Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[puterbac]

Puter- Serious question. Do you find it disturbing and cause for concern that Romney got 3 million fewer votes than even McCain?

I find it baffling.

By most polls R's were more fired up and by the crowds at these events over the last month Romney was drawing much larger crowds than Oprama.

O's turnout was WAY down compared to 2008 correct? If Romney had simply matched McCain's vote totals I believe he would have won although I have looked to see what the margins were in VA, OH, and FL compared to 2008.

Mom and Dad said it was longest lines they have seen on election day in Ohio. Of course that is in New Lebanon which isn't a major city. I assume the post mortem articles will be written in few weeks.

I don't know if people thought Romney was going to win and they didn't need to vote, I doubt that, or do some evangelicals actually hate a Mormon that much to not vote?

I'd like to ready why some of these folks didn't come out and vote.

I mean every metric that governs a presidential campaign, normally, were in Romney's favor.

Econ is biggest concern and latest polls gave Romney nod on economy, gas prices double, unemployment higher than four years ago, deficit more than a trillion plus every years he is president. Even likeability was even or a couple points in Romney's favor. Normally that would point to a landslide, so I don't know what caused that many to stay home.

[Big Orange Junky]

Puter- Serious question. Do you find it disturbing and cause for concern that Romney got 3 million fewer votes than even McCain?

I find it baffling.

By most polls R's were more fired up and by the crowds at these events over the last month Romney was drawing much larger crowds than Oprama.

O's turnout was WAY down compared to 2008 correct? If Romney had simply matched McCain's vote totals I believe he would have won although I have looked to see what the margins were in VA, OH, and FL compared to 2008.

Mom and Dad said it was longest lines they have seen on election day in Ohio. Of course that is in New Lebanon which isn't a major city. I assume the post mortem articles will be written in few weeks.

I don't know if people thought Romney was going to win and they didn't need to vote, I doubt that, or do some evangelicals actually hate a Mormon that much to not vote?

I'd like to ready why some of these folks didn't come out and vote.

I mean every metric that governs a presidential campaign, normally, were in Romney's favor.

Econ is biggest concern and latest polls gave Romney nod on economy, gas prices double, unemployment higher than four years ago, deficit more than a trillion plus every years he is president. Even likeability was even or a couple points in Romney's favor. Normally that would point to a landslide, so I don't know what caused that many to stay home.

Simple, as someone else has already pointed out, ya can't beat Santa Clause.

[Owlman]

The week before the election, Romney was not drawing larger crowds than President Obama. President Obama actually drew bigger crowds, but only slightly bigger. The point was, now Romney was drawing big, excited crowds, not that President Obama wasn't drawing big crowds, at least according to CNN.

[Owlman]

O's turnout was WAY down compared to 2008 correct?

Not in the swing states. He actually increased his turnout in Ohio, for example.

[puterbac]

Frankly we used to be able to have some actual discussions about why something was good or bad etc, but it has devolved into Stiffler like responses

Hell all I said was that if it wasn't for Oprama care being passed then even I could deal with the loss.

Opramacare and its implications are downright scary IMO. You may disagree, but you never say why. Its just insults and one liners.

Maybe tick sees a boon to his biz with Opramacare (thanks govt welfare...heh) and maybe DSL is just cranky cause he has to pay his own rent now. I don't know.

I've been in heathcare insurance for 27 years and know BCBS TN like the back of my hand. Since the mid-90s I've been sounding the alarm from cnnsi to worlcrashing to this place about the crippling rise of healthcare costs to the consumer - not with one-liners, but with charts and graphs and articles and all manner of facts supporting the obvious. The US spent a thousand bucks per person on individual care back in the 80s, it started building to 3-4k in the 90s, and then skyrocketed during the bush years to 8k. Most of that time YOU, puterbac, kept mum with your sweet family plan paid in full by your employer. You chose to ignore the light at the other end of the tunnel, and now the train is bearing down on you ("I have to pay 30% of my plan - SHITTTT"). That you think this started with obamacare is hilarious (healthcare costs actually stabilized for most of his term). But a generation of huge increases coupled with The Great Recession was bound to reach a tipping point. You get that, right?

Maybe I'll pull some more charts out again, just for you. Now that you've got skin in the game.

Frankly we used to be able to have some actual discussions about why something was good or bad etc, but it has devolved into Stiffler like responses

Hell all I said was that if it wasn't for Oprama care being passed then even I could deal with the loss.

