You realize, of course, that you all you've done is express snark without addressing what you quoted.
What you probably don't realize is that the propensity to work hard and the ability to make good decisions also pretty much come down to luck. So what? Some people are winners. Getting pissy about that fact just makes you bitter.
I'm fine with it. Chaos rules much of our lives. Some people make out better than others due to factors out of their control, such as personality, good looks, natural talent, and the advantages or at least lack of disadvantages they start out with.
Not saying that talent, will, and work don't play a part, just that they don't necessarily play nearly as big a part as many would have us believe. Just as you question my intent in pointing that out, I have to question theirs when they continually push hard work, sacrifice, etc as the major factors.
If you put in the hard work, you'll know where the right place and time is. It's 90%+ hard work, good decisions, and having someone to bankroll you in the early stages. It's less than 10% luck.
Sure. Bill Gates would have turned out the exact same way if his parents weren't rich, very business-minded, gotten access to personal computers very early and had connections at IBM. Right.
Of course, most of the statements about the Titanic's unsinkability included qualifiers such as "practically" or "nearly," but the public naturally ignored them, "unsinkable" (like "impossible" or "pregnant") being a word that didn't lend itself to qualification. And even as reports of the Titanic disaster began to reach America early in the morning of 15 April 1912, the Vice-President of the White Star Line in New York stated, without qualification, "We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable."
About the "scientific consensus" : for starters, that is a very ill-defined concept. Second, the scientific consensus was once that the titanic was unsinkable, that the earth was flat, and that some cool looking naked bearded guy in the clouds threw lightning at ill-behaving children.
Your post is so astoundingly wrong that I don't really even know where to begin rebutting it. You start off with a plausible (even if the numbers are completely made up) premise, but then just go on about how we can't trust anything. Not sure what your point is, but it seems to be that since there is always doubt, we shouldn't go with ideas that you disagree with. That generally seems to be the "conservative" position lately. If the science supports what you want to do, shout it from the mountain tops. If it doesn't, bury it and do what you were going to do anyway.
I'm trying to be pedantic here, but the GP never mentioned the word alleged. You're just twisting his hypothetical situation to suit your argument.
So what? He was twisting reality to suit his argument. Nobody has perfect knowledge, especially when it comes to a situation like the one described, of someone being assaulted on the street. It's a ridiculous argument. That's why the best answer is to stop it if possible and have it be sorted out in an objective way through the legal system. It's not perfect, but it's better than assaults in the street.
Not enough bankers have jumped from the top floors, but personally I consider that a negative.
They have, but those golden parachutes just don't allow for the satisfying splat that we'd like to see reported. That seems to be the biggest problem with the financial industry these days. Salary and bonuses don't seem to have any relation whatsoever to performance. The banks are taking the bailout money and continuing to pay dividends and big bonuses to execs. W T F ?!
Dont be a fool, those are certainly not bold claims, and Im not even sure it was a claim. And if it were even a cursory application of critical thinking would show they cant be proven, and certainly not to the vast majority of those that have their minds made up. And even if it's true I doubt it's a conspiracy as much as an unintentional reflection of the mindset of the editors.
It certainly is a bold claim when you provide no evidence whatsoever that they did anything like what you say they did. For all I know, you might have read one or two issues that you felt were like that and simply decided that it was a pattern that proved that this is how their coverage was throughout the campaign season. Wanting some evidence to back up your claims does not make me a fool.
I'm not trying to sway any opinions here... but maybe one or two people will look more carefully at the way news is presented and may see the pattern I thought I saw. If anyone replies to this thread in six months and tells me I imagined it all I can live with that. If you dont give a crap I can live with that too. But dont accuse me of making some Grand Statement and demand thorough and incontrovertible documentation because a thought doesnt conveniently fit in your mindset.
I'm not demanding it because the thought doesn't fit my mindset. I'm demanding it to determine whether your claim is even worth investigating. I've heard too many claims of media bias and conspiracy on both sides to bother looking any further into a completely unsubstantiated one such as yours. I suspect others are probably tired of such claims as well when they aren't accompanied by a shred of evidence.
Funny, I find MSNBC less biased than CNN. Perhaps conservatives and liberals perceive bias differently:-) But the slant I noticed on CNN was elegant and subtle. Not only were they unlikely to run a positive story on McCain, but if they did then all other stories on the main page would be negative. If the biz section had a downbeat story on the economy, then the political section would have a McCain story. If the Science section told of some breakthrough, they would run an Obama story in National or Politics. Stories also ran for very arbitrary periods of time... negative stories could stay on the page for weeks unchanged. Positive stories lasted half a day to two days. I think there was an intentional effort on CNN's part to paint the public mood as gloomy as possible, which helped Obama.
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported. The new outlets only mentioned his negative stuff. Obama had *lots* of attacks on McCain but he was getting a lot more coverage so it didnt appear as if thats all he was saying.
Those are some rather bold claims that suggest some sort of serious manipulation on a pretty grand scale. I think you're going to have to provide some support for those if they're to be considered even remotely plausible.
McCain (and especially Palin when she joined up) spent most of the time hurling personal attacks at Obama. Those got reported widely. McCain's discussions of issues got reported as well, just as Obama's did, but there wasn't a whole lot to report on since both of them had rather vague plans. So the press would focus on the conflict. What McCain said about Obama's plans, and vice versa. I don't see anything sinister in that.
