The Respectfully Republican Conversation

 Shirley---

And I thought it was hard to listen to McCain in a prepared speech...........

No wonder he doesn't want any town halls with McCain---That was absolutely painful to hear!

Linda, I'm glad your dh had a TV to watch.  He would have YOU miserable. 

I'm in the same boat as you.  DH and I do not watch the same TV.  I'm watching the news and he's watching the things I've mentioned.  And, if we do share the same TV I give him the clicker.  Why make myself miserable.  I'm an adult.  I won't pout! 

As far as your Mom...I never had a relationship with mine.  Not that I didn't see her, or that she didn't want to see me....it's a very long story.  I have gotten over the bitterness I felt toward her.  Holding on to the bitterness hurts no one but oneself. 

She is in a nursing home in San Antonio.  I haven't seen her since 2001.  That's when my dad died and we sent his body from here to San Antonio for burial.  I need to see her badly.  I feel it's more for her than for me.  Even though WE believe she must have been the meanest woman ever, she is a human being.  She was a very, very unhappy woman.  She is now 92 and I know I'll regret it if I don't see her before she's gone.  I was the only girl, and had three brothers.

Susie, I'm sorry about you and your mom.  I have three daughters and the one thing I wanted was a good relationship with them.  When I DO look back at my childhood I sometimes get sad, not mad.  I hope our girls will never look back and have that sad feeling.  My mom and I never sat down and had a girl to girl talk.  NEVER.

Roctobermom, I think it's great about you and your precious daughter going to Yosemite.  All I could think about when you first posted that was the fires in California.  Those are special memories your dd will have.  I take my hat off to you.  Being a single mom cannot be easy!

Rosemary, thanks for Harry's phone number.  I've heard that that Pelosi woman wouldn't allow the energy bill to come tot he floor to vote because she was protecting Obama from having to vote NO.  LOL  That makes sense, but now he may be changing his mind.  He does that often.  Have you noticed?  LOL  As soon as gas skyrocketed McCain let it be known he was in favor of offshore drilling.  IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!  The dems want our prices to go up...it's good for us. That's what the majority in this country think.  It's affecting every darn thing we do. 

Okay, I'll shut up!

Shirley

I know I'm on the wrong board because I was just diagnosed last week. I'm probably having a bilateral masectomy because it all looks very genetic and its in both breasts. That being said, have any of you ever gone without health insurance?  I am so terrified of losing my job and then my insurance, because who will hire a middle-aged cancer survivor... and then what?   I'll be lucky to find my own health insurance at $1000/month with $20000 deductible?   As a country, we've got some real health care concerns to address, and no one's really doing the kind of talking I need to hear.  I know I'll survive the disease - it's the future financial responsibility that scares the crap out of me.   And tell me, if our corporations are footing the bulk of our health insurance costs, how are we competing on the world stage?   I was pro--universal health coverage before this. Now I'm thinking I may have to find a country if nothing happens here.

2z

2z, I am very sorry for your concerns.  We are all concerned about health care.  However, there's no easy answers.  You will find different people in different countries who do not think they have the best health care.  Then you will find those who think they have the best.

I know how insurance worked.  I won't go into great detail.  I have the BEST insurance during my cancer therapy.  Now, the deductible is extremely high, $2200.  And we have to reach that deductible before they will help with prescriptions.  The most expensive prescription is my Arimidex, $748 out of our pockets.  And I thake others

My dh will be eligible for Medicare next year.  I have three more years.  I'm not very excited about that either.  I'm waiting for our insurance to drop us after we reach Medicare age.  So far I don't believe done that to their retirees.  However, even with this insurance and Medicare the way I understand my insurance to work is that we still have to reach that $2200 deductible before it starts paying what Medicare won't pay. 

Most definitely something needs to be done.  But there are no easy answers. 

Good luck to you. 

Shirley

Supposedly Cantor has impeccably Conservative credentials--So does Jindal, Pawlenty and Palin;  Not so with Ridge and Romney.

 Rosemary-- Are you talking about the fact that Obama was a follower of Saul Alinsky?  That is out there in any biography of Obama's Chicago past.  It doen't get much play and when it does Hillary's association with Alinsky is always brought up---

Here is an article from IBD that sheds some light.-----------

Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.

IBD Series: The Audacity Of Socialism

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.

"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.

In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).

Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.

It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.

Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.

Among his proposed "investments":

• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.

• "Free" college tuition.

• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).

• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").

• "Free" job training (even for criminals).

• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).

• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.

• More subsidized public housing.

• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."

• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.

That's just for starters — first-term stuff.

Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.

You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.

But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?

Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.

The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.

A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."

As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.

"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."

After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.

His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.

The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.

After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.

While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.

(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)

Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."

His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."

"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."

Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.

(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)

In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.

(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)

With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."

He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.

Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."

He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.

Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.

Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.

The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.

But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.

Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.

Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.

Chris Wallace on Fox will have Lindsey Graham and Tom Daschle on tonight 6PM ET.  It sounds like a good show.  I believe their some heated discussions between the two of them tonight.

