This entry was posted on May 25, 2011 at 7:58 am and is filed under Free For All . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I saw it live. It happened like 5 seconds after MSNBC went to the local feed. I had to rewind it to comprehend what I just saw. “That guy drove under a cross hovering in the sky?”
Yeah, we’re gonna give old people vouchers so they can “find” health insurance, also known as “young guy gaurantees no senior (the most reliable voting bloc) ever votes Republican again”. Nice work, Skippy. Good luck with that run for President..
I don’t understand how liberals are spouting that Ryan wants to kill Medicare. If he really wanted Medicare dead all he has to do is wait a couple of years. He is making an effort to try and fix a colossal mess we have made for ourselves and trying to make the best out of a bad situation but instead we get annoyingly naive comments from the other side (see above).
Yeah, God knows old people can’t manage to ‘find’ health insurance. There’s your liberal view of human competence, in a nutshell. Let’s just let Daddy Government handle it, because they do it so well and competently. The rest of us shouldn’t have to worry our heads about it. God help us.
Joe…always enjoy your comments (even when we respectfully disagree). My question…how do we continue to fund Medicare when independent Government & Congressional experts predict Medicare will be insolvent by 2024? Raising taxes will not make hardly any impact on continuing this program.
I reviewed Ryan’s plan. He wasn’t calling for anyone 50 & older to lose their coverage.
Perhaps, “Logan’s Run” will be implemented for us in the future. (j/k)
Here’s an idea. While conservatives are being hectored to ‘admit’ that certain idiotic political arguments are coded ‘racism’, hows about our liberal friends admit that Democrats are lying about entitlement reform? How about they admit that their party couldn’t possibly care less about bankrupting the country, as long as it buys them a few votes? I have just the tiniest bit more of a problem with that than what Eric Bolling has to say. He’s an idiot and a convenient distraction from actual problems.
But he has a good heart. He just goes a little too far now-and-then.
And it’s such a lovely word that the blog won’t let me post the link. What a big, fat, sweetheart. Look for Ed Schultz story on Mediaite, about what he called Laura Ingraham.
A day after his precious concern over Eric Bolling. FBN needs to put them together, and call it something else that can’t be posted on this blog. I got a good one, too…
I don’t appreciate “he has a good heart” – a variation on a comment I made a while back – being flung at me in light of Ed’s disgusting comment. No one “accidentally” makes a racist comment; no one “accidentally” calls a woman a sl*t.
My comment about seniors was severely misunderstood. It’s not about them being incompetent. It’s about them not having any insurance available to “find”. Insurance companies don’t voluntarily cover old people. Ryan is an idiot.
There is no discussion..I’m not interested in debating Medicare on this board. My Ryan comments are political analysis. He handed the Dems a huge win by emphasizing that old people will be handed a check and a prayer. He needs to work on his “messaging”. He could start by finding an older Republican to explain the concept a little more gently. “This won’t effect you, only your kids” ain’t cuttin’ it.
“And it’s such a lovely word that the blog won’t let me post the link. What a big, fat, sweetheart. Look for Ed Schultz story on Mediaite, about what he called Laura Ingraham.” – laura l
My Presidential Election dreams are coming true. I thought forever that she would run, then finally started losing hope a couple months ago with the rise of Michelle Bachmann in Iowa. Keep hope alive! With so many big names bowing out, I think she’s decided to go for it. Whatever will we talk about?
Hey, did you know that the auto bailout was Mitt Romney’s idea? Does that mean he was for it before he wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?” Chrysler and GM are back, jerkface, no thanks to you and all the other GOPers who b!tched about helping them. Suck it.
Please, you give any business billions in low interest loans and they’ll survive. The government gave GM more than $40 billion plus a special $14 billion tax break.
And from the IPO that GM just had, the government will not recoup about $20 billion in that.
The question – and it’s still open – is whether it was worth it to give GM another shot at it.
Let’s see if politicians who took a stand against it will refrain from lying about it later. Why bother to buck your party and back the president, when you can just pretend you did it later?
“Getting paid back” is pretty straightforward. So is “no American auto industry”. This recession was/is bad enough; losing that backbone would have destroyed this country.
