If ramming your car into a barrier in front of the White House isn't enough evidence of craziness, the woman who was shot in Washington is now revealed to have had significant psychological problems as told by her husband who worried about what she might do and whether it would result in harm to their child.
That the cops used their standard 'shoot first, think later' approach and killed the woman is a separate subject and is so common in America that it's not even that interesting to me.
Most people know that Reagan was at the wheel when Congress deregulated the Savings and Loan companies in the U.S. which opened them to the sharks and subsequently countless Americans lost their life savings as one S&L after the other collapsed. On signing the legislation, Reagan said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we really hit the jackpot this time."
I know he said that as I saw the video of the signing and I heard him say it. While Congress wrote the law and is ultimately responsible for it, there's no question that Reagan wanted it.
What is less well-known is that Reagan also supervised deregulation of mental health treatment in the U.S. Whether that means he is culpable for what happened in Washington with the crazy woman is for you to determine but the fact of what he did during his administration is easily-verifiable.
My purpose is not to deflect criticism of Obama as his foreign policy has been as much or more of a travesty as that of George Bush. Obama inherited the chaos in Iraq from Bush so that one really isn't his fault. However, he's extended the chaos in Afghanistan and done nothing about the skyrocketing heroin production. Moreover, chucking drone bombs at Pakistan has done more for al Qaeda than running glossy commercials for them on television. If he does go ahead with his plans to attack Syria, he will likely cement his position as the worst President in history.
I'm no fan of Obama's botched Presidency but it has little to do with management of mental health which is verifiably owned by Reagan. While it was an obvious mistake by Reagan, the question to be asked right after asking why he did it is why did not any following President order Congress to fix it.
That mental health is out of control in the U.S. should be obvious as a couple of days after the incident with the Crazy Woman at the Gate, a man set himself afire and died not far from where the cops shot her. It's not so long since the lunatic shot Congresswoman Gifford in Arizona and killed a number of her supporters. He wasn't just an extremist but is documented to have been barking mad. Then you've got the one who killed all the people at a Batman movie. And then there's the one who took the guns from his mother and killed all the kids in the school in New England. And on and on and on with one raving lunatic after the other.
This is not a prelude to a pitch for socialised medicine as there are two misconceptions about it. The first is that the Affordable Care Act is socialised medicine when, in fact, it has nothing to do with it. The second is that socialised medicine works and it doesn't.
Socialised medicine is a shabby version of the public option in the Affordable Care Act that was to take care of those with no money and it was thrown out very early in the negotiation. In function, socialised medicine is a flaccid approach to health care which is yet another salve for the conscience of the rich to make it seem like there is care for those with no money.
The doctors I have seen in Scotland could not have been less aggressive about their treatment plans unless they slept through their interviews with me. Perhaps it is not the same with others but this has been my experience. Nevertheless, this is not how the Affordable Care Act works as socialised medicine is entirely administered by the government which is specifically not the process of the Affordable Care Act which is administered by insurance companies. Whether the ACA works any better remains to be seen but any idea that it's the same as socialised medicine is blind ignorance.
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