Pangloss

Fun thread bump!

Yes, and the Democratic Party seems perfectly content to leverage a different fear to fuel its own fundraising efforts. Here's an excerpt from an email I got from chairman Tim Kaine the other day: Around and around and around we go, where it stops nobody knows.

So you guys are saying that "resistance to change" can be used to objectively determine whether an ideology represents harm to society? That's pretty intriguing. Of course, many changes are supported by conservatives that are opposed by progressives. Controlling the border, reducing taxes, certain changes to government services, ending abortion. Doesn't that make progressives harmful to society? Or is it the number of positions opposed by an ideology that makes it harmful to society? Is it that conservatives are more harmful because they oppose more change (more specific instances of change)? If so, how much more change do you feel they oppose? Is there any data on this? And what is the number of changes one may safely oppose without harming society?

Even if we accept this premise as fairly obvious:

It's something that's going around. This AP story is from two days ago and I just pulled it up at Google News: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jYnajhWrPEXihcCrpRNfUKN7rN-AD9EKTKIG0 But I think we need to wait a bit before drawing definitive conclusions. It's a big bill. There are going to be misunderstandings, even within the government.

"Conservative" is a very broad term that covers a number of highly generalized social and economic particulars. The conservative movement in the United States is generally seen as split into two camps: "Fiscal" and "Social". These Wikipedia articles may be helpful: Fiscal Conservatives Social Conservatives Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'm not convinced that they do.

I always applaud your forthright manner of posting in this subforum. I also know you well enough to know that you're not saying that all Republicans are bad. (It's not association fallacy.) Logically one party probably has a higher number of cases of bad behavior (however that's defined) than the other, just because of the unlikelihood that they have exactly the same number. The only thing I would say in opposition is that a handful of examples don't make a factual case. An objective assessment would require a statistical analysis, and even then it may be tainted by reporting bias. It also doesn't give us an indication, even if we accept the judgment, of how much worse it is.

The only problem I would have had with a couple of Republicans jumping ship is that they would have had to do that over bennies for their home states (nothing else would have been palatable to Democrats) and that it would have left moderate Democrats (the kind I like) twisting in the wind.

I'm sure they do, and no amount of ridicule-posing-as-reason will change that fact. Yes, and I think that's interesting given how many people tried to tell me that it was impossible for Democrats to accomplish this in spite of a 60-seat majority because, somehow, Republicans were the problem. But I wholeheartedly agree with this: Well put. QFT. Exactly. Also, guilt by association is a logical fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

I see your point but I can't really agree with that. If you engage someone in a conversation there's a certain assumption of risk of... shall we say accidental droolage. Doesn't really seem like the same thing as a surprise, intentional spitting on a passer-by.

I've said many times that one of the reasons I follow politics as a hobby is because, like any American sporting event, when the stakes are high the really interesting things start to happen. Wednesday night was one of those moments, and it was a rare one. The details of those myriad amendments that Republicans were throwing at health care haven't gotten a lot of attention, presumably because the press recognized that they were mainly intended to cause the bill to have to be voted on again. But in ignoring the details, a fascinating example of political gamesmanship was overlooked. What was so interesting about it was that it represented a free pass for Republicans to put up anything they wanted their opponents on record as opposing. Republicans knew that Democrats could not vote for a single amendment -- every single one of them had to have 51 opposing votes. This basically gave them a free pass to make Democrats look bad on any subject they might care to bring up for a vote. And, hm, I wonder what Republicans could do with an on-record vote from their opponents that's contrary to their stated opinions? Say, a bit later this year? (chuckle) Ain't politics fun? That quote's from Kim Strassel's lovely piece on this today over at the Wall Street Journal. This is her weekly column as their resident political observer. The piece may have gone into subscription status by the time you read this but I'll drop a few more quotes below, which also detail some of the amendments. Oh, that is just NASTY! Another interesting bit is that because Reid only needed 51 votes he was able to let a VERY SMALL number of Senators "out" of some votes that would have cost them at election time. The problem, of course, was that they ALL wanted out of these votes. Which means that some senior senators, or senators from areas that were hurting, got passes when others got stuck with having to vote. The back-room negotiating behind THAT must have been really something! Ah, politics. And yet people say it's not a game!

It's interesting how the bit about threats against Democrats keeps coming up. I thought Neal Boortz had an interesting take on that today. http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2010/03/a-pretty-good-plan-actually.html And of course there's this lovely bit of sentiment from Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy yesterday: Oh those saintly liberals, all peace and love and tolerance! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Thanks for clarifying. I agree with this 100%.

I guess I'm still not seeing the relevance of the last sentence, but okay. ------------------ Here's what I wonder: Why do people see the current behavior of the Republican party as a fundamentally different from an obvious extension of the gradually increasing degree of partisanship that both parties have sequentially risen to with each trip to minority status? (You held up 10 of our judges? I hold up TWELVE of yours! You held up 12 of our judges? I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!)

