State should stop overseeing health care market

Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > January > 04 > Entry

By Jim Wooten | Friday, January 4, 2008, 09:11 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For 9 1/2 years, Dr. Phillip Brown of Thomaston has been one of four general surgeons in his community called to provide emergency care at the local 100-bed hospital. Most times, he gets paid something.

But 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, he doesn’t.

The hospital doesn’t either. But the hospital and others across Georgia get tax breaks and reimbursement, indirectly at least, through a state fund intended to compensate them for the services they provide the uninsured. “In the last six months, we’ve worked something out with the hospital where they reimburse us something,” says Brown, a Blackshear native. For most of the decade, however, he got nothing. And, unlike hospitals or a hardware store that wasn’t paid for merchandise, he and other physicians got no tax break either.

My intent here, though, is not to make the case that physicians, whatever their practice or specialty, are in need of relief. It is, instead, to lament the horrid misuse of government authority that adds untold millions to our health care bills. In this instance, it concerns Brown’s livelihood, his freedom to compete in a perfectly safe and appropriate setting and the state’s role in a dispute between his specialty — general surgery — and the hospitals that want to prevent competition from free-standing ambulatory surgery centers.

At issue is whether general surgeons are considered a single specialty, as is the case with urologists, orthopedists, dermatologists and others. If so, they are permitted under Georgia’s archaic certificate of need law to open free-standing outpatient surgery centers. Every other state in the nation — every state except Georgia — recognizes general surgery as a specialty. Georgia is the lone holdout.

Legislation to declare general surgeons to be a distinct specialty would have passed the General Assembly last year but for a well-timed whisper campaign that, if approved, the outpatient treatment centers would perform abortions — something general surgeons don’t do. But it nevertheless served the purpose.

The board of the State Department of Community Health adopted a rule change in December allowing the centers. On Monday, the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals sued to block the rule.

All of this seems petty and bureaucratic — and it is.

Without question, general surgeons should be free to open centers. But opponents argue that allowing that would drive struggling hospitals out of business and make health care more expensive.

That is, in fact, the premise of “certificate of need” regulations, first enacted by New York state in 1964. A decade later, the federal government required all states to certify the need for a new hospital or nursing home. Before existing facilities could expand or buy expensive equipment, they were likewise required to get state permission.

At the time health care costs were running out of control. And every physician was a free agent in adding to the tab. Regulators and Congress decided the way to contain inflation was to control beds and equipment. Mostly it didn’t work, and, under President Ronald Reagan, the federal CON requirement was repealed. In the following decade, 14 states repealed CON laws, though, as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes, they retained some procedures for regulating costs and service duplication.

For free-market Reagan Republicans, the course for Georgia when the GOP took control of the Statehouse should have been to work aggressively to get the state out of the business of regulating the health care marketplace. Every bias and every action by the General Assembly and by the executive branch should be to back the state out of micromanaging health care markets and toward promoting competition. Battles like the one between hospitals and surgeons should not be before bureaucrats or the General Assembly in the first place.

Supporters of heavy-handed government regulation wish to force surgeons to subsidize hospitals by surrendering what should be their right to deliver their services in any safe setting patients might choose. So, in effect, they are singled out and forced by the state to leave their earning potential on the hospital’s balance sheets. Why not require that of the man who installs furnaces in hospitals, too?

On CON Republicans pick up where Democrats left off, policing markets and deciding arbitrarily how much competition a powerful and entrenched political player has to tolerate. Ronald Reagan? Who’s he?

Permalink | Comments (159) | Post your comment | Categories: Column

Comments

By Luckoduh

January 5, 2008 8:04 AM | Link to this

Thanks Jim for giving us another excellent topic.

Isn’t it amazing that the liberals want to exercise absolute control over every function of your life but then they whine when we spy on our enemies?

And that “spying” on the enemy harms no one except some al Qaeda terrorists but lib meddling in health care harms almost everyone involved?

It is really, really sick when you think about it.

~~~~~

{{{{If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather - Barack Obama will handily win here…..By comparison sHrillary was twice booed. The first time was when It said she has always and will continue to work for “change for you. The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clintoon said: “The there are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second,” and here Clintoon was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from It’s own supporters. “Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”}}}}

Now it is starting to get pathetic and almost makes you feel sorry for IT.

Almost.

~~~~~

Look at the front page of the Urinal litter box liner, also at their website and then think back the last couple days and tell me, are these Code Pinko libs so far into the bag for Shrillary Clintoon that they cannot even acknowledge the significance of Obama’s historical election victory?

This is almost like the coverage good news in Iraq gets.

Are you people embarrassed of Obama?

~~~~~

Hahahahaha:

{{{{NATION IN BRIEF Thousands of Iraqis went home- Nearly 50,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in the final 3 1/2 months of 2007, according to new data from Red Crescent relief workers. The new report said the decrease in violence that followed the buildup of American troops over the past year had been a major factor. But Red Crescent official Said Hakki said the main reason is that “the majority of them are broke or their visas have expired.”- Urinal}}}}

Yeah, they maxed out their credit cards in the refugee camps, I’m so sure.

And just imagine for a moment, the tight security at the Syrian border “checking visas,” Iraqis in this line and al Qaeda in this line.

The libs at the Atlanta Urinal are so quick to pass along enemy propaganda that they don’t even realize how ridiculous it is.

Or how ridiculous it makes them, for that matter.

And look at the section title, Nation in Brief, the libs are so tore up over the Clintoon debacle, they’ve lost track of which part of the world they’re in.

~~~~~

Look at the libs at the Urinal take full advantage of the annual CHRISTmas temporary employee layoffs:

{{{{WHAT’S STINGING THE ECONOMY? Job picture gloomy: Private hires down, unemployment up, recession feared-Whiny Times}}}}

Always feared but never happens.

Remember all the extra store clerks you saw as you shopped for presents in November and December, see if you can find them now.

A normal every year art of the business cycle that Code Pinko spins for political purposes.

