The best summary of the tea party I've read

[Gnomesmusher]

That asshole stomper later on did an interview but requested his face not be shown. What a fucking coward. And then had the nerve to say it was the girl's fault and demanded that she apologize.



Man these people piss me off. But still I wouldn't curb stomp someone for it. And there were two other incidents where conservatives detained people for questioning them or protesting at their rallies. They don't give a damn about free speech except when it suits their purposes.

 

[RichardMNixon]

Man these people piss me off. But still I wouldn't curb stomp someone for it. And there were two other incidents where conservatives detained people for questioning them or protesting at their rallies. They don't give a damn about free speech except when it suits their purposes.

The actual candidate was involved in one of them: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/10/18/130641686/joe-miller-s-security-guards-handcuff-reporter-at-public-event

 

[Yfelsung]

That asshole stomper later on did an interview but requested his face not be shown. What a fucking coward. And then had the nerve to say it was the girl's fault and demanded that she apologize.



Man these people piss me off. But still I wouldn't curb stomp someone for it. And there were two other incidents where conservatives detained people for questioning them or protesting at their rallies. They don't give a damn about free speech except when it suits their purposes.

I love how these types of people will throw a woman, and a small woman at that, to the ground or they'll get all up in the face of some pregnant woman at an abortion clinic but every damn time I go to one of these things they won't even look me right in the eye.

They'll always pick a fight with a weakling but never with someone who can hold their own.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

The poor have been paying for their own health care for two centuries, why do they have the right to demand someone else pay for it?

They've also been unnecessarily dying for two centuries and fostering public health crises. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Hmm? There's already free and low-cost vaccination programs in places. Insuring water quality is a public expense. "Public health crises" are already taken care of collectively.

Eh, more probable then you might think. History is rife with the fall of countries, and massive public overspending is one possible cause. Just look at the Ottoman Empire.

For real? :facepalm: People said the same thing about Medicare, we're still here, eh? I haven't heard about the collapse of Sweden yet.

You mean the medicare system that Congress has been consistently papering over the cracks of?

http://streetlightblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/social-security-and-medicare-outlook.html

The fact that you haven't hit the ground yet doesn't mean you're flying.

"Europe"? You're talking about dozens of countries with different systems. Want to narrow it down a bit?

Take your pick: http://www.visualeconomics.com/healthcare-costs-around-the-world_2010-03-01/

Heh... cherry-picked statistics.

Average life span is a post-hoc argument. There are many things (mainly diet) that drive down the US numbers that have nothing to do with health care.

The number of MRIs is meaningless. What matters more would be something like the average wait time for access (seven and a half weeks in the UK, not tracked in the US.)

The infant mortality is a bit more troubling, but a bit of examination reveals that this comes down to race. No, not income, race.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253609/?tool=pmcentrez

"Within the highest income quintile, the premature mortality rates were 476 (95% CI = 466,487) for the populations of color and 298 (95% CI 296,300) for the white population, a 1.6-fold relative difference"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality

"The infant mortality rate for White Americans was 5.7 per 1000 births in 2003-05. For African Americans it was 13.6 per 1000, and for Hispanic Americans it was 5.6 per 1000."

I'm not going to venture a guess as to why this is, but I will say that the US has a higher relative number of people of African descent then the other countries given. No, not being racist, not blaming anyone, just giving the statistics. If you can refute the statistics, please do so.

Also of note; the US infant mortality rate has been consistently falling for the last 50 years.

Sure we can! Overspending in the program causes cost reduction measures, which are either price controls (which create shortages) or rationing (which causes Grandma to be low priority).

The fears of rationing were the result of Palin not knowing what hospice care is and her blind followers not bothering to find out, it's completely unfounded and actually an improvement over the current system by putting restrictions on the ability of insurance carriers to screw-over their customers.

You want to actually take a position or are you just giving out rhetoric? Screwing the customers: How? For how much? By what methods? Why should I consider these methods undesirable? What regulations would you support?

I'm going to repeat myself, spending =/= deficit. A decrease in revenue is a factor in that bar along with TARP. According to Fox News (the article has your graph coincidentally), the Iraq war costs over 80% of ARRA. Not to mention that one put money into our citizens (so that wealth you're on about is still there) while one put money into killing people on a different continent for no particularly good reason.
Then there's the less conservative estimate of $3 trillion for the Iraq War: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html
And again, don't forget that ~half the cost of ARRA is in those tax cuts the right are so fond of. Funny they don't get much publicity on Fox.
Care to try again?

I think I've lost the thread on this one. We're spent lots of money on stimulus and lots of money on war; regardless of which cost more, how does this justify spending lots of money on health care? Alternately, how does this justify raising taxes to pay for our lots and lots of spending instead of cutting spending?

Also, you're forgetting the nasty little problem of absolute vs relative gain again. In relative terms, the teachers have Koch beat stone cold for benefiting from government intervention.

Again, I strongly disagree. Koch is not a superhero. He would not be a successful businessman in Somalia. Just because the government isn't giving things directly to Koch personally doesn't mean he doesn't benefit immensely from their presence.

Oh no, the US is a nice place to work in! Arrrrrrrhhhhh... wait, what? What's your point here? There are successful businessmen in most poor countries (AKA the dictator's family and their cronies). There are many benefits to having a stable government, sure, that doesn't weigh on any particular policy thereof.

 

[DepricatedZero]

Regardless, I was asking AWilborn.

You asked it directly after quoting me, thus why I responded.

as for the rest of this...it pretty much sums up my sentiment on why I no longer appreciate the Tea Party. I did in the beginning, but before this Rand Paul nonsense. It was hijacked from a relatively libertarian objective to a GOP vehicle.

 

[borrofburi]

Regardless, I was asking AWilborn.

You asked it directly after quoting me, thus why I responded.

Oh. Huh. Apparently I did... That's... strange... I would think I would have thought of that.

 

[Andiferous]

One of the issues I run into repeatedly on the interwebs is repeated arguments every few months... I tend to make very carefully composed arguments and will hold to them till I change my mind... and as I've addressed the health care issue so many times, I'm adverse to doing another, as I hope you understand.

Arthur Wilborn, if you are interested in my view feel free too read here and analyse. I will respond if you do; if you would rather not, that is alright too. I find I can only argue things a limited number of times unless I see genuine interest. No disrespect.