I was out on a business trip and I’m still catching up. Reading Soonergrunt’s post about his daughter reminded me of how I felt the day Obamacare passed. I was relieved because I knew that my daughter, who has a serious, lifelong pre-existing condition, will always be able to get insurance. Obamacare saved her, my wife and me thousands of dollars and years of worry.
My dad is a lifelong Democrat because his family felt that Roosevelt and the Democrats gave a shit about their kids during the Depresssion. I’m a Democrat because it’s clear who gives a shit about my kid, and none of them have an R after their name.
They don’t give a shit that hating gays leads to teen suicide.
They don’t give a shit if kids go hungry because food stamps were cut.
They don’t give a shit if teenagers can’t get birth control.
And they certainly don’t give a shit that a kid who has epilepsy, or Crohn’s, will be saddled with a life of worry over whether she’ll be able to buy insurance.
After all the noise over the website dies down, after the Republicans try to shut down the government three more times and vote to repeal another dozen times, this is what’s going to be left for thousands of American families: a man and a party that gave enough of a shit about them to endure a five year temper tantrum from a party that clearly has a broken give-a-shitter when it comes to children.
Cervantes
Thank you for putting all that into words.
Aji
One correction to this:
They absolutely do give a shit – about ensuring that they can’t get access to it. Because they shouldn’t be having all that fun sex in the first place, and if the girls are slutty enough to get knocked up, then they must be forced to carry the fetus to term, no matter the damage or risks.
WRT lack of access to birth control, it’s a feature, not a bug.
beth
My Facebook feed has blown up the last two days with a post from some nutty site about how Obamacare means the end of volunteer fire departments because it requires them to provide insurance to the firefighters. It’s very telling how these people I know who hold down jobs requiring a fair amount of intelligence read something like this and immediately jump to the worst case scenario. Even if it’s true and the ACA has some weird obscure provision requiring this, don’t they think communities and/or the administration would come up with some sort of work around for it? When I ask them if they seriously think their town is going to disband the only firefighting group they have, the answer they come up with is “who knows what Obama’s going to do next”. I just cannot imagine hating someone so much that all reason deserts me.
SFAW
What, have they stopped?
Or did you mean “five years and counting”? (Yeah, I know you did. Just me being a prig.)
Outside of that: your post is depressingly accurate. I hope that, before I die, I will be able to say to my kids or grandkids something like: “There was a 30-plus year period of the Republicans being total fucking assholes about anyone and anything that benefited the non-rich. Fortunately, the country wised up, and 73 percent of those seditious bastards were either voted out or carted off to jail. Now, let’s go watch Malia give her State of the Union address.”
Josie
More than fifty years ago, my father told me that, when Democrats were in power, the little man did well, and, when Republicans were in power, the big money people did well. Obviously nothing has changed in all those years. What amazes me is that so many little people have not figured this out.
SFAW
@beth:
And, of course, they’re ignoring that some smaller towns – and larger cities – were already trying to fuck over the public-employee unions.
SFAW
@Josie:
Well, when you engage in a multi-decade campaign to decimate public education, you end up with something like that.
Mr Stagger Lee
Saw a story in Raw Story about the Republican Commissioner of Insurance in Georgia basically saying if you have a pre- existing condition, well to quote Herman Cain “Blame Yourself” and the insurance companies should have the right whether to insure you or not.
doug r
@beth: So ALL these volunteer firefighters don’t have insurance with their paying employers or the healthcare marketplace? Wouldn’t the fire department qualify as a small employer or non profit and get a tax break? Or get covered via the town, or county employees plan?
WereBear
Sadly, many people have brains which operate on the level of “primitive magic.” Their path to success involves sucking up to rich people.
If your goal is to live in a big house and make everyone kiss your behind, you are going to vote differently than someone who wants every kid to have a hot dinner.
BruceFromOhio
At least, that’s how I read it.
