Yes, you seem to like to troll me. Tell me, do you have some sort of sadomasochist fetish with being smacked down or are you like the little engine that could and you will keep trying futile things until someone how you succeed?
Who do those services cover? The old, wounded veterans, and the poor who cannot afford care or insurance on their own. And for the latter, in many cases they've been "recissioned" by their health insurance company because they have a high-cost ailment, or lost their job (and thus their insurance) because of a severe accident or disease like cancer.
Gee, who's going to use the most medical care?
Maybe the elderly, wounded veterans, and patients recovering from cancer or a head-on collision? Here's your sign....
And what exactly does that have to do with the concept that private health is not exactly private in the same fashion as a market? Who cares who those services cover or why they are there. The fact that the federal government before Obamacare already covered the majority of non-elective health care and did it in a way that encourage the costs to rise for the better part of 45 years is not impacted one bit by your statement. It's as if you think justifying the participation would remove any negative effects of it. Well, it doesn't- at least not to anyone paying attention to reality.
As is usually the case, this is substituting wingnut ideology for reality. Every other industrialized nation has some form of universal health care (or insurance companies regulated to within an inch of their lives), so they must be paying more than we do for care, right? Because their providers just keep raising prices, right?
Are you simply not capable of paying attention or am I not verses in retard enough to get a point to you? Any other country's socialize health care does not compare to the US's feble attempt at it over the past 50 years. All of those countries own or control the medical services and employ the staffing and make direct connections to the costs. The US instead put a fucked up system in that encouraged the inflation of costs by not paying the the actual rate charge and instead paying a portion based on an average in the area. This encourages the actual costs to be raised in order to raise the average costs being reimbursed by half or more of the medical care they provide. It is completely different then other countries and your premise is missing the point, missing reality, and missing anything close to the discussion.
Except here in the real world, as opposed to Randian la-la land, they pay less money for better care. Even here in the U.S., Medicare, Medicaid and the VA have 2-4% overhead, compared to 30% overhead for private insurance. Why? Because the government agencies aren't paying people exorbitant salaries to find new excuses to deny you care. Because Medicare doesn't have shareholders demanding increasing profits from the agency. Because the head of one of those agencies makes less than $200,000 a year, as opposed to millions for health insurance CEO's like Stephen Hemsley, who made $100 million in one year.
Not only is your basis wrong concerning what I said, your premise is wrong too. The US government created these positions of denying people care. They created the HMOs in an attempt to save businesses money. This was spear headed by Sen. Ted Kennedy himself in the 1960s. The idea was that managed care would save businesses money and allow them to remain competitive.
but it would seem all that is important to you is complaining that the US is not like Canada with the waits so long enterprising companies found a market in providing wait insurance that one providence tried to forbid but got overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court. You are really a piece of work. Blowing off on a tangent about something completely unrelated and pretending it is somehow related just shows how ignorant and desperate you are. Pretending you are somehow superior by using "Randian la-la land" and other made up devices just shows how separated from reality you have become. You should seek professional help.
Why do you trot out with such easily verifiable claims that always turn our to be wrong on your part? The employee unions (United and Canadian) got more then 17% of the new GM shares after bankruptcy and it was funded by the federal government's infusion of money into their VEBA funds. This is undeniable.
The rest of your rubbish is some rant you seem to think belongs in the argument but has absolutely no relevance whatsoever at all. Are you that fucking deranged that you have to go looking for a fight by invading another discussion and injecting crap not even relevent?
It's not that American science doesn't have a chance, it's that people who want ot use it to take away freedoms of American citizens and increase their costs of living and so on doesn't have much of a future.
When they cross the line from science to politics, they are in fact in the political world no matter how much science is involved.
In fact, the definition of molested means 1. To disturb, interfere with, or annoy. Interfere with is probably quite obvious when you consider he has purposely manipulated data. Torture means 3: distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument : which I'm pretty sure has been purposely done.
I think the defendants can in fact successfully defend their statements based on the definitions and real world facts of the situation.
lol.. I'm not sure his comment would be a guilt by association. It is more like- this organization is known for doing obscenely crazy things so it is not the mark of prestige as trotted out.
He wasn't comparing Obama to someone, he was showing how little the Nobel prizes actually mean little for the creditability of someone. If you can't understand that, I will put it in other terms. He is saying that winning a nobel prize is as significant as winning a reward from your valued shopper cards.
MY definition is the one being accepted and used by 80% or better of the political spectrum in the US. It actually is the one that is important despite you closing your eyes to reality and demanding otherwise.
It is only the idiots who insist that we ignore history and the political workings of a country in order to worm a definition in that is counter to the accepted use and definition of that country for the last 80 years or better.
Lets do a word game and hopefully you will find your complete failures and we can move on.
If a policy is socialist, does calling it socialist get barred unless everything else is socialist? No. Ok so lets move on.
