Not exactly. I knew he was a liberal, he just was at least decently convincing during the campaign that he could lean if not right to the middle occasionally. Proved wrong.
I'm afraid to ask this but... what did he do in office that strikes you as hardcore liberal?
Obamacare? No way to sell national health care as anything other than liberal.
I like what you did here. You throw out one issue and the sharks in the thread eat it up and forget about the original discussion. But alas, we don't live in a vacuum. The president is not responsible for just one act.
In regards to the Affordable Care Act, the reality is that something needed to change in the realm of health care and insurance, and on one else had anything better to offer that could pass through Congress. Even now, the Republicans are more focused on repeal than replacement or improvement. Currently, there is no better alternative.
But as a whole, take a look at his defense policy. Gun control. Tax cuts. He's socially liberal, but as far as matters of other importance, he tends to fall in the center. And I won't discredit him for that. He probably has intelligent reasons, rather than implying that god tells him to make certain decisions. It may just be the realist in him, knowing what can practically get through Congress versus what will fail and be turned against him as rhetoric. But the idea that he is strictly and far left is just absurd, especially based on one single issue.
What provisions do you think are liberal/bad/whatever?
I don't like the bill in its entirety, and would have been happy if it had never passed.
I fear getting off topic of the SotU, but explain.
Do you mean you dislike the nature of the changes to healthcare regulation entirely, or do you mean you'd rather it hadn't been done at a federal level.
I can't see many reasons to oppose the nature of a number of the provisions, at all. Unless your position is "if you aren't rich, you run the risk of just up and dying/going bankrupt in our society"
I can see an argument for opposing the idea that it's done at a federal level, even if I disagree with it.
The bill wasn't presented as a cafeteria option- the final bill was all or nothing. Maybe if I dig through the bill, I can find something in it that I can live with. But that's not reality- the reality was either passing the bill in its entirety, or not at all. Such is the nature of our system, after all.
So, there's no point in discussing the particulars of the bill. I opposed it in the aggregate, and did not want it to be passed. If it had not passed, maybe we could have discussed an alternate bill, but that's neither here nor there.
Bullshit. The reason you and the Republican Party are playing this game is because you know that much of the bill is necessary and popular reforms that were needed, and that coming out and opposing those reforms would make you look particularly bad. Hence why Republicans killed Democratic efforts to force votes on the provisions individually. Furthermore, if you really do have a principled objection to the bill, and not just a kneejerk reaction, you should be able to articulate those reasons, which does require discussion of the specifics.
In short, stop dodging the fucking question because you know answering it makes you look bad.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Honestly, just about everything about the SOTU and the responses were utterly predictable. On the upside, we got a preview of the crazy and ignorance that Bachmann will bring to the table during the Republican primaries.
The mandate and elimination of denial for pre-existing conditions are the very core of Obamacare.* And they come as a package. You can only do the latter if you do the former.
*Along with the huge expansion of Medicaid and the tax credits up to ~$84000 income.
This is actually why I'm not opposed to ending the mandate. It'd completely kill the private health insurance industry, something that really needs to happen so that we can get on with single payer health care in this country.
Huh, I never thought of the implications of the fact that stripping the mandate would kill the insurance companies - I just kind of figured it'd be a blind panick, only the wealthy would actually get any care as they be paying privately.
I wonder if there's any chance you could get some sanity in the healthcare system after the insurance companies died. The dearth of pricing information and power imbalance screw the market all to hell, and at least part of that would be corrected in a market without the insurance companies.
I'd still be willing to bet eveyone gets totally screwed, but it's at least worth thinking about. I guess it comes down to after the private for-profit insurance industry is in the grave, will people get over the "oh shit SOCIALISM!' BS and implement a single payer system, or just dick around without access to healthcare at all?
I would really just appreciate it is there wasn't a tangible undercurrent of loathing underneath the word "liberal"
yes we are guilty of the opposite, but that doesn't mean i can't criticize them for it
Hey, even liberals seem loathe to use that term to describe themselves these days, hence "progressive."
Mission accomplished, I guess.
Progressive is just a more accurate label.
