U.S. House Democrats expect healthcare bill passage
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andyt @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:56 am
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
andyt andyt:
Read it again. So are the military, medicare and medicaid, and people who have coverage from a large employer. Sounds like the vast majority are exempt from this bill, so what's the fuss.
The "fuss" is that the Congress has probably the most expensive health care plan in the world and people resent them for that.
Well they already have that, so what difference does this bill make to that? I'm sure they voted themselves good pensions, just as our MP's do too. I'd be very surprised if the Republicons all voted against the health care that congress now enjoys.
I won't pretend to understand the details of this bill or of US healthcare in general, (except what I experienced directly with an HMO while working there. I paid way more than I do in Canada for my share of the coverage, didn't get to choose my doctor the way I can in Canada, and had all sorts of co-pays I would have had to pay if I got sick, unlike in Canada.) But I'll take factcheck's word that saying congress exempted themselves is a distortion of the truth.
commanderkai @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:05 am
Thanos Thanos:
I doubt that anyone would call David Frum a liberal flake, given his conservative credentials, (the real kind of credentials found among serious conservatives, not the contemporary FOX/Beck/Limbaugh insane ones).
Pray tell. What exactly is a "serious" conservative? I mean, considering that McCain was the praised Republican up until the 2008 election, I'm really not sure anymore. Seemingly a serious conservative is either A) One that is a kiss-ass to Obama, or B) Hates the Social/Religious side of the Republican Party. At least that's what I'm picking up.
Every single Republican in the House voted against this, so are they not "serious"? Considering how the US political system functions (where constituents matters more than party affiliation), how are they not serious?
$1:
He said the passage of the bill was definitely a Waterloo moment, but not for Obama. It was the last stand of the celebrity-nutcase/ideological-puritanist led extremism that calls itself "conservatism" in the US. "We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat."
He could say that the sky is neon pink, and his ass smells like wildflowers, and it really wouldn't mean anything, unless he has a DeLorean or a British telephone booth hidden somewhere. Only November, and 2012 will tell if this will hurt the Republicans or not. The Republicans have faced the defeat already in 2008, but it's certainly not irreversible, considering how a Republican was elected to a Senate seat in Massachusetts, and public opinion seemingly is against the Democrats (according to the polls, which, I have stated in the past, mean nothing), only the next few months will tell.
If the Republicans lose seats in November in the House over this, maybe it will be irreversible. But, I don't see it happening. Maybe it's my half American upbringing.
$1:
Over time, American liberals will certainly over-reach, because they always do. Some sort of regulatory and economic stagnation will eventually occur, just as happened under Jimmy Carter.
Sounds like Obama so far. Then again, according to Obama, the economy would be much better by now after passing various economic stimulus plans. The fact we're getting tax increases after passing this bill is a sign to me that I see businesses tightening up even more.
$1:
But all that means is that a rejuvenated, magnanimous, and morally decent conservatism under the next generation of Buckleys, Goldwaters, and Reagans, that's hopefully rid itself of the flakes and maniacs, will return again to push America back to the middle where it belongs. And that's the moderate and decent middle where it's interests have always been served best.
And maybe the Democrats do the same. Why is it always assumed that it's JUST the Republicans who became more partisan, and not the Democrats too? Maybe it's because Canada is more leftist, and are able to relate to the Democrats as well, but from an American perspective, in my opinion, the Democrats as moved much farther left than the Republicans have moved rightward.
$1:
And the greater goal, that of bringing some financial security to those who need it when they get injured or fall seriously ill, will be served.
Will it? Medicaid/Medicare shows that the government is more than happy to reject claims, more than private insurers.
$1:
And, just like every other modern country in the world, universal health care entitlement will be entrenched and won't be abolished. It'll become part of the American social fabric just as social security and Medicare have.
And Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt, and dealing with major corruption issues. Hell, why even need Medicare anymore?
$1:
Twenty years from now, in order to ingratiate themselves with different voting demographics after the politcal sway of the baby boomers finally comes to an end, Republicans will be defending universal care as much as they have Medicare over the last few years. It's inevitable.
