Free Republic

The seven principles are frow Swahili.

Didn't President Bush acknowledge this "holiday" last year?

Good point, but they'd of course blame Nigeria's problems on imperialists of Danish descent, and from neighboring countries. Got yer wallet with ya bud?

Wow! So I have it coming both ways - not only do I owe the blacks here because I was born here, but I probably also owe the Nigerians too because the nation of my ancestory did them wrong..

Why should I have to pay reparations simply because I'm white?

I watched the debacle closely last night for an hour or two, and more than once I heard this question answered.

Basically, the logic is, even if you stepped off a plane from somewhere a week ago, and became a citizen yesterday, you owe these idiots (the ones asking for reparations) money because you now enjoy life in the wealthiest country on the plantet - and the U.S. owes it's wealth and prosperity entirely to the fact we practiced slavery at one time, and that blacks have been treated unfairly. In other words, if we had never treated blacks unfairly or enslaved them 200 years ago, America would be a 3rd world country like Nigeria.

What I'd like to ask, is if my family has enjoyed this prosperity for 100 years, how much more have they enjoyed it for the centuries they've been here? I read something along the lines that the average pay of a man in Africa is 5% of the average pay of a black man in the U.S. However, I doubt the average pay of a person in Denmark is anywhere near that much lower - so a black man has benefitted from being here much more than I have.

The thing that amazed me most about the whole thing is that is that someone managed to collect so many idiots in one place at one time, and they managed to get media coverage on national TV.

How about the most powerful words of all? "I love you!" But not in any letter, face to face is the only real way to do it. Go to him now and avoid the lifetime of anguish that may come if he drifts even farther away!

BTW: I wouldn't worry about all the dope smoking and premarital sex too much. Many a wrongheaded youth has pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to become solid citizens as adults.

That is good advice. Two other things I'd try to remember are that boys that age think they know everything, they can't be told anything by anyone, and that what's done is done - don't spend the rest of your life beating yourself up over past decisions, learn from them and concentrate on doing the right thing now.

Don't worry so much about a clever quote for him, that probably won't sink in, but do tell him in your own words exactly what you want him to know. Be honest with him.

I was a real sh*tbird at that age. My father died when I was younger, and my mother did most of the parenting. Thru all the hell I put her through, she always made sure I knew she loved me and had hope for me, and that I was welcome to visit anytime, even when she booted my ass out the day I turned 18.

Without telling my whole life story, Mom and I had a great relationship, and once I grew up and realised what an idiot I was, I was able to honestly assure her that she had done everything she could, and I know the rest was my fault.

So anyway, let him know you love him, and do the best you can. When he is old enough to know better, it won't be his father he thanks.

I can't remember feeling this good after watching a news story.

Who will get sued when people start becoming addicted to filing frivolous lawsuits?

"Why was I stopped."

"Am I under arrest?"

"See ya."

Relax Will....geez.

I just saw John Q. for the first time on DVD. It's an excellent propaganda piece for socialist health scare, that will have all the sheep who see the movie bleating their agreement with anyone who says "healthcare for everyone."

Following are spoilers - if you haven't seen the movie beware.

After being told by the evil white capitalists his child will be allowed to expire because John's health insurance won't cover a transplant, he frantically sells everything that isn't nailed down to greedy, cold hearted white people and receives small wads of one dollar bills from all the town folk (it takes a village) who are obviously too poor to afford healthcare also.

Fair enough, but what strikes me is that during the introduction portion of the movie, prior to the bad news, where John is portrayed as the all-American family man, working hard at the factory, driving his pickup, attending baseball games, not paying his bills, thumb wrestling with his wife, etc... he is also seen ATTENDING CHURCH with his small family, belting out the hymns.

Great.

But later, when he's pleading for help from eveyone who would give him an appointment, the pastor is curiously left out. My feeling is that that the producers, writers, and director of this propaganda film were very careful to identify John Q with the milktoast churchgoers, (think of the way Clinton's handlers advised him to be seen seen toting his Bible back and forth between meetings with Jesse Jackson) but they were more careful to eliminate religious people from the list of those trying to help John Q in his time of need.

