@dag, I see what you're saying, and I erred in using the term "evil", since it's a subjective and meaningless word.

However I don't believe the NSA really, really think they're protecting Americans. I think government always wants more control, sees a way or a moment to grab more, and does. If there's any concept of "protecting" any one citizen, I can't believe it's anything other than some perverted form of the concept (reverse stockholm syndrome?)
As for specific motivations for a government to seek more control over the people within it's borders, I believe objectives such as "stop all file-sharing", "verify census data more accurately", "find out who's not paying taxes", "discover what 'X' does on his day off, and persecute if we don't like it", and so on.

But yeah, not evil, but not working for the citizens either. It boggles my mind that military walking around on foreign soil, and violating personal rights and freedoms just like this NSA crap doesn't strike someone in office as the very reason people fly planes into buildings to begin with. If they really wanted to protect citizens of the country, they could stop pissing off the rest of the world. But that's my idealistic view of reality.

Only one word for these cops: COCKSUCKERS

Illinois cops, some of the worst of the worst of the worst. Long-standing history of state corruption, organized crime-Not to mention THE most retarded gun laws in the country. Oh, and a shitload of racist white cunts, For Example: The following is the breakdown in demographics of the Illinois State Police:

Male 91% 49.0%
Female 9% 51.0%
White 80% 73.5%
African-American
or Black 13% 15.1%
Hispanic 6% 12.3%
Asian 1% 3.4%

(column 1-Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, 2000: Data for Individual State and Local Agencies with 100 or More Officers

Column 2- 2000 US Census factfinder - Illinois)

Pretty much a private white redneck crime syndicate.

It should be pointed out that the richest in America and those who benefited hugely from the bailout can't even be found on census data. You have to do A LOT of study to actually find out they exist, it's something like 1% of the top 1%. They have serious influence, and benefit from a crooked system.

Also for the broader point of inequality. The point of the battle against it is because those on the lesser side have been being hammered for following the rules. You work and work for years with the idea that you'll get ahead, and that's taken away from you. This is how the Tea Party came about, their grievances are legitimate before they were sort of taken away from them by more powerful interests.

The point is, democracy suffers hugely when you have inequality. Ancient Greece (Aristotle) had the idea to fix this is by making the society more equal, therefore you wouldn't have the poor using their power of numbers to subvert democracy against the rich. America had a similar problem in the early days, instead of working towards equality, they worked towards stifling democracy. By putting most of the power in the hands of the wealthy Senate, it made sure that democracy wouldn't get out of hand and the rich white guys can keep what they stole.

Look this isn't something that's right or left. The right and the left are together on this, we don't like tyrannical powers trying to control us. A corporation with it's top down infrastructure is the basic definition of tyrannical. Add that to the fact that corporations dictate how our democracy is run, you have a system that isn't functioning and needs to be fixed.

Our Democracy isn't functional, it needs to be taken down and replaced.

Wait! What?

"The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty:
9.9% of all non-Hispanic white persons
27.4% of all black persons."

US Population by Race:
White or European American 223,553,265 72.4 %
Black or African American 38,929,319 12.6 %

# of poor white people = 22,131,773
# of poor black people = 10,666,633

I think your mom thinks you're racist because you probably kind of are and facts don't seem to factor in it.

My mom thinks me using facts is racist. Poor people tend to be black. Poor people tend to commit crimes. White people tend to move away from black neighborhoods. I suppose I should have spent less time studying political behavior in my state and more time making jokes.

"What's the difference between a black man and a white man?" "A job." - From the woman who calls me a racist for saying most violent crime in the US is black on black crime.

The biggest issue with the mainstream and statistics is that unless it plays into their stereotypes of behavior, they don't care. And when it does, they don't really care about the real cause.