My parents were politically split: Mom was D, now more vehemently, Dad was and is a passive R. I leave him alone because he knows the R’s of today are nothing like the R’s of yore, well before the anthrax-and-tire-irons appetites developed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Aji:
This.
Oh, and of course, the sluts need to be punished.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
You rascal.
MomSense
Righteous, Mistermix. Thank you.
Yes!
Aji
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, over and above being forced to carry the fetus to term. Because there’s nothing more
scary to the right wingdangerous to society than a sexually actualized woman, doncha know.Branding sounds about right.
Cervantes
@SFAW: There’s that word “decimate” again.
(Sorry!)
MaryJane
Thank you for that, dpm. This is what my non-political friends and family members don’t understand about my shrillness, if you will. It’s not just the healthcare. I have two teenagers, one graduating next year, and I literally lie awake some nights worrying about their college costs, being gunned down at the theater, the young adult jobless rate, on and on.
Fucking Republicans don’t give a shit about kids and they’re goddamn liars to claim they even give a shit about fetuses.
IowaOldLady
My sister’s granddaughter was born with a hole in her heart. She’s now 5 and I’m sure is way over what would have been her lifetime limit in expenses on her parents’ insurance. She’d never have been able to get it on her own as an adult. But Obamacare has to be ripped out root and branch. It’s slavery.
Cervantes
@MaryJane: they’re goddamn liars to claim they even give a shit about fetuses.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s obviously about controlling women’s bodies and sexuality.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Oh, it”s worse than that. This is a quote from GA Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens (which he, of course, tried to walk back almost immediately when he saw how well it was playing):
jharp
I too have a daughter with a pre existing condition that our current insurer now refuses to cover.
Under ObamaCare they have to. And my premiums went down. But a lot. Nearly $500 a month less.
Mullah DougJ
Amen
Ruckus
…has a broken give-a-shitter when it comes to
childrenany one besides themselves including, their wives, their children, and of course anyone not purely white.Expanded it for you.
TaMara (BHF)
That was great. Well said, and I think it may be the best thing you’ve ever written here. Thank you.
Zam
Democrats worry that someone who needs help isn’t getting it. Republicans worry that someone who doesn’t deserve help is getting it. If you would rather have innocent people starve than see someone get something you don’t think they deserve then the Republican Party is for you.
skerry
@SiubhanDuinne: And that asshole is a prostate cancer survivor. But his pre-existing condition is different, I’m sure.
JoyfulA
@beth: Health insurance for volunteer firefighters is so unnecessary. Townspeople are always ready and eager to hold a spaghetti dinner and a bake sale to pay the medical bills of a firefighter with cancer or a hobby-related injury.
scav
@beth: Ahh, their logical skills again brought clearly to the forefront and put on display. Organizations people volunteer for, over and above usually having jobs, now have to provide health insurance. Why just volunteer FDs and Posses? Clearly, it’s also directed against all parents and teachers (PTAs), boys and men (BSA), kids and car drivers (car wash fund-raisers), empowered wimmins (GSA), nature lovers (the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Whatever), Readers (book Clubs), All organized religion (altar guilds) . . . Holeey Shit, the Entire Fucking Economy and all Social Relationships will consist of Nothing but people owing and buying each other Health Insurance in the So-Called Free Market! Cunning Cunning Evil Plan!
Elizabelle
How much do the NYTimes and other major newspapers care?
Because all I see is screaming headlines about the failure of Obamacare’s rollout, and the losers of the status quo.
Coupled with Paul Krugman’s humane and more rational assessments.
The LA Times is actually doing a better job, maybe because California, under Democratic leadership, is committed to providing affordably priced healthcare to its citizens and residents.
Also, if you are a Republican, national or state, and stood by, out of party loyalty, while the worst tantrumed, delayed, and obstructed you are part of the problem.
I hope these mother-f’s get turned out on their tails so hard in the midterms that they need Obamacare for a checkup of their coccyxes.
