‘Why Is It We Have Finite Resources For Health Care But Unlimited Money For War?’ »
Posted By tehranchik 1 week, 5 days ago in Political Opinion
Video: Dennis Kucinich:‘Why Is It We Have Finite Resources For Health Care But Unlimited Money For War?’
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tehranchik
Well, I'm from and live in the Pacific Northwest. I did live in the middle east during the late 70's and early 80 ...
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hyperbola1 week, 5 days ago
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The answer to his question is rather obvious - and one that happens with professional armies throughout history.
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America Owned by Its Army
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/11/08/america-...
It is possible that the creation of an all-professional American army was the most dangerous decision ever taken by Congress. The nation now confronts a political crisis in which the issue has become an undeclared contest between Pentagon power and that of a newly elected president.
Barack Obama has yet to declare his decision on the war in Afghanistan, and there is every reason to think that he will follow military opinion. Yet he is under immense pressure from his Republican opponents to, in effect, renounce his presidential power, and step aside from the fundamental strategic decisions of the nation. ....
...Congress created a new all-volunteer army. The sociology of the new army was very different from the old citizens’ army....
.... the U.S. army from the start of the Second World War to the end of Vietnam was effectively a democratic army, with civilian conscripts, and the majority of its non-commissioned and commissioned officers peacetime civilians, with solid commitments to civilian society, often with families at home –- doing their temporary (or “for the war’s duration”) patriotic duty.
Professional armies have often been considered a threat to their own societies. It was one of Frederick the Great’s own officers who described Prussia “as an army with a state, in which it was temporarily quartered, so to speak.” The French revolutionary statesman Mirabeau said that “war is Prussia’s national industry.” Considering the portion of the U.S. national budget that is now consumed by the Pentagon, much the same could be said of the United States.
The new army also has political ambitions. It now dominates U.S. foreign relations with a thousand bases worldwide and regional commanders like imperial proconsuls. Both General McChrystal and his superior, General David H. Petraeus, have been mentioned as future presidential candidates. The last general who became American president was Dwight Eisenhower. He is the one who warned Americans against “the military-industrial complex.” -
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Endoscopy1 week, 4 days ago
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This foolish person does not read the Constitution. He does ot bother to read the oath of office of the President. Both have in them the REQUIREMENT to protect and defend the people but not one word about health care. Of course liberals love to rewrite the constitution.
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jordan111 week, 5 days ago
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Georgia501 week, 5 days ago
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I guess no one told the kook that wars are fought by nations whereas people pay for their own health care. If the kook had half a brain, he might also notice we have an endless appetite for highways and bridges. But no...stupidity must reign.
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jordan111 week, 5 days ago
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What? You made no sense. An "endless appetite for bridges?" The bridge that collapsed a couple years ago was an existing structure that hadn't been maintained because our bridges aren't being maintained. You think we don't need bridges? Is that it? WTH are you talking about? Commerce needs roads. Commerce needs bridges. I'll leave you to figure out 'why.' Good lord.
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frctm51 week, 5 days ago
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I don't know if you have noticed this, but nations are an aggregate expression of the people living within them. Your argument is one of semantics and largely devoid of any meaningful principles. Health care could easily be thought of in terms of collective defense. Viruses and communicable diseases don't really care whether you have insurance or not. Agreed, however, that adult literacy would benefit us greatly as Fox Viewers so amply demonstrate.
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hyperbola1 week, 5 days ago
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Well Georgia, with that you just revealed that you are really a racist totalitarian. As well as a supporter of infinite corruption. Your kind of right-wing extremism is about as anti-American as it gets. Why do you stay in America? Wouldn't you be better off in your country of first loyalty?
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The Unacceptable Cost of Judeo-Christianity; Its Legacy of Pain
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/10/08/the-unac...
No religious persuasion has ever been more clearly responsible for so much bloodshed and destruction as has “Christian Zionism.” This 100-year old offshoot of fundamental Christianity has almost single-handedly legitimized wars in Arab states since January 1991. Its destructive power is only now being understood. ... We note again that the grassroots individuals within this movement are almost always motivated by altruistic religious belief (this author was once one of these), while the driving force behind their leaders is almost always tainted by money and the power of fame.
...First: It must be understood what Judeo-Christianity (also called “evangelicalism,” dispensationalism, or Christians Zionism) is: by any name, a 20th Century phenomena, an apostate-cult, meaning it practices, in part, a deviant path of following Christ, and it relies upon many varied human sources other than the traditional bible(s) for its theology.4 & 5
Second: Judeo-Christianity ascribes holiness to a foreign political state, Israel, as though it was itself a god. It placed political Israel on the throne along side of Jesus Christ, and, in so doing, its teachers ignore, if not annul, much of Jesus’ teachings. 1 & 2 & 3
Third: Rank and file churchgoers and many lesser known Judeo-Christian pastors think of themselves as moral, even when they are actively contributing to immoral acts, such as supporting mass military assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank. ...
