Ezra Klein (via Jon Cohn) says that politicians who cite the CBO estimate about the cost of the House bill should do the following:
a) Support, as the CBO says you should, the eradication of the tax exclusion that protects employer-based health-care insurance;
b) Support, as Lewin and Commonwealth say you should, a public insurance option that can bargain at Medicare’s rates;
c) Support, as the Office of Management and Budget and every health-care wonk in town says you should, one of the various policies floating around to give MedPAC authority to continually reform and modernize Medicare;
d) Support some form of aggressive cost-sharing that would make people extremely angry because it will save money by reducing their access to health-care services;
e) Support comparative effectiveness review that can judge not only the effectiveness but also the cost-effectiveness of various treatments, and give the federal government authority to use that data when deciding reimbursement rates.
It’s certainly true that reasonable people can have reasonable critiques of this — or almost any other — attempt at health care reform. But the vast majority of the critiques we’re hearing, from the Showboating Six, for example — are not good faith arguments. They’re simply obstructionist. To prove they’re not, they’re going to have to take some of the actions described above. I doubt we’ll see too many takers.
SGEW
I think that we can mostly agree that this is the central problem in most current political debates (health care reform, defense appropriations, economic recovery spending, climate change mitigation, progressive taxation, investigation for war crimes, etc., etc.).
The question is: what can one do about it? How can one have an actual policy debate when the other side is willfully disingenuous? Seriously, I haven’t the faintest idea anymore.
I suppose we just won’t have any actual policy debate. But that’s not really an acceptable situation for a democracy.
demkat620
Well if by policy debate you mean the GOP screamng “Socia lism and tax hikes!” and the Democrats crying in the corner, then yes we will have a policy debate.
robertdsc
I wish someone, anyone, on the Dem side would explicitly denounce the Showboaters for the obstructionists they are.
zoe kentucky
At least the gang of grandstanding, showboating obstructionists are coming out about it now instead of throwing a monkey wrench at the last minute. From an organizing perspective they just made things easier– they are basically asking to be pressured into doing the right thing– and afterwards they can still get credit for trying to slow things down.
I see a very targeted organizing campaign headed their way during recess, I hope that they and their staff are ready for it.
geg6
The Showboating Six (love that name, btw) are doing nothing other than what their masters (Big Pharma, the insurance industry, the AMA, etc.) Are telling them to. They disgust me and they likely disgust most Americans who do not have access to gold-plated tax payer funded lifetime health care for themselves and their families. People have to keep pushing back, ruthlessly, and treat this issue as every bit as important as the presidential election. Because it is.
inkadu
I don’t know how new bad-faith arguments are; I think they’ve been around since before democracy. But, yeah, it would be nice if we could get these concern trolls branded as pure-obstructionists.
On the Philipina-Christian front, I registered and ran across this lovely little description from a 35-year-old male from the United States:
Repelling: You’re doing it right.
I had to stop reading them after a while, because they were so sad. Then I realized that I was spending my Saturday morning reading Christian singles. That’s when I realized I should have registered as a male from the US instead of as 22-year-old philipina. I need a lady to treat me right and to pray for me as I lead our family in the path of the Lord. Then I can spend my Saturday mornings engaging in spiritual warfare instead of finding new ways to end all my sentences with “also.”
DougJ
I don’t know. Honestly, trying to push things like Ezra’s rules above might be helpful in some cases.
passerby
Pointing at their hypocrisy, I like what Krugman said about the showboaters: Six Deadly Hypocrits
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/the-six-deadly-hypocrites/
[Exerpt]
“After all, in the past most of them have shown no concern at all for the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.
“Case in point: the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which denied Medicare the right to bargain for lower drug prices, locked in overpayments to private insurance companies, and did nothing, nothing at all, to pay for its proposed outlays. How many of these six self-proclaimed defenders of solvency voted no on the crucial procedural vote? One. (Joe Lieberman, to my surprise.)”
inkadu
@DougJ: But who is going to push those rules? We found out starting with Bush v. Gore that the media is completely broken. Republicans can lie about anything they want, with impunity, and will not be called on it.
