It's a good thing The Onion posted this - because at the rate he's going, he was about a week away from proposing this himself. Then, we'd have every dumbass Republican from here to Alaska talking about what a great plan this is, and what a great leader McSame is for proposing it.
Found this by way of the campaign's Google News shared feed - a sober, level-headed analysis of Obama's health plan vs. McSame's dangerous and foolish "tax health benefits" plan. Obama's wins, and it isn't even anywhere near close.
Given the current inefficiencies in our system, the impact of the Obama plan will be profound. Besides the $2,500 savings in medical costs for the typical family, according to our research annual business-sector costs will fall by about $140 billion. Our figures suggest that decreasing employer costs by this amount will result in the expansion of employer-provided health insurance to 10 million previously uninsured people.
We know these savings are attainable: other countries have them today. We spend 40% more than other countries such as Canada and Switzeraland on health care -- nearly $1 trillion -- but our health outcomes are no better.
The lower cost of benefits will allow employers to hire some 90,000 low-wage workers currently without jobs because they are currently priced out of the market. It also would pull one and a half million more workers out of low-wage low-benefit and into high-wage high-benefit jobs. Workers currently locked into jobs because they fear losing their health benefits would be able to move to entrepreneurial jobs, or simply work part time.
In contrast, Sen. McCain, who constantly repeats his no-new-taxes promise on the campaign trail, proposes a big tax hike as the solution to our health-care crisis. His plan would raise taxes on workers who receive health benefits, with the idea of encouraging their employers to drop coverage. A study conducted by University of Michigan economist Tom Buchmueller and colleagues published in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the McCain tax hike will lead employers to drop coverage for over 20 million Americans.
This is a remarkable summary of the arguments against Palin, making the case that she's the most inexperienced candidate in recent memory.
THE most audacious move of the race so far is also, potentially, the most self-destructive. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has set the political atmosphere alight with both enthusiasm and dismay.
(snip)
The political calculations behind Mr McCain’s choice hardly look robust. Mrs Palin is not quite the pork-busting reformer that her supporters claim. She may have become famous as the governor who finally killed the infamous “bridge to nowhere”—the $220m bridge to the sparsely inhabited island of Gravina, Alaska. But she was in favour of the bridge before she was against it (and told local residents that they weren’t “nowhere to her”). As mayor of Wasilla, a metropolis of 9,000 people, she initiated annual trips to Washington, DC, to ask for more earmarks from the state’s congressional delegation, and employed Washington lobbyists to press for more funds for her town.
(snip)
The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience. When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior’s sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.
Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: “I’ve been so focused on state government; I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.
Just to make sure we're on the same page: A clueless governor, with no foreign policy experience, a far right-wing, fundamentalist Christian social agenda, and a creepy old man dictating her every move.
Look, we're all pissed off about the FISA thing. There's a good reason to be: it's utterly un-American, in the sense that it violates our basic human rights as detailed in the Declaration of Independence. You know, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", especially that "Liberty" part.
But dammit, the only way we're going to see any change in these political wimps, these 14 so-called Democrats that buckled under the "pressure" and signed off on the law, is if we flood their offices with calls, emails, letters, everything we can think of telling them - not just doing it, but telling them in no uncertain terms that we're going to do it - that if they keep falling in line with this administration, we'll see to it that they're removed from office. Then, if they keep doing it, find a primary opponent you can support, and (here's the important part) do it!
It's an easy thing right now to talk about how some Democrats need to be "thrown out of the party", but the fact that these Senators still, technically, are Democrats has at least given us the ability to force *'s hand on at least the minimum wage, and gives us the majority. What we need to remember is that these people work for us. They were elected by the people, and their job is to to do the people's business. If they don't, they get thrown out on their asses, just like you and I would if we don't do our jobs.
My Democratic Senator, Nelson, voted for this. I would presume Martinez did too. I plan to let them both know exactly what I think. You should do the same.
Gunmen stopped the car in which the athletes were riding and asked them to step out before shooting them Wednesday, Manham Kubba, secretary general of the Iraqi Tennis Union, said Saturday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was Sunni, and the two players were Shiite, Kubba said.
Six months ago, if you had asked a journalist whether a murder victim was Sunni or Shiite, you'd get the same blank-faced expression that you'd expect to get from your dog had you asked it the same question. It seems of late, to me at least, that the racial(? ethnic? religious? Not quite sure what to call it) aspect of this is being paid more attention to, perhaps as an understanding of the plausibility of a civil war in Iraq.
The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the vile actions of the murderers, or to decry the horrors of religious extremism - it's to ask the following question: is the media becoming more conscious of the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd divisions in Iraq, or is the mention in this article a one-off incidence?
While I was checking up on my sports news this evening, I was blindsided by a great New Orleans rant from Sports Illustrated's Peter King.
I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas that welcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about the hurricane, the flooding and the aftermath.
Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.
What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.
I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday. He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it.'' Disgust dripped from his voice.
On my way home today, I'm stuck in traffic, looking out the passenger-side window - I see a Wal-Mart, one of those big-ass suburban Wal-Mart Borg Cubes that's part grocery store, part clothes store, part tire shop... you get the idea. In the parking lot of this Wal-Mart is a McDonalds.
Disgusted, I look out my driver's-side window. On that side, there's a Publix strip mall. You know, Publix, dentist, lawyer, shoe store, and so on. In the parking lot of this strip mall... yeah, another fucking McDonalds.
Now, I'm sitting still in traffic, trying to figure out why anybody would need a McDonalds across from a McDonalds, and I'm reminded of the Lewis Black bit where he finds a Starbucks across from a Starbucks and proclaims that place the end of the universe. I had to laugh.