My Ryan comments are political analysis. He handed the Dems a huge win by emphasizing that old people will be handed a check and a prayer
It’s from the same old liberal play book:
1: R’s denounce spending
2: D’s say, “What about entitlements?”
3: R’s try to deal with entitlements
4: D’s denounce R’s
5: R’s lose… but maybe not this time.
^ Exactly. You’re allowed to change your mind and admit you were wrong, but most politicians skip that part, including many of the Dems who supported the Iraq War when it was popular. They retroactively “change their minds” so that the new position was the original one. That’s called lying.
It’s from the same old liberal play book:
1: R’s denounce spending
2: D’s say, “What about entitlements?”
3: R’s try to deal with entitlements
4: D’s denounce R’s
5: R’s lose… but maybe not this time.
You can’t beat senior citizens laughing at some young punk who has a brilliant plan to hand them a check and say, “Good luck finding an insurer who’ll take it.” I don’t have all the answers to this problem – note, I’m not running for anything – but I’m pretty decent at political analysis, and my analysis is..FAIL.
Yes, because that has been a long-standing and well-proven mechanism within our free market system for dealing with failure. Other, more successful companies would have been positioned to fill the void and many entrepreneurial opportunities that we haven’t even thought of are now missing because assets that rightly belonged to creditors, vendors, and stockholders were stolen by government fiat… and literally by Fiat, for that matter. Where was the bailout for the horse & buggy industry? IBM used to be HUGE, but from its failure came a new industry that brought with it hundreds of thousands of new, high-paying jobs.
That’s a lovely theory, but expecting this country to survive what can only be described as a Second Great Depression while we waited for a nonexistent entity to replace our last great industry is fantasy land. Which, after penning that stupid op-ed, Romney apparently now agrees with.
I am very good at dealing with insurance companies and well-experienced at dealing with Medicare/Medicaid. Political games can certainly be entertaining but the our government-funded portion of our medical system is already hurting people and if serious players such as Mr. Ryan continue to be demagogued then I guarantee you innocent people will die.
July 1 my group will stop accepting Medicare patients. I was out-voted but, to be fair, I’m the only one who could afford the loss.
Good luck finding quality healthcare professionals and facilities that can afford to work within federally-mandated payment and services guidelines. In short, retirees are screwed.
I gaurantee you that if the GOP keeps trotting out handsome young men to advocate the dismantling of the social safety net, they will never win another election. Your willingness to put all of this on the heads of “Democratic demagogues” ignores the rather obvious fact that Ryan and his buddies have done a miserable of explaining how the Dems are wrong.
The biggest problem your side has is their insistence on holding on to the precious “temporary” tax cuts for their donors, while telling old people they have to suck up a stupid voucher and a kick down the street.
The only way to sell “tough measures” is when your side accepts some, too. The Republican Party hasn’t given up a damn thing, and that gaurantees a re-election for an incumbent during an historic recession, which is unheard of.
I don’t know how you guys managed to screw this up this bad, but I’m enjoying the show. The only thing that could make it better…PALIN IN ’12!
Yes, I know we’ve heard this before, before and before, but for some reason, we’re supposed to believe it this time? Forget about it – if I see him do a perp walk, then I’ll believe it. I’ve never seen ANYTHING drag out so long.
laura l Says: “Does the Jared Loughner mugshot look like Uncle Fester on LSD or is it just me?”
The first time I saw that picture I remember wondering if he was trying to look like Uncle Fester. A day or so later another more “normal” (a word I hesitate to use to describe that man) looking photo was issued.
-Medicare & tax cuts-
It is your side who keeps making the false correlation with teh tax cuts. There is no relationship between those income taxes (which you call “temporary cuts”) and Medicare. Ending the Bush tax cuts (or raising rates on those “making $250K or more”) is not money that would be used for Medicare, which comes from payroll taxes. It is not possible to tax enough to even come close to paying for the system, and if you tried it would be at the cost of middle class jobs.
You’re missing the point, as usual. Ya know, I really don’t think I’m that hard to understand. I think you willfully ignore my intent in order to promote your Grand Conservative Utopia.
