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Two boomers, 38 dead in Moscow metro
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Afghanistan
Karzai's China-Iran dalliance riles Obama
Posted by: tipper || 03/29/2010 12:51 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Africa Subsaharan
Africa's Forever Wars - Why the continent's conflict never end.
There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants don't have much of an ideology; they don't have clear goals.

They couldn't care less about taking over capitals or major cities -- in fact, they prefer the deep bush, where it is far easier to commit crimes. Today's rebels seem especially uninterested in winning converts, content instead to steal other people's children, stick Kalashnikovs or axes in their hands, and make them do the killing. Look closely at some of the continent's most intractable conflicts, from the rebel-laden creeks of the Niger Delta to the inferno in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this is what you will find.

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else -- something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you'd like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times' East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars.

I've witnessed up close -- often way too close -- how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today's African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they're predators. That's why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo's rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means.

This is the story across much of Africa, where nearly half of the continent's 53 countries are home to an active conflict or a recently ended one. Quiet places such as Tanzania are the lonely exceptions; even user-friendly, tourist-filled Kenya blew up in 2008. Add together the casualties in just the dozen countries that I cover, and you have a death toll of tens of thousands of civilians each year. More than 5 million have died in Congo alone since 1998, the International Rescue Committee has estimated.

Of course, many of the last generation's independence struggles were bloody, too. South Sudan's decades-long rebellion is thought to have cost more than 2 million lives. But this is not about numbers. This is about methods and objectives, and the leaders driving them. Uganda's top guerrilla of the 1980s, Yoweri Museveni, used to fire up his rebels by telling them they were on the ground floor of a national people's army. Museveni became president in 1986, and he's still in office (another problem, another story). But his words seem downright noble compared with the best-known rebel leader from his country today, Joseph Kony, who just gives orders to burn.

Even if you could coax these men out of their jungle lairs and get them to the negotiating table, there is very little to offer them. They don't want ministries or tracts of land to govern. Their armies are often traumatized children, with experience and skills (if you can call them that) totally unsuited for civilian life. All they want is cash, guns, and a license to rampage. And they've already got all three. How do you negotiate with that?
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  the decline of the classic African liberation movement

No such thing ever existed. The so called liberation movements were mere guises for ethnic civil wars, with a handful of marxist inspired ideologues, generally of impressive ineptitude, such as Mandela and his mates, who in their 'liberation war' only managed to kill a couple of innocent black workers.
Posted by: phil_b || 03/29/2010 0:12 Comments || Top||

#2  But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry.

Bingo. Most "liberation" movements are nothing more than banditry and thuggery masquerading as history's vanguard. IRA, FARC, Arafat's PLO, Hamas: these are basically shakedown outfits that spend more time and energy terrorizing, and stealing from, the people they purport to lead than they do attacking and defeating their supposed enemies. Where they excel is in kneecapping, extorting, executing, and stealing from their own people.

Scratch a "national liberation" organization, and you'll see an armed gang. The only difference between the mafia and these gangs is in their tailors. Brioni for the former, fatigues for the latter, but the m.o.'s identical.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 0:19 Comments || Top||

#3  Notice how Mr. New York Times thinks that this is something new in the world? He honestly has no idea that this is Africa's natural state.
Posted by: gromky || 03/29/2010 1:28 Comments || Top||

#4  He honestly has no idea that this is Africa's natural state.

Staff at the NYT should pick up the National Geographic occasionally.
Posted by: Bulldog || 03/29/2010 2:56 Comments || Top||

#5  TOPIX > WEAK RULES PUTS CONTINENT AT RISK OF BIOTERRORISM.

* SAME > SOMALIA: UN - KENYA HAS LINKS TO BOTH SIDES [Islamist Militants vz. TFG Forces-Camps].
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 03/29/2010 3:22 Comments || Top||

#6  He honestly has no idea that this is Africa's natural state.

It was more or less the World's natural state until comparatively recently.
Posted by: Gaz || 03/29/2010 4:33 Comments || Top||

#7  Ma GUMbo Booga booga BANG!

106*F in the shade and AIDS, and why worry about a disease which can kill you in ten years when there are so many things which can kill you today.

And colorful names like Nbeke, Mbuto, and Qaddafy.

Not to mention the Nigerian who is dating your daughter at the Univ. Of Virginia.
Posted by: BlackBart || 03/29/2010 5:29 Comments || Top||

#8  It's true that wars of liberation are usually led my hard men willing to do nasty things, but unless your name is Ghandhi non-violent resistance usually gets you and your people laughed at, arrested or exterminated depending upon who the powers-that-be are.

Sometimes the state is made up of men as nasty and venal as non-state groups, and sometimes it is legimate to fight.
Posted by: Gaz || 03/29/2010 5:35 Comments || Top||

#9  What is happening in Africa now is precisely what one would expect when combining pre-civilization cultures with postmodernism and cultural Marxism. Take tribal violence and infuse it with a celebration of envy and outcome egalitarianism and mix well.

Africans blew it, and the West blew it, too. We should have sent in entrepreneurs, not leftist academics and Peace Corps volunteers.
Posted by: no mo uro || 03/29/2010 6:32 Comments || Top||

#10  "Mistah Kurtz, he dead."
Posted by: Glenmore || 03/29/2010 7:57 Comments || Top||

#11  Staff at the NYT should pick up the National Geographic occasionally.

Problem is that the National Geographic has fallen in quality and increased in leftist politics in the past couple of decades. Think Foreign Policy, only with pretty pictures and the rare map.
Posted by: Pappy || 03/29/2010 8:25 Comments || Top||

#12  Africans blew it, and the West blew it, too. We should have sent in entrepreneurs, not leftist academics and Peace Corps volunteers.
Posted by: no mo uro


There were 'entrepreneurs." Unfortunately however, they were labeled racists exploiters, aparthied fanatics by the West and sent packing in favour of tribalism and majority rule.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 8:27 Comments || Top||

#13  You are correct, Besoeker. There were entrepreneurs.

But they weren't sent, they went on their own. And yes, they were wrongly maligned.

