and the bastards threw him to the wolves. I think he is just trying to get back at his "friends" in the Congress. After all he will be retiring on a very nice pension with extraordinary medical benefits. What's he got lose by a little needling. He'll be at home back here in Idaho. The place is full of pervs who go to fundamentalist and LDS churches.

But liars figure. That is the essential insight from watching Petraeus in action. Until the Bush administration comes clean about the reasons we invaded Iraq we will never have a rational national discussion on what we should do. That whole neocon bologna was a red herring. Cheney and his oil company buddies, and the Saudis, planned the war in 2001, so that Big Texas Oil and the Saudis could replace their diminishing reserves with the last cheap (to produce) oil in the world. Until Bush comes clean on that there will not be an end to the fiasco.

He won't.

Bush and the Republicans temporarily convinced us that we could have our cake and eat it too, by borrowing from more sensible people who were willing to forgo consumption in order to accumulate the capital to buy us out. Now that the Saudis own a controlling interest in our Big Oil companies and the Chinese are buying up our computer and other companies, they will tell us what to do. Americans love the appearance of wealth, like big houses and big SUV's. Bush's Wall Street buddies made a lot of money brokering the selling out of America, but the ultimate blame lies with us for thinking that the appearance of wealth was the important issue. Of course house prices are now beyond the reach of the average American, so the shit has hit the fan. Time to tighten our belts, work harder, and spend less for quite a while, so we can repair our balance sheets.

is for him or her to be mugged. The conversion is immediate and will last forever.

The only thing we are really competitive in these days is weapons. Or weapons systems, not small arms. Even though our Big Oil companies will get 80% of the proceeds for oil, we still have to recoup the 20% the Iraqi's will get. What better way than to sell them arms? So the Saudis get all the high tech stuff we have been selling them for years, and the Iraqis get the low tech stuff. Between them they might have an effective force against Iran, except that arming the Iraqis is actually arming the Shiites. Is there some sort of strategic vision here, or is it just pork barrel?

The single most important coverage is to prevent health catastrophes from becoming financial catastrophes. That is probably doable, with support from both sides. The government should be the insurer of last resort to prevent financial catastrophe, funded from either from the general fund or a new value added tax. It could be progressive by defining medical/financial catastrophe as 10% of adjusted gross income. This approach would allow all of us to have the exact coverage he or she wants, or none at all, to cover ordinary medical expenses. Of course each of us would be allowed to put away tax-free money to cover the day to day stuff, which would include hearing and vision, which are not now covered by Medicare and many other insurance plans.

It is the major fallacy of the Democrats that we are too dumb to get medical care when we need it and that low cost or free doctor visits are the way to stay healthy. The great drive to "insure" everyone is to co-opt the healthy uninsured into subsidizing the unhealthy. By switching the costs of the 20% of the population who consume 80% of the medical costs to a value added tax the remaining 80% could afford whatever form of insurance they prefer. Since most of them would not come close to using the deductible that would cost very little.

I managed a small company where we bought each employee a $5000 major med and put $5000 into each employees HSA account each year. The effectively had zero-deductible insurance, which in total cost the company less than a "low deductible" plan with all its copays and deductibles. The major med premium went down every year we had it, since people who are spending their won money (even if we had given it to them) are careful about how they spend it. Doctors will always find a need for treatment, even for innocuous and self-limiting illness. I'm 73 and on Medicare and each time I see a Doc (very seldom) he gives me a prescription, which after a little web research I tear up. Medicare has very low administrative costs, but pays for a lot of unneeded care. Insurance companies have high administrative costs, but pay for very little unneeded care, and avoid paying for some needed care. I think the plan I outlined above would solve that problem.

And I don't want him, but who am I. The majority of Idahoans are flaming red Republicans.

It's interesting that the ACLU is protecting his right to proposition in public as long as he doesn't perform in public. Old Larry, like most "conservatives" hates the ACLU. With friends like the ACLU, who need enemies. Whoever at the ACLU came up with "helping" Larry is a genius. He can't win for losing with this one.

By the way, for those who don't think the police should be "entrapping" queers, the last thing I need while hitting the head between planes is for some guy sucking another guys dick in the stall next to mine.

Freaking disgusting.