Don't Ask, Don't TELL

If it's recognized as a common law marriage, then it's no longer a "significant other"; you emo-tard.

If anyone needs to support gay marriage, it should be you; seeing as how it's probably your only chance at being with anyone. :)

Does the Military accept the designation; because this is what this thread has been about, you pinhead?

ah...now the dishonesty kicks in, you replied to this about states and domestic partners:

If it's recognized as a common law marriage, then it's no longer a "significant other"; you emo-tard.

If anyone needs to support gay marriage, it should be you; seeing as how it's probably your only chance at being with anyone.

now you realize you screwed up about states and domestic partners, so change your stance

btw...married, so no idea why you fantasize about my personal life, can't you just discuss the topic?
 
ah...now the dishonesty kicks in, you replied to this about states and domestic partners:



now you realize you screwed up about states and domestic partners, so change your stance

btw...married, so no idea why you fantasize about my personal life, can't you just discuss the topic?

LYNCH YURT
REP ONCELER
 
What is there to discuss?

Corruption in Washington for one thing.

How about the size of our economy for another?

Are you implying the US can not look after it's ill citizens?

How about the ability of our government to maintain itself with the current deficit that will only grow much much bigger under HCR?

The cost for health care will decrease just like it has for every other country that has government involvement in health care.

This program will become a drain on our government just as Welfare, Social Security and other social programs.

Social programs are not a drain on government. Smaller, less wealthy countries cope quite well.

How about the freedom of Health Professionals to do business as they see fit rather than becoming in the near future employees of the U.S. Government.

Two points. First, health professionals do not become employees of the government, in all circumstances. Some countries with a universal plan treat them as independent contractors.

Second, no one is obliged to contract for the government.

This is currently being debated in Canada. Some health professionals want to start their own business, charge whatever they want for fees. THEN, when times are slow, they want the option to be employed by the government. Sort of a cake and eat it, too, scenario. Obviously, one can see the conflict of interest.

Let's say a patient sees a doctor who is contracting to the government. There is a wait time for a medical procedure. The doctor tells the patient that if they come to his private clinic and pay extra they will not have to wait. The word "scam" is written all over it.

And as to your "other countries do it", so what? I live in the U.S.A. because we are not "other countries".

Other countries show that government health care can and does work. The proof is the fact not one notable politician or political party is campaigning on reverting to a "pay or suffer" system. The French, the British, Canadians, Australians, Italians, Germans, Swedes....the list goes on and on. It's absurd for people to assert the US can not implement a government plan or a plan would be worse than the current "pay or suffer" money-grabbing system.

Personally, I would prefer providing Medicare to all the poor who do not currently have insurance and want it. I have absolutely no problem with providing necessities to the needy and paying for it with higher taxes

A noble sentiment, however, the past 100 years have shown not enough people feel that way. Any and every program to help the poor has been fought against, tooth and nail, not to mention the hoops people have to jump through and the rules/regulations to qualify.

The problem with government programs designed to help the "needy" is one has to lose everything, including their self-respect, before being considered "needy". We look at welfare recipients, people who have been financially beaten into the ground before help arrived, then wonder why they're not jumping out of bed Monday morning job hunting. We don't consider they haven't eaten properly for months, don't have decent clothes to wear, have stressed and worried just to pay the rent.....

To witness this occurring in the richest country in the world is an abomination.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

What is there to discuss?

Corruption in Washington for one thing.

How about the size of our economy for another? How about the ability of our government to maintain itself with the current deficit that will only grow much much bigger under HCR? This program will become a drain on our government just as Welfare, Social Security and other social programs. I understand much needs to be done, but I do not believe we can sustain ourselves in the manner we are going.

How about the freedom of Health Professionals to do business as they see fit rather than becoming in the near future employees of the U.S. Government. I realize that under the current law that passed this has not changed, but Candidate Obama indicated that he was going to take this one step at a time. Eventually, health care professionals will be working for the state. I for one, do not believe that medical bureaucrats are the way to better health.

And as to your "other countries do it", so what? I live in the U.S.A. because we are not "other countries".