In a different movie, John Q might have visited his pastor who would have helped him by drawing on the faith based generosity of his congregation, and reallocating the money for the upcoming addition to the church building to John's cause. John Q's pastor would also have made John aware of the many charitable organization that exist to help people unable to afford medical expenses. In the nick of time, enough money would be raised to get John's boy on the waiting list for a heart, and the prayers of the congregation would be answered when the heart of the woman who died in the car accident became available. But while being touching, and even a bit more realistic, this version wouldn't do much to further the cause for socialist style healthcare.

We find out that John's health care plan had mysteriously been severely reduced by his employer, without John Q. even knowing about it until too late. Unrealistic, and easily caught by anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but shows how dedicated capitalists are to getting rich off the backs of employees, and how government is the only one you can trust.

I think I got the biggest laugh during the scene when the greedy rich surgeon is yukking it up with his latest greedy rich patient on his way out of the hospital, who just received his new heart...and get this...he is wearing one of those 50s style neck scarfs under his silk pajamas. And then there is the big breasted blonde girlfriend/wife that is pushing his wheel chair.

Don't miss the scene in where the young ER physician from the trenches rattles off a short dialogue about the horrors of the existing HMO system - how the docors are forced to "give [patients] a bandage then the boot."

There are many more excellent examples of propaganda in this film. If you haven't seen a good propaganda film recently, I highly recommend this one.

Here is the article....

KAREN IGNANI, president of the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP), the association of the managed care industry, said that the movie John Q, irresponsibly sends the message that violence is the way to resolve health care disputes. AAHP subsequently placed newspaper ads calling for Washington to solve the problem of the uninsured. According to Ms. Ignani, America should fault the rising costs that make healthcare unaffordable for many Americans.

If Ms. Ignani and the AAHP are responsible for the image of managed care organizations (MCO’s) in this country, is it any wonder that HMO’s have a negative image? Instead of reminding people that HMO’s actually finance healthcare and that John Q is about as plausible as CinderellaMs. Ignani opines about the deleterious methods of resolving healthcare issues portrayed in the movie. How bizarre.

I worked in the healthcare field for fifteen yearsfor both the MCO’s and for the providers. My experience taught me the needs and concerns of the doctors, public, the insurers, and the hospitals. As the Director of Managed Care for Temple University Health Sciences Center in Philadelphia, one of my responsibilities was to negotiate contracts with HMO’s. Temple is an Academic Medical Center and one of the leading heart transplant hospitals in the United States. I would not have contracted with an HMO that did not include paying for transplants or paying only a small fraction of the hospital charges for transplants. I do not believe any hospital would have made such a contract.

The movie’s concept that an HMO only pays a certain amount for heart transplants and the balance has to be paid by the member is ludicrous. It is indicative of the ignorance of Hollywood regarding the private sector. (Of course, the AAHP did nothing to correct this misinformation.) John Q displays the incredible vapidity and fatuity that’s so common among Hollywood scriptwriters, producers, and directors. This is evident in most movies made about business, the military, and law enforcementthe three institutions Hollywood leftists loves to hate. John Q is a shibboleth for their advocacy of socialism.

Recently during an interview with Bill O’Reilly, filmmaker Michael Moore asked O’Reilly,

"You ever been to Canada? Nice country you think you could find fifty people who would complain about their healthcare system? "O’Reilly, who is sometimes clueless about such things and understandably so, did not respond. However, he could have said that cardiologists in Windsor, Ontario routinely send patients to Detroit for care. O’Reilly could have said that so many Canadians were going to the United States for medical care that the province of Ontario considered not paying their bills. Of course, Michael Moore does not know this because he is ignorant of anything other than the party line. Michael Moore thinks socialized medicine is what we should have in the United States. Moore and others in Hollywood believe the Canadian healthcare is a paradigm.

