Pro-Obama Democrats are waging a scorched-earth campaign on social media to portray people unhappy with Obamacare – including Democrats – as stupid, selfish and inflexible.
Ridiculous Pro-Obamacare Talking Points
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
36 Comments. Leave new
When you’re right, you’re right, Ted.
I’d hoped for a true single-payer bill, but didn’t make any plans for it. Now I’m hoping that the ACA will merely be a first step to something better. We did get a pre-existing conditions clause, and a few other overdue restraints on the insurance companies – so at least that’s to the good.
Fact is even though it got dubbed ‘Obamacare’ by the wrongnuts, it’s a GOP plan through and through. It looks a helluva lot like Romneycare, and helluva lot like the plan the Heritage Foundation proposed when they were scared the Clintons might pull off real health care reform. Gotta love them wrongnuts – obstructing congress with one showboat vote after another, appearing to oppose the very bill they wrote. At least it does keep them from drafting more vaterland security measures.
meh, you knowed ‘dat already. Just taking the opportunity to pontificate.
CrazyH, your analysis is precise and telling. As galling as the ACA is, it did eliminate some onerous restrictions on access to health insurance for some; the act’s deficiencies, however, doom it as the insurance companies remain in charge, and their drive for lucre will overwhelm. Single-payer, perhaps Medicare for all, eludes us. The US must continue some time longer as a distant runner-up to those countries for which the health of citizens is a top priority.
One more thing – how did you italicize “hoped” and “hoping” in your comment? I have yet to discover formatting tools and would much appreciate your sharing some tips. Thank you in advance for the info.
TX4 the kind words.
Formatting can be done with the HTML tags. If that sounds like geekspeak: in the text box, you enter this:
<i>italic text!</i>
and it appears like this when posted:
italic text!
The ‘i’ is for italic. ‘b’ would be bold, ‘u’ for underline, I can’t say for certain which ones Rallblog supports, but I’ve gotten those to work.
You forgot the #1 talking point of the race-baiting Kossacks and their ilk: Now that we have Obamacare we can work to fix it, make it better and move toward single payer!
Except, they never say exactly how we’re going to fix this mess, how we’re going to get single payer out of a system that has made it law to purchase private insurance. And there’s a reason why they don’t say HOW we’ll fix it — because we can’t. Does anyone actually think we’ll ever get out of the private insurance system now that it’s compulsory to purchase it? If so — please explain how. I’d like to see that strategy mapped out. Else — shut the fuck up.
The race-baiting Kossacks blind allegiance has caused more damage than their little brains will ever know.
There are people pushing for single payer in Vermont, on a state-run level.
Dead-on, ex. How will we get out of private insurance now that it is mandated?
For those of you who think everyone over at That Blog is a flaming idiot, some straight talk from Cassiodorus:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/10/1268767/-Omigod-this-is-a-partisan-site
Also, if anyone knows how to italicize text using an iPad, I’d love to know myself. I was thrilled to find the degree symbol and tilde/accent/umlaut toggles the other day.
Hey, Miep – if you mean italicizing text in comments on sites like Rallblog, I was just discussing that over here
Yes, we’re all here (but are we all there?)
My point was that I copypasted your sample HTML text, which did not format in your comment, but it did in mine, and I’m WTF about that.
Usually when people explain how to do HTML they leave spaces to disable the HTML, and then explain to people that they have to leave out the spaces.
I am currently concerned about the laws of the universe, or at least the Internet, having been suspended.
Thanks for the HTML reminder, in any case.
Here, I’ll do it again.
italic text!
With spaces inserted:
italic text!
The former should come out formatted again.
This is getting worse and worse.
rallblog!
This with lots of spaces. This is not supposed to work.
No, Crazy H. My question is why your first sample didn’t format in your comment. Everything else is formatting like mad. Even when it shouldn’t.
Ow. Truth be told, Rallblog doesn’t follow the rules properly either. In my example above, the angley-brackety guys *should* have been bold. I blame Ted. Or Canada – take your pick. 😀
Play with it a little, it will come back to you.
If we had a comment preview function, this would all be different! Now let’s all go yell at Ted 🙂
I actually did learn some HTML awhile back, and could have gone further with it, if I saw the need. But mostly what I saw was people wanting to read very short pieces and look at photos. I do need to get back into photos for a variety of reasons, but HTML is pretty much need-to-know for me.
GoComics has its own HTML stuff, there’s a page about that somewhere. But it’s non-standard.
> My question is why your first sample didn’t format in your comment.
OIC. The short explanation is “Magic” a longer explanation is ‘HTMLescaping’
For instance, if you want to make an angle bracket, you use:
&>
(I have to post it to make sure it works … just a sec’)
Nope, didn’t work right. :: sigh ::
To make a “less than” sign <
You type:
ampersand
gt
semi-colon
but I can't get Rallblog to display it properly. Then again, it might just display properly on the iPad.
Good luck (?)
CRAP!
Less than
is GT … gee tea
And it’s probably bedtime for crazies…
WHA ha ha ha ha ha
Even that didn’t come through right. Okay, I double-blame ted.
Oh, right! I totally forgot about that thing where you can use different symbols as code for characters. Silly me. Thanks for the reminder.
italic text!
(copypasted)
I don’t see any spaces, so why did this not format in your comment?
Okay, that formatted. Now I’m really confused, CrazyH.
It takes a bit of getting used to.
If you want to see italic text in your post, you need to type in the exact gobble-de-gook I did below.
angle bracket < followed by an i then an angle bracket going the other direction >
THEN type in the text you want italicized, followed by the angle bracket, slash / i ; other-angle-bracket. Make sense? eh, it didn’t make sense to me the first time I saw it either. 🙂
… and my reply didn’t quite appear the way I intended it to. %^P
Your copy-pasted text included the angle brackets, etc. That’s what made it work. HTH…
That explains absolutely nothing, but I’m duly mystified.
