Bloodless Coup

This morning I took the quiz over at Glassbooth (linked from crooks and liars. My least likely Dem candidates were Biden (70%) and Clinton (78%). Not doing too bad with the rest above 80. The quiz itself is interesting, because it asked you to identify issues of importance, and gives them more weight than stuff you don't care about. Of course, there are questions as on all such surveys that fail to capture the complexity of the issue.

I like that quiz. Weighting what you care about is good, and showing specifically what you do and don't agree with specific candidates on is good too. Much better than most similar quizes I've seen.

And of course it also shows how on the issues, a lot of what's being argued about within each party are fights over shades of gray. I was in agreement with each Democrat from 81% to 89% on the questions I answered - except for Biden (73%). As for the Republicans I was closest to Paul and furthest from Hunter. Happily Hunter will be out of a position of power in 14 months. Of course if all the questions had been equally weighted my agreement with various Democrats would likely have fallen - but since I'm likely to vote on "social issues" and foreign policy, it only makes sense for the quiz to take that into account.

And I learned that Edwards is rather lousy when it comes to medical marijuana. Too bad.

See, Edwards was my top score because I could give a rat's ass about medical marijuana. Also, all the Republicans matched me in the 40s, so looking at Dems doubles my fun.

You were in the 40s for all the Republicans? Huh - I guess you must have only answered questions on a fairly small number of issues? Because I had a much wider range on them than I did with the Democrats. I actually scored a 51% agreement with Paul. I forget my lowest scores (Huckabee, Tancredo and Hunter were the candidates) but they were no higher than the low 30s at most.

Don't forget, I like free trade.

Well so do I, and I included that in my questions (another area I disagreed with Edwards). Hmmm - ah well, maybe yours just sort of balanced out when it came to the Republicans

In many ways, I "read" like a classical conservative: pro-individual liberties, pr-free trade, care about foreign policy, moderate on social spending and who cares about the rest. Maybe that is what's going on there.

weird. i come up 93% kucinich(!), followed by gravel and richardson, three candidates i've largely ignored. i come up 75/74/73 with edwards, hilary, and obama respectively. among the R's, 51% paul, followed by mccain (41), and a couple of others, then giuliani at 39, but of course with folks like hilary, mccain, and giuliani, hell even romney albeit less so, one has to ask whether this is matching me to their pre-2008 campaign positions, or there the-field-is-open-and-i'll-say-anything-to-be-elected bullshit in this campaign.

another quiz i took, which also allowed for weighting of issues (without so sternly restricting the points one has to distribute among topics (on this one i only put two categories at zero, which makes it difficult to meaningfully prioritize among the remainder)), put me at edwards followed closely by obama, which squared more with my expectations.

granted, PA's likely to be irrelevant anyway, but if it weren't i should emphasize that i won't be voting for DK.

You, not a Kucinich supporter!?! I'm shocked. Just shocked. :)

For my possible candidates, I got 77% Huckabee(1st place), 70% Hunter (3rd place), and 63% Fred Thompson (6th place). I ended up balanced like Binky, with most Dems in the 40's and the lowly Kucinich getting 37% at the bottom (must be because of support for medicinal marijuana, for background checks at gun shows, and for the gay). Very informative.

"The gay," or the gay marriage?

"The gay," or the gay marriage?

I think anyone who supports the gay supports the gay marriage unless they simply don't support marriage. Otherwise it's like supporting the troops but not the war.

Otherwise it's like supporting the troops but not the war.

You mean by that, "perfectly logical," I presume?

By no means does everyone who supports "the gay" support "gay marriage." As you note, there are people who don't support marriage in general (regardless of sexual orientation). There are also those who argue - from within the community, and as such are pro "the gay" - that supporting marriage inherently supports heterosexist society, oppressive religions etc and so forth, though decent legal protections would be nice (coming from improved contract law, for example).

But back to the difference between you and Kucinich, is it that you don't support the gay and he does, or that you don't support the gay marriage and he does, or both?

Otherwise it's like supporting the troops but not the war.
"You mean by that, 'perfectly logical,' I presume?"

Binky,
Not so much. Imagine you're gay, and you hear someone tell you they support your being gay. Great, right? Then you tell them you want to get married to someone of the same sex, and they tell you they think you don't have the right to get married, because you're gay. How do you feel now? Probably you fell about the same as someone who's fighting in Iraq and hears Jack Murtha talk about how he supports them, but also that he wants to slow bleed them of body armor and bullets.