To reiterate: You can’t ask old people to take it on the chin while you give up nothing. I don’t care what the logistics are of income tax to Medicare funding..the bottom line is the selfcentered, uncaring GOP is holding on to egregious tax cuts while asking the poor to give more.
It’s a disgusting presentation, made even more so by being fronted by some preppy kid who is the very epitome of someone in no need of the help he’s proposing withdrawing.
LOD is doing a good job debunking the “1967 borders” outrage. The President said the same thing Presidents always say: “1967 borders, with mutually agreed swaps”. Duh, “the mutually agreed swaps” is what changes the outline of the borders. Idiots.
The old people aren’t asked to give up anything in Rep. Ryan’s plan… unless they’re fairly well off, that is. Doing nothing will require they give up their health and, so far, haven’t heard anyone come up with a better plan.
The plan requires them to give up gauranteed Medicare. That’s giving up something they once had. This isn’t rocket science. Everybody gives, or nobody; that’s the rules. The Republicans don’t sacrifice..they take. As usual.
“Guaranteed Medicaid” won’t get anyone much, and the plan doesn’t change anything for existing seniors. Appears to be that you don’t like the capitalistic free market system and suffer the delusion that “federally guaranteed” is somehow a good thing. Federal spending hurts everyone but fails to sufficiently help anyone.
I think Rep. Ryan’s plan is too liberal in that it uses federal monies to pay for privately administered health care insurance. Still, I can’t think of a better way to get the mess under control. Socialised medicine may sound nice but it simply does not work unless you’re rich and powerful.
I absolutely do NOT support pure capitalism. You know that. The current setup is a combination of capitalism and socialism, and it’s going to stay that way.
The current setup can’t work as long as those selfish bastards on the right keep starving it. I know the phrase “starve the beast”. You’re gonna lose that battle because your side can’t hide the nastiness and greed behind it. Paul Ryan? He looks like Damien in The Omen. Are you kidding me?
Starving it? How? Do you not understand how this mess came about? The money taken from paychecks to fund the programme was instead used to fund other spending over decades. Raising taxes will not put a dent in the problem.
Yeah yeah yeah, you’ve got it all figured out; you’re smarter than I; I don’t understand anything. I don’t care anymore, I’m on my second day of an exhausting anger around these arguments. Enough.
If Medicare was a private sector programme, similar to prepaid funerals, and the monies were similarly spent on something else then somebody would go to prison and have all of their assets seized.
The role of government in a free society is to provide the mechanisms for commerce that enrich the lives of everyone. It is not the role of government to be one of the participants within that mechanism. It is because the government has been that everything is all messed up.
I. Dis. Agree. Government has to be a regulating mechanism within, or the vicisitudes of an unfettered free market take over and your left with what we’re headed to now: A country run by a few huge corporations, and millions more in poverty. A purely free market is a selfish monster that eats everything in its path.
We’re not each farming a stake of land and growing our own food. We live in an industrialized society dependent on the few to employ the many. Without a regulating government in the mix to keep balance, the few get it all, and the many are crushed. It doesn’t work, and you will be stopped from trying. Goodnight.
Leaving aside the load of utter BS contained in that last post, under what fascistic form of government will we be ‘stopped from trying’? The Beck-flavored-one that Obama intends to impose? Sounds like naptime.
Without a regulating government in the mix to keep balance
I wholeheartedly agree with that. But an entity cannot be both a regulator and a competitor at the same time without fouling the system. If you want a government system, then make it a government only system, but you’ll lose all the benefits that come with the private sector… innovation and cost reduction, to name just two.
“Ridiculous” is when you keep trying the same stupid things in hopes that they will eventually work. That, along with your misguided belief that your crap somehow benefits the poor. The irony is that most of the really rich people push the liberal agenda. And if I were a selfish guy I would, too. ‘Me and mine” will be just fine if Medicare stays at it is – it’s the less well-off and those dependent on Uncle Sam who will bear the brunt of what will come.
May 25, 2011 at 8:00 am
Are you going looking for your snorkel again?
