We have been discussing how mean=spirited and nasty the presidential campaign has already become on both sides. With Republicans called Obama a socialist and a Muslim, Democrats are saying Romney would not have killed Bin Laden . . . and now that he is vampiric.
The new ad, “Steel” describes GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital. One former mill worker says “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer, a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.” “Mitt the Job Destroyer” is still better than “Vlad the Impaler” but they seem to be saying that he is both.
The question is how strong the anti-vampire vote is. After all, Obama is no Buffy The Vampire Slayer himself, but then again who is?
Before the Republicans denounce the ad, they should consider that there could be some positive aspects to an undead president for the GOP:
1. They work nights.
2. They truly can take the bite out of crime.
3. They are always taking the pulse of voters.
5. One meeting of the Group of Eight would leave a group of one.
6. The GOP would finally secure the Goth vote.
7. We would finally have a president who is all bite and no bark.
8. Republicans can re-use those “Drill, Baby, Drill” signs.
9. No one is more anti-evolution than a vampire.
10. Perfect for the slogan, “Better Undead than Red.”
Source: Washington Post
What I have to say about anything Howie Carr writes: Consider the source. I take what he says or writes in that right-wing rag The Boston Herald with a grain of salt. The conservatives in my state and the big money people on Wall Street do not want to see Warren elected to the Senate. The banksters would hate for Warren to replace one of their favorite senators–the senator who helped water down the Volcker Rule in the Financial Reform Bill.
Tony C:
Some Harvard professors even plagiarize cook books, come on. Doesnt she have enough of an imagination to just make a recipe up instead of going and stealing one? Character is a consistent application of principles. If she plagiarized recipes for cook book then why wouldnt she plagiarize anything.
“The credibility of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took another hit today as Boston radio talk show host Howie Carr released evidence that appears to confirm Ms. Warren may have plagiarized at least three of the five recipes she submitted to the 1984 Pow Wow Chow cookbook edited by her cousin Candy Rowsey.”
By the way, the concerns I had were legitimate and I said that the respondents might have stretched the truth in relaying information. I still would like to see the pre-bankruptcy debt these people carried, it is a legitimate question.
If you had $25,000 of debt prior to a medical problem and the medical bills, per the study were on average around $20,000 you cannot say the sole cause of the bankruptcy was medical bills.
If you dont see that, then you really arent very bright.
To paraphrase, slightly, Frederic Bastiat:
“The more one examines these “forward looking” socialists and their school of thought, the more one is convinced that at bottom they rest on nothing but ignorance proclaiming itself infallible and demanding despotic power in the name of this infallibility.”
That is you, Tony C in a nutshell. You should read Bastiat, but then a totalitarian like you wouldnt like him, he believes in human freedom not human slavery like you and Elizabeth Warren [the cook book plagiarizer].
I dont need to lie Tony C, I am very careful about what I post and if I find I am wrong, I will say so. I have had to more than once.
So I ask you again, what is the amount of pre-bankruptcy debt? It is a legitimate question to know the answer to before turning over 1/6th of the economy to totalitarians like you to disperse as they see fit.
You know what I say? I say quit taxing the shit out of people so they can afford to put money aside for a rainy day. It is their money, they earned it. The answer to medical bankruptcies is more freedom not less.
By the way, if I dont agree with your left wing sources that doesnt make me a liar, it just makes me skeptical. You should read Mike Spindell’s excellent article. You think you are infallible, you arent, you arent even close.
You need to give up speaking Marxish and Prudhommese, they are really ugly languages which lend themselves well to totalitarianism of which you are an inveterate adherent.
Read more: http://times247.com/pset/44warren-the-legend-of-fauxcahontas-little-big-lie2/page/1#ixzz1vWivlpSN
@Gene, OS: Thanks.
@Elaine: Thanks for the link; it was an interesting follow up and well worth reading.
Tony, somebody needs to hire you to be their speechwriter. Righteous rant, dude!
Damn.
That was so harsh I nearly snorted my coffee.
@Bron: I am waiting for Tony C and/or Elaine to reply to my concerns.
Then you will have a long wait, because your “concerns” are bullshit, stats are stats and are impossible to spin. Yes, reality has a liberal bias, because the reality is that liberals are more right than wrong.
I do not believe you are interested in the truth, I believe your “concerns” are invented fiction. As we have seen before in your harangues, when we present facts that knock down one of your arguments, you will just invent another and try to make us knock down that one. It is an endless and pointless game because your mind is made up, and you will lie about anything. Just as you lied about bankruptcies not being caused by medical bills.
So do not expect me to play. I pointed you at Harvard because it is the most respected University in the ENTIRE WORLD. If what you say is true, the Harvard study stats would have to be fabricated out of whole cloth, they would have to be LARGE willful lies by Harvard professors. If you truly believe Harvard professors would risk their jobs and reputation by fabricating statistics that can be easily refuted for some temporary and minor political advantage, then you are a hopeless paranoid beyond reason.
