OCinBuffalo

On target. But, Bernie is going to be accused of being a bad journalist again... Go ahead far-left turds: tell us how you are FOR free speech. Is this more offensive than some gay guy showing off his rear end? How come you will defend the latter, but not the former? And, for the PC turds I have argued with regarding the obvious problems with Islam: Bravo! Aren't you glad you got your way today? This is what you are really FOR, so rejoice! One more person who is able to cut through your PC crap gets the axe. You should all be proud of yourselves today. While you are at it, you should take this opportunity to remind us that Islam doesn't have real problems, and that terrorists are Arabs, not Muslim.

Awesome! But hardly shocking. You see, Obama is an ideologue, which means your willingness to be in lock step with his socialist(is anyone still trying to deny this?) ideology is FAR more important than your qualifications for a specific post. In fact, we haven't seen somebody push ideology to this extent, instead of solutions, since Jimmy Carter. The closest Bush came to something like this is trying to appoint his lawyer to the supreme court. But...most judges are experienced lawyers, and she was a very good and experienced lawyer so...not really near as bad. My speculation: Obama is tired of hearing from professional soldiers/sailors/marines/spooks regarding national security, because all of them know the proper way to conduct war, and it doesn't fit Obama's ideology. He is just realizing now that his world view doesn't fit with reality, and he doesn't like it. Obama is interested in having someone tell him what he wants to hear. Obama wants this to guy shield him from the professionals, while serving as the bearer of bad news to them, while also keeping Obama out of the line of fire.

1. This has the potential to become a major friggin problem, regardless of which source it is coming from. Nice to see the Barney Frank Deflector Shields are 100% operational though. 2. Trucking/Grocery/etc. = We are talking about food/gas/replacement parts distribution. 3. The words "civil unrest" are the nice way to refer to what will happen when there is no food to fulfill Pelosi's "more food stamps" plan. Cash will trump stamps, and then... 4. Once again we see the effect of failed economic ethos being allowed to spawn lots of small-medium turds, year after year, unchecked. The combination of these turds now has the potential to create a monster turd sandwich that we will all have to eat, in lieu of food of course. 5. Once again this is the fault of Union largess. Ask any .com veteran if they expected the successful .coms to be liable for the failed one's pension plans. Absurd. This is f'ing abusrd. 6. Worst of all: this has the potential to finally kill the labor unions in this country, which is shameful, period. The fact that this "last man standing" thing has even been allowed to be contemplated, never mind followed, is dumbfounding. This of course leaves me with questions: Aren't these the "policies of the past"? Aren't these the things that happened under the Republican's watch? If so, then isn't it reasonable to assume, if we are to take Obama at his word, that he will immediately push for laws that abolish this "last man standing" rule/policy/law/whatever? Since, we "can't go back to what got us here"?

Yet, amazingly, according to your premise, the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. How do you explain this astonishing act of self-control, without any manufactured and branded hysteria to enforce it?

They are talking about Dick Cheney shooting that guy, in detail. Hell they spent 5 minutes on this, with of course, the obligatory Chris Matthews dullard "insight": "This guy got shot by accident, but the Iraq war wasn't, according to (garbled), 64k people died in the Iraq War" Cheney shooting a guy, and the Iraq War. Holy 2006, batman. <- And you wonder why I have the word FUTILITY written under his picture? And again, we have to ask "Is this the best you can do?" Hysterical.

So basically, you are for the "piss Everybody off" platform. Nice.

My attempt to start trouble is FAIL. "You are welcome" even. EPIC Fail. Tom's attempt to start trouble is FAIL. Perhaps we should keep this Kumbaya thread going, just to provide a warm, safe, hippie drum circle environment here on PPP.

