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About the only thing that Dad thinks the government does well is defense (ha!) - but he thinks that even their budget should be cut because they're inefficient. He also won't be swayed by arguments that the free market health care system is unfair - he's only outraged by the idea of people who could otherwise afford health care being denied. If some people can't afford health care even with low taxes, well, they should have bootstrapped and saved up the money. He's pretty much a Randroid, except he claims to believe that voluntary charity is okay (though I've never known him to donate to any charity that didn't benefit me somehow).
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Oct 13, 2010 22:23
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You should tell him the majority of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills, and in the majority of those cases, the person had insurance.
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Oct 13, 2010 22:31
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Pththya-lyi posted:About the only thing that Dad thinks the government does well is defense (ha!) - but he thinks that even their budget should be cut because they're inefficient. He also won't be swayed by arguments that the free market health care system is unfair - he's only outraged by the idea of people who could otherwise afford health care being denied. If some people can't afford health care even with low taxes, well, they should have bootstrapped and saved up the money. He's pretty much a Randroid, except he claims to believe that voluntary charity is okay (though I've never known him to donate to any charity that didn't benefit me somehow). If that's your angle, then here's probably your best line of attack. You should start by asking if ERs should provide emergency care to people without the ability to pay. Remind him that any care which isn't paid for by the person who can't pay will be borne by all the other customers of the hospital. The goal here is to get him to say "Well, no, if they can't afford their treatment, they shouldn't be treated, even if they'd die without treatment". If he gets there, you should then tell him that his decision to not treat anyone unable to demonstrate ability to pay will result in the non-treatment of people with valid health insurance due to an administrative inability to determine the insurance status of emergency cases. Say, your dad is out one night walking home from work and gets mugged and stabbed. Someone sees it go down and calls 911, and luckily he's gotten to a hospital in time to be saved, but since his wallet was taken, the hospital has no clue who he is, let alone whether or not he has insurance. Does he expect the hospital to save him? This happens to be a great example for a number of reasons, but I love it, because it's essentially the same sort of scenario that wingnuts love to drag out against the idea of UHC/single-payer/socialzed medicine systems, where someone is being left untreated due to awful bureaucracy. Except here it's emergency life-saving treatment instead of fairly trivial care, and it's a dilemma faced only by the sort of private health care system we have in the US. There's absolutely no dilemma in a UHC/single-payer/socialized medicine system. You treat the guy, period, without any worry about not being paid. But if he's got a fear of being declined life-saving emergency treatment when he can "afford" it, then this is something that should hit home. If you can use that fear to get him to recognize that you have to provide that emergency care regardless of ability to pay, now it's not a question of whether or not he's going to pay for the health care of others. It will happen, period. Now, you should shuffle the discussion onto how he wants to pay for those free riders.
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Oct 13, 2010 22:43
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Some guy on Facebook has been messaging me back and forth debating me about politics for a good while now, and lately he sent me this little gem in response to me saying that, in my opinion, our military troops have not been used for legitimate self-defense in my lifetime (I am 24) "I don't agree. In our lifetime they have been used in our self-defense. The problem is that some people have too narrow a definition of what is self-defense and have a hard time applying that principle rationally when it comes to nations. Take Iraq for instance, let's try and compare that to a neighborhood of households instead of a neighborhood of nations. If you had a neighbor that had a past history of violence, that stored and kept a stockpile of weapons like M-16s and Rocketlaunchers in his basement, and he had used them years ago to kill some of your neighbors, and now you see unmarked trucks carrying cargo in and out of his driveway that you can't identify, and upon insisting that you want to inspect his basement to make sure he's not stockpiling weapons again for a future attack he refuses to let you in, and on top of all of that he makes verbal threats to some of his more immediate neighbors and pays for some street gangs to vandalize those neighbor's houses, then what would you expect a sane and rational person should do in that situation?" There are all kinds of logical leaps and things I find poorly thought-out in what he wrote to me, but I'd really love to smack him down with some icy cold goon logic. Anyone have any pointers or useful things I could say to him? I was going to say something like he's advocating us being "World Police" with his point and not just self-defenders (because Iraq is most definitely not in our neighborhood) and that's he's going against his own point, because self-defense does not equal preemptively attacking another nation.
