@Winstonfield_Pennypacker, if you're interested in looking at what my frustration over here on the left side of the spectrum is, read this analysis of an article reporting on a debate over what to do with the national debt between Jon Podesta (of Center for American Progress), and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (Former CBO head and was John McCain's chief economic adviser in the 2008 campaign).

Basically covers what you're doing here. You're trying to establish a false equivalence between the right-wing echo chamber that promotes objectively false and internally inconsistent ideas, and a supposed left-wing mirror opposite that's both internally consistent and supported by facts.

Someone on the left pointing out that people on the right are demonstrably being hypocritical isn't "partisan hackery", it's what journalists should be doing.

Let me try to rephrase your basic premise:

"Hey, isn't a spending freeze what Herbert Hoover did to make the Great Depression great? Isn't it what John McCain and the Republicans suggested doing in 2008 when they got crushed? Why the fuck is Obama talking about implementing it now? Will someone please, put a fucking stake through the heart of this vampiric conservative ideology that's been slowly killing our country for decades now?!"

Now that the SOTU is in the books, it seems like the freeze was the token offering to centrism in what was certainly not a defeatist speech.

>> ^Stormsinger:
As disgusted as I am with Obama's failure to follow through on any of his campaign promises that were important to me, I still have to believe we dodged a bullet when we avoided a McCain presidency.


My thoughts exactly. Obama may not be the savior some people were hoping for, but at least he hasn't dug us into Bush's hole any deeper. (i.e. "bomb, bomb, bomb... bomb, bomb Iran")

>> ^MikesHL13:
Well he is pretty old. Probably just a memory problem. Yeah, I'm sure that's it



John McCain stars in.... Memento 2: The Search for Lost Integrity

John McCain: Not Conservative Enough!

So even though you seem to be unable to stop criticizing and arguing against Obama, you did not think the McCain/Palin ticket was worth voting for, but you now defend Palin and the people in this video?

Precisely. I commend you for your concise and accurate summation. You don't have to be a Republican to find a bazillion things about Obama and his policies to dislike. And only a blindly loyal party-line Republican zombie would have voted for the left wing RINO disaster that was John McCain. And you don't have to be a Republican to argue against the insipid knee-jerk mentality that is the "I hate Palin" bandwagon.

I hate to break it to you, but the "bulk of Americans" can't afford to donate any part of their salary to charities

I think you'd be surprised just how many American donate to charitable causes every year. Partly because of the tax break, but also because Americans in general are pretty generous.

>> ^demon_ix:
What happened to the filibuster-proof majority?

It's dependent on Democrats sticking together to the last man, and we essentially have about ten Democrats who're afraid to admit publicly that they actually support the Democratic platform because they're afraid of being perceived as "liberal" in their usually-conservative states.

They need to get over it.

You guys should move to Canada or something. Your politicians don't work for you, it seems.

There are lots of reasons for that. Part of it is that there's about 30-35% of the American population who don't think politicians should stick up for people in any other way than cutting taxes, dismantling regulation, fighting endless wars, deporting all the Mexicans, banning abortion, and keeping gay people from being able to have a legal marriage.

Part of it is because that 35% was more like 50-60% for most of the last 3 decades, and a lot of the regulations that kept corporate bribery in check got dismantled (along with a lot of other things).

Also, the Democrats in the post-1968 era have refused to organize the party in a way that would enforce some party discipline. Joe Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate for the Presidency in 2000. In 2008 he campaigned for John McCain. He's one of the people who make up that "60" number, and as an aside, he's from a deep-blue state.

There are a lot of Democrats who think the only way they can win elections is to essentially be moderate Republicans. That time has passed. This will be a good test to see how many Democrats realize it.

Does this mean that John McCain is a secret Muslim?

I'll go with 538 on the accuracy of the poll,not that the sentiment isn't there:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/ibdtipp-doctors-poll-is-not-trustworthy.html

"1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and th quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one is not intending to be objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that."

>> ^Throbbin:
John McCain looks like a registered sex offender in that clip.


So he'd definitely registered?

John McCain looks like a registered sex offender in that clip.

