Thinking Right

By Mid-South Philosopher

October 16, 2007 8:04 AM | Link to this

Good morning, Jim,

The proposed SCHIP legislation is very much like the No Child Left Behind Act. It is hard to debate against it without seeming cruel, heartless and uncaring. Both pieces of legislation have as a theme the betterment of children. Who can argue with that? However, both are illogical, deeply flawed, and indicative of product that only drunks (reformed or otherwise) could possibly have created.

The SCHIP issue is interwoven with the larger question of universal health care or, as in the dreams of the liberals…excuse me…the “progressives”, socialized medicine.

The health insurance industry, the medical care industry and the drug companies, all dominated by corporatists, have, not so slowly, priced more and more people out of securing their health care, insurance, and medicine from the private sector. Many companies and employers that used low cost health insurance as a perk for their employees in lieu of pay raises in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s are bailing out now that costs are rising astronomically. Consequently, more and more people are turning to the government to fill the void.

Now, we all know that there are some people sitting at home, watching big screen televisions, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer, all the while on the dole from the government. Of course, those leeches are out there…just like the corporate leeches of K Street and other corporatist neighborhoods are out there!

We need a President who will address the broader issues of our society and our national economy. Thus far, from Hillary to Ron Paul, I haven’t seen such a leader emerge. Newt Gingrich and his American Solutions programs moves in that direction, but, likely, Newt is not electable.

Where is a Chester A. Arthur when we need one!

By TW

October 16, 2007 8:07 AM | Link to this

Compromise – insure the children to satisfy the Dems. Then fit ‘em with a gun and send ‘em to Iraq to get the Republican ‘support’. Bipartisanship!

By No Good Plan

October 16, 2007 8:25 AM | Link to this

I know a family who has 4 children on Peachcare who’s father works for un-reported cash and their family is about to go on their 3rd cruise this year. They also have 2 new computers, 4 automobiles, 3 cell phones, etc. Until a way of means testing those receiving the benefits is devised, we should not be increasing funding for this program. The money is NOT going to the most needy. I also exchanged emails with Cynthia Tucker regarding this situation last week in response to her SCHIP editorial. When presented with the facts, she never responded back.

By joyce

October 16, 2007 8:26 AM | Link to this

What the demoncrats have offered is the first step towards socialized medicine. Ask the Brits who are having to pull their own teeth about the glory of socialize medical care. Most of the children I know on Peach Care have sorry, lazy parents who should be forced to provide insurance for their children by working like the rest of us.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 8:27 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. Our democrat friends are incapable of arguing for big government on the logical merits, and thus always resort to purely emotional micro-illustrations of the need for expansion of Leviathan. Otherwise Hollywood bimbos and bimbas would not be called to offer their expert testimony before Congressional committees. It is all about the soundbite, the dumbing-down of the electorate.

Certainly there are a large number of uninsured children, mostly offspring of our undocumented immigrant guests. I don’t know why we should require a taxpayer-funded guarantee of the incomes of medicrats. As to the large remainder of those who would be newly-covered by taxpayer largesse, I suppose it would allow those with salaries up to $80,000, and singles aged up to 24, to terminate their private coverages. Why shouldn’t we increase the tax burdens for the struggling middle-class, middle-income family of four to pay the way to keep the medicrats in the style to which they are accustomed.

By Donna P.

October 16, 2007 8:32 AM | Link to this

The uninsured can go to a local medical clinic and for $40 to $50 see a doctor. There are ways to get medical care without insurance. I’m tired of the whining people are doing about health care. I’m sure those who are complaining have money for alcohol and cigarettes.

By Aquagirl

October 16, 2007 8:32 AM | Link to this

Gee…was that the Bush administration that shoved through Medicare prescription coverage? They were shamelessly milked by partisans who saw the elderly as a political instrument to retain the White House. They didn’t rest until 28 million Americans had taxpayer-covered health insurance with bureaucrats setting the rates and practicing medicine.

Now what were you saying about those 10 million kids, Jim?

Maybe the reason Wisconsin has 66% adult coverage is because the Bush administration issued them a waiver back in May to do so. If you don’t like adult coverage by SCHIP, your shrub has the authority to end it himself. Why complain? Oh, it makes them look like they give a flip and are trying to be fiscally responsible. Using taxpayers as pawns….Hypocrites.

By Matt

October 16, 2007 8:33 AM | Link to this

Does anyone know where Wooten gets his facts? Anytime I google SCHIP, I get political rhetoric in both directions.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 8:33 AM | Link to this

I yield to the superior argument of MidSouth - he said my thoughts better than I.

By Donna P.

October 16, 2007 8:34 AM | Link to this

The uninsured can go to a local medical clinic and for $40 to $50 see a doctor. There are ways to get medical care without insurance. I’m tired of the whining people are doing about health care. I’m sure those who are complaining have money for alcohol and cigarettes.

By Donna P.

October 16, 2007 8:34 AM | Link to this

The uninsured can go to a local medical clinic and for $40 to $50 see a doctor. There are ways to get medical care without insurance. I’m tired of the whining people are doing about health care. I’m sure those who are complaining have money for alcohol and cigarettes.

By Just Nasty and Mean

October 16, 2007 8:35 AM | Link to this

Anybody with a brain and cognition knows this bill was developed to be nothing more than a “stick” on which to bash Bush (and Republicans) for not “caring for the children”.

Political partisans Pelosi and Reid contrived the terms of this bill (supposedly paid for by non-existent smokers, coverage for families making $84k, adult coverage) such that any logical leader would veto it—-exactly what the Socialists (Democrats) wanted so they could campaign on “neglecting the children”

These shameless, partisan, power hungry, self-centered hacks have no more interest in doing what is right for America than my dog. They want political “triangulation” to beat on Bush (republicans) and that is all. This is clearly demonstrated by their lack of ANY accomplishment and abysmal approval ratings nearing single digits, but GREAT reviews by the mainstream left-wing media.

By Redneck Convert

October 16, 2007 8:39 AM | Link to this

Well, I seen how the libruls dragged out that punk kid to claim the country needs this SCHIP program. What we ought to do is drag the kid and his parents outdoors and give them a good whipping, the way we done Those People before the libruls stepped in and made it illegal. Claiming the kid wouldn’t be able to walk without the guvmint health insurance. Well, I don’t see nothing in the constitution that says people got the right to walk. It gives him the right to life, but not to walk. If God wanted the kid to be able to walk again, He would of healed him right there on the spot. Sort of like Oral Roberts used to do. “Heal!” He would of said, and the kid would get up from his hospitle bed and walk. The kid must be a Big Sinner, else God would of healed him already.

The libruls won’t stop till everybody has health insurance. Then there won’t be no advantage to working. All the welfare bums and the slackers will have insurance just as good as the people that work.

I like the tax credit idea of the godly Republicans. Course, the people that need the guvmint insurance don’t make enough to pay taxes to get a tax credit from, but that’s not the Republicans fault. If they want to be covered, they need to get out and work three or four jobs to make enough. The kids too.

Anyway, if people had any sense this SCHIP thing would be over. Just go to the emergency room at the hospitle when you get sick or hurt. The law says they got to doctor you and it’s free! You don’t have to pay nothing. So why should the hardworking taxpayer have to pay for something that all these people can get for free?

But no, the libruls got to make My President look bad. They got to try to override the veto and then claim My President is Scrooge McDuck for wanting to keep kids from getting doctoring. And all to get this Hillary woman in the White House. That will be the end of the U.S. of A. for me. Me and my buddy Jim Earl already decided we will leave the country if they put a librul and a woman to boot in the White House. There won’t be nobody to buy the beer I deliver. Drunks and druggies like TFTT will be stripped nekkid in taxes of everything and won’t be able to afford it, and poor jbmlaw will be taxed so hard he will have to settle for prune juice at his partys. We will probly be in a world war in no time when this Hillary woman gets her monthly and is in a bad mood.

Anyway, it sure don’t look good for godly Republicans next year. 12 of them in the House already decided it ain’t worth running again, and with “Diapers” Vitter and the godly Sen. Craig in trouble for picking up some paper in the next bathroom stall, it looks like the libruls will still run the House and the Senate after the 2008 election. We need a good white Christian Republican man in the White House to keep the libruls from ruining this country. And not one of the people that’s so stupid they got married 3 times and still don’t know what a big mistake they made.

By JK

October 16, 2007 8:57 AM | Link to this

No Good Plan @ 8:25: These people are committing tax fraud first, and peachcare fraud second. Existing tax laws are not enforced, and there are many well-to-do people among us with nice new stuff who do not pay their rightful share. (HELLO? What “American” company recently moved their headquarters to Dubai to avoid paying American taxes?) Being a tax cheat is condoned by Republicans who justify it with tales of the undeserving receiving government subsidies. How will removing subsidies of every kind force people to pay their rightful share of taxes?

And yes I know people too: like the woman whose [white, American, private-school educated] husband bailed and moved to Costa Rica to avoid paying child support. She makes $15 per hour with no insurance benefits and supports two children alone. Without Peach Care, she’d listen to her child scream with an earache all night with no place to take him. As it is, they are “accidentally” dropped from the program every few months, and she has to jump through all kinds of hoops to get reinstated, even though she’s never been late on a payment or paperwork ever. That’s how it really works.

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 9:07 AM | Link to this

“The uninsured can go to a local medical clinic and for $40 to $50 see a doctor. There are ways to get medical care without insurance.”

Oh, really, Donna? Ever try to get medical care without insurance? I know folks who do, and they universally agree that it sucks.

How many medical procedures have you ever paid for out of pocket? How many hospital visits?

Do you know anyone who’s actually covering themselves with the crappy, high-deductable “affordable” plans being offered today? Well, I do (that’d be me) and I can tell you that even if you ARE insured privately, you’re still paying a boatload of money just to attend to basic needs.

40 or 50 dollars? Yeah, maybe… but what if they actually find something during the visit? What then?

But hey, I don’t want to discourage any of this ignorant Conservo-discourse. So far we have in this thread the usual pack of lies, straw men, and anecdotes passing for statistically valid data.

I have every hope that this complete lack of attention to reality on the part of the right wing will lead to yet another election defeat in 2008.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 9:10 AM | Link to this

Wackieturd’s rabid lies and pathetic interlecktual dishonesty about Sanchez were freaking funny yesterday - but its inability to do more than puke up pallid, flaccid lame effete worthless gossamer lite insults in psychotic defence of its snivelling imbecilic idiocy was arguably even funnier.

Wackieturd undeniably cannot ACTUALLY DEBATE factual points - it just robotically and emptily anally pukes up its vile moveyourbowels/org LIES!!

Wackieturd - as a rabid leftist maggot brained scumbucket competely IGNORED what Sanchez 100% accurately said about the fascist treasonous cowering left in the party of demoNcrat hate media!! Indeed viortually the entire far left media SHAMELESSLY IGNORED Sanchez s remarks about their Quisling like moral fascism.

Funny how wackieturd ‘bleats and whines’ about reasonable, fair comment descriptive prose about its yellowbellies hate America far left self - yet it rabidly and gleefully pukes up despicable Bush hate like an energiser appeasing surrender monkey. Such moral fascism is so pathologically typical of the treasonous COCKroaches that now endlessly copulate with the far left vermin that its now impossible for these mentally diseased leftist swine to even spot their hectoring hyperbolic hypocrisy!!

Wackieturd is just another failed should have been aborted far left nutter cravenly bloviating its perfidious filth and bile!! STFU already!!!

Just wittily and factually mirroring back YOUR - and the rest of the diseased herd of far left moral fascists’ hate and bile Wackieturd!!

go on now Wackieturd - like a good commie parrot puke it up one more time … Bush is a “criminal” … and the rest of your unhinged bollocks … like it really matters!!! … huge I hate leftist scum smirk

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 9:21 AM | Link to this

“it just robotically and emptily anally pukes up its vile moveyourbowels/org LIES!!”

Wow, Jim. You’re attracting some high-end clientele these days, huh?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 9:24 AM | Link to this

I see the possumpissfilled guttersnipe yanKKKee turdburglar inbred redneKKK has obsessively YAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN yet again puked up its daily desperately envious of yours truly yanKKKee bile. The utterly inadequate KKK wannabe inbred is now as sadly anally obsessive and as anally unfunny as the execrable aborted foreskin and its million plus witless dumbarse cyber ids thare are even easier to spot than a dead termite in what’s left of a dead - or alive - Kennedy brain!!