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Oct 13, 2010 23:41
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Well, for one, he's working from a foundation that Iraq had WMDs. Second, ask him if a role reversal in his dumb analogy is fair. The US has a history of being a bully and attacking "neighbors", so isn't Iraq justified in arming itself, especially considering the US has a way bigger arsenal of WMDs? Is an ally of Iraq attacking the US out of pre-emptive self-defense justified? After all, the US was making verbal threats. Ask him if you can go through his stuff, he's acting suspicious. Threaten violence unless he does. Tell him, if you're innocent, what's the big deal? Also Iraq did allow inspections. He's just dumb. 24-7 Urkel Cosplay fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Oct 13, 2010 |
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Oct 13, 2010 23:51
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Yeah, when I was reading everything he wrote I kept thinking "well, crap, he might be too dumb to argue with anymore" but then I thought, no, that's the point of this, to inform and educate and JUST MAYBE change his mind. Thus, I turn to goons for ironclad logic bombs.
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Oct 14, 2010 00:09
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freebooter posted:I loved it when some American pundit said that if Stephen Hawking had been born in the UK, he would have died, because the bureaucratic NHS death panels wouldn't have considered him worth spending money on... except that he was, in fact, born in the UK and has lived there his entire life. That was pure gold. That was an editorial by the terrible Investor's Business Daily.
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Oct 14, 2010 00:57
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MrPhaethon posted:That was an editorial by the terrible Investor's Business Daily. It was Laffer, funnily enough.
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Oct 14, 2010 01:14
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AwkwardKnob posted:Yeah, when I was reading everything he wrote I kept thinking "well, crap, he might be too dumb to argue with anymore" but then I thought, no, that's the point of this, to inform and educate and JUST MAYBE change his mind. Thus, I turn to goons for ironclad logic bombs. He's also assuming that all things are equal among neighbors in this hypothetical neighborhood. To make his analogy fit reality, if you're playing neighbor (the U.S.) to this supposed neighborhood RPG-hoarding Mr. Wilson (Iraq), you'd have to make it so that your home sits atop a fortified hill, is armed with a far larger family to do the fighting, outguns every other neighbor ten-fold and then some, and already has "inspectors" going through the bad neighbors home on a regular basis. His whole argument really just isn't analogous to the Iraq invasion at all. It isn't "self-defense" if your opponent had no way of winning in the first place. edit: clarity tek79 fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Oct 14, 2010 |
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Oct 14, 2010 01:58
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BonoMan posted:You know this is pretty easy with Google Ads right? With talented people across so many disciplines on SA you could probably whip up something amazing assuming you could get people to actually work together. In theory at least it could be great - but maybe it would just devolve into 
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Oct 14, 2010 04:02
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Anosmoman posted:With talented people across so many disciplines on SA you could probably whip up something amazing assuming you could get people to actually work together. In theory at least it could be great - but maybe it would just devolve into I'd like to have a few different options on what to donate toward. Just start a thread for people to submit educational or zany videos they made.
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Oct 14, 2010 04:14
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Chunk posted:Second, ask him if a role reversal in his dumb analogy is fair. The US has a history of being a bully and attacking "neighbors", so isn't Iraq justified in arming itself, especially considering the US has a way bigger arsenal of WMDs? Is an ally of Iraq attacking the US out of pre-emptive self-defense justified? After all, the US was making verbal threats. I think the typical rhetoric about this is "Well we're not controlled by a crazy madman who will blow up the opponents without a second thought!!!" and the cognitive dissonance never gets resolved.
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Oct 14, 2010 05:36
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Panne posted:Well, here in Norway at least, there can be a bit long to wait for things like knee surgery, hip replacement and so on. You wait for stuff in the U.S. a long time too, My family has outstanding insurance since my father is a Government employee and my sister still had to wait 3 months to get a major ear surgery. Thats anecdotal I know, but if you go look at the healthcare threads we've had you'll see that even with American claims about the magical free market system and wait time horror stories, our wait times for non essential surgeries are pretty close, or even longer than Canada's Its basically a non argument.
