Getting back to government rating on educational facilities. It may start out innocuous enough...fixing some problems like Gut said. But we've seen enough of what happens when government gets involved(think NSA) to realize that it will evolve into something else....a government agency that penalizes and rewards with politics lurking in the background.

BGFalcons82;1490733 wrote:Never got it, eh? Have you read any polls since the ACA was passed without reading it? Do you know that a large majority of American citizens do not want it and it was crammed down our throats without 1 single vote from the other side? It wreaks. It stinks. Until a couple days before the SCOTUS ruling, it was going to be unconstitutional. Then Justice Roberts decided that laws passed without one Republican vote were indeed laws passed by a duly-elected Congress and he wasn't going to get in the way. Ball-less turd he became. But I digress.

The defund and kill it team is getting increasing support because the majority of Americans DO NOT WANT THIS POS LAW. That's why no fixes need offered. We need to erase the mistake and start over.

Start over with what?
The current system?
The current system is just as bad. Premiums still go up, people are still paying more.

HitsRus;1490742 wrote:I think a majority of Americans want 'free' healthcare....which is a completely different issue than whether we should provide it or not. While I realize ObamaKare is not 'free', I think there is a perception among less knowledgable people that the government is footing a large part of it.

Even people who should know better, have a mindset programmed to base their healthcare decsions on what their insurance covers, rather than what's in their best interest. I see this everyday as a healthcare provider. Healthcare decisions are based on whether deductibles have been reached, maximums have been met or whether a given procedure is a covered item. Necessary treatments are delayed or foregone or altered to fit into coverage. If you think about it, we have been bombarded for 20 + years by the arguement (since Hilary started jawboning about it) that someone else should be responsible for paying for Americans' healthcare. An entire generation has grown up with this. Is it any wonder that they are willing to let the wolf into the house. Is it any wonder that it should be the 'benevolent' government?

All valid points.

I happen to be one of those people "who should know better" when it comes to making health care decisions on what my health insurance will or will not cover. But that is because any out-of-pocket expense in our effed-up health care system is astronomically over-priced vis-a vis' the non-health care economy. This, of course, lies at the very heart of the health care debate does it not?

When I get a simple X-ray for example, why would a procedure like that cost a couple of grand as a simplified example?

Getting the health care industry back in line with sensible economic realities would and should be the first step to making health care affordable to all of us. We certainly do not need the Feds to "fix it" by passing insane dumb legislation like the so-called Affordable Care Act.

gut;1490656 wrote:Face it, America (uneducated morons, liberal, and poor people) wants nationalized healthcare.

FIFY

Also, I see quaker oats linked this article (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/23/new-obama-policy-warns-agents-not-detain-illegal-i/) and it's entirely absurd. Our border policies are complete bullshit. Obama is off his rocker. Quot: &#8220resident Obama has once again abused his authority and unilaterally refused to enforce our current immigration laws by directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop removing broad categories of unlawful immigrants,”

HitsRus;1490744 wrote:Getting back to government rating on educational facilities. It may start out innocuous enough...fixing some problems like Gut said. But we've seen enough of what happens when government gets involved(think NSA) to realize that it will evolve into something else....a government agency that penalizes and rewards with politics lurking in the background.

In a nutshell, resources (govt resources in this instance) will flow to the schools producing better outcomes, which is...capitalism (except for the govt $$$ part). That of course will not be "fair and equitable" and will require some sort of future redistribution to level the playing field.

A big part of the problem is liberals believe stupid and/or lazy people are entitled to govt loans to pursue a college degree. Require a 3.5 to continue getting govt loans, and pretty soon everyone will be getting at least a 3.5. Thus with grades no longer a differentiator the stupid and lazy kids can compete for jobs on a level playing field.

I am amazed that healthcare has been linked to employment as long as it has in this country.

People stay in jobs they hate or put off retiring strictly because of the health insurance situation. People don't get raises because any raise they would have gotten goes towards an ever increasing share of the insurance contribution to their employer.

People can't start small businesses because the cost of getting insurance is so prohibitively high it makes being a profitable start-up near impossible without incredible funding.

I am not sure what the answer is, but some how we need to get away from a system which basically ties the ability to get affordable insurance to being employed by a large company that provides good benefits.

20 years of health care costs at more than double the rate of inflation have taken a tremendous bite out of the economy. It is a reason we keep seeing tepid economic growth, because any COLA increase people get is going toward their health care contribution instead of the larger economy. That is not sustainable.

