ttogreh

Did you get into a brawl with a bunch of union members, TM? I doubt it. Both sides are culpable for the violence that has come out of some of the meetings, but there is a difference of a concerned citizen expressing herself, such as you, and astro-turf thugs like the tea baggers screaming at their representatives and fighting with union members. Union members who have only gone to the town hall meetings in response to reports of bellowing epithets being thrown there.

Well, write to your senators, Reaper. That actually sounds like a reasonable compromise. What with 14,000 people getting kicked off of health insurance rolls a day, with the uninsured reaching 50 million, we have to accept that the old way of doing things just does not make any sense. If the Republicans would just push something like what you are suggesting in the public airwaves, instead of blaming Pelosi and sending tea-baggers to town hall meetings... we might actually not have to re-visit this after whatever the hell does finally get passed.

Oh, stop equivocating, Gaf. We all know what you were implying by throwing that particular nugget of the bill onto this thread without any context behind it. Stop making shit up.

... the Pulitzer prize winning website that I use...

As you can see, this is why I relied on politifact.com for clarification. Go ahead, TM. Read that section, and tell me that politifact.com is lying to me. I haven't read it fully, yet. I will start now, and I might just have to change my mind about politifact.com. I doubt it, though.

Not "some website", TM. The Pulitzer prize winning politifact.com, ran by the St. Petersburg times. Politifact.com has never, ever, ever lied to me. Gaf lies to me all the damn time. Like in posts numbered 55 and 58 of this thread.

I will trust politifact.com over you any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. "Direct, Real Time Access" sounds scary outside of the context of Insurance companies paying for services rendered. Stop making shit up.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/jul/30/e-mail-analysis-health-bill-needs-check-/ Stop making shit up.

Ok. Canada pays for medical coverage. The doctors are not employed by the government. Canadian doctors have the option to be part of private medical systems. Nearly none do, because while the doctors are not employed by the government, if they want to be paid by the government, they can't be part of a private health system. That's single payer. Canada actually has ten single payer systems, all administered by the provinces. Britain pays for medical coverage, and also employs the doctors. That's national health care. Once again, private health care is not illegal in Britain, but it is rare. Essentially, the National Health System or Britain would be like if the VA was expanded to all American citizens. That is not what Obama is proposing. What Obama is proposing is a public option, sort of like the Canadian model, except for one big difference. Doctors can be paid by private insurers, or the government. In other words, the government would directly compete with insurers. That is why HMOs are so vehemently against the plan that Obama is proposing. It is the first step towards single payer health care.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090810/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_end_of_life_q_a There is no death Panel in the health reform bill. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/15/obama-if-you-like-your-doctor-you-can-keep-your-doctor/ There is no provision to force people to change doctors. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580516633344953.html An editorial in the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of conservatism, on why a public option is needed. This is what it is. It isn't perfect, but there you go.

Candyman, I would be less annoyed by the Republicans taking ammunition on this if they actually offered some kind of competing bill. An actual alternative rather than sophomoric astro-turf funding or the spreading of downright lies about the current bill. All the Republicans are doing is being the party of "No", because they know that whatever reform that does get past won't be enough. A group of obstructionists whose only objective is to maintain their base, which is demographically shrinking, with no substantive ideas at all... is not a political party. It's a cabal.

How much do you pay, Raev?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/ No system is perfect. We have to realize that "reform" does not mean "resolution". Indeed, we can assume that any government intervention into American health care now will most certainly be not enough, and that we will have to fight this battle once again in this presidential term. Indeed, the fact that any reform will not be enough will give the Republicans ammunition. "See?", they will say, "After all that, it still doesn't work. Clearly, we should be in charge, since a system that took 230 years to get where it is at isn't fixed after three years." And people will believe them. Hopefully not enough people, though... That comes from a post in a Something Awful forum.

I hope the whole Mainland / Island disagreement won't stop America from helping the Taiwanese clean up...

Poor Billy Mays. He had no logical reason for his incredible success. He really didn't. For every Billy Mays, there is a literally an entire industry of people that are a fraction of his success that are just as talented as he is. So... he felt trapped by his apparent illogical success. He couldn't modify any aspect of it, because he had no bloody idea why it worked. So, when he didn't feel up enough, he had to get up. Success is a hell of a drug.

