Quote:According to Gallup, most people believe they would be worse off with the current bill. People are pretty evenly split on whether it is good or bad for the country, and as time passes more people are leaning against the bill.No, according to Gallup, there is no majority opinion at all about the personal impact of the bill. 26% say better, 36% say worse, 31% say not much difference, and 7% have no opinion. Were we in a partisan bickering mood, we could take turns reading that as "57% say a health care bill would not diminish their health care quality" or "67% say that a health care bill would be negative or neutral." The poll also does not ask about anything specific - for instance, it says nothing about a public option, which tends to be popular in polls. It just asks generically about a "bill" - whatever that bill may be.
However, this poll question specifically ignores one of the major reasons people support health care reform - what it will do to *other* people. If you asked me in Canada whether my health care would get better with a private system, the answer would be yes, but I'd also oppose that reform because of its impact on others.
If you look at the "good for the country numbers", there's pretty much an even split - 41% say yes, 40% say no. This number is up, but the increase is almost entirely from an increase in those opposed (from undecided) - a product the massive anti-health reform campaign that's been getting so much media coverage, especially on Fox.
Quote:So that was an example. Bush beat us up with a hammer too, but Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have the pneumatic hammer. That slippery slope got vertical real fast.The majority of the current fiscal trouble is still directly attributable to Bush's mad spending - even if we don't blame him one iota for the financial crisis. Pelosi and Reid are responsible for only a tiny fraction of it, and that's the fraction that's helping put the economy back together.
Quote:Yeah, that stimulus was great... Now, let's see... Krugman would say the feds are not spending enough. Which, to me is the old, "Having lots of sex to prevent pregnancies" method of economics. But, I know who is getting screwed.Are you familiar with the work of Steven Landsburg? "More sex is safer sex"? If people who use condoms had more sex, it actually would prevent pregnancies. But fun libertarian logic games are neither here nor there.
Unemployment is still way up. States are cutting back programs drastically to meet their budget targets. More stimulus directed at bailing out states would help end the haemorrhage of jobs, and help the economy return to normalcy, to quote the not-great Warren Harding. Without more stimulus, I sure know who is getting screwed - the millions of people getting laid off.
-Jester
Afterthought: a stimulus that does not run into deficit is not a stimulus...
After-afterthought: how does Islam fit into all this? "Trampling over the nation" how?