You are right, he doesn't necessarily support cronyism. He supports nepotism.

Which is just as bad, btw.

Being Canadian, and having grown up with universal healthcare, I'm a big proponent of it. But I've also seen first-hand how underfunding creates huge problems. Doctors' annual billings are capped, and as a result, most GP's will work minimal hours (a lot are taking Wednesday's off for golf!!) Waiting times are going through the roof, and people with money (and/or good supplemental private plans) head down to the US to get MRI's or surgeries done.

But, this pales in comparison to what I've heard is happening in the US...things that are just unthinkable here, like people getting turned away from ER's due to lack of insurance, and going into bankruptcy because they get cancer. My mom has cousins living in NYC, and back in 1991 one of them got leukemia (at 35), and ended up dying. His sister had to mortage her house so her brother could die in dignity. As if the situation wasn't devastating enough...

Perhaps the Republicans have some good alternate ideas on how to make it work better, but I still think that there has to be an underlying universal plan in place to at least cover the "basics".

Chelsea works for Avenue Capital ... a hedge fund run by Lasry, heavy supporter of the Clintons.

And what's a hedge fund? Why that's a secretive investment fund exempt from gov. regulation and are only for the richest of the rich.

Ron Paul's 5 children. 3 are doctors.

He believes abortion is a state-right issue, and the feds shouldn't be for it or against it.

He believes states should be able to recognize same-sex marriage.

So I dunno where you get all that anti stuff. How is it he wants the church and state together? That's news to me. He's said that church does what the gov. could never do.

He wants the feds out of the loop on most things. Where he's coming from is he believes in individual rights, not in group rights ... Everyone has the same rights. He pro-constitution and that's it...

Don't know about vegyrex, but certainly it's very hard for me to figure out how you guys are still having "the abortion debate", let alone losing it so spectacularly.

Re: "individual rights", I don't see how that has anything to do with it. The churches want to curtail people's freedom. If the individual is stupid enough to support them on that, what, that's just too bad? Fuck that. This is exactly why the government should be involved, to the exclusion of the church, to protect people from themselves. Human rights have to national - global even - to make any kind of sense; if you allow states to set their own rules, they're not rights anymore, they're privileges.

It seems like an attractive idea: give everyone lots and lots of freedom, freedom = good etc. And yeah, fine, why not? The reason why not is, some things are just too important to leave up to that. What is popular is not always what's right, and if the majority are against or indifferent to a minority's right to equality, that absolutely shouldn't mean that they're not entitled to it. In the case of abortion, state rights are only going to lead to more restrictive and less consistent laws. The United States is not too big to govern, and it's not too diverse and complex to expect that people agree to differ now and then.

EDIT: In fact, re-reading your post... you seem unclear on this. If you and he believe that abortion and gay marriage are constitutional issues, why leave them up to states to decide for themselves? Or are you saying that the states' right to decide is constitutional? It's not very clear.