Oops. I’m an hour late with the post, but I’m on the air again today filling in for Ron & Don from 4pm to 7pm on Newsradio 710-KIRO.
Hour 1: Was Saddam Hussein’s death worth 3000 dead American soldiers and half a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money?
Hour 2: What is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?
Hour 3: Can’t afford health insurance? Blame the insurance companies… and your politicians for not giving you (gasp) “socialized medicine.”
Answer 1: NO
Answer 2: Bought a membership from 24hr Fitness
Answer 3: The fact that some WORKING Americans are among the 45 million without insurance is a cryin’ shame.
Damn! I missed the first hour and a half! I’d like to have heard the Hussein hour . . . could care less about stupid actions. I’m sick to death of the stupid right . . . stupidity has no appeal anymore.
Jeeez Goldie
Let your callers talk for pete’s sakes.
Ah, yes. “Socialized medicine.” Wonder if they’ve ever considered the fact that we have “socialized defense?”
re 4: Good point. But to reach the wingnuts with this bit of information would be an impossible task.
“Breaching the walls of stupidity is a task at which even God Himself would fail.”
Chuck Connors
http://superfrenchie.com/Pics/.....assage.jpg
Photo from 2006: Proof-positive that Bush is a halfwit.
Hour 1: NO
Hour 2: Be a Goldwater Republican (fortunately, I wasn’t old enough to vote)
Hour 3: Actually, nearly ALL of the 45 million uninsured Americans are workers and their families. If you’re on welfare or a poor child, you get Medicaid. If you’re elderly, you get Medicare. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and get third-rate coverage. Even Cubans have more health care than we do.
HEALTH CARE: ANOTHER MARKET FAILURE
Where does all the health insurance money go?
1. Paying hundreds of thousands of office workers to wade through claim forms — and find excuses to deny payment.
2. Pay multimillion-dollar salaries to health insurance CEOs.
3. In the private sector, administration and overhead consumes nearly a quarter of your health care dollars; in the government-run Medicare program, about 1%.
Let’s say you have a heart attack and you’re being wheeled into a hospital ER on a gurney. Will you ask how much this will cost you? Will you comparison shop? Are you even aware your doing business with folks who are about to charge you $20 for an aspirin? If any other business treated consumers like hospitals do, they’d be in jail.
Hospitals make moving companies look like the Better Business Bureau.
1: No, of course not. But both parties led the public astray on what was a maddenly predictable result and an entirely avoidable war, at least to anyone who has ever bothered to travel outside the 50 states or even just pick up a book on the region.
But we not only have GW, but Maria Cantwell and a lemming-esque low IQ Democrats in the Senate to blame for the most incompetent foreign policy blunder since the late 40s when we gave the go-ahead to the Nationalist Chinese to overextend their supply lines and lose China to the Reds. The only problem is, the Iraq fiasco will have much longer and much more damaging repercussions to US national security interests.
Don’t be so smug, the Ds are in my opinion more to blame than the Rs on this. They should have known better.
NBC CALLS SADDAM EXECUTION A ‘PUBLIC RELATIONS DISASTER’
That’s what the NBC Nightly News broadcast tonight called the way in which the Iraq dictator was disposed of. The result: Angry Sunnis previously sitting on the sidelines are joining the insurgency in droves, and a surge in violence against Shiites — and American occupiers — now appears inevitable.
At least 4 things went wrong: a) Someone filmed the hanging on a cellphone (why the fuck didn’t they search the witnesses at the door? it’s amazing someone didn’t bring a gun and shoot him), b) Saddam was taunted on the gallows (and this, of course, was captured on audio), c) he was hanged on the first day of a major Sunni religious holiday (which is strictly forbidden by Islamic law), and d) the Shiites who run Iraq’s U.S.-backed puppet government rushed Saddam to the gallows just four days after his sentence was uphold by an appeals court.
What this adds up to, in the Sunnis’ view, is that Saddam’s execution was nothing but Shiite revenge-taking. And the episode also demonstrates the U.S. can’t control their Shiite allies. Some of the problems could, and should, have been avoided if this thing had been better run.
Is there anything the administration doesn’t fuck up? Anything at all?
@11 So this is the new wingnut song-and-dance? The Democrats are to blame for the Iraq quagmire?
(pause)
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
Nobody’s “smug,” zack. Which shows how totally out of touch with reality you are. The whole thing is a fucking tragedy of large proportions — although to compare Iraq with the communist takeover of China is stretching things more than a little. Mao’s minions killed millions. We’re not there yet in Iraq. Bush’s minions are too fucking incompetent to kill millions. They’ll have to settle for killing thousands.
