Only on Planet Coulter: Republicans' gutting of regulatory oversight in Madoff case proves it doesn't work
By David Neiwert Friday Sep 11, 2009 7:00am
You know just how crazy Ann Coulter's worldview is getting when Bill O'Reilly serves as an honest-to-God voice of sanity in dealing with her proposals for how to reform health care, as she laid them out on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday.
Coulter, who's evidently just wrapped up another genuflecting session before the altar of Ayn Rand, thinks the whole problem could be solved just by doing away with state regulations and "opening up competition," at which point "every problem would go away":
O'Reilly: But every problem wouldn't go away. The one thing that I would like to see the federal government do is strict oversight on the insurance companies when they hose people. I mean, I don't think they should be throwing you, Ann Coulter, off the rolls if, God forbid, you get MS or something.
Coulter: That will not happen. But Bill, that will not happen under competition. Look -- [Crosstalk] -- no, no, let me make this point. No it will not. The government was regulating, the SEC was closely watching Bernie Madoff. Government regulation doesn't stop that sort of thing. What stops it is, people knowing you're investing with this guy at your own risk, and then all these private organization develop. Competition is what enforces that.
O'Reilly: Yeah, well, I don't believe that. I think competition can drive the prices down, but it cannot make an insurance company honest. Only a federal oversight committee that says if you don't do it, we fine you.
Coulter: Yes it can. Yes it can. Otherwise, what about the SEC with Bernie Madoff?
O'Reilly: No, Bernie Madoff got away with it because the SEC, under a Republican, Christopher Cox, simply wouldn't investigate him. That's why he got away with it.
Coulter: That's the government regulation! Why do you keep thinking a different regulator will be better? Government regulation does not solve these problems, competition does.
Because if I belonged to a health-insurance company that threw me off when I got sick, people would hear about it. There would be magazine articles. And I don't mean to be me, I mean people --
She's really been drinking the Randian capitalist kool-aid, hasn't she? Hell, people get thrown off their insurance when they get sick all the freaking time and there sure as hell aren't magazine articles about it.
But the Madoff analogy really takes the cake. O'Reilly, as we noted, is sensible about this: The SEC failed in its regulatory capacity precisely because it was under the guidance of a Republican who didn't believe in regulatory oversight!
Coulter subscribes to a philosophy which argues that less government regulation makes for better competition which in turn enforces honesty and ethical behavior. But when in fact it's demonstrated that such governance produces outrageously (not to mention criminally) dishonest behavior, she blames not the practitioners who gutted that oversight for its then-predictable failures, but rather the entire concept of oversight itself.
It's a classic tautology: Let's gut government oversight so that when it fails, we can blame it, thereby creating an excuse to do away with it altogether.
It's also, of course, the kind of completely insane thinking that has dominated movement conservatism in recent years. And a large part of the reason we have Bernie Madoffs and AIGs in the first damned place.
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What planet is she from, really? Yeah, sure, less regulation = more competition = honesty, ethics, and rainbows shooting out of every butt.
she's an intellectual giant.
get the tortured logic of her comment...She is a mental midget if she thinks this will sell to anyone but her deluded base!
coultergist is what happens when
you let the shit out of the bag and
it hits the fan.
over who sells more books.
Talk about Clash of the Titan-ic Egos~!
When Bill O'Reiley becomes the voice of reason during a segment?
Profit has always motivated people to be honest, right Ann?
on....teh...Ghoulter.....
AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!
the new wardrobe masks her feminine charm?
I wonder when was the last time she wasn't drugged out of her mind.
If she ever got straight and realized what a lunatic she's been for all these years she would probably become suicidal pretty quickly.
finally rotted off of her.
Pfffeeuw.
after Labor Day! Guess she was in the wrong sorority at Cornell.
with the sound off.
...witchbag, queen of the harpies.
topped off with the essence of O'Reilly - I feel very ill.
Fetch Lord Boustany and bring up my personal ambulance!
;)
Lord Doctor Boustany SAOF (Self Adulation of Own Feces)
It all makes perfect sense...but only in Coulter's pointed head.
If Anne didn't say contrary insane things, she would have no gig at all. That's what she does for a living, no one expects her to be rational, at least I don't.
Nut job Ann shouldn't be expecting a call from Galt to come to Happy Valley with the productive portion of society She is the anthesis of what Rand meant as are most of the fools who spout her drivel
She really is a one trick pony.
Say outrageous and outlandish things and insult dems/libs/progs.
She has nothing else.
Another "off button" award!
Hmmm, Coulter with MS
*looks skyward*
when BillO had to reprimand ****er for calling the President a liar.