Baud
Agree with all the kudos, dpm. Blogs get so caught up in minutiae sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.
SiubhanDuinne
@skerry: Well, he’s definitely a car wreck his ownself.
Gex
@beth: Even just stepping back… watching these folks get all pissed off that the men and women who risk their lives to defend them from fire hazard might get health care is telling. God forbid we demand that the people the right loves to worship in times of tragedy not get kicked to the curb the rest of the time.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
I’m missing something – is it because “decimate” was – as is popular – misused (to some extent)?
Or were you just making a wry comment?
chopper
@SiubhanDuinne:
the sheer spitefulness of these people is amazing.
Elizabelle
Too bad Obamacare does not cover empathy implants.
Davis X. Machina
@JoyfulA: We’re good at that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cervantes:
I really think this is secondary at best. It’s about getting a self-righteous hate on against those baby-killing atheists. It’s about feeling like they’re better than everyone else while letting their desire to be a sadistic shit run totally unrestrained. The second highest motivation is disapproving of sexytimes and anyone having fun, ever. The third highest is an attempt to force everyone else to live under their rules. Controlling women is probably down at number four. It’s on the list, but it’s not the central motivation, which for conservatives is always ‘being an asshole.’
EDIT – @Elizabelle:
How much does anyone else care how much the NYT and other national news media care?
chopper
@Elizabelle:
the FEMA reeducation camps will be finished soon enough. Be patient.
Higgs Boson's Mate
If volunteer firefighters have to be provided with insurance then all of those militias should have to be provided with it as well.
Gex
@Frankensteinbeck: Another thing about abortion and gays is that it is sooooo easy for straight men to be virtuous with no effort whatsoever. The bigger they make those sins, the better they feel about themselves. Anything in Christianity that interferes with things they like to do has been liberalized (usury, gambling, opposite sex-sodomy, you name it).
If I had to look at my own life and evaluate it for whether or not I am a good person, I might have a hard reckoning ahead of me. If, on the other hand, I look at myself with the checklist of sins that *really* matter and find I’ve passed with flying colors, then I don’t have to deal with my own shit.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Or maybe because it’s now owned by the Chicago Tribune Company. Do I have to spell it out for you Libtards?/wingnut
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Josie: I think John Steinbeck nailed it:
@SFAW: Reinforced, of course, by the dismantling of meaningful public education.
scav
@Roger Moore: That so doesn’t work if you’ve ever actually encountered the ChiTrib on a regular basis. Thus, you’ve entirely captured their logical flavor and elan.
Frankensteinbeck
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The ’embarrassed millionaires’ may have been true once. Now I think that a lot of the poor just hate the rest of the poor so much, they’re willing to stand in the same line to be executed. Spite. Massive, all-consuming spite.
taylormattd
This is great mistermix.
Zoot
Take all the shit characteristics that a human can possess – greed, violence, self-absorption, bigotry – all them, EVERY shit characteristic that makes a human indecent; leave out every decent characteristic a human can possess – empathy, humility, honesty – all them, and what you have, THAT being (not really human) is the prototypical modern day republican: all crap, no redeeming value. Republicans are a pox on humanity and what it means to be human.
Zoot
Take all the shit characteristics that a human can possess – greed, violence, self-absorption, bigotry – all them, EVERY shit characteristic that makes a human indecent; leave out every decent characteristic a human can possess – empathy, humility, honesty – all them, and what you have, THAT being (not really human) is the prototypical modern day republican: all crap, no redeeming value. Republicans are a pox on humanity and what it means to be human.
Zoot
Take all the shit characteristics that a human can possess – greed, violence, self-absorption, bigotry – all them, EVERY shit characteristic that makes a human indecent; leave out every decent characteristic a human can possess – empathy, humility, honesty – all them, and what you have, THAT being (not really human) is the prototypical modern day republican: all crap, no redeeming value. Republicans are a pox on humanity and what it means to be human.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Belated thanks for a terrific post, dpm.
