Stuff like this makes me angry. (via Kilgore)
[T]he latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that six in ten of the uninsured are unaware of the March 31 deadline to sign up for coverage. When reminded of the deadline and the fine for not getting covered, half of those who lack coverage as of mid-March say they plan to remain uninsured. Meanwhile, four in ten of the uninsured are still unaware of the law’s subsidies to help lower-income Americans purchase coverage, and half don’t know about the law’s expansion of Medicaid.
You could blame some of this on the administration and Democrats not promoting their obvious political interests and, you know, good policy by saturating the ariwaves with both informational and political advertising about the Affordable Care Act. I know. I have. But you cannot ignore all those Republicans gone nearly epileptic with hateful spite and lying their fool heads off about the program.
You can sacrifice some lives to make a buck and everyone knows that is bad, but what do you say when someone wrecks so many lives and livelihoods for basically nothing? Even in the old regime insurance companies never made fossil fuel-scale profits, and the ACA has hardly looks like much of a threat to their modest revenue stream. Hell, if anything the reverse is true. Ask the firebaggers. This to-the-death resistance has no economic explanation, it is all just reckless spite.
What do you call behavior like that? Evil doesn’t work. You gain nothing trying to stuff a difficult problem into a convenient manichean cubby hole like good or evil. I need something more tangible. I know that Republicans pulled the same bullshit when Clinton tried to expand health coverage, but would they have gone this far if the bill had passed and real people started getting covered? I guess they would. I guess hate and fear are powerful tools and hard to pass up when the rest of your toolbox runs dry.
It just strikes me as bizarre. It makes me feel ashamed to belong to a country that will keep electing people like this.
schrodinger's cat
Do you have a geographic break-up of the uninsured? Are they mainly in the southern states?
Goblue72
Oppose Obama at every turn. Make him into a perceived failure. Hold the House. Take the Senate in 2014.
Then pull out all stops in 2016 to take it all. With the 1st action being more tax cuts for the rich.
Lets not forget – Obama failed to end all the Bush tax cuts. Our government is still underfunded.
They are playing the long game.
MattF
Well, in WingerWorld™ Obamacare has failed and delivers only socialism, sorrow and servitude to anyone who signs up. So, doing whatever you can to prevent people from signing up is a patriotic public service. And no, I’m not being snarky, this is what they think.
WereBear
Once upon a time, there were Republicans who did care about fiscal matters, who wanted to solve problems; I might not agree with them, but they at least wanted to address the problem, with their own slant.
Now, as hired shills for the 1%, they don’t want to solve problems, they want to create and ignore them. That’s a tough sell… if you’re honest.
So, they’re not. It’s all they’ve got.
muricafukyea
Lol…another one of these progressive purity posts that makes it impossibly embarassing to call myself a progressive. They always seem to want to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
News flash, half of American doesn’t believe in evolution and probably can’t find Afghanistan on a map. You think they are going to know details about ACA even with media saturation?
Ha Ha. Thanks for the laugh.
cleek
you couldn’t do that if you lived in NC. there’s a commercial in nearly every break about it.
zealotry.
they’ve spent so long fighting and demonizing the imaginary ACA that they now have to fight the real one just to keep from looking like hypocrites.
Spurfy
No, the Republicans wouldn’t have gone so far just to spite Clinton. Clinton was white.
c u n d gulag
After 30+years of Reich-Wing radio jabs, and over 10 years of FOX right upper-cuts,
DOWN GOES EMPATHY!
DOWN GOES EMPATHY!!
DOWN GOES EMPATHY!!!
Down, and out…
Jado
Chaotic.
I call it Chaotic. They get no advantage, they just want to watch the world burn
Gorgon Zola
‘You could blame some of this on the administration … Democrats … Republicans …’
True, but you could also ‘blame’ the uninformed themselves. It’s not like the deadline(s) and fines and subsidies were state secrets. I fumigate ‘blame’ with quotation marks because I don’t want to disparage people who are not inclined to follow news–even the important shit that affects them and everybody else.
deep
considering the number of Americans who can’t even get off their duffer to vote, you shouldn’t be surprised at the number that can’t be bothered to get insurance.
David in NY
“wrecks so many lives and livelihoods for basically nothing”
Not for nothing. For power.
Citizen Alan
First of all, what percentage of those who plan to remain uninsured fall within the Wingnut Hole — too “rich” for pre-ACA Medicaid, too poor for subsidies, and trapped in one of the 36 or so states where the Repukes have prevented Medicaid expansion. And the next big thing will be when Repuke judges declare that in those states without Medicaid expansion, you can’t even get subsidies.
That said … I hate Republicans. I just hate them. And most of all, I hate them for making me hate them. Because I honestly don’t think I ever hated anyone really until the last few years and now I wake up every day and am instantly reminded that I am surrounded by evil monsters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Or who are just too damn tired. And that fumigation of “blame” goes both ways, there’s only so much Dems and people with good intentions can do to reach people who are exhausted by the business of keeping their shit together at the most basic level, who ‘should’ be looking in to health insurance but just worked an extra shift and/or figured out how to borrow twenty bucks to get food for the next week and now just wanna watch bad TV till they fall asleep and get up and do it all over again. Letterman, who is or at least was a big Obama supporter, had some kind of “there he goes again’ joke about Obama and Healthcare dot gov. Blame is the wrong word.
amk
The kenyan admin has gone out of the way to promote kenyancare. socialmedia, adblitz, ofa, bully pulpit, you name it, they did it. But the boneless dem pols dropped the ball due to cowardice.
Also. Too. Wliful ignorance from the voters side.
Amir Khalid
@Goblue72:
If you’ll pardon a small correction, it’s hold the Senate and take the House.
