|
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On May 06 2017 08:52 Grumbels wrote:
Yes, since the radicalization of the GOP that happened during the Bush years and accelerated under Obama. They have been supported destructive wars, failed to do anything about climate change, opposed lbgt rights, opposed health care reform, opposed reform of the financial industry, supported Trump, support the war on drugs. And a million other issues of importance.
Afghanistan can at least be morally defended. Iraq was a mistake but its not like it was going to last well through the Arab spring anyway. Bush provided tax credits to renewable energy sources. No one supported LGBTQ rights before it became popular. No one could reform health care seriously without a supermajority. The financial industry was giving everyone what they wanted prior to 2008. The war on drugs is a lot bigger then one presidents ability to change and made sense for the criminal elements that it was indented to fight, surprise racism as well.
We get it you don't agree with their politics but at least use reason and logic for your arguments instead of creating lame lists from buzzwords.
|
On May 06 2017 08:52 Grumbels wrote:
Yes, since the radicalization of the GOP that happened during the Bush years and accelerated under Obama. They have been supported destructive wars, failed to do anything about climate change, opposed lbgt rights, opposed health care reform, opposed reform of the financial industry, supported Trump, support the war on drugs. And a million other issues of importance.
It isn't radicalization, but a shift in their focus. The Republicans of the 70s-80s-90s were never the enemies of goverment. They believed in less goverment, but never claimed the goverment was the enemy of America success. But it is hard to sell the belief that we can't solve your problem because it isn't the governments role. So over time the Republicans started to stake out claims on specific issues. They became the an entire party of guns, pro-life, anti-civil rights laws, anti immigration reform. Even under Reagan they banned assault rifles and reformed immigration. But they just couldnt' keep selling their idea of limit goverment as the world became more complex.
So like the democrats, they lean into identity politics. But the identities are not minorities, but specific social issues. Limiting immigration. Protecting Christmas. All the bullshit we associate with the GOP. But unlike the other demographics that the democrats court, the GOP's groups will never leave. They love the power they have over that party. Far Left wing voters say "We might vote third party because you don't represent us." Far right win voters say "We voted for you and we are never leaving this party. Don't even think of not doing what we want."
|
On May 06 2017 08:53 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:26 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 08:13 Sermokala wrote:On May 06 2017 08:05 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 07:40 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 07:29 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 07:11 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 06:27 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 06:18 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 05:27 Grumbels wrote:
[quote]
Are you thinking of Bill O'Reilly&Co? I don't mean to say that the GOP suffers less from sex scandals, because they probably have more of them on average (FOX News apparently was almost like a harem with an absurdly sexist culture), but rather that the posture of both the mainstream media and the republican party whenever it is discovered that a conservative politician or figure engaged in some sort of illicit sexual practice (or even divorce) they virtually never bother to condemn this behavior and very frequently it has no effect on their career. If on the other hand there is even a trace of scandal around some liberal the media never stops blabbering about their serious moral concern, and all of right wing media hypocritically gloats about liberal immortality and the importance of family values.
