The Sort-of-God That Failed
The New York Review of Books has become a good source of unintended humor, as its writers attempt to explain what went wrong with their sort-of-god. In the October 5 issue, Garry Wills tries to explain why Barack Obama adopted many of the national security policies of George W. Bush. It turns out we created a “national security state” back in the fifties and “any president” would find it virtually impossible to turn around.
Now, in the October 22 issue of the Review, Elizabeth Drew tries to explain how a messianic president, with control of both houses of Congress, can’t seem to get anything done on health care or even persuade anyone anymore with his speeches:
A White House aide told me that Obama was “very frustrated” by his inability to convince people that the stimulus program was working. … Obama is sometimes slow in arriving at an effective formulation, and he presses his aides to sharpen his message. Finding a voice that is explanatory rather than oratorical can be difficult for him. This definitely has been the case with health care.
Of course, it is easier to find an explanatory voice when one has a plan to explain.
Drew blames the usual meanies: “entrenched interests,” impolite Republicans, anti-government rallies, Internet and cable TV with “repetitious and vile attacks,” “extremely powerful and well-financed” insurance companies, a “frightened” public, elderly people who were “especially troubled,” etc.
But she comes a little closer to the truth when she notes a certain incredulity that necessarily accompanies a non-plan that promises everything:
It was counterintuitive to believe that the president’s program would expand coverage to include nearly all of the forty-five million people who don’t have it and at the same time save money. It’s even harder for people on Medicare to accept that the proposed cuts in the program would not — as administration officials insisted — affect their benefits. The pledge to achieve most of the cost reductions by eliminating “waste and abuse” — a vague but handy phrase going back at least as far as Ronald Reagan — wasn’t convincing or reassuring.
Drew recounts how Obama, after his argument about saving money did not work, changed his sales pitch to an attack on insurance companies (while cutting deals with industry to get their support), and finally settled on a third strategy: a message of “stability and security” — “words that sound as if they had poll-tested well.”
“A White House aide told me that Obama was “very frustrated” by his inability to convince people that the stimulus program was working. …”
Does he think he can hynotize the American people into believing the stimulus program is working. My goodness, he really does have a messianic complex.
First the majority of the money in the stimulus will be spent prior to the 2012 presidential campaign. I have heard only 10% of the stimulus has been spent. And, most stimulus money is allocated for pork barrel projects – not jobs.
If Obama thinks the stimulus is working then he lives in a bubble. Out in the real world where unemployment is ACTUALLY at 17% – we know the stimulus is not working.
Face it – the man is a dud. Leaving aside his far-left disconnect with reality, the man personally is not particularly competent. I see an intellectually shallow narcissist, a man unable to accept the disadvantages of his decisions like a spoiled child, a moral hypocrite, an elitist wannabee snob, a man given to thinking in slogans, a self-righteous creep.
The lack of practical experience in the mechanics of governance is now showing up to disasterous effect, he is in way over his head.
When you factor in his far-left beliefs, his ”post-Americanism” & his inability to understand how the world really works, you have a recipe for diaster.
I cannot help but to compare Obama & his supporters to the Israeli Left, now marginalized after many years of failure. Here too, we have a biased media, a disasterously left-wing academia riddled with self-haters & crackpots, ”intellectuals” who are completely out-of-touch with the beliefs of the vast majority of citizens, & the same kind of self-interested corrupt politicians who hide behind BS liberal rhetoric while profiting financially from sleezy deals & influence peddling.
As their failure became more & more apparent, impossible to cover-up, they began losing influence & the Israeli electorate moved sharply right, a process that is still in progress.
While it took us 15 years, I think that one term of Obama will accomplish the same thing in America.
Declarations of Obama’s failure are premature and pathetic. Not only has he already rolled back some of the most egregious abuses of the previous administration (torture, wiretap, etc), he has moved more aggressively and with greater success than any previous president, toward achieving his goals in health care.
By the end of Obama’s first term, we will have comprehensive health reform, a rational carbon-emissions regime, and a younger SCOTUS. Even if he accomplished nothing else, this would be enough to mark his Presidency as a major force for positive change, but there will undoubtedly be other successes in foreign relations, the right to organize, and improved oversight of Wall Street.
The only explanation for the persistent call for failure from the right is a desire to paint Obama as “not much better” than Bush, who was recognized as a failure at home and around the world. This effort will fail because Obama is much better than Bush, as he continues to prove on a daily basis. He is not perfect, but he is smart enough to learn from his mistakes – something that had been missing from the White House for a while.
Peace.
DS
Before Chairman Mao launched the “Cultural Revolution”, because he saw the old Chinese culture still alive, he wrote, “Cold eye’d I contemplate the world”. Ideology was to trump anything that stood in its way, and if more viciousness was necessary to get the obstacles out of the way, then so be it.
This is at what passes for the heart of the current occupant of the Oval Office, and expect a crack down, rather than a charm offensive. Or at the very least, keep that option open.
Now, will this be said by those on the left side of the political spectrum?
I doubt it, unless there is absolutely no way for it to be said by them, for
if it were to do so, the mask of gentility will continue to come down, but
it will be in place for the highly politicized ideological demagogues.
It’s similar to the joke where Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev were on a train. The train stops in the middle of the prairie, and Stalin blames the engineers, so they are shot. The train still isn’t moving, so Khrushchev rehabilitates the engineers. The train still isn’t moving, so Brezhnev draws down the shades and says, “Let’s pretend the train is moving”. That doesn’t work, so Gorbachev starts shouting, “okay, everyone,
up and at it, the train isn’t moving”.
So, to wrap this up, the Brezhnevian response will be the response used by the left of centre to peddle the fiction of Agent Zero being a benign leader.
There are only two kinds of Democrats. The Idolators, and the Facilitators.
The Idolators, the vast majority within the party, perceive him as as a Superman, of brilliant intellect, strategic genius, high moral character, amazing perception, incredible persuasive rhetorical talent, an expert scholar, lover of poetry inspired writer, charismatic personality, and yet a modest man of the people, handsome and cool. All this, without any evidence that would gain him employment in any well-managed private enterprise. Their’s is the faith of the true Believer, unshaken by reason or evidential proof. They refuse to consider any questioning or criticism.
The Facilitators are the inner circe, fully aware that their straightman, their figure head, possesses limited knowledge, no scholarship or creative talent, a mediocre intellect,no leadership qualities, and an insufferable ego, but a persona and oratorical style, a charisma that can brain-deaden those who fall under his spell. Like a puppeteer, they can put words in his mouth, control his movements, create the illusion tat he is truly the Superman, the messiah that will lead them to
Eurotopia.
The Facilitators are keenly aware they that have to take full advantage of the Idolators’ gullibility as quickly as possible, because once he starts to wear thin, stumbles on his lines, loses his hypnotic power and becomes simplyboring, their cover will be blown.
That ‘s what is starting to happen. The smarter of the Idolators are having the first glimmers of doubt. The Punch and Judy crowd finds the performance getting thin. The Facilitators are increasingly nervous as theirs is a one-man show. They are the ones who taught Obama that they “bring guns to a knife fight”, Chicago style. It won’t be pretty.
@David S…
“The only explanation for the persistent call for failure from the right…”
Actually, if you read any Left blogs at all, you’d know that the ‘persistent call for failure’ isn’t just coming from the right.
In fact, I’ve been pretty surprised by the commentary on Left blogs. Sometimes I’ve had to check that I was indeed reading a Left blog, and hadn’t accidentally clicked on the wrong link.
Well, gee, I’d expect to have trouble convincing people that black is white, too.
Obama, unlike Bill Clinton, is the creature of the machine that elevated him rather than the master of it. He doesn’t appreciate his figurehead status; his pre-inauguration popularity has reinforced his pre-existent narcissism. In consequence, he believes he can “make it so” for any particular policy direction or outcome.
Quite true, but “when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
The Obamunist meltdown is highly instructive. Obama’s puppet-masters have become reluctant to expose themselves, in part because of what happened to Van Jones, and what’s happening to the other kleptocrats in his administration. So Obama has to be front-and-center for every slightest matter. This has eased conservatives’ problems: Defeat the Obama mystique, and we defeat the Obamunist program.
But the Democrats can yet learn from their mistakes. Stay alert!
Hail to the Affirmative Action President. 95% of blacks voted for him because he’s black. A great number of his white voters elected him for the same reason. In the case of blacks, though obviously done out of racial pride, I would probably have done so also, were I black. This is said after much thought and not from a stand of political correctness. As for the white voters who actually supplied the numbers that placed him in the White House, their reasons , when asked, often centered in on his race. Such reasons included, “He will put racism behind us as a country”,”his election is historic, the first black President, I want to be a part of that history”. When given facts about his past associations and lack of experience, they naturally labeled the bearer of these tidings a racist. Now we have a narcicisstic, inexperienced, egomaniacal idealogue who believes that the election gave him the right to change the country rather than be it’s steward. His election will continue to prove itself to be the most monumental failure of Affirmative Action in the history of our country.
It’s easy to see by some of the comments that there are people so desperate to have the world see Obama as a saviour, that they will close themselves off to any criticisms, rather than try to figure out why others see him differently. They are the ones who will be the ones hurt the most when they finally open their eyes to see the emperor’s new clothes.
Maybe Mr. Obama should begin by swallowing his pride and seek advice from Presidents Bush and Clinton as to what governing is all about. He can then begin by standing by democratic allies, and standing up to the terrorist nations that seek nothing more than the destruction of Israel and the U.S. Those are the people who would think nothing of destroying the world to achieve their goals.
David S proves Stuart is right about the Idolators:
“a rational carbon-emissions regime” – cap and trade, “and a younger SCOTUS” – inevitable, … “but there will undoubtedly be other successes in foreign relations” – he hasn’t had his first yet, “the right to organize” – I think that came in with FDR, but he means card check, “and improved oversight of Wall Street” – more Christopher Dodd and Barney Rubble.
Stuart may be wrong about one thing, however – guys like David may never wise up and will thus spend the rest of their lives walking around saying, “We wuz robbed”.
David S. – What we will have at the end of Obama’s term is high inflation, high unemployment, a devaluation of the dollar, & double-digit interest rates. So far, Obama has accomplished absolutely nothing, not domestically & not in foreign policy. It is also quite likely that we will have a nuclear-armed Iran to deal with unless there is an Israeli military strike to at least delay their program or a high risk of a nuclear war in the Middle-East. At the very least, we will see nuclear proliferation through-out the Middle-East & increased anti-Americanism in the region as countries align themselves with Iran.
Can you give me an example of ONE foreign policy success by the Obama administration?
One of the most prominent features of Obama’s moral degeneracy is a total abandonment by his “administration” of a HUMAN RIGHTS issues and an equally total acceptance of BARBARISM as a legitimate tool of obtaining and maintaining the POWER.
No one will ever know how many thousands innocent people have been murdered, raped or enslaved by the bloodthirsty, degenerate regimes emboldened by Obama’s new appeasement and his so blatantly paraded weakness.
It is now OK to rape virgins in Iran before executing them because Obama himself stated that this very regime will be treated with “respect” no matter how barbaric its behaviour might be.
It is OK for the inhumane Burmese hunta to keep that country ellected President – Aun San Su Kyi in detention, already for twenty years, because Obama has acknowledged that Burma is in the “sfere of influence” of an equally barbaric regime – Sino-Fascist China.
He treats practically every totalitarian regime, wheter it is Castro’s Cuba, Chavez’s Venezuela, Kim Jong Il’s North Korea with the same disarming friendliness, while pointing that his greatest enemies are American Conservatives, the very same people who actually finance his insane social designs and experiments.
The only instnces Obama and his criminal, corrupt to the bone cohorts mention “human rights”, are when they give them the means of bashing America’s most loyal and steadfast ally – Israel, or when it can be used to denigrate the American men and women in uniform.
It has come to such and absurd that it is a far greater crime when an american GI gives a terrorist’s a**e a kick, or puts an underwear on his head, than when Taliban rapes and murders a woman.
Unfortunately, that tragic descent of America (and my own Aussie as well) into civilizational abyss is possible thanks to the gigantic masses of ignorant flufferboys and fluffergirls like David S.
It is a failed presidency. Only his core supporters and world dictators trust him. The rest of us? Not at all.
#8
“…[Obama] believes that the election gave him the right to change the country rather than be it’s steward.”
Well put. The word change is not positive or negative. It is neutral, like the word cheese. Some cheese stinks. He did not campaign on details like completely changing the nation’s sick care insurance. If he had, the electorate would have asked how. He did not promise to change the country into a eurosocialist state. The electorate would have asked how. He did not campaign by stating he would support and befriend leftist dictators and wannabe dictators like Zelaya against the rule of law in Hondouras. The electorate would have asked why.
The electorate majority would not have liked the detailed answers had they known them.
Obama does not yet have a failed presidency, but he is on course to one in both domestic and foreign affairs. If he is going to revive it, he needs to come down to earth soon.
This is not the end, it may not even be the beginning of the end, but it is certainly the end of the beginning.
(some version of which I believe Churchhill is supposed to have said after the Battle of Britain)
I predict that the Olympicbomba will prove to be the inflection point of the Obama presidency, much as Hurricane Katrina was the inflection point for Bush. That was immediately followed by the Miers nomination, and so I expect Obama will experience another defeat imminently that will accelerate the downward trajectory.
At least Bush had one decent term, along with courage in turning Iraq around. Obama will simply have…his election as the first black president.
Now even Obamas war is a disaster.
The South Vietnamese tried the same tactic in South Vietnam.
Pull back from the borders, rice paddies and hamlets to protect the large populations.
It will now become a siege and we will lose more men and women than America can afford.
President Bush’s generals knew the battle of Afghanistan would become a quagmire unless we fought it long distance/aircraft and drones from Iraq.
Obama will soon forget about Bin Laden in his cave and have dreams and nightmares about the wounded and more dead Americans- 8 today-
Your title and what it implies is great. However, its not yet matured, thus, lacks a certain credibility. As we know, Johnson was stuck (Vietnam) after years, Nixon was stuck (crimes) after years and Carter was stuck (economy) after years and Bush was stuck (economy, leadership) after years. Obama? he has only been in office months, his policies are yet to be implemented due to harsh opposition, therefore, there is no mud, its too early. Therefore, it can only be dried dirt, at best. But who knows, this could be a great title/article in a few years. Save it for later, you might be viewed as a clairvoyant in 2014.
Had Obama governed from the center-left at the outset of his presidency he could have been one of our greatest presidents. Such a strategy would have necessarily focused on rescuing the economy through careful, pro-growth intervention supported by moderates on both sides of the aisle. A center-right strategy would also have required a cautious, but decisive hand in foreign affairs that would keep America respected in the world. Care and caution on domestic and foreign policy would have been strongly supported by the vast majority of Americans who are center-left, moderate, or center-right and would thus have based policy on the core of the nation. I am convinced that such a strategy would have rebuilt this nation quickly and Obama would have been remembered as among our finest leaders.
Tragically, Obama chose instead to pursue a hyper-partisan approach rooted in the ravings of the far left. The policies resulting from this extremist strategy have been unsurprisingly feckless and reckless. In six short months, Obama has thus firmly alienated the moderate middle, the people who were the best hope to lead our recovery and to defend our nation. In so doing, Obama has already scotched his chance to be honored among leading American statesmen, a prize he so obviously covets.
What angers me is that Obama’s hubris and narcissism will not let him or his gang of sycophants reverse course and return to a centrist approach. On the contrary, the President seems congenitally incapable of admitting that he made a serious error in judgment about his supposed mandate for left-wing radicalism, incontrovertible proof of the man’s inherent weakness. I predict that we will not return to prosperity or safety until we see him thrown out of office. That said, I remain confident that the American people can overcome any adversity, even when we have a fool in the White House. We are a great people in spite of ourselves.
In a nutshell, “Fail to plan, plan to fail”.
All the rheteroic this president constantly spews will not negate this old saying, regardless of how great one tries to convince others he is. I guess he got confused, he still thinks he is on American Idol.
No plan, shifting plans, maybe, maybe not, me, me, mine,I,I, wrong is now right, right is now wrong, don’t wear an American flag pin, wear one, tell me what to say now…….It feels like being in a long line at the grocery checkout stand, with a misbehaving 3 year old or at least, the country is being made to live “Alice in Wonderland”. What is currently going on in our great country is too bizarre, it has to be some kind of teachable moment for America. If this is the best we have for a leader, I’m embarrassed.
I’m actually really worried about how Thief in Chief will reacte to being unpopular and ineffective. He might let out his inner Ayers and Wright and go ballistic with the reigns of power while he still has them. Speculating about the future failures of the Thief in Chief regime make me feel sick to my stomach. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Say what you will about McCain but he would have made a much better president. I bet even many leftists secretly wish he won.
I wonder if obama should just drop the chip from his shoulder and go on fox. I’ve seen an interview he did with o’reilly, and obama’s clearly more than a match for him. Personally I believe that obama CAN explain well – he does actually know his stuff. He just isn’t choosing the most effective channels for making his pitch.
As for why his agenda is “stuck in the mud”, I just want to remind you that until september, baby bush essentially didn’t have an agenda at all. Apart from a few weaselly procedural changes (stacking the justice department, refusing to declassify material when it was due – things like that), he’d essentially done nothing until (by comparison) about a month ago. Obama is actually trying to effect important changes. The “stuck in the mud” aspect is natural political resistance to big changes.
Incompetence will normally lead to failure. Incompetence in highly competitive spheres combined with dire consequences? Epic failure.
Nate, appreciate your fantasy in regards to ‘if Obama would’a governed from center-left or center-right’.
BTW the same pipe dream that many had for Clinton. I grant that Clinton’s moderate image had some basis in reality, he being a Gov and all….but why would anyone with a brain think that Obama, a lefty Leftist from Commieland with no apparent history of any centered politics would govern other than from the Far Left? Obama has effectively committed Political Suicide and the questions are he’s very likelt to take the Democrat Party down with him but will he also take the whole country down before we can get rid of him???
Obama, whose high self-esteem is well known among close observers, had previously assumed that a “following,” a “movement,” would be there without his having to do much to stimulate it.
Oh crap! Don’t tell me he does not understand community organizing either???
Psst, his high self-esteem is well known to the rest of us as well.
Guys, Obama is not a failure! Do you not realize it is much better to be the laughing stock of the world, than to have our enemies hate us!
When I first heard of Michael Savage’s proclamation that “liberalism is a mental disorder,” I thought that he was being hyperbolic. I thought he was overstating his case to make a point.
More and more, I see that far from being hyperbole, the statement “liberalism is a mental disorder” is dead-on accurate. Today’s crop of liberals are almost completely divorced from reality.
Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. The left keeps trying more and more of the same ideas that have always failed in the past. It is like they think they just didn’t wish hard enough before. They also keep trying to force ideas on the American public that they have rejected time and time again. And they always reject the ideas that have always worked.
The left in this country operates in a fantasy land of wishes and dreams protected by a fact-proof sheild where they are unwilling – perhaps unable – to see reality when it stares them in the face.
Nice title, by the way. I’m old enough to have read “The God That Failed” back around 1970, and it did much to inoculate me against the claims of moral equivalency between the US and the USSR, not to mention the siren songs of domestic socialism. It will be interesting to see if 10 or 20 years hence, some key advocates in the Liberal/Progressive wing of American politics will in effect say, “What were we thinking?” ..bruce..
“17. Poor Citizen:
. Obama? he has only been in office months, his policies are yet to be implemented due to harsh opposition,……”
Yeah, them democrats are a b!tch huh. LOL, obama is such epic fail he cannot even get a Congress the democrat party totally controls to do his bidding. ….. Priceless.
#1: “Does he think he can hynotize the American people…” Yes. And he has.
Excellent article, Rick. Next one should be about the result of failure. Hayek and others, as well as history (Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Fidel…), say that failure of the Left ideologies always results in iron-fisted totalitarianism, almost never in a take-back by the right or center.
Go Galt in a bomb shelter.
All this, without any evidence that would gain him employment in any well-managed private enterprise.
If you look at where he went to work (at some no-name financial newsletter company), those place typically are at the bottom tier of employers for a graduate of an Ivy League school. That he had to settle for that job is evidence that he just didn’t stack up to his peers, when it came to actual marketable skills.
It’s a failed presidency because a majority of the people are finally seeing through the lies he and his advisors keep telling.
“The electorate majority would not have liked the detailed answers had they known them.”
I think you overestimate the electorate majority. Those of us paying attention knew last September that Obama would radically change health care. We also knew that he would meet with corrupt dictators without precondition. We also knew that he would try to pass some kind of environmental policy that would drive up costs for all Americans. Unfortunately, our liberal-biased media refused to ask Obama for specifics. They were too busy trying to interview Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend. And our electorate majority didn’t demand specifics before they stepped into the voting booth to press the button for Obama. They would rather watch American Idol than a Presidential Debate. They think watching a few political commercials and a skit on Saturday Night Live is sufficient info to vote for a president.
