*femme
*law

Adding video to channels (Femme, Law) - requested by NetRunner.

A very good response to the issue.
I'd be interested in seeing if he or anyone could have responded to Hillary in such a respectful, measured, authoritative manner without it descending into all the same old attacks and arguments.

Put that in your uterus and smoke it.

Now that's an oration.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 1:46am PDT - promote requested by deputydog.

Sigh, what is it about the elections which make people idiots? It's like when they have to pander to the masses, they suddenly become stupid. If Hillary had kept this level of intelligence during the election, I would have voted for her over Obama... but anyway... great response hil. Keep it up.

Government has no business interfering with or paying for personal medical decisions, either at home or abroad. That isn't government's job. I support the concept of allowing abortion to be a legal medical proceedure. I'm against any medical care being supported, advertised, promoted, and conducted with taxpayer money.

Essentially, I reject Clinton's spurious assertion that without the US government spending bazillions of dollars that the entire planet devolves into a mass of human misery. It isn't the US government's job to educate the world population about 'reproductive health'. If a citizen is concerned about the issue, they can personally volunteer time and resources to the cause. Supporting that cause with tax funds is wrong.

The well of human misery and need is a bottomless pit. The government can't and shouldn't even try to get involved in these kinds of issues. Encourage citizen volunteerism. Don't create government agencies, programs, and taxpayer pits to support causes 'du jour' in perpetuity.

"I deeply respect your opinions"

Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that one.

Wait, there's a CSPAN 3?

I didn't even know there was a CSPAN 2!

She is absolutely correct. Without education, whom ever you believe it should come from, the rates of abortion and teen pregnancy does indeed increase.

I'm a big Hillary fan already, this just backs up that fandom.

But Jesus doesn't approve, because he talks to me and tells me so.


-He who hears voices is deemed schizophrenic, and institutionalized for being mentally challenged.
-He who hears voices, and believes them to be from God and/or Jesus are considered blessed, and revered.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I'm against any medical care being supported, advertised, promoted, and conducted with taxpayer money.


Yeah, damn the VA. And stop wasting money on MASH units in war zones. The soldiers can buy their own health care. And stop funding health care for impoverished children. Those children can get jobs and buy their own health care.

BOOYAH!!!

Can we rebrand the "pro-life" crowd as "anti-choice"? Seems more descriptively accurate.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Government has no business interfering with or paying for personal medical decisions, either at home or abroad. That isn't government's job. I support the concept of allowing abortion to be a legal medical proceedure. I'm against any medical care being supported, advertised, promoted, and conducted with taxpayer money.
Essentially, I reject Clinton's spurious assertion that without the US government spending bazillions of dollars that the entire planet devolves into a mass of human misery. It isn't the US government's job to educate the world population about 'reproductive health'. If a citizen is concerned about the issue, they can personally volunteer time and resources to the cause. Supporting that cause with tax funds is wrong.
The well of human misery and need is a bottomless pit. The government can't and shouldn't even try to get involved in these kinds of issues. Encourage citizen volunteerism. Don't create government agencies, programs, and taxpayer pits to support causes 'du jour' in perpetuity.


What's your beef with socialized medicine? Tell us *why* taxpayer-funded medical care is wrong.

Canada, Norway, Sweden, France, Britain, and a bevy of other industrialized western countries have a taxpayer-funded system - and are healthier countries to boot.

Why do you hate healthy people? Why do you fight for a sicker America? Why do you hate puppies?

She would've made a much better VP than Joe

Preach it, sista!

I'd like to understand where how a distinction can be drawn between medical care, and other protective social services like police and fire?

Isn't the goal of those things ostensibly the same?

she also makes a better secretary of state than joe

>> ^volumptuous:
She would've made a much better VP than Joe

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I'm against any medical care being supported, advertised, promoted, and conducted with taxpayer money.


Yes, better save that taxpayer money. It will be needed for unemployment benefits for all the teenage mothers who get pregnant because the government was too cheap to grant them a free condom or two.

*talks

Adding video to channels (Talks) - requested by Ornthoron.

did they call her a gentleman?

What's your beef with socialized medicine? Tell us *why* taxpayer-funded medical care is wrong.

