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You're wrong. As for the angry old people going off on "keeping government out of my Medicare," I'd prefer to keep the conversation out of those levels of crazy.
It's best not to associate Barney Frank and closets in the same thought process. No telling how many secret lovers might tumble out once you start combing the payroll and opening doors.
With the best PO possible to be included in the current bill?
Maybe in 50-60-70 years.
None of us will be alive to see it - and yeah, yeah, go ahead with the snark :-)
No, I'm saying that Obama's health care proposal is "earth-shattering" and "paradigm altering" - the language that Sam used. It's caused a great divide.
My hope - and where I ultimately think US health insurance will head - is that basic coverage and catastrophic coverage (note - not care, but coverage of care) is nationalized.
Private/for-profit insurance handles the middle. Call it the Swiss/Japanese/Dutch model, whatever...
But you have mandated basic checkups, age/history appropriate tests, prenatal/neo-natal care covered on a zero profit basis. This happens via a mix of private plans (with Japanese style mandates and oversight) and a public plan. Catastrophic risk is nationally pooled - if you pull the unlucky card that has a gang of cells go apeshit, you're not in a position where the only option is to slide into poverty so you qualify for Medicaid/poor care.
The middle - hip replacements to knee scopes to experimental treatments - is where private insurers fight it out.
It's nothing remotely of the sort, it hasn't caused a great divide- but has illuminated that a "great divide" currently exists.
What that means is that you aren't using language in the same way that a political scientist would. There is nothing earth-shattering or paradigm altering about the current healthcare debate. Applying those terms to every political proposal you disagree with just makes them useless to describe something truly radical.
I'd also say - it may be paradigm shifting, but I don't know that I'd call it earth-shattering... the basic idea of a national health coverage scheme isn't new - it's got a near 100 year history of being proposed and not enacted.
We've spent the better part of 30 years trying to go in the other direction -- Medicare Part C, HSAs, etc -- under the idea that if we just privatize more of it, market forces will drive down costs.
It just hasn't worked. Out-of-pocket costs and insurance rates have skyrocketed, as has our national expenditure (taken as private and public expenditures together) on health care.
The fundamental problem with insurance to cover health is that the usual system of efficient offerings putting inefficient offerings out of business doesn't work in this case.
Once/if you get sick enough that you NEED insurance - you cannot afford to shop around. You're stuck with what you got, and you're just praying that you don't lose what you DO have, whether it's working out well for you or not.
I think this only helps make my point.
I didn't say it appeared out of thin air - I said many people don't want it.
ditto.
Now, if Obama had decided to push for the UK's system
now that would be "earth-shattering" and "paradigm altering" -
if he had started out saying we should copy Canada's system- maybe....
the "plan" as it looks now, not so much, in fact it has actual lefties annoyed because it's not.
One thing I've noted about the current healthcare "debate" (though I don't think you can characterize a situation where people are shouting past each other as debate...)- both the left and right wing partisans say, and actually believe, that their position is the majority position.
Extension of a program that currently exists - public option health insurance - to a second sub-set of the population can not be paradigm altering, by definition. If something similar is already in place - and whether you think the proposals improve or degrade the existing Medicare model you can't possibly believe that Medicare is not similar in scope and purpose to proposed health care reform options - then it is impossible to consider another like-minded program revolutionary.
There is absolutely *nothing* radical about the Democratic health reform proposals. Nothing at all. The Pelosi bill is more liberal than the Senate bill. Obama, if you pay attention to his positioning, actually seems to prefer the less liberal Senate option so far (because Obama is a center-left politician whereas Pelosi is much more of a traditional liberal.) The fact that a lot of uninformed seniors have joined forces with more economically radical (reactionary?) libertarians to vocally oppose a pretty run-of-the-mill proposal doesn't make the proposal itself less run-of-the-mill.
And most of those who don't want it, already have it (ie: Healthcare Insurance of one type or another).
Also many of those who "don't want it" are making false* arguments (either because they are lying or are being misled).
*Most BBTF Libertarians excepted, I disagree with their position on this issue, but they're not dishonest in their arguments.