Berial
Believe it or not THAT is what I have the biggest problem with. I actually understand why someone would say bullshit when they are getting PAID to say it, even when they know it’s un-true.
No the thing I simply cannot understand is how people keep voting for the current crop of Republicans. What kind of person honestly thinks, “If we can just make all those women admit they are sluts and have those babies then the world will finally be a good place!”, or “Only by making everyone follow my exact religious beliefs will the world be great again!”. What motivates people to vote Republican these days other than “Fuck ‘those people’!”, where ‘those people’ are women, sluts, blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, gays, or what ever group it is they hate today?
I used to be a pretty big believer in the Republicans, about like Cole, but somewhere along the way I finally had a moment where I realized, “Wait. That’s not right.” SOMETHING ‘the right’ said and believed FINALLY didn’t fit with the world I lived in. Then, because of that ONE THING (And I really can’t remember what that was dammit all!) I starting really THINKING about political positions and what the outcomes would be and I realized that everything the right stood for was a damn lie. That was over a decade ago. What’s taking the rest of the country so long to finally have that “Wait. That’s not right”. moment?
ruemara
@Amir Khalid: s/he is talking about the Republican plan. And that’s their plan.
Edited to reflect and concur that there is an awful lot of willful ignorance and shear blindness to public policy. These people do not read the paper, watch the news or spend an iota of time learning a damned thing about the world around them.
dubo
Well, according to Politifact, if a subsidy helps you purchase insurance, it still doesn’t count as affordable insurance, because neener neener.
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/mar/24/kathleen-sebelius/kathleen-sebelius-obamacare-understates-costs/
Kill me now.
Jeremy
Well when you have so many stupid people living in this country it’s not surprising that they don’t know anything about the ACA.
Belafon
@cleek: Here in Texas, the ads from the NIH and Blue Cross are heavily aimed at getting young adults on board, but there are even some family ones. The young adult ones try everyone-else-is-doing-it, you-don’t-want-to-get-caught-without-it, and just about anything else possible.
The only ads that beat those are the new anti-smoking ads, which have really ramped up the (w)ow factor.
Chris
I tend to use “sociopathic” a lot when describing them. People who are okay with inflicting massive harm on whoever they think “deserves” it (which tends to be the weakest, least enfranchised people in society) either out of hate or petulant hurt fee-fees.
An entire roomful of Republicans standing up and cheering when Ron Paul says that people without health insurance should just die already is pretty much the conservative movement reduced to its most essential element. Beyond such specific things as racism, sexism, homophobia or class prejudice is the simple glee of a kid pulling wings off of flies.
Belafon
@Berial: Because so many people would rather continue to be wrong than admit that they were. It’s an American trait.
bemused
I think it takes longer for information to reach lower income people. From observation only, I don’t think they pay close attention to tv news or newspapers. They may be consumed with just trying to get by, daunted by how and where to start and other issues.
Mike in NC
They’re too busy watching Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo-Boo to sign up for health insurance.
MomSense
@amk:
Also, also too corporate media who do not see correcting lies or just basic providing accurate information as their responsibility.
Jeremy
@dubo: Well I’m shocked that the conservative press would say such a thing. /sarc
Right now the conservative beltway press is attacking Sasha Obama and trying to make Michelle Obama look bad, while asking the most idiotic questions during President Obama’s press conferences in Europe. The liberal media hasn’t existed since Nixon.
sparrow
@Berial: Never, for all intents and purposes. Some people (like my parents) are just so invested in the WORDS “republican” and “conservative” that they just can’t let go. Outside of a republican-instituted holocaust or something equally horrible, they will remain comfortably deluded that the republicans are mostly good guys, out fighting for “fiscally conservative” policies and “family values”… anything bad/odd/discomforting on the news is the result of the “liberal media” and/or “a bad apple” in the republicans. If they need proof that there is still a fight for the republicans to win, they look at the “rampant crime” (i.e., local media hype about any remotely criminal activity in the area) and “backsliding culture” (any hint of sex on TV or movies). Their ability to grasp larger issues, to see things from a different point of view other than their own is nil.
tokyo expat
If someone doesn’t have insurance and goes to the ER, will it be like before, where they get hit with a huge bill? Will there be some attempt while they are there to try to sign them up? Is there any plan for how to handle these people when they do end up with medical problems?
I honestly don’t get it, but then as an adult I’ve had national health in Japan, aside from four years of NHS in England. I have a problem, I walk in the same day to see a doctor. I very much doubt I wait much longer than anyone else in the US does. Less if you consider the fact I don’t have to wait to get an appointment. It’s not perfect, but I don’t worry about my family going bankrupt due to medical bills or not being able to afford a doctor’s visit. So, I’m with Tim F., I just don’t get it.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
This. And it doesn’t sit well with me either, but I honestly don’t know how else I’m supposed to feel about people who think I shouldn’t be allowed to vote, shouldn’t be allowed to protest, shouldn’t be allowed to have health insurance, shouldn’t be allowed a living wage, all because I’m Not Part Of The Club.
(And a double, triple, quadruple, infinite-ple “fuck you” to the bullshit rationalizers who, if I put it to them exactly like that, would go with “well, YOU’re different, because you are a good and honest and honorable person, but you need to realize about all these other people who aren’t…” J. K. Rowling covered this one fairly well with “but you call everyone like me a Mudblood. Why should I be any different?”)
Cassidy
Fuck this noise. Who cares about healthcare and poor people. The long, national nightmare of our liberaltarian’s data being owned by the NSA, data that was freely given in return for free shipping from Amazon, is over. We should be celebrating! Shots of vodka should be appropriate.
Elizabeth
It’s all about power—whether people suffer and die is immaterial to them. It’s power, so much more important than money to many people.
kindness
Yes Republicans can be lying sacks of shit as they have been with anything to do with re-making America’s healthcare process.
