Well, just speaking for myself, if we had national health insurance I would be able to live comfortably as a self-employed freelancer and entrepreneur. As it is, I have to work to maintain a full-time job working for someone else because I want to be able to see a doctor if I get sick. I’m sure there are legions of folks in the same boat as I am. I also know that many businesses would hire more full time employees if they didn’t have to worry about health insurance costs. Not to mention the fact that health insurance costs have made it harder for older people to get jobs, and that health insurance costs are eating General Motors and Ford alive. And the fact that the current American health care system has resulted in a less healthy population than other industrialized countries. Plus, there is a real moral issue here: Is it really OK to deny someone healthcare so you can make more money?
I find your characterization of universal health care advocates glib and thoughtless. The health insurance industry is stifling innovation and entrepreneurship, tying people to jobs they hate, depressing employement, destroying America’s manufacturing base, lowering our life expectancy, and pushing people out of the middle class. That’s a hell of a lot more complicated than “I want the government to pay my bills for me.”
I’m going to answer you the same way my minister answers people who say they don’t believe in God: What sort of universal healthcare don’t you believe in?
For example: Do you believe it’s creeping socialism, weakens character, whatever, to save people from dying of diseases they can’t afford the treatment for?
Health care morality aside –(wait: is the word “morality” still aplicable to health care? If not I’ll withdraw it) – it is NOT in the interest of American business as a whole to allow more people to work profitably for themselves. Nor is it in the interest of moral-values conservatives to encourage any definition of the word “work” other than “doing what your betters tell you, how they tell you, when they tell you, and keeping your fat mouth thankfully shut.”
This is true. People should do such things the same way they would transport, say, artillery shells, which is to say with extreme caution for those around them and the understanding that there would be much liability in the event of a mishap.
My experience is that they suffer from the same problems as SUVs - too many idiot drivers using them as fashion statements. I think maybe 10% of the ones I’ve seen have any dings or even specks of dirt on them.
I feel the aggressive and bellicose stance of Israel is responsible for most of the Middle East problems. There was an opportunity to be kind to the Palestinians and they chose not to.
I believe greedy have no limits. Billionaires are still trying to stick it to the middle class.
I believe Bush is not very bright. Reagan level intellecy.
I believe we are in the process of remaking the world to increase profits and agrandize wealth in a small group of people.
I see danger and maybe unrest and revolution ,if we dont stop them.
Sometimes I think football should should banned. When half the team is to some degree crippled evry year ,how can it be sport.
( i am watching a game right now)
I dont know why racketball died. I believe it should have re new life.
I believe golf is the best gambling game on earth .
I think Rumsfield is a funny comedian. When he makes his statements he so far out of it they are to laugh.I would hide him as much as possible.
I believe we dont have capitalism. The free trade mantra is a joke. It is unrestrained by law exploitation of the world and workers.
I believe judges should have more latitude in imposing creative and more just sentences. For instance…
Jail time for Ken Lay? Nope. Had he lived, I think he should have been sentenced to work as a Walmart greeter for the rest of his life to give him a taste of how thousands of seniors will have to live since he fucked them out of their retirements.
Men and women who beat their children should be sterilized.
Football players who get caught with drugs ought to be sentenced to house arrest. With their moms. In fact, their moms should have to sit next to them on the sidelines, too.
I believe we should dispense with income taxes altogether and just have a sales tax.
I think all dogs and cats should be sterilized until the homeless pet population is under control.
Controversial? Okay, I think that human beings will never solve their social problems until religion dies out.
People who immigrate to the United States have a perfect right to speak their native language in their own homes and among others of their culture. But if they become American citizens they have a responsibility to learn and speak English. No ballot should be printed in America in any language but English.
Homosexuals have exactly the same rights as I or any other Americans. Those rights should be recognized officially by the government. Attempts to ban gay marriage or to discriminate in any way against gays and lesbians are un-American, and are counter to the Fourth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Churches should pay taxes on their income. I mean even on the collection plate. To the extent that they do not pay taxes, all the rest of us bear the burdon.
But enough already with the new taxes on tobbacco (I’m thinking of the initiative on California). Adults have the right to destroy their own bodies if they want to. The tobbacco companies have already been held to answer for the false advertising of former days. I was for hitting them for their claims that smoking wasn’t dangerous. But everybody now knows that cigarette smoking causes cancer, heart disease and strokes. We’ve already banned most tobbacco advertising. We’ve required warnings on cigarette and other tobbacco packaging. We’ve already taxed cigarettes until a pack can cost $4. Enough is enough. If we really think that tobbacco manufacturers are knowingly killing people, we should ban tobbacco products altogether. We should shit or get off the pot. Trouble is, prohibition doesn’t work. Tobbacco company executives are evil, but if we don’t prosecute them we should at least stop persecuting them. (I haven’t had a cigarette in 22 years. Yep, I’m one of those former smoker assholes.)
People on welfare should be prevented from begetting children while they are on the public teat. Once they are independent, whatever temporary method was used to make them infertile should be reversed (at public expense).
Guns do kill people. The more guns the more killing. I don’t advocate doing away with guns entirely, but I do advocate control of the kind of weapons that should be available. Hunting weapons should be avaialable, but I think handguns should be severely curtailed if not entirely wiped out. Is there anybody who still thinks easy access to handguns doesn’t increase the incidence of gun deaths? Please!
(Hey, you said controversial. )
I believe that an occasional Zombie thread is a good thing.
I believe that the stance of the USA in the world needs to change. It should be an all or nothing deal… which is to say, we get out of the Middle East, Europe, Asia, etc. No military presence outside of our lands and territories, and if someone cries to us for doing so, we show them tapes of millions of Europeans protesting us.
-OR-
If we do send troops for humanitarian reasons, we take it over. Somalia should be thought of as a territory, or a protectorate. Iraq, Afghanistan… lots of soldiers and such teaching English, Civics, and ruthlessly running down those that would overthrow that system. Basically building an American Empire.
One or the other.
I believe we should stop giving Israel money. Military support? Sure. Business? Sure. But no more giving them “foreign aid”.
I believe Abortion should be legal and readily available, and I support sterilization for those that abuse it.
I believe most folks like Der Trihs who hold extreme viewpoints are full of bullshit. Oh, a nihilist. How edgy. Only, not really.
I believe that firearms training should start in school, at young ages.
I believe that churches should be treated like a business… income taxed, land taxed, etc.
Unless religion is eliminated or sidelined, free societies are doomed in the long run. Either a theocratic dark age will be imposed on us all, or civilization will be destroyed.
Religions is fundamentally hostile to everything worthwhile. In the long run, this cripples any attempt to use religion for good, no matter how well meaning the people involved are.
The Republican Party, as a group, is simply evil. Not simply misguided, selfish, or stupid, but outright malignant.
Hitler and his Nazis were not exceptionally evil by the standards of evil people. They were simply in the right place and time to actually do what they wanted to do without restraint; there are millions who’d do the same if they could. As well, the Jews have managed to keep much of the world from conveniently ignoring what the Nazis did, and the Germans as a whole appear to actually feel bad about it. This has inflated the Nazi’s reputation as the apex of evil.
I believe that the simple fact that a belief is a religious belief makes it far less likely to be true.
Mother Theresa was a jerk.
Conservatives are, nearly always, evil or stupid. And no, that does mean that the left wingers are always the good guys; sometimes, there are no good guys in a dispute.
It’s perfectly possible to dislike or disagree with Israel without being antisemitic.
I consider a massive mulitaspected environmental disaster a near-inevitability at this point.
I believe that women in the West are generally better off than the men.
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