I don't think I've ever witnessed

[Control-Z]

this kind of obvious desperation by republicans. At least I've never seen the media expose them as they have this afternoon. Imagine that? This is about health care. Health care for fellow Americans. And republicans are shitting their pants in public over that possibility.

They will (and are) saying anything at this point. Anything! This bill may turn out to be better than we've been led to believe.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. I've seen this sort of thing at least twice over the last two years.

And I'd like to thank them for all the schadenfreude.

[Control-Z]

5. I don't actually watch the news

that often. But a fool could recognized the desperation coming from these slime bags. Their responses are usually calculated to, at least, sound reasonable. Now, they're just flinging whatever shit happens to pop into their alleged brains.

[tavalon]

2. The fact that Republicans are against it doesn't guarantee that its a good bill

It isn't, as a matter of fact. Even a broken Republican clock is right twice a day.

[kestrel91316]

3. It's a fair-to-middlin' bill that probably will help ME at some point, along with

millions of others. Your support of the status quo and circumstances that would eventually kill me has been duly noted.

But by all means carry on with the RW talking points.

[noise]

11. Nice frame

Why don't you blame the politicians who sold out the public? That is why many people on the left are opposed to the bill. Not because they agree with the right but because they think the HCR bill is too right wing.

"If it's so right wing then why is the GOP so opposed?"

1)The GOP would vote for child labor. Just put one helpful measure in a bill and they will oppose it.

2)The GOP believes in manipulating the public. Case in point the teabagger movement.

*Edited to fix context*

[icee]

13. It is a horrible bill. One of the worst ever written. But you have to

allow people to really experience how horrible before they'll stop with the "goshes, it's better than nothing". Just within 6 months you will have those same people who said "goshes, it's better than nothing" screaming that they never supported the bill in the first place. But, what difference does it make right now? None. It will be voted on Sunday and maybe pass in a couple of weeks once they get a one or two major stumbling blocks fixed. Mandates are the big stumbling block. The Senate Bill allowed for employer taxation of Cadillac plans above a certain amount. The unions bitched about this. The Dems can't reverse the mandates in reconciliation because they change SS taxes. That means they have to be voted on in at 60% in the Senate. The Senate are not going to vote for reversal. So the mandates will stick, unless something else can be done. Also, there is the employer mandate to provide health insurance. Caterpillar already said it will cost them $100 million in the first year alone. And there are thousands of Caterpillars. So what will Caterpillar do? They can't not offer insurance and pay the paltry fines; it would be ethics nightmare. So they will simply reduce their workforce or the pay for certain jobs to maintain their margins. If you go through the bill, it does some things good, but many other very badly. It helps the poor mainly and cuts up the middle class. Many people will see their contributions to employer insurance go sky high when that takes affect. Everyone should try and at least skim the bill so they can figure out what arrangements they'll have to make to come up with the extra money health insurance will cost them. And drugs for those on Medicare. You get a 250.00 credit first year for donut hole prescription charges in Medicare Part D, then in 2011 you get a 50% discount on brand name drugs when they hit the donut hole period. But many companies have already raised prices and will raise them more to get that 50% back. Take the drug Flomax for those with Prostate problems. They just raise the price on that 40% if memory serves, so it costs you 40% more but in two years you get a 50% discount. Also, one of the sections of the new bill that Obama talked about the other day gave the government the ability to control insurance company rate increases. Hey that was good. It just got stripped out of the bill at the last moment (so people can't react). So we now are forced by law to buy insurance from private companies and have no say in what they will charge. All this is only the tip of the iceberg. But, hey, let the people verify all this for themselves.

[girl gone mad]

15. No one here supports the status quo.

That's a straw man.

[salguine]

24. I support the status quo over this bill.

[tavalon]

22. I don't support the bill in its current iteration

I don't buy that it's now or never. I think we are capitulating without any net gain just so Obama can score a win. I'm not here for him to score wins off of.

[Control-Z]

4. Hey - these guys

are shitting their pants over health care. HEALTH CARE. There is something very wrong when one is willing to fight against helping even one person. That in itself tells me that the stakes are high. Possibly higher than I ever imagined.

