ariscus99

They were philibuster proof what about it was amazing?

Devana I think you have a better grasp of United States politics than most of us do. I do think that the U.S. is on the decline in a big, big way. And we're not very different from the Roman Senators overindulging in every way possible. We're greedy, we're dishonest and we're disrespectful of other countries. And we probably deserve whatever is in store for us.

China has worked hard and been really smart. It wouldn't surprise me if very soon they are the dominant force in our universe. In fact, I think it might already be happening.

And we're working so hard to acquire money and crap, we're oblivious for the most part.

I agree with much of what you said, especially about us being greedy and dishonest, and it definitely goes for both sides of the aisle. Something needs to change, and it may already be too late. What I don't agree with is the China statement. While China is emerging as a super power I don't think they will take over as "the" super power that we once were, the Roman's were that the British empire was for a long time. China is a very strange country in that while many people live well in that country and much of it is very nice comparing to the US in many ways, there are still over 100 million people living in poverty in the country. Loose statistics show about 10% living in poverty and with a population of over 1.5 billion, you do the math, thats a lot of people. Many are put in labor camps similar to what the nazi's did. However thats not to say that there isn't great things happening in that country and they are on the upswing, only 5 or 6 years ago that number was over 500 million. They remind me of the US about 250 years ago. I think we will go along time without a defined super power, we have many nations that are emerging as great, China, India, Israel, etc. and we aren't completely out of it yet.

And if the Muslims are buying land in Holland then someone is selling it to them. It's all about money. If those who own the land don't want mosques being built then don't sell them the land. But money talks and bulls**t walks.

It seems unless your muslim and trying to prove a point. Trump offered 25% more then they paid for the building and they said no.

Donald Trump is stepping into the fray over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero. The business magnate and television personality sent a letter to one of the financial backers of the project proposing to buy the building where Park51 would be located.

Trump offered 25 percent more than what the building was bought for. In the letter he makes the offer because it will end a "very serious, inflammatory and highly divisive situation."

The letter was sent to Hisham Elzanaty, who told the Associated Press that he provided most of the money to purchase the property on Park Place. The Egyptian-born businessman, who lives in Long Island, says he would sell it if the price was right.

Trump included one condition to his offer: as part of the deal, the backers of the Islamic cultural center would have to promise that if any new mosque is constructed, it would have to be at least five blocks farther away from the World Trade Center site.

WNYC reached Elzanaty this afternoon and he says he doesn't have a comment yet.

Actually, the tide is turning. While the majority of people polled still oppose it, fewer do and more support it. I think people are seeing that this is being made into a more important issue than it is and it is fueling hatred like the guy who was going to burn the Quoran.

Our government has no power to stop this mosque from being built so your statement that our government is a pushover in this matter is inaccurate. They also have no power to stop that guy from burning the Quoran if he isn't breaking any local zoning laws, fire laws, etc.. in doing so.

And if the Muslims are buying land in Holland then someone is selling it to them. It's all about money. If those who own the land don't want mosques being built then don't sell them the land. But money talks and bulls**t walks.

I very clearly stated numerous times that the government has no business deciding this, what I meant was that our pathetic government is pushover in general, we have a president going around apologizing for no reason at all like the world is a damn high school popularity contest that he has to win. We have some of the most inept people in history at the helm in this country on both sides of the aisle and it makes me sick to stomach all the time to think about. And yes obviously someone is selling the land to the muslims in Holland, but that doesn't mean that the majority of the Dutch people agree with or are happy with it. The muslims are taking over all over Europe not just Holland, I've vacationed there a few times and disheartening to see area's that were so rich with Judeo-Christian history at one time being completely taken over by the muslims and these people act as tho the law does not apply to them. It's sad. And it'll be happening here soon enough.

FYI:

Imam says NY mosque will have prayer spaces for other religions

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • September 7, 2010

NEW YORK - The imam behind plans for an Islamic community center near ground zero writes in a newspaper editorial that the facility will include "separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths."

They can put whatever they want in the thing, it wont matter, people don't like it, it doesn't sit well with millions and millions of American's. If they want to show what a tolerant religion islam is they would build somewhere else. There are hundreds of things that can be put in that building other then another mosque. It's a slap in the face to many people, and it's what the muslim people are doing worldwide. Some people like cm don't see it that way, but many more do. I know you want to make it all about fox news and whatever other BS your spewing, to many many American's they could care less what any news organization has to say because it's something they live with everyday, they do not want this hear. Many NY'ers are still suffering from PTSD from 9/11, and seeing something like this will do nothing but hinder them. I know that it is not sitting directly at ground zero, but it's close enough to make millions feel uncomfortable. Why have we become a nation that sees something like this where millions and millions of people are uncomfortable but still push on for the benefit of only a small few? Especially when the benefit can be gained in the exact same way by moving this thing a couple miles or even a few more blocks. Where is their tolerance? Why should only the majority be tolerant?

The city that I'm a firefighter in has a sister city in Holland, that we do a firefighter exchange with several times a year, last shift and threw the 9/11 weekend we have 5 Dutch firemen working with us, while talking to one of them who was riding out at my station we got on the subject of the ground zero mosque as 9/11 is fast approaching and it's a probably quite a bit bigger of a deal to us as firefighters than it is to many others, and he couldn't understand why we would let them build the mosque there. I explained that it's not a matter of letting, because they are doing nothing illegal and the last thing most of us want is government interference in a private matter, it took him a minute to wrap his mind around that, but once he did he started talking about the muslim take over of of Holland and much of Europe and how the Dutch are just about sick of it, and while they also practice freedom of religion there is quite a movement stirring in Holland to stop allowing the building of any more mosque's. It was quite interesting to get the input of someone not from this country and who is dealing with muslims on a grander scale then we have to, with a government that is even a bigger push over then ours.

