[The Mauva Syndicate]

So, it's John McCain and the Party of BAD IDEAS or its Barack Obama and the party of NO IDEAS.

Here comes a TMS Hippie rant!

Well I'll tell ya what, as a vet, and a military brat and the hubs is also a vet, we wouldn't let John McCain anywhere NEAR the CiC position. I'm sorry but he just remnds me of far too many ancient gung-ho moron 4 stars, so totally out of touch with reality that it defies description. FREE MARKETS DONT WORK. If these jockboy-lockerroom-mentalities that run wall street weren't the greediest fugs on the planet, IF people could control their greed, then yeah free markets would work by careful analysis and action. But it doesn't cause it aint. Markets are determined by fear and greed and NOTHING ELSE. All the blather about Iraq and this and that and the "Global war on terror" bullshit is just a smoke screen for the prfits of the oil companies.

Ask yourself, why Iraq? When our enemy was CLEARLY Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Why Iraq? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the oil in Iraq is closer to the surface of the planet than anywhere else (Called "Pull Weight, it indicates how much effort has to be expended to get oil out of the ground - Iraq= lowest in the world).

Then after speculative manipulation of the futures market (Legalized only recently, by John McCains #1 Economics advisor, when he was a Senator), huh! Gas Prices are near to a real price!! Horrors! (Of course we still pay a tiny fraction of what it costs in a civilised society) the only solution to your high price at the pumps is MORE DRILLING - never mind the McCain LIE that it will help assuage the high price of fuel - IT WONT for 7-10 YEARS, but the great cell-phone using, suv driving masses of cancerous consumers will run to suckle at the pap of empty promises, just so they can get another home equity line of credit to buy another hummer and give their overbearing and whining bitch offspring a new iPhone, so she can be just like iCarly and SO HIP! OMG!!

People dont get it, this is IT. If we don't drastically change the way we do things, we will preside over the decline of America. Soon we'll be only an "Also ran". If we can't figure out a way to lead into the future, we will be left behind by China and India, and NOTHING John McCain can do or say will in any way change it - in fact most of his ideas will merely hasten the decline of America. Not for the rich, mind you, they are insulated, but the disappearing middle class is history if we have 4 more years of his brand of money-suckling republican leadership.

In 1980 the marginal tax rates for people who earn more than 1million dollars was 61%, it's now 17% (Per Warren Buffet at his annual shareholder event for Berkshire Hathaway - and he KNOWS it's wrong and even said so). I know I pay WAY more than that. WHY? Because republicans ONLY serve the rich, and anyone who doesn't see that clearly is blind to it by distraction, they keep you focused on Iraq or "our boys over there" or those gays getting married or your Bible or whatever issue they think the people will resonate too, meanwhile the rich get break after break after break from the repubs and nobody notices....

In the next 20 years, the greatest redistribution of wealth in our country's history is about to begin when millions of baby-boomers begin to retire - WHO is going to pay their social security? Where is all that money going to come from? It should be waiting in the SS Trust fund, but we've been raiding that for years (BTW only Clinton didn't raid it, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II all wiped it out, utterly), so who's going to support that entire generation of people?

John McCain? With WHAT?

Honestly, if John McCain becomes president, prepare your escape routes... when the end comes it will be messy, and I'll be in Toronto (It's just a couple hours away).

BTW, My African American friends are all pretty much convinced that Barack Obama will win, and then be assaxxxxted almost instantly. They REALLY believe this. SO I guess his VP pick will be real important then... I'd like to think we as a society are beyond that, but then again...

[Raydeus]

About health care, the best medicine is not taking any in the first place. I've seen way to many cases of people starting with one disease and a single pill scalate till they get so many side effects they end up taking like 20 pills a day and feeling like crap in the process.

Which makes pharmaceutical companies very, very happy if I may add.

Speak to any doctor friend of yours (who isn't charging you) and you'll find out a lot of diseases can be controlled or erradicated with simple changes in habits, from alimentation to excersicing or simply avoiding certain foods/chemicals.

But instead we refuse to improve our lives and expect a pill to solve everything magically, which brings way more expenses and side effects that are way nastier than the initial shock from a habit change can produce.

Not to mention in the end people ends up changing their habits anyway because they would be sick 24/7 otherwise - once the side effects pile up.


And that's not even considering prevention in the first place. o_O;


And I definitely agree the only way to improve health care is removing profit from it, and also removing burocracy.


Here in mx we have a pretty good health care system (on paper) but because of the mafias in the service all the money that is supposed to be helping people with meds and improving/updating equipment and techniques ends up in the pockets of sindicate bosses and all the leech employess who only seek an early retirement (with obscene pension amounts for a third world country.)

