2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

i understand what he and you are getting at, and disagree. i would rather do something that runs the risk of being dismantled than seek something that increases the risk of not doing anything.

afdc did not cover 40 million americans

and afdc recipients had other programs to turn to

What is the point of a universal healthcare system if it only last 4 years?

the biz community now largely favors health care regulation

...

the fear that universal health care might be dismantled is a totally bizarre one

Businesses with large unionised workforces, with longstanding legacy benefits favour minimising their liabilities, I don't think the obama plan does much for them. Small business as seen through the GOP smalltown lens will not want to cough up anything extra. If the benefits are not widely felt then it is an easy easy target for the GOP to hit as a wasteful boondoggle in '10 and '12.

do keep up

Once again, read the article before you post it and please explain how the Obama plan shifts the burden from companies with longs-standing healthcare commitments? Also try and do this without being a supercilious, patronising young fellow.

Tucker Bounds suicide watch

i'm merely pointing out that your suggestion that business would be opposed to a universal plan is not correct

wait, gr8080 is max? wai 2 confuse

federalizing/nationalizing universal health care could just be done like nationlized mortgage backing. We set it up, spin the program off to pay for a war, then buy it back right before it all comes apart at the seams.

I never suggested that business would be opposed (again, read before posting) I am suggesting that the obama plan doesn't necessarily help big business all that much and can be all too easily painted as a un-american, non-free-market drain on all-american small town businesses. Enough people have to benefit from the system to sustain it going forward and to make any proposal to dismantle it politically untenable. The obama plan is not bold enough to achieve these aims.

they aren't, Tracer (i've seen them in the same room)

can be all too easily painted as a un-american, non-free-market drain on all-american small town businesses

and my point, which you keep insisting on missing, is 'by whom'?

can be all too easily painted as a un-american, non-free-market drain on all-american small town businesses

If it's that easy, then I wonder why McCain has not focussed much attention on this line of attack in his campaign ads. Where are the Harry and Louise ads of '08?

Where are the Harry and Louise ads of '08?

http://isbarackobamamuslin.com/

have we figured out which side harry and louise are on this time?

btw, if not rope-a-dope, what do we call lipstick-on-a-pig and this:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_If_you_believe_that_Ive_got_a_bridge_in_Alaska_to_sell_you.html?showall

whatever you want to think the pig line meant, she can't use the lipstick line anymore. we'll see if this does the trick as well.

have we figured out which side harry and louise are on this time?

I can't get to that YouTube link, but the only Harry & Louise ads I've seen this campaign cycle have been a decidedly ambiguous plea for health care reform.

Whenever any party of the right suggests some kind of spending boondoggle or tax cuts, they always say 'efficiency savings' as a magic mantra that explains where the money comes from. Unfortunately the efficiency saving very rarely materialise to the extent that is required.

This is a good point, and McCain is once again following this strategy to a tee. This document does a good job of trying to summarize and put a price tag on all of the promises made by each candidate as well as all their proposed cuts and savings:

http://www.usbudgetwatch.org/files/crfb/usbw0915promises.pdf

Notice that McCain's plan includes $159 billion of "unspecified cuts", vs. $50 billion for Obama's plan. And even with that very generous assumption, McCain's plan would still increase the deficit more than Obama's.

i like this headline:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/john-farrell/2008/9/15/john-mccains-journey-from-maverick-to-liar.html

i don't see the right ever using 'efficiency savings' as a magic mantra to explain where money comes from - the right doesn't generally talk about all the money it plans to spend. what the right's mantra is, at least over here, is cutting 'wasteful government spending,' which is usually vague but basically means health care and other social services.

http://www.slate.com/id/2199923/

i don't think it's a problem that obama isn't lying, though it might be a problem that he's stretching the truth too infrequently - the reason even karl rove is calling out mccain is because mccainco's gone beyond his patented say-something-that-is-literally-true-but-wildly-misleading and started just straight-up lying, with the result that the media is starting to call him on it, allowing an unreliability meme to take shape.

Well, that's true, they may not use the term "efficiency savings", which is a bit wonky. But basically the idea is the same, that there's a lot of wasted money in the budget, and if we did things smarter, we could do more with less. And though they never specify where exactly they're going to find this money that no one else has been able to find, they want us to trust that they will find it. Only the more die-hard conservatives will come out and say that they'd like to cut social spending (e.g., axe the Dept. of Ed.)

xp

right, but they don't tell us they're going to come up with this stuff to pay for new programs, they tell us they're going to come up with this stuff to avoid further increasing the deficit with their tax cuts

conservatives love to hold the public sector to these glass-like levels of platonic effiency perfection that no private sector outfit ever ever reaches. gee i wonder why.

omg i saw someone at the dmv playing solitaire STRANGLE THE LEVIATHAN NOWWWW!!@#!@#

When Jon Stewart asked McCain last year, "Are you going into crazy base world?" the celebrated maverick acknowledged, "I'm afraid so."

I mean I don't doubt that the government could do lots of things more efficiently, but I generally think we should wait until we've actually made the improvements before we start cutting the taxes. Or as Alan Greenspan said last week, "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a.BrvyBtV8CM&refer=home

xp

McCain still dumb

what is a good conservative website thats like the equivalent of dailykos? Reading conservative blogs and crap really entertains me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202594.html

McCain even seems to have forgotten what saved his greatest legislative achievement, which is campaign finance reform. When he was asked during the Saddleback Church debate which Supreme Court justices he would not have nominated, he named Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. It happens that those are four of the five justices who voted in 2003 to uphold the McCain-Feingold law.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-kilkenny/john-mccain-is-a-big-fcki_b_94952.html

a little heavy on the whore-talk there

(I mean not that I disagree but that isn't the kind of rhetoric that sways undecideds)

aren't you the one that wants independents to be more like that stupid article you linked to the other day that called Sarah Palin sugartits??

if you had actually read what I said you might have noted that what I wanted was for more independents who didn't like/didn't trust/wouldn't vote for her, not necessarily more independents with shittily written blog posts.

for

lord knows weve got plenty of independents with shittily written blog posts

all you wrote was "More independents like this please" and then linked to the Sugartits, Inc. document

i'm not sure what you want, Shakey Mo

perhaps I should clarify that what I meant was "more independents who are not into Palin" and not necessarily "more independents who rant, sometimes using inappropriate rhetoric"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, September 12, 2008 8:23 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

MOAR TITS de SUCRE

(I mean not that I disagree but that isn't the kind of rhetoric that sways undecideds)

i didn't know they liked to read huffpo in their spare time. i was merely pointing out some fine objective analysis.