Okay, Sully had the best blow-by-blow and noticed my favorite part, where people shouted “yeah” when Wolf Blitzer asked if we should let uninsured people die from lack of access to health care:
I am more surprised at the cheering of someone dying because he couldn’t afford intensive care. Yes, the GOP is now not only cheering executions; they are cheering people dying because thay cannot afford any health insurance. Cheering death by poverty. “Yeah!” came the cry at the thought of a twentysomething dying because he didn’t have insurance. I didn’t think I could be more shocked by the instincts of those in the Republican base, but I just was.
Update. As many of you have pointed out, the Wolfman stipulated that the dying person could have afforded insurance and chose not to buy it.
Jay in Oregon
Imagine how they’d react if the uninsured person were an HIV-positive gay man, Sully.
contessakitty (AKA Karen)
It was always there, but now there’s no reason to hide it behind civility.
Snarki, child of Loki
When torture is viewed with approval, and grinding the flesh of hundred of thousands of innocents in the maw of war is applauded, just WHAT the FUCK do you expect, Sully?
Big Baby DougJ
@Jay in Oregon:
Meh, he did a good job with his run-down here even if he doesn’t quite understand American politics.
ruemara
Who knew they were such walking sacks of horror? Oh wait, anyone paying attention. Are we now able to say they’re a different species than the rest of us?
Jenny
KILL, BABY, KILL!
thebeez
Not that it makes this ok, but Blitzer specifically said that this hypothetical person could afford insurance, but choose not to purchase it.
cokane
This was a good job by Sully, as a longtime critic of his. This was the take-away moment for me in this debate. On top of that observation: Ron Paul drowned out by boos when he challenged the notion that “they hate us for our freedom” and Perry booed for giving in-state college tuition to immigrants.
The big story of the 2012 nomination should not be the candidates, though there’s interesting stories, it should be about the Republican electorate.
The Dangerman
It may be ruthless and cruel, but at least it’s internally consistent; no health insurance, no health coverage and you die…
…compare this to the consistency of the best way to balance the budget is to cut taxes.
Despicable, but intellectually honest; I can at least respect them for the latter.
hhex65
It’s just the same old grand old party, Sullz. They just need Saatchi & Saatchi to do a few ads for them and all will be well.
arguingwithsignposts
No offense, but Sully can GTFO. He has no credibility on any of these issues. Until he apologizes, really apologies, a la Cole, he’s dead to me. Fucking Tory shithead. You can couch your bullshit in Catholic do-goodism and still be an elistist douchnozzle.
suzanne
I’m watching this fucking freak show on my DVR right now, and I couldn’t believe that Rick Santorum (ew, that’s nasty) basically just said that schoolkids in Texas fuck in school.
Well, maybe they do. They certainly aren’t reading interesting textbooks.
What the fuck is Ron Paul even TALKING ABOUT?!
God, I hate these people with an unholy fire.
suzanne
Michele Bachmann CANNOT ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTIONS.
And she can’t pronounce “United”, She says “Unined”.
GOD.
robertdsc-PowerBook
So what’s shitbag Sully gonna do about it? We always knew the GOP were animals. Now he knows. Now what?
Bob
@thebeez: Yeah, the proposition offered was willful refusal to buy insurance. There is plenty to rag the Republicans about without misstating what was asked and answered. Sully needs to get it right and make a correction.
arguingwithsignposts
@robertdsc-PowerBook: the same shit he always does. make some excuses, hire another connor friedersdorf and throw up some windows.
patrick II
@The Dangerman:
They used to pretend to be outraged at Alan Grayson’s depiction of the republican health care plan as “die faster”. Now they cheer the thought. You have to respect them for their honest enthusiasm for needless death.
Dee Loralei
They are who we thought they were.
Jenny
@cokane:
Really. Wow, Gray Davis got killed for that when he was Governor. I guess there’s no limits to IOKIYAR.
beltane
A thousand years ago, the ancestors of these people were being forced to abandon their age-old tradition of human sacrifice and cannibalism. Left to their own devices, the teabaggers would revert to their old customs almost immediately. Why is this a surprise to anyone?