Something had to be done. No question about that. But, this law really did very little to actually address the real issues.

Personally, I would prefer providing Medicare to all the poor who do not currently have insurance and want it. I have absolutely no problem with providing necessities to the needy and paying for it with higher taxes. What I fear in this case is the corruption involved in American Politics.

Maybe other countries have been successful providing universal health care. Maybe in days gone by when politicians really cared about America and not themselves, America could have accomplished this task. Now, with the control that lobbyists have on Washington politicians I do not have any faith in what is going on.

Immie
 
No on either of those, nor would I consider either of those flaunting a homosexual relationship.

Yes, I am married and yes, I hug and kiss my wife in public. There is a difference between hugging and kissing and feeling each other up.

I will also reiterate, that I have not yet given my opinion on whether or not DADT should have been repealed except possibly when I earlier made the statement that I did not believe the government should discriminate against any of its citizens.

I have repeatedly stated that I do not believe all homosexuals will flaunt their sexual preferences. I have asked why it is that the left is so euphoric over this. I have been given some decent replies, but I believe those people are wrong in their answers. I think the extreme left (meaning gay activists) are so thrilled about this because it pushes their agenda further along. If it is not yet evident, I am not fond of extremists of either side of the political spectrum. That includes gay activists.

Immie

No doubt some will flaunt it but, as I mentioned before, as long as being gay could justify dismissal from the service the rule had to be changed. It was always something one could hold over others.

In today's world we can't count on people being "fair".
 
Are you implying the US can not look after it's ill citizens?



The cost for health care will decrease just like it has for every other country that has government involvement in health care.



Social programs are not a drain on government. Smaller, less wealthy countries cope quite well.



Two points. First, health professionals do not become employees of the government, in all circumstances. Some countries with a universal plan treat them as independent contractors.

Second, no one is obliged to contract for the government.

This is currently being debated in Canada. Some health professionals want to start their own business, charge whatever they want for fees. THEN, when times are slow, they want the option to be employed by the government. Sort of a cake and eat it, too, scenario. Obviously, one can see the conflict of interest.

Let's say a patient sees a doctor who is contracting to the government. There is a wait time for a medical procedure. The doctor tells the patient that if they come to his private clinic and pay extra they will not have to wait. The word "scam" is written all over it.



Other countries show that government health care can and does work. The proof is the fact not one notable politician or political party is campaigning on reverting to a "pay or suffer" system. The French, the British, Canadians, Australians, Italians, Germans, Swedes....the list goes on and on. It's absurd for people to assert the US can not implement a government plan or a plan would be worse than the current "pay or suffer" money-grabbing system.



A noble sentiment, however, the past 100 years have shown not enough people feel that way. Any and every program to help the poor has been fought against, tooth and nail, not to mention the hoops people have to jump through and the rules/regulations to qualify.

The problem with government programs designed to help the "needy" is one has to lose everything, including their self-respect, before being considered "needy". We look at welfare recipients, people who have been financially beaten into the ground before help arrived, then wonder why they're not jumping out of bed Monday morning job hunting. We don't consider they haven't eaten properly for months, don't have decent clothes to wear, have stressed and worried just to pay the rent.....

To witness this occurring in the richest country in the world is an abomination.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Are you implying the US can not look after it's ill citizens?

I am stating that right now we are strapped. Unless we are willing to cut spending we are jeopardizing this nation's economic future. UHC will add to our deficit and further add to our deficit woes.

The cost for health care will decrease just like it has for every other country that has government involvement in health care.

Do you have any proof of that? Who's cost is going to be reduced? Let me put it this way, a medical professional's income will be reduced. They will no longer work for themselves, but rather they will work for the U.S. Government. The government pays them... that will be who they work for. That does not mean that our costs will be reduced. This will be funded with tax dollars either by taxing employers or individuals but most likely by taxing both. Taxes have that unique quality that lets them go up whenever politicians think they can get away with raising them. There will be no control over the costs once they end up in the hands of Congress.