A lot of negative ads run against McCain/Obama were not directly from McCain/Obama but supporters of McCain/Obama.
Even if you only look at the ads sponsored by the campaigns themselves, at least for the last few weeks or so, every ad run directly by the McCain campaign was negative, while Obama was something like 60-40 neg/pos IIRC. The main difference I saw was that McCain's negative ads were largely character attacks, while Obama's negative ads focused more on issues. I think people were more concerned with issues this time around, and the fact that McCain's ads didn't really address issues as much probably hurt him.
(I am an Obama supporter, who could have easily gone for McCain if it wasn't for Palin being on the ticket.)
The fact that the Republicans put her on the ticket, and that most of them were so gung-ho and happy about it says a lot about the party. That's why I can't vote for them. I want a fiscally conservative party in power. I also want a socially liberal party in power. Why don't we have a party that is both? The closest we have is the Democrats, who have been more fiscally conservative than Republicans for a long time now.
I just want them to run the military, balance the budget, and leave me the hell alone. They have no business trying to control every aspect of our lives, as both parties have tried to do for generations now. What's worse is that they do it by using our own tax dollars against us. Do what they want, or they cut funding to your state. It's completely ridiculous.
You complain about the "8 years of a Republican powerhouse". Certainly people deserve credit or blame for what they have done, but to blame the people in power for everything bad that happens, simply because they have been in power, is unfair and unjust.
In four years, we will probably have had four years of a 'Democratic powerhouse', and one that is much more close to being a actual powerhouse -- remember, Democrats controlled the Senate during 2001 and 2002, and both houses of Congress in 2007 and 2008.
Not exactly. They controlled it for maybe a year and a half, and even then it's kind of hard to call it control with the numbers so close and one being an independent former republican. Also, 9/11 happened during this time-frame, and democrats basically went along with everything Bush wanted for the sake of keeping things as calm as possible rather than creating the appearance of infighting and panic. Can't really say they were in control during that time. Bush was in control and Congress was a rubber stamp. I can't really fault either side for that in the months following the attack. Only when they started beating the drums to attack Iraq did I draw the line. Unfortunately most of Congress didn't.
During the next two years at least, the Democrats will have a much wider majority in Congress then anyone has had in many years. In 2012, it will be wrong to blame every problem in the world on the Democrats. Why can't you see that you are doing the same thing to the Republicans today?
I don't think we can blame every problem on the Bush administration. We can certainly blame them for Iraq though. They also were a major cause of the financial crisis (deregulating credit default swaps was a HUGE mistake that allowed the banks to rack up so many bad loans with no oversight). We can blame them for most of the bad laws passed during the last 8 years, and the fact that our national debt has skyrocketed during that period. So, no, can't blame them for everything, but there is a lot that they are responsible for.
Also -- if you are interested in healing the divide, I suggest you avoid inflammatory remarks like "ultra right wing", "showed their true colors", and so on. It really doesn't help.
It's true though. There are some real asshats on both the far right and far left. The kinds of douchebags that would boo during a speech like that. Of course neither candidate was really part of the extremes. They are both more centrist than a lot of their backers would like.
And finally the Democrats held Congress for two years; did anything improve? Nope.
They were basically tied, but had a 1 vote advantage if they were completely united, but they also had a president that threatened to veto anything they wanted to do, so it's not like they were going to be able to get anything done anyway, let alone fix the the aftermath of the previous 6 years of neocons run amok.
"Why must we keep following this path when it obviously isn't working?"
Hey..it's working for me now...why should I want it to change?
Because it isn't working for our country. We pay more per capita for health care than any other industrialized country, and we get less for it. That's just stupid. It makes no sense to continue that. Yes, you can think you're ok now, but so did a lot of other people until they got sick. Then they find that their insurance doesn't really cover them as well as they thought. Or they change jobs and lose coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Our system is asinine, and it needs to be fixed. You can just ignore what's going on and think you're fine, but some of us would like to fix it before we become victims of it.
"From what I understand of Obama's plan, you could still keep your regular health insurance plan. The idea is to make sure that there is at least some health care available to everyone and that all children are covered in some way. You can still keep your existing health plan. It focuses more on providing preventative care such as routine physicals and various types of screenings. This should help people catch problems earlier before they end up becoming much harder to treat and a lot more expensive, which we'll end up paying for when the person shows up in the emergency room."
Great...so now I can pay for MY health plan.....and someone elses too, eh?
Oh Joy!
We already do, through taxes, when people who can't pay end up in the hospital. Might as well lower our tax burden by helping to make sure that we don't have to keep waiting until they require ridiculously expensive emergency care before we help them.
We already pay more per-capita for health care than any other similarly developed country, and we can't even manage to cover everyone, as most of them do. Nor is our health any better for it. Why must we keep following this path when it obviously isn't working?
No...the govt. is a necessary 'evil' for some things, but, please don't put in in charge of my very living health!!
From what I understand of Obama's plan, you could still keep your regular health insurance plan. The idea is to make sure that there is at least some health care available to everyone and that all children are covered in some way. You can still keep your existing health plan. It focuses more on providing preventative care such as routine physicals and various types of screenings. This should help people catch problems earlier before they end up becoming much harder to treat and a lot more expensive, which we'll end up paying for when the person shows up in the emergency room.
