GOP--Sore Losers

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 2:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Why do conservatives keep going off about how bad the Carter Administration was?

"Misery" Frank, it's all about the misery. Carter wins on the misery index (the combination of unemployment and inflation). The irony was that he used it against Ford as a campaign tactic. It is a classic case of being hoisted on ones own petard. Looking at this on a year by year basis, Ford’s worst misery was 17.68 in 1975, Carter’s was 20.76 in 1980. By the way, the highest Bush number is 9.61 in 2008. The current index is 8.07 (because of a negative inflation rate - Misery Index (8.07) = Unemployment rate (9.5) + Inflation rate (-1.43))

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 2:15 pm

Crissa wrote:Look, we had tzor arguing for funding ERs. That's pretty awesome, if you think about it.

Anyhow, the problem with the dialog is that it looks like this.

Hey I can be pretty awesome at times; you should see me defend the cars for clunkers program and calling those Republican Senators out of their minds for opposing it.

However, I think your argument calls for the counter argument. Ironically, Michelle Malkin just wrote about this today Tea Party-Bashers Gone Wild. What is “civic vigilanteism” and why invent the term now when …

They sat quietly while Code Pink disrupted hearings on the Hill and harassed Marine recruiters.

They looked the other way when ACORN illegally broke into homes and stormed foreclosure auctions.

Yes, the right of the people to be heard is a fundamental right given in the constitution, but apparently if you aren’t the liberal elite, that doesn’t apply, while the right to throw rocks, smash windows, vandalizing businesses and breaking into private homes are all fine when done in the name of almighty liberalism.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:13 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Are you going to defend Chiropractors?

Really?

They are evil sons of bitches. Stone cold killers.

Link? They fixed my back after an injury. I mean, sure, they're trained in the deadly arts of Marine-style neckbreaking assassination techniques, but how much damage/how many deaths can we attribute to these?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:14 pm

We're a country of debtors. High inflation is good for a majority of people, even if it is unsettling.

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:35 pm

The idea, Frank that it is the combination of the two (unemployment and inflation) that is bad; when one is high and the other is not high, it is not so bad. In some cases one can argue that both inflation and unemployment is good for some people, and even a "majority" in some cases.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 4:07 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Are you going to defend Chiropractors?

Really?

They are evil sons of bitches. Stone cold killers.

Chiropractors have helped my family greatly over the decades. I don't use them often, but sometimes one simply needs to.

Sure some are frauds and claim all sorts of bullshit, but then there's actual legit ones. They provide a service and reduce join pain. So fuck you and your bullshit.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 5:54 pm

I believe he might be referring to how many chiropractors are against things like vaccinations, which leads to people dying.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:01 pm

I loved the idea of them as stone cold killers, like they're a secret society of assassins.

And the majority of vaccinations are useless.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:43 pm

Chiropractors, like everyone else in the alternative medicine crazy town circus, don't actually have a consistent stance on anything. They have no methodology as a whole, no theory of medicine, and basically no body of work that would allow people to treat them as a group.

Now, chiropractic medicine was created by osteopaths in the 1800s based on a theory that all disease was caused by impediments of spinal flow, and that they could cure influenza, syphilis, and blindness by contorting peoples' spines. This idea is wrong, it's stupid, and it's dangerous.

And a lot of chiropractors still believe it, and still try to do that shit. And a lot of them don't. A fair number of people who call themselves "chiropractors" are actually just masseuses. And frankly, I have no especial problem with them. But I'm very wary of them, because for historical reasons they use the same name as, and do not bother to distinguish themselves from, dangerous lunatics who should have vanished completely after Marie Currie.

-Username17

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:49 pm

It's for the same reasons that you should be wary of Nutritionists. The term includes people who have degrees in appropriate areas and try to give you good advice on your diet (people who should, by all rights, call themselve Dieticians, but do not because Nutritionist is the fashionable term) and nuts who advocate downing vitamin pills (of their own design) by the truck load to cure AIDs - in exclusion of Antiretrovirals. I am not joking on that last bit.

If the person you are taking medical advice from does not use a job title that is a protected term, then you should be very cautious about the advice they give you. No matter how harmless you think their advice might be.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:49 pm

tzor - the problem with Michelle Malkin is that she's lying. Code Pink didn't interrupt proceedings. ACORN didn't break into people's homes. There's a big difference between a protest outside and a few, small detractors needing to be pulled from the gallery... And a huge corporation advocating inserting people into discussions so they will not continue.

I hope you see the difference.

While I'm all for a public health option using evidence based medicine, I get worried by edge cases like skin-disease-43 having treatments that work on some small portion of patients getting mixed in with evidence that it doesn't work for everyone. That happens in HMOs now, they choose their one treatment, and if it doesn't work for Joe Blow, he's shit out of luck.

-Crissa

PS: Malkin is lying. While the total value of those names she mentioned is $40 million per annum... The industry lobby for health insurance spent $133 million dollars in the second quarter of this year alone. That's four times more money in one quarter the time, on one topic, rather than a diverse set of topics.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 8:39 pm

Well, yeah I can buy that, Frank. As far as I'm concerned, they *are* just weirdly specialized masseuses. As far as I've ever seen in his practice, at most there'll be things about bad spinal alignment affecting blah blah blah. Mainly resulting in pain. Thankfully, nothing about curing diseases or whatever.

In any case, I find value in his services. I and my family often get joint and back problems, which he has helped. Now, if only the other ones you mentioned were this legit...

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:40 pm

Well, you should always check someone's degree, certification, and then look up what they said so you can talk to them in an informed way.

