ObamaCare

[Sure Shot]

This is what you said.

Originally Posted by illinirazorback

Pretty much every monthly jobs report they issue is later revised downward anyway.

Which is categorically untrue.

Also, if any of you actually want to learn something as opposed to just blithely honing truth-optional conservative applause lines, read the rest of that link I posted. It's pretty much impossible to accurately gauge job numbers at the time that those reports are released (the two-months-later ones are better). And yet they lead every news outlet in the country and have become central to the presidential race. Now THAT'S something to :rolleyes: over.

[illinirazorback]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

This is what you said.



Which is categorically untrue.

Also, if any of you actually want to learn something as opposed to just blithely honing truth-optional conservative applause lines, read the rest of that link I posted. It's pretty much impossible to accurately gauge job numbers at the time that those reports are released (the two-months-later ones are better). And yet they lead every news outlet in the country and have become central to the presidential race. Now THAT'S something to :rolleyes: over.

Hypocritical much?

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by illinirazorback

Hypocritical much?

I beg your pardon?

[illinirazorback]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

I beg your pardon?

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

This is what you said.



Which is categorically untrue.

Also, if any of you actually want to learn something as opposed to just blithely honing truth-optional conservative applause lines, read the rest of that link I posted. It's pretty much impossible to accurately gauge job numbers at the time that those reports are released (the two-months-later ones are better). And yet they lead every news outlet in the country and have become central to the presidential race. Now THAT'S something to :rolleyes: over.

You post blithely honing truth-optional liberal applause lines daily. I don't expect anything different from you, merely pointing it out.

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

We gotta get you some Claritin or something for that allergy to objectivity.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77083.html

:rolleyes: doesn't even really say it.

Personally I don't think that the President alters the data but here is something.

There are 100K more people working in the USA today than there were in January 2009. So I am unsure how Obama is claiming much of any job creation at all. I will admit that we are off the bottom in October 2009 by about 3.8M jobs. Definitely no significant job creation in aggregate though. We are actually at about mid-year 2005 levels in terms of employment. From that level Bush reached a peak of about 4 million more workers than we have today in January 2008.

I think the presidents do very little to create jobs. I think they can destroy jobs or job growth fairly easily but they are impotent when it comes to job creation for the most part.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by illinirazorback

You post blithely honing truth-optional liberal applause lines daily. I don't expect anything different from you, merely pointing it out.

Nice appeal to the Cult of Centrism. CNN would have let you get away with that.

[illinirazorback]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

Nice appeal to the Cult of Centrism. CNN would have let you get away with that.

Truth hurts sometimes, I know.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

I think the presidents do very little to create jobs. I think they can destroy jobs or job growth fairly easily but they are impotent when it comes to job creation for the most part.

I don't think they do either to any great degree. At least within a few years.

The job situation we have now is a result of a muddle of policies of all sorts of different political parties in countries all over the world. Government, writ large, worldwide, affects job growth dramatically, but no one American president really wields all that much power over the marketplace.

Now, a sea-change that becomes an influential global model like the Reagan Revolution can be a pretty significant event (and I do think we have largely been living in Ronald Reagan's economy, for better and worse, the past decade), but I doubt something that dramatic will result from this election. We can hope, I suppose.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by illinirazorback

Truth hurts sometimes, I know.

Seems to hurt you just about all of the time, you should be more careful.

Man, I'd like to see what you would do if you met some REAL lefties. I feel like it would be like the hunting scene in Borat (or was it Bruno? I forget)

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

I don't think they do either to any great degree. At least within a few years.

The job situation we have now is a result of a muddle of policies of all sorts of different political parties in countries all over the world. Government, writ large, worldwide, affects job growth dramatically, but no one American president really wields all that much power over the marketplace.

Now, a sea-change that becomes an influential global model like the Reagan Revolution can be a pretty significant event (and I do think we have largely been living in Ronald Reagan's economy, for better and worse, the past 30 yrs), but I doubt something that dramatic will result from this election. We can hope, I suppose.

Slightly modified it for you but otherwise I agree.

[illinirazorback]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

Seems to hurt you just about all of the time, you should be more careful.

Man, I'd like to see what you would do if you met some REAL lefties. I feel like it would be like the hunting scene in Borat (or was it Bruno? I forget)

Um, OK....

As the regulars know, I have a liberal cousin I see all the time. The only one I have ever met who speaks coherently with actual reasons behind what he believes. In other words, he thinks for himself, and we just disagree. Almost all others believe what they see on the tee vee or on FB and repeat it.

