And the same question never goes away: Do Republicans in elected office actually believe this crap - or are they cold-blooded liars who are saying what their voters want to hear?

Well...Oklahoma. More idiots in Oklahoma than almost anywhere else.

John Sullivan made more sense before his recent stay at the Betty Ford Clinic. I guess the booze had been taking the edge off his wingnutty paranoia.

He makes a good companion for Oklahoma's two Senators - Inhofe and Coburn.

Maybe there's something in our water?

With such ignorance uttered by a sitting Congressional representative, John Sullivan sounds like he was trying to incite a riot of his attending constituents. With his intellect up his ass, John Sullivan would not be welcome in my neighborhood. I am so glad his kind haven't moved into my neighborhood yet - the property valued would drop precipitously! -Kevo

Maybe Orly Taitz is his girlfriend.

Or his dentist.

Mock Sullivan and the Okies as much as you desire.

68% of American voters rate their health insurance coverage as good or excellent. Jump that hurdle with insults, all you Maher fans!

Try making the argument on the issues without emotional whine/rants regarding, say for example, evil -- eeeevill Pharma. Oops, the President just greenlighted their 80 Billion pledge for "protection" and they'll wet his beak with 150Million in advertising buys.

You're reduced to calling alot of Americans stupid, birthers, or political terrorists because you can't make the argument for your gold plated, free for you/but not me, Great Society fever dream.

You're beginning to be amusing.

Sooner or later, one of the people that Sullivan (or Inhofe or Boehner or Beck or Rush etc.) is revving up with this stuff will be incited to violence. At which point they'll blame the whole thing on liberals. (See Douthat's Theorem re: abortion--if you didn't demand women's reproductive rights, right-winger wouldn't have to kill you. So it's YOUR fault that we're violent!)

How many more Poplawski's are they creating every day with this talk? And is that REALLY what their vision of America amounts to?

I have been hearing this kind of crazy talk all over the place lately -- mostly I have been hearing it from over 50 white people--the exact demographic Rush Limbaugh and Fox News target. I am beginning to be really concerned that crazy talk radio and fake cable "news" is damaging the fabric of the nation.

I have seen no evidence supporting the outlandish comments coming from folks like Sullivan or Palin, but it seems they feel free to lie and lie again. Nobody holds them to account. Oh, for a working press.

tao9 said:
68% of American voters rate their health insurance coverage as good or excellent. Jump that hurdle with insults, all you Maher fans!

What percentage of those who are satisfied have actually had to use their health coverage for anything other than routine (and relatively inexpensive) care? In my 20s and early 30s I went for ten years without needing to see a doctor. If asked, I would have said I was satisfied, too.

And yes, anyone who believes that Obama is not really a citizen is stupid. Anyone who believes that any version of the proposed health coverage reform will include a "death panel" is stupid. Anyone who thinks this is an attempt to "nationalize" health care is stupid.

But you're right, the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry are not evil. They are, however, amoral. The businesses are corporations, which are artificial entities created to make it possible for businesses with thousands of owners to function. But as artificial entities they have no souls, therefor no conscience, therefor they are amoral.

Milton Friedman said that the purpose of corporation is to increase its profits. But the obvious corollary is that if you expect a corporation to do anything else, then you have to require them to do so. You have to require them to produce a product that doesn't kill people. You have to require them to produce the product in a way that doesn't main its workers or poison the surrounding environment. And in the case of the health insurance industry, you have to require them to actually pay legitimate claims when they can make more money denying them.

So far, thanks to bribes (campaign contributions) made to both sides of the aisle, the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry have be able to avoid many regulations that would require them to act morally. Hopefully the reform legislation that passes will fix that.

Hopefully.

It's really simple-- this isn't about birthers or rush/beck/hannity/foxnews. The protesters are REPUBLICANS, you know, those who voted against change, voted for the status quo. They voted for McCain/Palin and are still angry and bitter that their side lost. Additioanlly, all of the people protesting have health insurance, they pretend that they'll never be one of those people who are in danger of losing everything because of a medical catastrophe.

The anti-reform side seems to prefer that their health care be controlled by billion-dollar companies who only care about their profit margins. They clearly haven't thought much about the system as it currently stands, how it makes so little sense to have an insurance company standing in between you and your doctor, deciding what you can and cannot have done based on cost and not need. There is a reason that nurses are squarely on the side of reform-- because they see every day what a total mess our system is.

