American Presidential Elections

[Korona 0]

Why I like Obama can be summed up very simply. He wants universal healthcare and he voted against the war.

He is one of the sanest people in US politics. Is that saying much? Not really, but in a relative contest like an election the truth stands.

I don't begrudge anyone the US economy right now though.

 

:lol:

I guess that, in the words of RA Einstein; "time Will tell".

[IconOfEvi 0]

So let me get this straight - universal health care is synonymous with sanity?

 

 

Also, yes thats actually what I was thinking too,

"Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell..

 

But again, I say you will regret this.

 

And you will be sorry.

 

And it might be too late by then.

[Korona 0]

Anyone who prefers the US system to pretty much any other system is insane. The costs are the highest in the world, and the performance is amongst the worst in the developed world. When the NHS can out-perform it on 1/3rd the budget you need to realise that there is something very wrong with the entire structure.

 

I also think that believing in universal education but not universal healthcare is inconsistent and seems pretty loopy. Where I am from of course universal healthcare is considered to be a basic right. Actually if I had to choose I would pick health over education.

 

 

Anyway that was a good debate. I think McCain wants us to feel like his friends :lol:

[Torlek 0]

With rights come responsibilities though and too many Americans can't be trusted with carte blanche on healthcare. Also your comparison of the NHS budget is shot because the US has more than 4 times the population of the UK. Universal access, yes. Universal privilege, not until people learn to take responsibility for themselves.

[Mehman 0]

Why are people so selfish in the US? I mean, do you know that paying for healthcare is not paying for others, but paying for yourself? When you get old enough to pay taxes you start paying back what you got as a child, all the free visits to the doctor, all the times you had a tummy ache and you got free medicine to take care of it. It's more paying and covering your own ass first than others.

 

Second, private and goverment medicine can coexist, like they do here, the private sector supposedly provides better service, shorter waiting lines, etc etc, but unless you visit the doctor often it won't make much of a difference.

 

And you get rid of people saying: when I can afford the doctor.

 

[IconOfEvi 0]

MehMan, you're forgetting 1) the difference in political culture, and 2) you highlighted why we're NOT selfish. How does your family paying for you and then you repaying your parents when they're old translate into the community? The family and community are two different things. Now I've said before nations are just a large family, or should be thought of as such, or a clan, but the truth is, at least in Western society, medical care was always payed by IN the family. Or mutual aid societies, another derivative of a clan structure/family.

 

As for selfish? Uh huh.

 

Look, it kinda defeats the point when you toot your horn about your benevolent acts, however, selfish is nearly the LAST word to describe Americans. The deep American psyche has ALWAYS been to help the poor, the needy, the unfortunate, the wretched. Even in the Age of Robber Barons (The Gilded Age/Post-Reconstruction Era), with wealth and poverty equally in grasp, people still found so much money to give away. After all, thats what America was born out, the wretched outcasts of the British Empire. Of course, we're not perfect, but I think the American psyche at least has something going for it in that regard.

Edited October 8, 2008 by IconOfEvi

[Korona 0]

With rights come responsibilities though and too many Americans can't be trusted with carte blanche on healthcare. Also your comparison of the NHS budget is shot because the US has more than 4 times the population of the UK. Universal access, yes. Universal privilege, not until people learn to take responsibility for themselves.

No the budget is per person. You spend 3 times as much per person on healthcare and get a service marginally worse than the NHS.

 

The cost overruns come from the HMOs. They are a layer of bureaucracy dedicated to refusing claims

 

@Icon, the same is true for education. Why don't families pay for private education? Because most cannot afford it.

I agree that Americans are generous and that is probably why the majority want universal healthcare, because they care about the poor families that can't afford to buy decent cover themselves. They can appreciate the injustice of people becoming ill, crippled or dying because of their economic circumstances rather than the ability of medical science to affordably treat them.

[IconOfEvi 0]

Actually, you wouldn't believe the amount of people, even poor people paying for private school, even when taxes are taken for public school here. And also, before there was public education, people payed for education for their children quite handsomely and in large proportions of the populations, even during the most turbulent times in our history. Don't forget homeschooling too.