Right, because how dare John McCain be a Republican who sometimes disagrees with party dogma. You leave your own ideas at the door when you join a political party, am I right?

Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series

by ANN COULTER


(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.

You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.

As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." That's why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines -- unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they're a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)

Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. That's what single-payer health care is: "Single payer" means "single provider."

It's the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it's screwed up because there's not enough government oversight (it's the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of "reform."

You could fix 90 percent of the problems with health insurance by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden -- another illustration of the ironclad Ann Coulter rule that the worst Republicans are still better than allegedly "conservative" Democrats.

(2) National health care will "increase competition and keep insurance companies honest" -- as President Barack Obama has said.

Government-provided health care isn't a competitor; it's a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer. Consumers may be able to "choose" whether they take the service -- at least at first -- but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion. It's like a new cable plan with a "yes" box, but no "no" box.

Obama himself compared national health care to the post office -- immediately conjuring images of a highly efficient and consumer-friendly work force -- which, like so many consumer-friendly shops, is closed by 2 p.m. on Saturdays, all Sundays and every conceivable holiday.

But what most people don't know -- including the president, apparently -- with certain narrow exceptions, competing with the post office is prohibited by law.

Expect the same with national health care. Liberals won't stop until they have total control. How else will they get you to pay for their sex-change operations?

(3) Insurance companies are denying legitimate claims because they are "villains."

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday's New York Times, saying: "A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn't known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died."

Well, yeah. That and the cancer.

Assuming this is true -- which would distinguish it from every other story told by Democrats pushing national health care -- in a free market, such an insurance company couldn't stay in business. Other insurance companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor's shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves.

If only customers had a choice! But we don't because of government regulation of health insurance.

Speaking of which, maybe if Mr. Gallstone's insurance company weren't required by law to cover early childhood development programs and sex-change operations, it wouldn't be forced to cut corners in the few areas not regulated by the government, such as cancer treatments for patients with gallstones.

(4) National health care will give Americans "basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable" -- as Barack Obama claimed in his op/ed in the Times.

You want to protect consumers? Do it the same way we protect consumers of dry cleaning, hamburgers and electricians: Give them the power to tell their insurance companies, "I'm taking my business elsewhere."

(5) Government intervention is the only way to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The only reason most "pre-existing" conditions aren't already covered is because of government regulations that shrink the insurance market to a microscopic size, which leads to fewer options in health insurance and a lot more uninsured people than would exist in a free market.

The free market has produced a dizzying array of insurance products in areas other than health. (Ironically, array-associated dizziness is not covered by most health plans.) Even insurance companies have "reinsurance" policies to cover catastrophic events occurring on the properties they insure, such as nuclear accidents, earthquakes and Michael Moore dropping in for a visit and breaking the couch.

If we had a free market in health insurance, it would be inexpensive and easy to buy insurance for "pre-existing" conditions before they exist, for example, insurance on unborn -- unconceived -- children and health insurance even when you don't have a job. The vast majority of "pre-existing" conditions that currently exist in a cramped, limited, heavily regulated insurance market would be "covered" conditions under a free market in health insurance.

I've hit my word limit on liberal lies about national health care without breaking a sweat. See this space next week for more lies in our continuing series.

Oh no, a black man with a funny name! I don't remember any of these ignorant dipshits complaining about Panama-born foreigner, John McCain. I guess it's OK if you are white and Republican. Fucking racist imbeciles.

EVEN if Obama was born in Kenya, he would likely be eligible to be president.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen_of_the_United_States

The court has never ruled on what "natural born citizen" actually means. But the child of a US citizen, born anywhere, is a US citizen (as long as the parent actually lived in the US for a while).

Three Republicans born to US citizens in foreign countries have run for president -- George W. Romney (Mitt's dad) in 1968, Lowell Weicker in 1980, then of course John McCain, who was born in Colon, Panama which is NOT part of the Panama Canal Zone.

Complicating all of this is that the laws have changed since McCain and Obama have been born. In 2003 Republican Orrin Hatch proposed a bill to clarify that citizens for 20 years or those born abroad to US parents can be president.

Of course, it's a purely academic matter right now, since only a tin-foil hat Truther or racist would think that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.