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by The Mauva Syndicate

Lots of stuff.

/befriend Mauva

[Malacite]

Speaking of taxing the rich, I bet you didn't know that Frank xxxxtra paid 90 cents on the dollar in taxes and still lived a pretty good life.


Oh yeah and statistics show that even if all of the available offshore oil was drilled, it lower gas by like 10 cents tops, and only for a short while. The reality is we've fallen into the same trappings as Egypt and China.


Egpyt could have had steam engines! That's just incredible that they actually had the capability to do that so many centuries ago. But they didn't bother because Slaves were cheap and plentiful.

China refused to employ clocks and new technologies invented by Europe for pretty much the same reasons; why bother with more efficiency when you have so many people to work for you?


Now the USA (and Western Society as a whole) faces the same issue. We've had 30+ years to do something about the consumption of oil, but didn't bother because it was cheap and profitable for the oil companies.

[Caspian]

On the topic of healthcare, making it nolonger a business sounds great but in the end you come out with subpar healthcare everyone can afford. The reason the doctors in the U.S. are so good is because U.S. is where the money is. If you start taking away significant portions of their income, then you better get rid off all the bullshit malpractice lawsuits because grandma Smith was 115 years old and she died because she was 300 lbs. overweight, but you're sueing the doctor because its convenient and shouldn't we all be able to profit economically from the passing of our loved ones? Because thats the best way to honor their memory: cold, hard cash.
I am serious, though. Doctors give half their money to Uncle Sam and the other half to malpractice insurance. If we start significantly cutting their salaries then everyone's healthcare is going to suffer.

[TheGrandMom]

Caspian is right. Whatever is done to the healthcare system is going to have to be done slowly and very carefully. So people that think one president is going to be able to come in and change it all is asking for trouble. You start pulling out the rug from under it and there will be people that will die. He can start the change rolling and hope that it gains enough steam so that no one can stop it. But to jump in and stop it cold is only going to cause a pile up of epic proportions that will lead to the big businesses saying "See I told ya so!" and then it going back to the way it was. Then politicians can throw their hands up in the air and say "Well we tried!" and look good.

I also have many friends and family that are doctors and they aren't rich. Some even live hand to mouth just like the rest of us do. The doctors that pull in the big bucks work for the pharmaceutical companies and research firms. (I have a neice who works for Pfizer. She went there against her family's wishes and only for the money.)

Healthcare is something near and dear to me. Everyone wants change and they'd like to see it happen NOW but we have to be patient. We didn't get into this mess overnight and it isn't going to be solved overnight either.

[Raydeus]

There's a big difference between well paid doctors and insanely profitable meds that are pushed onto patients as much as they can so they can get their comission or whatever it is doctors and the health system in general get for pushing unnecessary meds on people.

That's the profit that needs to be removed from the system, not doctor's incentives to practice.

If the state has to take all med research on their own then so be it.

[Caspian]

Originally Posted by Raydeus

There's a big difference between well paid doctors and insanely profitable meds that are pushed onto patients as much as they can so they can get their comission or whatever it is doctors and the health system in general get for pushing unnessesary meds on people.

That's the profit that needs to be removed from the system, not doctor's incentives to practice.

If the state has to take all med research on their own then so be it.

They've actually gotten much more stict on inducements in the last few years and its looking like its gonna keep going that way.

I'd recommend against the state taking all the research development on itself. Competition between companies gets us far, its not perfect, but neither is an underpayed PhD working for the government who has no incentive to work harder. (I know a huge discovery should be enough, but unfortunately for most doctors it isnt)

[Malacite]

Obviously Obama isn't some magic Mr. Fix-it, but at least he's taking steps.


The Justice system is another thing that needs a serious over haul. The US is the only country that takes cases of punitive damages. The frivolous litigation has got to stop.


Also, there's no reason that you can't have social and quality healthcare. I will give props to Obama's plan as while it's not quite what we have, it is a nice step above your current system. One of the things he adds is that once you have your health insurance, you will not lose it if you change jobs or move to another state.

Thank god the man wants to raise the wages for Teachers too. Education has taken such a beating in recent years and it's shameful (here too; teachers put up with a LOT of BS and don't get paid enough for it.)

