Personally I see nothing wrong with Obama policies except when he tries to broker a Middle east peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Now intention is one thing but the stupidity to carry them without proper timing and condition is another.

I see this as a sign that Obama may be trapped in the expectation presented mostly from the Muslim world that he would be the one to finally succeed in securing Israel-Palestinian peace deal.

I sense a desperation here and a lost of touch with reality.

Apples and oranges.

First off the Federal government doesn't mandate having car insurance. That is done by the states and probably still not all of them. Rhode Island only went mandatory a few years ago for example.

Second, where it is mandated the legal minimum is always only liability. ie it only covers damage to other drivers if you are at fault. Health insurance has nothing to do with liability or damage to other people.

Third, one is only required to have car insurance if one plans to drive their car on public roads. As long as you do all your driving on private property you don't even need a drivers license (something also not mandated by the Feds).

You can't really compare the two.

It matters not if its fed or state its a gov forcing you to buy insurance period.

You'd like it to be that simple but it's not. Purpose, implementation and authority are all different. Apples and oranges.

Well one idea would be to get the 50% of illegal immigrents who don't pay taxes to pay them. (Something like you pay taxes for five years you get on the fast track to citizenship). The half that payed taxes last year shelled out $7 billion in Social Security alone (just a guess from my pay stub but it would work out to about $3 billion in medicaid and federal taxes).

Other than that (its late and I don't feel like researching more) I would look to other nations with such a system: namely Japan and Sweden.

...except they are not providing anything for the general welfare; rather they are requiring private citizens provide healthcare for themselves to be purchased from a private entity (which is why I stated that single payer would have been more Constitutional).As I asked TLAM, how would you propose creating a single-payer system in THIS nation that would work?

Personally I favor a single payer system, but I concider the United states to be too large to run a single payer system efficently, a better option would be for the fed to set a minimal standard of healthcare states must provide and leave it up to the states how set the tax to provide that healthcare coverage. Though this sounds a lot easyer than it would actually be.

However a bigger nation wide system has advantages. Companies that produce medical goods (from band aids to X Ray machines) would have to deal with them. Meaning they have a huge incentive to market their products at the best quality and lowest price otherwise they would have nowhere else to sell.

There are benefits and drawback to both. It is about striking the best balance and to be completely honest, I don't really know which would be better, but both seem better than the system that stands now, if properly implemented.
The main problem I see is the politization of the issue and witting it down to soundbites instead of talking about the actual issues.

That's every issue in American politics! Your average American voter is so dumb and has such a short attention span that if your political message doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, you've lost the debate.

This is what folks mean when they say the Democrats are elitist. Maybe it's just the Independent in me but i'll never vote for a party that says i'm too dumb to be their boss.

First off - not a Democrat.

I think you're just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. You know darn well that the American electorate is stunningly ill-informed on all sorts of issues and facts - ranging from basic procedures and civics to recent events.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/op...n.html?_r=1&hp

“Whenever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” - the famous liberal elitist Jefferson.

http://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/co...mb-ocracy.html

Like I said, elitist, or racist, or possibly both. It's a common dem mantra that ought to serve them really well come November.

Uh, no.

Mookie, I'll say the same thing to you that I say to anyone I hear criticizing Utah drivers: Never forget, you are one.

You are the American electorate. Some of them are, as you say, not so well informed. I actually place myself in that category. Others are very well informed indeed. But whether you are one or the other is unknowable at best. Inform yourself all you like, you have to face the possibility that you could still be wrong. And others need to face the idea that you could be right.

And it's true that the great majority don't know and don't care, but you do indeed make it sound like you know what's best for them, and they should listen only to you. As I've tried to remind others, it's how you say it that comes across.