It’s coming to crunch time for the centerpiece of Obama’s legislative agenda for his first year: nationalizing health care. Will he get away with it? Really, it’s up to us. America is still, even now, a sort of democracy, and our rulers in Washington still serve at our pleasure, notwithstanding the decades-long reign of the Byrds, Kennedys, Inyoues, Leahys, et al. Remember that. And if haven’t done so yet, consider joining ThrowTheBumsOut.org
But as the battle over who is to control another one-sixth of the U.S. economy — you or the bureaucrats in Washington — as this battle approaches its denouement, I’d like to offer a couple points for reflection.
For an overview of the entire debate, let me recommend Dr. David Gratzer’s “Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster,”
the first of a new series of Broadsides from Encounter Books.
The pamphlet has just rolled off the press and will be coming to a book emporium near you any day. It’s available for pre-order now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and will soon be in stores and available for download via Kindle and other electronic readers.
Also, please read John Hinderaker’s piece at Powerline.com on the report issued by Price-WaterhouseCoopers on what the health care bill currently being debated by the Senate would mean for you and your wallet. Bottom line: it would mean a lot of money.
As Hinderaker dryly observes, “PWC concluded that the cost of health insurance for the average family will rise by $4,000 by 2019, as compared with doing nothing.” He supplies this handy graphic to illustrate the point:
One of the most often repeated assertions from TeamObama about their proposed “reform” of health care has been that individuals would be able to keep their current health insurance if they so desired. But this, to employ Joe Wilson’s colorful characterization, is a lie. As Hinderaker shows, the Baucus plan before the Senate, combining a “weak mandate” to buy insurance with “a strong requirement on the insurance industry that it insure everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions or state of health,” would “devastate” the private insurance industry.
What is meant by a “weak mandate” is that, in the current version of the Baucus bill, there is no requirement to buy health insurance at all until after 2013, and by 2017 the penalty for failing to buy health insurance still amounts to only about 15% of the cost of the insurance. Now, think about it: if you know that you don’t have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do? Obviously, you would defer buying insurance unless and until you get sick. This means that the pool of those who are insured will be lower quality, and the cost therefore higher for everyone who buys insurance. It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you.
As Hinderaker observes, “This isn’t reform, it is stupidity.”
What, then, should the government do? In brief, it should get out of the way. Improving the delivery of health care, if that is what we care about, really isn’t that difficult. (I say “if” because the real goal is only incidentally concerned with health care: the real goal is extending government control over your life.) First, go after the trial lawyers: cap malpractice judgments and severely limit what lawyers can take away in fees. Second, let the market, i.e., let competition, work in the insurance industry. “It actually would be very easy to make health insurance cheaper,” Hinderaker points out.
All we have to do is allow insurance companies to compete nationally instead of state-by-state and eliminate all mandates that limit consumer choice. It has been estimated that these simple reforms — which are not part of any of the Democrats’ “reform” bills, for obvious reasons — would reduce health care costs by one-quarter to one-third. Instead of such common-sense reforms, the Dems are proposing Rube Goldberg measures that will make health care more expensive. Instead of eliminating mandates, their measures, including the Baucus bill, increase them — in effect making cheaper health insurance illegal.
Of course, all these details about the cost of insurance, who must do what for whom when and how much it will cost, is a bureaucratic spaghetti. The complication — what John Hinderaker aptly refers to as the “Rube Goldberg” aspect of the whole debate — is deliberate. It is meant to stun, confuse, obfuscate, and depress. Clobber the slobs with a miasma of conflicting proposals whose ultimate aim is lost in the mists of ill-defined mandates and sooner or later many people will throw up their hands in submission.
Before you do that, however, let Obama advisor Robert Reich tell you what’s really going to happen if ObamaCare becomes a reality (h/t Instapundit). The year is 2007. Reich tells an appreciative audience “What an Honest President Would Say about Health Care Reform.” Reich himself is not wholly candid, for he begins with the bizarre and dishonest observation that the U.S. health care system is the only one in the world designed to avoid caring for sick people. But leave that big lie to one side. Here’s what Obama’s advisor thinks is the “truth” about what needs to be done to improve U.S. health care.
–Young and healthy people will have to pay more;
–The old will be denied various drugs and technology: “we are,” Reich said to a round of applause, “going to let you die.”
–The government will pressure drug companies and the medical establishment to bring costs down, with the result that there would be less medical innovation and fewer new drugs in the future. Probably, you will not live longer than your parents as most generations in that past could reasonably have hoped to do: get used to it.
Think I am making it up? Listen to the master in his own words:
Brutal? Moderately. But this is the Age of Obama, the age of diminished expectations for Americans. Remember, Obama swept into office promising to “fundamentally transforming the United States of American.”
In only nine months, he’s done an amazing job. He has made us poorer, less secure, and less free. If his proposal to let the government gobble up health care goes through, it will be another step down the road Obama calls Hope and Change. I think Friedrich Hayek came closer to the truth when he called it The Road to Serfdom.
With the election of Obama along with a Democratic Congress dominated by the left wing of the Democratic Party, America has put a loaded gun into its collective mouth. We are in serious danger of making structural changes to our nation that can only be undone after the cataclysm that the changes will surely provoke, but the cost will be America’s prosperity, security and global leadership, which will almost certainly vanish. For the sake of all that is good and right, we need to stop these people, and we need to stop them now.
It has been fascinating to watch the proponents of this debacle continue to shift the debate on why we need to do this. First it was health care reform so that everyone could have unlimited, high quality health care at the lowest possible cost. And only government could do this. Than it became the need to rein in the evil health insurers who were charging high prices, rejecting claims and denying coverage to the needy and making obscene profits. Now it is those same insurance companies who we will be forcing people to buy from because the real problem is that the young people in this country are not paying for the health care needs of others. While there are real families out there who are struggling with the cost of providing health care for their loved ones, these ungrateful little monsters are taking a free ride simply because they don’t expect to be sick or need expensive health care for the next few years. I bet those young college age kids are really glad that Obama and the democrats have finally uncovered the villians in why our health care system is so “bad”.
“The old will be denied various drugs and technology: “we are,” Reich said to a round of applause, “going to let you die.”
“The government will pressure drug companies and the medical establishment to bring costs down, with the result that there would be less medical innovation and fewer new drugs in the future. Probably, you will not live longer than your parents as most generations in that past could reasonably have hoped to do: get used to it. ”
It sounds as if we won’t even have the luxury of “death panels”. On a certain birthday to be decided upon by those who are wiser than us, health services will just be turned off.
Sorry if this sounds defeatist, but how will my joining another organization do anything to stop the government takeover of health care? My two senators and one representative have heard from me and say that they will vote against whatever takeover legislation is presented. As I see it, that’s the extent of my ability to affect the outcome.
Elections have consequences, and in 2008 the Republicans screwed the pooch for conservatives all over the country for years to come.
So where is the Republican Leadership on this issue? Why is there not a simple common sense alternative being offered by the GOP?
I understand they are offering amendments to the Dem legislation, but it seems to me, that from a strategic point of view, if the GOP offered an understandable, comprehensive, honest bill with a resonable set of goals and put it on the internet for all to see, the Dems would have no choice but to move that direction. Otherwise, they would be continuously exposed to unflattering comparisons of their bill vs what could have been.
If the objective of health care reform was really to control costs the sensible thing to do would not be to mandate health insurance but to outlaw it. The three forces that have allowed the costs of health care to escape the bounds of market pricing are 1) the institutional barriers to competition, 2) the overhead introduced by legal expenses and 3) the disincentives inherent in a system where the people who receive the services do not directly bear the incremental costs. Your proposals address forces number one and two but fail to address number three.
If, in addition to your sensible proposals, it were made illegal to offer insurance on, say, the first $10,000 of annual health-care expenses the number of people looking for lower-cost health care options would suddenly include the majority of the population, and the market for more-efficient, alternate health care delivery methods would be huge. If people knew that they would pay for their own routine and elective health care expenses (and that insurance was only for the medically-necessary big-ticket items) it would be a different world.
To help finance the initial deductible amount a program similar to college loans would be available (so that uninsured people who show up at an emergency room with a broken leg would be guaranteed financing) and that financing would only be available if the recipient agrees to carry a catastrophic illness policy until the balance is paid off. This could be tied to a beefed-up health savings account program (that extends the tax advantages of HSAs) so that people would have an incentive to pay into the system (up to the $10,000 self-insurance requirement.) Finally, there would be a one-time per individual free catastrophic policy that would pay (once only) for expenses above, say, $30,000 which could only be paid to individuals who agree to carry their own catastrophic insurance for the rest of their lives.
That’s what a reform would look like if reducing cost was really the goal.
Crunch Time for Health Care: Now It’s Up to Us … To Keep Health Care Where It Belongs — Firmly in the Hands of the Insurance Industry!
Once again, Republicans and independents are asleep at the switch. Yes, yes, yes…I KNOW it’s a rigged game. The nefarious entrenched media is in the bag for the left, lefter, leftist wing of the Democratic Party.
But for heaven’s sake…if they can’t win this walkover issue, we deserve the reeducation camps we are about to get.
Leftists have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt that when William Ayers said they wanted to kill 25 million…they meant it. Becoming (Soylent) Green could be the new way to solve a few “problems” at once.
For any fool who thinks this is about “health” or “care”…the painful truth is, they are too intellectually unarmed to join the battle of half-wits tossing this potato back and forth across the aisle.
This is about going after leftist “bogeymen”…the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, …and all their shareholders and executives.
You want to hit the Republican White Devil (and any critical thinking independents)…go after banking, insurance, big pharma, Wall Street, the military, …not necessarily in that order. And begin to dismantle them.
Since you already own…and I mean deep within your pockets…(like obedient little sock puppets)…Hollywood, entrenched media, and academia, …accomplish the above and you can “let people die” at your whim. And nobody will say a word, nobody with teach against you, nobody will protest on behalf of the “populists”…because the faux populists have control.
The entrenched media long ago gave up any pretense of being the Fourth Estate. They are the Left Flank lined up AGAINST the people.
Rube Goldberg machine… my left cheek. There is a design here and your number is being set to be tattooed on your arm, just as soon as they complete the conquest. They are 60% done. And if you try to get in the way…they are going to “let you” die.
Why don’t we hear more about health care from the Republicans?
I’m not sure that there is a Republican party anymore, or maybe so-called “Republicans” are afraid of seeming Conservative.
Why did John McCain seem to want to lose the last election? Who knows?
All the facts and figures in regard to the health care costs aside, one question that keeps nagging me and is, what makes us think that the government can run health care when they can’t even deliver a letter without running a deficit?
Reform of the health care is needed. But seriously? The government here-to-fore has been a significant part of the problem in my personal opinion.
If we want to get as many people insured as possible,wouldn’t the simplest policy be to make health insurance-whether personal policies or business plans-100% tax deductable?
If a small business was given the choice of offering health insurance to all it’s employees or paying the exact same money to the IRS…
Note this would avoid the young adult buy or be fined issue as a large chunk would be going to work for companies that gave them insurance automatically.
@12 Harris Tweed
The reason you don’t hear more about health care reform from the Republicans is not because they don’t have any ideas. At last count there were no less than 23 separate Republican sponsored bills in the House alone. You aren’t hearing about them because, as someone else above observed, the MSM are in the tank for the Democrats and there is a defacto embargo on any news that might reflect better on the Republicans.
D’oh! Make that 32, not 23 bills.
How are we going to stop this abomination termed “healthcare reform?” I have gone to tea parties, written letters and emails, called every Congressperson listed.
All this is to no avail. They are going to pass it in committee anyway–today. We have NO recourse until 2010 elections and by then it will be too late! If you have any actual hope, please post it!
#3 HOw do you propose we STOP them?
This is an emotional issue for many Americans. This so-called “public option” in Government run health care presents serious challenges for us. As Consumers we should be able to compare the cost and quality of health care services. How much is a specific surgery at one hospital, as compared with another? http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/media/
Who wouldn’t want healthcare in the hands of for-profit companies? It is in America, where everything has a price, that must we make a profit on something so fundamental. In America, where the only things worth having are the ones run by profit-seeking companies. In America where where the idea that WE manage our own healthcare for US is offensive because everybody knows that government will foul it up. Capitalism and the free market excuses us from making moral decisions. We just let the market decide for us and we tell ourselves that the health insurance oligopolies can run companies successfully but a government-run program must surely fail.
