Geria's Comments (210)

“It is atrocious that the Stupak Amendment was introduced by a DEMOCRAT and voted for by DEMOCRATS apparently to destroy their own healthcare bill. It doesn't matter one bit that democrats have majorities in both houses and the White House, the time has come to betray women & cuddle up to the Catholic Church, and they are jumping at the chance! All good sexists seek to destroy women and their rights. They all want to be republicans, conservatives and bishops. Let the Catholic Church re-elected this mob, I wouldn't touch the lot of them. They don't represent you or I; so why call them our government?”

“How in the hell do you get past this macho/military culture and create a decent world for women to live in? All we get is the arrogance of those who think they are better than we are while they contribute to the problems we face and deny us solutions! I fought for women's rights for most of my adult life and I am astounded by the persistence of cruelty and perversity on every issue related to women's lives! They emotionalize what is a rational decision we are perfectly capable of making for ourselves and interfere negatively with it! F.O. for God's sake, you are making things worse! Can't you see that?”

“Catholic Bishops, you have NO right to dictate your narrow viewpoints to anybody not Catholic. Get off our bodies, you bunch of sterile, unreproducing eunuchs. What do you know about poverty, what do you know about domestic abuse, male domination, medical conditions that make pregnancy unadvisable? Nothing. Nor have you any feeling for human beings of the female gender! The Stupak Amendment goes MUCH futher than the Hyde Amendment which already forbids federal funds for abortions. You have just denied legal abortion to ALL American women with this amendment. It is a poison pill for healthcare reform and will most likely result in the death of this vital piece of legislation, awaited for 75 years. You have done only harm in an attempt to stamp out what you consider a sin--but leave the sin of arrogance and all other sins intact.”

“The abortion issue is not emotional; it's a rational one. Every developed country settled this issue long ago and can't figure out what is wrong with Americans. Neither can I. As long as there is a need for abortion, it will exist, therefore it makes more sense to have a medically safe procedure and protect the mother's life than to have a dangerous, back-alley one. This is only possible by making the procedure legal rather than illegal. "Abortion on demand" was never a real issue; most women seeking abortions have a medical or economic reason for doing so. The belief that abortion was being demanded all over the place led to the denial of the service to most American women, which is the state of the issue today. Abortion clinics have been forced to close all over the country because people mistakenly think women seeking the procedure do so for frivolous reasons so they can continue to live promiscuous lives. Instead of trusting women to use it conscienciously, you have been distrustful and suspicious and now everything is chaotic. We too are moral people!!”

“It is apparently hard for people not used to accepting responsibility for their own actions to show any concern about the millions suffering because of their gambling binge and free market policies. I think they knew that the nation would suffer for what they've done and that's just fine with them.

We don't need the Pew Research firm to tell us we are completely disregarded by the media, the bankers, the multi-nations, the Congress and, possibly also the White House. They are trying to make us politically and economically irrelevent. There is nothing left for us to do about it except revolt. Don't forget, there are 350 million of us and only l% of that is them.”

“To be lying, a person must know what he is saying isn't the truth. If a person says something false and doesn't know it is false, that isn't lying, but what he says misleads the listener. The results are the same. Which is Beck?
It is easy to show what he is saying isn't true; it is hard to convince his listeners of that fact. Have you,billhodges, ever verified what Beck has said? You will find getting at the truth can be difficult and requires a great many resources. Read widely], far beyond conservative sources..”

“Are you looking at the same man? If there is one thing Obama is not, it is ideological. Here again, you are unable to see the man as he is. No ideologue (like Bush and Cheney, for example) has any regard for other opinions or actually invites those who disagree with him to float their own ideas. Obama does. He is a pragmatist and believes in what works. Inexperienced, only somewhat. He was a state and federal senator, whereas Bush was only a bad governor like Reagan.”

“As you point out, this fear mongering has an old history in the US and we have survived it. We will survive this latest wave of demogogery too. What we need to be aware of are the powers behind the rant. How far are we ignoring what is really being done to our democracy by corporations, bankers and their politicians?”

“Stop McBush, do you notice how you think liberals do exactly the same things that conservatives do, namely tell lies and distort reality? The "liberal media" is extremely small next to the vast conservative one, and as far as I know, it has no "agenda" that it is trying to promote; it is mostly trying to get at the truth. If you had any actual familiarity with the liberal media, you would notice little similarity.”

