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I suspect that the uberrwealthy like the Koch's think it is all an amusing game.
1. Wall Street finally decides to spank the Tea Party.
2. The rest of the world's financial markets spank the Tea Party.
...helpful hashtags: #tcot #teaparty #gop #shutdowntheGOP #GOPshutdown
The debt ceiling thing is ultimately ignorable two different ways: platinum coin or just by Obama deciding follow the part of the law that says the US can't default on its debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinio…
Hopefully someone will have the necessary will if it comes to that.
Secondly, the GOP will still hold on to the House in 2014 due to redistricting. So remember the teabaggers are doing what their consitutancies want them to do.
I'm sure many are furiously masturbating to this scenario right now.
As usual, the poor and the middle class, the people least responsible for the damage and the mess, will have to clean it up through their suffering. Meanwhile, those responsible will enjoy their goverment healthcare and taxpayer supplied salaries, while telling the poor and middle class they are irresponsible "takers."
It's treason is what it is. Fucking sons of bitches need to be lined up against a wall and shot.
Craven, depraved, puerile, self-absorbed cold hearted bastards, every single one of them.
Banana republican rule is worse than Assad.
Or, you know, not.
See, the federal government interfered with stuff getting done. It doesn't, with a few exceptions, get stuff done.
I realize all you liberal types, who couldn't change a tire or fix a blocked kitchen sink let alone manage your own financial lives, worship and adore federal programs taking adult responsibilities from you.
But try to keep at least a corner of your blinkered eyes on objective reality, okay children?
And death anxiety.
'They' want to control government expenditure in a time of massive unprecedented national debt?
Bastards!
But...is saying that citizens must buy their own food, clothing, housing, child and medical care the same as denying these things? Is saying that a sexually active person should pay bear the costs the same as denying abortion (or, as sane people know it, mass murder) or birth control?
Hint- to an adult, as opposed to a lefty, the answer is no.
You are a loser, and you are witnessing your movement's high water mark. From here on, it will be nothing but one defeat after another as you and your ilk become as irrelevant as the KKK - your spiritual, terroristic and hateful brethren. You may not share their views on race, but you do on humanity.
Oh Mile High
You're, as always, mistaken.
It's the progressive or lefty who thinks without government people couldn't manage the most basic aspects of their lives. The left is made up of two kinds of people. Hateful elitists who think their fellow citizens helpless morons and the self made victims mooching off their more productive fellow citizens.
Conservatives believe most folks can manage (in most cases better) without some government employee too incompetent to make it in the private sector interfering.
I'd say consider yourself corrected but you're far too stupid to learn from anything.
Fact. This is the tea party's "have you no sense of decency moment." Fifty years from now, some splinter group of whatever the Republican party becomes will try to sanitize the legacy of Cruz, Palin, Paul, et al., but they won't come clean then, either.
How well does your business run without employees? How much money do you make off unrented homes?
Self-reliant? You're more dependent upon others than anyone else who posts here.
Every Rethug who voted for delaying Obamacare (and therefore the shutdown) is guilty of dereliction of duty, and they all ought to be impeached. The people who support them and their actions are disloyal citizens with no love of anyone but themselves and those who think like them – the polar opposite of a good American. They want to ruin this nation because they can't have their way. Selfish scumbags, each and every one of them.
The government could completely eliminate all of your bugaboo entitlements and the cost, the taxation, and the deficit would be completely unchanged. It's a trivial amount.
What you are ignoring, probably because you live in a vacuum, is that the government does all sorts of stuff that people have decided they want. You don't get to decide by yourself. That's how democracy works.
Among those things are: virtually every tech advancement in the last fifty years, from semiconductors to the speech recognition engine in both Apple and Android devices; virtually all pharmaceuticals; every major scientific discovery; every university, public and private; Boeing, Microsoft, and dozens of other companies that even a dipshit like you has to have heard of; automobiles; national parks; safe food; in fact safe everything; clean air; the fact that human feces doesn't wash up on the beaches anymore -- the list goes on and on.
I know it's a terrible inconvenience for you to not be able to pour cans of paint down the drain anymore, but it's for the best -- and more importantly, it's for the will of the public.
