Voters steer Europe to the right

POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 16:35
VIEWED: 24282
PAGE 9 of 23

PREV PAGE 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NEXT PAGE

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:12 AM

Quote:
It's gonna take more than one at a time, Frem.

Well, there's that, but there's also the fact that I've been at this twenty-seven friggin years too.

That means, two, three generations worth of folks, each one influencing the next, and the next, every droplet spreading ripples.

It's not one at a time no more, and the pebbles themselves are bouncing merrily down the side of the mountain.

Of course, the evil overlords at the bottom of that mountain ain't got a clue, but by the time they do, welll....

Too late.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

KWICKO

Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Speaking of intellectual dishonesty and using anecdotal evidence to try to back a claim...

[sarcasm]
Personally I'm enjoying the honesty and lack of insult in that paradigm of honest debates posts.[/sarcasm]

Yeah, I know I was being more than just a bit snarky, but it just grinds my gears when someone wants to go around pointing out "intellectual dishonesty" and dismissing "anecdotal evidence", and then offers nothing substantive to back their own points other than anecdotal evidence.

Hell, by those kinds of metrics, I can prove categorically that murder and gun violence aren't a problem in America at all. See, I used to live in a REALLY bad neighborhood, where there was violence and shootings on a regular basis. But *I* was never assaulted, and *I* was never shot or killed, so that proves that there was no problem. Right?

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

KWICKO

Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Quote:
It's gonna take more than one at a time, Frem.

Well, there's that, but there's also the fact that I've been at this twenty-seven friggin years too.

That means, two, three generations worth of folks, each one influencing the next, and the next, every droplet spreading ripples.

It's not one at a time no more, and the pebbles themselves are bouncing merrily down the side of the mountain.

Of course, the evil overlords at the bottom of that mountain ain't got a clue, but by the time they do, welll....

Too late.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

I love that analogy, Frem. It gives me a great visual of a couple bigwigs sitting in their lodge listening as pebbles hit the roof...

tick

"Did you hear that?"

clank

"Did I hear what?"

ping

"That. There's something out there."

plink-plink

"Naaahh... I don't hear nuthin'."

WHUMP

Silence.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

KPO

Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:13 PM

Quote:
The "solution" that the EU is shoveling isn't Marxism

I never even hinted that it was! And I AM a pro-capitalist. Just pointing out that the radical revolutionary left position isn't there now as it was say, during the 1930s and a previous era of economic hardship. And thank God for that.

Heads should roll

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Other nations have folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor.

Bah, this quote from slaughterhouse 5 and all the rest I didn't copy is just a pile of go-see generalizations. No suprise when coming from the fff.net dubed "Queen of generalizations".

I guess stories of Jonny Appleseed weren't poor folk tales of a man with nothing but his faith in god as he traveled the United States in the early 19th century sowing apple trees for future generations to enjoy.

Well as more than a folk tale, he was a real man, who carried out apple growth as a business and yet himself kept nothing, spending his life giving all his fruits (pun surely) to others. At his death he willed his land holdings to his sister and gave the rest away to the needy. And some land, like his holding in Ft. Wayne Indiana was given to the city and now exists as Jonny Appleseed Park where an annual festival is held.

In short, speaking as a hoosier, Jonny Appleseed exists as our state's folk hero and seemingly as opposite to your article I quoted above exists in hoosier folk tales as a man who lived a poor lifestyle. He is taught to Indiana schoolchildren as a man who was extremely wise, virtuous, and giving. The rhyme Indiana kids learn (And I'm sure you've heard this before) is:
"Oh the Lord's been good to me. And so I thank the Lord. For giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the appleseed. The Lord's been good to me. And every tree I sow, will grow into a tree. And someday there will be apples there, for everyone in the world to share. The Lords been good to me."

And regard this from his wiki article:
According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine, towards the end of his career, Jonny Appleseed was present when an itinerant missionary was exhorting an open-air congregation in Mansfield, Ohio. The sermon was long and quite severe on the topic of extravagance, because the pioneers were starting to buy such indulgences as calico and store-bought tea. “Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians of old, is traveling to heaven bare-footed and clad in coarse raiment?” the preacher repeatedly asked, until Johnny Appleseed, his endurance worn out, approached the preacher, placed his bare foot upon the stump which had served as a podium, and said, “Here's your primitive Christian.” The flummoxed sermonizer dismissed the congregation.

Stop tossing around your generalizations. The thread topic runs off in crazy tangents and I haven't yet returned to your birth stats.

And I thought this was a conversation about socialized health care.

CITIZEN

Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Just pointing out that the radical revolutionary left position isn't there now as it was say, during the 1930s and a previous era of economic hardship.

Unfortunatly the radical revolutionary Right, hasn't.

KPO

Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:57 PM

Not sure we'll ever lose the far right.

Heads should roll

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Thursday, June 11, 2009 5:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
From a personal perspective ... MY child almost died at birth. IF they had done a C-section there is a good possibility she would not have been brain-damaged.

