American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

yeah this talk of permanent majorities, dependent classes etc. is all bullshit

yeah this talk of permanent majorities, dependent classes etc. is all bullshit

So there's no such thing as a dependent class of people?

see Aimless' post above

and even if it did, that "dependence" has nothing to do with voting patterns

the most dependent people in the country are the rich fucks who live off investments. stigmatize them too or gtfo

why do people over the age of 18 fall for the con that helping the poor hurts the country?

like OMG I am dependent on the gov't for keeping random people from murdering me, BETTER VOTE REPUBLICAN

or OMG I am dependent on the gov't for giving me massive tax breaks and subsidies BETTER VOTE FOR EITHER PARTY

the most dependent people in the country are the rich fucks who live off investments. stigmatize them too or gtfo

Dependence doesn't have anything to do with voting patterns? Seems like the rich are quite reliable to be conservative. The rich are as dependent.

the basic equation behind the premise - that "class X receives benefit Y from legislation passed by party A = class X always votes for party A" - is inaccurate, people do not vote that way. I get that the classic example to be trotted out is black people voting for Democrats because of civil rights legislation but that is not the clearcut example people usually argue it as, and it's relevance on other, non-explicitly race-related issues is highly debatable.

xp

Seems like the rich are quite reliable to be conservative.

no

that is, if by conservative you mean Republican.

I'm with wide-eyed Sully: the threat of penalties will make everyone who needs to sign up for health care at the last minute, so the numbers now don't matter (which is why when traffic swells in December the site better be ready to handle it).

The actual mandate doesn't kick in until February (and there's speculation they can extend it all the way through open enrollment). The December crunch will be people who want their insurance to begin on January 1st.

the biggest complaint I've heard against government single payer is that the government doesn't do anything right (and the healthcare.gov website rollout isn't helping matters in that resolve).

Maybe a year or two ago, a medical policy wonk I respect said he was actually hoping for the Affordable Care Act to pass specifically because it was doomed to fail, recognizing that it might have to fail to make single payer that much more appealing.

wonder how much the republican freak out is really about wider spread access to cheaper mental health care

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/joe-biden-new-frontier-for-mental-health-98779.html?hp=r20

their base could get decimated

also, joe biden totally looks like a wizard

sorry i know we're talking about health care now but it seems that the phone tapping might have wide repercussions:

Merkel: US Spying Has Shattered Allies' Trust

BRUSSELS (AP) — European leaders united in anger Thursday as they attended a summit overshadowed by reports of widespread U.S. spying on its allies — allegations German Chancellor Angela Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama administration and undermined the crucial trans-Atlantic relationship.

..."The United States of America and Europe face common challenges. We are allies," the German leader said. "But such an alliance can only be built on trust. That's why I repeat again: spying among friends, that cannot be."

...Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called it "completely unacceptable" for a country to eavesdrop on an allied leader.

If reports that Merkel's cellphone had been tapped are true, "it is exceptionally serious," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told national broadcaster NOS.

"We want the truth," Italian Premier Enrico Letta told reporters. "It is not in the least bit conceivable that activity of this type could be acceptable."

Echoing Merkel, Austria's foreign minister, Micheal Spindelegger, said, "We need to re-establish with the U.S. a relationship of trust, which has certainly suffered from this."

..."I think we are all outraged, across party lines," Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent German lawmaker from Merkel's party, told Deutschlandfunk radio. "And that also goes for the response that the chancellor's cellphone is not being monitored — because this sentence says nothing about whether the chancellor was monitored in the past."

...Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, said Europe's undermined confidence in the U.S. meant it should suspend negotiations for a two-way free-trade agreement that would account for almost half of the global economy. The Americans, Schulz said, now must prove they can be trusted.

"Let's be honest. If we go to the negotiations and we have the feeling those people with whom we negotiate know everything that we want to deal with in advance, how can we trust each other?" Schulz said.

