Tom’s weblog

I had started this a while and forgot to publish it, so a little old but that does not mean the idea has lost merit.

Saw a reference to an interesting post over at John Dvorak’s site today. He was referring to an editorial which appeared at the The Independent, a British publication. A very interesting read, for the most part summed up what I have been thinking these past few weeks.

One of the replies I found most interesting was someone who was obviously against the current plan begin proposed which would include a public payer option and held up as examples that the current system works people who are getting good care on the Medicare system. I guess someone forgot to tell this guy that Medicare is government run and paid for health care paid for by taxes on all.

Found this BBC article today and figured others would find it interesting also. On the site I found it at I was looking at some of the comments and began to wonder, were we reading the same thing? To each their own I guess.

I was chatting with a friend at work Thursday afternoon when someone who sits nearby joined in. Somehow the discussion turned to government regulations and after a short while this other guy was getting quite angry about this topic. There was no way to just discuss this with him, his viewpoint appeqrs to be the only one that matters and any competing ideas are so wrong and dangerous they have to be literally shouted down with vulgar language.

In a nutshell, his contention was that the government required banks to make loans to people who could not afford them and that this is what has lead to the current economic problems. At the time I was too flabbergasted at his reaction to respond but it occurred to me later even if that was the case, the banks were not required to structure these loans to fail or make them without performing due diligence. Our current problems were not the regulations fault but greedy banks looking to grab whatever they could damn the consequences. (Of course, there is a lot more to this topic but I will leave those books to someone else to write.)

I don’t care for induhviduals who hold such extremist views that a simple debate is just not possible. The only way to discuss current events with these induhviduals is when one just agrees with everything that is said, that is not a debate or discussion though.