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Comments Posted By choicelady

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Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Care Act

OMG – NO!!!!

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:41 pm

Have to tell you – the term “Fat Bastard” is a positive British name for a full-bodied, rich-tasting Chardonnay. So kindly don’t apply it to lardbutt who is anything but appealing?

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:40 pm

I think a much larger portion – 10% – will be impacted. I think 1% of the walkaways who will NOT buy as opposed to cannot buy health insurance, yes. But with 32 million soon to be covered, that’s about 10% of the population.

We have been subsidizing the 1% who could but won’t buy health insurance. We’ve been subsidizing far more than that with covering their uncompensated care, minimal though it be, when insurance companies refused them or dumped them or they were too poor to purchase insurance.

One of the VERY BEST PARTS of the plan is the grant that counties are getting to cover the very low income single or married but childless adults. Think what this means to homeless adults! It’s revolutionary! This will cover mental health, substance abuse treatment as well as illness and injury. This could be life AND society altering, all for the good! And even better? Boehner cannot take that away since the money is already distributed. HAH!

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:38 pm

I’d go for lazy. Yup.

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:33 pm

It’s a very cogent argument!

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:31 pm

USED TVs, microwaves, etc. I know very few really poor people who have new stuff. They barter, get it at Salvation Army, hand-me-downs from others.

Sigh – this actually makes each person responsible for his or her own health care costs. We are already “socializing” uncompensated care. Everyone like the son of a friend. He had a serious major medical expense and got a payment plan for his wired jaw and treatment. Did he pay? Nope. Blew it off. Who pays? Not just other insured people but ALL tax payers since the state and federal governments cover “uncompensated care”. That causes either higher taxes or more money diverted to that payment away from other things.

We have to give you basic life-maintaining care. If you don’t pay for it, we do. So how, exactly, are we ahead if we are doing this at the highest and most inefficient levels of cost?

I actually LIKE the idea it’s a tax and not a commerce issue. Taxes are for those things we all pay for rather than remotely telling us we have to “buy” a private commodity. But either way is fine – health care is what is being “sold”. Now you just have to pay your share.

We won’t be told what to eat. Broccoli is NOT on the Court’s menu. Your freedom to eat donuts and Twinkies is safe. You are now holding us harmless while you scarf. That’s all. It protects your freedoms to be irresponsible or self-indulgent. But now I don’t have to pay for you. You don’t have to pay for me.

ACA does a magnificent job (unlike Romneycare) of protecting the people. Romneycare protected the insurance companies with a flat rate premium subsidy (you pay the rest) and a HUGE deductible and out of pocket costs that means the insurance companies don’t pay until you’ve ponied up at least $5000 per year. ACA instead has huge numbers of free preventive care items AND pegs your premium costs on a sliding scale from 1 to 9% based on your income. The deductible is for when you’re sick and is about $1500 for a family rather than $5000 per person per year as in MA.

This is an amazing program of health care – it’s affordable, accessible, inclusive, and accountable. Single payer (or European style regulated insurance) can emerge from it though as that will be a much more rational use of federal and state dollars. As with Social Security and Medicare, it will grow, evolve, change, morph – whatever word you want to use – into an even more efficient means of keeping us whole, both individually and societally.

A great victory today. The start of an even greater protection for us all.

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 4:30 pm

Actually, they probably would not have recourse to striking down SS, Medicare, etc. since those are entirely government programs well within the scope of Congress’ rights.

This is more nuanced – buying a commodity (insurance) under a mandate seems unique, but it’s not. Someone pointed out last night that Congress demanded after the Revolution that all men equip themselves at their own expense with arms by which to defend the new nation. Now THAT is a MANDATE!

But Congress can require that people hold other people harmless for expenses that come from existing requirements. Since we are required to give you health care to keep you alive and get you stabilized, then we CAN impose a “tax” of insurance purchase or outright tax per se to help defray your costs to us. NOT an issue of buying a private item but of holding others harmless.

Jonathan Turley, libertarian Constitutional scholar, said the mandate was struck down. NO! It as the threat to pull ALL Medicaid funding from any state that would not expand its Medicaid program. This is a GOOD ruling. Has nothing to do with the mandate. Turley was not listening. State’s can pull out of Medicaid EXPANSION, is all.