There is plenty of fear to go around in this debate-- there are those who fear change and those who fear that if things don't change that we're one car accident or layoff away from losing everything. It's a typical have's v. have-not's.

@ tao9: 68% of American voters rate their health insurance coverage as good or excellent. Jump that hurdle with insults, all you Maher fans!

68%? Ok, that would be the 80% who have insurance minus 15% of that number, who presumably are the ones who got sick and the insurers dumped. Here's an interesting factoid: when the insurers appeared before Congress, they claimed that only .5% of their customers are affected by "recission", the legal term of art for insurance company fraud, refusing to pay for treatment when someone who has been paying premiums actually seeks it. Sounds like not such a huge problem, eh? I'm sure to a math moron it seems like it's not a big deal that "only" one-half of one percent of people are being defrauded and bankrupted by their health insurer. That would probably be because you haven't taken into account that A) that .5% is the ANNUAL rate of recission - which means over a 10 year period, the insurer will have screwed a full 5% of its customers, and B) fully 80% of the insured do not seek care in any given year. So it's only the 20% who actually file claims that the insurer focuses in on when seeking to "cut costs" via defrauding certain customers - the ones who, you know, actually need the medical services they have been paying premiums to get. Suddenly, that puny little .5% looms larger - it's 2.5% of those each year who seek medical care, and over ten years, it means that fully 25% of those who seek care are going to be shafted by the insurer. And the more expensive the care, i.e., the more care they need or the more serious the medical challenge - the more likely they are to be screwed. When those factors are taken into account, we come up with numbers more like a third or half of people with big medical bills are the ones being thrown under the bus.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't medical catastrophe the reason most of us bother to carry medical coverage in the first place? Good to know that if you REALLY need it, you only stand a 25 - 50% chance of going bankrupt. If you're generally healthy, no worries - they only dump you if you get sick.

As I said on a previous thread, we don't need to sub-categorize stupid people by their motivations for opposing that which helps them - we just need to keep in mind that they're stupid. Like tao9, who believes that a system of legalized fraud is a perfectly good way to handle delivery of a service that is a basic human need we will all need to fulfill at one point or another - all because he sucks at basic mathematics.

"And the same question never goes away: Do Republicans in elected office actually believe this crap - or are they cold-blooded liars who are saying what their voters want to hear?"

They're cold-blooded liars. They've stepped in a tar pit. The Republican Party is separating itself further and further from the mainstream and cleaving closer and closer to a small, irrational and dangerous fringe element of society. They're on record, they've been filmed and there's not much they can do to distance themselves from these kooks. They're sinking deeper and deeper.

Are black people at their sites getting riled up by this? See Pitts' great editorial today.

tao9, we've had plenty of arguments on the issues here, but crap that that drunken Republican Congressman puts out is basically nothing but insults anyway, so why not reply in kind.

You may be referring to this survey: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/issues2/articles/americans_give_low_marks_to_u_s_health_care_but_69_rate_their_health_insurance_good_or_excellent
Hmmm, notice the full title and read this:

More than two out of three Americans (68%) rate health care in this country as fair or poor, but a near identical number (69%) give good or excellent marks to their health insurance coverage and are very reluctant to change it.

A new Rasmussen Reports national survey finds just 29% of Americans think the U.S. health care system is good or excellent.

So why do so many think the US health care "system" is poor? Maybe the can't distinguish that much of the result, the "care" is conditioned by what insurance companies will cover and how they pay for it. Note SteveT's argument, that people only realize their insurance plan is inadequate when something goes wrong. This is a *risk* and not something you see immediately. If many of the other 30% didn't get good outcomes when the crunch came, that's actually pretty bad.

Note how many people are dissatisfied with their health *care* - so by your same implication in reverse, maybe we should nationalize the entire "health care system" and not/just the insurance part? But your sort never accept the logical flip sides of your arguments.

