Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

In my case, it has always been antipathy, even as far back as Bush vs Gore.

I would have rather voted for Alfred E Neuman.

(Bush presented himself as, and later confirmed himself as, a blatant neocon ass fucker. Gore presented himself (via his books and other extra-political actions) as a raging environmental loonie. (There is a difference between conservation, and magical thinking. Gore crosses that line.)

[smjjames]

I wonder what the dem's field would have looked like had she chosen not to run.

I too wonder this......

There would certainly be a bigger field since the Clinton Juggernaut wouldn't be there.

As far as I'm concerned, she's pratically the nominee already As semi-competitive as Sanders is, he's got pretty much no chance of beating her unless something extremely dramatic/drastic happens, and O'Malley has even less of a chance.  Although I could see either guy possibly making VP, I think Clinton is probably likely to try and get a woman as a VP because why not.

[wierd]

Can somebody please assassinate her, so that this happens? Pretty please? (Now on CIA watchlist!)

(Political assassination is perfectly fine! If you feel like exposing her most dirty dirt to ruin her career, I encourage you to do so! If you can do a double down and get Trump too, please do! Let sanity prevail, please!)

[Flying Dice]

I mean, I'm going to be perfectly frank here: I care exactly nothing about the opinion re: Clinton's email server of anyone who is treating a situation in which several of the SecStates aides and contacts were possibly slightly negligent in the level of detail included in a single-digit number of emails among hundreds which happened to be sent to a private server instead of a government one as an equal or greater issue than Karl Rove and Scooter Libby deliberately leaking the identity of an active CIA field agent to the press, and then the only one to be tried had his sentence commuted by the President.

This whole thing is giving me flashbacks to the '90s when the exact same propaganda machine was endeavoring to convince Americans that Bill Clinton lying in court about being fellated by an intern (or, often as not, just the last bit alone) was JUST AS BAD AS WATERGATE NO SERIOUSLY.

Really serves to underline the differences between the gold standard of the left and right in the U.S. when it comes to politicians: ineffectual and uninspiring for the Dems, malicious and corrupt for the Reps. Both, of course, with their respective authoritarian ambitions: Republicans to usher in Sharia Biblical Law (except not really) or a neo-con social/neo-liberal economic shithole like we got from Bush Jr.; Democrats to bring forth a new age of stunning mediocrity and half-measures that take us nowhere as slowly as possible (though that is at least an improvement over taking us to 1815). And I'm only mostly kidding. 

[wierd]

FD, I viewed approximately 30 emails, out of 813. 3 of those contained classified information. While very dirty, the laws of statistical sampling apply. Of my sample of the archive, 10% were in violation. Extrapolated (dangerous, I know. I need a bigger starting sample to do this right, and I acknowledge that) this means that some 80+ emails will contain confidential information.

I do not have the time to sit down and laboriously read each and every one of the emails in that archive. I find the 10% statistic to be disturbing. Your mileage may vary. We will leave it at that.  It is clear that the burden of proof that you seek is not possible to attain; It would require me to have unredacted copies of the emails (which would then be unverifiable, and thus hearsay when presented), and then leak them illegally, in order to meet such a burden of proof. That is not possible nor reasonable to demand. I am not Edward Snowden.

Since we clearly are in agreement that no amount of data present in that archive will be sufficient to meet your requirements (because who knows what those redacted sections say! Could be Michelle Obama's secret family recipe! Who knows!) continued argument over it is moot.

For me, it is sufficient that her administration played fast and loose with policy, flagrantly, and a disturbing percentage of the time.

For you it is not.

That is all.

[Descan]

I'm just noticing a bit of weirdness in your position, uh... wierd. Hm.

Anyway. You call yourself a centrist, and Clinton(s) are... well, usually considered to BE centrists.

Now, it's all well and good if you disagree with that. You're entitled to think of her as a leftist instead of merely left leaning. You'd be in the minority on that, a lot of people think of her as not left enough. But fair enough.

What's getting my goat though is that you prefer Bernie, who, again, most people consider to be extremely leftist. You said "from the middle both extremes are terrifying" or something to that nature, but here it seems like you've flipped Bernie and Hilary around in terms of who would be closest to your self-described centrism (not knowing the particulars of your centrism I can only guess)

So I guess what I'm asking is: Why do you identify closer to Bernie than Hilary (besides that you distrust Hilary for already stated reasons) when by all rights, Hilary is closer to your self-described political identity and Bernie is closer to your "i'd be terrified of" political identity?

