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Thread: The ONLY political and religious thread allowed on Chiefscrowd

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    Default The ONLY political and religious thread allowed on Chiefscrowd

    Clinton, McCain emerge as comeback winners in New Hampshire primary



    WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Clinton pulled off an unexpected narrow victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, dramatically rescuing her bid for the White House in a tense battle with Barack Obama.
    Clinton, who's fighting to become the first woman in the Oval Office, mounted a surprisingly strong showing after bracing for a second defeat following her devastating third-place showing in Iowa.
    Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. greets a familiar face. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Elise Amendola
    Republican John McCain also nabbed a major comeback victory, putting him solidly back in his party's nomination race.
    While Obama, vying to make history as the first black U.S. president, scored big among independents and voters between 18 and 24, Clinton attracted lower-income voters and seniors and did best among voters citing the economy as their top concern.
    But a big factor for Clinton was women voters, who had gone over to Obama in large numbers in Iowa. Nearly half in New Hampshire were once again supporting her, while Obama got only a third.






    http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/080108/w0108115A.html







    Crap.
    http://arrowheadjunkies.com/pictures/PhotoShop/sig_pics/NFL_Players/kansas_city_chiefs/tyson.jackson/062009/tyson.jackson.500.png

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    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    It is not unprecedented.

    You purchase SS insurance from the government. Medicare, etc.

    And you will use medical care, no matter how hard you try not to.
    Wrong, Medicare and Social Security are both taxes, and neither of them are delivered through private companies. Both are Government run and managed programs. I would agree that Obamacare was Constitutional if it was presented in the same fashion, but it was not. There are very distinct reasons why it was not delivered this way.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Without a Dr declaring you dead, you are eternally alive. And nobody has gotten away with that one yet.

    You use it at birth, you get your vaccinations.
    Sorry, but maybe in some states you can have your vaccinations covered at birth through medicare if you are poor enough, but Medicare does not provide blanket coverage for all vaccinations and while the Government says I have to have my kids vaccinated to attend school, I still have the choice as to whether I want them vaccinated or not. There are usually 3 or 4 stories every year about people who do not choose to have their kids vaccinated and a growing number of people are making that choice.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Nobody doesn't use the healthcare system.

    It will be struck down. But not justly. When you get to the bottom of the dicussion, it is not unconstitutional. You have to follow a lawyers disgusting path to get there.... But, in the end, it is Constitutional.
    You used fallacies here to make your conclusion, you used the same argument that the Government's attorney used to defend the law and he was nearly laughed out of the court room. When you listen to the line of questioning from the Justices, the idea that this is unprecedented is clear, even they feel that way.

    The Consitution does not guarantee social justice in this country. I know the liberals in this country would wish it to be different, and they have twisted the common wellfare clause to the point that it is about to break. This law is going to be struck down because there is no provision in the Constitution that allows the Federal Government to do this. If the individual states want to do it, then that is a different matter as the 10th amendment expressly allows states to do this very thing.


    Are you man enough? Eric Berry? Apparently Not!

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    Quote Originally Posted by TopekaRoy View Post
    Chief31,

    Dude! You didn't let me finish! I will respond to your latest posts, but not until I have finished responding to your previous posts. I told you I wouldn't get done with that until Wednesday. Give me a chance to get through your previous arguments before staring new ones!
    It's been an interesting read in as much anyhow. Just thought I'd say.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hayvern View Post
    ...
    You used fallacies here to make your conclusion, you used the same argument that the Government's attorney used to defend the law and he was nearly laughed out of the court room. When you listen to the line of questioning from the Justices, the idea that this is unprecedented is clear, even they feel that way.

    The Consitution does not guarantee social justice in this country. I know the liberals in this country would wish it to be different, and they have twisted the common wellfare clause to the point that it is about to break. This law is going to be struck down because there is no provision in the Constitution that allows the Federal Government to do this. If the individual states want to do it, then that is a different matter as the 10th amendment expressly allows states to do this very thing.
    I'll get back to my dialog with Chief31 in just a minute ( ), but I just wanted to say I agree with everything you said in this post, Vern. You are telling it like it is and Chief31, is telling us how he wishes it was.

    Forget that the link below is to a Glenn Beck page. It contains 18 brief audio excerpts from the actual Supreme Court arguments regarding healthcare. Listen to them and you will see why the individual mandate is such a problem.

    Supreme Court Audio
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    Sorry I took so long to get back to you, but I couldn't get to my computer Tuesday and I have been having trouble with my internet connection all day. It's still really slow, but it seems to be working intermittently, now.