In other words, I pity real lefties. They simply don't know any better. Perhaps I mistook you for someone who knows better. If so, I apologize.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

Slightly modified it for you but otherwise I agree.

Yeah, I see why you say that, and you're right, but the Reagan transformation didn't happen overnight. The corporate culture that was born in the early 1980s took some time to permeate society. Maybe we're not even fully there yet, who knows?

I think American history can be pretty neatly divided up into five stages:
1. 1776-1815, when the survival of the republic was a genuine question. Winning the War of 1812 essentially meant that we were here to stay.

2. 1815-1861, when the issue of slavery fundamentally divided the nation and that alone prevented the true union that we take for granted today.

3. 1861-1932, when the Industrial Revolution made a superpower of America and we expanded across the continent. Every country that evolves into a first-world nation goes through this (the Chinas and Brazils are in this stage right now) where there is great wealth and infrastructural accomplishment, which masks the vice and human toll of unfettered modernity. And of course it all came crashing down with the Great Depression.

4. 1932-1980, when the government became a primary force in the lives of the people by necessity. We banded together to fight challenges at home and abroad, and in a lot of ways tested the limits of social democracy in the same way the previous era tested the limits of capitalism.

5. 1980-present, which politically is defined by the Reagan Revolution and a deregulatory, corporatist, mindset, but I think even more importantly directed by a focusing inward in the wake of the Soviet Union falling. By that I mean that the natural competitive influences of Americans turned on each other in the absence of a worthy foe. In the same way the late 1800's were a time when we slowly figured out the vices of the dominant ideology of the time and morphed into something entirely new, I think the same change is hopefully coming for us. We aren't headed back to the Great Society era, we're going to craft a 21st century model of American competitiveness, because the challenges we face now are very different than they were then.

[DaytonIllini]

I think your 1980-present category needs to include the decline of organized labor. I am not sure what a corporatist mindset is unless it is the recognition that outside government there is no labor without corporations doing well.

I think the thing about the fall of the Soviets is reasonable. This country defined itself through opposition to communism. After that occurred we have been rudderless. I mean what is the point to anything we do? There is no overarching vision. Nothing we can get behind. It is all about this gizmo or that gotcha moment. We used to have the space race, the arms race, the economic race. In a vacuum of leadership we now (and by that I would include Clinton, W and Obama and Mitt if he is elected) are more about putting a new coat of paint on the house rather than adding a new wing.

[DaytonIllini]

Anyone running for government should lay out a vision of where he wants to take the country over the next decade. We don't have that.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by illinirazorback

Um, OK....

As the regulars know, I have a liberal cousin I see all the time. The only one I have ever met who speaks coherently with actual reasons behind what he believes. In other words, he thinks for himself, and we just disagree. Almost all others believe what they see on the tee vee or on FB and repeat it.

In other words, I pity real lefties. They simply don't know any better. Perhaps I mistook you for someone who knows better. If so, I apologize.

I don't think you know what I'm talking about.

I just got done arguing with a friend who was going on about how all of the world's troubles are the fault of global capitalism destroying local communities and making sustainable subsistence existence into slavery to the almighty dollar. THAT'S a lefty.

I've got the crazies coming at me from both sides tonight.

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

Anyone running for government should lay out a vision of where he wants to take the country over the next decade. We don't have that.

And I tell you what, if some candidate or other would make a down payment on that kind of outlook, just offer a coherent message for what that direction might be, he or she would take off. The situation is ripe for a political paradigm shift.

[illinirazorback]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

I've got the crazies coming at me from both sides tonight.

Maybe it's you?

[Sure Shot]

Originally Posted by Sybok

OTOH, Obama was not going to create new taxes for the lower/middle class. He's now done so. He has his read my lips moment. I'd drive a Mack truck right through that big mistake, if I was a campaign advisor.

Well, here they come with it:

“While I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...e-is-a-tax/?hp

He's dead in the water on this issue. If it's a tax, then he taxed people the same way in Massachusetts. His argument in the primaries was that what was constitutional in Mass. wasn't constitutional for the federal government. Well if that's the case, then he agrees with the dissent, meaning that it wasn't a tax.

He's gotta steer clear of this. Flip-floppy circular reasoning plays into all of the negative stereotypes he carries with him.

[DaytonIllini]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot

Well, here they come with it:



http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...e-is-a-tax/?hp

He's dead in the water on this issue. If it's a tax, then he taxed people the same way in Massachusetts. His argument in the primaries was that what was constitutional in Mass. wasn't constitutional for the federal government. Well if that's the case, then he agrees with the dissent, meaning that it wasn't a tax.

