ariscus99

It's kind of amusing, you hate Bush so much, and only(quite obviously) pay attention to the left wing media, your to busy to notice that, even amongst the right Bush doesn't have a whole bunch of fans. Sure most conservative's don't hate him like liberals do. It wasn't the right wing media who made up stories about Bush having mental disorders, autism, and all the other things the left made up. But he still wasn't much liked by the right, mainly because he screwed up their chances for re-election of a republican president in 08. But also because of the banking fiasco, believe it or not, some republicans actually lost some money too, it wasn't all the poor liberal democrats who lost. Conservatives, and republicans, lost their children and parents and brothers and sisters in a war they weren't sure had any meaning. But now that Iraq is doing "better", it's obama's accomplishment. Neat how that happened. They suffered through the real estate burst too. But they are capable of seeing that it wasn't all just one person, and the republicans never had a filibuster proof house and senate, so, the republican party isn't the only one to blame for the things that have happened since 2000. Liberals, who talk about conservatives short term memory, seem to forget this quite often. Oh well. I am consumed with big taxes and big government. Thats not how America was founded, it was founded on the basis of government doing as little as possible. Isn't there a quote that goes something like "the government is best which governs least." I don't feel that I shouldn't pay taxes, I gladly pay my taxes, but there are millions of American's who don't, and not just the rich. I live in one of the highest taxed states. And to now have to pay even more, I'm not a fan of that. Most people I know, don't mind paying taxes, they just don't think they should pay all the taxes. Don't the top 1% pay something like 80% of all the taxes? How is that fare? When it comes to taxes, I'm huge fan of the flat tax. put a 15% tax on everyone and everything, no exemptions whatsoever. I think it would be awesome, would reduce the tax code by 20,000 pages or so, and make everything easier on everyone.

Feel free to factor in state taxes as well, we are trying to be honest here aren't we?

First, when and where did I say Bush was my guy? And where do you get this idea, that I think he is great? Show me something somewhere, that says or implies I think Bush was great. Ask me a simple question like "hey did you vote for Bush?" Why no BJ I didn't. And what my friend was talking about and was very clear about in that message was that with the (coming, as this was sent to me before he bill passed)passage of obamacare and the new taxes, he will now, make these changes, not because of how the medical field has been in the past, because of how it and the taxes will be in the future. The people he knows that have veered away from becoming physicians, according to him, have done so, because of fear of what this bill will do to the medical field. Again, not because of how it was before, but because of what it will become. Whether he and the people he knows are right or wrong about the bill, that is why their decisions were made. I have two other very close friends from high school that dropped out of med school in this what would have been their 3rd year, and have switched tracks to become lawyers. For; according to them, the same reason, the medical field is about to become a wasteland.

And this is a perfect example of selective reading. What did I say in the passage that you quoted? Here let me refresh your memory; verbatim: Protected me and my country from additional terrorist attacks. Now unless I've missed where I said 9/11 happened under someone else's watch.....

From a friend of mine finishing up his residency

Gladly, here; from post 112 of the hypocrisy of repubs thread You were obviously being sarcastic, meaning I wouldn't do any of those things, this isn't a quote about how nice you think I am.

Protected me and my country from additional terrorist attacks.

It's part of what you said, and you right, I confused what you and BJ said, you all have the same talking points and she rides your coattails so often it's easy to confuse the two of you. But you are right. You said the young mean spirited part and she said the wouldn't help my neighbor, part.

November isn't far off.

From the Hypocrisy of Republicans/Conservatives thread, post 137

Ask me in 15 years when I'm your age.

Look outside of TX maybe. Most CA firefighters start around 75 to 80K a year with minimal OT. Definitely not hard to see 100k+ in the first year or two. Engineers, w/ OT closer to 150k a year, captains, close to 200k. Didn't pay anywhere near 252k for my house. 2 cars? Seriously? Two blacked out OT months paid cash for a Nissan Titan, and a Nissan Murano. Tuition at any CSU was about 2000 a semester. Trying a little thing called living within your means, priceless.

