hadn't noticedOriginally Posted by Grim
hadn't noticed
Exactly. I'd go further back, though. RICO is (in my mind) where it started. Prior to RICO, cops weren't paramilitary goat fuckers; they were officers sworn to protect and serve.
Really? Because all I care about is that you're a fellow American. What you just did is exactly what I am railing against. You've cubby holed yourself into the groupings that matter to you. In a sense, you've segregated yourself from people like me.
Jesus fuck. Why'd you have to go to a talking points memo?
Man that last page started getting really depressing.I think there might be a political revolution (in the sense of physically demanding the removal of certain systems of our government, IE: The Filibuster, but not necessarily violent), but I really don't see America becoming a nation in which man kills one another due to his beliefs. Isn't that the very hellish landscape that we created the Constitution to protect against?
I hate the current Congress, I really, really loathe them, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to murder someone to get my point across.
You see, thats the sweet thing, its theoretically possible with our government to enact change through peaceful means, but it takes a huge portion of the country being moved to cause, and in our current environment, thats going to take near herculean effort.
Well, that is probably because for most of his presidency he had a Democratic controlled congress. Besides, you are missing the point completely. C'mon, 41% of Democrats didn't vote for McCain/Palin. Christ, we have a two party system. If a Republican is sitting in the oval office, Democrats always want to get their guy in there after four years. The opposite is also true. This is really basic stuff, c'mon! How often the congress votes for legislation sponsored by the executive office is a different debate. Any attention given to the comment that "we need to make Obama a one term president" is a waste of effort.
Also, the fact that Obama can't get more than 6% out of the Republicans is as much of a reflection on Obama as it is on Republicans. Bush, as much as he was loved, was able to get into the 40 percentile. I'm quite sure Reagan had similar success. Clinton had to deal with a mostly Republican congress and he did a good job. What is Obama's problem eh? By the way if you didn't notice, I'm pretty sure Obama's latest budget he sent to the Senate didn't even get a single Democratic vote. It died in the Senate with zero votes. That's some leadership.
The house gets a lot of stuff done and then it dies in the senate. Harry Reid(D. Majority Leader) doesn't even allow much to come to the floor. If you ask me Harry Reid is the reason so little is done. I can't stand that PoS.
The new Republicans are just doing what they said they were going to do when they were swept into office during the midterms. I can't put all the blame in congress on the Republicans. 50/50 is the best I can agree to. The senate Dems are some stubborn assholes.
Yes because public employees should have better pay, better benefits, and better pensions than the people that are paying for them? Public employee unions are out of control.
Right because my high school teacher's salary and pension was just so outrageous. He had so much extra cash he could afford a whole box of donuts for us on a test day once.
Big spender. And fyi I lived in literally the most well-paid school system in my State and my teacher's STILL had shitty salaries.
This however is completely fair. Both sides of the aisle are just so out of control and on power-trips that it makes Xenuria look like a legitimate politician in comparison.
I didn't. I just riffed.
Maybe I'm political material?
Or, you know, maybe we should raise the standard for non-public employees instead of arbitrarily using the lowest common denominator as the baseline to which to aspire.
I just can't get why there is only 2 big political parties in the US. Well, i do, but this weird electoral system kinda make me scratch my head in confusion.
His salary is or was? In my podunk part of Georgia, the teachers are doing pretty well for a 3/4 year job. Masters degreed teachers make as much as I do.
The electoral system is designed in such a way that the more populous states don't have automatic control of the political landscape, disenfranchising the less populous states. I actually like that part of the system. It also determines house or representatives demography.
It's systematic.
Compare the way the French and Americans elect their Presidents. With two rounds of voting, French voters are able to flirt with other parties. That gives the smaller parties a chance to survive, attract support and grow. By contrast, each American state allocates its electoral college votes on a winner takes all basis. If a left leaning voter votes for an alternative leftist party rather than the Democrats, then it makes it easier for the Republicans to carry the state. Because of this, voters on each side have to stick with established parties or risk the other side winning because their opposition's votes were split. That makes it much harder for small parties to survive and grow.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the American consitution is old. Most European countries entered their current form some time within the last century (and the sole exception doesn't actually have any form of constitutional law). That's why so many European countries include elements of proportionality in their electoral system - it's a fairly modern concept. By Contrast, the American consitution is a couple of centuries old and really hard to change. Patterns have had a long time to establish themselves.
