Here:
After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform.
It’s a lonely battle. The hospital associations, AARP and other powerful interest groups that usually howl over Medicare cuts have also switched sides. Last week, they stood silent as the Senate Finance Committee debated a plan to slice more than $400 billion over the next decade from Medicare, the revered federal insurance program for people over 65, and Medicaid, which also serves many seniors.
Those folks at Reason sure know how to pick their allies, don’t they?
asiangrrlMN
Fiscal conservatives, my ass. If the slash in spending was from the monies that go to actual clients, then the ‘fiscal conservatives’ would be all over it. They can all DIAF (the so-called fiscal conservatives, that is, not the seniors. The latter have to wait for their death panels).
Napoleon
Heck AARP is running ads (I have heard it a dozen times) that basically say “we are standing up for you retirees – your benefits are safe, but not the cut the insurance companies are skimming off the top to your detriment”.
PeakVT
So predictable. Republicans are complaining not because they care about old people all of the sudden, but because the insurance companies who benefit from Medicare Advantage overpayments are whining. Of course it takes eight paragraphs to get to the issue of Medicare Advantage, which is probably safely after the jump in the print edition.
Robertdsc-iphone
When fiscal conservatives call for tax increases on the wealthy & significant reductions in military spending, then I’ll give them a bit of credit. Otherwise they can take a flying leap for all I care.
Zifnab25
What we really need to do is privatize Medicare to streamline the process. Cut all those expensive medical benefits and channel the money straight to insurance companies, where it belongs.
Keith G
It has been really unsatisfying to note that lately the arch of political discourse in this land bends toward retrenchment. Suddenly the elites become consumed with not spending money. Health care is the ultimate national security issue, but we must not be too helpful, we must not do too much.
Off topic – I need help:
Had a problem with malware. Installed McAffee Security Center 8.1. Since that time. I cannot play .flv or .wav files successfully. By that I mean the files are playing slowly with sound being very low and filled with static. This includes You Tube, Google Video (both from web or saved) and all the familiar Windows warnings and announcements.
I have de-installed Flashplayer and reinstalled it to no effect. And these probs also occur with IE or Firefox. Sigh
gonzone
libertarian = dope smoking Republican
dumber than a rock.
reason = OK, tell me the reason again?
RareSanity (phone mode)
Keith:
Download Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware program. If whatever is causing trouble is known, that program will clean it.
If that program can’t clean it, it then gets very hairy. Download “Hijack This!” And run it. Then go to the Hijack This supports forums and post the file it creates. It may take a little time, but someone there will walk you through how to manually remove the offender.
Good Luck!
RareSanity (phone mode)
Keith:
Download Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware program. If whatever is causing trouble is known, that program will clean it.
If that program can’t clean it, it then gets very hairy. Download “Hijack This!” And run it. Then go to the Hijack This supports forums and post the file it creates. It may take a little time, but someone there will walk you through how to manually remove the offender.
Good Luck!
The Moar You Know
@Keith G: Yes, you sure do now. I have found that McAfee caused issues are usually only resolved with reformatting the machine.
You can try removing McAfee and then reinstalling all the media players for your system. Good luck. That will be a lot fo time and inconvenience.
RareSanity
@Keith G:
I posted a response from my phone, but I don’t know if it got submitted, or moderated, or what if it double posts, forgive me.
Download Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware program, install it, let it update itself, and the run a complete scan. If the offending malware is known, MB should be able to clean it.
If it is not known, the whole process becomes a bit messy. Download “Hijack This!”, and run it. It will generate a text file. Save the contents and post the contents in a new thread in the Hijack This support forum. It may take awhile, but, one of the gurus there will look at the text file and give you step by step instructions on how to manually remove the unwelcome guest. The people in that forum are extremely knowledgeable and most times inundated with help requests. Be patient, they are doing it for free.
As a public service announcement, I would also recommend that every one download the Malwarebyte’s program and pay the one-time $24.95 license fee. It gives you real-time protection and automatic updates. It’s saved my azz a couple of times.
georgia pig
The success of Republican brainwashing on this theme is breathtaking. I was talking to my recovering republican colleague about it this morning when, while lamenting the Republicans’ new found love of Medicare subsidies for insurance companies, he reflexively regurgitated “Republicans used to be fiscally conservative.” I asked, “exactly when? When Reagan was president?” The Republicans have successfully conflated tax cutting with fiscal conservatism, and this is what keeps this zombie on its feet.
r€nato
OT: next subject of right-wing fauxrage:
Obama politicizing the O-lympics!
