it's about fundraising. It's always about fundraising.

I hope I can sleep tonight worrying about those employees getting screwed.

You got it half wrong and half almost right. It's not that she often speaks "unclearly". It's that she often speaks "incoherently". And it's that what she seems to be saying purposefully panders to the small base that most of us vehemently disagree with.

government death panels,

tax cuts,

drill, baby, drill,

ammunition shortages,

helicopter wolf hunts,

6000 year old earth,

...

While the lies and lunacies she spews might be fodder for serious debate within her echo-chamber base, the rest of us are being flipped off by her.

"After 8 seconds..."

She claims she was ready when the call came. I doubt that she meant that she was/is ready to go toe to toe with Putin or Netanyahu but, come on, is it unreasonable to expect that she could handle Couric?

back when his 2007 rhetoric becomes 2009/2010 action.

Shocking!

What would you know about being a little boy?

Lack of current enthusiasm over Obama echoes my concern prior to the election that he would be an all-blow/no-go moderate. Every time push comes to shove, he's turning his back on the positions he claimed during the election. I don't have to be surprised to be disgusted and discouraged.

has always been whether he's just a lot of hot air or not.

It's been looking more and more like not not.

the difference between the public option and co-op/private insurance is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

My neighbor's 97 year old father just died. Three days earlier, a surgeon tried to convince his son to have his father undergo a hip replacement. It took another doctor's intervention to derail that lunacy.

I'm not sure patients clinging to a few extra days of life is the problem.

I read today that $600 billion of the annual US health care budget goes toward administrative costs (including private insurance company's vig). Maybe it was $800 billion. What's a few billion squandered on desperation by comparison?

In your complaining about Prop 13, you pointed out that similar houses in the same neighborhood could be paying $10,000 or $2,000 depending on when the property was purchased. Of course, to get to the $2,000, you have to be talking about someone that's been in their home for more 30 years and are probably on a fixed-income. Regardless...

Prop 13 also capped property taxes at 1% of the taxable value (1978 value or sales price of last sale). Prior to Prop 13, property was taxed locally at 1.5% to 2.75% of the "market-set" home value. So, in the case of your "unfair" $10,000 tax bill example, without Prop 13, your tax bill would be a "fair" (?) $15,000 to $27,500. How would you like them apples? But, heh, your neighbor gets to pay that same amount so everything is fair, right?

If you'd like to pitch the idea that "if you were paying your fair share of taxes, my taxes would be lower", you haven't been paying attention for very long. Real estate property value escalation over the past 30 years has greatly increased property tax revenues both locally and to the state more than compensating for the reduced tax rates imposed by Prop 13. Those increased taxes didn't prevent California from digging itself a huge hole. Had pre-Prop 13 taxes rates been in existence all along, the tax hole today would be 2x or 3x bigger.

Oh and those guys who are "getting away" with $2,000 a year taxes 1) have been part of building the community you enjoy today for probably longer than you've been around and 2) are probably your parents (as parents seem to be the common example of "unfair" taxation).

Finally, the last 10 years has seen an unsustainable rise in home prices in California. It's been absolutely nuts. I, for one, don't want a frenzied housing market setting the paper "value" on my home as the basis for my annual property tax bill. Prop 13 sets property tax rates based on what a home buyer was willing to spend both in terms of the purchase price and the subsequent property tax bills. Without Prop 13, there was literally no knowing what the "market" would set your tax bill at in coming years. How do you financially plan for that?

Soggy cardboard between two buns tastes pretty good with the right secret sauce hiding what's really there. If you really want to know what you're getting, scrap off the garnishes and try eating just what's left. It's a sure cure for fast food. Those hamburger patties have a stronger liver taste than any meat should (though I'm not sure it's liver I'm actually tasting).

Some few decades ago, I was installing a machine used at a factory making Taco Bell's cheese. I remember being told the cheese is "synthetic". Ever since, I've wondered if it was also recyclable. Maybe that's why it looks like toxic waste from a nuclear power plant.

Living in California, we are blessed with taco trucks. They're not quite as good as the street vendors in Baja but, once you find one you like, they're miles ahead of franchise fast food.