Spaghetti Lee
@The Dangerman:
You know, fuck this idea, honestly. “Intellectually honest”? Who gives a fuck? They’re monsters. Utterly despicable monsters. I’m not going to “respect” them for a damn thing.
I think this sort of garbage among people who don’t really have to face the consequences of their political ideals is what helps give rise to bullshit like objectivism in the first place. “Sure, they’re advocating slavery and fascism, but at least they’re doing it in a consistent way! I respect them much more than people who only advocate it some of the time!”
Nothing personal, but this line of thought just bugs me.
As for the loathsome fascists in the Republican Party, nothing they do surprises me anymore. I would like to make a request that we spend this thread staying angry at them for being loathsome fascists, not at Sully for not “paying attention” or whatever. If we want to defeat these monsters, we’re going to need strength in numbers, which means working with a whole lot of people who weren’t paying attention as much as we were.
MariedeGournay
Sully, Sully, Sully….When bad things happen to them, it’s misfortune. When it happens to others, they fucking deserved it.
Turgidson
Told ya, Doug.
I have made no secret that I’m no fan of his in general, but Sullivan’s horror at the GOP multiple-car pileup of crazy is on target.
RossInDetroit
@suzanne:
It’s a Northern Central States thing. Clear diction is considered elitist and rude.
Bruce S
I’m no lover of Ronald Reagan – although I think he was at least a head above the current crop, if not head and shoulders – but it’s interesting that his daughter had this to say about the last GOP debate where Republicans bared their soullessness…
Here’s the skinny, for Tom Friedman, the Ghost of David Broder, et. al. on our current partisan divide: The Democrats truly are maddening in that they genuinely represent the divided human condition – the struggle in our hearts of our lesser selves vs. our better angels. The GOP is less complicated – it’s an instrument of the Devil.
Paddy
Video of the “Let Them Eat Death” segment- Video- CNN Debate: Tea Party Crowd Cheers Letting Uninsured Die
Marc
@Turgidson:
A point utterly lost on many here, sadly.
Cain
A lay off, and no insurance should give them some wisdom of what happens and maybe a non-fatal but expensive to treat disease to reduce their coffers might enlighten them that we have only a tenuous grip on our finances unless you’re really really rich.
Fulcanelli
It’s amazing how how many well and non paid people waste their time hyper-analyzing what modern feral republicans think and what drives them.
Just look at Wisconsin and scale it up to the federal level, it’s what they’ll do if they get in the White House only exponentially worse depending on how many of their ilk are in congress.
Destroy unions, fire whistleblowers, loyalty oaths, purity balls, give the plantation away to big business, lower business taxes to negative numbers and strip away voting rights for non-whites. Oh and leave ’em dead on the gurney outside the ER.
They’re not even bothering to conceal it anymore.
Matt Osborne
Those of us who’ve been watching the tea parties up close — especially Tea Party Express! — are unsurprised. We tried to warn you :D
Mark S.
I think my head would actually explode if I tried to watch this.
patrick II
Sully is kidding himself if he doesn’t think needless death is the logical result of his libertarian/free market credo. At least the republicans at the debate, as Dangerman pointed out earlier in the thread, are honest in their appreciation of the consequences of their philosophy.
arguingwithsignposts
@Marc: You will note Sully is under the “Blogs we monitor and mock as needed” here. With good reason.
Turgidson
@Bruce S:
Reagan’s daughter conveniently forgets hours worth of utterly reprehensible things Reagan said throughout his career on a variety of subjects, and the idea that Reagan had some kind of integrity and spirit and honor that Obama, of all people, doesn’t is blatantly laughable. Her father was a race-baiting, lying asshole for much of his political rise. Some honor, that. The fact that he was a race-baiting, lying asshole but did it with a disarming smile and cute turn of phrase doesn’t excuse a goddamn thing.
But…sigh…yes, compared to the certifiable lunatics running for the GOP nomination, Reagan is the picture of level-headed statesmanship. No doubt about that.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
YMMV, I suppose, but the answer WAS consistent; they could have easily pandered and given the more standard “they go to the emergency room” bullshit and gotten away without the follow-up of “who pays for it?”.
It’s despicable, but honest; if there were a similar act of honesty with regard to fascism or slavery, I would surely be appalled, but if the argument is at least consistent, I’d give them a tip of my cap as well as the tip of my middle finger.
