Dude, this ain't a Jersey thing, it's am "Oh America" thing.

It's a "Kevin Smith's home town" thing.

LOOK WHAT YOUR MOVIES HAVE DONE, FATTY.

I work alongside one of these people. He works with me as a second job PURELY on the back of the health benefits our job provides. Yet the entire time, he's deluded into thinking that people are stealing his imaginary millions in tax dollars.

I read a sentence as "I am ready to use knuckle daggers" just glancing at your post. Five for psuedo showing me a solution. oh and the evil.

how conservatives can manipulate people's fears and hatred to act against their own interests will never cease to amaze me

Nah this is time to get serious. "Reasonable" people have sat by assuming the other side will come around on their own, just given the chance. These people can be marginalized and made to feel less than and shamed.

here, have a beer

Obama's mistake is believing too much in the Republican's potential for decency. It exists, but they can and will sell it out in a split second if it means hurting a Democratic president.

Fuck bipartisanship. That only works when the opposition party isn't being run by hate-spewing fanatics. We have the majority, and even with Ted Kennedy dead we have a good chance of passing this thing, especially when the GOP have done so much over the past month to paint any and all Democrats so starkly as enemies of freedom. That has the unintended side effect of unifying Dems who would otherwise squabble.

What Obama needs to do is ignore the Repubs, bring his party together to work on a bill, and exercise the so called "nuclear option" AKA the congressional cheat code that lets you pass health care reform without 60 votes (the actual name of which escapes me.) This can all be done without a single Republican vote.

The right have abandoned civilized debate, so let's give them what they asked for -- lock them out of the discussion altogether, then let them watch as this shit gets passed without them. They had every opportunity to work with the president on this and they did the total opposite.

Obama could do all this, and it has a pretty good chance of working. The only question is if he has the balls to do so. He's been doing a good job up until health care came along but he's shown a bit too much eagerness to please everyone. Sometimes being a leader means knowing when to tell someone to fuck off.

Sounds about right to me. If they can't play nice, don't let 'em play at all.

The thing about this that makes me want to just throw my head back and laugh my mind away is that prior to this whole screeching "debate", I really wasn't concerned with health care as a moral issue. Now don't get me wrong, I did feel it was a moral issue, but my own primary concern was purely pragmatic: I thought it was just plain stupid and inefficient to not use collective bargaining as a tool to drive down health care costs. Think Lawrence O'Donnell's "smart, effective socialism" argument re: Medicare in the Katy Abram video.

Now, after seeing all the uneccessary hatred and bile being spewed by these protesters, I'm willing to give a hell of a lot more weight to the moral side of things--if for no other reason than to piss 'em off.

I dunno, maybe that's what Obama was going for all along. I sure hope so. I really don't like thinking that I understand this situation better than he does.

And there I go, babbling on again. Next round's on me.

In emulation of Christ.

You make me want to puke, Enjoy.

Of course, you will always be healthy and disease only happens to other people.

I love idiots who toss the word socialism around when they clearly have no clue what it actually means, if only for the laughs.

Up until recently I would never have thought of myself as the bleeding heart type, but really: why is it so hard to disagree with this woman's position without acting like a total asshole? Honest question, I just don't get it.

And just to head off the obvious response of pointing out instances where I've been a raging dick in poeTV comments (my recent spat with foopants comes to mind), I would like to point out that this is the internet. This town hall shit is happening out there in the real world, where I at least pretend to know how to be polite and respectful.

because a society is only sane to the extent that it's policies are humane, you privledged elitist shitcock. a healthcare system that only serves the wealthy is fucking immoral and reprehensable, and most arguments beyond that are thinly veiled defenses of disgusting levels of personal greed and maintaining the modern aristocracy

but i remember you bragging about your LSAT results, so, i really don't expect you to be enough of a human being to understand the fact that the world is bigger than your bunker (or self interests), and that we live and die as a society by working to better the lives of everyone in it - not just to that small segment who can afford to monopolize access and services, you tainty fuckram

I take it Enjoy is a regular poster on Poe-news and not Cena with a new account?

teeth c'mon this is rich. Help me follow the logic here. This lady has terrible diseases and therefore everyone should be on socialized medicine?

if that system is preventing her and 40 some million other people from getting healthcare, then yes. not to mention the people who would be dropped from their plan at the first sign of trouble. this is a bit larger than one woman in a wheelchair you think sounds funny , cockston wembley

this private insurance system is killing people w/ lack of medical care at a rate of a 9/11 every two months - the shit ain't workin', and it's siphoning away hundreds of billions in profits and overhead that could actually be put into actually improving healthcare

you ass

I think it's because there's a segment of the popluation (which skews old, male, and white) that are afraid of any change whatsoever because it may mean people "who didn't work for them" gain certain rights or protections. It's a nice mix of entitlement and discrimination. Add the Commie-Nazi conspiracy insanity, and it's a recipe for creating schizophrenic, scared, loud people who couldn't accept a rational argument if it was given to them via ice pick to the skull.

It's like that Craig T. Nelson clip or that woman who was afraid of Obama's "Back to School" Speech because it meant government was interfering with (The Public) School.

Or what do I know, maybe all of these people have their money in Healthcare Companies and Pharmaceuticals.