|
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On February 26 2014 09:58 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 09:50 IgnE wrote:On February 26 2014 09:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:05 SnipedSoul wrote:On February 26 2014 03:44 RCMDVA wrote:Covered Califonia... has 86% of their 720k enrollment subsidized. Covered California enrollment as of 1/31/2014The problem is... they have actually done a bad job signing up Latinos. So when they get around to sigining them up...that isn't going to lower the subsidized ratio. It's going to increase it. What does that tell you about health care in the state if 86% of people need help paying for it? umm... little to nothing? What if we changed it to 86% of people need help paying for basic foodstuffs? Would that tell you anything? Define *need*. 100% of people in Canada *need* the government to help pay for htealthcare. What does that say about Canada's healthcare system? It probably says that Canada has a healthcare system that works for 100% of their people. Obamacare isn't exactly great, but there's not much you can do with the amount of people in the US that oppose a mandatory single - payer system. At least it's getting millions of people into insurance. If gradual change is the only way to improve the system because the true American heroes are too opposed to the commie healthcare system that the rest of the Western World employs successfully, there's not much to do.
|
Hong Kong9145 Posts
considering most if not all american food is subsidized to be at an artificially low price, the point is pretty moot.
|
On February 26 2014 10:01 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 09:58 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:50 IgnE wrote:On February 26 2014 09:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:05 SnipedSoul wrote:On February 26 2014 03:44 RCMDVA wrote:Covered Califonia... has 86% of their 720k enrollment subsidized. Covered California enrollment as of 1/31/2014The problem is... they have actually done a bad job signing up Latinos. So when they get around to sigining them up...that isn't going to lower the subsidized ratio. It's going to increase it. What does that tell you about health care in the state if 86% of people need help paying for it? umm... little to nothing? What if we changed it to 86% of people need help paying for basic foodstuffs? Would that tell you anything? Define *need*. 100% of people in Canada *need* the government to help pay for htealthcare. What does that say about Canada's healthcare system? It probably says that Canada has a healthcare system that works for 100% of their people. Obamacare isn't exactly great, but there's not much you can do with the amount of people in the US that oppose a mandatory single - payer system. At least it's getting millions of people into insurance. If gradual change is the only way to improve the system because the true American heroes are too opposed to the commie healthcare system that the rest of the Western World employs successfully, there's not much to do. Eh? If gradual change is what we are needing to do, then you should be welcoming criticism of the ACA...
|
On February 26 2014 10:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 10:01 Nyxisto wrote:On February 26 2014 09:58 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:50 IgnE wrote:On February 26 2014 09:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:05 SnipedSoul wrote:On February 26 2014 03:44 RCMDVA wrote:Covered Califonia... has 86% of their 720k enrollment subsidized. Covered California enrollment as of 1/31/2014The problem is... they have actually done a bad job signing up Latinos. So when they get around to sigining them up...that isn't going to lower the subsidized ratio. It's going to increase it. What does that tell you about health care in the state if 86% of people need help paying for it? umm... little to nothing? What if we changed it to 86% of people need help paying for basic foodstuffs? Would that tell you anything? Define *need*. 100% of people in Canada *need* the government to help pay for htealthcare. What does that say about Canada's healthcare system? It probably says that Canada has a healthcare system that works for 100% of their people. Obamacare isn't exactly great, but there's not much you can do with the amount of people in the US that oppose a mandatory single - payer system. At least it's getting millions of people into insurance. If gradual change is the only way to improve the system because the true American heroes are too opposed to the commie healthcare system that the rest of the Western World employs successfully, there's not much to do. Eh? If gradual change is what we are needing to do, then you should be welcoming criticism of the ACA... No, what I'm saying is that gradual change is the only thing that can be done at the moment, because the system overhaul the healthcare system would need would probably result in Ted Cruz setting the Capitol on fire and Danglars getting a stroke.
