The Alternative To Obamacare

ajoknoblauch said:
I regret to have to say, as I indicated above, that steveninbsas is the one who is factually challenged.
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In some ways, I agree. So point it out to him calmly. Be the one who's factual and rational in the face of Libertarian pipe dreams and nonsense. Steve is obviously a very good-hearted person, look how hard he tries to help people with practical issues, he is always there to answer questions and give good tips. If he's a bit of a dreamer, well, that's no mortal sin, is it? Look to his undeniably good intentions and not at his socio-economic delusions.
 
Redpossum said:
In some ways, I agree. So point it out to him calmly. Be the one who's factual and rational in the face of Libertarian pipe dreams and nonsense. Steve is obviously a very good-hearted person, look how hard he tries to help people with practical issues, he is always there to answer questions and give good tips. If he's a bit of a dreamer, well, that's no mortal sin, is it? Look to his undeniably good intentions and not at his socio-economic delusions.
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I'm not his shrink, but he's obviously not a stupid person and often provides helpful info. Still, that Randian resentment flares frequently.
 
Redpossum said:
Now comes the part I'm going to dispute. Obama is not a collectivist, by any stretch of the imagination. He is purely a tool of the corporations, a groveling minion of the ultra-rich magnates. A puppet, una muñequita. If he was a Socialist, we would at least have had a public option, or better yet true universal healthcare. But he didn't even try to negotiate, instead he sold us down the river to the HMO's, and took his thirty pieces of silver.
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I don't believe that Obama is a "tool of the corporations" or a "puppet of the ultra-ich magnates" aka: crony capitalists. I think he is using them very cleverly to advance his collectivist cause and has been able to disguise it in "capitalist and freedom-friendly" rhetoric.

From Obama's second inaugural speech:

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

"But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people."

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it, but how can individual freedoms be preserved by "collective" acts of government which actually deny individuals the freedom to chose to act on their own judgement, including what kind of health care coverage, if any, they choose to purchase?

This editorial presents the best case to call Obama a collectivist that I've read:

The title is Obama Inaugural Disguises Collectivism As Liberty and includes the following:

It begins with this:

Socialism: Tuesday's inaugural address included a big dollop of "give capitalism its due." But it was just a spoonful of sugar to help Americans swallow their collectivist medicine.

And includes the following observation in response to the line of Obama's address: "preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action."

"In other words, there is no real liberty without big government. Or perhaps we should turn to Orwell's 1984 to break the code: "Freedom Is Slavery."

Obama says he's all for entrepreneurs, Grandma and her apple pie, but "a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play."

Talk to the millions of victims of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Mr. President, the monstrous public-private hybrids designed by government with rules to suffocate competition and fair play among banks in the name of redistributing income via residential real estate.

Economic illiteracy is so rampant today that the Mitt Romneys of the country, not the anti-market rulemakers in government, get blamed for the Fannie/Freddie-driven financial crisis of 2008." :
The full editorial can be read here:

http://news.investor...m-inaugural.htm

PS: Obama has always wanted "universal health care, aka a "single payer" system. He made this clear in 2008, if not earlier, but he also told his followers that it would take time to get there.

Perhaps this is was ajoknoblauch was referring to when he wrote that the Democrats advance their cause tentatively and timidly.

They did not go for universal health care in one fell swoop, but I invite anyone to make the case that ACA was passed into law in a timid or tentative manner.

And Obama's collectivst philosophy goes as far as actually linking salvation (yes, life after death) to collective action on Earth which leads to Collective Salvation in the afterlife:

Consider this: President Obama Living and Governing by His “Religious Faith”--- Collective Salvation

Definition: Collective salvation is the religious belief that members of a group collectively influence the salvation of the group to which they belong. Collective salvation can teach that the group is collectively one person by its nature. The concept of collective salvation is sometimes taught in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Wikipedia

One of the pillars of Obama’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is “economic parity.” On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with “America’s economic mal-distribution.” Among all of controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright, the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language “economic parity” and references to “mal-distribution” is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black Liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim class (blacks). (Action Institute )

http://blackquilland..../?page_id=12736


“One of their beliefs which is antithetical to traditional Christianity is collective salvation. Sin is not individual, but collective and it cannot be overcome by religious conversion. According to liberation theologies, God does not save men. Man saves himself through a political process of absolute social justice. This is not in Christian doctrine, but it is Marxist.”

http://www.180people...ism-Fascism.htm

And here are Obama's exact words regarding Collective Salvation and the need for collective (and involuntary) action:

"My individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country."

The video of him saying this is included here: http://blackquilland.../?page_id=12736

It's pretty darn hard to get more collectivist than saying the pearly gates will only open for collectivists.
 
What really cracks me up about this is that people think if you disagree with Obama's approach, you hate him. If you think his health care plan, which was forced through Congress in a way completely opposite to how Obama ran his first election campaign (remember Pelosi's statement about digging under or jumping over the fence or parachuting in WHATEVER it takes to get the bill passed and compare that with Obama's "I'm going to be completely open and above-board during my tenure" [paraphrased]) is a bad thing, regardless of whether you think universal health care is good or bad, you hate Obama. You're a racist and an obstructionist. And some of the people I see who take that stance here, in this forum, are supposedly so open-minded and tolerant. Heh. Saying one thing and doing another doesn't give anyone moral superiority.

