Some time ago tbere was a piece on the BBC about medical "fairs", volunteer doctors, dentists and opticians travelling the States bringing help to those unable to afford it. It was a horrible story.
This pm they interviewed the Englishman who set it up. He was so sorry he could only treat "...a drop in the bucket..." , a mere 100 000.
So, in the land of the free how many people are suffering pain, unable to read, unable to work . . . because state aid is seen as liberal socialist crap that, incidentally, probably cuts the profits of all kinds of rich and influential people?
Wonder if those suffering voted against the aid system Obama launched? Never mind, they are poor and therefore don't count anyway?
Bloody glad I am not an American!
Ironically, many of the states won by Trump also have high enrollments in "Obamacare." (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/states-won-trump-highest-obamacare-enrollment/story?id=44344734) (Autoplay video at link. >:()
"I need Obamacare and I fucking hate it" - random angsty industrial worker with a teenage mind
There was a NY times article a whole back, can't find it, about one woman who relied on food stamps and subsidized health care for a while, but voted for Republicans anyway because she was no longer using it and thought people using it now were "mooching". Other Trump voters apparently didn't think he was serious when he said he would gut Obamacare. The amount of self-delusion with some people is just impossible to understand.
Quote from: Recusant on December 29, 2016, 08:29:23 PM
Ironically, many of the states won by Trump also have high enrollments in "Obamacare." (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/states-won-trump-highest-obamacare-enrollment/story?id=44344734) (Autoplay video at link. >:()
If one graphed each state for religiosity, unemployment, income, state benefits drawn, predominant industrial tech type, education graduates v dropouts against support for Trump I wonder what the picture would be?
Quote from: Firebird on December 30, 2016, 05:23:00 AM
There was a NY times article a whole back, can't find it, about one woman who relied on food stamps and subsidized health care for a while, but voted for Republicans anyway because she was no longer using it and thought people using it now were "mooching". Other Trump voters apparently didn't think he was serious when he said he would gut Obamacare. The amount of self-delusion with some people is just impossible to understand.
One explanation I heard is that the poor and/or unemployed white workers who vote Republican don't think the Right's anti-safety net plans apply to them.
Quote from: Gloucester on December 30, 2016, 10:00:34 AM
If one graphed each state for religiosity, unemployment, income, state benefits drawn, predominant industrial tech type, education graduates v dropouts against support for Trump I wonder what the picture would be?
A Rorschach?
Quote from: Bad Penny II on December 30, 2016, 12:43:37 PM
Quote from: Gloucester on December 30, 2016, 10:00:34 AM
If one graphed each state for religiosity, unemployment, income, state benefits drawn, predominant industrial tech type, education graduates v dropouts against support for Trump I wonder what the picture would be?
A Rorschach?
Just a blob that your brsin can interpret any way it likes then?
Acfually the visulisation, in relative terms, of that kind of data would be a good exercise! Maybe a 3D topographical map with colour coded contours for each class and diameter representing numbers, one set for each state?
No, could not classify industry type in that way without imposing false values. Farming states are going to have a different mindset to high tech states I feel, but each is important to the economy - though the mindset difference is pertinent to my graph.
Nah, more work than it is worth without the odd super-computer or two to help!
It's no coincidence that many conservatives who rely on social services often vote for politicians who are completely against them. The most red states are almost the poorest and most uneducated as well. It's been well circulated recently, but a guy was railing on Facebook about how awful Obamacare is and he can't wait until they get rid of it, and his friends pointed out to him that he is insured through Obamacare. His response was no he wasn't, his insurance was through the Affordable Care Act. He honestly didn't know that they were the same fucking thing, and that's not an accident either. Republicans love a misinformed public, if people actually understood what was going on, no one would fucking vote for them.
I saw that image, it's funny.
(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FKZUDj7j.jpg&hash=8e5c321e7c946bdb236d0bacde3e7eed247319b2)
I don't have much doubt that it is real, but I don't just accept it either. I've talked to people who didn't realize that ObamaCare is the Affordable Care Act, and would talk like all the bad things (like "keep your doctor" or the website not working well for a few days), and all the good things were the ACA, as if they were two different things.
Do I get the feeling that a lot of Trump supporters might soon become former Trump supporters.
