Not sure if this is more funny or sad. (Opens MP3 file.) [Hat tip: Josh L]
The basic gist of the clip is an employee of Howard Stern walking around Harlem, asking Obama supporters if they support him for different policies - McCain's policies. They all support staying in Iraq, they are pro-life, anti-stem cell research (McCain actually is not against, but okay), and most importantly, would be perfectly fine with Palin as VP should Obama win.
Winston Churchill used to say that the best argument against democracy was 5 minutes with the average voter.
Pretty pathetic. I'm sure you'd get equally stupid results polling Republicans in Appalachia. Hell, even Sarah Palin can't tell Obama's policies from McCain's without coaching.
ReplyDeleteJA - I'm not saying you wouldn't get the same from some Republicans, though see below. I didn't take a side - it's just what was recorded. I actually thought the stem cell Q was unfair, since most people don't care and wouldn't know either candidate's policy on it.
ReplyDeleteThe war in Iraq Q is mind-boggling, and makes you wonder if people pay any attention at all to anything of substance; I'd bet that most GOP voters would at least know this one. Same with the pro-life. These are two major issues that they vote on. For blacks in NYC, the major issues are economic related, so perhaps they'd answer better on those. I'm sure that most people around the country have no clue as to either candidate's economic plans or healthcare plans and how it affects them. I wrote a 12-page essay comparing the basics of Obama and McCain on health and I still couldn't tell you which is better for me personally from a selfish POV, even if I know which is better for the country. (Hint: Not the one that leans toward universal health care. :) )
I wrote a 12-page essay comparing the basics of Obama and McCain on health and I still couldn't tell you which is better for me personally from a selfish POV, even if I know which is better for the country.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that conservatives always have some idiosyncratic personal research that demonstrates why all the smart experts are wrong?
What experts?
ReplyDeleteMost policies in this country are not as complicated as people make them out to be. Read the candidates' detailed proposals and see for yourself.
...I almost fell of my chair laughing...
ReplyDeleteHere's Krugman, for one:
ReplyDeleteMr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
Krugman?! LOL.
ReplyDeleteUnbiased.
The joke on him about his recent award: "Just shows you what writing 10 anti-Bush pieces a week can get you!"
Yeah, yeah, everybody's biased against the poor Republicans. Krugman should be discounted because he's a Democratic partisan, all economists should be discounted because they lean Democratic, etc., etc. The media's biased, the academy's biased, everybody's biased.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny at first and then just sad after you think about it. It's just as racist to vote FOR Obama because he's black as opposed to against him because he's black. Both options support deferential treatment based solely on race.
ReplyDeleteJA - umm, actually in your 'everybodys biased' paragraph, you should really replace the word republican with democrat. Have you NOT been watching the news lately??
ReplyDelete