Even today, with a 10% unemployment rate, too many Americans are too lazy to research WHY we are in this mess so that they can vote better next time. Given the Internet, it is extremely easy to go beyond the 30-second sound bites that the liberal MSM likes to play and learn what is really going on. But that would take time away from the latest stupid reality show on TV.
Stuart may be wrong about one thing, however – guys like David may never wise up and will thus spend the rest of their lives walking around saying, “We wuz robbed”.
I have to think that David S is, or wants to be, drawing his income stream from the kind of Left-liberalism Obama wants to solidify as the economic “base” of the country. No one in David S’ is going to act against his own economic interests when he has no other marketable skills. Can you imagine an ideologue like David S working in a corporate environment? His co-workers would want to finish the monthly reports and he’d be yammering about cap-and-trade or how waterboarding is torture.
Nate (#18),
Well said.
But I’m pretty sure there was never a chance that Obama would come down somewhere near the middle of our political spectrum.
Jamie Irons
As his domestic & international failures mount, President Obama’s anger will become more visible as his carefully constructed masque shatters; therefore, I believe Obama will also emotionally shut down given he will not talk to the Republicans at all given he is a rigid ideologue demagogue. He will use slash & burn tactics which will not only take the Democrats with him, but our country as well. The man is seriously going to crack-up & lose his mind given his malignant narcissism & his messiah complex. The man is a fool & a liar. The people already do not trust him anymore given he has revealed his Communist spots.
“Liberals seek to explain why Obama’s agenda is stuck in the mud.”
Wrong title, this works better:
Conservatives seek to explain why Obama’s agenda is stuck in the mud.
I wonder where we would be if Bush/Cheney were in power today? Chinese bankers would be living in the White House, Tea Parties would not happen, same health care, no auto industry, foreclosures rising, new homeless cities, etc . . .
Drew blames the usual meanies: “entrenched interests,” impolite Republicans, … Internet and cable TV with “repetitious and vile attacks,” “extremely powerful and well-financed” … “frightened” … who were “especially troubled,” etc
For a second there I though I was reading a post on the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin.
Nate (#18) expressed much of my feelings too.
I voted against Obama, fearing he do the sort of things he has in fact done. Nevertheless, I do not rejoice to see any American President fail. It emboldens our enemies. I have a son serving in the military, and I do not want his life or any of those with whom he serves recklessly endangered because a distracted, compass-less President conducts a confused, unrealistic foreign policy. Nor do I want to see any of my posterity saddled with astronomical debt due to Wall Street/mega-bank bailouts.
I had hoped last month’s tea party demonstration would pull the President back to the middle, just as the midterm election of ’94 helped moderate Bill Clinton’s agenda. But Obama seems too young and cocksure to listen to opposing voices. I don’t expect a course correction unless the Democrats are severely punished in next year’s elections.
I thank God for the separation of powers specified by the Constitution that limits the power of any President. We are a divided country; maybe we would be better served by a divided government with a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. I don’t necessarily trust Republicans, but our first priority needs to be restoring some checks and balance in Washington.
16. Old Vet: I recently heard an interview with Ahmed Rashid, on “Fresh Air” on NPR. He’s a Pakistani journalist who wrote a best selling book, “Taliban,” and has been writing about that area of the world for decades. He was very critical of the U.S. war in Iraq, but he wants us to put more troops into Afganistan and do it soon. The only way to secure information and loyalty from the Afgans is by having boots on the ground. He does not agree with Joe Biden’s notion of bombing from afar in order to reduce casualties. We will not secure help from the people with that strategy. Obama needs to make a decision soon because the Taliban are gaining strength.
That needs to be amended for Obama times of Hope and Change In Chains:
“When all you have is a hammer and a sickle, what you can’t nail you cut down”.
Read “nail” as you choose
21. Matthew: I agree that Obama is trying to effect important changes, but are they the changes we want? Do you want government bureaucrats dictating your health care?
“A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson
I prefer the American tradition of self-reliance and control over one’s own life. Unless Obama does an abrupt about-face and begins to see the virtue in our traditions, I hope he remains “stuck in the mud” (along with cohorts Pelosi and Reid).
I heartily enjoy the comments here. It is very entertaining to see people arguing that Obama is unpopular, or that his agenda is not supported by most Americans.
Health care reform that includes a public option is precisely what the people want – it is what doctors want, it is what mothers and fathers want, and it is what voters want. The opposition to comprehensive health care reform is solely from the far right and corporate interests. It will pass, and it will be a victory for Obama. Americans prefer a Democratic bill with a public option – the GOP clearly is not relevant to this debate.
There is not a single example cited here of a failure on the part of Obama. Just partisan belly-aching. Consider the situation that Obama inherited, and it is pretty clear that he has been superb so far, and is making progress. Attacking him on the economy is absolute spin – he took over a mess from Bush, and the progress since he took office has been steady. Given the magnitude of the underlying problems, our economy is in better shape than expected.
I’d gladly reconsider my position, but not without actual evidence and argument on the topic at hand. I find it telling that my critics revert to personal attacks, or making judgements based on woefully incomplete evidence – just more signs that their thesis is hollow.
Peace.
DS
“Guys, Obama is not a failure! Do you not realize it is much better to be the laughing stock of the world, than to have our enemies hate us!”
Well, Fantom: is it possible to have both at once? Our President says, “Yes We Can!”
@7 Francis W. Porretto
I enjoy your comments. To put quotes in italics use html. Put an i between at the beginning of the quote and /i between at the end of the quote.
I hope this works.)
Poor Obama can’t get his agenda passed because of fierce opposition. If only the media was in the tank for him and if only his party controlled both house of Congress, perhaps he could get his agenda passed.
Why is Barack Hussein Obama seemingly unable to get anything done? Although the liberal Democrats control the executive and legislative branches, fortuitously there are a few men and woman of conscience who won’t allow the total destruction of this country. Another reason is that the American people are finally waking up from their slumber and are informing their legislators of their dissatisfaction.
If you think that the American public will tolerate some of these rediculous Obama policies, think again. Here’s a latest example of the insanity surrounding the health care legislation:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/04/the-doctor-will-see-you/
Obama is a failure already because he simply isn’t doing his job- he doesn’t know HOW to govern! When is he governing? All he does is put on make-up and get in front of a tv camera day after day after day after day after day (….+ over 2 years now). How can anyone rational, except Hollywood types who do the same thing as Obama, be surprised or even disappointed?
David S,
“rolled back abuses of previous admin… torture, wiretap”
plEEEze.. the last time waterboarding took place was SIX YEARS AGO, it was done on only THREE people, and it was banned well BEFORE Bush left office.
Nothing else that was done was REMOTELY near to torture, and if you’re talking about Abu Ghraib those three people are in JAIL now, as they should be, not because they ‘tortured’ anyone but because they egregiously violated military orders.
As for wiretapping, which I believe is actually ‘interception of foreign conversations routed through or directed to America for the purpose of discovering terrorist plots’, it is not only still going on but Obama has recently given instructions to continue it. Bush was right.
Whatever Obama has ‘rolled back’, it’s symbolic only.. the serious stuff he continues, just as Bush did, because it’s right and it works. Or because he doesn’t want the responsibility of the abject failure that would ensue if he REALLY ‘rolled back’ effective practices.
Not only has he already rolled back some of the most egregious abuses of the previous administration (torture, wiretap, etc), he has moved more aggressively and with greater success than any previous president, toward achieving his goals in health care.
That’s freaking hilarious! Do you actually believe what you typed there David? If so, seek professional help.
The opposition to comprehensive health care reform is solely from the far right and corporate interests.
Yes, those dastardly “corporate interests” who’ve given the “far right” millions to spread their anti-comprehensive health care reform message. Oh, wait, they gave that money to Obama to support comprehensive health care reform.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/60879-does-obama-have-a-secret-deal-with-insurance-companies
YOU LIVE IN A $&*^-ING FANTASY LAND.
The opposition to this is coming from people who don’t want it, once they hear the details. You cite surveys that basically ask people, “If you could get free healthcare paid for by ‘the rich’, would you like that?” That a majority of people would is no big shakes, dumb*ss. The devil is in the details.
It didn’t work. Put the i and /1 between left and right chevrons (arrows).
David,
Enjoying yourself? You are definitely entertaining.
The clothes have no emperor!!
#42 David S. wrote: “Health care reform that includes a public option is precisely what the people want – it is what doctors want, it is what mothers and fathers want, and it is what voters want….Consider the situation that Obama inherited, and it is pretty clear that he has been superb so far, and is making progress.”
David, are you delusional or taking a few early-morning hits on a crack pipe? Independents elected Obama and they deserted him in droves this past summer when it became obvious Obama (1) did NOT have a health care plan in mind and (2) they could finally see the moral degeneracy associated with Obama’s bailout. So if we exclude the right side of the political aisle and the majority of Independents, you are left with liberals and Leftists — NOT “the people.” Obama lives in the same fantasyland as you, but most Americans do not. Furthermore, it’s time to stop blaming Bush for what Obama “inherited” if The One “has been superb so far.” Please, get some help. There are numerous 12-Step programs that can be tailored to your specific “addiction.”
DavidS – You seem really smart. Tell us more about Obama. These typical rubes here need some wisdom schoolin’ from a really smart wisdom person.
Love.
MS
I’ actually like to know, short of making the left in this country and the hate -america crowd internationally happy…what exactly has Obama accomplished?
Stimulus? Um, not so much.
Iraq? Well, Bush won that.
Afghanistan? No.
Iran? LOL
Russia, well he did clean Putin’s boots with his tongue….
Health Care? Actually the most compelling rebutting to the idea that Obama will be seen as any more successful than Bush, so let’s discuss it.
A.)The majority actually has better health care than that already.
B.)No one who can read and write thinks that that would “save money”
No, it looks like just another leftist wet dream of diminishing America’s power and prosperity by America Haters.
42. David S:
…I’d gladly reconsider my position, but not without actual evidence and argument on the topic at hand…
David, you present no evidence, and make no argument. You simply make statements that are belied both by actual evidence and by even superficial application of common sense.
33. venividivici: has it right. I don’t even think you qualify as a useful idiot because you’d never be able to convert another person to your beliefs. Just spout endlessly that black is white and the sun rises in the west. You remind me of the woman about a year ago who with a glowing smile and in all sincerity celebrated her belief that Obama would pay her mortgage. That is the world view of the people who made the difference in putting him in the oval office. Not the hard core progressive’s worldview. Not even at the useful idiot level. But the world view of the endlessly replenished ranks of the ‘entitled’ tools like yourself that the useful idiots use in turn.
Pick carefully your battles – the Health care reform is a pretty important issue, yet making out of it the essential point of then presidential policies activity (at the beginning of the term), when we have TWO wars going on, when a severe recession might morph anytime in a depression, when the unemployment is reaching :The Grapes Of Wrath” dimenssions, when we’re surrounded by other urgent challenges is a proof of great managerial incompetence.
In February, all polls showed that the health care issue is dwarfed in the citizenry’s mind by other issues -
… and since then, the situation hasn’t changed, yet energies go here and congress and the executive are stuck in this swamp – add to this the burning necessity of two long vacations and a trip to Danemark and we’ve got the picture of a remarkably out of sync presidency.
And this is just Act I -
David S- your rebuttal attempt to the criticisms against Obama here is inadequate.
First, there are no personal attacks here against Obama. A conclusion that he is a narcissist, with an enormous ego and inability to listen to others is an opinion,not an ad hominem. It is based on an objective analysis of his constant self-praise, self-references,and his insistence that with His Arrival, things go from bad to good. Just because He’s Arrived.
Second, you are making the false argument that ‘people want the public option’. This is totally unsubstantiated by the statistical data (see Rasmussen). Your further attempt to break down this population into ‘doctors, mothers and fathers’ etc is an ad populum’ fallacy.
Your assertion that opposition to Obama’s Health Care plan is only from the ‘far right’ and ‘corporate interests’ is false; statistics show the opposite. The opposition is from the left, centre and right; that is, it has nothing to do with political filiation but with empirical and reasoned analysis of the plan.
Your assertions that the policy will pass, etc..are just that: assertions.
All executives inherit the past, including its achievements and failures. That includes the achievements of Bush – democracy in Iraq, a safe America etc. To continue the Obamic Myth, with his egoistic messianic declarations that His Arrival sets up a new America, with the ‘old America’ viewed as ‘bad’ is Obama’s narcissism speaking. Not the truth.
Obama’s ‘stimulus’ is a failure, a pork-filled explosion of deficit. Do you consider increasing the deficit in this manner a sign of success? Unemployment, despite Obama’s insistence that it will instantly fall, has surged.
No, the economy is not in ‘better shape than expected’. Expected by whom? With what evidence? You are engaging in ‘Obama-talk’, which is rhetoric filled with vague, ambiguous and empirically empty statements.
With regard to foreign policy, Obama is equally disastrous. Europe has turned its back on his requests for help in Afghanistan, his insults to old western allies, his kowtowing to dictators, his support for the anti-constitutional agenda of Zelaya, his indifference to the pro-democratic desires of the Iranian people, his words-only puffery to Iran, allowing it to obtain nuclear arms..his amoral equivalence of democracies with dictatorships …disastrous.
Essentially, Obama is an egotistical narcissist, intellectually shallow, ignorant of history, economics and living entirely in a ‘virtual realty cocooon’ where he thinks that His Presence and Rhetoric are enough to control and effect things.
I suggest that you supply the evidence for your assertions of Obama’s ‘superb success’.
This site seems to be for right wing nut jobs to blow each other… well enjoy it you goose stepping idiots.
36. vivo.
“I wonder where we would be if Bush/Cheney were in power today?”
Do you sill blame past lovers who jilted you for the problems you have today?
Well, it is Sunday. But at least we have David S’ comments to take the place of the comic page(s) in the major newspapers as they march relentlessly toward extinction. That is the joy of humor and ridicule–as one vehicle disappears, another arises to take its place. David, I think, may be kind of like Beetle Bailey–a weekly, sometimes daily, offering of comical ineptitude.
60
Knowing that you don’t like the site makes me enjoy it even more. Your dislike is like a yummy chocolate cake to me. Mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm.
Oh, and GFY.
lol, An Obama fluffer, haha that ‘s a good one, about as accurate a description as I have ever heard…..
LOL @ 53. enemyofthestate! (Not only funny, but nail-on-head)
Anyone else notice the Obama apologist’s posts are getting shorter and shorter and shorter? It really must be hard to come up with ways to defend the Obamination now that unemployment is up to 9.8% and the wars are going so badly.
I find the trolls Obama defense entertaining. Keep ‘em coming! We could use a good laugh until we get this administration either voted out or jailed (whichever comes first).
Who put the in messiah?
According to the Kool Aid Kiddie Krowd, it is those dastardly right wingers and those …you know…”corporate guys”, who ALWAYS “steal” our money.
And you can’t have a good Hollywood celluloid polemic without blaming the military and our men in uniform, for “abuses and excesses” that CAUSE the otherwise gentle, doe-eyed lambs of the mideast to strap on explosives and kill innocent civilians.
Of course, there would be no way to fill up the one hour Humanities class at Prissy Proletariat U…without the 55 minutes of “blame Bushhitler” screechings and five minutes of pushing Michael Moore’s latest bag of lies and distortions.
Reading the crap that the lemmings and parrots toss out on their “trolling for alibis” visits here will follow the playbook each and every time. In fact, I suggest we simply set aside in red the prefabricated, premasticated pap that we all know will arrive…and save them the trouble of going to Wiki to look up the big words and definitions.
In the meantime, we are going to hit double digit unemployment on the phony numbers and go over 20% on the REAL unemployment numbers. Book it.
We have a national debt that the phony numbers suggest is $13 trillion dollars and will reach over $20 trillion before the next presidential election.
The “stimulus” isn’t stimulating, the “right” war isn’t being prosecuted, the number of bank failings will sail over 100 for the year, the FRENCH think we are weak supplicants …the FRENCH…and our voting process is filled with such rampant cheating…we need someone to come in from South America to help us assure the public that the system isn’t rigged. (Jimmy Carter need not apply, nobody believes his sham act any longer, who isn’t already a parrot or lemming)
The commercial lending avalanche has not yet begun down the slope, we are heading into the worst of it, not coming out of it.
The entrenched media is failing the American people dismally, they have left their posts and have sold their black souls.
They joined as the third leg of the three-legged stool of the Prissy Proletariat…and they, along with Hollywood (led by imbeciles like Jaenene Uglyafolo and Michael Please No Moore), and tenured traitors and seditionists in academia…to create EVERY angle for worsening race relations, create class distrust, and attack this land of ours.
Leftism is the disease. Truth is the cure. And the fellow traveling trolls are more than the useful idiots, they are the fuel for the disgrace we have allowed to soil us.
And the band plays on.
First sentence should read, who put the “mess” in Messiah
In terms of him coming down to earth soon — good luck with that. All the President knows how to do is campaign. Governing — not so much. It was apparent from the Obamas’ speeches to the IOC how self absorbed they are. He thinks his “narrative” is so magical should be able to carry him beyond all obstacles and even common sense. The IOC brought him back down to earth quickly on that one.
His sycophants (of which he still has many) both in the media and in the form of advisers and supporters will still enable and make excuses for him. There is no way he will take responsibility for the failed message, or why this is happening. That would run counter to the NPD from which he suffers. To admit this, his world would come crashing down and he would need to plant his feet behind the desk, hit the books to figure out what is going on and what he wants his policies to be. Congress has complained he has not given them direction. Uhh, that is leadership. That’s what he’s supposed to be there for.
Guess America shouldn’t have elected American Idol after all.
Re 60/duhhhhhhbya: [...] This site seems to be for right wing nut jobs to blow each other… well enjoy it you goose stepping idiots. [...]
Goose stepping idiots quacking:
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Hopen’n change! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Hope’n change!
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Hope’n change! We’re the one we’ve been waiting for!”
Anyone else notice the Obama apologist’s posts are getting shorter and shorter and shorter?
Well, except for David S., who keeps digging a hole so deep I expect he’ll soon hit the earth’s molten core.
But this is the same guy who defends Polanski because – get this – he believes in “the rule of law.”
Imagine seeing the world and drawing conclusions 180 degrees opposed to reality and common sense. That’s our David S! The only reason I can think of (strike up ominous bass chords): One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,…,
who put the “mess” in Messiah
Ok, cfbleachers, that’s too good not to steal! I will give due credit.
I apologize for posting again the same points that all our pundits want to ignore:
you can say that Obama failed only if you understand what a radical-marxist’s goals are
the goal of the radicals is to weaken America, because America has been the bastion of Freedom that has caused ALL the totalitarians dreams of the last 100 years to fail
Obama has not made any mistake in weakening America, he is succeeding pretty well: one example for all:
in this moment, while we are chatting peacefully, our Warriors in Afghanistan are under attack and the additional troops that have been requested have not been sent.
The economy is suffering greatly under the weight of the terrifying debt, worse debt will be soon created by worse laws ( health “care” and cap and trade), all the possible thugs in the world have been appeased…
All this is not a failure, it is the success of a subversive operation pushed from abroad (Soros and C.)
Thank you for the opportunity to comment
PS And I read now in Atlas’s blog that we are losing control of the Internet, Icann will be under INTERNATIONL(ist !!!) control
In the last line:
INTERNATIONAL(IST)
70. misanthropicus:
Shame on you kicking a teabagger in the chin. You just made him(60) neuter his ACORN Rep.
Rudyard Kipling understood this dynamic. In “The Man Who Would Be King,” his British soldier is unwittingly mistaken for a God-descendant of Alexander the Great because of the Freemason token on a chain around his neck. He carefully cultivates the misimpression to become king of an Afghan tribe. Only when he forgets he is a mortal man and forces a local beauty to marry him is he undone: she scratches him, and his bleeding reveals to the tribe that he is a mortal after all.
check out 43rdsfan@zazzle.com thank you
@59. ETAB:
you are making the false argument that ‘people want the public option’. This is totally unsubstantiated by the statistical data (see Rasmussen).
Is Rasmussen your only source for polling data? Because if it is, you may want to broaden your sample.
Polling by NPR indicates that a large majority of Doctors support a public option (73%)
Polling by CBS/NYT indicates that a large majority of Americans support a public option as well (65%)
In fact, the support for a public option has remained robust throughout the summer, despite a withering media blitz from the GOP and health insurance interests.