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 2:51 pm

ACA makes denial, recission, discrimination in cost, etc., etc., etc. TOTALLY ILLEGAL. We don’t even have to fight FOR it. Though, life being what it is, we probably do have to keep an eagle eye on insurance companies. But WE WON ALL THIS!!!!

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 2:44 pm

I think these are exactly the opposite sides of the coin. What a woman does with her OWN body is not fit matter for others.

When you have the right for our entire medical system to keep you alive – and it is mandated that we not kick you into the gutter to die – then it falls on all of us if you cannot or will not pay. Health care is NOT a commodity. We have deemed it a societal responsibility from all of us to you. Therefore you have the responsibility to relieve as much of the burden on society as you can – NOT to socialize the cost through inability or irresponsibility – to hold us harmless as much as possible.

Some idiot on NPR said the broccoli argument DID apply – we can demand you eat healthy to keep your medical costs down and off our back. NOT TRUE. It’s this issue – we already must take care of you. Now you must help take care of us. What you eat is irrelevant. We are not trying to reduce costs by taking away donuts and imposing veggies. The broccoli argument is fallacious – like the blue jeans, what car we drive, etc. This is the ONLY thing we mandate – because it’s already required from us to you.

Women’s lives and choices are precisely the opposite. Since no one takes care of women and children by obligation, how she views her possibilities and life outcomes remains entirely hers while that fetus is not viable. Her choice because we are NOT called to care for her or for the born child the fetus will become.

» Posted By choicelady On June 28, 2012 @ 2:43 pm

EXCLUSIVE: Mitt Romney’s Secret Gaffes About Latinos Uncovered

Honest to Pete, I’d think this was impossible for anyone to be this dumb, but some people are SO disconnected from others that, yeah, Mitt could easily be this stupid.

Some years ago I saw a presentation by the young wife of a banker. She was into historic preservation in Birmingham, AL, and part of the project was documenting the worker housing around the city’s blast furnaces. This included homes of Black retirees and former workers. She told us, a year after her foray, that she, rich WASP southern Belle, had gone to a meeting within the Black community, and oh, my! Wasn’t she Brave! And oh, my! They were really nice! And oh, my! It was just like talking to regular people! Even if they were hard to understand, but she just kept smiling! And didn’t we all think she was MARVELOUS to have done that!

I am NOT making this up.

Clueless. Some people are just clueless.

» Posted By choicelady On June 27, 2012 @ 2:03 pm

I want to know first how many grandmothers Mitt has. Then I want to know where he keeps his secret other wives.

» Posted By choicelady On June 27, 2012 @ 1:52 pm

So You Want To Buy A House?

Oh wow – the very idea that people play these games with would-be homeowners is disgusting! It is my profound belief that mortgage insurance has a role here – the banks get a lot of the loan covered in a default, put up a house on a “loss leader” price then play the game of upward spirals that drive out actual live-in owners but help the flipper and landlord. Since none of this is illegal, there is little to be done.

Sue – we wish you well on the condo purchase! A HOME is different from a HOUSE, and you have the right to a HOME! CA started this downward spiral (death spiral?) of housing as investment not as residence back in the early 70s, and we’ve not seen the end. Good luck bucking the trend!

» Posted By choicelady On June 21, 2012 @ 11:15 am

Republicans Fight to Allow the Dead to Vote

If the GOP think dead Chicago Dems will just be morphing into reincarnated Republicans, they are in for a VERY rude surprise.

» Posted By choicelady On June 21, 2012 @ 3:57 pm

Wow, AdLib – and here I thought this was the CHICAGO DEMS who perfected “voting the cemetery”. Shows that the GOP can learn from Dem past experience. But if that means they are NOT brain dead (still educable) then does it DISQUALIFY the GOP from voting at ALL? A conundrum.

Won’t they have to cull the Dead Dems from the Dead GOP though? Oh! I know! They can select them out by the RAPTURE! Only the GOP will be Raptured! That’s how they’ll be able to tell! I can see it clearly now why the Dominionists and the GOP have merged – easy cull for picking the “good” dead voters.

It’s all clear now.