Also today.
Pawlenty can forget about running for President.
He's a Deather.
Scarborough calls out Pawlenty on death panels, comparison to UK health system: "What in this bill" creates death panels?
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909110004
Wow thanks for the link.
paws even admits at the end that there is no such provision in the bill, but speculates that death panels will arise out of reform.
Quite a reach, especially since end of life counseling is a good and necessary thing that everyone needs to go through.
God damned repukes.
On that Mediamatters link, I saw another link wherein beck was talking to one of his radio listeners. The damned beck suggested that maybe the levees in New Orleans were allowed to fail during Katrina in order to destroy records of ACORN's corruption.
coulter, beck, insannity.....these people must all regularly sniff glue.
"It makes people feel like they're being protected and they're not."
Well you could say that about a lot of things these days, like the police in our police state, who's primary purpose I believe is for revenue generation for the municipality, not to protect and serve.
"I think competition can drive the prices down, but it cannot make an insurance company honest. Only a federal oversight committee that says if you don't do it, we fine you." Who are you and what have you done with the real Bill O'Reilly? I'm not saying you have to bring him back. I'm just curious.
Wow. O'Reilly actually sounds very reasonable there. Amazing. I almost believe he's the independant he always claims to be. Almost. For the record there used to be magazine and newspaper articles about insurance companies screwing people all the time back in the late '80's and '90's. Not sure why that stopped because those practices certainly haven't. Preassure from advertisers? Or maybe it's just so common and widely known that nobody thinks it's news anymore.
it's not that hard to stand out.
Jeffery (Brad Pitt's character in "12 Monkeys") seemed like the most sane one in the room at times.
..to a health-insurance company that threw her of when he got sick, I'm pretty sure we'd hear a rousing round of golf claps.
that.
... the absence of the Fairness Doctrine has led to fair and balanced media through competition.
to things sent over a cable into your home. Nor does the Fourth Amendment any longer once it is inside.
... cable is unregulated. Where's the media paradise that open competition is supposed to create?
Doing the same thing and expecting different results. After the great depression regulations were put in place to prevent another great depression. These rules were remove with the result that another great depression almost happened. Now Anne Coulter is arguing for less regulation again. How many times will they mess up the economy and the country before they realize that their beliefs don't work and are extremely dangerous to the country.
They're insane, as you stipulated.
No, see, why it'll work this time is because there will also need to be tax cuts for the rich, since they create all the jobs, and so forth. No regulation + no taxes = things will be great for the masses!
Clearly it will work this time, all those other times it failed was because there were still too many regulations and taxes holding the multi-national corporations back. C'mon, if you can't trust the economic advice from Ann Coulter, who can you trust?
Another great depression 'almost happened'? I encourage you to review exactly what we're experiencing at present. Oh, and also be keenly aware that we're no longer privy to the M3 info and other critical data that might be clues to how bad the situation truly is.
...a stopped clock is right twice a day. And I have to tip my hat to Bill O and declare him the winner of this round. Enjoy it while you can. There won't be too many more moments like this.
Rush Limbaugh's affection for the Mac is well documented, but this is the first time I've heard Madame Coulter wax poetic about Genius Bars... Is she a recent "switcher" ?
Why do "conservatives" keep pretending like the free market is some brand spanking new idea and if we just implement it health care will be solved? Didn't the "free" market get us to this point? What is the epiphany that is going to strike the health insurance industry to make them change their ways? There were so many things it said that I could go after, but it is just too much of a stupidity overload. aMErica first.
Government intervention ruined health care. When we went off the Gold Standard doctors stopped accepting chickens in payment and it has been downhill ever since.
I think it started when they did away with bleeding.
How much does a leech charge per hour?
Although they could have stepped in and stopped the f*&kin
leech union.
Without the unions you would have no health insurance at all. You really want to go back to late 1800s to 1930? Poverty rate was above 30%. People lived in "poor houses." Wages were a joke. And if you died and could note pay for a plot your body was thrown into a pit. Sick days did not exist and the employer would penalize the individual for being sick. Oh the wonderful times of old.
how?
... how much someone like Bill-O makes in a year and do some division.
Obama has brought out the deeply stupid in all of these fools.
but it was thinly disguised at best.
Pushing it much today? ;)
(and those are very long hands, indeed) she does cause me to wonder whether short sentences followed by parole are truly effective tools with politically incorrect sex offenders.
Are you suggesting if recidivism rears its ugly head the perp might walk because I baited him?
I'm not sure, but I do know where in Spain the rain mainly falls.
She's got it. I think she's got it.
