With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
June 02, 2009 - 2:36 p.m.
I vegetated yesterday so I do not have much to talk about. My health is just weird. I feel fine but I lack energy. I am OK if my adrenaline is pumping but it is hard to get started.
One thing I have to do is get the new enhanced security driver's license so I can go to Canada at the end of the month. I don't think I have time to get a passport as I don't have a birth certificate. 
On better news my summer plans are falling into place. I talked to Melissa yesterday and I'm going to go with her to the Greater New Bedford Summerfest. People have been telling me that I have to go there for years, especially Pete and Maura. I decided to go without checking the lineup. It's good, better than FRFF's. Some highlights are:
- Antje Duvekot
- Cliff Eberhardt
- Stephen Fearing
- John Gorka
- The Kennedys
- Lovell Sisters
- Peter Mulvey
- Ellis Paul
- Red Molly
- Richard Shindell
Unfortunately Yoram is going to be away but I'll have some quality time with Melissa. It's been way too long since I've seen her. I'll also get to see Jake at the Festival. Are any of My Gentle Readers going to be there?
I decided to strip down the rest of the entry. It's about health care in this country. I'm also going to target the entry at my actual audience. My purpose is not to convince you but to give you some tools to use when you argue with others.
I was talking to a friend revamping our health care system. I am of course if favor of a single payer system along the lines of those used in Japan or France, the countries with the best health systems in the world.
The insurance companies have spent a fortune building a fear in this country of having government bureaucrats making your health care decisions. My answer is great. I prefer that to the system we have where most people's decisions are made by insurance company bureaucrats whose sole interest is maximizing their profits and those without insurance who simply don't get treated. The irony is that we spend far more on health care while getting inferior results. I'm going to use just one simple example that packs a lot of punch. The infant mortality rate in this country is 6.26 deaths per 1000 live births. This is higher than any other First World country not to mention Cuba and Slovenia. Canada with a rate of 5004 does better than us but fares poorly compared to the leaders. The rates of the France and Japan are 3.33 and 2.79 respectively. There are about 4,000,000 babies born here every year so if we could lower our infant mortality rate to that of France about 12,000 fewer babies would die every year. Just lowering it to Canada's rate would save the life of 4000 babies. So next time someone tells you that they don't want the government in charge of their health care ask them how babies' deaths is that worth to them?
If you are wondering what left wing organization I used as my source it was the CIA. Their World Fact Book is a goldmine of data.
Old Father's Tales - June 07, 2009
Duck Dodgers in the 20th and a Half Century - June 06, 2009
The Hovendile Edda - June 05, 2009
S.4401 - June 04, 2009
Musing on My Musings - June 03, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile June 02, 2009
