patrick.net

To quote Richard Jeni:If you are on the far left or the far right,you've too far"

apropos to my 1:42 above:

http://trollblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/why-does-anyone-read-the-wall-street-journal-editorial-page/

The problem with the posters on Patrick, and Americans in general, is that all seem to suffer from the same delusional aberration in the evolution of civilization. Namely, that individuals can be elevated above their station.

Thankfully, gentlemen of stature and merit direct these underclass impulses for the betterment of ourselves. The Pharoh didn't build the great pyramids by himself. He had thousands of underclass minions toiling day and night to build these "wonders of the world" that the underclass still marvels and worships. The difference between the Pharoh and myself? I have millions toiling for me.

PD Quig says

Your disparagement of the Tea Party is particularly revealing. To reach the conclusion you reach requires an active denial of the obvious: there are simply many, many Americans who recognize that we have pushed beyond the limits of government to manage itself reasonably.

I see your loyalty to republican doctrine. Admirable I guess, or at least not surprising. Are you familiar with the concept of starve the beast?

The typical republican line is now fiscal conservatism,but for decades when borrowing and adding to the deficit was about lining the pockets of the military industrial complex, or the medical/pharmaceutical complex, or big oil, or Halliburton, and all the other companies that support military operations, or when increasing the deficit was about under taxation, relative to our wars and corporate subsidies, that was tolerable.

Quite a bit of our deficits of the past decade can be traced to a lack of regulation of banks and other financial institutions.

But now that it's gone too far, it's suddenly clear that the real problem can be traced back to social safety nets, and so called entitlements. AFAICT this was an actual plan of republicans who conveniently said that deficits don't matter while their friends were getting rich off of that deficit spending.

Starve the beast while enriching themselves, and then force a roll back of social programs. Maybe it wasn't a conspiracy, but it is what seems to be happening.

Phaedra says

Far left: Would love to nationalize industries,

I have never heard or read of any "liberal" advocating that. I know that I don't. I'm for capitalism and a market based economy. I am glad that the government saved GM, but I don't want the governemts to stay involved.

But I believe there is a lot that government can contribute to society. I'm not sure that getting private enterprise into areas such as running prisons, or supporting our troops (or actually being our troops in the case of blackwater) makes a lot of sense. Because then they become a special interest that is far different than what would exist with those functions when performed by the government.

PD Quig says

The Tea Party. Typical Americans that only want rationality to return to government. Want government to spend only what it takes in in revenues. Want to rebalance SS and Medicare so that they will not continue on their current path to bankruptcy. Want to return to policies that were 'mainstream throughout most of American history' but which began to be broken down in the 1930's when the SCOTUS began the end run of the constitution via an absurd re-interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause to empower the federal government to do anything it wanted to do.

IT is true that most of American history occurred before the 1930s, but our becoming a global super power with the biggest economy on the planet happened after that.

We get it. They want to undo the New Deal, and to go back to an era when 75% of senior citizens lived in abject poverty. But understand what it is that got us to this moment. It wasn't tax and spend liberals. It was borrow and spend policies, especially the unfunded wars and tax cuts of the last decade, and the criminal negligence on the part of the financial industry.

As for war spending, it seems to me that if we are at war, and there isn't shared sacrifice involved, then that calls in to question whether all of the death destruction and deficit spending involved is really worth it.

As for "balancing SS and medicare" I'm fine with the incredibly minuscule tweaks that it would take to have SS solvent many decades past the death of all the boomers. My favorite solutions are means testing and slowly increasing the payroll tax 1 or 2% over the next couple decades.

See this excellent article that Patrick posted a couple days back:
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?source=patrick.net&article=better_than_bernie

As for medicare, that's more tricky, especially if we don't do some more significant health care reform.

I nsignificant
W hile
O bfuscating
G arbage

marcus says

Quite a bit of our deficits of the past decade can be traced to a lack of regulation of banks and other financial institutions.

Actually they used the growth of debt to HIDE the money they were spending on big government during the Bush years:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2rS

blue line is non-government debt, red line is government debt, both scaled to GDP

clever, no?

All this got rolling during Clinton's 2nd term, really. Financial sector started leveraging up then and didn't stop until everything blew apart in 2008.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DODFS

I sold my last real estate four years ago and decided to never again invest in anything that I couldn't transact in less than one second.

Therefore, putting up with the nasty far lefties on this site really doesn't make any sense anymore. These aren't discussions. They are hate-filled screeds dripping with ad hominem attacks, arrogance, ignorance, and boundless self-regard.

Too bad you are a tiny minority who will finally be crushed when TSHTF. Gawd, what tiresome crap. Why did I ever bother engaging you all????

