A Few Hammers Short Of A Bag At USN&WR
The prospect that the Obama administration will make health insurance available to almost everyone in the United States has the right wing howling in abject terror. It’s not enough that we have health care (they moan). Others must not.
Witness James Pethokoukis over at Useless News & World Distort. He is predicting the end of Western civilization as we know it if one single additional person gets health insurance. Instead of having the decency to die off, as is the moral obligation of the lazy, worthless bums who find themselves at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, these losers will, thanks to health insurance, live to vote again. And who will they vote for? Why, the New Socialist Islamobamic Democratic Party, of course!
Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of “Marxist thought,” puts it: “After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.”
Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: “Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival.
This is perhaps the most odious thing I’ve read since that Malkin wretch went all stalker on the sick kid who dared to speak out in favor of children’s health insurance. What Pethokoukis is saying is that the reason to oppose health care is that people might actually like it and that the future of the GOP depends on making sure that people continue to lack health care insurance. If a few uninsured people have to die to save the GOP, that’s just their patriotic duty. Hopefully, they’ll be black gay abortionists. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?
Just to kick up the odiousness of his post a notch or two, Pethokoukis proposes his own ideal health care plan which — surprise, surprise!! — means less health insurance for more people.
John McCain’s healthcare plan was perhaps the most provocative policy proposal of the entire 2008 campaign. Too bad he could neither fully explain how it worked nor persuasively argue why it was better than Barack Obama’s plan. Also too bad since his plan would have smartly reduced healthcare costs by getting companies out of the healthcare benefits business and empowering individuals to buy insurance on their own. This would have helped fix what economist Arnold Kling calls the insurance vs. insulation problem: “Insulation relieves the patient of the stress of making decisions about treatment. The patient also does not have to worry about shopping around for the best price. The problem with insulation is that it is not a sustainable form of healthcare finance.”
In other words, let’s get rid of employer-provided health insurance. Obviously if individuals bought their own health insurance it would be cheaper because they could drive a harder bargain than their employer could buying group insurance. You can’t simply be born this stupid; you have to work at it and acquire it, either by a self-inflicted head wound or a number of overly extended auto-erotic asphyxiation sessions.
It’s not that he’s stoopid. Naw, that aint the problem. The problem is that he, like the reat of what’s left of the GOP, is sociopathic. He’s a sicko, that’s all. Excess human baggage. A walking argument for retroactive abortion. A P.o.S.
See also: Baroney, Michael
This is all just a problem of perspective. Most people think that healthcare–being treated when you’re sick–is some sort of right.
Republicans believe that seeing a doctor and getting treatment is a privilege. Letting more people see doctors and get treated really devalues the privilege–kind of like not having a rope-line at Studio 54.
Ha ha! I know Norman Markowitz, and I can reassure Mr. Pethoukokowakkawakkaloukis that he is not advising the Obama government.
Speaking of Baroney, a Google search of his US News blog turns up the following posts from the election:
The Race Isn’t Necessarily Over
Joe the Plumber Gives McCain a Chance to Overtake Obama
John McCain Had the Advantage Several Times This Election, and Fate Took It Away
Sarah Palin Won the Debate
Obama Supporters Spew Hate
Yeah, a real objective, impartial political observer there.
At least he’s honest about it…
Waitaminit, a wingnut who is a completely straightforward, non-duplicitous, non-lying-asshole sociopathic class warrior in mercenary service to the Republican ruling class? I think my brain just broke. I mean, usually they at least make an effort to disguise their hostility to anyone who isn’t rich, white, and male, what with dogwhistle codewords and “compassionate conservatism” and all. This…this, on the other hand, is sortakindaalmost refreshing, in a way…and a lot less likely to dupe the rubes. I like it, I like it.
Bill Kristoff said the exact same thing in opposing Clinton’s health reforms. That it would make the Democrats look good. It’s all about power with these amoral freaks.
Why are these people so afraid of universal healthcare? Is it really so crass as the fear that they’ll finally be rendered as irrelevant as they deserve to be?
If fucking Fiji can provide universal health care (my wife had the opportunity to take advantage of it back nearly 20 years ago; it was simple but effective care) what the hell is wrong with us that we can’t seem to manage it?
And every time Robert fucking Samuelson tries to tell me we can’t afford our “entitlements” I want to wring his pencil neck. Tell ya what, Bobbo, how’s about we drop SDI (whatever the fuck it’s called these days)? How’d that change the money picture? How about getting the fuck out of Iraq? Would that free up some money?
OK, excuse me, I have to get a paper towel to wipe the spittle from my monitor. Again.
The GOP is full of sociopaths, idiots, and idiotic sociopaths. In their zeal to punish the poor for being poor, the GOP can’t work the political calculus far enough to realize that people would want to vote GOP if they took the initiative and implemented universal health coverage. There’s political capital to be made by giving the people what they want, but apparently the idiotic sociopaths of the GOP would rather kill people instead.
“Health insurance” is pure parasitism.
It inserts a middle-person between the patients’ needs and the doctors’ services which extracts a premium without returning anything of value in the relations between the two principles.
Therefore, any program which focuses on ‘health insurance” is a give-away to a (very wealthy, very powerful) ‘special interest,’ health insurance companies.
It is also, therefore, a betrayal of the promise of health-care for all, a right which, if not explicitly expressed in the founding documents, can easily be implied from the intentionalities of the texts…
Here’s the argument in a nutshell:
1) In America, if you work hard and perservere, you will prosper (“The American Dream” hypothesis)
2) If you prosper, you will have health insurance.
Therefore,
3) If you work hard and perservere, you will have health insurance.
3) is logically equivalent to
4) If you don’t have health insurance, you did not work hard or perservere.
which means
5) If you don’t have health insurance, you are lazy and shiftless.
which, together with
6) If you are lazy and shiftless, you, like the grasshopper, don’t deserve the same benefits as your fellow hard-working citizens.
yields
7) In America, if you don’t have health insurance, you don’t deserve it.
QED
Shorter dumbasses @ USNW:
People vote for the party that takes care of them. Why weren’t we informed?
srsly, it’s beyond mere stoopit. the cognitive dissonance — cf: compassionate conservatism — would hurt if they had two brain cells working at the same time.
Fetuses are sacred, living chlidren are a burden.
Tax and spend bad, borrow and spend good.
Handouts for corporations are good for business, a hand up for the working poor rewards moral weakness.
Portable healthcare would create opportunities, but insurance company profits (campaign donations) would be less awesome.
We don’t have enough troops in the field, but gays in the military are bad and we daren’t draft the cheerleaders.
Funding military operations and regimes against drug growers is morally right, even if it starves the poor and helps recruit new soldiers — buying up the crop is way cheaper but means we’re buying drugs.
Here in the Soviet Republic of Englandstan it’s perfectly true that the National Health Service is a constant reminder that government can and does work for the betterment of society. Which really gets up the noses of those people who insist it does not.
Even Thatcher had to hold her nose and pretend to love the NHS. She’d have been beaten like a mule had she tried to privatize it.
I always enjoy the, “Liberals want your health care to be run by BUREAUCRATS!!” argument. Because, as we all know, private health care is simple doctor/patient relationships, and there are never any forms to fill out in triplicate. Awww, shucks, ma’am. Let’s go down to the malt shop, and make sure no colored folk sneak into our cinema!
Hey, let the invisible hand take care of everybody – literally.
It’s worked well so far, hasn’t it?
Well, hasn’t it?
If they’re so worried that people will be more likely to support the party that gives them health insurance and relieves them of the need to worry about it so goddamn much, why doesn’t the GOP just do that?
Oh, right – because fuck you if you don’t have insurance, that’s why.
“John McCain’s healthcare plan was perhaps the most provocative policy proposal of the entire 2008 campaign. Too bad he could neither fully explain how it worked nor persuasively argue why it was better than Barack Obama’s plan.”
i.e., convincingly lie about it well enough.
Fized.
This is my favorite part:
“Insulation relieves the patient of the stress of making decisions about treatment. The patient also does not have to worry about shopping around for the best price.”
…right, because you’re sick and you aren’t really in a position to shop. Also, insurance isn’t like buying apples. You’re buying promises, and its impossible to know for sure if they will be kept. I like where this is going …
” The problem with insulation is that it is not a sustainable form of healthcare finance.”
Doh! So close to the conclusion, then a sudden left turn into on-coming traffic!
If only there was some system of limits on what an individual could get out of the healthcare system. Then you could have an actuary draw up good estimates for the cost… wait, that’s what HMOs do now? Well, slap my ‘fro.
John McCain’s healthcare plan was perhaps the most provocative policy proposal of the entire 2008 campaign. Too bad he could neither fully explain how it worked nor persuasively argue why it was better than Barack Obama’s plan.
Priceless.
Fized.
I’m stealing that.
PeeJ is right. Roy at Alicublog once proposed rating wingnut bloggers on a continuum of Stupid-Evil. The problem is, none of these people who make it to positions where they can influence opinion are actually stupid. The stupids are found further down the food chain.
Dear Sadly, No!,
It is my sincere desire to see you mock, point, and laugh at today’s Breitbart essay over at the Washington Times – it is true comedy gold, and it has everything you’re looking for!
The future of the GOP? Young, fabulous-looking people! (are there any fabulous-looking people in the GOP? I digress) Shirtless Abercrombie Models, for example! (ummm… Larry Craig Syndrome?) Only DFH’s are standing between hot, sweaty, shirtless retail models and a $160K job!!!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/24/the-kids-are-all-right/
Trust me on this one….
All of my love and respect,
TavernWench
In unrelated news, I believe this:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g32v8EY6DKraN4afDE04q1ZI1diwD94LF1HO0
should be added to the Barack Obama deathlist, as MC Breed once penned a rap that included the lyric, “I’ll paint the White House black…”
Coincidence?
Because, as we all know, private health care is simple doctor/patient relationships, and there are never any forms to fill out in triplicate.
The idea that corporate bureaucracy is better than government bureaucracy is one of my favorite conservative fantasies.
One of the problems that’s been created by all this healthcare silliness is the virtual elimination of many forms of dangerous epidemic disease. The shared experience of enduring devastating pandemics could bring our country together, help build our national character, and cull the herd of millions of potential socialists.
It’s time to wake up and start coughing.
“After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.”
Wow.
You mean, workers are smart enough to know when a party is acting in their own best interests and not vote for the fear-mongering closeted homophobes who are trying desperately to hypnotize them with the lure of “tax cuts for you, the rich” and “no more gay abortions”?
Who’da thunk?
The idea that corporate bureaucracy is better than government bureaucracy is one of my favorite conservative fantasies.
Isn’t that, well, the core of conservative ideology? Corporate power is better than government power because…shut up.
It’s time to wake up and start coughing.
Don’t forget to turn your head first.
Is it just me or has the Right found exciting new ways to go even more bugfuck sociopathic insane than they already were before November 4th?
“Health insurance” is pure parasitism. It inserts a middle-person between the patients’ needs and the doctors’ services which extracts a premium without returning anything of value in the relations between the two principles.
Agreed.
We should go back to paying our doctors with cattle and eggs.
Is it just me or has the Right found exciting new ways to go even more bugfuck sociopathic insane than they already were before November 4th?
I think it’s just that the moderate voices who modulated these cretins all told them they were on their own now.
“Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival.”
Or maybe after it passes they’ll just become so small they can be drowned in a tub.
Actually, the Republicans do have a health policy designed for those too poor to buy stellar coverage.
