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Senator Arlen Specter Becomes a Democrat
Akido37 was one of many readers letting us know that US Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties to become a Democrat. This gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and 60 if and when Al Franken gets seated from Minnesota. However, Specter said in his announcement that he will not be an automatic 60th vote for breaking Republican filibusters. While the senator's move seems to have surprised many Republicans, it is understandable to moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said, "You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how they [Republicans] view moderates. Either you are with us or against us." Specter noted that in his home state of Pennsylvania, 200,000 formerly Republican voters switched party allegiance last year.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/04/27/ayn.rand.atlas.shrugged/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge-I am the man who will now tell you.' The chief engineer was the only one able to move; he ran to a television set and struggled frantically with its dials. But the screen remained empty; the speaker had not chosen to be seen. Only his voice filled the airways of the country-of the world, thought the chief engineer-sounding as if he were speaking here, in this room, not to a group, but to one man; it was not the tone of addressing a meeting, but the tone of addressing a mind.
"You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man's sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.
"You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish.
"Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man's mind.
"Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn't. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren't.
"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem-I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality-mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.
"All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
"We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.
"There is a difference between our strike and all those you've practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of
Political parties are an abomination. Anyone who declares for a party should be killed immediately. Unfortunately, however, principles are completely unimportant to 99.999999999% of the world.
YEAH! Like universal health care, and an end to the 35% of health care expenditure that goes to parasite insurance companies! WOOT!
I was never for universal health care, and the experiences of a friend of mine who has been in England for a year have only made me more against it. Sure, England has a universal health care system. But when my friend started having health problems (most likely due to his flat having been inhabited by a smoker before him), the doctors there were absolutely no use. He had difficulty breathing and other symptoms, which the general practitioners he saw couldn't figure out. When he asked to be sent to a specialist, the request was denied because he hadn't experienced anaphylactic shock yet. In other words, if you're not near death, you can't see someone who can actually help you. And since it's the national government's rules and plan, you can't exactly ignore it.
Universal health care is a great idea in theory, and a horrible one in practice. Do I think our system is great? No. But neither is any other system I've seen. I, personally, don't believe health care is a right - it's something you need to earn. And if you don't earn it, then you shouldn't have it. Granted, I think we need a better system than we have right now (maybe start with affordable health care for children and those recently unemployed), but universal health care managed by the government is not what we need.
Right. People need a wake up call that the free market is broken, and the fix we need is to nationalize the banks and the health care system, which is exactly what will happen if things get bad enough. You folks better start praying things don't get that bad, and that we continue to limp along with the broken system you prefer, rather than scrapping it and going with what has been proven to work: socialism. Don't forget, it was you free market, deregulate everything folks that put us in this position in the first place.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And you have a choice today? I'm tired of this false argument. If you have any sort of health care insurance, its a decision between your (for profit) insurance company and NOBODY. Your insurance company doesn't want it, you don't get it.
I'd rather have a trip to the DMV than mafia.
Um, if my health insurance provider screws me over, I can sue them. You can't sue the government. Ever heard of an Erin Brockovich leading the charge against a government provided anything?
If my health insurance provider screws me over, I can bitch to and/or sue my company, which pays for most of that insurance.
As of yet, I've had no problems ever with any health insurance company. I know that not everyone has been so lucky, but that's what the courts are for. (see Erin Brockovich)
Either way, can you tell me one single government program that works better than a private equivalent (other than the military, but with what is spent, private industry could do better)? Amtrack, Postal Service, Social Security... Nope, they all suck.
I don't want my health care decisions handed over to the same group of losers that are wasting my retirement funds.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Prepare for some extremely Democratic legislation. (In the party sense, not the democracy sense).
YEAH! Like universal health care, and an end to the 35% of health care expenditure that goes to parasite insurance companies! WOOT!
(Just for reference, the US is the only western country to tie health care to one's employer. It is a strange combination, that has many perverse effects such as separating the consumer from the one paying the health care bills, and turning the bill-payers into care-denial organizations. The macro effect is that we spend more of our GDP on health care than any other country in the world, yet our population dies sooner (about 3 years' shorter life span).)
