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Topic: Teabaggers (Read 12681 times)
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Draxas
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I feel the need to interject here, for the (possible) benefit of my friend in Europe.
The traditional values have served humanity well for centuries, so why not rely on them instead of falling back on some wannabe prophet who, by the way, gravely overestimates his own abilities and underestimates the people who, by popular vote, elected him in the first place? To be honest, I definitely agree here. American traditional values are pretty impressive and something well worth admiring. I mean, you came up with separation of church and state ages ago, while we're still stuck with it here. Devout Christian as I am, I'm sure we can both agree that religion running things usually ends in a bad fashion. And you figured that out over 200 years ago. And your immigration principle used to be amazing, allowing anyone who could work to move into the countries, bringing skills and mixing cultures. It's a pity it's been so watered down in the last 60 years or so, don't you think? Oh, and of course the fact that you haven't made English your official language. I mean, it takes serious balls to guarantee your citizens to freely speak and demand service in any language they damn well please.
I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate here by purposely misconstruing this statement, or if you're just not aware of its implications. "Traditional values" is code in US politics for "unseparating church and state," hence my accusation of bible thumping. It tends to be a popular platform in the same areas where ideas like Intelligent Design and Having a Monument of the Ten Commandments Erected Outside the State Supreme Court crop up.
What services do you feel would not benefit from a purely capitalist approach? The judiciary?
Worst idea ever. The legal system in the US is already dangerously teetering on "money will buy your freedom" territory. If we were to codify that into the official system, we may as well not bother having any laws at all.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Some have. And the rest of us only let them change things around the edges (immigration, cough cough) when we don't notice they're doing it. However, immigration was rarely the rosy image you have of it, especially for the eastern europeans and asians.
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lakota.james
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It makes me real sad that this discussion stopped, I was enjoying reading it a lot.
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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It makes me real sad that this discussion stopped, I was enjoying reading it a lot.
To be honest, at this point in time the thread subject isn't what is most interesting to me, but rather the psychology going on here. I mean look at the thread. It starts off pretty slow, just a few people remarking that they don't know or care much, but that every country has their fringe groups. The general attitude towards them is negative, but since everyone agrees the thread is pretty relaxed. Only the Hitler picture gets a bit of a rise out of people, but even then, not much.
But then it gets pretty interesting. A dissenting voice appears, which is generally good for debate. But the way it acts is a case study in its own. While taking the dissenting side, it gears up the emotional level quite a few notches by making a lot of strong emotional statements that at face value are pretty polarizing. Things need to die, people are being censored, controversial images are defensible, systems are despised and pointless and so on. It completely changes the tone of the thread. Previously only on poster was somewhat emotional about his objections to the Tea party in general and the image in particular, but this slew of strong language fires thingsup. It looks like everything is set up for a major argument.
But, then it suddenly veers off in a completely new direction. After making a slew of strong, polarizing and emotional statements the dissenting voice suddenly changes completely. As soon as a answer pops up that doesn't just contradict, but does so in a less than friendly fashion, things change again. Despite having entered a thread and made numerous attacks on several subjects, the dissenting voice now casts itself as the victim of unjust attack on subjects that haven't even been discussed in full. It's something pretty unexpected to see, the person on the attack is suddenly cast as the victim, going as far as to leaving the thread because of the lack of support. Even though there was clearly no support to begin with and that didn't dissuade entry into the thread.
To me, that's just a fascinating path to take. A man can never know another man's mind of course, but it would be really interesting to know if this is a planned strategy or unconscious behaviour. And if it is planned, what is it meant to accomplish? The best way to get people to listen generally isn't to antagonize them first. And if it is unconscious, is it something that poster ever reflects over, or is there just a general sense of sadness that people won't listen?
Fascinating stuff really.
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What's up doc?
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RTyp06
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When I started the thread my frame of mind was disgust at the conservative movement. But my disgust was mainly due to my father's approval of this group and the fact that the tea party movement itself is recieving political clout here in the U.S. At the time my father was sending me protest pictures via. e-mail with which he would point out his favorite protest signs and claim that "we are taking our country back." I've since struggled to understand the people behind the movement, their agenda and what it means politically.
At first I thought Admiral Zeratul was just trolling. When Draxas and Lukipela joined the conservation ,it was time to sit back an watch the show. It was indeed enjoyable while it lasted.
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ziper1221
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And the worst thing about hospitals and medical facilities is the crazy prices. $500 for some blood work without insurance. who gets that money anyway?
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Lukipela
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Since I have a artifical valve, I eat Warfarin that thins my blood out. Unfortunately, Warfarin (or rat poison) is notoriously unstable. A change in diet, exercise habits, sleeping habits, or getting out of bed on the wrong side can cause the values to shift. Values that are too low enhance the risk of the valve failing. Values that are too high increase the risk of inner bleeding and all the goodies associated with that.
