The New York Daily News kvells that Hillary Clinton is the New Yorker of the year, dubbing her “a woman of resolve and class.” At the very least she has become, albeit belatedly, the comeback kid of 2008. We have followed her from inevitability (pre-Iowa) to vilification (South Carolina primary) to grudging admiration (Ohio and Texas victories) to respect (the DNC speech and summer campaigning) to a triumph of sorts (Secretary of State nominee). Hers has been a more dramatic roller-coaster ride (all in a single year) than any other political figure in recent memory.
She is, an a sense, the anti-Caroline Kennedy. Sure, Clinton benefited from her last name, but any similarities with the dullest (if most demure) of the Kennedys ends there. Clinton engages; Kennedy recedes. Clinton has never feared the political arena; Kennedy hardly knows what to do there. Clinton has courted controversy; Kennedy has bathed in sympathy her entire life. Clinton will go fifteen rounds with any reporter; Kennedy can’t manage the liberal toadies at the New York Times.
In part, this is a difference in class — social and economic that is. Clinton was never given anything. She was, as she reminded us frequently, a Midwestern middle-class gal who overcame a hyper-critical father. Neither he nor an unfaithful husband could block her ambitions. She progressed by force of her own personality and efforts – and even after fumbled opportunities, repeatedly constructed the next act in her life. She ran for office, never dreaming she’d be elevated without proving her mettle. By contrast, Caroline’s entire persona has been bequeathed to her. She is an heiress of extraordinary wealth and the recipient of popular goodwill wholly unrelated to any accomplishment of her own.
These two New Yorkers are a study in contrasts. Despite her atrociously managed campaign and a host of missteps, Clinton has emerged in some sense more popular (certainly among non-liberals) and more powerful than ever. And Caroline? The princess-waiting-for-the-coronation routine isn’t going so well. Perhaps she should try fighting for her place on the national scene rather than waiting for an appointment to be gift-wrapped and delivered to the Martha’s Vineyard compound. And if she is looking for a role model, she needn’t look beyond Chappaqua.
Did you notice that, in an article about “the left” and “liberals,” four of seven paragraphs were about the Congressional Black Caucus? Are they the current doxology-meisters?
The Obama liberals aim at creating conditions that cannot be undone by the next Republican president and congress. If we have a hope, it is that the southern Democrats will step on the brakes before it’s too late.
“Be afraid, be very afraid.” As hard as it is to enact sweeping legislation, it is ten times harder to get rid of it. Take public broadcasting. The choices on TV back in the mid 1960s was limited. This was also before UHF became popular. Now you have hundreds of cable channels, on demand, plus streaming video. But, who is advocating pulling the plug of public TV?
I wouldn’t say it can’t be undone, but it would require a nationwide tax revolt that would probably run largely run along white/nonwhite lines even if nonwhite conservatives helped lead it. I assume Republicans know what’s in store for them if the Democrats ever start to feel threatened. On the other hand it may be possible to peel away some state and local officials who don’t want to be left high and dry if the Obama tide goes out.
Clift was wrong to use the word liberal. All the people who voted for Obama, plus another 5% to 10%, depending on the day, still are elated at Obama’s performance and agenda.
Meanwhile, the conservative-led GOP is getting smaller, shriller, more angry and more partisan, all of which are a huge turnoff to the voting public.
Rasmussen:
“Since release of the President’s budget, the number of Republicans who Strongly Disapprove has grown to 57%. That’s up fourteen percentage points since Thursday morning. Only 8% of Democrats share such a negative assessment.
“Fifty-six percent (56%) say that Obama is a good or an excellent leader. Just 24% say he is a poor leader.”
The numbers are clear. Obama is doing what he promised. Most Americans approve of him and his performance. Those who were bound to hate his agenda, do. That’s unfortunate, but it’s probaby also unavoidable. In fact, to his constituents, it is a sign that he is taking the right course, which happens to be left. The center of the country has shifted. The sooner you get it, the sooner you can return to relevance.
5: Man, that’s almost up to the standard of coherence of Glib Bobby Gibbs.
William, we get one of you obamabots in almost every thread. Do you think you’re convincing anyone? Do you think you are disheartening us? I know that’s your goal, but it ain’t happening. And most Americans who voted for him did not do so because they want to be taxed to death. Otherwise, as Jennifer points out, he would have run on the expansionist tax and spend huge deficit creating platform he is enacting now.
#5: Your type of analysis-by-polling-numbers is so tiresome. If you insist that what Obama and the D’s in Congress are doing is wise because their policies are currently supported by polls, will you be consistent and agree that, when the polls turn on those policies because they don’t work, it is Obama and the D’s patriotic duty to immediately repeal those programs (and that you will fully support the repeal)?
If not, then please find another way of arguing your case.
William:
Has a great point, about the percentages. True. However, I’ll never understand how disagreeing with Obama makes us “shriller” and “more partisan” than before. Thsis I just don’t get, from the liberal population or media. Apparently GW Bush can be safely called anything in the book, 99% of his policies disagreed with by the left, but when some of us disagree with BHO we are ultra-partisan.
Isn’t 22% approximately the amount of evangelicals in the electorate? What about the other 78% there Ms. Rubin? For eight years the Bush/Falwell/Dobson Admin. spent eight years kissing the behinds of the Christian right, at the expense of others in the electorate. I fail to see a difference. I agree with you inasmuch as 22% of the electorate should never dominate the agenda, regardless of the politics in charge or the leanings of the politicians. I just doubt you wrote anything referencing what I just did over the past eight years.
I’m skeptical about the majority of Obama voters continuing to be elated with his performance as president. I am struck by the fact that I haven’t heard a single person say he is doing a great job, or even a good one, yet up to and including election day, I commonly encountered jubilant Obama supporters who were quite vocal about His Wonderfulness. It’s easy to write a pro-Obama post on a website. I live and work amongst some pretty committed Democrats and they haven’t spoken up at all, whereas a few months ago they were practically dancing in the streets.
#8
What other guide to what the American people think do we have other than opinion polls. They are not perfect, the results are a little contradictory but they are infinitely preferable to the assertion of personal opinion (in this case you’re personal opinion) as reality. I think this emerged most clearly in those instant polls they did after the election debates. They immediately killed all the all the self important opinionating why so called media pundits. Unfortunately Rubin, and many others here, wants to turn reality on its head by quoting exit polls which are to polling as astrology is to astronomy. When a bunch of polls tell you that the president has approvals in the high sixties and some of those post speech polls showed approvals showed about 80% approval for his proposals we can be reasonably assured most of the country is pulling for this guy. OK. I’m bound to say he’s being helped immeasurably by Republican tactics and presentation. No doubt many are happy with the coverage CPAC received this week totally oblivious of its likely appearance. A bit like the tipsy uncle telling off color jokes over thanksgiving dinner. This reached it’s apogee on Saturday when a huge, inflated, red faced, bullfrog like figure ranted on at Castroesque length about his desire for national failure while Dr Cool gave one of his reassuring little talks reminding the people he was going to be looking out for their interests above the special interests of big insurance, oil etc etc. You wouldn’t just have to have tin ears to miss the difference…you’d have to have NO ears. But this alas is the predicament we find ourselves in. I suggest Ms Rubin and the like minded make themselves an early appointment at the miracle ear store.
