Hot on the heels of the whole "healthcare is tyranny!" nonsense that the right wing is pushing regarding healthcare (WTF? Are these people batshit crazy? Nevermind, I know the answer to that!), I then made the mistake of clicking on a link over at The Political Cat, and came to the web site of S-21 Prison, one of Pol Pot's places to send political prisoners.
I click on the photographs, black and white and grainy and sometimes torn and spotted with blood. I click through them and notice the children, children who have no names, only numbers. Like Number 137, a beautiful, beautiful child despite the limitations of a torn and blood-smeared photograph. Dead. Like all the prisoners at Tual Seng, all of whom were executed as the Vietnamese soldiers that liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot's rule approached. There are only twelve known survivors of the tens of thousands of prisoners that passed through S-21.
This is what tyranny looks like: A beautiful child, dead, gone, nameless, with nothing but a torn and blood-stained photograph to attest that she ever existed.
-- Badtux the Grim Penguin
How very sad.
ReplyDeleteMillions of old fucks born during the post war baby boom (myself included) don't want to die.
ReplyDeleteAnd they and the worthless bottom feeders that never contribute anything to society want everyone else to spend whatever it takes to try to keep them alive, no matter what it costs.
No country can afford to support such a system, and then there is always the built in greed factor because doctors and others in that business think they are special and deserve more more money and toys than others.
Whatever health care program, if everyone gets what they want out of it, it will break this country.
Obama it seems wants to tax the rich to support it, that isn't how it works in real life though. Any extra taxes on the rich trickles down to the workers, the rich just pass the expense on (to you) and their taxes gets ticked up a bit to spread things around so it doesn't seem so bad.
The rich paying for health care in this country, ROFLMAO. Anyone that thinks that will happen is a fucking idiot. They will just pass the expense on to you. :-)
Thanks for the enlightenment BBC.
ReplyDeleteA little perspective. 1) Social programs have never made a significant contribution to deficits in the country. It has always been wars - hot or cold. Check it out. The facts are easy to find. 2) Great Britain instituted universal, single-payer, cradle to grave heath care in 1948, in the aftermath of the Great War, when they were basically broke. So, I believe it can be done. Or could be if the fucking pharmaceutical Cos. didn't
both god damned political parties.
Back to the subject at hand. Little number 137 was 9 years old, give or take 18 months when that picture was taken. I have granddaughters that age. What a horrible, awful, despicable race are we humans!
As you may have noticed, the word "own" should be where the vagrant line break actually is in the previous post.
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ReplyDeleteJazz, I cannot even look at poor little "Number 137" without practically crying. If ever there were a warning of the evil that Man can do... sad to say, too few heed it :-(.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Grim Penguin
BCC -
ReplyDeleteAs a BabyBoomer myself, I would like to ask you - what 10 year span do you think provided the greatest prosperity for the middle class. You might share my opinion that it was the decade following WWII.
Now when was the deficit (as a percent of GDP) the greatest - at the end of WWII. And what were taxes like in the highest bracket for that decade - and 10 years following? Taxes for the high bracket were over 60% for the decade that probably catapaulted one of your parents from poverty to middle class.
The miracle of Reagonomics is that most liberals are unaware that taxes for the top tier are about half what they were in the best years this country has had. 'Liberals' in Congress are wetting their pants (and panties) about a 2-3% increase in taxes for the top tier ONLY - pay for universal health care, like that bump is going to throw the train off the tracks.
Doug Hughes
How very sad.
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