Obama care passes. Any opinions? Lawyers reading it over

[DAS]

Everyone knows we need healthcare reform in the US. This bill is not it.

Exactly!

[Sagittarius Rising]

Let me just say, I am no big fan of this bill but it is a first step, even if somewhat misguided it is getting the ball rolling and it is not socialism.

My big question is this: Why can't we as a nation simply look at what other countries are doing, pick the one that best fits our needs, and adapt it for America? Why must we always re-invent the wheel, just to figure this out 10 or 20 years down the road. As a example, why don't we simply adopt the system in place in Germany or the Netherlands??? I used to date a German woman and we would schedule our vacations around check up time because she loved the health care system in Germany so much. I asked her why their system is so good and I almost shit when she told me that Germany's system is less socialized than Americas! That's right, less socialized, in a country that is a socialistic republic. You see, what the Germans, Swedes, Dutch, and Norwegians have done is simply set price controls on health care services. They still have insurance companies, and you pay for health care out of your paycheck just like most Americans do. The difference is the government will not allow a hospital, for example, to charge $10 for an aspirin. The hospital, or doctor is allowed a 20% profit over cost for material such as drugs, tests, surgery, etc. They get paid quite well (doctors) compared to American doctors, about 2/3, and have equal or better education.

Also, unrelated yet connected, Germany has a unique welfare system...if you lose your job you get one, that's right, one government check equal to two weeks pay. Then they hand you a paper with about 10 - 20 companies that WILL hire you and say bye. No more checks! So, if you do not want to work, fine, but then you don't receive any more assistance checks either.

I am not saying Germany is Eden, though I am saying they and other countries have some good ideas worth exploring and adapting.

[greenman]

Everyone knows we need healthcare reform in the US. This bill is not it.

Its not ideal but I'd argue its a step in the right direction given how messed up your system is and how heavly the population have been indoctrinated to support it. Basically most opposition to the bill in the US believes it goes to far when in reality I believe it doesnt go nearly far enough.

Why is the government limiting what a private corporation can make?

Why? Because they will eventually squeeze the private companies out altogether.

As a citizen of the UK, they may not bother you, I'm not sure.

But we're pretty big on that whole free-enterprise thing.

I wonder what industry the government will target next?

How has that worked out for you so far? it looks like its created a healthcare system that offers poorer care AND costs more in public money due to private sector expliotation.

The US goverement can and does limate the behavour and profits of private industry in a great many ways, antitrust, anti polution, comsumer rights etc, The massive cost and lack of service for the poor in the healthcare industry seems like a pretty clear case for intervention to me.

The massive misconception Americans seem to have is that universal healthcare means the death of the private sector as in Canada when in reality the two can and do coexist in many nations such as here in the UK.

[mstork]

The massive misconception Americans seem to have is that universal healthcare means the death of the private sector as in Canada when in reality the two can and do coexist in many nations such as here in the UK.

Frankly I know enough Brits to know that the healthcare system over there should not be a model for us. "Death panels" may be an exaggeration but "rationing" is not.

To those who say the bill is "a step in the right direction" I'll counter that the majority in the US think it's a step in the wrong direction. Let me put it this way; even if you didn't understand all the nuances of this law, what would you think if...

-The bill is over 2500 pages and nobody realistically had a chance to read the whole thing before voting on it.

-The President himself left all the heavy lifting to Pelosi and Reid, two politicians who will never be mistaken for FDR or Ike.

-The state of Massachusetts elected a Republican(!) to Kennedy's old seat to stop this bill, and the Dems passed it via reconciliation anyway.

That's not reform, it's political opportunism, and it stinks.

Anyone think the Republicans elected in 2010 have been obstructionists? Good. They're doing what they were elected to do after the democrats had control of the Presidency, House, and Senate for two years and chose to bully this unpopular bill through the legislature instead of prioritizing jobs, true tax reform (way to appoint Simpson-Bowles, talk it up for a year, then completely ignore it Mr. President), and demonize the Repubs for attempting to address entitlement reform.

