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Congressman-elect Allen West has been extremely critical of the idea of government sponsored health care. From a comment in The Hill on West joining the CBC:
photo by Gage Skidmore
West is hypocritical to question national health insurance, while having taken advantage of a VA healthcare system where everything is owned by the government and everyone works for the government.
It’s absurd to claim to be a spokesman for free enterprise when you choose a professional career of living off the government teat and are now trying to get another “gummint” job.
I have nothing to add to that.
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The CBC is another group that needs to clean up its act. This is just one indicator: “20 in Black Caucus Ask for Curbs on Ethics Office” by Eric Lipton, June 1, 2010, link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/politics/02ethics.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss .
Being a black Republican nowadays means that you’re the ultimate exponent of “I got mine, now I’m pulling up the ladder so you can’t get yours”.
Allen West sucketh.
I nominate him for “Most Fun Freshman” — he’s looney.
That is going to be an intense competition as a lot of these new folks fit that description.
Wait until he discovers that freshmen congresscritters are supposed to be quiet and polite to their betters.
Ah, the Clarence Thomas school of Humanity.
Senator John McCain was born in a U.S. government hospital and has had access to free government-provided health care every day of his life– except for when he was a prisoner of war. Yet he’s against government health care.
They never do Jane. They love government handouts they just dont want you to have them.
Seems to me like this is between all hypocrites like West and the people who vote for them.
Are there any Republicans who practiceth what they preacheth? /rhetorical
I have been saying for a long time, we live in an hypocracy not a democracy. Hypocrites rule!
According to TPM, West has said that the government should have “put out feelers” re the TSA pat downs. LMAO!
That is just too good. :)
We really have that favor.
How about “tea baggers suckling Rupert Murdoch’s teats.”
Sounds like he’s embarrased to look like some of the folks who have become dependent on welfare. /s
Good Grief. I don’t think anyone really prefers to be dependent on “hand outs”, but then I’m one of those lazy unemployed people.
He might just get a verbal whoopin’ from one of his constituents with talk like this.
Medical care is one of the fringe benefits of military service, along with risking your life defending the country.
I used to work with a guy who used to deplore “social programs” and “government regulations”, etc. The thing is, this guy spent twenty years in the Air Force and when I knew him, he was working in a VA hospital as a civil servant. He was married on base by a chaplain, all his children were born in Air Force hospitals and he had, in fact, never had any job outside the United States armed services. He was quite proud of his service but every time I used to hear him bitch about social programs and so forth, I would point out that he is a product of the biggest social program there is or ever has been. It didn’t shut him up but he started being more careful about speaking up around me at least.
Maybe not for long if people like West get their ways.
You might have noticed that some of the Catfood Commission recommendations include raising the cost of GI health care co-pays and cutting VA services
You can hold up a mirror, but you can’t make them look and see. (But, I bet you made him at least think about it.)
Uh, read these:
“Puffing up John McCain, POW” (by Ted Rall for Tucson Weekly, Feb. 6, 2008, link: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/puffing-up-mccain/Content?oid=1090385 )
“McCain and the POW Cover-up” (by Sydney H. Schanberg, Sept. 18, 2008, link: http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1 )
“McCain was not tortured, PoW guard claims” (The Guardian, Oct. 14, 2008, link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/uselections2008-johnmccain )
McCain has enjoyed a lifetime of entitlement and enablement. It’s past time for the good citizens of Arizona to bring that out of control train skidding to a halt and remove it from the rails.
In a way I feel sorry for the guy. He just got riffed and now he’s out of work. He probably would have gotten another position but he overreacted when he got the word and started demanding that they fire one of two other people, (who have far more seniority than him), instead so now he is not only going to lose his appeal but after he badmouthed the clinic manager, that person isn’t going to spend a lot of effort trying to get him re-assigned. Sucks for him because he just bought a house but he also used to go around calling unemployed people “lazy” and unemployment benefits “welfare” so my sympathy is limited.
The sympathy might be better directed towards his family, it sounds like. And, maybe he’ll have a little more compassion for other folks.
It’s a literal self-contained, one-stop-shopping, cradle-to-grave system and society and that’s on purpose.
Ha ha ha . . . feel sorry for ‘im, that’s a good one! There’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing people hoisted by their own petards. And it’s happening a LOT nowadays. (Most of the time they figure out a way to blame liberals) But won’t he continue to get free or inexpensive health care since he was in the service so long? For that reason alone I don’t feel sorry for him in the least.