Mira, you're not entirely correct.
Not all states are winner take all. The option to allocate elector votes is decided by the states, not the constitution. At present only two states have opted out of winner take all, though.
We do have a two round vote. while we do have a more difficult time getting new national parties to compete at the federal level, we can see a pretty wide variety of left/right in out primaries. This last year we had several people with very divergent ideas of governing. Romney (a moderate) was chosen from this field. Obama has won all of the states where he was contested.
While the constitution is old and difficult to change, it's designed to be thus. While I have serious complaints about our current environment, the constitution isn't the problem. It's the end runs made around it that are. The constitution had enabled us to have a relatively stable country for the vast majority of the years it has been in force. The same cannot be said for most of the world.
because the republicans would never propose economic measures which would actually increase the debt more than the dems would in the long run~
wait... fuck.
Republicans controlled the House and Senate from 2000-06, yet Dems still voted with his policies nearly 50% of the time. He only had the last two years where the Dems controlled congress and they still voted for many of his measures.
The reason that health care reform ended up being such a piece of shit neutered legislation, or banking reform ended up being such a piece of shit neutered legislation, was that Obama kept trying ~bipartisanship~. He naively believed that he could pursue a bipartisan agenda with people whose simple aim was to deny him wins, waste time and protect their corporate funding.
Most '10 Republicans campaigned on upsetting the Washington status quo, yet they have been the most active group of Congresspeople in snatching up corporate links and establishing relationships for when they retire. I bet thats what their electors wanted them to do, right?
It's been 4 years of Republicans saying "Fuck the country, it's all about me," while everyone (on both sides) gets fat on Citizens United monies, it'll be interesting to see if a) Obama can pull this off, and then b) if he does, what they will behave like when the "one-term president" thing is over.
I'll never understand how Romney can run on an anti-Obamacare platform when THE most onerous thing about Obamacare is that people are REQUIRED to carry insurance... And that's exactly what Romney passed for MA.
And the whole "responsible economist" platform after his Harvard MBA ass-fucking of any company he could get his hands on... I just don't get it. He's the poster child for why our economy is as fucked as it is, but somehow he can convince people that he's The Man We Need Right Now to fix it? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Obama out of the White House, but not at the cost of this douchebag running things for 4 years. If the Republicans really planned for a one-term Presidency for Obama, they should've come up with an Exit Plan. Not exactly their strong suit, amirite?
Anybody see this thing where Obama got heckled in the Rose Garden? On the one hand I watch it and think that it's getting pretty bad that someone can get into a press conference like that and heckle, but on the other hand -- fuck you and your dog and pony press conference. People should be in there with air horns and referee whistles and brass bands when he starts spewing shit like that.
Um, no. AGAIN. The health care bill was written at a time when the GOP COULD NOT "DENY HIM WINS". They did not need any GOP votes to pass it, and
thus they didn't seek any. Pelosi & Co. wrote the bill behind closed doors and dumped it on them all to vote on it. Reid did essentially the same thing.
Also, dumb foreigners get out.
"behind closed doors", ie on C-SPAN. "didn't seek any", ie it was developed with senate republicans through committees.
k mate.
link plz
http://www.c-span.org/
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
Fartman, I dont think they ever livestream a bunch of staffers making documents. But its not like the bill was super sekret opsec or something.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
faggot here is claiming the drafting of the bill in the house was broadcast live on c-span..
the actual drafting of the bill.. again, link plz.
You really want a video of people making multiple drafts, sending it through coordination, soliciting inputs, reconciling changes, and soliciting inputs for a thousand page document? Not sure what your getting at here.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
i said the bill was drafted by the democrats behind closed doors, without any input, or the ability to offer amendments to it, by the GOP.
faggot said "lol whut its wuz on c-span derp!"
i asked for a link to this evidence. apparently none is forthcoming.
i personally wouldn't watch it if my life depended on it, so i find it hard to believe that some idiot in the UK sits around watching c-span all day either.
edit: you guys are kind of dumb why do i waste my time trying to argue with you?
