Quote of the Day: The Conservative Temperament

It is truly amazing how Republicans follow their leaders. Recently Limbaugh talked for hours, apparently, against the idea that health insurance should cover pre-existing conditions. And his listeners seem to have accepted that. Reminds one of Jonestown.

Insurance stocks jumped only because most of the uncertainty is out of the way. Investors are now certain that Obama is fully supportive of Corporatism... as Chomsky says, there's only one party in America, the Corporate Party, and the Dems and the Rethugs are simply factions of it.

Kevin, this post gives me the sense you are trying to bolster your view, wrongly held in my opinion, that this HRC bill is a good thing. In spite of you, Nobel Prize winner Krugman, Klein, DeLong et al taking the same position on this, the best reflection on the bill came today from the National Nurses United group, representing 150,000 nurses in the US. Their analysis of the bill provided 10 well-researched points as to why the bill is worse than nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-ann-demoro/an-inglorious-end-to-the_b...

These are people who actually work in the industry, unlike you and your ilk who have merely opined from afar on something you know very little about. Here's a few of their points about how insurance company's will continue to get away with their scam.

"As the NNU has said in its statement on the bill, the loopholes include:

* Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.

* Permitting insurers to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.

* Allowing insurers to charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

* Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" - the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage."

There is a lot more in the Huffington Post article, and I suggest you have a look Kevin...and perhaps change your view.

Republicans over this past year have seemed increasingly creepy. Like they're quietly looking for some way to fuck with you they can get away with, like leaving a roller skate on your stairs.

Full of nails and broken glass. With a bomb in it.

Commenters seem to miss the point about the continuing popularity of Ron Paul and the growing trend of his supporters running for Congress on essentially his platform (his son, for one, running for US Senate). He is able to maintain his broad support across the far right, yet maintain sufficient respectability to attract more mainstream republicans and libertarians and even some anti-war liberals. While his bill to audit the Fed has received a lot of coverage, his proposals to end the Fed, free competition in currency, etc. have received very little attention. While I feel these are generally really bad ideas, as an economics novice I am not sure why they are bad ideas and I have nothing to respond to the Paulites who make these arguments. So these ideas grow within the realm of "Liberty Patriots" (to put two of their favorite words together) unchecked by any counter argument. And at the right fringe of this group are many who speak in revolutionary terms. Paul may not support calls to violence, but he certainly does little to discourage them.