The only reason health care is likely to pass is because people are sick of being sick, they are sick of being worried about dying or being bankrupted by an insurance, they’ve heard enough stories about people getting screwed out of insurance, they’ve changed their doctors and their plans enough time. The overwhelming weight of the evidence is already in people’s heads.
Michael Moore’s ‘sicko’ has taken that sense of personal grievance and allowed people to imagine that there is a political solution to it.
And that is effin’ that. Don’t expect to have a fair, moderated policy debate in the media with Republicans about anything. There is zero cost for flat-out lying.
The best thing to do is organize campaigns against the showboating six, including substantiated threats of a primary opponent.
Electoral consequences speak louder than Ezra Klein.
passerby
@inkadu:
“The best thing to do is organize campaigns against the showboating six, including substantiated threats of a primary opponent.”
“Electoral consequences speak louder than Ezra Klein.”
I agree. This kind of political chicanery used to not have any consequences and incumbents found re-election a rather simple matter.
But now that we can organize on the internet and channel money to ANY candidate, they could easily have a fight on their hands.
I hope they continue to dominate the headlines so their hypocrisy and their “principled” objections can be seen and understood by all.
gex
@SGEW: As with so many of these governance problems, any attempted solution would require an honest and informing media. The press utterly fails to identify the problems with the slogans masquerading as policy proposals. It fails to truly inform on the nature of the problem or the likely consequences of proposed solutions. The media consolidation regulations that Reagan initiated and subsequent FCC chairmen rammed through have really fucked up the fourth estate. I don’t think that genie will ever go back in the bottle.
I have to hope that whatever journalism model the impending demise of print news ushers in will help alleviate some of the problem of the current media capture by the pols and corporations. I hope that what we have seen by way of Internet news and blogs, which helped Obama achieve the presidency, will continue to break the iron grip on analysis that the paid for shills have been doling out. And while we will continue to have confirmation bias in selecting and believing what we read, it will still be better than the mass propaganda that we’ve been seeing in the MSM for the last several decades.
Just wait until the demographics who only get news from Fox, CNN, or NBC are no longer in the picture. I hope it is going to be harder for grandstanders like these jerks to get by on sloganeering alone.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Obstructionist is too kind. They’re Handmaidens of the Health Insurance Companies.
DougJ
We can try to do it ourselves. I’m not saying it will work, but it’s worth a shot. That’s why I don’t think blogging is a waste of time.
I agree. And exposing their hypocrisy is one of the first steps to getting them out of office.
demkat620
@demkat620: I am still in moderation. Ugh!
We are 6 months in to this administration. The dems have 60 seats in the senate and they are still afraid the GOP will call them names.
General Winfield Stuck
Obstruction is the end result of craving for attention. Or, look at me, I have power, I’m important. The unholy twosome of Susan Collins and her poodle Joementum Lieberman are the leaders of this Apple Dumpling Gang.
They could care less about “their concerns”
SGEW
Oh, no doubt (snarkily, I am reminded of God’s willful bad faith arguments with Job and Abraham), but somehow I feel that the current debates are filled with nothing but bad faith arguments.
I mean, when the neo-cons were advocating for the invasion of Iraq, I didn’t feel that they were all arguing in bad faith – I thought that many truly did believe that Iraq wad WMDs and were an imminent threat and that we would be greeted as liberators etc. (n.b.: not the actual administration officials who actually planned the invasion (Powell’s Anthrax speech might have been the ultimate bad faith argument), but many of the pundits and commentators who supported it). When the tax cuts were pushed through, many people actually believed that they would be a good measure for the economy; when the torture stories started to break, many people honestly denied their accuracy in good faith; Etc.
Now it feels like there’s nothing left but Washington Post duplicity and obviously disingenuous canards. Have all the reasonable opposition figures gone to ground or come around? (I’m looking at you, Mr. Cole). Has my thinking become so partisan that I cannot see beyond my own policy preferences, so that even reasonable good faith arguments now seem patently false? Has my supply of the benefit of the doubt been exhausted? Or has something ossified in the political establishment so that opposition for the sake of opposition has become the norm?
