Bush seeking $60 - $70 billion more for Iraq
 

http://www.msnbc.com/news/961153.asp?0cv=CA00

This is on top of the $72 billion that the war has already cost.

What could be done with $140 billion?

Over 40,000,000 children could be provided with a year of health care.

or

14,000,000 children could attend a year of Head Start.

or

1,800,000 additional teachers could be hired for one year.

or

24,000,000 cars could be converted to natural gas.

or

1,400,000 affordable housing units could be built.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower

You coming to Amsterdam for New Years Eve, bro?

:rasta

Thunderballs, don't post....it's stuck on 666. :1orglaugh

this country was never based on free healthcare, or giving everyone everything. that's the bane of free enterprise.

we already give too much to the wrong people.

Socialised medicine works.

Ask someone in a country that has it whether they would like to live without it.

i don't know much about a lot of that, but with all the bitching i hear from canadians, it's not very effective.

hell, what is it, the hmos or whatever that are kinda oriented like that here... nobody i've heard likes those either.

Still trying to work out the details. Waiting for my ex wife to let me know if she'll keep our 5 year old while I'm gone. Whats your ICQ?

So you would rather the money go to a middle eastern country that could give a fuck about us?

After Irag then where? when do we take care of the US?:glugglug

I really don?t understand the surprise here?

101014454

it's going to go to some other fucking country anyways, so why not spend it in a manner that might just benefit the US?



and for everone else: socialize this, bitch :321GFY

we're going to be giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses, remember? that in itself will cost god-knows how much.

Ultimately, when the oil really starts flowing out of Iraq we will end up ahead. Not because we are going to steal it, but simple supply and demand. Especially if we can manage to get Iraq out of OPEC.

Wouldn't you love to audit the "real" books of the United States.

God only knows where it all goes.

want to know where the welfare checks and food stamps go?

good story... true deal. bitch drives up to a gas station in a bm-fucking-w, gets out in fancy ass clothes and a fur coat. out pops 3 of her little magots, and she gives them food stamps to go buy fucking candy.

She probably got them as change from her dealer.

Yep so true. I was in a supermarket line and this good looking black woman was buying a load of groceries with food stamps. But she was decked out in nice clothes, fancy shoes, diamond "bling bling" all over, and I saw her getting into a Mercedes in the parking lot.

:1orglaugh

yup, and when i was unemployed for a while a couple years ago and finally ran out of money... here's me, my cheap little truck (cheap, but i keep it in good condition), in my ratty clothes eating ramen noodles every night the state didn't want jack shit to do with me. never did get an unemployment check.

i think i applied for just about every shitty job in town then, got 1 offer. jobs are very tight around here. not sure how money magazine rates this as one of the top cities to move to for work. this place is fucking lame. this town is also one of the worst anti-poor people places to live in the country as well.

that's ok though, it's all run by the Baal or something.

Congratulations! You've discovered that people like handouts. You've discovered that people like other people working to help pay their costs in life. You've discovered that people are lazy.

Of course people like free stuff. Have you seen the supermarket? "Buy one get one free", "12 oz. free","Win a free trip".

We all pay and we all benefit. The bottom line is that even most of the conservatives like it too. So it's a consensus.

There's no argument.

Money in = money (spent) out. This is a way to redistribute income. There's no magic way for everyone to pay into a pot and yet everyone to receive more back than they put in.

When I make financial decisions I consider the ROI. I prefer to make those decisions for myself.

What decisions are you making exactly? The decision to pay prices that aren't held in check by the existence of a state funded alternative? The decision to pay prices that are inflated to cover insurance company profits?

Maybe you want to help pay off my elder daughter's 6-figure medical bills. Perhaps you could explain to my younger daughter why, because of a pre-existing condition, she will never get insurance and her financial security for the rest of her life may depend on whether she can stay healthy.

Barbara Starfield of the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, notes:

* More than 40 million people have no health insurance.
* For 16 available health indicators the U.S. ranks behind Japan, Sweden, Canada, France, Australia, Spain, Finland, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Denmark, and Belgium.

The poor performance of the United States was recently confirmed by the World Health Organization, which used different indicators, and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries.

Tell me about your decisions again...

Isn't it amusing how we teach children to share with others.

Quite hypocritical really.

I'm in perfect health and I can afford to pay for anything that happens to me, no matter how serious.

You've reverted to non-applicable parables.

That makes no sense. People are selective in their teaching their children. Everything in life is conditional. Most people I know are quite well-off and share more of their money - through charitable giving - than an average person even makes in a year. That doesn't change their general belief in rugged individualism and self-reliance.

I'm by no means a socialist, BUT there's one very good thing about having a generous social system.

We have no desperate people here. Desperate people do desperate things. Nothing fucked up ever happens in my country. If you saw the crime statistics here you would think we had Superman and Batman cleaning up the streets.

It's almost so peaceful it's depressing :)

*edited* not only generous welfare system.

If by "quite well off" you mean people earning more than $100,000 a year then you move in refined circles indeed: only 5% of the US population boasts such incomes.

Ironically however, according to the NCCP (for example), the vast majority of this ruggedly individualistic, self-reliant segment of the population owes its financial well-being either wholly or in part to inherited wealth.

Yes, that's exactly the point. Joe's insinuation that those who are most opposed to health care "don't share" is laughable. They do give, often the equivalent of what 100 people of average income do. Choice!

I'm glad people inherit their wealth. Good for them. I'm leaving everything I have to my daughter when I die. I work for my family, not my neighbors. I believe in that right more than I believe in a right to free services.

100% in favor of giving immigrant's drivers licenses and improving this country's health care, than screwing w/ Iraq..