No, tool, the things that JFK fought for. The things that unions USED to stand for. This comment simply confirms the fact that Democrats like you have no clue what being a Democrat is all about. By pushing a health care abortion that will raise their insurance rates, or strip them of health care altogether? By doing NOTHING to fix the economy? By doing everything that doesn't help the middle class? Who do you think is out of a job/underemployed right now? The college professors? The trial lawyers? The government employee union bosses? The limousine liberals in Manhattan? The government administration people? No. The middle class is bearing the burden here, and they are doing it so the leftist special interests get their political and financial pay-offs. I don't hate Obama. I don't hate anybody. I am not you, and your ridiculous President hating derangement syndrome belongs to you alone. I am about performance. Pelosi's/Reed's since 2006 has been piss poor, and therefore, it's moving day. This election is about Congress, not Obama. We'll see how Obama peforms. He still has 2 years to get his act together. Then prepare for 20 more years of losing, especially if a certain governor from Indiana gets runs for President in 2012. You won't even listen to one of the key guys that got Clinton elected, and re-elected. Carville doesn't know what he is talking about? Clinton sucks? Because as LA says, you can't compose an original thought. And, like I say, you aren't familiar with the material we talk about. You have demonstrated your lack of knowledge on so many subjects I lost count long ago. You consistently demonstrate your lack of critical thinking skills, and grasp of logic, almost every time you post. You keep getting shellacked, because you keep falling into one logic trap after the next. You want us to respect your opinion? STOP getting your opinion from internet hack sites and MSNBC. READ something authoritative, learn it, and then base something, anything, you say on that understanding. You are screaming for education, go get some. If you care about all this stuff so much, go figure out how it actually works for real, for yourself, and then go do it for a living. The problem conner, is that you don't honestly know if I am shoveling crap at you or not. Think about that. You have no idea. I could tell you that rent control makes apartments cost more, or cost less, or has no effect, and you wouldn't really know which one is true. I could tell you that 2 standard deviations = 20%. I could tell you that raw data collection is the single biggest problem in Health Care IT. You wouldn't know anything about any of it. But worst of all, I could tell you that monkeys are used to determine the Fed's funds rate, and as long as the monkeys were far-left Democrats who hate Clinton, you would agree with me.

No. !@#$ the idiots who have taken the Democratic party so far off its message and it's traditional values that it has become unrecognizable. Democrats have inexplicably, and inexcusably, given up their #1 issue: "The economy, stupid!" That's stupid alright. You understand that right now I think Clinton would have been a better President than both McCain and Obama, right? Why? Because she is about winning, including everybody, because she is really about staying in power. Tools like you are the reason the Democratic party is where it is. Change the behavior. Don't blame everybody else. Get back to REALLY representing the middle class, all of it, and things will get better. Keep pushing this enviro-socialist UN extortion racket, victimhood = entitlement, gay/femninazi agenda, which has little to do with the middle class, and things will get worse. Every Democrat has to make this choice, and the results they get will be determined by it. Christ, listen to James Carville and Pat Caddell->he was on Nixon's enemies list...good enough for you?

In all honesty, it comes down to money. They aren't getting money from independents anymore. They have effectively cut themselves off from all business money(did it to themselves, again), even though they enjoyed a serious advantage on Wall Street. They aren't even getting money from George Soros The only people giving them money are the absolute wingnuts. + "Money controls the message." = Obama etc. are speaking wingnut now. There's no shortage of Hollywood producer types, Upper West Side trust fund babies, and feminazis that want to outlaw straight sex. Yeah, these people have a lot in common with the "average American" and the "middle class". They will never admit they are wrong about socialism, belong to the Church of Environtology, and want every non-white male to be entitled to everything. They will pay gobs of cash to defend their nonsense to the last Congressional seat. Their voices are who you are hearing now. Enjoy. Edit: meanwhile, reasonable Democrats whose focus really is on the middle class, protecting American jobs, protecting American interests abroad, looking out for the poor, and making sure we don't play favorites anywhere....are about to get chucked.

Guess I should have included EEI(how did I forget? ) in my list of "somebody will come here and say something dopey" posters.

This is an automated response. This topic is already being discussed in another thread...6 threads away. Please read the friggin' board before you post new threads. Thank you, turd.

I'm sure it's not somewhere, but everywhere, and, the swing district/state Congress people have have been saying that on every single issue for the last 2 years. How many more "initiatives" from Democrats, that end up getting them the exact opposite of what they intend, is it going to take before they realize that they have the wrong methods? Who knows? But honestly, these are the same people that handled gay marriage, so what do you expect?

Crap. But, questions: 1. Is there some way to tally up the cost as we go? And, can't we stick them with the original state costs? 2. Can we make them pay into Federal Reserve type thing, that uses the money for public defenders, thus allowing for "victimhood" transference? Nice, I knew I could count on you for the lulz.

Take that, and add: the people who file these ridiculous lawsuits should have to pay for the cost of them in full, and we agree. Cripes there's too much agreement in this thread. We need conner/peace/..lybob/Dave Norfalk to come in here and say something dopey as per normal.