...Judeo-Christianity can easily be used by its leader, and by the leaders of Israel, to carry out a political agenda that favors that foreign political state over and ahead of the interests of America, and ahead of the interest of any humans in the USA or any other country except Israel. For the most part followers of the cult do not know they are being used. Without this understanding many are confused between Judeo-Christian religion and its political agenda. Pro-Israel activists, including John Hagee, should rightly be registered as agents for a foreign government, so open are their objectives.,Some of our allies against serial wars attribute them to Israel, working through its agents and lobbies for the purpose of gaining US dollar support and creating chaos in the Middle East for its own benefit. -
hyperbolaComment removed: Spam
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frctm51 week, 5 days ago
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What's interesting is that a single flu virus in 1918 killed more Americans than all of our wars combined so in terms of comparative threats, infectious disease far outranks foreign enemies. So, on any rational criteria, health care should rank higher, but people aren't rational.
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The reason the right loves the military, at least in a vicarious way because their passion is not reflected in their willingness to join, is that they view it as a tool of dominance and intimidation and not as purely defensive. Its a way of showing he world you have a big johnson. Let's call it "compensating".
I find it interesting that those who generally have the least bragging rights when it comes to the realm of personal achievement are often the most zealous patriots and military lovers. They seek self esteem vicariously through the strength of arms of our military and through their citizenship in a wealthy country. These are the most irrational forms of self esteem since nothing about being born in this country makes you better than anyone else. That is just a matter of chance. True patriotism is defending the principles of freedom, justice, and self government. As is usually the case, the threats to these are more often domestic in nature.-
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hyperbola1 week, 5 days ago
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Well, our present "health care" system kills about 45,000 Americans per year. You know, fifteen 9-11s per year.
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Shut Down the Murderous Health Care Racket
Al Capone is awake in his grave in awe at the criminal racket promulgated by the health care industry: a murderous multi-billion dollar industry that keeps the world’s Superpower in the sociological Stone Age. A recent study upped the figure of Americans killed by this enterprise from 20,000 to about 45,000: that is fifteen 9-11’s a year of Americans facing a cruel, painful death at the hands of these prolific killers....
Some might say I sound like a demagogue. When you are used to insipid soundbytes and P.C.-fluff, the truth starts sounding like demagoguery. The fact of the matter is that the truth is extraordinarily painful in this country ruled by a peculiar Victorian fetish of the marketplace. Nowhere in the civilized world could one imagine civic leaders fear mongering the populace about the evils of “socialized medicine” without getting laughed out of the country. Unfortunately, these goons of capitalist oppression seem to have been collectively laughed out of the civilized world and into Land of the Free.
Nonetheless, the problem is not this visceral minority. The problem lies in those that pretend to befriend progress: that grand, archaic organ of political oppression called the Democratic Party. This increasingly irrelevant union of crooks, hucksters and swindlers has betrayed the American people beyond recognition. Their failure to enact meaningful health care reform must be the last straw....
... Progressive leaders have fallen to the right of the American people. Americans crave and need meaningful health care reform in line with the remainder of the civilized world. They crave and need leadership in Washington that stands for the interests of their constituents: leaders that aren’t fearful of lifting their heads above the fray, pounding their fists on the podium and declaring “It is time we shut this racket down. Let us throw the insurance companies into the dustbin of history once and for all, and end this domestic terrorism that kills 45,000 Americans a year!”
Unfortunately, to get to this point, we are going to have to purge the Congress of almost every last one of its members, and stop thinking that the Democrats or the NGO industrial complex will ever bring Americans their cherished Medicare-for-all.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/11/07/shut-dow... -
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mesodude1 week, 5 days ago
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I just have to laugh when I see right wingers turning into rumplestiltskin (all because Democrats want to keep Americans safe by providing them health care)--when they were desperately hoping we'd be staying in Iraq and spending more trillions for decades into the future. This, I do not comprehend.
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hyperbola1 week, 5 days ago
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What makes you think we are leaving Iraq? In fact because Obama is stealthily replacing "cheap" soldiers with even more expensive "contractors", our costs in iraq are going UP!
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The Obama Administration is Actually Increasing the US Presence in Iraq
Believe it or not, the U.S. presence in Iraq is growing under the leadership of antiwar president Barack Obama. A recent Washington Post by reporter Walter Pincus explains that when U.S. troops are "withdrawn," their jobs are taken over by......mercenaries -- the notorious "contractors," who are hired for fabulous sums of money to sustain the huge U.S. presence there.
