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I had this forwarded to me yesterday. I proffer it as an example of why I often cannot stand the American Left. The author's name is omitted for a reason because I want to consider the words, not the mouth (or fingers, in this case) which they came from:


"Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country.

A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing -- in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents". An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket. Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge".

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right; half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin. Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual". Then, in the 20 margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.” To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"


I generally agree with the sentiments, particularly about a small number making the decisions for the many. It's a dicey proposition as who those small number are can make a huge difference, but I don't think democracy works unless the general level of education is tremendously high AND the moral compass of a people is well-oiled, and I don't know of any society on Earth that fits that bill at the moment.

So the "smart people" get to distribute an email like this and laugh and feel superior about themselves...but here are the two problems I see with this liberal bs:

1) Laughing about the problem just makes you part of the problem. Talk about irony.

2) Who's to say that this is an American problem?

If you pay attention to the truly liberal media, there's a sleu of this tongue-in-cheek aristocratic humor...ha, ha, laugh at the peons...but so much of it seems to imply that Americans are somehow unique or worse in their general stupidity; and it isn't just a matter of American media reporting on American issues and thus the conversation being about Americans. The cues are often subtle, but among liberals there's always this undercurrent running that perhaps Europeans aren't as stupid as their American cousins.

I take a different tack...I think most everyone, everywhere, isn't all that bright or well-educated. It seems to be a natural function of life that the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle and you get exceptional over- and under-performance in very small percentages on the ends of the chart. So if you're on the one end you may think everyone is smart, and if you're on the other you may think everyone is stupid.

I think that what frustrates me the most is that for the people who think they're on the smart end, that many of them don't seem to feel the responsibility to use their gifts to try and help out everyone who isn't as lucky as they are. While dealing with non-digital natives at my job is often extremely frustrating, it's also the most rewarding part of my job when I see someone finally "get" something new, and they become a little less afraid of the digital daemons they've been confronting.

Anyway...I just felt like taking a swing at the liberals for a change. Arrogant c@cksmokers.

Funny.

M.

perhaps Europeans aren't as stupid as their American cousins.

...well...we don't like to go on and on about it, but.....

And we don't really think of you as cousins either, more like our lost children who will one day return.

Not like a noble, good looking, first born son who captains the cricket team and gets a first from Oxbridge type of offspring, obviously, more like some bastard, boss eyed, and lactose intolerant offspring from a drunken liaison whilst on shore leave in Shanghai many years ago who turns up at a family party 18 years later unexpectedly.

reds8n wrote:

perhaps Europeans aren't as stupid as their American cousins.

...well...we don't like to go on and on about it, but.....

If you want to complain about smug lefties there's probably no better place to start than with Bill Maher.

Meanwhile, the people don't have to be brilliantly educated to have a decent democracy. Most politician's lies are quite transparent. When someone is saying that healthcare reform should be stopped because it'll result in death panels, it doesn't take too much education to know that's a very silly claim.

But people believe it, average ordinary citizens that are smart enough to hold down jobs, socially aware enough to have successful relationships... they believe these incredibly stupid things. It isn't a lack of intelligence or education, they believe it because they want to believe it, because they want to believe in a culture war, they want to believe that they're under siege from the left.

People believe transparent lies because they want to.

Ahtman wrote:

reds8n wrote:

perhaps Europeans aren't as stupid as their American cousins.

...well...we don't like to go on and on about it, but.....

sebster wrote:If you want to complain about smug lefties there's probably no better place to start than with Bill Maher.

Meanwhile, the people don't have to be brilliantly educated to have a decent democracy. Most politician's lies are quite transparent. When someone is saying that healthcare reform should be stopped because it'll result in death panels, it doesn't take too much education to know that's a very silly claim.

But people believe it, average ordinary citizens that are smart enough to hold down jobs, socially aware enough to have successful relationships... they believe these incredibly stupid things. It isn't a lack of intelligence or education, they believe it because they want to believe it, because they want to believe in a culture war, they want to believe that they're under siege from the left.

People believe transparent lies because they want to.

Like it won't blow apart the budget right? right?

No one can prove that, Fraz. For every set of numbers you toss around to "prove" that the budget will be blown, someone else can toss around a set of numbers to "prove" that your presented numbers are wrong and completely full of gak and that the proposed health care reform will actually save us money and cut down the deficit by huge margins.

End result = null result. The numbers can't be used to prove anything.

In the end, I think Obama's right and it may just come down to moral character. Either you think people should go bankrupt when they get sick or you don't. If you don't think so, then you support change.

