Personal Aside: Thoughts While Shaving—How Much to Amputate a Foot?...How Media Differs in Treatment on Two Veep Nominees.

Footless.

In last week’s Town Hall, President Obama said that if a family care physician works with his diabetic patient to lose weight, modify diet and sees that he takes his medications in a timely fashion, that physician won’t be reimbursed a pittance…but if that same diabetic ends up getting his foot amputated, it’ll be “$30,000, $40,000, $50,000 immediately and the surgeon is reimbursed.” Ergo we must make sure “we’re reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation—right? That will save us money.”

Not so fast, Obama. The AMA which supports his health care reform measure, says surgeons aren’t paid from $30,000 to $50,000 to amputate a diabetic’s foot. Medicare pays a surgeon on average $541 to $708 for one of two procedures involving foot amputation…which means that Obama is off in his estimate by a factor of at least 30. That’s on a par with his remark a couple of weeks ago about taking a kid’s tonsils out. A letter from the head of the Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office last week said that overall when you pour money into prevention, it increases…not decreases…the cost of medicine—i.e. a good thing to practice but don’t count on it saving money.”

With Media, It All Depends.

John Edwards who was Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 and a front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination in 2008 will shortly confess that…in contradiction to what he has said previously…he is indeed the father of the baby born to his mistress. The story of his adultery was widely ignored by the mainstream media at the time. In fact CBS’s Bob Schieffer scoffed when the story was floated that there are always stories floating around about politicians’ behavior and that he would ignore it. The National Enquirer…of all publications…finally shamed the media to cover it since there was no way for the media to flee. Edwards withdrew from the race. By any other professional standard, a person so outwardly biased as Schieffer as to allow his judgment to become converted to Enabler, would be drummed out of his work. Schieffer who is guilty of great journalistic malpractice continues. The reason: he is a liberal and Edwards is a liberal—hence the story is not of that much significant interest to the liberal media.

Edwards went on to spew a flurry of lies. He said he conducted the affair when his wife’s cancer was in remission. We know now that the affair began when Elizabeth was not in remission…continued through remission and in fact through the period when she was pronounced in danger. Thus: he’s a chronic liar. We know that he denied paternity alleging that it could not be since he did not have sexual relations with his mistress at a time that would make possible her pregnancy. We know that he did the disgraceful act of importuning a staffer to take a hit for being the father. These two actions were out-and-out lies. And still the media determine that the story is yesterday’s news: based on the fact that the media agrees wholeheartedly with Edwards on the issues.

In contrast, Sarah Palin has had a distinctively honorable record and character in life. She was notified that she was carrying a Down Syndrome child and went through with the birth rather than get an abortion. But she has been Target One on the media and David Letterman’s hit list ever since. The logical reason: she is a conservative Republican and the media are liberal Democrat. No other way to explain it. That and as the psychiatrist-Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Krauthammer says: the fact that she went through with the birth makes liberal feminist women angry out of inner guilt…since they would have short-circuited the baby’s birth and are inwardly guilty about it…so in rage this significant portion of the liberal Democratic constituency wishes to punish Palin for his act and the liberal media follow obediently.

We are at a time of great cultural decadence in this country to which the media have been a witting ally along with the “entertainment” industry. It will be of great interest to me to see…when Edward finally “confesses”…how much attention he will get from the misnamed “mainstream media.”