Even the Insurance lobbyist spokesperson did not dispute the stats, but attempted to blame it entirely on lost income, which is a minor factor involved in less about a third of these bankruptcies; because in a family some of these health care bills are related to a non-working spouse or non-working children, whose injury or disease does not actually affect the family income, or the middle-class worker with a disease is entitled to sick leave, vacation pay, or can still work with the illness and outpatient care.
Do not expect me to “address” your concerns, they are always just a front so you can spread more lies, because you are an evil person that refuses to acknowledge any logic that speaks against your selfish dogma that would legalize you doing anything to anybody without conscience or fear of punishment, if only you could trick enough people into buying it.
The study proves you lied. I am posting here to warn people you are a liar and you debate in bad faith. You will ask for proof, when incontrovertible proof is presented, you will dismiss it out of hand or claim it is irrelevant to your argument anyway.
All of your arguments will be that way, because you aren’t interested in the truth of anything, you are only interested in promoting your Aynish lies no matter what the real cost would be to real people, because you cannot let go of the fantasy of living responsibility-free on the oppression of others.
Medical Bankruptcy in the United States
Elizabeth Warren
Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/petrie-flom/workshop/pdf/warren.pdf
Excerpt:
My co-authors’ and my original report (based on 2001 data) that half of all bankruptcies in the US occurred in the aftermath of a serious medical problem was a startling finding that quickly made its way from academic paper to conventional wisdom. But in a highly politicized area such as the health care debates, it should have been no surprise that the report would trigger vigorous disputes over the data. My co-authors and I repeated the
original study for families filing bankruptcy in 2007. We modified the approach, both to respond to the critics and better to understand the respondents’ circumstances. The result was the attached paper, which has also stimulated vigorous attacks. I plan to discuss the findings reported in the attached paper, but by adding more background data and by disaggregating the data regarding medical issues, I hope to put the data in this paper in more context and to explore the question of what should be categorized as a “medical bankruptcy.” Because the new paper is in its early stages, and because it is derivative of the 2001 and 2007 papers, I think that reading the attached paper provides the best launching ground for the discussion, “What is a Medical Bankruptcy?”
Malisha:
apparently it isnt because there is credit card debt which they could not track, at least according to the article. Also they said people took 2nd mortgages which would not offer an accounting of where the money went.
So the study could only rely on the respondents and take their word for the amount of money going to medical expenses.
If someone has $25,000 in consumer debt and $15,000 in medical expenses, it is disingenuous to say medical bills were the cause of the bankruptcy.
I think this study has flaws, medical expenses can be a real burden as I have 2 chronic diseases in my family one of which is quite expensive so I know the hardship people can have when dealing with medical bills.
No that isnt a fact, there have been more than a couple of articles on Global Warming which were bunk and made it through “peer review”.
You wrote an article on propaganda and should know how that works.
All kinds of academic studies, articles and books are published which are later proved to be hokum and they were peer reviewed.
Please. Do you say things like that on purpose? Or do you really believe it?
I thought that when you went bankrupt you had to list the debts and say what they were for, so it should be fairly easy to figure out how much debt is medical and how much is “other.”
“This study is subjective.”
Opinion.
Health Affairs is a peer reviewed journal. Elaine and Tony have a far better case for the study not being biased than you do for it being biased considering that it has passed peer review – a process that would have certainly revealed something as blatantly wrong as a sample error.
That’s a fact.
Since I dont have access to the raw data, all I can do is have an opinion.
The study hasnt proven anything except that some of the people who went bankrupt had medical problems. Another point of contention is that how do they know the people answered truthfully?
If I had $50,000 in debt and then had $20,000 in medical bills, I would tell someone the medical debt did it to me especially if I thought they were simpathetic to my situation.
This study is subjective.
Elaine and Tony C can prove it isnt.
Your concerns do not constitute proof of your position, Bron.
As your last paragraph? First, partisan gibberish wasted on probably the least partisan person here (me). Second, you betray again your ignorance of how statistical analysis of poll data works. If you think they skewed their sample space? Prove it. Saying it is skewed and showing it is skewed are not the same thing. One is opinion, the other is fact. Get some facts. Otherwise, you are still talking loud and saying nothing.
I actually read the study, there are a good many unanswered questions. The telephone interviews are highly subjective and there is no list of questions asked.
I am waiting for Tony C and/or Elaine to reply to my concerns.
By the way those figures are in the study, go read it for yourself and I suggest Tony C and Elaine read it too so they can see what it says instead of just pointing to an article talking about the study. Isnt that called hearsee?
It is a partisan study with the sole purpose of making a case for national health care.
I am going to do a study of 2 million who didnt claim bankruptcy even though they had serious medical problems and show that health care had nothing to with not claiming bankruptcy and then “prove” that we dont need national health care because 2 million people didnt have to declare bankruptcy even though they had a serious illness in their life which caused them to miss work and have large medical bills.
