This is entirely separate from Joe’s “Quote of the Day” system, which is so good that I wouldn’t touch it.

One of the great (and therefore feared) minds of our time, Thomas Sowell is prolific in his generation of highly quotable phrases;

Democrats could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.

Ah, but the Republicans are only doing what the super smart people are telling them; trying to sell blankets with built-in cooling systems, to Eskimos, on the notion that both blankets and refrigerators are too extreme in their single-minded, fundamental design goals.  Who needs a blanket that keeps you warm, when you could have an ingenious blanket that does what the Democrats’ refrigerators are doing, but does it more slowly and in a less efficient manner?

I know that there are still voices of sanity around because I have counted them — on one hand.

Take heart, Mr. Sowell.  There are at least a dozen.  Actually I jest.  It’s just that you have to look far from DC, and far from the Old Media, to find them.  There are millions.  Lets not assume that just because the American press wants us to feel isolated and hopeless, that we are isolated and hopeless.

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.

and;

One of the wonders of our times is how much more attention is paid to the living conditions of a bunch of cut-throats locked up in Guantanamo than to the leading international sponsor of terrorism getting nuclear weapons.

Well, when you put the two together (concern for cutthroats while ignoring Iran’s nuclear ambitions) along with much of the leftist dogma, it’s consistent in its opposition to American principles and its support for the enemies of Liberty worldwide.  It becomes a “wonder” only if you ascribe a shred of patriotism to the American Left.

All quotes from one short piece entitled, “Random Thoughts”.

I say “medicine” but it applies to anything socialism touches. It’s just that with medicine we have more vivid and frequent examples to chose from.

Via an email from friend Kris an escapee from Australia here in the U.S., Full hospitals turning patients away in Brisbane:

emergency rooms went into meltdown yesterday as major hospitals turned away patients because they were full.

Six hospitals around the city issued capacity alerts as a flood of high priority patients threatened to overwhelm services stretched to the limits, The Courier-Mail reports.

The chaos left stressed ambulance officers trying to care for people in their vans.

…

“Today is out of control, our departments are in complete meltdown,” the nurse said. “What is scary is that there is no good reason for it – it isn’t a terribly hot day, it isn’t flu season, there is no outbreak of disease, we just don’t have enough resources.”

Ambulance union spokesman Kroy Day said the lack of hospital resources meant it was “only a matter of time before someone dies in a van”.

He warned that having multiple hospitals on capacity alerts meant paramedics could be left caring for patients in their vans for up to four hours.

“If this is what we are seeing on a mild summer’s day, I hate to imagine the trouble we’ll be in when flu season rolls around,” he said.

When asked about the RBWH being on bypass, Health Minister Stephen Robertson blamed a record amount of elective surgery patients.

Kris reports, “Regular occurrence in Perth at certain times of the week, or whenever it gets too hot (it never gets too cold in Perth).”

In Britain this has been a complaint for many years. People wait in the emergency room for many hours before being seen by a doctor. The politicians then required the hospitals to report on how many hours people had to wait.  The hospitals then started refusing to let the ambulances bring the patients into the hospitals until they were ready for them. This improved the numbers because the clock didn’t start ticking until the patient entered the door. The ambulances sometimes wait in the parking lot for hours with the engines running to provide temperature control. This not only threatens the life of the patient waiting for a doctor it also ties up the ambulance such that it can’t transport another patient in need of immediate care.

The basics of the problem is that when the central committee (politicians) allocate resources rather than the free market they do a much poorer job. They are further from the problem that needs to be solved and cannot respond as quickly. In a free market someone realizes they can make a profit whenever the demand starts to exceed the supply and the most successful will meet the demand quickly and for the least total cost.

Via friend Jim, who spent some time in eastern block countries during the mid 80s, I heard reports of lines for bread, shoes, toothpaste, toilet paper,  and almost every common commodity you can think of. Another friend reported to me that light bulbs were rationed out to government offices and critical businesses. Hence people would bring in their burned out bulbs from their homes and swap them with the new ones in public buildings and businesses.

And the above doesn’t even address the frosty stares I get from my physical therapist wife when I bring up more U.S. government involvement in health care. We already have too much government involvement in health care. Don’t let the Obama administration give us ambulances waiting in the parking lot too.