What I was trying to say is that the people who actually were sent by the governments of the West were the postmodernists and goofy leftists.
Posted by: no mo uro || 03/29/2010 8:31 Comments || Top||

#14  Like King Leo II?
Posted by: Gaz || 03/29/2010 9:00 Comments || Top||

#15  Ever hear of the Trail of Tears or visit an Indian reservation Gaz? The path of human progress hasn't always been laudable.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 9:07 Comments || Top||

#16  Let us not speak too high nor wax too nostalgically for entrepreneurs: in their day their goal was to do one thing, make money for themselves, and if they had to enslave the local population to make that happen, then so be it.

Sugar cane plantations.

Tobacco plantations.

Pineapple plantations.

I could go on.

The man you call an 'entrepreneur' could also be called an 'exploiter'; both definitions were correct.

Ask the long suffering people of the Congo about Leopold the 'entrepreneur'.

We in the West did Africa no favors.
Posted by: Steve White || 03/29/2010 9:34 Comments || Top||

#17  Shall we all then return to the oldest form of communism, that of tribal butchery and sex slavery whilst lifting the heads of your enemies high on poles, eating his internal organs and washing them down with gourds of human blood?

I'll throw my lot in with western entrepreneur if you don't mind, warts and all.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 9:47 Comments || Top||

#18  Rhodes University in Grahmstown wasn't started by a philanthropic Matabele tribesman. The De Beers Group did not crawl ashore from the banks of the Orange River. Much of the world's gold would still be in the ground had it not been for pioneering entrepreneurs. Lastly, I give you one of your own the late Dr. Chritiaan Neethling Barnard. Yes an outspoken anti-apartheid advocate. But where might we be without his entrepreneural spirit?
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 10:11 Comments || Top||

#19  Shall we all then return to the oldest form of communism, that of tribal butchery and sex slavery whilst lifting the heads of your enemies high on poles, eating his internal organs and washing them down with gourds of human blood?

Much of Africa has urbanized, actually: especially on the coasts. There will be no return to village life for many Africans, whether that would be idyllic or nasty, brutish, and short.

Personally, as member of a community of 162, I think a voluntary, thoughtful, and organized return to village life would be good for a lot of Africans. It’s good for a lot of us, actually, regardless of race or culture. But that is one man’s semi-informed opinion.
Posted by: Secret Master || 03/29/2010 12:09 Comments || Top||

#20  Problem is that the National Geographic has fallen in quality and increased in leftist politics in the past couple of decades.

That's very true, but I've borne with it for a decade or so and this month's issue (March) has a very refreshing piece about African society in Southern Ethiopia. In it, the author states both that the tribes here are amongst the least affected and thus least altered by Western/modern influence, and then goes on to describe in considerable detail how these tribes carry our routine acts of barbarity and endless cycles of vengeance. Educational, adult and totally not boring (unlike most of its articles of late).

Re the maps - yes there still aren't enough of them.
Posted by: Bulldog || 03/29/2010 14:17 Comments || Top||

#21  "We in the West did Africa no favors."
Really? I would counter that colonialism, and the stability that it provided, especialy the British version, gave, on balance, a far better life for the average African than they have now. And the idea that most African culture is as egalitarian, productive and decently humane when compared to the Judeo-Christian West, is well, poppycock.
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 03/29/2010 17:56 Comments || Top||

#22  Africa's Forever Wars - Why the continent's conflict never end.

One could say the same of Europe had it not been for the Americans and Russians sitting on them after '45. A couple generations later and 'peace' seems to be assumed as the normal state of affairs.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/29/2010 18:30 Comments || Top||

#23  Colonialism in Africa went astray : too many countries carving up too many little pseudo-states. If there had been only one or two major power colonial powers and they had divided up their territories per tribal affiliations, Africa probably would not be the mess it is today. Of course, Europe dropping the colonies willy-nilly in the late 50s, 60s, and 70s was a major screw-up as well. Too many decent local nationalists were thrown to the wolves and their Soviet/ChiCom backers.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 03/29/2010 19:56 Comments || Top||

#24  Plus, by having the modern African states' borders bear no relationship to tribal makeup, the modern African situation is that of tribal warfare with modern weapondry - AKs and RPGs used instead of pangas and assegais. So give it about 40 more years of unrelieved slaughter, and the Africans may have ironed out their tribal disputes.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 03/29/2010 19:59 Comments || Top||


Britain
Why Britain's Affair with the U.S. Is Over
The wages of Smart Diplomacy™
Posted by: ed || 03/29/2010 16:53 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Caribbean-Latin America
The U.S. vs. Honduran Democracy
The administration is pushing a policy that divides Honduras and bolsters a chavista.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

The image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wielding what resembled an oversized mallet while leading a mob of congressmen across Capitol Hill on the day of the health-care vote is the stuff of nightmares. It is also instructive. As a metaphor for how the Democrats view their power, the Pelosi hammer-pose could not be more perfect.

Just ask Honduras.

Last year, the U.S. tried to force the reinstatement of deposed president Manuel Zelaya. When that failed and Team Obama was looking like the Keystone Cops, it sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa to negotiate a compromise.

Participants in those talks say Dan Restrepo, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, let slip that the U.S. interest had to do with American politics. The Republicans, he said, were using the administration's support for Mr. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, against the Democrats. It's not going to work, Mr. Restrepo is said to have informed the other negotiators, because "we have the power" and would be keeping it for a long time.

It can't have been comforting for Hondurans to learn that while their country was living a monumental crisis, fueled by U.S. policy, Mr. Restrepo's concern was his party's power. For the record, an NSC spokesman says "Mr. Restrepo didn't say that." But my sources are more plausible considering what has transpired since.

Four months after a presidential election, reports from Honduras suggest the Obama administration remains obsessed with repairing its foreign-policy image by regaining the upper hand. The display of raw colonialist hubris is so pronounced that locals now refer to U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens as "the proconsul."

Washington's bullying is two-pronged. First is a maniacal determination to punish those involved in removing Mr. Zelaya. Second is an attempt to force Honduras to allow Mr. Zelaya, who now lives in the Dominican Republic, to return without facing any repercussions for the illegal actions that provoked his removal. Both goals are damaging the bilateral relationship, polarizing the nation and raising the risk of a resurgence of political violence.