Don’t you suppose that as a recipient of government health care, Alan West might have a little better idea of what it’s like than the dreamers that keep advocating its sterling qualities?
He’s invincible!
If he were giving it up, yes.
But since there are no indications that he is giving that “government health care” up then no.
(Stated as someone who had oral surgery performed at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland AFB in San Antonio just after basic training and as someone who had gallbladder surgery at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu just before I left the USAF)
Government care is quite good for the most part.
Yep. That’s where my sympathy goes.
Nope, plus he gets lifetime medical and dental. He’s way better off than lazy assed me for example.
After being out of work for two years, yes, I feel sorry for anybody who loses their job, even when it’s karma calling.
That’s it in a nutshell. The Little Bush Administration and the Reagan Administration both ran huge deficits making government bigger, except those parts that they didn’t like. The states in this country that have the most conservative congressional delegations seem, by some strange coincidence, to be the ones that receive the most federal support per captita.
Go figure.
Book Salon up with Bob Cavnar’s Disaster on the Horizon High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout hosted by Riki Ott
I spent a long time in the defense industry, working with people who were retired military. I don’t remember a single one giving up his government medical coverage to get care on the civilian market.
While they have their complaints, some no doubt valid ones, when it comes to their actions, most vote for the military/VA system.
Ding!
It will be a hoot to see how he, and others from the Town Hall Screamer set, will react when they are totally ignored by the pack leaders.
“hypo-” means lower, yes?
“hyper-” should be the word pieces-part for Mr. West’s description at the beginning of the quote.. no?
or mebbe it’s a secret message, so the author can claim whatever suits the fancy of the moment on some later date, as politics do seem to change and acquire odd wrinkles over time, in this day and age.
Sorry for the intrusion. Just wanted to sign in to say Hi, preferably with something trivial. Heh. Some a these pols, especially the more outlandish ones, surely deserve a proper description, if all else fails… or not…
(((((Jane)))))
You’re the best! Thank You!
You’re the best. The rest
“hypo-” means lower, yes?
“hyper-” should be the word pieces-part for Mr. West’s description at the beginning of the quote.. no?
or mebbe it’s a secret message, so the author can claim whatever suits the fancy of the moment on some later date, as politics do seem to change and acquire odd wrinkles over time, in this day and age.
Sorry for the intrusion. Just wanted to sign in to say Hi, preferably with something trivial. Heh. Some a these pols, especially the more outlandish ones, surely deserve a proper description, if all else fails… or not…
(((((Jane)))))
You’re the best! Thank You!
maybe the answer to the teabaggers is always:
dont like big government?
dont take the money
dont like federal spending
give it back
want to shrink govt?
dont cash your federal pension and paycheck and cancel the federal health insurance, dont collect your ss, accept medicare or medicaid to pay for your mother’s nursing home.
I know it sounds ridiculous. But is just as logical as anything they say–like cutting taxes doesnt have to be offset because of, you know, voodoo.
:)
Vampires don’t have a reflection.
No. It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. Maybe we actually do need to spell our each little action and consequence. They seem pretty-much divorced from reality so far.
Since I live in FL-22, I apologize in advance for anything stupid he does.
Now… can the Dems get anyone competent to run against West in 2012 so he can be one-and-done?
Then it only makes sense that we just move all the civilians over to the military system, right?
Hi, Adie!
I had medical care at the VA hospital in San Francisco and Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, and you just met someone who gave up his medical coverage to get care in the civilian market.
In the financial ecosystem we live in, you’re taxed for Social Security and taxed for Medicare. When you turn 65 insurance companies base their plans on you starting to receive those benefits. If you decline them, you still pay for them anyhow.
That would actually make a lot of sense, as the VA gets better marks than the Mayo and Johns Hopkins in terms of quality: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.longman.html
And it would wind up being cheaper. But of course that would be a death blow to the private insurance companies, whose profits depend on a Byzantine setup that has far more bureaucratic layers than any single-payer system (and which is a big reason why our overall health care is the most expensive in the world yet our outcomes are barely above Third World status).
Got any names in mind?
The more the public becomes aware of the distinction between personal pecadillos and political doublethink, the better informed they become. I’m less interested in what kind of sexual transgressions a candidate may or may not have been involved in (which the media likes to hype) than I am whether he stands or does not stand on the issues he advocates. I’m also less interested in the color of his skin. We’ve moved on from there; let’s not go back.
This is one that really hits home for folk whose healthcare has become strictly personal and not by choice.
Jane,
Why use the phrase?
“gummint” job.