Everyone knows global warming and climate change is a hoax to surrender more of your liberty to the Commie Lieberals.
You know what would fix this problem? Deregulation and tax breaks for loggers. I learned that at Reason magazine and from the Heritage foundation.
General Winfield Stuck
We need a national meme hunt to track down the “conserve” in “conservatism”.
clone12
And firefighter vouchers! Don’t forget firefighter vouchers!
Comrade Mary
You are one speedy man, John Cole. I just finished watching the entire report.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Who funds Reason anyway? Don’t tell me Koch and the other nutbags.
Comrade Mary
Plus: I just can’t watch much news or read much blogging any more. Can’t. I’m sick of evil and stupidity. I’m here because there’s some real humanity present, plus gallows humour, plus, of course, Tunch and Lily.
Punchy
Just watched this bit on 60 Minz. Sad as shit. Between this and the news that the Artic is basically fucked and the ocean is wicked warm and acidic and the coral reefs are to be almost completely bleached in 40 years makes me want to puke. Especially when I see Boortz and Beck tell me that the Earth cant be warming cuz today’s high was only 70F when the daily norm is 72
me
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Mary:
Can I pretend to be Canadian, just for a little while?
Comrade Mary
Meh, we aren’t doing much better. We’ve got four shit-for-brains political parties up here which may be jostling their way to the 27th national election in two years.
Comrade Mary
But yeah, we still have health care. Let me forge you an OHIP card, OK?
The Grand Panjandrum
You do realize that if we pray hard enough all of this will go away. Right? Jefferson and Madison dying on the same day 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was issued is all the proof we need that we are a blessed nation and nothing could possibly go wrong that we can’t fix with tax breaks, free markets and copies of Atlas Shrugged in hand. As long as the innovators and industrialists don’t disappear EVERYTHING will be fine.
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Mary:
I live on the Mexican border, and already have personal healthcare, but having a Beck of a time keeping sane while watching my fellow citizens keel over who don’t have it.
Do you need any more wingnuts up there? We are lousy with them.
Leelee for Obama
@The Grand Panjandrum: It was Jefferson and Adams, otherwise, you are perfectly in line with the CW, you betcha!
Keith
*More* CO2 would help put out the fires! Yippee!!!!
Bad Horse's Filly
@Comrade Mary: I’m with you.
MikeJ
Michael Kinsley comes after you so called “fact checkers”.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/09/michael-kinsley-mocks-factcheckers.html
John Cole
@MikeJ: I read that Kinsley stuff at ObWi this morning and was like “WTF?”
That happens a lot for me these days.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Punchy: I know it seems all doom and gloom, but there are some good things happening regarding climate change. Only time will tell if we can turn the Titanic around, but I remain hopeful.
I saw so many wind turbines and solar panels in Boston recently, which surprised me. They were everywhere.
And I spoke with someone who works in the green industry in MA – similar to the one I work in, and they are as busy as we are, hardly able to keep up the pace.
BTW, I HATE the term green, but will save that rant for another time
slag
Silly, John Cole. Don’t you know that the reason we have more fires is that we have too many trees? It’s simple. Get rid of the trees, get rid of the fires. That’s what Rush says.
gocart mozart
OT but there is an ad on your masthead for a prostitute that says “First, Fearless, and Free”. Is this true? I have been looking for a free virgin prostitute for a long time. She says her name is “Ann Coulter”. I assume this is an alias; hookerism being illegal and all. I clicked the link but alas, there was no contact info. (Odd for an adult website) John or DougJ, do you have the agency’s phone number? Also, do you know if they have any whores without adam’s apples and, I don’t know how else to say this but, a less crack-whorish demeaner? Thanks in advance.
General Winfield Stuck
If only them Dinosaur’s had not eaten so many Twinkies.
Demo Woman
60 Minutes just highlighted the LATimes reporter who wrote about Nathaniel Ayers. I saw “The Soloist” a few weeks ago and enjoyed the segment on him.
Rick Taylor
*sigh* The sad thing is, this isn’t even snark; this is pretty much what they believe. If this were the middle ages, these would be the people calling for Galileo to be condemned for arguing the earth moves.
Bad Horse's Filly
I’m going to go watch the next DVD of True Blood that came yesterday. That show is like heroin. Can’t get enough. The crazies in the world will have to get along without. Hoping for Tunch and Lily pix later…or other equally cute pets.