    We now return to our regularly scheduled discussion!
    Page 4 ...
    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Ah yes... Solyndra... The lone poster-child for Republicans. But, for every Solyndra, there are a hundred success stories.

    Breaking our dependency on foreign fossil fuels is hardly money down the drain. We need to keep that push going, as evidenced by the gas prices.
    I agree that we need to encourage the development of alternative energy. I would love to have a solar powered car! (It wouldn't go very fast at night, though. ) Or one that runs on water by converting it to hydrogen and releasing oxygen through the tailpipe!

    But the Obama administration pushed through this unsecured loan without doing their do diligence to make sure that the money would keep the company afloat. It was done purely for political purposes. It was well known at the time that China was producing similar solar cells at a much lower cost, and Solyndra still wouldn't be able to compete. It didn't create a single job and, yes, it is over half a billion dollars of the taxpayers money that went down the drain. That money could have provided 1,337 people with $40,000 per year jobs for 10 years if it hadn't been thrown away!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    So you were in favor of allowing Detroit to crash? What do you think the UE numbers would have been then?
    Were did I say that? I'm okay with loaning the money to GM (like we did with Chrysler), but not with the country taking over control of the auto giant. This was nothing more than a shameless power grab, and a payback for the AFL-CIO union members who supported Obama in the election. You worry about politicians being beholden to large investors who support their campaigns by exercising their first amendment rights. Well, it's already happening. there is your quid pro quo!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    ...And help ensure some minimal amount of balance. You can't have people going hungry. They become desperate, and desperation spawns crime.
    Who would have gone hungry? The GM factory workers? Nobody at Chrysler went hungry.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Speech comes from your body, not the wallet. Spending is not speech. And corporations are still not US citizens. They can't be.

    And a group of people, does not, a person, make.
    So you are okay with people standing on a street corner and telling whoever is within earshot who they support? You just don't want them buying television ads? Campaign ads on television and radio have always been a form of free speech, but they aren't free. They have to be paid for. You know that. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing, here.

    And corporations are made up of people. They have to be afforded the same first amendment rights as unions. I could make the same argument that the teachers union is not US citizens, but that argument would fail for the same reason your does. The Supreme Court and the Constitution disagree with you.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    No. That is flat out wrong. They expect the insurance company to provide that form of healthcare.
    No you are wrong. Many large companies self-insure. They pay for their employees health care directly, not through an insurance company. And The Obama administration would have required religious bodies (like catholic universities and hospitals) to pay for not just contraceptives, but also abortion procedures and abortifacients (morning after pills.) That's why there was such a flap over it and why they backed down.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Nobody has the right to deny healthcare to employees.
    Wrong again. Small businesses who employ fewer than 10 people (which accounts for over half the employed in the US) have no requirement to provide healthcare to their employees. I have also worked for telemarketing agencies as an "independent contractor" in the past and received no healthcare benefits, even though these companies employed around 50 and around 200 people.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    And contraception is preventative healthcare.
    I guess, if you consider preventing a person from existing to be "healthcare." I have no problem, personally, with contraception. There are a lot of people that I would rather they don't reproduce! I don't really think it is a basic human right, but if the government wants to force insurance companies to provide it, then so be it. But they can't force religious organizations who self ensure to provide it--and ultimately they didn't.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Don't get me started on illegal immigration. That has been ongoing for decades, and it would be insane to pay the amount that a 2000 mile, indefensible wall would cost.
    The wall is too expensive, but you have no problem paying billions of dollars for the education, healthcare and food stamps of illegal immigrants who come here. How much is that costing the country? Most of these people can't legally get jobs so they are paid "under the table" for less than minimum wage, keeping them poor and allowing them to not pay any income taxes.

    I haven't checked these figures yet, so I don't know how accurate they are, but if they are anywhere close to correct, then illegal immigration is costing us far more that a wall/fence ever would!



    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    We have been deporting for so long that we have figured out that deportation is as expensive as it is ineffective.
    It's not effective because we won't secure our borders and they keep coming back!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    But President Obama has stepped up border patrol (waste of money).
    I agree because border patrol agents have to be paid and there aren't enough of them to make a difference. A fence (which already exists along parts of the border) would be much cheaper in the long run becuase it only has to be paid for once and then it's free (other than routine maintenance).

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Only to have everybody spout off this ridiculous rhetoric about how [he] is the reason for all illegal immigration. When, in fact, the prime culprit is our unwillingness to put the blame where it belongs, on ourselves.

