…With a cherry on top. :rolleyes:
What a petty point this is.
Multiple people presented valid points about the preponderance of evidence showing that conservative and right wing views (& policies) are frequently aligned and supported by bigots, racist, misogynists and homophobes. Instead of addressing their concerns, you pounced on a trite point and crowed about scoring an easy win.
And you have the temerity to call me out as being “petty” for pointing out your obvious weaseling to avoid addressing the real issue?
…Wow.
“How did we become bitter political enemies?”
Asked & answered, I think.
Have you been following this story, or is that cite your primary source on what happened at the march? We’ve been discussing it over here. Your cite makes it sound like they were kicking out anyone showing a Star of David. The three women who were kicked out of the march were flying this flag, which some people interpret as a mash-up of the Israeli flag and the Pride flag, which some people further interpret as supporting a pro-Zionist agenda. I want to emphasize that I’m not endorsing this deeply stupid line of thought. I’m just saying, there’s some nuance here that your cite is ignoring.
i find it very telling that you describe Zimmerman’s shooting as self-defense in a thread in which we are discussing the bigotry of conservatives.
I described it that way because it WAS self defense.
No, I haven’t been following the story closely. Thanks for expanding on some of the nuance. Do you know if this line from the article is accurate?
If he was, he’s a fucking moron. And given that he’s almost single-handedly crafted most of the major republican victories of the past 8 years, I doubt he’s a moron.
This 30% premium decrease is really meaningless. First of all, “silver” plans only have to cover 58% of health care costs instead of 70%. There’s a massive chunk of that 30% already gone, just by merits of what the plan has to cover.
Let’s say my plan costs $1,000 a year now, and covers 70% of my health care costs, which are $5,000 a year (which is not nearly as much health care as you might think). Under this new plan, my plan now costs $700, but only covers $2,900 instead of $3,500 of my health care expenditures. I’m already losing double what I gain. Then there’s the drop in government subsidies. There’s a reason the CBO contains this paragraph:
“People who are less healthy (including those with preexisting or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all — despite the additional funding that would be available under H.R. 1628 to help reduce premiums. As a result, the nongroup markets in those states would become unstable for people with higher-than-average expected health care costs.”
The LA Times looked at this particular claim. It’s devoid of reality. A person who looks solely at the total premium cost is akin to a businessman who sees that his company was in the black last year and celebrates while ignoring that his product sold zero units in the last month due to an ongoing scandal. As they put it:
This gets a little weedy, but the bottom line for consumers is insurance plans that cover less and carry lower premiums but impose far higher out-of-pocket costs. As in, two-thirds higher.
The “benchmark” plans are the ones that determine how large the premium subsidies for qualifying individuals will be. Under current law, such plans cover 70% of a consumer’s expected medical costs; under the Senate bill, the benchmark will cover only 58% of those costs starting in 2020. The report goes on to note that because of the insurance regulations in current law, which the Senate bill would not change, insurers would have no choice but to impose very high deductibles on their policies.
So, average deductibles for the benchmark plan would rise from about $3,600 today to about $6,000 in 2020 under the Senate bill, the CBO projected. Lower premiums are great, but deductibles that high would make insurance effectively worthless. As the report puts it, “As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan, CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate.”
Quartz did the math too, and it’s not pretty.
What this chart shows it that under the current law, an adult at the bottom end of the middle class can buy a benchmark “silver” insurance policy for $1,700, with a deductible of $3,600—which is undoubtedly high. Under the new proposal, the benchmark plan’s premium, while $100 less, comes with a deductible of $6,000.
Faced with roughly the same premiums, a hypothetical consumer might look to pay less for less coverage. Under current law, they could drop down to a lower-quality plan, called a bronze plan, with a $700 premium and an $800 deductible. That option doesn’t exist in the new proposal.
**The CBO predicts the choice between a premium that’s too high to manage and a deductible that is more than one-fifth their annual income will lead millions of Americans to not buy coverage at all if the law is enacted.