But of course the Canadian system is not the panacea Hollywood and the media portray it to be. Socialized medicine is dysfunctional. However, filmmakers want to be reformers and to them socialized medicine is the reform. My concern is that the reformers, in their zeal for the phantasmagoria of "equality and justice," will try to fix what is not broken.

Let us not lapse into the demagoguery of such aphorisms as "Patients, not profits, " unless we want the result to be a bureaucratic oligarchy, where the aphorism " Political power not patients," will be a more apt description. Remember, Michael Moore, Denzel Washington, and Bill O’Reilly earn more money than the annual salary of ten heart transplant surgeons. What is more valuable to society? Michael Moore books, Denzel Washington movies, Bill O’Reilly TV shows, or transplant surgery?

There is a line in the movie in which Denzel Washington wants to know why the hospital cannot do the surgery for free since they made $70 million the prior year. $70 million in one year? John Q made $23 million in one weekend.

Americans considering socialized medicine should heed the words of Benjamin Franklin who said, "A mutual change of necessities, the more free...the more it flourishes. Most of the restraints put upon it…seem to have been the project of particulars for their private interest under the pretense of public good. "

There are many criticisms Hollywood could make of managed care. John Q is not one of them.

Funny, I'm in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii, and I haven't caught wind of this. Usually if there is a slip-up like this supposed one, we find ourselves attending all kinds of training and lectures. But then, I don't watch the local news much.

If there is any truth to this, the guy who had the classified material in his possesion, in his car at the beach is a complete jackass and is currently in a load of kimchee.

Doesn’t it make sense to add one more line of defense — guns in the cockpit, as risky as that may be — before moving to the last resort, which is 100 percent guaranteed to kill everyone aboard?

Just goes to show that harm to innocents isn't what the anti-gun folks want to prevent. They can't stand to see someone able to defend themselves. If they condoned pilots defending themselves and their plane with firearms, it would be a precedent for ordinary citizens defending themselves against criminals and tyrants.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, a Muslim policewoman was able to win her fight with the police department she works in, when they allowed her to wear the hijab while on duty after their initial refusal.

Did anyone see this idiot on Oreilly? What scares me is not that she's wearing a scarf on duty, it's that she's on duty.

You would have had to seen the interview to know what I'm talking about - not a glimmer of intelligence in the woman. Bill was being unusually easy on her too. Could she really have been a deputy?

Bill basically asked her why she as a woman would convert to a religion that persecutes women, and cited the recent cases in Saudi Arabia. She managed to get something out about how that isn't what she's been taught, it's a peaceful, loving religion, blah blah blah.

I used to work in grocery, and I remember the WIC program now. Food stamps should be replaced with that sort of system. I wonder why it hasn't already...

Oh I know, because all the ACLU types would go ape sh*t and raise the biggest stink who knows when. They would claim the stamp collectors deserve the same freedom of choice to eat slim jims and frozen cheese cakes as everyone else.

Truth is, they do have that right, but not on my dime.

This system would be even easier to implement. Hell, I'm easy...they could have different lists to choose from. Pork-free for the muslims, vegetarian for the tree-huggers, all proportioned to the size of the family, etc.

I always wondered why, instead of foodstamps, they don't just have food outlets where people who qualify for the assistance can go and pick up the food. In the larger population centers, there could be a outlet where the people in need go to pick up their rations. In rural, or less populated ares, it could be a sort of mobile van type thing, where a refrigerated truck makes stops in a different town each day. Someone in govt. can work out the details.

I think that if I were in need of assistance, and needed help with feeding my family, I'd be happy to go to one of these and show a card, and pick up the actual food. Military folks do this sort of thing every day when they go the mess hall/galley to eat.

I can't imagine why someone who's family would starve otherwise would mind signing up for a card, then going once a week to pick up their share of hamburger, chicken, canned goods, milk, etc.

I'm not trying to be shi**y, it just seems it would be a more cost effective way to get good food on the table of the people who need it. Maybe I'm wrong about the cost effectiveness tho.

