Quotes of the Day: 'This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill'

Hasan and the militant cleric -

Does the senior federal investigator think Hasan was just saying "Hi" to the militant cleric?

What if a non-Muslim soldier (Christian or otherwise) was communicating with a militant cleric? Would anybody pay attention to that?

That red flag was waving like it was in Katrina, but everybody dismissed it.

Our government institutions are made up of people who "follow orders"... they don't make decisions. That is why we have the Fort Hood disaster, and that is
why our health reform is a disaster too.
Americans need to wake up and realize
what government is: its a huge bureaucracy, ineffective, slow-moving,
inefficient, ineffective, anal, etc.
And to think Democrats actually believe
this bureaucracy can takeover our healthcare system--- Heaven forbid, unless we want more disasters to come.

ddg. Still playing the same old tired tune. Actually the government did not plunge us into the Great Depression or the current recession. That was so-called "free enterprise" run amok with what-used to be illegal derivatives such as sub-prime mortgages and credit delay swaps. The "free enterprise" supposedly "capitalistic" companies displayed an amazing gravitation toward what could only be called massive fat cat WELFARE by rewarding failures and the direct opposite of actual PERFORMANCE by giving incompetent executives completely undeserved bonuses, stock options, and golden parachutes while their stock holder were left to eat their failures. In far more honest times a good many of these so-called "more efficient" leeches would have been in jail where they belong.

Actually, as far as helping the sick get well, instead of dropping them or excluding them for often bogus pre-existing conditions, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration do a much better job than a private sector system harassed by insurance companies. LOL

Igor????
Why did you address this to me: ddg?
I wrote about Hasan.

Your tired comment should have been directed to the writer, Paul.
-----Might I add:
Don't dismiss what parts the democrats played in the economic disaster.
You think all execs are republicans?
Come on. Where do the democrats work?
At Burger King and places like that only? They have no top jobs? No????
They only flip burgers or work for orphans?

Greed can be found in all parties.
Don't kid yourself.

Yes, it can, but the Republicans are the only ones who want to totally deregulate and give it entirely free rein. Do you remember Phil Gramms? I might have mistakenly left out the Libertarians who want everything (roads, schools, parks, etc.) for nothing.

Why do you insist on such nastiness in your posts? We're all Americans. We all want this country to be as good as it can for as many good, hardworking Americans as it can, don't we?

Remember in 1965, both Democrats and Republicans got together and worked out a Medicare program for seniors, who at the time were spending 20% of their money on healthcare. I hear very few of them complaining about that government-run program. I do know all of the same absurd lies were circulating to stop Medicare back then. (socialism from the same people who didn't know the actual definition of socialism then, just like the ditto heads today don't).

I'd take a friendly but small bet that the great majority of executives are Republicans. They give to Democratic campaign funds to hedge their bets on elections just as all the bribery (oops, lobbying) in Washington does. I'd also bet that much of Washington's disregard for the majority of Americans as well as its inefficiency has much to do with that same lobbying. Keep government out of my business unless it can make me a pile of money: Lockheed-Martin, G.E., Blue Cross-Blue Shield, etc. Historians should call this The Age of Hypocrites.

I don't work at Burger King but it's honorable work. It's not collecting welfare as so many corporations seem willing to do from both Dem and Repub governments. It would be interesting to put the pork welfare of big business up against the welfare for the poor in America and see on whom we poor tax payers actually spend more.

Have a good day, ddg

I'm just tired of such narrow thinking.
I admit that my comment was a bit nasty. I give you that.
My original point was this: You actually slammed me (ddg), but your first comment needed to be addressed to Paul. You had the wrong person. You were nasty to me, and you didn't even have the right person!

I know all about honorable work. I do it everyday.

Don't pretend no Democrats made their money off the backs of others. Please.
Be honest.

Look at all of the senators who are democrats AND republicans that take huge contributions from the health care industry.

Also, you bet that the majority of execs are republicans? What????
Yeah, okay. Have a good day to you as well. Address your comment to the right person next time.

The government is more interested in watching Christians than Muslims!

"It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims." -- Nidal Hasan

So sad that Mr. Hasan was so very confused.

