The Glade 4.0

I'm guessing he meant EMTALA, but then again, this is the internet, so who knows....

*chuckle* Apparently, Perry agrees with me:

Those comments are ironic given his stance on the death penalty.

I figured he meant the National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes.

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Hardly.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

that is awesome on GP.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

This is the single most rational post I have read in months.

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What the **** does "letting people die" mean? Millions of people die every year all over the world, and I've never personally intervened to save any of them. Am I guilty of letting people die?

Aren't democrats just as guilty as the government for "letting people die" when they don't step in to help the uninsured out with their hospital bills? Why is the government the only one we hold responsible?

What kind of sentiments are those? I realize it's convenient for you to believe that republicans cheer the death of (fake) sick people, it's an easy one to knock down. The cheers though are derived from a refusal to be lead down the path Blitzers hypothetical was taking Dr Paul, not any bloodlust.

It's a common tactic to frame the questions to herd people into agreeing with socialized medicine, affirmative action, anti-poverty programs, education programs and on down the line. If you dont agree with the liberal position you hate kids, minorities, sick people etc. This is completely segregated from how effective the proposal is. Is there anyone here with a shred of intellectual honesty that doesn't acknowledge the race card or charges of heartlessness is a standard club for liberals? I mean just look at this thread or the title of the youtube clip heh.

So when Blitzers imaginary person with a good job but no insurance gets sick, the sought after response is "yes someone should help him". This is what liberals want, someone to take care of them NO MATTER WHAT they do. Left alone is the question of how retarded you would have to be to buy healthcare if someone will help you no matter what, bringing us to mandates, and more forced payments at the point of a gun.. but I digress.

The cheers then, were for Paul rejecting the trap question and highlighting the fact that this fictitious douche is at fault. He had the means but chose not to buy insurance, then got burned. Should he die for that mistake? No. This is where charities and churches come in.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

This, too.

"Letting people die" is such an absurd notion. Insurance companies let the insured die, too. You know why? Because we can't afford to spend billions of dollars of resources on every single human life.

I look at our 24% GDP health care industry, and boggle. It's unbelievable to me that we're spending this much, mostly on trying to extend life, and we're barely even seeing the baby boomers retire, yet.

Can we sustain an economy where 50% of our resources go into extending life for people no longer generating productive economic activity? How about 75%? We, as a society, need to get over our impulse to extend "feel-good" aid to create a "right to care," and really think about the economic and logistical realities involved.

And that's not because I want anybody to die. That's because death is a natural part of life, and our capability is outpacing our feasibility in health care, and nobody is willing to acknowledge that because they'd rather demand we provide them with everything that is medically possible.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

"Letting people die" is a poorly worded and sensationalist phrase. It doesn't make sense because everybody dies regardless of whether you 'let' them, but the implication here is people can be saved from this fate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_life_span

Whatever happened to the concept of tort reform? Wouldn't that cut down significantly on health care costs by lowering malpractice insurance and eliminating the need for defensive medicine?

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Dem's will never ever ever touch tort reform. The trial lawyers money is too sweet.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

RangerDave:

If a person cheers a politician when they declare support for abortion rights, are they cheering for the act of abortion?

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Ooooooo...that's a good question...

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I'd be happy with lifestyle segregation by the providers. BMI is in morbidly obese range? Here's your rate. Smoker? Here's yours. Annual checkup shoes liver damage due to heavy drinking? Here ya go-ahead and BTW don't expect a transplant anytime soon.
If I can find the article, it gave the costs of just obesity in the US. Its astronomical.

But then the whole obamacare falls apart again when you can't steal resources from the healthy and give sick or those who make poor choices.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I'm good with that but I still want to see medical tort reform.

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That is a good question, Stathol, and the answer is yes, in circumstances analogous to the ones in those clips, they would be cheering for (or, at best, evidencing moral blindness to) the act of abortion. I'm glad you brought this up, actually, because I think it's a useful analogy for those arguing against my point to consider as well.

For the capital punishment clip, imagine the moderator at a Democratic debate notes, "Your state has paid for 234 abortions, more than any other governor in modern times...." and the Democratic crowd applauds. You don't think Republicans and conservatives would be bothered by that? You don't think that applause shows a moral blindspot on the part of the Dem audience with respect to the 234 dead fetuses involved?

