The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

[Jared]

And they all want to continue sending billions and billions of dollars to Israel so their citizens can have free health care and free college while our citizens who are footing the bill go without either.


Sure they argue about stupid little things neither side is ever going to actually change so they can get you to think that they're different. They're not. Just look at Obama he's taken every bad policy Bush created and expanded or extended it ten fold.

Edit: This looks like a terrible site but it gives some very legitimate reasons on how they're exactly the same in practice.

http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/

 

[Gunky]

And they all want to continue sending billions and billions of dollars to Israel so their citizens can have free health care and free college while our citizens who are footing the bill go without either.


Sure they argue about stupid little things neither side is ever going to actually change so they can get you to think that they're different. They're not. Just look at Obama he's taken every bad policy Bush created and expanded or extended it ten fold.

Edit: This looks like a terrible site but it gives some very legitimate reasons on how they're exactly the same in practice.

http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/

Health insurance is not a stupid little thing. I am 62 years old. I have paid into the insurance system for decades. If we leave it to the republicans I am shit out of luck and will just have to go to the emergency room when there is no other choice. You say nothing is ever gonna change but over the last few years the system changed and I can now buy insurance. I saw a doctor the other day for the first time in years. The republicans promise to dismantle the affordable care act on day 1 of a republican administration. This ain't no stupid little thing to me.

A young woman struggling to make ends meet may soon find gynecological / reproductive services are unavailable or un-affordable to her because the republicans don't like planned parenthood. Not being able to afford appropriate birth control and reproductive care is no stupid little thing to her.

To the working urban poor person who wants to vote on a Saturday, the republican party says: no extended voting hours for you! Maybe voting privileges are meaningless to you, but to many of us this is no stupid little thing.

I could go on.

 

[CarolKing]

Healthcare will go down as a legacy for Obama. I know many people that have insurance for the first time in years. I think we should have a one payer system but Obama couldn't get that. This was the best that he could get.

 

[grokit]

I'm gun-toting pacifist that favors full mj decriminalization and a big social safety net. I think this makes me more of a russian than a republican or a democrat lol. Kudos to sanders for making it this far, a declared socialist never thought I'd see the day. Kudos to trump as well for exposing the naked hypocrisy of today's republican party. I want a four-way race, with sanders & trump kicking the crap out of clinton/bush!

 

[Jared]

Healthcare will go down as a legacy for Obama. I know many people that have insurance for the first time in years. I think we should have a one payer system but Obama couldn't get that. This was the best that he could get.

And I know multiple people who can't afford it because they aren't poor enough.

Why is Obama still sending billions of dollars to Israel so their citizens can have free health care and free college while Americans suffer? Why are Israelis more important to American politicians than Americans?

 

[CarolKing]

Marijuana Legalization Activists Should Support Bernie Sanders For President
Posted by Wiz Kaliko at 1:34 PM on August 17, 2015Ending Marijuana Prohibition


Next year will be a monumental year for marijuana legalization. As a movement we are heading into our third national election cycle as a legitimate political force. It started when the first two bricks in the wall of prohibition fell on election night in 2012, when the voters of Colorado and Washington voted in favor of the legalization and regulation of marijuana. Some may even recall that marijuana legalization received more votes in Colorado than President Obama did during his successful reelection campaign. In 2014, two more states were added to that list (Oregon and Alaska), along with the District

Read More

 

[Gunky]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#Amounts

Israel got 2,961 million in US foreign aid in 2013. Of that, 17.81 million was economic aid, and 2,943 million was military aid. Yes we in the USA are subsidizing the development and testing in Israel of military equipment like the Patriot missile. We are not paying for Israelis to attend college. I urge you to look at the chart linked above. Total US foreign aid in 2013 was $40.11 billion. So Israel received 7.3 percent of the US total foreign aid for that year.

Afghanistan received double what Israel got: 4,533 million. Egypt got 1,566 million. Jordan, 1,211 million. The west bank and Gaza received 1,007 million. Together those four places got 8,317 million in foreign aid from the US (more than 20% of our foreign aid budget). So is there some reason you keep singling out Israel? They get something on the order of 7 percent of our foreign aid. We actually get pretty good returns from that aid, unlike say Afghanistan, which is a dead weight.

 

[CarolKing]

More folks have insurance now than before. Again it's not a perfect system because Obama didn't get everything that he wanted. Even if he had it still wouldn't have been perfect. I agree I don't think we should be giving money to these other country's either. Generousity should begin at home.

