GOP--Sore Losers

[tzor]

Umm, actually the GOP is planning on filibustering any bill, so that's just plain organizing... Most of the tax-protests and yelling at town hall meetings was organized and roused up by industry or Republican party sources directly. It's not like joe blow on the street would have shown up telling lies had no fox news and right-wing radio been spewing lies word for word from GOP and industry sources.

No, no, no, no and again if I have not said it enough times no.

First, to suggest that the GOP is “organizing” a filibuster is plain silly (if not outright stupid). Any GOP action towards a filibuster is “collective knee-jerking.” There is no organizational top down pressure to get people to filibuster and the votes aren’t there; I’m sure that the RINO would never support it and neither would some of the moderates like McCain.

The tax-protests were “organized” to the extent that someone had to apply for permission to host them. Having been to one and seeing a neighbor of mine who has never been involved in politics and was certainly not a part of any organization that would have called them, I can attest for the “field of dreams” nature of the event; someone held it and people came.

The yelling at town hall meetings was not “organized.” It’s not like they all wore the same purple union shirt and had professionally made signs. The people who were against all liberally quoted FOX and Rush, the people who were for all liberally quoted the president, and MSNBC. With the exception of those purple shirts there was little “organization,” just the commonality of rampant rumors.

So let’s throw the shoe on the other foot. Were those who go to those town hall meetings “organized” by the emails that were sent out by the White House on the health care issue? I’m sure that they would not have made those points if the White House hadn’t told them of them so does that also qualify as “organized?”

The Republican Party Organization has finally gone on the offensive (not that it’s going to do much, Steele can’t offensively get out of a paper bag) by objecting to cutting Medicare benefits to pay this reform and instead propose real plans to get Medicare effective and not crying about going bankrupt every five years. It probably won’t work as a tactic, Steele is not clever enough (they shredded him on NPR’s Morning Edition) and of course with the general MSM media blackout on anything not gloriously praising The One, no one will ever know it happened anyway.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually, they don't if you ask them. Protestors refuse to admit who told them to go.

And here is Tzor on time to remind us he denies everything, and he knows nothing, NOTH-THIINKG!

And of course since it's Tzor he either swallows the right wing astroturf hook line and sinker as usual, or maybe he just lies through his teeth.

Tea Baggers are an astroturf movement the town hall disrupters running around threatening democrats with asualt rifles are largely the same people, and organized by the same people.

Their tactics including the yelling that Tzor regards as totally spontaneous and grass roots, are actually outlined in astroturfer memos.

And similarly you can find Republicans all over the public record for longer than the last decade talking about how they as a party MUST stand against ALL Democratic health reforms for political reasons. And plenty of their talk at the moment about killing the bill as a party.

So yeah. As usual, Tzor is living in a strange right wing alternate reality where up is down and fascism is public health care. So much so sometimes I wonder if Tzor himself is Astroturf.

Edit: As for steele and official republican plans on health care, you don't get much more offensive than not only rabidly attacking the health care bill but using it as a lever to propose cutting ALL government funding for major national parks, school lunch programs, head start education programs, cancer diabetes and heart disease research, living wills paliative care and hospices (even needed and voluntary forms, not those naughty involuntary TOTALLY REALZ!11!!! death panel ones), the entire college loan scheme, all government farm subsidies, disbanding about half a dozen entire government departments, firing 10s of thousands of government workers, ending "regulation as we know it".

[Crissa]

Cutting Medicare benefits is not in any of the proposed bills. So why did you bring that up, tzor?

Steele himself is opposed to Medicare. As was Reagan. The idea that they want to 'save' it is laughable.

-Crissa

[tzor]

So yeah. As usual, Tzor is living in a strange right wing alternate reality where up is down and fascism is public health care. So much so sometimes I wonder if Tzor himself is Astroturf.

I am clearly not Astroturf. After carful analysis I have determined that I am 50% crab grass and 50% dandelion. I fully expect that 2009 will be a great year for my dandelion wine.

Cutting Medicare benefits is not in any of the proposed bills. So why did you bring that up, tzor?

Obamacare Does Cut Your Medicare Benefits

The next healthcare battle: Cutting Medicare Advantage

Steele himself is opposed to Medicare. As was Reagan. The idea that they want to 'save' it is laughable.

The following link is Steele's op ed piece in The Washington Post: Protecting Our Seniors - GOP Principles for Health Care

The Republican Party's contract with seniors includes tenets that Americans, regardless of political party, should support. First, we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of "health-insurance reform." As the president frequently, and correctly, points out, Medicare will go deep into the red in less than a decade. But he and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program to fund his health-care experiment. The president also plans to cut hospital payments and Medicare Advantage, all of which will mean fewer treatment options for seniors.

I am not surprised to find the world turned upside down, where the worship of "The One" leads one to believe that facts are an alternate reality. Such is life.