And you don't pay shit in taxes, asshole. You're getting the best bargain around and you don't even know it. You're a fucking moron, and you and people like you are deliberately destroying the world's largest economy because you don't understand the first thing about how it fucking works.
You should be fucking shot, motherfucker.
Everyone who voted for or supports Obamacare hates the basic right to self determination on which the greatest nation in Gods earth is founded. Anyone who actually believes any government pretending to support human rights should have this kind of tyrannical authority is a traitor and should have their citizenship revoked. A government which can tell me that for the welfare, not general and not personal, of a Topeka retiree or New York single mom to buy a financial instrument not in my interests forfeits all right to allegiance.
My insurance agent has my order to keep our non compliant catastrophic care coverage in place. My accountant knows that I'll pay not one fucking dime in fines now or ever.
If you folks hate freedom so much get the hell out of MY country.
@Apologists for Tyranny
Yep, old news. The government is the source of ALL good yada yada yada.
Whatever contribution to deficits they cause, the very fact of programs stealing from productive citizens for the benefit of nonproductive ones is abhorrent morally and ethically.
Do you know, it's good to see liberals in full hate mode. The prissy 'I'm only concerned about YOU' lie most assume to misguide others is so hypocritical.
Twice now you've called for fatal violence, once against congressmen. Where's the Slog outcry? Anyone? No?
Yeah, thought so, you slobbering demented idiots.
Anyway, YOU have the home in Italy. Allegedly. Get thee on a plane and leave America to real Americans.
The apologist for the cradle to grave nanny state, Fnarf, called in this thread for my being shot and for the shooting of federal congressmen.
Keep up the ESL courses, buddy. Clearly you need them.
The most conservative Supreme Court in the history of this country disagrees with you, you know.
I love freedom. You don't even know what it looks like.
One minute you're all "traitor!" and the next you're going with "forfeits all right to allegiance". So you are the traitor. You're disavowing your allegiance to the lawfully elected government of the USA. OUR government. YOUR government. Stupid fucking asshole. I hope they take your house. I hope you go to fucking prison. You stupid, old, defeated, clueless piece of shit.
Fuck off. Fuck off hard, fuck off forever.
Since you're wrong about everything important, unimportant errors shouldn't be surprising.
I'm not old, at least unless 40 is old.
You're the mouth breathers crying out for civil disobedience all the time. As long as the issue suits you and there aren't consequences.
You're the ones who keep bawling about Bush v Gore, Citizens United et al. So, respect the court when you like their call but not when you don't/
And again, thanks for showing the true hateful, angry, childish face of liberal 'thought'.
You're a piece of shit, however old you happen to be. You're a bad Christian, a bad American, and a plain old bad man. I pity your family.
@33: The Supreme Court of the United States, final arbiter of what is or isn't acceptable, a court whose makeup at present is center-right, says that the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, is Constitutional. Either you accept the ACA as the law of the land, or you oppose the Constitution of the United States of America that the Founding Fathers famously assembled.
It's not YOUR country. It's OURS. One man--one pompous, angry, misguided, willfully-ignorant little man that you are--doesn't have the right to decide everything for the other ~300 million. And if you are so set on defying the law, well, you'll get fined. Refuse to pay the fine and you'll probably get fined some more, maybe even audited. Eventually you may end up in jail, at which point we won't have to deal with your arrogant blathering.
@34: Requiring citizens to give what they can afford to for the care of the poor and the infirm is as old as civilization itself. The Pentateuch, cornerstone of the Judeo-Christian tradition that informed many of this nation's great minds, requires that fallen fruit and the gleanings of harvests be left for the poor and the hungry. Gifts to the poor from one's own possessions were referred to as צדקה ("tzedakah", literally "righteousness") and were left as a personal and voluntary act, but leaving a portion of one's yield to the poor, the infirm, and the traveler was MANDATORY. Be a good Christian, will you?
@39: Take a few deep breaths. Seattleblues is misguided and ignorant, but he's not worth getting that mad over. Don't get mad; get smug and condescending.
No better way to revert to their gold standard, Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal, amirite?
"My insurance agent has my order to keep our non compliant catastrophic care coverage in place."
