It would be tactically and politically foolish to blame the idiots who refused to think for themselves and realize Ocare was a shit sandwich from the get so now we all have to pretend they were deviously misled by mustache twirling evil geniuses when, in fact, it was just the usual Obama and Duhdministration and Cronies. If you like your doctor/insurer you can keep them and get $2500 back was an obvious lie. Everything said to sell Ocare was a lie. Everything.
I can just imagine this group sitting around laughing, knowing that they would get away with telling lie after lie, and why should they worry, they knew the press wouldn't ask any embarrassing questions.
It is a very safe bet that Jonathon Gruber is not in circumstances that require he enroll in ObamaCare, or even carry a high deductible, high co-pay version of medical insurance. He is a university employee, and as such, is not a victim of the bill he (helped) write.
And why did Gruber (help) write that bill? Do we ask too much to have Congressional staffers write proposed bills under the guidance of the elected representatives we send to DC to do just that work? And to read and understand bills before voting on them?
Gruber's boastful and arrogant statements confirm for many exactly what is believed true about the ACA: It was written by outsiders with a leftist political objective, and who believe that if voters knew what they were doing, the voters would be brutally angry.
Says Gruber: Yeah, lack of transparency and lying instead is not totally cool, but, bottom line, I rather have this law than not.
Reminds me of this BBC exchange with Eric Hobsbawm, the British Marxist historian:
On the BBC2's Late Show in 1994, while being interviewed about the fall of the Berlin Wall, five years earlier, he defended 'what had to be done'. Interviewer Michael Ignatieff asked: 'What (your view) comes down to is that, had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15-20 million people might have been justified?'
Hobsbawm's unhesitating answer was a single word: 'Yes.'
Obama is so going to regret being "present" for that particular photo op. It's the sort of iconic visual image that lingers forever regardless of the original context and the fact that everyone else, including Super Poot, was also dressed up like a maroon moron. All props to the allusion to Dr Evil (but where's the white cat?), the best caption so far is this one:
To bend reality and priorities to the extent that one believes Obama's tripling of the Dow and cutting unemployment in half is inferior to Bush's crashing the Dow and tripling unemployment takes a mindset that is too removed to debate.
I haven't watched the video. I take it my description, that you object to their tactic of treating at as "too controversial" is the biggest complaint here. In which case, what a sin. I sure hope no Republican or CEO paying him off is ever opaque about his real message.
No republican talking points for miles. It's one of your guys, one of your precious elitist leftist government-health care architects explaining how deceiving the stupid masses was all part of the plan.
IIRC, Kentucky's one of the stronger beneficiaries of the ACA. If this tactic led to the passage of a law that's really so abominable, you'd think the incoming majority leader would get ready to whack it to bits.
But, he's not.
I guess Obama's guys aren't the only ones who are opaque about what they're really up to.
Gruber said that “the stupidity of the American voter” made it important for him and the White House to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,”
The biggest stock market bubble in history, the final and complete fictionalization of employment numbers, economic "growth" underwritten by China 'cause they're such good guys ... what's not to love, America? Add to that the infinite grievance-mongering, complete lack of transparency and accountability, further politicization and now militarization of the civil bureaucracy, 24/7 cronyism, sympathizing with the enemy as foreign policy, laying the groundwork for the next foreign war as foreign policy, neverending efforts to undermine voter rights in the name of "voting rights." Also is a shitty golfer even and despite all the golfing he does. UN-FUCKING-TEACHABLE NARCISSIST.
Not even Congress likes the guy, and they'll suck up to anyone.
Obamacare was passed on party line vote in the dead of night. The hack press do all they can to suppress the facts: Endless broken promises about how we would all save an average of $2500.00. LIE. It's 2500$ in the other direction, actually. Obama and the good doggie mind-cramp leftwinger progressives repeated that lie over and over: (why so many of those assholes are NOW out of a job. heh)
UDALL IS GONE - YEAH! Kay Hagen - GONE + 6 others.
“If you like your plan you can keep your plan.” LIE
Pelosi's classic words of democracy: “We had to pass it to find out what is in it.” YES MA'AM!
The premium hikes, deductible spikes, and dropped coverage are VERY REAL TO AMERICANS.
Screw you and your corrupt party, Rtimo.
Now we have a video showcasing the Obamacare architect and his own words. We knew it, you fell for it and you continue to fall for it. Sad, really.
If there's really a stock market bubble I really want to know how Amartel came by that information and what he's doing with his investments as an alternative, if he has any.
April, you have to understand people like Ritmo, they're vicarious sadists. When they see a victim and a con man, they identify with the con man. "Wow, look at that, he's totally pulling one over on that sucker. I'm so proud I'm in the know, I'm not that fool. Hahaha, that's great."
Meanwhile the con man's accomplice is lifting Ritmo's wallet while he's distracted and watching the show.
My employer-paid premium is less than $100/month. And I'm not under 30.
The sadist, Mitch, is people like you who say ignoring and growing the number of people without any coverage and decreasing the ability of the poor to pay is morally superior to alternative courses. How can anyone who has coverage complain about people who had much less now getting some? It's morally disingenuous to say you need people to care about your own premium if you prove your contempt for those who didn't even have the luxury of a plan, let alone a premium to bitch about.
Mitch - You are correct. vicarious sadist who appreciates the con man.
The point of Obamacare was to fill the pockets of the top 8 insurance companies who climbed into bed with it.
We had health care for the poor, and no one objects to that. The rest of us don't want to be forced to buy a crappy product that provides less and costs more.
We had health care for the poor, and no one objects to that.
The rest of us don't want to be forced to buy a crappy product that provides less and costs more.
Oh the hilarious irony of someone who thinks higher cost = higher quality complaining about how the poor had already supposedly gotten adequate coverage prior to passage of the act.
The precision thinking and understanding of someone who uses phrases like "crappy products" must be overwhelming. I'm pretty sure April will tell us exactly how these products have gotten crappier. She must be a more astute student of medical necessity and the components of quality care than I.