From Gallup.

GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot

August 30, 2010

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.

These results are based on aggregated data from registered voters surveyed Aug. 23-29 as part of Gallup Daily tracking. This marks the fifth week in a row in which Republicans have held an advantage over Democrats -- one that has ranged between 3 and 10 points.

Yess!!! What if your are a really short woman! If you're 4'11 and weigh 200lbs then your BMI is over 40.0 and you meet the requirments for LAP-BAND®....but in general I think people know if they are never going to be able to get this weight off by themselves then they should be able to get the surg if they want to.

What if your a really short man?

Yes that is true there can not be a sure thing in any situation, like, who would have thought that with our power, training money connections and the finest military might on earth, we could not get a bunch of low life saudi terrorists and taken them down like the worms they are. Navy Seals, Green Beret, Elite forces of course the best we have to offer. Yet somehow here we are 10 yrs and countless thousands of lives ended or damaged, there is a chance this will never produce results either it appears. So, is it the best course of Action?

Your avoidance makes it pretty clear that you would not want the American way it's all it's wonder in charge of the fate of these people, because there is a chance they could just walk free. So I'll take it that your answer to my question you refuse to answer is that if something like that were to happen we'd do something unconstitutional to ensure they don't go free, because the "American way" can't always be trusted for the outcome we want.

So was it the best course of action? Of course not, now your talking military strategy, and we had the same problem with the war in Iraq as we did with the "conflict" in Vietnam, we tried to nickel and dime our way to victory and it didn't work. It couldn't work. What we should have done in Iraq is what we should have done back then; a very large insertion is what was needed. For example if we had calculated that to win this war we needed 100,000 troops we should have immediately sent 200,000 and we would have been in good standing for the take over. One of the other major problems in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is the overly tightened rules of engagement that were enforced on us. Ask your nephews about it, I have several friends in the fire service who spent time over there and that was one of their biggest complaints. In some instances for example, they were not even allowed to return fire without the okay of a commander that was not with them. So imagine your in a foreign country where everyone hates you already, and now people start firing on you, with machine guns, sniper fire, mortars, and all you can do is sit in your humvee and radio for permission to return fire. That is, once again as we say in the fire service, junk. Had these two issues been dealt with from the very beginning we would have had a much different outcome, and a much different timeline as well.

I don't think that if we had evidence and followed the laws of our land we would be worried about these theories. I think we could have done this IF we had been able after almost 10 yrs to to catch them and get them behind bars on put to death or whatever the punishment would have been, we are still trying to get out of Iraq and never belonged there and can't even figure out a goal in afganistan and try and get out of there, but then now we need to maybe run around Pakistan and hunt for the terrorists in the hills there. Maybe if we had kept a strict plan of action and clear goals we could have had the justice we all want. We had the Bush regime with their finger up their A$$ for the most part wasting resources and padding the pockets of their buddies for 8 yrs. THEY ARE THE ONES WHO FAILED YOU.

You are offering quite the what if scenario, so that is all I'm offering back to you. It happens quite often, and had we done this, these guys would have had a slew of ACLU attorneys turning every stone. While it is a remote possibility it is one. And I'll ask again, had all this happened and there was some technicality and they were to be let off, would you be okay with it? Your statement is you wanted them captured and brought to trial, because that's the American way. Well technicalities where killer's and rapist's walk free is also unfortunately part of that same American way.

Being attacked on our own soil is another nation like say japan did come to our country and attack our military and make a clear intention of War, that is what I am thinking of. 911 was a bunch of saudi maniacs who made a terrorist attack they did not represent another nation with an intention of War. We should have tracked them down, those that lived and thier group of thugs and brought them on trial for the attack and every lost life and damaged life as a result. they should have been tried and found guilty and then been punished accordingly.

That is how it works here we should not be a military force that never leaves.

All these countries we have had wars with and stayed in have been rebuilt and we stay there for our own interests or we would not be there.

That is my opinion and I have a right to it. you guys are welcome to your opinion as well.

So what would have happened had we done what is bolded and underlined there, and lets say, something happened paper work wise, as is so common in our legal system, and these people were to be found not guilty by some technicality. What then? Would you be okay with them walking free and going about their lives, as that is the way it works here?

The fact that this is such an emotionally charged issue is one reason I jumped on the ban-the-mosque bandwagon. But the fact is that if I know that bad guy, Rupert Murdoch, has spearheaded the outrage, then I have to take a step back! He's the money behind the misrepresentations and lies that spew forth on the Fox network, better known as Faux News. And not just the Fox network, newspapers and magazine publications as well. And he certainly isn't the ONLY money or machine behind all of the anti-progressive, anti-democratic movement. He's a big part of it though. So I don't trust anything that uses him as a source of material, or money to distribute his material.

