COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

This memorial is in or adjacent to Occupy Portland camp site. The names are those of Oregon soldiers who were killed in the service of their country in the First World War. Here is what the protesters of Occupy Portland did.


The photo was taken on the morning of the 13th of October.

Don't you dare question their patriotism!

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: culture, liberals, Occupy Wall Street, protesters, The Left

Not surprising, but here it is:

The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

Health care providers have been squawking about low medicare reimbursement rates for years, and it's getting harder and harder for medicare patients to find providers. What was fascinating to me, though, is the sheer arrogance and denial coming from the White House and from their fellow leftist morons, the Urban Institute:

Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman for health care, declined comment on Mayo’s decision to drop Medicare primary care patients at its Glendale clinic.

Funny, the White House was full of praise for their low-cost, high-quality, highly-efficient health care before. Cat got your tongue? Can't figure out why this might be happening?

Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said physicians’ claims of inadequate reimbursement are overstated.

No, libtard. They're not. If they were overstated, doctors would still be seeing these patients. It is patently obvious for anyone who's not dribble-down-his-chin, charter-member-of-the-smaller-bus-club stupid that reimbursement rates do not reflect what the market will bear.

Rather, the program faces a lack of medical providers because not enough new doctors are becoming family doctors, internists and pediatricians who oversee patients’ primary care.

And why might that be, genius? Could the fact that medicare and medicaid underpay our family care doctors, internists and pediatricians so that the fields are no longer attractive to our medical school students?

“Some primary care doctors don’t have to see Medicare patients because there is an unlimited demand for their services,” Berenson said. When patients with private insurance can be treated at 50 percent to 100 percent higher fees, “then Medicare does indeed look like a poor payer,” he said

.

Holy crap. The free market slaps this leftist twit right across the face to get his attention, and he still can't figure it out. He just said that Medicare underpayment was overstated - and then in the same article concedes that medicare pays only half the going rate.

This is the kind of USDA Prime-quality stupid we're up against, here. It's the think tankers at the Urban League who are coming up with these ideas and advising our dumbest members of Congress - liberals to a man - about how to structure health care reform.

It's already a disaster and they haven't even started yet.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: health care, stupid, The Left

Mao?!?!?!

Strange fruit, indeed.

Who in God's name are these people staffing the White House?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Mao, Obama, stupid, The Left

Yes, Kennedy was a sociopathic drunken ass who killed a young woman in the prime of her life. But he's sufficiently liberal, so it's ok.

UPDATE: Link fixed.

Labels: Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, Politics, Ted Kennedy, The Left

Crossposted from Althouse's comments on this post:

Any libtard who blindly asserts that 'torture doesn't work' is a half-witted, naive little panty-waist talking out of his ass.

Torture works. It always has. The threat of torture works. It always has. Not in every single instance with every single suspect, but damn well enough and consistently enough.

Here's where the typical pony-tailed pinko tries to assert "yeah, it's effective at getting the victim to say what he thinks the torturer wants to hear."

That's because the libtard shitbird is an amateur, and he read about torture committed by amateurs, and therefore, in his ignorance he cannot conceive that other people are professionals.

Torture is extremely effective at extracting confirmable information, where the victim cannot be certain that the information is not already known to the interrogator, and where the detaining power is sufficiently brutal - or is perceived to be sufficiently brutal - that the victim has a reason to believe that his lot will become substantially worse if he is caught in a lie.

This is not difficult to do where the detaining power is organized and disciplined about tracking information received and shares it among the interrogators, carefully keeping track of known and unknown, confirmed and unconfirmed information.

In some cases, less intense forms of interrogation are effective BECAUSE more brutal interrogations were performed on others, and the subject of the less intense interrogation has no idea whether the first guy broke or not - but must assume he has.

I keep seeing libtards argue crap they don't understand till they're blue in the face.

There are legitimate moral arguments why we should not practice torture - putting aside definitional problems. But every time some ignorant fool argues that it just isn't effective, he makes an utter clown of himself.

Labels: detainees, ethics, The Left, War on Terror, Warfighting

Behold the depths of libtard stupidity:

"Look at Canada," says Charles Krauthammer. "Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we."