May 25, 2011 at 8:17 am
Mine’s on that crazy picture of the hovering telephone pole at http://www.msnbc.com. That car drove right under it. Not good.
May 25, 2011 at 8:23 am
^ Yeah, I was watching that yesterday. Pretty crazy.
May 25, 2011 at 8:27 am
I saw it live. It happened like 5 seconds after MSNBC went to the local feed. I had to rewind it to comprehend what I just saw. “That guy drove under a cross hovering in the sky?”
May 25, 2011 at 8:30 am
May 25, 2011 at 8:31 am
^oops, sorry. meant to just post the link.
May 25, 2011 at 8:37 am
Yeah, we’re gonna give old people vouchers so they can “find” health insurance, also known as “young guy gaurantees no senior (the most reliable voting bloc) ever votes Republican again”. Nice work, Skippy. Good luck with that run for President..
May 25, 2011 at 9:24 am
I don’t understand how liberals are spouting that Ryan wants to kill Medicare. If he really wanted Medicare dead all he has to do is wait a couple of years. He is making an effort to try and fix a colossal mess we have made for ourselves and trying to make the best out of a bad situation but instead we get annoyingly naive comments from the other side (see above).
May 25, 2011 at 9:24 am
Yeah, God knows old people can’t manage to ‘find’ health insurance. There’s your liberal view of human competence, in a nutshell. Let’s just let Daddy Government handle it, because they do it so well and competently. The rest of us shouldn’t have to worry our heads about it. God help us.
May 25, 2011 at 9:26 am
Joe…always enjoy your comments (even when we respectfully disagree). My question…how do we continue to fund Medicare when independent Government & Congressional experts predict Medicare will be insolvent by 2024? Raising taxes will not make hardly any impact on continuing this program.
I reviewed Ryan’s plan. He wasn’t calling for anyone 50 & older to lose their coverage.
Perhaps, “Logan’s Run” will be implemented for us in the future. (j/k)
May 25, 2011 at 9:45 am
Here’s an idea. While conservatives are being hectored to ‘admit’ that certain idiotic political arguments are coded ‘racism’, hows about our liberal friends admit that Democrats are lying about entitlement reform? How about they admit that their party couldn’t possibly care less about bankrupting the country, as long as it buys them a few votes? I have just the tiniest bit more of a problem with that than what Eric Bolling has to say. He’s an idiot and a convenient distraction from actual problems.
May 25, 2011 at 10:19 am
But he has a good heart. He just goes a little too far now-and-then.
And it’s such a lovely word that the blog won’t let me post the link. What a big, fat, sweetheart. Look for Ed Schultz story on Mediaite, about what he called Laura Ingraham.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/
May 25, 2011 at 10:35 am
A day after his precious concern over Eric Bolling. FBN needs to put them together, and call it something else that can’t be posted on this blog. I got a good one, too…
May 25, 2011 at 11:28 am
I don’t appreciate “he has a good heart” – a variation on a comment I made a while back – being flung at me in light of Ed’s disgusting comment. No one “accidentally” makes a racist comment; no one “accidentally” calls a woman a sl*t.
My comment about seniors was severely misunderstood. It’s not about them being incompetent. It’s about them not having any insurance available to “find”. Insurance companies don’t voluntarily cover old people. Ryan is an idiot.
May 25, 2011 at 11:37 am
I was p|ssed about Schultz’ comment, and pulled-out the first thing that came to mind. It’s what I’m known for. Sorree..
May 25, 2011 at 11:39 am
”Ryan is an idiot” pretty much stands on it’s own, as far as any discussion is concerned.
May 25, 2011 at 11:48 am
Sorree..
Accepted
Ryan
There is no discussion..I’m not interested in debating Medicare on this board. My Ryan comments are political analysis. He handed the Dems a huge win by emphasizing that old people will be handed a check and a prayer. He needs to work on his “messaging”. He could start by finding an older Republican to explain the concept a little more gently. “This won’t effect you, only your kids” ain’t cuttin’ it.
