Would be an interesting risk to take in the event of an emergency. Do you quickly sign up for insurance and wait for the underwriters to approve it before going into the ER for chest pains? Do you sit around and wait for the new plan to kick in after breaking your leg?

HIPAA has a built-in clause to avoid that by having a pre-existing window. If you did come down with something in the previous 6 months and were treated for it, you wouldn't be covered under the insurance for that particular issue. That essentially stops what you described above from happening. It also encourages people to have insurance at all times so that they don't fall into a window where a pre-existing condition would not be covered.

Right, so you wouldn't get rid of the pre-existing conditions clauses?

That one is in there to protect the insurance companies from what you described. I would make it so private plans fell under the same rules as group plans.

Little disappointed in everyone that I don't remember seeing a mention of his daughters.

He did say in his speech last night that they were both available.

I saw a hot chick on a news site clapping during his speech. Didn't realize that was one of his daughters. I still have a place in my heart for John McCain's daughter but I will add these two to the list.

Glenn Beck re: Scott Brown's "available" comment about his daughters:


Scott Brown’s remark about daughters raises eyebrows - The Boston Globe

Im Faux-shocked

Ah, the right wing of the GOP: making its more moderate members feel welcome from Day One. Bless them.

Yeah, I'm kind of wondering why Ronnie even posted it. Pretty sure everyone who posts in this thread can agree that Glenn Beck has a screw loose. Makes for good entertainment, but doesn't contribute much in the way of real ideas.

I'm not much into contributing ideas MBBF, I guess I'll sit in the corner now.

No, I was talking about Glenn Beck not contributing any real ideas. You've contributed far more good ideas than he ever has.

dola,

Anyone who thinks they're accomplishing anything by bullshitting "ideas" on a sports-sim message board, and is not just here for entertainment, is a bigger idiot than I previously assumed.

Well, I posted it because I found it entertaining. That's why, since you were wondering.

What's Glenn Beck's alias on FOFC?

Benn Gleck.

the shame of it all is the millions of people who listen to those mouthpieces and allow them to sway their thoughts.

Or worse, when people listen and elect them to the Senate Al Frankin.

It's like an easily swayed Simpsons crowd.

I'm going to say that he doesn't have a screw loose. I just think he knows how to play the media and people like a violin. Kind of like the Paris Hilton of talking heads. Everyone thinks he's bonkers but he just keeps saying and doing stuff that makes him more money.

Oh and I would motorboat the hell out of Meghan McCain. Always had a thing for slight chubbies.

Interesting opinion:

The Context Of Middle-Class Frustration « Doctor Zero

Interesting until it lumps liberalism in with communism and fascism two paragraphs in.

Articles like that are common and they should just create "mad libs" versions of it where you can plug in a few different words to make it seem different. It's just an extension of the hate speech that has grown so popular in politics today. Swap the words liberals, collectivists, and lefties with blacks, negroes, and colored people and it just looks like the same hate speech we had 50 years ago.

That's the problem with this blog and virtually all partisians who gain traction with the public. There is no independent thought in any of that. No new ideas, no solutions to problems, and not even explaining what the problems are. Just destroying our freedoms and taking away our liberties. No details on what specifically will happen, no actual scientific evidence. Just vague generalities to try and get people on a "team" riled up.

Ask the guy what freedoms and liberties he has had taken away. Crickets will follow.

Perhaps. I'll admit that many from both sides of the street are good at speaking in generalities. I would say that personally though, my general discomfort would arise from the feeling that I may not have as much freedom as I might appear to have, because really I have very little control over my situation. The rules which will govern my life, and the lives of the vast majority of citizens, will be decided by others (how much I am allowed to make, what I am allowed to keep, what I'm allowed to eat, drink, smoke, what doctors I can see, what procedures I can have, what medications I can buy and from whom, what is deemed "safe" for me to do and what's not). I think this is why a large number of folks are getting riled up, and are "teaming" up. It's the only way they feel they'll be heard.

I see the country as being run by two behemoths - government on one side, and corporation (or the rich, take your pick) on the other. But really, the two are closely linked, and folks go back and forth between the two sides (those elected to government tend to be rich, or if they're not they leave that way; those appointed to posts later become lobbyists, etc).

