In the past year I've gone from thinking "Hillary can't win" to "Oh my god, Hillary is the only one who CAN win."
It was one simple thing that Hillary Clinton said at last night's debate in my former temporary home city of Las Vegas: "The Republicans aren't just going to voluntarily give up the White House."
THANK YOU! It's so obvious, so fucking clear to all normal people, but these are politicians. Finally we have a Democrat who knows there's a fight ahead; and that the fight will be fucking brutal.
Al Gore ran in 2000 thinking "How can anyone vote for Bush? He's a dickbrain." John Kerry watched as draft dodgers paid off his fellow veterans to blatantly lie about his war record. He reacted like someone left the pickles off of his Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Hell, John McCain was more upset! HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...Oh, sorry...I was thinking about John Kerry and fell asleep with my finger on the 'H' button.
I still have major reservations about Hillary Clinton, but I'm pretty sure she won't back down when the attack dogs try to rip out her jugular. In fact, she may collect a few jugulars of her own.
It was one simple thing that Hillary Clinton said at last night's debate in my former temporary home city of Las Vegas: "The Republicans aren't just going to voluntarily give up the White House."
THANK YOU! It's so obvious, so fucking clear to all normal people, but these are politicians. Finally we have a Democrat who knows there's a fight ahead; and that the fight will be fucking brutal.
Al Gore ran in 2000 thinking "How can anyone vote for Bush? He's a dickbrain." John Kerry watched as draft dodgers paid off his fellow veterans to blatantly lie about his war record. He reacted like someone left the pickles off of his Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Hell, John McCain was more upset! HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...Oh, sorry...I was thinking about John Kerry and fell asleep with my finger on the 'H' button.
I still have major reservations about Hillary Clinton, but I'm pretty sure she won't back down when the attack dogs try to rip out her jugular. In fact, she may collect a few jugulars of her own.
20 Comments:
She was fierce, yo. It kind of made me want to make out with her.
You are right to have major reservations about her bro. The idea of implementing a socialized health care system that is a complete failure in Canada and England here in the US tends to piss a lot of people off, myself included. And, just like the Republicans aren't going to voluntarily give up the White House, we aren't going to voluntarily give up 45% of our income in taxes either.
Yes, we might wind up supplying health care to the poorest segments of our population if Hillary is elected. What a waste of our tax dollars! Let's continue to elect Republicans instead, so they can piss away money in much cooler ways, like spilling blood for oil.
As long as gas prices are tripling and the dollar is on pace to match its Monopoly counterpart, we might as well at least have something positive to show or it. And by "we," I mean "not the corporate barons."
tits,
I wouldn't go that far. I'd make out with you, though.
vast,
let's just say my reservations are different than yours and leave it at that.
ian,
hey, some of my best friends are corporate barons. Ok, not really.
What Ian said.
I would call an economic system where less than one percent holds the vast majority of wealth and many citizens can't afford basic needs like food, shelter and medical care a failure, but maybe that's just me.
Ah, the old myth about the health care system in Canada being "a complete failure." It's like the Republicans' security blanket...
Hey, VRWC, you are characterizing a health care plan from the 90s, not anything currently proposed by Clinton or any major candidate.
Mulletboy, I know exactly how you feel. What I will not support among the Dems is anyone that I feel will fit the Mondale-Dukakis-Kerry mold. Unfortunately, I think that rules out Obama. I was supporting Richardson, but I'm not so sure about him in this regard either.
Perhaps if ANY of you had worked 100 hour weeks for the past decade to build your company from absolutely nothing, you might understand why I don't want to give away half of my income to pay for someone else's health care and other bullshit entitlements.
Nevermind the fact that I have created dozens and dozens of jobs for people, lets financially punish me for having fucking bothered. If you Dems want this socialized health care so bad, pay for it yourself. If it doesn't matter how much our taxes are, why don't you pay 60 or 70% and leave me the fuck alone?
I guess if I never aspired to succeed in life, I might feel like you too. Luckily for the may people I employ, I never did.
VRWC - I'm assuming that you pay for your employees' benefits, right? Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to do that?
VRWC, if more of your wealthy compatriots were re-investing their wealth, I might be more sympathetic.
We have been fed a line of bullshit since Reagan that helping rich people benefits everyone.
Well, it hasn't. But I do believe that a large middle class, with buying power, helps rich people. Where are your customers going to come from?
I think that John Edwards is probably my favorite, but it would make me happy for Clinton to win just to watch the people who have a problem with a woman president have strokes.
VRWC is forgetting the simple fact that employees who are cared for (i.e., not constantly worrying that one unexpected expense will screw them for life) are more productive, miss work less and have more money to put into the economy.
Health care is not a "bullshit entitlement." Thinking that you deserve to pocket all your profits with no reinvestment in your work force is a "bullshit entitlement."