Bad Horse's Filly
I stand corrected, I’m going to FEED my cats first, and then watch my DVD. Ahem.
donovong
It’s not just the western forests, either. The hemlock and pine are dying in the east, and there are numerous others that are experiencing substantial threats, including oak.
We be fucked.
donovong
By the way – did you vote for Bitsy today?
John Cole
I have no idea. For some reason, I have it in my head it is tobacco money, but I would love to know who is paying the bills there.
Sly
Yup. Koch, Bradley, Earhart, Scaife, Olin, JM, and Smith Richardson account for pretty much all of Reason’s funding. David Koch is one of their trustees. It’s part of the Atlas Research Foundation (yes, Atlas Shrugged Atlas) which gets most of its funding from the same family foundations as well as corporate contributions from oil companies.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation
General Winfield Stuck
That was a sobering piece that is hard to debunk by skeptics. And anyone living in the west with half a brain cell knows things are changing rapidly. And when you consider the fire season has extended by 78 days, that bodes very bad.
Right now the overheating, drought and megafires have shifted away from us in the SW to the north. But we just had one our driest summer rainy seasons in a while,, often an omen to a return to the high heat drought conditions that nearly burnt us all up in the early 2000’s.
General Winfield Stuck
@donovong:
Yes
linda
I saw so many wind turbines and solar panels in Boston recently, which surprised me. They were everywhere.
just returned from a brief visit to des moines and having read about the wind farms in western iowa, one day my sister and i headed towards storm lake in the northwestern part of the state. driving (usually gravel) county roads and the horizon is nothing but acres and acres of very healthy corn and soybean fields and suddenly popping up are these fields of 260 ft 3-bladed towers. it’s just the eeriest looking thing to suddenly drive upon.
another funny thing is to see semis on the interstate transporting one of those blades. they are huge.
Leelee for Obama
@MikeJ: Kinsley thinks it’s OK to let a fellow history buff make a mistake and not make it right? I don’t like to let friends make mistakes they can be given a hard time about. We’uns got to stick together.
However, this may explain why so much CW is wrong, they just don’t like to correct errors-probably how Bush the Lesser got re-elected.
gocart mozart
crickets chirping . . .
C’mon, wasn’t that a little funny guys :(
Leelee for Obama
@gocart mozart: Sorry, mozart, but Ann Coulter is not in my consciousness. I see her name and move on.
John Cole
LOL. It makes so much sense that Reason is just another arm of the wingnut welfare circuit. Anyone have any numbers?
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Me neither, but she sometimes shows up in my nightmares.
Mike in NC
Right-wing “think tanks” like Heritage Foundation are an oxymoron.
Laura W
@gocart mozart:
Sorry. I totally laughed aloud when I got to this part. Should’ve chimed in, but you know, I just thought the LOL would be assumed!
auntieeminaz
@donovong: Thanks for the reminder.
gbear
OT. Embedding practice for me, anda LOLcats for tunch
Laura W
@auntieeminaz: @donovong:
Yes, thanks for the reminders, and the ongoing votes, all y’all. Who knows? Maybe she still has a chance in a new week? And even if she doesn’t win this competition, I think we’ve helped in other ways “yet unseen”.
jeffreyw
Hmm…
A sorta vegan friend wants to cook something kinda complicated tomorrow. She asks me if I have any good ideas. Just throwin it out here for an assist, and thanks.
Jonny Scrum-half
Boy, John Cole, you do have a large bug up your rectum about libertarians and Reason Magazine, don’t you? I don’t get it; many people with libertarian leanings (like myself) were against the invasion of Iraq before it happened, at the same time I understand you were arguing in favor of it. I appreciate that you’ve made the jump, and I like how your site exposes right-wing hypocrisy, but I would think that your questionable judgment 5 years ago might make you less sure that your current views are correct and that anyone who disagrees has got it wrong.
slag
@Jonny Scrum-half: Sooo…your saying that deregulation and tax breaks for loggers is the answer, then?
I can’t imagine why people wouldn’t take that seriously.
slag
Also. Sick of freakin homonyms. Also.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I’m sure the glibertarians believe that only if we had more deregulation the country wouldn’t be in the pickle it’s in.
