Dog Days Indeed

Post on August 11, 2009 by Andrea Verykoukis 13 Comments »

Wow. It’s getting hot in here, with all the leash and weenie talk. Y’all are getting really funky. I wish I could approve, but certain parties are making mountains out of … what’s smaller than a molehill? Minutiae? In any case, we’ve got actual problems on our hands. Over at Under the Dome, they’re reporting that a new poll demonstrates that North Carolinians are unhappy with health care reform. Said poll also indicates that a scant half of the state’s voters believe that President Obama was born in the United States. See what I mean about problems?

Regarding the first item, 50 lashes with a wet noodle (I’m keepin’ it freekay) go to the pollster who designed the questions. Public Policy Polling actually asked people if they support Obama’s plan for health care. HE DOESN’T HAVE A PLAN! They conducted a poll that is useless because it asked about something nonexistent. The president has offered advice on aspects of our system that must change, but he has repeatedly left it up to Congress to devise a plan that would effect the changes. Now, one might poll voters and ask them if they believe he’s right about what needs to change, and/or if they agree with some of his suggestions, but there’s no Obama plan or Obamacare to get all het up over. Some people like to argue that we can still learn things from faulty polling, but we cannot. A poll that asks for opinions on something that doesn’t exist is meaningless. In this case, it also reinforces misconceptions about a very important matter that we know too many people are misinformed about, making it frustrating as well as pointless.

More seriously, we have the results showing that way too many voters are ill-informed not only about our current president but also about our Constitution. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court could not administer the presidential oath of office – two times, no less – to a person who is not a natural born citizen. We couldn’t elect one. The president was born, as has been consistently shown, in Hawaii. He was not born outside the United States. It is shocking to me that anyone, even Republican voters, could actually believe this rank nonsense. Nevertheless, 76% of them have swallowed (kinky again!) the crazy concept whole. If it’s any comfort, Hawaii is the sticking point for some of them. That’s right, 8% don’t know or are unsure if Hawaii is a state. Again, see what I mean about problems?

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Greenville health forum

Legislative session gets positive reviews

Comments (Closed):12

IBXer
August 11, 2009 at 2:16 pm
What’s your point? Oh I see. We the people are too dumb to govern ourselves, so Führer Obama must show us the way.
Rob Schofield
August 11, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I think the right-wing is worried and feeling the pressure, AV. It used to take at least a couple of swipes at their lack of understanding, analysis, preparation, etc… before they resorted to the Nazi B.S.

Now they lead with it almost every time they open their mouths or fire up their keybaords. How ironic from a movement that has made the big lie the centerpiece of its strategy.
Rob B
August 11, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The point is that these troglodyte Republicans don’t care how untrue all the lies are about certain proposals Obama has made– they just want to be loud and violent and feel like a part of a really marginalized, victimized group who are small but who are right, damn it! And these polls add fuel to their moron fire because they are in fact push polls when they suggest that there is an official healthcare plan on the table. I’m sure they’ve all read that thousand-page what’s-it where it says that the elderly will be euthanized and that they’ll be charged directly from their bank accounts whenever a crackhead abortion-junkie mother of twenty (read:black woman) twists her ankle. Misinformation is a problem, especially when Republican officials are shamelessly pouring it out and millions of bigots are swallowing it up and turning quasi-violent about it.
old social worker
August 11, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Curious that the fringe right sees universal healthcare as a bigger threat than big insurance. Perhaps none of them or their loved ones have experienced a severe illness or had their coverage cancelled or denied when they most needed it.

More than a few of the protesters, including the irrespressable Dallas Woodhouse, appear clinically obese, making them targets for potential policy cancellation under the current system.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare” pretty much sums up the rational capabilities of the protesters.
IBXer
August 11, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Old Social, “Big Insurance”, whatever that is supposed to be, has never set out to cause the death of hundreds of millions of people. Government, in its many forms, has.

