The crack team at Reason has a video explaining why people don’t have health insurance in America- malt liquor and designer jeans:
I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to work in the word “bling.”
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cleek
now why would anyone ever accuse libertarians of being out of touch with reality ?
flounder
I was watching CNBC just now, and in preparation for Obama talking to Wall Street today, the chyron on the screen asked:
“Has Bush Admin lost the will to regulate”
I think the answer to that is “yes”.
Zifnab
Or racist?
DougJ
What’s so dumb is that, to me, this shows exactly why our system needs to change. We have idiots in this country who won’t buy health insurance under our current system. Guess what? There’s idiots in other countries too. And those idiots have health insurance so they’re clogging up emergency rooms, carrying around TB, and so on.
Is Reason trying to convince us that since people are dumb, we shouldn’t have universal health insurance? Because it seems to me that, by that reason, we shouldn’t do much of anything ever.
General Winfield Stuck
“The reason I don’t have health insurance is because I live in America”
Duh. The mind reels.
Shalimar
I’m surprised they didn’t work in fried chicken just to make it more obvious who they don’t want to help. But I guess that could be perceived as an attack on KFC and they didn’t want anyone to think they were attacking elderly Kentucky colonels.
Zifnab
Or cell phones! How can these people afford cell phones but not afford health insurance?! We can’t let these lucky duckies keep walking all over us like that.
(Also, did you notice these guys didn’t look out of their 30s? Maybe a little bit of age-ism going on?)
Mark
Until I see a version of this video that includes the guy behind the camera asking questions, I’m not convinced that these answers aren’t taken completely out of context.
cleek
it fits right in with the glibertarian notion that fat people are bringing down our health care system: if everybody made the same choices as the glibertarians, everything would be perfect.
asiangrrlMN
Not gonna do it. I have already had my fill of bullshit this morning, so could someone summarize for me? kthxbai.
Crashman06
That guy looks like the poor man’s Manny Ramirez.
SpotWeld
It is to the credit of our country (and civilization in general) that stupidity is remarkably less fatal than it used to be. It is also incredibly easier to become non-stupid (see previous eras of rigid caste systems and in the case of US history how it was illegal to teach slaves to write.)
Proponents of Health Care Reform consider this to be a feature, and wish to continue the trend.
Opponents of Health Care Reform consider this a bug, and seem to be convinced that helping some people recover/succeed must be accomplished though the diminishment of their own prosperity.
4tehlulz
Is this the usual glibertarian “Those that do not make all their decisions
like mewith complete rationality and perfect clarity about future events do not deserve health care, assistance, to live, etc.”? Or is this actually a new and improved version?BH
Can one of the geniuses as Reason point me to where you can get quality health insurance for the cost of a pair of jeans?
This is John Stossel’s old line of thinking: unless you live in a hovel and eat bread and water for every meal, you just need to STFU. That’s quite a vision for America, isn’t it?
Leo
“Is Reason trying to convince us that since people are dumb, we shouldn’t have universal health insurance? Because it seems to me that, by that reason, we shouldn’t do much of anything ever.”
Isn’t that more or less the libertarian position?
Svensker
Yes, if only 20-somethings would buy health insurance instead of trendy clothing, the health insurance crisis in America would be solved. Why didn’t we think of that before!
I will tell this amazing insight to my three 50-something friends who have lost their jobs and their health insurance coverage in the last 9 months. This insight will bring them much comfort and make them so healthy that they will not need any stupid insurance! Hooray!
AWJ
What a bunch of… fucktards. Pardon my French, but “assholes” just isn’t strong enough to describe the glibertarians. I can’t believe I used to read Reason (and, God help me, lewrockwell.com) when I was younger and stupider.
Brick Oven Bill
A ‘metic’ is a Greek term for a legal resident alien, one without the rights of a Citizen. Socrates describes late term democracy:
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.
