Harry Reid and Barack Obama want a government shutdown.

They're pulling the same tactic they did with the sequester; reach an agreement, then turn around and demand more.

Now they want to end their sequester, the one they tried to use to terrify Republicans, then they disowned it and said it would be the end of times if it went into effect and then they claimed credit for it when it reduced deficits.

What are they telling us now?

The sky is about to fall, so they need to go on another spending spree and begin growing the deficit again.

I say let them.

Eventually the Middle Class will figure out who benefits and who pays...

http://www.france24.com/en/20131014-mainstream-baffled-french-turn-far-right

If there's a middle class left at all.

Ishmael
 
Here is what your President is fighting for:

Over on the employer-based health-insurance side, unless you have a policy that grandfathered in before 2010, you will be faced with new plans that restrict the number of tests and treatments I can order while paying me less and less to see you. This is how insurers plan to save money. Like the failed HMOs of the 1990s, they will shrink the networks of participating providers to those of us who are desperate enough to work within these limitations or are crooked enough to have concocted some medical mill to make money despite them.

Keep in mind that Obamacare mandates that employers cover at least 60 percent of your premium while the most you, the patient, can be asked to contribute is 9.5 percent of your yearly income. The policy deductibles are also being limited to $2,000 per year or $4,000 per family. Coverage for preexisting conditions, no lifetime limits, and no dropping a policy for illness are now mandatory. All this coverage is expensive for the insurer to provide — something has to give. If the premiums go too high, then employers can quickly drop you from their insurance plan (since President Obama deferred the business mandate for a year) or cut your hours so that you’re a part-time employee. So insurers restrict tests and cut fees to keep premiums down, and the impact in the doctor’s office is huge. Here is one disturbing example. Can you believe that as flu season begins, one awful but popular insurance plan is no longer reimbursing me for flu shots? The same insurer pays me less than $30 per visit, and only $5 for an EKG. How can I possibly continue to work with this insurance and give high-quality care, especially when all the specialists I generally refer to are running away from it?

My employed patients — including that 45-year-old computer expert — are worried that they will lose their coverage and be forced onto the dysfunctional state exchange. I can’t blame them for worrying. At the health exchange, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the national average for a silver plan for a non-smoking family of four with a $52,100 annual income is $8,290, and $3,669 even after the federal subsidy kicks in. Forgetting the drain on the taxpayer, do you know many working families with this kind of income who can afford $3,669 a year? If such a family chooses a bronze plan with a higher deductible in order to qualify for a lower premium, they will discover that Obamacare has delayed the out-of-pocket spending caps for at least a year. So if you choose the bronze plan because the price tag on the silver frightens you, you could end up with a premium you can afford but, when you get sick, be asked to fork over more cash to pay for your illness than you have in your bank account.

Can you find a doctor or a patient who believes that Obamacare has really addressed the problem it was intended to — providing health care for those who didn’t have it? I can’t. Even if you were uninsured before and now manage to get a policy at the state exchange, you are likely to find that your doctor or his hospital or the network of doctors he generally refers to are not accepting these new policies. This was the problem with restricted HMOs in the 1990s, and it drove many practicing doctors to begin to cherry-pick the policies they accepted. Even if I take your bronze or silver plan, the orthopedist or hernia surgeon or psychiatrist I am used to referring to may not. What are you going to do then?

If the feds really wanted to help uninsured patients instead of snowing us with false, expensive promises, they would have encouraged and even incentivized more talented people to go into medicine. Instead, they gave us Obamacare, a tumor growing on our economy and our health-care system. The American public is hungry for a cure.
Marc Siegel, M.D.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/361222/print
 
If there's a middle class left at all.

Ishmael

The President has expressed his antipathy to the Middle Class and their suburbs.

I think he wants a ruling class of the intellectuals and a servicing class that performs the base labor and is compliant enough to be "managed" by the brightest minds the Ivy League can produce. The only way that they can believe that they have a sound economic model is to adopt the model of good intentions and all its attendant sophisms.
 
The President has expressed his antipathy to the Middle Class and their suburbs.

I think he wants a ruling class of the intellectuals and a servicing class that performs the base labor and is compliant enough to be "managed" by the brightest minds the Ivy League can produce. The only way that they can believe that they have a sound economic model is to adopt the model of good intentions and all its attendant sophisms.

He wants feudalism.
 
The President has expressed his antipathy to the Middle Class and their suburbs.

I think he wants a ruling class of the intellectuals and a servicing class that performs the base labor and is compliant enough to be "managed" by the brightest minds the Ivy League can produce. The only way that they can believe that they have a sound economic model is to adopt the model of good intentions and all its attendant sophisms.

That what I've been saying for years, but even the Soviets, the Cubans, and the Chinese, among others, couldn't pull that off.