[MGuy]

Your second link isn't working for me.

In your first link I find the wording questionable. Obama says that:

"We’ve got to eliminate programs that don’t work, and I’ll give you an example in the health care area. We are spending a lot of money subsidizing the insurance companies around something called Medicare Advantage, a program that gives them subsidies to accept Medicare recipients but doesn’t necessarily make people on Medicare healthier. And if we eliminate that and other programs, we can potentially save $200 billion out of the health care system."

Which is directed towards getting insurance companies to accept the elderly. If there is a provision in the Healthcare bill to accept those who aren't accepted by insurance companies what would be the point of continuing to pay the companies an incentive to cover them?

That just popped out at me in the first one I'm still reading the third one.

[MGuy]

I have quite a few problems with the third one it turns out but here are a few that pop out at me.

"While Republicans believe that reforms are necessary, President Obama's plan for a government-run health-care system is the wrong prescription."

This is the claim that gets at me the most. The Health Care Bill is still under construction. It is being run over by both parties. Many parts of it can still be altered. If the whole reason why this guy doesn't like the bill is because its cutting the funding from Medicare why isn't he instead just working to keep that money in Medicare instead of being in favor of eliminating the ENTIRETY of the reform? If the Republican party is so into reform then why don't they make a counter proposal instead of shoving their fingers in their ears and defiantly shaking their heads at this version of reform.

"Second, we need to prohibit government from getting between seniors and their doctors."

This is strange. The guy says he likes Medicare (government run) and now says the government shouldn't be involved in it. So he basically wants to eliminate Medicare.

"Third, we need to outlaw any effort to ration health care based on age."

Don't insurance companies currently ration their health care?

These are just the lines that jump out at me the most. There is something on about every line that doesn't sit right with me honestly.

[tzor]

This is strange. The guy says he likes Medicare (government run) and now says the government shouldn't be involved in it. So he basically wants to eliminate Medicare.

He is saying (as he tried to make the point on NPR this morning) is that Medicare is an important program. It has problems, in part because it is government run, but it currently is doing the job that it was designed to do. It needs to be made more efficient so that it is no longer constantly in danger of going under every five years. Given its current condition, the last thing it needs is to be sacrificed in order to pay for a system with even more problems than Medicare.

[Kaelik]

So just to be clear Tzor:

Your theory is that when Steve Forbes and Dick Armey get together and create an organization called "Freedom Works" that launches a "Tea Party Tour" and then releases actual memos telling people how to confront your congressman in town hall meetings, and then a bunch of people happen to exactly follow the advice of the memos.

That's totally accidental and spontaneous?

[tzor]

The original Tea Party was (ignoring the tea parties of Ron Paul in 2007) was first proposed by Rick Santelli of CNBC (Feb 19, 2009). The biggest organizer was definitely Glenn Beck’s organization, although there were a lot of other groups formed separately of the 912 project because at the time some conservatives thought Glenn Beck was a little radical and a little too attention getting. (In my own town we had two parties almost side by side within a half hour of each other. The one I was involved in – where my icon comes from – was organized by Republicans trying to bend over backwards to be apolitical as possible – to the point where there were no speeches.)

The so called “Tea Party Express” doesn’t start until tomorrow can I can’t find any reference to FreedomWorks in the original Apr 15 Tea Parties aside from smoke and mirrors and perhaps one event in Atlanta. They were at one point a central housing location for people registering tea party events, but that’s not the top down organization that you are talking about.

So clearly it was not “accidental and spontaneous.” It was an idea that was in one sense “accidental and spontaneous,” followed by a number of people who jumped on the band wagon, followed by a number of people who thought “coordinating” and “listing” all these events would get them web hits, followed by groups who didn’t want the parade to pass them by, followed by people who suddenly thought that they had to be there. It was like a modern day political Woodstock and about as well organized.

(After all, if there had been real Astroturf organization, the July 4th tea parties would not have been the dismal failure that they were. Most of the “success” of the April 15 tea parties was the sheer novelty of it all.)

[Crissa]

tzor, Tea Parties were advertised and scheduled by GOP front-men well in advance of the well-to-do Santelli's little whine-fest.

You're just buying into the myth, and once again, perpetrating a lie. I hate relying on word of mouth articles, but that's what I got in Google. If you look up who paid for the web postings and websites for the various protests, you'll find out that it was indeed from the top. Porkulus became tea-party when their anti-pork protests fell flat during the stimulus debate.

-Crissa

PS, more people went to Woodstock than participated in every Tea Party held this year, together. Please don't lie.

PPS,

[Kaelik]

SO Tzors official position on the issue is:

"Stever Forbes doesn't know how to organize anything, and would never have created an organization designed to promote an idea that he likes. LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! IF I IGNORE IT, IT DOESN'T EXIST!"