Screw the uninsured poor, complain about how the adequately covered are screwed over by lacking Cadillac plans and proclaim one's moral superiority. Yup, I think that's how it works in some strange inverted universe.
It's always the morally superior who complain about how the fate their better lot is more important than the fate of those with nothing.
"Premiums for job-based insurance rose modestly for the third consecutive year, reflecting slowed spending, even as key elements of the federal health care law went into effect.
Family premiums rose 3 percent in 2014, one of the lowest increases tracked since the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust began surveying employers in 1999. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
Nonetheless, the cost of the average family plan rose to $16,834 annually, according to the survey of more than 2,000 employers nationwide.
8 million covered out of 400 million. Fantastic.
The NY Times link title: In Context, Health Premium Increases Don’t Actually Look Like Increases
LOL. The New York Times - hehehehehe snicker. Seriously.
snip: Yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a six-page report predicting that Obamacare could cause premiums to increase for nearly two-thirds of small- to medium-sized businesses. “This results in roughly 11 million individuals whose premiums are estimated to be higher as a result of the ACA and about 6 million individuals who are estimated to have lower premiums,” CMS writes. But CMS’ projections almost certainly understate the problem, one that will begin to affect millions of workers in the second half of 2014.
I claim no moral superiority to you, Ritmo. I'm a bastard like all the rest of them, as fallen as my fellow man. The difference between you and I, is that I am not convinced that I can love my fellow man via the heavy hand of government, and I don't grant my inner bastard license by the dispensation of my altruistic politics.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Corruptocrat morality: Fuck the poor. What about me? My donors owe me! meeeee! Plus, voters love us and will blindly follow us over the cliff. Let's lie to the suckers and screw them over but good. Stupid idiot voters. Transparency *this*.
Congratulations April. You only overestimated the population of the U.S. by 28%. Yep, decreases in premium growth from 8% to 3% should be expected to escape you given f-ups that large.
No one cares about the video. For political operatives like you, I can see the appeal. But the facts are still the facts. Ignore them away and go fight the good fight for honest political consultancy that Republicans are so well known for.
The difference between you and I, is that I am not convinced that I can love my fellow man via the heavy hand of government, and I don't grant my inner bastard license by the dispensation of my altruistic politics.
That's not the difference at all.
The difference is that when you are shown that the government has clearly made a difference for the better, you object on the basis that your selfishness won't allow you to see it.
It is really great. That 8% is 3.8 million people who now don't have to die or remain in a permanent state of ill health from a chronic disease.
But who cares about millions of people when 59 seconds of video shows that not all altruists are altruistically respectful of low-information politicians. (And BTW, I did watch your video sound-bite. Worst 59 seconds of my life. If I could have it back, I would).
How on earth am I a political operative? I'm an American citizen with a voice.
The same voice that the pol ops parrot regularly.
One, mind you, that your party would love to silence.
No one minds your voice or how loud it is. They just don't have a problem asking you which parts of your brain and eyeballs you feel you need to shut off when speaking and why.
I would like to nominate Ritmo as the most demented mofo on the internet, next to Crack.
Crack, however, is in a class all by himself. He's been exiled from TOP, and he now devotes himself to denouncing Althouse's entire family as the most vile racists on earth. You can't help but be amused and satisfied with this outcome.
Somebody, Ritmo will may also rise to this level of dementia. For now, he occupies a distant second place.
Strangest thing. I read several blogs daily. And for the past couple of months there has been no discussion of ObamaCare.
But beginning last Thursday (two days post mid-term elections) ObamaCare popped up in the comments of each blog, and wherever it popped up, there was an earnest proponent claiming that he or she subscribed, it was inexpensive, the coverage was great, if you didn't like it you are immoral,, a Republican, hated poor people, hated minorities, favored the wealthy, etc.
It all seems choreographed, you know?
And interestingly, none would answer some basic questions like: what is your deductible? Single or family? Co-pay amount? Issuing company? Lifetime maximum? Name of your previous insurer?
When questions were asked, they were never answered, and the conversation was artfully turned back on the person asking the question.
No talk of the destruction of the middle class. Full-time employment is vanishing. People who want to climb the socio-economic ladder through hard work are stymied... why? one big reason - Obamacare.
I suspect that the Althouses are sublimely happy to be rid of Crack. It was only the usual liberal fear of being accused of racism that persuaded them to humor his Mau-Mau act.
That he now spends all his time cursing his former benefactors is a sort of poetic and comic justice for both sides.
This is the main thrust of the eight Walter Russel Mead essays I linked last night.
(Who incidentally used to be solidly Democrat until he wised the fuck up and realized what duplicitous lying-ass turds they all are -- to themselves first of all and then to everybody else secondarily. This post is solid proof of all that.)
That the third American dream is not so much being better off with larger houses, more expensive cars and more of them, burning more fuel, eating more food -- all that is already attained, although Maslow is not mentioned. So improvement in American lives comes from better transportation, better communication devices, better food all around. And we do see that happening. Better information and we see that too. The ineluctable change that is occurring, the American dream is changing from power centered in distant Washington, where we see people accumulating power who do not deserve it, who are flatly not worthy of having it, back to the States, closer to the individual. Out of the hands of unaccountable unelected federal regulators and into the hands of individuals who can vote for their representation and not by hide-bound bureaucrats who cannot handle it without exhibiting their corruption, as this post shows.
Even dummkopf Democrats with their screaming daddy issues are finally becoming aware that the country is not governable. Why? Because the third American dream is taking hold. Americans now have more time, more energy, more money to concentrate on their politics and they want it close to home, and they are not so beholden to remote politicians. Especially the ones they don't like.
La la la la la la suck it. Just suck it. The longstanding Dem dreams of overarching government with their disgusting filthy mitts in everybody's business is falling by the wayside bit by bit, in slow motion, in fits and starts, right before our wondering eyes.
What we're seeing is the struggle of a transition period. Eventually even dip ships will wake up and when they do they'll imagine it all their own idea.