The U.S., as represented by Mr. Llorens, has been at the center of the Zelaya crisis all along. People familiar with events leading up to Mr. Zelaya's arrest on June 28 say that had the U.S. ambassador not worked behind the scenes to block a congressional vote to remove the president a few days earlier, the dramatic deportation would never have happened.

The State Department denies this allegation. But numerous sources maintain that Mr. Llorens' interference allowed Mr. Zelaya to push ahead with an unconstitutional referendum. Fearing he would use violence—as he had before—to trample the rule of law, the Supreme Court took action. Mr. Zelaya was arrested, shipped off to San José, and removed from power by a vote of Congress the same day.

Honduras had defied Uncle Sam and the U.S., led by Mr. Llorens, decided that it had to be taught a lesson. It took out the brass knuckles and tried hard to unseat interim president Roberto Micheletti in the interest of restoring Mr. Zelaya to the office.

Honduras wouldn't budge. That's when Mr. Restrepo traveled to the capital with a U.S. delegation. The agreement reached included U.S. recognition of the November election. For a time it seemed things might return to normal.

But the Americans had scores to settle. The U.S had already yanked dozens of visas from officials and the business community as punishment for noncompliance with its pro-Zelaya policy. Then, just days before President Porfirio Lobo's inauguration in January, Hondurans estimate it pulled at least 50 more from Micheletti supporters. The visas have not been returned, and locals say Mr. Llorens continues to foster a climate of intimidation with his visa-pulling power.

He hasn't stopped there. In early March he organized a meeting of Liberal Party Zelaya supporters and the party's former presidential candidate, Elvin Santos, at the U.S. Embassy. Some 48 hours later the party's zelayistas and its Santos faction voted to remove Mr. Micheletti as party head. Rigoberto Espinal Irías, a legal adviser to the independent public prosecutor's office, complained that the "meeting generated much bad feeling in Honduran civil society" because it was "perceived to have the purpose of intervening in Honduran national politics."

Now more trouble is brewing: Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, according to press reports, has said that Mr. Lobo made a promise, in front of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr. Funes, that Mr. Zelaya could return "without fear of political persecution." Mr. Lobo subsequently announced that Mr. Zelaya is free to enter the country. In exchange, it is expected that foreign aid flows to Honduras will resume. But the minister of security maintains that if Mr. Zelaya returns he will be arrested.

It's hard to imagine what the U.S. thinks it achieves with a policy that divides Hondurans while strengthening the hand of a chavista. Revenge and power come to mind. Whatever it is, it can't be good for U.S. national security interests.
Posted by: || 03/29/2010 13:20 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Economy
Europe has left Greece hanging in the wind
However you dress it, the Greek package agreed by EU leaders is a capitulation to German-Dutch demands. There will be no European debt union as long as Angela Merkel remains Iron Chancellor of Germany.
Posted by: tipper || 03/29/2010 07:43 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I see no compelling moral argument for the proposition that one country is obligated to bail out another country which has become insolvent.
Posted by: Mike || 03/29/2010 9:27 Comments || Top||

#2  ....one country, or state, or citizen is obligated to bail out another which has become insolvent.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 9:36 Comments || Top||

#3  So what?

Cause meet effect.
Posted by: DarthVader || 03/29/2010 11:54 Comments || Top||

#4  I see no compelling moral argument for the proposition that one country is obligated to bail out another country which has become insolvent.

Certainly not if that second country (or individual or whatever) has chosen to work very hard to become insolvent. Greece and California have consistently chosen to do things that have increased their indebtedness while driving away their most profitable businesses.
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/29/2010 13:01 Comments || Top||


Planting the seeds of disaster
By Robert Samuelson
Posted by: ryuge || 03/29/2010 07:26 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Politix
In Defense of Sarah Palin
Norman Podhoretz, Wall Street Journal

Nothing annoys certain of my fellow conservative intellectuals more than when I remind them, as on occasion I mischievously do, that the derogatory things they say about Sarah Palin are uncannily similar to what many of their forebears once said about Ronald Reagan.

It's hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this "airhead," this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. They readily acknowledged that his political views were on the whole close to ours, but the embarrassing primitivism with which he expressed them only served, they said, to undermine their credibility. In any case, his base was so narrow that he had no chance of rescuing us from the disastrous administration of Jimmy Carter....

Unlike her enemies on the left, the conservative opponents of Mrs. Palin are a little puzzling. After all, except for its greater intensity, the response to her on the left is of a piece with the liberal hatred of Richard Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. It was a hatred that had less to do with differences over policy than with the conviction that these men were usurpers who, by mobilizing all the most retrograde elements of American society, had stolen the country from its rightful (liberal) rulers. But to a much greater extent than Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush, Sarah Palin is in her very being the embodiment of those retrograde forces and therefore potentially even more dangerous....

But how do we explain the hostility to Mrs. Palin felt by so many conservative intellectuals? It cannot be differences over policy. For as has been pointed out by Bill Kristol—one of the few conservative intellectuals who has been willing to say a good word about Mrs. Palin—her views are much closer to those of her conservative opponents than they are to the isolationists and protectionists on the "paleoconservative" right or to the unrealistic "realism" of the "moderate" Republicans who inhabit the establishment center.

Much as I would like to believe that the answer lies in some elevated consideration, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the same species of class bias that Mrs. Palin provokes in her enemies and her admirers is at work among the conservative intellectuals who are so embarrassed by her. When William F. Buckley Jr., then the editor of National Review, famously quipped that he would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT, most conservative intellectuals responded with a gleeful amen. But put to the test by the advent of Sarah Palin, along with the populist upsurge represented by the Tea Party movement, they have demonstrated that they never really meant it.

Whether Buckley himself really meant it may be open to question, but it is certain that his son Christopher (who endorsed Mr. Obama) does not now and probably never did. Listen to the great satirist who blogs under the name of Iowahawk, writing in the fictional persona of T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, son of the founder of The National Topsider, which he describe as a "once respected conservative magazine" now controlled by a bunch of "state college neanderthals."...