My turn to try:
italic
<i>italic</i>
The first used the second; the second used < for the < and > for the >
by jove, I think ‘e’s got it. 😉
Actually, the fourth panel isn’t ridiculous at all. My grandfather and father fought hard for liberal causes, because it was the right thing to do, DESPITE knowing they weren’t going to see a dime or speck of benefits for themselves. That USED to be a point of PRIDE for liberals: “The other side works for things that will benefit themselves, regardless of how it affects the country. We work for things that will help the country, regardless of how it affects us.”
Somewhere along the way (around 1970 or so) the left let other things become more important than helping others, sadly. That’s one of the attitude problems which makes “progressives” today pathetic and increasingly irrelevant. “This is going to help a whole bunch of people, but not me!?! Fuck it and them then, I’m out. Bring on the collapse.”
And then of course comes the whining “But..but..but..why won’t anyone listen to meeeeeeeeeeeee?”
Well, duh.
One problem with many so-called ‘progressive’ (and, for that matter, conservative) schemes is that, while they sound good, like the government is really helping people, only a few Friends of the administration get any real benefits.
So the numbers matter. If a very few Friends are getting that $100 a month total out-of-pocket cost premium healthcare, and others are all seeing a massive increase they can’t really afford, it’s not a good thing. If few who can afford it have to pay a bit more to provide affordable care to everyone else, then it is. And so far, I can’t get any reliable data on which version is closest to the truth.
@Whimsical: Liberals’ commitment to the social contract died with Jimmy Carter in 1977. He began a string of Third Way centrist DLC presidencies, including the present one, under which not one major anti-poverty program was proposed, much less passed. To the contrary; Clinton increased the misery index by trashing welfare and passing NAFTA.
Liberals tend to vote Democratic for two reasons: nostalgia and wishful thinking. Oh, and lesser-evilism.
I can almost see the appeal of lesser-evilism, but not the first two. And lesser-evilism is soulless and not at all forward-looking or optimistic.
Well, Ted, I’m glad you’ve come around to admitting the shitty attitude of progressives is the problem, confirming that I’m right.
Of course, you’ve got the date wrong- “progressives” abandoned the social contract in the early 70’s when they bought into the false notion that they could help more people by punishing Democrats for not delivering everything “progressives” wanted immediately- as demonstrated by Kennedy’s rejection of Nixon’s health care offer. Had “progressives” been as supportive as they could’ve and should’ve been about that we’d almost certainly have single-payer by now.
The shitty attitude of progressives led directly to the election of Carter, and Clinton, and Obama. And until they change their attitudes the Democratic party will continue to drift right, and they’ll continue to demonstrate cognitive dissonance by causing the rightward drift and whining about it. Until they get the crash they are hoping and working for, and then they’ll get it- but of course then it will be too late.
Lastly, what you deride as lesser-evilism is the most forward thinking philosophy there is; as candidates improve slowly, over time, they stop being evil and start being better and better.
Sadly, the shitty attitude of “progressives” won’t let that happen, because it requires patience, frustration tolerance, caring about others more then themselves, and a decent grasp of election strategy- all quantities the modern left hasn’t possessed in a long, long time.
Kennedy’s rejection of Nixon’s health care plan only looks wrongheaded with the benefit of decades of 20/20 hindsight, which nobody, including you, has.
At the time, the political momentum looked like it was heading towards socialized medicine. That’s what McGovern ran on in 1972. You can hardly blame Kennedy for thinking the same thing that everyone else did at the time. No one thought that the system was going to lurch so far to the right over the next 40 years.
I don’t blame Kennedy for thinking what everyone else was thinking at the time. But he woke up and realized his mistake, and changed his attitude- he often said that rejecting Nixon’s offer was the biggest mistake he ever made.
I can and do blame “progressives” for not waking up realizing they were and are wrong, and changing their shitty attitudes, like Kennedy did.
And I especially blame them for whining about the Democratic party’s rightward shift when just as they caused it, they can stop it.
While I’m sure Mr Rall must have seen some Obamabots saying those having trouble with the website were DUMB, what I’ve seen is Prof Krugman’s take: the website is irrelevant. He said that, while the website didn’t work, the ACA is now using dead trees and snailmail, but people who had previously been unable to get access to healthcare were now getting affordable healthcare, and that’s what matters.
I agree with Prof. Krugman that the website is not important, what’s important is affordable healthcare. And one mostly gets Obamabot lies (everyone has full access to healthcare for less than $100 a month total out-of-pocket) or Tea lies (death panels, etc.).
The only reliable report I’ve seen was Mr Rall’s, but it never finished. He said he could not afford health insurance before the ACA. Then he complained about the website, which still isn’t working very well, so the ACA was NOT providing him with affordable healthcare. Then he said that they said he’d get an ACA plan via dead trees and snailmail, but it wasn’t final. Then we got a post that the website STILL isn’t working.
I’m dying to hear the real end of the story: did Mr Rall finally get decent, affordable coverage for himself and his family, or not?
(The ‘real story’ gets even more interesting, because, after sending in the paper forms, they must be entered into government and private insurance company computers, and we’ve heard reports that isn’t happening, so Mr Rall still might not know if he really has affordable insurance or not.)
This stands as a testament to the extremes we as Americans will go to deny the obvious: That a healthcare system designed on a for-profit system is an affront to human dignity. But keep in mind, this is the country that still can’t figure out if the civil war was fought over slavery or not.
The so-called «Affordable Care Act» seems to be yet another device for guaranteeing the profits of insurance companies, but is unlikely to have significant effect on the excessive costs of health care – as compared to that in other OECD countries – in the United States. Mission accomplished !…
Henri