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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Reality-based Liberal
Published Letters: 950 Editor's Choice: 102
You are a condescending prick, which is comical given how vapid you are.
Yes, some hospitals are struggling, but that's because our whole health care market is, in fact, inflated. You can simply look at the macro level -- that we spend twice as much as other nations that deliver better care, more comprehensively. Or you can zoom in to your troubled hospitals, which have to pay a lot to attract too few general practitioners because med students go into lucrative special fields that allow them to live in mansions and work only 2-3 days a week once they pass the age of 35. Those hospitals have to pay hyper-inflated rates for some medicines or equipment. They pay a load in malpractice insurance for a malpractice lawsuit crisis that doesn't exist. They are owned by larger corporations that reinvest only a dearth of profits back into the institution. Or they are partially or wholly public, and lack funding.
To argue that our health care costs are not inflated as you do is akin to claiming the moon is made of cheese and anyone who says otherwise is some technologically challenged rube.
If Clinton loses the popular vote and the delegate count from the voters (and MI and FL are able to weigh in some way), will you oppose a Clinton effort to grab the nomination just as you would an Obama effort?
I see a lot of concern from Clinton supporters about how angry some posters are about her and her candidacy, and I understand how that is discomforting if you support her. I'll try to explain.
Despite many posts that cast it this way, it is not a choice between A and B. It is a choice between two people who are different. Clinton has a history (some call it experience) and that matters to some of us. For me, her history -- right through the way she has managed a highly negative campaign -- makes me angry. It has nothing to do with my love for Obama (I have clearly not been an Obama flag waver).
While Clinton supporters have claimed that Obama is just as negative, that's hard to defend. He has asked for her tax records (a standard call for anyone running for office -- he hasn't even suggested that she's done something bad, he's simply asked that we see how the money loaned to her campaign was earned). He could have gone a million different directions: her divisive nature; her legal troubles; her investment problems (she's gone wild on his one small example); her "experience" as a corporate lawyer and Walmart board member; etc. He has done none of this, but he could have. Meanwhile, she has thrown the kitchen sink at him, even going so far as to say that he isn't as prepared as McCain to be president, despite McCain's experience showing nothing but promotion of agendas antithetical to Democratic principles.
Of course we can argue about this. And we can argue about whose supporters are more vitriolic (I don't think it can be said that Obama supporters take this prize uncontested). But these are not two sports teams -- they are not A and B -- they are different.
There is simply less to criticize with Obama (not because he's better, but because he has less experience in the dirty world of national deal-making). Whether that experience is worth something -- good or bad -- or it is meaningless, is up to voters. But that lack of negatives shows up here, and results in an interesting pattern:
Obama supporters are expressing their anger at Clinton. Clinton supporters are expressing their anger at Obama supporters (on balance, obviously not as a rule). The only attacks on Obama that have much merit are about his experience. The few other attacks range from myopic attention to Reznik while ignoring Clinton's more substantial such issues, or based on something more loathsome (ShawnWM talking about Obama's support from blacks -- or "people who don't work" -- or others who say "he just doesn't look right").
I don't judge Clinton by her supporters. I judge her by her actions (or experience, if you like). Could Clinton supporters (and other Obama supporters) do the same?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