Yes Tzor, through you epically long eighth of a second reading my post you didn't find any evidence that Freedom Works exists.

Great. What does that have to do with them sending out memos to people telling them to yell at their congressmen and call them nazi's?

[Crissa]

Lots of Even more astroturfing. Of course, most tricks are just simple ones.

-Crissa

[tzor]

PS, more people went to Woodstock than participated in every Tea Party held this year, together. Please don't lie.

Please don't put words into my posts either, because I don't recall talking about "numbers" of people. By the way, if you are counting estimates for the April 15th tea parties look to be 250,000 and estimates for Woodstock look to be 350,000 - 500,000. Of course that only compares the initial tax day protests, not the subsequent ones although I doubt that the rest of the dates reach the same level as the April 15th date.

[tzor]

Oh great, Republicans have Steve Forbes, OMG we are so evil.

Democrats have George Soros what does that make them?

George Soros Announces $15 Million Effort Combat The Influence of Money on Health Care (04/15/2009)
George Soros Pledges $5 Million To Bankroll Health Care Reform Push, Group Says (08/10/2009)
How George Soros Created Obama's Health-Care Coalition

The inner core that created HCAN are the tight clique of Soros front organizations, ACORN, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America's Future, Center for American Progress, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and USAction (formerly Citizen Action).

I love it when the pot calls the kettle carbon scored.

[PhoneLobster]

Tzor you have just embarrassed yourself. You should go spend some alone time in your crazy box like you did that time after your embarrassed yourself with your economic prediction credentials.

I'm thinking that quality of crazy there is at least 2 months of silent shame for you to deal with in private.

[Heath Robinson]

Oh great, Republicans have Steve Forbes, OMG we are so evil.

Democrats have George Soros what does that make them?

The Democrats are not the ones claiming that the things they do are spontaneous and unplanned. In fact, it'd be pretty silly to claim that Obama's healthcare plan is spontaneous and unplanned. So they, uh, don't.

[tzor]

(Deliberately ignoring PhoneLobster for now just becasue I want to annoy ...)

Speaking of AstroTurf, why look at this article from the New York Times (I dare Crissa to try to dismiss this as a conservative rag with conservative lies.)

Enviro Ad Sparks Debate -- Grass Roots or AstroTurf?

A blogger based in Minot, N.D., who picked up on a Craigslist ad seeking "progressive activists" who would be paid $90 a day, charged the Environmental Defense Action Fund with "astroturfing," or running a fake grass-roots campaign. Television news reported the story. Environmental Defense Action Fund said it was simply hiring workers to talk to voters.

So according to PhoneLobster I just embarrased myself again.

[violence in the media]

So, changing subjects somewhat, do the Republicans have any valid reasons for opposing health care reform? Do they have any viable alternatives?

[angelfromanotherpin]

It depends what you mean by valid.

• Generously speaking, some Republicans may genuinely believe against all evidence that health care reform will be bad for the country. For reasons. And while they're deluded, they are at least voting their conscience.

• Most Republicans think that if health care including a public option passes it will be so wildly successful that it will discredit their anti-government philosophies super hardcore and the political ramifications will be kicking them in the balls for decades.

• Everyone is being lobbied by the health insurance companies.

Now, if you mean, 'do they have any coherent reasons backed by evidence?', the answer is no. If they did, they would have produced those, instead of lying endlessly about 'killing seniors' and embarrassing themselves by talking about fiscal responsibility.

Now, the GOP has presented an alternative plan. It is, unsurprisingly, based on tax cuts.

The nexus of their plan is redirecting the $300 billion annual tax subsidy for employment-based health insurance to individuals in the form of refundable, advanceable tax credits. Families would get $5,700 a year and individuals $2,300 to buy insurance and invest in Health Savings Accounts.

Low-income Americans would get a supplemental debit card of up to $5,000 to help them purchase insurance and pay out-of-pocket costs. They would have an incentive to spend wisely since up to one-fourth of any unspent money in the accounts could be rolled over to the next year. The combination of the refundable tax credit and debit card gives lower-income Americans a way out of the Medicaid ghetto so they can have the dignity of private insurance.

So, you might get some money which will not come close to paying for the costs which are continuing to spiral out of control, because their plan has nothing to control costs.

It's the level of quality I've come to expect from the GOP.

[MGuy]

Now is that a static 5,700 for every family no matter what the size?

[tzor]

So, changing subjects somewhat, do the Republicans have any valid reasons for opposing health care reform? Do they have any viable alternatives?

There is an assumption in that statement that I will disagree with. Republicans, in general, do not oppose “health care reform.” They oppose specific planks of proposals and laws currently working their way through congress.