@Frankensteinbeck: That too is a huge part of it. Massive, all-consuming spite is endemic to a certain group of very fearful people, so much so that they will suffer so long as someone else is suffering more.
Part of the “who are you better than?” mentality. Encouraged and exploited, of course, at every opportunity by the sociopaths at the top, who suspect that is the fear of and spite for the rest of the bunch ever ceases, the actual enemy will be recognized.
That’s depressing. I think I’ll go make Mr. Q a mushroom and cheese omelet.
Ruckus
@Zoot:
That was worth repeating 3 times.
I would state though that some seemingly can be saved. John Cole for one. OK the sample size is very small, anyone got any other examples, enough to show an actual trend?
Frankensteinbeck
@Zoot:
I would amend this to make clear that that’s the idealized Republican, the essence of Republicanism. Individuals may be more or less assholes. They may get into the self-righteous hate of anti-abortionism, or be scared of all these blacks who they know are gang members but are somehow allowed to be in charge now, or they may think the sluts are asking for it, or they may just dismiss suffering on a massive scale in favor of some vague, abstract moralism. Some are all in, some have just enough asshole to be willing to vote asshole. I’ve certainly notice that the broad tendency has been hate junkies who used to be okay with a little fix of assholery, but now need more and more.
aimai
@beth: Of course isn’t an uninsured volunteer firefighter organization specifically an enormously bad idea which leads to places like “fuck, I blew up my town and my volunteer firefighters” Texas then having to hold bake sales to pay for the medical and funeral expenses of people who are in fact doing a horribly dangerous job for you with little or no remuneration? Why wouldn’t you want to make sure that your volunteer firemen were insured?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: I think you’re right, but the two delusions– “I’m a maker, not a taker!” and “I only have to pay taxes because of them!”– are not mutually exclusive. I have a pet theory that a lot of people think they’re richer than they are. We’ve got lots of anecdotal evidence that people who really should no better, i.e. Mitch Albom and his editors, don’t get how income tax rates work; I think a lot of not-quite-upper-middle-class people, on a gut level, confuse an aspirational idea of net worth (another poorly understood concept) with income, so when Dems talk about raising taxes on income over $250K/yr, they think “Hey! My house is worth half a million! They’re talking about me!”
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
This is knee-jerk psychoanalysis, but I suspect he might agree with it: Cole gets angry easily and all-consumingly. That draws you to conservatism, which is so closely tied into getting your rage on and feeling good about it. Because people are not simple cardboard cutouts, Cole also actually cares about people and wants them to be happy. When slapped hard enough to realize that conservatism doesn’t give a shit about human happiness and if anything wants them to suffer, he switched sides and got angry AT them.
muricafukyea
“.,.,Kirsten Gillibrand, who’s very much in the same mold, could become the first female president…”
Bahahaha….you really crack me up sometimes ball-juice Doug with masturbatory horseshit like this.
SFAW
@muricafukyea:
Wrong post, genius.
I know, I know – multitasking is so HARD.
scav
@aimai: There’s a difference though in the type of insurance you’d want. Ideally, yes, there’d be insurance against catastrophic stuff, line of duty stuff that happens to the volunteers when doing volunteer related activities, but not the garden variety covers all stuff health insurance. There’s a confusion of categories.
scav
@SFAW: It’s not as though context or coherency really matters for their ventings of spleen.
SiubhanDuinne
@chopper:
Here’s Hudgens on obstructing Obamacare:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@beth:
yes, heaven forbid communities be fucking required to provide health care to people who are risking life and limb for the community. What a bunch of fucking selfish psychopaths.