Scott Rock
“Don’t steal from Medicare to support socialized medicine”
– a sign on HP a few days back
r€nato
…also, fauxrage is missing from the BJ lexicon…
Kryptik
If you don’t want to pay for the programs, there are free options to protect your comp too.
AVG (for antivirus and the like) and Spybot: Search and Destroy (for other sorts of malware, cookies, and registry futzes) both have free downloads and are fairly comprehensive and up-to-date.
liberal
@gonzone:
That’s true. But it doesn’t get at the core reason why (most, if not all) libertarians are despicable, freedom-hating scum (despite all the pronouncements about loving liberty): they’re crypto-feudalists.
The Grand Panjandrum
Fiscal conservative would be part of a George Carlin skit were he still alive.
OT: Hey John! How ’bout dem 1-2 Lions … who knew they’d give the Steelers a run for their money so early in the season?
joe from Lowell
It’s important to remember that libertarianism was born into fusionism. There was never an independent, third-way libertarianism that was neither conservative nor liberal; libertarianism was part of the anti-New Deal, anti-left coalition from the beginning.
And so, we see the Reasonoids joining with the Town Hall mobs. They have all the cultural signifiers that matter so much to the right, and they’re opposing a Democratic health care initiative. Are most of the bodies in the room screaming that they don’t want their Medicare cut? Hey, it’s all part of the big tent.
slag
@Scott Rock: I didn’t believe you, so I had to see for myself. The “We don’t know what we’re talking about” sign included in that mix said it all.
Sometimes, the inanity of this whole “debate” makes me wonder how America ever got to be a first world nation. I can only assume that we–as a people–weren’t always this asinine. Of course, the prospects of meritocracy have always been dubious, so it’s quite possible that path dependence and plain old dumb luck got us to where we are today. Either way, Obama really should bring back Arrested Development.
dmsilev
@r€nato: Yeah, just read about that over at the GOS. Depressingly predictable.
I think Obama should announce the “Don’t jump off tall buildings” initiative, and then stand back and watch as the conservative movement decimates itself.
-dms
The Grand Panjandrum
@slag:
Things have gone down hill since Obama got elected. With only a few “minor” exceptions like the Holocaust, the Depression, the Civil Right Movement, the Kennedy assassination, WWII, Korean war, and the Viet Nam war everything has been pretty smooth for at least a hundred years.
John Cole
@The Grand Panjandrum: I turned the game off with 2 minutes left because I knew they were going to blow it and went to bed. Woke up around 11ish, the Steelers highlights were on on the sports channels, turned around and went back to bed.
As far as I am concerned, yesterday did not happen.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Republicans have only ever been fiscally conservatives when it come to programs for poor people. They love throwing money at corporations (including corporate farms).
R-Jud
@Scott Rock: I liked the counterprotestor’s sign: “This sign is the brownest thing on the entire block.”
Keith G
@RareSanity: & Et al. Thanks folks. Insights greatly appreciated. I am running Malwarebyte now as a precaution. My feeling is that I am clean and the scan seems to be showing that.
My gut is telling me that a software conflict is the issue with the Flashplayer probs. And McAffee seems a likely candidate due to the timing of onset.
@The Moar You Know:Hope your not totally right.
flounder
For the record, 137 House Republicans voted to get rid of Medicare back in April:
slag
@The Grand Panjandrum: Hey. I’m not saying I’ve never wondered before. I just keep re-wondering. Besides, not being alive while those other things were going on makes it easier to think of them as flukes rather than the natural outcomes of Moran-ness.
The Grand Panjandrum
@slag: I know. Your rhetorical question gave me a chance to vent. I’ve been asking the same rhetorical question for more than 35 years.
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole: Close your eyes, click your heels three times, then keep repeating: “There’s no place like the Silver Dome.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’d say the 1970s “story song” music thread from a few days ago conclusively disproves this thesis.
Punchy
@John Cole: At least your team is better than the Kansas City Chiefs. Barely.
Ha!
asiangrrlMN
@r€nato: I would like to throw my support behind poutrage, too, because it perfectly encapsulates the whiny nature of all the manufactured fauxrage.
The Grand Panjandrum
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I can’t argue with that. I read through that entire atrocity.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: If anyone sees a link to this town hall meeting by all means post it here! Ron Paul was a guest at a Michelle Bachman town hall meeting:
This is what the Republicans have to overcome: two mutually exclusive groups of batshit insane people in the same political party.