Sometimes you just have to throw gak against the wall and see what sticks. Any reference to blowing budgets is kind of stupid at this point anyway...Bush blew the budget for eight years, so for anyone claiming aversion now to doing so I'd like to see what they've been saying about budgets and politics for eight years and see what their opinion was when their man was in the Oval Office.

$10 says they were fine with the Bush budgets...in which case I'm not listening to their claims about blown budgets.

Cairnius wrote:No one can prove that, Fraz. For every set of numbers you toss around to "prove" that the budget will be blown, someone else can toss around a set of numbers to "prove" that your presented numbers are wrong and completely full of gak and that the proposed health care reform will actually save us money and cut down the deficit by huge margins.

I call screaming BS on that. THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET CALLS SCREAMING BS ON THAT.

Sorry Obama can't lie and obfiscate his way out of it. There is no grey area here. The plans as proposed will add $900Bn to $1.3TN (House version) to the national debt. I know this is irrelevant to Obama and coincides with his budget plans of $1TN deficits annually for the next ten years, but this means something if you don't want to see what happened to Argentina writ massive.

America put a man on the moon from a standing start to done in under 10 years.

(Admittedly you had experience building ICBMs thanks to your captured WW2 German enigneers.)

Anyway, the point is it can't be beyond America's capability to make a health system which is more efficient than the one you have now, if you really want to.

Indeed KK, but this 'aint it.

Bill Maher is great, yes he is awful elitist (as he stated), but the people who tend to hate him are the ones who believe the gak blindly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
I call screaming BS on that. THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET CALLS SCREAMING BS ON THAT.

QFT. The people that are saying that the budget for this will balance out are either flatout lying or have one hell of a trump card (a la pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan (actually, even ending the war won't pay for the health reform) or raising taxes by 30%)

If only those douchebags Rudolph, Patterson, Ellsworth, Sherman, and Johnson had been more specific in determining what the "general welfare" of America is then we could say that Congress doesn't have the power to touch health care.

Frazzled wrote:The plans as proposed will add $900Bn to $1.3TN (House version) to the national debt. I know this is irrelevant to Obama and coincides with his budget plans of $1TN deficits annually for the next ten years, but this means something if you don't want to see what happened to Argentina writ massive.

I could really care less about the short term, Fraz, and so should America. We are riddled with debt. DEAL WITH IT.

We're not getting rid of it anytime soon. Too late. Make sure you heap a nice steaming pile of blame on your last President and two wars we never should have fought, and will get zero return on.

What do analysts have to say about how much money the health care reform package will save us? What about the estimates that show the deficit being reduced by half by the early 2010's through the cost savings health care reform will generate? You conveniently ignore those numbers.

Also, if you can prove to me that the THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET is faultless, always correct, and a rock-solid metric for studying any and all economic programs and their costs I'll take this at face value. Otherwise, I call BS on your playing "the expert game." We've had that discussion elsewhere already recently.

I maintain that estimates are estimates and numbers can be used to prove almost anything. I won't even bother digging up the pro-health-care reform numbers because I intrinsically trust them as much as the anti-health-care reform numbers.

I'm more concerned with making sure that my sister, who has a "pre-existing condition" of a genetic prevalence for blood clotting, but who has NO history of blood clots, who is a private fething trainer for christs' sake and in better shape than 99% of us on here, can't get health care just because she has two genetic markers for blood clots.

There's a word for that: slowed.

There's another word for that: money grubbing.

Our health care system is fethed-up and needs fixing. In the absence of any other plans which address people like my sister and her issue, which no Republican plan I've heard reference to does by a long shot, I say try Obama's and see what happens.

If it doesn't work, try something else. You're not going to change anything by doing nothing, which is the Republican's best response to the problem. "Everything's fine, why change anything?"

The lack of perspective on the issue shouldn't be astounding, but it is.

youngblood wrote:Bill Maher is great, yes he is awful elitist (as he stated), but the people who tend to hate him are the ones who believe the gak blindly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
I call screaming BS on that. THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET CALLS SCREAMING BS ON THAT.

QFT. The people that are saying that the budget for this will balance out are either flatout lying or have one hell of a trump card (a la pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan (actually, even ending the war won't pay for the health reform) or raising taxes by 30%)

If only those douchebags Rudolph, Patterson, Ellsworth, Sherman, and Johnson had been more specific in determining what the "general welfare" of America is then we could say that Congress doesn't have the power to touch health care.