By ron

October 16, 2007 9:24 AM | Link to this

By CC

October 16, 2007 9:32 AM | Link to this

When Republicans shamelessly hide behind children to get their way they are cultural heroes. When Democrats try and help children get the health care they need WITHOUT their families losing their homes they are branded as cowards. You people make me sick. You are so wrapped up in your money and your wealth and the rest of the world be damned. How very sad. You all need to look into what is left of your souls. I am sure every single one of you conservatives bashing Graham Frost and his family (who have gone through a terrible experience) call yourselves good Christians. Prove it.

By Howard

October 16, 2007 9:33 AM | Link to this

Jim…concerning the SChip…what did you expect from Democrats? They’re the Mafia pure and simple and will do anything and use anybody to advance their warped and socialistic view of this country. Using children…children defined as kids over 18?? as a tool to get votes. Their entire existence is based on the premise that people are stupid enough to believe their lies (which about 50% are) and people are lazy and sorry enough to love hand-outs and freebies (which about 50% are)and will all vote for them. I hate ‘em worse than the Muslim terrorists. They’re more of a danger to the USA than anyone from the Middle East.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 9:34 AM | Link to this

Dear JK @ 8:57, “Being a tax cheat is condoned by Republicans who justify it with tales of the undeserving receiving government subsidies. How will removing subsidies of every kind force people to pay their rightful share of taxes?” Good question. To borrow responsive logic from the memorable Willie Sutton, abolition of the subsidy removes the taxpayer burden.

By Billy

October 16, 2007 9:39 AM | Link to this

So far we have in this thread the usual pack of lies, straw men, and anecdotes passing for statistically valid data.

Right. And this child the right seems hell-bent on vilifying is only out there because no one ever believes the other side’s anecdotes. If Reid brought out a story about this child, he’d be called a liar. Everyone uses children to push their agendas. Some people’s agendas are just more noble than others. Yes, I believe guaranteeing children’s health care is more noble than providing paths to the privatization of the public school system by for-profit companies…

By Glenn Gilbert

October 16, 2007 9:45 AM | Link to this

jbmlaw, stop being rational and topical & such, and try indulging your inner name-caller.

Jim Wooten, thanks for doing our homework for us on SCHIP. I used to work for the outfit that did the federal evaluation of the program (there have been many state-level evals), and the thing really ought to be blown up, rather than fixed. It was meant as an experiment anyway, and politicizing it just makes a bad situation worse.

The Psalmist sed: “Like as arrows in the hands of the giant, even so are the little children.”

By TW

October 16, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this

Is ‘fear’ an emotion? Anybody? Anybody?

By Billy

October 16, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this

“…abolition of the subsidy removes the taxpayer burden.”

So they’ll just be cheating on a lower total amount of tax burden? Well, that’s acceptable.

By JK

October 16, 2007 9:50 AM | Link to this

Dear jbmlaw, thanks for the “DUH.” However, not everyone feels as you do, that only the natural forces of survival of the fittest should operate in a civilized society. Taxes are still required for infrastructure, defense (and care of wounded soldiers), law enforcement, education, and the public good. Since you make it clear every day that your only interest is your own, and not the public good, your keen observations really aren’t pertinent to this discussion. Thanks anyway, but I’d rather live in a society where my neighbors children don’t spread tuberculosis to my own because YOU told their hourly-wage parents to “s—k it.”

By Wooten Hates Kids

October 16, 2007 9:51 AM | Link to this

I bet Jim Wooten’s grandchildren have health insurance!

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 9:52 AM | Link to this

“Some people’s agendas are just more noble than others.”

Right. Like Bush’s “snowflake babies” press conference, where he was surrounded by kids that—we were to make this enormous logical leap—might not have existed had EVIL EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH been funded!

(Of course, they never mentioned how many embryos were destroyed makin’ them snowflake baybeez… nor how there are plenty of fertilized eggs out there for both purposes.)

Let’s see—in the SCHIP kid’s case, it was a REAL problem. In the snowflake baby’s case, it was a PHONY problem.

Who’s been using “children as pawns” again, Jim?

By Marc

October 16, 2007 9:56 AM | Link to this

Yes, there is a lot of politics associated with SCHIP expansion, but all of you are forgetting that it still is an issue about kids despite what Jim Wooten says. They don’t have a voice in this, unfortunately.

And one way or another, society pays. Insuring kids means we’ll pay less.

By Glenn Gilbert

October 16, 2007 10:01 AM | Link to this

Even the most libertarian-inclined among us tend to see the value of government when it comes to bridge inspectors.

By Glenn Gilbert

October 16, 2007 10:07 AM | Link to this

Marc, yes. Let’s not leave the children out in the cold (as, incidentally, colonial Americans not infrequently did with female newborns). Let’s chuck this COWCHIP and start over in earnest. Like, now.

By Shar

October 16, 2007 10:08 AM | Link to this

Glenn Gilbert, I have been admiring your recent posts. They are refreshing, pithy and on topic. This morning’s is no exception. I would add, however, that deciding which bridges to inspect (and fix!) is where the debate begins.

By Glenn Gilbert

October 16, 2007 10:14 AM | Link to this

Shar, that’s good. Reckon you’re right. And I suppose that while we’re at it we could ask who gets the bridges and the bridge-building contracts, and for how much, etc.

Thanks for the compliment.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 10:14 AM | Link to this

The far left feminazi hatepig randy rhodes was very likely deservedly attacked in the illegal leech sanctuary of New Yaaaaaaawk City over the weekend. Hopefully it was by an illegal leech felon who’d been freed yet again by a far left liberal judge. That would indeed be sweet karma!! Rhodes every single day pukes up its far left treasonous hate to the smallest ‘national’ talk radio audience in US history … being massively subsidised by hypocritical limousine liberal far left smear merchants who know that the laughable ‘nationally intended’ dead air america HAS hilariously over several extremely expensive years now ALREADY ABJECTLY FAILED to get any kind of meaningful audience.

the ONLY really good news about this marvellous, long overdue incident is that the feminazi hatecow Rhodes’ dog was OK and not harmed.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 10:19 AM | Link to this

Wooten Hates Kids

SNIGGER SNIGGER SNIGGER

another pathetic glib liberal LIE!!!

see how these far left vermin just puke up their fascist knuckle dragging hate because someone disagrees with their socialist commie surrender monkey world view!!

By Camus

October 16, 2007 10:21 AM | Link to this

So, who is “using” children for political gain?

Not that I expect facts to alter the demented wingnut opinions here, but still:

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s spokesman acknowledged yesterday that he alerted reporters last week to questions bloggers raised about the financial circumstances of a 12-year-old boy Democrats had used to urge passage of an expanded children’s health insurance program. It has been reported already that an email from a McConnell aide went out to reporters telling them of the winger attack. But this appears to be the first time that McConnell’s people are publicly acknowledging their role in trying to push mainstream reporters into joining the attack on young Graeme. Stewart acknowledged to the paper that he’d done this as “part of regular conversation with reporters.”

What makes this story even better is that after McConnell’s aide tried to get reporters to push the story, he quickly realized a few hours later that the whole thing was a big sham and tried to call reporters off.

This is significant, because it shows that McConnell’s operation cheerfully urged mainstream reporters to pick up the winger attacks without even bothering to fact-check them first. When Michelle Malkin pointed her finger at the Frosts and started howling, McConnell’s staff immediately joined in the fun — that is, until they realized that they had a big dud on their hands. More from the Courier-Journal:

Hours later, he said, he sent two follow-up e-mails waving reporters off.

“Forgive me if I already told you this, but a blogger that I trust (and who hadn’t written anything on this issue yet) tells me that after spending a lot of time on this, they now believe there’s no story there, that the family is legit,” Stewart wrote in one e-mail, according to the text he provided to The Courier-Journal. “So I’m passing that along to the folks I wrote to this morning. Fair is fair.”

In the other follow-up e-mail, Stewart wrote, according to the text he provided: “I just heard from a blogger I know who did some research. Says it’s not a story, they’re the real deal.”

So, just to recap: This story was too bogus even for McConnell and the gang to push. You’d think this would be chastening to Malkin and her pitchfork mob. But it won’t be, because nothing ever is.

At any rate, the office of the top Republican in the U.S. Senate has now publicly admitted that it actively tried to get mainstream reporters to participate in the smearing of a 12-year-old and his family — before he even knew whether there was any truth to what the wingers were writing.

By Glenn Gilbert

October 16, 2007 10:22 AM | Link to this

jbmlaw, on 2d thought, don’t bother indulging your inner name-caller. It’s so, like, not cool anymore, so yesterday, so 10:14!

By Curious Observer

October 16, 2007 10:31 AM | Link to this

Yes, the hypocrites like jbmlaw will go on mouthing Christian platitudes and attending church on Sunday morning, content with having done their part to deprive children of adequate health care. They will resort to any scrurrilous tactic to avoid paying taxes to underwrite such care, including attacking a 12-year-old. You have my utter contempt, jbmlaw, and so do the rest of you who want to keep the United States in the same status as third-world countries that have no provision for national health care. Go ahead and deliver your anecdotes to justify your caveman positions. We heard the same thing from you when you discussed imaginary welfare queens who rode in Cadillacs. Your time is coming soon. November 2008 is not too far away.

By Victory

October 16, 2007 10:39 AM | Link to this

Wow “time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings” you are one messed up human being. So full of hate and vitriol. Why do you have to be like that? What good does it do? I just guess you are another violently angry man who has a miserable life and has to bash others to feel good about himself. Why else would someone write the sort of hateful non-productive things you write? If you care so much for your causes do something about them besides whining. I am so tired of conservatives like you who complain the loudest yet have no ideas. You sir are a huge part of the problem.

By J

October 16, 2007 10:39 AM | Link to this

“Milked shamelessly by partisans who see children as a political instrument to regain the White House…”

You mean Michelle Malkin? (zing!)

Please, Jim, spare us the histrionics about Democrats engaging in pure politics - both sides are equally guilty of that sin. Jim is just whining like a stuck pig because after years of Republican control of Washington, and thus “the message”, the shoe is on the other foot.

Or, more accurately, the political shoe is now in the hands of Democrats and being beaten over Republican foreheads.

BTW, doesn’t SCHIP provide federal grants so states can purchase PRIVATELY PROVIDED health insurance for children? Admittedly, it’s a bureaucratic food chain (federal bureaucracy->state bureaucracy->private health insurance bureaucracy), but the money still winds up in the private sector. It’s a bit of a stretch to call that government-run health care, don’t you think?

And I can’t pass this up: “This program, incidentally, is a measure of how far national government has sunk and how dysfunctional Congress has become. Its 11 percent approval rating is earned.”

Um, is that why the Wall Street Journal (obviously a propaganda organ of the left) reports that: “those who favor expanding SCHIP outnumber opponents by a four-to-one margin (53% vs. 13%), according to The Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll, conducted Aug. 16 to 20. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults, including half of all Republicans, agree that expanding the program is a good idea, since it has been successful in reducing the number of uninsured children in the country. Only 13% disagree, the poll shows.”

So, let’s get this straight: Congress has a low approval rating because they’re trying to authorize a program expansion supported by a majority of the voting populace, including half of all Republicans??? How does that work?

By Aquagirl

October 16, 2007 10:48 AM | Link to this

@ 10:39 : Victory, may we have the pleasure of cordially introducing TFTT?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 10:50 AM | Link to this

The worthless unhinged LIAR peeping tom pukes up yet more sick and twisted lies!! The 12 year old duped and used brat and the brat’s car accident circumstances that the demoNcrats puked up in that Goebbels like video nasty was a complete LIE!!!

That kiddie (and other kiddies in very similar positions would similarly be helped) recieved all its medical attention through the current SCHIP programme. This kiddie was therefore despicably used by the LYING far left scum in a vain attempt to make yet another disgustingly dishonest dissembling LIE “true”.

shame on the far left scum for their Nazi like lies using this brainwashed kid WHO was obviously FED such barefaced LEFTIST LIES and shame on the equally doltish leftist lying parents!!

but as ever peeping tom COMPLETELY IGNORES THE FACTS!!

which are that BUsh is actually offering to increase SCHIP provisions by @ $5 billion - but NOT for those middle class types who can afford insurance … or their parents/adults as Senor Wooten so clearly points out above!!