So basically what you all are arguing is that the side with the smaller number of ridiculously hypocritical and unethical politicians in the news is the one we should vote for? Given the large number of hypocrits and ethical violators on both sides, and lacking a connection between one politician's bad behavior and another's, I'm not sure I see the value in this.

Ran across this link to the Wikipedia article on the new law today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Term limits for Congress.

One of the points that opponents have used to fuel the fight against this bill was that the American people didn't want it. But I was struck a while back by an argument that I caught from Paul Krugman one day, suggesting that once the reform took hold that Americans would support it a lot more willingly. Much that it pains me to credit Krugman, that may be happening even faster than he predicted. (Side note: Does anybody by any chance have a link to Krugman saying something along those lines? Least I can do is give the guy credit, but this really was a while ago.) USA Today and Gallup released a poll on Tuesday showing that 49% of Americans now say that the legislation is a "good thing", and only 40% say it's a bad thing. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/03/health_care_gets_positive_gall.html These numbers are supported by Pollster.com: http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/markos-moulitas/88675-gops-worst-nightmare A weekend poll by CNN showed a somewhat different result, but in detail the news wasn't exactly better for the GOP (from the same link as above): It gets even worse for Republicans from there: Bear in mind that many Republicans supported some of those measures, but their inclusion in the bill does make it harder for Republicans to argue that the bill should be fought. Looked at in terms of realpolitik, it seems to suggest that the GOP faces an uphill battle to fight this legislation. I think it reflects American exhaustion of all the fighting over the cost issue, and gradual recognition of some of the more beneficial aspects of it. The situation seems analogous to the wife getting home from the mall with the kids in tow and the credit cards newly maxed out and waving the honey-do list. Yeah it sucks, but what're you gonna do? Answer: Go back to work and get those bills paid. What do you all think?

Bad drives do happen sometimes, and it does sound like a bad drive scenario. I'm not familiar with that program, but one suggestion I could make is to boot off the Windows XP drive and go all the way to the desktop, then see if the new (blank) drive appears with a drive letter in Windows Explorer. If it does, see if you can reformat it, and be sure and UNCHECK the box for quick format. That will ensure that it attempts to format each sector, which will throw a bunch of errors if the disk is bad. If all goes well, you might want to consider writing a bunch of data to it, possibly even filling it up completely, just to see what happens. Listen for re-writes (write... pause... click... write... pause... click...). Watch for extended copy times. Stuff like that. There's also a built-in drive checker in Windows, and I'm pretty sure it was there in XP. Right-click on the drive in Windows Explorer and get Properties on it, then go to the Tools tab and look for the Error Checking tool. If none of that stuff produces an error then I'm not sure what the problem is but at least you'd know it's not a bad drive.

So the right's plans tend to fail for one set of reasons and the left's plans tend to fail for a different set of reasons. Why is it that vigilance of one kind is considered more likely to succeed than vigilance of another kind?

I'm sure there are a lot of differences between health care in 1967 and 1990. I wonder what differences there will be between health care today and health care in 2020. My point is this bill depends on today's prediction of what health care in 2020 will cost. I'd rather have universal health care, even with its attendant cost concerns, because at least then we'd have a lot more clarity and control over cost right from the get-go. But as I said earlier, I'm going to accept this and not focus on criticism. I'll be hoping for the best and pressing for vigilance by lawmakers on both sides to make sure it happens the way we all hope it can.

Well that's the concern, that Democrats have just fed the insurance companies in exactly the same way (and on an even bigger scale) that Republicans fed the drug companies with the prescription drug benefit -- two massive entitlements that basically say to these massive companies "how much money would work for you?" The hope is that there will be a net savings based on reduced load on Medicare, and the projection was supported by the CBO. George Will said on Sunday (no idea what his source was, so take this with a grain of salt) that in 1967 Medicare was projected to have an annual cost of $16 billion by 1990, but the actual cost by 1990 was over $100 billion. So really the only way this is going to work (and I think both Democrats and Republicans agree on this) is by making sure that we keep the expense of this program down, and that we do something about the skyrocketing cost of health care at the root level. And guess what this bill didn't address? The cost of health care at the root level. But okay, if you want to make an omelet you gotta break some eggs, and we're in this mess now, so I expect them to get cracking. I wanna hear those hens SQUEAL.

It's worth noting that the legislation passed yesterday does not address this issue.

I don't believe in being negative and focusing on down sides, so I'm just going to hope that the new rules that affect the insurance industry are sufficient to overcome the potential pitfalls and enormous expense of this plan. It is possible that it could go the way that Democrats and the CBO say, and now Congress will just need to work really hard over the next ten years to ensure that it does. The thing that is most important for dissenters like myself to keep in mind here, in my opinion, is that this may be the best plan that was possible. We always knew that no plan would be perfect, so maybe with some hard work and determination, identifying the problems when they come up and knocking them out as best as we can, we can achieve the two main goals that we all seem to want: Lowering the expense, and making sure that as many people as possible are covered. If we can overcome burdens that we ourselves sometimes make harder than they really need to be, doesn't that say even more about our ability and our determination?

Nice post, padren. (Whole post was great, but especially this last bit.)