I would really like to depend in the tooth fairy, the
easter bunny, and the wisdom of the free market system to steer the ship of state and it’s good Citizens to do the right thing. But I’ve had enough of George W, Bush.
John Cole
@Jonny Scrum-half: I have a bug up my ass for glibertarians who sat by and said nothing, or put up mild protests over egregious violations of the law, but then freak the fuck out because we would DARE to think about reforming our dysfunctional healthcare system, or who spend their days providing rhetorical cover for violent lunatics, or who freak the fuck out because we spend 1/20th of the prescription drug plan liability to stimulate the economy from the Bush wreckage.
Yeah. Fuck them.
clone12
His blog does say “consistently wrong since 2002”
Of course, the same could be said of us all. Given the massive financial mess our awesome deregulated market got us into, shouldn’t libertarians also be a bit chastened about the absolute truth of their ideology?
Davis X. Machina
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Nullō modō, semper cacat in latrinam propriam, sed vīdī ursōs quōsdam Missam Sanctam in basilicā Sanctī Petrī hodiē celebrantes.
joe from Lowell
Reason also gets a bunch of money from the oil lobby (Marshall Institute, Road Users Alliance) and the Homebuilders Association.
Which is why you won’t ever, ever, ever read a disparaging word about suburban sprawl zoning there, while frequently being treated to explanations of why the people who do criticize sprawl zoning are actually evil statists out steal your liberty.
BTW, my Mac doesn’t recognize “statists” as an English word. Good. It’s not.
SiubhanDuinne
I always enjoy linking to Obsidian Wings because of the kitty going all Tom Cruise in the last scene of TAPS.
Here are a few anagrams (I had to pull up one middle name, but the rest are as we know them):
Glenn Lee Beck : BELL NECK GENE
Sean Hannity : INANE SHANTY
(This one’s for Tunch) Bill O’Reilly : LILY OR LIBEL
Roger Ailes : SERIAL OGRE
Rupert Murdoch : OCHRE RUMP TURD
Can you tell I’m easily amused?
General Winfield Stuck
@Davis X. Machina:
I love it when you speak Latin. Don’t have a clue what it means but it adds an intellectual pinache to the bohemian goings on here.
joe from Lowell
Given the massive financial mess our awesome deregulated market got us into, shouldn’t libertarians also be a bit chastened about the absolute truth of their ideology?
One would think. In reality, they latched onto the “loans to poor people and minorities sunk the economy” line early on, and are clinging to it like a long-lost relative.
See, the problem was too much government, not to little. Also.
RedKitten
@Comrade Mary: I hear you about our political parties, and yes, all four of them are definitely shit-for-brains. All four of them need to can their leaders and make a completely fresh start.
Bad Horse's Filly
@jeffreyw: A little more information and I might be able to assist. What do ya need to know?
RedKitten
Oh and John?
I think you’ll like this./a>
Sloth
I have come to the conclusion that libertarianism is an ideology that will simply never manage to be tried correctly. And unless it is done *just so*, it will fail. At least that seems to be the excuse.
One does tend to wonder why such an apparently simple ideology would be so fragile, but there you have it.
RedKitten
Okay, so my html was crappy, but the link still works. Good ’nuff.
Bad Horse's Filly
@RedKitten: Getting any sleep? Or do you just stare at Sam all the time in wonder and amazement?
demkat620
@Bad Horse’s Filly: I’m watching the marathon as we speak.
Love. That. Show.
General Winfield Stuck
a Sunday Night open thread?
JK
OT
It’s not enough for the people at Powerline that Van Jones has resigned. These wankers are still upset with the NY Times and AP for being too soft in their coverage of Jones
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024450.php
Davis X. Machina
Lit. “No way. He always poops in his own john, but I did see certain bears celebrating Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica today.”
dsc (Unreasonable liberal)
jeffrey:
A sorta vegan friend wants to cook something kinda complicated tomorrow. She asks me if I have any good ideas.
slice, baste with olive oil and grill eggplants, zuchini, red peppers and onions (protabellas or button mushrooms on a skewer are also good additions). grill some cherry tomatoes on a skewer too
slather grill-toasted french bread with pesto
make sandwiches
eat
I know you said complicated–so look a a good recipe for mousaka if this simple recipe isn’t what you want.
