Is there a now Great Pumpkin board?
 

I wasn't sure if anyone wanted to hear me rant about the fact that even with 93 bipartisan sponsors, the Campaign Finance Reform Bill in the Texas House will never see the light of day.

Good news, Politics Board! The Texas Legislature only has a month left in the five month, every two year session. So I can go back to ranting about national politics, until the special summer session and the fight over school finance.

Is there a now Great Pumpkin board?
 

And again I offer:

I will help you get rid of the dirtiest Rs in Texas.

Just tell us where to send aid that is likely to be used effectively. Seriously, its payday where I'm at. The mortgage is down to 10 years, I'm 6 months in real payments ahead, I just bought lunch for the entire staff on my floor, there are no other loans outstanding beside the mortgage, and I still have moolah in the wallet.

Just tell me where to send it and why you believe it will used effectively to bring down one of the worst.

All I ask in return is for your help in getting rid of Mayor Daley and Senator Durbin. But I'll consider your word your bond, so just give me your word and the information on where to send the money.

and what would people's nicknames be if their screennames had mob nicknames? What would your's be?

Say Hello For ("the Sweeper") Me

Nahhh, but I'd bet you could come up with a pretty cool tough mob nickname for Replaced Texan!

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

I think you may have an excessively short view of history.

Putting aside Judicial nominations and steroids
 

Apparently, not even Democrats have the balls to tell people to quit whining about gas prices.

Putting aside Judicial nominations and steroids
 

As a good republican, I don't like the idea of a national health care system. And if there is one, is should be kept in the private sector as much as possible. However, I was wathcing Thomas Friedman on TV tonight and he said that the number one reason for companys in the United States moving their factories off shore is health care costs. Not high taxes or high labor costs. In China, the government takes care of health care so the company's don't have to worry about it. He said that $6,000 spent on every GM car goes to the healt benefits of its workers. I don't know if it is true, but what he is saying is the strongest argument I have heard for a national health care system.

Conservative v. Neo-conservative
 

I was also watching Charles Krauthammer being interviewed on CSPAN, and he was comparing Neo-conservatives to conservatives. He was saying that conservatives just look at foreign policy in terms of US interest. Neo-conservatives look at it in terms of turning other countrys into democracys and free market economies. He compared the two camps to billard balls. Conservatives just care where the balls are bouncing on the table. Neo-conservatives care what is inside the balls and how what is inside the balls determines which way they go. Neo-conservatives are different from liberals in that they believe that US power, and not multilateral institutions, is the best way to spread democracy One interesting point he made, was that he felt that a neo-conservative would have voted for Johnson in 68 and not Goldwater. Didn't quite get the logic behind that. But I have to say that I am definitely a neo-conservative.

Krauthammer's Balls
 

I think the neocons position could be restated as that turning other countries into democracies with FMEs is ultimately in the best interests of the US. Hard to argue with as a general proposition. As usual, however, the devil is in the details. Are there any limits on our decision to implement this goal? In other words, who's next? Also, I'm concerned that US power and multilateral institutions are seen as an either/or proposition. US power is finite and its use without regard to world opinion will steadliy foster increasing resentment. We may soon find ourselves in a position where we are no longer able to project force at the moment we have burned our last multilateral institutional bridge.

Where's Hank?
 

Oh. In Kansas.

Krauthammer's Balls
 

Does the term "neocon" have any widely recognized definition? It seems alternately self-serving (i.e., "we're so cool that we've jettisoned the "old" conservative ways like racism and mere imperialism) and deprecatory ("they're dressing up the same pig in new clothes")

Krauthammer's Balls
 

I thought it had something to do with Keanu Reeves.

Putting aside Judicial nominations and steroids
 

This is something you just heard?

Conservative v. Neo-conservative
 

Yeah, 'cause Johson's efforts to use US power to create democracy in faraway lands worked out so well.

Krauthammer's Balls
 

They all wear a special decoder ring.

Putting aside Judicial nominations and steroids
 

If it is a strong argument for government intervention into the health care system at all, it is a strong argument for an approach such as Oregon's, not a national health care system. I don't have the statistics at my fingertips, but some extraordinarily large portion of our health care expenditures is spent on the last year of people's lives or futile efforts to keep them alive or extend their (often miserable) life my some incremental amount. What Oregon is at least trying to do is insert some cost-benefit analysis into health care decisions, i.e. don't spend $1,000,000 on a liver transplant for a 70-year old.

We are spending something like 20% of our GDP (or GNP, I don't know and it doesn't matter) on health care in some misguided belief that all efforts must be made at all times for all people. And some disproportionate amount of that is not spent on the stuff that most people want from health insurance, whether it is keeping the vegetative alive, using extraordinary attempts to save the old, infirm and feeble, or on all the machines in the ICU that go "beep."

Somehow the doctors, lawyers and religious right have created this systemic belief that no amount of resources should be spared to save one life on the margin. Oregon is at least looking at the marginal benefit for the expeniture of extraordinary costs. A national health care system would not. I don't know what exactly, but I have no doubt that it would instead create some other system with unintentional, yet existent, built-in incentives for inefficiency, graft, and incompetency. (See, e.g. the TSA).

Putting aside Judicial nominations and steroids
 

Agreed, but Less -- you're going to have to accept that "fuckable" will never be included on the benefit side.