My beef with social medicine is the same as my beef with central planning in general. Central planning is wasteful, prone to corruption, and inefficient. Government tries to 'plan' things that are inherently unplannable. In the process it screws up far more than it gets right. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day, but by and large the best way for government to improve the lives of others is to encourage freedom based, private activity then to get the smack out of the way.

Government is not there to 'help' people. Government is there to perpetuate itself. It will dribble out subsistence help to political causes it favors and thinks are likely to increase its power.

Why do you hate healthy people? Why do you fight for a sicker America? Why do you hate puppies?

(1) Because they make things crowded when I go shopping. (2) Because it furthers my plans for world domination. (3) I don't hate them, they make excellent fuel for my death-ray.

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." - Mahatma Ghandi

Of all the things my taxes go towards, the National Health Service is the one I'm actually proud of. That's not to say it doesn't have it's problems, but not having a social health service would feel like living in a third world country.

It's a pretty crappy government that can't even get the basics up and running, and national healthcare is that - the basics. What could you want from your society more than that?

I don't understand anybody who wouldn't want it. That must take some serious marketing from the drug and health care companies to make a population turn their nose up at a guaranteed minimum value of their health.

Most ideologies that you can hope for a society to attain come with a very striking problem: it's never possible to get enough people on board. Living in a world where there seems to be more and more narcissism, selfishness and greed, it's pretty amazing when millions of people get their shit together and organise a joint system like protecting everyone's health. I'd vote for it being the most amazing acheivement of human civilisation.

Yet some people would rather gamble on insurance companies in a (mistaken) hope that they'll save a penny or two rather than give a rat's ass about the health of their neighbours.

I wonder how many people who get ill in the states change their minds about the issue.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

OK, that's it. I like Hillary again.

Winstonfield - Yes, government regulated healthcare is so wasteful - [ahem] the free market system has proven so efficient at providing lean, unpadded, cheap healthcare to America's public. No waste in the current system, - it's not like anyone is getting shafted or overbilled or anything right? It's not like patients would be billed $12K for a CAT scan. oh. Like many Republicans your attitude is "I'm covered, so STFU non-rich people".

I love my fair, reasonably efficient, public healthcare here in Australia. I'm afraid to travel to the US with my family in case something happened over there. Wouldn't want to have to sell my car to get a broken arm set.

While central government is inefficient and there to perpetuate itself, it's globally accepted - as the alternative is always worse.

Countries without strong central governments become decentralized, and self serving and unscrupulous individuals take control of services and resources. Without central government the result is always a feudal system with unelected, undemocratic localized dictators who protect their power and have no government to answer to.

Central government MUST perpetuate itself. Otherwise it would cease to exist and people would no longer get to democratically decide their leaders and policies - it would be forced upon them by rich and powerful businessmen and republicans.

What a peach.

Well said L0cky, dag, and raverman.

I get a kick out of Winston's use of the word 'freedom' - as if it is limiting someones freedoms by socializing medicine. Here in Canada, I can choose my own family doctor, choose which hospital I go to, etc.

I am always wondering why the very people (conservatives) who despise government are always running in elections to run it. It's like me trying to get a job on the board of Monsanto or KBR - it doesn't make sense.

But, I guess, if Winston isn't looking out for the insurance company's interests, who is going to?

EDIT - Winston's citing of 'freedom' reminds me of this guy.

^ awesome clip Throbbin

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
My beef with social medicine is the same as my beef with central planning in general. Central planning is wasteful, prone to corruption, and inefficient.


Ha ha ha ha ha!

Or so you've been told, and dutifully repeated.

Bugs the shit out of me when a see a man waving his finger at a woman about abortion rights.

Abortion isn't a women's issue. Men are not inherently incapable of understanding what is a really an extraordinarily simple ethical problem.

I found Clinton's response pretty inane, in fact.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
My beef with social medicine is the same as my beef with central planning in general. Central planning is wasteful, prone to corruption, and inefficient.

Bullshit.

Public health campaigns such as vaccination have proven to be highly efficient and effective, saving countless millions of lives around the world. Centralized education, prevention, and screening is much more efficient than privatized health care treating late stage disease.