Big Baby DougJ
@Turgidson:
I’m not a hater, I just think that his love of Cameron/Ryan shows that his judgement is poor .
Martin
Ok, clearly the key to a 2012 election victory is for us to get an operative into the full presidential debate administrative office and arrange to fill the audience with teatards.
Safe to say that the teatard policies seem to boil down to “America would be awesome if all these poor people would get on and die and stop shitting the place up.”
suzanne
Michele Bachmann is a bleeding, infected fissure on the asshole of this country.
beltane
@Cain: Hardship has no effect on them whatsoever other than to make them even more miserable and hateful. We are dealing with people who have no good in them whatsoever, a no capacity to ever be good. They are the garden variety monsters among us, their existence serving no purpose other than to defile the ground they walk on.
Spaghetti Lee
@RossInDetroit:
‘Ey, ey! Dat’s naht true at ahl!
Jenny
@Fulcanelli:
But,.. but… but, the left keeps telling me, after Hitler comes us.
eemom
oh good. Another “how do I love/hate Sully? Let me count the ways” thread.
Turgidson
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yes. I was an early advocate of that change and am thrilled it came to pass. His Paul Ryan fluffing was unspeakably idiotic. Add that to the Fifth Column Greatest Hit, and not realizing Limbaugh was being a dick when Obama got Bin Laden, among other things, and yeah. On balance he’s a moron.
Yet, I’ll give the innumerate clown credit when it’s due. His remarks about the GOP primary could just as easily be said by Cole or Doug themselves, or hell, even Krugman, sometimes. But there’s still a lot of noise you need to deal with to get to signal with him.
jibeaux
You could write any number of fascinating hypotheticals to suss out exactly what “pro-life” means to these guys. An uninsured pregnant woman in a coma? Not too tricky, you remove the fetus and implant it in a woman with a better job. If it’s just a zygote, you might have to wait a little while. She dies, of course, but she dies FREEEEEEE, no doubt comforted in the knowledge that taxpayer dollars were not unnecessarily spent on her care. What about a pregnant woman who is in a coma but is also on death row? That one, clearly, I think you have to pay for her care and rescusitation measures so you can kill her later as God intended. Fetus gets put into a really, REALLY Christian woman since it’s genetically half-murderer.
suzanne
@Mark S.: That was the part where Rick Santorum (ew, SO NASTY, he should change that) intimated that Texas school kids fuck as part of their curriculum. He said that other vaccinations were okay because they reduce transmission of diseases AT SCHOOL, but implied that if you actually wanted to reduce transmission of HPV, it’s because those dirty sluts are fucking at school.
I want to know what state of denial that fuckwad lives in that doesn’t have high school students fucking.
wasabi gasp
I blame the CNN applause sign. Go Baggers!
The Dangerman
@jibeaux:
Is she Caucasian?
Wasn’t witnessed first hand (I only did clinic protection duty once; just wasn’t my thing), but I know someone that swore that the Operation Rescue types tried to prevent Caucasian women from getting to the Health Clinic but parted like the Red Sea when a minority woman would arrive.
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
Not what I intended, he had the best description of that moment and I only caught it fleetingly myself, as I was watching football for the most part.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Turgidson:
Did she go that far? I turned it off when she said she wants a president who has ‘shoulders big enough for all of us to cry on”. What the motherfucking fuck does that treacle even fucking mean?
Bruce S
Turgidson – it’s always lost on conservatives that if Reagan’s Darth Vader version of the USSR were, in fact, as simplistically true as he apparently believed it to be, Mikhail Gorbachev would have been an ontological impossibility. But I do give him credit for recognizing a potential negotiating partner once he came face-to-face with the man. There’s a lot to criticize – even loathe – about Reagan. But he wasn’t a total lunatic and probably did have some core of decency that eludes a Rick Perry. I’ve heard via a couple of lefty film guys who shot some PSA spots with him post-presidency that he was almost inordinately likeable in person. At this point, I see his mythology as useful AGAINST the GOP. So I’ll run with that…
Linda Featheringill
Perhaps we shouldn’t worry about Republican candidates. We should be worrying about Republican voters.