You're not noting the consequences of such extension - what would happen to peoples' existing coverage, etc.
EDIT: People are most upset not because entitlements are being extended to another X million people, but because their own situation is going to change. If you can't understand this, I don't know what else to tell you.
That seems to be true. Frankly, I have no idea what the "majority position" on it really is.
When you lived in England in the 1980s, the Labour party couldn't get elected in large part because of such radical ideas. That's why they abandoned pretty much their whole platform and became New Labour. The party in power is centrist, fiercely committed to NATO/US alliances, and related to the original socialist party in virtually no meaningful way.
Unless your idea of "radical" is any bill that would tax someone to pay for anyone else's health care. Which pretty much defines the position of our resident libertarians. Hell, from their vantage point up there on Mt. Galt they see even Medicare as "radical," not to mention "theft," "slavery," etc.
Please enlighten me?
I don't think there is one.
I don't think they see it as "radical", they see it as "wrong"
Most libertarians freely acknowledge that their beliefs and wants are radical compared to society at large.
Being as how for the vast span of human history the idea of taxing for social services was unheard of, I'd say that "radical reactionary" would be a more precise term. But I have to admit that the more honest libertarians would proudly claim that description as well.
Of course since all these terms are relative, the real argument is about how one defines what the starting point of "normality" is. Is it the United States of the 21st century, the United States of 1787, or the United States of the Hoover administration?
Well, a lot of them want to go back to how things were before FDR in many respects, so it wouldn't really be "new."
Right, but we've defined our terms ahead of time here, remember. A radical wants to significantly change society from how it currently operates, often via violent revolution. A liberal wants perceptible change - "progress" or "progressive reform" within the constraints of the current system. A conservative is skeptical of change, Buckley's aphoristic man "standing athwart history yelling stop." A reactionary wants to "put the genie back in the bottle" in some sense of another.
The status quo for the United States in 2009 is public sector health insurance provided so certain citizens based on criteria for inclusion (age), paid for by reciept from the common treasury. The current proposals look to provide that same sort of service for more citizens based on another criteria (need.)
The libertarian mindset you reference is either radical (if not violently so) in that it is an attempt to vault society forward to a Galtian paradise, or reactionary in that it wants to return to a sort of pre-FDR Eden where "creeping socialism" hadn't been introduced to the grand American continent. I honestly don't know which is the kinder or more precise description to use.
That's why I'd combine it into "radical reactionary," which is both precise and not unkind. The only question is how they divide within their ranks in terms of how far back in time (or how far up Mt. Galt) they want to go. Unless they're hiding in a cave, though, their form of protest seems to be pretty much of the traditional American sort, and the best way to answer them is simply to outvote them and let them scream themselves blue in the face for another four years. It's not as if we haven't seen these sort of people before, and when they get off their steeds they can sometimes be quite nice.
Libertarians are neither. What they want is a world where government doesn't exist at all, and political science isn't necessary in that fantasy world.
I am attempting to engage said fairy minded dreamers in good faith, so I'm trying to find a way of not talking past one another.
Except for Kneepants, of course.
In fact, if I was a Dem operative (trust me I'm not), I'd create a pro-Bachman/Boehner flyer using it, and then mass mail that flyer (asking people to vote for Bachmann/Boehner whoever to help advance the Tea Party Freedom agenda)- to the most demographically liberal areas I can find.
If that doesn't get the "progressives" out to vote
nothing will.
Kind of the way that the Republicans (or I should say, more precisely, Hillary Clinton's primary supporters) used Jeremiah Wright videos, except that the Tea Party people are an far greater percentage of the GOP base than black nationalists were among Obama supporters. And the beautiful thing about the Tea Partiers is that they have absolutely no clue as to how their rhetoric comes across outside the friendly confines of the true believers. They give the term "useful idiots" an entire new meaning.
Good luck. You might as well try talking about angels with an atheist.
If I were a leftie, I'd spend less time playing the concern troll about the Republican party and more time desperately hoping that the economy recovers one of these days.
