Also my name....

Where are you getting your info?

"costs, by supporting legislation that increases costs."

Dude wake up! ALL costs are going to increase. For eight years we have allowed costs to escalate to 25 million dollars a day! For our war to insure our security from ANY dead arab guy. Oh yeah, we hung him on video-tape; wrong-guy though. Your bullet prices, the pointless unwinnable wars, gas, healthcare....

We cold have spent the bucks on kids and old-people who will certainly die as a result of your mis-placed aggression. You are a Patriot with a ribbon (faded) on his car I'm sure.

Why are not Sweeden, or Hungary, or Australia or europe, not threatened ( and spending BILLIONS) on terrorism?

Because they know it's a joke and a ruse: Time you did too.

What you guys NEVER get; is that the horse already left the barn. The money is already spent. Payees include Halliburton, Blackwater Security (now operating under a name change), Citi, Goldman-Sachs, on and on. ALL OF THIS was done under the previous (Bush) administration. Obama is stuck with the bill. We have a defense budget (apparently un-verifiable) which dwarfs any nation on earth. IS it keping us more safe?

I want this paragraph to be separate:

"I dare say, without ANY of these costly STUPID measures in place; there would be no more or less "terrorism" than already exists" You can damn well quote me. cdr42

What's with those weird hand gestures she's always making? Classic passive-aggressive.

I agree with others who question what experience she brings to the debate as well.

Unlike others; I hope she never goes away. She is the face of a discredited, dis-oriented, ageing out-of-touch party. Let 'em hang themselves with their weirdly mean, dis-honest sound bytes. Bill Clinton brings a perspective which I had not considered in the most recent Vanity Fair interview. (Encapsulating); the country's make-up changed during the Bush years. We and the entire world are more diverse and progressive. The shift happened beneath the 'Murcan radar because we were to fixated on slapping (now faded) "Support the Troops" bumper-stickers on our cars.

As Bill E. Pilgrim suggested on page one of the letters: Taibbi's RS article is a must read. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong/2

And does anyone know where I can watch the speech live online tonight?

THX

You have taught me forevermore to consider my choice of screen-names more carefully in the future. Very funny.

Cheers

I have tried to stay away from this, but I'll tell you a personal story about having to make "End of Life Decisions."

My brother was found clinically dead 17 years ago by an EMT team (Heroin overdose). Since he was a young guy; the paramedics were able to re-start his heart after approx. 20 minutes of arrest. If you know much about the issue; THATS a long time. He spent the next two weeks in a coma. We ( his wife and me)were asked every day what we wanted to do (removing the ventilator was the big one) To make big decisions. The whole issue was how much brain-function would be left when the brain-swelling subsided; nobody could say athough I could tell that the ICU team didn't holdout much hope. Every day I asked the EKG tech what, if anything, she found. No-one could tell us anything. I even eaves-dropped on a staff meeting, where it was apparent that this was a biz-as-usual irreversable condition.

We had to make these decisions while there was still hope that there might be SOMETHING left over. As it turned out; the coma passed, and the resultant condition was nearly indestinguishable from the coma. If you have seen the Terry Schiavo videos, you have seen my brother. There is nothing there. It's torture. He had three adolescent children at the time. They went through teir teen-age years in this horrible limbo. What hell those poor kids went through. He spent the next two years in different ICU's unbelievably while they figured out a place to put him. The bill was astronomical (paid for by the public) there was even a working telephone, billed at $8.00 a day in his room (though he made no calls).

I think it's damn smart to leave a "Living Will". I knew my brother; we were very close. Henry would never have consented to 17 years in agony; tube-fed through a tube inserted in his stomach, a tracheotomy; where when he gets sick, he sometimes turns red and coughs sputum across the room through a hole in his neck. I've been asked to make funeral arrangements for him at least five times now. He keeps bouncing back though. Then there's the constant bed-sores, and the time he fell out of his sling on the way to get bathed, resulting in 170 stitches....

It's smart to make these decisions ahead of time; and the real issue in the health bill is an informed, non-binding DISCUSSION, not a final decision. I wish we would have. It's horrible to say maybe; but I think we (his family, the doctors) may have made better choices had we known his preferences. I damn well have a living will. Not about ME, but about the effect my incapacitation will leave, for possibly a very long time, on the people I love.