From Wiki: (Violent Crime, UK)

"Includes all violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery as violent crime.[8]
Rates of violent crime are in the UK are recorded by the British Crime Survey. The Home Office Statistical Bulletin on "Crime in England and Wales" summarizes the findings of this survey. For the 2010/2011 report,[9] the statistics show that violent crime continues a general downward trend observed over the last few decades as shown in the graph.
"The 2010/11 BCS showed overall violence was down 47 per cent on the level seen at its peak in 1995; representing nearly two million fewer violent offences per year."[citation needed]
Regarding murder, "increasing levels of homicide (at around 2% to 3% per year) [have been observed] from the 1960s through to the end of the twentieth century". Recently the murder rate has declined, "a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02", as measured by The Homicide Index.
By contrast, there is a widespread belief that violent crime is on the rise, due largely to a mass media which disproportionately reports violent crime. This phenomenon is described by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature."

(Violent Crime, US)

"The United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) counts five categories of crime as violent crimes: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. It should be noted that these crimes are taken from two separate reports, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and that these do not look at exactly the same crimes. The UCR measures crimes reported to police, and looks at Aggravated assault, forcible rape, murder, and robbery. The NCVS measures crimes reported by households surveyed by the United States Census Bureau, and looks at assault, rape, and robbery. According to BJS figures, the rate of violent crime victimization in the United States declined by more than two thirds between the years 1994 and 2009.[10] 7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons on September 30, 2009 were in for violent crimes.[11] 52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons at yearend 2008 were in for violent crimes.[11] 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails in 2002 (latest available data by type of offense) were in for violent crimes.[12]"



------------------------

If you didn't want to read that babble, quick and simple: they're one and the same. From my understanding, both countries use the Type 1 list: a crime against a person in which injury or death may occur. In some cases, just because no one was hurt, doesn't mean it wasn't a violent crime.

Which brings up the other point to be made. Is the reporting of the crimes uniform? Do the Brits report EVERYTHING, as opposed to what's somewhat routine here in the states where crimes often go unreported, even when the police show up? Domestic violence only exists if one person files charges. The victim could be bruised, bleeding, broken bones etc, but if they're not willing to file a charge, no crime occurred.

Or, more so, do street brawls get reported more often in the UK? If I punch some dude, does that go onto a record somewhere where as in the states, I've been in many fights where even if the police broke it up, no reports were ever filed.

All of this is useful information, but so far the data is pretty superficial. The comment the video makes about "put on your boots and go find out" (paraphrased) is pretty much the only solution I can think of. Then again, it's the same solution that people have been chanting for for generations and have yet to see the high and mighty Elite do it.

You actually ignored the weaker parts of my argument.

If a history of violence against military and civilian targets is your grounds for banning an organisation, does that mean you want the Republican party banned for attacking a civilian news organisation, or military targets? How about the Democratic Party for essentially the same thing?

Who gets to choose when violence is justified?

Should the U.S. get to choose for everybody, including the 95.5% of the world population who are not U.S. citizens?

Claiming that an organisation is non-violent is not sufficient to prove innocence. It is quite possible to get a lengthy stay in prison in the U.S. for non-violent activities, such as online gaming, and in fact although I take the statistic with a grain of salt I have seen it claimed that 60% of U.S. prisoners are in prison for non-violent reasons. The number of U.S. prisoners (730 per 100,000) is in fact far higher than Chinese prisoners (121 per 100,000) by such a large percentage that the total prison population in the U.S. is higher than China despite having only about one third the total population (I hasten to point out that things have improved slightly since 2008, but my point stands).

BTW, don't get the idea that I have anything against the U.S., because I don't. I just don't accept that it is the bastion of freedom and that China is the evil empire.

I used the 2012 budget (~$3.8T, look it up wherever), the most recent figures for total income and total taxes paid of the top 1% (which are from 2010) from the Tax Foundation, which are $1.52T and $350B, respectively, so I did a little rounding. So you can adjust my $1.2T to $1.15T, if you want.

