill should be paid like your Income tax, according to what you have.  There is nothing that keeps poor people poor as much as paying Doctor bills.  It always wipes out their savings, and it’s that fear of not being able to pay that makes it ten times worse on them.” WA #394, July 13, 1930

 “All there is to politics is trading. That’s why politics is not as good as it was years ago. They don’t have as many old-time horse traders in there. These we got are just amateurs. They’re crude with their trades. There is really no “finesse.” Finesse is a French word and it means sneaking it over.”  Saturday Evening Post, June 2, 1928