freshnotbitter's Comments (1382)

“This is truly bizarre.

The dems passed the equivalent of Romneycare: the Massachussetts plan.

Why would repubs want to oppose this plan? They would do better by simply thanking Obama for passing the republican plan.”

“Many people died for lack of health care insurance today. Nobody died in an airplane disaster. Guess what the big story on the media outlets is. Yeah.......”

“Democrats and Insurers might want to sit down and ask themselves if it would not be better for everybody involved to have a public option.

Are private insurers really ready to offer unlimited liability insurance like Uncle Sam does and like Obama is saying they will have to do under the Senate bill which appears to be the one that will be passed?

And do the private insurers really want to grab the whole pie? When you are holding the whole pie I can guarantee you there will be a lot of hungry eyes following your every move. Yes, Virginia Aetna, you WILL be regulated - big time. That corporate jet is history. When you hold every persons health care in your hands, your life habits will be under intense scrutiny.

My recommendation to Aetna: Cut a deal. Tell O he can have his public option if he lets private insurers continue with the employer based group plans as is and to be left alone. There are ways this can be done.”

“All they had to do was say that anybody not in a private plan pays 15% of their income and gets medicare type insurance from the government. End of story. I know people would say 15%? I can't afford that ! But incomes would rise to pay the tax and if you lost your job and didn't have income the insurance would be free, basically, since there would be no income to take 15% of. Repubs couldn't complain about free riders because health care is 15% of national income so anybody paying 15% of his income would be paying his share. Private insurers would still have their employer based coverage which they like and be out of individual insurance if they wanted to be, which they don't like so much. Basically private insurance would be free from all the problem groups. Oddly, they fought the public option like crazy and what they will end up with is a heavily, heavily regulated industry that will be hated out of existence.”

“but we don't need 60 senators for all bills.


we can pass bills that punish these senators severely for opposing health care using reconciliation.

don't let anybody fool you.

there are ways to get these senators on board that has not been done. the fix is in.”

“The wall street journal article says that

a) there is massive discontent with democratic party

and

b) none of the discontent with dems is translating into increased support for republicans

How incompetent can these bozos be?

a) dems - take massive victory with huge majority in house, senate, and bungle it.

b) repubs - party of no can't find one single issue to add voters in an atmosphere of rising contempt for dems. they are totally clueless.

How much farther can those degenerate politcians in Washington fall before we just decide to put Attila the Hun in charge?”

“I need the NY Post to tell me that the President of the United States was civil in a meeting with the biggest bankers on Wall Street?

What irks me is that O thinks we are kiddies who think he chewed out the bankers. He is losing an important pie slice of his coalition with his ingenuous inferences.”

“I have no problem with this and my sole qualification would be that not one dime goes to Citi's health care benefits.”

“His father was African and his mother American. I guess fact has become fear, paranoia and insecurity in your tortured brain.”

“Just a garden variety jerk. If an American President gets the chance to use the world stage he should take the opportunity. I don't see much imagination in what this administration is doing with its chances.”

“Not sure how your comment has any relevance. But, just for the record,
Norway is the 6th largest net oil exporter in the world (not counting natural gas).

There's more, but what's the use.”

“"Irony" of peace prize during "war time"?

I thought we were engaged in peace efforts.

I'll never forget how many times Nixon went on and on about "peace" when he was President. Now that was irony. But everybody went along with it. Nobody called it ironic. Our operations in Afpak are a teen age slumber party compared to what Nixon was doing in Viet Nam. And yet we are told this is "war time" when the total amount of casualties in 8 years don't reach the level of one hour on Iwo Jima.

Better push away from that table, O. I think you are being sucked into the bubble.”

“I'm surprised O is not having lunch with the King. A photo of Obama, the African American President, having lunch with European royalty would have presented just the right photo op for this trip and shown the various "extremist" groups in the world exactly what can be done in America.

Oh, well, I guess O's "foreign affairs" staff had other fish to fry.”

“The planning for this trip is insipid. I've been against O's foreign policy staff from the beginning when the transition office selected these bozos.

He should NOT be on the balcony.

He should have brought Sasha and Malia. Years from now they will be asked what they experienced when their father received the Nobel Peace Prize and they will say they learned amo, amas, amat at the Freinds Academy. Obama should be on the ground with the family among the people. A little skiiing through the capital would have made the front pages throughout Europe and re-inforced the image that is so valuable to our troops, of a democratic leader seeking peace among the people. This should have been followed up with a colorful lunch with the King, a sign of support from "old" Europe in the fight against extremism. After digesting lunch he coulde accept the peace prize and fly home.

Memo to O: You better think twice about the advice you are getting from Joker Biden and the other bozos "around the table". It is too easy to be captured by the "bubble" and become encased by little lilliputians with their own agendas.”

“Funny, I thought he would leverage this event into a demand from Europeans for money and troops to support our boys and our cause. Instead he seems to be minimizing the importance of it all and lookiing to skip town as quickly as possible with the headline: O snubs King.