Wanting to raise the standard of living for the lowest class is a noble idea. It really is - very few are truly despicable enough to deserve to be poor. I have little confidence though that bringing up the lowest classes will be achieved without being at the expense of those marginally above them. Those that make the rules won't be the ones to sacrifice, the middle will be dragged down (yay Harrison Bergeron). Rather than the economic distribution being a gradual curve, it will be a step chart - 90, 95% of the populace at a low step, then the rest at an extremely high one.

That's why I think opinions like that resonate. Am I cynical? Maybe. I have little faith that either government or corporations are run for the good of they people. I unfortunately think that it's human nature to want power, to want money, and once you have it to make damned sure you keep it. An independent-thinking, financially independent middle class could be a threat to that.

/end crazy cynical rant

Or put it this way. If someone with either political power or enough economic power wanted to ruin me, I believe they could and there would be very little I could do about it. Is that really living "free"?

As long as we're talking about pundits who annoy you, can I nominate this kid?

Amazon.com: Defining Conservatism: The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back (9781593156015): Jonathan Krohn: Books

The idea that a 14-year old has a book's worth of original or useful thoughts about politics (no matter what side of the aisle he or she may be on) is absurd. What's even worse is that the book's been blurbed by Gingrich, Bill Bennett, and Rich Lowry from National Review.

He and Luke Russert are the next Evans and Novak.

edit: There's good humor in the what others bought section. People who bought "Defining Conservatism" also bought "Catastrophe".

While I haven't read anything about this specifically, I do like the fact that there seems to be an increase in interest amongst younger people about politics. We need more people to vote and understand how things work in our country. Getting younger people involve earlier in their lives is always a good thing.

Heh, I've kind of purposely kept that book out of the house for fear my son might get ideas.

As my wife has noted on numerous occasions he's so conservative that he makes me look downright liberal by comparison :D I find myself increasingly having to discuss how realpolitik differs from theory.

I'm a moderate, but this is frightening. :D

Kinda how my wife feels I think. She's a bit concerned that if he follows the somewhat normal pattern of becoming more conservative over time that he might end up a tad right of center ;)

I echo cuervo's:
"I have little faith that either government or corporations are run for the good of they people. I unfortunately think that it's human nature to want power, to want money, and once you have it to make damned sure you keep it. An independent-thinking, financially independent middle class could be a threat to that."


Unfortunately, that middle class could be the best engine of growth to make the entire economy lift which would help all boats rise (my philosophy, as a 'middle classer').

Loved the rant and agree with everything you said.

David Axelrod.

Heard him on NPR the day after the MA election and instead of hearing anything new, fresh or daring just heard the same old partisan BS I realized I've always heard from him.

But I guess we're always campaigning these days, right? :(

Getting younger people involved is great. But honestly, writing a book isn't "getting involved". I've known teens who ran for school board or even state representative and thought that was pretty cool. I just have a hard time believing that a 14-year old is going to be able to add anything unique and original to the conservative canon, and would be much better off reading than writing at that age.

The most important thing he adds is quite possibly a small reason to have some hope for the future. To see things crystalize with someone this young is rather encouraging, and let's face it, there hasn't been a lot to be encouraged about lately if you're a conservative.

I think I must have flown through a wormhole on my way back from Las Vegas last night. I'm being all cynical and JiMG is a hopeful optimist here. :)

Parallel universes.... Somewhere Jon is out there, sipping a cup of herbal tea, typing on FOFC's message board about how upset he is about Air America going off the air.

Fixed that for you ;)

No it isn't. He's talking about conservatism. How old do you need to be ? ;)

Looks as if #1 is (going) down the drain for now. Ouch, that hurts ... it'll be interesting to see what alternatives/approach the Dems go for now.

Assuming the GOP actually is willing to offer any solutions, they should unveil their HCR package Monday and steal the thunder of the State of the Union. They don't need to have a great package or necessarily even something that works, but they could sure pull the rug out from under Obama if they actually are willing to let something pass.

The GOP plan would be to lower taxes and increase competition, neither of which will address the issue of people with pre-existing conditions or high risk issues.

They couldn't get away with an HSA and tax break bill, but they could propose eliminating pre-existing conditions and insurance portability and HSAs. It wouldn't work, but they don't need something that works, they just need to take the spotlight.

A poll that interviewed less than 100 people? That wasn't even worth doing.