Is that the best you can do? The funny part is: I couldn't care less about the Republican party. I have never worked for them, and have never voted for them. The only people I have worked for are Democrats. The only people I have voted for are Democrats. But, this reality doesn't matter, because I won't put up with environtology, Obamacare, or any other leftist BS, and that means I love Republicans.

No it is 100% a problem, all day every day, since health care is a 24 hour/365 business, and that's what people who haven't been smelling the fine scent of poop at 3am on a Saturday because they have been observing health care business process for the last 15 years don't understand. Your example doesn't come close to defining this issue. Your understanding of this problem is severely limited. I will try to help. You think the "cost" is limited to a "test" for "you". Wrong. The costs DO NOT end with the cost of the test itself and providers serve 10s fo Ks every year. All these tests cost materials, additional staff if we are always testing everything , additional managers for the additional staff, benefits for all, additional administrative costs for all, requiring additional administrative staff, additional reporting to the government, requiring additional administrative staff, additional management oversight of the reporting activity, hell most providers have dedicated staffs just for this, additional time spent describing the results to the patient, which means less effective time for docs and nurses and finally data overload for Docs/RNs that makes their decision making process take much longer. You are acting like this is no big deal. Wrong. And additional tests only account for 20% of the problem. This, and the fact that the average provider can't manage at a high level because management isn't what they went to school for, coupled with the constant change management challenges, is why the cost of health care keeps rising. This starts with government/lawyer buffoonery, and only ENDS with insurance companies raising rates. You think that we are talking about doing "a few" additional tests. Wrong. In most cases, lawyers will get a nurse to describe every possible protocol that has even a remote chance of being related to the patient, and if the doc didn't order every single one? Negligence. There can be 100s of tests that need to be done to attenuate this. Those 100s of tests only exacerbate the issues I described above. Get it? No, your point is that you now realize you are dealing with somebody who knows this content cold, and now you are deflecting by trying to talk about the process and communication. Spare me. It's not possible for you to truly agree with me, because you don't know this material. It's like agreeing that the sun will come up tomorrow, but not knowing why. Keep wailing at dawn, medicine man. Again, I deal with provider business process. I don't deal with who gets to be a customer and why. That is clinical stuff and we intentionally don't do clinical. There are already too many clinical systems out there, and few of them are any good at solving the obvious business problems confronting health care. Sorry, I don't deal with BS very well. Never have. A guy in NYC just introduced me yesterday as "my No BS consultant". It's my job to cut through the crap and start solving the problem immediately. If you want niceties, you are looking in the wrong place, especially on this issue. I am much more amiable on the football board.

Round 2 on the yikes thing. I couldn't have said it any better.

Is that the best you can do?

So, I'm not wrong am I? Trial Lawyers are the main root cause of defensive medicine. The lesser root cause? The government surveyors. Defensive medicine has secondary and tertiary associated costs that would take 4 pages to fully list, and another 10 to define how we get rid of them. We have this document. It's part of what we send to clients I have the data and the experience. You have: "it doesn't look like they are the biggest" - is that supposed to be empirical evidence? I KNOW this stuff because I see it right in front of me, not what I think it "looks like". Defensive medicine, including all its effects, dependencies, etc., is accounting for 40-50% of the tasks where we find wasted $$$. You have: something you read from somebody who doesn't know a thing about how my job works. Look, it's not your fault. There are so many political trolls and amateurs posing as (insert consulting role here) in health care, when it comes to objectively discussing it's business processes, or even knowing how to do that properly, most of what you hear is utter crap. You don't solve business problems with clinical studies = HHS grants to Ph.D turds. You solve them with proven business design patterns. EDIT: Talking about EMRs and Integration(Obama) only solves 20% of this problem, and it's all for crap if the raw data that these systems depend on stinks, because the process of recording it is massively convoluted by government/lawyer/amateur IT buffoonery...which it exactly the case right now. I have no problem with sound regulation in health care. I have every problem with MORE retarded quality assurance systems forcibly implemented by amateurs in health care = Obamacare. I specifically noted that there are MANY cost problems, not one. I see your little backpedal above. That's fine, as long as you understand both that post and this one is about making it simple for people to understand, rather than invoking every gory detail. My very existence makes me right. I wouldn't be doing this if I was wrong, because nobody would f'ing pay us. This is not about "how I argue". This is about: you don't really know much about this issue, went googling for any straw to grasp, and out of the entire thing I wrote, this is all you could find. Apparently this is about: how YOU argue.