I don't begrudge any of the other nations in the world to handle healthcare as they see fit. Here in the US, many of us would rather see this addressed by the states, with interstate competition for insurance and true tort reform for starters.

[greenman]

Frankly I know enough Brits to know that the healthcare system over there should not be a model for us. "Death panels" may be an exaggeration but "rationing" is not.

...and yet the world healthcare organisation rank your system #37 and ours #18 with France at #1 opperating a system of compulsary insurance thats basicly Obamacare with the middlemen cutout.

Sorry but I believe Americans have simpley been brainwashed by the lobbying power of the healthcare industry that is protected obscenely large profits by any means that it can. Your system doesnt offer good care for the entire population and it is not in anyway cost effective with the amount of public expendature involved.

Obamacare is working towards objectives that he clearly has a mandate for given his promises in the last election, what changed is I'd say those who'se interests are threatened by it are fighting back though there political and media pawns.

[mstork]

...and yet the world healthcare organisation rank your system #37 and ours #18 with France at #1 opperating a system of compulsary insurance thats basicly Obamacare with the middlemen cutout.

Sorry but I believe Americans have simpley been brainwashed by the lobbying power of the healthcare industry that is protected obscenely large profits by any means that it can. Your system doesnt offer good care for the entire population and it is not in anyway cost effective with the amount of public expendature involved.

Obamacare is working towards objectives that he clearly has a mandate for given his promises in the last election, what changed is I'd say those who'se interests are threatened by it are fighting back though there political and media pawns.

Well, respectfully I'd say you sound like Obama's campaign team. Anyone not on board with their vision must be uneducated, misinformed, or "brainwashed" as you put it. Tell it to people who have to wait years for a hip replacement because they're "too old".

And no, he didn't have a mandate to reform healthcare. He had a mandate to get people back to work and cut the defecit, and he hasn't been serious about either. Again, as I said in my first post, we do need reform. This is not it.

[Bong-Man]

...and yet the world healthcare organisation rank your system #37 and ours #18 with France at #1 opperating a system of compulsary insurance thats basicly Obamacare with the middlemen cutout.

Sorry but I believe Americans have simpley been brainwashed by the lobbying power of the healthcare industry that is protected obscenely large profits by any means that it can. Your system doesnt offer good care for the entire population and it is not in anyway cost effective with the amount of public expendature involved.

Obamacare is working towards objectives that he clearly has a mandate for given his promises in the last election, what changed is I'd say those who'se interests are threatened by it are fighting back though there political and media pawns.

Appreciate your opinion. I refuse to argue this issue anymore with anyone in America until they first explain to me what type of health care they have, and who pays for it. People need to realize that even those who have coverage from their employer, are seeing those benefits erode very quickly. My dental coverage is the same $1,000 max as it was 34 years ago, co-pays are going up, paying 20% on the premium, and it ain't over yet. During the largest economic expansion in the history of the United States, my benefits were reduced. Those with benfits are getting screwed too.

[Sagittarius Rising]

Appreciate your opinion. I refuse to argue this issue anymore with anyone in America until they first explain to me what type of health care they have, and who pays for it. People need to realize that even those who have coverage from their employer, are seeing those benefits erode very quickly. My dental coverage is the same $1,000 max as it was 34 years ago, co-pays are going up, paying 20% on the premium, and it ain't over yet. During the largest economic expansion in the history of the United States, my benefits were reduced. Those with benfits are getting screwed too.

Exactly, spot on!!! I am a 44 year old man, in excellent health, never been in the hospital or to the doctor for anything. I have my routine check-up every year, pat me on my head and say, "see ya next year." I do not smoke (never have), drink moderately, do not do drugs, run 6 miles every other day with my wife, weight-lift every other day.