Just because central planning doesn't work for economies doesn't mean that you can extrapolate the same conclusion to every situation.

Oh, yay, another old white guy spouting off about woman's issues. She nailed that response.

>> ^dirtythirtyix:
I'd like to understand where how a distinction can be drawn between medical care, and other protective social services like police and fire?
Isn't the goal of those things ostensibly the same?


That is a very very excellent question! I'd love to see some parodies of anti socialised medicine propaganda where they are instead arguing against socialised fire protection, or policing.

"Some people think that the government should be in charge of the police. This kind of socialised policing would be inefficient, wasteful, and unamerican!"

>> ^Throbbin:
Well said L0cky, dag, and raverman.
I get a kick out of Winston's use of the word 'freedom' - as if it is limiting someones freedoms by socializing medicine.


Of course it tramples on people's freedoms to have socialised medicine.
How do you think it is funded? Out of pots at the end of rainbows?
People do not have a choice about whether to fund socialised medicine or not.

It's great you are happy to help other people. I am very willing to help others in need also, but I do not expect to be FORCED into doing this - which is what happens in e.g. the UK.

If there was the option to opt-out this would be a *slightly* better system.

Nevermind about how badly run the government systems are, another problem with government funded projects is people feel a sense of entitlement.

e.g. Rather than appreciate that it was his friends and neighbours who helped him out with the funding of his surgery, Joe just felt that he was entitled to this as this is what everyone gets and you cannot put a face to who it is that has helped you...
In turn, he does not have the incentive to help out in turn e.g. help out his neighbours when they are in trouble or make a donation to the organisation that helped them.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^The problem is that you don't recognise that you live in a community, society and world that is interdependent.

When I ride public transport to work each day - I'm glad that the people I sit next to have at least the same basic medical coverage that I do.

I'm also happy that when my kids go to school at the public elementary, that their neighbors have a basic level of health care and that there are no cases of complete destitution and malnutrition among their peers.

You, Toast and Winston should get a cabin in the woods and lay down the concertina wire. The rest of us are trying to build an supportive, healthy society.

^ I was not saying that you should not help those around you but that at the expense of another person I should get this or that from money gain by FORCE.

As in if I do not help that person out with their medicine, I end up in jail. This is what I do not agree with.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^That's the penalty for living in an interdependent society. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a "true" libertarian society- but I'm pretty sure that the roads would be shit - and paved with a different substance every 500 meters.

>> ^toast:
>>^Throbbin:
Well said L0cky, dag, and raverman.
I get a kick out of Winston's use of the word 'freedom' - as if it is limiting someones freedoms by socializing medicine.

Of course it tramples on people's freedoms to have socialised medicine.
How do you think it is funded? Out of pots at the end of rainbows?
People do not have a choice about whether to fund socialised medicine or not.
It's great you are happy to help other people. I am very willing to help others in need also, but I do not expect to be FORCED into doing this - which is what happens in e.g. the UK.
If there was the option to opt-out this would be a slightly better system.
Nevermind about how badly run the government systems are, another problem with government funded projects is people feel a sense of entitlement.
e.g. Rather than appreciate that it was his friends and neighbours who helped him out with the funding of his surgery, Joe just felt that he was entitled to this as this is what everyone gets and you cannot put a face to who it is that has helped you...
In turn, he does not have the incentive to help out in turn e.g. help out his neighbours when they are in trouble or make a donation to the organisation that helped them.



Just where are these "badly run government systems"? Give us an example. A journal article. Something other than rhetoric.

Also, if you (or "Joe") cannot be bothered to help each other out, regardless of incentive, then I'd begin to question your own moral compass.

I don't need incentive to help my neighbour out in any way I can - it's called "humanity".

>> ^toast:
^ I was not saying that you should not help those around you but that at the expense of another person I should get this or that from money gain by FORCE.

Yet again with the FREEDOM/FORCE canard.

If you want freedom you can have it, head into the nearest forest, and never walk out, you will not get taxed, you will not benefit from an economy subsidized on tax funded roads, or stabilized through tax funded courts, or made fluid through a tax funded currency system. You will also probably die of a curable disease by your fortieth birthday.