Support doesn't mean much unless you make it real. If you support someone who identifies with their ability to have a gay relationship, then you should support that gay relationship, and where that ends up, in marriage. If you support someone who identifies with fighting a war, a soldier, then you have to support the war they fight. If you don't, then you never really did more than just rationalize a way to feel better about yourself.

"There are also those who argue - from within the community, and as such are pro "the gay" - that supporting marriage inherently supports heterosexist society, oppressive religions etc and so forth, though decent legal protections would be nice (coming from improved contract law, for example)."

First of all, I have to disagree with your assumption. Just because someone is within a particular community doesn't necessarily imply they're pro that community in a meaningful way. That is, Al Sharpton takes a very different approach to the black community than Bill Cosby, so if either approach is meaningfully right, then the other is anti-black.

Second, this is exactly what I said, people who oppose gay marriage and truly support the gay community have a general problem with marriage, not with gay marriage. I love the way you use "heterosexist" and "oppressive" to describe religions (begging the question, are there then heterosexists who aren't oppressive?) and then in the same sentence you argue for "decency," the very same criterion used by those oppressive, heterosexist religions.

You misunderstood my poorly phrased sentence above. It's because of my support for the gay, medicinal marijuana, and background checks that I ended up balanced on my scores. Otherwise, that Kucinich matched me 37% didn't make much sense to me, given my conservatism on economic and foreign policy positions.

Thanks, Morris. I needed a laugh tonight.

And I appreciate the credit you give me for making up arguments, but you know, just summarizing what you can find out there with google.

And finaly, who knew, you're more liberal than I am.

Oh, so much for Binky to play with! ;)

But for my part I'll just note that - "Just because someone is within a particular community doesn't necessarily imply they're pro that community in a meaningful way" - is kind of funny given what you wrote above it about the war. Because that's true. There are thousands and thousands of service people in Iraq who'd love to be out of there after all, men and women who are big supporters of John Murtha and those folks. These are service people who oppose the war, so are they ... self-hating Marines and soldiers?

And amusing of you to knock Murtha when if there's been anyone who's been systematically destroying the military (stretching it ways reminiscent of the 1970's, driving droves of patriotic people out of it, and not buying adequate body armor and the like) it's been Bush and Cheney.

And to add on (a tiny bit) - there's more to queer arguments against gay marriage than merely opposition to marriage; and I find your position that either Sharpton or Cosby is anti-black to be peculiar - can't they both be pro-black, but in different ways (but don't feel a need to get into that unless you really want to, as that's reallllly off topic in this thread)?

"There are thousands and thousands of service people in Iraq who'd love to be out of there after all, men and women who are big supporters of John Murtha and those folks."

Was that before or after he accused innocent Marines of being murderers? Before or after he wanted to keep them from getting body armor and bullets so they'd be forced to quit? Murtha is just as much of a war hero and patriot as Benedict Arnold.

"can't they both be pro-black, but in different ways"

They may even be at different stages of their ethnic identity formation. But Sharpton's bull horn still sends out destructive messages, people still die. And I can't be pro human if I think he's pro black. Blaming the other guy tends to avoid the very anxiety that's necessary to solve problems. In the same way, throwing out all social conventions fits a certain stage of identity change, one that parallels Sharpton's and blames the system for all problems.

"And I can't be pro human if I think he's pro black."

What exactly does that mean? That you don't think he's human?

"Blaming the other guy tends to avoid the very anxiety that's necessary to solve problems."

What does George Bush ever do that's not blaming the other guy? So does that mean he's not human either?

And the Murtha = Arnold comparison is just friggin ridiculous. But beyond that you didn't address my point - you instead retreated into a personalized smear (been reading O'Reilly, Hannity or Coulter lately? that is their game) and didn't mention that it's the Bush White House that sent troops into the field without proper body armor, that it's the Bush White House that sent them in without adequate support to complete the mission, that it's the Bush White House that's been fighting the Democratic Congress's attempts to increase the size of the army and thus reduce the strain on forces already in the field, that it's the Bush White House who's fought Democrats' attempts to get the troops proper leave periods - and, not surprisingly, lots of troops support Murtha and the Democrats who've argued for cutting off funds for the war. So, again, considering your definition above - do you think those Marines and soldiers are self-hating or hate the military?

