Welcome to the second weekly Kossack Soundbite Potluck.
Last week's winner, Friend of the Court, has chosen for this week's topic to be healthcare. For those who already know the rules and need no intorduction to the topic, have at it.
For the newcomers, the rules are simple: any time you post a comment with the title "SB" in front it is understood that your comment contains exactly one soundbite that you're putting forward for community consideration. Then people will vote on the best soundbites by whichever ones get the most recommends. In order to spice things up, we make it a bit of a contest. Whoever comes up with the highest rated soundbite by the time the diary can no longer receive recommends gets to pick the topic for the next potluck, to follow the next week..
Before I introduce this week's topic, let's first set down some criteria for what makes a good sound bite. In no particular order, the qualities of a good sound bite are:
- Concise - this especially means being short. The statement should be able to stand on its own with as few words as possible.
- Memorable - it has to be able to stick in people's minds by either hooking on to something everyone already finds unforgettable or through some innate quality of the soundbite itself. Shortness helps here, but so does wittiness, humor, bite, and ideally rising to pithiness.
- Truthiness - Ideally this means that it's true, but sadly that is not an absolute requirement. The point is that it shouldn't illicit rejection by "Ridiculous!" and should at least sound like it could become conventional wisdom.
- Requires no Explanation - this could technically be part of conciseness, but it bears repeating. If it requires explanation it isn't a soundbite. Ideally, we could argue by explanation and leave soundbites out of it. In reality the explanations need to be saved for after people are at least convinced to be open minded by the soundbites.
- Contributes to Narrative Wars - whether attacking a Rethug narrative, bolstering one of our own, or establishing a new one, our soundbites should fit in to a larger strategy for maximum effectiveness.
Ok, now that all that's out of the way, I give to those of you still with us the topic for this week:
Topic: America's Sick, She Needs Real Healthcare Stat!
The system we have could best be described as "sick care" - if someone's life is on the line, we'll go to any expensive lengths to save it but we won't life a finger to prevent the potential catastophe before hand. Solutions to this problem range from universal healthcare to... I don't know what others there are, frankly.
Or, you could focus on more near term goals that are also of urgent importance: Medicare (esp Bush's part D), drug patents, drug importation, etc.
Have at it!