I'm also tired of our service men and women fighting a war in all these 3rd world countries.
EDIT
Sanders for president

 

[Jared]

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

"U.S. military aid to Israel was $2.775 billion in 2010, $3 billion in 2011, $3.07 billion in 2012 (and $3.15 billion per year from 2013-2018)"

I don't really care what the letters on the paper say the money is going to them for, I just know it's massive amounts of money going to them, not us, every single year. They have free healthcare and free college, we don't, and it needs to stop.

 

[Gunky]

Keep in mind that military aid, which is a huge component of foreign aid, stimulates the US economy. Who do you think is building that equipment which the US government procures and makes available to Egypt, Afghanistan, etc? Foreign aid and military aid is not as simple as you are thinking. If we can help an area develop and avoid a famine, for example, it will actually save us money when we don't get sucked into the military exercise that chaos caused by famine produces. If we invest heavily in dealing with a serious, infectious disease at its source in Africa, for example, maybe we don't have to watch our own people die of the disease. That is foreign aid. Don't knock it.

 

[Jared]

Keep in mind that military aid, which is a huge component of foreign aid, stimulates the US economy. Who do you think is building that equipment which the US government procures and makes available to Egypt, Afghanistan, etc? Foreign aid and military aid is not as simple as you are thinking. If we can help an area develop and avoid a famine, for example, it will actually save us money when we don't get sucked into the military exercise that chaos caused by famine produces. If we invest heavily in dealing with a serious, infectious disease at its source in Africa, for example, maybe we don't have to watch our own people die of the disease. That is foreign aid. Don't knock it.

If they need our money so terribly bad to prevent famine or other atrocities how can they afford free healthcare and college for their citizens? Why can't we if we've got all this money to throw around to extremely developed nations with more nuclear weapons than any other country on our planet?

 

[Gunky]

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

"U.S. military aid to Israel was $2.775 billion in 2010, $3 billion in 2011, $3.07 billion in 2012 (and $3.15 billion per year from 2013-2018)"

I don't really care what the letters on the paper say the money is going to them for, I just know it's massive amounts of money going to them, not us, every single year. They have free healthcare and free college, we don't, and it needs to stop.

I suppose you are channeling Rand Paul and other, even more foolish demagogues. You are going on ignore, since there is no point in arguing with a set of ignorant, xenophobic talking points.

 

[Jared]

I suppose you are channeling Rand Paul and other, even more foolish demagogues. You are going on ignore, since there is no point in arguing with a set of ignorant talking points.

Haha if you think Rand doesn't support Isreal you haven't been paying much attention. I don't channel anyone but my own thoughts through my own research.

Edit: I'm totally cool with helping Africa and whatever other countries you may have mentioned...just not one that needs our help less than we do.

You are going on ignore, since there is no point in arguing with a set of ignorant, xenophobic talking points.

Xenophobic?

"When you resort to name calling you've already lost the argument."

Ignore away buddy.

 

[grokit]

Keep in mind that military aid, which is a huge component of foreign aid, stimulates the US economy.

Free health care and higher education would stimulate our economy even better.

 

[Gunky]

Free health care and higher education would stimulate our economy even better.

I agree and would add infrastructure repair to the list.

People are suggesting we cut off all foreign aid. That would be shooting ourselves in the foot, because much of the 'aid' is actually procured from American agricultural and military industrial businesses. Cutting off the aid cuts off our business too.

I know 40 billion foreign aid in 2013 sounds like a lot, but the federal budget that year was 3.45 trillion. It's about 1% of the budget. Next to the Bush tax cuts, foreign aid is peanuts.

 

[Jared]

I agree and would add infrastructure repair to the list.

People are suggesting we cut off all foreign aid. That would be shooting ourselves in the foot, because much of the 'aid' is actually procured from American agricultural and military industrial businesses. Cutting off the aid cuts off our business too.

Literally no one suggested we cut all foreign aid but you. One single country that doesn't need it and who's citizens are better off than we are was mentioned. No other countries.

 

[CarolKing]

It would definitely help the health care crisis in America if we could keep more of our hard earned money over here in our own country. Not for helping everyone else and we come last. There are only a little over 8 million people in Isreal and and almost 319 million here in the U.S.

Israel really is sitting in the middle of a shit storm. There doesn't seem a right answer to keep the people of Isreal safe. I say move it somewhere else. I hope I didn't say the wrong thing.

