The cliffs that Republicans created with Republican policies? Sure, if you want to go there. Obama is of course doing his part to add to that cliff - by continuing Republican policies like tax cuts for the rich, bank bailouts, and spending over a trillion a year on the war/surveillance machine.
And that's the attitude that got us 8 years of Bush! Al Gore won the popular vote and take away the Ralph Nader votes and it was a landslide for Gore in 2000.
There were twice as many Democrats in Florida that voted for Bush than the total number of Nader voters, and five times that number of Democrats didn't vote on election day.
So, given the fact that there's no mathematical difference between a Nader voter and a non-voter, and that a Dem vote going for Bush was twice as bad for Gore's percentages as a vote going to Nader, who's really at fault again for the 2000 election?
Which Gore did actually win. A statewide press recount showed that Gore would have earned more votes than Bush, which means we had a stolen presidential election.
They are both the same? Not to me. As a cancer patient who has gone from unemployed to a semi-well paying job, I can now get insurance that I couldn't get/hope to afford before Obama.
...since he was the first to bring about Romneycare, before it was known as Obamacare? It's the same damn plan, though partisans on both side of the aisle would like to forget that.
As a cancer patient who has gone from unemployed to a semi-well paying job, I can now get insurance that I couldn't get/hope to afford before Obama.
Except: the PPCA does nothing to guarantee you care. It does nothing to stop your insurance from dramatically increasing in cost. It does nothing to reign in drug prices.
What it does do is give the insurance industry, which was on an unsustainable business model (shareholders demanding blood from a stone), hundreds of billions in new revenue from tens of millions of consumers now forced to buy their junk products.
I think you have no clue about the state of the private medical system in the US.. Health care in the US used to be affordable until the government got completely involved in it. Did you know that before Obamacare, the government was the single largest provider of medical coverage? They had something like 60% of all the non-elective health care market sowed up with Medicare, Medicaid, and VA services.
Who do those services cover? The old, wounded veterans, and the poor who cannot afford care or insurance on their own. And for the latter, in many cases they've been "recissioned" by their health insurance company because they have a high-cost ailment, or lost their job (and thus their insurance) because of a severe accident or disease like cancer.
Gee, who's going to use the most medical care?
Maybe the elderly, wounded veterans, and patients recovering from cancer or a head-on collision? Here's your sign....
And it is exactly how they are involved which is why the costs are so high. The government does not pay for services as you or I would should be go in ourselves. They pay an average cost for the region which could be more or less then the actual bill. Now the government said it's going to save money by only paying a percentage of that costs. So what happens, the medical service providers jack the costs up so the government pays what is normally asked for. This increases the area average and provides incentives for increasing the costs.
As is usually the case, this is substituting wingnut ideology for reality. Every other industrialized nation has some form of universal health care (or insurance companies regulated to within an inch of their lives), so they must be paying more than we do for care, right? Because their providers just keep raising prices, right?
Except here in the real world, as opposed to Randian la-la land, they pay less money for better care. Even here in the U.S., Medicare, Medicaid and the VA have 2-4% overhead, compared to 30% overhead for private insurance. Why? Because the government agencies aren't paying people exorbitant salaries to find new excuses to deny you care. Because Medicare doesn't have shareholders demanding increasing profits from the agency. Because the head of one of those agencies makes less than $200,000 a year, as opposed to millions for health insurance CEO's like Stephen Hemsley, who made $100 million in one year.
Because on Planet Wingnut, insurance executives become the highest paid CEO on the planet by paying out claims rather than denying them...
The Tea Party howled when the GOP created a GOP.com/teaparty page.
The hell they did. The Tea Party is run by establishment GOP officials (Army) and establishment GOP donors (Kochs), and it's been that way for almost the entirety of the teabagger existence.
You may think it would be preferable to base the election of POTUS on the popular vote alone, but that would ultimately undermine the very theory of the United States.
Hardly. Direct election of the president would no more "undermine the very theory" of the U.S. any more than the direct election of Senators did, or the abolishment of slavery. Don't be so hung up on the notion of a "republic" because we are in a democratic republic.