OK. As distasteful as this subject might be, yesterday I promised I'd visit it. I recall sometime in the past you had refered to your personal traumas in the medical world. I myself have experienced no such hardship but I can say that I exist as 2nd of my mothers 3 children and also as the eldest. My older brother Paul died one year prior to my birth and is a 1970's infant death statistic.

Walking around the internet tubes today I pulled several articles about infant mortality.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/05/08/17819.aspx
http://www.emaxhealth.com/1/50/25454/u-s-infant-mortality-rate-drops-a
nd-less-american-infants-are-dying.html

All of these articles say pretty much the same thing, that the USA is worse off than euro nations. I guess the key question is to ask why this is and then to extend that question to the ultimate thread discussion about socialized health care. Can a social network truely cancel the disparity?

One of the points of the CNN article is to draw attention to minority groups in america and how their statistics are higher than the average and that lower income stats are also higher, so I'll acceed that so far the data fits into your model. Fair enough.

I also found this article:
http://www.emaxhealth.com/58/3321.html
And this one from an academic paper
http://books.google.com/books?id=81KtzIY6Xz0C&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=dr
inking+rates+lower+income&source=bl&ots=TacCrtRoLo&sig=bUMTy-um8xyVGbSiJ0OQSjlG3GI&hl=en&ei=djUxSpP7NZKkNcv_4bMH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PPA161,M1
As well as other articles concered with drug use, and neglect.

What I'm seeking right now is something that ties all of these things together to paint the clearer picture but I cannot spend my day combing the internet tubes for it, so I'll just get to a synopsis proposal.

All those new articles agree that:
smoking is more common among lower income americans.
Drinking is more common among lower income americans.
Child neglect is more common among lower income americans.
Drug use is more common among lower income americans.

Combine this with the data in infant deaths & Insert the voice of the sheriff in The Train Job (Dust from the mines + air we got = recipe for Bowden's Malady). Draw a conclusion.

Is that proof of anything? No, I cannot say that it is. I think that the equation in this case possesses so many varibles to be acknowledged, the journey to the solution would be futile. But like my analysis of average life expectancy given yesterday, I also can say with absolute certainty that it would be intellectually dishonest (just for you kwik) to grope at wiki or CIA stats for use as proof to change social policy. No regard is given to the reverse stats.
What are obesity rates in western europe?
What are smoking rates?
alcohol abuse?
Drug abuse?
Child Neglect?

Does the conversation shift then away from governmental social support and into something else? Should we be changing social paradigms of lower income americans to improve their health? We libertarians say yes, that rugged individulism and personal responsibility are vital to a healthy human condition.

As a final bizarre end to this anaylsis I found this: http://www.arc.org/racewire/030210z_kashef.html
I really don't know what to say when a person writes that "College- and graduate-school educated black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate than white moms who didn’t finish high school"

Wow. Just wow. I never knew that such a thing would be true. Signy, perhaps you'd concede that some areas of the world are genetically better off in this regard (sweden perhaps? I don't know.) and since america is a melting pot we serve as genetic average for the world?

Lets also not miss sight of the fact that, like the life exp

KWICKO

Thursday, June 11, 2009 6:00 PM

Quote:

All those new articles agree that:
smoking is more common among lower income americans.
Drinking is more common among lower income americans.
Child neglect is more common among lower income americans.
Drug use is more common among lower income americans.

Lack of health care is more common among lower income Americans, too. That might have something to do with any or all of the above...

Also, how do we compare on wealth distribution? In other words, we know that these things are more prevalent among the poor. The question is, how many poor do we have relative to those Euro nations? If you say these things are more prevalent among the poor, and that's no big deal because they're poor and no one really cares if they live or die, and THEN you find that some 80% of us qualify as "poor" by Euro standards, might that impact your thinking a bit? (I pulled that 80% number out of my ass, obviously; I don't have the real number, which is why I asked the question).

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

CITIZEN

Thursday, June 11, 2009 6:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Lets also not miss sight of the fact that, like the life expectancy stats, we're talking about very small differences. 6.3/1000 = 0.63%. Recall that the delta value of life expectancy twixt the US and the UK is 7 months. Is France a socialist paradise with its 0.42%?

There was that World Health Organisation report that ranked France's Healthcare system 1st, and the US's 37th. One might say you get what you pay for, until you realise that France spends 7% GDP on Healthcare, the US 14%, and France's system covers everyone.

In fact, there's something from Reuters that would seem relevent:

Quote:
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN07651650

But why stop there?

Quote:
Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries' health systems. Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The inclusion of physician survey data also shows the U.S. lagging in adoption of information technology and use of nurses to improve care coordination for the chronically ill.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2007
/May/Mirror--Mirror-on-the-Wall--An-International-Update-on-the-Comparative-Performance-of-American-Healt.aspx

PREV PAGE 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NEXT PAGE