It makes a lot of sense. Existing plans continue. Everyone is covered for the basics, leading to better general health and lower costs to taxpayers for emergency care and hospitalization. The info on the full plan is available. As is the FAQ.
McCain and Obama are presenting plans that have a lot more similarities than differences. They are both fairly vague, both in the reforms they will make, coverage they will provide, and how they will be paid for. A lot of that will be up to Congress to decide anyway. The plans seem to set the goals, and then they're going to have to fight to meet as many of those goals as they can. That's going to be tough in the current financial situation.
No one in the Western world wants a nuclear armed middle eastern country, and why Israel continues to "no comment" their nuclear status. It changes the world dynamic and strips the West of it's power to command resources.
Nobody in the western world has much say in the matter anymore. Who's going to keep troops in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon? Who's going to prevent North Korea, Russia, China, Pakistan or factions within them from selling nuclear technology? It's not going to happen. We need a new plan and we need it quick. We can't keep pouring thousands of troops and billions of dollars a week into these wars. It's not sustainable, and it's not even creating any benefit for us. It's money sink that a few are profiting massively from.
Shia dominance in the region is not the worst outcome for us. They are much less radical and more reasonable than many of the other sects. Regardless, the Shia are in charge in Iraq now, and Iran is gaining more and more influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it did in Lebanon. It is already exerting its power over the oil of southern Iraq. We can probably hang on to enough influence in the region to keep the oil flowing for a while, but it is imperative that we reduce our dependence on oil.
We need to work hard and fast on clean coal technology, as we have vast amounts of it. We need to develop more and better nuclear sources, and ways to deal with the waste. Battery technologies, alternative fuels, energy transportation, distributed generation, and a host of other potential research avenues need to be funded and pursued in earnest. We simply cannot remain dependent upon countries that we don't like and who don't like us. Only by reducing our demand can we hope to help keep oil prices low enough and create a situation where the middle eastern countries need us at least as much as we need them.
It's not a matter of who has the better plan IMO, it's who has the will to actually work hard enough on this one problem among many other priorities.
It will probably be a matter of coming up with a plan for how it could work, but the implementation may be a ways off due to the current economic problems. Of course that might be a good thing since it may force them to think more conservatively about how it will be paid for. If they even had a plan at the end of the next four years, I would consider that an amazing feat.
Catastrophic insurance is fine and good for both situations - if they pay out. Maybe the restructuring of health insurance should get those companies out of the routine care & maintenance - driving down the prices for the sort of care that prevents serious conditions - and leave the insurance companies to fight for that catastrophic coverage.
I get discounts on auto insurance for having a good driving record, for having an alarm and window etchings, for having multiple cars covered, and a few other things I don't recall off the top of my head. You'd think that you'd get some sort of discount on catastrophic health insurance for getting routine checkups and things like prostate exams, mammograms, etc. Uninsured prices for routine visits for these things are kind of ridiculous, which I believe is due to the insurance companies. They shouldn't be involved in routine health care like that, and they shouldn't be influencing pricing.
If the doctor thinks there's something wrong with you and starts requesting more expensive procedures (MRIs, extensive blood work, etc), then I think you should have a deductible to pay and the rest could be covered. Just like a minor car accident would be (car analogies... is there anything they can't do?)
"I also wonder how much of a discount doctors would be willing to give if you provide them with free malpractice insurance for accepting patients in the national health insurance program."
Funny, I wonder what would happen to their level of competence and the budget when that tax payer insurance had to cover lawsuits..
I'd think that there would be some criteria for doctors working within that system. If they start having an inordinate number of malpractice claims against them, they should be booted from the system, as the cost to retain them would become too high.
Also, what lesson might nations like Iran and Syria take away from the present wars if the US suffers a humiliating defeat at the hands of guerillas funded and equiped by them? A US defeat in either Afghanistan or Iraq, perhaps preceded by a precipitous and ill-advised early withdrawal, would embolden all of the insurgents in those regions and have disastrous consequences and implications for Israel, Europe, and the United States for decades to come.
Israel has already been defeated by these guerrilla fighters in Lebanon. Our tactics don't work against them. We haven't found a way to defeat them without incurring a large number of civilian casualties in the process, which just leads to more people that hate us, and therefore more guerrillas to fight against. We can't infiltrate them. We can't fight them directly. We're always just reacting to them. We're not going to win. Nobody can really even define winning.
Iran will end up pulling the strings in Iraq. They will be the beneficiary of us removing Saddam, something they weren't able to do on their own. We aren't going to benefit from this. The longer we stay, the more of a waste it will be. The longer we stay, the more people will turn against us. While we've been devoting a ridiculous amount of resources to Iraq, Afghanistan has gone in the crapper. We're seriously losing control there, and it may be too late to regain it. Iraq has been a horrible diversion from what we set out to do in Afghanistan, and now we may have failed at both.