So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.

In case you missed it, Ezra - or his editors determined to dig his hole for him, entitle his piece "We ration. We ration. We ration. We ration." Hey, libtard! You wen' foget one "We ration!"

Here we have the modern libtard - and in this case, the leading public polemicist for PelosiCare - a man who cannot discern between a rationing system under a command-control economy and a free-market system. Either he's bone stupid or the intellectual dishonesty of the left has descended to unheard-of depths.

If a free-market system is "rationing," then the term has zero meaning whatsoever. We ration fuel, we ration rubber, we ration access to golf courses, movie theaters, restaurants and fruit cocktails. We ration coffee and sugar and turnips and peas. We ration newspapers and Internet access. We even ration sex, and favor people who are attractive. RATIONISTS!

This is the kind of obtuseness the left is reduced to. Up is down, left is right, war is peace, free markets is rationing, and 2 + 2 = 5. But each one of these statements is equally false, and for the same reason.

Fortunately, Reason Magazine is on the case:

Like most left-leaning folks, Klein clearly doesn't know the definition of rationing. Take this one from Britannica:

Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies.

The entire Washington Post editorial is a disaster. The whole thing is predicated on a falsehood. I've never seen such a decisive editorial FAIL before it even gets started.

I've often said - and I never have time to build the case anymore - but I've often said that any screwed up shit-for-brains lefty with a knack for turning a phrase can secure some prime real estate in our high-gloss media. For a conservative to get the same shot, he has to be five times smarter than the liberal competing for the same space. Ezra Klein utterly beclowns himself here - and scores the WaPo. Megan McArdle, love her or hate her, can think circles around Ezra Klein and Andrew Sullivan combined. If she was as hopelessly lost as those two, AND a libertarian/sort-of-conservative, she would NEVER have gotten her gig at the Economist, OR The Atlantic.

Wow. We even ration Op-eds.

Klein. Clown.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Ezra Klein, health care, Politics, stupid, The Left

The latest episode of WeeWee's Big White House Adventure features our hero, St. Barry, Partner of God in Matters of Life and Death, lashing out at reform opponents (e.g., people who can read) for spreading "outrageous myths" concerning his health care plan.
Which myths? The Senior Partner(TM) specifically mentioned abortion, claiming that the bill will NOT allow for public funding of abortions. The problem: Not even the Associated Press believes him.

Associated Press, August 5, 2009 -- Gov't Insurance Would Allow Coverage for Abortion

Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive issue.

Federal funds for abortions are now restricted to cases involving rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother. Abortion opponents say those restrictions should carry over to any health insurance sold through a new marketplace envisioned under the legislation, an exchange where people would choose private coverage or the public plan.

Abortion rights supporters say that would have the effect of denying coverage for abortion to millions of women who now have it through workplace insurance and are expected to join the exchange.

The predictable leftard argument is that Congress is insisting that abortions will not be paid for using tax dollars, but premium dollars. This is a distinction without a difference. Utterly dishonest. They pretend that money is not fungible. Government subsidizes the plan, the plan pays for abortions.

Obama also claimed that the plan would not fund benefits for illegal immigrants. If this is true, why did the Democrats in Congress vote, by party line, not to check patients for eligibility to prevent this very occurance? Obama also claimed that the "Death Panel" rumors are false. Not even the New York Times is signing on to that piece of tripe anymore.

New York Times: A Basis is Seen for Some Health Care Fears About the Elderly.

White House officials and Democrats in Congress say the fears of older Americans about possible rationing of health care are based on myths and falsehoods. But Medicare beneficiaries and insurance counselors say the concerns are not entirely irrational

Bills now in Congress would squeeze savings out of Medicare, a lifeline for the elderly, on the assumption that doctors and hospitals can be more efficient.

Obama. While he's spending precious political capital on anything but shoring up support for the War in Afghanistan, he is squandering it here at home, using his bully pulpit not to beat down Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but to beat down his fellow Americans.

Obama. Everything he says about health care reform is a lie, except for "if," "but," and "the." And I'm not so sure about "the."

