elkabong's Comments (405)

“No, you don't know. No one, no one, I reapeat, no one has proposed socialized medicine. The most anyone has proposed is socialized health insurance. There are nations where medical professionals work for the state. That hasn't been proposed by anyone. Not even Senator Sanders, an avowed socialist.

Doesn't it bother you that you have the time to comment here but no time to make sure you know what you're writing about? Does it bother you that you don't know what you're writing about?

Insurance corporations are parasites. They produce nothing and their profits increase when they find ways, ethical or not, to deny claims. They suck the life out of our potential growth as individuals and as a nation.”

“Campaign finance is the disease - everything else, merely a symptom.

Unfortunately, those who can cure it, benefit from the illness.”

“When did creating optimal solutions equal expending political capital? It seems to me they're expending political capital by passing crap and calling it reform. It seems to me they're trading political capital for campaign contributions.

They call themselves "leaders." What a joke.”

“"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."

- James Madison

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."

- James Madison

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."

- Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."

- Thomas Jefferson

"...religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

- Thomas Jefferson”

“"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."

- Thomas Paine

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

- Thomas Paine

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

- Thomas Paine

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

- John Adams”

“What we have been doing is throwing money at the problem, including multi-billion dollar subsidies to the PRIVATE insurance companies that do the job less efficiently and at a higher cost than Medicare. Medicare Advantage and Medicare Plus are prime examples.

That's why we should have a single payer system. It's much, much cheaper. No advertising. No billion dollar executive compensation. No shareholder profit. There should be no profit motive in health insurance. It's not good for our health. It's not good for our industries that actually MAKE things of value. Pushing money around should not be what America does. Unfortunately, that has become increasingly the case.

Insurance corporations are parasites. They produce nothing and their profits increase when they find ways, ethical or not, to deny service. They suck the life out of our potential growth as individuals and as a nation.”

“We're in the trouble we're in because of attitudes like yours. We hang together or we hang separately while bankers buy their third beach houses. Your attitude is great, if you like 1950's Cuba. Look how well that turned out.”

“Campaign finance is the disease - everything else, merely a symptom.
Unfortunately, the ones who can change it, benefit from the illness.

Thanks, Ed.”

“"Tort reform, tort reform, tort reform."

Tort reform is what Republicans call institutionalized irresponsibility for the wealthy. Tort reform MIGHT save about 1% by all estimates. They had tort reform in Mccallum, Texas. Mccallum, Texas has the most expensive health care in the US of A.

The AM radio is not your friend.”

“Just so Republicans are clear (if that's possible). They're not proposing cuts to Medicare. They're proposing cuts to Medicare Advantage and Medicare Plus - PRIVATE insurance companies' costlier versions of Medicare that have been subsidized by the taxpayer for decades. Guess where the subsidies go? 'Into the pockets of the CEOs. Why they haven't cut them sooner should be the question.

Free market, my a$$.”

“They're not proposing cuts to Medicare. They're proposing cuts to Medicare Advantage and Medicare Plus - PRIVATE insurance companies' costlier versions of Medicare that have been subsidized by the taxpayer for decades. Guess where the subsidies go? 'Into the pockets of the CEOs. Why they haven't cut it sooner should be the question.

Free market, my a$$.”

“Respectfully, i completely disagree. The reason people aren't hiring is not because they're worried about legislation. They're worried that people aren't BUYING. There is one thing and one thing only that creates jobs. It is DEMAND for goods and services.

The reason there isn't demand is because people have no money. The reason they have no money is because "the people with the money" decided about 30 years ago that supply-side economics was a panacea; because they did their best to abolish trade unions; because they gave jobs to Indians and to Chinese instead of Americans; because they wanted it all.

Wages have been flat or in decline while expenses have been rising. Even with two incomes, many could barely make ends meet. Eventually, the middle class turned to using their homes as ATMs. Now, they can't even do that.

Who says we MUST do business with countries that don't meet our environment, safety and wage standards? Who says we MUST allow businesses that outsource to the lowest bidder to do business in America?

What you're suggesting is a race to a third-world standard of living. You can't be suggesting that Americans work for 3 dollars a day, can you? Isn't that the logical extension of your argument?”