Truly sad to see this great country sliding into oblivion.
Dan:
Republicans can’t introduce legislation that they can’t even get out of committee. They can, and have, gone through the intellectual exercise of proposing an alternative, but no one cares because there’s no way to get it to a vote.
Steven:
Sounds like you’re talking about a tax credit, not a deduction. I think there are already deductions for out-of-pocket health care expenditures over a certain minimum, at least on individual returns.
I heard a rumor that they’re not really going to let white men over sixty just die. It sounded plausible to me.
Whether we stop the Dems or not (they seem intent on slitting their own throat in order to appease the 20% of useful idiots cheer leading for shorter lives) the answer must be the same:
Real fiscal conservatives must be selected and advanced for 2010. Hear about a challenge to an RINO incumbent? (i.e., Virtually everyone with an “R” after their name.) Read their policies and send them $10, regardless of the district. Republican ‘leader’? Find his opponent and send him $10. Purge the ranks and purge the stink of corruption, timidity and feckless wavering on our original core issues: Small Government that leaves us alone and National Defense (and leave the god stuff in church where it belongs). It must also be clear that we are sending them for one reason. To heartlessly dismantle every stupid plank of this socialist train wreck. (Sorry Jorge, Billy Joe Bob, Shenaney -no free oxycontin for you.)
Palin seems to get it and has many advantages:
1. Not from the Harvard/Yale rivalry that’s done such a ‘heckuva’ smashup job these past 20 years.
2. Has previously worked for a living, so she understands that capitalism is not bailing out former coworkers and classmates from Goldman Sacks.
3. Has actual accomplishments of some consequence which are not the source of shame or destructive to economic well being.
4. Actually seems to know who she is and what she believes.
“Those who do not work, neither shall they eat.”
Well, the first thing I’m doing is telling Steele the Republican Party has to chose between me and Snowe. If she is not fired from the party and never given a dime, I’m never giving then a dime.
Second thing is stopping all withholding from salary. A large scale tax protest of tens of millions will get their attention.
Come April 15, people should not pay taxes for their own slow murder.
In the meantime, protests with thousands of people will have to take place in every state on every weekend from now until Nov. 2010.
That’s a sample of what people are going to have to do. We are going to have make them more uncomfortable than they are making us.
The insurance industry is all FOR PROFIT. Affordability isn’t just going to happen magically. I’m not sure how these fat cats in Washington think everyday folks are going to be able to afford to pay this price. What if I do not or CAN NOT comply? Are they going to put me in jail? Garnish my wages? This is fascism. I am distraught by the idea of adding another expense to my already stretched household. When I consider the following expenses: homeowner’s insurance, car insurance, various federal taxes, various state taxes, etc., I find I am already paying about a third of my income as some form of “fee” or “tax”. I wish they would start completely over on health care reform. Try to figure out a way to extend the benefits of the existing Medicare and/or Medicaid systems to those whose employers do not provide an affordable option. I wish President Obama would’ve stuck to his original stance on the whole mandate issue. He was flatly against it (and with good reason). What a betrayal.
There is nothing more demonstrably false than this satanic meme that- “…we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people” (Thanks Robert the third Reich)
I know people who are addicted to going to the doctor. And the doctor bills their Insurance program and/or Medicare and Medicaid for payment, and the whole process is repeated ad infinitum. Til you’re dead. And you die in a hospital.
I’ll tell you the whole (if there is any) problem with health care IN THIS COUNTRY.
Doctor run tests; they run test after test after test. And Why? BECUSE OF THE FRICKING LAWSIUTS IF THEY DON’T, THAT’S WHY!!!
and what do they (the doctors) do BETWEEN TESTS? They, (wait for it) THEY BILL THE FRICKING INSURANCE COMPANIES FOR PAYMENT, for RE-IMBURSEMANT(S)!, THAT’S WHAT!!!!
And who pays for that? YOU DO!! YOU ALREADY DO!!! (PAY) IN HIGHER INSURANCE PREMIUMS!!!!! You freaking addicted-to-doctors idiots!
Now I won’t presume to know what the solution to THIS PROBLEM is, but the bard, one mister Shakespeare had a good idea on that when he said “FIRST, WE KILL ALL THE LAWYERS”
So just remember, he said it, not me…
and I would point out that, most of the jerks IN GOVERNMENT ARE LAWYERS!!,
so,
Do you think ‘solutions’ to any ‘problems’ in the ‘health care’ industry will be solved BY LETTING THE FOXES GUARD THE HENHOUSE????? ????? Hmmmm??
This GD insidious left wing totalitarian democrat meme….
GRRRRR!!!!
And this government (of
lawsuitslawyers)threatens“PROMISES”, That’s right I said “PROMISES” to “control costs!“…Yeah right,
For SHAME, Reich, [zieg HEILl!! ] For SHAME!!
Now go back to Hell, and stay there this time
And say hello to Adolf, your mentor, you freak
If there is anything wrong with american health care its that you get too much of a good thing. And it must stop; (learn to..) Live better with less.
That is all. continue
The time has just about come when those who wish to preserve freedom will have to decide whether they are willing to take the next step towards a direct subversion of injustices through civil disobedience. The government is committing itself to controlling an awful lot of people, and an enormous number of transactions between individuals. It is possible to make all of that very difficult. The key to rationalizing health care has always lain in making insurance insurance–that is, like house and car insurance, a way of minimizing risk from unforseen, potentially catastrophic costs. The key to the Democrats’ proposals is moving further away from such a model. So, will it be possible to set up “illegal” insurance companies and “co-ops,” if one likes, that doctors and patients can sign onto–will those involved get arrested? Are enough people willing to risk it? Also, as with other socialized systems, “black market” transactions are sure to emerge, as patients and doctors and hospitals make private arrangements and will probably be prosecuted as instances of “corruption”–who will be ready to defend such lawbreakers, who will be demonized by the socialist media?
17. AnnaS:
“I have gone to tea parties, written letters and emails, called every Congressperson listed.
All this is to no avail. They are going to pass it in committee anyway–today.”
The reality of how the American system works.
20. Steve:
“Who wouldn’t want healthcare in the hands of for-profit companies? It is in America, where everything has a price, that must we make a profit on something so fundamental.”
Not when the profits are excessive and damage the consumer by rejecting needed coverage and payments.
Single-payer is the way to go.
The pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be affected, medical personnel wouldn’t be affected, medical insurers would have to become creative and insure the insurable. Just like Medicare.
Howcome no one has mentioned Reids carve outs for Nevada premiums or the same for Chucky Schumer in New York? Add in the protection of the union “Cadillac” plans, and this is a bowl of handouts.
No thanks.
I don’t want to pay for Nevada, New York nor union health care, thank you very much.
Let them know we will not have this ‘finely crafted piece of legislation’ become law without a fight.
tom
Vivo:
Examples please of health insurance making “excessive profits” (Return on Equity after tax) and health insurers rejecting coverage.
Both accusations are ridiculous. Health insurance companies don’t make gigantic profits. They do have to spend millions to comply with different regulations from every state. And, spend millions more to deal with ambulance chasing lawyers. Neither of these costs are being addressed in this legislation.
As for denial of claims – ridiculous. The state DOI’s specifically lay out what services are covered. If you think you are being inappropriately denied, just contact your state DOI – it will be resolved pronto.
If a public option is passed by congress then it will be imperative that the House of Representatives will have to be won by republicans in 2010 or we can forget about any viable economic future.
“Will he get away with it?”
The answer to this question all comes down to Moderates.
Will they choose tyranny or will they choose Liberty?
Moderates, choose wisely because Moderates will be held responsible for what come this way.
Moderates, you voted Obama into power and now you know what a mistake you made.
Do not make the same mistake twice; learn from your mistakes.
“The government will pressure drug companies and the medical establishment to bring costs down, with the result that there would be less medical innovation and fewer new drugs in the future. Probably, you will not live longer than your parents as most generations in that past could reasonably have hoped to do: get used to it. ”
If the Left was in charge back in the day, we’d all still be living on the savannah and in trees. “Fire?, who needs fire?”
Back in the early 20th century, the head of the Patent Office wanted to shut it down because everything really useful had “already been invented”. It was a ludicrous idea then and it’s just as ludicrous now.
Oh, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Reich is OK with research in how to cure dwarfism.
32
I noticed that use of “excessive” without definition, too. Not surprising that a weasel would use a weasel word.
Can’t wait till the democrat Obama grumblement forces insurance companies to give me non-pre-existent coverage.
When I and the family discover we have a terminal illness or hospital stay surgery we promise to sign up with a private insurance company.
You rich $200,000 dollar business owners will pay my public option or go to jail.
Now I ask you, with the Town Halls and the Tea parties and the 9/12 Project and death panels and Fox News and talk radio promoting all of it, with REAL Americans and moms and dads and grandmas who would have been killed and babies waving flags and three-cornered hats and swastikas and and Billy Ray Cyrus and everyone hating Obama hating . . . how could healthcare reform possibly pass?
Following is a Jewish rant from a Jewish web site in Israel.
Amazing that about 90 percent of it is true:
25. betheweb:
“Second thing is stopping all withholding from salary. A large scale tax protest of tens of millions will get their attention.”
By all means, do that. There’s now way the IRS will make your life a living hell for years to come. back taxes, interest penalties, garnishment, property seizures. Yeah, that’s a good plan. Go for it.
BTW, why do conservatives need health insurance at all? There are plenty of charity groups and churches out there. They’ll take care of you. Right?
29.Adam says -
“The government is committing itself to controlling an awful lot of people, and an enormous number of transactions between individuals. It is possible to make all of that very difficult.”
Good point. There’s an interesting novel from the 50′s “The Revolt of Gunner Asch” by German author Helmut Kirst on that very subject, subverting the system by following the rules to the letter. Might be a good read right about now.
So, Bobby Reich, Zeke Emanuel, Tommy Daschle, John Holdren inform this administration’s “health care” precepts.
(Bobby Reich is on video a’preachin’ that new jobs under the Porkulus shouldn’t go to “white” construction workers)
Of those four guys, three of them qualify as social engineers, verging on being eugenicists. (Holdren qualifies as full blown eugenicist, it’s based on the progressive idea of producing (re-producing) the “perfect” citizen. It’s also based on the notion that these enlightened folks know better for you than you know for yourself.)
The fourth, Tommy, is merely a disgraced politician & tax cheat, into ideas of social engineering in the name of personal power.
There’s nothing we can do. The Democrats have the votes to do whatever they wish. And they will no matter what the polls say. Sure, you can write your Senator and Congressmen, and your letter will go right into the circular file. Sure, you can protest in DC, and it will be ignored just like hundreds of thousands were in August. Throw them out in 2010? Yeah right. Corrupt and/or incompetent politicians like Kennedy, Biden, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, etc. get relected term after term. The weak minded, lazy, do for me crowd now outnumber the producers. We have a year or two left before taxes and inflation kick in, health insurance — mandatory now — goes up exponentially and you start having to wait weeks to see a doctor, unemployment goes above 20%, gas goes above $4. Third-world banana republic here we come.
We, the people of the USA have spoken truth to power since this all started. The truth that others above have repeated “the Republicans in America screwed the pooch in 2008″ is all true; WE DID THIS TO OURSELVES!
But it didn’t start in 2008. This nation has buckled under to political correctness, multi-culturalism, soical welfare ideology and all the other philosophies of WEAKNESS for generations. The World Wars, and the spectre of global conflagration that was the Cold War, in the twentieth century sapped the strength from the peoples of the Earth. The Europeans were the worst hit by these effects, as the battlefieds were their homes. Tens of millions of the strongest and bravest died on all sides in those conflicts, leaving weakened and dispirited populations that were eager for ANY solution that would prevent it from happening again. The solutions of The Left offered them this salvation. We can see the results. It has just taken longer for the takeover of The Left in America, as we suffered less and were stronger as a people during the struggles of the twentieth century. But the day of the victory of The Left is dawning in America.
