Government Shutting Down

[Templar 331]

the Republican party is still the liberal party if you actually look up the definition of the word.. unfortunately people like yourself who believe in ever increasing government power have hijacked and tainted the word.. that's why leftists call themselves progressives or more recently moderates..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism#Americas

History and facts say otherwise.

[mvaliz]

Somebody posted this nugget of joy on Facebook just now. Not sure if it's been posted before, but it's definetly VERY amusing.

In short: Jimmey Kimmel walked around the streets and interviewed people, asking them which they liked better: Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act....

[Felya]

So you're only patriotic when it's convenient?

He isn't patriotic... His ties are nothing more than to a free market. He doesn't care about the country, the people or anything else. Like he said, he will leave for any place with a free market. America is meaningless to him...

[Shadowmelded]

This surprises you?

Not at all, just hope other people pick up on how self serving it is :P

He isn't patriotic... His ties are nothing more than to a free market. He doesn't care about the country, the people or anything else. Like he said, he will leave for any place with a free market. America is meaningless to him...

Yup, almost makes me want to sig it for the next time he starts professing his undying love and adulation for the founding fathers and the constitution.

[obdigore]

Yup, almost makes me want to sig it for the next time he starts professing his undying love and adulation for the founding fathers and the constitution.

Undying love for what he wants the 'founding fathers' to have believed in. As if they were in lock-step about anything. This entire nation is a giant compromise, and the 'side' that claims 'only do what the founding fathers said!' are the ones who refuse to compromise, which is pretty ironic in itself.

[frumper]

no.. and if someone tried to play the reverse on me.. I'd ask them where I could possibly go and find a constitutional republic based on individual liberty.. free markets and rule of law?

believe me.. I'd consider moving elsewhere if there were actually an option.. people who share your viewpoint have done a pretty damn good job of @#$%ing up this nation

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it's exactly how America works.. why the hell do you think we have a system of sovereign states?

I can't restrain myself like NYC17. So you've got nowhere to go for free markets and a rule of law, but you'd be happy to leave if you had a place to go. Instead you're telling everyone else that doesn't agree with you to leave because...this is where it gets fuzzy...REALLY fuzzy....yea. I'm not sure why you don't leave other than you don't have a place where people agree with you, but then again, you could take a page from those founders and go start your own "colony" that will later secede from the nation causing a colonial revolutionary war, and if, big if admittedly, you win then you and the fellow colonists can setup your own government the way you want. Sound like a plan?

[mvaliz]

He isn't patriotic... His ties are nothing more than to a free market. He doesn't care about the country, the people or anything else. Like he said, he will leave for any place with a free market. America is meaningless to him...

We should send him to Darfur. By the very definition that's a free market. I'm sure he will do well there as all the people there are clearly benefiting from a market completely free of restrictions and regulations whatsoever, and the business people are 100% free to run any business they want, and how they want to run that business.

Well, so long as you can deal with the competition - of course. But hey, that's what a free market is all about! Makes you stronger, right? ....right!? ^_^

[usiris]

Somebody posted this nugget of joy on Facebook just now. Not sure if it's been posted before, but it's definetly VERY amusing.

In short: Jimmey Kimmel walked around the streets and interviewed people, asking them which they liked better: Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act....

video snipe

I saw this a bit ago as well....

I dont doubt he edited out those that didnt conform to what they wanted..but it in a way proves what Ruk and a few other were saying pages back. The public doesnt understand this bill.

[NYC17]

Not at all, just hope other people pick up on how self serving it is :P



Yup, almost makes me want to sig it for the next time he starts professing his undying love and adulation for the founding fathers and the constitution.

It's easy to have undying love and adulation for people he's warped into caricatures of themselves. He fancies himself a student of the Founders, so in essence he's only interested in idolizing himself. It is what it is, and what it is, is hilarious.

[iperson]

based on your logic we should have never tried to end slavery.. because it was the established norm before we even became a nation

It's no use arguing with them because it's a moving target. Their brains are capable of folding into pretzels to try and explain away logic when they have a position. They believe the SCOTUS is infallible (unless of course you ask their opinion on the ruling which basically said the Al Gore campaign's attempt to only recount votes in certain districts was illegal.) That one they believe the court got wrong, but no way they could be wrong on Obamacare, even though it wasn't struck down because a Justice called it a tax, which the President says it isn't...

[Mainer]

What a classic example of liberal state-ists: Overhaul an entire industry because 10 to 15% of people don't have it, while destroying the other 85-90% peoples current situation.

This part of your quote caught my eye. It reminded me WHY an overhaul of the industry is needed as was excellently explained in another thread by Skroesec. While normally I like to cut down to reduce wordage....I think the entire post I am about to quote needs no cutting.

The problem with every healthcare approach in the US and Europe is it accepts the high costs of services to a degree, and attempts to either indirectly control costs (via incentives or penalties) and spread costs (which is the biggest purpose of Obamacare).