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 10:51 AM | Link to this

“You mean Michelle Malkin? (zing!)”

He means Stalkin’ Malkin.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 10:54 AM | Link to this

Camus, come on. Surely you know the answer to your question “who is ‘using’ children for political gain?” Everyone is. And not just for political gain, but for fun and profit too. But then maybe I’m just being a dupe of the corrupt agenda-driven media. You notice they never report on the 11 year-old girls who masquerade on the Internet as middle-aged federal agents, or about the children who seduce their priests with the sexually provocative clothing they demand from Abercrombie, or about the toddlers who, when they’re not too busy cuffing their parents, regularly abandon them to oven-hot parked cars or discard them in alleyway dumpsters with no regard whatever for parental rights, or who conspire — and this the press will never dare cover — in great numbers to pool their resources to ensure that vast school systems are maintained wherein they refuse to apply themselves to the business of learning, instead running the places as though they were built for them and seeking every possible opportunity to turn the enterprise toward their own advantage.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 10:54 AM | Link to this

@ DICKtory

“hate” … HA HA HA HA HA .. like the typical brain dead surrender monkey you simply dont get it!! I’m just having great fun at the expense of dim witted far left vermin!!

Why else would someone write the sort of hateful non-productive things you write?

LMFAO … please puke up some of this witless patronising moveyourbowels.org bollocks … PLEASE!!! don’t be all selfish now!!

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 11:00 AM | Link to this

LMFAO … please puke up some MORE of this witless patronising moveyourbowels.org bollocks … PLEASE!!! don’t be all selfish now!!

By Dusty

October 16, 2007 11:02 AM | Link to this

Oh bother!! Using sick children again to promote politics!! What a bummer. Lest we forget….

When you are 25 years old, you are NOT a child.

When your family makes $80,000/year, you are not “poverty stricken”.

If you are so “dim” you cannot find an ER, doc-ina-box, county clinic, caring physician, Parish nurse to take care of your suddenly ill child, then no one can help you, not even the “socialized” medicine being promoted here surreptitiously by Democrats.

For Democrats to feature a sick child is nothing more than a political Munchausen Syndrome. The usual form of this syndrome is for the mother to MAKE a child sick to get the attention. The political form is to USE a sick child to promote political policy. Either form is very SICK!

Jim Wooten has given us, in explicit detail, the facts on using children as pawns in politics. It needs no elaborations.

By I'm Sure Wooten Doesn't Really Hate Kids

October 16, 2007 11:05 AM | Link to this

time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings @10:19am

First of all, my post was obviously tonge in cheek. Or was intended to be.

More importantly, I want to help you understand the difference between a socialist and a fascist, since you seem to think they are the same thing.

socialism - a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

fascism - a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

To make it a little clearer for ypu….socialists are typically associated with the “left” while fascists are associated with the “right.”

By getalife

October 16, 2007 11:05 AM | Link to this

Check out the pic of the kids the right chose to attack

Geez.

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 11:06 AM | Link to this

BTW:

“The far left feminazi hatepig randy *[sic] rhodes was very likely deservedly attacked”*

Jim, are you ok with posts advocating violence against public figures?

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 11:08 AM | Link to this

Go Dusty.

By Mrs. RepubLady

October 16, 2007 11:10 AM | Link to this

Thank you Dusty! You took the words right out of my mouth. It was Hillary who made those children sick in the first place in order to raise campaign donations. I know this to be a fact. And besides we know anyway that God only allows children to be sick if there parents are bad. Anywone can find a doc in a box or clinic IF they are good white Christian people of respectable lineage. If they aren’t, they don’t matter anyway, and why should we care if there sick?

Dusty, I’m in the mood for some new Louis Vuitton. Phipps at the usual time?

By catlady

October 16, 2007 11:11 AM | Link to this

My suggestion (since I absolutely hate the way SCHIP is headed): make it available for EVERY US child. No income test for inclusion. Its generous benefits are available to every citizen under 18 (unless they are married or have a child of their own—in that case they are ADULTS). Everyone has to pay each month for each child (like the real world). No “free first six years” like we have now. Those who make more pay more. Those who have more children pay more. No”pay for two and the rest are free”. Maybe $10 per month per child for the barely above medicaid level, up to $150/month (or more) for the wealthy. Unnecessary trips to the ER incur a healthy fine—we should discourage folks from this. Do an adequate job of checking folks income and severely penalize and jail those who lie (and steal). No one can claim the high moral ground on “socialized medicine”, not after what we have done with Medicare.

BTW, those “illegal leaches” so many talk about—their children, in our area, are on Peachcare because the children were born here and are considered citizens. Until we change that, so that the mother must be here legally to claim citizenship for the children, we will have more and more of these children. I know quite a few parents here illegally who have 8 or more (US born) legal citizen children on Peachcare.

While I am at it, I also think women who get Medicaid to have babies should have to repay the money the taxpayers spend, even if it means money from welfare, tax returns, etc. until the debt is paid.

By Carol

October 16, 2007 11:18 AM | Link to this

To “No Good Plan” Look up your county’s Department of Children and Family Services and report the tax and welfare cheaters. Don’t just complain. Give them specifics, ie cruise dates, car tag numbers, etc.
Most PeachCare parents are responsible citizens that are trying to make ends meet in a country that has seen employer benefits shrink and wage increases lag behind inflation. Health insurance cost have skyrocketed. An average family policy cost about $12,000 a year. Try making a budget on a $48,000 income that would provide housing, transportation,and food, clothing for a family of 4. THEN, see if there is money left over for health care. Lastly, where were all of you that are screaming “socialized medicine” when the trillion dollar Medicare pharmacy program was passed? Millionaire seniors are being subsidized with our tax payer dollars. SCHIP funding is minor in comparison.

By Jack

October 16, 2007 11:20 AM | Link to this

JK @ 8:57. That guy that moved to Costa Rica should get the rusty hacksaw treatment. :)

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 11:26 AM | Link to this

catlady, thanks for taking head-on the challenge to start kicking around some ideas for common healthcare for children. Such a difficult and dauntingly complex problem that it’s like a shot in the arm to hear some clean & simple ideas, such as your repayment for publicly funded obstetrics. That helps, by the way, to address the complaint made here last week by a tired hospital worker who said that on the previous day something like nine of the 10 women admitted to her ER (!) were non-citizens whose obstetrical care was therefore free. County hospitals all over the country are closing because of this and similar problems. Seems amiss that under these extravagant circumstances a child also should be born into citizenship, their parents subsequently encouraged to parlay the child’s citizenship into their own.

By tater salad

October 16, 2007 11:30 AM | Link to this

One thing that never goes away on this blog is liberals posing as evil, greedy, rich republicans like the lefty fraud at 11:10. The quasi-communists on the garbage bin left are so predictable. Note how not one of them tackled the age 25 and $80,000 questions about the “poor children.” Meh, what are facts to an over emotionalized tin hat liberal. Just put more dependents on government for collectivist power. That’s what it’s all about. How ultimately pathetic and un-American. No surprise really.

By SCHIP - THEFT BY TAKING

October 16, 2007 11:31 AM | Link to this

SCHIP is just a fraud to transfer tax dollars to the health care industry. The medical crooks out there, and there are many, already collect some two trillion dollars per year from Americans, that is 1 in seven dollars of GDP. Children are by far the healthies age group in America, yet Hilarity the Clown wants to throw health care money at them, plus pay their parents a voting for Hilary bonus of one thousand dollars. The fat cat administrators of health care organizations are already preparing bonus and stock options for themselves as a result of all this free money the Hag is offering. The docs, nurses, and othe direct care providers will get nothing extra out of SCHIP except highter taxes, higher inflation, and the added burden of a dollar dying even faster on foreign exchange markets. Of course, who expects stupid women voters to think things thru?

By Dennis

October 16, 2007 11:32 AM | Link to this

It’s pathetic how Wooten’s toot’n puts down the costs of child healthcare, yet he’s, hardly, if ever, said a damned thing about the costs and the waste of money for an unnecessary war in Iraq (not to mention the wasted lives of American soldiers).

But, you don’t expect better from a neocon.

You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 11:35 AM | Link to this

RepubLady, curious that you should mockingly acuse Dusty of taking the words right out of your mouth when you are busy putting words into hers.

And no, she can’t meet you at Phipps. She and I have a noon tee-time, and it’s been hard enough getting a woman into the club without her spurning golf for a French seducer like Monsieur Vuitton.

By Dusty

October 16, 2007 11:42 AM | Link to this

Mrs RepubLady at 11:10

Well, thanks but no thanks as to shopping. ( When Captain Freedom/ RedNeck Convert dresses up in “drag”, he calls himself Mrs. RepubLady.)

You don’t shop at Phipps. They don’t specialize in menswear.

Hillary makes a lot of people sick of her politics. You got a little mixed up on that subterfuge. But then you ARE a liberal loser. They are usually crazy mixed up government moocher makers.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 11:42 AM | Link to this

@ one of the easiest of far left t wats to goad!!

cheers for the moronic DECIDEDLY OBTUSE patronising attempt at an ideology lecture.

the POINT about my use of ‘fascist’ is that the pragmatic modern usage/meaning of it has evolved to mean ANYONE who is rabidly intolerant of anyone else’s POV. Thus we have far left fascists -moveyourbowels.org, codepinko, various stop the war traitor groups, far left ‘anarchists’ who viciously attack any one who opposes them etc -and islamic fascists etc, both types of pondscum are clearly utterly intolerant of any opposing views. Far left fascists also talk of fundamentalist christians as being fascists - homosexual queers do this often. These days fascist has become a term that is NO LONGER limited to the Franco/Mussolini style corporate state.

Your pitiful attempt at defining socialism shows what a SIMPERING weedy little moral fascist U are!!

Socialism is about state theft of private property/nationalisation, oppressive centralised control of economies by (invariably) unelected far left dictators, the hysterical oppressive opposition to ANY kind of profit motive for business owners, oppressive socialist ONLY control of a nations everday life, little or NO freedom of press or association, a vicious ONE PARTY STATE, usually oppressive levels of anti-semitism, political reedcuation for opponents and torture/mass killing of opponents during the ‘revolution’, invasion and oppression of neighbouring countries, mass personal corruption by the ruling party elite and on and on - summed up by the infamous Clause IV of the British Labour Party - which Tony B.Liar hilariously and sensibly turned his back on in 1997 - which is why true socialists hate him like they hate BUsh and REagan!!

socialism is invariably an ‘interchangeable’ term for various genocidal strands of marxism/maoism/marxist-leninism/trotskyism. a moral and political cancer that is just as evil as hitler’s nazism or backward 7th century mohammedan fascism!!

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 11:43 AM | Link to this

Dennis, you say that Mr. Wooten is both a neocon and a conservative. How is that possible?

P.S. It is I who am unclear on the concept of “unnecessary war”. Presumably you’re using shorthand, but for what?

By getalife

October 16, 2007 11:44 AM | Link to this

[Not about about the children Jim?] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkAvxrgtLr4)

Geez, you really do hate American children don’t ya?

Iraqi welfare?

100 % behind that aren’t ya?

By ray

October 16, 2007 11:49 AM | Link to this

glenn: perhaps you could explain why the war was necessary.

By SCHIP - THEFT BY TAKING

October 16, 2007 11:51 AM | Link to this

yo getawife - with your song and dance about chemo and surgery, how do you find time to blog all day long? House a mess, no job, sucking off the old SSI must give you to free time to blog your life away. Maybe the Hag will offer a special Cancer Payment Initiative that will pay you for caring for your, eh, wife and pay for all her health care needs? After all, in your world, it to each according to her needs, and from each according to his abilities, right?

By getalife

October 16, 2007 11:53 AM | Link to this

Not about about the children Jim

Where is the outrage on the FDA giving themselves large bonuses after failing to stop Chinese goods that kill..

Iraq contractor corruption and waste of a trillion in Iraq?

Corporate welfare for the rich?