Labels: Abortion, Afghanistan, Democrats, health care, immigration, Obama, stupid, The Left

I made the mistake of giving the libtards too much credit for honesty and judgement. I had thought they were being truthful about not covering illegal immigrants under ObamaCare.

Turns out that that's not true, either. The libtards are bound and determined to allow even illegal immigrants to suckle at the public teat.

Health reform legislation, particularly H.R. 3200, contains a number of provisions that open the door to taxpayer funding of immigrants’ health care. That’s for illegal aliens, legal aliens who are supposed to rely on their sponsor for financial assistance their first five years here, and certain immigrants who sponsor other immigrants.

In brief:

Despite nominally barring illegal immigrants from receiving a health-insurance subsidy, an amendment to require that applicants be screened for eligibility — as are all other welfare recipients — was rejected on a party-line vote.
Even legal immigrants whose sponsors are supposed to provide them financial support would be eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies.


Certain legal immigrants who qualify for premium subsidies or expanded Medicaid would also be able to sponsor new immigrants, whom they would have to pledge to support.


Illegal immigrants would be exempt from the legal mandate to have health insurance, but they’d still receive taxpayer-funded medical services at health clinics and hospitals required to serve all those presenting with medical emergencies.

So they have carefully left the back door sitting wide open - and voted overwhelmingly to keep it open - for illegals to steal health care from the American taxpayer. (Indeed, in a way, they might have to. If the libtards get their way, they will make it illegal for illegal immigrants to buy their own private health insurance!)

They do all this - on a party line vote - while simultaneously trotting forth their leaders to claim that the ObamaCare will not cover illegals, KNOWING DAMN WELL THAT IT WILL.

There is simly no negotiating in good faith with the current crop of libtards. They will lie to your face. They'll sabatoge and undercut their own legislation. They'll search your court records and divorce proceedings if you get in their way.

Nothing is beyond the pale for these people.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Congress, Democrats, health care, insurance, Obama, stupid, The Left

Libtards say that a public option would not eliminate private insurance companies from the field, but would compete with them, keeping them honest.

This is bullshit. First of all, a public plan would pay no income tax. This alone would be a decisive blow to the private sector. But on top of that, they would face zero cost of raising capital, zero reserve requirements, and an implicit government guarantee. We all know how that shit worked out over at Freddie and Fannie.

The libtards say that the public option gives consumers more choice. No, once private insurers throw in the towel, consumers will have LESS choice, and fewer options, not more. What options are left will be MORE expensive, not less, because of adverse selection.

The libtards, including the WeeWee in Chief, point to the Post Office as an analogy. But I still stand in line at the Post Office, and adverse selection does not apply to the parcel industry.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: health care, Obama, Politics, stupid, The Left

The most maddening aspect of the whole health care debate for me is the utter willingness of the libtards to lie wholesale about EVERY ASPECT of the debate. The intellectual dishonesty... the flagrant intellectual dishonesty - goes all the way up to the top. To the President, to Speaker Pelosi, and to Harry Reid.

This alone, regardless of the merits of the policy objectives themselves, is a powerful reason to fiercely oppose this legislation. The lies have been so frequent, and so egregious, that there is simply no way to reason with the current crop of libtards in control of Congress and the White House and their noise machines. You cannot take them at their word. You cannot assume that your words will be honestly taken. Instead, the libtards in charge, unfortunately, have made it so that the default position for opponents of PelosiCare must be that every thing they currently offer in compromise is a lie, and a trick. They are utterly devoid of reason and utterly without honor.

The fish rots from the head down:

President Obama himself claimed that he never said he was in favor of a single payor system. That was a flat-out lie: He is on tape saying precisely the opposite a couple of years ago.

The entire libtard-industrial complex is saying that Palin was referring to end-of-life-care consultations, and threw them out of the legislation as a sacrificial lamb. Unfortunately, too many hopeful idiots believed them. But it was clearly a big lie. Palin wasn't referring to the end-of-life consultations, but to the various boards and commissions that MUST be convened in order to rationally allocate scarce health care resources. THESE are the "death panels," and Palin had it precisely right. The entire bill will turn the Health and Human Services department into one big 'death panel.'