These liberals are such liars, total propagandists, no wonder nobody believes a thing they say anymore.

~~~~~

Ahhh, lib propaganda in the Urinal Vent:

{{{{If you think the scientists are perpetrating a hoax about global warming, are the 10,000 calibrated thermometers they read worldwide in on the plot, too?- Whiny Times}}}}

Try reading a little, dimwit:

{{{{Apparently they realized that many of the automated weather stations they were using to collect data were placed in areas that caused the thermometers to read temps that were higher than the actual temperatures occuring at that time. They came out and said that since 1997 only 5 or 6 of those years were the warmest on record since records started being recorded. For example, some of the thermometers being used were sitting on roof tops and some were even close to air conditioning exhaust vents. I believe NASA said that 1936 is still in the top 3 warmest years on record. So, at this point, it is hard to believe anything the government is telling us about record years for temperatures. Now, of course, this was not widely covered by the national media because it did not line up with there agenda of pushing global warming onto the American public!}}}}

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 8:22 AM | Link to this

Yes, it is sick, you two et al, though I never thought to juxtapose as you have done, Luckoduh. Very shrewd of you to “zoom out” from Jim’s column, and view it from a more vast vantage. Let me toy with that some more.

The kind of social-pychological colonization that liberals used to perpetrate under the rubric of the “helping professions”, they now increasingly perpetrate in the guise of environ-mental-ism, which similarly arms them with a broad and deep reach into every department of our lives. Even medicine is being recast in an environmentalist light.

It is more catholic than even the outbreak, some 20 years ago, of cybernetic thinking, in which persons are so often reduced to metaphors drawn from the semiconductor industry that eventually we find ourselves used by our tools instead of using them. This desperate gasping aspiration for some allegorical category under which to structure our lives—-thereby to lend meaning and purpose to them—-is precisely religious, and a response to the Nietschean vacuum, Love Thy Fate. It is dread of that. It is despair itself.

All in all, a rather counterproductive circumstance in which to help others in medical need.

By Luckoduh

January 5, 2008 8:29 AM | Link to this

News from Iraq that is too good for the Urinal:

{{{{Coalition forces detained 18 suspects today during operations targeting al-Qaeda networks in central Iraq.}}}}

{{{{North of Samarra Coalition forces captured a wanted individual believed to be an associate of the terrorist network in the region. The suspect is allegedly involved in weapons facilitation and media and propaganda operations in the Tigris River Valley. Reports also indicate the wanted individual is associated with a suspect detained during an operation Nov. 15 for his ties to al Qaeda in Iraq senior leadership. The individual identified himself to the ground force and was subsequently detained along with three other suspects.}}}}

{{{{Thousands of families in eastern Baghdad soon will have their neighborhoods free of raw sewage in the streets. Iraqi construction workers are completing a $30 million sewer project in Kamaliya, southeast of Sadr City. About 36 miles of sewer pipe has been installed, and 10 pump stations were built, with the largest having the capacity to move more than 2,000 cubic meters of water per hour.}}}}

{{{{“Residents there appreciate the improvements taking place,” said Iraqi engineer Mustafa Haddad, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “For over two years, we’ve been working on this project, and the community has been very supportive. They were using slit trenches and wading through raw sewage to get to their homes, a definite health risk.”}}}}

{{{{Haddad is the deputy resident engineer of the corps’ Loyalty Office, located south of Sadr City. More than 20 Iraqi engineers work out of the office, overseeing more than $125 million in infrastructure improvements in eastern Baghdad, including school and hospital renovations, electric network upgrades, road paving and new water-treatment facilities.}}}}

{{{{The Salah ad Din governor, the deputy governor, and the provincial director of police, along with other leaders from the city of Samarra attended a joint ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the Samarra Dam Bridge Jan. 3.}}}}

{{{{For the past eight months, the entrances to the city of Samarra were essentially closed due to the levels of violence. Commerce into and within the city stopped. The re-opening of the bridge and other entry points is a direct result of improving security.}}}}

{{{{�The presence of the Salah ad Din province governor in the city of Samarra shows the people here that the provincial government is working for them, and is hearing first-hand some of the grievances from the people of Samarra,� Kurtzman said.}}}}

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 8:41 AM | Link to this

More whining from conservatives about a problem they caused, while attempting to foist blame on “libs”.

Jim admits the problem would have been solved last year in one of the few moments of clarity and real problem-solving by the General Assembly. Then the social-conservative wackos were easily manipulated by well-placed rumors about abortion they could have easily figured out were untrue, if only they weren’t such hysterical nutcases who flew into a rage when fed stupid rumors.

There’s a reason right-wing nutjobs cling to creationism, cheerleading for senseless wars, diagnosis of medical conditions by political fiat (see:Terri Schiavo), denial of global warming, etc. It’s because they hate to apply logic and prefer to accept what they’re told without reasoning.

So why is a right-wing journalist complaining about right-wing legislators who ran over the cliff like lemmings, carrying doctors,hospitals, and patients with them? Oh, that’s right, this is Pander To The Conservatives Land, where everything is a liberals fault, even when caused by conservative looneyism. Well, y’all just sit here in the mess created by dummies you elected, who love to rant about baby murder even when it’s got nothing to do with the subject at hand. What a bunch of tools—-literally.

By Technical Glitch

January 5, 2008 8:52 AM | Link to this

Wooten’s very awkwardly expressed, yet oversimplified meditation on medication is not what it seems. Notice there is no mention of the Insurance Companies who drafted every inch of these “horrid” (sic) free market crutches?

Wooten is setting the background music for the new Republican approach to the November2Remember. (sic)

Log cabin John Birch diehards serve as the counterpoint to the beat-box campaign ballad: “talk about change, talk about healthcare… MmPhh butta Pyuuh Mmphhft… Talk about Change Talk about Healthcare…. MmPhh butta Pyuuh Mmphhft….”

Wooten’s phrasing is very awkward today. He may have written this at Miller Time. (hic)

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 9:01 AM | Link to this

Aquagirl yoo fun-nee. I gechoo back so’day. Yoo-see.

By Luckoduh

January 5, 2008 9:05 AM | Link to this

{{{{By Aquagirl January 5, 2008 8:41 AM More whining from conservatives about a problem they caused, while attempting to foist blame on �libs�.}}}}

What do you think Jim is trying to say?

On CON Republicans pick up where Democrats left off, policing markets and deciding arbitrarily how much competition a powerful and entrenched political player has to tolerate.

Whether you like it or not, democrats created the problem.

The whole point of Jim’s column is the question of will Republicans fix the problem or will they carry on the lib legacy.

Two weeks ago, I was on this blog blaming Bushie for the improperly named “energy bill,” which was devised solely to diminish America’s energy, I didn’t blame the libs, Bushie had the veto and didn’t use it.

I blamed Bushie for the outrageous McCain-Feingold violation of the First Amendment, which we will be hearing a lot more of as McCain rises in the polls.

Look back last year in the archives and see if I didn’t denounce Bushie’s very name over that immigration “amnesty” travesty and you can thank people like me that the US is totally flooded with illegals this year.

Harriet Myers?

Alberto Gonzales?

I am not the partisan toady that you whine about, aquacarryinggirl, but now that I think about it, when have you ever criticized the democrats?

Care to talk about that?

By Cheney's Okay

January 5, 2008 9:16 AM | Link to this

Wrong, Aquagirl. Global warming will cost money to fix. Taxes do hurt growth. Economic history is great way to predict the future. God may exist, but without Caesar, we’d have the devil to pay.

There’s nothing wrong with conservative values.

There’s only one issue: War. Who really sponsored Iraq? All the evidence says Cheney. The Plame plume illuminates what he knew and when he knew it. Yellow cakes. Rocket tubes. Mushroom clouds. Look how funny those words seem now. Something horrendous was done under the cover of our 911 stupor. Someone saw opportunity. Never before have the real powers governing our world been so near the surface in the reflections on Cheney’s face. These people are not stupid. They had to know about Churchill’s 1920 Iraq War. They had to know about Sunni vs Shia. They couldn’t have assumed we’d waltz in and waltz out.

They didn’t care, they saw a mountain of gold and who among us could have resisted. But who are they? Who are they?

Who are they.

By Anon-a-Comment

January 5, 2008 9:16 AM | Link to this

Aquagirl, excellent, excellent, excellent!

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 9:16 AM | Link to this

Technical Glitch,

Please inform the Junior Birdmen at Kos that they’ve got a technical glitch in their style book, under the heading “Republican”, as your phrase “Log cabin John Birch diehards” doesn’t apply to reality, much less to Jim Wooten and his readership. Log Cabin Republicans are gay, and politically moderate, Republicans, an important grouping within the GOP. The John Birch Society is reduced to approximately 17 nanogenarian widows in Fallbrook, California. The Society’s purpose always has been to serve as a claxon over against Communist influence in U.S. domestic affairs. Such influence, in the form of Chinese industrial (and other) espionage, is, unlike the Birch Society, very much alive and kicking. Jim Wooten and the more conservative of his frequent bloggers, to my knowledge bear no likeness to either the Log Cabin clubs or the Birch Society.

Know thine enemies.

By Craig also

January 5, 2008 9:42 AM | Link to this

Amen Aquagirl. Conservatives push through brain dead ill conceived plans, then whine about libs when they fail.

By jbmlaw

January 5, 2008 9:43 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. Jim today proposes a legislative change that increases freedom, at the expense of those who would constrain freedom. Other than the controlling enslavers, who would object?

By Redneck Convert

January 5, 2008 9:43 AM | Link to this

Well, I see this truck driver Luckodull is back in town posting books and raving again. He needs to get with TFTT and this Captain guy for treatment. I can’t make heads or tails of half the stuff he’s saying.

I’m with the politicans that voted against abortion. We need to make sure every baby gets had. Course, after they are had they ain’t our problem, so we shouldn’t be asked to pay for guvmint programs like Peachcare and welfare and Medicaid and stuff like that. The important thing is that the babys get had. After that they can be poor all they want. It says right in the Bible we will always have the poor with us. So if God wants those babys to be poor and do without, we got no business innerfearing. Its the American Way.

Anyway, I know we got a bunch of doctors just itching to set up a corner store and do abortions for women. So Wooten is flat out wrong. We need to nip this stuff in the bud. This ain’t no time for Free Innerprize for doctors. Its a awful thing when Free Innerprize runs right into the Right to Life. Us godly conservatives get all bound up about it.

Well, I got to go out and get some pork skins to go with the beer I laid in for football today. Speaking of bound up, Joe Bill is over his little stink problem and will be coming over later on. If the missus don’t run him out of the trailer again. And Jim Earl will show up. Have a good weekend everybody.

By getalife

January 5, 2008 9:49 AM | Link to this

Just when you think there is no intellectual life on this blog, along comes “Aquagirl” to correct this thought.

Such intellectual honesty is much needed in speaking truth to these wingnuts on this so called “common sense con” blog.

It must be too difficult for these whackjobs to actually think, so they take the easy way out, never blame their own lunatics but blame the libs instead.

This is not common sense, it common laziness and intellectual dishonesty in its purist form.

By Glenda

January 5, 2008 9:51 AM | Link to this

Wrong, Loogie Magnet, the John Birch Log Cabin reference is a generic way of saying that the vestiges of the Republican base that hasn’t fled will never flee. Thus, it serves as the counterpoint, (part of the entire music), to the new beat box (which is saying that the spin will be toward new voters), and that will form the new approach being developed to earn a GOP win in nov.

You’re not stupid, in fact you’re IQ is probably higher than mine, which is 146 ( I peeked in the 8th grade. I peaked in the 8th grade.)

I wouldn’t swing at everything if I were you. You’re problem is that you dont have your finger on the lexiconical value of a phrase like Log Cabin, or John Birch. the actual definition, which you so obsequiously googled, is irrelevent. It’s what an average reader would absorb about my message. I know about the expressive power of those phrases to mold a sentiment. You dont. You’re almost blind to the power of words, and most of your comments are spaghetti. You try to be something you’re clearly not. Look at duhng’s loitering longueurs. It’s torture to wade through them. Maybe if he kept using italics, which now I’m really sorry I teased him about, then people would still read him. But nobody does. You see, the italics were cool, and it was fun to behold it all.

You’re not a bad guy, in fact you’re quite likable. I’d hate to be forced to launch a loogie everytime I see you. Why go there? There’s plenty of targets for both of us, without either wasting ammo on each other. Here’s a deal: We’ll spit this city on hocks and drool. Spit this City… Spit this City….. We’ll Spit this city on hocks and drool……(I loved that song)

Jefferson Starship Gracie Slick, the once queen of rock and roll. What a babe she was in 1967. No one’s ever quite been able to touch her. Stevie Nicks took over from her in the 70’s and no one has quite been able to touch her. Then I gotta say it went to Chrissy Hines, but she was more of a duchess than a queen. If you open it up, how about Alison Krause as a woman of your dreams? Voice. Face. whoa.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this

Luckoduh, I have criticized Democrats, but you’re right that it’s infrequent here, since I usually stick to the topic at hand—Jim’s column, a usually unapolagetic screed blaming liberals/Hillary/Democrats for all evils.

I have critiqued liberals for their bizarre reasoning of thinking we have a implied right of privacy (birth control, abortion) under the Constitution, yet no explicitly stated 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

I’d call myself a libertarian (with a small L) so there are many points of disagreement for me with left-wingers. However, “conservatives” to me are worse. They claimed Bush as their own, who combines the worst of both worlds—tax and spend like a Democrat, complete trampling of the Constitution, and a nanny state to boot. At least liberals care in a twisted illogical and immature way about others. Conservative/Republicans are for screwing everyone else over and pretending—even to themselves— they have family values. Plus, they think Jesus is their precinct captain. The hubris involved is overwhelming. And very, very dangerous.

By Getalife

January 5, 2008 10:05 AM | Link to this

Getawipe, for once you compliment the right blogger. Aquagirl’s comment was fun to read, easy to read, and actually had some almost original insights.

But you ruined it, getaknife, with hatespeak. There’s no room for hate in the democratic change.

Conservatives are not whackos, or nutjobs, or what is that too-clever-4my-loogie original word you always use: “wingnut”? WOW, I cant believe how clever you are you uber-pudwit.

We have to work together. You dont have to like the right, but you have to respect your fellow americans.

I’ve noticed that you regularly say the wrong thing, with the wrong tone, and the wrong politic. You’re the problem, not the left, not the right, but you.

Kweeck Thwoop!

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 10:19 AM | Link to this

Conservatives aren’t all wackos or nutjobs—but they’ve let wackos and nutjobs run the Republican party. I have no more sympathy forn them than I do the idiot “flaggots” (as Neal Boortz refers to them)..where were they when the KKK was co-opting the Stars and Bars? Own your stuff or shut up. And “conservatives” are in heavy denial about what they’ve allowed other “conservatives” to do. Raise taxes (on those so-precious unborn, by running up a deficit) tell others what to do, expand the government, and use social engineering to buy votes. And as I pointed out before, they’re meaner than getalife on his meanest days.

What’s “conservative” about those things?

By AmVet

January 5, 2008 10:20 AM | Link to this

After the results in the Iowa caucuses, the imploding GOP’s “problems” are becoming more and more evident.

Huckabee’s “resurrection” is BAD news for them. He obviously has a huge electability problem, yet he will keep hope alive among the fervent religionists and other neolithic era fans. Bit…I kinda like the guy anyway!

Romney is showing sheer desperation by cranking up a Rovian-like smear machine. He must believe, like the current CIC, he simply cannot win without doing so. But even then he’s DOA as a quasi-Christian. If he played the whole thing smarter..but, then there’s the rub. He’s desperately trying to show he’s a good “conservative” and in 2008 that may well be the kiss of death.

Rudy? An enigma with all of the wrong connections (think Podhoretz) and a social RINO. More bad news for the “conservatives”. Yelling 9/11 every chance he gets may save him, but it is doubtful.

Thompson, barely worth comment, but I’m sorry to say, is a flat out joke and an embarrassment to the GOP. To paraphrase Dean Wormer, fat, dumb and disinterested is no way to go through an election.

Ron Paul remains resilient and relevant and dramatically shows the glaring “holes in the GOP’s fossil record”. And this totally PO’s the “faithful”. How dare ANY Republican be against the botched invasion/occupation? It borders on sedition. But is GREAT TV!

John McCain is the straw that may well break the elephant’s back. The ONLY man, IMHO, with the cred, experience and values to lead the nation. This, in spite of some major problems for the left and right. But isn’t that exactly what we need? Someone who is not a slave to either extreme?

His support for the surge does not sit well with us who have been against this Iraq clusterf@ck from before the beginning. And his lack of Republican intransigence sells very poorly with the “base”.

That is why he SHOULD win the nomination.

But I really doubt the GOP will get it’s act together in time do so…

By getalife

January 5, 2008 10:23 AM | Link to this

But then comes the wanker, to prove that this blog needs more intellect.

The unity thing worked for Obama, so what happened?

Well, willard is now using this argument and so is the leader of Kenya.

I guess we can call that intellectual stealing.

I prefer Edwards argument in fighting change. Corporations are running our government and they are not going to stop doing this with hope and unity.

It will take force using all the Presidential power w and cheney have to force this change.

And it will take strong leadership that will fight and not back down.

By Another taxpayer

January 5, 2008 10:35 AM | Link to this

Well, Jim.

The doctors certainly got paid by us — along with the hospital and the insurance company. They will continue to get paid for many years to come — a little bit each month, that is. Alas, we were but another victim of the system. The system that if it ain’t broke I don’t want to know what broke is. That is the definition of broke, that is. The problem with us is we have faith. We have faith in a broken system that cares less and less as the years go by. Why? Because what was once an asset is transforming into a social tumor. We’ve grown too big in our needs with age. Mere 20% yearly increases in insurance premiums are no longer sufficient to maintain the lifestyles of the rich and infamous. But I ramble. I need a glass of wine. I hope no one is watching. Aaahhhhh! I feel the stress slowly flowing out. Now then. Thumb to pinky and haummmmmmm.

By Captain Freedom

January 5, 2008 10:42 AM | Link to this

THE Captain fears that the Islamopansie getalife is on to something. He must be stopped.

THE Captain has long insisted that We True Belief Warriors need to play up the cross-the-aisle comity angle since We are certain to be turned out of office by the 70% of the American public that has been siezed by irrational Bush hatred. At the same time, We need to be careful not to let the Dumbocrats now that the only way to wrest control of society from Our Righteous Hands is to fight Us like wild beasts on every point.

THE Captain is confident that as long as Good Democrats like Joe Lieberman believe in “bi- partisanship” that We of the Godly Old Party will continue to bend them over the negotiating table and deliver a proper right rogering to these stooges, emptying Our Righteous Firehose of Freedom into their astonished backsides.

It is the Right Thing to do.

By DemDems4Ever

January 5, 2008 10:46 AM | Link to this

Aquagirl 8:41 AM

Once elected there is no difference in Conservatives and Liberals - the differences only appear during elections.

Our elected officials act in their best interest. All of your hyperbole aimed at Conservatives can also be said of Liberals. For example, Hillary Clinton, to broaden her appeal, has become a church-going believer. No self-respecting Socialist would do such a thing if not to garner votes.

Your comments seem to often be laced with the Communist Kool Aid phraseology such as:

“There�s a reason right-wing nutjobs cling to creationism, cheerleading for senseless wars, diagnosis of medical conditions by political fiat (see:Terri Schiavo), denial of global warming, etc.”

Perhaps there is a reason Left Wing Loonies ignore the once popular theory of a coming “Ice Age” but cling to the equally absurd global warming.

The point is that all of your ranting does not change the simple fact that we have created a political process in which the only concern for the candidate is election and the only concern once elected is to stay in office (power).

One more thing, when Jim supports the Conservatives in office the Left here criticizes his partisanship and when he writes of the failures of the Conservatives he is once again criticized by the Left. Apparently you Lefties come here only to be “the angry opponent” regardless of the topic.

I know, I know, you claim to be a libertarian (small l at your request).

By getalife

January 5, 2008 10:52 AM | Link to this

Exactly Captain,

The way Reid and Pelosi negotiate is to cave to corporate interests.

This so called leadership should be replaced with real fighters like Dodd and Waxman.

Sure the unity thing would work if all Congress was purged. Waiting decades for this happen is ridiculous.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this

No it isn’t a way so to refer, PoFo, and yours just now is a ludicrous fig leaf. It’s as silly as if I were to suggest that Cynthia runs with the red-diaper Jewish Stalinists and Weather Underground wing of the Democratic Party. What in hell?

Aquagirl can’t manage to call for conservative rationalism without flaming straw men. Aside from Creationism, which is lunacy, the issues Aquagirl lists as exemplars of GOP irrationalism are in fact some of the most alarmingly disgusting examples of the magical materialism increasingly identified by voters with the Democratic Party. (Anthropogenic global warming, the mortal inconvenience of the very existence of Terry Schiavo, etc.)

While you clever people are busy congratulating yourselves for Aquagirl’s mindlessness, meanwhile Jim has put a damned important issue on the table. It’s an issue that’s both unusually non-partisan and well known to all of you, who have posted highly intelligent things about it in the past. That issue is: whither the American system of delivery, of healthcare or of any other public sector service? So far jbm is the only one to pick up on this. Would y’all please get on with it?

[Rudy 08]

P.S. Your cracks about IQ are good&funny, esp. as you and I well know what a scam that whole industry is. Also the Glitch-y “(hic)” in place of (sic). Spiffing, that one.

P.P.S. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on Kenya sometime when it’s not digressive.

By Getalife

January 5, 2008 11:01 AM | Link to this

Aquagirl, come up for air, dont confuse Rushannities with real life conservatives. Showbiz, ratings, it makes for a controversial host and damn good tv or radio, and so what, wouldn’t you say, “Libs are commies” on your radio show for 15 million dollars a year? It’s showbiz. Dont confuse the actors with the person.

We have to look past our favorite tv stars and dig in and compromise a solution to our country’s problems. There’s nothing new, read any page of any american history book and we’ve been here fifty times before.

whatever. just stop the hatespeak and lets work out a deal about getting people some healthcare insurance. that we can afford: Insurance.

The war? We aint never gonna git outta iraq, sorry. We’re there. U dont have to love it, but dont expect to leave it.

Taxes stunt growth. Entitlements stunt productivity. Green is too expensive. These are facts proven over and over and over. Dont let your blind hatred of Cheney, (and nobody hates that fathead worse than me), delude you about the proven ways to achieve economic and political growth. Growth! We grow or we die.

