One of the highlights of the summer for me last year was interviewing “Doc” Pepping, one of the original “Toccoa Boys” from Steven Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, on the NARN one weekend. It was among the best hours I’ve ever spent on the radio. As a memento, he gave me a copy of Band of Brothers that the publisher and the Ambrose estate had allowed him to annotate with his own experiences, photography and observations – a rare honor in the publishing world; it has a treasured place on my bookshelf today.
What could possibly be better?
Being able to announce that Doc is scheduled to be back on the show this August. He’s going to be back in town, promoting “Vettes for Vets” and “Honor the Fallen”, again. He’s one of the best interviews there is, and I for one can hardly wait!
Found in the comments for a Facebook page story about someone someone who intended to, um, evacuate into his ex-girlfriend’s car, but, er, left it in the wrong one:
Sounds like an urban legend. Or possibly a new strategy for Tea Baggers! Throw your soiled Depends diaper into the offices of a Democratic congressman! (And hope you have his real address, not his brother’s!) Then skeedattle post haste on your Rascal (TM) mobility scooter, paid for by Medicare!
In 1987, when I was a 24 year old rookie talk show host working the graveyard shift at around 3AM one Sunday night/Monday morning, I took a call. We’d spent the first hour talknig with – and beating on – a noted Holocaust denier.
It’s pretty much axiomatic in talk radio that the callers turn out in droves for gun control and abortion; babies and crime/self-defense are topics pretty much everyone can relate to. Holocaust Denial is another one – or so I found out that night. It’d been a very busy hour; while I never had to beg for callers on my old graveyard-shift show – there were always lots of drunks, third-shifters, aspiring novelists, crazies and (oddly) handicappers tuned in and dying to sound off – that night was particularly heavy – it was a red-letter night. The phone lines crackled with revulsion; a guy claiming to be a Jewish Defense League member said that if the guest had been in the Twin Cities rather than on the phone, he’d have come out to the studio and shot him.
Now, that’s brisk, baby.
And it carried on into the second hour. Full banks of callers, mostly angry; some wondering why I’d given the guy any play at all, most tearing his positions apart, many with stories of relatives who’d served in the war and fought their way into camps, and the stories they’d told.
And then, late in the final half-hour, someone called; in my mind’s eye at 23 years’ remove, he sounded a little like Dennis Hopper. And he said “We’re coming for you, Jew -boy. You can run but you can’t hide”.
I mentioned that I was about as Jewish as a bacon cheeseburger, and that he needed to take his meds as I hung up.
The lesson for the evening?
It’s obvious: Jews and Democrats are violence-prone!
———-
Well, no. It means that when people get angry (and maybe just a tad demented) and find a way to lash out at the targets of their anger from behind the cover of anonymity, they say things they’d never dare say in person. It happens on the phone (ask any talk show screener), and in blog comments, with anonymous leftybloggers – anyone, really, any time that anger isn’t tempered by accountability.
If you’re ap public figure at any level, you’ve tun into this – and you know it’s one of the little stressors that happens.
Congresspeople? Sure, they know it.
———-
It’s tiresome – and more than a little insulting – to have to iterate every time the topic of threats and violence comes up “…now, I don’t advocate threats or violence…”.
Doyy. No kidding?
Tiresome and insulting.
And that’s exactly what the Democrat leadership intended with the stories they’ve run since last weekend in re the Tea Party’s purported response to Obamacare.
It’s several stories, really. +
It’s A Loogie World: “Tea Partiers” ostensibly “spit” on Democrat congresspeople as they walked across the Mall.
Except it’s looking pretty doubtful that it actually happened (around 1:20 of the video in the link):
Jim Treacher:
I can’t get it to link to the specific time code, but fast-forward to the 1:20 mark. Looks to me like that dude was yelling at him and maybe a drop of spittle flew at him. Which still sucks. Nobody likes to be yelled at, especially by some redneck who won’t just shut up and pay his taxes. But it’s not like somebody hocked a loogie in Cleaver’s face.
I know, I know. It doesn’t matter anyway because the Tea Parties are racist. I’m just providing… what’s it called? Oh yeah: Evidence.
According to the article, Lewis was walking from the Cannon Office Building to the Capitol when protesters started shouting. According to Lewis, however, what they shouted was not a racial slur, but “Kill the bill, kill the bill.” If he heard anything more derogatory, he does not seem to have told Douglas about it.
Lewis, it should be noted, is no slouch when it comes to race-baiting. During the 2008 campaign, he compared the McCain-Palin campaign to that of “presidential candidate George Wallace,” whose comparable “atmosphere of hate” led to the fatal church bombing in Birmingham. So egregious were Lewis’s comments that McCain called on Obama to “condemn” them.
