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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (542852)	1/11/2010 1:23:46 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574956

This is what I meant when I responded to the friedman article. In every poll, there is roughly 30-40% of those polled that oppose what is happening in this country while roughly 2/3 are happy. Obviously the majority likes the way things are going but that 1/3+ is a huge drag. And it would be okay if they were constructively opposed.....but they are not. They criticize without providing a reasonable and constructive alternative. NOT THE RESULTS THE GOP WAS HOPING FOR.... It's been more than two weeks since the failed Christmas-day terrorist plot, but there hasn't been a lot of polling about the incident. CNN released a new one today, and it seems American attitudes are surprisingly encouraging on the matter, despite misplaced media hype and Republican exploitation/fear-mongering. In the wake of the Christmas day attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner, most Americans remain confident that the Obama administration can protect the country from terrorism, according to a new national poll. [...] Nearly two-thirds of people questioned in the poll say they have a moderate or great deal of confidence in the administration to protect the public from future terrorist attacks, up 2 points from August. Thirty-five percent say they have not much or no confidence at all, down 1 point from August. A number of Republicans have criticized the president over his handling of the attempted bombing of Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. But according to the survey, 57 percent approve of the way President Barack Obama's responded, with 39 percent disapproving of how he handled the situation. Of particular interest, the poll suggests Americans are less concerned about their personal safety now than before the failed attempt. Respondents were asked, "How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism?" The results were largely the same as they were in mid-October, with those who are "very worried" going down a little, and those who are "not worried at all" going up a little. So, most Americans are confident in the Obama administration; they approve of the president's handling of the issue; and they're not panicking about the terrorist threat. This is a pleasant surprise. The news wasn't entirely encouraging though -- a majority of poll respondents said they'd prefer to see Abdulmutallab tried in a military court, as opposed to the civilian judicial system, but chances are, the public hasn't heard much about the merits of this debate. Neverthless, overall it seems the public is remaining fairly calm about all of this, and Republicans' apoplectic talking points aren't having much of an effect. It's good to see.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (542852)	1/11/2010 1:50:05 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574956

>>> Prove to us that we have the best healthcare in the world. Do you have any statistics that support your assertion? I've posted this time and again. First and foremost, if you think a broad life expectancy figure, in some way measures, the quality of health care, you simply do not understand the issues. This is the same kind of mistake that WHO made in its oft-cited 10 year old study -- using obviously improper bases for comparisons amongst systems. Life expectancy is influenced far more by other factors than it is by the quality of health care (such as, the consumption of fast food, the sedentary lifestyles, smoking, etc. -- all of which are far more important predictors of life expectancy than any health care metric). If you really want to know about the quality of health care look at the problems people suffer from and how good a job American health care does versus other nations. Take cancers, for example: These are meaningful because they reflect the care that is received after a person is diagnosed with a given problem. Do you know that over half of innovation in the field of health care comes from the US? Drugs, medical equipment, techniques -- more than half the major innovation around the world comes from the US. I've posted about this stuff for months and I'm not going to recap it all. But it is pretty much indisputable that American health care leads the entire world by most important metrics. There are a few specific areas where America lags, and the bogus WHO study put us 37th behind Costa Rica -- but had to take into account level of socialization of medicine in order to get us there.