And I mean a real economic recovery, not this "jobless recovery" bullsh*te. An unemployment rate of 10.2 percent and rising is nobody's idea of an economic recovery.
That would have been awesome.
Of course they omit "indivisible" from the Pledge; it might offend the neo-Confederates in the crowd.
It is true, if sadly ironic, that the last 28 years of Republican and psuedo-Republican economic dithering may have blown a hole into the economy so large that it effectively undermines the only administration in the last 30 years who might actually apply some corrective to the fundamental failures of said economy. If Reaganomics has exploded so thoroughly that it leads to the election of hyper-rabid Reaganistas who would tar the actual Reagan as a RINO, there would be a certain pathetic "Nero fiddling the fire" sort of justice at work, I suppose.
Hey, I can't speak for others, but I'm even handed I think, I play concern troll for both the Elephants and the Donkeys.
Seriously, I don't doubt that concern trolls exist, but I've noted a tendency for the partisans of either party to insist that anyone who says they are on the same side as the partisan, but offer a different strategy or tactic, is really a concern troll.
It's basically a way to avoid debating the merits.
This was actually the cause of my first and biggest falling out with Daily Kos. It was the special election that Jean Schmidt won back in 2005, and there were some negative rumors floating around about Schmidt a few days before the election that most likely wouldn't have proved true but also wouldn't have time to be proved true or false before the election. Front-pagers like Armando were arguing that Republicans would use those rumors against her and spread them around, so Hackett supporters should too. All is fair in politics. I argued that we should hold ourselves to higher standards and not spread rumors that could turn out to be false. For which my comments were troll-rated.
It can be argued whether or not DKos has gotten more or less liberal over the years, but what can't be disputed is that their focus has always been on winning elections, at all costs.
The lefties would like to see it start visibly/palpably recovering by about, oh, June/July 2010, but as long as it starts recovering before summer 2012 they'll be happy.
The possible paths I see based upon historical analogies:
1: Reagan Path: The recession costs Dems congressional seats in 2010, but recovery well under way by 2012 allows Obama to crush the Repub nominee in 2012 (whose campaign message is hijacked by wingnuts in much the same way that Mondale's in 1984 was by Jesse Jackson and the Fems)
2: Clinton Path: Healthcare fails, dems get tossed out on their ears, economy perks up, Obama triangulates, you know the drill.
3: Hoover: Recession is L shaped (we know now it's not Vee shaped, it's probably U shaped, but...), Dems get clobbered in 2010 and totally reamed in 2012, any Repub running who has a pulse wins.
Of course, something totally unexpected will happen to screw this all up, Aliens visit, Osama gets the bomb, we actually stumble into usable cold fusion energy and finally get to tell OPEC to fcuk off for good... The Protestant Evangelicals are right and the rapture occurs, the Shiite twelvers are right, the Mahdi comes and all us unbelievers get smited (except the unbelieving women who will apparently be sold off to the believers as concubines or something...)
Which one do you see as most likely from this list, and how do they stack up in terms of likelihood to "Mets win the World Series?"
Yeah, but he's a d*****-bag.
If I were a leftie, I'd spend less time playing the concern troll about the Republican party and more time desperately hoping that the economy recovers one of these days.
Is this from Joey? Call me crazy, but I almost sense that he's desperately hoping that the economy doesn't recover.
Don't worry, he came already, but Kitchener kicked his ass.
I vote FTL drive.
In order:
Osama gets the bomb
we actually stumble into usable cold fusion energy and finally get to tell OPEC to fcuk off for good...
gap
Aliens visit
The Protestant Evangelicals are right and the rapture occurs,
gap
Mets win the World Series
gap
the Shiite twelvers are right, the Mahdi comes and all us unbelievers get smited
I don't know about our pal Joey, but some of the wingnut media whores (Rush/Coulter/Malkin) definitely give me the impression that's what they want to see happen.
Impression? It's so vividly clear that it can be seen from space.
Better move "Aliens visit" up your list, JPWF.
Is there any other kind?
Other than crystal, I mean.