|
On February 26 2014 10:25 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 10:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 10:01 Nyxisto wrote:On February 26 2014 09:58 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:50 IgnE wrote:On February 26 2014 09:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 26 2014 09:05 SnipedSoul wrote:On February 26 2014 03:44 RCMDVA wrote:Covered Califonia... has 86% of their 720k enrollment subsidized. Covered California enrollment as of 1/31/2014The problem is... they have actually done a bad job signing up Latinos. So when they get around to sigining them up...that isn't going to lower the subsidized ratio. It's going to increase it. What does that tell you about health care in the state if 86% of people need help paying for it? umm... little to nothing? What if we changed it to 86% of people need help paying for basic foodstuffs? Would that tell you anything? Define *need*. 100% of people in Canada *need* the government to help pay for htealthcare. What does that say about Canada's healthcare system? It probably says that Canada has a healthcare system that works for 100% of their people. Obamacare isn't exactly great, but there's not much you can do with the amount of people in the US that oppose a mandatory single - payer system. At least it's getting millions of people into insurance. If gradual change is the only way to improve the system because the true American heroes are too opposed to the commie healthcare system that the rest of the Western World employs successfully, there's not much to do. Eh? If gradual change is what we are needing to do, then you should be welcoming criticism of the ACA... No, what I'm saying is that gradual change is the only thing that can be done at the moment, because the system overhaul the healthcare system would need would probably result in Ted Cruz setting the Capitol on fire and Danglars getting a stroke. OK, so replace "are needing to do" with "can realistically do". We good now?
|
Hong Kong9145 Posts
President Obama, apparently resigned to President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States before he leaves office, told him in a phone call on Tuesday that he had instructed the Pentagon to begin planning for a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
But in a message aimed less at Mr. Karzai than at whoever will replace him, Mr. Obama said that the United States was still open to leaving a limited military force behind in Afghanistan to conduct training and counterterrorism operations.
Noting that Mr. Karzai had “demonstrated that it is unlikely that he will sign” the agreement, Mr. Obama told him, in effect, that the United States would deal with the next Afghan leader. He warned Mr. Karzai that the longer it took for Afghanistan to sign the pact, known as a bilateral security agreement, or B.S.A., the smaller the residual force was likely to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/asia/obama-keeps-options-open-in-afghanistan.html
|
Norway28443 Posts
On February 09 2014 02:57 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2014 02:40 Liquid`Drone wrote:To be fair not knowing the recent election results from a country you are supposed to become ambassador of.. it's not good. then again it's hard to accurately explain the success of the progress party without being insulting towards Norwegians, which I guess he should also try his hardest not to do. I guess this is derailing the thread a little, but do you mind shedding a little light on why people voted for the progress party? Typically this kind of stuff happens in bad economic times, but Norway's economy seems to be doing really well.
Hey, sorry about not responding to this earlier, first I was too busy and then I forgot and now I just remembered after the post about US ambassadors on the previous page. :p It can't be explained shortly either, because it's a complex issue.
Spoilering this cuz it's huge and not specifically relevant to US politics - I think it can be interesting to many who venture into this thread though.
