Does anyone know if repub lites support giving all children health care

:shrug:
just making fun of the bs that Kerry is that, I hope his bill passes, its a step in the right direction.

they look like heartless assholes. If they do, we get healthcare for children. It's a good situation either way. I'll take this time to vent. Ok, people have posted his petition online and there are all these people who refuse to sign it because they have a beef with Kerry. What kind of fucked up, cold-hearted shit is that? GRRRRRR

I signed it btw :). It is very COLD HEARTED crap. I was more less on playing on the fact that a republican lite would never do this, that is introduce what Kerry is introducing. Givin the man praise, I wish the bill luck.

It's so important. The fact that there are any uninsured children in this country is ridiculous.

even my more conservative government teacher would support it, god though I got pissed at him when he said that not everyone should be.

believe me, I know. I work in public schools in Chicago (south side). Some of them don't even have TOILET PAPER! (I am *not kidding, and I wrote to W about some of these issues in my open (as yet unanswered) letters to the president Oct14-Nov3 04).

My suggestion: toilet paper the white house--i.e. send individual rolls of toilet paper to the WH, enmasse. If he can't figure it out, tell him to go read the letters I sent him. (from my letter of oct 20)

" It’s amazing the things kids notice, isn’t it? When I took my students out to those suburban schools, their eyes just lit up: “Wow!” they said, “these guys have carpeting!” “Look at all those computers!” “There’s toilet paper in their bathrooms.” (I’m not exaggerating, Mr. Bush, these are quotes from children, and the toilet paper shortage in many inner city schools is real—and this paper shortage exists at the university level, too. A couple years ago, the University of Illinois, for example, decided to eliminate paper towels in the lavatories as a cost-cutting measure. "

Of course, the tp theme runs like a blue thread through the rest of the letters.
(At some point, I started cc'ing the "great pumpkin" on my letters bc it didn't seem like my pres was listening).

When Kerry wins, I'll send them to him. *someone* in his office is bound to read them.

:silly:

It's in the top right hand corner. I got it in e-mail last night. It was good to hear him speak again and know that he was alive and well and still working for us.:-)

http://www.johnkerry.com/

When they get involvedit is usually becanse they know they cant say "screw children" and they know that such legislation is very popular.

John Kerry was largely behind what became the S-Chip program, Kid Care and such, having written the original legislation that eventually provided thebase for the program under Clinton. It first started out by being written by Kerry and I think Sensenbrunner. When Ted Kennedy read it, he decided to some on board, and then the Act Became Kerry/Kennedy.When Orrin Hatch saw that this legislation had a lot of support among the public, they couldnt openly oppose it, and REpublican increase in Opower that occcured after th 96 election was still not strong enough to completely defeat the bill Hatchesingned on a a sponsor, in order to weaken the legislation. Kerrys plan was broad and comprehensive, providing heath care to all families earning less than 300 percent of national poverty levels. It became Kennedy Hach at this point. Kerrys plan provided the states with 75 percent of the cost. They had to vcome up with 25 percent. Hatch andcrepublican cronies whittled it down to the same percentages paid by Medicaid. Federal 60 percent, states 40 percent, and reduced the percentage above poverty that made a family eligible. It was the final program that allowed Howard Dean to expland the existing Dr Dynasaur program in Vermont, by moving it from being an entirely state financed program, to simply being another part of Medicaid. AS a result, Dr Dynasaur has been subject to the whims of Washington financing, and has suffered cutbacks in who is covered since BUsh has cut so much money to the states. One of the chief criticism of Dr Dynasaur, is that Dean never provided foimr sournces to finance the states' 40 percent for arogram that had been greaty expanded. As a consequence, when Bush tax cuts hit caused massive reductions in grtants to the states, In order to leave for Dynasaur as intact as possible, Dean last budgets called for massive cuts to programs serving adults, and elimination of many other similar programs assisting the elderly and disabled. Dean knew that his political bread and butter relied on Dr Dynsaur, as for every kid whoi is on the program, there are two parents and even grandparents wbo vote. The disabled, and the elderly ( at least in Vermont) were a smaller voting block, and so harming them was politically safer.

This plan of Kerry's is an updated program based on his original bill that ended up being whittled down by REpublicans to get S-Chip.

He originally wrote and presented this program in 1995, before the Repukes took congress in 1996. The new version is even stronger in preparations for further repuke attempts to cut it down.

Kewrry knows that this legislation was extremely popular in the mid 90's so much so that REpublicans worried that direct opposition to it could hurt them in re-election campaigns. So rather than go to the media, or quitely introduce it in the Senate4 and try to get public support later, Kerry is going directly to the public first, preventing republicans from trying to destroy the act before the public can find out about it.