OzoneR
In fairness, they’re not, the question was “If the man decided not to buy health insurance and he had a good job and can afford it”
I hate teabaggers as much, or more, than the next guy, but lets be truthful about what happened.
Cain
@beltane:
They live a sad existence.. and I suppose their Christian God can’t help them either. Of course, they have co-opted God as well, so they probably think the celestial one would be happy with all they do.
mclaren
It’s a limbo dance. How low can they go?
Will one of the Republican candidates bite the head off a live puppy for a standing ovation?
Or will one of them beat a baby harp seal to death and electrify the crowd into a chant of KILL, BABY, KILL!…?
To paraphrase Nietzsche, “When you look into the abyss, the Republican party looks back at you.”
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
THIS! Hear hear.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Meh. I don’t love or hate Sully, but I’ll never forget or forgive his ‘decadent blue enclaves of fifth columnists on college campuses’, just like I can never forget Arianna Huffington was until fairly recently (by my clock) a cheerleader for Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich. I put Sullivan in the same category as Brooks: A wise fool with grossly exaggerated idea of his own education and wisdom, thought I do think he’s about twelve times smarter than Brooks.
arguingwithsignposts
@Big Baby DougJ: oh, c’mon dougjarvis-glen-ellis. You knew where this was going.
Chris
@Fulcanelli:
And why should they? They haven’t paid a price. They last forty years have been a history of them pushing the boundaries further and further, cautiously at first, then faster and more energetically. And it’ll go on like that until they hit the brick wall that tells them when to stop.
mclaren
@Fulcanelli:
I’ve corrected your predictions for you.
Fulcanelli
@Chris: And axing Social Security just might be that brick wall.
I seem to remember how quick they back pedaled that last time they pulled that shit and that was when they had a stacked deck.
Amoral, pig-fucking huns, the lot of ’em.
Chris
@Cain:
They’ll just blame it on black people, immigrants, unions, the poor and the Fucking Liberals who are too solicitous to these people.
If ONLY the Fucking Liberals weren’t so solicitous to these people, then of course they never would’ve found themselves in such a position.
Bnad
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Kazakh national anthem, as quoted in Borat:
I start to see similarities between the Repugnicans and the Eastern European / central Asian cults of political manhood. Like the Bulgarians who elect their strongest wrestlers to lead the country.
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not sure where the “shoulder big enough to cry on” quote is from. An interview?
I was referring to an article she wrote that a friend of mine linked me to, and where the quote I was responding to came from.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2092425,00.html?iid=pf-main-mostpop1
Here’s the quote I was referring to in the article (not the one above that provoked my first post):
My response: Bullshit. Reagan, character? Please. He spent his entire rise to conservative prominence making snarky soundbytes about the welfare state, hippies, his political opponents, and in more abstract terms when he needed to for political gain, brown (black) people. Fuck him and his so-called character. Obama, who I freely acknowledge is hardly perfect himself, has more character in his sphincter than Saint Ronnie had total.
/rant
Fwiffo
I’m shocked that anybody can still be shocked by this. Who hasn’t heard some equivalent from their own Tweety’s Cranky Republican Uncle? Sully must really be isolated if he hasn’t heard this exact sentiment before.
Comrade Kevin
@Bruce S: One interesting thing about Reagan is that he helped defeat the infamous “Briggs Initiative” in California in 1978.
Chris
@Fulcanelli:
I hope it is. I truly hope it is.
Achrachno
These are our “pro-lifers” folks — well, pro-zygote anyway. After birth, it really is open season.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Turgidson: ah, I thought we were all talking about her appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell tonight. the shoulders quote actually came, she said, from Harry Smith, of CBS
Reading that, and from what little I saw of her tonight, she really is looking for a President Daddy. A pretty widespread desire in the electorate, but one that makes me a little bit ill
Evolved Deep Southerner
That clarification sorta makes your headline look kinda fucking stupid, no?
Just sayin’.
Bill
Rare is the case that people die because they lack access to care. More often, they die of the related medical incident — be it an accident, act of malice, or unfortunate disease.
In the case of accidents, people are almost always provided immediate and stabilizing care. Same goes with accidents. Diseases, however are trickier, and people who lack the ability to pay for care either die because of the disease of lack of care. Sometimes it’s one or other times it is a combination of both.