May 25, 2011 at 11:50 am
‘affect’
May 25, 2011 at 1:28 pm
“And it’s such a lovely word that the blog won’t let me post the link. What a big, fat, sweetheart. Look for Ed Schultz story on Mediaite, about what he called Laura Ingraham.” – laura l
Will Ed get the David Shuster treatment?
May 25, 2011 at 1:30 pm
– ”Shuster treatment” –
With any luck, he can guest-host Twitter-casts in the near future.
May 25, 2011 at 1:56 pm
^Twitter.
Also known as Command Center and Headquarters of the vast Keith Olbermann Media Enterprise.
CCHKOME.
Er, I think I left a letter out.
May 25, 2011 at 2:21 pm
My Presidential Election dreams are coming true. I thought forever that she would run, then finally started losing hope a couple months ago with the rise of Michelle Bachmann in Iowa. Keep hope alive! With so many big names bowing out, I think she’s decided to go for it. Whatever will we talk about?
http://www.mediaite.com/online/summer-blockbuster-1-million-sarah-palin-biopic-could-be-campaign-kickoff/
May 25, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Used to be that writing a book was a sign. ‘Reading’ is less her draw than ‘looking at’.
May 25, 2011 at 2:29 pm
^ HA! I can’t top that one.
May 25, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Hey, did you know that the auto bailout was Mitt Romney’s idea? Does that mean he was for it before he wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?” Chrysler and GM are back, jerkface, no thanks to you and all the other GOPers who b!tched about helping them. Suck it.
May 25, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Please, you give any business billions in low interest loans and they’ll survive. The government gave GM more than $40 billion plus a special $14 billion tax break.
And from the IPO that GM just had, the government will not recoup about $20 billion in that.
The question – and it’s still open – is whether it was worth it to give GM another shot at it.
Let’s see.
May 25, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Let’s see if politicians who took a stand against it will refrain from lying about it later. Why bother to buck your party and back the president, when you can just pretend you did it later?
May 25, 2011 at 3:02 pm
And what they’re ‘recouping’ is mostly a shell-game. Typical government ‘help’.
May 25, 2011 at 3:04 pm
“Getting paid back” is pretty straightforward. So is “no American auto industry”. This recession was/is bad enough; losing that backbone would have destroyed this country.
May 25, 2011 at 3:06 pm
– Why bother to buck your party and back the president, when you can just pretend you did it later? –
Why does that make me think of the Iraq war in reverse?
May 25, 2011 at 3:08 pm
My Ryan comments are political analysis. He handed the Dems a huge win by emphasizing that old people will be handed a check and a prayer
It’s from the same old liberal play book:
1: R’s denounce spending
2: D’s say, “What about entitlements?”
3: R’s try to deal with entitlements
4: D’s denounce R’s
5: R’s lose… but maybe not this time.
May 25, 2011 at 3:10 pm
^ Exactly. You’re allowed to change your mind and admit you were wrong, but most politicians skip that part, including many of the Dems who supported the Iraq War when it was popular. They retroactively “change their minds” so that the new position was the original one. That’s called lying.
May 25, 2011 at 3:13 pm
It’s from the same old liberal play book:
1: R’s denounce spending
2: D’s say, “What about entitlements?”
3: R’s try to deal with entitlements
4: D’s denounce R’s
5: R’s lose… but maybe not this time.
You can’t beat senior citizens laughing at some young punk who has a brilliant plan to hand them a check and say, “Good luck finding an insurer who’ll take it.” I don’t have all the answers to this problem – note, I’m not running for anything – but I’m pretty decent at political analysis, and my analysis is..FAIL.
May 25, 2011 at 3:25 pm
-Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?-
Yes, because that has been a long-standing and well-proven mechanism within our free market system for dealing with failure. Other, more successful companies would have been positioned to fill the void and many entrepreneurial opportunities that we haven’t even thought of are now missing because assets that rightly belonged to creditors, vendors, and stockholders were stolen by government fiat… and literally by Fiat, for that matter. Where was the bailout for the horse & buggy industry? IBM used to be HUGE, but from its failure came a new industry that brought with it hundreds of thousands of new, high-paying jobs.
