jerseyhoya wrote:If Republicans were successful in derailing passage of the further reaching reforms, then they could have gone to Obama/Reid/Pelosi and worked out a less ambitious package addressing things like preexisting conditions and cost controls like medical malpractice reform, allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, and a greater transparency about the true cost of medical care.

Could have, I suppose, but I seriously doubt they would have. They've been pretty consistent and comprehensive about wanting to deny this president and majority any policy achievement, even getting the administration fully staffed. They're running against the productivity and effectiveness of the government, so it follows that they want to make it as unproductive and ineffective as possible.

Am I hyperbolizing? Maybe a little. But if so many Republicans voted against the deficit commission--something that they all profess to care about, and that a bunch of them had previously frigging co-sponsored IIRC--I can't credit that many would have wanted to do anything on health care... unless, maybe, it was solely Republican ideas and/or called the Reagan Act.

Maybe more to the point, the idea of "just the popular stuff" almost certainly would have yielded a bad CEO score, and the Democrats have restored pay-as-you-go. The notion of this bill is that you have to give the candy with one hand and jam cauliflower and carrots down the public's throat with the other, or else the numbers don't add up.

Thinking a little more about the possibilities for compromise on the health care bill... while I don't doubt that there's considerable principled opposition to the bill among Republicans, I suspect [url=http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/what_do_conservatives_believe.html]]those arguing that in the historical context of the health care debate this is a pretty solidly center-right bill are correct.
[/url]

Perhaps it takes someone very familiar with liberal health-care reform ideas to say this, but this is not a liberal bill. Liberals believe access to medical care is a public good that should be provided by the public sector. The sop to that approach was the public option, which isn't even in the final law. That's why every time someone terms this socialism, I fantasize about Karl Marx, or maybe William Beveridge, stepping out Marshall McLuhan-style and saying, "You know nothing of my work!"

This bill is Clintonian: It achieves liberal ends through market means, and since conservatives frequently claim they are also in favor of access to medical care, it's not even clear that near-universal coverage can properly be called a liberal end. Not to mention that it's more conservative than the Great Triangulator himself was: It doesn't resemble his reforms so much as the Republican alternative to his reforms. But Democrats haven't gotten credit for that, in part because the opposition of Republicans meant they had to keep their liberals onboard, and that cut against trumpeting the conservative structure of the legislation.

But if President Mitt Romney had proposed this bill, a substantial number among his party would have stood with him on it, and no one would have trouble identifying what was conservative within it. And, to be fair, many Democrats would have fought the legislation every step of the way.

I don't know whether or not this is true, but if there's been a coherent or compelling response from Romney or other defenders of the MA plan (I wouldn't ask Scott Brown for one, as I suspect he'd just start pole-dancing or something) to the charge that Obamacare=Romneycare, I haven't heard it. (If you have, please link--maybe I missed it.)

At the same time, while some Republicans did propose health care reforms, their common theme was solely in the direction of cost controls, not better health. To paraphrase this piece, the Republican health care plans amounted to protect the wallets of the healthy and wealthy from the misfortunes of the sick and poor. That's not a framework that easily accommodates compromise, even before you throw in the full-press hyperbolizing of the bill's awfulness and eevil socialism and all the rest. I can buy that principle for a lot of Republicans was as much a part of the "ONLY try to kill it" strategy as politics was.

BTW, I listened to part of her recent speech. She really is pretty bad at public speaking.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:There are a few reasons I try not to wade into policy type discussions. One is I am typically outmatched in them,

BZZZZZZZT!!!!!!!!

and I don’t like talking about things that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about....

:rollseyes:

we so need that emoticon

The rest of the "dialogue" aside, I think it's disrespectful to throw those comments back in his face in such a way. You added nothing here except contempt and mockery. Do any of the regulars wonder why most of the conservative political posters (outside of jerseyhoya), as well as the politically novice posters, do not care to post content/opinion here very often?

Werthless wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:There are a few reasons I try not to wade into policy type discussions. One is I am typically outmatched in them,

BZZZZZZZT!!!!!!!!

and I don’t like talking about things that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about....

:rollseyes:

we so need that emoticon

The rest of the "dialogue" aside, I think it's disrespectful to throw those comments back in his face in such a way. You added nothing here except contempt and mockery. Do any of the regulars wonder why most of the conservative political posters (outside of jerseyhoya), as well as the politically novice posters, do not care to post content/opinion here very often?

Once again you've misinterpreted not only the content but the tone of those entries.

In the 1st, Jerz suggests he's "typically outmatched" in policy discussions. I "buzzed" him for flagrantly exaggerated modesty; with his smarts & experience, there's little chance he's outmatched by anyone here in any instance, let alone frequently.

The 2nd is a variant of the 1st - my entry tweaks his profession of abject ignorance on the topics under discussion.

In both cases, my replies "scoff" if so strong a term could be applied, at his claims of incompetence, knowing, as I and I'm fairly sure most others here do, that he's one sharp cookie. Like you, most of the time.