But there willalways be idiots that will spin it, in their own minds or from Trumpite misrepresentation, so Obama is to blame . . .
I saw that post below last week, and not sure if it's real or not, but there have been many Republican/Trump supporters who apparently did not realize that Obamacare, and the Affordable Care Act were one in the same.
Excerpt from the following
article (http://bizstandardnews.com/2017/01/14/trumpaca/).
Quote"I thought that Obamacare was different from the Affordable Care Act," said Waylon Harrison, a Trump supporters from Mobile, Ala. in an email. "Now I'm going to lose my health insurance. Trump was supposed to deport the Mexicans, bring the jobs back and lock up the Black Lives Matter terrorists. I didn't think he was going to screw over, us blue-collar, white folks."
Waylon sounds like a really nice person by the way, I mean for a racists ass.
The article also linked the following:
QuoteThe website GOP Apocalypse (http://www.gopocalypse.org/dismayed-trump-voters-tweet-about-what-losing-aca-means-to-them/) has posted the Twitter comments of Trump supporters who are enraged at the GOP's actions.
Quote from: Gloucester on January 16, 2017, 03:30:48 PM
Do I get the feeling that a lot of Trump supporters might soon become former Trump supporters.
But there willalways be idiots that will spin it, in their own minds or from Trumpite misrepresentation, so Obama is to blame . . .
Yeah, that's what I'm scared of. There are people saying we should sit back, let Trump break things, and people will finally come to their senses and realize the Republicans are full of shit. Nope. Republicans will find any excuse to blame someone else, and as we've seen, people are gullible enough to believe it if you yell loud enough. Democrats need to yell and scream as loud as possible at every opportunity. Fuck being the "better person" at this point./
Yeah... Well..
You want to know what I honestly think of this whole mess? No? Well, here goes;
Trump was elected by virtue of a hopelessly messy and at-a-glance broken elections system by people who really don't know better. You can blame the media, education, a general lack of interest and/or perspective but here, today, just before the inauguration, it just doesn't matter. Trump is the legitimate president of the United States for at least the next four years. The Republican party also has the majority in the Senate.
So... Let him build the wall, take away people's health insurance, leave NATO, fuck relations with China sideways... What have you. Let him do that, and a lot of people will suffer, not to mention the environment and the US' image abroad. And when you try to do your best to help your fellow man suffer less, or, if you are one of the less fortunate, just trying to... Well, keep breathing, really, learn the fucking lesson as you do that, and in the next election, vote for someone likely to not only clean up the mess, but also, or even in stead, fix a broken system once and for all.
Oh, and do invest in weapons and coal. I don't know shit about stock trading, but somehow weapons and coal seem... Safe. At least in the near future.
My jury on Trump is still out. It will not come in until the end of his term. What does baffle me, is the level of ignorance displayed in certain rather large circles of the US society as to what Trump's proposed policies will actually mean for them.
Will America ever be the same again?
Unless there is some kind of victory of sense over stupidity (awful lot of the latter still being displayed) . . .
Yes!
Then again, if this is the fuck-up it seems to be heading towards the GOP could sink in its own cess-pit over the next 4 years. If Trump even lasts that long. Oh, forgot Pence moves up one if Trump is impeached or abdicates.
Oops.
By the way, wow... I think I may have unleashed a literary gargoyle. :-/
Quote from: Asmodean on January 16, 2017, 04:53:37 PM
Oh, and do invest in weapons and coal. I don't know shit about stock trading, but somehow weapons and coal seem... Safe. At least in the near future.
Weapons, perhaps. Not coal. Coal is still fucked, at least in the US, because natural gas is so cheap now. Which is fine by me. I'm not against frakking completely if it's properly regulated, but it should be considered a transition to something even cleaner, including more nuclear.
As a US citizen, I am appalled that the chump got elected. My hope it that the swamp government is just enough of a monolithic juggernaut that even the chump can't jack it up too badly before his term runs out. Of course, "monolithic" really isn't a decent description. Maybe "loose amorphous mass with its own gravitational field holding it together".
Quote from: Fireball on January 18, 2017, 04:23:18 AM
As a US citizen, I am appalled that the chump got elected. My hope it that the swamp government is just enough of a monolithic juggernaut that even the chump can't jack it up too badly before his term runs out. Of course, "monolithic" really isn't a decent description. Maybe "loose amorphous mass with its own gravitational field holding it together".