Actually, no it's not. You might hope or think so, but Obama made a huge mistake. It's not taking effect until 2014. That means those who expected something to happen right away, will be hugely disappointed, while businesses and individuals suffer a higher tax burden. A four year gap is politically dangerous for the Democrats as their support base (minorities, the poor, others) question why aren't they benefiting from socialized/universal health care?
N_Fiddledog @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:20 am
If you're thinking this setback, has knocked people like the tea partiers back on their heels, and they will now kneel, you're wrong. Those guys model themselves after the warriors of the revolution who marched through snow with rags wrapped around their feet for boots, from their last defeat to their next victory.
Here's what their orators are saying...
$1:
What Freedom Demands
by Doctor Zero
Tonight, self-appointed wise men in Washington are steamrolling the objections of sixty to seventy percent of the population, and forcing a massive health-care bill down our throats “for our own good.” Presumably the backroom deals, corrupt payoffs, Congressional Budget Office accounting tricks, threats of unconstitutional parliamentary maneuvers, and betrayals of principle are also for our own good. What do you know? Banana republics turn out to be the highest evolution of government – the only form of the State equipped to take proper care of its citizens, by lying to them and trapping them in legislative cages over their howling protests.
Tonight is not the end of the ObamaCare saga, but it does mark the beginning of a slow turn by the American ship of state. It doesn’t have to be a turn to the left. On the contrary, it could be the first overture in a rebirth of our commitment to freedom, and the last gasp of an exhausted statist ideology, long overdue for its disposal in the waste bin of history.
The decision is up to us. Our representatives will fight various legislative battles in the months to come… and then we will speak in November. As the voters of the United States ponder what to say, it would profit us to think long and hard about the freedom Democrats are trying to take from us tonight, and what freedom demands.
Yes, it makes demands. Freedom is not a gift. It is not given to you by the government, in a precise dosage that can be adjusted to match a politician’s diagnosis of what ails the body politic. Your forefathers won an impossible Revolution against an invincible foe to declare the self-evident truth that your rights descend from your Creator. Whether that Creator is a transcendent God, or a random combination of genetic material in the primordial soup, it is a power that existed before the first king assumed his throne, or the first president was elected. Liberty burns in your imagination, flows through your veins, and rings through your words.
This radiant idea has burned through all the bloody clouds of the last three centuries: you are not clay to be sculpted by the will of another. You are not a racially inferior inconvenience, to be marched into a concentration camp. You aren’t a class enemy to be exiled by dictators. You are not a disposable cog in the machinery of collectivist economics, or a mouth to be starved by the failure of collective agriculture. You are an American, and through a dereliction of their duty as elected representatives, the Democrats have forced you to choose whether you will retain the full measure of the honor and dignity your Constitution asserts for you.
If you choose to obey their demands, it will be the last such choice you make. Your opinion was disregarded on this travesty of a health-care bill. It will not be solicited in the future. Fifteen thousand new IRS agents will ensure that you comply with endless future “adjustments” to socialized insurance, until it mutates into socialist medicine, and bankrupts us along with the crushing weight of other unsustainable entitlements. On that dark day, you will be fighting battles, not making choices.
Like your muscles, heart, and lungs, freedom is a part of you, and it makes demands. You cannot exercise freedom in the absence of responsibility. That means you must accept the challenges of a complex, fast-moving world. You must exercise your influence in that world, and money is the medium of exchange that transforms your labor into your will. You have to demand the best return on your investments, and the best quality for your purchases. This requires education, to gather the information necessary for making wise decisions.
We are currently paying the price for decades of turning away from those demands, and trusting government to insure our quality of life. It’s understandable. The free market is huge and powerful, and it does not pause to adore the millions of individuals passing through it… and occasionally stumbling. We feel overwhelmed by the waves of information crashing around us. In the case of an arcane discipline like medicine, we don’t feel as if we understand it well enough to make informed decisions, and our will is expressed through an insurance system that has already been turned into an incomprehensible mess by government regulation. It would be so easy to let righteous politicians with limitless power and money take care of us, tapping into the vast fortunes of the super-rich for the benefit of all, and transforming health care into a “human right” – which means the little people won’t have to think about it any more.