Y'know, I am sitting here, enjoying seeing these miners get hauled out....and then this crap comes along. Good. I was getting all sentimental. Time to shake that off and smoke a new "I know about Health Care because I read MoveOn.org" dweeb. Sorry, I have a hard time with stupidity(a choice) based on blatant ignorance(not a choice), or willful distortion. Instance #1 of leaving out the facts that don't support your position. The #1 cause of health care cost is: trial lawyers. That's right, the people who give the Democratic party most of their campaign money. Now, you think it's a f'ing coincidence that Obamacare has exactly 0 tort reform? Yes, Democrats have really taken the "morally superior" position here... I will give you a pass on this post, but from now on, don't spew your phony moral superiority arguments here. The #2 cause of health care cost is: lack of competition amongst insurance companies. Why doesn't Obamacare allow insurance companies across state lines? Simple: another payoff to the other constituency that pays for campaigns. Labor unions own insurance companies in many states and interstate commerce will put those union-owned insurance companies out of business. The #3 cause of health care cost is: useless or barely effective government regulators/regulations. The government has added infinitely dumber ways to uselessly complicate care delivery, and they are almost certain to require 10s of ks of additional government employees to continue this silly attempt at micromanagement. Dealing with this spam is partially what I do for a very nice living, go ahead and argue with me. So, Obamacare does a great job cutting cost....if you take out the top 3? Retarded. Regarding the rest of the world: they suck compared to us. You are acting as if the rest of the world gets the same quality of care we do. That's blatantly false. Get some real #s from HHS on cancer survival. Why do all the wealthy people from the "socialist paradises" you love come here for care? Answer: You get what you pay for. Even you, as a economic neophyte(proved later) should understand that basic tenet. Look, you have proven you don't even know half of what you need to know to have a reasonable opinion on Obamacare. As I said, not all of it is bad, but so much of it is retarded that it needs to be completely overhauled. The "meaningful use" standards(FAIL) are a perfect example of the buffoonery at work here. I can say that because I have learned this material. You have not. Instance #2 of leaving out facts that don't support your position. I love how your "history" starts with Reagan, as though he wasn't cleaning up after a giant f-tard, Mr. Stagflation: Jimmy Carter. In fact, Jimmy Carter was the LAST TIME WE TRIED THIS KEYNESIAN NONSENSE. Of course Reagan had to spend money on Defense...WE WERE ABOUT TO LOSE THE COLD WAR DUE TO 30 YEARS OF DEMOCRAT CONTROL OF CONGRESS AND A DILETTANTE IN THE WHITE HOUSE. I love how Democrats still live in Carter-Denial. Don't worry all: we are about to see this generation's worst president. Then they can spend the next 20 years pretending Obama '= FAIL. Economic Neophyte Statement 1, Instance #4 of leaving out the facts that don't support your position. Yes, slappy, because we are no longer taxing 91% of income after the first 400k. So, by definition, they are going to make more money. We no longer have a capital gains tax of 40%, that wasn't adjusted for the Carter inflation of the day, that made it near 100%. What you are proving here? Something we already knew: the Democrats of the 70's were idiots, and they almost destroyed this country. What else? Reagan's supply side measures were extreme, but they were the only way to clean up the mess left by Carter and the rest of the Retards. Supply side has always worked, long term. Keynesian has always failed, long term. None of this changes the fact that SSI needs to be reformed, Medicaid has been bastardized, and Medicare = EPIC FAIL. Assuming Obamacare is repealed, these three programs constitute problem #1 for the deficit. If we don't reform them, then this entire argument is a waste of time. And they wonder why I call them morons. Economic Neophyte Statement 2 The economy is not a 0 sum game, but you tools keep propagating this myth so that you can invoke these tired(as in Jimmy Carter tired), old, class warfare mantras. When I started my company I didn't take anything away from anybody else. Hell, the best of my knowledge I don't have any serious competitors...so, exactly whose "pie" am I taking? Answer: nobody's! There is no law of "Conservation of Pie" here. If I am not taking any pie...then I must be creating pie. If pie can be created, then your argument is retarded. Our economic realities are not the same as in 1973. We live in a global economy and, that leaves your "pie" argument no place to hide. The wage "problem" has nothing to do with losing pie. Rather, it has everything to do with the emergence of 3rd world economies. Auto workers in Detroit, who make 70k a year are facing strong competition from autoworkers who make 70k every 10 years, if they are lucky, in the 