Yeah! I want my government deciding if I get care or not because they can make such a better decision that I can make for myself or my children.
I want my trip to the doctor to be like a trip to the DMV.
Instead of the way it is now? Where your INSURANCE PROVIDER decides what you and your children do or do not get?
As for the DMV, I'd rather it be like the Postal Service. You know, WHERE YOU PAY 42 CENTS AND A LETTER GETS ACROSS THE COUNTRY IN A SINGLE DAY AND NIGHT.
I've *yet* to see a private company match that.
BZZZTT! Wrong. $0.42 MIGHT get your letter across the country in one piece in a week.
Besides, if my insurance provider does not give me the coverage I want, I go with another. What do you do when the government doesn't give you the coverage that you want?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
That's the ballsiest, most hypocritical statement I've ever read in my life. You've got a governor going to jail, a senate appointee who paid for his seat, a house minority leader whose husband pulls in millions from government contracts awarded by her committee, and a whole administration that takes the Leona Helmsley view to taxation. That's a whole lot of horse excrement you're throwing around.
This is the most corrupt government since Warren G. Harding.
That's funny. For all of your railing against the "free market" and for socialism, it's apparent that you simply don't know how the free market is even supposed to work.
If you had taken all of that money that you happily gave to insurance companies over the years in exchange for absolutely nothing, and instead saved it for when your wife needed her ankle fixed, you would find that you could pay cash for great service. Instead you're stuck hoping not to get screwed-over by a for-profit company with absolutely no incentive to provide your wife with appropriate care. If you were a hospital, who would you treat first, patients who offer cash or those who send their insurance company to haggle with the doctors?
I agree that some parts of health care in the US are completely screwed up. But it appears that a major part is people like YOU who can't manage your own affairs, and expect to be able to pay someone else to do it for you. The free market is based on rational self-interest. You appear to be appropriately self-interested, yet completely irrational about it.
Worse, you don't seem to understand that socialist health care is exactly the same as what you already have, except the insurance companies are replaced with the government and you still get to pay out the ass in exchange for horrible service when you need it most.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
... only in countries with oil ...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Why is it that you're so intent on taking what I have for yourself? Do you feel you deserve it more than I do? Or do you think it's better that you benefit and I suffer than the other way around? Or do you just generally believe that it is more efficient overall to take things from people who earn them and give them to people who don't? In other words, are you greedy, evil, or just plain foolish?
Every socialist I've ever known of has fallen into one of those three categories. The greedy ones vote the evil ones into power, and the foolish ones preach about how superior socialism is with the all the fervor (and the logic) of any religious zealot.
I'm guessing you're the latter kind. So I'd ask you for a small favor, one that I'd ask of anybody extolling the virtues of his own faith: Please don't force your religion on me.
I am a social anarchist
Great. I'll try to speak slowly.
I am self employed
Maybe if the government didn't take 30% of your paycheck to pay for health care for old people, you could afford a hospital visit every now and then? I'm sure you don't mind, though. Anything for glorious socialism, right?
I have health care coverage... and pay for my health care expenses out of pocket like you suggest
What? So which is it?
But we're talking about your wife, right? Was her $6000 broken ankle paid for by "health care coverage" or "out of pocket"? And hopefully that bill includes an ambulance ride and a some physical therapy, because this random page puts the average cost of a broken ankle at $1400 in 2003. Even at 20% annual growth*, the cost shouldn't be $6000.
*Caused in part by employers over-providing untaxed health benefits, over-insured patients burdening the system with non-essential doctor visits, and of course the state-sanctioned licensing monopoly failing to keep up with demand for doctors. But of course none of that could be solved by anything as silly as the "free market", right?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Just because your *LOCAL* postmaster is shitty, don't judge the whole postal system as such.
Well, if my local postmaster is shitty, it takes a week to get my mail. If my local medi-master is shitty, I lose a leg.
The postal system works, the DMV works, the Military works, I get clean and safe drinking water, AND I WANT GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE SO I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT DIEING FROM A F__KING PREVENTABLE/TREATABLE DISEASE.
