ExRx.net

You're pretty close there Wouter. And yes, the Republicans did want to make some changes to the current system, which mainly had a lot to do with privatization. Something merging the privatization and Govt would probably be good, but unfortunately, the two parties in congress apparently don't agree with working with each other and comprimising. Both are my way or the highway, which isn't helping John Q Public a bit

Isn't that always the case with politics/politicians?
And I don't get why medical care should be privatised.
Or is the reason that Americans don't want something led by the government?

That's one of the reasons. The thoughts on that are that if you put the medical community in competition, it will lower the prices. Also, they say Govt botches everything and the costs would rise. The truth is probably somewhere in between there somewhere.

It's really hard to say anymore who the Republicans are. It appears they are held hostage by the Tea Party, whose policy objectives appear to be nothing short of the complete rollback to pre-New Deal society. They appear to be attempting to recreate the conditions that led to the Great Depression.

They thought the same thing over here when they privatised the electricity.
We pay a lot more now than we should, up to 30% more than in the neighbouring countries.
But that's basically because everybody has stayed with the same provider, and they've got something like a monopoly.
But that's slowly changing, thank god.

I'd still like to have medical care provided by the government though.

Might that change your political parties?
Republicans tearing up their party into far rightwing (tea party) and a more neutral party.
Instead of the democrats and republicans (and some independent), democrats, slightly right wing (whats to word for neither right nor leftwing?) and very right wing.

The original ideas of the tea party were NOT far right wing. It began with a lot of independents, democrats and republicans that were totally pissed off with the fact that their representatives were not paying any attention to them. Basically it started in the healthcare fiasco, and the fact that the democrats were not being transparent (same thing the Repubs did prior to them losing congress) and doing a lot of backroom deals that would jump their taxes up. Unfortunately, the far right Repubs seem to be taking over the tea party, close to what Ken stated. Too bad, the original ideas I could definately live with. If they kept to representatives actually REPRESENTING their districts instead of doing whatever they wanted, stuck to the economy and jobs, and left out all the far right social issues, they'd be a lot better off.

Apropos of nothing, I came across this:

From a facebook page, "Americans Against the Tea Party":

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bail outs, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither.

Well, Ken, IMHO, the wrong people are getting blamed here. I don't see that as the Tea Party, but rather the corporate oligarchy. The hijacked part of the tea party supports those idiots, but not the original ideas.

Agreed.

To answer your question, Wouter, it's propaganda and social issues. They put a lot of religion based issues out there, anti-abortion, anti-gay, etc. This get those voters to ignore stuff. Now propaganda is inherent in all sides, but the right as taken it to an extreme. Look up "the big lie". That is a technique used a lot.

There are really two major tea party factions, plus some other people that fit in with neither. It's mostly far right stuff, but one is quite totalitarian, while the other is kind of balanced between totalitarian and libertarian.

The only reason the majority don't like "Obama care", is because most liberals such as myself, feel it's a neutered piece of $h1t for the most part. It has a couple benefits to it, but mostly it's do nothing crap. Then the right has made up various conspiracy theories believed by different factions. Usually it is conflation. A social program, becomes socialized despite there being no public option, which become socialism, which is related to Communism, which the only Communist country Americans are familiar with is the old USSR, so that becomes totalitarian. So basically the health care bill is equated with totalitarianism. Plus the usual "government takeover" language used as propaganda to sell it.

The funny thing is one big tea party complaint, was actually capitulation to get it past congress. That was a requirement to buy life insurance, or at least buy it at a discount if you are too poor. So it's really screwed up. The media is corporate owned mostly, so there you go. The only reason it passed at all was because big phrama would gain bigger customer base. That's the problem, stuff that helps peope only makes it through if it helps corporations and/or the rich.

Some people in the tea party of "caught the ball", so to speak, but unfortunately, they are running the wrong way with it, for the most part.

Yeah, I've heard about it, making a very big lie, so big that others think you couldn't come up with it or be making such an obvious lie.
Hmm, I start to get it little by little.

But what do you mean with the neutered part?
That by compromising the plan between the democrats and republicans it has become something of little real value?

Now that this has become the controvesy thread, I might as well get started:

I get that there are a lot of people "pro-life" in the USA.
But I hate that they condemn abortion saying that 'your kid might become the next Einstein', ...
People should be able to choose between being pregnant and abortion if they don't want a child or when the child's handicapped.

If a 16 year old girl is pregnant and she doesn't want a kid she should be able to abort the pregnancy.
They say "what about the life in her belly?" and "whore", ...
But what if she can't support a baby, she lives in a poor family and by having a baby she has to drop out of school,
get a low paying job and in the end there's a big probability that her kid wont have all the chances in life he or she needs,
and the mother could become one of those "what-if" parents.

Wouter, I don't take a far right, or far left position. But this is a social topic, of which the far right Republicans are adamant about. Here's my take. First, the Govt has absolutely no business on determining what a person should or should not do as long as it's not negatively affecting others. Second, this is an extremely hard choice for some young lady to make, and it has to be thought over carefully, and acted in a way that produces the best possible outcome, for HER and the CHILD. Lots of complications there. Third, if you have a penis, you have NO voice in the matter.
Tim