Lets try not to get out of hand. Keep nasty remarks to yourself(hopefully I can practice what I preach!). Lets all try so we can keep coming on here and having fun.

Can anybody tell me what Bush did to make our country better? Also why is Obama expected to turn everything around in 19- 20 months? Like Ive said in the past, Im independent(my wife might disagree)and dont care who fixes the economy as long as its fixed. Im quite sure Bush made this problem though! It definitely seems to me that the reps would rather see Obama fail so they can look good come election time. This coming from someone who in the past thought everything Hannity and Beck said was the gospel. Ive come to grips with the fact that being independent Ill never have a legit candidate so I have to vote for the person whose ideas are more in line with mine.

Can anybody tell me what Bush did to make our country better? Also why is Obama expected to turn everything around in 19- 20 months? Like Ive said in the past, Im independent(my wife might disagree)and dont care who fixes the economy as long as its fixed. Im quite sure Bush made this problem though! It definitely seems to me that the reps would rather see Obama fail so they can look good come election time. This coming from someone who in the past thought everything Hannity and Beck said was the gospel. Ive come to grips with the fact that being independent Ill never have a legit candidate so I have to vote for the person whose ideas are more in line with mine.

To answer your first question: Nothing.

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. They only look to enhance their re-election prospects. They want to take this entire country down with them, too. Strip it of all the social support systems that separates us from third world countries. Tax cuts for rich, deregulate big business and war at any cost. That's the republican plan. And the hell with everyone else. By the way, did you know that of all the programs that Pres. Obama and congress got passed they have never gotten more than 3 republican votes. Never before in the history of congress have we had such obstruction. And these are the people some want to elect more of?

Pres. Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009 and on January 21, 2009 people wanted 8 million jobs created.

I think the government has done as much as it can do to create jobs. Interest rates are near zero. There have been programs to help housing with tax credits, and it did for awhile. The stimulus has helped create and more so save jobs. But the private sector is lagging.

Now it's time for the private industry to step up, stop sitting on two trillion dollar in assets and start hiring. It's not like there isn't work to be done. Just try to get some home improvement done and find out how long you have to wait. I had to wait 3 months for inside painting. I had to wait a week for AC repair. Businesses won't be happy until they have to pay zero taxes, no employee health insurance and have no regulations. They need to quit whining and start hiring. Ford knew he had to pay his auto workers more so that they could afford his product. Private business needs to hire so people will have money and spend it on their and other products. The economy won't improve until they start hiring so if they are waiting for the economy to improve before they do so - it won't.

And the republicans are going to block anything to improve the economy because they don't want the economy to improve - because they believe a bad economy will improve their election prospects. And it will because people can't analyze the situation and see who is trying to dig us out of this hole and who got us in it in the first place.

Now, is that enough ammunition for you, bob, so that you're not bored? LOL

Edited August 26, 201015 yr by Cleo's Mom

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.

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.

In an interview with the New York Times McConnell said charges that he blocked the president’s agenda are okay by him because of the results.

“I am amused with their comments about obstructionism,” McConnell said to the Times. “I wish we had been able to obstruct more. They were able to get the health care bill through. They were able to get the stimulus through. They were able to get the financial reform through. These were all major pieces of legislation, and if I would have had enough votes to stop them, I would have.”

March 25, 2009 -- Updated 0737 GMT (1537 HKT

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- -- It's OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he's jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.

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.

Edited August 27, 201015 yr by Cleo's Mom

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.

is how you put it. Same thing basically. And you failed to prove this. I don't expect video of everything, I will expect real proof of outlandish statements like the ones you made tho. Just as you would.

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. is how you put it. Same thing basically. And you failed to prove this. I don't expect video of everything, I will expect real proof of outlandish statements like the ones you made tho. Just as you would.

If Obama's agenda to help this country out of the worst economic collapse since the great depression fails then American fails. If the stimulus had failed to pass, if the bailout of GM and Chrysler had failed to pass, if the cash for clunkers and the home buyers tax rebate had failed, if unemployment hadn't been extended, then America would fail and a lot more people would be suffering. And if the republicans cared then they wouldn't have voted no on everything and obstructed everything. If they were concerned about not having the wall street abuses that caused this collapse from happening again, they would have voted for financial reform. But they don't care, so they voted no. They sure care about extending the tax cut to the top 2% millionaires, though.