But at a certain point it comes down to the actual citizen. If they don’t want insurance you can’t make them, only make it more difficult like by how the program will fine them if they actually have an income above abject poverty. It’ll be like traffic tickets. The person might not care but when it starts eating their money they will start to care. Sure, they’ll then blame Obama, Democrats, the IRS and anyone else just like they do with traffic tickets by blaming the judge, the cop, the DMV.
Stupidity, especially the willful kind is impossible to cure.
Aimai
@deep: get off their duffs. A duffer is an old man. Though no doubt some percentage of americans use an old guy as a couch.
Citizen_X
@Goblue72:
As far as campaigning, yes, but the other part of politics is governing. Which they can’t do because they can’t help showing their asses as soon as they get any power.
If they can just sabotage the works and make everybody more cynical, that works for them. But that’s as far as they can go. They don’t have any “plan” other than that.
Aimai
@Berial: Very interesting and really gives me hope. Thanks for posting.
Librarian
@Berial: Yet, the GOP stands a pretty good chance at retaking the Senate, and winning the Illinois governor’s race. I know nothing about Illinois politics, but the fact that that can be possible after we have so much abundant evidence of what the right does when they get into power is simply mindboggling.
bemused
If there could be ACA/Medicaid facilitators in every food shelf in the country as well as other places one would find groups of lower income people, I think a lot more people would get signed up especially those who don’t know anything about these possible options.
Xecky Gilchrist
I think the opposition at the Republican legislator level is largely just kneejerk stupid. But where it isn’t, it has less to do with profit than the power relationship between bosses and labor – if labor will literally die without the bosses’ deigning to give them health insurance, the petty tyrant bastard managers have way more of that sweet, sweet power.
The ACA, flawed as it is, is a dangerous precedent, according to whatever these dickweeds use for minds.
WereBear
Every corrections officer I know says something like, “Most of these folks just don’t know any better.”
It is very difficult for people who were raised half-way right to understand just how wrong some people get brought up. I’ve seen a lot of it in poverty, but also in lower & middle class, and even in upper & upper-upper, where they can afford to get help and the neglect takes the form of rotating nannies and parents being a dimly glimpsed figure occasionally.
In whatever class or circumstance, there are people who have no clue how the world works, what they are supposed to do day by day, what goals to strive for, and how to handle their own emotions.
They just stumble around, and how much trouble they get into is a direct consequence of how much the deck is stacked for, and against, them.
So I’m completely unsurprised that free health care is going un-noticed by the very people who would benefit the most. You could sit them down and explain it all with Powerpoint… and a lot of them still wouldn’t get it because they have some vague “bad feeling” about it they picked up from ignorant relatives and brainwashing authority figures.
And they go with the feelings because they’ve never been taught how to think their way to a conclusion.
randomworker
It takes time to get to some people. In 5 years if we have the same problem then I would be concerned.
srv
You shades-of-gray softy liberals just can’t grok that Republicans are just plain evil.
It’s not manichean, it’s reality.
Ayn Rand was obsessed with a child kidnapper who chopped up the kid and threw her body out the car door after the ransom exchange. After propping the body up in the passenger seat and wiring the eyes open.
This is Hannibal territory. These people are monsters.
raven
It’s about fear boys and girls, fear.
catclub
@deep: “you shouldn’t be surprised at the number that can’t be bothered to get insurance. ”
Except they are totally different things. The thing they have in common: A hope for a better future that you contribute to by doing something now. And this is what appears to be missing for far too many people in this country.
catclub
@srv: Ayn Rand was obsessed with a child kidnapper
and not in a good way.
KG
@Citizen_X: I’m not sure they can’t help from showing there asses – I mean, they have been pretty regularly, sure. But I think it’s something different. I think they learned the wrong lessons from the 90s. They think it is all about the campaigns now. I mean, why else would cable news immediately start talking about the next presidential election once the 271st electoral vote has been called? They think Clinton won, not because he had better policies in the 90s, but because he campaigned better (and did it 24/7). Bush winning in 2000 and 2004 confirmed this for them – Bush (sadly) ran better campaigns than Gore and Kerry; but most Republicans, if you press them, they’ll admit that Bush’s governing was shit, they’ll also tell you that his governing didn’t matter because he won the elections.
charluckles
I do think keeping people desperate is part of the Republican game plan, but the biggest thing that seems to be overlooked here is how much Republicans have staked their entire ideology and premise on “government is the problem”. So what does it mean for them and for America if a government program actually works, what does it mean if regulation of the health insurance industry actually improves the lot of Americans? If a new government program with strong regulation is even remotely successful and helpful to the average American it’s going to be increasingly difficult to continue to win elections on a platform based entirely on getting government out of the way to let the holy free market rule.
CONGRATULATIONS!
In his first term? Probably not. But they’d lost all sense of shame and perspective by his second, so yeah, it could have gone down like that. Might have even worked better back then because most folks didn’t realize how far off the rails the GOP had gone until the Clenis impeachment trials started, and folks would have thought they might be arguing in good faith.
Nobody believes that anymore, especially Republicans.
Violet
@Berial:
One could ask you the same question: Why did it take you so long to have that moment? The Republicans have been batshit crazy since Reagan was president. Even Bush the Elder knew Reagan’s economic policies were “voodoo economics”.
Not asking the question to be mean or rude–I’m asking honestly. Do you know why it took you so long? Did you need an ah ha moment? Did you believe what they said before? Did their appeal to fear work for you? Patriotism? 9/11? Was Dukakis or Al Gore not “manly enough” or something? What changed?