Putting a bunch of crap on top of an existing crappy system isn't going to get ANYONE what they want. Not even Obama, who is going to go down as one of the worst presidents in American history. Except to those blind followers who can't see that they made a big mistake and can't (or won't) admit it because they feel that electing a black man to the post of POTUS was more important than electing someone who was qualified and could get the job done. And BTW - I admit the first time there wasn't much choice - in a two-party system you had a choice between a political organizer who didn't even finish his first term in Congress and an old, worn out too-conservative "war hero" and his idiot running mate - a woman thrown in obviously to just offset the black and female candidates on the "other side". the second time - well, I didn't like Romney either, but he was better than Obama if only because he would more likely have been more moderate. But how many people couldn't get past the fact that he was a Mormon??? Welcome to the US' dysfunctional two-party system and a complete lack of choice for leaders...

If you truly want universal health care, look at real reform, not a block of laws sitting on top of a bunch of cronyist policies supported by special interest groups and lobbies (our pre-Obama Care health system). Try thinking critically instead of automatically taking the position that anything is better than what we had before. Real reform is NOT EASY and it is NOT QUICK. No one person has the answers, it should be a consensus Real reform doesn't come from just one party, but is something that comes out of a struggle to find common ground and it shouldn't be rushed so that one man and his supporters can claim that the black man they elected is a super-genius and fixed everything (I'm not being racist, it seems to me that the people who continue to elect and support Obama are being reverse-racist and are trying to prove something or are afraid that they were just simply wrong in supporting the man to begin with). I can think of many more black people who are more qualified to be president than Obama, and would have been happy with any of them. I think it's great that the US can elect a black person to the highest office in the land, and I welcome the day when we elected a QUALIFIED woman, as well.

I fully support the Republicans' every effort to try to have kept Obama Care from passing, and for trying to repeal it now. I fully support any party who would take the issue forward with openness and true dialog to find a common solution, and get away from rhetoric that means nothing. NOT something that was thrown together in the first 6 months of a new president's term and pushed through in a hurry before the first mid-term elections because he knew he'd lose his super majority.

But what the hell - I'm a marginalized Libertarian who doesn't agree with what either party is doing and am put down as "Ayn's man" or a Tea Bagger. What a country. What a populace. See any similarities to Argentina and Peronism maybe?

Something that would be universal, affordable, and fair, would actually require a constitutional amendment, not a bunch of Democrats (only) pushing to put a bunch of crap on top of a currently failing system. And not a bunch of Republicans sitting on their supposedly conservative hands and trying to keep things the way they are at whatever cost. The US passed the 16th Amendment to take money from the workers of the nation - was universal, affordable health care not important enough to be done correctly? Or has everyone just gotten tired of the struggle and welcome short-cuts?

What REALLY chaps my ass are the people who bitched about Bush and his way of forcing things through (including the PATRIOT act, which I think is absolutely abhorrent) and support what Obama is doing, in the wake of a large majority of US citizens who DON'T WANT IT.

Shame on you all. Both sides.
 
Well the dude is pretty good. Remember watching the Putin phoned Obama on the Crimea, when allegedly
Putin called Obama to discuss how to settle the dispute, Obama told Putin, whatever you say but I wanting
your phrases in writing.!
 
ElQueso said:
What really cracks me up about this is that people think if you disagree with Obama's approach, you hate him. If you think his health care plan, which was forced through Congress in a way completely opposite to how Obama ran his first election campaign (remember Pelosi's statement about digging under or jumping over the fence or parachuting in WHATEVER it takes to get the bill passed and compare that with Obama's "I'm going to be completely open and above-board during my tenure" [paraphrased]) is a bad thing, regardless of whether you think universal health care is good or bad, you hate Obama. You're a racist and an obstructionist. And some of the people I see who take that stance here, in this forum, are supposedly so open-minded and tolerant. Heh. Saying one thing and doing another doesn't give anyone moral superiority...

...I fully support the Republicans' every effort to try to have kept Obama Care from passing, and for trying to repeal it now. I fully support any party who would take the issue forward with openness and true dialog to find a common solution, and get away from rhetoric that means nothing. NOT something that was thrown together in the first 6 months of a new president's term and pushed through in a hurry before the first mid-term elections because he knew he'd lose his super majority.

...But what the hell - I'm a marginalized Libertarian who doesn't agree with what either party is doing and am put down as "Ayn's man" or a Tea Bagger. What a country. What a populace. See any similarities to Argentina and Peronism maybe?

Shame on you all. Both sides.
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Thanks, elqueso. That was eloquent and written without personally insulting those who disagree with you (something many of them are not capable of doing).

If by shaming "both sides" you are referring to the Democrats who passed the ACA without a single Republican vote, I heartily agree, but I am not ashamed of the Republicans who opposed it any more than I am willing to be shamed by those who misrepresent the truth and continue to insult and mock me here instead of trying to refute what I've posted with facts, while I make no personal comments about them...whatsoever.
 
ElQueso said:
What REALLY chaps my ass are the people who bitched about Bush and his way of forcing things through (including the PATRIOT act, which I think is absolutely abhorrent) and support what Obama is doing, in the wake of a large majority of US citizens who DON'T WANT IT.
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I tend to stay out of these discussions because people only hear what they want to hear. However I wanted to point out the statement above is actually not correct. There is really no majority, much less a large one. The ACA has a 49% approval rating. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/03/at-49-percent-support-obamacare-hits-a-high/

As for the rest, carry on.
 
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