In 1995 I was purchasing my own health care as me and my father had our own business. In 95' I was paying $55 per month for Blue cross / Blue Shield with a $15 co-pay and a $100 deductable on hospitalization, $500 deductable on major surgery. Now in 2012 and in better physical shape than I was in 1995, I pay $500 per month for me and my wife for Aetna, with a employer contribution (the practice I work for) of 40% which brings the total monthly health care expense for two very healthy (I am 5'11" 175lbs and athletic build, my wife is 5'9" and 120lbs athletic build) adults to about $825. We have a $40 co-pay on office visits, labs must be performed at a satellite office (Sonora Quest Labs) to be covered, $2,500 deductable for major medical. Also, in 1995 when I went to my primary if I had a 10am appointment I would be seen within 10 minutes of appointment time, now the wait is at least one hour.

To stress one very importaint point which keeps being brought up. In Canada and Great Britain they have a "triage" system of care which means if your condition is not very severe (knee replacement, mole removal, etc) you usually have to wait about eight months for treatment. However, in those countries, if you are diagnosed with a disease or illness you are seen and treated immediatley, just like here. And, in the good old USA if you need to see a doctor and you are a new patient you have at least a six week wait time to be seen for anything including cancer. So yes, our system sucks and has sucked big time since the late 1990's. It all about the money here and I for one think it is a sin to charge such insane prices for a basic human right of access to health care.

One last point, anyone on this board who is American and has a decent amount of cash and assets, you better damn well set up a trust and transfer all cash and assets by the time you hit 65 to a relative you can trust who is younger, otherwise should you get a nasty illness, once your insurance benefit has maxed out they will take EVERYTHING YOU OWN OR HAVE TO PAY THE BILL. That's right, you will be left destitute after a lifetime of hard work!

Great health care system we have here, just fantastic!

[Anjin-san]

3.2% tax on medical devices.

Hoo-ray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cryingbluerain]

85% of Americans have health coverage.

Of the 15% who don't, it wouldn't be a stretch to say at least 5% are healthy young adult taxpayers who voluntarily choose to NOT carry health insurance, opting to pay office visits as they go instead, gambling they won't get a major illness at that age.

Not a particularly responsible choice, but a reasonable gamble they have the right to make for themselves.

I did that very thing for a number of years.

That leaves 10%.

Currently, over 8% are unemployed.

That leaves 2% out in the cold.

Healthcare isn't perfect, but it's far from the disaster it's being portrayed as.

It could be fixed in a much more efficient way that leaves Americans with the freedom to continue to make choices for themselves, instead of the government stepping in and forcing everyone to participate in their mandated ponzi scheme.

And if we had been focusing on jobs and the economy rather than a very expensive "fix" for healthcare over the last 3 years, those unemployment numbers would be lower, and more people would be working and getting some form of coverage.

But it was a decision borne of politics rather than prioritized need.

Copied this from the DHS thread because Type O makes some excellent points. I would also add that it is O-care itself that is hindering an economic recovery because businesses are less likely to hire/invest and consumers less likely to spend when they are faced with the uncertainty of the effects this law will have on the economy.

[Sagittarius Rising]

Copied this from the DHS thread because Type O makes some excellent points. I would also add that it is O-care itself that is hindering an economic recovery because businesses are less likely to hire/invest and consumers less likely to spend when they are faced with the uncertainty of the effects this law will have on the economy.

That is an extreme example and if were true, the Northern European nations would be worst off than Greece and Spain. The fact that the contrary is true and the Northern European nations boast the strongest economies in the world and have the highest standard of living. How do you explain that?

[cryingbluerain]

That is an extreme example and if were true, the Northern European nations would be worst off than Greece and Spain. The fact that the contrary is true and the Northern European nations boast the strongest economies in the world and have the highest standard of living. How do you explain that?