And there are some really awful aspects of this process, including:
• The cost of the contractors is substantially higher than the cost of the soldiers they replace. (That is, the cost of the war is going up as the U.S. "scales down" its presence in Iraq)
• "Where private guards replaced soldiers, many more guards were needed to do the same job." So the numbers and cost of the U.S. presence is going upward, not downward.
• The new contractors are overwhelmingly "third-country nationals" employed by U.S. corporations under contract from the U.S. Defense and State departments. That is, with unemployment at 60% in many places around Iraq, the new jobs created by these contractors are not giving employment to unemployed Iraqis.
• And just to underscore that this is not a process of de-escalating a U.S. presence, the "third country nationals" brought in to replace U.S. soldiers are required to speak English, but they need not speak Arabic. So we learn that the process of cultural imperialism is continuing--there is no effort to have the U.S. presence become blended into Iraqi civil society. In fact, this and so many other actions work to coerce the Iraqis into integrating into the globalized U.S. political economy.
Just another glimpse of the long term effort of the U.S. government to colonize Iraq.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/09/14/the-obam... -
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epiphannyy1 week, 5 days ago
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I've never understood our outrageous military spending compared to the rest of the world. Who are we SO afraid of that we must outspend the entire world combined? And how well did that spending actually protect us on 9/11?
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http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/military...
Considering out completely out-of-balance spending on military, globally speaking, we should be the most secure nation in the world. Yet we still don't protect our ports, our borders, or our citizens against forewarned attacks using planes as missiles. I guess this is proof positive that more money doesn't mean better quality. Although, it is curious that all of the recently reborn fiscal conservatives have no issue with the lopsided funding for military, when spending a fraction of that same expenditure for anything that actually helps Americans throws them into spasms in protest.
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truthiness1 week, 5 days ago
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Liberals- end slavery
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conservatives- no
liberals- give africanamericans the vote
conservatives- no
liberals- give women the vote
conservatives- no
liberals- SS to keep the elderly out of poverty
conservatives- no
liberals- medicare/medicaid to care for elderly and poor
conservatives- no
liberals- civil rights act
conservatives- no
conservatives- pre-emptive war
liberals -no
liberals regulate corporate corruption
conservatives- no
liberals- cap/trade to force market green
conservatives- no
liberals- universal health care
conservatives - no
a proud american history for one of us.-
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beavith11 week, 4 days ago
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let's review.
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Liberals- end slavery
conservatives- no
republicans - end slavery.
democrats: no
liberals- give africanamericans the vote
conservatives- no
republicans: give african americans the vote
democrats: no
liberals- give women the vote
conservatives- no
1/2 of all men, plus one more: : give women the vote
1/2 of all men less one: no
liberals- SS to keep the elderly out of poverty
conservatives- no
does it do that? maybe in the beginning. now? its a Ponzi scheme.
liberals- medicare/medicaid to care for elderly and poor
conservatives- no
did the supporters lie about the actual expense? they were only off by a factor of 4. that's why i don't support this health care boondoggle.
liberals- civil rights act
conservatives- no
republicans: civil rights act
democrats: no
conservatives- pre-emptive war
liberals -no
democrats and republicans: preemptive war
a few odd opponents: no
liberals regulate corporate corruption
conservatives- no
how do you 'regulate' corruption? i'd have to ask Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
liberals- cap/trade to force market green
conservatives- no
kooks: cap and trade to force market green
non-kooks: no
liberals- universal health care
conservatives - no
everyone that believes that TTisSTAAFL: universal health care
everyone that believes that TNSTAAFL: no
a proud american history for one of us?
sure, if that 'one of us' is all over the map.
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Natureboy1 week, 5 days ago
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Unfortunately, we have had anti-incumbent sentiment abounding for decades, possibly centuries, in this country. Throwing the bastards out seems only to create a vacancy for the next bastard to fill.
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I think the problem is structural. Anti-federalists warned that a strong central government and a standing army would soon devolve into a tyranny of the elite. 200+ years later, here we are with a millionaire president and 237 millionaires in congress. And not a one of them gives two sh!ts whether you oppose the wars fought in your name, or whether your son or daughter comes home in a box from one of those wars, as long as the wheels of Wall Street, Madison Avenue and the defense industry stay well greased.
Obama and congress are respectively the CEO and board of the America corporation, and even if you throw them out, the corporation will continue to do business as usual. It's going to take more than a change of faces to change the direction in which this country is headed.
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