Nobody should celebrate this. Those who cheered should be ashamed. However, assuming that lack of ability to pay for care should always guarantee an individual unlimited medical services from the collective costs of society is naive as well.
Turgidson
@Bruce S:
I take no issue with any of this. Reagan did have more decency than today’s Republicans, and he WAS statesman enough to work with Gorbachev (easily the most impressive and lasting part of his mostly-wretched legacy).
But being more decent than today’s Republicans is…well, a very, very, very, VERY low bar. He wasn’t particularly decent in my estimation. At least far less so than I prefer to see in our leaders. More so than Perry or Bachmann, though, sure. Romney too.
Spaghetti Lee
And yeah, the ‘qualifier’ doesn’t do much for me. Needless death is, y’know, a bad thing, people don’t deserve to die horribly just because they’ve made a few mistakes, and setting yourself up as the great moral judge about whether someone is economically rational enough to live or die is part and parcel of the bullshit that makes me hate Ayn Rand so fucking much. “He deserved it” is the calling card of the Christian Fascist/Objectivist Party that calls itself the GOP. Instead of moralizing about who does and doesn’t deserve disaster in their life, how about we work on lessening the amount of disaster out there?
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ok, gotcha.
Yeah, I mean I guess I’ll give Ronnie’s daughter a pass – she is his daughter after all. But her notion that Reagan had some strength of character that Obama doesn’t…well, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and…disagree with her there. But I’ll let it go now that I’ve gotten the rant off my chest.
SensesFail
One of the many things that really piss me off about Tea Baggers and those on the Right in general is that they will never give any respect to the fact that LIFE ISN’T FAIR.
If someone is struggling to get by on welfare, it’s because either: (a)that person DESERVES his current condition; or (b)that person just needs to pull up harder on his bootstraps but has chosen not to. But often times, that person was just UNLUCKY: maybe his business failed or he was diagnosed with cancer and his medical bills are bankrupting him.
And of course, if something unfortunate would happen to one of these stupid fuck Tea Baggers that would put him in financial trouble, we all know that he would be grabbing all the government handouts that he could get his hands on.
They are massive hypocrites, and the only real principle that they live by is: I WANT ALL THE HANDOUTS I CAN GET, AND I DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE ANY, GO FUCK YOURSELF. If they would at least admit this, I would gain a miniscule amount of respect for them.
Sam Harris recently posted a blog on this when he lost a bunch of readers by proposing we raise taxes on the rich:
Big Baby DougJ
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Not really, you could be pretty poor and still “afford” it. In reality, who chooses not to pay for it? Poor people with other financial pressures. Sorry I’m just not with you pro-deathers on this one.
Bruce S
Turgidson – look, Reagan was the beginning of this downward spiral for America. That’s just the fucking truth about the man. He also fucked California – although not as bad as his disciples who came after, like Howard Jarvis. But some key aspects of his record and his governing strategy – crappy as they were – do happen to stand in rebuke to the current GOP insanity. So if we can stick the “real” Reagan up the ass of these unalloyed scumbags, it’s deserved on all sides. (Bonus points for sending Peggy Noonan to her fainting couch…)
Another Bob
People misunderstand. The audience members were just expressing their belief that there should be harsher penalties for violating the individual mandate requirement of ObamaCare.
Turgidson
@Bruce S:
Word.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think she’s looking for someone who is compassionate enough to be a foster dad to 23 kids, but who has the inner strength to resist the immense gayness that is struggling to get out.
mclaren
@Turgidson:
Exactly right. But not so much “snarky soundbites” as viciously sadistic hatemongering and calls for the death of political opponents.
Consider, by way of example, Ronald Reagan’s proclamation, “If it takes a blood bath, let’s get it over with,” referring to killing the sons and daughters of Americans because those kids protested publicly against the Vietnam war. That was two months before the Kent State massacre.
When Reagan’s long-urged massacre finally happened, he backpedaled like a true coward and claimed he was “only joking.”
Ronald Reagan was America’s great hater. He described medicare as “the descent…downwards to a totalitarian anthill” in a 1964 speech.
Ronald Reagan said young people in the 1960s “look like Tarzan, walk like Jane, and smell like Cheetah.”