While Kerry was running, he said that since Cingress was in the hand of Republicans, he would be dealing with people who would try o oppose his legislative requests. He said that if Congress did not cooperate, he owuld use the bully pulpit to get public support for programs, and by doing so, expose all of the Republicans who were opposing programs wanted by the people. Though he didnt win the election, he is going forward to try to advance the programs and legislation that Democrats want to see in the U.S. Some of this is very popular amopng Democrats, and many moderate Republicans. He is going to make it very difficult or REpublicans to oppose it and face no consequences when it comes to being re-elected.

like I said: either way, this is a good thing. I can just see the the attack ads now :evilgrin:

Meanwhile I cant believe people are so mean they wont sign the petion.

Is that all of the Dean supporters who are railing for him to become head of the DNC first respond to my posts about Deans record as one of the most conservative Democrats the party has seen in the last 60 years, then totally stop responding to the posts because they are probably worried that people who have not followed Deans record as Governor will decide not to back him if they actaully lean about his record.

What is even funnier is that most of the "soundbite" attacks that Dean made against the DLC and the DNC and the candidates who were running aginbst Dean were not invented by Dean but were phrases used against Dean by liberal Democrats when Dean was Governor of Vermont.

If you go back and look at some of the things Dean said about "liberals and progressiveswhen he was governor, you might find it very interesting.

For example:

He once likened a group of liberal Democrats to communists. He publicly said he hoped one fellow Democrat would lose shortly before her election.

Even the issue closest to his heart at times butted with his fiscal priorities. His last budget, in addition to cutting the state share of local schools funding, required higher co-payments from patients, reduced Medicaid payments to providers and cut coverage for dental care, eyeglasses and other services.

The state's budget crunch proved them wrong. Vermont is one of the few states without a constitutional requirement for balanced budgets, and Dean faced a $69-million deficit when he took office. Snelling had imposed a temporary income tax increase that was due to sunset in 1993. Many Democrats expected Dean would extend the tax to help the state weather the recession with more social services spending and continue reducing the deficit.

Dean adamantly refused. Vermont could not compete for businesses if it maintained one of the nation's highest income tax rates, he said. He joined with Republicans to ensure the tax increase disappeared and slightly lowered the rate again in 1996.





http://www.sptimes.com/2003/07/06/Worldandnation/Democrat_laces_up_a_l.shtml

Deans behavior here parallels Bushs attempts to get rid of moderate Republicans and replace them with Neo-Cons.

In fact, one quotation attributed to Dean about Clinton and the DLC was actually something that was used by Vermont Liberal Democrats too describe Dean. The Liberal Democrats and Progressives in Vermont referred to Dean as "The Republicna Wing of the Democratic Party" amd Dean later picked this up when his campaign reinvented himself as the person who would change the direction of the Democratic Party with its move to the center, using the phrases that were used to describe his political style as governor to describe the DLC's Centrism. In fact, While Dean was Governor, he was frequently usedas an example of the new Centrist Democrat, while many Democrats insisted that Dean was not even a centrist, but a Conservative Democrat.

Deans closest political advisor pointed this out in 2003.

"The joke among a lot of Vermont Republicans was that they didn't need to run anyone for governor because they basically had one in office already," said Harlan Sylvester, a conservative Democratic stockbroker and longtime adviser to Dean.

(St. Petersburg Times, July 6, 2003)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/DVNS_Howard-Dean.htm

When Dean took ofice on the death of Govenror Richard Snelling, all of the legislation and programs for which he later took credit, were already passed and place, and they were resonsible for eliminating the 64 million dollar deficit that Dean has claimed that He eliminated.

As pointed out here:

Most close observers of Vermont politics note, Dean the Democrat continued to pursue much of the agenda established by Snelling the Republican. Dean worked at balancing a deficit-plagued budget, resisting urgings from the left to abandon Snelling's tightfisted ways. As he told Vermont Public Radio in an interview two years ago, "I think there was an expectation among some of those on the farther liberal ends of my own party that I was going to come in and now things were going to be different, and the facts were that we had a big serious financial crisis and somebody had to deal with it and that somebody happened to be me by chance."