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Oct 14, 2010 07:08
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Coitus_Interruptus posted:You wait for stuff in the U.S. a long time too, My family has outstanding insurance since my father is a Government employee and my sister still had to wait 3 months to get a major ear surgery. Thats anecdotal I know, but if you go look at the healthcare threads we've had you'll see that even with American claims about the magical free market system and wait time horror stories, our wait times for non essential surgeries are pretty close, or even longer than Canada's Not to mention you are still free to go to a private hospital if you want. The government will cover what it would have cost at a public hospital and you "just" have to pay the difference. I'm sure the entrepreneurial insurance industry will figure out how to make quick-treatment policies or something.
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Oct 14, 2010 07:38
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My parents want to retire somewhere in Brazil (or South America) or Scotland. My mom is still a little iffy because, as she told me "Three words: National Health System" I would be allowed to move with them to loving fantasy country deluxe but my mom is trying to find Free Enterprise, Latin America. Jesus lady 
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Oct 14, 2010 08:27
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Coitus_Interruptus posted:You wait for stuff in the U.S. a long time too, My family has outstanding insurance since my father is a Government employee and my sister still had to wait 3 months to get a major ear surgery. Thats anecdotal I know, but if you go look at the healthcare threads we've had you'll see that even with American claims about the magical free market system and wait time horror stories, our wait times for non essential surgeries are pretty close, or even longer than Canada's I had insurance when I required ear surgery. They denied it, so technically I've now been waiting 8 months for the surgery. That sort of stuff doesn't get counted.
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Oct 14, 2010 14:17
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Nessus posted:I think real crises tend to get prioritized heavily and so there is no waiting (or at least, no waiting inherent to the system.) I believe things which are not immediately threatening to life and limb, but which can have long term degenerative effects or simply suck, like hip replacements or some organ transplants, do have waiting lists, and there is criticism because people can die indirectly while waiting. Also, well, if your hips are out, you can't... walk, and that is possibly where you get things like people opting to pay five large and go to America to get it done rather than be miserable and semi-sessile for three years. The only way you'd get a hip replacement for 5000 in the US without insurance is if you let the surgeon take an organ of his choice while he had you on the table.
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Oct 14, 2010 16:04
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Cjones posted:My parents want to retire somewhere in Brazil (or South America) or Scotland. My mom is still a little iffy because, as she told me "Three words: National Health System" Somalia has small pretty much non-existent government, few if any taxes, no gun control, and it's right on the beach! Of course she probably won't like all the black people. And the toxic beaches covered in sludge from illegally dumped toxic waste dumped by European companies after the dissolution of the Somali government in the early nineties, resulting in a rag tag group of local fishermen picking up guns and starting what they called a "Somali coast guard" that captured and ransomed ships that were dumping illegally as a way to pay for the care of the coast residences who had drastically increased instances of cancer and other diseases, and as a deterrent to future illegal dumping.
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Oct 14, 2010 17:32
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Did we get this one yet? Imagine it interlaced with an animated gif of a guy at a desk alternating between writing and having his pen on his chin thinking. It was obnoxiously sprinkled into every line. I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes & the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. So, here is my question: Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their BUTT----doing drugs while I work. Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? I guess we could call the program "URINE OR YOU'RE OUT"! Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Something has to change in this country - AND SOON! P.S. Just a thought, all politicians should have to pass a urine test too!
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Oct 14, 2010 17:37
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Saw this on facebook: " pretty sure I would celebrate the coming of conquistadors if i lived in one of the countless villages the aztecs destroyed to provide their gods with the thousands of human sacrifices they required daily. better to risk smallpox than have my throat slit for a pagan god." This was in a conversation about Christopher Columbus. There are just so many things wrong with that statement.
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Oct 14, 2010 17:56
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Chunk posted:Saw this on facebook: I'm hoping that's hyperbole, but it never is with these people, is it?  Also, loving the word "Pagan" and the implication that the Americans had a concept of religion even vaguely similar to Christian Europe.
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Oct 14, 2010 19:02
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I am on this email list because unfortunately, I had to correspond with the author for work. He's not conservative, per se (another large section of the newsletter is railing against religion in government) but...well, have a readThe Don Ardell Wellness Report posted:
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Oct 14, 2010 19:23
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One human sacrifice is too many, really.
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Oct 14, 2010 19:31
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Chunk posted:This was in a conversation about Christopher Columbus. There are just so many things wrong with that statement. Not that the rape and pillaging of an entire continent was a good thing or anything but he's kind of right how it was an improvement for much of the tribes that inhabited Mexico. I have a slew of Mexican history books that cover in detail, how absolutely awful it was to live in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish. The Aztecs where gigantic cunts.