People are human, and you cant call your neighbor a whackjob and expect him to cooperate about the leaves blowing all over both yards all winter long. YOu have to embrace each other. You have to appreciate his right to his leaves and his raking patterns. You have to devise strategies that lend themselves to getting the leaves where you think they should go.

Change.

By Getalife

January 5, 2008 11:08 AM | Link to this

Glenn, your comment was very funny and illustrative of a peculiarly poetic point about the malapropisms which have ruined our (kweech thwoop)

.gotcha, sucker. You read it and didn’t see it coming. Got you suckah!

Is there no end to my mastery over this blog? (but I’m not happy, not when there’s a woman like alison krause out there singin’ and i’m not part of her world……)

By getalife

January 5, 2008 11:11 AM | Link to this

Imposter at 11:01,

I don’t captitalize my name honey.

get your own handle girlfriend.

There’s only room for one queen here.

Geez.

By getalife

January 5, 2008 11:15 AM | Link to this

cons do take rush and his brother seriously.

They have cranked up their smear machine on Gomer Pyle.

They call him liberal. The one stop, mindless, intellectual laziness, shop for smearing an opponent.

It is way beyond pathetic but the wingnuts in Iowa did not take them seriously and chose Gomer.

NH does not have that many wingnuts like Iowa. McOld and Clinton should win NH.

By getalife

January 5, 2008 11:22 AM | Link to this

Clinton should win, but do love me some Obama.

I hear dark meat tastes sweeter than white meat.

Obama can be my running mate anyday.

By getalife

January 5, 2008 11:29 AM | Link to this

Well, the 2 year old child like intellect is back.

Off to better blogs.

By getalife's wanker

January 5, 2008 11:32 AM | Link to this

Bye jacka$$!

By getalife

January 5, 2008 11:36 AM | Link to this

GFY pf.

By getalife's wanker

January 5, 2008 11:41 AM | Link to this

You wish you could do that don’t you sweetie?

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 11:45 AM | Link to this

Aside from Creationism, which is lunacy, the issues Aquagirl lists as exemplars of GOP irrationalism are in fact some of the most alarmingly disgusting examples of the magical materialism increasingly identified by voters with the Democratic Party.

It was the uber-Repub Santorum who diagnosed Schiavo from videotapes, and please don’t even pretend the Republicans weren’t the ones exploiting that case for political profit. Her brain was mush. Republicans constantly tried to get around scientific diagnosis, the sanctity of marriage, and the rule of law to pander to the wackjobs.

The “Creationism lunacy” is fully embraced by the current darling of the Republicans, Huckabee. Name one major Democratic candidate who has a personal belief that humans lived with dinosaurs. The entire basis of modern biology is denied by some major Republican candidates.

Glenn, you may disagree with global warming, but there is a sizable group of scientists who agree with the idea. And when I say “sizable” that means a larger group than the Discovery Institute.

Much more than liberals, current conservatives show a disturbing tendency to ignore scientific evidence if it collides with their worldview. Abstinence-only sex ed doesn’t work? So what, keep teaching it anyway. The head of the CDC wants to include remarks on possible health implications of global warming, without mentioning causes? Gag her.

That, folks, is wacko, and getalife can squelch his distaste for such idiocy, I won’t. I don’t want our great-grandchildren speaking Chinese because of sloppy “conservatism”.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 11:59 AM | Link to this

don’t worry, get. most of us know when you’re jacked. PoFo, I hate Alison Krauss; she refuses to marry me. I’m not sure which bit of low legerdemain you’ve pulled off this time, but it’s a pity that a cynical writer so adept should find amusement simply in drawing attention to oneself and in luring fish to flash at artificials. You’re more than capable of reeling them in, so why not do so? Just pick a nom de qwerty and convince. You’re at your best when you did what you did at 11:01.

About which, incidentally, it’s a shame that you find that the world finds green too expensive. I don’t doubt it, and it’s a shame. If they’d only stick with it, then sooner, rather than later, it will become an everybody-wins-but-big-oil proposition, and the most economic way to displace the diseconomic, no?

But again, a digression. Would someone please meet Jim’s challenge:

Whether and how to change the structure of delivery of health care services, public and private?

By getalife

January 5, 2008 12:05 PM | Link to this

BTW pf,

I hate to burst your bubble but you are not funny.

Not even close to funny. Give your lame, pathetic act a rest, it is old and tiring like a child clinging my leg.

Stop humping my leg toetapping freak.

Take it back to yahoo loser. If you were on stage, I would heckle and boo you off stage but I bet you get that with your act.

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 12:17 PM | Link to this

My goodness, PoFo is actually posting for getalife today. Sometimes he even makes sense, that’s why I know it isn’t getalife. But PoFo? If he’d stop talking about outdated singers I might be fooled into this veil of complicity. Right now, I think we have only four or five posters here for many comments. Oh well, aquagirl has gotten in her two cents worth of knocking conservatives. So she has done her duty. And Captain and RedNeck have waggled their usual pseudo savoir faire.

Jim has given us a good review of the doctor vs. government. Most doctors I know are not general surgeons. But all say they are not making lots of money. That may be relative. I don’t think they are living off bread and water. But they do work long hours under heavy stress and there is no doubt about that.

Glenn, I haven’t read today’s reports on Kenya. They are protesting the presidential election even more than libs over Kerry. Seems like Kenyans are determined to kill several hundred people to prove their point. When liberals here lose again this year, I hope they don’t “act up” like they did before.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 12:17 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl,

Yes, you’re of course right that the Schiavo case was outrageously exploited, by many factions including by the GOP caucuses on the hill and in the statehouses. There also were some quite powerful elected officials who felt strongly enough about it to put their self-interests and part interests on the line. That’s precisely because Schiavo we never did know whether Sciavo was demonstrably brain dead, and the reason we haven’t known this is that, because the courts covered the original judicial error of placing the burden on the respondent parents rather than on the plaintiff husband, the latter never had to so demonstrate.

Once again you muddy the waters where distinction-cutting is necessary to the validity of the debate on global warming. You say that scientists support the idea of global warming. Duh. The issue is not the warm weather of late; the issue is whether the weather is anthropogenic, and therefore susceptible of change through human action. The new greenies in the U.S., and they include the entire Democratic Party rank-and-file whether awares or unawares, maintain that it is anthropogenic because they wish to believe that it is, not because evidence shows that it is. That’s why you all are magical thinkers flaunting your overweaning metaphysical yearnings, which are manifestly and often expressly neo-Pagan in character. Were I you I’d be most embarrassed by this.

By Another taxpayer

January 5, 2008 12:22 PM | Link to this

Glenn,

Whether and how to change the structure of delivery of health care services, public and private?

Lead the way with your thoughts. Give us something to digest. Perhaps those talking points will come flowing forth at that point.

By Dr Coles

January 5, 2008 12:22 PM | Link to this

The only thing that is broken in health care is the cost of health care and no one is addressing this problem. The government caused the problem with health care cost crises in America by over socializing (with mandates) medicine to the extent it is not completive. http://www.InteliOrg.com/

By BlueCrossed

January 5, 2008 12:32 PM | Link to this

Okay, you all know my wife is in stage four breast cancer, and has endured a double mastectomy, and is now in clinical trials with a promising new wonder drug called Sutent. The doctors expect a total remission and recovery. The chemotherapy is very toxic and it wipes my wife out and she mostly lays in bed lethargic and half comatose. She can barely do her artwork for our sole source of income. (joybroe.com)

But here it is: Raw data for you liberal and conservative wonks: Last 24 months: We’ve put in about $30K in BlueCross Premiums, and We’ve incurred about $160K in treatment. However, between 1985 and 2005, we paid $85K in premiums and never incurred any treatment.

SO does the system work for those who can afford it? or is it better to have a health saving account? Our $85K in BlueCross over 20 years could have become quite a large amount with Merril Lynch’s help.

One thing: BlueCross only approved about a third of the actual hospital charges, and the hospital wrote-off the rest. If we were self-insured with a health savings account, then our bill would be nearly half a million dollars, because the hospital doesn’t give individuals the same price break they give blue cross for some reason.

So there’s always some pitfall when you try to reason out a personal healthcare solution.

The Insurance companies are in business to make profit for shareholders. They’re set up NOT to pay out hospital charges. They refuse the charges sometimes.

After we appeal, they have usually ruled in our favor, but it takes hours on the phone every month and a lot of loogies. It’s wearing me down. It’s the real reason I blog to escape the stress. We’re in our late fifties, we’re too young for this insurance gauntlet. I can see the advantages of a national healthcare insurance program. I also understand that we cant tax the economy to pay for healthcare and also expect growth. I see the problem too clearly.

Now Jim Wooten’s piece today is a first sketch of a new approach to defining conservatism. Maybe it’s the right way to get where I hope our whole country can be concerning healthcare insurance.

By BlueCrossed

January 5, 2008 12:33 PM | Link to this

So there’s always some pitfall when you try to reason out a personal healthcare solution.

The Insurance companies are in business to make profit for shareholders. They’re set up NOT to pay out hospital charges. They refuse the charges sometimes.

Now Jim Wooten’s piece today is a first sketch of a new approach to defining conservatism. Maybe it’s the right way to get where I hope our whole country can be concerning healthcare insurance.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 12:52 PM | Link to this

Glenn, I’m not sure what version of the Schiavo case you’re reading. Michael Schiavo initially let a court decide what his wife’s wishes were. They said she would not have wanted life prolonging measures. That should have been the end of the disagreement.

When her parents disagreed, the whole mess was launched as conservatives shopped around for a judicial activist who would ignore the law and decide in their favor. Your attempt to cover the Republican party’s shameless behavior by blaming a lower-court judge is a red herring. Like I said, if it’s yours, own it. The entire case was a perfect demonstration of how social conservatives have turned the Republican party into a…I don’t even know what to call it anymore, it’s so sickening.

As far as global warming being entirely uncaused by us, I’m shocked to hear that the National Academy of Sciences is populated by magical thinkers and neo-pagans, since they consider humans as a credible contributors to global warming. If 170 Nobel Prize winners are neo-pagans, maybe we should be teaching their version of creationism starring Gaia or the Goat-God or whoever.

And Glenn, whenever you can come up with the serious Democratic contender who thinks Satan planted all those fossils to corrupt us—-I’d really love to hear who that is. Alzheimer’s preventing you from remembering that question?

Maybe stem cell research will help you, once a Democrat takes control of the White House, and decides people are worth more than soon-to-be discarded blastocysts.

By admirably in tune

January 5, 2008 12:57 PM | Link to this

yes, getalife, I am funny. I’m very very funny. I have a rare gift; an amazingly adaptive sense of humor. I can get a laugh out of a rock. There is a reason, and it is the old thing about something in my childhood, but I’m too embarrassed to ever tell anyone about it, because I live with it to this day. It’s not abuse, or anything like that, but rather incompetence, the incompetence of a military machine not set up to protect young loogie magnets kweek thwoop….

oh man you fell for it again. I rule.

By Another taxpayer

January 5, 2008 12:58 PM | Link to this

There are many things wrong with our system. Have I ever told you the story about the Yellow Rain? It involves a Health Insurance Company called World Insurance Company. Aside from the obvious — Health Insurance is an oxymoron and Yellow Rain has a negative connotation — what could an insurance company do to deserve a leading role in such a plot. One certainly must wonder. Is it a worldwide conspiracy to ensure the eternal employment of lawyers? Or is there a more biblical wanting? Tune in next time to find out what happened to Buck [Rogers] in the 21st.

By Curious Observer

January 5, 2008 1:06 PM | Link to this

You want healthcare to be affordable and available? The first step is to get the insurance companies out of the business. They squeeze the physicians by telling them that it’s either take the reimbursement and the covered patients or do without income. They squeeze the insureds by establishing deductibles and using a niggling approach to settling claims, as exemplified by BlueCrossed’s experience. They squeeze the rest by negotiating sweetheart contracts with hospitals, forcing the hospitals in turn to make up the difference by charging uncovered patients three times as much. The companies then award bonuses and shareholder/policyowner dividends with the money they’ve saved through denying healthcare.

It is time for some of our hard-core conservative friends to acknowledge the truth: raw capitalism will never eliminate health disparities by itself. I see a lot of blabber-mouthing by people decrying “Hillarycare” and other pejorative straw-men. But I see no proposed solutions to the problem of lack of access.

There is a place at the table for government intervention in health care. It doesn’t have to be 100% governmental. It can very well be a mixture of private and governmental approaches. Those who like to exclaim their horror at the idea of government-subsidized healthcare conveniently forget that we are all losers under the current system. After all, those high provider prices come about not only because of the insurance companies but also because we taxpayers are forced to make up the difference between what insurers pay and what the full bill is.

And while you’re declaiming about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, try to remember part of that opening sentence in the former, which includes the phrase “provide for the general welfare.”

You will find in November that the majority of American voters will reject your position that access to healthcare should be left solely to the private sector. And you will be very, very remorseful that you chose not to participate in the development of an adequate solution to the current healthcare mess.

By Tampa John in Atlanta

January 5, 2008 1:21 PM | Link to this

Nothing to contribute…just hi all

By Another taxpayer

January 5, 2008 1:44 PM | Link to this

I want to be a conservative. I don’t like the thought of Government “in your face”. Government needs to be as minimal as practical in order to have minimal taxes. That’s a good thing. HOWEVER! (Who didn’t see that one coming? Choo Choo!) People will be people. Witness the likes of Creflo Dollar and Ken Lay to name but two. Just imagine what could have been accomplished with all that money. But, who would we trust with all that money?

I think Capitalism is good in many respects. It does have its frailties though. After all, it is a human creation. The free market is good in many respects. It works great when it comes to non-discretionary expenditures. You get where this train takes you. Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, sports, etc., should all be left alone because you REALLY can take em or leave em. What about food, water, our health? I’m not saying “black and white”. There is plenty of grey matter left here. But we have to start somewhere. Don’t we?

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 2:13 PM | Link to this

Curious Observer @1:06

What do you mean there is a place at the table for government intervention in healthcare? Then you mention a mixture of private and governmental healthcare which is exactly what we have now. Such things as Medicare and Peachcare and the likes of Grady are the government’s form of welfare in the general sense.

You are really stretching it to quote “provide for the general welfare” as our ancestors wrote in historical documents. “General welfare” can cover everything from police protection to wars against subjection. I doubt very seriously that our predecessors were abdicating “welfare” as overall community charity.

Americans are STILL too independent to expect the government to be their babysitter for all needs. Conservatives are still preserving that principle of independence: Do for yourself as much as possible. That is why most of us do not want socialism or communism.

By admirably in tune

January 5, 2008 2:23 PM | Link to this

Health Insurance is entrenched. Health Insurance has 500 congressmen and senators running interference for it. Destroying Health Insurance would be as impossible as destroying disease itself. Maybe what we’ve created is an institutionalized fractal of quantum ironies and poison-pill remedies where the cure kills the patient who’s been taking the hair of the dog that bit him, which itself is chasing it’s own tail. Our only chance lies in whether the bark is worse than the bite and whether an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure….(sorry).

By admirably in tune

January 5, 2008 2:23 PM | Link to this

By Maureen

January 5, 2008 2:36 PM | Link to this

Dusty, I’m very surprised that you support marxism, although I gotta tell you it makes you even hotter. Communism just doesn’t work so if you can be as eloquent in enunciating the difference between marxism and communism as Lee Harvey Oswald was in that television interview he did in Dallas before the assassination, then maybe you’ll gain some credibility with the david dukes of the world.

By Georgia Patient

January 5, 2008 2:56 PM | Link to this

Bravo!!! I should be able to choose my doctor and the place I want to get my medical care. It is not the government’s business.

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 3:14 PM | Link to this

Admirably in tune @2:23

Healthcare insurance may be entrenched but you are not required to buy it. Take your chances. Go without it. If the big calamity happens, then you can pay with all that money you saved by not buying health insurance.

Perhaps you have not realized that there is NO WAY to have CHEAP healthcare. You cannot expect healthcare experts who spend many many years of education and practice to work at day labor wages. Nor can you have the latest equipment for the best diagnosis and treatment to come cheap. It doesn’t. You cannot have an outdated facility to fulfill the requirements of good healthcare that meets standard requirements. Parmaceutical companies do make money but they also develop many of the latest remedies by research.

The best healthcare in the world is to start taking care of yourself early and thereafter. Health insurance is about the only buffer we have against possible health disasters. But… if you want to smoke, drink, get drugged, drive crazy and be merry, that is another reason to buy health insurance.

Don’t forget. You still have the freedom to make the choices, good or bad.

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 3:24 PM | Link to this

Dear Maureen also known as PoFo,

I am as much for Marxism as you are for Republicans. Now, you crazy mixed up liberal, go play with your dolls.

By Maureen

January 5, 2008 3:59 PM | Link to this

Dusty I cannot believe that you support euthanasia of viable patients. Dusty: the marxist herd-trimmer.

By ron

January 5, 2008 4:01 PM | Link to this

Off subject completely;Iraqi soldier kills two American soldiers.Where in the Far East has that been seen before,Jim?From now on,let the Irqaqis do the fighting and the Americans just keep a gun trained on them while they’re doing it.Hell of a way to fight a war.

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 4:15 PM | Link to this

Maureen also known as PoFo, 3:59

Only in your case, dear heart. That would trim the marxist herd. Now, go read your Manifesto.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 4:18 PM | Link to this

Dusty, you’re well known as a supporter of Dubya; his Medicare D drug plan is as socialized as it gets. He’s only against socialized medicine when there are children (i.e.nonvoters) involved. But granny Smith has her meds paid for by taxpayers.

You should be directing your comments to BlueCross with the double-mastectomy wife. He’s got private coverage and doesn’t seem to think a little marxism would be all bad. You should go tell him his wife should have eaten more veggies or whatever simple-minded advice you think would have prevented her inconveniently developing breast cancer and burdening the rest of us. Then they wouldn’t have had to use the healthcare system at all—-in your GW Bush Fantasyland. Where people never get sick (except those who deserve it) and if they do, they love their private insurance! Yay!

Oh, and since I’m back here…a major Presidential Democratic candidate who believes Borg hunted Tyrannosaurus Rex? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Or do we agree the superstitious illogical types are all Republicans?

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 4:28 PM | Link to this

It’s wonderful to see once again everyone’s thoughtfulness on health care. It’s not my field (education policy is), but I think I see one important aspect of its diseconomy, which is to say its overpriced counterproductivity: hospitals.

Florence Nightingale’s memory should be a blessing to teenage students the world over, but instead she is either forgotten or else relegated to some balsa Hollywooden angel-of-mercy metaphor. Nightingale was hell on wheels, a breaker and maker of social institutions. She was a perfect example of the practical radical, the Reformer. The modern hospital was her principal legacy.

Its days may be numbered, however, as they may not only cause more harm than good, but they may also do so at financial costs that are self-defeating if a hospital’s victory is defined by its success in returning patients to some desirable notion of health. (This is tricky, as definitions of health shift increasingly, according to the self-interest of the growing number of parties involved.)

Hospitals have become gold-plated, almost impossibly costly concentrations, not of Nightingale’s pathos, but of patients’ pathogens. They are not so much showcases of science as carnivals of its corruption. In an era when a world expert in trauma surgery sits in Baltimore directing the blade of a field surgeon in Iraq while viewing the patient’s innards in three dimensions and real time, it is no longer clear why it is so compelling to co-locate the sick and injured in a germ ridden environment of fiscal triage.

Jim points to the State of New York’s “certificate of need” legislation of the mid-1960s as the seminal error of over-reliance on the hospital concept as One Best Means of delivering health care services. I’d like to undertake a little historical study of this; should be fascinating. In any event, it seems clear that the “problem” the resultant regulations were meant to “solve” was wasteful duplication of services.

Avoiding duplication probably was a good idea, lest the relatively poor State of West Virginia, for example, find itself with a Robert Bird Barbour County Hospital and a Robert Bird Berkeley County Hospital and a Robert Bird Boone County Hospital and a Robert Bird Braxton County Hospital and a Robert Bird Brooke County Hospital and then on to the letter “C”, all at public expense and without reference to need. On the other hand, as Vice President Nixon argued to Premier Kruschev, service duplication is not necessarily diseconomic; on the contrary.

Bankers know about as much as anyone about economics, I suppose, and they deliberately duplicate their own services in the interest of remaining both cost-effective and cost-competitive. That the concept of service duplication and the pursuit of economy are not, in service delivery, necessarily antonymous was the discovery of the brilliant A.P. Giannini, founder of B. of A. and inventor of branch banking.

When once Americans did their banking at main branch Parthenons and other temples of usury, today they do their banking at main branches, local branches, store-front ATMs, embedded retail mini-branches and distributed kiosks. Moreover, their banking was rendered location-independent with the advent of telephone banking and, later, banking on home and office desktop computers, on travellers’ laptops and on the proliferating subspecies of wireless handheld devices. Every major financial institution deploys enabling technologies to fit these multiplying points of delivery, with the counterintuitive result that service has improved while its overall consumer cost has decreased.

These examples of modern delivery systems in the financial services industry should cause us to second guess any regulations that limit health service delivery to a prescribed precinct, especially when that precinct is a Petrie dish of bacilli and bilk.

By Luckoduh

January 5, 2008 4:35 PM | Link to this

{{{{Barack Obama, fresh from his victory in Iowa, now holds a ten point lead over sHrillary Clintoon in New Hampshire. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race found Obama with 37% of the vote while Clintoon earns 27%. John Edwards is the only other candidate in double digits, with 19% support. Bill Richardson is the choice for 8%.}}}}

Bwa.