What can we do to stop this? We all ask the pundits and each other this question on these forums. At this point there probably is very little that we can do. Before 2010 and the elections, The Left in Washington will successfully change healthcare, energy policy, and a number of other large sectors of our economy in ways that will radically alter life in America. Some we will be able to scale back or blunt in other ways IF, somehow, conservative majorities replace The Left in the halls of power. But the writing is on the wall all over the Earth, the slow slide to a Euro-style socialist-democracy with muted capitalism to keep the wheels of government rolling will continue to be the pattern for quite some time.
Radically altering this pattern back to some classically conservative way of governance would probably require an upheaval with great destruction and loss of life. The alternative would be a commitment by a conservative majority to retake the education system from the bottom to the top, retake the MSM in a similar fashion and for conservatives of means to remake the popular culture. This non-violent approach would take generations, just as it took The Left. Do conservatives have that kind of patience and ideological resolve? History suggests not.
My observations may be totally off, and I fervently hope so, but my fifty plus years of observation and reading of history say otherwise. I plan to keep working and will try everything possible to preserve a way of life (and at the same time preserve my own life) that made The United States of America the greatest nation in the history of the world!
Here’s the only ‘reform’ that will work:
- Stop pretending that “insurance coverage” is the same as health care.
- Bring the costs of routine health care down by restoring the free market for health care, which has been completely corrupted through extra-constitutional, federal government meddling.
- Use insurance as it’s intended: to mitigate the risk of catastrophic illness or injury, NOT to pay for a routine cost of living that everyone should budget for.
Do you think the Main Stream Media would report any plan that the republicians could put forth?
I think not. Will the leaders in congress report that the republicians have a plan? Surly you jest. All they want is control and to screw the American people.
Just to be fair, here are comments from McConnell of Ky I posted on another site:
I can vouch for Mcconnell…… he opposes any attempt to create a government-run health plan…..from his letter:
1)Americans want reform
2)the ‘public plan option’ would eventually become the only option
3)private companies can’t compete with the government
4)government option would be run with taxpayer’s money
5)government plan would dictate prices to doctors
6)coverage for millions would be undercut
7)experts have estimated that 119 million Americans will lose their current insurance and end up with the governmment-run plan
Congress should take these steps to lower health care costs:
1)insurers and employers should expand prevention and wellness programs
2)it should be easier for businesses to purchase coverage for their employees
3)tort reform, or reform medical liability lawsuit abuse..(I guess he thought I didn’t know what tort reform was??)
McConnell Statement on Finance Committee Proposal ……………………………
from the Office of Senator Mitch McConnell
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
“The fact is, this proposal will never come before the Senate. But what we do know is that the bill written behind closed doors here in the Capitol will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar Washington takeover. We know it will slash a half-trillion dollars from seniors’ Medicare, add new taxes and raise premiums. That’s not reform.”
So not all Republicans are selling us out.
“We have elected the enemy.” Jim Quinn (Quinn and Rose)
“Third-world banana republic here we come.”
Yup .. and when everyone shouts “How did this happen?” You can be assured they will somehow blame Bush, Palin, and Limbaugh …. and those other nasty Republicans!
BTW, why do conservatives need health insurance at all? There are plenty of charity groups and churches out there. They’ll take care of you. Right?
This post makes zero sense. Which conservative is actually making the case that charity care and churches should form the entire basis of health care?
There is no such thing as a deficit neutral grovernment program. The CBO said that costs and potential savings could not be predicted. Some sort of tax disguised as a reform will be Rhamed through with many secret deals behind closed doors. The final bill will be different than what was passed in committee.
The cheers from the exclusive democrat club are deafening.
I am reminded of a movie line from The Hunt for Red October, when the first mate of the Russian submarine told the captain who had just launched the torpedo with all safties off,”You arrogant ass, you have just killed us all.”
Meanwhile, according to NPR, the government is busy trying to regulate everything. This is change and hope that everything goes according to plan, with the safties off.
32. Old Soldier:
“Vivo:
Examples please of health insurance making “excessive profits” ”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/how-much-money-do-insurance-companies-make-a-primer/
# 39 .. thank you,interesting. easier to read if you paragraph.
Obama is our “post turtle”..
When you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a “post turtle”.
You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put him up there to begin with’.
Let’s have another 9/12 march on Washington, but this time we all carry a lasso.
biblio44, Vivio and Now and Then, I am sorry that you were so deprived of a quality education.
Free enterprise with modest controls works better than any economic system the world has ever produced.
The government will produce mediocre to poor to awful results as a matter of course. Only the military and that in only a few countries are exempt from that and that is only because of patriotism and tradition. There is no patriotism and tradition in the DMV, the IRS or the coming Health bureaucracy. (at least no tradition I would want to be saddled with)
41. Now and Then:
BTW, why do conservatives need health insurance at all?
The Democrats say they’ll need it keep from getting fined, harrassed by the IRS, wages garnished, or possibly arrested and put in jail.
We should ignore the moronic leftist trolls. If this disaster happens, the results of this obvious mistake will start to set in and they will be long gone.
41. Now and Then:
BTW, why do liberals need health insurance at all? Obama can heal the planet and stop the waters from rising… He is the ONE right? He’ll take care of you. Right?
Once again, the American people know more about the legislative process than our Senators and Representatives.
Yesterday afternoon I called the Finance Committee at (202) 224-4515 and got some dumb sh*t that didn’t know anything. I asked him:
1. Will the Committee Report be on line? (He didn’t know)
2. Will a Committe Report be written at all? (He didn’t know)
3. Will the Cordon Rule be followed (He asked, “What’s that? I don’t know much about Senate rules. I read the rule to him and he said, “I assume it will be followed”.
Talk about worthless…
Cordon Rule: Senate rule that requires a committee report to show changes the reported measure would make in current law.
But I guess since they’re violating a bunch of other Senate rules by voting on ‘conceptual language’ that was never actually introduced and doesn’t even have a bill number, they might as well violate this rule as well.
53
Yes, they are so “excessive” that the author of that piece, which I read a couple of weeks ago, had this to say about insurance company profit margins:
“Relative to other industries, these are not particularly high numbers, nor are they particularly low.”
Nowhere in that comment by the author do I see the word “excessive”. It doesn’t even look like it could be formed even by re-arranging the letters in there, unless, of course, it’s in some secret code and some letter that is actually in there is really code for the letter ‘x’.
And you want to run the health care system? I wouldn’t trust you to mow my lawn.
48
Congress should take these steps to lower health care costs:
I think the focus on cutting costs is misplaced. Health care is a “superior good”, so demand for it rises as incomes rise.
http://american.com/archive/2009/september/forecasting-the-cost-of-u-s-healthcare
The focus should be on growing the economy and individuals’ incomes, so that they can afford the health care they want.
The author is fundamentally correct – it is crunch time for health care, and it is up to the American people to make their desires known. That’s why millions are letting their congress-critters know that now is the time for a public health care option.
Obama’s election on a platform including comprehensive health care reform is a very good indication that the people support his efforts, and the ongoing duplicity of the insurance industry is likely to provide motivation to make the public option more robust.
The shortcomings of the PWC study are obvious, just like efforts to frustrate reform that would impact industry profits are transparently not about improving care. Market based solutions will not work without comprehensive care available from a public plan, because the insurance industry is not focused on quality of care or reducing premium costs – only on profits.
The time for health care reform is now – and the American people are ready.
Peace.
DS
Let’s see. Republicans controlled the Congress from 1994 to 2006 with 8 years of a Republican president.
And did nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Unless you want to count shooting down Clinton’s plan for reform.
And they had their asses voted out of office with the campaign of reforming health care.
You lost. It’s over. You had your chances and blew it.
Funny, they will not need death panels, they are going to cut health care for ALL senior citizens.
Stalin is rolling in his tomb. “Why didn’t I think about that ?”
Instead Pol Pot is angry: Obama is a moderate, Pol Pot planned the killing of everybody over 12 (you understand, they were polluted by capitalism).
Then they will attack the free enterprise (cap and trade).
Then they will attack Freedom of Speech.
It’s the whole socialfascist ride.
Thank you for the
ticket to the gulagopportunity to comment.“Reform” is a lie. We can no longer think of ‘something for nothing’, but that is nearly impossible with decades of entitlements (welfare, free housing, education, farm subsidies,food stamps, etc.). Too many people are hooked on free things without paying anything.
The house of cards are about to come down on us soon. What concerns me is not what’s going to happen today/nxt week, but the following year. The social upheaval will border on revolt of the masses against big govt. tyranny & corporate greed.
Just read an enlightening book (A Time To Stand by Oliver) that is a modern day version of what the colonial Americans had to endure & what ultimately brought them to fight King George III. I gave one to a friend cause it shows what’s in store nxt. It’s not pretty. Just read it & prepare for fundamental changes in your life.
http://www.booksbyoliver.com
There is NO Republican leadership, so the Dems are running amuck..
I do not believe Republicans know how to fight back..they’re too
“proper”…pc gone crazy. It has landed us in a fight for our country.
51. venividivici:
“Which conservative is actually making the case that charity care and churches should form the entire basis of health care?”
Eric Cantor, that’s who . . .
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/eric-cantors-insane-rant-town-hall-meet
You should all be ashamed.
Listen all ye who are opposed to health care reform, whatever your fancied and fanciful reasons might be…this is how it’s going to be:
Health care reform will pass, and become law, with a meaningful public option.
All the reasons offered here, and ones you might offer in the future against health reform, have been heard before, and are drained of possible influence due to repetition (not to mention lack of coherence, sense of fairness, and lack of economic sophistication). Your arguments will have no impact on the outcome. You have blown your wad, and like most wads, it is headed to the garbage.
Will it pass? Six months ago I would have said no ..now?…I say 63 are now for it, which, is remarkable. I will have to take my hat off to a few sensible rebulicans that have dedided to join the majority to make history. The public option? I think that the compromise will be that…some kind of opt out, which conservatives probably need, cuz they are so afraid of losing money “payin for those poor people again…” And with some opt outs…taxes will rise at a more than acceptable rate.
Is it a good bill? Not perfect, but the best we can do. I say, pass it now..fix it later. Good Job to Dems and Reps…and Good Job America !!
I completely misunderstood what Mr. Reich was saying when i commented on #28.
I thought that Mr. Reich was advocating the increase in costs he was refering to in the speech he gave, but in fact, as he stated, he was presenting these realities and potentialities in a way that no politician seeking election ever would, for obvious reasons.
So that means I owe Mr. Reich a big fat , on-your-knees apology.
Mr. Reich, I apologize, for misunderstanding the point you were making, and the way you presented this information. In fact, thank you for telling the truth in the way that you did.
My mistake. continue
Now and Then:
51. venividivici:
“Which conservative is actually making the case that charity care and churches should form the entire basis of health care?”
Eric Cantor, that’s who . .
____________________________________________
Great link. I’m a big fan of C & L but missed this one.
And as usual the moron VVV doesn’t even know where the people he supports stand. A typical teabagging uneducated fool.
Here’s the money quote.
The question an audience participant asked is paraphrased as “Relative got cancer and lost his insurance… what happens?”
Representative Eric Cantors response paraphrased: “Sell or auction all your belongings. After you reach a certain poverty threshold, apply for Medicaid, the federal medical insurance for the very poor. If that’s not enough apply for indigent services.”
Or Senator Coburn:
“But the other thing that is missing in this debate is us as neighbors, helping people that need our help. [Applause.] You know we tend to … [Applause.] The idea that the government is a solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.”
My comment on the meme still stands though. Government cannot improve on our health care system in any way, shape, or form. Free Market Competition is the only thing that will improve it. Take away the rope and chains of regulation; let the 1700 Insurance Companies compete in all states, to offer the best program at the lowest price, and there won’t be any price gouging for long. Insurance companies know this that’s why they want want to set the terms of who gets health care and who is denied, and they want to bill the National Government for the cost of premiums, an idea worse that what we have already.
Take Medicare. Medicare Insurance pays he cost of treatment that the doctor prescribes of deems necessary. Medicare pays, but makes no medical decisions as to what is medically required. THE DOCTOR DOES. Because he has attended 8 years of medical school and has his professional experience to guide him, including all the supplemental education he/she acquires on a daily basis after leaving medical school.
If this crap passes, it will be up to the supreme court to knock it down based on anti-trust (monopoly) legislation already passed and on the books.
Eric Cantor, that’s who . . .
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/eric-cantors-insane-rant-town-hall-meet
You should all be ashamed.