@6 Criminy, this photo makes him look like he’s hitting on a woman old enough to be his mother. Not that I would put that past him.
I like you dems. I got along great with old man Kennedy. Why wern’t more of you around in the 40’s?
I really miss old Prescott Bush. He and I certainly killed our fair share of jews. Now his offspring GW Bush is killing Arabs for oil. Who knew?
Goldy – KVI ran mostly reruns, infomercials and assorted horrible shit all weekend, so I flipped the radio over to KIRO yesterday to listen to the Seahawks game. I left it there, and when I turned it on today, there you were filling in for the ron and don.
As you know, I think your politics are stoopid, and on a personal level, I think you’re a complete asshole. And like Mike McGavick you have the perfect voice for newspaper.
But I found both the new years eve show where you interviewed Monica Hunter and today’s show where you had people call in about stoopid stuff they did… I actually found that entertaining.
If you had even a shred of fucking brains, you’d take a lesson from Air America and realize that librul hate talk doesn’t sell. Never has; never will.
But the “light” topics you did the past coupla days might work for you. Seriously… if you’re looking for a way to “monetize” your “fame”, I’d go for the kind of stuff you did the past few days, and leave the politics to the grown ups.
re 18: Those years of ibogaine abuse have left you with a brain the consistency of swiss cheese.
I agree with Mark the Redneck. Goldy, you should go for bread and circuses — big time. That’s the fastest road to fame and fortune. You’ll look back at your “activist” phase as an unfortunate detour along life’s highway. Trust me.
Loocy – Go take care of “the negro problem” and get back to us. OK????
“Black people can be stressful to be around 24/7. Believe me , I know.” Commentby headless lucy— 9/16/05@ 10:12 pm
Thanks Cynical though for your help with the Negro problem.
Commentby headless lucy— 9/17/05@ 7:47 am
Fox loses money. It’s propped up by deadbeats who inherited great wealth and whose biggest fear is that someone is going to take their money and priviliges position away from them.
http://www.hotghettomess.com/
Check it out, MTR.
Sounds like checkers… or umm… oil to me..
…the oil industry is a zero sum game ( like checkers )
Commentby headless lucy— 4/9/06@ 2:56 pm
Hey Goldy, I have a suggestion. Since our wingnut friends can’t keep you, Will, and Darryl straight — how about all three of you signing every thread as “Goldy”? That way, they won’t have to remember.
Hey wingnuts, I have a suggestion … if you can’t keep Goldy, Will, and Darryl straight — how about if all you wingnuts start your posts with “Hey you”? That way, you won’t have to remember.
Hey Goldy since Mark The Cowardly Redneck doesn’t want you to talk politics we can only assume that he’s (as usual) worried sick and afraid that you are effective.
Cowardly inbred assholes like Marky don’t want democracy. They liked it better when they owned the entire playing field. Now that we’ve kicked their asses last Nov, let’s hope we can do some more damage.
By the way Marky, your wife says hi!
26 Marky’s crack-whore wife is dead. She was dead when he married her, and she’s still dead.
re 24: It is a zero sum game — ask the editors at Forbes.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/.....ame_z.html
zero-sum games and oil
“Here’s the bottom line: Any finite resource is a ZSG. Even an infinite resource has only 100% of marketshare, to be divided amongst competitors. That percentage is also a ZSG.
Let’s see how some of these zero sum issues apply to different areas:
Markets: are probably the best example of a ZSG. In 2000, the Wishire 5000 was worth $1.2 trillion more than it is today. Some people bought, some people sold. Mark-to-market, there is a loss to the collective buyers from the collective sellers. Its even more specific with individual companies.
I short the SPX to you — each tick is zero sum — there’s a winner and a loser.
Stocks that always go up and never go down are exempt from this; Please let me know as soon as you find any.”
Keep going Loocy… I luv it when you talk economics…
Oh, by the way… work into your theory someplace the value that is created by direct and indirect labor. Account for the value of innovation. Explain how all that equals zero. (In your case, that is probably true)
If I have a good idea that results in a new product or a more efficient way of doing something, is the net result zero?
Dumshit…
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/.....ame_z.html
“I am neither endorsing nor criticising zero sum; I am only acknowledging it as a reality. I have found that those who refuse to acknowledge it are often trying to sell something.”
…. Like wingnut ideology….
re 29: Game theory was not invented by me. A zero sum game is any game that has a finite amount of resources — be it checkers or oil.
How can you be so obtuse?
