So what if Hillary’s sleeping with her aide? I was never an HRC fan anyway, though this does tend to make me even less of a fan.
If she were out, she wouldn’t have been able to rise to power on her husband’s back. She’d have to run on her own accomplishments, which, as Maureen Dowd noted, would qualify her to be president of Vassar, not the leader of the free world.
Sleeping with an employee is just sloppy, though generations of politicians have done it. I suppose if I was already a supporter, I’d say, “Damn, I wish you hadn’t done that,” and continue my support.
Given that the aide in question is fairly hot, though not as hot as people are saying, it’s got to be Hillary’s power that’s the fascination here, not her womanly charms. Ironic then that Hillary acquired this power in large part by maintaining a relationship with a man she’d long since lost interest in sleeping with. http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0732,musto,77465,15.html
Just because conservatives don’t believe that government-run social programs are the best way to help disadvantaged people, it doesn’t meant that they don’t care about their plight. Many conservatives I know give TONS of money to social causes. More than you would ever imagine.
None of those things make her a socialist. FDR was no socialist. LBJ was no socialist. The industrial democracies that already have universal health insurance – which includes practically all of them save the U.S. – are not socialist countries. Progressive, redistributive taxation is not a distinctly socialist policy though socialists are bound to endorse it. And the idea of giving every American a financial stake from birth is solidly endorsed – in fact, AFAIK, invented – by the thinkers of the “radical centrist” New America Foundation. (See The Radical Center, by Ted Halstead and Michael Lind.) No socialists there – check out their website and you’ll see.
I know, I know. But relying on private charities to deal with poverty in America is like relying on morphine to treat cancer, and you know it. My point stands: Conservatives in power act as if they do not care about the poor.
I know no such thing. See, you believe that the only way that conservatives in power have only one way to show that they care about the poor, which is to enact more and larger social programs, which, in my opinion, have shown questionable levels of success.
Generally, what conservatives, both in power and otherwise, want from social programs is for them to be more effective and more efficient, allowing for fewer of them to exist over time, not more. You are entitiled to hold the opinion that this shows disregard for the poor, but it is only your opinion.
Not really true…or at least not any truer than the same statement can be made in regards to communism or socialism.
Extremists on both sides (i.e., communists/socialists and libertarians) always try to claim that the reason that a society according to their ideals hasn’t worked is that it has never been tried in the way they think it ought to be. I think the reality is that we have tried going toward both of these extremes and have found them to be wanting…which is why societies have moved back towards the middle between these two extremes.
What I mean is that we haven’t tried (at least not hard enough for long enough) attempting to make social programs productive, meaning actively helping people become self-sufficient, vs. just offering handouts. The idea isn’t to just cut programs, it’s to improve them so they make themselves obsolete.
That’s true, which is why, as I said to jsgoddess, I don’t think even most conservatives these days just want to cut programs down to nothing. But I think it’s wrong to say that because people have a different idea of what a social program should consist of and what it’s goals should be, that it means that they are uncaring about the poor (which was BrainGlutton’s assertion).
If you mean “welfare-to-work,” that’s now most strongly associated with the Clinton Administration, isn’t it? Yet conservatives still unrelentingly revile Clinton’s memory. (And going from welfare poor to working poor doesn’t raise your standard of living much, might even lower it. And by any reasonable measure we still have a whole lot of poverty.)
Mike Huckabee, at any rate, seems to care about the poor, but if he actually wins the presidency and tries to do something for them – something more effective than what Clinton did – movement conservatives may well denounce him as not a true conservative at all, despite his undeniable social-religious-conservative credentials.
The work I did in Mississippi in an area ravaged by Katrina was a hell of a lot more efficient than anything I saw out of the local, state and federal government.
I don’t hate Hillary, but I also will not vote for her (when my choice is Hillary vs “someone else” - as it gets closer, ask again). She lost me with HillaryCare, when she didnt’ seem to want any real input from practicing physicians. The thought that she could re-write our nation’s health care system without talking to the people that actually deliver it astounded and infuriated me. I do not argue that the system is broken for those on the bottom of the scale, but she went about it using a bunch of attorneys and bureacrats. That mindset is NOT what we want in DC.
Bush’s latest budget cuts rental subsidies by $163 million and public housing funding by $400 million. Homeless assistance is increased by $120 million, but the homeless appear to receive less aid in the current budget when all is netted out.
Personally, I don’t think its controversial that conservatives favor greater military spending and less social spending on the non-elderly. Those who pretend otherwise need to get a grip.
Oh. Really. What about welfare reform? What about the earned income tax credit? What about the decline of job training, after it was found to be ineffective? (What about the pushing of certain types of job training (resume building, interview prep and the like), which were found to be effective?)
My take is that conservatives typically make broad-brush characterizations of the effectiveness governmental anti-poverty programs with little factual substantiation. And some of their analysis, when it happens, is a joke: the analysis is shaped to produce feel-good conclusions (i.e. faith based yada yada).
Tough minded empiricists are interested only in what works and what does not. Some of the more recent interesting approaches are listed here. They include aspects that conservatives will glom on to, as well as less intuitive approaches. That’s the nature of reality-based observation and policy setting.
Back in the 1970s Republicans used to care about program effectiveness. But Clinton took over that ideological space in the 1990s, and today’s Republicans show little sustained interest in it. As an example, we can look at No Child Left Behind. It was a good try (really!) but Republicans have unfortunately showed pretty much no interest in shoring up its considerable deficiencies. (To be specific, observers have noted that changes in tests scores are more meaningful than meeting pre-set levels. Furthermore, any auditor will tell you that performance tests should be conducted by someone other than the teacher who is being evaluated.)
What’s hilarious is that the four gospels are chock-full of admonitions to help the poor and attacks on hypocrisies. Abortion? Gay sex? Not so much.
“Hyperbole” is when a Democrat tells a whopper. “Lying” is when a Republican tells a whopper.
Probably because he vetoed it twice, and only went along with it after it was clear it was going to pass. So he let it pass and then tried to steal the credit for it.
Since Republicans and conservatives donate more to charity than liberals or Democrats, your perceptions are probably skewed. Republicans tend to be the sort of people who don’t need to be coerced into doing the right thing, and therefore tend to believe that others don’t need to either.
Cite? The statistic I’ve seen is that religious conservatives donate more to charity than secular liberals. That would make sense if only because religious organizations tend to be involved with lots of charitable activities. I have seen no comparison of religious conservatives with religious liberals, or secular conservatives with secular liberals, in terms of charitable contributions.