[Triple_D_Bet]

Originally posted on 12/05/2013:

Nice statement Trip and yes I am the Centaur's ghost, living in Canada, claiming to be American while using a vpn to post from New Zealand! Those crazy kiwi's brew a nice pale ale up here!

Hrm, looks like I was mistaken...you didn't give me a nickname, you can't be centy Thanks for the thoughtful reply mikey, sorry it took so long to get back to ya!

In all serious though, you raise some excellent points, some I respectfully disagree with, but most are absolutely true and right on target. Has our president made mistakes, yes indeed, but all of them have bro. We too often forget these guys are human just like you and me and being the leader of the free world is gotta be one of the most stressful jobs known to man. I for sure as hell would not want to do it and you're never going to be able to please everybody.

Everyone make mistakes, but a fundamental disrespect for the constitution isn't a mistake, it's a willful ignorance of our founding principles and a symptom of the diseased way of thinking that claims better living through incessant regulations. Is he worse than other presidents in that regard? Not really, but that still doesn't make him right...and the claim that at least he's not Bush doesn't hold much water when he's only added to the civil liberty-destroying practices of Bush. All of this should be a moot point though, because so much of what the President does or doesn't do is actually Congress' job in the first place. Instead, they've given the President so much of their power (for political reasons I'm guessing, to get what they want and still get to blame someone else for the downsides) that the office of President is far more powerful than it should be constitutionally, and we continue incrementally creeping to a dictatorship.

That being said the man has had some great successes and has reached across the isle far beyond what Bush or any republican controlled house would ever do. I agree, Republicans and Democrats act almost identically on several issues pertaining to their parties own self benefit and that of their constituents. Which is why we have the government shit sling fest, get nothing done, in office now. I, just like you, don't blame the right or the left, it's both of their dumb asses. And when you have small fractions of radical ignorant minded individuals, like the tea party, it only makes the problem worse. It's to the point now where a small group of politicians can block the whole process of compromising and at least trying to find some middle ground where we can all meet and come to some agreement.

I'm not aware of any great successes he had. Killing bin Laden maybe? I don't assign a lot of value to that aside from propaganda value for campaigns. He's accomplished some very small things (bringing troops home from Iraq much slower than promised was at least a step in the right direction), but he's overshadowed them with things like the contuining of the Patriot Act, the liberty-smashing provisions of the NDAA, and countless other things he hasn't vetoed and has outright supported. There's no "middle ground" in Congress, it's just grandstanding for their poltical game...when it comes down to fundamental actions they take, I'd venture to say they're well over 90% identical in action. "obstructions" are just temporary things to score points with low-information voters (a term which is hilarious only because it's often used by people who don't realize they're part of the group too!).

I see this as second term destruction, no matter who is in office, it's a known fact, since that president is in his final term, the other side will go outta their fuk'in way to block, turn against, and filibuster every issue, just to make the man and his party look bad. You've got to remember what President Obama has accomplished though Trip, He said he would bring the troops home and he's done that. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are ending and as he stated, it is up to Afghan soldiers and citizens to learn to defend themselves. We would have been out of there sooner, if not for republicans insisting we keep a continued presence in that country. And left up to them, we'd still be in a war over there and losing the lives of Americans. President Obama didn't start this mess, but he was the one who had to come in and clean it up. Give him some credit for having the balls to say no more fuk'in wasteful wars!

Forget the political games, which both sides play are terrible at their jobs because of it. Afghanistan and Iraq are still a mess, as could be expected...but troops didn't come home when he promised, and he basically just continued the Bush timetables where he didn't extend them. We've replaced soldiers with private groups and aid money, but we're still making the same fundamental mistake of thinking we have the ability (or any right) to try to tell other countries how to live. Again, war should be Congress' duty, but since they haven't wanted it in decades the President gets the blame (as they no doubt prefer). As for no more wars...this is the same guy who was chomping at the bit to get into Syria, who went to Libya, and who conducts violations of other countries soverignty every day through not-so-covert ops. We might not be at war with Pakistan on paper, but it's hard to fathom the logic of endlessly drone-striking Pakistan and not calling it war. It will be interesting to see how history books handle the irony of getting a Nobel Peace Prize for not being your predecessor, then ramping up all of his war-mongering efforts.[/quote]

Also, President Obama authorized the use of more drones, so we could target just those fuk'ers who are the actual terrorists and not kill innocent civilians. When you can use intelligence and a pin point strike on a terrorist safe house or a car he's riding in, that makes way more sense than carpet bombing a whole city or town like Bush and Cheney did.

Therein lies the problem: these drone strikes aren't in any way as accurate as you describe. Independent studies have shown that only about 2% of the people killed are actually terrorists, with the rest "collateral damage"....more women and children are killed than actual terrorists. Amazingly, we try to fudge these numbers by implementing policies claiming that any male victim of age who dies in a blast is automatically assumed to be a terrorist, inflating the numbers of terrorists we say were killed. Pretty astounding for a country that claims to believe in due process, respect for the rule of law or even general decency...but all that stuff goes out the window when you do things like specifically target first responders and funerals with drone strikes. This isn't anything new; we've been doing similarly stupid shit for decades now, creating our own enemies and giving them every reason to hate us as well as the motivation (if China killed your kids in a drone strike, do you think maybe you'd want to cause them harm??). But just because it isn't new doesn't mean the people currently doing it aren't wrong.

