"Where do we draw the line, Sherrie, in a free country on what is a commodity and what is a ‘service’ to be granted for free?"

You draw the line where corporate execs are allowed to get wealthy on the one thing that human beings ultimately have no real control over……….their health.

There is a lot people can do to prevent the preventable, but until we find a way to prevent all illness nobody should be allowed to gouge profits out of human suffering. No corporate health care facilities, not drug companies and certainly not insurance companies. These should in no way be for-profit industries. They should be non-profit organizations and if there is no other way to prevent greedy opportunists from taking advantage of other peoples’ suffering other than making them government run organizations so be it.

Are all of those glowing white virgins really ALL that much more far fetched than:

"A mansion, just over the hilltop

In some bright land where

We’ll never grow old

And someday yonder

We’ll never more wander

But walk the streets that

Are paved with gold."

Like the evangelical right believes?

"Liz, you live in a bubble.  Well off New Yorker. "

By Diana T on 10/30/2009 12:33 pm

Precisely Diana.She is clueless about the reality of the lives of most Americans.That’s more obvious with every article she writes.

As for health care, the republicans in government don’t want to do anything to change the health care system because they’re being well paid by the health care industry to keep it profitable for the CEOs. What they want to do is make it impossible for people to whom more harm than good has been done by the health care industry to get restitution for that harm. They say that if doctors couldn’t get sued for cutting off the wrong leg that they wouldn’t have to charge so much to stay rich and still pay their malpractice insurance.

Bottom line, either way you look at it, it’s all about making a profit not about healing the sick. That’s the republican way.

Health care shouldn’t be an industry, it should be a service.

It shouldn’t be a commodity, it should be a service.

It shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right.

"Sherrie: The Republicans want you and everybody in this country to succeed. Democrats want everybody on welfare and unemployment. The Republicans want you to keep as much money you earn. Democrats want to tax, and tax you until you have less than 40% of what you make.

Whats it going to take for you to realize this?"

By Frank Somsel on 10/26/2009 6:11 pm All it takes is knowing everything you said is hyperbolic, republican party-line bullshit. I’ve lived the last 40+ years as an adult in this country and know what the republican party wants.   Everything you said is what they want those ignorant enough or full of enough of republican flavored kool-aid to believe. I’m in neither of those categories.   I’ve seen the results of the differences in Democratic and republican policies in action. I don’t have to rely on rhetoric, hyperbole and lies on which to base my choices.   There is something morally and ethically flawed in people who believe sending young people off to a unjustified war to be killed is more patriotic than paying taxes so that those same people can get decent medical care.  

Whether a spouse decides to stay or go I think they should be honest about it. No spouse should feel forced or obligated to "stand by their ____" while they confess their infraction to their constituents and/or the  press for appearances sake. That hypocritical, but then I guess that’s par for the political course.

I believe we need much more accountability and real consequences for all of the moral and legal misdeeds and ethics infractions of all of our legislators and government appointees no matter what party, branch of government or government agency with which they are affiliated.

I work in law enforcement and right now, even with the unemployment in this area in double digits, we’re having trouble filling some job openings because of the high legal, moral, and ethical standards to which we hold our applicants. I dare say that most of our congress and many in the White House and Justice Departments wouldn’t measure up to our standards of behavior.

We do complete background and financial investigations then back them up with a polygraph on everybody who is considered for a position here, whether it’s a law enforcement officer or records clerk. We all have to take the oath and nobody who isn’t up to the standards required by that oath is ever allowed to take it.

Isn’t it about time we started demanding the same for our elected and appointed government officials before they are allowed to run for office? That way maybe the government won’t have to spend so much time cleaning up their own backyards rather than keeping the American citizens from losing theirs. 

We won’t have the kind of complete waste of government funds that we had with all of the billions spent persecuting the Clintons for the non-existent White Water. We wouldn’t have all of the doubt that Faux News is trying to stir up about the new White Water (Acorn) and get this congress to spend billions investigating. Not to mention not having the embarrassment of having so many members of the "Family Values Party" caught with their pants down (literally).

For all the faux facts that the republicans can dig up and post on here they can’t undo the real fact that republicanomics over the last 25+ years is what has nearly destroyed the economy of this country.

IT DOESN’T WORK PEOPLE!!!!!

What is it going to take for you to realize that? 

You missed the point Margorie. No big surprise there though.

What most of Wall Street needs is to be in the same place Bernie Madoff is. All they’re doing is building yet another house of cards and this one is not only lacking a foundation, it’s sitting on an active fault line.

There is no way in hell the market can legitimately be at 10,000 with millions of people unemployed, millions more underemployed, most of them without health care benefits and no growth in the job market in this country. 

It doesn’t take an economist to figure out that those people aren’t buying products or services. 

The market is no longer a monitor of the economy of this country. It’s nothing more than a bookie’s tote board show how much the rich are betting and where they put the odds of their own performance. 

Absolutely legalize both. Marijuana is no where near as "narcotic" as Oxycodone or even alcohol for that matter and why should Wall Street and the government be the only ones allowed to legally screw the public.

Runnin’ Alone by Steve Perry

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I believe that every soul
Has a song to sing
The spirit’s locked in every man
Waiting for a wing
Oh so much is wasted
And oh so little used
The trick of the dreamer
Is keeping yourself from the blues

And I don’t mind runnin’ alone

 

Everyone’s a hero
If you want to be
Everyone’s a prisoner
Holding their own key
Every step I take
Every move I make
Always one step closer
I don’t mind runnin’ alone

 

If your stomachs are strong enough take a look at the kind of "news" these people watch. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327…

"Glenn Beck’s popularity has soared over the past several months due to the lack of leadership in the Whie House."

By deber B on 10/20/2009 2:40 pm

Beck has become the pied piper of the wingnuts and the spectacle du jour for some who find the "Jerry Springer" type of human degradation entertaining.

If it is any indication at all of the state of affairs in this country it’s simply that the riff raff has a lot of time on their hands since the NRA/Christian Wingnut party that they vote for sent all their jobs to China.

"Sherrie - your post above - so basically your saying nothing has changed…..I am sure you tune in to something that millions of others tune into." 

By C Hardy on 10/20/2009 11:58 am

Changed as a species? No, but some of us do seem to have evolved a bit further than others.

You probably are sure, but just like other times that you’ve said you were sure, you’re wrong.

I watch very, very little TV and none of what little I do watch is on Fox. I get my news from the internet because I like to read the printed information rather that sift through the spin, vocal inflections and facial expressions offered by the "infopinionators" that call themselves news anchors and reporters these days for the facts. If I’m curious about a performance (or "exhibition" in the case of Beck) that I read about I’ll watch a video clip of it on the web so I’ll know what the article is about. 

Like the song says:

If you trust your television what you get is what you got,

‘Cause when they own the information they can spin how they want. 

"F P, you can say what you want but thousands of Americans are listening to him."

By deber B on 10/20/2009 10:42 am

"Thousands" of American watched Jerry Springer faithfully for many years.

"Thousands" of Americans still watch professional "rasslin’".

"Thousands" of Americas watch NASCAR races hoping to see a violent crash.

I’ll bet a lot of them are the same "Thousands" who watch Beck.

Crowds of people used to gather in the Collisium to watch people kill each other.

A few centuries later crowds of people used to gather to watch public executions.

Crowds of people will gather today at the scene of a tragedy in hopes of getting a glimpse of carnage.

Crowds of people today watch boxing to see people bloody each other.

Most red necks watch NASCAR in hopes of seeing a violent crash.

The quantity the of viewership is in no way an indication of the quality of the spectacle or the viewers.