Hmm, more like a whirl-pool with a bottomless hole in tbe middle? Held together merely by the energy of its own dynamics with little reference to the real world.
Perhaps all governments are black holes into which everything sinks. If so Trump finding a stopper would be a good thing if he had altruistic motives. However could "Trump" and "altruism" appear in the same sentence without something negating in between, such as "has no" or "is a stranger to"?
Certainly the American model of governance seems far too complex and almost designed to generate inter-departmental competition rather than cooperation. But, then, America seems to be established on competition.
Quote from: Gloucester on January 18, 2017, 07:23:07 AM
Perhaps all governments are black holes into which everything sinks.
Not really... No government is perfect, I think, but the Norwegian government, at least, does not fit that description.
Quote from: Gloucester on January 18, 2017, 07:23:07 AM
Certainly the American model of governance seems far too complex and almost designed to generate inter-departmental competition rather than cooperation. But, then, America seems to be established on competition.
After our experience with the English, distrust of government is part of our DNA. Thanks, Mum.
123
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on January 18, 2017, 12:55:10 PM
Quote from: Gloucester on January 18, 2017, 07:23:07 AM
Certainly the American model of governance seems far too complex and almost designed to generate inter-departmental competition rather than cooperation. But, then, America seems to be established on competition.
After our experience with the English, distrust of government is part of our DNA. Thanks, Mum.
It was not distrust of government that I was alluding to but the multiplicity of, say, security agencies - from the locally employed police to Homeland Security and the NSA etc just how many, potentially competing, "empires" are there?
I think Thoreau was possibly a main instigator of the distrust of government as a national movement, aided later by the influx of refugees from authoratarian and totalitarian European countries, criminal types from Italy and Ireland (and other places). Not forgetting the descedants of the freed slaves and victims of the segreation condoned by the state authorities and perhaps ignored by the national government fir a long time. And now almost any other immigrant who has to look over his or her shoulder and wonder if the next attack is coming from someone in authority.
Chips the size of a sequoia threading through America's history from before the Pilgrim Fathers (what about he mothers?) even decided to emigrate?
But it is not only The People versus The Government, it is the disparate (and desperate?) diversity of ethnic origins, many still hanging on to 19thC values, still not yet "E Pluribus Unum" and looking askance at each other. And I know that this is not a universal situation, there are places of peace and neighborliness, but it is the handle by which both bad media and bad politicians shake the whole structure, thus keeping the negatives in the spotlight.
And the fat cats are not above stirring if there is a buck or three million in it for them, just so long as the cost of civil unrest does not depress the markets. "Hey, need more armored vests and riot suppressing systems? Got them right here, ready to go!"
Quote from: Gloucester on January 18, 2017, 01:56:34 PM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on January 18, 2017, 12:55:10 PM
Quote from: Gloucester on January 18, 2017, 07:23:07 AM
Certainly the American model of governance seems far too complex and almost designed to generate inter-departmental competition rather than cooperation. But, then, America seems to be established on competition.
After our experience with the English, distrust of government is part of our DNA. Thanks, Mum.
It was not distrust of government that I was alluding to but the multiplicity of, say, security agencies - from the locally employed police to Homeland Security and the NSA etc just how many, potentially competing, "empires" are there?
I think Thoreau was possibly a main instigator of the distrust of government as a national movement, aided later by the influx of refugees from authoratarian and totalitarian European countries, criminal types from Italy and Ireland (and other places). Not forgetting the descedants of the freed slaves and victims of the segreation condoned by the state authorities and perhaps ignored by the national government fir a long time. And now almost any other immigrant who has to look over his or her shoulder and wonder if the next attack is coming from someone in authority.
Chips the size of a sequoia threading through America's history from before the Pilgrim Fathers (what about he mothers?) even decided to emigrate?
But it is not only The People versus The Government, it is the disparate (and desperate?) diversity of ethnic origins, many still hanging on to 19thC values, still not yet "E Pluribus Unum" and looking askance at each other. And I know that this is not a universal situation, there are places of peace and neighborliness, but it is the handle by which both bad media and bad politicians shake the whole structure, thus keeping the negatives in the spotlight.
