It’s hard to say if yesterday’s Republican victory is the result of ‘voter apathy’ or if it is the Legacy of GOP governor Mitt Romney, who ‘gifted’ my home state with ‘mandatory’ health insurance…which, as one would expect, sucks. People who end up on the ‘free’ end of the system (due to low/no income) find, as one would expect, no service providers willing to accept what the state plan pays.
So the ‘financially challenged’ end up where they started, no coverage at all BUT, they are no longer ‘counted’ as being uninsured, they do indeed have ‘insurance’, insurance that no healthcare provider accepts but what are ya gonna to do?
Which brings us to the ‘Republican victory’…are we staring at ‘voter apathy’ or, as I have been saying, is the ‘Ballot box’ broken? It doesn’t matter what you scribble on the ballot if your ‘betters’ have already decided the outcome for you.
This, good citizen, is the difference between participation and the illusion of participation that is passed off as our ‘free and fair’ government.
Sadly, your ‘right’ to decide who will make decisions in your name without ever consulting you has also been stripped by those who control the farce that we have come to call ‘government’.
No irony should be lost on the fact that those who benefit the most from the ‘status quo’ are the same people seeking to strip from you the protection of the government. Hell, they even campaign as being ‘anti-government’, but you have to ‘read between the lines’ to fully understand what they are ‘against’.
In a nutshell, they are ‘against’ you being protected from their machinations. They really do want to charge you for the air you breathe, but they have to crush the government in order to lay claim to your air supply!
Um, for those of you who are extremely ‘literal’, I am not claiming that conservatism/libertarianism’s ‘sole objective’ is to eliminate the word ‘free’ from our language…that’s only part of their agenda.
What makes this even weirder is the root word ‘liberty’ actually means ‘freedom from tyranny’…and tyranny is exactly what these idiots advocate! They want to be ‘free’ to charge you for everything!
Which begs a different question: Can you be ‘free’ in a society where nothing else is?
Short answer: no! You will be, by default, an economic slave; forever forced to act against your own best interests as you ‘serve’ the interests of the ‘owners of money’.
Interesting phrase; that last bit, our circumstances today are pretty close to that not particularly desirable outcome.
You do indeed toil your life away, against your own best interests, while you serve the ‘owners of money’…and let’s not forget the central premise, nobody owes you nothin’. Should they decide they don’t like looking at you anymore, they are free to hire someone more pleasing and it’s ‘tough nuts’ to you! If you can’t live on what they pay you: it’s not their problem, it’s yours!
We’ve drifted pretty ‘far afield’ here, from Republican victory to the predatory mindset of the followers of the Chicago School of economics…the ‘basis’ for libertarianism.
In a shift from matters economic (although you never get completely away) we turn our attention tonight to what, for me, was a local election
G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats
By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary. [Voter turnout was reported to be 50%, there is all kinds of rhetoric as to ‘why’ voters, some who claim to have never voted Republican before, to switch sides. Since the public is unable to verify poll results, we will never know the true results with any degree of certainty.]
With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.
“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.” [Um, if you don’t believe the ballot box is broken here in Massachusetts then go ahead and explain 6 successive Republican governors in an overwhelmingly Democratic state?]
The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters. [This opens the door to some very interesting scenarios, especially if people suspect we are dealing with another ‘stolen election.’ Once an unheard of phenomenon, the ‘upset victory’ particularly by conservative politicians, has become the ‘norm’ around the world.]
There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month.
And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.
Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year.
Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.” [This is a bizarre way of looking at what boils down to the equivalent of the ‘House of Lords’, who until 1923 had seats that were appointed by the governor rather than elected. The Senate exists to ‘counterbalance’ the popularly elected House of Representatives. Each state gets an ‘equal number’ of Senators while more populous states can enjoy larger contingents of Representatives. By making the Senate the ‘playground of the rich’ and requiring that all legislation passes both houses, do the wealthy retain complete control over the legislative process. There’s nothing ‘fair’ about this.]
That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held for the next two years by a Republican who has said he supports water-boarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects. Opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country. It was a sharp swing of the pendulum, but even Democratic voters said they wanted the Obama administration to change direction.
“I’m hoping that it gives a message to the country,” said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. “I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.” [While the government does indeed ‘have the power’ to legislate new jobs and to eliminate debt, our corporate overlords would be seeking regime change if such legislation were proposed, never mind enacted. They haven’t pushed civilization to the brink just to have it undone with the stroke of the legislative pen!]
Mr. Brown ran strongest in the suburbs of Boston, where the independent voters who make up a majority in Massachusetts turned out in large numbers. Ms. Coakley did best in urban areas, winning overwhelmingly in Boston and running ahead in Springfield, Worcester, Fall River and New Bedford, but her margins were not large enough to carry her to victory. [The idiots in my own community voted Republican by a two to one margin…but what do you expect from an affluent town that voted for W twice?]
In a concession speech before cheering supporters, Ms. Coakley acknowledged that voters were angry and said she had hoped to deal with the concerns.
“Our mission continues, and our work goes on,” she said, echoing well-known remarks by Mr. Kennedy. “I am heartbroken at the result, as I know you are, and I know we will get up together tomorrow and continue this fight, even with this result tonight.” [Strangely, I wonder if people will realize that we can no longer trust the ballot box? The upcoming mid-terms are likely to be far more interesting than anyone currently anticipates.]
