HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 2/12

by — ,

– Everybody with a special election ballot, get it postmarked or dropped off by today.

– Cheney is a jobless former vice president who’s been wrong about everything, and who has criticized Obama since before he became president. That he’s still hailed as a newsmaker tells us only bad things about the news industry.

– Is Tim Sheldon’s wife really upset that the Democrats aren’t going to fundraise for him anymore? I don’t know what’s awesomer that she wants to defend her being a Democrat in the same paragraph as she quotes Sarah Palin, or the obnoxious sexism.

– We have a new King County Council member.

– More Biblical families.

– I feel like it says something about our conversation at the moment that lower costs of health care aren’t in and of themselves as important a story (and headline writer in particular) as the deficit.

– Yum

Comments

  1. 1

    “The Shooter” details are “a different story”. Apparently there’s not enough space in Esquire for two details that undermine the journalist’s article.

    http://www.stripes.com/blogs/t.....e-1.207506

    The writer, Phil Bronstein, who heads up the Center for Investigative Reporting, stands by the story. He said the assertion that the government gave the SEAL “nothing” in terms of health care is both fair and accurate, because the SEAL didn’t know the VA benefits existed.

    “No one ever told him that this is available,” Bronstein said.

    He said there wasn’t space in the article to explain that the former SEAL’s lack of healthcare was driven by an ignorance of the benefits to which he is entitled.

    “That’s a different story,” Bronstein said in a phone interview with Stars and Stripes about what he omitted from the article.

    Other ommissions as well. It’s worth a read.

  2. 2

    “ommissions”

    Besides the mispelling, I probably should have used “detail omissions”.

  3. 3

    Open Thread 1/12

    Is it really still January there? I had no idea that the Philippines was so far ahead of you guys.

    Snarkles (;>)

  5. 5

    … lower costs of health care …

    I suppose it would depend on how one defines ‘lower costs’, wouldn’t it?

    Would this:

    Family Health Care Costs Will Top $20,000 A Year For First Time Ever: Study

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....89297.html

    count as ‘lower costs’, for instance?

    Two important points:

    1. ACA is back-end loaded. The fees start now, the coverage doesn’t really ramp up for another couple of years. That’s how they gamed CBO into holding the cost of the bill below $1T.

    2. Know who else isn’t talking about lower costs? Jim McDermott isn’t, for one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....r_embedded

    You don’t hear much from Sebelius or Team Obama about how much less things will cost, either. Maybe this is one of the reasons why:

    ObamaCare Exchange Subsidy Cost Hiked By $233 Billion

    Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/0205.....z2Ki615ROC

    All I can say is that it’s a good thing Lib Sci’s children will be around to bear the burden of all those health care costs you’re trying to tell us aren’t increasing.

    Teach your children well, Lib Sci. We’re gonna need them to be high earners so we can tax their income. We’ll be taking an increasingly large share of it, in fact.

  7. 7

    – Is Tim Sheldon’s wife really upset that the Democrats aren’t going to fundraise for him anymore?

    If Sheldon’s wife has her facts straight, it’s not like the Dems have done much fundraising for him in the past:

    And we will really miss your usual donation ($0.00) to Tim’s campaigns.

  9. 9

    @4 At least, probably thanks to the motorcycle industry, it’s no longer correct to call Mr. Cheney “heartless”.

  10. 10

    Your children deserve the president you elected, Lib Sci.

    Obama Prepares To Screw His Base
    Young people reelected the president. Now they get to pay disproportionately for ObamaCare.

    In an interview, AARP legislative policy director David Certner didn’t contest the suggestion that young people would be forced to pay more, but argued that it was a matter of the common good, not simply the interest of his constituents.
    First of all, he told BuzzFeed, the young may not be paying their fair share: “Younger people pay less in taxes than they do when they’re middle aged and have higher incomes.”

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmi.....ung-people

    Damn, all this time I’ve been told it’s me who doesn’t pay my fair share. Turns out all along it’s been Lib Sci’s children.

    It’s a good thing we learned in the top part of the thread that health care costs are lower, isn’t it? Otherwise it would be kinda……..

    ……. burdensome.

  11. 11

    That’s quite the email rant written by Sheldon’s wife. Actually, she comes off something like Rags over at (un)SP. Hmm, I wonder?

    Heh. The response by Dwight Pelz deserves posting.

    Linda, I am sure you are a wonderful person, and I have enjoyed our brief meetings, but you really should not waste your time by writing me long e-mail messages.
    I have zero respect for your husband. He will hold no place of importance in the history of our state other than being admired as one of our most successful self-promoters, and double dippers.