Mike in NC
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
This may be true about John but I’d have to have a lot more personal exposure to know than what I get off a blog. But remember we all have anger, it is a very human emotion. It is how we deal with it and how we understand the cause of the anger rather than just lashing out at a convenient group, one that has no actual part in whatever caused the problem. Being angry at blacks for example, wtf? The entire black race caused you(that’s the editorial you) to be a douchebag? Yea I didn’t think so. It’s the Hatfield v Macoy bullshit on a huge scale. Anger passed down generation to generation, etc. No resolution even possible because there is not even a glimmer of a real idea what the anger is even about.
Now some have reasons, bullshit reasons IMO, abortion for example, except they forget that the world changes, that more people live here and really do have to get along, that their narrow view of the world that never existed in the past, should never exist in the future either.
Chris
@Josie:
I always wonder how many people “haven’t figured it out” vs how many people simply don’t care as long as someone else is getting fucked worse.
IowaOldLady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Re tax issues, I knew Obamacare was financed partly by a tax of (I think) 3.8% on income about 250K, but something Richard said the other day suggested that applies to unearned income too. So these guys are paying 15% on their stock income and now that’s upped to 18.8% if it’s above 250K. That’s hilarious. Congress would NEVER up their regular taxed like that and yet it happened.
aimai
@scav: Well, sure, but they aren’t talking about that at all. They are talking about health insurance–if the firefighters are already covered by their own full time employers then there’s no problem. If they aren’t and are uninsured to begin with you’d pretty much want to offer them health insurance as a perk of being a volunteer firefighter. But in any event, since acting as a volunteer firefighter probably voids all kinds of catastrophic coverage in the same way that extreme sports or travel abroad does, you’d want a system that gets your firefighter’s covered for injuries in the course of fighting a fire just to protect your town’s few assets in the event of an uncovered injury. People are so badly misinformed about health care, health insurance, and liability its just not even funny.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
Yes, that usage always gets my goat.
(In my own defense: I immediately apologized for the pedantry — and not because I thought it was the right thing to do, either.)
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
You may be right. I just don’t see that they care very much about the defense of actual babies, so I am skeptical.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: “[G]etting a self-righteous hate on against those baby-killing atheists” in no way suggests caring about actual babies or the defense thereof.
dr. luba
@Ruckus: There’s Charles at Little Green Footballs, although, IIRC he was fairly liberal (or at least not batshit crazy) before 9/11, and it just took him a long time to come back to his senses.
I give him credit, though–many who went around the bend after 9/11 are still there.
Karen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, yes, I suppose one could be “against baby-killing atheists” for reasons unrelated to baby-killing or atheism.
Perhaps we can at least agree that this would be counter-intuitive.
Jasmine Bleach
@SFAW:
Yeah, that and a multi-decade campaign to dominate the media (talk radio, television, newspapers, etc.) to constantly convince people to place the blame elsewhere (brown people, immigrants, muzlims, librul adgendas, unions, government wasting your tax dollars, those other poor people [but not you, of course]).
I can’t tell you how effective that has been. It has even managed to shift mainline Democrats far to the right.
zoot
@Frankensteinbeck: you’re making a distinction without a difference. Very charitable of you, but really not particularly relevant other than it lulls decent people to sleep and to thinking they can actually have rational discussion with republicans and that there is such a thing as compromising with republicans.
For all intents and purposes republicans active in US politics are all crap! Sure there are plenty of OK people that call themselves republican, but more often than not they have no idea what politically active republicans are, do, and stand for.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
If it makes you feel any better, I was going to include a disclaimer (in the original comment) about its improper usage. So, you and I can be pedantic together (or whatever).
And, for what it’s worth, the last time I had the temerity to note here that “bemused” does not mean “amused,” a few people here literally ripped me a new one.
So to speak.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cervantes:
No, it’s just psychology. They enjoy the feeling of righteousness and the opportunity to be mean to other people they get by telling themselves that they’re heroes and everyone else is a ‘baby killer’, a phrase they use actively. Actually caring about babies is completely unconnected. They don’t. They’ve just found an excuse to sell themselves on the idea that they do and we don’t.