Dunno… must be that dang MBA…
Stoopid book larnin’…
But all this bullshit aside… this is what you use to justify confiscatory taxation. Right?
That is… if someone has money it’s ’cause they stole it from somebody else… and that somebody has every right to demand that gummint steal it back and give it to them.
Is that what all this is about…
17
We evil dictators dont need to kill Jews. You Seattle liberals (Haq) are doing a fine job of that. I am with you lefties in morning Sadam.
re 33: YES. I don’t agree with your interpretation, but it does boil down to taking back what’s mine.
You get so incensed about “gummint” taking taxes, but when big oil is literally picking your pocket you come up with “free market” bullshit about how that’s all as it should be. Well, I’m no masochist. I will NOT be under the thumb of some goddamn money elite.
Your day has come and gone. The grownups are in charge now and the upper 1% can go fuck themselves.
If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time. There are winners and losers and I intend to win.
re 33: If you would put all your bullshit aside and say what you mean in the first place it would save a lot of time.
You can cling to your ideology as hard as you want to, but I, for one, do not live in a theoretical otherworld. I don’t want it all — but I insist on having my fair share. If taxing it away from the wealthiest is the way to get it, then that’s where i’m goin’.
When asked why he robbed banks, Stankfinger Willie replied: “Cuz that’s where the money is.”
Goldy –
Your third hour topic touches on an especially vexing problem for us all:
Why should the burden of health care fall to the producers? Why should it be an employee benefit? What of those too young for, too old, or incapable of employment? If we only work for roughly two-thirds of our lives, why set up a system where we’re vulnerable for one-third – infancy and old age – when we’re most vulnerable?
Why is health insurance a responsibility of business? Why should Boeing have to manage a multibillion-dollar health plan in addition to competing with Airbus? At the other extreme, why should the entrepreneur, the sole contractor, the freelancer, be priced out of the market? Why burden a four-employee startup with health insurance worries?
Perhaps it’s time to reexamine our adversary from a different perspective: perhaps it’s time to consider – as other states are doing – making health care ‘mandatory’ in much the way car insurance is today, ultimately taking employers out of the system altogether. Insurers offer plans through state associations (no more price discrimination for health or employment status); businesses redirect employee premiums to employee raises; everybody buys in.
For reflection…
Just dropped in to see if you dipshits have anything meaningful to say about anything. Thankfully I haven’t missed a thing
to answer your questions.
1) no
2) spent way too much time on this website trying to learn anything meaningful from liberals.
3) socialized medicine in Canada is a farce. My sister comes to seattle for her Chemotherapy from Burnaby. Why? Because she’s on a waiting list in canada for treatment. it only works up there if you are well. If you are sick with anything you’re up shit creek. They are taxed to death up there and they have literally nothing to show for it. But, isn’t that what you dumbshits want? you want us all to be poor and beholden to the government for everything.
Let’s see the government can’t manage a war or an election correctly (just using two of your liberal whines from the recent past) and you expect them to run health care correctly. Excuse me for laughing my ass off.
@ 38
Could you repeat that in English?
If Saddam was such a bad dude, why were we helping him?????
@38 reggie says:
Let’s see the government can’t manage a war or an election correctly (just using two of your liberal whines from the recent past) and you expect them to run health care correctly. Excuse me for laughing my ass off.
———-
Our government doesn’t run anything Reggie. Our lobbyists run everything. Where have you been? Ever check out how the Prescription Drug Benefit bill got written, and passed?
Taxpayers are only good for one thing. To be raped at every turn by Corporate America.
Every study I have seen shows Canada’s health care far superior to ours overall, and costing half as much.
Go figure.
When it comes to managing wars, no war was ever managed correctly, as long as innocent people die, and pretty much all the dying is done by innocent civilians, and soldiers. Never the people that do the profiting…..
Managing fair elections is easy. Paper ballots, and a 20 year sentence for anyone breaking fair election laws.
Problem solved.
@29 Oil creates innovation? Creative wars, maybe.
32 I once met an MBA who couldn’t spell his own name. (Exhibit A.) Since then, I’ve never been impressed by an MBA. I figured if that idiot could get through business school, any idiot could. I offer you as Exhibit B:
George W. Bush
@33 It’s hard to deny there’s a lot of stealing going on right now …
16 et al. – Seems fitting that a wingnut is posting under the screen name “Hitler.” It fits to a T.
@37 There are at least 3 things wrong with your suggestion.
1. What’s to stop businesses from simply shifting the costs of health insurance to employees, and pocketing the savings? In fact, that’s what many are doing.
