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General politics discussion thread


David

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Yes, the assumption there is that she could have afforded to take out health cover, which presumably she couldn't - many people can't.

But -- if you're a fundamentalist Republican -- that presumably comes down to choice on what she spends her money on. If you choose to spend your money on a pair of Nikes and go without food, then even though you're still poor and in an unenviable position, you still chose to go without food.

 

To back up that point would be the statistic that "only" 27% of households with an income below $25k in 2009 went without insurance. They went without other things. It's ridiculous that people find themselves in that situation but the statistics indicate that "not being able to afford it" doesn't mean that people simply go without it.

 

Personally, and without sounding like some massive socialist, but I think universal healthcare is one of those fundamentals of a decent society, and it always amazes me that the US hasn't had it until these recent reforms, which kind of partially introduced it.

 

Totally agreed. I don't even see why there's any need to debate it; it should simply be self evident. It's absolutely rotten to think that the accepted response in a society to a couple whose child is born with severe medical complications is "Unlucky, pal. Good luck with that", the understanding being that such a couple are on their own.

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I think, thank God, that no British party now openly advocates dismantling the NHS - the Tories talked about it for many years, but Cameron at least seems to cling to the concept of "free at the point of service".

 

Of course, free and shit... that's a different matter.

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I wonder if they could somehow work free healthcare under the radar by re-packaging it as freedom of healthcare? Seeing as the same morons who automatically distrust anything that can be seen as vaguely socialist are generally also the ones who'd vote for Hitler if got the word freedom into every soundbite.

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An interesting (and disturbing) article from the Irish Daily Mirror;

The Real IRA last night claimed they planned to kill the Queen when she visited Ireland.But they called off an assassination attempt on the Queen because they did not believe her life was worth one of their volunteers being jailed.In an astonishing interview with the Irish Daily Mirror the Dublin leadership of the dissident group claim they met to plot the killing and were confident they could pull it off.A spokesman said: "We considered killing the Queen. We could have managed to carry out a successful attack but it wouldn't have been feasible to get away."The streets were lined with gardai and secret service."Any volunteer would have been caught and locked up for life."A volunteer's life is not worth the life of the Queen."There were massive security fears ahead of the visit of Queen Elizabeth II last year. Thousands of gardai and army personnel were drafted in to safeguard her time here from May 17 to 20.The entire operation to police the visits of the Queen and US President Barack Obama cost

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I wonder if they could somehow work free healthcare under the radar by re-packaging it as freedom of healthcare? Seeing as the same morons who automatically distrust anything that can be seen as vaguely socialist are generally also the ones who'd vote for Hitler if got the word freedom into every soundbite.

I saw Michelle Bachmann say she would do everything she could to reverse 'Obamacare' because she would not allow Obama to bring socialism to America. The Iowa caucuses were depressing viewing: Bachmann being herself, Romney getting cheered for being unable to decide what his favourite line of the national anthem is and Santorum being a front runner after saying he would ban all pornography as part of him implementing God's Law back in America and all of these people could be in the running for being the world's most powerful person. Edited by John Galt
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and all of these people could be in the running for being the world's most powerful person.

Could be a blessing, in the way that having Palin on board really made it easier for non-committals to turn toward Obama more readily than toward McCain. It's awful that these people stand any chance at all, but I think I'd feel better off knowing that the ones up for election are those that make a point of driving sensible folk away more than having relatively normal and more electable politicians up there who hold quite true to these thoughts but attract some middle-ground votes too.
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