291–300 of 435 posts
I guess I'm part of the problem.
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Wait, what? He ran on fixing the economy (done), ending the war in Iraq (done), restoring our relationship with the rest of the world (done), universal health care (done) and improving the acceptance of minority groups (somewhat done - at least the LGBT community). Illegal immigration is down, unemployment is down, crime is down. There are definitely things Obama hasn't done, but he absolutely delivered change, and h…
> Wait, what? He ran on fixing the economy (done)... Not really. It's not at the point of collapse, but it sure wasn't a normal recovery. It's better than 2008, but it's still broken in some very real ways. > ... ending the war in Iraq (done)... Sort of. The battle for Mosul was in the news just last week, with US involvement. > ... restoring our relationship with the rest of the world (done)... Russia is fighting ag…
I'm amused by the Republican concern for rising premiums this year. My health insurance rates have gone up every year by 5-10% for the last 10 years after my work switched to high deductible plans. Between my employer and I the total cost of insurance is $14,400/year. That's more than the total income tax for a median income back in my country of birth. Just for insurance!
There are a lot of things wrong with the ACA/Obamacare but let's not pretend that the giant mess known as the American medical system is solely the responsibility of the Democrats. Every other OECD nation seems to have figured it out....
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> Wait, what? He ran on fixing the economy (done)... Not really. It's not at the point of collapse, but it sure wasn't a normal recovery. It's better than 2008, but it's still broken in some very real ways. > ... ending the war in Iraq (done)... Sort of. The battle for Mosul was in the news just last week, with US involvement. > ... restoring our relationship with the rest of the world (done)... Russia is fighting ag…
> Seen the premium changes for 2017? I'm amused by the Republican concern for rising premiums this year. My health insurance rates have gone up every year by 5-10% for the last 10 years after my work switched to high deductible plans. Between my employer and I the total cost of insurance is $14,400/year. That's more than the total income tax for a median income back in my country of birth. Just for insurance! There a…
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Are these the same people who've seen their rates go up 85% in two years? Bloody ingrates!
This line of argument would be more persuasive if any of the Republicans, Trump or otherwise, had proposed an alternative that amounts to more than letting people fend for themselves
Not to mention that (A) employees in the US often have employer-provided health insurance; (B) many who live in the middle of nowhere are covered under medicare, medicaid, veteran's benefits, children's programs, and state programs; and (C) people who really depend on health insurance, ie those with big families or no savings, can still go out and buy it from a private company.
It's not like people are sitting on the side of the highway in Appalachia, dying of appendicitis and the flu.
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I burned my foot without insurance. Out of pocket this twenty minutes in the doctor's office, two pain pills, and a nurse assuring me that it wasn't quite a third-degree burn cost me $2000+. It's not six MRI's the uninsured need to worry about, it's incidental injuries and illnesses that potentially cost several month's wages. God forbid you have a multi-day stay in the ICU.
Under many of ACA policies, you would still end up paying that amount, because they have ridiculously high deductibles. So if you are a relatively healthy person that does not regularly go to the doctors to get that chewed up earlier, you are still going to be left holding the bag for non-catastrophic, but expensive services. I have been burned by this in the past.
Poor choice of words, douche.
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> "There are issue like abortion, that to me are like the holocaust. I know most don't agree with me on that, and I can understand that they don't see a fetus as a life, I get it. But imagine for a second that you were firmly convinced that a fetus was as much a life as a new born." Okay, so here I am - lifelong progressive Democrat. And I'll open up to this discussion. So, I'm believing that at the moment of concept…
"Life of the mother" is very different from "it's my body", though. If I believe that life begins at conception, I can perhaps bend to a "life of the mother" exception. "It's my body"? But it's not just your body - there's another life involved as well - so you can't just do what you want with your body.
How do you handle and account for miscarriages? A sizable number of pregnancies end in miscarriage - especially if we view life as beginning at conception. So in miscarriage the mother has ended the life of the child.
What's the framework with which you believe this should be dealt with? What's to be done with people who have biological disorders leading to problems with gestation? After all, if life starts at conception then it's pretty quickly no longer just a woman's body.
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Regarding the difference between polls and election results: maybe many people are racist, sexist xenophobes and if they tell the preference in public, they get rightfully derided for it. But with the secrecy of the ballot, they can give into their deep desire to kick out the Muslims and the Blacks, kick the females back into the kitchen and make America white again.
This is the issue. People did not vote Trump to satisfy hateful racism and sexism, they voted Trump despite everyone painting them as racist sexist pigs. The other option was so far from what they wanted they had little choice. Please try to understand why people disagree with you, why the majority disagrees with you.
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The irony to me about immigration violations is that a major factor in reducing them has been...NAFTA. There is even currently a net migration of Mexicans back to Mexico. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-... I'm not sure I count as part of the left, but as an atheist, I have no trouble understanding a fetus was as much a life as a new born as an honest and principled position. On the other…
> On the other hand, I'm not sure how you come to a political compromise with people that disagree with it (how do they reach out?). I've often found myself with the same question. What's a satisfactory answer for "THIS IS MURDER!?" vs. "Eh, I don't think so, more like a nasty wart...". I understand both, but I just don't see place for a bridge other than telling one side to get over it.
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him."
Yes, liberals in America are all smug and holier-than-thou, unlike their ideological opponents, who really listen to what you have to say and never judge you ahead of time. And, of course, they never pass comment on how a person looks.
Because what makes some of us on the left come off smug or haughty is the fact that conservatives refuse to accept that we deserve those protections. Worse still, some of them think that LGBT people should be put into some kind of hospital to be "cured" because "JESUS!" I'm not trying to lash out but it's a real complaint I have as someone who was formerly an evangelical Christian. It's a thread of thought I see that conservatives get looped into that their faith should override their sense of good law. I'm not asking for the Christian churches out there to let me join their congregations. I'm asking for them to respect my civil rights as I respect theirs. It's a reciprocal arrangement with both benefit. It's mutualism at it's best. Why is this so hard for them? I just want a good answer beyond their emotive, knee jerk reactions.