The top 1% in wealth owned 34% of the US's total wealth, in 2007, according to Wikipedia citing a Forbes article citing this article which cites this paper by Edward Wolff of NYU. The 2010 numbers cited are 35%, but I rounded down to 30% to be safe. Then I just looked up the total US household wealth--which is harder to do than you might expect.

Wikipedia reports ~$54T for the total US household *and non-profit* wealth in 2009 (Graph), which gets its data from the Federal Reserve. If you go to p. 104 of the 2011 document, you can see that this went up to $60T. I don't know how much of that is non-profits and how much is households, so I looked at the Census data.

Unfortunately the most recent is from 2007, which is pre-crash but which gives the mean household wealth as $556k. There were about 110M households in 2007, so that gives us about $61T total--but this was pre-crash. So we can kinda compare with the Wikipedia chart and see that in 2007 the total household+nonprofit wealth was $66T. So let's just assume ~$5T is nonprofits, so households had around $50T in 2009 and maybe closer to $55T in 2011, give or take. 30% of $50T is $15T. I had made slightly higher estimates before to get my $16T (didn't see the 'nonprofit' thing there).

So all told, the data's from the census and the Fed, and I'm kinda rounding down everywhere I can. I did some extrapolating here and there because I can't find a consistent data set from any year after 2007, and it wouldn't be fair to your side of the argument to use 2007's numbers. If you can find better data or if there's something egregiously wrong, please correct me.

It's worth remembering that Democrats won 53% of the total votes cast for the house of representatives. The republicans held on thanks to aggressive Gerrymandering after the 2010 census. Whether they want to see it or not, the election was a rebuke.

I think the upvotes for this video may end up a good census of the VideoSift population.

I hope I live to see the day when we do away with this nonsense and go to a popular vote. I recently realized this is worse than being disenfranchised; in some sense my vote exists, I just have no say in who it goes to. Because I was counted in the last census, I helped determine how many electoral votes my state will have. But I can be certain every one of those votes is going to Romney, since it's a strongly Republican state.

Unless you live in one of the few swing states, the only real way to vote for President in America is to, every 10 years in time for the census, move to a state that votes for your party. Then your vote is locked in for a decade (even if you move away or die in that time). It's insane.

@shinyblurry


We seem to be getting into a lot of repetition in this thread, so rather than going line by line, I'm going to attempt my points and reactions to yours with fewer quotes, hopefully hitting the important themes. I don't want to minimize anything you've said, so if I skip anything you feel is a separate issue and is cogent, feel free to draw my attention back to it specifically, but check first and see if you can't answer that same point with something I've already said in here.

Before any quotes, I'll give my own overarching point: Life without a higher purpose may be ultimately meaningless (I'll get more into what sense I mean), and that makes life more difficult than if there were ultimate meaning, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth value of the existence of Yahweh. You cannot derive Yahweh's existence (or any deity or pantheon) from your claim that life is easier that way. [Edit: Turns out I never actually get to that conclusion in my comments below, so you might as well address it here, but after you've read the rest.]

My overarching point is to demonstrate the cognitive dissonance inherent in your position ... if this world is not under the sovereign control of God, it is doomed to destruction ... You live as a Christian does, judging what is good and evil … these are just chemical reactions in your brain … why be a slave to chemicals?… you have no rational justification for … saying your sense of right and wrong is any better than the psychopath, or that yours should be preferred.

There's no cognitive dissonance in my mind –at least, not about doing the right thing. I acknowledge a life without God has no ultimate purpose, and that in the grand scheme of things, the Earth is going to be swallowed by the Sun in a few billion years and nearly all traces of humanity will disappear with it, and at that time, nothing anybody has ever done will matter because there will be nobody left for whom it can matter. With that in mind, it does seem odd that despite realizing this, I would still care about doing the right thing.