[Electric Monk]

8. Remember Terri Schiavo? The Republican hypocrisy here is astounding.

[noise]

6. This cannot be said enough

There is no real consensus/bipartisanship/centrist compromise with the GOP. It's a fake concept. The GOP doesn't want citizens to have affordable, quality healthcare.

[DevonRex]

7. And Nader being against it doesn't guarantee it's a bad bill either.

He's right LESS than once a day.

[Gman2]

9. If I strip your skin off, your skeleton aint that sexy either. This is just the mannequinn.

[HughMoran]

12. No

You can't say "it isn't" without also stretching the truth to serve your purpose - to boost Republicans.

[havocmom]

14. How nice of you to edit out the part calling someone a lying mf

:eyes:

[salguine]

10. It's NOT about health care for Americans, it's about INSURANCE for Americans. And

insurance means exactly squat as far as health care goes. Three-fourths of medical bankruptcies last year were for people who HAD INSURANCE.

When, when, WHEN are you people going to get it through your heads that insurance is not health care? Insurance not only doesn't guarantee care, odds are better than even that it WON'T be there when you need it? This convincing yourselves that this travesty of a bill is somehow great because Republicans don't like it is simply insane. It's not based on anything remotely logical. Your barometer of whether a bill is good or not is based on whether a bunch of certifiable crackpots and nutjobs dislikes it?

AAAARRRGGGHH!!!

[Control-Z]

17. There is so much more

to health care/health insurance than catastrophic events. Medications, well children visits, immunizations, brief hospitalizations, out patient surgeries, preexisting conditions, ambulance services... the list goes on for the majority of people.

You are lucky if you haven't had to live every day of your life with these concerns. To be desperately ill without the means to visit your GP is unconscionable.

[icee]

18. At this point, I now believe no matter what they say, the Republicans

actually may want the bill to pass. They can blame the Democrats entirely for this monsters passage, as well as the sneaky way it will be passed under the Slaughter Rule. Then come August when everyone has had a taste of the new bill, the Republicans will start on their talking pointes and there will be a Democratic bloodbath. Did you read the poll in this place on Obama job approval? He won by one or two percentage points. That's amazing, considering liberals were his base.

[pampango]

27. No matter what the republicans say or do or how much money the HIC's spend to defeat this,

you think they actually want the bill to pass.

If they are this good at the "opposite game" - talk, vote and spend their money in one direction when they really want the opposite to happen, what are they going to do to fake us on on financial reform, climate change legislation and other things? Might they speak out in favor of financial reform or a carbon tax, vote for it and spend their money on ads supporting it, just to fake us into thinking "if republicans support it, it must be bad" so that Democrats kill the reform. Republicans are not that smart.

That poll you're referring to is a DU poll not one of liberals in the US. Check any public poll of liberals at large and you'll see overwhelming support for Obama and particularly for this HCR. (I know - DUers are much smarter than other liberals out there. ;) )

[icee]

30. The name of the game is power. The Republicans will do whatever

they have to do to regain power. And they will work in complete uniformity to do this. You apparently think the HCR package on the table is swell. I do not. The DUers I have seen here ARE much smarter than other liberals I talk to every day. They do not know details. Ask a DUer on the street what they think of the possibility of HCR being stalled by the Mandates not being eligible for reconciliation adjustment due to their effect on social security taxes. Compare the answer you get to someone's here, like a Grant Cart or Oogly Moogly and watch the difference. Having said that, yes there may be a difference in Obama support between the two samples. As opposed to a 50% support for Obama here on DU, I would guess a 75% support outside of DU. But not because of smartness. Because of a resolve, like people who continue to believe our government is not crooked no matter what they do. Anyway, I believe if the Presidential election were held next week, I believe Obama would be defeated. By whom, I don't know, because I don't study the other team's candidates. However, if things keep up as they are going with Obama moving from centrist to right, I believe should Petraeus run in 2012 he may well win. I won't be alive then, so you'll be the only one between us that will know. Well, nice talking to you. I don't trust the Republicans, and I think Rove may still be giving them strategy pointers.

[onethatcares]

19. as I bang my head upon my desk

I've been saying the same thing for months. It's an insurance company bailout bill that will fill the pockets of those that vote for it.