ZERO TAXES
The next time some talking head brings up the death panel comment, the interviewer needs to ask them what their end of life plan is, how did they go about getting one together, and how much did it cost? Its called a living will/medical directive, power of attorney, everyone needs one, unfortunately, or else the state decides what happens to grandpa and the state will probably keep him plugged in even though neither he nor his family would have wanted it.
our "system" guarantees everyone a long happy life now let's get on with this MRI as step one and everything will be just fine.
"God is my death panel."
Mr. curtilingus? We Doctors have the finest Technology available and pharmaceutical technology has made it possible for everyone to live a long HAPPY life. Now let's have a good look inside just to make sure there are no conditions that may have gone unnoticed . . . . just a precaution "
Didn't he shell out enough dough to be Lord curtilingus?
Oh I'm already royal thank you ricky.
Curtilingus is an old Dutch name that goes way back,
the symbol above is our Code of Arms.
Are you related to the dutchess, Oily Taint?
Phlegmish.
Oily taint isn't from Holland. The Dutch are much more reasonable.
In the best case scenario, competition does work...after the fact! After several people die from the rotten food at a restaurant word of mouth will stop people from going there and they will soon be out of business. After a few thousand people die sales will go down on a faulty product. After a few hundred thousand people die as a result of an insurance company's denial of health care maybe they would get a bad reputation and their sales will fall. Then some smart politician will suggest that instead of waiting for all of these deaths maybe the government should get out in front of these problems with some government regulation. I guess we need to relearn the lesson over and over and over..
Funny that she cites Apple computers as an example of competition.
They're overpriced to begin with, they only run Apple operating systems, they only take Apple parts and you can only get them serviced at Apple dealerships.
Competition?
No
years of coulter will not be kind to her physical appearance.
She already looks like a skag queen.....her next regression will approximate death eating crackers......stay tuned sports fans this WILL get ugly.
Goulter just keeps proving why only the uneducated, racist pigs, and ignorant lunatics, are left in the Right wing-Nut party, that thankfully dying out.
How does the ignorant, smelly whore, ghoulter keep her long giraffe neck from bending over all the time??
Umm, I don't think we are supposed to talk about her neckish area.
by your gender.
Occams razor.
Maybe guns are allowed at town hall meetings but razors are not allowed anywhere. Not once in the constitution does it mention the freedom to bear razors.
Because that new white suit sacrifices her right to bare arms ( and they are long arms that she bears).
Umm, that's a taboo subject here. Might want to edit it out.
Time to bash Obama. Fromming shame, too.
Just when we chirrens were having some fun playing in the hall without a pass from the teacher.
Yes, I agree. Time to lay down this foolishness and cry bloody murder because Obama hasn't turned anyone's water into wine yet. This is change I can believe in? The water looks just as it did when bush was president. I'm never voting again and anyone who doesn't like that can blow a horn or something.
Yeah Ann, that's exactly how I want things resolved when I get screwed by any corporation. Let them loose market share after I tell my story. That's so much better than actually being forced to cover my illness or pay my expenses when their product maims or kills me. I can live the rest of my crippled days rich in the knowledge I cost some CEO a small percentage of his bonus.
Orbiting,I need hardly add, Uranus.
loved the crawl on the screen-cap... glad to hear they are going into business together, but isn't it kind of mean to call BO and Coulter "Loopholes"?
Does this mean I have to go back and watch it again to get the joke?
no just look at the screen cap ...
(I wouldnt make a blind hila monster watch those two flying monkeys).
What would you make a blind hila monster watch?
like I am watching as we speak?
"What would you make a blind hila monster watch?"
THIS!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3b0NWljlPw
That almost sounded like a bit of centrism there in Billyboy. ZOMG the world's going to end on December 21st 2012!!!
Next thing you know Coulter will be apologizing for being a bitch!
Dogs and cats living together!
Mass hysteria!
Bill being the voice of reason frightens me.
..what's up with that? bor as the voice of reason, I'm guessing its just his little gimmick to balance the coulter's lunacy. By tonight, all will be returned to normal. Tune in tonight for the usual nonsense.
Bill O does it himself.
dickless shut off the containment grid.
Is this true?
Yeah, this man has no dick.
monkey.
BO calling for MORE government ... just more hypocrisy.
Mr. O'Reilly might have gone a little "pod-person" on us...
Is the world described in The Jungle. She should be made to eat food that hasn't passed FDA inspection and drink water from Mexico if she thinks that's such a great thing.
"God forbid, you get MS or something.
Coulter: That will not happen."