"you instead retreated into a personalized smear (been reading O'Reilly, Hannity or Coulter lately? that is their game)"

As opposed to your taking pot shots at Bush, twice in this thread, when I didn't bring him up. It's not Bush who's holding up funding for veterans so they can take one more vote they know they can't pass. It's not Bush that tried to piss off Turkey without regard for the American soldiers who will die if they strike Iraq. It's not Bush that said we should have never gone into Iraq even though Saddam regularly executed thousands of people, then claim Darfur is a moral imperative.

Yah, if you take away all moral distinctions between good guys and bad guys, Al Sharpton and George Bush are the same. But if you believe Saddam was a really really bad guy and people who invest in minority areas of this country don't necessarily deserve to have their stores burned and be killed, there's a subtle difference in their pro-human character. Tenet completely f-ed Bush by claiming there were WMDs ("slam dunk") in Iraq, and there weren't. Did Bush blame Tenet? As I recall, he gave him a medal.

Put down the Huffington Post, it's gone to your brain. Bush never claimed Iraq would be easy, and just about every time people ask him, even just after Operation Iraqi Freedom began, he told reporters it would take years. People dumped on Rumsfeld and asked for his resignation for years; Rumsfeld offered it. Bush stuck with him because it's not about blame for Bush. Firing somebody wasn't the solution; he knew it would take time before Iraqis on the ground realized they really didn't want AQ running their lives (arguably a lot less time if CNN and Reuters had been fair and balanced in their coverage, but it's just not a story when Al Queda massacres families in Iraq). If you want to learn about blame, try to make it through a Democratic debate without hearing Bush's name come up a hundred times.

And Charlie Rangel doesn't care about the strain on troops in the field. He only suggested the draft because he's under the mistaken impression that dumb poor people are being pressed into service when if you look at it, our soldiers are on the average smarter than the general population. But this is more proof that Bush believes in freedom for people, and the Dems don't; they think more government is the solution, no matter how that worked out in the Soviet Union. Equality at any cost is not an attitude I want in those running this country.

Pointing out Bush's egregious record is not taking potshots at him. I'm not trying to make a cute historical comparison, or throwing around inflammatory accusations without a factual basis for them. I'm pointing out his record stinks - including on military affairs.

As to your charges:

How is whether or not a vote will pass relevant to it being held?

Actually yes, Bush did piss off Turkey (remember Wolfowtiz's comments which were more or less "nice democracy you've got going there, would be a shame if anything happened to it").

And you really need to read ... well, a million things, but start with the One Percent Doctrine if you think Bush acted in Iraq solely b/c of Tenet's words about WMD (of course that accusation against Tenet seems to conflict with your vision of Bush as a savior of tortured people, but whatever). Bush got the intelligence he wanted, despite the intelligence agencies' attempts to provide him with accurate intelligence.

I don't read the Huffington Post.

"Bush never claimed Iraq would be easy" - wow - where to even start? This White House did little else for months on end. It'll cost us nothing to rebuild Iraq, they'll great us with flowers, the mission was accomplished in May of 2003 ... (I could go on).

"he knew it would take time before Iraqis on the ground realized they really didn't want AQ running their lives" - What the hell? You'll need to remind me of the point when the Iraqis said AQI, come run our lives! I missed that.

I don't know what CNN and Reuters you are talking about, but the one's that exist in the "reality based community" actually do report AQI attacks.

Dems think more government is the solution? Hmmm - look at the change in the size of the federal government under Clinton, then look at it under the current president. It's the Republicans who've been expanding government.

And if you don't want equality at any cost that's fine and dandy - b/c no one running for president in either party is advocating that.

And I still am not clear on how you differentiate Sharpton and Bush, but I'll let it go.

Btw, today Andrew Sullivan wrote a line that I think might be worth injecting here, regarding what you wrote about Bush - "Heroic Christianism - with its certainty about everything and moral imperative to intervene wherever "evil" strikes - is not compatible with any sense of limited government."

this whole thing is hilarious. morris, i just want to thank you for compensating us for your long absence by making as many outright laughable statements in one thread as we might expect in one of your more frequent months. seriously, my method for this was just to keep highlighting and copying the most ridiculous statements, replacing each with the next as i went down, with the intention to engage the last -- and hence most recent -- fragment i found to be worth engaging. i don't even remember which one i've got here, so let's find out.

