The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[MikeC]

Bartlett's right. The medicare drug bill was crappy legislation. However, is Bartlett suggesting those that made mistakes should repeat them? (I know, I know, Bartlett is suggesting they lose their jobs, and I would agree).

No, he's saying that someone who voted for a budget buster should shut his yapper over a bill designed to be budget neutral.

It's not the same mistake, it's a different one.

Health Care reform is going to be budget neutral? Do you honestly believe that?

And when it isn't budget neutral can we cancel it? No? Then who really cares if it is budget neutral or not, the goal is Health Care for all (well except for the 20-30 million left out in this bill) damn the costs.

Let me propose this question.....if it wasn't budget neutral would you still want it?

[Chuck to Chuck]

Bartlett's right. The medicare drug bill was crappy legislation. However, is Bartlett suggesting those that made mistakes should repeat them? (I know, I know, Bartlett is suggesting they lose their jobs, and I would agree).

No, he's saying that someone who voted for a budget buster should shut his yapper over a bill designed to be budget neutral.

It's not the same mistake, it's a different one.

Health Care reform is going to be budget neutral? Do you honestly believe that?

And when it isn't budget neutral can we cancel it? No? Then who really cares if it is budget neutral or not, the goal is Health Care for all (well except for the 20-30 million left out in this bill) damn the costs.

Let me propose this question.....if it wasn't budget neutral would you still want it?

Do you even know I want it? 

No.  Of course you don't.  You've avoided every question put to you.

Here's another: Did you support Medicare Part D?  If so, why would you be against this bill?  If not, why are you not working to unseat everyone who voted for it?

[Quality Start Machine]

There goes the Dems' main redistributor of wealth.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

There goes the Dems' main redistributor of wealth.

Now where will we get our lupins?

[R-V]

MikeC, I assume you agree with this?

"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey told ABC News in an interview, "by having a war surtax."

[CubFaninHydePark]

This is pretty ridiculous:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/22/AR2009112202216.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009112301535

This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.

The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."

I had little respect for Kerry to begin with--now that I know he's a special-interest advocate for religious whackjobs, whatever shred of respect I had for the man is gone.

But if this goes into effect, who wants to join with me in starting a Christian spiritual healing business?  $20-$40 a prayer?  That's easy street if there's ever been one.  It still astonishes me that there are enough fucking morons in this world to make bribing Senators to vote for this insanity worth the time and money.

The Internal Revenue Service allows prayer treatments to be itemized on income tax forms as medical expenses. And a few federal insurance programs, such as those for military families, already reimburse for prayer.

Seriously?  Maybe Michelle Bachman can push for an expose to be done on Congressmen and women that vote with and otherwise offer support to the Christian Science lobby.  It would actually be useful to know who's batshit crazier than Kucinich and Bernie Sanders.

[CBStew]

If one itemizes deductions one can deduction contributions to a church

[Oleg]

This is pretty ridiculous:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/22/AR2009112202216.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009112301535

This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.

The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."

I had little respect for Kerry to begin with--now that I know he's a special-interest advocate for religious whackjobs, whatever shred of respect I had for the man is gone.

But if this goes into effect, who wants to join with me in starting a Christian spiritual healing business?  $20-$40 a prayer?  That's easy street if there's ever been one.  It still astonishes me that there are enough fucking morons in this world to make bribing Senators to vote for this insanity worth the time and money.

The Internal Revenue Service allows prayer treatments to be itemized on income tax forms as medical expenses. And a few federal insurance programs, such as those for military families, already reimburse for prayer.

Seriously?  Maybe Michelle Bachman can push for an expose to be done on Congressmen and women that vote with and otherwise offer support to the Christian Science lobby.  It would actually be useful to know who's batshit crazier than Kucinich and Bernie Sanders.

Why are the Christian Scientists so spacial as to deserve this vitriol?  Once you start down the "belief" path and away from "science", the rest just seems like splitting hairs.

[CBStew]

This is pretty ridiculous:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/22/AR2009112202216.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009112301535

This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.

The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."

I had little respect for Kerry to begin with--now that I know he's a special-interest advocate for religious whackjobs, whatever shred of respect I had for the man is gone.

But if this goes into effect, who wants to join with me in starting a Christian spiritual healing business?  $20-$40 a prayer?  That's easy street if there's ever been one.  It still astonishes me that there are enough fucking morons in this world to make bribing Senators to vote for this insanity worth the time and money.