You can try to point a finger at me instead of addressing the flaws in your previous statements.
I’ll simply point to you trying to change the subject and redirect blame to someone other than yourself for the errors in your thinking.
First, your understanding of bankruptcy and how that would relate to national single payer health care insurance is facile and little more than another round of you spouting your anti-tax Libertarian dogma. What part of “if everyone had insurance coverage, it would be practically impossible to be forced into bankruptcy by medical bills” escapes your tenuous grasp on logic? Aside from all of it? But it is far better to drive people into bankruptcy to protect private profits, isn’t it? You don’t give a damn about other people, Bron, except how they can be exploited for profit.
In re your Baltics example? Apples and oranges. The Baltic states went in to the global crisis in a considerably different state of domestic economic affairs than America and the rest of Europe. Please feel free to ignore the continued stability and growth through the crisis presented by the socialist Scandinavian countries who maintain their long standing policies (because, duh, they work). Also, citing that tool Harry Phibbs at that neocon rag the Daily Mail as a source is about as good as quoting someone from PNAC or Growth Club for America. That you bitch about the LA Times and quote him is really, really funny. The LA Times is a bastion of journalistic integrity compared to that fish wrapping.
You can either provide proof Tony and Elaine are wrong or you can (unsuccessfully) try to make this about me some more or further try to change the subject. Like I said, I’m not interested in dancing with you today, Bron.
You and your Objectivist religious zeal for profits have become tedious. You clearly aren’t part of the solution to anything that ails society unless private profits can be maximized in the process. That would make you part of the problem since the world is currently burning on a pyre fueled by unfettered greed.
So please, spin some more instead of addressing that you have nothing to prove either Tony or Elaine wrong other than hot air and attempts at misdirection.
That is the salient point.
Gene H:
I see you used that Hobgoblin quote up above. Well if something works [and you are a pragmatist, a utilitarian one at that], then you would be remiss to not consistently apply it. So how is this, Puerto Rico, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all cut taxes and reduced spending and are now enjoying economic growth. The “good” socialist countries of the European Union and America are pretty much floundering.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2145733/For-real-growth-strategy-look-Baltics.html#ixzz1vMvDL6WR”>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2145733/For-real-growth-strategy-look-Baltics.html#ixzz1vMvDL6WR
You should read that excellent article by Mike, you might actually learn something.
Before you can help people, you actually have to have money to help them with. If you werent so wrapped up in your socialist crap you would see that you can have capitalism and a social safety net but only if you let people enjoy economic and political freedom. Both of which you care nothing about despite your protestations to the contrary.
You are’nt really a pragmatist.
Gene H:
Those studies could be looked at either way. The average debt was around 44,000 dollars and from what I can tell the portion of medical debt was less than half.
Which goes back to my tax holiday for people with medical bankruptcies. It would work out just about like I said.
So I am not sure why you would want to implement national health care because around 1 million households file bankruptcy every year. It sounds like the medical expenses tipped them over the edge. They already had large amounts of consumer debt and little or no savings [due to a multifaceted tax burden at local, state and national levels]. So you could just as easily say that burdensome taxes tipped them over the edge.
The solution is to give people back more of their money not give them national health care.
Gene H:
“You go right on ahead and ignore the indirect taxation that disproportionately impacts the poor and middle class and focus on income tax all you like.”
That is why I am against taxes because they hurt everyone. The Social Insecurity Tax is a bad tax on the poor, I suggest we do away with it and let people save for their retirment, as it is a good number of people think SS is going to be enough to retire on. Which was never its intent. That tax has caused people to change their behaviour to their own detriment.
I have great regard for people, unlike you. I know most Americans would open up their check books if they werent paying taxes or werent paying as much in taxes. Charity giving in the 19th century was the 8th largets “industry” in terms of revenues.
Why bother, Bron? Nice try at shifting the burden of proof again too. Do your own legwork. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. You suck as a logician. “Just because people go bankrupt and have medical bills doesnt mean the medical bills caused the bankruptcies.” Really. Speaking about sucking at logic, unpaid and unpayable bills are the cause of bankruptcies. If those bills consist of medical bills, then they are part or wholly the cause of that individual bankruptcy. Correlation isn’t always causation, but sometimes it is. In this instance, there is a causal connection.
If you want to disprove Tony and Elaine? Get to work providing your evidence and arguments that they are wrong.
they showed me 2 short articles, that isnt any sort of proof in my book.
The study was never linked to and the LA Times article says the person had other debts as well. So the real factor could be the other debt.
Non-sequitur indeed.
The LA Times article and the Warren study have fallacies of their own.
Just because people go bankrupt and have medical bills doesnt mean the medical bills caused the bankruptcies.
You are so good with logical fallacies why dont you tell me which one.