    We are the people who have created and funded the cartles of those nations, to where they are able to strong-arm their own governments, and our own citizens who encourage those people to come here, by offering jobs and housing.
    Wow! We agree again! The Drug cartels are funded by Americans because it is too easy for them to get into the country and exchange drugs for money. We need stiffer penalties and better enforcement of existing laws for companies that hire without proper documentation and we need to stop paying for the education and public housing of people who come here illegally.

    Continued ...
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    Page 5 (I think!) ...

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    But I assume you are in favor of forcing all US citizens to carry ID cards to avoid deportation?
    Not just for that, but also to get a job, obtain government benefits, drive a car and vote. If they can't afford to buy a state ID (about $8-$12 in most states) then I have no problem with the government providing them for free (as they already do in Texas and Wisconsin) It would save the government far more than it would cost in the long run.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Ah yes. Mandatory ID cards, there it is.

    This is one of the problems with The US Constitution. You lose interest when it does not punish people whom you don't like.
    They might have a problem with federal IDs, but there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the states from requiring residents to carry IDs.

    24 states, including Kansas and Missouri, already have stop and identify statutes requiring citizens who are suspected of committing a crime to identify themselves. (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_Identify_statutes)

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Aside from the mandatory ID problem, Arizona's law is unconstitutional because it assumes guilt of suspects. Meaning that, so long as you are a suspect, we allow the state to assume your guilt by demanding an ID.
    Also untrue. You are falling victim to liberal propaganda.

    According to Arizona law, police have to have "reasonable suspicion" to ask for identification. No court in the world would agree that "looking Mexican" qualifies as reasonable.

    The law specifically bans picking up someone just because they are Hispanic or even because the person was originally from Mexico or any other country. Anyone arrested for a crime must have their immigration status determined before they are released. Thus, it is not just Hispanics who will be required to provide evidence of citizenship, but so will all whites, blacks and Asians. If the eligibility for public services depends on citizenship, again, everyone who applies, regardless of race, will have to provide an ID. In other circumstances, law enforcement officials must have reasonable suspicion, not based simply on the person's race or origin, that the individual is an illegal alien before they can ask to check someone's ID.

    Read more: Fears Of Arizona's Immigration Law Are Bogus | Fox News
    But don't just take my word for it. You can read the actual law for yourself right here. The law only requires Arizona law enforcement to comply with and enforce existing federal statutes, specifically United States code section 1373(c).

    And what is wrong with asking people to prove they are who they say they are before they can vote? You don't think voter fraud is a problem? Watch this:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5p70YbRiPw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5p70YbRiPw[/ame]

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    I would be glad to, so long as you were willing to thank the previous administrations for the economic ruin that we fell into. But you seem content to let that rest on the clean-up crew.
    Sure. I blame all previous administrations going back to at least the "dot com" bubble burst, as well as people's overuse/misuse of easy credit along with banks and Wall street mismanaging funds for the current economic state. And I blame Obama for not fixing it and making it worse.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    As well he should. There is nothing wrong with being respectful to other world leaders. And we have done a whole lot of wrong that should be apologized for.
    I have no problem with showing respect for foreign leaders or adopting their customary greetings (such as grasping both hands and giving a quick "kiss" on each cheek). But US presidents have never bowed to foreign leaders, because it is not just used as a greeting. It is a symbol of submission to the other's authority. Asian leaders are not expecting a US President to bow because we are not subservient to foreign powers: we are equals. He even bowed slightly to the queen of England! We haven't been under the rule of the British monarchy for over 200 years!

    He can apologize to a foreign leader if he is directly responsible for wronging that country. Otherwise right the wrong or make amends, if possible, and move on.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    I have no doubt that I could get you on a rant about how The USA interferes too much in other nations' business, so long as I were to frame it as an anti-Obama opportunity.

    Iran and their arsenal is not our business. Not that I want them to be armed. But we are not the police of the world.

    Again, where is the Constitution now?

    That is absolutely not what our government is supposed to be doing.
    I agree that we too often stick our noses in places where it doesn't belong (both democrats and republicans), but I am not an isolationist, by any means. I support foreign intervention to defend our national security and humanitarian support (to a reasonable degree) because it helps us out in the long run and it is 'morally' the right thing to do.

    Al-Qaede took responsibility for the 911 tragedy. I absolutely support going after them, Hamas , the Taliban and the nations who sponsor them.