ACORN officials, Serena Williams, and Kayne West are demonstrating the break-down of the Christian framework that constrained man’s passions for a long time in America. Malt liquor and consumerism is another. This is most evident in the Neolithic demographics, but the breakdown of constraint is present in all demographic groups. Except perhaps the Amish.
Socrates goes on to describe how democracy gives way to tyranny. The Founding Fathers read The Republic and blessed us with the 1st and 2nd Amendments, to resist the emergence of tyranny. For this we should give thanks.
The Teabaggers appear to mostly have ancestors who evolved in the civilizing presence of metal. This small and growing American faction recognizes the importance of self-discipline to the happiness of man. Not everybody has the capacity to comprehend the importance of this.
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?”
-Thomas Jefferson (Go Teabaggers)
Citizen_X
@asiangrrlMN: Easy: “Let them eat cake.”
Seriously, Reason bitches: please play this one all the time! I’ve never heard the term “plummy” applied to an American accent, but that narrator’s voice? Absolutely. (Although, perhaps “punch-me-in-the-face voice” would be a more fitting, all-American term.)
And what a convincing argument. Now I understand: if only I stopped buying protein supplements and designer jeans, I could afford $1000 a month for health insurance.
beltane
All I can say is that looking at those teabaggers on Saturday, the first words that came to mind were diabetes, trans-fat, and clogged arteries. Judging by what I saw, the average right-winger feels that soap, exercise and green vegetables are a socialist plot to be avoided at all costs. Take these people out of the risk pool and insurance for the rest of us would be affordable.
SpotWeld
B.O.B. you’ve had you troll post for the thread.
Now shut up
GregB
Has anyone seen the rightwing phrase:
Watermelon socialism?
The definition is: green on the outside, red on the inside.
The dogwhistle is busted due to overuse.
-G
asiangrrlMN
@Citizen_X: That was succinct but descriptive enough for me to know that I do not want to watch it. Thank you.
@Crashman06: Yes! Thank you. It was bugging me who this guy resembled.
zzyzx
This is something I posted at the end of a comment thread here on Fri or Sat… it should probably be repeated here because I’m still floored:
If you want to have fun, read Reason’s attempt at Obama’s speech. Not only should medicare be destroyed but the gap created by defunding it should be covered by selling off our national parks, presumably to developers. And when you finish picking your jaw off the floor from reading, “Since many on fixed incomes would have trouble buying even inexpensive insurance. I propose we sell off the 507 million acres that the federal government owns and give the proceeds to the oldest and most needy,” go to the comments where that’s not libertarian enough:
“Why do the oldest and most needy get the proceeds? They’ve already proven they can’t handle basic finances and, will rob their grandchildren into bankruptcy to get more sweet sweet meds.
“How about you give the proceeds to people who’ve proven they can be responsible with money?”
So an argument about health care becomes, “Sell off all national parks and then give the money to the rich just because.”
Leo
@Brick Oven Bill:
Man, that’s some great stuff right there.
harlana pepper
my sense of humor is gone
whoever is responsible for that piece of garbage can FUCK THEMSELVES WITH A GLOW-STICK
Balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill: ACORN officials, Serena Williams, and Kayne West are demonstrating the break-down of the Christian framework that constrained man’s passions for a long time in America.
And Joe Wilson! Don’t forget Joe Wilson!
Or Dick “Go Fuck Yourself” Cheney, who can’t find enough cameras to jump in front of to advocate torture.
asiangrrlMN
@harlana pepper: You win for the casual tossing in of the glow-stick in the end (pun intended). I am with you at this point.
BDeevDad
And the idiots at Reason don’t realize when the drunk one needs his stomach pumped, they’re the ones paying for it with higher premiums.
They probably want to bring back debtor’s prison as well.