#5
So all I gotta do is “get it” and then I can “return to relevance”? Apparently, “getting it” means being an enthusiastic sycophant of expanding statist power financed by gargantuan debt and taxes, advocating compulsory redistribution of wealth, and re-engineering the relationship between the economy and the government. O.K., I get. Am I relevant now?
Kudlow isn’t having second thoughts. He always knew what’s what.
It is the Wash. Post which seems to be having them and it is CNBC’s Jim Cramer who is clearly having them as anyone who saw his face on Friday could tell.
We need to mount a campaign right away as cities and states and DC are all on the verge of raising taxes on everything to maintain their bloated budgets and corrupt spending.
One of the few rays of home I see is a real and fulsome grass roots prairie fire tax revolt: including smokes, booze, parking meters, shopping holidays, downtown parking garages, everything.
PS
Jennifer Rubin, where have you been all my life?
“Kudlow isn’t having second thoughts. He always knew what’s what.”
……..This is a guy who as recently as the summer of 2008 was encouraging people to go out and buy stocks which were undervalued in what was still a Goldilocks economy according to him. The fact that this guy’s name is even mentioned as some sort of sensible spokesman for the conservative economic position betrays our total poverty of thought and credibilty. Clearly Zoltan didn’t take his advice and buy last June.
Whether that [a] changes the course of Obama’s agenda or [b] brings it to a quick halt in the next Congressional election remains to be seen.>>
I’m counting on option “b”. And then some.
Rassmussen’s polling provides strong evidence that Obama’s budget and extreme liberalism is losing him support among voters at a rapid rate. After his faux-SOTU speech, Obama’s Presidential Approval Index was +16. But immediately after his budget and one-trillion dollars in new taxes was announced, his Preidential Approval Index dropped precipitously to +8, which is an all-time low for him (so far). And we are only a month into his presidency.
During the election, I occasionally posted on some blogs that Obama, by National Journal’s account, was the most liberal senator in congress. His supporters would always deny this, attacking National Journal’s methodology and claiming that he was really a moderate. Now that he stands revealed as from the the extremes of the Democratic party, just as National Journal had pegged him, his supporters are claiming that is what we all voted for. Ha.
I think that one of the major difficulties with attacking or criticizing Obama and undermoining support for his poiticies is that he is an African-American. He is in a cultural category that has become, by our own doing, a privleged and protected class, that is now wildly over-represented among newscasters, commentators, and columnists, and that provides him with a kind of teflon coating. Whites and others feel inhibited from criticizing him, or even saying they don’t support him. (This is perhaps why Rasmussen’s polling numbers, which are done with anonymity-protecting robo-calls, show less support for Obama than those polls done with live interviewers, where people are more afraid to criticize him or to say they don’t support him.) This is also what makes Michael Steele such an inspired choice for RNC chair. I only wish McCain has chosen him for a running mate.
We have to find a way around this. The only solution for his protected status is to make it more acceptable to criticize Obama by in fact criticizing him openly, sharply, and accurately, and by doing it a lot. Each time someone hears Obama fairly and sharply criticized, they become more willing to do it themselves.
One good thing that should provide a lot of hope and fuel a lot of strategy: Obama’s culturally protected status does not carry over to his congressional allies or to Democratic candidates generally. This is why the generic ballot is so much better for Republicans than Obama’s support would lead one to expect. And this suggests that attacking the liberal congress–especially Pelosi and Reid, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd–for their liberal extremism and big government policies, and then tying Obama to them, could be a fruitful and winning strategy to attract the great middle in the electorate.
Universal healthcare is consistently supported by a majority of Americans. Right-wing hacks like Rubin have done a good job obscuring that fact, though.
“When a bunch of polls tell you that the president has approvals in the high sixties and some of those post speech polls showed approvals showed about 80% approval for his proposals we can be reasonably assured most of the country is pulling for this guy.”
Perhaps you should look at other polls that measure things such as economic confidence, right direction/wrong direction and finances as opposed to just relying on the president’s own personal poll.
“……..This is a guy who as recently as the summer of 2008 was encouraging people to go out and buy stocks which were undervalued in what was still a Goldilocks economy according to him. ”
Well, new information came out between the summer of 2008 and now. But that doesn’t mean anything to you.
“Universal healthcare is consistently supported by a majority of Americans. Right-wing hacks like Rubin have done a good job obscuring that fact, though.”
I believe it was P.J. O’Rourke that said, “If you think healthcare is expensive, wait until it is free.” Frederic Bastiat said, “It is through politics that everyone seeks to live at everyone else’s expense.” If I told you that you can have universal healthcare, well by gosh, you’ll say you want it because it sounds “free”. If I then were to tell you that you would have long wait times, no access to advance medical treatments, lower drug choices, and loss of choice of which doctor to see, and a government bureaucracy making the medical decisions for you with your medical healthcare and you would still have uninsured and uncovered individuals and costs would increase exponentially, one would hope your response would be, well, that doesn’t sound so “free” to me.
#10, just wait until the American people start realizing that the job pools are shrinking and that the opportunities to create businesses are disappearing.
#12: You’re missing the point.
Polls are certainly a way — assuming the questions are fairly put and the sample adequate — of determining what the opinion of Americans are on a particular program or policy at a particular point in time. But they say nothing about whether the program or policy is prudent or that will work or how it compares, in effectiveness, with another program or policy. Nor do polls purport to do so — only those who happen to be on the popular side of the poll believe otherwise.
For example, one major issue with the stimulus program is whether it will work to improve the economy. The reality is, it will either work or not. That reality is not changed, regardless of whether 95% of the polled believe one way or the other about its ability to do so. A similar issue is whether the stimulus program, combined with a high-spending budget, will lead to inflation. It either will or will not, regardless of what today’s polled people believe.
This is not a call for know-nothingism. It is a call for all of us to do best thinking to try to analyze/evaluate what the implications/expected outcomes of a policy or program may be. Polls are of no use here, except to gutless politicians, who will constantly change their positions, with the hope that they will have timely changed their opinions so as to be on the winning side when those polled cast their votes.
A recent example of why you are mistaken to use polls to set your policies is the polling on the “rescue” of the Big 3 auto companies. At first, those polled were strongly in favor of a rescue. Why not: Americans are generous people and who wants to see a lot of people thrown out of their jobs (even if their unions, along with Congress, created the problem). But then, as it is becoming clear that throwing government money at the problem will not cure it and as people are seeing that we have to make choices about how to use limited resources, the polling numbers have changed dramatically, and only a small percentage of people favor keeping the Big 3 on life-support. So, #12, if you were a big supporter of the auto rescue a few months ago because the polls favored it, I assume you now are with the vast majority who are opposed. You’ve made a complete reversal in your position, all without having to think about the problem! Congratulations: you’ll do well in Obama’s brave new world.
#15: Kudlow couldn’t fathom then what most everyone couldn’t fathom back then. I’m sure his asset allocation is a lot different now, if he has any assets left to allocate, and, anyway, ‘the market’ has never been an open and shut case of black or white. There even are a few stocks which have gone up since last August, Otto. It is and always has been a market of stocks and not a generic stock market unless you are stubbornly attached to the notion of index funds.
Havn’t you heard of Netflix?
And, anyway, Otto, I was hoping for a response from Jennifer, not you, sir.