And further to that, how can we extend that “ah ha” moment to more people? Can we chip away, one by one, and peel off Republican voters? What works?
aimai
@WereBear: Well, sure, but also their experience of authority and the health care profession and the government is probably pretty bad, too. These are not people who come from entitlement–if they are uninsured and are long term uninsured they are used to being shit on by everyone, especially hospitals and doctors and government bureaucrats. If someone told me that tomorrow they were giving out free new cars at the DMV I probably wouldn’t believe them either. Especially if one political party had been blaring out for years (four years and counting) that it was all a lie.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@WereBear: Every word of your post is dead on. A former girlfriend of mine is a public defender. She deals with the end result of this absolute lack of knowledge about how things work (as do corrections officers) and it is not pretty. And these folks will not listen even when told; most of them end up with far longer sentences than they were originally offered under a plea deal, because they think they know the law better than their lawyer does.
They don’t.
MomSense
@srv:
What? Going to the google right now.
rollSound
Functional government health care is the triple threat that knocks down the major pillars of conservative ideology:
+ It shows that government can be the solution instead of the problem (contradicting St. Ronnie)
+ It will show that improving the welfare of the citizens helps save the government money (contradicting St. Grover)
+ It shows that some parts of society can be improved by not privatizing them (contradicting the plutocrats)
If Rethugs let this stand, it is admitting that their cause is not just.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@MomSense: legit. She was obsessed/in love with this fucking psycho kid killer.
eyelessgame
@Goblue72: This. That’s the situation – it is purely for partisan advantage. If Obamacare is seen as a success, Republicans believe it will destroy them as a party with any hope to have a majority. Because while we might (rightly) be at least somewhat dubious that the demographics will inevitably rebound to our advantage (even as we hope they do, and work to make it so), Republicans surely believe that the loaded gun of demographics is pointed at their heads – they act as though they are cornered rats.
And add to it the Bill Kristol argument – that it was the success of Social Security and Medicare that produced a generation of Democratic dominance, and any other Democratic program that is seen to be a success will produce another generation (or more) of Democratic dominance. Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent it from happening.
Belafon
@bemused: A number of the states that refused medicaid expansion passed bills to make it harder for the ACA helpers (forget what they were called) to work in those states, just as requiring extra training.
aimai
@MomSense: There was a big new yorker article about it. It is one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read. Google Ayn Rand murderer (I think his name was Hickson).
WereBear
@aimai: Here you go:
The Rand-Hickman matter
cathyx
This should be thought of as part of Darwin’s principle of natural selection and survival of the fittest. If you’re too stupid to sign up and get the healthcare, too stupid to vote for those who are opposed to it, or are the children of either of the above, you will naturally be eliminated over time.
GregB
Can I take a moment and say a big Eff You to the Royal slobs of Saudi Arabia?
They are banning a Jewish reporter from covering President Obama.
The President should cancel the tour and tell them to screw.
schrodinger's cat
@Librarian: This is the CW pushed by the MSM, its up to us not to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@MomSense: William Edward Hickman is the guy. Quite a piece of work.
Patricia Kayden
@Goblue72: I doubt the Repubs are going to win in 2016. I don’t see them in the White House for years to come. But the rest of what you say is true. They’re doing damage strictly for political purposes. They could care less about the uninsured.
flukebucket
John Roberts is doing everything he can to help out poor Hobby Lobby.
Elizabelle
@Belafon:
The ACA helpers are “navigators.”
Uncharted waters, and all.
Patricia Kayden
@Spurfy: They went as far as to impeach Clinton so not sure you’re right about that. I don’t think they’re going to be nice to a President Hilary Clinton either.
WereBear
Pet peeve of mine… that implied they care, a bit.
It’s really “couldn’t care less.”
/Professor hat
Belafon
@Elizabelle: Thanks.
Cassidy
@cathyx: Or maybe uneducated, not computer savvy, working multiple jobs…
cathyx
@Cassidy: If the description fits…
Joel
You could say the same thing about stupid-ass beliefs like Creationism and its sophist cousin, Intelligent Design. People believe stupid shit, and once they’re committed, they’re impossible to move.
raven
@flukebucket: Were you around “Get the Picture” for the right wing freak show this weekend?
Cervantes
@GregB:
Meanwhile:
Cervantes
@cathyx:
Whereas what should happen, would you say, to seemingly clever people who abuse Darwin’s ideas to flaunt their ignorance of how unknown people have to live their unknown lives?
muddy
@cathyx: None of those things means a person is stupid, damn.
bemused
@Belafon:
I’m just reading about Enroll America in a TPM piece and other Dem groups with strong infrastructure in FL and other states that are going to reach or have beaten enrollment projection numbers despite GOP obstruction. Dems have spent resources in swing state FL for a number of years. They know where the people they need to reach are from canvasing apartment buildings, etc.
raven
@muddy: Someone here is stupid and nasty.
Gene108
The reason to oppose Obamacare and Hillarycare, before it, is Republicans have built their ideology around “government is the problem” and therefore taxes and services should be cut, because government cannot do anything useful by its nature.
If something came along – like universal healthcare – to convince folks “government is the solution”, than Republicans, as they currently exist, will cease to be.
As long as people are not satisfied with government Republican ideology and the current incarnation of the Republican Party can happily chug along, even as the country’s problems continue.
SatanicPanic
@WereBear:
Yup. Sometimes there’s no point in even trying. My dumbass cousin was repeating a bunch of nonsense from her dentist boss about how national healthcare would mean she’d have to work for free. That shouldn’t make sense to any adult. I thought about correcting her, then decided that she’s been hopeless as long as I’ve known her and life is too short.
Berial
@Violet: Like I said in the previous post, I honestly cannot remember what the ‘Wait. That’s not right.” moment was. My first ever presidential vote was for Bush the elder. Whom I simply was more familiar with at the time and he was was good enough for Reagan so was good enough for me. I was brought up to really like Ronnie.