I do believe (without being very informed at all) that it is in poor taste to build a mosque in the neighborhood of the World Trade Center. Didn't someone say there's already one 4 blocks away? How many mosques are needed in Manhattan? I think Bloomberg (again, I'm merely guessing) is trying to be a big man and a kind man and a true blue Statue of Liberty thinking American by welcoming such a proposal. And that would be admirable if the wounds had healed and peace between our nations had been achieved.

But that is just not the case. We know that Islam and muslim terrorists are just as prevalent and out to do harm today as they were on 9/11. We are a kinder, gentler nation, but there needs to be some kind of kinder, gentler feelings that are afforded those of us who were so seriously affected by the terrorists who flew those planes into our towers.

And that is not to say that I am discriminating against all Muslems. That would be flat out ignorant. But in the context of 9/11 and all that is happening world wide with our military, it would not be an act that would go toward healing our nation and our relations with the middle eastern world. In fact, it could make Americans even more bitter and resentful and could backfire big time.

And as for Pearl Harbor, a Japanese tea garden would be fine there NOW that we've healed our relationship with Japan and so many years have passed - and we WON that WAR. But this is not the case with 9/11, Muslim terrorists, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the middle east in general.

We welcome Muslim refugees. We welcome those of middle eastern descent who wish to immigrate to the U.S. and join us in the fight against global terrorism and who want to become Americans and have a better life. But we must also be sensitive to our own people and the grief and stress that we still feel today because of those terrorist acts on 9/11.

If you cut out the unnecessary fox bashing(which is the most watched news station on tv today, so they must be doing something right), this post was mostly spot on. The tea garden at Pearl Harbor I'm gonna say there are still probably enough people who fought in WWII around who would think that is a terrible idea. It was actually a comparison made by my neighbor when we were talking about this(he was B-17 pilot in WWII) and he's still quite uncomfortable with anything Japanese being placed around Pearl Harbor. But that is just the opinion of one old man.

Who was the wise person anyway?

Are you serious? Thats almost un-American. Our 26th president of these United States Theodore Roosevelt. The quote is actually; "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

Somebody wise said "speak softly and carry a big stick" If we are attacked on out own soil we must fight to the death for our country.

Before Israel decided to not share with the Palistinians somewhere to live and trade and exist they should have really thought of the consequences. They were all there and need to be sharing some space to those people.

So we should do nothing unless we are attacked on our soil? That is your stance? You realize that here in 2010 and into the future war will not be fought like it was 20-30-40 years ago, with people on the ground. When we are attacked (and without any preemptive move on Iran and possible N. Korea it is when not if) it will be a nuclear attack, it won’t be a little ICBM or an F-15 dropping some free fall bombs. It will be a nuke, and IT WILL KILL MILLIONS. So after this, is when we start to fight is what you’re saying? Sacrifice millions of American lives for some "dream" of world peace. World peace is a beautiful thought, but has never and will never happen. You cannot look back through history and find one single point since the existence of humans where there has been peace on earth.

Iran well, I don't necessarily think we need to blast them and the koreans either. We are the ones who started this crap with nukes and atomic bombs and so on we have to take some blame here for our reckless attitude. I think you all are so mad that President Obama won and just cannot get over it. I wanted health care reform and wish it would have gone further but we will take what we get on our way to a good socialized model. I am talking about basic health care not foolish wasted dollars health care.

I am proud of our President's work so far and nothing you all say will sway me. I work for kaiser myself and I think we do a great job for our members. I am also a union member and am proud of that as well.

Healthcare won’t mean much after a nuclear attack on US soil. The healthcare system will be so overwhelmed if you aren’t there for some sort of problem related to the bombing you won’t receive much care, and that will probably go on for some time. So all this work done by obama and the dems will be for not.

I still say we can have a peace in the world someday and that is my daily prayer for us all. I am not a wacko religious freak either I am a buddhist. I have never collected one dollar of unemployment thankfully for my family but if I needed it I would and I would hope some kind of healthcare would available to my family. Those are social programs I believe in like social security,food stamps, and housing for the very poor and elderly care and help. If we cannot do that in thiscountry with some of those tax dollars what is this all about? keeping the rich rich? BULLSH!!T. I also give to some charities and i know some very wealthy people do as well, they are no worse for the wear. Just how much do some think they need?

Again, I challenge you to find one point in history since the time of man, that there has been peace on earth. It’s not human nature, unfortunately.

Tort reform is not necessary, we have all the rules and regs we need on this subject and if a doc takes off the wrong leg or a wrong kidney is removed, well I think I should have the right to sue his insurance for damage. Limiting people in amounts that they can sue for is just unreasonable, we have a jury who can look at these cases and hand down reasonable pay outs and the ones who have obviously mistreated the public and lied to them, they deserve to be taken to the cleaners, like cigarette companies who spent years decieving the public and big oil lying and paying off government officials to sink poorly designed oil wells etc... sue them til they sink! I am in medicine and have been for 30 yrs as a nurse I have been to 2 depositions, it's sad when people try to launch thier lives on the backs of decent Dr's and health care organizations that don't deserve it,but that is not the norm from what I have seen. If they deserve it they should pay and that is why the insurance companies should be looked at closer, they are often the scoundrels for charging so DANG high all the time.