Nancy Pelosi is calling soccer moms and grandmoms speaking out against the measure "nazis," and "unamerican."

This was too far even for the Obama Administration (though they may well have privately encouraged her bomb-throwing.)

Following the attack on a black conservative, caught on tape at a St. Louis Town Hall, the leadership of the SEIU issued a press release claiming their own members were attacked - and edited out a section of the video showing a witness screaming at a Union thug "you attacked him!" They kept the audio, but since the video proved them to be liars, they edited it out.

Now that Palin has come out swinging on tort reform, the "operative statement" on the left is that malpractice costs do not contribute to high health care costs - an assertion that would be laughable in any other context, but with so much at stake, it's not laughable - it's sinister, maddening, and Orwellian.

Obama continues to insist that the bill will be revenue neutral, despite the findings of the Congressional Budget Office. Obama's White House made no attempt to rebut the

Obama claimed that for those making less than $250,000 per year, our taxes would not go up one dime. But many of those makeing less than 250k per year are small-business owners, and Obama is now advocating an 8%-of-payroll tax on any businesses that do not offer group health care benefits.

This 8% is either going to come directly out of health care benefits for workers, as small-businesses punt their private insurers, or it will come directly out of small-business-owner income, be it 10k or W-2 income.

Obama is claiming "you won't have to wait in any lines!" But this isn't even true of the Post Office, and it's CERTAINLY not true of the VA health care system.

Obama claimed no one will be forced to buy coverage. But he also claimed he wanted a system with "everybody in, nobody out."

Obama claimed you'll be able to keep your insurance company. This is a flat-out lie. First of all, workers who get their health care from their employers will get booted from their plans by the millions as smaller companies drop coverage to save costs and move workers to the public option. Some states require group insurers to issue an individual policy, but not all.

Further, if Obama gets his way, adverse selection will cause millions of healthy workers to move to the public option, leaving private insurers with a pool of sick people. Premiums must rise to compensate for the deteriorating risk pool, which further accelerates the adverse selection problem. Private insurance risk pools will quickly collapse. This isn't just theoretical bullshit: It will happen as surely as night follows day.

The '47 million uninsured Americans' claim is itself a lie: The figure includes millions eligible for Medicaid and millions of illegal immigrants. The damnable thing is we've known this figure to be false for years, and yet the libtards STILL embrace it.

The libtards, including Obama himself, have claimed that federally-funded abortions would be excluded by the plan. This is also a lie, and the President continues to lie about it. He is totally two-faced: He will tell libtard audiences that "reproductive care" will be covered, but tells centrist audiences that there is no language in the bill specifically including abortions in the list of covered services. If the President is appointing people who populate the 'best practices' boards, then they are going to cover abortions. This is obvious to most intelligent people, but Obama continues to try to play both sides - and continues to lie to all but Leftard America.

The leftards continue to claim that the UK spends less with better outcomes than the United States. But the UK lags significantly behind the US in the metrics that actually count: The 5 and 10 year survivability rates of people diagnosed with various dread diseases. Why? The UK sharply restricts access to newer drugs and treatments - to save money. Why? Because the UK, like all socialist systems, has appointed a Death Panel, called NICE, whose job it is to rationally direct scarce resources to where they will provide the most value.

The leftards continue to claim you can be 'dropped for a preexisting condition.' This is also a lie. Under just about any state law I'm aware of, an insurance company cannot target an individual, in-force policy for a rate increase because he or she has developed a preexisting condition. They can adjust rates on a class, or a group, but typically not an individual.

Yes, you can drop someone for letting his or her policy lapse. That's life among grownups and it's true for Medicare, as well. (That's what disability income insurance is for: Everyone who can qualify should have enough disability income insurance to cover health premiums, in my book. The LAST time you want to be lapsing your medical insurance is right when you lost your job because you are sick or hurt.)

The libtards are still arguing that preventative care reduces costs, overall. Idiots who don't take time to think about the mechanics of the plan take them at face value. But preventative care does NOT save money, in the aggregate. Some screens are expensive, and where positive results are rare, they can very easily lose money, in the aggregate. This is well-documented, but obvious to anyone who gives the issue more than a moment's thought.