Opramacare and its implications are downright scary IMO. You may disagree, but you never say why. Its just insults and one liners.

Maybe tick sees a boon to his biz with Opramacare (thanks govt welfare...heh) and maybe DSL is just cranky cause he has to pay his own rent now. I don't know.

I've been in heathcare insurance for 27 years and know BCBS TN like the back of my hand. Since the mid-90s I've been sounding the alarm from cnnsi to worlcrashing to this place about the crippling rise of healthcare costs to the consumer - not with one-liners, but with charts and graphs and articles and all manner of facts supporting the obvious. The US spent a thousand bucks per person on individual care back in the 80s, it started building to 3-4k in the 90s, and then skyrocketed during the bush years to 8k. Most of that time YOU, puterbac, kept mum with your sweet family plan paid in full by your employer. You chose to ignore the light at the other end of the tunnel, and now the train is bearing down on you ("I have to pay 30% of my plan - SHITTTT"). That you think this started with obamacare is hilarious (healthcare costs actually stabilized for most of his term). But a generation of huge increases coupled with The Great Recession was bound to reach a tipping point. You get that, right?

Maybe I'll pull some more charts out again, just for you. Now that you've got skin in the game.

No tick. I never said there was no problem. My insurance has never been paid in full. I've had skin in the game the entire time. I'm not the 47%. It didn't start with Opramacare, but tell me how Opramacare is going to make it better. Everything that is currently in effect with Opramcare increases costs. 100% coverage on many many things with NO co pays, no life time limits, no pre-existing, coverage for 26 year olds as if they were children, etc.

NCVOL said it right when he said healthcare is an inelastic economy. My life is worth infinite dollars to me, but not to govt or ins company.

I think the biggest problem is people want the best care possible, but they don't want to pay anything for it. They think it should all be covered 100%. New treatments, new medical devices, etc cost a shit ton of money to develop and then market. The best costs money, but people don't want to pay for it. They'll drop 50 grand on a truck, but complain endlessly about 10k bill for surgery that saved their life.

The consumer doesn't really see the cost other than in premiums. Bottom line is if something is cheap or free people will naturally use more of it and Opramacare really pushes 100% coverage and NO copays for quite a lot things meaning there is NO incentive to not use it.

Of course lawsuits and malpractice insurance is a huge issue. How much it actually impacts costs...I don't know. Probably less than people think.

Defensive medicine probably adds more cost, but when your liable if you don't run a test...wtf are you gonna do?

I'm open to suggestions, but I don't see Opramacare fixing anything. In the end it will drag everyone down lower and govt will just try and cut reimbursement to save costs cause that is all they know how to do. Well that and rationing.

And my coverage is pretty normal: 80/20, in network only (unless emergency), max out of pocket up this coming year. Although I don't know why I am supposed to apologize because my job happens to have an okay insurance plan. It isn't any kind of unicorn plated UAW plan, but its okay.

[Owlman]

I mean every metric that governs a presidential campaign, normally, were in Romney's favor.

Not according to this guy: (copied from eCat from the Goat Pen)

"In January 2010, more than a year before Mitt Romney had formally announced he was running for president, political historian Allan Lichtman predicted President Obama would be re-elected in 2012.

On Tuesday, Lichtman extended his record of correctly forecasting the winner of the popular vote to eight straight elections.

What makes Lichtman interesting is that he makes predictions early, long before eve-of-election polls, long before October surprises, and sometimes even before the nominees have been chosen.

Lichtman says he sees elections the way geophysicists see earthquakes — as events fundamentally driven by structural factors deep beneath the surface, rather than by superficial events at the surface.

He said he came to this idea after happening to meet a Russian geophysicist. They got to talking about earthquakes and asked themselves whether elections might follow the same principles as earthquakes.

"Everything we know about elections, we've already stolen from geophysics," Lichtman said in an interview shortly before Tuesday's election. "Tremors of political change, seismic movements of the voters, volcanic elections, political earthquakes. It's all geophysics anyway."

Rather than think of elections as battles between liberals and conservatives, or even between two candidates, Lichtman said he decided to test the idea that elections follow earthquake principles: You either have stability, or you have upheaval.

Translated to elections, if the incumbent party in the White House kept the White House after the election, that meant you had stability. If the incumbent party lost, that meant there was upheaval — an earthquake.