Property, currency, and other social services are all conventions we use because they bring us benefit both collectively and personally. If you believe you should have the "freedom" to own things, then I should have the "freedom" not to have to worry about pandemics and poverty in my society.

The difference is that you believe, incorrectly, that property, and all the legal machinery necessary to maintain it, is somehow not funded by force, but that the medical machinery to maintain universal health care is.

I find Hilary Clinton very sexy.....what??...NONE of you find power sexy?!

the free market system has proven so efficient at providing lean, unpadded, cheap healthcare to America's public

The theory is a single payer would implement price controls & decrease costs. That's not what happens in practice. Contracts which pay $400 for a toilet seat or $150 for a lugnut are not 'lean, unpadded, or cheap'. And yet that sort of malfeasence goes on all the time in centrally planned systems.

Without central government the result is always a feudal system with unelected, undemocratic localized dictator

You're having a different discussion with some other hypothetical person. I never said, 'abolish central government'. A central government is fine, but it does not mean that government needs to be in charge of the personal, private decisions of citizens. It certainly doesn't need 2 trillion dollars a year. Those are different concepts.

As if it is limiting someones freedoms by socializing medicine. Here in Canada, I can choose my own family doctor, choose which hospital I go to, etc.

You are talking about simple "What building do I go to?" freedom. I'm talking about the much more important issue of economic freedom. When government siphons wealth from citizens it means there is less money that could be donated to charities, start businesses, hire employees, educate, care for others, pay for commerce, contribute, save, or invest. The result is less capacity for individuals to live, pursue happiness, and be at liberty.

"But all the goverment helps those things so you don't have to!" Go to the projects and ask how free they feel. Ask the guy living off Social Security how free he is. Ask the guy who has to beg the government to approve his surgery if he is free. Being on the dole doesn't make you free. It makes you a slave. Are there people who need help? Sure. Permenant, expensive 'one-size' social programs are not a proper solution to the temporary needs of small percentages of individuals.

Centralized education, prevention, and screening is much more efficient than privatized health care treating late stage disease.

I don't mind government spending a few million a year on PSAs and flu shots. The government taking hundreds of billions every year to run health care is totally different. Peas and apples.

Just where are these "badly run government systems"?

Google "Canadian health care crisis" or "British health care crisis". There are thousands of articles discussing how problematic the public health care systems are. In fact, private health care in Canada and Britain are quite popular because the public systems are so lousy. When anyone has enough personal financial freedom (IE money) they opt out. There's that issue of financial freedom again... Hmmm...

Not everyone gets health care in public systems. People are denied care ALL the time. So it is a myth that a public system will care for more people. Public systems are not free. They require co-pays, taxes, and even insurance premiums. So it is a myth that public systems are cheaper.

So if public health care doesn't treat more people, isn't cheaper, and decreases freedom then why would anyone want to touch it with a 10 meter cattle prod? I think it's because large numbers of people are (A) ignorant of basic economics (B) ignorant of basic civics and (C) are easily manipulated by politicians and the press. IE Lots of ignorant, gullible voters.

I think we should have until age 8 to kill our children. At about that point you can tell if they'll be a useless member of the society...actually at that point you're better capable of telling than as a fetus. So no on abortion, yes on proving your own worth at age 8.

>> ^rottenseed:
I think we should have until age 8 to kill our children. At about that point you can tell if they'll be a useless member of the society...actually at that point you're better capable of telling than as a fetus. So no on abortion, yes on proving your own worth at age 8.


No upvote, but LOL nontheless.

>> ^rottenseed:
I think we should have until age 8 to kill our children. At about that point you can tell if they'll be a useless member of the society...actually at that point you're better capable of telling than as a fetus. So no on abortion, yes on proving your own worth at age 8.



Make it a yearly assessment, starting at age 8... for everyone.

Am I the only one who clapped in my computer chair??

She argued brilliantly with stupid arguments.

>> ^JiggaJonson:
Am I the only one who clapped in my computer chair??

Nope!

So liberating 30 million Iraqs from a cruel dictator in favor of free elections is the US "interfering with another nation's sovereignty" but the reproductive health of women around the world, that's our business, and so we should fund irresponsibility overseas, just like liberals do here at home.

