This is not the country we thought it was when we were younger . . .

[Anonymous]

Repulicans are wreaking havoc in this country with their propaganda and lies. Cutting funding to Head Start? WTF are they thinking? Put our kids first! They demanded tax breaks for the top 2% of earners in this country but cut funding to Head Start. Does anyone else think this is fucked up?

http://putourkidsfirst.com/kidsfirst/education_ratings_us.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's what conservative is: you hang onto the worst of the culture as long as you can, crouched in a cave until everyone else has moved on, and when you're finally pulled kicking and screaming into the light of day, you puff out your chest and pretend it was your idea all along.

Indeed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Repulicans are wreaking havoc in this country with their propaganda and lies. Cutting funding to Head Start? WTF are they thinking? Put our kids first! They demanded tax breaks for the top 2% of earners in this country but cut funding to Head Start. Does anyone else think this is fucked up?

http://putourkidsfirst.com/kidsfirst/education_ratings_us.asp

Right, but most of middle America has so internalized the empty koan, "Both sides are equally bad" that they're incapable of any sort of political agency. After all, if there are no policy difference between either party, there's no point in getting involved. The mainstream media does everything they can to obscure these differences, to the point where most Americans don't even know what a "policy" is.

[Anonymous]

OP here. 11:33, you are awesome. Thanks to the others who also pointed out how far we've come. I think I have just spent too much time focusing on the negative.

I agree, our children are going to look back and wonder why and how anyone ever justified denying anyone the right to get married. We have come a long way.

You should turn that post into a blog or send it in to the Washigton Post or something - I think it is exactly what a lot of people need to hear right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Repulicans are wreaking havoc in this country with their propaganda and lies. Cutting funding to Head Start? WTF are they thinking? Put our kids first! They demanded tax breaks for the top 2% of earners in this country but cut funding to Head Start. Does anyone else think this is fucked up?

http://putourkidsfirst.com/kidsfirst/education_ratings_us.asp

Since you asked, I too think it is fucked up. And more so because such un-Christlike actions are supported by devout Christians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Repulicans are wreaking havoc in this country with their propaganda and lies. Cutting funding to Head Start? WTF are they thinking? Put our kids first! They demanded tax breaks for the top 2% of earners in this country but cut funding to Head Start. Does anyone else think this is fucked up?

http://putourkidsfirst.com/kidsfirst/education_ratings_us.asp

Since you asked, I too think it is fucked up. And more so because such un-Christlike actions are supported by devout Christians.

Right, but Christian End Times eschatology covers those guys. They're the one's who it turns out are actually worshipping the anti-Christ. The Bible is pretty clear on this. Of course, the worshippers of the anti-Christ think they're Christian. That's why they call the anti-Christ The Deciever.

On Christ's return, he says to these folks:

“Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.” ... “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's what conservative is: you hang onto the worst of the culture as long as you can, crouched in a cave until everyone else has moved on, and when you're finally pulled kicking and screaming into the light of day, you puff out your chest and pretend it was your idea all along.

Do you care to elaborate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's what conservative is: you hang onto the worst of the culture as long as you can, crouched in a cave until everyone else has moved on, and when you're finally pulled kicking and screaming into the light of day, you puff out your chest and pretend it was your idea all along.

Do you care to elaborate?

Not particularly. Unless one is a complete moron--or irrevocably in thrall to epistemic closure--the previous post should be a sufficiently comprehensive bitch-slapping.

[Anonymous]

Conservatives turn everything into damn circus - take healthcare for example. Richard Nixon was all for reforming healthcare, so my question is -- what the hell happened to this country's politics in the last 20 years? Nixon today would be labeled a moderate or (GASP) a bluedog Democrat.

Republican idea

BY JOHN DORSCHNER
[e-mail]
The lawsuit against the healthcare reform act filed Tuesday by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is focused on a provision that has long been advocated by conservatives, big business and the insurance industry.

The lawsuit by McCollum, a candidate for governor, and 12 other attorneys general, focuses on the provision that virtually all Americans will need to have health insurance by 2014 or face penalties.

The lawsuit calls this an ``unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals.'' It states the Constitution doesn't authorize such a mandate, the proposed tax penalty is unlawful and is an ``unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states.''

``The truth is this is a Republican idea,'' said Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association. She said she first heard the concept of the ``individual mandate'' in a Miami speech in the early 1990s by Sen. John McCain, a conservative Republican from Arizona, to counter the ``Hillarycare'' the Clintons were proposing.

McCain did not embrace the concept during his 2008 election campaign, but other leading Republicans did, including Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.

Seeking to deradicalize the idea during a symposium in Orlando in September 2008, Thompson said, ``Just like people are required to have car insurance, they could be required to have health insurance.''

Among the other Republicans who had embraced the idea was Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts crafted a huge reform by requiring almost all citizens to have coverage.

``Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate,'' Romney wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2006. ``But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.''

Romney was referring to the federal law that requires everyone to be treated in emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay.

During his presidential election campaign, Barack Obama was opposed to an individual mandate, preferring instead strong requirements that employers be required to provide coverage. ``I'm not sure how ready the country is politically to accept the overall mandate,'' Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University physician and advisor to Obama, told The Miami Herald during the campaign.

Still, the concept was gathering a strong momentum. The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of America's largest companies, supported it in the summer of 2008, thinking it much better than a broad requirement to force businesses of all sizes to offer coverage -- something that could increase business costs and make them less competitive.

Others joined the bandwagon, including the liberal Service Employees International Union and the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan nonprofit that studies American healthcare problems.

In November 2008, just days after Obama's landslide victory, America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, made a stunning announcement, saying it favored universal coverage and supported a law that would stop insurers from rejecting applicants because of preexisting conditions.

``Universal coverage is within reach,'' the group said in a historic press release.

After being adamantly opposed to reform during the Clinton years, AHIP said it had changed its mind -- based on one condition: Any reform plan had to require that all individuals have insurance or pay stiff penalties.

AHIP's reasoning was simple: Many of the uninsured are healthy and under age 35. They either have jobs that don't offer insurance or they didn't pay for insurance because they were certain they wouldn't get sick.

Having this group in an insurance pool spreads risk. Without an individual mandate requiring them to get insurance, Americans could wait until they got sick and then sign up for insurance -- a trend that would mean only sick people would be paying premiums while running up huge bills. In this scenario, healthy people would have no need to buy insurance -- a financially disastrous situation for insurance companies.

The Obama administration saw that the mandate was the only way to get a reform package passed and it became a foundation of the legislation, along with subsidies for those who couldn't afford coverage.

On Monday, the day after it was passed, McCollum was ready with a press release: ``The healthcare reform legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last night clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and infringes on each state's sovereignty.''

He objected to Thompson's car insurance analogy because people could choose wether or not they wanted to drive a car, while people had no choice about buying health insurance under the reform act. What's more, car insurance was rightly a state requirement, not a federal one.

He was joined in the lawsuit by attorneys general from Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Washington, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Utah and Washington.