THE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM NO ONE WANTS

One of my all time favorite talk show hosts, and a great personal inspiration, was J.P. McCarthy. He died 10 or so years ago of a rare blood disease and till this very day I miss him very much. It's strange to miss someone so much that you really didn't even know. I listened to his show every work day for years and I always loved the way he could talk to anyone with equal respect. Democrat or Republican. My daughter jokes that I could talk to a rock about dirt. If that's true, I learned it from J.P. McCarthy.

One day, after a particularly trying series of calls from listeners on polar opposite ends of an issue, J.P. paused for what seemed like a really long time. When he came back on, he said with great exasperation, "Why is it we are so prone to run to "A" or "Z" when there is so much room in the middle?"

Why, Indeed.

The Health Care issue in the United States feels like that to me. On the "A" side stands the Republicans. In their view, everything is just great the way it is now. Everyone gets care. No one is denied health care if they show up at the emergency room door. They will tell you that other countries with Universal Health Care are in shambles. People wait for months for cancer treatment and bureaucrats, not health care professionals, decide what treatment is proper. And worst of all, those of us with good health care will see our health care shrink. Frankly, most of that is horribly spun. If not a down-right lie.

On the "Z" side stands the Democrats. What they are proposing is a move toward absolute coverage for every ailment that the masses come across. Abortions-covered, sex change-covered, mental illness-covered, flea dip for Fi-Fi the Poodle-covered. That would be a disaster of monumental proportions. One only needs to look at the average person abusing SSI to see how bad this can be. Medicaid cards are treated like Gold Visa cards by some doctors. Test after test after test. I know of one young man who fought for years to get on SSI for a questionable "illness". End result? Over a million dollars on tests and then a fat $30,000 check for back pay on his SSI. To see how many will exploit a system like that, just look at what happened to Hungary.

So, there's "A" and "Z". Both utterly unacceptable.

Now, here's what I'm proposing. I'll call it "Proposal M". With Proposal M you get catastrophic health care coverage issued by the Government as long as your a legal U.S. citizen. What this means is that every man, woman, child and any liberal combination of the three, gets coverage against any major health issue that you can have. As long as you have it involuntarily. Sex change-not covered, abortion-not covered, breast enlargement-not covered, hair transplants-not covered. Also not covered are office calls or tests. Frankly, nothing is covered until it's determined that you have a major problem. What are covered are operations, cancer treatment, major life-threatening injuries, bone marrow transplants and the myriad of god-awful things that can put an uninsured person into bankruptcy.

But H.C., what about all the other things? Poor people can't afford office calls and tests! For that I would expand on our already successful state run clinics. Sure, you won't get your own doctor, sure you'll have to wait in line with smelly homeless people, but once it's determined that you have a serious illness it's back on the fast track that everyone has.

But H.C, I already have health care. Will I have to give up my doctor? My place at the front of the line? Absolutely not. You will be able to purchase health care just like you do now, only it will be way cheaper since it doesn't have to cover any of the big -ticket payouts. Anyone can purchase additional coverage. Hell, I can buy flood insurance on my home and I live on a hill! Noah would be floating by on an Ark before my basement would flood.

There are two major problems with our current system the way I see it. 1) People without coverage (usually working poor) are seeing their life savings destroyed by one major health issue. This can also happen to someone who loses their job but has too many assets to qualify for help. It should never be that someone in this country goes all the way back to square one because of a series of unfortunate events beyond their control. 2) Expensive health care coverage is making our companies less competitive in the global market. Proposal M is a solution to both those problems.

Universal Health care is a dangerous venture for any country to enter into, much less one as big and as prone to abuse as ours. Catastrophic coverage is a good way to start without destroying both our current health care system and our budget. Sure, it's a bitter pill for conservatives to swallow, of course it's not everything the Socialists are hoping for, but I for one, would be happy knowing that, no matter what happens, I'll never lose my house and everything that I've ever worked for because I lost my job and got sick or hurt. Proposal M may not be perfect, but "A" and "Z" are completely unacceptable. So, let's make J.P. McCarthy proud and show him we Americans do know there's something between "A" and "Z". Proposal M. H.C.

WHAT'S REALLY BEHIND BILL MAHER

I just finished watching the movie "Religulous" written by, and starring Bill Maher. No, I didn't pay for it. I try to never contribute money to people that are purposely trying to hurt someone else. A friend of mine thought I might get a kick out of it, so he brought his copy over. In case you don't know who Bill is, Mr. Maher got his start doing stand up comedy. Like a lot of stand up comedians, he had a hard time finding his nitch. Then one day, Bill discovered something that would become his trademark; taunting religious people. The best part for Bill was, he enjoyed it, even if he didn't know why.