Your assertion that opposition to Obama’s Health Care plan is only from the ‘far right’ and ‘corporate interests’ is false; statistics show the opposite. The opposition is from the left, centre and right; that is, it has nothing to do with political filiation but with empirical and reasoned analysis of the plan.
The only opposition I see from the left is people pushing for single payer. I understand their position, but characterizing them as opposition is disingenuous. Most will support a public option in lieu of a single payer system (for now).
Your assertions that the policy will pass, etc..are just that: assertions.
Yes. And you are welcome to deride me for them if health care reform fails to pass.
All executives inherit the past, including its achievements and failures. That includes the achievements of Bush – democracy in Iraq, a safe America etc. To continue the Obamic Myth, with his egoistic messianic declarations that His Arrival sets up a new America, with the ‘old America’ viewed as ‘bad’ is Obama’s narcissism speaking. Not the truth.
Obama inherits the most colossal failures in eight decades. Invading Iraq at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars is not an “achievement” that one would normally tout – especially given the lies and propaganda used to sell the war. The “safe America” you mention happens to be a place where tens of thousands die for lack of health insurance, and thousands died in a terror attack that Bush failed to take any meaningful action to avert.
Obama’s ’stimulus’ is a failure, a pork-filled explosion of deficit. Do you consider increasing the deficit in this manner a sign of success? Unemployment, despite Obama’s insistence that it will instantly fall, has surged.
Just an assertion on your part. From where I stand, Obama’s stimulus appears to be a qualified success, an example of a successful government intervention in an economy that would otherwise have continued in a downward spiral. Deficit spending by government is the proper response to a failing private economy. Layoffs would likely have continued to worsen without the stimulus – the claim of a million jobs saved or created is not hyperbole, it represents real people who are working today because of the bill Obama signed.
No, the economy is not in ‘better shape than expected’. Expected by whom?
The economy is better off with the stimulus according to the CBO, or any other non partisan source.
With regard to foreign policy, Obama is equally disastrous.
That is to say, we are much better off than we would be without him. Obama has already shown savvy in dealing with the Russians and the Iranians, and continues to show strength in coping with Israel as well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were left to fester for far too long, but there is clear evidence that Obama is committed to closing this chapter in American adventurism. He has already begun the difficult and delicate process of rebuilding our international reputation in preparation for further initiatives on AGW and nuclear weaponry.
Even in his short tenure, Obama has already done a lot, but he is just getting started. How one could declare him a failure before he has even hit his stride I cannot fathom. What you have seen so far is just the very beginning.
Peace.
DS
David WL — you’re almost exactly right about the Churchill quote. He said it just after the Battle of Egypt, in November 1942, and the exact statement goes like this: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The main difference between your version and Churchill’s is that he used the provisional “perhaps” while you used the absolute “certainly.” I prefer your version, because I think you’re right.
I see no way Obama can recover from his blunders, for the simple reason that the blunders aren’t ordinary goofs; they’re closely related to character flaws – and nobody Obama’s age can or will do very much about changing character flaws.
His chief flaw, I believe, is his thin-skinned inability to absorb, to internalize, criticism. He is, I fear, a man who will not learn — and, the vicissitudes of life in the Oval Office being what they are, such a man can only go down, not up.
So I very much agree with you: we are at the end of the beginning. What we can expect from here on out is a series of bungles and stumbles. We can only pray that none of them (like, say, the exploding of an Iranian nuke) is a disaster.
Polling by CBS/NYT indicates that a large majority of Americans support a public option as well (65%)
What’s ironic is that the other link you supplied, to the NPR survey, quoted the head of the AMA as saying “‘Public option’ means something different to everyone”. He’s right. The NYT poll defines it as “Medicare for people under 65″. Well, shoot, since Medicare pays out more in benefits than it took in in taxes to just about everyone who uses it no f-ing wonder people like the idea. However, and this is the crucial point, Medicare is going bankrupt and will bankrupt the entire country if it isn’t stopped.
All this question really tells me the answer to is “What percentage of adults don’t understand the financial condition of the Medicare trust fund?”
Man, you people are fools.
What you have seen so far is just the very beginning.
Great. I’m just about ready to short the stock market, so anything Obama does to make it fall will be just perfect for me. If I have to live in a country with 52% idiots, I might as well make some money off their idiocy.
78. David S:
‘Is Rasmussen your only source for polling data? Because if it is, you may want to broaden your sample.
Polling by NPR indicates that a large majority of Doctors support a public option (73%)
Polling by CBS/NYT indicates that a large majority of Americans support a public option as well (65%)’
Rasmussen’s polls are substantiated and normally poll likely voters as a sample. Your NPR ‘poll’ is anything but. It is based on survey questionnaires sent out to physicians with no disclosure on what physicians received the surtvey nor who many responded. It does not list the series of questions, how many physicians who received the mailing responded, nor make any attempt to substantiate it’s results statistically. The most NPR can say, and that is based on their interpretation of data they do not share, is that a certain percentage of respondents – not poled doctors nor physicians in whole or in part but just the respondents – to a survey fall into a group NPR defines as for the public option.
You look like an idiot claiming that two doctors sending out survey questionnaires are in a class with Rasmussen or any other independent polling organization.
Your NYT poll menas nothing in the context in which you present it either. They polled 1,042 adults by telephone from Saturday through Wednesday. Once again, there is no mention of how many calls were made to get to the 1042 number. They claim a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, which is only valid for whatever segment they polled – likely voters, registered voters, or just breathing people. On top of that, the article does not even support your contention unless one cherry picks a couple of sentences that aren’t even in line with the meager data presented.
Again, you look like an idiot claiming that an MSM telephone poll is in a class with Rasmussen or any other independent polling organization.
I mentioned common sense to you earlier and your lack thereof. If the public option had anywhere close to the support you claim, it would still be on the table and not rejected by any but the most left fringe of legislators. Because unlike yourself, the rest understand what polls mean, who runs the ones that give real results, and base their futures – reelection – on real data.
‘From where I stand, Obama’s stimulus appears to be a qualified success,…’
The spin you put in this whole paragraph cannot be proven. One can say that things have gotten worse since his stimulus plan was passed. One cannot say that Obama’s stimulus policies kept things from getting even worse.
‘The economy is better off with the stimulus according to the CBO, or any other non partisan source.’
Again, nonsense. Can’t be proven. Actually, a lie. Since the CBO makes no such simplistic claim anyway.
‘”With regard to foreign policy, Obama is equally disastrous.”
That is to say, we are much better off than we would be without him.’
Current events make this statement ludicrous on it’s face, but even so, again it’s just your unsubstantiated opinion and one that cannot be proven.
‘Even in his short tenure, Obama has already done a lot, but he is just getting started. How one could declare him a failure…’
Because none of his initiatives after 8 months have improved the problems that were targeted. (I assume you’ll claim they would have been worse etc etc and save you the typing time). So if what he has done up to now has failed to improve the targeted problem, that makes him at 8 months into his tenure a failure. Will that change? It is my opinion it won’t under his tenure. It’s is yours that it will. Both just opinions to be sure. But I am extrapolating the future based on known data and rather obvious trends. You are extrapolating the future based on hoping the trend will change.
In closing, all your assertions seem to be based on a belief that things would be worse without Obama’s leadership. Not claiming they are good. But claiming they would be worse. I doubt you are capable of or have an open enough mind to see the desperation in presenting your assertions in those terms and the very low expectations you have for Obama at this point. Plus, all your assertions were posited as a counterpoint to what you claimed was a lack of evidence. While it’s good that you admit they are assertions and nothing more, next time don’t play the fool and claim a factual basis for them over what is contained in comments from people whose understanding and interpretation of current events is magnitudes more logical and supportable than the talking points given to the tools like yourself.
By the way, whatever minuscule respect I had for you for sticking to your guns in this forum no matter how badly and consistently you were savagely pwned disappeared when you defended Polanski. It exposed you as just a knee jerk reflexive defender of anything presented as ‘progressive’ and a despicable dirtbag.
And as a dirtbag.
Cut off by mistake. Last sentence should be:
And as a dirtbag on the same level as the garbage so obsessed with teabagging that has infested this forum off and on.
The Latest From the Obama-Aide Drinker
That is to say, we are much better off than we would be without him. Obama has already shown savvy in dealing with the Russians and the Iranians, and continues to show strength in coping with Israel as well.
Yes, he’s savvying Iran right into nuclear weapons. And the bear hasn’t growled this loudly since 1989.
But here’s the tell on you, David S. According to you Obama,continues to show strength in coping with Israel .
Yup, coping with our closest ally in the middle east requires strength. For Obama, I’m sure it does.
Now GFY, you passive aggressive idiot.
His chief flaw, I believe, is his thin-skinned inability to absorb, to internalize, criticism. He is, I fear, a man who will not learn — and, the vicissitudes of life in the Oval Office being what they are, such a man can only go down, not up.
Bingo. Clinton started on on the left and swung to the center after Hillary care went down in flames and the GOP swept Congress in ’94. Since Clinton’s core moral belief was that Clinton should hold power, he was able to be flexible. (And, as a past governor of a Southern state, Clinton had experience in compromising – having to compromise – with people more conservative than him.)
Obama isn’t flexible. He has never had to be in the past. He’s an ideologue and a product of hothouse academia and Chicago Dem corruption. My guess is that, even after the Dems get a well-deserved kick in the teeth in 2010, he’ll double down on his leftism. And he’ll walk out of the WH for the last time in Jan. 2013, wondering what the hell happened to Hope and Change.
Well, David S, since I’m very aware of the glaring frailty of surveys and polls, then I rely on the best polling firms – and that’s most certainly not an MSM station but a professional firm, Rasmussen, which knows how to avoid weighted questions, bias in questions, words and sample population, etc. I’ll stick to their polls, for their reliability and validity. And they show, clearly, that the majority reject the Obama public option..and that support for Obama’s plan has steadily dropped during the summer. At the moment, 56% reject it. Just 41% support Obama’s plan.
I caution you about something called ‘Confirmation Bias’ which is a syndrome where the individual makes his decision FIRST, and then, cherry picks ‘data’ to support it.
Actully, opposition from the left includes those who are concerned about the cost – not just a desire for a ‘single payer’ system. They don’t believe that the ‘reduction of waste and inefficiency’ will cover the cost. Did you know that in countries with public health care, the cost is at least 15,000 per person, per year, in taxation?
And, the numbers, left right and centre, who oppose Obama’s ‘plan’ includes those who are concerned about losing their private insurance (Rasmussen puts this at 63%).
Just 51% of Democrats support the public option; the remaining 49% of Democrats don’t. That’s a statistical equivalence. Not a majority.
Your assertion of ‘the most colossal failures in 8 decades’ remains your isolate assertion. You provide, it should be noted, absolutely no argument to support it. Try again.
I happen to consider that the Iraq war, which removed a dictator, and enabled the Iraqi people to develop a constitutional democracy, was one of the most important constructive actions of the last decade. And I can give you a long argument based on a data-based analysis of the difference between a tribal and a civic governance, as to why I came to this conclusion.
As for your ‘tens of thousands die for lack of health insurance’, I think you’ll have to provide some evidence. In other countries, including those with ‘universal health care’ many die for lack of health care. Now, concluding that people die for lack of health care, one has to ask: is it because they have no insurance? As I’m sure you know, or ought to know, the number of people in the US without health insurance is NOT made up primarily of those who are poor. The infamous number, a blatant lie, told repeatedly by your Obama, of 46 million, is made up of about 10 million aliens, 17.6 million who can afford insurance but choose not to, aou 14 M covered by Medicaid plus those who are between policies…and the actual poor, is about 5 million.
You state that Bush didn’t do any ‘meaningful action’ to avert 9/11. Please clarify for me what he ought to have done.
No, repeating your assertion that Obama’s ‘stimulus’ is a qualified success’ is just..wel, it’s repetition. How about some FACTS? Tell me what is economically better. Jobs? New industries? Tell me the facts. Don’t just repeat the empty rhetoric. And no, my statement that unemployment has surged is not an assertion; it’s a fact. Remember Obama’s promise that his ‘stimulus’ would create 3-4 million jobs – with 90% in the private sector? The private sector has shed almost 7 million jobs. H said unemployment wouldn’t go above 8%. It’s almost 10% now.
Would you provide some proof that deficit spending by the govt, with such spending tripling the national debt, is the proper response?
The CBO said that Obama’s plan would actually SHRINK the economy and said that the economy would begin to recover on its own, as a market economy, without Obama’s stimulus and that Obama’s stimulus, over the long haul, would actually harm the economy. (see the CBO report and also, the Washington Times analysis).
You must be joking. What is ‘savvy’ about Obama’s dealing with Russia and Iran? Please inform us.
You possibly forget, or choose to ignore, the reason for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. As I said, I strongly supported the Iraq War, for its introduction of a democratic system into a tribal area..and tribalism is the cause of Islamic fascism.. And remember, that Obama has supported the Afghan War, while he was against the Iraq War. So, could you explain why he is now turning against Afghanistan?
Oh, and please explain why you call these wars ‘American adventurism’.That’s quite the adjective. Explain.
You are, I suppose, equally joking when you inform us that Obama is ‘rebuilding our international reputation’. How? By constantly denigrating America and informing everyone that now that He, the Obama, is here, the pre-Obama era, defined as ‘evil’ is over, and the Obama Era will bring..ah..peace and brotherhood and etc?
How? By his insults to the leaders of Western nations? By his support for Zelaya’s violation of the Honduran constitution? Hmm? By his ignoring the Iranian people’s demonstrations in support of democracy?
By his dithering about Afghanistan and Iran?
How about Sarkozy saying that Obama lives in a ‘virtual world’ and is ‘so egotistical’ that he is unable to learn? How’s that for the US reputation?
Did you know that in the real world, nations have nuclear weapons..and the bad guys are not going to give them up just because Obama smiles at them. What kind of narcissistic world does Obama inhabit?
Good god – you also are an AGW cultist? Whew..Are you aware that there’s not a shred of scientific evidence for this?
You haven’t, still, provided any factual evidence of Obama’s ‘success’.
Oh, and stop with the sanctimonious ‘peace’ ending. That went out with the 60′s. We are adults now, and must face reality.
61. Mr Lucky:
“Do you s(t)ill blame past lovers who jilted you for the problems you have today?”
U r mixing apples and oranges. U know what the legacy is. The 800-lb orangutan in the room . . .
He’s never going to come back down to earth. Obambi has totally bought into the false idea that he is some sort of god that must be worshiped. He has discovered, unfortunately for the rest of the country, that it’s much easier and more fun to campaign for President, to make jokes at the other candidates expense, to poke fun at the other candidates numerous homes, or his age, or his choice for VP, or the age of his wife. Boy that sure was fun. But now Obambi is the President, and it’s not so much fun. He’s scrambling around to find answers to difficult questions that he’s never actually given any thought to, except for imagining that once he was Prez the whole world would get together, sing songs of peace and do bong hits while watching the sun set. Or rise…or both. It’s a tough world, as Obambi is finding out.
#85 ETAB:
Good points all, but it’s almost pointless to hammer someone like DavidS with facts. He and other true believers like him are immune so they just soldier on repeating the same, monotonous postings with unshakable bluster; much like a telemarketer reading from a script.
56. Layer of Bill:
Stimulus? Um, not so much . . . We’re 25% in. Don’t root so hard against America.
Iraq? Well, Bush won that. . . . Why are we sill there? Republicans declared victory, we didn’t achieve it
Afghanistan? No . . . It’s gonna take a few months to clean up W’s 7 years of negligence.
Iran? LOL . . . What would you do?
Russia, well he did clean Putin’s boots with his tongue…. No, he looked into his eyes and saw his soul.
Health Care? . . . It’s coming.
Stay away from lists. There’s too much that can go wrong.
Obama does not yet have a failed presidency, but he is on course to one in both domestic and foreign affairs. If he is going to revive it, he needs to come down to earth soon.
Yeah? What are the chances of that?
The 800-lb orangutan in the room . . .
Let’s not drag Michael Moore into this discussion.
ETAB @85
Thank you for your patience in dealing with passive/aggressive David S.
I have no doubt that one of the reasons he’s so deluded is that he informs himself from the MSM and has no clue of the extent of their bias. He unfortunately comes here not to learn but to spout the nonsense he’s absorbed there.
In addition to permanently solving the problem of Iraq developing nuclear weapons and dealing al Qaeda a humiliating defeat in Iraq, Bush kept America safe and the economy humming for most of his Presidency. He accomplished this with quiet resolve and good humor in the face of vicious opposition from America’s opinion makers – the MSM, Hollywood and Academia.
Obama has had embarrassing and nearly unanimous support from all three of these elite and flawed forms of humanity and he’s accomplished absolutely nothing but massively increasing debt, significantly increasing unemployment, stacking the White House with leftist radicals, including himself and his wife, and giving aid and encouragement to dictators and America’s enemies.
And his pandering to the world as some sort of savior by running down his own country is pathetic.
Obama’s Presidency is a disaster. I was clearly wrong about this presidency. I thought it would take 18 months to get to this point.
I agree with the leftist trolls that it is still too soon to judge the Obama administration as a failure. He still has time get a clue, denounce his anti-American rhetoric and associations, reverse on destroying our economy, and clean house of the leftists he has advising him. He may then have a chance at not being a failure.
In the mean time, that is exactly where he is headed and those of us on the right do him a great service by encouraging him to change course.
Finally I found something to agree with the Obamatons on mister Obama’s presidential accomplishments – yes, it’s a bit too early to come with solid opinion on that.
Yet, considering that so far his presidential feats (in almost one year), have been steadily going from bad to worse, I think that we can reasonably expect his tenure to be rated soon and by a convincing majority as terrible – if not catastrophic.
91. Donna V.:
The 800-lb orangutan in the room . . .
“Let’s not drag Michael Moore into this discussion.”
LMAO!
Donna V., you’re my HERO! hehe!
“a post-partisan, post-racial, purple president.”
Well after all, purple is the royal color, what else would we expect from His Imperial Majesty Barack I.
The title should read “The Manufactured God That Failed”.
The corrupt Democrat party operating in the slime pit of Chicago’s South Side and The Left Wing Media manufactured the poseur we’re now stuck with for another three years. He’s failed – and will continue to fail – to implement any of the policy that got him elected (laughably, as a “centrist”). Even with bullet-proof majorities in the House and Senate, he’s completely incapable of getting the members of his own party to agree on a health care bill.
At the same time he and the socialist Congress – which took the reins of this country almost three years ago, and which is entirely responsible for the current economic situation – are succeeding quite artfully at destroying what’s left of the Republic economically and geopolitically. And we’ll all be paying the price soon – including moronic lickspittle like David S., vivo, BC and the rest of the useful idiots who are peeing down their own legs and calling it a “tingle”.
Unemployment continues to climb – up another point in September. It is now almost 25% higher than the rate predicted by the whack-o BHO selected to produce his economic Spendulus propaganda back in January. In fact, the unemployment rate has far exceeded the level Romer predicted we’d see without the Stimuless. Yeah… she had a clue. Not. Which is why she was rejected by Harvard.
But further, if we count those who have given up the search, real unemployment currently stands at approximately 17%. THAT is the number that actually means something with respect to the taxes and Social Security contributions that are no longer being collected by the federal government. THAT is the number people like Romer failed to consider when they put together their wild-eyed – and now thoroughly debunked – economic predictions.
But that’s not all. We must also include those who’ve taken early retirement – a cohort BHO’s lamebrain trust obviously never even considered when they made their fantastical predictions. Those folks have doubly impacted the already bankrupt Social Security system. Not only that, they have also doubly impacted the bankrupt Medicare system as well. By both cutting off payroll contributions and starting to withdraw their own benefits, those who’ve taken early retirement constitute a huge shortfall that was easily predicted by The Law of Unintended Consequences – which no one in BHO’s administration has ever studied. Once the impact of all this is taken into account at the end of this year, expect the CBO’s estimates of our year-to-year deficit to increase by another 20% or more.
All-in-all we can call the current unemployment rate – among those who are able and otherwise willing to work – approaching 20%. Ironically, men have been the most severely impacted by the current trends, and most ironically, black men have been hit harder than any other demographic. I’m sure this isn’t the “CHANGE” they had in mind when they blindly pulled the lever for BHO – collectively comprising the most racially-motivated of all voting blocs – last November.
With all this, rather than cut taxes and free up the market to boost the economy, the Democrats want to increase entitlements by extending unemployment benefits. Either way, the “cost” to the government is identical, but the former would stimulate the economy and start putting people back to work, while the latter keeps people dependent on the government. Gee – tough to see where the priorities are there.