Thats not an enumerated power. It will be interesting to say what happens when the inevitable lawsuits hit SCOTUS.
So see healthcare in the Constitutional grant of federal powers...

It's funny how people translate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to their own ends. The 2nd Amendment ties gun ownership to belonging to a regulated militia...no one chooses to read that part, though.

So, if we can read rights into the founding documents, we can read rights into the founding documents. I'd say "life" as in "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" certainly includes health care. Yeah it's in the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, but the Declaration is pretty important, so I'd say that counts as a founding document of our government and statement of legal principles, too.

So people do have the right, and the Federal government does have the enumerated power to provide it.

You can thank the NRA, then, for laying the legal groundwork for the upcoming health care reform package. LOL

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:Bill Maher is great, yes he is awful elitist (as he stated), but the people who tend to hate him are the ones who believe the gak blindly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
I call screaming BS on that. THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET CALLS SCREAMING BS ON THAT.

QFT. The people that are saying that the budget for this will balance out are either flatout lying or have one hell of a trump card (a la pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan (actually, even ending the war won't pay for the health reform) or raising taxes by 30%)

If only those douchebags Rudolph, Patterson, Ellsworth, Sherman, and Johnson had been more specific in determining what the "general welfare" of America is then we could say that Congress doesn't have the power to touch health care.

Thats not an enumerated power. It will be interesting to say what happens when the inevitable lawsuits hit SCOTUS.
So see healthcare in the Constitutional grant of federal powers...

Again, many argue that the whole providing for the "general welfare" includes health care reform. Pretty soon, it'll to alcohol and tobacco bans, firearms bans, and matching uniforms (keeps gang colors down you know?)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cairnius wrote:It's funny how people translate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to their own ends. The 2nd Amendment ties gun ownership to belonging to a regulated militia...no one chooses to read that part, though.

I'm my own militia, a well regulated one at that

Cairnius wrote:
Bush blew the budget for eight years, so for anyone claiming aversion now to doing so I'd like to see what they've been saying about budgets and politics for eight years and see what their opinion was when their man was in the Oval Office.

$10 says they were fine with the Bush budgets...in which case I'm not listening to their claims about blown budgets.

I wholeheartedly agree with the above. I don't understand why it has been so easy to spend almost a trillion dollars for two wars, but as soon as the republicans lose majority they all of a sudden become concerned with fiscal responsibility. A republican president set the precedent for massive wall street bail outs, and yet only now voices are being raised opposing the ri-cockulousness of it. Think what you may about the necessity of going to war, and "saving/stimulating" the economy, the fact is that something must be done about health care, and political posturing to score points with Joe beer-gut constituent isn't actually helping anybody.

Besides, I don't see what the big deal is, our entire monetary system is a lie, and a joke, they're just going to print fresh million dollar bills soon anyhow. But that's an entirely different soapbox...

Cairnius wrote:
We're not getting rid of it anytime soon. Too late. Make sure you heap a nice steaming pile of blame on your last President and two wars we never should have fought, and will get zero return on.

Bush didn't put in an 800Bn demo porkbarrel spending bill, and greatest federal budget in history of mankind. Bush didn't nationalize the car companies on the taxpayer dime, try to force through massive taxes via cap and trade, and try to nationalize 1 / 5 of the economy without debate.

What do analysts have to say about how much money the health care reform package will save us? What about the estimates that show the deficit being reduced by half by the early 2010's through the cost savings health care reform will generate? You conveniently ignore those numbers.

You mean where they say, er $0?

Also, if you can prove to me that the THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET is faultless, always correct, and a rock-solid metric for studying any and all economic programs and their costs I'll take this at face value. Otherwise, I call BS on your playing "the expert game." We've had that discussion elsewhere already recently.

THE OMB is a bipartisan entity specifically created to put numbers this stuff and be the bad guy vs. bills or the Pres albeit Repub or Demo. But I agree. the costs actually will be much higher.

I'm more concerned with making sure that my sister, who has a "pre-existing condition" of a genetic prevalence for blood clotting, but who has NO history of blood clots, who is a private fething trainer for christs' sake and in better shape than 99% of us on here, can't get health care just because she has two genetic markers for blood clots.

I agree and we are in the same boat with my kids boyo. Here's how you fix it that initially and then long term.
1. Pass a bill tomorrow:
*insurance options are naitonwide
*insurance is portable
*insurance cannot be dropped for pre-existing
*insurance has to cover catastrophic.
*every employee has to have, either through themselves or spouse. Else fine against company.