Their HC system may be working for them but newsflash: the USA is not Europe. It's not even an apples to oranges comparison. We have a system of dual sovereignty (federalism) that limits the central government's control of state policies. All European governments operate from systems of centralized control where one size fits all. They can accomplish this because they have a more homogenous and distinct people in each country compared with the diversity we have in America.

Another point, the US already has a ponzi scheme called Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that is bankrupting the country and is unsustainable. On top of this we want to pile on the monstrosity of O-care?

Insanity = doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[ally]

. All European governments operate from systems of centralized control where one size fits all. They can accomplish this because they have a more homogenous and distinct people in each country compared with the diversity we have in America.

Insanity = doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[GeorgeC]

I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, but I'll say it more explicitly here.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I appreciate the conservative/free-enterprise opposition to the US health care bill. What I find really odd, though, is that so many conservatives and free enterprisers are posting their thoughts on a Led Zeppelin message board - isn't this a group of British sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-rollers from the dreaded 1960s and 70s? Didn't they do peace-love-and-unity anthems like "That's The Way," "Misty Mountain Hop," and "The Rover"? Wasn't there a recent pic posted here of Page and Plant attending a rally for Democrat candidate George McGovern in 1972?

Hey, Republicans and Tea Partiers: isn't there a nice Ted Nugent or Gene Simmons site where you can complain about socialists and big government taking away your freedom? Their music's not as good as Led Zeppelin's, but I'd say their politics are a lot more like yours.

[DAS]

^ Jimmy Page is a Republican.

[2bitnogoodjive]

I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, but I'll say it more explicitly here.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I appreciate the conservative/free-enterprise opposition to the US health care bill. What I find really odd, though, is that so many conservatives and free enterprisers are posting their thoughts on a Led Zeppelin message board - isn't this a group of British sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-rollers from the dreaded 1960s and 70s? Didn't they do peace-love-and-unity anthems like "That's The Way," "Misty Mountain Hop," and "The Rover"? Wasn't there a recent pic posted here of Page and Plant attending a rally for Democrat candidate George McGovern in 1972?

Hey, Republicans and Tea Partiers: isn't there a nice Ted Nugent or Gene Simmons site where you can complain about socialists and big government taking away your freedom? Their music's not as good as Led Zeppelin's, but I'd say their politics are a lot more like yours.

Isn't this in the Ramble On section, the place to post things about non-Zep topics?

Just because I like Zep music doesn't mean I have to agree with their politics.

[jimmie ray]

I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, but I'll say it more explicitly here.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I appreciate the conservative/free-enterprise opposition to the US health care bill. What I find really odd, though, is that so many conservatives and free enterprisers are posting their thoughts on a Led Zeppelin message board - isn't this a group of British sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-rollers from the dreaded 1960s and 70s? Didn't they do peace-love-and-unity anthems like "That's The Way," "Misty Mountain Hop," and "The Rover"? Wasn't there a recent pic posted here of Page and Plant attending a rally for Democrat candidate George McGovern in 1972?

Hey, Republicans and Tea Partiers: isn't there a nice Ted Nugent or Gene Simmons site where you can complain about socialists and big government taking away your freedom? Their music's not as good as Led Zeppelin's, but I'd say their politics are a lot more like yours.

What an absurd opinion - I can't enjoy good music, because I lean conservative? I don't give a rat's ass about about what any musician's political views are, or if some of their songs contained dreamy ideas that are proven through history to be of no benefit to civilization as a whole. One of my other favorite groups is Jefferson Airplane. Below is an except from Jorma Kaukonen's blog (he did not write it), which certainly goes against what they were extolling back in the 60's - yet he has matured enough to understand reason:

THIS spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women’s rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?

There was a long pause. People shrugged and sighed. I had an epiphany, which I offered, bumming out everybody in the room.

What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous. It’s all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.