I fear that the attitude satirically exaggerated here by Iowahawk is what underlies the rejection of Sarah Palin by so many conservative intellectuals. When push came to shove, they could not resist what Van Voorhees calls Mr. Obama's "prodigious oratorical and intellectuals gifts" and they could not resist attributing Sarah Palin's emergence as a formidable political force to "the base enthusiasms and simian grunts" of "the loathesome Tea Party rabble."

As for me, after more than a year of seeing how those "prodigious oratorical and intellectual gifts" have worked themselves out in action, I remain more convinced than ever of the soundness of Buckley's quip, in the spirit of which I hereby declare that I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.
Posted by: Mike || 03/29/2010 08:18 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  As for me, after more than a year of seeing how those "prodigious oratorical and intellectual gifts" have worked themselves out in action, I remain more convinced than ever of the soundness of Buckley's quip, in the spirit of which I hereby declare that I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.
Posted by:Mike


Great article. Podhoretz nails it.
Posted by: WolfDog || 03/29/2010 12:06 Comments || Top||

#2  More at link. RTWT.
Posted by: KBK || 03/29/2010 21:25 Comments || Top||


2010 could be the Black Swan year in politics
By Hugh Hewitt
Posted by: ryuge || 03/29/2010 07:23 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  When corporate health plan open enrollment dates roll around in October and employees and retirees see huge increases in costs and decreases in coverage they won't be blaming Obamacare, they will be blaming Wall Street and greedy Republican fat cats.
Posted by: Glenmore || 03/29/2010 8:06 Comments || Top||

#2  In any other year, maybe, Glenmore. But if the "fat cats" keep their mouths shut and let Pelosi & Co start emoting and reminding them about the $hit $andwich they just passed, it could work to their advantage. That goes double if the economy is still in the toilet then, too.
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie || 03/29/2010 9:38 Comments || Top||

#3  The Donks are running ads thanking our local congresscritter (Boccieri) for voting for the health care bill. That would be the health care bill that 60%+ of his constituents opposed.

They've taken ownership of the issue. It won't be so easy to deflect blame.
Posted by: Mike || 03/29/2010 10:18 Comments || Top||

#4  I think the Donks are hoping to use the Media to set the tone. "Oh we passed healthcare but the mean old insurance companies and republicans won't let you have the savings" or "The evil Republicans wouldn't let us implement anything before 2014...." or some such crap.

Unfortunately for them not many trust the media anymore - the've been praising the goodness of the healthcare bill for over a year now and most people still oppose it.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 03/29/2010 10:35 Comments || Top||

#5  Employers will be doing the math. Many of them will be altering the insurance they offer to reflect the new economics of Obamacare.

So will the insurance companies. My health insurance just upped my co-pay for one drug from $50 to $350 due to Obamacare. Expect more of that.
Posted by: Frozen Al || 03/29/2010 11:58 Comments || Top||

#6  Ahhhhhhh, but Al ... That's just the evil insurance shysters trying to make The One look bad, doncha know.

And how could they do that already?
Posted by: Bobby || 03/29/2010 12:34 Comments || Top||

#7  Bobby - the insurance shysters are breaking out the champagne. Their profits will soar under ObamaCare. Government Sachs has a buy recommendation on Cigna and the rest of the sector.

Neither Tweedledum nor Tweedledee will take on these predators, which means we'll continue to pi$$ away a few hundred billion each year in utterly useless admin expense, aka private insurer revenues. We need a new political class.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 20:34 Comments || Top||


Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Redux
We are now beginning to enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act stage of our republic's socialist crisis. At our constitutional founding, the evil of slavery was crudely evaded. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited the abomination north of 36°30' north latitude (about the middle of Missouri), was enacted.

But with the western push of the frontier, a new compromise was needed. So the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 decreed that the "popular sovereignty" of each territory should decide whether it would be a slave or a free state. The Civil War ensued, because, as Lincoln sagely explained:

A House divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure; permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

But now, just as the (Democrat) Kansas-Nebraska Act broke through the geographic limit to slave states, the Democrat party's 2010 health-care law has broken the boundary that limited socialism. Now, the chains of socialism are to be clamped onto the able-bodied middle class -- not merely retirees who have paid their insurance premiums and the presumed-helpless poor.

And just as the free states could not tolerate the spread of slavery into their midst, so, too, free middle-class America -- if it still has its historic character -- will not tolerate the yoke of socialism being put upon their necks.

Come November, we shall see whether the system can still turn the popular will of the majority into legislative will. If it can, all will be well and the crisis will end.

But come November, if the majority will -- which opposes the socializing of health-care delivery and its associated government intrusions -- is denied its expression by the corrupt bargains and constitutional distortions of Washington, then, for the second time in our history, we will enter that dangerous period when the House resolves its temporary division. Let us devoutly pray -- and commit to ourselves -- that this time freedom shall be reacquired . . . peaceably.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 03/29/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This article is bull$hit. First, the dispute over the proper way to attend to an aging population's increasing healthcare liabilities is in no way comparable to the crisis over slavery. Not even close. Forget it.

Second, this is stupid:
For example, the new law takes away from insurance companies the right to charge for insurance based on actuarial risk — which is the essence of insurance.

The notion that for-profit health insurance companies should be able to cherry-pick healthy patients and, en masse, say f&&& off to sick patients, is, in an advanced democracy, absurd. The essence of HEALTH insurance is that SICK PEOPLE should not have to worry about losing all because of the profit imperative of companies that add no value whatsoever to the health care system. They're nothing but parasites, adding needless cost and complexity and doing zip for efficiency, or price transparency and with it consumer choice.

And yet this idiotic bill PRESERVES and even RAISES the profit margins of these parasites!

The whole point of health care reform was to eliminate needless cost and needless complexity. In short, to end this tax on the populace imposed by the insanities, and casual everyday cruelties, created by this absurd system of for-profit insurers cherry-picking healthy people and denying benefits to people who actually need care.

A pox on both your f&&&ing ignorant houses. We have two incompetent parties conspiring, through this idiotic pi$$ing match, to either bankrupt the nation or to deny care to Americans who need it. F%%% you both.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 0:12 Comments || Top||

#2  Don't hold back, Lex. But, if you don't mind subsidizing the insurance plan of a family making nearly $90,000, make a donation to the IRS in excess of what they usually confiscate from you.