But the fact is that somehow, in the context of my own little 80-year microblip in the lifespan of our planet, I do care. I just do. I have nothing more than a pet theory about why I care. I care, and I care a lot. I suppose I'm somewhat curious as to why I care, but it's not of primary importance for me to know. I just do, and it's pleasing to notice that just about everyone else around me does too. The only question for me is how to follow this desire of mine to be good given my circumstances.

And why should I reject being a slave to chemicals? The chemicals MAKE ME FEEL GOOD, remember? Should I purposefully do things that make me feel bad? Why on Earth would I even consider it? Ridiculous.

I reject the description that I live my life "as a Christian does", as if Christians invented or have some original claim being good. All humans, regardless of faith or lack thereof, believe in the value of humans (or, any societies that don't value humans go extinct very quickly). We all generally shun murder and violence, foster mutual care, enjoy one another's company, feel protective, have a soft spot for babies and so forth, and have been doing all of this as a species since before Christianity began.

So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

I can claim that I have a stronger sense of what's right and wrong than the psychopath simply because they are defined as lacking that sense (or, perhaps non-psychopaths are defined as people having that sense). And you're right that I do not claim that my way of determining which actions are appropriate is inherently superior to the psychopath's. As it happens, my way of determining morality puts me among the overwhelming majority, and so it's relatively easy for me to mitigate the negative impacts of people like that by identifying and avoiding them. I don't say that my way should be preferred to the pshychopath's; I just notice that it is, and I'm grateful for that, and for the fact that psychopathy is not a choice.

You're drowning in a sea of relativism, where a justifies b and b justifies c and c justifies d, and this goes into an infinite regress.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Can you give an example of a justification to infinite regression that would cause some kind of problem unique to non-thesitic morality?

People worship because they're made to worship … 1 Romans says that God has made Himself evident to people in the things He has made. So, rather than people worshiping because they wanted to avoid meaninglessness, they worship because it the most natural thing for them to do which matches their experience.

I don't accept that it's any more natural to worship Yahweh than some other deity or pantheon or idol, and I can't imagine how you could justify such a position without referring to dogma. Ask a Muslim. He'll tell you with the same conviction that Allah is the natural way and show you his own dogma. 100 years ago, a Japanese would have told you it was natural to worship the Emperor, and today he'd say it's natural to worship ancestors. My point is that any worship will satisfy our natural urge to worship, which is why almost all people worship something, and the object of worship you're brought up around is the one you're most likely to be comfortable with worshipping, naturally.

People don't naturally conclude life is meaningless; they know from their experience that it is very meaningful. They are taught it is meaningless through philosophy and the ennui that comes from modern life. You will never find a population of natural atheists anywhere on the planet.

The problem —and one that I fell into myself— is the conflation of two senses of the word "meaningless". For example, I can say without conflict that the planet and humanity is doomed and so forth, so our actions are ultimately meaningless, AND that interacting with people gives meaning to my life. Now, in the first sense, I mean there's no teleological purpose to my life. In the second sense, I mean certain people and things in my life give fulfillment/bliss. If by "natural atheist" you mean people who have no supernatural practices including ancestor worship or anything, then yes, you're right, I don't believe such a society exists. To me, this points to the universal human tendency to worship something—anything, and to feel better about life when we do so. Slaves to chemical reactions in their brains, as far as I'm concerned.

I can speak on depression because I used to be depressed. I know what it is like, and having come out of it, I am qualified to speak on what I can clearly see as being the number one issue; hopelessness.

Your anecdotal evidence about depression doesn't make you an authority on *the single cause* of depression. Some depressives follow your pattern, and others don't. I don't. When I'm depressed, my feeling isn't hopelessness. In fact, these days, I'm feeling rather hopeless, but I'm not depressed.

If someone feels it right to hurt and steal from you, who are you to tell them that they ought not to do that?