In most parts of the world this is normal. The "majority" passes laws because they have a majority. The minority votes against them because the majority of America thinks they are retarded.
To bitch and moan that the majority in the legislative branch didnt cater to a minority that was essentially thrown out of office for incompetence is ludicrous.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
i know this
then the majority should stop whining that the minority is "obstructing" the majority's agenda?
Your right. They should remove the ability to filibuster.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
you should ask for a refund!
Why should I? You paid for it!
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
you don't argue with anyone, you just spew republican talkingpoints while sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "nah nah nah i can't hear you nah nah naah".
ok
I hadn't really intended on getting into a single issue argument but...
I think you'll find that the thing most right wingers are concerned about is the fact that the health care legislation opened up a massive new government jobs program and will lead to much higher taxes that haven't been seen in quite some time. Only about half the people in the country even pay taxes and the ones that don't are largely exempted from this new law but they still have health care provided for "free".
Yeah, it pisses us off that we're forced into an insurance market against our will (which wouldn't affect me since I have coverage as a disabled vet anyway) but that our taxes and our paid coverage will skyrocket.
Do you know why so much of the world is able to (just barely) afford their own NHS schemes? Foreign military welfare programs. You see, we don't have a mercenary army (who oddly enough works for free) keeping our sovereignty safe. Many of the more progressive (IOW welfare states) governments pay a pittance into their military. They can do so because we pick up the tab in both gold and blood.
If we must be involved in protecting Poland and parts west, we should be charging a fucking rate that generates a net profit. Jesus fuck we're terrible at the financial part of being mercs.
My insurance rates have literally doubled and then some since the Obamacare stuff started going live. Shit's going to get more expensive for the consumers after this August, too. If you already have insurance that you pay for, you're getting boned by Obamacare. The only ones who make out are people who don't make shit for money and the new government workers. Yahoo!
Seriously, about ten percent of the population is getting some benefit from this while the taxpaying portion of the population will get to pay twice as much for the insurance on this ten percent. WTF? If my insurance went up a tenth to get these asshats insured, I might be OK with it. How the FUCK do we justify twice as much to cover the cost of 1/10th of us? That's just policy increases; We'll also get fucked in the ass by Uncle Sam.
Right now is a good time to get fired and live off the government tit.
I agree. You see, though... whoever is the minority will bray about losing the filibuster while the majority with a small margin will always hate it. I do think it should go away but you must be able (since I assume uni still provides critical thinking, right? RIGHT?) to see that this isn't even a partisan issue. It's a matter of who has more votes today.
and a vote against ending the filibuster is that majorities aren't always right or righteous. Majority to rule can be a path to abuses.
Tyranny of the majority or minority? I'm not sure which one is better. The obvious solution is more statesmen and less politicians, but its the toughest to implement.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
If you had a single payer health service then the long term (tax) cost would be lower than what Obamacare requires. Its essentially corporate welfare because nobody in US politics can be seen to destroy an industry which creates so much profit (Health insurance), so they require the Health insurance companies to cover everyone and then even it up through taxes. Its wasteful and inefficient.
Do you believe that? Most other countries who have single payer have to raise taxes and reduce care to make ends meet. The US is much maligned because 10% of the people have no health care but they can't be refused life saving care and I've heard plenty (though It's late and I'm not up for searching for references) about single payer rationing of care.
I have a dog in the health care fight. My son had AML and is only alive today because of the health care system we have in the U.S. He would have died waiting for treatment or the hospitals wouldn't have the latest procedures and equipment. Half the people with him in CHOA and Duke were from countries with single payer systems because the parents were desperate to save their kids and their (ahem) free health care came at a steep cost to their kids. Single payer may be OK for run of the mill treatment but it's not a great way to go if you're facing expensive treatment which requires fast response.