As Douglas reports, it was Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), a Lewis colleague walking a few steps behind him, who actually claimed to have heard the slur. Note the way that Douglas runs these sentences together.
Do you hear a “Chorus” of “N”-bombs? “Kill the Bill”, sure. But there’s a difference, isn’t there?
So far, at least?
Well, all you leftybloggers out there who want to cling to the idea of Republican/Tea Party thuggishness; Andrew Breitbart is putting his money where his blog’s mouth is:
It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.
I’d almost bet that same amount that he never, ever gets a taker.
Anger and Pique and Threats, Oh My: Steny Hoyer got front page coverage yesterday when he claimed that…:
more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote. Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.
Naturally, the media accepts this allegation at face value, and never once stops to question whether the Alinsky Party is, you know, exaggerating or even lying — as the spiritual mentor of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton taught it to do.
The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.
The horse-race-obsessed Mainstream Media might want to look up the term, agents provocateurs…
While I suspect there’s more than a little chance that some of the “estimated” “threats” were phoned in or are complete fabrications, it doesn’t matter; people get angry, regardless of their politics, and some of them say dumb, hateful, even illegal things.
Here comes the controversial part that still must be said: I have heard the audio of some of the threats. I get worse stuff routinely. Rush Limbaugh gets worse stuff on a daily basis. Republican members of Congress have gotten similar and worse stuff. Thank God this wasn’t a free trade vote or a variety of left wing groups would have half the country in flames right now. I do believe the 24 hours of threats, many of which were pretty weak, has gotten more national coverage than the leftist anarchists in Texas who molotov cocktailed the Texas Governor’s Mansion — for which arrests have never been made.
Certainly more than the houseful of bomb-making goodies, vandalism supplies and buckets of urine that police found when they raided a Saint Paul house being used as a staging ground for “anarchists” at the Saint Paul RNC in 2008.
The Dems’ “concerns” are long on feelings, short on actual actions. To date, there are only two actual physical actions that have been reported to law enforcement (if you leave out the real shooting at Eric Cantor’s office, which much of the media has done).
Gas Attack: A gas line to an outdoor grill was allegedly cut at the house of Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother, after a “Tea Partier” ostensibly posted the address online.
I really want to know the details about this one. Who did it and why? Let me see the photographs. I want to know all about it. I don’t like the home addresses being posted on line, and I don’t like even peaceful protests at any individual’s house. I can see why you’d be upset that your address is known. But anyone could commit an act of vandalism (including dirty tricksters on the Democrat’s side). Is the press following up about what, exactly, happened? Or are they complacently passing this story on to be used to propagate the violence meme?
After the Sparkman, Bedell and the Texas IRS-plane-crasher, I’ll take “B”.
Like A Brick: There was an alleged brick attack at a Democrat office in Cincinnati. Again – we have no idea who did it, or why; no note was attached, no threats received, no nothing.
So while it could be an angry tea partier, it could just as easily be a punk kid, a drunk or, for that matter, a Democrat activist. There is no evidence at all, either way.
———-
But this isn’t about individuals breaking laws; this is about the Democrat party using those acts, real, imagined, fabricated or instigated, to try to not only defame dissenters, but to give their own, increasingly embattled supporters the sort of “us against them” siege mentality that they’ll need to survive and keep the fire going during what promises to be an ugly electoral season.
I am forced to largely conclude that the Democrats are running to the nearest microphone in an effort to play the victim and generate sympathy as they try to steer poll numbers back in their direction.
I never bet m0ney; I don’t much believe in gambling. But I’ll bet bragging rights that nothing ever comes of any of these complaints.
Because they’re not intended to be “real”. They’re intended to set the majority party (for now) up as “victims” of a huge, benighted, ugly conspiracy that just happens to hate black people, doncha know.
And I’d have to hope this is wearing thin with the American people.
So I saw my eldest, Bun, off at the airport today. She’s going on a school trip to Europe. Her first real trip anywhere without a parent.
I thought “I hope those nineteen f***ing hijackers are burning in the most dismal pit in hell” for making it impossible to walk to the gate to see people off anymore – to watch them get on the plane, see ’em taxi out to the runway and lift off and will them safely to their destination through the sheer strength of your own prayers and wishes until they disappeared into the distance, and miles beyond.
Not that she’d want that; she got on the plane with all of her friends – 13 of ’em – so having Dad around would have probably been a buzzkill.
So be it. But my libertarian side came under sustained, determined attack by my Dad side when I saw her disappear through the TSA line. “Bring on the sniffing dogs, the intrusive searches, all the scanning and sniffing that a competent security apparatus can do. Hell, let them be competent. Profile everyone getting on back through five generations of anscestry; slap anyone who squawks about it in cuffs; hell, I’ll cover your back and groin-kick any ACLU weenies who show up to bitch at us”.
