Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was in New Hampshire yesterday trying to drum up support for his presidential run. What he had to say about health care was revealing:
Perry proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he called “another example of one-size-fits-all coming out of Washington, D.C.” And he noted that Texas chose not to participate in Medicaid expansion.
“Texas has been criticized for having a large number of uninsured,” he said, “but that’s what Texans wanted. They did not want a large government program forcing everyone to purchase insurance.”
Texas wanted “a large number of [medically] uninsured” people in their state.
Why would anyone want that?
Uh, faster turnover of population?
No doubt that other states would be more than happy to send their uninsured to the Lone Star state.
Meanwhile, like Ol’ Man River, the indictments just keep rollin’ along.
Fewer <strike>leeches</strike> senior citizens.
a mofo with gold-plated insurance paid for by the taxpayers bragging about not insuring people.
uh huh
uh huh
BooMan, those of us who hand out at your Frog Pond just aren’t cut out to be courageous, independent sufferers of extreme pain and financial ruin. That’s why we share your curiosity. “Why would anyone want that?” indeedy.
Charles Bukowski’s thinly veiled autobiographical character Chinaski had a moment where he represented the ideal Texas citizen. Of course, Bukowski wrote this as satire:
“I fell against the corner of the bed frame– an edge of steel like a knife blade. When I got up I found I had a deep gash just above the ankle. The blood ran into the rug and I left a bloody trail as I went to the bathroom. The blood ran over the tiles and I left red footprints as I walked about.
There was a knock on the door and I let Bobby in. “Jesus Christ, man, what happened?”
“It’s DEATH,” I said. “I’m bleeding to death….”
“Man,” he said, “you better do something about that leg.”
Valerie knocked. I let her in too. She screamed. I poured Bobby and Valerie and myself drinks. The phone rang. It was Lydia.
“Lydia, baby, I’m bleeding to death!”
“Is this one of your dramatic trips again?”
“No, I’m bleeding to death. Ask Valerie.”
Valerie took the phone. “It’s truie, his ankle is cut open. There’s blood everywhere and he won’t do anything about it. You better come over….”
When Lydia arrived I was sitting on the couch. “Look, Lydia: DEATH!” Tiny veins were hanging out of the wound like strings of spaghetti. I yanked at some of them. I took my cigarette and tapped ashes into the wound. “I’m a MAN! Hell, I’m a MAN!”
Lydia went and got some hydrogen peroxide and poured it into the wound. It was nice. White foam gushed out of the wound. It sizzled and bubbled. Lydia poured some more in.
“You better get to a hospital,” Bobby said.
“I don’t need a fucking hospital,” I said. “It will cure itself….””
A culture that has defined gender in an extremely binary way and demands of its sons to “prove that they are a man” and defines “being a man” as uncaring, able to bear pain, unfeeling, and instrumental produces monsters who are trying to be hyper-male.
And the pudgy-faced privileged members of the GOP are among the worst of them. And the ones that act like a Bukowski character are the most vicious.
Both standing on a chair, beating their chest, hollering to the world, “I am a MAN!” Which they hugely doubt. No mensch at all.
No revolution without martyrs.
Preferably someone else….
To a Texan, uninsured == Mexican
For some time I’ve been expecting that “Fuck you” will become a Republican campaign slogan, since that is their increasingly unveiled message to about 99% of the population.
The sad thing is that millions of Americans will still vote for these assholes. They might not even mind if the “Fuck you” applies to them, as long as they get to say “Fuck you” to someone else.
or, “[I’ve got mine,] f*** you”
Yet from The Hill the numbers for TX signups are 80% higher than last year.
Well, the overwhelming majority of Texans want to have a society/culture that stigmatizes the poor and gives them no aid in any way, for anything. Because bootstraps. And one gets bonus points if one believes the poor are disproportionately members of (hated) racial minorities, who have already gotten so much more than their fair share from lib’rul socialistic wealth distribution!! Very logical for moral monsters.
As for Pinhead Perry and the workings of the ACA, how does not expanding Medicaid somehow release Texans from the ACA provision “forcing everyone to purchase insurance”, even though they “didn’t want that”? Those rules are still in effect, nationwide, aren’t they? So in reality it’s lose/lose, but Texass sees win/win….
I don’t think it is as much the overwhelming majority of Texans as the overwhelming majority of Texans who have the habit or incentive of voting. There was a lot of informal voter suppression in Texas before the Voter ID law passed. And Texas is one of the places that has had a lynching within the last twenty years.
Those who know don’t vote. Those who vote–well, we’re still trying to figure out how far over the cliff they will go.
But even the vote margins are far from overwhelming except for incestuous tiny white majority counties, of which there seem to be quite a few. (BTW “incestuous” in this case need not be taken literally–the politics is self-reproducing within “the family”). They check loyalties at church.
Thanks for your views. Certainly the Texas election system is currently so unfair as to be illegitimate and and its white “conservative” regime should not be considered or described as democratically elected.
However, there is no national figure who speaks in such terms and it doesn’t appear Perry even gets asked about his illegitimate regime. Of course, the conservative movement and its GOP isn’t going to allow anything to threaten their control of the Mothership of Conservatism and it’s not like the useless federal courts are going to do anything about it.
As for those Texans permitted to vote, the faceless placeholding GOP machine pol Abbott just got 59% of the “vote” to Wendy Davis’s 39%. John Corndog was reelected with 62%. These are pretty overwhelming margins in my book.
I am pretty sure he’s right. They wanted it because they like to see “the other” suffer. Because they’re “other.”
” Texas wanted “a large number of [medically] uninsured” people in their state. “
Feature, not bug, in their playbook.