My second vote was also for elder Bush. I didn’t like Clinton, but I didn’t ‘hate’ either, because he did a really good job of campaigning to the “College Crowd” of which I was a member at the time and I appreciated his campaigning to my age group. I remember being flabbergasted that the whole country(my part of it at least) basically wigged out when Clinton won. I graduated during the fall of ’92 and Clinton’s election basically resulted in over half my graduating class (of Mechanical Engineers) NOT FINDING JOBS! Yes, the business world freaked the fuck out, that a Democrat was going to be in charge. Then around 6-8 months later the economy blew up(in a good way) and everything was fine again. I think it was the freak out that started me towards introspection. My third presidential vote went to Clinton, so I may have already been questioning things before the whole impeachment thing.
bemused
@SatanicPanic:
Does her dumbass dentist boss really believe dentists and all other health care employees work for free in Canada & other national health care countries? Now there’s a dentist I would avoid going to just like we won’t take our pets to local creationist vet even though other vet clinics are much further away.
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
That’s basically me with… pretty much any conservative nowadays. I just don’t have that kind of time.
muddy
@bemused: Clearly the socialists take 100% of your income in taxes to pay for it.
Sir Laffs-a-lot
Tim: moar doggie pics :)
MomSense
That Rand Hickman thing is depraved.
muddy
Speaking of dentists, who suck, I broke a tooth in the back last week. Called around to get it pulled since I couldn’t afford to get it fixed. No one would take me unless I had (and paid for) a full exam and xrays in order to become a patient first. Or if I had dental insurance. My credit card not good enough apparently?
So at least Bernie Sanders has started a dental clinic thing, where you can go and stand in line at 7am to get a tooth pulled. Not sure how they are suddenly able to do it under those circumstances when the same damn dentist won’t do it in normal business hours.
And I only had to wait 8 days for my “appointment” to stand in line at 7am. Meanwhile my face is going to fall off from the pain. No ER for teeth! I actually considered going at it myself the other night, only because when I inevitably hurt myself I could then go to the ER, where they might have to take it out.
bemused
@muddy:
I should never underestimate the willingness of rightwingers to believe anything no matter how stupid.
ellie
An author I really, really like (I have read all of her books) was asking people on her Facebook page which book influenced them the most and the one they give to people. The author herself said Atlas Shrugged; she just loves it and gives it to everyone. WTF?
muddy
@bemused: The ones that kill me are the ones who seem to be intelligent enough and believe the really obvious lies. I guess having intelligence is not the same as being able to whip up some critical thinking and logic.
I used to just think it was difference of opinion, but now I see these people as seriously lacking in morals as well. Let’s have a new Moral Majority, a real one this time.
JPL
@muddy: Yesterday I paid 1500 for a crown. Your solution sounds reasonable but I’m sorry that you are in pain.
SatanicPanic
@bemused: Ben Carson thinks the ACA is slavery so it’s not inconceivable to me that a dentist (or what I like to call a “tooth mechanic”) believes this. These are Orange County residents of course.
bemused
OC sounds like hell.
hoodie
Well, actually it does, because that’s what evil is. Fear of loss and denial, both in the politicians and the people that vote for them. Lying like that is an act of desperation, as is believing such obvious lies. You have millions of people who have been raised to believe that they’re god’s chosen and that they should control everything, and they can’t accept that was largely an illusion. A crumbling economy, a failed war and, ultimately, a competent black president that replaced their chosen fuckup, lifted the mask. Lift the mask, you get lying, rage and the like. That goes as much for the pols as it does for their constituents because, if the pols were on their game, they would have figured a way to co-opt Obama and everything he represents. They lost control of the game in the second half, and now they’re resorting to fouling because they can’t think of anything else.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Out of context I was left wondering if you were talking about a headpiece, a Czech crown, or ascension to supreme executive power over a territory. And then the next question is, 1500 of what?
:D
SatanicPanic
@muddy: I hate dentists. I figure that everyone should cultivate an irrational prejudice so they can satisfy that part of human nature that wants us to just hate something. So I chose dentists. That may sound silly, but it’s actually a good release and in my experience most of them deserve it.
shortstop
No explanation at all. What do they have to lose by letting Obamacare’s consumer protections succeed and become as entrenched in American life and Americans’ expectations as Medicare or Social Security? That certainly won’t have any negative political effect on the Republican party or its power.
(I guess I better put a close sarcasm tag on here for our usual suspects.)
bemused
@muddy:
Yup, got a few R relatives and friends that are not dumb at all. They might not believe the most insane stories but they believe enough of the lies. We just don’t talk politics. The things that they do drop rarely are bad enough and I just don’t want to know what else they believe. They are good people otherwise and it hurts my head trying to reconcile the dissonance.
Another Holocene Human
@bemused: You’d think after three generations the Okies would have finally gone native. My mother became more or less assimilated in the Northeast after a decade, but OTOH she was outnumbered. Had there been a large OK emigrant community in Boston I’m sure that would have gone differently. Oh, she tried for years to evade the transition. Any friends she had were not from Boston either (or even from the US). (She’s probably happy now… Warren is a fellow Okie and my mother loves any Okie uncritically because of their accent, more broadly midwesterners, no matter what their politics or how much they suck… Donald Rumsfeld, JC Watts…. And no, seriously, Rumsfeld is from fucking Cook County, but it was midwestern enough that she ate it up*… but she loooooooved JC Watts, who was obviously bugfuck crazy to me the first time I saw him, though apparently a little less loony than Alan Keyes, not by much I wager, maybe he’s King (R-IA) crazy, not Michele Bachmann crazy.)