[Kitalrez]

Meh, biggest challenge of the next president is simply: convince people that "America" still exists somewhere. The "American Dream" is/was a myth, as was "chicken in every pot" and the like. No one has worked their way up to CEO from the mail room in recent memory. Starting at 0 tends to end not too far from 0, even today. And that's your problem, racism probably exists in some form here still, but classism is a bigger problem now. Do people have something against mexicans or blacks still or is it more because they tend to live in ghettos? What about the white guy who lives in a trailer park? Is he more "employable" just for being white? What George W. Bush did better than Gore or Kerry in the last two elections was appeal to the lower classes. He made himself look like one of them, which John Kerry couldn't do. Class has become important now, moreso than race or politics.

Originally Posted by Feba

The 80s disagree

No, not really. I grew up in the 80s, having the threat of being blown up over your head allowed us to think of ourselves as one nation. How do we think of ourselves now? Where is this "America" we used to live in? What happened to all these ideals we were supposed to be the champions of? We weren't doing any of that even then, but at least we grew up believing we were. When you have one of these problems that's way bigger than you can possibly fathom or deal with on your own, it's easier to ignore the sorts of problems you do face. Like class, or politics... which I'm not convinced aren't becoming one in the same. When someone with a weird accent asked me where I was from in the 80s, I answered that I was an American without even thinking about it. Considering I never left the country back then, that probably should've been an obvious point. Ask kids that today. If they're from someplace smaller, like Rhode Island or New Hampshire, they might give you their state. Larger like California, or even Colorado or Utah, and they'll start rattling off cities. Hell, ask a kid in DC where he's from and he'll give you the neighborhood. We no longer conceive of ourselves as Americans first any longer.

When you have a common cause people are able to look beyond their own situations and become part of a group. We don't really have a common cause, so we're fracturing along class lines into a common mess. Like the gas crisis, some of you on the east coast were suggesting raising the gas tax across the nation to fund mass transit systems and the like. The problem with that idea is that while it works in areas you can afford it, basically you'll bankrupt everything from the Mississippi to Las Vegas or LA. That solution does the same thing the dustbowl in Oklahoma did in the 30s, it creates a huge underclass of refugees from one part of the country and sends them everywhere else. When Walmart is down the street and you're out of milk, it's one thing, in small towns here, its a 30 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. The hardware store might be an hour away. Gas hits harder here and right now we're living a lot closer to the bone. Mentally, a lot of us over here stopped being Americans and started being Utahns or Coloradoans, etc. We're not so concerned with the middle east or the like, we'd like to know how we'll pay for the basics of life tomorrow.

The challenge of the next president, IMO, starts with saving us, (if that's even possible now), and convincing us that we have something in common with the rest of the country again. Solving that problem starts with addressing class barriers, addressing cultural differences in the nation, etc. I haven't heard either candidate come up with a plan for doing that.

[Cometgreen]

Originally Posted by Feba

Fixed.

There's too much else to discuss my view on global warming, but I'll concede that it's too much to ask for a network program to be skeptical of mankind's role in the climate's ups and downs. But my main complaint still stands: their only proposals were massive government programs.

Originally Posted by Susurrus

Obama is anti-military and I am pro military. I can't vote anti-military, sorry

That's pretty ridiculous. I could understand throwing that label at someone that is against standing armies or actually wants to cut servicemen's benefits, but not because he disagrees with current military actions. Unless of course you mean it's anti-military to send troops overseas without justification, in which case I agree with you.

---

Originally Posted by Malacite

As long as there's a profit to be made it will be flawed.

Yeah, profit has messed up everything else. The only reason these computers we're using have gotten better and dropped dramatically in price over the years is because of non-profit companies.

Not that the profits made by HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are at all natural, but such a claim is still pretty silly.

Originally Posted by Malacite

Healthcare should be a basic right for people in North America, not a business.

Why a right, and why only in North America? And does this mean we have to worry about Mexico too? (not that a lot of Mexicans aren't already getting free health care)

Originally Posted by Malacite

Also, score another point for Obama on this 'cause he wants to reduce costs by 76 billion dollars by upgrading hospitals to keep records digitally

Kinda odd to say he's reducing costs, considering that 76 billion has to come from somewhere. Under a normal profit system, hospitals would make those upgrades when it makes sense for them to do so, reducing costs without taking the money from those who may never benefit from it.

Originally Posted by Malacite

and also invest in preventative care

I think it's important for people to actually be healthy, but it's still a personal choice and a personal responsibility. I do find the term "preventative care" a little scary when used by the government, as it could only lead to further unwarranted meddling. If it becomes a mainstay of the government, you will see children being removed from their parents for providing what the state deems a bad diet. And if even professionals can't decide what is healthy for you and what isn't, I wouldn't trust a bureaucrat or a judge to know.