[wierd]

See the prior quote about progress.

The euro-socialist angle Bernie presents has some track record of "success" in eurozone countries in dealing with the kinds of social problems that the US currently faces. Comparatively, the positions taken by Clinton, and the GOP candidates, all have historical track records of failure in the US.  While I am seriously dubious about Bernie (I DO NOT LIKE HIM! I DO NOT LIKE HIM SAM I AM, I DO NOT LIKE HIS GREEN EGGS AND HAM!-- Ahem. Sorry.) his platform is the least ideologically centered, and the most focused on historically successful approaches to these kinds of problems, and pays to the most attention to the minutiae of their constituent parts.

Personally, the approach I would personally take as POTUS would be considered quite radical by all of you, I am sure. I would expound on that, but it would come off as flagrant navel gazing/intellectual sophistry/internet masturbation.

[Descan]

Which part of scale? Population? America has a lot more people, but it also has a lot more tax base because of that, and a pretty rich potential tax base too, if you guys start taxing rich blokes and corporations at more than a pittance.

If it's a matter of geographical scale, then yeah, I can understand that, y'all are pretty spread out. That said, so is India and China, so it might do to take a look at how they handle welfare and healthcare. Granted, they're more spread out because they're still rather rural, and they have a rather huge population, not to mention a lesser tax base, but taking ideas from all around the world instead of just from India/China or just from Scandinavia is more likely to give you guys a working (and ethical) model than either taking it only from one area, or not even looking at the rest of the world and going "fuggit, we'll try whatever hasn't been done before!" Like, that can have merit, and that is the main idea behind the states being rather more independent (at least originally, perhaps still so) but when it comes to peoples lives, I still think trying what has worked, even if it's not an exact fit and needs to be taken from multiple areas and refined more for the American situation (or the Texan/Alabaman/New York/Vermont situation, if you go with the state-based action)

Though if you guys do for the state based model, I think the federal system has some room for a hand in there. Whether it's things like Medicare, or simply doing the main research on what works where in the world and why, that's still valuable information for your states to take and work out a good system for them on the ground...

I'm a bit rambly because ear pain. Hopefully something in there makes sense! <3

[wierd]

I would prefer to see a hybrid of these.

A federal level quality of service edict, with strict repercussions for states found in violation, and federal level oversight-- with individual states left to decide how to implement the federal outline provided, to best mete out effective healthcare in the specific locale they administer.

Each state would be subjected to quarterly audits of their healthcare system, and chronic under-achievers would be flagged for more aggressive intervention.

That way the Fed has quality of service Top-down authority, and the individual states have the implementation details responsibility.

As long as the fed does not mandate impossible healthcare (EG, "All individuals must be free of effects of age related decline by 2030." or some similarly unattainable edict), this should work.

[Aklyon]

Assuming it doesn't get rambled about for so long in congress it gives the republicans time to stall it down to nothing, yes.

[Twi]

Honestly, what particularly bothers me about Sanders' position is the focus on euro-socialism, particularly those done in the Scandinavian countries. To me, he fundamentally underestimates the problem of scale, and particularly the problem of state-controlled action versus federal-controlled action.

On the other hand, he's probably the only candidate that even considers things like how to implement their policies, afaik. Or you know, seems to care about effectiveness rather than blindly advancing an ideology or talking points. Though I'm probably exaggerating a little, but that's besides the point

[smjjames]

I wonder when the first post debate national polls will come out....

[RedKing]

If it's a matter of geographical scale, then yeah, I can understand that, y'all are pretty spread out. That said, so is India and China, so it might do to take a look at how they handle welfare and healthcare. Granted, they're more spread out because they're still rather rural, and they have a rather huge population, not to mention a lesser tax base, but taking ideas from all around the world instead of just from India/China or just from Scandinavia is more likely to give you guys a working (and ethical) model than either taking it only from one area, or not even looking at the rest of the world and going "fuggit, we'll try whatever hasn't been done before!" Like, that can have merit, and that is the main idea behind the states being rather more independent (at least originally, perhaps still so) but when it comes to peoples lives, I still think trying what has worked, even if it's not an exact fit and needs to be taken from multiple areas and refined more for the American situation (or the Texan/Alabaman/New York/Vermont situation, if you go with the state-based action)

In general, India and China are not models to emulate so much as warnings to others. Especially India.