Rob, the Nazis were socialists. Socialists always think that they are doing what is right by forcing their utopian ideals upon everyone else. The Nazis believed that and so do modern day socialists.
T. Hill
August 11, 2009 at 5:20 pm
IBXer, the Nazis were Authoritarians.

Just like you.

The economic model they ascribed to had no impact on bossing people around.

As a Capitalist Libertarian, I assure you that the Nazi’s had both wrong. You being half right, just makes you scream louder but still makes you half Authoritarian idiot.
IBXer
August 12, 2009 at 10:02 am
T. Hill, maybe you should have someone edit your writing before you post it because what you just wrote makes no sense. Or are you joking, I can’t tell.

I am Authoritarian because I want the government to stay out of my every waking moment? Yet you are anti-authority because you think government should control every aspect of your, and everyone elses, life? Seriously? Are you even reading and/or thinking about what you are saying?

Rob, it is utopian to claim that you can give everyone everything they want and they won’t have to pay anything for it. It is a lie. People are seeing through it and that is why the democrats are loosing this argument.

The only way Obamacare becomes law now is if they strong arm it onto the American people in defiance of our will. That will be the end of your party. The leadership knows this now but will keep up the talking points so they don’t offend their base. they know the fight is lost, though.
IBXer
August 12, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Jonathan, you can’t “Give American’s the opportunity to seek their own health care, without their employer and without the government getting in their way” because letting people live their own lives without you forcing your ideals on them is authoritarian, at least according to Mr. Hill.
T. Hill
August 12, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Oh, IBXer lighten up. If you support government out of marriage and abortion rights so be it. I just figured since you busted out the “Führer” in your first comment you were one of those Republicans that lost everything in the last few elections. Also.
old social worker
August 12, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Big Insurance is the collection of quasi-monopolistic entities who control healthcare that lies outside private pay, Medicare and Medicaid. The proper libertarian response to BI is to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid (and their pricing minimums), and allow a truly free market in healthcare (with much lower competitive prices) to evolve.

At least I suspect that’s what IBXer is trying to articulate.
Rob B
August 12, 2009 at 3:15 pm
IBXer, do you honestly believe I think everyone should get everything they want without paying for it? Health is a matter of life and death and it’s not a commodity that private industry can handle, which is obvious. I don’t think we all need digital cable or even a government supplied converter box so we can still watch six channels for free.

The real losers (the ones “loosing,” as you say) are the Republican voters who believe that their Republican representatives care about them and about family values (whatever the hell that means) and smaller government (ha!) and aren’t just pawns for big business who can turn whatever issue they get paid to care about into a heated moral issue, chopped up and processed to please the palate of the uneducated southern whites.

In response to some of the free-marketeers, the problem I have with Libertarians is that while the economy is amoral, there are people at the helm of every business and morals (or lack thereof) come into play whether or not they should. It’s kind of like those bumper stickers that say “Guns don’t kill people, PEOPLE kill people.” Those stickers should read “People kill people much more easily with guns.” Money, like guns, may not be prejudiced, but money does not erase prejudice or cronyism or nepotism or anything else that prevents the best person from having that job or getting that contract, etc. That’s where the law comes in; that’s where government comes in; that’s where the intervention is needed.
IBXer
August 14, 2009 at 9:56 am
Rob, we are talking about healtchare reform here, stay on target. We are not talking about digital cable.

Obamacare cannot cover everyone, allow your healthcare to remain exactly the same if you want it (this is a cleaver use of wording but is nothing more than an outright lie*), avoid rationing, and lower healthcare cost all at the same time. It can’t. This is utopian and based on ideology, not reality.

*Obama keeps saying you can keep your current coverage if you want to. What the bill says, is that you can keep it for up to 5 years, and, if after that point, your policy is completely unchanged – not even adjusting for inflation – then you can keep it. So in 5 years, if you have the exact same policy, same deductibles, and you and your insurer have not made any changes to the policy whatsoever, you can keep it. That will mean no one gets to keep their coverage for more than 5 years because that is not a sustainable business model. Everyone will then be on The Leader’s plan.