    Whether you like it are not, we are the police of the world. It is not something that we desired or sought, but as the most powerful country on the planet, it has been thrust upon us. And I (and our foreign allies) would much rather have us taking on that role than, say Russia of China doing it.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    And I notice that you left out the civil unrest in Egypt and Libya. We did as should, and maybe too much. We did not invade some foreign nation to meet our ends. We used a lot of diplomacy, and a little bit of help for the humanitarian effort, without putting a single US soldier on the pricetag.
    I support our actions in Libya and Egypt, but you can't compare those situations to that of Irag and Afghanistan. The situations are entirely different and the direct threat to American security was not there.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Meanwhile, all I heard from the right, leading up to our role in Libya, was how we had to invade. And there was a lot of outrage because we waited for all US citizens to get out of the country before helping.
    I don't remember hearing that, and you sure didn't hear it from me, but I will take your word for it. We did provide some drone military support for Libya, but that was mostly in accordance with UN actions.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Why, oh why, did you have to go and bring up every single political argument, all at once?!?!?!?!?

    Me!? Pot, meet kettle!

    To be continued ...
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    Page 6!


    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Instant politics?

    Again... policy does not have instant impact. It takes years to feel the full effect and you are just looking for a way to spin the positive effects your way.

    But there is no way to spin the fact that Republicans held power over Washington for over a decade leading up to the crash in '09. It had been building for a long time, and de-regulation (Repeal of Glass Steagal) ensured that the housing market was doomed.

    Allowing lenders to sell off insured commodities, while keeping the insurance, guarantees that they will sabotage the commodity to collect the insurance pay-off (Bi-partisan effort).
    I don't hold the previous administration blameless for getting us into this mess, but I also blame the consumer, OPEC and many other factors.

    For the record Democrats controlled the House and Senate when Carter was in office and that led to a major recession. Under Reagan, dems still controlled the House but reps took control of the Senate and the economy rebounded nicely.

    Dems took control of both houses in the '86 election, but supported Reagan's policies because they were working.
    We did have a minor recession under George H. W Bush while the democrats were in power, but it didn't last long.

    In 1992, reps took back control of both Houses except for Nov, 2022 to Nov, 2004 when Dems had a 2 vote majority in the Senate and the economy continued to hum.

    Dems took back control both houses in Nov, 2006. And when did the current recession begin?

    You want to blame previous administrations for the present economy. Fine. How far do you want to go back? Every time democrats have taken control of congress the economy has taken a nosedive and it always recovers under republican power. Coincidence?

    I'm tired of blaming previous administrations for the bad economy. Don't point fingers---fix it! Democrats have controlled the Senate for almost 6 years and the oval office for almost 4 years, now. Republicans just took control of the house a year and a half ago, because democrats are not getting the job done. They couldn't get control of the Senate because only 1/3 of the seats were up for re-election. Hopefully republicans will take control in November and we can get the country moving again.

    But I'm sure if that happens you will give the democrats who were voted out, all the credit, right?

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Right... Because the term "tele-prompter" was so popular then.

    And how many complaints about seeing W's birth certificate, "oh, that's the official birth certificate? That's not good enough. Show us the nonsense version so we can call it a fake" did we have to endure?
    Oh, now you want to go there!? Alright, let's do it. I was never a "birther." I just took it for granted that Obama was born in Hawaii, but then he admitted he was born in Kenya and his wife, Michelle, confirmed it!

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se5zvGF6u9g"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se5zvGF6u9g[/ame]

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M7Rp_Ghv6k"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M7Rp_Ghv6k[/ame]

    Maybe he just 'forgot' where he was born. Or maybe they both 'misspoke.' or maybe they were lying.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    The fact is that Bush led the charge to get one of my best friends killed in Iraq for fictitious WMDs.

    He earned a great deal of the wrath that was flung at him.

    He was "blessed" with the support of all Americans after 9-11. And he worked his way from there to produce the lowest approval rating since Nixon.
    I'm very sorry that you lost a friend in Iraq. He is truly one of America's heroes.

    But he had the support of the American people because he was doing the right thing based on the information he had. In retrospect, it might not have worked out but you can't blame him for doing what you and all of congress and most of the American people wanted him to do.
    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    So was I. That doesn't change that it was one of the worst presidential decisions of our lifetime.

    But, regardless of WMDs, the US Constitution does not give our government the right to police foreign countries.
    Yes it does. it falls under defending us from foreign powers.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Surely you will admit that the biggest driving forces behind that were profit, and revenge for H.W. Bush?
    What profit? The wars have cost us a great deal. Irag is not paying us what it costs us to rebuild their country.