And it's not about this specific issue, it's about how conservatives cynically exploit every possible angle of attack and feign outrage about everything, with the tacit support of the media, even though they engage in the exact same behavior themselves. It has to do with temperament (liberals are less likely to be hypocritical in this way), but also with negative stereotyping of underprivileged groups. You said politicians, so I wasn't including Bill O'Reilly. Herman Cain is a prominent example. Affair scandal and boom, he's gone. Big front runner, and a lot of my Obama voting friends were quite prepared to vote for him instead of the Obama re-election based on their own economic fortures. Because Phillip Hinkle got caught, boom gone. Mark Foley, gone. This is just off the top of my head right now, because it sounded like you were Spicer in the Briefing Room for a second there. I lived through these high profile sex scandals and how, far from "no one cares," they plummeted and were gone, I gotta call bullshit. It's absolutely ironic for how quick they all rocketed out of there that people like you might legitimately never heard of them. It would be doubly ironic to put up with the first round of watching sex scandals ruin candidates/elected politicians, hearing Republican hypocrisy at how many bit the dust from the family values party, and hearing a second whammy that it never was a big deal for Republicans because the hypocrisy was accepted. Family values rhetoric was at the core of the GOP. Only in big liberal states could you get by without it. Trump is absolutely a noticeable departure. I don't think these are good examples. Herman Cain is a fringe figure and no one in the GOP liked him, so they would easily turn on him. Hinkle and Foley deeply embarrassed the GOP by being involved in gay sex scandals, and homophobia certainly played a large part in their disappearance. What I'm talking about is the garden variety pseudo-scandal where someone has an affair or is accused of sexual misconduct, or even divorces. Liberals are held to different standards than conservatives. Much like how if some rightwing extremist shoots up a school it's a non-event, but if a Muslim does the same thing it's front page news: terrorist attacks sweep the nation and require endless war as the only logical response. Wow. We're really plumbing the depths with you. Herman Cain was a frontrunner, but for the purpose of your thesis you want to call him fringe. Gay sex scandals aren't really sex scandals because homophobia is somehow your deciding factor in a sex scandal. I'm a little blown away, and Plansix and Biff have been doing their utmost to cause nothing to surprise me anymore. I can't even begin to unravel these absurd justifications. So when you don't cherry pick your sex scandals and dismiss inconvenient counterexamples, I'll think you're interested in laying a basis for your case. Ben Carson and Trump were frontrunners too, but in many ways they are fringe. Which disturbed weirdo captures the attention of the republican base is pretty random, it is usually not meaningful but Trump is an exception. And the GOP was perfectly willing to throw Trump under the bus when the Billy Bush tape came out, you had the spectacle of a bunch of people who all have their own private scandals and all have antediluvian attitudes speak concernedly about the importance of respecting women. People in power are always willing to bend the rules when it personally benefits them. Because most of the GOP consists of white men with patriarchal beliefs, they will exploit their power to gain access to attractive young women. Because homophobia is an important element of their platform and they don't personally benefit from a compassionate attitude towards gay people, they will immediately abandon anyone caught in some sort of gay scandal. But the situations are just not symmetrical. Liberal sex scandals are treated much differently by the GOP than vice versa. The GOP has an endless ability to be hypocritical, they will be utterly dedicated and convincing in attacking people for certain behavior and then immediately engage in the exact same acts. You've staked out your position quite well. If I wanted someone more rational to describe how conservatives and liberals are treated differently, I'd probably do better to ask your brother. It's just too clear from your narrow view of consideration and lack of standards that your thesis is all that matters. T leading presidential candidate for the party is rocked by scandal to drop precipitously in the polls directly following and is never heard from again. Somehow not a sex scandal ending a career. Somehow gay affairs aren't affairs. But I have no intention to waste my breath with maybe the least able person in this thread to give a fair hearing to countervailing points. Believe the facts you choose to believe; Trump would be proud. Do you seriously think that Cain disappeared because of a sex scandal? Or that he had a realistic change of winning the primary? (lol) He disappeared because he was an embarrassment to the party, because he couldn't be controlled and on top of that was involved in a scandal. They probably tried to do the same thing with Trump but he had too much momentum. I don't understand where what you think the line is between what the GOP doing the right thing is and doing the wrong thing is. He disapeared beacuse he was involved in a scandal and the party didn't even try to save him beacuse he wasn't a party kind of person? They tried to do the same to trump beacuse he wasn't apart of the mainstream party but he had too much momentum? both of these things make sense are logical and are good things for the party to do. I don't see how sex scandals are handled differently by who is involved with them. Both parties make rational decisions on when to bail on someone. Edit: I saw your edit after your post and it cleared things up for me. You don't actually care about making any progress you just want to complain