Also: does this have anything to do with why hilzoy is retiring from blogging? I suspect.
Dennis-SGMM
Lieberman, a proud Showboating Six member, is also one of the Senators pushing to spend $1.75bn on the construction of seven additional F-22 fighters. The Pentagon has already stated that it does not want any more F-22’s and Obama has threatened to veto any bill that contains funding for the additional aircraft.
Lieberman’s concerns about cost are selective at the very least.
The Grand Panjandrum
Good faith arguments are not the way of the DC denizen. Foul and biased argumentation rule our ruling class. The nation’s poltical discourse devolved to a system that counts points scored for cheap tactical poltical victories as policy. Policy is no longer about the country. It’s about our ruling class and it’s desire to stay in power. Why do you think the two parties write all the rules for elections at the local, state and national level. It makes it impossible for anyone to get elected to anything other than the local school board without kissing the ring of the local party officials.
I haz sinisizem.
Brick Oven Bill
Regarding Reality:
These are the same people who assumed that pumping more money into school districts and hospital social programs would keep unemployment below 8%. None of this is reality-based. Economies are built on things that are grown, mined, and built. American leadership consists of either very naïve people who believed what they were told in school, or people who have an agenda that involves breaking the American economy and replacing it with something else.
Here is a steaming pile of propaganda from the Center for American Progress.
“Reducing costs by 30 percent will take time and effort, but it is not inconceivable over the long term. Experience in the health care sector and other industries suggests that cost reductions on the order of 1.5-to-2.0 percentage points per year are within reach.”
Yeah, right.
We should instead openly state that public funding for expensive end-of-life care is unaffordable. We should also openly state that public funds will not be used to treat non-Citizens or their children. This will reduce the flow of immigrants that take more from the system than they contribute. But this will not happen in a democracy.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
-Adams
Beeb
When HoJo endorsed and then campaigned for McCain, I figured he wasn’t planning to run for reelection. Who needs a Kiss float when you have all that lovely news footage? Wyden is apparently there because the Prez asked him to be the go-between, or so his office claims. Nelson and Landrieu are useless. Fine by me to primary their worthless asses. But Nelson isn’t up again until 2012, and Landrieu just won reelection in 2008. If Harry Reid had a spine, he’d pound them into the ground like tent pegs. Did I just write “if Harry Reid had a spine?” Yeah, right, and if my grandmother had had wheels, she’d have been a tea trolley. Harry Reid with a spine would be someone else entirely.
jcricket
I think it’s all about targeting the Dems. When there are 44 Dem Senators, you obviously need to court a lot of moderate Republicans (and there are many). When there are 60 Democrats, and the remaining Republicans have maybe 3 moderates as best, I think a more productive political strategy is finding a way to provide a united front.
Make it clear Democrats have to vote for cloture, even if they vote against the final bill.
If you shut out the Republicans, the moderate ones will have their feelings hurt/feel shut out of bringing pork to themselves and will either pull a Specter or find a way to work with us.
Let’s remember the size of our majority and work on making it work for us.
Brick Oven Bill
There should be a two-tier system, and everybody should have equal opportunity to aspire to make it into the upper tier.
Tier #1: There is a doctor and there is you. If you want something from the doctor, you pay him if you can afford it, and you decide you want to.
Tier #2: Public system offering the basics. Being within this system for a certain period of time involves limits to future reproductive rights. End-of-life care involves any drug you want to experiment with.
This is my system and it would reduce health care costs by probably 70%. It would also last in perpetuity, instead of self-destructing in a prolonged wave of social violence that takes the whole system down, good intentions and all.
p.a.
Does anyone know more about the employer-provided health tax exclusion? I know my health benefits aren’t taxed (yet) as income, but some of the articles I’ve read say/imply companies can deduct the cost of the benefit from their taxes. Is this true? If so, is it a partial deduction or a full one? I ask because we keep hearing corporate complaints about the increasing cost of providing health ins., but if the cost is deductible their whining, not to mention the trend to end these benefits, seems self-serving (shocking! I know).