The ONE thing the libtards aren't lying about now, is that illegal immigrants are not going to be covered under the bill (except, of course, for point-blank emergencies that no doctor in good conscience could turn away.)

This is a disappointment to the cheese-eaters at NPR, who wrote a story, in all seriousness, headlined "Health Care Overhaul Ignores Illegal Immigrants."

No doubt the bastards will try to Rahm that through in the reconciliation commitee.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Congress, health care, NPR, Obama, Pelosi, Politics, Reid, stupid, The Left

Obama's administration can't handle the logistics and pay the dealers what they were promised - even after the dealers in good faith fronted their customers the cash.

The Feds have only made good on about 2 percent of the deals so far.

But don't worry. We'll have oodles of doctors and clinics lining up to do business with a government insurer. None of them will quit in disgust just when demand surges because of the perception that medical care is free.

Idiots.

Labels: business, cars, Economics, Obama, stupid, The Left

So he says on Professor Bainbridge's blog.

Heh.

I swear, you can be the dumbest, most ill-informed twit on your block, and you can get on as a columnist in a major U.S. daily. Conservatives - those few left in journalism, have to be three times smarter than libtards to write a column.

Labels: stupid, The Left

Phony doctors

Labels: stupid, The Left

Haven't seen a talking plant like this since Steve Martin starred in Little Shop of Horrors.

Labels: culture, health care, The Left

Obama: "I have not said that I am a supporter of a single-payer health plan."

Obama to an SEIU gathering: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan."



"Hello," he lied.

Labels: Obama, stupid, The Left

...then who will answer the call?

It's official. The U.S. is no longer engaged in a "war on terrorism." Neither is it fighting "jihadists" or in a "global war."

President Obama's top homeland security and counterterrorism official took all three terms off the table of acceptable words inside the White House during a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

"The President does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism,'" said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a "new way of seeing" the fight against terrorism.

The only terminology that Mr. Brennan said the administration is using is that the U.S. is "at war with al Qaeda."

I guess his pal Bill Ayers put him up to this.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: foreign policy, language, Obama, The Left, War on Terror

Scratch a liberal, you'll find a fascist.

Labels: Obama, The Left

In order to more fully portray the vileness of the assault on democracy being propogated by Nancy Pelosi and the White House communications office, I'm going to discuss it in the context of this great Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom of Speech.




The painting depicts a 1940s version of Everyman: a working man, by his tidy but informal presentation, and the lean strength of his frame. He could well be a farmer - Rockwell frequently portrayed Middle America in his art. Note the wear and tear on his hands - aged well beyond his face. The figure has a bill or program or agenda in his pocket, and is looked up to and apparently admired by the citizens - citizens - surrounding him, young and old alike.

The painting, for those who may not be aware, was one in a touching series of paintings depicting the Four Freedoms as constructed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want, and Freedom of Worship were the others.

Now, when you or I see this painting, we see an admirable figure, a leader, a great American. We see a citizen speaking his mind, an American posessed of the God-given, inalienable right to freedom of expression. We see discourse and debate. We see what America is all about.

The modern Libtard, represented by Nancy Pelosi and the White House Press office, sees a manufactured mob.

This is pure poison. Pelosi and her enablers have simply declared rhetorical war not just on the Republican party, but on the electorate itself.

Their attitude is nothing short of a big 'F***k You' to the American people. I cannot overstate how vile and dangerous modern libtards are. They need to be opposed at every turn. They need to be made to feel the heat until they see the light, or driven from office. They are bigger enemies of America than McCarthy could ever dream of being. For all his faults, at least McCarthy loved his country and the things that made it great.

You and I look at this painting and see America.

Pelosi and Obama see a threat.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Arts, culture, health care, Obama, Pelosi, Politics, Rockwell, The Left

...over Cheney's secret energy task force meetings?

That was then, this is now.

Splash, out

Jason

UPDATE: To add to the irony, Biden once referred to Cheney as "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history?"

Labels: Biden, energy, Politics, The Left

She's not.

Labels: environment, stupid, The Left