“You get on your knees, put your hands together and you pray.”
See? It’s free, it’s easy, anyone can do it, and it panders to the religious right!
Hilzoy and her commentors were all over this two days ago, while the S,N! crew were presumably passed out in a corner beside an empty jug of purple drank.
I do like this suggestion that John McCain is a sort of idiot-savant who dreams up a heathcare proposal as a cynical headline-grabbing gimmick, and is naturally unable to explain its workings or its advantages — but somehow he stumbled on a superior scheme without knowing it (perhaps because information from an alternative universe is tunnelling through into his blank receptive brain). It’s like a Philip Dick story.
JenJen: “Are there any fabulous looking people in the GOP?” Well…I kinda like looking at Monica Crowley on “The McLaughlin Group”. Umm…after hitting the “mute” button.
So am Political Affairs a journal of Marxist thought, or ain’t it?
empowering individuals to buy insurance on their own.
Jesus K-rist. Spoken by someone who has obviously never had to attempt to buy individual health insurance. If you haven’t had the pleasure, I can assure you: there is nothing empowering about it. Demeaning, upsetting, devastating (depending on why, exactly, you want the insurance), sure. Empowering? No.
However, I feel that my family was embiggened by our rejections.
It truly never ceases to amaze me how these sniveling bastards “think”. We’re fucking BROKE! We can’t afford to pay the copays for the “insurance” we already have. So here’s the plan: we’ll take that AWAY, and then you can go BUY YOUR OWN insurance.
With money that doesn’t fucking EXIST. Let’s see…can barely make the house payment, can barely pay the utility bills, can barely make the car payment, can occasionally buy groceries, OF COURSE we can shell out huge bucks for insurance. It’s so simple!
Man, I’d love to see those smug motherfuckers walk a mile or twelve in MY shoes…
Spoken by someone who has obviously never had to attempt to buy individual health insurance.
Wouldn’t surprise me. They haven’t ever applied for public assistance or food stamps, either, yet feel perfectly free to spew out their ignint cakeholes about it neverthless. And trust me – applying for health insurance is probably a cool groove compared to how degraded you’ll feel after just four hours at Social Services.
Shoes?!? You have SHOES?!!
Well, we call them shoes…really more just a piece of cardboard stapled on the bottoms of our feet…but we love ’em…they’re so American-y and Republican-y and ouch-y…
Look, it’s very simple. People who do not rely on their employers for health insurance might just look for other work when threatened with a pay cut or assigned odious tasks. They might work up the gumption to unionize.
If employers didn’t have the threat of leaving employees without recourse to health care, they’d have no leverage.
Hence the bleatings from the mouthpiece for the employer class.
And trust me – applying for health insurance is probably a cool groove compared to how degraded you’ll feel after just four hours at Social Services.
Ummm….. no, not really. Been there, done that, too. Maybe it’s just our local office, but they’re pretty nice and understanding at Social Services. Dealing with Blue Shield, on the other hand, was 60 days of hell culminating in a rejection explained by an agent who couldn’t even pronounce the medical terms they were rejecting us for.
OF COURSE we can shell out huge bucks for insurance
Why, once we get TEH GUMMINT out of it it’ll be so cheap it’ll be included free with the supermarket coupons in Wednesday’s paper.
After all, aren’t you paying SO MUCH LESS for your telecommunication services since the deregulation and competition started back in 1997? Let’s do for health care what we did for cable! Whee!
I’d rather have the invisible hand give me a prostate exam, but considering the ineffectiveness, maybe it’s better that the doctor does it.
Well…I kinda like looking at Monica Crowley on “The McLaughlin Group”.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Ewwwwwww!
Even when she’s quiet, there’s a anger and spite lurking under her faux-Veronica Lake flip hairdo that makes Laura Ingraham look passive, even with her Joan Jett crop-cut!
I wouldn’t do Monica with Laura’s dick!
Well, we call them shoes…really more just a piece of cardboard stapled on the bottoms of our feet…but we love ‘em…they’re so American-y and Republican-y and ouch-y…
Ock! We scrape gravel over th’ bottom of our feet befo’ we walk barefoot to mill to work 26 hours a day!
It does take a black belt in obliviousness to cite the 60-year-old British NHS as an example of the kind of health-care system that could become entrenched and permanently weaken the self-punishing mindset that inclines people to vote Republican, then move on without so much as a musical segue to cite another economist’s claim that the NHS model “is not a sustainable form of healthcare finance”.
Mr Pethokoukis deserves some sort of award. How about the Titanic Prize for Mental Compartmentalisation?
After all, aren’t you paying SO MUCH LESS for your telecommunication services since the deregulation and competition started back in 1997? Let’s do for health care what we did for cable! Whee!
And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of all that damned regulation in the banking/investment/stock market industry. Never did a bit o’ fuckin’ good…
Man, I’d love to see those smug motherfuckers walk a mile or twelve in MY shoes…
And once they’re a mile away, do you really think they’re going to come back and give you back your shoes?
Ock! We scrape gravel over th’ bottom of our feet befo’ we walk barefoot to mill to work 26 hours a day!
You have a MILL??? We just have a little pit dug in the hot gravel on the side of the road…full of rat poison…a troll with a whip beating us nine days a week…but we love it!
Happy to have a jobs, we are!!!
Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors.
So… it would turn investors into people?
Ock! We scrape gravel over th’ bottom of our feet befo’ we walk barefoot to mill to work 26 hours a day!
Trouble at mill! One o’ th’ crossbims gawn o’tskew on t’ treddil!
Thanks DocAmazing.
Well, we call them shoes…really more just a piece of cardboard stapled on the bottoms of our feet…but we love ‘em…they’re so American-y and Republican-y and ouch-y…
You have feet?
SOCIALIST HANDOUT!
We just have a little pit dug in the hot gravel on the side of the road…full of rat poison…a troll with a whip beating us nine days a week…but we love it!
Why, yes, I’ve worked for Wal-Mart too.
And once they’re a mile away, do you really think they’re going to come back and give you back your shoes?
Probably not. But at least the staples might give ’em an infection…a man can dream…
Mister Pethoukoukis, your beloved ‘market’ healthcare system is a state-enforced oligopoly in which hospitals are captives of the insurance industry, which sets any prices it likes for uninsured clients and charges the state the difference for insured clients.
Because of you – and people like you – America has a healthcare system actively inferior to not just functional social systems like the UK’s or Germany’s but to second-world social dictatorships like Cuba. This is not just for the poor – it’s for you rich fuckers, too.
And because of your active shilling for Whitey, Inc, ten years of medicine gets you six figures and four years of business gets you seven, and the latter are the ones who make all the decisions.
Fuck you, buddy. I’ve got relatives without insurance, relatives who have had vital medicine denied to them by the insurance cartel because it’s become fashionable enough as a cosmetic to justify them raising their rates, and relatives whose years of work in medicine are basically servile to your paper-pushing jagoff heroes. You’re holding the free market, and the best and brightest physicians in the world, back for the exclusive benefit of the quotidian class.
I really hope you’re proud of yourself, you lousy cunt-fucker. No, that’s a lie: what I really hope is that you get lupus and die in agony – and the mountains of paperwork follow you to Hell.
Actor212: I don’t care what you say: I’d rather have the job of doing Monica Crowley than working in your mill by the side of the road… 26 hours a day…
This snippet from the excellent article about one of those NRO cruise parties from The Independent by Johann Hari demonstrates this way of thought (if you haven’t read this article, you really should):
http://tinyurl.com/yomkx8
I think we’re going to see this “honesty” happening more often as the wheels continue to come off the wingnut express. Dogwhistle code is going to be peeled away as fewer and fewer “moderates” are convinced by the double-talk and the wingnuts frustration grows.
You should be more careful about personal information you put online.
I understand the vetting for folks in the bikini inspector/trebuchet operators division is going to be quite thorough.
They know it will be like Social Security… once you don’t have the elderly starving in a gutter any more, people tend to like it.
Once people find out their family and friends don’t have to die, chances are, that will become popular too.
The funniest thing, to me, about the McCain plan was the $5,000 tax credit to purchase insurance being put forth at around the same time as the “40% of Americans already don’t pay taxes and Obama wants to give them a check!” (And I won’t digress by talking about how the EIC was a Reagan construct used to help businesses pay their employees less and is really a business subsidy we all pay for. Oh wait, I guess I just did.) So, according to the GOP CW, under McCain’s plan the bottom 40% income earners wouldn’t get any tax credit (since they don’t pay taxes) to use to buy the insurance. They were just going to be SOL, I guess. That would sure purchase a lot of goodwill for the GOP.
Stupid, indeed.
Doop-de-doop, just surfin’ teh intarwebs*…
Hullo, what’s this?
Barack Obama isn’t even President yet, and he’s already angering some of his most devoted followers on the party’s left wing. This is the mark of what could be a very successful presidency.
“With its congressional majority, the Democratic Party has refused to seriously try to end the war, to stop the bailout and to stop the trampling of civil liberties, just to name a few off the top of my head,” wrote David Sirota on the popular liberal blog OpenLeft, decrying the serial betrayals of Obama and the congressional Democratic majority. The Democratic Party, he wrote, has “faced no real retribution” for its manifold heresies, something that Sirota believes he and his band of angry bloggers must change. “We better understand why this happened,” he fumed.
Allow me to provide an answer. You don’t matter.
Owwwwwich! Has anyone told Markos?
Doop-de-doop, just clickin’ around…
Uh oh.
WHILE most of Democratic America is basking in the Obama victory glow, one contingent despairs: liberal bloggers and activists.
Shocked that the man who ran as a post-partisan candidate seeking the middle ground is being post-partisan and seeking middle ground, these people are blasting Barack Obama’s early, centrist decisions.
…
Later, I grew up and realized that the country doesn’t necessarily share all my views, that a president has to work with all sides to achieve his goals. I saw this time and time again in the Clinton years. So my (no doubt unwanted) advice to those despairing now: Take a deep breath and grow up.
Yikes! Has anyone told Hamster?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11242008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/left_at_the_altar_140414.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/11/22/2008-11-22_barack_obama_doesnt_fear_the_enraged_imp.html?print=1&page=all
*apologies to Gavin for stealing his schtick.
If this turns out to be some metaphorical thing, I’m going to be very disappointed.
Actor212: I don’t care what you say: I’d rather have the job of doing Monica Crowley than working in your mill by the side of the road… 26 hours a day…
Trust me, my job has less grit and more lubrication.
I can find my own damn leeches.
You have a MILL??? We just have a little pit dug in the hot gravel on the side of the road…full of rat poison…a troll with a whip beating us nine days a week…but we love it!
You have TROLLS?
Our owner is so cheap he makes us beat ourselves off!
Once people find out their family and friends don’t have to die, chances are, that will become popular too.
Y’know, you’re ruining my inheritance plans…
I think David Frum already spilled this bean a long time ago, with his stuff on the cultural aesthetics of working-class suffering or something. Didn’t SN do a special on that a while back?
Trouble at mill! One o’ th’ crossbims gawn o’tskew on t’ treddil!
Ye’ll haff ta fohgive Pere, he’s been soffrin from th’ writer’s cramp.
Our owner is so cheap he makes us beat ourselves off!
Is your mill hiring?