Top on the list is the “public option.” The basic argument is that if we look towards Medicare as the model for “cutting costs.” But that model which simply pays less to doctors and hospitals hurts the system as a whole because those unpaid costs have to be paid by someone, normally those who have private insurance. In addition more and more doctors simply refuse to accept Medicare patients. This is reasonable when dealing with two different sets of people (under and over 65) but when a similar system attempts to compete with the private companies for the same group of people they can literally kill the competition by forcing all the unpaid costs on the competition. Once this happens the same situation with Medicare will happen; too many people chasing too few doctors because most have retired instead of being paid significantly less.

As for viable alternatives, the best ones I have seen would be to allow (or require) insurance companies to directly sell to individuals rather than to corporations and their employees. The biggest real gap for those who really want to get medical coverage but can’t are very small business owners who have exceptionally limited options for purchasing insurance and mostly are stuck with a “take it or leave it” mentality. (As a result most leave it because they cannot afford it.) Another alternative would allow insurance companies to sell across state lines. The idea behind this is that the more people compete for your services the better the service becomes.

[Cielingcat]

so they can have the dignity of private insurance.

This seriously made me laugh, and then I remembered people actually believe in this.

[Kaelik]

So Tzor, your official reason why you believe that Steve Forbes didn't use an organization he created to arrange for health care protests even though anyone with half a brain can see that he did is because:

"George Soros owns the President!"

Sure, whenever you are proved to be a totally wrong mislead tool, just start insulting the nearest democrat to the conversation. That will never get old, ever.

Your official proof that protests all using the same methodology that was promoted by the Republican party in a memo is that George Soros spent money on a campaign.

Do you not see how retarded you are? Or do you just close your eyes while a Fox news anchor shoves his hand up your ass to work your mouth like a puppet?

And then you present a solution to poor people not being able to afford healthcare that is basically take healthcare away from more poor people so you can give it to middling rich people cheaper.

[violence in the media]

So, changing subjects somewhat, do the Republicans have any valid reasons for opposing health care reform? Do they have any viable alternatives?

There is an assumption in that statement that I will disagree with. Republicans, in general, do not oppose “health care reform.” They oppose specific planks of proposals and laws currently working their way through congress.

Top on the list is the “public option.” The basic argument is that if we look towards Medicare as the model for “cutting costs.” But that model which simply pays less to doctors and hospitals hurts the system as a whole because those unpaid costs have to be paid by someone, normally those who have private insurance. In addition more and more doctors simply refuse to accept Medicare patients. This is reasonable when dealing with two different sets of people (under and over 65) but when a similar system attempts to compete with the private companies for the same group of people they can literally kill the competition by forcing all the unpaid costs on the competition. Once this happens the same situation with Medicare will happen; too many people chasing too few doctors because most have retired instead of being paid significantly less.

I have to question the reality of this claim, especially the bolded part. You mean to tell me that most of the doctors in this country will retire, rather than be paid significantly less, under a new system that supports a public option? So, how are all of these doctors going to support their indefinite retirements or fulfill their education debts? Become concierge doctors? Go to the other nations with less socialized medicine? Really?

As for viable alternatives, the best ones I have seen would be to allow (or require) insurance companies to directly sell to individuals rather than to corporations and their employees. The biggest real gap for those who really want to get medical coverage but can’t are very small business owners who have exceptionally limited options for purchasing insurance and mostly are stuck with a “take it or leave it” mentality. (As a result most leave it because they cannot afford it.) Another alternative would allow insurance companies to sell across state lines. The idea behind this is that the more people compete for your services the better the service becomes.

How is a person acting as an individual insurance customer any better than the current system? It seems like that would serve to make any individual customer even less important. Why would we think that Timmy the truck driver is going to get the same deal for the same coverage on insurance that a company like GE would be able to negotiate? Would this be something heavily regulated? I can't see it working the way you described unless it was, at which point I go back to wondering why there just isn't a public option to provide a minimum coverage/maximum cost baseline for the industry.

Also, what counts as a very small business? And, is there a way to identify and separate the faux-businesses* from the legitimate attempts at livelihood?

*By faux-business I mean the small business licenses held by people to fund hobbies through wholesale pricing and/or tax advantages. Phil the NASA engineer's Home Photograpy Studio, incorporated for discounts on camera equipment and for a tax deduction on his home studio, is probably never going to employ anyone, nor act as Phil's primary (or even significant) source of financial support. Therefore, it seems unreasonable to count him as a small business owner lacking health insurance.

[tzor]

Once this happens the same situation with Medicare will happen; too many people chasing too few doctors because most have retired instead of being paid significantly less.

I have to question the reality of this claim, especially the bolded part.

You want to know something? I have to question that as well. There is the problem of brevity being the cause of misunderstanding and I omitted a few important words. Let me revise that sentence.

Once this happens the same situation with Medicare will happen; too many people chasing too few doctors because most of the doctors nearing retirement age will decide to retire instead of being paid significantly less for their services. Many of these doctors are no longer accepting new Medicare patients for exactly this reason.