Hey, we're at war, right? What if the reverse occurred? An Al-Q operative in Afghanistan, undercover, became tainted by Western influences while fraternizing with American soldiers. So he turns coat and detonates himself during a local AQ get-together, killing and maiming dozens of America's top enemies.
Yes I didn't mean to suggest the radicals were in power. Until I read your post I didn't realize I might have been taken that way.
The point I was trying to make was that to some of us with real socialists in government the difference between the Dems and Repubs doesn't always seem to be as big as our American cousins view it.
Yes I think you have accurately explained why the old left/right paradigm doesn't really work.
Someone I recently read (I can't for the life of me remember who) used a cute though simplistic paradigm.
He said there were two important thinkers we are all arguing about: Darwin and Adam Smith.
Some people like Darwin and don't like Smith. Some people like Smith and don't like Darwin. Some like both. Some don't like both. That divides us into four groups rather than a one dimensional paradigm. It has a ton of weaknesses but it is a better approach than left/right.
I'd go even further.
You've four major "fissions" as I see it.
1) Traditional personal morality (largely sexual): this is the one where the conservative/liberal divide often works as intended.
2) Primarily market based economics vs. larger government sector/welfare state.
3) Nationalist vs. Internationalist. This encompasses a bunch of issues like trade, immigration, culture etc.
4) Activist foreign policy vs. quasi-isolationist.
That gives you 16 cells, which may not even be enough.
Ignoring that, it's obvious that the Democratic leadership is in a bit of a jam and that there is a significant national sense of dissent with regard to the stimulus and health care. The Republicans have a horrible record over the last several years with regard to fiscal conservatism, and the tea baggers are not endearing themselves to the moderates who are currently questioning where the Democrats are taking the country. I think it's pretty clear that the Democrats are failing to sell their "plan" (if it can be called that) to the public. But all of that can change very quickly.
Yawn.
I don't know about our pal Joey, but some of the wingnut media whores (Rush/Coulter/Malkin) definitely give me the impression that's what they want to see happen.
A true believer (of whatever stripe) doesn't "hope" the economy doesn't recover, they "know" it wont recover under the evil policies of whoever is in charge.
(And if it would happen to recover, beyond what's possible to dismiss, it is despite and not due to Reagan, Clinton, Obama etc...)
Well, I was going to type the entire list, but I didn't think I'd be able to get through it without my fingers cramping up.
Well, I was going to type the entire list, but I didn't think I'd be able to get through it without my fingers cramping up.
So, Rush, is Obama going to turn us into the Soviet Union circa 1952, complete with Doctors' Plots, or is he going to ease off and settle for being merely an American Tito or Chavez?
ONLY 1,576,800 MINUTES LEFT TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY---WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT????
That's our Dave, never missing an opportunity to miss a point.
Seriously, whether or not those wingnut media whores make the same argument regarding the lefties is pretty irrelevant- whether or not the lefties really want us to fail in Iraq/Afganistan is the point.
I have no doubt that some moonbats (especially in academia) want us to fail, and spectacularly, in Iraq and Afganistan. But no liberal or normal dems do (some may want to simply cut and run, but that's something else entirely).
Now the wingnut media whores I was discussing DO WANT this recession to be long and painful, simply because they believe it will harm Obama and the Dems, now if I was charitable I'd say they want that for the long term good of the country.
But you are talking about a marginal minority (even in Berkely/San Francisco) that is dwarfed even by Libertarians.
You're so precious, little bird. An idiot, but precious none the less.
But you are talking about a marginal minority (even in Berkely/San Francisco) that is dwarfed even by Libertarians.Dude, anyone not striding from peak to peak across the Mountains of Galt are *totally* communist already. Don't think you're fooling anyone with this idea that there's some "real left" that's more socialist communist Stalinist murder 12 million by taking over GM and force relocating anyone on the death panels to DETROIT DEMONRATS!!
Maj. Hasan was raised and acculturated in the United States, joined the Army against the wishes of his parents, and was educated as a doctor. He had pledged an officer’s oath to serve faithfully and a doctor’s oath to do no harm. With every built-in advantage, we lost his heart and mind, failing to retain from him even the most rudimentary of fidelities.