2. Develop a long term series of entities to study the problem and look at what works and what doesn't worldwide. They develop alternatives in 1-2 year's time.
Those can then be tested via pilot programs. Everything should be wrapped in-care for seniors, littleins, everyone.

I think that the government needs to be fiscally conservative. Neither war or this reform plan are fiscally responsible.

I agree with Fraz's opinions here. Regulate the industry more closely sure, but don't overhaul. Covering all American's isn't a realistic proposal, it never will be. Politicians know this. Instead they should be focusing on those that should qualify and pay for reasonable coverage.

I'm not defending Obama-care by making the war expense comparison, I'm just sick of the hypocrisy coming from the right. I want a viable alternative to be considered, but unfortunately the republicans in general are simply making this into a huge circus.

I'd like to point out there is a difference between debates about projected numbers (like the health care thing), and believing things like geo-centrism or that Bush knew about 9-11. That people think the future will go one way instead of another might be questionable, but it's not demonstrably wrong. The other thing can be proven empirically.

Lint wrote:I'm just sick of the hypocrisy coming from the right. I want a viable alternative to be considered, but unfortunately the republicans in general are simply making this into a huge circus.

There's massive hypocrisy on both sides, but I'm sick of it too. Both sides need a bit more compromise. It's sad because only the poles are getting any attention. You have one side saying that a complete government health care option is best and the other side saying that "government should stay out of my medicare". Where's the middle?

As for the actual health care thing, I blame the GOP for this bill. Rather than going to the mattresses and trying to fight any bill, knowing that the Democrats would unveil a massive spendy bill, they should have worked hard to get a compromise through that would, you know, help people.

The GOP's strategy seemed to be "Wait until kennedy dies and we can ride out a filibuster in the Senate." Which isn't exactly inspired leadership.

Don't get me wrong, I'm upset at the Democrats "spend as much as we can" policy, but honestly, being surprised or upset about that is like being surprised or upset when the sun sets.

Polonius wrote:As for the actual health care thing, I blame the GOP for this bill. Rather than going to the mattresses and trying to fight any bill, knowing that the Democrats would unveil a massive spendy bill, they should have worked hard to get a compromise through that would, you know, help people.

The GOP's strategy seemed to be "Wait until kennedy dies and we can ride out a filibuster in the Senate." Which isn't exactly inspired leadership.

Don't get me wrong, I'm upset at the Democrats "spend as much as we can" policy, but honestly, being surprised or upset about that is like being surprised or upset when the sun sets.

The GOP is acting ridiculous on this, but both sides are to blame for not compromising.

Frazzled wrote:Bush didn't put in an 800Bn demo porkbarrel spending bill, and greatest federal budget in history of mankind. Bush didn't nationalize the car companies on the taxpayer dime, try to force through massive taxes via cap and trade, and try to nationalize 1 / 5 of the economy without debate.

No, he just took advantage of typical American wartime hysteria to squash debate on what may have been the most important foreign policy decision we've ever made and spent, what, several trillion dollars and thousands of American lives on a war which didn't need to be fought, which provided recruitment fodder for terrorists for decades to come, and which ruined our standing in the world for seven years?

Get off the soapbox, Fraz. It ain't actually there to stand on.

Frazzled wrote:THE OMB is a bipartisan entity specifically created to put numbers this stuff and be the bad guy vs. bills or the Pres albeit Repub or Demo.

While I appreciate the Wikipedia Digest entry, this still doesn't tell me how accurate they are historically such that I should give a gak what they have to say.

Frazzled wrote:
I agree and we are in the same boat with my kids boyo. Here's how you fix it that initially and then long term.
1. Pass a bill tomorrow:
*insurance options are naitonwide
*insurance is portable
*insurance cannot be dropped for pre-existing
*insurance has to cover catastrophic.
*every employee has to have, either through themselves or spouse. Else fine against company.

2. Develop a long term series of entities to study the problem and look at what works and what doesn't worldwide. They develop alternatives in 1-2 year's time.
Those can then be tested via pilot programs. Everything should be wrapped in-care for seniors, littleins, everyone.

So, you espouse Federal intervention in availability and portability of health care, you espouse Federal regulation making dropping coverage for pre-existing conditions illegal and forcing insurance companies to cover catastrophic illness, and Federal law forcing every employer to pay for employees who don't have health care.

What, precisely, are you in disagreement with the President about?

