Does anyone know of any rigntwinger who claims to be against the government being involved in healthcare and has proven it by giving up their Medicare? Seems like a lot of those tea party folks are eligible by the looks of them.
Actually, does anyone have the stats on how much of the deficit we could reduce if every rightwinger who claims to be against the government having anything to to with their healthcare gave up their Medicare and any other subsidies the government provides as well as any regulations the government oversees in the healthcare industry?
Man the rest of us could probably have Medicare extended to all of us without it costing anything if only the people who believe in government's role in healthcare and the regulation of the healthcare industry should be zero opted the freak out of all of it and let us have the decent-and-equally-caring-for-all system we want.
Have you noticed (this one's not easy because the "mainstream media" that the right has convinced their followers is "liberal" is actually scared to death of the right) that the healthcare "reforms" being suggested now (on the Sunday talk shows and elsewhere) by the Republicans, who it looks like have been successful in killing the Dems bill, is exactly the same as the ones in the bill they voted against when they were in control of the Congress and presidency?
Just asking. (And before it even happens, we all know the rightwing trolls like "Jim" et. al. will refer to articles from rightwing sources that have as much credibility as Glen Beck recently saying it's the liberals who try to "shout down" their opponents and use horrible tactics like calling people "racists"—forgetting that he called the president "racist" as a way of attacking him and spends most of his waking hours "shouting down" his opponents or would-be opponents and supporting groups like the tea partyers and birthers etc. who use "shout down" tactics as their main strategy).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Nice to have you back Lals.
Yo Lal.
You and a lot of others have made this point, which real reporters, if we had any, should have been pointing out all along. And for our lovable trolls, please give us a sworn affidavit renouncing any and all rights you may now have, or have in the future, to medicare benefits. I for one would love to see you pay outrageous premiums,(assuming you can even get them to cover you), for the same care I am proud to be getting right now, (yeah, I'm almost 66),from that heinous entity known as medicare. Put up or shut up. You can scan and email your affidavit to "alamedatom@gmail.com" and I will make it my life's work to insure that it gets to medicare personnel.
~Willy
i'd go one step further Willy - with the signed affidavit, the individual would receive a tax credit proportionate to the amount of their personal tax liability that actually subsidizes their benefit - providing they exempt themselves from any, and all entitlements ...
the numbers would probably be as staggering as the much anticipated 'troll comments' we're going to have to tolerate ...
it all sounds like a reasonable solution - but therein lies the problem; you can't reason with unreasonable people ...
I think it’s time you examined your faith in the Democratic Party. William Kristol, Jim’s soul mat, has. (The neocons also love Obama’s foreign policy.)
Obama is the point man for continuing the transfer of wealth from what’s left of the middle class to the super rich.
I remember last summer, before I was laid off, I commented here that Obama and the Democrats were very concerned about the bankers but showed no concern for the unemployed, many of whom will lose their benefits in the Fall of ’09. You said you were sure the Democrats would work to extend the benefits. Michael, with unemployment north of 10%, please show me where they have. Instead we have the spending freeze.
On the same day that Obama announced his spending freeze it was reported, Robert Gates (Bush appointed, like Bernake, where’s the change there?) met with defense contractors:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted a meeting with the nation's top defense company executives Wednesday, stressing the need for a closer partnership with them and pledging to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time, according to his spokesman. . . .
Gates's meeting was part of a day-long session between Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter and the Aerospace Industries Association, the top trade group for American aerospace firms. The heads of the nation's top two defense firms -- Lockheed Martin and Boeing -- attended, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.
How is this different from what Ronald Reagan did? See this for Obama’s candid thoughts on Reagan.
I am sure you remember the ’60s truism - if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. The Democrats and the Republicans are both part of the problem.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this Butch. Go back and read my earlier posts on politics over the past few years and you will see my thoughts. The Democrats extended unemployment insurance twice, so far with a smaller extension counting as three times. So they didn't do "nothing" as you assert. Obama's attempts to work with the system that exists and try to keep the enemies of all that he seemed to stand for at bay and from undermining or outright sabatoging every initiative he comes up with or has planned for the future etc. have been pretty brilliant if not to your liking. Has he made mistakes. Duh. Has he in one year reversed and/or corrected many of the moves made by the Republicans in the last administration and some going back to Reagan and even Nixon to make government a tool of corporations and the rich at the expense of the rest of us. Absolutely. Are the people who can't find jobs or are losing their homes justifiably upset. Duh. But ask the families whose kids are now covered by healthcare who weren;t when Obama came in or schools that didn't have to lay off teachers thanks to this administration (and don't blame Obama for the states problems, CA for instance can all be traced back to the Republican right's campaign to eliminate or vastly reduce property taxes for schools etc.). Veterans have much much better benefits, something Bush/Cheney fought and kept from happening despite their jive pretense of caring about "the troops" blah blah. There are so many areas where Obama has improved things from the highly consequential in ways that affect all of us (Supreme Court judges for one) and seemingly not all of us, like no longer using the justice department and law enforcement agencies to chase after marijuana users etc. etc. etc. etc. Oh my gosh did he get in bed with bankers in order to keep from having the entire banking system collapse and cause a worldwide depression worse than the last one in the 1930s brought about by Republican policies that favored the rich over the poor and the corporate over the individual (sound effin' familiar?). You can cite all the reports you want, my personal experience and my reading of history and interaction with it to the extent I have informs my opinions and they are that ALMOST ANY DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS has done more for the average "American" than almost any Republican ones. Just use a little imagination and consider what our country and our world would be like had Gore actually not been cheated out of the presidency, or if Nixon had lost, or lost his reelection bid or if Reagan hadn't won, etc. etc. etc. (but this is pointless because all the books I've read and experiences I have mean nothing in the face of ideological purity that posits an ideal against anything less than that ideal and finds all things less than ideal equally bad. That's how we ended up here in the first place.)