~~~~~

{{{{Among the Democrats, the challenger is already chosen. Obama is in. Edwards is out. Banking all on a strong showing in Iowa, Edwards finished the same distant second that he won in 2004. After six years of working Iowa, he could do no better. Now all the anti-Hillary vote will coalesce around Obama and Edwards will be forced out.}}}}

Bwa.

~~~~~

{{{{Now he goes to New Hampshire, which is an open primary far better suited than Iowa to a movement-based campaign with strong independent appeal. Then he goes to South Carolina which has a large black vote that, I’m confident, will now see him as a bona fide contender. So, my prediction is that Obama wins New Hampshire by double-digits, then crushes Clinton in South Carolina, at which point the race will be over.-Jonathan Chait, New Republic}}}}

Be still my beating heart.

~~~~~

{{{{But a few minutes into It’s speech It trots out It’s standard line about how “some people think you get change by demanding it and some people think you get change by hoping for it” (a dig at Edwards and Obama)—there’s actually some booing. It throws It off. After starting the speech upbeat and sunny, It becomes a bit brittle. The response from the audience gets fainter with each applause line until you can actually see the Obama supporters sitting on their hands, their “O” signs resting on their laps.}}}}

Brittle?

I guarantee you that monster was seeing red and, like some stupid caged animal, was desperately wanting to scratch some eyes out.

{{{{“We have to pick a president who is ready on day one,” It says, to muted applause from It’s small contingent. The Obama crowd then waves their signs and begins chanting “Obama! Obama!” while It keeps speaking. It’s a tense moment and Clintoon seems rattled by it.}}}}

Now I bet there specks of foam forming at the corners of this idiot’s mouth and It’s eyes were probably darting back and forth in It’s empty as-s head.

{{{{When he walks on stage, the crowd goes nuts. It takes him almost a minute to quiet them so that he can speak. Tonight he’s in full command of his powers.}}}}

Bwa.

~~~~~

{{{{Despite attempting to soften It’s image, Sen. Clintoon left some Iowans feeling cold. It swung through Des Moines’s Lovejoy Elementary School Thursday night to greet caucus-goers. After It shook hands with Rob Moyers and moved on, he remarked: “I looked into Obama’s eyes and he seemed sincere. Now, that looked mechanical. It’s like a robot.”}}}}

Or It’s just a total mindless dimwit<—-!!!

Anybody starting to wonder where It got all those hundreds of millions of dollars of kampaign “contributions,” seeing how nobody even likes the bit-ch?