Because it will be. They will wake up to a new idea as improvement and it actually will be their own idea.
Even though we've told them 1,00 times.
Confused about what is happening? This goes far in explaining.
And that is why such things as one-size-fits-all healthcare, school lunches, is so broadly rejected, and with extreme prejudice.
I must add, socialized medicine really is the way to go for all the reasons given. it saved my life several times. I'd be long dead without it. But not at the Federal level. That's just flat stupid. Better for it to be socialized closer to home. In my case the district level, not the state level, but it is the same idea. I do pay for all those womanly things that I have no use for. And they pay for mine.
Further, the United States is uniquely situated for just such experimentation unlike all other first world and other western countries.
What is so right for those countries is not so good for America. The idea might be, but not the scale.
In this manner individual freedom is sustained and enhanced. The American dream in new form brought about mostly by technology.
Like the little douchegbag on Twitter last night who presented a woefully wrong map of the states, calling flyover states Idiotnation, Her map was so wrong it was actually funny. Others pointed it out, but being dummkopf and partisan she's impervious. The situation much worse for her "team" than her silly map indicated, but bad enough for her to say, "Well, I guess I'll give up my plan for moving to Denver (her map has Denver solidly red -- fucking idiot) instead, I'll go to Oregon (where the smart people are, like her.)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I assured her it's no loss to us. We used to have a very nice state until her malevolent type moved in large numbers taking over the capital and making it worse through their corruption, as they so often do.
Oh, I'm sure you would wonder something like that, wouldn't you?
You thrive off of discord, dissension, misunderstandings, mistrust and dislike.
I had my schadenfreude moment of Althouse when crap went down years ago… when it led to this place cropping up. Much better. Less narcissistic. More interesting.
Althouse? I knew about her problems for a while. So did Troop. So did anyone with morals and a brain.
I'm not surprised to learn you were too slow to get all that when the rest of us did. When Meade comes around here to snipe now and then and the entire household takes inventory of their burnt bridges, it's just sad.
History's repetition is first tragedy, then farce. But it's only reliably funny to people who never learn from it and thrive off others sad episodes. People like you.
Althouse, Meade and Crack are sad in how they relate. Any jokes that could be had at their expense, I made sure to have. I laughed when the laughing was good.
But an unwitting clown who never learns how to see their own irony is sad.
People with morals and a brain get this. It has nothing to do with effective humor.
Ask Haz how funny Meade has become. To grown-ups, people who can't smell their own shit eventually just become a pain in the ass.
Surely not one accorded on the basis of excessive pride - which is one thing Crack, Althouse, Meade and you all have way too much of.
I think all four basically deny that they're as proud as they are. They laugh off merited insults by getting more excited at having pissed off the person who insulted them.
Which as a reaction is, again, only so much more pride.
Haz: Although I'll never be able to keep up with all the little things-of-the-moment pissing Chip off, at least his latest comment is a bit more even-handed. But I'll never understand what the devolution of power has to do with health care. If you say a state will do it more efficiently, that's an argument to be made. But that doesn't ensure its fallibility.
But the idea that any federal oversight over healthcare took us a step closer to North Korea I think every Republican now wisely understands can only be dismissed as so much bunk.
I'm sympathetic to devolving power generally. To allowing market innovations in the delivery of care, etc.
But healthcare is an industry. The same way we never presume mom and pop stores were more efficient than Walmart, we should never presume small states and small town doctors are more efficient at organizing the delivery of health care.
Sure, we might like the small town store and country doctor. We have nostalgia for those things.
But it's ridic to jerk our chains and pretend that those are economic arguments of effectiveness.
In a prison somewhere, Bernie Madoff is looking at the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the fraud known as The Affordable Care Act and saying WTF.
Thomas does his best to pretend that his inherent hatred of others and disregard for them is what defines him as a patriotic American.
But not all Americans outsource their moral sensibility to a Roman envoy. Some of them don't feel their morals to be at odds with their Americanism.
The fact that Thomas does says a lot about Thomas and the way he views his country. And his need for a clerisy to tell him what is right and what is wrong. Lord knows he has no capacity for that using his mind alone.
And there's Thomas' pride again. Love that self-righteousness. No way he could ever be wrong. Others are wrong for caring and advocating help in ways that his Roman leader isn't able to, or so says Thomas.
The fact is that the powerful don't need government advocacy. They already get enough of its patronage without telling it to ignore the destitute so as to get even that much more attention and favor.
A wealthy class that needs the government to devote more attention to it than to the needy can't be a very self-confident group.
But they can be sure that kiss-ass suck-ups like Thomas will be there to advocate for them.
When you're done with the insults, and ready for a fact or two, I'll answer your question.
But you're just a walking talking point. No need for facts. I don't think you've ever cited a fact in your life.
That's not me being angry. That's me telling you you're pathetic.
In what sort of household did you grow up, that told you proud ignorance is better than successful growth and an engaged mind? You must be proud to have done no better than your parents.
But you did manage to get an immigrant wife who was the success that you never could make of yourself. No wonder you idolize her. She was all the things that you curse and insult having been deprived of personally.
Myrna pitied you, Thomas. But it's hard to find other people who so quickly confuse love with pity like that. Yep. You got lucky one time.
You seem to be avoiding the question as your bile curdles, Ritmo.
You actually said that you consider Walmart, a company that built its success step by step in the marketplace as identical to a federally mandated program that penalizes those who will not patronize it.
Getting caught with your pants down talking stupid seems to happen to you a lot, Ritmo. Maybe you should consider ceasing the stupid talk. If you can.
The ACA makes the delivery of care more affordable (if slowing premium growth matters) and efficient.
A guy that doesn't have his big red tongue hanging out wouldn't consider that fact to have anything to do with "pants down". And what's up with that metaphor anyway? Have you been hanging out with the more, er, eccentric priests lately? ;-)
Stop panting and accept the point. People who accuse others of hysteria would be well advised to.