In other words, Dean was trying to be true to his pledge to govern as Snelling would have -- as a progressive Republican. The label may be scorned at the national GOP level, but it's still worn proudly in this New England state.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1216-2003Aug15¬Found=true


As other Liberal Democrats and Progressives have pointed out, that Dena is poerhaps the last candidate that should be considered if one is looking for change in the Democratic Party. At least progressive change. At heart, everything Dean has ever done has placed him squarely on the conservative side of almost every issue, and as an opponent of the liberal and progressive ideology of the Democratic Party. While Dean likes to describe himself as a Fiscal Conservative, and a Social Liberal, he has always been seen to be willing to sacrifice the social liberalism in order to support his fiscal conservatism. Whenever the time came form Dean to make a chouce between the two, his choice would always come down on the conservative side. Dean never had an original thought about how to accomplish a fiscally responsible method of governing, while supporting socially progressive legislation. When it came time to take sides, Dean would always favor the interests of the wealthy, of large corporations, at the expense of the poor and the middle class. If Dean had the choice to cut programs that provided the poor with necessities beyond their means, or tax the rich, who could afford it, a little more, Dean always refused to tax the rich.

Even his ideas about reversing Bush's tax cuts would have had a more devastating effect on the Poor and middle class, than it would effect the rich.

In an examiniation of Dean's campaign, comparing it to the campaigns of the past, as political historian recently put it, Dean has become a "professional liberal"rather than a genuine one.

This distinction was made by Harry truman in his Diary:

He belongs to the crowd of Tommy Corcoran, Harold Ickes, Claude Pepper crackpots whose word is worth less than Jimmy Roosevelt's...No professional liberal is intellectually honest. That's a real indictment - - as true as the Ten Commandments..."

http://hnn.us/articles/2999.html

Dean has displays all of the charactereistics of the professional liberal. He changes position frequently (examples, his stance on raising the age or retirement while Governor, and his repudiation of such statements after becoming a candidate. His support of the war in Iraq before Bush went to war, his opposotion to it once a large anti war movement began). Lack of party loyalty is another. Deans threat to take his 1.5 million supporters and look for another politician who was not a Washington insider who would be worthy of his their support is one indication of Dean lack of genuine liberalism.

There have been other Democrats who have done similar things. In 1948, Henry Wallace left the Democratic Party, attacking Truman for not retaining closer ties to the Soviet Union and Stalin after World War II. Deans attack on Democrats who supported getting rid of a similar dictator in Iraq is strikingly similar to Wallaces assaults on Truman for not trusting Stalin. While Most Democrats opposed Bush's timing and reasons of going to war in Iraq. Most Dems saw the need to do something about Hussein, at least once Al Qaeda had been dealt with first. This also parallels George McGovern's use of the Vietnam War to attack not only theRepublican Administration, but the Democratic Party itself. Dean's attempts to swing from supporting unilateral action against Hussein before the war started, to one that was vocally opposed to the war once he saw that there was a vocal oppositionb to the war in a group that did not support either the Democrats or Republicans (the youth vote) Dean rather opportunistically started attacking the very group that a mere year earlier, he was not only allied with, but was one of the foremost members of...The DLC.

Another trait of the 'professional liberal" is a feigned righteous anger whichs is aimed at the political insider. Dean of course, was one of the most inside insiders of the DLC, but he retired from office and gave up DLC membership a year before running, so he could remake himself as an outsider.

As it stands, Dean, is at minimum, a very conservative Democrat, and at most, really a progressive Republican, who had no base at all among existing voters, who had to try to fool a lot of people who had no education, experience, or knowledge of the political system, and used the language of progressiveism, and liberalism in order to snare a group to support him, who would likely never have supported him had they been aware of his political ideology or record before they were snared by his campaign platform. Once ensnared they no longer look at the recor, but bend over backwards to explain the anomoies away, or simply deny them, much as the conservative supporters of George Bush refuse to accept the truth about George Bush's record, his distortions about reasons to go to war in Iraq, and every other lie or deception Bush has been caught in. Dean's supporters support Dean for vague and tenous reasons. Deans fire, and passion are essentially as vague and poor a reason for supporting a candidate as the Supporters of Bush's shared "values" are for supporting Bush.

his record didn't match his rhetoric, its odd that a guy whos problem as governor came not from the opposite side of the aisle but from the other democrats. It's just so odd that Kerry has a moderate label now, when in reality he's one of the more liberals in the senate, now he doesnt have the label I think because he was in Kennedy's shadow often times and he made his mark early as a senator not as a fiery liberal but as a great investagator as we see with Iran-Contra and the BCCI.

:grr:

Its amusing to have a place wher one can refer to Dean and all of the monday morning quarterbacking that hus supporters are engaging in due to Kerry not winning. At the highest poinmt, Dean barely mustered the support of 1.5 million voters, but Kerry managed to get 55 million to vote for him, the largest Democratic vote in history.