If someone is trying to implement a socialist policy, does the fact that not everything they do or want to do bar the the policy from being called socialist? NO, ok so lets move on.
If a policy is socialist and we are not bared from calling it a socialist policy, then we are not bared from calling the person trying to implement it as socialist.
So here is what I suggest to you. Stop insisting it is all or nothing or you will look silly. The US is quite far from being a socialist county by your definition largely because we recognize the policies and call it what it is. When we see the policy, we reject the policy and the person because of what it is and what they are trying to implement. You demanding that we wait until the take over and everything is matching your dictionary references before using the word socialist simple has no place in US politics.
So let me get this straight, you believe the role of a third party is to cause a major party to lose so they will take notice of the positions of the third party and not to get the candidates representing the third party elected.
That is exactly why people think their vote is wasted on third parties. If they vote third party, there is a chance of who is most different from them or most damaging to their policies being elected. Like I said, if you do not mind either of the candidate being elected, it doesn't matter. But if you do not want one of them to be elected, the not voting for the most likely person to beat them is a wasted vote no matter how you look at it.
Oh, I get it. Now that someone has looked up the numbers and they don't support you, you're talking about "core" funding, because actually fighting wars shouldn't factor into calculating military spending. I don't think there's any point in discussing any further.
Well, first of all, core funding is what Romney was talking about and is what is being discussed. The fact that you did not know that does not mean the numbers does not agree with me. It simply means you were looking at the wrong shit. Second, I never changed this position, the only thing I did was explain it once it became obvious you had no clue what was being said. But go ahead and look at my statement I made when I initially replied to you. I said " I am mystified how not increasing core military spending to keep up with inflation despite redirecting most of the to deal with unfunded wars is not neglecting it."
You are right in one thing, there is not point in you discussing it any further. If you cannot pay attention to detail enough to at least know what is being discussed then try to pretend the topic has changed, you should remain as far as possible from discussing anything important.
Oh and yes, you do not count wars because the spending in wars will disappear or get moved to some other program as soon as the war is over. Also, if the money is being spent on a war, it is not being spent for the core requirements of the military which causes it to be neglected.
I do not understand why people think that voting for a third party is throwing away your vote. I don't understand why third party candidates don't point out that even if they do not get enough electoral voters to win, that if they get enough electoral voters to swing the vote they could make a huge difference.
Very few states divide their electoral votes. so the third parties wouldn't be getting any electoral votes anyways. Swinging the vote is specifically why people understand that voting third party is a waste. If you happen to not want any of the likely to win candidates to win, then voting for anything other then the most likely to beat them is a waste. You are essentially allowing what you do not want if you vote third party. If you're inclined to stay at home and don't care who wins, then voting third party doesn't matter.
With the way the electoral college is set up if Obama wins 250 electors, Romney wins 249 electors, and Johnson wins 39 electors, guess what? Johnson's not going to win, but he could ask his electors to cast their votes for one of the other two guys. That's quite a bit of power and influence. Not a bad method of actually representing the will of the people either. Of course the problem here is that with the exception of Maine and Nebraska the electors in other states are picked in a winner-take-all fashion. Also, about half of the states impose some minor penalty for electors voting for anyone other than who they were chosen to vote for.
He will not get those 39 electors unless he takes a state or two. Simply not possible with a third party candidate unless they are a convert from one of the major parties running as a spoiler.
Personally, I would hate to see election by popular vote. I would hate to see the country being run by someone that only 51% of us chose. I'd much rather see the country run by the guy that 40% of chose and who had to make concessions to the guy that the other 20% of us voted for. It really is a much better representation of a larger portion of the population. but I guess we haven't really had a representative government for some time now.:P
We do not elect two presidents. We elect one and the only way to get rid of them is by death, impeachment, or the expiration of their term. Even if a president had to make a pact with a third party non elected person, there is no way to enforce the pact.
I think you might have some romantic concept that the federal government is supposed to represent you. They are not, they are supposed to represent the union of states. Their goal is mainly a unified face for foreign relations, settling disputes between the states, and a few other things. That is the constitutional role of the federal government which originally had only half of one of the three branches of government for representation of the populace. The senate was originally supposed to be selected by the states, the president is still selected by the states through the electoral collage and there is nothing in the constitution stating the electors need to follow the will of the people. The courts except for the supreme court is administrated at the will of congress, the president can't even appoint someone without checking in with congress. What is left is the house of representatives which is supposed to be representative of the people directly in the government's business.
I think you will never find a solution to your dismay in the federal government because you seem to think it is something it is not and likely never will be. This is understandable with the state of education and the acts of government. Even politicians pretend they do not understand this. But you will not find a satisfactory solution without replacing the government and that is not likely to happen.