» Posted By choicelady On June 21, 2012 @ 11:20 am

When the Chips Were Down, Mitt Romney Cut and Ran – To France

GirlOutWest – wouldn’t you love to be a private investigator who has the know-how to scratch Willard’s nasty past? The more we learn, the worse it gets. I think something evil is lurking beneath that frozen smile and glazed eyes. AdLib’s query about whether he’s a sociopath haunts me. Willard IS the scariest dude running for the most powerful position in the world, and I think we are all right to be very afraid.

» Posted By choicelady On June 10, 2012 @ 9:04 pm

Sue and kes – you have NAILED this. I was fine with men doing whatever they had to to avoid Vietnam but also knew a whole lot of vets who could not get any kind of deferment and served. Even now several of those friends have PTSD and other very hard lingering problems.

Went to Vietnam? Honorable. Opposed the war and either went CO or found another way out? Honorable. SUPPORTED the war but evaded every way possible to go and trashed those who opposed it? CHICKENHAWK indeed! I once knew a guy living in a classy apartment in Marina del Rey who coldly told me that anyone who opposed the war was a shit. When I asked him why he didn’t go (he worked for a defense contractor and got big bucks as an engineer – complete with deferment) he said, “I’m too good to be cannon fodder for the war. I’m doing my bit here.” Problem with that rationale? He worked on the space research side of things. So there he was, sitting in his beautiful place, long-stemmed wine glass in hand, demanding that others die – but not him. Asshole. Just a complete and total asshole. I’m SURE he’s voting for Romney. Birds (Chickhawks) of a feather…

You can sacrifice yourself all your want in honor of your principles, but you have NO principles if you sacrific only others. Those are the men to whom, during WW I, they used to give “Four Feathers” to indicated cowardice.

You have to stand for something. SOMETHING. I have too many friends with wounds from Vietnam and too many who served hard time in prison for their conscience to think advocating that others should go and die while you don’t is a nifty thing.

CHICKENHAWKS are chickenshits. No principle, nohow.

» Posted By choicelady On June 10, 2012 @ 9:00 pm

The Increasingly Elusive Conscience of America

Well, AdLib, I always said the GOP motto was “Forward to the Past”. They relish the good ol’ days when there were no weekends, no retirement, and you worked until you dropped then your family cared for you. No health costs, no pensions, no nothing.

The steel industry used to employed people on “the long turn” – 12 hours on, 12 hours off, SEVEN DAYS PER WEEK. Then every other week – the Long Turn of 24 hours on thereby rotating from day to night and night to day. So every two weeks you’d get 24 hours off – just enough time to get JUST enough rest that you’d be a higher danger to yourself and others when you did go back. You could set your clock by the escalation of deaths and injuries every other Monday.

Yup – labor became just another fungible commodity to make the maximum for the investors and as little as humanly possible for the person doing the job. Voila! Labor is just a bottom line calculation. It’s why to this day, eradicating skill was so important. People with essential and not quickly replaceable skill could – gasp – strike and hold the company by the throat for decent wages.

To get rid of skill, besides the obvious mechanization, shift work has become the norm in even professions. Keep people on shifts, make even lawyers, doctors, architects, computer techies etc. punch a clock and have to show up at one of three shifts on the new 24/7 rota, and you diminish their collective ability to organize or resist the degredation of their jobs and lives and pay.

We have reduced every non-upper management job to calculable inputs. Thomas Edison, Alexader Graham Bell, anyone with the creativity of the past High Tech world – gone. We train doctors and lawyers and everyone else to make money FIRST, do professional standard things last. Creativity? Don’t be silly. Every single thing is reduced to cost benefit analysis, and having ideas is not beneficial to tomorrow’s immediate bottom line.

So all your kids’ dreams of professions and aptitude in action? Well, sure – but at the bottom of their dreams lies one question: how much money did you make for us, the corporation that owns you, today.

THAT is the reason business people never should be president. Government is what stands with us when business screws up, economies fail, society has problems – and business people who “like firing people” have no role in that. Government is NOT a business nor should it run as one – it is not there to make a profit – but to hold us safely together in good times and bad, to mediate between us and Mr. Moneybags, to offer us chances to succeed even NOT in a money making capacity but to serve others and fulfill dreams.

The love of money is the root of all evil. That is especially true when the creation of the thing loved – bucks – is at the expense of human beings, of creativity, of democracy, of justice. Putting a lot of money in only a few hands and putting that acquisition above all else? Brave New World.