But then, what to do with that big, red, hanging tongue? Can't you roll it up and pack it back into your humungous mouth?
There has to be a talented cartoonist out there who can draw a priest in vestments taking out a switch and whipping a Shouting Thomas head on a doggy-body.
The howls would be almost as comprehensible as the babble he spews here. Well, at least the meaning would be the same.
Rhythm and Balls said... (And BTW, I did watch your video sound-bite. Worst 59 seconds of my life. If I could have it back, I would).
I thought it was candid and revealing. Why the visceral reaction, Ritmo? It reminds me of the time I threw that quote from Oxford AGW wanker in your face and you threw it back saying who cares. For a devotee of truth, you sure like yours filtered.
"The ACA makes the delivery of care more affordable (if slowing premium growth matters) and efficient."
All the people who were given cancelation notices, (despite assurances from Obama that would not happen) are chopped liver? Masses of people are now required to buy more expensive plans that cover things they don't need, with a higher deductible and a spiked premium. They must be dreaming. It's all a lie to make dear leader and the economic Fannie and Freddie architects look bad.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. It’s a second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
- ObamaCare Architect, MIT Economist Dr. Jonathan Gruber
The disingenuous part of Ritmo's take is that the ACA hit the middle class the hardest. In California, the ownership class has have gotten away with weakening the full-time paradigm of work. To be fair, both parties support the importation of lower wage "labor units" at both the unskilled and highly skilled levels. The effect is best visualized:
D ⇒ (middle class) ⇐ R
The upcoming "debate" on immigration will be telling because only lies and lack of transparency will get things "done."
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Thanks, Lem, for the info. Crack wrote disparaging remarks about just about everyone on her blog. It only mattered when comments were made about her? And not even on her blog? (Not questions for you... just the thought in my head.)
Frankly, I found it damaged her reputation more when she allowed him to mindless rant at everyone but her. She was clearly playing favorites with Crack and the only apparent reason was because he was black. Blech. Bad reason to treat anyone differently.
109 comments:
Gruber: Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.
Me: But what about Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness?
Gruber: You STUPID!
Duh!
Why is this news?
Everybody should have known this already.
It would be tactically and politically foolish to blame the idiots who refused to think for themselves and realize Ocare was a shit sandwich from the get so now we all have to pretend they were deviously misled by mustache twirling evil geniuses when, in fact, it was just the usual Obama and Duhdministration and Cronies. If you like your doctor/insurer you can keep them and get $2500 back was an obvious lie. Everything said to sell Ocare was a lie. Everything.
Now we have to lie so nobody's feelings get hurt.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."
Nancy warned us.
I can just imagine this group sitting around laughing, knowing that they would get away with telling lie after lie, and why should they worry, they knew the press wouldn't ask any embarrassing questions.
It is a very safe bet that Jonathon Gruber is not in circumstances that require he enroll in ObamaCare, or even carry a high deductible, high co-pay version of medical insurance. He is a university employee, and as such, is not a victim of the bill he (helped) write.
And why did Gruber (help) write that bill? Do we ask too much to have Congressional staffers write proposed bills under the guidance of the elected representatives we send to DC to do just that work? And to read and understand bills before voting on them?
Gruber's boastful and arrogant statements confirm for many exactly what is believed true about the ACA: It was written by outsiders with a leftist political objective, and who believe that if voters knew what they were doing, the voters would be brutally angry.
If there is one thing they got right, that's it.
Larfing it up about Ocare:
OMG, you guys, stawp
No, seriously, stop. I think I just pissed myself
And just for fun
At the Douchebag Convention Achievement Break Out Session
Seriously, what was up with those Dr. Evil tunics, Amartel?
I wonder why this isn't on the mainstream alphabet channel nightly news?
It's big news. Real big news.
It's not news to those of us who know how the economically corrupt corruptocrat Paul Krugman liar left operate.
Says Gruber: Yeah, lack of transparency and lying instead is not totally cool, but, bottom line, I rather have this law than not.
Reminds me of this BBC exchange with Eric Hobsbawm, the British Marxist historian:
On the BBC2's Late Show in 1994, while being interviewed about the fall of the Berlin Wall, five years earlier, he defended 'what had to be done'. Interviewer Michael Ignatieff asked: 'What (your view) comes down to is that, had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15-20 million people might have been justified?'
Hobsbawm's unhesitating answer was a single word: 'Yes.'
Should I be despairing that our overlords are so contemptible, or happy that their exceeding contempt for us hastens their overthrow?
Christy,
Yes.
Obama is so going to regret being "present" for that particular photo op. It's the sort of iconic visual image that lingers forever regardless of the original context and the fact that everyone else, including Super Poot, was also dressed up like a maroon moron. All props to the allusion to Dr Evil (but where's the white cat?), the
best caption so far is this one:
Epic Caption
The squirrel has eaten Ritmo's brain again.
Shorter Koolaid tipping true believer Ritmo:
but but but but Bush! Lied! No WMD! Tax Hikes work perfectly! Red Herrings & Squirrels!
Care to comment on the subject at hand? You can't, can't you.
C'mon April.
Does that mean you've given up defending Republican talking points and can instead only complain that Democratic legislation is too controversial?
To bend reality and priorities to the extent that one believes Obama's tripling of the Dow and cutting unemployment in half is inferior to Bush's crashing the Dow and tripling unemployment takes a mindset that is too removed to debate.
I haven't watched the video. I take it my description, that you object to their tactic of treating at as "too controversial" is the biggest complaint here. In which case, what a sin. I sure hope no Republican or CEO paying him off is ever opaque about his real message.
Don't be ridiculous, Ritmo. Watch the video.
No republican talking points for miles.
It's one of your guys, one of your precious elitist leftist government-health care architects explaining how deceiving the stupid masses was all part of the plan.
IIRC, Kentucky's one of the stronger beneficiaries of the ACA. If this tactic led to the passage of a law that's really so abominable, you'd think the incoming majority leader would get ready to whack it to bits.
But, he's not.
I guess Obama's guys aren't the only ones who are opaque about what they're really up to.