And the only reason Obamarx hired this reptile was crosshairs insurance.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
The theory is a single payer would implement price controls & decrease costs. That's not what happens in practice. Contracts which pay $400 for a toilet seat or $150 for a lugnut are not 'lean, unpadded, or cheap'. And yet that sort of malfeasence goes on all the time in centrally planned systems.


No, that's what happens in a corrupt system.

If you want to get something done on a large scale, there is no other way to do it other than some form of centralized planning. Your arguments are silly. You're just repeating bullshit somebody told you about the horrors of Russian inefficiency.

What you describe above is happening right now in your vaunted "free market" scamola system we have in place now for health care.

But go ahead, keep shitting on America, it's what people like you do best.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
My beef with social medicine is the same as my beef with central planning in general. Central planning is wasteful, prone to corruption, and inefficient.

Really? China?

>> ^Psychologic:
Can we rebrand the "pro-life" crowd as "anti-choice"? Seems more descriptively accurate.


As long as we can start calling the "pro-choice" crowd "anti-life." Even more accurate.

>> ^JiggaJonson:
Am I the only one who clapped in my computer chair??


A computer chair? Sounds cool!

No, that's what happens in a corrupt system.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more power you allow a government, the more corrupt it becomes. Giving a central government authority over the health care needs of its citizens invests it with enormous power. The inevitable outcome is corruption and subsequent self-insulation from accountability or responsibility.

If you want to get something done on a large scale, there is no other way to do it other than some form of centralized planning.

No other way? That's an absolute, and I reject it. There are MANY ways to accomplish things on a large scale without a large central government being involved. Regardless, you err when you assume health care is something 'done on a large scale'. Health care is a 'small scale' micro-transaction between a patient and a doctor. That is not a national activity, and requires no central system. Evidence suggests that the larger a system becomes, the more corrupt, uncaring, and indifferent it is. Yeah, that's a good idea for health care...

What you describe above is happening right now in your vaunted "free market" scamola system we have in place now for health care.

I pay $40 a month in premiums for an 80/20 plan with a $200 deductible and a $5,000 annual out of pocket limit. For that price I've had family members receive $250,000 in health care within one year (cancer). I paid $5,000. How was that 'scamola'?

It's what you people do best.

I'm wryly amused that such boorish language results from merely sharing an alternative point of view. Why does the mere communication of a different approach cause you to react with such anger and fear? Are you so insecure in your beliefs that merely knowing another system exists causes you to attack it? Assaulting other beliefs just because they are different must mean that you are some sort of religious fundamentalist, right? Watch Pat Robertson much?

Can we rebrand the "pro-life" crowd as "anti-choice"? Seems more descriptively accurate

That sort of politically motivated branding happens on both sides. "Pro-Choice = Anti-Life... Pro-Life = Anti-Choice..." Blah blah blah blah. It's all a load of propoganda crap. Both arguments have thier place.

>> ^Morganth:
>> ^Psychologic:
Can we rebrand the "pro-life" crowd as "anti-choice"? Seems more descriptively accurate.

As long as we can start calling the "pro-choice" crowd "anti-life." Even more accurate.

If you want to go NPOV you should consider pro/anti-abortion-recriminalization or abortion-criminalizers/decriminalizers.

pro/anti-life disregards that life includes far more than white-human-fetuses. And the ven diagram of pro/anti-life & pro/anti-militarism shows the lie in the labels.

pro/anti-choice disregards that the fundamental desired outcome of both sides is about the legal status. The choice is always there, the question is if making a particular choice is a crime.

i dont see why people are jumping on winston,
his views are obviously conservative.
that's his right.
i disagree with his view,and much of my argument many here have posted..
i.e:american already has taxpayer socialized systems,the free market health system is an epic fail geared for the have's,even the 250 million that HAVE
health insurance are receiving inadequate care for their dollar.
a civilized country should take of its elderly,vulnerable and its children.
the one point i would make that has not been addressed is the simple,yet blaring fact,america could insure every single american for 200 million LESS than is spent now.
lets think about this...
adequate care for every american,for 200 million LESS than we pay now.
i think even winston would appreciate those numbers.
no need for medicare,medicaid,prescription drug plans,government subsidized childrens health plans....all gone.
one teensy weensy problem though...
the eradication of the FIFTH largest lobbyist.
the health insurance industry.
they spend untold BILLIONS to influence legislature to affect their bottom line.
they have been writing the legislation for medicare and medicaid for the past twenty years.
*note* yes..it has been lobbyist who have been writing 85% of legislation.