You know the group that is actually on a platform of being moderate.
Which, like "centrism", is a huge bias in itself and malleable by extremists. Case in point:
In the 80's, Ronald Reagan proudly signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which requires the prosecution of those who commit torture. Bush responds to the 911 attacks (which he was warned about point-blank but ignored) not by taking up the Taliban's offer to hand over Bin Laddin in exchange for evidence, but by launching two wars and a torture regime. Obama came into office and supposedly ended U.S. torture, but shielded Bushco officials from the law.
So the "moderate" position would now be: no U.S. official will be prosecuted for torture, despite a treaty that requires it.
but you will find those who will claim it should be possible to use drugs like cocaine and meth and heroin freely. these are people who only see the constraints on their personal freedom, and not costs to society
Hardly. The worst drug use is far less evil than the best prohibition, as the societal cost of addiction is insignificant next to the societal cost of the War on Drugs. Millions of non-violent offenders sent to jail, tens of thousands of people killed in Mexico, the militarization of police forces across the country, the destruction of civil liberties, hundreds of billions spent with no real decline in use...
lots of alcoholics who can't take care of themselves. even if you buy the dubious claim that someone can have a drink only occasionally with no ill effect on their relationships or employment, such an outlier does not have any merit on what a nation's alcohol policy should be like for the average person
The argument for Prohibition has remained the same, only the variables have been switched around.
That's amazing, in spite of the fact the this new product has lower screen resolution than a product that costs $130 less
Nice slight of hand there, comparing the 16 big iPad Mini to the 8 gig Nexus 7, as opposed to the 16 gig. Which is still cheaper, so why the need for the switcheroo?
sports an obsolete dual core processor
So every Android device running a processor from 2011 is now shit?
and still has no built in USB port. Oh, and the battery is glued in.
Oh, and if anyone gave a rat's ass, the iPod and first iPad would have been one-hit-wonders. If you want a replaceable battery, go ahead and buy whatever it is you want. But stop pretending that your desired feature is someone's design flaw, anymore than the lack of a second camera on the Nexus is a flaw.
Apple customers obviously don't care about saving $100 since they are still customers, but Apple ex-customers do. That is precisely how Apple lost the lead in the smartphone market.
To...Android phones costing just as much as an iPhone? And haterz like to complain about Apple's reality distortion field...
...Same as all the parents who brag to me that their three-year-old is so clever that he/she can use the iPad. Amazing!
If Apple's next operating system contains a shitty redesign of the UI, and people point to 3 year olds being able to use it as lame deflection, it will be. Until then it's a lame false equivalency....
1. iPads are not desktops 2. haven't used Metro but it seems less straightforward than using an iPad 3. iPads weren't around for 20 odd years like the Windows GUI
Failo. The entire point of capitalism is to make the most amount of money possible for the smallest investment possible. Which, in the absence of competition, frequently makes for shitty choices for the consumer.
While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.
Or, the mundane truth is capitalist apologists are willfully oblivious to the lack of competing options for the consumer to chose from.
Imagine if even 25% of the new phone buyers took a look at these plans and said, "Wow, that's a terrible option. I'm going to roll back to my old Nokia flip-phone and wait for industry to get its act together."
In which case the phone companies will say "okay, cool, no one wants 4G so we can stop investing in it and coast on our 3G network, which becomes ever more profitable as those investments continue to be paid off".
The problem is, apologists will blame the corporations for nothing, and just pass the blame along to the consumer as if he or she has any actual say over what corporate beancounters decide to do in the absence of regulation.
Libertarian blather. Even if you were to sprout wings, or in the case, telepathy, there's no amount of "education" he can do to "persuade the masses" that they should move in a monolithic block to demand xyz features for xyz prices from for-profit corporations as mere consumers.
Considering I have unlimited 4G service here in the states, I'd say pretty well.
Pretty much not, or else the two largest carriers (Verizon & AT&T) wouldn't have data caps on their plans without ceasing to be the two largest carriers.