    I don't believe 'revenge' was a motive for going into Iraq. I think 911 was, but I won't deny that he may have saw an added benefit of finishing the job his father started. We should have taken Saddam Hussein out when we liberated Kuwait. That was a mistake.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    I mean we gave Saddam a deadline, he refused, refused, then agreed, and he was told "too late", in favor of "Shock and Awe".
    Saddam defied us at every turn, lied repeatedly and now under direct threat of attack we are supposed to trust him. Why would you believe that someone who repeatedly lied to us and defied us could suddenly be trusted? That would have been very foolish, indeed.

    Whew! I'm still not finished responding to your original reply and you have already added 7 posts in response to this reply! Sigh.

    More to come ...
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    Page 7 ...

    Let's see, where did we leave off? Ah, here we go ...

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Tort reform is just horrible. The only place for that kind of thing is in the individuals courtrooms. You just can't allow a medical professional to cause a life-long problem for their patients, and try to put some cap on what the victim is entitled to.

    "Oops. Sorry that you will never walk again, because you came in for an Appendectomy. Good thing I will be protected from your lawsuit. Whew!"
    Because jury's are very sympathetic to the victims of malpractice (as they should be) they often award ridiculous sums of money to them. I'm all in favor of the victim being fairly compensated but someone who would have earned maybe 100 to 200,000 dollars in his remaining "productive" years should not be awarded $10 million just because the surgeon made an innocent honest mistake, regardless of how egregious the consequences were. And how much is "pain and suffering" worth? There has to be a limit. Is $1 million not high enough?

    The problem is that the doctors don't pay if they lose. Their malpractice insurance company does. Many of these outrageously high settlements are reduced on appeal, but it still costs a fortune, and that cost is passed on to us in our insurance premiums. People know that it costs a lot of money to defend a malpractice suit and they file nuisance suits that have no merit, because they stand a good chance of getting a nice out of court settlement. One of the biggest costs of healthcare is in the malpractice insurance premiums that doctors pass along to their patients. Then you have the additional costs of unnecessary tests that doctors have to perform "just in case," so they have a better defense if one of these nuisance suits is filed against them.

    I was a juror on a malpractice suit were the admitting intern misdiagnosed the x-rays and thought the patient had pneumonia, and he ordered that diahhretics be administered. Less than 6 hours later the attending physician reported to work and made the correct diagnosis of cardiopulmonary adema. This is a common mistake because it is very difficult to tell the difference between fluid and blood in the lungs on an x-ray. The doctor ordered the correct treatment and the patient was recovering for 3 days, before his heart just gave out and he died.

    The family sued the attending physician for $1,000,000 even though he did everything right! We found the doctor not liable but we still had to convince 5 of the 12 jurors in deliberations to change their vote because they felt sorry for the family and thought they should get "something." They didn't care whether the doctor was guilty or not. They knew the insurance company would be paying for it and "they could afford it." It didn't matter to them that the patient was very obese, didn't exercise and was a long-term heavy smoker.

    I've seen first hand how the legal system is abused and how it affects the cost of healthcare and insurance.

    I don't know how you would go about setting "fair" limits, but something needs to change there.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    The first thing that US citizens are entitled to is "life". And healthcare is mandatory for it. We should cut through all the red tape and guarantee that we will provide healthcare.

    Just making a law that says you can't be refused is nonsense. It does not close the door on treatment by class.
    NOW you are using the Constitution to defend your argument? (just kidding!)

    The poor are not "entitled" to drive the nicest cars, live in the biggest houses or receive the best healthcare; the things that the wealthy can afford. They are entitled to receive adequate life-saving care. That is the problem with most liberals. They don't understand the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. The Constitution does not guarantee that everyone will make the same amount of money or be able to to afford the same amenities. Some people are just lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family or are blessed with above average intelligence or are willing to work harder to get ahead. Life isn't always 'fair.'

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Government.
    Local, county and state government, not Federal government. These are the things that are supposed to be relegated to the States according to the Constitution.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Private schools out-perform because they get to pick their students.
    You have that backwards. They outperform because the student's parents pick the school. Parents who are willing to pay more for a private, often religious education are for more motivated to make sure that their children take their studies seriously and apply themselves in class. Because these parents tend to be more affluent they are more likely to be better self-disciplined and harder working and they instill those traits in their kids. They tend to have a more stable home life as well because money issues are the leading cause of marital stress.

