Rand Shrugged
Ah, how does the Republican Party find such diamonds in the rough. Do the have some sort of algorithm written by a climate change denier “scientist”? Could it be something in the cocktails served at their country clubs? But the party that has given us Sarah Palin and Michael Steele has now presented us with a new clown in Rand Paul.
Turns out the new poster boy of reduced government lives on the teat of Washington – 50% of his patients are on Medicare. Awesome.
Here’s an amusing essay by Michael Tomansky “Intellectual consistency can be overrated:”
Rand Paul has also stated he wants the Medicare “doc fix” (a fix to make sure Medicare payments don’t go down – a Gingrich-era law). I think this is just further proof of what we already know – teabaggers want their government money, they just don’t want other people who they don’t like to get government money.
UI, that was a great blog post you referenced there. From the same post:
All Rand Paul did was not speak in code. He actually said what we all knew. Actually, we should be thanking him for removing the dog whistles and just putting everything on the table.
Like John Boehner on truth serum.
Exactly pandora, that’s what made him unusual. I think we owe him a thank you for exposing exactly what the teabaggers want. Even if Rand Paul does manage to win in Kentucky (which I think is not a sure thing at all) Republicans will have to spend a lot of time either defending him or distancing themselves from him.
Paul’s strategy now is to only do friendly media, like Fox. We’ll see how that works out for him. He’ll not only be crazy but cowardly (how will he dodge debates?). I hope Paul causes a lot of headaches for national Republicans, including Republican Mike Castle.
Didn’t Rand Paul say something goofy yesterday like if everyone were Christian we wouldn’t even need to have laws?
And one of the real tells that Paul has largely stripped away any of the pretense of CRA support is that none of the usual shining lights of the GOP have not flooded the zone to defend him with their usual deflections about liberals, the media and the liberal media. They can’t even get their homeboy Steele out there to help a brotha out.
This was the NRSC’s defense.
Here it is:
Going right past the usual notation that 98% of people who aren’t Christian don’t murder people, don’t steal, and don’t break the law and that 98% of people without religious convictions certainly do have functioning moral compasses or moral bases for their lives — this doesn’t exactly explain how tolerating prejudice in our civic life is a *moral* thing. Or even how a society that agrees to legislate penalties for people who would discriminate in civic life is somehow less moral.
Oh dear. How weak is that, UI? And the *real* irony, of course, is that while the old school Democrats reformed themselves and purged themselves of their Dixiecrats, it was the GOP who welcomed them with open arms. And continue to let them tend to their racial resentments.
That NRSC defense could have been ripped right from Delaware Politics. Does the GOP not realize that if the most recent thing they can talk about with regards to advancing civil rights is in 1964, it’s pretty darn weak? Anyway, if you read the TPM link from yesterday’s Rand Paul thread you’ll realize that the GOP can’t really claim to be the drivers behing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Senate was composed of 67 Democrats and 33 Republicans and was championed by the Democratic president. Republicans just didn’t have the numbers to drive it through themselves, although 80% of them voted yes (along with 70% of Democrats). Almost all dissenters were Dixiecrats.
Wonder how the new Texas US History books tackle this subject?
“Atlantic Triangular Trade”? Nice to know the right wing has its own set of perverse PC lingo.
The right has always driven censorship. I remember very well Rudy Giuliani and “Piss Christ.”
Paul: “I would Love to be Treated Like an Old Black Sharecropper” (satire)
Alan Keyes Pounces to Rand Paul’s Defense Amid Slavery Flap (satire)
Piss Christ.
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz4-23-08_detail.asp?picnum=38
Your absolutely right — he should refuse to treat the poor or the old. Let them die in the streets. Then you can talk about what evil hateful people Republicans are.
Oh, that’s right — you do anyway.
The Atlantic Triangular Trade is actually a term long used by historians to describe the three-legged course most traders sailed. That’s why the shipping of slaves from Africa to America was called the “middle passage.” They typically carried sugar from the islands to the US, rum from the US to Africa and slaves from Africa to the islands. The slaves cut the sugar, the sugar was made into rum and the rum was used to trade for slaves. You can read it in any textbook.
Really, that’s what you got out of this post? This is where your logical mind took you? Let’s recap: Rand Paul is a libertarian who believes that the private sector can do a better job than the government. Rand Paul is also a doctor who has the government pay the bills 50% of his patients. There appears to be a big disconnect between Rand Paul’s political philosophy and Rand Paul’s overflowing wallet.
Nemski: That half his patients pay in government money isn’t the richest part. It’s that he’s against cutting the reimbursement rate to doctors because, he said, “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.” You can’t make this stuff up.
But he’s against minimum wage.
To tell the truth, physicians in highly-paid specialties are generally for higher Medicare reimbursement and against health care reform.
The sugar, rum, slave trading triangle was one of a few trading triangles in the Atlantic. The most famous and probably most lucrative one, but triangular trading of lots of items was the usual — there one would have been coffee and sugar from Cuba to Russia; iron from Russia to New England; corn or other ag goods to Cuba. Specifically abandoning the specific naming of the slave trade in favor of something more generic like the Atlantic Triangular Trade (which I don’t think you are defending, Geezer) is sorta deciding to call bank robberies a banking transaction instead. Technically true, but it lets those doing the renaming avoid dealing with issues like law, morality, an imperfect Constitution and the legacy of a superpower built on slave labor. It lets these fools indulge in their fantasy history.
Barack Obama’s Facebook Newsfeed — now with Rand Paul and other new friends from this past week.
Very clever post title. 🙂 first I’ve seen that play.
Cass: You are right, of course. I was only pointing out that the name isn’t some special conservative code. But it can’t be used as a substitute for “slave trade,” which consisted of a lot more than the middle passage.
UI: Yes, most doctors are, and I understand why. But Rand and his merry band of libertarians are supposed to put their principles above all else, aren’t they?