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Posts Tagged ‘nancy pelosi’

Bad, bad, US Health Care

30 Nov

Proving the recent studies that say Cuba and other countries have better health care than the US, another international leader, the Saudi King, has traveled internationally for health care.

To Cuba? To the UK? France? Canada? Netherlands?

No. To the United States.

The problems with health care isn’t the treatment – we’ve got the best treatment in the world. Otherwise, perhaps the Saudi King, Canadian officials, and others, would perhaps stay in their own countries or head to Cuba.

The problems have been cost and an entitlement attitude of a large group of citizens.

Cost is high because of a few factors:

  • Cost of compliance with government regulation.
  • Cost of excess treatment to attempt to prevent frivolous lawsuits from being filed.
  • Cost of malpractice insurance and/or legal expenses to fight frivolous lawsuits that have been filed and which benefit trial lawyers (aka Democrat congressmen) more than anyone.

The entitlement attitude is not just among those on government healthcare. If the middle class didn’t feel entitled, we wouldn’t all be in so much debt, having “bought” things we cannot afford. What many Americans expect:

  • Someone else should pay for the health consequences of my behavior.
  • Someone else should pay for the elective treatments I receive.
  • Someone else should take financial care of my family and parents.
  • I deserve to keep the money I make for my work. Doctors that provide treatment and insurance employees that ensure it’s as affordable as possible do not deserve to be paid for their work.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid health plan does a few things to ensure all the problems get worse:

  • Dramatic increases in government regulation are raising the cost of health care.
  • Purposeful ignorance of the frivolous lawsuits has empowered trial lawyers (Democrat congressmen) to continue to file even more frivolous lawsuits which is raising the cost of health care.
  • Adults up to 26 years old have been told that legally they are not needing to be responsible for their own health care.
  • Everyone has been told that pre-existing conditions, often the result of behavioral choices are not their responsibility and someone else will pay for them.

The costs continue to rise, and the entitlement attitude is being encouraged.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care plan has successfully made the two main aspects of the problem worse.

 
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Posted in Culture, Politics

 

RNC Pledge To America

24 Sep
Republicans and the Pledge to America

Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

The Republicans have published a 21 page “Pledge to America“. I have only skimmed it so far, but some of the bullet points indicate a commitment to spurring economic growth by lowering taxes on the citizens and downsizing the government. This means that every business and every individual has more money, and the federal government spends less money.

Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are expected to announce the DNC response today: a 2,200 page document called “Hope for America” that no one has read, and we’ll find out what it contains after the Democrats are elected.

 
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Posted in Politics

 

Nancy Pelosi, Wicked Witch of the West: Why Party Trumps Person in Politics

13 Sep

We’ve often voted just for the individual politician that we like or agree with the most in elections. It’s usually a Republican because there’s some core issues of the Democrat party that are immoral (such as oppressing the poor through entitlement programs that keep them poor and oppressed, abortion, devaluing individuals by lessening individual rights) and Libertarians tend to be unqualified and silly ( with bios that sound like “I’m a kindergarten volunteer, I like the color pink, and I want to be governor and legalize pot!”)

But – at least in the legislative branch, and in a year like 2010, party trumps politics. Here’s the most creative ad campaign I’ve seen in a very long time:

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John Dennis is taking on Nancy Pelosi with this ad, and throughout his website. Americans aren’t too happy with Congress right now. With good reason. The parties switched control of the legislative branch in 2006, and everything went wrong. Unemployment increased, repeated bailouts and stimulus packages were written into law, anyone who dares disagree is slandered and maligned. The economy took a downturn when Pelosi took leadership of the legislative branch, and things continue to move the wrong direction now, 4 years later.

But John Dennis isn’t the only one taking on Pelosi. Every Republican congressman is. Pelosi is in control of every committee and the agenda of what comes to the floor for a vote and when – because the Democrat party has the majority. The same is true with Harry Reid in the Senate. If you vote for a moderate Democrat, it’s a vote for the extreme left-wing ideologues like Pelosi who will both control the legislative branch and ignore the moderate Democrat you vote for.

Isn’t the same true of Republicans? While the Democrats say they want to expand government and do so, the Republicans say they want a smaller government, but during Bush’s presidency, they grew government just like Democrats.

The difference is that Democrats screwed things up right away. The Republicans took a long time to ignore their own platform and increase government intrusion into your life. We need a new change – different from the Democrat ‘echo Obama’ strategy. We the voters need to get rid of the Democrat control of the legislature, and we then need to force the Republicans to stick to conservative principles, or vote them out in the primaries when they’re up for re-election.

A vote for any Democrat, moderate or not is a vote for the Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid control of every law written in Washington.

 
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Posted in Politics

 

How to Fail at Arguing #5

20 Jul

radioOn my way home tonight I heard Randi Rhodes of Air America. In her very loud rant, she kept repeating two lines for the duration of my 10 minute drive.

First, she was responding to charges that the Democrats under Pelosi and Obama have grown the size of government. She listed the dozens of government departments that were created under the 8 years of Bush, totaling hundreds! I agree Randi, Bush shouldn’t have grown government so much. And conservatives said so at the time.

How to fail: Take the 2nd grade “I am rubber you are glue” approach.

When someone says your party is growing government bigger, respond with, “Your party grew the government bigger!” Randi’s response didn’t deal with whether a bigger government is good idea or a bad idea. Presumably Randi is in favor of the bigger government that her party is bringing, so her response is meaningless. All someone has to say is, “I don’t like that Bush grew the government by so much either,” and her argument is totally deflated.

Here’s how the argument could have gone:

Obama is growing the government! That’s bad!

Bush grew the government by huge amounts!

Right. That’s one of the ways Bush wasn’t very conservative. I agree that Bush expanding the government so much was a problem. I said so at the time.

Then the conversation could have gone somewhere productive, like talking about what the government should or should not do.

I think this usually happens when someone knows the negative claim against their position is true. Instead of explaining or justifying where they’re coming from, they simply deflect and say, “You too, you too!”

Another example I heard recently was in response to concerns that Obama could use the oil spill for a government power-grabs, to enforce huge new government programs. The response?

What – like Bush’s illegal wars against countries not even related to 9/11?

The original concern is still valid, but what’s worse is the double-standard. It’s good when Obama takes sweeping action in response to a crisis, but bad if Bush does it? How can there be any logic with such inconsistency? To respond by insulting when Bush did it is to say that it is a bad idea. If a power-grab during a crisis is a bad idea, it’s a bad idea.

Don’t say something is a bad idea when one person does it, but when another person does it, it’s pure righteousness.

 
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Posted in How to Fail at Arguing

 

Obama Inherited This: From Democrats

10 Jul

Obama’s mantra changed when he took office. He used to say “Hope and Change!” Now he says

“It’s not my fault!”

That’s leadership! 2 years into his term Obama still spends his time pointing fingers, and still talks about how he inherited this economy. He inherited the rising unemployment rate. He inherited…

But who did he inherit these things from?

This chart is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over-layed with the House Majorities

Democrats lead the way to unemployment

The unemployment rate was low and was dropping until the Democrats took over the House. As we all learned from Schoolhouse Rock (video embedded below), the House has to vote and pass any bill before the senate can even consider it.  Everything starts in the House.

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Next time you hear Obama say he inherited the problems, just remember – he inherited them from Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat friends in the House, who were doing what he thinks they should have been doing.

 
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Posted in Politics