If you are in thrall to this temptation, consider what you are being asked to surrender. Hidden in ObamaCare’s thousands of pages are countless legislative snares, and subsidies designed to convert your freedom into benefits for favored constituencies. The money drained from our economy into this health-care sinkhole will reduce your freedom – even when it’s money from the wallets of other people. That’s because a collapsing free market will eliminate choices and options you currently take for granted. Mandates that wipe out part-time employment will destroy services your family needs. Jobs shipped overseas to avoid crushing penalties are employment opportunities forever denied to you. Higher taxes on corporations slither down to you as elevated prices on goods you may no longer be able to afford.
A swelling government reduces the size of the private sector… the galaxy in which free Americans burn as stars. Common sense tells you that a nation with a gigantic government is less free. What is the proper name for a system in which the State controls everything, and the private sector is completely gone? Why should free men applaud heavy steps taken in that direction? What about the freedom of Bart Stupak’s constituents, who foolishly trusted him to resist the tyranny of forcing pro-life taxpayers to fund abortions? Today they watched Stupak’s honor shrivel into a meaningless piece of paper, offered by a compulsive liar, whose every commitment comes with an expiration date.
The call of freedom requires you to turn away easy solutions offered by corrupt politicians. It’s not a “solution” anyway – just the gateway to another, heavier imposition on your liberty down the line. If its authors believed otherwise, why would they use tricks and lies to chisel out a “deficit-neutral” ten-year forecast from the Congressional Budget Office? A free man dismisses such deception with contempt, and demands to know what happens in Year Eleven. A free woman looks at a “crisis” in a heavily regulated market and commands government to remove itself to undo the damage it has already caused. What is the final form of a State that is rewarded for its failures with more power? We already know that name, don’t we?
Tonight, the Democrat Party declares war on the American middle class. They are gambling on the forced creation of an entitlement we’ll be too exhausted and weary to reject – no matter how poor its quality, corrupt its inception, or unbearable its cost. We do have one last chance to strike this down. There is no reason any Democrat up for re-election in 2010 or 2012 needs to retain their seats. They don’t own those seats, any more than the Kennedys owned Massachussetts. There’s no reason the Democrats need to exist as a viable political party after 2012. Obama can be their last President.
It would be incredible if the American people could bring about such a transformation of their decadent political class, in these coming elections.
Sometimes freedom demands that you do the incredible to preserve it.
by Doctor Zero
Tonight, self-appointed wise men in Washington are steamrolling the objections of sixty to seventy percent of the population, and forcing a massive health-care bill down our throats “for our own good.” Presumably the backroom deals, corrupt payoffs, Congressional Budget Office accounting tricks, threats of unconstitutional parliamentary maneuvers, and betrayals of principle are also for our own good. What do you know? Banana republics turn out to be the highest evolution of government – the only form of the State equipped to take proper care of its citizens, by lying to them and trapping them in legislative cages over their howling protests.
Tonight is not the end of the ObamaCare saga, but it does mark the beginning of a slow turn by the American ship of state. It doesn’t have to be a turn to the left. On the contrary, it could be the first overture in a rebirth of our commitment to freedom, and the last gasp of an exhausted statist ideology, long overdue for its disposal in the waste bin of history.
The decision is up to us. Our representatives will fight various legislative battles in the months to come… and then we will speak in November. As the voters of the United States ponder what to say, it would profit us to think long and hard about the freedom Democrats are trying to take from us tonight, and what freedom demands.
Yes, it makes demands. Freedom is not a gift. It is not given to you by the government, in a precise dosage that can be adjusted to match a politician’s diagnosis of what ails the body politic. Your forefathers won an impossible Revolution against an invincible foe to declare the self-evident truth that your rights descend from your Creator. Whether that Creator is a transcendent God, or a random combination of genetic material in the primordial soup, it is a power that existed before the first king assumed his throne, or the first president was elected. Liberty burns in your imagination, flows through your veins, and rings through your words.