Some may say I'm being overly pessimistic, but I've seen no reason for any real optimism about our chances of achieving positive outcomes. We've achieved a fragile security in Iraq by throwing a large, and unsustainable, number of troops at the problem. That is ending, but we also haven't achieved anything politically that could be considered positive for us. Iran is taking over the country and is pretty much calling the shots in southern Iraq already. We're not going to end up with another ally there. Iran will. Same thing could end up happening in Afghanistan. We'd better start working to become less reliant on middle east oil in a hurry, because it's not going to get any friendlier towards us.
I looked at Lockheed, and the top guys combined are still just a tiny fraction of revenue. I think it worked out to about 2 thousandths, or 0.2%. Even if you are not vertically integrated and there are 100 levels beneath you in subcontractors, you are still only talking about a 20% overhead. And I don't think that anything but the top-level subcontractors would have compensation packages anywhere near as generous as Lockheed, so my number is ridiculously inflated.
I think these guys make too much money, but let's not overstate the problem. I think bad intelligence had a lot more to do with the war, along with strategic miscalculation on the part of Saddam. Without the crappy intelligence, congress never would have gone along with a full-scale invasion. And Saddam's belief that he could call our "bluff" turned out to be catastrophic.
Right, but you're looking at it as a percentage of the costs of what they're providing. If they're building multi-billion dollar fighter planes, then it's understandable that it's a high-dollar contract. Looking at their compensation as a percentage of a contract to provide 50 fighters is deceptive though. Two thousandths of a percent of a hundred billion dollar contract is still a ridiculous amount of money. A hundred million here or there could do a lot for the education system and other areas as well. Just because we're dealing with high-dollar contracts doesn't mean we should be wasteful.
As far as the war itself, even with faulty intelligence, I still can't see it as justifiable. Why the administration put so much trust in Ahmed Chalabi I'll never understand. Without his influence, we probably wouldn't have gotten into this war. Saddam was contained. It seems like they were just looking for any reason at all to invade, and afterward couldn't settle on what the reason was. Congress agreed to the invasion while being told that it would be quick and cheap. A matter of less than six months and maybe 10 billion dollars or some such nonsense. The administration ignored anyone that told them that their numbers were pure fantasy.
Now that we've been there over five years, lost thousands of people, and spent over 60 times the original estimate, I think we can safely call this a massive failure and get out as quick as possible. Iran won. Iraq will be a Shia-dominated country that Iran will have a strong influence over. Drop it in their lap to deal with. It's the best outcome for us and the worst for them. We can't do any better than that.
By the way, while I'm sure that certain people get quite rich from war spending, the vast majority of the money gets spread out to the employees and suppliers of the defense contractors. For example, Lockheed brings in about $40 billion. Of this, their highest-compensated employee got a bit over $34 million. Outrageous? Yeah... but at 1/1000 of the revenue not really a significant problem. Contrast this with the roughly $38 billion that goes back out to normal employees and suppliers. Even their dividends (about $600 million) are a small fraction of the total money moving through the company, and dividends are as likely to end up in a mutual fund as they are in a rich guy's pocket.
I think you have to consider more than the top guy at each of the main contractors. You have to consider all of the 7-8 figure top employees at each one of them getting a very over-sized cut. Then you get the same from all of the major subcontractors under each main contractor, with their 7-8 figure people getting their over-sized cut. A lot of the rest does trickle down, but there's a relative few taking a huge chunk of the money. I wonder how much influence these few had on the administration in the lead up to the war.
I wish Obama would just come out and say we're leaving Iraq. We lost. Iran won. End of story.
umm... I wish Obama would come out and say* that there was never anything to win in Iraq. what the hell are they trying to win, exactly? no one ever asks that, and that's strange, because I don't think anyone has ever told me. anyway, of course he won't do that, because he's just like the rest of them. he doesn't want to leave Iraq; in fact, he most likely wants to extend our warring efforts to Pakistan and Iran. he wants to do whatever the Israel lobby tells him. boy, those guys sure do have a lot of money.
I don't know what the real reason for invading was either. People like to say it was for oil, but if it was, they seriously dropped the ball on that. Iran is siphoning off about half a million barrels a day and basically owns southern Iraq. I read the other day that Iran's money is even the preferred currency there now.
The worst thing we could do to Iran right now is leave and drop the whole thing in their lap. Then they'll have to be the bad cop as well as the good. Right now they get to do what they want and blame the Americans for everything that goes wrong. Leave it all to them and they'll at least take the hits too. Either way we're not going get anything out of this war.
It looks like the CRA actually had quite a lot to do with large numbers of sub prime mortgage securities being improperly rated and sold. Which is the basis of the current financial crisis after the people who obtained those loans began to default on them devaluing those securities. The bottom line is that legislating that banks take on increased risk in order to provide loans to people who are unlikely to be able to pay them back was a bad idea. The banks tried to offload that risk onto other investors and because of the misrating of the mortgages they succeeded.
The CRA can't take all or even most of the blame. There's a lot more to it than that.
Obama is going to go overboard in the other direction. Look at the Union voting issue - he supports doing away with secret ballots, which will only encourage Unions to muscle in on businesses, and that's going to result in places shutting down.
Deregulation has never been a problem - it's always been irresponsibility.
Not irresponsibility. Lack of accountability. When we start closing loopholes and prosecuting white-collar crimes with the kind of resources and zeal we've been prosecuting drug crimes with, maybe we'll get somewhere. How likely is that? Not very...