May 25, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Does the Jared Loughner mugshot look like Uncle Fester on LSD or is it just me?
May 25, 2011 at 3:30 pm
-Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?-
That’s a lovely theory, but expecting this country to survive what can only be described as a Second Great Depression while we waited for a nonexistent entity to replace our last great industry is fantasy land. Which, after penning that stupid op-ed, Romney apparently now agrees with.
May 25, 2011 at 3:37 pm
I am very good at dealing with insurance companies and well-experienced at dealing with Medicare/Medicaid. Political games can certainly be entertaining but the our government-funded portion of our medical system is already hurting people and if serious players such as Mr. Ryan continue to be demagogued then I guarantee you innocent people will die.
July 1 my group will stop accepting Medicare patients. I was out-voted but, to be fair, I’m the only one who could afford the loss.
Good luck finding quality healthcare professionals and facilities that can afford to work within federally-mandated payment and services guidelines. In short, retirees are screwed.
May 25, 2011 at 3:42 pm
I gaurantee you that if the GOP keeps trotting out handsome young men to advocate the dismantling of the social safety net, they will never win another election. Your willingness to put all of this on the heads of “Democratic demagogues” ignores the rather obvious fact that Ryan and his buddies have done a miserable of explaining how the Dems are wrong.
May 25, 2011 at 3:49 pm
The biggest problem your side has is their insistence on holding on to the precious “temporary” tax cuts for their donors, while telling old people they have to suck up a stupid voucher and a kick down the street.
The only way to sell “tough measures” is when your side accepts some, too. The Republican Party hasn’t given up a damn thing, and that gaurantees a re-election for an incumbent during an historic recession, which is unheard of.
I don’t know how you guys managed to screw this up this bad, but I’m enjoying the show. The only thing that could make it better…PALIN IN ’12!
May 25, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Meanwhile, Democrats exempt their donors from the precious Obamacare. Blah blah blah.
May 25, 2011 at 4:08 pm
ATTENTION!!!!!!!
John Edwards about to be indicted.
Yes, I know we’ve heard this before, before and before, but for some reason, we’re supposed to believe it this time? Forget about it – if I see him do a perp walk, then I’ll believe it. I’ve never seen ANYTHING drag out so long.
May 25, 2011 at 5:20 pm
laura l Says: “Does the Jared Loughner mugshot look like Uncle Fester on LSD or is it just me?”
The first time I saw that picture I remember wondering if he was trying to look like Uncle Fester. A day or so later another more “normal” (a word I hesitate to use to describe that man) looking photo was issued.
May 25, 2011 at 5:24 pm
-Medicare & tax cuts-
It is your side who keeps making the false correlation with teh tax cuts. There is no relationship between those income taxes (which you call “temporary cuts”) and Medicare. Ending the Bush tax cuts (or raising rates on those “making $250K or more”) is not money that would be used for Medicare, which comes from payroll taxes. It is not possible to tax enough to even come close to paying for the system, and if you tried it would be at the cost of middle class jobs.
May 25, 2011 at 5:25 pm
It took me awhile to place the face, cuz I’d usually avoid looking at it. And ‘Uncle Fester’ isn’t a character that springs to mind, in any case.
May 25, 2011 at 5:34 pm
You’re missing the point, as usual. Ya know, I really don’t think I’m that hard to understand. I think you willfully ignore my intent in order to promote your Grand Conservative Utopia.
To reiterate: You can’t ask old people to take it on the chin while you give up nothing. I don’t care what the logistics are of income tax to Medicare funding..the bottom line is the selfcentered, uncaring GOP is holding on to egregious tax cuts while asking the poor to give more.
It’s a disgusting presentation, made even more so by being fronted by some preppy kid who is the very epitome of someone in no need of the help he’s proposing withdrawing.
Can you hear me now?
May 25, 2011 at 5:44 pm
LOD is doing a good job debunking the “1967 borders” outrage. The President said the same thing Presidents always say: “1967 borders, with mutually agreed swaps”. Duh, “the mutually agreed swaps” is what changes the outline of the borders. Idiots.
