Posted on 11/22/2003 3:22:08 AM PST by RobFromGa
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:37:57 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
this alone, means it is a good bill
It's called leadership and character. Ronald Reagan had it. Reagan believed in doing what was right regardless of the apparent political implications. Reagan was elected in a landslide and won re-election with an electoral blow-out. If it were not for Reagan's willingness to buck the political tide, you might be speaking Russian.
There are two reasons that our elections have gotten closer. When you can't tell the difference between the candidates or the two political parties, there isn't much reason to bother voting. Voter turn-out continues to decline, virtually setting new record lows with each election. Illiteracy rates are higher than voter turn-out rates. And I would be the last to dispute that these are related, but they are not related in the way that you might first be tempted to think. The people who are smart enough and able to recognize the differences stay home when there are not enough differences to actually make a difference in government. As long as both parties and candidates want to grow government and increase socialism it no longer matters how much or how fast. And to tell you the truth, Republicans have been moving left and growing government more than Democrats.
The second reason our elections are getting closer is that more people are recognizing that they themselves are conservative. They are recognizing that socialism doesn't work. Once people realize that socialism doesn't work, they cannot vote for Democrats at all. Grover Cleveland was the last Democrat that wasn't a socialist. After Reagan proved what a real conservative can do, the Republican Party surged as this group of former Democrat/ex-socialists started voting Republican. Do you remember the "Contract with America"? The Contract with America was the first time in my lifetime that the Republican Congressional candidates ran on a truly conservative agenda. If you can remember the candidates "taking the pledge", you will understand what a big deal this was and how it illustrates how little credibility political candidates have deservedly had. The result of actually running on a conservative agenda turned Congress over to Republicans, something that only happened once before in seventy years. For voters that cannot see or tell the difference, this looks like a one-off event. But to voters with a little more understanding, if you give them a strong conservative reason to turn out and vote; they do and did and in droves. The lesson of Ronald Reagan and the Contract is give conservatives a reason to vote and they will.
The problem lies on the other side of the realm. Since the XVIIth Amendment passed and due to a lack of term limits in the original Constitution, America is ruled by professional politicians instead of being governed by concerned citizens. Professional politicians are the world's second oldest profession. Professional politicians are professional promisers. They win election and re-election with promises to buy the votes of their constituents. Pandering for votes means the votes go to the highest bidder. In the minds of dumbed-down Americans, CFR was important. But it isn't campaign money directed at buying votes that is important to politicians. Over time no candidate or group of candidates can control the balance of power with the tiny equally balanced sums available in campaigns. Professional Politicians are using the treasury (where the big unlimited amounts of money are) after election to perpetuate themselves in office so that nothing ever changes.
Republicans came to power on Reagan's coat-tails and on the Contract with America. But it appears that once in power Republicans have become more interested in pandering for re-election than in serving their country by being statesmen.
The plan, which would not take effect until 2006, actually prohibits the government from negotiating deep prescription drug discounts for consumers.
And if anyone believes that they're crazy. As drug prices increase, those paying taxes to support this bill as well as the recipients will scream for governmental price controls. In turn, that will reduce profit margins and hurt R&D in the long run.
That is an inevitable result of this bill - it's just a matter of how long it takes.
Exactly. Enacting conservative legislation is a winning proposition. I'm a conservative because I truly believe it's the best governing philosophy, and I'm totally confident that the results of conservatism will bear that out.
Yet every day on this site I see people run screaming from conservative ideas because they think it will damage the GOP. I think it reveals the fact that these folks honestly do not believe that it can work in practice.
Yep, typical. Can't respond with intelligent debate, so you lob insults. You must be a Democrat..........
Professional panderers do not deserve re-election regardless of party. Professional politicians have turned a representative republic into a democracy by surrogate. Democracies end in bankruptcy or in hyperinflation when the electorate learns that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury. The United States is going to default on its debt or end in hyperinflation before the 2016 Presidential election. Socialism is an unworkable form of government. It is a powerful tool for politicians, but it is an unworkable economic model.
Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. Socialism came to America on the Mayflower. Because of socialism, the pilgrims barely survived the first winter. The pilgrims discarded socialism and adopted capitalism. As a result, their stores became bountiful and they knew the stores were adequate to survive and thrive over the coming second winter in America. There are really two parts to the celebration of Thanksgiving, but dumbed-down Americans forget. First and foremost, the pilgrims were celebrating the bounty of capitalism. But we forget that they were also celebrating the end of socialism that made their capitalism possible. Capitalism and socialism are incompatible economic models. Socialism can only exist as long as it can cannabalize the accumulated capital of a nation or parasitize existing capitalists. Socialism fails when the saved capital has been drained or the remaining capitalists are driven away.
