Comments on: Why Weren’t Progressives Making Cat-Calls During Obama’s Speech?

By: zeepkist

zeepkist — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:04:50 +0000

how come the photographers had their cameras ready to make all these nice pictures of this “spontaneous” outburst?

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:53:20 +0000

The democrates have become the republicans, and the republicans have become your odd uncle who shows up at holidays.

Jesus always ran credit checks before care was rendered.

By: dobropet

dobropet — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:24:45 +0000

There’s some more evidence of another group of people disapproving of the healthcare overhaul:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

By: Chief

Chief — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:51:21 +0000

I gotta say…I just read “piece” and the comments and I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth! Get a life…losers.

By: dobropet

dobropet — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:17:51 +0000

People have a right to healthcare correct, but not in the sense of removing the doctors right to refuse service to the patient. Once again you’re removing the practitioners right to say no, or the physicians, or any other personnel in the medical field.

When you remove the right of one to apply it to another you’ve only taken the rights away from both.

You are correct that the community has a responsibility to engage in healthcare as they see fit, not as they wish upon those who may not need it. But upon this suggestion the community has the ultimate goal of providing for the welfare of the individual NOT the government. And even further “provide for the general welfare,” does not imply “regulation of healthcare.” Ultimately you are suggesting removing the rights of the doctors to provide for individuals regardless of necessity.
Not everyone needs healthcare, just as not everyone will benefit from it being provided through government regulatory bodies. I understand that we’ve come along way to expounding upon the principals of healthcare generally, yet to promise it as a necessity and not based upon individual needs simply removes the rights of everyone.

And the entire idea that we cannot carryout anything in disrespect for our fellow man and not expect consequences will itself manifest when the Maya calender runs out, which is the same time as the I Ching of China. Just a passing thought.

I’ll expand on the idea of simpler-societies at a later time, until then.

By: dobropet

dobropet — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:06:34 +0000

“The bithers, the teabaggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so.” -Paul

Is that why after his outburst he received over 1.5 million dollars from the people to continue his campaign?

By: wooden bed frames

wooden bed frames — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:11:33 +0000

The issue about the health care has been bugging America since. I believe that health care is a service provided to the people and not a right. But with all the rumors regarding it,it seems that it is going nowhere!

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:08:59 +0000

Some call Joe Wilson a great statesman, and are even proud of his “Shout Out”, so lets see, he says, he was told by the Republican leadership to apologize (he did not realize the magnitude of his mistake), he then gives his weak “not for reals” apology, but then goes on to those “Commentator Talk Shows” and basically says he real was not wrong and plays the victim card and calls for people to send in for money to support him for re-election. Had he kept quiet after his apology, that might have been the end of it but now that people know he lied about the apology the story will continue, until he is out of a job and the funny thing is, he does not see it coming. This summer has been rough for his beleaguered political party. At least he did not end up on the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC). In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”. The bithers, the teabaggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so.

By: Dave Lindorff

Dave Lindorff — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:13:50 +0000

First, let me say that by mentioning conservatives and libertarians in the same sentence, I was not equating them. And if we were to be really accurate, we’d have to distinguish true conservatives, neo-cons (who are anything but conservative!) and libertarians. Conservatives don’t like single-payer health care, or any kind of government health care, because they have a congenital fear of anything that smacks of socialism. Libertarians don’t like government in health care because they think that government only belongs in the business of providing armies and police. Neo-cons, frankly, don’t give a shit one way or the other. All they care about is aggrandizing federal power. If they thought socializing health care would give them more power, they’d be for it.

That said, and I gather dopropet is a libertarian, I have to disagree with the whole idea that healthcare isn’t a right.

If you go back to any simpler society–and I’m referring to pre-nation-state times–if someone in the community got sick, everyone pitched in to help the person get better, and to help out the family. This today is done as “charity” by church groups, etc., but we’ve lost in our larger society, that connection to our community. Also, back in the dim past, health care was a simple thing. The “doctor” was a medicine man or woman, who knew healing arts and probably didn’t charge anything for his or her work. Today, medical care is hugely expensive–so expensive that in communities like the Amish, where this kind of community care is still practiced, it can outstrip even the community’s collective resources to help. So as our ability to heal people grows, and as our societies expand in size and scope, it becomes necessary to expand the community responsibiltiy for the health of its members.

There is a historical precedent for the idea of health care as a right and as a community responsibility. Socialized medicine is the modern answer to that traditional belief.

A libertarian in tribal pre-historic times would have been a dead person. As a belief system it is a historical artifact of a perhaps at most 2-300 year period in human history, and as we now have hit a wall in terms of planatery carrying capacity for humankind, the idea that I can do whatever I want, and that I have no social responsibility for my brothers and sisters is simply not tenable, ethical, or even possible.

Get used to it. We’re all in this together, and the trick is to figure out how to help each other get by, with the minimal instusion on our freedom to be ourselves.

People have a right to medical care, jusst as they have a right to be protected from starvation.
Dave Lindorff
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

By: dobropet

dobropet — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:46:44 +0000

Let me explain my view a little more clearly, from Maria Martins:

“Medical care is not a right. Medical care is a service provided by doctors and others to individuals who want to purchase it. A patient presents to the doctor with a request for care. The fact that the patient has a serious condition – even a life threatening one – does not entitle him, as his right, to the services of the doctor. To claim that he does means that doctors and others who provide these services have no rights, or that society can deliberately ignore these rights for the “greater good”. [...] If the exercise of a patient’s so-called “right” to healthcare imposes obligations on taxpayers to pay for it and healthcare practitioners to provide it, then it is not a right, but an attempt to enslave one part of the population for the benefit of another part. In reality, these types of so-called “rights” are offered to groups of Americans by politicians in exchange for votes. Claims on humanitarian concerns are merely a fig leaf over a naked power grab by the state.”

Hope this helps.