I don't know what state you’re in, but I've been in emergency medicine for about 8 years in CA and have been called to testify 7 times in 8 years. Never about service's I've rendered one time was a comment that was made in very poor taste by a paramedic from a different agency that I happened to be working alongside. Another was about a doctor who tried to take control of an emergency scene on a traffic collision and refused to release care of the patient and it slowed the patients arrival to the hospital, the other 5 were complete and utter BS, brought by scourge of the earth type people who I'd ran on literally hundreds of times and they were trying to get rich. That’s in 8 short years. Why should we limit them? Well let’s say the doctor does something atrocious. Let’s say you go in for appendicitis and you leave without your foot. Now you sue. And you get an extremely liberal jury who decides that your pain and suffering is worth 250 million dollars. Would you have ever made anywhere near that amount of money in your life? No. Is your pain worth a lot? Absolutely, but 250 mil? Now most likely a judge would throw that out and make his own ruling and assign a more reasonable number. But that is the sort of thing that can and does happen. One of the trials I testified in the person was asking 50 million dollars from the ambulance company because the medic never started an IV or hooked up a heart monitor. Now in this persons past trips they had almost always been hooked up to a heart monitor and had an IV started. They asked the medic why he didn't do it, he told them that the vitals were stable and it wasn't needed. The patient demanded he do what he was told by the patient, and the medic refused. And was being sued for 50 million dollars. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Another was a person who wanted to be seen in the ER they "the fastest" way in was by ambulance complaining of chest pain. However they didn't know that we had a no nonsense medic working with us and a equally no nonsense triage nurse and PA waiting at the ED. So in route the patient was attached to a 12 lead that showed nothing, BP was normal, skin's normal, resp rate normal, the only thing abnormal was the patients pain scale which when we asked they very calmly said it was at least a 10 out of 10. I've never experienced what I would call a 10 out of 10 pain wise but I have been in so much pain I was on the ground in tears, I'd call that about a 9. To have someone look me square in the face and say 10 usually to be honest makes laugh a little inside. So needless to say we arrive at the ED we've already made base contact informed them we would be bringing the patient in threw triage as they were not critical and didn't need a bed right away. The patient felt otherwise and sued the ambulance company, my fire department, the hospital and the doctors group that the PA worked for as well as the triage nurse. And he only wanted a cool 25 million for his "pain and suffering". If we stop these we stop a lot of wasted money. Two examples of my short 8 years in the medical service. There are probably thousands and thousands more.

Also, al-qaeda jihadists are not building the mosque and that's who attacked us on 9/11.

A.K.A muslim extremists. The imam is the guy who, 15 days after the attack said we brought it on ourselves and deserved it. I'm paraphrasing but that's the jist of what he said. IMO that = an extremist.

Tort reform is about limiting the awards a jury can give in a medical malpractice suit. This happens after a lawsuit has been filed. How will this impact doctors practicing defensive medicine to reduce the liklihood of their being sued in the first place? And how will it affect malpractice premiums since it has been shown that they are tied to investment losses?

Will a doctor not order a CT scan to look for cancer if he knows a jury can only award $500,000 if he misses the cancer? And what about his reputation once the lawsuit is filed and he has to defend himself in court? And his lawyer fees and time lost? How does tort reform stop all of this?

If reasonable amounts of money are placed on individual malpractice suits it will make them not as afraid of their patients, first of all, not as many people will be hopping on the lawsuit bandwagon hoping to be the next millionaire the "American way"(having someone give you the money). Thats not to say that if you go in for a knee replacement and come out with an amputated arm you shouldn't get a healthy amount of money to compensate you. But, frivolous lawsuits are what is doing all this to the healthcare industry. Will a doctor not order a CT scan to look for cancer if he's not as scared? No. Doctors in general love what they do, love their patients and love to beat the illness. Are there some lazy ones who could care less? Yes thats what lawsuits are for. But if a doctor does due diligence and finds nothing, then six months later cancer is found, nowadays, the patient will find some ambulance chasing lawyer to find some minute obscure outrageously expensive test that "could" have been done, and then will sue for 100 million dollars. So, now the doctor will run that test, and every other unnecessary expensive test, in order to not get sued, and they still might miss the cancer. Medicine is a practice. Mistake's happen. They shouldn't be a way for people to become rich.

But we don't make legal decision based on polls or popularity. We can't enforce the constitution just when it's convenient. The tea party is alway yapping about the constitution when they think THEIR rights are being abridged. And they're alway yapping about big government taking those rights away (they are never specific, though) but now they want - who? - that's right - the big government to step in and say NO. How hypocritical.

It is an inflammatory issue to be sure and it is being fed by the big money on the right. People need to look beyond this. So what that they build this mosque. The sun will still rise tomorrow, people will still go about their work in NYC and someday we will have an awesome world trade center bigger than the mosque and more impressive.

Now, that takes me to my next point. I am actually more PO-ed about what is taking so long for this world trade center building and memorial to be built. I mean 9 years? Come on, folks, it could have and should have been built by now. And then maybe we wouldn't be having this debate.

Did you know there are strip clubs next to ground zero? Anyone oppose them?

Who's asking for the government to step in and shut this down? Most of what I've heard is them wanting the guy who owns the place to reconsider, no one is debating whether or not it's constitutional, it is, what people are saying is it is grossly insensitive and should not be put there. Strippers didn't kill 3000+ American's and 343 of my brothers and sisters on 9/11 radical muslims did.

So, malpractice premiums go up when the insurance companies lose money in the stock market just like the rest of us, but we don't have a way to recoup those losses. They do. It's not because of rising jury awards, which, at least in my state, have decreased.