I LOVE summer veggies
JK
OT
A Joni Mitchell song for Glenn Beck
Twisted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKIQSo7JbKQ
Long Live Joni Mitchell and Fuck Glenn Beck
jeffreyw
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
The friend is a girl? Does that help?
She likes fish. She eats squash. And other stuff.
I dunno, my idea of complicated is ham beans and cornbread.
Citizen_X
@Jonny Scrum-half: OK then, what’s the glibertarian scheme for dealing with anthropogenic global warming? And “It’s a hoax!” and “Everybody moves inland and 20 degrees north or south” don’t count.
Max
@linda: They are beautiful to see, aren’t they?
I always smile when I see the ones outside of Palm Springs.
General Winfield Stuck
@JK:
They don’t get that many fresh bones to crush, It’s not Big Dawg is still presnit, and the bimbo scanners are always turned way on. So when they do get one, they try and make it last, and when there is nothing left, they bray at the moon, or NYT’s to give them some seconds.
General Winfield Stuck
I think I have Dropped Word dyslexia, if that’s possible.
Keithly
As Limbaugh is the leader of the conservative movement, I would only note that Limbaugh cannot be wrong, he can only be wronged.
donovong
@Laura W: No problem. Anything for a puppy from up in God’s Country.
Demo Woman
@jeffreyw: If she does milk products, a vegetable lasagna is always nice. She can serve a salad and garlic bread with it.
Bad Horse's Filly
@jeffreyw: Alright, if she eats cheese, this is good (my cousin is vegan and doesn’t eat any dairy or fish):
http://whats4dinnersolutions.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/farmer%e2%80%99s-market-week-menu-edition/
or this:
http://whats4dinnersolutions.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/thursday-night-menu-northwest/
Exchange vegetable broth for the chicken broth and skip the bacon.
If neither of those work for you, email me – whatsdinnersolutions [at] live [dot] com
and I can come up with something else and email you the recipe (I’ve got a bunch of recipes not posted on my blog) or talk you through the cooking process if you’re worried. Just let me know if there are any don’ts – like dairy or shellfish, etc.
These are very, very simple meals, but have great flavors.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
Oh, for want of an edit button:
whats4dinnersolutions [at] live [dot] com (and you know, use @ and . )
Comrade Darkness
@jeffreyw: When I feel like getting all complicated, I make Ethiopian food. This includes making the Teff injera, but if you didn’t start 10 days ahead of time to set it out to foam and get the natural yeast going, you can easily make it 3/4 self-rising flour 1/4 teff instead.
(The main animal based ingredient in the cuisine, clarified butter, can easily be corn oil.)
Ethiopian is my absolute favorite.
jeffreyw
@Demo Woman:
i found an eggplant lasagna from a tip by dsc above, well received and thanks
b-psycho
@joe from Lowell: Well, the constant “we got your back” from the government to Wall Street whenever they take a crap in the pot doesn’t help…
Yes, I know most of the Reason types won’t acknowledge that. That’s the problem, to them all the stuff that the government does for big business is invisible.
Sly
In terms of funding, Reason is a 501(c)(3), meaning that they have to report income and expenditures to the IRS (which is required to be made public after a certain number of years), but doesn’t have to give numbers on exactly who is giving how much. To do that, you have to go through each contributor (which is a big pain in the ass).
This is their 2005 filing:
http://tfcny.fdncenter.org/990_pdf_archive/953/953298239/953298239_200609_990.pdf
As with most think tanks, most of their money comes from private donations. Most of that is probably from family foundations and corporate gifts. If you go through the trustees list of Reason, the people on it aren’t really associated with small donation, grass roots groups. Anyone here who has done any digging into the financial backing of conservative groups will undoubtedly recognize the name C. Boyden Gray. Big time insurance, commerical banking (and, formerly, tobacco) lobbyist who is pretty much the go-to-guy for conservative astroturfing. Served as White House Counsel to W. before he got appointed to Ambassador to the EU, which is probably the cushiest job on the planet.
If I were a betting man, however, I’d wager that a disproportionate amount of donations to Reason comes from API and Exxon. Mostly a hunch, but they seem to do a disproportionate amount of work on climate change debunking.
Kirk Spencer
@jeffreyw: “something complicated” is what gets me. Complication for the sake of complication, or are you trying for rich/fancy/special?
gnomedad
@Citizen_X:
I think the general idea is that nothing global warming does to us could be worse than taxes and regulations.
