NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC: I am called a right-wing fanatic, un-American and a threat to my country, yet I was a paper boy in my hometown, was an honor student in high school, was an Eagle scout, worked and PAID into the system since high school, went to college and dental school (honor student again) and a surgery residency (making $5k a year!), spent 12 months 28 days and 13 hours in Vietnam (most with a Marine combat battalion), treated patients who were Title XIX patients for half what my overhead expenses were, at times charged patients plates of peanutbutter cookies instead of a fee, “donated” (read STOLEN) over $500,000.00 of my time and expertise to the government, and NOW I’m threatened with obscurity and health care rationing because I’m NO LONGER A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER of society!?!?!? I got news for you CLOWNS & CROOKS in CONGRESS…I’m STILL WORKING AND STILL PAYING and almost ONE-HALF of my gross! I object to the CRETINS in CONGRESS of BOTH political parties who refuse to participate in OUR proposed health plan! They are OUR employees and need to start listening to their bosses or WE, THE PEOPLE, will start taking out the GARBAGE on Capitol Hill come next election day. The days of elitism, back-room politics, secret deals, cronyism, “business-as-usual,” wasteful pork-barrel spending, TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS, ad nausium, all despite the BS campaign promises of BHO JUNIOR, are OVER! Big government IS NOT THE SOLUTION! IT IS THE PROBLEM! If DAIN-BRAMAGED Pelosi, Reid, DIngle, Schermer don’t or can’t comprehend THAT, then BYE! BYE!!
Harley,
My advice is to go into ANY OTHER field than medicine. Some field in which profit is not a curse-word and will compensate you according to the principles of FREE-MARKET/ FAIR MARKET, i.e. what you are worth, not some concept of what a socialistic bureaucrat THINKS you are worth. My advice is to NEVER let anyone, but ESPECIALLY THE GOVERNMENT, try to decrease your true worth in order to elevate some one else of lesser value. It is not now nor should it EVER BE a level playing field. If you excell over another’s competency, YOU are more valuable. There are no grades on diplomas-your doctor/lawyer/ businessman/whatever may have been the valedictorian OR the last in their class. EMBRACE, WORSHIP & STRIVE for excellence-DEMAND it of others-REJECT MEDIOCRITY and the false dogma of diversity. There IS room for both individuality and respect for all others less driven, less capable than you. STAND UP AND SPEAK UP for your RIGHTS AS AN INDIVIDUAL ! There will always be those who will seek to drag you down to their level rather than spend the required energy to elevate THEIR OWN status.
harleyquinn, keep your idiotic lies to yourself, will you?! No bill before Congress would make a doctor into a government employee. Do you ever run a reality check on your fanciful notions?
I won’t bother here going into the litany of other lies you’ve spewed on these pages.
Wow! Ramirez more accurately could have shown Cheney and the gang applying the tape. Yep, that “Patriot Act” and “Military Commissions Act” really opened up freedom, like for them to check on my library card.
I think “doc” Roger really needs to stop gulping things randomly out of his medicine chest. I didn’t know PCP had been cleared for treating ingrown hairs on the head.
we don’t know who actually wrote it, oldlego, but it does appear on this page as a description of Ramirez’ work …
and Ramriez fails the “informative” test time after time
Tpenna: Was there a bill before Congress making all of GM & Chrysler’s workers employees of the government? Medicare already prohibits some excellent doctors from charging more than a specific fee, as if every doctor was equally capable. Some, like in most bell curves, are GREAT doctors, some are lousy doctors and the majority fall in the B-C-D grade range. It is the precise reason why some people buy Caddies or Rolls Royces and others buy Chevies. They are not all equal either, otherwise we’d all be driving Yugos. It is why some people buy Dom Perignon and others settle for Cooks. It’s known in the free world as the FREE-MARKET.