First of all, I’m not ashamed of that response at all. If you’re so ashamed, start up a private insurance company and insure people who’ve lost their insurance. Secondly, he didn’t say the entire system of health insurance should be based on private charity, he said in this person’s instance, there might be an opportunity for private charity to kick in. That’s a big difference, although when you’re an emotional person rather than a rational person, I can see how the difference could get lost.
And as usual the moron VVV doesn’t even know where the people he supports stand. A typical teabagging uneducated fool.
When I had my first Master’s degree, I was already more educated then you, jharp.
Gaffe Prices:
“Take Medicare. Medicare Insurance pays he cost of treatment that the doctor prescribes of deems necessary. Medicare pays, but makes no medical decisions as to what is medically required. THE DOCTOR DOES. Because he has attended 8 years of medical school and has his professional experience to guide him, including all the supplemental education he/she acquires on a daily basis after leaving medical school.”
I have no idea what you are getting at but your statement is accurate.
And the public option is going to do the same thing.
I eagerly await it becoming law. Great work President Obama. Great timing for the knockout punch to the party of ignorance. Bring on the 2010 midterms.
Speaking of not knowing what you support, all you brain-dead morons do know that Medicare denies a larger percentage of claims than private insurers, right?
http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/05/ama-endorses-largest-denier-of-health-care-claims/
But I’m sure YOU won’t get denied by the “public option”. You know because you’re so important.
venividivici:
Eric Cantor, that’s who . . .
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/eric-cantors-insane-rant-town-hall-meet
You should all be ashamed.
First of all, I’m not ashamed of that response at all. If you’re so ashamed, start up a private insurance company and insure people who’ve lost their insurance.
__________________________________________________________
You’ve got it all wrong. Your masters degree obviously didn’t include any classes on government.
It goes something like this. Work hard and get the candidates who support health care reform elected to office.
Apply pressure for them to pass the legislation that they promised.
And that’s how it works. If you don’t like it, leave. I hear Somalia has a very limited government.
Great timing for the knockout punch to the party of ignorance.
It’s actually just the beginning of the secession movement, which will only grow stronger over time as the inherent flaws of the program reveal themselves. People like me don’t like bending over for the government like you do. Let you wallow in the filth you create for yourself. Like Bartelby, I choose not to.
70
not to mention lack of coherence, sense of fairness, and lack of economic sophistication
Nice of you to cite some details on the “lack of coherence, sense of fairness and lack of economic sophistication”.
Sounds like you’re trying to use big words to frighten people into thinking your right. It’s a common tendency of the trolls here, based on their false belief that conservatives are dumb.
What exactly is “coherent” about forcing people to undertake actions they don’t want to undertake, e.g. buying insurance rather than self-insuring?
What is “fair” about having young people subsidize older people’s health care costs or providing insurance coverage to people who choose self-destructive behaviors and so become privately uninsurable?
What is “economically sophisticated” about a one-size fits all government-run insurance program, run by a government that is already running deficits so large that the currency itself is buckling under the weight of them?
Finally, what does the experience of the states that have already tries this tell us?
Perhaps some of the rubes you typically deal with are impressed with your $2 words camouflaging 50 cent thoughts, but I’m not.
Finally, YOU don’t get to tell me when I can and can’t oppose something. You do not have that right, motherf*cker.
76. jharp:You should avoid having faith in a man who got his start servicing a slumlord, turning tricks for him, getting his knees dirty for the slumlord. This also goes for NOWANDTHEN.
@75. venividivici:
When I had my first Master’s degree, I was already more educated then you, jharp.
So would you care to explain what happened, and how you lost your education?
It sounds like a tragic tale…
Peace.
DS
A few libs are a little worried about Sen. Snowe:
N]ow that Snowe has voted for the bill in committee, she can basically dictate the terms of the final bill… That’s because, if you alienate her during the forthcoming negotiations, her defection from the final bill would be disastrous. Just imagine the atmospherics of Olympia Snowe getting up on the Senate floor and saying she was so serious about passing health care reform she voted for it in committee, but that she can no longer support the bill because it’s moved too far to the left. It would be absolutely devastating.
Let’s hope that’s what Snowe has in mind.
#76
Harpo, have you explained to the folks here why tax-paid sick care is your one theme, your monomania?
I think they would like to understand why you have a personal stake in wanting everybody paying your sick care bills along with you and why you are even willing to accept a fascist government to get it done.
I saw the title of this post and came here hoping to see something other than the usual recitation of numbers and disaster we are already familiar with.
It’s up to us? As Anna S and others ask, how do we stop them? As cfbleachers says, if they can’t win this walkover issue, we deserve the reeducation camps we are about to get.
Okay, here’s my idea: We make REPEAL of any of these anti-American acts a CENTRAL ISSUE in the 2010 elections. Candidates must pledge to work for repeal of any god-awful healthcare “reform.”
No excuses — including that Obama will refuse to sign it. In fact, his refusal will be important in its own way, too.
58. Dave:
We should ignore the moronic leftist trolls. If this disaster happens, the results of this obvious mistake will start to set in and they will be long gone.
————————
I heartily agree that we should ignore the trolls, who will have a thousand excuses for the inevitable horrors of Obamacare anyway.
We have more important matters to discuss. What are we going to DO?
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A public option CANNOT pass the Senate. Snowe won’t vote for a public option, and neither will Leiberman. You can’t even count on Byrd to show up for the vote- that’s how sick he is. If you try the nuclear option, you will not even get 50 votes. You will lose, and you will crash and burn. And if by some miracle you manage to succeed, be warned- the American people will be pissed off, and pissed off Americans will eventually turn to violence to kill this parasite that constitutes an existential threat.
“Bring on the 2010 midterms” writes jharp.
For once we agree. From Gallup:
The Republican Party’s relatively strong position on the generic ballot in the latest poll, conducted Oct. 1-4, stems from the support of political independents, who now favor Republican over Democratic candidates by 45% to 36%. In July, independents were evenly divided in their party voting preferences, whereas last fall they showed a clear preference for the Democrats.
Gallup’s latest congressional job approval rating provides an additional sign that the 2010 elections could be challenging for Democratic candidates: 21% of Americans approve and 72% disapprove. Approval of Congress is now low across all three partisan groups, but is exceptionally weak among Republicans (9%) and independents (16%).
Yes, bring them on.
I am getting tired of the change this new administration is forcing down our throats. It seems like a battle every week. This is insane. Both Senators from Michigan could care less about this country’s future or my children’s tax burden. They are secure in what they have given themselves in pay, pension and now health care for the masses but not Congress! I am looking for change just a way back to our founding father’s wisdom and beliefs!
53. Vivo
What portion of the linked article at the NYT indicated that the insurance company sited made “excessive profit”? The article even admitted that the profit given (between 5% and 10% depending on time frame and profit definition used) was in line with other industries.
If you eliminate the profit motive, people with money to invest will take that money elsewhere and you won’t have an insurance industry. If the government provides the insurance, you will have a bloated, inefficient mess just like every other single service they provide!
The only way for government to control prices will be to ration service. This is economics 101 people.
82
So would you care to explain what happened, and how you lost your education?
It sounds like a tragic tale…
Peace.
DS
I am educated in the Classics. You know, those dead, white European males that were so much smarter than people like you that you had to start denigrating them when you realized that you couldn’t live up to their standards. One sentence of Aristotle is more profound than every post of yours on this or any other website combined. If I actually believed that anyone on the Left measured up to Plato’s (Plato was the first Leftist, really) ideal of the “philosopher-king”, I would follow that person’s vision of the “just society” to the letter. Alas, all I see among the would-be philosopher-kings are fools, charlatans and incompetents (sometimes all of these things combined in one). Plus, no one seems to understand that “Utopia” is a play on words and isn’t meant to be an actual political program. A lot gets lost in translation, but that one’s so simple that it says a lot about the people, like yourself, who haven’t even figured that out.
So, it’s not that I “lost” my education, it’s that you’ve never had one.
You really don’t seem to believe me when I tell you that at one point, I thought just like you, only I grew out of it once I truly reflected on what drove those thoughts, i.e. what Nietzsche called ressentiment. Read Nietzsche’s “Untimely Meditation” on David Strauss for a good portrait of yourself and your many shortcomings.
venividivici:
Great timing for the knockout punch to the party of ignorance.
It’s actually just the beginning of the secession movement, which will only grow stronger over time
_____________________________________________________
Put the crack pipe away. And have ever given any thought to what Redneckistan would look like?
You ignorant hillbillies would make the old U.S.S.R. look prosperous.
venividivici:
“What exactly is “coherent” about forcing people to undertake actions they don’t want to undertake, e.g. buying insurance rather than self-insuring?”
What is “fair” about having young people subsidize older people’s health care costs or providing insurance coverage to people who choose self-destructive behaviors and so become privately uninsurable?
What is “economically sophisticated” about a one-size fits all government-run insurance program, run by a government that is already running deficits so large that the currency itself is buckling under the weight of them?
All of them are powers granted by our Constitution, jackass. You can’t opt in or opt out any more than I could have opted out of paying for the Iraq war.
“Finally, what does the experience of the states that have already tries this tell us?”
That it doesn’t work on the state level, dumbass. Therefore, since we have a model (Medicare) that works on a national level, we’re are going copy it for a public option.
And there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
I should add, of course, that the content my education was substantially the same as many of the Founding Fathers, so I am quite qualified to say that I know what they meant when the chose a “republic” as our form of governance. Hint, it ain’t anything you trolls want to see put in place.
Chris in Dallas:
“The only way for government to control prices will be to ration service. This is economics 101 people.”
Where did you take economics 101? I want to be sure my kids don’t go there.
The government can control prices in many ways. Take Medicare for instance.
Lot’s of hate at this site. And ignorance as well.
Veni: C. Paglia has a new column up at Salon and you might enjoy her comments about the current degraded state of American higher education:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/10/14/teaparty/index1.html
Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren’t worth the parchment they’re printed on these days. Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech. We’re in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.
It’s hard to believe that such empty palaver is still being peddled by major universities in the U.S. And this guy has a Yale PhD! (When I got mine, it still meant one could write coherent English.) One can only pity the parents bankrupting themselves for their children to be “educated” by such chicanery.
“Docile creatures of the system” describes our resident trolls perfectly.
I don’t always agree with Paglia but when she is good, she is very, very good. And it’s always fun to see the leftists at Salon go into psychotic rages over her articles, demanding that she be fired for mocking their sacred cows.
Finally, someone talking sense. I disagree with much of their analysis of economic growth, etc., but this is the right path. Fundamentally, you have to do that analysis at the individual tax-payer/income-earner level, not the aggregate, state-wide level, but whatever, it’s typical superficial Lefty analysis, so I would expect no different.
http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/107941/let-the-red-states-secede.html
From your article VVV.
“Look at the numbers. New Jersey got back just 61 cents for every dollar it paid in federal taxes. Connecticut: 69 cents. Illinois: 75 cents. New York: 79 cents. Massachusetts: 82 cents. In other words, being a member of the union is costing these states billions in lost money.
Meanwhile Mississippi gets back $2 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. Alaska: $1.84. Louisiana: $1.78. North Dakota gets $1.68, Alabama $1.66, Tennessee $1.27, Idaho $1.21 and Arizona $1.19.
Red staters always like to accuse blue states of high taxes. But if they are right, one of the principal reasons blue staters are paying higher taxes is to subsidize…red staters.”
More from your article, VVV.
“According to data compiled by the Commerce Department, the economies of the blue are actually growing faster than the red states too.
California, much derided in conservative circles as a high-cost, high-tax, moonbat/left wing hell, has nonetheless managed to grow its real output per person by 25% over the last 10 years.
How did its low-tax, low-cost, red state neighbors do over the same period? Arizona is up just 14% per person. Nevada: 10%. Utah: 10%.
Over the past 10 years, New York’s real, inflation-adjusted output has boomed by 33% per person. Massachusetts: 25%. Oregon: 29% The figure for the red Midwest: 16%. The deep red southeast: 12%.
Ironically, the red states have done worse even though they have enjoyed a number of advantages: lower wages, lots of land, huge subsidies from the blue states, and even a massive, worldwide boom in commodity prices. Apparently it still hasn’t helped.”
