Foxy,

GOP voted against gun control...and against Obamacare.

Right-wing nutters, actually.

Yes Foxy, the issue of 'the right to bear arms' in a country where there is no right to health care if needed, is amazing.

Apparently, in America, your 'right' to own a gun, just in case other gun owners want to shoot you, is more important than your right to affordable health care.

Thank goodness we live in good old Oz !

I am sure Foxy Hasbeen is not a bad bloke, but the world holds different views than him.
Polls, not ones taken here but in America, and commentary from within the Republican party, say America for the most part, blames the Republican Tea Party for this.
They understand, some of us do, that without rises to Americas borrowing limit, they, maybe the world, face a nightmare recession.
And have used both those who voted for them, and the system, to try to kill off Obarma care.
Innocuous it is in no way as good as our system, one very few of us would not want to keep,used as a blackmailing tool by no representative Tea Party extremists..
After the last election the Republicans, and middle America, took on board this truth.
To win future elections Republicans needed to embrace Latino Americans.
This act does the very opposite.
Today we look on in interest.
But if it continues? believe me no one knows how bad we may all suffer.
ENRON and a host of others may look like a kids picnic in comparison.

Republicans truly, see help to the poor as near communism, how long can they not live in this century?

Dear Poirot and Suse,

There's the persistent belief that, since criminals
have guns, law-abiding people need them for self
protection. Actually, gun-owning households are
much more likely to suffer fatalities from their own
weapons than from those of outsiders. One study found
that only 2 percent of all slayings in gun-owning
households were for self-protection; the remainder were
suicides, homicides, or accidental deaths, almost all
involving family members, friends, or acquaintances.
Also, the proliferation of handguns in the US is the
belief, deeply held by many Americans, that gun ownership
is an individual right.

It seems to me though that for granting this liberty to
the individual, American society certainly pays a heavy
price in the deviance of those who abuse it.

As for what the Republican Party is currently doing in
the US - it appears to simply be wrong. There should be
set limits that public officials dare not violate.
How can they hold a nation to ransom? I would have thought
that there would be formal restraints such as laws limiting
the exercise of power, constitutional arrangements for the
impeachment of officials. No one group should be allowed to
obtain a monopoly over such power.

Ladies, I think this is just a trial run for the argument coming up on credit limit.

I think they have decided that the US can not let the fool Obama get them any deeper into debt than he already has. They caved in allowed him to increase their debt ceiling before, but I think they are signaling that they are less likely to do so again.

They believe Obama will run up so much debt, while destroying so much earning capacity, that they have to make a stand.

Those who live off the government want Obama to continue spending like a drunken sailor, but more sensible folk know that is the way to becoming the new Greece.

Will sanity prevail, you have to doubt it, when so many have their hand out for their bit of the largess.

Dear Hasbeen,

These guys want what the corporations and individuals
who funded their campaigns want. Tax cuts for the
rich, perks for fossil fuel industries, cuts to
health care, and the like - no matter what the cost.

They are driving hard for maximum political advantage
with no thought of anyone else. They are just a
bunch of angry old white men and their hangers on
lashing out in impotent frustrated anger at an America
that no longer shares their demographic. Eventually
they will have to give in and this will add to
their collective humiliation.

Its a disgrace. The health care law should be passed.
It improves greatly the health care industry.
Providing better preventive care, women's health
services, better care for senior and expanded coverage
for its nation's poorest. It also prevents insurance
companies from dropping you when you are sick.

A society is judged by the way it treats its most
vulnerable. And these men should stop behaving like
spoiled brats.