Grateful Dead

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Joe Scarborough, morning talk-show host and former Republican Congressperson, has released a book in a media blitz that is timed to try to influence the 2016 presidential elections. The book is called: “The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics--and Can Again,” The gist? "We can win again and we will. And we can do it by following the right paths of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. We can do it by fighting for the core principles of conservatism and emphasizing those values that most Americans agree with. There will also be times when we will follow the lead of Reagan and Eisenhower by putting principled pragmatism before ideological battles that will undermine our ability to win elections, elect majorities, and take back control of the White House." The air goes right out of his prognostication with the election of Chris Christy and the inevitable comparisons between a moderate Republican an a centrist Democrat. Christy gets crushed by the colored ascendency (Black, brown, yellow, whatever, the whole rainbow knows whose side their bread is buttered on) by 30 points in the polls if the election were held today. He offends the purist Right-wing Kingmakers. With Republicans efforts to stop colored people (and their children who come of age) from voting and stopping immigration reform it is insuring their own defeat. I, for one, urge them on to greater and greater heights of rigid ideology as they fossilize in their rockers listening to Rush Limbaugh. Look for Hillary Clinton to stomp any sacrificial offering put on the Republican altar. The saddest fact? It won't make any difference to working class American who gets elected, or environmentalists, or gun-control advocates, or doves, or anybody with an intelligent brain. Sorry Hillary, don't hit your head too hard on the glass ceiling.

The dysfunctional Congress is, er, disturbing (since we are toning down our speech per the mod.) What is even more frightening is that there is very little difference between old-line mainstream Republicans and and old-line mainstream Democrats. That used to be the core of our political sysytem and the core of our problem. No meaningful choices. Well, that pat little theory got blown out of the water! The Republicans have now gone far to the right and dragged the traditional leadership behind them to ruin. The Democrats are timidly standing behind the president without much enthusiasm. What should be Obama's crowning achievement has turned into a high-tech quagmire that will eventually be fixed. The Congress, probably not. And that is more frightening than the whole health care crisis. The strangest thing? One of the longest bull markets ever under a Democrat. See my following post.

in my earlier post I did not say,or intend to imply, that I hope Obamacare fails, or should be repealed, or that everyone does not deserve health-care, not in the least. It was only meant to show the frustration that most Americans feel about the total dysfunction going on in Washigton has been going on for years.

'The husband and supporters of a jailed Pussy Riot band member are trying to find her in Russia's Siberian prison camp system on her 24th birthday. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is being transferred to a different prison but her husband Pyotr Verzilov says he has heard nothing from her for 19 days.' Please read the article here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24848893 Pyotr Verzilov is using the Twitter account gruppa_voina - https://twitter.com/gruppa_voina You can get in touch directly here - 6046040@gmail.com

take the personal stuff offline. Reasonable people differ as to how to frame an issue or define a problem, and what they see as the appropriate way to address the matter. If you go around blasting or sneering at everyone who sees things differently from you, it's bad for the vibe, bad for the dialogue, and bad for getting things done, because it rapidly devolves into who's got the biggest and noisiest mob and that's where the energy goes. This is not the venue. Please. Thank you. (mod off)

sorry anna, quess you are one of the poor souls who need health care, maybe in a decade or more I might need it and when I do I will pay for it, but the government ain't gonna tell me to do it cause you need health insurance.

i agree with you anna, regarding healthcare. and others... please think of the sentiment and concern being expressed here, not necessarily the approach and language used.

Rather, they are words for people who do not wish to live up to inconvenient realities. Unkle Sam, you speak of people who are never sick and don't need medical insurance. Who are these human beings you are talking about? I have never known one person in my whole life who was never sick, never had an accident and never needed the services of the medical profession. Not one. Further, you lump them in a group who can't have one more dime coming out of their paychecks. I can relate, totally. I'm one of those Americans who is losing. More money going out than coming in every month (because I save for retirement). This category of people is usually the working class. They are mortal and are in need of even more medical insurance due to the nature of their working class jobs. You assert that they pay out of pocket (the name for this is self-insurance) every time they are sick. But they can't afford a dime. But they pay the bill the whole time. Doesn't make sense. The point is there are NO superhuman healthy people who never get sick. None that are never subject to accidents. Even if you hide in your own home you can slip and fall and break something. Most of us go out every day and participate in a very hazardous activity -- driving -- where other selfish people share the road with us texting and talking on their phones causing the most completely insane and avoidable accidents. You can have a history of no illness and have an accident. God bless you if you fall into the superhuman category of people who went through war and never got a scratch or came down with any malaise in the desert of wherever they were. I am not conversant with VA benefits. Do they amount to a major medical plan for those sicknesses and accidents that have nothing to do with war? That would be a very generous benefit of serving four or six years in the armed services. As I recall my father never used his VA benefits as a major medical even though he faced kamikazes in WWII. He had to pay for insurance. And if you really hate it so much that you might be subsidizing some other person less fortunate than yourself is it so insane to ask for a tax equal to 1% of your taxable income? You couldn't find some tax loophole out there to take care of some or all of it? Corporations sure do. There ought to be a provision that you can pay for that tax with a pre-tax dollar medical flex spending account. The main thing I am saying is that we all get sick, sooner or later. It is denial to think that we don't. If we all pay into the pool then there is enough for everybody. If we don't then we face massively crowded emergency rooms crammed with all those people who don't pay because they never get sick or have accidents. This is what amounts to a callous disregard for those who are less fortunate. But don't don't worry. It's a brave new world. With the human genome mapped there will be more and more precise measurements of who will become sick and who have a lesser chance of becoming so and people will pay premiums accordingly. I have a friend who gladly pays the 1% tax in Ma.. He'd rather pay for good organic food than pay for health insurance. The point is he pays his dues and doesn't bellyache about it. I like his approach better than those who would act like right-wing talk show hosts and continually screech about those people they perceive to be leaching off of them. The very worst thing is that with all the problems the very group we are arguing about will not sign up in sufficient numbers and the whole thing will go into a death spiral, unable to sustain itself

please tone down the abusive language and name-calling. People of good will can and do differ profoundly, and if we cannot respect that here, it's time to give up.

He nails his balls to the ground, sews his lips together and wraps himself in barbed wire... For various causes. This latest stunt to protest police day. The same things that are happening in Russia are happening in America. Except we don't have any performance artists with big enough balls!