**
This law may lower costs somewhat for people who don’t need health care. It’s an immoral atrocity for the poor, the chronically ill, and the old. And why did we need these cuts? Well shit, I dunno, why does the bill contain massive tax cuts on the super-rich? Because that’s what this bill is for. It’s taking money from the poor and the sick to give money to the rich. Did you miss Robin Hood growing up or something?
I’d say pretty good. Compared to other forecasts, it was superior. They dropped the ball a bit on where people would get their healthcare, but they got the number who would get healthcare pretty accurate - which means that I see good reason to take them seriously when they say that 22 million people will lose their healthcare.
I know you believe this and it is why we are such bitter political enemies; the GOP is a white nationalist movement and violence against blacks is inherent in its philosophy. I don’t want to work with them, I want to defeat them.
I would imagine that it’s the blind spot of being part of a cultural majority. Even in the Blue States where I’ve mostly lived, the suburban towns tend to lean more Republican. Having grown up and spent a fair amount of time in those environments, there is an underlying current of mild racism that the people who live there are largely blind or indifferent to. Specific examples I’ve seen:
- Wearing black face for costume parties, etc
- My in-law’s neighbor telling me about her father dressing up in a Klan costume for Halloween (keeping in mind I’ve just met this person and she neither thinks this is odd or offensive)
- Offensive or racists jokes (but only when the subject isn’t in ear shot)
- Complaining about Blacks, Mexicans or other groups based on the experience with a sample from work or other setting
- Tendency to stereotype groups in general
- Long, detailed, apparently deeply thought out explanations about the difference between “N****s” and “Black People”.
But if you were to tell any of these people they are being racist or even point out why their behavior might offend, they become extremely defensive and will go to great lengths to explain why their behavior is “ok”.
I suspect the main reason for this is that they have spent their lives in a largely ethnically and culturally homogenous environment. Other races or cultures typically live in completely different (and often poor and crime ridden) neighborhoods and towns. At best, other races are like someone’s friend visiting from another country. They are treated respectfully as “guest” with weird cultural differences, mostly because someone vouches for them. But they are still an “other” who doesn’t really belong there.
That tracks with what I’ve been reading about the march.
And how’s that working out for you?
If that was the reason to expect the other side to fold you are just set for disappointment. After conservative people were a few years back not getting much, did not stop them for continuing. The bad news is that a lot of what they were proposing or electing to office was dumb, and while it was a winning move recently it is not bound to be sustainable. A lot of the recent defeats were in places the Democrats were not really expected to win, but the margin of victory for the Republicans was close.
Meaning that in more even places the Republicans will not see what they want, particularly when many independents and a significant number of moderate Republicans notice how bad the current leadership is.
The RCP average today has Trump’s job approval at 40.1%. While that’s certainly nothing to brag about, it’s a bit more realistic than the cherries you picked.
Still allows one to point out that realistically you and many conservatives are being set for disappointments in the future. (I will have to say that a lot of what the aggregate is saying there is courtesy of polls like Rassmusen and FOX) And I did notice that you could not declare that the health care poll was cherry piked.
How do you like these cherries?
So Gallup says 60% disapproval. (per GIGObuster’s post)
RCP says 40% approval. (per HD’s post)
What makes your stat “realistic” while GIGObuster’s stat “cherry picked”, HD?
Or do you simply like to view it as glass 40% full?
Could it be one glass has actual water in it, and the other has EPA approved water? Both the same in volume but the second glass is enhanced with cancer.
To answer you straight, it’s my strong impression that there’s actually a third category between “approval” and “disapproval”, presumably populated by people who stared intently at the pollser in complete silence and then slammed the door. So a 60% disapproval would be paired with a < 40% approval, and a 40% approval would be paired with a < 60% disapproval. They’re not the same and it’s not a glass half empty/half full scenario.
FiveThirtyEight shows it currently as 39.9% approval and 54.1% Disapproval. Which leaves 6% ‘other’, I guess.