There is a clear history showing what works and what doesn’t under these circumstances. We saw what happened with the severe recession in 1920-21, when the government took almost no action. Recovery was almost immediate. Conversely we saw what happened later in 1929, when FDR’s largely unconstitutional “New Deal” spent money hand over fist – which turned the recession into a Great Depression and extended it almost a decade. The same result was experienced by Japan, who failed to learn from our mistakes and similarly destroyed its economy for a decade. Spending more and more money the government doesn’t have on fake “stimulus” has NEVER, EVER worked. And they know it.
So the real question is what does this administration consider “success” and what does it consider “failure”.
Clearly, the False God manufactured by the Democrat machine and The Left Wing Media has failed, utterly, to live up to the hype that got him elected. We’ve seen nothing to date indicating that will ever change, and he’s now even got leftist pundits criticizing him on a regular basis and leftist comedians openly mocking him for that failure.
But the marxist behind the hype, with the help of the socialist Congress, is succeeding beyond all reasonable expectations.
89
Stimulus? Um, not so much . . . We’re 25% in. Don’t root so hard against America.
Typical Now and Then: Always wrong, never in doubt.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sprott-beyond-stimulus
That someone as stupid and ill-informed as you ever got the idea of commenting in public fora is a true landmark in the history of stupid decisions.
@85. ETAB: – …in countries with public health care, the cost is at least 15,000 per person, per year, in taxation?
Interesting tidbit on that point:
“Britain must charge for health care and raise retiring age to escape debt crisis, says IMF…”
So, because socialized medicine works so well, Brits are now being taxed through the nose to pay for it and, on top of that, soon they’ll have to pay for it to get it. So much for “free” health care.
Now that the EU is becoming the EUSSR, one wonders if the payment for the health care services will also have an added EU VAT tax.
Almost comical.
But the puppet masters behind the scene have a sure fire way to remain in power. It is simple. They find a hard core white supremacist “cracker” self-professed “Christian” and work him up to assassinate the One.
In one moment they can smear Christians, conservatives, the “right-wing” as racist murderers. And they would. Blame Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Savage, etc. as having “encouraged” and “promoted” the unspeakable sub-human savagery of the “right-wing”.
Of course the timing has to be right. Either shortly before the 2010 elections — or perhaps 6 months or so before the 2012 elections.
The poor guy has to have figured this out also. All we can do is pray that the secret service continues to do an excellent job and protect him. He needs to stay alive to lose in 2012. Him being assassinated would be an unmitigated disaster for conservatives.
89. Now and Then: I forgot to tell you that your messiah got his start servicing a slumlord. Did you know that? Yeah he did. He worked it and made it sugar daddy proud!
You know what? Bush was a terrible president, and so far your pathetic, bootlicking worm of a president is actually…worse. Do you hear that? WORSE.
And yes, there is help for 400 lb shut ins like yourself. There’s this company called Rascal, and they make a product that can help you get from the computer to the bathroom so you no longer have to have a bucket next to the computer.
@ David S, #78:
I generally adhere to the philosophy “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
To heck with it, I’m going to jump in the mud. You stated:
“From where I stand, Obama’s stimulus appears to be a qualified success, an example of a successful government intervention in an economy that would otherwise have continued in a downward spiral.”
“The economy is better off with the stimulus according to the CBO, or any other non partisan source.”
According to the figures that were put out by Obama’s economic team, the stimulus has had the opposite effect. See this graph:
http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/stimulus-vs-unemployment-september-dots.gif
I know actual facts get in the way of your arguments, but you are incredibly wrong to assume that no one else has access to facts or the intelligence to see the truth.
We spend more than any other country on health care.
This is what is wrong. Please stop deluding yourselves. Single payer, public option, whatever – the system we have now is awful and getting worse, and there are many better models to learn from. Better care for less money is the rule in public programs – that’s why the developed world uses them.
Just look at the numbers – not the baseless talking points of the PJM spin machine.
Peace.
DS
Thanks, Donna…right back at ya with the Michael Moore line!
Goy, …right on the money. The Prissy Proletariat modus operandi during the tenure of ANYONE who isn’t a card carrying anarchist as they are…is to deliver a constant, unrelenting, vicious smear campaign.
The menu of items is always the same. They screech RACISM! at the top of their lungs, with a slightly more sotto voce they allege homophobia…since it doesn’t play in all quarters quite as universally.
They attack the military…but pay a little lip service to the “men and women in service”…no longer calling them baby killers and throwing bags of feces at them…since that doesn’t play as well in all quarters either.
They attack the SOUTH as a region of NASCAR loving, tobacco spitting, mental lightweights.
They attack Christians as a group, but most harshly Evangelicals as a subset.
They attack corporate executives regardless the size of company or revenue.
In other words, they attempt to stir up racial warfare, class warfare, religious warfare, economic warfare. It’s the Marxist/anarchist/seditionist way. They use the unions for muscle, since the Prissy Proletariat are skulk fighters not face to face warriors. They do the stealth, hide, sneak game well…not hand to hand combat.
What do they do when they have the White House, both houses, the media totally and completely in their pocket?
They implement their idiotic and failed ideas…and when they don’t work…see outline of tactics above,… rinse, repeat.
98. venividivici:
Overall, about $191 billion in stimulus spending had gone out the door in spending and tax cuts as of Sept. 25 – well ahead of the $185 billion the budget office estimated would be out by Wednesday. – Propublica
Don’t worry the facts, just stick with your theories. It’s less demanding.
86. vivo.
“U r mixing apples and oranges. U know what the legacy is. The 800-lb orangutan in the room . . .”
At what point are you willing to pass the “Legacy” to Obama? How many months/years back does the “Legacy” go? How many months/years will it take for the economy to become Obama’s economy? Is the Afghan war his now? What is Obama responsible for? Nothing?
Is Bush President?
When does Obama become the President?
Guys, don’t even humor the trolls. Their guy took it upon himself to win this, Rahm/Axelrod style and he lost….he lost HARD.
America DID NOT lose, Obama’s crooked cronies and Donk machine scum are the ones who lost.
Laugh at Barack.
Mock Michelle.
Point at Oprah.
Ridicule Jarrett.
Deride Daley.
They deserve it.
The gripes you here from “Now and Then” and “David S” and other assorted trash are just their pathetic sychopants sayin’ they don’t like the well-deserved taste of crow.
Mmmm mmm mmm another moronic libtard who thinks the NAZIS are right wingers. “duhhhhhhbya:” You really should not be so hard on your SOCIALIST ‘libtard; friends we know the NAZI’s ( the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party) were not nice people but most Dems are not quite at the Holocaust phase yet.
David S: writes
“I heartily enjoy the comments here. It is very entertaining to see people arguing that Obama is unpopular, or that his agenda is not supported by most Americans.
Health care reform that includes a public option is precisely what the people want – it is what doctors want, it is what mothers and fathers want, and it is what voters want. The opposition to comprehensive health care reform is solely from the far right and corporate interests. It will pass, and it will be a victory for Obama.”
You are absolutely correct to say that most Americans favour some sort of Health Care reform but what you DELIBERATELY disingenuously omit to do is complete what the Poll results from the Polling agents say. That is while they want reform they OVERWHELMINGLY DONT want the Obamanations reform.
Why do libtards have to LIE and try and twist the facts all the time?
11. Terry, Eilat – Israel:
So far, Obama has accomplished absolutely nothing
~~~~
Actually, he has taken over two american car companies, is stimulating unemployment and devaluaing real estate – both situations that are leading to businesses shutting their doors for lack of consumer spending. He’s staffed his “office” with czars with far-left ideals and a dream job of rahming those ideals down america’s collective throat, plus they are answerable only to him. He’s offended our allies, and tried to cozy up to our enemies. He’s gone around the world “apologizing” for what a horrible country America is, and bowed to a third world KING.
I’d say he’s doing pretty well at accomplishing his first steps towards turing this country in to a third world dictatorship.
73. Sherab Zangpo:
I apologize for posting again the same points that all our pundits want to ignore:
you can say that Obama failed only if you understand what a radical-marxist’s goals are
~~~
Maybe I read your post wrong (if so, I apologize), but do you mean people can only say obummer is failing is if they DON’T understand what a radical-marxists goals are?
87. kenny komodo:
He’s never going to come back down to earth. Obambi has totally bought into the false idea that he is some sort of god that must be worshiped.
~~~
Something I read recently made me think of obambi as Ozymandias – wtih his towering statues of himself in pieces all around him. becasue he was no god, only a delusional mortal.
President Obama could not undo in one year the resentment against America that President Bush and others built up for years,
“There must be” resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson
105
98. venividivici:
Overall, about $191 billion in stimulus spending had gone out the door in spending and tax cuts as of Sept. 25 – well ahead of the $185 billion the budget office estimated would be out by Wednesday. – Propublica
Don’t worry the facts, just stick with your theories. It’s less demanding.
Hey, stupidf8ck, I didn’t dispute your claim about the amount spent, I showed you that the pace of spending and impact of it on the real economy was greatest in the fiscal quarter just ended. Hint, it was the first chart embedded in the PDF at the link. I know that’s all so complicated for a simple Leftard like yourself.
As the analysis says:
“What impact will this stimulus have on the economy? Chart A[see I told you it was the first one]presents results from Moody’s[ah, before you object, it's from Moody's employee and noted Obama supporter, Mark Zandi, so STFU. That's an "ad hominem" anyway, dipsh*t]that is representative of several private forecasts we’ve reviewed. The chart illustrates the ARRA’s impact on real GDP by quarter and reveals that right now, in Q3 2009, the US is experiencing the maximum impact of the Obama stimulus package. That’s right, this is as good as it gets. The majority of the Act consists of tax cuts and transfer payments to citizens. By the end of September 2009[hey, didn't that just happen?]this stimulus will have worn off and with it and along with it will vanish the greatest marginal impact of the entire stimulus package itself.
Now, I know that requires understanding percentages, rates of change and the concept of marginal GDP, as opposed to the addition and subtraction that you and your ProPublica idiot pals can do on your fingers and toes, but these things are inevitably complex. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t waste your or my time commenting on them.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sprott-beyond-stimulus
Don’t you ever question me, beatch. You aren’t fit to dust my bookshelves, much less actually read the books on them.
@104. cfbleachers: – The menu of items is always the same. They screech RACISM! at the top of their lungs…
Funny, though, that no one is screaming raaaaacist! at the multiculti’ OIC for not only dissing, but completely disgracing the racially homogeneous POTUS-FLOTUS-QUOTUS* team sent to Copenhagen, isn’t it.
*Queen (Uncrowned) of the United States
Daniel said that thoes that do righteous things if they die will shine in sky.they will not melt if they were buried in grave the way Judah which kill from neck interlocks cloud in Yoga position while dead person is laying in state.
Sadly, there are thousands of Obamessiah worshipers who, as they a are being put on the train to go to the gulag, will still swear loyalty to the man about imprison them.
114. venividivici:
venividivici, venividivici, venividivici . . . Called out and proved wrong, and now you’re angry. The raging machine of misanthropes where you get your marching orders and misinformation does nothing to insulate you from the idiocy that it guarantees. As for questioning you, I’ve never done it. That suggests a minimal amount of respect for your thinking, which I don’t have. Instead I’ll continue to show the world the arbitrariness of your principles and the vapidity of your world view.
Case in point . . . “Hey, stupidf8ck” . . . “Don’t you ever question me, beatch” . . . Looks like think Krugman was right this weekend when he said, “The conservative movement has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.”
Thanks for chipping in to help our cause, Mr. Child. Now, don’t you have some dusting to do?
118
How was I proved wrong? You said that the stimulus hadn’t been spent (only 25% of it, was your exact figure) so that means it was too early to judge it’s effects. I pointed out that was wrong and showed a completely on-point analysis of why looking at dollars spent was the wrong metric. So, again, how was it that you proved me wrong? I know that in magical fairy-tale Lefty land saying good things about Leftism three times and clicking your heels makes them true, but that’s where you live, not me.
The raging machine of misanthropes where you get your marching orders and misinformation does nothing to insulate you from the idiocy that it guarantees.
Man, you just can’t stay away from those sweet, juicy “ad hominem” attacks, can you? In this particular case, I got my “marching orders” from Sprott Asset Management. You know, those well-known “raging” asset managers. The irony is that they are based in Canada, a.k.a. Moonbat Utopia.
I know that your knee-jerk reaction is to scream “Glenn Beck Rush Limbaugh”, but, unfortunately for you, I don’t listen to those guys and only know what I read here about them or on other blogs. I operate at a completely different intellectual level and don’t need those guys to make my points.
Instead I’ll continue to show the world the arbitrariness of your principles and the vapidity of your world view.
Yes, please continue to try to do so, so I can hand your *ss to you again.
Looks like think Krugman was right this weekend when he said, “The conservative movement has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.”
Considering that Krugman has self-lobotomized in order to fit in with the leftist movement, which has the intellectual maturity of a 2-month old, I don’t consider his opinion of any import.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/krugman_response.htm
It gets worse. Krugman hints at dark conspiracies, claiming “dissenters are marginalized.” Most of the article is just a calumnious personal attack on an ever-growing enemies list, which now includes “new Keyenesians” such as Olivier Blanchard and Greg Mankiw. Rather than source professional writing, he plays gotcha with out-of-context second-hand quotes from media interviews. He makes stuff up, boldly putting words in people’s mouths that run contrary to their written opinions. Even this isn’t enough: he adds cartoons to try to make his “enemies” look silly, and puts them in false and embarrassing situations. He accuses us of adopting ideas for pay, selling out for “sabbaticals at the Hoover institution” and fat “Wall street paychecks.” It sounds a bit paranoid.
It’s annoying to the victims, but we’re big boys and girls. It’s a disservice to New York Times readers. They depend on Krugman to read real academic literature and digest it, and they get this attack instead. And it’s ineffective. Any astute reader knows that personal attacks and innuendo mean the author has run out of ideas.
That’s the biggest and saddest news of this piece: Paul Krugman has no interesting ideas whatsoever about what caused our current financial and economic problems, what policies might have prevented it, or what might help us in the future, and he has no contact with people who do. “Irrationality” and advice to spend like a drunken sailor are pretty superficial compared to all the fascinating things economists are writing about it these days.
The best part, though, is where he hoists Krugman on his own petard (that means he points out that Krugman’s an inconsistent-minded dumb-dumb, dumb-dumb):
Third, and most surprising, is Krugman’s Luddite attack on mathematics; “economists as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.” Models are “gussied up with fancy equations.” I’m old enough to remember when Krugman was young, working out the interactions of game theory and increasing returns in international trade for which he won the Nobel Prize, and the old guard tut-tutted “nice recreational mathematics, but not real-world at all.” He once wrote eloquently about how only math keeps your ideas straight in economics. How quickly time passes.
Go ahead, do that “proving me wrong” stuff you claim to do so well, idiot.
“raging machine of misanthropes” …
Not as good as Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity,” but not bad, not bad at all.
*goose-stepping away to the tune of mmm, mmm, mmm*
RE #118/Now and Then: [...] The raging machine of misanthropes where you get your marching orders and misinformation does nothing to insulate you from the idiocy that it guarantees. [...]
N&T, dealing with pests like hollow-headed liberals and lefties like you and your Obamaton companions cannot but rush any normal human into misanthropy’s folds -
122
For me, it’s not “misanthropy”, it’s a variation on Sartre’s statement “Hell is other people”, which I’d restate as “Hell is Leftist people”, although I hesitate to use the term “people” to describe them. No wonder they’re all so concerned about their “carbon footprint”. Deep down, they know they’re wastes of carbon. It’s a mighty useful element and it’s a shame it’s used as the building block of those losers.
@109. Pragmatist:
You are absolutely correct to say that most Americans favour some sort of Health Care reform but what you DELIBERATELY disingenuously omit to do is complete what the Poll results from the Polling agents say.
I know I am correct to say that most Americans favor health care reform – and I cited the polls to show that they also support a public option. You claim that I have to lie and twist the facts – but I told you the truth, and backed it up with links to the data that support it. Any polling on “Obama’s plan” is premature, as the final bill is not even crafted yet. But the public option has been polling in the 65-75% range for many years – so my suggestion that it is popular is hardly twisting the facts.
Thanks for at least conceding the obvious – if you need help understanding the polling I cited, I’m happy to help.
Peace.
DS
Obama? Failed? Impossible…
But the public option has been polling in the 65-75% range for many years – so my suggestion that it is popular is hardly twisting the facts.
Yes, people support a public option. So long as THEY don’t have to be covered by it! Which I don’t blame them, seeing as how Obama himself thinks the Post Office is a great analogy for the type of service the “public option” will provide.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/october_2009/fear_of_losing_private_health_insurance_trumps_public_option
The fear of being forced to change insurance coverage can be seen in results from a pair of survey questions.
The first question finds that 46% favor the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan. Thirty-seven percent (37%) are opposed.
The second question asked about the creation of a public option if it encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers. Given that possibility, support for the public option falls to 29%, and opposition rises to 58%.
Please, raise your predictable whine about Rasmussen.
A White House aide revealed to me why Obama is so frustrated by his inability to move this country down the socialist track any faster than he has already.
He says Obama blames the stubborn older Americans for their reluctance to embrace public ownership of the means of production, socialized medicine, a military on par with other nations, a hyper deficited budget which will lead to a highly devalued dollar and hyperinflation.
Fortunately, the aide said, President Obama holds the threat of an interruption in social security checks to move recalcitrant older Americans more in line with Obama’s socialized thinking which he believes is the future of America.
He has further decided to veto any bill that makes English the official language of the U.S., while in terms of school children, wants his education czar to approve all state’s lesson plans in the summer so they reflect the new theme, “the wisdom of Obama”. If parents object, they will be dealt with on a case by case basis, and the power of the IRS may be used to obtain their cooperation.
The U.S. many of you grieve for is dead and is being radically modified so it rests in peace.
Furthermore, Obama wants you to embrace the country where change has taken root and is flourishing, where every citizen now sees in the future the kind of hope that to so many has heretofore been denied.
Obama is like the village idiot who’s following in the steps of Rezko, Immanuel, Palosi, Boxer, Hyde, Guethener, Wright, Ayers and others as he steps in mud and thinks the fastest way out is to press forward till he’s up to his elbows in muck and corruption.
This socialist path Obama and his gang of 30 have taken, unbeknownst to them, has taken them in a circle. Every bathroom tub has the metaphorical equivalent of their destination. It’s not the money, power and comradeship that they so hope for.
No, not at all, you see, these committed creatures of socialism sooner or later will realize that they’re circling the drain of hell.
While your average, God disbelieving, run of the mill marxist doesn’t start there, they always seems to end up there.
In Barack Obama’s book he quotes his idol and friend Saul Alinsky who stated, ” One day I hope the socialist workers love me as much as I love them.” Barack, unfortunately, is President of the wrong country. He selected the United States that one day will have him exiting the White House from the back door in handcuffs.
Barack’s final destination if the roach motel. Where creatures like Obama find it much easier to get in than get out of.
@126. venividivici:
Yes, people support a public option. So long as THEY don’t have to be covered by it!
That why it is called an option. Nobody has to be covered by it – it is one choice among many. Medicare is also a public option, and people support that – heck, even the GOP is on the record now in support of Medicare. Even the Republicans support a public option.
The fear of being forced to change insurance coverage can be seen in results from a pair of survey questions.
Thankfully there is no “forced” change of insurance coverage in the proposals so far. Nice straw man, though.
Please, raise your predictable whine about Rasmussen.
Nope – nothing wrong with Rasmussen here. They phrase the questions to provide you the talking points you crave, but they can’t help you back it up with substance because there is none. Counterfactual hypotheticals are good fun and all, but they don’t advance your argument. You already conceded my main point, which is that people support a public option. The GOP can try to shoo this truth away with scare tactics, but at the end of the day the public option is what the people want. Yes, people support a public option. That’s common ground we agree on.
Peace.
DS
Everything said about Obama prior to election, i.e.inexperienced, unproven, shallow, untried, an empty suit, a little weird (creepy I believe Sam Donaldson said) manipulative, narcissistic, etc, etc, etc, was quite correct, ergo his stunning nosedive. The media ignored all of that then, and now must come to grips with being such fools. That difficult realization explains their continued fawning treatment of His Excellency. This cannot go on indefinitely as they appear more and more ridiculous with each Obama failure.
You already conceded my main point, which is that people support a public option.
A point built on sand. Drilling down into that “point”, one consistently finds that the reason people support it, beside thinking it will only be an issue for ‘the other guy’ is that they think they will be able to get it for “free”. Again, and I have said this to you many, many times now: People generally support other people giving them things for free, or for what they perceive as free. The problem, as always, is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same NYT you cite to show support for the public option did a survey earlier this year showing that the average person wasn’t willing to pay even $500/year more to get “comprehensive health care reform”. Since the price tag is definitely going to be higher than that, expect lots of anger if it passes and people start getting those bills. They did that survey using conjoint analysis, which is one of the better methodologies for getting at the real-world trade-offs people are willing to make, as opposed to the fantasy-world where everything’s free.
