...is the angry, white, conservative faces in the chamber that don't applaud.

Suck it up, whitey.

And of course the GOP chooses Charles Boustany of LA to do the rebuttal, a known birther, who opened his rebuttal with a lie and closed it with a lie.

Oh well, no health care this year.

Americans have access to the best healthcare in the world, what are you talking about?

Oops, my bad.

Americans have access to the best healthcare in the world, what are you talking about?

Yes, and as Tom mentioned the other day, Saturn makes cars that Americans want to buy!

Obama?
Obama??
Obama???

Do y'all NEVER get your heads out of your asses, enough to read contemporary fiction?

Ever heard of Tom Clancy?  And there are others.

* stares at keyboard

All I'm going to say is this:

I pay an extra cent and a half on top of my tax payment each fortnight. That cent and a half from me and every other taxpayer goes into a Federal Government coffer that guarantees me and every other Australian (tax payer or not) basic health cover. It doesn't cover everything, but I can afford private health insurance to cover the rest.

If I need to see a doctor, or go to hospital in a hurry, all I have to do is flash my Medicare card, and its all taken care of. I need a prescription, I will never pay more than $23 for it (assuming the medicine is on the PBS list). My private health insurance costs me $70 a month. It covers everything that Medicare doesn't.

Pensioners and low wage earners get higher Medicare benefits, even though they are rarely in a position to contribute through taxes.

And you know what, I'm fine with all of that. It's hardly socialist and it isn't perfect, but it is socially responsible in my opinion. And no one is offing Grandma.

Ever heard of Tom Clancy?  And there are others.

Fyre? I've met Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy lives just down the road from me in Huntingtown. Tom Clancy is the most arrogant asshole I've ever met. He was called in for "acccidentally" publishing classified materials and while I applaud him telling the Director to go fuck himself, there was no reason to treat those of us on the support staff like his slaves. I wouldn't read his shite if you overpaid me in Filipina hookers.

but they'll toss your salad!

tom clancy sure writes like he's an arrogant asshole.

Clancy was just an example of an author that could think up a viable way to topple a government.

To think that the "enemy" hasn't been giving all of this serious consideration is still refusing to see that "If it can be dreamed up"?

Someone can (and probably will) try to DO it.

Actually he wrote about some classified systems that aren't supposed to exist and got his wrist slapped for it.

But it was pre-9/11 by almost 10 years so nothing happened.

I liked Tom Clancy a lot when I was 13-15 or so.  I recently gave away all of his books that my parents gave me because I would never read any of them ever again.

Eric van Lustbader, then,

PERV

Chicka bow wow...

SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.
Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments
for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are
not lawfully present in the United States.

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments
for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are
not lawfully present in the United States.

   1. Though illegal aliens will be prohibited from receiving Federal premium subsidies, they are not prohibited from participating in the plan.

   2. Every benefit dollar received by the participant in excess of premium paid represents a deficit against the plan

   3. The plan is funded by tax dollars and benefits are paid by the Fed.

 Dear Leader lied to you.

No dumbass, you're just being disingenuous. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, and they could also buy into a new government-run insurance plan if Congress creates one. But unlike legal residents, they wouldn't get federal subsidies to help them.

Anything else you're pulling out of the right side of your ass.

No dumbass,

Do as i Say, NOT as i Do?  ...

i'm sorry, Zoom, but Wowzer is right.  LOOK at the evidence.  Time WILL tell, and by the time it all comes out?  It'll be too late for any of y'all to back-track, or "Do-Over,"

and in the meantime, we're ALL going to get fucked.

What about the arguments ... somewhere ... i think i might need to get back to you on this, because i'm getting REALLY floaty.  i need to post in dreams about what floaty is, i think.  But all anyway, i can't think too hard, right now.  My bad.  <sigh>

Zoomie, you ignorant slut, shouting "NO IT'S NOT!!!" isn't going to change a damned thing.

And furthermore, if the current bill were to pass private insurance would pretty much be history, as it effectively paralyzes existing private insurance policies as well as forbidding insurers from refusing clients with pre-existing conditions, setting them up to be run into the ground. What was that Alinsky said about destroying your opponent first by fixing them in place?

 this isn't about providing healthcare to Americans, and it never was. It is about luring the howling mob into handing over control of a part of their lives which can thereafter be used to purchase or extort votes from them to perpetuate the left's insatiable hunger for power. They don't write 1000 pages of legalese for the good of humanity, they write 1000 pages of legalese to obscure their intentions and make everything so convoluted that they'll be able to interpret it in whichever way best suits them without accountability.

 Kind of like passing a $700,000,000,000 already containing enough kick-backs, pay-offs, and bribes that there was no need for riders, then claiming it contained no "pork".

Seriously Zoomie, let's see reason. These are the same folks who have:
1)Persisted in claiming that the president of the US was not a US citizen,
2)Persisted in claiming that the president of the US was seeking to inculcate the youth of our nation with communist, nazi, and/or satanist values,
and
3)Persisted in claiming that Senator Wilson was right in disgracing his constituency by causing a ruckus during a "let's stop ruckusing" speech.

In other words, you're dealing with zealots.
If it's one thing I've learned from my years of arguing against creationists, flat earth pushers, and the schizo-paranoid, it's that you can never win. It's better just to wave the white flag of neutrality and forget about the fact that they are the ones who for the most part are benefiting from the very programs their asshole overlords have convinced them to protest against. It's really not worth the argument. It lessens us as humans.

Yeah you're probably right.

OK, you're definitely right, he's a liar and a cheater and a Kenyan. And he wants to come into your neighborhood and kill your puppies with Soviet-era communist assault weapons because he and all his minions hate America and freedom.

(did I do that right?)

Balor - how would you fix the health-care issue?

He wouldn't. Evolution dictates that only the strong survive.

I still think this this bill is pretty shitty & favors most of the interests it should be reforming.  Most of the arguments against it, though, make me want to argue for it.

I think they should be passing a bill to force the states to get their respective shit together.  Screw this federally-run shit.

Looks like the plan to keep everyone arguing is working.

Since McCain is one of bush's close personal buddies I voted for Obama as a last ditch effort, a last hope as it were.
It has since become clear we have no hope.

But giving out trillions of dollars was not Obama's personal agenda, he didn't think it up.
All of this shit was predefined and would have happened right on cue no matter who we were allowed to elect.

In my opinion.

Seems to me our Presidents main role today is simply to act as a focus point for polarizing the public into bickering fragments.

I agree.  The financial industry was going to get the bailout no matter who was elected.  We were going to get the same sleaze bags who were already owned by Wall Street running the economic show.

Unless Bill Ayers was elected.  But I might have been the only person in the country to vote for him!

I still think this this bill is pretty shitty & favors most of the interests it should be reforming.  Most of the arguments against it, though, make me want to argue for it.

Exactly the way I feel. There is a lot of compromise built into the bill and compromise usually just ends up leaving both sides as if they've been cheated. Also, as you guys say it was inevitable.

Tru's conspiracies and Balor's embellishments aside, I find it unconscionable that we bailed out several industries that should have been allowed to fold for the good of economic evolution but people still suffer and die in the US because they have no health care options.

With luck, unemployment will skyrocket, swine flu will ravage the health insurance industry's coffers and when they come looking for a handout we can tell them to fuck right off.

Hey, a man can dream, can't he?