“Mr. Handler, you argue better and more persuasively than President Obama largely because you keep the emotional element in your statements instead of leaving them out. If you really want to take people along with you, you gotta have heart.”

“You are dismayed that anybody (usually a conservative) could want anything other than the most powerful healthcare program possible. I think free market capitalism with its emphasis upon maximizing profits at any cost has so devalued human life in America that attitudes like "if they can't afford private healthcare, then they should die" are heard here all the time and people don't seem to be shocked by it. Forty years ago, such remarks would not have been tolerated, as we were a more humane country still under the influence of the New Deal policies of FDR. Single payer, universal healthcare or Medicare for Everybody is the only real solution and it was never seriously considered. The years to come will prove the seriousness of this mistake.”

“Ornish is saying he has a solution for both Big Government and the need for healthcare, change your lifestyle. Such changes would be cost-saving, but there is NO substitute for healthcare. To avoid the severe arthritis I suffer from today, I should have been more athletic during my teens! At that time, nobody knew greater sports participation would protect a woman's joints against arthritis. Today I participate in Silver Sneakers, an exercise program to prevent seniors from becoming frail and requiring nursing home care. It is very well attended. That's fine, but it is too late to help arthritis, a disease which STILL has no cure, despite millions of sufferers!
What is wrong is the fear of Big Government. I find Big Pharma and Big Private Insurance more frightening as they have no social responsibllity whatsoever! They can do anything that maximizes profits for themselves and their shareholders. Government cannot be this indifferent to public welfare as it must stand for re-election. Moreover big insurance companies are immune from anti-trust laws. They can grow into cartels and nobody can break them up. I prefer a universal, single-payer plan, or Medicare for Everybody. Ask the countries that have universal healthcare, it can't be beat. These countries have private health insurance too, but it is not-for-profit as Blue Cross/Blue Shield once was. Everybody, except Americans,agree healthcare is a human right, like fire protection, and not a priviledge only for those who can afford it.”

“How did you get to be as evil as Fox or Wolf? Machiavelli was writing for evil men, of which there are always too many.”

“When are you going to get over the idea that the poor are poor because they don't work! In America, you can be poor and work every day. In America, you can be poor because there are few or no jobs, or you must accept a temporary or part time job because there are no full time ones. You can be poor if forced to live on a small Social Security stipend. The amount of benefit received varies from one recipient to another. You can be poor because you have no marketable job skills. You can be poor because the breadwinner dies or abandons the family and there is no life insurance or survivor benefits available to you. You can be poor because the republicans and democrats destroyed public welfare as a safety net. You can be poor because you are a child.
Secondly, the rich get rich by generally taking wealth from the whole society. It is only fair to take it back in the form of taxes. Not only fair, it is essential.
Dr. Adrian Rogers was talking nonsense, and you are quoting it.”

“No politician knows what the public wants at any given moment. Opinions are too diverse and too ignorant for the most part. A politician must have an awareness of the situation and how to remedy it. And s(he) must have the guts to oppose entrenched interests if they get in the way of his mission. Obama has yet to show he is anything like this. He thinks he can have everybody, including opposing interests, on his side? That's madness. Does he take more than a moment's notice of the condition of the people or care about it? He leaves healthcare reform up to Congress. up to its knees in special interest cash. Of course you can't get real reform out of such a body. He had to lead the charge with his own bill, ignore the republicans, and remain hands on throughout the process. He didn't and he wasn't. I wonder how long he thinks he can last.”

“You don't get it--you can't FIX the private health care system. It exists to make a profit, period. If providing health care to you or me isn't profitable there is no healthcare. That is why we have no economic security in this country. You can be pushed off your plan at their discretion at any time even when you need it most! A healthcare system MUST be public and financed by cuts in the military budget or taxes on the wealthy and the big corporations, they are the only ones left you can afford to be taxed and they are not paying their share now. Stop being good capitalists and think of what is best for the vast majority of Americans. Europeans can see any doctor they want and go into a clinic or hospital for treatment and pay a pittance or nothing.”