Do I really want a heart surgeon who is making $60,000 a year giving me a transplant? Would I actually be able to find a qualified heart surgeon after Congress cuts their salaries? How about hospitals? They too will be run by the government. Will they begin skimping on cleanliness because their revenues are reduced so much?

You place a hell of a lot of trust in the men and women that supposedly run this country. About all they seem capable of running is this country into the ground.

Social programs are not a drain on government. Smaller, less wealthy countries cope quite well.

Right, and Social Security brings in more than enough taxes so that we do not really need to worry about the eventual running out of funds. Both parties tell us that Social Security is in serious trouble. So, why do you think America's Universal Health Care will be any different?

Social programs are a drain on society and what other countries do or have done is immaterial. We are so much larger than those other countries that there is no comparison.

First, health professionals do not become employees of the government, in all circumstances. Some countries with a universal plan treat them as independent contractors.

Call them what you want, they are still slaves of the government working for whatever minimal subsistence the government deems them worthy. If the government pays them, then they work for the government not the patient.

no one is obliged to contract for the government.

True, they can give up their medical training and go work for McDonald's.

This is currently being debated in Canada. Some health professionals want to start their own business, charge whatever they want for fees. THEN, when times are slow, they want the option to be employed by the government. Sort of a cake and eat it, too, scenario. Obviously, one can see the conflict of interest.

Let's say a patient sees a doctor who is contracting to the government. There is a wait time for a medical procedure. The doctor tells the patient that if they come to his private clinic and pay extra they will not have to wait. The word "scam" is written all over it.

First, that would be a scam. It is also very wrong and should not be allowed. Nor do I believe it would be allowed here in the USA. Thus the way I foresee America's health care future would be that medical professionals would either be required to work at the minimal subsistence payments the government deems them worthy of, or they will have to become black market providers. There will be no "private practices". I hate to say this, actually I do not but that is just a figure of speech, but America is a capitalistic society and we have always believed in allowing business people to set their own rates within reason. I do not believe Medical Professionals should be the first to lose that right.

Here in the U.S.A. we don't have a problem with wait times... unless you consider having to wait three hours in an emergency room to have a sore throat looked at to be a problem. Why do you want to change that?

Why shouldn't a health care professional be allowed to run his own business? When America's universal health care system takes hold they will not be able to own their own practices because all payments will be required to come out of the U.S. Government. That means that the government will tell them what they are allowed to charge and will pay them what the government says they are eligible to make. At least under our current policy they can negotiate their fees with insurance companies or they do not have to accept an insurance companies customers as patients. When the government is the only health insurance company, there will be no negotiating, no choice for the medical professional. It will mean accepting the government's offer or not practice at all.

Will their income be salary based or will it be based on services provided? If it is based upon services provided there may very well be so much more fraud because of the low pay offered that many of our health professionals may end up being criminals rather than providers.

Unless, of course, you are stating that doctors will be allowed to only offer their services to the rich and should they choose not to take the minimal governmental subsistence payments they will be allowed to open their own practices. Which would mean that the good doctors will no long offer services to the middle class because the middle class would never be able to afford their services because most of the middle class would need to use their insurance which is run by the government and those doctors would not be allowed to accept payments from the government because they chose not to. How is that beneficial to us?

Other countries show that government health care can and does work. The proof is the fact not one notable politician or political party is campaigning on reverting to a "pay or suffer" system. The French, the British, Canadians, Australians, Italians, Germans, Swedes....the list goes on and on. It's absurd for people to assert the US can not implement a government plan or a plan would be worse than the current "pay or suffer" money-grabbing system.

We are not other countries. Washington is flooded with corrupt individuals who are only in their line of work for their own benefit. The fact that they pushed HCR through Congress without knowing what the hell it even said is proof of that.

To put it bluntly, I do not trust Congress to do it right. You may feel great about a half-assed attempt at it. I do not. I would not be opposed to Universal Health Care if it were done right. Heck, I grew up under Kaiser Permanente Hospital care and if UHC could be run as well as they ran their hospitals, I would be knocking on the doors of Congress asking them to institute UHC. I am, however, 100% opposed to the scum in Congress deciding my health care.