about the situation. This whole discussion is because I wanted to mention that there are different standards for conservatives than for liberals. Which is true. Then I mentioned sex scandals as an offhand example, because my impression from following politics is that republicans constantly have them but it doesn't affect the party very seriously and doesn't stop them or the media from presenting themselves as the party of morality. And often it doesn't affect the politicians either (think of Gingrich and his several wives). Then Danglars kept coming up with examples of GOP figures who had to step down after a scandal as if those are counter examples for my thesis. Go blame Danglars. And you can complain about my edit, but whatever. I don't think anyone can contest the fact that the GOP is on all controversial matters on the wrong side of history. You can wonder how tactically useful it is to dogmatically oppose them, but I think morally speaking the only possible answer is that they should be stopped. But thats a bad joke. There isn't different standards for different parties everyone treats sex scandals as a near career ending event. Danglers came and confronted you and brought examples why you were wrong and then you got confused why that mattered. You think that the GOP is somehow worse then anything else humanity has done in all history and you are confused why people don't agree with your biased impressions based on that? You have a fundamental misunderstanding how things work. Conservatives are suppose to be the opposition to progress and to test it to make sure its not eugenics. If progress can't defend itself as necessary then whats the point of it? They're suppose to be on the "wrong side of history" (not even going to approach that dumpster fire of a term) because thats their purpose to benefit society as a whole. Because hey things are better now then they've ever been full stop so lets not fuck that up? Dogmatically opposing anything is morally wrong. The catholic church should be example enough for you. My great-grandparents left your country because they would have been killed otherwise by people who dogmatically opposed them thinking they were morally right. We were suppose to learn from those mistakes to make a better society.
You are defending mythical conservatives that have a crucial role balancing human progress, whereas I am talking about the nominally conservative movement in the USA which is incredibly radical and dangerous.
Furthermore, we all have dogmatic beliefs, they are called taboos and they serve a useful function in discourse because they prevent you from constantly have to debate whether black people are inferior to white people yes or no. Instead we have racism as a taboo.
I am not opposed to political science, or political discussion, but I think there is little point in earnestly debating the ills and benefits of some particular GOP endeavor when they virtually always act in bad faith and their policies are always designed to defend privilege, to deny people rights, to transfer wealth to the upper classes, to reproduce aristocracy, to feed xenophobic and nationalist impulses and so on. If you pretend they might act in good faith you are normalizing them.
|
On May 06 2017 08:58 Grumbels wrote:
We do know what side history will take on climate change, on the iraq war, on lgbt discrimination, on gender equality, on the drug war, on health care reform. Unless you want to make this about semantics and the subjectivity of writing history.
This is about the difficulty of predicting the future.
Just to pick an easy one... if we're staring down the barrel of an ice age 100 years from now, the Republican party will be seen as having been on the right side of climate change - or at least less wrong than the Democratic party.
|
The current GOP approach is completely cynical. They seem to deliberately sabotage government so that the only conclusion of the voter can be that 'government is bad', thus pushing their small government agenda. And it's hard to argue with this logic. Or with the degree of sabotage.
In a sense, Trump is their perfect tool for complete government sabotage, because unlike most GOP career politicians, Trump is actually completely unhinged.
I do love the Trump comment about him wanting to have Australian's health care system, though he probably means 0% of what he said, because he is clueless about most things he said. All he was thinking about is complementing Turnbull. Yet what he really said is that the US should stop being the only advanced country in the world without universal health care.
At least things have changed. I remember a time where on the internet Americans swore that they had by far the best health care system in the world.
|
On May 06 2017 08:21 Buckyman wrote:
It looks to me like this new health care bill is mostly another fake repeal. It does get rid of the special tax on medical devices and the individual mandate. Everything else is, "We know you elected us to repeal this, but we're going to make the states do the actual repealing. But we don't trust the states enough to let them opt out of a few of the bill's worst features. Also, let's throw in some unfair Medicaid changes while we can."
There is too much Obamacare-lite remaining in House version. I'm somewhat sympathetic to arguments that we can't get everything bad out of Obamacare following the restrictions of the budget reconciliation process, but we can do much better. The Americans that sent representatives to Congress based on the promises of repeal did want the repeal and not keep it on the books. If states support this kind of stuff, do what Massachusetts did and enact it yourself.
|
On May 06 2017 09:13 Othryoneus wrote:
The current GOP approach is completely cynical. They seem to deliberately sabotage government so that the only conclusion of the voter can be that 'government is bad', thus pushing their small government agenda. And it's hard to argue with this logic. Or with the degree of sabotage.