Put the crack pipe away. And have ever given any thought to what Redneckistan would look like?
You ignorant hillbillies would make the old U.S.S.R. look prosperous.
Ha, I just ran the numbers from the 2004 election (there’s no way that the 2008 numbers will be relevant in 2012) and here are the findings:
Average Bush voter income: $36.6K
Average Kerry voter income: $29.6K
Oh, and that’s the minimum difference, since I only allocated a $200K income to everyone in the $200K and above category, where Bush won by his largest margin. Don’t worry if you don’t understand why that makes it the minimum difference, jharp. I wouldn’t expect a moron like you to understand.
Stick that in your crack pipe and smoke it, retard.
Numbers here:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
Once you have to start paying for your own welfare programs, you won’t think they’re so hot.
I don’t always agree with Paglia but when she is good, she is very, very good. And it’s always fun to see the leftists at Salon go into psychotic rages over her articles, demanding that she be fired for mocking their sacred cows.
Paglia has always been someone who understands the kind of passion one needs to be truly educated and that it’s not the kind of thing that comes from ticking off boxes on a syllabus that a professor hands you at the beginning of the school year or semester.
She pulls a lot from Nietzsche, but in a way that doesn’t trivialize him, as the post-modernists do. I always appreciated that about her writing, as well as her “gadfly” role on the Left. When viewed from the outside, she’s more of a Libertarian than a Leftist, it would seem.
Average Bush voter income: $36.6K
Average Kerry voter income: $29.6K
And, if you deepen the analysis even more to take into account geographic location and think of the income discrepancy on a “purchasing power parity” basis, the difference in income would grow.
Why? GOP voters are more likely to live in suburbs or rural areas, where pay and cost of living are both lower than in the Dem strongholds in the cities. Translating the equivalent income from suburban/rural terms into urban terms alone could easily add another 5-10% to the average GOP voter’s income.
Stick that one in your bong, jharp, you ignoramus.
I should add, of course, that the content my education was substantially the same as many of the Founding Fathers, so I am quite qualified to say that I know what they meant when the chose a “republic” as our form of governance. Hint, it ain’t anything you trolls want to see put in place.
You’re absolutely right about that last part. Because what they meant is exactly what America got. An over-empowered set of nation states that enslaved fellow Americans and eventually warred on one another. You’re right, someone like you, with the 11th grade education that the founders had, would probably think that was some pretty hot sh^t. Thankfully, you’re about as influential as a flea on a Schnauzer’s balls.
earth to jharp. You’re the rube:
The Blue State Meltdown and the Collapse of the Chicago Model
Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and café society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America.
For example, while state and local budget crises have extended to some red states, the most severe fiscal and economic basket cases largely are concentrated in places such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon, and, perhaps most vividly of all, California.
The last three have among the highest unemployment rates in the country; all the aforementioned are deeply in debt and have been forced to impose employee cutbacks and higher taxes almost certain to blunt a strong recovery.
The East Coast–dominated media, of course, wants to claim that we have reached “the twilight” of Sunbelt growth. This observation seems a bit premature. Instead, traditional red-state strongholds such as the Dakotas, Idaho, Texas, Utah, and North Carolina, dominated the list of fastest-growing regions recently compiled for Forbes by my colleagues at http://www.newgeography.com.
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-blue-state-meltdown-and-the-collapse-of-the-chicago-model
#76, jharp, apologies, some misspellings:
“Take Medicare. Medicare Insurance pays he cost of treatment that the doctor prescribes of deems necessary. Medicare pays, but makes no medical decisions as to what is medically required. THE DOCTOR DOES.”
should read: Medicare Insurance pays the cost of treatment that the doctor prescribes as he/she deems necessary for the patient. the Doctor then bills Medicare.
And this is how this should read:
“Insurance companies know this, that’s why they want to set the terms of who gets (what) health care [instead of the doctor] and who is denied (as well), and they want to be able to bill the National Government for the cost of (the) premiums, an idea worse than what we have already.
All of them are powers granted by our Constitution, jackass. You can’t opt in or opt out any more than I could have opted out of paying for the Iraq war.
We’ll see about that, obviously.
That it doesn’t work on the state level, dumbass. Therefore, since we have a model (Medicare) that works on a national level, we’re are going copy it for a public option.
Brilliant analysis. Too bad you weren’t there to help save all those states and the people who live in them millions and millions of dollars.
As you have amply proven, you obviously are incapable of understanding Medicare’s long-term fiscal issues.
When the dollar collapses for good, it will be because of people like you. You will not escape the ensuing chaos.
Re: #39 – This is a truly exceptional list. Breathtaking to see all of these facts compiled together and the inevitable picture they draw. The Jews in Israel, from what I have read, are onto this guy. Having lived with tyrants and deceivers all around them they should know. Now if only they could convince those in America who are still starry-eyed as the shiv is being quietly inserted between their shoulder blades.
venividivici:
Average Bush voter income: $36.6K
Average Kerry voter income: $29.6K
And, if you deepen the analysis even more to take into account geographic location and think of the income discrepancy on a “purchasing power parity” basis, the difference in income would grow.
Why? GOP voters are more likely to live in suburbs or rural areas, where pay and cost of living are both lower than in the Dem strongholds in the cities. Translating the equivalent income from suburban/rural terms into urban terms alone could easily add another 5-10% to the average GOP voter’s income.
_______________________________________________________
What the hell you are trying to get at I have no idea.
Are you suggesting that each state would be broken down to red and blue sections?
You’re nuts. Redneckistan would consist of the deep south, part of the mountain west, and Texas.
And fer crying out loud, VVV. The GOP has a 17% favorable rating. You’ll be lucky to get a dog catcher elected outside of Redneckistan.
My bad. I forgot to include the plains states being part of Redneckistan.
103
Yes, the original ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were so terrible for non-white males and all females that basically the past 200+ years have been a struggle to provide EXACTLY THE SAME RIGHTS THAT WHITE MALES HAD AT THE FOUNDING OF THE COUNTRY TO ALL CITIZENS. One would have to be blind not to see that. You may recall Obama’s complaint that the Constitution doesn’t provide “positive rights”. Well, once the “negative rights” have been applied almost across the board (it has been a long struggle, but one primarily animated by classical liberalism, not the trash you espouse), I guess that would be the next step the Left tried to implement. That’s where you depart from the republican form of governance and that’s where I have no problem opposing you. In fact, idiot, all of Western history can be read as a long and drawn-out progression to applying the rights that an Athenian citizen of the 5th century BC had to broader and broader strata of society. I am fully in favor of that progression. That is not what “progressives” of today seek.
Thankfully, you’re about as influential as a flea on a Schnauzer’s balls.
And you’re about as intelligent. I guess that makes us even.
An over-empowered set of nation states that enslaved fellow Americans and eventually warred on one another.
God you are a mincing little dandy. War and slavery are the norm in human history.
You’re right, someone like you, with the 11th grade education that the founders had, would probably think that was some pretty hot sh^t.
One other thing, you historically-illiterate putz. There is a long tradition on the Left of praising the Classics as the ideal foundation for education of man as citizen, instead of the mass society norm of educating man to be an economic commodity. Gramsci wrote an essay on the value of a Classical education to teach the proletariat how to act like free men and women and not cogs in the fascist state (can’t find it online, but I’ve read it and it’s quite good, although obviously I disagree with his Communist ideology). Lenin said that once Communism was instituted and the proletariat had free time, he hoped they would spend it reading Classical authors like Democritus and Lucretius (the first “materialists”, who were proponents of the “atomic” theory of matter).
So, keep posting, please, and continue to show the world your ignorance about matters deeper than who won “American Idol” last time around.
Following is a Jewish rant from a Jewish web site in Israel.
Amazing that about 90 percent of it is true:
DON’T TRUST OUTSIDER OPINION
Who is Obama? Barack Obama is less of a person than an image— a brand. People see whatever they want as they do on a Rorschach test. But does anyone really know him?
In fact, he is: An empty suit. A man who was deserted in childhood by his biological father. A man whose birth records,both in the United States and Kenya, are sealed by government order. his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, spied on the U.S. military installations in Hawaii for the Soviet Union, edited a communist newspaper, authored pornographic novels, and wrote poetry in praise of Joseph Stalin.
A man mentored by and still supported by radical Muslims. A man who promised transparency in government, but has spent over a million dollars in legal fees hiding information that would determine his eligibility to be President. A former drug user. A man whose academic records are sealed from kindergarten through law school. A man who arrived in New York in June of 1981 without enough money to get a hotel room, but one month later flew to Indonesia and Pakistan.
Why did he go? Who paid his expenses? A man who traveled to Pakistan when it was illegal for U.S.citizens to do so. So what country’s passport did he use? A man whose Law School Admission Test scores and grades at Columbia University are known to have been mediocre, but was admitted to Harvard Law School through the intervention of a Saudi named Khalid al-Mansour.
A law review editor who never published an article in any law review. A lawyer with no significant accomplishments in the law and no reputation in the legal community. A former State and U.S. Senator, who never authored a piece of legislation. A disciple of the Marxist Saul Alinsky.
A product of the Chicago political machine—the most corrupt political organization in America. A man who selects Marxists, corrupt politicians, and criminals as his close political associates and personal friends. A man whose presidential candidacy was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Socialist International, and the Workers International League.
A man lauded for the literary brilliance of two memoirs, both of which were ghostwritten by others. A so-called Christian who says that knowing when human life begins is “ above his pay-grade,” but somehow knows that abortion is permissible at any stage. A man who thinks “waterboarding” is immoral, but that partial-birth abortion is moral. A man who publicly laments slavery in America—which was abolished 150 years ago—but praises Islam, which still practices both slavery and the sexual mutilation of young girls.
A man who speaks endlessly about helping the less fortunate, but gives almost none of his sizable income to charity—not even to his half-brother, who is living in squalor in Kenya. A man who had the most left-wing voting record in the United State Senate, but was predicted by the press to “govern from the middle.” A man who has never created a job, met a payroll, or even operated a lemonade stand, but wants to tell Detroit how to make cars. A President who has never before served as an executive in either the private or the public sector.
A Commander-in-Chief who doesn’t know how to shoot a rifle, throw a hand-grenade, drive a tank, fly a plane, or navigate a ship. A Commander-in-Chief who has publicly divulged some of our nation’s most important intelligence secrets.
A man who has been put in charge of the largest economic engine that ever existed, but has never invested in the stock market and admits total ignorance of it. A President who says that science will guide his administration , but has no education in the sciences.
A man who is proficient in reading what is written for him on a teleprompter, but jerks and stammers his way through any off-the-cuff speaking. A man whose health records are sealed from childhood to the present day.
A man who spent 20 years in a church whose pastor espouses Marxist Liberation Theology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Semitism, but claims he never heard his pastor utter anti-American, and anti-Semitic statements. A man who added more to the National Debt in 120 days than all other Presidents did in the past 220 years, yet feels qualified to lecture Americans about “fiscal responsibility”.
A man who publicly expressed disdain for the U.S. Constitution on a Chicago radio station because it limited the government’s ability to “ redistribute wealth.” The first American President to bow before a foreign head of state—a Muslim dictator. A man who sits and listens submissively while his country is castigated by Daniel Ortega—a Communist thug whose own daughter accused him of raping her. A narcissist who gave the Queen of England a present from the United States – – an iPod containing recordings of his own speeches.
A so-called Christian who officially declared “Pride Month” for a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination. A man who wanted Americans to ignore his Muslim name during his election campaign, yet boasts of his Muslim name when he travels to Muslim countries. A man who can name hundreds of America’s shortcomings, yet none of its great accomplishments.
A President who claims the moral high ground by closing Gitmo yet supports the transfer of terror suspects to countries where horrific torture is certain. A President who scoffed at being called a socialist yet acted to nationalize the auto industry, the banking industry, and the insurance industry . . . and now seeks to nationalize the healthcare industry.
A President who violates private property rights, the sanctity of contracts, and the rule of law—three essential principles that go back over a thousand years in the Common Law tradition. A man who promised 95% of all Americans a tax cut, but is increasing taxes on 100% of the population through inflation—the cruelest tax of all. A lawyer who represented ACORN—an organization now indicted in several states for voter fraud—whose stated goal is to get as many people on welfare as possible in order to destroy our financial system.
