It was a short-lived show about Bush that featured a pro-life activist who was a fetus that had survived a botched abortion. It was funny/weird but pretty much indescribable. Suffice to say that the fetus was clearly a middle-aged "man" and had a feisty attitude.

I really do. But they have a legitimate point here. If you force them to insure anyone, and have a low penalty for not buying health insurance, then a lot of people will just wait until they get a serious illness to buy it. This could undermine the whole risk-spreading concept underlying insurance.

These companies don't have a money tree. The money they pay out comes from consumers (and soon taxpayers).

A pretty large proportion of Nobel Prize winners fall into one of two categories:

1) Winners who start a war and then end it... or just try to!

2) Winners who are given a symbolic "Attaboy!" or "Attagirl!" for taking a positive stand. Case in point, Al Gore.

No one would claim that Obama is in the top flight of Nobel Prize winners, but he fits comfortably in category 2.

Hey, if we bash this President enough, we'll get another, more liberal one. Right?

just their own greatness.

... But by his own admission, some planes have a pilot-accessible button which adjusts the airflow. Of course loony claims about the cockpit having 20 times more oxygen should be debunked, but making blanket statements and then contradicting them doesn't help the cause.

There is no country in the world that would pay for the kind of surgery Sen Kennedy underwent...

is that it is Kennedy's plan, too. He sponsored it in the Senate. So Huckabee is really accusing Kennedy of wanting to do himself in.

Read my post. Obama has flipped to the right on some things, but this time he flipped to the left.

The current pivot point in the debate is whether there should be a public option. The following elements seem to already be baked into the plan:

1) Insurance will be mandatory, with an employer mandate

2) Insurers will have to take all comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions

This by itself is a huge change, and is arguably more than Obama promised as a candidate. Remember, it was Hillary Clinton who wanted a mandatory system, not Obama. What was a left-wing position in the Democratic primary has become a centrist position in the country.

(Ssh, don't tell any Republicans you know...)

Doesn't the Bible teach us that drawing a "no, no square" around a ripe, juicy piece of fruit is counterproductive?

I stand corrected. China has more income inequality than the US. But they do have better food. :)

I don't know where you are getting your information about China. Housing is not free like it used to be. Actually they are becoming more and more capitalistic.

My experiment is imperfect, but it is something like an objective test. You may personally find the life of a Chinese peasant preferable to that of a poor American. I can't argue with your opinion. But I would be surprised if you could find much objective evidence to back it up.

By the way, I hope that doesn't come as across is someone saying that the US is the best at everything. We need to be realistic about ourselves and other countries, too.

Yes, China has gleaming cities, but it also has a lot of pollution, and hundreds of millions of peasants. There are not moral criticisms, but simply facts.

However, the Poor in China, for the most part, are far better off than poor people in the United States.

It is true that the US has more social inequality than China. But this is overstating the case to the point of absurdity. A simple experiment: Offer a Chinese peasant a US immigrant visa, and offer an American welfare recipient a Chinese visa. Does anyone doubt which party would accept the offer, being fully informed of what their circumstances would be?

For the sake of argument, let's imagine that Robert Byrd was beating up on a Republican Supreme Court nominee for allegedly being a racist. Would the media bring up Byrd's past whenever he made accusations of racism? Of course! They would have Rush and friends raking them over the coals if they didn't.

I see Obama's statement as a response to the widely repeated claim that the government is going to completely take over the healthcare system. It is true that Obama is not going to force employers to keep the same privately-sponsored insurance, but that seems so patently obvious that it is not worth saying.

Reich is basically arguing that the longer the debate goes on, the more likely it is that the universal healthcare proponents will lose. Doesn't he think our side has a stronger argument?

The big difference between 1993 and now is that all the important stakeholders agree that the current system is terribly. The Republicans can't defend the status quo, and they can't just shout "Boo, socialism!" and run away. If they can't come up with their own credible plan in the next few years, they are going to lose. (Deregulation is not a credible plan.)

I suppose it would be pointless to refer to the polls saying Biden won... not to mention the fact that Palin actually looked in the camera and said she was going to ignore questions that she didn't want to answer...

Where are the people are on right who are supposed to be heroically defending free speech from humorless, PC liberals?

His job is to tell jokes. If you don't like his jokes, don't listen.

The FDA was approving drugs long before fMRI scans were used. Drugs are approved based on their ability to have a clinical effect, not to make your brain light up differently.

In terms of the whole federal budget, $20 million is loose change. Who cares who controls it?