Of course, that is best done on a macro-economic scale. A local municipality ought to stay under budget while the federal government makes up the short-fall. Indeed, a municipality ought to fund its operations through federal bonds or some other manner. The smaller the government, the more loudly Friedman is heard. The larger a government, more attention should be paid to Keynes. Still, both philosophies are two sides of the same coin.

COTN, you get what you pay for. "We", as in American society pays for a failing system that boots 14,000 people off of insurance every day, with fifty million people uninsured. Whenever one of those people gets hit by a bus, we don't check their insurance. We patch them together with the best health care technology in the world, and then pass the cost to everyone else that is insured. Which is dropping by 14,000 people every day. Canada does not have universal health care. It has ten provincial health systems with a single payer system. For instance, in Ontario (Windsor), anyone that makes less than $20,000 CAN pays nothing for health insurance, and anyone making more than $200,000 CAN pays $75 CAN a month or $900 dollars a year in premiums. If you make more than 20,000 but less than 200,000, you pay a smaller premium. However, there are only so many doctors in the Ontarian system, with only so much money to pay for care. Still, since the single payer system is the only game in town (private insurance is not illegal, but doctors can either have private insurance patients or public patients. Never both. And anyone with a private plan pays for the public plan any way), costs are contained. People also have to wait for non-critical care sometimes, as well. Doctors in Canada aren't swapping out Mercedes every year, but they aren't starving either. Moreover, wait time has consistently been dropping for years.

TM, that was an "ad hominem" logical fallacy. "Ttogreh is mean to me, so I shouldn't even bother to defend my opinions in the face of his aggressive jerkiness." Look, I fully admit to being an aggressive jerk, but that's no reason to let me run roughshod over your principles. With that in mind, if you actually have substantive evidence of yellow journalism, demagoguery, or outright lies by anyone on MSNBC... Please. Stand up to a bully and tell him what for, eh?

While I certainly have been lazy in this thread, I feel that one of the reasons I have fallen back on that sin is because I haven't really needed to work. My opinion of Fox news is reaffirmed on a daily basis, while any assault on my chosen world view has been weak and dare I say with a streak of paranoia. Indeed, ACORN has not been shut down because Obama, while he was a candidate, convinced the Bush administration and the local law enforcement agencies of dozens of states that ACORN was above board. It's not even a "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy, because the sequence of events is backwards. The time when Obama actually was in a position to unduly influence the investigations, came into effect some more than sixty days after the election. Then the attacking of DailyKos, Media Matters, Politifact, and the other media watchdogs I have mentioned... Obviously the reason these watchdogs are all saying the same thing isn't because it is the truth... it is because they all have a liberal bias and want to obliterate the non-existent credibility of Fox News... I might be lazy, but look at my competition.

Raev, I have a strong opinion, but I am capable of intellectual evolution. The other side of the pole, MSNBC, Olbermann and Matthews... I am ready and willing to hear their atrocities. I want to hear when and how often MSNBC has spewed out yellow journalism, or outright lies, or blatant demagoguery. All I am getting is half hearted attempts to defend the yellow journalism, outright lies, and blatant demagoguery of Fox news. Don't blame me if the Peacock network is being used for peacockery. I'm not meeting much resistance.

http://trueslant.com/christopherthomas/2009/08/01/glenn-beck-and-the-governments-fictional-plot-to-hijack-your-computer/ Fox News Makes Shit Up.

Jyxxxed, 18 states have either medical marijuana laws or have decriminalized marijuana. You need 38 states to amend the constitution. I have hope.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2009/jul/29/cop_accidentally_reveals_the_wis Essentially, this drug warrior sincerely believes that if Marijuana was legalized, everyone would still buy shitty weed from Jose, the drug lord with facial tattoos, rather than from "Marijuana merchants, LLC", where they can get pot so powerful they won't be able to stand after smoking it, and don't have to worry about being stabbed by their dealer. Is that the best argument these fascists can muster?

COTN... The Daily Kos link was nothing more than a clip of Glenn Beck's show, and a transcript thereof. The Reddit comment Showed how incredibly blatant the lie was. ACORN admits openly that the people it hires for eight dollars an hour sometimes aren't the most upstanding of individuals, and routinely sends what IT considers registration fraud to the relevant authorities. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/oct/17/sorting-truth-obama-acorn/ Read that. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/may/21/michele-bachmann/bachmann-claims-acorn-has-access-85-billion-federa/ And that.

Banks have them, as well.