Ash Can
Libertarianism has always given self-centered boors a means of justifying their belief that they’re the center of the universe. The fact that this particular issues also gives the racists among them a means of justifying their own racism is an added bonus.
jon
I guess Brick Oven Bill is endorsing the idea of a stratified society based not on merit but on the rules of the state, where hierarchy is all that matters, where men go from buggered boys to married men to buggerers over the course of a lifetime, and women are little more than property? Admire the Greeks all you want, but their society collapsed for a reason. It wasn’t that poor men didn’t know their place, but that rich men didn’t want to give them one.
The Grand Panjandrum
Who knew GNC, Anheuser-Busch, and True Religion Brand Jeans were to blame for the skyrocketing costs for health care? Anheuser did just get bought out by a European company a couple years ago, and now we know why …
Brachiator
Russell Brand at the VMA awards gets into the health care debate (and you thought it was just about Kanye West):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1213280/Kanye-West-ruins-Taylor-Swifts-big-MTV-acceptance-speech-storms-stage.html
Heh!
Shinobi
An interesting possible subtext to this video is;
“These people should not be spending money on consumer goods, they should be giving their money to the health insurance companies.”
All they are doing is suggesting that rather than spend their money in one place these Americans should give it to the health insurance companies for policies that may or may not cover them when they actually get sick.
This video seems to assume that having health insurance is meaningful in and of itself. Totally overlooking that if your coverage is bad or your policy is rescinded you can still go bankrupt from health care costs quite easily. Is it really a good bet to spend all of your disposable income on health insurance now on the off chance you might get sick, after which you may still owe a lot of money and go into bankruptcy? Or is it better to enjoy while you can and end up in the self same bankruptcy down the line?
(Not to mention the effect on the economy if all uninsured Americans stop buying CPGs so they can pay for health insurance. Good bye retail industry, good bye consumer goods firms, hellooo recession, again)
Betsy
@Brachiator:
That last bit is all kinds of awesome.
Leelee for Obama
@SpotWeld: Is this the reason, no pun intended, that the Darwin film can’t get a distributor here in the US because it’s too controversial. Don’t want anyone to realize that the artificial social engineering the tea-baggers and Libertarians rail against is actually helping to perpetuate stupid people that agree with them? Perhaps the distributors are part of that group?
zzyzx
@BDeevDad: One of these days maybe Libertarians will understand that the social net doesn’t exist for the poor. It’s there to give society the stability that’s needed so we can have banking and real estate industries; imagine what the housing market would be like if UI didn’t exist and people immediately defaulted on their houses whenever they lost their job. It’s there so we have the roads that let programmers drive to work in the morning. It’s there so the rich can leave their houses and not have to worry about being kidnapped for ransom by desperate people.
They’ll never understand that their Libertopia would be significantly less free than what we have now, that free speech requires public spaces to use it, that without protection from onerous contracts people would be too scared to do anything without talking to a lawyer…
Bill E Pilgrim
@DougJ: Is Reason trying to convince us that since people are dumb, we shouldn’t have universal health insurance?
No, “Reason” is trying to convince us that the only people who suffer from any lack of health care in the country are lazy people who buy designer clothes and all sorts of other stuff instead. And of course these people are not white.
Not the working salaried people whose health is endangered when they get dropped by their insurer in the middle of chemo for having had acne once, and suddenly can’t pay for any treatment anymore. Not all of the people who pay huge amounts for coverage and can’t afford to go to the doctor because of the copay and deductible. And on and on.
It’s just those welfare queen minorities, in other words, the rest of us are fine.
Leelee for Obama
@Brachiator: This for the win!
Thanks for posting it.
gbear
Driftglass has a good post about how the last 17 years have led up to the level of right wing rage we’re seeing today.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/09/like-virgin.html
harlana pepper
@asiangrrlMN: thanks! bitchiness sometimes results in creativity, however raw. also :)
asiangrrlMN
@Brachiator: Love it, man. That last part is teh awesomes.
Corner Stone
@Brick Oven Bill:
What about Blackie D. Blackmon? Wouldn’t you say that he too is at fault here?
Your dogwhistles and inane analogies have gone from transparent to outright blatant. IOW, your troll-fu is weak.