PS: Hurf, sir. In England, where everyone must have their weekends off, try finding an orderly or a nurse for your Mum in the hospital, on a Sunday, lying in her own feces, on filthy sheets sir. Socialized healthcare increases demand whilst decreasing supply, sir. Then you’ve got to ration it. No way round it sir.
8
Don’t be an idiot.
The title of Jennifer Rubin’s piece is “What about the other 78%?” The implication, based on Clift’s observation that liberals are happy with Obama, is that the other 78% who don’t identify themselves as liberals are unhappy. That is easily disproved, and the question answered, through approval polls, which show that roughly 60% of Americans approve of Obama. Only a minority of voters — those who weren’t ever going to vote for Obama anyway — disapprove.
She asked the question. I gave her the answer. If you have a rebuttal, present it. But making broad-brush, strawman swipes at any comment that cites “polls” only shows that you are unserious, determined to avoid reality, and incapable of following a logical thread.
Barack Obama is an 8 year President, regardless what happens to the economy good, bad or ugly or if something worse than 9/11 happens. President Obama won reelection in 2012 on Feb 17, 2009, Tuesday, when he signed the 2009 Stimulus Bill. It bought votes for the Democrat Party for 2010 and 2012. There is nothing conservatives or Republicans can do about it because that is what the American people want is – “what the government can do for me”. Barack Obama won 2008 election on health care reform. If national health care is socialism, then most Americans want socialism. I would say that most Americans agree with Obama’s $650 Billion dollar National Health Care , $3.6 trillion budget, $787 billion Stimulus Bill and $700 billion dollar TARP. . We are now all Democrats, Democrats Rule.
Question about Rush Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC:
Do Americans care about America?
This was stupid.
53% voted for Obama, he has 68-70 % approval ratings. The fact that conservatives have made the word “liberal” synonymous with Michael Moore is not very relevant to the political climate.
See also, last two congressional elections.
1) Obama supporters are clearly not in a minority.
2) Obama is not engineering a government takeover. He’s handling a fiscal emergency.
A great many Republicans who created this mess stand to benefit from Obama’s emergency steps, as do the rest of us. Considering that you supported the people who made this mess in the first place; one would think you would be a bit more grateful for the frank, realistic, and unselfish assistance being offered to you by someone you didn’t vote for.
It would be smart right now, to say you’re sorry and find a way to contribute something more positive to the solutions we need, than these CPac talking points.
sc
<<<<>>>
Obviously you are just inciting a response. During Bush’s tenure, often in national polling if a question was asked concerning a policy without context it would get majority support. But as soon as that same question was asked in the context of it being a Bush idea, support dropped dramatically. The same is true at the moment but in reverse.
To be sure class warfare is popular at the moment when one has the idiotic actions of some leading wall street lights but the tendency to tar wall street with the same brush is just the coalescing of the politics of envy for the moment. But give it time. Obama has basically adopted Bush’s approach to Iraq. We know it will be described as something else, and that misdescription will last a little while in the same way as the current budget proposals misuse the word “responsible”. But just wait. As the taxes increase, particularly the social security taxes, and the unemployment lines grow, the budgetary growth assumptions prove to be dishonest as they obviously are, and the thundering herd get sick and tired of seeing Obama’s face on the screen everyday holding forth, the natural scepticism of just enough of the electorate will begin to emerge. By that time, Obama’s function will be done. He was elected for the same reason that dog’s eat grass. America will revert.
JRub did set herself up for william’s criticism, by focusing on polling numbers herself, and whether people “approve of” what Obama is doing.
The temptation to cite the polls that support our positions is very powerful. I try to limit myself to the very few topics on which polls show the same trend over time, like whether there should be at least some restrictions on abortion (a consistent majority of 70% says yes — SOME), and which political principles people embrace, regardless of their party affiliation (consistently 60% embrace those of conservatives, when they are asked to declare themselves principle by principle. This doesn’t mean they self-identify as either conservative or Republican).
But GirdYourLoins is right: the ultimate issue is not whether pollsters can find 690 out of 1100 people in “blue counties” who will answer their phones and say, Yes, they approve of what Obama is doing. (If you’re not aware that phone polls are automatically biased toward politically “blue” counties by the unavoidable filter of area codes, congratulations: you’re typical.)
The ultimate issue is whether Obama’s policies will produce the results he has proclaimed as his goals. All the poll approval in the world can’t make that happen. People have lots of opinions. I remember the polling after Pluto was declared to not be a “planet,” in the sense the eight other planets we all grew up naming in order are planets. Majorities of people thought it was just a shame that we weren’t calling Pluto a planet any more, and plenty of those polled thought we ought to cut Pluto a break, and keep calling it a planet.
You had to wonder if Pluto was getting secret Planet Subsidies or something, and its revenues had been cut off by this redesignation. It’s just a ball of ores hurtling through space, for crying out loud. Should the humanly-appointed astronomic authorities have — what, relented? Redefined planethood so Pluto could still be one? Created the Pluto Exception?
Polling approval of the job Obama’s doing (and that approval IS declining) doesn’t mean he’s doing the right thing. If you asked people whether they thought it was a good idea for the federal government to go $1.5 trillion into debt this fiscal year — that’s DEBT, not the total of expenditures, which is higher — I don’t know that they would approve doing that to the level they supposedly approve of Obama. But it helps put the polls in the right perspective if we, on the conservative side, don’t assign more import to them than they merit.
Lee is honest on what he is wishing for, even though I mostly disagree with his politics, an interesting article.
21
Zoltan Newberry Says:
March 1st, 2009 at 11:49 AM
And, anyway, Otto, I was hoping for a response from Jennifer, not you, sir.
PS: Hurf, sir. In England, where everyone must have their weekends off, try finding an orderly or a nurse for your Mum in the hospital, on a Sunday, lying in her own feces, on filthy sheets sir. Socialized healthcare increases demand whilst decreasing supply, sir. Then you’ve got to ration it. No way round it sir.
….Zoltan you clearly live in world of urban myth so I’m hesitant to bring you back to reality but here goes. I’ve lived and worked in both France and Britain and been treated under their health systems. British ok, French outstanding. Damn you say. About four years ago my brother in law in Britain contracted Guillame Barre syndrome, spent about 9 months in hospital and emerged largely cured or at least as far as you can with this condition. A doctor friend tells me similar treatment over here would have cost around $3million and even had he had insurance the carrier would probably not have picked up anything approaching the full tab which didn’t cost my bil a penny. I visited him several times over the nine months and never once saw anyone lying in feces or on dirty sheets. When was the last time you were in a British hospital? Have you ever been in a British hospital. And if you want feces and dirty sheets I’ll find plenty for you in US managed care institutions. You are if I may say so a classic demo of why our party is in such awful shape….it’s basically been taken hostage by a load of juvenile bs that bears absolutely no connection to the real world in which people are living their lives. And until we break free of it the future is bleak.
There are polls of members of the NHS who are asked their opinion of the system. 56% say it is so bad it should be scrapped and they should start over. The French system, on the other hand, is an excellent model for us. It is largely funded from employee contributions, just as ours is. Fee-for-service and free choice of physician and hospital are parts of it, a feature being lost in our own. I have a study of the French system here.
I haven’t been in a British hospital as a patient but I do know that airport restrooms are filthy. The NHS is a system that is underfunded and is saved from worse by the 25% of the population, mostly in southeast England (The only part of England that has a positive GDP), who have private insurance and go to private hospitals.
