Fort Perry

Thank you, Fort Hood.

Because of the recent massacre on your grounds, we now see how much Rick Perry hates Washington.

That is, he doesn’t.

When it comes to the U.S. military, the Texas governor nobody wanted is all for it.

When it comes to the health of all Texans, the cheerleader is all pom-poms for the U.S. military.

Oddly, it’s the publicly-subsidized, national armed forces that has “socialized medicine;” everyone from top generals to lowliest of privates go to government-run hospitals for treatment.

The rest of us will probably have to wait three years to see the “public option” fail from its own ill-conceived design.

Even with the so-called ”option,” we’re still at the mercy of the private hospital industry jacking up prices for the basic health essentials.

The rationale for the protection of military personnel’s health is simple; they volunteered for service, so they get free rides from taxpayers.

The rationale for the protection of private health industry is just awful; they hold the monopoly, they negotiate the prices, not the public.

Perry The Secessionist writing in The Washington Post prior to the 220-215 House vote for the public option suggested, “Let states lead the way.”

That would be a great idea if Perry had gotten out of the way for the last 15 years.

All Perry and his ilk have done is protect the dumbest of doctors in Texas, so while more doctors might have come to Texas to find work, who can say that everyday Texans can afford to pay them?

Even to help the neediest of health care consumers, Perry won’t grab federal dollars for Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program. He complained:

“Expanding the Medicaid program in Texas alone to include an additional 2 million people would cost $20 billion to $30 billion over the next 10 years. Regardless of how that cost is shared between the federal and state governments down the road, we believe that level of new mandated spending is grossly unacceptable.”

The talk around the Pentagon has it, though, that another $50 billion is needed for the Iraq and Afghanistan war in 2010.

Granted, Jack Murtha, chairman of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, figures that this supplemental spending bill will be around $40 billion.

And that’s just for one year!

So where are the Texas state flags flown at half-mast for those Texans who have died as a result of a lack of healthcare coverage?

Perry and his partner-in-crime, Washington-insider Newt Gingrich, would have you believe that “one-size-fits-all solutions” hurt every American.

Tell that to the servicemen and servicewomen (with and without PTSD) who used the shirts off their own backs and their knowledge of first aid to treat the blood-soaked wounded at Fort Hood.

If those soldiers had set aside “their devotion to central planning,” dare to imagine of how many more Americans would have died that day.

It’s vicious irony that a mentally-unbalanced psychologist could snap and kills his co-workers.

But what is it when your heartless governor looks the other way as his countrymen suffer?

Striaght viciousness.

— Nathan Diebenow