Don't sign up. When they see the lack of custom - they will rethink the idea/deals.
What they'll "rethink" is 4G service, not their pricing. If customers aren't signing up, why invest in new equipment when your old, mostly paid for by now, 3G network is making you more money and the customers have nowhere else to go?
If Amazon eat up all the smaller outlets (including in meatspace), and only two or three car manufacturers remain in the world, I would see that as progress, as it streamlines production, without unnecessary duplication (often by those who would be less efficient anyway).
Eh? When has the creation of a monopoly or an oligopoly benefited anyone but the primary shareholders of the companies involved? Can you name a single example?
Here's a counter-example: the rollout of "upgrade fees" for cell phones in the U.S., which are nothing more than an excuse to screw their customers for more profit. If the market was competitive, Verizon never would have been able to get away with rolling out a $30 fee (yes I know they weren't the first) because Sprint would have eaten their lunch by offering Verizon customers $30 off the cost of a new phone if they switched carriers.
Slashdot Mirror
The cliffs that Republicans created with Republican policies? Sure, if you want to go there. Obama is of course doing his part to add to that cliff - by continuing Republican policies like tax cuts for the rich, bank bailouts, and spending over a trillion a year on the war/surveillance machine.
There were twice as many Democrats in Florida that voted for Bush than the total number of Nader voters, and five times that number of Democrats didn't vote on election day.
So, given the fact that there's no mathematical difference between a Nader voter and a non-voter, and that a Dem vote going for Bush was twice as bad for Gore's percentages as a vote going to Nader, who's really at fault again for the 2000 election?
Which Gore did actually win. A statewide press recount showed that Gore would have earned more votes than Bush, which means we had a stolen presidential election.
Shorter fjord: on Planet Teabagger, a suspicious $99,000 payoff is totally equivalent to a suspicious $20-$100 million payoff.
Except: the PPCA does nothing to guarantee you care. It does nothing to stop your insurance from dramatically increasing in cost. It does nothing to reign in drug prices.
What it does do is give the insurance industry, which was on an unsustainable business model (shareholders demanding blood from a stone), hundreds of billions in new revenue from tens of millions of consumers now forced to buy their junk products.
We meet again, dumass.
Who do those services cover? The old, wounded veterans, and the poor who cannot afford care or insurance on their own. And for the latter, in many cases they've been "recissioned" by their health insurance company because they have a high-cost ailment, or lost their job (and thus their insurance) because of a severe accident or disease like cancer.
Gee, who's going to use the most medical care?
Maybe the elderly, wounded veterans, and patients recovering from cancer or a head-on collision? Here's your sign....
As is usually the case, this is substituting wingnut ideology for reality. Every other industrialized nation has some form of universal health care (or insurance companies regulated to within an inch of their lives), so they must be paying more than we do for care, right? Because their providers just keep raising prices, right?
Except here in the real world, as opposed to Randian la-la land, they pay less money for better care. Even here in the U.S., Medicare, Medicaid and the VA have 2-4% overhead, compared to 30% overhead for private insurance. Why? Because the government agencies aren't paying people exorbitant salaries to find new excuses to deny you care. Because Medicare doesn't have shareholders demanding increasing profits from the agency. Because the head of one of those agencies makes less than $200,000 a year, as opposed to millions for health insurance CEO's like Stephen Hemsley, who made $100 million in one year.
Because on Planet Wingnut, insurance executives become the highest paid CEO on the planet by paying out claims rather than denying them...
The hell they did. The Tea Party is run by establishment GOP officials (Army) and establishment GOP donors (Kochs), and it's been that way for almost the entirety of the teabagger existence.
Hardly. Direct election of the president would no more "undermine the very theory" of the U.S. any more than the direct election of Senators did, or the abolishment of slavery. Don't be so hung up on the notion of a "republic" because we are in a democratic republic.
Which, like "centrism", is a huge bias in itself and malleable by extremists. Case in point:
In the 80's, Ronald Reagan proudly signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which requires the prosecution of those who commit torture. Bush responds to the 911 attacks (which he was warned about point-blank but ignored) not by taking up the Taliban's offer to hand over Bin Laddin in exchange for evidence, but by launching two wars and a torture regime. Obama came into office and supposedly ended U.S. torture, but shielded Bushco officials from the law.