» Posted By choicelady On June 5, 2012 @ 5:02 pm

Weekend Music Thread – Send Your Love

So THAT is why Murph is having so much trouble! Wow. Who knew? Bad karma from the git go.

» Posted By choicelady On June 10, 2012 @ 10:08 am

Wow – GirlOutWest I know only two people other than the two of us who ever heard of Jimmy Spheris and Isle of View! It is my absolutely favorite album, and had he lived, he’d have been a major part of our music history. Thanks for posting this – I drag it up from YouTube now and then since my turntable is temporarily unavailable. Yes, I still have the vinyl. Nice to know someone else loves the album and that amazing songwriter.

» Posted By choicelady On June 10, 2012 @ 12:02 am

Bill Clinton Endorses Mitt Romney

What Romney did as a venture capitalist was use the WORST tools of the deregulated environment to gut companies, put people out of work. Clinton should have said that – there is a difference between smart investing and greedy gutting. Bain and therefore Romney have a lousy track record of the latter, and that is ALL the steel ad talked about. It did not hit Bain for its investment practice – it hit the practice of stripping assets which is, by the way, illegal though rarely prosecuted.

By doing what he did, Clinton gives a pass to vulture capitalism including Romney. It deserves to be called out for its lack of precision that makes it appear Obama did something wrong. He did NOT.

» Posted By choicelady On June 1, 2012 @ 6:04 pm

WEll to be fair (with teeth gritted) Gore DID win the popular vote, so Lewinsky did not become the obstacle we feared.

All the rest is absolutely true. What scares me is whether he will influence voting outcomes.

Between this and Murph’s observations, this is a very down day!

» Posted By choicelady On June 1, 2012 @ 12:59 pm

I’m speechless. I’m also nauseated. I cannot believe that Clinton cannot see the difference between investment capitalists who build things and those who gut them for the sweet rake-offs they personally can obtain.

Well, what would you expect from a president who threw Labor under the bus in every policy he made and with his disgusting wimp of a Labor Secretary who did the same – and still is.

Maybe I’m NOT speechless! This is despicable! Clinton just lost the last shred of credibility he ever had and the very last shred of my respect for him.

» Posted By choicelady On June 1, 2012 @ 11:46 am

The Shape of the GOP Win in 2012? I Fear The Coup is Coming

Hi nabsentia – know you from TPV and glad you’re here.

Thank you for words of wisdom. MUCH appreciated. Wisconsin is not the end of the road at all. Someone once reminded me that had Nixon lost in 1972, Watergate as an investigation would never have happened or would have seemed to be McGovern’s “fault” as revenge. I believe you’re right – Walker IN office will likely speed the investigation of his actions and show the rot at the core of his party and its members.

Sometimes the long plan is the better plan. Either way tomorrow, we will see what comes. I think it will be good for opening eyes no matter what occurs.

» Posted By choicelady On June 4, 2012 @ 8:41 am

I know, I’m saddened by all this, too, but every time we thought Obama was down and out – he wasn’t.

It’s far more dicey at the local level with Congress and Senate. I’m sorry Claire is getting overwhelmed, but MO is and always has been something of an outlier – no offense (my roots are there, too) it is not a very important state. It was a slave holding non-Confederate state, it’s lousy with RW white supremacists in Springfield and the Ozarks, it’s the meth capitol of America (well, maybe second – think OK is first), and it does NOT set the standard for the nation. I like Claire, but she’s a turncoat in many respects, and were she to have been a solid liberal, she MIGHT be doing better. One of the 2010 lessons – only Blue Dogs got beat in the main. We did lose two progressives, but MOSTLY it was the Claire’s of the world.

I am taking heart from the stories from the streets in WI and other places. WI recalled half their targets even with the overwhelming money, and Ohio shoved SB 2 right up Kasich’s nose, Rove and Kochs notwithstanding.

We cannot forget our victories!

We also cannot stop working. We cannot. That’s what they want – pre-election defeatism. We had that happen in 1972, and if we let that happen again, we are doomed for decades. Yes, we will go BACK into a full blown Depression under Romney and GOP congressional control, but NO we will not stage a FDR uptick because we will not have defeated Citizens United, we will not be able to redistrict in balanced ways, and the Supremes will probably be even MORE conservative if older liberals have to be replaced by Romney.