In a sense, Trump is their perfect tool for complete government sabotage, because unlike most GOP career politicians, Trump is actually completely unhinged.
Cynicism is a good way look at the GOP. And a worship of the "free market" and meritocracy. You will find this core belief, especially in the current congress, that poor people are poor because it is their fault. I have heard republicans I know act like PECs are always the fault of the person that has them. Like getting hit by a drunk driver is a lifestyle choice.
|
On May 06 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:21 Buckyman wrote:
It looks to me like this new health care bill is mostly another fake repeal. It does get rid of the special tax on medical devices and the individual mandate. Everything else is, "We know you elected us to repeal this, but we're going to make the states do the actual repealing. But we don't trust the states enough to let them opt out of a few of the bill's worst features. Also, let's throw in some unfair Medicaid changes while we can." There is too much Obamacare-lite remaining in House version. I'm somewhat sympathetic to arguments that we can't get everything bad out of Obamacare following the restrictions of the budget reconciliation process, but we can do much better. The Americans that sent representatives to Congress based on the promises of repeal did want the repeal and not keep it on the books. If states support this kind of stuff, do what Massachusetts did and enact it yourself.
Even with as little of the "Obama care lite" as it has if that bill became law I would be one of the 24 million who would lose insurance because it would be way too expensive. I am aware that not having healthcare does place a burden on the people that do have it for various reasons but I would not be able to pay 350 dollars a month for health care (which is what mine is without the current subsidy) or I think with there subsidy it is something like 250 which is about 140 dollars a month more than what I currently pay which I just can not afford.
|
On May 06 2017 09:09 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:53 Sermokala wrote:On May 06 2017 08:26 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 08:13 Sermokala wrote:On May 06 2017 08:05 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 07:40 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 07:29 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 07:11 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 06:27 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 06:18 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
You said politicians, so I wasn't including Bill O'Reilly.
Herman Cain is a prominent example. Affair scandal and boom, he's gone. Big front runner, and a lot of my Obama voting friends were quite prepared to vote for him instead of the Obama re-election based on their own economic fortures. Because Phillip Hinkle got caught, boom gone. Mark Foley, gone. This is just off the top of my head right now, because it sounded like you were Spicer in the Briefing Room for a second there. I lived through these high profile sex scandals and how, far from "no one cares," they plummeted and were gone, I gotta call bullshit. It's absolutely ironic for how quick they all rocketed out of there that people like you might legitimately never heard of them. It would be doubly ironic to put up with the first round of watching sex scandals ruin candidates/elected politicians, hearing Republican hypocrisy at how many bit the dust from the family values party, and hearing a second whammy that it never was a big deal for Republicans because the hypocrisy was accepted.
