Is that all it takes? I fly to Sweden, and now I’m a citizen and I can work and benefit from social programs, etc.? Cool! I always thought countries controlled who they let into their country and become citizens. But now that I know it’s a simple “AMERICA! LOVE IT OR GET OUT!” followed by a quick flight anywhere in the world, I guess maybe I should look into country-shopping.
Why is this a problem relating to payment for medical services? Would you have gotten better treatment if it were an insurance company footing the bill? I remember my right-wing mouthpiece friend making the argument “here, look at this surgery they botched in england, socialized medicine is bad” once.
Ironically, the wait would be as bad or longer in US emergency rooms, since they’re filled with people who don’t have the option of seeing a regular doctor as you did.
Come on, Sam. You can’t seriously believe this. One side makes a career out of people who do nothing but get them worked up into a recreational outrage by confirming and embellishing anything they want to hear. There’s no left wing equivelant of Beck/Limbaugh/Coulter, etc.
The right, as a whole, tends to be anti-intellectual and anti-science. There’s a very large “I know it in my gut, so I don’t care what those pointed headed smart people say” movement. It’s catered to. Politicians and pundits make careers out of it.
Who on the left is as stupid, deceptive, and hateful as Sarah Palin that has any realistic shot of going on a presidential run?
I could go on and on.
Look, there are obviously ideologically conservative (or libertarian) people who are smart and reasonable and not all those things. BUT WHY THE HELL CAN’T ANY OF YOU ACKNOWLEDGE that a whole lot of people on your side (and certainly not in only the same numbers/representation/etc as the other side) are proudly ignorant, hateful fucks who are more interested in getting them libruls riled up than seriously improving the country?
Of all the conservatives on this board (and I don’t like grouping in liberatarians with conservatives as a whole), I think you’d be the one who’d be able to step back and see the fucking craziness that has taken over the popular movement of the right in recent years. Why can’t anyone just acknowledge this?
This simply isn’t fair, and it’s a problem with conflating conservatives and libertarians. Essentially no matter what he says here, you’ll label him conservative. Against gay marriage and drug legalization? Of course, all you conservatives are! Pro gay marriage and drug legalization? Well, of course, you’re libertarian, and libertarians are conservatives, so that just confirms that you’re conservative!
Retard, huh? And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously. Your mom know you’re on her computer?
I’m talking about 20 years, maybe 50 years down the road. Not sure why you’re immune to reason; maybe it’s the thalidomide your your mom took, maybe that special uncle who had the ‘boundary issues’. Who the fuck knows.
Go back to the fanboi sites. And good luck with mid-terms.
Your idea will still be stupid in 50 years. Are you aware that if demonstrations aren’t caused by OIF now, they won’t be in 50 years? Are you really that unable to reason or think?
I’m immune to your special brand of reason. If you’d actually think about issues and take the time to understand before working your ignorant mouth, maybe you could make some inroads.
Maybe you should go back to a reputable news site and try to learn about current events and recent history before you make yourself look like more of a desperately ideological fool.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. In the minds any of Elvis and his ilk, there is simply no reason to question the efficacy of forced busing at all. None whatsoever. And if you object to it for any reason you’re not only a racist, but your alleged racist attitudes and words get invented and stated out loud for you because you’re too hypocritical to know you feel that way in the first place.
The same applies with regard to welfare, unemployment, union support, etc. too. A person might very well favor them all philosophically but disagree with how they’re applied or to what extent. But voice any of those concerns, or voice alternative measures that to you would be more effective, and you get whatever the “racist” equivalent is with regard to welfare, unemployment or whatever. Nope, in liberal land it’s “my way or the highway,” and if it’s the highway you’re automatically some variation of asshole.
If you want to know what’s wrong with conservative America, I would suggest it’s forty to forty-five years of liberal America.
I never said love it or leave it. I said that there were other options available to you if you didn’t like the current system in your home country. Apparently the US is not ‘left’ enough to have a system like Canada’s, so your only option at this point is to move. Unfortunately, most countries don’t allow slackers to immigrate and would require you to demonstrate some usefulness to them. Unless you figure you can claim refugee status. Doubtful.