A fair summary , easy to understand . It is easy to Imagine tao9's surprise when he reads this and discovers , "I've been had !"

it is so wonderfully telling when someone like tao9 or other wingers post: tao9's entire argument is premised on the notion that "of course people are totally selfish!" Which tells us a lot about how conservatives think.

i'm one of the alleged 68% satisfied with my own health care. that does not mean i am satisfied with a system that leaves millions of others uninsured, that puts millions of others who are underinsured into crippling debt, and that eats up billions of the GDP while still having an unacceptable number of stupid mistakes and outcomes worse than many other western countries who spend less.

i know this may be news, tao9, given your circles, but there are people out there who, you know, actually care about something beyond the walls of their own panic room.

Let me get this straight-- those who are screaming the loudest against reform have government health insurance!?!? Is there no one in the audience who can stand up and ask their congresscritter this: "Please tell us all how awful your government health insurance was and why you had to opt out of it for a private policy."

Hell, even Sarah Palin is on a government health insurance policy-- or was when Trig was born. Did she have to go before a "death panel" to justify gaving a baby with special needs? I'd hazard a guess that she and her family are on COBRA right now and still have government health insurance via the state of Alaska.

Their lies are so big and absurd that they really are pretty easy to counter, we just need to start doing it a lot better than we are doing at the moment.

Ironic that he's talking about "Enemies lists" on the anniversary of Nixon's resignation.

zoe - I think we need to have a "shaming squad" present at every townhall, taking names of the Medicare recipients who stand up and screech about the evils of "socialist government healthcare". Then, at their turn at the mike, they can say something like, "Mr. Jones, I couldn't help but notice that you're an elderly gentleman of the age that receives Medicare coverage. Medicare is a socialist, government-run program, and I should know, because I pay for it out of every paycheck. Not that I expect someone who shows up for the express purpose of denying adequate care to me to say "thank you" but...you're welcome. I actually don't mind paying for medicare because I have elderly relatives who need it, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't want to live in a country that throws old people out of their homes and takes their retirement savings just because they got old and faced some inevitable health issues. What I can't understand is why you are so opposed to extending the same courtesy to me. I mean, I'm out here going to work every day and cheerfully paying for your health care, and I'm at the mercy of these private insurers. I could easily lose my home and life savings before I ever reach retirement age...and I'd still be paying for your health care even as everything I worked for was lost. Presumably you may have some children and grandchildren who are in the same boat I'm in, and you don't care what happens to them, either? You care so little about them, and me, that you're out here protesting against protections for us that aren't going to cost you a thing? What's wrong with you? How can you call yourself an American when you don't care what happens to your fellow citizens - even your own family - the people who are keeping your home and savings protected? You should be ashamed of yourself." And so on.

Public shamings, delivered respectfully, at every meeting.

black people at their sites

WTF?

Noreen, no need to get so excited. Why not be frank, about things like the opinions of the NAACP etc? A President that they can be proud of, the first African-American, is being smeared and many commenters here and elsewhere say it is veiled racism. There's nothing wrong with me wondering directly how they are reacting, nor would it be if I asked about the impact of criticism of Sotomayor on the Latino opinion spots, etc.

once again, when dealing with the republicker base, you can't be TOO crazy TOO often or TOO soon.

I think I am beginning to understand why the conservatives are so frightened. And that group of frightened people is being politically manipulated by wealthy individuals and corporations who see in them a source of political power.

The conservatives live within a culture that is ordered by a set of values that includes very rigid rules of social stratification. Two of those rules are that Whites are invariably superior to non-Whites (and especially superior to Blacks) and also that Men are invariably superior to Women.

Another such rule or set of values says that the democratic Republic of America is the greatest nation in the world and the greatest nation ever. American Exceptionalism or something like it.

It should be no surprise that those values are widespread in the American South in the dominant White culture, and especially dominant in my experience in Oklahoma.

Those value rankings - by race, gender and by nation - have been taught to them since they first learned to speak. Everything they do and say is framed within those core values, and it's what they expect from everyone around them. If society is not functioning that way those individuals are going to feel that something in society is going very badly wrong. But this is not conscious thought. This is based on core feelings of what is right and wrong.

So what happens if (perfect superior) America chooses to place a Black Man in the highest, most iconic office in the land over his White opponent? And it does so in the democratic process (which is the superior form of government, of course), chooses to dismantle all the rigid rules that institutionalize White male superiority?