Umm...do you mean insurance provider or carrier? Maybe you mean "broker," but brokers do not provide insurance. There is no such thing as an "insurance agent" who has any power over the plans offered. They are just salesmen with a set product. If you actually called one, he was probably very confused about why some moron called him to tell him nonsense.
Anyway, whatever provider you are using is bound by federal law to comply by plan year 2014. You do not get to decree this, and nor do you have any input on the plans your provider offers. If your provider does not comply, they will be heavily fined and forced to under federal law. You have no power to decide what your provider offers, or choose a plan that is non-compliant.
Unless your catastrophic plan does not cover anyone older than 30, or has no dependents, it has to comply with the basic ACA regulations. Since you claim to be both older than 30, and with a wife and kids...
So are you completely ignorant, or just lying?
Oh, yes. Any links from SB supporting his bullshit lies about death threats @ 34.
But projection? Oh, there's projection aplenty. His own inability to comprehend a challenge becomes someone else's. His own hatred for his fellow Americans becomes someone elses. His own ability to leave America becomes a demand that we do so.
We are fucking your ass with logic and truth, SB, and you're so squinteyed that YOU think you're doing the fucking.
Your greatest nation cannot govern itself. Your national government can be shut down by a minority of a minority.
In countries with functioning political systems, when legislators cannot agree on something as fundamental as the budget to fund government operations, they are dismissed and a new election is held. Only in the USA do they get to keep "working" - and getting paid! - after jamming a stick through the spokes of government.
The biggest leeches and moochers in your country are the Representatives and Senators who continue to collect a paycheque while refusing to do their job of governing the nation. Not obstructing - governing.
Know anyone who's had a kidney transplant lately? Thank the US federal government, and the thinkers who made the donor match possible. Work like that is on hold now. People will die.
http://www.goldengooseaward.org/winners/…
Probably for the same reason domestic terrorism and militia activities go up when there's a Democrat in the White House. "Conservatives" get extremely pissed off when they don't get their way.
This clear enough Ted?
I WILL NOT buy a financial instrument not in my interests.
I WILL NOT pay a fine for refusing an unlawful government order to engage in commerce.
Obama, the Nazis in charge of Obamacare, and anybody who supports this treasonous legislation can go straight to hell. Or some socialist country, which is pretty much the same thing.
The courageous men and women taking a necessary stand against tyranny and for fiscal responsibility are to be commended. The democrats, who through sheer bullheaded lunacy, refused reasonable compromise and really shut down the government should be removed from office, lawfully through the electoral process as opposed to the call for assassinations upthread.
Compromise: v. - To bend over while we shove our agenda up your ass, ignoring the fact that we lost the last election. (Oh, and the one before that as well.)
Take your dumbfuck mal-formed opinions over to Sharkansky's circle jerk.
Just bring a paper towel.
Anyway, the point is, unless you are willing to break federal law (your insurance carrier is not, trust me), you have to buy insurance, or you have to pay the tax for not having it. Unless of course you make so little income that it does not apply to you.
Now, you may be willing to break federal law, and since you are just one unimportant maroon no one cares about, you probably will not be caught, so go ahead. Also, the idea that it is "unlawful" is supported by nothing but your fantasies.
But do not pretend you are standing up to tyranny, or doing anything other than not paying your fair share into the insurance pool. You fucking "taker."
Are you really that shitty of a husband, father, and provider?
Which is it? Buy a complaint plan, or refuse to provide for your loved ones responsibly?
I've paid my fair share all my life, plus the share of citizens who thought having 4 kids on no stable income a GREAT idea.
I pay for their food. I pay for their housing. I pay for their kids college. And now, thanks to a socialist fuck of a president, I get to pay for their fucking health insurance.
When a bastard liberal (I kniw, the word liberal kind of means bastard, but oh well) says 'fair share' they shouldn't kid themselves that sane people don't know what they mean. They mean we, who work and save and plan and have families when we can afford it, get to pay for every lazy thriftless moocher who didn't.
And federal law be damned, I won't play along with my own mugging this time, you socialist fucks.
Fuck him.
