Mind if I pop in? Just going to drop some (hopefully logical) counter-arguments so that you can review and strengthen your original arguments.
1) A combination style health program manages to infringe upon something that should always be considered a top priority: Economic well-being should have virtually no say in the outcome of your physical well-being. Long wait times are simply going to kill people. And they are going to kill the middle-class worker and below. You COULD tax the upper echelon's health care to speed up the process for the others but that sort of puts a roll of duct tape on the problem instead of actually solving it, metaphorically speaking.
2) First off, 9/11 was definitely a witch hunt no matter which way you look at it. And could you please justify your anti-Gore and anti-Kerry arguments? The way I see it, you're pretty much condemning short-term environmental spending, even if it has long term benefits. And I didn't even see justification for Kerry being bad. Also: Having a lot of stuff dropped on your plate is no excuse for inadequacy, especially if we're talking about the most important job in the free world. You know who else had a lot of stuff dropped on his plate? FDR did. A great deal more than Bush, may I add.
3) Please don't act like people dying is a good thing. Thank you.
*kicks computer for not liking the internet for most of yesterday*
1) How would a combination interfere with the health care quality? The government aided hospitals would of course end up with more people, and thus have longer lines. However, because not
everyone goes to those hospitals, the lines would be reduced, and thus less people die.
I also don't agree with "extra taxing the rich to help the poor" at all. I'm sorry, but if I worked my butt off in high school, worked even harder in college, took extra college years to get into one of the better paying jobs, and finally got in, I should not be forced to pay a higher percent of taxes to help those who didn't do as much. Yes, there are people who tried to do the same, but just couldn't get as far, and yes there are those who just got lucky money wise in the lottery, or inheritance wise, but there is no way to sort everyone out in the tax brackets. Seeing as there is no way to only add extra tax to those who didn't work for their higher paycheck, and give it to those who are trying their best and aren't just laying around: don't even try. Of course I feel sorry for those who don't do as well, but that's not the right way to help them: by punishing success.
2) I'll be blunt and say I don't remember much of Kerry except for his whole "Do well in school kids, or else you'll end up in Iraq!" comment, and the fact people who worked with him in Vietnam said that he was a coward and that the only enemy he ever shot was a kid. I watched less news during that election, due to living in a house only partly built, ect. However, the fact that Bush beat Kerry by a larger margin than he beat Gore in the electorals(sp?), even with grumblings about him going about screams volumes to me.
Gore quite frankly is a joke. Do you want your president to be the type of guy who goes around talking about "global warming" (which was later proven wrong, and changed to "climate change" BTW), and explain how bad CO2 is...by flying around in his private jet, causing lots of CO2 to fly out of the engines, when he could have taken public flights if he was serious about it? Or the fact that his house was one of the biggest energy wasters in his state? What about the fact that in one of his books about global warming, he initially published it, knowing that a graph in there sideways and was later for forced to fix it? The dude didn't even
attempt to not be hypocritical when he was up for election, or in the events afterwards, imagine how bad he would have been as the President. He would have placed
insane "green house preventive measures" on factories, which would have shut down a lot of them due to not having the money, slowing down the others, and losing money for the economy through it. Probably would have thrown in a "green tax" on gas like British Columbia has done (which is extremely stupid I would add. People have to use cars, why try to "punish" them for it when there is no other option lots of the time. Buses and Bikes can't go everywhere.) It would have been a nightmare of "green friendly" limitations and ideas all over the place, all for something that got proven false later and thus had to be changed to "climate change".
And don't even start trying to tell me that 9/11 was "just a witch hunt": you will lose that argument. My dad teaches NATO forces how to counteract terrorist propaganda within the middle east. The terrorists/extremists want American
destroyed. They call it the Second Devil, the first one being Israel. Do you
honestly think they would have stopped after the Trade Towers if we hadn't gone after them? That they would have stopped trying to destroy America just because we didn't react? Oh no, they would have continued right along, flying more airplanes into buildings. Or other types of terrorists attacks. It wouldn't not have stopped. And the moment all NATO forces pull out of the Middle East, they will simply start to regroup and plan similar attacks again. Like the events in the UK.
It is scary how good they are at propaganda. If you have ever believed that "Bush caused the towers to fall, just so he could start a war" (proven false on so many levels it's not even funny) or "The US is just over there for the oil" (even though the US has not taken a single extra drop of oil, and continue to just buy oil from the normal places): congrats, you just either believed something that the extremists started, or helped along! Now look at what percent of Americans believe one of those two things. It's no wonder that they think we're stupid. There is so much else stuff I could go into...it's just insane.
3) Like it or not, war is profitable. I obviously don't like war, but thats how things work: when there
is one going on, the US makes money. Why do you think FDRs programs actually worked? They were all failing miserably until WW2.
I think most of my responses to the other post are covered in this, but:
A side note on green energy: The sun has fueled all life on Earth for 4.5 billion years. Water and air are everywhere people can live and are essential to life. In any given situation people will have easy access to one or more of solar, wind, and hydro electric power. This means green energy cannot be monopolized or treated as a commodity. Gas topped $4 a gallon. The sun is the most direct transfer to usable power, no steam turbines or waste. If we, humans, can depend on liquid drilled out of the ground from ancient bones, we can make use of green energy. I admit green energy wouldn't have helped in Iraq right away but thing how much heat, solar, and wind energy is being wasted in that area.
Wind Energy is not usable. You'd have to cover the
entire US with windmills to generate enough energy to meet the needs of the country. There is also the fact it's dependent on the weather. Solar power is even more dependent on the weather, and isn't practical. Take a solar powered car for example: you have to cover the entire thing with solar panels, but then the weight of it all causes it's max speed to be
maybe 40 miles an hour. I actually think it was 20, but I can't remember. And then there is all of the waste generated by throwing broken panels out. Hydro power is great, but only works where you actually have a place to build a dam, and then you get all of the environmental people going "Save the animals!". Hybrid cars don't work well, (why hello there fact that the greenest car of the year wasn't a Hybrid, but a diesel car), and has huge problems leaving waste when the batteries die. There is also the fact that the metal used in those batteries is fairly hard to find/build. Using corn as energy? Same problem as the wind energy, you'd have to cover the entire US to get enough energy, and if there was one bad year with the crops, the US would be screwed. Green energy is currently not even close to an option. The only other options that currently work are the few places we can have dams, and nuclear energy, which everyone doesn't like due to Cheyrnopal(sp?), and the problem with dealing with the waste. When there is an alternate solution that is actually viable, I'll support it. Until then, there is oil/natural gas and almost only oil/natural gas.
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I wants SC2. Is the multiplayer as balanced as SC1s? I had one friend who played the Beta, and he said the Terrans dominated everything, and that the Protoss were worthless online.
EDIT, HOPEFULLY THIS WON'T BE MISSED: I've been poking around the BBR character discussions, and a comment has me thinking: what options do we have to keep Diddy at the ledge? Apparently, Marth beats Diddy as long as he keeps him there, due to the fact Diddy then can't use his banana game, and gets juggled no matter what he does getting off of the ledge. Obviously, Ike isn't Marth, but we have more range, and more knockback on our aerials without needing to space a tipper all of the time. Anyone willing to look into this? Because if we have an effective way to rack up the damage on a Diddy Kong trying to get back onstage from the ledge, combined with instant-throw/DACIT/other banana stuff, we just might be able to scrap out an advantage against him.
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