You didn't say contributing to huge numbers, you said number one cause. You can only get there if you count someone with a $1,000 medical bill, $10,000 in credit card debt, and a $200,000 mortgage as being medically caused. When you find a straw that's breaking a camel's back, the straw really isn't the primary cause of the problem.

Only the first of the 4 listed proposals included an exchange, going by the article itself. Is it really that hard to accept that you were wrong on the facts regarding a claim that you decided was HUGELY IMPORTANT?

Hint: it's usually best avoid using absolute statements. They are almost always false and will become a point of contention with anyone who disagrees with you. I didn't mention it in the previous post, but it's also not true that no one in nations with a national health care system ever declares bankruptcy for medical reasons.

For what it's worth, I think a government provided healthcare system to run in parallel with the private sector, while having plenty of it's own flaws, probably would have been better than trying to control the market for health insurance.

Three possibilities come to mind: Excessive youth unemployment, general tendencies to rebel against their parents, and regression to mean. The parents may be exceptionally free thinkers for their country of origin, but their children probably won't be. I would bet that 20% support you mentioned is higher in the populace that actually lives in a theocratic country. The youth unemployment rate in France is apparently about 22 percent, but I suppose it's a matter of opinion as to whether that's excessive or not.

Sorry, you are simply wrong about all republican proposals including exchanges.

Regarding your medical bankruptcy information, the study most commonly used do make that claim treated every bankruptcy which included a medical bill as a medical bankruptcy, no matter how small a portion of their total debts was tied to medical bills.

Try FDR not hoover for WW2, Taft did nothing to get us into WW1 that was all Wilson, Vietnam was mostly Kennedy and Johnson with only minor material support during the Eisenhower period, while Nixon escalated and then actually had us get out, the Korean war was entirely under Truman. You should actually read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States and look at the presidents at the time.

Define capitalism. If you mean our current system, then that's pretty basically not libertarian in nature. If you mean a free market, then they are absolutely correct, and I wonder why you think libertarianism should have a problem with it? The only form of economy fully compatible with personal liberty is a free market.

The issue I was referring to with hotcorners (yes, that's what I meant by hotpoints. misremembered the name) is that the options you get by mousing over the top right corner is different in desktop mode and metro mode. I don't recall on the others.

By letting me avoid Metro and letting me make 'all programs' the default view, some of my distaste for Windows 8 will be gone, although first impressions are hard to overcome. I still think the start menu is a better setup, at least if you read faster than you interpret icons and grok folder hierarchies. I will freely admit that I probably don't think like Joe user, so maybe it shouldn't be default, but I don't think it's completely asinine like you do.

you could do that in 7 as well...

Here's why i prefer the start menu to the start screen: I read fast. It's faster to scan an alphabetized list of folders than to try to figure out which little picture has something to do with the program I'm looking for or read the name of programs that are widely separated, in no particular order, and aren't all the same size. The start screen version of all programs isn't as bad, but I really shouldn't have to right click to get it. It should be an obvious link on the main start screen. The ability to start typing to find the program you need is still present, but there is no visual clue that the start screen supports such a feature. I'd go a little insane supporting Windows 8 without the keyboard shortcuts I know and love.

All that being said, the start screen isn't my main issue with Windows 8. I've got 3 major complaints: Mousing over a section of screen bringing up new things you can do with out any visual cues whatsoever that there's something there, those hotpoints acting differently depending on whether you are in a metro app/start screen or desktop/regular program, and generally the completely different behavior between metro and desktop modes. Especially for Metro IE and flash. Can't load flash on a site you want? Guess you need to download it. Except doing so loads adobe's version for the desktop mode, even if you downloaded it in Metro. The metro version still won't load that site you want. Please feel free to try explaining the issue to a clueless user. Next, clicking and dragging a program to the bottom in order to close it is much harder to find by experimentation than having a visible button to click to close the window. Their tutorial doesn't even mention it. I made myself check the getting started guide, and they never tell you how to close a metro app. Someone else had to tell me how to do it. Given that metro apps aren't presented as a window, I didn't even assume I'd be able to click and drag an app around while it's active. It's like they don't actually want you closing apps or something...

So, you have no actual counter arguments then? Please engage their actual points if you can. Krugman consistently argues from left just as Heritage consistently takes a right wing position. However, Political stance does not, in itself, invalidate anyone's arguments. When I'm familiar roughly with counter points, I try to find a well written example of those points regardless of the source.

More on point: Japan's problems started well before they started trying to get their budget under control, so you can't reasonably blame all of their issues on the cuts. You can make a hand wavey "They stopped just before all that government spending would have saved them", but that's one of those unprovable assertions that are oh so very common and totally useless at the same time. The counter argument, that all that spending temporarily propped up businesses until that spending stopped, at least has some sort of correspondence with actual events even though it's also basically unprovable.

Who vetted Krugman's argument before it was published in the New York Times, since you claim that happened?

Blaming Japaneese spending cuts for their issues in the 90's is problematic.

Let me be clear: the constitution is not the end all be all of protecting freedom. Please do not assume motivations on my part. It remains true that gridlock mostly serves to protect freedom, and that the constitution as written helped make it possible. There is nothing inherently pro-freedom about democracy (although it's better than monarchy). The two are not synonymous. Having been passed by a pure party line vote (actually, opposition was a little bipartisan), using procedural tricks, it has very little legitimacy compared to things such as the Iraq war. Play political hardball to get something passed, and it's going to be subject to every sort of political trick people can dream up to get rid of it when the opposition gains power. As, in fact, they did in the immediate following election.

Damn, I thought I replied to this yesterday.

Do you have anything beyond your assertion that your analogy is correct and redefinition of terms like debt? If so, I'd really like to see it. The way you think things ought to work has no bearing on how they actually work.

Claiming that writing laws creates an obligation on all future congresses that can't legitimately be overturned is nonsense. At any point up until the point of acquisition, congress is free to change it's mind, exactly like a person who is purchasing goods or services. Given general discussion regarding the power of the purse, and past attempts to defund various programs as a way to get rid of them(Reid pushed to defund the iraq war for instance), I don't think most people view the law the way you think they do.

Full faith and credit is a clause in the constitution about states obligations regarding each others laws and contracts. It's not normally applied to valuation of the Dollar, but let's stipulate that people's belief the stability of government is a major factor in it's value. Government deciding to spend more and more money than it's taking in, and continuing to borrow with no end in sight, is far more likely to cause people to lose faith in it than choosing to stop borrowing money and reducing the sorts of things it does. Anything that can't go on forever will stop eventually. It's not actually possible to prove which way any given choice will affect the value of the dollar. However, the unsustainable explosion in government borrowing with no plausible fix was part of the rationale for our last credit downgrade.

Even if it does reduce the value of the dollar to have the government opt not to follow through with some plans, it's irrelevant to whether or not those plans can legitimately be called a debt. The two things have nothing to do with each other.

Our publicly held debt is the credit card balance. Credit card balances are increased when you actually buy something with borrowed money, not when you make the decision to go out and buy it. Raising the debt limit to cover payments is like getting your max increased so you can keep buying more stuff instead of cutting back to living within your means. This should be a simple tautology: We haven't spent the money until we've actually spent the money. Really, read that sentence, then go back and read your post, and see if you can see how you are blurring the lines between planning to spend and actually spending. At the very most, contractual obligations can be considered actual debts. Laws establishing government agencies and responsibilites are only statements of intentions.

Got a cite for that? Democrats are masters of gerrymandering as well, and have done their level best to keep power that way.

Troll? Really? Providing cites upon request is the opposite of trolling.