Is this a bad sign?

Does the word clueless apply here?

No, not a bad sign. Obama is moving the US in a direction reached decades ago by every other developed nation on Earth.

The US is a second-rate country in tems of life expectancy, infant mortality, dental care, pre-natal care and many other measures.

Why is it a bad sign that he is requiring that you justify and explain your statement?

Whenever someone goes to the ER and has no money, the taxpayer invariably ends up paying the bill. That is how it already was before health insurance reform. Mandatory health insurance is not intended to force you to pay for someone else, on the contrary, it is intended to make you pay for your own healthcare by having you insured, lowering the financial burden of the rest of the population to pay for your healthcare.
Let us just say that the bad sign here is not the boy asking you to explain your statements, but something else.

What sign is bad? That you as an adult indoctrinate young adults with pernicious propaganda, or that they seemed to have believed you, and didn’t check facts to see how wrong you are?

@dpworkin Forget what I said about the cheese rind question

Oh? You were wrong about that too?

OMG…It’s definitly a bad sign! You son is gay!

While @josie and I aren’t going to agree on health care, I can see that “What do you mean?” is a poor response.

The guy could have defended his own statement better, explaining why he disagreed.
Or he could have said, “I see your point”.

So, for exhibiting shallow understanding of the debate, I could say it’s a bad sign.

I don’t think it’s a bad sign. I’d be more concerned if he just said “whatever” and walked away. At least he was interested.

Obviously he meant “where the hell is a college grad going to make some money?”

At face value it is a bad sign that a 20 yr old who is of voting age is so oblivious to the core components of what is impacting his life. But I would have to give him a pass as he was probably immersed in his college course studies and didn’t have time to watch the news or surf the Fox News website.

”or surf the Fox News website.”
LOL

Any time a young person is open to discussing a political issue it is a good sign, not a bad sign.

That you have chosen to help him understand the political process is a good sign.

That apparently you caught no fish is a bad sign.

Kudos to that young man for having an open mind and for using it, and for being enlightened enough to see healthcare for all as a good thing. Surfing the FOX News website for any kind of truth would be an utter crap shoot anyway.

With so much having been discussed and written about this in the press, it seems he would have at least understood your statement. Twenty years old are still pretty clueless though, so no, I wouldn’t worry much about it.

While I can see how that may seem clueless, I have to say that I can see his point in that Bush is going to make that guy’s great-great-grandkids pay for Iraq, so it may just be a case of “how is that any different from what the Republicans have been doing for years?”.

I must admit that I would likely also have reacted with “What do you mean?”.

The reason being that I feel that it is a better – more neutral – reaction than “Why are you feeding me such tainted propaganda?” or “What kind of nonsense is that…?”

When feeding such propaganda as you were to young people, I find it not so worrying when they reply with a polite “What do you mean?” statement.

edit:
I truly feel you were feeding them propaganda. You were obviously trying to make him feel that Obama’s plan is unfair and unbeneficial to him, by feeding him selective and slated information, without explicitely telling him you were trying to change his attitude on Obama and his reforms.

First off, “The roomate, whom they call Leatherface for reasons that I do not understand” – lol…the rest of your details…well, I’m with Leatherface and it’s a grand sign.

I think it’s important for a father to express and share his political opinions with his son. But perhaps not his son’s roommate.

Any college kid worth his salt will take your political input, completely ignore it, and focus on drinking more beer and getting more sex until the jig is up and they have to work every day for eons.

The kid was probably smart enough to avoid the typical BS of class warfare that right wingers so firmly believe. Every preisdent since Grover Cleveland has said we need to do something about healthcare. Clinton gave an honest effort, but the Insurance lobby’s advertising dollars, a huge disinformation p[program, and Republican obstructionism stopped the effort dead. Obama got it done.

Republicans are still claiming more has to be done to save America’s endangered rich from the encroaching poor who are eating up all their wealth. THat is a patent LIE! In the past 30 years, the bottom 60% of Americans by income have actually lost ground. The next 30% have just held their own. THey earn no more in inflation adjusted dollars than they did in 1980. Only the top 10% have benefited from all the tax cuts for the rich, and the top 1/10th of 1% have increased their share of the nation’s wealth to the same high point it hit just before the Great Depression. Our billionaires are not an endangered species. Our middle class is.

The US spends 17% of its Gross Domestic Product oin healthcare and till now left 15% of its population with no coverage. Yet we rank #37 in the world, at the very bottom of the developed nations, in healthcare outcomes. In contrast, France has the #1 system in the world and spends only 10% of its Gross Domestic Product to cover 100% of its citizens. On top of that, healthcare costs were spiraling upward with no end in sight. We were on a track that was unsustainable, and Republicans cared more about defending the profits of big Insurance and big Pharma than they did the health and security of the USA.

Good for Leatherface.

@ETpro Rock on!

I think that the fact that this individual is nicknamed Leatherface is what you should worry about the most.

@Symbeline I work with a guy named Skidmark and went to school with Roadkill, and both of them are decent enough people. Rather intelligent too, if a little goofy…

Flag my answer and be done with it then.

@josie – Nicknames are edifying among friends. If he actually looks like an ugly ass Goth Leatherface, then you might worry.