Americans love to say that. Problem is, nobody is really sure who you're defending us from........ I don't think you're defending Europe anymore. You did at one point (although let's not pretend you weren't doing it out of self interest) but that was a long time ago.
Perhaps you should ask your mom or dad. And long time ago is within my lifetime. The fact that you are young enough to not see that is somewhat of a testament to how well it worked.
In terms of the amount you spend compared to what you used to spend, are you making comparisons to WWII? Or the cold war? When you actually faced credible threats? Besides, US defence spending is currently higher (either in constant dollars or as a % of GDP) than it's been since the end of WWII (if you want to quibble it's a hair lower than it was around 2006).
I'm basing it on before the war compared to now. Core military funding has been siphoned off to fund the wars. Now before you claim but spending is more, look at what was actually said- Core funding.
And no, it's not a hair over what it was around 2006 in the 2013 budget which is where this is coming from. IF the 2013 budget is ever implemented and both Iraq and Afghanistan were removed from the military funding, the resulting funding will be down 25% from 2010.
They have formed a coalition when they joined the parties bowing to them. The only difference is if a vote is needed first.
The major parties are major parties because they are big tent. They are not single issue parties which a lot of third parties are, they have a position and say about most all situations that crop up.
I think you have no clue about the state of the private medical system in the US.. Health care in the US used to be affordable until the government got completely involved in it. Did you know that before Obamacare, the government was the single largest provider of medical coverage? They had something like 60% of all the non-elective health care market sowed up with Medicare, Medicaid, and VA services.
And it is exactly how they are involved which is why the costs are so high. The government does not pay for services as you or I would should be go in ourselves. They pay an average cost for the region which could be more or less then the actual bill. Now the government said it's going to save money by only paying a percentage of that costs. So what happens, the medical service providers jack the costs up so the government pays what is normally asked for. This increases the area average and provides incentives for increasing the costs.
This is also why medical service providers offer steep discounts to insurance providers. They wouldn't pay the exorbitant prices but with the provider network discounts they do not have to and because it is a discount on regular services, the service provider still gets to keep the inflated costs as the number that goes into the cost averaging.
You cannot claim the health care in the US is private when the largest market force in it is the government.
No one will ever seriously vote for a third party candidate in large enough volume that they actually have a possibility to become president. This is because everyone who isn't dreaming of some utopia knows full well that a president has very little real power to create change other then influencing party members in congress. No third party is serious about getting members in congress or even at local positions.
The main parties will continue to run their top of the line scum candidates that make used car salesmen appear honest and hard working. The people will continue to vote those scum into office because they voted for their buddies into congress, into their state legislature, into their local governments. It's what they know, it is what they are comfortable with.
A third party president would be useless. One thing that will unite congress more then anything would be an outsider trying to tell them what to do. Just ask Jimmy Carter about when he tried it and even the Democrats in congress actively worked against him. Carter has one of the absolute worst president terms ever in the history of the US. They say he is a better ex president then a president. The bar wasn't set too high for him to achieve that.
Voting third party is a waste unless it's a protest vote and the alternative is staying home. The government is not constructed like other countries and even in parliament system that do the IRV, the equivalent of the president's office is actually someone from the party with the most members in parliament. It proves this point.
The reason you see most Americans associating social programs with socialism is not only because social programs implies a social political philosophy, but 90% of the social programs claimed in existence was at one time a specific platform goal of the Socialist party in the US. The socialist party USA had a decent following until the Communist party attempted to usurp them in a bid to overthrow the government and instal a Stalin type dictator. The Communist party failed co-opting the socialist party and most were run out of the country, the rest joined the socialist party which made them suspect since the 1920s. This distrust was heightened after WWII when communism fell out of mainstream favor and most Communists joined the socialists parties around the world. With the start of the cold war, we focused on the possibilities of the country being destroyed from the outside in again as what originally could have happened in 1919. This is where the McCarthyism came about and it did actually reveal foreigners attempting to convince Americans to work against the US government. This is also why most of the holdouts firmly against socialism and communism where mostly adults before the fall of the Soviet empire. Those more accepting to socialism seem to be the younger generation who had no direct experience with the threats and history of threats to the US government.
Most Americans do not have a problem with welfare for those who are in need. The problem they have is when those who are capable game the system. I don't think it is all of welfare that they call socialism even though it is specifically a goal of the socialist party when it was big in the US. Er perhaps it is not all of welfare or all of socialism they have a problem with.
To be honest, in the US, it is hard for welfare recipients to get off the system because you need to make so much more then start off pay in order to replace the welfare assistance given that it effectively eliminates a lot of job opportunities.
