So the House has very tentatively suggested that some small part of the huge drain of resources from the poor and middle class to the wealthy might possibly be used to "provide for the general welfare"?

Let the squealing of the wealthy and their domesticated pundits begin!

Public health affects all of us.

Absolutely. Anyone with any understanding of public health knows that it's in their own best interest for everyone to have simple access to good healthcare.

Contrary to the example set by some of the the current Republican leadership and most corporate media pundits, "making shit up" is not a valid approach to intelligent discussion.

Assuming that's your goal, I mean.

what about when the not-so-elite doctors decide that it's not worth it to go 200k in debt, get sued constantly, have insurance payments continually cut, and still get tax increases and give it all up?

If you're curious about that, ask them. That's happening now, in our current oh-so-awesome system. That may be part of why 59% of doctors support government legislation to establish national health insurance (per April 2008 Annals of Internal Medicine).

Even 50% of *Republican* voters support a public option. The only "partison" division is between congresscritters who've been bought off by the insurance industry and those who haven't.

He laughed and replied, "I'm only loved because they don't know what I think."

Not exactly. I think people loved him because most of the time, they didn't know his opinion. So they took it that much more seriously when he did express it, whether they agreed with him or not.

True. After all, if certain rights aren't for everyone, there's a better word to describe what they are: "privileges".

I'm amused that the bullshit term "special rights" has pretty much died out, as it became increasingly obvious that people arguing against supposed "special rights" for non-straights are actually desperately trying to protect their own "special rights".

It's technically an important distinction but in practical and personal terms -- and in terms of a just society -- it's an irrelevant distinction. At least until and unless people decide to enact a similar DADT policy about straights in the military.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

If only that had been true ...

"What's the hurry?"

Absolutely! It's only been in the works for 60 years. That's not nearly enough time to make a change this important.

With this much money involved, there was never any chance that there wouldn't be a fight.

The corporatists and their Congressional and MediaCo allies did their best -- and it was obvious easily good enough -- to keep single-payer from being taken seriously by the Village. But they want "reform" that includes a mandate ... as long as it comes with only easily-undermined reforms and no real public option. As far as they're concerned, the mandate is the central point and everything else is window-dressing to be either gutted or discarded.

It's a gamble of sorts, to be sure. If in spite of their best efforts we end up with a mandate and a real public option, the corporatists will have to figure out how to strangle the public option in the crib.

... a corporate CEO. But somehow corporate welfare handouts of hundreds of millions of dollars never get the same attention that poor single moms do for getting barely enough to live on.

This country's been "redistributing the wealth" for a long time ... and more and more of it gets redistributed to the wealthy. But any tentative suggestion that there just might be something out of whack with that is just damn hippy socialists inciting class warfare.

For right now, Liberals on TV need to grow a pair, and start shouting back just as loud as the Corporate media

With the exception of the Obermann/Maddow ghetto, there aren't any "Liberals on TV". There are far-rights, rights, and center-rights, the latter of whom are grudgingly allowed on in order to portray actual progressives as "rabid left-wing extremists".

Some of you folks seem to think this is just an oversight on the the part of MediaCorp, and if liberals would "shout back just as loud", then MediaCorp would give them better coverage. But it doesn't have anything to do with how supposedly skilled the Right is at manipulating the media, or how supposedly bad the Obama Admin is at staying on-message. It's not even a matter of MediaCorp having a right-wing bias. MediaCorp is part of the right wing. Any negative coverage of the right or positive coverage of the left is accidental, a result that owes less to good reporting than to the fact that MediaCorp's control of topic presentation is -- usually -- implicitly understood rather than explicitly enforced.

We can't beat MediaCorp and the rest of the right at the game, because it's their game. The only way to win is to get enough people interested in a different game.

Obama -- and Dean before him -- hesitantly started down that road, but didn't get very far. They got what they could out of it and stopped.

A CNN source with very close ties to the U.S. Secret Service confirmed to me today that threats on the life of the president of the United States have now risen by as much as 400 percent since his inauguration, 400 percent death threats against Barack Obama — quote — "in this environment" go far beyond anything the Secret Service has seen with any other president. - Rick Sanchez, CNN, August 28, 2009

I predict that the first active attempt (*) on Obama's life will happen before the end of the year. The Right will (mostly) condemn it, but in a back-handed way. To wit, "It's unfortunate that this misguided person felt it necessary to respond in this way to the President's actions."

If my sense of humor was blacker and more twisted, I'd start a betting pool.

((*) As opposed to plans by losers that get interrupted before they get anywhere near him, as has already happened.)