And the fat cats are not above stirring if there is a buck or three million in it for them, just so long as the cost of civil unrest does not depress the markets. "Hey, need more armored vests and riot suppressing systems? Got them right here, ready to go!"
I live here, and it's still a great place to live. Maybe some disagree, but I don't see much civil unrest. It's magnified by the media, but the actual reality is that the vast majority of people get up every day and go to work or school. Then they enjoy their weekends. Maybe Trump will change all that - I admit to being concerned. But this is no third world nation. When was the last time you were here?
Doesn't "Third World" refer to countries which did not take sides in the Cold War? Because in that case, the USA is certainly not a Third World nation.
Quote from: Asmodean on January 19, 2017, 08:15:06 AM
Doesn't "Third World" refer to countries which did not take sides in the Cold War? Because in that case, the USA is certainly not a Third World nation.
I think that's the original definition, and then it evolved into meaning poor and developing countries.
Quote from: Asmodean on January 19, 2017, 08:15:06 AM
Doesn't "Third World" refer to countries which did not take sides in the Cold War? Because in that case, the USA is certainly not a Third World nation.
Maybe, but the current usage means "undeveloped".
And, I agree thst America is far from undeveloped. However it does, in its health systems at least, seem to generate 3rd world type problems for itself - minor illness (thatcan turn major) not being treated because the sufferers cannot afford insurance or trestment.
I did not look the phrase up before but now that I have it seems that Arianna Huffington is of a similar opinion.
I am sure most Americans live in nice neighbourhoods, but how often do they look into the cracks in their society? I used to fo something potentially very dangerous 40 years ago - spend a night walking round central London, amongst the hidden night people. Scary but gives one a different view of the world. But even there the sick and injured could, if they wanted to, go to any hospital and get some sort of treatment. Once when I was in hospital for a minor process a homeless person (an American by his accent) was brought in (stinking from lack of hygeine), treated, showered, given a haircut and beard trim, fed, reclothed and - when considered no longer in immediate danger - seen by a social worker and allowed to leave. And I wondered if he had ever paid National Insurance or tax, it made no difference - he was given the same treatment and respect the rest of us had.
Perhaps, with its mega-rich and very-poor America has more notable contrasts than most European countries. I did say that this was a handle that the media and politicians could get a grip of. Even in fiction the image of a violent, socially divided America seems to be the most common and that "tradition" goes back at least over my lifetime, from the western films of the 50s, with their shooting and fighting, to the likes of "Rambo" and beyond. There are times when Americans seem to celebrate that image of themselves. Certainly they advertise it well.
Individual Americans are just like individuals all over the world, good and bad. Perhaps it is America's still pre-eminent postion as a world power that places it in the world's eye so much. Its image, as a nation, will be determined by how it is seen by others. It has, so far, been sure enough of its own power and self-inage to largely ignore the opinion of the world.
Will Trump improve that image or make it worse?
Quote from: Apathy on January 19, 2017, 08:25:05 AM
I think that's the original definition, and then it evolved into meaning poor and developing countries.
Yeah, well... I think that may have to do with A and B largely sharing geography.
A border wall in Texas would make us look more like a Third World Country. It would become an ugly graffiti magnet, especially on the Mexican side. A $25 billion graffiti wall. Great.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on January 19, 2017, 03:12:47 PM
A border wall in Texas would make us look more like a Third World Country. It would become an ugly graffiti magnet, especially on the Mexican side. A $25 billion graffiti wall. Great.
Yeah, there was some great graffiti on the Berlin Wall!
:notsure: If the US is becoming more like third world America then what does that say about the actual third world america?
While like any large country there could be a lot of heterogeneity I don't think they're fully there just yet.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on January 21, 2017, 12:22:58 AM
:notsure: If the US is becoming more like third world America then what does that say about the actual third world america?
While like any large country there could be a lot of heterogeneity I don't think they're fully there just yet.
I don't think the phrase was coined to include the whole nation: "Poor America" or "The American Underclasses" also works but has less "punch". But all nations have their contrasts, no more so than India. Is India 1st, 2nd or 3rd world? It has billionaires and millions who sleep in the streets with less rights than the cows.
It is the case thst America is, currently, the world's largest evonomy and has the largest investment in armed forces. And a habit of shouting out loud just how great it is, how it has a "Dream", how it is the "Land of the Free" etc. Freedom has two edges.