Obviously the only reason people like Seattleblues can be so blase about this all is because they have very little actual understanding of the mechanisms that allow scientific and engineering research to progress.
As a scientist, I'm a bit partial, but the knock-on effects of the shutdown strike me as the most damaging and furthest reaching. Luckily I don't work at a government facility. Sucks to be a really sick person who won't be able to join that new study at the NIH. Sucks for the engineers who spent years working on a Mars mission that could have to wait until 2016 for a launch because they missed their window. For people who like to talk about fiscal conservatism, they sure are comfortable burning cash and wasting human capital.
The NIH funded most of my seven-year PhD. I want to continue to work in my field, but I need to be able to pay the rent. If I end up falling back on my undergraduate engineering degrees, it'd be kind of a waste (though I could be making 3-5 times as much money and spending fewer evenings and weekends at work, so it wouldn't be all bad). When you close down research projects/labs, the people will simply switch fields. And they'll be fine, more than likely. But that work just disappears and it takes a long time to build those pipelines up again.
I'm a recent grad with a background in evolutionary bio. I'm going to have an even harder time finding lab work without the federal government funding our amazing insights into the workings of the natural world.
You claim to be married with kids. Let's take a look at how much you paid for all these moochers, shall we?
A family, married, two kids, $80,000 income, paid $3360 in social security, $1160 medicare, and $4469 federal income tax in 2012. Where did that federal tax go?
"I pay for their food"
Food and nutrition assistance - 3.89%, or $173.84 per year.
"I pay for their housing."
Housing assistance - 1.74%, or $77.76 per year.
I pay for their kids college
Education and job training - 3.3%, or $147.48 per year.
So, if your household income is $80,000, you pay one dollar and ten cents per day to help the poorest of your fellow citizens eat, live indoors, and get an education. A pittance, a bargain, but too much for a selfish bastard like yourself.
(Via http://www.whitehouse.gov/2012-taxreceip…)
The Heritage Foundation, Nazis. Mitt Romney, a Nazi. A fascinating theory.
You do know that's where the ACA came from, right? The Heritage Foundation, the biggest right-wing think tank in the country, currently headed by Jim DeMint. Jim DeMint, a Nazi. Hmm.
The architect of Romneycare in Massachusetts, Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor who also consulted with Obama on the ACA, says "they're the same f---ing bill". Jonathan Gruber, a Nazi. Uh-huh.
You're full of shit, Blues. You don't even know what makes this country great. You don't know ANYTHING.
That pretense is completely gone now. Truly, I fear for the safety of his neighbors and family.
Seriously, The Stranger should notify his local police department. He's going to kill someone, probably sooner than later.
They're popular, too. People vote for this stuff. That's why it's there. Seattleblues doesn't believe in democracy, though. He wants to strip everyone but property-owning white men from the vote. But we're the Nazis.
I mean, really, what option does he have? He can't live in this world with us filthy liberals (many of whom are conservatives of long standing who just aren't quite rabidly insane enough for him). There's nowhere he can move to -- Italy is ten times as socialist as we are. The way I see it, he's got no choice but to follow his conscience and barricade himself in his house with all seventeen of his guns pointed out the window at the black helicopters that will be coming for him soon, with only his Bible for a bulletproof vest.
Come on, Blue! Shoot! Shoot!
Gruber on Romneycare and Obamacare: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/pol…
Rod Dreher, arch-conservative and Rand Paul supporter, contemplates voting for Democrats instead because the Republicans are crazy: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/d…
Seattleblues, is Rod Dreher a Nazi too?
oh shit, did you see this? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
PUBMED :(
Nice to know that the people on the forefront of global medical research are in danger of losing their houses because they're not being paid. Dipshits like Seattleblues are screaming about subsidizing deadbeats while gulping their diabetes pills that someone else's tax dollars paid for.
Then it seems kind of likely you will eventually end up in federal prison, where they don't have wifi which means we will need another resident Randian jackass to pummel, bummer.
Because then you would go broke from the bills, or simply default on them and force society to deal with it for you.
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm
I still love doing science, but we are about to fall way way behind....
Puzzling.