I'm not a religious person, so Bill's attempts to crawl under my skin with his smartzy "I'm so much more intelligent than you, cuz I don't believe in fairy tales" crap doesn't do much for me. Whether or not the Christians are following a false prophet doesn't interest me. Why the Mormons wear those "magic undies" doesn't fascinate me, and the millions of contradictions that Bill and his faithful followers find in religious documents are only mildly worth listening to. But I am very curious as to why Mr. Maher devotes so much of his life to attacking other people's beliefs.

I like religious people. There, I said it.

I like that they have a moral compass dictated by a group, not by their own individual wants and needs. I like their commitment to their family and their understanding that some things are just plain wrong. I even married a sweet Catholic girl and entertained myself for a while by going to church with her (mostly Easter and Christmas). I tried to be a follower, but hard as I tried, it just wasn't for me. I liked the morality though. I'm a bit of an "Old Testament" guy at heart. I love a story where the bad guys get theirs in the end. But the "pray on Sunday, sin on Monday" attitude kind of lost me. I like the Old God. The Great Smiter. Now religion is all about forgiveness. How can someone live a life of hurting people and then on his deathbed suddenly ask for forgiveness and get it? Not in my world. Want forgiveness? Admit your wrongs before you find out your dying, repair the damage you've done and then seriously repent from your hurtful ways. Then maybe. For the rest of you...let the smiting begin, in the smoking section.

Still, I have never felt the need to try to talk anyone out of their religion.

Why would I? If it brings them comfort during times of hardship, what's the problem, Bill? Does it really bother you that much that someone has faith in something that you personally don't believe exists? At first I thought that Mr. Maher was just making a few quick bucks on haters. If a few girls with, shall we say, lowered morality, happen to want to sleep him in the process. Hey, bonus! I really believed that was about it.

Then, about half-way through the movie, an epiphany. There sat Bill Maher, with his poor old gray-haired mother, talking about his religious upbringing, when a little chestnut fell right out of the tree. Bill apparently was crushed as a child when he found out there was no Santa. There it was staring me in the face. Bill was bitter that he was lied to and started to question everything. If there was no Santa, and no Easter Bunny, and no Tooth Fairy, then by God, there would be no God! And not just no God for Bill, no God for anyone. They would all have to have their faith crushed just like his was. Bill Maher is simply acting out his own hurt by hurting others.

Suddenly, I found myself pitying poor little Billy and his broken Christmas heart.

So, let's all do Bill Maher a favor and help him get over his pain. Everyone print off a copy of this piece and send it to Bill Maher. Maybe after seeing it for the tenth or hundredth time, Bill will finally see himself for what he really is, a selfish, bitter little man who is still carrying around his childhood pain. There is help for people like Bill Maher, but first, they must admit they have a problem. So, let's all get together and help Bill to help himself. It is, after all, the Christian thing to do. H.C.

DORA THE.....WHORA?

Zoey got pregnant, Hannah Montana's posing nearly nude, Two pre-teen boys are fronting something called "The Naked Brothers Band", and now Dora the Explorer is being turned into a pre-teen tramp. If all this sounds like an effort to sexualize your 8 year old daughter or son, you'd be right on target. The last time I wrote about this horrible trend in our culture, it was a couple of university professors that we're trying to convince you that adult/pre-teen sex was perfectly O.K.. Don't believe me? Check it out.

Being the father of 3 children and the grandfather of 6 grandkids, this effort by the disgusting "progressive"arm of our media and universities makes me nauseous like no other issue. When I bring up this effort (by some) to legitimize sexualizing children, or even having sex with children, I'm usually greeted with a large degree of scepticism. My efforts to tie that movement to the current Gay Rights movement is usually met with down-right anger and accusations that my '70's experimentation has left me with less than a fully operating brain. Let me assure you, The Hippie's brain is firing on all cylinders.

Anyone that's been around for more than two decades has seen this for themselves, even if they don't know it. If you don't have any young children, or don't pay much attention to what's going on in T.V. programing lately, I suggest you take a day or two and watch Nickelodeon or any of the children's networks. Be prepared to be shocked. Eight year old boys are chasing girls and walking around with bare chests, Lazytown, a popular children's show, is so sexualized that pedophiles have set up sites to salivate over the seemingly pre-pubescent star. Your children are being taught that they should use words like "hot" or "sexy" to describe their playground playmates.

Hollywood and our media have had a tolerant attitude towards sexualizing children for some time. When Roman Polanski, a famous director, raped a 13 year-old in his hot tub (after feeding her Quaaludes), Hollywood couldn't even feign shock. In fact, they even continued to celebrate his films and defend him even as he fled to France to escape prosecution. When Woody Allen, another famous producer and star, started openly dating his own step daughter immediately after she turned 18, Hollywood embraced them both without a hint of condemnation. Every day another teacher is paraded across our T.V. screen after being caught having sex with one of her "tween" students. Is she in the orange garb and shackles typical of past male teachers caught fornicating with a child? No. She looks like she just stepped out of a day spa. Our media offers no judgement, no condemnation for having sex with her student while we paid her!