Sorry Ian, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. No one goes to work then OWES society anything. I trade my time to my employer for money. Once that transaction is complete, I owe society nothing. Reinvesting is a nice thing to do, but it's certainly not morally mandated. To assume that it is places an unfair burden upon folks like VRWC, and frankly, anyone who's got a job together.
I think free health care for everyone would be great, if it were actually free and wasn't really just the working people paying for doctor's visits for the not-working people.
Let's strike a middle-ground, for all the compassionate conservatives (this is not an oxymoron, there are more of us out there than you think) like me: Enlightened Self-Interest. Sure, let's help everyone. After I've helped myself. Until I'm sure I'm okay, fuck 'em.
There is no such thing as free healthcare - in Britain it is 'free at the point of delivery' big difference, it all needs paying for somehow.
Apparently no-one except VRWC has ever worked hard... hmmmm, ooookay.
If money is the only reason a person gets out of bed in the morning and once they've got some they want to hold onto it forever then good luck to them, there are plenty of people like that in the world. They tend to hang out together because no other fucker wants to be in there awful, boring company.
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Joe, your mentality is exactly what's wrong with America today. No one feels like they should have to pay into the system.
But guess what? That system is exactly what enables people to get rich in the first place! Without a federally regulated economy, there IS no wealth. Similarly, without workers, employers would be nothing. Businesses don't think twice about insuring their buildings, vehicle fleets and other holdings. But their workers, the single most important resource they have, deserve nothing?
Cold-hearted "compassionate conservatism" is the reason that government mandates exist in the first place. Minimum wage and labor laws exist precisely because many employers would use virtual slave labor if it were up to them.
(By the way, Marvin Olasky's "Compassionate Conservatism" is the most condescendingly racist book I've ever read. I wish more people would read it.)
I honestly cannot comprehend any reason that employers would feel zero obligation to protect their employees. Unless they are cheap.
And, yes, I have a full-time job with benefits. It sure beats the three years of uncertainty I had before.
I would like to know where humankind would be right now if we all "looked out for ourselves."
I don't know that socialized medicine is the answer, but neither is ignoring the problem. Many of our nation's elderly are forced to choose between food and medicine. I'm quite sure they've worked enough hours to have earned better treatment than that.
If wealth wasn't concentrated at the top and more people were paid a wage that afforded them to pay for necessities, perhaps this conversation wouldn't be necessary. But here in the Chicago area at least, I can tell you that this conversation is very necessary.
Ian, your argument would have more merit if I didn't regularly watch people in line ahead of me buying junk food with food stamps.
The answer isn't clear. We all know that. But the answer is never bigger government. The system we have now is no good, but giving it over to government control would be far worse. Imagine the paradigm it sets up.
I've come to the conclusion that the only real answer is to do away with insurance coverage all together. We didn't have it 100 years ago, and everyone didn't die. Deregulate all of it, and let the industry charge what the market will bare. In time (probably not as much as one would assume), the system would economically regulate itself.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, alot of innocent sick people would probably die. That's the downside. But until the revolution comes, there probably isn't a better way to fix it. Raising our taxes to the absurd level it would take to socialize medicine certainly is not the answer.
This is why socialism does not work. I may not be a have-not, but I'm certainly not a "have," either. Getting sick and dying slowly in America is an expensive proposition, and if I spend my youth and middle age working hard to pay for someone else to receive medical care, who's going to take care of me when I reach infirmity? Certainly not the ladies in front of me at the supermarket trying to justify to a tired, glassy-eyed cashier the legitimacy of buying name-brand junk food with government-assistance funds.
Explain to me again why I should give up money I worked hard for with no guarantee that I will ever see the benefits of this action? Shall enjoy the warm-fuzzy I get from helping my fellow man in my grave?
Ronald Reagan used to complain about people buying oranges with food stamps and then using the change to buy vodka. That sufficiently irked the American public until someone pointed out that change from food stamps is limited to 99 cents. Oops.
The reason people - regardless of income - buy junk food is because it's cheap and filling. Healthy, organic food is not cheap. That by itself is a huge part of the problem. If healthy food was cheaper than junk food, and we as a society valued fitness over endless TV-watching, then health costs could spiral without government interference.
But no. The magic free market has dictated that the worst foods are the cheapest; that pills, not exercise, are the answer to weight loss; and that insurance clobbers the working poor.
And to answer your last question, Joe: the reason you should pay it forward to others is because others have done the same for you. Even the most rugged individualist benefits from government services in some form or fashion. If you need justification to help your fellow man, then higher taxes are the least of your problems.
Personally, I'd rather pay taxes to help others in need than to give even one penny to Bush's horrific misadventure in Iraq. Talk about a money/blood pit!
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