Ronald Reagan started out his conservative career by eagerly betraying his fellow actors, selling them out and snitching on them to the House Unamerican Activities Committee at the behest of the cowardly studio heads. Ronald Reagan spent the 1950s as the point man for the anti-communist red scare McCarthy witch hunts in Hollywood.
In fact, Ronald Reagan first met Nancy Davis (later Nancy Davis Reagan) when she went to him because her name showed up on the Hollywood blacklist, and Reagan as usual demanded that she give him fellatio in order to get herself off the blacklist. That was Reagan’s standard practice when dealing with blacklisted actresses: demand oral sex in return for clearing them to work in Hollywood. Since Nancy Davis reportedly “gave the best head in Hollywood,” this worked out particularly well for both of them.
Reagan was a despicable sadistic hatemonger and a lifelong coward. He could have served in WW II but instead chose to stay in Hollywood and make movies like his co-coward, Marion Morrison AKA John Wayne.
Martin
@Big Baby DougJ: Well, the bottom line here is that the argument presented is that failure to buy insurance is a mistake punishable by death. Which only begs the question of what other similar mistakes (deliberate or otherwise) do they think are deserving of the death penalty?
Morzer
@Paddy:
Death Eaters would seem to be a well-chosen name for the GOP.
wasabi gasp
Re: the update
Dying kid of dude who chose not to afford health insurance: pom poms down, pom poms up?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cokane: “The big story of the 2012 nomination should not be the candidates, though there’s interesting stories, it should be about the Republican electorate.”
Yes, it’s been some time since the last resurgence of the KKK.
Bruce S
mclaren – you left out some of the best stuff…
http://purplepinupguru.blogspot.com/2005/04/reagans-darker-side-reagans-mob.html
mark
I’m with Spaghetti Lee.
These people aren’t honest or brave or consistent unless being consistently cowardly and hypocritical is some new virtue.
They have no humanity and to quote HST “Fuck them”
dead existentialist
@Jenny: ZING!!!!
ETA: You’re showing your inner Palin.
Chris
@SensesFail:
This.
Jobhunting in this economy has made me acutely aware of two things: just how much of this crap is just blind luck, and just how lucky I am to have been born with all the advantages that I have (not rich, but very far from poor, and a fantastic family environment to back me up, two things a lot of people don’t have).
What they call “liberal guilt” is the simple acknowledgement of the fact that none of us is self-made. And the reason they call it “guilt” is because they consider it a crime not to have lived up to their Ayn Randian fantasy, and if they acknowledged that they hadn’t done so either, they’d basically consider themselves criminals.
Chris
@mclaren:
“Tee hee hee! Dead people! Oh come on, that was a LITTLE funny!”
Yeah, that bastard: living proof that conservative humor’s only funny if you consider bigotry or cruelty funny.
My favorite from him is “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.” Really gives you the scope of the man’s sheltered, oblivious, privileged upbringing, as well as the ugly streak inside him. Not only doesn’t he know or give a shit about the conditions of poor Americans, but he actually thinks it’s hilarious enough to poke fun at.
Satanicpanic
Who cares if he had a choice to buy insurance, it’s still creepy to wish death on someone for making a bad purchasing decision. Not to mention you can buy insurance in this country and still get dropped when you get sick. What do you do then?
greylocks
If it becomes government policy to leave you to die because you didn’t buy health insurance you could afford, isn’t that de facto an “individual mandate”?
patrick II
@Dougj
It is one thing to assert the necessity of living with consequences in the imaginary “stand on your own two feet” world of conservative/libertarians. It is another to cheer for an incorrect decision about insurance to have that consequence be death –to actually cheer for it. Your detail was wrong, the essence of your distaste is correct.
Dream On
I had not heard this, a new genre – Reagan-porn?
Morzer
@Dream On:
I’ve heard stories of Saint Ronnie’s penchant for date-rape.
Jebediah
@mclaren:
My bucket list includes pissing on his grave.
CT Voter
Stop it. just stop mangling Wolfman with Blitzer.
And yes, I just skipped over all the other comments to post this, and that’s probably bad form, but fuck it.
I’m in that kind of mood tonight.
Villago Delenda Est
@CT Voter:
I never refer to Blitzer by his stage name.
He’ll always be Leslie to me. That’s his actual name.
