"Try this instead - "THE WORLD WILL END TOMORROW IF THIS STIMULUS IS NOT PASSED"

You do know that the 2008 Economic Stimulus Plan was passed under Bush, who signed it. Right?

I love how the extremists on the right are trying to pretend that they never supported Bush, and now include him in their diatribes. Or, as it seems here, don't even know about how this all began well before Obama was President.

I think the cartoon is right on the money. Obama and the Democrats give away the store to get "bipartisan" support, and then watch in horror as the Republicans call it "Communism!" anyway and refuse to vote for it.

The Republicans, for whatever reason, have decided to simply obstruct. Anything. It's blood sport, they even just come right out and admit it.

In light of that, asking the Republicans "Well, if I compromise on THIS part then, will you join me and vote for the bill?" is like asking "If I abandon my principles entirely for your sake, will you then stop trying to just cause political damage by having me fail?"

It's not only foolish, it's a non sequitur. It makes no sense, given what they've shown.

Accept that all Republicans will vote no on anything proposed by Obama and the Democrats. And move on, relieved of that concern.

I say this as someone who admired Paglia in the past... Once she struck out alone, her narcissism quickly sunk any clues about reality she has ever possessed. No wonder the right wing loves her.

I see this a lot in comments at Salon, people who liked Paglia's work and claim that she's somehow changed in some fundamental way. It puzzles me, because I remember her articles appearing in "alternative" papers (in the East Bay Express in my case) in the early 90s or late 80s, and everyone I knew found her insufferable from the start, not only sensationalist and reactionary but also dimwitted and incoherent.

The great columnist Molly Ivins around this same time looked into what the "buzz" about Paglia was by actually reading her work, and wrote a devastating piece for Mother Jones about what she found, namely that Paglia was nothing but a sensationalist and vapid "twit", in Ivin's immortal words. You can read it here or click my signature:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~erich/misc/ivins_on_paglia

Which isn't to say that there wasn't something valuable about her early work that you liked, obviously you did. I'm just saying that the notion that she's made some fundamental shift, which is bandied about here often, is puzzling to me because I don't see it.

By the way, just scanning these, to all of the Paglia supporting self-described conservatives: The "vitrol" you see here (that seems to to be the word you all use in lockstep) is not from progressives or other Salon readers who don't like the fact that Paglia is a liberal or a "left wing intellectual" as you like to call her, that they disagree with.

Because she's not.

No one except conservatives considers her anything remotely liberal or "left wing".

What non-right wingers are instead annoyed about is Salon continuing to publish such AM-radio-level talking points, the same badly thought-out, scare-mongering, easily debunked low-level populist right wing pablum anyone could hear by tuning in Glenn Beck, or O'Reilly, or Rush. Which Paglia does. Tunes in Rush. Daily, she says. And well, to us, it shows.

Just thought I'd clear that up.

Bill Pilgrim

Bill,

Canada and Europe spend less on healthcare per capita than the US because they ration care. That's our point.

Oh that's your point, is it? And the US doesn't "ration" care? So everyone who needs any care just gets it, in the US, is that the idea?

You'd be surprised how non-rationed care is in France. I've lived in both systems for many years, and the long waits for appointments, endless paperwork, and "rationed" care I experienced was entirely in the US system.

It's one of the more amusing, albeit infuriating, facts of life these days that almost all of the right wing zealots opposing reform of the insanely bad US system are the ones who know almost nothing about life outside the US except rumors.