[1]And Charlie Rangel doesn't care about the strain on troops in the field. He only suggested the draft because he's under the mistaken impression that dumb poor people are being pressed into service when if you look at it, our soldiers are on the average smarter than the general population. [2]But this is more proof that Bush believes in freedom for people, and the Dems don't; they think more government is the solution, no matter how that worked out in the Soviet Union. Equality at any cost is not an attitude I want in those running this country.

ah, that one, a two-parter. awesome!

first, regarding rangel, while there's probably a kernel of truth to all of what you write in this regard (amazingly enough, at least when it comes to this thread, where you appear intent on reducing the dominant strains of thought of seemingly a dozen major public figures, and incredibly broad swaths of the population that no one can really be so foolish as to imagine are monolithic in their beliefs), rangel's not the only one who supports a draft, and the reasons cited have more to do with thinking that the legislature, the people tasked by the Constitution with determining when and whether we will go to war at all, might be a little more reluctant to enter into stupid, dubious wars, or to take dubious, unsubstantiated intelligence at face value, when the question before them is not only a) do i think this issue or threat warrants the letting of american blood but also b) am i prepared to so proclaim when the blood in question may be spilled by my child or the children of my colleagues. i can't know, because i haven't been in that situation, but i think the burden is on anyone who cleaves to the idea that this would have no effect on the rigor with, and the extent to, which congress went about exercising its constitutional mandate to tell the president, "fuck off, we're not going to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives on both sides just because you claim to think it's a good idea. show us the intel and we'll decide whether to let you march our children off to war." not for nothing that congress's steady diminution of its constitutional prerogatives in this regard seem to coincide with the all-volunteer army. ditto things like proper preparation and equipment, veterans benefits and the like, all -- as armand already noted -- aspects of military service that have become woefully underfunded during the years that the republicans have seen fit to reroute as much of the federal budget back into the pockets of america's wealthiest few percent as it can tell us about with a straight face.

which brings me to [2]. you know, somewhere between the old soviet union and the modern, ignorant approach to free markets (in the sense of being wrong about the original ambivalent idea of the invisible hand; in the sense of being willfully oblivious to economic indicators suggesting that deregulation is doing us (meaning the 98% at whom its benefits are not aimed) far less good than we are told), there are alternatives. i hate to speak for others, but i'm confident that no one here identifies with either position in its pure form, or in any form you've condescended to engage. so as with rangel and just about everything else, your strawman approach is utterly unresponsive. the choice isn't between bread lines and ozzie and harriet, and the more you argue as though it is, the more unwilling to engage the views of those with whom you disagree you reveal yourself to be.

for example, how about the post-war years, when for three decades our annual growth approached 4% under much more vigorous regulation than we are now told the market can flourish under. you know, keeping banks and brokers separate for example. not for nothing that the depression happened thanks to that sort of self-dealing; that prosperity followed for decades the institution of meaningful safeguards against that sort of thing; and that our recent problems, in particular enron and the subprime mortgage debacle (the full impact of which we cannot yet even pretent to know), seem to have followed directly from our repeal over the last twenty years of many of the measures our ancestors, conservative and liberal alike, thought wise to institute to prevent another great depression from occurring. instead, here we are, in the name of the free market.

that the fed can save us from the truly catastrophic outcome by bailing out the malfeasors once again doesn't change the fact that that each time that happens the market has failed, and not due to any sort of oppressive regulation, but rather as a consequence of the absence of same. every time the government bails these jackasses out, john q. taxpayer is paying -- in a decidedly regressive and compelled gesture -- out the nose to keep the fabulously rich from suffering the consequences of their own improper or just plain foolish behavior. and this from the biggest advocates of "bootstrapping."

I don't have time to get into this right now, but you do realize that the (recently lambasted on this blog) Presidential candidate/Congressman Duncan Hunter's son served as a Captain in Iraq, right? You throw straw man charges at me, lumping together those who do not belong, then you throw out this shot at the Congress in general about them not caring because it's not their children who serve (watch Fahrenheit 9/11, lately?) that doesn't apply to at least one Presidential candidate and Congressman.

Hmmm - I guess Moon means the other 533 members of Congress, plus the delegates - given that 2 have kids who've served in the war (Hunter and Sen. Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota). You two can scrap it out over whether or not 533 out of 535 (+ delegates) equals a strawman.