Still playing at your childish taunting? Well, given your political and social worldview it's encouraging that you can still remember to wipe the drool off your chin. Sometimes. There, that's better, isn't it kiddo?
As to the rest, do you ever tire of being wrong? Knowing that government is where the unemployable find work from which they can't be fired for incompetence, airlines or outright rudeness, or stupidity why would I want them telling me what specific insurance I need? To help an Iowa plumber or Californian housewife find insurance? No, they, like me, can plan their own lives or suffer the consequences.
Again Ted, the simple version- I had health insurance that fit my needs. Now I'm told my duty is to buy insurance that doesn't so that other people I don't know can be insured. Fuck that, and fuck you.
Go ahead. I await your brave stand, which will be a media case. You will be outed by your own actions, and your illegally-evicted lesbian tenants will be able to sue your bigoted, selfish ass. AND you'll be told to buy up or pay up. What a glorious day that will be.
Our nation values the rights of the individual. But rights are not unlimited, and you need to learn that. You are not greater than the group. As in any society, you are lesser than the group, but with certain inalienable rights. Which do NOT include opting out of paying taxes for the benefit of society. That is why you are compelled to pay your fair share and help your fellow American.
So pay up or get the hell out. America doesn't need your unproductive dead weight dragging us down.
Here's some assertions that you cannot contradict: As a business owner who has never taken unemployment, who isn't on food stamps or any other form of public assistance, I pay for your and your wife's womb-rats to go to school; I pay for the roads you drive on as well as the roads you drive on (I'm sure we share very few destinations, likely to both our benefit[s]). I, like everyone else here, am part of a vast web of citizens who make up this little corner of global society we call the U.S., and your very existence depends, has always depended, on the proper function of this web from the time you were born, by virtue of your not having been born into either a horticultural village or a nomadic tribe of hunter-gatherers.
Saying "fuck you" to the other commenters on this thread not only contradicts everything you claim sits at the center of your moral compass: it actually clarifies for the rest of us that you quite pointedly don't know what you're talking about. For all we've given you throughout your life (however sad and small we may find what you've done with it), I wouldn't dream of saying, "Fuck you!"; the proper expression, to my mind, is, "You're welcome!"
For the ingratitude-curdled-into-antipathy you offer in return, however ... Fuck you, ingrate. I tire of speaking softly and attempting, against all evidence of futility, to speak softly and rationally to every peckerwood who refuses to keep up.
I think reasonable people can disagree as to HOW a society should ensure that citizens have access to affordable health care, a thriving infrastructure in which to function, freedom of moral self-determination, and, yes, some assurance that they will be rewarded for greater effort (particularly if this effort is undertaken in light of greater aptitude) with a higher quality of life. One cannot, however, reasonably assert that costs in that industry are out of control, and out of reach for many Americans; that the infrastructure as it currently exists in inadequate for meeting the needs of our current population; that morality is still legislated more than it ought to be; and that the greater rewards enjoyed by some citizens are out of proportion to either their effort or their contribution, and that those rewards are not being sensibly and properly shared with the various employees who make that kind of success possible.
Let me put it simply for you: come the 2014 plan year, there will be no such thing as non-compliant plans for you to buy. You seem to think you can just declare to your provider what you are buying, but this is not how healthcare works. It honestly makes me think you have never purchased healthcare coverage.
So you have exactly two options: Buy a PPACA compliant plan, or do not buy insurance. That is it. You do not get another option, unless you want to dodge taxes, or can find some kind of weird illegal back-alley provider willing to break federal law with you. Good luck.
No amount of you telling me to fuck myself will change this. You are living in a fantasy world.
Also, I do not see why you think it is appropriate to call you she/her or state that you are quite a delicate minded lady. You have stated repeatedly that you think it is ok to declare what gender people are for them, so we are doing the same to you. If you can do it, why can't we?
But seriously, you are putting your family and yourself at great risk by refusing to buy insurance. If this is true, you are a horrible mother.
But let's get real: this is all just another one of your internet tough guy fantasies isn't it?
Good thing SB doesn't let reason bind him up, then, for his sake. Giving in to blind emotion is so liberating that way.
Like all liberals, reality really confuses you.