How am I connecting all this to the current Gay Rights Movement? First, let me say that it isn't gay people that I have a problem with at all. It's the activists. Note that I didn't call them "Gay Rights Advocates". These are the left-over '60's era hippies (the one's that stole our movement for their own gain) that have made their way into the arts and our schools and our universities. They are reliving their past by clinging to anything that has the word "rights" attached to it. Having justifiably worked for Civil Rights, Women's Rights, The Anti War movement and now Gay Rights, they are quickly finding themselves with no cause to fight for. And no more attention. No more adulation. No more getting laid by young impressionable people. That's the crucial point, attention. They liked to be viewed as championing for the underdog and will back anything that gets them attention. This will include the lowering of age of consent (or Young Adult Civil Rights) and adult/child sex. Once Gay Marriage is passed and gay rights are established, do you really think they'll just leave all that attention? Or will they just find another issue?

To see how right I am on this subject, simply walk through any Junior High to see how well their efforts are working. Young ladies walk around in clothes that make street-walkers look conservative and no teacher or administrator says a word. No judgement is passed because they've been taught it's wrong to judge. The media has taught our youth that their sexuality is all they have to offer. And where are our Feminists? They are deathly afraid to cross these activists because they are on the same side on issues such as Gay Rights or abortion. Rather than risk offending their supporters, they stand idly by as young women are sexualized far, far beyond anything seen in our more oppressive past. If we can't stand up for our own children when they're being dressed up for pedophiles, sexualized before they reach puberty by cartoons and 'tween pop stars, and then preyed upon by sick gray-pony-tailed academics, maybe we should stop calling ourselves "parents". We will no longer deserve the title. H.C.

IS BARNEY FRANK AS BAD AS KEN LAY?

Most of you probably don't know who Rep. Barney Frank (Mass-D) is, but you should. Representative Frank heads one of the most powerful committees in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. This committee oversees the entire U.S. financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. The Committee also oversees the work of the Federal Reserve, the United States Department of the Treasury, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In short, our entire finances that are now in utter chaos.

However, I'm not blaming him for the disaster that lays at our feet. What I am blaming him for is his sunny assessment of our finances even as it was crumbling like the Roman Empire.

First, let me make one thing abundantly clear. I put the majority of the blame for our financial mess on the Republicans. In fact, I would say this is about 70% the fault of the Republicans and 30% the fault of the Democrats. The reason I say this is because throughout the lead-up to this mess, it was the Republicans that controlled Congress the vast majority of the time. Looking back through the past 7 Congresses (Congress changes every two years), the Reps controlled the House for 12 of the past 14 years! They also controlled the Senate for 10 of those 14 years and had the Presidency for the past eight. With that kind of control it's hard to believe this wouldn't be mostly your fault even if you just left it alone. During those years I believe a deal was struck between the Reps and the Dems that caused this whole mess. The deal went like this; The Democrats wanted more loans for their constituents, (I.E. minorities, poor whites and inner cites that were decaying) and the Republicans wanted deregulation of the financial sector. Since the problem was that no banks wanted to be passing out loans for high risk cities and people, the Republicans found the solution. Deregulate the industry, they give out sub-prime loans and in return they get to bundle the loans and sell them on the open market (something that wasn't allowed before). The Rep constituents get to make profit and farm-out the risk, the Dem constituents get the loans that they couldn't (and probably shouldn't) have gotten before.

Now, here's were the Democrats get their blame.

Once the Democrats found themselves back in the driving seat of Congress, do they start shouting from the highest hills that our finances are a mess? No. Barney Frank gets put into a position that oversees the entire financial services industry, and what does he do? Does he immediately sound the warning bell that all is not right in our financial house? No. Instead he does exactly what Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, did to his stockholders...he lied. He said that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were sound even as the bricks were falling off the buildings. He knew that there would be political capital to pay by the Dems if Fannie and Freddie were exposed as unsound, so he hid that fact from the people, the press, and most importantly, from the people who owned Freddie and Fannie stock.

When we pulled out the torches and pitchforks and went hunting Ken Lay after the Enron fiasco, the luckless stockholders had lost over $60 billion dollars and a whole business went down the tubes. The reason we went after Ken Lay and his cohorts with such zeal is because of the innocent investors that lost their savings. Ken Lay's lies cost people their livelihoods. Now, compare that to what Barney Frank's lies have cost us. It's hard to put an exact figure on the amount lost, but here's what we do know. Fannie and Freddie hold a combined stake of over a trillion in mortgages. Their stock has fallen by 90% over the past year, costing investors tens of billions if not hundreds. We the taxpayers are on the hook for an estimated $200 billion and they're still asking for more.