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You realize, of course, that you all you've done is express snark without addressing what you quoted.
What you probably don't realize is that the propensity to work hard and the ability to make good decisions also pretty much come down to luck. So what? Some people are winners. Getting pissy about that fact just makes you bitter.
I'm fine with it. Chaos rules much of our lives. Some people make out better than others due to factors out of their control, such as personality, good looks, natural talent, and the advantages or at least lack of disadvantages they start out with.
Not saying that talent, will, and work don't play a part, just that they don't necessarily play nearly as big a part as many would have us believe. Just as you question my intent in pointing that out, I have to question theirs when they continually push hard work, sacrifice, etc as the major factors.
Complete crap.
If you put in the hard work, you'll know where the right place and time is. It's 90%+ hard work, good decisions, and having someone to bankroll you in the early stages. It's less than 10% luck.
Sure. Bill Gates would have turned out the exact same way if his parents weren't rich, very business-minded, gotten access to personal computers very early and had connections at IBM. Right.
> The White Star Shipping Line "claimed" the Titanic was unsinkable
No, they didn't.
Yes they did. From the article you linked:
Of course, most of the statements about the Titanic's unsinkability included qualifiers such as "practically" or "nearly," but the public naturally ignored them, "unsinkable" (like "impossible" or "pregnant") being a word that didn't lend itself to qualification. And even as reports of the Titanic disaster began to reach America early in the morning of 15 April 1912, the Vice-President of the White Star Line in New York stated, without qualification, "We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable."
About the "scientific consensus" : for starters, that is a very ill-defined concept. Second, the scientific consensus was once that the titanic was unsinkable, that the earth was flat, and that some cool looking naked bearded guy in the clouds threw lightning at ill-behaving children.
Your post is so astoundingly wrong that I don't really even know where to begin rebutting it. You start off with a plausible (even if the numbers are completely made up) premise, but then just go on about how we can't trust anything. Not sure what your point is, but it seems to be that since there is always doubt, we shouldn't go with ideas that you disagree with. That generally seems to be the "conservative" position lately. If the science supports what you want to do, shout it from the mountain tops. If it doesn't, bury it and do what you were going to do anyway.
I'm trying to be pedantic here, but the GP never mentioned the word alleged. You're just twisting his hypothetical situation to suit your argument.
So what? He was twisting reality to suit his argument. Nobody has perfect knowledge, especially when it comes to a situation like the one described, of someone being assaulted on the street. It's a ridiculous argument. That's why the best answer is to stop it if possible and have it be sorted out in an objective way through the legal system. It's not perfect, but it's better than assaults in the street.
Not enough bankers have jumped from the top floors, but personally I consider that a negative.
They have, but those golden parachutes just don't allow for the satisfying splat that we'd like to see reported. That seems to be the biggest problem with the financial industry these days. Salary and bonuses don't seem to have any relation whatsoever to performance. The banks are taking the bailout money and continuing to pay dividends and big bonuses to execs. W T F ?!
Dont be a fool, those are certainly not bold claims, and Im not even sure it was a claim. And if it were even a cursory application of critical thinking would show they cant be proven, and certainly not to the vast majority of those that have their minds made up. And even if it's true I doubt it's a conspiracy as much as an unintentional reflection of the mindset of the editors.
It certainly is a bold claim when you provide no evidence whatsoever that they did anything like what you say they did. For all I know, you might have read one or two issues that you felt were like that and simply decided that it was a pattern that proved that this is how their coverage was throughout the campaign season. Wanting some evidence to back up your claims does not make me a fool.
I'm not trying to sway any opinions here... but maybe one or two people will look more carefully at the way news is presented and may see the pattern I thought I saw. If anyone replies to this thread in six months and tells me I imagined it all I can live with that. If you dont give a crap I can live with that too. But dont accuse me of making some Grand Statement and demand thorough and incontrovertible documentation because a thought doesnt conveniently fit in your mindset.
I'm not demanding it because the thought doesn't fit my mindset. I'm demanding it to determine whether your claim is even worth investigating. I've heard too many claims of media bias and conspiracy on both sides to bother looking any further into a completely unsubstantiated one such as yours. I suspect others are probably tired of such claims as well when they aren't accompanied by a shred of evidence.
Funny, I find MSNBC less biased than CNN. Perhaps conservatives and liberals perceive bias differently :-) But the slant I noticed on CNN was elegant and subtle. Not only were they unlikely to run a positive story on McCain, but if they did then all other stories on the main page would be negative. If the biz section had a downbeat story on the economy, then the political section would have a McCain story. If the Science section told of some breakthrough, they would run an Obama story in National or Politics. Stories also ran for very arbitrary periods of time... negative stories could stay on the page for weeks unchanged. Positive stories lasted half a day to two days. I think there was an intentional effort on CNN's part to paint the public mood as gloomy as possible, which helped Obama.
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported. The new outlets only mentioned his negative stuff. Obama had *lots* of attacks on McCain but he was getting a lot more coverage so it didnt appear as if thats all he was saying.
Those are some rather bold claims that suggest some sort of serious manipulation on a pretty grand scale. I think you're going to have to provide some support for those if they're to be considered even remotely plausible.