You'll feel better.

I live in Texas and we have no stomach for this kind of blatant maldistribution. We'll do whatever it takes and you can bet it will be 'peaceable'.
Posted by: Gomez Threter7450 || 03/29/2010 0:27 Comments || Top||

#3  f you don't mind subsidizing the insurance plan of a family making nearly $90,000,

I DO MIND! I wanted an end to the bizarre and cruel practice of cherry-picking, AND an end to the bizarre and utterly senseless preservation of for-profit insurance that adds hundreds of billions of dollars in cost for no discernible social benefit.

The goal was to LOWER COSTS and expand coverage. Tweedledum doesn't give a f*** about the former, and Tweedledee doesn't give a f**** about the latter.

And so we now have the worst of both worlds. A pox on both your f***ing houses.

We need a new political class in this country.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 0:35 Comments || Top||

#4  You do realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right? Doctors, hospitals, medicines and tests are what drive up healthcare costs.
Posted by: Gomez Threter7450 || 03/29/2010 0:48 Comments || Top||

#5  "The notion that for-profit health insurance companies should be able to cherry-pick healthy patients and, en masse, say f&&& off to sick patients, is, in an advanced democracy, absurd. "

It is the notion that people can decline health insurance to pocket some extra cash when they are healthy and then demand to be placed on insurance when they get sick that is absurd.

The notion of employers paying for health care came out of WWII regulations that prevented employers from increasing wages. The government was afraid that the major defense industries would bid labor costs through the roof. So what the companies did was offer "fringe benefits" like health coverage instead.

We need to wean ourselves off of employer-based health care and put individual policies with people making their own choices in its place. Employers should simply stop providing health insurance at all.

People should be allowed to band together and get insurance at group rates. Do you have any idea how many people stay in dead-end jobs or jobs they hate just because of the health insurance? If they had their own individual policy, they could go where they want, when they want, for employment.

Your health insurance should be just like your car insurance, homeowner's insurance, and life insurance. It should be your own individual policy. We need to get employers completely out of the health insurance equation.
Posted by: crosspatch || 03/29/2010 0:51 Comments || Top||

#6  Weneed to get employers completely out of the health insurance equation.

I agree totally. McCain's approach was only a half-step toward this end. The rest of the deal has to be to eliminate profit from health insurance. The for-profit insurers add nothing: they don't improve price transparency and thus enable informed consumer choice, they don't reduce bureaucracy and red tape, they don't improve medical efficiency or better medical decision-making. They are simply arbitraging the actuarial tables. They're screwing us.

That the GOP refused to stand up against these parasites is to their shame, and not in any way some kind of badge of heroic defense of "liberty" or the free market. These parasites have destroyed the essence of a free market, which is consumer choice based on price transparency.

If you're upset about Barry's Botchjob, don't leave the GOP off the hook. They ignored this firebell in the night for decades, and only now are beginning to get serious about ending the national scandal that is denial of benefits for "pre-existing conditions." They deserve Barry. They created him.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 1:01 Comments || Top||

#7  Youdo realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right?

Nice try, but no go. It's the idiotic reimbursement SYSTEM created by the insurers that forces so much unnecessary cost on the docs. Start with the need for FT billing and "business office" warriors sent out daily to do battle over reimbursement with the insurers' back-office shock troops. Then look at the underlying reasons for unnecessary procedures-- not just tort madness but also (surprise, surprise) the idiotic reimbursement system that was created by... the insurance companies!

You do realize, don't you, that Cigna and the other major parasites were popping champagne at news of the passage of this botchjob? And that Government Sachs has a strong buy recommendation now for health insurance stocks?

Free market, my a$$. There's no consumer choice to speak of in the US private insurance market. No price transparency, no transparency about benefits, and little real option for the ultimate consumer to shop around.

The worst thing about this stupid pi$$fest is how American voters are lining up behind either the Sharks or the Jets. BOTH parties have botched this system. Neither party has a solution that will both contain costs and stop punishing ordinary Americans who, through utterly no fault of their own, fall seriously ill. Fu$$ both the Obama-morons and the Tea Party fools.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 1:12 Comments || Top||

#8  So, tell us Lex...now that you've made the insurance companies the evil villains...what's your plan? Do you think the federal government would be more cost efficient? Keep in mind that insurance company profits are less than .05% of what this country spends on health care annually.

Do you think that neither Medicare or the VA deny coverage for a lot of procedures and care? Do you seriously think that more than 150 new government bureacracies (and that's just a start) with their attendant bloated high salaries would work better? Just remember that they will have no rules to follow and no insurance commissioner to answer to. Audits? Forgedaboutit...all the employees will be unionized.

The process is not perfect and reforms need to be made, but be careful what you wish for because it may (will) be a lot worse. Only a Socialist tool would not see the pitfalls of single-payer government-run system. I mean, c'mon...it's worked so well in other countries.

Posted by: Gomez Threter7450 || 03/29/2010 2:08 Comments || Top||

#9  Stop denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, period. Pay for it by expanding the risk pool to include, yes, healthy young people and by eliminating the idiotic arms race between dueling business offices, of payers vs providers that imposes far more costs on the system than are indicated by your very limited metric of "insurance company profits." It's this stupid feature more than any other that makes our pseudo-free market, non-system far more INEFFICIENT than those of Sweden or Switzerland or France-- all of which deliver excellent medical care at a fraction of the per-GDP cost of ours.

Me, I'm with Gary Becker. Make health care spending tax deductible up to maybe 10k per year for a family of four, and allow purchasing nationally.

Gary Becker is a founder, along with his friend and teacher the late Milton Friedman, of the Chicago school of economics. More than four decades after winning the John Bates Clark Medal and almost two after winning the Nobel Prize, the 79-year-old occupies an unusual position for a man who has spent his entire professional life in the intensely competitive field of economics: He has nothing left to prove....

I begin with the obvious question. "The health-care legislation? It's a bad bill," Mr. Becker replies. "Health care in the United States is pretty good, but it does have a number of weaknesses. This bill doesn't address them. It adds taxation and regulation. It's going to increase health costs—not contain them."