---

Originally Posted by TMS

I'm sorry but [McCain] just remnds me of far too many ancient gung-ho moron 4 stars, so totally out of touch with reality that it defies description.

My thoughts as well. I don't mean to demean the man, but I think he is unstable. Everyone has a temper and is aggressive to a degree, but with the power Congress has ceded to the president because he's THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF!!, I'd be afraid of the US armed forces under the control of McCain.

Originally Posted by TMS

FREE MARKETS DONT WORK.

It's kind of odd that you say this, when a few sentences later you give an example of why we do not have a free market:

Originally Posted by TMS

All the blather about Iraq and this and that and the "Global war on terror" bullshit is just a smoke screen for the prfits of the oil companies.

Though there are many other examples, a system in which money is taken from the cash register of a mom & pop store to support the interests of an oil company is not free. Similarly, an economy based on inflation, in which Wall Street and banks get new money before prices rise, is not free.

Originally Posted by TMS

(Of course we still pay a tiny fraction of what it costs in a civilised society)

LOL, what? The only reason the price would be higher is if companies were artificially raising the prices (which would require a cartel to maintain) or taxes. I assume you would abhor the former, and I don't know why the latter is civilized.

Originally Posted by TMS

never mind the McCain LIE that it will help assuage the high price of fuel - IT WONT for 7-10 YEARS

It will lower prices today. Since there will be more oil in the future, people will sell their oil futures now, lowering the price of oil. The idea behind futures is that it's cheaper to buy oil at the current price, to be used in, say 2015, when the price is speculated to be higher. If there's promise for more oil in the future, the price is not likely to be as high in 2015 as speculated, so people will sell off their oil futures, releasing the oil that was to be held for future use. Prices are always trying to reach equilibrium: the marriage between the ultimate supply and the ultimate demand. Thus, producers do not set prices in a vacuum; they have to think about supply and demand today and in the future. Knowing there will be more oil someday drives down the price today.

Of course, offshore drilling alone is certainly not the answer, as the recent rises in oil price are not simply due to supply and demand.

Originally Posted by TMS

NOTHING John McCain can do or say will in any way change it - in fact most of his ideas will merely hasten the decline of America.

Though I don't think there'd be much difference between a McCain and Obama presidency, I would say Obama, with a Dem Congress, would be the one to hasten it. Or hasten it more, at least.

Originally Posted by TMS

the SS Trust fund, but we've been raiding that for years (BTW only Clinton didn't raid it, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II all wiped it out, utterly)

I don't know about the accuracy of Clinton's involvement, as I know the only reason the budget was "balanced" is because of Social Security funds, but the President doesn't go into the SS money; the Congress does. And the two parties have pretty much controlled the Congress for equal time since Reagan.

Today was very boring at work.

[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Cometgreen

Kinda odd to say he's reducing costs, considering that 76 billion has to come from somewhere. Under a normal profit system, hospitals would make those upgrades when it makes sense for them to do so, reducing costs without taking the money from those who may never benefit from it.

Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Health Care

Okay they've edited it out of the site, because I could have sworn they wrote that exact figure there before. Basically those savings come from upgrading hospitals so that records are kept electronically, which would make things much simpler, faster, and cheaper.

I saw a news cast on the BBC the other day showcasing WiMax, the next step above 3G. Unlike WiFi, this can cover an entire city. The reason I bring it up is because Obama is pushing for more advanced technology like this (laying down real broadband lines and making the internet accessible to all Americans) and they were riding in the back of an Ambulance where they were using WiMax to transmit data on the patient to the hosptial.

Before this you'd have data recorded on the way there and handed to the medical staff when they arrive; now it can be sent over instantly (and it's two-way of course so info can be sent back to the Ambulance)


Cool stuff! And healthcare should be a right for us (start at home then work abroad >_> let's be realistic here) and not something you have to pay for. It shouldn't cost you $50 just to get a damned check up, or put you into bankruptcy due to a serious illness or injury.

It's not about the government dictating our lives, it's about having access to what's quickly becoming a greater and greater necessity. Of course, if costs can be lowered and healthcare made easily affordable by everyone, then that's good too; just so long as people aren't getting screwed over for something they really need.

Though I don't think there'd be much difference between a McCain and Obama presidency, I would say Obama, with a Dem Congress, would be the one to hasten it. Or hasten it more, at least.

There is a world of difference and anyone who thinks this and plans on voting needs to inform themselves pronto, regardless of who you vote for.

EDIT: For that matter, those 9% who are still undecided shouldn't be allowed to vote. The election is in less than 90 days and you people STILL haven't clued in!?