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Must be that the Brits, Canadians, Ticos and Cubans are awhole lot smarter than the Americans if they can successfully put together national health programs without sinking their respective countries.

Conservatives consider all change to be dangerous and bad. They are usually the ones who have managed to exploit others enough to accumulate a certain amount of wealth and so they feel, and rightly so, that they need to preserve the status quo in order to keep what they have stolen.

Part of that strategy requires that they convince enough of the exploited to support their agenda. They do this with fear mongering and lies. You can see them doing it in their opposition to a decent national healthcare program. If they can’t outright kill it, they will mangle the bill enough so that it will be guranteed to either be little change at all or completely fail.

Edited on Jul 26, 2009 14:32

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Anyone who believes democrats are leftists are so far to the extreme right that they are completely out of touch with reality or just plain ignorant of facts.

Leftists run Cuba, Venezuela and much of latin america now. They have nothing to do with the US government, which is and always has been a right wing defender of corporate interests around the world and at home. Costa Rican ideology and sentiment is much closer to those leftists some of you seem to despise than it is to the US. I find it amusing when I come across conservative right wingers who have chosen to live in Costa Rica.

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My doctor in Miami has a sign in his office informing patients he does not carry malpractice insurance. Is this not an option for all doctors?

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I devoutly believe in socialism, but not corporate socialsim.

I consider conservative, capitalist corproate autocrats to be the supreme enemy of everyone on the planet including themselves.

I also believe that hard core 25% of the US adult population which consistanlty votes for conservative, right wing, militarist governments to be the cause for most of the misery and problems in the world today. All the bigots, rascists and intolerant religious seem to associate their evil causes with that right wing and we end up with what looks like a conservative country after elections. We are not getting meaningful national healthcare. That WOULD be a move to populist socialism
and the right wing only want to continue with corporate socialism.

Edited on Jul 25, 2009 15:42

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It sounds like both of you prefer the cluster@#$!! we currently have. Don’t worry. Our version of national health care will be prety much the same thing we have now. The insurance companies will still be deeply involved in skimming profits except now they will be officially in bed with the congress they own.

Do you really think Obama is a true progressive and is going to revolutionize anything?He will do only what the money wants him to do. He is a typical politician. He can’t help himself. And neither can we help ourselves. We are stuck in this merry go round system and can only elect the same kind of people over and over. Right now the money wants him to keep some kind of war going and they want to keep some kind of health care systen that permits them to suck the life blood out of the nation…not too much at a time but just enogh to keep the victim alive and working.

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GRB, private business is the big problem. Corporate control of our government is so deep and profound that any national health care program we get will just be a disguised version of what we have now.

Edited on Jul 23, 2009 18:16

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I am not Cuban but would also be interested in knowing this. I am no authority on Costa Rica by a long shot but so far, I have not found nor heard of any Cuban communities. Cubans tend to form communities in the States in some places because of a high level of immigration there. Additionally, they feel the need to establish some of their cultural aspects in a land where latin culture is not prevelant. Neither of these things apply to Costa Rica.

However, if such communities exist in CR, I would like to know of them.I love Cuban culture..the food and the music especially. I learned Spanish among the Cubans and had visited Cuba many times.

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So you agree that the armies in these small countries are for domestic control. We might disagree, though, on which chimps are more reasonable. The accepted way to resolve that disagreement is at the voting booth or in the courts. Reasonable people do not resort to guns first.

And sometimes a country doesn’t resort to such tactics.For example, we let our chimp stay in the whitehouse even after he had done so much damage. Hell, we even asked him to stay for a second term.

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What does Honduras need with an army today? What is the function? Which neighbor nation threatens or has threatened Honduras in the last 50 years? Nicaragua and the US invaded twice. The Honduran army has only served to supress the people on behalf of United FRuit last century and has done little else. Costa Rica, a much richer and larger nation, has had no need for a military.

Alfred, do you really think the Honduran people, the working class people, are proud and happy to pay for a military? Do you think the military is their idea or is it perhaps a creation of another, more elite segment of the population?

As for the term “banana republic”, it is meant to be derogatory and is properly used in this situation. How a government handles such situations defines its legitimacy.

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Presidents often use other branches of government for political ends. Didn’t the Bush administration do such a thing with judge appointees?

I am not defending anyone in that mess. I think Honduras simply reminded the world what a banana republic is. Small nations like Honduras have no business keeping armies around. The only purpose of armies in those countries is to keep the people in line with an agenda imposed from the US. I think we just saw another expample of this in Honduras.

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As long as there is at least 3000 feet of altitude to make the weather pleasant, I can’t imagain a bad piece of property anywhere in the CR countryside.

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Explain what Zeleya did that was unconstitutional. If he had broken a law, the legal path to address such a problem is through the courts. Instead an illegal military coupe was taken. It is very simple. I may disagree with his intentions to try for a constitutionl change permitting him additional time in office, but I am more in disagreement with using the military to impose an opposing view. If you agree with use of the military for such matters, where does it stop? You might look to Argentina’s and Chile’s past for an answer to that one.

Edited on Jul 10, 2009 10:44

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Since when is a military take over a legal move? That is state terrorism, pure and simple. It is sad how quickly people will throw away their constitution and begin hugging their army when they are frightened.I think that happened in Germany last century, didn’t it?

~ Military men are the scourges of the world ~
Guy de Maupassant

Edited on Jul 10, 2009 07:51

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I have briefly visited those areas and have noted the lower costs for land compared to Alajuela, Naranjo and San Ramon. I also do not care to be too close to San Jose.
How easily accessible is decent medical treatment in that area compared to areas closewr to San Jose?

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Imx,,
you seem intelligent enough to comprehend that there is not that much difference between our so called two parties. It doesn’t matter a lick who gets elected from the two major parties, the same people are runing things the same old way. All that changes is rhetoric and some faces.

Obama will keep the war machine well oiled. He will keep the banksters and the insurance companies and big pharma all as happy as the peoples’ ignorance and apathy will permit. There are only two forces that can change things substantially: armed revolt or a complete breakdown of the system on its own faults. The people are too fat, deluded and apathetic to muster any kind of revolution so that leaves the latter alternative.

I listen to the Ticos speak glowingly of their country’s politics and I sometimes think it sounds naive but maybe it’s just me. Perhaps my outlook has been jaded by so many years living inside a decrepit and self deluding empire.

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