    But even these same parents know that if they put the same kids in a public school they won't get as good of an education. That's why they are willing to pay more for it.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Try flooding the private schools with the full population, and, eventually, it will go right back to where it was before we figured out that we had to bring the whole nation along.
    You are talking about a voucher system that would take the same amount of taxpayer money that is spent on the student in a public school and allow them to use that money toward a private school education. I'm in favor of that, but some parents still wouldn't be able to pay the difference, and it wouldn't make those parents better parents. Good parenting plays a huge roll in a students success, as does good teachers.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    And the decline has started since "No Child Left Behind", which I think you will admit does exactly the opposite.
    It started well before "no child left behind' which was one of the reasons the program was implemented. But I'm already on record as having said that it didn't work out as intended and needs to be drastically reformed or dropped, so we are really in agreement here.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    I believe in performance-based pay in most cases. But teachers are not on an even playing field. Their performance would be based on other peoples' performances, not their own.
    I agree with both of these statements as well. Everyone else receives "performance based" pay and teachers should be no different. I'm not sure what criteria you base that performance on, though. It can't be just grades as you have just pointed out, but somehow the teachers who get the most out of the same students should be rewarded.

    In the past we allowed students who weren't performing at grade level to be promoted anyway, and these same students are now the teachers. "No child left behind" was supposed to help the worst students improve academically. What has happened instead is that
    tests have been made easier and teachers are "teaching to the test" so the quality of education overall has been eroded. I don't know how to fix that, but I do know it's broken.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    The US mail service was built for a massive system, that is dying because of a lack of usefulness of that service. The private companies are able to specialize, because they don't have to compete on that level.

    They are not playing on the same field. But the private companies were never even able to put a thought toward competing on the field that the US Postal service was designed for.
    You make a good point here. I don't know too many people who use Fed-ex to pay a bill or use UPS to mail a letter to their aunt. A lot of those people aren't using the USPS anymore, either. They pay online or have recurring bills automatically deducted from their account and use email and "unlimited free calling" to communicate with family.

    I still think if the post office was completely privatized and run like other businesses (profit motive) it could at least break even. You might have to limit deliveries to only Monday, Wednesday and Friday to improve efficiency, but it already takes 2-3 days for first class mail to get delivered, so I don't think that would be much of a sacrifice.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    And, for those who can afford the private school, which again excludes most, good for them. But they will not be able to do it on a full-size level, just like the medical industry. It is crumbling because it is a privatized industry, forced to supply to all, regardless of the ability to pay for their service.
    There is still a lot of waste and unnecessary costs in both private medicine and Medicare/medicaid and I think there are a lot of things we can do to lower costs without an individual mandate or socialized medicine. Maybe you are right, though. Maybe we are doomed to suffer the same fate as other countries who have socialized medicine and the lower quality of care that comes with it. But we still have the best health care in the world and I'm not quite ready to give up on it, yet.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    If you have a service or product that the entire nation requires, you just aren't going to be able to keep it privatized.
    You mean like agriculture and fuel? Should the government take over all food and energy production as well? Most of the countries that tried that (communism) have not fared so well and they have been moving toward a free market system for the last 20 years. Even China is more capitalist than communist now. Only Cuba and North Korea seem to be clinging to communism, and I'll bet they don't have an illegal immigration problem, either!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    It is not a bad thing. It just isn't good. It's better than watching our medical industry die off because of rising prices, caused by the uninsured/non-paying.

    And, even the way I think it needs to done, (socialized medicine) would cause a catostrophic economic catastrophe, as our insurance industry is just plain massive, and socializing the medical industry would decimate it, leaving millions out of work for the long term, as their profession will have been cut in half.
    Exactly! That's why I think we need to take small steps to make it better. "Obamacare" will only make it worse.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    But the calls of "repeal and replace" are just plain wrong. It has to be just "replace", or silence.
    I'm not sure what you mean by this. Maybe you can clarify. How do you replace something without repealing what you are replacing?

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    The private medical industry is on the road to sure-fire economic ruin. We have to do better, and Obamacare is a strong patch, that will offer some relief for a while.

    But, eventually, we will have to decide, do we want to live in a nation where we take care of those in need, or let them die.
    But how do you know that Obamacare is a strong patch? Because some democrats, who didn't read it before they passed it, told you it is? I haven't read it all, either, but I don know some of what is in it and much of what I know I don't like. I did just now download the entire bill form here!

    It's 1017 pages but the print is fairly large, the lines are short and it's double spaced. I think I can read 50 pages a day and get trough it in 20 days! Then I will be able to discuss it in detail. Won't that be fun!

    And we aren't letting anybody die now!

    Whew! That's all I can get through tonight. Page 8 will have to wait until Friday evening. How come there is no simple :( smiley in this forum!?

