jesus....this post leaves me speechless....

Yes, but at least that mom wouldn't be alone. Maybe there'd be something in that Democratically-enabled health care plan that allowed for a support group, or for experimental medicine. And maybe the nation's mood would simply be different. Just because one's life would "not be good" doesn't mean that it can't be the best it could be.

Goddammit, when are the Democrats going to nominate someone with the power to heal cancer?!

ratner, that was funny! Well, as far as gallows humor goes...

Ol' man Peretz is a nincompoop. If his missus didn't have money, he'd rant in some park and people would give him a dollar for a Night Train bottle.

sleepy, well put.  You are dead-on.    

And ratty, there was a man that could cure cancer.  His name was Mike Gravel.  And we ignored him.  For shame, DUMBocrats.  

Folks,

Wouldn't you love to be the fly on the wallpaper in a room where Martin Peretz, Maureen Dowd, and Peggy Noonan discuss Hillary Clinton? Oh the humanity!

So what else is new! The left, the old left, the new left and leftover left have always had a penchant for waving bloody shirts, weeping for dog-food eating grannies, exhuming dead babies, evoking cancer, screeching about AIDS, drugs and whatever else can be described as the ole human condition. They have a cure for all of them: your money to buy them a permanent constituency. Once they get 'em hooked on your money they'd be fools to vote themselves out of rent control, welfare payments, free health benefits. It was  so irresistible that even that pinhead Bush tried it. Hillary didn't invent that racket. Why pick on her. And speaking of demeaning, what about the Great Society programs like Aid to Dependent Children which was probably the biggest calamity to hit the African American community since Jim Crow. Where are we now? Two trillion in the hole, a dying dollar, a shrinking economy, and more, much more, to come.

"And speaking of demeaning, what about the Great Society programs like Aid to Dependent Children which was probably the biggest calamity to hit the African American community since Jim Crow. Where are we now? Two trillion in the hole, a dying dollar, a shrinking economy, and more, much more, to come."

This is amazing! Blaming the contemporary problems of American economy to the New Deal-Great Society programs implemented from the thirties to the sixties of the last century!

Yes, yes. I'm sure that that "dying dollar" and "schrinking economy" are all due to some subsidies given to black children in the sixties! They have absolutely nothing to do with irresponsible policies that allowed for the biggest twin deficits already recorded in history (and not only in American history), with a deregulation "ideology" that allowed for highly speculative and highly damaging behavior, forgetting all "market correcting" necessities, etc., etc.

The FACTS today are so evidently clear and transparent that one must be blind not to recognize that the age in which the right and the "rightovers" could rewrite history according to it's anti-social ideology is over...

yikes.

This discussion is idiotic. If the poor, saintly, desperate woman didn't have health care she wouldn't have a bald head. Democrats are fraudulent first, last and always.

Well, imagine someone is dying of cancer in Auschwitz (with no help or dignity).

And imagine that someone refers to that particular situation in order to underline the degradation, the particularly un human condition that's being experienced in Auschwitz. It surely is moraly and politicaly legitimate to single out such a particular situation in order to stress a particularly inhuman situation!

And what would Peretz, RAPprods and ajmalkov say? That that woman in Auschwitz would have a bald head and would die anyway!

Please do not confuse this with a comparison of the situation of the woman Clinton mentioned with the situation of an eventual woman with cancer in Auschwitz. Surely this last situation is terrible and it's particular political context is beyond comparison. REPEAT: BEYOND COMPARISON.

The point is that it would be moraly and politically legitimate to stress the particular situation of that eventual woman in order to underline what was happening in Auschwitz.

As it is moraly and politically legitimate to stress the particular situation of the "bald headed" woman Clinton mentioned (for a woman in that condition to be dying without public support is a disgrace) in order to stress how terrifying is the absence of a public system that offers at least some relief to the same.

If those that still don't give a damn about health care find this unconfortable, it is their problem. Perhaps something to do with consciousness?

ajmalkov writes;

-- If the poor, saintly, desperate woman didn't have health care she wouldn't have a bald head.

Perhaps she shaved her head to make a point, or perhaps she had access to some charity care. The problem with charity is you can never be sure if it will be there tomorrow. And if it were up to a heartless Republican it would not have been there yesterday or today either.

My, liberals are a testy bunch...point out the failings of the Great Society(and it did decimate the black family and involve us in a terrible pointless war)and Auschwitz is invoked-not even to defend Israel but to defend gov health care!! Relax, the liberals won-even though the recognized failures of same caused politicians to shun the label they all govern as such and always will, e.g., George Bush. Obama, McCain what's the diff-the top management group of USA comprises between 15 and 60 members who rotate in revolving door fashion between and among various centers of social and political power. The figureheads and mouthpieces – the Kennedys, Nixons, Clintons, Bushes – are all fungible, each can be replaced by another without perturbing the system. In this manner do elections always come to a choice between two morally indistinguishable candidates. Likewise, no matter who you vote for, the political establishment always gets elected.