===========================
As for birth certificates, if I had to show mine just to get a NJ driver’s license, why shouldn’t ANY presidential candidate have to prove they are a natural born citizen? John McCain had to provide HIS. Why not our current president? Or is it acceptable to have a DOUBLE STANDARD? On March 12, 2009, Florida Representative Posey and several co-sponsors introduced into the United States House of Representatives H.R. 1503.[4] which would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate. Seems like common sense to me. If you are a candidate for the highest office in the land, you should at least have to prove you are qualified under our CONSTITUTION.
===========================
Broadway Carl: Please show me where I mentioned any reference to death panels in my two posts. ALL I WROTE ABOUT WAS NOT ALLOWING THE GOVERNMENT TO BRING YOU DOWN TO A LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR. I STRESSED INDIVIDUALITY & INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS. EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME!!
============================
Dtroutma: I DO NOT TAKE ANY DRUGS other than those prescribed for me by my physician, and CERTAINLY NOT ILLICIT drugs! Ad hominum attack are infantile and pointless.
This is a quote from Rahm Emmanuel’s brother (Dr. Ezekial Emmanuel). It was in an article in the NY Post:
Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.
Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.
Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens … An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ‘96).
Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.
============================
As for suicide rates, here’s a reasonable source of facts:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2301/do-dentists-have-the-highest-suicide-rate.
I’ve known thousands of dentists over my career spanning 41 years & having taught them for 7 years. I know of only two who suicided.
“The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public.
Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors’ lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too “enamored with technology” and is determined to reduce access to it.
Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.
Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re “associated with longer waits” and “reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it “debatable” whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)
Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.
In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist “embedded clinical decision support” – a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.”
Of course Congress won’t have to deal with these realities-they won’t opt in, prefering to stick to their own over-indulgent plan of 100% coverage paid for by ALL OF US!
============================
Do YOU HONESTLY think the NON-PARTISAN CBO is wrong in their assessment that this plan will cost taxpayers TRILLIONS of dollars over the next 10 years? Do YOU want a desk-jockey determining what medical care you receive? Do YOU want to allow the government to regularly stroll through your bank account and take money out?* Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Of course, the GUV NEVER makes mistakes, so it will not be a problem when a decimal point is MISplaced and you get wiped out with no one to turn to for assistance. Do YOU want your tax returns available to countless bureaucrats & BHO SYCOPHANTS to determine whether you need to be taxed because your health insurance isn’t up to their standards? Do YOU REALLY think that the same BI-PARTISAN government which bankrupted Medicare & Medicaid and stole the money from the Social Security Trust to pay for their pet pork-barrel spending rather than cut the wastefulness are even capable of running a health care agency controllinig ONE-SEVENTH of our entire economy? If the answer is YES, then grab your KY jelly & BOHICA- “Bend Over-Here It Comes Again!”
Good for you and your communitarian post. That is the word I personally use to describe the political philosophy 180˚ from Libertarianism/Classical Liberalism. Perfectly respectable philosophy which from reading the posts on the political cartoons I think many here subscribe to. I personally strongly disagree but that is what makes a ball game.
The real words we need to hear are fairly simple, the real cost of the ten year program for health is the real cost of two B-1 bombers, that still can’t reliably fly a mission.
@dtroutma I will give you the benefit of the doubt and that the above was simply hyperbole rather than economic ignorance. The GAO estimated the original ObamaCare plan would cost $1T over 10 years. A B1 cost $280M. You do, understand the difference between a million and a billion and a trillion?
It doesn’t help your cause to make an inane argument like you just did.
