It's Different Here

Maybe the reason it's different here is that we don't have a county hospital.  Actually, we don't even have a real hospital anymore.  Our local hospital went bankrupt a few years ago, was closed for about a week, and then reopened under a different name.  Since then, they don't call it a hospital, they call it a "campus", although it's not really a school either.  They have an emergency room and do all kinds of outpatient stuff but, if you have to stay overnight, they ship you to Petoskey, some 50 miles away.  I have never heard of them turning anyone away for any reason, either when it was a real hospital or since it's become a campus.  Back when they were debating Obamacare, I said it would be a better idea to establish government owned medical facilities like your Cook County Hospital all over the country.  Sure it would be no frills care, but it would be free.

When I had my bleeding ulcer back in 2008 they were upset with me because I didn't have a regular doctor, but they took care of me anyway.  The guy who handled my case was a specialist, and he wanted me to take up with a regular doctor after he was finished with me, but I never did.  I was sick a lot when I was a kid, and I remember going to the doctor quite often.  I have seen doctors less and less over the years, and my health kept getting better and better as I did.  I've got this chronic back problem, but they can't cure it, and I have learned how to work around it over the years.  Other than that, I'm in pretty good shape for an old geezer.  I know lots of people younger than me who are in worse shape than me, some of them are even dead, and they all saw doctors on a regular basis before they got like that.  This leads me to believe that, the more you go to the doctor, the worse your health gets.  Of course you do need to seek medical care on occasion, but the less you have to, the better off you are.

Like I said before, the reason they are separating families at the border is that they can't send the kids to jail with the parents.  The reason the parents go to jail is that they have crossed the border illegally.  If the parents didn't cross the border illegally, they wouldn't have to go to jail and their kids would still be with them.

"Draining the swamp" is obviously a figure of speech, no real swamps are being drained here.  I'm not sure how that saying got started.  The closest thing I ever head to it is an old saying we had at the paper mill:  "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your original intention was merely to drain the swamp."  I don't think that means the same thing.