so the REAL problem is not a universal health care system.
its the removal of the bloated behemoth we call the "health insurance industry" which devours almost 60% of every dollar paid for health insurance for "administrative costs".
bribery, *cough* i mean "influence", is extremely costly.
this entrenched,archaic,self-perpetuating,and ultimately redundant system,
needs to go.which i do not think is going to be a walk in the park.

i think that when viewed in this light,even our friend winston,the conservative,will agree on some points.
its all about common ground,and re-gurgitating the health insurance's own propaganda to make an argument helps noone.
well..it helps the health insurance industry.

Enoch is right. The health insurance industry/lobby is failing and abusing us dramatically. In large part, this is because they fail to acknowledge what "insurance" is. Insurance is supposed to be for when something goes badly wrong. Car insurance companies do not pay for maintenance tune-ups, new wipers, signal lights and brake pads, even though those can all prevent accidents. Why then does health insurance cover those? Answer: it makes them more money. The more they get their dirty fingers into our health care, the more money they make. But that's more money that goes to a middle man and is spent on bureaucracy instead of into doctors' pockets. This is causing rising prices and decreasing numbers of doctors due to higher workload for less pay.

Let's be clear. Insurance is for alleviating the cost of *problems* by spreading risk across a population. Insurance is NOT for checkups, vaccinations and allergy meds. You can try to rationalize that those reduce later costs, but the evidence i'm seeing out there is rising costs and reduced physician availability. The proof is in the pudding.

So, what to do? I'm fine with the government financing health insurance and even regular health care. No issues. I'm not fine with the government running both of those through greedy insurance companies and complicated bureuacracies. I like their compassion for the poor and sick. I despise their need for control. I do believe the free market can do it better. But for that to happen, we have to do a few things:

1) finance it via tax credits (deductions for the rich, rebates for the poor) so that individuals maintain control of spending, but have at least a portion of it ultimately paid by the government. thus we have both freedom AND compassion. oh, and this must include Medicare/Medicaid.

2) ending the employer tax breaks for providing health care. this is sand in the free market gears, as it reduces the number of choices happening.

3) educate people that the "we pay for every little thing" plans are not financially sound. because, they're not, especially if #1 is put in place.

oh, and the whole abortion debate is handled on preposterously unscientific grounds most of the time. it's plain as day that unborn "fetuses" are very much human children long before they are born. my son was born at 24 weeks. would he really have been "just a fetus" that my wife had some "right to kill" for the next 16 weeks were he not premature? Heck, i saw my daughter on ultrasound at 8.5 weeks. She already looked very human (just with an oversized head) and was moving around. Where on earth do we get the idea that human rights should only start at birth? Maybe that seemed sensible 30 years ago, but it's seems scientifically ignorant given all we've learned about life in utero since. I would much rather see the "right to abortion" at least end at a more sensible stage of development, like 8 or maybe 12 weeks. That's plenty of time to make a choice.

I agree that the insurance industry is a buearucratic expense. It is an administrative roadblock in the relationship between consumers and providers, contributing little. But 'national health care' as yearned for by liberals simply replaces one big phat expensive useless bureaucratic middleman (insurance) with a completely NEW one (government). I see very little logic or merit in that approach.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other large social programs are insolvent failures. Yet they all had the same sentiments as national health care. But that never stops them from being 'epic fails' on a scale grander than the insurance industry.

So why is that? Corrupt systems. Once you give a corrupt system a pile of money, that system is destined to waste, steal, misappropriate, and mismanage it. It happened with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et al... It is inevitable that it would happen again with national health care.

I look at Obama's proposals and the other plans being served up by Democrats & liberals and I see nothing but naked money-grubbing for a new stream of unaccountable, unfettered tax revenue. I'm not 100% against the idea of a single payer system. I just don't think that GOVERNMENT should be allowed anywhere near it.

