Culture Gap Could Keep Democrats From Gaining Seats in 2006

[opebo]

Interesting article

I think at some point the Democratic leadership needs to tell the loony left to shut up. Publically.

The 'loonies' are these self destructive intolerant poors who can't bear to vote in their own economic interests if it might benefit someone they hate.

[opebo]

As usual, you have it completely backwards, dazzleman - poverty causes 'social ills', not the other way round.

[opebo]

As usual, you have it completely backwards, dazzleman - poverty causes 'social ills', not the other way round.

Wrong.  You have it backwards.  Poverty is the result of a certain type of behavior, in most cases.

Poverty and social ills cause each other.  It's like alcoholism.  A person is an alcoholic because he has problems.  But his alcoholism causes him to lose his job, family, etc.  How does he BEGIN to solve these problem?  He has to start by quitting drinking.  Drinking is the behavior that has ruined his life.  Only after he quits drinking can he begin to solve the other underlying problems.

Your argument is basically akin to saying that the alcoholicism is caused by the underlying personal problems, and that solving them will solve the alcoholism.  But in reality, it doesn't work that way.

Poverty is the result of lack of power, not the result of behaviors.  One may show up at eight AM and toil assiduously all ones life, and die nothing more than another working-class, while a rich may shoot heroin and crash mercedes all his life and still die cossetted in priviledge.  No, it is one's position in the heirarchy that determines ones well-being, not minor details like personal habits.

By the way alcoholism is a great example of something that is a 'problem' only if you are a poor. 

[opebo]

that last sentence can't possibly be true, opebo.

alcoholism (not just being a drunk), but clinical alcoholism is a disease, often inherited, that destroys lives, not just livelihoods.  This is well documented by the AMA. 

I was speaking in a social and political sense, angus.  As in - other people will treat a poor alcoholic worse than a poor sober, while they will treat a rich alcoholic exactly as well as a rich sober.

[opebo]

Poverty is the result of lack of power,

Utter rubbish. I disagree with the assertion that poverty is somehow the fault of the poor (this is certainly the case with a small, but very visable, minority) but that sort of crypto-marxist bullsh*t is so out of touch with reality it's almost comical.

Its either one or the other, Al.

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No... no it isn't. Cirrhosis is something of a social leveller.

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Please refer to my post directly above yours, where I deal with this medical misaprehension.  (It is beside the point)