What are American quirks?!?

[Jack]

Damn all doctors! Just spit whiskey on whatever isn't working, if that fails, you're boned.

[JAllen]

watch all 4 parts of this frontline special on wall street.

Video: Money, Power and Wall Street: Part One | Watch FRONTLINE Online | PBS Video

welcome to amercia

[Hunter Morrow]

I've never really seen this from any other country and it seems to me to be quite quirky:

We've got an awful lot of pastors and preachers with the entire "mega church" phenomenon. Like, 15,000 seater churches with JumboTron T.V. screens so nobody misses a thing, pro choirs of 200+ people and the works. The churches have everything but fireworks and roller coasters. Well, that is if you don't count the religious theme parks. Yuck.

Every year or so, it never fails, at least one of these preachers is busted as an adulterer, pervert and homosexual. It is inevitably the one who ranted and raved about sexuality the most. Ted Haggard and Pastor Eddy Long are textbook cases of this.

It just reminds me of when I was a child going to a church where the pastor preached passionately, nay, FANATICALLY, about tithing and giving time and money to the church. He turned out to be a gold-plated fraud who was dipping into the offering plate and embezzling church funds. Of courrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrse.

I've never really heard that sort of thing from any other country.

[Anisya]

...mmmmh, what is Homecoming Queen?

Oh wait, I can check that one on google...back to the serious stuff then...

[Hunter Morrow]

Making fun of people for eating salad

WHAT ARE YOU!? SOME EUROTRASH ASSHOLE!?! YOU'RE EATING A SALAD! THAT ISN'T EVEN DEEP FRIED! THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE SUGAR OR ALCOHOL!

[Tight-Lines]

Making fun of people for eating salad

WHAT ARE YOU!? SOME EUROTRASH ASSHOLE!?! YOU'RE EATING A SALAD! THAT ISN'T EVEN DEEP FRIED! THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE SUGAR OR ALCOHOL!

Fuck you bubbleberry.

[slayer9019]

This is a far cry from socialized health care. I mean, jeez, god forbid the insurance companies make less money. I am with you on some things. I believe people have to hold personal responsibility for they finances, but at the end of the day, we are still a nation where the wealth divide is incredibly gapped. We are in a country where we bail out financial institutions with our tax money...and the former CEOs still live in mansions. Does that make sense?

Nobody thinks it makes sense, not even the "fat cat" types, they are just simply in the position to pull it off and lack moral backing.

No, it doesn't make any sense at all.

But that doesn't mean I can support socialized health care, either. Look, if socialized health care was so great, how come people come here from all over the world to get their health care needs met? Why would the Kanuckian Health Care Minister have his wife brought here for heart treatment?

The insurance companies, the huge corporations you talk about...guess what? These are the banksters that are running EVERYTHING. Not just health care, not just our government, but basically everything.

As for the wealth divide, yes, in many places it is incredible. In many places it is justified, in many places it is not. One of the only ways we will be able to get out of the clutches of the banksters is if we once again become a Nation that makes "things", not just financial instruments.

The only solution is another revolution.

Agreed. When things are run by the government they end up being terrible because government has no competition. With no competition, why would they function properly when just passing for piss-poor performance can suffice with a nearly unlimited flow of tax dollars flowing in (not even going to get into how taxation is technically illegal and the IRS is not a government org and blah blah blah). A great example of no competition/everyone gets a "fair share" is Russia. Talk to anyone who lived in Russia under Soviet control...its was a fuckin mess. The car technology was haggard at best (hell look at Urals...1940s tech that you can still purchase!) and everything was pretty much along the same lines.

Also countries where there is universal health care, from what I've been told, you usually opt for private insurance anyway to skip the insane waits. So...back to square 1

[Hunter Morrow]

I can't possibly be Bubbleberry. He's married and has a festive pair of cutoff jeans.

If the government created a Department of Oxygen it would have a 100 billion dollar budget and we'd be suffocating by the end of the year.