“Stuff Bun’s plane with vacationing SAS troopers on their way back from Vegas, and rugby-playing flight attendants and a squad of Air Marshals and a bunch of El Al security guys on the way back to Israel from the International Security-Guys-who-can-smell-gelginite-like-bloodhounds-and-can-rip-arms-out-of-their-sockets Convention – and toss in a few Dutch documentary film-makers for good measure.”
“Give them a Sully Sullenberger for a pilot, someone who could make an F-16 sit on a telephone wire and sing Aida back in the day and hasn’t lost a friggin’ thing since then.”
No, I wasn’t asking too much, and no, it wasn’t easy.
Having lots of “guy time” with Zam will help, of course.
10,000 years ago when our anscestors were hunter-gatherers, it was a field or a stretch of forest or river that some other family of hunter-gatherers hadn’t pretty well plundered already. You – and, hopefully, your tribe – would have the means to keep up their strength until spring brought a new, less-meager bounty staved off starvation for another year. Maybe.
Back then, the worst thing that could happen was another tribe moving in and deciding that you, Clan Urk, were going to be Happy To Pay For A Better Clan Thag. The results meant moving long and far to find more forage. Or dying. Or both.
500 years ago, when 999 out of 1000 of our forefathers were subsistance farmers? Wealth was some extra potatoes or sauerkraut or wheat stored away that nobody else had a claim to, in case there was a drought the next year. It was the knowledge that your family, and ideally your village, could ride out some of the hard times without starving to death.
The great impediment to properity for most of our peasant anscenstors? The nobles who claimed a percentage of what you, the peasant, grew and stored. in exchange for the privilege of having their protection (and the plague, rabies, accidents, wars, cholera, typhus and dropsy). Their cut came off the top; if your cut wasn’t enough to feed the family? Well, peasants could always create more kids.
Today? The topline definitions of “prosperity” have moved quite a bit in the past five to 100 centuries, but in one way or another it’s still the same as it was for both groups of anscestors; make life less tenuous. Whatever “tenuous” means.
Of course, we moderns have less to worry about in terms of starvation, plague and dropsy than our hunter-gatherer and feudal forebears.
The nobles? Well, they’re still out there, and they’re still a problem.
Why do you work? Wouldn’t life be a lot more fun if you got to hang out, drink and play Wii all day? Of course – until you starved! That’s why, eventually, most people (yes, except the odd trust fund baby) needs to actually work in some way or another to support themselves, whether digging ditches or underwriting bonds.
How prosperous one is is largely – not entirely, but mostly – a function of choices one makes. Ones’ future hinges to a sometimes depressing extent on choices one makes when one is not old enough to be making life-altering choices. Decide to knuckle down and get straight “A”s, maybe with the help of a family that encourages it? Decide to party your way through (or out of) high school? They’ll likely lead one down different paths by the time one is thirty.
But once one is on a path – neurosurgeon or night stocker, programmer or truck driver – ones work is what one does to feed oneself and one’s family, to provide shelter and clothing and internet and private school for the kids and that yacht in the Seychelles.
And whatever one does, whatever ones’ abilities, whatever one did to get to where they are in life, “prosperity” today means the ability to make ones’ life as secure as one can, given the talent they have and the work they do.
Now, government does have a purpose in ensuring prosperity. A prosperous city, state and nation need everything from enforceable contracts to safe streets to the rule of laws rather than men to a work force and entrepreneur class that is capable of building the things and institutions needed to prosper. Those mean courts, law-enforcement, defense, some form of education, and all the kinds of infrastructure that enables commerce, from roads and harbors to currency and a legal system – even the prevention of starvation and epidemics. The sorts of things a government very well should be doing, within limits.
But a big chunk of our society doesn’t recognize the concept of limited government; to many, government has no limits. And a government that has no limits – that decides that its job is to provide an income (not “prosperity”, mind you), health insurance, cradle to grave social security and the engineering that society “needs” – is taking a huge, utterly discretionary bite out of your prosperity. Government becomes another mouth, or two or three, in everyone’s family. It becomes Clan Thag, competing with all your Clan Urkers for the resources that are out there, making Clan Urk’s – your family’s – existence that much more tenuous.
So I want government to promote, rather than retard, real prosperity.
“But Mitch – what do you mean real prosperity?”
Prosperity that one controls oneself. Clan Urk doesn’t have to ask Clan Thag for permission to hunt and gather; your group of peasants keeps the grain they grow, rather than giving it to your good-for-nothign duke who hasn’t done a damn useful thing in his life since he got back from Yale. Because prosperity that exists at someone else’s discretion isn’t prosperity; it’s being a pet.