So this is the last stand. We have to win this. And no amount of fear can let us stop moving forward. We cannot see the future, but we can affect it by doing nothing. Then the outcome is clear. We will lose. And that is doom for democracy.

» Posted By choicelady On June 1, 2012 @ 6:33 pm

Well up until a few moments ago, I thought you were viewing things too narrowly, but what with Clinton defending predatory capitalist and loser governor Mitt, now it’s serious.

I do think things are not as uniform as you think from your seat in MO – but this could be a game changer.

I’m looking for Canadian property, just in case.

» Posted By choicelady On June 1, 2012 @ 11:53 am

I think you are entirely right to be concerned. Our Vox conversation a couple of weeks ago was dismal indeed, but I must say I went over to The People’s View to express my dread based on what you had heard, and several people from WI were of an entirely different mindset. It was most encouraging!

If you scroll down to the first post by Churchlady320 and go down from there, you will see a lot of encouraging signs. Gallup, surely NOT a liberal organization, has the race in WI in a dead heat despite the influx of tens of millions of corporate dollars for Walker.

What has energized me is how many of us are calling for “boots on the ground” (or flip flops depending on your climate and terrain) doing what needs doing – helping people get ID, then get registered, then doing old fashioned precinct walking then driving people to the polls, and on and on. And what makes me even happier is that people are reporting all across the country that they are DOING these things!

One thing I know is that money alone has a real SOLID challenge from this kind of door-to-door, person-to-person work. My own organization beat the crap out of conservatives on legislative issues – issues where conservative power was holding sway – by doing personal intervention with their conservative legislators.

Money is huge, and it’s dangerous. But people who are motivated to get out there CAN overwhelm the big bucks. At this point do we really have another choice? I know it’s harder in smaller areas and rural ones, but it’s not impossible to win with that kind of work. It’s just not. In FL a candidate avowing the legalization of marijuana just also beat the crap out of the Bagger. Florida! The dark horse had flip flops on the ground and won. The Bagger had incumbency and money and lost. OK – NOT every district is gonna win with “toke up, dude” I know, but the point holds. Work, work, work for candidates, and you just cannot help but win more than you otherwise would.

Democracy is NOT a spectator sport, and this is NOT the time to get dismal.

Hope that helps you worry less. It’s not that we shouldn’t, but we must find ways NOT to be defeatist. You have shown – democracy itself is on the line.

Thanks Murph – and good luck where you are. It’s one of the tougher places to be.

» Posted By choicelady On May 31, 2012 @ 2:34 pm

Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and The Theory of Relativity

Sorry again, AdLib, but you cannot extend the notion of ten dimensions to these one-dimensional bozos. You are giving them waaaaay too much credit!

» Posted By choicelady On May 30, 2012 @ 2:27 pm

It’s possible he changes from time to time, but he seems to prefer the side-over comb out. It looks supremely silly in a high wind. Looks like a cat puffed out in a claws-extended frenzy, a perfect look for The Donald.

My cat is smarter than The Donald though.

» Posted By choicelady On May 30, 2012 @ 2:26 pm

Hair looks better on Aunt Bee…or on Spring Byington.

Either of them would be preferable to The Donald and both would have smacked him silly.

» Posted By choicelady On May 30, 2012 @ 2:23 pm

Hey Nomadic – if Trump insists that you cannot be president if not born IN the US, how would he justify McCain’s run? McCain was NOT born in the US but in the Panama Canal Zone that was merely a territory. It was the Dems who stopped the birther nonsense from our side. Anyway, what about all the kids born overseas to citizen parents who are in embassies, at military bases, whatever? Are they stripped of their rights? Natural born has a number of meanings, and even IF he were born in Kenya, which he was NOT, his mother was a citizen, therefore HE is a citizen and qualified to be right where he is.

Trump doesn’t understand that this crap undermines the FBI, Secret Service, etc. all of whom vetted Obama well before he ran. Doesn’t say much good about them if they could not come up with the goods The Donald professes to have – but never shows.

Some people will do ANYTHING for a sound bite, and The Donald leads the pack!

» Posted By choicelady On May 30, 2012 @ 12:16 pm