Every use of the term “reality-based community” that I can recall seeing from SDMB types (what does that mean, again?) and other liberals has been sardonic.
Apparently we have our cite. A whole 29,400 people on the whole world wide web. An immense smear campaign if I ever saw one.
I like your reality based analysis where you leave out Bush Hitler or Bush Nazi or Bush Fascist. It makes your view look more impressive. Bush Nazi only gets 5,580,000 so I admit that Obama Nazi is way out of proportion. The spreads on the rest are pretty par for the course considering Bush is no longer current, and there are probably tens of millions more blogs today than there were in August 2003.
Ok, so not orders of magnitude, just comparable.
Show me where in this thread I argued against UHC? Since I haven’t, I’ll be interested to see what you can find.
That was clear a long time ago. You’re the only one still obsessing over it.
LOL. You’re the one denying shit that undeniably happened. shrugs
Why is this important? The proponents of the bill are attempting to make it law, so criticism about how it will affect people if/when it becomes law is perfectly relevant.
As for the interview, I don’t think Stewart did a very good job of picking her apart. For example, she said (paraphasing) “Medicare costs will be cut 10% over the next 10 years, when the people on medicare grow by 30%. That means that there will be a reduction in treatments for people on medicare” to which Stewart laughed and said “no, that’s not what it means” - and just brushed it off.
I don’t know if her figures are true, but it does seem like a reasonable interpretation. Stewart certainly did nothing to combat the notion.
There’s also the fact that working in front of a hostile (studio) audience can make you look stupid. For instance - she talks about how the survival rate for most common cancers is best in the US, to which Stewart replies “well yeah, but our life expectancy is 48th” - she countered “yes, but if you factor out violent crime and car accidents, it’s actually #1” and then the audience just laughed at her. But if it’s true (and I have no idea if that’s true or not) then it’s a perfectly relevant counterpoint - if our life expectancy is reduced by violent crime and accidents, unless that number is being created by inadequate emergency care (and I doubt that’s the case), then the reasons for the lower life expectancy are outside of the influence of the health care system. Therefore they can be discarded when you’re looking at the efficacy of the medical system on lifespan.
But instead of actually considering that point (and again, she may have been lying, I don’t know) just laughing at her makes the home audience (us) think she’s ridiculous even if she made a valid point. Our monkey brains look for cues from other people - that’s why they use laugh tracks on most comedies. We’re more likely to think something is funny, or in this case ridiculous, if we see others having that reaction. If you had the same interview wherein the studio audience was sympathetic to her and hostile to Stewart, the audience perception would be different even though it had the same content.
I like how in the reality based community you cherry-pick the least significant cite. Good job with your ‘fact-basing’. You can just add it to the 7,160,000 Bush Hitler hits that still exist.
And quite a few of those are copies in message board posts, at that, no doubt. Not that I give a damn enough to go find out. But then that’s cherry-picking mswas’ own choice example anyway.
Google doesn’t even autocomplete “Bushitler”, btw.
Agreed and that is the big problem I’ve been having with the dismissals of people’s concerns. It’s a lot of PALATR but those retards are people who are genuinely scared.
No, he did a terrible job in this interview.
I am curious about the Medicare cuts portion, I don’t really know what that part entails.
That’s actually not so relevant. If you take out violent crime and auto accidents from the US you have to remove it from all the other countries you are comparing it to as well. Also, the statistic of being 48th in life expectancy is totally and completely irrelevant. First off the difference between first and 50th is about 6 years. The difference between first and second is almost two years, so the gap between the US and Andorra is only about 4 years. Andorra doesn’t even compare in size and demography to the US so Japan at number three is a better example. Only the top 20 have more than two years on us. Not a single country with more population than us is even near us on the list, in fact not a single country with more than half our population is above us is near us on the list. The most comparable polity in terms of size and a diverse demographic would be the whole of the European Union which only outdoes us by about half a point. So we’re supposed to think that not comparing to an outlier like Macau is somehow a bad thing for us.
The Daily Show depends on preaching to the choir. So, agreed.
:rolleyes: This is how you guys do it in the ‘reality-based’ community huh? I throw out one example and you just abuse the context so that you can congratulate people who agree with you.
And therein you prove my point precisely. It’s not about facts for you, it’s about belonging to the group. Everything you’ve said has precisely been about group belonging, and all of the facts play secondarily to that. All of your attacks at me have been calling me a ‘conservative’ as though that’s some kind of insult. You are dim enough to think it’s an insult but I don’t find it insulting.