A President who cheated GM’s bondholders by giving their property to the UAW in a political payoff. An American President who frequently criticizes his own country when speaking in foreign countries, but never praises America ’s generosity, goodness or greatness.
A President whose Secretary of the Treasury cheated on his taxes—as did several other appointees and advisors. A President who, despite the current federal debt of over 10 trillion dollars, wants to add the greatest debt ever by nationalizing healthcare.
A President who scoffs at being called a socialist, yet has appointed 28 “Czars” to circumvent constitutional government, including: 1) A “Science Czar” who has advocated compulsory abortions for American women and the “surrender of sovereignty” to a “comprehensive Planetary Regime.” 2) A self-professed communist as his “Green Jobs Czar”. 3) A “Pay Czar” to regulate the pay of corporate executives. A President who swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” yet has nominated a domestic enemy of the Constitution to the Supreme Court. A President whose Home land Security Chief classified pro-lifers, veterans, and supporters of traditional marriage as terrorists. A President who stood silent while the Iranian government hacked unarmed protestors to death with axes, because it was an internal matter, but freely offers his opinions about the internal affairs of Israel and Honduras. A President who decreed that true acts of terrorism must now be described as “man-made disasters.”
A President who cracks hurtful jokes about Special Olympians. A President who refused to intercept or inspect a North Korean ship virtually certain to be carrying Weapons of Mass Destruction to Myanmar (Burma). A President who wants to cancel all missile defenses while rogue nations are developing long-range ballistic missiles.
An American President who blames the violence in Mexico on America. A Commander in Chief who claims to have been unaware that Air Force One was taken on a terrifying, low-level photo-op over Manhattan. A President who berates American CEO’s for flying in private planes at private expense on company business, but whose wife spends hundreds of thousands tax payer dollars flying to Paris for a shopping spree.
A President who promised a transparent administration, but requires all questions be screened before “impromptu” appearances. A man who freely admitted that his energy policies are designed to bankrupt the American coal industry. A President who has presided over the loss of 14.7 million jobs and whose “energy policy” will cause the loss of another 1 million jobs. A President whose “energy policy” will increase the average American’s utility bills by over $2,000 a year in the middle of the Great Recession.
A man about whom liberal journalist Tom Brokaw said, “There’s a lot about him we don’t know.” … just one week before the election. The vast majority of Americans do not know who he is, but someone surely does. Someone paid for his travel expenses to Pakistan and Indonesia. Someone engineered legal challenges to all of his election opponents for the State Senate and had them disqualified.
Someone straightened and leveled his path to the U.S. Senate when a Democrat Judge made public the child custody records of his Republican opponent. When he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, someone arranged for him to speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Someone saw to it that all of his records were sealed, both at home and abroad. Someone assembled the massive organization for his run for the Presidency. SOMEONE KNOWS ALL ABOUT HIM…..
Look, there is a big and getting bigger problem with health care costs. So far there is *only* one plan out there with even a shot of dealing with this, and that’s Obama’s. The Republicans have nothing even remotely as complete, and instead of being constructive in tightening up and improving the plan, they’ve instead opted to just uselessly whine, complain, and make up BS. They’ve collectively have been like some spoiled brat who didn’t want to play outfield in a baseball game so he instead spent the entire game hiding behind a fence to throw rocks and insults at the players.
You make your choices….
And as far as income, IQ and all that stuff related to Kerry and Bush voters, there is this (no, that’s not the hoax one).
Any liberal here can claim that Robert Reich is a liar? Here is what he said:
“I will actually give you a speech made up entirely–almost at the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is, and a candidate will never say, but what candidates should say if we were in a kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship, and they were educated in terms of what the issues were, and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:
“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you, and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health-care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. [laughter] That’s true, and what I’m going to do is I am going to try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people. But that means you–particularly you young people, particularly you young, healthy people–you’re going to have to pay more. [applause] Thank you.
“And by the way, we are going to have to–if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive, so we’re going to let you die. [applause]
“Also, I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid–we already have a lot of bargaining leverage–to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. But that means less innovation, and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market, which means you are probably not going to live that much longer than your parents. [applause] Thank you.”
You’re right, someone like you, with the 11th grade education that the founders had, would probably think that was some pretty hot sh^t.
Fancy that. Moho, a miserable little PJM troll, considers himself wiser and better educated than Jefferson. JFK, when entertaining a bevy of distinguished scientists at the WH quipped that there had not been a greater collection of brains in the building since “Jefferson dined alone.”
Oh, but, Moho is smarter than Jefferson! Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but Moho has – well, what exactly have you accomplished? What have you invented? What great tomes have you written?
Let me guess. Your social studies gave you a big gold star for your book report “Why Amerikkka sux.” She privately thinks you’re dumber than a stick of gum, but doesn’t want to hurt your “self-esteem. ”
A conceited, dirt-ignorant, self-righteous little worm – obviously a product of the public school system.
Those commenters depressed at the notion that Baucus’ monstrosity or some cobbled-together version thereof, and that there is nothing we can do about it, might take heart from remembering a previous episode when a dem congress passed a complex and expensive attempt to finagle expanded benefits coverage. Dan Rostenkowski and the dem’s section 89 debacle so infuriated the American peopled, particularly seniors, that the still dem-dominated congress ingnomineously repealed the piece of crap by a vote of 390 to 36 in 1989. This result will be particularly likely, I believe, since the tax and fee increases occur first, before any benefits are conferred (once millions of citizens and non-citizens alike are lined up at the trough, of course, it would be virtually impossible to claw the programs back).
Crunch time for Rush and his bid for the St. Louis Ra . . . what? . . . Never mind.
The GOP has a 17% favorable rating.
You’re a liar. I refer the brain-damaged dolt jharp to Gallup:
The Republican Party’s relatively strong position on the generic ballot in the latest poll, conducted Oct. 1-4, stems from the support of political independents, who now favor Republican over Democratic candidates by 45% to 36%. In July, independents were evenly divided in their party voting preferences, whereas last fall they showed a clear preference for the Democrats.
I also refer the idiot to the link I posted at 104. I can understand why you would ignore it, since it directly undercuts your argument. The states in the deepest fiscal trouble right now are blue. The states in the best fiscal shape are red. There’s no getting around that.
You’d think Obama’s election would have quieted down the trolls a bit. Instead, they grow shriller and more deeply stupid with each passing day.
An over-empowered set of nation states that enslaved fellow Americans and eventually warred on one another.
Yes, America was the only nation to ever have slavery. Such a thing was unheard of in Europe, Africa, South America, Middle East, and Asia before we invented it.
No other peoples ever fought civil wars. The Native American peoples never warred amongst themselves, never tortured, never enslaved members of different tribes and never practiced human sacrifice.
No, Mojo knows that they were all nice because he’s seen “Dances with Wolves.” Why read boring old history books?
Again, Paglia’s point about modern education producing “docile creatures of the system” is proven by Mojo’s incredible stupidity. He’s the perfect leftist sheeple.
Donna V.: ***APPLAUSE***
I hope it’s sue time for Limbaugh.
Defamation of character using false quotes – I’d say he has a pretty good case.
Donna V.:
The GOP has a 17% favorable rating.
You’re a liar. I refer the brain-damaged dolt jharp to Gallup:
———————————————————
Wrong again. It’s 17%. And that is hilarious.
Try this.
http://www.dailykos.com/weeklytrends
FAVORABLE UNFAVORABLE DON’T KNOW
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: 17 69 14
109. jharp:
My bad. I forgot to include the plains states being part of Redneckistan.
Don’t forget Alaska, dumbass. And to you it may be known as Redneckistan, but to us it will be known as America.
A fan of straw man, are you goy? Donna V, your argument boils down to “Mommy, Billy did it too”. Really, that’s the epitome of the philosophy I see here. Never take responsibility, always shift the blame. Pathetic stuff. I can see why you’d want to bring Paglia into this–she’s one of the most ignorant people commenting today. Judging from her articles, she probably doesn’t even read the paper regularly. If you’re commenting here seriously, and not for the sport of zinging idiots, then I doubt you do either.
Donna V, not too quick on the uptake…How dare anyone compare themselves to Jefferson? Oh wait, the person you’re defending just did that. Whoops.
Yes, the original ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were so terrible for non-white males and all females that basically the past 200+ years have been a struggle to provide EXACTLY THE SAME RIGHTS THAT WHITE MALES HAD AT THE FOUNDING OF THE COUNTRY TO ALL CITIZENS. One would have to be blind not to see that.
I’m not going to dignify any of the rest of your screed with a reply. Nothing in my response indicates my level of education, although its quite obvious you’re quite insecure about your own. That’s your bugaboo, I’ve been called uneducated by people with poorer reasoning skills than you [if you can believe it]; its the first response of people who can’t defend their point. Nothing in my response required you to flee to the archives.
Case in point, the above excerpt. Your approach seems to be that the constitution dropped from heaven, and the poor passive white males have been fighting ever since to extend the rights that they were granted, strictly by accident of history, apparently, to their brethren. In so doing, they left a wonderful narrative of legislative history in that regard–Scott v. Sanford, striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Plessy v. Ferguson, etcetera, and a hundred years worth of petty legislation designed to keep African Americans from having any voice in politics and assuring that slavery would remain by another name. Yeah, two hundred years of struggle–against people like you! Almost all of the civil rights victories for African Americans happened in the last 60 years.
By the way, as I said to your somewhat smarter partner, there’s no need to bring up the actions of any other country when discussing those of your own. That’s simply childish wimpering.
Two examples that tell us all we need to know about the Left:
1) The hysterical witch-huntng campaign against Rush Limbaugh (which one of the trolls here just crowed about) based on out and out lies that could easily have been fact checked. Completely shameless, classic communist-style campaign against the “class enemy,” right out of 1984.
2)Alan Grayson’s “portrayal” of the Republicans’ health care position as “die soon,” etc. Again, sheer nonsensical viciousness, the purest demagoguery. And this after all the hysteria regarding Sarah Palin and “death panels.”
Not to mention Chris Matthews wishing Rush Limbaugh dead, etc.. And all this by leading media and political figures, who get celebrated rather than castigated by their peers.
The Democratic party is a criminal cult–at this point there is very little difference between them (and their media allies) and communist and fascist parties who do nothing but vilify their opponents. In the end, I don’t think they will get a health care bill through, and their other attempts to “fundamentally transform” America will also fail because, like any criminal gang, they will fall out among themselves and expose their intentions too completely and too soon. But there is no point to talking about normal political issues like health care with them–they simply need to be seen as the equivalent of invaders, to be resisted as effectively as possible. Not with violence, unless they initiate it, but with constant, relentless exposure of everything they say and do and a complete refusal to work with them on anything–any Republican who does so is a traitor, not to the party but to the country. Fight them now, fight them if they manage to sneak a health care bill through–sabotage every effort through civil disobedience and through Alinsky and Plivan-Coward style tactics. The language we use to speak about them should always be framed in terms of what they are doing to America–never for, just to. Krauthammer’s essay in the Weekly Standard is a good reference point, but our language can be much more visceral–they want to weaken the country, to subordinate us to transnational interests and regimes, they want to sabatoge the dollar and turn us into social-democratic swamp. As Robert Reich says, they are the ones who will tell us when to die. They want large black populations permanently on welfare and in decaying and dangerous inner cities, they attack and try to destroy any woman who doesn’t toe the line the abortion and gay rights. Ridicule and vitriol–that’s all we should have for them. Elected officials may have to speak a bit differently, but that’s not our problem. The Left is a monster that must be destroyed.
And as far as income, IQ and all that stuff related to Kerry and Bush voters, there is this (no, that’s not the hoax one).
Your link might be of interest IF states, and not individuals, actually had IQs.
The reason you do the analysis at the individual level is precisely because, e.g. Georgia, let’s say, has a 97 average IQ and goes for Bush. Well, if all of the people voting for Bush in Georgia have 105 IQs and all of the people voting for Kerry have 90 IQs, and the vote is nearly split, it comes out that a Bush state has a 97 IQ. The analytical unit has to be the same scale as the point you are trying to prove. With income, I did exactly that. Again, the Left doesn’t seem to know what it doesn’t know, but is so caught up in its self-image as all-knowing, it misses the fact that what it knows isn’t all that much. Sad and annoying people you are.