>> ^nadabu: oh, and the whole abortion debate is handled on preposterously unscientific grounds most of the time. it's plain as day that unborn "fetuses" are very much human children long before they are born. my son was born at 24 weeks. would he really have been "just a fetus" that my wife had some "right to kill" for the next 16 weeks were he not premature? Heck, i saw my daughter on ultrasound at 8.5 weeks. She already looked very human (just with an oversized head) and was moving around. Where on earth do we get the idea that human rights should only start at birth?

Roe V. Wade, which is the current state of the law in the US, allows limits on 3rd trimester abortion, for the reason you mentioned. But saying conception, or 1/2/3 months = human would mean that most miscarriages are manslaughter, or that the mothers body is, at the very least, a crime scene, this would be more absurd than the status quo.

Fetuses before 20weeks have no brain function, that is the science, they are not people by any reasonable definition. We, at present, have a continuum of "value" which the law places on a fetus as it becomes more likely to be conscious. As it stands birth is the least absurd of the arbitrary criteria we could use for discrete personhood.

Our moral sense did not evolve to deal with the fluidity of personhood, but that is what we see when we look at the science. No solution is morally satisfying, because the universe is not structured to appease our moral sense.

I'm against any medical care being supported, advertised, promoted, and conducted with taxpayer money.

Tell it to the millions who died in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. Healthcare is a public good with the same rationale as public fire department, public police departments, public military, public highways, etc. One person's lack of healthcare negatively influences the health of everyone around them.

Public healthcare is a matter of NATIONAL SECURITY. That kind of stuff pushes your conservative buttons, right?

>> ^Morganth:
"I deeply respect your opinions"
Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that one.


Actually I'm going to counter you there. The fundamental premace of the pro-choice movement is that you DO respect the choice both to have or not have an abortion. That's what is different about it. The pro-choice movement leaves the door WIDE open not to have an abortion and to choose other options such as adoption. The problem with the pro-life movement is that it does not respect the opinion that abortion is a right women should have.

So in summary, I'm far more inclined to believe that Clinton respects people's opinions by supporting an option which allows for women to choose what they do with their own bodies and not have someone who believes that voices from heaven tell them what is unilaterally right in the world.

Oh and for the record, I, unlike Clinton, don't respect the senator's opinion.

Oh and by the way:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/index.html

ironeeeee

Fetuses before 20weeks have no brain function, that is the science, they are not people by any reasonable definition.

"No brain function?" My goodness, that's a grossly inaccurate claim. First, my understanding is that 20 weeks is the earliest detected (thus far) activity in the cerebral cortex. That is not the earliest brain "function" detected. Far as i know, the brain stem cells are connecting and responding to stimuli by 8 weeks according to some studies. So, to me, 20 weeks is the very *latest* time frame i would consider reasonable to still permit "choice" as a rule. However, since there has been limited study in this area, especially of late, i believe it would be wiser to move the legislative controls to the 8 or 12 week time frame. Certainly your life prior to the pregnancy plus 2+ months of awareness of the pregnancy is enough time for most people to make such a decision. Obviously, there should be a variety of exceptions for rare, extreme cases, but my beef is that the general rule permits abortion later than it ought.

And please drop the nonsense about miscarriages (which usually happen by 12 weeks anyway) being "manslaughter". That is first class idiocy. Natural processes kill people every second and no one calls it "manslaughter". The very idea is both a laughable straw man and terribly insensitive.

Anyway, despite the limited recent study in the specific area of fetal brain activity, you are grossly exaggerating our ignorance by labeling birth the "least absurd of the arbitrary criteria" available to us. Birth was an absurd criteria even before we had ultrasounds, EEGs and the medical ability to keep a kid born months premature alive and healthy. Societies for *millenia* have called it murder when an unborn child is killed by an act of violence against a pregnant woman, because it is very obvious that the unborn baby is a person well before they are born. I'm guessing that you've never closely walked through a pregnancy with a woman before if you can say something ignorant like that. Go have a kid, watch them on an ultrasound at 8 and 20 weeks, feel them kick and respond to sounds (even recognize mom's voice) in the last trimester. Then come back and tell me again how you think "birth is the least absurd" choice for recognizing a baby's humanity.