Oh the billions. Oh the trillions. Mission Accomplished that it's no longer an unmitigated disaster. Now it's the great monumental money pit of all time. This is the Republican idea of victory. They like the idea of the U.S. broke and penniless; it suits their world view. I mean, they have plenty themselves, and it keeps the peons from getting to uppity. George Bush is a true Republican hero for draining the treasury of trillions of dollars. On top of that we have the Republican banking disaster; every eight-year Republican term has to have one. The true Republican always leaves the economy in a shambles. What's hilarious is that they keep winning elections.

If fiscal discipline was truly a dem concern...social security, medicare, and welfare would have been shit-canned long ago.

Social Security and Medicare provide a benefit to people, unless you're saying people don't deserve their benefits, that all their tax dollars are paid in for the masters to foolishly throw away on nothing. Of course an implicit Republican belief is that certain people don't deserve to live. If you can't afford health care, go ahead and die. If you get to old to work and have no money, go ahead and die. If you're black, brown, or white trash, go ahead and die. We the rich will survive in our enclaves to do as we will. Plus, all your tax dollars are ours to throw away on death, destruction, and a stupid belief that we rule the world. Here's our army to create a pro-Iranian anti-American government in Iraq that once we leave, which we will, we can no longer control. All that six years will have been for what exactly? All those trillions for exactly what?

True...if only we didn't have to pay taxes to support such a mammoth government, we could afford to pay for our own healthcare and welfare.

If we didn't have such a mammoth government, how could we engage in that costly global military adventurism you love so much? A small government would certainly be a good thing, but then, it'd most likely waste all of its time trying to focus on American problems, and not nearly as much time toppling governments on the other side of the planet. We couldn't have that, now could we? ;-)

Apologies Captain Danger....somehow you are under the impression that I like global domination and regime toppling, strategic communications would be boring without it.

And I don't think a small government would waste it's time on worrying whether or not our hearts and colons are disease free. Again, it would expect us to operate on the "big boy program" and handle our own business as responsible adults exacting the benefits and/or consequences of the choices we made.

The beauty of American problems are supposed to be the freedom to handle them as we see fit....without the teet, training wheels, and leash. Dependence breeds subservience...will free healthcare and mandatory voluntary Social Security really keep you free?

Oh yeah,

See. the reason we're supposed to be HAPPY to live in fear (get cancer and your insurance will be taken away; lose your job and you'll lose your house) because

1.) that Moral Hazard is essential to the proper functioning of the Free Market (tm) -- a god that demands the occasional blood sacrifice, and is that too much to ask? and,

2.) we're AMERICANS god dammit, and it's our patriotic duty to heap SCORN on those european type softies who remind us what a huge BARGAIN national health is for all but a tiny number of rich folks at the top. And what red-blooded American isn't enraged by the constant insult of Social Security depriving him of the freedom to make up his own American Mind about retirement and whatnot?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Look, Navy Boy, you should begin ANY post on the topic of Social security with the admission that as a government pensioneer, you're outside the system anyway. You still post on the topic because you're basically fulla crap, but don't expect the rest of us to support your boy McCain in his attacks on one of the very few government programs that isn't a total loss, like your stupid war.

And this bullshit about how only dependence on the insurance bloodsuckers is REAL freedom - where do you GET this nonsense?

Since you suck that teat all the time, Navy boy (or is it buoy?), isnt' it kinda IRONIC that you want the rest of us to both pay YOUR medical expenses and crawl off and die without help if we ever happen to get sick? Speaking of sucking....

Kind sir, I pay into social security and medicaid, so I can say all I want about it and it's failure. As far as my federal pension, I still haven't earned it, and I don't recall you ever saying the opportunity was denied you unless you were to physically or mentally decrepit to serve at least 20 years. And you keep forgetting what I'm willing to risk for my 50% pension...something you can't or aren't willing to do...other than shit on me for having something you covet but aren't willing to do what it takes to earn it.

"And this bullshit about how only dependence on the insurance bloodsuckers is REAL freedom - where do you GET this nonsense?" Huh???

And no, I never said I hoped you would crawl off and die if you got sick....but I can see you are averse to the idea that you be responsible for your own health and welfare.

Since as I recall you're some kind of middle-level military bureaucrat, what do you risk for your pension, exactly?

I'm not shitting on you for having something I covet. I'm shitting on you -- I guess that's your colorful term for mocking you -- for being an asshole. I don't covet your glorious pension. I only think you should mention it when you weigh in on Social Security and your studly libertarian views about things. Because there's this disconnect between what you have and expect yourself and what you think all the rest of us should have and do.