*maybe there’s a layer of Texas oil baron carpetbagger on top of the Illinois that makes him sound more downstate-ish; giving way too much thought to this matter, actually
Another Holocene Human
@bemused: Cognitive dissonance avoidance. They have some deep need to believe the lies. Confronting them with facts will only make them angry.
rikyrah
@Citizen Alan:
AMEN
AMEN
AMEN
Someguy
Some people honestly are too stupid to live. Sorry, there it is. Idiocracy at work. If you aren’t smart enough to grab free shit, when you are living in desparate need of free shit, well, then you deserve to sit there and suffer your ass off. That isn’t the result of Republican propaganda or Democratic failure to talk about Obamacare on the Sunday talkers and at fundraisers. It’s because a lot of people are too stupid to look out for their own interest or engage with the world around themselves to the most minimal extent.
The average BJ commenter and the average Red Stat commenter (I presume they’re in business still) are sadly quite likely in the cognitive elite compared to the rest of the country. That’s a sad commentary, and it’s not like our country is unique in this aspect… the whole world is full of utter morons.
muddy
@JPL: I hope you didn’t mean that my attacking it myself solution was reasonable! I really don’t need much encouragement at this point. Please don’t dare me.
Another Holocene Human
@GregB: That’s disgusting. I’m beginning to realize how insulated we are in the US from most real anti-Semitism like they have world-wide. I always thought it couldn’t be that bad… but it is. In the US most depictions of Jewish life have been defined by Jews themselves. But that’s not true in other countries (except Israel).
Also, those dickbags that say Jews/Judaism is dying because of intermarriage are stupid. Because Jewish assimilation was key to being able to shape and define Jewish representation in American media. It required engagement, crossing over, empathy. Not the xenophobia and fear inculcated by creating a closed world. Just as the Fundamentalist LDS makes people fear and distrust Mormons in general (over and above the feeling that they screw Gentiles in business deals in Utah), groups like Ger and Lev Tabor and the New York Skverers feed non-Jews’ insecurities about the “alien” religious life in their midst, and the ultra-Orthodox morality police conflate religion, culture, and community life in a way not only dangerous for the young people trapped in that world, but on those in the dominant society that are insensitive to their own privilege, who refuse to understand that Judaism in not just a religion, it’s an ethnicity and a culture and no, atheist Jews don’t enjoy making Christmas cookies with the fam just like “everyone else”. I’m looking at you, Garrison Keillor.
My wife and I were really shocked and disappointed to see some really anti-Semitic bullshit on a Canadian TV show. It wasn’t just the idiot who wrote the show, it was the fact that their management, their backers, including ITV and the Canadian federal and a provincial government gave that crap the rubber stamp and they didn’t fear backlash from B’nai B’rith or what have you. (This is a show that went out of its way to be sensitive to other groups such as First Nations and Chinese-Canadians, and also one that was eventually picked up by CBC and had Stephen Harper as a guest as well as other officials.) Canada – Land Next Door of Old School British Anti-Semitism.
muddy
@SatanicPanic: I was accused of having an irrational prejudice the other day against tattoos. I don’t have anything against tattoos in general, but I think facial and neck tats are anti-social. I got a lot of pushback on this from liberal friends. So judgmental, don’t be a wingnut etc..
The story I was telling involved someone who had a complete don’t give a fuck attitude (while serving customers) and I said that the fact that he had this hideous thing on his neck should have advertised it to me.
I thought it was an entirely rational prejudice, but probably everyone thinks that about themselves!
Another Holocene Human
@Someguy: By YOUR logic, those shitweasels who do taxes and charge enormous fees for same-day refund loans are just upstanding citizens doing their civic duty to beat down the stupid and keep them in line?
bemused
@Another Holocene Human:
JC Watts, wow. I can’t imagine ever being that homesick!
Another Holocene Human
@bemused: Supported the Iraq War, enthusiastically as I recall. My mother is pretty batshit insane herself, so maybe they “reached”.
bemused
@Another Holocene Human:
I try to change the subject if there is even a hint the conversation may go rightwing. At the time of the Trayvon Martin murder, a couple, close relatives among 6 of us, started to say something that I just knew was going to drive me to murder so I abruptly got up and walked outside for awhile. I thought maybe I should have stayed and countered it but I was so upset, I thought I might start crying.
I just can’t reconcile the two sides to these people.
JPL
@muddy: No I mean having the tooth pulled. The tooth that required a crown for me was in the lower back. Dental costs are exorbitant and most people don’t release that tooth problems can cost health problems.
Another Holocene Human
@bemused: Me too except it happened at work and I was kind of afraid of some of my coworkers for a while.
Mnemosyne
@tokyo expat:
As I understand it, everyone who turns up at the ER will be presumed eligible for Medicaid unless they have an insurance card and will be signed up on the spot.
goblue72
@Amir Khalid: I meant from the GOP perspective. They hold onto the House and add to it by taking the Senate in 2014. Then they take the Presidency in 2016. Then they cut taxes. Then when they get kicked out in 2018 or 2020 for fucking up the country again, they hold on to enough to prevent the unwinding of their tax cuts and force govt to shrink even more. Rinse and repeat.
That’s their plan.
flukebucket
@raven: Ha! Nah. I missed that. I will have to double back around and see if I can read up on it. I generally do not even go around there until football season.
goblue72
@Citizen_X: Their plan is cut taxes and shrink government. They’ve been quite successful in that. Obama has been backed into cutting the Federal budget as much or more than Ryan even proposed.
And on taxes, they managed to hold on to a LOT of the Bush tax cuts, which were originally going to expire.
Bit by bit, inch by inch…they are winning. Because they have the easy goal. Get money from the rich to get elected, cut taxes, shrink government, repeat. Everything else is secondary. Our side is trying to accomplish a lot more to benefit people with less money. Which is why we have it harder.