40 million plus Americans don't have healthcare in this country Trip, and another 20 million are under insured and their healthcare is a bullshit scam, ie.. get a serious illness and they drop your ass and cancel your policy. I know people wanna bitch and moan about the hassle and the roll out problems, but if you look long term you will see it will make a difference and healthcare costs will drop considerably once everybody is in the pool. That's the way it works man, the larger the group of people you have in there, young, old, rich, middle class, poor, the better it's gonna be. It creates a larger group of individuals who now won't get stuck with bearing the make up cost of those who don't have health insurance. Somebody has got to pay when a uninsured person ends up in the emergency room and those costs are past along in higher premiums for those who do have coverage.

Plus, think about be able the get preventative care. Most people wait until they are so sick or racked with a life threatening disease before they finally get to a doctor. By then its usually too late and the sky rocketed costs of treating a person at that stage is astronomical. Wouldn't you want your wife, girlfriend or mom to find breast cancer in it's early stage because she could get a mammogram without the hassle of a damn insurance company saying "no we wont' cover that". Or what about your kids (if you have any like me), insurance companies have been fuk'ing over families with children for years. God forbid your child is born with a birth defect or needs a surgery to save his life, you talk about going to war, that's exactly what you had to do under the old system! Not anymore. This AHCA will save lives and will help us all to live healthier.

There are problems with health care for sure, many stemming from false assumptions. There is no such thing as a "right" to someone elses services, whether that's an auto mechanic's services, a garbage man's or a doctor's. Forcing someone else to provide services to you against their will is the exact opposite of freedom. Do I think we could construct a system that provided basic coverage to people who can't afford it and that we should? Absolutely, but that is my personal opinion, and as such, I should be free to give money to causes to support what I think is right. But I have no right to force my neighbor to give to causes he might not support. This is a fundamental problem of government and one that's contributing greatly to us spending ourselves into oblivion as well as consuming so much time and effort: most people think we should help the needy, but we continue to try to force a tax-funded, one-size-fits-all solution instead of letting people keep their money and donate freely to the solution of their choice. If we do that, the organizations that most closely reflect our values will thrive and everyone can have their say in how the million little details should be handled. If people don't give enough money to cover as much as you or I might like...we might judge non-givers as heartless people, but that still wouldn't give us a right to spend their money against their will. When we try, we get things like the ACA, which doesn't decrease costs in the short or long run. Despite people's rose-colored glasses, it's fundamentally unable to decrease prices; insurers aren't going to be forced to lose money, and providing more services for "free" isn't helping (not free, just subsidized by taxpayers, often the very ones the law is supposedly helping). There's already a huge backlash with people getting their hours cut so businesses don't have to pay their healthcare, and young people aren't signing up as projected (why would they, when they can just pay a fine and get insurance with a pre-existing condition if anything bad happens to them?). People call the companies heartless, but it only makes sense; companies exist to make money (for their shareholders no less, often the middle class who gets so fervent about big bad corporations). if it was in the companies' interest to give their employees healthcare, they would have already done so without government intervention...it's not, so they'll avoid it by hiring more people for fewer hours. The effects on employment from the ACA are entirely predictable, and goes to show the futility of people who don't understand economics meddling in them. Which calls into question the lack of quality in increasingly federally-controlled education, just another instance of government ineptitude with far-reaching repurcussions.

I understand people don't like change. And the media and the right make sure the point out all the problems and exaggerate the lies. But you've got the give the man credit Trip for tackling a long serious problem in our country that should've been solved long ago. I don't like intrusive government any more than anyone else does, but sometimes it does work. Are we gonna just stand around while large corporations, insurance companies and banks control everything. Look what happened when Bush and Cheney gave control of the housing regulations and lending practices to these greedy bastards. They destroyed our economy and we're still reeling from it.

There aren't many great leaders who come along and make such a difference that everyone is able to say, the man had a vision, and sought to make the world a better place. The last one I only know from history, was John F. Kennedy. And even then, the evil of man kind silenced him. I know a lot people aren't ever gonna agree with what our president is trying to accomplish, namely because he's black and they can't even get passed that. The fact still remains, he was voted in by the the majority twice, into a job from day one to your last people are going to hate on you and criticize everything you do. He's still a human being just like the rest of us and his good intentions and accomplishments are worthy of respect.

This isn't a "change is bad" thing....most people like change when it's good. The media is a business; it exists for ratings...instead of blaming them, we should be blaming people who can't exercise enough skepticism and blindly believe what they want to (most voters it seems). Large corporations control what they do because people voluntarily buy their stuff...if you want to stop them, stop buying their stuff! That kind of feedback is how a market is supposed to work. Instead, we try to legislate around economic truths, and instead we end up creating a system where companies are incentivized to buy congressmen to legislate in their favor. Take that power away from the government and there will be no influence left to buy; businesses will then have to survive based on their customer's approval instead of hidden subsidies from their taxes. Intrusive government doesn't work, simply because the government can't make optimal choices (can't keep everyone happy) as well as individuals making choices can. Every time you give the government more power and try to create a one-size-fits-all solution, it only introduces inefficiencies and tramples on freedom.

I have nothing against Obama personally (as so many right-wingers seem to)...he's probably just as well-intentioned as Bush, Clinton, Regan or any other recent President. However, the job he's doing it horrible; being the shiniest of two turds still means you're a turd!

Apologies for anyone else reading all that who was hoping for more poker drama. I'll do what I can...


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