I doubt it's just a coincidence that the Canadian PM came to the US for heart treatment.
The health care system we have is inefficient on cost basis (our actual care available is the best in the world), I'll give you that. A large portion of that inefficiency can be lain at the doorstep of politicians who like to find reasons to add more reporting requirements, more oversight, more... bureaucracy.
Let's say the U.S. went single payer. The model of this system would be the VA or NHS. Stepping into a VA hospital is risking your life and NHS has some notoriety here as well. I would personally not want the substandard care, which means I would have to go to a private insurance carrier (if I'm allowed to). Do you have the right to opt out of NHS/single payer? I'm guessing not. Because of this you'd have to pay for care twice.
Europe is suffering a financial crisis right now. While not all of this is due to health spending, we're seeing how excessive social spending works out to basically be a ponzi scheme. Were the mercenary American army to leave, they would have to increase defense spending or accept the risk of a resurgent and still paranoid Russia. Now, I'm already on the record as an isolationist. I would gladly legalize and tax drugs AND bring the vast majority of our troops home in exchange for public health care. We just need to be careful about allowing the rest of the world to drag us into their wars.
Well, the financial crisis Europe is suffering is due to american and brit banksters privatizing profits while our socio-traitors governments socialised losses (aka bailouts).
If you want to see a really efficient healthcare system, look at norway. Those guys are amazing when it comes to this.
For the individual you certainly pay more than any country with a single payer system, you pay once for health insurance (roughly 20% of an average US salary is spent on health insurance) and then you pay again out of taxation. Whereas in the UK the NHS is paid only out of general taxation and the proportion spent on it is around 15% of a single person's tax contribution.
Rationing of care occurs in the US right now to an extent unheard of in a single payer system, if you do not have health insurance and you aren't able to be covered by medicaid or charity, then you won't be treated at all. That doesn't happen here. The offset for that is that non-immediate non-life threatening conditions are given less priority than others, and I'm fine with that.
People from the UK who go to the US for treatment fall into two categories; People who are there because the NHS is paying for them to have an experimental treatment, and people who do not accept their final UK diagnoses and go to the US to spend lots of money to be told the same thing in the end. There are more of the latter.
I don't know about other countries, but in the UK private health care is a mess. All you pay to do is jump the queue for low-level operations, they simply don't do the same things that the NHS does. If you paid to jump the queue for a hip replacement, and then stroked out during the operation, the private hospital would literally phone for an ambulance to take you to the nearest NHS hospital.
The NHS's notoriety in the US is based on misinformation and scaremongering. Until the current UK government started "reforming" (ie selling off to the lowest bidder) parts of the English NHS it was enjoying record satisfaction ratings and patient outcomes.
Many of the countries that are currently in trouble, such as Ireland and Spain, are not in trouble because they have excessive national debt but because they are unable to recapitalise banks that are struggling with toxic debt. That's not because of social spending, it because of inherent stupidity in the way capitalism works which can be pretty much sumarised as: If I didn't do it*, someone else would have.
In fact, cutting social spending in times of financial hardship is in some senses absolutely the worst thing to do. Things like benefits, public sector wages and capital construction projects tend to go straight back into the economy as the people involved tend to buy essentials such as food and the like. By contrast, if you let money sit in the wallets of the rich rather than be taken as tax, it's more likely to stay sitting there rather than be spent. We're probably going to end up seeing what Greek voters think of that later on today.
*In this case 'it' refers to loaning people money who realistically had no chance of ever paying it back. It's usually something retarded like that.
While your argument makes sense on the first look many of these rich people also reinvest their capital. Its not THAT easy
They reinvest it in complex action insurances, could as well invest in wind. This is purely speculative and does not anything in real economy : make money by betting more money on some derivated contracts, and if the bet is wrong, it's OK because you are ''too big to fall'' and thus the taxpayers will help you.
Dude, that's complete bullshit. Wanna talk about misreporting and scaremongering? Homeless people can walk into any ER and her treated for a common cold. They can't be turned away.