That damned troll NEVER washes his hands…
OT, but here is an online civics quiz to break up the Monday work and/or just-laid-off-from-work day: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
I was a bit puzzled about the stats of college students who took this, as the site claimed Dems scored lower than repigs. But after about question 20, the free market/repig bias of the test becomes apparent.
For the record, I got 1 wrong.
*sniff* …. *sniff sniff* Eeewww, what’s that awful smell? Hey! Who walked in here without wiping the goober off your feet?
One of the interesting things about the NHS is that the bits that don’t work are, as a rule, the bits that aren’t actually NHS institutions. British GPs – family doctors – are famously awful, and all the worst things I’ve heard of happening in British healthcare involved some GP who couldn’t find a gunshot wound if he was at the Battle of the Somme.
BUT….GPs don’t work for the NHS. Back when it all began in 1948, the British Medical Association bitched and moaned about it so much that Health Secretary Nye Bevan had to let them stay self-employed for fear otherwise they’d go on strike and wreck the whole thing.
Most of the hospital docs were either young house officers who weren’t trying to protect their profit margins because they were still house officers, and many of whom had just come back from being army surgeons, or else consultants who were either smart enough to see the point or at least smart enough to realise they would be doing a lot more procedures. But the BMA was dominated by the middle-aged, conservative, well-off GPs, and so it came down against, and so Bevan had to offer them a hell of a lot of money and a licence to stay fucking useless.
As a rule, once you’ve got past your local GP, you’re going to be OK. The system will send you to the national laser medicine research centre, if that’s what it takes. They will reassign your gender if you’re fucked up enough that you might kill yourself otherwise, and you can spend a year as the required gender.
There are a couple of drugs that will only be prescribed if they think you might get better, as opposed to sticking around another week or two in the cancer ward, but you are now allowed to pay for them yourself. (I disagree with this; I reckon if we start that more and more things will go that way, but I accept a lot of people disagree.)
Woah now, lets not go crazy. Obama’s good, but he’s not a fuckin’ miracle worker.
“The idea that corporate bureaucracy is better than government bureaucracy is one of my favorite conservative fantasies.”
Yeah, it’s freaking hilarious until your father-in-law gets a huge bill from the hospital for the privilege of having his wife die there because the hospital and the insurance company can’t get their act together.
Then: not so funny.
the vetting for folks in the bikini inspector/trebuchet operators division
Will there be on-the-job training? I have some prior experience in the trebuchet department.
And don’t forget that here in Britain we do have two streams. If you can afford health insurance you can buy it. Many employers (including my own) offer private health benefits. If you really don’t want to lie in a communal ward then you can, for a little extra cost have your own private room. If you want expensive care there are plenty of expensive private doctors who you can bill to look after you.
However, I prefer not to fork out the co-pay, forgo the little amount of extra comfort, and enjoy care that is pretty much identical to that the private sector gives. The one advantage of ‘going private’ is that you can jump waiting lists for certain forms of treatment (particularly surgical). Other than that, we have a free-at-point-of-delivery system that has treated me very well on the unfortunate occasions I’ve had to use it.
Oh, you want funny?
For ten years I had a home computer business that we managed to keep going despite the huge conglomerates all around us because it was a niche market, and my first husband was a tech genius. We had people from all over the world sending us stuff to fix.
But we had gone into debt to do it because no matter what they tell you in conservative fantasies, writing a killer business plan means nothing. No one would give us money, so we borrowed against the house equity.
Couldn’t afford health insurance, of course. So when genius came down with what looked like a bad case of flu, we gutted it out. On the point of going to the emergency room… but didn’t, because we knew it would cost like 5k and we just didn’t have it.
Well, it wasn’t flu, and he didn’t get over it.
Lost him, lost the business, lost the house.
We started our own business. We were successful.
And it didn’t mean shit.
Yeah, because the problem with bureaucracy isn’t all the red tape but the shameful accountability of it all. To think: when you go to the DMV, someone is actually (gasp) at risk of losing their job if they screw up! Heavens to betsy, what a world, I gave at the office, I believe this is central to my point etc.
In point of fact, the reason your father-in-law got a huge bill from the hospital to have your wife die there is because the hospital and insurance company did get their act together. Without inspiring market-driven cooperation like that, no court in the country would enforce such a literally horrifying implied contract and your bereavement would go unbilled, a grim casualty of the economic inefficiency of statism.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die; and when #2 results in a bill to the tune of #1, that’s freedom.
To have his wife die, unless you’re from Stereotypical Virginia.
It’s kind of like West Virginia, but they’re all Robert Byrd.
Another curious side effect of the NHS. In Britain nurses are unimpeachable. They are treated like Florence Nightingale and angels rolled into one. If the nurses grumble and threaten to strike, even the right wing press tread carefully about giving the unions stick. Because the two things every Briton knows about nurses are: (a) it’s a shit job, and (b) they don’t get paid enough for it.
For the record, I got 1 wrong.
Likewise, and I bet it was the one on why the free market is just so peachy-keen superior to eeeeevil Soviet gummint central planning, which is the only one I missed.
Pere,
Uh, no. I fucked up the supreme commanderguy in chief question.
I’m sure there’s some reason I’ve blocked that the president is head of all the armed forces…can’t quite put my finger on it…
So, let’s see…we mustn’t allow universal health care because people might actually like and want it, and reward its supporters with votes?
This guy makes me ashamed to be of Greek descent.
Yeah, I love how they use Hayek in a test ostensibly about civics. Because subscribing to Austrian information theory is a vital part of our heritage.
I’m sure there’s some reason I’ve blocked that the president is head of all the armed forces…
I can see that.
It seems to me that the nutshell version of conservatism that the Republicans have been selling boils down to, “Ya’ll’d be rich if it weren’t for the guvmint taking all yer munnies.”
And huge bunches of people, whose knowledge of economics begins and ends with using a thirty cent off coupon to buy something that is a dollar more than the store brand, fell for it, and the rationalizations it rode in on.
Now that it’s become freakin’ obvious, even to these people, that it don’t work that way, the bottom of the barrel is being scraped down into the wood.
How can anyone sane be a true believer anymore? Doesn’t it just follow they are a few faucet handles short of a sewage plant?
Over at CT there was some pedantry mentioning “jejune” and I found this funny reader remembrance of William F. Buckley:
The S,N!ers could do it better I’m sure, but I took a swing at that one myself:
http://joemax93.blogspot.com/2008/11/re-education-of-alex-p-keaton.html
Yeah, OK liberals, you think national health care is so great? You ever been to Britain, where people have to pull their own teeth, because it takes up to six months to have an appointment with the dentist?
If national health care is so great, then why do Canadians (Canada has universal health care) frequently drive to the U.S. to go see a doctor? Because they don’t want to wait the several months necessary to see a doctor in Canada.
If you nationalize health care, eventually, if has to be rationed, just like every other government provided service. Not to mention the massive buearcratic inefficencies. Do you enjoy the quality of service you get at the DMV? How would you like to have the same people who run your local DMV, run your local doctor’s office? You wouldn’t. That’s exactly the quality of service you get at hospitals and doctor’s offices in countries that have universal health care. To that I say no thanks.
Remember kids, we’re the weird, out-of-touch elitists.
> And huge bunches of people, whose knowledge of economics begins and ends with using a thirty cent off coupon to buy something that is a dollar more than the store brand, fell for it, and the rationalizations it rode in on.
Tip for GDII™: use coupons for name brands if your store has double coupons. I wait until the item is on sale, and then double-coupon it. I have a closet full of free – literally free – name brand toothpaste and shampoo.
Sorry for slipping into fatwallet.com territory, but GDII™ demands it.
In the spirit of merchandising that Colbert did on his Xmas special last night, have I told you about GDII™?
* I am hoping to trademark GDII™ for Great Depression II, in the same vein as the WWII/WWI naming conventions.
How would you like to have the same people who run your local DMV, run your local doctor’s office?
It has to beat the jackass at my HMO who tells you you can’t have anesthesia for appendix surgery (true story)
You were saying…?
If national health care is so great, then why do Canadians (Canada has universal health care) frequently drive to the U.S. to go see a doctor? Because they don’t want to wait the several months necessary to see a doctor in Canada.
And do you know why so many doctors have all that free time and why Canadians are given preference?
Because a) over half of American adults never see a doctor, preferring the ER for catastrophic healthcare, which you and I are paying for, and b) the Canadian government PAYS FULL FARE, unlike HMOs who cut doctor fees.
Now…you were saying?
> Yeah, OK liberals, you think national health care is so great? You ever been to Britain, where people have to pull their own teeth, because it takes up to six months to have an appointment with the dentist?
Yeah, I got sick whilst visiting London for an extended visit 2 years ago.
Walked into the local clinic a block away from our apt, got an appt in a half hour, walked out another 1/2 hour later with my free prescription. Total cost: $6.
Similar to what happened to me in France in 2000, although my illness then was more serious and took a “house” (really hotel) call by a doctor and a visit to get tests and a prescription the next day. Here my total cost was a hard-to-bear $50.
I think for $50 in America all you can get is a doctor to complain about HMO reimbursement policies.
Re: the online civics quiz
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a right-wing outfit dedicated to propaganda dissemination and recruitment for the cause.
> It has to beat the jackass at my HMO who tells you you can’t have anesthesia for appendix surgery (true story)
They want you to use Three Stooges brand anesthesia (a mallet to the head).
Well, we call them shoes…really more just a piece of cardboard stapled on the bottoms of our feet…but we love ‘em…they’re so American-y and Republican-y and ouch-y…
Typical Dimwitcracks, expecting the system to fufill your every need. I make what I need, like my boots made out of pelican pelts (they’re actually kinda cute, like furry slippers with bunny faces, ‘cepting these have pelican faces). Any fool knows that cardboard isn’t worth a damned for shoes, go out and find a couple of pieces of scrap plywood and attach them to your feet with deck screws, to make em secure. Stupid LIEbrals.
First the left managed to get socialism implemented in Europe. Then they suceeded in turning once great Christian Europe, into a hyperbalkanized, muliti-cultural cesspool, by abandoning Christianity, and letting in massive amounts of muslim immigration.
Lets hope the secular left never suceeds in doing the same to America. This is why the Republican party needs to rediscover its conservative principles, during the upcoming Obama years. Hopefully we can take back congress during the 2010 mid-term elections, think 1994. If the Republican party doesn’t return to its conservative principles, then God help us.
You can’t simply be born this stupid; you have to work at it and acquire it, either by a self-inflicted head wound or a number of overly extended auto-erotic asphyxiation sessions.
Luckily for them, both situations will be covered under Obamacare.
> The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a right-wing outfit dedicated to propaganda dissemination and recruitment for the cause.
Thanks for the info. As I said, the bias of the “non-partisan” quiz became obvious halfway thru it.
Do the college students they give this to get another quiz on detecting political bias in “non-partisan” thinktanks and quizzes?
To everything, jejune, -june
There is a season, jejune, -june
And a time for every purpose under heaven
[Europe] abandoning Christianity
Um, dude…the home of the Pope?
France is the most Catholi–
Oh. Forgot. You evangelicals considert Papists to be anti-Christs…nevermind.
I think the Scottish nutjob/wingnut/whackjob here might very well be Mr. Troof, judging by the prose style.
They want you to use Three Stooges brand anesthesia (a mallet to the head).
They offered the premium plan, too: Four hours listening to Whoopi Goldberg live on Fresh 102.7
I think the Scottish nutjob/wingnut/whackjob here might very well be Mr. Troof, judging by the prose style.