~~~~~

{{{{As for Mr. Huckabee, he shares at least one trait with Mr. Obama—both come across as likable men with an easy charm. But we have our doubts that the former Arkansas Governor’s victory will have the same political impact. He won in a caucus where his fellow evangelicals were 60% of the vote, and this won’t be true in other states. Mr. Huckabee is also only now being discovered by most Republican voters. His innocence (or ignorance) on foreign policy and penchant for borrowing liberal economic attack lines deserve to be understood by voters before they make him their standard bearer.}}}}

Bwa.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 4:47 PM | Link to this

Thank you, Glenn, for subjecting us all to another round of your pseudo-intellectual masturbation, ignoring the conversation and sailing off into your own personal monologue.

Now, how ‘bout you send off that thoughtful letter to the National Academy of Sciences/Neo-Pagans, telling them they’re Gaia-worshippers? The link is still available in my 12:52 post. Yes, that Alzheimer’s has gotten worse, you seem to have forgotten your earlier pontification revisionist history and just plain dumb thinking.

And one Democratic candidate who believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old?

Nope. Didn’t think so.

Yakking about banks in a desperate attempt to change the subject seems to make you feel better. Well, enjoy your public exposure. It’s a little squicky for the rest of us, but Wooten’s blog isn’t always a pretty sight.

By LaMar McGinnis,M.D.

January 5, 2008 4:54 PM | Link to this

Dear Jim Wooten: From the background of a General Surgeon practicing in Georgia for over 40 years, let me offer thanks to Mr. Wooten for his clear yet concise views on the issue of General Surgeons as specialists and of the impact that our states misdirected view is having on patient care. Our state is singled out nationally for these isolated bureaucratic views and this is limiting the availability of General Surgeons for our state. Your comments are on point and hopefully will be joined by others and the misdirected laws righted before even more adverse effects occur. Sincerely, LaMar McGinnis

By Dusty

January 5, 2008 5:04 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl @4:18

Yep, I support the President of the United States. Just whom did you say you supported?

Yep, granny Smith paid Social Security all her working life and then added Medicare and Drug D to be deducted when she started withdrawing Social Security. I bet she didn’t have any insurance when she was a child. That was when families took care of their own children.

Children are now well covered by insurance for low income families as given by the government. Even the children of illegal aliens are awarded almost free healthcare. All that went well until Democrats tried to call 25 year olds as children and families making 80 thousand as needy. Now that is socialized medicine, not “welfare”, and was rejected.

Breast cancer is a disaster health problem which is why most of us have health insurance, which is what I said in the first place. I suggested preventive healthcare as the best way to keep your health. A member of my family has had a double mastectomy to remove cancer. I am quite familiar with that pathology.

I don’t know any superstitious illogical Republicans so I assume you are talking about Democrats. You said a major Presidential Democratic candidate who believes Borg hunted T. Rex. Huh what?

You will have to explain because I don’t know of anyone except the Flintstones who have dealt with dinosaurs.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this

Aqualgirl,

You are a determined, sophomoric and quite tiresome liar. Everything in your 12:52 post is a lie. You may take your pretentious blue-screen link to the Wikipedia definition of the National Academy of Sciences and shove it up your alimentary canal, as I worked for the NAS long before a pipsqueak such as you could possibly have been born.

As for your similarly childish accusation of “pseudo-intellectual masturbation”, I’ve been a professional intellectual for 20 years, and my post of 4:28 does not constitute intellectualism of any kind, nor was it intended to do so. It was an answer to those who asked for a follow-up on the subject of alternate means of service delivery in health care, the topic of today’s column.

It’s really rather weird of you to insist that you be paid attention to because Jim’s column is less deserving of attention. As for Alzheimer’s, yes, it does run in the family; two of my family have died from it, in my arms.

By Another taxpayer

January 5, 2008 5:15 PM | Link to this

Tax all campaign monies at 50% and place all of it in a health care trust fund run by the Gates foundation. Then, change all terms to 1 year effective immediately.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 5:20 PM | Link to this

Glenn, shove this blue linkup your alimentary canal. You’re flat-out lying that the NAS doesn’t think humans are contributing to global warming. And you have the gall to say you worked with them. You really think anyone will believe you when you haven’t said one word about the Repub fascination with creationism? What a scientist you are—not.

To paraphrase another frequent poster: fake.

P.S. I got this post in before Jim closed for the day, nice try to dodge. And nobody asked for your meanderings on banks except the voices inside your head.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 5:38 PM | Link to this

LIES IN AQUAGIRL’S 12:52 POST

Michael Schiavo did not “let” a court do anything.
“They”, the court, did not “say [said] that she would not have wanted life prolonging measures”; he said that she would not have wanted extraordinary measures taken, and the court chose to side with the testimony of the least disinterested of all possible witnesses.
Given that, as you say, “her parents disagreed”, your suggestion that “that should have been the end of the disagreement” constitutes moral turpitude in the grease paint of moral rectitude and the fright wig of an ignoramus’ notion of the law.
Similarly, it is ridiculous to suggest that it would constitute a flouting “of the law” for jurist to challenge the civil ruling of an earlier court under any circumstances. Your pretending to know anything at all about American law is itself a lie.
You lie when you accuse me of “attempting to cover the Republican Party’s shameless behavior” is a lie disproved by my statement, addressed to you at 12:17, that “the Schiavo case was outrageously exploited, by many factions including the GOP caucuses on the Hill and in the statehouses.” I thought it rather polite of me not to mention that the conduct of several Democratic elected officials, notably Charles Schumer, was far more outrageously exploitive.
You say that the blame for the Schiavo fiasco is mine and that I “should own it”. Earlier you said that the blame for the problem defined by today’s column rests with the Republican leaders in Georgia’s statehouse. That is a lie. Jim makes clear that the GA GOP elected officials so far have failed to solve a problem caused by Democrats, beginning in New York in 1964. You should own that, but of course you won’t, as you are a liar.
Your suggestion that I claim that “global warming [is] being entirely uncaused by us” is not only a lie, but ludicrous on its face. All that proceeds from this lie, then, are subordinate lies where I am concerned.
Your numbering me among Creationists is likewise a lie, especially as it “ignores” my earlier, unequivocal statement to the contrary.

By Aquagirl

January 5, 2008 5:49 PM | Link to this

LIES IN GLENN’S 5:32 POST:

denying he said this earlier. Your tapdancing feet would make Larry Craig proud.

Fake.

I’ll be happy to address your other lies tomorrow, blog shutdown is nigh. Please, bring it on.

The new greenies in the U.S., and they include the entire Democratic Party rank-and-file whether awares or unawares, maintain that it is anthropogenic because they wish to believe that it is, not because evidence shows that it is. That�s why you all are magical thinkers flaunting your overweaning metaphysical yearnings, which are manifestly and often expressly neo-Pagan in character. Were I you I�d be most embarrassed by this.

By Jackie

January 5, 2008 5:51 PM | Link to this

Over and over, we see the conservatives make the argument that we should “take responsibility for ourselves” in all aspects of life. Never mind that the economy is shrinking, wages are shrinking and the cost of living is rising. If you can’t afford education, health care, food and general municipal services, too bad. We should study our history carefully and try to find where this same tact was used to gain control of a modern western democracy. After total control is given to the corporations, where does that leave the citizens? As for the conservatives, when you purport to love the Constitution so much, when do you step up and say this is wrong and stop needs to be put in place, for the sake of the country? Who has enough courage to speak out ?

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 5:52 PM | Link to this

PoFo, I was one of those unaware of your wife’s struggle with cancer and of your resultant struggles. I’m really sorry to learn of her suffering and yours. Thank you for bothering to convert some of that sadness into some healthcare wisdom commendable to us.

gtg

By Maureen

January 5, 2008 5:58 PM | Link to this

Wooten rocks!

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 6:00 PM | Link to this

No wonder you’re a compulsive liar, Aquagirl, you’re congenitally incapable of drawing the simplest of distinctions! My suggesting that there is not convincing evidence (in law, proof; in science, convincing evidence) that global warming IS anthropogenic, gets converted by you into a claim that it is in no way affected by us. Your conversion is a distortion amounting to an especially pernicious lie.

That you know nothing about NAS is borne out by your having to look it up in Wiki to know even what it is, and by your assuming that working for them is so impressive as to cause one to want to lie about having worked for them.

By Glenn

January 5, 2008 6:03 PM | Link to this

Jackie,

I’ll do so, as I wholeheartedly agree with you, with the sole qualification that the able among us have an obligation to help those not able—-as I know you and I are doing and are prepared to do for veterans. With that qualification, then, I agree with you that self-sufficiency is far better than governmental dependency and somewhat better than dependency in general.

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 8:07 AM | Link to this

The anti war Urinal, run by pinkos that supposedly abhor violence, uses the following words on their front page to describe a political debate:

Crossfire

Attack

Spar

Battle

Great way to foster “bipartisanship.”

So this is what the libs will man up and fight about, some pointless debate in some obscure liberal state, but not or their country against a savage enemy like Al Qaeda?

~~~~~

Speaking of which:

{{{{Al-Qaida offers cellphone videos! Yay!-Urinal}}}}

The latest message from the “boss” is just a few keystrokes away!

~~~~~

{{{{Countdown 2008: ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE: GOP debate grows testy -Urinal}}}}

Huh, so let’s just see for ourselves, shall we?

Yeah, now that was “testy.”

~~~~~

Looks who’s in the bag for Clintoon:

{{{{In another 30 days or so, it will be clear whether Obama’s campaign is a mere moment of wonder or a genuine political movement. While he has pumped up his creds with a dramatic win in Iowa, his most daunting test will come on Feb. 5, a Tsunami Tuesday when as many as 22 states, including Georgia, will hold primaries or caucuses. If he loses most of those critical contests, his presidential campaign will likely be too wounded to limp forward.-Queen Pinko, Urinal}}}}

Nothing out of the ordinary, eh, Cynthia, just a guy that won a 97% white state and derailed a candidate that you pinkos have been chanting was “inevitable” for the last seven years.

If we want to get deep here, I think this Obama win, and his showing in recent polls, proves once and for all that America is not the hot bed of racism that you race baiters have based your careers on.

What will be your new grievance?

~~~~~

Gee, Huckabee got zero delegates in a truly Conservative state, while Fred picked up 25% of the vote.