So the "moderate" position would now be: no U.S. official will be prosecuted for torture, despite a treaty that requires it.
Hardly. The worst drug use is far less evil than the best prohibition, as the societal cost of addiction is insignificant next to the societal cost of the War on Drugs. Millions of non-violent offenders sent to jail, tens of thousands of people killed in Mexico, the militarization of police forces across the country, the destruction of civil liberties, hundreds of billions spent with no real decline in use...
The argument for Prohibition has remained the same, only the variables have been switched around.
Right. Because not coming up with workarounds for your supplier's shitty product means you are a bad person....
Nice slight of hand there, comparing the 16 big iPad Mini to the 8 gig Nexus 7, as opposed to the 16 gig. Which is still cheaper, so why the need for the switcheroo?
So every Android device running a processor from 2011 is now shit?
Oh, and if anyone gave a rat's ass, the iPod and first iPad would have been one-hit-wonders. If you want a replaceable battery, go ahead and buy whatever it is you want. But stop pretending that your desired feature is someone's design flaw, anymore than the lack of a second camera on the Nexus is a flaw.
To...Android phones costing just as much as an iPhone? And haterz like to complain about Apple's reality distortion field...
If Apple's next operating system contains a shitty redesign of the UI, and people point to 3 year olds being able to use it as lame deflection, it will be. Until then it's a lame false equivalency....
And if that was his only argument, you'd have a great point....except for the butthurt rage, of course.
1. iPads are not desktops
2. haven't used Metro but it seems less straightforward than using an iPad
3. iPads weren't around for 20 odd years like the Windows GUI
Failo. The entire point of capitalism is to make the most amount of money possible for the smallest investment possible. Which, in the absence of competition, frequently makes for shitty choices for the consumer.
Which is kinda the point of the story.
Or, the mundane truth is capitalist apologists are willfully oblivious to the lack of competing options for the consumer to chose from.
In which case the phone companies will say "okay, cool, no one wants 4G so we can stop investing in it and coast on our 3G network, which becomes ever more profitable as those investments continue to be paid off".
The problem is, apologists will blame the corporations for nothing, and just pass the blame along to the consumer as if he or she has any actual say over what corporate beancounters decide to do in the absence of regulation.
Hardly.
How is clean water a need?
How is landline telephone service a need?
How are highways a need?
Then there's the slight issue that the subject of this article isn't "needs", but "massively overcharging for a shitty service."
Libertarian blather. Even if you were to sprout wings, or in the case, telepathy, there's no amount of "education" he can do to "persuade the masses" that they should move in a monolithic block to demand xyz features for xyz prices from for-profit corporations as mere consumers.
Or was that a feature, not a bug for you?
Pretty much not, or else the two largest carriers (Verizon & AT&T) wouldn't have data caps on their plans without ceasing to be the two largest carriers.
Right, just like how landline phones and highways didn't exist in the Soviet Union, because they didn't have capitalism....
What they'll "rethink" is 4G service, not their pricing. If customers aren't signing up, why invest in new equipment when your old, mostly paid for by now, 3G network is making you more money and the customers have nowhere else to go?
Eh? When has the creation of a monopoly or an oligopoly benefited anyone but the primary shareholders of the companies involved? Can you name a single example?
Here's a counter-example: the rollout of "upgrade fees" for cell phones in the U.S., which are nothing more than an excuse to screw their customers for more profit. If the market was competitive, Verizon never would have been able to get away with rolling out a $30 fee (yes I know they weren't the first) because Sprint would have eaten their lunch by offering Verizon customers $30 off the cost of a new phone if they switched carriers.
But neither of those companies is verging on monopoly status. If Yahoo goes under and Microsoft calls it quits on Bing, then we can talk about Google.
A convicted monopolist.
You didn't realize that's a non sequitur to the point he was making, or did you just rush in to be a douche?