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Oct 14, 2010 19:38
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Not only were the Aztecs not the only culture to practice human sacrifice in Mesoamerica, you're attempting to justify genocide. So how is being wiped out better?
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Oct 14, 2010 19:41
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Slaughtered by disease from which you have no protection, enslaved then forced to work backbreaking labor in gold and silver mines for the Spanish crown until you drop dead. Yeah, lots to be thankful for.
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Oct 14, 2010 19:47
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Chunk posted:Not only were the Aztecs not the only culture to practice human sacrifice in Mesoamerica, you're attempting to justify genocide. So how is being wiped out better? Not trying to justify it at all, just saying Aztecs weren't peaceful or picturesque in anyway. They we're extremely violent and ruled the neighboring tribes through sheer brutality. It in no way excuses the abuses and horrors of the Spanish, but we need to keep in mind that the Aztecs where not idyllic or peaceful and we're actually really hated by many of their neighbors. One of the heaviest contributions to their complete defeat by the Spanish was that many of the neighboring tribes took the arrival of the conquistadors as a much sought after opportunity and helped them defeat the Aztecs. Again not that I approve of genocide, but the arrival of the Spanish was a huge boon to my tribe. The Jesuits arrived and after converting much of the indigenous population to Christianity provided them with the means to farm and produce cotton and other products at a rate and of sufficient quality to become strong enough economically to at multiple points fight the Authority of the Mexican state. Not that I celebrate the horrors and atrocities of the Spanish conquerors, but what I'm saying is that while that other guy is a complete racist prick. I can think of at least one example, where the arrival of the Spanish was a net benefit to the indigenous population. Even if you want to argue that they lost their religion to the Jesuits the reality is that most of the rituals and practices that survived to this day, survived only because of their association with Catholic ceremonies. The Deer Dance, the making of Masks for Passion plays. The only violence perpetuated against them came from Mexicans and Americans. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Oct 14, 2010 |
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Oct 14, 2010 19:57
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Coitus_Interruptus posted:You wait for stuff in the U.S. a long time too, My family has outstanding insurance since my father is a Government employee and my sister still had to wait 3 months to get a major ear surgery. Thats anecdotal I know, but if you go look at the healthcare threads we've had you'll see that even with American claims about the magical free market system and wait time horror stories, our wait times for non essential surgeries are pretty close, or even longer than Canada's I work a job that sees a fair amount of joint injuries. We are also union, and get that awesome "Cadillac" health insurance. The kind where the eyes of doctors and receptionists light up when I walk through the door. Hips, knees, shoulders and even back surgeries are considered "elective" so long as there isn't anything to directly cause death. So even people with above average health insurance, and the wide variety of private doctors to go see, still have to wait many months to get treated. To add insult to injury, a lot of these guys end up hooked on opiates because doctors will prescribe endless amounts of pills while you wait upwards of 6 months unable to walk or keep your shoulder in socket. Wait time being longer then recovery time is pretty much a given. Also, doctors have their own system for choosing who is next in line. If I go into the ER with a broken toe, I could sit there all day if a stream of "chest pain" suffers and car accident victims keep jumping in in front of me. Not to long ago, my wife got her dentist appointment canceled, while she was there, because some one came in with a problem bigger then her filling. A month before that, I had to wait an extra half hour for my appointment at the same dentist because some guy without insurance needed an x-ray. He had no insurance and no cash, and sitting their I could only think to myself that I was pretty much paying for his free $100 x-ray through what they charge my insurance. The wait time issue is a canard. In the US, only the fabulously wealthy get immediate treatment for any problem. Basketball stars can get knee surgery when ever they want. Truck drivers and dock workers can wait months if their knee surgery is covered at all.
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Oct 14, 2010 20:05
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Kavak posted:I'm hoping that's hyperbole, but it never is with these people, is it? Remember, Mexicans pop out babies by the dozen, and Mexicans are just diluted Aztecs so Aztec girls must have popped them out by the hundred. Therefore thousands of sacrifices daily is quite plausible.