I doubt it, Mr. Truth has a propensity for the usage of dangling double negatives and allied degenerative nouns.
It seems to me that the remaining wingnuts have utterly lost track of the points of the debate.
It it’s center, the questions upon which people on the left and people on the right disagree can, in some larger measure, be summed up by the question “what do you believe is the role of government in the lives of it’s citizens”?
At this point, they aren’t even pretending to address the substantive issue. A lot of what used to be Republicans would not be opposed to the concept of single payer health insurance, only it’s cost to taxpayers.
But now, it just seems to be a matter of spite, some kind of deeply-ingrained ideological vindictiveness. I don’t remember any more than a cursory concern about what invading and occupying Iraq might cost the taxpayer, but to spend one thin dime on delivering services to the very americans who ARE the taxpayers is deemed unacceptable.
This is the reason we’re seeing the end of the monster that the republican party has become. Someone upthread said they are sociopaths. It’s as good a description as any. Because most humans have a strong sense of BELONGING, a compassion for their fellows, and empathy for their suffering. They WANT to see that suffering alleviated. And only the bloodthirsty madmen at the fringe would choose to let their fellow tribe members suffer and die in order to prolong the bloodletting in a far-off land.
As horrific as this kind of rhetoric is, I hope they keep it up. Because this far-right fascist thing they call the republican party is destined to decades of marginalization and irrelevance until they can find some trace of their humanity…
mikey
I doubt it, Mr. Truth has a propensity for the usage of dangling double negatives and allied degenerative nouns.
And besides, ever since he had his ass handed to him last week, he’s been lingering three threads back or so.
Four weeks ago I sprained my ankle. Spent six hours on Saturday in “Urgent Care” getting x-rays and making sure it wasn’t broken.
Two weeks later saw my GP.
Two weeks after that I missed my follow-up. That was on a Friday. Re-scheduled for the FOLLOWING Wednesday.
Total out of pocket expense: $25 for crutches from the hospital.
$86 for an ankle brace from a private sports clinic.
I’ve never felt the need to go to America for healthcare. I don’t doubt that it happens, but it’s the exception and I imagine, for the most extreme of medical situations.
I will never support an American style health care system. No way no how.
In Wingnuttia, doctors are a finite resource and oil isn’t.
Are you fucking deaf? Is there something about ‘bureaucracy’ that implies government involvement? Because what we have now is a private bureaucracy – all the red tape, none of the accountability, and the people are being paid to deliver money rather than a public good.
Funny thing, that: because the DMV is directly answerable to the state government, Nevada is among various states that have mandated (at fairly moderate taxpayer expense) redundant desks, more online, telephone, and mail ingresses, and appointment-setting. The longest I have ever waited in a department of motor vehicles building in my life was half an hour, and that was during the rush in the first week of January.
By contrast, half an hour in the private hospital/insurance bureaucracy gets you enough forms signed to have a fart sterilized. But hey, at least I can rest easy knowing that unlike the $10/hr Stalinists in the DMV, the people who force all of us to jump through hours and hours of flaming hoops are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be useless.
Old troll is old.
Yeah, sure. Tell it to the tens of thousands of Americans who die every year because they are either self-employed or part-time and as such have no medical options at all. But I guess you gotta crack a few eggs to shorten a waiting list, right?
Another true story: the Las Vegas UMC is one of the pioneering institutions of laproscopy, and it’s been one of my father’s singular focuses in practice. You know how you’re used to having appendicitis done – big fuck-off gouge, dozens of stitches, hours of work? They don’t gotta do that any more.
Instead, they poke a hole in you, inflate the appropriate cavity with gas, and operate with a set of servomechanical instruments, including telescoping vacuum bags for biopsy and removal. My father, who has been doing this for a while, can get an appendix out in six minutes, and there’s little to no risk of infection or other morbidity.
But it’s impossible to do without general anesthesia. So for the sake of a couple of bucks (and that’s about what anesthesia costs the HMO – they can stretch wound debridement with $5 materials and $20 labor into five figure bills), they’re forcing doctors who have the equipment and expertise to do otherwise to hack into you with a bone saw and leeches.
The free market: because socialism stifles innovation!!!
Jejune genie lives on his back
Jejune genie loves chimney stacks
Hes outrageous, he screams and he bawls
Jejune let yourself go oh
Not this dead horse dragged from its grave and beaten, again!
Funny thing, there might be lines at the DMV, but people generally leave there with a driver’s license.
And who the hell are you, who doesn’t wait in the doctor’s office? Last time I waited for 2 1/2 hours, because my doctor actually talks to people and explains what’s going on, and there was an emergency in there somewhere, and you know what, waiting on line for something like that is different from waiting on line for Space Mountain at Disney World.
If waiting on line means losing a loved one while not losing any hope of financial security, or the difference between losing a loved one and not, or having anesthesia for an operation, or not… (just to use a couple of examples offered here,) well, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey there, I’ll wait on line!
I’ll bring a book!
I’ll buy one of those cane-chairs with the little seat that folds out!
Because I’m not a freakin’ horses ass who values my convenience above the lives of others.
f national health care is so great, then why do Canadians (Canada has universal health care) frequently drive to the U.S. to go see a doctor? Because they don’t want to wait the several months necessary to see a doctor in Canada.
Friends of mine in Michigan sneak into Canada to see physicians, because their HMOs refuse to authorize their visits. Here in California, I have patients who get surgeries in Mexico, because their HMO makes them wait, yes, several months for their surgeries.
National health sucks worse than everything except the system we have in the US.
On the death of Lady Diana, our once merry little Christian nation lost its moral purpose. The Falklands went on Argentine time; homowork, proctored by paedo Pakis, replaced homework in our schools – the Clause having been discarded.
The stiff-upper-lipped people of jolly England gave out at last to the dark onslaught of Europe, surrendering to the decimal Pound and metric measurements and time. As per standards mandated by our new Stalinist overlords in Brussels, subsidies now go to homosexuals and mated pairs of Sikhs and Gypsies.
…and what Wearbear said.
Saint-worshipping Papist thugs of Rome, neither fearing beatings from a populace which feared God no more nor wishing to join in the communion of Christ in spite of miraculous images of Diana, seemed poised to seize the franchise.
Blacks, Pakis, Jews given citizenship after the fifth generation; black put into Union Jack.
The glory of the defenders of South Africa against its Boer siege faded.
Londonderry, Ulstershire, and Dublengland fell at last into Papist hands.
The spear-chucking bongo-beating missionary-boiling antics of the hateful chav white woggo-woggo garnered no laughter, for this now Godless nation had lost its sense of humour.
French was spoken in Paris and Hindoostani in New Delhi, showing the world that this plucky tribe of England is not safe even in its own God-given territory.
If you nationalize health care, eventually, if has to be rationed,
As opposed to what is happening RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
The magical invisible hand of the market sez you have no money, you get no doctor.
HEALTHCARE IS ALREADY RATIONED IN AMERICA.
The miraculous intervention of Diana may prove to give no succor to this Christian nation, nor must we in Diana’s name have faith in an island of faith in God and His most noble angel the Princess Diana in the sea of Eurabia.
The steely, courageous resolve of brave Maggie having destroyed Stalinism and denied Labour its greatest pleasure – taking marching orders from their bosses behind Churchill’s Iron Curtain in Paris and Moscow – they have ‘reformed’, and now seek to destroy the well-being of the common Englishman with their reform of the NHS and their ban on fox hunting.
God save our Queen, Elizabeth II, by the grace of God Queen of England, defender of the Faith of God.
God save the Queen. In Diana’s name, God save the Queen and all her loyal British subjects.
No pakis. God save the Queen.
Got any facts, figures, citations… you know, evidence… to back that up, Scotty?
I’m still waiting to get the approval paperwork for a root canal operation for my kid from DeltaCareUSA. We took her to her regular dentist and got the referral three months ago.
It took my mom ONE YEAR to get approval for her powered wheelchair from HealthNet, after spending the previous six months getting THREE DOCTORS to sign off on it, with all the waiting time between appointments.
The folks at her primary doctor’s office said she was the ONLY patient they had EVER SEEN who actually saw the process through to the end, because the rest of them gave up and bought the medical equipment they needed out-of-pocket (me and my mom are very tenacious.)
So screw you and your “rationing” trope – the American HMO system already rations medical care more strictly than any single-payer system – by stonewalling and attrition. If they stall long enough the patient dies anyway!
(Is this guy the new The Truth? I hope so. We need another good troll now that Truthie has run away.)
Here in California, I have patients who get surgeries in Mexico, because their HMO makes them wait, yes, several months for their surgeries.
Hell, Doc, HMOs are authorizing surgeries in India to save costs…
I’d just like to share, incidentally, that experienced doctors who work within the mainstream health system generally devote almost as much mental energy and memory to anything they can possibly do to keep the administrators and insurers from screwing their patients as they do to medicine.
It’s depressing work. There’s a reason that, however awful the war might be, there has never been a shortage of medical refugees in the Army.
Damn WordPress..ate the link.
Here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/health/21abroad.html?_r=1&ref=health
Surgeries in India
I didn’t get it, but neither did BarbinMD
The war in Iraq was very profitable to certain large corporations (DoD contractors), so they supported it. Single payer healthcare would eliminate certain large corporations (insurers), so they oppose it. There’s no great feat of mental gymnastics at work. It’s just all corporate profits all the time.
The silly part is that the average wingnut seems to think that he’ll get a taste.
Jejunie in disguise, well that’s what you are
Lemonade pie with a brand new car
Cantaloupe eyes come to me tonight
Jejunie in disguise, with glasses
The silly part is that the average wingnut seems to think that he’ll get a taste.
Well, you know, 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of income earners…which always troubled me: if you’re making a fair buck (I mean, if you’re making $25K and consider yourself rich, you’re a fucking loon), it means you must have some intelligence, enough I should think that you might, you know, Google the average income in America as well as the distribution and find out that 19 times as many people can’t all be in the top one percent.
Oh, little Jejunie, you got so much love.
Little Jejunie, And you take it where it strikes
And give it to the likes of me
I hate to break it to you liberal droogs, but national health care is not just inefficient, it is also impractical.
Do you have any idea how much it will cost for the federal government to insure 300 million Americans? All at the taxpayers expense, of course. It will end up costing over 1 trilllion dollars. About the same as our nation’s current GDP.
Do you liberals really want your taxes to be raised to the draconian levels they are in Europe? I take it you don’t believe me about the ineffeciencies, but assuredly you believe me about the practical concerns of implementing such a plan.
I read liberals like a book, you’re all so predictable. I know whats coming next. Now you’re about to whine about the military industrial complex, the only program our government actually runs correctly. Which of course is the only job assigned to it in the Constitution. But in this age of terrorism and increasingly expansionist powers like Russia and China, do you really think its a good idea to cut military spending to 10% its current levels? (which is exactly what the far left American Socialist Party proposes).
A statement of this kind requires not knowing what “military-industrial complex” means.
I hate to break it to you liberal droogs, but national health care is not just inefficient, it is also impractical.
Medicare’s administrative costs are roughly three percent of its budget.
The average HMOs admin costs are roughly ten times that.
Now, you were saying…?
I hate to break it to you liberal droogs
Hmmm…..where have I heard that before?
Also what the constitution says, but whatever.
Doesn’t that statement imply that you’ve actually read a book?
All at the taxpayers expense, of course. It will end up costing over 1 trilllion dollars. About the same as our nation’s current GDP.