You don't seem to have a firm grip on all of the repercussions of a lack of tort reform. Doctors don't necessarily charge more per hour or per procedure due to high liability ins cost, but the real cost and waste in money comes from what many have coined as "defensive medicine". Which basically is all the test's that doctors will run that aren't needed just to please a patient who is threatening to sue them. Most estimates have the cost of "defensive medicine" into the hundreds of billion's of dollars a year. Think of the good that could be done with that money. Here's an article that touches on "defensive medicine" and tort reform.

(1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone's insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

What to do? Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

:biggrin: I agree

"If we aren't a country that provides for health insurance for all of our people then what are we?"

Answer: If we do provide medical procedures and facilities for "All", then we are a communist state.

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"If we tell a little 8 year old girl that her diabetes can't be treated because we don't have insurance or the money to pay for it and there is no government program, what does that say about us?"

Answer: There is a program in place, it's called Medicare or Medicaid, or by the state... in AZ it's called Access. Want to guess who pays for this?

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"The republicans want everything to be about privledge - the haves and the have nots."

Answer: This Republican would like it to be about accountability and choice.

This Republican would like to see all the aid and money that goes to other countries stay in this country. Why feed starving kids in other countries when children in MY United States are going to school hungry, going to bed hungry, wearing shoes with holes in them?

Too much to want? I think not!

Ariscus99,

I think I see that you are a conservative pretty clearly and against medical care for all in this country. I have been a nurse for 30 yrs, i have worked in many different specialties and currently am in a large HMO. I have to say I am for socialized medicine hands down. I feel that we could provide everybody basic health care much more affordable than the current system of "just show up at the ER" after things have gone to far. If we paid for yearly preventative physicals, mammography, cholestesterol screenings, BP and pulse checks and get to those who have preventable illness or find problems early. This would save us all money! Also mother baby care and those who are disabled need to have regular health screenings. I think that we just cannot go wrong by doing this. Look at what has happened to youngsters in school when we allowed big business in the set up mcdonalds and taco bell in schools and decided PE was to expensive to keep for the kids? It would have been so much better to have excellent healthful cafeteria's in schools and push for PE and sex education in schools? these poor kids have suffered. Socialized programs that serve the public as a whole are much better than waiting until folks are sick and disabled and then trying to make lame excuses why we cannot help them because oh my it is "socialism". This is America and we can afford to do this once we clean up after the republican mess of the past 25-30 yrs of damage. The gap between rich and poor is just shameful and we all need to remain vigilant until we can get back on track but we don't abandon our own. I am an independent and have been for many years I am conservative about some issues fiscally but really none socially.

Yes I'm conservative about many things, spending is a big one. I don't like to think that I work my butt off while others do nothing and get to benefit from me. I donate a pretty substantial amount of money to charities every year, that's the only way I want my money redistributed, by my choice. I'm also pretty liberal about things that would make many "conservatives" cringe; abortion, and gay rights to name a couple. Your statement there is pretty sweeping. Do I want medical care for everyone in America? Of course, but I don't think that I should have to pay for your medical care, nor should you pay for mine or any one else's. If you read the article I posted on the first page you will see a pretty clear example of how I feel about handouts. The article is titled "healthcare is not a right" but talks about many handout programs and is pretty spot on with how I feel. I've been in the medical field for awhile now and am getting deeper in it now, but I have to say in my experience, you are the exception and not the rule in the medical field. The vast majority that I've met(and this only goes for in the state of California because it's the only place I've worked) in hospitals up and down this state are against obamacare and any form of socialized medicine, from nurses to doctors, to admitting staff, to the custodial staff, I try to talk to as many people as possible and like I stated the vast majority do not feel how you feel. You say you work for an HMO? Talk about capitalism at it's "finest". I recently spent two day with my cousin who is an gastroenterologist with kieser, a large HMO, and was shocked and disgusted at what she has to go threw and the hoops they make their customers jump threw. My cousin told me she has never been so miserable but had signed a contract with them in order to pay off much of her student loans and she had to finish the contract, but the day it was up, she'll be leaving and never coming back. If the government wants to run my healthcare anything like an HMO I don't know what I'd do.

You say "this is America and we can afford it." Based on what? We're how many trillions of dollars in debt? How big is a our budgetary shortcoming? And I know it's all Bush's fault. But we're here we need to really fix it, not by showing fake numbers of unemployment going down, because we all know very well that the numbers that are reported are only of those claiming benefits and as benefits expire these people fall off of the spectrum and the dems then say they went back to work. I enjoy how it went from "jobs created", to "jobs saved", to what they're calling it now "lives touched". The real unemployment rate in this country is higher then ever, but there's no proof because the government only tracks people who are actively collecting unemployment benefits.

The best fix for healthcare, IMO, still would have been insurance reform. Now I know that because cm thinks I'm a conservative that that means I want no government whatsoever and no government regulation whatsoever. For some reason she can't see that there is a happy medium somewhere along the line. Had we made some strict regulations for ins companies, got rid of the pre existing conditions restrictions, and had some MAJOR tort reform, most of this could have been fixed.

You can cut and paste articles that support your opinion and I can do the same.

If we aren't a country that provides for health insurance for all of our people then what are we? Who are we? If we tell a little 8 year old girl that her diabetes can't be treated because we don't have insurance or the money to pay for it and there is no government program, what does that say about us?

If we tell the young person who needs dialysis that they can't get it because there is no insurance and no program to pay for it and they will die without it - what does this say to the world about what kind of people we are?