From the beginning, the American idea embodied a tension between radical individualism and the demands of the commonweal. The document we’re celebrating today says in its second line that axiomatic human rights include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — individualism in a nutshell. But the Declaration’s author was not a greed-is-good guy: “Self-love,” Jefferson wrote to a friend 38 years after the Declaration, “is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”

Periodically Americans have gone overboard indulging our propensities to self-gratification — during the 1840s, during the Gilded Age, and again in the Roaring Twenties. Yet each time, thanks to economic crises and reassertions of moral disapproval, a rough equilibrium between individualism and the civic good was restored.

Consider America during the two decades after World War II. Stereotypically but also in fact, the conformist pressures of bourgeois social norms were powerful. To dress or speak or live life in unorthodox, extravagantly individualist ways required real gumption. Yet just as beatniks were rare and freakish, so were proudly money-mad Ayn Randian millionaires. My conservative Republican father thought marginal income tax rates of 91 percent were unfairly high, but he and his friends never dreamed of suggesting they be reduced below, say, 50 percent. Sex outside marriage was shameful, beards and divorce were outré — but so were boasting of one’s wealth and blaming unfortunates for their hard luck. When I was growing up in Omaha, rich people who could afford to build palatial houses did not and wouldn’t dream of paying themselves 200 or 400 times what they paid their employees. Greed as well as homosexuality was a love that dared not speak its name.

But then came the late 1960s, and over the next two decades American individualism was fully unleashed. A kind of tacit grand bargain was forged between the counterculture and the establishment, between the forever-young and the moneyed.

Going forward, the youthful masses of every age would be permitted as never before to indulge their self-expressive and hedonistic impulses. But capitalists in return would be unshackled as well, free to indulge their own animal spirits with fewer and fewer fetters in the forms of regulation, taxes or social opprobrium.

“Do your own thing” is not so different than “every man for himself.” If it feels good, do it, whether that means smoking weed and watching porn and never wearing a necktie, retiring at 50 with a six-figure public pension and refusing modest gun regulation, or moving your factories overseas and letting commercial banks become financial speculators. The self-absorbed “Me” Decade, having expanded during the ’80s and ’90s from personal life to encompass the political economy, will soon be the “Me” Half-Century.

People on the political right have blamed the late ’60s for what they loathe about contemporary life — anything-goes sexuality, cultural coarseness, multiculturalism. And people on the left buy into that, seeing only the ’60s legacies of freedom that they define as progress. But what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same libertarian coin minted around 1967. Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.

In that letter from 1814, Jefferson wrote that our tendencies toward selfishness where liberty and our pursuit of happiness lead us require “correctives which are supplied by education” and by “the moralist, the preacher, and legislator.”

[mstork]

I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, but I'll say it more explicitly here.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I appreciate the conservative/free-enterprise opposition to the US health care bill. What I find really odd, though, is that so many conservatives and free enterprisers are posting their thoughts on a Led Zeppelin message board - isn't this a group of British sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-rollers from the dreaded 1960s and 70s? Didn't they do peace-love-and-unity anthems like "That's The Way," "Misty Mountain Hop," and "The Rover"? Wasn't there a recent pic posted here of Page and Plant attending a rally for Democrat candidate George McGovern in 1972?

Hey, Republicans and Tea Partiers: isn't there a nice Ted Nugent or Gene Simmons site where you can complain about socialists and big government taking away your freedom? Their music's not as good as Led Zeppelin's, but I'd say their politics are a lot more like yours.

George, I'm disappointed to see such a closed-minded and judgemental post from you given the fact that I loved your book.

First of all the "rally" Page and Plant attended for McGovern was a concert. You really think they would have been passing out pamphlets for the guy of there weren't great acts at that show? They showed more support for CS&N than McGovern, what a stretch! Furthermore, they've gone out of their way to NOT be political, which is just one of the things I love about them. They've never lectured anyone a la Springsteen, etc., they know their role and respect their audience.

Before you thoughtfully pawn us off on Ted Nugent, did you know Condi Rice is a big Zeppelin fan? Is she allowed or should she have to listen to the Nuge too?