Agreed. And the assumptions made by Steve based on those results were suspect at best.

{scratches head a little} Y'know, I really don't see any way to insure people with pre-existing conditions that makes much sense, I mean, not against the pre-existing condition anyway. Insurance is essentially a bet but in the case of something you already have, the bet is already lost. And I say that while my household pays a significantly higher premium for private health insurance on my wife the cancer survivor.

Generally speaking, I don't believe the majority of people actually want "insurance", they really seem to want a "discount plan" a lot more, based on the complaints I hear most anyway. Seems to me that going after insurance is like treating a symptom instead of the actual problem, which is the generally high cost associated with health care.

Minor confusion here, help me out. The WaPo poll was 880 voters + 242 non-voters, that's 1,122 voters. Was the "less than 100 people" comment about another poll maybe?

Holy shit, I agree with Jon on something.


Yep. I'm not a big fan of the insurance industry and I think they're part of the problem, but the major issue is price of goods and services. The only way to significantly reduce per capita healthcare costs is to significantly reduce the yearly increase in the costs of goods and services.

Thanks (I think)

I honestly don't know how anyone could hardly disagree with that being the actual issue with possible exception of those getting paid for the various services of course.


And that brings us to where the matter of how to address the situation comes in, a fairly safe bet that puts us quickly back into our more usual major disagreement territory ;)

Your right about one thing. People don't want insurance. They want free health care and they want to call it insurance.

The State of the Union Address should be pretty interesting...

It may actually be worth watching now.

Ah, it's always worth watching. Sometimes the parts are boring, but maybe we'll get a couple more "You lie!" moments.

Well I think that that is an easy way to categorize those you oppose, painting them with a big brush.

I want people to have a parachute so that if something catastrophic happens they dont go bankrupt. I want cheaper prescription drugs and people with pre-existing conditions able to get back onto the rolls so that they arent the walking dead anymore.

The only way I could see would be to create a government health care plan that would only take those with pre-existing conditions who can't get regular insurance. They would be required to pay a % of their income still for the insurance. Ultimately I believe this is cheaper for the public as a whole than to have hospitals/doctors pass-through costs to insurance holders for fees they can't collect from those on insurance.

I agree with you on health insurance costs. I believe that is ultimately the biggest gripe of people. I do think there is anger towards insurance company which is more delegated to those who have had to deal with them a lot for major illnesses (which is a smaller percent of the country). Insurance companies are quite scummy and run their business rather unethically. But if you're a healthy guy/girl most of your life who is just going in for minor stuff, you never really have to see that side of the business.

The issue I have is that there is so much stuff that would need to be done to lower health care costs. It's so much deeper than a few items in a bill or some money thrown toward it for those uninsured. We need more doctors and nurses out there. We need to find a way to cut down on malpractice claims so that doctors don't play it too safe and over-test. We need to stop doctors from milking an insurance company dry or abusing machines they make money on. We need a much healthier populace who is willing to take preventative medicine seriously.

But the biggest problem may be ourselves and where we draw the line on what we should and shouldn't be doing. Take bacterial meningitis for instance. We have a vaccine out there that can cost over $50 a person. Now it's extremely rare in this country and very few people die from it. To vaccinate every child on up through college would be massively expensive and if you were looking from the outside, probably not worth it. However, if it's your child, you want that vaccine because 1 in 500,000 or whatever is not worth the risk to you.

So to lower health care costs, we'd actually have to sacrifice in some ways. Many would have to say that it's probably not worth spending tons of money on someone who has 3 months to live to give them an extra few weeks. Or to vaccinate an entire nation for something that is extremely rare.

I believe the only way we could solve that is with a two tier system. You have your basics that are covered. Essentially if you get sick and see a doctor, you're covered. You get hurt or have an emergency, you're covered. But that's it. The second tier would cover more elective stuff such as those vaccines or maybe that extra CAT scan or MRI that may find that 1 in a million shot that you have an aneurysm after being bumped in the head. We need to find a way to seperate what is absolutely essential health care from what is not. That second tier should be available to anyone who can afford it (or pay insurance for it) but not be the norm in society.

