Perhaps Governor Clinton (and all subsequent governors of Arkansas) should have been more concerned with improving the worst public school system in the US.
With health care, I think something this year is better than nothing. I think Obama is going to have to take what he can get. While I think he might have let it slip away some, there just wasn't enough political will to do everything he wanted with the economy coughing and wheezing. IMO, that's a huge part of the problem. The economy and the wars are crowding out other major agenda items. Don't blame Obama for that. Those two things could destroy his presidency more than compromising on healthcare. It's too early for him to drop the bipartisan approach. It would severely damage him politically. I think the administration is laying a foundation to do so in the future, like next summer or just after mid-term elections. He has to be able to say, "I tried and they (Repubs) didn't want to work with me". Giving up after 7 months in office doesn't cut it. You have to be realistic about what was achievable this year. If Obama has 8 years in office, significant health care changes will happen before he leaves. You can't eat a whole cow in one day.
This is a great post. Obama's on the edge of becoming politically neutered. If he continues to compromise, he's doomed. I've been totally unimpressed so far. He has not really accomplished a damn thing except the stimulus package, and I did not consider that a "must have" anyhow.
I really don't know what you mean. My real point is why should we be surprised that Arkansas has such skewed statistics when their educational system sucks so bad? They have raised an entire generation of ignorance.
Ignorance has more to do with not having the ability to tell when the media is full of it and a lot less to do with who runs the media. Nice try though.
Thought this article was apropos Lies of Mass Destruction The same skewed thinking that supports a Saddam-9/11 link explains the power of health-care myths. Not being a complete idiot (contrary to the assertion of many readers I've been hearing from), I was not exactly surprised at the e-mails I got in response to my story analyzing why the myths about health-care reform—even the totally loony ones, like death panels—have gained such traction. One retired military officer called me "nothing more than an 'Obama Zombie' that has lost touch with reality," while a housewife sweetly suggested that I sign up for "socialistic medicine" and die, the sooner the better. (My kids get upset when people wish me dead, but hey, they'll survive.) But now I think I understand people who believe the health-care lies—and the Obama-was-born-in-Kenya lie—even better than when I wrote that piece. Some people form and cling to false beliefs about health-care reform (or Obama's citizenship) despite overwhelming evidence thanks to a mental phenomenon called motivated reasoning, says sociologist Steven Hoffman, visiting assistant professor at the University at Buffalo. "Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief," he says, "people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe." And God knows, in the Internet age there is no dearth of sources to confirm even the most ludicrous claims (my favorite being that the moon landings were faked). "For the most part," says Hoffman, "people completely ignore contrary information" and are able to "develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information." His conclusions arise from a study he and six colleagues conducted. They were looking at the well-known phenomenon of Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Some people, mostly liberals, have blamed that on false information and innuendo spread by the Bush administration and its GOP allies (by former members of the Bush White House, too, as recently as this past March). (As Dick Cheney said in June, suspicion of a link "turned out not to be true.") But the researchers think another force is at work. In a paper to be published in the September issue of the journal Sociological Inquiry(you have to subscribe to the journal to read the full paper, but the authors kindly posted it on their Web site here), they argue that some Americans believe the Saddam-9/11 link because it "made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq . . . [T]he fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11," they write. For their study, the scientists whittled down surveys filled out by 246 voters, of whom 73 percent believed in a Saddam-9/11 link, to 49 believers who were willing to be interviewed at length in October 2004. Even after the 49 were shown newspaper articles reporting that the 9/11 Commission had not found any evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, and quoting President Bush himself denying it, 48 stuck to their guns: yup, Saddam Hussein, directly or indirectly, brought down the Twin Towers. When the scientists asked the participants why they believed in the link, they offered many justifications. Five argued that Saddam supported terrorism generally, or that evidence of a link to 9/11 might yet emerge. These counterarguments are not entirely illogical. But almost everyone else offered some version of "I don't know; I don't know anything"—that is, outright confusion over the conflict between what they believed and what the facts showed—or switched subjects to the invasion of Iraq. As one put it, when asked about his Saddam-9/11 belief, "There is no doubt in my mind that if we did not deal with Saddam Hussein when we did, it was just a matter of time when we would have to deal with him." In other words, holding fast to the Saddam-9/11 belief helped people make sense of the decision to go to war against Iraq. "We refer to this as 'inferred justification,'" says Hoffman. Inferred justification is a sort of backward chain of reasoning. You start with something you believe strongly (the invasion of Iraq was the right move) and work backward to find support for it (Saddam was behind 9/11). "For these voters," says Hoffman, "the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war." For an explanation of this behavior, look no further than the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory holds that when people are presented with information that contradicts preexisting beliefs, they try to relieve the cognitive tension one way or another. They process and respond to information defensively, for instance: their belief challenged by fact, they ignore the latter. They also accept and seek out confirming information but ignore, discredit the source of, or argue against contrary information, studies have shown. Which brings us back to health-care reform—in particular, the apoplexy at town-hall meetings and the effectiveness of the lies being spread about health-care reform proposals. First of all, let's remember that 59,934,814 voters cast their ballot for John McCain, so we can assume that tens of millions of Americans believe the wrong guy is in the White House. To justify that belief, they need to find evidence that he's leading the country astray. What better evidence of that than to seize on the misinformation about Obama's health-care reform ideas and believe that he wants to insure illegal aliens, for example, and give the Feds electronic access to doctors' bank accounts? Obama's opponents also need to find evidence that their reading of him back in November was correct. They therefore seize on "confirmation" that he wants to, for instance, redistribute the wealth, as in his “spread the wealth around” remark to Joe the Plumber—finding such confirmation in the claims that health-care reform will do just that, redistributing health care from those who have it now to the 46 million currently uninsured. Similarly, they seize on anything that confirms the “socialist” label that got pinned on Obama during the campaign, or the pro-abortion label—anything to comfort themselves that they made the right choice last November. There are legitimate, fact-based reasons to oppose health-care reform. But some of the loudest opposition is the result of confirmatory bias, cognitive dissonance, and other examples of mental processes that have gone off the rails.
Nice try? I was not arguing with you, just making an addendum. And what we have here is a perfect storm, with two, equally important attributes. 1) General ignorance a) An inability to (as you say) determine when the media is full of it (lack of educational ability to research and discern independent of media bias). b) An apathetic attitude born out of our selfish and jaded culture. 2) Willful manipulation of this ignorance by the media/power cartels. Yes, refman, ultimately it is the responsibility of the individual to educate his/herself and act accordingly. However, the media is certainly not acting "in good faith" by willfully manipulating said individuals and inciting further bias. As Jon Stewart wrote: "A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy. It serves to inform the voting public on matters relevant to its well-being. Why they've stopped doing this is a mystery."
He's not taking anywhere near "what he can get." More than 70% of Americans support a public option. More than 70%. The "bi-partisan" gang of six allegedly isn't even discussing one. It's off the table because people like Chuck Grassley (who repeats the ludicrous death panel BS) don't want one. Obama still apparently believes that he can reach the American people with calm, rational arguments while the other side is screaming bloody murder about the government trying to kill old people to save money. Obama should be the one making the emotional appeal -- health care is a moral imperative and he should be treating it like one. It's not enough to debunk the lies; he needs to light a fire under this country to do the right thing -- in fact, the thing that polls show the country wants to do. Instead, so far, he is getting badly rolled by an unpopular minority party. And they are doing it mostly with flat out lies. This is his moment. He needs to get off the ****ing mat. This is his chance to do health care. If he does it right he will transform this nation for the good. If he doesn't do it right, this year, it's hard to believe he'll ever have another chance.
I understand how you feel but disagree. If Obama had done everything right so far, with this economy and the GOP's ridiculous rhetoric, a radical healthcare overhaul would still be very difficult. He does need to "get off the mat", start setting the agenda and make the difficult decisions that will alienate some people. This can't be left to congress. But getting 51 votes in the Senate to pass meaningful reform is the hard part. I expect a lot more arm-twisting from Obama very soon.
I worked for Jerry Brown's Houston campaign office during the 92 primaries. We had all those Arkansas stats memorized.
Three or four other states have been polled on this and, in every case, Republicans come out heavily on the birther side. As a Republican, does this embarrass you at all?
Obama is sidelining as Martha's Vinyard instead of fixin' the durn economy n' givin us are god given rite to bear arms. Galdurn Obama.
I don't know, but 8% of the people in North Carolina either don't think Hawaii is a state or are unsure. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_NC_811424.pdf
Obama is failing on health care. That much is clear. republicans are dancing in the street. They finally got a victory against Obama. Who cares if 40-some million people remained uninsured and that the rest of us continue to pay $15k a year for crummy health care.
Of course it does. Then again, I am not so pinned to the party label to really identify with the people that think this. When the whole notion was first raised on this BBS during the campaign my opinion was that if there had been any real question about Obama's birthplace that would DQ him from the White House, the Bush led government would have been all over it like a cheap suit. I may disagree with Obama on many things, I just don't have a burning desire to "find some dirt" on him. It just isn't good for the country right now to do that to the President.
My bad for misreading your post. The media is not acting in good faith, nor have they ever really. It is up to the individual to educate themselves, but the school system has to put the building blocks in place. This is where the school systems in many states has failed out nation.