SatanicPanic
@muddy: Facial, neck and hand tats make it hard to communicate, because I get all distracted. Generally not a fan. I have a few myself (not on my face, neck or hands), so I’m not anti-tat. They’re art, it’s OK to judge art.
cckids
Well, the spouse & I have finally signed up; our first health insurance since 2002. Yay us! And the subsidies are saving us. Not just money, they are saving us. I haven’t seen a doctor since 2004, not for anything.
We procrastinated due to lots of issues, mainly an infuriating struggle with Nevada’s website, which couldn’t comprehend that we wanted to cover our 21-year old son, who lives in another city (same state) while going to college. It kept dropping him from our application at the end, and the response from the website “help” center was basically “huh. It shouldn’t do that”. Ya think?
Anyway, we are getting a decent Silver plan, for $91 a month. Though Consumer Reports says that none of NV’s plans meet their standards. Not a surprise.
bemused
@Another Holocene Human:
I think they were starting to say Trayvon was like a teen thug and I just couldn’t believe they were going there. I could barely see straight. I wonder what they think now that Zimmerman has proven to be unstable loser but it’s probably best I don’t know.
bemused
@cckids:
Congratulations!
muddy
@JPL: I knew what you meant, I was being silly! Altho I have cut a cast off myself before.
I steeled myself to the pulling rather than fixing becaue $, and was just happy it was not in the front. I’m vain enough I’d have sold an heirloom to fix a front tooth. But having to wait 8 days just to have one pulled is pretty uncivilized.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
This seems like a more constructive way of talking about them than describing them as “anti-social”, even though the basic thrust of your criticism is about the same. Rather than saying something very broad about them and people that have them, you’re saying something concrete about how they affect you. I don’t personally find small face and neck tats problematic, but I can understand where you’re coming from and my experience doesn’t invalidate yours.
muddy
@SatanicPanic: The communication thing is just exactly it. The person is forcing you to look at their tattoo if you need to interact. And I’m not asking him a favor, he’s slicing turkey for me to purchase.
When I first interacted with this guy I was initially thinking that it was nice they would hire a deli worker who looked like he just got out of prison. But then he was so horrible I wished they had discriminated against him. It was at this point that I was saying I should have gone with my initial prejudice that people who chose tattoos by their face are probably anti-social.
muddy
@Roger Moore: This wasn’t small. It was over half of his neck and going up the chin.
Now the tear at the corner of the eye is small. That’s not so visually distracting, but then one is left wondering if they really killed someone, and was it on purpose?
Roger Moore
@muddy:
FTFY.
muddy
@Roger Moore: Gods forbid I wonder about the meaning of a tattoo that is put on the face for a meaning.
Chris
@goblue72:
The last time we managed to actually stomp on them, it took the pretty much the entire public (look at FDR’s electoral maps) focusing laser-like on the issue of fighting the 1%. As soon as the system moves on to another issue, they see their opening and use it. It’s an exhausting business.
muddy
@Roger Moore:
What about giant ones, that say ugly things in messy Gothic lettering?
PIGL
@Roger Moore: My response to facial tats: there goes the straight job, and the life of crime.
Seriously, facial tattoos are prima facie evidence of serious mental illness. Unless it’s a teardrop, in which case run. Or shoot the fucker…that’d work too.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
Ouch! I think it depends on where you live — we do appear to have emergency dentists available here in the Los Angeles area.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: In the end it’s an aesthetic preference and I don’t feel bad expressing an opinion, even if it’s get offa my lawn-y. People can mock my tattoos if they want, I’ll survive.
muddy
@Mnemosyne: My rural area is lovely, but not overstocked with options! Less than 48 hours to go by now.
C.V. Danes
Why, you reward them with control of the Senate, that’s what you do.
Hal
One thing I’ve noticed is the number of complaints about the ACA that come from people who are in no way affected by the law. I have a couple of conservative Facebook friends who are completely negative about it, but both have good jobs with their own insurance. But, they know people, who know people. My own mother blames her increased medicare premiums on the ACA even though I got her to admit they go up every year. But this year? Thanks Obama!
There is something malignant in the thinking of some people in this country that react negatively to people getting greater access and protection. Like folks who just think it’s terrible any public employees enjoy decent wages and gasp! a pension that might make it possible to retire one day. These people are shooting themselves in the foot in the long run, and what’s most embarrassing is that the wealthy elite along with their political stooges that are leading the charge barely work up a sweat getting these people to jump off a cliff. As long as they can be outraged that someone else has something beneficial, that’s all that matters.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
Ice. Seriously, put ice packs on the side of your face that hurts — 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off so you don’t get frostbite. And if you’re not taking at least 600mg of ibuprofen every four hours, start doing it now. It won’t help as much with the root pain (that nasty throbbing) but it will at least keep any swelling down.
Also, the wet tea bag thing in this article helps — that’s what they had G do when he had his wisdom teeth out.
Adam C
Lying to people to promote your own ideological outcome? The belief that causing short-term pain for the poor is essential for the long-term good of everyone else? I believe that’s called neoconservatism.
Someguy
@Another Holocene Human: By YOUR logic, those shitweasels who do taxes and charge enormous fees for same-day refund loans are just upstanding citizens doing their civic duty to beat down the stupid and keep them in line
No, they’re just taking advantage of the Diminati*. Well, and the desparate too.
*The opposite of the Illuminati. The world runs >them<.
karen
As long as we have a population that would happily eat stale moldy bread as long as OTHERS had only crumbs, the GOP will be in control of everything.
muddy
@Mnemosyne: Thanks, cold is good – I have cloth bags with rice and flaxseed that I use for freezer or microwave. They don’t sting like ice can. I’m not supposed to take ibuprofen, nor tylenol. But I have this aspirin3. I don’t know the real name, it’s like tylenol3 only it’s aspirin with the codeine. You can get both kinds OTC in Canada.
Needless to say I have done very little work this week. But somehow one always feels well enough to bitch on BJ!