Obama is taking us toward a corporate state that used to be called fascism. It will be interesting to see if the educational system has deprived the population of its senses as it has their knowledge of economics.
Structurally, we are endangered because many of the Western democracies are becoming tripartite states in which one-third of all taxpayers are employed by government at some level, one-third of the people are crucially dependent in some way on government support (welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, and a gazillion other untrackable support programs), and one-third produces the income (the tax base) paid out in supports for the first two-thirds. Anyone can see that, as this develops in a mass “democratic” system, the first two-thirds will always gang up on the last.
As we find ourselves arguing on thread after thread – whenever the newest here-today, gone-tomorrow Obamanaut enters and departs saying the same things that every other one always says – building your political argument and agenda on polling results is building sand castles that can be swept away by the first adverse tide. It’s also inherently backward-looking, and, like the urging to “become relevant” by joining the reflexively affirmative collective, repeated enough it’s a creepy tune in the key of cult fascism. Even before then, it’s a poor substitute for adult discussion of ideas.
As for Rubin’s point, no one here has made an argument against it. Clearly, she believes that the rather large overlap between the “other 78%” and the 65% approval ratings hasn’t worked itself out yet, but should, unless she’s wrong in her characterization of Obama’s policies, wrong in her characterization of the electorate, or wrong in her assumption that his non-liberal supporters won’t forever ignore the content of his policy in favor of the glow of his charisma.
If I were an Obama supporter, I’d worry a bit more about the out-years of the Obamabudget and warn my friends against approval euphoria. In the words of Machiavelli, “there is nothing that consumes itself so much as liberality: while you are using it, you are losing the possibility of using it, and you are becoming either poor and contemptible, or, to escape poverty, rapacious and hated.” Machiavelli also said that men will “forget the death of a father sooner than the loss of their patrimony.”
“Universal healthcare is consistently supported by a majority of Americans.”
Sure, I am in favor of “universal healthcare”, but the public is not heavily in favor of “government healthcare”. But of course, that was not the “ideal” that the poll question stated.
Anyhow, Obama has not proposed “universal healthcare”, nor does he promise that idealism.
He has called for “universal health insurance”. Not healthcare, but universal government spending and control of the insurance market and healthcare choices.
Obama ran for office as one thing and is governing as another. Its very diffiocult to avoid. As to whether a poll says that his policies are approved or not approved, all adminstrations start with favorable poll numbers, even Bush. That a poll says that a majority of its sample seemingly favors a policy today does not mean he was elected to enact it as much as it reflects the natural tendency to want to support a new administration. And the bottom line beyond electoral dishonesty is if the policy is actually appropriate. That judgment cannot be found in a poll. Tell me that the stiimulus package was the right policy, not that it is temporarily popular.
Just a week ago, the nation’s commentators couldn’t help but observe the apostle of “hope and change” was wandering the country sunk in despondency. Nor was it conservative observers, but more painfully for Dems, it was liberals, and flagship liberal institutions such as the editorial board over at The Washington Post.
He gives a speech laying out an agenda that’s tantamount to an economic death sentence for the defender of the free world, he stands there as an undertaker of all undertakers of American economic greatness, and because he’s rolling out socialism straight, {without any alloy, with nothing but a rhetorical chaser…} fools like Clift applaud him.
People need to recall that when LBJ rolled out his great society program, AT LEAST HE DID IT AT A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED economic expansion. It was a program that was envisioned BECAUSE of America’s economic greatness, not because of desperation, nor because a “crisis” presented itself.
For Emmanuel and Obama to embark down this path AT THIS TIME, when America is already facing unparalled debt, to embark down this path now, ——————————— it’s beyond brain dead. It’s destructive. It’s DELIBERATELY destructive.
It’s impossible not to think that Obama and his minions are determined to eradicate this unipolar/hyperpower moment, because they’re either guilt ridden about American greatness, or hateful towards it.
The Chicago machine hasn’t had problems pushing through unpopular measures, such as a one party city-state and corruption, but that hasn’t stopped them.
The issue isn’t health, it’s cost. Everyone pretty much agrees we have the best and most accessible health care in the world. Obama’s OMB chief Orszag is concerned that the costs of private sector health care are having a negative effect on the U.S. economy and that the level of spending may have reached a point of NEGATIVE returns. His focus is to reduce the cost of health care while providing access to treatment to the supposed 47 million souls wandering around uninsured and dying of some disease. Is that even possible? There isn’t any doubt that part of his plan is to curtail some treatment options.
And if the issue is cost, that sickness can “unfairly” bankrupt a family, why haven’t we heard about some form of national legal insurance? Aside from the public defender “welfare for jobless lawyers” program, where’s the national effort to rescue someone that’s got legal problems? According to the media, Bill Clinton’s legal fees for his impeachment trial were over $6 million. If that happens to me, I’m out of luck.
“A doctor friend tells me similar treatment over here would have cost around $3million and even had he had insurance the carrier would probably not have picked up anything approaching the full tab which didn’t cost my bil a penny.”
Somehow, I doubt this occurred, but I’ll humor it anyway. Let’s say that you just received your $3 million in care from the government. Now, the government has spent $3 million on one person (once again, I find this hard to believe) which means it no longer has $3 million to use for the thousands of other medical consumers who need care. On top of this, if this money was solely allocated for fighting your particular ailment, what prevents the government from preventing anymore funds from being allocated to the next sufferer of your malady until the next budget passes? I’m pretty sure the person that comes behind you doesn’t want to wait to receive care and have to get approval from a bureaucrat first.
“When was the last time you were in a British hospital? Have you ever been in a British hospital. And if you want feces and dirty sheets I’ll find plenty for you in US managed care institutions.”
Once again, humoring your position, America have institutions other than managed care hospitals. Some may perform poorly, but that is not descriptive of the whole. Most are run by the most competent of doctors and administrators. It’s no accident that Parliament members from socialized medicine countries and the King of Saudi Arabia come to the US to receive the best in medical care.
You liberals always have to try and tear down America in order to further your asinine egalitarian, utopian goals. All you have to do is look no further than California and Michigan to see the end result of your policies. But, of course, you prefer fantasy to reality and continue to convince yourselves that America is somehow inferior to Europe because we don’t have socialized medicine and gay marriage and loose drug laws.
Heads up! When Obama raises your Employer’s taxes you ain’t gettin a pay raise. In fact you may become unemployed. The best you can hope for is that they just cut your wages.
Mike K Says:
“I haven’t been in a British hospital as a patient but I do know that airport restrooms are filthy.”
….Well there’s a reliable measure of the effectiveness of the NHS….airport restroom comparisons…..how about diners next…….dressing rooms in women’s clothing stores?
What all you idealogues miss in all the debate about the US system is the distinction between “paying” and “delivering.” Under the US system that’s likely to emerge from all this which is probably going to look fairly like that in MA where one of my kids lives the paying bit will continue to be done by a combo of insurance companies and an extended medicare….while the delivering bit will remain essentially unchanged an in the private sector. Even if we went to a single payer system which many left libs want but isn’t going to happen the delivery would remain largely private outside the VA. Unfortunately, Mke as I can see from the way you throw around emotive terms like fascism, and hyperbolic comments about education, you don’t want your little reverie disturbed by the real world. What I find most uncanny here is the way people betray a rigidity of mind and extremity of speech they’d never use going about their daily lives assuming they are in the job market and not at college where you’re allowed to say and do stupid things…I certainly did.
chuck martel Says:
March 1st, 2009 at 1:48 PM
“The issue isn’t health, it’s cost. Everyone pretty much agrees we have the best and most accessible health care in the world.”
