via www.nytimes.com
I was coming out in support of the Howard Dean / Markos Moulitsas position: kill the bill. I think mandating people to buy crappy insurance products with no real ability to control rising premiums is political suicide for the Dems.
But this is persuasive.
A good place to follow the ins and outs is the TPM Cafe:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/
via www.nytimes.com
The fact that some people are able to discard / denigrate facts that do not support their ideology is what makes this even more depressing.
Debating with wingnuts is a useless, frustrating exercise.
I remember candidate Obama saying things about "getting the job done" in Afghanistan and pulling out of Iraq. There was this idea that Afghanistan was the "good" war, because that was where Al Qaeda was based. In part, I think supporting the Afghan war - for Dem candidates opposed to the invasion of Iraq - had to do with not being perceived as anti-war pussies. There was also a notion that things were going relatively well in Afghanistan, as opposed to the disaster that was Iraq. I don't think many realized the disaster in the making that is / was Afghanistan.
So here we are. Still stuck in Iraq with vague promises of withdrawal, and doubling down in Afghanistan to the tune of many tens of billions more, with no clearly defined mission (creating a stable state? C'mon!) and no exit strategy.
What a fucking waste.