You're own description of private/NHS hospitals is scary. Unless you're talking about outpatient surgery (which I assume a hip is not done in) then you're hospitals aren't worthy of the name. The scary hospitals in the US are government run places where you go in for a colonoscopy and leave with AIDS AND Hep.
I don't deny that we may pay quite a bit for our insurance. Part of that is are the obamacare regulatory costs which began two years ago (and doubled my insurance cost). Another part is those evil phama companies everyone hates. You see, it costs money to come up with new drugs; money that the EU and Canada make difficult to recover. Since the NHS countries place price controls, the US has to pick up a tab that might have been distributed over a billion and a half payers.
In any case, I'll take my system over anyone else any day. The simple fact of the matter is that public care can't but reduce the quality of our care (and yours if we fucked the pharmas too).
They can walk into a state run hospital and the state picks up the tab for their cold, but if you have a condition which requires a complicated procedure which can only be done in an private hospital then either you need a mechanism (medicaid or charity) to pay for you, because unless the hospital agrees to do it pro-bono then they need paid somehow.
How? Its the opposite of your system. The NHS has the best doctors, the best equipment, the best support staff. There isn't much of a market for private healthcare beyond queue jumping low level stuff because the NHS does its job so well. There is nothing stopping a company from setting up a US-like hospital in the UK, but there simply isn't a market for it. The UK's private hospitals cater to so little because its not worth investing in the other stuff.
Single payer systems bulk buy medications, but it works because of the economies of scale, it guarantees an amount of sales for companies and the vast majority of drugs which are bought have long since had their development paid for and patents expired (painkillers and broad spectrum antibiotics make up the majority of drug purchases). The idea that the US going single payer would cause problems for the drug industry is simply false.
You have a system which provides the best care for those who can afford it, and bankruptcy and/or poor care for those who can't. You spend the highest amount yet come 37th in the WHO ranking for Health care systems. The UK comes 18th but is the 26th largest spender.
You have yours, so fuck everyone else.
Guess who comes first? I guess redistribution of wealth is bad.
Why do people point to to Greece and say, "Look at what socialism does to your economy." and ignore pretty much everywhere else is Europe?
Its very likely to be Americans who say that and they should ask themselves "what has capitalism done to our economy lately?"
The very same people who are looking at greece and saying those things are the quickest hypocrites to the mark considering it was them who brought the world to its knees.
But dont worry they have the great American dream, a historical license to shit on other people to further their own selfish goals.
I can only hope that they elect Romney to president, so he can take his completely crack pot bat shit crazy religious views and rape them good.
America getting raped by crack pot bat shit crazy religious views has been happening for quite some time.
In 2008 roughly 40% of American still believed in literal six day creation. (Link tohttp://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm)
However much of America getting 'raped by crack pot bat shit crazy religious views) has been self inflicted. How much support do you guys think Mitt will have from Evangelicals? I personally think they will be an average turn out for him just because he is other realistic option against Obama and everyone seems to be more relied up this election cycle than normal.
I'm pretty sure the most cost-intensive war you recently had/have is one you (i.e: the Bush, jr. administration) dragged a lot of your allies into. Don't play the sacrificial lamb here.
And like Mira already pointed out, Greece's current financial crisis has nothing to do with a health care system but all with corruption and nepotism. The results are both a bloated beaurocratic apparatus (the political class getting their relatives and buddies through with overpaid jobs that aren't needed) along with devastating tax evasions. The financial crisis that started off with your real estate crisis and the already mentioned socialisation of losses/bailouts was the last straw. And Merkozy's ridiculous saving measure demands (to a degree no country, certainly neither France nor Germany, would be able to withstand nor tolerate without social uprisings) were the final nail in the coffin.
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
It'll be an interesting test of the acceptance of Mormonism, these are strange days when a black man runs against a Mormon for POTUS.
To me the interesting test will be which way the Tea Party will get behind Romney and push. There's a lot going on with the man that's completely contrary to their "deeply held beliefs." Will they put their unread copies of the Constitution back in their pockets, or will they wave them and pelt him with copies of The Federalist Papers?
We're fucked either way, so at this point I'm just trying to find the best entertainment value.
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