Btw, I can't say we're all that interested in Duncan Hunter. We've only ever devoted 2 posts two him - one criticizing his opposition to practically every open trade deal ever, and one criticizing him earmarking tens of millions for a plane that won't fly. But yeah, if that qualifies him for lambasting, I stand firmly behind it. He's a big-spending, anti-Liberal (not liberal) menace.

A plane that won't fly? As I recall, you said we'd never have a working missile defense, too. It must be tough, then, to explain why we just had a successful test last month, a hit to kill against a missile target above the atmosphere. Earlier this month, we had the 33rd successful test out of 41, and even though my math's a little fuzzy it seems like that's 80%, and 80% better than if we'd taken the word of nabobs.

"that the fed can save us from the truly catastrophic outcome by bailing out the malfeasors once again doesn't change the fact that that each time that happens the market has failed, and not due to any sort of oppressive regulation, but rather as a consequence of the absence of same."

Moon,
Does it even occur to you that just after you criticize me for acting as though people on this blog take an extreme position, you immediately take an extreme position. What you're saying is it's always been the free market's fault, and that only the mechanism of government can save us for these greedy captitalists. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much in line with the thinking of Hillary who wants to take money out of the hands of everyday people "for their own good." And it's pretty much in line with John Edwards who doesn't want people to be able to choose a free market alternative to socialized medicine. But if I didn't have any real response, maybe I'd attack you and say you're attacking a straw man, or some other such nonsense.

My Bro says:
"And you really need to read ... well, a million things, but start with the One Percent Doctrine if you think Bush acted in Iraq solely b/c of Tenet's words about WMD (of course that accusation against Tenet seems to conflict with your vision of Bush as a savior of tortured people, but whatever). Bush got the intelligence he wanted, despite the intelligence agencies' attempts to provide him with accurate intelligence."

Well, then Bill Clinton must have been a lying liar:
"We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information and ideas.
And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us."

Or maybe you think George Bush invented a time machine and went to the CIA and doctored intelligence so that Clinton would get only the intelligence GEORGE BUSH wanted him to get.

"'Bush never claimed Iraq would be easy' - wow - where to even start? This White House did little else for months on end. It'll cost us nothing to rebuild Iraq, they'll great us with flowers, the mission was accomplished in May of 2003 ... (I could go on)."

Did you even listen to the speech he gave:
"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous."
"The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time...."
"Yet we also have dangerous work to complete."
"Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed."
"The enemies of freedom are not idle...."
"The war on terror is not over...."
"We do not know the day of final victory...."

This is the danger of the left, if enough people listen to what they say, even smart people like you believe it. Bush talked about hope, that's what leaders do. But he was and remains a realist, but one with the faith that few of us shared, one with a vision that is becoming real.

Yes, a plane that won't fly - the DP-2 - google it if you like. And what does missile defense (which of course we don't have yet) have to do with anything?

And speaking of things that don't have anything to do with anything - what's with the Bill Clinton quote?

And fine and dandy - sure I'll happily agree that President Bush regularly states that we should all fear for our lives b/c the terorists could get us and our mommies and puppies any second now, even if you are in McDonalds in Sheboygan. But that's not really relevant to how he sold the Iraq war. And there White House interviews were nothing but how this would all be free (Natsios) and we'd be greeted as liberators and get flowers (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc.). Anyone who said otherwise was promptly fired (Larry Lindsey, Secretary of the Army White, General Shinseki, etc.). So ... care to try again?

"And what does missile defense (which of course we don't have yet) have to do with anything?"

As I said above, I recall you having your doubts about it; and speaking of needing to google things, we do have pieces in place, as of more than a year ago (from the MDA website):

"Today we have deployed the initial block of an integrated and layered Ballistic Missile Defense System with more than a dozen long range interceptors and powerful radars keeping watch in Alaska and California, We continue to deliver sea and land-based interceptors to defend against shorter range missile attacks. And we will continue to expand and improve this defensive capability over time."

You don't throw away an idea just because it doesn't work the first time. The car you drive is the product of millions of failures from which our gifted engineers actually learned.

"And speaking of things that don't have anything to do with anything - what's with the Bill Clinton quote?"