My wife had no option to see her regular doctor until later. Her only option at the time was clinics and the emergency room. Neither did anything other than to pass her around. Either one could have prescribed the necessary medication but didn’t even though they thought the issue was serious. Why are people being particularly dense about this? Luckily she did have a family doctor to rectify the situation otherwise she would have had significant medical issues.
Then tell us what your “better way” would have been. You’ve had enough time to think about it, obviously. So what should have been done instead to end racism?
But you don’t have one, do you? All you had is opposition to those who tried to end the problems caused by racism. All you have today is invective toward those who recognized, and still recognize, what being part of the problem consists of.
You do have denial and self-flattery in your favor. The facts, however, are not.
No problem with who you allow to immigrate, that part’s fine. It’s who you allow to emigrate! I swear, one more emotionally overwrought female singer, and its war!
No, if you’ve noticed I’ve not said that it was something to emulate. It has issues the same as Canada’s has issues. It also has good points the same as Canada’s has good points. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, it would make more sense to figure out how to get quality health care to everyone, not give everyone some diluted mess so that at most everyone can expect only mediocre healthcare.
Far enough in the future that you won’t have to be held accountable for what you’ve supported in the present. Convenient, huh?
Now, how about trying some of this “reason” stuff you claim to understand, and point out a chain of cause and effect between our brutalization of Iraq and the popular uprisings in Tunisia etc.? Perhaps something as solid and verifiable as the connection to WikiLeaks and Facebook? Got any such chain of events to suggest, or are you going to take the same sort of approach poor old set-upon Sam takes by claiming that the existence of Iraq’s WMD’s was “a matter of opinion” ? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
You do know what you can do with that straw, right? It involves a wooden mallet and a lot of pounding.
I’ve already proven that I am addressing the points directly that EP put forth and am not misinterpreting his position as he wrote it. If you think that I’m the only one who has had problems with the Canadian health care system then you are being deliberately ignorant.
Okay, you’re what’s wrong with conservative America. Or Conservative North America anyway. Outright stupidity in the face of facts.
Tell me, does Canada have 30 million people who have no access to non-emergency medical care? Is Canada’s leading cause of bankruptcy health care bills?
If the answer to those two questions is no, then even a slow-burner should be able to understand that the Canadian system, which costs less and produces better results, isn’t exactly something that looks bad when compared to the American system.
So I’m a lying sack of shit, but you’ve never actually caught me in a lie. Instead, I ‘misrepresent’ facts and arguments. That’s very convenient for you, because a vague charge like that is pretty hard to disprove.
Of course, I’ve been accused of that before from you and other people, and when I’ve challenged you to produce examples, it turned out to be the sort of thing where one side gives a different amount of weight to a fact, or you choose to play hair-splitting games with error bars, or claim that my sources aren’t valid because they’re on the right, or whatever. In other words, typical partisan disagreement over sources and facts which you choose to elevate into ‘lies and misrepresentations’. Whatever, dude.
First of all, how would you know? You don’t read my stuff, remember? You just skim over it assuming that it’s all lies or misrepresentations. I think the only time you bother to read what I write is probably when you’re searching the archive for ‘gotcha’ posts you can use against me.
And now to the specifics:
Look harder, sparky. I have repeatedly said that a minimum level of welfare is required for a well-ordered civil society. I’ve specifically said (pre-‘stimulus’) that the level of welfare available in the U.S. and Canada seemed about right to me and I had no desire to see it restricted further.
Now we’ve crossed over into the humorous. You can’t find any example of me supporting a government role in health care. Here’s an example:
You managed to dig back seven or eight years to find a lame quote against me, but you can’t be bothered to do anything remotely similar to verify your own claims. Guess when I posted the little nugget above? Yesterday. And where? In This Very Thread. Try post #82.
The public employees unions are not ‘voluntary’ in the sense I’m talking about. Workers have no choice but to join them if they want to work in those positions, and the money to pay for them is taken from taxpayers.
Public unions are the worst form of unionization, because they lack the checks and balances that voluntary unions have.