I would never say that someone "ought not to do" anything on objective moral grounds. If I ever said something like that (I wouldn't use the words "ought" or "should"), it would be on the understanding that this person either knows the local laws and is violating them, or more likely shares a moral foundation with me, is acting against it. Either way, that person, upon consideration, would probably prefer not to be doing that mean thing, and is only doing it to satisfy some other need of theirs that they consider higher than their need to do the right thing by me. (This isn't to justify the bad act, but to show you how I think about bad acts and the people who do them. In other words, I don't believe people get encouraged by Satan or anything to do bad things.)

[me:]There’s nobody who’s going to judge my soul when I’m dead, so in that sense, once I’m dead, it won’t matter to me in the least what I do now once I’m dead because I’ll be dead.

[you:]You say this with certainly but I think you have to recognize that this is your hope. I wonder where this hope comes from? Since you've never been dead before to see what happens, what makes you so sure about it? Could this information about life after death exist in the 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of things that you don't know?

It's not my hope. I believe that dead is dead. Much simpler than your belief. Much more likely too. You're implying that I'm following some faulty reasoning about the afterlife. Among the things I don't know are an *infinite number of possibilities* of what could happen in the afterlife, one of which is your bible story. My best guess is nothing. Since nobody's ever come back from the dead to talk about it (Did nobody interview Lazarus? What a great opportunity missed!), nobody knows, so there's no reason to speculate about it ever. Your book says whatever it says, and I don't care because to me it's fairy tales. I'd have to be an idiot to live my life differently because of a book I didn't first believe in. Just like you'd be an idiot to live like a non-believer if you believe so much in Yahweh.

I would also ask how you think the brain understands the complex moral scenarios we find ourselves in and rewards or doesn't reward accordingly? Doesn't that seem fairly implausible to you?

It's quite plausible. I'm no biologist, but I'm sure there's a branch of evolutionary biology that deals with social feelings. My own pet theory is that these feelings are comparable to the ones that control the behaviour of all communal forms of life, like ants and zebras and red-winged blackbirds. It's evolution, either way, IMO.

What makes someone a bad person?

In the absolute sense, religious faith, only, can bring that kind of judgement as a meaningful label.

In the relative sense where I would colloquially refer to someone as "a bad person" (my prime minister, Stephen Harper is an example), I mean someone who has shown they are sufficiently disruptive to other people's happiness due to acting too much in their own self-interest that they're best removed from influence and then avoided. But I would only use that term as a shorthand among people who knew that I don't moralize absolutely.

Do you think this could have something to do with the fact that the bible says you should do things you don't want to do, or that you should stop doing things you don't want to stop doing?

An interesting question, but no. I don't believe it because everything I see points all religion being a human invention.

Your atheism leaves you in the position of not being able to tell me that something like child rape is absolutely wrong. In your world, there is no such thing, and if everyone thought it was right, it would be.

Your hypothetical is an appeal to the ridiculous. It simply is a fact that just about everyone —including child rapists, I'm guessing— believes that child rape is wrong for the simple reason that it severely hurts children. If it increases a person's suffering, then it's wrong. I can think of nothing simpler. Your hypothetical is like one where a passage in the bible prescribed child rape. Would it be OK then? Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

[me:]Yahweh’s morality is nowhere near as simple as a secular morality. Where in those two commandments of Jesus does it say that using condoms or allowing same-sex couples to marry is wrong? In fact, saving lives, preventing unwanted pregnancies and allowing all loving couples to get married are ways to love your neighbour, and they’re exactly what I would want my neighbour to do or advocate for on my behalf.

[you:]God wrote His commandments on our hearts, which is the reason your feelings tell you what is right and wrong.

And elsewhere…

[me:]First, you’re talking in circles. If Harris’ model of morality is arbitrary, then so is Jesus’ model of “do unto others…” because they amount to pretty much the same thing, and what one person wants his neighbours to do may not be the same as someone else’s, etc. At some level, we’re going to have to determine for ourselves what’s right and what’s not.