I hope a strong public option emerges from the Congressional sausage-making session, but given the fact that even 70 years later Social Security is still under attack can you really see any but those completely without insurance signing up for the government plan? I wonder how many will leave a private plan, no matter how crappy, for something that could be ‘reformed’ out of existence the next time the Repubs. gain power.
Valdivia
There is a very good way of making an impact this week. Sign up at organizing for America and go cavassing or phonebank. This is the moment that we can actually make a difference by acting. I have signed up to canvas and phonebank and would be heartened to see you all here who think this matters take a pro active step.
inkadu
@passerby: I do rather enjoy the new ability to target high-profile obstructionists with national, grassroots money. Can you imagine the hell you would have to go through to find out how to fund an opponents campaign, or how hard it would be to seriously challenge a sitting senator in a primary? Or how difficult it would be, from out of state, to find out more about what was going on and to be involved? The internet is really a great help to participatory democracy — for good AND for bad. It’s part of the reason the Reich Wing has become so pure; but it probably means we shake the pebbles out of own sandals.
@gex: I’m not sure I share your pessimism on bringing back ownership rules. There was a very raucous, corporate-owned media environment throughout our history. But we still passed those ownership rules. On the other hand, even with those ownership rules, we only had three major networks, all corporations in their own right, so they could still have a very loud voice. Maybe they knew they could still have a very influential voice, regardless of who owned the stations. Hm.
For my part, I still marvel that people watch television news, which presents about 1 bit of information every three hours and usually it’s wrong.
@General Winfield Stuck: Lieberman IS an attention whore, true, but his wife also works for the insurance companies in Hartford… so maybe whoring just runs in the family.
@SGEW: No, sgew, I think after being blatantly lied to for eight years to the ruin of our country might deleterious impact on your bonhomie. Most of the arguments — ALL of the arguments from the right are recycled radical Randism that had already been showed to have failed.
@Brick Oven Bill: It’s still not too late to send your ideas to your local senator so they can be entered into the record.
Ecks
Actually Ezra didn’t say obstructionists SHOULD support these six things, he said they should SAY WHICH they support. The point is you can’t just say “uh, too expensive,” you have to say “here’s how *I* would make it affordable.” He himself only supports about 4 of the 6.
Oh, and BOB, I can improve your system even further. Why not have a three tiered system. Level 1 is you get what you pay for, level 2 is you get experimental treatments for the benefit of the level 1 people, and level 3 is that if you are poor or past working age they just shoot you. Dead people, after all, incur no expenses past a quick burial. Of course, all this killing could get messy so we might have to build some kind of industrial apparatus for it. Perhaps a really efficient system could involve shipping them on trains to big gas ovens with big mass crematoria attached. And we could send all the illegal immigrants and awkward minorities to them too, which would certainly discourage all that nasty unwanted immigration! Except if they are able bodied, even this is a bit of a waste, so we could put them to work for a few years first, producing cheap stuff the rest of us can use, maybe volunteering them for more medical experiments.
Just don’t let all those namby pamby leftists with all their talk of “empathy” this and “justice” that get in the way. Our system is way more efficient and stable. Why, I predict it could run for a thousand years.
DBrown
Brick for brains is a typical sicko – trade your ability to have children for access to health care? That is so typical of so many rightwing neo-nazis. As if poor people are somehow criminals for being poor. Every modern western country provides excellent health care to their people but us – yet somehow these countries manage without trying to create a nazi state but rather, freedom from fear. Amazing how rightwing nut jobs try to take away peoples freedoms for their own economic benefit. Bankruptcy laws were changed to protect banks (via credit cards) but 70% of all bankrupted people are the result of medical issues and 40% of these people had health insurance.
Robertdsc-iphone
I find it alternately amusing & infuriating that you wingnuts talk big about having rights, freedoms, & personal responsibility, yet move to deny those things to women every chance you get. You’re an embarrassment, BOB.
Brick Oven Bill
Sorry to break it to you guys, but my position is far to the left of Obama’s Science Czar, who endorses forced sterilization.