The unions I support are unions like the plumbers and insulators union here in Alberta. Membership is voluntary, but most people join because the union provides good benefits to them. The employers work with the union even though they could hire non-union workers, because the unions provide value - a ready source of labor, training, HR management, etc. Win-win.
I have said before on this board that taxation should be based on utility. The marginal value of a dollar goes down as you get wealthier, and therefore the wealthy can pay more while feeling the same amount of ‘pain’. I would moderate that with competitive concerns, and if government is roughly 20% of GDP you don’t need the tax system to be all that progressive. I would also substitute a consumption tax for some of the other taxes and get rid of all tax loopholes.
If you want to bother looking for posts I’ve made on taxation in the past few years, I think you’ll find that position consistent.
Why would I? There’s already a huge disparity between right and left on this baord. I have little interest in attacking fellow libertarians or conservatives when they may be slightly more to the right of me and joining in on the pile-on when they’re already outnumbered. I have no obligation to do your arguing for you. I’m guessing you’d feel the same way. On the other hand, when I have participated on more right-wing discussion forums than this, I’m much more likely to go after the more extreme right-wing comments.
Yes they are, because libertarian != conservative. I just don’t make a big deal out of labels, so I don’t get bent out of shape when people call me a ‘conservative’, and sometimes use that label myself. But my core beliefs are far from conservatism.
This board is to the left of the Democratic party, which most lefties around here to be considered ‘center-right’. And the Democratic party in Washington is to the left of the American people in general. Certainly the liberal wing of it only makes up approximately 20% of the population, and the lefties on this board would certainly fit in that category.
There are even a few hard-core Marxists around here, and they don’t get much grief from the other lefties, including yourself. How come you’re not attacking them like you expect me to do to people further on the right than myself? Might it be because you don’t want to side with your hated enemies over people who may go further than you but nonetheless are closer to your core values than people like myself?
I have done plenty of complaining about the nutty conservatives on this board. I started out defending Sarah Palin at one point because of the outrageous nature of the attacks against her, but she eventually said to many crazy or stupid things and I’ve piled on her with the rest of you. I have no use for Glenn Beck and his histrionics and I’ve said so many times on this board. But if you think I’m going to come on here and issue my daily mea culpa for having the audacity to be roughly on the same side as some crazies and offer myself up for penance, you’ve got another thing coming. It’s not my job to denounce people who call themselves conservative or libertarian and say crazy things. Not here, anyway. And I have no desire to give ammunition to people who I think are even crazier.
As for no equivalents of Rush or Beck on the left, that’s a joke. Ever heard of Michael Moore? The man has been peddling complete bullshit for decades, with hearty cheers from the left. Bill Maher is a misogynistic anti-vaccination crankpot. Keith Olbermann is a grade-A asshole who continually crapped on anyone on the right until his employers got sick of him and kicked his ass out of the office. He’s also a misogynist. Chris Matthews is borderline nuts, Larry O’Donnell is prone to occasional bursts of on-air spittle-flying rage in between his attacks on anything conservative.
I’ll grant you that they’re not as popular as Rush or Hannity or Beck. Perhaps that’s because they appeal to a much smaller subset of the American population. Conservatives outnumber liberals in America about 2-1. It could also be because they’ve never learned the trick of being personally likable while flinging hatred at the other side.
If you want to talk about political figures, I could point to Sheila Jackon-Lee, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer, Cynthia McKinney…
Both sides have their share of nuts and imbeciles.
Only a fool thinks things are exactly equal. As it happens there is more stupidity on the right. Right now at least. And as for the other equivocations you threw out without bothering to actually have any knowledge about the issue, how about you cite that Matthews, Olberman and O’Donnel lie as much as Hannity, Beck and O’Rly?
You think they’re the same because you want conservatives at worse to be equal to liberals. But that’s just a bullshit wish, and your yearning for it to be true has no bearing on reality.
Even if you are the only decent conservative on Earth, ask yourself, if the only people who believe what you believe are allergic to facts, what does that say about your beliefs?
:rolleyes: