Good luck with that (sincerely).

Those would be the young and employed.

If it weren’t an issue of national proportions then it would hardly rate a mention, let alone be a top priority of the President.

The US was founded on the basis of lower taxes small government and guns for the people. get over it people, its not OZ, but it is the US.

I have some American friends whom I sometimes prompt to nominate who will own the 21st century by say 2030. They don’t answer. They don’t even try to bluff. They are still psychologically affected by 9/11, let alone every thing that has hit the US since. They are in no condition to own a country, let alone a century.

When you try to democratically govern 300+ million people spread across 50 states you have a problem of, well, American proportions.

It sometimes surprises me how vehemently many Americans, regardless of education or social status, simply do not trust the government — regardless of who’s in power. It’s almost an article of faith that the government is out to get everybody, even when it’s trying to provide universal health care.

At it’s most fundamental, effective democratic politics is the art of compromise. When a committee sits down to design a horse, what inevitably emerges looks a whole lot like a camel. Get ready for CamelCare.

Jay Gould: “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

This was said in relation to wage slavery.

Hahahahahaha

Guy, love your work (but then I’m a baby-butchering, malodorous commo) the other bits of that stat are that for 20% of GDP being spent on private and public health about 1/5th of the population have no health cover. In Britain (with an NHS JamesK would decry as a hulking inefficient stalinist abomination) 99.8% of the population is covered and the percentage of GDP spent on health is 8. Makes the argument about ‘how will we pay for this galloping socialism (sorry, liberalism)’ a bit hollow.

It’s beyond me how anyone can make an argument that one in five of your fellow citizens can just take their chances if the get sick and many of the rest get health care determined by the profit of a health insurance business. Just what part of that is sane, humane, cost effective, societaly cohesive? Don’t care? I know, but leaving human decency aside, at it’s basest, in a cohesive society people don’t climb through you window and rob you at gun point.

Obama and truly ‘b-tshit’ Dems like Reid and Pelosi are responsible for a oh so very real grass roots revolt described disingenuously and beyond arrogantly by this hubristic leftist sneering class as nothing more than “astoturf” or right wing swastika waving anarchists of the GOP!

I don’t include the ideologically malodorous Rundle in this sneering class as I’m sure that that class would find Rundle ‘noc’ as well. Besides, he’s an anarchist as well……..

The feisty housewife from Alaska ends one the most loathsome aspects of the bill almost overnight with just two words out her divine mouth: “death panels”.
Game over despite NYT characterisation of Palin’s two word blood stained sword as her “ghoulish carousel”. The Dems promptly remove that provision.

As six time Presidential candidate for the Socialst Party of America, Norman Thomas famously said: “The American people will never knowingly
adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation,
without knowing how it happened.

That’s the dishonesty of Rundle too…… socialism-by-proxy as socialism itself is already known to be anathema to freedom and dignity.

Americans are waking up to the dishonesty of Obama.

The question is when Australians will wake up to the dishonesty of Rudd.

John, hate to break this to you, but, well - they lost. Sarah helped.

And even if it does pass, the same thing will happen again with the next reform, imagine implementing any sort of energy policy (ie. reduction of imported oil consumption) in this sort of environment.

It seems the norm for the American media outlets to give a seat at the table to the lying republican congressmen and usually they don’t call them out for it. Some are trying lately and far too late, to correct the facts. But why they keep getting these people on who represent a minority of the people who voted for them, gobsmacks me.

Big insurance and lobbing groups employ ex republicans and are doing a good job of turning the media’s head. Weiner a Democrat in the House said that the white house will lose 100 votes from progressive deomocrats if the public option is not included in the bill. They need 218 votes to pass the bill and with 100 withdrawing their support then the white house will be left with shite on their faces.

The blue dogs are republicans dressed up as democrats. Rahm’s experiment has backfired tremendously with trying to have these so-call band of six. They seem to vote with republicans many times and are funded by Health insurance companies. Progressives have given up the single payer, for the middle ground of a public option. Now they’re being told pull your head in and swallow the co-op version. From the blogs I’ve read today the white house just broke the once strong straw.

Since losing office, the Republicans have completely lost the plot, denying the legitimacy of the Obama administration and trying to white ant every sane initiative by maliciously spreading lies and misinformation, which you seem to be a part of.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, looks on gobsmacked at the insanity in America. God help us all if that bimbo fundamentalist fascist from Alaska is taken seriously. You are joking aren’t you?

The US, long before 911 had spent more than the rest of the world combined on defence - and the spending wasn’t just because of an imperial over-reach. There was/is real fear of any sort of change.

I believe they still have penny (1 cent coins) and paper dollar bills.

Any sort of voting reform/modernisation would be presented by the right as a threat to democracy.