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Oct 14, 2010 21:32
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Coitus_Interruptus posted:Not that the rape and pillaging of an entire continent was a good thing or anything but he's kind of right how it was an improvement for much of the tribes that inhabited Mexico. I have a slew of Mexican history books that cover in detail, how absolutely awful it was to live in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish. The Aztecs where gigantic cunts. If only we could have asked the local indiginous population how they'd have liked the forced destruction of their culture first, rather than reading the 10th-hand assumptions of the Europeans 500-years after the fact. Whoopsie. PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Oct 15, 2010 |
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Oct 15, 2010 01:23
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Not what I meant at all man. It doesn't have to be black and white. the Aztecs where really really really brutal to their neighbors and it comes as no surprise those neighbors where quick to ally with the Spanish to defeat them. That doesn't excuse anything the Spanish did at all. The reality though is that the Aztecs where guilty of many of the same atrocities as the Spanish and to give them a clean record simply because they where then victimized in turn is completely unfair. Modern Mexico as we know it didn't exist, it was massive complex of tribes and power structures and while the arrival of the Spanish meant dreadful and terrible things for vast swathes of the indigenous population. It was hardly uniform. Some groups collaborated with the Spanish and received amicable treatment. Previously marginalized tribes where able to use the arrival of the Spanish to gain some semblances of power. Other tribes and groups never saw actual violence and where instead uneventfully converted to Christianity and largely ignored only to later be victimized by Mexican's and not Europeans. To say some Tribes fared better than others when the Spanish arrived is neither unrealistic nor a tacit approval of Spanish colonialism. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 15, 2010 |
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Oct 15, 2010 01:37
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If you're speaking about 16th century "Mexico", it's reasonable to be against: 1. Aztec supremacy, Spanish imperialism 2. Spanish imperialism, Aztec supremacy 3. Both If you somehow take the position that the Spanish were hosed up but not the Aztecs, you're wrong. If you somehow take the position that the Aztecs were hosed up but not the Spanish, you're also wrong. The two aren't even on the same level. The Spanish wanted to rob the country for as many slaves and as much gold as they could get as fast as possible. The Aztecs wanted to dominate the country for long-term power and, in the short term, sacrificial captives. The two are both morally repugnant but not equivalent. The difference between the Spanish and the Aztecs is the difference between the desire to rule and the desire to loot. If the 16th century Spanish had had their way, Mexico would have been a country of mines, mining towns, roads to the coast, and ports. This is what they tried their best to do and this is still apparent in Mexico to this day. Even a conditional defense of the Spanish regime in Mexico is absolutely wrong. You can't say "The Aztecs were bad, so the Spanish were at least a little bit justified." Two wrongs do not make a right. There is no gray area in this debate, as there are in so many others. No tribe made out well in the end when it came to Spanish control of Mexico. They all got loving destroyed. Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Oct 15, 2010 |
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Oct 15, 2010 04:36
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Good derail guys
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Oct 15, 2010 07:55
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poopinmymouth posted:I guess we could call the program "URINE OR YOU'RE OUT"! Of course, the follow-up to this would be "Why do WE have to pay taxes for mandatory drug tests?!?!?!"
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Oct 15, 2010 11:59
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quote:This is by a daughter of a murdered couple in Raytown who had a Bible and Bookstore on 63rd street. Separation of Church and State? What's that? (Also didn't happen)
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Oct 17, 2010 05:13
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Man, too bad she didn't have her wits about her, she would have really let that Judge have it and maybe the Judge would have realized the folly of his ways!
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Oct 17, 2010 06:22
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RagnarokAngel posted:Separation of Church and State? What's that?  Wishful thinking, I know. I also really like how the fact that the parents of the daughters got murdered had a single thing to do with people not having say "So help me God!" in courtrooms. 
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Oct 17, 2010 09:29
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My favorite part from those types of emails is that they always, always have some line that goes to the effect of "If we didn't take GOD out of _____, this would never happen!"
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Oct 17, 2010 11:55
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Blarghalt posted:My favorite part from those types of emails is that they always, always have some line that goes to the effect of "If we didn't take GOD out of _____, this would never happen!" Yeah. Seems to me that the writer had cause and effect a little confused, too. Getting God into the courtroom seems kind of like the wrong point in the chain, if you ask me. "If only we had kept God in the hospital, these people wouldn't be sick!"
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Oct 17, 2010 15:30
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Not sure why I keep doing this to myself, but I am arguing with idiots yet again on Facebook: Speechless.
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Oct 18, 2010 01:54
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