Not putting the dots together tonight, eh? If Bill Clinton says back in 1998 that the best example of how a terrorist can get hold of chemical biological nuclear weapons, way before Bush took office, then I doubt he consulted a psychic to get that information. He would have gotten it from the CIA. And if the CIA's best guess was that Saddam had WMDs back then, before Bush took office, your argument ("Bush got the intelligence he wanted, despite the intelligence agencies' attempts to provide him with accurate intelligence") falls apart, because Clinton believed the same thing about Iraq that Bush believed.

"But that's not really relevant to how he sold the Iraq war."

Actually, all the quotes above come from the Mission Accomplished speech you refer to as an example of how Bush said it would be easy. What he did do was express his appreciation to the soldiers who had risked and had given their lives in the previous months. Bush never said it would be easy; you would have to have listened to the speech to know that, of course, and not just gotten the blurb from your Daily Kossack.

That Democrats would turn our President's expression of gratitude and appreciation for free citizens who felt they had a duty to defend us, that liberals would turn that into a reason to hate him, to score political points by using that to convince ignorant people that he'd lied and said it would be easy, that's what's sick, to my mind. What he said was he believed our soldiers were gifted and strong enough to outlast their enemies; and he was right, about that.

"Initial block" does not equal missile defense.

And sure, some things can be fixed over time. Others cannot. Others aren't worth being fixed given the limited gains compared to the costs. And ... what's the point exactly? You want more tens of millions thrown at Hunter's plane that won't fly?

Since when it Bill Clinton an intel expert on Iraq? I'm not particularly interested in his views on the subject. It's the case that the intel types in 2002 and 2003 were trying to raise alarm bells about Team Bush's fantasties, and they were being ignored. This isn't some left-wing fantasty Morris. Go back and read the newspapers at the time which covered a veritable war between the CIA and the White House. Read the things that have been written since about decision making in the run-up to the war. It's very clearly the case that the intel people knew better and were ignored.

And again, you aren't able to refute that the White House (again and again and again) said it would be easy. And as far as what people remember from that PR stunt, of course it would be the gigantic banner behind the president - that's what people were going to see after all, and what would be photographed around the world and be on front pages everywhere. If you know how people get their news, that's what mattered, not the details of the speech (which don't take back the White House saying repeatedly how easy and costless it would be).

What you're saying is it's always been the free market's fault, and that only the mechanism of government can save us for these greedy captitalists. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much in line with the thinking of Hillary who wants to take money out of the hands of everyday people "for their own good." And it's pretty much in line with John Edwards who doesn't want people to be able to choose a free market alternative to socialized medicine.

Actually, no, what I'm saying is what I said. What I said had nothing to do with greedy capitalists, really. What it pointed out is that it was regulations requiring transparency and prohibiting self-dealing that were identified as the prescription to protect against over-leveraged speculation and conflicted deals that benefited only the people -- greedy capitalists or otherwise -- who arranged them while fleecing everyone who wasn't privy to the deal worked. I said that in the decades immediately following those regulations, three decades in fact, our economy grew at an annualized rate of 4%. When we can manage that annualized rate for as long as a fiscal quarter these days the Bushies tout it as evidence that giving the rich yet more money to invest by allowing them to derive the greatest benefits from society while not asking them to give back the greatest amount in return (via tax cuts for the richest few percent) is a boon to economic prosperity. Tell you what, when tax cuts for the rich demonstrably give us five years, let alone a decade, or three of the sort of growth we enjoyed when the Sherman Act had teeth and CEOs' multiples of their employees' salaries weren't counted in the hundreds, then I'll listen to the bullshit rhetoric about how only if the avaricious few percent never give anything to anyone can we flourish as a capitalist nation.

Oh, and until you come clean and excoriate the Fed for its incessant tampering with the economy and villify every Republican who's ever voted to bail out an airline, automotive manufacture, S&L, hedge fund, bank, or any other major corporation that's ever failed due to its own greed or mismanagement, until you apply the same rhetoric you apply to government entitlements for the poor to all of the corporations that wouldn't be here without equivalent, and on balance much more pernicious, subtle, and expensive handouts -- until, that is, you behave like you believe in the free market even when it screws the rich, rather than only in those regards as to which it leaves out the poor -- you have absolutely no credibility on the topic. And bringing up Clinton or vacuous platitudinous snippets of speeches from our current Incompetent in Chief, won't save you from this one. Tell me there's no such thing as corporate welfare. Tell me there is but that it's necessary in a way that poor people welfare isn't. Tell me that there's a robust reason Adam Smith's own equivocations and qualifications regarding the "invisible hand" never quite make it into the right's free market rhetoric, and explain to me what it is, and we can have a discussion. Until then, you're full of shit. (And as for Bush's rhetoric of sacrifice, please square that with the go shopping, tax cuts, full steam ahead approach to individual sacrifice Bush has taken during the war, the only one we've ever fought where our leader hasn't had the nerve to demand that everyone sacrifice in some material regard.)