BDeevDad
@zzyzx: Amed, I used to think I was libertarian, then I grew up and faced the real world.
BDeevDad
Amen, not Amed
harlana pepper
that was pretty lame, tho, it’s really too stupid to get mad about (re-directing anger)
Shinobi
@BDeevDad: Me too. As much as I like the IDEA of a limited government, I like, y’know, people LIVING a lot more. (New slogan, Libertarianism Kills.)
4tehlulz
>The Teabaggers appear to mostly have ancestors who evolved in the civilizing presence of metal.
I’M GOING OFF THE RAILS ON A CRAZY TRAIN
Leelee for Obama
@gbear: That was really incisive. Why doesn’t he write for a major newspaper? Oh, right, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. I forget that all the time.
Brachiator
Stupid Libertarian videos makes the ghost of Ayn Rand weep.
Brick Oven Bill
Socrates also spoke of ‘Free men of nature’. Jefferson wrote of this also, but his term was the ‘natural aristocracy of man’.
The goal of the establishment, examples being the Bush and Kennedy families, is to suppress the threat of free men of nature. Bill Clinton is a ‘free man of nature’ and neither Ted Kennedy nor George Bush has nearly the talent. Bill Clinton is a threat.
The modern Left fears the Bill Clintons of the world. He was trailer trash with a single mom from Arkansas. The enemy of the modern Left is largely poor white populations, because it threatens their dogma and their power.
The child of a white couple making $25k scores on average 995 on the SAT. The child of a black couple making $100k scores on average 908 on the SAT. The modern Left seeks to suppress free men of nature by imposing an artificial system of racial spoils, and to insulate the Bushes and Kennedys from the Clintons.
Shinobi
I think BOB got into Sully’s stash. He seems to be making even less sense than normal.
cleek
bah. the reason it hasn’t been picked up is because distributors know that nobody in the US wants to watch a movie about a 19th century scientist . it’s like Merchant/Ivory meets 8th grade biology class. whee!
Riggsveda
Here’s your proud libertarian:
http://corrente.blogspot.com/2005/09/do-these-people-live-on-my-planet.html
No matter how monumental the human disaster, they can always rumble up some pseudo-philosophic crackpot argument to justify sitting on their asses, watching the tragedy unfold on TV with a beer and a hoagie and their thumbs up their butts.
DonkeyKong
Yo, does this make Meg McMuffin a wiggitarian?
Yo Respect!
Common Sense
I get the ManRam reference, but all I kept seeing was Gary Oldman in True Romance.
It ain’t white boy day, is it?
binzinerator
@Ash Can:
Nailed it!
liberal
@zzyzx:
Actually, you’ve got it exactly backwards.
The social safety net exists because the real estate industry exists; it’s the inevitable outcome of handing 10–20% of GDP to landowners for doing absolutely nothing.
ricky
@Riggsveda:
I don’t understand your surprise. In order to get a beer and a hoagie up your butt the thumbs must be involved.
CalD
Ummmm, who wants to tell ’em?
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html
Corner Stone
@BDeevDad:
Don’t think we didn’t notice what you did there. How long have we got?? HOW LONG until your friend Ahkmed and the Mooslim Horde descends upon the BJ community?
HOW LONG DAMN YOU?
Brachiator
@Brick Oven Bill:
By the way, what did you score on the SAT?
And I think you should keep posting. You are obviously a useful barometer for the level of batshit craziness in the US.
And remember to take your meds.
Xenos
“The Teabaggers appear to mostly have ancestors who evolved in the civilizing presence of metal. ”
When the ancestors of the classical Greeks were conducting funeral games for Achilles outside the gates of Troy the most precious prize possible was a lump of iron that these Bronze Age tribesmen could only get from one source – ferrous meteorites.
Luckily for the rest of us the black-skinned Meroites figured out how to smelt iron, or the lot of us would syill be running around with bronze-age technology.
ricky
When did the Libertarians break up with the Log Cabin Republicans?