Is there anything more irritating on your morning commute than slow-moving drivers who refuse to extricate themselves from the passing lane? The answer is “no.” And so now we may have at least one good reason to consider moving to Georgia
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning that some of his Democratic colleagues are being threatened with violence when they go back to their districts — and he wants Republicans to stand up and condemn the threats.
Hey, everyone; don’t threaten Congresspeople.
The Maryland Democrat said more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote.
Wow. If true, this sounds like a real huge wave of lunacy…
…oh, wait:
Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.
Yeah, I’ll bet it is.
I’ll bet three more things:
That this announcement was planned at least a week ago.
That the number of “threats of violence” varies no more than 10-15% from normal.
That Mr. Hoyer will never release any details of any of these threats for public examination. Indeed, he can’t – because he doesn’t have any specifics. He’s passing off gossip to defame dissenters. Five’ll get you ten that there are no more serious, significant threats than normal during any contentious debate.
Expect much, much more of this between now an November.
And every time you see this, ask to see the specifics. When you’re at a Tea Party and see someone with a threatening or racist sign, snap a picture and post it on a blog.
Bloomberg radio on XM reported this morning that that Jimmy II, palms sore from high fives all around, is hitting the road to sell his health care deform bill.
But sir! Isn’t it the law of the land now? Why does it need to be sold?
Again and again and again?
President Obama spent 14 months getting to this moment, but aides said Monday that he wouldn’t spend much time savoring it. He plans an aggressive campaign to clarify what the bill does and try to deflect a Republican counter-assault. And other policy goals he had postponed in favor of healthcare now jump to the front of the line.
We’ve heard that before.
Only a clinically delusional man could at this juncture think he can simultaneously campaign for his health care plan and move other priorities (it’s the economy stupid) back onto his desk.
Any expectations of bipartisanship or cooperation on the part of the now neutered Blue Dogs on any issue have dissolved in the caustic environment that is the residue of Madame Pelosi and President Obama’s pressure-cooker tactics. Nonetheless, it appears Obama has more to concern himself with than the GOP.
The President is facing an American counter-assault.
Republicans, right now, can feel they’re on the side of the voters, who polls show simply don’t like the overarching bill. A CNN poll Monday showed 59 percent of voters oppose the reform bill passed by the House late Sunday, compared with 39 percent who support it.
Iowa is only the first stop in what will be a concerted White House effort to explain a bill that many Americans don’t understand.
Mr. President; Mr. Emanuel, you arrogant, condescending pricks with all due respect, America understands a lot more…now.
In November they may have found dubious the GOP’s attempts to hang labels of extremism and socialism around then-candidate Obama’s neck, but sixteen months later an implicit “we told you so” is being met with nods of acknowledgment.
“If this is going to be turned into a real asset for Democrats, the president and others have to be out there in a continual effort to sell this plan,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “Just letting it lie is not good. It’s got to be sold, sold actively and sold vigorously.”
…and that will be their downfall, if we haven’t already witnessed it.
How obtuse can one pollster be, let alone an entire administration – nay an entire political party – to not realize the obvious fact that the more this cluster has been sold, the lower it’s popularity has sunk?
“I don’t think there’s any place that it’s going to be helpful to them,” Jesmer said, scoffing at Democrats’ assertion that they will be able to turn the tide of public opinion. “They have been selling this thing for 13 months — all they’ve been doing is selling it.”
That is the sole reason the Senate vote was conducted on Christmas Eve and the House vote in a hurry-up huddle on Sunday night – for fear sniveling, castrated Democratic lawmakers might escape to find themselves in a conversation with increasingly disapproving constituents.
The party hopes to make that case with a healthy dose of testimonials from Obama, who signs the bill Tuesday, then totes it on the road to Iowa on Thursday to sell it.
But the addition of a Tea Party candidate to the ballot changes the dynamic: The Republican candidate drops dramatically to 25 percent and the Democrat only slightly to 36 percent, while 15 percent would back the Tea Party candidate.
It strains the imagination to think that there are still 36-39 percent left that would still vote for a Democrat yet at the same time this data shows it’s the GOP’s race to lose and a right leaning candidate won’t fly (again).
In light of this data, loyal readers, who do you think is our (Wo)Man?
Via your polling, it’s become a fairly common meme that about a quarter of Republicans have some degree of question about President Obama’s birth certificate (ranging from questions to outright doubt that he’s a citizen), while a little over a third of Democrats believe on some level that former President Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11 (ranging, again, from belief that the President should have reacted to a purported intelligence assessment declaring an attack likely by waiting Jack Bauer-like at the head of a team of Marines at Logan/Newark airports on that fateful morning, to belief that Bush pushed the plunger on a controlled demolition of the WTC and then fired a cruise missile at the Pentagon).