This radiant idea has burned through all the bloody clouds of the last three centuries: you are not clay to be sculpted by the will of another. You are not a racially inferior inconvenience, to be marched into a concentration camp. You aren’t a class enemy to be exiled by dictators. You are not a disposable cog in the machinery of collectivist economics, or a mouth to be starved by the failure of collective agriculture. You are an American, and through a dereliction of their duty as elected representatives, the Democrats have forced you to choose whether you will retain the full measure of the honor and dignity your Constitution asserts for you.
If you choose to obey their demands, it will be the last such choice you make. Your opinion was disregarded on this travesty of a health-care bill. It will not be solicited in the future. Fifteen thousand new IRS agents will ensure that you comply with endless future “adjustments” to socialized insurance, until it mutates into socialist medicine, and bankrupts us along with the crushing weight of other unsustainable entitlements. On that dark day, you will be fighting battles, not making choices.
Like your muscles, heart, and lungs, freedom is a part of you, and it makes demands. You cannot exercise freedom in the absence of responsibility. That means you must accept the challenges of a complex, fast-moving world. You must exercise your influence in that world, and money is the medium of exchange that transforms your labor into your will. You have to demand the best return on your investments, and the best quality for your purchases. This requires education, to gather the information necessary for making wise decisions.
We are currently paying the price for decades of turning away from those demands, and trusting government to insure our quality of life. It’s understandable. The free market is huge and powerful, and it does not pause to adore the millions of individuals passing through it… and occasionally stumbling. We feel overwhelmed by the waves of information crashing around us. In the case of an arcane discipline like medicine, we don’t feel as if we understand it well enough to make informed decisions, and our will is expressed through an insurance system that has already been turned into an incomprehensible mess by government regulation. It would be so easy to let righteous politicians with limitless power and money take care of us, tapping into the vast fortunes of the super-rich for the benefit of all, and transforming health care into a “human right” – which means the little people won’t have to think about it any more.
If you are in thrall to this temptation, consider what you are being asked to surrender. Hidden in ObamaCare’s thousands of pages are countless legislative snares, and subsidies designed to convert your freedom into benefits for favored constituencies. The money drained from our economy into this health-care sinkhole will reduce your freedom – even when it’s money from the wallets of other people. That’s because a collapsing free market will eliminate choices and options you currently take for granted. Mandates that wipe out part-time employment will destroy services your family needs. Jobs shipped overseas to avoid crushing penalties are employment opportunities forever denied to you. Higher taxes on corporations slither down to you as elevated prices on goods you may no longer be able to afford.
A swelling government reduces the size of the private sector… the galaxy in which free Americans burn as stars. Common sense tells you that a nation with a gigantic government is less free. What is the proper name for a system in which the State controls everything, and the private sector is completely gone? Why should free men applaud heavy steps taken in that direction? What about the freedom of Bart Stupak’s constituents, who foolishly trusted him to resist the tyranny of forcing pro-life taxpayers to fund abortions? Today they watched Stupak’s honor shrivel into a meaningless piece of paper, offered by a compulsive liar, whose every commitment comes with an expiration date.
The call of freedom requires you to turn away easy solutions offered by corrupt politicians. It’s not a “solution” anyway – just the gateway to another, heavier imposition on your liberty down the line. If its authors believed otherwise, why would they use tricks and lies to chisel out a “deficit-neutral” ten-year forecast from the Congressional Budget Office? A free man dismisses such deception with contempt, and demands to know what happens in Year Eleven. A free woman looks at a “crisis” in a heavily regulated market and commands government to remove itself to undo the damage it has already caused. What is the final form of a State that is rewarded for its failures with more power? We already know that name, don’t we?
