ding dong, the stick is dead

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

[joeblast]

ROFL...Al Gore, of all people! "I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion." (But then I wouldnt have made 100 million dollars hawking this bullshit!)

 

c'mon SoDE...you can do better than that, if you're going to put up an essay by someone on the pro-AGW side you could at least make it something that has a technical basis to it. All Al can do is regurgitate and cant think on his feet, plenty of us would have loved to have seen Monckton rip him to shreds in a debate but Al knows how shaky the ground is beneath his feet and how little of a grasp he actually has on the technical matters of the situation, which really reduces him to nothing more than a cheerleader So yet again we have an essay constructed to tug at one's heart-strings in order to attempt to obtain a result, because technical matters surely arent doing the job.

 

Sure the Obama admin feels they're entitled to the 600+billion that these taxes would raise because they clearly intend to squeeze every drop they can, they even included that revenue in their budget when no legislation even exists! In plain terms, the US cannot afford this tax legislation. Cant even seriously call it cap, because no emissions will really be capped, it is a purely fictitious tax to scrape more revenue from the people. How's Kyoto doing, btw? Complete failure. Its a sad thing that the eco-commies were able to harness this theoretical curiosity as a way to increase the amount of revenue they thieve from people - and its all for naught, because spending a trillion for a possible degree "saved" is about as viable a proposition as believing that one can count a 'saved' job and present remotely accurate numbers detailing such!

[Owledge]

Well... nothing to add to a 'column' with so little substance, but I wanted to congratulate Al Gore for his very suitable closing, quoting a war criminal:

 

Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.”

Yep! Like sacrificing thousands of civilians to get the USA into World War I.

 

EDIT:

This quote contains even more ironic honesty than I first saw:

When doing your best is not sufficient, but doing what is required is, then what is that? If it were less than your best, than doing your best would be more than sufficient to accomplish what is required. The remaining logical conclusion is that doing what is required means intentionally doing bad things ... and very likely doing your worst.

Edited February 28, 2010 by Hardyg

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Hey, I'm the one bumpin' this thread alive...he he...

[joeblast]

perhaps, but the entire basis for gore's fictional movie, the main weight of all of the IPCC's assessments...is scientifically unsound. that part has already been proven - so by that rationale, this thread can die

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

So be it, Joe. Let me guess, you work for a corporation I bet.

[joeblast]

now how silly does that sound. yes, I work for "a corporation." I've worked for a ton of corporations, LLCs, whatever. most businesses are corporations, it protects the owners personal assets. of course there's the myopic insinuation in there that either 1) I work for a corporation that has a vested interest in the prevention of another tax hike (the vast majority of all corporations would fall under that, with the exception of ones like GE who fit the definition of an evil corporation by juxtaposing themselves to get the most amount of your tax dollars by supporting artificial government pushing in the market with faux "green" subsidies, which are proven to be a huge money-loser) or 2) a corporation that will make money by there not being energy-punishment, which again, would constitute the majority of corporations, since having skyrocketing energy prices constitutes increase business expenses, profit loss, and ultimately, loss of wages for the lowly worker...and I almost forgot, decreased tax revenues because making business interactions more expensive means less business, which means less taxes collected.... or 3)somehow I've got a monetary interest in these things - why yes, I DO have a monetary interest - its called keeping more of my own money, and I dont want to have all of my energy prices necessarily skyrocket so that the most efficient waster of monies on the planet can waste more of mine!

 

got anything else to shoot yourself in the foot with?

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

No, nothing as involved as that. It just a suspicion I had about a certain worldview that seems apparent from your posts.

[Owledge]

I just wanted to mention that I don't work for any interests of other people, have no commercial interests and don't pay income tax, and I pay an energy flatrate. So you can trust me.

 

 

By the way... you call it a suspicion. Well judging by what you said...

So be it, Joe. Let me guess, you work for a corporation I bet.

...you guess that you bet something. You are not as certain about yourself as I initially thought.

 

P.S.: An alternative interpretation would be that of a self-contradiction. Surely you don't want that one.