Both are fine. As with most language, it's not really the words themselves but the way they're used. I'm perfectly happy calling myself a liberal; it is offensive when a conservative hurls the term, with the implication that I eat babies, read Marx, and work to undermine America in my free time.
Mission accomplished..........if you want to poison references to the philosophies underpinning most Western democracies. Why bother reading Locke, Smith, Wollstonecraft, et. al.? They were all dirty liberals!
This is actually why I'm not opposed to ending the mandate. It'd completely kill the private health insurance industry, something that really needs to happen so that we can get on with single payer health care in this country.
Huh, I never thought of the implications of the fact that stripping the mandate would kill the insurance companies - I just kind of figured it'd be a blind panick, only the wealthy would actually get any care as they be paying privately.
I wonder if there's any chance you could get some sanity in the healthcare system after the insurance companies died. The dearth of pricing information and power imbalance screw the market all to hell, and at least part of that would be corrected in a market without the insurance companies.
I'd still be willing to bet eveyone gets totally screwed, but it's at least worth thinking about. I guess it comes down to after the private for-profit insurance industry is in the grave, will people get over the "oh shit SOCIALISM!' BS and implement a single payer system, or just dick around without access to healthcare at all?
There'd be some initial pain as the insurers start canceling plans, but if other insurance markets are any indication, the government would quickly move in to fill the gap. For instance, here in FL the state government has become the largest home insurer because the private insurers can't get their rate increases approved by the state and choose to leave the market altogether. Similarly, the federal CHIP (and state equivalents) exist because health insurers were pricing middle and lower income people out of the market on individually purchased plans that cover children. These programs will only expand further because insurers are starting to not offer plans for children at all to avoid complying with the ACA's mandates. And, of course, Medicaid and Medicare exist because the insurers don't want to offer affordable coverage for higher risk/lower reward customers. The free market's failure in this case works in our favor, because bad behavior and practices on the part of the insurers will slowly drive them into smaller and smaller market share, while the government will begin shouldering more of the burden. With the ACA in place, we're bound to end up at single payer eventually, and the insurance industry's profit motive will be what drives us there.
Unfortunately, wwtMask, the Gov can't step in if it doesn't have the funds. Washington's CHIP is ending this year due to budget cuts. It's a great program, and I'm glad it was there for my children when I was working minimum wage and struggling to keep my fledgling family afloat.
Now I'm nearing six figures and have insurance through work, but I know plenty of people still using it who are going to be screwed when it ends.
Unfortunately, wwtMask, the Gov can't step in if it doesn't have the funds. Washington's CHIP is ending this year due to budget cuts. It's a great program, and I'm glad it was there for my children when I was working minimum wage and struggling to keep my fledgling family afloat.
Now I'm nearing six figures and have insurance through work, but I know plenty of people still using it who are going to be screwed when it ends.
olol bootstraps, right?
Right, that's what I meant by initial pain. It took a few insurers moving out of state before the GOP down here realized that shit would be in crisis if the state didn't step up. Since "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS!!!" seems to work reasonably well, I feel pretty confident that the CHIP programs will continue to expand, especially since insurers seem hell bent on being mustache twirling villains. For all other health insurance, it'll take mass rescission of policies and/or corporations being force to offer the shittiest policies possible to their employees in order to keep costs down. The insurers will try to make someone pay for all the good stuff in the ACA, mandate or no mandate. Without the mandate, though, all of this will just happen really, really fast.
What provisions do you think are liberal/bad/whatever?
I don't like the bill in its entirety, and would have been happy if it had never passed.
I fear getting off topic of the SotU, but explain.
Do you mean you dislike the nature of the changes to healthcare regulation entirely, or do you mean you'd rather it hadn't been done at a federal level.
I can't see many reasons to oppose the nature of a number of the provisions, at all. Unless your position is "if you aren't rich, you run the risk of just up and dying/going bankrupt in our society"
I can see an argument for opposing the idea that it's done at a federal level, even if I disagree with it.