Drafting a good bill would have been easy, he continues. Health savings accounts could have been expanded. Consumers could have been permitted to purchase insurance across state lines, which would have increased competition among insurers. The tax deductibility of health-care spending could have been extended from employers to individuals, giving the same tax treatment to all consumers. And incentives could have been put in place to prompt consumers to pay a larger portion of their health-care costs out of their own pockets.

"Here in the United States," Mr. Becker says, "we spend about 17% of our GDP on health care, but out-of-pocket expenses make up only about 12% of total health-care spending. In Switzerland, where they spend only 11% of GDP on health care, their out-of-pocket expenses equal about 31% of total spending. The difference between 12% and 31% is huge. Once people begin spending substantial sums from their own pockets, they become willing to shop around. Ordinary market incentives begin to operate. A good bill would have encouraged that."
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 2:26 Comments || Top||

#10  "You do realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right?"


"Keep in mind that insurance company profits are less than .05% of what this country spends on health care annually."


Which insurance company do you work for, troll?

Source for these statistics?

You know that the insurance industry has too much money when they can afford to have people monitoring even blogs like this.

According to HHS statistics in 2005 (most recent I've seen) doctors fees account for roughly 18% of the total cost of health care. Total amount kept by the insurance industry out of the premiums for services they covered they covered for that year? 22%. Most of the rest went for hospital corporations (NOT doctors) long term care (like nurses, physical therapy, elder care) and lab tests (you at least got that part right).

Imagine a bank which charged 20% interest for a mortgage like in the Carter days merely for moving around a few papers and moving your money from your hand to the mortage holders and you have a pretty good idea of how health insurance works.

That .5% number is distilled oil of BS. Anyone who has ever owned a business knows the accounting calisthenics that produce a number like that. How many hundreds of thousands of employees in the insurance industry are getting healthy salaries? How many buildings and other items of real estate are purchased using corporate money to make the "profits" look smaller for the IRS and local taxing authorities?

The truth is that while the "profit" your industry shows the IRS is small, the overall size and more imnportantly COST of your industry is gigantic. Cigna and Metlife may not show a "profit" as defined by corporate tax law, but they are enormous, well funded bureaucracies, all bankrolled by premiums that smaller companies and individuals thought would be going for actual health services but instead are being shunted into salaries of paper shufflers and their managers and "infrastructure" in the guise of buildings and real estate and IT equipment.

I've owned a small business for 23 years and I've had the chance to observe first-hand how the health care system works, not only as a patient but as a purchaser of health insurance. There are excesses by doctors but the insurance industry is way, WAY more to blame. They have literally no incentive to be efficient in their current form because inefficiency increases their gross pay, and that's just how it is.



Posted by: no mo uro || 03/29/2010 6:57 Comments || Top||

#11  For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone calling himself conservative would want to defend the current system. It does not empower consumers or small businesses. It stifles new business creation. It hurts competitiveness. It burdens families with children.

US private insurers are objectively anti-business, anti-family, and pro-ObamaCare. Why are their absurd privileges defended by people who champion families, business, and individual choice?
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 10:29 Comments || Top||

#12  Hey lex. Why don't you tell us what you really feel! LOL. You do have a lot of good points. I don't like the current system. I don't like what Obama has shoved down our throats. I get emails from the FBI and nearly every one of them have cases where various people are prosecuted for health care fraud; individuals, clinics, and doctors alike. That's got to cost a lot of money. Obama completely ignored tort reform in an effort to throw a sop to the trial lawyers. The unions also got sweetheart deals as did some of the states. He didn't stop health care corruption; he institutionalized it. I know a doctor who practices in a group. The doctor was advised to prescribe more diagnostic and imaging procedures because not enough were being ordered. These are apparently revenue/profit generating.

The Kansas-Nebaska Act of 1854 redux? WTF. It was a prelude to the Civil War. I don't see that health care legislation is going to lead to another civil war. The writer is stretching.
Posted by: JohnQC || 03/29/2010 10:51 Comments || Top||

#13  lex, I don't think anyone likes the current system all that much. But since most people think it is a competition between the devil you know (current system) and the monstrous, putrid sac of corrosive pus that just got passed....most people will go for the former, even with all its flaws.
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie || 03/29/2010 11:02 Comments || Top||

#14  Well said Blondie. No sense wailing away at the darkness. We've already identified the culprits. Now if we can only survive until November.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 11:06 Comments || Top||

#15  'IF' the government had demonstrated by fact and deed an effective and efficient Indian Health Care system, Veterans Administration, and Military Health Care [Walter Reed Scandal(c) wasn't that long ago] would there be the level of resistance we witness now? Unable and unwilling to clean their own house [and truthfully show the real costs] the government is not in any position to be an viable alternative.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/29/2010 11:22 Comments || Top||

#16  Here's a suggestion to the GOP leadership: quit bitching and propose a better system. Talk up real and thorough reform, root and branch. The status quo is not acceptable. It's bankrupting many millions of normal, financially responsible families and will bankrupt the nation soon enough.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 11:37 Comments || Top||

#17  Source for these statistics?

Mitch McConnell made the statement on the floor of the House and Politifact backed him up...100% on the Truth-O-Meter.....Troll.

I've never worked for an insurance company, but neither have I been the CEO of a hospital, earning half a million annually, either. Why don't we slam them as well? Hell, why don't we slam any private company (including those we work for) for daring to want to make a profit?? Troll.

If you want to paint with the 'evil' brush, why not take on the trial lawyers? Even the Democrats have admitted that they're the ones preventing any semblance of tort reform in this country. Zero is afraid of them.

And guess what? France has tort reform, which is part of why they can keep costs lower (their docs are also paid much less there). But, again, careful what you wish for. Close examination reveals they are inching slowly back to the private system and anyone with a brain can figure out why.

An overwhelming 87% of this country is perfectly satisfied, not only with their health care plans, but with the health care they receive (can you say that about those foreign countries you all seem to so admire?). But, by all means, let's get rid of private industry, hand it over to the government (they do everything so well), so we can be just like them.

