1581

So one of my tea party acquaintances has a post on his wall about the debate, and I brought this little gem up. The response surprised me.

I expected apologetics. I got that from one guy: the typical “there’s a few assholes in every crowd, you can’t extrapolate from that, etc, etc” type response. That was the first response.

The next five responses, including the one from my acquaintance, were basically “yep, that’s right, sucks to be that kid, HANDS OFF MY MONIES,” occasionally peppered with “the churches can handle it” or “where is his family?”

Good Lord. These people are seriously psychotic.

1582

Why not privatize road maintenance, water works, police, and fire fighting while you’re at it?

1583

Don’t give them any ideas.

EDIT: Yeah, I know die hard libertarians already want some or all of this…but the tea party actually has political power. Yikes.

1584

For what it’s worth Rick Perry as quoted in the National Review Online:

Perry also said he was “taken aback” by the few cheers that erupted in the audience at the suggestion that candidates should favor letting uninsured sick people die if they get a serious disease.

“We’re the party of life,” he said. “We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives.”

So apparently Rick Perry isn’t really quite far enough right for today’s Tea Party Republicans.

1585

Rick Perry may claim that the GOP is the party of life, but my take is that the GOP is pro-life only until the person is born. After that, who gives a shit, and if they’re poor, they’re better off dead anyway.

The modern GOP is the unholy offspring of Conservative Christianity and Ayn Rand.

1586

Thats exactly what they are. They’d force you to have a kid and then let that kid starve in the street or live in a ditch without batting an eye.

Mind you thats not everyone, some people are Pro-Life not just Pro-Birth. Then again those are the few who actually listen to crazy stuff like what Christ said instead of deciding what they want to do and finding Bible passages they can “interpret” to excuse anything they feel like doing.

1587

Wasn’t he proud of his record on executions, even if there was a chance someone on death row may be innocent?

1588

If they were truly innocent, then He will forgive them.

1589

And they will ascend to Heaven.

Jeezus.

1590

All he has really said on the subject was that he believes that Texas’ “thoughtful” judicial process makes it very unlikely that an innocent is executed, so he “doesn’t lose any sleep over it.”

That said, there seems to be some evidence that he deliberately prevented any delays in one particular execution:

However, according to multiple reports, Perry intervened in the forensic process, replacing three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission to keep the execution moving forward. He refused a stay of execution, despite mounting evidence that questioned Willingham’s guilt.
The article.

1591

Here is some more context that either shows that Ron Paul is a terrible person or that he is just that Hard Core. (both is also an option)

As it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in 2008, Kent Snyder — Paul’s former campaign chairman — died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer’s example, the 49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder’s surviving mother (pictured, left), who was incapable of paying.

1592

The article doesn’t say why Kent Snyder was uninsured. If he had managed to raise $19.5 million for Ron Paul’s campaign, couldn’t he have afforded to have medical insurance?

1593

The money you raise isn’t your salary if you have to give it to someone else.

1594

Sorry, I assumed it was a paid position (unless die-hard Libertarians are against paying staffers…).

1595

Why would the bill go to his mother? Did she co-sign for treatment or something?

1596

Legally she’s not on the hook for anything, but hospitals regularly try to stick relatives with the bill.

1597

Yeah, if her name isn’t on it she can tell them to stuff it. His estate stands for what he owes, not his family.

1598

But another example of a medical event potentially ruining someone financially, if she did sign on as part of the process (and it is likely she did, in the shuffle of paperwork in a hospital.)

It is interesting why he had no insurance, though. I doubt he could not afford some of the basic plans out there that aren’t very expensive per month, have pretty high deductibles, but are primarily to cover some type of expensive catastrophic event. I had one of those for one of my daughter when she was between schools and thus not eligible for my company policy (which is not an issue today, due to the evil Obamacare.)

1599

Note there is an asterisk in my quote above. It leads to this -

*The Kansas City Star quoted his sister at the time as saying that a “a pre-existing condition made the premiums too expensive.”

1600

I like to look at things on some broad, long term meta level, and with the announcement that poverty rates are the highest in 50 years, i wonder if this increasingly intolerant and narrowminded worship of personal income as some holy thing, and damn everyone else who wants a piece of it (even if this means society falls apart) is somehow a reflection of this; especially interesting since tax rates have never been lower. It’s like the inverse of taxation correlates to political disenchantment.