COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Half Truth of Forty Million Without Health Insurance



Technically it is true, but in practical terms, everyone on the planet has a de facto call against the US health care system.

38 comments:

  1. That is a tale told along the frontier and, I'd venture to say in NYCity and Chicago. Anywhere there is a large population of unauthorized residents residing in a community.

    Of the forty million uninsured, well over a third of those Americans are undocumented residents, from any one of the other countries that comprise America, along with US.

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  2. That's "interesting," I guess. In an academic type of way.

    Folks, you don't have any idea how badly those 15, or 20 Million people that can't get/afford health insurance are getting beat up.

    I can think of no viable society in history that allowed any of its members to go without a, more or less, average amount of "health care."

    In your most primitive societies the Shaman treats the powerless to approx. the same extent as he does the elites. If he didn't he would be the recently-departed shaman.

    We have MILLIONS of citizens suffering from debilitating (but, not quite life-threatening) health conditions. They can't get health insurance, or a job that would provide it, thus, they can't get "cured."

    These MILLIONS of sick have families. They, and their families, are creating a voting bloc of TENS OF MILLIONS. The size of this voting bloc means the problem WILL be rectified. And, unfortunately, it's going to be rectified by the Democrats.

    The GOP might be wandering in the wilderness for an awfully long time.

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  3. Damn, I wish I'd bought those Citi shares. I'd be up $3,000.00 in a day.

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  4. Yesterday I bought GE january 2010 $7.50 calls. It is not too late to do that.

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  5. Actually, Every damned thing looks good right now. (except Chrysler, of course.)

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  6. GE actually manufactures things...such as infrastructure...that stock belongs in the twenties..take a shot on the 2010 $20 calls...

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  7. Thanks, I'll take a look at it.

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  8. Public Transport Ridership Hits 52 Year High | Consumer Energy Report

    http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2009/03/09/public-transport-ridership-hits-52-year-high/

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  9. Thanks, I'll take a look at it.
    ==

    Don't forget to lookup the term countertrend rally.

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  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  11. The entire "Immigration Reform" issue will be solved, soon now.

    Wrapped up in Health Care and Economics. You fellas will pine for the days of the Bush Amnesty proposal and letting illegals have drivers licenses.

    Watch and see.

    Learn it, live it, love it.

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  12. Ahh, it may belong in the 20's, but the market knows best, if those GE shares were being held as collateral for a loan, it'd be being called, now.

    While the cash flow value of the assets would tell a different tale.

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  13. March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said his bank is having the best quarter since 2007, when it last posted a profit. The shares rose as much as 38 percent and helped spur gains for finance company stocks.

    “I am most encouraged with the strength of our business so far in 2009,” Pandit wrote in an internal memorandum obtained today by Bloomberg. “We are profitable through the first two months of 2009 and are having our best quarter-to-date performance since the third quarter of 2007.”

    Citigroup has logged five quarters of losses totaling more than $37.5 billion since it posted a $2.1 billion profit in the third quarter of 2007. Once the world’s biggest bank by market value, it fell below $1 in New York trading last week for the first time as investors lost confidence that the shares can recover after losses and a government rescue.

    “I am, like you, disappointed with our current stock price and the broad-based misperceptions about our company and its financial position,” Pandit, 52, said in the memo, adding that the price doesn’t reflect the New York-based bank’s capital strength and earnings potential.

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  14. 39. buddy larsen:


    i think they just suspended m2m –

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  15. The forces of Mordor shall be defeated.

    The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken 9 August 1973, next to one of his favourite trees (a European Black Pine) in the Botanic Garden, Oxford.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Jrrt_1972_tree.jpg

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  16. The 10 Major Newspapers That Will Either Fold or Go Digital Next - TIME

    http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883785,00.html

    http://snipurl.com/djddp
    ==

    Zero credibility = Zero readership

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  17. S&P to bottom at 600 points in October: Merrill | Reuters

    http://www.reuters.com/article/pressReleasesMolt/idUSTRE5286PT20090309

    http://snipurl.com/dje4i
    ==

    Who's up for a pissing contest?

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  18. Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ.

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  19. Which doesn't mean everyone's one the same wavelength.

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  20. Low volume. Not much of a short squeeze. Traders are now selling into the rally. Everyone is back to cash.

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  21. I am observing the tell tale M shape formation in my DOW Live Chart right before closing uptick. This is a dead giveaway of what's coming. I have observed this in my dart throwing too.

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  22. Zero credibility = Zero readership

    ==

    No more JPOST for me. That leftist homo paper is now forbotten on my computer, and I told them so.

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  23. Check out the classic M formation Here right before the closing uptick.

    Dead giveaway.

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  24. All in all, pretty good day. Depression's over already.

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  25. Bob, youz da expert:
    What's 'inflation depression'?

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  26. I've been saying for some time that those "toxic" assets have to be throwing off a whole lot of cash.

    Look, they took a $Nine Billion Writedown for "Goodwill" last quarter.

    I'm not calling a "moonshot," here. I'm just saying Citi stock will be worth a lot more in a year than it is now.

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  27. I've Got a Feeling

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcuvjYxYJz0

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  28. Bob, youz da expert:
    What's 'inflation depression'?


    Dat be when youz get old 'n fat.

    Like da Ruby sez we all be.

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  29. US Bear Market Losses: $11 Trillion Dollars | The Big Picture

    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/bear-market-losses-11-trillion-dollars/

    http://snipurl.com/djvhu
    ==

    So a guesstimate of about $100 trillion in worldwide loses, should be about right.

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  30. Well, Ruby is wrong. And when we blast thru the bike trails on Mt Carmel, we be hard working our ebikes to prove her so. :)

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  31. David Frim, writing in Newsweak

    ... Here's what I wrote: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party.

    Here's Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party." What a great endorsement for Rush! … But what about the rest of the party? Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

    On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

    And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

    Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

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  34. Mr Frum continues, with tiddy bits of knowledge that strengthens my general impression of the political situation and the tendlines we've been living.

    This particular one should be of interest to our host, as it is his home State, and to anyone else seeking to unseat the Democrat majorities, sometime before 2060.


    Political strategists used to talk about a GOP "lock" on the presidency because of the Republican hold on the big Sun Belt states: California, Texas, Florida. Republicans won California in every presidential election from 1952 through 1988 (except the Goldwater disaster of 1964). Democrats have won California in the five consecutive presidential elections since 1988.

    In 1984 Reagan won young voters by 20 points; the elder Bush won voters under 30 again in 1988. Since that year, the Democrats have won the under-30 vote in five consecutive presidential elections. Voters who turned 20 between 2000 and 2005 are the most lopsidedly Democratic age cohort in the electorate. If they eat right, exercise and wear seat belts, they will be voting against George W. Bush well into the 2060s.

    Between 2004 and 2008, Democrats more than doubled their party-identification advantage in Pennsylvania. A survey of party switchers in the state found that a majority of the reaffiliating voters had belonged to the GOP for 20 years or more. They were educated and affluent. More than half of those who left stated that the GOP had become too extreme.


    ...

    McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

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