Kerry is one of the only presidential candidates who has started a campaign of attempting to get the platform and issues he ran on continued after the race, and the support of the millions who voted for him will make sure that anything he does will not be easily ignored by Congress. Going straight to the voters will have as much of an effect on this as the state efforts to get amendments defining marriage on the ballot. This petition to get health care coverage foe children is only the start of getting many of the issues that Kerry ran on into the public forum in a way that cannot easily be sidetracked by the media, or conservatives. It wil be difficult for any of the churches that arranged for support of Bush to oppose the issues the petition argues for as well.
Out of all of the other candidates who ran, Kerrys post election activities are geared far more towards the benefit of the Democrats whjo voted for him than the post election activities of any other of the candidates, whose behavior seems more geared to assure their own future political ambitions than it does to keep faith with the Democratic voters who supported them.

Has it come to this: Gorilla theater?

I just posted this outrageous conspiracy theory over on the Olbermann blog thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=64753&mesg_id=66935&page=

If this is whacked out theory is subsequently proven to be true: then JFK and his teams (grass roots included) have just accomplished the mission impossible and the most spectacularly successful ad campaign, criminal investigation, and peaceful revolution in *recorded history: a perfectly orchestrated conspiracy to keep the peace, a conspiracy to defend and restore democracy, a conspiracy to win, not by any means necessary, but by the best means available..... all in one fell swoop.....Smart Jews, Catholics, Codetalkers and Kooks Unite! :toast:

I got into it with a guy today who informed me that he had a phd in math and called me a tin foil twit. I said, well, shame on you then, most respectable scientists I know look at the studies and the research before they draw conclusions.

To the people who get nasty with me: well then go to Baghdad (sorry I can't help being a *little* snotty, i'm tired).

Sorry, I never got to vote for JFK I, I was born just in time to watch him die--and it is one of my earliest infant memories.

I didn't vote last time bc I said its a rigged game (I just walked around with a Nader/LaDuke button on like I was thinkin' about voting, why does everyone always forget how many people went for Nader bc of LaDuke?): my husband kept chiding me: it's because people like you don't vote. He was right. So I voted. Now I want my president back.
:dem:

Bob Dylan Unplugged: Mystery Revealed
It’s time to call in the troops, folks: where the hell are OUR heroes. Even the recalcitrant ones, like Dylan:
The liner notes to Blood on the Tracks read...

“The idiot wind trivializes lives into gossip, celebrates fad and fashion, glorifies the dismal glitter of celebrity. Its products live on the covers of magazines, in all of television, in the poisoned air, and dead grey lakes. But most of all, it blows through the human heart. Dylan knows that such a wind is the deadliest enemy of art. And when the artists die, we all die with them. Or listen to the long narrative poem called "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts". It should not be reduced to notes, or taken out of context, it should be experienced in full. The compression of story is masterful, but its real wonder is in the spaces, in what the artist has left out of his painting. To me, that has always been the key to Dylan’s art. To state things plainly is the function of journalism, but Dylan sings a more fugitive song: allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the great privilege of creating along with him. His song becomes our song because we live in those spaces. If we listen, if we work at it, we fill up the mystery, we expand and inhabit the work of art. It is the most democratic form of creation. Totalitarian art tells us what to feel. Dylan’s art feels, and invites us to join him.

http://www.slopbucket.com/bob/tbob/writtenword/bott.html

Here are the lyrics to Lily, Rosemary and the Queen of Hearts....
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/lilyrosemaryandthejackofhearts.html

And my shot at creating along with Dylan

the election-lines were over and the boys were all planning for a ball
the cabinet was falling except for those drilling in the haul
the blackout had been issued and the rumor mill shut down
anyone with any sense was driven underground
He was sittin’ in the White House, looking like the basest form of art.

he moved across the tv screen, “Set it up for everyone” he said.
Then everyone commenced to do what they weren’t doin’ before he screwed their heads.
He walked up to the press corps and he asked them with a grin,
“Could you kindly tell me sirs what time the war begins?
He was backed in a corner, face down the basest form of art.


Anyone care to stun further? Anyway, I’m going to bed. O8)

big blue dress on the gallows?



was limp

a cold mouse clicked

chimp

but I do the irony interesting.

I read that Kerry stole this idea from somebody else, and why didn't he have this idea during his campaign. I'm not kidding. Some people paid no attention at all, it's as if they secretly hoped Kerry would lose because their egos were more important than this country.

They refuse to pay attention because they're ignorant asses. Yeah I think you're right about their egos, and as Ive seen you say, some are all about revenge, Ive seen whats happened to this country, and I want change, personally John Kerry to me was the best antidote to Bush, such a different man, a guy who really cares.