Interesting enough.
But it’s time to turn some new sod. So I thought I’d turn to you, America’s leading poll jockeys, to find the information we really need.
How many Americans are…:
Triggers: How many people believe that Trig Palin is really Bristol Palin’s child, but Sarah is making noises about raising him to…well, I’m not sure what the conspiracy is supposed to say. It is that addlepated. Anyway – how many?
Gaggers: How many Americans still parrot the inane trope the media is “really conservative”, and thus government intervention is needed to ensure enough liberal thoughts get heard?
Warmers: How many of us believe, despite the exposure of the rampant bad science, bullying and crass politics underpinning the theory of manmade global warming, that the science is “settled” and “past debate?”
Toaders: What percentage of people think Helen Thomas is a credible journalist?
Floozers: The same, but in re Maureen Dowd?
Reporters: How many people still believe the Administration is “moderate?”
Tinglers: What ratio of Americans don’t make derisive faces when Chris Matthews appears on the TV? (See also: Coopers)
Dead-Airers: How many Americans still have “Air America” bumperstickers on their cars/bikes/dogs?
Kruggers: How many people still mindlessly recite Paul Krugman’s infamous, innumerate, context-deprived trope about red states getting more tax money back than they put in?
Healthers: Who still believes, after a year of fact to the contrary, that Obamacare will cover more people for less money?
Dumpers: How many people believe that the external manifestations of Bachmann Derangement don’t help Sixth District rep Michele Bachmann’s electoral chances?
Crashers: How many Americans believe that, despite the fact that government both actively legislated subprime mortgage lending and subsidized the obscene profits (and socialized the now-obvious risks), the current credit crisis is purely a result of free-enterprise and greed?
Thank you for your attention to this vital matter.
Coulter said she has been speaking regularly at university campuses for a decade. While she has certainly been heckled, she said this is the first time a speaking engagement has had to be cancelled because of protesters.
“This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university,” she said.
Anyone who can make Havana Denny Dease look like a stalwart of civil liberty has got serious problems.
Coulter remarked on the reception she has had since entering the country.
“Since I’ve arrived in Canada, I’ve been denounced on the floor of Parliament — which, by the way, is on my bucket list — my posters have been banned, I’ve been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council, so welcome to Canada!”
I may have to put that 0n my bucket list too.
That, and being Olberman’s “worst person”. That’d be fun.
I’m disappointed that Betty GAVE her vote away, instead of holding out for more home-state swag, as did her colleagues from Nebraska, Florida, etc.
Well, that’s the difference between prostitutes mercenaries like Stupak, Nelson and Tester, and true believers like McCollum. The former will fight the battle for their own perceived advantage; the latter does it based on pure zeal for the cause.
Before the 2008 crash, it seemed like this new liberalism might be poised for a long run of domestic policy triumphs: First health care, then climate-change legislation, then card check and immigration reform and so on down the list. But in the wake of the Great Recession, our rendezvous with fiscal retrenchment has been accelerated, and the chances for a rolling series of progressive victories have diminished apace. Barring an extraordinary economic boom, the American situation will soon require the slow and painful restructuring of the welfare state that liberals have spent decades building.
And I think we can pretty safely bar a big economic boom.
This environment may or may not lead to a revival of D.L.C.-style centrism among the Democrats, but at the very least it’s hard to see it proving congenial to further adventures in sweeping social legislation.
As much as the GOP struggles with its own internal contradictions – between fiscal hawks, moderates and social conservatives – pale compared to the war between the Kossacks and the moderates, which has effectively led to a near-purge of moderates.
Which helps explain this past weekend’s scorched-earth assault on the free market:
I’ve talked to liberals who seem to understand this: The reckoning is coming, they allow, and the theory of health care reform has always been to get everybody inside the barrel before it goes over the falls. (I’d lay good money that this is Peter Orszag’s view of the matter.) But seen in this light, the health care victory looks less like the dawn of a bold new era, and more like the final lurch forward before a slow retreat. you might say; now they have to hope that it turns out better for them, and for America, than it did for Napoleon.
As Lefty pundits from the esteemed Paul Krugman to the unhinged Brian Lambert have pointed out, it’s only teh dum ignant racist conservatives who oppose healthcare.
Keep that in mind when you read this detailed takedown – on both liberal and conservative principles – from Glenn Beck:
Myth
Truth
1. This is a universal health care bill.
The bill is neither universal health care nor universal health insurance.