The crowd at Mr. Brown’s victory rally, upset by reports that Democrats might try to vote on the health care bill before he takes office, chanted, “Seat him now!” Mr. Brown, for his part, noted that the interim senator holding the seat had finished his work, and that he was ready to go to Washington “without delay.” And he effusively praised Mr. Kennedy as a big-hearted, tireless worker, and said that he hoped to prove a worthy successor to him. [Given the long delay in getting ANY legislation through Congress while they enjoyed a majority sort of serves what has become GW’s third term right.]
Ms. Coakley’s defeat, in a state that Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote, led to a round of finger-pointing among Democrats. Some criticized her tendency for gaffes — in a radio interview she offended Red Sox fans when she incorrectly suggested that Curt Schilling, a beloved former Red Sox pitcher, was a Yankee fan — while others criticized a lackluster, low-key campaign. [She won the primary handily, what happened yesterday was a repeat of a now familiar conservative ‘upset victory’. Something’s rotten here, it always is when a candidate comes out of the dark the way Brown did.]
Mr. Brown presented himself as a Massachusetts Everyman, featuring the pickup truck he drives around the state in his speeches and one of his television commercials, calling in to talk radio shows and campaigning with popular local sports figures.
The implications of the election drew nationwide attention, and millions of dollars of outside spending, to the race. It transformed what many had expected to be a sleepy, low-turnout special election on a snowy day in January into a high-profile contest that appeared to draw more voters than expected to the polls. There were reports of traffic jams outside suburban polling stations, while other polling stations had to call for extra ballots. [Ironically, when I went to vote yesterday I had the place to myself…]
The late surge by Mr. Brown appeared to catch Democrats by surprise, causing them to scramble in the last week and a half of the campaign and hastily schedule an appearance by Mr. Obama with Ms. Coakley on Sunday afternoon. [Understand, he ran on ‘nothing’, worse, all I heard about the Brown candidacy is what he wouldn’t do, there isn’t one thing he went on record as a goal to accomplish. For all I know, he’s going to Washington solely to polish the damn ‘Junior Senator’s seat!]
“Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts,” Mr. Obama said in his speech that day, repeatedly invoking Mr. Kennedy’s legacy. “It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.” He all but pleaded with voters to support Ms. Coakley, to preserve his agenda. [Probably shouldn’t have come to that but you reap what you sow. All of this foot dragging and compromising has produced nothing…and Mr. Obama didn’t have time to waste.]
As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in. “He was both surprised and frustrated,” Mr. Gibbs said. [I have had the chance to view local election results and it sure looks ‘screwy’, there are far more ‘conservative’ votes than normal.]
Although the race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.
Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill. [Those lying sacks of shit! People here were hoping for the ‘public option’, the crap Romney saddled us with is worthless as most healthcare providers refuse to accept it.]
On Capitol Hill, the fate of the health care legislation was highly uncertain as Democratic leaders quickly gathered to plot strategy in the wake of the Republican victory. [Left unanswered is why they waited so long? They let the majority slip through their fingers…but they have fumbled repeatedly on other issues as well.]
Sentiment about how to proceed was mixed, with several lawmakers saying the House would not accept the Senate-passed plan. Top officials had said that approach was the party’s best alternative, and many members said they still believed it was crucial that Democrats pass a plan. [Note what passes for ‘conventional wisdom’ coming from the same idiots who want you to believe Massachusetts has ‘nothing to gain’ from the healthcare reform bill!]
“It is important for us to pass legislation,” said Representative Baron P. Hill, a conservative Democrat from Indiana.
Reporting was contributed by Katie Zezima, Danielle Ossher and Bret Silverberg in Massachusetts, and Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn in Washington.
Understand good citizen if we get saddled with an ‘insurance mandate’ like we have here in Massachusetts, it will force a large number of people into making some extremely difficult choices. It’s no longer ‘heat or eat’, it becomes ‘buy insurance OR pay for heat OR pay for food’…because if you can’t do two, you sure as shit can’t do all three!
Worse, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that the ‘mandated insurance’ will provide you with blanket health coverage. You can get insurance today that only costs a hundred dollars a month. The ‘catch’ is the first hundred thousand dollars is all you!
You are only insured if a ‘catastrophe’ strikes, like you break every bone in your body, forcing you to spend the next six months in traction and the following six months in rehab.
In the strange alchemy of insurance, you’re covered…just not for very much.
Let’s suppose a hundred dollars a month is too rich for your blood, your only economic support comes from food stamps, you don’t have any money. Well, surprise, surprise, if you don’t have money, you can still get coverage…it’s just that the coverage is next to useless. You can see a doctor but the first problem with that is finding a doctor/clinic that will accept your basically free healthcare plan. There may not be anybody in your state (or in any of the surrounding states) who is willing to treat you. There might be somebody two states away but then transportation becomes an issue…nevermind ‘timeliness’. Clinics are only required to service just so many ‘indigent’ patients, once they’ve satisfied this requirement, they can thumb their nose at you as they turn you away.
If there isn’t enough service to go around, tough, it’s not their problem, it’s yours!
Which is to ask why should this be any different?
The only ‘perspective’ to add here is it’s no accident we have the oldest government on the planet…not because it works so well, nobody is buying that horse pucky, but because the status quo is so firmly entrenched.
You certainly don’t need me to tell you that ‘entrenched = corrupt’, that’s axiomatic.
If we are to turn things around, we need to start over from scratch with a brand new crew and a new way of doing things.
Nothing less will succeed.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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