Tonight, the Democrat Party declares war on the American middle class. They are gambling on the forced creation of an entitlement we’ll be too exhausted and weary to reject – no matter how poor its quality, corrupt its inception, or unbearable its cost. We do have one last chance to strike this down. There is no reason any Democrat up for re-election in 2010 or 2012 needs to retain their seats. They don’t own those seats, any more than the Kennedys owned Massachussetts. There’s no reason the Democrats need to exist as a viable political party after 2012. Obama can be their last President.
It would be incredible if the American people could bring about such a transformation of their decadent political class, in these coming elections.
Sometimes freedom demands that you do the incredible to preserve it.
http://www.doczero.org/
BartSimpson @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 11:54 am
$1:
Sometimes freedom demands that you do the incredible to preserve it.
Amen.
Thanos @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:15 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
$1:
Sometimes freedom demands that you do the incredible to preserve it.
Amen.
Does that mean the offical "Let's Shoot The President" stopwatch has been started?
BartSimpson @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:18 pm
Thanos Thanos:
Does that mean the offical "Let's Shoot The President" stopwatch has been started?
No, but it does mean that the stopwatch has started on Democrat dominance in Congress.
Thanos @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:27 pm
ManifestDestiny ManifestDestiny:
I have to ask you a serious question. Are you gainfully employed and do you pay taxes?
I run my own business.
I'm up in McMurray almost all the time as part of the filthy oil patch.
I made an average of $75K per year for the last five years.
I pay my fair share of taxes, both corporate and personal.
I also don't piss and moan like a fucking four-year old (or an American) about tin-hatted communist tyrannies or mythical welfare leeches.
You're part of what's called a "Society", whether you like it or not. Look it up in the goddamn encyclopedia to find out what it means. What it doesn't mean is that the richest or the most vicious get to win all the time.
Grow the hell up already. Or, more appropriately in your case, go join some compound like the Branch Davidians or the militia nuts and live the rest of your life in shivering, paranoid terror about the government coming to take away all of your stuff. You people and your "rugged individualist" crap died out about the same time as the Old West did.
N_Fiddledog @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:29 pm
This is my favorite bit from that Doctor Zero rabble-rouser...
$1:
If you choose to obey their demands, it will be the last such choice you make. Your opinion was disregarded on this travesty of a health-care bill. It will not be solicited in the future. Fifteen thousand new IRS agents will ensure that you comply with endless future “adjustments” to socialized insurance, until it mutates into socialist medicine, and bankrupts us along with the crushing weight of other unsustainable entitlements. On that dark day, you will be fighting battles, not making choices.
No Thanos. He is not talking about physical, fights. He's talking about the larger, longer, more difficult battle within the rule of law. The people he's talking to believe in the rule of law.
Thanos @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:41 pm
Actually, with classy people like this feeding blood to the sharks, the fight will eventually become physical. These 'tards have been calling for a revolution and certainly some of them will attempt it. There's always been a lot of Tim McVeigh's out there in the American hinterland just waiting for another flimsy excuse to do something horrific to their fellow citizens.
andyt @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:43 pm
Thanos Thanos:
Actually, with classy people like this feeding blood to the sharks, the fight will eventually become physical. These 'tards have been calling for a revolution and certainly some of them will attempt it. There's always been a lot of Tim McVeigh's out there in the American hinterland just waiting for another flimsy excuse to do something horrific to their fellow citizens.
9/11 took the homegrown nut bars off the radar screen, but that doesn't mean they want away.
BartSimpson @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:16 pm
andyt andyt:
Thanos Thanos:
Actually, with classy people like this feeding blood to the sharks, the fight will eventually become physical. These 'tards have been calling for a revolution and certainly some of them will attempt it. There's always been a lot of Tim McVeigh's out there in the American hinterland just waiting for another flimsy excuse to do something horrific to their fellow citizens.
9/11 took the homegrown nut bars off the radar screen, but that doesn't mean they want away.
Not all of those 'nutbars' are actually nuts. Some of them are just normal people who've been through extraordinary circumstances.
Back in 95 or 96 I had to meet with a militia 'study' group (meaning they got together at a library and shared amazing stories) and when I first heard some of what these people told me I was blown away that they were out loose and without medication.
