"The first yields no benefit to the American people. "

I'll respectfully disagree, as the yield to this American is quite astounding.

"the billions sent overseas for other countries' people is a major sticking point for me."

You make a good point there. All I can say to that is this...many problems here (like poverty and homelessness) can not be solved by throwing money at tham. Many people are not poor due to a lack of money, they are poor because of laziness or menatl disease or addiction. Can't cure that with money. But you absolutely can save the life of an African baby, born with AIDS, with money.

But as usual, you make a logical point about solving our own problems first. There is some validity to that.

"down the rabbit hole of a totalitarian-like government where once inalienable rights are blatantly infringed upon and every citizen is treated as a terrorist"

I'll respectfully disagree again. IMHO, the world changed on 09/11, and we can respond to the new threat or we can ignore it. I have never felt like I was being treated like a terrorist. I don't see any large-scale elimination of inalienable rights. I don't see that I have an inalienable right to bring a shampoo bottle on a plane, I can just as easily buy it when I get there.

Some might say pushing and signing a bill that will ensure health care for millions of people comes somewhat close to that.
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hope he tries to run on that one :uhuh:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),[1] informally referred to as Obamacare,[2] is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010

January 24, 2012
More Americans Uninsured in 2011

However, more adults aged 18 to 26 now covered

by Elizabeth Mendes

This is the first article in an in-depth series on the state of health insurance coverage in America. Future articles will explore trends in types of health insurance coverage and uninsured rates across states.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More American adults lacked health insurance coverage last year than in any year since Gallup and Healthways started tracking it in 2008. The uninsured rate has been increasing since 2008, climbing to 17.1% in 2011.


at least we're covering more "children" ages 18-26...good place to start or reinforce the road to government dependence:uhuh: oh wait....we're actually forcing insurance companies to accept them as children so that they can stay on mommy and daddy's policy....

Young Adults Seem to Benefit From New Healthcare Law

U.S. adults aged 18 to 25 -- who are now allowed to stay on their parents' plans until age 26 because of a provision of the 2010 healthcare law -- are less likely to be uninsured than in previous years. The percentage of uninsured declined further in 2011 to 24.5%, from 27.6% in 2010 and 28.2% in 2009. Although this group is still among the most likely to be uninsured, it is the only group Gallup tracks that has seen a significant decline in the percentage uninsured in 2011.


should have made it 36.....then the numbers would be really inmpressive:rotf2:

Some might say that...but as of now, it hasn't happened yet. Bush saved those lives, past tense. Obamacare has lofty goals, which are nowhere near accomplished yet. Time will tell if Obamacare does what he said it would do, but we know for a fact what Bush did. And Bush's feat remains mostly anonymous because of deranged hatred.

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Most of the law isnt in effect. You wanted to point out that one of the few parts that went into effect has lowered the uninsured rate?

You don't have the inalienable right to bring a shampoo bottle on a plane because the plane is not your property. Supposedly, the plane belongs to the airline company, and it has a right to say what you can bring onto its planes. That is the company's inalienable right to its property. It acts constitutionally when, on its uncoerced volition, it prohibits the shampoo bottle. When, however, it is coerced to do so by the government, the government, in effect, owns that piece of its property, and is denying, in that respect, its inalienable right and ownership of that property. The overreaching government in this case will say that it is acting under the now ubiqitous commerce clause. Originalists would say that the commerce clause was intended to promote commercial cooperation among the States, but not a tool for the central government to own commerce. The clause was not intended to allow the central government to become a commercial entity, nor one which would usurp the commercial powers of private entities. A progressive would say that the Constitution has evolved, and, indeed, the Federal Government does have, as a necessity, unlimited powers under various clauses.

Property and the right to it is precisely one of the original principles that progressives intend to remake. The progressive shift of property is from the individual, as originally intended, to the public, which, of course, is expressed in, and by, the government. For the public good, individual ownership of property must be limited to "reasonable" and "fair" or "equitable" bounds. Property was orignally one of the main tenets of the Founders Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness was a more generalized version of the pursuit and ownership of property.

And this attack on property, and inalienable rights, started down, as JohnnyD says, the rabbit hole of a totalitarian like government long before Bush. And it is parroted as a benevolent exercise by various speeches of Obama, such as his you-didn't-build-it speech. It is government, directly, or through its regulatory directions of the people, that did it. We build publicly more and more, and own as individuals, less and less, through the regulatory schemes of a benevolent gvt. that directs our efforts toward the public good, not the selfish private.

"That is the company's inalienable right to its property..."

The airline doesn't own the space above my house where it flies the plane. Therefore, I have no problem with the feds telling airlines that they have to take precautions before they take to the skies. If an airline doesn't ant to put security measures into place, that endangers all of us.

"Property and the right to it is precisely one of the original principles that progressives intend to remake."

Agreed 100%. I just don't feel like the post 09/11 security measures have reduced my freedoms by any measurable amount.

I see a lot of things that scare me out there, most of them economic in nature, because I'm a numbers guy. But not many safety measures that are part of the war on terror, worry me. I only worry that we aren't going far enough in the name of political correctness.

I could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet that most of those 18-26 year olds would prefer a job to a free ride on their parents health insurance policy and a room in their basement :uhuh:

I hope you're right. But the fact that a large majority of those 18-26 year olds will vote for Obama, makes me think they'd prefer a handout.

How do you add $4 trillion to the debt, and still have unemployment over 8%...Not much to show for that expenditure...

When you give government power over you for safety, you might be a bit safer in one way (debatable), but in danger of forfeiting your sovereignty in another. Was it Franklin that said something to the effect that those who give up liberty for security and comfort deserve neither (or will lose both?).

Luckily, pretty soon after we got the current president, we stopped purging jobs. I know, don't blame Bush :love:

" For each job the private sector cut under George W. Bush, the private sector gained~0.09 jobs under Barack Obama (if one attributes January 2009′s job losses to Obama, the private sector eliminated ~5 jobs for every job it created under Bush). The economy would need to destroy 701,000 private sector jobs for Bush to break even with Obama (not accounting for the 125,000 jobs that the economy must create each month just to keep pace with population growth)."

Bush vs. Obama: Unemployment (May 2012 Jobs Data) | Reflections of a Rational Republican

I hope he tries to run on that too :uhuh:

Obama’s remarks on worst job growth: Did he end it or should he own it? - The Washington Post

The Pinocchio Test


There’s no doubt that Bush owns an unimpressive record on job creation. But Obama comes in either last, second-to-last or in the bottom half among presidents since the Great Depression, depending on which way you look at the numbers. considering all of the money he spent saving and creating jobs..you'd think he'd have better results :)

The president said that policies from 2000 through 2008 produced the “most sluggish job growth we’ve ever seen.” Perhaps so, but the worst numbers on record occurred under his watch.

Obama chose a poor metric for measuring past administrations. To make his point with jobs data, he has to point to his own numbers and completely disavow much of them, or else ignore public-sector losses. We came close to thinking this was worth Three Pinocchios, but ultimately decided he was not necessarily including his record in the statement oh....just give him 4 he's earned it . Still, it’s a very fine line. The president should be much more careful about making such a sweeping claim.

Three pages and I have a headache - time to roll a new thread