And McConnell's deception of the "stupid masses" would lead you to believe he needs to end the law yesterday.
But his real actions show you what he's not deceiving you into believing.
But IOKIYAR.
Gruber said that “the stupidity of the American voter” made it important for him and the White House to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,”
Awesome. Right Ritmo?
Ritmo cannot comment on the rot in his own party because:
*fingers in ears*
lalalalalalalalallaaaa
Shorter April:
Democrats: "Deceiving the low information voter is inevitable."
Republicans: "It's really important that we believe the lies we tell."
Yes, April. Pick your poison.
Gurber was going for you, and he won you over.
Goober didn't have to tell me anything. I already:
1. Felt that universal/improved access was socially better.
2. Knew that all insurance requires more relative burden on the safe case than the one who needs it.
Which of these was a problem for you and these supposedly fellow "high-information" voters of yours?
I don't think the voters mattered at all in any Congressional vote. The "deceived" here were Repubby legislators.
But they would have always opposed it anyway.
So, the supposedly abstruse nature of the way the legislation was written therefore did two things:
1. Made them more confused about what kinds of talking points to barrage the airwaves with.
2. Revealed to us that they don't like to read the things they vote on.
Win-win for the high-information political non-ignoramus. ;-)
The biggest stock market bubble in history, the final and complete fictionalization of employment numbers, economic "growth" underwritten by China 'cause they're such good guys ... what's not to love, America? Add to that the infinite grievance-mongering, complete lack of transparency and accountability, further politicization and now militarization of the civil bureaucracy, 24/7 cronyism, sympathizing with the enemy as foreign policy, laying the groundwork for the next foreign war as foreign policy, neverending efforts to undermine voter rights in the name of "voting rights." Also is a shitty golfer even and despite all the golfing he does.
UN-FUCKING-TEACHABLE NARCISSIST.
Not even Congress likes the guy, and they'll suck up to anyone.
Obamacare was passed on party line vote in the dead of night. The hack press do all they can to suppress the facts: Endless broken promises about how we would all save an average of $2500.00. LIE.
It's 2500$ in the other direction, actually.
Obama and the good doggie mind-cramp leftwinger progressives repeated that lie over and over: (why so many of those assholes are NOW out of a job. heh)
UDALL IS GONE - YEAH!
Kay Hagen - GONE
+ 6 others.
“If you like your plan you can keep your plan.” LIE
Pelosi's classic words of democracy: “We had to pass it to find out what is in it.” YES MA'AM!
The premium hikes, deductible spikes, and dropped coverage are VERY REAL TO AMERICANS.
Screw you and your corrupt party, Rtimo.
Now we have a video showcasing the Obamacare architect and his own words. We knew it, you fell for it and you continue to fall for it. Sad, really.
Not even Congress likes the guy, and they'll suck up to anyone.
Hah ha. You say that like it's a bad thing - an indictment of Obama. ;-)
If there's really a stock market bubble I really want to know how Amartel came by that information and what he's doing with his investments as an alternative, if he has any.
The premium hikes, deductible spikes, and dropped coverage are VERY REAL TO AMERICANS.
Average cost increases are down and the number of people covered have increased. Numbers matter for those of us who don't obsess about the extremes.
Screw you and your corrupt party, Rtimo.
I apologize for not better sympathizing with your plea for mathematical ineptitude as a political virtue.
April, you have to understand people like Ritmo, they're vicarious sadists. When they see a victim and a con man, they identify with the con man. "Wow, look at that, he's totally pulling one over on that sucker. I'm so proud I'm in the know, I'm not that fool. Hahaha, that's great."
Meanwhile the con man's accomplice is lifting Ritmo's wallet while he's distracted and watching the show.
Average cost increases are down and the number of people covered have increased.
NOPE. You are incorrect.
My employer-paid premium is less than $100/month. And I'm not under 30.
The sadist, Mitch, is people like you who say ignoring and growing the number of people without any coverage and decreasing the ability of the poor to pay is morally superior to alternative courses. How can anyone who has coverage complain about people who had much less now getting some? It's morally disingenuous to say you need people to care about your own premium if you prove your contempt for those who didn't even have the luxury of a plan, let alone a premium to bitch about.
Cite it. Link your Daily Tattler or whatever the right-wing rag du jour calls itself and show me the propaganda you're relying on.
Mitch - You are correct. vicarious sadist who appreciates the con man.
The point of Obamacare was to fill the pockets of the top 8 insurance companies who climbed into bed with it.
We had health care for the poor, and no one objects to that.
The rest of us don't want to be forced to buy a crappy product that provides less and costs more.
While I await the source of April's propaganda, WSJ, NYT and Kaiser all show the average rate of premium growth slowing:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/cost-of-employer-health-coverage-shows-muted-growth-1410357841
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/upshot/in-context-health-premium-increases-dont-actually-look-like-increases.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/kff-employer-survey-2/
The irony of people who don't read complaining about being deceived is ripe.
We had health care for the poor, and no one objects to that.
The rest of us don't want to be forced to buy a crappy product that provides less and costs more.
Oh the hilarious irony of someone who thinks higher cost = higher quality complaining about how the poor had already supposedly gotten adequate coverage prior to passage of the act.
The precision thinking and understanding of someone who uses phrases like "crappy products" must be overwhelming. I'm pretty sure April will tell us exactly how these products have gotten crappier. She must be a more astute student of medical necessity and the components of quality care than I.
Screw the uninsured poor, complain about how the adequately covered are screwed over by lacking Cadillac plans and proclaim one's moral superiority. Yup, I think that's how it works in some strange inverted universe.
It's always the morally superior who complain about how the fate their better lot is more important than the fate of those with nothing.
Whenever I see someone with less than me I always complain about how it's immoral to care more about his circumstances than about my own.
If Mitch's morality of greater concern for the better insured were illustrative, he might ask, "But why is no one showing concern for the sadist?"
Lol.
Republican morality: Fuck the poor. What about me?
from Rit's brilliant links!