Thankfully there is no “forced” change of insurance coverage in the proposals so far. Nice straw man, though.
Typical leftist BS. “Oh, they don’t ‘force’ you to change, so blah, blah, blah”.
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2009/04/public-plan-option-for-under-age-65.html
Among Democrats in the Congress and at the White House there is a great deal of interest in creating a government-run health plan in the under-age-65 market. Such a plan would compete with the existing private health insurance market in a head-to-head showdown between private and public health insurance.
Such a plan was part of the President Obama’s campaign health proposal—albeit limited to the small employer and individual market. We are told the President’s greatest interest here is in “keeping the private health insurance market honest.” That is, creating competition in order that private insurers do a better job of controlling costs.
While most observers assume that this would mean paying providers at Medicare—or even Medicaid—rates the administration says not necessarily.
The respected and non-partisan Lewin Group recently issued a report evaluating the idea, “The Cost and Coverage Impacts of a Public Plan: Alternative Design Options.” It looks to me to be a credible job. They made the assumption providers would be paid at Medicare rates—a logical conclusion if the objective is lowering costs.
Among Lewin’s findings:
* “If the public plan is opened to all employers…at Medicare payment levels we estimate that about 131.2 million people would enroll in the public plan. The number of people with private health insurance would decline by 119.1 million people. This would be a two-thirds reduction in the number of people with private coverage (currently 170 million people).
You don’t fool me for a second with your “no one is forcing them to change” crapola.
Since he took office, Obama has figuratively
been using our country as a bathroom.
Besides number one and two,
he’s vomited all over the constitutional bedrock of our country while trying to jam everything from unread stimu-jackin the box acts to ethnocentric, mentally unbalanced Sotomayor brain froths to socialized medical mistakes down our throats.
Electing Obama was like unleashing a horde of suicide bombers on every facet of this nation, from its ideals of self reliance, private ownership of land and capital to the need to preserve, protect and defend every aspect of this constitution that’s made us strong and free for 233 years and counting. We’re counting on each. We can’t let one another down in this hour of need. Of, course, years before Obama, there was acorn.
Actually Obama was Acorn’s seedling.
Acorn represents corruption at its source, stealing votes, defiling election after election, stoking the hell fires of communism.
Acorn’s offspring, President Obama, appears to be a brown eyed handsome man, but if we had the vision of the deity, he would undoubtedly resemble a fecal drenched, pus laden, Acorn tentacle, covered entity of afterbirth goo.
Acorn elected Obama in the stealth of voter fraud and corruption and now, finally, we’re shining the disinfectant of light on this evil body. We’re trying to unravel every corrosive part of this corruption laden corporation that operates in the depths of lying non-profit depravity of words and action; from poisoning school children’s minds, to leaping at the perverted chance to uses 13 year old bodies as sex slaves. Its work is dirty, nasty and perverted.
It saddens my soul that our first black President, who should have been a rallying cry for pride, hope and change, has turned into a mean, self centered, narcissistic, socialist train wreck who’s not just put us on the wrong track, but has intentionally put us on the path to destruction.
It’s like Barack has infected the greatest country on earth with the worst viruses in the world.
He laughs, dances, drinks his $600 bottles of wine on Wednesday party night at the White House while sweaty patriotic Americans try to fashion a plan to save the land of the free and the home of the brave. So far the antidote is untried. The cure is not as yet within reach.
Our economy is sick, sickened by Stimulus One, cheapened by devaluing currency, weakened by voter fraud and intimidation that’s gone unpunished. And while our NeroBama fiddles with military strategy even though he’s always run from and despised the military, our Afghan troops die every day because Ocrumbball won’t send his own General the troop strength he’s been requesting since August.
Figuring out military strategy to Obama is like asking a blind man to solve a Rubic Cube. And I’m assuming Obama is not out to sabotage the fighting men in the field. Which is a benefit of the doubt I now seriously question.
This country can be saved, our brave soldiers can be saved, a war can be won, but two million Americans must be willing to answer the call. Protest en mass. Raise your signs and make your voices be heard.
Obama’s self avowed communists and socialist czars must go. We must save our most precious national resource, our children, from perverted, pervasive, professional indoctranation of creepy socialist belief whether in mantra, song or word;
A sordid concoction of arguments conceived in hell and notarized by haters of liberty the world over to imbue our children with a love for Obama and a distrust of private enterprise and liberty must be cut off at the knees.
I know I don’t paint a pretty picture. But I know better than hoping the socialized infestation can cure itself.
Whatever it takes, we must be willing to bear any burden, meet any hardship, fight any foe.
Failure is not an option.
@131. venividivici:
The respected and non-partisan Lewin Group
Okay – good thing I was done with my coffee or that involuntary guffaw might have caused some trouble. You have confirmed that you have no interest in a reasoned debate. Thanks. The Lewin Group is neither respected nor non-partisan.
Still, I’ll play along. All you’ve shown here is that a public plan would be justifiably popular, and that given the choice people would choose a public plan over the current private insurance products. That’s not a rebuttal of my point – it’s an endorsement.
In other words: Yes, people support a public option.
Peace.
DS
DavidS wrote: What you have seen so far is just the very beginning.
I think that is what worries people the most. So much damage in so little time that another 3 years of the Affirmative Action President scares the hell out of most rational thinking Americans.
21. Matthew: As for why his agenda is “stuck in the mud”, I just want to remind you that until september, baby bush essentially didn’t have an agenda at all. Apart from a few weaselly procedural changes (stacking the justice department, refusing to declassify material when it was due – things like that), he’d essentially done nothing until (by comparison) about a month ago.
You’re wrong, Matthew. By “last month,” President Bush had two major legislative achievements (or “achievements” depending on how you felt about them) under his belt: the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Both were major components of an agenda you claim was non-existent but was, in fact, showcased and thoroughly debated during the 2000 campaign.
N&T wrote: Overall, about $191 billion in stimulus spending had gone out the door in spending and tax cuts as of Sept. 25
Let me fix that for you:
Overall, about $191 billion in stimulus spending had gone out the door to Obama cronies and to the making of signs stating “This project is brought to you by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act” as of Sept. 25.
@131. venividivici: – A point built on sand…
It’s also a point built on a false choice.
The only “health care reform” that will ever mean anything is that which brings routine health care costs under control and back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living so that low-premium/high-deductible plans can manage any real risk posed by catastrophic illness or injury. That will never happen as long as comprehensive insurance encourages over-consumption of health care (both by doctor and patient) and stimulates artificial increases in price through group plan resource pooling.
It doesn’t matter whether this comprehensive plan is administered by private companies or the federal government. As long as there is comprehensive health care insurance, costs will continue to skyrocket as they’ve been doing ever since we began abusing insurance to pay for the routine health care. The UK has already proved this, and is now faced with the prospect of forcing patients to pay for health care ON TOP OF being taxed through the nose to fund it (Will the EU add a VAT tax? Of course they will). If the government implements wage and price controls by limiting reimbursement as they do with Medicare, the quality of care will be destroyed. And since the proponents of socialized medicine are using the argument that Americans already have crappy health care compared to what we’re paying for it vs. what other countries have, that won’t be a desirable outcome.
Also, federal health care architects have made it clear that their goal is to engineer a so-called “public option” that will manipulate the insurance market so as to put every U.S. citizen into a single-payer pool, controlled by the government, just like the UK, where the system is failing. So the notion that the so-called “public option” will remain an option is naive in the extreme.
Here’s what the so-called “public option” does for people already living under such a plan in Massachusetts:
A friend of ours – we’ll call him Dennis – is a chef who suffered a serious injury to his arm while insured under the Massachusetts “Commonwealth Care” a/k/a CommieCare (public) plan. He was forced to enroll in this plan, rather than go on paying for health care out-of-pocket, because the cost of private insurance has been driven up at rates in excess of the rest of the nation due to a 2006 law requiring all residents purchase insurance or face a fine. He couldn’t afford a private plan, so his “options” were either face fines or enroll in the State’s plan. Luckily, his earnings at the time were below the threshold under which the State subsidized plan was available.
The injury required surgery, which could only be performed by facilities approved by the State (per the State’s plan). The surgery was botched by the State-recommended facility, leaving Dennis unable to use his arm at all and, thus, unable to work as a chef. Since Dennis’ injury was not work-related, he can’t get worker’s comp’n and his injury is considered a non-permanent disability, so SSDI is also not an option.
Here’s the fun part. While all this was going on MA’s health care insurance boondoggle was slowly coming unraveled and they began adjusting the thresholds at which people qualified for CommieCare in an effort to control costs. Dennis’ last income tax filing revealed a salary level which, per the latest changes in the MA regulations, put him above the qualifying threshold for the State-subsidized CommidCare. During the most recent review of his status he was effectively ‘disenrolled’ from CommieCare, but wasn’t notified for several weeks. During those weeks a number of expensive procedures, physical rehab and other medical costs were incurred – all of which both Dennis and the providers, based on information available to them, assumed would be paid by CommieCare (who didn’t notify anyone until weeks AFTER the change was made).
This past week, Dennis told us he’s counted up over $75,000 in health care bills that were kicked back by CommieCare after the enrollment change. The State says that all of this is now Dennis’ responsibility to pay.
To add insult to injury, despite the fact that Dennis is now unemployed (and unemployable in his chosen profession of 20 years), the State has notified him that he has 90 days to enroll in a private health insurance plan or face fines. He won’t re-qualify for CommieCare until he’s been unemployed for 6 months. Note that he now has a pre-existing condition, thanks to the poor-quality care provided by the State-recommended facility, and so the cost of private insurance will be considerable.
So Dennis now has to choose between staying in Massachusetts and caring for his dying mother or leaving the State to avoid being raped by the State’s so-called “public option” fines while trying to figure out how to get proper treatment for his arm and legally fight the clearly insane situation Massachusetts has put him in.
This is exactly the sort of thing we can expect from a federal “public option”, whose architects (again) have openly stated is intended specifically to put private health insurers out of business and force all U.S. residents into government-controlled socialized medicine.
135. SukieTawdry:
OK, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
The first he rammed through by reconciliation, so It’s good to know you support that approach. The second he never funded. I think “achievement” is the wrong word.
All you’ve shown here is that a public plan would be justifiably popular, and that given the choice people would choose a public plan over the current private insurance products. That’s not a rebuttal of my point – it’s an endorsement.
No, what would happen is that employers would drop the more costly private plans for the taxpayer-subsidized public option because it would be cheaper. How would it be cheaper? By reducing provider reimbursements from current private insurance levels to Medicare-type levels. I know that, again, a loser like yourself with no skills other than regurgitating BS has a hard time with more skilled people getting compensated for their skills and that you probably think that Barney Frank et al. should be the highest-paid individuals in our economy, but doctors work a lot harder than community organizers and politicians and their compensation reflects that.
Okay – good thing I was done with my coffee or that involuntary guffaw might have caused some trouble. You have confirmed that you have no interest in a reasoned debate. Thanks. The Lewin Group is neither respected nor non-partisan.
I wish I’d mentioned them right as you were mid-gulp. The silence from you side of the computer would have been welcome.
I guess the very same Federal Government that you want to run the health care financing system in this country disagrees with you about the Lewin Group.
http://www.lewin.com/Clients/
The Lewin Group helps federal agencies develop and implement new programs and evaluate existing policies for populations such as military personnel, veterans, Medicare and Medicaid Beneficiaries, citizens in natural disasters, and other low income and vulnerable populations.
Let me guess, they aren’t “respected” or “non-partisan” because their numbers made the public option look exactly like what it is, i.e. a “Trojan Horse” for single payer.
There is no discussion possible between people who think like you and people who think like me. Split the country in two piece and let you f-ck up your part and put up a Berlin Wall to separate us. You are a moron, but at least that way you’ll be a moron I’ve washed my hands of. There are, by your own and others’ lists of countries with the health care systems you want, at least a few dozen that fit your needs. If I could have one wish for you, it’d be that you’d have been born in one of them. F*ck you if you think I’m going to let you turn this country into one more socialist craphole. Sincerely, f*ck you.
@137. goy:
The only “health care reform” that will ever mean anything is that which brings routine health care costs under control and back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living so that low-premium/high-deductible plans can manage any real risk posed by catastrophic illness or injury.
Bull pucky, and you know it. All other developed nations have public plans. The best answer to the problem Dennis had would be single payer health insurance. At least he had access to care – many would not have even been in a position to get the surgery that a “public option” afforded Dennis. I agree his predicament is unfortunate – that’s why comprehensive health care reform is needed. Again – single payer solves these problems, but private insurance never will.
Peace.
DS
goy,
I hear you and I get what you are saying. How do you get providers to wean themselves off the 3rd-party payor teat?
@141. venividivici: – I hear you and I get what you are saying. How do you get providers to wean themselves off the 3rd-party payor teat?
Through business-and-consumer-friendly, rational tax legislation and tort reform: two things that will NEVER happen under the corrupt, pay-for-play BHO administration.
Oh, and a nice generous cup of Government Reform: eliminate lifetime incumbencies; audit and ultimately dissolve the Federal Reserve; put money back under the control of the People, not socialist, “central planning” bureaucrats who are appointed by politicians and who are accountable to no one; reinstate the welfare reform that was just completely broken by the $timule$$ bill; require Constitutional reference and justification for all bills introduced by Congress. That’d be a good start.
Also, seeing as how the SCOTUS keeps shrinking its own docket – by consistently voting to reduce its workload – put them back to work for the People they supposedly serve, reviewing ALL new legislation for Constitutionality.
Health care “reform” can only ever be achieved by freeing up the health care market and restoring the economic relationship between the health care provider and consumer, driving routine health care costs back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living. Government – especially our overweening, wannabe socialist government – will never do that.
High-deductible/low-premium health care insurance can mitigate the real risks posed by catastrophic illness or injury, and it’s readily affordable by far more people than is private, comprehensive insurance, which stimulates over-consumption and drives costs higher in multiple ways.
Government will only implement “solutions” that benefit government – that is, it will only make the problem worse, just as it did after Medicare was implemented, when health care costs were first encouraged to rise at extra-inflationary rates. Just as it did after the HMO act was passed, and later, when the government’s bullsh!t HMO “plan” failed, when costs began to skyrocket. Just as it has in Massachusetts, which has driven insurance costs to increase at rates higher than anywhere else in the nation. Just as it has in the UK, which is now faced with general insolvency and the prospect of having to charge people (yes – they’ll call it a “co-pay”) for a service they’re already taxed to the hilt to provide. Just as it always does.
.
@140. David S: – Bull pucky
Lame. Like all your other B.S.
- The best answer to the problem Dennis had would be single payer health insurance.
He’s already the VICTIM of a GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED system, Zippy. Congratulations, you just graduated to half-wit.
- At least he had access to care …
He – like every other resident of the U.S. – already had access to care BEFORE Massachusetts forced him to purchase insurance and dictated to him who his doctor would be. His predicament was CAUSED by a GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED system. Congratulations, you just graduated to moron.
– …many would not have even been in a position to get the surgery that a “public option” afforded Dennis.
Everyone is in a position to get surgery, Zippy. Your problem is you think Taxpayers should be required to pay for everyone’s surgery. Correction: your adolescent morality inclines you to “feel” that Taxpayers should be required to foot the bill for everyone, since there’s no rational argument involving anything remotely resembling thought that might support that notion.
- I agree his predicament is unfortunate…
There’s your hypocrisy, Zippy – hanging out there for everyone to see.
When someone needs health care, but either can’t afford it, doesn’t want to pay for it or thinks someone else “owes” it to them because comprehensive insurance and government misfeasance have driven the cost of health care through the roof, THAT is an unfortunate predicament. But to you that’s an unacceptable predicament. To you, that unfortunate predicament requires socialist, nanny-state, central planning in the form of government intervention. You proclaim over and over that a completely functional society, unparalleled, in fact, in all of human history, should turn itself upside down and inside out to accommodate people in this unfortunate predicament – based on your unsuccessfully educated whim of what’s “fair”.
Conversely, however, when someone experiences an avoidable and unfortunate predicament at the hands of GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED misfeasance, well that’s essentially just a cost of socialism. That’s acceptable. You’ve clearly indicated that your preferred solution to the problem created by government meddling is … more government meddling. You fail to see how utterly irrational this is. Instead, when the government makes the problem worse, as it always does – as it did in Dennis’ case, hanging him out to dry for tens of thousands of dollars – that’s acceptable to you. It’s acceptable to you because this particular unfortunate predicament wasn’t caused by the ham-handed corruption of something you pretend is a “free market”, it was caused by policies based on leftist ideology, which you are incapable of judging objectively. You won’t recognize any of this, of course, but when people call you a hypocrite for judging yourself differently from the way you arrogantly and ignorantly judge others in these two circumstances, at least now you’ll know what they’re talking about.
– … that’s why comprehensive health care reform is needed.
Wrong. His predicament was AVOIDABLE. And as was clearly demonstrated in this case, in which a GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED system is the problem, it’s clear that comprehensive GOVERNMENT reform is needed.
- Again – single payer solves these problems, …
Wrong again. No single-payer system operating under a Constitutional Republic with a capitalist economy like the United States has ever solved these problems. The closest analog we have is Medicare, which is utterly bankrupt and operates only through government-sanctioned extortion, and theft of Taxpayers’ money from the Treasury’s general fund. Again – GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED insurance CAUSED THE PROBLEM HERE, Zippy. Congratulations, you just graduated to imbecile.
- … but private insurance never will.
Socialist-style, group comprehensive private health care insurance never will. “Spreading the cost around” with this bogus Ponzi scam has been driving skyrocketing health care costs higher since it became popular after the GOVERNMENT’s HMO debacle – which was GOVERNMENT MEDDLING in the health care market. Comprehensive insurance will continue to cause skyrocketing health care costs as long as employers get tax breaks for providing it and as long as people irrationally and selfishly use it to pay for routine care that THEY, THEMSELVES are INDIVIDUALLY responsible for.
Crypto Muslim/Atheist/Black Liberation Theologist Marxist New Left Radical.
As long as the corporate new media treats nutcase Republicans & right wingers as though they represent something other than people who just want to smear Obama and block anything he tries to accomplish, then there will be some confusion. For instance some blockheads have targeted “comprehensive health care insurance” as the big reason for skyrocketing health care costs even though comprehensive coverage well predates any measurable rise in health care rates above CPI, and that healthcare costs really shot up during the 80′s when Reagan and his people were screwing around with using market forces, and HMO’s started become very popular as — supposedly — lower cost alternatives to full coverage. Fat lot of good that did.
Savid S #124 You said this
“I know I am correct to say that most Americans favor health care reform – and I cited the polls to show that they also support a public option. You claim that I have to lie and twist the facts – but I told you the truth, and backed it up with links to the data that support it. Any polling on “Obama’s plan” is premature, as the final bill is not even crafted yet. But the public option has been polling in the 65-75% range for many years – so my suggestion that it is popular is hardly twisting the facts.”
And in true PC MC left wing libtard moonbat style you cannot even see the stupidity that YOU write in supporting a Bill which in your own words has “POLLING ON OBAMAS PLAN IS PREMATURE” ‘NOT EVEN BEEN CRAFTED YET”. Truly the naive gullibility of libtards exceeds all ridicule so you support a Bill that you ADMIT is not written yet. Totally unbelievable stupidity.
David S. “All other developed nations have public plans.”
Bla bla bla. And all the public plans in all the other developed nations are bankrupt, broke and down and out. Here in Germany I have to buy every year privately another additive insurance to get adequate care because of further restrictions by the public plan. You are such a wise-cracking pompous busybody. Do gooders like you are responsible (by the law of unintended consequences and due to their ignorance of reality) for the worst shit on earth.
Love
106. Mr Lucky:
“At what point are you willing to pass the “Legacy” to Obama? How many months/years back does the “Legacy” go?”
That’s easy, the legacy remains until it gets fixed, then it becomes History.
“That’s easy, the legacy remains until it gets fixed, then it becomes History.”
So the damage done by “fixing” can be easily blamed on the “legacy”. This trick works only temporary. After some years more of “fixing” even trolls like you will become History.
DavidS – You’re out of your depth arguing with venividiviki. You’re probably used to being a big fish in the small pond of your friends. You sound like it throughout your posts over these many months. However, this is pjmedia. It is a deep pond. There are some big fish swimming around, here.