Biden said that ongoing research also holds promise for returning veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress.

psst Joe gimme a call I totally have the solution to this problem

more:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls#_

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts
• Agency given more than 200 numbers by government official
• NSA encourages departments to share their 'Rolodexes'
• Surveillance produced 'little intelligence', memo acknowledges

"Surveillance produced 'little intelligence', memo acknowledges"

hey, doesn't Merkel have a PhD? or has that one been found to be plagiarized too?

i'm surprised they'd trust us at all after the iraq invasion and the subprime meltdown

seriously, i have no idea why any govt would trust the united states to not spy on them, ally or axis of evil or beyond the axis of evil or the outposts of tyranny or sauron or whatever

they're all just jealous they didn't think of it first

i wonder how U.S. conservatives in 2003 would react if they learned if France was spying on George Bush's phone calls?

total tangent but goddamn the freedom fries incident of 2003 was among the most idiotic moments in world history

merkel had a freedom phone

she just was not made aware of it until recently

in order to avoid detection by the NSA, future world leaders must resort to

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/2213489/mr-burns-baseball-signs-o.gif

i have no idea why any govt would trust the united states to not spy on them

Everybody has always spied on everybody. Some countries are better at it than others. Some countries get caught from time to time.

Right now I'm watching my upstairs neighbor thoughtfully pick at a booger oh shit call Snowden

Not enough Dineh in most countries, tbh.

d'Souza?

Clearly the solution is to fabricate intelligence that shows the Germans et al. were spying on us. That'll make things better.

NSA was spying on the German PM's cell phone? Yo, props.

well it's not like the germans are angels

"Economics students in Germany were more likely than students from other majors to recommend an overpriced plumber when they were paid to do it."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201310/does-studying-economics-breed-greed

you're forgetting one thing qualmsley: iraq

let's roll!

lol

http://www.nationaljournal.com/pictures-video/the-acela-is-a-great-place-to-stalk-or-overhear-government-officials-20131024

"Me and Steeler fan Michael Hayden."

I'm glad we're seeing more stories like this: how Dems saved Medicare D.

total tangent but goddamn the freedom fries incident of 2003 was among the most idiotic moments in world history

we'll probably be enjoying more of this shortly

could use a liberty gin and tonic right now

I've seen this in a couple stories and I find the phrasing of it kind of puzzling, not that I know anything about IT of course:

If any part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace. That’s just what happened: On Oct. 2, officials identified a bottleneck where those systems intersect at a software component sold by Oracle Corp. that still hasn’t been cleared.

Seems that most important element of this shitshow was that the software wasn't tested very well. And it doesn't matter who sells the software component or who built it--it's how that component is integrated into the system. There were many pieces bolted together and that process was overseen by a federal agency, a very tough job given the circumstances.

Why the Government Never Gets Tech Right

But HealthCare.gov is only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government. Indeed, according to the research firm the Standish Group, 94 percent of large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful — more than half were delayed, over budget, or didn’t meet user expectations, and 41.4 percent failed completely.

While that rate sounds awful, the same rates for large IT projects are insanely high in the private sector as well. That's one of the things they hammer you with in requirements writing classes ("It's always you fault! It's not that developers can't read or ask questions!") is low project success rates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/us/politics/in-white-house-pitches-rosy-view-of-health-care-site.html?hp&_r=0

pretty lame how everyone seems to be covering for everyone else tbh

While that rate sounds awful, the same rates for large IT projects are insanely high in the private sector as well.

Anyone who can increase the rate of success in IT projects--especially the large ones--is going to become insanely rich. But that would require removing the vocal nodes from all clients once the SOW has been signed off on.

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/raising-the-medicare-eligibility-age-is-now-a-really-bad-idea/

important post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/healthcaregov-fixes-wont-be-done-until-end-of-november/2013/10/25/22df29ba-3d93-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html?hpid=z1

Don't worry, we got this. Everything with the website will be fine by the end of November

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/25/what_the_nsa_wont_admit_theres_no_evidence_that_data_collection_thwarts_terror_attacks_partner/