my two cents

[Turky]

I find it silly that the Obama campaign made such a huge deal about the unemployment rate "finally" making it under 8%. Regardless of whether the numbers are skewed due to the amount of people that have stopped looking for jobs, it seems superficial for that to be such a point of contention just because it took Obama almost his full term in office to fulfill his own promise.

[Magyk]

I find it silly that the Obama campaign made such a huge deal about the unemployment rate "finally" making it under 8%. Regardless of whether the numbers are skewed due to the amount of people that have stopped looking for jobs, it seems superficial for that to be such a point of contention just because it took Obama almost his full term in office to fulfill his own promise.

And he didn't really fulfill it, because as you said the numbers are skewed.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48468748/Real_Un ... re_Jobless

You know when NBC is reporting on it, shit is baaad.

[MajorMajor]

*face palm* did you even take a look at those numbers Magyk? Rather than just read the NBC report I mean?

The U-6 unemployment graph with those much higher numbers proves what I have said. Things are getting BETTER but MORE SLOWLY THAN WE WOULD LIKE. The general trend of both the standard unemployment numbers and the "real" unemployment numbers both show that unemployment is decreasing. In the U-6 they peak at 17.2% and are currently at 14.7 %. Now, you're going to say these aren't good figures and I agree with you 100%. The problem I have is, and I repeat myself here, Romney says they are getting worse. Which is a flat out lie. If it were true they would have to be going up and not down.

I get pissed off at Romney because rather than being honest and saying things are getting better but too slowly he chooses to lie to us and say they are actually not getting any better at all but instead are getting worse. In complete denial of the facts.

I get pissed off at Obama too. He skews facts for his purposes. I'll name one. It isn't about the ecomony though. No, he tries to sell us the bull that voting for Romney would mean an end to Big Bird. This is completely untrue. PBS and NPR both have enough money from private sources that they could continue without government funds. They'd just have to tighten their purses a bit.

It pisses me off that Obama chooses to attack him on Big Bird rather than on what would actually occur by cutting public broadcasting funding. You see it wouldn't hurt Big Bird but it would hurt a whole lot of little radio and tv stations in rural areas across the country. These would all be shut down because they rely on that money for the majority of their budget.

Both parties completely ignore the facts when it suits their purposes to do so. I really wish just once a candidate would refrain from stretching facts.

Note: For the record. I voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primary here. I would have preferred him as a candidate because he generally tries to make sense.

Side Note: I can't believe they were going to have us sign "loyalty oaths" to support the winning primary candidate. How fascist can you get?

[Turky]

When you vote in the Texas primaries, you're forced to vote for one party or the other entirely. I couldn't vote for a Republican presidential candidate and vote for a Democratic senator at the same time. That's messed up too, it promotes too much narrow-minded thinking of blindly voting for the same party across the board.

[MajorMajor]

But at least your high school kid can get sterilized for free and they don't even have to tell you!
http://www.catholic.org/health/story.php?id=47274

I know the election is over and I have no interest in continuing the Romney vs Obama debate because it is settled. However, I must point out just how wrong this article, and what is being suggested by it, is.

If you read the article and actually understood the facts you'd realize that even though it is bashing Obamacare, what it is bashing Obamacare for is not even a part of Obamacare.

The sterilizations are part of Oregon STATE LAW, NOT FEDERAL. All Obamacare would do would be to allow people who wish to steralize themselves to be covered by insurance rather than having to pay the expenses out of pocket.

Apparently, in Oregon, they are ok with sterilization without parental consent. This is something you should take up with their state legislature, not with the federal government and Obamacare.

The whole article is basically skewed to scare people into thinking that sterilization is something Obamacare would do when it isn't the culprit at all.

[Sakke]

One thing I've noticed about the American election campaigns, is how many lies go into them. I find it utterly unacceptable and I'm glad it's different in Denmark. Of course they lie here too - but not nearly to the same extend.

[MajorMajor]

Speaking of Europeans...

The healthcare argument frequently brings up either that we should model our system after one of yours because its so great or we shouldn't because yours apparently doesn't work at all.

Some of the worst logic I've heard about the European argument is that even if your system works we shouldn't yews it because we need something American. Why wouldn't we yews something if it works? Are we patriotic snobs now? Have to have it our own way because we can't admit someone else has done something better than us for once?

[Turky]

It's not as simple as just using someone else's system to make all the problems go away. Socializing medicine will cause lots of wait time for people to get appointments. My dad often does heart surgery on people who come from Canada, because the wait time is longer than they might have to live (if they don't have the surgery done within that time).

So if Canada already has a lot of their kinks in the system worked out, and they still have people that have to leave the country for proper medical care... it makes me wonder how much worse it'll be for us when we first start implementing the system.

It's going to make a lot of changes that people here aren't going to be accustomed to... it's not going to be a smooth transition at all. I feel like there's other, more immediate issues that we need to address (such as the national debt) before we start trying to tackle an issue like socialized medicine.

[MajorMajor]

I don't think the issue should be tackling medical care before debt or debt before medical care. We should have been tackling them both at the same time but congress is just too disfunctional.

Obviously, there are going to be some differences between any system we adopt here and what they have in Europe simply because of the way things are organized now. My point is many people sound like they wouldn't even TRY using something that works simply because it isn't American.

Lets look at this common concern I hear about all the time, that Socializing medicine will cause lots of wait time. Why do those systems seem to experience this problem?

I think one likely reason is not the system itself but the lack of trained medical personel. It makes sense that if you have more doctors you can treat more people. (Note: more doctors means more competition and therefore should lower the cost of services in some economic theories) These systems are probably trying to treat more people per doctor than we are because, lets face it, we turn people down for procedures they need simply because they aren't "covered".

So, in order to see that everyone gets medical care (treating everyone is what socialized medicine attempts to do) we probably need to work on training more doctors, nurses, and specialists.

I've often thought that we could train loads of qualified people who aren't fully trained doctors to treat simple bacterial/viral infections that people go to the doctor 90% of the time for. We could have people who simply train to set broken bones or who specialize in doing one type of common operation. Unfortunately, the medical profession seems to guard entrance into its domain beyond just seeing that unqualified people don't get in. They require people be trained for years to treat more things than are generally in demand. They limit the supply and we end up paying more for their services.

[GUARD!AN]

We are all fucked now, bring on the debt!!!