That is a nonsense approach only built on the faulty foundation that the market for healthcare is like the market for televisions. It's empircally untrue. In fact, it is dishonest to say that every or even most markets behave like each other: the ability for free market competition to inherently control costs has been shown not to work in other markets aside from healthcare such as defense, space launches and higher education. In every case, becoming locked in long term relationships - not even just a singular contract but an ongoing business relationship - has retarded the ability for competition to surpress costs to the point where costs are not surpressed.

One of the things that bothers me most about modern American political discourse is that we pretend that we're the first ones ever coming across this (and other) problems and we're engaging in pioneering problem solving. It's like we live in a vacuum where the American experience of a problem is the only experience that matters. That's crap. It gets us into mess after mess.

Japan is by far the best example of how to fix a health care system. They have one of the best and least expensive in the world. They also have a problem that we have been thankfully spared: they're becoming a nation of the elderly to a degree far beyond what is happening to an Aging America. Their elderly, like everywhere else are demanding more retirement and medical services. But they are keeping it inexpensive and affordable to their far smaller base of younger taxpayers. So how is it then that they have a bigger problem but already found a solution?

Because Japan, one of the world's paragons of capitalism, had the intellectual honestly to realize Health Care is not a market like any other, and that the delusion of shopping around for providers and services like you're shopping around for television had no factual basis in reality for being effective. What they did was brilliant. They got insurance providers and health care providers in a room and sadi, in so many words, "you're going to agree to a low, but reasonable price... and if we don't like it, we're going to set the price for you".

As a result Japan is the land of the $70 MRI and some of the lowest cost services in the developed world.

If this sounds like price controls and the government controlling a market, that's because it exactly is that. Japan, one of the most successful capitalist countries in the world, decided that health care was different and treated it as such.

The US could easily do this and solve it's health care issue. It would have to make two intellectual compromises: first that the health care industry is a very low profitability industry - that health care providers and insurance companies do not exist to make a lot of money, but rather to provide a service. And secondly, we would have to make the compromise of openingly engaging in a price control. The truth of the matter is, in the US, through subsidies and outright legislation, lots of goods people use every day, especially food staples, are limited by strict price controls that keep things like milk affordable. But Americans like to pretend these don't exist because it makes every argument about free markets easier.

When it comes down to it, Japan is just a more serious country than we are. They had a problem, identified a pragmatic solution, and jettisoned principle, to great effect. In America, we embrace principle and accept the $2000 MRI, hoping vainly that spreading costs will surpress prices going forward. If it sounds like a bullshit strategy, that is because it is.

Diagnostics should be dirt cheap. Routine procedures (like mending the most common reasons for emergency room visits) should be cheap. More involved procedures should be expensive but affordable. But the root of the problem is the COSTS and how they are decided in the first place, which isn't effected by market forces at all.

To this, I point to a kind of amazing question: how much is a bottle of water? About $1.75 right? So you would think that a bag of Saline at the hospital should cost about $4.00 to $5.00 when you consider it's just salt water (entirely drinkable), with a bag instead of a bottle, and a disposable needle. You would think that, but you would be wrong. It's actually about $400. Yes. $400 dollars. Costs the French $4.73, but America, it's vastly more for overhead costs factored in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/he...anted=all&_r=0

And this is the source of every bullshit health care problem this county faces. Because instead of dealing with, head on, how $400 for a liter of salt water is allowed to happen, we focus on trying to bring that down via market competition or spreading costs or some nonsense like this. The fact is, you're being gouged in a cornered market.

Any health care reform that doesn't directly cut costs of routine procedures by a hundredfold, instantly, isn't serious health care reform worth talking about.

[Felya]

It's no use arguing with them because it's a moving target. Their brains are capable of folding into pretzels to try and explain away logic when they have a position. They believe the SCOTUS is infallible (unless of course you ask their opinion on the ruling which basically said the Al Gore campaign's attempt to only recount votes in certain districts was illegal.) That one they believe the court got wrong, but no way they could be wrong on Obamacare, even though it wasn't struck down because a Justice called it a tax, which the President says it isn't...

Just a reality check... You are agreeing with a guy who compared slavery to Obamacare... Al Gore was never president...

[The Riddler]

If Obamacare is soooo great why isn't...

The case the GOP (well more Ted Cruz than the GOP) is that Obamacare is violating the Equal Protections clause by being unequally and unfairly applied depending on the whims of a political party. Some folks (including Jon Stewart, and all his clapping seal audience) are whining "wah wah wah - its the 'Law of the Land'..." These same hypocrites don't care about that when Obama and his cronies gave out 1,231 waivers to favored companies and groups. Or when Obama delayed key aspects of the law 17 times. Guess being "the law" didn't matter too much then, eh?