Whoa, Sparky, maybe you ought to take a course or two in civics.
A trillion dollar GDP?
ROFLMAO!
Try fourteen times that, ignert slut. So, to pay one-fourteenth of GDP to see health care costs in this country DECLINE?
Now, you were saying….?
“The idea that corporate bureaucracy is better than government bureaucracy is one of my favorite conservative fantasies.”
Yeah, it’s freaking hilarious until your father-in-law gets a huge bill from the hospital for the privilege of having his wife die there because the hospital and the insurance company can’t get their act together.
Then: not so funny.
I don’t know, OneMan. When my mom got a bill for $43,000 from the hospital that failed to save my dad’s life after a heart attack – a process that took less than 15 hours, mind you – I laughed my ass off.
Why, in England or Canada he would have had to wait months to die!
Viva capitalism!
Do you liberals really want your taxes to be raised to the draconian levels they are in Europe?
Sadly, we already do.
I read liberals like a book, you’re all so predictable.
Ah, but which book?
I wonder, wonder, who, who-oo-oo, who
Who wrote the book of liberals
I read liberals like a book, you’re all so predictable.
I collect comma splices like Pokemon cards, they’re so entertaining.
I had WFB’s photo on my bulletin board instead of the Beatles
For all he knows the Beatles could have had WFB’s photo on their bulletin board.
Also: O be still my beating heart.
I’m beginning to think that Commanderguy here is just Peth–, Petho–, the columnist over at Useless News. He’s about as well-informed and intelligible.
There’s a word for this: Innumeracy.
But it has to be more than that. What, 2% of the nation makes more than $250,000 a year?
And that is a lot of money, but by the time you buy a 4-5 bedroom house, fill it with furniture, add a couple of luxury vehicles and maybe a boat, a really good mink, a vacation in Europe… you’re getting down to the dregs, and you’re NOWHERE near Real Money, the kind who hires headliner entertainers for their kid’s birthday parties, or gets a new wardrobe at some designer place every year, or has their own jet.
The true meaning of that statement is that 19% of Americans are rich assholes.
Who would render down their own grandmother for aromatherapy candles.
These are the people voting Republican to hang onto “their money” when the people making out with the real cash wouldn’t spit on the houses, the clothes, or the cars that they sell out their fellow humans for.
To have his wife die, unless you’re from Stereotypical Virginia. It’s kind of like West Virginia, but they’re all Robert Byrd.
Thanks for not indulging in tireseome stereotypes.
For all he knows the Beatles could have had WFB’s photo on their bulletin board.
I thought he meant he tacked a picture of WFB to his bulletin board instead of tacking it to the Beatles.
To clarify: my MIL dropped dead mid-sentence from a massive heart attack. Nobody on this earth could have revived her. The ride in the ambulance with the paramedics performing CPR nonstop resulted in an $800 bill. The hospital stop where they tried a little and then called her came to, I think, $6000.
Insurance should have (and probably eventually will) covered all but a nominal amount of that. That didn’t stop my FIL from receiving a couple of jaw-dropping bills that, in his grief, he’ll have to go to battle with a bunch of uninterested bureaucrats over. Either that or my wife will have to get involved. Meanwhile, having just lost 40% of his income stream (because dead people don’t get a pension) he’s wondering what he’s going to have to give up to keep putting food on the table.
So don’t fucking tell me how the private sector is soooo much more efficient than the public sector because I’ve dealt with both and frankly, I’d prefer my bureacracy public, thank you.
VERY FIRST SENTANCE:
in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
No, no. ‘My taxes’ are payroll taxes, which you people have been dancing ridiculously around for ages. As for 90% marginal taxes: cry me a fucking river, it won us Korea and World War II.
Heh. ‘Practical concerns’? Yeah, it’s real practical to make healthcare into a binary between making payroll taxes confiscatory and making health payments confiscatory just so some pencil-neck with an MBA doesn’t have to worry about what numbers he puts on blank federal checks. Do you even fucking listen to yourself?
See, most of us don’t read books that give away the ending on the cover, but I won’t deny that Big Dicks, Fatt Backs is our generation’s Mein Kampf.
Ha ha ha ha ha! ‘Correctly’? The military!? Yeah, because spending 4%+ of our GDP on General Electric’s bottom line and getting an army designed to fight the Cold War is beautifully efficient. On a totally unrelated note, I can sell you a whole mess of serfs for twenty easy installments of five talents!
Uh, no: the Constitution specifically assigns military expenditures and maintenance to the various states and limits federal involvement to levying and commanding armies in wartime. Try to know this shit before you get snide about it.
Our current government egging on Georgia with implied military support and proceeding to flail impotently at Russia through diplomatic channels is all the rebuttal this needs. When you can’t do the job you claim you’re there to do with 200% of the funding, why on Earth should we even give you 10%?
So lemme get this straight. Throwing enormous amounts of public money at problems is a good idea as long as an obscure party with ‘socialist’ in it is against it? OK, here goes nothing: as the chairman and sole member of the Satanic Socialist Nazi Party of Greater California, I’m completely and totally against any federal funding for punching you in the nuts until they bleed.
Do you have any idea how much it will cost for the federal government to insure 300 million Americans? All at the taxpayers expense, of course. It will end up costing over 1 trilllion dollars.
I’d like to see the raw figures on that, Charley.
And anyway, that kind of thing assumes the costs of normal life on top of taxes. What fuckwits like you are hiding is the fact that universal health care means NOT HAVING TO PAY YOUR OWN MEDICAL COSTS, much like mass transit means not having to pay for the upkeep on the vehicles you use.
Everyone pays in and the healthy assist the unhealthy – just like insurance does already. Fuckwits like you just hate it ’cause the government might get involved, god forbid.
Were there actually any Scots in the First Crusade?
Madam, my mayor suggested to a fourth-grade class that all he would want with him on a desert island would be a case of gin and a number of showgirls.
I ain’t in a position to judge depravity. I just find the idea of a Virginia for every occasion unreasonably amusing.
It’s Like The Truth on crack
OK, here goes nothing: as the chairman and sole member of the Satanic Socialist Nazi Party of Greater California, I’m completely and totally against any federal funding for punching you in the nuts until they bleed.
I’m sure the free market here at S,N! would gladly take up the slack in funding that.
Obviously, you meant to say ONE TRILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLION DOLLARS.
1) The taxpayers are already paying those expenses – the only difference would be a state intermediary turning moderate payment for most and crippling payment for some into moderate payment for all.
2) The GDP is, in fact, around 13.78 trillion (finally, the billions upon billions of dollars we throw at the CIA produces something useful!)
3) In case you missed it, the federal government is trying to ram through a 7-trillion dollar bailout, which (owing to the fairly extreme levels of existing debt and political unfeasability of hiding it in regressive taxes as Republicans prefer to do) will probably result in one or all of default, hyperinflation, or the complete destruction of the discretionary budget.
4) Fuck you with a rake.
A rake?
Whatever happened to splintery broomsticks?
Giuliani time happened.
Wait, no, that’s plungers. I think it’s Eliot Spitzer’s fault; we should probably monitor him 24/7 for a couple of years to be sure.
We’re spending $2.3 trillion on health care now. If our socialist overlords can do the job for $1 trillion, I say go for it.
Oh noes! Someone on teh Interweb is making up tendentious sodbucketty bullshit! How shall I ever get any work done?!
The bailout(s) were the result of President Bush and certain Republican Congressmen, selling out their conservative principles.
It was the same thing with FDR during the Great Depression. FDR wasn’t a socialist, he was actually, believe it or not, trying to save capitalism from itself. And in so doing (despite his good intentions) changed America’s economic system from classical liberalism (today know as conservatism) into New Deal liberalism, which despite being implemented in order to protect capitialism, actually paved the way for more socialist inspired government programs (all under the guise of protecting capitalism) unitl finally, America’s economic policies has become something our Founders would never have recognized, and would have vehemetly opposed.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
What is this work you speak of?
America’s economic policies has become something our Founders would never have recognized, and would have vehemetly opposed.
Well, Our Founding Fathers wouldn’t have recognized baseball, either, but I think they’d sorta liked it. Like you know what someone 200 years ago would’ve thought about something happening right now. Who the fuck are you, J.Z. Knight?
Don’t forget the two wetsuits and a dildo.
America’s economic policies [have] become something our Founders would never have recognized, and would have vehemetly opposed.
Sorta like the notion endorsed by some that the only thing the Constitution mandates government to do is “run the military-industrial complex.” No way the founders could have foreseen Americans becoming THAT stupid.
Then we won’t have to worry about you setting foot on it.
> Now you’re about to whine about the military industrial complex, the only program our government actually runs correctly.
This scottish idiot used “droogs”. He is Da Troof.
As for the quoted passage, can I sell that scottish idiot some $600 hammers?
Da Troof is still posting under this alias as though his ISP is Associated Mental Hospitals, Inc.
Don’t fall for it.
> FDR wasn’t a socialist, he was actually, believe it or not, trying to save capitalism from itself.
Scotty/Truth, post this on one of your favorite wingnut/nutjob/whackjob websites and see how fast you get banned.
What a moroon*
* mispelling of Bugs’ maroon in honor of the famous Moran photo.
This scottish idiot used “droogs”.
Means nothing. All the parody trolls are using that word now — if only because it annoys their parents — and hanging out at the Moloko Milkbar. Nadsat is the new Lolcat.
unitl finally, America’s economic policies has become something our Founders would never have recognized
Amazing how that march to BIG GUMMINT SOCIALISM wasn’t stopped by the free-market homespun wisdom of Saint Ronnie of Reagan.
Guess he was a sell-out to TEH IMMORTAL MASTERS UV TEH WROLD as well.
WHILE most of Democratic America is basking in the Obama victory glow, one contingent despairs: liberal bloggers and activists.
Shocked that the man who ran as a post-partisan candidate seeking the middle ground is being post-partisan and seeking middle ground, these people are blasting Barack Obama’s early, centrist decisions.
The Failed Obama Presidency: What Went Wrong, and Why?
We have free market for the poor and socialism for the rich. That seems like a strange sort of conservatism.
and you may ask yourself, “Was he dropped on his head?”
and you may ask yourself, “How many times?”
and you may ask yourself, “Does he know much it shows?”
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…
Commander of the Scottish Contingent during the First Crusade: I hate to break it to you liberal droogs, but national health care is not just inefficient, it is also impractical.
Sadly, no!
You’re completely wrong, “up-is-down” wrong, “day-is-night” wrong, “2 + 2 = 5” wrong. Anyone who has looked at the comparative costs of European and American health care knows that the American “free-market” system is not only hard on the tens of millions of citizens who get no health care at all, but that it is also a great deal more expensive than the European model. We get a lot less for a much higher price. In terms of the fraction of the GNP, European-style socialized health care costs somewhere between 45% to 75% as much as American “free-market” health care does, yet virtually everybody is covered. Here is a nice collection of charts by the Kaiser Family Foundation illustrating this fact. In particular, look at Exhibits 4 and 5.
Thanks to the bunch of sharp lefty socialists around here, another troll slinks off with his ass under his arm. Why can’t our new senators and congressmen talk like that?
If I’m not mistaken, that’s conservatism in it’s purest form: feudalism.
Are you kidding me?
My last experience at the DMV(in Massachusetts) was stellar. It only took an hour because of the amount of paper, and the sloth of the seller.