Here's a simple rule to keep in mind; someone's views on art, music, sex, etc., are not dictated by their personal view of the proper role of government.

[DAS]

I have a friend who was a hippie, and I mean a real hippie from the 60s who had long hair and used drugs and believed in peace not war, the whole nine yards. He is against this health care bill as well as the current administration in general. He didn't have a big change of heart or anything because the hippies were about protesting the Vietnam war not about healthcare or immigration or anything else like that. I think it's closed minded to say that everyone on the hippie scene, as Led Zeppelin were, adhere to the liberal agenda 50 YEARS AFTER THE MOVEMENT! I have another ex-hippie friend who does support the bill. The simple truth is you can't say that because someone was involved with a group half a century ago that you can lump them together into the same group today on issues that were totally unrelated to the original movement.

[GeorgeC]

No intention of insulting anyone's politics; sorry if I did. I'm just struck by the disconnect between Led Zeppelin's place on the social-cultural spectrum versus some of their fans'. Guess I just assumed rock 'n' rollers are generally liberal in their outlook. In fact, Jimmy Page told a contemporary interviewer that he voted for Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in the 1979 UK election.

I get the critiques of the Sixties' (and Led Zeppelin's) do-your-own-thing ethos. Indeed, a lot of the neoconservative backlash that began in the late Seventies and through the Eighties arose from the excesses of the previous decades. People, and governments, found out the hard way that psychedelic drugs and indiscriminate sex have their downsides, that expansive state largesse isn't economically sustainable, and that rights have to be balanced with responsibilities. Many of the peace-and-love ideals of Led Zeppelin's music and lifestyle turned out to be very naive or very unhealthy. I get all that.

That said, I still find some of the opposition to your President Obama and his policies to be wildly overstated. In Canada, we have a Conservative Prime Minister said by progressives to be "like Hitler" because of his policies (which have the support of many citizens); in the US, you have a liberal President said by conservatives to be "like Hitler" because of his policies (which have the support of many citizens). Neither caricature makes for very constructive debate.

Can't we tone down the rhetoric and say that the US health care bill is a debatable plan of well-intentioned leaders - flawed, problematic, or otherwise unworkable - rather than make it out to be some kind of cynical bid to suppress Americans' personal liberty? I heard the same kind of alarmism coming from the left when George W. Bush was president. It was pointless then and it's pointless now.

For those interested, there's more here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Dissent-Fallacies-Political/dp/1463690150/ref=la_B001JS6RIG_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1341785736&sr=1-5

[DAS]

Can't we tone down the rhetoric and say that the US health care bill is a debatable plan of well-intentioned leaders - flawed, problematic, or otherwise unworkable - rather than make it out to be some kind of cynical bid to suppress Americans' personal liberty?

I would like to take this view and usually do but because the overwhelming consensus of the people was against the bill it can only be seen as a usurping of the Constitution which gives the authority to the citizens. If, on the other hand, the Democrats had attempted to rally the support of the people for the bill and convince them and at the very least have a near split decision among the people and put it to a vote that would be different. But because of the way in which they shoved it down the people's throat against our wills it is an act of treason.

I will also go on record as saying I am personally against the bill. However, I've been attempting, for the most part, to argue, not over the content or potential results of the bill, but over the way in which it was passed. Forget about whether it's good or bad. Everyone has their opinion and will most likely not change it and we all must get used to that. Further, if the majority was for the bill I would just have to suck it up because this is OUR country and not MY country. But because the people were against it and it was forced on us the potential good or bad results of the bill are irrelevant. The passing of this bill was immoral and should be repealed.

[mstork]

I would like to take this view and usually do but because the overwhelming consensus of the people was against the bill it can only be seen as a usurping of the Constitution which gives the authority to the citizens. If, on the other hand, the Democrats had attempted to rally the support of the people for the bill and convince them and at the very least have a near split decision among the people and put it to a vote that would be different. But because of the way in which they shoved it down the people's throat against our wills it is an act of treason.