 

In that regard, the US educational system is one of the worst - it is one where for the most part you and your tax money are assigned to your district and oftentimes, to a particular school. While the latter is not a thing where I live, for the most part, across the US, your tax dollars are assigned to your localest public school. And you'll be damned if you try to do anything about it. Wanna goto a different school in the district? Different district? FORGET IT. This is where other countries excel - the money is attached TO THE CHILDREN, not the other way around (I think Im thinking of Belgium here). Meaning if they wanna goto a private school, the government money goes with them. Vocational? Tech? Gifted? Etc etc? Check check and check.

 

Now the US has a solution to our horrid school system, in the form of vouchers, essentially a scheme to do what should have been done, and attach the money to the kid instead of to the localest district. However, teacher's unions fight this tooth and nail, to the last straw. Thanks to their efforts, only a few places actually have a semi-voucher system going, notably near where I live: Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thanks to the use of vouchers, international test scores at all grade levels for BOTH private and public schools HAS GONE UP. Even though its only a semi-voucher form, more like a lottery instead of universal, Milwaukee is shooting up. Also, it is having a knockdown effect perhaps - the school district I went to, the RUSD (Racine Unified School District) is probably the smartest in Wisconsin, and probabaly the surrounding area, considering most of our 'smart students' for example don't need things in university chemistry reexplained and explained to them, for we tend to grasp it very quick - though I don't know if this is due to Milwaukee's use of vouchers. Other school districts around Milwaukee also have had a rise in test scores.

 

What I'm trying to point out is that education is very DIFFERENT from healthcare, yet you're looking at it as another social service. I'm sorry, but I don't think I can give chemo at home. But kids can be taught at home. And they're often smarter too.

Edited October 8, 2008 by IconOfEvi

[Korona 0]

Yeah there are many structural problems with the US school system (just like every country) as well as social problems that affect the quality of education. (As models of excellence, I hear that Japanese students are absurdly well behaved.) However I am talking about the principal, not the bodged way it has been implemented. I don't know of anyone who doesn't believe in the principal of universal education. It is seen as a good and a right.

 

Now the idea that there is a qualitative difference between health and education because you can get one at home and not the other makes no sense to me. What you can and cannot provide for yourself at home is conditional on circumstances in both healthcare and education. I think most people can get some cough medicine Lucozade and soup for their sick child, just like they could teach them to count, but my parents couldn't have taught me even the basics of Kant's transcendental aesthetic any more than they could have given me surgery.

But I am taking about the principal behind universal education or health provision. The principal isn't specific, that we should get everyone an MRI or a CAT scan or a load of pills. Rather it is the more general idea that we have a moral duty to safeguard the health of our fellow human beings. How we actually do that is going to be limited by human and practical limitations, but the general principal is one I think most people agree with.

[hawk10314 0]

Why I like Obama can be summed up very simply. He wants universal healthcare and he voted against the war.

He is one of the sanest people in US politics. Is that saying much? Not really, but in a relative contest like an election the truth stands.

I don't begrudge anyone the US economy right now though.

 

:lol:

I guess that, in the words of RA Einstein; "time Will tell".

 

You sure he voted against the war? He wasn't even in the senate until 2005.

[Korona 0]

Ugh I thought I edited that thanks for spotting it.

Yep he ran for the Senate on an anti-war platform, he didn't vote against it. He has voted for a phased withdrawal though and was consistently anti-war, which makes him a rare-species.

[spyvspy 0]

Question for all you non-americans: In light of the US loan defaults starting this global financial crisis, is anybody there asking: "how did our banks get tangled up in American sloppy lending practices?"

 

Is there any backlash against funding American's appetite for debt?

 

Is the US getting reamed in public opinion over this?

[Count von Phoib 0]

Not really, we're more angry at our banks for getting involved in the US mess.

 

That, and Holland and Britain just bought Iceland, more or less.

[IconOfEvi 0]

Who says YTMND isn't relevant all the time?

 

Epic Debt Clock Manuver (note this really happened earlier this week)

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average vs Vegeta

 

The Democrats Secret Objective!

 

The Democrats Secret Objective 2.0!

