The Political Discussion Thread

[Ukko]

Oh man, the ignorance

Knowing your sources is a fundamental tenet of bothering to provide them at all. Scratch that--the most important tenet. WorldNutDaily has about as tenuous a grasp on reality as Stormfront or John Titor; parading op/ed around as if it were news, and even being sued for libel for just making s--t up on at least one occasion.

Heck, I'd get a more accurate reflection of reality by reading The Onion than I would from WND.

Next.

Of course you would, i go there.

[mad_gater]

Oh man, the ignorance

Knowing your sources is a fundamental tenet of bothering to provide them at all. Scratch that--the most important tenet. WorldNutDaily has about as tenuous a grasp on reality as Stormfront or John Titor; parading op/ed around as if it were news, and even being sued for libel for just making s--t up on at least one occasion.

Heck, I'd get a more accurate reflection of reality by reading The Onion than I would from WND.

Next.

you believe what you want but I'll take WND over the Marxist claptrap that liberal "news" outlets continually try to sell me any day of the week and twice on Sunday

[Ukko]

[lordofseas]

you believe what you want but I'll take WND over the Marxist claptrap that liberal "news" outlets continually try to sell me any day of the week and twice on Sunday

They're not trying on Saturday? I guess they're observing the true Lord's Day.

[SoulReaver]

People tend to liek and want austerity in theory.

corporates tend to like austerity - in theory and practice - since it doesn't affect them

So now they are going for the 'new and untested' ideals of solalicsm.

actually they "tested" it 31 years ago, although the results were nothing "ideal" to brag about, it didn't end up in the economic meltdown that the french monarchists conservatives were raving about either. tbh it didn't change much in the big picture and neither did the coming of the conservative moderates (Chirac) in the 1995 either

btw piece of advice - when typing, try placing the keyboard with keys facing up

[SoulReaver]

you believe what you want but I'll take WND over the Marxist claptrap that liberal "news" outlets continually try to sell me any day of the week and twice on Sunday

Fox News, marxist?

[lordofseas]

I miss Livni.

[DigiFluid]

Some interesting reading... Tommy Douglas: the Baptist minister who made universal healthcare in Canada reality


LIFE AND DEATH
In 1910, when Tommy Douglas was six years old, he injured his leg and it never healed properly. Four years later he developed a life-threatening bone infection, and because his family couldn’t afford a specialist to treat it, the doctors wanted to amputate the leg to stop the infection from spreading. Tommy’s leg was saved only by chance -a teaching surgeon took an interest in the case and offered to operate on Tommy for free, provided that his students could watch the procedure and learn from it.

Tommy never forgot the experience. A medical crisis could affect anyone -what would happen to the people who weren’t as lucky as he had been? His situation wasn’t all that unusual in the early 20th century. In most industrialized nations, there were few options if you were poor and happened to get sick. Hospitals would occasionally admit “charity cases,” but only rarely. For the most part, if you needed life-saving surgery and couldn’t pay for it, you died.

HUMAN RIGHTS
After spending his teens at a variety of jobs (printer, whiskey distiller, actor, boxer), Douglas became a Baptist minister and in 1930 took a job as a preacher at Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. The rural, blue-collar town was devastated by both a drought and the Great Depression. Even if families had money for food, there was none left over for medicine. It reminded Douglas of his own near-tragedy from childhood. “I buried two young men in their 30s with young families who died because there was no doctor readily available and they hadn’t the money to get proper care,” he wrote. Douglas came to believe that medical care was a basic human right and should be available to everyone.

In 1934 Douglas realized that he could do more for the poor in politics than he could at a small-town church, and joined the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Like Douglas, they advocated health care access. (The party also agitated for social reforms to end the Depression, including workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.) Douglas ran on the CCF ticket for the Saskatchewan legislature in 1934 …and lost. But in 1935, he won a seat in the national legislature, the House of Commons.

WINS AND LOSSES
Douglas served in the House for nine years but never got the support he needed to institute health care on the national level. The CCF wasn’t well regarded in mainstream Canadian politics; their idea of tax-supported, government-run medicine was too reminiscent of the complete state control of the Soviet Union. But Douglas was no communist, and had no interest in totalitarian government. He just wanted universal health care.

Frustrated with the lack of progress at the national level, Douglas resigned from the House in 1944, returned to Saskatchewan, and tried to get his health care plan going on the provincial level. The voters were with him: In the 1944 election, the CCF won 47 of the 52 seats in the Saskatchewan legislature. And since Douglas was head of the Saskatchewan CCF, the election landslide made him premier (governor) at age 39. Now he’d have a chance to prove to the rest of Canada that his social welfare programs, especially universal health care, could succeed.

PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS
Douglas’s entire plan for governing was built around the idea of universal health care, or “medicare.” Seventy percent of the 1944 budget was allocated to health, welfare, and education. That year, Douglas’s government passed 72 social and economic reform laws, most of them directly or indirectly related to health care:

• Douglas ordered the University of Saskatchewan to expand to include a medical school to create and train more doctors.
• Utilities, lumber, fisheries, and other corporations became state-run, generating substantial revenue to pay for health care.
• Douglas and his cabinet took a 28% pay cut.
• Retirees were immediately given free medical, hospital, and dental coverage. Treatment of cancer, tuberculosis, mental illness, and venereal disease were made free to everyone in Saskatchewan.

