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

[Oleg]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

Someone's been using the GOP's URL shortener.

Que Fork Joke?  Morph?

[morpheus]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

Someone's been using the GOP's URL shortener.

Que Fork Joke?  Morph?

LEAVE OLEG OUT OF THIS!

[R-V]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

What about the people between 100% and 133% of the poverty line who currently don't qualify for Medicaid, but will under the Senate bill?

What about the people between 133% and 400% of the poverty line who currently get no help to buy health insurance, but will get some pretty generous subsidies under the Senate bill?

That's direct help, aside from the market reforms and regulations. Insurance won't be "cheap" for these people, but they'll be a whole hell of a lot better off than they are now if they happen to get penis cancer or anus rabies.

I know "making the perfect the enemy of the good" is a way overused cliche, but yeah, I do think Howard Dean is being a penis when he suggests that the entire bill should be killed because it doesn't have a public option.

[Oleg]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

What about the people between 100% and 133% of the poverty line who currently don't qualify for Medicaid, but will under the Senate bill?

What about the people between 133% and 400% of the poverty line who currently get no help to buy health insurance, but will get some pretty generous subsidies under the Senate bill?

That's direct help, aside from the market reforms and regulations. Insurance won't be "cheap" for these people, but they'll be a whole hell of a lot better off than they are now if they happen to get penis cancer or anus rabies.

I know "making the perfect the enemy of the good" is a way overused cliche, but yeah, I do think Howard Dean is being a penis when he suggests that the entire bill should be killed because it doesn't have a public option.

I may just be an ignorant caveman, but isn't that precisely the Medicare buy-in provision that was just stripped out of the bill bill by Lieberman?

[Gil Gunderson]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

What about the people between 100% and 133% of the poverty line who currently don't qualify for Medicaid, but will under the Senate bill?

What about the people between 133% and 400% of the poverty line who currently get no help to buy health insurance, but will get some pretty generous subsidies under the Senate bill?

That's direct help, aside from the market reforms and regulations. Insurance won't be "cheap" for these people, but they'll be a whole hell of a lot better off than they are now if they happen to get penis cancer or anus rabies.

I know "making the perfect the enemy of the good" is a way overused cliche, but yeah, I do think Howard Dean is being a penis when he suggests that the entire bill should be killed because it doesn't have a public option.

I may just be an ignorant caveman, but isn't that precisely the Medicare buy-in provision that was just stripped out of the bill bill by Lieberman?

The Medicaid expansion was always planned for.  The Medicare buy-in only came up as a replacement for the full-throated public option, both of which were killed by Lieberman.

The "up to 400% of the poverty line" thing relates to subsidies for citizens to buy health insurance through the exchange.

If you have time, which I did apparently, I'd start reading the Baucus bill over again, as it seems that will be the one that gets signed by the Kenyan Nazi.

[R-V]

I don't have time to read any news right now, but I think Howard Dean might be a penis.

Yep.  A man who's worked his whole life to bring more affordable health care to the poor is the penis for suggesting that this bill, which will not bring more affordable health care to anyone, may not be worth voting for.  I'm sure the penis is NOT the sell-out who mere months ago was advocating a medicare buy-in, while now changing his mind and being against it, just so he could grab whatever power his rotting soul will allow him.

What about the people between 100% and 133% of the poverty line who currently don't qualify for Medicaid, but will under the Senate bill?

What about the people between 133% and 400% of the poverty line who currently get no help to buy health insurance, but will get some pretty generous subsidies under the Senate bill?

That's direct help, aside from the market reforms and regulations. Insurance won't be "cheap" for these people, but they'll be a whole hell of a lot better off than they are now if they happen to get penis cancer or anus rabies.

I know "making the perfect the enemy of the good" is a way overused cliche, but yeah, I do think Howard Dean is being a penis when he suggests that the entire bill should be killed because it doesn't have a public option.

I may just be an ignorant caveman, but isn't that precisely the Medicare buy-in provision that was just stripped out of the bill bill by Lieberman?

No. That's independent of the Medicare provision. That was for people from age 55-64, regardless of income.

The subsidies/increased Medicaid eligibility are for people making between 100 and 400% of the poverty level.

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?m=200911

[R-V]

DPD. For Oleg and Howard Dean:

If you don't like the Senate bill, fine.  Don't support it.  But in what universe will healthcare reform get revived anytime soon if it dies this year?  2010?  With the legislative plate already jammed, healthcare reform probably polling in the mid 30s, and midterms coming up?  2011?  After Republicans have gained a bunch of seats in both the House and Senate thanks to public disgust with Democratic disarray?  2012?  A presidential election year?  2013?  2014?