The dirty secret of American healthcare is that we subsidize the cost for the entire world. We pay 10X what the rest of the world does because corporations have to make up the profit margin here they can't get because every other government has price controls. It is why we pay $10 for a pill that in Canada is 50 cents.

I don't like the idea of a price control market, but at the same time how long can the American people be expected to subsize profit margins for companies because they can't charge what they want anywhere else.

It is like the cost of tuition continuing to skyrocket because the government continues to make tons of loan money available to anyone who wants it. When there is no brake or reason to pause on price increases, you just keep raising the price.

As long as Americans have to foot the world's medical bills, we will continue to see skyrocketing prices not because of our government, but because of the other 180 governments in the world.

There can be no market based pricing in health care when that situation exists, as we will always be stuck paying out the ass because we are the only free market avialable, and will have to subsidized profit margins not being made in the other 180 other countries in the world.

I don't have answers, but I there is far more at play here than many people consider for why costs keep skyrocketing and why the system is so broken.

There is a reflexive get government out reaction many gravitate towards that ignores the fact that doing so would do nothing to bend the cost curve in a world where we would still be the only free market., and thus still stuck subsidizing the world's costs.

What we need is to get serious about telling healthcare companies that they need to start figuring out how to deal with hostile governments instead of just raising our prices to meet profit goals. That won't be touched by Congress since they are all bought and paid for by the various lobbyists for that industry, but that is the dirty secret lurking beneath the surface for why we can't get control of healthcare costs more than any other factor.

KERRY DECLARES WMD

What now?
I wonder what the few of the chatter people on here would be?
Do nothing?
Cruise missile strikes?
Full on air strike?

ptown_trojans_1;1491477 wrote:What now?
I wonder what the few of the chatter people on here would be?
Do nothing?
Cruise missile strikes?
Full on air strike?

Do nothing. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

No good options in Syria.

There is an urge to do something because Assad is gassing his own people, but the rebels that would take over for him if he is deposed are Al Qaeda backed at this point and would likely leave us wondering why we toppled him in the first place.

I wish we could just nuke the whole freaking region as it would solve much of the world's problems.

IggyPride00;1491512 wrote:No good options in Syria.

There is an urge to do something because Assad is gassing his own people, but the rebels that would take over for him if he is deposed are Al Qaeda backed at this point and would likely leave us wondering why we toppled him in the first place.

I wish we could just nuke the whole freaking region as it would solve much of the world's problems.

Reps!

So, even if Syria creates a new haven for terrorists like Afghanistan did in the 1990s, the U.S. should still do nothing?
You guys would crush Obama for being weak on terror if that is allowed to grow like it did in Afghanistan.

I agree its a tough choice, but doing nothing seems like a worthless answer.

Nuking the area would be nice, but that is not the world we live in.

obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner; when he gets off holiday I am sure he will solve this with a stroke of a pen.

QuakerOats;1491594 wrote:obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner; when he gets off holiday I am sure he will solve this with a stroke of a pen.

Cute, but honestly, can you even add anything of substance?

So, instead of just crushing the President, what should he do? Or, can you put together a complex thought free of political bs language?
You sound just like the W bashers. Just the same political hack.

This is a thread of being disgusted at the administration, so I have a feeling no matter what he does, you all will disaprove. He could do nothing and you still would crush him for leaving a potential haven around.

I think he wishes he could have his "Red line" speech back from last year, as it has backed him into a corner I don't think he'd be in had he not said it.

Not having made that speech wouldn't necessarily make any of the options more attractive, but having said chemical weapons was a red line he now risks making the U.S look some what impotent and like a paper tiger if he does nothing in the face of clear evidence Syria used chemical weapons on its people.

When you make a bold statement like that, you have to be ready to follow through if someone ignores it.

From that stanpoint Obama wildly miscalculated the situation if he had no intention of ever using a military option on Syria.

I don't think military action in Syria has an end game that we find desirable, but if he does nothing he looks terribly weak having made that statement about the redline.

Iran is watching, because lack of follow through in the face of Assad gassing his people tells them Obama has been making nothing but empty threats about Iran not getting a nuke. That will only embolden them seeing such outright weakness from the U.S President.

Sadly this sitiation is one for which Obama is entirely responsible, as there would be less pressure to act if he hadn't made the threat he did.

ptown_trojans_1;1491606 wrote: This is a thread of being disgusted at the administration, so I have a feeling no matter what he does, you all will disaprove. He could do nothing and you still would crush him for leaving a potential haven around.