ItAintEazy
@BOB: Since there are more poor black students taking the SATs than poor white students taking that test, which is extraordinary since there are 20% more poor white kids than blacks. That would indicate a much more restricted talent pool of poor white test takers than any other demographic…fuck it. I’d have better luck explaining physiochemistry to an euglena.
Alex
I pay $850 a month for crappy health insurance for my wife because of a pre-existing condition which is treated with about 50 bucks a month worth of generic prescriptions. She hasn’t been to a doctor in 12 years for anything other than a check up.
That’s a fucking shitload of malt liquor. I wonder how these unReasoning asshats figure someone making $10 an hour and taking home $320 a week is going to swing a payment like that; and God forbid if they have a real illness.
Alex
Jefferson wrote of this also, but his term was the ‘natural aristocracy of man’.
Jefferson also established public (i.e. socialized) schools in Virginia to promote his “natural aristocracy” and wanted the state to pay the full cost of university education for qualified students.
I just love it when ignoramuses claim their interllectural heritage from sources they know nothing about.
slippy
@zzyzx:
It’s sad — they don’t understand all that because they’ve got the emotional intelligence of a fucking sixteen-year-old.
goblue72
Actually, I think whoever pulled the night shift at the MIT Media Lab where the “BOB” AI is running forgot to leave the A/C on to keep the servers cool. Clearly something overheated last night. Either that or a software patch upgrade to “BOB” didn’t install properly.
As for the Reason vid, I’m glad they made it – its not often those right wing think tanks provide such perfect evidence that deep down they truly are a bunch of racists. Because creating a video where a bunch of brown- and black-skinned men are blathering on about how they’d rather spend their money on designer threads and malt liquor than buy health insurance is no different than putting on the blackface and singing “Mammy”.
Brick Oven Bill
RE: “…indicate a much more restricted talent pool of poor white test takers…”
That makes no sense ItAintEasy. The High School graduation rate in most black-dominated schools is very low. The High School graduation rate in most white-dominated schools is very high. We recently discussed Detroit (30% graduation rate) vs. Escanaba (90% graduation rate). The feedback from a Youpper was that Escanaba was a very poor place.
I fail to believe that the test taking rate of Detroit graduates is 300% the SAT test taking rate of Escanaba graduates. My gut tells me that the test taking rate is probably far lower for Detroit graduates than for Escanaba graduates.
Black scholars warn that as standardized testing becomes more widespread within the black community, that the scores will likely go down. This I have read, you can read it for yourself in the link provided above. The reason given is ‘cultural bias’.
ItAintEazy
@BOB:
Yes, yes, a city in the Northern Peninsula with half the poverty rate and a higher per-capita income than Detroit is VERY comparable. Smarter sheet-wearing conservatards, please.
/end troll feeding.
OniHanzo
@zzyzx:
I swear everytime I listen to these anarcho-capitalist bastards I think of that scene in Robocop 2 (I know, I know… guilty pleasure):
The Old Man: “Anybody can buy OCP’s stock, and own a piece of our City. What could be more democratic than that?”
Douchenozzles are convinced that EVERYTHING is for sale.
Cyrus
@ItAintEazy:
You might be right, but I thought he was just making it up. I didn’t see a link or even a cite.
nota bene
Typical. WTF do SAT scores have to do with public healthcare?
And this is just gibberish:
That’s so bizarre I can’t even unpack it to argue with it. But
I’m much more interested in your retort to that than some claptrap about Jefferson, Socrates, and
nota bene
Typical. WTF do SAT scores have to do with public healthcare?
And this is just gibberish:
That’s so bizarre and confused that I can’t even unpack it to argue with it. But I can confidently say that poor white folks are not the enemy of the left. Howard Dean caught a lot of flak for saying “the guy with the Confederate flag decal on his pickup truck ought to be voting for me.” He wasn’t talking about racism, he was talking about economic self-interest.