Shirley

Linda, is this is article?  http://www.examiner.com/a-1507516~A_fight_to_the_finish__McCain_vs__Obama_on_health_care.html

It's an interesting article.  I'm in Canada; we have a single payer (government) universal health care system and while I like our program, I know that it's not without problems and it certainly is facing financial strains as the population ages and more people need more health services.  For the U.S., I don't know that starting a similar program from scratch today would be feasible or a wise idea.  On the other hand, I also don't think that putting the control in the hands of the insurance companies makes sense.  They may have the infrastructure in place, but we already know about the types of problems that can happen when an insurance company is making medical decisions. And what's the point in having a middle-man taking profit from the system?  As for the McCain plan, I think it has some interesting components but I wonder if too many people might still fall through the cracks.  And you still have the insurance companies with too much control and too interested in their own bottom lines.  There is no easy answer to this one.      

BTW, to enter a link, just do a copy and paste, and then press enter or add a space at the end of the url so that the url becomes highlighted as a url (I'm sure someone here knows why this extra step is necessary).

This is rich!..........................

____________________________________________

From Say anything

Now That It Doesn’t Matter Obama Would Like Michigan And Florida Delegate Votes To Count
By Rob on August 3, 2008 at 12:17 pm

"Back when Hillary was still in the race Obama was against letting the Michigan and Florida delegates vote (the states had their delegate votes taken from them by the DNC as punishment for moving their primary dates to earlier dates).  Mostly because he hadn’t campaigned there, assuming that their votes wouldn’t count, and the states were likely to go for Hillary at the convention.

Obama took a lot of flak over that given the “every vote counts” activism from his resume (Obama worked closely with ACORN, America’s largest voter registration organization and also the nation’s largest perpetrator of voter registration fraud) at the time, but when he was running neck and neck with Hillary he just couldn’t afford the edge Michigan and Florida would have given her.

But now that Hillary is out?  Obama wants the state’s delegates to count.

Which is, you know, big of him.  After the fact.

More likely Obama is making a plea to moderate Democrats in those states who are thinking about voting McCain after he snubbed them earlier in the election cycle.  Though, frankly, this little flip-flop does more to make him look like the sort of cynical political operative he claims he isn’t than ingratiate him with moderate swing-state voters." 

Rosemary--Have you heard that Pelosi is pushing Chet Edwards -Waco representative for Obama's VP?--------------Guess they figure they could put Texas in play with that pick.............

The idea of a National Health plan is good, but it could not work in the U.S.  I hear about people in Canada and the U.K. having to wait 6 months or more for ROUTINE tests...  that is not good, especially if someone NEEDS these tests, to be screened for cancer.  It would be too late, by the time they FINALLY got the tests, and were dx'd.

A friend of ours who lives in Florida just had a hip replacement surgery back in February.  She was talking on the phone to some of her relatives, who live in the U.K., and she mentioned that she was having hip replacement surgery in Feb., and they asked her.... WHAT YEAR?   That is horrible, to have to wait YEARS for something like that!! 

Our medical system, and the drs. are so overwhelmed with all their patients as it is.  So I don't know what the answer is, but it isn't a National Health System.

You are right, Shirley.  The U.S. is filled with people who live here, and they don't want to work, but they want to collect benefits, and they want health insurance, but they don't want to pay for it.   

Harley, I live in Canada and I've never heard of anyone waiting 6 months for a routine test.  That's not to say that it hasn't happened - no doubt somewhere it has - but that's most certainly the exception, not the rule.  As for a concern that someone who needs tests for cancer might not get the tests in a timely manner, the thing that you have to keep in mind about the Canadian system is that services are prioritized based on urgency.  So when I was in the process of being diagnosed for BC, every test I needed was promptly scheduled.  I had my call-back mammo and ultrasound within a day, I had my biopsy within a week, etc..   Although I decided to go to the top PS in the city who had a 9 - 12 month waiting list for appointments, I got in to see her within a week.   Those with urgent need are bumped to the top of the waiting list.  Of course, that also means that those who have non-urgent needs and those who are waiting for elective surgeries might have to wait longer.  Personally I don't have a problem with that.  I think it would be wrong if simply by paying more, someone could move their non-priority surgery up ahead of someone who has a more urgent need but doesn't have the ability to pay.

Linda, as for your friend, I'm sorry that she was misdiagnosed.  That must have been a harrowing experience for her.  But I think we all have to be careful to not take a single situation and assume that it is representative of the norm.  Unfortunately misdiagnoses happen, and they don't happen just in Canada.  It doesn't take much reading on this board to see that. 

Please understand that I'm in no way suggesting that the Canadian healthcare system should be replicated in the U.S..  Our system is not without it's problems.  I would hope that the U.S. can learn from our experience and the experience of other countries and implement something better.  Easier said than done and for now, I don't think either of the candidates have it quite right.  Having said that, I think the McCain plan may be preferable in that over the short-term it would provide additional coverage for many people without adding a huge infrastructure.  This would allow for new learning and it would be easier to change the program or implement something new over time.  The McCain plan may be a good first step; I just don't think it will work as a final solution.  I think for me the biggest problem in both plans is the heavy involvement of insurance companies.  Having spent my career working for large corporations, I understand the overriding profit motivation of these companies.  I have no problem with capitalism and profits, but when talking about medical services, it just seems wrong to me to divert so much of the money to the bottom line of a few large corporations.  

Prices of oil are coming down.  Just as the republicans have been saying they would with just the threat of our drilling.  I didn't listen to Mr. flip-flopper about his oil plans, only the part that he's for using our reserves.  I hope the wizards wait till after hurricane season is over.  Anyway, the House  already voted that down a couple of weeks ago.   Oh, but the annointed one has spoken so now they'll have a re-vote? 

Whatever happened to having representatives that think for themselves?  Or they just sit there waiting for the high command to think for them and tell them how to vote?