Dr Canuck,
For your edification, if that is at all even POSSIBLE, I was QUOTING a New York post article, not claiming the words as my own. You are truly MINDLESS & CLUELESS. BHO’s goal WAS to shove the Health Care/Insurance Reform through by the end of the past session 7/31/09. But he ran into snags with all those 86% of AMERICANS who had NO COMPLAINTS about their health insurance and our system of medical care, and which included people who had ACTUALLY READ the 1017 pages (GASP! the HORRORS!!) It would seem that you have but two neurons firing in sequence, held together oh so tenuously by a spirochete, and you took a heavy dose of penicillin! Your not using what minimal brain cells you have functioning can NOT CHANGE THAT! It isn’t about what Mr. Limbaugh said…it was ALL ABOUT RAMMING this TRILLION DOLLAR P.O.S. legislation through without ONE IOTA of the transparency he touted throughout his campaign BUT HAS YET TO PRODUCE! Instead, he, his elitist FAR-LEFTIST minions and all the liberal LEMMINGS such as Pelosi, Reid, Schermer, Dingle,Hoyer, Frank, ad nauseam, can only sink to ad hominum attacks rather than face facts that the SOCIALIST AGENDA SUCKS. EVERY COUNTRY in the world is moving away from Socialism; every time it has failed, and not just failed but FAILED MISERABLY! If you want NANNY STATISM why don’t YOU move to Russia. The rest of AMERICANS who would rather remain in a democratic REPUBLIC can stay here and fight the clowns in Congress & the WH west wing! How’s that hope and change been working for ya, bunky?
Wachs, the real cost of a B-2 was abut $1.5 billion, sorry ‘bout that. F-22s run around actually $263 million each. When our disabled vets are covered, the cost of Iraq will exceed $3 trillion. How ‘bout that.
I think “doc” harris’ all caps drove me to distraction.
DrCanuck, surely that was sarcasm, right? By and large, capitalism (with social welfare supports) has tended to produce the best results for the most people throughout history. That’s pretty much an axiom.
I think the point of contention for most is the degree of social support that is best (or the level of government at which said supports should be provided).
Those social supports may frequently have elements of socialism involved. But absolute socialism simply does not work in any society larger than a commune (where all citizens are agreed).
“In the 1994 Defense Authorization Act, Congress capped the B-2 bomber program at 20 planes. The last of these 20 bombers is to be produced in FY 1997 and delivered to the Air Force in FY 2000. ”
Roaring success in England hence Thatcher. Socialist Party in Germany got 8% of the latest vote. There actually was a successful Socialist party in Germany. It was called the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.
Difficult to compare any 16 million homogenous country with one of 305 million diverse.
Not so sure that Europe can boast having truly Socialist countries in its midst. “Socialist “parties in power are mostly in name only since they now all tend to be centrist with slight leanings left of or even right of centre.
If you heard the extremists in some European countries you’d think they’re no longer homogenous since they fear being “swamped” by the foreign cultures. Meh.
As for population size; France is approx 62mil; Germany is 82mil; UK is 60mil; Spain is 40mil; Poland is 38 mil; Sweden is 9mil; Denmark is 5,5mil; Norway is 4,5mil. (non-EU) The Netherlands is 16,5mil though.
Collectively the EU is 490mil and, I suppose, diverse.
HUMPHRIES almost 15 years ago
This guy is tiresome.
believecommonsense almost 15 years ago
… very tiresome and very far off the mark
blackash2004-tree Premium Member almost 15 years ago
A master and right on the mark.
meowdam almost 15 years ago
We seem to have a difference of opinion here! LMAO Hard to hate his art.