The republicans want everything to be about privledge - the haves and the have nots. Of course they are the haves. If you have the money then you can get medical treatment. If you don't - too bad.

This is what Rep. Alan Grayson (I really like him, btw) said about the republican healthcare plan: Don't get sick and if you do, die quickly. He nailed it. That is the mean-spiritedness of the elected republicans - all of whom have healthcare of course. If I have the money to buy health insurance, or it is a job benefit, then I deserve it. If you're stupid enough not to have the money to buy it or a job that provides it then you deserve to die. Tough luck.

But I wonder how many of the doctors or others who oppose "socialized" medicine accept medicare patients? And who will themselves accept social security and medicare when they turn 65.

My local state senator - a republican woman - had a town hall meeting that I attended. Her husband is a doctor and she said he only accepts medicare patients. I think he is a kidney specialist or something. I wonder why- if this socialized medical program is so bad?

I think we saw the contempt for the unemployed when some elected republicans said they were hobos or lazy or just didn't want to look for jobs and they didn't want to extend unemployment benefits while at the same time championing for extended tax cuts for the rich.

Of course the doctors would be opposed to anything democratic. Because the democrats want the top 2-3% wage earners to go back to the fairer tax rate that was in place under Clinton when 22 million jobs were created. As opposed to the 8 million jobs that were lost in the last 10 years while the 2 bush tax cuts have been in effect.

Of course we can cut and paste articles, I don't expect people on here to write huge articles for that purpose. The article I posted is just something that was recommended to me by some doctors I've been working with. As far as taking medicare patients? I am most interested in going into emergency medicine(working in an ED) so we must take all patients, most of the doctors I've been shadowing are ED doctors, so they have no say, and by law, do not know what ins. their patients have. But of the other doctors I've worked with(an endocrinologist, a radiologist, a dermatologist, and quite a few internists) would much rather not treat people on medicare because of the pain that it is with everything, from billing to getting procedures approved, to dealing with all the red tape, doctors in general(those who I've been around) despise medicare. And doctors after taxes, and paying insurance premiums for malpractice, since there is no tort reform those ins premiums keep going up and up, the amount that most doctors make is not as much as most people believe. And when you consider most doctors come out of medical school with in excess of 100,000 dollars in student loans it takes awhile before they become "top earners".

And I think I proved my point to my satisfaction. My comments were only outlandish to those who deny the obstructionist republicans and their contempt for the middle class and the unemployed.

The republicans vote no based on what they believe(some of them, some vote no, to obstructionist). Not everyone in this country, believe it or not, thinks that the answer to everything is a handout. To say that because they vote against handouts means they have contempt for the middle class is, once again, naive, none of these people can be who they are without the middle class and believe it or not, most of them know it.

I started back to school again this semester working on my second degree this one in science, in hopes to become a physician sometime in the not to distant future. And along with attending classes, I've been shadowing several different physician's in my area, a couple who are friends, a cousin, and some that I don't know, at several different hospitals, and I find it interesting to listen to what these people have to say when it comes to politics, because like with most things they go above and beyond what most people do in their research of topics and the thought process behind their beliefs can typically be more eloquently expressed. And I have found that just about none of them want anything to do with the democratic side of things, they mostly feel that all obamacare is going to do is restrict the medical practice, and I've actually been teased a great deal for trying to go into medicine at this point in time. I've also been given a great deal of literature to read in my off time to try to better see where they're coming from. One such article, tho it's old I have been told to read by about half a dozen doctors is this one from 1993 when the last fight for socialized medicine was going on, it's worth a read cm if for nothing more then to get a better idea as to the mindset of MANY republicans. It's only a 5-10 minute read but gives good insight even if you disagree with the basis.

Health Care Is Not A Right

by Leonard Peikoff, Ph.D. Delivered at a Town Hall Meeting on the Clinton Health Plan. Red Lion Hotel, Costa Mesa CA. December 11, 1993

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen:

Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea -- which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical -- it does not work -- but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. So I'm going to leave it to other speakers to concentrate on the practical flaws in the Clinton health plan. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan -- not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it -- to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.

What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with -- and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.

Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at Mcdonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights -- and only these.

Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want -- not to be given it without effort by somebody else.

The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if and when you have achieved them. In other words: you have the right to act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish. But you have no right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which they voluntarily agree.

To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is precisely that: the right to the pursuit -- to a certain type of action on your part and its result -- not to any guarantee that other people will make you happy or even try to do so. Otherwise, there would be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your "right" to happiness at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless.

That is why the U.S. system defines rights as it does, strictly as the rights to action. This was the approach that made the U.S. the first truly free country in all world history -- and, soon afterwards, as a result, the greatest country in history, the richest and the most powerful. It became the most powerful because its view of rights made it the most moral. It was the country of individualism and personal independence.

Today, however, we are seeing the rise of principled immorality in this country. We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded. We are seeing the complete destruction of the concept of rights. The original American idea has been virtually wiped out, ignored as if it had never existed. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents -- rights which require no earning, no effort, no action at all on the part of the recipient.

You are entitled to something, the politicians say, simply because it exists and you want or need it -- period. You are entitled to be given it by the government. Where does the government get it from? What does the government have to do to private citizens -- to their individual rights -- to their real rights -- in order to carry out the promise of showering free services on the people?