Last century we went from 1 billion people to 7 billion people. We ain’t going to make 49 billion this century, fortunately or unfortunately, so population control is coming. It should be managed in an ethical and controlled manner.
Ecks
BOB, your interest in population control is commendable. You know the best way to do it? Educate women. The data show that when women are educated they have less kids. That’s why much of the western world currently has birth rates below the replacement rate, and have populations that are growing only because of immigration from poorer regions with less economic opportunity and education available to women (who then stay home and just become baby machines).
I also assume that your leftward fervour is directed towards saving the planet (because, other than that, who would care if we DID get to 49 billion people), so I bet you have a mania for recycling, and you’ve sold your car so you can bike everywhere, and you’ve given up eating meat (which is the single biggest environmental impact most of us can make).
Thanks for being a responsible citizen BOB, you’re an inspiration to all of us.
Brick Oven Bill
Calls for eugenics comes from the left far more frequently than the right. It is based on their desire for control in times of affluence. Glenn Beck is dead set against eugenics. So is Sarah Palin.
“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
-Justice Ginsberg
I don’t think she was talking about Lutherans, but you would have to ask her for clarification.
The driving force in the 21st Century will be resources, as well as control. If we want this next phase of human existence to be civil, it would probably be a good idea to address Justice Ginsberg’s concerns. One ethical way to do this would be to tie extended government assistance to a one-child policy.
passerby
And now Sam Stein on HuffPo is reporting that Obama is running ads in the districts of selected Democratic members of the House of Representatives, calling for the need for healthcare reform. Does arm-twisting fall under the legal definition of torture?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/18/obama-campaign-arm-double_n_239258.html
Hmm…wonder if he dare do the same to the Dem members of that oh so elite and powerful club, the US Senate. Dare he??
Bhall35
Really, BOB? Quoting Ginsberg out of context is so July 14th. Try to keep up.
http://commentsfromleftfield.com/2009/07/jonah-goldberg-maybe-stupid-definitely-dishonest
burnspbesq
The entire discussion about health care is deeply disingenuous, on all sides.
My personal view is that I’ll know somebody is serious about this when they publicly admit that there is no fucking way to pay for it without a VAT of at least 15 percent.
Brick Oven Bill
The only populations that educate their women to any significant degree are those populations whose ancestors proceeded through the iron, bronze, and steel age. Neolithic societies are less complex and do not value educating women. This is evidenced by the acid thrown in the faces of school girls in these societies.
Have fun setting up those schools Ecks.
The education of Western women is an extravagance, provided by the internal combustion engine, as unleashed by the tractor. Western women will assume a more traditional role this century. They will probably be happier for it. The professional women I know are usually cranky. Women I know who bake are usually happy.
Fulcanelli
@Brick Oven Bill: “The professional women I know are usually cranky.”
Maybe from having to put up with Professional men, who are even more adept at being assholish?
And if you talk to them like you’re spouting off here, consider yourself lucky to still have your ‘nads, you ‘effin dillweed.
inkadu
@Brick Oven Bill: BOB — While we’re on the subject of baking, do you recommend any particular recipes for brick ovens? I’m not sure what kind of brick oven your moniker refers too, but I have a brick oven, covered with terracotta, and it works by keeps a few fags burning on the edges. I think it’s basically how a pizza oven works. I’m going to try to bake some bread with it next weekend, and wondering if you had any pointers.
Indylib
@passerby:
These commercials are also targeted at Dem Senators.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019134.php
Somebody had the list up yesterday of who they were targeting, but I don’t remember where. My ex-Senator from California, DiFi was on the list.
Brick Oven Bill
Take, for example, Christine Herridge. Harvard and Columbia educated. But she never seems happy to me. This whole women’s rights movement has seemingly not made her life better.
Inkadu, here is my pizza dough recipe. 3 parts water to 5 parts flour by weight. Instant yeast from Sam’s Club that you buy two bricks at a time for around $6. I put 3 tablespoons of olive oil in for 500 grams of flour. Salt and brown sugar to taste.
Start to bake your bread once you can hold your hand inside the oven for 10 seconds. It can be very good.