Oh, and at the same time people who claim that the government is actually NOT a Christian government but instead is something called "pluralistic" or some other such nonsense are given power in that government, too. What has gone wrong? Remember, the dominant church is spreading and reinforcing those values. Might not the people who make such claims be considered enemies to all that is right in society as those conservatives see things?

If the (perfect) society that you live in starts calling into question all your core values, questioning all those deeply held values that have ordered your adult life, that seems to me to be the perfect definition of a very frightening time of life.

Such a challenge to their deepest most firmly held values is going to unhinge a lot of people.

Then consider how powerful people who want to keep and build their social power might use that confused group of people. All they have to do is offer them leadership and enemies and they become a power source. Such a large group of frightened people who see society going radically, inexplicably wrong are going to be wide open to political manipulation by a small group of powerful cynical wealthy oligarchs who wish to exploit them and use them to build their power in society. The oligarchs offer their leadership as the solution to the confusion caused by the challenges to the core values of these people.

That social structure seems to me to explain the conservative movement over the last three decades. It also explains why we are seeing the insanity of the birthers, etc and the radical right groups adopted by the mainstream conservatives as they find themselves losing power. The mainstream political conservative leaders and the wealthy oligarchs both need the energy and the numbers represented by the populist frightened and confused mass of conservatives. Such people are their source of political power.

Just in case you missed it above, SteveT (10:10 AM) has written the essence of the entire health care battle written into two short paragraphs.

Milton Friedman said that the purpose of corporation is to increase its profits. But the obvious corollary is that if you expect a corporation to do anything else, then you have to require them to do so. You have to require them to produce a product that doesn't kill people. You have to require them to produce the product in a way that doesn't main its workers or poison the surrounding environment. And in the case of the health insurance industry, you have to require them to actually pay legitimate claims when they can make more money denying them.

So far, thanks to bribes (campaign contributions) made to both sides of the aisle, the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry have be able to avoid many regulations that would require them to act morally. Hopefully the reform legislation that passes will fix that.

Corporations act for one reason and only one reason - to make a profit. Any hint of morality is a mask they wear to try to sell more and make more profit. Anytime the mask of morality gets in the way of profit and abandoning the mask is significantly more than presenting it to the public profitable, the corporations will abandon the mask in favor of profit. it helps in they can hide their behavior and no one knows what they are doing. They hate auditors, regulators and government hearings with a deep passion. All of those are required by government, of course.

That's why none of the health care CEO's would commit to stop canceling health care policies (recissions) when someone had an expensive claim. Profit always comes ahead of paying for health care as far as the insurance companies are concerned.

Government is not profit motivated. Civil Service laws exist so that government agencies can be operated by a corps of long term professionals who are not motivated by profit. They can have other motivations, and in a good and well run government agency, they are socialized to work for other goals. This, of course, drives the business profit-oriented people crazy. They simply don't understand what is happening.

Thank God he's not criticizing the President because that's treason!

FWIW, John Sullivan is my elected representative, though I did not vote for him. I read that Hill piece last night and sent him the following letter via the email form on his Congresscritter page:

Representative Sullivan,

Greetings. I am not a Republican and did not vote for you in the last election, nevertheless you are my representative to Congress. You seem like a decent guy in interviews, and we share the burden of being recovering alcoholics - I am twelve years sober.

I am writing to you to ask that you please refrain from feeding the frenzy of overcooked hyperbole and dishonesty surrounding the health care debate. I'll be honest - I dislike the various plans now under consideration in Congress because I feel they do not really address the problems of universal coverage and cost control. By my lights, a single payer national insurance scheme similar to the Canadian system (with necessary adjustments) would be a better way to go, but I realize that isn't something you as a Republican are likely to support, though it has the best chance to control spiraling costs and deliver care.

My difficulty with you is not your opposition to the proposed Democratic plans, it is how you have chosen to voice that opposition. There are many arguments to be made along policy and budgetary lines, but repeating falsehoods about the plans does nothing to educate anyone, and in fact, serves only to raise the temperature in an already over heated debate.

Specifically, I read on The Hill's blog that at a meeting in Tulsa you repeated the lie that President Obama has created some sort of "enemies list" and is collecting information on Americans who oppose health care reform. You and I both know that isn't true - what the White House has asked is that citizens who see or receive misinformation and distortions being spread via the Internet pass along the type and nature of the smear so that correct, truthful information can be released to counter the lies. They are not asking for names or creating lists.