In terms of studies...do you really pay so little attention to Washington, Frazz? Either something gets done in a relatively short time through the passage of law or NOTHING gets done. Bill Clinton tried to address this issue in the early '90's, and jack gak was done about the problem and STILL hasn't been done about the problem since then.

This is why the "too much too quick" people are full of gak. Too quick? It's been over a decade we've been discussing this! There are no new options, no new variables to calculate. We know what the options are, and we know what's not working.

There's no excuse not to act now other than "We don't want the other Party to get credit for fixing health care." That's what this comes down to. The weakened, less-relevant Republican Party is stark raving terrified that Obama's health care reform will pass and actually work, and then the Democrats can point to a major victory with positive outcomes for practically every American for decades.

Let's just call a spade a spade for once and be honest about it...your "studies" option is a formula for getting nothing done. For someone who has such little faith in the government you sure have a lot of faith in the government.

Cairnius wrote:It's funny how people translate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to their own ends.

Yes, it is.

Cairnius wrote:
The 2nd Amendment ties gun ownership to belonging to a regulated militia...no one chooses to read that part, though.

What were you saying? The 2nd amendment does not explicitly require that the ownership of a firearm be contingent upon membership in a militia. That's one potential reading of the document, but not the only one.

Cairnius wrote:
So, if we can read rights into the founding documents, we can read rights into the founding documents. I'd say "life" as in "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" certainly includes health care. Yeah it's in the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, but the Declaration is pretty important, so I'd say that counts as a founding document of our government and statement of legal principles, too.

Except it doesn't. The Declaration has frequently been used as a kind of written moral compass, but its never been considered a legal text.

Cairnius wrote:
So people do have the right, and the Federal government does have the enumerated power to provide it.

You can thank the NRA, then, for laying the legal groundwork for the upcoming health care reform package. LOL

That's an unbelievably huge stretch. The Declaration is not a legal document. The Feds have the enumerated power to regulate healthcare (inter-state commerce), but there is no legal right to healthcare. Nor an explicit moral right.

Indeed, this entire debate is about two things:
1) Can we afford healthcare reform?
2) Do people have a moral right to healthcare?

The first question is unlikely to fully dealt with. Its simply a matter of which numbers people choose to believe. The second will not be dealt with. After all, one of the biggest sticking points in the nascent culture war is variance in group morality. A perfect healthcare bill isn't going to pass, because the general level of distrust with respect to the Feds is simply too high, and not without good reason. The last 10 years have done little to instill confidence in the public eye. A fact which is made even worse by the systemic nature of the problems which created the financial crisis; hearing that the government has been failing for 30 years, ill-conceived as that argument may be, is hardly going to generate confidence in the state. Healthcare is about trust with respect to the larger state. Its an amazing opportunity for the government to renew the clout it one had; something which may actually be the nexus of Republican resistance to the matter.

youngblood wrote:

Polonius wrote:As for the actual health care thing, I blame the GOP for this bill. Rather than going to the mattresses and trying to fight any bill, knowing that the Democrats would unveil a massive spendy bill, they should have worked hard to get a compromise through that would, you know, help people.

The GOP's strategy seemed to be "Wait until kennedy dies and we can ride out a filibuster in the Senate." Which isn't exactly inspired leadership.

Don't get me wrong, I'm upset at the Democrats "spend as much as we can" policy, but honestly, being surprised or upset about that is like being surprised or upset when the sun sets.

The GOP is acting ridiculous on this, but both sides are to blame for not compromising.

The GOP was not invited into the negotiation. This is a Pelosi/Reid creation. Why on earth should they participate? Obama knew that when he gave it to them to run with and didn't do himself.

The GOP should participate because it's in their best interests to do so. I think they have an opportunity to show they care more about winning elections and actually do some leading, and in doing so, win more elections.

How on earth isn't health care reform a core GOP issue? It's got all the hot spots: government waste, the inability of US companies to compete evenly abroad due to health care spending, the drag on entrepreneurialism due to a worry about health care coverage, and the perverse fact that often it's better to be destitute and sick than to be middle class and sick.

The GOP could show that it's about more than tax cuts for the wealthy and appeasing the religious right (I know it's about more, but it's often hard to remember that), and actually wants to use the smallest possible government to allow people to succeed on their own.

Its not in their best interests to do so. In order to cooperate there has to be two parties to the negotiation. There isn't.

At this point current estimates are 25 or so seats back to the Republicans in the House in 2010. Thats without a double dip. If unemployment is still 9% in late 2010 the democrats can kiss the House and the open seats in the Senate goodbye.