“That raps it up well. It is the profit motive, putting profit first, ahead of all other values, that ruins the American system. As time goes on, the cruelty and ruthlessness of the private sector, working with government, seems to get worse. You are correct; they create no wealth, only productive labor creates wealth, they just loot the wealth that is there.”

“What is that "American Middle class lifestyle" today? Home ownership--getting harder and more expensive all the time; for-profit healthcare system? Higher costs with worsening outcomes. How about college education? Who wants to graduate owing 75,000, especially when there are no jobs. How about a paid. 2 week vacation--Europeans have this, you have to bankroll it yourself. Can you look forward to a rosy future? By all indicators the good days are behind us and there will be no recovery--a jobless recovery means there is no recovery.

You don't "have your own doctor." You have your HMO's doctor, or your PPL's or whatever. Try to get an American-born doctor these days--there are few. What we have now is far worse than a few warts. We have no economic rights, all economic decisions, aside from simple household, personal ones, are made for us by somebody else. This means somebody who doesn't care about you decides what you will earn--and from there everything else is determined. Think about it, it is enormous and unfair power.”

“That is another of America's problems. It is easy for anybody to immigrate to the US but difficult for unhappy Americans to emigrate to somewhere else. The countries of Europe's northern tier, the ones with universal healthcare, have restrictive immigration policies. In Sweden, you practically have to have a job lined up to get a housing permit! The reason is obvious; they want to preserve their system for their own people; too many foreigners would overload it. That's the smart way to run it--not open the doors for everybody to come and take everything you have, like it is done here in the US. It is only the capitalists who like the open door immigration policy because it keeps wages low and humbles Americans who think they deserve better pay, undermines unions, lowers standards of living, all those anti-social desires.”

“The trouble with Americans is that they don't know that other people are better off than we are. They think this for-profit system is the best thing since sliced bread--it is ripping us off at such a rate, we can't possibly carry it on our shoulders for another decade. Give yourself and your family a break and get behind universal, single-payer health care, stop being a good capitalist.”

“I agree. Anybody who doesn't want universal, single-payer health care should leave the country. Try the results of this poll: no developed country having such a healthcare system wants to trade it for the American for-profit system. They know from our example that it doesn't work.”

“All this obvious decline in economic activity has its source in Milton Friedman's free market economics, which is also advocated by Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and advisor Lawrence Summers. Free market economics doesn't allow appropriate tariffs to American manufacturers with the result that manufacturing has declined severely from foreign goods competition. Don't tell me China doesn't impose tariffs; a car exported from the US to China has a 20% tariff on it while a car imported to the US has a 2% tariff. Is there any wonder the auto companies went bust? You can't survive without tariffs--e­ntrepreneu­rs facing this kind of suicide won't be tempted to try to open a factory. We have GOT to get rid of free market economics; we have GOT to get rid of the NAFTA, CAFTA disasterous trade policies. I think of Obama's government as one that refuses to do what must be done to save this nation and is letting us die.”

“You might occasionally think of all the gunless people that have been gunned down by police. A person without a gun could not have fired at police so it is disingenuous (stupid) for police say they were shooting in self-defense. I think police should only shoot if fired upon. I take my work seriously too--do you think it would be excusable if I shot somebody?

I wonder how long this preconception would persist even if blacks stopped "reinforcing it by resisting" which is what you are saying. Preconceptions about people must be shown to be unreliable and recognized as such by the officers. That is what doesn't happen. It is the cop who has control of his own mental switchboard, not blacks.”

“No black people aren't above reproach, but just obeying the law isn't enough to avoid problems with the police. It is called "driving while black." It is like this: your car is stopped by police and they intimate you have stolen the car and demand to see your title card as well as license. They search your car looking for illegal drugs, when there aren't any. There is no logical reason to assume that because a person is black he is up to something--but that is the assumption made by police who do this kind of thing. If the driver gets upset because he is being insulted, trouble really ensues. It is hard to do the calming thing when you are upset--everybody knows that! Things get out of hand rapidly if it escalates. We criticize the police because they are doing the stopping and searching.”

“Knowing Anne Coulter, I'd say she was being reverse racist, rather than facetious. Really, how can you watch people so hate filled as Coulter? Coulter is just telling you what SHE would do if she invited Obama over--serve watermelon. See? That is how it works.”