Your selective outrage on American children shows your true charcacter and why the gop will always be the minority and marginilized.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 11:55 AM | Link to this

I knew that (presumably) the sickster aborted foreskin would USING YET ANOTHER one of its many thousands of PATHETIC supposedly “anonymous” id’s bite on the randy rhodes post … and COMPULSIVELY anally bite on the sneering respelling of randy.

rhodes is a cowardly far left Bush hating hatepig and as such is a perfectly legitimate target for true patriots!! Just as true American heroes like Ann Coulter and the Minutemen have despicably been physical targets of far left RATS!

Funny how scumbags like aborted foreskin and peeping tom never ever SEEM TO say anytHing about far left violence!!

Although Rhodes might just have been a mugging that went wrong. Who knows and who cares. I personally wouldn’t actually expend any energy advocating physically attacking it, or its ilk - but its hardly a matter for any regret.

Now if the FEMINAZI hatepig’s dog had been harmed it would truly have been an outrage though!!

By Brad

October 16, 2007 11:56 AM | Link to this

Liberal talk radio show host Randi Rhodes was savagely attacked and beaten Sunday night. Naturally, with zero proof other than circumstances the demunderground nuts are saying some neocon did it and it’s the beginning of ‘upping the ante’. Like what does that mean? Don’t you just love the libs who are so much for innocent until proven guilty? Phonies.

However, this comment needs to be addressed:

Apparently, some right-wing critics of lib talk aren’t happy that conservative talk only accounts for 90% of the programming on talk radio. These whack jobs appear determined to whatever it takes to silence the opposing point of view.

Well, I’d say that was the left’s attitude towards Foxnew in a media swamp 90% dominated by the left.

That said, beating a woman no matter what her political affiliation and what she says is not cool and I hope whoever did it is caught and strung up. Now, I just know <—- that comment would have been said by a lib had Malkin been attacked. So sure.

By Dennis

October 16, 2007 11:56 AM | Link to this

In response to “By Glenn October 16, 2007 11:43 AM;”

I’m not using any “shorthand”. The war in Iraq is an “unnecessary war” for oil.

That’s well documented for anyone who’s willing to be honest about it.

You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 12:01 PM | Link to this

The right-wing thug gave us:

American heroes like Ann Coulter and the Minutemen have despicably been physical targets of far left RATS!

Ann Coulter took a whipped-cream pie to her face, you filthy liar.

Randi’s teeth were bashed out.

Jim, again I ask—are you ok with a poster who advocates physical violence against public figures?

By getalife

October 16, 2007 12:03 PM | Link to this

Instead of being a gop suka-ss , why not some good reporting on the water shortage, our broken government or corruption.

Geez.

By Alfred B.

October 16, 2007 12:07 PM | Link to this

Seems like Mr Wooten lost the common sense part of his title.

SCHIP is necessary for us the lower middle class. We the ones who are not on social programs, who work two jobs, who are married and have kids need this program for our children. Our jobs don’t offer family health care any more, or of they do it’s a third of our total income!!.

I guess Mr Wooten kids are well covered by private programs and his tax money is to dear for him to expend in my kids health but not in Black Water contracts.

By Dusty

October 16, 2007 12:11 PM | Link to this

Dearest Glenn@11:35,

Merci beaucoup but I must decline even your fabulous invite!! I had on my pink booties and burka! My pastel clubs were ready. But alas! Sir Sears-Roebuck called and I was swept off my feet!! He even mentioned a Burger King feast afterwards. Forgive me!! I am weak!!

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 12:13 PM | Link to this

Well ray, I wasn’t really trying to change to Dennis’s topic, the war, I was just kind of scratching my stubble trying to figure out what struck me funny about that particular use of the word “unnecessary”. Guess scratching one’s stubble is a philosophic kind of gesture and I was just in a speculative mood or something. I mean, this state was scorched from stem to stern and gutted from beam to beam in a war that I have a hard time calling either “necessary” or “unnecessary”. So I was hoping that Dennis could just tell us which are his reasons for evidently finding the war ill-advised. Different folks have different reasons, obviously.

You put the onus on me to report why I think the war was “necessary”, so I guess that sticky word has now stuck to me. Since you ask, I’d felt increasingly, over a period of many months preceeding and following 9/11, that the U.S. “needed” (see what I mean about the strange usage?) to launch naval and aerial operations against Iraq and then go in on the ground to oust the regime if only because Saddam had gotten into the daily habit of trying to shoot down UN-ordered peacekeeping planes bearing the American star and, sometimes, the Queen’s livery. Where I come from we call that an act of war.

By Momma

October 16, 2007 12:14 PM | Link to this

time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings — I hope you have insurance because you need some serious psychological evaluation. You bash, fight, demean and degrade. Why? Why are you so full of anger? Your words are those of someone who has fallen off the beam. PLEASE get the help you need!

By Dusty trails

October 16, 2007 12:25 PM | Link to this

Dusty, will you be donating your brain to science when you pass on? I mean, it hasn’t been used for as many years as you’ve had it. I don’t think that parroting Jim Wooten and the rest of the GOP disinformation squad uses any brain cells. What’s it like to never have to think for yourself?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 12:26 PM | Link to this

BRad

I agree, in virtually any instance a woman being beaten is absolutely indefensible and if this was a mugging gone wrong then the thug(s) need to be caught and punished - but in liberal sanctuary New Yaawk City they rarely are caught … let alone suitably punished for something like this. This is a deliberate policy that the pandering lefties need to realise has consequences!!

there are a handful of so far left hatepig wimmin that are so beyond the pale when it comes to handing out hate that when/if they get some kind of payback I personally do not care very much. I would never perpetrate such a thing myself - but after years and years of this feminazi’s unremitting public airwaves hate surely a lack of sympathy is hardly unsurprising.

The lefties on the website I saw were ranting about the far right doing this!! Hopefully the typical commie violence/intimidation that the brave selfless Minutemen and Ann Coulter and David Horowitz and so many others are constantly subjected to will not spread. But its the far left that do this ALL DAY LONG TO THOSE WHO THEY cannot answer in actual debate.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 12:30 PM | Link to this

getalife, I didn’t know about the FDA raises for the China-enablers. Outrageous. Many, many outrageous things in our post-Tienanmen posture vis-a-vis China. Both parties, both Bushes, both Clintons heavily involved. Kissinger and Haig also. Absolutely disgraceful.

As to “corporate welfare for the rich”, the GOP doesn’t think that corporate tax breaks are for the rich, but rather for all who are party to a corporation, including employees, managers, subcontractors, municipalities, customers — and for that matter citizens at large, who benefit generally from prosperity. The French, among other species, seem never to have mastered this point. Also, every Democratic statehouse muck unflinchingly puts together incentive packages to lure businesses and keep them happy. The practice isn’t reserved to Republicans, though you’re right to identify the GOP with the cultivation of commerce, about which Democratic politicians generally know very little.

By Jackie

October 16, 2007 12:35 PM | Link to this

The Repubs say they want to stop the abortion of babies, yet, they want to deny those same babies medical care. You have to ask the question, is one concerned about the well-being of the child, or concerned about making political points? @time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings. Waiting for your comments. Yesterday’s rant has not been forgotten.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 12:37 PM | Link to this

Glenn,

It is obvious our government is broken.

Jim chooses to ignore this reality like a good little german

By ray

October 16, 2007 12:38 PM | Link to this

glenn: yes. response similar to libya would have sufficed.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 12:40 PM | Link to this

(I’m assuming again) the sickster aborted foreskin simply cannot be honest enuff to post under its real anal dumbarse id …

who ever U are - cheers for biting so very nicely!!!

As just one example - The Minutemen were very seriously threatened, thuggishly intimidated and physically prevented from speaking BY A MASSIVE far left LYNCH MOB at the far left ivy league RATturd campus Colombia. There have been numerous well documented violent attacks on conservative speakers around the nation. Yet Republican students do NOT physically attempt to try and stop the cowardly far left staging their events.

NOTHING WAS DONE by way of punishment to the far left rabble at Columbia for their far left fascist brownshirt thuggery!!

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/islamo-fascism-awareness-week/

By Dusty

October 16, 2007 12:41 PM | Link to this

Dusty Trails @12:25

Sweet talk will get you nowhere, even though you are kinda cute.

I bet you are busy. Have you found another sick child to put on TV for the Democrats? Have you found a 25year old to apply for children’s healthcare?

Get busy, fellow. Liberals are counting on you.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 12:45 PM | Link to this

@ fatobesehatepigMAMMY!!

I’m just having tremendous fun winding U far left scum up!!

I note U say NOTHING about the far left fascists who obsessively post their Bush/GOP and anti-Wooten hate on here all day long!!

TYPICAL Far LEFT HYPOCRITE — U can hand it out but cannot take it!!

just like the forum sneak aborted foreskin!!

By getalife

October 16, 2007 12:48 PM | Link to this

And of course, “crusty the clown” is the witch of the so called “pro life” who casts spells upon our children.

We get it crusty, you want our kids to die.

Ride off on your broom witch.

Geez.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 12:51 PM | Link to this

Dear Glenn @ 9:45, ha. Re 10:22, I have to admit I am a fan of TFTT. While 90% of his posts are stuff like that which you criticize here, he has a capacity, an insight, far beyond the rest of us on the blog, and shows it about once every week or so. Also has a clever way with the language, again, not one that shows with every post, but one that is striking when it shows. For the most part, however, he enjoys simply ragging on the leftists.

Dear JK @ 9:50, “thanks for the “DUH.” However, not everyone feels as you do, that only the natural forces of survival of the fittest should operate in a civilized society.” You’re welcome, of course. Please note that not everyone feels as you do, that the taxpayer ought to subsidize the income of medicrats. If a Mafia capo sends his henchmen out to shake down a victim, the capo is just as much a thief as the henchmen; theft remains theft, even when the medicrats use the government for the shakedown.

Dear Camus @ 10:21, if I read the newspaper article correctly, the Republican acknowledged a factual error. I realize that Democrats would never do such a thing – thanks for highlighting the fundamental difference between the two parties.

Dear Sure @ 11:05, if I read correctly, you thus will defend laissez faire conservatives against the “Fascist” epithet?

Dear Ray @ 11:49, although we anticipate nothing more from leftists than the chant, “four legs good, two legs bad,” don’t you think you’re ranging pretty far off topic?

Dear Dennis @ 11:56, “I’m not using any “shorthand”. The war in Iraq is an “unnecessary war” for oil.“ You evidently missed the talking notes. Essay online yesterday:

Mrs. Blood for Oil Consider the following reasons why America might consider military action against Iran:

• To save Israel from nuclear annihilation.

• To prevent a nuclear arms race between Iran and neighboring Arab regimes.

• To keep Iran’s mullahs from acquiring a nuclear deterrent, which would give them leverage in Iraq and make it easier for them to wage terror elsewhere with impunity.

• To topple Tehran’s repressive, theocratic regime.

• To protect America’s oil supplies.

What if we told you one of the presidential candidates accepted the last rationale—blood for oil!—but rejected arguments for war based on concerns about human rights or nuclear proliferation? Based on the media stereotypes, you’d probably think Dick Cheney had thrown his hat in. The Associated Press has the real story from Florence, S.C.: Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton advocated talks to settle differences with Iran but said Saturday that Tehran would invite U.S. action if it were to disrupt oil supplies.

“I will make it very clear to the Iranians that there are very serious consequences attached to their actions,” Clinton said… . The New York senator, responding to a question, said blocking oil shipments “would be devastating to the world economy.”

If the U.S. took military action as a result, she said, “I would hope that the world would see that was an action of last resort, not first resort. Because we need the world to agree with us about the threat that Iran poses to everyone.” Clinton said that is why, as president, she “would immediately open a diplomatic negotiation with Iran over all issues that we disagree with them on.”

Mrs. Clinton is in a difficult spot when it comes to Iran. On the one hand, she doesn’t want to seem soft in front of the general electorate. On the other hand, she doesn’t want to seem firm lest she alienate the Angry Left in her own party. The position she’s put forward is clearly a compromise. Yet you’d think from the Angry Left’s rhetoric that promising war for oil—the way they disparage every American military action in the Middle East—would be the least likely approach to appease them.