[you:]We have the freedom to obey or disobey God. The one thing God will never do is make you obey Him. In that sense, you have to determine whether you will do what is good or evil.

In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules. I showed that was wrong with my AIDS in Africa example (condoms saving lives). You can address that, or you can agree that Yahweh's laws are more complex that Harris' model of secular morality. 2) I also pointed out that Jesus gave us a moral model that requires the individual to determine for themselves based on fixed criteria what's good and what's not. "… as you would have your neighbour do unto you…" implicitly requires the individual to compare their actions with what they themselves would want someone else to do to them. That means relying on their own understanding. This contradicts your other statements that we shouldn't rely on our own understanding. You see? To follow Jesus' second law, you must rely on your own understanding.

[me:]Third, do you picture a world where everyone suddenly agrees that torturing babies is OK? Do you really believe that without religion people have absolutely no internal direction whatsoever, and will accept torturing of babies as acceptable? I don’t. So, no, Harris’ moral system does not allow for the possibility of torturing babies.

[you:]This is really an argument from incredulity. I'm sure no one pictured an entire society could be convinced that killing millions of jews is a good thing, but it happened.

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

It's a bad comparison anyway. Genocide happens all the time, even in religious societies (by the 1939 census, 94% of Germans were Christian, FWIW). You can't compare this with an entire society suddenly deciding that torturing children is morally correct. If I ever heard of such a baby-torturing society existed, I'd immediately assume it was in accordance with their religious belief, rather than just what they all decided was OK, wouldn't you?

[me:]If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

[you:]What about all of Pagan societies throughout the ages that sacrificed their children to demons?

You're making my point for me. Paganism is religion. Non-believers would never justify a habit of killing their own children.

The fact is, in a meaningless Universe you simply can't prove anything without God. You actually have no basis for logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature, but you live as if you do. If I ask you how you know your reasoning is valid, you will reply "by using my reasoning".

You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

^@ bobknight33

Your 50 million is way off the # was 30 Million and that doesn't divide who can afford but choose not to get it and whose who really cant afford healthcare. (At least with the individual mandate those who can pay but choose not to are required to pay back into the system).

That # is reported around 12 million. (Where did you find this percentage i have yet to see it in an official report?).

Now is it worth you paying 2600 more in insurance just to cover 12 Million? (Covered below).

Amount of Deaths due to the absence of healthcare: More than 26,000 working-age adults die prematurely in the United States each year because they lack health insurance, according to a study by the consumer advocacy group Families USA, estimates that a record high of 26,100 people aged 25 to 64 died for lack of health coverage in 2010, up from 20,350 in 2005 and 18,000 in 2000. also 22,000 deaths nationwide in 2006.

"Lives are truly on the line," said Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack, who supports the reform law. "If the Affordable Care Act moves forward and we expand coverage for tens of millions of people, the number of avoidable deaths due to being uninsured will decrease significantly."

What is the republican healthcare solution?.

Source: Reuters, 6/20/2012 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47892292/ns/health-health_care/t/report-uninsured-americans-die-each-year/#.UEKmKdbiZO8.

the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has analyzed census data to provide a closer look at the people without health insurance in the U.S. Its report, focused on people younger than age 65, found 45.7 million "nonelderly" uninsured people in the U.S. last year (including the elderly, the number of uninsured was 46.3 million). Low-income adults without dependent children — who generally do not qualify for government programs like Medicaid — were hit hardest. Despite heated rhetoric on the issue, immigrants are not driving the problem; 80% of the uninsured under age 65 are native-born or naturalized citizens. The uncompensated cost of providing health care to the uninsured last year was $57 billion, three-quarters of which was picked up by the Federal Government.

Most uninsured Americans work: Of those under age 65 without insurance, 8 in 10 are members of working families. Only 19% are in families with no one working. However, 62% of the uninsured have no education beyond high school, limiting their ability to boost their incomes or advance to jobs that may offer health care. The uninsured were three times more likely to have trouble meeting basic monthly expenses like rent and food.