Unfortunately, not even close to it.But here's the thing Steve didn't mention - assuming its the same poll I saw quoted in the newspaper, that's down from 68% at the time of Obama's election. That's a huge swing in the pendulum back towards small(er) government.So Massachusetts voters support HCR by 10-15%, and want Brown to work with Democrats on it by ~3 to 1 margin, yet anti-HCR people came out to the polls in much higher numbers and overwhelmingly voted against Coakley. And this proves that opposition to HCR wasn't a significant factor in bringing out Brown voters how....?

Some good points here. One that I would add is that I would rather see the government spending some money on funding "free" medical schools. Tuition costs are getting to the point where the very wealthy or very altruistic (who are willing to go deep into six-figure debt to become physicians) are going to make up the majority of our doctors. It seems like it would be a smarter social service to create more doctors (who will earn good, taxable incomes over a long period of time) that are willing to work in underserved areas.

More information about the NY Fed coverup of agreement details has been released.......

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N1S220100124

The only question left on the AIG backdoor bailout as they seem to be calling it, is just how big it was. I'd venture $70 billion to actually be on the low end... but given the lack of transparency in corporate information, you have to forgive a certain lack of accuracy! I'm just waiting for the day that all details of a business are hidden behind a government enforced wall of secrecy and all you have left to make decisions on is marketing spin from the corporation itself.

Agreed. Related to this, a while ago in the Health Care thread I posted this by Nate Silver which seeks to illustrate why "health insurance" isn't really insurance, at least in the way we think of it typically.

Poll concerning issues that the public believe need the most attention. Jobs and economy are tops. Health care is 8th and global warming is 18th. Sounds like you can forget about health care reform and cap & trade in the near future.

Public's Priorities for 2010: Economy, Jobs, Terrorism: Summary of Findings - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

In case you needed any proof of the GOP's just say no strategy, Obama proposes middle class tax beaks and the GOP comes out against them.

No to tax breaks.

As somebody without any kids... good for the GOP! So you pop out a few kids, why do you pay less taxes than me or somebody whose wife stays home with the kids? Hardly a middle class tax cut for middle class panerd.

I suppose there are people out there that care only about themselves, and that's always how they'll make their decisions. I can't really fault someone for voting strictly on whether or not it's financially advantageous to them, but I thought the level of compassion for the others was a little higher across the board.

Just a general statement here, but as I have gotten older I have learned that there is a certain segment of the population whose clearcut, #1 voting priority revolves around money and taxes. That doesn't fit my voting or political profile, but there are a lot of intelligent and likeable people who feel that way and, at some point, you just have acknowledge and respect it.

Eh, I'm hoping the GOP suggests upping the child tax credit rather than doubling the child-care tax credit. Of course the fact that I have three kids and no need of daycare might have something to do with that. :)

I think there is compassion toward others. I do think that we cross a line from compassion to encouraging behaivor not beneficial to the country as a whole. This may or may not be the case with these middle class tax cuts, but when you consistently give credits to those who are pumping out kids they may not be able to afford, it's encouraging that and making it balloon. It also comes across as completely unfair to those who have been more careful with when they have kids and who make sure they are capable of financially supporting one.

So you give big advantages to those who have kids they can't afford while punishing those who wait and save up money before they have a kid (something we should be encouraging).

I do not have kids and would not feel comfortable having one until I was certain I could financially support it and give it the necessary parenting time. But I'll be punished by those who do the opposite.

Wait...didn't Bush extend tax breaks to the middle class while he was in office? And what about those refund checks too? So now when a democratic president wants to do what a republican president did, the republicans are against it, just like the democrats were against Bush's tax breaks. Wow, politics as usual in DC. Please please bring on term limits...

I would like to see a rule that does not allow politicians the ability to work for a lobbying firm or earn any income from one for 5 years after they finish their public service. Like that Congressman years ago who pushed through the huge Medicare bill that greatly benefited the pharmaceutical companies. Then retired from Congress and took a huge paying job with that same lobbying firm.

Some pretty good simple tables down the page in that link, including one that shows the specific party breakouts & differences on the issue as well as where "independents" fall on the same stuff. Some interesting things in that to me, including the 7 items that were 20%+ different between the two. Of those, 6 of 7 were higher for D's than R's.

