Who would’ve thunk there was even more appalling stuff to learn about the Vietnam War?

Re: Gregg and others using Republican talking points – we may not need to put together a list; Bill Moyers mentioned on his show tonight about health care/insurance that earlier this year a memo written by (who else?) Frank Luntz was leaked with alll the talking points to use.

Moyers played a damning series of clips of members of Congress using all the main points, just like parrots.
Since this was tv, not a site with a link to follow, I’m not sure whre it’s to be found, but if it’s been leaked, it’s on the toobz somewhere, no?
Oh, and Adie – welcome back! Glad you’re moved, and astonished that your kitties “love” the new place. Never heard of such a thing! None of mine ever took kindly to a move, old furniture or not.

I hope this is EPU enuf for an OT.

Just want to report we arrived at our new digs. Even our 2 kitties are absolutely thrilled with our new little cottage (with some help from the presence of our old furniture simply sitting on a different point in the universe.

‘Puter obviously up and running just fine, so I can now visit the Lake again. It was a shaky few days there without my daily cuppa and Lake visit. Our new cable connection also returns C-Span 2 to our grasp, so we’re back to being almost operational, but too tired to make much sense for a while yet.

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy! This is progress.

Please return to your regular programming, and I’ll enjoy lurking off ‘n on and catching up on the news when and as I can. Busy week in D.C., I see. ‘Bout time. Go gettum’ Dawgs!

Dragon, if you’re around, one of our little tigers just bonked me in the forehead and patted my typing hands with her constantly kneading “happy toes” — sending a message to you and your clan, I ’spect.. She’s as picky as MarthaStew., so that speaks volumes. She and her brother LOVE the new digs, thank dog!

Good Health Care for ALL.

and

P. E. A. C. E.

What is different is the economy and the whole system of employer-based private health care, which is collapsing in this severe economic downturn. You have to take the position that as a matter of policy protecting the interests of the corporations that provide private health care insurance is more essential to the real American economy than either a single payer universal health care system or a public option. But no facts are offered to buttress Senator Gregg’s decision, simply beliefs about a free market system that has failed disatrously because it requires smoke and mirrors and a sympathatic hand on the Fed’s tiller to make it work until it inevitably crashes.

Senator Gregg’s beliefs and the principles he derives therefrom are fundamentally at odds with reality. That is the larger philosophical battle looming behind this particular fight. That is why the GOP and the Blue Dog Democrats reject a single payer universal health care system and the public option. They reject it because it indicts their way of thinking about reality. The reality is that single payer or public option would help people afford more medical coverage, and leave substantial savings that could then be spent, saved or invested in our economy. A single payer or public option, therefore, would make our whole economy more efficent while ensuring the necessary access to affordable health care that every American deserves to have.

The GOP and Senator Gregg and the Blue Dog Democrats are wrong on this issue, and demonstrably so. But it is a measure of their delusion that they will use their political power to fight the public option becuase they cannot allow reality to affect their decision making.

On a personal note, I find the Blue Dog Democrats to be the worst actors in all this. They always want to have it both ways. They want the party affiliation with the Democrats, because of its connotation that Democrats believe the government can and should patch the holes that the free markets create and exploit to make life better for all Americans. But they love to claim the fiscal conservative mantle as an excuse to do nothing that actually acts as a corrective to the free market crony capitalistic system that prevails in America. And they happen to be fairly unintelligent about all economic matters, as opposed to the narrow business concerns of their free market sponsors which they too easily absorb, and some of them are out and out stupid and corrupt.

The Blue Dogs are an interesting mixture of stupid and spineless. I have no use for them and, indeed, they are no use to ordinary Americans who toil for their daily bread so that these motherfuckers can gut punch them over and over again.