Ishmael
 
He wants feudalism.

That what I've been saying for years, but even the Soviets, the Cubans, and the Chinese, among others, couldn't pull that off.

Ishmael

I have to believe that Hoffer is spot on in describing the academics (the scribe class).

If they have no purpose, their frustration leads them to destroy the system, in the case, they have been chipping a way at Liberalism (Capitalism) ever since they discovered that the common man does not need them to manage his life. The only way to placate their frustration is upward mobility to what they assure themselves is their rightful place in the sun, and the only way to do that is to expand the Governmental-Educational Complex. They then kill the host organism by the method of 10,000 paper cuts. If you deny them Centralized Government, they ferment revolution amongst the masses promising them a new order, one where the common man will be on top, and that is going to require a well-regulated and staffed government of the best and brightest minds...

;) ;)

In short, they desire a return to, as James points out, a more Feudalistic State.
 
That describes exactly what went on in the IRS hearings.

The scribe class has hold and sway over the bureaucracy and simply thumbed their noses at the Representatives of the Common Man as if answering the questions of those uncouth upstarts were completely beneath their rank and dignity.

And note, Obama being adopted by their class, is not about to punish a single one of them; instead they get promoted.

No, he doesn't have to send out marching orders.

They already march...
 
I have to believe that Hoffer is spot on in describing the academics (the scribe class).

If they have no purpose, their frustration leads them to destroy the system, in the case, they have been chipping a way at Liberalism (Capitalism) ever since they discovered that the common man does not need them to manage his life. The only way to placate their frustration is upward mobility to what they assure themselves is their rightful place in the sun, and the only way to do that is to expand the Governmental-Educational Complex. They then kill the host organism by the method of 10,000 paper cuts. If you deny them Centralized Government, they ferment revolution amongst the masses promising them a new order, one where the common man will be on top, and that is going to require a well-regulated and staffed government of the best and brightest minds...

;) ;)

In short, they desire a return to, as James points out, a more Feudalistic State.

Perhaps even worse than that. The mode in which that occurs is by the destruction of the Bourgeoisie, which is nothing more than the upper middle class in the classical definition and the middle-middle class upwards in some of the broader definitions of the word. The problem that they refuse to deal with, or even acknowledge, is that they ARE the Bourgeoisie. They see themselves as outside, and above, the masses. Linked arm and arm with government to use the population as compliant lab rats for their grand social experiments. They never seem to get it through their heads that they too are expendable and the lessons of Mao's "Cultural revolution", Stalin's purges, the Cambodian 'killing fields', and Vietnamese 're-education camps' never seem to be part of their focus on reality. The very system they want so badly to create is the system that will ultimately lead to their death and destruction.

And the ultimate irony is that in each of the aforementioned cases, after having destroyed the Bourgeoisie, including the 'scribe' classes, those governments had to go about rebuilding the Bourgeoisie in order to be remotely relevant in the world.

After having destroyed all the elements of automation the first thing they do is rebuild the Coke machine.

Ishmael
 
That describes exactly what went on in the IRS hearings.

The scribe class has hold and sway over the bureaucracy and simply thumbed their noses at the Representatives of the Common Man as if answering the questions of those uncouth upstarts were completely beneath their rank and dignity.

And note, Obama being adopted by their class, is not about to punish a single one of them; instead they get promoted.

No, he doesn't have to send out marching orders.

They already march...

You scored 83 label points for this post. Had you added liberals, socialists, nazis and welfare to it, you would have reached the coveted 93% and an A grade.
 
Perhaps even worse than that. The mode in which that occurs is by the destruction of the Bourgeoisie, which is nothing more than the upper middle class in the classical definition and the middle-middle class upwards in some of the broader definitions of the word. The problem that they refuse to deal with, or even acknowledge, is that they ARE the Bourgeoisie. They see themselves as outside, and above, the masses. Linked arm and arm with government to use the population as compliant lab rats for their grand social experiments. They never seem to get it through their heads that they too are expendable and the lessons of Mao's "Cultural revolution", Stalin's purges, the Cambodian 'killing fields', and Vietnamese 're-education camps' never seem to be part of their focus on reality. The very system they want so badly to create is the system that will ultimately lead to their death and destruction.

And the ultimate irony is that in each of the aforementioned cases, after having destroyed the Bourgeoisie, including the 'scribe' classes, those governments had to go about rebuilding the Bourgeoisie in order to be remotely relevant in the world.

After having destroyed all the elements of automation the first thing they do is rebuild the Coke machine.