The agent sorted through it, processed everything that made sense and started digging into the gobbledegook that was left over. Told her manager “This is a mess.” Manager took a look and said, “yeah, this is a mess. Here – take this, file these two together, and sign it off. I’ll initial it, and here’s your plate, sir.”
I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to take that thing back to the seller and shake my money out of him – 150 miles away.
And all I had done was smile and ask nicely.
I could cope with that level of service at any given hospital. My GP is quite nice and accessible, but busy – maybe more money could fix that, extra staff, that kind of thing.
> Thanks to the bunch of sharp lefty socialists around here, another troll slinks off with his ass under his arm
Don’t worry, he’ll be back with more Talking Points, breathlessly downloaded from http://www.oxycontin_rush.com, guaranteed to annoy Liberals – and deny reality.
> We have free market for the poor and socialism for the rich. That seems like a strange sort of conservatism.
Shhh. The nutjobs/wingnuts/whackjobs aren’t supposed to know about the “deep secret” of their idolized ideology.
No crap.
Last time I went to the Cali DMV, I made an appointment on-line, showed up two or three minutes late, filled out a form, sat down & waited for five or so minutes, paid, had my photo & thumbprint taken, signed on the digital line & was out in thirty mins. total.
And had an amusing conversation w/ the clerk I paid (“writer-producer”) & the woman in the next line (“actress”) about the travails of show bidness.
We can only hope that our health system will work that well some day.
Huh.
Just from a few anecdotes, I’d say Mr. Pravda’s talking point was deader than Francisco Franco.
Imagine that.
Repig: As long as none of those talking points involve the Jena Six, I’ll be happy.
Mr. Pravda probably gets his elderly mother to drive him to the comic book store, & may not have been to the DMV for some time, if ever. He may not realize that computers can be used for more than displaying one’s ignorance & looking at smut.
Had to get my licensed renewed and my address changed at a DMV right outside of downtown Atlanta two weeks ago. In and out in 10 minutes.
I see your point, but I raise you this: Dealing with teh bureaucracy is a little bit better than dealing with cheaters, swindlers, and screwjobs.
And additionally, ignoring my own typo up there, I’ve never gotten to see a doctor in under 10 minutes. Ever.
In fairness, the Jena Six is just a much-needed relief from continuous chatter about OJ Simpson, and at this point are themselves just provisional blackgoats until Malia’s first swear.
We really need to launch some kind of humanitarian mission here – the wingnuts are scraping by on years-old race-hate. Kind of like the Berlin Airlift, only specifically for the Klan.
Do you enjoy the quality of service you get at the DMV?
Last time I renewed my liscence, I did it online. So the picture’s like six years old, which is nice ’cause I’ve quit drinking since then and apparently don’t look quite as raggedy these days. Time before that, I was in and out in about half-hour, most of which I spent watching DMV folks patiently and professionally dealing with North Georgia nitwits. Chuckling at the scene, I noted to myself that perhaps if everyone in America wasn’t insistent on always being the firstest with the mostest, we’d lose a viable resource of grouchery, i.e., the DMV. And then I realized I’d forgotten the $15 renewal fee.
Also, a friend of mine was trying to get his liscenced renewed and because of an incident the week prior*, he had to take the whole driver’s test all over again. Part of the process – at least for my friend – was a breathalyzer test. I sat and waited out in the lobby reading a Brian Greene book and the sherrif’s deputy tapped me on the shoulder and liked to have scared me to death. Said to me, “You won’t let him drive, right.” Not even a question or a request, just that’s how it is, country boy. My friend was pissed and refused to tell me what went down until I told him that I’d make him walk home if he didn’t tell me.
My friend blew a .16 on the breathalyzer test. Georgia limit at the time was .08. And my friend had absolutely no booze that day, he was still twice the legal limit from the night before. So I say, sal-ute to the good folks at the Georgia DMV.
* He showed up to the DMV drunk and reeking. Yes, there is a pattern.
Ahh, my liberal droogs, durr dee dumn de deedily Jena 6 Ted Kennedy Bill Ayers Michelle Obama McCain’s going to win! Why aren’t you being funny ding dong diddily deedily farty fart sploot.
They should have changed their format to “Hot Naked Chicks & World Report” when they had the chance.
My friend blew a .16 on the breathalyzer test. Georgia limit at the time was .08. And my friend had absolutely no booze that day, he was still twice the legal limit from the night before.
Wow. You just gotta admire some people. I mean, commitment’s gotta count for something, y’know? If you’re willing to work that hard at something, whether it’s being a bank CEO or a drunk, that’s worth acknowledgment…
mikey
It’s actually much simpler than that – FDR just turned everything into a great big glob of liberal fascism.
You obviously haven’t been keeping up with the latest trends in historical analysis.
I doubt it, Mr. Truth has a propensity for the usage of dangling double negatives and allied degenerative nouns.
And besides, ever since he had his ass handed to him last week, he’s been lingering three threads back or so.
Yeah, it’s actually The Truth/Goober/Obsessive Compulsive again… you didn’t respond to him as Goober, so he’s shifted to a brand new identity you won’t know yet, and a different (but not really, as he doesn’t have any talent for creativity, just repetition of things he’s picked up from elsewhere) prose style that he hopes you won’t associate with him, after he lost his temper and made a fool of himself a few days back with his Dr.Dick outbursts again. But yeah… it’s him again, quoting right wing talking points from other blogs, and using an equal parts historically pompous, and historically ignorant user name (there wasn’t a specifically Scottish contingent in the First Crusade, but he’s hoping you’ve spent hours googling it, because you’re an historical illiterate like he is and only know things by rote-learning them)…
However, I will say one thing about him … he DID get right that you need to wait 6 months to see a dentist on the NHS.
Because 6 months is the scheduled time for an NHS check up. You get one EVERY 6 months to check for complications in advance. But can wak in any time and be seen within a few days at the worst if something comes up before. And into the Accident & Emergency ward of any hospital in case of dental emergencies, via the free ambulance service if need be
I’m British you see. And I had a dentist appointment, last week. and I’ll be back again in 6 months for another, on a day and time of my choose, on Tuesday the 2nd of June. Oh the horror of that 6 month wait, eh?
It’d be awesome if Obama spent presidential vacations golfing in particular places.
Horror of horrors. If only you had a private system, you could do what we did and see a dentist every half dozen years, give or give a couple.
Seriously, it’s actually difficult to hammer home how goddamn deficient the American system is without a standard of comparison. You’re supposed to have regular dental and medical checkups; most of us can barely afford visits of absolute necessity, and that’s if we’re lucky enough to be provided the shit-ass standard insurance by an employer.
Long story short, all of those dumb jokes about bad dentistry are really gonna bite us in the ass in the next coupla generations…
However, I will say one thing about him … he DID get right that you need to wait 6 months to see a dentist on the NHS.
Because 6 months is the scheduled time for an NHS check up.
Ah.
We knew there had to be a catch in it somewhere, if it’s a right-wing talking point.
See, preventative health care like that is one reason it’s so much cheaper in the long run elsewhere. But as long as this country’s infested with morans like <a href=”http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7790″John ‘Universal Health Care in the E.R.’ Goodman, we’re going to continue to run up a higher bill than everyone else through the use of catastrophic treament for things that’re easily prevented ahead of time – and then have dumbshit conservatives point to said catastrophic treatment and gabble about “best health care in the world”.
BTW, eat me with ketchup, WordPress, I fucking closed that HTML tag you fucking dumbass douchbag piece of shit software.
WP doesn’t seem to like embedding URLs when they contain complicated subclauses like “?diaryId=7790”. Something goes askew with the parsing, it forgets that it’s waiting for the closing quote marks and reads them as part of the URL, then everything goes pear-shaped.
The remedy is to leave out the quote marks altogether, so the tag is simply
[a href=”http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7790].
I like that the glibbie talking point on that line is ‘making medical care available free to everyone means they use it when they don’t really need it’.
My dad, as almost every doctor does, has all kinds of stories. You do general practice – let alone trauma – in a tourist town, you see pretty much everything.
One time this guy comes in with this gigantic bulge in his pants, right? They get ’em off and he’s all swoll up and purple-blue like a slow-fried plantain trying to cruise a California Raisin. Guy managed to squeeze it into a box-end and waited half a week out of embarassment – and after the first couple of hours you have to imagine, because of the way dicks work, the erection would be mechanically irresolvable (this is called ‘priapism’) and it just got worse and worse. Worst thing is, when they actually get him there, the contusion damage and risk of gangrene is severe enough they need to go in there surgery and just take out everything north of the ol’ christmas ornaments, which were probably a couple more days of blood infection away from being ruined themselves.
The moral of the story is that letting a little problem become big is a bad idea, especially if you can help it. If the guy hadn’t been embarassed and/or Libertarian, he’d still have that wrench.
One time this guy comes in with this gigantic bulge in his pants, right? They get ‘em off and he’s all swoll up and purple-blue like a slow-fried plantain trying to cruise a California Raisin.
Remind me to never start swapping stories with you at a party.
I think I’ll go barf now…
You think that’s something? Never bring up the USS Arizona. Trust me on this one.
Where were you during the “Things liberals will fuck” conversation a few threads ago?
I don’t know…I have this theory—a sure fire way to really freak someone out is to add an element of yuck to anything they might find sexually attractive. Guys are already somewhat sensitive about their, ahem…gay guys? Yeah, I think you could break many a fag brain with that story.
Not sure about the moral of Alec’s story. “Affordable access to medical care will allow dudes to use box-end spanners as improvised cock-rings without worrying about the consequences”? If nothing else, that line of argument could easily bring the sex-toy industry out in force against health-care reform.
This is why the Arizona story is worse: it’s basically like the wrench one, only heartwarming.
You would be amazed what a teenager will try to fuck. They are almost as bad as liberals.
Would I?
While I very much appreciate the knowledgable responses many of you have given to our resident wingnuts, in response to their usual tired old cliches, the one thing you have to remember is that the ruinous cost of healthcare will do the job of convincing them far better than any argument you can make. Indeed, it’s already gone a long way towards convincing the majority of Americans. Wingers will embrace government health care when they are left with no other choice, in the same way all those freemarketeers on Wall Street are currently going begging to Congress. When your kid’s sick, and you can’t afford to do anything about, ideology flies out the fucking window.
Well, should you let the march of history take its inevitable course or do the right thing now?
At first I thought with the Scottish warrior thing and the anti-muslim bile the new troll was Mark Steyn using a sockpuppet, but this guy’s a better writer.
Truly, no one could have anticipated that using a wrench in this manner could have led to tragedy.
One time this guy comes in with this gigantic bulge in his pants, right? They get ‘em off
Okay, I had to read that bit twice before I understood that you meant his pants.
I once read an argument that people generally accept the status quo when pressed, no matter what it is – this was specific to gay marriage, but it’s been true of the reactionary phalange for a long time. The same arguments might be being recycled about gays as were thrown around about interracial relationships, but the latter are completely uncontroversial today even among relatively die-hard conservatives.
Unfortunately, occasionally the status quo cannot remain long enough to seriously change people’s minds – and Prop 8 wound up being a pretty big exception to the historical rule. But I’m sure that once we actually have socialized healthcare (for the love of God, let it be socialized – simply federalizing the insurance system would be goddamn infuriating to me on so many levels) they’ll just bring it up in the indolently reactionary way they do the household before the Sexual Revolution.
