To the suggestion that preventive care is not cost preventive, I ask, compared to what? Most people who do not receive preventive care will not simply drop dead once they become sick, thus removing themselves from the ledger books, but will mostly continue to live on to the ends of their respective life spans. However, once they become seriously ill with ailments that might have been prevented through preventic care, or if not prevented, at least impeded from more progressive development through earlier intervention, then the costs of treating their ailments can become much more expensive. What will cost more: regular and periodic colonoscopies beginning at age 50 for everyone, or treating the individual cases of colon cancer that will develop in those whose incipient development of the disease was not caught earlier due to their having had no screening?

I'm no economist, and I can't say what the costs or cost benefits are to early preventive care, but it seems logical to think that for any patient whose health is maintained by regular checkups and early preventive care, the higher costs associated with treating serious illnesses after their development and progression to later stages will have been mitigated or prevented.

Beyond this, simply as a matter of human decency, in what we have always flattered ourselves to be the "richest" and "most advanced" (sic) society on earth, don't we think every citizen should enjoy the higher quality of life that access to health care will provide? Don't we consider the relief from or prevention of suffering to be a value?

If parents must--or assume they must--send their children to private school in order for them to receive a good education, we have to admit that the American experiment has failed. If only those with means can provide decent schooling for their kids, we no longer have a democratic society of equal opportunity, but a two-tiered (or more) nation where opportunity is prescribed or proscribed, respectively, according to one's class. If the American experiment is to be resuscitated, it is crucial that our public schools be saved, and that quality education once again be made available to all children.

Zucker's comments are simply his acknowledgment that Stewart's comments have hit home with a sharpshooter's accuracy, and are the whimper of a corporate pimp with no legitimate defense for the mendacious propaganda evacuated unceasingly by his crew of prostituted "journalists." All the major news networks are low-rent PRAVDAs, acting as PR flacks for the military/industrial/corporate complex that is our true governing body.

I agree with the previous comments...this couple is bad news...they sound like selfish, narcissistic jerks, and you should consider the price you paid for your ticket--and presumably whatever gift you gave the happy couple--as the cost of learning a valuable lesson: not all long-time acquaintances are your friends. A friend would, first, consider whether her friends could afford the cost of traveling to a destination wedding, and, second, understand if anyone could not afford to come.

In short: Fuck 'em.

I haven't seen the movie and you have, so I can only comment based on what I have heard about the picture, but you seem to have missed a little joke about Ginormica when you state that she grows to be 50' tall at her wedding. I have heard her height stated as 49'11"...in other words, an insignificant significant (sic) distinction that clearly alludes to the 50' Tall Woman from the 1950s for fans of the genre.

Also, you dismiss "Your mother wears army boots" as an epithet. I doubt anyone today under the age of 50 or so has even heard the phrase, and certainly no one uses it anymore. However, during WWII, when the phrase was current, it must have had a very distinct meaning. I puzzled over it for years and then I had an intuition that it must have been a coded way of accusing a woman--"your mother"--of sleeping with a soldier...other than her husband. In other words, she has a strange man's clothing--his "army boots"--in her bedroom. So, at the time, it was probably quite a pointed, if jocular, statement to direct at someone.

"end of discussion"

Wrong.

Jim Webb's advocacy of prison reform is truly courageous and should be--but will not be--a shining example to his Congressional peers. They are there purportedly to represent us and our interests, but it's almost axiomatic that instead they become (or begin) as self-aggrandizing careerists, selling themselves to the highest bidders to maintain their political careers and the attendant perks: power, celebrity, and (often) riches. I used to be opposed to term limits as undemocratic: if the people want to send the same person back to office repeatedly, if they are happy with their representation, that should be their choice. However, I wonder whether it might be better if all offices were limited to one term at a time, so those we send to represent us have no incentive to tailor their positions to suit their benefactors, but to serve our interests.

Bravo to Mr. Webb

It's better if you just wait and watch it cold. It's a tour-de-force savaging of Glenn Beck and his cancerous mendacity, his phony patriotism and abject pandering to the worst in his none-too-bright audience of gullible shut-ins and angry paranoiacs. Enjoy it without having already sort-of experienced through second-hand description.

In other words, you are saying (accurately) that Beck is just a rabble-rouser. He spews incoherent bile and fake schmalts to arouse the inchoate passions and undigested resentments of his audience, a rabble of the ill informed.

NotOrbitBoy: Obama is a war criminal, just as his predecessors were.

In the broader view, one has to see that self pity and its concomitant emotion--resentment--must be a key psychological element of authoritarians and their followers. The most blatant evidence of this is Hitler's Mein Kampf, a bleeding howl of self-pity and resentment. Never doubt (or fail to fear) the mass movements that can be grown and sustained through appeals to self-pity.