“The Democrats could actually pick up seats in both the House and the Senate and president Obama could guarantee himself a second term if they only did two things:

1. Announce that campaign finance is the disease and that just about everything else that's wrong with America are merely the symptoms.

2. Do something about it.”

“Maybe you can help me with a couple of things. How would the "state line" proposal, if instituted, keep insurance companies from racing to headquarter in those states with the laxest regulation? How would lax regulation keep the insurance companies from continuing their parasitical practices?”

“I hope English isn't your first language.”

“I'm sorry, Cynthia. You'd think NY would have done the right thing. But I believe the government should stay out of the marriage business altogether and sanction civil-unions only. Then, if the couple wishes to be "married," they could do so in the church of their choice. In either case, they could call it what they like.

People who have a problem with gays are scared, like they're scared about most things. That's the way they were raised. They may not admit it, even to themselves, but they they think it's contagious. They're afraid their children will go homo if they're exposed to it.

It would be nice if they figured out it's not a choice. It would be nice if they thought that maybe it's God's idea of population control.

Soon, it won't matter what they think. Soon, there won't be enough of them to stop it.”

“Well said!”

“George C. Scott was a Hollywood actor. I can probably think of something more ironic but not at the moment.

Excellent post.”

“Ignore the deniers. Forget them. If we do nothing and it becomes clear beyond question that they are wrong, they'll only look for someone else to blame. They still think the financial collapse wasn't caused by Reaganomics, free-trade and deregulation. They'll tell you with a straight face it was Barney Frank. Their ignorance is willful and overwhelming. The best thing to do is to tell them to go jump in a lake while there is still a lake in which to jump.”

“"He doesn't have to "fix" the economy. He needs to introduce a business friendly atmosphere and get the hell out of the way. That includes tax cuts..."

Sounds exactly like Bush. You know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different result. I think the same thing goes for advocating doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

“Thanks, Mr. Frank.

I think this purity test comes as a result of being acutely aware that things are a huge mess while being absolutely certain that none of it is their fault. It can't be Reaganism. It can't be conservatism. It can never and will never be themselves. It can be only one of two things: Those damn libs or those damn libs posing as Republicans. It doesn't get much more complicated than that. Of course, the "libs" to whom they refer are figments of Sean's and Rush's imagination and bear as much relation to reality as Reaganomics does to middle-class prosperity, but it's much easier to call us "baby-killers" than to ask why abortion rates went down under Clinton and up under Bush and to question the nonsense they've been trained to believe all of their lives.”

“There's no question we were royally screwed by George and Dick, but I'd sooner see us use special forces missions and cash. You don't go after small bands of dedicated terrs with battalions and an insurgency will always outlast us.

Secure the nukes - one way or another. Give every Afghani a couple thousand bucks. Don't give it to some mayor. Do it door-to-door. Tell them we're very sorry and get the hell out. Let them build their own hospitals. Let us build an economy independent of fossil fuel.”

“Fifteen if the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world. Do you wonder why we never talk about it? I don't.

Let's get really real: 9/11 was ultimately about oil. They don't hate us for our freedoms.

We wouldn't have been fooling around in the middle-east at all; we wouldn't have quartered troops; we wouldn't have built an airbase that was anathema to many of them and we wouldn't be in Iraq and Afghanistan right now if it wasn't for oil.

I cringed when pres. Obama said, "We will not claim another nation's resources" although he was correct: We'll never claim it. We'll always call it something else.

I like the pres.. I worked, donated and voted for him. I hope and pray he succeeds. But I'm afraid he's wasting more time and resources when the investment to solve our fiscal, employment and security problems would be a maximum investment in alternative energy. I thought he knew it.”

“I think you're misreading Arianna's point. She's not suggesting we wage wars we can afford. She's saying that if we're going to wage war, it should not be put on a credit card. She's saying that it's hypocritical to say that health-care should be deficit neutral and that it's ok to add wars to the deficit.

There is something seriously wrong with people who support war, scream for tax-cuts and whine about the deficit simultaneously.”

“I was wondering why they're always chanting "we're #1." Now I know.”