Yup, and for Clinton in '92 that thing was healthcare.

I and a lot of other folks do and always have; they aren't (theoretically) the same as the Dixiecrats, because they did have more issues than the dead letter of segregation, but if you read what Lee Atwater (who did more than anyone to make Reagan) said about it you can see the other issues were just a more subtle example of the original one:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'N--r, n--r, n--r.' By 1968 you can't say 'n--r'—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'N--r, n--r.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

Same song, second verse. And by 1980, of course, the Southern Dems who made tax cuts and states rights their priority (and began calling affirmative action "reverse racism" ) culminated in this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil_%28politics%29

Perhaps the most instructive statements from Atwater, however, are the ones he made after discovering he was terminally ill, a pretty harsh repudiation of the scorched earth tactics he pioneered and a public apology for his character assassination of Dukakis in '88.

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul. "

It's amazing how the knowledge one is not just going to meet ones Maker, but SOON, changes perspective. Personally, I think that price too high to pay for "winning. " Moral majority, indeed....

The lions share is BS, but when dealing with a commercial industry you're dealing with people as good at selling snake oil as any politician is. In the case of healthcare, literally. The Clintons severely underestimated the industry backlash (just as now, that's where nearly all of it started; media blitz/=grass roots even if you do pound your message into peoples heads till it sounds sensible. ) No one was worried about the government making you choose your doctor from a list or pay for certain procedures yourself until insurers told them they should be, even though the insurance industry was already doing those very things. Just as now, when the cost mitigation panels that have been industry standards for decades are decried as "death panels" when the government wants to use them. Neither private nor public insurance says you can't have the treatments, they just aren't always willing to foot the bill. With the government you have these things called "elections" to make them listen; with private insurance you appeal (to the same company) and possibly file a grievance, then pray.

Did you see the article Lady Lorraine posted a few days ago? Not the first time Canada and other countries took the lead where we didn't. The first human heart transplant was in one of those poor backward countries with socialized medicine. Again, it sounds good if you don't look at where medical innovation is occurring; then it doesn't hold water. It's the same argument pharmaceutical companies use to justify America being the only Western country without price controls: "Our US profits fund the R&D from which all countries benefit. " Problem is their R&D budget is a fraction of what they spend on advertising, which their own execs have admitted is over half their budget.

No, it's not, at all. Especially from the same folks whose last VP routinely implied anyone not on board with any administration policy was a traitor; I believe the line was "helping the terrorists" (though "You're either with us or with the terrorists" was good, too. ) De Mint and his cronies never looked at what Obama was trying to do. Indeed, I'd be more sympathetic if they had, because Obama himself has attempted little; he delegated to Reid and Pelosi then told them to give away whatever the other side demands in exchange for being able to say they passed a bill. The loyal opposition isn't any better though, willing to do whatever it takes to make sure Obama CAN'T say that. We do NOT have time for this crap, from either side. So, yes, I have an honest objection to trying to defeat someONE rather than someTHING. Oppose the policies, but when we enter the realm of character assassination for its own sake see: Atwater, Lee.

Odd, this is the first I've heard anyone rail at CORPORATE trial lawyers despite nearly twenty years scrutinizing the issue. Still by way of rebuttal, still the only solution is "cap damage awards and everything will be fine. " I guess if that's all we're willing to do, it BETTER fix everything. I doubt very seriously damage caps will ever be so low insurance companies don't have law firms on retainer; their business practices combined with customer volume will insure that. For the record, if you want to ban suits when some idiot turns his coffee upside down to see if the lid's on right, fine by me. If you want the feds to limit to how much free and impartial juries can award for REAL damages up to and including death, I have a problem with that. And, once again, I believe the Seventh Amendment does, too; so much for the status quo and keeping big government out of the citizens business.

Yeah, the exit polls got FL wrong for the second election in a row, the first goof since 1948 (the first year Gallup did Presidential polling. ) Was that "poorly weighted" too?

That so few have done so in the past twenty years still strikes me as a biting indictment of the "Clinton boom. " Real wages didn't rise much for most workers, and while a lot of people at the time thought they were rolling in dough, most of it was souffle dough that deflated rapidly after 2000.

Edwards screwed up big time, and as someone who supported him strongly I was very disappointed, especially since he made his faith the touchstone of his legal and political career. You won't find any of his clients winning awards for scalding themselves. You WILL find one who suffered brain damage due to being overprescribed, a child with her guts ripped out by a defective pool drain, a child with cerebral palsy due to its cartilage covered brain being seized by forceps during delivery, people who got AIDS from contaminated blood. Maybe you think the government should tell the citizens what their suffering is worth, but I think it should be the other way around, and since the Constitution mandates a jury trial for any civil suits involving >$20 I think the Framers are on my side. First time I saw Edwards he said something I'd waited all my life to hear from a Dem: That recognizing the civil rights of blacks didn't diminish those of whites, and that the richest country on earth should have room for everyone at its table.

None of which makes cheating on his terminally ill wife any less disgusting, nor lying about it, convincing others to lie about it, and even trying to fake DNA tests to cover it up any less despicable. While I can tolerate (but not excuse) shameful personal lives in solid public servants, when we enter the realm of trying to falsify legal and medical records, public trust is gone.

That sounds a lot like saying you don't like the metric because of the results; Scandinavian countries tend to do better, and most objective social scientists would expect that, but it doesn't mean they cooked the books. It seems far more likely that those who say, "socialism has destroyed Europe, " will dismiss data saying the opposite BECAUSE it says the opposite.