Even though I rarely ship packages via USPS, they've still lost a package of mine. What is the medical equivalent of the USPS losing my package? UPS and Fedex do a much better job. Why? Because they are private and if they don't do a better job, they die as a company. Besides, we are talking about UNIVERSAL health care. That means your health care must be as shitty as my own.
As for the preventable disease part... that's what worries me. Do you enjoy the occasional cheese cake, beer, cigar or cheap floozies? Do you drive too fast, sky dive, swim or anything else the government might consider risky? Be prepared to give it up. You see, heart disease, lung cancer, liver disease, and STD's are all preventable diseases. You want the government to make sure you don't die from them? Be prepared to give up some freedoms. How about what the government may consider a risky lifestyle? Be prepared to give that up or lose your health coverage.
Government health care will lead to a world where "papers please" means you have to show your grocery store receipt!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Frankin can't help but win. He's gotten more than 130% of the elagable voters in several counties. With a turnout like that, how can you lose?
Agreed....
Both parties always blame the other..."If only we had all the majority!"
But the Dems had it in the 90's and reneged on most of their promises. The Republicans had it under Bush...and instead of seeing fiscal conservatism & reduced government we saw expansion. (And please, don't blame it on the religious right. Because most of whom I know were not asking for such crap either.)
Now the Democrats have a super-majority. Probably the only thing they'll do is take over private industry and work to eliminate the 2nd Amendment. Everything else will stay status quo...(ie: bigger government, less liberty).
I think I am changing my party affiliation to "Tea Party"
And you are one of those that probably believed "Inside every gook is an American waiting to get out" but it didn't work out that way, did it? Old Saddam kept order by gassing everyone that disagreed with him. I can't really see Americans dropping mustard gas, which is pretty much the ONLY way you are going to "win" there. But believe Fox News and run us further into debt and waste American lives on a total fucking pointless waste of time. And PLEASE don't give us that "democracy" bullshit,okay? It is about OIL, it has ALWAYS been about OIL, and if Somalia had the oil reserves that we see under Iraq we would be "liberating" them now as we speak. Old Saddam was going to go to the Euro. The petro dollar is pretty much the only damned thing we have left in the country, so pretending that we actually gave a shit about "democracy" while we make deals with China(true evil) is not only BS, it is kinda insulting,okay?
Let us look at the facts, okay? FACT- There was NO Iraq until the British made it, it was a bunch of little warlords and fiefdoms that frankly didn't like each other very much. FACT- Iraq is made up of THREE completely separate groups that frankly can't agree on shit. These are of course the Sunni, The Shia, and the Kurds. ALL THREE want TOTAL control of the country, or to have the country split up into autonomous regions that THEY control. ALL THREE want TOTAL control on the oil, and ALL THREE want power, TOTAL power. See the problem?
This ain't Democrats VS Republicans, bud, Hell these groups make the Hatfield VS McCoy feud look downright neighborly. The Shia and Sunnis have been killing each other for centuries, a hell of a lot longer than the USA has been around. You think your mighty planes and bombs are gonna make them into peace lovin hippies? Sorry bud, we tried that shit once before in a little place called Vietnam. Didn't work out too well there either. We thought bringing American style civilization (and a government that would listen to us) would solve their problems and they would love us. Instead they gave AK47s to kids and did every single thing in their power to kill us. HMMM...why does this sound familiar?
So I hate to be the one to break your "America, fuck yeah!" RDF, but they ain't NEVER gonna be like us. All the planes and smart bombs and dead American kids on the streets of Baghdad ain't never gonna change that. You could blow a billion buck a day and pave their streets in American blood and they will just keep on coming. So mark my words, we WILL get out. Just like Nam, it is just a matter of when. And the hawks will blame the dems for not letting them "win" when the simple fact is you can NEVER win. Folks become civilized because they WANT to, not because you stuck a gun in their face and told them to be good citizens. Sorry, but it just ain't never gonna work. It will just billions out of our already depressed economy and way too many American kids sent home in wheelchairs and bodybags. And all for nothing. How fucking sad.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Total bullshit.
You describe yourself as an "anarcho-syndicalist" or some such, which means you're a commie. As a commie, you naturally want America to fail, whether it be economically, politically, or militarily.