Family values rhetoric was at the core of the GOP. Only in big liberal states could you get by without it. Trump is absolutely a noticeable departure. I don't think these are good examples. Herman Cain is a fringe figure and no one in the GOP liked him, so they would easily turn on him. Hinkle and Foley deeply embarrassed the GOP by being involved in gay sex scandals, and homophobia certainly played a large part in their disappearance. What I'm talking about is the garden variety pseudo-scandal where someone has an affair or is accused of sexual misconduct, or even divorces. Liberals are held to different standards than conservatives. Much like how if some rightwing extremist shoots up a school it's a non-event, but if a Muslim does the same thing it's front page news: terrorist attacks sweep the nation and require endless war as the only logical response. Wow. We're really plumbing the depths with you. Herman Cain was a frontrunner, but for the purpose of your thesis you want to call him fringe. Gay sex scandals aren't really sex scandals because homophobia is somehow your deciding factor in a sex scandal. I'm a little blown away, and Plansix and Biff have been doing their utmost to cause nothing to surprise me anymore. I can't even begin to unravel these absurd justifications. So when you don't cherry pick your sex scandals and dismiss inconvenient counterexamples, I'll think you're interested in laying a basis for your case. Ben Carson and Trump were frontrunners too, but in many ways they are fringe. Which disturbed weirdo captures the attention of the republican base is pretty random, it is usually not meaningful but Trump is an exception. And the GOP was perfectly willing to throw Trump under the bus when the Billy Bush tape came out, you had the spectacle of a bunch of people who all have their own private scandals and all have antediluvian attitudes speak concernedly about the importance of respecting women. People in power are always willing to bend the rules when it personally benefits them. Because most of the GOP consists of white men with patriarchal beliefs, they will exploit their power to gain access to attractive young women. Because homophobia is an important element of their platform and they don't personally benefit from a compassionate attitude towards gay people, they will immediately abandon anyone caught in some sort of gay scandal. But the situations are just not symmetrical. Liberal sex scandals are treated much differently by the GOP than vice versa. The GOP has an endless ability to be hypocritical, they will be utterly dedicated and convincing in attacking people for certain behavior and then immediately engage in the exact same acts. You've staked out your position quite well. If I wanted someone more rational to describe how conservatives and liberals are treated differently, I'd probably do better to ask your brother. It's just too clear from your narrow view of consideration and lack of standards that your thesis is all that matters. T leading presidential candidate for the party is rocked by scandal to drop precipitously in the polls directly following and is never heard from again. Somehow not a sex scandal ending a career. Somehow gay affairs aren't affairs. But I have no intention to waste my breath with maybe the least able person in this thread to give a fair hearing to countervailing points. Believe the facts you choose to believe; Trump would be proud. Do you seriously think that Cain disappeared because of a sex scandal? Or that he had a realistic change of winning the primary? (lol) He disappeared because he was an embarrassment to the party, because he couldn't be controlled and on top of that was involved in a scandal. They probably tried to do the same thing with Trump but he had too much momentum. I don't understand where what you think the line is between what the GOP doing the right thing is and doing the wrong thing is. He disapeared beacuse he was involved in a scandal and the party didn't even try to save him beacuse he wasn't a party kind of person? They tried to do the same to trump beacuse he wasn't apart of the mainstream party but he had too much momentum? both of these things make sense are logical and are good things for the party to do. I don't see how sex scandals are handled differently by who is involved with them. Both parties make rational decisions on when to bail on someone. Edit: I saw your edit after your post and it cleared things up for me. You don't actually care about making any progress you just want to complain about the situation. This whole discussion is because I wanted to mention that there are different standards for conservatives than for liberals. Which is true. Then I mentioned sex scandals as an offhand example, because my impression from following politics is that republicans constantly have them but it doesn't affect the party very seriously and doesn't stop them or the media from presenting themselves as the party of morality. And often it doesn't affect the politicians either (think of Gingrich and his several wives). Then Danglars kept coming up with examples of GOP figures who had to step down after a scandal as if those are counter examples for my thesis. Go blame Danglars. And you can complain about my edit, but whatever. I don't think anyone can contest the fact that the GOP is on all controversial matters on the wrong side of history. You can wonder how tactically useful it is to dogmatically oppose them, but I think morally speaking the only possible answer is that they should be stopped. But thats a bad joke. There isn't different standards for different parties everyone treats sex scandals as a near career ending event. Danglers came and confronted you and brought examples why you were wrong and then you got confused why that mattered. You think that the GOP is somehow worse then anything else humanity has done in all history and you are confused why people don't agree with your biased impressions based on that? You have a fundamental misunderstanding how things work. Conservatives are suppose to be the opposition to progress and to test it to make sure its not eugenics. If progress can't defend itself as necessary then whats the point of it? They're suppose to be on the "wrong side of history" (not even going to approach that dumpster fire of a term) because thats their purpose to benefit society as a whole. Because hey things are better now then they've ever been full stop so lets not fuck that up? Dogmatically opposing anything is morally wrong. The catholic church should be example enough for you. My great-grandparents left your country because they would have been killed otherwise by people who dogmatically opposed them thinking they were morally right. We were suppose to learn from those mistakes to make a better society. You are defending mythical conservatives that have a crucial role balancing human progress, whereas I am talking about the nominally conservative movement in the USA which is incredibly radical and dangerous. Furthermore, we all have dogmatic beliefs, they are called taboos and they serve a useful function in discourse because they prevent you from constantly have to debate whether black people are inferior to white people yes or no. Instead we have racism as a taboo. I am not opposed to political science, or political discussion, but I think there is little point in earnestly debating the ills and benefits of some particular GOP endeavor when they virtually always act in bad faith and their policies are always designed to defend privilege, to deny people rights, to transfer wealth to the upper classes, to reproduce aristocracy, to feed xenophobic and nationalist impulses and so on. If you pretend they might act in good faith you are normalizing them.