Of those without health insurance, 11% reported being in fair or poor health, compared with 5% with private coverage. Nearly a quarter of the uninsured say they've forgone medical care in the past year due to its cost, compared with 4% who receive private care. As a result, the uninsured are more likely to be hospitalized for avoidable health problems.

Government programs are making a difference for children: Despite overall increases, the number of uninsured children last year fell by 800,000, to 8.1 million, thanks to expansions in Medicaid and state programs covering minors. (The total in 2006 was 9.4 million).

Young adults with no children are especially vulnerable: Programs such as Medicaid and Medicare insure millions of parents, children and disabled people. But low earners without dependent children are offered few resources when it comes to health insurance; they comprise 58% of uninsured Americans as a result. At 30%, those ages 19 to 29 have the highest uninsured rate. Racial minorities are also disproportionately represented; about one-third of Hispanics and one-fifth of blacks go without insurance, compared with 13% of whites.

Most people know that millions of Americans lack health insurance, but this report helps give that enormous group a human face. That many unemployed workers lack health insurance is not a surprise, but many of us may not realize that so many working people do as well — a troubling fact that lends credence to the reform efforts under way.

Source: TIME, Oct. 14, 2009 http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1930096,00.html#ixzz25GkXZCFq

>> ^quantumushroom:

Irish O'bama is ignorant of Tea Party ideals. One cannot expect a Eurosocialist to understand a healthy fear of government power, the sole reason our American government is divided in TREES.

"It is said by the proponents of government-run health care that 47 million people go without health care in the United States. For example, during the so-called Cover the Uninsured Week event in 2008, Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued a statement declaring that this is the “time to reaffirm our commitment to access to quality, affordable health care for every American, including the 47 million who live in fear of even a minor illness because they lack health insurance…In the wealthiest nation on earth, it is scandalous that a single working American or a young child must face life without the economic security of health coverage.” This is more deceit.
"In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that there were 46.6 million people without health insurance.
About 9.5 million were not United States citizens.
Another 17 million lived in households with incomes exceeding $50,000 a year and could, presumably, purchase their own health care coverage.
Eighteen million of the 46.6 million uninsured were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, most of whom were in good health and not necessarily in need of health-care coverage or chose not to purchase it.
Moreover, only 30 percent of the nonelderly population who became uninsured in a given year remained uninsured for more than twelve months. Almost 50 percent regained their health coverage within four months.
The 47 million “uninsured” figure used by Pelosi and others is widely inaccurate."
--Mark Levin, Liberty and Tyranny


Even one humanbeing left without a basic health care is a travesty in a civilized country. This really baffles me, how can US even consider of not providing a basic human rights to all it's citizens. In my opinion the basic human needs are food, shelter and heatlhcare. The obejctive is that everyone can provide themselves with the first two while the healthcare is in the hands of professionals. You can claim that then goverment should provide free housing for all by employing professional constructor workers following the same logic that healthcare is done by professionals for free. Not all things are comparable, you can spend your night on a floor and be safe from the enviroment but you can't patch a guy up with staples and tape when he had a nasty fall and broke his leg.. Shelter can be variable as long as it fills the purpose but denying healthcare will kill humanbeings, you're fellow men and women.



We can take care of healthcare for all in every G20 country. And since we can do it, it's then mandatory. Like if we would get free unlimited energy logic will dictate that it will be ditributed to all, it never ends, it's free and there is no real reason to not give it out. Unless one man denys the service because of his own petty jealousy, anger, racism, or religious reasons. Those four things is what stops the regular US citizen from accepting a true humanitray cause, YOU DON*T WANT YOUR FELLOW HUMANBEING GETTING THE SAME RIGHTS AND PRVILEGES THAN YOU!!! It doesn't matter what your reasonings are, the trhuth is that you are an evil humanbeing that deliberately hurts all less fortunate than you. You get kick out of it, you enjoy looking at homeless, you spit on them and would no doubt just kill them in a whim, they are not humanbeings to you. Only your family and you are considered the right to get everything you want. No one else can, it's deminish your own ego.

