So I still support it because I think if they kill it now it will die a certain death come January and the election year bullshit.

And this still wouldn’t be the final bill. From what I understand it still has to go back to the house and then back to the senate again if this vote passes.

I think we have to learn the lesson from what happened in the clinton administration when they tried to reform healthcare. It died. People who were born during the clinton administration are now acting in porn movies to give you an idea of how long we might have to wait for another go at this.

Also- there’s the rarely discussed public health issue. If your neighbor has an infectious disease and doesn’t get treated for it, then you are more likely to get it. Diseases are social and they generally don’t discriminate based on wealth. Having everyone covered by health insurance benefits the health of everyone, not just the poor in this country who are often vilified.

I pay $550/month for insurance. I can’t afford it and pay the premiums using credit. Sure I could work for Starbucks and become an indentured servant to pay for it but I seem to remember from grade school that America is supposed to be a free country.

Although, yeah, being forced to pay for insurance isn’t exactly freedom, but then again neither is taxes. I think that angle is being overplayed. Everyone needs healthcare for the physical and fiscal health of this nation. Call it what you want and repackage it, but in the end, it is a tax and is not voluntary. But, it’s more fair than forcing sick people to die because they can’t get coverage and forcing healthy people to get sick because their community is sick and poor.

I could go on and on. Yeah, the bill sucks, but in it’s current form, I still support it.

If we blame the politicians, it gets us nowhere. Just about all of them are corporate sell-outs. It seems to me that the corporations (lobbyists) are strong arming these politicians pretty hard to get them to obey them over their constituents. Who knows what’s really going on? Are the corps. threatening politicians with something other than campaign funding? It certainly seems to be within the realm of possibility.

But then the American people are just as to blame as the pols- at least many millions of them are.

So yeah it’s easy and perhaps fair to blame the politicians and the American people, but Is there a common denominator?

Yes, The corporations are to blame. They’re behind all of the influencing of the politicians and the brainwashing of the American public through advertising, PR, bad TV shows, and fake news.

Corporations are to blame. Their influence is too powerful. Expecting the pols to loose this influence is like expecting inner city youth to get straight A’s and get 1200 SAT scores without changing their schools, parents, or environment.

The corporations- and I mean the ones being evil, which is not all of them- need to be stopped.

That’s the problem. (I think). So how can these huge things be stopped legally and ethically? There’s something to ponder.

I could be way off here- so feel free to disagree or say whatever you want in the comments. LIke I wrote up there. I’m just trying to figure it all out.

Maybe the reason we often avoid politics as a culture is because often people take things personally and feelings get hurt. We have to get past that.

This has been a healthy debate. When I consider that just a few weeks ago I was complaining that nobody was twittering of substance, I am amazed.

People are taking this stuff seriously which is good. But we can’t take it personally or,I feel, we will shy away from political topics in the future. This allows other people to decide our fate.

So, I appreciate (I can’t say enjoy) the debate and hope it continues. But please keep in mind that anyone who informs themselves and is earnestly doing the best they can in a democratic process deserves respect for doing so.

I don’t know if that makes sense.

Studs Terkel has often said, “They say you shouldn’t talk about politics or religion, but that means you can’t talk about life!” I agree with that

I think this document is great for reassuring Clinton’s constituents that they are voting for the right candidate, but it does nothing to change my loyalties, which admittedly can (and have) change(d) with the wind.

Do you see the word ‘marriage’ anywhere in this document? Does Hillary Clinton support gay marriage? No. Let’s see Hillary make a statement like this and I’ll proudly change my mind. Of course it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already voted.

Furthermore, how exactly does Hillary’s statement explain away the following quote she spoke in 2006 to SFgate?

“Children are better off if they have a mother and a father,” Clinton said in the San Francisco interview with the then-Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner. “My preference is that we do all we can to strengthen traditional marriage … and that people engaged in parenting children be committed to one another.”

(source)

Has Obama explicitly endorsed gay marriage? No, but he has come a lot closer and has displayed strong character in doing so. He defended gay rights and abortion rights to a CBN anchor in 2006. Hillary waited until the day before Super Tuesday to make her smoke-and-mirrors statement.

I don’t buy it. Bill Clinton charmed out they gay vote in 1992 using the same word games that Hillary is using now. Pick your cliché.

Most importantly, if you disagree with someone else’s poltical choices, you have more luck in persuasion, IMHO, making a logical argument instead of insulting the people who vote for another candidate. Especially when both candidates are so similar ideologically.

UPDATE: And, My Goddess! She voted pro-war. I mean i’m glad she wants to repeal her husband’s don’t ask don’t tell but I’d rather she’d also prevent these soldiers from getting killed in oil wars.

His achievement required political clout, and that, too, is on display. Soon after he formed Citigroup, Congress repealed a Depression-era law that prohibited goliaths like the one Weill had just put together anyway, combining commercial and investment banking, insurance and stock brokerage operations. A trophy from the victory – a pen that President Bill Clinton used to sign the repeal – hangs, framed, near the covers.

source

Clinton got a rousing reception from the human rights community, and seemed to take an uncharacteristically bright-line stance, in a recent statement on the Senate floor during the debate over torture.

“Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach?” she asked at one point, and left anti-torture commentators, and even Clinton critics like Andrew Sullivan, with the impression that she’d emerged into a kind of un-Clintonian moral clarity and said no to torture.

But at yesterday’s Daily News editorial board meeting, it emerged that she’s not actually against torture in all instances, and that her dispute with McCain and Bush is largely procedural.

She was asked about the “ticking time bomb” scenario, in which you’ve captured the terrorist and don’t have time for a normal interrogation, and said that there is a place for what she called “severity,” in a conversation that included mentioning waterboarding, hypothermia, and other techniques commonly described as torture.

“I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that,” she responded. “Again, I think the President has to take responsibilty. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don’t mind if it’s reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn’t be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule.”

Asked again about these methods, she said:

“In those instances where we have sufficient basis to believe that there is something imminent, yeah, but then we’ve got to have a check and balance.”

So I’m not sure what Andrew Sullivan is so excited about. Torture is OK as long as the president approves it, as long as it’s an exception, and as long as it’s secretly reported to Congress. That doesn’t sound like a bright moral line to me.

I see many libs doing the same thing that conservatives did to Clinton. It ain’t right. Forget about all that personal shit and stick to the issues that matter. Duh. The World is melting!