He's gotta steer clear of this. Flip-floppy circular reasoning plays into all of the negative stereotypes he carries with him.

He won't need to touch it. The Republican Super Pacs will skewer Obama for his lying about taxing people under $250K. It turns out that the majority of the taxes are on people making under $125K (or thereabouts).

[bmb777]

Originally Posted by DaytonIllini

He won't need to touch it. The Republican Super Pacs will skewer Obama for his lying about taxing people under $250K. It turns out that the majority of the taxes are on people making under $125K (or thereabouts).

how come if Romney changes his mind he is a flip flopper, but if Obama changes his mind he is "evolving"?

[Snowball]

I thought this an interesting article. It's on many CEO's at drug firms that originally signed up for supporting Obamacare have left their companies.

"With Key CEO Support Gone, ObamaCare May Be Easier To Redo"

http://news.investors.com/article/61...or-retired.htm

snippet from the article:

...The inside deals with key players from throughout the health sector were a big reason the American people initially soured on the law. They saw a pattern of special deals to win special favors behind closed doors, almost always at the expense of taxpayers.

It turns out they were right: A House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation has uncovered emails and other documents detailing conversations between the White House and pharmaceutical executives that opened the door to broader health industry support for the legislation.

But now it turns out that the CEOs of the largest pharmaceutical companies who made the ObamaCare deals have been replaced since the law was enacted in March 2010.

In fact, all six of the big pharmaceutical company CEOs who led negotiations with the White House over the health overhaul law are now gone, and the head of their leading trade association also has been replaced as well....

[pizzaman]

This morning there was a brief story on NPR about the repubs now deciding that insuring the uninsured is not their top priority but reducing health care cost is the goal. I don't disagree and if that can be achieved, hooray for republicans, but......how in the world can health care costs (and thereby insurance costs) be reduced if a whole bunch of people get their health care costs covered by those who can pay???

Hospitals and doctors aren't working for nothing. If those needing health care can't pay, docs and hospitals charge more to those who can pay.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012...r-the-priority

[IntenselyOrange]

Originally Posted by pizzaman

This morning there was a brief story on NPR about the repubs now deciding that insuring the uninsured is not their top priority but reducing health care cost is the goal. I don't disagree and if that can be achieved, hooray for republicans, but......how in the world can health care costs (and thereby insurance costs) be reduced if a whole bunch of people get their health care costs covered by those who can pay???

Hospitals and doctors aren't working for nothing. If those needing health care can't pay, docs and hospitals charge more to those who can pay.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012...r-the-priority

It's not clear to me what you are asking.


But insurance costs are not equal to health care costs. And in both the old system and the president's (actually Pelosi's/Reid's) plan, a few of us subsidize everyone.

Of course docs will charge more to those that can pay - that is why doctors are closing their doors more and more to medicaid/medicare patients.

[pizzaman]

Originally Posted by IntenselyOrange

It's not clear to me what you are asking.


But insurance costs are not equal to health care costs. And in both the old system and the president's (actually Pelosi's/Reid's) plan, a few of us subsidize everyone.

Of course docs will charge more to those that can pay - that is why doctors are closing their doors more and more to medicaid/medicare patients.

I understand what you're saying and have no disagreement. Go back to my post. Can you fathom how the repubs see their way to reducing health care costs? All they are saying (IMO) is forget getting people insured, lets just reduce costs. That's a great goal but I just don't see how that's possible when those that pay subsidize those who don't pay and those without insurance will not be able to pay.

[IntenselyOrange]

Originally Posted by pizzaman

I understand what you're saying and have no disagreement. Go back to my post. Can you fathom how the repubs see their way to reducing health care costs? All they are saying (IMO) is forget getting people insured, lets just reduce costs. That's a great goal but I just don't see how that's possible when those that pay subsidize those who don't pay and those without insurance will not be able to pay.

I can't speak for republicans. I am often baffled by their "logic". But, to me, I see nothing that is at odds here.

Costs of healthcare is what it costs for an individual to get treatment. This includes the tests and the administration of the actual medication/procedure. Whether you have insurance or not, those tests have a cost. And if whether we insure the uninsured or we don't, the same people are picking up the cost.

Ways to reduce costs include death panels or whatever you'd like to call them (outcome based treatment I think is the dem lingo) and fewer precautionary tests aimed only at covering the doctor's behind. There are of course many other ways as well, but those are the simple ones that get the most time.