You haven't been paying attention on the Obamacare. Obama sent the initial bill to the house and senate. They went through the comity process and changes a few things then found they couldn't get enough people supporting it to pass it. They then used a trick of passing it as it was submitted to send to the senate in hopes they could make it more palatable. The senate made some changes and voted to agree on the changes and send it back to the house for reconsideration. There was no consensus in the house so the leaders of the house and senate decided to use a reconciliation process that until then, was reserved to specific issues concerning the budget not for general legislation. The reconciliation takes the parts that were initially voted on from the house to send it to the senate and the parts that remained identical in the senate that was passed to send it back to the house and made them law without another vote. After the bill is passed into law, the conflicting areas are supposed to be hammered out which they to this day have not been.
This is Obamacare no matter how you look at it. IT is what he submitted to the democrats in congress verbatim. It was passed that way using loopholes that probably wouldn't even survive a constitutional challenge but definitely appears to not be the same bills signed by congress at the time they were voted on by congress.
What's that saying, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya? I mean, why wait, just go and leave now. Romney is not that much different then Obama and even if he looses, someone worse then Romney will be elected next cycle if there isn't some sort of collapse and breakdown in the US first. I guarantee you that even if Obama wins, people will be pointing to his faults and failed policies in real time. And in the next 2-3 years, the vast majority of his Obamacare crap becomes mandatory and there will not be a shortage of complaints. Except this time, more people will be impacted and louder voices with more authority will be screaming it.
lol.. Isn't that exactly what happened with the GM bailout? He gave GM to the Employees Union.
Anyways, your definition is unimportant. In the US, the socialist and communist parties created a wish list or reforms they wanted to accomplish before the failed communist revolt and the resulting temporary ban of the Communist party in the US back in 1919. Roosevelt succeeded in getting some of them accomplished and they have been trying to get the rest and some extra modifications put in place since the 1920's. This socialist agenda as it is, became the basis for the US's claims of something being socialist which is accurate in the relevant context.
Socialism in the US is the Socialist party's objectives of taxing people based on their success in order to provide for the unsuccessful through social programs at the whim of government. Your definitions of something at the core does not escape that.
How does any of that have anything to do with a single policy in the US being socialist or not and or the people in the US rejecting it.
Here is a hint- absolutely nothing. It's as if you witnessed a school teacher rob a liquor store and are insisting he isn't a criminal and never has done criminal acts because he gave free piano lessens on the weekend.
lol.. You are delusional and making irrational conclusions based on you biased feelings.
Okay, so it was Clinton who stated that the courts (e.g. the only one of the three chambers of government that is directly answerable to a citizen which comes before it) should not be allowed to express an opinion on the constitutionality of abortion laws - so that religious-minded politicians can make them ? Oh now wait, that was Paul Ryan. In the VP's debate. Score another for the republicans.
this one isn't about religion. First, you do not have to be religious to be anti-killing your unborn baby. You do not have to be Anti-religious to support it either. And finally, the correct and proper place for a judge to opine on a law's constitutionality is in a court when presented with a case. So you can score one for biased ignorance here.
(In case you were wondering - despite not being a huge fan of the Obama/Biden camp - Biden's answer to that SAME question was the ONLY one acceptable from any politician on this question - EVER "I will not let push my beliefs onto equally devout holders of OTHER faiths" [no seriously - if I could vote in US elections - I'd be voting for Jill Stein])
More biased rubbish being spouted here and by someone not even able to vote.
Oh but of course it was Clinton who first instituted "don't-ask-don't-tell" so I guess the democrats has to score one there... then again that was only done because at the time it was the closest that was politically possible to get from the Reagan-era outright ban on homosexuality in the military - it was a decent step-in-the-right-direction which the NEXT democrat could then build on to get to where it SHOULD be which is: zero discrimination allowed. Fine, call this one a tie.
First, homosexuality is not a religious issue. There are churches that have gay pastors and even perform gay marriages/commitment ceremonies. You conflating it with religion is only because of your fear of religious things. I suspect you are an evangelical atheist who knows it all and will say everything is exactly how you think and everyone else is wrong because you somehow are smarter. But you would be wrong as demonstrated already.
Second Sodomy had been barred in the US military since the beginning of it before we were even a country. During WWII and after, homosexuality was considered a mental defect and barred people from serving who were gay. In 1982, gays were flat out rejected from military service because of research stating it wasn't a mental condition but a choice. You cannot blame Reagan for something that had been effectively in play for the entire history of the country. And you cannot blame Clinton for only halfassing the removal either.
Mind you - since Clinton - all those ultra-right-wing religious nutjob candidates have been running on democrat tickets. Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum and... oh wait... score a few dozen more for the republicans.
Yep, you are right, and how many of them got elected once we found out how nutty they were? Oh wait what? You mean you are going to base this all on people who tried and failed to become elected on a platform? It would seem to me that if logic was actually working inside your brain, the fact that they got relegated to obscurity would pretty much mean the opposite of what you are claiming.
Sorry pal... but the GP has this one right: when it comes to overly religious politics, the republicans are the scary ones.
