Most Vile Things Said by American Politicians in the last ten years

[JustinC]

*“Well, I learned a lot….I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.”

President Ronald Reagan, December 6th, 1982*

Yeah, it’s out of date and not really vile, just a badly constructed sentence. Politicians have very good speaking skills and writers, even the bad ones!

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@gracer

My google dictionary plug in only says “vile” is “extremely unpleasant”. To say that equating removal of a bunch of cells to the killing of children is extremely unpleasant is hardly something that can be wrong. I don’t think you have to be evil to say something vile, and as I said upthread, I don’t think stupidity is an excuse.

But why is it vile? You call it a clump of cells. He calls it a child.

[gracer]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

But why is it vile? You call it a clump of cells. He calls it a child.

To me, because killing a child is abhorrent. It’s literally the lowest thing, one of the worst things you can accuse someone of. Kids I’ve worked with survived attempts, their siblings in some cases didn’t. To say that a friend of mine who aborted a meaningless clump of cells is* the same* as those abject murderers is, to me, a vile thing to say. It’s extremely unpleasant to accuse someone who chose to evict a clump of cells from their own body of murdering children.

I get that it’s a spectrum, that what that person is referring to is that at some point the clump becomes a human child. It’s a difficult question, and I do understand the emotion. But it doesn’t make it pleasant to say the two are the same thing. I think there are plenty of other instances where we don’t like equivalencies and comparisons that paint someone as equal to something we abhor. Eg saying the doctor of an abortion clinic is like Hitler for murdering lots of children.

I’m not saying that someone who calls a clump of cells a child is vile. But someone who says that someone who chose to abort is a murderer of children, I find that a vile thing to say.

[Fleetwood]

@GIGObuster

A lot of that vile goes to the health care insurers, plenty of time to make the change less painful and still they followed the usual procedure of cancelling plans to moving them to a different one instead of making upgrades.

Upgrades and different plans are not covered by his promise. He lied to get the plan passed and to get re-elected. It is not the insurance companies failure, it his lying to the American public.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@gracer

I get that it’s a spectrum, that what that person is referring to is that at some point the clump becomes a human child. It’s a difficult question, and I do understand the emotion. But it doesn’t make it pleasant to say the two are the same thing. I think there are plenty of other instances where we don’t like equivalencies and comparisons that paint someone as equal to something we abhor. Eg saying the doctor of an abortion clinic is like Hitler for murdering lots of children.

I’m not saying that someone who calls a clump of cells a child is vile. But someone who says that someone who chose to abort is a murderer of children, I find that a vile thing to say.

Well, the abortion clinic thing is different because abortion is ( by definition) not murder.

[Malthus]

@gracer

To me, because killing a child is abhorrent. It’s literally the lowest thing, one of the worst things you can accuse someone of. Kids I’ve worked with survived attempts, their siblings in some cases didn’t. To say that a friend of mine who aborted a meaningless clump of cells is* the same* as those abject murderers is, to me, a vile thing to say. It’s extremely unpleasant to accuse someone who chose to evict a clump of cells from their own body of murdering children.

I get that it’s a spectrum, that what that person is referring to is that at some point the clump becomes a human child. It’s a difficult question, and I do understand the emotion. But it doesn’t make it pleasant to say the two are the same thing. I think there are plenty of other instances where we don’t like equivalencies and comparisons that paint someone as equal to something we abhor. Eg saying the doctor of an abortion clinic is like Hitler for murdering lots of children.

I’m not saying that someone who calls a clump of cells a child is vile. But someone who says that someone who chose to abort is a murderer of children, I find that a vile thing to say.

I agree, it’s the deliberate damming by comparison to something very emotion-laden which is vile.

It’s a type of vileness that is particular to fanaticism of all stripes, and it is vile in part because it is manipulative and in part because, as rhetoric, it does not allow for any notion that the target has any legitimacy.

[GIGObuster]

@Fleetwood

Upgrades and different plans are not covered by his promise. He lied to get the plan passed and to get re-elected. It is not the insurance companies failure, it his lying to the American public.

Meh. Health care was an issue but Romney showed that with a virtually same plan in his state he did go for it and as the world did not end the plan was also used as a model for the ACA.

And I have to insist, it is the insurance’s fault, you are not aware that the government has limits on what it can tell the companies to do, otherwise it would be then public option or single payer.

What the government can do is to enforce the rules, rules that insurers were actually breaking.

http://publichealthwatch.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/policy-cancellations-another-tempest-in-a-teapot/

From the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute:

Having an insurance company discontinue an insurance policy is not anything new. And actually, the term “policy cancellation” is a misnomer. Generally, an individual health insurance policy is sold via a 12-month contract between the insurer and the consumer. At the end of that contract period, the insurer has the option to discontinue or change that policy – nothing in federal law changes that. Current policyholders are not having their current policy cancelled – rather, the insurance company is exercising its option to discontinue the policy at the end of the contract year.

In other words, companies who were cheating the system by offering too-good-to-be-true low-cost policies are no longer allowed to profit from their fraudulent activity, and people who were covered by these policies will now be referred to the Health Insurance Marketplace to purchase insurance that meets minimum acceptable standards.

What I do think happened was that the insurance companies, that in reality got a big lifesaver with the plan, told Obama and the people making the plan that they could indeed do the work. But in the end their predatory bottom line surged and to me the insurance companies just shoot themselves in the foot for that greed. Going forward will mean that the insurers will have less of an influence when the issue of dealing with the expenses and more changes to make health care reform work will take place.

[Mdcastle]

Obama’s “bitter” comment and Romneys “47%” comment, along with “you can keep your health insurance” come to mind.