That's the real story of his tragedy.
How can we possibly win hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan if we can't even win the heart and mind of our own?
More broadly, isn't it obvious that something more profound is at work with what some call Islamic fanaticism? Religion alone, IMHO, is insufficient to explain what's going on. One must note that Maj. Hasan was a doctor and unable to find a girlfriend. Those with potential were dubbed, reports tell us, insufficiently chaste. There's an admixture of inhibition and desire at the very core of the psyches of many Muslim males, whereby the Freudian injunction against self-denial has mixed with the Mohammedian imperative to form men whose outlet lies in fanaticism. Women are tantalizingly available and at the same time profoundly unavailable. This is why the most fanatical aren't found in the mountains and backwoods, but in the straddlers of both civilizations -- in Hamburg, Palestine, Jersey City, Fort Hood. The long-term answer can't be anything other than our Muslim brothers liberating their women from the burka and the harem and letting them fully enter modernity. Sometimes the best explanations lie in our most primal instincts.
An article in Atlantic Monthly last year mentioned a similar phenomenon among devoutly religious muslim men in the UK, attractive women are all around in the west (attractive women are all around everywhere, but in the west you can actually walk down the street and see their faces, arms, legs...)
when you are constantly confronted with what you want but can't have, resentment builds (except apparently among dedicated libertarians who profess no covetous feelings towards the property of others whatsoever)- and make no mistake about it, many islamists HATE women- whenever Islamists have taken over an area some of the very FIRST things they do, is restrict the rights of women, women can't drive, go to school, go out in public unless accompanied by a male relative, can't work, get married off agisnt their will to men 3X their age.
What many men like the FT Hood shooter want is a world where woman are kept in place, a world where he doesn't have to impress or date women, but one where some GIRL is told that she has to marry him, where he can later divorce her at will, but she can't divorce him,
Naw. His insane posts were in the other thread. ;- Seriously, interesting stuff, SBB.
I will digest it more fully once I stop celebrating the deaths of American soldiers with the other BTF Leftists.
Our own Muslims or our own deranged leftists? It could apply equally well to either.
concur.
Yup. Assuming there's still a civilization around in 200 years, the Islamic womens lib/reformation that's currently bubbling up around the margins will be much more historically important than any of the wars-of-civilization we're fighting.
I was thinking of our own deranged rightwing nutbags like, oh
Timothy McVeigh
James W. von Brunn...
Of course the non-libertarian "conservative" fringes share with Islam a fundamental discomfort with modernity. The violent explosions from that fringe that you mention - McVeigh, Von Brunn, Scott Roeder, etc. - hate women and modern "liberal" culture as much as Hasan. They just couch their hatred of modernity and women in terms selected readings of western/Christian doctrine rather than cherry picking from the Koran.
What is more emblematic of modernity, though, than free, equal, sexually uninhibited women and the men who celebrate them -- all on proud public display?(**) How can Freud not be part of the discussion about how repression interacts with all that?
(**) Which isn't of course to leave our non-heterosexual friends out of this ... since they're a big part of the mix, throw them into the mix.
Very few things. God bless America.
The problem with Freud is that his theories were all untested ########. His notions of sexual repression are the "clutch hitter moxie" of psychology. When put to the test they're all essentially crap. We can discuss behavioral models if you want, or we can just stick to the boring description of facts. Cultural "traditionalist" both Muslim and Christian (and Hindi and Chinese and a gazillion other whatever variants thereof) thrive on the subjecting and disempowerent of women. The violent outbursts from those "traditional cultures" when faced with the ever forward wave of modernity are evidence in and of themselves. We don't need some Freudian sub-conciousness to frame the matter.
A lot of Freud's theories were claptrap, but he was on to something when he noted that the repression of desire leads to other neuroses. And from there it's not that big a leap from neurosis to violence.
I don't disagree, really, with what you say, but IMHO the causes of what we see run deeper than sociology, culture, politics and the like.(**) They go to the core of the psyche -- to sexual competition, desire, and repression.
(**) Culture and politics can of course be expressive of the collected psyches of the people.
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