+ Show Spoiler +Firstly, while I voted for the party most distant from the progress party in the previous election, I actually feel that I need to defend them a tiny bit. While it would be wrong to say they have nothing in common with other far-right/anti-immigration European parties, because they have certainly garnered a lot of support due to their more restrictive immigration policies and anti-immigration rhetoric, they don't deserve to be coupled with golden dawn, sweden democrats, vlaams blok and some of the more extreme ones. (In fact from a quick reading - I actually had no idea about this until just now), it seems like comparing them to the successor of Vlaams Blok - Vlaams Belang - is much more fitting. Basically, the party was first founded in 73 and at first was more of a libertarian party, immigration wasn't much of a national issue then. During the late 80s and 90s though, Norway was becoming more multicultural and partially because of the progress party making it a big issue, it became one. And during this period of time, the progress party looks really bad and downright racist - the party leader Carl Ivar Hagen used a fabricated letter from a supposed Islam extremist threatening with the eventual overtaking of Norwegian society during an election campaign - and creating a fear of immigrants for then to use it politically gave them their best election result to that date - jumping from around 4% to 12% of the votes. This was in 1987 - and during the 90s there were multiple situations where leading members of the progress party were caught having meetings with known neo-nazis. The thing is though, these members were always swiftly expelled from the party. And the party, while it has always had some "loose cannons" on deck and continues to allow or even encourage fringe members to make semi-racist statements, which moves the political discourse a tiny bit every time it happens, has really toned down or even legitimately gotten rid of the racist elements from the most influental party ranks, and out of all their ministers in the new government (7 total), none of them have really profiled themselves as anti-immigrant or anti-muslim. In reality, the new government including the progress party is not all that more restrictive than the old social democrat government was. Granted, many of the people who voted for the progress party and also some of their fringe and older members have stated their disappointment with this, which again is something that the central power of the party is mostly happy about (party members stating their disappointment and getting attention through anti-immigration rhetoric) as it continues to lock down the anti-immigration vote. What I would say is the reason for the progress party's success when Norway hasn't really suffered any economic downswing during the economic crisis and where the "they took our jobs" argument obviously has no place in the Norwegian political context is rather a unique situation which arises due to our absolutely immense "government pension fund" (or oil fund). This is estimated to reach $717 billion by the end of 2014 - our country has 5 million people - this leaves like $140k for each individual. The political parties with the exception of the progress party basically have this agreement to not spend more -and preferably less - than the yearly income from the pension fund's investments, set at 4%. While Norway is obviously doing really great, it's always possible to make it better, and not everything is great for everyone. For the people who are poor, who are constantly fed news articles about how this is the best country in the world, but also fed articles about how the Norwegian welfare system is under threat by Muslims who procreate more and work less, who just might not be all that happy about how life is in this greatest of all nations, it's a tough sale - I mean, it doesn't even require them to be prioritized, they just don't understand why we can't just spend 6% or why we can't decrease taxes - this isn't even stuff I can really claim to understand myself, but I've understood it to have something to do with not wanting to over-inflate the economy and all that- I buy that at face value without having any scholarly understanding of the subject anyway. I think most of the progress party vote belongs to that group. Immigrants are part of the equation here, occasionally due to plain nationalism, fear of Muslims, love of "traditional Norwegian culture", because we need to protect our women from gangs of rapists that plague the streets of all our cities, but more than anything because they threaten the Norwegian welfare system. I definitely think there's an element of plain selfishness here, for example the progress party often states "we should help them there rather than here", but then they also want to make harsh cuts to foreign aid while claiming/thinking that more free trade is what development countries need. Like, I don't want to understate how they are anti-immigration, because it's certainly an important element in understanding the progress party and their success, but it's more of a dissatisfaction party. There are elements of the party and voter base who just plain don't like Muslims, but what I guess I'm trying to state more than anything is that the problem is that Norwegians are basically supposed to be so happy with how things are here because it's such a fantastic country - but then life actually isn't that great for a lot of people. Even though we're rich, not everyone gets to enjoy the great wealth adventure, immigrants are a good scapegoat for those people. Our wealth and job availability just makes it so that instead of immigrants being the cause for why our society is currently troubled, they become the reason why our future is looking bleak. To me and most other Norwegians - the progress party got 16% of the votes - the reason why the future is looking so bright is our sensible economic politics, for the progress party voters, the immigrants are the reason why we have to be so cheap and why they can't get more. And I guess outside Norway, one of the things people know about the progress party is how Breivik was a member of their youth party. And once again, while I totally don't support them, this just isn't fair; Breivik left the youth party because he couldn't garner any support for his political views, and certainly none for his methods. In addition to all this, Norway has a genuine problem with bureaucracy. Here, the progress party has been the staunchest opponent of this and they have a lot of credibility here. And hell, even I think they have some good points here.
|
On February 26 2014 04:15 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +In 2012, the conservative “campaign for religious liberty” looked like a smart and possibly winning strategic gambit. Aimed specifically at the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, nestled in a broader claim of institutional and individual exemptions from complex and sometimes unpopular laws and regulations, the campaign linked the Conference of U.S. Catholic Bishops with conservative evangelicals and both to the Republican politicians (including presidential candidate Mitt Romney) who made it a new front in both their anti-Obamacare and “family values” messaging.