What the hell you are trying to get at I have no idea.
Are you suggesting that each state would be broken down to red and blue sections?
jharp, I doubt you know what “Dick and Jane” books are “getting at”.
Yep, let’s split the country into red and blue. You can tax and spend yourself into oblivion and, best part for you, no teabaggers! I guess you’ll have to find another way to sublimate your homosexual fantasies into invective. Maybe you can finally get to meet Anderson Cooper and have the teabagging session you’ve always dreamed of.
Come on, don’t you have the courage of your convictions? I know you turds don’t love the country as it is, so here’s the chance to engage in a historical experiment to prove once and for all whose vision of the “just society” is the right one. I contend that you people don’t have the balls to split off and try to form your own country because your entire political ideology consists of flapping your gums about how smart you are. Plus, as I pointed out above, GOP voters make more money and, hence, pay more taxes to support you lazy Leftist bums. The bottom line is that you need “us” more than “we” need you. All the insults, accusations of stupidity, etc. cannot obscure the simple numerical facts. You are the party of the ultra-rich and ultra-poor. If the Democratic party were a country unto itself, it would be a Communist revolution just waiting to happen. Half of your party is people like John Kerry and the other half is people like those helpful folks at ACORN. Yeah, really friggin’ brain-trust you’ve got there.
We could reorganize at the county level, based on Presidential election results from 2008. Every county already has a fully-operational governance infrastructure, so there’d be hardly any need for any immediate capital investments. Heck, with the way Congressional districts have been gerrymandered, it’s already practically a reality that counties consist of either GOP partisans or Dem partisans, so this would just be codifying it into law. Individuals would declare their allegiance to one set of laws or another. People wouldn’t have to move unless they wanted to, but if you were “caught behind enemy lines” in a county that voted against your man in the 2008 election, you had to abide by those laws anyway.
You wouldn’t have to pay for any future wars that you didn’t want to pay for and I wouldn’t have to pay for your entitlements. It’s a win-win. Right now, politics overall is lose-lose. I hate you and you hate me. That’s no way to go through life. It’s not God-ordained that the United States exist in its present form for all eternity. The two political factions are clearly analogous to a couple that’s going to end up getting divorced sooner or later. Might as well get it over with now.
Look, there is a big and getting bigger problem with health care costs.
Not really. The focus on costs is wrong-headed.
http://american.com/archive/2009/september/forecasting-the-cost-of-u-s-healthcare
We could spend 50% more as a percentage of GDP and still get good value (at least on the surface. A deeper dive into actual value versus just dollars spent would need to be done).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350810610869756.html
“Mr. Obama has said that “the cost of health care has weighed down our economy.” No one thinks the 20% of our GDP that’s attributable to manufacturing is weighing down the economy, because it’s intuitively clear that one person’s expenditure on widgets is another person’s income. But the same is true of the health-care industry. The $2.4 trillion Americans spend each year for health care doesn’t go up in smoke. It’s paid to other Americans.”…
“In a 2007 study, Stanford University economists Robert E. Hall (who will take office next year as president of the American Economic Association) and Charles I. Jones reported that modeling they’ve conducted has found that mid-21st century U.S. health-care expenditures would optimally amount to 30% of GDP or more. They wrote:
“We examine the allocation of resources that maximizes social welfare in our model. We abstract from the complicated institutions that shape spending in the United States and ask a more basic question: from a social welfare standpoint, how much should the nation spend on health care, and what is the time path of optimal health spending? . . .
“Viewed from every angle, our results support the proposition that both historical and future increases in the health spending share are desirable. . . . [W]e believe it likely that maximizing social welfare in the United States will require the development of institutions that are consistent with spending 30 percent or more of GDP on health by the middle of the century.”
The GOP’s “plan” should be to let this happen, as it would naturally and for the Dems to get out of the f*cking way of me spending my money on my health if I damn well f*cking want to. It can’t get much simpler than that.
Trolls will be trolls, but it appears that the law will make the USA in to a big laboratory, and we will all be the lab rats. The consequences of this legislation will resonate for decades, and the truth will be known for all to see, one way or the other.
Somebody mentioned not paying taxes, and was answered that you’ll go to jail.
However, you can increase the number of dependents, reducing your withholding to zero, and this is legal. You DO want to save the $ to pay your taxes.
I am self-employed, and will do as much business as possible in barter or exchange, if this bill becomes law.
If very many of us reduce the cash flow of the govt. in these ways, it will be noticed.
I know nobody wants to quit their health insurance, and many of us can’t because of it being provided by employers. Insurance companies have some leverage that we don’t have, and it might be possible to write our insurance carriers and influence them. Any advice from insurance experts here?
Some countries have national strikes, seems to get attention.
We need more practical ideas. When the government refuses to listen to a majority who don’t want this bill, we can reasonably look to anybody with leverage, and consider civil disobedience. The tea parties, town halls, and march on Washington, plus a gazillion polls, make it perfectly obvious what the public response is, and if our government ignores us, we need to have more options than sniveling.
They are counting on us submitting, like good little PC citizens. How long do we keep submitting? Where is the line? We could end up like citizens of the USSR, too intimidated to even try, if we wait too long. Keep telling yourself, it could never happen here… They admire Cuba so much…
jharp: LOL! You’re pointing to a Kos poll? Yeah, that’s about as accurate as me using a poll of Free Republic readers to prove my point. Feel free to believe your own propaganda,moron. Nobody else buys it.
As for Moho, his ignorant and ill-informed remarks reveal his poverty of thought and imagination. Moho, I’m sorry you didn’t get a good education and are so jealous of those who did that you want to belittle their learning. Clearly, you don’t understand the basic difference between putting the faults of one’s country in historical perspective and evading responsibility (another case of leftist projection) because you were never taught elementary logic. But then, I doubt they teach that to the slow learners in middle school.
Oh, and Moho the historically illiterate simpleton knows that
conservatives are routinely slandered as being dumb, ill-educated rednecks. jharp, who believes everything he reads at Kos, does it routinely. (So much for the Dems being the party of the common man.)When veni and other commenters on this blog clearly demonstrate that they are far better read and more knowledgable than any of the trolls, the outclassed Moho then whines “Why do you bring up your education? Are you insecure?”
Moho in a battle of wits, you’re wielding the equivalent of a plastic butter knife.
Case in point, the above excerpt. Your approach seems to be that the constitution dropped from heaven, and the poor passive white males have been fighting ever since to extend the rights that they were granted, strictly by accident of history, apparently, to their brethren. In so doing, they left a wonderful narrative of legislative history in that regard–Scott v. Sanford, striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Plessy v. Ferguson, etcetera, and a hundred years worth of petty legislation designed to keep African Americans from having any voice in politics and assuring that slavery would remain by another name. Yeah, two hundred years of struggle–against people like you! Almost all of the civil rights victories for African Americans happened in the last 60 years.
Yes, “people like me” have been denying others their rights for 200 years. In fact, I’m 200 years old and I’ve never done anything in my entire life but deny people rights, so it’s all my fault. Are you f-ing serious with this? Are you really going to tell me that no white men were out there fighting to extend rights that they enjoyed simply by virtue of being white in a post-American Revolutionary world to others? I already told you that my approach to politics is more in line with classical liberalism/libertarianism, so, unless you want to make the argument that any political ideology that doesn’t embrace whatever happens to be the Leftist meme du jour on race relations is ipso facto a manifestation of hiding behind “white privilege”, then, as the innocent suspect always says to the cops, “You got the wrong guy”. Given the timing of my birth, I may not have fought on the front lines for any of the things that have been accomplished in the extension of rights (interestingly, if you had bothered to ask, I’d have told you that the last place I think white males of the non-aristocratic mold got their rights was directly from Heaven. There’s actually a whole school of thought that uses empirical historical evidence to show that rights, among the Greeks and Romans (and in a more generalizable way, other cultures as well), ebbed and flowed with the level of contribution of the “common man” of the day to the military efforts of the Greek city-state and the Roman republic. Just as an aside, but, hey, don’t ask me what my thoughts on a topic are when you can just assume) doesn’t automatically mean that I’d have been fighting against their extension in the first place.
So, in summary, you do not get to accuse me of historical crimes I didn’t commit simply because I oppose the direction from which you would like to go from the present day, e.g. because I don’t support “affirmative action” being extended in perpetuity doesn’t mean I would have fought for the South in the Civil War.
I originally brought up education in response to jharp’s stupid gibe about me being a “typical uneducated teabagger”, FYI, so it wasn’t like I was trying to trot it out there unbidden.
Donna V, not too quick on the uptake…How dare anyone compare themselves to Jefferson? Oh wait, the person you’re defending just did that. Whoops.
No, I said my education was comparable to the education he received and that it helped me better understand where he was coming from. That’s a whole different thing from comparing myself to Jefferson. If you really were “the smartest guy in the room”, you’d have seen that pretty easily by just reading my post. So, either you didn’t read it or you’re not the smartest guy in the room.
I’m not going to dignify any of the rest of your screed with a reply. Nothing in my response indicates my level of education
Yes, I know that being confronted with facts is considered and, being the typical Leftist that you are, you need to defuse that pain by calling those facts a “screed”.
Nonetheless, to the casual observer your response may not indicate educational level, but to me the fact that you had no idea of the tradition on the Left of celebrating the Classics (hence your denigration of them as “an 11th grade education”, to which, of course, the response is “not in an NEA-run public school”) as a source of inspiration for the proletariat to rise above its blue-collar origins (it was one of the original versions of “use the master’s tools against the master” for crying out loud) indicates an education with some significant holes (not necessarily in absolute terms, but in relative terms). If you want to talk politics beyond the issues of the day and you don’t even know the basic history of your own ideology, well, why would I respect your perspective at all?
Donna V.”
There’s nothing like being called stupid by someone who doesn’t understand even the simplest fundamentals of debate. Every single one of your arguments is a straw man, linking my statements to things I haven’t said and the opinions of others. You don’t even know if I am a liberal, and even if I was, I have no responsibility for the fact that other people have called you stupid.
but to me the fact that you had no idea of the tradition on the Left of celebrating the Classics (hence your denigration of them as “an 11th grade education”, to which, of course, the response is “not in an NEA-run public school”) as a source of inspiration for the proletariat to rise above its blue-collar origins (it was one of the original versions of “use the master’s tools against the master” for crying out loud) indicates an education with some significant holes (not necessarily in absolute terms, but in relative terms). If you want to talk politics beyond the issues of the day and you don’t even know the basic history of your own ideology, well, why would I respect your perspective at all?
I thought even you would have more dignity than this [actually, not really]. The putative importance of the classics has nothing to do with the topic I mentioned. Its almost as if, knowing little of the history of the United States and unable to competently use google, you switched the conversation over to something you could find more easily on Wikipedia. As I said, you can tell little about my level of education by my comment–and indeed, it should have nothing to do with our discussions, everything I wrote was historically accurate–but your own insecurity about your intelligence and education is the only thing that emerges as an intact theme from your comments.
So, in summary, you do not get to accuse me of historical crimes I didn’t commit simply because I oppose the direction from which you would like to go from the present day, e.g. because I don’t support “affirmative action” being extended in perpetuity doesn’t mean I would have fought for the South in the Civil War.
This is specious reasoning. I never accused you of doing any of these things. In fact, I focused my critique on the ideas you’re aligning yourself with. There’s a pretty big credibility gap for the founders. They had some good ideas, but if the US could ever be looked at objectively by people like you, it would be clear that it was a disaster of human rights, not unlike S. Africa and even Nazi Germany. The ideas failed to be put into effect in a meaningful way–the constitution and the bill of rights were a sham until just recently, and the changes that made them worth the paper they were written on came largely from non-conservative, non-mainstream actors. They were told to slow down, or that they were pushing too hard. They were also told to let go of some of their demands–those that would guarantee a better life for their children, such as affirmative action. Mostly by people like you–conservatives afraid of change. You’re no classical liberal, any more than the men who consigned entire populations to slavery were liberals. Relegating one group to second class citizenship by law is the exact opposite of liberalism.
Anyone who seeks to align themselves with the concepts and frame of mind that produced the country as it was for the first century and a half of its existence as if it was some glory day we all need to harken to–or as if its slave holding hypocritical elites were some kind of enlightened saints–need also take responsibility for the mind-set that produced the atrocities of the 19th and 20th century, for they have made those their own.