As for "socialized" medicine, look up socialism, look up any of the Dem candidate's plans, read the Medicare law, and get back to me. The various plans proposed are no more socialism in the form they would take than our economy is socialist simply because it provides food stamps to the poor -- and no more socialist than Romney's Massachussetts plan. In scheme, the they are all analagous, differing only in degree.

Talk about straw men. Name me one candidate who's proposed "socialized" medicine during this campaign, one candidate who wants to run private industry out of the system (as opposed to taking steps to ensure that those companies stop fleecing the American people in order to preserve their place as the most profitable business in the country (about which, how would you feel if education were privatized and became equally profitable, even though certain children were unable to afford school, and if differently, why?)), one candidate who believes the obscenely rich shouldn't be able to have the best care their money can buy, and then you can throw around the word "socialist." Until then, you sound ridiculous and mis-informed on this topic as well.

You want socialist health care? John Edwards is your man:

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

When a (so called) free citizen is mandated to get a check up every [however often the government decides], that means that the citizen is no longer as free. The free market is about choice, and socialism is about taking choice away. So now you'll have a huge new beaurocracy in place. And since there's no way the government is going to let the doctors set their own prices, you'll have to have price controls. So that means on the one hand, not everybody will get all available care because that would skyrocket the laughably low proposed cost, and on the other hand the government will set prices, how much they'll pay for certain proceedures. And then we're back to the space shuttle problem, where the lowest bidder gets to do your family's heart surgery. And get a load of this [load]:

"Edwards said his plan would cost up to $120 billion a year, a cost he proposes covering by ending President Bush's tax cuts to people who make more than $200,000 per year."

If Edwards weren't a thieving trial lawyer, he might expect people would actually go back to 2000 before the "tax cuts for the rich," expect they'd adjust the government's receipts from that year for inflation in each of the next years, and expect they would eventually realize that our government is making more in real dollars than it was in 2000 before the "tax cuts for the rich." So if he actually repeals those tax cuts, we'd expect the government to make less actual (as opposed to made up) money, and then be another $120 billion (if you believe this laughable cost projection) in the hole. But since there will be no disincentive to getting more expensive treatments, and since everyone will be required to get regular checkups which they don't now get, you should expect that figure to skyrocket by several orders of magnitude.

Taking away tax cuts isn't going to make the government more money, but it will allow the Dems to continue their class warfare rhetoric and let everybody suffer, so everybody has less money (because when taking away the tax cuts doesn't increase government's income, they'll "have to" raise taxes even more). This is about taking away people's money "for the common good" as Hillary says, because it is socialism, less choices and less liberty. And when people have less money after taxes are raised, more people won't be able to afford private doctors. And as more people go into the government funded health care system, taxes will be raised again to cover the increasing cost, and more people can't afford health care on their own, have to go into government health care, and then taxes will be raised again.

If you want more government in health care, look at countries that have more government in health care. I don't want to have to wait three or six months for an appointment, and it sucks to eat the cost of insurance every month, it means I have less other things I can do with my money, but on the rare occasion that I get sick and need a hospital, it's well worth it. Health care is too important to be left to the beaurocrats who aren't rewarded for imagination or innovation.

Ah, so it's one candidate, and a couple of sentences from a speech (nothing from the plan itself), that support your entire excoriation of the left as a bunch of confiscatory taxers and socialists, based on a definition of socialism that apparently is so capacious that it sweeps up virtually everything that isn't an entirely "free" market. That's not socialism, it's regulation, and, as I said, once you're willing to get rid of corporate welfare -- and only then -- can you extoll to me the virtues of the "free" market. For the time being, though, you've left me with the impression that you can't refute the claim that the rich are no better able to survive in a free market than the poor, that the right's fiscal philosophy is predicated on a bowdlerization of Adam Smith akin to Fox News bowdlerizations of the left's policies and proposed policies (bowdlerizations you buy hook line and sinker every time you use the word socialism), and that you don't really want to discuss what I was getting at.