We've always had catastrophic policies for health care. We pay low premiums and pay for routine costs from our HSA (evil tax break!!) We always laugh when we get a statement showing what the doctors/labs have charged and the fraction the insurance company decides to pay. They know the demographics of our area and we get the best care at the most affordable prices. No complaints so far and it's been years.

We own two homes here in South Texas. One on the mainland and one on the Gulf Coast. Of course, we couldn't afford to own beach property without some kind of risk management, so here in Texas our beach home property goes into a risk pool, in which all insurance companies are more or less forced to participate. It keeps premiums affordable by spreading the risk. We lost a good portion of it to Ike, but rebuilt within a year with no hassles, no stress, no out-of-pocket expenses. Evil insurance company finally had to pay up after 20 years! Let's eliminate them and hand all insurance over to the Government because that will surely be a pleasant experience!

In the meantime, those of us that have practiced personal responsibility and are working to enjoy a rewarding retirement, can now subsidize those 26-year old 'children' and families earning $88K, because God forbid they should have to pay their own insurance. Throw in paying their mortgages as well, and HELL yeah, there will be a revolt! Bring it!!!
Posted by: Gomez Threter7450 || 03/29/2010 12:17 Comments || Top||

#18  Point of information: Several of the larger companies I have worked for were self-insured, but did use insurance companies to the processing.

I wonder how that sort of thing plays into the costs/percentages numbers?
Posted by: Bobby || 03/29/2010 12:22 Comments || Top||

#19  According to HHS statistics in 2005 (most recent I've seen) doctors fees account for roughly 18% of the total cost of health care. Have a link for this? I've been looking for one for years. Also a link for the insurance companies' take of the total cost of health care.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 03/29/2010 12:30 Comments || Top||

#20  What is bankrupting millions of people is the lack of jobs.

I just went through losing my cobra and I will say it has been an interesting experience getting a new policy. I am 63 so I need some catastrophic coverage for two years. I got bids from five differnt health insurance providers and to my suprise they were all within $100 of each other. I question if there is competition in this industry.
Posted by: bman || 03/29/2010 12:37 Comments || Top||

#21  2008
Posted by: Beavis || 03/29/2010 12:57 Comments || Top||

#22  You know, if you have a pre-existing condition, then it is no longer insurance, it's getting someone else to pay for your treatment of your condition. I'm all for preventing insurers from not insuring those people and preventing them from being dropped. But the fact is they DO and WILL cost more and therefore should shoulder a higher percentage of the burden. Anyone who thinks the current system is good isn't paying attention, but anyone who thinks what just passed is reform is stupid. It will increase costs and it will cause primary care shortages.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 03/29/2010 13:08 Comments || Top||

#23  Point of information: Several of the larger companies I have worked for were self-insured, but did use insurance companies to the processing.

I wonder how that sort of thing plays into the costs/percentages numbers?


Mr. Wife's company does the same. Any company that has a payroll large enough to closely resemble the general population does the same -- the insurance company charges a small fee for doing the paperwork, a large enough cost savings that the practice spread rapidly once the idea was publicized.

Nonetheless, my doctor's office spent in total about a month of man-hours arguing with them to continue covering my key medication, and in the end lost. It's an orphan condition, the medication costs over $900/month, and we weren't willing to publicly fight Mr. Wife's employer to make it happen.

lex, insurance is a bet against a catastrophic occurrence. For the young and healthy, the odds are low catastrophe would occur, so their costs of health insurance is low. For the older and unhealthy, the odds are high, and it's only fair that the insurance cost is high as well. If you don't like the bet, keep your money in your pocket against the costs that will surely come, because it certainly isn't fair to force the young kids just starting out to pay for you -- unless you chose the gold-plated insurance policy that you didn't need back when you got your first job.
Likewise, life insurance is cheap when you're young, but very expensive when you're older than 65 and much more likely to die in the near future. It's not about fair or unfair, but the iron-clad laws of probability.

As for France, they are starting to cut back on what they cover, closing hospitals, and talking about raising premiums and co-pays, because the costs have gotten so high they're threatening the fiscal solvency of the government. It's not as bad as Britain, but rapidly heading in that direction. You damage your argument by raising a point that leads to the opposite conclusion.
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/29/2010 13:27 Comments || Top||

#24  Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). If you don't like your provider, you can still fire them and get another. Anyone tried to fire FICA lately?
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/29/2010 13:35 Comments || Top||

#25  Isn't the question not about health care but about immortality? Do we as a general population today have better health care than 1950, 1970, 1990? Or did we have ready access to better procedures, protocols, and pharmaceuticals back then? Does anyone really want to trade today for back then? Are we just not a bunch of little Pharaohs looking to consume the GDP for a ever lasting life for ourselves and our loved ones?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/29/2010 13:54 Comments || Top||

#26  For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone calling himself conservative would want to defend the current system.

True. What is badly needed is a complete deregulation of the entire medical sector to include, of course, the insurance companies.
Posted by: AzCat || 03/29/2010 13:56 Comments || Top||

#27  AH #19

I don't have an exact link but I can get you started here:

http://www.hhs.gov/

Please do NOT be drinking anything when you open this or the mugs of Pelosi, Obama, and Biden will cause you to spray your monitor, and that's before even reading the story on page 1.

To everyone else, I never advocated Obamacare. Government has the anti-Midas touch, everything it lays its hands on turns to excrement. But that doesn't mean I can't point out the problems with the current system. And the idea that health care is too expensive because doctors are overcharging and making too much money has no basis in reality. However, promoting that notion does help people who have an irrational hatred of the medical profession feel good. And it does do marvelously in terms of distracting peoples' attention from the bulk of problems we have in health care which are, in, truth, related to the purposeful inefficiency of the insurance system done to increase the equity they can accumulate.

If everyone had high (5-10 grand) deductible plans, market forces would drive down the cost of health care. (See Besoeker's comment about BLUF.) Most of people's needs fall below that in any given year. They could spend (or not) that money as they see fit instead of having it go through the insurance industry's conduit, where one fifth of it stays instead of going for actual treatment. Because the bulk of health care spending would be done without the insurance industry siphoning off one fifth of everything people spend in premiums, you not only get the market savings, but also 20% of the first 5 or ten grand's worth of health care on everybody.