Further, you are in danger of stepping off into the deep end by getting involved in the Birther movement, a movement characterized by tin foil hat wearing lunatics who have crafted the most absurd fantasies to "prove" our sitting President is Kenyan, or Indonesian, or Martian. His place of birth has already been well established and investigated. His certificate of birth has been verified authentic and released on the Internet, prior to the election. The relevant public officials in Hawaii have issued sworn statements concerning their knowledge of his certificate. There is absolutely no doubt in any sane person's mind where and when he was born.

Promoting the insanity of the Birther agenda does nothing for the health care debate, and in fact is quite damaging to our democracy. It promotes the idea that our elected president is inherently illegitimate to wield the power of his office, and that is a dangerous notion in the face of a free and fair election result.

Elections have consequences. Obama is our president, just like you, for whom I did not vote, are my duly elected representative. Please, please turn down the rhetoric, find some sane rational grounds upon which to oppose the President's health reform push, and stop feeding the atmosphere of paranoia with demonstrably false statements about the proposed legislation, and about the president himself.

My father was an Air Force officer who served in the Korean War, and later a Foreign Service officer for the State Department. He was also a staunch Republican, supporter of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. He would find the more outrageous tactics employed by too many Republicans of late to be offensive to good governance, the general order, and to the democratic process. I am asking you as a citizen, a fellow Oklahoman, and a brother in recovery to check your soul and ask if this is the way to conduct yourself as an elected representative to the United States Congress.

Regards,

Me

Are black people at their sites getting riled up by this? See Pitts' great editorial today.

WTF? Because black people don't read (and comment at) Political Animal?

How wonderful to be burdened with having Oklahoma.

on the "americans love their health insurance" subject....WaPo found that the folks that give their insurance high marks are also folks less likely to have had to deal with their insurance companies...

by the way, since i previously left a comment that i want singer payer, am i now on "the enemies list?"

I have a feeling I'm going to be saying this a lot, and I'm already a broken record: this is getting profoundly dangerous and may well result in violence.

I don't see all the need for flak about "black people at their sites." Some people are indulging temptations to pick on someone making innocent but possibly clumsy observations in that area. There are organizations and outlets that cater to various groups, such as NAACP as I already stated. I was wondering about their response. There being members of such groups commenting here doesn't invalidate it, even if you can take advantage of my poor wording.

Well, here's an example, about Glenn Beck:
http://www.naacp.org/news/press/2009-07-30/index.htm

We deplore the statement of Glenn Beck on Fox and Friends that President Obama is a “racist.”

Mr. Beck’s statement was irresponsible and inflammatory at a time when as a nation we are attempting to engage in a constructive dialogue on race. Beck’s statements are an attempt to divide when we need to be united, an attempt to inflame with rhetoric when we need to discuss with thoughtfulness the serious question of race. It is a futile effort to distract from the serious issues of health care, the economy and the environment - issues that President Obama is tackling with foresight and fortitude.

I don't see any mention yet of the disruptions at meetings.

They ask what's the matter with Kansas, but Kansas appears to have nothing on Oklahoma.

I wonder how many of those 69% who like their health insurance are covered by public (government-provided) plans--Medicare, Medicaid or VA health care? Medicare and Medicaid cover about ninety million people, I believe; I'm not sure about the VA.

I am "uninsurable." When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was (comparatively!) lucky to find that California has a special Medicaid program for women with breast or cervical cancer, who are otherwise uninsured.

If the pollster had asked me, I would have replied that I am DELIGHTED with my insurance. My care has been terrific. And my oncologist tells me that of all the insurers she has to deal with, she actually prefers Medicaid, as they waste her time the least.

And it's a well-known fact that people covered by Medicare report greater satisfaction with their insurance than those covered by private plans.

So I would imagine that of that 69%, a good chunk are actually covered by public plans. If you asked only those covered by the private insurance industry, I think the percentage would be lower--maybe MUCH lower.

And, as others have noted above, the vast majority of younger people--those most likely to have private coverage--have never experienced a serious illness.

Oh, and since Bill Clinton overhauled the VA system, vets also report high satisfaction with their care.

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