Health Care Bill Passes 219-210Follow

You have to understand, Samira, that these people are avowed Alinskyites. People who proudly proclaim to have studied his works and who gush that every action they take comes from his tomes.


Paling around with terrorists is what these Tea Party Alinskyites do best.

Edited, Mar 25th 2010 9:50am by Jophiel

Also, from the zombieland blog:



Where is his source for this? How does he know that those threats were not followed up by the Secret Service? If that's true it's a horrible breach of security. I'd like to know more about that.

Again, the threats this time around are against members of Congress, and that is the comparison that should be made.

Well, in the case of that congressman's brother, they thought they were getting the congressman, so the brother wasn't intentionally targeted. That's the only case where I've heard of a family member actually being involved.

Either way, though, I was just joking.

Anyone in politics who does anything ANY radical group on either side doesn't like gets death threats.

This is one of the reasons some of us are and have been arguing that the public discourse needs to be brought back into some semblance of civility. The current hysteria, and by "current" I'm perfectly willing to include the last couple of administrations as well, is untenable and counterproductive.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/12/2289

I get my results from peer reviewed science. I have posted this several times before. Originally, the best estimate was 10,000 per year. It is now 40,000. I had to admit I was out of date and re-post with the updated study.

I'm sure if I just pulled figures out of thin air it would be easier.

Here is a link to the 2002 earlier study, called Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late, which estimated about 15,000 deaths per year:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10367

To be clear these are deaths before the age of 65. On page 162 you can see that this amounts to about 2000 deaths per year for people between the ages of 25-36 and so on.

You will often see references like: "Achieving universal insurance coverage in the United States would protect households against undue financial burdens at the same time that it was saving an estimated 18,000 to 44,000 lives.4,5" in this article from the New England Journal of Medicine, where 4 and 5 are references to the two links, above.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/362/2/98




Edited, Mar 25th 2010 9:59am by yossarian

I agree that the rioting was a terrible thing to do, but I don't know if I can consider it comparable to calling with death threats, bricks through office windows, and, well, the cutting of gas lines of someone who's only tangentially involved.

They're both reprehensible, though, don't get me wrong.

I think flint-lock pistol duels should be brought back.

Please. A man was arrested in possession of Molotov cocktails (tried, plead guilty, sentenced to 2 years), groups were raided in possession of balloon and jugs filled with their own urine and *****, intent on dousing attendees with them. There were simple private citizens mobbed by groups of shouting demonstrators blocking their entrance to the convention (I suppose that doesn't reach the level because there was no actual violence, just some evil Republicans fearing for their lives as they were verbally assaulted and detained by a crown of foaming-at-the-mouth demonstrators, right?).

I don't recall the speaker of the house making a public plea for calm during that, do you?

To wander back down Procedure Ave a moment, the reconciliation bill passed the Senate today. The GOP found 16 lines of text regarding Pell grants that were in violation of the Senate rules so those lines were removed and the bill will go back to the House where it's expected to easily pass before heading onward to President Obama.

House Rules demands that a reconciliation bill returned with amendments by the Senate must be passed by a majority vote and by rubbing it against a unicorn's ****. In absence of a unicorn, a griffon was used in 1961 although that might not have been constitutional. The Supreme Court of Wizardy rules on the case but didn't address the constitutionality, rather reserving themselves to talking only about how big a griffon ***** is.

They're on a bridge, Charlie.