Title: ORourke1 Signature
I've had some off blog conversations
with Mr. Drum in the past. Some debate about the Texas Republican
platform for 2000....
Rarely he will say something that makes sense. This is one of
those times.
David
"The
principal villain in rising health
care costs is the government. Not
pharmaceutical companies, not doctors,
but government."--Neal
Boortz
On 11/8/2012 6:32 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
m.motherjones.com
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/11/we-should-probably-all-calm-down-bit
By Kevin Drum on Wed. November 7, 2012 9:19 PM PDT
I am going to be a killjoy tonight. I have two things to
say:
- Liberals, you should rein in the triumphalism. Obama
won a narrow victory and the composition of Congress
changed only slightly. This was not a historic
vindication of liberalism, and it doesn’t mean that we
can suddenly decide that demography will sweep us to
victory for the next couple of decades. The plain truth
is that although an increasing number of voters are
turned off by what Republicans represent, that doesn’t
mean they’ve become lefty converts. A lot of them are
still pretty nervous about a big part of our agenda, and
we have a lot of work ahead to get them more solidly on
our side. Also: No matter how much you hate to hear it,
long-term deficit reduction
![]() and entitlement reform really are pretty
important. Just because conservatives abuse the point
doesn’t mean there isn’t something to it.
- Conservatives, you should rein in the apocalytpic
despair. Increasing top marginal rates to 39.6 percent
is not a harbinger of torches and pitchforks in the
streets, it’s a limited corrective to decades of
skyrocketing incomes at the high end. Obamacare is not a
sign of incipient tyranny, it’s a modest attempt to
provide broad access to healthcare that’s based on a
Republican plan and operates largely through the private
sector. Universal access to contraceptives doesn’t
represent the end of religious liberty, it represents a
fairly narrow disagreement over the responsibilities of
organizations that occupy a gray area between secular
and religious. Fifty million people on food stamps
doesn’t mean the final triumph of takers over makers, it
means that we’re still recovering from the biggest
economic downturn since the Great Depression. (Outside
of healthcare, spending on low-income programs is actually
pretty low.) America is still America, and it’s
still the best place in the world to be if you’re an
entrepreneur. More generally: You really do need to
update your attitudes on a raft of social issues, but
honestly, if you can manage to do something about your
crackpot wing and your blood oath to Grover Norquist,
you’d be in reasonably good shape.
Oh, and smart people on both sides of the aisle should
start thinking seriously about how to handle a future in
which smart machines do more and more work and humans do
less and less. I’m dead serious about this.
That is all. For now. You may now all start tearing me
apart in comments.
(via Instapaper)
Sent from my iPhone
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
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