The Best Reason Now To Be An Expat In Argentina...

[steveinbsas]

I decided to look up who Mark Levin is....



ahh... a crazy right wing nutcase who's friends with Sean "waterboarding is not torture" Hannity and Rush Limbaugh who is just a terrible terrible person.

More name calling.

How refreshing!

There's nothing like conservative principles to reduce those who oppose them to hurling insults as opposed to making intelligible arguments.

 

[internationalguy]

More name calling.

How refreshing!

There's nothing like conservative principles to reduce those who oppose them to hurling insults as opposed to making intelligible arguments.

That's exactly why I left this debate. I suggest you do the same. You can't have a mature and constructive conversation with someone who doesn't want it.

 

[scotttswan]

More name calling.

How refreshing!

There's nothing like conservative principles to reduce those who oppose them to hurling insults as opposed to making intelligible arguments.

He's not a crazy right wing nutcase? he should keep better company then.

Obama's such a liar! Changing his position on things all the time.

 

[steveinbsas]

That's exactly why I left this debate. I suggest you do the same. You can't have a mature and constructive conversation with someone who doesn't want it.

You are welcome back anytime.

The entire earth will have to freeze over (aka snowball earth which has happened in earth history) before I'm finished here.

 

[ElQueso]

Thee are actually two ways to amend the Constitution.

Please read Mark Levin's book, "The Liberty Amendments."

Before it's too late.

You can lean more about it here:

http://www.marklevin...=4183&is_corp=0

His radio program is the only one I listen to on a daily basis...

I went and found a synopsis of the book so I could get a gander at how else one can make amendments. Basically, all he is saying is the other method (quite legitimately) is instead of requiring the US Congress to initiate an amendment, the state legislatures may do so as well, but at the end, 75% of the states have to ratify the amendment.

I think it's as impossible for many of the things listed as it would be if ACA was presented as an amendment.

However, another possible tool that I rarely see mentioned is Nullification, and there is a reason for that not being used much. According to many, the States have a right to declare a federal law unconstitutional due to the theory that because the states formed the union to begin with, they have the right to nullify federal laws. It's never been upheld when a State has tried it and it has bad connotations for federal constitutionality as well when thinking about the three branches of government (the States not being considered a branch under the Constitution) and any laws a State may pass in contra to the Constitution.

I think that it is too late for the US as a beacon of liberty. The US is now a follower who has plenty of muscle and can still intimidate those who lead, although the power of intimidation is quickly lessening. Particularly when its citizens use the "they're doing it, why shouldn't we" reasoning. Globalization is here and everyone must act the same or be considered insane.

I just recently had a discussion with a young man (early 30s) acquaintance of mine who is the owner of a two very successful bars here (he's an expat, both bars have the same name, but for some reason when they're mentioned by name here the post gets cut...) who said the exact same thing to me when related to the ACA: The US is the only first world country in the world that doesn't have universal healthcare for all of its citizens.

So?

So now, anyone who believes that the Constitution of the US is for no one but fetishists, and that we should follow the example of other countries, shows how people have been raised in the US to think of their country - like the other countries in Europe whom we broke away from (the 13 colonies aren't the only ones that escaped from Europe and are now States. Spain and France were big in the northern hemisphere of the New World as well and more than a couple of wars were fought against both, rightly or wrongly).

I don't think the States themselves could get enough power together to propose a lot of the amendments mentioned in the book you linked to, much less ratify them.

I don't know, I'm getting depressed again about all of this. It gets really hard to argue a case when you have things like "right wing-nut" thrown in your face all of the time. I know Ejcot was not talking to me when he said that, but I've been dismissed too many times by other people with that same comment. I'm about as far from a right wing-nut as can be but my voice gets swallowed up in the noise from both "sides" in the States and pretty much from everyone else in the world that thinks socialized medicine is the way to go and ignoring the laws and the compact between States in the US is the way to get it done.

Labels, labels, labels.

 

[steveinbsas]

He's not a crazy right wing nutcase? he should keep better company then.

Obama's such a liar! Changing his position on things all the time.

Did he said the same thing in all 57 states?

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."

"If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor."

(Among many other lies..)

 

[camino no tomado]

Two things here.

First, being labeled a "Constitutional fetishist", to me, is like being labeled "non-believer in the laws that our Congress hands down" to others. Considering the fact that the Constitution is the single most important document in the US as related to constraint on government, creation of laws, and how the Republic runs, that's a bit of a problem for anyone who believes in that document and its uses. And notice, BTW, that most of my arguments against Obama and ACA and other things Obama has done are related to that very point.