When is O going to get it?”

“Here is how republicans will hit O on this issue:

Can you imagine how Geo.Bush I and Jim Baker would leverage this peace prize into support for our cause, for our troops, for our pocketbooks, if they had been awarded this prize during Gulf War I?

Look at how stupid the people "around the table" are in the O White House. They seem to be concentrating on minimizing the meaning of the prize. O is supposed to say that he is below Mother Theresa and Mandela.

If I were "sitting around the table" with Joker Biden and Hillary Clinton I would be telling O that we should leverage this situation for everything it is worth.

Instead, O is meeting with some jerk cabinet official whom nobody knows and probably heads a minority coalition government, and he is skipping the great photo op he could get with lunch with the King. Caption under lunch photo: Europe united behind O's peace plan and US troops with King in usual colorful uniform, Obama kids, Michelle and O.

O has a lot of stupid people advising him.”

“The whole event is spread out over 3 days and Obama is only staying 24 hours. 24 hours is pretty good for the Pres of USA. 3 days is a vacation. They must have known that he couldn't devote 3 days to the event when they awarded him the Nobel.

Actually, the Nobel prize is something he will prize long after he is out of the presidency. Clinton couldn't win one. Only Teddy and Wilson got one besides O. He'll get a fantastic meal with the King. I'd take him up on that one. Simply reschedule and Insist on seafood. I wouldn't miss it if I were O. He should take the girls and give them a skiing tour through Oslo (if Al didn't put the kabbosh on the snow.) Later in life the girls can reminisce about being with Dad in Oslo to get the peace prize.

There is too much cynicism on this site about Afghanistan. Just about everybody was fed up with the Taliban, including Afghanis, and it was Iraq that all the Europeans were upset about.”

“I am really excited by the progress that seems to be going on in the Senate. I just hope they understand that there are many people like me out there who have no faith in the private for profit insurance system and fixing it is no use because they have a thousand lobbyists up there tomorrow to undo it all.

MSNBC just had a guy on who needs a double lung transplant costing $500,000

His insurance company at work (a car dealer) will pay $80,000.

He doesn't have the other $420,000

Can anybody explain to me what the difference would be if this guy had more "choices" or insurance companies were "competing" more?

Congressmen always point to the federal program and talk about extending it to everybody but the fact is that a car dealership might be able to offer a moderate plan to their employees, and those plans are always group plans so everybody has to be on the plan (some choice, huh?). Of course, if the group plan gave people "choice" then the CEO would have a cadillac plan and pay for it by stiffing his other employees.

I would love a National Plan written by HHS that we could buy into and they can outsource the administration to a business service under contratct to run it for x years, then. I just want to be able to trust the signature on the policy. The signature of United Healths CEO is worth the same as Bernie Madoff's.”

“Gary Daniels is a gator hater. He makes me sick. I hope they fire him. Typical comment from Gary: Gators are trailing in the second half and gators make some yards and look to be starting a comeback and here is the verbatim quote from Gary Daniels after a Tebow completion, uttered in great excitement: "You have to cut off the head of the snake...."

there he is urging Alabama to cut off the head of the gators which he compares to a snake.

CBS should make Gary issue an apology forthwith and then they should fire him.”

“When the party of no says yes, always check to see if their fingers are crossed.

Dems woudl score a KO with their extention of medicare, as early as next year, to people in the fiftyfive to sixty four age group who are not already insured at work. I would buy in immediately and vote for every democrat on the ballot in every election untill I die.”

“When it goes to Wall St it is necessary. When it goes to pay for the operation of a dying child it is nefarious socialism. The party of "no" did say yes once: To the Wall St bail out. "No"-body will ever forget it either.”

“Here is the assignment for next year's turner prize.

do anything you like but all pieces will be titled "suicide bomber"

but that would be too controversial. the turner prize must be given for something that is pretentiously controversial. something fake, in other words. can't scare away the money.”

“The winner looked like the damask table cloth my mom used for xmas dinner. I voted for only one work: Black alphabet, which got the best rating from readers after the damask tablecloth.

the damask table cloth reminded me of the rorschach clones that were popular in the 60's only it was updated to conform to the gilded petrodollar age. no doubt it will fetch a handsome sum and make a great hanging in the offices of a Dubai Bank with the appropriate accreditation. boo.”

“Hey, I know that guy. He counsels sex offenders at the C Street brothel in Washington, DC.”

“Pride goeth before the fall.

Here is the ultimate irony.

Coach Meyer suspends the defensive end Dunlap for the game because he was found asleep at the wheel of a vehicle stopped under a green traffic light (DUI, I guess).

Dunlap had been touted as an early round NFL pick in next year's draft.

Result of Meyer's action? Dunlap will now move up in the draft, his team mates will move down. Dunlap should send Meyer a Xmas basket for sure, with a short note: "Tks, coach. I needed that."”