Venividividi is one of these big fish. I have a wicked high IQ, and am well-informed and literate. However, his IQ matches mine and he is far better educated. He is classically educated with training in multiple disciplines. He has numerous facts at his tongue and fingertips. I freely acknowledge my superior.
You are a small fish. We laugh at you, here.
Why are conservatives always touting their supposed IQs, Mensa membership, whatever. It’s so . . . desperate. Reveals a complete lack of confidence in their actual opinions. Sad to see, really. Predictable, but sad nonetheless. Much like their sense of humor . . . what was it Rachel Peepers said in the current column on humor . . . “funny as a crutch.”
Wicked!
I have to admit I destroyed part of my IQ by participating in the counter culture. But the realization of that and more made me turn conservative. And even with my lowered IQ I know you my dear trolls from inside out. Anyone who is getting his kicks by doing what you do here is by definition an adolescent and self-important person.
Love and peace you lowlifes.
@144. BC: – …comprehensive coverage well predates any measurable rise in health care rates above CPI, and that healthcare costs really shot up during the 80’s when Reagan and his people were screwing around with using market forces, and HMO’s started become very popular…
HMOs were never ‘popular’. They were shoved down people’s throats at the point of a gun. They failed, utterly, to improve the quality of health care and succeeded only in addicting the entire U.S. population to comprehensive health care insurance, which is a gross misuse of insurance that has had numerous economically destructive effects.
As YOUR CHART SHOWS, health care costs are STILL shooting up at ever-increasing rates almost thirty years later, which completely debunks your lame, irrational attempt to blame “Reagan and his people” for this whole mess.
Comp. health care insurance has existed for decades, but the fact you conveniently ‘forgot’ to mention is that it was not almost universally adopted until the late-70s / early-80s – a result of GOVERNMENT meddling in the form of mandates for an unworkable HMO program. Comp. insurance therefore had no measurable effect on health care costs until that time.
The facts you refuse to acknowledge are as follows:
- In the 60s the GOVERNMENT began distorting the health care market with Medicare – an extra-Constitutional program that is now utterly bankrupt and which is sustained only through government-sanctioned extortion and outright theft of Taxpayers’ dollars from the Treasury’s general fund. Very soon, thanks to the Democrats’ economy-destroying policies, it will only be sustainable through deficit spending – adding to a deficit that was quadrupled overnight by the current inept administration. Immediately following passage of Medicare, routine health care costs began rising at rates higher than inflation for the first time.
- In the 70s, the GOVERNMENT began actively corrupting the health care market by passing its first attempt at socialized medicine: a doomed mandate for comprehensive, government-subsidized HMO coverage. It was IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THAT POINT that routine health care costs began to rise significantly faster than inflation.
- By the late 70s, the GOVERNMENT’s failed HMO mandate proved unworkable and began slowly falling apart. It gave way to private comprehensive health care insurance that provided the same basic service, but at a profit. The intentional damage was already done by the GOVERNMENT, however: the entire country had been successfully addicted to comprehensive health care insurance, which set the stage for the skyrocketing health care cost crisis and provided the gateway drug used to convince the public to move on to the harder drug of socialized medicine.
- Next, to perpetuate this crisis, tax breaks were given to employers for providing comprehensive health care coverage. This was, effectively, GOVERNMENT further corrupting the health care market by artificially supporting comprehensive coverage. Skyrocketing health care costs immediately went into high gear at that point, and they’ve been rising at rates 3-4 times faster than inflation ever since.
Every single action by GOVERNMENT has been to distort, corrupt and ultimately destroy the free market for health care and related insurance. Every action by GOVERNMENT has caused the problem to grow worse by pushing the cost of routine health care to levels that people either refuse to pay for individually, or simply can’t afford. The perception, successfully engineered by GOVERNMENT destruction of the free market in health care, is that one can’t get health care without insurance, which is an inherently absurd notion.
All of this is discussed in detail here. There are helpful graphs that will provide you with the facts you refuse to acknowledge. I’m sure you’ll recognize them.
152 goy
I’m afraid I’m going to have to contact a collection agency on those invoices I sent to you.
151. Thomas Fink:
Tell me, Señor Fink, how is what you do here different than what I do?
154. @Now and Then “Tell me, Señor Fink, how is what you do here different than what I do?”
Like the other trolls you are posting in an obsessive manner anti conservative statements on a conservative website. This is what Trolls do. I am not obsessive. Which you can find out by comparing the number of my posts and the number of your posts on PJM. Also I am a conservative. I am here because I like most of the content. By the way, other conservatives who post much more than me are not necessarily obsessive because they do it at a place where they feel at home, where they want to talk with other people who are more or less like minded. Like the other trolls, you do not like this. You do not like it that conservatives have a voice. You want them to shut up. This is your real motivation. And this is something what only adolescent, self-important and desperate persons do. Lowlife.
Goy, I appreciate your passion for this issue. But your complete refusal to even consider the state of health care in other countries, based on the lame excuse of American exceptionalism, only makes your arguments that much more hollow.
I hate to tell you this, but people on Medicare get quality care for a reasonable rate. Even the GOP is defending this program – because it works. A similar program for all Americans would lower health care costs, improve outcomes, and eliminate all of the problems related to trying to squeeze profit from sick people.
Market solutions have never achieved universal coverage, and contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every year. Private insurers have incentives that are diametrically opposed to the best interests of their customers. This perversity creates problems more severe than can be found in any government run system.
However, arguing with you has proven to be pointless, because you have immunized yourself against any evidence that contradicts your extremely narrow world view. You don’t want to hear about successful government programs, because you have vested all your interest in the idea that a free market (which never has and never will exist) can do it better.
For anyone that does have an open mind, just do a little research. There are plenty of public health systems throughout the world that provide better care, for less cost, and without the danger of losing coverage, or being rejected for pre-existing conditions, or running out of coverage.
Private insurance is the wrong solution to this problem, just as private fire suppression and police protection are the wrong solution for public safety. This has been clear for decades, but the profits of insurance companies have come first in the USA. You may like paying big bucks to ruthless corporations for inferior coverage, but I despise this system because it harms people for the sake of profit.
Keep deluding yourself – it hardly matters, as your ilk have been marginalized even by the GOP. There is broad recognition of the importance of health care reform for our economy going forward, and it will be done. The cost curve will be bent, and the USA will gradually catch up with other developed countries in quality and cost. You will reap the benefits, even if you continue to wail against the reform.
Peace.
DS
@154. Now and Then: – …how is what you do here different than what I do?
That’s an easy one.
You insist on impersonating the online version of “a threatening, adolescent, loudmouth punk.
Fink, OTOH, provides valuable public service information by linking to stuff like this – a moving-picture illustration demonstrating how to respond to threatening, adolescent, loudmouth punks like you.
The difference is quite educational.
149
Marc, thanks for the kind words. I had good teachers, both the living kind and the dead kind.
I still remember my reaction when I finished reading Nietzsche’s collected works for the first time, which was basically “Well that puts a different spin on everything I’ve been told in my life up until now!”
Trolls like Now & Then should read some of his work. He had a lot to say about them. None of it good, of course, and I see no reason to disagree with him in this matter.
@156. David S: – …consider the state of health care in other countries, …
Why? The UK’s system is failing in demonstrable ways – ways you consistently refuse to acknowledge. Other systems are riddled with lengthy waiting times and faulty services. They all require socially suicidal dependence on the State. There is no rational reason to consider these as an alternative to what we have, which could be easily fixed by simply restoring health care to a free market.
You deny American exceptionalism, labeling irrefutable evidence “lame”. This places you in no position to accuse someone else of refusing to consider facts. It places you in a position to be laughed at. Congratulations, you’ve graduated to clown.
- … people on Medicare …
Again: Medicare is bankrupt. It survives solely through government-sanctioned extortion and outright theft of Taxpayers’ dollars from the Treasury’s general fund. A similar program for all Americans would be orders of magnitude worse, further bankrupting our already bankrupt nation. Every action taken by GOVERNMENT in the area of health care has made problems worse. This would be no different.
- Market solutions have never achieved universal coverage, …
Neither has any other system. And you keep deluding yourself that “coverage” is the issue. The necessity in question is affordable, routine health care, Zippy. Your failure to recognize that demonstrates how completely indoctrinated and irrational your thinking is on this.
- …arguing with you has proven to be pointless, …
You don’t “argue”. You make baseless assertions and sweeping generalizations, expecting others to “prove” you wrong. You follow up with passive-aggressive remarks driven by years of unsuccessful education. Your pretend “arguments” are as pointless as everything else you do.
- Private insurance is the wrong solution to this problem, …
Thank you for agreeing with me so completely. Insurance is not a rational way to pay for a routine cost of living that is no different from food, clothing and other basic necessities. Just as I’ve been saying.
Even the GOP is defending this program – because it works.
It works in the same way those Euro-trash “aristocrats” spending down their families’ wealth without replenishing it through gainful employment works: for a few generations and then it crashes.
If the GOP wants to enable this charade, that’s their right. It may be good short-term politics, but it’s bad long-term policy.
Governance and policy, in general, should be based on principles and long-term (as Horace said, “aere perennius”) thinking. The Constitution was an attempt to make that so in the context of a new country. That is why the Founders looked back to the Romans, because of the durability of their polity and the long-term thinking embedded in its policies. Who really gives a fig about the 6th or 7th or whatever number French Republic is in effect now? From a historical standard, the current French Republic (or German or whatever other “model” of universal health care you want to point to) is a toddler and part of the, if not the main, reason they won’t even reach adolescence is because they will bankrupt themselves providing “free” healthcare.
Market-based solutions are stable and robust. Centralized government-based solutions are not. That is why there are places around the globe where generations of vendors selling their wares have been doing for millenia, yet there is not a single government that has lasted even a good fraction of that time. That’s a historico-philosophical parable of why government solutions can’t possibly work, regardless of intentions.
@159. goy:
@156. David S: – …consider the state of health care in other countries, …
Why?
Because you might learn something. The UK still spends less than we do, and still has better care and universal coverage to boot. Your assertion that no system has achieved universal coverage is a bald-faced lie. That’s what public plans do. Check out the top twenty health care systems in the world, and you will see this common thread.
You claim Medicare is bankrupting the USA – but if you looked closer, you would see that it is actually the private insurance companies that are the driver of cost increases, and that countries with robust public health care programs don’t suffer these same problems. Medicare is actually more cost effective than private care – so really, the truth is that private insurance is bankrupting the USA, and public health care would solve this problem.
- Market solutions have never achieved universal coverage, …
Neither has any other system.
That’s just nothing but a lie. And one that you keep repeating for no apparent reason. Public health care systems do provide universal coverage, and at lower cost than our system which excludes 1/6th of the population from coverage.
You don’t “argue”. You make baseless assertions and sweeping generalizations, expecting others to “prove” you wrong.
No, actually I do argue. I pointed to clear and convincing evidence of support for a public plan in the US, and clear and convincing evidence that public plans work better than our current system. You are the one making baseless assertions, such as claiming that no system in the world achieves universal coverage. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. Here are a few countries that do:
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela
also:
Bhutan, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan
and don’t forget:
Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the UK
in case you need more examples of places with universal coverage, try these:
Australia and New Zealand
Tell me again how no system has achieved universal coverage?
You follow up with passive-aggressive remarks driven by years of unsuccessful education. Your pretend “arguments” are as pointless as everything else you do.
You are projecting. I’ve brought you plenty of evidence, but you reject it out of hand because your mind is closed. You can’t even see the obvious.
Insurance is not a rational way to pay for a routine cost of living that is no different from food, clothing and other basic necessities. Just as I’ve been saying.
If health care had predictable costs like food clothing and other basic necessities, you might have a point. The nature of health care is different, because an individual’s costs are not predictable, and highly variable.
You are of course free to go on lying – but you will be called on it regularly.
Peace.
DS
Medicare is actually more cost effective than private care – so really, the truth is that private insurance is bankrupting the USA, and public health care would solve this problem.
Bloody f-ing hell. Now I know how Winston Churchill felt when he said “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth can get its pants on.”
http://www.scrivener.net/2009/07/can-nationalized-health-care-reduce.html
As the author of the linked piece points out, the easiest cost for a politician to cut is “fraud” and they can’t even do that.
And your point about Medicare’s efficiency is false, too. When you adjust for the amount of spending per beneficiary, Medicare’s less efficient than private insurance, just like if I have a business and I can make 1 phone call and make $1 million, it will be more efficient than if I have to make 10 phone calls to make that same $1 million. Even Obama himself recognizes that 80% of health care spending is primarily on the elderly, so of course the administration of those huge bills running into the tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars will be more efficient than administration for claims that run four and maybe five figures for healthier, younger populations that have private insurance. When you control for that, as I said above, Medicare is less efficient.
Seriously, if I were to teach a class called “Analytical Methods 101″, I would use your posts as case studies in what not to do to reach a sound analytical conclusion. They are that bad.
If health care had predictable costs like food clothing and other basic necessities, you might have a point. The nature of health care is different, because an individual’s costs are not predictable, and highly variable.
That variability is exactly what catastrophic policies cover.
@161. David S: – UK still spends less than we do, and still has better care and universal coverage to boot.
We have learned – it doesn’t work. The UK is saddled with a failing system that is riddled with problems and going broke. From a practical standpoint, Canada’s health care is a complete joke.
Meanwhile, you’re fixated on making false analogies. The very existence of the UK’s and others’ systems are predicated on a socialist, nanny-state governmental structure that is not (yet) what we have in the U.S. The federal government doesn’t have the Constitutional authority to provide “free” health care for all U.S. residents at Taxpayers’ expense.
- You claim Medicare is bankrupting the USA…
Wrong. Read it again for comprehension. I observe that Medicare is bankrupt. I observe that even while it reimburses some 20% less than other insurers, it still pays out far more money than it takes in every year. I observe that Medicare is sustained only through forcing people to stay in the plan through government-sanctioned extortion and through outright theft of Taxpayers’ dollars from the Treasury’s general fund. I observe that Medicare will not survive the next ten years without being funded through deficit spending on top of a federal deficit that is already well over a trillion dollars thanks to the Democrats’ failed economic policies. These aren’t “claims”, Zippy. These are inconvenient facts published in the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees’ own reports – facts that your knee-jerk idolatry of socialism won’t allow you to recognize for what they are.
– … private insurance companies that are the driver of cost increases, …
Thank you – again – for so completely agreeing with what I’ve been saying all along. Abuse of insurance is the problem.
- That’s just nothing but a lie.
Nope. No system provides “universal” coverage. And again – as you keep refusing to recognize, and my friend Dennis found out the hard way – “coverage” is nothing more than a conditional promise to pay for someone’s health care. “Coverage” is a promise that can be broken on a whim – just like BHO’s campaign promises. “Coverage” is not actual health care. “Coverage” does not guarantee care, it only guarantees long waiting times, declining quality of care and – as the UK is learning – looming insolvency.
- I pointed to clear and convincing evidence of support for a public plan in the US, …
The B.S. you linked to was neither clear nor convincing. Americans are not interested in paying higher taxes to provide people with “free” health care.
- I’ve brought you plenty of evidence, …
Poor Zippy – your cherry-picked polls, lists, assertions and ludicrous Wikipedia cites are not evidence.
- If health care had predictable costs like food clothing and other basic necessities, …
Routine health care is predictable BY DEFINITION, Zippy. Everyone’s going to need a periodic physical, flu shots, childhood vaccinations, blood tests, etc. Statistically, everyone is going to need treatment for common basic illnesses, ear infections, broken limbs, lacerations, sprains, accidents and the like. Anyone with a chronic condition requiring ongoing medication knows exactly what those expenses are. NONE of these things constitutes an “unpredictable” financial burden that can’t be budgeted for just like other routine necessities of life. This used to be known as ‘saving for a rainy day’. Catastrophic illness or injury, on the other hand – which requires the only type of health care that is truly unpredictable and potentially devastating in terms of financial burden – justifies the procurement of high-deductible / low-premium health care insurance, which is widely available and not expensive. Neither of these justifies the irrational notion that the government should be allowed to seize control over the health care market. This is the difference your socialist indoctrination prevents you from recognizing, let alone acknowledging.
Routine health care is predictable BY DEFINITION, Zippy. Everyone’s going to need a periodic physical, flu shots, childhood vaccinations, blood tests, etc. Statistically, everyone is going to need treatment for common basic illnesses, ear infections, broken limbs, lacerations, sprains, accidents and the like.
Since everyone, even the government, likes to be able to accurately forecast cash flows, one wonders what David S and other ObamaCare supporters would say when the day draws near (and it will), when a few genetic tests drawn from fetal fluids will be able to accurately forecast a child’s likely health care costs and, therefore, a measure of the “cost” of letting them be born. I’m sure that other countries, the ones he loves to cite, in fact, will start utilizing these technologies in fairly short order, since they need to precisely because their health care costs are going to bankrupt them even faster than ours will bankrupt us.
Hey David S, in the name of “predictable medical costs” are you willing for the government to have the power to deny someone the right to have a child that will “cost too much” according to the genetic tests?
I love the movie “GATTACA” (mmmmm, Uma), but are we really prepared to actually live it?
Essentially, the argument you are making boils down to this:
Private insurance is the cause of, and solution to, all of our healthcare problems.
This kind of nonsense only flies with the party faithful, folks. You keep lying about the state of healthcare in the industrialized world, in hopes that the ignorant GOP base will buy your BS. There is no way the UK or Canada would trade their systems for the mess that we have in the USA.
As expected, even well-cited, peer-reviewed research is rejected with no explanation – because you have no answer to the facts of the situation – only your ideological commitment to a failed system.
You lie. It is that simple. You can’t even face the basic reality that universal coverage is typical in the industrialized world. If anyone here is following the example of Zippy, it’s you goy, not I.
Peace.
DS
DAID S: You are a liberal,therefore you are a liar,your “studies” are crap,your stance is phony ,and you are mendacious.people in UK and Canada envy our system.Nice try at being Orwellian. when you get cancer,and I sincerely hope you do,go up to Canada,and live by your principles; better yet, die by them,and decrease the planet’s carbon footprint..Peace! As in rest in(hopefully in a toxic waste dump)with the other excrement.If anyone wants to check outthe veracity this pollutsant’s “studies”,just go on Heritage.org., daily Telegraph, Dick Morris,or talk to any Brit or Canadian being treated in the US because their govts,want them to die to save pennies,so that they can buy votes.
@166. David S: – …the argument you are making boils down to … Private insurance is the cause of, and solution to, all of our healthcare problems.
Another stellar example of your complete inability to comprehend what you read. Or another stellar example of your endless list of straw man assertions. You pick.
Group comprehensive health care insurance is the (biggest) problem. I’ve made that abundantly clear here and elsewhere numerous times. It doesn’t matter if it’s private or not, and I’ve made that abundantly clear here and elsewhere as well. In fact, HMOs started the comprehensive insurance mess and they were not private, they were GOVERNMENT-designed, GOVERNMENT-subsidized, GOVERNMENT-mandated organizations forced down our throats at gunpoint. So stop lying – “private” insurance is not the problem OR the solution.
Meanwhile, GOVERNMENT meddling in and corruption of the health care market has been the demonstrable source of all health care woes experienced by Americans these past 50 years. Your solution: more GOVERNMENT meddling, which is the most irrational “solution” imaginable. That kind of nonsense only flies with the terminally brain-dead useful idiots and brainwashed socialists such as yourself, Zippy.
- There is no way the UK or Canada would trade their systems for the mess that we have in the USA.
LOL!!! In case you hadn’t noticed, Zippy, no one is asking them to. They’ll figure things out for themselves at some point or go broke trying. At this point smart money is on the latter. Meanwhile, if you’re so eager for the yoke imposed by a socialist structure like the UK’s, I heartily suggest you go live there. Better hurry though. Pretty soon the UK will be charging a “co-pay” (*wink-wink*) and health care there won’t be “free” anymore (*wink-wink*).
- … even well-cited, peer-reviewed research is rejected with no explanation …
You haven’t provided any research, peer-reviewed or otherwise. THAT is the explanation. Meanwhile, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees have stated outright that Medicare is insolvent, that it must take Taxpayers’ money from the general fund (without their express consent) and that it won’t be able to maintain operations for long without deficit spending. You can’t even recognize that, let alone acknowledge what it means, can you Zippy. No, you can’t. Your socialist brainwashing won’t allow it.
– … universal coverage is typical in the industrialized world.
“Coverage” is not health care, Zippy.