I'm not a "Constitutional fetishist" any more than I am a scofflaw. I think a lot of people who look to the Constitution to defend individual rights are in the same boat.

I knew I was going to regret using the phrase "Constitutional fetishist" .

As a lawyer I'm somewhat familiar with the source of law and the role of a constitution. But I do make a distinction between respecting the US Constitution in the legal sense and venerating it as something more than merely the product of (admittedly brilliant) men of its time.That's what fetishists do, and I'm sad to say that your country is chock full of them. The inescapable fact is that the world today is more different from the world the framers lived in than their world was from Plato's. No matter how prescient they were, there's no way they could have ever foreseen a diverse nation of 300+ million people (or a world of 7+ billion people) and its attendant political, technological and social complexities.

The existing US Constitution contains some inexcusable omissions (example: equality for women); terms that have been rendered anti-democratic by the course of development (example: two Senators for Wyoming's 575,000 people and two for California's 38 million); and poetic, but imprecise language that gives far too much interpretive power to the Supreme Court (examples too numerous to mention). Perhaps it's time the US considered a new Constitution, or at least a significant update. *

Second, I don't believe that what the overwhelming majority of nations do in the world should necessarily drive what the US does. Last I checked, we are an independent nation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot ... the US is special. Exceptional even.

I never said that the US should have a single-payer healthcare system because that's what other countries do. I think I used the term "evidence-based" instead. Examining the evidence would (unfortunately) involve looking at what other countries do, disregarding what doesn't work and emulating best practices. Certain features do jump out when evaluating the couple of dozen countries that have been achieving better results than the US. All have universal coverage and most have reduced costs by eliminating the layer of bureaucracy and profit represented by private insurers (i.e. they are single-payer). The Canadian system may not be the best fit for the US, but there is absolutely no arguing about the fact that it's working better. For about 60% of the cost per capita, everyone is covered, the level of general health is higher and citizens are living nearly three years longer on average.

Once again, why would anyone prefer to pay more for less? Just because of not-invented-here syndrome?

AND BTW - I'm the last person in the US who thinks there should be no reform of the medical industry in the US. But we should work it out together, not one group forcing the others to do what they want. That causes a lot of problems and divisions, as we're seeing.

The answer to this is simple. Given the political realities of the two-party system, if you wait to "work it out together" you will never achieve anything. Attempts were made for over fifty years to effect change (including during times of far less partisanship than today) and nothing came of them. Nothing. Advocating for a bi-partisan solution in today's climate is EXACTLY the same as advocating for no change /status quo.

The ACA is far from perfect. The only group not griping about it is the insurance industry, because essentially it's a sellout to their interests. But it's a start and even according to a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, it passes constitutional muster. At this point, those who opposed it would better serve their constituents by cooperating to make it work better, instead of beating a dead horse (note how much better it's going in the states that did not refuse to set up exchanges or expand Medicare). That--not continued pointless obstructionism--would be the American way.

*Thirty-one years ago, my country gave up on a Constitution that was no longer working for us and wrote a new one. It was the single best thing we ever did as a nation. It may shock you to hear this, but according to the New York Times it has actually overtaken the US Constitution as the one most copied by new nations or others who are replacing an outmoded founding document. But just like single-payer, I wasn't suggesting that the US consider constitutional change because we did it ... do it for yourselves.

 

[jp]

(post deleted)
Should have known better...

 

[ElQueso]

As a lawyer I'm somewhat familiar with the source of law and the role of a constitution. But I do make a distinction between respecting the US Constitution in the legal sense and venerating it as something more than merely the product of (admittedly brilliant) men of its time.That's what fetishists do, and I'm sad to say that your country is chock full of them. The inescapable fact is that the world today is more different from the world the framers lived in than their world was from Plato's. No matter how prescient they were, there's no way they could have ever foreseen a diverse nation of 300+ million people (or a world of 7+ billion people) and its attendant political, technological and social complexities.

I don't believe in adhering strictly word-for-word to the Constitution, and I understand that it must be interpreted, somewhat and within limits. If an entire constitution has outlived its usefulness, I like the idea of rewriting another. A constitution in this sense should be a contract between people stating the basic ground rules around which the game is played. Specific laws that follow these guidelines are good, ones that stretch it too much are bad and should be discarded. If too many bad laws are written, something has to give, either the repeated violation of the terms of agreement, or a rewrite of the terms of the agreement. If most everyone agrees that the terms of the agreement suck, that's easy to fix. If not enough think that, something else has to give. But you can't expect the people who don't agree the terms suck, when it's a large percentage of the population, to just sit there and take it because another large percentage of the people think it's good for everyone.