    His prime value will be as an object lesson for political science professors in our state, who when asked whether party labels mean anything, will be able to answer “No”, and point to the obscure State Senator who called himself a Democrat but endorsed George Bush for President, Dino Rossi and Rob McKenna for Governor, and opposed his centrist colleague Derek Kilmer for Congress.

    When Tim retires he will be able to gather around himself the people who respect him. That meeting will take place in your kitchen.

    Dwight

    I’d like to see Kathy Haigh take him on. I know her as my state representative and as my vet. As my representative she brings common sense instead of ideology to her job and as my vet she didn’t hesitate to drive through deep snow following the blizzard of a few years ago just so my pet could die peacefully at home.

  12. 12

    Cost Hiked By $233 Billion

    Wow.. What’s that? A half year of a Republican war of choice?

    Less money for that thank you very much.

    More money for affordable health care for the people..

    And age rating.. Wow silly Bob.. It’s only been done forever.. Now it’s being done so strapped older folks don’t have to choose between paying health insurance premiums and eating..

    Bend the cost curve and it’s not so bad on the young..

    Like promoting LARC methods to prevent expensive unplanned pregnancies? Oh but that bends your ilk all out of shape because of your miserable sex lives.

  13. 13

    Actually, she comes off something like Rags over at (un)SP.

    I understand Rag’s better half was at death’s door..

    Ok I shouldn’t go there..

  14. 14

    @3 Back in the days when we had real newspapers, the copy desk crew would have gotten a first-class chewing out for a gaffe of this magnitude. Pop Rabbit (RIP, sniffle), an old-time newspaper guy, told stories about readers who combed every column-inch of the paper looking for typos and errors. “They lived for that,” he said. It was a cat-and-mouse game in which readers were cats and editors were mice, and both sides reveled in the rivalry. Needless to say, an error in a headline was the Holy Grail for vigilante readers. I’m glad to see the spirit of those bygone days is still alive here.

  16. 16

    “I’d make some sort of snarky pseudocelebratory comment, but then it would turn out that Steve had a friend who was beheaded”

    I made the point that your gratuitous post describing the effects of extreme violence demonstrated to me that you are a very weak man, Bob. Eh, nothing has changed.

    Snark. It’s all you’ve got, Bob, so you might want to hang on to it for dear life as you’re in for a ride. Just look at what’s going on around you. Not only are Republicans driving away everybody with all the krazy talk, what remains of your party is splintering into two – the krazies and the not-so-krazies. Good grief, Bob, the krazies want to start a fucking civil war! Just think for a moment. The last time you did that you had General Robert E. Lee. This time you have General Ted Fucking Nugent! Good luck with that, Bob!

    So, yeah, Bob, bring on the snark. I hope it at least makes you feel a wee bit better to flail away in left-wing blog comment sections as you watch the GOP disintegrate into third-party irrelevancy.

  17. 17

    @3,

    Fixed (and yesterday’s too, yikes). Thanks!

    First the community wants dates on the Open Threads, and then they want the correct dates.

  18. 18

    @5 Obamacare isn’t billed as a program to reduce health care costs. Any such potential was squelched by GOPers’ refusal to deal with the river of money that hemorrhages into the coffers of the private health insurance giants, who for all the trillions they suck out of our economy don’t deliver a baby or single flu shot — their net contribution to our physical and financial well-being is zilch.

    The private health insurers swallow roughly 28 cents of every U.S. health care dollar, in return for which we get nothing. Medicare, by contrast, performs exactly the same billing and payment functions for less than 1% of program costs. The remaining Medicare dollars buy actual health care. What we have here is a government-run health insurance system which is at least 30 times as efficient as the privately-run health insurance system existing alongside of it. The GOP response is to call the government-run system “socialism” and try to privatize it.

    Private health insurer CEOs get paid tens of millions of dollars a year for running the world’s least efficient health care billing and payment system. Medicare’s top administrators probably earn something on the order of $180,000 a year or less. But you’ll never hear Republicans who bleat about “overpaid bureaucrats” admit that private sector insurance bosses are overpaid leeches who are bleeding our society dry. In their minds, the salary of every government worker down to the lowliest GS-1 file clerk is “waste, fraud, and abuse” but there is no such thing as an overpaid CEO.

    Why should anyone listen to such people when public policy decisions are being made?

  19. 19

    @17 “First the community wants dates on the Open Threads, and then they want the correct dates.”

    Yeah, readers are worse than a wife, as Pop Rabbit would say. Welcome to the world of journalism.

  22. 22

    I wish these politicos would stop using the term “coverage” when what they really mean is simply paying for health care. Poor people don’t need health care as much as they need somebody to pay for that health care.