By 1947, Saskatchewan had one of the strongest economies in Canada. After just three years as premier, Douglas made the province financially stable enough to introduce universal hospitalization for all residents of Saskatchewan for an annual fee of $5.

Free hospitalization and surgery were in place, but drugs and doctors visits were not. There just wasn’t enough money. Still, the rest of Canada was beginning to see how well Douglas’s program was working and warmed to the idea. When new prime minister John Diefenbaker -a conservative- was elected in 1958, he offered matching federal funds to any province that started a free hospitalization program. The following year, Saskatchewan had a budget surplus, and in 1959, after 15 years of work, Douglas was finally able to introduce complete universal health care to the province.

JUST THE BEGINNING
Seeing how well Saskatchewan did with health care, legislation began in 1961 to expand it to all of Canada, and by 1966 it was in place, paid for by the provincial and federal governments, each contributing 50%. His goal reached, Douglas returned to national politics in the early 1960s. He led the New Democratic Party, a new version of the CCF, and held seats in the House of Commons off and on before retiring from politics in 1979. In 1988 he was elected to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. He’s one of the few non-doctors honored, but without Douglas’s efforts, the Canadian medical -and social- landscape would be far different today.



Other Tommy Douglas factoids:

• His Master's thesis proposed a system that would have required couples seeking to marry to be certified as mentally and morally fit. Those deemed to be "subnormal" because of low intelligence, moral laxity or venereal disease would be sent to state farms or camps while those judged to be mentally defective or incurably diseased would be sterilized. He very rarely mentioned the thesis later in life, and even rejected similar proposals made to his government once he was an elected official
• His PhD field work was in the Depression-era "jungles" or hobo camps where about 75,000 transients sheltered in lean-tos venturing out by day to beg or to steal. Douglas interviewed men who once belonged to the American middle class --- despondent bank clerks, lawyers and doctors. "There were little soup kitchens run by the Salvation Army and the churches", Douglas said later. "In the first half hour they'd be cleaned out. After that there was nothing...It was impossible to describe the hopelessness." Douglas was equally disturbed that members of the Socialist Party sat around quoting Marx and Lenin, waiting for a revolution while refusing to help the destitute. "That experience soured me with absolutists", Douglas said. "I've no patience with people who want to sit back and talk about a blueprint for society and do nothing about it."
• Daughter Shirley Douglas was arrested in 1969 for ties to the Black Panthers -they had helped Douglas organize a free breakfast program for African-American children living in poor sections of Los Angeles. Following her arrest, Tommy Douglas said, “I’m proud that my daughter believes that hungry children should be fed, whether they are Black Panthers or white Republicans.”
• Kiefer Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas. (His mother is Shirley Douglas.) As a boy, Sutherland asked his grandfather what defined a Canadian. Douglas’s response: the harsh winters and Medicare.

Some of the bonus facts lifted from Wikipedia, all of which had at least two citations each.

[Col.Foley]

Oh man, the ignorance

Knowing your sources is a fundamental tenet of bothering to provide them at all. Scratch that--the most important tenet. WorldNutDaily has about as tenuous a grasp on reality as Stormfront or John Titor; parading op/ed around as if it were news, and even being sued for libel for just making s--t up on at least one occasion.

Heck, I'd get a more accurate reflection of reality by reading The Onion than I would from WND.

Next.

Oh so they have been sued for libel. Amazing! You do know i probably could sue you for libel right here and right now it would be the results of said case that would matter.

They're not trying on Saturday? I guess they're observing the true Lord's Day.

corporates tend to like austerity - in theory and practice - since it doesn't affect them
actually they "tested" it 31 years ago, although the results were nothing "ideal" to brag about, it didn't end up in the economic meltdown that the french monarchists conservatives were raving about either. tbh it didn't change much in the big picture and neither did the coming of the conservative moderates (Chirac) in the 1995 either

btw piece of advice - when typing, try placing the keyboard with keys facing up

Oh Malarky. Corporations have as much to lose by people cutting off the crack pipe as the est of us. In theory. I mean we gain liberty, freedom, and balance budgets, but lose our stipends and free government education!

As I said everyone likes austerity when it is someone else who is paying for it.

[lordofseas]

Americans. Failing again, I see.

[Col.Foley]

Americans. Failing again, I see.

That's Democracy for you.

[lordofseas]

That's Democracy for you.

I hope it goes absolutely wonderfully for them.

[LtColCarter]

Americans. Failing again, I see.

Failing royally...I don't see how states can pass laws which are clear violations of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Last time I checked...the Constitution was supposed to be the SUPREME law of the land...

[Gatefan1976]

Failing royally...I don't see how states can pass laws which are clear violations of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Last time I checked...the Constitution was supposed to be the SUPREME law of the land...

Wanna make a statement?
businesses and individuals who believe in "freedom to be legaly recognized as partners irrelavent of gender" should just leave NC.
Remove thier money, thier numbers, and thier support from the state.
I believe religions *should* be able to withhold thier "ceromonies and blessings" if they choose to, I also believe that if you don't agree, you should have the freedom to go elsewhere, a bit like a "rainbow Mayflower".

[lordofseas]

I just think the South should secede so that the North has the ability to move on rather than be held back by Jesusland.