Per the CBO:
Total uninsured in 2019 with no bill: 54 million
Total uninsured in 2019 with Senate bill: 24 million (44%)
2.Insurance companies hate this bill
This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009. The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.
3. The bill will significantly bring down insurance premiums for most Americans.
The bill will not bring down premiums significantly, and certainly not the $2,500/year that the President promised.
Annual premiums in 2016, status quo / with bill:
Small group market, single: $7,800 / $7,800
Small group market, family: $19,300 / $19,200
Large Group market, single: $7,400 / $7,300
Large group market, family: $21,100 / $21,300
Individual market, single:$5,500 / $5,800*
Individual market, family: $13,100 / $15,200*
4. The bill will make health care affordable for middle class Americans.
The bill will impose a financial hardship on middle class Americans who will be forced to buy a product that they can’t afford to use.A family of four making $66,370 will be forced to pay $5,243 per year for insurance. After basic necessities, this leaves them with $8,307 in discretionary income — out of which they would have to cover clothing, credit card and other debt, child care and education costs, in addition to $5,882 in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses for which families will be responsible.
5. This plan is similar to the Massachusetts plan, which makes health care affordable.
Many Massachusetts residents forgo health care because they can’t afford it.A 2009 study by the state of Massachusetts found that:
21% of residents forgo medical treatment because they can’t afford it, including 12% of children
18% have health insurance but can’t afford to use it
6. This bill provide health care to 31 million people who are currently uninsured.
This bill will mandate that millions of people who are currently uninsured must purchase insurance from private companies, or the IRS will collect up to 2% of their annual income in penalties. Some will be assisted with government subsidies.
7. You can keep the insurance you have if you like it.
The excise tax will result in employers switching to plans with higher co-pays and fewer covered services.
Older, less healthy employees with employer-based health care will be forced to pay much more in out-of-pocket expenses than they do now.
8. The “excise tax” will encourage employers to reduce the scope of health care benefits, and they will pass the savings on to employees in the form of higher wages.
There is insufficient evidence that employers pass savings from reduced benefits on to employees.
9. This bill employs nearly every cost control idea available to bring down costs.
This bill does not bring down costs and leaves out nearly every key cost control measure, including:
Public Option ($25-$110 billion)
Medicare buy-in
Drug reimportation ($19 billion)
Medicare drug price negotiation ($300 billion)
Shorter pathway to generic biologics ($71 billion)
10. The bill will require big companies like WalMart to provide insurance for their employees
The bill was written so that most WalMart employees will qualify for subsidies, and taxpayers will pick up a large portion of the cost of their coverage.
11. The bill “bends the cost curve” on health care.
The bill ignored proven ways to cut health care costs and still leaves 24 million people uninsured, all while slightly raising total annual costs by $234 million in 2019.“Bends the cost curve” is a misleading and trivial claim, as the US would still spend far more for care than other advanced countries.
In 2009, health care costs were 17.3% of GDP.
Annual cost of health care in 2019, status quo: $4,670.6 billion (20.8% of GDP)
Annual cost of health care in 2019, Senate bill: $4,693.5 billion (20.9% of GDP)
12. The bill will provide immediate access to insurance for Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition.
Access to the “high risk pool” is limited and the pool is underfunded. It will cover few people, and will run out of money in 2011 or 2012Only those who have been uninsured for more than six months will qualify for the high risk pool. Only 0.7% of those without insurance now will get coverage, and the CMS report estimates it will run out of funding by 2011 or 2012.
13. The bill prohibits dropping people in individual plans from coverage when they get sick.
The bill does not empower a regulatory body to keep people from being dropped when they’re sick.There are already many states that have laws on the books prohibiting people from being dropped when they’re sick, but without an enforcement mechanism, there is little to hold the insurance companies in check.
14. The bill ensures consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to challenge new insurance plan decisions.
The “internal appeals process” is in the hands of the insurance companies themselves, and the “external” one is up to each state.
Ensuring that consumers have access to “internal appeals” simply means the insurance companies have to review their own decisions. And it is the responsibility of each state to provide an “external appeals process,” as there is neither funding nor a regulatory mechanism for enforcement at the federal level.
15. This bill will stop insurance companies from hiking rates 30%-40% per year.
This bill does not limit insurance company rate hikes. Private insurers continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, and are free to raise rates without fear of competition in many areas of the country.
16. When the bill passes, people will begin receiving benefits under this bill immediately
Most provisions in this bill, such as an end to the ban on pre-existing conditions for adults, do not take effect until 2014.Six months from the date of passage, children could not be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions, though insurance companies could charge more to cover them. Children would also be allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. There will be an elimination of lifetime coverage limits, a high risk pool for those who have been uninsured for more than 6 months, and community health centers will start receivingmoney.