For the health care clip, imagine the moderator at a Democratic debate says, "A woman with no medical problems and a perfectly healthy fetus decides she wants to have a late-term abortion just because she doesn't want to pay the $200 or $300 a month for childcare. Should she be allowed to do that?" The Dem candidate hems and haws for a bit about advice and options, but then says, "That's what freedom is all about, making your own choices." The crowd applauds and cheers. The moderator continues, "But Conressman, are you saying that society should just let her abort the baby?" And some folks in the crowd shout, "Yeah!" Again, don't you think the right would go to **** town on the Dems for that one? And don't you think they'd have a legitimate point?

Personally, I find much of the rhetoric and enthusiasm for abortion rights on the left to be morally reprehensible. Pro-choice advocates are often so zealous in their defense of a woman's right to control her own body that they render the fetus virtually invisible for moral and legal purposes, either explicitly by denying that a fetus is a person at all or implicitly by simply ignoring the interests of the fetus and pretending the "woman's right to choose" is the only issue involved. I feel that Republicans and conservatives do the same thing these days with respect to "personal responsibility" and "tough on crime/terror" issues - they cheer the principle they're so zealous about while basically ignoring the actual effects and moral implications of applying that principle in a given context.

What about the Republican acid?


Tough crowd.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Those millions of people aren't American. When Americans are at an immediate risk of dying, you basically are expected to intervene, either personally or through government as a proxy. If someone is suicidal, or through negligence/stupidity is going to do something that seriously endangers their life, and you break down their door and stop them, are you getting nailed for trespassing/property damage/etc.? No, you're not. The cops can do it too, perfectly legally.

Them not being American seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction. Are you okay with letting people die just because they didn't have the good fortune to be born in the US?

And we're not talking about people committing suicide, these are people with long term health problems that need teams of doctors and nurses providing them with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars worth of services to save their lives. And they're dying. We're letting them die right now. I just looked up some stats and they say somewhere in the range of 20-40 thousand Americans are dying every year because they lack insurance.

Are we not all "letting them die"? I bet if every supporter of Obamacare got together and pooled all their savings, sold all their luxuries and expensive houses and took on as much debt as they possibly could and lived very minimalist lifestyles, they could pay to treat those people who are dying and save their lives. But they're not doing that. No one is (er, I guess there probably are some who do). We're all letting them die. How can we put the blame solely on the government when we ourselves have the capacity to help but refuse to do so?

I don't buy that interpretation of the cheers, and more generally, I disagree with the idea that pointing out the unpleasant consequences of a candidate's policy preferences is a "trap question" (or in Palin-speak, a "gotcha question"). It's just forcing the candidate to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality of what he/she is advocating. By all means, ask Dems who defend late-term abortion questions that go into graphic detail; point out that demanding tougher environmental standards in trade deals will result in more poverty abroad; highlight the fact that socializing medicine may reduce innovation and increase waiting times; etc., etc. And hold Reps' feet to the fire on their issues too. Make politicians actually confront and defend the reality of what their policies will entail, and then let voters decide what they think of the real answers instead of the consequence-free pablum they're fed now.

*ETA: The one caveat I would add to the above, though, is that the question should illuminate the likely consequences, not some fanciful hypo with no basis in reality. Hence, the "ticking time-bomb nuke in an orphanage in Times Square justifies torture" question is just stupid. But the correct candidate response in those cases is to point out how stupid the question is, not to simply regurgitate talking points and applause lines.


This is an annoying rhetorical device Republicans and conservatives have adopted lately. Aizle was "forced at the point of a gun" to pay for a war he opposed. I'm "forced at the point of a gun" to pay for the administration of capital punishment I disagree with. Everyone is "forced at the point of a gun" to pay taxes for sh*t they don't like. It's part of living in a democracy (or a Republic for those who wish to quibble) - either you buy into the concept of non-unanimous decision-making or you don't, and if you don't, you have bigger problems than an objection to one particular policy or another.

An inconvenient truth, indeed.

Also, for those who would do this, for whom would you? A 30 year old struggling with breast cancer? A 50 year old with lung cancer? A 50 year old with prostate cancer? A 75 year old with degenerative heart failure? A 90 year old recovering from their 5th stroke?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

****

That's a curious false dilemma ...

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