A sign of things to come?

~~~~~

{{{{Can a lame duck sprint to the finish?-Urinal}}}}

You libs are getting rid of Harry Reid and Blinky Pelosi next year?

Well, good for you.

By TW

January 6, 2008 8:24 AM | Link to this

Hats off to the Republican candidates for once again appearing in public without bags on their heads. Political egg all over their faces, knee-deep in American soldier blood, and they just keep going out there like nothing has happened. Who says ego can’t fill the heartless void?

New comedy on FOX this spring - THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

By Redneck Convert

January 6, 2008 8:30 AM | Link to this

Well, I’m OK with the doctor and insurance I got right now. Dr. Sanjay Singh don’t speak much English but my insurance co. loves him, he says. Says he works real cheap. He looks after my pile-on cyst real good. When I come down with something and go to him he always asks if I’ve had it before. When I say yes he says, “Well, you got it again.”

Anyway, what I like best is the pills he has me buy at the drug store. You never know which one he will tell you to take. We got a real good trading program up here in north Forsyth County. Say you get tired of the pills you are taking. Well, you can always trade with somebody else. Course, you got to know what you are doing. For instance, you don’t give more than three green ones for one yellow one. And you got to watch what you trade for. I recall when Joe Bill traded for some little white pills and was going to the bathroom every 10 minutes.

I see this Aquagirl got real mean with Glenn yesterday. I think she’s mad on account of she can’t get her hands on this Captain guy. He always brushes her off even when says she wants to have his baby. I ain’t got the heart to tell her he’s gay. No wonder his wife goes off to other countrys and stays.

Have a good godly Sunday everybody. And don’t try to buy beer today. Its against my religion and my religion is the law in this state.

By GaVoter

January 6, 2008 8:32 AM | Link to this

TW,

If the GOP doesn’t get its act together, it will be a satire called The Tertiary Republican

By Maureen

January 6, 2008 8:49 AM | Link to this

America got a ring-side seat at the New Hampshire debates. The GOP candidates were entertaining, (they sparred convincingly), and the only thing missing was the bikini bimbo strutting between rounds.

Ah, but the main attraction was the Democrats. Hillary got tag-teamed. “In this corner, at 29 percent and representing the status quo, Hillary Clinton. In that corner, with a combined 69 percent and representing change, Obama/Edwards.”

Hillary didn’t like being double teamed like that. Hillary lost control in her reply, and her face and voice assumed a tone far from the calm aplomb expected of a presidential candidate. McCain had previously cautioned about how a president’s demeanor could make the aftermath of a nuclear attack worse, but Hillary became visibly unhinged as she recited a littany of change that her experience had wrought. As she spoke, a transformation took place. Her eyes went first. Peculiarly, she berated Edwards with the right and scolded Osama with the left. Her hands went into Cassius Clay mode as she swung deftly after the fading specter of her candidacy. There was a moist rasp in her voice, and it almost seemed as if she were in phase one of a loogie launch. Poor Richardson, cowering in the corner, could only wait for a Fema response to the tsunami of indignity Hillary displayed. It was magnificent T.V.

If New Hampshire wants a fish-woman for president, then Hillary should do well.

By @@

January 6, 2008 8:53 AM | Link to this

Holy mackerel Jim, when I read your column this morning I couldn’t help but recall the tangled mess I encountered when removing my Christmas tree lights this year. I had to turn the dang tree upside down and drop the strings from the fat bottom to the skinny top. Whoooweeee—finding the ends and working them back through all the loops and knots to find the other end was painstaking and tedious.

I’m trying to unravel your column here. It would appear that Dr. Brown is being held hostage by some ridiculous restriction placed on him by government. Dr. Brown is valuable but only on their terms? If Dr. Brown is losing 15 to 20% right along with the hospital, can I assume that Dr. Brown may eventually lose the only location from where he can apply his expertise in general surgery? I suppose he could relocate, and wouldn’t that be a shame?

My husband is from Thomaston and his family still resides there. I can think of very few Thomastonians who actually use Upson County Hospital. Columbus, Macon, Henry, Atlanta, Fayette County hospitals are the preferred treatment centers for most.

I certainly don’t understand why the state would care whether a group of private investors would want to assume the risk of offering medical services in any area. Your column makes it sound as though the states support medical monopolies. Why the limitations through the CON? Does the government have to bail them out if they fail?

As far as free-standing clinics—there would have to be some reassurance that they don’t place the patient at risk. There have been plenty of quacks out there who have done just that and some who have been wrongly accused of doing so. The litigious Jackpot Johnny Edwards types have certainly benefitted in that arena.

I am a big fan of University Hospitals. See one…do one…teach one. Their ability to raise private donations is nothing short of miraculous. Afterall, who wouldn’t want to invest in education, healthcare and research with one stroke of the philanthropic pen? Even university hospitals suffer the impact of government’s demands though. They don’t go untouched by the rise in healthcare costs for the elderly and uninsured. I recently read an article where one administrator is quoted as saying…“Reimbursements also are expected to become more challenging (because the government can’t afford them) in the coming years,” he said. “Medicare rolls are increasing, and the number of uninsured patients is rising.”

The spokesman pointed out the vulnerability of hospitals to changes in laws involving government programs..

�With one stroke of the legislative pen,� he said, �we can have multi-million-dollar changes.�

I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to the problem short of locating the burned out bulb.

Let’s see now—is it at the beginning of the string or the end?

You’ve given me a headache—should I go to the nearest hospital or just take an aspirin? I’ll take the aspirin because there are those whose needs are more urgent. We would all do well to remember that fact—insured or uninsured.

Don’t hog the limited resources. Leave them for those who need them. If your a child of 25 years whose parents make $80,000 fuhgedaboutit.

By @@

January 6, 2008 9:02 AM | Link to this

Uh-Oh! If you’re a child of 25 years…

Probably more, but who cares? Certainly not me…

IHB anyway.

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 9:10 AM | Link to this

{{{{By TW January 6, 2008 8:24 AM Hats off to the Republican candidates for once again appearing in public without bags on their heads. Political egg all over their faces, knee-deep in American soldier blood, and they just keep going out there like nothing has happened.}}}}

Oh goos, the libs are back to campaigning on “ending the war.”

Same thing they campaigned on in 2006.

And not only did they not “end the war” like they promised they would, no, they sent more troops to Iraq and funded every single solitary funding request from the lame duck war mongering Bushie.

What will you Code Pinkos do in 2009 if you win in 08, invade Iran?

Maybe we should vote for a pinko.

And by the way, make note of the dem debate in New Hampshire and how all the libs were touting the act that they had either increased government spending or wanted to increase government spending.

So much for the fiscal discipline promise.

By Mr. Chips

January 6, 2008 9:16 AM | Link to this

I’ve graded your papers and will begin handing them back, class. @@, you get a C+. It’s good to use an appliance to tie a piece together, but make the appliance relevent. Other than being a moron, good job.

RedNeck you get a D-. YOu write the same thing everyday, so I let an intern read and grade this. So dont waste money on toilet paper, okay, you’ve got plenty of surface area right here.

Maureen: A+ and underlined with an exlamation point! You write well. Now I dont know who Maureen is, class, but in all my 20 years of teaching, I’ve never seen this kind of talent. I’m posting this piece on the chalkboard. Read it and learn, class.

Class dismissed, oh wait, you’re homework is to read more, write more, and then stick your heads in the toilet…not you Maureen.

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 9:20 AM | Link to this

I cannot believe that the libs at the AJC really ran the Benizar Bhutto interview in Parade Magazine as though she were still alive and did not make any mention of her killing.

Truly bizarre.

By @@

January 6, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this

Since you referenced loogies BlueCrossed, I’ll assume you’re PoliFore.

After we appeal, they have usually ruled in our favor, but it takes hours on the phone every month and a lot of loogies. It�s wearing me down.

You won, and your wife is worth all of your hard work don’tcha think?

BTW, a promising new wonder drug called Sutent was likely developed by that greedy Big Pharma—the cutting-edge research that liberals want to dull.

I guess we should be more than happy to serve as the whipping post for your frustration. Personally I don’t understand how it could help, but feel free, and my best to your wife.

By Mr. Chips

January 6, 2008 9:36 AM | Link to this

Duhng, why wouldn’t the AJC run the Bhutto piece? They let a brain-dead loogie magnet like you blog, dont they?

By Betty

January 6, 2008 9:47 AM | Link to this

I have been posting around here for years. I have very much enjoyed reading the wonderful comments by a few of you.

However, I am afraid that I am going to have to lodge an official complaint. I have to call someone out.

Maureen, I don’t appreciate your blathering. For some unknown reason you have literally become some obnoxious fool on this board that has no respect for others, your power play here is not appreciated. @@ has tried these tactics before and people see through it. (Its no secret I hate @@.)

Maureen, did you know you sound like a man? I have read Buy Danish and you Maureen are no Buy Danish. Please refrain from stealing her dignity with your pathetic attempts to be the best female blogger. Just stop. People like you should limit themselves to one or two posts per day.

Un-Friggen-Believable…..Please come back Buy Danish, our suffering blog world awaits you.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this

Mr. Chips also known as PoFo @9:16,

Awww, come on. Give us a break. You couldn’t grade eggs much less the written word. What are your credentials? Credentials???? Being a liberal does not count.

Oh well, a GED is still an accomplishment. Keep struggling, Maureen ChipPo. Chin up and all that stuff…

By Charmaine

January 6, 2008 10:11 AM | Link to this

Get to the round tables now, people. Meet the press and fox. quick.

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 10:16 AM | Link to this

MoFo, dig the Hillary-pillory done up as pulp sportswriting. It’ll be irresistible to view her in that light next time she infects my new flat screen.

@@, agreed that teaching hospitals and research medical centers are medicine at its best. They’re not really flush, though, most of them. When Stanford Med and UC San Francisco—-both of them the equal of Harvard Med and Hopkins—-sought out of financial necessity to merge a few years ago, the proposed merger was nixed as a breach of the Trustees’ and Regents’ fiduciary responsibilities, as the collective debt would have been insupportable. And other important medical centers are effectively in receivership.

My somewhat pretentiously portentous take on this is that it’s indicative of historic bloat in our social institutions; our britches have become too big for us.

Luckoduh, what will be their new grievance? We already know. It’s the Aussies. From Cynthia’s column for tomorrow: “Wake up, people! While America slept, the treacherous Australians cornered the market on marsupials. We are left with only the smelly Opossum.”

Not for nothing, that Pulitzer.

[Rudy 08]

By getalife

January 6, 2008 10:19 AM | Link to this

@@,

Yeah, I guess he gay wanks my name to relieve his frustatration. Weird.

I was surprised McOld called the drug companies evil last night. He is advised by neocons and wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years.

Edwards and Obama united against Hillary using her as the establishment to change.

Nice move and she is in trouble.

Nothing on obl from the gop until the Dems hit the stage but overall the Dems won the debate.

By Betty

January 6, 2008 10:25 AM | Link to this

Glenn, just who the hell are you, and what the hell are you trying to say? Speak English.

Un-Friggen-Believable

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 10:43 AM | Link to this

Betty,

I am Norton II, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico and Patriarch of all the Greenvilles. You, madam, are not fit to clean up after my canine entourage. An entire city shut down in honor of my dog’s funeral, which was bigger than Coretta’s, with a procession numbering more than a quarter million souls. You, on the other hand, are but the loogie on the superating jowls of a fevered ratter’s snout.

By Charmaine

January 6, 2008 10:43 AM | Link to this

I think I can field Betty’s query: Glenn is the blog’s malaprop. Take the word, “portentous”. He uses that word all the time. I dont think it means what he thinks it means.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 10:48 AM | Link to this

Err Betty,

What language is “friggen”? “Pigeon” English? Give us a “smiggen” of your knowledge.

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 10:50 AM | Link to this

Charmin’ Charmaine,

I’m touched by your having kept count of my uses of the word. Is that a portent? “I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.” You use that line all the time. I think it’s one of your phrase whiskers. It’s good that you cultivate your whiskers, Charmaine.

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 10:57 AM | Link to this

Dusty, not to be a pedant, but it’s Pidgin, as in the linguistic form to which getalife is limited.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 10:59 AM | Link to this

Who uses the word “loogie”?

Come on blog detective @@.

Geez.

By Maureen

January 6, 2008 11:02 AM | Link to this

Round tables were boring. Are we sick of the campaign yet? They actually suggest that Hillary fared well with her hysterical episode. I guess it’s up to George Wills on This Week to tell Hillary to “say it, dont spray it.”

Charmaine, Glenn is more of a log-cabin loogie-magnet than a malaprop. Just a point of order.

Betty, you really fooled everyone with your alias ambush troll act. You’re like a person who got molested by a mime when you were younger and now everytime you have sex you fake the orgasm. Kweeck Thwoop! I think we have a new loogie magnet, folks.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 11:06 AM | Link to this

True, I never claimed to be a “professional intellectual”(Bwa) and my writing sux.

I do have a record of being right because I use common sense. I do not get punked by the gop and w with their lies and know they have no credibility.

Intellectual honesty is what I look for and it is severely lacking on this truly bizarre blog.

Off to better blogs. Have a nice day.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this

Glenn @10:57

You are correct as to the most common usage. It is “pidgin”. But my dictionary explains that “pigeon english” is also permissible. Whatever…

By Captain Freedom

January 6, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this

THE Captain wishes to offer His insight on the World Wresting Federr….uh, the Democratic Debate Debacle last night.

THE Captain is concerned. These Dems showed an unsettling ability to fight and attack. This is dangerous. THE Captain has said it before, and like all pearls of True Wisdom, it bears repeating. (Since the Lucky Dull Butter Knife posts the same damned drivel every time, THE Captain is sanguine about repeat posting something of worth…)

We of True Belief are doomed if the Dems ever turn that spirit of fight on Real Americans like Wooten, Dusty, and THE Captain. These liberal pansies are currently fogged by their hope for “comity” and “bipartisanship”, and it is this foolish nature that allows Real Americans to keep the liberals bent over the negotiating table, pants around their knees as they firmly grip their Islamofascist ankles, yaw gaping to receive the right rogering that We of True Belief deliver them daily. It is the Right Thing to do!

But mark THE Captain’s words…if these Dems ever realize they need to fight us tooth and nail over every little matter, it will be We Common Sense Godly Conservatives who will assume the position and receive the Liberal Noodle of Communism into Our own astonished rumpsides.

THE Captain realizes that in the Redneck’s milieu (and likely Sister D, as well) this is a common hobby. But for the rest of us, this would be a sad day indeed.

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 11:19 AM | Link to this

That’s what I like about you, get; you take a joke so well.

And admitting to being a professional intellectual—-for example, economic forecasters, scholarly researchers, and all those who teach and manage projects at our colleges and universities—-is never a good idea in this most anti-intellectual of nations. It’s not back-breaking work to be sure, but it’s work of a kind; of a particular kind. That’s all.

As a matter of fact you do not “have a record of being right”; you have a record of being colorfully wrong. It’s simply because you’re absorbed with hip postmod lefty blogs, in which knowledge, wisdom and fidelity to the record count for nothing. As the programmers used to say, garbage in, garbage out.

The only trouble I see with your pastime is that it leaves you rather incapacitated when it comes to discerning “intellectual honesty”, as you very frequently trumpet your admiration of the most unabashedly blatant intellectual cheats and deceptions.

Still, in my opinion you use your freedoms to the hilt. And that’s what they’re for.

By Maureen

January 6, 2008 11:36 AM | Link to this

Good one, Dusty! Kweeck Thwoop! Suckah!

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 11:42 AM | Link to this

Dear Captain @11:14

Your high class vulgarity is the epitome of epicurian garbage. True, you made me smile by calling the Democratic debate the World Wrestling Federation. Your anti-liberal mantle covers your real lib life somewhat well. In other words, you cheat. And your odious observations reflect your dubious character. There is no doubt that you have forgotten your scout’s pledge of honor.

By the way, libs are not fighting. That is the last cry of drowning drones. You should recognize that status as it is also yours.

By TW

January 6, 2008 11:45 AM | Link to this

Due to the wealth of vocabulary knowledge here this morning, please help me understand a word. Does the term �collateral� damage get used regardless of the motive behind the attack? Does the civilian population that was killed during the initial invasion of Iraq still get lumped in as �collateral� now that we know our efforts were misguided? Are the killed Iraq citizens in the same category of those German civilians who perished during WWII? Seems like there would be another term for those innocent civilians who get totally screwed. Like if the cop breaks into my house and shoots me in the leg by accident while he goes after the robber, that’s one thing. But if I get shot in the leg by the robber when he breaks in, that is entirely something different?

By GaVoter

January 6, 2008 11:46 AM | Link to this

Freedom! Freeeeeedom!

Freedom to say Dam* them all to H*lllllllllllll. Above all else, Freedom to bear arms. And above above all else the Freedom to use em if you got em.

That’s what I say anyway.

Wait a minute. Who censored me?

What was the subject today? No subject you say. OK! But you will pay. That is what you say!

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 12:04 PM | Link to this

TW,

I see you’ve got urse’f all worked up again about the little dust-up in Babylon. Relax. Like the Cuban affair of 1898, it’s a splendid little war.

Seriously, you stated earlier that the GOP candidates in discussing domestic policy when they should be owning up to the war, effectively makes them complicit in war crimes (blood on their hands). With this subsequent post you make it clear that the blood to which you refer is civilian blood spilt during the lightning invasion.

Let me just rattle off some assertions I take as relevant and true:

The invading multinational force took considerable pains to minimize civilian casualties;
Civilian casualties are inevitable in any invasion, but especially in the invasion of a country whose sizeable military is largely embedded amongst civilians.
Every civilian death owing to the invasion should be a cause for sincere regret, sorrow, apology, reparation.
There is a crucial, definitive moral distinction between those factions which kill the innocent accidentally or even concommitantly while endeavoring legitimately to kill others, and those factions which set out to kill the innocent.
In the Iraq invasion, the U.S. fell into the former category; in WWII, into the latter.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 12:12 PM | Link to this

TW@11:45

Would you say that terrorist attacks on 9/11 were just “collateral” caualties in al Quaida’s “honest” efforts to take over America?

Or would you say “Forget 9/11” because you are anti-war and do not want to protect Americans from those who would kill us?

Would you say that Sadaam was a sweet lil’ hate-America dictator that we should have let run wild with WMD he desired and was acquiring?

Quit dumping this old stuff on our troops and on those of us who love and stand for this country. We know about free speech and Thomas Jefferson and your squeamishness about fighting. We also know that terrorists love your support and that is what you are giving them. If there is something misguided, it is YOU.

By Captain Freedom

January 6, 2008 12:17 PM | Link to this

THE Captain apologizes to Sister Dusty if He has probed a sore spot. Time and rest will relieve her discomfort.

And He is relieved to know that the fight He perceived amongst the Dem Debaters is all for show. God Help Us if they discover that We would fold like a house of cards if they grow some stones. We of True Belief prefer the testicle-free opposition offered by Reid, Pelosi, and Holy Joe Lieberman.

This Edwards guy knows how to grab the powerful by the short hairs and make ‘em cry uncle. And everyone well knows how pasty white Real Americans like Lucky Dull and @@ react when threatened by a dark menace like Obamandingo. THE Captain knows that he (Obama, not THE Captain, smart aleck) is only half-black, but that is enough to strike terror into the souls of Real Americans.

We True Believers are more comfortable with the sort of dark people that know how to get along and rise within the Republican establishment. Give THE Captain hearty souls like Clarence Thomas, Claude Allen, Dr Sowell, and the prolific seed-scatterer JC Watts…dusky-hued men who know just how to shuffle and scrape to gather a few crumbs from their Wiser handlers.

By GaVoter

January 6, 2008 12:19 PM | Link to this

Some good books say thou shalt not kill at all. Others take exception. Maybe it’s a matter of perception.

Now, once a person has blown himself (herself) up, it’s difficult for a mortal to kick that butt — except for the little pieces.

By Maureen

January 6, 2008 12:42 PM | Link to this

Sam Donaldson on This Week has become an unruly troll. He rudely interrupted George Wills and then bounced around like a monkey during the entire round table with George Stephanopolou. and who is he kidding with that toupe? He needs to retire. George Wills takes it in stride, but it has to be irksome.

By TW

January 6, 2008 12:44 PM | Link to this

Glenn - thanks for the well articulated response. While I think Iraq to have been a tad more than a ‘dust-up’ for the initial 10,000 civilians that were blown into oblivion as a result of our �oops,� I appreciate you willingness to admit to their being no difference in the classification of civilian death during wartime. My favorite part of your post, however, is that it came in right before Dusty’s, thus exposing the difference between a true conservative thinker like yourself and the ignorant lot that has all but taken over the party.

Dusty - The calluses left on your knees from Bush’s bedroom carpet have killed your credibility.

By AmVet

January 6, 2008 12:48 PM | Link to this

Glenn, good points, all, at 12:04.

But I have one significant exception with your post, and that is with your term “multinational”.

While technically correct it is actually a very misleading assertion.

The “coalition” was a complete joke, and shamefully by design. How else can you explain than 95% of ALL casualties in-country are American?

We have a rogue cowboy, albeit completely inexperienced and overwhelmed, who was from the beginning VERY willing to go it alone. And he damn near succeeded…

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 12:50 PM | Link to this

{{{{American Al Qaeda leader Adam Gadahn told his followers to welcome Bush “with bombs and traps” upon his upcoming visit to the Middle East this week.”}}}}

{{{{The occupied territories are awaiting their first visit by the crusader Bush and the mujahideen are also waiting for him,” said Gadahn, a California native and now an Al Qaeda spokesman.}}}}

This message brought to you by a spineless, frightened little POS that is hiding in a cave.

While Bushie walks among his people.

Bushie the Strong Horse.

Adam the weak kneed, whiny sister.