You don't understand how taboos work. You don't talk about them and everyone agrees that they're so bad you don't talk about them. Cannibalism is taboo. Racism is something people talk and should talk about every day. Its not taboo to think black people on a whole are inferior to white people. Its taboo to think that because of their skin color or because they're black. Its not taboo to think that they're inferior because they got a raw deal in the domestication animal lottery (zebras instead of euro horses FWI) and because white people enslaved them and put them in a shitty socio economic position.
Man most of your last paragraph is just misinformed garbage. No they arn't always acting in bad faith. see how that debate happened? it was boring for the both of us and accomplished nothing because I didn't do anything with it other then make a statement. I mean we still have an aristocracy just like in the feudal days. either the elected one or the wealthy ones. The whole system is basically a rip of of feudalism with a group of representatives in a decentralized governmental fashion deciding how to run the country with no input from who they represent. Its even worse in parliamentary nations where they chose the executive from among them and the voters don't get a realistic say in it. I don't want you to disolve my governments and I want you to solve issue. Well to bad because I do what I want.
Villians are people too and heros have flaws. Stop acting like things can be distilled into simple statements and make a frigin argument already.
|
On May 06 2017 09:12 Buckyman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:58 Grumbels wrote:
We do know what side history will take on climate change, on the iraq war, on lgbt discrimination, on gender equality, on the drug war, on health care reform. Unless you want to make this about semantics and the subjectivity of writing history. This is about the difficulty of predicting the future. Just to pick an easy one... if we're staring down the barrel of an ice age 100 years from now, the Republican party will be seen as having been on the right side of climate change - or at least less wrong than the Democratic party.
Climate change is already displacing people, sea levels are already rising, temperatures are already increasing, ice caps are already melting. The future is here today, we can judge political inaction for the last twenty years without having to hedge our answers because of some totally improbable, hypothetical catastrophic event which might or might not take place a hundred years from now.
|
On May 06 2017 09:12 Buckyman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:58 Grumbels wrote:
We do know what side history will take on climate change, on the iraq war, on lgbt discrimination, on gender equality, on the drug war, on health care reform. Unless you want to make this about semantics and the subjectivity of writing history. This is about the difficulty of predicting the future. Just to pick an easy one... if we're staring down the barrel of an ice age 100 years from now, the Republican party will be seen as having been on the right side of climate change - or at least less wrong than the Democratic party.
Well, the Republican party (or at least the elements who cheered for bringing a snowball into Congress to show what a myth climate change is) would certainly see themselves as being on the right side of the issue. But those people would see themselves as being on the right side of the issue even if/when Manhattan goes underwater-they'll just say it was non-man made and a natural geologic cycle or whatever.
That's the beauty of so much of 21st century U.S. politics, both sides have figured out the advantages of building on unverifiable claims propped up by the occasional fact and a whole heaping of verifiably false information.
Edit: Saying both sides is a misnomer, because the Green and Libertarian parties have figured this out quite well themselves.
|
That's a good example of the difficulty of future-casting.
How much warming have we seen from the last twenty years of America's (and only America's) emissions?