The bill wasn't presented as a cafeteria option- the final bill was all or nothing. Maybe if I dig through the bill, I can find something in it that I can live with. But that's not reality- the reality was either passing the bill in its entirety, or not at all. Such is the nature of our system, after all.
So, there's no point in discussing the particulars of the bill. I opposed it in the aggregate, and did not want it to be passed. If it had not passed, maybe we could have discussed an alternate bill, but that's neither here nor there.
Bullshit. The reason you and the Republican Party are playing this game is because you know that much of the bill is necessary and popular reforms that were needed, and that coming out and opposing those reforms would make you look particularly bad. Hence why Republicans killed Democratic efforts to force votes on the provisions individually. Furthermore, if you really do have a principled objection to the bill, and not just a kneejerk reaction, you should be able to articulate those reasons, which does require discussion of the specifics.
In short, stop dodging the fucking question because you know answering it makes you look bad.
Its only been like a year you can't expect him to know whats actually in that thing man
it's not like you can find the full text of it just anywhere
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: We know there was slavery that was still tolerated when the nation began. We know that was evil. And it was a scourge, and a blot and a stain upon our history. But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. And I think that it’s high time that we recognize the contributions of our forebears who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.
MATTHEWS: I don’t know what to make that, Sal. That’s balloon head. That’s not what our history was founded on. We were founded on a constitution that includes treating slaves as three-fifths of a person. It went on all the way to the Civil War. We had compromise after compromise trying to avoid a war. We went to war and lost 600,000 people in the worst catastrophe in our history, because slavery continued through the 1860s and only ended because of that war. Here’s this woman that you made your spokesperson saying that somehow the founding fathers dealt with it. That’s the one thing they did not deal with. That was the horrible compromise that was at the heart of our Constitution. Why do you put someone like this forward who is a balloon head — who knows no American history? It’s a ridiculous decision you guys have made. Do you know how little this woman knows about our history?
RUSSO: I think Michele Bachmman is one of the best –
MATTHEWS: Did you just hear that stuff? Did you just hear? You want me to play it again? We can rub it in, Sal. It’s horrendous.
RUSSO: I heard what she said.
MATTHEWS: What is she talking about?
RUSSO: What she’s talking about is that we cannot continue to spend money as recklessly…
MATTHEWS: What? That’s not what she just said. She said the founding fathers got rid of slavery. Why would you say that? Every high school kid has been to Mt. Vernon and seen the slave quarters. Jefferson had slaves. all those guys had slaves. I know they were great men in other regards but they never got rid of slavery. It’s right in the Constitution. Here’s this woman waving the Constitution around, palling around with Scalia, and she doesn’t even know what the Constitution had in it. The treatment of slaves, African-Americans, as three-fifths of people. That’s in our history. You can’t take it out. Explain to me what this woman is talking about.
RUSSO: I think she’s just using that as an illustration.
MATTHEWS: Of what? Of balloon head thinking? What do you mean, sir?
RUSSO: I think that Americans are concerned today that their children and grandchildren will not have the same opportunities of the American dream because we’ve –
MATTHEWS: What your talking about? You’re talking like her. That’s how she talks. She goes on this tape no matter what you ask her she goes on a tape. I want to ask you about slavery. Sal, you know when slavery ended. It ended with the Civil War, right?
RUSSO: Well, some kind of slavery ended with the Civil War.
MATTHEWS: What do you mean “some kind of slavery?” Why are you hedging?
Armored Gorilla on
"I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years."
RUSSO: What she’s talking about is that we cannot continue to spend money as recklessly…
MATTHEWS: What? That’s not what she just said. She said the founding fathers got rid of slavery. Why would you say that? Every high school kid has been to Mt. Vernon and seen the slave quarters. Jefferson had slaves. all those guys had slaves. I know they were great men in other regards but they never got rid of slavery. It’s right in the Constitution. Here’s this woman waving the Constitution around, palling around with Scalia, and she doesn’t even know what the Constitution had in it. The treatment of slaves, African-Americans, as three-fifths of people. That’s in our history. You can’t take it out. Explain to me what this woman is talking about.
this is the stuff EVERYONE should be doing to 100% of politicians
Anyone who publicly makes the "taxation is slavery" argument gets to spend a month as an actual goddamn slave, mopping floors and cleaning toilets in an inner city high school, living on gruel and sleeping in a pile of straw.