    To be continued ...
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  9. #2108
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    Quote Originally Posted by TopekaRoy View Post
    Chief31,

    Dude! You didn't let me finish! I will respond to your latest posts, but not until I have finished responding to your previous posts. I told you I wouldn't get done with that until Wednesday. Give me a chance to get through your previous arguments before staring new ones!
    Oops. Sorry about that.

    But no harm done. It's going to be a huge mess at this size, no matter what happens. And, of course, then end argument will be what it always ends up as, rather we need government to grow as the nation does.

    But it will be a fun journey.

  10. #2109
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    ... Page 8

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Well, let's just take Ron Paul's following for now then.
    Let's not. You can't say Ron Paul or his dingbat supporters are representative of mainstream conservatives. That's like saying Crocodile Dundee represents the typical Aussie. Ron Paul is an isolationist libertarian on the far fringe of the republican party. He no more represents republicans than Sen. Arlan Spector did before he switched to the democrat party.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Basically though, the entire Republican platform is to rewind the greatest nation on Earth. 70 years, or fifty years, we have built an incredible society, with some kinks that need to be ironed out, just as we have been doing since we started.
    Republicans aren't looking to move backward; they want to move forward. I just heard a stat today that says 67% believe this country is headed in the wrong direction. Of course, they don't all blame democrats for that, but clearly what we have been doing since Obama took office either hasn't worked or hasn't been enough.

    $205,075 of the stimulus package money was spent to move a bush! Here is the story. These same bushes are sold at Home Depot for $15.99. For the same amount of money, we could have bought 1768 of these bushes and paid 1768 people $100 each to plant them! This is the kind of crap that voters are fed up with.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Actually, I did. That's a whole lot of reading.

    But my apologies.
    No problem, buddy. I thought I made a mistake once, too, but I was wrong!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    However, there is a price to be paid for more than doubling the work force by giving women and minorities their rights.

    Here we are, with a long-term job situation.
    Wait! Now you are blaming women and minorities for the unemployment situation? I'm sorry but that doesn't fly. We had near full employment for most of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Blaming the previous (Bush) administration is one thing, but going back 40 years to blame the Kennedy and Johnson administrations is a bit of a stretch, don'tcha think?

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Speaking of which.... how long have women been counted in the UE numbers?
    Good question. Women started entering the work force en masse during WWII to support the family while their husbands were off fighting the war. When the men returned, many women were able to quit their jobs, because you could still support a family on one income back them, but many others continued to work, even if it was only because they enjoyed it or liked having the extra money.

    Since at least then, women have been counted the same way they are counted today. Only women who want to work and are seeking employment, but can't get it are counted. Housewives and "welfare moms" are not counted. Of course there are a lot more women in the labor force today because the modern economy (and society's refusal to live frugally and make sacrifices) along with the much higher percentage of single parent households have forced more women into the workforce.

    What may be overlooked is that these working women stimulate the economy by generating income, which they spend to create increased demand for goods and services, so they create almost as many jobs as they "take." You can't make the argument that unemployment is higher now because women are taking jobs away from men. We didn't have an unemployment problem in 2005 and the number of women in the workforce is essentially unchanged from 7 years ago.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    And those "New Deal" policies had settled in quite nicely at that point, hadn't they?
    There is strong support that many of FDRs new deal policies actually extended the depression. You can go to Wikipedia and look up "New Deal," but here are just a couple of quotes:

    UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian are among those who believe the New Deal caused the Depression to persist longer than it would otherwise have, concluding in a study that the "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt and his economic planners had hoped," but that the "New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression." They claim that the New Deal "cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery". They say that the "abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s".
    Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs." They suggest that without Social Security, work relief, unemployment insurance, mandatory minimum wages, and without special government-granted privileges for labor unions, business would have hired more workers and the unemployment rate during the New Deal years would have been 6.7% instead of 17.2%.
    I will admit that some of the things we did were absolutely necessary and some good things came out of the New Deal but it wasn't the Utopian society that they teach you it was in school. What really ended the great depression was World War II.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Well, at least for a society that did not allow women into the workplace anywhere near as evenly as it did men.
    It wasn't that women were not allowed to work, so much, as they didn't have to or chose to stay at home and raise a family.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Wow. It sure would be nice to be able to work for a living and not have to have a second income just to keep the household running right.
    It sure would (lower taxes would help with that, BTW) but Americans now have to live in the nicest homes, drive a new car every 2 years and you can't live without that big screen TV so you can watch your 300 cable or satellite channels, and who wants to give up going to a nice restaurant twice a week? We think we are making sacrifices when we go to the reduced priced matinee to see the latest movie. Real sacrifice would be waiting for it to come out on DVD and watching at home on your new big screen TV.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    No. This nation's government has never been this polarized. Democrats hopped on board for Bush. And he went off the deep end.
    Except for extending the middle class tax cuts, which was politically advantageous to them, I can think of little that democrats "hopped on board for" after they took control of the House and Senate in Nov. 1996. Maybe you can cite two or three examples. There is little polarization when the economy is strong, as it was for most of around 1984 to 2009. This country was very polarized during the Nixon (Watergate), and Carter (recession) administrations, but you probably don't remember that. I do. By the way, you never did tell me how old you are. Being young doesn't mean you are wrong or have any less insight, and I'm not asking to in any way attack your arguments. It would just give me a better idea of what you have gone through personally and where you are coming from.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    But even after sending our own to die in Iraq, we were still not as polarized as we have been since Democrats got back in power.
    Maybe that is the problem!