How much warming did they say, 20 years ago, we would suffer from by now if we didn't curtail emissions?
|
I prefer the title Obamacare 0.5 instead of Obamacare 2.0 or Obamacare lite.
|
On May 06 2017 09:22 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 08:21 Buckyman wrote:
It looks to me like this new health care bill is mostly another fake repeal. It does get rid of the special tax on medical devices and the individual mandate. Everything else is, "We know you elected us to repeal this, but we're going to make the states do the actual repealing. But we don't trust the states enough to let them opt out of a few of the bill's worst features. Also, let's throw in some unfair Medicaid changes while we can." There is too much Obamacare-lite remaining in House version. I'm somewhat sympathetic to arguments that we can't get everything bad out of Obamacare following the restrictions of the budget reconciliation process, but we can do much better. The Americans that sent representatives to Congress based on the promises of repeal did want the repeal and not keep it on the books. If states support this kind of stuff, do what Massachusetts did and enact it yourself. Even with as little of the "Obama care lite" as it has if that bill became law I would be one of the 24 million who would lose insurance because it would be way too expensive. I am aware that not having healthcare does place a burden on the people that do have it for various reasons but I would not be able to pay 350 dollars a month for health care (which is what mine is without the current subsidy) or I think with there subsidy it is something like 250 which is about 140 dollars a month more than what I currently pay which I just can not afford.
Do you have some numbers prior to 2009 ACA that shows what the cheapest plan was? And has your governor made a public statement on high risk pools, opt-out, and the rest? I have a lot of people that would kill for 250$ a month but the cheapest bronze plan is higher and the rest of insurers pulled out.
|
Having an ice age in 100 years does not mean they were right. Global temperatures rising which in turn shift global climate patterns can easily cause an ice age. This is one of the most complex systems out there, people can't readily predict what's going to happen in x years, hell, they have supercomputers doing crazy math all day long yet they can't even perfectly predict the weather every single time, so how is a random science denying politician going to be right in his assessment? The facts are undeniable. Global temperatures ARE rising and it IS concerning. Trivializing this is simply unethical.
I'm so goddamn fed up with these stupid topics that should've been long over by now but keep being such a hassle to get through. The world is backwards and the US is putting up a nice performance for us to swallow every single day. You're the poster boy for a failing Western ideology. It's sickening. Get your shit together (not just the US), or we'll drown, perhaps for some even literally.
|
|
|
On May 06 2017 06:56 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 06:30 zlefin wrote:On May 06 2017 06:27 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 06:18 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 05:27 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 05:11 Danglars wrote:On May 06 2017 05:01 Grumbels wrote:On May 06 2017 04:41 Plansix wrote:
White, college educated men have been the GOP’s demographic as long as I have been alive. This is why the Dems get accused of “identity politics” so much. The GOP mostly appeals to one or two “identities”. Whites without a college education is where the democrats fell down this time.
There are always different standards for conservatives than there are for liberals, same with white vs black, male vs female. If a GOP politician engages in some sex scandal no one cares, even though they're the ones that espouse family values rhetoric, but if a democrat does the same it can be the end of their career. They are always positioning themselves as the voice of moral authority, capable of judging others, but they can never be judged themselves. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's only democrats that are accused of trafficking in identity politics, never the GOP, regardless of the merits of the accusation. (I do think some of it is merited) You want to talk about different standards for politics and open up with the GOP suffering less from sex scandals than a Dem? I certainly hope you've got more in the bag than that woozy. Are you thinking of Bill O'Reilly&Co? I don't mean to say that the GOP suffers less from sex scandals, because they probably have more of them on average (FOX News apparently was almost like a harem with an absurdly sexist culture), but rather that the posture of both the mainstream media and the republican party whenever it is discovered that a conservative politician or figure engaged in some sort of illicit sexual practice (or even divorce) they virtually never bother to condemn this behavior and very frequently it has no effect on their career. If on the other hand there is even a trace of scandal around some liberal the media never stops blabbering about their serious moral concern, and all of right wing media hypocritically gloats about liberal immortality and the importance of family values. And it's not about this specific issue, it's about how conservatives