[flyby 0]

Question for all you non-Americans: In light of the US loan defaults starting this global financial crisis, is anybody there asking: "how did our banks get tangled up in American sloppy lending practices?"

Is there any backlash against funding American's appetite for debt?

Is the US getting reamed in public opinion over this?

 

Actually, almost nobody wonders "how" or why....we all know that by now...

For a considerable time, the financial construction, "made in USA", has been very successful, to a point where almost every bank in the world jumped into the boat. Europe and certainly the UK was no exception on that.

 

The problems that occur now in Europe, are far less related to the collapsing housing market in the US, but have all to do with interbanking skepticism.

Only a few European banks got into the bad loans business, but as the general atmosphere is degrading, we also get a serious credit lock up.

As a result any bank, that works with a system debt-cash flow system, suddenly finds itself without cash flow and is no longer able to meet its creditors.

Debts are made with the previsions that the situation remains stable in the future. If your revenues fall unexpectedly, you have a major problem.

 

The issues we have this week have more to do with the dreaded virtual bank run. I say virtual, because wire transfer is very much integrated here and what was a cost saving measure now backfires as ppl can move large sums in seconds... As it is now, unfounded rumors can send a bank diving with -20% stock value...

It's panic...

 

I'm uncertain about a backslash from the European side. We're only 4 or 5th place as far as USA debt papers go. Fact is that you have a serious credibility issue on hand now. And as more countries will first focus on their domestic economical issues, that will translate itself automatically in less appetite for foreign debt certificates. Basically, your should ask China and the Middle East, if they will continue to support you guys. Our part in this is rather marginal...

 

-reamed? no, not in the media anyway. We’re fed rather objective information, how Wall Street is doing, how the common American is effected and also how the financial hocus pocus worked. We see the consequences of an unregulated free market that puts ppl out of their homes, living in tents...

In Europe the system of free floating rates is much stricter regulated. It is impossible for banks to drastically increase their rates here, precisely because it causes to much misery.

There is no blatant finger pointing and if a bank goes belly up here, we do not blame the US but the bank itself. It's their fault they went with the US style of doing business. Socialist speakers often refer it as "casino capitalism" but still prefers to blame the bank top, instead of the US.

 

[Korona 0]

They don't want to lend cos the companies could collapse, and the companies could collapse cos the banks don't want to lend them money. Ugh Joseph Heller is laughing at us all.

[IconOfEvi 0]

I don't suppose it'd be worth posting this, but whatever. Hopefully, I won't be hearing anything about the means justifying the ends anytime soon.

[Mehman 0]

McCain defends Obama?

[Goose 0]

Obama will win, I can feel it in my ovaries. You heard it here first (or not).

[Korona 0]

Yeah both parties have retarded supporters. At least Obama didn't make one of them his VP nominee :lol:

 

It's ironic that Obama was getting painted as a socialist candidate, but the Bush administration is beating him hands down. Nationalising the banks! Awesome! I think Obama will have his work cut out to stop an extra S getting into the USA...

[Count von Phoib 0]

The USSA is already a fact.

[IconOfEvi 0]

Brilliant!

 

Before I say anything else ever, I want to point out just how awesome the Hammer and Sicke looks.

 

As for Obama winning...of course he's gonna win. Just the entity of McCain is enough to ensure his defeat. And with every word he speaks, he dooms himself more.

 

Obama will have his work cut out to stop an extra S getting into the USA...

And Korona...what makes you think he'd wanna take that extra S out? I guess this is the same thing that has Obamacons - they will see anything in Obama, even when what they believe is in direct contradiction to the facts and analysis.

 

 

Also, Gunman Kills 15 Potential Voters In Crucial Swing State:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/gunm...otential_voters

Edited October 15, 2008 by IconOfEvi

[JokersAce 0]

I would love to have the statue of liberty as my woman.

[Korona 0]

Compared to nationalising the banks, I'd say Obama's policies are pretty centrist, unless wanting universal healthcare like most Americans do somehow makes you want the destruction of capitalism. More realistically, I am interested to see how the US media is going to deal with the fact that the free market now clearly doesn't work.

[Monkey 0]

I would love to have the statue of liberty as my woman.

 

 

Yeah, but she doesn't shave her legs.