Kathleen
@Citizen Alan: Infinite updings. I’ve been feeling that way myself today. And I am a believer in “evil”.
Chris
@Hal:
Conservatives trying to be clever often use the “crab bucket” analogy when finger-waggling about liberal “envy” (none of the crabs gets out of the bucket, cause the other ones always pull him back before he can). Good analogy. Just directed at the wrong people. The “crab bucket” mentality best describes the yutzes desperate to stomp out the wages of unionized workers, federal government workers, all the black, Asian and Hispanic workers they believe have unfairly benefited from Affirmative Action Welfare, et al, because God forbid any of the other Common Folk get ideas above their station. Meanwhile, the 1% are the fisherman looking down at the bucket shaking his head in bemusement.
Downpuppy
@Another Holocene Human: I’ts been a bad year for the low end tax preparers. A fair number of busts of the cheaters, a few tax offices shot up, & so far this year returns submitted by paid preparers are down 700,000 (2%) while homegrown are up.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
By “not supposed to,” I assume you mean for medical reasons. Ugh. Can you have naproxen sodium (Aleve)? That’s also an NSAID, so the answer may still be no. (It makes me sick to my stomach, but it works great for other people.) I usually try not to take opiates because they don’t seem to do much for my pain except make me care less, but it might be worth taking one at bedtime just to help you sleep. Make sure you eat a little something — aspirin is much harder on my stomach than ibuprofen is, for some reason.
And it sounds crazy, but the teabag really does help — you (gently) clench it between your teeth and keep it there for 30 minutes or so. It needs to be black tea, not herbal, though — something about the tannins.
cckids
@bemused: Thanks! We’re happy about it, we will be relieved, but it hasn’t sunk in yet.
I’m fairly sure some of the procrastination may be due to the complexity of choosing a plan. There are so many details, so many plans that are so similar you’re sure you must be missing something. And if you haven’t had insurance, or the opportunity to buy it, you can get overwhelmed very fast.
My husband & I have 4 college degrees between us; he has actually been licensed to sell health insurance in the past, and still . . . after a long,stressful day, looking at the plans I start to hear Charlie Brown’s teacher in my head “blah blah . . . blahblahblah blah”. So glad to be done.
muddy
@Chris: That’s why you can’t give a man a fish only teach him to fish and then the job creators will give him crabs.
If he’s lucky!
Chris
@muddy:
Fixed to reflect what the Mammon worshipers actually think.
muddy
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, doctor said no. In fact when I had surgery he went searching for some formulation of Vicodin that had the least tylenol in it. Probably I could have called up and gotten some more of that, but I had this other on hand.
grillo
Very late to the thread, but the word you are looking for is vandalism. They are vandals. They destroy for the sake of destroying.
Vandalism.
grillo
Very late to the thread, but the word you are looking for is vandalism. They are vandals. They destroy for the sake of destroying.
Vandalism.
Gene108
@goblue72:
I do not think they are winning.
On social issues they have lost, with the exception of abortion rights.
On economic issues it is not as cut and dry as you make it out to be. The Republicans have gone all in on their slash and burn tactics. Jindal tried to repeal the LA state income tax and his popularity tanked soon afterward.
Federal spending is constrained because of gridlock. If you get one Party in power Federal spending will pick up, as only one Party will get credit for the improvents.
evodevo
Ky. here …. the most efficient in the nation at signing up people for ACA – easiest procedure, etc. etc. Our tenants – unemployed, disabled, no SSDI, no unemployment, not paid rent for 9 months – refused to sign up because, and I quote, “I don’t want them to implant a chip and I ain’t signing up for no ni&**er insurance.” I was contemplating dumping them out on the street for being too stupid to live, but what are ya gonna do?!
Chris
@cckids:
Phone lines are about that good. Been on the phone with them since 11AM. Every time the phone center decides to disconnect you, the whole process starts up again. Still on hold.
WaterGirl
@evodevo: wow, just wow.
Republicans, in their quest to put politics above all else, including humanity, will result in some low income, low information people like this dying when they don’t have to. They really are sociopaths.
satby
@evodevo: yep. That sums up the thinking of quite a few of the hardcore uninsured and no one was going to get them anyway. In the meantime it looks like the ACA will meet or exceed the projected 7 million new enrollees, and that 7 million people all have friends, neighbors, and families who are going to be hearing happy stories about people finally getting checkups and long delayed healthcare, and the sky will not fall. By November the opposition to ACA will look as mean and stupid to the “low info” folks as it does today to us political junkies.
noabsolutes
It’s racism. It’s not evil, it’s a specific system with many moving parts and a tremendous historical advantage. It succeeds even when it doesn’t intend to. The Clinton comparison isn’t how far republicans would go to obstruct Clinton, it’s how hard they fought along with him to dismantle welfare. Now when there is a good policy on the table that would level the playing field somewhat, and there’s a black guy in charge, they can’t stand it. But what they’ve been doing in the long run–republicans in government and their voters, too– is trying to maintain the system of racial inequality that has worked to their benefit, politically, if not economically and in terms of actual health and well being. But that’s what’s going on. Not evil, but something specifically odious.
Matt McIrvin
TPM is heavily pushing the idea that the ACA might actually go down, or at least become greatly hobbled, in Halbig v. Sebelius:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/halbig-sebelius-dc-circuit-arguments
The argument is that Congress forgot to explicitly provide for federal subsidies for people who are using the federal exchange, as opposed to the state exchanges. So in all the states that are not running their own exchanges, if the lawsuit wins, everyone receiving the subsidies for an ACA plan is going to get them taken away.
Don’t know if it’s just clickbait, but if it’s not, this would be suck to end all suck, if what finally does destroy the ACA after surviving so many challenges is an idiotic loophole coming from what amounts to a missing sentence in the law.