17. The bill creates a pathway for single payer.
Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, so no, it doesn’t create a pathway for single payer.
Obama told Dennis Kucinich that the Ohio Representative’s amendment is similar to Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill, and creates a pathway to single payer. Since the waiver does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, it is nearly impossible to see how it gets around the ERISA laws that stand in the way of any practical state single payer system.
18 The bill will end medical bankruptcy and provide all Americans with peace of mind.
Most people with medical bankruptcies already have insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses will continue to be a burden on the middle class.
In 2009, 1.5 million Americans declared bankruptcy
Of those, 62% were medically related
Three-quarters of those had health insurance
The Obama bill leaves 24 million without insurance
The maximum yearly out-of-pocket limit for a family will be $11,900 (PDF) on top of premiums
A family with serious medical problems that last for a few years could easily be financially crushed by medical costs
UPDATE: Oops. I screwed up. The article and table above wasn’t from Glenn Beck. It was from Jane Hamsher, writing at usually far-far-far-far-left uberblog Firedog Lake.
And yeah, it’s done with an aim toward promoting single-payer, which is certainly not my goal.
But it’s a decent digest of everything that’s wrong with Obamacare, abortion funding aside.
I took a rare trip to a Minneapolis strip joint the other evening.
I was sitting at the bar drinking a vodka/sour when I saw a prominent DFL legislator getting a lapdance from Maria, a cute latina who’s been working there for a couple of months. He was enjoying it in the way that DFLers always express enjoyment – by complaining and demanding.
“Tell me your little hermano needs to have his croup looked at, and could I preese herp he see a docta!”, he yelled, not a trace of mirth in his face.
“Er”, Maria said, “Sure. You gonna tip me?”
The DFL legislator shouted “Everybody! Pony up so that I can tip Consuela, here!”
Maria got up and walked away.
“Hah, hah, hah” yelled the prominent DFL legislator. “Your Hermano or whatever his name is will never see a doctor!”
He got up and finished his drink, and started staggering toward the door. I followed him, intending to ask what his problem was.
We walked out onto Washington Avenue and walked toward the parking ramp. I was walking to catch him when he stopped by a drunk sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the wall of a plumbing supply store. He leaned down and grabbed the bum’s bottle of Mad Dog and took a long, greedy swig. He then tossed the bottle into the street. “When you win elections, you get to keep your booze. When I win, I get to take your booze! Hahahaha!”
He staggered away as the bum looked, nonplussed.
“I rule the woooooorld!”, he bellowed as he walked through the door of the ramp. “I can do anything I waaaaaaaant!”
That means he is a government employee who works for people who derive at least part of their livelihood from the government, and he draws a pay check from the tax payers.
Right. Because as libertarian as I am, even I would balk at privatizing the legislature. Perhaps I should aim higher?
I digress:
So it’s curious that he would tweet something like this:
Sat on a bench in Target for 20 wating for pharma 2 open. Guy next to me the whole time gets up & opens it. Imagine when he’s a govt worker.
Got that? A guy who’s a government worker observes a private-sector employee and uses him to impugn government workers.
I’m trying to figure out what the problem is. Is it that Quimby believes government workers (and future ones!) should all march in solidarity with each other? That a government employee has no right to criticize his fellow employees or future colleagues (much less the legislation that our current pack of nutslaps are trying to pass into law?) That a government worker should lead the lesser proles by example?
What was Watterson’s offense? That he, a “government worker”, doesn’t want to waste time (yaaay, Kevin!), and sees, correctly, that government healthcare will be an even more catastrophic time-suck than it is today in the not-too distant future?
I’m not going to argue that government at any level is a total paragon of efficiency, enterprise or long-term decision-making.
(And yet they’re the ones Quimby’s side wants running your family’s healthcare!)
But the people arguing the loudest for defunding the public sector seem to believe that government is incapable, while the private sector is a model of efficiency, creativity and adaptation that will save America from the cesspool of creeping socialism.
Got that? Watterson sits apparently inert waiting for a private business to open — presumably at the time it has established its business hours — and uses the occasion to demean any government employee who might do the same.
Yep.
And better yet, Watterson is right to do it.
Because Kevin, today, can go to the sluggard’s manager and complain, and likely get results; ever tried to complain to government about government?
Because Kevin today can voice his disgust at Target by turning on his heels and going to WalMart, DVS, Cub, Walgreens and dozens of other pharmacies who are happy not only to fill his prescription but will do it when they say they will, if Target won’t. (And so Target will, too – or they’ll leave the business). What imperative is there for government to improve service? To whom is government accountable? Fellow bureaucrats, themselves accountable to more layers of bureaucrats.