Our grandchildren’s dipshit wingnuts (assuming they’re not Tories picking at the scabs of an empire in decline) will treat private healthcare the way ours do non-progressive tax – a good idea, but far from worth investing actual political capital in. And so it should be.
So it’s agreed. Find a wingnut and break his leg/cut his brake lines/put asbestos in his cereal/improvise.
This a time of national crisis.
Harelip.
Yeah, I feel bad about that already.
Well, should you let the march of history take its inevitable course or do the right thing now?
Oh, trust me, we need to do something now. Piss on the 25%ers who don’t like it. My point was that, though they’ll no doubt rationalize it somehow, they’ll be lining up for the government health care the same as everyone else, and they’ll be secretly glad about it.
You would be amazed what a teenager will try to fuck.
When I was 19 they sent me to a really fucked up place, gave me access to unlimited weapons and WAY more wealth than the locals had, and essentially told me there were no rules.
I could kill anything I wanted, and anything I wanted to fuck first, well, that would be just fine.
I was NINETEEN. In you sickest nightmares, you can only begin to imagine what the words “military occupation” mean to the local population. People will let you fuck their wives, their daughters, their sons, their water buffaloes in order to see the sun rise one more day. Teenage boys will take them up on this offer. And of course, there’s all the starving families who will turn their women and girls out to provide all kinds of sex for money so the family can eat one more day.
It’s a circus of depravity if you are a young man who likes to party. Oh, and don’t forget the alcohol and drugs you can get handed to you every day, and the ongoing adrenaline rush you’re living on. Along with being inured to the horror and brutality. It’s been going on since Alexander the Great, but you’d think we might start getting past this…
mikey
No results found for “hot naked box-end wrenches”.
Little market niche here.
This a time of national crisis.
That is, it becomes a
tragedytime of national crisis if a wingnut has broken his leg.Okay, I had to read that bit twice before I understood that you meant his pants.
Well, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.
Truly, no one could have anticipated that using a wrench in this manner could have led to tragedy.
…Except certain disloyal left-wing websites, where the moonbats have been hoping right from the start for a victory on the part of the wrench.
That is, it becomes a tragedy / time of national crisis if a wingnut has broken his leg.
Remember – as whoever pointed it out pointed out, every accident gives a boost to the GDP by ensuring jobs and services all over the economy, from the pens the police officer fills out their incident report with to the bandages in the E.R.
Therefore, more accidents mean a wealthier more prosperous country! So if the wingnuts were true patriotic Americans, they’d be lining up to allow us to break their legs with baseball bats, and give much-needed job security to trauma doctors and ambulance drivers.
It’s a rare thread when a site like this seems relevant, but such a time has arrived.
Any Seinfeld flashbacks are completely understandable.
Feh.
fuckin’ WordPress.
Smiling Mortician: That was the very first thing that came to mind when I read Righteous Bubba’s comment at 3:43, so I’ll feel bad about it with you.
I think my favorite take on it is Dolan’s (cache, because looks like Exiled Online is down) – basically, that American society is ridiculously prudish when it comes to this shit. Not so much the violence or general baseline contempt for human life – shit happened in Vietnam that made the Eastern Front look like summer camp – but the drugs.
We’re probably the only major belligerent in human history that sends teenagers out to reduce other human beings to paste but blanches at the thought of them being high while they do so. Hell, even the Soviets – worse than us on the prudishness front, all considered – were out of their gourds on the strongest shit science had to offer.
Of course, this is coming from a culture that treats unused blastocysts and mechanically-maintained corpses as sacred and worthy of protection and hundreds of thousands of children born into too little money basically beneath our dignity. Difficult to expect a lot of decency out of, you know?
WB: Oh god, rectal foreign bodies, don’t get me started.
I’ll have to give dad a call, but my four favorites are:
Guy comes in with a zucchini up his ass; claims he backed into it in the supermarket.
Guy comes in with a bottle of dried-out shampoo, claiming to have slipped and fallen on it in the shower.
The USS Arizona story.
Guy comes in and says he got jumped by a bunch of guys who told him to give them all his money or they’d shove what turned out to be a brand-new $200 seven-speed vibrator all the way up his ass. He kept his money.
(For the record, the overwhelming consensus is that the shit you have up there isn’t exactly going to surprise anyone – you’re showing this shit to women and men who have helped put guys together after being peeled out on, a little anal insertion isn’t going to freak ’em out – and judgement will only be passed on you if you feel compelled to invent a ridiculous cover story for the thing you lost in your butt. They know why you did it and they do not care.)
but blanches at the thought of them being high while they do so
Unless it’s on military-approved drugs like amphetamines – remember the Candians who got shot up in Afghanistan ’cause one of our pilots was on crank?
They know why you did it and they do not care.
This might be the most awesome sentence ever, given the context.
Vietnam. You figured out your shit quick.
The green beanies and the airdales had the speed. I HATED to sit 100% alert on a perimeter without speed. Greenies, mostly, Dexedrine straight up or Dexamyl Spansules, the notorious “Brown and Clears” to which quite frankly I owe my life and a good bit of the bling they decided to give me. A soldier peaking hard on good medicinal speed is a force to be reckoned with, and what it might take to break my piece of the perimeter is measured more accurately in milligrams rather than in ordnance. Training, knowledge, experience, drugs and weapons all come together in this perfect warrior moment. You can be firing claymores with one hand while firing short bursts with your rifle and working the arty over your shoulder.
They give us responsibility, but they challenge us for using the tools available. Hate and fear are not enough – you need to find a way to reach your inner madman. And that path is available…
mikey
A zucchini
a bottle of dried-out shampoo
The USS Arizona
a brand-new $200 seven-speed vibrator
ONE OF THESE THINGS DOES NOT BELONG.
There’s too much zucchi in the pants!
There’s too much zucchi in the pants!
Wikipedia tells me the zucchini is a swollen ovary. How many men can say they’ve had an ovary removed from their anus?
Ah, but it is also a masculine diminutive plural.
Smiling Mortician: That was the very first thing that came to mind when I read Righteous Bubba’s comment at 3:43, so I’ll feel bad about it with you.
It’s funny because it’s TRUE.
One gets the feeling that alec would like to tell us the Arizona story.
Step One: Cut a hole in a box
FYWP with big stompy boots.
My partner’s dad died this morning. He had Medicare, which meant that he died in an absolutely lovely hospice facility rather than at home being inexpertly cared for by my partner or in the county hospital. Anyone who suggests to me that universal health care is a bad thing will likely get popped in the nose. Hear that, Truthy? Come say that to my face. Better yet, come tell my partner that Medicare is socialism and can’t be extended to the population generally. You’ll need your expensive private insurance, asshole. Hope you’re paid up.
I’m saving it for the period of wingnut outrage after Obama oversees the inevitable withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq.
🙁
Best wishes to Candy and crew.
No matter what you liberal peons want to believe, Congress will never approve of Obama’s universal healthcare plan. Last I checked, the Democrats were still two seats short of a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate.
The Republicans, hopefully under the leadership of someone with a little more courage than Mitch McConnel (preferably, Tom Coburn), will fillibuster any attempt by the Democrats to impose their socialist agenda.
Lets just hope some good came out of the otherwise unfortunate Republican defeat. I’m thinking, perhaps a Republican minority with the courage of its convictions, unlike the blatant cowardice they’ve shown in recent years. The most cowardly action the Republican Congress took by far was trying to legallize 12-40 million illegal aliens, with the outright opposition of the Republican base, no less.
Those cowardly Rinos responsible for that obscene piece of drivel, are also partly responsible for our Party’s recent losses. They were more concerned about the leftwing media calling them racists, then they were about the approval of their own base. That kind of blatant cowardice should not be tolerated in a Party that supposedly prides itself on conservative principles and patriotism.
The Republican leadership needs to wake up, rediscover its conservative principles, boot out the Rinos, and then figure out how to become the majority party once again.
Mis sentidos pésames, Candy.
Thanks, folks. It was expected, but still very hard on A. It’s my first time dealing with a slow death. Everyone in my family seems to drop dead of heart attacks or strokes.
If the guy hadn’t been embarassed and/or Libertarian, he’d still have that wrench.
Natural selection at its finest.
Candy.
There is life.
And there is peace.
Please know that peace is worth seeking.
I am with you in your pain.
Carry on, for that’s what we are here to do.
It’s about love, not hate….
mikey
…oh, I skimmed a bit I guess. I thought that was a metaphor. :p
Thanks, mikey. I agree; peace is about the best we can do, and a truly good thing.
Candy, my condolences for your loss.
May he rest in peace, and may He comfort you during this time of tragedy.
Nice way to conflate the terminology, dickass. Pro tip: ‘illegal’ isn’t another word for ‘Mexican’, no matter how you want it to be.
Or maybe they were actually worried about being racists. Nah, couldn’t be: the real racist thing would be to leave the subhuman Mexicans and Italians and Irishmen and Slavs in the country, fouling up our very law with their ostensibly ‘documented’ presence!!
Conservative principles like the support of an enormous state apparatus to document, monitor, and expel residents at will, and patriotic principles like active racial antipathy for a group that makes up 20% of the population and 13% of the armed forces – not to mention having soldiers dishonorably discharged for fucking the wrong kind of person off duty.
Yeah, no more of this filthy lily-livered ‘patriotism’ crap. We need to fuck the Mexicans now!!!1 Unlike despicable race-traitor RINOs like Ronald Reagan and Ike Eisenhower, the Republican Party should never give carte blanche to Mexofelons with open-termed amnesty.
Er, “euphemism.” …Fuck I’m tired. I should stop babbling. >.<
Candy: Heartfelt sympathy from me to you and your partner. I’m glad Medicare did a good thing by you guys.
As I always said, less is more. Yes, I’m looking at you, alec.
As Shock G says, do what you like.
Everyone in my family seems to drop dead of heart attacks or strokes.
As a cancer survivor of nearly 10 years and the spouse of a cancer survivor of nearly 9 years and a person whose dad died last spring after 6 months of pancreatic cancer and whose mother-in-law died of lymphoma and dear god how I could go on and on, I sincerely hope that when I go it’s the dropping dead kind of death. Especially if it’s under the current “health care” system, and during the current economic climate.
Candy – my condolences and I’ll gladly hold your coat if you and Mr. Pravda (or whatever name he’s hiding behind lately) wish to step outside.
Alec, my friend, immigrants are more than welcome to come to this Great Land, if they do it LEGALLY. And of course, unlike healthcare, the federal government DOES have jurisdiction over matters of immigration and naturalization.
This means that this country should be selective in the immigrants we accept to become Americans. Not only does this mean that immigrants must be willing to leave their native culture and traditions behind and assimilate into American culture, speak fluent English and have no criminal record whatsoever, but that they must in some way be a benefit to America and to society. They should preferably be of some means finacially, have skills such as medicine, business, law ect…, and be absolutely willing to learn and embrace American culture, history, religion and civics.
In short, when its all set and done, their should be no distinctive difference between the immigrant, and traditional American society at large.
Of course, their needs to be more serious restrictions on legal immigration as well. As it is, this country takes in more than two million legal immigrants each year. Their is no way for that great mass of people to effectively assimilate into American culture and society at this current unprecedented rate. America should go back to more tradtional levels of immigration pre-1960s, before the Kennedy’s screwed things up. 200,000 immigrants a year would be perfectly sustainable and resonable. It worked for us so long, who’s to say it can’t work now?