In case you haven't looked yet & want to try to guess, I'll put those here

They are one pro-state party. Pick a year (1972, 1984, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010). Tell me which party is (in favor of war, spending a lot of money, opposing the president spending a lot of money, outraged at the president, the populist party). Are your answers all over the place? Liberal voters are side-tracked worrying about health care while the president issued an unlimited line of credit to Freddie and Fannie. Both parties are completely out of control and pull outragous proposals out of their ass. But people are too busy whining about Bush or whining about Obama to wake up and realize what is really happening. I wish I could say this just started recently but this shit has been going on for years. Human nature, I guess. Probably will never change but it bears repeating over and over at least hoping a couple of people will listen.

Pretty much spot on. Have read some good books about this that state the same thing. These people are all the same and just pick a few social issues that can never be changed or don't matter in the grand scheme of things to seperate themselves. What's the Matter with Kansas? is a good one.

The sad thing is it discourages those we want to vote. The other day I asked a friend who is a smart guy if he had any suggestions for the upcoming election in Illinois in a couple weeks. Just said he doesn't care, they're all scumbags. So you lose smart voters like that and end up with a bunch of mouthbreathers worried about bullshit issues.

My point was, both sides bitch about what the other side is doing just because they have an R or a D before their name on CSPAN. There's no bi-partisanship, just bickering and finger pointing unless someone flies a plane into some buildings. Maybe, just maybe had the democrats not cried about Bush's tax breaks and refund checks, the republicans wouldn't be crying about what Obama is wanting to do. I know, a crazy idea. Gotta toe the party line regardless of if a proposal makes sense or not. Yea, there's a few rogues on both sides, but, for the most part nothing really gets done other than trying to position themselves for the next elections.

As for term limits, no one should be a career politician. It should be a civic duty, not a life long opportunity to make money for yourself and your cronies. I'm not sure how term limits make lobbyists more powerful if the politicians would do their damn jobs instead of worrying about if they will get re-elected. Term limits are important so you don't have stagnant asses like Kennedy or Helms or any other long term elected official taking up a seat that could be filled by someone who has some fresh new ideas.

How hard can it be to legislate? I really don't think legislating is all that hard where it should take you a lifetime to figure out what you're supposed to do. A little common sense and a couple of economics classes would go a long way.

I consider myself independent and don't root for either side, but, not having a horse in the race, all their little flaws are that much more obvious to me. It would be nice to see a viable 3rd party come in and shake the dust off of DC. Not the libertarians though. :)

Im tired of the crazy health care costs. My Father-in-law was airlifted on a 120 mile round trip (60 miles to get him, 60 back to the hospital). Cost- $60,000. I can go on a helicopter ride at Lake of the Ozarks for $25 on a 6 mile tour. So a 120 mile trip would be $500. Granted there is some cool equipment on the helicopter. But one trip at 60 grand would go a long way to pay for it.
I was diagnosed with Plantar facitis (sp?). A shoe insert- $80.

Fix that and I imagine all health costs would be cheaper.

That seems like an unusually high cost for a medevac flight. Just Googling, the norm seems to be in the $12k to $15k range. The only breakdown I found in a handful of articles was a Florida company that had a $9000 lift-off fee then $87 per mile, which would have worked out to something like $25k for your father-in-law. Just out of curiosity (if you don't mind discussing it that is), was it a private contract firm that handled the flight or a single hospital or county owned service? I ask because I've seen a figure of $800,000 for an annual lease described as not unusual, so a scenario of limited use + leasing could create a situation where charges are higher than normal just to try to break even. But the $35k higher than I can figure out number sure pays for a hell of a lot of $100 Tylenols.

That does seem really high although I know it depends highly on location of pickup.

While there are a lot of gouging and that may very well be a case, the difference in the helicopter rides is the use. A helicopter tour is flying multiple times a day with multiple people on each trip. They probably get thousands of trips a year out of the helicopter.

A Medevac may only be used once a day or less depending on the location. Not only does it require having trained medical personnel on the helicopter, but also a trained pilot who is most likely requiring more skill than a tour pilot (much tougher landing locations). That pilot and that crew need to be on-call 24 hours a day so a hospital or private company may be paying to have a pilot sit around all day doing nothing till a call comes in. So lets say it requires 4 full-time pilots to man one Medevac 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Not to mention emergency personnel, helicopter maintenence and equipment, etc. That's really expensive when you think about it (especially when paying patients have to eat the cost for those with no insurance).

That's part of the issue we run into with an emergency and why it costs so much. It just costs a lot of money to have high tech, trained personnel on call at all times.