I didn't make this up, you can follow the link and take the word of the liberal atheist who said it. But your critique of the idea is completely shallow and fruitless if examined in the slightest. Your argument falls apart quickly with the exception of the so called abstinence only sex ed which for some reason was never implemented in my area and we never lost schoo
google for the number of Iran centrifuges and you will find a host of articles claiming they doubles the amounts at different sites. I suspect they cannot all concentrate to the same levels so a complete run might make use of several of them for a final product.
As one of the people who has been largely funding your defenses for the last lots of years after WWII, I am mystified how not increasing core military spending to keep up with inflation despite redirecting most of the to deal with unfunded wars is not neglecting it. The amount we spend isn't as important as the effective amount compared to another time when you are considering neglecting it.
If you think CNN is trying to tell you how to vote, please do not come to my house and try to interpret what the dog is trying to get you to do when he put his paws on your lap. (I'll give you a hint, it's not dirty minded but you can decide to think whatever you want I guess).
Four years closer means that four years of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons has not been effective. It speaks to the effectiveness and ability to ignore the ineffectiveness of policy yet saying something is being done. Iran is years away from having a weapon that can use the enriched uranium. However, that doesn't mean it is wise to wait until the point where all they have to do it put the Uranium into the weapon to get serious about stopping Iran from getting nukes.
It's like the parent who grounds his kids for bad grades and send them to their room because the TV and stuff are distracting them, but never checks to see if the homework is done, is done accurately, and the kid has his own TV in his room along with all the video games and such that was distracting him from doing the homework. The parent can say he punished the kid, but the punishment made nothing different.
If the goal is to stop Iran from getting nuclear arms, we have failed because even right now, they can use it as a dirty bomb. Sitting on our hands and waiting for policy that isn't working to magically start working doesn't seem to be much smarter then sending kid to his room that has all the amenities as the rest of the house to remove distractions.
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Yes, you seem to like to troll me. Tell me, do you have some sort of sadomasochist fetish with being smacked down or are you like the little engine that could and you will keep trying futile things until someone how you succeed?
And what exactly does that have to do with the concept that private health is not exactly private in the same fashion as a market? Who cares who those services cover or why they are there. The fact that the federal government before Obamacare already covered the majority of non-elective health care and did it in a way that encourage the costs to rise for the better part of 45 years is not impacted one bit by your statement. It's as if you think justifying the participation would remove any negative effects of it. Well, it doesn't- at least not to anyone paying attention to reality.
Are you simply not capable of paying attention or am I not verses in retard enough to get a point to you? Any other country's socialize health care does not compare to the US's feble attempt at it over the past 50 years. All of those countries own or control the medical services and employ the staffing and make direct connections to the costs. The US instead put a fucked up system in that encouraged the inflation of costs by not paying the the actual rate charge and instead paying a portion based on an average in the area. This encourages the actual costs to be raised in order to raise the average costs being reimbursed by half or more of the medical care they provide. It is completely different then other countries and your premise is missing the point, missing reality, and missing anything close to the discussion.
Not only is your basis wrong concerning what I said, your premise is wrong too. The US government created these positions of denying people care. They created the HMOs in an attempt to save businesses money. This was spear headed by Sen. Ted Kennedy himself in the 1960s. The idea was that managed care would save businesses money and allow them to remain competitive.
but it would seem all that is important to you is complaining that the US is not like Canada with the waits so long enterprising companies found a market in providing wait insurance that one providence tried to forbid but got overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court. You are really a piece of work. Blowing off on a tangent about something completely unrelated and pretending it is somehow related just shows how ignorant and desperate you are. Pretending you are somehow superior by using "Randian la-la land" and other made up devices just shows how separated from reality you have become. You should seek professional help.
Why do you trot out with such easily verifiable claims that always turn our to be wrong on your part? The employee unions (United and Canadian) got more then 17% of the new GM shares after bankruptcy and it was funded by the federal government's infusion of money into their VEBA funds. This is undeniable.
The rest of your rubbish is some rant you seem to think belongs in the argument but has absolutely no relevance whatsoever at all. Are you that fucking deranged that you have to go looking for a fight by invading another discussion and injecting crap not even relevent?
Then you are irrationally ignoring a good portion of the discussion and have little basis to complain.
It's not that American science doesn't have a chance, it's that people who want ot use it to take away freedoms of American citizens and increase their costs of living and so on doesn't have much of a future.
When they cross the line from science to politics, they are in fact in the political world no matter how much science is involved.
I don't think there is no evidence of that.
In fact, the definition of molested means 1. To disturb, interfere with, or annoy. Interfere with is probably quite obvious when you consider he has purposely manipulated data. Torture means 3: distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument : which I'm pretty sure has been purposely done.