3rd world. There is no evil conspiracy here...just basic economics, which you clearly don't know, running it's course. Leopold is an idiot. So is Kirkpatrick. These are specious arguments at best. Purposeful distortions more likely. The CEO job has changed drastically since 1973. The typical union job has not. CEOs have to do 5x more now than they did back in the day, and, with the consolidation of corporations and globalization, the average CEO burns out in 4 years. The average union employee expects to collect a pension for 40 years. Who are we supposed to be pissed at again? This is about stockholders, and what they are willing to pay. If you don't like what a CEO is getting paid, and you don't own stock in his/her company? This doesn't concern you. You don't get to complain if you don't even play the game. More people own stock(50% of the country), thus participate directly in Capitalism, than ever in the history of this country. I guarantee you they don't want some half-ass running the companies they invest in. Again, you get what you pay for. Not if they don't want the TEA party all over them they won't. Again you are misinformed. The Republicans didn't act like Republicans for the last 10 years. I agree that if they go back to what they were doing in 2000-2006 we will be in trouble. I guarantee you this will not happen. The TEA party isn't going to go away, and Boehner, etc. have been put on notice. If they don't deliver as fiscal conservatives, they won't get past their primaries, never mind worrying about the general election. Warren Buffet is playing CYA for supporting an obvious EPIC FAIL in Obama. He is simply trying to protect his brand(Buffett '= FAIL). He knows damn well that he needs to play damage control game for the next year, followed by quietly giving money to both sides in 2012. Every business person knows that taking away investment capital in a recession is retarded. Buffett knows this too, but, continuing the Obama nonsense costs him nothing right now. He paid his money, he gets to play his song, for now. Ultimately, you can't treat Buffett's business opinions the same as his political opinions. They aren't based on the same premises. We want people to invest in the economy, yesterday. They aren't going to take risks if you take away their rewards. This is the most basic of financial and economic concepts, proving once and for all that you don't know this material. You are an economic neophyte that gets their "info" from f'ing blogs and hacks who have never worked in or run a business, and one(1) real business guy who is playing you. None of these thoughts are yours, you are just copy/pasting. I don't care about any of this. Social issues are a waste of time, and the government should ignore all of them. Government should focus on what is written in the Constitution, get that right first, and then move on to other things. I don't like anybody telling anybody else how to live, and, I don't like minorities telling majorities how to think. Ultimately we live in a "majority rules" country, and we live in a "don't give a f" country when the economy is in trouble. Term limits is fine by me. The rest of what you wrote is pure BS. For every Republican you can find that is corrupt, I can find at least one Democrat, so spare me the moral superiority argument. These Democrats have proven that they don't know how to govern, and that they don't even know the basics. Show me some new Democrats that have real business experience, and aren't trying to play Communist by redistributing wealth instead of solving problems, and I will listen to what they have to say. Right now though? These Democrats = The Party of No Clue.

The Whiff! Watch Stripes, focus on John Candy.

My takeaway from this thread is: Shieffer is on to something. After terabytes of scurrilous, that inevitably turn into specious, conner, etc. threads/posts since we didn't find WMD in Iraq, all resulting in Epic Fail, we must also ask, "Is this the best you can do?". All this crap is nothing. Wait until June 2011. I said it would get like this 6 months ago. 6 months from now, it will be even worse. The far-left simply will not apply reasoned introspection to themselves, and they will continue to blame everyone else instead of their horrible methods. They are a giant, steaming pile of Fail. If the Republicans are the Party of No, the Democrats are the Party of No Clue.

Seriously? That's seems goofy to me. All that does is raise insurance rates and therefore take money away from any proposed expansion. What would you say to having an Chief Executive Association, like the Bar Association, except one that was actually non-partisan politically, and a little more effective? Just curious.

Regarding Finance stuff? I have yet to see anything that Magox posts that is factually deficient. The problem is, again, that Magox has a formal education in this material....and you have what, exactly? Is Magox right? Is coloring books a valid analogy? Go ahead and tell us exactly what he is saying that is factually inaccurate. Skip the party politics stuff and just tell me what you know.