Goodbye to all that.

marcus says

have never heard or read of any "liberal" advocating that. I know that I don't. I'm for capitalism and a market based economy.

well, he did say the "Far left" would want to nationalize industries. He's correct, but not many people on this country are "far left", LOL

He also put the Tea Party in the center, which is why I was assuming that puts me fairly far to the left - or at least far enough to the left that I would have heard of a liberal American who advocated this.

Phaedra says

Why did I ever bother engaging you all????

Your entire 5 posts worth of engagement under that account name.

And gee, I was waiting for an honest response to my 11:57.

Going to be a long wait I guess.

Nothing new there though.

marcus says

that get spent by the government almost as if it wasn't borrowing the money from our SS trust fund.

$4,625,536,857,585.03 and counting in intragovernmental savings spent by Congress, LOL.

Well, I guess it's actually going down now.

Phaedra says

Therefore, putting up with the nasty far lefties on this site really doesn't make any sense anymore.

Too bad...

Goodbye to all that.

Oh I'm going to cry a river in deep sadness at the loss...

Has anyone else noticed that all of a sudden there is a rash of right wingnuts who have only posted 1-5 times and only in this thread?

Cortaid anyone?

simchaland says

Oh I'm going to cry a river in deep sadness at the loss...

Is it more than you can "bear?"

simchaland says

Has anyone else noticed that all of a sudden there is a rash of right wingnuts who have only posted 1-5 times and only in this thread?

I find it interesting that many people on this forum just post their opinion, but then a few are so angry that all they'll believe is that we're liberal idiots.

Any conversation that doesn't complain about liberals seems to label everyone a lib.

Does the Patrick.net readership represent "Americans"?

Of course not! The only real Americans are Bible thumbing, illiterate, anti-science, gun-toting, rednecks who screw their first cousins. If you don't meet all of these criteria, you're not a real American. So says all Republicans, and they wouldn't lie to you.

If you live on either coast, you're not a real American. You're a filthy, commie pinko, and probably a gay-married terrorist, too!

And if you live in the big city either you are an arugula eating egg-headed elitist who sips lattes and recycles and believes in global warming or a good for nothing hippie or "inner city person" who lives off of the teat of the gummint avoiding any labor or any personal responsibility expecting handouts so you can buy your 40 and dro/grapes/weed/420.

Real Americansâ„¢ wear American Flag T-Shirts, eat red meat with every meal, have lots of guns, use religion instead of science, hate gays, hate liberals, hate the French, collect Social Security and use Medicare, believe that unemployment insurance is a hand out, want social security ended or privatized, want gummint hands off their Medicare, think that global warming is fake, drive hummers and pickups and giant SUVs and giant old boats while complaining about the price of gas, want capital punishment, hate abortion, drink watered down tasteless coffee by the gallon, watches nascar etc...

It sounds like some of these noobs don't actually know the difference between left and right and don't really understand the political spectrum. No different from someone like Shrek really, although I think too much discussion of ideology is probably misguided. Better to discuss ideas on their own merit, rather than try to put people into boxes and calling it intelligent debate.

Even something like this is completely unsupportable by data:

Phaedra says

4. We have the most predatory legal system in the world that drives doctors to prescribe unnecessary treatment in order to defend themselves against malpractice lawsuits. Cap "pain and suffering" awards, and pricks like John Edwards will have to get a productive job.

Except that there is no evidence that malpractice payouts have gone up. If anything, they have gone down when adjusted for inflation. This is a talking point, and there's little evidence that lawsuits are what causes health premiums to go up. Lawsuits comprise something like 2% of the premium. Even if payouts magically doubled, the new percentage would be 4/102 or 3.9%. If your premium goes up 20%, it has nothing to do with lawsuits. More likely, it was the economy, since insurance companies invest premiums. I mentioned this issue on another thread and provided this link -- there are numerous studies on this:

http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm

Reality has a liberal bias:

I'm not a liberal despite the facts, I'm a liberal because of the facts. And many of the postings here make me almost reflexively say, "Pesky facts!!"

That said, I don't think this site represent the majority of Americans. The regular posters here are intelligent, and extremely so. I think if all of you stop and take a breather you'd be impressed at the vocabulary, lucidity, and generally comprehensive understanding on display here daily.

Demographically, don't most post-graduates vote liberally? Isn't that why the Right concocted the "egghead liberal", "pointy headed liberal" and Universities as liberal incubators? If you can't find a way to unite your base, and peel off another (in this case, smart folks) the apparatchiks demonize.

So, it may be the site leans left. It may be because it's objectively honest, and intellectually true.