I will also go on record as saying I am personally against the bill. However, I've been attempting, for the most part, to argue, not over the content or potential results of the bill, but over the way in which it was passed. Forget about whether it's good or bad. Everyone has their opinion and will most likely not change it and we all must get used to that. Further, if the majority was for the bill I would just have to suck it up because this is OUR country and not MY country. But because the people were against it and it was forced on us the potential good or bad results of the bill are irrelevant. The passing of this bill was immoral and should be repealed.

I echo your comments on the way the bill was passed, which I touched upon earlier in this thread. I even forgot to mention that Pelosi has been handing out waivers like candy, and of course the unions are exempt too. Again, this is not a solution; it's pure partisan politics.

I appreciate George's reply too, but feel it's fair to point out that Obama, among other things, said Bush raising the debt ceiling was irresponsible and showed "a lack of leadership". Then he raised the debt ceiling even more. The guy in the White House and his Chicago team have done more than their share to heat up the hyperbole in this country.

[TypeO]

I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, but I'll say it more explicitly here.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I appreciate the conservative/free-enterprise opposition to the US health care bill. What I find really odd, though, is that so many conservatives and free enterprisers are posting their thoughts on a Led Zeppelin message board - isn't this a group of British sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-rollers from the dreaded 1960s and 70s? Didn't they do peace-love-and-unity anthems like "That's The Way," "Misty Mountain Hop," and "The Rover"? Wasn't there a recent pic posted here of Page and Plant attending a rally for Democrat candidate George McGovern in 1972?

Hey, Republicans and Tea Partiers: isn't there a nice Ted Nugent or Gene Simmons site where you can complain about socialists and big government taking away your freedom? Their music's not as good as Led Zeppelin's, but I'd say their politics are a lot more like yours.

Then you won't be offended when I am explicit in response.

Fuck off.

Oh, the irony of liberals who preach tolerance while berating those who don't share their beliefs as intolerant.

Yeah, I was a child of the 70s, used drugs, partied hard.

But then I grew up and got a job and had to start paying taxes.

And I began giving a damn where and on what my tax money was being spent on.

To paraphrase a common quotation, Anyone who isn't liberal at 20 has no heart. Anyone who isn't conservative at 40 has no brain.

Most of all, GeorgeC, I don't seek out like-minded philosophies to validate my opinions, nor do I wish opposing opinions to go away.

I seek out differing opinions in order to expand my understanding.

But that's just me.

[DAS]

[Sagittarius Rising]

Then you won't be offended when I am explicit in response. Fuck off. Oh, the irony of liberals who preach tolerance while berating those who don't share their beliefs as intolerant. Yeah, I was a child of the 70s, used drugs, partied hard. But then I grew up and got a job and had to start paying taxes. And I began giving a damn where and on what my tax money was being spent on. To paraphrase a common quotation, Anyone who isn't liberal at 20 has no heart. Anyone who isn't conservative at 40 has no brain. Most of all, GeorgeC, I don't seek out like-minded philosophies to validate my opinions, nor do I wish opposing opinions to go away. I seek out differing opinions in order to expand my understanding. But that's just me.

I would say the above statement, "Anyone who isn't liberal at 20 has no heart. Anyone who isn't conservative at 40 has no brain," is more of an indictment of age, laziness, and pure and simple greed, nothing more. You see as a person ages it also tends to make one cynical which resorts to the person feeling a sense of, I am gonna get what I can get and to hell with everyone else. The problem is that is a very selfish and assinine position. A cognitive dissonance results and the conservative mindset is thus born. It's simple, the ideology of youth gives way to the self-serving pragmatism of middle age, and to justify this about face and embrace of the accumulation of money at all costs.

But, that's just my humble opinion as a person who holds strong feelings of civic responsibility and a proponent of Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth.

BONUS: I did not have to result to base name calling, then again I hold respect for my fellow human beings.