Edited February 28, 2010 by Hardyg

[joeblast]

I'm sure your interpretation of the certain worldview would be different than how I see mine - for me it is mostly that everyone comes equipped with a set of bootstraps and it should be part of your life's learning that you familiarize yourself with them and learn how to use them!

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, what's your take on the healthcare situation in this country of ours? What steps do we need to take, if any?

[Owledge]

Now you've fetched the stereotypewriter.

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Now you've fetched the stereotypewriter.

 

Now you've just sPUN my answer, Owl-guy.

[joeblast]

Well, the creation of a whole new entitlement structure is certainly not the way to go, nor is bullshitting about the cost or future explosions of such should that be implemented. The crap that the progressives are trying to railroad through congress at a time when there's simple steps that can be taken that will actually improve costs (which, was their initial argument in the first place!) is just another indication that american voters have been swindled - and it most certainly appears that there's been tons of swindling going on both sides for a good long time at any rate.

 

Part of the issue is that "health insurance" is really "healthcare financing" but the models dont accurately reflect that. You dont use your car insurance to pay for tires, oil changes, or when 3rd gear suddenly stops being shifted to. By that rationale, it would make sense (albeit it would likely be unpopular) to shift more of the everyday maintenance costs toward a different model that made more use of tax free healthcare accounts - sorta like what HSAs do right now, but there should be no reason that you would have to come up with a dollar figure you think you'll use in the next year and then either lose what you dont spend or lose out altogether on the tax incentive if you go over the amount you think you might spend. Remove healthcare expenses from taxation for citizens altogether - then have catastrophic insurance for if you break a leg or something. Granted that still leave a bit of a hole for chronic long term issues like cancer or something, but really, clean other areas up and that should free up some measure of subsidizations for chronic patients that have tons of cost.

 

Of course, expanding the pool concept and making plans available country wide would provide a huge measure of competition and enhance the pool concept hugely - therein would be a way for subsidies to make a better impact on pooled areas of chronic costs. A certain measure of cost shuffling to help offset higher pools would likely be an outcome of this so that low cost pools would be able to offset higher cost pools - at root it would be a matter of healthy paying extra for less healthy offset, but there's a greater percentage of this happening anyway right now and a more efficient structure would make these offsets more targeted, timely, and efficient. I'm sure I dont have to say that I believe the public option is simply a giant progressive trojan horse and we simply do not need that in america.

 

Tort reform is a must as well - that they discuss cost cutting measures and this is among the first things tossed out is testament to progressives being in the pockets of big law people like john edwards who made his millions hawking class action lawsuits. So I got pretty pissed when I went to the doc for something a few years back and he wanted, insisted, that I get a CAT scan to look for something entirely unrelated, just to make sure - $700+ out of my pocket to 'just be sure' when perhaps a single symptom may be correlated...its just insane. Crazy to have doctors practicing CYA medicine! Not to mention the ridiculous malpractice insurance they have to pay.

 

Of course there's more, but...that's my big 3 right there that would do a million times more in terms of saving and cost cutting than what's been put forth by our legislature.

 

Par of the problem is the whole entire concept of insurance - its been used and abused so badly! The net effect of what it has done (removing the end user from actual costs) is to simply give companies that provide these services carte blanche to jack prices up through the roof, almost completely arbitrarily. Its the same effect that the FELP program had on college tuition costs - why do you think that they are rising at 400+% of the rate of inflation? In 1965 the government decided to guarantee student loans, and since the government "smoothed" this process out, all it really did was set the stage for monetary abuses.

 

When you have a parachute or a safety net, you arent quite so concerned about your own ass. I'd jump out of a plane too, not thinking of any consequences, if I had a well packed parachute on my back.

 

Bottom line - you are more careful about what your expenses are if you see them, line by line. Its why I laughed at the "at least we have free healthcare" somebody shouted at the olympics. It aint free by no measure, bud. Simply because you dont pay for it at the time of service!? It would be like "getting groceries" and they just show up and you get a "grocery bill" that says "groceries...$400." Wait a sec, if I go myself and get what I want, I can get an order down to a hundred bucks easy!

 

(had to edit in paragraphs )

Edited February 28, 2010 by joeblast

[joeblast]

Edited March 3, 2010 by joeblast