Of course, since this would drastically reduce the gross sales of the insurance industry, they've lobbied mightily to prevent it from happening.

Tort reform? Of course, but again, the mighty trial lawyers' lobby will never allow this cash cow to be euthed while a Dem is in the White House.

Does the inability to deal with mortality brought on by the increasing irreligiosity of our time play into all this, as P2K says? Of course, but I don't know how to fight that on the short term. If you have the attitude that you will spend literally every penny of everyone else's money to stay alive, bad things will happen.

Posted by: no mo uro || 03/29/2010 14:22 Comments || Top||

#28  I think most thinking people would be in favor of health care reform. Lord knows the sytem needs it. The abomination the donks passed was passed with no bipartisan support. Some donks were opposed to the bill. Basically, the donks said shut up and take this bill, we know what is best for all of you. The arrogance of the process was astounding. There were a lot of fixes that could have been made without all the payoffs (bribes) for votes, arm-twisting, blatant arrogance and insults, that would not have involved turning the entire system on its head and shaking it by its toes. Fix what is broke and go on--gradual fixes are generally more acceptable to people than remaking an entire industry and system.
Posted by: JohnQC || 03/29/2010 14:28 Comments || Top||

#29  A trunk's root and branch proposal is here. They didn't make it up yesterday. Why don't you ask the MSM why you've never heard about it?
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 03/29/2010 14:31 Comments || Top||

#30  I agree, whoever wrote this is 'way overstating his case, but still ... lex, are you seriously arguing that some sort of single payer system with compulsory membership will do a better job than leaving matters to free economic transactions between consenting adults?

Well, I mean, look at how much more efficient the post office is compared to FedEx and UPS. And how many Americans go north into Canada to take advantage of their superior health care system. And how much better a Lada built in the USSR was compared to a Honda built in Marysville, Ohio.
[/sarc]
Posted by: Mike || 03/29/2010 16:15 Comments || Top||

#31  Lex are you truly stupid or are you just working real hard at it?

The GOP has had a plan out there for a long time. A simple Google search would have shown you what the MSM has been trying to ignore and bury for a couple of years.

Try educating yourself before you start braying.
Posted by: Beldar Threreling9726 || 03/29/2010 16:37 Comments || Top||

#32  Lex is not stupid. Just frustrated like the rest of us. Maybe lex has had a bad personal experience with the current system. There many such stories. It is stacked against us--the rates keep going up, my retirement keeps going down.

There are many suggestions to make the health care system better. The donks weren't buying any of that and now they own the new health care system. They carefully didn't craft the legislation to really kick in until 2014--after the 2012 election--probably no happenstance. The taxes to pay for it will begin immediately. That can work against them in 2010.
Posted by: JohnQC || 03/29/2010 18:38 Comments || Top||

#33  And 2012.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 03/29/2010 18:59 Comments || Top||

#34  "A pox on both your f***ing houses"

That's my line

/m/
Posted by: Mercutio || 03/29/2010 19:05 Comments || Top||

#35  I'd sooner be trapped in a room with a spider monkey wielding a chainsaw than have the dipstick in the oval office dictating my health care. My survival rate with a spider monkey is probably equal to that if I needed catastrophic medical under Obamacare and got left on a stretcher in the hallway somewhere for too long.
Posted by: GirlThursday || 03/29/2010 19:11 Comments || Top||

#36  Another nice try from Beldar. Ryan's plan is OK as far as it goes, but it took the GOP 8 years to even come up with a decent plan, and of course $5700 is chump change for most of the population, so few families would adopt it while there's a serious risk that many employers would dump it.
Posted by: lex || 03/29/2010 20:26 Comments || Top||

#37  Hate to point out the obvious, but HEALTH CARE IS NOT LISTED UNDER THE ENUMERATED FEDERAL POWERS.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/29/2010 20:48 Comments || Top||

#38  Barbara, obviously you haven't read the new, improved Constitution that the Democrats are using.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 03/29/2010 21:28 Comments || Top||

#39  Oh, I've read it all right, Rambler.

It says we should sit down and shut up; the DemoncRats are in power now, and they'll do whatever they have to to make sure it stays that way. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/29/2010 21:55 Comments || Top||

#40  A nice demonstration of the economic illiteracy that is becoming, bar none, THE greatest burden on our society. "Arbitraging" the actuarial risk, einstein, is exactly what insurance does, and contrary to your idiotic, absurd allegation, insurance provides tremendous economic benefit, when it's actual insurance. Your level of illiteracy, like my brother's, probably would prevent you from realizing that the profit margins of publicly-held insurance companies - like all companies - tells the tale. Their margins are modest and declining - nothing special for their sector. GS's stock picks are about as valuable as their mortgage derivative record.

Please show me the millions of bankrupted families - would they be some of the 40 million 30 million 20 million 10 million - oh hell, "lots and lots, really!" of families desperately in need of the titanic mess just disgracefully passed and signed by the quota hire? Your conscience bothering you? Fine. Work up a voucher program for the means-tested needy, while pushing through de-regulation to get real competition to clean up the waste imposed by bureaucracy- and managed-distorted-regulated competition.

Move to Sweden or France if your ignorance of their realities is so pristine, as it appears to be. No loss for us.

Health is not a public good, therefore non-profit is not an appropriate approach. Yes, it is exactly that simple. But as I said above, fundamental economic illiteracy - in this case teamed with arrogance and a blind compulsion to run other peoples' lives - will remain with us, even if the (slightly) b-slapped electorate throws on the brakes in November.
Posted by: Verlaine || 03/29/2010 23:53 Comments || Top||

#41  I say it again: I'd sooner be trapped in a room with a spider monkey wielding a chainsaw than have the dipstick in the oval office dictating my health care.
Posted by: GirlThursday || 03/29/2010 23:59 Comments || Top||


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Thu 2010-03-18
  'Jihad Jane' due in federal court in Philadelphia
Wed 2010-03-17
  N.Wazoo dronezap reduces 10 to component parts
Tue 2010-03-16
  Local Qaeda big turban titzup in Yemen strike
Mon 2010-03-15
  Sipah-e-Sahabah Pakistain chief pegs out

Better than the average link...



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