Great Society may have many flaws. But howcome did it "decimate the black family" and "involve [you] in a terrible pointless war"? D

Do you mean Iraq? If that is so, your causalities are as weird as RAPProds' when blaming Great Society for the current American economy frailties!

Or Vietnam? What do Roosevelt's, Truman's, Kennedy's and Johnson's social programs have to do with the specific Cold War context that got you in Vietnam? Wasn't the decision on Vietnam similar to the decision on Korea (and couldn't it have been taken by a strictly laissez faire Republican?).

Talk about a "testy bunch"

Luis. Good to see you back.

The posited decimation of the black family has much to do with the idea that a survivor community was allowed the room to forego its self policing mechanisms by virtue of unaccountable and un-obligated largess.

Now there are many mitigations which can and have been discussed at length. But then there always are. The notion that unattached subsistence might lead to an alienation and hence counterproductive behaviors is not far fetched. Thus such arrangements are frowned upon by 'conservatives'. If largess is not informed by a moral impetus, bi-directionally speaking, obligations and their moral import is impotent. So caring dies and management is the prime. Humans become things and things are capable of doing any thing.

Right.  Republicans would never revel in human suffering,  do something so treacly, so theatrical, so deus ex machina, like manipulate  the 3 branches of the federal government to intervene in the case of one comatose woman.  I expect Republicans to be tougher and to devote their energies to the things that matter, like upper class tax cuts, corporate bailouts, and fighting for the rights of oil tankers to run over whales.

Jack! Old friend. It's such a pleasure to talk to you again.

I see what you mean. And I agree. Really.

I understand that if social policies are not very well thought, they can end up causing the very contrary effects they stood originally for. Which is, always, promotion of human dignity (and inherently freedom, responsibility, awareness)

What annoys me is that some "conservative" speech is not really interested in reviewing the flaws of the past in order to correct them. It's simply interested in destroying every possible trace of social solidarity through the state, pursuing an absurd ideal/fiction of athomistic freedom in which some supposedly just want the state "off their backs" (as if those that have property and actually exercise freedom did not depend on the state, for instance, on police to keep their nice neighborhoods "clean"...).

And in such impetus, they usually rewrite history. For instance, and most importantly, forget Roosevelt's original motivation ("necessitous men are also men"). As they forget that if irresponsibility and alienation was indeed sometimes promoted (by policies that should have been corrected if they weren't, I don't question it), people like Michelle Obama could not have "made it" without the New Deal / Great Society programs.

As they forget that getting people to have universal education and health is never (ever!) something that promotes irresponsibility. If it is proven that the market cannot provide for that universally; it it is even proven that when it provides (always not universally), it provides it at a higher cost / lower benefit, why do these guys (instead of discussing) keep coming up with some ghosts on the Vietnam war and on black junkies?

Simply because what is being challenged is a black and white vision of the world in which private is good / public is bad; the state is an ogre enemy of freedom, etc., etc. Those are ideological dogmas that deserve the destiny of all unsustained ideological dogmas. Which is garbage.

Luis. Thanks for  the bang! I'll have to get back on the morrow as to devote justice.

Luis. We (US) fight over valid symbolic markers in our elections. More often than not there isn't much difference about what that marker is. It's over how best to make it live. Truth is all democracies do this. The oscillations between individual v collective is the noise we make for those contentions. While your black and white admonishment is valid it is the ratification of both in equal strength the goal. And so chest beating and outrageous passions consume the fervent. It goes beyond competence of management skills.

Actually there is more similarity between the contenders this year than there have been in quite some time. The proximity of that black/white interchange in our little yin yang alchemy begs its temporary resolution.

I suppose the question for me is how much symbolic purity do I concede to the temporal need for satisfaction? It was my intention to work toward some profundity that might not be a waste of time. I've not hit that mark in my opinion. That said our little election has some big stakes and is about as interesting a season as I've had in my life.... given my disposition.

Be well Luis. Jack

aj - Good (and overlooked) point!

(horribledictu.com)

"Democrats are fraudulent first, last and always"  says ajmalkov.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton: the Rightwing-controlled Republicans had an opportunity from 2001 - total control of the White House and both houses of congress - to practice their ideology without contraints, and prove that it's good for America.

Well, the terrible results are in and the GOP leadership, still, have not recanted inspite of the massive deficits and economic meltdown. In fact, McCain vows that, if elected, he'll make permanent an even bigger tax-cut for the people at the top 1% of income. In other words, we've been dug into a big hole by the GOP and they want to continue digging, except this time they want a bigger shovel.

Now, tell me again, aj, who's being fraudulent?

it should read "constraints"