This is my take on healthcare, anyone denying it is a monster. if you really want, we will leave you opt-out plan too, take care of your self if you like, hell we can even give you the money back you would normally spend for others (those cockraoches you know, people who don't deserve to live..)

How do you figure Healthcare is affordable to the average citizen?

Helthcare ranges from $13,375 to $20,000 for the average family
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/29/pf/healthcare-costs/index.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2009-09-15-insurance-costs_N.htm

Even at $50,000 income per year,(which is peanuts these days by the way,) the average family cannot afford this.
And then, if they did sacrifice all other basic amenities to pay the health care costs, The insurance companies do whatever they can to deny claims and the basic care they deserve. The first thing that's asked is, "Does your policy cover this?" and if not, guess what, you still don't get treatment and someone can and has died.

That's Fact!
Health Care on any level is a human right not a present to be given to the select few who hold all the cash.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Irish O'bama is ignorant of Tea Party ideals. One cannot expect a Eurosocialist to understand a healthy fear of government power, the sole reason our American government is divided in TREES.

"It is said by the proponents of government-run health care that 47 million people go without health care in the United States. For example, during the so-called Cover the Uninsured Week event in 2008, Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued a statement declaring that this is the “time to reaffirm our commitment to access to quality, affordable health care for every American, including the 47 million who live in fear of even a minor illness because they lack health insurance…In the wealthiest nation on earth, it is scandalous that a single working American or a young child must face life without the economic security of health coverage.” This is more deceit.
"In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that there were 46.6 million people without health insurance.
About 9.5 million were not United States citizens.
Another 17 million lived in households with incomes exceeding $50,000 a year and could, presumably, purchase their own health care coverage.
Eighteen million of the 46.6 million uninsured were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, most of whom were in good health and not necessarily in need of health-care coverage or chose not to purchase it.
Moreover, only 30 percent of the nonelderly population who became uninsured in a given year remained uninsured for more than twelve months. Almost 50 percent regained their health coverage within four months.
The 47 million “uninsured” figure used by Pelosi and others is widely inaccurate."
--Mark Levin, Liberty and Tyranny

Get off you high horse.

If one holds the opinion that begin gay is ok then you fine with it.
But If some one has the opinion that being gay is wrong than you think the worst of them. It appears that you have drawn a line in the sand and believe that bible believing people are the worst. Are you that intolerant of bible believing people.

I said nothing about mistreating or disrespecting gays and yet you drew you own false conclusions about me.




>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^bobknight33:
There is a difference between fear, hate and what one believes what is wrong. If one believes that being gay is wrong then it is wrong.

The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau found that homosexual couples constitute less than 1% of American households. The Family Research Report says "around 2-3% of men, and 2% of women, are homosexual or bisexual." The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force estimates three to eight percent of both sexes. So who's right -- what percentage of the population is homosexual?

I believe 2+2=5, Belief doesn't make you correct. You should be listening to evidence, not belief.
@PostalBlowfish is absolutely right, you can believe homosexuality is wrong all you want. There are still lots of people who believe blacks are of inferior genetic stock, women shouldn't vote and that the earth is really flat and that we didn't go to the moon either.
Public policy, however, has a higher standard of evidence than what makes @bobknight33 and the other bible thumpers uncomfortable. Doesn't matter if there were only two homosexuals in the entire world or 200 billion, you still treat people with basic dignity and respect and they have a right to their pursuit of happiness as you do. Civil rights is not a popularity contest.
If homosexuality is so horrible and detrimental to society as you would have us believe, you shouldn't have any problem proving it without using the bible. I eagerly await your mountains of evidence.
Run away bob, run away to your next sift-trolling