And you still haven't provided the libertarian's solution to population health challenges in the 21st century. Surely it's in you...?

MARK THOMPSON: Yeah, this is crazy. And they’re suggesting ... the Republicans are defending themselves by saying this is happening on both sides. This is not happening on both sides.

REP. GRAYSON: Well, I think that’s what they said about the burning of the Reichstag, if I recall correctly.

In complaining about overheated GOP rhetoric leading to conservative activists becoming threatening and violent, Grayson compares us to the Nazis.

Really.

Grayson's being typically asinine and hyperbolic here. But I can't help feeling that if it had been left-wing crazies threatening Republican officials, the Bachmann/Malkin crowd would be calling for people like me to be put in camps...

Of course, this is implausible anyway--while there are certainly crazies on the left, they don't pay heed to or take cues from any mainstream liberal pol the way the right-wing nuts do from Palin et al. And while I readily grant that Grayson's response is way over the top, I think it's no more so than the FREEDOM DIES WITH THIS BILL rhetoric the Republicans kept putting out there, and which probably did motivate some of these incidents.

The rhetoric against this bill on the right is no more severe or hyperbolic than the left's reaction to the PATRIOT Act. The aftermath of the 2000 election comes to mind as well (that lasted years).

VoxOrion wrote:The rhetoric against this bill on the right is no more severe or hyperbolic than the left's reaction to the PATRIOT Act. You didn't have the "establishment" egging things on in that case, though, because it was a bi-partisan bill.

I don't think we're taking "left" and "right" to mean the same things. I'll take your word that the rhetoric was equally overheated. But you can't argue that hyperbole has the same power when it comes from Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore or whoever than from the most recent vice-presidential candidate.

Part of this is probably the symbolism or kitsch or whatever you want to call it of the two sides. Palin puts gun targets on the districts of Democrats because that's her shtick; what would Michael Moore do (assuming he called for explicit action anyway, which to my knowledge he never has), put a jelly donut on the same map?

Well no, the left makes docudramas featuring the assassination of the president (to the effect of multiple film fest awards and accolades). I bet, and I say this with a smile on my face, the PATRIOT Act and post 2000 election hysteria stuff didn't seem as hyperbolic to you because you agreed or at the least, sympathized with a lot of it. Look at the reaction to Prop 8. Go back and look at your posts here after that, you were positively foaming at the mouth. I'm not questioning where you were coming from or how righteous you were or weren't, I'm saying that the focus on the right's reaction to health care is yet another tempest in a teapot.

We can both adjust the scales just right to try and break or expand comparison using specific examples here and there, but we'd both be adjusting the scales to do that, the net effect is the same except that one side's hyperbole is less acceptable than the others.

VoxOrion wrote:Well no, the left makes docudramas featuring the assassination of the president (to the effect of multiple film fest awards and accolades).

So "the left" is one asshole who's disowned by every other liberal, just as the right is your former vice-presidential candidate.

Wow. When someone as intelligent and, most of the time, as intellectually honest as you writes something like this, I start to think maybe you have a point about the pointlessness of politics threads.

VoxOrion wrote:I bet, and I say this with a smile on my face, the PATRIOT Act and post 2000 election hysteria stuff didn't seem as hyperbolic to you because you agreed or at the least, sympathized with a lot of it. Look at the reaction to Prop 8. Go back and look at your posts here after that, you were positively foaming at the mouth. I'm not questioning where you were coming from or how righteous you were or weren't, I'm saying that the focus on the right's reaction to health care is yet another tempest in a teapot.

I think you keep emphasizing the hyperbole, rather than the actions taken in partial response to the hyperbole, because the truth is that there's no liberal parallel to the vandalism and threats against a dozen or so Democratic elected officials. Speech is protected, if selectively obnoxious. If I didn't hear about someone cutting the gas line to Katherine Harris's home or mailing nooses to Ted Olson, I'm happy to reassess my view.

The Patriot Act is an interesting example because a plank of the right hates it with more veracity than anyone else.

dajafi wrote:I think you keep emphasizing the hyperbole, rather than the actions taken in partial response to the hyperbole, because the truth is that there's no liberal parallel to the vandalism and threats against a dozen or so Democratic elected officials. Speech is protected, if selectively obnoxious. If I didn't hear about someone cutting the gas line to Katherine Harris's home or mailing nooses to Ted Olson, I'm happy to reassess my view.

You are coming off as very slippery here. Are you saying liberals don't vandalize or make death threats, or are you narrowing your framework such so that it doesn't count unless it's against an elected official? Are lefties who do such things outliers, not to be concerned with, but righties are not? Why?

VoxOrion wrote:

dajafi wrote:I think you keep emphasizing the hyperbole, rather than the actions taken in partial response to the hyperbole, because the truth is that there's no liberal parallel to the vandalism and threats against a dozen or so Democratic elected officials. Speech is protected, if selectively obnoxious. If I didn't hear about someone cutting the gas line to Katherine Harris's home or mailing nooses to Ted Olson, I'm happy to reassess my view.

