ikol

Africa: Vampire Weekend

There could be an argument made that bailing out the financial sector was necessary and helped avert the crisis (I'm not entirely convinced of this, but at least there's some rational basis to it), but bailing out GM was ridiculous. There are plenty of cars companies that were not failing because they made decent cars. If GM had been allowed to fail, there might have been some temporary problems, but eventually the other companies would have filled to hole left by GM.

Well, I guess my head is in the sand.

Yeah, I just meant that it didn't really fit the definition of irony. Not to mention using tax dollars to bail out corporations, buy and destroy old cars, and pay for healthcare.

I fail to see the irony. I'm also not getting a whole lot of Hitler from that. And as far as unconstitutionality goes, Obama's policies take the cake.

Maybe so. I honestly don't know or care whether those calling Obama Hitler are mainstream Republicans as it does not affect my inclination to ignore them. However, I don't recall a lot of fury on the left when Bush was Hitlerized for 8 years. He's on Dancing with the Stars. You can't get more mainstream than that.

Aren't a lot of the people comparing Obama to Hitler with the Lyndon LaRouche cult?

Agreed.

Frank is lucky that he's receiving all this criticism from batshit crazy people, because he tends to respond similarly to rational criticism and doesn't come off as well.

Agreeing (somewhat) with the themes certainly helped, but I actually liked it more for the plot. I first read it back in high school when I was still forming my beliefs and didn't know much about Ayn Rand, so it wasn't just that I was a rabid fan of her philosophy. The writing style is pretty simple and there are definitely plenty of over the top dramatic parts, but it had a plot that kept me interested. I never would've thought I could get through a 1200 page book about a railroad company.

Well I read and enjoyed it twice, and I don't read a lot of 1200 page books.

I prefer my dystopian novels to be fictional. My point was going to be that the only selfish douches in Atlas Shrugged are those trying to "help" people.

Have you read Atlas Shrugged?

Atlas Shrugged is a much better use of 1200 pages than the healthcare bill.

So most of the people being polled on this healthcare bill haven't had a chance to read it yet?

So either the government funds healthcare and they send everyone's grandparents to the gas chamber, or they don't and the streets fill up with dead bodies? No wonder this debate goes nowhere. Well, the planet has been cooling for like 10 years...

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail. Yes. Not that this is a new thing. It's been going on at least since FDR. Does any rational person actually believe...nevermind. That sort of thing got the last Democrat President in trouble.

No, kwall. People here used to always accuse us of being the same person. That's because no one hates capitalism more than big businesses. It's much easier to spend a little money lobbying the government to pass favorable policies than it is to actually compete. Furthering socializing the government only makes such rent seeking more prevalent. Would you like to buy some soap?

But my alter ego would actually be me. Either I'm extremely insane, or you're a separate person.

My evil twin returns!

Great book.

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare A nice Op-Ed by the CEO of Whole Foods.

Exactly. Theoretically, you would still be a able to choose private insurance. Realistically, insurance companies will not be able to compete with a government program because 1)as Bush and now Obama have proven, the government doesn't have to have revenue to spend it and 2)the government can set its own reimbursement rates much like Medicare does, which would further drive up the prices that private plans would have to pay. While doctors may not always effectively communicate with their patients and explain their options and likely results well enough, the decision on aggressive treatmen

That's certainly better than Nancy Pelosi. At least the profit-driven millionaire has an understandable reason to let me die. All sarcasm aside, at least with a private system I can look at all the available plans and decide what I like. If a plan has a record of offing old people, and I want to live long enough to get dementia, I can go with another plan. With a government-funded/run plan, it's only possible to change the plan if I can convince a couple hundred million other people that what I want is right, and even then, the resulting legislation is going to end up being some over-compli

If socialized medicine works so well in other nations why do people buy individual insurance on top of the government plan in a lot of these nations? The "death panels" refers to government bureaucrats deciding when to withhold care, not actively kill people. Now there are many cases where withholding care is a good thing, and in this country we are often too aggressive with care without thinking about quality of life. I just don't think someone hired by Nancy Pelosi should be involved in the decision. Our life expectancy in this country is 78, compared to about 79-80 in other places. Even ass