Then again, if Mrs. Clinton can hold on to her Angry Left support despite this, she will have proved herself to be a truly deft politician. Maybe this is Mrs. Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment.”

By Dennis

October 16, 2007 12:52 PM | Link to this

By Glenn October 16, 2007 12:30 PM as to “corporate welfare for the rich”, the GOP doesn’t think that corporate tax breaks are for the rich, but rather for all who are party to a corporation, including employees, managers, subcontractors, municipalities, customers — and for that matter citizens at large, who benefit generally from prosperity.”

I think that’s a nice ideal, Glenn, but it’s not working. The fact that the growing financial disparity between the haves and the have nots pretty well proves that.

And it seems that rather than invest in this country and creating jobs here, those folks and corporations getting huge tax breaks are instead, investing in other countries.

The jobless rate rose in this country last month (even with illegals to do many of the jobs).

(Let me add, too, I’m disgusted with the behavior of spineless Democrats).

You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 12:55 PM | Link to this

By GETATURD

October 16, 2007 12:48 PM | Link to this

And of course, “crusty the clown” is the witch of the so called “pro life” who casts spells upon our children.

We get it crusty, you want our kids to die.

Ride off on your broom witch.

Geez.

COME ON HYPOCRITICAL LEFTIST VERMIN … lets see ya puke up a hissy fit about this LATEST deranged hatepuke from the illegal greaseball Cuban rentboy getaturd

By Dusty trails

October 16, 2007 12:57 PM | Link to this

Good one, Dusty. Way to prove the point.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 12:58 PM | Link to this

That’s OK, Dusty, the Club just called and said they had to cancel everybody’s reservations anyway, to clear the course for Jimmy Carter and his coauthor, the Rev. Dodgson. They said the Treasury boys hadn’t called ‘til the last minute, “for security purposes”. So we’re off the hook, and it even gets better. As an apology for shunting us, Mr. Carter has arranged with the Club for us all to get two complimentary rounds at his expense. He’s such a fine churchy gentleman. Evidently he’s going to pay for it out of his proceeds from investing his own Nobel winnings in Mr. Gore’s Internet enterprise.

By mamasue

October 16, 2007 1:01 PM | Link to this

Reality check: as a single mom with 2 kids who have no health insurance, I’ve looked into purchasing coverage - $200+ per month. That’s almost a week’s pay for me. Health insurance companies charge too much for the benefits provided.Thank God they are healthy, but you can betcha that if something happens, we’ll be getting treated at the ER and the taxpayers will foot the bill in the end anyway. My employer offers health insurance only for me, but I have heard rumblings that that may soon be gone as well. Irony: I work in a clinic that makes all of its revenue from insurance.

By Kurdish Stanzas

October 16, 2007 1:02 PM | Link to this

Putin Delays Iran Visit? He’s afraid. Putin believed the rumor that terrorists in Iran want to “FiddyCent” his sorry azz. That’s a big story, folks. Bigger than SCHIP.

I wonder if Putin is worried about maintaining the purity of his precious bodily fluids. Putin is suspicious and almost mystical about national security and his own neck.

Did Bush see a coward when he looked into Putin’s soul? Did he see himself?

Think about it. A measely threat from a suicide bomber can keep Putin at bay in Iran? This is a great victory for rumors of assassinations and rumors of war. Just what rumors of war will Putin believe as he judges whether Bush will try to “fiddyCent” Russia itself? Its not like Bush has never preemptively invaded another country based on rumored intel that terrorists may try to “fiddyCent” the USA…

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 1:06 PM | Link to this

Dennis, you’re right. And BTW, corporate pass-through economics not my bag; was only trying dispassionately to describe how the respective parties approach it.

By JK

October 16, 2007 1:13 PM | Link to this

Jbmlaw,

Please explain to Mamasue (@1:01) why she is a “medicrat” and why her contributions to the society in which you glean great rewards for your hard work (such as billing clients while blogging all day) are not important, and why the health of her children are not important to anyone besides herself, and why you have not, in your infinite understanding of all things economic, devised a better way to insure the health of one’s family than the limited options this mother faces today. Thanks!

By getalife

October 16, 2007 1:14 PM | Link to this

$88.20 for a barrel of oil and at this rate it will be $100 for Christmas.

Holiday presents will be a tank of gas.

Mission Accompished?

Geez.

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 1:16 PM | Link to this

jbmlaw gave us:

*Mrs. Blood for Oil Consider the following reasons why America might consider military action against Iran:

• To save Israel from nuclear annihilation.*

Israel has its own nukes. It can defend itself, and surely will. We don’t have to “save” it, and in any case, why would Iran be so stupid as to commit suicide with a pre-emptive nuclear attack?

We’re the only ones stupid enough to contemplate doing that.

• To prevent a nuclear arms race between Iran and neighboring Arab regimes.

Given that we’ve already sent the signal that if you have a nuke, we won’t go after you, whereas if you don’t, it’s Eye-Rack Peeance Freeance Occupation Time… I’d say it’s a little late for that.

• To keep Iran’s mullahs from acquiring a nuclear deterrent, which would give them leverage in Iraq and make it easier for them to wage terror elsewhere with impunity.

I can’t think of anything that would unit Iran against us and double their resolve to acquire nuclear weapons by hook or by crook, than an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack by us.

• To topple Tehran’s repressive, theocratic regime.

Our regime-change record hasn’t been so good, now, has it? Even if we were “successful” in throwing a nation of 70 million into political chaos, you really it’s safe to assume that whatever replaced the current theocracy would be an improvement, and less of a threat to us?

*• To protect America’s oil supplies. *

OUR oil supplies? They’re OURS now?

You’re out of your mind.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 1:17 PM | Link to this

Forget the terrorists, Rudy said he will protect us from space aliens.

Tin foil hat Rudy?

Damn.

By deegee

October 16, 2007 1:21 PM | Link to this

A trip to the doc in the box is around $100.00, not $40.00 or $50.00. The big nut is the prescription medicine. That may run you over $100.00 a pop. As hard as it may be for our compassionate conservatives to imagine, this is not exactly chump change. If Congress were truly in the mood to govern, why wouldn’t they make it easier for individuals to tailor their health insurance coverage to their needs? Until that happens, we should be funding SCHIP fully, and distributing the grants widely. There is no excuse for a country as wealthy as the US to allow sick children to go untreated for the lack of affordable health care. We send billions of dollars in aid overseas to care for sick children. Why should there be any question as to how to take care of children within our borders?

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 1:22 PM | Link to this

mamasue, do you think you could begin to conjur either (a) a kind of Model-T system of coverage for children now lacking it or soon to lack it, or (b) a radically dissimilar set of means of delivering healthcare services? I personally don’t have sufficient knowledge of the system to undertake this, but think I could help others to come up with some valuable design criteria or even new methods. In just the past week I’ve culled from “these pages” a couple of good suggestions, and I even suspect that our friend jbmlaw, if JK would let him off the ropes, might pitch in.

By ray

October 16, 2007 1:23 PM | Link to this

jbmlaw (12:51): it was a response.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 1:25 PM | Link to this

“TX-Sen: Kay Bailey-Hutchinson quitting.”

The gop have destroyed our country and then cut and run.

Cowards.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 1:26 PM | Link to this

getalife, $88.22 more like Halloween than Christmas.

By Kurdish Stanzas

October 16, 2007 1:36 PM | Link to this

The cost of my wife’s double radical mastectomy was $22,500. Blue Cross paid it all. SO dont bash private insurance when it works. Monthly Premium is $750.

Perhaps a SCHIP program to cover the deductible which private insurance wont pay. There’s always some deductible and it’s expensive. Maybe deductible insurance is the way to go with SCHIP.

By Kicked Out Of Va Tech In 1984

October 16, 2007 1:57 PM | Link to this

jackie @ 12:35 - Republicans only care about “babies” when they’re in utero. After those “babies” are born, they’re to be Someone Else’s problem.

Until they approach death, of course. At that point it’s Terri Schiavo Time!

By Curious Observer

October 16, 2007 2:03 PM | Link to this

Perhaps a SCHIP program to cover the deductible which private insurance wont pay. There’s always some deductible and it’s expensive. Maybe deductible insurance is the way to go with SCHIP.

Here we go again. People seem incapable of thinking outside the box. Their only reference point is the current insurance mess: write in exclusions and ban preexisting conditions, then impose deductibles and negotiate prices with providers so that the burden can be thrown onto the uninsured, while insurance and HMO executives pocket millions in bonuses.

Any government-sponsored insurance program that relies on the existing health insurance system, as PeachCare and all SCHIPs do, is doomed to failure as surely as Medicare Part D, which has proved a boondoggle for Big Pharma.

You can believe this: the objective of for-profit insurance firms is not to underwrite the health of customers, but to maximize profits. These firms screw over physicians by putting them in a vise—viz., take our service price or do without patients. They also screw over the customers by writing policies that practically guarantee a substantial profit while making patient health a secondary consideration. Finally, they screw over the uninsured by shifting the excess costs from the prices negotiated to them. Has no one ever read a bill from a hospital? The cost of a treatment is $90,000, but the price is $34,000? Guess who makes up the difference? The poor sap who shows up without insurance, that’s who. Or the taxpayer who foots the bill for the treatment of the uninsured.

I harbor the greatest contempt for the stupidity of those who label any government-sponsored plan “socialized medicine.” Just how is the medicine socialized, when it uses existing providers and existing insurance carriers?

In one of the books of his Gulliver’s Travels—or more correctly, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, Jonathan Swift presents a land in which the people are so addle-brained that they have to be hit on the head by an inflated bladder to be brought back into reality. Maybe some of the ranting conservatives on this blog could use a good conk with a bladder—hopefully one filled with about ten pounds of sand.

The problem with all existing and proposed government-sponsored health care programs is precisely that they are based on the same insurance carriers that brought us the current mess. People have the right to be suspicious of any such programs. Until Americans insist on universal health care, a plan that will put the HMOs and insurance companies out of business, while restoring physicians to prominence as the arbiters of health, we can expect to see the same failures that we deplore today.

By Shar

October 16, 2007 2:09 PM | Link to this

I may well be wrong here, but isn’t emergency medical care for indigent children required to be provided by hospitals regardless of ability to pay? Hence Grady’s financial crisis, and the extremely expensive proclivity of those who cannot pay using emergency rooms in place of cheaper primary care. SCHIP mostly applies to health maintenance and long term rehabilitation care. Therefore, wouldn’t expansion of SCHIP in fact offer the potential for health savings through promotion of disease prevention and early treatment, or rehabilitation instead of long term care of the permanently disabled?

I don’t see why the parameters for SCHIP cannot require such proven health maintenance strategies as annual physicals, innoculations and timely dental work in a clinic setting as a condition for coverage, or why a threshold household income has to be set on a national basis. $80,000 seems like a great deal of money here, but if the recipient is living in New York City there would be no “extras” in such a budget.

Private coverage is not “one size fits all”, and I fail to see why publicly-funded health care should be either. Limiting the debate to the politically polarized all-or-nothing extremes invites stalemate, which will immediately be broken by the first measles or whooping cough outbreak resulting from unvaccinated children in classrooms and busses. A plan born in such a catastrophe will surely be much worse than one that results from debate and compromise.

An aside to jbmlaw - I grow concerned. Yesterday you professed support for the “perfected” remarks of Ann Coulter; today you offer high praise to tftt’s “insight” and “clever way with the language”. I admit that I avoid both sources,as I find that neither offers sufficient intelligent commentary to offset the slog through the repetitive, abusive potty-mouth screams for attention that weigh down their every utterance. Like rap and hip-hop lyrics, there may be a germ of an interesting idea somewhere but it’s not worth getting to. You say that TFTT “enjoys simply ragging on the leftists”, but nearly all other posters who don’t just skip his posts (like me) feel abused if not actually threatened. I can’t see that there is anything praiseworthy about that, and I am disappointed that you think there is. Or was that remark, perhaps, the work of the nickjacker who seems to pursue you here?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 2:13 PM | Link to this

Wackieturd

my witty, astute, admittedly uncharacteristically restrained comments were PROUDLY posted earlier this morning … clearly u’re blind as a leftist dingbat as well as exceedingly dumb and stupid!!