The answers are obvious. The newfangled rights wipe out real rights -- and turn the people who actually create the goods and services involved into servants of the state. The Russians tried this exact system for many decades. Unfortunately, we have not learned from their experience. Yet the meaning of socialism (this is the right name for Clinton's medical plan) is clearly evident in any field at all -- you don't need to think of health care as a special case; it is just as apparent if the government were to proclaim a universal right to food, or to a vacation, or to a haircut. I mean: a right in the new sense: not that you are free to earn these things by your own effort and trade, but that you have a moral claim to be given these things free of charge, with no action on your part, simply as handouts from a benevolent government.

How would these alleged new rights be fulfilled? Take the simplest case: you are born with a moral right to hair care, let us say, provided by a loving government free of charge to all who want or need it. What would happen under such a moral theory?

Haircuts are free, like the air we breathe, so some people show up every day for an expensive new styling, the government pays out more and more, barbers revel in their huge new incomes, and the profession starts to grow ravenously, bald men start to come in droves for free hair implantations, a school of fancy, specialized eyebrow pluckers develops -- it's all free, the government pays. The dishonest barbers are having a field day, of course -- but so are the honest ones; they are working and spending like mad, trying to give every customer his heart's desire, which is a millionaire's worth of special hair care and services -- the government starts to scream, the budget is out of control. Suddenly directives erupt: we must limit the number of barbers, we must limit the time spent on haircuts, we must limit the permissible type of hair styles; bureaucrats begin to split hairs about how many hairs a barber should be allowed to split. A new computerized office of records filled with inspectors and red tape shoots up; some barbers, it seems, are still getting too rich, they must be getting more than their fair share of the national hair, so barbers have to start applying for Certificates of Need in order to buy razors, while peer review boards are established to assess every stylist's work, both the dishonest and the overly honest alike, to make sure that no one is too bad or too good or too busy or too unbusy. Etc. In the end, there are lines of wretched customers waiting for their chance to be routinely scalped by bored, hog-tied haircutters some of whom remember dreamily the old days when somehow everything was so much better.

Do you think the situation would be improved by having hair-care cooperatives organized by the government? -- having them engage in managed competition, managed by the government, in order to buy haircut insurance from companies controlled by the government?

If this is what would happen under government-managed hair care, what else can possibly happen -- it is already starting to happen -- under the idea of health care as a right? Health care in the modern world is a complex, scientific, technological service. How can anybody be born with a right to such a thing?

Under the American system you have a right to health care if you can pay for it, i.e., if you can earn it by your own action and effort. But nobody has the right to the services of any professional individual or group simply because he wants them and desperately needs them. The very fact that he needs these services so desperately is the proof that he had better respect the freedom, the integrity, and the rights of the people who provide them.

You have a right to work, not to rob others of the fruits of their work, not to turn others into sacrificial, rightless animals laboring to fulfill your needs.

Some of you may ask here: But can people afford health care on their own? Even leaving aside the present government-inflated medical prices, the answer is: Certainly people can afford it. Where do you think the money is coming from right now to pay for it all -- where does the government get its fabled unlimited money? Government is not a productive organization; it has no source of wealth other than confiscation of the citizens' wealth, through taxation, deficit financing or the like.

But, you may say, isn't it the "rich" who are really paying the costs of medical care now -- the rich, not the broad bulk of the people? As has been proved time and again, there are not enough rich anywhere to make a dent in the government's costs; it is the vast middle class in the U.S. that is the only source of the kind of money that national programs like government health care require. A simple example of this is the fact that the Clinton Administration's new program rests squarely on the backs not of Big Business, but of small businessmen who are struggling in today's economy merely to stay alive and in existence. Under any socialized program, it is the "little people" who do most of the paying for it -- under the senseless pretext that "the people" can't afford such and such, so the government must take over. If the people of a country truly couldn't afford a certain service -- as e.g. in Somalia -- neither, for that very reason, could any government in that country afford it, either.

Some people can't afford medical care in the U.S. But they are necessarily a small minority in a free or even semi-free country. If they were the majority, the country would be an utter bankrupt and could not even think of a national medical program. As to this small minority, in a free country they have to rely solely on private, voluntary charity. Yes, charity, the kindness of the doctors or of the better off -- charity, not right, i.e. not their right to the lives or work of others. And such charity, I may say, was always forthcoming in the past in America. The advocates of Medicaid and Medicare under LBJ did not claim that the poor or old in the '60's got bad care; they claimed that it was an affront for anyone to have to depend on charity.

But the fact is: You don't abolish charity by calling it something else. If a person is getting health care for nothing, simply because he is breathing, he is still getting charity, whether or not President Clinton calls it a "right." To call it a Right when the recipient did not earn it is merely to compound the evil. It is charity still -- though now extorted by criminal tactics of force, while hiding under a dishonest name.

As with any good or service that is provided by some specific group of men, if you try to make its possession by all a right, you thereby enslave the providers of the service, wreck the service, and end up depriving the very consumers you are supposed to be helping. To call "medical care" a right will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country, as socialized medicine has done around the world, wherever it has been tried, including Canada (I was born in Canada and I know a bit about that system first hand).

I would like to clarify the point about socialized medicine enslaving the doctors. Let me quote here from an article I wrote a few years ago: "Medicine: The Death of a Profession." [The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, NAL books, c 1988 by the Estate of Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff.]