Matthews makes a good point regarding the deification of the founding fathers. Is there anybody writing about that trend, or talking about it in any significant manner?
Matthews makes a good point regarding the deification of the founding fathers. Is there anybody writing about that trend, or talking about it in any significant manner?
It's a fascinating and frightening occurrence...
Writing as in books? I know there's some books out there about this regarding Lincoln, if that counts. Similar principle in play there
Matthews makes a good point regarding the deification of the founding fathers. Is there anybody writing about that trend, or talking about it in any significant manner?
It's a fascinating and frightening occurrence...
Dude, we're a country that pledges allegiance to a strip of cloth.
Matthews makes a good point regarding the deification of the founding fathers. Is there anybody writing about that trend, or talking about it in any significant manner?
It's a fascinating and frightening occurrence...
Dude, we're a country that pledges allegiance to a strip of cloth.
Well to the flag and all the things it represents.
Matthews makes a good point regarding the deification of the founding fathers. Is there anybody writing about that trend, or talking about it in any significant manner?
NASHVILLE — Members of Tennessee tea parties presented state legislators with five priorities for action Wednesday, including “rejecting” the federal health reform act, establishing an elected “chief litigator” for the state and “educating students the truth about America.”
About two dozen tea party activists held a news conference, then met with lawmakers individually to present their list of priorities and “demands” for the 2011 legislative session that opened Tuesday.
Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”
That would include, the documents say, that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”
The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”
Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.
“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” said Rounds, whose website identifies him as a Vietnam War veteran of the Air Force and FedEx retiree who became a lawyer in 1995.
Plenty of people recognized slavery as fucked up shit. Plenty of the founding fathers recognized slavery as fucked up shit but cared more about creating a country than basic human rights.
Also, anybody who brings up the "republic, not a democracy" thing as if it means anything in modern language needs to be kicked in the balls. It is mostly just useful when explaining fears of mob rule on the part of the makers of the constitution.
Posts
I like what you did here. You throw out one issue and the sharks in the thread eat it up and forget about the original discussion. But alas, we don't live in a vacuum. The president is not responsible for just one act.
In regards to the Affordable Care Act, the reality is that something needed to change in the realm of health care and insurance, and on one else had anything better to offer that could pass through Congress. Even now, the Republicans are more focused on repeal than replacement or improvement. Currently, there is no better alternative.
But as a whole, take a look at his defense policy. Gun control. Tax cuts. He's socially liberal, but as far as matters of other importance, he tends to fall in the center. And I won't discredit him for that. He probably has intelligent reasons, rather than implying that god tells him to make certain decisions. It may just be the realist in him, knowing what can practically get through Congress versus what will fail and be turned against him as rhetoric. But the idea that he is strictly and far left is just absurd, especially based on one single issue.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
Bullshit. The reason you and the Republican Party are playing this game is because you know that much of the bill is necessary and popular reforms that were needed, and that coming out and opposing those reforms would make you look particularly bad. Hence why Republicans killed Democratic efforts to force votes on the provisions individually. Furthermore, if you really do have a principled objection to the bill, and not just a kneejerk reaction, you should be able to articulate those reasons, which does require discussion of the specifics.
In short, stop dodging the fucking question because you know answering it makes you look bad.
More people want the law expanded than replaced with a Republican-sponsored plan, 28 to 23.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0B8--qw1ws&feature=youtu.be
There's 3 of them now?
Is there a summary of his version? Or is it just 4:44 of him yelling GOOOOOOOOOOLD?
*Along with the huge expansion of Medicaid and the tax credits up to ~$84000 income.
Also, I'll never, ever get how someone can claim to hate government so much, and yet be a career politician.
BauchusCare.
I like MittCare myself.
yes we are guilty of the opposite, but that doesn't mean i can't criticize them for it
I wonder if there's any chance you could get some sanity in the healthcare system after the insurance companies died. The dearth of pricing information and power imbalance screw the market all to hell, and at least part of that would be corrected in a market without the insurance companies.