Jonny Scrum-half
John Cole and others — I’m not going to defend Reason specifically and everyone who calls him/herself a libertarian; there certainly are a lot of cranks/nuts/shitheads who fall into those camps. But I don’t see how you can disagree with the general idea of giving less power to government. Even if you like everything Obama’s doing, at some point (incredible as it may seem) there will be another Republican President. I don’t imagine that anyone here would be cheering the decisions made by a President Palin.
The only way to stop or prevent abuses of power is not to give away the power in the first place. And please, don’t anyone suggest that I move to Somalia, because that isn’t a “libertarian paradise” — it’s a country that has no law, which is not the same thing.
Finally, I haven’t seen much outcry here about the recent Afghanistan aerial bombings that killed civilians. I recall that topic being a major issue back when Bush was doing it and Obama was decrying it during the campaign. As much as I like how this site calls out Republican hypocrisy, it would be nice to see some more even-handed criticism.
Bad Horse's Filly
If you want something really complicated, I have a spinach lasagna that you make completely from scratch, including the pasta. That one will test your culinary skills for sure.
Jonny Scrum-half
Sly — I think that Ronald Bailey agreed a couple years ago that anthropogenic global warming was real.
Unabogie
@jeffreyw:
Jeff, for the record, dairy is not vegan. If she is really vegan, she does not eat any animal products at all. I’d clarify this before deciding, since if she does eat fish, she’s not in any way, shape or form, a vegan. And if she is vegan and you serve her dairy she’ll have nothing to eat and likely won’t appreciate it.
Good luck!
Unabogie
By the way, I am a vegan, so if you want any information, please ask.
ominira
@MikeJ: One of my favorite responses to Kinsley’s piece:
Sly
If giving more power to government means less power to a private entity that is willing to profit from my suffering, I’d consider that a pretty good deal.
That’s what elections are for.
Alan
From the RW stale bag of tricks, it’s the environmentalists’ fault. They don’t allow the necessary brush removal and maintenance needed to prevent fires. This, in order to save the habitat of the (fill in the blank), ie. snail darter, spotted owl, etc–global warming or climate change is junk science. :)
jeffreyw
@Kirk Spencer:
Here is the statement/question in it’s entirety: “i want to cook something complicated tomorrow but i don’t know what”
My friend lives in Texas, and we chat, I’m in Illinois, we’ve never met.
My take: She wishes to spend some time in the kitchen making something other than a quick meal, she wants to busy herself making a dish she has never tried.
El Cid
There is no such thing as man-made global warming, it is all caused by the SUN, and no scientist has ever ever studied the Sun and tried to figure out its effects on climate, just us global warming skeptics, and also Al Gore is fat and has a big house.
jeffreyw
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
Now that’s interesting, post your recipe, please and thank you.
jeffreyw
@Unabogie:
LOL, my bad, I did say “sorta”. I was gonna say “sorta vegetarian” but my spell checker said I was spelling it wrong.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I consider myself having a healthy streak of libertarian and is why I love living in NM, I think the healthiest ideological place I;ve ever lived in, and that covers 8 or ten states. What I object to is Libertarianism as a full throated ideology toward a fixed ideology for governance. I don’t want the government involved any more than is necessary, but it can do things nothing else can to correct the certain excesses and failures that always befall individuals and their imperfections when left to their own devices.
We have lived the past 30 years the model that free markets can govern itself, and have learned it can’t without some rules and enforcement of those rules that only a government can coldy and faithfully execute. And yes governments are not perfect stewards in these situations and go off the rails from time to time, especially when one party comes to power and works day and night to sabotage the agencies tasked to bring some fairness and rules. But it is what we have for the un-perfect human experience.
And with Healthcare, it should have been painfully obvious from day one that the market cannot function as it should to provide a product that folks cannot foregoe, because they will die. It is not meant for that purpose.
And being a civilized society, we will not let this happen and have been using desperate and costly measures by treating the uninsured by emergency that costs a fortune./
Now we are at the inevitable place where profiteering of a vital service has brought us all to the point of HC system collapse, and only government has the wherewithall to make it right. And denying that glaring fact due to some ideological dogma is what I object to from glibertarians.
b-psycho
@Jonny Scrum-half: The think-tank associated shill types have way better media access than serious skeptics of government power. Questioning the entire system tends to get you shut out, y’know?