McCain (and especially Palin when she joined up) spent most of the time hurling personal attacks at Obama. Those got reported widely. McCain's discussions of issues got reported as well, just as Obama's did, but there wasn't a whole lot to report on since both of them had rather vague plans. So the press would focus on the conflict. What McCain said about Obama's plans, and vice versa. I don't see anything sinister in that.
A lot of negative ads run against McCain/Obama were not directly from McCain/Obama but supporters of McCain/Obama.
Even if you only look at the ads sponsored by the campaigns themselves, at least for the last few weeks or so, every ad run directly by the McCain campaign was negative, while Obama was something like 60-40 neg/pos IIRC. The main difference I saw was that McCain's negative ads were largely character attacks, while Obama's negative ads focused more on issues. I think people were more concerned with issues this time around, and the fact that McCain's ads didn't really address issues as much probably hurt him.
(I am an Obama supporter, who could have easily gone for McCain if it wasn't for Palin being on the ticket.)
The fact that the Republicans put her on the ticket, and that most of them were so gung-ho and happy about it says a lot about the party. That's why I can't vote for them. I want a fiscally conservative party in power. I also want a socially liberal party in power. Why don't we have a party that is both? The closest we have is the Democrats, who have been more fiscally conservative than Republicans for a long time now.
I just want them to run the military, balance the budget, and leave me the hell alone. They have no business trying to control every aspect of our lives, as both parties have tried to do for generations now. What's worse is that they do it by using our own tax dollars against us. Do what they want, or they cut funding to your state. It's completely ridiculous.
You complain about the "8 years of a Republican powerhouse". Certainly people deserve credit or blame for what they have done, but to blame the people in power for everything bad that happens, simply because they have been in power, is unfair and unjust.
In four years, we will probably have had four years of a 'Democratic powerhouse', and one that is much more close to being a actual powerhouse -- remember, Democrats controlled the Senate during 2001 and 2002, and both houses of Congress in 2007 and 2008.
Not exactly. They controlled it for maybe a year and a half, and even then it's kind of hard to call it control with the numbers so close and one being an independent former republican. Also, 9/11 happened during this time-frame, and democrats basically went along with everything Bush wanted for the sake of keeping things as calm as possible rather than creating the appearance of infighting and panic. Can't really say they were in control during that time. Bush was in control and Congress was a rubber stamp. I can't really fault either side for that in the months following the attack. Only when they started beating the drums to attack Iraq did I draw the line. Unfortunately most of Congress didn't.
During the next two years at least, the Democrats will have a much wider majority in Congress then anyone has had in many years. In 2012, it will be wrong to blame every problem in the world on the Democrats. Why can't you see that you are doing the same thing to the Republicans today?
I don't think we can blame every problem on the Bush administration. We can certainly blame them for Iraq though. They also were a major cause of the financial crisis (deregulating credit default swaps was a HUGE mistake that allowed the banks to rack up so many bad loans with no oversight). We can blame them for most of the bad laws passed during the last 8 years, and the fact that our national debt has skyrocketed during that period. So, no, can't blame them for everything, but there is a lot that they are responsible for.
Also -- if you are interested in healing the divide, I suggest you avoid inflammatory remarks like "ultra right wing", "showed their true colors", and so on. It really doesn't help.
It's true though. There are some real asshats on both the far right and far left. The kinds of douchebags that would boo during a speech like that. Of course neither candidate was really part of the extremes. They are both more centrist than a lot of their backers would like.
And finally the Democrats held Congress for two years; did anything improve? Nope.
They were basically tied, but had a 1 vote advantage if they were completely united, but they also had a president that threatened to veto anything they wanted to do, so it's not like they were going to be able to get anything done anyway, let alone fix the the aftermath of the previous 6 years of neocons run amok.
"Why must we keep following this path when it obviously isn't working?"
Hey..it's working for me now...why should I want it to change?
Because it isn't working for our country. We pay more per capita for health care than any other industrialized country, and we get less for it. That's just stupid. It makes no sense to continue that. Yes, you can think you're ok now, but so did a lot of other people until they got sick. Then they find that their insurance doesn't really cover them as well as they thought. Or they change jobs and lose coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Our system is asinine, and it needs to be fixed. You can just ignore what's going on and think you're fine, but some of us would like to fix it before we become victims of it.
"From what I understand of Obama's plan, you could still keep your regular health insurance plan. The idea is to make sure that there is at least some health care available to everyone and that all children are covered in some way. You can still keep your existing health plan. It focuses more on providing preventative care such as routine physicals and various types of screenings. This should help people catch problems earlier before they end up becoming much harder to treat and a lot more expensive, which we'll end up paying for when the person shows up in the emergency room."
Great...so now I can pay for MY health plan.....and someone elses too, eh?
Oh Joy!
We already do, through taxes, when people who can't pay end up in the hospital. Might as well lower our tax burden by helping to make sure that we don't have to keep waiting until they require ridiculously expensive emergency care before we help them.
We already pay more per-capita for health care than any other similarly developed country, and we can't even manage to cover everyone, as most of them do. Nor is our health any better for it. Why must we keep following this path when it obviously isn't working?
No...the govt. is a necessary 'evil' for some things, but, please don't put in in charge of my very living health!!