Lichtman analyzed presidential elections between 1860 and 1980. Over that 120-year period, he looked for markers of stability and markers of upheaval.

Much of what he found is intuitively obvious: When the country was in recession or there was a foreign policy disaster during the tenure of the last administration, the incumbent party was likely to lose. When there was a major domestic or foreign policy success, the economy was doing well, or an incumbent president was running for re-election, the party in power tended to hold on to power.

What Lichtman did was take his data seriously: He found that in every election between 1860 and 1980, when the answers to six or more of the 13 questions he devised went against the party in power, there was an upheaval — the challenger won.

He applied the model to subsequent elections. Starting in 1984, the model has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every election — sometimes months or even years before the election takes place"..............

Before the 2012 election, Lichtman said his model showed the answers to only three of the 13 questions — he calls them "keys" — turning against Obama: One was the long-term state of the economy. A second was the fact that the incumbent party in the White House had taken a shellacking during the previous midterm elections. The third was that Obama's sizable disapproval ratings meant he could not be considered a once-in-a-generation charismatic leader.




Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

[SnoodGator]

Why some have the facts and others do not: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... le/264855/

[Owlman]

Hmmmm. With all that, you'd think insurance companies would be upset with President Obama's PPACA. But their stocks increased when it passed.

[Cletus]

O's turnout was WAY down compared to 2008 correct?

Not in the swing states. He actually increased his turnout in Ohio, for example.

How do you figure? He got approximately 245,000 fewer votes in Ohio and there were about 300,000 fewer votes cast.

[puterbac]

BoJ is correct re:cancer. Also, criteria for inclusion for incidence, prevelance, and mortality are often reported differently and with different rule-out and exclusion criteria in other countries. That said, our working poor have much less access than the working poor of most industrialized countries.

BOJ and AA are both correct.

For example you how bad we suck when it comes to infant mortality, but that is because we count everyTHING. Where most other countries don't count many pregnancies and births in their statistics which artifically makes their numbers look better cause they cherry pick them. A preemie baby here who lives for a week and then dies is counted as it should be. But in many other first world countries being born very early or being below a certain birthweight means it never counted as a live birth if it dies before 1 yr old.

-----------------------

The World Health Organization … has long defined a live birth as any product of conception that shows signs of life at birth, with no consideration for birthweight or gestational age criteria. Although this definition remains unchallenged, countries have widely varying regulations for registration of birth that range from definition based to pragmatic. For instance, birth registration is required for all live births that satisfy the WHO’s definition of live birth in Canada, England and Wales, and the United States, whereas countries such as the Czech Republic, France, and the Netherlands specify limits based on some combination of gestational age (for example, at least 22 weeks), birth weight (for example, at least 500 g), or survival (for example, any live birth irrespective of birth weight that survives the first 24 hours after birth). Procedural differences due to longstanding traditions, social attitudes, and local incentives (including financial remuneration of healthcare providers) also probably dictate whether an infant at the borderline of viability is registered…

In summary, we observed large international differences in the reported proportion of live births under 500 g and under 1000 g birth weight and in neonatal deaths in these birthweight categories. International comparisons based on crude fetal, neonatal, and infant mortality rates yielded results that differed from comparisons that excluded extremely low birthweight and early gestation births, especially those at the borderline of viability. Variations in the registration of births at the borderline of viability and related problems compromise the validity of international rankings of industrialised countries by perinatal and infant mortality.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Make no mistake...this election was not about black...white...hispanic...social issues...it was about free shit.

[THE_WIZARD_]

....another question...I see ad nauseum on the national news about suffering from "Superstorm Sandy" (a whopping Category 1 Hurricane) and it sounds as if the government is not responding like it should....and nobody is blaming Obama...hmmmmm....yet with a Category 5 Katrina Bush was a dolt...

Imagine that.

[Professor Tiger]

I'd like to ready [sic] why some of these folks didn't come out and vote.

I'll address that question. I usually vote Republican, and I turned out to vote, but not for Romney. I wrote in Ron Paul. I thought I was a lone wolf in doing so. Turns out there are 3 million like me.

I posted here early and often why Romney was a terrible nominee, but I can once more to answer your question.

1. Romney is a mushy moderate. When he governed, he was passionately liberal on all the social issues. (Sorry IB, Romney's oh-so-convenient conversion to social conservatism just in time to pursue the R nomination convinced no one).