Here is a link to Rado, the guru, for more ideas. Usually an evening starts with pizza when the oven is very hot, then bread, as the oven has cooled some, then an overnight roast. Enjoy.
HRA
I work for a state U. Until a few years ago, our health benefits were taxed [i.e. I was taxed] Shortly after they stopped taxing, they entered us into a state program added to our own personal choice of health insurance. I recently received a questionnaire in which I am to send either a copy of our marriage certificate/license or our last joint tax statement to this state funded additional insurance. The majority of the questions are for unmarried or gay couples.
Ecks: Education of a woman has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s size of family. I would rather you would not have targeted women. Men have a role in this as well. The men who come to mind are Supreme Court Justice Scalia and Mitt Romney at this instance. Others I know personally would not impress you.
B.O.B.: I certainly have no clue about your own personal circumstances and it’s very clear you have no clue about the women who do everything other women did who stayed home after putting in a full day’s work. IOW we have 2 full time jobs. Be aware not everyone made it a choice to have to work. The choice was foisted upon us by men who screwed up the economy. One paycheck was not enough during and after the Great Ronald.
You flew right into the spider web B.O.B. I have been up since 5:30 am baking for a party.
Ecks
And so is John Kerry and Michael Moore, what’s your point?
The extreme forms of the left (communism) and right (fascism) both tend to bend towards each other as they get rather totalitarian. Both left and right have flirted with Eugenics, and even full blown massacres at times.
In the moderate middle where the rest of us live, however, you’ll find the left as the more peaceful end of the spectrum.
And your bizarre theory about education being the product of iron age evolution is just WEEEIRD. You realize that there are some excellent schools in “primitive” places like India right, and that the existence of these same completely trashes your theory.
And before you get so high and mighty about Western culture being better because we don’t throw acid on people, please keep in mind that it’s only 1 or 2 generations since the west gassed 6 million people in Germany, and intentionally starved 20 million people in Russia. And it’s only 3 or 4 generations since people in the American West went on a pogrom of genocide against the Natives in order to clear land, and it’s 5 or 6 generations since we were burning women at the stake for being witches (or giving them trial by water, where the only way for them to prove their innocence was by duly drowning when they were tied to a stool and ducked into a pond). I’d work on that beam in your own eye before you get to the mote in other people’s.
Brick Oven Bill
I really don’t think India is a primitive society Ecks, see the Taj Mahal for one example built long long ago. The Indians invented Algebra, which was then transported by Islam to Europe, for the Enlightenment. India was far more advanced than Europe, back in the day. They also educate their women, and have responsible families, from what I can tell. India is not a Neolithic society.
I know the Muslims had good metal swords, and I think the Sikhs and Hindus did too. Here I am kind of shaky.
The point I was trying to make about eugenics is that all of your history examples boil down to undisciplined eugenics, which are usually ugly, even with relatively low population densities.
A disciplined eugenics program, such as advanced by Obama’s Science Czar and Justice Ginsberg, is the more civil way to go in my opinion. I think a one-child policy for those on long-term government assistance would be a good policy debate to have.
America was one big eugenics nightmare before Europeans showed up. Typical life expectancy for Native Americans was 15-20 years.
inkadu
@Brick Oven Bill: Thanks, Bill. I’ve give the link a try. Don’t want to start with pizza yet, though. And, um, I don’t know how to politely say this, so I’ll just come out with it: 500 grams of flour is unAmerican; I would find it less offensive if you said, “17 ounces,” or “just over a pound.”
ruemara
@Brick Oven Bill:
I’m all for giving you a plot of land and allowing you to live a pure existence over there. Far, far away, over there.
Batocchio
Ezra Klein wants them to support some combination of that list, not necessarily the whole thing. However, as he and you both argue, these obstructionists should be pressed by the media to explain their positions.