wholetooth almost 15 years ago
NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC: I am called a right-wing fanatic, un-American and a threat to my country, yet I was a paper boy in my hometown, was an honor student in high school, was an Eagle scout, worked and PAID into the system since high school, went to college and dental school (honor student again) and a surgery residency (making $5k a year!), spent 12 months 28 days and 13 hours in Vietnam (most with a Marine combat battalion), treated patients who were Title XIX patients for half what my overhead expenses were, at times charged patients plates of peanutbutter cookies instead of a fee, “donated” (read STOLEN) over $500,000.00 of my time and expertise to the government, and NOW I’m threatened with obscurity and health care rationing because I’m NO LONGER A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER of society!?!?!? I got news for you CLOWNS & CROOKS in CONGRESS…I’m STILL WORKING AND STILL PAYING and almost ONE-HALF of my gross! I object to the CRETINS in CONGRESS of BOTH political parties who refuse to participate in OUR proposed health plan! They are OUR employees and need to start listening to their bosses or WE, THE PEOPLE, will start taking out the GARBAGE on Capitol Hill come next election day. The days of elitism, back-room politics, secret deals, cronyism, “business-as-usual,” wasteful pork-barrel spending, TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS, ad nausium, all despite the BS campaign promises of BHO JUNIOR, are OVER! Big government IS NOT THE SOLUTION! IT IS THE PROBLEM! If DAIN-BRAMAGED Pelosi, Reid, DIngle, Schermer don’t or can’t comprehend THAT, then BYE! BYE!!
HUMPHRIES almost 15 years ago
Oldie, Vicent van Gogh was also an artisitc genius but he was also a whack job.
wholetooth almost 15 years ago
Harley, My advice is to go into ANY OTHER field than medicine. Some field in which profit is not a curse-word and will compensate you according to the principles of FREE-MARKET/ FAIR MARKET, i.e. what you are worth, not some concept of what a socialistic bureaucrat THINKS you are worth. My advice is to NEVER let anyone, but ESPECIALLY THE GOVERNMENT, try to decrease your true worth in order to elevate some one else of lesser value. It is not now nor should it EVER BE a level playing field. If you excell over another’s competency, YOU are more valuable. There are no grades on diplomas-your doctor/lawyer/ businessman/whatever may have been the valedictorian OR the last in their class. EMBRACE, WORSHIP & STRIVE for excellence-DEMAND it of others-REJECT MEDIOCRITY and the false dogma of diversity. There IS room for both individuality and respect for all others less driven, less capable than you. STAND UP AND SPEAK UP for your RIGHTS AS AN INDIVIDUAL ! There will always be those who will seek to drag you down to their level rather than spend the required energy to elevate THEIR OWN status.
eksteen almost 15 years ago
Take it easy Mike. You can still lie as much as you want.
tpenna almost 15 years ago
harleyquinn, keep your idiotic lies to yourself, will you?! No bill before Congress would make a doctor into a government employee. Do you ever run a reality check on your fanciful notions?
I won’t bother here going into the litany of other lies you’ve spewed on these pages.
oneoldhat almost 15 years ago
toon of month
no drquaccanuck is it yours
Dtroutma almost 15 years ago
Wow! Ramirez more accurately could have shown Cheney and the gang applying the tape. Yep, that “Patriot Act” and “Military Commissions Act” really opened up freedom, like for them to check on my library card.
I think “doc” Roger really needs to stop gulping things randomly out of his medicine chest. I didn’t know PCP had been cleared for treating ingrown hairs on the head.
BroadwayCarl almost 15 years ago
Dr. Harris, if you’re buying into the death panels bleeep, then I would suggest it is someone else who is “dain-bramaged.”
believecommonsense almost 15 years ago
we don’t know who actually wrote it, oldlego, but it does appear on this page as a description of Ramirez’ work … and Ramriez fails the “informative” test time after time
Michigander almost 15 years ago
I take the toon as taxpayers have no say in anything anymore. The government has their agenda and if we don’t like it; oh well.
wholetooth almost 15 years ago
Tpenna: Was there a bill before Congress making all of GM & Chrysler’s workers employees of the government? Medicare already prohibits some excellent doctors from charging more than a specific fee, as if every doctor was equally capable. Some, like in most bell curves, are GREAT doctors, some are lousy doctors and the majority fall in the B-C-D grade range. It is the precise reason why some people buy Caddies or Rolls Royces and others buy Chevies. They are not all equal either, otherwise we’d all be driving Yugos. It is why some people buy Dom Perignon and others settle for Cooks. It’s known in the free world as the FREE-MARKET.