This goes for doctors to mechanics to whatever.

-Crissa

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:54 pm

Koumei wrote:Link?

Link

That's a copy of an article that the British Chiropractors association is trying to suppress under draconian British libel laws. Laws under which it should be noted truth is not a defense. They have already gone so far as to retroactively purge their own websites of references to the article, or even references to anything the article mentions.

The basic idea is that actual "brand name" Chiropractic treatments do nothing for anything except the back itself, and what they do do for the back is almost immeasurably minor in comparison to the risk of stroke, spinal injury, brain damage, and death.

If it were a drug it would be banned.

edit: and apparently the article is an edited version. So there may be even further damning material in the original. Edit+Edit+: OK the extra bits that were removed are actually ridiculously insignificant in nature. This libel case is so lame it's amazing it has legs even in the UK.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 12:19 am

Yeah, in Australia you only get it under medicare if it's from a government certified professional as part of a chronic illness management plan created by your GP. As the system only functions if GPs are taking a reasoned and serious approach to making clinically the best decisions for the patient, I have to conclude that if your GP thinks medically it is a good idea for you to do XYZ, then whatever as far as I am concerned.

The other altenative route is if a Department of Veterans Affairs employed doctor decides you need treatment XYZ which can be administered by a chiropractor.

Essentially, at that point I really have no way to make an informed decision, but in general I'm okay with things that your GP thinks are a good idea being covered by medicare, especially as it is illegal for your GP to pick up kickbacks for doing so. I mean I support all the other shit doctors tell me is a good idea without any real way of knowing if it is a good idea or not (aside from evidence presented by other doctors), so if the government certified doctors say that Chiropractor is part of treatment for chronic medical condition Z, then fine.

Edit: Incidental note, I only mentioned physotherapy and massage therapy, Chiropractor was quoting you. Do you think physio should be banned?

I really have no idea. I think the medical system should cover whatever is medically most cost effective. Maybe Chiropractors should be out and physios should be in. Dentistry should definately be in. I'll go with whatever the doctors think is the most effective.

Second incidental note: Whatever you think about them, people want them, hence highest satisfaction rates in french system. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you want the NHS, patients and doctors don't really.

The NHS: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/aboutnhs/P ... cture.aspx

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:05 am

Hmm, so with them out, that means there's no real fix and the best thing to do for back pain is just keep taking masses of opiate analgesics? I am so there.

Also, as an aside, today I remembered that the body builds up resistances to chemicals, then lowers the resistances over time. It's been ages since I needed codeine for my back. This morning I took 90mg to relax for a job interview, and I ended up getting pale, sweaty, shaky and nauseous.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:40 am

Koumei wrote:Hmm, so with them out, that means there's no real fix and the best thing to do for back pain is just keep taking masses of opiate analgesics? I am so there.

I wouldn't know. Back pain is very hard to treat.

But as a starting point physiotherapists are not automatically chiropractors and visa versa. Note that the link itself discusses "conventional" physiotherapy for back problems. Still somewhat questionably effective but with far less death, paralysis and brain damage.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:49 am

Well, chiropractic procedures - some of them, anyhow - have been shown to have as much or more efficacy as drugs for lower back pain, less so for upper back pain, and none at all for head pain. That doesn't stop there from being evidence-based uses for massage therapy.

I don't think we should jump on people because they don't know the history of the word they're using. We should, however, flag it...

...But for some reason, we don't flag twelve-step programs for having frou-frou basing, either. Or do we?

-Crissa

PS, 700 cases over an undefined set of time... In the US, a study of the stroke chance found there was the same number of strokes in patients treated conventionally, indicating there was some unknown factor at work.

violence in the media · Mon Aug 10, 2009 2:44 pm

Newsweek article about how the Democrats need to fight back against the Republican mob minority.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:38 pm

You know, I did chiropractic stuff for some upper back problems (T2 and T5 are permanently dislocated without drastic surgeries that I'm not a good candidate for), and it didn't help much. What did help was dropping 60 pounds and getting back in shape. I'm still sore most days, but it's something I can deal with and still live an active life.

I was somewhat suspicious of the Chiropractor's assertion that conventional was false and his way is the only correct way. I tend to suspect anyone who says that, I've found that I hear that a lot when I'm getting ripped off.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:46 pm

Fight back? That's not in the Democrat arsenal. They love just taking it while Republicans create artificial riots of in order to circumvent the law to enforce their minority opinions.

Hell, they stole a presidency with that tactic, why not block health care too?

(image shamelessly stolen from bartcop)

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 9:45 pm

Exactly how are we supposed to fight?

In this case, we fight by not canceling the hearings. Let them keep getting on the news as no-nothings. It only helps.

And maybe write op-eds like this.

We may not be able to fight back, but we shouldn't let them stop us.

-Crissa

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:43 pm

That alone might be difficult. The Dems are too independent. Without the discipline and solidarity shown by the Repubs the Dems are at a huge disadvantage. Only through the Repub's own incompetence were they forced to relinquish (that's right I am implying they let it happen) the Government.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:27 am

What I think you mean is not that the Dems are too indepedent, but that the Democratic party specifically has a wing of Dems that are getting ridiculous amounts of money from the health care industry and has a stake in sitting on the fence and hoping that this issue goes away.

You may have heard of them. They're called Blue Dogs. I can't tell you how amazingly bad it was for us to lose Ted Kennedy and get Max Baucus.

Absentminded_Wizard · Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:29 pm

You may have heard of them. They're called Blue Dogs.

That would be these blue dogs