You are coming off as very slippery here. Are you saying liberals don't vandalize or make death threats, or are you narrowing your framework such so that it doesn't count unless it's against an elected official? Are lefties who do such things outliers, not to be concerned with, but righties are not? Why?

What I'm saying is that I think it's much easier to draw a direct line between the inflammatory, hyperbolic statements of prominent Republicans, including both the Palin/Bachmann electeds and the Limbaugh/Beck media crowd, and the violent, illegal actions of right-leaning "activists" than to do the same thing on the left.

(And this is even before considering statements from many on the right, even a putative centrist like Scott Brown, expressing some sympathy with the sick bastard who flew his airplane into the IRS building in Texas a couple months back. Nobody wanted to "claim" him, but they sure seemed in a hurry to give his insane rage some credence and acknowledge its validity. Again, I think that if something analogous happened with Democratic electeds somewhat cheering a murderous, crazy action for its supposed political groundings, the public reaction would have been much more strongly condemnatory. We both see a double standard here, just in different directions.)

But this is probably one of those pointless debates, where I acknowledge that both sides have extreme voices and elements but argue that those folks are much closer to the heart of the Republican/"conservative" faction than on the center-left, where we can't even sustain an anger-based radio network. Then you counter, I'm guessing, that there's every bit as much rage and actual violence on the left but the liberal media throws a blanket over it or mischaracterizes it, or some such. I'm sure we both have better things to do than actually go through these motions, so I'm happy to take all this as read.

Are we really reduced to "well the left does it too" as a defense of threatening murder and in at a least a few isolated cases carrying out acts of terrorism?

It's sad.

I think the equivalent might be the left's pointless demands to try Bush and Cheney for war crimes. As ridiculous as those people are, at least they continue to be operating within the confines of civilized society with courtrooms and stuff, rather than cutting gas lines and ramming the cars of people who have bumper stickers you don't like.

If you look at the editors and network executives of major news outlets they all lean very far left on social issues and further right than most conservatives on economic issues, so in reality the media really doesn't have a bias left or right in general. College poli science classes ftw[/list]

The Nightman Cometh wrote:If you look at the editors and network executives of major news outlets they all lean very far left on social issues and further right than most conservatives on economic issues, so in reality the media really doesn't have a bias left or right in general. College poli science classes ftw[/list]

It's probably more accurate to say they have the collective set of biases we'd associate with the urban rich: disregard for the "God, guns 'n' gays" agenda of the hard right, but don't dare fuck with the economic order of the last 30 years which has seen a huge upward redistribution of wealth.

dajafi wrote:

The Nightman Cometh wrote:If you look at the editors and network executives of major news outlets they all lean very far left on social issues and further right than most conservatives on economic issues, so in reality the media really doesn't have a bias left or right in general. College poli science classes ftw[/list]

It's probably more accurate to say they have the collective set of biases we'd associate with the urban rich: disregard for the "God, guns 'n' gays" agenda of the hard right, but don't dare $#@! with the economic order of the last 30 years which has seen a huge upward redistribution of wealth.

The real bias of course is that paying attention to the most extreme sells. Had the "left" been making threats, the media would surely be attentive to it. Calling for trials, alas, simply isn't as exciting as cutting gas lines.

There's no doubt the reactionaries make good television.

If anything, by publicizing the terrorism it serves the aims of the terrorist, thus reflecting not a leftist bias at all.

VoxOrion wrote:Look at the reaction to Prop 8. Go back and look at your posts here after that, you were positively foaming at the mouth. I'm not questioning where you were coming from or how righteous you were or weren't, I'm saying that the focus on the right's reaction to health care is yet another tempest in a teapot.

I was curious what dajafi foaming at the mouth looked like so I searched for all posts by user=dajafi and keyword=prop OR proposition. There were 21 matches and most of the posts had nothing to do with politics. This is the closest I could find to foaming at the mouth:

dajafi wrote:The Prop 8 vote, 52-48 with 95 percent reporting, is really heartbreaking.

It's a reminder that, notwithstanding the symbolic value of Obama's win as a validation of America's possibilities, the fight against bigotry, irrationality and fear goes on. That evidently it was the same African-American surge at the polls that gave Obama his CA landslide that won it for the homophobes, is bitterly ironic. I've thought for years that homophobia is our last socially acceptable presence, and I'd be lying if I denied that I've used homophobic slurs myself. As time goes on, it ebbs away, and I feel certain that we'll see this issue overcome in my lifetime. But at a moment when we should be celebrating the widening of the American circle, it's terribly sad that millions are still forced outside of it.

That doesn't seem very foamy to me. Perhaps he just took a sip of his cappuccino right before typing that post? Or maybe there are other more foamy posts and I just don't know how to use the search function too good?