The Internal Revenue Service allows prayer treatments to be itemized on income tax forms as medical expenses. And a few federal insurance programs, such as those for military families, already reimburse for prayer.

Seriously?  Maybe Michelle Bachman can push for an expose to be done on Congressmen and women that vote with and otherwise offer support to the Christian Science lobby.  It would actually be useful to know who's batshit crazier than Kucinich and Bernie Sanders.

Why are the Christian Scientists so spacial as to deserve this vitriol?  Once you start down the "belief" path and away from "science", the rest just seems like splitting hairs.

This is a very valid point.  Treating "prayer treatment" under the medical deduction could be less advantageous to the taxpayer than treating it as a contribution, depending upon the taxpayer's income and the amount spent on medical expenses. 

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Matt Taibbi explicates his General Theory of Political Reporter Jackassery to the Palin fandom...

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/11/23/yes-sarah-there-is-a-media-conspiracy/

Once the signal comes down that this or that politician doesn't have the backing of anyone who matters, that's when the knives really come out. When a politician has powerful allies and powerful friends, you won't see reporters brazenly kicking him in the crotch the way they did to Dean and they're doing now to Sarah Palin. The only time they do this is when they know there won't be consequences, meaning when the politician's only supporters are non-entities (read: voters), as in the case of Ron Paul or Kucinich. Like America in general, the press corps never attacks any enemy that can fight back. To illustrate the point via haiku:

Journos are pussies

Only attack when it's safe

Lay off entrenched pols

...

The press corps that is bashing her skull in right now is the same one that hyped that WMD horseshit for like four solid years and pom-pommed America to war with Iraq over the screeching objections of the entire planet. It's the same press corps that rolled out the red carpet for someone very nearly as abjectly stupid as Sarah Palin to win not one but two terms in the White House. If there was any kind of consensus support for Palin inside the beltway, the criticism of her, bet on it, would be almost totally confined to chortling east coast smartasses like me and Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan.

What the people who are flipping out about the treatment of Palin should be asking themselves is what it means when it's not just jerks like us but everybody piling on against Palin. For those of you who can't connect the dots, I'll tell you what it means. It means she's been cut loose. It means that all five of the families have given the okay to this hit job, including even the mainstream Republican leaders. You teabaggers are in the process of being marginalized by your own ostensible party leaders in exactly the same way the anti-war crowd was abandoned by the Democratic party elders in the earlier part of this decade. Like the antiwar left, you have been deemed a threat to your own party's "winnability."

And do you know what that means? That means that just as the antiwar crowd spent years being painted by the national press as weepy, unpatriotic pussies whose enthusiastic support is toxic to any serious presidential aspirant, so too will all of you afternoon-radio ignoramuses who seem bent on spending the next three years kicking and screaming your way up the eternal asshole of white resentment now find yourself and your political champions painted as knee-jerk loonies whose rabid irrationality is undeserving of the political center. And yes, that's me saying that, but I've always been saying that, not just about Palin but about George Bush and all your other moron-heroes.

What's different now is who else is saying it. You had these people eating out of the palms of your hands (remember what it was like in the Dixie Chicks days?). Now they're all drawing horns and Groucho mustaches on your heroes, and rapidly transitioning you from your previous political kingmaking role in the real world to a new role as a giant captive entertainment demographic that exists solely to be manipulated for ratings and ad revenue. What you should be asking yourself is why this is happening to you. Even I don't know the answer to that question, but honestly, I don't really care. All I know is that I find it extremely funny.

"Read the whole thing."

[Brownie]

This is pretty ridiculous:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/22/AR2009112202216.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009112301535

This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.

The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."

I had little respect for Kerry to begin with--now that I know he's a special-interest advocate for religious whackjobs, whatever shred of respect I had for the man is gone.

But if this goes into effect, who wants to join with me in starting a Christian spiritual healing business?  $20-$40 a prayer?  That's easy street if there's ever been one.  It still astonishes me that there are enough fucking morons in this world to make bribing Senators to vote for this insanity worth the time and money.

The Internal Revenue Service allows prayer treatments to be itemized on income tax forms as medical expenses. And a few federal insurance programs, such as those for military families, already reimburse for prayer.

Seriously?  Maybe Michelle Bachman can push for an expose to be done on Congressmen and women that vote with and otherwise offer support to the Christian Science lobby.  It would actually be useful to know who's batshit crazier than Kucinich and Bernie Sanders.

Aren't you making the argument for getting the government OUT of health care?