Commander of the Scottish Contingent during the First Crusade said,
November 25, 2008 at 5:38
Alec, my friend,I like pie.
Fixed.
I hope that I go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather
and not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
MzNicky, I honestly don’t know what we’d have done without Medicare. We’d have been screwed. In time, I’m going to try to write something up about the experience, as it had everything: There was cancer, Medicare, no private medigap insurance, foreclosure, religious and alternative medicine anti-science woo, bad decisions, circumcision or lack thereof . . . a veritable cornucopia of these here times we live in!
The old man had an interesting life. I guess that’s the best any of us can hope for. He was born in Tornillo, Texas in 1928. His mom died a short time later and his dad, who was a border smuggler, was shot to death when he was six months old. Grew up speaking Spanish on an Apache res in New Mexico raised by an aunt and granny. Ran away from home at 14, was a trucker, got shot himself and had a spectacular accident or two. Later got married and settled down and became a Jehovah’s Witness of all things. He was a walking Cormac McCarthy novel. I wish I could have gotten his story down on tape. The partner and I used to talk about it from time to time, but as with so many things always going on, never got around to it.
I have to try and straighten some stuff up around here because A’s mom is coming to stay for a few days and things are a wreck. It’s kind of good the family is mostly Witness; no spoiled holidays to worry about. I bought a turkey and trimmings and will cook it Friday probably. Just won’t call it Thanksgiving. Hell, I’m an atheist myself and so’s my son and the partner is too but keeps his views to himself so it doesn’t matter what we call the day. I’m just partial to turkey and wine and my ethnic Irish upbringing demands that we all imbibe large quantities of food and drink at the time of a death. They’re Latino and Native American so they’re not opposed to the wake concept with food and beer either, Witnesses or no.
I’m kind of drunk, hence Teh Rambling. Good night all, and again, thanks for your kind words.
Ah, yes, the shiftless and lazy uninsured. My beloved partner lost his job (er, was downsized) from his well paid job a month ago. Tried to sign up with suggested ‘individual’ insurance for the family. Our 15 y.o. son (in excellent health, btw) was denied-asthma. My partner denied (also in otherwise excellent health)-asthma. Neither has had an episode for years. I, too, was deemed ‘uninsurable’, with the only problem being (so far as we can determine) hypothyroid requiring a low dose of medication. Two of the most freaking common-not to mention benign if controlled with fairly cheap meds-conditions around. They were happy to inform us, however, that our 10 y.o. son was eligible. Yayz! One out of four. Otherwise, we are, ahem, SOL. Now, if eldest son ends up compromised because of lack of routine maintenance care of his (easily) treatable asthma, we’ll be out of a house, out of what little savings we have left (thanks, 401k!), and bankrupt. Oh, yeah, and all you who still have insurance will face an increase in premiums due to our not being insured! All because the insurance companies decided it was ‘too risky’ to insure an asthmatic kid. Way to go! Makes me truly want to stick something large and prickly up some sanctimonious asshole’s asshole. I wouldn’t even charge a deductible, either.
I think the wingnut ideology is totally in tune with whining and lying a smidgen in order to grab a double handful of free government dough.
Before we even say anything: there are 37.5 million foreign-born Americans total as of right now, so you might want to take whatever Stormfront affiliate gave you your number off your bookmarks list – it’s clearly either double-counting or listing born citizens as non-citizens, and counting every foreign-born American (including legal and illegal aliens and US citizens) as ‘illegal’.
I hope your Scots is better than your Inglis, sir.
To be less flippant:
Does it? Might you perhaps show me in the constitution where (beyond ‘general welfare’, under which Congress’s constitutional authority to make laws concerning citizenship tends to be construed) this is specified? This isn’t a major point, but I’d just like to point out that there is in fact such a thing as jurisdiction, constitutionality, and law outside of your opinion.
No: it means that the country should do whatever the government decides it should do with respect to accepting people to become Americans. There’s no basis for any of the criteria you describe in the Constitution (besides ‘a more perfect union’ in the preamble, which could as readily be construed to put a lower limit on height as it could be construed to mean any of what you say it does). This is, again, a minor point – one you’d certainly know more about if you had ever actually read our major founding documents in any detail, but still minor.
I do like how you seem to believe Mexicans are a species of violent, anhistoric pagans; that they labor under a king and have no idea what culture is.
Seriously, under the criteria you set out we should be more reluctant accepting Italians into the polity than Mexicans – they share with us a long republican tradition, a struggle against an imperial mother country, and an unusual regard for religion in the public square. Of course, that matters less to you than their scandalous moustaches.
Yeah, no: the current immigration rate is, at its highest, about 1 million a year, including undocumented aliens.
The ‘traditional’ rate of immigration was actually established by statute following the Dillingham Commission, which blamed south European immigration for the perceived anarchist threat and began the enactment of serious strictures on immigration. Between 1930 and 1940, the heaviest restriction of immigration post-Dillingham partially owing to the severe economic situation, the foreign-born population dropped from 15 to 10 million. (This did not include non-resident aliens, e.g. the seasonal migrant labor force from Mexico trying to make it big and buy land down south – they were regarded as a salutatory presence and not considered any real threat – the first border checkpoints were designed to ensure the people moving through the borders were actually Mexicans and not swarthy impostors.)
At its lowest, the US foreign-born population was roughly 8-10% of the population. Higher numbers certainly existed in the 19th century, but less reliable census methodology and far laxer standards of naturalization (allowing tens of millions of people from around the world, with the increasing exception of Asians, to move into and out of the US as they pleased) meant that no reliable number has ever been derived.
‘Traditional’ migrant populations in the era of the US westward settlement, Great Plains agricultural revolution, and early heavy industrialization could be assumed to stand anywhere between one in five and one in three Americans, including a large population of American-born foreigners.
The only states to build a particularly vital non-primary economy in the wake of the Civil War were those which admitted a substantial migrant labor force – especially Texas and Florida, the latter so much so that land which had previously been regarded as worthless grew so much in value so quickly as to severely damage the real estate market for generations to come.
How would you like to have the same people who run your local DMV, run your local doctor’s office?
And how would you like to have the same people who run your local International Arabian Horse Association, run your local Federal Emergency Management Agency?
Fuck off and die, asshole.
Fuck off and die, asshole.
I apologize for this inappropriate line. Angry Liberal was angry. Won’t happen again.
I like that we’ve gone so far that simple facts about our government sound like filler details in Nigerian 419 scams.
I do like how you seem to believe Mexicans are a species of violent, anhistoric pagans; that they labor under a king and have no idea what culture is.
…isn’t that, like, a really good description of *Americans*?
Peace, Candy.
And I just wanna say, Doctorb, that I never get tired of that joke. IIRC, I first heard it from my dad back in . . . oh, the mid-14th century, and it still catches me off guard every damn time.
all I know is if they want to expand government healthcare they better fix that crap we have now really quick…since they reimburse less than cost most of the time and take nine months to send payment. You know any docs that run a medicare-only practice by choice?
“Of course, their needs to be more serious restrictions on legal immigration as well.”
You’ve never known someone trying to apply, have you?
“As it is, this country takes in more than two million legal immigrants each year.”
Last year, we took 1,052,415. More than I expected, but only half of your figure.
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/LPR_FR_2007.pdf
You can’t simply be born this stupid; you have to work at it and acquire it, either by a self-inflicted head wound or a number of overly extended auto-erotic asphyxiation sessions.
Don’t forget the goats; there must be goats. It’s Kaus and effect.
Candy, very sorry for your and your partner’s loss. Having lost one recently myself, I’ll say take good care of A and be there while he goes through the process.
Peace to you.
Without Mexicans, no chola beauty
My sympathies, Candy. It’s always epochal to lose a parent.
Fuck off and die, asshole.
/ I apologize for this inappropriate line. Angry Liberal was angry. Won’t happen again.
I disagree. It was a totally appropriate line.
Tardy to the thread as usual these days, but I feel compelled to add these remarks:
“Peace” and “Candy” are two of my favorite words.
Tracy: Logic and facts have no effect on such hate-laced, titanium-reinforced stupidity. They make shit up and that’s what they “know” and that’s it.
The Republicans, hopefully under the leadership of someone with a little more courage than Mitch McConnel (preferably, Tom Coburn), will fillibuster any attempt by the Democrats to impose their socialist agenda.
Bring it on!
It will seal the Republican party doom for eternity.
The bailout(s) were the result of President Bush and certain Republican Congressmen,
selling outembodying their conservative principles.Edited for accuracy.
Were there actually any Scots in the First Crusade?
Well, the Knights Templar had that hideaway in Rosslyn Chapel, so maybe.
Were there actually any Scots in the First Crusade?
Well, the Knights Templar had that hideaway in Rosslyn Chapel, so maybe.
I didn’t bother to check if our trolling friend responded to me because, well, who really cares what he has to say, as it’s just a form of confidence-transference for him to get your attention, either through ignorance or hate…
But no, whilst the First Crusade would no doubt have included a few Scottish individuals, maybe even small groups of Scots, there was no “Scottish Contingent” within the First Crusade… or for that matter any Kings or nation states either. It was an ad-hoc grouping of religiously-inspired individuals from every European nation, based around charismatic Preachers and ambitious warlords who then marched them out en-masse, sometimes to absolute slaughter, but eventually to Jerusalem itself. Because you see, displaying a colossal ignorance of History, our pal seems to be unaware that it was this complete lack of the Great and the Good on the First Crusade which inspired the Poverty and Children’s movements within the later Crusades, because clearly with the First Crusade being the only ever successful one, The Lord must favor the meek and faithful and unworldly over the Kings and their riches and their national taxation who ruined the later Crusades…
Which of course, I automatically know, having read Crusade history during my degree…. But as I mentioned, he’s hoping you’ll spend hours googling up on his feigned arrogance and claimed knowledge, so he can then repeat arguments and styles he’s heard others use in the hopes of frustrating you even more.
Oh, P&G, I just figured he made up that title as if it was some Monty Python-ish gag that he thought was clever. All it needed was (Ret.) at the end, and it might have been passably cute.
Candy…late to the party, but my condolences on your loss.
Dr. Paisley – I resent your insinuation that the wonderfully talented Mickey Kaus is involved with “a number of overly extended auto-erotic asphyxiation sessions”. He does not use auto-erotic asphyxiation to help us goats. He only uses his loving mouth.
Thanks to all for your kind words. It means a lot.
Republican Health Plan = don’t get sick.
Yep, a functional national medicare plan would indeed be the GOP’s worst nightmare come true: pretty damn hard to run on “let’s go back to the bad old days” once everyone’s gotten a taste of the decent care the rest of the industrialized world has had for ages.
The current US system seems to be designed around extracting maximum amounts of money from individuals buying health-insurance, & providing minimum amounts of care … & unfortunately it’s working like a charm.
Some Canadians spend a lot of time bitching about Medicare – then they bring up the subject around Americans. Hilarity ensues.
The current US system seems to be designed around extracting maximum amounts of money from individuals buying health-insurance, & providing minimum amounts of care … & unfortunately it’s working like a charm.
PROFIT!
Pethokoukis is Lithuanian for “petroleum jelly-scented rectal effluent.”
Pethokoukis is Lithuanian for “petroleum jelly-scented rectal effluent.”
And well on its way to becoming the English term.
Pethokoukis is Lithuanian for “petroleum jelly-scented rectal effluent.”
And well on its way to becoming the English term.
GOOGLEBOMB!