"Premiums for job-based insurance rose modestly for the third consecutive year, reflecting slowed spending, even as key elements of the federal health care law went into effect.
Family premiums rose 3 percent in 2014, one of the lowest increases tracked since the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust began surveying employers in 1999. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
Nonetheless, the cost of the average family plan rose to $16,834 annually, according to the survey of more than 2,000 employers nationwide.
8 million covered out of 400 million. Fantastic.
The NY Times link title:
In Context, Health Premium Increases Don’t Actually Look Like Increases
LOL. The New York Times - hehehehehe snicker. Seriously.
The Next Shoe To Drop: Obamacare Will Increase The Cost Of Employer-Sponsored Insurance
snip:
Yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a six-page report predicting that Obamacare could cause premiums to increase for nearly two-thirds of small- to medium-sized businesses. “This results in roughly 11 million individuals whose premiums are estimated to be higher as a result of the ACA and about 6 million individuals who are estimated to have lower premiums,” CMS writes. But CMS’ projections almost certainly understate the problem, one that will begin to affect millions of workers in the second half of 2014.
rtwt
Meanwhile, Ritmo still has not addressed directly the contents of the video. I wonder why? Very inconvenient. tisk.
I claim no moral superiority to you, Ritmo. I'm a bastard like all the rest of them, as fallen as my fellow man. The difference between you and I, is that I am not convinced that I can love my fellow man via the heavy hand of government, and I don't grant my inner bastard license by the dispensation of my altruistic politics.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Corruptocrat morality: Fuck the poor. What about me? My donors owe me! meeeee! Plus, voters love us and will blindly follow us over the cliff. Let's lie to the suckers and screw them over but good. Stupid idiot voters. Transparency *this*.
Congratulations April. You only overestimated the population of the U.S. by 28%. Yep, decreases in premium growth from 8% to 3% should be expected to escape you given f-ups that large.
No one cares about the video. For political operatives like you, I can see the appeal. But the facts are still the facts. Ignore them away and go fight the good fight for honest political consultancy that Republicans are so well known for.
Everyone should care about that video. You won't even watch it because you know in your heart how bad it is. Sad.
oh true - 8 million out of 316.13 million.
Still really great!
The difference between you and I, is that I am not convinced that I can love my fellow man via the heavy hand of government, and I don't grant my inner bastard license by the dispensation of my altruistic politics.
That's not the difference at all.
The difference is that when you are shown that the government has clearly made a difference for the better, you object on the basis that your selfishness won't allow you to see it.
How on earth am I a political operative? I'm an American citizen with a voice. One, mind you, that your party would love to silence.
It is really great. That 8% is 3.8 million people who now don't have to die or remain in a permanent state of ill health from a chronic disease.
But who cares about millions of people when 59 seconds of video shows that not all altruists are altruistically respectful of low-information politicians. (And BTW, I did watch your video sound-bite. Worst 59 seconds of my life. If I could have it back, I would).
How on earth am I a political operative? I'm an American citizen with a voice.
The same voice that the pol ops parrot regularly.
One, mind you, that your party would love to silence.
No one minds your voice or how loud it is. They just don't have a problem asking you which parts of your brain and eyeballs you feel you need to shut off when speaking and why.
Rit - your straw-man arguments are tired.
Oh no. They still have lots of energy.
As do the he-man arguments. ;-)
Must be that time of the month.
I think Dems ran from Obama because he deprived them of an issue.
It's like how people say that Republicans don't really want to make abortion illegal. It's better politics to keep the issue indefinitely alive.
Obama deprived Democrats of the need to always tell people how horribly America was doing on health care access.
"It's better politics to keep the issue indefinitely alive."
I see what you did there.
"If you like your period, you can keep your period. Period."
I hope not. Cory Gardner removed all the tampons from every store shelf in the entire universe.
I would like to nominate Ritmo as the most demented mofo on the internet, next to Crack.
Crack, however, is in a class all by himself. He's been exiled from TOP, and he now devotes himself to denouncing Althouse's entire family as the most vile racists on earth. You can't help but be amused and satisfied with this outcome.
Somebody, Ritmo will may also rise to this level of dementia. For now, he occupies a distant second place.
Wonder if Gruber will try to put this down to just another "speak-o—you know, like a typo"?
Strangest thing. I read several blogs daily. And for the past couple of months there has been no discussion of ObamaCare.
But beginning last Thursday (two days post mid-term elections) ObamaCare popped up in the comments of each blog, and wherever it popped up, there was an earnest proponent claiming that he or she subscribed, it was inexpensive, the coverage was great, if you didn't like it you are immoral,, a Republican, hated poor people, hated minorities, favored the wealthy, etc.
It all seems choreographed, you know?
And interestingly, none would answer some basic questions like: what is your deductible? Single or family? Co-pay amount? Issuing company? Lifetime maximum? Name of your previous insurer?
When questions were asked, they were never answered, and the conversation was artfully turned back on the person asking the question.
Interesting, innit?
You can't help but be amused and satisfied with this outcome.
Laughing at others' misfortunes is the only way a sadist like Tommy can feel good about himself.
No talk of the destruction of the middle class. Full-time employment is vanishing. People who want to climb the socio-economic ladder through hard work are stymied... why? one big reason - Obamacare.
Others' misfortunes, Ritmo?
I suspect that the Althouses are sublimely happy to be rid of Crack. It was only the usual liberal fear of being accused of racism that persuaded them to humor his Mau-Mau act.
That he now spends all his time cursing his former benefactors is a sort of poetic and comic justice for both sides.
I wonder what circle of hell awaits you?
Obamacare is only one factor in the current economic stagnation.
Deliberately hamstringing the oil, gas and coal industries in favor of green energy scam handouts to cronies is probably a bigger factor.
The real damage from Obamacare is the incredible cost added to hiring new employees.
This is the main thrust of the eight Walter Russel Mead essays I linked last night.