So it’s really not about the facts it’s about group affiliation. You’ll get Ludovic’s approval and then you’ll start picking nits from each other’s back and eating them. Both of you ignore that Bushitler is just a cognate of Bush Hitler.
My political beliefs are what they are, you consitently think that mischaracterizing them makes some kind of difference, you assume that group affiliation means to me what it means to you. It doesn’t.
So in the fact based community, it doesn’t mean you actually like critical thought, it just means you like throwing facts around despite context.
It’s very important because the bill never had a chance to be law in its exact form to begin with. That’s not how the legislative process works. Scaring a bunch of people who don’t know how the law works is simply not productive and, in my opinion at least, it’s a pretty clear indication that the person doing the scaring is using those people as pawns to forward a private agenda.
Unfortunately, those people with the agenda also happen to be our lawmakers. So, even though it seems pretty clear to most people in this country that the healthcare system needs reform of some sort, the people who are supposed to be helping create that reform are using their constituents’ fear to prevent any sort of change from happening. .
Perhaps the Democratic sponsor of the bill should’ve waited until after a rebuttal/response bill was available. At this point, it really doesn’t matter. The whole thing has gotten so out of control that passing a meaningful healthcare reform bill that will actually do something other than cause side A to insult side B and vice versa doesn’t seem at all possible this year.
I looked it up right after I posted my reply. It did bring up a lot of sites.
It’s just weird were arguing over these crazy people, (there’s gotta be a “We’ll Make Them Look Like Hitler” service out their, since it’s so prevalent). If we’re looking back, it should be to reflect on how to handle such hyperbolic claims… not to have a pissing contest on who’s craziest. I liked that it was brought up, as it was a relevant point, (it’s happened to Bush too, I personally don’t like lumping ‘crazy’ to any specific group, so it’s worth bringing up). But it seems like people are just trying to swing the pendulum back after it hurls towards them… why argue over this? Shouldn’t most of us have a collective disgust over these things?
Holy CRAP! I JUST realized this now! THANK YOU for pointing this out as I would NEVER have realized that had you not so helpfully pointed that out to me.
Yes, but in all fairness that can’t be laid at the door of just the right-wing demagogues because the Democrats at first were trying to ram it through before anyone had really picked it apart fully.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that health care needs to be reformed. I don’t think even Rush Limbaugh would disagree with that. The point is this bill in particular. Yes, ‘Death Panel’, is hysterical hyperbole, but asking about rationing for end of life care is a completely reasonable thing to be worried about and people are acting like it’s not.
They most certainly should have, and they didn’t wait on purpose. They were trying to rush it through before it got mired in the process and inevitably killed. The process is inherently antagonistic at this juncture in our history, and so this is really the only way that politics can be done right now, particularly with the democratization of broadcast where now every idiot in the world can have their voice heard in some way or another.
Hey, don’t cherry-pick the poorest example and I won’t think you’re of ElvisL1ves ilk. :dubious:
They did. It didn’t even have numbers. :rolleyes:
Who cares about insults? That’s all the opposition has, opposition.
That’s ultimately the point I’ve been trying to make.
It’s really unfortunate that you believe that. That’s why I think that YOU not liberals in general but YOU are of the same ilk as the people we are talking about, you just are for a different team.
If you think that worrying about end of life care and medicare cuts aren’t real issues, then I guess nothing a conservative can possibly care about would be something you’d consider valid, but not because the ideas are invalid, only because conservatives care about them.
It’s far more unfortunate that it’s true.
It isn’t? Show us what proposal you Republicans have that even has numbers in it.
Reality and proposals vs. fantasy and oppositionism. Hmm, yes, those are exactly the same, aren’t they?
Gawdamighty, kid. :rolleyes:
I assumed this was being done, since it would hardly be fair otherwise. But I also admitted that she may be lying or disingenuous - and removing those figures from the US totals and not other countries would be one way to lie.
I don’t even necesarily mean in that way. I mean, yes, that’s part of it. But literally just having an audience to laugh or scoff or cheer at the right moments makes one person look right and the other look wrong. Our monkey brains respond to social cues from other monkies.
You mean the Democrats? 
duck and run
Oh jeez… I haven’t even finished watching, but McCaughey may be the most scattered, disjointed guest I have ever seen on the show. Nevermind that she appears to have no idea at all what she is talking about.