Let me get this straight. A government mandate that you have to have health insurance or you will be fined something like $1200? 

1) We provide 30 million more customers to the rapacious profiteering. Compulsory monthly payments for similar bad coverage (to afford it, you have to have outrageously high deductibles).

2) The Wellpoints and Blue Shield’s get, guaranteed by congressional order, a fixed number of customers. They can carry on business as usual, and only have to allow a few pre-existing conditions and possibly be forced to eliminate the lifetime caps.

3) The pharma deal struck by the White House forced congress to not approve importation cheaper identical drugs from Canada. So, they get to participate in this additional 10% of the US population into the prescription drug market.

4) The older you are, the more you will pay. So, don’t get old. Die early. That way there is no drag on the profit of the drug and insurance companies.

Sounds like a great compromise plan, eh? Supurb for the 17% of Americans that are un or under employed. (Actually, the figure, if you include those that aren’t looking, or are uncounted, maybe close to one in five.)

Try telling the 35 million people that have “food issues” (monthly struggles with their budget over providing food for their family) that they now have to buy health insurance. Hey, while the lined pockets on K Street are at Ruth’s Chris hammering it out, why not mandate everyone have a balanced three meals a day. Heck, let’s mandate every family in America to buy a new car every 5 years! See, that’ll fix it, and everyone will be happy.

This is just fucking stupid. As Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner pointed out, this is an albatross that the Democrats will have to live with for a generation. And the Republicans will just snicker when the votes dry up for the party of yes. Yes, we can force people to buy shit they can’t afford. Yes, we can pretend it is reform. Yes, we can tell people it is good for them and they did us a solid.

No. More of the same crap. The rich get richer, and the only thing that is reformed is the balance sheet. Add more pages! Promise of profit long term is a great deal to cut to allow asthmatic Janice or crippled Timmy to pay you for an $180 inhaler (only $150 with insurance!!!), or $210 crutches ($20 at Salvation Army or let the doctor “prescribe” them for you).

 God Bless us everyone. Enjoy your change!

This following video has a lot of fucks in it. This guy is angry (He forgot his Paroxetine -um, $169):

OK, well, nevermind. But, do you think this mascot below will get a mandatory policy? -

 UPDATE: Someone tell me why the republicans are against this senate bill. It lines pockets on both sides, those that vote for it. It is billions more for big insure and big pharma, so wouldn’t all of the whores want a piece / kickback? How does it hurt the GOP to let this go through?

Posted by admin as Currents at 3:43 PM PST

14 Comments »

     In general and specific, I try to look at every issue from all angles, and try to listen to every opinion whether it be one derived from a bribe, a “religious” view, or due diligence and complete study of all facts available.

That being said, every now and then, I get that “ever-gnawing inner doubt” as to whether I am right (Saul Alinsky). To avoid becoming “doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated,” I watch Glenn Beck. I listen to Al Gore. I read Ann Coulter. I endure Nancy Pelosi. Rush. Ed Schultz. Olbermann. Ingraham. Then, something comes along on the internets that actually gives you perspective you didn’t have, and opens your brain up to ideas that you hadn’t thought about.

Lord Christopher Monckton aside, for now - The BBC documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is something everyone should see. Now, don’t start the bullet / talking points about ignoring the science, and “denier” bullshit. Seriously. Watch it:

Watch all of it. All 90 minutes or so. It is worth it. Then, weigh it with your other indoctrined thoughts about earth warming, carbon emissions, radiation from the earth, polar bears drowning, sea levels rising several feet in the next hundred years, and, the so far unassailable calculation that humans contribute no more than 4% of the carbon that is in the atmosphere.

Yes, we need to cut fossil fuels altogether. And soon. Yes, oil sands destroy the water, air and earth. Yes, burning oil and gas is destructive and eventually, when we squeeze the last drops of it from the sponge we call the earth, there will be none to damage the environment any more. Yes, coal is dirty and should be replaced with renewable alternative sources of energy.

But, it is plain simple hubris to think that we are changing the world’s temperature so much that we can actually stop or reverse it. Seriously. If we stopped all usage of fossil fuel carbon emitting crap (and ask any climate change / global warming advocate,) it would be 20 years before we could even reduce the earth’s temperature 1 degree celcius. Yes. That’s right.

 This is the first time, as hard as it is to semi-agree with Palin, Inhofe, Beck, Hannity et al, that I think that the lockstep liberals are totally and incoherently full of the Kool-Aid. If they would focus on caps and lay off the trades, there can be real emissions control through the government’s role (disputed) of regulation and taxation. Fucking tax the windfall. There, done.

Maybe the Greenland and Antarctican ice will melt and raise the levels of the oceans. Maybe things will get 5-10 degrees fahrenheit warmer. But, we can’t stop it. The green revolution seems to make us all feel good. Use less toilet paper. Buy a hybrid. Take shorter showers. Go ahead. Make yourself feel real good. It does nothing.

And, here’s the real issue. The biggest carbon footprint is people. The the more we make, the more abuse there is. So, stop fucking. All of you. Stop it. Or, we cap the human being emission and trade any child more than 2 per family to families that can’t or don’t have 2.

Tell me where my logic is wrong. How can you try and cap CO2 while still making more people faster than they are dying? It just does not make sense. Any more than telling Africa they can’t burn coal to advance themselves into the second world. How dare we.

In the end, sure, I could be wrong. But, the threat that if we don’t do something now for our children about climate change we will regret it, is like believing in God because you don’t want to be wrong and still want to go to heaven. That is just plain silly.

Facts are facts. And we can argue over all of the facts. But one thing very few want to address is, if the earth is indeed still warming, we can’t stop it by hedging fossil fuel extraction and use. You are being fooled. Cap and trade creates a derivative floor to continue the Enron scheme to create things to trade that don’t exist. Just like the mortgage bubble.

I used to like Al Gore. Seriously. Stop laughing. I did. He got screwed in 2000. But, the shit he is pulling now is beyond dubious. It is a fucking huge money making machine.

This is funny:

And back to Monckton. Discredited, or rebuked, or just plain a nutball. You decide:

 

 UPDATE: And then, if you are up to it: Global Dimming. You see, the earth is cooling as well. It is warming because of fossil fuels, and it is cooling because of fossil fuels. Wha? Who knew?! Someone, quick, email Albert Gore:

Posted by admin as Currents at 3:39 PM PST

10 Comments »