I would prefer Medicare for all, paid for by everyone that wanted to use it, and if you wanted a supplemental insurance policy, you could pay for it out of pocket without disrupting the cosmic.

But that's just me.

[girl gone mad]

16. Republicans put on a big show about being against TARP, too..

though clearly they would have voted for it, had their votes been necessary. That doesn't mean TARP was good, because it was a piece of garbage bill that opened the door to some very sleazy activity and broad scale theft, and destroyed perhaps the single greatest opportunity we've had to correct our economic course.

This is sheer political spectacle, at it's "finest".

[icee]

20. Had the Democrats not passed TARP there would have been

several bank failures and we would have had a depression, which would still be going on. However, at the end of it, Single Payor Health Insurance would have passed easily because of the reduced costs.

[girl gone mad]

23. Complete and utter nonsense which has been thoroughly debunked numerous times.

All the Fed had to do to end the manufactured crisis was support the CP market (a no-brainer) and end the mark to market rules. TARP funds weren't even used for their stated purposes. Not only that, most weren't distributed for weeks and it was haphazard, even then. If these banks were really on the verge of failing and we were facing imminent depression without the immediate passage of TARP, then the dire predictions should have come true, all things considered. Use a little common sense. It was bullshit.

Please, stop repeating lies. By now, there have been hundreds of thousands of pages written on the subject. I'd suggest you read some of them. Andrew Ross Sorkin's http://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Washington-System/dp/0670021253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269049946&sr=1-1">Too Big to Fail, Yves Smith's http://www.amazon.com/ECONned-Unenlightened-Undermined-Democracy-Capitalism/dp/0230620515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269049908&sr=1-1">ECONned, Barry Rithotz's http://www.amazon.com/Bailout-Nation-Corrupted-Street-Economy/dp/0470520388/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269049873&sr=1-1">Bailout Nation are all excellent places to start to get the FACTS behind the economic collapse and the failed response.

[icee]

28. Oh, right, simply end mark-to- market rules and that would have made

everything fine. Laughable. TARP funds should never have been used at all. The banks should have been allowed to fail. Called supply and demand: perhaps you should have perused the concept more closely in your waltz through high school economics 1A. The banks were on the verge of failing based on government debt to asset ratios they have to abide by. The banks financed houses for people who never should have gotten loans at all. Wells Fargo, among others, was giving loans to illegal aliens. Then these loans were sold to mortgage companies who packaged them and sold them all around the world, which is why other banks not in the US began to fail. Some of our banks, like Goldman didn't sell all their mortgages packs--too messy. They went to AIG and had AIG devise and then sell them insurance for these wraps (CDO's). Then when the components started to fail Goldman went to collect on the policies and AIG couldn't pay them. Consequently AIG started to fail. Well AIG couldn't be allowed to fail. Not only were they too big to fail (allegedly), bonehead Sentator Stupid One through One Hundred have their life insurance policies through AIG. Then we move to Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers not only sold a bunch of worthless mortgages worldwide, but many of the mortgages were fictitious--totally made up. So when they got to their final collector, there was no one to collect from. Nothing was total bullshit, except your vapid interpretation of the events. Furthermore, when you make statements that something has been debunked, state your source of said debunkment. "All the Fed had to do to end the manufactured crisis was to support the CP market and end the mark-to-market rules." ROFLMAO. Classic. The authors of the books you mentioned are as questionable as are Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke. One thing they have in common though is a need to con people out of their money, like most of today's financial authors. But, then, they could have written better books. All they had to do was end their punctuation rules. Don't believe me. Just check out Strunk and White.

[FiveGoodMen]

21. Interesting, then, that "Americans for Stable Quality Care" is pushing for passage

It's a group mostly funded by big Pharma.

They're on our side, right?

[eridani]

25. No, thay aren't shitting their pants about health care

They don't give a flying fuck what's in the bill (just like most supporters of it). They just hate it because Obama wants it, which is exactly the same reason that so many supporters are for it.

[SpiralHawk]

26. Republicons are shitting their diapers because

they know most Americans want health care reform, and the Republicon campaign for the continuance of corporate megaprofits has attained FAIL.

[rucky]

29. What are you referring to?

I see outrageous shit from them every single day.