If a man declares himself a dog born in a human body, rational people (outside a gay 'pride' parade) won't leash him up, feed him kibble and so on. Rational people would object to him publically urinating and carrying plastic bags for defecating in parks.
But if his or her mental illness is the belief that, objective physical evidence aside, he's really a chick? Well! Rollout the red carpet and call him 'her!'
Similarly, on silly, pointlessly optimistic budget projections flawed in their basic assumptions you idiots claim more people can be given health care at net savings over current expenditures. 40 million more, if you please! Well, I'll give you credit- when you spin fantastic lies you do it without reservation.
And if no plan or purchase of something I don't need, don't want and which (very expensively) does me no earthly good at the point of unlawful federal force is my choice? Easy. I will not buy what I don't need to make halfwit socialist trash happy. I will pay not one damned dime in fines for assertion of my fundamental rights. There's nothing I can do about the theft of my money for EITC, food and housing assistance, and now subsidies for others to purchase health insurance. But principled resistance to this latest act of federal tyranny? That I can do.
Because they can. I have pointed these facts out to you before. Let's try again, shall we?
I've selected life expectancy at birth and infant mortality as representative of the overall health outcomes for a country. Let's compare the US, pre-PPACA, with a couple of those nasty, socialist, single-payer countries. All figures are in US dollars.
United States:
Health care spending per capita (2010): $8233
Life expectancy at birth (2011): 79
Infant mortality (per 1000 live births, 2013): 5.9
Canada:
Health care spending per capita (2010): $4445
Life expectancy at birth (2011): 82
Infant mortality (per 1000 live births, 2013): 4.78
France:
Health care spending per capita (2010): $3978
Life expectancy at birth (2011): 82
Infant mortality (per 1000 live births, 2013): 3.34
Less money; better outcomes. Of course, the PPACA won't get the US all the way there; you'll need single payer for that. But it is a good first step.
Even if gender depended on genitals, how exactly do you claim to have such intimate knowledge of the genitals of strangers? You dirty girl.
I am going to just live with the idea that you have no idea how insurance works or what an insurance pool is, this seems to be a lost cause.
But what do your wife and kids think about the idea of you not caring enough about them to buy insurance coverage for them? What if someone gets cancer, or there is a car accident? Is risking the scurity and health of your loved ones really worth sending a message (which no one will "read") to the scary black man in the White House?
First, and really most importantly, it isn't any of your business. I couldn't care less what nutbar political or social things happen in Canada. Even if I did, I'm not a citizen or ripped off/moocher (the only two classes in a socialist system) taxpayer there, eh. So, as with you and America, it isn't my business what happens there.
Second, using statistics is subject to the great Clemens famous observation.
Third, comparing a system where a few are robbed for the medical care of everyone to the unconstitutional Obamacare is pointless. 'Look, this system that isn't yours might be better than this other system. That isn't yours.'. You do see the problem right? No? Hmm.
We have, well, car insurance for auto accidents. If injured at home we have home insurance to cover it. I have life insurance to care for my family if needed. We spend little in a low maintenance lifestyle and invest heavily so money, while far from limitless, isn't a problem.
See, it's called taking responsibility for ones own life. Sorry, liberals have no understanding if that concept. I keep forgetting I'm not discussing this with rational adults who respect others property and liberty.
As to my numbers, I take your reference to Clemens to indicate that you can't refute them, so you will simply dismiss them. Noted.
Finally, you clearly know as little about single-payer systems like Canada as you do about anything else. Hence the hand-waving dismissal and references once again to "ripped off" and "moochers".
I take an active interest in local, national, and international politics. As a result, I am well-informed and well aware of what my country does well and where it can improve. You seem to take a more myopic approach, which explains your blind adherence to ideology and your near-total ignorance of what actually goes on in the rest of the world.
You really think car insurance and homeowners insurance covers medical expenses?
Seriously, have you ever purchased any kind of insurance? You do not seem to know how any of it works, let alone health insurance.
Better keep those fingers crossed cowgirl. Because in the event someone in your family needs medical care, you may just find out how the other half lives.
Bearing false witness is not forgiven when it keeps happening. Jesus is going to make you answer for it if you don't change your ways.