ENJOY!! :)

GOAD GOAD GOAD …

make sure U tell us whether U agree with Sanchez’s 100% correct, factual evisceration of the LEFTIST surrender monkey party of hate media!!

I am preDICKting that U don’t!!!

winding up sad cut and run lefties is such a pleasure - and to provide such fabulous, incisive entertainment for others is always an honour and a privvellidddge!! …huge bugger off NOW lefties smirk

By ray

October 16, 2007 2:13 PM | Link to this

curious observer: file ‘thinking outside of the box’ with ‘upstream approach’. neither feeds the god of mammon. disaster/mess presents opportuntiy for $. think of the private contractors who would have suffered had the levees been fixed ahead of time…blackwater in iraq…

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 2:15 PM | Link to this

ray@12:38, in re response similar to ours in Libya: steering a cruise missile into one of Saddam’s palaces would have done nothing but reinforce our pre-Iraq image as a paper tiger. (Though the Libya msg. did get through to Col. Khadaffi — or however the NYT Style Book sez we should spell his name this year.) While I suspect that the invasion of Iraq was more than warranted, I don’t know of circumstances that in earlier days would have warranted our invasion of Libya, unless we go all the way back to the first Roosevelt. Had someone taken out Khadaffi, though, a certain airliner would’ve flown unmolested over Scotland, and God knows what other horrible events would’ve been preempted. And all this armchair speculation just because I found it curious to contemplate the “necessity” of war…

By Dennis

October 16, 2007 2:20 PM | Link to this

By Glenn October 16, 2007 1:06 PM Dennis, you’re right. And BTW, corporate pass-through economics not my bag; was only trying dispassionately to describe how the respective parties approach it.”

What’s really sad is that both partys are corrupt as hell, yet we teach our kids these lofty ideals about how government works and they get into the real world and few ever realize just how brainwashed they are.

As example, look at some of the conservative stuff posted on here - not to mention Wooten’s columns.

It seems to me right now that Hillary, Pelosi, et.al are trying to maintain the status quo while trying to fool Americans that the democrats are “different”.

Now that we’re in Iraq, neither one (or either party) are willing to give up control of Iraq’s oil.

To be polite, it’s bulls..t to think that Congress, in voting to invade Iraq, didn’t also think the invasion was going to be a “slam dunk”.

And the Bush administration has almost literally taken over the government without firing a shot.

And it’s nuts to think that all of this investigative stalling by some democrats isn’t for the purpose of taking up the reins where the Bush administration leave off.

You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

By Taylor

October 16, 2007 2:22 PM | Link to this

The main reason that Bush gave for vetoing this legislation was that it increased funding somewhere around 15% for the program over the 5 years. Yet Bush fails to realize that the average cost of health insurance premiums rises almost 7% every year. Work that out over 5 years, and you’ll find out that the difference over 5 years is a whopping 43% increase in health care costs for the average family. Yet we are only authorizing an additional 15% over 5 years? Sounds to me like there are going to be many more families that will be losing the ability to pay for health care under the current SCHIP funding levels.

The fundamental problem to this whole debate is that “government run healthcare is bad”, which we all agree is an accurate statement. So why not fix the government? They run the police force and the roads and highways pretty decently eh? There has only been one candidate who has been standing up from the very beginning saying we need to break the chains and get away from the old way of doing things in Washington.

The only reason that “people” say the government cant effectively run healthcare is because their opinions have been muddied by the health insurance industry who have done everything in their means to insure (no pun intended) that their companies stay in business, no matter the cost.

Feel free to read about the newly crafted private drugs plans and how much they have been ran. So much for the thought that private insurance companies run things better than the government eh? They run them exactly the same, just at 10x the cost.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 2:25 PM | Link to this

Will somebody please flush the turd known as “time for the toilet”.

Geez.

Looks like the corp. of engineers are screwing ya’ll like they did with the levees.

Not to worry, I prayed and rain is on the way.

Good luck dealing with the corp. They are draining your water and Jim should write about that.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 2:32 PM | Link to this

@ the patronising t wat shar_k turd

jbm gets it … most of the leftist vermin on here DO NOT!!

harmlessly excoriating pompous pussfilled pinko pansy panty waist (that’s a genuinely Amerian insult I believe) pu$$ies like U is damn good fun.

laughing at and sneering at both types of mentally flatulating liberal vermin - self absorbed supercilious nasal whining yanKKKee lefties and their unashamed turgid blue collar plebian alter egos as evinced by the scummier horridly doltish vainglorious likes of URself and inbred redneKKK - and their ENDLESSLY HYPOCRITICAL endless obsessive Bush/GOP hate is a selfless service I choose to undertake. A suitably selfless moral equivalent to the smug liberal PEEE-ce Korps if U like.

Knowing that even just occasionally I manage to grate on the (collective) liberal vermin’s last dissembling surrender monkey nerve(s) is more than thanks enuff!!

Cheers for now BOLLOCK CHOPS

By Shark Sammich

October 16, 2007 2:33 PM | Link to this

Well, I have to admit it appears I (and a whole bunch of other folks) was wrong about Randi Rhodes. She apparently wasn’t mugged, but was hurt when she fell.

My apologies to all, even to that repulsive individual who posted that he thought she deserved to be attacked.

Daily News account is here.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 2:42 PM | Link to this

Well, I have to admit it appears I (and a whole bunch of other folks) was wrong about Randi Rhodes. She apparently wasn’t mugged, but was hurt when she fell.

Cue John Lennon’s INSTANT KARMA!!

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 2:44 PM | Link to this

Dennis, agree with you about political rot, but I don’t get the petrocentrism. Oil’s strategically important as hell, perhaps as much so as plutonium. I’m not ashamed of that fact, nor afraid of it. We’ve done a lot of things for oil, but invading Iraq wasn’t one of them. Were oil the driver, none of this would’ve happened, and we’d still be enjoying low pump prices, which would help the GOP significantly in 2008. Folks sed the Republicans (presumably some mysterious Yalie oligarchs holed up at Davos or in the Bohemian Grove) would fix gas prices to win in 2004, and instead the election came & went with prices at an all-time high, at costs more than 225% higher than when W was sworn in. The Iraqis have their oil, and will continue to have it. To get it refined and to market, they’ll need Yankee/Limey/Dutch ingenuity as always, unless the treacherous Chicoms usurp us all. Jimmy Carter, of all people, militated for petro-economic reasons, and so did Geo. H.W.B., the latter expressly so. The present incumbent, sadly, finds what he considers bigger fish to fry. He may be right.

By Camus

October 16, 2007 2:44 PM | Link to this

To Kurdish stanza: From the AP wire: TEHRAN, Oct. 16 — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told a summit meeting of five Caspian Sea nations in Iran today

You cement head, he didn’t delay his visit. Neither did he sneak in and out of the country in the dead of night like your President Pi$$ypants. As to fear of losing precious bodily fluids, why aren’t you in uniform, keyboard warrior?

jbm:

Your pithy response to my post earlier is demonstrative of your intellectual dishonesty. Faced with proof that the attacks on a 12-year old child were both unwarranted and the product of a Republican attack machine, you piffle about Republicans admitting mistakes. You ain’t one of ‘em, pal.

As to your defense of our resident deranged nutjob (“he has a capacity, an insight, far beyond the rest of us on the blog, and shows it about once every week or so”), the old saw about a hundred monkeys typing randomly or the blind squirrel finding the occasional nut comes to mind. But really, if you want to stand shoulder to shoulder with this freak of human rage, be my guest. When you lie down in $hit, the stink stays on you.

By Jackie

October 16, 2007 2:46 PM | Link to this

@time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

I see that you have been posting your same circle logic. It reminds it of the fact that someone left you on the side of the ride and the bad guys picked you up. It appears they let you go because they figured out that you were more trouble than you are worth. Still a lookout for the house of ill-repute that your folks run?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 3:14 PM | Link to this

Wackie turd

And very preDICKtably I see U respond in the shameless cowardly way of the archetypal bedwetting leftist t wat!!

Sanchez explicitly excoriated the leftist party of hate media for their shameful rabidly partisan coverage of Iraq … yet far left wankpigs like U cut and run from actually addressing this VERY AWKWARD FACT and sullenly hide behind the usual perfidious moveyourbowels.org speak!!

Still a lookout for the house of ill-repute that your folks run?

YEP … sure am … usual time for U tonite bubbaturd?? That lesbian disabled donkey U tried blindfolded last time is still working on Tuesdays … and I know your usual favourite blow up doll Hanoi Jane as U so butchly call her is waiting for another of your crystal meth fuelled marathon sesions.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 3:15 PM | Link to this

A PLEA FOR AN ANSWER FROM ALL LIBERALS WHO DON’T WANT TO OWN AMERICA’S CHILDREN AND ALL CONSERVATIVES WHO DON’T WANT TO DISOWN THEM:

Which are the medical serices that you think should be afforded to every child, one way or the other?

Please do not yet assume:

a) Any specific means of delivery of services;

b) Any spedific payers or payment system;

c) Any specific medical procedure that goes by a technical name;

d) Any particular clientele.

To paraphrase a blog of a couple days ago, please do not tell me of the shape and size and the color and cost of the bottle; rather, tell me of its contents, and then perhaps I can recommend some bottles that will work for you, within your pocketbook. Perhaps a barrel would do better. Perhaps you wouldn’t need a glassblower or a cooper at all.

By getalife †

October 16, 2007 3:16 PM | Link to this

The House is voting on a resolution for the State, Dept. to cooperate with a Iraqi corruption investigation.

In other words, it is demanding Condi to stop covering up this corruption.

Yes folks and some gop are voting against it. If this is not a broken governmernt, I have no idea what is.

Geez.

By Rev Pat Robertson

October 16, 2007 3:21 PM | Link to this

Hello Atlanta and others in the Deep South, this is Reverend Pat Robertson stopping by to tell you that God is very angry with you and that is why you are facing the calamitous drought of recent years.

Until you can change your wicked ways, you will all writhe in the dust-filled hell of your own making, a punishment that our Loving and Merciful Lord has laid upon you with due Justice and Righteousness.

As with to sodomites of Florida and Louisiana and the deserving liberal victims of 9/11, may your skin burn and your tongue cleave to your palate, begging for relief in a stark landscape where no tree can provide shelter from His burning wrath.

Of course, you can stop this drought now by calling 1-800-MoWater and contributing to the Liberty University Development Fund. Only my Prayers can save you now.

By getalife †

October 16, 2007 3:24 PM | Link to this

21 gop voted to cover up corrption in Iraq.

Score one for Waxman and good luck trying to get more billions to waste in Iraq but the wingnuts chose to scream about American children’s freaking health care.

Where is your your outrage on the waste of a trillion of your money in Iraq?

Crickets……

chirp…….

chirp…….

chirp…..

Geez.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 3:29 PM | Link to this

Dear Shar @ 2:09, I appreciate your concern; almost everyone who knows me expresses similar feelings for dissimilar reasons. I am eccentric, and I cannot honestly apologize for my eclectic tastes. I think Ann Coulter is the modern-day Art Buchwald, and I simply have no quibble with someone who refuses to deny her beliefs for the sake of comity. As to our old friend TFTT, he and I have exchanged blog philosophies. He acknowledges, and is grateful when I notice, his capacity for soaring prose and brilliant ideas; he affirms that he simply enjoys playing games with our brothers (and sisters) of the left. To me that would be much like Andruw Jones going to the little league park, but throwing and batting left-hand only, but I also think it is beyond my role to tell someone how to live his life. So I appreciate genius wherever I see it, whatever form it takes.

By Drew

October 16, 2007 3:30 PM | Link to this

Maybe when Republicans stop milking 9/11……

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 3:31 PM | Link to this

When you lie down in $hit, the stink stays on you.

So that’s what stinks on the blog today … the pathologically supercilious anal retentive knobjockey Camus - the younger the better arab boy loving pseudo intellectual has been practising the Kennedyesque DNC sport of coprophagy again!!

By Camus

October 16, 2007 3:33 PM | Link to this

Glenn,

Quite simple answer…a single payer insurance plan for all Americans, to be paid for by a combination of general revenue and targeted payroll deductions for all employees, somewhat akin to the FICA tax. Those who are not working are carried by those who are. The expansion of the risk pool to include the entire population precludes exclusion of people who are currently “uninsurable” (primarily because no private insurer will touch them).