Some leading Catholic Democrats (e.g., E.J. Dionne) feared it would become a crucial wedge issue. And it gave a nice First Amendment gloss to unseemly culturally reactionary impulses, while providing mainstream respectability to the “constitutional conservative” claim that church-state separation was a threat to faith itself.
Two years later, the “religious liberty” crusade shows signs of backfiring. This very day, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may veto a bill just passed by a legislature controlled by her own party that provides a broad exemption from discrimination laws to businesses and individuals claiming compliance violates their beliefs. And more generally, an argument that once distracted from the extremist nature of conservative Christian objections to gay rights and reproductive rights is drawing attention to them in a dangerous way.
This began happening first on the contraception coverage front, where the religious objection to the Obamacare mandate had to be justified (in the Hobby Lobby litigation most notably) by the claim that highly effective contraceptive devices (the IUD) and treatments (Plan B and hormonal “patches”) used by millions of women were in fact “abortifacients.”
This is not a terribly common view outside the Right-to-Life movement and the conservative Catholic and evangelical Protestant clergy; it certainly is not in accord with mainstream medical opinion. But the very discussion of angels-dancing-on-a-pin disputes over fertilization versus uterine implantation as the beginning of pregnancy shifted the debate over reproductive policy away from the strongest ground for anti-choicers — rare but controversial late-term abortions and the conditions under which they should be allowed — to the very weakest: “abortions” so early that most Americans don’t consider them abortions at all. So a gambit designed to broaden support for faith-based objections to reproductive rights policies is pulling the discussion in a direction that threatens to isolate anti-choicers and their Republican allies in a small ghetto of extremist opinion. Source
Wanted to come back to this 'cause this affects my state, if not myself.
Don't see what the whole fuss from the left is about. The first genuinely bigoted business to show its true colors is going to get outpaced by its competition in no time. But from some comments I've been reading (not here; other, less educated sites), you'd think that every Mom-'n'-Pop was planning on starving homosexuals by electing to not do business with them.
I support the bill because freedom; your business should not be the government's, even in part. But, McCain and Flake don't see it the same way. Rhinos.... (¬_¬)
(Should maybe put this in my old thread, perhaps....)
|
ah, yes, the "freedom" to ostracize minorities
|
On February 26 2014 12:32 Mindcrime wrote: ah, yes, the "freedom" to ostracize minorities
What are you supposed to do? Enforce transactions just because the client is interested?
Truly discriminatory business owners would be literally chasing off their business. They wouldn't last long.
|
It's far better administratively to say just don't do that. Don't be a prick and let them buy stuff. Also because freedom is an argument of no quality; because "freedom" isn't an inherent good, it depends on what kind of freedom, what it's doing, what the social effects are, etc.
|
On February 26 2014 12:36 cLAN.Anax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 12:32 Mindcrime wrote: ah, yes, the "freedom" to ostracize minorities What are you supposed to do? Enforce transactions just because the client is interested? Truly discriminatory business owners would be literally chasing off their business. They wouldn't last long.
History has shown that this is not the case. Anyway, I think the biggest problem with the bill is that it also allows government employees to discriminate if they have a "sincerely held religious belief," and this could cause a lot of trouble for people in small towns where there are only a couple government employees.
|
On February 26 2014 12:44 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2014 12:36 cLAN.Anax wrote:On February 26 2014 12:32 Mindcrime wrote: ah, yes, the "freedom" to ostracize minorities What are you supposed to do? Enforce transactions just because the client is interested? Truly discriminatory business owners would be literally chasing off their business. They wouldn't last long. History has shown that this is not the case. Anyway, I think the biggest problem with the bill is that it also allows government employees to discriminate if they have a "sincerely held religious belief," and this could cause a lot of trouble for people in small towns where there are only a couple government employees.
