GP Ed. Note - Anti-Christian bigotry will not be tolerated on this blog.  Period.

I thought this quote by Baker was particularly noteworthy, especially considering NDT’s usual talking points:
‘The Iraqis themselves dare not dream: they have been liberated from the nightmare of a tyrannical order only to face the nightmare of brutal violence.’

I agree with the commission that one last go at it is probably best, but that we are at the make or break point. All may already be lost, but I liked what I heard today. However, the clowns in the White House are still the ones setting the policy and that doesn’t bode well for a succesful outcome. After all, they’re the ones who screwed it up in the first place.

First off, that’s the mentality of the Ba’athist and Islamic fundamentalist leaders; the only reason that they don’t control the world is because the Jews and the Americans keep them down, and if the Iraqis would just give power to them, everything would be peachy-dandy.

Second off, it’s the mentality of the anti-American left, especially in Europe and the UN, to whom the fall of Saddam represented the elimination of a major market, free of US competition, for their exports, and a perpetual cash machine that enriched their bureacrats in exchange for looking the other way.

Bush hit the nail on the head when he said, “They hate our freedoms”. Saddam, bin Laden, and his ilk cannot stand the fact that, in the United States, people are allowed to choose their own government, their own rules, and their own religion. The anti-American leftists cannot stand the fact that their socialist and communist models not only cannot keep up with us, but keep collapsing in the process.

Finally, what adds to that, though, are Democrats like Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Jimmy Carter who, desperate to curry favor with the anti-American leftists, are constantly telling the rest of the world how awful the US is, how all our soldiers do is torture and murder civilians, and how the Iraqis were so much better off under Saddam (or how the Venezuelans are better off under Hugo Chavez, or how the Iranians are better off under their Islamic fundamentalist government, or whatever the anti-American dictator of the week is).

The problem with the United States is that we have an entire generation of people, most of whom are Democrats, that honestly don’t realize how good they have it and who consider the inconveniences of their life under the Bush administration as equivalent to the horrors the Iraqis underwent under Saddam (and aided by anti-American leftists who covered up the worst of Saddam’s abuses). Furthermore, as in the case of the misguided “human shields” who went to Iraq prior to the invasion at Saddam’s behest, only to find out that he expected them to defend non-humanitarian targets, once they are confronted with reality, they slink away and hide, rather than publicly stating, “We were wrong.”

The United States truly is a model for the rest of the world. However, that’s hard for people to figure out, when you and yours not only yield the floor to people who are viciously anti-American, but aid and abet them yourselves.

2nd base. Double. Congrats and cheers!!

“In Iraq, we try to win the hearts and minds of population,” said 1st Lt. Gerard Dow, 32, of Chicago. “They want Americans out of here. They blame us for all their problems. They look at us as the terrorists and then they turn around and help the terrorists who are trying to kill us.

The Iraqi army is getting there, but they are still not where they need to be and I doubt they will be by (2008). Too many times, they are in a selfish state of mind. Too often they are along for the ride while we do the work for them.

U.S. soldiers are dying trying to help people who don’t want their help. That makes you angry.”

That basically sums up the entire problem. The Iraqis hate us and no matter what we do or say, even if we have their best interest in mind, will not follow or listen to us. We are trying to do something, establish a government, that takes the trust of the people. Yet, we have no credibility in Iraq. They do not trust us.

Thus, it will never work.

Here’s a solution for you Mike. It may be one that Calarato might like too.

Take the money we currently spend on Medicare and Medicaid (at the federal level) and divide it equally among every citizen in the US to subsidize the purchase of their own health insurance. In 2006 we spent 563 billion dollars on those two programs (pfd file, table 3). That equals $1,875 per person.

That would cut your health insurance costs nearly in half.

The administrative costs could easily be paid for by the elimination of the preferential tax treatment of employer provided health insurance benefits .

Also, for the record:

- Employer-paid health insurance is viewed by businesses as a cost because… umm… it is. Politically labelling it “an employee retention tool” changes no fundamentals. Wages and salaries, another top employee retention tool, are also a cost - are they not?

- You said, “I disagree that government programs are ‘driving up the cost of health care’, when in fact costs from providers to the Medicare/Medicaid program are lower than to private insurers.”

Well Mike, again sorry, but your re-framing or disagreeing that something is a certain way, won’t change it. Yes, the government does use force (law and regulation) to artifically compel below-market prices from some providers. That doesn’t breed the efficiency and innovation we need to get better, so to speak. It does force providers to raise prices elsewhere to make up for shortfalls - DRIVING UP COSTS.

And in any case, that whole debate misses my actual point: that because the CONSUMER isn’t paying the true costs (Medicare, Medicaid, etc. step in for him), far more money is blown on health care than ought to be. It’s easily documented.

John Stossel has a wonderful analogy for it. Imagine that we all expected employers to provide “food insurance”. And that people like you went around saying “Government has to step in and, by issuing its magical orders, guarantee universal access to good coverage at low prices.” What’s the first thing that would happen? People would not spend carefully at the supermarket. Their carts would be overflowing with lobsters and premium steak. The only question they’d ask is, “Does my insurance cover it?”

What would happen after that? Food prices would shoot through the roof; Foodicare and Foodicaid would then have to step in to regulate prices at gunpoint (which is what government fiat is); many food providers would drop out of the business, while the survivors simultaneously became ever more bloated and inefficient, and demanded and received ever higher prices from all. In 20 or 45 years, we’d go from being a country where people spend 3-5% of their income on food, to five times that.

- You said, “But punitive damage awards aren’t handed out by lawyers - they’re handed out by lay juries, your neighbors and mine.”

Because the law allows them to. We badly need tort reform. Still.

- You said, “the whole paradigm is out of whack.”

Indeed it is. But taking more of the poison that got you into the mess (government intervention, orders, fiats, regulations, subsidies in various forms) is not how you solve the problem.

We should reverse course and poison the market less: restoring true incentives / costs to consumers and true freedom to providers.

Kerry and his fellow anti-American leftists got the US out of Vietnam, for which I’m sure he received a handsome premium from the Viet Cong and the adulation of their European supporters…..but they for some reason never discuss the million-plus people that the Viet Cong then merrily went about starving, “re-educating”, and erasing.

And the same needs to be shown to the baklava seller. One wonders if he’ll be as supportive of sharia and Taliban-esque movements like Hizbollah if he realizes that keeping his shop open during prayers or on other holy days is now worth his death — or that, when his daughter goes out to get flour unaccompanied or with comfortable shoes on, she will return in chains and covered with welt marks for being a harlot.

What you need to confront, Chase, is that Hizbollah and other movements deliberately mislead people as to how harsh their rule is by justifying their actions based on “the Great Satan” — and that, by his constant need to smear and bash American actions, Kerry and his fellow Democrats reinforce that notion that Hizbollah, et al.’s actions are justified.

When Democrats like you can ask Ted Kennedy why he didn’t seem to care one whit about torture on a mass scale at Abu Ghirab when Saddam was doing it, THEN you’ll have progress. And when you can hold accountable organizations like the UN who scream “no blood for oil”, but themselves took billions of dollars in oil money to turn a blind eye to Saddam’s systematic genocide, THEN we’ll believe that you actually stand against such things.

But until then, you’re no different than Kerry, who honestly thinks the rest of us don’t notice that the lips which spoke platitudes about his “brothers in arms” in 2004 were the same ones calling them baby-killers and murderers in the ’70s when he was aiming to get into Jane Fonda’s pants and on her ballot.

It’s what happens when it becomes fashionable and politically prudent for the opposition to undercut American opinion and public resolve to the win. Kerry and the Democrat wannabe-prez types started to do that stuff out on the campaign trail in 2004-5. Kennedy and others did it from the well of Congress in tandem with the politicians aiming to nab the DemocratLeft primary vote. And the media saw an opportunity and sold it out the back end of the wagon.