That's where I and many others find ourselves. People who argue against us say we are evil, we're fascists, we're greedy, we don't care about anyone or anything else other than stuffing our pockets with gold and silver and green things (bills, not weed!) and certainly, above all, we're not enlightened!

I could go on and on for what I really believe in, but I have, in many posts over a lot of time, and not just on this forum. I'm not a selfish person, I'm none of the things mentioned above, and I resent very much those who paint me in that light. i don't accuse you of this, this is in general.

To me, things like the Constitution protect guys like me, who is not a nut and shares similar feelings related to small government and fiscal responsibility and the sovereignty and responsibility of every individual. It doesn't mean I'm inflexible, but I'm only willing to go so far with compromise until enough people can show me that I am truly in the minority, all over the country. That would come with a rewritten constitution either in the form of something new or amendments to the existing one.

Either way, it takes a 75% approval of all of the States to do that, in my country, according to the terms of agreement under which all of us must live until those change. In that, I am protected from a tyranny of those who would change it because the mass they represent is not enough to be an agreement.

The existing US Constitution contains some inexcusable omissions (example: equality for women); terms that have been rendered anti-democratic by the course of development (example: two Senators for Wyoming's 575,000 people and two for California's 38 million); and poetic, but imprecise language that gives far too much interpretive power to the Supreme Court (examples too numerous to mention). Perhaps it's time the US considered a new Constitution, or at least a significant update. *

Depending on how you look at the Constitution and which exact subject, I agree with you.

Ideally, our Constitution was meant to be something that limited the government and anything not specifically granted in the Constitution in relation to governmental powers was not granted to the government. Equally related to the people, anything not prohibited by the Constitution and not outlawed later by Congress (as long as it followed the Constitution in what Congress was outlawing, or regulating, etc) was not prohibited. The tenth amendment, BTW, ensures that government is limited by the Constitution as was originally intended but apparently not made clear enough.

Realistically, humans are humans and they specifically did not mention certain things, I think through shame (in some cases) and through sheer morés of the time, as to who valued what (i.e., women and slaves). Slavery was in existence at the time and it was an accepted (though in many cases abhorred) practice and the only mention of slaves had to do with counting their population for voting purposes and treating escaped slaves. Similarly with women, it had been accepted for a long, long time that women simply did not own property and/or vote and/or really have a voice. Unless you were royalty...

Those things were fixed in the first ten and thirteenth and nineteenth amendments .

There have been a number of other amendments. The Constitution was meant from the start to be a living, breathing document. Everything dies, and if it's time for it to die, then let's put it to rest and create a new one, but we shouldn't hack it up, we should respect it until it's retired.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot ... the US is special. Exceptional even.

No more special than any other country, and you are twisting my words. I don't believe in American Exceptionalism, and in fact, I abhor much of what my country does in the name of "Freedom".

But there are things I like about what the US used to be (and still has within it). I think you are probably proud of your country and like it the way it is and if it changed radically on your against the laws of your country, you might have some feelings about that. It doesn't take exceptionalism to feel that way.

I never said that the US should have a single-payer healthcare system because that's what other countries do. I think I used the term "evidence-based" instead. Examining the evidence would (unfortunately) involve looking at what other countries do, disregarding what doesn't work and emulating best practices. Certain features do jump out when evaluating the couple of dozen countries that have been achieving better results than the US. All have universal coverage and most have reduced costs by eliminating the layer of bureaucracy and profit represented by private insurers (i.e. they are single-payer). The Canadian system may not be the best fit for the US, but there is absolutely no arguing about the fact that it's working better. For about 60% of the cost per capita, everyone is covered, the level of general health is higher and citizens are living nearly three years longer on average.

Once again, why would anyone prefer to pay more for less? Just because of not-invented-here syndrome?

You are assuming that a single taxpayer system is the only way to approach this, based on the evidence of what is currently being done or has been done, conclude that is obviously the way it should be done. My friend did use those words, and maybe I insinuated something from yours, but the fact is, the US health care system is not free enterprise. It has many, many problems with it, brought on by years of lobbyists yammering for what their employers, who have lots of money, want. A single taxpayer system could indeed take care of a lot of these problems. But I think there are other ways to do it, to bring down costs and bring the country under control. In that, I fight for what i believe in (which again I can't enumerate but it isn't selfishness and greed).