Could the U.S. do it? Yes. Can we do it with the people in Congress setting it up? Hell no. There would be so many loopholes that it would make the tax code look water tight. So yes, I am saying that the U.S. can not care for its ill citizens at least not in the proposed manner.

The Health Insurance Reform bill that passed earlier this year will provide a very large influx of tax revenue to the U.S. Government that will end up in the general fund for purposes of pork expenditures and the cost of our health care will be added to the U.S. debt for our great, great, great grandchildren to pay off just as has happened with Social Security funds. This will be in the form of T-bills as are Social Security funds. That is U.S. debt and we have too much of it as it is. That is not fiscally responsible spending.

Immie
 
No doubt some will flaunt it but, as I mentioned before, as long as being gay could justify dismissal from the service the rule had to be changed. It was always something one could hold over others.

In today's world we can't count on people being "fair".

Like I said, for the vast majority of service personnel, gay and straight, life will go on without any change. Most homosexuals in the service will not suddenly "come out of the closet" and most straights won't care either way. I have no problem with that. It is the activists that I have problems with.

And you are right, it is wrong to have that kind of a threat over the head of anyone. That is probably the best response from the "other side" that I have heard yet.

Immie
 
I am a big gay emotard named Freedumb.

I confess that Yurt is much smarter than me, and I deserve to be spanked for my ignorance.
 
Like I said, for the vast majority of service personnel, gay and straight, life will go on without any change. Most homosexuals in the service will not suddenly "come out of the closet" and most straights won't care either way. I have no problem with that. It is the activists that I have problems with.


Immie

I think life will change for all gays in the military. I think having the fear of being discharged if they slip up is real.

The activists may not be to your liking. But they accomplished something that needed doing. The gov't would have been content to let this continue. Bureaucrats need to be pressured.
 
I think life will change for all gays in the military. I think having the fear of being discharged if they slip up is real.

The activists may not be to your liking. But they accomplished something that needed doing. The gov't would have been content to let this continue. Bureaucrats need to be pressured.

I meant in regards to their public persona. Most of them are not going to go out and run across base shouting "I'm gay and I'm proud". Most will simply go on living their lives as they have all along.

Immie
 
I meant in regards to their public persona. Most of them are not going to go out and run across base shouting "I'm gay and I'm proud". Most will simply go on living their lives as they have all along.

Immie

Oh, I agree completely. Which is why I see this as a positive thing. They will not have the fear held over their head, we will not lose good people, and thing will not change for most people.

Win/Win situation.
 
Oh, I agree completely. Which is why I see this as a positive thing. They will not have the fear held over their head, we will not lose good people, and thing will not change for most people.

Win/Win situation.

The fact that they will not have that threat held over their heads is a good thing. Also, the fact that an accusation true or not cannot be used against someone to ruin their careers is also a good thing.

Immie
 
Having 40 years in the service, one aspect of this decision has been passed over, ignored, or maybe people are not aware of it. That is the reaction of service members themselves when gays are exposed, but will now remain in their units.

Most (I surely hope most) will not make any deal out of it. But there ARE a significant number of anti-gay people in the military, from those that "just feel uncomfortable with it" to outright full-blown homophobes. The military is going to have to deal with this situation, just as the military had to take a strong official stand against racism when we integrated the military racially.

From the point the military was racially integrated the official position of the military was a zero tolerance of overt signs of racism. But, when I first joined, this official position was not very strongly enforced - there was a lot of side-winks between racist leadership to racist soldiers and recruits. Today, it is genuinely not tolerated. A person who cannot get over their racist tendencies - and there are those out there of all races - will end up with an other-than-honorable discharge. But the problem I see coming is it took a long time for us to get from an official anti-racism stance to a genuine anti-racism stance.