That part, I have a problem with too. Government should be free of personal discrimination wherever possible. But, ideally, there'd be fewer government employees to discriminate.
|
I think there are two things you can do here:
1. Force these people to sell their stuff to anybody, which is pretty much standard in most countries because of anti-discrimination laws, or
2. strip them of their status as a business, so that they don't pay less taxes or get any other benefits businesses usually get, because if they don't want to play by the public rules, why give them public benefits?
.. or you could obviously not elect people who would sign such bills in the first place
|
I'd prefer the second plan, except apply that unilaterally to all businesses. Subsidizing some businesses but not others will generate an artificial monopoly in favor of the companies benefited, unless their competition can massively outpace them economically. Because why public benefits?
|
On February 26 2014 13:06 cLAN.Anax wrote: I'd prefer the second plan, except apply that unilaterally to all businesses. Subsidizing some businesses but not others will generate an artificial monopoly in favor of the companies benefited, unless their competition can massively outpace them economically. Because why public benefits?
That's sort of the current rule. Organizations can discriminate against whomever they want (hence the country clubs that can exclude women), unless they hold themselves out as being open to the public. Once they do that, they cannot discriminate without a valid business reason.
|
United States41386 Posts
On February 25 2014 11:25 RCMDVA wrote: You can't really tell the difference between 500lbs of tungsten coming in at Mach 15 or 500lbs of plutonium. (ballistic, going way way up into orbit and then coming down, not a cruise missile)
Basically. If they launch 20 of them at once...they are kinetic.
If they launch 1-2, they are probably nukes.
edit...ok I understand... you should be able to tell the target quickly. Missile going for a carrier instead of Los Angles. yeah. But you don't know the warhead.
The US military can't tell the difference between a civilian airliner squawking "I am a civilian airliner" while making a scheduled flight it makes daily on the same route it makes daily down the same approved flight corridor and a jet swooping down to make a bombing run, there's no way they could tell two things that look slightly similar apart.
|
On February 26 2014 12:40 zlefin wrote: It's far better administratively to say just don't do that. Don't be a prick and let them buy stuff. Also because freedom is an argument of no quality; because "freedom" isn't an inherent good, it depends on what kind of freedom, what it's doing, what the social effects are, etc.
Freedom is just a commodity that is bought and paid for in America.
|
On February 26 2014 11:12 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote + President Obama, apparently resigned to President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States before he leaves office, told him in a phone call on Tuesday that he had instructed the Pentagon to begin planning for a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
But in a message aimed less at Mr. Karzai than at whoever will replace him, Mr. Obama said that the United States was still open to leaving a limited military force behind in Afghanistan to conduct training and counterterrorism operations.
Noting that Mr. Karzai had “demonstrated that it is unlikely that he will sign” the agreement, Mr. Obama told him, in effect, that the United States would deal with the next Afghan leader. He warned Mr. Karzai that the longer it took for Afghanistan to sign the pact, known as a bilateral security agreement, or B.S.A., the smaller the residual force was likely to be. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/asia/obama-keeps-options-open-in-afghanistan.html Please, its not like Karzai and his drug smuggling family of scumbags havent moved most of their wealth to Dubai already. Americans always end up picking the shittiest local puppet for their various nation building projects. Lets hope that there is some General Park guy somewhere in the Afghan Army.
|
The problem was they put it up to a vote; democracies put in areas without heavily developed institutions reliably just end up with crappy corrupt scum. Especially since, from my POV, they do a terrible job designing the institutions as well. Maybe if the US would use someone competent at nation building.
|
|
|
|