2. Romneycare was the prototype of Obamacare. (See #1 above.) Obamacare is the single most unpopular accomplishment of Obama's first term. That issue was begging to be knocked out of the park by a Republican challenger, but Romney was rendered a deaf-mute on Obama's biggest weakness because Romney cannot plausibly condemn what he himself championed. (Sorry IB, that Clintonesque federalism argument convinced no one.)

3. Since Romney could not run on his governing record any more than Obama could, he had to rely almost exclusively on his business experience. While the proven ability to make a vast sums of money may be impressive to those who aspire to do likewise, regular average working class people will simply never get all excited about tax cuts that give them an extra $10 a week, but gives their boss an extra $1,000 a week.)

[THE_WIZARD_]

This nation has become a bunch of wimps...I seriously doubt a conservative could win the POTUS nowadays...we have become a socialist state...people expect the government to take care of them...cradle to grave...individualism is dead. The Rust Belt and the Liberal Northwest should form their own Socialist nations...and then the rest of the country can stay America as we used to know it.

[10ac]

Do you really need a [sic] in a quote box?

Republicans will never win another presidential election.

My view on abortion is changing. I now think that if you are on the dole and get preggy, mandatory RU-486 (or RU4FSU81).

[Jungle Rat]

I see Wizzie still likes the pipe.

[Owlman]

when is Wizzie leaving

[Professor Tiger]

Republicans will never win another presidential election.

I disagree. After four more years, the electorate may be sick and tired of the results of Obama's economic policies. They may be very ready to consider economic conservatism again. Of course, the R Establishment will probably ensure the nomination of another mushy moderate like Dole, Bush Sr,. McCain and Romney. That's what they do. I'm guessing somebody like Bloomberg or Crist (if it were Constitutional) Schwartzenegger.

[innocentbystander]

Make no mistake...this election was not about black...white...hispanic...social issues...it was about free shit.

Its like a neighbor of mine said last week when we were talking about the election. We were at the block party discussing who we were voting for and my neighbor got all serious, wide-eyed, and indignant, "Are you kidding me? I HAVE to vote for Obama. I got two kids in high school, one is a junior and we live to check to check." Took a step closer to me, get red in the face. "Did you here what I said? I LIVE CHECK TO CHECK! I have no savings for our kids edcuation, nothing. We're upside down, we're fucked. If Obama gets re-elected then maybe my kids can go to college because somebody has to pay. I sure as shit can't. I know with Romney elected my kids are screwed." One person mentioned the debt and he got even angrier "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THIS DEBT SHIT!!!!! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE DEBT!!!!! MY KIDS NEED SOMEONE TO PAY FOR THEIR COLLEGE! FUCK YOU MAN!" And he sauntered off screaming at the world with a can of Natty-Light in his hand.

Wiz, there is no reasoning with people like that. I basically am left shunning them because their irresponsibility has meant that their pride has left the building. A better man would start moonlighting for a second check to send his kids to college instead of expecting government to step in and make his family whole.

[Cletus]

Make no mistake...this election was not about black...white...hispanic...social issues...it was about free shit.

Its like a neighbor of mine said last week when we were talking about the election. We were at the block party discussing who we were voting for and my neighbor got all serious, wide-eyed, and indignant, "Are you kidding me? I HAVE to vote for Obama. I got two kids in high school, one is a junior and we live to check to check." Took a step closer to me, get red in the face. "Did you here what I said? I LIVE CHECK TO CHECK! I have no savings for our kids edcuation, nothing. We're upside down, we're fucked. If Obama gets re-elected then maybe my kids can go to college because somebody has to pay. I sure as shit can't. I know with Romney elected my kids are screwed." One person mentioned the debt and he got even angrier "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THIS DEBT SHIT!!!!! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE DEBT!!!!! MY KIDS NEED SOMEONE TO PAY FOR THEIR COLLEGE! FUCK YOU MAN!" And he sauntered off screaming at the world with a can of Natty-Light in his hand.

Wiz, there is no reasoning with people like that. I basically am left shunning them because their irresponsibility has meant that their pride has left the building. A better man would start moonlighting for a second check to send his kids to college instead of expecting government to step in and make his family whole.

There is a zero percent chance that any of these encounters you describe ever happened. You do have a vivid imagination though.