These agenda items aren't perfect. I am sure Pres. Obama would have preferred to have inherited a budget surplus like bush inherited and spent his political capital on clean energy, education, transportation, infrastructure, etc...but instead he has had to tackle very difficult problems. Tough problems require tough solutions, but the republicans just vote no. They aren't interested in getting us out of the mess we're in. Why should they? They are the ones who got us in it.

And I think I proved my point to my satisfaction. I can't find one vote on an agenda item that republicans voted for America to succeed.

Edited August 27, 201015 yr by Cleo's Mom

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.

Cleo's Mom - quote: And if he fails, the country fails, too, but they don't care.

Ariscus99 quote: is how you put it. Same thing basically. And you failed to prove this. I don't expect video of everything, I will expect real proof of outlandish statements like the ones you made tho. Just as you would.

I don't need to prove this statement- it is my opinion based on the facts of how the republicans have voted.

Dingell: Health Care Should Be a Right, Not a Privilege

By Rep. John Dingell

Special to Roll Call

March 23, 2009, 12 a.m.

Related Content

Health Care Policy Briefing

In my more than 50 years of serving in the House, no issue has captured my attention or passion quite like health care reform. Since my first day in office, I have been committed to this issue, and today, more than five decades later, my commitment remains steadfast. The resolve to achieve universal health care is just as noble as it was when I first entered Congress, but the urgency is far greater.

I work from the driving principle that health care should be a right, not a privilege, a belief that my father shared during his 23 years as a Member of Congress. Every new Congress since 1956, I have carried on my father’s torch by introducing H.R. 15, a bill he once championed that would provide universal health care for all Americans. He laid the groundwork for national health insurance, and I have devoted my career to seeing it happen.

Over this time, I have witnessed major gains in expansion of health care coverage, and have also seen opportunities lost. Take 1935 as the first example. After the establishment of Social Security, President Franklin Roosevelt, working with my father, who also served in Congress, planned to address health care for all. But — and this will sound familiar — an impending recession and the impending danger of international conflict, coupled with partisan political battles over enlarging the Supreme Court, forced our leaders to pass on the issue of health reform. I remember my father talking with former UAW President Walter Reuther about how this issue could someday break the back of the auto industry.

Under the bold leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, I helped move Medicare and Medicaid through Congress in 1965. We hoped the success of these programs would catapult a call for further reform into the national conversation, but Vietnam prevented that from happening.

It took almost 30 years before another president came along and committed to providing all Americans quality and affordable health care. However, President Bill Clinton’s efforts were met with grand resistance and millions of dollars to wage a campaign of misinformation against the plan. A series of television advertisements claimed we couldn’t afford it and that it would be a bureaucratic nightmare that would pry patients away from beloved family doctors. The effort died in my committee when it failed by one vote.

With our economy under strain and our patients, businesses and states suffering, we now have another opportunity to accomplish our mission of comprehensive health care reform. The stars have aligned in favor of progress, and this time if for no other reason than economic necessity, we can be successful, because we must be.

If we do not act now, we risk missing a tremendous opportunity, and history has shown us that ignoring the problem does not cure our health care woes. For economic and humanitarian reasons, we need health care reform now — and waiting will only make it harder to do, as well as more damaging to the nation we live in.

We spend more on health care than any other nation on Earth and have less to show for it than any other Western country — yet we keep delaying reform. Health care spending continues to rise at the fastest rate in our nation’s history, last year more than 7 percent — more than twice the rate of inflation. The United States spends more than $2.2 trillion on health care each year, approximately 16 percent of the total economy.

The high cost of health care causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds. By the end of the year, it will cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. Premiums have grown four times faster than wages over the past eight years, and in each of these years, a million more Americans have lost their health insurance.

Right now, an American company is laying off a worker it can’t afford to cover. Right now, a pregnant woman is forgoing prenatal care because of its high cost. Right now, a sick child is not being treated because a trip to the doctor is too expensive. As you read this newspaper, dozens of people are filing for bankruptcy in the wake of a serious health problem. And by the end of the day, two people in my home state of Michigan will be dead because they lack health insurance.

In the budget plan he released earlier this month, President Barack Obama demonstrated that he has the courage to face one of the toughest challenges of our time — health care reform. The recent health care reform summit is a major step toward accomplishing this massive undertaking. Obama understands that we cannot fix our economic problems without reforming the nation’s health care system — the two are intertwined at all levels of our society.