…..Where do you get this idea from. I know a bunch of Canadian and Brits who have like me experienced both systems and while they would all agree that the British and Canadian systems are far from perfect, given a choice there’s absolutely no doubt they’d not choose the US one! Cost is certainly a huge problem, were paying about twice in both per capita and GDP terms what every other industrialized country in the world is. Ultimately it’s unsustainable which is why the wheel is coming off the bus and even business is getting behind reform because the costs are killing them and they’ve reached the limit of what they can transfer to employees. I’ve personally experienced this situation running a fairly large business.
“Under the US system that’s likely to emerge from all this which is probably going to look fairly like that in MA where one of my kids lives the paying bit will continue to be done by a combo of insurance companies and an extended medicare….while the delivering bit will remain essentially unchanged an in the private sector.”
And what you’re missing is that when the payor pays, the payor can determine what services are delivered. Do you think that if medicare expands, the private sector won’t contract? Regardless of who’s paying, it isn’t the consumer and if the consumer doesn’t pay then the consumer has no say so about what services are being delivered. Expanding government control of healthcare will result in less choices being available for delivery by the doctor. If the government could guarantee that nothing will change in the healthcare market you wouldn’t find much argument from critics. However, we know that that isn’t true because you can look at the market where government has de facto control: public education. That is a complex, bureaucratic jungle and there is no reason for me to believe that the administrators of public education would do any better at administering healthcare.
“Ultimately it’s unsustainable which is why the wheel is coming off the bus and even business is getting behind reform because the costs are killing them and they’ve reached the limit of what they can transfer to employees.”
1) If costs transfer to the government, they don’t go away. Businesses will simply be asked to pay more in the form of taxes, which will find their way back to consumers.
2) Businesses have not yet reached the limit of transferring costs to employees. When I see businesses dropping healthcare coverage en masse, then I will know we reached that limit.
btenney — Indeed, the very BEST that many people can hope for is that their wages are cut. It could be a lot worse. The cap-and-trade bill working its way through Congress is a 100-megaton nuclear warhead about to go off in our economy, if it is passed with anything like the provisions that have been considered over the last several years. Electric bills for average residential ratepayers are projected to go up 160%, natural gas bills by the same, heating oil and motor fuel by $1.50-2.00 a gallon. Since all these utilities will go up for businesses as well, the price of literally everything will go up: food, household supplies, clothing. Small businesses will be slaughtered by cap-and-trade.
Obama’s team claims that tax credits for poorer households will make up for their increased costs, but the calculations of even the political PROPONENTS of cap-and-trade show that they will not. Poor people will have to cut back on their use of utilities and motor fuel at least as much as the middle-class. This is one thing when adults in their 20s-60s are at issue, but quite another when we’re talking about denying heat and a/c to families with children, and old people.
Consider also that the cost of emergency and health services will increase dramatically. Police and fire spend a LOT on fuel. Hospitals are huge consumers of power and fuel. Under cap-and-trade, we will have to forego other things to keep our services.
If the economy is allowing people to live and prosper too independently for someone’s political taste, it’s hard to think of anything that would change that as completely and effectively as a cap-and-trade scheme. Unless it is defeated in the Senate, the day is coming when we will only WISH that the extent of the damage to our way of life had been seeing our wages cut.
Ottovbvs — your claim about Brits and Canadians choosing their health care system over America’s just doesn’t meet the fact test. Not in the case of Canadians, at least. Every US border state with Canada sees thousands of health tourists each year who cross the border to pay cash for procedures they can’t expect to have done in Canada for months, or years. Americans simply don’t generate any traffic in the other direction.
Americans do go to Mexico for cash-basis medical treatment, because government regulation and cost-shifting mandates have made treatment so expensive here.
I’ve personally known members of the British, French, and Dutch armed forces who paid cash for medical procedures done in the Caribbean, rather than be put on waiting lists of over a year for those procedures at home. Cash-basis medical services are big business in the Caribbean — as they are in Malta, and on “floating clinics” anchored offshore around the Mediterranean. They cater mainly to Europeans.
37
Chris Bolts Sr. Says:
March 1st, 2009 at 1:50 PM
….Leaving aside your typically unpleasant implication that I’m a liar, you clearly have never been near a British hospital in your life…. or probably have any idea what Guillame Barre syndrome is judging by the incomprehensible para that follows your denial that it would cost about $3 million to treat it. Btw my wife had a three day stay in hospital for recently, hospitalization alone was $1700 a day. Do you know that a health plan for a healthy family of four costs around $13,000. In fact do you know anything about the economics of healthcare. And I have no problems with your descriptions of the US system, it’s excellent…it just costs too much and doesn’t provide access for about 47 million people….probably 50 million by the end of this year.
” It’s no accident that Parliament members from socialized medicine countries and the King of Saudi Arabia come to the US to receive the best in medical care.”
…..You are also going to find quite a few Arab rulers in the King Edward VII for officers in London.
As usual when faced with reality those like you are clearly on the far right of a party that I was voting for when you were in short pants seek refuge in accusing us of “trying to tear down America.” It’s immature buddy. US medicine is great, it’s just too expensive and unavailable to about to nearly 20% of the population.
42
Chris Bolts Sr. Says:
March 1st, 2009 at 2:15 PM
2) Businesses have not yet reached the limit of transferring costs to employees. When I see businesses dropping healthcare coverage en masse, then I will know we reached that limit.
…….What planet are you on buddy….Masses of businesses are dropping coverage. I was running a business with about 3000 employees and it was our major overhead headache because it was basically totally outside our control.
One of the reasons I occasionally post at this site and a couple of others is basically to support the efforts of a few conservative writers who are trying to inject a bit of reality into the prevaliing conservative mindset which is not only deeply detached from real life but is essentially nihilistic in outlook.
Ottovbvs, the fact that you repeated the now-part-of-Democratic-dogma of “47 million people that are uninsured” leads me to believe that it is you who does not understand healthcare economics. I don’t understand the complete ins-and-outs of healthcare economics – indeed, I doubt that there is anyone who can – but I have a good enough training in economics to understand the basics of supply and demands and consumer utility. Socialized medicine is smoke and mirrors whereby the government provides the coverage for healthcare, but the costs are borne by all the market participants.
If I am lucky, I will never be near a British hospital EVER. I never called you a liar – if I did, I would be more direct about it. It’s surprising that you didn’t address my central point in my other post, which is that the $3 million allocated to your friend removed allocations for other citizens. That’s the central argument, not whether you were telling the truth. You continue to wed yourself to this idea that healthcare, when provided by the government, is “free”. It isn’t because you pay for it other ways: higher taxes, longer wait times, lower health choices, etc.
“…..You are also going to find quite a few Arab rulers in the King Edward VII for officers in London.”
Hmm…here’s another. It’s surprising that Edward Kennedy wants socialized medicine for everyone, but he himself is getting care from the finest neurosurgeons this country has to offer in Cambridge. Why didn’t he go across the border to Canada if their system is so great?