2. Employer-paid health insurance isn’t taxed as income to the employee; the money employees spend to buy health insurance is.
3. Making health insurance mandatory for individuals is unworkable for several reasons. First, some people simply can’t afford it. Second, it would be unenforceable. Third, you will need an expensive enforcement bureaucracy to get even partial compliance. Enforcement costs will merely add to the already outrageously high administration and overhead costs of our health care system that contribute nothing to the delivery of health care.
4. Why not a single payer system? The government has demonstrated it can run a first-class health care system (the V.A.) and reduce administration costs to 1/20th of what the private sector spends (Medicare). Private enterprise has produced the most expensive health care in the world, with enormous overhead costs, and spotty quality of care. The employer-based system of providing health insurance is collapsing as more employers opt out. Why not consolidate all of the overhead functions for maximum efficiency, collect premiums with the world’s most effective collection organization (the IRS), and cover everybody with the cost savings? Sneer all you want at “socialized medicine,” we already have socialized industry (aka government contracts and bailouts), it can’t possibly do worse than what we have now.
@38 Those impervious to learning are unlikely to acquire knowledge.
@38 So reggie, what do you learn from wingnut blogs? Let me guess:
1. The moon is made of green cheese
2. The earth is flat, and always has been
3. The Framers of the Constitution recognized Christianity as our nation’s official religion
4. Iraq had WMDs
5. Democrats are to blame for the quagmire in Iraq
You are a fucking idiot, and always will be.
Rightwing Myth #13: Nobody voted for Gregoire; she is governor because Democrats in King County stuffed the ballot box with thousands of dead votes, felon votes, and phony votes.
Rightwing Myth #11 1/2: The only reason eastern Washington conservatives don’t run this state is because of the evil plotting by Seattle liberals to steal elections.
(Note: Eastern Washington conservatives are about 13% of Washington’s voting population.)
Hey reggie, in case you haven’t heard, reading HA comment threads is a voluntary activity. Now go fuck yourself, and pet your armadillo.
Listened to your show Goldy , not bad really .. But you go off on some strange and boring attempts on political satire . The guy from the Jesus Blog was Borrring …
Health care debate was pretty interesting .
I wish you had taken some of the other side points .. Conservatives find your show lacking in intellectual honesty most of the time .. Or at least we hope thats not what you really think of other points of view . Because insurance companies are all that is stopping socilaized medicine . Freedom , the Constitution , are some other reasons .
Quality of care , socilized medicine tends to bring that care down in certain areas . Especially in research …
I am a state employee and we are now allowed to use tax saving accounts just for medical care . So you get a tax exemption besides just our tax exempted premiums . Should go farther, but it has a provision if you don’t spend what you have in the account , you loose it … This Should be transferred to a policy of all money not used to be refunded to you like a IRA after retirement . We don’t usually shop around for best medical deals on subscriptions and such , we pay the co pay no matter what , so the consumer just pays what they charge , at the first place they go to . Competition is not always bad .. Helps bring down prices .
What about people who go to the doctor with a runny nose , should they have the same preiums with people who say exercise , don’t smoke or drink heavily , etc and use the doctor only when really needed .
I could go on , and I hope you know some of the arguements , because this big bad insurance company is BS ,it is really lacking intellectual thoughts to be heard .
Insurance companies have fled this state because of being forced to cover certain procedures , the new thing from the left is forcing trans gender sex change operations . Whats next face lifts ? The left making regulations have brought forth better accountabilty and better care , but like most liberals Goldy , you don’t know when to stop with the government mandates .
Insurance companies not wanting to cover life long illnesses and such , and the regulations dealing with changing policies then having them not cover a pre existing condition is one good thing I can think of off the fly that was a good thing ..
I still think a middle ground needs to be had , regulation that allows the consumer to shop and benefit from making healthy choices ..
Its why socialism does not work , but the health of your loved ones and FAIRNESS makes your side have valid points .
Maybe have a show where you can make them next time would be a better way to go .
Roger
you left nutted dimwit.
I don’t go to right wing websites. those morons aren’t any better than the ones I find here.
but let’s look at your suggestions in #46.
If you are suggesting the the VA is a well managed system then I have identified your problem. You’re a classic under-achiever and you’ll settle for anything. The VA system is just like Canada’s. If you aren’t sick it’s a great program. If you get sick you’re screwed.
and while I’m at it…..
in response to #41…
Hey it was the democrats that suggested that the Republicans were screwing up the war and the elections. So, now you’re telling me that it’s not really Bush’s fault? No wonder you fucking liberals are so screwed up