This is not just a humanitarian issue or just an economic issue — it is an urgent issue that we must face now. It is now time for Congress, providers, industry, advocates and the American people to meet Obama’s level of urgency and to do our part in showing that we are just as serious about providing quality, affordable health care for all Americans

It is not going to be easy. My long history with health care reform has taught me to expect misinformation campaigns and an active and well-funded opposition. This process will be no different.

However, with sustained, focused leadership from the president, swift action by Congress, an expectation of shared sacrifice from all interested parties, and continued pressure from the American people, this time we can pass comprehensive health care reform. I look forward to working with the president and his team in crafting a plan that will make quality and affordable health care accessible for all Americans.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) is the chairman emeritus of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and will play a key role in the committee’s deliberations on health care reform.

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.

Edited August 27, 201015 yr by Cleo's Mom

Republicans want President Obama to fail -- at least that's how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sees it. "It's very clear, they've made a decision they want President Obama to fail," the Nevada Democrat told reporters Tuesday.

Reid would not name names, but said "there's a significant number of Republicans out there who want the president to fail."

"I think it's very clear as a result of actions since Obama was elected that people want him to fail," Reid said. "Some have said so. Others have just acted accordingly."

huffington post: 3/4/2009

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".

patty's gone. ariscus is back. a coincidence? I'm a frayed knot.

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'm not buying it and neither do most people. They voted no on most things just because it came from the democrats and Pres.Obama.

Seven Things Republicans Were For, Before They Were Against Them

1 month ago

I happened to be in the room the day John Kerry said he had voted for a war-financing bill before he voted against it. Republicans appropriated the sentence (uttered at a 2004 town hall for veterans in Huntington, West Virginia) and used it to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper. Six years later, it's a better fit for the GOP than it ever was for him.

So many Republicans have changed their ideas on so many major issues that it's hard to keep up. With the return of Congress this week, two of those issues – campaign finance disclosure and climate change – could play out in the Senate over the next month.

What accounts for the shifts? Evolving principles? Pressure from the right? Political Strategy 101, block Democrats and President Barack Obama so they'll fail and look bad? Maybe a slightly more subtle approach -- find fatal flaws in a compromise that under other circumstances (say if a Republican president wanted it passed) you would support, on the theory that the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the halfway decent or the baby step forward? All of the above? Here are seven reversals that hold clues:

1. Financial disclosure. Prominent Republicans have often made the case that transparency – not limits on campaign spending or contributions -- is the best antidote to corruption. "Republicans are in favor of disclosure," Sen. Mitch McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 2000. Seven years later, on the same program, House GOP leader John Boehner declared: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Boehner voted no last month on the DISCLOSE Act, which requires corporations, unions and some other groups to disclose more information about their campaign activities. It also imposes new restrictions on campaign spending by foreign firms, large government contractors and companies that get taxpayer bailouts. Boehner has said the bill favors some groups over others and would "shred the Constitution." McConnell agrees.

"There clearly has been a change of heart," Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, told me. She said Republicans are following the lead of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which has held that limits on spending are tantamount to limits on free speech. The result, she said, is a "knee-jerk political reaction to any attempts to disclose or regulate in any fashion the raising and spending of political money."

2. Cap and trade. Smithsonian magazine last year traced the history of "cap and trade" to a 1980s meeting of the minds between free-market conservatives and "renegade environmentalists." Their idea was to let companies buy and sell the right to pollute. The first Bush administration used such a system to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants to reduce acid rain. Emissions trading, as it was called then, was seen from the start as a model for dealing with the larger problem of carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

But Republicans now tar cap and trade as a job-killing "cap and tax" system. Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, running for the Senate, renounced his vote in favor of cap and trade in the House last year. Sen. John McCain of Arizona co-authored a pioneering cap-and-trade bill and introduced it in 2003, 2005 and 2007, then did an about-face last year. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina stepped in to help write an ambitious economy-wide cap-and-trade bill, but he too has walked away. Some Democrats are now aiming to cap carbon emissions from utilities only, and even that could be a heavy lift.

3. Immigration. McCain, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy and President George W. Bush were the prime movers of comprehensive immigration reform in 2006. But Kennedy died, Bush left office and McCain has become a hard-liner as he fights a primary challenge from the right. The 2006 bill strengthened border security but also laid out a path to earned citizenship for some 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country. Obama said in a speech this month that "under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support."