===========================
As for birth certificates, if I had to show mine just to get a NJ driver’s license, why shouldn’t ANY presidential candidate have to prove they are a natural born citizen? John McCain had to provide HIS. Why not our current president? Or is it acceptable to have a DOUBLE STANDARD? On March 12, 2009, Florida Representative Posey and several co-sponsors introduced into the United States House of Representatives H.R. 1503.[4] which would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate. Seems like common sense to me. If you are a candidate for the highest office in the land, you should at least have to prove you are qualified under our CONSTITUTION.
===========================
Broadway Carl: Please show me where I mentioned any reference to death panels in my two posts. ALL I WROTE ABOUT WAS NOT ALLOWING THE GOVERNMENT TO BRING YOU DOWN TO A LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR. I STRESSED INDIVIDUALITY & INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS. EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME!!
============================
Dtroutma: I DO NOT TAKE ANY DRUGS other than those prescribed for me by my physician, and CERTAINLY NOT ILLICIT drugs! Ad hominum attack are infantile and pointless.
============================
http://community.tasteofhome.com/forums/p/728736/6236293.aspx
This is a quote from Rahm Emmanuel’s brother (Dr. Ezekial Emmanuel). It was in an article in the NY Post:
Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.
Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.
Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens … An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ‘96).
Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.
============================
As for suicide rates, here’s a reasonable source of facts: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2301/do-dentists-have-the-highest-suicide-rate.
I’ve known thousands of dentists over my career spanning 41 years & having taught them for 7 years. I know of only two who suicided.
wholetooth almost 15 years ago
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07242009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/deadlydoctors180941.htm?&page=1
“The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public.
Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors’ lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too “enamored with technology” and is determined to reduce access to it.
Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.
Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re “associated with longer waits” and “reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it “debatable” whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)
Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.
In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist “embedded clinical decision support” – a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.”
Of course Congress won’t have to deal with these realities-they won’t opt in, prefering to stick to their own over-indulgent plan of 100% coverage paid for by ALL OF US!
============================ Do YOU HONESTLY think the NON-PARTISAN CBO is wrong in their assessment that this plan will cost taxpayers TRILLIONS of dollars over the next 10 years? Do YOU want a desk-jockey determining what medical care you receive? Do YOU want to allow the government to regularly stroll through your bank account and take money out?* Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Of course, the GUV NEVER makes mistakes, so it will not be a problem when a decimal point is MISplaced and you get wiped out with no one to turn to for assistance. Do YOU want your tax returns available to countless bureaucrats & BHO SYCOPHANTS to determine whether you need to be taxed because your health insurance isn’t up to their standards? Do YOU REALLY think that the same BI-PARTISAN government which bankrupted Medicare & Medicaid and stole the money from the Social Security Trust to pay for their pet pork-barrel spending rather than cut the wastefulness are even capable of running a health care agency controllinig ONE-SEVENTH of our entire economy? If the answer is YES, then grab your KY jelly & BOHICA- “Bend Over-Here It Comes Again!”
GNWachs almost 15 years ago
@Seniorbullwinkle
Good for you and your communitarian post. That is the word I personally use to describe the political philosophy 180˚ from Libertarianism/Classical Liberalism. Perfectly respectable philosophy which from reading the posts on the political cartoons I think many here subscribe to. I personally strongly disagree but that is what makes a ball game.
Dtroutma almost 15 years ago
The real words we need to hear are fairly simple, the real cost of the ten year program for health is the real cost of two B-1 bombers, that still can’t reliably fly a mission.
GNWachs almost 15 years ago
@dtroutma I will give you the benefit of the doubt and that the above was simply hyperbole rather than economic ignorance. The GAO estimated the original ObamaCare plan would cost $1T over 10 years. A B1 cost $280M. You do, understand the difference between a million and a billion and a trillion?