But, before you go blaming only the Democrats for Freddie and Fannie, take a look at how they spread out their lobbying dollars.

The bottom line on all this is that while Ken Lay got what he deserved for his lying and treachery, Barney Frank has walked completely away from his role in the collapse of a giant industry that controlled nearly half of all our mortgages and contributed (if not caused) the current situation we're in. For him to stay in a position with that magnatude of power when he's already demonstrated that he can't be trusted to tell the truth is criminal. I'm calling for a full "what he knew and when he knew it" investigation into Rep. Frank and his office. Is Barney Frank as bad as Ken Lay? No. He's far worse, and he's on our payroll. H.C.

KILL CHRYSLER

Now, let me see. How can I alienate all of my Michigan friends at the same time?
I know! I'll suggest closing down some Michigan auto plants! Nothing raises the hackles of a Michigander faster than threatening their high-paying shop jobs. Maybe I'll even get myself some more of those death threats that I love so much.

But, on the serious side.

Anyone that has been paying any attention at all knows that the U.S. automakers are in serious trouble. This really isn't any groundbreaking news. When I was in high school, many eons ago, my teachers were already telling us that these shop jobs were on their way out. Then in the 1980's the shops started laying off and tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Yet, here in Michigan, we still didn't get the message. Even Bruce Springstein, who's not the brightest guy on the planet, understands. In the 1985 song "My Hometown" he says, "these jobs are going boys, and they ain't coming back". Yet here in Michigan, we remained clueless.

Fast forward to the present, and here we are again, still not getting it. So, let me make this as simple as I possibly can; The U.S. auto market is too divided and competitive for the government to continue to subsidize three different parts of a failing industry. One of the Big Three has to die.

In the later part of last year, GM, Chrysler, and to a lesser degree, Ford, all went begging to the Bush administration for money to help them survive the vicious downturn that our country is now experiencing. The first sign of what a problem this was going to be was in the fact that the automakers raised the amount that they needed by $9 billion in just the 6 weeks of negotiations. The U.S. government then decided they were all "to big to fail" and covered them to the tune of $17.4 billion taxpayer dollars. I then predicted that they would be back for more within a couple of months and lo and behold, I was right. Move over Nostradamus. Now they (Chrysler and GM), want another $14 billion (or more) and I'm going to make another brilliant prediction-they'll be back again. The problem is, we're simply not addressing the core problem. Not enough people are buying American cars to support all three car companies. We can bail them out till 2020 and we will still have the same problem.

Then the question is; Who should we save and who should die?
No matter the answer, someone is not going to like it.

First, let's all agree that Ford isn't even in the running to be eliminated. Ford is still viable and isn't even asking to be bailed, they only wanted a line of credit-just in case. One of my chief complaints about how all these bailouts are being passed out is that we keep giving the most to the people who are performing the worst. Ford proves this point. They get no subsides because they are the most successful. We give more money to GM than to Chrysler simply because they are further in debt. This is rewarding bad behavior and the golden rule of rewards is, "Whatever you reward, you will get more of."

However, on the flip side is the argument that GM is bigger than Chrysler and therefore needs it more. By the numbers, GM employs 230,000 workers while Chrysler only employs an estimated 100,000 (it's next to impossible to get an accurate estimate on Chrysler's workforce) This in and of itself says the impact of a failing GM would be harder for the economy to absorb.

But I have an even bigger problem with bailing Chrysler.

Unlike publicly-traded GM, Chrysler is an LLC (Limited Liability Company). It is owned by the investment firm Cerberus. What this means is that Chrysler is privately owned and therefore doesn't report it's assets and debts in the way that GM has to. This is one of the reasons that it's so hard to put an exact figure on their employees, executive pay, liabilities and debts. In fact, we're pretty much taking their word that they're in debt at all. Cerberus, which owns Chrysler, has it's own assets that it refuses to put into Chrysler. That raises the question, if Cerberus doesn't think it's a good investment to pump more money into Chrysler, why should the taxpayer?

The bottom line here is this; There just isn't enough market left to support all three American carmakers. Eliminating one creates more market for the remaining two. Since the American taxpayer is only going to tolerate so many bailouts, I think it's imperative that we focus on something that will more likely work on two automakers than directing our resources and efforts on the less likely prospect of saving all three. If we all think about this logically, there can only be one answer to the problem of what to do with our struggling automakers. Chrysler must die. H.C.

LIGHTENING UP A LITTLE

A little something from my favorite comedian who just so happens to be from my hometown of Flint, Michigan. Ladies and gentlemen (insert drum roll) Bryan McCree