Ishmael

Player Piano

;) ;)

In America, they first came for the very rich and I didn't speak up because I wasn't rich," said the Rev. Imadem Doinggood. "Then they came for the Bourgeoisie and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Bourgeois. Then they came for the Upper Middle Class blue-collar workers. I didn't speak up because I was a Government clerk. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up.
A_J, the Stupid

Everyone thinks that it will always stop right at their doorstep, just the way they dreamed it up.
 
All the Progressives need is a few more moderate centrist Libertarians like kbate.

Someone, like a RINO, who hates the Progressive enemies with equal enthusiasm.

The reason the Tea Party is hated and vilified is that it simply represents that group of people who do not need the intellectual class to order and manage their lives for them. They are antithetical to their drive towards Social Justice.
 
I fault the middle class.

Paul Fussell, a liberal perfesser, in his book AMERICAN CLASS, spoke of how the middle class always helps the elites and proletariats destroy the middle class by selling them the rope and bullets, and the middle class is incapable of protest, because its enemies might be offended enough to buy its rope elsewhere.

The Jews are the best example.
 
All the Progressives need is a few more moderate centrist Libertarians like kbate.

Someone, like a RINO, who hates the Progressive enemies with equal enthusiasm.

The reason the Tea Party is hated and vilified is that it simply represents that group of people who do not need the intellectual class to order and manage their lives for them. They are antithetical to their drive towards Social Justice.


Yes, either Mises or Marx. There is no spoon!
 
I fault the middle class.

Paul Fussell, a liberal perfesser, in his book AMERICAN CLASS, spoke of how the middle class always helps the elites and proletariats destroy the middle class by selling them the rope and bullets, and the middle class is incapable of protest, because its enemies might be offended enough to buy its rope elsewhere.

The Jews are the best example.

Hoffer postulates that what the Intelligentsia sells is long-term hope. In order to deliver that hope, their beneficence must steadily expand as they try to alleviate the loss of economic vitality that the transfer of Capital from Private to Public hands effects. In short order, they tend to authoritarianism (yes kbate, grey tends to black where Social Justice is the driving factor) which the people submit willingly to out of fear until that point in time when reformers of the totalitarian state emerge and suddenly the lure of short-term hope (via the easing of total tyranny) causes revolutionary explosion.
 
All the Progressives need is a few more moderate centrist Libertarians like kbate.

Someone, like a RINO, who hates the Progressive enemies with equal enthusiasm.

The reason the Tea Party is hated and vilified is that it simply represents that group of people who do not need the intellectual class to order and manage their lives for them. They are antithetical to their drive towards Social Justice.

I've thought about writing a book about a cruise boat loaded with these people that sinks, and they have to cope on an uncharted island. It would be fun to watch them come to grips with reality.
 
I've thought about writing a book about a cruise boat loaded with these people that sinks, and they have to cope on an uncharted island. It would be fun to watch them come to grips with reality.

Lord of the Flies meets the Galtless Motor Company?



;) ;)
 
Hoffer postulates that what the Intelligentsia sells is long-term hope. In order to deliver that hope, their beneficence must steadily expand as they try to alleviate the loss of economic vitality that the transfer of Capital from Private to Public hands effects. In short order, they tend to authoritarianism (yes kbate, grey tends to black where Social Justice is the driving factor) which the people submit willingly to out of fear until that point in time when reformers of the totalitarian state emerge and suddenly the lure of short-term hope (via the easing of total tyranny) causes revolutionary explosion.

The solution is to murder anyone who sticks her nose inside your tent.
 
I've thought about writing a book about a cruise boat loaded with these people that sinks, and they have to cope on an uncharted island. It would be fun to watch them come to grips with reality.

In a sense that premise was explored in the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy."

Ishmael
 
The solution is to murder anyone who sticks her nose inside your tent.

"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. ... there is only one remedy: time. People have to learn, through hard experience, the enormous disadvantage there is in plundering one another."
Frédéric Bastiat

Like Obamacare, it has to collapse before people will give up their altruistic dreams.

They all see the hope of the future dangling in front of them.

They do not see that each has a differing dream,

One maybe not so mainstream...
 
I've thought about writing a book about a cruise boat loaded with these people that sinks, and they have to cope on an uncharted island. It would be fun to watch them come to grips with reality.

My book about republicans (and I'm not a republican but I agree with their every thought AJ) would have them still on the ship as it went under, trying to blame socialist workers and unions for it sinking and it would end in 'blub' and the world shrugged.
 
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. ... there is only one remedy: time. People have to learn, through hard experience, the enormous disadvantage there is in plundering one another."
Frédéric Bastiat

Like Obamacare, it has to collapse before people will give up their altruistic dreams.

They all see the hope of the future dangling in front of them.

They do not see that each has a differing dream,

One maybe not so mainstream...

Sure. The Crisis fixes everything, and few change till The Crisis forces it.
 
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