Later, I found out that nearly all of them could confirm their stories.
One older black woman told me of a paranoid tale about how Glen Craig (Sacto. County Sheriff) was tapping her phones, bugging her car, and etc. and I dismissed it all as paranoid ravings.
A few months later I got to see the story in The Sacramento Bee about how she won a $3 million judgment against the county for violating her rights. It was all true.
Since then I listne to these people and do my best to sort out the ones who are nuuts from the ones who've had their rights trampled. The latter group can be some pretty awesome friends when you need them.
N_Fiddledog @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:39 pm
See, here's the problem with trying to create a scary bogeyman to scare people with though. Sooner or later people start to notice the bogeyman just isn't showing up. These protests which were supposed to erupt into violence at any moment have been going on for a year now, and they've been peaceful. The only real incident of violence was when the purple people beaters of the SEIU hospitalized that guy who was hawking T shirts to the protesters.
But Andy says just you wait, he's comin, he's comin, the bogeyman's comin. Yeah right, I'll expect him about the same time as Al Gore's apocalypse, which apparently is always ten years after the deadline of the last failed prediction of apocalypse.
Anyway, nobody ever convinced me even McVeigh was more right than left, or left than right. He was just another pathetic guy with reality problems, gathering rationalizations where he thought he could find them, like Jeremiah Wright, or the other crazy preacher in the article Thanos links to.
I think when you go radical you ostracize yourself from the mainstream. Offering up radicalism as a bogeyman to scare people from mainstream argument is a silly, and ineffective trick of language.
poquas @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:56 pm
Ladies and gentlemen. Elvis has left the building! It’s over (for now).
If the Republicans can grow up and find a rational excuse to kill it later, they’ll have to get elected on that basis and then they can do what they want.
I seriously doubt the American people will want to have it removed.
ManifestDestiny @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:03 pm
Thanos Thanos:
I run my own business.
I'm up in McMurray almost all the time as part of the filthy oil patch.
I made an average of $75K per year for the last five years.
I pay my fair share of taxes, both corporate and personal.
I'm up in McMurray almost all the time as part of the filthy oil patch.
I made an average of $75K per year for the last five years.
I pay my fair share of taxes, both corporate and personal.
Not knocking you, but you should be making more if you are running your own business. For that kind of money you could work for a company and go haome at night with little or no worries.
$1:
I also don't piss and moan like a fucking four-year old (or an American) about tin-hatted communist tyrannies or mythical welfare leeches.
No you piss and moan like a six year old (or a Canadian) about some BS of how evil the USA is and they have been hampering in Canada's affairs for to long now! et. etc.
$1:
You're part of what's called a "Society", whether you like it or not. Look it up in the goddamn encyclopedia to find out what it means. What it doesn't mean is that the richest or the most vicious get to win all the time.
My Family comes first then couple of my friends you and LBJ can keep your "Great Society" BS
$1:
Grow the hell up already. Or, more appropriately in your case, go join some compound like the Branch Davidians or the militia nuts and live the rest of your life in shivering, paranoid terror about the government coming to take away all of your stuff. You people and your "rugged individualist" crap died out about the same time as the Old West did.
I am not a religious freak never have been doubt I ever will be.
I am a firm believer that my Goverment should fear the populace not the other way around.
Just cause you are weak and scared and feel you need the goverment to fall back Cause as a small business owner you cant make enough dont force us to fall in to the trap of "its about the greater good of society" BS
My country was built on the strength of Indiviuals that choose to help other indiviuals out of what is right, not cause the goverment says its right.
DrCaleb @ Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:28 pm
ManifestDestiny ManifestDestiny:
My country was built on the strength of Indiviuals that choose to help other indiviuals out of what is right, not cause the goverment says its right.
They why does US healthcare seem to be about Big Companies deciding which individuals need help based on what is profitable?
Honestly, I have no idea why you guys are opposed to your fellow citizens being healthy. Do you think the strong individuals who became Doctors and Nurses will suddenly stop caring about people because the government becomes another healthcare insurer?
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