From what I understand of Obama's plan, you could still keep your regular health insurance plan. The idea is to make sure that there is at least some health care available to everyone and that all children are covered in some way. You can still keep your existing health plan. It focuses more on providing preventative care such as routine physicals and various types of screenings. This should help people catch problems earlier before they end up becoming much harder to treat and a lot more expensive, which we'll end up paying for when the person shows up in the emergency room.
It makes a lot of sense. Existing plans continue. Everyone is covered for the basics, leading to better general health and lower costs to taxpayers for emergency care and hospitalization. The info on the full plan is available. As is the FAQ.
McCain and Obama are presenting plans that have a lot more similarities than differences. They are both fairly vague, both in the reforms they will make, coverage they will provide, and how they will be paid for. A lot of that will be up to Congress to decide anyway. The plans seem to set the goals, and then they're going to have to fight to meet as many of those goals as they can. That's going to be tough in the current financial situation.
No one in the Western world wants a nuclear armed middle eastern country, and why Israel continues to "no comment" their nuclear status. It changes the world dynamic and strips the West of it's power to command resources.
Nobody in the western world has much say in the matter anymore. Who's going to keep troops in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon? Who's going to prevent North Korea, Russia, China, Pakistan or factions within them from selling nuclear technology? It's not going to happen. We need a new plan and we need it quick. We can't keep pouring thousands of troops and billions of dollars a week into these wars. It's not sustainable, and it's not even creating any benefit for us. It's money sink that a few are profiting massively from.
Shia dominance in the region is not the worst outcome for us. They are much less radical and more reasonable than many of the other sects. Regardless, the Shia are in charge in Iraq now, and Iran is gaining more and more influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it did in Lebanon. It is already exerting its power over the oil of southern Iraq. We can probably hang on to enough influence in the region to keep the oil flowing for a while, but it is imperative that we reduce our dependence on oil.
We need to work hard and fast on clean coal technology, as we have vast amounts of it. We need to develop more and better nuclear sources, and ways to deal with the waste. Battery technologies, alternative fuels, energy transportation, distributed generation, and a host of other potential research avenues need to be funded and pursued in earnest. We simply cannot remain dependent upon countries that we don't like and who don't like us. Only by reducing our demand can we hope to help keep oil prices low enough and create a situation where the middle eastern countries need us at least as much as we need them.
It's not a matter of who has the better plan IMO, it's who has the will to actually work hard enough on this one problem among many other priorities.
It will probably be a matter of coming up with a plan for how it could work, but the implementation may be a ways off due to the current economic problems. Of course that might be a good thing since it may force them to think more conservatively about how it will be paid for. If they even had a plan at the end of the next four years, I would consider that an amazing feat.
Catastrophic insurance is fine and good for both situations - if they pay out. Maybe the restructuring of health insurance should get those companies out of the routine care & maintenance - driving down the prices for the sort of care that prevents serious conditions - and leave the insurance companies to fight for that catastrophic coverage.
I get discounts on auto insurance for having a good driving record, for having an alarm and window etchings, for having multiple cars covered, and a few other things I don't recall off the top of my head. You'd think that you'd get some sort of discount on catastrophic health insurance for getting routine checkups and things like prostate exams, mammograms, etc. Uninsured prices for routine visits for these things are kind of ridiculous, which I believe is due to the insurance companies. They shouldn't be involved in routine health care like that, and they shouldn't be influencing pricing.
If the doctor thinks there's something wrong with you and starts requesting more expensive procedures (MRIs, extensive blood work, etc), then I think you should have a deductible to pay and the rest could be covered. Just like a minor car accident would be (car analogies... is there anything they can't do?)
"I also wonder how much of a discount doctors would be willing to give if you provide them with free malpractice insurance for accepting patients in the national health insurance program."
Funny, I wonder what would happen to their level of competence and the budget when that tax payer insurance had to cover lawsuits..
I'd think that there would be some criteria for doctors working within that system. If they start having an inordinate number of malpractice claims against them, they should be booted from the system, as the cost to retain them would become too high.
Also, what lesson might nations like Iran and Syria take away from the present wars if the US suffers a humiliating defeat at the hands of guerillas funded and equiped by them? A US defeat in either Afghanistan or Iraq, perhaps preceded by a precipitous and ill-advised early withdrawal, would embolden all of the insurgents in those regions and have disastrous consequences and implications for Israel, Europe, and the United States for decades to come.
Israel has already been defeated by these guerrilla fighters in Lebanon. Our tactics don't work against them. We haven't found a way to defeat them without incurring a large number of civilian casualties in the process, which just leads to more people that hate us, and therefore more guerrillas to fight against. We can't infiltrate them. We can't fight them directly. We're always just reacting to them. We're not going to win. Nobody can really even define winning.
Iran will end up pulling the strings in Iraq. They will be the beneficiary of us removing Saddam, something they weren't able to do on their own. We aren't going to benefit from this. The longer we stay, the more of a waste it will be. The longer we stay, the more people will turn against us. While we've been devoting a ridiculous amount of resources to Iraq, Afghanistan has gone in the crapper. We're seriously losing control there, and it may be too late to regain it. Iraq has been a horrible diversion from what we set out to do in Afghanistan, and now we may have failed at both.