Oh really? How so? Just because you couldn't accomplish something doesn't mean that no one can.

And then those 500,000 people can get on government assistance, and we'll be that much closer to the dream right?:confused:

It's funny how everyone profiles you no matter what they actually know or don't know. For instance; yes I'm 25, however I do have a wife and family, she just completed her master’s degree and is a teacher, working a state paid job, with great benefits, I'm a firefighter, I work for a dept that is social security exempt, which I have done since I was 18. During that time I was able to pay for myself, and my wife to go to college, graduate school for her, I'll probably be attending grad school in the next year and a half or so, paid cash for a house, have nice cars, nice things, live the "American dream", still have a nice savings and no credit card debt. But because I'm 25 I get lumped in with every other 25 years old, some of whom have no common sense, no work ethic, little to no morals, and rely heavily on the government for everything. You see them marching for things like tuition increases. Guess what, when the cost of everything else is going up, so will tuition, get a job and stop crying about it. I've never understood the mentality of hand outs. I don't want one, and it would have to be dire circumstances for me to except one, and I would want to pay it back. People like cleo's mom say I have no compassion, I'm young and mean, and don't want to help my fellow American out. She says I wouldn't help my neighbor if they were down and out. What she and most liberals don't get, for one reason or another isn't that conservatives don't want to help people; it's that most of us don't want to be forced to help people. Let us do it of our own free will, don't tax me to help someone all the while telling me how evil I am for not wanting to help. I'd love to help, I regularly make large donations to different charities, one of my favorites is the wishing tree's at Christmas time, my wife and I ever since we started dating have participated in that, it was one of our first Christmas dates, we picked 5 children and 5 seniors to buy presents for. Because it was something we chose to do on our own. Had barry obama sent me a list of 1 child and 1 senior I had to buy gifts for, I probably wouldn't have, or would have done the bare minimum. I help because I want to, not because I'm told to. Health care is the same idea, why shouldn't we deregulate some, open healthcare across state borders, do massive tort reform, I read a report on tort reform that was put out there, the only number included in that was money paid out for lawsuits each year. So when you here the dems cry out, it would only be 2%, that’s nothing, well yeah, 2% is nothing, that only a little less than the profit the ins. companies make. But when you factor in doctors mal-practice premiums, the cost of extra test doctors run for fear of being sued etc, etc, that 2% I believe, though the data isn't out there to support me yet, would climb significantly, which if you cut that out, premiums would fall significantly, opening across state borders, creates much higher supply, which if we all remember 4th grade economics, greater supply, less demand, equals lower prices. Now I work in an ER part time as well, and see the costs of things there, and most are just outrageous, my father-in-law is the CFO of a major hospital in CA and swears the prices are justified because of the cost of doing business(by the way before any greed comments come out, the hospitals he works for are not for profit, which means they have no investors, so they aren’t driving up prices to help out the fat cat wall street investors who are backing the hospital), especially in CA, for example the net cost to build or add on to a hospital, because of all the red tape, taxes, and things you must do in CA, comes in at cool $1 million per bed, well someone has to pay for that so it gets transferred into healthcare cost which push up the cost of premiums, decrease some of these overhead costs to the hospitals, and you’ll decrease costs of the medical care, which will decrease costs of premiums. And all the while you’re not forcing anyone to pay to do anything. How about fining people who don’t have medical coverage, what a crock that is. I read the argument on here, “everyone needs it”, well no, not true, I know lots of people who are into the 50’s and 60’s who lead active healthy lifestyles who’ve never needed it, rarely go to the dr for more than a checkup which they can pay out of pocket, all you have to do is save and be financially responsible. So why should that person have to have coverage or risk being fined. And what about the threat of doctors leaving the medical field? Now I have to say I don’t think it’s a very real threat, but if it was, and if like the NE J of M poll said, happens, and over 40% of doctors leave, that would destroy our medical field. I work with several doctors on a regular basis as well as see my personal doctors regularly and I’m still yet to hear one who thinks this healthcare reform is a good idea. Health care reform in general? Yes, it needs to happen, this particular recipe of reform? No, it’s garbage, says most of them. The tax increases. Only on the wealthiest Americans, the dems say. However the level that makes an American, the wealthiest of them keeps inching down. I’m lucky enough to be in a field that pays phenomenally, my wife is a teacher, so as everyone knows it doesn’t pay that great, however, she does have her master’s degree and a special education credential, she teaches mild to moderate special education, being specialized in that field, earns her a higher salary, so this year, we’re in risk of becoming part of that group of the wealthiest Americans. So now, not only are we going to be paying much higher taxes in general, we’ll also being paying even more taxes to support obamacare. We aren’t rich; we’ve both worked very hard, have got into demanding fields, and would like to reap the benefits of this. However, we’re being penalized for it. We’re just two working class folks, a firemen and a teacher, but here we are paying more in taxes that 20% or Americans will ever pay in taxes. So what does this make us want to do? Well it makes her not want to teach anymore, because if she stops teaching we’ll fall back under the 200k mark and won’t have to pay the extra taxes. She’s a great teacher, loves the children she works with, was blessed with the patience to be able to work with children with special needs, but is getting penalized for it. So she’ll probably work this year, then quit, so we don’t have to pay 50% of our income to taxes. She’ll be a stay at home mom, someone else will have to go through 6 years of college to take her position, and hopefully that person doesn’t have a spouse with a good job or they’ll be in the same position.