PS (I obviously couldn't keep it brief.) Do I think baks should be better regulated, broken up so they're never "too big to fail" and the Glass Steagall Act re-enacted? Yup. And I think Rham Emmanuel should be replaced and that Howard Dean should have had and still should have a role in this administration and Jim Webb and etc. etc. etc. But all the wrong steps Obama and his administration have taken, as well as the factionalized Dems in Congress does not negate the fact that they inherited the worst situation of any administration since the the Great Depression and were faced with rightwing appointees up and down the line in federal agencies and departments etc. who would be willing (as they were with Carter) to create shadow agencies and depts. to thwart any progressive moves Obama and the Dems made/make, and given all that and the stylistic and media spin mistakes (O should never have taken up golf in the first year and kept to basketball, e.g. remember Bush Junior and the ranch he acquired just on time to run for the presidency as a Texas "rancher" (without any cattle) rather than an Ivy League cheerleader, literally), it's amazing he and the Dems have gotten as much done as they have.
Medicare and social security are going bankrupt. The US debt has quadrupled in a year. If our spending ways are not changed we are on the way to a second class country. Taxes are scheduled to go higher and we already have the second highest corporate taxes in the free world.
Paul Ryan's WST Jr article, which advocates the phasing in of changes which secure current and near retirement age folks, but changes to a more fiscally responsible plan for people below age 55, is practicle and responsible change. By the way, I have private health insurance. If I had no choice I would be with Medicare. I would be part of the problem.
Mike,I note that your nastiness has returned. Why is it that liberals/progressives/ socialists are so nasty?
Wall St. Jr. Article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025080017959478.html
Gee, I wish I could be as not nasty as you rightwingers like Rush and Glen and Cheney and O'Reilly et. al. and, um, you Jim. Oh, and I take it you don't get Medicare, is that right? You only use private insurance? Hmmm.
PS Jim, the two biggest deficits in the history of our country until now were run up by Reagan and Bush Junior and I didn't hear any outcry from the right. Hmmm. And the biggest surplus was garnered under Cilnton, and as I remember it there were no accolades for him from the right, in fact there was an attempt to impeach him for trying to hide an extramarital affair that cost more than any government investigation up to that time (and no outcries for the expenditure from the right! oh my). This has nothing to do with what Obama and the Dems do or don't do, this has to do with an inability to accept a democratic change in who the people voted to run the government. The right was attacking Obama before he even took office. Et-endlessly-cetera.
If you did not hear of any outcry from conservatives on the spending of Republicans in the Bush years, you were not listening. The rise of the Tea Party movement is reaction to government out of control, both Democrat and Republican. As to nastiness, Rush and Beck use humor with a heavy enphasis on facts which can be verified. If you would like to challenge some of those facts, name them. You always took your self to seriously to use humor. With facts you are at the very least cavalier if not, to be kind, misguided.
Jim, explain the humor in Beck declaring on live TV that Obama hates white people and is a racist. I'm not laughing.
One could say that Obama has had a problem with white people from: 20 year association with racist pastor, calling white cops stupid and immediately taking the side of the black professor, alliance with Farrakkhan, accusing his granny of latent racism, his biography expressing his uncomfortableness with whites etc. endlessly etc.
I recently got new bi-focals..
the cost was $525.00
I gave the optometrist my Medicare card as he said "medicare will pay for some of this."
so
he took off $100 that he said Medicare would cover.
now 3 weeks later
he sends me a bill for
$135 ! says in the statement Medicare paid $5.25!!!
so I owe him the $135!
FUCK HIM! FUCK Medicare!
now i am off to the grocery store to steal a 1-lb steak for dinner!!
what a country! we are going down the toilet
pee est he said he accepted Medicare... so, I ain't paying him this extiortinary fee!!!!
this is pointless because all the books I've read and experiences I have mean nothing in the face of ideological purity that posits an ideal against anything less than that ideal and finds all things less than ideal equally bad. That's how we ended up here in the first place.
Pointing out that Bush/Obama Sec of Defense promises the defense industries increased Pentagon spending (and profits for them) is “ideological purity.” Let’s all drop our “purity” and cheer as our government drops $1 trillion on our 5 wars, or billions for the latest drones.
And I guess recognizing that Bush/Obama’s Bernanke missing (and actually facilitating) the $8 trillion housing bubble that shoved our economy off a cliff is just too damn pure. All together now, applaud Obama as he reappoints Bernanke, because he “saved” us from a problem he helped create.
Heck-a-ve job Bernake.
We “ended up here” because Americans teeter totter between euphoric adulation of the latest savior and depression and alienation when the savior continues the same old policies. It’s time to break this cycle.
RIP Howard Zinn, another purist.
Where is your response Mike? Imagine that the supposed racist was Sarah Palin. Imagine that she sat in a pew with a KKK racist preacher, joined or supported a white supremist group, and mentioned that she was uncomfortable with blacks in her book. Would she be a RACIST??
Post a Comment