I think the defendants can in fact successfully defend their statements based on the definitions and real world facts of the situation.
lol.. I'm not sure his comment would be a guilt by association. It is more like- this organization is known for doing obscenely crazy things so it is not the mark of prestige as trotted out.
He wasn't comparing Obama to someone, he was showing how little the Nobel prizes actually mean little for the creditability of someone. If you can't understand that, I will put it in other terms. He is saying that winning a nobel prize is as significant as winning a reward from your valued shopper cards.
MY definition is the one being accepted and used by 80% or better of the political spectrum in the US. It actually is the one that is important despite you closing your eyes to reality and demanding otherwise.
It is only the idiots who insist that we ignore history and the political workings of a country in order to worm a definition in that is counter to the accepted use and definition of that country for the last 80 years or better.
Lets do a word game and hopefully you will find your complete failures and we can move on.
If a policy is socialist, does calling it socialist get barred unless everything else is socialist? No. Ok so lets move on.
If someone is trying to implement a socialist policy, does the fact that not everything they do or want to do bar the the policy from being called socialist? NO, ok so lets move on.
If a policy is socialist and we are not bared from calling it a socialist policy, then we are not bared from calling the person trying to implement it as socialist.
So here is what I suggest to you. Stop insisting it is all or nothing or you will look silly. The US is quite far from being a socialist county by your definition largely because we recognize the policies and call it what it is. When we see the policy, we reject the policy and the person because of what it is and what they are trying to implement. You demanding that we wait until the take over and everything is matching your dictionary references before using the word socialist simple has no place in US politics.
So let me get this straight, you believe the role of a third party is to cause a major party to lose so they will take notice of the positions of the third party and not to get the candidates representing the third party elected.
That is exactly why people think their vote is wasted on third parties. If they vote third party, there is a chance of who is most different from them or most damaging to their policies being elected. Like I said, if you do not mind either of the candidate being elected, it doesn't matter. But if you do not want one of them to be elected, the not voting for the most likely person to beat them is a wasted vote no matter how you look at it.
Well, first of all, core funding is what Romney was talking about and is what is being discussed. The fact that you did not know that does not mean the numbers does not agree with me. It simply means you were looking at the wrong shit. Second, I never changed this position, the only thing I did was explain it once it became obvious you had no clue what was being said. But go ahead and look at my statement I made when I initially replied to you. I said " I am mystified how not increasing core military spending to keep up with inflation despite redirecting most of the to deal with unfunded wars is not neglecting it."
You are right in one thing, there is not point in you discussing it any further. If you cannot pay attention to detail enough to at least know what is being discussed then try to pretend the topic has changed, you should remain as far as possible from discussing anything important.
Oh and yes, you do not count wars because the spending in wars will disappear or get moved to some other program as soon as the war is over. Also, if the money is being spent on a war, it is not being spent for the core requirements of the military which causes it to be neglected.
Very few states divide their electoral votes. so the third parties wouldn't be getting any electoral votes anyways. Swinging the vote is specifically why people understand that voting third party is a waste. If you happen to not want any of the likely to win candidates to win, then voting for anything other then the most likely to beat them is a waste. You are essentially allowing what you do not want if you vote third party. If you're inclined to stay at home and don't care who wins, then voting third party doesn't matter.
He will not get those 39 electors unless he takes a state or two. Simply not possible with a third party candidate unless they are a convert from one of the major parties running as a spoiler.
We do not elect two presidents. We elect one and the only way to get rid of them is by death, impeachment, or the expiration of their term. Even if a president had to make a pact with a third party non elected person, there is no way to enforce the pact.
I think you might have some romantic concept that the federal government is supposed to represent you. They are not, they are supposed to represent the union of states. Their goal is mainly a unified face for foreign relations, settling disputes between the states, and a few other things. That is the constitutional role of the federal government which originally had only half of one of the three branches of government for representation of the populace. The senate was originally supposed to be selected by the states, the president is still selected by the states through the electoral collage and there is nothing in the constitution stating the electors need to follow the will of the people. The courts except for the supreme court is administrated at the will of congress, the president can't even appoint someone without checking in with congress. What is left is the house of representatives which is supposed to be representative of the people directly in the government's business.
I think you will never find a solution to your dismay in the federal government because you seem to think it is something it is not and likely never will be. This is understandable with the state of education and the acts of government. Even politicians pretend they do not understand this. But you will not find a satisfactory solution without replacing the government and that is not likely to happen.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but possession of Marijuana- even smoking it, is not a felony unless it is over a certain amount.
Perhaps you should ask your mom or dad. And long time ago is within my lifetime. The fact that you are young enough to not see that is somewhat of a testament to how well it worked.
I'm basing it on before the war compared to now. Core military funding has been siphoned off to fund the wars. Now before you claim but spending is more, look at what was actually said- Core funding.
