Good Americans who through their bosses or their own misdeeds created all the MILLIONS of bad mortages out there! Millions? How is that possible? We have created a culture of greed/desire enabled by banks with their pre-approved credit cards sent to EVERYONE—-especially those who have other credit cards-trying to get their business without ever verifing any income!

Those of us who have no debt and have never missed a mortgage payment or any payment wonder how the hell this could have happened?

It is a reasoned, thoughtful, version of the the beliefs of the modern republican party.

It’s always struck me as very odd that doctors, whose main goal is supposedly to help people, seem to draw a disproportionate number of people who are in it for the money. Don’t get me wrong, I think those who take on professions that consist primarily of doing things for others (teachers, police, social workers, etc) should be paid far more than they are. And many doctors are dedicated, caring people who don’t make millions.

But one doesn’t tend to picture social workers playing golf or teachers driving around in new BMWs.

Of course, the reason that there don’t seem to be enough physicians in MA to go around is that thousands of previously-uninsured people are now insured and are now going to doctors instead of getting sicker and dying.

A progressive looks at this and says: Yay, more people are getting decent health care. There’ll be some growing pains, but eventually the physicians will move where the patients are and there’ll be fewer problems all around.

A conservative looks at it and says: Who cares if fewer people are getting sick and dying. Physicians are overworked and not getting paid as well. It’s a disaster.

Another lesson in why conservatives are always wrong.

Let me just take a wild guess here. The “harshly worded report” was from the neocon wing of the Parliament, wasn’t it? The ones who support a privatized system?

Admitting you were wrong? How unlike you!

The Zogby poll you cite did NOT show the contrasts you claim. The other was NOT a Zogby poll.

Nothing circular there. You were just wrong.

Jay Tea, you want to provide a link in support of this statement?

There you go! If someone thinks we’ve got universal health care in this country, challenge them to prove it by dropping any other health care they’ve got. I’ll bet anyone whatever their monthly premium is that they won’t do it.

So is thinking. You should try it some time.

You remind me of a Creationist quoting scientific papers out of context to claim there’s a problem with the Theory of Evolution. Sure, no system is perfect, and there’s room fro improvement in France, The U.K., Canada, etc. But by every objective metric, it works better that the system in the United States does for 90% of the people.

But in your opinion, that doesn’t matter, as long as you can find one or two flaws in other systems, you don’t have to look to improve your own. This is exactly the attitude that got the United States is such a huge fucking economic meltdown.

According to Bush, yes.

Bolding is fun! Plus, it’s pretty neat of you to toss off 15,000 deaths as a mere anecdote. That’s more than 3X the death toll in Iraq. Are those deaths mere anecdotes as well?

The bulk of the victims — many of them elderly — died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in a country where air conditioning is rare.

…
Other European countries hit by the heat have been slower than France to come out with death tolls, but it’s clear they also suffered thousands of deaths.

But it’s the fault of the public health system. Somehow.

I see we have short memories here. France’s health care system made Katrina look like nothing more than a cloudy day.

Their bowls are already full of blame-Barney-Frank. No more room. That’s perhaps by design, I think.

JT, surely no system is perfect and we could argue for years (and in fact, have been arguing for years) over which is better. We each have yardsticks which support our argument, but I feel I’ve got more in my favor and more relevant ones, besides – life expectancy, infant mortality, cost (unit cost pricing – government operation, like the post office – against profit pricing – private hospitals), etc.

The wait times argument is irrelevant if you were to do a dual public-private system, so that anyone who could afford the procedure could have it done right away, whereas anyone waiting for the public system couldn’t pay for the private practice anyway.

Actually this country was built by cheap labor.

To be fair, working at the behest of the investment capital which AO is lionizing. Sure, capital is necessary, but the idea that the creation of the U.S. was some uber-risky venture for investors and businesspeople is probably a myth, IMO. They knew the railroads would be successful, for instance – the government was literally giving away land to make sure that they would be.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner KEITH HALL: If I were to characterize this jobs report I would say it’s very dismal jobs report. There’s very little in this report that’s positive. This is maybe one of the worst jobs reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics has ever produced.

Rep. ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Ever?

HALL: Yes.

CUMMINGS: And how long has the Bureau been around?

HALL: 124 years

All you free market cheerleaders? Pour yourselves a big bowl of STFU.

Unless you’re gay. Then fuck you.