~~~~~

{{{{By TW January 6, 2008 11:45 AM Are the killed Iraq citizens in the same category of those German civilians who perished during WWII? Seems like there would be another term for those innocent civilians who get totally screwed.}}}}

I know a “term” for them.

How about victims of Islamic extremism?

Only a real live sick POS would insinuate that the brave soldiers of the United States are callously and wantonly killing Iraqi civilians.

The 4000 troops that died gave their lives to protect the innocent people of Iraq and there are many stories of those who died directly because of the rules of engagement did not allow them to use force to save their own lives.

It’s just like a wormy little liberal to sit stewing in their anti American hate factory and to think the worst things possible of the greatest nation on Earth.

How truly bizarre it really is.

By TW

January 6, 2008 12:59 PM | Link to this

Luckoduh - Your willingness to throw our brave soldiers in front of criticism intended for their excuse of a commander in chief makes you a vital tool for Al Qaeda. You represent the party of deferments well.

By Curious Observer

January 6, 2008 1:00 PM | Link to this

Yep, I support the President of the United States. Just whom did you say you supported?

How admirable of Dusty to support the presidency! I look forward to seeing that loyalty in action when a Democrat moves into the White House a little more than a year from now. Then we’ll see whether Dusty is indeed a patriot or merely an ignorant political hack, as I suspect.

By AmVet

January 6, 2008 1:16 PM | Link to this

Party of deferments!!!

Best line of the day!

By getalife

January 6, 2008 1:18 PM | Link to this

“Pakistan says it will not allow US forces to hunt militants on its soil.”

Mmm, funny how the gop ignored this national security issue but the Dems debated it at the start of their debate.

This is the consequence of w’s surrender to the taliban when he cut and ran to Iraq for oil.

Now, he will go promote peace with two occupations.

Yeah right.

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 1:27 PM | Link to this

{{{{By TW January 6, 2008 12:59 PM Luckoduh - Your willingness to throw our brave soldiers in front of criticism intended for their excuse of a commander in chief makes you a vital tool for Al Qaeda. You represent the party of deferments well.}}}}

Oh, O.K.

So to prove my “patriotism” I should rampage around falsely accusing American soldiers of killing “10,000” innocent civilians during their “war for oil” that Clintoon and Edwards both voted for?

That sound about right?

It’s funny the way that the stooges of Al Qaeda, a fanatical religious extremist movement who kills innocent people every day and that every normal person should want to defeat, sound just like the democrat party:

{{{{Gadahn made reference to November’s Annapolis conference of Middle Eastern leaders, saying it was a gathering of Bush’s “loyal puppets.” He said the United States has been “unmistakably defeated” in Iraq in Afghanistan and has lost the battle for hearts and minds “in spectacular fashion.”}}}}

Weak minds think alike.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 1:29 PM | Link to this

TW,

You think in terms of kneepads while I think in terms of loyalty. That’s one difference betweens liberals and conservatives. You libs are afraid to be patriotic and think it is worship.

Same for you, Curious Lib Observer,

You don’t have to wait to see if I am a patriot. I don’t run around with “ifs and buts” about supporting this country and the President. While you keep waiting to get patriotic, I am already there.

Keep sniffing around terrorists like they are your next door neighbor. Perhaps you should look at Pakistan’s latest assasination to see how friendly terrorists are. They see you waving and wavering.

I support ethical citizens and always will. Why don’t you try it?

By getalife

January 6, 2008 1:43 PM | Link to this

crusty and her ilk did not support Clinton in his victory. Hell, they bashed President Clinton for attacking obl.

Not even close to a patriot.

They support their party no matter the damage done to their country.

They are gop patriots not American patriots.

By Dusty

January 6, 2008 2:01 PM | Link to this

getalife,

What Clinton victory? The election? The Chinese embasssy in Yugoslavia? The empty training camp or the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan? The withdrawal from Somalia? Those sound like “victories” you libs would celebrate, not to mention women. Oh well. You brought up Pres.Clinton but don’t want anybody else to do that. Run, baby, run. You libs really know how to do it.

By ray

January 6, 2008 2:05 PM | Link to this

great comedy today watching the republican blog nazis circle about the bowl…ha…

By Glenn

January 6, 2008 2:11 PM | Link to this

Hail Victory!

By getalife

January 6, 2008 2:11 PM | Link to this

See, still bashing President Clinton’s victory.

Stop with the fake patriot bs crusty.You are not a patriot.

You are the reason this country is divided. We were united after 9/11 until w chose to occupy Iraq and you cheered this division and destruction of our country.

You are a party loyalist and to blame for the current state of America.

By TW

January 6, 2008 2:12 PM | Link to this

They are gop patriots not American patriots.

Absolutely - Plantation Politics.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 2:22 PM | Link to this

”Tonight for the first time in 79 days, the skies over Yugoslavia are silent,” Mr. Clinton said. ”The demands of an outraged and united international community have been met. I can report to the American people that we have achieved a victory for a safer world, for our democratic values and for a stronger America.”

And crusty bashes this victory still today.

By Camus

January 6, 2008 2:29 PM | Link to this

Dusty,

I support the Constitution and the rule of law. Pace Churchill, however imperfect, it is the best system yet.

You, however, favor a personality cult and support a man who systematically sets out to destroy the very system he was sworn to protect. That is false patriotism and is closer to Stalinism than democracy.

Today, you support every expansion of presidential power the Bushies think to grab. In one year, when Hillary or Obama or Edwards takes the mantle, those same powers will de facto be theirs on a silver platter. I’ll be interested to see how much you support “our president” when the object of your schoolgirl crush brand of patriotism is gone.

You are outed Dusty. You are a fake patriot.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 2:34 PM | Link to this

crusty, the fake patriot spewed this crap:

What Clinton victory? The election? The Chinese embasssy in Yugoslavia? The empty training camp or the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan? The withdrawal from Somalia? Those sound like �victories� you libs would celebrate, not to mention women. Oh well. You brought up Pres.Clinton but don�t want anybody else to do that. Run, baby, run. You libs really know how to do it.

It can’t support an American victory because it happened with a Dem President.

Cut and run crusty, you have been exposed as a liar and a loser.

By The Way

January 6, 2008 2:40 PM | Link to this

Manning!

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 2:43 PM | Link to this

{{{{Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn’t turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007’s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it’s up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.-Boston Globe}}}}

You reckon?

{{{{“Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change,” Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. “Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind.” In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: “The sun … appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change,” they write.}}}}

No way!

{{{{Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, “the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.”}}}}

Bwa.