How the fuck does she know that? Are her twiggy legs actually antennae that beam down visions of the future?
she must be getting lousy reception with the interference from all the voices in her head.
those voices were coming out of her aas or Limbaugh's.
Bill Maher is coming out of her ass.
(BOOM! Goes the dynamite!)
That was totally tasteless (no doubt), tactless (who cares) and totally childish (I gotta be me).
I apologize for offending.
But your comment is comment #100 on this thread. That's kinda something.
each time?
Rep. Joe Wilson School of Apology.
It is her twiggy ears that are the antennae. That' why she has to keep flicking her bleached long locks off them so the transmission is not interrupted. The twiggy legs are there to keep Rich Lowry from being totally mesmerized by Palin winking at him.
For those of us females who are blessed with twiggy ears and twiggy necks and twiggy legs and arms, I feel you fellers are being a bit unkind.
but you would take that as an attack on your little dog's bathroom habits.
Besides, willowy and woody come to mind when I think of Twiggy.
Republicans love the cry "Government doesn't work!" Then, they work hard to get into government, fail at running it because, why bother understanding something you hate right, and then say "see, told you so!"
When government focuses and tries, it CAN AND DOES work. The FAA, on 9/11, was able to bring down, without any additional incidents, every commercial and private flight in the air to completely clear the skies over the United States for the first time in who knows how many decades. But hey, the government always fails right?
What my brain automatically recalls from the conservative movement to this day is their fixated mantra in regards to "State Rights".
They hammered this for more than a decade. Now they (flip-flop) one allowing the federal Gov't to over-ride state rights. It is obvios all along that repub/conservative simply feel they deserve the authority and power "ONLY" to step on state rights and when the Federal Gov't shouldn't.
Ayn-Annie placing this on display nicely for us all. But Annie, I didn't forget how hypocitical the conservative are!!!!
How many thousands of people per day are dropped by these vampire insurance companies? How many people per day go bankrupt because of medical bills?
And yet, how many articles about medical bankruptcy do we see in "magazines" or newspapers, on TV, etc?
Here and there, but if Coulter's supposition were true, then there wouldn't be room for anything else. There aren't enough magazines. Hell, there aren't enough fucking BLOGS to post all these daily stories of personal financial disaster.
Every. Single. Day.
Ann Coulter is such a rank boob.
may be getting ready to pull a Dennis Miller.
Switch sides.
O'Reilly: Yeah, well, I don't believe that. I think competition can drive the prices down, but it cannot make an insurance company honest. Only a federal oversight committee that says if you don't do it, we fine you.
Can you imagine this coming out of Bill'O's mouth.
He basically killed Coulter the entire interview.
She was frustrated when it ended.
He's been a lot less crazy than the other crazies on his station.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert return next week and he don't want to give them any extra ammo.
Bill's thinking: Just lay low... try to sound somewhat sensible and maybe Jon and Stephen will ignore me.
Did Dennis Miller ever switched sides?
Sponsors are threatening to pull ads from his how like they did with Beck?
BO as the voice of reason on the Factor? What is the world coming to?
AC is such a........uh, what's the word I'm thinking of? I think it rhymes with a football term; what you typically do on 4th down?
AC is such a........uh, what's the word I'm thinking of? I think it rhymes with a football term; what you typically do on 4th down?
OH!!! YOU MEAN SHE'S A ****!!
;)
Ran across musical commentary about all the Fox News pundits. It says it "ALL" with wit and humor and would probably cheer up every Democrat and moderate in America...maybe some Republicans!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spKr46-KPC0
Every time this skank speaks in public, she should be confronted with this quote.
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
"Because if I belonged to a health-insurance company that threw me off when I got sick, people would hear about it. There would be magazine articles."
Annie.... dear sweet Annie... that's because of that silver spoon in your mouth. We "have-nots" don't get to write magazine articles and bitch up a royal public storm when you "haves" fuck us over.
I would LOVE to see somebody like you try to live in our real world.
She may be stupid, but she is evil!
Oh, come on, people!
Obviously Government regulation couldn't catch Bernie. Only competition could have avoided him scamming people.
If only there was at least one other place to invest. It's really sad that there was no competition whatsoever for Bernie. Everyone was FORCED to invest in his monopoly.
BillO was saying something similar to what I might say. I mean it was lucid. Did anyone see someone else's arm up his shirt, moving his lips? I never thought, in a million years, I would say, "Good Job Bill". (God that was painful).
This friggin woman ( ? ) isn't even making any sense , then again what else is new ? Just another right wing lunatic ... a genuine fountain of bullshit , just say the opposite of what the truth and fact is and you are a good right winger . Damn ! O-really seemed like a sane and rational man in this episode !
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