ChrisB
@Scott Rock: The “Homo Sex is Great” sign or, to be more accurate, signs, were great too.
Just Some Fuckhead
Even though they share the same record, there is a case to be made that the Lions are actually better at this point than the Steelers. The Steelers beat a 0-0 team in Tennesee who has yet to beat anyone else. The Lions beat a 1-2 team in Washington.
scav
@The Grand Panjandrum: I remember one crowd protesting at a bookshop when HRC was signing her book. Was mostly the tax-crowd there, for some reason dressed up as Uncle Sams and Statues of Liberty. 5 seconds too late I realized I should have walked up and loudly told them that the Price Is Right was filming one block further west.
minachica
Has anyone seen the lastest class act (courtesy of the GOS)?
dailykos.com/story/2009/9/28/787194/-Facebook,-delete-this-f***ing-poll!!
Midnight Marauder
@The Grand Panjandrum:
What I would have paid to just watch the lone, brave drummer pound his revolutionary Freedom Drum back and forth through that calvacade of crazy.
These people are becoming more and more surreal by the minute.
minachica
Wow, lots of fail in that post, trying again…
Has anyone seen the latest class act (courtesy of the GOS)?
Facebook Poll
kay
Democrats should send Sherrod Brown out to explain Medicare Advantage. Just him. No one else may talk about it, because they can’t manage it in 30 seconds, and he can, and they’re just muddling it all up. He’s rumpled and trustworthy-looking and he has kind eyes. I would only ask that he constantly refer to the fact that his father was a doctor. That’s a worthwhile addition to his spiel.
I honestly don’t know how people get to be Senators when they can’t talk, but they do, apparently.
I’d like it if we’d assign each specific fake controversy to those who can address it in a coherent, truthful paragraph, with plain phrasing, and appropriate facial expressions.
I favor a chart, but they can manage this any way they like.
steve s
With geniuses like these in charge, it’s kind of hard to understand how 2000-2008 went so badly…
Bush Officials Objected To Awarding Medal To J.K. Rowling Because Harry Potter Books Promote Witchcraft
thinkprogress.org/2009/09/24/bush-officials-objected-to-awarding-medal-to-j-k-rowling-because-harry-…
slag
@kay:
Yes!
asiangrrlMN
@kay: Damn right. He is knowledgeable and trustworthy, and he has a great voice. I third the motion. Motion passed!
kay
@slag: @asiangrrlMN:
I think there’s an outside chance Voinovich might break ranks and vote for reform. He’s retiring, he’s the senior Senator from Ohio, and he is, apparently, sick to death of 1. being a Republican, and 2. southerners, in general, judging from his recent outbursts.
Maybe Brown out there will inspire him.
Steeplejack
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Dude, that’s just cold.
asiangrrlMN
@kay: We can but hope. I love Sherrod Brown. And Anthony Weiner (NY). And, of course, “I’d rather talk to my dining room table”, Barney Frank (MA). Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL). When I see any of these on my teevee machine, I feel a slight bit better.
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
“We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s the southerners.”
Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.
“They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr,'” he said. “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'”
IndieTarheel
There should be more than enough tape for a side-by-side comparison of many of these GOP “representatives” with, well, themselves, and any organized political party should already be working on ads featuring said comparisons for the next election cycle.Of course, my use of the word “organized” means that, in all likelihood, no one is currently doing so…
Mike G
libertarian = dope smoking Republican
Libertarian = anarchist who demands the police protect him from his slaves.
asiangrrlMN
@kay: I love that quote and how crazy it made the Southern Congresspeople!
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s bitterness left over from the Battle of the Cars, last March.
I love this, because it’s so incredibly cranky and irrational. He sounds like my father:
“It’s the southerners.”
Funkhauser
John, you write as if I care that small people with big egos at Reason are hypocritical.
It’s a libertarian magazine with a small audience of masturbators that couldn’t survive in the “free market.” Who gives a sh-t what they think?
b-psycho
I stopped reading after that “blowing your money on useless crap is a good, even heroic reason to not have insurance” post.
bob h
AARP is actually running TV ads in which they advise seniors not to worry about cuts to unnecessary “subsidies to insurance companies”.
yet another jeff
To paraphrase myself speaking of Tom DeLay and the budget a couple years ago:
“Medicare’s not fat, it’s just big boned.”