I think there are a lot of other areas we can cut back on health care costs. I don't know if I want emergency care to be one of them.

Obama To Diane Sawyer: I Would 'Rather Be Really Good One-Term President' (VIDEO)


What if you end up being neither?


Agreed. So get busy doing it already and quit worrying about getting reelected.

And yet, they used budget reconciliation to pass all the tax breaks under Bush. So I don't see why anyone should complain if the Senate Democrats use reconciliation to pass HCR. :D

So the White House has announced a three-year freeze on discretionary spending.

I'm disappointed in what looks to be a panicky gimmick--the sort of stunt that John McCain pulled when he canceled the campaign and rushed to Washington to save the economy. I know that Obama is trying to reassure people, but by so suddenly distancing himself from the Keynesian approach of his first year, he risks an even more massive erosion of people's confidence in his White House.

heh

Well, the tax cuts were popular for one thing.

Right now, based on the details as we know them, I'm in 100% agreement with Paul Krugman:



OK, I believe in political manuvering. I believe in tactics. I believe in picking your battles. But enough is enough. I didn't vote for these guys just for them to be a bunch of pussies. I didn't live through 1994-2000 (Democratic President trying to placate obstructionist GOP Congress) nor 2000 - 2006 (GOP stranglehold running roughshod over everyone) for this kind of BS.

Enough is enough. Here's the plan for the next 10 months, polls be damned:

1. Strip the crap out of HCR you had to put in to placate "moderate" Democrats and pass it via reconciliation in the Senate with 55 Democratic votes, if necessary. While you're at it, remove that seniority rule for choice on committees and kick Liebermann to the curb.

2. Repeal all the Bush tax cuts, using reconciliation as necessary.

3. When Stevens & Ginsburg retire, replace them with liberal judges who are 45 years old. In the face of GOP filibusters on these and any other judges, get George Soros to pay for TV ads that show GOP Senators asking for "up and down votes" a few years ago, and point out their hypocrisy.

4. Send a series of bills through the House & Senate that sound great to the average American but contain provisions the GOP hate and force them to vote against them or filibuster them, and use this in November.


Bottom-line: I understand I wasn't going to get everything I wanted after 2008, but to have these guys give up without a fight? Give me a break.

So was HCR, until they allowed months to go by (heck, basically a year now) while it got hammered by its opponents and dicked around in the Senate. Let's give credit where credit is due: the GOP rammed those tax cuts through before most people were able to give the ramifications a second thought.

We've had several years now to live with the ramifications. Perhaps you could point out the grassroots protests with thousands of people demanding that their taxes be raised?

This really needs to be done in an MS-PAINT drawing for the Democratic leadership to get the full benefit of your political acumen.

I'm trying to free-form rant here, Cam, and your snark isn't helping. :p

Flere,

You say Obama is a failure for enforcing Bush's policies. But...

Bush approval rating was 29%, Obama's is 47%.

I call that pure genius. Say your a Democrat to get the Dem's vote, then do what the Republican voter wants....you can't ever fail!

was the middle comment Sawyer's or yours, spinmeister

Sorry. Seriously, clearly this is a frustrating time for many progressives, but here's my question: who did you think you were electing? I mean, clearly a lot of conservatives thought Obama was the next Chairman Mao, and perhaps we should have realized he was just a craven politician the moment he started throwing people like Jeremiah Wright under the bus in order to win votes. But if conservatives should have realized back then that he was going to be just another politician in it for himself, shouldn't progressives have realized it as well?

It's about what is right for the country, not who can save face from a particular party. As a citizen, I could care less who introduces a bill or reform or whatever, I care about the contents and only the contents.


That is true, but, when one side is wrong I could care less which side is right. As for the fillibuster, both sides use it as weapon to hold something hostage and both parties have flipped flopped on trying to get rid of fillibusters.


What exactly has happened? I live in California and in all honesty, you can't tell the difference. The people and businesses leaving California can be attributed to higher taxes, higher unemployment costs to companies and a global ressesion.

Comparing private sector employees to elected officials, I don't think is a very good comparision. A Boeing employee can't tax the citizenry to pay for homeless panda bears or increase how much it costs to register your vehicle. The damage that can be done by elected officials outweighs what a private sector employee can do by a long shot.