The irony is that from all I've heard on both sides of the Atlantic, postsecondary education benefits are probably underestimated for the States, because European degrees are, from what those holding them say, far more narrowly focused on a major. The assumption seems that anyone whose grades and tests can get them into university (usually the sole admissions factor in Europe) knows enough math to function as an English professor without taking more math, and vice versa. Contrast with America, where a minimum amount of prereqs in non-major disciplines is required to ensure you don't graduate PhD basket weavers who can't do integer math (btw, underwater basket weaving IS a UT class, but ONE class teaching how to weave wicker baskets by softening the dried textiles in water first, and not a major by any means. ) I don't think the "public ed bias" noteworthy; maybe you were an exceptionally blessed autodidact (it happens) but people who learn more on their own than from formal texts and multiple experienced instructors are definitely the exception rather than the rule, and that's all the "bias" reflects. If you simply mean you were home schooled, unless accreditation has changed DRAMATICALLY I don't see how the HDI will undervalue that relative to standard public education.

Yeah, the thing is, none of the three factors is completely independent of the others. In fact, you probably just cited the very reason why adult literacy is considered: It impacts both life expectancy and earning (and in Europe, where most Western democracies lie, income is largely irrelevant to education, though education is VERY relevant to income. ) Life expectancy will have a minimal impact on literacy, and outside the US the same is generally true of income, but education has a direct impact on both of those, so maybe it's weighted as it should be.

Only because it actually is.

But, as you note, "adult literacy" involves higher education as well as "See Spot Run. " I think we'd agree education increases life pleasure in America, but the simple fact is there are educational opportunities from which I would benefit, and for which I'm suited, that are simply not on the table for me here. I would be happier were that not the case. I would earn more. I would probably live longer. And even after adjusting for purchasing power parity (which the HDI does, or Norways per capita GDP would be TWICE Americas instead of $7000 more, if you really want to make the argument "happiness=income" ) incomes don't always rise in a linear fashion like life expectancies. In fact, the metric would be useless outside of the developed world without PPP, for the same reasons people say, "sure, Chinese workers don't make much, but their cost of living is a lot lower, too. " Yeah, if we graph that in a linear way Americas $14.5 trillion GDP would put it way ahead of second place Japans $5 trillion, but people might say the metric just rated "how American a country is. " Though, for the sake of argument, America is second if you count the EUs $18 trillion as one country (darned socialism and it's $4 trillion outperformance of superior laissez-faire!) It's less if you use World Bank rather than IMF numbers, but that's because it excludes Warsaw Pact survivors (i.e. per capita GDP would be higher. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29

Iceland dropped like a stone--because they bought the same laissez-faire get richer quick scheme Wall Street did. For people in love with making money, the laissez-faire folks sure are bad at it. Iceland did what America said was best, and took a bath. Not a ringing endorsement of our approach; the countries that stayed the hell out of that are still doing fine.

And as long as life expectancy is (in general) a function of literacy rather than the reverse adult literacy will be at least as important. You may see an illiterate live to 115 while a triple PhD has a coronary at 50, but if you want to wager on life expectancies of 1000 random people I'll take the better educated every time.

It actually IS science; it's just that social science isn't usually as precise as physics. It's not like they just pulled numbers out of thin air and selected for the ones that made their favorite countries look good (even if some wish to believe that when THEIR favorite country isn't #1. )

I don't think it's arbitrary at all; they intentionally didn't weight one over the other so that a nation that excelled in one area and lagged in others wouldn't end up on top.

Actually, it's the purchasing power parity per capita GDP, so undeveloped nations don't automatically lose out to developed ones just because the price of a car in the first wouldn't buy a sandwich in the second. Essentially you're saying the same old thing: Western Europeans MUST be miserable because their taxes are so much higher. Which probably explains why they're still choking Ellis Island like they did in 1900--oh, right. My fiancee is SCARED to live here (though part of that is that you can count the annual gun murders in Norway on the fingers of one hand. )

Look closer. Greece was better off under Pericles than during Platos life, but you're probably 20X happier than most of the SLAVES even then. Life expectancy was a BIT lower, too. Especially when Sparta besieged 1000 square miles of land occupied by 100,000-400,000 people (when they weren't trapped inside; obviously it was higher during the siege, see second paragraph of second section here: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521807937&ss=exc ) Might have had something to do with the plague that killed Pericles and thousands of other ecstatic people; maybe we're not happier, but we can treat typhoid fever.

Since you bring it up, however, Wikipedia claims the reforms that democratized Athens and ushered in their Golden Age were:

Concession of salaries to public functionaries.
To seek and supply work to the poor.
To grant lands to dispossessed villagers.
Public assistance for invalids, orphans and indigents.
Other social helps.

Note: Not "other laissez-faire economics helps. " Based on the changes they made, I'd say they wouldn't consider THAT any help at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Pericles#End_of_the_Age_of_Pericles

Meanwhile, it seems a given that GDP, even PPP per capita GDP, will cover a MUCH broader range than life expectancy or adult literacy. Average linear adjusted life expectancy is pretty much limited to a range of sixty (if I can conveniently write it as one word, it probably doesn't need to be a log scale. ) What's the range on adult literacy? Twelve or thirteen years of K-12 plus the time for a doctorate or two? Maybe there's a REASON they used a logarithmic scale for the five digit numbers and used a linear one for the two digit numbers. Social science IS a science, and that means you don't just make up numbers and throw them at the UN. Y'know, unless your professional credibility has become wearisome.

Yet, and once again, as you noted yourself "adult literacy" isn't literally confined to Fun with Dick and Jane (if you're going back on that academics are no longer favored over longshoremen. ) I think most people who know wtf is going on derive pleasure from that over and above income and life expectancy. Though I must admit there are times when ignorance does seem like bliss.

I doubt many countries let people die in the streets from cholera because they're spending too much teaching people who can't or won't learn to read. Guess which one's more likely to cause riots.