Originally posted by: EndGame
Originally posted by: Phokus
Lets be honest, the only reason government fails in America is because we have republicans... Europe doesn't have to deal with that and their standard of living is great and their people are happy.
ROTFLMAO!:laugh:
That's GOT to be Satire! Surely nobody is quite that ignorant.......
What's ignorant,exacty? European politics are often described as having their 'right and left' be like our 'center-left' and 'left' wings of Democrats here, without any strong party correspondign to our Republicans, who would correlate to a small 'radical right' in the European political system. The standard of living in Western Europe - especially when the safty net is an issue - has a lot of good things about it (though comparing them involves what you choose to measure); and western Europeans seem pretty happy generally.
Actually, it might be the more ignorant statement for you to disagree. The Republicans have been such a disaster for this country that it's only the ideology that you just can't say they're that bad that may prevent you from saying they're that bad. Democrats have repeatedly made things bette for the middle class and the poor, while the rich as always since the French Revolution do just fine. Republicans at best tread water and uusually find ways to slide back towards increased concentration of wealth and worse.
Seriously, write our 5 or 10 things you think make a 'good result' for government in yoiur own view, and then map the last century for each by the party of the president.
Democrats have ledt every fight for removing discrimination, they've led the fights for average American's prsperity and labor rights, for consumer protections (safety, accurate information), for the regulations of the financial sectory to prevent corruption and the crashes that result from laissez-faire greed (Clinton with Repulbicans excepted), and much more. Over a century, every econmic indicator from stocks rising to loower unemployment to growth and more consistently do better under Democrats than under Republicans.
Under Republicans, the top 0.01% especially, but the top 1%, do well, relatively speaking, at the cost of the nation. They're consistently fighting against public healthcare, public retirement systems (from the moment it was introduced to it being Bush's #1 domestic prioirity to try to privatize SS), and countless other programs that help the public - while for the last quarter century leading the skyrocketing of the growth of public debt, not even scoring that one issue they should easily be able to claim, leaving Democrats as the party who both does more AND is more fiscally responsible. Republicans have given us our most unnecessary wars (with the exception of Vietnam before Nixon expanded the war, which had the full support of Republicans and which JFK had blocked), our biggest scandals from Watergate to the illegal funding of a terrorist army in Nicaragua, by laundering money from illegal missile sales to Iran, and lies about all of it, to the massive corruption of the Bush administration both legal and illegal, with our nation adopting the 'pre-emptive war' doctrine and defending torture and illegal wiretapping, establishing the precedent or the US performing 'covert operatons' for greed making us the eemy of democracy, starting with Iran in 1953 but containing many activities of overthrow, assassination, and terrorism after, and much more.
No, the "ignorance" is the refusal to deal with the facts, not to blindly insist on the ideology that the parties are about equally good and bad.
Our nation became far greater under the more liberal leadership period 1933-1968; who knows how great it might have been with more strong liberlal leadership 1981-present, instead of the disasters of Watergate, of Reagan's terrorism and anti-labor policies starting the first period I'm awareof in US history when the bottom 80% get aboutnone of the economy's growth after inflation while skyrocketing the debt, the decades of stagnation on social programs and rollbacks of what works replacing it with corrupt spending.
Now that they have run the nation in to the ground again, the Democrats get to rebuild the country again - after some years to heal, maybe they can do great things again.
Like on the nation simply caring for the health of the citizens - not in the most overpriced (not just most expensive, most overpriced) system in the world, as good as it admittedly is for those who can pay for the high costs -but with universal healthcare. Party records? After FDR dealt with the Great Depression and created public healthcare programs, Trums first push universal healthcare. Kennedy and LBJ greatly expanded care, while Reagan fough Kennedy as the national spokesman against Medicare. Clinton made UHC a priority but Republicans and the pricvate industry got the public to oppose it; and now we're likely after 8 years of nothing from Bush to have Democrats, by having both branches, finally pass a form of UHC.
But I guess your version is that both parties are equally deserving of credit for UHC?