Happened with VN. Happened with Korea. Happened with Beiruit. Happening now with Iraq and Afghanistan will be next. The winners in a war aren’t determined by who is right –just by who is left standing. The antiwar crowd isn’t right or morally correct… just base enough to use dead soldiers to their partisan advantage.

No, but convincing the average Middle Eastern Arab, the type that sells baklava out of a deli, is. We’ve never done well winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people or of the broader Muslim world.

That’s why we are losing the war.

I disagree that government programs are “driving up the cost of health care”, when in fact costs from providers to the Medicare/Medicaid program are lower than to private insurers. But I’m still not advocating more government programs.

And our litigation emphaiss should change too (and this coming from a lawyer-in-training). But punitive damage awards aren’t handed out by lawyers - they’re handed out by lay juries, your neighbors and mine.

Eseentially what I’m saying is the whole paradigm is out of whack. If we don’t think health care is a divine right, we also need to stop giving doctors a god-complex, and not questioning them. In that way HMOs have it right. Our health care consumers need to be better educated. But it’s a two way street.

And in a way, I am buying health care insurance for someone else. I’m lucky that my new employer offers domestic partner benefits, so we chose that route recently. And it makes my taxes higher. So I’m paying for it, but of course not as much as if I were paying the entire cost! It’s a good example (in my opinion) of a private employer seeing a competitive advantage in hiring and retaining workers.

Again, thanks for the discourse.

Oh, wait - you had in mind to use government force to give MY money to them? (The little there is.) Umm, well, that’s where the “communist” label would rightly enter.

Health care coverage is not a divine right…

Indeed it is not.

…people should[] have reasonable, affordable access to it… we can do better [a Clinton line]…

Do you believe that going further down the road of government mandates and forced subsidies will magically generate the necessary human innovation and increases in efficiency?

Gee, it’s worked so far. Health care costs have sure dropped (NOT) sinced we piled on program after program, mandate after mandate, and subsidy after subsidy over the last 45 years, right? Let’s continue the floggings until morale improves.

When people have health insurance that they view as “free”, they over-use. They bend your ear with a great story on how the extra doctor visit is “necessary” and you nod sympathetically - but come on, as soon as they have to pay for it, they discover it isn’t.

Thus, “free” insurance (funded by employer and/or government) is one factor massively driving up costs for all of us, over the last 45 years. Litigation (malpractice insurance awards) would be another. Let’s end those things.

For a couple good books on how to really solve our health care issues, see here, or here.

You’re right taxman56, we did exist for millenia without health care and health care coverage. No offense, but to use that as an argument is crap. We lived for millenia without cars, reliable energy, computers, industry, etc…the list goes on. Should we give all those up too? Health care coverage is not a divine right, but that doesn’t mean more people shouldn’t have reasonable, affordable access to it. (And that’s key - reasonable and affordable, not entitled to it by right) My partner runs his own business - it’s just him. A individiual health care policy for him would be over $350 a month out of his pocket for a policy that covers his needs. My COBRA when I got laid off this year would have $370. Who has that much money to spare every month? No one I know, and certainly no one I know who’s in that job-loss situation, or trying to make a small business work.

Again, I agree that health care is not a divine right. We have the best quality health care in the world in this nation, and I for one am grateful. But our delivery of that care needs work. I don’t necessarily think universal health care is the best option, but there has to be a middle ground on which we do better.

And that’s where the punishment comes in. People who work two jobs often work without health care coverage. So what happens when they get sick or injured? They go to the hospital. As a result they lose work time they can’t afford to lose, in extreme cases some get fired, and then they’re stuck with a massive hospital bill that puts them further behind. We’re punishing them. It may not be intentional, but it’s the real effect.

All I’m saying is I think we can do a little better for many of our fellow Americans without becoming the communists so many of you conservatives thinks all we liberals are. Call me an idealist I guess.

And is the hard work of KILLING TERRORISTS and of PUTTING FEAR INTO THE EVIL really a Betty Crocker bake-off, or other popularity contest? I’d say the “American brand” is nearly radioactive enough - That is the problem!