Touchy subjects: presidents (May be NSFW)

[abstractApathist]

About the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"):  The ACA forces health care companies to stop screwing over large swaths of the population who desperately need health care, including the disabled, diseased, and elderly, and it provides care for those who cannot afford it, including the homeless and unemployed. This stops millions of people from suffering or dying because they can't afford to go to the hospital. While it does force a very small portion of the population to switch over to a more expensive health care plan, those who are forced to switch are all young, healthy adults who are last in line for needing healthcare.

TL;DR: Obamacare stops a lot of people from suffering or dying at the expense of a few people paying slightly more.

[abstractApathist]

More people lose coverage than the people who get coverage.  ObamaCare causes job losses.  It forces people who have no reason to need to pay more, to pay an insane amount.

Where did you get this from? Please give a credible citation. Here is my source: http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/timeline/timeline-text.html

[Moneekahh]

My goodness, whether you're an Obama supporter or not, you can't seriously consider his proposed limitations on assault weapons to be a threat to the second amendment! He wasn't actually trying to take guns away altogether... Am I missing something here?

I don't know enough about each president in history to have formed a valid opinion on this topic so I will pass on answering the OP.

[Kaworu, the Fifth Child]

This blew up fast

[Ertai]

What Obama calls an "assult weapon" is completely stupid.  I agree that fully auto guns should be banned, be he calls anything with (I'm not up to date on assult weapon lingo) a pistol grip, a barrel cooler, clip with more than 10 bullets, muzzle break (I think) etc an assult rifle.  The thing he wants to ban just makes the shooter more accurate and able to defend their family.  Lots of my guns have those things but they aren't assult rifles.  The whole "ban assult rifles" thing is complete stupidity, because it's just a step in the direction of banning all guns.  It won't reduce gun violence.  None of the things he proposes would reduce the ability of shooters to kill lots of people.

If you make owning guns a criminal act, only the criminals will own guns.

That's not good.

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

What Obama calls an "assult weapon" is completely stupid.  I agree that fully auto guns should be banned, be he calls anything with (I'm not up to date on assult weapon lingo) a pistol grip, a barrel cooler, clip with more than 10 bullets, muzzle break (I think) etc an assult rifle.  The thing he wants to ban just makes the shooter more accurate and able to defend their family.  Lots of my guns have those things but they aren't assult rifles.  The whole "ban assult rifles" thing is complete stupidity, because it's just a step in the direction of banning all guns.  It won't reduce gun violence.  None of the things he proposes would reduce the ability of shooters to kill lots of people.

If you make owning guns a criminal act, only the criminals will own guns.

That's not good.

It works in many other modern countries.

[PapaBudz]

Worst: Andrew Jackson. He did some messed up things to Native Americans, disobeyed the Supreme Court when they ordered him to stop, and wrecked the economy.

He did some nasty stuff, but I wouldn't say he was the worst. Jackson called for eliminating the electoral college as well as democratizing federal office holding. He also dismantled the second national bank. Not all jeffersonian ideals are for me, but there are a few I like.

I've only lived through a couple presidents and I can't say they are the best. My favorite is Lincoln. It's sad it took 16 presidents to realize "all men are created equal" wasn't true.

[MuggyWuggy]

I really like Teddy Roosevelt since he was an industrious safari hunting president. Closest thing we will get to  Chuck Norris as president

Slick Willy is also a favorite of mine.

Least favorite: Nixon - a scamming politician who got exposed

Millard Fillmore: Scum scum scum: signed into law the "fugitive slave act" after wiping a presidential cabinet after President Taylor died.

[MuggyWuggy]

Get on with it

[abstractApathist]

I finally watched the vid (my ap gov teacher who keeps up on stuff told me that so I trusted him) and both fox and the other side are wrong.  It doesn't cause job losses, it just causes people to not want to work.  However, it doesn't make them dependent, and it's not enough to stop them from working.  It also doesn't help the vast majority of people like its supposed to.  Really, it only helps single moms (most of the time that was just a bad decision on her point (DONT YELL AT ME FOR THAT!  I know there will always be exceptions) and elderly who can't afford healthcare (who should have just planned better for retirement). It does cause a dependency on the government which is bad.  Take the Indians for example.  They are a prime example of people who are dependent on the gov and what happens to them.

How does this make people not want to work? "Oh I can finally get enough coverage that I'm not at risk of dying to anything worse than a common cold, sounds like a good time to quit my job." While the government did have to intervene, the alternative was to let health care companies screw over the disabled and poor. Also, don't even act like Native Americans that are dependent on the American government are there by choice: white settlers stole their land, forced them into labor camps, and massacred them in droves.

[abstractApathist]

Free healthcare is in no way an incentive to not work: it doesn't stop you from starving (and neither do food stamps very well) and most jobs must now provide health care anyway. If the unemployed have free health care, it means they will be healthy enough to continue searching for a job, not that they'll no longer have to work.

[Rass]

If be increasing your salary 5 g's by taking another job would make you lose healthcare, your healthcare is making you not want to work.

And why is healthcare a "right" that everyone should have?  Where in the constitution does it say it's the government's responsibility to keep everyone healthy?

Ok I will chime in for the health care debate.  Me being a person who is lucky enough to have good healthcare before and still now. I think it is a good idea to help with the healthcare. The problem already existed with free healthcare. If you have no insurance and you are in an emergency you go to an emergency room and they cannot refuse you. So if you have no money and cannot pay the bill guess who pays the bill. All the other people who go to that hospital. Now they are trying to force everyone to have a healthcare plan for two reasons. 1. To help subsidize healthcare. The healthy help pay for the sick. 2. Preventive health services. It's a lot cheaper to go for check ups and stay healthy then it is to go to the emergency room. What I have heard is that for ever $100 it would cost at a regular doctors office it will cost a $1,000 at an emergency room.


Sidebar. You want to help get rid of the free healthcare make business offer their employees healthcare.

[MuggyWuggy]

Fair enough, I'm still putting Fillmore as worse: "hey guys lets return all of the freed slaves...."

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

The Obama administration has actually looked at the numbers and determined that all job loses due to Obamacare is because of a decrease in the labor force's willingness to work, not business's demand for workers. This does not impact unemployment because unemployment is the percent of people who are willing to work, but cannot find a job.

[abstractApathist]

Bottom line for me, I don't believe it's governments role to offer healthcare.  They manage to break everything they try to run and everything they do have adverse side affects they didn't intend.

I would say that the convenience of the healthy and those who can already afford healthcare does not outweigh the right to life and happiness of the disabled and poor (who many healthcare companies would refuse to help).