“US medicine is great, it’s just too expensive and unavailable to about to nearly 20% of the population.”
“If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait until it is free.” That’s all I’ll say to that.
#44
Mr Dyer,
They go to Mexico because it’s cheaper…In any case all this urban myth about health tourists is essentially fringe stuff….it’s weeds, it’s not were the real action or problems lie.
Oh, boy, cap and trade. What a neat invention, like the bumper-mounted deer whistle or the radon gas detector or, better yet, the derivative. Take a problem that no one can prove actually exists (global warming), present a strategy of negligible effect on the perceived problem (reduction of carbon dioxide emissions) that will have enormous economic impact (diversion of financial resources from the necessities) and whose results will never be seen by those who implement it (we’ll all be dead). All so governments can extort more money from some of their citizens and give it to others. Why not just skip the BS and just take the money? Wouldn’t it be easier?
“…….What planet are you on buddy….Masses of businesses are dropping coverage. I was running a business with about 3000 employees and it was our major overhead headache because it was basically totally outside our control.”
I would like to see these “masses of businesses” that are dropping coverage. Shifting more costs to the consumer, yes, but dropping it outright, no. When I see plastered on the front of the NYT “Over half of American businesses stop paying healthcare benefits” will I believe that businesses are dropping coverage.
But an aside – if healthcare costs are such a huge burde on American businesses, why is our unemployment rate lower than every last EU country, where most if not all have socialized medicine?
“A doctor friend tells me similar treatment over here would have cost around $3million and even had he had insurance the carrier would probably not have picked up anything approaching the full tab which didn’t cost my bil a penny.”
Somehow, I doubt this occurred, but I’ll humor it anyway
……Well Mr Bolts if that’s not an implication I’m a liar I don’t know what is. And pleased to hear that you admit you’ve never been near a British hospital which apparently you think would be a fate worse than death.
“……Well Mr Bolts if that’s not an implication I’m a liar I don’t know what is. And pleased to hear that you admit you’ve never been near a British hospital which apparently you think would be a fate worse than death.”
Not calling you a liar, but I doubt it did occur. Doubt does not equal lying, but I digress. And going to a British hospital can be a fate worse than death for those who have no choice but to use the medical system (indeed, some have died waiting to receive care).
By the by, you still have not responded to my original point.
“If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait until it is free.” That’s all I’ll say to that.”
…..It’s never going to be free……it’s a question of making it accessible to all at a price we can afford which is probably somewhere around 10% of GDP. Apparently only 50% of businesses dropping healthcare is going to be good enough for you ….not 10%( about 12 million workers)…not 20%(24 million)….I can only say Mr Bolts when the GOP has friends as bright and well informed as you it doesn’t need enemies…..Either way it’s going to happen…..it will make a huge difference in areas like labor mobility…..malpractice law….and business creation
The debate about taxes could be resolved by simply publishing (minus all personal information)returns for an adequate statistic sampling of that top 1%. Start letting the statistical facts speak – Main Street America is smart enough to draw the conclusions.
Millionaire Warren Buffett recently said in a speech “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter” Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.
“…..It’s never going to be free……it’s a question of making it accessible to all at a price we can afford which is probably somewhere around 10% of GDP. ”
Why try to attain the impossible? You can’t both make it accessible and affordable. That’s the current mess we have now.
“Apparently only 50% of businesses dropping healthcare is going to be good enough for you ….not 10%( about 12 million workers)…not 20%(24 million)….”
Oh boy, another liberal who think that because I don’t want to help the masses I don’t have a heart. Save your feigned outrage for someone else. Our problems arise because people with too big a heart make wide assumptions for everyone else, then make policy calls based on emotion without thinking it through, and then heap those policies on everyone else, and when faced with the unintended consequence of said policy refuse to admit error but instead doubles down on said failed policy. Your answer to address coverage lapse (as if this is important) and cost is to have the government control more of the cost to try and reign them in and guarantee coverage. However, this does not work. I would argue that we should go in the opposite direction, back to a time before there was a Medicare and have the consumer buy health insurance, customized for their needs and then buy a catastrophic provision to guard against unforeseen occurrences. And for the extremely poor and indigent who cannot afford to buy insurance, then we can have a subsidized plan to provide them with assistance. That was how Medicaid started out, but it turned into something completely different.
Free healthcare is not free, as many posters have quoted P.J. O’Rourke, “if you think healthcare is expensive now just wait until it’s free”. It will be expensive, and rationed, and the older you are the less care you will receive, because society won’t get much back from you if it invests in your care.
In the UK recently, there was a scandal over rationing of drugs to prevent blindness. Here’s the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1049491/Too-late-After-thousands-patients-needlessly-blind-NICE-boss-says-sorry-delays-sight-saving-drugs.html – “The head of the NHS rationing watchdog has said he is ‘genuinely sorry’ for a delay in approving a new treatment for blindness….NICE’s original recommendation was that patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.”
Macular degeneration is a disease of old age.
On the other end of life, check this out: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?id=41ccae74-8325-449a-b89f-e68957ca25ae&k=79546
“Calgary’s quads: Born in the U.S.A. – By The Calgary HeraldAugust 17, 2007
A rare set of identical quadruplets, born this week to a Calgary woman at a Montana hospital, are in good health and two of them were strong enough to be transported back here Thursday. Their mother was transferred to Benefis Hospital in Montana last week when she began showing signs of going into labour, and no Canadian hospital had enough neonatal intensive-care beds for all four babies. (She) was transported to Benefis hospital in Great Falls last Friday — making her the fifth Alberta woman to be transferred south of the border this year because of neonatal shortages in Calgary.”
In all of Canada they couldn’t find four beds for these babies! Yet Great Falls, Montana had plenty of beds available. Great Falls, Montana is a relatively small city in the U.S. and can currently provide better health care than any city anywhere in Canada.
I do have relatives in England on my wife’s side, and, one almost got killed by the English HC System. He had a simple problem, gall stones, so they scheduled him for surgery, and lost all his papers. Being a nice stoic Englishman, he just waited and waited, whilst his problem worsened to the point he was rushed in for emergency surgery which they botched, cutting into his bowel and causing a huge infection which brought him to the edge of death and kept him hospitalized and away from his farm work for many months.
On the other hand, I must say we were near the village of Howarth which has a wonderful brand new mini hospital- clinic. One of us took ill and was seen immediately almost free of charge, with the medicine dispensed right there.
Whenever I contemplate nationalized medicine here, I have nightmare visions of our DMV’s and Postal Service (where I used to work [ugh!]). Like our urban public schools which offer jobs for life for teachers who cannot teach, nationalized health care would (will?) be another national disaster.
Ottovbvs — I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re talking about when you call health tourism an “urban myth” or “fringe” phenomenon. Since you’ve obviously — unlike me — never been to the places that specialize in it, or known people who have traveled to pay cash for medical services (not plastic surgery, but things like gall bladder and back surgery), I recommend you do some web searches and get educated.
And the fact that cash-basis services are cheaper in Mexico is the point of observing that Americans are making use of them. Americans don’t go to Mexico to use the national health care, they go there to pay cash, to private physicians, for services that would cost them three times as much in the US. Many US-educated doctors now have practices in the major Mexican border cities, where they are patronized by cash patients from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
The reasons the same procedures are so expensive in the US are:
1. State cost-shifting health care mandates. California is the biggest example, but Arizona isn’t far behind today. States set fees for services compensated by insurance, and regulate hospital care policies, to ensure that paying patients and their insurers are paying part of the cost of care for non-paying patients. The other part of the care of the non-paying comes from general tax revenues. If you carry health insurance today, you are already paying for care for the non-paying.
