Hermit
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Baby Talk
« on: 2006-05-15 09:30:26 » |
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Part I : John Gibson: "Make more babies"
Source: Media Matters
Authors: BA
Dated: 2006-05-12
Gibson: "Make more babies" because in "[t]wenty-five years ... the majority of the population is Hispanic"
Summary: On The Big Story, John Gibson urged viewers to "[d]o your duty. Make more babies," because he had found out, from a recently released report, that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. Gibson added: "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." Gibson later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies." [http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120006][Report on Fox Bigot Continues][/url]
[Hermit] I wonder how the dubious precedents currently being established by the Wrong Wing will be appreciated when they are the minority? e.g. Spanish only schools anyone? Immigration weighted towards South Americans? What pathetic Social Security is offered, directed primarily to Hispanics?
Part II : Obscenity
Source: Media Matters
Authors: Jonathan Schwarz
Dated: 2006-05-09
We’re very concerned about family values except of course when it involves children
I certainly agree with Señor Mañana’s views below about the new Save the Children report on U.S infant mortality rates. It is obscene that the only industrialized country we’re beating out is Latvia.
However, I think our host actually lets the U.S. off a little easy. America has favorable conditions matched by no other nation that’s ever existed. We’ve suffered less than almost any country from armed conflict, even given the ferocious devastation that was the War of 1812. Meanwhile we have an extremely helpful, temperate climate and natural resources coming out of our noses. By contrast, Japan has 1/3 the infant mortality rate of ours, with no natural resources and sixty years after it was burned to the ground and nuked. Europe is also far better, after it almost obliterated itself twice within the past century.
In other words, not only should we have the highest level of average health in the world, it shouldn’t even be CLOSE. How far we’ve fallen short of this says something extremely unflattering about us.
For instance, here’s how Canadian malcontent John Ralston Saul describes America in his book The Doubter’s Companion : A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense:
America "A highly sophisticated THIRD WORLD country."
The three-way contrast between the complex, civilized, rich and highly trained elites, the weak middle class and the vast majority of the population who are excluded from the benefits of the empire and so participate mainly through the great American mythology is what first strikes those who come from more middle-class societies. The nation whose mythology is devoted to equality is increasingly a society of class divisions in the style of the Third World. [ John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter’s Companion : A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense", Free Press, 2002, ISBN 0743236602 ]
[Hermit: As the graph I keep posting (see below again) shows, America no longer has a middle class. America has only a poorest class, a poor class, and an extremely wealthy class. The tragedy of America is that courtesy of the myth, lacking the words and concepts to explain this, the poor and poorest imagine it is their own incompetence that causes this - and so, knowingf that they have no hope of improvement in this lifetime, seek solace from the communist religion of the second class - while the wealthy pay it just sufficient lip service to keep it in vogue.]
Part III : Obscenity
Source: Media Matters
Authors: Tom Tomorrow
Dated: 2006-05-09
Obscenity.
To quote Justice Potter Stewart’s famous non-definition, I know it when I see it. And this is fucking obscene:
Quote:An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.
American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.
Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births. |
Quote:| The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births. |
Because of some unholy confluence of conservatism, free-marketism, and general head-up-ass-ism, this country has never made health care for all a national priority.
[Hermit: The elite don't care, and the poor don't realise that it is important - and couldn't afford to fix it even if they did realise it.]
Things like this are the result, and it infuriates me. Next time some right wing asshole starts talking about the scary, scary dangers of socialized medicine, just remember: among industrialized nations, only Latvia has a higher death rate for newborns than the United Fucking States of America.
For a nation as advanced and wealthy as we are alleged to be, that’s unspeakably obscene.
[Hermit: For a few suggestions as to how to fix the mess, see here:
Quote from: Hermit on 2006-02-16 16:29:46 | [Jonathan Davis] What would you do if your were say US or EU President.] |
Graph showing the distribution of wealth in the US.
Source:
Inequality.org
Original Credit: Edward N. Wolff,
"Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.," Jerome Levy Economics Institute, May, 2004.
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