To a lot of us, this sounds ridiculous. Pray if you think it helps. But why should that be the government's business? And why on earth would we want the government to mandate that insurers cover prayers?

But if you want government health care, then this is the world you have chosen. We've already seen pitched battles over whether abortion should be covered by government programs, or government-subsidized programs, or insurance plans that participate in the government "exchange." The House bill eliminates a tax penalty for same-sex couples who receive health benefits from employers, but so far the Senate bill does not. The House bill provides grants to states for "home visitation" programs in which nurses and social workers counsel pregnant women and new mothers in low-income families, coaching them on "parenting practices" and skills needed to "interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development" — a program that some American families would surely find Big Brother-ish.

But that's the reality of government-funded and directed health care. If the government is paying for it, then every inclusion or exclusion — abortion, fertility treatments, prayer, same-sex couples, acupuncture, homeopathy – becomes a matter for political decision. And political decisions become the subject of political activity and lobbying, by groups ranging from Big Pharma to small insurance companies to nurses to Catholic bishops to Christian Scientists. No wonder lobbying is up in our increasingly politicized economy, particularly in the health care arena.

You can't have government pay for something as personal and intimate as health care, and not find the government poking around in the bedroom, the medicine cabinet, the sickroom, and the chapel.

[Chuck to Chuck]

Aren't you making the argument for getting the government OUT of health care?

I'm not smart enough to know if this is a good bill or a bad bill.  But clearly there is a problem with the way the free market works and the ability to get people insured.

I had lunch with a congressional aide a few years ago and we talked about healthcare.  What I told her was that I believed the purpose of government was to provide markets that are in the public interest that the private sector does not efficiently provide - i.e. that the market is one that cannot be done profitably and efficiently.  Roads, military and schools are three markets that fit this profile.

Given that 16% of the population is uninsured, there is certainly a case to be made that the free market is not working.  Looking at that chart even closer, you see that only 69% of the insured population is covered via private insurance.

If government is the source of nearly 1/3rd of healthcare already and 16% of the population can't even get coverage, there certainly seems to be an argument to be made that the private sector does not manage this market efficiently.

I'm not saying that I know what the answer is or if the ideas being thrown around are any good.  But throwing your head in the sand and saying "Let's do nothing," especially when the guys saying that are the ones that voted in favor of Medicare D, is not a way to win this person's vote.

[BH]

As long as we keep propping up old, helpless people and get all their dollars (and Medicare's) while they rot in a hospital, I'm all for it.  Any bill that keeps this practice going is what I want.

[Brownie]

But throwing your head in the sand and saying "Let's do nothing," especially when the guys saying that are the ones that voted in favor of Medicare D, is not a way to win this person's vote.

Chuck, doing nothing is always an option. Jim Hendry could have done nothing or traded for Kevin Gregg, signed Milton Bradley and Aaron Miles and traded DeRosa. Doing nothing would have yielded, at the very least, the same results that all that activity yielded. This offseason, he could have decided that doing nothing instead of overpaying for Grabow would have been the better option. Would you have bleated: "HOW CAN HE NOT OVERPAY FOR GRABOW WHEN HE GAVE SORIANO AND MARQUIS AND MILES THOSE AWFUL CONTRACTS!?!" If Hendry passes on Granderson because the Tigers want too much, will Hendry be a dunce because he once traded three pitchers for Juan Pierre?

The first part of your argument makes a tremendous amount of sense, even if I do not agree with it.

The second part of your argument makes no sense. With that reasoning, the Bears should NOT make coaching changes after the season for the simple reason that Virginia McCaskey didn't in 1996, 1997, or 2002.

As for the first part of your argument, it really doesn't speak to the problem of more government involvement. If you want to shrink the influence of K street, of lobbyists, of special interest groups, and of religious organizations, reduce the role of government.  They're all involved because government right now is where the money is.

The marketplace in health care, by the way, has been skewed dramatically by government influence. Who is the customer for those of you who have employee-sponsored insurance? Your employer, of course. If the insurance company screws you and not your employer, well guess who is renewing with them the next year. If you have government-sponsored insurance, who is the customer: the taxpayer (chortle, chortle) who has the government as its proxy. Again, the consumer is not the customer. Thus the consumer will consume the maximum it can get, while the provider will provide the minimum it can get away with. The consumer has little buying power.

[Oleg]

Aren't you making the argument for getting the government OUT of health care?

Or perhaps we should keep religion from affecting public policy.  Just sayin'.