THANKSGIVING IS ACTUALLY THE CELEBRATION OF THE TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM OVER SOCIALISM. Dumbed-down Americans, both Democrats and now Republicans, are forgetting the mistakes of the past!
I was born in the United States, but live in "Wonderland". In "wonderland" anything means anything you want it mean and whenever you want it to mean something else, that's fair too. Things commonly get turned upside down or backwards in "wonderland".
As a life-long conservative, I realized when I was very young and sometimes undecided, that whenever the Democrats took a stand, reality and the truth were always diametrically the opposite. Democrats were always wrong about everything. Everything that Democrats stand for is wrong and everything they believe is untrue. But now, for the first time in my life, Democrats are on the correct side of an issue.
This is actually a reflection of the old adage that the majority is almost always wrong, and on the rare occassion when the majority is right, it is for the wrong reasons.
The key to getting things right in America is to focus on socialism. Anything that expands socialism or government is wrong. Anything that reduces or blocks an increase in socialism is right. This bill is the largest expansion in Medicare since its enactment. Democrats are opposed only because they are not going to get the credit for its passage, Bush and the Republicans will.
GO DASCHLE GO, HOLD THAT LINE AND DEFEAT THAT BILL! Kick Alice W. Bush's a$$.
I gave you 2 questions, you ignored them. I gave you the bill's facts with explicit directions where to read the answer to your point, and you ignored them as well. Then you launched into a Libertarian tirade.
Double you dosage.
I only hope the glasses will slip a bit from the nose of a majority of Seniors; that they will look up and recognize the warped, deceitful, arrogant and self-serving representatives who claim to serve them in the name of the Democrat Party.
I'm studying it. Hopefully there is a way that this bill is introducing the market back into healthcare.
Yall make me think Bush is trying to out-socialize his competition for the Florida vote.
Surely this bill has a way to reduce government intervention in the healthcare mess they are causing.
GOOD
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, called the overhaul "a cruel hoax that dismantles Medicare and does not provide seniors an affordable, defined, guaranteed Medicare prescription benefit."
BETTER
largest overhaul in Medicare's history
BEST
No I didn't. I challenged you to actually read the Patriot Act and come back and discuss it intelligently. You, like your Congresscritters, obviously have not read the Patriot Act, let alone the Constitution, with particular imphasis on the 4th Amendment. To simply cut and paste one partial sentence from one section of the act and use it wholely for the grounds of your debate is weak at best. I cited specific concerns that I found after I thorougly reviewed the act. It's not an easy read, so I can understand why most, including you and most of those who voted it into law, haven't read it. It's a jumbled mess of cross referenced laws and statutes that would confuse the best of attorney's. It does nothing to secure our ports, the place we are most likely to be hit. It does nothing to secure our borders, where drugs, arms and illegals flow across every single day. It does nothing to track illegals, estimated at 6 million in country (but you can probably double that). What the Patriot Act does do is ease the restrictions on the FBI, CIA and others to spy on citizens by limiting the necessary evidence presented to the Judiciary to gain permission to do so. You obviously cannot comment in specifics of the act in it's entirety because you do not know what you are talking about. Hence you lob insults because of your lack of understanding of the subject at hand. And, if you think it's going away in 2005, think again. Get ready for Patriot Act II.
You just keep pulling the covers over your head. All is well. There is no boogie man trying to kill you and your family. All is well. All threats have been neutralized by the Patriot Act. All is well. We haven't been hit on our soil since 9/11 and the Patriot Act is the reason. All is well. The lack of attack has nothing to do with opportunity as seen by the terorists. All is well. I feel so safe. All is well..........
Um, people don't "get in" because of thinking.
When Medicare was passed cost estimates for 1990 were supposed to be $10 billion. The actual figure was a little over $65 billion, or 6.5 times the initial estimate. GWB's Socialist prescription drug bennie is "estimated" to cost $400 billion over 10 years. Multiply that by 6.5 and you get $2.6 TRILLION DOLLARS. Where exactly are we going to get the money to pay for this boondoggle? Answer: Your children and grandchildren. This is pandering and vote buying plain and simple.
With Conservatives like these, who needs Liberals?
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