I'd still be willing to bet eveyone gets totally screwed, but it's at least worth thinking about. I guess it comes down to after the private for-profit insurance industry is in the grave, will people get over the "oh shit SOCIALISM!' BS and implement a single payer system, or just dick around without access to healthcare at all?
Mission accomplished, I guess.
Rigorous Scholarship
Progressive is just a more accurate label.
Both are fine. As with most language, it's not really the words themselves but the way they're used. I'm perfectly happy calling myself a liberal; it is offensive when a conservative hurls the term, with the implication that I eat babies, read Marx, and work to undermine America in my free time.
Mission accomplished..........if you want to poison references to the philosophies underpinning most Western democracies. Why bother reading Locke, Smith, Wollstonecraft, et. al.? They were all dirty liberals!
There'd be some initial pain as the insurers start canceling plans, but if other insurance markets are any indication, the government would quickly move in to fill the gap. For instance, here in FL the state government has become the largest home insurer because the private insurers can't get their rate increases approved by the state and choose to leave the market altogether. Similarly, the federal CHIP (and state equivalents) exist because health insurers were pricing middle and lower income people out of the market on individually purchased plans that cover children. These programs will only expand further because insurers are starting to not offer plans for children at all to avoid complying with the ACA's mandates. And, of course, Medicaid and Medicare exist because the insurers don't want to offer affordable coverage for higher risk/lower reward customers. The free market's failure in this case works in our favor, because bad behavior and practices on the part of the insurers will slowly drive them into smaller and smaller market share, while the government will begin shouldering more of the burden. With the ACA in place, we're bound to end up at single payer eventually, and the insurance industry's profit motive will be what drives us there.
Now I'm nearing six figures and have insurance through work, but I know plenty of people still using it who are going to be screwed when it ends.
olol bootstraps, right?
No, he spends a long time talking about slashing everything that's not SS, Medicare and the Military to the bone as well.
Right, that's what I meant by initial pain. It took a few insurers moving out of state before the GOP down here realized that shit would be in crisis if the state didn't step up. Since "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS!!!" seems to work reasonably well, I feel pretty confident that the CHIP programs will continue to expand, especially since insurers seem hell bent on being mustache twirling villains. For all other health insurance, it'll take mass rescission of policies and/or corporations being force to offer the shittiest policies possible to their employees in order to keep costs down. The insurers will try to make someone pay for all the good stuff in the ACA, mandate or no mandate. Without the mandate, though, all of this will just happen really, really fast.
Its only been like a year you can't expect him to know whats actually in that thing man
it's not like you can find the full text of it just anywhere
http://www.americablog.com/2011/01/sotu-word-cloud-what-words-were-used.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Americablog+(AMERICAblog)
Obama's cloud has Jobs as one of the main words. In Ryan's and Bachmann's clouds you can barely see the word at all.
And I thought he wanted to make it smaller!
You would, you socialist. :P
/movesfactoriestoTaiwanMexicoChina
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/01/26/did-michele-bachmann-deliberately-sugarcoat-history-of-slavery-in-america/
this is the stuff EVERYONE should be doing to 100% of politicians
Anyone who publicly makes the "taxation is slavery" argument gets to spend a month as an actual goddamn slave, mopping floors and cleaning toilets in an inner city high school, living on gruel and sleeping in a pile of straw.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
As in: "This shit is delicious"
It's a fascinating and frightening occurrence...
Writing as in books? I know there's some books out there about this regarding Lincoln, if that counts. Similar principle in play there
Well to the flag and all the things it represents.
I don't know. It is just really pathetic sometimes:
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/13/tea-parties-cite-legislative-demands/ Plenty of people recognized slavery as fucked up shit. Plenty of the founding fathers recognized slavery as fucked up shit but cared more about creating a country than basic human rights.
Also, anybody who brings up the "republic, not a democracy" thing as if it means anything in modern language needs to be kicked in the balls. It is mostly just useful when explaining fears of mob rule on the part of the makers of the constitution.