I usually don't say much about legislative tactics because I figure you need some serious ground level knowledge before you mouth off about what's possible and what's not on Capitol Hill.  But the fate of failed major initiatives is so obvious that I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously.  When big legislative efforts go down in flames, they almost never spring back onto the calendar anytime soon — and that's especially true when big healthcare bills fail.  It didn't happen in 1936, it didn't happen in 1949, it didn't happen in 1974, and it didn't happen in 1995.  What makes anyone think it will happen in 2010?

If healthcare reform dies this year, it dies for a good long time.  Say what you will about the Democratic leadership, but Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Steny Hoyer all know this perfectly well.  So do John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  (Boy do they know it.)  But if it passes, here's what we get:

    * Insurers have to take all comers.  They can't turn you down for a preexisting condition or cut you off after you get sick.
    * Community rating.  Within a few broad classes, everyone gets charged the same amount for insurance.
    * Individual mandate.  I know a lot of liberals hate this, but how is it different from a tax?  And its purpose is sound: it keeps the insurance pool broad and insurance rates down.
    * A significant expansion of Medicaid.
    * Subsidies for low and middle income workers that keeps premium costs under 10% of income.
    * Limits on ER charges to low-income uninsured emergency patients.
    * Caps on out-of-pocket expenses.
    * A broad range of cost-containment measures.
    * A dedicated revenue stream to support all this.

What's more, for the first time we get a national commitment to providing healthcare coverage for everyone.  It won't be universal to start, unfortunately, but it's going to be a lot easier to get there once the marker is laid down.  That's how every other country has done it, and that's how we did it with Social Security and Medicare, both of which had big gaps in coverage when they were first passed.

But if we don't pass it, we don't get any of this.  Not now, and not for a long time.  Instead of being actual liberals, we'll just be playing ones on TV.

[Internet Apex]

Penis.

[morpheus]

PEnis!

[BH]

Franken shuts up Liebermann.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/17/watch-wielding-gavel-fran_n_396267.html

[Brownie]

The Christmas story meets the 2010 census:



I don't know if the Roman census and the way it works into the Christmas story really makes one want to fill out a census form.  I instead leave you with the 1967 Mike Royko column...

Mary and Joe were flat broke when they got off the bus in Chicago. They didn't know anybody and she was expecting a baby.

They went to a cheap hotel. But the clerk jerked his thumb at the door when they couldn't show a day's rent in advance.

They walked the streets until they saw a police station. The desk sergeant said they couldn't sleep in a cell, but he told them how to get to a welfare office.

A man there said they couldn't get regular assistance because they hadn't been Illinois residents long enough. But he gave them the address of the emergency welfare office on the West Side.

It was a two-mile walk up Madison Street. Someone gave them a card with a number on it and they sat down on a bench, stared at the peeling green paint and waited for their number to be called.

Two hours later, a caseworker motioned them forward, took out blank forms and asked questions: Any relatives? Any means of getting money? Any assets?

Joe said he owned a donkey. The caseworker told him not to get smart or he'd be thrown out. Joe said he was sorry.

The caseworker finished the forms and said they were entitled to emergency CTA fare to County Hospital because of Mary's condition. And he told Joe to go to an Urban Progress Center for occupational guidance.

Joe thanked him and they took a bus to the hospital. A guard told them to wait on a bench. They waited two hours, and then Mary got pains and they took her away. Someone told Joe to come back tomorrow.

He went outside and asked a stranger on the street for directions to an Urban Progress Center. The stranger hit Joe on the head and took his overcoat. Joe was still lying there when a paddy wagon came along so they pinched him for being drunk on the street.

Mary had a baby boy during the night. She didn't know it, but three foreign-looking men in strange, colorful robes came to the hospital asking about her and the baby. A guard took them for hippies and called the police. They found odd spices on the men so the narcotics detail took them downtown for further questioning.

The next day Mary awoke in a crowded ward. She asked for Joe. Instead, a representative of the Planned Parenthood Committee came by to give her a lecture on birth control.

Next, a social worker came for her case history. She asked Mary who the father was. Mary answered and the social worker ran for the nurse. The nurse questioned her and Mary answered. The nurse stared at her and ran for the doctor. The doctor wrote "Postpartum delusion'' on her chart.

An ambulance took Mary to the Cook County Mental Health Clinic the next morning. A psychiatrist asked her questions and pursed his lips at the answers.

A hearing was held and a magistrate committed her to the Chicago State Hospital.

[Brownie]

... continued

Joe got out of the House of Corrections a couple of days later and went to the County Hospital for Mary. They told him she was at Chicago State and the baby had been placed in a foster home by the state Department of Children and Family Services.

When Joe got to Chicago State, a doctor told him what Mary had said about the baby's birth. Joe said Mary was telling the truth. They put Joe in a ward at the other end of the hospital.