There IS a lot of anti-gay sentiment out there, and I would estimate that, unfortunately, there is a significantly higher percentage of anti-gay people in the military than we'd find in the general population. As such, there are going to be problems getting the military at the same level with respect to sexual preference as we are now with respect to racism. That was the advantage of Don't Ask, Don't Tell - we in the military did not have to take on the inevitable interpersonal tensions that will occur when serving gays are "exposed" (for lack of a better term).

Of course, avoiding the issue by discharging what were often excellent soldiers isn't a good answer either. OTOH, wartime is not a good time to give the military a big personnel headache to contend with. And that was the BAD part of DADT. When DADT was instituted we were in the middle of one of the longest periods of relative peacetime in our entire history. Gulf I was such a flash in the pan, it hardly even counts in the broad picture as a time of conflict. THAT would have been the time to grasp the nettle firmly and move to integrate gays into the military.

To be honest, though, had full gay integration been proposed at that time, I would have been dead set against it. I am not proud of that, but I must be honest with myself. One grows and learns over time - at least one should. Perhaps there was enough strong resistance from those of us in the military at that time that Clinton et al figured they could not succeed pushing it on us, and thus DADT was their compromise answer. But like individuals, societies must progress - and gay integration in the military is an issue that must SOMETIME be addressed. Now, being in a significant military conflict is not the best of times, but who knows when a "good" time will ever come for it?
 
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Having 40 years in the service, one aspect of this decision has been passed over, ignored, or maybe people are not aware of it. That is the reaction of service members themselves when gays are exposed, but will now remain in their units.

Most (I surely hope most) will not make any deal out of it. But there ARE a significant number of anti-gay people in the military, from those that "just feel uncomfortable with it" to outright full-blown homophobes. The military is going to have to deal with this situation, just as the military had to take a strong official stand against racism when we integrated the military racially.

From the point the military was racially integrated the official position of the military was a zero tolerance of overt signs of racism. But, when I first joined, this official position was not very strongly enforced - there was a lot of side-winks between racist leadership to racist soldiers and recruits. Today, it is genuinely not tolerated. A person who cannot get over their racist tendencies - and there are those out there of all races - will end up with an other-than-honorable discharge. But the problem I see coming is it took a long time for us to get from an official anti-racism stance to a genuine anti-racism stance.

There IS a lot of anti-gay sentiment out there, and I would estimate that, unfortunately, there is a significantly higher percentage of anti-gay people in the military than we'd find in the general population. As such, there are going to be problems getting the military at the same level with respect to sexual preference as we are now with respect to racism. That was the advantage of Don't Ask, Don't Tell - we in the military did not have to take on the inevitable interpersonal tensions that will occur when serving gays are "exposed" (for lack of a better term).

Of course, avoiding the issue by discharging what were often excellent soldiers isn't a good answer either. OTOH, wartime is not a good time to give the military a big personnel headache to contend with. And that was the BAD part of DADT. When DADT was instituted we were in the middle of one of the longest periods of relative peacetime in our entire history. Gulf I was such a flash in the pan, it hardly even counts in the broad picture as a time of conflict. THAT would have been the time to grasp the nettle firmly and move to integrate gays into the military.

To be honest, though, had full gay integration been proposed at that time, I would have been dead set against it. I am not proud of that, but I must be honest with myself. One grows and learns over time - at least one should. Perhaps there was enough strong resistance from those of us in the military at that time that Clinton et al figured they could not succeed pushing it on us, and thus DADT was their compromise answer. But like individuals, societies must progress - and gay integration in the military is an issue that must SOMETIME be addressed. Now, being in a significant military conflict is not the best of times, but who knows when a "good" time will ever come for it?

Good post, but I especially admire the comment I put in bold. I respect someone who admits to past errors. And I have even more respect for one who changes and grows.
 
There is no rule that says they have to now expose they are gay, they can continue to keep their sexual orientation to themselves, most will want to do this. It is no one's business, it is private, but now they do not have to live in fear if their sexual preference is exposed by someone else or if they do tell another that they are gay, they don't have to worry about it!

The military will handle their discipline problems as they have in the past, be it racism or sexism, they will deal with it!

One guy they interviewed said he was bullied more for being Asian than being gay!
 
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