The inclusion of the entire population provides exceptional bargaining power to apply pressure to the Big Med and Big Pharma concerns to lower prices to realistic levels. (Unless we believe that a 50 cent aspirin is really worth $20 in the hospital, for example).

This would also require reversal of the (GOP-led) Congressional giveaways of recent years that prohibits the govt. from bargaining with providers.

Finally, anyone who wishes to engage private insurance, either as primary or supplemental, will be free to do so. Companies that wish to provide health insurance to its employees will remain free to do so, though most corporations and small businesses want out of this more than they want a tax shelter in Bimini. Because the private market will contract so severely, the private insurance companies will have to compete more actively to attract and retain customers with low rates and quality service (which is pretty much not available now).

A final point…private insurance companies spend 15%+ of their overall budget on administrative costs, including extensive efforts to weed out “risks” and deny coverage to their clients. Medicare, on the other hand, spends approximately 2% of their budget on admin. So, who is the more efficient??

By catlady

October 16, 2007 3:38 PM | Link to this

Let’s not try to villianize the trotting out of the poor sick child as unfair when we have the Willie Horton incident and the Terry Schiavo incident brought to us by the other side of the aisle. Both sides are black with tar on this.

If the elderly deserve low cost health care at the end of their lives and productivity, then perhaps our newest, yet to be productive workers also deserve health care. I really do not buy the idea that “children are doing without health care.” They do without immunizations sometimes and dental care and eye checkups perhaps, but when a push comes to a shove they are taken to the ER and seen by a doctor. Frequently an office visit would have sufficed if it had happened in a timely manner, and parents not indulged in magical thinking (if I ignore it, it will get better). Yet we continue to reward that magical thinking by paying for parental neglect/misuse of resources.

It is imperative that we craft policy toward desired objectives, and those that follow the rewards/punishments of the real world. For example, if you choose to have five children you should pay for the health premiums of all five from their birth on (at a discounted rate, if necessary). If you choose to have children but cannot pay the OB/hospital fees at the moment, you should have the amount garnisheed from your wages/welfare/tax refund for the next 40 years, if needs be. Too often we reward or insulate folks from the consequences of their actions. And then we are surprised when they repeat the action!

If SCHIP is available and you choose not to pay the premium (you allot $ for other things like a car payment or cell phone or cable TV), when your child needs care the amount of their care will be deducted from your future earnings until it is paid off. This teaches folks to postpone the gratification of wants in favor of the assumption of responsibility.

We make it all too possible for folks to slide on the public dime. We make too many excuses. In the US, there is NO EXCUSE for people to have children they cannot provide for. There is NO EXCUSE for people to not be educated.

Things that are not free are frequently not valued. People tend to me more responsible about things that cost them money and time.

By Camus

October 16, 2007 3:41 PM | Link to this

jbm

truth’s prose wouldn’t soar if you flung it from an airplane. Come on, show some sense of good taste. The guy wouldn’t make it out of freshman comp with that turgid flood of alliterative adjectivising.

But thanks for establishing your standard for genius…it goes a long way to explaining your affection for the work of President Beady-eyes and the “literature” of Ayn Rand.

seriously. Frau Coulter as Art Buchwald?? Tell me then…Is Wooten Hugh Sidey or Edward Murrow???

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 3:42 PM | Link to this

getalife, getagrip. You don’t want to address chilcren’s health today, but many people here, of various shades of opinion, do. Some of them perceive, or else actually are now having, problems with children’s healthcare. Some of you prefer to address the costly U.S. presence in Iraq. Fine. That discussio, yet again, is taking place. Why mock those who care about the day’s topic? I don’t get it.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 3:42 PM | Link to this

Dear Glenn @ 3:15, given my position that government participation in healthcare has FUBAR, the cure has multiple requirements:

(1) Prohibition, under penalty of death, of sale of any health insurance policies. (2) Abolition of all government programs that pay any funds to any healthcare providers for provision of health-related services. (3) Abolition of medical malpractice as a cause of action in the United States.

The first two criteria are to re-establish “the market” for healthcare in the United States. Three generations of subsidy have wrongly created an entitlement mentality, both of provider and beneficiary. The healthcare professionals need to collect for their services from the people who receive them. My best guess is the third item corrupts the market more than the first two, by compelling massive over-production of services that have little true need, “just to avoid malpractice.”

(4) Recognition that the death rate remains 100%.

Nobody is entitled to live forever, and nobody deserves to pick anyone else’s pocket without limits for the privilege to try.

Thus, the short answer to your broad inquiry, “Which are the medical services that you think should be afforded to every child, one way or the other?” is none. There is nothing more precious about provision of medical services than provision of Ipods.

By Matt

October 16, 2007 3:52 PM | Link to this

Just out of curiosity, jbmlaw, was type of law do you practice?

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 3:54 PM | Link to this

this is fooking priceless

U honestly tell the surrender monkey lefties U’re sneering at them … using deliberately ‘sententious’ aphorisms with an occasional well chosen sparkling epithet and then mix in a sparing spot of alliteration and they still keep on and on and on and on whining and bleating.

GRIND GRIND GRIND …. snigger snigger

keep it coming jbm … these sad hopelessly inadequate wanKKKers have NO IDEA!!

By Shar

October 16, 2007 4:04 PM | Link to this

Glenn @ 3:15 - Again, a neat way of presenting the issue and invite thoughtful comment. I’d take a step backward, though, and ask if we can agree on defining goals and recipients for the program? That way, we have a better chance of reaching agreement on strategies that support the goal.

I’d suggest that the public weal is best served by a healthy population, and that this justifies public outlay. Therefore, in the formative years until majority when children are dependent on adults to (supposedly) make decisions in their best interest, I’d say that preventive and emergency health care should be available to all. Delivery models for preventive care could be simplified to lower costs and encourage participation. Emergency or trauma care, too, should be available to provide the best possible outcome for crisis injuries. Common drugs such as amoxycillin, the near-universal treatement for childhood infections, should be prescribable by nurses and bought in bulk by the government to reduce costs.

To me, the rub comes with long term care of non-citizens and with costs stemming from diseases that are for the most part self-inflicted. For example, I have serious questions about public financing for treatment of adults with smoking-related emphysema or lung disease, or for injuries caused by drunk driving or failure to use safety equipment like seat belts or motorcycle helmets. To me, the risk should be assumed by the person making the choice. For children who are supposedly unable to make wise choices, the parents should shoulder more responsibility for such growing health care problems as childhood obesity, the exponential growth of non-inheirited diabetes, complications from diseases that are easily treatable in their early stages, adolescent pregnancy or injuries resulting from the commission of a crime. Immediate intervention for these, yes, but after that the recipient and their families bear more responsibility in the form of mandatory public service, access to care only through the most cost-effective means (reduced numbers of providers or locations for greatest efficiency) or compulsory training and participation in health maintenance strategies. For the non-citizen, the crisis intervention he or she receives is more than what would be available in most countries of origin. Clinics and emergency rooms should not ask for proof of citizenship but when patients need long term care at taxpayer expense proof of citizenship should be required, and stable patients returned to their home countries.

By Master of Flatulence

October 16, 2007 4:04 PM | Link to this

At 1600 hours 16 October, 2007, I find myself in complete agreement with jbmlaw. I think I just messed myself.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 4:08 PM | Link to this

jbm, in your jurisprudential opinion, is it fair to say that the first thing the rebelious colonists agreed upon was that goverments should be constituted to vouchsafe the God-given right to life, liberty and something called the pursuit of happiness, and that if the Crown failed to sustain the exercise of these rights, then a new government would? Leaving aside the fact that the Declaration is not our controlling charter, is it significant that “life” is preeminent among the rights listed? What can or should the government formed by the colonial federation do now to protect life? Does the answer have anything to do with common provisions for children’s health? What — and this is not a sophomoric pose, as I suspect this is the crux — what is “health” for a child in this country at this time?

By Byron Leftwich

October 16, 2007 4:09 PM | Link to this

Since I don’t have much to do anymore, I’ll weigh in. I agree with jbmlaw. Once docs had to provide services to regular folks making real world wages, the real price of treaments, including drugs,would be set. Hocus pocus cost inflation would vanish and we’d all be better off.

By Lyrical Louie

October 16, 2007 4:14 PM | Link to this

At the risk of not sounding snobby, that Glenn guy could communicate better if he took some of the air out of his prose.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 4:24 PM | Link to this

You’re right, Lyrical Louie. I frequently have a hard time, when I’m addressing something important to me, being precise enough that others understand me to have said what I mean to say, rather than something else. A lot of the denizens of this nether region won’t try in the least to understand what somebody’s else is trying to get across. And since you cotton to the lyrical, Daddy-O, sorry for the dearth of prosody. Didn’t you dig the riff about bottles & barrels, though? I thought it was pretty clever. And besides, jbm, who has a funky sense of humor, likens me to P.J. O’Rourke, so there you go.

By Steve Wills

October 16, 2007 4:26 PM | Link to this

Cnn Just reported that President Bush admitted he wouldn’t have invaded Iraq if he knew now what he didn’t know then. The President plans to give a speech Friday night about his total regret of the Iraqi situation. This coming on the heals of Putin’s bailout of the Iran trip means that high level talks have been made concerning security for all visiting dignitaries to the middle east.

Something’s up folks.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 4:29 PM | Link to this

Where is the gop health care plan Jim?

Is it MIA like lazy fred on the campaign trail?

One thing is for sure, it will increase corporate profits while screwing the people.

Bet on it.

Geez.

By Curious Observer

October 16, 2007 4:32 PM | Link to this

Recognition that the death rate remains 100%.

So let’s repeal the laws against homicides of all kind, since the victims are certain to die anyway. Are you certain, jbmlaw, that you weren’t the voice in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal

By Shar

October 16, 2007 4:32 PM | Link to this

There is an interesting piece by Paul O’Neill on the op-ed page of the New York Times today on the subject of structuring health care. Here’s the link to those who would like to read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/opinion/16oneill.html

By getalife

October 16, 2007 4:33 PM | Link to this

Steve,

I am watching CNN and w will never admit Iraq is a disaster. It is his legacy.

Putin is in Iran making threats toward us attacking Iran.

It is all about the oil.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 4:35 PM | Link to this

Why mock those who care about the day’s topic? I don’t get it.

that’s because U’re an arrogant bloviating dullard wankpig with a decidedly supercilious my prosaic yanKKKee prose better be better than yours teeecher complex!!

getaturd is obsessed with constantly robotically posting one or two puerile lines of Bush/GOP hate haltingly culled from treasonousmoveyourbowels.org … that is getaturd’s only reason to ILLEGALLY keep wasting American oxygen. Its either that or a hopefully completely silent race to see if he can die before the commie killer Castro back in his native Cuba!!

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 4:35 PM | Link to this

Shar, your response is so cool. Feels to me like it works as groundwork for working up the “design parameters” of a good system. I was thrown off by a couple of your assumptions, about who delivers what procedures where, and I also think that jbm’s libertarianism, with which several agree, has to be borne in mind. But this is so much better than starting the discussion with a soggy straw man like horSeCHIP! Wish you’d posted that in the AM.

By Judy

October 16, 2007 4:45 PM | Link to this

Steve Wills @4:26. I saw that report too, but dont know if I trust it. Bush appears to be running from the camera and you cant really make out anything, but we’ll see.

Did you notice Putin’s yellow streak over a mild rumor? Rumors. Hmmmm.

Wasn’t there something about rumors of war leading to the end of time? I dont know, it’s probably all mysticism.

I’ve got a tennis match. Bye.

By Dennis

October 16, 2007 4:45 PM | Link to this

By Glenn October 16, 2007 2:44 PM | “Dennis, agree with you about political rot, but I don’t get the petrocentrism. Oil’s strategically important as hell, perhaps as much so as plutonium. I’m not ashamed of that fact, nor afraid of it. We’ve done a lot of things for oil, but invading Iraq wasn’t one of them.”

I agree about the importance of oil. Disagree on that’s not the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Which, Saddam already being “our boy”, he liked power so much that we could have continued to placate him as we had for so many years before.