So when people are saying "look how well it works in other countries" I don't deny that truth. I feel that the kind of country I want has low, affordable health care for those who work and want to buy it, and who will be able to pay their bills if they don't have insurance without breaking them if something happens, and for those who truly can't pay and try their best, I can then talk about good coverage paid into by ALL of us, to help them out. Welfare is not something I believe in because it absolutely does tend to create a dependent class of people. I don't have a better suggestion other than those I have made already in many places, but welfare in my opinion is not the answer and when used should be used very sparingly. Too many politicians promise people money to get votes, not because it's best for their constituency.

I believe that true free enterprise is best, when regulated properly by laws and enforced for EVERYONE, politicians included. Again, this isn't an argument for this particular item because I'm running out of strength and space.

If we created a single taxpayer system, I believe it would be much better than the amalgamated result of what we have with ACA thrown on top. I would still rather have something else.

The answer to this is simple. Given the political realities of the two-party system, if you wait to "work it out together" you will never achieve anything. Attempts were made for over fifty years to effect change (including during times of far less partisanship than today) and nothing came of them. Nothing. Advocating for a bi-partisan solution in today's climate is EXACTLY the same as advocating for no change /status quo.

It depends on what you want to work out. Our current system is not meant for the government to "get things done quickly". Go back and read a lot of the writings that the US founders wrote. It's clearly obvious what they wanted.

If things have changed, it is indeed time to change. I'm all for it. But do it legally, within the framework we've all agreed to, or dissolve the framework and get started from scratch.

Personally, I favor the latter, I really do. I've written about one form this could take on this forum a few times.

The US should break up. Some have estimated that it could reasonably form on the order of 15 new countries. I actually think this would be a good thing for the citizens of the US and for the world in general. Will this ever happen? I could see it happening under certain circumstances. Probably never internally, but with all the stupidity that goes on internally, our position has serious weakened in the world financially and we've got a lot of debt floated out there. If the US suffers a collapse, I can certainly see it breaking up. I don't think Texas (who currently has something like 20% of the population openly favoring secession) would stick around.

The ACA is far from perfect. The only group not griping about it is the insurance industry, because essentially it's a sellout to their interests. But it's a start and even according to a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, it passes constitutional muster. At this point, those who opposed it would better serve their constituents by cooperating to make it work better, instead of beating a dead horse (note how much better it's going in the states that did not refuse to set up exchanges or expand Medicare). That--not continued pointless obstructionism--would be the American way.

The ACA is horrible. And I don't agree with the Court on its decision. It stretches the definition of too many things too far in my opinion. But, I'm not a lawyer just a poor citizen who gets beat around by legalese in one form or another all the time in the form of an obstructive government "for the good of all."

I believe at this point it would be a good idea for the US to pull its head out of its ass, realize that it now has two problems to fix instead of one (now both getting rid of ACA and reforming the entire health care system, legislation, tort reform, etc - facing tough decision used to be the American way) and get busy figuring out how to compromise to come up with something that pleases a good majority of Americans.

Probably never happen, and I'm counseled to just sit back and let happen something I and many, many others don't believe in.

*Thirty-one years ago, my country gave up on a Constitution that was no longer working for us and wrote a new one. It was the single best thing we ever did as a nation. It may shock you to hear this, but according to the New York Times it has actually overtaken the US Constitution as the one most copied by new nations or others who are replacing an outmoded founding document. But just like single-payer, I wasn't suggesting that the US consider constitutional change because we did it ... do it for yourselves.

See my above comments on changing. I'm all for it - legally, probably pretty much as your country did yours.

BTW - I like the way you argue, reasonably civil

 

[EricLovesBA]

BTW - I like the way you argue, reasonably civil

Reading this comment it struck me that a debate group could be fun. I never took debate in school, but every once in a while you'll run across a vlogger or interviewer or someone on a forum who obviously has at least independently studied such things as sophism, the logical fallacies and such, if not formally. It is readily apparent that these disciplines sharpen the mind considerably. The more important product of such study is not in convincing others, but in clarifying and strengthening your own framework of ideas.

For those who think and debate rationally, is more than a bit disconcerting when we look around us in our dysfunctional society and realize that the majority of decisions and opinion swaying are not accomplished at the rational level at all. Politics, lawmaking, policy, commerce, etc etc all move by other forces in a populace ill-equipped to discern, discriminate, defend or understand the manipulation. Too many people just parrot ideas and use the same old tired methods to propagate them.