It's kind of like I do with bums. (Not to say foodstamp collectors in general are bums - there are active duty military people on foodstamps) The bum asks me for money, I ask why he needs money. He says to buy food. I offer to buy the food for him and ask what he wants. The bum walks away. Only one time have they ever taken the food - one older lady this happened with actually did want food, she asked for bananas. I went to the nearest grocery store and bought her a bag full and was happy to do so.

One thing that really disappoints me, especially coming from freepers, is that so many want government to take care of all the problems by default.

Government should only get involved when it has to. The only good thing I can say about child support laws as they are, is that they attempt to force the low-lifes who actually don't care about their kids into assisting. But these are the extreme cases, and my original post, which was largely for shock effect, points out what is wrong with the system as it applies to men who do want to take care of their children regardless what the law says.

The majority of divorces are initiated by the women, and rarely on the grounds of abandonment or abuse.

If we need laws to prevent the low-lifes from running off without supporting their children, we need laws to prevent the situations like the one where the woman is collecting $400 or so from 4 different fathers collecting $1800 a month in tax free income.

I would like to see a system where the courts don't get involved in the child support amounts until they have to. When they do, it should be to ensure the custodial parent is receiving enough support to make up the shortfall. In the meanwhile, the responsible parents would be protected from excess intervention in their lives.

No two situations are the same. Some children cost more to raise than others. Custodial parents can move up and down in their financial status.

I know that if I were to find myself divorced with custodial care of my children, I would not require an extra $1000 per month over what I already make to raise them. However, my situation is unique. My wife and I are both active duty military, we both receive full medical beneits for ourselves and children, as well as an addional "dependents" allowance for one of us. In my hypothetical situation, I would get the dependent allowance, my wife wouldn't, but she'd still be paying around $1000 a month. If I allowed her to receive the dependent allowance, it would just slide how much support she has to pay up the scale. That $1000 would be nearly half her take home pay.

She'd be getting screwed, and I'd be living great. I could move into base housing, eliminating expenses like rent, utilities, I pay no medical, and even after paying for day-care, I'd have a huge chunk of her money left over to spend as I please.

Some situations might require this amount support, but not my hypothetical one. No reasonable person can think this is just.

My boss's wife is collecting child support on her first kid. She uses it for spending money and they invest the rest in the stock market. They don't sit down and figure up what portion of the grocery bill, rent, etc is attributed to her, and apply the child support check there (much less refund the excess) it's basically just money over and above what it costs them to run the household.

In situations where the father dumps his family without offering to leave sufficient support, hell yes the law should force him to. In situations where a woman dumps a decent husband for selfish reasons, takes his kids away from him, and shacks up with someone else, we need to look at what she gets.

Fair enough?

You and your father have it right. If people today were forced to rely on common sense and morals, perhaps we wouldn't need government to tell us how to live.

"...definitely EM slopchute thinking..."

You blew it.

You've jumped to false conslusions.

I don't mind you insulting me, but you've insulted the enlisted men and women of the military (as a whole) one too many times.

And for crying out loud, you can't seem to think, much less debate.

I can't take you seriously.

Thanks for posting that link, here it is again: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/712385/posts

"...the most vocal men here appear to believe that women expend their intellectual energies on successfully snaring, then dumping and emptying the wallets of men."

While it does happen, I'm sure this is not the initial intention of most women. The problem is, child support laws allow it.

None of them wanted to believe me when I told them I was financially better off without my technical exec spouse, even after being cleaned out when we got divorced, just by working hard and advancing in my field, with absolutely NO money from him.

Exactly. Child support laws seem to presuppose that women are witless and incapable of making decision they can be responsible for. They are apparently a throwback to the times when women were restricted in their pursuits to child rearing, and told who they could marry.

Things got nasty, as they frequently do when a woman with any intelligence or education fails to pretend she is witless.

Another of my problems with child support laws is they are insulting to women. They ignore the fact women like you exist who can control their own lives.