Obama Healthcare

[RagnaToad]

Ah, that's what I love about liberals -- the hypocrisy. If I want to keep the money I work for, I'm selfish. But if I want the money YOU work for, I'm "needy" or "less fortunate".

Again, you are generalising. If I were to criticise republicans remotely as arrogantly as you do, you would freak out.

It wouldn't be paid for as much. They wouldn't get the same equipment, they wouldn't get the same training, and they wouldn't have nearly the same work ethic.

What? Health insurance has nothing to do with the way doctors and nurses are being trained, nor with what equipment hospitals would buy. If anything, they would have more money, since more operations etc. would be actually paid for.

I'll give you a situation, and I'd like you to answer a question for me. You and I are both just graduating high school. You want more -- I don't. I go out and get a minimum-wage unskilled labor job. You go to college. You have a better work ethic than I do. Since you don't have the money to pay for college, you get a full-time job while you're in school, like millions upon millions of people have before. In five years, I move up another couple dollars an hour, not because of my work ethic but because I've been there for a while -- you finish college, having worked a full-time job that paid all of your bills and some of your college off. You get a good job that pays a decent salary -- say, twice as much as I would make in a year working the unskilled labor job that I have. In another five years, your supervisors and managers have recognized your superior work ethic -- you stay late after work and come in early or work on weekends, you try to take night classes to give you more education in your field, etc. -- and you get promoted. If I'm still at the same job, I'm making twelve or fifteen dollars an hour, because I only work what I have to, and I only work as hard as I have to work, and I only got the education that I had to. Your work ethic has helped you get an education, a better job, and a higher position within that job.

Now: if you were going to make the same amount of money I would, why would you have a better work ethic?

I'm not sure what the question here is.

Not all, of course not. Canada and Britain, yes -- at least in comparison.

I have no idea about the Canadian health care, but you may be right about the British health care system. Over here in Belgium we have one of the most efficiently working health insurance systems in the world AND the best health care possible. I'm not trying to be patriottic. It really is one of my country's main assets. We have lots of flaws (like shortage of prisons etc.), like any country.

We'd be forced to pay the medical bills of people who don't take care of themselves.

And you're not doing that right now? You're saying all the people ho have the same health insurance are taking care of themselves as well as you do?

The problem with that idea is that our government isn't some omnipotent being -- it bends to the whim of the people. The citizens don't answer to the government, the government answers to the civilians. The government does not have ANY obligation to "take care of her citizens" other than protecting them from outside forces. The CITIZENS have the obligation to protect THEMSELVES.

I understand what you're saying. And I think this is one of those US vs. The World situations where an idea doesn't seem to fit a certain society due to it's history and cultural differences. I respect that, but I think it's a shame.

Because it's not like the government is controlling what we learn at school or what kind of health care we get, taking over some of our largest businesses, using taxpayer money to buy out private corporations ... Wait, no, that's not right.

That is how ALL politicians in the US work... I don't see the relevance of this issue.

I do see the quality of Fox News -- but honestly, I can't say that I thought you were better than someone who shouts "bias" at whatever you disagree with without looking at the facts or the logic.

I didn't say they were biased. And I never said I criticised them for making points that I don't agree with. If they were to praise Obama for things he never did, I would be annoyed in the same way.

Yes, O'Reilly is on Fox News Channel. So? Kieth Olbermann is on MSNBC, and he's more liberal than O'Reilly is Republican. That doesn't automatically mean that everything MSNBC reports has a liberal bias, of course not -- MSNBC's liberal bias would exist whether Olbermann was there or not.

Whether MSNBC is liberally biased or not is not the issue. And frankly, I don't know if it's true what you're saying or not.
But you can have your opinions all you want, I think it is only healthy to remain objective about matters like politics. I just can't seriously watch Fox News, due to those minor discrepancies, but mostly the dramatic tone and the twists they give some news stories. Maybe it's a matter of taste? But you have to admit that a LOT of not-so-smart people get fired up just by watching Fox News and the shows on the Fox News Channel, nodding at everything. Whether they are conservatives or liberals doesn't really matter. Being biased is not an attractive feature to me. But I must say that the 'liberal' media, bisaed or not, tend to reconsider their own ideas from time to time, more than most conservative media do. That's healthy, in my opinion.

And it's not the President's job to be a parent to America's children -- I'm sure the time he spent doing that could have been better spent doing something else, like his job.

If I were to use this argument against a president you had voted for, you wouldn't agree. Be honest. The president is more than the guy who decides important things.

And if I was Obama, I would have said something about it. The lack of a liberal outrage shows a clear double-standard -- that people who support Obama can be disrespectful and improper, even enough to use the word nigget, but people who support Republicans or conservatives are attacked for everything they do.

There is no double standard here. I was just explaining how Fox News used that rapper as another argument to prove how bad a president Obama can be. Are you among the people that believe Obama should show his birth certificate?

I'm going to quote you:
"I'm sure the time he spent doing that could have been better spent doing something else, like his job."

You don't have to be 65 or over to receive Medicare.

Ummm.
YES YOU DO.
(Or meet some other 'special criteria'.)

And because you don't like what he says, you automatically discount it as false. No need to listen to people you don't like, right? I mean, if you don't like what they have to say, there's no possible way that it could have any truth to it!

I'm not talking about the content. I'm talking about how ridiculous his methods are to make his points. He circles the first letter of a few big words, and they form the word Oligarchy. How is that using logic?

Like you wouldn't piss on anyone else who tried to make a point by circling words and letters? Come on...

And I'll try to find a source about those sponsors. I even read WHAT sponsors wanted to be moved to another hour, but I can't remember, as they were (obviously) American sponsors, and I wasn't familiar with them. You can believe me, if my word is worth anything to you.