Bartholomew Roberts

There are actually very few actual Iraqis that are attacking us. Sadr's militia is the bulk of them. The rest of the insurgents are just flooding in from surrounding nations because they are getting the chance to make their cause known, and attack the "evil westerners" in the process.

__________________
Proud Libertarian. www.lp.org
Bob Barr for President 2008!
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~P.J. O'Rourke
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
-Plato

presluc

Well, they can always go back to the old "Morals and Ethics" routine.
Get some supporters like
Foley
Rumsfeld
DeLay
Brown
Libby
Rove
Ridge.

TheHat

Yes there were counter attacks after the war. We just killed them all off.

Yes, I would rather be in Japan and Germany too, but that atmosphere is only present b/c: WE WERE ALLOWED TO RUN A WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH WITHOUT BEING CRITIZED EVERY STEP OF THE WAY!

We defeat our enemies, build them back up from nothing, and then watch as they thrive. Germany and Japan are both examples of this, as Iraq will be one day. People need to calm down and let us do our job over there. We will finish the job and do it again, it just takes time. This isnt The Sims 2000 video game where you can knock down and rebuild cities and towns in a couple of hours with fake disasters, this is real life. Things take time.

Look at the news coverage from Iraq. Where has it all gone? You can always tell when things start going well b/c the media suddenly stops dishing out hourly news about it.

Bartholomew Roberts

Just something to think about in addition to that: America declared independence and began building up it's government in 1776. We didn't decide on a successful form of government (aka sign the Constitution) until 1787. That's 11 years. Iraq has had five years, and they are doing very well considering they have had to fight dissenters and insurgents.
How can we expect Iraq to create a stable government faster than we did?

__________________
Proud Libertarian. www.lp.org
Bob Barr for President 2008!
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~P.J. O'Rourke
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
-Plato

jpn of Seattle

I'd like to thank those who posted defenses of Republican policies. You all speak really well for the Republican party...heh heh.

I love the rhetoric against universal health insurance. Not one poster grappled with the reality that:

Universal health insurance is available in EVERY developed nation except the U.S., and

1. EVERY nation pays far less per capita
2. EVERY nation has as good or better overall health
3. EVERY nation is happy with their system compared to ours, and
4. MANY nations have none of the problems presented here, such as waiting lines

See, that's another problem that Republicans have. They lead with their ideology. So when the facts don't cohere with reality, they have to go into denial mode.
Just like on global warming.
And evolution.
And that tax cuts create deficits.

No wonder they have to rely so heavily on trumped up social issues like gay-bashing and finding "terrorists" behind every bush.

Bartholomew Roberts

Wow..you're right. Britain fixed waiting lines by passing legislature that required people to be treated within 10 hours of entering the waiting room....they now wait in the ambulance for several hours instead of the waiting room.
I went to Canada last year and spoke with the people there as I traveled. The majority detested the universal healthcare because they could not get preventative treatment. They had to wait until little problems became life threatening before they could get treatment.

Denial mode? That term is misleading. They don't deny. They use logic to prove their point to the best of their ability, just as you do.

Yeah, they don't create deficits when you also cut spending. Unfortunately, Bush cut taxes and then increased spending, leading to deficit, and as for the Democrats, well, they can say that tax cuts never work because they always make government bigger, thus increasing spending, so tax cuts never work for them.

At least they don't have to resort to the "other countries do it so we should too" arguement. In all honesty, what makes America great is that we are not like other nations. If we were like every other nation, so many people would not move here from other countries. What makes us really great is that we allow people to leave when they want to. So if some people like the systems that other countries have in place, they are free to move to that clearly superior nation.

__________________
Proud Libertarian. www.lp.org
Bob Barr for President 2008!
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~P.J. O'Rourke
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
-Plato

jpn of Seattle

Ever notice how few people move here from Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc? I imagine that as many Americans move there these days as vice versa. The people immigrating here and those that have throughout our history are people in economic crises. They also immigrate to other rich nations.

America is great because it's really big and blessed with bountiful natural resources. It also embraced a more dog-eat-dog style of capitalism than most other nations, which on balance probably makes us somewhat wealthier and also more socially stressed.

But when it comes to health care, we are just being stupid and it's time we removed our heads from our asses. Universal health insurance is the only way to go. It's much cheaper and it delivers as good or better overall health results--despite all the scare stories told by knee-jerk conservatives.

It's also more morally just. Denying health insurance to people because they already have medical problems is sick. It's disgusting. Any society than embraces such a sick, immoral system has no right to call itself "great."

In Canada and most European countries, the doctors are self-employed or work mainly for privately owned hospitals and clinics. Only Britain, among major nations, has actual socialized medicine, in which the government runs the hospitals and doctors are government employees.
Rudy Giuliani asserts that our system is "the best in the world"--except that the World Health Organization actually rates it as number 37. Cross-nation surveys say that even the British have better overall access to health care than Americans do: they wait longer for discretionary surgery than we do, but they find it easier to see a doctor on short notice, especially after hours or on weekends. And the Germans and French have no significant delays of any kind. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An Update on the Quality of American Health Care Through the Patient's Lens

"In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems." The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months
And all the while, we pay half again as much as all the other nations that we're "so much better than."

nemesis

It would be foolhardy to ignore a poll that demonstrates a consistent trend over the course of 16 years not that you need a poll to see the trend, just go on Youtube.

__________________
Proof of media bias? A mistake by the major networks they don't want you to know about. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media...als_04-24.html

GlobalSmiles

Universal Healthcare is bad business and just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Anything you hand over tthe government ends u as crap basically.

They are already talking about fast food sin taxes i New Jersey. . .soda will be shortly after that. I don't understand why lefties who act like rebels want a bloody nanny state so badly. Universal healthcare eventually leads to over burdensome government, ie even now the is no way in hell I'd move to a western or northern European nation.

I'm sick of big daddy, what we need to do is make sue it actually functions somewhat like a free market. Work on peeling back the double digit inflation of the past 20 years. You can do this any ways but you will have no friend after it is done (something that really effects the chances of this ever happening properly). First you make more prescription writers, nurse practitioners seem like a great option,after all most of the time you can diagnose ourself. Temporarily regulate pricing while you pt a cap on malpractice suites and then move on to regulation of insurance costs adjusted for the new cheaper healthcare.

Use socialist instruments to fix the problem at hand, do not hand it all to the government and sya "Daddy, please."

presluc

I suppose I could post a long list of problems the Republican party has.
I could post probems the Democratic party has,but this thread is about the Republican parties problems.
The main problem the American people have with the Republican party is simple.
BUDGET CUTS on domestic issues.

Name a subject you will see a budget cut.
From education to health care to space exploration right down the line.

That is except tax cuts for people that make a million dollars a year.
Or the taxdollars going to Iraq to rebuild Iraq while Iraq sets on oil profits.