Watterson was right.
Next week: My evening with three prominent DFL legislators at a dog fight.
“In any other year, I would be horrified by the idea,” said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville. “But I will consider this as a short-term solution. Education funding should be from the state. But schools need a lifeline right now.”
Greiling, who chairs the House K-12 Education Finance Division, introduced a bill last week that would allow school districts to levy up to $200 per pupil from local taxpayers without voter approval.
The bill is one of three that gives districts more taxing authority. They are scheduled to go in front of Greiling’s committee this week.
Great idea, DFL. People are hurting, unemployment is booming – shake ’em down for more!
Not every DFLer has lost his mind:
“I’m very hesitant to do that. When property taxes have gone up $3.6 billion since 2003, we don’t need to be raising more property taxes,” said Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, chairman of the House Property and Local Sales Tax Division.
About three-quarters of school funding — close to $7 billion annually — comes from the state.
The rest comes from property taxes. School districts across the state levied about $2.3 billion for taxes payable in 2010.
That 2.3 billion, by the way, is money that charter schools don’t get; whenever any DFL/MFT/MN2020 flaks tell you “charter schools cost more than public schools”, ask ’em why they’re leaving out a quarter of the budget.
At any rate, here’s the DFL’s message to you; “our institutions can’t operate within a budget, like the rest of you have to, so we’re going to take what we need. We’ll let you know when we’ve decided what that is. Buh-bye”.
Google Street Maps photographed and display the gate and perimeter of the headquarters of the British Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment – the unit from which Delta Force was descended.
Military chiefs and MPs blasted internet giant Google today after its Street View service included detailed pictures of the headquarters of the SAS.
Internet users can peer around the entrance to Credenhill, Herefordshire, which has never before appeared on maps for security reasons.
On the one hand, the Brits have a long tradition of keeping their special forces out of the public eye (although not all of the Regiment’s former members cooperate).
On the other hand…:
MPs and military top brass have demanded Google removes the pictures, claiming it makes the SAS a target for terrorist attacks.
Lib Dem Hereford MP Paul Keetch said: ‘The footage is simply not acceptable during a time of perceived terrorism…’I wouldn’t want a terrorist to be inspired by these pictures and it would be appalling if any help at all was given to our enemies.
‘We all know where the Palace of Westminister is, we all know where the SAS camp is, but the issue is if you’re going into such detail in such a way that you can undermine the security of that building, that could be a problem.’
…attacking the SAS’ headquarters seems a bit like diving into the tiger pen at the zoo to fight for the Big Mac you just dropped.
…keep the oven door closed, bake at 500 degrees for a whole weekend, and the result should be no surprise.
It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak.
He did look like he was about to cry…or had “dropped the soap” in a prison shower.
…is hard to swallow…and it’s probably too late any way. Then again, why do we need that pill now any way? The federal government will pay for an abortion.
America is pissed off, but will anyone be made to pay?
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (…of course if this were a Fox News poll, it would be thrown out by most liberals-JR) found that 59 percent of those surveyed opposed the bill, and 39 percent favored it. All of the interviews were conducted before the House voted Sunday night, but the contents of the bill were widely known.
…to the extent they’ve ever been widely known.
In addition, 56 percent said the bill gives the government too much involvement in health care; 28 percent said it gives the government the proper role and 16 percent said it leaves Washington with an inadequate role.
On the question of costs, 62 percent said the bill increases the amount of money they personally spend on health care; 21 percent said their costs would remain the same and 16 percent said they would decrease.
The poll’s results about the bill’s fiscal impact were particularly stark: 70 percent of respondents said they believed deficits would go up because of the bill; 17 percent felt they would stay the same and 12 percent said they would go down.
…not than any of this was ever about health care. This has always been about a transfer of power to Democrats by crafting a new middle-class entitlement.
In the immortal words of some Oscar-winning song or another, It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp.
Even a poverty-pimp who’s held a sinecure largely on the basis of “elite” business connections that’d make Ken Lay blanche with embarassment.
That’d be Barney Frank. The guy’s got a tough row to hoe, and I think the strain is catching up with him:
“It’s like the Salem witch trials, and healthcare is the witches,” Frank said. “There is mass hysteria.”
That’s right. Obamacare is an innocent victim, caught up in mob hysteria (because what is the only thing mass movements do, when they’re not electing pretty-boy empty suits to the Presidency?), supported only by a political party that came into this term with a near-epic mandate (although get back to us in November).
Just like those witches.
I’ll give him some credit. He got it half right. At least Obamacare deserves to be lit on fire.