@Sly:
Really? They seem to end up doing the same thing regardless. Call it crazy, but I suspect they’re in cahoots and the whole idea that the average person has control over either is a charade.
slag
@Jonny Scrum-half: I’ve seen plenty of criticism here about Obama’s failures to walk back Bush-era civil liberties abuses. I’ve also seen some debate here about what the hell we’re actually doing in Afghanistan and whether or not we should be doing it.
Nonetheless, the right/libertarian/tea party wing of this country has decided that they’re going to throw a daily temper tantrum and continue to drive the narrative that the only meaningful danger to this country is affordable healthcare and cap and trade legislation. And this is AFTER their 20-something year deregulation fetish had led to a near global economic collapse.
I’m sorry…what was your concern again?
Ash Can
I wonder how many people, right, left, or center, truly understand that fighting climate change in particular, and preserving the world-wide ecology in general, really isn’t about saving the planet and all that tree-hugging stuff? It’s about saving humans. If the other animals go, we go. If plant life goes, we go. If the air goes, we go. The planet will still be here after we’ve destroyed everything on it, including ourselves. And the living cells remaining in cockroaches and algae and viruses and whatever else remains will eventually evolve back into other life forms. And, if the planet’s lucky, there won’t be any asshole humans around on Earth 2.0 to fuck everything up again.
But then, all these right-wingers don’t give a shit because they’re all looking forward to the Rapture, or whatever the fuck they think is their get-into-heaven-free card. Heh. Won’t they be surprised.
Ash Can + a bottle of Stone’s Throw. (Great stuff, but it leaves me particularly unwilling to suffer fools gladly.)
Sly
As for Reason and climate change, you may be right. According to ExxonWatch, it looks like Reason’s funding from them peaked in 2000-2002, when Baily was writing articles like “Global Warming and Other Eco Myths” and Kenneth Green was concern-trolling the IPCC. Since then its taken a nose dive, and probably dried up.
But it looks like Ken Green moved to Fraser Institute (which is also funded by the same people who fund Reason) where he tried to muddy up the IPCC report in 2007 and didn’t do to well. See: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Independent_Summary_for_Policymakers
By the way, the same thing happened to a lot of think tanks doing “independent tobacco research and policy advocacy” in the 1990s, and it appears that Reason was a part of that network as well. Think tanks cash in on certain industry messages while they can and when the money dries up they move on to something else.
MR Bill
SiubhanDuinne, I will never see Rupert Murdoch’s name without thinking “OCHER RUMP TURD”.
For Dean David Broder I got ODD REDD AVIAN REB.
Neil Boortz (and I hope you are lucky enough to be unaware of this odious fellow’s radio career and spewing): RE:ZION BLOT;
Megan McArdle: GAMMA CENDLER
Ann Coulter is of course TAN NU COLER..
Sloth
Yes, I think we’re all painfully aware of that, and Obama has already walked back a lot of the abuses of power (specifically: of the constitution), that happened under Bush – and where he hasn’t, there has been a considerable hue and cry from the left.
He hasn’t moved to prosecute those abuses of power, at least not at the highest levels, which is – arguably – exactly where that prosecution should occur. There has been a considerable hue and cry around that as well.
As for healthcare, I see that as fixing a broken market. We could conceivable deregulate to fix this market, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests that the market would still be broken (there are large barriers to entry, it’s likely that there are large economies of scale, etc.) And, at the end of the day, we’re still probably going to distort the market anyway because we, as a society, don’t want people dying in the streets – and there is a common public health argument for providing healthcare.
Furthermore, truly deregulating the market is likely to be simply impossible. We’ll need to break the AMA as a union and bring in more doctors, we’ll need to drop patent protection for the drug companies (or limit it severely), and we’ll probably need to force some competition into the insurance industry. All hard stuff. And quite an experiment.
The available evidence (a host of other countries) suggests that we can get a much better solution than the one we have now by either regulating health insurance or by forcing competition on it via a public option. This is likely to be easier to implement, and the basic model has been proven out.
Yes, there’s more government, but the alternative, if possible, amounts to a grand experiment with some very real likelihood of failure.