2. The cost of regulatory compliance. Medical practices and hospitals have all had to hire additional clerical workers over the last 30 years, to process the paperwork incident to health care regulation by the federal and state governments.
3. The cost of liability insurance. This cost continues to spiral upward with the litigation boom. New doctors are establishing fewer and fewer practices in the high-cost states, like California and Florida. But liability also introduces the more insidious cost of frequently unnecessary procedures which are performed as a hedge against litigation. If you know even one physician with a full-time practice, he or she will confirm this for you instantly.
In our health care system, the paying patient bears the cost of heavy regulation and cost-shifting mandates; we do NOT have unregulated, “free market” health care. The paying patient also bears the cost of our absolutely unfettered tort law system, in the cost of his own insurance premiums, the cost of fees, and the declining availability of doctors as their operating costs in one place drive them elsewhere.
Ironically, the best way to guarantee against malpractice lawsuits being a useful tool, when patients really do have valid grievances, is to institute national health care. Once there is a single payer, patients who do not already belong to a designated “victim” category, because of ethnicity or income, will have no recourse against malpractice. After all, if a leg is cut off unnecessarily, or a spinal cord severed by accident, the state’s various services will take care of the unfortunate patient.
AddingMisInfo;
You need to take a course in Stats 101.
You & Buffett are mixing percentages.
Also, what does “without trying to avoid paying higher taxes” mean. He doesn’t take any capital losses or credits/deductions on his gross income? Odd.
Look, isn’t he in the Top tax bracket, which is somewhat higher (35%) than Buffetts’ 17.7% for all income over something like $350,000 (don’t make me look it up). Is Buffett “avoiding” something?
Oh, let me have N. GREGORY MANKIW explain:
“One might wonder how Mr. Buffett gets away with a tax rate of only 17.7 percent, while a typical millionaire is paying so much more. Most likely, part of the answer is that Mr. Buffett’s income is made up largely of dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at only 15 percent. By contrast, many other top earners pay the maximum ordinary income tax rate of 35 percent on their salaries, bonuses and business income.
“The distinction is crucial for understanding how much the rich pay.”
And
“None of these calculations, however, say whether the rich are paying their fair share. Fairness is not an economic concept. If you want to talk fairness, you have to leave the department of economics and head over to philosophy.”
Finally, we already have the stats on income tax paid by various classifications of earners: a CBO Report gives the effective federal tax rate by income group so what would your proposal add?
I hate to break it you fellow conservatives, but the goalposts have shifted. This country just isn’t what it was. 1994 might as well be 1924.
This country now wants leftist government, has it, and will want it for the future. Nothing could be as clear as is if my fellow conservatives would just look around, especially at the youth vote. The youth vote, which the messiah carried by 2:1, and the ever enlarging black and hispanic vote mean a lifetime of socialist nirvana.
These Obamabots love this man, love his party, and will excuse anything from him. I mean everything. They will just blame Bush; after of course, the MSM tells them to.
Another thing. The MSM is far from dead, and the alternative conservative media is far from strong. One Rush, One Hannity, and One network like Fox can’t compare to the leftwing massive assault on everyday stories.
So thus, my fellow conservatives, you need to accept this reality, store away money, hide it from Obama’s greedy paws, and accept that the next 20+ years will be wasted and perhaps devastating. I hate Obama’s policies more than anyone, and I hold no quarter in my repulsiveness towards liberals, but I am realistic.
This is 1932, only worse. Until we get another Eisenhower in 20 years (1952), we will be in the wilderness. By then, who knows what this country will look like after Obama gets done with it? Imagine a country where the only reliable conservative state is Utah. 500 electoral routes, all 9 justices being like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Fox News saddled with the “fairness doctrine”, Rush dead, Hannity retired, and universal health care with waiting lines and a 75% top rate in taxes. We will be Mexico+Europe in all but name….
Oy Vey, Tex.
# 60
See V. D. Hanson today at
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/recessional/
AddingMisInfo:
Same.
“My quibble, of course, is that he is not out to “save” capitalism, but to disable it and replace it with a statist arrangement wherein the government owns banks and car companies, directs employers on how to pay and treat their employees, limits industrial output, and runs the healthcare system.”
This is where J-Rub blows it – not a single bank or car company has to take a penny – but those that do – because they wish for the taxpayer to save their butts, will have to play by OUR rules. Does J-Rub call that socialism? perhaps. Will average Americans? No dice. They’ll see it as fair play for reaching so deeply into our wallets.
Does J-Rub believe the car companies should get a free ride with no strings attached? Does she believe the American peaople want that? Or does J-Rub and the Republicans root for the destruction of the American automobile industry? Do you think America wants that? They may say they’re against bailouts, but when GM starts closing down plant after plant after plant, they will quickly change their tune.
As Americans realize that once again, the Neo-Cons and the far right speak in overblown and absurd rhetoric, they will furthur marginalize their position – just as they did on Iraq, digging themselves deeper into the realm of the extreme – where they finally, and bitterly, clung to the surge as the be all end all of their Iraq policy, and are STILL rejected by Average Joes: America STILL wants out from Iraq – ASAP – a position at odds with J-Rub’s, though right in line with Obama’s. If the election and the polls tell us one thing, it’s that the right wing is so out of step with what America really thinks, they will continue to spiral into obscurity. I can almost see the Political adds next year: flash to Rush Limbaugh: “Of course I want the President to fail…Of course I do!”
Rush and J-Rub and the Zionistas at Commentary may be rooting for failure. America defintely is not.
#63
———————-
they will furthur marginalize their position – just as they did on Iraq, digging themselves deeper into the realm of the extreme – where they finally, and bitterly, clung to the surge as the be all end all of their Iraq policy, and are STILL rejected by Average Joes: America STILL wants out from Iraq – ASAP
———————-
That’s a curious statement. The position on Iraq was the position of the elected U.S. government, which includes the U.S. Congress. The “surge”, a five letter word that denotes much more than sending more troops to the country, was also a policy of the US government, developed and implemented by the military, not just some neo-con, right wing maniacs. And, as far as Average Joes, there’s probably a diversity of opinion about Iraq and many other things. If you’re indeed right, the question is: Why? Why does America want out of Iraq? Has the current effort (by definition, it’s not a war) been too dear in terms of casualties? Has the expense produced hardship on the home front? Is it simply wrong to maintain a military presence in a foreign country? Is it philosophically wrong to engage in military combat period? Is it wrong in an increasingly shrinking world to use force to protect essential commercial interests? For instance, if a 1991 Iraq had been able to march through Kuwait and then appropriate the Saudi oil fields, would we have been justified in invading or should we have just started paying $20 a gallon for gas and shut down the airline industry?
#37:
You make some good points, but I believe you’re mistaken about gay marriage. As far as I know, the only places in the world where it’s legal are certain states in the US.
#66
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
Nepal?
“My quibble, of course, is that he is not out to “save” capitalism, but to disable it and replace it with a statist arrangement wherein the government owns banks and car companies, directs employers on how to pay and treat their employees, limits industrial output, and runs the healthcare system.”
