Reading the comments here, I think all of us, who are not dogmatically pushing points from which no amount of argument will move us, would benefit from at least temporarily decoupling whether the expanded SCHIP is a good thing and the way it is being paid for. It is entirely possible to agree with either one of the two issues without agreeing on the other.

I'll use myself as an example to keep this from appearing to be a personal attack on any of the posters, which I hope will make it less likely to result in knee-jerk reactions (although you still may want to strongly disagree with my personal positions). I think it is an indelible stain on our society that we do not provide all children with at least basic health insurance and wellness coverage. And while I am sure there must be a few parents that are too selfish to purchase insurance for their kids even though they could afford it if they tried, speaking as a parent, I find it unlikely they constitute a significant proportion of the adults in the families where the children are presently uninsured. So, whether you agree with me or not, I am strongly in favor of expanding SCHIP.

On the other hand, I have long been unhappy with the cowardice of most of our elected bodies when it comes to seeking fair ways of funding the things that most of us support. There are many modern taxes that I think reflect that cowardice: using lotteries to fund public education, using sin taxes to fund healthcare, having new stadium taxes collected through hotel taxes (taxation without representation, I say), etc. So, I do think the way Congress has chosen to fund the expansion of SCHIP is cowardly.

On balance, what do I decide? For the moment, I swallow deeply, look the taxation injustice in the eye and decide it is, for me, more important that these children have healthcare. I'll be back to fight for fair taxation the next time the issue is raised, but I cannot condemn millions of our most vulnerable and politically powerless citizens to live without coverage in the meantime.

(P.S. I realize we could simply let the veto stand, send the bills back to Congress and demand that they change the funding. Not choosing this path is pure expediency on my part: A) there are other pressing issues that I would like to see the Congress address in addition to SCHIP and B) changing the funding will not change Bush's stance, so I judge that, given A, let's bite the bullet and do some good even though the taxation could be made more fair.)

The results of the Gallup poll are puzzling to me. Particularly the graph showing that the public's perception of the media being too liberal has been nearly stable since 2001.

I must live in some alternate universe, but my sense that the majority of the American media was fawningly right wing up to and following the invasion of Iraq is clearly not shared by the American public at large. I'd like to know what they're basing their opinions on. Has the right wing meme of the liberal media been so effective that folks perceive the media as too liberal no matter what they actually do?

I think it would be interesting to ask some retrospective questions in a current poll. For example, "Looking back on the run up to the Iraq war, do you think the media was too willing to accept the claims of the Bush administration, too critical of the Bush administration or about right in its level of skepticism?" Such questioning might reveal that while folks at the time were under the sway of the right's "liberal media" meme, that they have reassessed that view in light of the evidence. And if it revealed the opposite, lord help us.

The parable of the Prius is great Tim. The only thing I would add is that after refusing to buy the SUV the guy/gal, knowing that about 70% of the folks in town agree with him, sets out to buy the dealership. Sure enough, the buyer gets overwhelming support from the community and in short order the old dealer is out of business and the buyer is now the owner, selling Priuses.

(OT: I want to weigh in on this new format for War Room: lousy. Way to much space is taken up by the bar on the right. Please, please, please either shrink its width or get rid of it.)

I considered writing a response similar to yours (with less vitriol), but then realized that Tim did not say that there were any other dealers. Only that the buyer continued to drive his/her beater, which would be analogous to continuing with the political status quo, not going to another dealer. That's why I wrote the additional "ending" for the analogy as I did. Stick with the status quo for the moment since you face an intractable and irrational dealer, but use the fact the community agrees with you to get rid of the dealer.

I too am very skeptical about the net energy gain from "cracking" disposable diapers and their odiferous contents. Cracking is routinely used by the petroleum industry to produce products from crude oil and it is an energy intensive process. I wouldn't expect the cracking of diapers to be too different.

Seems to me that it would be better to find a way of using the energy in the diapers directly in highly efficient combustion (water and CO2 as biproducts, with, hopefully, most of the CO2 coming from the human waste and cellulose so it doesn't add much to the CO2 gain of the atmosphere). Otherwise, it would probably make more sense to compost the diapers except for the plastic parts.