Do those hard working "American's" include the 20 million or so illegal aliens that are here? Because this bill does. Here's an interesting article on the "real" cost of this bill.. fantasy in, fantasy out....

What you people really wanted, a single payer system, would have been a huge hit to capitalism. Getting mad at insurance companies and calling them evil over 3% profit margins is just hacking away at capitalism. The slow take over and emergence of the nanny state that liberals want, is definitely killing capitalism.

This was once upon a time a capitalistic society were a person or group of people was encouraged to make money. And I highly doubt the 30 minute flight was a scheduled flight.

Everything does cost; like the 5 million a pop to take senators for joy rides on air force 1. How many people would that have insured?

Enlighten me please, what is the real LeighaMason version of the profits that insurance companies make? What is the real number? As for CM, wellpoints large Q4 profits were explained in the article I posted, and also explained what they would have been without selling the PBM division. And United made a stifling 4.33% how dare these money hungry jerks do that. In reality cigna is the only one of those mentioned by you who made over 5%.

Show me the figures on how much they spent to defeat the bill. How can the US government thats 14 trillion dollars in debt afford to fly senators around on air force one to try and bribe them to vote their way at 5 million a pop to get AF1 in the air?

Q4 of 2009 profits for health ins. companies. CARPE DIEM: Health Insurance Companies Rank #88 by Industry Profit Margin, Earning $100-200 on Avg. per Policy From the article,

So everyone who works there should work for free? Or for minimum wage? Ah heck just let the government support them, thats why it's there right?

When exactly did 3% profit margin become obscene? And what in your opinion is not an obscene profit margin? .1% or something in that area. I've never heard any scream and cry about outrageous obscene, disgusting profit margins, when that profit margin is 3%? I'm a little perplexed.

BJ and CM, you talk about the separation of church and state, and thats great, it's needed, however in the context of the constitution and bill of rights, "state" is referred to as the US in it's entirety, and each individual state, believe it or not, until 1947 was allowed to have it's own official religion, and many did. This is still a topic that supreme court views regularly and still has not made a definitive decision on, tho currently individual state supported religion are not allowed, states can have official religions, they just cannot be ran nor funded by the state.