Silly me,I think that makes you a stinking hypocrite.

I'm not averse to paying for my own health and welfare -- that's what I do. I'm just averse to paying for YOUR welfare, while you carry on about how letting the general public in on the same kind of deal would just make us all a bunch of softies.

Again, I am taking the steps to earn a pension and cheaper healthcare (not free), and you are only demanding that you deserve it simply because you are you. The benefits to serving have been well known for decades, and like I have said before, you had a choice and now must live with it. You want what I will soon have, without enduring the same risks I must take to earn it. And somehow I'm the asshole in your mind.

I pay into social security, and have long desired to option to remove myself from that program. I feel that I can do better for myself than social security, a program that I can pretty much count on not being available when it is actually my time to possibly need it. I also pay into medicare. I also pay taxes. So, if you deem me a hypocrite because I have earned my benefits and pay into a failing system, that's on you. I've got nothing to prove to you. If you need me to qualify the risks I have taken, currently face, and future unknowns in order to add some validity to my views....you lose. In your mind, I'm just a mid-level bureaucrat...and I doubt you are willing to let that go...it would contradict your argument that I earned what I have.

Just what is it that you do that makes you think you deserve the same thing I have earned? You aren't paying for my welfare, I've done a pretty good job at earning it...it's already paid for, dick.

>

Oh, the usual.

Risk? Again, what risk? Paper cuts?

Go ahead, call me names. Fact is, my taxes pay your check and bennies and your taxes don't do shit for me. In fact, the only taxes you pay that engage me in any way are the payments you make to social security -- payments you resent, being as you're both a libertarian and a bureaucrat: this makes you a hypocrite already, so why not go for Big Casino?

LOL.

That's alright...you made your choice, live with it. If you aren't willing to make the same sacrafices I have made in order to earn a pension and cheaper healthcare, tough shit. I pay the same taxes you do...contributing in the same way as you do, and then some.

Again, if you want what I have...and apparently you do, recruiters are waiting. You can come live the easy life with me....suffering paper-cuts.

Rubma, you are young and idealistic. I know plenty of people who took responsibility for their own health only to find they fell victim to disease anyway.

One was a MSgt I worked with in Italy. He practiced free-radical Wednesday and colonic cleansing, walked religiously (had to leave work early every day to do it!) and had great plans (which he was kind enough to share with us unwashed masses) about retiring to his Greek island home and lying on the beach all day. He's now a GS in Stuttgart. He needed the health insurance and his Greek wife dumped him and her family lives in the beach house.

You can plan all you like, but it doesn't always turn out the way you plan. Not all diseases are controllable by diet and exercise.

So what happens to the person who tests positive for a cancer gene and loses his/her health insurance? Are they just supposed to crawl away and wait to die or appeal to some Baptist charity? I go to school with a woman whose family has a history of breast cancer. She wants to be tested but was advised by her doctor that if she has the genetic marker she will likely lose her health care coverage.

When the worry about what will happen to oneself or one's family is allievated by health care for all, we free people up to achieve, not live in fear.

Please, realize it's not as easy as you believe.

Young and idealistic? This is reality Ads....health care is a personal responsibility, just like paying your bills, taxes, and insurance on your car. Socialized healthcare is an ideal....therefore idealistic to those that support it.

I made choices in my life long ago which put me in the position I am now. Life is a series of choices for which we all pay the consequences or reap the benefits...I made my choices. Perhaps when oxnuts was 18 and made the same choices I did...or I made the same choices he did....where would we be? With or without health insurance. If there are those that feel they deserve some entitlement simply for consuming oxygen and paying taxes....I'm just one guy that disagrees, press on with your idea that the Fed can handle your business better than you can.

What the Fed can handle better than the private insurance companies is the issue, not the crap you keep churning out. The choice is whether we pay extra to sustain the illusion of free enterprise wehn it's not free at all.

This isn't about you. Yu insisted it WAS about you, from the beginning. You just didn't want to approach it honestly. Now you've finally made a partial concession to honesty, you have to throw a bucket of shit at me to compensate. I just consider the source and go on with my day.

We WILL have some form of national health in the near future, if for no other reason simply because we won't be competitive without it. The employers and teh AMA already want it. If the insurance lobby didn't own some senators outright (Joe Lieberman, e.g.) it would already be a done deal.

Rubma, for a bully and a blowhard you have awfully thin skin. i wouldn't have it any other way.