Being "the law of the land" only matters to these folks when people are OPPOSING them. In short, the phrase is nothing but political jingoism parroted by brainwashed, biased drone puppets who lack intellectual honesty. The same people don't care about "the law of the land" when it comes to immigration enforcement, taxes, abortion, Defense of Marriage, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and all the other illegal actions of the Obama administration. Nope. To the pit with "the law of the land" when it becomes politically inconvenient. :P

Regardless, the House using its power to try and delay, defund, and repeal Obamacare is also "the law of the land". That's how the Constitution was written, since it seems people using this "law of the land" propoganda have forgotten that the Separation of Powers was specifically included to allow exactly this kind of thing. They're all for it when it lets them get what they want. They hate it when it goes the other way.

[Theinquisition]

The case the GOP (well more Ted Cruz than the GOP) is that Obamacare is violating the Equal Protections clause by being unequally and unfairly applied depending on the whims of a political party. Some folks (including Jon Stewart, and all his clapping seal audience) are whining "wah wah wah - its the 'Law of the Land'..." These same hypocrites don't care about that when Obama and his cronies gave out 1,231 waivers to favored companies and groups. Or when Obama delayed key aspects of the law 17 times. Guess being "the law" didn't matter too much then, eh?

Being "the law of the land" only matters to these folks when people are OPPOSING them. In short, the phrase is nothing but political jingoism parroted by brainwashed, biased drone puppets who lack intellectual honesty. The same people don't care about "the law of the land" when it comes to immigration enforcement, taxes, abortion, Defense of Marriage, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and all the other illegal actions of the Obama administration. Nope. To the pit with "the law of the land" when it becomes politically inconvenient. :P

Regardless, the House using its power to try and delay, defund, and repeal Obamacare is also "the law of the land". That's how the Constitution was written, since it seems people using this "law of the land" propoganda have forgotten that the Separation of Powers was specifically included to allow exactly this kind of thing. They're all for it when it lets them get what they want. They hate it when it goes the other way.

Woot its my boy the riddler kickin ass woot woot!

[NYC17]

The case the GOP (well more Ted Cruz than the GOP) is that Obamacare is violating the Equal Protections clause by being unequally and unfairly applied depending on the whims of a political party. Some folks (including Jon Stewart, and all his clapping seal audience) are whining "wah wah wah - its the 'Law of the Land'..." These same hypocrites don't care about that when Obama and his cronies gave out 1,231 waivers to favored companies and groups. Or when Obama delayed key aspects of the law 17 times. Guess being "the law" didn't matter too much then, eh?

Being "the law of the land" only matters to these folks when people are OPPOSING them. In short, the phrase is nothing but political jingoism parroted by brainwashed, biased drone puppets who lack intellectual honesty. The same people don't care about "the law of the land" when it comes to immigration enforcement, taxes, abortion, Defense of Marriage, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and all the other illegal actions of the Obama administration. Nope. To the pit with "the law of the land" when it becomes politically inconvenient. :P

Regardless, the House using its power to try and delay, defund, and repeal Obamacare is also "the law of the land". That's how the Constitution was written, since it seems people using this "law of the land" propoganda have forgotten that the Separation of Powers was specifically included to allow exactly this kind of thing. They're all for it when it lets them get what they want. They hate it when it goes the other way.

Temporary waivers. Suck it up, and step it up.

[Wells]

The case the GOP (well more Ted Cruz than the GOP) is that Obamacare is violating the Equal Protections clause by being unequally and unfairly applied depending on the whims of a political party.

Where's their suit?

[obdigore]

Where's their suit?

That would require BIG GUBBERMINT because it requires a federal court. Can't have that!

[NYC17]

Woot its my boy the riddler kickin ass woot woot!

Ladies and gentlemen, obliviousness incarnate.

[Templar 331]

Or when Obama delayed key aspects of the law 17 times. Guess being "the law" didn't matter too much then, eh?

If I'm remembering right, someone in this thread said it was written in the law that the ACA could be delayed. I'm not sure how true it is.

Being "the law of the land" only matters to these folks when people are OPPOSING them. In short, the phrase is nothing but political jingoism parroted by brainwashed, biased drone puppets who lack intellectual honesty.

So everyone in this thread who disagrees with the Republicans is a parrot with no real intelligence. Nice.

The same people don't care about "the law of the land" when it comes to immigration enforcement, taxes, abortion, Defense of Marriage, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and all the other illegal actions of the Obama administration.

The only thing in all of that that can be blamed on Obama is F&F. And even that wasn't illegal. Just stupid.

Regardless, the House using its power to try and delay, defund, and repeal Obamacare is also "the law of the land". That's how the Constitution was written, since it seems people using this "law of the land" propoganda have forgotten that the Separation of Powers was specifically included to allow exactly this kind of thing. They're all for it when it lets them get what they want. They hate it when it goes the other way.

What we want is Congress to do it's job, pass legislation. Not sit on it's hands until one party gets what it wants knowing good and well it won't.

[mvaliz]

Woot its my boy the riddler kickin ass woot woot!

Any respect I had for your opinion just went out the window with this post.