Sly
There is some degree of collusion between government entities and private business, but this almost always happens at the state level. The risks are just too big at the Federal level when you have to deal with the IRS and Congressional subpoenas. No one wants to be dragged in front of a subcommittee of Government Reform and Oversight or Energy and Commerce and have to plead the fifth, believe me.
State government is an entirely different matter, and on some days I flirt with the idea of removing states as an organizational entity all together. There are very few jobs that they actually do to my satisfaction, and most of the bad experiencess I’ve had, and people I know have had, with government have always come at the state and local level.
Kirk Spencer
@jeffreyw: Then allow me to make two suggestions.
Suggestion one, which is pure vegan, would be a vegetable terrine. Simplistically, it’s vegetable broth that’s gelatinized (use agar-agar for total vegan) with layers of veggies within. Veggies can be fresh or grilled. Yes, there’s more to it, but that’s the simple.
Suggestion two is a favorite from Julia Childs’ Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Gateau de Crepes a la Florentine. It’s a layer cake – well, not really, as the layers are crepes and various veggie mixes. HOWEVER, it is not ‘true’ vegan: crepes need milk, the mushoom duxelle is properly made with cream, “You can never have too much butter”, etc. Properly it’s molded, and both beautiful and rich on completion.
Both add the complication of being something most folk haven’t tried, so getting it right the first time (blindly flailing through ingredients) is, well, entertaining.
jeffreyw
@Kirk Spencer:
Wow, I’ll link her to your suggestion, that sounds wildly entertaining. At least as long as I stay in Illinois and just see the grumbling from Texas. lol
SiubhanDuinne
@MR Bill: I love RE:ZION BLOT for Neil Boortz. Brilliant! I wish I were ignorant of him, but he got his start in Atlanta (I believe he still broadcasts from here — I haven’t listened to him in years) and I used to hear him occasionally when he was strictly a local personality, long before he had a national platform. IIRC he was a practicing lawyer and did the radio thing only as a part-time amusement. I was never a fan but he came across as fairly sane and intelligent back then. When he was being a dick, he was still a thought-provoking dick. But as I say, that was nearly 25 years ago and I’ve gone out of my way to avoid him for most of that time.
b-psycho
@Sly:
Interesting you mention that. I seem to recall a time where oil executives were allowed to skip being sworn in — meaning they could legally lie, thus defeating the entire purpose of bringing them in at all. I also recall a distinct lack of actual punishment for the huge fuck-up on the part of the mega-bankers that was deemed threatening enough to feed their companies billions. If I’m not to interpret stuff like that as yet more proof that representative government is bullshit and politics is little more than legalized robbery, then what?
Ideally, I’d rather have neither corporations nor government. But damn, shouldn’t politics have to actually result in some capitalists being nailed to the wall first before it gets praised as The Only Thing Standing Between Us and Them? For all the barking about the Democrats being supposedly fire-breathing soshulists by the wingnut types I kinda wish that was true so they’d have something to really bark about. You’d think the Senate majority was Bernie Sanders and 59 clones of him from the noise…
grumpy realist
To: Libertarians
The reason we make snotty remarks about your moving to Somalia is because your party has (unfortunately) too many believers who hate taxes and believe The Magic Infrastructure Fairy causes stuff to appear out of nowhere and be maintained at no cost. Your devotees also have the distressing habit of ignoring all lessons from history.
If Libertarianism was a theory that worked, we’d see a society/economy in history that used it. We don’t. And no, some city councils in Iceland back in 900 AD don’t count.
If you don’t like government, what would you prefer instead? Warlords/mafia? City-states? (If you want the latter, I suggest you read up on the history of Renaissance Italy and the innumerable wars and fun with i banniti. Don’t forget the invasions by the French.)
Ed Marshall
The most screwed up part is that the libertarians I most want to identify with will tell you that they aren’t all about kicking people on welfare in the teeth and the like. They won’t have problems on the face of it with extending unemployment benefits. God forbid you for being the Hessian who would suggest that’s their M.O.
Except it is. What do they have in common with the GOP other than that? What else is the alliance based on?
Equal Opportunity Cynic
@Jonny Scrum-half: You’re not alone as someone of a libertarian orientation who posts here. However I often call myself “post-libertarian” because of the general lack of pragmatism I see among libertarians, both on macro-level issues and in micro-level organization.
Macro: I mean, for example, resisting the Keynesian economic consensus so vehemently without any consideration of the magnitude of the consequences if we guess wrong. Falling into the “Obama is evil” crowd more than engaging the debate and offering market-based solutions to the health care problem.