cynically exploit every possible angle of attack and feign outrage about everything, with the tacit support of the media, even though they engage in the exact same behavior themselves. It has to do with temperament (liberals are less likely to be hypocritical in this way), but also with negative stereotyping of underprivileged groups. You said politicians, so I wasn't including Bill O'Reilly. Herman Cain is a prominent example. Affair scandal and boom, he's gone. Big front runner, and a lot of my Obama voting friends were quite prepared to vote for him instead of the Obama re-election based on their own economic fortures. Because Phillip Hinkle got caught, boom gone. Mark Foley, gone. This is just off the top of my head right now, because it sounded like you were Spicer in the Briefing Room for a second there. I lived through these high profile sex scandals and how, far from "no one cares," they plummeted and were gone, I gotta call bullshit. It's absolutely ironic for how quick they all rocketed out of there that people like you might legitimately never heard of them. It would be doubly ironic to put up with the first round of watching sex scandals ruin candidates/elected politicians, hearing Republican hypocrisy at how many bit the dust from the family values party, and hearing a second whammy that it never was a big deal for Republicans because the hypocrisy was accepted. Family values rhetoric was at the core of the GOP. Only in big liberal states could you get by without it. Trump is absolutely a noticeable departure. I don't think these are good examples. Herman Cain is a fringe figure and no one in the GOP liked him, so they would easily turn on him. Hinkle and Foley deeply embarrassed the GOP by being involved in gay sex scandals, and homophobia certainly played a large part in their disappearance. What I'm talking about is the garden variety pseudo-scandal where someone has an affair or is accused of sexual misconduct, or even divorces. Liberals are held to different standards than conservatives. Much like how if some rightwing extremist shoots up a school it's a non-event, but if a Muslim does the same thing it's front page news: terrorist attacks sweep the nation and require endless war as the only logical response. do you have a link to a study or somesuch to verify your belief? I ask because personal impressions are often quite inaccurate. at any rate, my personal impression is that sex scandals take down people from both parties quite readily enough. The topic of sex scandals was only a random example though. In any case, the point is not that sex scandals negatively affect the careers of individual republicans that embarrass the party, but the hypocrisy among conservatives and their media allies where a scandal for a liberal politician somehow is an indictment of liberal politics and somehow reveals their immorality, yet a similar scandal for a republican (and they actually have way more sexual misconduct than liberals) never affects the party's reputation, and they're all treated as incidents. Furthermore, high profile republicans don't really lose institutional support for getting caught, and the media is complicit in this because they amplify the republican outrage machine. Of course bad stuff happens on both sides, but for people like Ailes, O'Reilly, Hastert, Trump, they were able to get away with extremely gross, illegal behavior for ages.
what you're saying sounds more like routin behavior for everyone. people (especially politicians) are hypocrites. failing by people in the "in" group are considered as incidents and not reflective of the group as a whole, and they can still receive support. failings by people in the "out" group are considered reflective of that group as a whole and they will be thoroughly vilified for it and their policies deemed bad by association.
This is basic group dynamics (and basic politics), not something merely applying to one party in one country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups
|
On May 06 2017 09:12 Buckyman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2017 08:58 Grumbels wrote:
We do know what side history will take on climate change, on the iraq war, on lgbt discrimination, on gender equality, on the drug war, on health care reform. Unless you want to make this about semantics and the subjectivity of writing history. This is about the difficulty of predicting the future. Just to pick an easy one... if we're staring down the barrel of an ice age 100 years from now, the Republican party will be seen as having been on the right side of climate change - or at least less wrong than the Democratic party.
they'll claim they were on the rgith side; but they'd still be wrong, cuz they were going against the best evidence available at the time.
politicians being politicians, they'll argue they were right no matter what happens.
also a pretty far-fetched scenario you describe.
|
in other news you may have missed Rand Paul thinks he was spied on by Obama and/or the intelligence community
|
On May 06 2017 12:46 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
in other news you may have missed Rand Paul thinks he was spied on by Obama and/or the intelligence community
But... Why? Not why does he think that, I mean, why would they bother? He was never a serious contender and he's basically just a rabblerouser in the senate.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