(Who incidentally used to be solidly Democrat until he wised the fuck up and realized what duplicitous lying-ass turds they all are -- to themselves first of all and then to everybody else secondarily. This post is solid proof of all that.)
That the third American dream is not so much being better off with larger houses, more expensive cars and more of them, burning more fuel, eating more food -- all that is already attained, although Maslow is not mentioned. So improvement in American lives comes from better transportation, better communication devices, better food all around. And we do see that happening. Better information and we see that too. The ineluctable change that is occurring, the American dream is changing from power centered in distant Washington, where we see people accumulating power who do not deserve it, who are flatly not worthy of having it, back to the States, closer to the individual. Out of the hands of unaccountable unelected federal regulators and into the hands of individuals who can vote for their representation and not by hide-bound bureaucrats who cannot handle it without exhibiting their corruption, as this post shows.
Even dummkopf Democrats with their screaming daddy issues are finally becoming aware that the country is not governable. Why? Because the third American dream is taking hold. Americans now have more time, more energy, more money to concentrate on their politics and they want it close to home, and they are not so beholden to remote politicians. Especially the ones they don't like.
La la la la la la suck it. Just suck it. The longstanding Dem dreams of overarching government with their disgusting filthy mitts in everybody's business is falling by the wayside bit by bit, in slow motion, in fits and starts, right before our wondering eyes.
What we're seeing is the struggle of a transition period. Eventually even dip ships will wake up and when they do they'll imagine it all their own idea.
Because it will be. They will wake up to a new idea as improvement and it actually will be their own idea.
Even though we've told them 1,00 times.
Confused about what is happening? This goes far in explaining.
And that is why such things as one-size-fits-all healthcare, school lunches, is so broadly rejected, and with extreme prejudice.
I must add, socialized medicine really is the way to go for all the reasons given. it saved my life several times. I'd be long dead without it. But not at the Federal level. That's just flat stupid. Better for it to be socialized closer to home. In my case the district level, not the state level, but it is the same idea. I do pay for all those womanly things that I have no use for. And they pay for mine.
Further, the United States is uniquely situated for just such experimentation unlike all other first world and other western countries.
What is so right for those countries is not so good for America. The idea might be, but not the scale.
In this manner individual freedom is sustained and enhanced. The American dream in new form brought about mostly by technology.
Like the little douchegbag on Twitter last night who presented a woefully wrong map of the states, calling flyover states Idiotnation, Her map was so wrong it was actually funny. Others pointed it out, but being dummkopf and partisan she's impervious. The situation much worse for her "team" than her silly map indicated, but bad enough for her to say, "Well, I guess I'll give up my plan for moving to Denver (her map has Denver solidly red -- fucking idiot) instead, I'll go to Oregon (where the smart people are, like her.)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I assured her it's no loss to us. We used to have a very nice state until her malevolent type moved in large numbers taking over the capital and making it worse through their corruption, as they so often do.
Oh, I'm sure you would wonder something like that, wouldn't you?
You thrive off of discord, dissension, misunderstandings, mistrust and dislike.
I had my schadenfreude moment of Althouse when crap went down years ago… when it led to this place cropping up. Much better. Less narcissistic. More interesting.
Althouse? I knew about her problems for a while. So did Troop. So did anyone with morals and a brain.
I'm not surprised to learn you were too slow to get all that when the rest of us did. When Meade comes around here to snipe now and then and the entire household takes inventory of their burnt bridges, it's just sad.
History's repetition is first tragedy, then farce. But it's only reliably funny to people who never learn from it and thrive off others sad episodes. People like you.
Althouse, Meade and Crack are sad in how they relate. Any jokes that could be had at their expense, I made sure to have. I laughed when the laughing was good.
But an unwitting clown who never learns how to see their own irony is sad.
People with morals and a brain get this. It has nothing to do with effective humor.
Ask Haz how funny Meade has become. To grown-ups, people who can't smell their own shit eventually just become a pain in the ass.
Chip wins the internet. Nailed it!
I wonder what circle of hell awaits you?
Surely not one accorded on the basis of excessive pride - which is one thing Crack, Althouse, Meade and you all have way too much of.
I think all four basically deny that they're as proud as they are. They laugh off merited insults by getting more excited at having pissed off the person who insulted them.
Which as a reaction is, again, only so much more pride.
Haz: Although I'll never be able to keep up with all the little things-of-the-moment pissing Chip off, at least his latest comment is a bit more even-handed. But I'll never understand what the devolution of power has to do with health care. If you say a state will do it more efficiently, that's an argument to be made. But that doesn't ensure its fallibility.
But the idea that any federal oversight over healthcare took us a step closer to North Korea I think every Republican now wisely understands can only be dismissed as so much bunk.
I'm sympathetic to devolving power generally. To allowing market innovations in the delivery of care, etc.
But healthcare is an industry. The same way we never presume mom and pop stores were more efficient than Walmart, we should never presume small states and small town doctors are more efficient at organizing the delivery of health care.
Sure, we might like the small town store and country doctor. We have nostalgia for those things.
But it's ridic to jerk our chains and pretend that those are economic arguments of effectiveness.
In a prison somewhere, Bernie Madoff is looking at the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the fraud known as The Affordable Care Act and saying WTF.
Ritmo does his "I care" bit.
This is his most amusing affected posture, and it always proceeds his explosion into paranoid rage.
Walmart is a private venture, not a government boondoogle, which is why we assume that it is more efficient.
Well, we know it's more efficient, because its customers chose to patronize it.
This is not the same as patronizing a mandated federal program... or facing penalties for failing to do so.
Really, Ritmo, you've got to do better than this.
Thomas does his best to pretend that his inherent hatred of others and disregard for them is what defines him as a patriotic American.
But not all Americans outsource their moral sensibility to a Roman envoy. Some of them don't feel their morals to be at odds with their Americanism.
The fact that Thomas does says a lot about Thomas and the way he views his country. And his need for a clerisy to tell him what is right and what is wrong. Lord knows he has no capacity for that using his mind alone.
Here it comes!