Rathskeller
@Dream On: The bit about her giving the best head in Hollywood is not new. I heard that in the 1980s.
I had not heard specifically that Reagan used the blacklist in any way as a form of blackmail. It seems unlikely. He was good looking, prominent in his field, wealthy. It would require more than an assertion to believe.
Rathskeller
@Villago Delenda Est: He’ll always be Leslie to me. That’s his actual name.
Man, it must have been rough in elementary school. I would have picked Wolf, too.
karen marie
@Evolved Deep Southerner: In other words, they’re in favor of “Obamacare” and the individual mandate, no? Except they’re not.
The caveat of “he could have bought it but didn’t” is bullshit, because it’s rare that health insurance covers 100% of the cost. Even with insurance, a person who winds up in a coma could end up with monstrous medical bills.
Sure, if they recover, they can declare bankruptcy but doesn’t that still throw the cost of their care onto everyone else?
So the caveat is bullshit. The people who applauded, whether at the debate or watching at home, are thoughtless, cruel and disgusting excuses for human beings.
Darkrose
@OzoneR: Granted it’s Wolf Blitzer, but…that’s a stupid question in the first place. That’s not the primary problem with our health care system, and it’s not what the ACA was addressing.
I may actually hate CNN more than the debate audience right now.
Jebediah
@Rathskeller:
I don’t think it was about not being able to get his knob gobbled any other way – I think it was more about asserting power and dominance and dishing out some humiliation/degradation, just because he could.
Omnes Omnibus
@RossInDetroit:
I live in Wisconsin and have very clear diction. Oh, I see your point.
Snarki, child of Loki
@suzanne:
The Santorum family homeschools their 7 kids, so, ah, um…eeeewwwww.
John Weiss
@Chris: Correct. I’ve experienced no success in my successful life that wasn’t accidental, including my good brain.
Better to be lucky than anything else.
Jennyjinx
He should’ve pointed out a real-life scenario:
“Mr. X chose not to buy the $75 a week premium insurance because he makes $10 an hour, his rent is $800 a month and his employer only permits him to work 32 hours a week. Out of that money he must pay his rent, pay the utility bills (if he’s in Ohio, those bills are unregulated), buy gas for his car and food for his family. Mr. X chose not to buy insurance because of the cost…”
However, since he stipulated that Mr. X could’ve afforded insurance, Mr.X can just die. Fuck him. That makes cheering for this man’s death all better. So unfair to point out the hypocrisy of the Right to Lifers when the dude deserved to die because he didn’t pay for the insurance.
Jay Schiavone
Not surprised by the sentiments of the GOP crowd, but I would expect them to keep it hidden. When Bachmann was asked about submitting to her heterosexual husband, the crowd booed the question. They like that she is a submissive Christian type woman, but they have the self-awareness to realize that the majority of voters would find that notion repellent.
Likely the conservatives just don’t care anymore if we see their warts in the hope that closeted haters will be drawn to their brazenness. If Perry called Obama a n—–, he would win the nomination on the spot. Barring that he would head a third party ticket and outdraw the GOP.
mikeyes
One thing the Republicans get right, anyone can go to an emergency room and receive medical treatment especially in a critical situation. Hence if this uninsured young man was dying of a treatable illness in an emergent situation, the hospital is obliged to take him in and figure out later how to pay for it. Newt and several others have mentioned this in the past, I’m surprised no one thought about that answer during this debate. (I didn’t see the debate, but no one is reporting that answer.)
In the perfect Republican medical world the hospital would simply raise the cost of treatment to all the other patients but the same set of regulations that require a hospital to take the patient also limits raises to others. In reality what would happen is that the hospital would probably find the money from a state fund for uninsured or just eat the costs. The patient would have a chance to live as he or she would be in the ICU, etc. Of course when the emergency is over, the patient might die at home of another simpler problem such as no access to needed meds if the social workers couldn’t get medicaid for the patient.
The question itself was not realistic.
Lurker
@Martin:
There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Justice” that sentenced Wesley Crusher to death for stumbling into a bed of flowers.
Rome Again
@mclaren:
Anything I ever said about you that was even the least bit unkind, I take it all back now. This here, that you wrote above, wipes the slate clean forever!