(no subject)

[madscience.livejournal.com]

So, whattya say, America? Think we can hit 40 straight years of neocons in the White House?

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on, if Obama was a neo-con,
we'd have troops in Syria today, and Iran
would have been blown up. I hate
to think about what would be happening
now with Russia.

[blackdwarv.livejournal.com]

MTE. While he has a lot of issues, the fact that he has negotiated out of two military situations, has passes the ACA, Lilly Ledbetter (and the bigger, better version in Congress right now), the Credit Card Bill of Rights, ending DADT, minimum wage increase (for federal employees... so much for Conservitives 'caring for the troops'), and has increased federal spending into alternate entergy by almost a billion... Yeah, the drone program, and the NSA are sticky issues...
But a Neo-con?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The ACA is one of the main things that makes Obama a neocon.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Are UHC plans neoconservative as well?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Are they insurance?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Yes, government-administered insurance with mandatory participation.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

His answer will be "Of course that's neo-con!"

[madscience.livejournal.com]

And I'll be right.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

So everyone's a neo-con country and the U.S. is just catching up. Or you're a very silly person.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The US isn't "catching up" to other countries with regard to health care. It's charging full speed in the opposite direction.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I feel that I'm failing to understand where you're coming from. What's your beef?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The private health insurance industry is the reason health care was so expensive in the first place. Instead of destroying it or undermining it with a public non-profit competitor, we enshrined it in law and made participation mandatory... the worst thing we could have possibly done, even worse than doing nothing.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

America wasn't ready to join the rest of the world because UHC is a terrible tyranny we couldn't bear. Or something. Even the Democrats couldn't back it. I'll agree with you that it's not at a good end point but something had to be done to plug the huge coverage holes.

I'll agree the free market is no place to administer a service that should be treated as a utility rather than a commodity.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The Democrats didn't back UHC it because their billionaire puppeteers didn't want them to. The billionaires couldn't get an insurance mandate passed when the Reps were sponsoring it. So they changed the script a little, and stupid Dem voters with the memory of a goldfish swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

So, all insurance programs are neocon, including those that include no direct premiums? Or should we limit the neocon label to those plans (universal or not) that use private companies issuing coverage?

If the latter, I'll agree with that.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I'd grudgingly agree to the latter as well. Public insurance would only eliminate half the problem (the corporate greed.) The other half is that insurance coverage is essentially price fixing, and price fixing creates all kinds of perverse economic incentives. Instead of charging a price determined by the market, health care providers raise prices to the maximum that insurance will pay. A far better solution would be a market-based health care system in which insurance is completely illegal, with direct subsidies to the poor for a basic standard of care.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Instead of charging a price determined by the market, health care providers raise prices to the maximum that insurance will pay.

While true, that's the beauty of UHC. A single payer can dictate what that maximum might be, as witnessed by the stunning number of countries with such systems. A multitude of payers proves too balkanized to have any say in provider excess to be effective.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

That still comes with all the problems usually associated with price ceilings.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Clearly if it's a thing he doesn't like, it must be neocon.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Obama isn't a neocon.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

If Obama's not, then Bush wasn't.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Wrong. Bush subscribed to Neoconservative philosophy, Obama does not.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Amazing how varied the opinions although I agree with Maher, hating Obama is what gets some people up in the morning.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Obama never really was very liberal, that's a given, but he's not a neoconservative either. Neoconservatism isn't really a thing since the end of the Bush administration. Words have meanings and Neoconservatism was a real and specific ideology. It's not just a label to fling that means "did some things like Bush did". Furthermore, sharing some ideas of an ideology doesn't mean you buy in to an ideology. I wish people wouldn't cling to religion so much, it doesn't make me a satanist nor a communist.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well, I looked at the Wikipedia article on Neoconservatism, and Obama definitely had some factors they have listed. But to me, it's a big bruhaha over nothing that gets anything accomplished. It's like right wingers arguing over who is a true conservative. Pointless I think.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Like I said, sharing a belief with a thing doesn't make you fully the thing.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Right, and there are shades of gray too.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

If one wants to be very technical, I don't think Bush was a neoconservative, either. I knowingly use the word as most people use it, as a loose synonym for "corporate whore". And Obama is definitely that.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Bush was a Neoconservative, he bought in to the ideology. He had neoconservative staff members.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people use "neoconservative" when they mean "neoliberal". My guess is because the perversion of the word "liberal" in the US means people struggle to think it could be connected to something that is largely the opposite of what they think "liberal" should mean (even if it is much closer to the original meaning of liberal). It's also really only useful when talking about economic policy (although the neoliberal will claim that all policy is economic policy, which is precisely their problem).