You can forget this David S. He is a hopeless case. You can tell him a thousand times that the typical universal coverage in the industrialized world of Nanny States is universally bankrupt. He has to ignore it, because it does not fit in his belief system. State run public health care is collapsing worldwide. Here in Germany one Hospital after the next gets privatized because the government cannot run them efficiently. And this is just one in a myriad of examples. The collapse goes step by step. Less service for more money. This is the direction every state run business is heading. And this is the direction of bankruptcy. But the DavidS of this world live in a fantasy world because they belong to the Millennial Generation morons who according to the standardized narcissistic personality inventory belong to the most narcissistic people who ever lived on the face of the planet. They just take the wealth they were born in for granted without any understanding of how it was created. Now 52.4 percent of them are unemployed and they learn the hard way that they are not that special they thought to be.
Group comprehensive health care insurance is the (biggest) problem. I’ve made that abundantly clear here and elsewhere numerous times. It doesn’t matter if it’s private or not, and I’ve made that abundantly clear here and elsewhere as well.
I will vouch for that. You have definitely made that case consistently.
@169. Thomas Fink: – But the DavidS of this world live in a fantasy world because they belong to the Millennial Generation morons who according to the standardized narcissistic personality inventory belong to the most narcissistic people who ever lived on the face of the planet.
That’s quite interesting Thomas. I wonder if this might help explain why self-described “liberals” (actually leftists) consciously choose and incomplete, adolescent morality over a more comprehensive, holistic and mature basis for their ideology.
@171. goy:
That’s quite interesting Thomas. I wonder if this might help explain why self-described “liberals” (actually leftists) consciously choose and incomplete, adolescent morality over a more comprehensive, holistic and mature basis for their ideology.
Still pushing this tired line as well, I see. So, not only are you unable to admit that universal health care is common and successful throughout the industrialized world, despite the overwhelming evidence – you also consider yourself morally mature because you subscribe to a tribalist world view, which makes you unable to comprehend the common threads that bind humanity.
Your whole “moral adolescence” shtick is pretty funny, really, because it demonstrates clearly that you have no grasp of the real world you inhabit. It’s been fun, goy, but you are honestly just an embarrassment to yourself and those who support you here.
You shared your scores on the morality survey, and they demonstrate that you are devoted to the authoritarian ethic above all others. There is nothing mature or holistic about it – your so-called “comprehensive” moral intuition is in reality an insular, tribal morality that most intelligent persons have outgrown.
But you can keep pretending that your private moral intuitions are universally valid and applicable – reality is no concern of yours, anyway.
Peace.
DS
@172. David S: – Still pushing this…
Only because it scares you and it’s fun watching your apoplectic, fact-free reactions… like the one above. You’re like a well-trained lab rat. I post, you jump.
- It’s been fun …
You have no idea.
- … you are devoted to the authoritarian ethic …
Still haven’t realized that authority and authoritarian are two different things, eh? A successful education would have provided you with an understanding of the difference. Your 6 years of unsuccessful education left you unable to see it, even when it’s pointed out to you.
Go live in Europe, Zippy. Really. I hear flights are cheap, With the EU(SSR) now fully ratified, your socialist Utopia can’t be far behind over there. It’ll be a dream come true.
“Go live in Europe, Zippy.”
Oh no, please, we have enough welfare lefties here already. They “fight the authoritarian system” which gives them a paycheck every month. Which is one of the reasons we go bankrupt and I am forced to pay for everyone of my employees healthcare and other state services almost the same amount they get as salary. It is absurd. It gets more to pay every year. It is reality. But obviously not the parallel universe the lefties live in. During the last elections the left party in Germany sticked posters with the slogan: “wealth for everyone!”. But they also sticked posters with the slogan: “tax wealth!”. Sometimes you could see posters with the two slogans hanging together. And they also hang in DavidS mind alongside each other. And that he calls reality. It is absurd. But thats reality.
goy: good link about Adolescent Morality
148. Thomas Fink:
“After some years more of “fixing” even trolls like you will become History.”
Yes, fink.
155. “Like the other trolls you are posting in an obsessive manner anti conservative statements on a conservative website. This is what Trolls do.”
Who said this is a private club?
“Trolls” are the beacons of light in the mud of ignorance and bias. I said it first, so forget your obsessive manner to plagiarize this gem.
174. Thomas Fink:
““Go live in Europe, Zippy.”
Oh no, please, we have enough welfare lefties here already.”
No wonder you say the things you say. Living in Europe. You feel like a misfit, but don’t understand that the socialism of Europe is not the same as the American socialism, even if it ever gets implemented here. Europeans have their own countries and cultures, Americans have one country and diversity. Two very different things.
Whatever you say vivo you beacon of light shine bright when the morning dawns in the new world of diversity and brotherly love. Love and peace.
@174. Thomas Fink: – During the last elections the left party in Germany sticked posters with the slogan: “wealth for everyone!”. But they also sticked posters with the slogan: “tax wealth!”. Sometimes you could see posters with the two slogans hanging together. And they also hang in DavidS mind alongside each other. And that he calls reality. It is absurd.
Heh. Excellent observation. No one can accuse Orwell of having invented doublethink in a vacuum, eh?
@174. Thomas Fink:
During the last elections the left party in Germany sticked posters with the slogan: “wealth for everyone!”. But they also sticked posters with the slogan: “tax wealth!”. Sometimes you could see posters with the two slogans hanging together. And they also hang in DavidS mind alongside each other. And that he calls reality. It is absurd.
The two slogans go hand in hand. Wealth for everyone depends on progressive taxation. It would be more absurd to see the right advocating for what it actually wants: “Wealth for the wealthy!” and “I got mine, keep your hands off!” along with “tax the poor!”
You make me snicker.
Peace.
DS
178: “Wealth for everyone depends on progressive taxation”
says the thief. Punk you. Reminds me on a tv discussion when the moderator told Obama two times that above a certain level of taxation the actual tax revenue declines not rises. Obama ignored that statement two times in a manner that it was clear that he was not even understanding it. That was the moment I knew this guy is nuts. Like you. You have not the slightest clue how wealth is created. But you have many ideas how to participate from the wealth others create. Punk you again. Poverty for all, this is what you get. But you will not get it. You, your country will get a taste of it. But then people will realize whats going on and thieves like you will not have the bright future you think you deserve.
@178. Zippy – The two slogans go hand in hand.
LOL! Yeah – in your mind. That was exactly Thomas’ point. What’s gotten into you that you’re so agreeable lately?
- Wealth for everyone depends on progressive taxation.
Wrong, Zippy. As usual. Relative mediocrity for everyone depends on progressive taxation, because that’s exactly what it produces.
Wealth depends on prosperity. Wealth for everyone depends on pervasive prosperity. And by exploiting the immutable Darwinian human trait of self-interest, capitalism is the only economic system that has ever led to anything remotely resembling pervasive prosperity. This would explain why the number one nutrition-related health problem among the “poor” is obesity.
So-called “progressive” taxation can never produce wealth. What it does in reality is to disproportionately penalize success, diverting enormous sums into wasteful, corrupt governance and suppressing prosperity as it does so, thereby reducing wealth overall. Dividing up what’s left so as to curry favor with the unfortunate and the indolent doesn’t guarantee wealth for anyone.
- It would be more absurd to see the right advocating for what it actually wants: “Wealth for the wealthy!” and “I got mine, keep your hands off!” along with “tax the poor!”. You make me snicker.
You make yourself snicker. That is, your self-induced delusions and subsequent, passive-aggressive pronouncements about “the right” make you snicker.
“The right” is a meaningless appellation, Zippy, just like all of your vapid generalizations. Classical liberals, libertarians and self-described “conservatives” are characteristically proponents of individual freedom AND individual responsibility.
There’s so very MUCH you need to learn, but here – we’ll put this in terms you have a chance of understanding: individual responsibility means that once you’re no longer being clothed, fed, sheltered and educated (unsuccessfully, in your case) by your parents, you’re responsible for your own means of support. Individual responsibility means you don’t get to replace the parental benefits of adolescence with identical benefits from the State. That’s neither your right nor your privilege in this Constitutional Republic. And the act of simply being born into a society doesn’t guarantee you a “share” of that society’s collective wealth either, regardless of what your college brainwashing led you to believe. It’s not “collective”. You have to earn it.
When less than half the population is paying income taxes to support the entire nation, you will automatically have conflict that leads to a non-sustainable society. Government thrives on this conflict because its primary inclination is always to seek more power over the governed. Conflict provides the excuses – the “crises” – needed to justify increasing restrictions on individual liberty, increasing seizure of the People’s wealth, ultimately leading to rule over the People the way a king rules his subjects… the way a parent rules a child. You and your morally adolescent ilk gravitate to this arrangement because, simply put, you never grew up to achieve individual responsibility. You’re still clinging to an immature, incomplete morality with notions of “right” and “wrong” that are driven by childhood narcissism – not by reason or an understanding of human nature or an ability to think things through.
So none of that has anything to do with “wealth for the wealthy” or “tax the poor”. Those are YOUR childlike illusions and intentional internal misrepresentations.
Individual liberty has no meaning or value without the concept of private property, Zippy; without that, the power of the State is absolute and any notion of liberty is an illusion. Again, to bring it down to the level of your understanding, without the notion of private property, the State is free to confiscate all of your instruments and equipment and give it to someone with more talent and more “need” – based on the State’s criteria for making such judgments.
Likewise, private property has no meaning or value if the State can simply take that part of it that it wishes from one person and use it to curry favor by acting as supporting parent to someone else. Yet that is exactly what so-called “progressive” taxation does. This is what so-called “progressives” do, generally. That’s all socialism does, which is no surprise, since it was made popular by two morally adolescent, professional “community organizers”, neither of whom ever held a real job or created any wealth throughout their entire lifetime – just like our current President, oddly enough.
The Democrat Party – and, lately, the U.S. federal government in general – has excelled at this scam, suppressing pervasive prosperity by penalizing success through punitive taxation on the one hand, and preaching “wealth for everyone” to curry popular support on the other. It’s like the monumental insanity of using an insurance policy to pay for the equivalent of milk, eggs and butter: the most brazen lie of all time. The lie is so outrageous that few have the presence of mind to recognize it, or the courage, once they do, to call them on it.
And it’s not so much the “poor”, but the useful idiots like you who keep on falling for and allowing corrupt politicians to perpetuate this lie, Zippy. This is because you have no aspiration other than to “be Marx” – right down to the drinking club fixation. Psychologically, now that you have your useless degree(s), you want to be supported, clothed and cared for by an ersatz Mutti und Vati while you play video games, drink beer and play in a garage band. And your disproportionate obsession with “fairness” demands that everyone else have the same equal benefit.
@180. goy:
What’s gotten into you that you’re so agreeable lately?
I’ve been pondering that PJM is the best agit-prop outlet the Democrats could ask for. By providing a forum for the more reactionary elements of the conservative movement, it makes the GOP look completely loony – and the Democrats look that much better by comparison. Keep up the good work.
Relative mediocrity for everyone depends on progressive taxation, because that’s exactly what it produces.
Relative mediocrity sounds a lot better than what we have now – unless you happen to be wealthy.
Wealth depends on prosperity. Wealth for everyone depends on pervasive prosperity.
Pervasive prosperity does not emerge naturally from the free market, goy. Without the framework of laws and taxation built by progressives during the last century, there never would have been the massive improvement in living conditions for average Americans that we saw. It was the self-interest of political actors and unions that made this prosperity pervasive – not the market. You forget that self-interested actors are not merely economic actors – humans have other interests as well. Your comment on the obesity of the poor reveals your ignorance of the causes of obesity in this country, and the quality of food available to the impoverished underclass in the USA.
So-called “progressive” taxation can never produce wealth. What it does in reality is to disproportionately penalize success, diverting enormous sums into wasteful, corrupt governance and suppressing prosperity as it does so, thereby reducing wealth overall.
Over the course of the 20th century, the greatest increases in GDP accompanied the highest rates of marginal taxation. These also are the periods of the broadest improvements in prosperity, and decreasing concentration of wealth. Rather than penalizing success, progressive taxation prevents disproportionate rewards from accruing to the richest. Without progressive taxation, the disparity in wealth in the USA would be much worse. You have no evidence to offer that progressive taxation reduces prosperity. In fact, the opposite is true – progressive taxation results in increased prosperity.
Dividing up what’s left so as to curry favor with the unfortunate and the indolent doesn’t guarantee wealth for anyone.
This isn’t about currying favor. It’s about social justice – something which you apparently don’t value.
“The right” is a meaningless appellation, Zippy, just like all of your vapid generalizations. Classical liberals, libertarians and self-described “conservatives” are characteristically proponents of individual freedom AND individual responsibility.
I believe that individual responsibility includes paying your fair share of taxes. You have the individual freedom to not pay taxes if you don’t want to. In case you didn’t notice, we are a Republic, and we have common interests which we all share – we are not a libertarian utopia.
When less than half the population is paying income taxes to support the entire nation, you will automatically have conflict that leads to a non-sustainable society.
You really are a dense one. Of course less than half the population is paying income taxes – the massive tax cuts and continual erosion of wages since Reagan was elected have led to the most uneven income distribution in the history of the Republic. If you want folks at the bottom to pay income taxes, you need to improve their incomes. A sustainable society does not encourage the accumulation of wealth by the top 1% of income earners at the expense of all other citizens.
So none of that has anything to do with “wealth for the wealthy” or “tax the poor”. Those are YOUR childlike illusions and intentional internal misrepresentations.
So you say. Except you are defending wealth for the wealthy, and grumbling that the poor don’t pay taxes. That’s your infantile economic perspective.
Individual liberty has no meaning or value without the concept of private property, Zippy; without that, the power of the State is absolute and any notion of liberty is an illusion.
I’m not advocating the abolition of private property here. Just a rational tax system that encourages pervasive prosperity, rather than the skewed system currently impoverishing the poorest Americans.
Again, to bring it down to the level of your understanding, without the notion of private property, the State is free to confiscate all of your instruments and equipment and give it to someone with more talent and more “need” – based on the State’s criteria for making such judgments.
Progressive taxation is what I am advocating. Should I make millions playing music (doubtful), I will gladly pay my share of taxes. I’m not advocating the seizure of private property – just the rational taxation of income. I’m not a statist, despite your attempts to paint me as one. I’m more aligned with libertarian socialism.
Likewise, private property has no meaning or value if the State can simply take that part of it that it wishes from one person and use it to curry favor by acting as supporting parent to someone else. Yet that is exactly what so-called “progressive” taxation does.
No, progressive taxation simply mandates that persons who wish to collect a very large income need to give a proportionally large share of their income to the common good. It is a well established means to finance the functions of the modern state, which secure the liberty and freedom that make such wealth generation possible.
I’m not a big fan of Marx – I think his advocacy for authoritarianism was bad for socialism, and bad for humanity. Socialism on a libertarian model is more my style. I’m a Bakunin fan more than a Marx supporter. I will admit a fondness for the occasional beer – but calling my beer blog evidence of a “drinking club fixation” is stretching the truth, and also an ad hominem.
What you call my “disproportionate obsession with fairness” is one of the basic principles upon which this country was founded. I don’t demand that all receive equal benefits – just that those who reap a disproportionate share of wealth should not be allowed to accumulate this wealth to the detriment of society. The excessive concentration of economic power in the hands of private individuals is a recipe for disaster, as you yourself have acknowledged here. The state is not sustainable when it permits such a distribution of resources.
You keep trying to characterize me as an extremist by misrepresenting my position – all I am advocating is a rational tax policy based on the best available scientific evidence, for the purpose of ensuring pervasive prosperity. If there were evidence that eliminating progressive taxation could accomplish this, I would support it – but the evidence is clear. Progressive taxation is the best way to make prosperity ubiquitous.
Peace.
DS
@181. David S: – Relative mediocrity sounds a lot better than what we have now…
You really do need to get out more.
As far as that statement goes, you are completely and absolutely full of sh!t, Zippy. You obviously suffer from something similar to anorexia nervosa, where no matter how low one’s body weight goes, s/he still sees a fat pig in the mirror. In your case, as long as one truly wealthy person remains, you’ll be suffering from the self-imposed delusion that the nation is ‘broken’, and that mediocrity is preferable to pervasive prosperity. Simply put, because mediocrity is obviously all that you aspire to, you clearly think it should be good enough for everyone else.
- Pervasive prosperity does not emerge naturally from the free market, …
Of course it does. It can’t possibly emerge from anywhere else. True, pervasive prosperity requires that the laws of economics be allowed to operate without artificial, politicized distortion. That’s why the laws and taxation built by so-called “progressives” during the last century have stifled growth and transformed America from a world leader into a world apologizer. As the U.S. has become more socialist it’s also become more disliked and feared abroad, more conflicted within, fatter, lazier, more corrupt, less innovative, more petty, less tolerant, poorer, deeper in debt and less secure geopolitically. All of that can be placed squarely at the feet of creeping socialism, punitive taxation and corruption of the free market, which have proceeded apace with each new Congress and each new administration since Woodrow Wilson.
- Over the course of the 20th century, the greatest increases in GDP accompanied the highest rates of marginal taxation.
All were preceded by periods of relatively lesser taxation, by definition. During those periods the engine of the economy revved. Every reduction in taxes has been followed by a boom – 1997 was a perfect example.
But of course the boom cycles are the times during which feckless politicos take advantage of the rise in productivity to raise marginal tax rates and rob the economy of the real surplus. The period of 2001-2006 is the one exception. That period of slow, steady growth was NOT accompanied by increased taxation (although the taxes paid by the so-called “rich” increased during that time), yet it paradoxically resulted in all-time record federal tax revenue that exceeded any previous period of increased taxation. It also led to a clear trend toward a balanced budget which would have occurred around mid-2008. But then the economically destructive policies of the Democrats came back to town in the form of the 2006 election. Since then we have seen decreased growth followed by economic decline, punctuated by a virtual meltdown that was caused by “central planning” money market manipulation and social engineering aimed at artificially increasing the property of those who did not earn it.
- This isn’t about currying favor.
Again, you really need to grow up and get out more. Politicians don’t get elected by promoting justice, they get elected by currying favor: handing out entitlements and telling people what they’re going to do for them.
- I believe that individual responsibility includes paying your fair share of taxes.
And of course you and your ilk get to determine what’s “fair” based on some arbitrary scheme that ultimately suppresses prosperity and leads to universal mediocrity. No thanks, Zippy. A fair tax would include tax contributions, however small, from the greater than 50% of the population that presently pays no income tax whatsoever – many of whom are handed federal welfare in the form of “tax credits” comprised of someone else’s money.
- If you want folks at the bottom to pay income taxes, you need to improve their incomes.
Baloney. They’re enjoying the benefits provided by the State – they should contribute their fair share to pay for those benefits. A flat tax – or better yet, a federal sales tax that is based on what one consumes – is far more fair than the punitive taxation we have now, which only punishes success and reduces prosperity for everyone.
Improving people’s income requires the creation of more and better jobs, you idiot. The federal government can’t do this (e.g., with “stimulus”) because it has to steal money from the Taxpayers to do it, giving them nothing of value in return. Every case where this has been tried in history has been a failure. The only way to create more and better jobs is to leverage humanity’s immutable Darwinian nature by allowing the creation of jobs to serve the interests of those who create them. You don’t do that by punitively taxing someone MORE when they provide a benefit to society in the form of offering people a job. This is the concept your adolescent morality refuses to recognize.
- …you are defending wealth for the wealthy…
Liar. I’m defending wealth for those who’ve earned it or inherited it. You, on the other hand, despise, disparage and attack the wealthy merely for their “sin” of being wealthy. You’re pathetic.
- … and grumbling that the poor don’t pay taxes.
Liar. I observe that over half the country isn’t pulling their own weight as far as income taxes are concerned. They are getting a completely free ride. I observe that many of those receive money that I earned – money no one has the authority to take from me and give to someone else merely because they’re breathing and taking up space. That’s not me contributing my “fair share”, Zippy. That’s me being robbed and the proceeds being handed to someone else who didn’t even have to risk going to jail for larceny in the process. And it all benefits the political elite who promised that person a share of my property in return for their vote.
- I’m not advocating the abolition of private property here.
Bullsh!t. Private property is either property or it isn’t. If the State can simply readjust the tax laws any time they want to funnel more money through the Treasury for their own benefit – like with Medicare and socialized medicine, for instance – then there is no such thing as property because all property becomes subject to confiscation at the State’s legislative whim. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, Zippy. Property is either property or it’s not. With so-called “progressive” taxation, it’s not.
- Progressive taxation is what I am advocating.
Well then Congratulations! You already have that. In spades. And you’ve had it for decades. Now you can take responsibility for it, because here’s your biggest problem: in all that time, “progressive” taxation has not created wealth for everyone. On the contrary, according to you, and your first bullsh!t statement up above, progressive taxation has given us a situation that is so exceedingly “bad” that “relative mediocrity” would be better. This is just one example among many of your own pathetically inconsistent, hypocritical and self-contradictory view on all this. An intelligent, successfully educated person would learn from that. But you will seek to rationalize it.