 

[Gunky]

I'm afraid you are letting people distract you over foreign aid. It's just not important to the budget! We could make healthcare universal and free or near free, same for higher education and infrastructure rebuilding. We could do enormous things as we have before in this country. But we can't do them by starving the 99% and enriching the 1% (low taxes for the rich and austerity for the poor and middle class, defunding education, yada yada). Historically wealth in this country was grabbed back from the super rich and used to benefit the whole. Anti-government right wingers are now making that difficult. The naive theories of these people are going to take us back to oligarchy and feudalism. Heck they already have. Please don't elect more of these clowns and make it worse.

 

[CarolKing]

I assume I will vote for whatever Democrat wins the nomination. I wish there was a better system and better choices. I keep hoping someone new will materialize that we will give us another option.

I thought this was funny.

 

[Farid]

Egypt and Afghanistan get more military aid from the US because without that aid, other groups (could be Islamists, could be Nationalists, could be Russia or China) would compete with the United States for influence. In Israel the United States does not hold much influence. That's why the aid should be cut. We give them money, and they do their own thing, and ignore American interests (case and point Netanyahu talking to congress behind the back of our Commander in Chief). The whole war in Iraq was the result of Neocon warmongering with huge support from the Israeli center and right.

 

[grokit]

Obesity-related illnesses are responsible for ~75% of health care expenses. And a worker that's of a healthy weight pays the same as the obese smoker that gets to go on more breaks to boot (to smoke). A typical obamacare subsidy on a $1600 a month policy is $1400, that's how messed up the system is, with these high premiums going to socialized medicine, as in a cash giveaway to the biotech/pharmacos that overcharge the american public to an insane degree for their drugs while they squash the generics.

 

[Gunky]

Obesity-related illnesses are responsible for ~75% of health care expenses. And a worker that's of a healthy weight pays the same as the obese smoker that gets to go on more breaks to boot (to smoke). -snip

Um, in case you haven't heard, that's how insurance works. You can say the same about any health issue. Why should I pay the same as the guy who has cancer? Maybe because I might get cancer someday, in spite of my buffed body and healthy habits? This, by the way, has nothing to do with Obamacare, that's just how insurance works. Even if we go off the insurance model to single-payer, it's still the same thing. Some people will pull more treatment and costs out of the system than others and we accept that because this is how we can fund treatment for everybody and you never know - you might be the one who ends up needing lots of care.

 

[CarolKing]

This is off the subject. I knew a couple who seemed to be really healthy way back in the early 80s. They were eating all organic veg and all whole grains. No Wonderbread for them, very little meat but other forms of protein, they did eat eggs. They weren't vegetarian. No smoking, alcohol or drugs. They were also long distance runners and biking to and from work 12 miles round trip. The husband died of a massive heart attack at the age of 48. She died of breast cancer at 52. You just never know.

My brother just had spine surgery (he's not obese) the bill was $339,000.00. He has insurance. He had to pay $1200 for his co pay. I'm glad Obamacare benefited him. He is on Medicaid because he's 68 but his fees are low for his additional supplemental insurance. He lives off of $1309 a month. Eventually he hopes to be able to work part times when healed. He worked up until he had to quit due to his health. He didn't plan well for his retirement. Plenty people though fall in the same category as my brother. Luckily he doesn't have a house payment anymore.

I'm worried that Hillary's email server will do her in. Especially if they find some really sensitive email. She needs to get Bill out to sing her praises. I realize they don't want him to outshine her. If you get Hillary you get Bill too. Let's hope he can keep his pants on and doesn't embarrass her. Democrats need someone in the wings, just in case "oh shit" happens.

 

[Gunky]

A lot of people who were in their fifties when the great recession hit and got thrown out of their jobs and lost their homes are now in the same boat as your brother, or worse.

The email server business doesn't bother me in the least. It's yet another republican fishing expedition. What will emerge from greater scrutiny of the declassified emails is that Hillary Clinton is an extremely diligent workaholic. Jeb Bush had a similar private email server as governor and did even less well in managing it and complying with the regulations surrounding it.

 

[grokit]

Um, in case you haven't heard, that's how insurance works.

Not auto insurance, (in most states) if you're a higher risk you pay more.
Why should I cost the same to insure as someone that drives drunk, or gobbles up trans fats?
This is the way it should be for all insurance imo. Sorry for the ot.

edit: I just thought of something: people may eat more trans fats when they're drunk!