Anyway, that means I have to take a blood sample a month, on a good month. If something goes wrong (which it invariably does once or twice a year) I get to go once a week, then once every second week and so forth. I pay 15€ per visit, and that includes talking to the doctor afterwards as well to get my new regimen and possibly a new prescription. After I have paid over 90€, I get a little card that shows I've paid the maximum amount of personal coverage and up until a year later I can go in for free. Well, semi-free. I pay taxes of course. 
So over here I effectively pay 90€ a year for this, plus maybe 40€ a year more for my medication. Since I was born with this and it is an existing condition, could I even have gotten insurance for this in the US? If not, I'd be paying a minimum of 6000€ a year, but probably around 10000€ a year to stay alive. That'd eat up a pretty big part of my salary, even with lower taxes.
Since we're on healthcare, a question for you Americans. What do you pay, on average, for health insurance for you and your spouse/children? I don't need an exact amount or anything, just a general approximation. Or maybe how much of your monthly salary it is. I hear all sorts of crazy values being thrown around so it'd be interesting to get some insight.
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What's up doc?
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lakota.james
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I can't decide how on topic this is.
I always wanted to leave the US just because so many people here take pride in being idiots. Back when I was active on here, I decided that I'd look into moving to Finland at somepoint. Ever since then, all I ever hear about is how awesome Finland is. My girlfriend also wanted to move to Europe, but maybe France or Italy, she's in school for cooking. How's the food in Finland? Finish food we look up online sounds either bland or nasty (fermented fish?).
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« Last Edit: September 13, 2010, 10:57:19 pm by lakota.james »
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Lukipela
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Scandinavian food in general is pretty good. We eat a lot of fish, like salmon and such. We plenty of berries and mushroom from our beautiful forests. And reindeer, but pleased don't tell Santa. Our beer isn't that good unless it comes from a local brewery. We have some traditional foods which are probably disgusting to people who didn't grow up with them, such as liver pudding. Jamie Oliver did a show on Stockholm, Sweden and the food he really loved there, and Finnish food is very similar. And fermented fish is Swedish, but eaten in some coastal parts of Finland as well. It's supposed to taste all right, but smell horribly.
However, the climate is dreary and if you're American you're going to find the people cold and unfriendly. They aren't necessarily, but it is a culture shock, coupled with a language shock.
If you're seriously considering this kind of move, I'd recommend setting it up for a short time first. Find a job or get a transfer for a year or two. That'll give you a taste of what the culture you're encountering is like.
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What's up doc?
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lakota.james
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I've talked to Finnish people here and some other places online, and they seem pretty cold and dry. That was one of the things I liked about Finland. I heard someone tell a story about a Finnish friend they had, where he said hi to him at a bar and the response was "are we here to talk, or to drink?" I don't like the way people here are. Thanks for the information
Also, do you have any idea if raindeer is similar to other deer? Because that's probably my favorite meat.
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« Last Edit: September 13, 2010, 11:22:52 pm by lakota.james »
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Draxas
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So over here I effectively pay 90€ a year for this, plus maybe 40€ a year more for my medication. Since I was born with this and it is an existing condition, could I even have gotten insurance for this in the US? If not, I'd be paying a minimum of 6000€ a year, but probably around 10000€ a year to stay alive. That'd eat up a pretty big part of my salary, even with lower taxes.
Depends on the whims and whimsy of your insurance company. It's quite likely that you would be able to get coverage, but it would be hideously expensive. Also, if one of the bean counters at the insurance company decides that you're just not profitable enough, you could be dropped with no more notice than a letter in the mail stating when your coverage will be terminated.
Since we're on healthcare, a question for you Americans. What do you pay, on average, for health insurance for you and your spouse/children? I don't need an exact amount or anything, just a general approximation. Or maybe how much of your monthly salary it is. I hear all sorts of crazy values being thrown around so it'd be interesting to get some insight.
For myself and my wife, I pay ~$225 a month on my employee plan ($100 of that is for the actual coverage, and the rest is a spousal surcharge since my wife doesn't use the insurance offered to her by her employer). This is a fairly reasonable monthly cost (once upon a time, I was paying $500+ a month for COBRA just for myself before I was eligible for health coverage through work), but the coverage is poor. Only 80% of the cost of routine medical (checkups, doctor visits for minor illness or other issues not requiring a specialist) is covered, and that percentage goes down for more significant care. Fortunately, they're revising the health plan at work this year. It also should say quite a lot that my wife significantly improved her health coverage and reduced her monthly cost by abandoning the health care plan offered at her job and signing up solely for mine, despite the spousal surcharge. I work for a major multinational corporation, and she works for a local business, which goes a long way toward explaining the disparity (she previously paid ~$250 a month for her work plan, only for herself, and had a plan that covered her up to a annual maximum of $4000 for all medical bills, with both the first $1000 of that and anything above that amount coming straight out of pocket).
So yeah, you can see why I think healthcare is pretty mesed up here in the US.
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