Tell me more, Ritmo, about this wonderful, federally mandated "efficiency" that rivals the market driven success of Walmart.
You really said that stupid shit, Ritmo. What comes over you that causes this jabbering?
And there's Thomas' pride again. Love that self-righteousness. No way he could ever be wrong. Others are wrong for caring and advocating help in ways that his Roman leader isn't able to, or so says Thomas.
The fact is that the powerful don't need government advocacy. They already get enough of its patronage without telling it to ignore the destitute so as to get even that much more attention and favor.
A wealthy class that needs the government to devote more attention to it than to the needy can't be a very self-confident group.
But they can be sure that kiss-ass suck-ups like Thomas will be there to advocate for them.
When you're done with the insults, and ready for a fact or two, I'll answer your question.
But you're just a walking talking point. No need for facts. I don't think you've ever cited a fact in your life.
That's not me being angry. That's me telling you you're pathetic.
In what sort of household did you grow up, that told you proud ignorance is better than successful growth and an engaged mind? You must be proud to have done no better than your parents.
But you did manage to get an immigrant wife who was the success that you never could make of yourself. No wonder you idolize her. She was all the things that you curse and insult having been deprived of personally.
Myrna pitied you, Thomas. But it's hard to find other people who so quickly confuse love with pity like that. Yep. You got lucky one time.
But it still wasn't love.
You seem to be avoiding the question as your bile curdles, Ritmo.
You actually said that you consider Walmart, a company that built its success step by step in the marketplace as identical to a federally mandated program that penalizes those who will not patronize it.
Getting caught with your pants down talking stupid seems to happen to you a lot, Ritmo. Maybe you should consider ceasing the stupid talk. If you can.
And, it's always amusing to observe you melting down into hysteria.
As I said, you rival Crack when it comes to raging dementia.
The ACA makes the delivery of care more affordable (if slowing premium growth matters) and efficient.
A guy that doesn't have his big red tongue hanging out wouldn't consider that fact to have anything to do with "pants down". And what's up with that metaphor anyway? Have you been hanging out with the more, er, eccentric priests lately? ;-)
Stop panting and accept the point. People who accuse others of hysteria would be well advised to.
But then, what to do with that big, red, hanging tongue? Can't you roll it up and pack it back into your humungous mouth?
I'm glad you've ceased the caring empath act, Ritmo. It's laughable. You should stick with the dumb, savage adolescent.
It's you. Apparently, you will never do any better.
Can someone please translate that 10:35 PM comment? I don't speak barking, panting, yelping, snarling and snipping. Thanks.
Like those great 5 Year Plans, Obamacare has decreed that greater efficiency and cheaper care must and will be achieved.
But the stores shelves were still empty and the quotas were not met.
They pretended to pay us and we pretended to work!
Do you have any opinions that weren't handed down to you from the RCC?
I mean, seriously. There's got to be a priest out there who has the time to take you to doggy obedience training school.
Overheard: But then, what to do with that big, red, hanging tongue? Can't you roll it up and pack it back into your humungous mouth?
Bitch
You've really outdone yourself tonight, Ritmo.
Caught with your pants down talking stupid shit. Explode into vicious abuse. Belch up the usual PC crap.
Quite a performance. Condensed and compact, too.
I bring out the real you, Ritmo.
Whatever.
You are the ultimate verbal masturbator. Always talking to yourself while pretending you're actually engaging.
There has to be a talented cartoonist out there who can draw a priest in vestments taking out a switch and whipping a Shouting Thomas head on a doggy-body.
The howls would be almost as comprehensible as the babble he spews here. Well, at least the meaning would be the same.
Rhythm and Balls said...
(And BTW, I did watch your video sound-bite. Worst 59 seconds of my life. If I could have it back, I would).
I thought it was candid and revealing. Why the visceral reaction, Ritmo? It reminds me of the time I threw that quote from Oxford AGW wanker in your face and you threw it back saying who cares. For a devotee of truth, you sure like yours filtered.
It was a joke.
Rhythm and Balls said...
It was a joke.
ROLF
Ritmo declares the party line:
"The ACA makes the delivery of care more affordable (if slowing premium growth matters) and efficient."
All the people who were given cancelation notices, (despite assurances from Obama that would not happen) are chopped liver?
Masses of people are now required to buy more expensive plans that cover things they don't need, with a higher deductible and a spiked premium. They must be dreaming. It's all a lie to make dear leader and the economic Fannie and Freddie architects look bad.
Here's the quote from Gruber, Rit:
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. It’s a second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
- ObamaCare Architect, MIT Economist Dr. Jonathan Gruber
I see why you cannot comment directly.
The disingenuous part of Ritmo's take is that the ACA hit the middle class the hardest. In California, the ownership class has have gotten away with weakening the full-time paradigm of work. To be fair, both parties support the importation of lower wage "labor units" at both the unskilled and highly skilled levels. The effect is best visualized:
D ⇒ (middle class) ⇐ R
The upcoming "debate" on immigration will be telling because only lies and lack of transparency will get things "done."
Hey, as long as this thread is active and Crack was mentioned... what happened that finally caused Althouse to banish him?
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Great quote.
... what happened that finally caused Althouse to banish him?
She read his blog where according to her he was writing all kinds of disparaging thing about the... dynamic duo. (Althouse and Meade)
An ethical college administration would be embarrassed by this guy's disreputable, dishonest behavior and would fire him.
Lem:
Is that really true that his blog scribbling was the straw that broke the camel's back?
Thanks, Lem, for the info. Crack wrote disparaging remarks about just about everyone on her blog. It only mattered when comments were made about her? And not even on her blog? (Not questions for you... just the thought in my head.)
Frankly, I found it damaged her reputation more when she allowed him to mindless rant at everyone but her. She was clearly playing favorites with Crack and the only apparent reason was because he was black. Blech. Bad reason to treat anyone differently.
Anyway, back to regularly scheduled comments.
I think Crack was banned because he criticized her son on his blog. In a mean way.
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