It doesn’t help your cause to make an inane argument like you just did.
wholetooth almost 15 years ago
Dr Canuck, For your edification, if that is at all even POSSIBLE, I was QUOTING a New York post article, not claiming the words as my own. You are truly MINDLESS & CLUELESS. BHO’s goal WAS to shove the Health Care/Insurance Reform through by the end of the past session 7/31/09. But he ran into snags with all those 86% of AMERICANS who had NO COMPLAINTS about their health insurance and our system of medical care, and which included people who had ACTUALLY READ the 1017 pages (GASP! the HORRORS!!) It would seem that you have but two neurons firing in sequence, held together oh so tenuously by a spirochete, and you took a heavy dose of penicillin! Your not using what minimal brain cells you have functioning can NOT CHANGE THAT! It isn’t about what Mr. Limbaugh said…it was ALL ABOUT RAMMING this TRILLION DOLLAR P.O.S. legislation through without ONE IOTA of the transparency he touted throughout his campaign BUT HAS YET TO PRODUCE! Instead, he, his elitist FAR-LEFTIST minions and all the liberal LEMMINGS such as Pelosi, Reid, Schermer, Dingle,Hoyer, Frank, ad nauseam, can only sink to ad hominum attacks rather than face facts that the SOCIALIST AGENDA SUCKS. EVERY COUNTRY in the world is moving away from Socialism; every time it has failed, and not just failed but FAILED MISERABLY! If you want NANNY STATISM why don’t YOU move to Russia. The rest of AMERICANS who would rather remain in a democratic REPUBLIC can stay here and fight the clowns in Congress & the WH west wing! How’s that hope and change been working for ya, bunky?
believecommonsense almost 15 years ago
DocCanookie said: Don’t these people EVER think for themselves?
No, they either don’t know how or they’re afraid to …
GNWachs almost 15 years ago
DrCanuck
Was that sarcasm or a joke?
Headline Yahoo: Public option may be dead!
Dtroutma almost 15 years ago
Wachs, the real cost of a B-2 was abut $1.5 billion, sorry ‘bout that. F-22s run around actually $263 million each. When our disabled vets are covered, the cost of Iraq will exceed $3 trillion. How ‘bout that.
I think “doc” harris’ all caps drove me to distraction.
tpenna almost 15 years ago
DrCanuck, surely that was sarcasm, right? By and large, capitalism (with social welfare supports) has tended to produce the best results for the most people throughout history. That’s pretty much an axiom.
I think the point of contention for most is the degree of social support that is best (or the level of government at which said supports should be provided).
Those social supports may frequently have elements of socialism involved. But absolute socialism simply does not work in any society larger than a commune (where all citizens are agreed).
GNWachs almost 15 years ago
Note the year. Clinton was president.
“In the 1994 Defense Authorization Act, Congress capped the B-2 bomber program at 20 planes. The last of these 20 bombers is to be produced in FY 1997 and delivered to the Air Force in FY 2000. ”
GNWachs almost 15 years ago
Roaring success in England hence Thatcher. Socialist Party in Germany got 8% of the latest vote. There actually was a successful Socialist party in Germany. It was called the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party. Difficult to compare any 16 million homogenous country with one of 305 million diverse.
OmqR-IV.0 almost 15 years ago
Not so sure that Europe can boast having truly Socialist countries in its midst. “Socialist “parties in power are mostly in name only since they now all tend to be centrist with slight leanings left of or even right of centre. If you heard the extremists in some European countries you’d think they’re no longer homogenous since they fear being “swamped” by the foreign cultures. Meh. As for population size; France is approx 62mil; Germany is 82mil; UK is 60mil; Spain is 40mil; Poland is 38 mil; Sweden is 9mil; Denmark is 5,5mil; Norway is 4,5mil. (non-EU) The Netherlands is 16,5mil though. Collectively the EU is 490mil and, I suppose, diverse.