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    [They] have not been offering any concessions at all. They have their demands, and they will "shut it down" unless they get what they want.
    No budget plan that the Republican House puts forward is going to pass the democrat controlled Senate, and even if it did, they wouldn't have enough democrat votes to override a presidential veto. You know that. I suppose they could completely turn their backs on the voters that elected them by giving the democrats everything they want, but that would not only be political suicide, it would be a direct betrayal to the districts that voted them in to office. The goal of the democrats is to block passage of a budget and use it for political gain in the November elections. Then they can say "Republicans controlled the house and they couldn't get a bill done."

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    Obama took a Republican healthcare bill, and invited them to take part in it, and they turned their backs.

    A couple of Republicans have even called out their party for their obstructionism, and having Obama as their agenda.
    A republican bill!? What was republican about it? That it didn't eliminate insurance companies? The provisions in this bill will still eliminate private insurance. It will just take a bit longer. They didn't even allow debate or allow republicans to offer amendments to the bill. As Nancy Pilosi said, they had to hurry up and pass it "so [they] could see what was in it."

    If this was essentially a "republican" bill, with a few democratic concessions, don't you think at least one or two of the most liberal republicans would have voted for it? Not only did every republican vote against it, even 37 democrats thought it was a bad idea.

    Even so the democrats had to resort to unprecedented (Obama's word) trickery to get the bill passed.

    Despite all this, Democrats could not pass the law through normal parliamentary procedures. The election of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts to the seat left vacant by Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death ensured that. Brown explicitly ran on a platform of stopping the Obamacare train wreck, and his election gave Senate Republicans the 41 votes they needed to filibuster the law.

    The only way for Democrats to avoid the filibuster was for the House to pass the Senate version exactly as written to avoid another Senate vote. However, opposition to the Senate version ran so deep in the House that Democrats had to cut an eleventh-hour deal promising pro-life Democrats that the law’s abortion-related provisions would be eliminated through a procedure called reconciliation. Under it, the House appended the pro-life revisions to an unrelated bill the Senate had already passed — one it could approve by a simple majority vote. (source)
    And did you even notice that the most controversial provisions of the bill were not set to take effect until January 1, 2013 after the next presidential election? Democrats knew that this bill would devastate American health care, so they made sure it wouldn't kick in before Obama could get re-elected.

    Quote Originally Posted by chief31 View Post
    He doesn't blame Bush. He blamed prior administrations. Again, twelve years of Republican power lead to economic collapse, just like it did almost 100 years ago.
    So he didn't blame president Bush, he blamed the "BUSH administration" and the "BUSH tax cuts" and "the previous administration's policies."

    You're right. I don't know how anyone could think he was pointing a finger at Bush!

    12 years, you say? I don't remember him ever blaming the Clinton administration ...

    Okay, your turn!

    Reagan inherited the end result, and had lots of tax room to work with. Not to mention a society that was still relying on dads to be the sole bread-winners. So that UE stat that you like to play with was not even with today's. And was it during his Presidency when they changed the UE statistics to be more favorable?[/QUOTE]
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  11. #2110
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    Quote Originally Posted by TopekaRoy View Post
    Forget that the link below is to a Glenn Beck page. It contains 18 brief audio excerpts from the actual Supreme Court arguments regarding healthcare. Listen to them and you will see why the individual mandate is such a problem.

    Supreme Court Audio
    Whoops! That was obviously the wrong link! Here is the correct one.

    Supreme Court Audio
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