"In medicine, above all, the mind must be left free. Medical treatment involves countless variables and options that must be taken into account, weighed, and summed up by the doctor's mind and subconscious. Your life depends on the private, inner essence of the doctor's function: it depends on the input that enters his brain, and on the processing such input receives from him. What is being thrust now into the equation? It is not only objective medical facts any longer. Today, in one form or another, the following also has to enter that brain: 'The DRG administrator [in effect, the hospital or HMO man trying to control costs] will raise hell if I operate, but the malpractice attorney will have a field day if I don't -- and my rival down the street, who heads the local PRO [Peer Review Organization], favors a CAT scan in these cases, I can't afford to antagonize him, but the CON boys disagree and they won't authorize a CAT scanner for our hospital -- and besides the FDA prohibits the drug I should be prescribing, even though it is widely used in Europe, and the IRS might not allow the patient a tax deduction for it, anyhow, and I can't get a specialist's advice because the latest Medicare rules prohibit a consultation with this diagnosis, and maybe I shouldn't even take this patient, he's so sick -- after all, some doctors are manipulating their slate of patients, they accept only the healthiest ones, so their average costs are coming in lower than mine, and it looks bad for my staff privileges.' Would you like your case to be treated this way -- by a doctor who takes into account your objective medical needs and the contradictory, unintelligible demands of some ninety different state and Federal government agencies? If you were a doctor could you comply with all of it? Could you plan or work around or deal with the unknowable? But how could you not? Those agencies are real and they are rapidly gaining total power over you and your mind and your patients. In this kind of nightmare world, if and when it takes hold fully, thought is helpless; no one can decide by rational means what to do. A doctor either obeys the loudest authority -- or he tries to sneak by unnoticed, bootlegging some good health care occasionally or, as so many are doing now, he simply gives up and quits the field."

The Clinton plan will finish off quality medicine in this country -- because it will finish off the medical profession. It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy.

The only hope -- for the doctors, for their patients, for all of us -- is for the doctors to assert a moral principle. I mean: to assert their own personal individual rights -- their real rights in this issue -- their right to their lives, their liberty, their property, their pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence applies to the medical profession too. We must reject the idea that doctors are slaves destined to serve others at the behest of the state.

I'd like to conclude with a sentence from Ayn Rand. Doctors, she wrote, are not servants of their patients. They are "traders, like everyone else in a free society, and they should bear that title proudly, considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."

The battle against the Clinton plan, in my opinion, depends on the doctors speaking out against the plan -- but not only on practical grounds -- rather, first of all, on moral grounds. The doctors must defend themselves and their own interests as a matter of solemn justice, upholding a moral principle, the first moral principle: self- preservation. If they can do it, all of us will still have a chance. I hope it is not already too late. Thank you.

I didn't say every elected republican, I said leaders and mcconnell is the republican senate leader. Boehner is now the apparent de facto republican leader making major speeches and he has kept the republicans in the house in line and in lock step voting against every Obama agenda item. And Jindal wants to run for president.

I have heard this claim made over and over again on MSNBC by Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann and others and I don't think the republican leaders have denied it because they are proud of wanting to block everything of Obama's and try to precipitate failure to the best of their ability.

And it is unreasonable to expect videos for everything unless you, too, post them for everything you claim.

Ok I'll give you that you didn't say every republican, you did say leaders. But you've failed to prove that, and you've also failed to prove that they said they just don't care if America fails so longs as obama fails.

And if he fails, the country fails, too, but they don't care.

It is a fact that before Obama was sworn in the elected republican leaders said that their objective was to have Obama fail by voting no one everything. And if he fails, the country fails, too, but they don't care.

You can prove everything in this statement correct? I'm really curious to see the transcripts and or video's of every republican representative saying these things. If you can in fact show proof of this outlandish statement you just made I'll vote for obama in 2012.

I absolutely know how this country shouldn't work and that's how it was under bush - the lost decade when we lost our retirement, savings, home values and earnings. He took a surplus and turned it into a deficit and started an unnecessary war costing billions in dollars and thousands in lives. And the necons view of how the world works comes from none other than cheney who has zero credibilty. Like any of them have any credibility when it comes to foreign policy or how the world works. They got every freakin' thing wrong with the war in Iraq, from WMD, to being greeted as liberators, to how long it would last to how much it would cost, to having no exit strategy, to saying Al-Qaeda was there - THEY GOT NOTHING RIGHT. So, yeah, like I'm going to listen to any of them about the real world. :biggrin:

Who the hell is talking about foreign policy? This is not a conversation about bush and Cheney. It's about putting a mosque the building that the people who attacked America and killed thousands of YOUR fellow countrymen worship at. And now their going to put up a place of "worship" because some Muslims died there? Give me a break. What is the percentage of Muslims that died in comparison to none Muslims? I will go ahead and say that if it's even close to the same then I'd be okay with them maybe putting a plaque o something there but not a mosque. And they aren't talking about a little remodel and a coat of paint, this is quite the undertaking that is proposed. You talk about how the right blames bo for everything, well you just took a conversation that had little to do with any president and somehow were able to spin some Bush bashing into it. Do you feel better now? Congrats. Now back to tue topic. Why would these Muslims who KNOW how angry this is making many, many people all around "their" nation, want to continue this? It's the disgusting uber liberalism of this country that every little group should get what they want no matter what or who it angers as long as the minority is happy. As we say in the fire service this is JUNK!