I suspect some of these people really don’t understand the mechanics of the program and fear change, but they ain’t working in good faith, either.
zoe kentucky
Wow. Just when I thought BOB couldn’t be more offensive he says that the education and liberation of women is what is making women unhappy– that we were all happier uneducated and living as men’s personal domestic servants. Why not take it a step further and say that women were happiest when they were still the property of men? That it is our nature to be weak and subserviant, that our only real purpose in life is to care for men and have babies.
Let me guess, you’re single, right BOB? No women in your life beyond your mother? I bet you’re also completely perplexed about why no women will give you the time of day, why you have no close women friends. Go and try and claim that you’re happily married, I dare you. It’s really not to be believed. And for god’s sake, I really really really hope that you don’t have kids, let alone daughters.
BOB is nothing more than a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur. You and Pat Buchanan should move in together already, I’m sure you’d be very happy.
Brick Oven Bill
I think what scares Zoe is that I might just know her better than she knows herself. Go forward without fear Zoe.
You don’t want this. Be honest.
zoe kentucky
Don’t flatter yourself, you don’t scare me at all, BOB.
If anything I’m happy and increasingly relieved that your breed is clearly dying off. The fact is that this country (and the western world at large) is and has been fundamentally shifting for a while, we are moving towards progress on many fronts. Meanwhile the white males who pine for the good ol’ days when they were thought of as inherently superior to everyone else are a shrinking, pathetic group of whiny, insecure crybabies. What’s not to be happy about? :)
Additionally, I’m not sure what point you were trying to make with that link, it made no sense whatsoever.
By the way, I find it bizarre that you simultaneously say that eugenics is bad (a la Glenn Beck) but that you believe in a one-child policy. How would you enforce that exactly? Forced sterilizations? Forced IUDs? Forced abortions? That would never happen in this country, trust me, the women of this country would stage a coup.
John K
Truth is the public sees through the democrat’s attempts at forcing the US into a cummunist system.
This healthcare bill stinks and is not financially sustainable.
Even democrats are smart enough to see that now.
Obama’s failures are mounting every day.
Ecks
Shorter John K:
“domokrats r teh dumz, lolz, now u getz mad at mie trohling hahaLOL!!!!!11!eleven! [fap fap fap fap]”
Bob, I was following for a while, but am now lost in your ramblings. India is an advanced society, Arabs kept Algebra alive then passed it back to Europe, but now they throw acid on women so that proves they are hopelessly stupid, and all of this has to do with what kind of metal they had in their swords 700 years ago… Riiiiiiight. Methinks you’ve been skipping your meds of late.
Brachiator
@SGEW:
I am also disappointed that the Obama administration has mostly turned the health care issue into a muddle. I honestly don’t know what the adminstration’s proposals are attempting to accomplish. And if Democrats in Congress have wanted to get health care out there for years, it’s downright weird that they stumble so badly once they finally get control. Or maybe typical.
This doesn’t make the opposition by the GOP and the health care industry any less despicable. But it makes it a hell of a lot easier than it should be.
By the way, I can’t get the link thingy to work in Chrome, but I recommend the NY Time Magazine article on health care, “Why We Must Ration Health Care,” by Peter Singer.
An attempt at a link reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1&hpw
zoe kentucky
Best typo of the day!
Something tells me that John K couldn’t explain the difference between a representative democracy, communism, socialism, theocracy or fascism.
Wait, Glenn Beck, is that you?
Wile E. Quixote
@Brick Oven Bill
Of course BoB ignores the fact that the largest eugenics experimentation ever implemented, as opposed to being talked about, was by a right-wing (well unless you’re Jonah Goldberg) regime, that is to say, Nazi Germany. The Nazis not only sterilized and murdered those who they considered defective but also attempted to breed more Aryans with the Lebensborn program.
As far as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck being against eugenics, well I can understand why, under any rational eugenics program people as stupid and mentally imbalanced as Beck and Palin would be denied the right to procreate and further contaminate our gene pool with their inferior genes. Given the demonstrated stupidity and obvious genetic inferiority of most Republicans it’s a sure bet that most eugenics programs would include them too. Indeed if we implemented your policy of demanding that people receiving government assistance only have one child the red states in America would be the ones hardest hit as most of them consume more in services than they contribute in tax dollars.