CE 7

[stratman19]

More on healthcare later. I'm still running my ass off....

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

RocDoc said:

I'll assume the lack of right-wing response to my post on the health issue is a tacit admission that they don't want to defend the indefensible.

Ha.

- Healthcare premiums have soared by 59% since 2000.
Litigation, record high payouts, malpractice increases causing specialties’ offices to CLOSE causing the remaining offices to be overworked in some locales->mistakes->more payouts
- Those without health coverage increased by 3.2% in 2003 compared with the year before, to leave 45 million Americans without any health coverage.
- DUE to the increased premiums caused by(you guessed it!)litigation…
- Americans are banned from buying cheaper drugs from Canada
The ban is over.
- Bush is blocking crucial stem cell research to appease some wacko religious loonies on the right-wing fringe of his party, despite the fact it might lead to cheaper and more effective treatments.
Bush is not in fact ‘BLOCKING’ anything of the sort from moving forward regarding stem cell research. It continues but w/o federal support at this time.

FPs

You want to write to the Guardian. That's where all that stuff came from.

[chrisfan]

RocDoc said:

I'll assume the lack of right-wing response to my post on the health issue is a tacit admission that they don't want to defend the indefensible.

Ha.


- Those without health coverage increased by 3.2% in 2003 compared with the year before, to leave 45 million Americans without any health coverage.
- DUE to the increased premiums caused by(you guessed it!)litigation…

I've been searching for the exact numbers, and I can't find them, so I apologize for the generalizations here. The 45 million number is VERY misleading for a number of reasons. First, that number includes anyone whose healthcare coverage lapsed at any time in 2003. So, if a person changed jobs, and had a one day lapse in health coverage while moving from job 1 to job 2, then he is counted in that number, but is not someone lacking health coverage. Next, there is a fast growning number of people who qualify for health care through their jobs, and choose not to take it. Many of those in this group are young professionals making a lot of money who figure they're healthy, they don't need healthcare. Dumb in my book, but true nonetheless. It's a reason why the number of peole who make over $75,000 a year and don't have healthcare is growing. Next, there are actually millions of people who qualify for government provided healthcare via medicaid and other programs who don't bother to apply for it. I'm not sure why I need to be overhauling the system to provide healthcare for people who either can afford and have access to healthcare and don't buy it themselves, or people who qualify for assistance and don't bother to apply for it. When you take all of those people out of the 45 million, you have a group that is small and managable enough that if politicians on both sides would talk about THAT number, we could probably afford to help them without overhauling the system.

RocDoc said:

- Americans are banned from buying cheaper drugs from Canada
The ban is over.

It is?

RocDoc said:

- Bush is blocking crucial stem cell research to appease some wacko religious loonies on the right-wing fringe of his party, despite the fact it might lead to cheaper and more effective treatments.
Bush is not in fact ‘BLOCKING’ anything of the sort from moving forward regarding stem cell research. It continues but w/o federal support at this time.

Doc is right that stem cell research is not blocked at all in this country, but Bush or anyone else. But he's not quite right that it continues but without federal funding. Federal funds DO go to stem cell research ... it's simply limited to the lines that were already in exsistence at the time that Bush made his decision on the issue. The number of lines is not quite known, but federal funds DO go to research on those lines. And Bush to say that Bush is blocking funding for additional lines is rather misleading. Until Bush made his decision, there were NO federal funds that were allowed for stem cell research. Bush was actually the first presidnent to allow ANY funding for it.

[pissin2]

At this point I think I'd rather have Swarzeneggar as President.

[Galactus]

Because of Gov. Ah-nuld you can't screw dead people or feed pigeons any more...is that the country you want to live in?

[shin]

JesusLooksLikeMe said:

Any news channels in the US shown the F-16 fighter footage of the slaying of Iraqi civillians yet? The footage has been run in the UK over the last couple of days, and shows the F-16 firing a missile into a crowd of about 30 people running down a street. No effort is made to ascertain who they are, but the pilots toast the massacre with approving shouts of "Oh dude!".

At no point during the exchange between the pilot and mission control is any question asked about whether these Iraqis are adult, armed, or posing a threat. Rather worrying evidence of war crimes?

+++++++++++++++++++

How's Rumsfeld's clumsily retracted admission of no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda playing over there? It's been big news over here.

We've been focusing on Kerry's "orange" tan the last week or so.

[shin]

RocDoc said:

ONLY if you discount the veracity of THAT intel(accepted as actionable by those two superpowers) out-of-hand, can you be so stilted as to call it a 'diversion'...

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/06/iraq/main647743.shtml

Does this constitute as being "stilted"?

[pissin2]

Ta hell with the dead people and ta hell with the pigeons.

[Proud]

ah, allowing foreigners to be presidents during an age of terrorism...

[melon1]

I'd rather have a foreigner who was FOR this country than a born American who wants to take us back 4 years to the place of "progressive" policies that attempt to change our country into something that it's not.