Our Military is engaged to help Muslims.

Here's a partial list
Rebuilding Infrastructure like the electric system
Building Schools that girls not just boys get to go to.
Training a police force
Training an Army
Killing Muslim Terrorist who are trying to blow up Muslim kids and civilians.
Helping to get democracy started so that the people can chose their leaders

The only Muslims we are against are the extremist nut-cases who just want to kill kill kill.
Perhaps Nidal felt a bond with the those type of muslim terrorists.

So sad.

Heath Care is an individual welfare and as such the federal government has no business attempting to provide it or dictating to our states how to provide it. Article I Sec 8 of the Constitution allows the Congress to provide for the general welfare "of the United States." Herein the United States is referred to as an entity unto itself which excludes the notion of welfare as the greater good for the most individuals. Individual welfare is never mentioned in the Constitution and the Congress has no power to provide it. However, the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not explicitly given to Congress to the states. Thus, the states may provide socialized health care, if their citizens allow them, but the federal Congress cannot. The only way Congress could and should address problems in the health care market is to ensure that trade barriers to the health insurance market, erected between the states, are removed in accordance with the commerce clause.

R.J. You really don't believe your hair splitting. If the United States is just so much dirt then you'd better tell all those people who formulated a Constitution for honest to goodness PEOPLE to read and take heart for a change in having a government that cared for all of them and not just the rich and powerful as was true in the countries they left behind. If the federal government can make health insurance exempt from the Sherman Anti-Trust laws against monopolies, it certainly can do something about one of the most inflationary and greedy businesses in the country.

Your post is a complete charade; just as the ads telling lies about "death panels", and raising taxes on all of us are outright lies. People who make over 500,000 dollars a year are due for more taxation. They were taxed at 91% by Eisenhower and a Republican Congress (By your absurd definition of the word that would make Ike a "socialist.) and even by Reagan at 41%. Bush W. gave them a totally unjustified and unproductive huge tax cut that certainly contributed much to the deficit we face today. Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world, reports that he is taxed over 10 point less than his SECRETARY. Here's your actual "redistribution of wealth," R.J. What we really have in this country is a plutocracy so preoccupied with insatiable greed that it makes economic trips over the cliff like the one we've just experienced inevitable.

ddg. I will address it to right person next time. My apologies. I also appreciate your willingness to see both sides of some issues. If more in Congress were able to do the same, we just might get some of our very large problems solved. I have voted for moderate Republicans of the same sort as Jim Ramstad of Minnesota and Chuck Hegel of Nebraska, but it seems to me these people who recognize that no one person or group of people have all the answers to all the problems are becoming more and more rare and marginalized and from my perspective, more so in the old, necessary and honorable party of Abe Lincoln. I don't always agree with the Blue Dog Democrats, and I am a conservative Democrat, but at least they are there while the Republicans lost 28 moderates from Congress because they were "out-of-step" with their own right of right party members.

Anyhow, thanks for discussing and not propagandizing.

Thank you. I also apologize.

I am afraid death panels and rationing are not lies. CER panels were snuck into the stimulus package. I wonder why?

How might the government squeeze enough out of medicare/medicaid without rationing? We have rationing of H1N1 vaccine right now!

From Wikipedia:

"Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time."

Ed. We are exactly 27th or lower now in the area of rationing health care. Insurance companies slow down the needed service by trying to block every test they can to add to their profit margin. The 27 represents deaths due to needless delays. So if we're 27th and so many other countries are ahead of us with far more complete government control of health care than is proposed in this bill, what does that tell us? We have death panels on an extreme level right now and they are run by insurance executives, people who do not deliver one speck of actual medical relief or treatment to patients. It's a major reason why the AMA, actual doctors who know how to treat the sick, are for reform. This information is all available on the fact finding non-partisan websites.

Any Health Care Reform Bill that doesn't include robust tort reform is a un-lubed rod ready to be inserted into the American Taxpayer's collective posterior orifice.

health care is merely a market for goods and services. Nobody plans a market. It is made up of the billions of interactions of the participants as they attempt to achieve what they value the most.