Some may say I'm being overly pessimistic, but I've seen no reason for any real optimism about our chances of achieving positive outcomes. We've achieved a fragile security in Iraq by throwing a large, and unsustainable, number of troops at the problem. That is ending, but we also haven't achieved anything politically that could be considered positive for us. Iran is taking over the country and is pretty much calling the shots in southern Iraq already. We're not going to end up with another ally there. Iran will. Same thing could end up happening in Afghanistan. We'd better start working to become less reliant on middle east oil in a hurry, because it's not going to get any friendlier towards us.
I looked at Lockheed, and the top guys combined are still just a tiny fraction of revenue. I think it worked out to about 2 thousandths, or 0.2%. Even if you are not vertically integrated and there are 100 levels beneath you in subcontractors, you are still only talking about a 20% overhead. And I don't think that anything but the top-level subcontractors would have compensation packages anywhere near as generous as Lockheed, so my number is ridiculously inflated.
I think these guys make too much money, but let's not overstate the problem. I think bad intelligence had a lot more to do with the war, along with strategic miscalculation on the part of Saddam. Without the crappy intelligence, congress never would have gone along with a full-scale invasion. And Saddam's belief that he could call our "bluff" turned out to be catastrophic.
Right, but you're looking at it as a percentage of the costs of what they're providing. If they're building multi-billion dollar fighter planes, then it's understandable that it's a high-dollar contract. Looking at their compensation as a percentage of a contract to provide 50 fighters is deceptive though. Two thousandths of a percent of a hundred billion dollar contract is still a ridiculous amount of money. A hundred million here or there could do a lot for the education system and other areas as well. Just because we're dealing with high-dollar contracts doesn't mean we should be wasteful.
As far as the war itself, even with faulty intelligence, I still can't see it as justifiable. Why the administration put so much trust in Ahmed Chalabi I'll never understand. Without his influence, we probably wouldn't have gotten into this war. Saddam was contained. It seems like they were just looking for any reason at all to invade, and afterward couldn't settle on what the reason was. Congress agreed to the invasion while being told that it would be quick and cheap. A matter of less than six months and maybe 10 billion dollars or some such nonsense. The administration ignored anyone that told them that their numbers were pure fantasy.
Now that we've been there over five years, lost thousands of people, and spent over 60 times the original estimate, I think we can safely call this a massive failure and get out as quick as possible. Iran won. Iraq will be a Shia-dominated country that Iran will have a strong influence over. Drop it in their lap to deal with. It's the best outcome for us and the worst for them. We can't do any better than that.
By the way, while I'm sure that certain people get quite rich from war spending, the vast majority of the money gets spread out to the employees and suppliers of the defense contractors. For example, Lockheed brings in about $40 billion. Of this, their highest-compensated employee got a bit over $34 million. Outrageous? Yeah... but at 1/1000 of the revenue not really a significant problem. Contrast this with the roughly $38 billion that goes back out to normal employees and suppliers. Even their dividends (about $600 million) are a small fraction of the total money moving through the company, and dividends are as likely to end up in a mutual fund as they are in a rich guy's pocket.
I think you have to consider more than the top guy at each of the main contractors. You have to consider all of the 7-8 figure top employees at each one of them getting a very over-sized cut. Then you get the same from all of the major subcontractors under each main contractor, with their 7-8 figure people getting their over-sized cut. A lot of the rest does trickle down, but there's a relative few taking a huge chunk of the money. I wonder how much influence these few had on the administration in the lead up to the war.
umm... I wish Obama would come out and say* that there was never anything to win in Iraq. what the hell are they trying to win, exactly? no one ever asks that, and that's strange, because I don't think anyone has ever told me. anyway, of course he won't do that, because he's just like the rest of them. he doesn't want to leave Iraq; in fact, he most likely wants to extend our warring efforts to Pakistan and Iran. he wants to do whatever the Israel lobby tells him. boy, those guys sure do have a lot of money.
I don't know what the real reason for invading was either. People like to say it was for oil, but if it was, they seriously dropped the ball on that. Iran is siphoning off about half a million barrels a day and basically owns southern Iraq. I read the other day that Iran's money is even the preferred currency there now.
The worst thing we could do to Iran right now is leave and drop the whole thing in their lap. Then they'll have to be the bad cop as well as the good. Right now they get to do what they want and blame the Americans for everything that goes wrong. Leave it all to them and they'll at least take the hits too. Either way we're not going get anything out of this war.
It looks like the CRA actually had quite a lot to do with large numbers of sub prime mortgage securities being improperly rated and sold. Which is the basis of the current financial crisis after the people who obtained those loans began to default on them devaluing those securities.
The bottom line is that legislating that banks take on increased risk in order to provide loans to people who are unlikely to be able to pay them back was a bad idea. The banks tried to offload that risk onto other investors and because of the misrating of the mortgages they succeeded.
The CRA can't take all or even most of the blame. There's a lot more to it than that.
Obama is going to go overboard in the other direction. Look at the Union voting issue - he supports doing away with secret ballots, which will only encourage Unions to muscle in on businesses, and that's going to result in places shutting down.
Deregulation has never been a problem - it's always been irresponsibility.
Not irresponsibility. Lack of accountability. When we start closing loopholes and prosecuting white-collar crimes with the kind of resources and zeal we've been prosecuting drug crimes with, maybe we'll get somewhere. How likely is that? Not very...