Micro: I’ve been involved in two local Libertarian groups in different states, one more practically activist than the other. However, my general observation is that Libertarians would rather gather and talk blue-sky theory with each other instead of doing outreach and trying to win others to their cause incrementally. As a result, the movement never grows.
==
@Citizen_X:
I’m hardly qualified to speak for libertarians as a whole but I would think that some sort of market-based solution that reflects the true costs of environmental discussion would appeal to libertarians as well as to me. However, libs might object to the cap part of cap-and-trade, whereas it seems to me to be an essential prerequisite to cause the market to consider environmental impact. Internalize the externalities, etc. etc.
I suppose the staunch lib view is that once environmental goods get REALLY scarce then the market will allocate them efficiently, but I distrust humans’ capacity for forward-looking rational thought enough to expect action before it’s too late.
grumpy realist
Equal Opportunity Cynic–Unfortunately we’ve got Easter Island and quite a few other examples to show that humans are really, really dumb about backing off from self-destructive behavior.
Eh, so what do I know–I’m getting into the “old fart” stage of life and have found myself agreeing more and more with the aphorism that has guided most of my political philosophy: “Stupidity should hurt. Badly.”
Balconesfault
Next time some libertarians cite a few of their crowd opposing the invasion of Iraq … it’s time to remind them of
the libertarian ideology at the root of our Iraq reconstruction strategy.
The Other Steve
Are western fires the result of warming or of drought?
Sly
Again, this is what elections are for. Representative government requires citizens governed under the same to be the ultimate jury in cases of massive fuck-ups. That isn’t easy, but no one said it wouldn’t be. Where you have ignorant and venal people, you’ll see ignorant and venal politicians. If you think people like Michelle Bachmann or Tom Delay don’t serve the best interest of “the people”, I entreat you to go visit their constituents.
I know its fashionable to blame “The Media” or things like gerrymandering, and that argument could probably hold water twenty or thirty years ago when access to information required the time and will to go through a FOIA request. But we live in an era where there’s ocean of information out there for anyone to look through who’s got a few minutes, internet access, and a bullshit detector that is somewhat functionable. Give me five minutes and I can find the donor list of every lobbying group in the country who hides their motives behind sweet-sounding names like “Americans for a Fair Tax Code” and “Citizens for a Sound Environmental Policy”. So can you. So can everyone else.
I have no way of proving this, but I bet we’d be in a similar situation if we scrapped representative government and went to direct democracy.
Sly
Probably the greatest story of the past ten years that few people bothered to listen to. Immunity from Iraqi law and taxation was just the opening salvo of the CPAs mission to destroy what Shock and Awe didn’t.
My favorite story is the one about Fred Burke, who was initially tapped to head up Iraq’s Ministry of Health (or what was left of it after two wars and a decade of sanctions). Guy was an expert in public health policy, especially in post-conflict areas, who worked with Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, etc. Did a lot of work in Kosovo and Somalia during the 90s.
So, of course, he had to be fired. Experts? Running shit?! No way! They replaced him with James Haveman, who had virtually no experience in public health systems administration. His first act was, and I kid you not, implementing a public anti-tobacco campaign in Baghdad.
There was also the 24-year with no background or education in finance, who was bored with his real estate job and called up Bremer’s assistant to see if there was any work in Iraq (the two were friends). Next thing he knows, he’s running the Iraqi stock exchange.
Balconesfault
@The Other Steve: “Are western fires the result of warming or of drought?
Well, climatologists have long been predicting that regionalized droughts will be a natural consequence of climate change.
b-psycho
@Balconesfault:
Instead of “privatization” (more like robbery), assets that were previously held by the Iraqi government should’ve been treated as commons owned by the people that operated them. ESPECIALLY the oil: Their country, their labor, their fucking oil, and no force on earth had ANY right to change that, at all. For that reason, the kind of disobedience that Iraqis took up in situations like this I am 100% in favor of.
Any “libertarian” that thinks imposing capitalism from above is even remotely defensible is a fucking fraud.
DougW
@!gocart mozart
Stupendous! Ann Coulter is like the toothache that you just can’t stop worrying — you know it’s going to hurt to tongue it but you just keep doing it.
Keep up the good work.