Imagine what Kennedy could have accomplished without all the game playing and back scratching that is required? He could have retired after 10 years. Trying to navigate something that resembles an Escher drawing is nothing to be proud of. If the government had a, for the lack of a better term, "keep it simple policy", I think a lot more could get done instead of having to play the 'ol Potomac Two Step and having to deal with varying degrees of self induced red tape that exists.


Is governance really that hard or is it that governance makes it hard on itself? The way it is currently setup, yes it is hard to run and easy to break, because you have people who are too worried about positioning themselves for the next election or wanting to be in good graces with someone so they can get on some committee, instead of doing what is right for the country. Governing is a very common sense type job, not a whole lot of skill required other than being able to BS your way through something, which is no surprise that so many people in government are lawyers.


My feeling is, Ross Perot self destructed by bowing out and then trying to come back in and left the people who were going to vote for him stranded and having to pick one of the two parties. Don't know much about the Progressives back in the 20s though. I would like to see more independents get elected in the Congress and the Senate and then work on the presidency later. But, it won't really matter when there will always be that nagging feeling in the back of an elected officials mind...election time is coming up.

These are just my opinions though on how, I as an outsider, view our government is being run. Mostly by incompetent/self intitled people who put their party before the people.

I do appreciate your views regarding our government and like hearing things from all 3 sides of the coin. A broader perspective is never a bad thing.

This is karma I can believe in:

I had to smile at that as well. I wonder if he was wearing his pimp suit as he was waiting in her office.

This isn't really about Obama. To me, though I never viewed him as the messiah, though I was happy to vote for him, Obama has still, in general, been a thoughtful and pragmatic President, especially within the constraints imposed on his Administration. If I'm disappointed in Obama, it's because he's failed to be as assertive in pushing his policy agenda as I'd like, and perhaps to often surrendered to conventional wisdom when it wasn't warranted.

The bulk of my ire is directed towards Congressional Democrats, especially the leadership who, when presented with an electoral golden opportunity, have completely fumbled it. Their complete incompetence will not only result in the failure of almost any progressive policy initiatives this term, but will almost certainly seriously compromise their ability to do anything after the 2010 midterm elections.

In my opinion 2009 represented the best chance we've had in a long, long time to advance a progressive agenda and in less than a year the Democratic leadership has managed to almost completely squander the advantageous position they were given. Worse, should the GOP gain significant ground in 2010 (and I'm certain they will), this may have been the last time our side of the aisle will have had this opportunity for years. All in less than a year! I mean, the GOP eventually squandered their domination too, but at least they had 6 good years of ramming through tons of stuff they wanted.

Now, don't anyone get the impression I'm maudlin or devastated or anything. I can put this all into perspective. I'm just frustrated, and every once in a while one wants to rant. :D

+1

I hope he's got a good lawyer, because wiretapping a federal office is a big no-no.

Yep. Clinton was right, people would rather vote for strong and wrong than weak and right. Never thought huge bank bonuses would be the highlight of this admin/congress.

edit: Would be nice to see Obama come out swinging the way Reagan did under similar economic/popularity circumstances.


A little better than "Remember all that stuff we told you was important last year? Well, after one setback we're going to give up."

I guess the issue for me isn't so much the issues, it's how he's gone about business. He comes into power under massive support even from moderate Republicans. He's laid out his plans throughout his campaign, told everyone that things are going to change, and then proceeds to hand it over to Pelosi and Reid and say "show us the way". Just makes no fucking sense to me. You are insanely popular, Congress is insanely unpopular. You then count on them be the voice for the issues.

Take health care for instance. He should have gotten up front of the Democrats and even moderate Republicans and said "listen, this is how it's going to be done and if you don't like it, I'll make sure your political career ends". It's harsh, but that's what a leader of a party or country does. If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don't like it, then fuck them. See how well an already unpopular Reid and Pelosi do politically when you have a popular President calling them out. But the public didn't want to see those two shmoes trying to bring in support for health care. They wanted Obama to be out there and the one pushing everything.

Bush was a pretty shitty President but when he wanted to get something done, he got it done. He didn't cry about not having a supermajority or having some moderates in there. He said "I lead this party and this is how it's going to be done and I dare you to fucking cross me". We all want some bipartisianship in government and both sides to work together, but sometimes when you are elected for your ideas, you need to implement them and leave others in the dust.