Doctor? Mr. M.D.?

American constipation victim.

You know American Thinker, the blog whose gravatar for some reason represents Uncle Sam in knee breeches working out something painful on a rough-hewn backwoods privy?

I normally don't go there, so to speak, since there are talented and more or less professional bloggists to do it for me. But Cerberus, the current curator over at the Sadlys, covers each story in such depth that he has to let most of them go, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at the crud left at the bottom of the net.

There's a fabulous indictment of "Justice Sonia Sotomayor's shocking ignorance" by Jason Lee, who notes one of her questions in the PPACA health care debate:

"What percentage of the American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and that child was turned away because the parent didn't have insurance?"....

Cerberus thinks it's a "Shorter" when it's only four minutes long.

I have a precise answer for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The percentage of American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and were turned away because the parent didn't have insurance is exactly zero.

But hang on a second, Jason. You are right to remark that it's illegal for an emergency room to deny emergency care to anybody who needs it. The trouble is the patients who don't need emergency care. The emergency rooms don't have to treat them at all after getting them through triage, and they are increasingly charging for it, demanding upfront payment.

Kim Bailey, research director for the consumer group Families USA, said the tactic lets hospitals turn away uninsured patients who often fail to pay their bills and are a drag on profits. While the uninsured pay upfront fees as high as $350, depending on the hospital, those with insurance pay their normal co-payment and deductible upfront.

And people have died, though nobody knows how many, while hospitals that are too generous with the emergency care close down. Then again, the Affordable Care Act is doing something about that, as in the case of the Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles, maintained in existence as a Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center after its closing in 2007:

First, because their public health center will receive substantial federal funds under the portion of the Affordable Care Act funding community health centers, thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders. Second, because they can develop a financial plan that actually delivers health care before it becomes an emergency, and that delivery will be paid for under the Affordable Care Act. (Crooks & Liars, 20 January 2011)

So while it might have been shocking if it was Sotomayor's ignorance, it's only Jason's; dog bites man and all that.

Then there's a jeremiad against "cafeteria Catholics" by Jim Mahoney. He's not talking about Catholics who reject the church's teaching on social inequality or capital punishment, though, just birth control pills again. His own understanding of American sexual behavior, however, seems to come from being a really creepy character himself, driving by middle schools at lunchtime to eyeball the sixth-grade sluts (if they're not actually there he can easily imagine them), and spending the rest of his time in unsavory neighborhoods of the Internet:

Drive by any middle school to see how degraded tomorrow's mothers are.  These children, like most of us alive today, never knew a time when babies weren't preventable.  Why shouldn't a girl give herself away to gain the things a child craves?  It'll be years before she realizes what she's done to herself.

By then, after a series of recreational couplings, perhaps she'll settle down with a boy who grew up on pornographic fantasies.  When they encounter the day-to-day realities of adult life, neither will find the "fulfillment" he or she sought, but only a dreary sense of emptiness and loss.  Eventually they'll divorce, leaving more fatherless children to repeat this cycle, while two more adults grow old seething with rage, resentment, and guilt.

Yipes! And what's driving this process is nothing less than Modernism! Freethinkers and Freemasons, Jacobins, the Tübingen school of theology, and I'll bet those Jews are behind it somewhere. And the Affordable Care Act, of course:

In the course of 200 years, the Revolution learned that murder makes martyrs.  Today, the Revolution mounts its final assault.  It no longer needs to shoot priests on the altar or march them to the scaffold.  It can simply force the congregation to pay for its own destruction.

The fiends!

Obispo Telescopio. From Ecclesia Primus, "The Oath against Modernism Betrayed"

If you're suffering from a non-urgent condition please don't go to the emergency room! Try listening to some Angela Gheorghiu:

Angela Gheorghiu helpfully explained to Italian newspaper "la Repubblica"
that she, in fact, has been known to heal the sick.
Well, not Angela personally. Her voice.

«Basta la mia presenza per diffondere emozione. E ho questa voce che regala struggimento. Ci sono persone che dicono di essere guarite da una malattia sentendomi cantare»

In English:

"My simple presence is enough to spread excitement. And I have this voice that expresses longing. There are people who say they were sick and were healed when they heard me sing".

(Operachic Milano)