The other problem is that you have states which have very different ideologies, and while local control is a good thing on paper, when it results in drastically different outcomes and coverages, we got a problem. How would you like to go from being fully covered in Massachussetts to finding out your insurance can deny coverage for half the medicines you're already on just because you had to move to Texas for work, and the Texas government was keen to deliver the bare minimums? Or find out that your same-sex partner is no longer covered?

Or going the other direction, that you moved from Texas to Mass., and found out that your "faith-based healing" isn't covered?

I used to be more of a fan of states' rights, until realizing that we have a patchwork system that literally allows your legal status on a number of issues (marriage, immigration, insurance, age of consent, etc.) to fluctuate because you're on a road trip. The last time we had that, it was when a freed black man could become a slave again just by setting foot in the South. That was an untenable situation then, and it's an untenable situation now.

[wierd]

Which can be resolved with the hybrid system I advocated; The fed places the requirements. They are not optional. The state manages the nitty gritty of the implementation.

EG, the fed says something like:

"Individuals seeking medical care cannot be denied due to race, sex, national origin, religious belief, or sexual identity-- and cannot be denied due to a pre-existing condition. The purpose and scope of this bill is to ensure that all americans, regardless of these conditions, are able to receive quality healthcare that is affordable, to them."

Now, it suddenly goes from "Hey, I can't get my HIV meds because the fundies think my gay lifestyle is to blame, and I am cursed by god!" to "Oh darn-- you mean my swiss massages arent covered here? darn!" levels of difference.

Because the scope is "All americans", marital status is moot-- You dont get a benefit or a detriment to being married, or having children. You are mandated to be able to have quality healthcare that you can afford.  If poverty rate is very high in the state, that puts extreme pressure on the state to improve that problem, so that people can afford quality healthcare.  They dont get to deny access. That's the point of the fed oversight.

This kind of approach would basically destroy the very idea of private insurance for healthcare. Instead of gambling that you wont become sick, like a private ensurer does, the state would look at overall statistics for incidence of disease or injury, and amortize the annual costs over the whole taxbase. Thus, even if your have a cancer that costs multiple millions of dollars in treatment to put into 5 year remission-- your tax rate does not go up, because most residents of the state are not going to having that happen to them. The state keeps a surplus fund, or some other means of implementing such amortization, so that it is able to absorb that cost for you, per the federal mandate. Failure to be able to absorb those costs, and thus failure to meet the mandate, results in a failing grade on their audit, and federal level interventions, such as say-- the feds earmarking money to make up the shortfall. (Nope, no stadium this year-- you done fucked up. We wont let you.)

[RedKing]

And poor states immediately argue (with some validity) that this is an unfunded mandate. Especially if you're including pre-existing condition coverage. Let's take North Carolina as an example.

We have 17.5% of the population below the Federal poverty line.
We had roughly 1.7 million adults (under 65) without insurance in 2010, about 20% of the total non-senior adult population.
Nearly 30% of our high-school population is overweight or obese, and that jumps to 65.7% of adults overweight or obese, with 29.7% of adults being obese. Nearly 40% of the black population is obese.
10.8% of adults are diabetic.
35.5% of adults have high blood pressure.
Rates of heart disease are skyrocketing.

And there's a very close correlation between health, income and education. So yes, there is an impetus in your plan for states to fix poverty and education, and in turn reduce healthcare costs. Problem is, short of draconian measures banning cigarettes, fried chicken and reality TV, there's not a lot of measures states can implement to fix that in the short-term. The costs of covering healthcare for all those people however is very much an issue in the short-term.

Either we figure out a way to socialize the costs (while simultaneously trying to stimulate healthier behavior), or we say fuck it and let poor people die of diabetes and heart attacks and strokes that are the result of behaviors that they may not have known were bad, or been too poor to avoid. Yes, we know eating a shit-ton of fried food and McDonald's is bad for you. But if you make minimum wage and have five kids to feed, and live somewhere where a supermarket is half an hour away and where one organic meal costs more than a batch of Happy Meals for the whole week, what are you gonna do?

What kills me is that a lot of the people who are against Obamacare are also against "food police" or anyone telling them that hey, buddy maybe BBQ ribs aren't one of the four food groups. Well, actually I guess it kills *them*, not me.