Simply put. You can’t say you agree whole-heartedly with Jefferson, a man who enslaved his own children, without explaining where you diverge. And you can’t expect me to assume you reject everything from the past which is currently unacceptable de facto, without having to endure some questioning along those lines. No, its not obvious to me that you wouldn’t have fought on the South, though I would wager that you wouldn’t have fought at all, but simply paid a poorer person to do it for you.
I thought even you would have more dignity than this [actually, not really]. The putative importance of the classics has nothing to do with the topic I mentioned. Its almost as if, knowing little of the history of the United States and unable to competently use google, you switched the conversation over to something you could find more easily on Wikipedia. As I said, you can tell little about my level of education by my comment–and indeed, it should have nothing to do with our discussions, everything I wrote was historically accurate–but your own insecurity about your intelligence and education is the only thing that emerges as an intact theme from your comments.
You keep shifting themes and I am trying to address them all. One thing you said referred to the Classics, and other thing you said referred to the animating ideas of the Founding Fathers, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and another thing you said referred to the struggle for civil rights. To say that I’ve only focused on one of these and that wasn’t the important one, is a moronic accusation that has no anchor in reality.
There’s a pretty big credibility gap for the founders.
Ad hominem. Yawn.
They were told to slow down, or that they were pushing too hard. They were also told to let go of some of their demands–those that would guarantee a better life for their children, such as affirmative action. Mostly by people like you–conservatives afraid of change. You’re no classical liberal, any more than the men who consigned entire populations to slavery were liberals. Relegating one group to second class citizenship by law is the exact opposite of liberalism.
Easily argued in hindsight. Yawn.
Anyone who seeks to align themselves with the concepts and frame of mind that produced the country as it was for the first century and a half of its existence as if it was some glory day we all need to harken to–or as if its slave holding hypocritical elites were some kind of enlightened saints–need also take responsibility for the mind-set that produced the atrocities of the 19th and 20th century, for they have made those their own.
Never said anything about “hearkening”, I said that if you look at the concrete demands of historically-marginalized groups (up until Communists started influencing them in the 20th century), they typically demanded that the rights enshrined in the Constitution (which themselves have a lineage back to the Greek city-states) be extended to all, rather than to just a few. I said that I wholeheartedly agreed with this conception of who should be covered by said rights. All accusations from you to the contrary can go back from where you pulled them: up your *ss.
No, its not obvious to me that you wouldn’t have fought on the South, though I would wager that you wouldn’t have fought at all, but simply paid a poorer person to do it for you.
How do you want to pay me for losing that bet? Are you on PayPal?
As I said, you can tell little about my level of education by my comment–and indeed, it should have nothing to do with our discussions, everything I wrote was historically accurate–but your own insecurity about your intelligence and education is the only thing that emerges as an intact theme from your comments.
Again, the topic came up from others, not me. An insecure person would have, unasked, offered information on their education to set a context for their remarks. At best, you can argue that I shouldn’t have responded to the initial gibe. That’s a judgment call and reasonable people can disagree. What reasonable people can’t do is automatically jump to the conclusion that because I responded, it’s a sure sign of insecurity. jharp is a f*cking douchebag who constantly slings sh*t about which he knows nothing, so when he calls me “uneducated”, I reserve the right to tell him exactly how educated I am and that he can kiss my educated *ss.
Also, I didn’t accuse you of historical inaccuracy, I accused you of historical omission, with regard to a specific theme in Leftist thought, based on your comment vis-a-vis a Classical education, as well as a broader lack of awareness of what it was that non-whites and women were seeking and how it related to the rights already enjoyed by white males in post-Revolutionary America. You keep putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say and speculating on actions I would have taken based on your assumptions about what I must mean in what I do say, which is definitely a sign of someone who is insecure in addressing the actual things I did say.
Again, I didn’t bring up leftist thought, you did. I’m not a “leftist” if that word indeed has any meaning anymore. I have no interest in discussing the history of leftism, and especially no interest in hearing such a history from you, a rather flamboyantly ignorant individual. I think you summed up your points perfectly here:
To say that I’ve only focused on one of these and that wasn’t the important one, is a moronic accusation that has no anchor in reality.
Yes, it was. But it was created by you, not me.
as well as a broader lack of awareness of what it was that non-whites and women were seeking and how it related to the rights already enjoyed by white males in post-Revolutionary America.
And, of course, how those rights already enjoyed by white males had a lineage that went back to the old Roman and Greek rights, as I already mentioned. I don’t think you’re unaware of what those non-whites were fighting for, but I don’t think you see those things in the broader historical context of Western history, or at least showed no evidence of it.
moho: Look for whatever reason you are on this thread, and continue to come back to this website, you are winning a losing battle. Your black liberation theology is plainly evident and it bores me.
What’s done is done. But to you it is an easy target-something you can bring up when you are losing an intellectual battle and say,” but those awful white men back in the formative years of the republic enslaved us so they were evil” demonstrates your incapacity for real thought and debate. You think immediately that these white people will shrivel up and stop arguing with me because I am black and have suffered from the sins(?) of the past. Weak!!
Your constant refrain of “the poor black folk have been put down by the priveleged white folk” is getting pretty tedious.
Who gives a rats a$$ what you think about the founding of the greatest nation this planet has ever seen. The only reason you and Obama are at the levels you have risen to is because some guilt-tripping white liberal allowed you (via affirmative action)and him to get there. Do you really think O got to where he is without some white benefactor??
Give it a rest. If you hate this country so much leave.
I never accused you of doing any of these things. In fact, I focused my critique on the ideas you’re aligning yourself with.
What is this, if not an accusation?
Yeah, two hundred years of struggle–against people like you!
Again, there were plenty of white males who were abolitionists, women’s suffragists and marched for civil rights. From a pragmatic perspective, it’s difficult to see how these movements could have achieved their goals without support from white males, given the exact power imbalances of the society at the time when these movements began. Had white males decided to oppose them with all their might, blood would have flowed in the streets in far greater quantities than it did. Even someone with your lack of perspective should be able to appreciate that fact. If you can’t see that there were political fault lines within the demographic known as “white males” today (which, of course, was not always the case, e.g. Italians were dirty anarchists back in the day, but are considered a part of the white male demographic today), then your even less astute an observer of politics than I thought, which is pretty much to say that you’ve achieved a level of zero astuteness.
#14. ‘tax-deductable’ ?
========================================================
What an abhorrent thought, comrade. Totally counter productive, from the government’s position.
Again, I didn’t bring up leftist thought, you did.
After you conveniently parroted a series of Leftist ideas regarding the Founding Fathers and early American history, including the value judgments that are fairly standard from that side of the aisle. Sorry, I’m just a simple man, so if someone shows up at my door with blond hair and blue eyes, speaking German, I assume he’s German.
I’m not a “leftist” if that word indeed has any meaning anymore.
This would have more credibility if you’d ever posted something here that wasn’t pretty much by-the-book Leftism. I’ll take your word for it but it’s not as if many of the topics discussed at PJM don’t offer opportunities for a person who isn’t a Leftist to support either the conclusions reached by the various authors (which often, obviously, oppose Leftist political preferences on, e.g. school choice) or to offer up alternatives that really do go beyond some of the traditional dichotomies.
especially no interest in hearing such a history from you, a rather flamboyantly ignorant individual.
Yeah, I’m “flamboyantly ignorant”. OK, of course you would say that and at least you have enough understanding of the performative aspects of debate to make the accusation part of your rhetoric. The thing is that in the context of a public forum, the posters themselves don’t really get to decide that, now do they? Who knows who, if anyone, is reading this, but they are the ones who decide who is ignorant, whether flamboyantly or not, and who isn’t. I like my odds.
This would have more credibility if you’d ever posted something here that wasn’t pretty much by-the-book Leftism.
I challenge you to show me what an example of this. The topics discussed here are pure fantasy, that’s what makes me angry. You people are impoverishing our discourse, talking about the number of angels that can fit on a pin. If you really had any beliefs of any kind, you’d be taking your fellow posters here to task for their striking bullshit. Its quite obvious that you don’t. No integrity, no belief system, simply a blind servant of authoritarian power.
Who knows who, if anyone, is reading this, but they are the ones who decide who is ignorant, whether flamboyantly or not, and who isn’t. I like my odds.
You should, the people here are not only ignorant, they’re as dumb as a bag of hammers. They couldn’t tell sh^t from shinola with a microscope. Just a list of some of the amazingly pertinent and really based in reality topics discussed on Self-Pwnage Media today:
The Media’s War Against Liz Cheney
[a petty bureaucrat on every single morning show for the past six months with absolutely no real accomplishments to recommend the attention. But yeah, they're persecuting her]
CAIR: The Muslim Media Exposed
[I can't even bring myself to criticize this sorry piece of propaganda. Anyone discussing this in real terms is an idiot]
Ohio State Student Group Hosts Hamas Fundraiser
[they also baked Hitler shaped cookies]
Pure fantastical bs, the lot of it. If you had any shame at all, you’d scurry over to your long-suffering wife and children and beg for forgiveness for your part in the decline of the public sphere. But you have no shame, and no integrity. Just an authoritarian looking to lick the b6lls of the biggest Republican dog you can find. Have at it, Rex.
@91. venividivici:
I am educated in the Classics. You know, those dead, white European males that were so much smarter than people like you that you had to start denigrating them when you realized that you couldn’t live up to their standards.
In other words, you spent your time at the University reading the stuff I read while I was in middle school.
One sentence of Aristotle is more profound than every post of yours on this or any other website combined.
Nice of you not to share that sentence. So obtuse.
If I actually believed that anyone on the Left measured up to Plato’s (Plato was the first Leftist, really) ideal of the “philosopher-king”, I would follow that person’s vision of the “just society” to the letter.
You have explained, in one sentence, exactly what is wrong with you.
Alas, all I see among the would-be philosopher-kings are fools, charlatans and incompetents (sometimes all of these things combined in one).
Have you decided which category you belong to yet? Or are you shooting for a trifecta?
Plus, no one seems to understand that “Utopia” is a play on words and isn’t meant to be an actual political program. A lot gets lost in translation, but that one’s so simple that it says a lot about the people, like yourself, who haven’t even figured that out.
Funny that – you are the only one here talking about Utopia.
So, it’s not that I “lost” my education, it’s that you’ve never had one.
It’s a good thing you didn’t claim to have a degree in science. Your logic is lacking.
You really don’t seem to believe me when I tell you that at one point, I thought just like you, only I grew out of it once I truly reflected on what drove those thoughts, i.e. what Nietzsche called ressentiment. Read Nietzsche’s “Untimely Meditation” on David Strauss for a good portrait of yourself and your many shortcomings.
I’m certain that you believe that at one point you thought just like me. I don’t doubt that you have read Nietzsche. I just wonder why you elect to make a show of it. It’s not like the rest of us are not familiar. Your college education sounds a lot like my summer reading list from my freshman year in high school. But you can keep on assuming my shortcomings – I don’t mind. Whatever makes you feel better. I wouldn’t want to bruise your self-esteem. I’m sure that your education has served you well in whatever field you have made your own.
Peace.
DS
Obama’s plan for forced welfare:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/16/morning-bell-obamacare-puts-you-on-welfare/
Here’s where the Republicans’ (particularly the Palin impaired) intellectual and ideological agoraphobia has led them:
• That Quinnipiac survey finds that just 25 percent approve of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their job, while 64 percent disapprove.
• The latest Democracy Corps survey finds just 30 percent with a favorable opinion the GOP while 44 have an unfavorable opinion. That -14 point net approval rating is nearly twice as bad as it was on Election Day in 2008. Moreover, at net 17-point favorability gap between the two parties is down only slightly from Election Day 2008 and is still substantially larger than when Democrats secured their first of two successive wave victories on Election Day in 2006.
• A similar analysis of Pew data from Brendan Nylan at Pollster.com finds that “the Republicans are currently viewed more negatively than any minority party in the previous four midterms in terms of both net favorables and the difference in net favorables between parties.”
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-baumann/voters-tiring-of-republic_b_315563.html
Obama, in the town where Gavin Newsom’s “Whether you like it or not…!” sank his own career, says “I’m not tired!”
As Yoda would say, “You WILL be.”