[RocDoc]

shin;
Does this constitute as being "stilted"?

The CBS article:
The tubes were only one part of the administration's case for war, in which officials alleged Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons.

I'd say that this statement keeps it steps from being stilted, tho it sure continues to talk doooown to the convinced group of goobers who wish to believe that this thing about the enriching tubes is THE intel, the sum total of EVERYTHING, the sine qua non....which the CIA and its Brit analogue(What is it? OSI or something?)discovered re Iraq and that there was NOTHING else which those 2 groups uncovered...

[RocDoc]

Re the Canadjan drug import ban...mail-order is definitely going on. Why else would I be getting all these spam mail offers...for Xanax....for(?)Viagra??

[chrisfan]

RocDoc said:

Re the Canadjan drug import ban...mail-order is definitely going on. Why else would I be getting all these spam mail offers...for Xanax....for(?)Viagra??

It's happening, but to the best of my knowledge, it's not happening legally.

[melon1]

Bush Should Take the Gloves off for Second Debate
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004

It appears that Senator Kerry has stopped his bleeding for now and even opened a couple of wounds on President Bush. And this is just on foreign policy issues - supposedly the president's strong suit. What now?

I said before the first debate - on foreign policy - that the best way for Kerry to increase his chances in the debate and the election itself would be to shift the focus from his own record and inconsistent positions on Iraq to President Bush. With the help of Old Media warhorse Jim Lehrer, Kerry was able to do just that.
Story Continues Below



I've reviewed the transcript of the debate to confirm my sense that Jim Lehrer, in his questions both to President Bush and Senator Kerry, mostly made the situation in Iraq the focus.
He did give President Bush a couple of openings to make the case that Kerry's record is a gigantic red flag waving fervently against the prospect of Kerry becoming commander in chief, but President Bush politely declined the invitation.

The president must not make that mistake again. John Kerry is playing for keeps, and the president better take the gloves off. The public can't be expected to believe the foreign policy differences between President Bush and John Kerry matter that much if President Bush doesn't say so, passionately and without reserve.

But for now there seems to have been a significant momentum shift in the campaign toward Senator Kerry. And the Kerry folks aren't the only ones with a bounce in their step following the debate. The Old Media are positively giddy.

From ABC's "The Note" to the New York Times, the Old Media are palpably re-energized at the prospects that Kerry might just have turned this thing around even against their expectations. And some of them are going to continue their pro-active participation in swaying the election in Kerry's favor.

The New York Times on Sunday splashed its front page with the beginning of a 10,000-word story suggesting the Bush administration willfully ignored evidence that certain aluminum containers in Iraq were not likely for the production of nuclear weapons.

Conspiracy or not, the Old Media have to be aware that the only chance Kerry has to win is to keep the heat on President Bush and away from John Kerry.

It's like an old Western movie with the media crouched behind some barricade shooting at President Bush while John Kerry, with the media's cover, is free to leave his own barricade and move freely toward domestic issues. As long as the media keep firing on President Bush he will be less likely to refocus the discussion on Kerry's miserable record and policies - especially on foreign policy.

Don't get me wrong, economic and social issues are very important, and the economic ones, at least, will get a major airing in the upcoming debates. The president has to be fully prepared to answer Kerry's largely bogus criticisms on the economy, too.

And, as with foreign policy, he needs to expose Kerry's long and damning record of tax-and-spend liberalism and in the process put the lie to Kerry's pretense to responsible fiscal stewardship.

That said, nothing will change the fact that we are at war, and the most important thing to be determined by this election is which of the two men is better suited to be commander in chief. It is President Bush's job, with the help of the New Media, to bring the focus back to the War on Terror.

Don't let anyone tell you that since Kerry hasn't been president yet, his record isn't as relevant as that of President Bush. His record and his positions on the issues matter every bit as much as President Bush's presidential record.

This isn't merely a referendum on the president's record. We only have, effectively, two choices, and if the president loses, Kerry is our next president. That's a very scary thought, and the Bush team must demonstrate just how scary it is.

The Bush campaign's task over the next month is clear. Beginning with the Cheney-Edwards debate, Team Bush must proudly defend the president's record and relentlessly showcase Kerry's record, from his Jane Fonda days, through his two decades of anti-defense in the Senate, to his reckless policy shifts on Iraq and his triumphant global-test-multilateralism today.

I understand President Bush's desire to be gentlemanly and polite, but he shouldn't do so at the expense of the public's edification on the scary Kerry record.

As we've seen in the past few months, like a vampire, John Kerry can't stand the light of day. It's time for the president to pry open Count Kerry's coffin during daylight hours and let the sun shine in.


COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[melon1]

Rocking the Vote
By Lowell Ponte
The rockers at "Vote for Change" sing a seductive song for the Kerry campaign -- written by Noam Chomsky.


www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15397