The 11 Republicans who supported the 2006 bill and are still in the Senate are McCain, McConnell, Graham, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Bob Bennett of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Sam Brownback of Kansas and George Voinovich of Ohio. Obama had a message for them: "Without bipartisan support, as we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem. Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes. That is the political and mathematical reality."

4. Deficit spending. Republicans in the Senate have been holding up passage of emergency unemployment benefits for weeks because they want to offset the spending with budget cuts elsewhere. They are also loath to help states cope with rising Medicaid costs or avert mass layoffs of teachers, police and other employees, unless the money to offset the costs is found somewhere else. This call for discipline is a stark contrast to GOP actions during the Bush administration, when two wars, $1.3 billion in tax cuts and a major expansion of Medicare were financed with deficit spending (aka borrowing money).

Many Republicans now say they were wrong. But their timing suggests a double standard (OK to pay for Bush's priorities with borrowed money, but not Obama's). And the battle they have chosen to fight is puzzling. Even deficit hawks say that with more than 15 million unemployed, they're not worried about spending $34 billion for a benefits extension that's temporary and badly needed. As Robert Bixby, president of the anti-deficit Concord Coalition, memorably told The Boston Globe, "I just feel like unemployment benefits wandered onto the wrong street corner at the wrong time, and now they are getting mugged."

5. Bipartisan deficit-reduction commission established by Congress. This reversal early this year involved six Republican co-sponsors of such a commission who voted against their own Senate bill. The six were McCain, Brownback, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma. McConnell had once supported the idea, but he too voted against it. The bill required an up-or-down vote on the commission recommendations. McConnell and others said they feared the panel might suggest raising taxes.

Obama quickly formed a bipartisan commission by using an executive order, and the hope is that Congress will adopt its consensus proposals. Co-chairman Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, said it was "the saddest thing" to see "no" votes from senators who had fought for the congressional commission for years. "What was the purpose of that?" he asked at a bipartisan forum Sunday with several dozen governors. "As far as I can discern, it was to stick it to the president."

6. Individual insurance mandate. Conservatives and Republicans once favored a requirement that all or most people buy basic health insurance. Like cap and trade, it was conceived by free-market conservatives as a way to avoid harming the private sector. It also fit with conservative views of personal responsibility and the immorality of freeloading. In 1993, Republicans pushed it as an alternative to an employer mandate. Stuart Butler, a domestic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, described the individual mandate in 2003 as a necessary part of a "social contract." Republican Mitt Romney signed a health law with a mandate in 2006, when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Now, however, Republican governors and attorneys general are suing the federal government over the individual mandate in the new health law, saying it is unconstitutional. Romney says the federal government has no right to impose such a plan on all states. Butler told me that experience in the last seven years with the federal employee health benefits system and with auto-enrollment (you're enrolled at work or school unless you opt out) suggests the requirement is not necessary to achieve a stable health insurance system with broadly shared risks. Obama's campaign position was similar, but health experts later changed his mind.

7. Medicare spending curbs. Democrats have financed their new health law in part by planning on nearly $500 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years. The proposal provoked months of attacks from Republicans. That was a dizzying role reversal from the days when Republicans used to recommend the same types of reductions in future Medicare spending (and had to play defense against attacks from

and other Democrats, now having their own role reversal).

In 1995, for instance, Republicans proposed cutting $270 billion over seven years. In 1997, McConnell and McCain were among the Republicans voting for a Balanced Budget Act that cut Medicare by $115 billion over five years. And in his 2008 presidential campaign, McCain proposed combined Medicare and Medicaid cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Yet last year, as he neared a re-election campaign in a state full of retirees, McCain led the fight against the Democrats' plans to trim Medicare.

Seven issues, scores of lawmakers, an epidemic of head-slapping and rethinking that corresponds to Obama's tenure and the rise of the Tea Party movement. Coincidence? Doubtful. Principles are in the mix, for sure, but nobody should mistake where they are sitting in the car. That would be the back seat, with politics at the wheel.

Another example:

Mitch McConnell is asked why seven of the Republicans who co-sponsored the Conrad-Gregg fiscal commission turned around and voted against it. McConnell says he now wants a spending reduction commission because heaven forbid we can't have them considering any tax hikes for the rich. Leave it to Republicans to take a bad idea and make it worse.