EDIT – Oh, and they’re not just telling themselves that they’re heroes and we’re baby killers, they’re telling the world. Loudly. It makes them feel really good about being complete assholes.
kbuttle
This is why I read every post on this website every day, even as I rarely venture into comments threads, and I actually comment much more rarely still.
The writers at Balloon Juice just nail it sometimes. Not to dismiss y’all in the comments – not getting into them is just a function of time. When I do occasionally relax on a Saturday and go through a comments thread, I’m always pretty wowed by some of the insights there as well.
So I guess thanks from Britain. Love this place.
Lurking Buffoon
I get the feeling there’s a decent number of Republican voters who are a great example of the sunk cost fallacy. Where much like the lengthy development of Duke Nukem Forever, they tell themselves “I’ve put so much time and money into this party, I can’t leave now. Fuck it, I’ll outlast the crazies,” and ignore how long the crazies have been there and how pervasive they are. So they continue to zombievote for anything with an (R) and refuse to acknowledge what those assholes are actually doing… and by extension the years/decades/generations they’ve been supporting these assholes.
And then you have the sociopaths who let their freak flag fly. Those fuckers think shit like this is realistic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyHgGWFwDbg
(And yes, I’ve been waiting a long time for an excuse to use that link)
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is the key.
As long as they’re defending defenseless babies from the horrid liberals genociding them, then that means they’re not complete sociopathic monsters who hate the weak and powerless because they’re weak and powerless. It’s the token issue that allows them to side with the strong against the weak in every other respect (race relations, homosexuality, labor relations, gender roles, war, torture, abuse of prisoners).
chopper
@Frankensteinbeck:
of course it isn’t merely a conservative thing. it’s really more about orthodox, black and white (lazy) thinking. that exists on the left as well, leading to some outright self-righteous assholism.
it’s bigger on the right because the right just gravitates towards simplistic black and white ‘why can’t the world be as simple as the world in my head’ thinking. hence the heavy religiousness.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
Yes, yes, I think I’d like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s also a way of expressing tribal hatred for latte drinking, sushi eating, Volvo driving, arugula eating, white wine sipping, tax–loving, gay marriage supporting, government expanding, NPR listening, New York Times reading, etc., cosmopolitan liberals – which, I think, is one of their primary goals
Frankensteinbeck
@Omnes Omnibus:
I put that as #3, part of ‘enforcing my rules on everyone else.’ That’s tied so intimately into tribalism, I don’t think they can be considered separate motivations.
Fred
@dpm- Well said. Thanks for untangling it so well.
Davis X. Machina
@Lurking Buffoon: Not just GOP voters. GOP legislators. That process sunk-cost describes Susan Collins, inter alias, to a t.
Cassidy
You’re a Democrat? Had me fooled.
J R in WV
@aimai:
I think here in West Virginia, Vol Firefighters have worker’s comp if they get hurt.
Mike G
@Lurking Buffoon:
That was awesome. I know a few people who would think that was a documentary.
brantl
The Republicans in Michigan now give a shit about autism, because the Lieutenant Governor’s kid is autistic. Funny, how that’s when they give a shit……
martian
Thank you, mistermix. This is exactly where I am. My family benefits from Obamacare in a number of significant ways but, at the end of the day, what I keep coming back to in my mind is the fact that my tiny little daughter, who has a daunting collection of pre-existing conditions, will be able to get decent healthcare all of her life. They can’t refuse her. God, the relief.
I won’t forget who helped her and who would have been just as happy to see her entire life hemmed in, her quality of life at risk, all of her choices circumscribed by the need to maintain access to or pay for medical care. It sounds so melodramatic but, for some of us, Obamacare means freedom. At least, more of it than we had.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: Hudgens’ jerky language aside, isn’t the problem he’s worrying about exactly the reason why Obamacare includes that tyrannical socialistic insurance mandate? You’d think people would make the connection.