itty prank on the inners
 

It's not clear that much was ever done, but -- as ever -- don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. The GOP's debt to Ronald Reagan is truly immense.

itty prank on the inners
 

lighten up. I meant politically biased extremism generically. a cousin was A political appointee for the R.R. white house. before the '84 election he said "I don't like black people, because they won't vote for the President." I said, if you are willing to "not like" them for how they vote, sounds to me like they're voting the right way.
My only point was the political appointees are agenda driven in a way beyond the merely political aligned, but rationale, people like me, club, ag, ggg, sam, shfm and everyone else here but you. You aren't rationale.

itty prank on the inners
 

That's funny -- the rest of us were just saying the same thing about you.

itty prank on the inners
 

yeah, but they were having YOU on.

David Ropeik faults media coverage of the mad cow thing for amping public concern and failing to tell people that the threat is low. But, hey, them journalists are just trying to sell newspapers.

serial posting
 

Matt Yglesias makes a good point:

• In domestic politicy, right and left tend to have basically different goals. The left is trying to construct a well-designed social welfare system and the right is trying to keep the government as small as possible. Foreign policy goals, however, are fairly uncontroversial, at least in a general sense. None of us want to see nice democratic countries overrun or innocents slaughtered in terrorist attacks and we would all like to see other nations become freer, more democratic, more prosperous, and so forth. But it's not totally clear how you get from here to there.
  
  The tendency, though, is to blow up every policy dispute into some massive gap of principle. "You looked at the Iraq War and decided it was a bad idea -- well, you must hate freedom!" Well, no, I don't.

But wait, I thought the numbers dropped because people were frustrated?

Apparently they were less frustrated last month.

serial posting
 

A couple of thoughts:

It is impossible to design well a social welfare system.

The right is no longer even trying to keep government small, much to my dismay.

Support for foreign policies is now based almost exclusively on what party the commander in chief hails from.

Conclusion:

We are a nation of delusional hypocrits.

serial posting
 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but will suggest that conservatives who are tolerant of civilian casualties and other collateral damage when we go to war have no similar patience for predictable problems with social welfare programs.

The corporate interests that are in the driver's seat right now are not particularly principled. There are a lot of principled conservatives who don't like what's going on, but their principles don't seem to be sufficient strong to motivate them to actually criticize a Republican President or otherwise do something about it.

This just isn't true. Afghanistan had bipartisan support, and a lot of Democrats were in favor of invading Iraq. There are a lot of Democrats who are upset about the way this President used terrorism as an issue in the 2002 elections, but that doesn't mean that another Republican would get the same response.

You can all tell that I don't like Bush, but my dislike for him has much more to do with what he's done than with the fact that he's a Republican.

serial posting
 

I'm not sure how this is responsive. Even if true, it doesn't change the fact that you cannot design a social welfare system that actually works well. Valient attempts were made for the the better part of the 20th century, but to no avail.

I see this as just the opposite. Bush has not had the balls to stand up to the porkers and say no. He's got a veto which he has yet to use. I'm hoping that changes after 2004.

serial posting
 

No avail? I think Ty's point is that huge swaths of the social welfare system in America lumber along well enough that both sides of the aisle introduce legislation to "save" them (e.g., social security; Medicare) rather than abolish them.

The fact that movements to abolish them entirely get no political traction essentially means that they work as well as any massive infrastructure will ever work in a democracy. Everyone complains about their inefficiencies, but only the academics* get exercised about their very existence.

*The ones with whom Dan Quayle disagreed were called the cultural elite. The ones with whom he agreed were called "experts."

serial posting
 

I still have no idea what you mean when you talk about a social welfare system "that actually works well." If you compare welfare reform in Wisconsin with, say, Alabama, you will see very different results. Wisconsin works better. The problem most conservatives have is hostility to the basic goals -- Yglesias's point -- which leads them to try to kill the programs, not to make them work better.

It's not a question of whether he has the balls. Those aren't his principles. He pays them lip service, but that's it. He is taking advantage of you.

serial posting
 

"Well enough" is not well designed, which was the blogger theory as to what the goals of the left are. My point was that these goals are not obtainable. I'm not sure I want to abolish SS or Medicare, but both need major rehauling. The personal savings accounts to be introduced in 2004 would be a start, but they won't pass next year. Curious though that you select the 2 untouchable programs, rather than the system as a whole. It goes back to my post a few weeks ago. Trot out the old and the sick and see who is against it, then brand them insensitive.