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Jimmy Carter was a neocon?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

No. We've been under neocon rule since Reagan took office in 1981. The next term will run from 2017-2021. So if Clinton is elected, it will make 40 years.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Ah. Got it.

Still quibble on the Obama thing, mainly because of the unspoken assumption that every president from Reagan through Obama (and potentially including Hilary) is equally bad just because some things they do are bad. Obama might be continuing some policies of previous neocon presidents (and it infuriates me, yes) but it would be a terrible oversimplification to turn around and then say "He's just the same as Bush" based on that.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on what you consider important. Obama is as bad as Bush, or worse, in all the ways I care about. As I am fond of saying, the differences between them are smaller than the difference between either of them and acceptable.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

Obama is as bad as Bush, or worse, in all the ways I care about.

That, to me, is a very interesting statement. I'm curious to know what ways you mean.

We all have different priorities. From the standpoint of my own priorities, Obama's a lot better than Bush. But if my priorities were different, I might have a different opinion.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Spending; spying; drones; deportation; commitment in Afghanistan; KeystoneXL; and, of course, the abominable ACA.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The ACA, as bad as it is—and yes, without a Public Option and cost controls, it is bad—was the best he could wrangle against a neocon snarling beast of an opposition.

The first on your list, though, (up to Keystone) are really Deep State issues nowadays. No one can campaign against them (really), because they wouldn't get any funding from the private interests that choose candidates to fund.

I wonder quite seriously if alternative view candidates can even be considered considering the hurdles placed before any and all tossing their hats into the ring.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

If people stopped listening to what the media tells them about which candidates are viable, alternative view candidates would actually be viable. The only thing that can actually prevent us from electing alternative candidates is outright election fraud... and if that ever happens, it's time to start spilling blood.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

If people stopped listening to what the media tells them about which candidates are viable, alternative view candidates would actually be viable.

Think about what you're asking. In your view, our commercially-funded media should cover candidates that don't buy campaign advertising or are supported by interests other than those who do buy advertising. Exactly why should publishers/broadcasters allow their hired help to do that, especially when the message of the alternative candidates focuses on reforming the politics of corruption that has entrenched the publishers and broadcasters in their current cushy positions?

The only thing that can actually prevent us from electing alternative candidates. . . .

. . . is actually several things, starting with allowing us to consider only the candidates covered by the commercial media and therefore vetted by the monied interests. Fraud comes only waaaay down on the list.

We're so far passed time to spill blood it isn't in any way funny any more.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

"especially when the message of the alternative candidates focuses on reforming the politics of corruption"

That's exactly why they should... and, of course, why they don't. IMO, candidates who lack big media endorsement haven't fully exploited the potential of media like YouTube to talk directly the people. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein had a shitty webcast that broke down halfway through, and that's about it.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think there's also something to be said about him resetting the middle of the overton window. By not pushing back to the left on a whole range of issues, he's now set a new middle, which means the right can move further to the right on issues. This seems to have been the method for the left and the right in the anglosphere since the early 80s; the right goes bonkers, the left gives up (usually because they're too internally divided to have a coherent narrative about positive progress).

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I think it's all orchestrated. The right goes ultra-right so the left can move right and pass awful legislation that liberal voters fought tooth and nail when the right proposed it.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

Obama might be continuing some policies of previous neocon presidents (and it infuriates me, yes) but it would be a terrible oversimplification to turn around and then say "He's just the same as Bush" based on that.

Agreed. I've been disappointed with certain aspects of Obama's presidency, but I'll take him over the shrub ANY day.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* I care not what she does so long as it continues to benefit me and mine.