JABbering Stooge

It’s official: Gangster capitalism has reached the cancerous stage.

It just feels like the fix is in for the average guy every where you look these days. The top story at the Times now is the market surge because there was bad news for the dollar. What is bad for America is good for the Wall Street boys.

Meanwhile, one party in Congress is completely devoted to defending the rights of insurance companies to screw their customers, the ratings agencies have paid no price for their part in the meltdown last year and are still slapping triple A ratings on anything that moves so that the big swinging dicks on Wall Street can swindle pension funds out of their holdings — I’m really looking forward to that hoocoodanode/come to Jesus in a few years. The pension funds are already horribly underfunded, social security [sic] is strained because employment is so bad that people are collecting benefits early, setting the stage for the Republicans to push through some way to tinker with social security, benefits are running out for a lot of people collecting unemployment and the jobs market has not recovered, and banks are failing left and right and Congress decided the banks didn’t need to pay fees to the FDIC for a decade or so.

But hey — Goldman is turning a profit. Fuck it all.

Why does Wall Street hate America?

First the Rockefeller amendment to put a public option into the Max Baucus (D — CIGNA) health care “reform” bill fails by a vote of 15-8.

Then the Schumer amendment to add a (very watered down) public option to the Baucus Baka bill fails by a vote of 13-10.

Can we get some real Democrats in office in 2010? You know, ones who aren’t willing prostitutes for the murder-by-spreadsheet cartel?

Also.

MY COMMENT ABOUT OBAMA ON WALL STREET

• LOL! Epic Logic FAIL! I’m not comparing B. HUSSEIN Osama X The Usurper to a child molester in that infamous tweet, but since he’s just as dangerous to Wall Street as a child molester is to kids, they are comparable in a way. Stupid libtards!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

I haven’t seen logic this bad from Boortz since he declared Kerry voters were just as dangerous to America as all Muslims Al-Qaeda.

Just think folks, this moron used to be a lawyer.

Riddle me this wingnuts: if the talk radio/teevee market is REALLY subject to market forces and the reason the market is saturated by wingnut hate speech is because “libtards” are too boring/screechy/hate-filled/[insert excuse-of-the-week here] to attract advertisers and listenership, then why the hell does Glenn Beck still have both a TV and a radio show?!

Gee, Conservatives for Patients’ Corporate Rights lied to the Canadians they duped into taking part in their lying ad bashing Canadian health care. Color me not surprised in the least.

I’ve got your Death Panels™©® right here:

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

And when this plan inevitably blows up in America’s face (to Wall Street’s benefit), and we’re staring face-to-face with the Second Republican Great Depression, Wolf Blitzer’s going to be in front of the cameras saying, “No one could have possibly foreseen this crisis,” before spontaneously combusting from his diet of hard cheese and drywall.

Would it kill Wall Street not to act like rapacious mobsters for one fucking nanosecond? I mean, seriously. What the hell are they teaching in the nation’s MBA programs, “How To Be Nakedly Criminal And Get Away With It?”

What was BartCop’s Second Law again?

ANY time a person or entity makes a “mistake” that puts extra money (or power) in their pocket, expect them to make that “mistake” again and again and again.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Fascinating:

I’m seriously just sick of lunatics. I really am. I simply can not believe people are freaking out over Obama addressing schoolchildren. As unhinged as I thought some on the left were in the early Bush years, they have nothing on the right-wing noise machine. They’ll just say or do anything. They have no shame. And I’m sick of reading “respectable” Republicans who fail to call their own party out on this crap. They sit by and feed this nonsense, but I’m supposed to get my knickers in a twist because a liberal blogger said the “f” word of [sic] Van Jones called Republicans “assholes?”

Can we just start the civil war now so it might be over by the 2012 election?

Heh. Indeed. The only problem is that, if the last civil war is any indication, Civil War 2.0 would last past the 2012 election (which Obama would win handily), and Obama would be assassinated less than a week after the official end of fighting.

In the local fishwrap, of all places. The first letter takes on the notion that if you make it impossible to sue incompetent doctors, CIGNA will provide free ponies for everyone:

Tort reform

Re: Aug. 20 letter “Society’s real problem.”

Tort reform is a red herring when it comes to health care costs.

We all know how much tort reform has helped consumers in Texas, California and the 16 other states that have passed strong tort reform laws. My insurance premiums have risen more than 40 percent in the last three years. I now pay more than $4,000 per year and carry a $1,500 deductible. And I have never submitted a single claim.

A study by the American Medical Association based on surveys sent to medical practitioners shows that malpractice premiums as a percentage of overhead was the same in 2000 as it was in 1986. The largest percentage increase of overhead during that time (36 percent) was for nonmedical staffing. Might that be because of the extra people needed to process insurance paperwork?

The second letter uses conservatives’ Free Market Fundamentalism™ against them:

There is no health care market

What conservatives have forgotten in the debate over health care reform is that there is no health care market.

In a market, consumers operate with sufficient information and bargaining power to make effective choices based on marginal benefit. Hospitals and insurers are loath to part with information necessary to make informed choices.

Although 39 states require hospitals to report information on mortality or infections resulting from medical care, this information is difficult to find and not currently available in Texas. And even armed with information, consumers can hardly choose their emergency care provider.

Our choice is whether or not we value the myth of the health care market above the reality of human suffering it causes. The cost of protecting the health care market is inefficiency, a broken economy and, for those unable to receive life-saving care, death.

Heh. Indeed.

John Cole is Shrill™©®:

Excellent:

Man, I bet if I were a libertarian who spent the last couple of months defending teabaggers and pimping every Republican lie about fiscal responsibility, I’d feel pretty damned stupid right now. I wish there was some way I could put this on infinite loop in Reason HQ so they would have something to watch in between Fox News appearances and watching PJTV.

But don’t you dare call them Republicans.

What? The GOP using their ideological alliance of convenience with the glibertarians and teabaggers to shuck them like the gullible oysters that they are? That’s unpossible!

Also.

Ezra Klein’s Confusion Over “Rationing”

• According to the movie* dictionary in my mind, it’s not “rationing” if CIGNA, Aetna, UnitedHealth Group and the rest of the murder-by-spreadsheet cartel does it!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

* Cf.