In fairness, anything Obama does on this issue is likely to prove to be a failure.

Our track record of invasion and/or regime change going back to Vietnam is pretty abysmal. So assume that's off the table. We could bomb the shit out of them and let the chips fall where they may, and that likely means terrorists end-up with WMD's.

So you make the proposal for action to the UN. It will fail. But Obama's whole thing back in 2008 was not acting unilaterally - so time for him to focus that rhetoric on the UN. His greatest skill is blaming others, so pinning the chaos in Syria on the UN's inability to act would seem to be in his wheelhouse and, in this case, potentially the only scenario that isn't completely lose-lose-lose.

IggyPride00;1491631 wrote:I think he wishes he could have his "Red line" speech back from last year...From that stanpoint Obama wildly miscalculated the situation if he had no intention of ever using a military option on Syria. ...I don't think military action in Syria has an end game that we find desirable...Sadly this sitiation is one for which Obama is entirely responsible, as there would be less pressure to act if he hadn't made the threat he did.

ding ding ding we have a winner

ptown_trojans_1;1491581 wrote:So, even if Syria creates a new haven for terrorists like Afghanistan did in the 1990s, the U.S. should still do nothing?
You guys would crush Obama for being weak on terror if that is allowed to grow like it did in Afghanistan.

Lobbing some cruise missiles in to Syria isn't going to to prevent that from happening. That will just prolong the war and killing. The Russians are not going to loose their influence easily. Neither are the Iranians and Hezbollah. This is why Obama's "red line" comment has come back to bite him in the ass.

ptown_trojans_1;1491581 wrote:I agree its a tough choice, but doing nothing seems like a worthless answer.

So is doing something just to do something.

There is an urge to do something because Assad is gassing his own people, but the rebels that would take over for him if he is deposed are Al Qaeda backed at this point and would likely leave us wondering why we toppled him in the first place.

You guys would crush Obama for being weak on terror if that is allowed to grow like it did in Afghanistan

Naw...Al Qaeda is on the run...remember? I guess Benghazi is not the only thing that doesn't fit the narrative.

Also lets be honest with ourselves chemical weapons as they are being used are not weapons of mass destruction. They provide a secondary means of killing in a limited area. No different than repeated indiscriminate conventional bombings of civilian areas. which has been par for the course in Syria. Is it any more horrible for a child to die choking on a chemical or on their own blood when shrapnel pierces their lung. Or suffocating under the rubble of their collapsed apartment complex. Its all bad. But a line has been drawn and now everyone is needlessly fretting over it. When they should be taking a realistic look at how to handle this difficult situation.

majorspark;1491763 wrote:Also lets be honest with ourselves chemical weapons as they are being used are not weapons of mass destruction....

Good point. Of course, people don't really view it as equivalent - definitely a horrible "pain & suffering" attachment that might be, relatively speaking, somewhat arbitrary. But I think the concern with chemical/WMD is the mass panic it would induce in the hands of terrorists. In other words, some ricin attack that kills a handful of people is actually a bigger fear to deal with than a conventional bomb killing dozens.

ptown_trojans_1;1491606 wrote:So, instead of just crushing the President, what should he do? /QUOTE]


I am not the pre-ordained Nobel Peace Prize winner; he is.

You now see how utterly ridiculous it is to have this completely unprepared idealogue as president.

As for me, 5 years ago I would have turned on the oil/gas gushers in this nation to solve our internal economic woes and put ourselves in a better position with zero reliance on the Middle East as an energy source. I would then use our rejuvenated economic/energy power to bolster our defenses/offenses in eradicating militant islamic terrorists, and stabilizing friendly governments.

Unfortunately we have an environmental activist in the WH who has appointed radical environmentalists and marxists to positions of great power in an effort to shut down the fossil fuel industry upon which our economy rests, and to perpetually antagonize capitalists, furthering weakening our ability to achieve our energy/economic potential, and ultimately our ability to rationally deal with foreign affairs.

I'm no longer sure whose side the prez is on. But if he does happen to be on our side, he is doing just about everything wrong, and as a result we have no economic growth, no confidence in the future, no leadership in the world. Most of us knew the guy was incapable of running the nation; he does though seem capable of destroying it.

DOES OBAMA KNOWS HE'S FIGHTING ON AL-QAEDA'S SIDE?

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