Neocons hollered about Saddam’s duplicity of the swaping food for oil, etc., then recently we discover that some of our “good ole boys” in the oil industry were skimming off of the top, too, but after the initial headlines of that, the mainstream media has said very little about it (and Jim Wooten hasn’t said a damned thing).

Laughable, isn’t it, how the Repubs, especially those up for re-election, are abandoning the USS Bush.

You don’t have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 4:46 PM | Link to this

Please post the gop health care plan so I can compare it to Senator Clinton’s.

What’s that?

There is not a gop health care plan?

Are you kidding me, you a bashing her plan and do not have one to propose?

Come on people, STFU!

Geez.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 4:46 PM | Link to this

Yeah, liquidator, I reckon the prose is supercilious sometimes. But that’s OK: I too am an old code-switcher from way back, a stone-cold stylistic amphibian, you sonofabuzzard. What style do you prefer? Any requests? Check with Louie the Lyrical if you must.

By rd

October 16, 2007 4:49 PM | Link to this

Question: if my children qualified for health insurance under SCHIP, do you think my company-sponsored insurance would continue to cover them?

Anyone who knows insurance knows the answer is “No”.

This is an overt attempt by the Democrats to move children from private insurance… which parents and companies are paying for now… to the government payer-plan. This shifts the burden of payment from parents to taxpayers, and places politicians squarely in charge of health care.

By getalife

October 16, 2007 4:50 PM | Link to this

Get back to me when you have a plan to propose, you freaking idiots.

Biased much?

Geez.

By jbm is a condescending...

October 16, 2007 4:51 PM | Link to this

Glenn, at 4:24, I wouldn’t get too excited about the comparison to PJ O’Rourke. jbm thinks TFTT is just “messing” with the left with his obscene, frantic, misogynistic, ugly, racist, etc. etc. twaddle, and thinks Ann Coulter is Art Buchwald. His opinion means very little now. (NOt that it meant much before) TFTT is a genius???? Not even close. But I’m sure he’ll post another rant eviscerating me for this opinion. jbm, you could do so much better, but you choose to defend the undefendable. It’s sad, not eclectic.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 5:00 PM | Link to this

What style do you prefer?

Anything that with even just a hint of (caustic) wit and erudition that abuses/exposes the leftist scum for the venal corrupt appeasers they are!!

By Steve Wills

October 16, 2007 5:02 PM | Link to this

Judy @ 4:45. Putin finally showed up in Russia, but his delay does concern me that he believes wild, unsubstantiated rumors. I wonder who punked him? I wonder if it was a homie who put a video on you tube where he says, “Yo, Putin, I gonna fiddyCent a cap in your azz, word bru.”

You never know, you know?

Turkey is poised to invade Iraq and wipe out those pesky Kurds. It’s about to turn inside out in Iraq. Aint no doubt about it. It’s all the drive by media’s fault for tweeking Turkey’s nose about those swarthy armenians and the genocide that never happened. It was the world wide flu epidemic of 1919 what killed all those armenians in 1915. I’m sure of it.

We are on the precipice of a catastrophe of such monumental proportions, it will make our civil war look like a waltz.

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 5:03 PM | Link to this

getalife, don’t be a bozo. Waxman’s “Iraq Corruption Resolution” (his title!) is just that, a resolution. It gives the sense of the House, which is to say it’s toothless, non-binding claptrap that could only achieve its intent of alienating our crucial ally at a crucial time of danger. Waxman shouldn’t wield the gavel if he can’t count votes in his own committee. The thing went down because too many Democrats saw the backlash from Pelosi’s having had the bad taste and treasonous intent last week to put the Armenian genocide reso on the floor docket. We’re busy trying to work up a plan here that will put SCHIP in the dust, and you’re telling us to take a hike until we wake up to the reality that some serious s**t, such as the Waxman resolution, is going down while Democracy Slept. Egads, getalife.

By Camus

October 16, 2007 5:07 PM | Link to this

Okay wingnuts, one more time…

Putin is in Iran today, he did not cancel his visit in response to the rumors, but went ahead on schedule.

I am no fan of Putin, who is the authoritarian killer Giuliani dreams of becoming. But there are knuckledraggers here who keep repeating Rush-spin about Putin chickening out on his Iran trip, and it just ain’t true. Not that truth has ever been a barrier to the wingnut choristers.

As to jbm’s proposal that all health insurance be outlawed and that doctors may henceforth only compete in a free market, I find this quite interesting. While I agree with you completely (mark that!) that today’s medical professionals are grossly overpaid as a result of their attachment to the insurance teat, I do not believe these people will go quietly. The AMA is the most effective labor union in history, and as the brother-in-law of two highly compensated MDs, I know that they will fight tooth and nail to preserve their advantages.

But the market approach has its advantages. Perhaps reducing compensation will reduce the overall number of doctors sharing the shrunken pie. Likely, the best docs will serve the people who can pay the most, while the incompetent (and newly protected from malpractice actions) will serve the rest. This can only lead to a decline in life expectancy for the less-advantaged, which likely fits in with your Randian vision of a better world. In the end, this approach might serve to reverse the Malthusian curve.

But that’s enough of that. This spasm of comity and bipartisanship has gone on long enough. ;-)

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 5:08 PM | Link to this

**Liquidator”, how’s mine of 5:03 for a start?

By Glenn

October 16, 2007 5:17 PM | Link to this

Camus, yrs of 5:07 and mine of 5:08 make for a fun juxtaposition.

rd, don’t make sense here, with your complete sentences & such. It offends some folks.

By time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

October 16, 2007 5:18 PM | Link to this

Y’all need to be more pithy, direct and mirror back the far left’s mindless obsessive ALWAYS DISHONEST abuse with some panache.

So called name calling - although with the liberal left its simply every day descriptive factual observation - should stretch one’s ‘personal barriers’ - go a wee bit further than U would normally. Soon enough you will have established a more credible cyber persona that conveys a more focused, amusing (for others to read) message that is ranted about by your enemies. Look at how many of the pinko scum have bleated today about what I will reluctantly admit are pretty restrained comments!!

By Steve Wills

October 16, 2007 5:19 PM | Link to this

Gadhafi and Libya have won a seat on the UN security council. The US and Libya are moving closer together in spite of the Lockerbee Pan Am 103 bombing. Oil changes everything.

Putin mentioned the Caspian Sea at his Iran summit. Yes, there’s more oil in the Caspian Sea region than anywhere on earth.

Oil changes everything. Perhaps Iraq was about oil. Perhaps. I dont know, do you know?

Do you know?

By jbm is a condescending...

October 16, 2007 5:25 PM | Link to this

Patting yourself on the back and having one bozo who thinks you are a genius doesn’t make you a genius. You are your own biggest fan, TFTT, but that doesn’t make you Hemingway. The little tricks like “it’s not racist, it’s the truth”, and “so-called name calling-though with the liberal left, its (sic) simply everyday descriptive factual observation” allows you, in your own warped mind, to justify insulting, racist, obscene and mysoginistic comments. All of us, other than jbm, see through it to what you really are. So stretch yourself all you want and enjoy being a bigot. Keep on fooling yourself, though. It’s probably the only way you can stand yourself. Cue the ranting.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 5:29 PM | Link to this

Dear Camus @ 5:06, ha, funniest post of the day, my (of dubious integrity) compliments.

Dear Glenn @ 4:08, notwithstanding that the rights proclaimed as “of the Creator” belonged to individuals and were not to be usurped by the Crown, the significance of Jeffersons trilogy of individual rights actually began life in a different form - as rights to “life, liberty, and property.” The change to a phrase of the day, “pursuit of happiness,” has an explicitly religious origin, in the then-new concept that God did not intend life to be dismal and unpleasant - a rebuke of the Puritannical and socially-controlling early settlers of the US. The odd phrase incorporates not only the right to produce and obtain property, but also the concept of living without the oppression of a controlling government. Not that any of that has anything to do with government picking our pockets to pay medical professionals for their services to social leeches.

I agree that Shar’s argument is internally-sound, and if one accepted her defining principle (that the ends justify the means,) certainly theft of the property of one for benefit of another is jusifiable. Indeed, that is the entire foundation of Rawlsian ethics. Of course, I follow Nozick.

By Jackie

October 16, 2007 5:30 PM | Link to this

@time to liquidate lying leftist lunatic lemmings

I see that you conviently forgot how you wanted to bring my mammy into this discussion. I told you that I would not forget those comments and that you will have to defend yourself from me at all times, LOOKOUT!!!!! As your usual modus operandi, you hit and run then plead not guilty to the discretion. I heard my mammy tell me “…that if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that gets hit yelps.” I think that was a wonderful truism, don’t you? Each and everytime that I am on this blog and you rear your ugly head, I will throw the rock and NOT HIDE MY HAND!!!! As I have said before, YOU ARE LOWER THAN WHALE GRAVY!!!!!

By Steve Wills

October 16, 2007 5:30 PM | Link to this

Camus, it depends on whether you listen to fox news, cnn, or bbc. the bbc said that putin delayed his trip to Iran until russian secret service KGB agents could check out the summit. The threat has been narrowed down to a you tube video some kurdish mercenary put out there last week, it loosely is translated as, “Yo, Putin, I gonna fiddyCent a cap in your sorry azz, word bru..”

Simply click on the quote to get to the you tube video and watch it yourself.

By Doom

October 16, 2007 5:40 PM | Link to this

You know, as I sit here wondering whether Putin really did believe that some kurdish renegade was truly going to attempt to fiddycent a cap in his sorry azz, my mind wanders to the global flooding of nukular fissionable uranium which al queda and the taliban are doing everything they can to steal and sell to the highest bidder, like to the blackwater mercenaries who are sure to follow us home from iraq, in fact, Iraq demanded today that the Blackwater Cowboys be sent home to the USA. Hell, we dont want them.

That’s 4sure, that’s 4dangsure.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 5:40 PM | Link to this

Dear Matt @ 3:52, I am one of Salieri’s “mediocrities.” I regard myself as a general practitioner, excluding only contested divorces (one of my few immoral stands) and patents (for lack of competence.) My best skills are in a narrow area of financial regulatory law. Don’t worry, you’ll never run into me - I rarely do more than one trial per year, and otherwise work only by referral.

By Doom

October 16, 2007 5:52 PM | Link to this

Paul Simon is on CNN promoting the SCHIP. Hasn’t there been enough water under the bridge over his own troubled waters?

Bush has issued an apology to Iraq for invading the country. This was in direct response to Iraq’s demand that Blackwater be withdrawn, which aint gonna happen cause Cheney gets a cut of Blackwater money.

Bush is going to give a speech tonight and ask the country if we should pull out of Iraq. He’ll ask for a show of hands…….sounds like the prez, doesn’t it?

bwa

By catlady

October 16, 2007 5:53 PM | Link to this

When was Alexander Hamilton the President? (See AJC print, p. A9)

By jbmlaw - Works out of his 1991 Ford LTD - a former police car, then a taxi, now a law office

October 16, 2007 5:55 PM | Link to this

Another failed lawyer, oh, the disappointment you must have been to your family!

By Curious Observer

October 16, 2007 5:59 PM | Link to this

Why don’t you come right out and say you’re an insurance company lawyer, jbmlaw? “Narrow area of financial regulatory law” indeed. You show up to defend one-sided insurance contracts against litigants who feel they’ve been shafted.

By Doom

October 16, 2007 6:03 PM | Link to this

Cnn just reported that Bush has apologized to Iraqis for invading their country. He’s going to speak to the country tonight and ask for a show of hands as to whether we should pull out.

Bush is bush.

By jbmlaw

October 16, 2007 6:03 PM | Link to this

Dear Curious @ 5:59, close, I write them.

By Doom

October 16, 2007 6:12 PM | Link to this

Bush, speaking to the american people on television: “Give me a show of hands if you want the US to pull out of Iraq….I count zero….I’m stayin’ the course..”

bush is a lovable president

By mamasue

October 17, 2007 1:43 PM | Link to this

wow. this debate showed compassionate conservatism at its best. People sure can get mean-spirited when they are anonymous. BTW, I am never on the clock billing anyone when I’m reading these rants - how about you? No child left behind, except those whose parents don’t get coverage from their employer or make enough to afford private. like mine for instance. I don’t expect any of you freaks to care about us, but yes indeed, I for one will be voting “medicrat.”