  23. 23

    Will there even be a GOP in 2014? Eh, not if the current trend continues.

    “We kicked away four or five Senate seats in the last two cycles by nominating candidates who did not have the best chance to win,” Barbour told NRO. “We ought to talk to Republican donors now, in the off-season before the primaries, and discourage them from donating to organizations that will attack good Republicans. … Republican groups like the Club for Growth should stop spending money to defeat Republicans. Politics can’t be about purity. Unity wins in politics, purity loses.”

    Chocola added: “The more Haley Barbour and Karl Rove attack the work of the Club for Growth PAC, the more it energizes and grows our membership. In 2014, we are looking forward to adding to the U.S. Senate ranks the likes of Tom Coburn, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Jeff Flake, Ted Cruz, and Tim Scott — all elected with the support of Club members and despite the initial disdain of the GOP Establishment.”

    Your political party is presently splitting in two, Bob. Out of curiousity, do you side with the krazies or the not-so-krazies?

  24. 24

    With his party in dire straights and falling apart at the seams, Bob’s been reduced to posting lame “whistling past the graveyard” comments. Actually, it’s kind of sad, sort of like the musicians playing as the Titanic sank.

  27. 27

    @10 – yeah I guess as a gay man I can think of myself being screwed by Obama or be told that I am a second class citizen by Mitt Romney or some other scum Republican. Very disappointing.

  28. 28

    Serial conservative,

    Your Republican Party is far too aligned with the religious right. People aren’t interested in that kind of religious zealotry any more. It’s too “fire and brimstone” for a modern world.

    Your people need to give up on the abortion issue and the gay issue. People support access to abortion, and they are not all “Leviticus” about gays. That’s why R-74 passed back in November.

  29. 29

    17. Carl spews:

    @3,

    Fixed (and yesterday’s too, yikes). Thanks!

    First the community wants dates on the Open Threads, and then they want the correct dates.

    Don’t worry, some of us are years out of date.

  30. 30

    So, is this Christopher Dorner guy mentally ill? I thought the gun problem was a mentally ill issue. This guy, prior to him going crazy, was supposedly an upstanding guy. One day upstanding and the next a killer – just add the gun.

  31. 31

    @ 28

    My people?

    I was one who voted for R-74. I support abortion rights – most of them, anyway. I still have a problem with not telling the parents of a 12-year old girl that she’s pregnant.

    I’d probably get about an 80 from the ACU. I don’t own a gun. Most days I don’t eat meat.

    I know nothing about you. Pretty sure you know little about me.

  33. 33

    25. Steve spews:

    I’d say that it’s safe to assume that Politically Incorrect sides with the krazies.

    Who cares? I was willing to read his POV until I found out that he welshed on a bet to benefit a politically neutral charity. Now I just scroll on by. Don’t other people?

  34. 34

    OOOps. Sorry. Somehow thought you were referring to welsher Bob. Apologia to PI. He may be an idiot, but not (so far as I know a deadbeat.

    My incompetence a reading…comes from my advanced age, I guess.

  35. 35

    @34,

    I’m not an idiot: I’m just someone who has a different opinion. All you usual suspects are very intolerant for other voices who dissent from your orthodoxy.

    In any event, apology accepted.

  36. 36

    @ 33,34

    I’m wondering, Chad, how you know I’m a deadbeat. I posted the text of the acknowledgement letter I received from the ED of Northwest Harvest, four minutes after Darryl asked me about the donation on December 31.

    I emailed Darryl an image of the contribution showing up on my credit card account, as a payment to Northwest Harvest, in the amount of the wager. Authenticity wasn’t in dispute.

    So, Chad, all the way over on the other side of the Pacific, how do you know I’m a deadbeat?

  38. 38

    @37 You do understand that it’s a joke, don’t you? Matt Damon is simply doing a series of humerous videos intended to draw attention to a charity he founded which addresses the need for clean water and sanitation in countries like Ethiopia. Most commenters here, left and right, are at least somewhat familiar with the problem of a lack of clean water and sanitation because of a local nine year-old girl’s last birthday wish. Commenters here both left and right donated to help the girl’s wish come true.

  40. 40

    Your take is no different than Erin Burnett’s. When he talks in front of those kids about dimishing the chances of a mass shooting, she comes back with, “well, will it stop it or not”? That might be a relevant question if Biden had actually made that claim but he never said it would stop it. Again, “diminish”. That word has a little bit different meaning than the word “stop”, don’t you think, Bob?

    Making stuff up. I guess when you lose elections and are going to continue losing with no end in sight, you gotta do what you gotta do, starting with making shit up. It really must suck to be so desperate.

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