And no, it's not a hair over what it was around 2006 in the 2013 budget which is where this is coming from. IF the 2013 budget is ever implemented and both Iraq and Afghanistan were removed from the military funding, the resulting funding will be down 25% from 2010.
They have formed a coalition when they joined the parties bowing to them. The only difference is if a vote is needed first.
The major parties are major parties because they are big tent. They are not single issue parties which a lot of third parties are, they have a position and say about most all situations that crop up.
I think you have no clue about the state of the private medical system in the US.. Health care in the US used to be affordable until the government got completely involved in it. Did you know that before Obamacare, the government was the single largest provider of medical coverage? They had something like 60% of all the non-elective health care market sowed up with Medicare, Medicaid, and VA services.
And it is exactly how they are involved which is why the costs are so high. The government does not pay for services as you or I would should be go in ourselves. They pay an average cost for the region which could be more or less then the actual bill. Now the government said it's going to save money by only paying a percentage of that costs. So what happens, the medical service providers jack the costs up so the government pays what is normally asked for. This increases the area average and provides incentives for increasing the costs.
This is also why medical service providers offer steep discounts to insurance providers. They wouldn't pay the exorbitant prices but with the provider network discounts they do not have to and because it is a discount on regular services, the service provider still gets to keep the inflated costs as the number that goes into the cost averaging.
You cannot claim the health care in the US is private when the largest market force in it is the government.
No one will ever seriously vote for a third party candidate in large enough volume that they actually have a possibility to become president. This is because everyone who isn't dreaming of some utopia knows full well that a president has very little real power to create change other then influencing party members in congress. No third party is serious about getting members in congress or even at local positions.
The main parties will continue to run their top of the line scum candidates that make used car salesmen appear honest and hard working. The people will continue to vote those scum into office because they voted for their buddies into congress, into their state legislature, into their local governments. It's what they know, it is what they are comfortable with.
A third party president would be useless. One thing that will unite congress more then anything would be an outsider trying to tell them what to do. Just ask Jimmy Carter about when he tried it and even the Democrats in congress actively worked against him. Carter has one of the absolute worst president terms ever in the history of the US. They say he is a better ex president then a president. The bar wasn't set too high for him to achieve that.
Voting third party is a waste unless it's a protest vote and the alternative is staying home. The government is not constructed like other countries and even in parliament system that do the IRV, the equivalent of the president's office is actually someone from the party with the most members in parliament. It proves this point.
The reason you see most Americans associating social programs with socialism is not only because social programs implies a social political philosophy, but 90% of the social programs claimed in existence was at one time a specific platform goal of the Socialist party in the US. The socialist party USA had a decent following until the Communist party attempted to usurp them in a bid to overthrow the government and instal a Stalin type dictator. The Communist party failed co-opting the socialist party and most were run out of the country, the rest joined the socialist party which made them suspect since the 1920s. This distrust was heightened after WWII when communism fell out of mainstream favor and most Communists joined the socialists parties around the world. With the start of the cold war, we focused on the possibilities of the country being destroyed from the outside in again as what originally could have happened in 1919. This is where the McCarthyism came about and it did actually reveal foreigners attempting to convince Americans to work against the US government. This is also why most of the holdouts firmly against socialism and communism where mostly adults before the fall of the Soviet empire. Those more accepting to socialism seem to be the younger generation who had no direct experience with the threats and history of threats to the US government.
Most Americans do not have a problem with welfare for those who are in need. The problem they have is when those who are capable game the system. I don't think it is all of welfare that they call socialism even though it is specifically a goal of the socialist party when it was big in the US. Er perhaps it is not all of welfare or all of socialism they have a problem with.
To be honest, in the US, it is hard for welfare recipients to get off the system because you need to make so much more then start off pay in order to replace the welfare assistance given that it effectively eliminates a lot of job opportunities.
You haven't been paying attention on the Obamacare. Obama sent the initial bill to the house and senate. They went through the comity process and changes a few things then found they couldn't get enough people supporting it to pass it. They then used a trick of passing it as it was submitted to send to the senate in hopes they could make it more palatable. The senate made some changes and voted to agree on the changes and send it back to the house for reconsideration. There was no consensus in the house so the leaders of the house and senate decided to use a reconciliation process that until then, was reserved to specific issues concerning the budget not for general legislation. The reconciliation takes the parts that were initially voted on from the house to send it to the senate and the parts that remained identical in the senate that was passed to send it back to the house and made them law without another vote. After the bill is passed into law, the conflicting areas are supposed to be hammered out which they to this day have not been.
This is Obamacare no matter how you look at it. IT is what he submitted to the democrats in congress verbatim. It was passed that way using loopholes that probably wouldn't even survive a constitutional challenge but definitely appears to not be the same bills signed by congress at the time they were voted on by congress.
