...and I Just ADORE Indulging Myself Occasionally With a Dental Check-Up

[paft.livejournal.com]

Harold Ford: People like Medicare, and if it’s framed that someone is against Medicare…

Joe Scarborough: You know what I like? I like chocolate cake. You know what else I like? I like steak. And I don't just like the lean steak, I like the steak that has the fat...and I will actually carve off the fat first and eat it and watch it go down my face. Now, I would like to have that every lunch and dinner. I would love to wake up with chocolate cake and wash it down with a big milkshake. I like sunshine, I like daffodils…

Hey, Joe, you know what I like? I like, if I start having chest pains and dizziness, feeling as if I can afford the resulting ride in an ambulance and day spent at the hospital undergoing the tests that will tell me its acid reflux and not a heart attack without risking personal bankruptcy.

You know what else I like? I like having regular mammograms! And I don’t just like the mammograms, nosirREE! I like going to the doctor and having a biopsy when the mammograms pick up something that needs checking. I will actually arrange an appointment the minute I get the call from the doctor’s office. Call me a hedonist, call me a sybarite, call me a heedless lover of pleasure, but that's just the way I roll! In fact, I would love to have those mammograms every year and, if they uncover a tumor, washing them down with some radiation therapy, chemo, and possibly surgery.

Instead of just sitting at home and waiting to die from breast cancer.

I also like Daffodils and, every few years or so, a colonoscopy.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Comments

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Are we really at a point where Harold Ford is a go to guy for the LIBERAL perspective?

Sheesh.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

For those of us who can't actually watch the video can you include the actual full text of Scarboro's comment?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Allow me to summerize: TANSTAAFL.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1015755.html?thread=79833291&style=mine#t79833291

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Scarborough is an asshole, news at 11.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

news at 11.

May 21st: The Rapture is coming at 6. Film at 11.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Scarborough's brand of assholery has become the Republican Party Platform.

Which makes it newsworthy.

[paft.livejournal.com]

That these "stupid things" that "stupid people" are saying are what the Republicans want to make national policy.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Joe Scarborough comes across as borderline. Most of the time he presents himself as a generally reasonable sort of listening-type person, then he goes off on these mad rants out of nowhere with a crazy meter of 11 and you can just see the festering Old White Man burning with hot rage inside of him.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So what's the problem here?

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

medicare won't cut the fat off joe's steak...

[paft.livejournal.com]

Does somebody need to explain to you the difference between luxury food items and basic healthcare?

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

It's a false comparison.

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

You misquoted him.

In response to the charge of being against medicare, he said: "I would love to wake up with chocolate cake and wash it down with a big milkshake. I like medicare too. I like sunshine, I like daffodils…" (underlined part omitted in your misquote)

Moreover...

He continues: "But you can't have sunshine every day... And guess what, medicare is going bankrupt... so let's decide today, do we want to tell people who are fifty years and younger you're going to get medicare at seventy, or slow down the rate of growth for people who are fifty and younger, or do we want it to collapse?"

Further...

JS: "We must slow down the rate of entitlements... do we have to do that, yes or no?"
HF: "Clearly."

Presumably you know this already, since presumably you watched the video in order to select quotes from it. Why did you misquote JS, omitting the entire relevant section from the remark you chose? Why did you omit his thesis statement? Why did you omit HF's agreement to this thesis?

Your commentary, such as it is, implies that JS' intention is to reduce the value of health care, in your example diagnosis and treatment of cancer, to the kind of arbitrary whimsies championed by "a hedonist, [..] a sybarite, [..] a heedless lover of pleasure."

But his point doesn't have even the slightest resemblance to this. In fact, he states that he likes medicare. This remark is in the middle of the part you quote, but you omitted it without indication. In fact, he states that his concern is with the collapse of medicare. You make no reference to this at all. In fact, the clip ends with JS and HR in agreement on the necessity of a fiscally viable model of health care provision. You make no reference to this at all.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

This seems to be one of the central problems with political discourse in the US. One set of extremists rejects the whole notion of social responsibility -- and the other side rejects the whole notion of fiscal responsibility.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes, he says that he likes medicare the way he likes eating a steak and drinking a milkshake. I.e., as a sort of luxury item.

It's not the equivalent of a steak dinner or a high fat sweetened drink. It's the only way many elderly Americans can afford healthcare. It's a necessity.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Because this is an agenda-driven post. This surprises you?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Do you want to be able to do all that without paying for it, or are you willing to pay for those treatments?

[paft.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly willing to pay taxes to support those treatments. That's much more cost-effective than relying on private donations.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

You know what I like, living in a country that didn't ruin itself financially by creating unsustainable social programs that ended up collapsing and injuring the entire country.

But you know, some people just hate sustainable living.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Somalia beckons in that case.

I'm going to call bullshit on your social-darwinist interpretation of sustainable living. Amazing how you have so little confidence in the country you live in - every other first world nation is somehow able to manage UHC but it's somehow beyond the U.S.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

and I will actually carve off the fat first and eat it and watch it go down my face.

Am I the only one disturbed by this sentence?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

No, not at all. The only worse thing, would have been Newt saying this.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Hey sup.

UHC provides better health care per capita, costs less per capita and saves on expenses for the government. All of this is demonstratively true.

From a purely financial standpoint, UHC saves money in every possible way.

So you don't really need to be a socialist/liberal/leftist/stalinist/maoist/Canadian/European/Israelite to support it.

Just a fiscal conservative.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

That's like saying a 1979 Lincoln Continental gets better Gas Mileage than an M-1 Abrahams.

It might be better than what we have today but that does not actually make it a Honda Civic either and I am sorry to say that even the Honda Civic may be beyond what we can actually afford to provide, we might need to go out and find ourselves a beat up 92 Geo Metro.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

This = tip of the iceberg.