And now for a Tea 'Bagger's Perspective: The President's Speech on Healthcare Today

[Emit]

I listened and this is what I heard. Lowing premiums paid to insurance companies, taking away millions of members that pay into a free enterprise system of insurance and opening up these healthcare pools will take more money away from insurance companies and prevent them to operate. Making employers cover all employees will force them to buy a cheaper policy not from insurance companies but from the government pools. This will force insurance companies to close their doors leaving only the government pools . In short, this Bill will take down our free enterprise system and force all Americans under Government control of our choices for healthcare. If Obama could not get it by a Government Run Healthcare System, then he has gone in by the back door with this present Healthcare Bill. One way or another Obama is hell bent on gaining CONTROL. It does not get much clearer than that.

from http://www.teapartynation.com, membership required, lol.

Oh, if it were only that simple! :D

[JBoy]

1. Whoever wrote that is a fucking idiot.

[Emit]

9. Yes, they are none too bright.

There's one guy that posts prolixity: Defying Reason: Discourse and American Decline

http://www.pointvcounterpoint.com/2010/03/defying-reason-decline-of-american.html

And most of the responses he gets are laughable, like "This article is a tough one to get a handle on, RJ!" and "Rj. Thanks. I understood a lot of that, but now I need to rest a bit."
But they think he's brilliant, even though they can't understand a word of it!

[FrenchieCat]

2. What are they saying about Banks?

Just curious.

[Emit]

6. They mostly claim Obama has 'nationalized' the auto industry and banks

and then is segues into something akin to the OP, with some silly conspiracy about Obama wanting to 'nationalize' health care and everything else. They have no clue.

Can't find any specifics on that at the moment.

Today, the soup d'jour is armed resistance, pondering whether words are enough or something to that effect. Here is one of the responses:

Well, someone is awake to the realities of a Revolution. In a sane and orderly society, then an orderly voting process is the proper channel to regulate the government. However, we are not in that sane and orderly society any longer.

~snip~

There comes a time when voting is not enough. This whole government needs to be RESET back to Constitutional standards, If armed resistance is one of the more powerful ways to make this happen, then the time has come.

The post with the most responses to date ends with:

AND ….. we outnumber them. Our weapons are Truth and Honest Action. We are the Traditional Americans that free men and those who want to be free admire and appeal to when they are threatened with tyrants. We will defeat our own would be tyrants beginning now. STAND TOGETHER !!

These words are repeated ad nauseum: "Demanding our rights which are our freedoms from tyrannical government" "we are the true CITIZENS of America.

They drone on about the "Founding Principles of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence," and their "God given rights."

[MindandSoul]

3. IF they don't watch out, the teabaggers will be known for their LOW INTELLECT and big mouth!

[OffWithTheirHeads]

4. Fuck the teabags They're all gonna get free med care after we

round em all up and put them in the Obama re-education camps anyway. Hmmmm, I think maybe you first have to be educated before you can be re-educated. That could be a problem.

[jmowreader]

5. Let me try to translate this into English

1. If public health pools are established with lower rates than private insurers offer, millions of people will leave private health plans for these government pools. The net result will be to cause the private health insurers to close their doors.

2. If employers are forced to cover all their employees, they will purchase this mandatory insurance from the government pools rather than the private insurers.

3. If private citizens who purchase their own healthcare coverage and private employers who are mandated to cover their workers all transition from private insurers to government pools, the private insurers will fail leaving only the government pools.

4. The net result will be to eliminate the Free Enterprise system.

Obviously, then, if the private insurers wish to remain in business, they will be required to do something the government pools either can't or won't do. They'll have to offer lower rates, better coverage, more options or a combination of the three. The right wing continually reminds us the government can never do anything right--well, except for the troops, the police and the fire service, but they're not "really" the government, are they? If the government isn't able or willing to provide the kind of healthcare coverage people want at a price they like, they won't buy it no matter how cheap it is. (The Liver and Kimchi platter at K&W Cafeteria is really cheap. Ever seen anyone eating it?)

But this is the thing: Those government pools the teabaggers hate? Let us discuss the word "tranche." A tranche is a shared risk pool, and it's normally associated with the derivatives industry, specifically asset-backed securities. A company will buy a lot of debt in one category--consumer signature loans, perhaps--put it into a pool and sell bonds against it. As the debtors repay their loans, the people who own those bonds receive interest payments. This is essentially what they'll do with healthcare: tranche a couple thousand people and sell securities that make regular payouts consisting of the difference between the policyholders' premiums and their healthcare costs. Most of the customers for these bonds will be...well, private insurance companies.

The teabagger described their ideal business scenario--an uncompetitive company collapsing. He stands in fear of a program that will largely benefit the private insurance companies. And he sees this in negative terms. The only REAL problem the healthcare reform bill has, is it's so large none of the teabaggers will ever try reading it. It would be very nice if someone would print up a summary booklet the size of a Chick tract that liberals could pass out to roaming teabaggers.

[Emit]

10. In other words, the simplest translation?

Teh stupid.

[jmowreader]

11. That's the simplest translation for anything that comes out of their mouths

There's a video floating around out there where someone--I'm not sure if it's a jourmalist, a left-wing blogger or what--goes to a tea rally and asks the participants therein what specific parts of the bill they don't like. Usually the response was "the whole thing" or "it's socialized healthcare." But sometimes they'd talk about the euthanasia provisions of the bill. They certainly don't like the euthanasia provisions, they want the bill killed over the euthanasia provisions, they think anyone who would write a bill that has euthanasia provisions in it should be removed from office. And on this I truly agree with them--anyone who writes a bill with euthanasia provisions in it really should be removed from office. The problem with the euthanasia provisions in this bill, of course, is there are no euthanasia provisions in this bill, nor were there ever euthanasia provisions in this bill. I swear, I think one of the wingers went on here a few months back, found my post about the bill providing funds to erect a Soylent Green plant, and decided the government really was going to start turning senior citizens into Soylent Green. Note to the far, far right: that is what we call Satire. The government is NOT planning, now or in the future, to turn your grandma into crispy, delicious wafers.

Just pronouncing everything the Republicans do "teh stupid," although the purity of Ivory Soap is lower than the percentage of teh stupid the wingers exhibit on a daily basis, is lazy and boring and we shouldn't do it anymore.

[Hestia]

7. May I say boo-frickin-hoo for the money sucking insurance corporations

:nopity: :cry:

[Emit]

8. Why, yes...yes you may.

lol!