- I’m not advocating the seizure of private property …
Of course you are, you dolt. The money I earn and the money in my bank account is my private property. Disproportionate, punitive taxation enforced through the seizure of that money is, by definition, seizure of private property. There’s no way around that one, Zippy. The money’s either mine to do with as I wish, because I earned it, or it belongs to some idiotic and undefinable notion of “the common good” and I’m just holding onto it temporarily. You need to pick one, because there’s no third option there.
You have this absurd notion that someone who earns “more” owes more. But the fact is that someone who earns more isn’t getting any greater benefit from the State than anyone else. The State doesn’t protect them MORE, geopolitically, because they earn more. The State doesn’t give them better roads because they earn more. Everything they get that’s “better” than someone else’s, not only doesn’t come from the State, but they PAY FOR IT out of the money they’ve earned. So there’s no rational logic available to support your stupid idea here. Someone will always have “more”, there’s no way to avoid it. You’re pushing for unreal perfection that has never existed and will never exist – human nature simply will not allow it, and you can’t change human nature with a few slogans and labor strike or two.
- I’m not a statist, …
Of course you are. Everything about you screams more control by the State. You want State-controlled health care. You want State-mandated limits on earnings and/or concomitant State-controlled seizure of private property based on one’s earning level. Again, you have to take responsibility for this: when the State controls your health and your property, that’s the whole ballgame, dipsh!t. That is the very definition of an all-powerful, omnipotent State. As such, you’re not merely a statist. Like it or not, you are in fact a proponent of far-left totalitarianism.
- No, progressive taxation simply mandates that persons who wish to collect a very large income need to give a proportionally large share of their income to the common good.
According to whom? You have a bit of a God Complex here, Zippy. You’re just not qualified to make decisions like this. And no one should be expected to trust you to make them fairly even if you were, because that statement is no different from the communist B.S. preached as “from each according to his gifts…”, which is the basis of the most socially suicidal of all ideologies.
The act of working hard to earn more and, in the process, providing jobs and prosperity to others DOES NOT automatically increase one’s debt to the “common good” (whatever that is, since it’s not defined anywhere). That’s why so-called “progressive” taxation is punitive. That’s why it discourages effort and reduces prosperity. For everyone. That’s why it makes no sense.
- I’m not a big fan of Marx …
Of course you are. Like Marx, you’re unsuccessfully over-educated and you’ve never actually had a real job or been involved in an enterprise that actually creates wealth. So you have absolutely no clue what it takes to do it or what it really means. As a result, you see anyone who has more than you as someone to be envied rather than emulated. You see that person’s wealth as something to be redistributed, not replicated. You want “your share” but you don’t want to do the work to get it. Deny it all you like, but Marx’ idiotic, socially suicidal philosophy has been imprinted on your psyche to the point where you don’t even recognize it as such anymore. To everyone else it’s completely obvious.
- What you call my “disproportionate obsession with fairness” is one of the basic principles upon which this country was founded.
No. Fairness is one of the basic principles on which this country was founded. Redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation was not. The disproportionate obsession with “fairness” that your adolescent morality exhibits was rejected by the Founders completely.
- …those who reap a disproportionate share of wealth should not be allowed to accumulate this wealth to the detriment of society.
This is hilarious. You’re the one who lies about ME being “authoritarian”? WTF? Allowed by whom?? Do you have any idea how completely statist, narcissistic and authoritarian that statement is?
Earning great wealth is no “detriment” to society, Zippy. It’s exactly the opposite. When a businessperson or entrepreneur builds a business that generates wealth, s/he provides jobs and needed/desired services and/or products to others. It’s absolutely no concern of yours how they’re compensated for their efforts in the process – it’s none of your frakking business. You are truly insane if you think the act of providing jobs poses some “detriment” to society. You’re also truly insane if you think the act of building a business places the person in a position of “owing more” to society – it’s just the opposite, you moron. You’re also truly insane if you think that person should receive the same compensation as the unsuccessfully educated, lazy schmuck sitting at his computer in his little co-op apartment swilling beer and playing video games until it’s time for the evening’s gig at the local bar. Trust me on this one: Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Here’s where you’re completely off-the-rails delusional, and it’s obviously because you are utterly and pathetically ignorant of how wealth is created in the first place. People don’t “reap” a “share” OF wealth, as if there’s some big “pot” of wealth in Washington D.C. that gets handed out to the People. Wealth is generated out of imagination, creativity, talent, hard work, ingenuity and a willingness to take on risk – all concepts with which you are obviously completely unfamiliar. As such, you see earning big bucks as taking something away from someone else. Until you grow out of that infantile, petty, envious ignorance, you will continue to idolize socially suicidal policies based on leftist ideology and fantasize that they benefit society, based on specious rationalization and plain old self-delusion.
- You keep trying to characterize me as an extremist by misrepresenting my position …
Your extremist, demonstrably totalitarian position speaks for itself, Zippy.
What comes up when bench drinking Bakunin is thinking about being wealthy? Yeah, becoming a celebrity, making “millions playing music”. Doubtful because he obviously is a loser and also kind of revealing. As I said:
The DavidS of this world live in a fantasy world because they belong to the Millennial Generation morons who according to the standardized narcissistic personality inventory belong to the most narcissistic people who ever lived on the face of the planet.
Here a good link to neoneocon about the implications of taxing the rich: http://neoneocon.com/2009/10/07/new-york-finds-out-that-gasp-taxing-the-rich-more-doesnt-pay/
@182. goy:
In your case, as long as one truly wealthy person remains, you’ll be suffering from the self-imposed delusion that the nation is ‘broken’, and that mediocrity is preferable to pervasive prosperity. Simply put, because mediocrity is obviously all that you aspire to, you clearly think it should be good enough for everyone else.
I think you missed the point. I never claimed that mediocrity is preferable to pervasive prosperity – just that it would be better than the pervasive poverty we have now. Taxing wealth does not eliminate the wealthy.
True, pervasive prosperity requires that the laws of economics be allowed to operate without artificial, politicized distortion.
There is no way to eliminate politics from the equation. Your theory is fatally flawed from the outset.
That’s why the laws and taxation built by so-called “progressives” during the last century have stifled growth and transformed America from a world leader into a world apologizer.
You are kidding, right? What the heck do you think transformed America from a backwater agrarian state into a world leader, if not the laws and taxation built by progressives? The only thing stifling growth has been the GOP obsession with cutting taxes and gutting regulations, which has led to predictable economic collapses. America’s power and prestige over the course of the century essentially mirrors our marginal tax rates.
As the U.S. has become more socialist it’s also become more disliked and feared abroad, more conflicted within, fatter, lazier, more corrupt, less innovative, more petty, less tolerant, poorer, deeper in debt and less secure geopolitically.
I think you conflate militaristic nationalism with socialism. It is the military-industrial complex, and associated wars, that have made us disliked and feared abroad, not our social welfare programs. We have grown poorer and deeper in debt because of GOP tax policies since Reagan, and less secure geopolitically because of his foreign adventures, and those of his successors. Your claim that we have grown less innovative is laughable, and your contention that we have grown less tolerant only applies to the far right – most Americans have grown more tolerant. You fail to make any kind of causal connection between the supposed rise of socialism and any of the complaints you have about the USA – and in fact most of these problems can be traced to the decline in social cohesion that accompanied the gutting of unions and the tax code.
All of that can be placed squarely at the feet of creeping socialism, punitive taxation and corruption of the free market, which have proceeded apace with each new Congress and each new administration since Woodrow Wilson.
Taxes have gone up and down throughout the century – and it is well established that higher taxes lead to higher growth, and sustainable economic improvement, while lower taxes lead to asset bubbles and massive government deficits.
Every reduction in taxes has been followed by a boom – 1997 was a perfect example.
Yes, it was. A perfect example of a temporary asset bubble, caused by foolish tax policy, much like the boom in 2003, that landed us in our current pickle. Or the boom and bust known as the Great Depression. All of these can be blamed on ill-advised tax cuts that generated asset bubbles. A boom is not what we need – we need sustained, predictable economic growth for pervasive prosperity to be possible.
But of course the boom cycles are the times during which feckless politicos take advantage of the rise in productivity to raise marginal tax rates and rob the economy of the real surplus. The period of 2001-2006 is the one exception.
Yes, and we can see how great that turned out. Cue your “blame the Democrats” meme… you can’t point to any Democratic policy that caused this crisis because it was clearly the GOP dominated government that built this bubble, as well as the massive deficits of the last thirty years. Face it – the GOP is not the party of fiscal responsibility it claims to be. Gutting the tax code and abandoning regulatory oversight always leads to economic disaster. This was the lesson Hoover supposedly taught to the GOP – I guess it’s a lesson that must be relearned periodically.
Politicians don’t get elected by promoting justice, they get elected by currying favor: handing out entitlements and telling people what they’re going to do for them.
I’d much rather have the government handing out health care to sick people than sending troops halfway around the world to kill people. Handing out entitlements to the people is one thing – handing no-bid contracts to corporate cronies, and engaging in a war based on false premises are entirely worse. Promoting social justice is what the former amounts to – promoting social injustice is what the latter amounts to. The government has a mandate for the former, but not for the latter.
A fair tax would include tax contributions, however small, from the greater than 50% of the population that presently pays no income tax whatsoever – many of whom are handed federal welfare in the form of “tax credits” comprised of someone else’s money.
Don’t you get it? Poor people pay income tax indirectly by buying products, and already pay payroll tax on their income. A fair tax would mean extending payroll taxes to all earned income, including capital gains. Your focus on income taxes is intellectually bankrupt, because it ignores the payroll tax.
They’re enjoying the benefits provided by the State – they should contribute their fair share to pay for those benefits.
I get it. You want to be the one to decide what is fair. The problem you have is not with taxes – it is with other people having a say in the government, when you would prefer to be the “decider”. How will you determine the fair share?
A flat tax – or better yet, a federal sales tax that is based on what one consumes – is far more fair than the punitive taxation we have now, which only punishes success and reduces prosperity for everyone.
In case you didn’t notice, the payroll tax would be a flat tax if the income cap was removed. You have provided no basis for your assertion that a tax on consumption would be more fair than a tax on income – and clearly, it would not, because you would tax the poor who consume all their income, while the rich would enjoy the benefits of reduced taxation.
You also confuse income tax with a tax on offering people a job. A proprietor who elects to hire more workers, and take a smaller income, is rewarded with lower taxes. A proprietor who prefers to enrich himself, rather than hire workers, will pay a higher rate. An owner collecting a massive income does not automatically create jobs.
- …you are defending wealth for the wealthy…
Liar. I’m defending wealth for those who’ve earned it or inherited it. You, on the other hand, despise, disparage and attack the wealthy merely for their “sin” of being wealthy. You’re pathetic.
How is it that defending inherited wealth is not defending wealth for the wealthy? You would have the tax code rewritten to punish the poor and reward the rich, and provide tax relief to the richest among us while demanding more income from the most impoverished Americans. There is no lie here. You are defending wealth for the wealthy. I don’t despise, disparage or attack the wealthy – I just think they should pay a higher tax rate than the guy who collects my trash.
- … and grumbling that the poor don’t pay taxes.
Liar. I observe that over half the country isn’t pulling their own weight as far as income taxes are concerned.
That’s right. You object if anyone other than yourself gets input into what is fair. How egalitarian. Perhaps you would divide the tax burden up equally for all, regardless of ability to pay? Is that your idea of fairness?
- I’m not advocating the abolition of private property here.
Bullsh!t. Private property is either property or it isn’t.
In case you didn’t notice, I was talking about income, not property. There happens to be an amendment to our Constitution making the distinction clear, in case you are having trouble understanding.
If the State can simply readjust the tax laws any time they want to funnel more money through the Treasury for their own benefit – like with Medicare and socialized medicine, for instance – then there is no such thing as property because all property becomes subject to confiscation at the State’s legislative whim. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, Zippy. Property is either property or it’s not. With so-called “progressive” taxation, it’s not.
By your logic, any taxation at all poisons the well and makes private property a joke. You are advocating a position so radical, there is no need for me to even address it. The fact is that tax laws are enacted according to our Constitution, and limited by the rights enshrined there. Property is property, but there are limits to the rights of all property owners. You may think there should not be, but there are.
- Progressive taxation is what I am advocating.
Well then Congratulations! You already have that. In spades. And you’ve had it for decades. Now you can take responsibility for it, because here’s your biggest problem: in all that time, “progressive” taxation has not created wealth for everyone.
Except that the tax code has been growing more regressive for decades. Progressive taxation led to the relative prosperity of mid-century America, but these gains have been reversed by the tax cutting, deficit spending GOP. The situation has been deteriorating under conservative leadership. Relative mediocrity would be much better than the concentration of wealth that has been substituted for progressive tax policy.
- I’m not advocating the seizure of private property …
. The money’s either mine to do with as I wish, because I earned it, or it belongs to some idiotic and undefinable notion of “the common good” and I’m just holding onto it temporarily. You need to pick one, because there’s no third option there.
The third option is called taxation. The money you earn is yours to do with as you wish, but if you earn enough to be subject to taxes, you owe them. If you don’t want to pay taxes, don’t have a taxable income. Property rights are not absolute.
You have this absurd notion that someone who earns “more” owes more.
Why is this absurd? Someone who earns more is by definition getting a greater benefit from the State than his fellows. The State protects MORE property for this individual, because they earn more – that is a greater benefit. The rational logic is so clear and simple, you must have missed it.
Someone will always have “more”, there’s no way to avoid it. You’re pushing for unreal perfection that has never existed and will never exist – human nature simply will not allow it, and you can’t change human nature with a few slogans and labor strike or two.
I expect that someone will always have “more” – the point is that there are different degrees of disparity in income, and policies of the government will determine whether the situation improves or worsens. The policies you advocate would make this problem worse. I’m not pushing for unreal perfection – I’m pushing for higher marginal tax rates, like the USA had during our more prosperous years.
- No, progressive taxation simply mandates that persons who wish to collect a very large income need to give a proportionally large share of their income to the common good.
According to whom? You have a bit of a God Complex here, Zippy. You’re just not qualified to make decisions like this.
According to scientific evidence, as I’ve made clear before. You claim to know what’s fair intuitively – I’d rather pursue a tax policy based on evidence.
I’ve got nothing against business owners who provide jobs, products and services to others – and they are welcome to compensate themselves as they see fit, so long as they are willing to pay taxes on that income. It’s not the providing jobs or building a business that is the detriment to society – it’s the disproportionate economic and political power that accumulates when tax policies favor the rich. I don’t claim they should receive the same compensation as you or I – simply that they should pay progressive taxes proportional to the income they collect. I don’t see earning big bucks as taking something away from someone else – but I think earning big bucks comes with a responsibility to contribute to the general welfare. Intelligent rich people agree. It’s only greedy, hopeless cases like yourself that can’t see the value in progressive tax policies.
Peace.
DS
@185. David S: – I never claimed that mediocrity is preferable to pervasive prosperity – just that it would be better than the pervasive poverty we have now.
Which illustrates my observation perfectly. We don’t HAVE pervasive poverty. You don’t even have the slightest clue what real poverty is.
Zippy, you’ve just proved once again that you’re not a serious person. Rather, you’ve demonstrated, by your own statements, that you’re a nattering, willfully obtuse, leftist imbecile. To wit…
You are an admitted proponent of totalitarianism: you want to give the State singular control over the nation’s health care and you want to give the State unlimited power to impose punitive taxation, which together puts the State in an omnipotent position. That is as radical, extremist, far-left as it gets.
You refuse to recognize that people need to be responsible for themselves rather than expect others to support them. You also refuse to recognize that everyone who derives from benefit from society must contribute something in return. Clearly, for someone obsessed with “fairness”, you haven’t the slightest clue what it means.
You believe we should base taxation on socially suicidal, overtly communist dogma, i.e., “persons who wish to collect a very large income need to give a proportionally large share of their income to the common good”. Pretend differently all you like, but this is simply your weasel-worded version of “from each according to his gifts”.
You deceitfully hide behind “tax codes” while ignoring the fact that higher earners are paying a higher percentage of all taxes paid than they were 8 years ago. In fact, as of 2007 the top 10% of earners paid OVER 70% OF ALL TAXES PAID. That’s not a sustainable arrangement, Zippy. How much MORE unbalanced do you expect to be able to make this arrangement? How long are you going to blindly ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Your claim that punitive taxation creates wealth for everyone is a absurd on its face. We’ve had DECADES of it – some years less, some years more, but ALWAYS “progressive”. Your claim is bullsh!t. It hasn’t created wealth for everyone. And your specious rationalization won’t save you from looking like a moron here. With over half the population paying no income taxes WHATSOEVER, your stupid assertion still isn’t panning out. In fact, according to you, things are about as bad as they could possibly be. The kicker is that you keep chattering in an attempt to deny this.
You casually lie while trying convince yourself that you know what you’re talking about regarding a subject on which you are patently clueless. Then, when called on your lies, you try to rationalize them.
You demonstrate that haven’t the slightest clue how wealth is generated, as demonstrated by your infantile fantasy that people “reap” a “share” of it. You seem to think that wealth derives from the State, and that people who work harder and earn more are somehow protected more by the State than others because of this. That is self-delusion so severe that one wonders how you manage to function at all, saddled with such risible fantasies.
You’re a sad, contemptible, pathetic fraud, Zippy. Own it.
@186. goy:
We don’t HAVE pervasive poverty. You don’t even have the slightest clue what real poverty is.
Yes, we do have pervasive and worsening poverty.
Maybe you didn’t notice that your neighbors are starving? Preoccupied calculating your tax burden?
I have advocated for public health care – you claim that I have advocated for the elimination of private care, which is simply a lie. I have not. You also claim I want to give the State unlimited power to tax – but I was quite clear about my thoughts on taxation, and my support for the Republican form of government that we currently enjoy, which naturally prevents the kind of omnipotent state that you fear. Progressive taxation is not unlimited taxation.
You … refuse to recognize that everyone who derives from benefit from society must contribute something in return. Clearly, for someone obsessed with “fairness”, you haven’t the slightest clue what it means.
Um. Did you read what I wrote? My position is that everyone who derives a benefit from society should contribute in proportion to the benefit they receive. People who are barely able to feed themselves are not in a position to contribute financially – and no fair system would require them to do so. On the other hand, people who have earned great wealth have derived a benefit from the society that gives them the means to contribute financially – and a fair system recognizes this and taxes them appropriately.
I’m not advocating a 100% tax rate on all incomes, which seems to be your fear. Maybe you simply don’t understand the nature of progressive taxation?
You deceitfully hide behind “tax codes” while ignoring the fact that higher earners are paying a higher percentage of all taxes paid than they were 8 years ago.
You can’t claim that I ignore this fact. It is easily explained by the fact that higher earners are taking home a higher percentage of all income than they were eight years ado. Of course their share of taxes has gone up.
In fact, as of 2007 the top 10% of earners paid OVER 70% OF ALL TAXES PAID. That’s not a sustainable arrangement, Zippy.
The top 10% of earners had OVER 48% OF ALL AGI REPORTED. Exactly what I have been trying to explain. Progressive taxation, over time, helps to reverse the concentration of wealth that causes this unfortunate situation. How can you be surprised when 10% of earners take home half of all income, that they pay more than half the taxes?
How much MORE unbalanced do you expect to be able to make this arrangement? How long are you going to blindly ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences?
I’ve been pointing you toward the solution to this problem all along here. The way to remedy this situation is by making income distribution more equitable – not making the tax code more favorable to the rich, who already collect most of the income.
Your claim that punitive taxation creates wealth for everyone is a absurd on its face. We’ve had DECADES of it – some years less, some years more, but ALWAYS “progressive”.
Actually, throughout the 50′s and 60′s, income distribution became more equitable, due to tax rates that were extremely progressive. The reduction in tax rates that followed has been driving the income inequality that has resulted in the situation you are complaining about. Talk about ignoring the Law of Unintended Consequences! What did you think would happen when tax rates were reduced on the rich? More charity? No – they just get more rich. Wealth for the wealthy.
You casually lie while trying convince yourself that you know what you’re talking about regarding a subject on which you are patently clueless. Then, when called on your lies, you try to rationalize them.
Projection. Nice.
People who earn more income are, by definition, benefiting more from society (at least economically). There is nothing wrong with requiring a person who has earned more income to pay more taxes. It is not punitive – it is fundamentally fair. Not only is it fair, but progressive taxation also promotes the general welfare, which is one of the founding purposes of this fine Republic. Misrepresenting my position to reinforce your farcical take on the nature of poverty is mighty entertaining – but your arguments are hardly convincing.
Peace.
DS