By Abomi Nation

January 6, 2008 2:46 PM | Link to this

Don’t you all get it? Our know-it-all Republican war genius has declared that Yugoslavia is a lost cause. Lott, Wooten, Newt, Delay have all said that it will turn out to be a disaster, another Viet Nam. It will bankrupt us, deplete our military at the cost of many American lives.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 2:55 PM | Link to this

Nobody has been drafted in 36 years and addle brain thinks deferments are the line of the day. Strange.

~~~~~~~~

Luckoduh,

Over the past few months we’ve gotten the news from Parade that Barbaro was all but back on the race track about two weeks after he had been put down.

They told us Lindsey Lohen had really turned things around and was on the straight and narrow. Again this was several days after she had her wild drunken car chase and was sitting back in rehab.

Now we get the glowing story of how Bhutto is Pakistan’s great hope for relations with the US and tells us about the election coming up next week.

I get the feeling Parade is probably a primary source of information in the Moonbat(ic)® Party.

By GaLiberal

January 6, 2008 3:09 PM | Link to this

Moron Jim says: For free-market Reagan Republicans, the course for Georgia when the GOP took control of the Statehouse should have been to work aggressively to get the state out of the business of regulating the health care marketplace.

So what Moron Jim is really suggesting is that doctors should be allowed to charge whatever they want and hell with anyone that gets shut out because they can’t pay. Typical of the neocon ‘compassionate conservative’ thinking. Let’s price healthcare so that only us uberrich can get treatment. We’re sick (no pun intended) of having to wait to see a doctor because of all these dirty poor people demanding to see a doctor. Who the hell are they anyway? They aren’t part of the haves and have mores. Oh, and I’ll need a bigger tax cut too.

The state has a vested interest in ‘regulating the health care marketplace’ to ensure that people are not cut off from necessary services. If, as Moron Jim suggests, it’s left to the free market then a large group will be left with limited healthcare. This prevents large-scale outbreaks of disease. Just look at other countries were the poor do not have access to good healthcare. It eventually reaches everyone. But the hell with them poor people. The world’s better off with a few less of them and I get to have my own private doctor.

When you vote Rethuglicon, you vote against your own best interests. And free-market healthcare is living proof.

By @@

January 6, 2008 3:28 PM | Link to this

Getalife:

Who uses the word �loogie�?

Come on blog detective @@.

Let’s see—starting with yesterday’s posts here, it was:

Glenda

BlueCrossed

admirably in tune

Maureen

me, @@

Mr. Chips

Glenn

Have I missed anyone?

I’m good aren’t I?

By getalife

January 6, 2008 3:32 PM | Link to this

@@,

pf.

By @@

January 6, 2008 3:34 PM | Link to this

Whoopsee! I did miss one:

Who uses the word �loogie�?

and you.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 3:40 PM | Link to this

Speaking of neocons:

�Team� John McInsane who wants troops in Iraq for 10,000 years … (the men behind the curtain)

Richard Lee Armitage (outed a CIA agent) Bernard Aronson William L. Ball III Stephen E. Biegun Max Boot Brig. Gen. Tom Bruner Lorne W. Craner Lawrence S. Eagleburger Brig. Gen. Russ Eggers Maj. Gen. Merrill Evans Niall Ferguson Michael J. Green Gen. Alexander M. Haig Maj. Gen. Evan �Curly� Hultman Robert Kagan Brig. Gen. Robert Michael Kimmitt Henry A. Kissinger Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich William Kristol (the bloody neocon) Adm. Charles Larson Robert �Bud� McFarlane Brig. Gen. Warren �Bud� Nelson Brig. Gen. Eddie Newman Maj. Gen. John Peppers Maj. Ralph Peters Brig. Gen. Maurice Phillips Gen. Colin L. Powell (lied about WMD’s) James R. Schlesinger Randy Scheunemann Gary Schmitt Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft George P. Shultz Brig. Gen. W.L. �Bill� Wallace Maj. Gen. Gary Wattnem R. James Woolsey

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 3:45 PM | Link to this

News too good for the Urinal to print:

{{{{Tunis is an example that Iraqis are not only ready to secure their towns, but take care of the physical needs of their own people…The city recently celebrated the opening of a renovated health clinic near Iskandariyah. The Tunis Health Clinic will have the ability to provide health care to more than 5,000 citizens in the Tunis region…�This represents the hard work of the Iraqi people,� said Col. Thomas James, commander 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. �And this health clinic signifies taking care of the people.�}}}}

To bad they weren’t cut each other’s throats AJC, then we’d have a real story, eh?

{{{{Iraqi Security Forces, advised by U.S. Special Forces, detained a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq terror cell leader, a suspected criminal weapons supplier and two suspected terrorists in separate operations Jan. 4 and 5….Iraqi Special Operations Forces detained a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq cell leader near the city of Balad Jan 5….In all, 17 extremists have been detained and two have been killed during the operations, resulting in a decrease of indirect fire attacks against LSA Anaconda.}}}}

{{{{Iraqi Security Forces, advised by U.S. Special Forces, detained four known extremists Jan. 3 in an operation in Barrah. The extremists are said to be part of a counterfeiting and smuggling cell in and around villages near Barrah.}}}}

{{{{Key leaders from the Iraqi Army and the local volunteer security force in Baghdad�s Adhamiyah neighborhood held a summit Jan. 3 to discuss the way forward…At the meeting, IA and ISV leaders were able to form a stronger relationship and resolve their differences, said Maj. Ike Sallee, operations officer, 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, the U.S. unit who operates in the area….�What�s encouraging is that, a few hours after an elevation of differences, the IA and the ISV were back out at joint checkpoints together,� Sallee said….�The important thing is that every body is working towards the same goal � safety and security in Adhamiyah,� he said.}}}}

By AmVet

January 6, 2008 3:59 PM | Link to this

So Fux News bans Congressman Paul?

What a bunch of paranoid fools.

Anybody with their eyes open (this precludes having one’s head NOT buried up the administration’s collective arses) has known for years that in spite of the claptrap protesting otherwise, Murdoch and boys are little more than neo-con shills for Bushco and their twisted agenda.

Republican stooges singing to the choir…

By getalife

January 6, 2008 4:10 PM | Link to this

For sale: West�s deadly nuclear secrets

No wonder they were debating nukes last night.

Geez.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 4:11 PM | Link to this

Wonder where Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel were last night since the debate wasn’t on Fox and we know nobody else would ever drop a marginal contestant for the office.

By the way, Fox has another debate in South Carolina where they have more space and time. Ron Paul and his lunatic followers are welcome in that one.

By The Way

January 6, 2008 4:18 PM | Link to this

Manning Impressive

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 4:30 PM | Link to this

If you were ever charged with, or for that matter had committed, a crime don’t you wish you had this guy as your prosecutor?

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard.

The only thing missing are facts and evidence. I guess I shouldn’t be dismissive though, the guy that said that carried Massachusetts back when it was a red state.

He buys the Lancet study hook line and sinker too.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this

Yeah RW,

He said the same thing about Nixon and we know how that turned out.

I doubt cheney and w are man enough or care enough about our country to resign in disgrace too.

By Luckoduh

January 6, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this

Listen to Clintoon toady Estrich cackling about Obama:

{{{{Why all those “present” votes? What issues was he avoiding? Why? What are his accomplishments? Where did he lead? What has he done? What makes him ready not simply to win Iowa, but to lead the country in dangerous times when any hint that he is naive, not tough enough, not ready for a world where we face evil, becomes the kiss of death.}}}}

Tell me that she isn’t ate up with grief and half out of her mind.

It’s kinda cute.

Even better, imagine the massive wave of depression that will inflict all of these 1960 anti war relic losers when that pig is finally gone.

Now that will be funny.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this

getalife,

Actually it says in the article that he didn’t say anything about Nixon.

Do you moonbats just make it up as you go?

By getalife

January 6, 2008 5:23 PM | Link to this

RW,

Not in that article but when Nixon decided to not hand over the tapes.

Like the torture tapes. I see Tenent lawyered up.

Ever think of going Independent?

Geez.

By getalife

January 6, 2008 5:27 PM | Link to this

duh,

It was kinda cute when she said her feelings were hurt in the debate last night.

Funny stuff.

Of course, you can’t be inflicted with CDS to see it.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 5:29 PM | Link to this

getalife,

BS, McGovern wrote the article himself.

I am independent, last primary I voted a Democrat ballot and this time I’ll be going with a Republican one.

Ever thought of having any facts on hand when you try to debate over here?

I know on your favorite blogs you can just spew something about Bush being a chimp or Cheney being evil and they think you’re a genius. It doesn’t work that way when you debate people that live in the real world.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 5:51 PM | Link to this

getalife,

Check out the participants from the debate last night

So was that Bill getting all weepy over the fact that nobody can stand her?

By getalife

January 6, 2008 5:54 PM | Link to this

RW,

Which part of not in that article did you not understand?

It was during the Watergate investigation.

Funny how we come full circle with missing tapes.

It would seem America would have learned by now the gop are crooks and liars.

By RW-(the original)

January 6, 2008 6:03 PM | Link to this

getalife,

I’ll try to see if it’s possible to slow this to where you can understand it.

McGovern wrote the editorial in today’s Washington Post. In today’s article McGovern says that McGovern never called for Nixon’s impeachment.

Got it?

Now why is it you’re so all fired up to out a couple of CIA agents? I thought you once frowned on that. Of course up until Thursday you were the biggest Clinton suckup on the planet. Just another flip flopping Democrat toady I guess.

By getalife

January 7, 2008 8:37 AM | Link to this

RW,

You got punked again

By The Way

January 7, 2008 9:27 AM | Link to this

It’s a little frightening to read how personally RW feels the hatred for our candidates for presidency. I have to admit that while I criticize most of you for NOT reading Wooten’s pieces (or understandiing them) before you comment, I havent been reading RW at all till now, and I gotta say that RW, you’re quite mad, you know. There’s a sociopathic tone that drips off of your narration. I dont even think meds would help. You’re gone, pal. The people in your orbit must really count their lucky stars to have you around all the time. I apologize for only glancing at and not fully appreciating your cries for help in the past two years when maybe I coulda blogged something to help you. What a shame. You took yourself so seriously that you imploded and now actually believe the nonsense you create.

Look, I minored in Psyche, so I know to ask these questions about your symptoms: When you type, do you feel a surge of Uber-Passion about the topic? When you read comments teasing you, do you curl your fingers into der zeig-heil heetler saluten? Have you ever goosestepped as part of foreplay with your frauleinen? Do you daily hack from the author’s note to the preamble of “Mein Pet Kampf”, the book Bush was reading on 911 to that assembly of Hitler Youth?

If you answered “Yavoodle, Mein Herr” to two or more of these questions, then du bist krank unt ein sweinhunt.

By GaVoter

January 7, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this

By the way, RW, some yank theirs while yanking others.

By Thomas Russell

January 7, 2008 12:47 PM | Link to this

Mr. Wooten:

Thanks for your comments on the issue of CON in Georgia and the unfair restrictions on general surgeons when seeking to open ambulatory surgery centers. They were much different from the opinions presented in the article �A New Threat To Hospitals,� by Mike King (December 31, 2007) which demonstrated a lack of understanding of the issues and indicated that Mr. King had swallowed the hospital lobby�s position hook, line and sinker. As the largest organization representing organized surgery�and with 1,750 members in the state of Georgia�the American College of Surgeons believes the general surgeon�s viewpoint on this issue should receive a fair hearing in the pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which you helped to do in your column.

We believe that the Georgia Board of Community Health took a courageous action when it voted to recognize general surgery as a single specialty in the certificate of need (CON) regulations in your state. That ruling is in keeping with the fact that general surgery is recognized as a single specialty by all major medical and surgical organizations and every state in the country�with one exception until last month: the state of Georgia.

We see little evidence to support the hospital lobby�s claim that changing the definition of general surgery and allowing general surgeons to build ambulatory surgery centers would force hospitals around the state to close. There are more than 200 outpatient specialty surgery centers throughout Georgia that compete with hospitals, but most hospitals have remained profitable. It is true that some hospitals do close, but there are a variety of complex reasons why that is the case, and it�s not because an ambulatory surgery center opens up down the street.

To be sure, since the facility fees at an ambulatory surgery center are a third those of a hospital, general surgeons are able to provide less costly and more efficient care at their own centers. Given the burden Georgia employers and all Georgia citizens face due to the spiraling costs of health care, allowing such ambulatory centers would bring a major benefit to the Georgia health care system and health care consumers, including Medicaid recipients whose care is paid for by the state.

What the hospitals don�t want the citizens of George to know is that they receive �disproportionate share� funds from the government to help cover the cost of uninsured or underinsured patients, and these funds are not paid to ambulatory surgery centers. It is insulting to surgeons everywhere, and especially surgeons in Georgia, to suggest that they don�t or won�t see Medicaid patients in their own ambulatory surgery centers or will not provide charity care in these centers. General surgeons already see these patients every day, and they will provide the same excellent surgical care in an ambulatory surgery center as they will in the hospital, whether or not they are paid for it.

With regard to questions about the Georgia Board of Community Health�s authority to promulgate rules and regulations, we are reminded of the basic civics lessons we all learned in school about the three branches of government. In this case, the Department of Community Health functions as the executive branch and implements the laws through rules and regulations. The suggestion by hospital groups and even some legislators that the legislature must change the definition of general surgery in rules promulgated by an agency of the executive branch of Georgia government would seem to violate the constitutional separation of powers and create a constitutional crisis rather than solve the issue at hand� recognizing the fact that general surgery is a single specialty.

Thomas R. Russell, MD, FACS Executive Director American College of Surgeons

Thinking Right

Thinking Right

What's on this page →

Categories

My favorite sites

Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F

Recent entries

RSS feed

Comment Removal Request

Access Atlanta Blogs

News & Features

Opinion

Health

Sports

AJCJobs Blog

Ajcpets Blogs

Evening Edge Blog