Then there are the ludicrous points you make, based on one sentence in an Edwards speech, that you claim are evidence of socialist health care yet are in fact features of health care as it currently stands in America. I have fantastic benefits, and it takes me two months to get an appointment at my tony GP, whose practice is affiliated with one of the best health care systems in the region (i.e UPMC). In my first job out of college, my HMO foisted tremendous limitations on my freedom of choice with respect to doctors, and required me to see a PCP before I could see the specialist Iknew I needed for this or that ailment. And I have never ever ever gone to the doctor while insured that the doctor had absolutely no choice what he would be paid for the time, which was, natch, far less than he would like to charge.

What's a free marketeer to do with the rampant inefficiencies in health care? The fact that the system is built to divert the un(der)insured to Emergency Rooms for basic care, at a cost of hundreds of dollars to the taxpayer where it might have cost dozens? Are you really going to tell me that your care, insured or not, is everything you want it to be? Is cost effective? That your doctors, and you, wouldn't substantially change the system if you had the opportunity? (I realize, of course, that you will say it, because that's what you do (well, you'll either say it, or cite some camping trip Bill Clinton took in 1976 as an example of the depravity of the Democratic candidates, but my real answer is in what you're thinking when you read this; I know you know better.)

And good lord, you actually still believe that people wait six months for critical surgery, or whatever such utterly insubstantial bullshit the right spouts against the actually socialized systems (ones where no one has much choice, where doctors are paid by the government for their time, rather than by avaricious companies that pay them so little (under the free market) that they need to see twenty patients an hour just to make ends meet! You can't support your characterization by reliance on a reputable source on that front any more than you can demonstrate the charge of socialism as to any of the plans forwarded by democrats.

And really, do you want to hold the candidates to any one line from a speech? No one you like on the right is going to survive that test, either, especially the Strategerist in Chief. Where in Edwards policy -- or for that matter, his speech -- does he say that, if you can afford to improve your benefits beyond a federally mandated minimum threshold, you will be unable to see the doctor of your choice at whatever time s/he's available to see you? Thing is, he's effing right. Not that people should be compelled to see doctors against their will -- although interestingly, that sort of thing is done by corporations all the time to ensure their bottom lines; which suggests that preventive care is good for people, by your own implacable "free market" principles, since no one made companies do that -- but that's not what Edwards meant there, and you know it. What he meant is that a healthy health care system wouldn't make preventive care essentially inaccessible to broad swaths of the population, since it's inhumane and bad for the economy. The 15 or 20% of the population that can only secure curative care, and only in the emergency room, are huge drains on the economy, and the people paying for it are the taxpayers to a great extent, and the premium-payers to a lesser extent. I don't know about you, but when the only entity profiting from this ridiculous arrangement are the providers, I've got a problem. Not that someone's making a profit; but that my taxpayer dollars are being squandered by going out at exorbitant levels to buy that which would have been cheap had it been done sensibly.

Finally, you didn't answer my question with regard to education, which is dead on point and which provided an analogous comparison between private health care -- as it actually is -- and the Democrats' private-care-plus-a-safety-net-for-the-disadvantaged plans as they actually are. But I guess I can assume that you believe public education is socialist, that kids deserve to be punished for the sins of their fathers, and all that malarkey about equal opportunity -- which ought to require basic health care just as much as it requires equal education -- is, you know, so dated. The only non-socialist way to run education, I take it, is to foist upon schools piles of mandates and then demand that they pay for them themselves.

Don't worry, Morris. When you're rich -- or when you're a middle-class idolator of the rich -- you, or they, will still under Edwards' plan and everyone else's be able to select that doctor seeing whom just screams, "I have more money than you do." The well-to-do won't have to associate with the rabble at all, I promise.

Now, does anyone else want to cover the Laffer Curve (?) bullshit about how as taxation diminishes to zero government revenues approach infinity? Last I checked, the economy now is no better off on balance than it was under the "confiscatory" tax schemes to which Democrats have the temerity to want to return. Anyway, notions of our current growing economy have been greatly exaggerated, since a) it's only because the Fed keeps printing money, and b) with the dollar crashing against other currencies, a consequence of a), we're going to have to pay that piper really soon. As a consequence of which, even more people will find themselves in the ER-as-PCP healthcare limbo, at our expense. I sure do love that free market.