Funny, I don’t recall Ms. Rubin complaining about the government directing “employers on how to pay and treat their employees” when the GOP was re-negotiating the salaries and benefits of America’s auto workers. In fact, I seem to recall her being quite enthusiastic about that “statist arrangement”.
10.
Give me some examples of “Christian right” policies implemented by Bush that had any significant negative impact on the people of the US. I don’t recall the “Christain right” having been behind the war in Iraq, for example. I don’t recall them having any input on tax cuts at all. They oppose abortion, but I don’t recall that having any significant effect on limiting abortion.
#60-(tex)- I share your pessimism about the next “20years,” but not your optimism about thereafter.
Exactly how much of the New Deal did Eisenhower roll back? Did his administration not continue to expand the government and, most lamentably, bring federal intrusion into education for the first time? Did his judicial appointments slow down the stampede to rule by elitist fiat?
The Left adheres to the Brezhnev Doctrine:”Whatever territory we get, we keep.” Considering the success of their long march through the institutions, they’re going to get a whole lot, and they’re going to keep it.
‘Tis my fate, I suppose, to always be in opposition. This election “conservatized” me good and proper but for most of my life I’ve been a loyal (if centrist) democrat. Yes only 22% of the electorate are self-identified liberals, just as a slightly larger minority have been self-identified conservatives over the past 30 or so years. But that 50% in the middle will go along with pretty much any president, as long as he’s cute and articulate and things don’t get too bad. Like it or not, it’s the Democrat’s turn and it is hard to argue that the GOP is not largely responsible for that fact. People will give Obama a large benefit of doubt because he inherited a failing economy. But he is still gambling heavily and seems to be operating on blind faith to as great an extent as GWB did in the first half of the Iraq War. Not a good sign. Still, he’s a lucky SOB so he may pull it off. But conservatives will have to be content to watch from the sidelines until their time comes round again. Events are outside of their control.
William at #5 has a point: self-described liberals may only be 22% of the population, but a healthy majority of all Americans supports President Obama now, so for Rubin to suggest that the other 78% are “in agony” is specious.
“In agony,” perhaps, is overstating it. “Will be in agony when they fully grasp what has transpired” would be nearer the mark. Obama’s poll numbers, just a month after his inauguration, shouldn’t be used as a barometer for where “the American center” is. Every president has high poll numbers before the breadth of their policy decisions are actually felt.
That’s not even taking into account that conservative complaints about Obama are not just the right wing counterpart to the 2001 whining about “theocracy” and “social justice” and the like. We are actually convinced that the man’s policies would destroy the country and the results will be visible long before Nov 2012. Obviously if Obama is right (in a theoretical magical world where the concepts of incentives don’t exist), he will be reelected. That goes without saying.
What Republicans are doing by refusing to join the party is jumping off a ship that is bound for electoral relevance. They are jumping off because the ship is sinking. Obviously if they’re wrong, they’ll wish they stayed on the boat. But the water is filling the belowdecks and the President’s promise that the deluge is intentional and can be easily be bailed out (buy only by the richest 2%) isn’t very convincing.
For perspective on how important early-term polling is, Obama is *more* popular than Reagan or Clinton was at this time…and *less* popular than George H. W. and Jimmeh Carter.
I once was a Republican, until 1998.
Then the GOP decided to impeached a twice-elected President.
And why? Just because they could.
Republicans have lost their way.
Even these posts…
You just don’t get it yet, do you?
And I didn’t even vote for Obama.
But am I cheering on the political vomit of Rush Limbaugh?
GAG.
The whining of Republicans these days is embarrassing.
George W. Bush admitted he lost his free-market philosophy when he was told that his recession was turning into his Great Depression.
A few months before that?
Bush told us the underpinnings of our economy were strong.
Bush and Cheney RUINED the GOP.
Now you have to live with whatever Democrats and Independents hands you.
You didn’t take the 2006 Thumpin’ seriously and so you lost even worse in 2008.
So now you have no power.
Personally, I don’t think I’d ever vote for a Republican ever again.
They had all the power and they blew up the nation.
Republicans, don’t blame anyone but your own arrogant and greedy selves.
You have proven to the world that you have no idea how to run smart government.
Despite the hope of many in the country it is becoming increasingly apparent that Obama is a nice young man with very little experience. Let’s hope that as he learns on the job he makes fewer errors going forward.
Hey libtards…read this, memorize, learn something, and come over to our side before you run out of food.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030209/content/01125106.guest.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/anti-stimulus-t.html
#60, Tex:
/1/ If “the goalposts have shifted” so suddenly
(between 2004 and 2006), then they can shift again just as quickly.
One cannot make long-term predictions based on short-term shifts
in public mood in highly volatile times.
/2/ Historical analogies (1932 in your case) are useful to clarify issues
- but they suck as predictors. One can easily pick another historical
analogy to make an opposite prediction! For example, instead of
living under another FDR, waiting for another Eisenhower
(who btw was a liberal) we might instead be living under another Carter
(similarities are closer), waiting for another Reagan.
I am not predicting that – too many factors
to see 4 years ahead; but I’d say that Republicans have
a good chance to take back the House of Representatives in 2010 -
and the historical model for doing so may be the Gingrich revolution.
President Obama does still have wide-ranging support. But so far the mass of the American public is basing their opinions on the appealing presentation of his promises with little thought on the costs of such thing cap and trade, government control of healthcare. etc. But those costs will come due and it will not be on only the top earning 2%. Then will come the great moan followed by each group’s scramble to save the programs that benefit them. “Shrill” conservatives will not be able to stop that. That will take a great Reaganesque leader and finding such a man or woman make take many many painful years.
face it,,, people are stupid, the dims have succeeded in dumbing down enough people that they now form the majority and do not care to look at any issue any more than superficially. We are in the era of new speak,,, it’s not what it is, it’s what they say it is. They are taking the Chicago patronage system and rolling it out nationwide. All we can hope for is a backlash in the 2010 elections.
Last I checked Obama has the support of 71% of Americans. So, exactly who is he upsetting now with his bold agenda to actually do something positive for the country? Oh right, the 29% who thought W. was doing a heckuva job until the day he left office.
five trillion deficit, proposed huge federal government expansion, massive inflation down the road, debasement of the dollar, regulations which will increase costs to all industries and thus great passed on expense to the consumer,,, yeah really bold and positive for the country. Within six months that 71/29 will turn around if people come to really understand. Read the news, even Putin says obama is on the wrong track.
The President has the support of so many people because he has done with the economy what the Republicans did with terrorism – used it to scare them. Both had legitimate issues and overplayed it. Bush used the war on terror to implement his policies which he sincerely felt would protect the country and was vilified for it when people got tired of those policies working so effectively. Now Obama is taking another serious issue and using it to ram his agenda through, again I’m sure with the best of intentions. One day Americans will wake up and run him out of office, but hopefully not before it’s too late. The problem is that the Dems have told people for so long that the American Dream is dead that people have started to believe it. Ironic to hear so though from the son of a foreigner who rose to President or from his wife who was more typical of so many of us, born to a working class family, who got an education and worked hard.
What a shame that the opportunity I had – growing up with no money, working hard to go to a good college and working my tail off for the last 25 or so years so that I could be successful – is now considered somehow bad and that so many Americans are defining their success as being able to suck money from those who earned it.