What's that saying, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya? I mean, why wait, just go and leave now. Romney is not that much different then Obama and even if he looses, someone worse then Romney will be elected next cycle if there isn't some sort of collapse and breakdown in the US first. I guarantee you that even if Obama wins, people will be pointing to his faults and failed policies in real time. And in the next 2-3 years, the vast majority of his Obamacare crap becomes mandatory and there will not be a shortage of complaints. Except this time, more people will be impacted and louder voices with more authority will be screaming it.
lol.. Isn't that exactly what happened with the GM bailout? He gave GM to the Employees Union.
Anyways, your definition is unimportant. In the US, the socialist and communist parties created a wish list or reforms they wanted to accomplish before the failed communist revolt and the resulting temporary ban of the Communist party in the US back in 1919. Roosevelt succeeded in getting some of them accomplished and they have been trying to get the rest and some extra modifications put in place since the 1920's. This socialist agenda as it is, became the basis for the US's claims of something being socialist which is accurate in the relevant context.
Socialism in the US is the Socialist party's objectives of taxing people based on their success in order to provide for the unsuccessful through social programs at the whim of government. Your definitions of something at the core does not escape that.
How does any of that have anything to do with a single policy in the US being socialist or not and or the people in the US rejecting it.
Here is a hint- absolutely nothing. It's as if you witnessed a school teacher rob a liquor store and are insisting he isn't a criminal and never has done criminal acts because he gave free piano lessens on the weekend.
lol.. You are delusional and making irrational conclusions based on you biased feelings.
this one isn't about religion. First, you do not have to be religious to be anti-killing your unborn baby. You do not have to be Anti-religious to support it either. And finally, the correct and proper place for a judge to opine on a law's constitutionality is in a court when presented with a case. So you can score one for biased ignorance here.
More biased rubbish being spouted here and by someone not even able to vote.
First, homosexuality is not a religious issue. There are churches that have gay pastors and even perform gay marriages/commitment ceremonies. You conflating it with religion is only because of your fear of religious things. I suspect you are an evangelical atheist who knows it all and will say everything is exactly how you think and everyone else is wrong because you somehow are smarter. But you would be wrong as demonstrated already.
Second Sodomy had been barred in the US military since the beginning of it before we were even a country. During WWII and after, homosexuality was considered a mental defect and barred people from serving who were gay. In 1982, gays were flat out rejected from military service because of research stating it wasn't a mental condition but a choice. You cannot blame Reagan for something that had been effectively in play for the entire history of the country. And you cannot blame Clinton for only halfassing the removal either.
Yep, you are right, and how many of them got elected once we found out how nutty they were? Oh wait what? You mean you are going to base this all on people who tried and failed to become elected on a platform? It would seem to me that if logic was actually working inside your brain, the fact that they got relegated to obscurity would pretty much mean the opposite of what you are claiming.
I didn't make this up, you can follow the link and take the word of the liberal atheist who said it. But your critique of the idea is completely shallow and fruitless if examined in the slightest. Your argument falls apart quickly with the exception of the so called abstinence only sex ed which for some reason was never implemented in my area and we never lost schoo
I don't know, this article puts the number at 9,000 at one site.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/iran-claims-3000-new-uranium-centrifuges/
google for the number of Iran centrifuges and you will find a host of articles claiming they doubles the amounts at different sites. I suspect they cannot all concentrate to the same levels so a complete run might make use of several of them for a final product.
As one of the people who has been largely funding your defenses for the last lots of years after WWII, I am mystified how not increasing core military spending to keep up with inflation despite redirecting most of the to deal with unfunded wars is not neglecting it. The amount we spend isn't as important as the effective amount compared to another time when you are considering neglecting it.
If you think CNN is trying to tell you how to vote, please do not come to my house and try to interpret what the dog is trying to get you to do when he put his paws on your lap. (I'll give you a hint, it's not dirty minded but you can decide to think whatever you want I guess).
Four years closer means that four years of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons has not been effective. It speaks to the effectiveness and ability to ignore the ineffectiveness of policy yet saying something is being done. Iran is years away from having a weapon that can use the enriched uranium. However, that doesn't mean it is wise to wait until the point where all they have to do it put the Uranium into the weapon to get serious about stopping Iran from getting nukes.
It's like the parent who grounds his kids for bad grades and send them to their room because the TV and stuff are distracting them, but never checks to see if the homework is done, is done accurately, and the kid has his own TV in his room along with all the video games and such that was distracting him from doing the homework. The parent can say he punished the kid, but the punishment made nothing different.
If the goal is to stop Iran from getting nuclear arms, we have failed because even right now, they can use it as a dirty bomb. Sitting on our hands and waiting for policy that isn't working to magically start working doesn't seem to be much smarter then sending kid to his room that has all the amenities as the rest of the house to remove distractions.