I’m much more interested in your retort to that than some incoherent claptrap about Jefferson and Socrates.
Batocchio
So Reason magazine can only offer straw men, lame attempts at comedy and implicit racism. Same old, same old…
joe from Lowell
It’s pretty rare the equation of the necessities of life – food, shelter, heat – that people can’t afford, with consumer goods they want, is the least offensive part of a political message.
I can’t believe how much of time I gave over to those assclowns. I feel like the guy who dated a 300 pound girl for two years.
KaffeeMeister
Republicans obviously want their cake, without sharing…
They can afford the pricey private insurance plans. Or, they are provided premium health care by their employers.
Health care for the uninsured might raise their taxes… The poor little rich babies just can’t accept that (while they have the one of the lowest tax rates of the developed world).
JL
@Leo:
I take from it the conclusion that “because people are dumb we don’t have universal health insurance.” That’s what I took from the reporting on the 9/12 teabagging fest, too.
litbrit
Arrrgh, I don’t usually allow myself to get sucked in this way, but when it comes to this issue–healthcare–I sometimes can’t help myself. I headed over there, got thoroughly disgusted, and tried to make a sane argument in an insane world.
And so it went.
Commenters here who’ve pointed out how immature, selfish, and blockheaded Reason’scontent can be–not to mention tone-deaf and racist–are absolutely correct. The site’s title is used ironically, right? Please say yes.
b-psycho
Wow, that video actually ended up dumber than I thought it’d be…
The point of the phrase “no one should have to choose between X and Y” there w/r/t insurance was CLEARLY NOT a reference to people who can afford health insurance but simply don’t buy it. Those people are dumb, fuck them. Rather, the point was people who CANNOT afford it simultaneously with other things they NEED merely to live. This is just a blatant dodge of the subject dressed up in snark.
ItAintEazy
@Cyrus:
Well, the disparities in SAT test scores between high-income blacks and low income whites have been used ad nauseum by affirmative action opponents and Serious Black Commentators to point out how it’s those negroes fault if they don’t get into good colleges. Like I said, they never bother to heed the fact that very few poor whites take the tests, and obviously it is those that will most likely get high scores.
Also wealth is a better indicator of performance than income, and if whites earning around $25K a year has nearly as much wealth and liquid assets as black families earning over $75K, then there are going to be some crossovers.
Also according to research by Dalton Conley, when wealth and socio-economic status is factored out, blacks are no less likely than whites to graduate high school or college. In fact, it appears that blacks have a slight advantage over whites in both those cases.
But this is all TLDR and will just go over the head of your average wingnut and, sadly, your average “moderate.” Bleh.
Jason
Is there any other way to read BOB at #18 than as “Kill all the browns.”
Wile E. Quixote
So I went to the pharmaⅽy today to get a presⅽrⅰptⅰon filled and a few minutes after I left got a phone call from them saying that my health insurance had been cancelled as of 31 August. Now, I told my former employer that I wanted to continue my health coverage via COBRA (which the Obama administration made more affordable via ARRA), filled out all of the paperwork and have been sending them cashier’s checks to pay for it. So I need to find out today whether or not I have health insurance, which kind of sucks.
After I got this phone call I went to the gym and watched Anderson Cooper do a show on the Glenn Beck wingnut protest this weekend. Needless to say I had a lot of anger to work off and did quite a bit of elliptical trainer this evening and while watching the footage of the protests wondered if I could get a job in one of the death camps that Obama is going to set up for conservatives and if so what the health insurance is like.
Nancy Irving
If anything, the video shows why we need reform that includes a universal mandate.
Millions of young, childless, healthy-at-the-moment young people are contributing nothing towards the cost of health care in America, because they are too young and inexperienced (Reason would probably say “stupid”) to make the right choices about how to spend their money.
The video shows that many of these young people will not voluntarily contribute; they will start contributing only if they are mandated to, by law.
Thus the video is good advertising for Obamacare.