May 25, 2011 at 6:08 pm
The old people aren’t asked to give up anything in Rep. Ryan’s plan… unless they’re fairly well off, that is. Doing nothing will require they give up their health and, so far, haven’t heard anyone come up with a better plan.
May 25, 2011 at 6:19 pm
What part of Rep. Ryan’s plan would require the poor to give more?
May 25, 2011 at 6:47 pm
The plan requires them to give up gauranteed Medicare. That’s giving up something they once had. This isn’t rocket science. Everybody gives, or nobody; that’s the rules. The Republicans don’t sacrifice..they take. As usual.
May 25, 2011 at 8:13 pm
“Guaranteed Medicaid” won’t get anyone much, and the plan doesn’t change anything for existing seniors. Appears to be that you don’t like the capitalistic free market system and suffer the delusion that “federally guaranteed” is somehow a good thing. Federal spending hurts everyone but fails to sufficiently help anyone.
I think Rep. Ryan’s plan is too liberal in that it uses federal monies to pay for privately administered health care insurance. Still, I can’t think of a better way to get the mess under control. Socialised medicine may sound nice but it simply does not work unless you’re rich and powerful.
May 25, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Medicaid = Medicare.. hate when I do that.
May 25, 2011 at 8:19 pm
I absolutely do NOT support pure capitalism. You know that. The current setup is a combination of capitalism and socialism, and it’s going to stay that way.
May 25, 2011 at 8:27 pm
The current setup is not working. To your preference, however, Rep. Ryan’s plan maintains that combination.
May 25, 2011 at 8:32 pm
The current setup can’t work as long as those selfish bastards on the right keep starving it. I know the phrase “starve the beast”. You’re gonna lose that battle because your side can’t hide the nastiness and greed behind it. Paul Ryan? He looks like Damien in The Omen. Are you kidding me?
May 25, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Starving it? How? Do you not understand how this mess came about? The money taken from paychecks to fund the programme was instead used to fund other spending over decades. Raising taxes will not put a dent in the problem.
May 25, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Yeah yeah yeah, you’ve got it all figured out; you’re smarter than I; I don’t understand anything. I don’t care anymore, I’m on my second day of an exhausting anger around these arguments. Enough.
May 25, 2011 at 8:51 pm
If Medicare was a private sector programme, similar to prepaid funerals, and the monies were similarly spent on something else then somebody would go to prison and have all of their assets seized.
The role of government in a free society is to provide the mechanisms for commerce that enrich the lives of everyone. It is not the role of government to be one of the participants within that mechanism. It is because the government has been that everything is all messed up.
May 25, 2011 at 9:03 pm
I. Dis. Agree. Government has to be a regulating mechanism within, or the vicisitudes of an unfettered free market take over and your left with what we’re headed to now: A country run by a few huge corporations, and millions more in poverty. A purely free market is a selfish monster that eats everything in its path.
We’re not each farming a stake of land and growing our own food. We live in an industrialized society dependent on the few to employ the many. Without a regulating government in the mix to keep balance, the few get it all, and the many are crushed. It doesn’t work, and you will be stopped from trying. Goodnight.
May 25, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Leaving aside the load of utter BS contained in that last post, under what fascistic form of government will we be ‘stopped from trying’? The Beck-flavored-one that Obama intends to impose? Sounds like naptime.
May 25, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Without a regulating government in the mix to keep balance
I wholeheartedly agree with that. But an entity cannot be both a regulator and a competitor at the same time without fouling the system. If you want a government system, then make it a government only system, but you’ll lose all the benefits that come with the private sector… innovation and cost reduction, to name just two.
May 25, 2011 at 9:16 pm
You’ll be stopped from trying by voters who consistently reject the ridiculous libertarian crap you want to impose on them.
May 25, 2011 at 10:02 pm
“Ridiculous” is when you keep trying the same stupid things in hopes that they will eventually work. That, along with your misguided belief that your crap somehow benefits the poor. The irony is that most of the really rich people push the liberal agenda. And if I were a selfish guy I would, too. ‘Me and mine” will be just fine if Medicare stays at it is – it’s the less well-off and those dependent on Uncle Sam who will bear the brunt of what will come.