Meanwhile, the three strangely dressed foreign-looking men were released after the narcotics detail could find no laws prohibiting the possession of myrrh and frankincense. They returned to the hospital and were taken for civil rights demonstrators. They were held in the County Jail on $100,000 bond.

By luck, Joe and Mary met on the hospital grounds. They decided to tell the doctors what they wanted to hear. The next day they were declared sane and were released.

When they applied for custody of Mary's baby, however, they were told it was necessary for them to first establish a proper residence, earn a proper income and create a suitable environment.

They applied at the Urban Progress Center for training under the Manpower Development Program. Joe said he was good at working with wood. He was assigned to a computer data-processing class. Mary said she'd gladly do domestic work. She was assigned to a course in key-punch operating. Both got $20-a-week stipends.

Several months later they finished the training. Joe got a job in a gas station and Mary went to work as a waitress.

They saved their money and hired a lawyer. Another custody hearing was held and several days later the baby was ordered returned to them.

Reunited finally, they got back to their two-room flat and met the landlord on the steps. He told them Urban Renewal had ordered the building torn down. The City Relocation Bureau would get them another place.

They packed, dressed the baby and hurried to the Greyhound bus station.

Joe asked the ticket man when the next bus was leaving.

"Where to?'' the ticket man asked.

"Anywhere,'' Joe said, "as long as it is right now.''

He gave Joe three tickets and in five minutes they were on a bus heading for southern Illinois--the area known as ``Little Egypt.''

Just as the bus pulled out, the three strangely dressed men ran into the station. But they were too late. The bus was gone.

So they started hiking down U.S. 66. But at last report they were pinched on suspicion of being foreigners in illegal possession of gold."

[CubFaninHydePark]

The only thing that I hate about the bill is the individual mandate.  It's just another way for the elderly to screw the young.

If I were independently wealthy, I would make my life's cause organizing the 35 and younger block to break the AARP's electoral back for eternity.  I think we'll see the day when young/working America tells retiring baby boomers to go fuck themselves and reap what they've sewn as far as electing people who have squandered social security and other entitlement spending, and that day isn't going to be pretty.

But I will be at the front of that revolution.

Until then, those of us who need little more than catastrophic care are going to be forced into risk pools to subsidize health care for older folks.  I still support the bill, but only because I have faith that the courts will have the good sense to strike down the individual mandate for the unconstitutional garbage that it is.

But, count this as one more exploitation of the "don't give a shit" young crowd.  It's a shame.  I'm a big believer in generational warfare politics, and I really hope that battle comes to pass and that the young people win it.

[Quality Start Machine]

The only thing that I hate about the bill is the individual mandate.  It's just another way for the elderly to screw the young.

If I were independently wealthy, I would make my life's cause organizing the 35 and younger block to break the AARP's electoral back for eternity.  I think we'll see the day when young/working America tells retiring baby boomers to go fuck themselves and reap what they've sewn as far as electing people who have squandered social security and other entitlement spending, and that day isn't going to be pretty.

Considering nobody can make you feel guilty like an organization of old people. I'm sure this cause will go swimmingly.

[R-V]

The only thing that I hate about the bill is the individual mandate.  It's just another way for the elderly to screw the young how you achieve universal coverage or something close to it.

Fixed.

Pick your favorite system. Socialized medicine in Britain. Single-payer in Canada. Multi-payer with a government floor in France. Private plans with heavy public regulation in Sweden, Germany and elsewhere. None of these plans are "voluntary." In some, there's an individual mandate forcing you to pay premiums to insurance companies. In some, there's a system of taxation forcing you to pay premiums to the government. In all of them, at least so far as I know, participation is required except in very limited and uncommon circumstances. And there's a reason for that: No universal system can work without it.

If I were independently wealthy, I would make my life's cause organizing the 35 and younger block to break the AARP's electoral back for eternity.  I think we'll see the day when young/working America tells retiring baby boomers to go fuck themselves and reap what they've sewn as far as electing people who have squandered social security and other entitlement spending, and that day isn't going to be pretty.

But I will be at the front of that revolution.

Until then, those of us who need little more than catastrophic care are going to be forced into risk pools to subsidize health care for older folks. Fuck you, old people, I got mine. Until I get old.

Fixed.

 

I still support the bill, but only because I have faith that the courts will have the good sense to strike down the individual mandate for the unconstitutional garbage that it is.

Or not.

Under an unbroken line of precedents stretching back 70 years, Congress has the power to regulate activities that, taken cumulatively, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. People not purchasing health insurance unquestionably has this effect.

But, count this as one more exploitation of the "don't give a shit" young crowd.  It's a shame.  I'm a big believer in generational warfare politics, and I really hope that battle comes to pass and that the young people win it.

I hope whatever generation you're a part of, loses.