All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

hey C-L are you applying in mpls??

McGovern, 89, helicoptered to trauma unit:

"About 10 feet from the door he slipped and fell and hit his head," Simmons said. "He was bleeding pretty heavily."

Hang in there, big fella.

I am! On Monday! (I woulda posted this but then ILX asploded)

!!!

good luck, duder. say whuddup to my mans dr. fi0l

good luck, c-l.

Thank you! I may have already seen the winner of my Interview Sweepstakes, but it is still hilarious and fun to do interviews. Plus I get to go to Mayo in a couple weeks! BECAUSE I CAN~

healthcare professionals are scum

Bah. This makes me feel shitty for even saying anything. Obv. river wolf is an excellent example of a liberal-arts grad who will be an awesome health-care professional. One of my favorite uncles was a lawyer before he went back to school for a microbiology Ph.D. Obv. there are also dudes like Atul Gawande and Siddharta Mukherjee who are top-notch doctors/writers.

I guess my thing with K3vin was that I'd never encountered him having talked about his pharmacy studies with the same degree of passion that he talked about other things. Obv. ILX as a whole leans more toward humanities-related subjects than toward hard science, but it still felt sort of dissonant to me. But I have a better understanding now!

sorry i was just bein cranky

np dude u know i <3

Humanities stuff is more exciting to discuss and debate and have opinions on, though, I guess. Like, even with medicine, the stuff that starts arguments is political stuff and the squishy humanities/ethics elements. And you get some of that over the course of the day, but when I talk with my friends from school about medicine stuff it is basically a) patient stories, which are kinda awesome, but I feel weird talking about them on the internet in all but the vaguest of terms, b) gossip about other students/residents/attendings, which is SO AWESOME but does not translate well, and c) talkin' bout residency. In the preclinical years it was talkin' bout how stupid certain stupid things were. (Stupid antiarrhythmics HATE YOU SO MUCH)

I am kind of doing c) right now but again I am compelled to be really vague because I decided to post to the internet with my initials and so if someone really cared enough to try, they could figure out my identity pretty quickly.

Panetta to Israel/Palestine: "Get to the damn table." Watch this cause a shitstorm.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/panettas-advice-for-mideast-peace-talks-just-get-to-the-damn-table/

antiarrhythmics are just the worst.

i'm at FVRS (across the river) rotating through neuro's softer lil brother. hope you enjoy our fair burg! how long you in town?

for some reason i've decided to watch the herman cain announcement on two different live feeds at the same time

live feed 1

feed 2

there's a one second delay between the two feeds and the result is extremely psychedelic

here's a third, if anyone wants to completely blooow their miiiind, duuuuude

feed 3

CNN's treating like the Apollo 11 launch.

They've even got Wolf on the phone from Florida.

he quoted the pokemon movie

lol

The Bush Obama administration's latest decree:

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

The lawyers were asked at a national security conference about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and leading al-Qaida figure. He died in a Sept. 30 U.S. drone strike in the mountains of Yemen.

The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, did not directly address the al-Awlaki case. But they said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp65xjwH5p1qamtb3o1_500.jpg

only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions

Sounds reasonable, until you realize that the targeting decision is what created the battlefield; there was no "battle" until the drone fired its weapon.

http://www.impawards.com/2000/posters/battlefield_earth_ver2.jpg

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question.

I would have thought Michigan Republican Upton would have said that Republicans in Congress and the tech boom were responsible for Clinton era growth, but I guess these folks never get this obvious question from our esteemed press corps.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/04/381510/upton-cant-explain-tax-cuts-jobs/

lol

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/an_absurd_choice_for_a_health033923.php

Why is Politico giving such awards in the first place, and really --Paul Ryan for “Health Care Policymaker of the Year”

Did y'all read that Obama called Pakistan's President to offer condolences for those recent mistaken killings/deaths, but I read that he did not offer the apology in a public setting as the White House was afraid that Republicans would use the footage to further their stupid message that Obama is not proud of "American exceptionalism"

the White House was afraid
the White House was afraid
the White House was afraid
the White House was afraid

It's all about politics

that's all "it" is ever about

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/an_absurd_choice_for_a_health033923.php

Why is Politico giving such awards in the first place, and really --Paul Ryan for “Health Care Policymaker of the Year”

Politico is hackery congealed and in print form?

Hmm.. so Obama gave a 55-minute speech on economic themes today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-economic-speech-in-osawatomie-kans/2011/12/06/gIQAVhe6ZO_story.html

yeah good speech, albeit composed entirely of empty posturing

"empty posturing" is the best kind of posturing.

really, why waste substance on posturing?

under President Newt our empty posturing will be fuller & more vital, worthy of the greatest nation on earth

god-emperor newt, thank you very much.

FUNDAMENTALLY fuller and more vital

yeah good speech, albeit composed entirely of empty posturing

I'm not sure what would constitute non-posturing. He can't exactly say "I promise to do this" without 60 votes in the Senate.

lol

have you not noticed how this rhetoric is completely different from the rhetoric he was using just 12 months ago. I mean, it's ALL rhetoric whenever a President makes a speech, but in terms of legislative priorities this stuff is basically meaningless. Non-posturing would involve staking out a specific legislative goal and then following through on it.

I mean it's pretty hilarious for him to cite regulators falling down on the job or whatever when you consider how he's handled the SEC

for example

or letting the Bush tax cuts get extended as part of a lopsided deal with the GOP (I dunno about you but tax cuts expiring >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> gays in the military)

The president's getting frisky because he thinks he can adeptly manipulate public opinion for the first time in ages.

^^^

there's also some sort of election coming up

In terms of specifics, there's the current proposal for extending the payroll tax cut for the middle class and paying for it with a tax surcharge on incomes over $1 million. But that's not going anywhere without Republican support. There are also things that have already been passed but are still in the implementation stage, such as Dodd-Frank. I guess we'll have to wait and see if further specific policies come out of this, but in general I think Obama tends to lay out the philosophy in broad-strokes first and then work out the specifics.

he is, as Z S reminds us, in election mode now, so he makes like Moses lifting his staff and rallying Dems behind him.

The president's getting frisky because he thinks he can adeptly manipulate public opinion for the first time in ages.

he's feeling frisky? how cute.

let it out shakey!