Here’s a joke for you. Doug Feith has published a book called War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism . Must be a laugh riot.
Here’s another joke: John McCain’s health care plan. As near as I can make out, he wants to “lure” people away from employer-based health plans by eliminating tax incentives to employers to offer those plans. Instead, people will get a $5,000 “family tax credit” that will enable them to purchase private insurance, he says, even though the actual average cost of health insurance for a family is way more than double $5,000. And he has little idea what to do about people with a pre-existing condition who cannot purchase health insurance at any price.
Hilzoy takes the plan apart so I don’t have to.
Steve Benen says the plan “probably won’t receive much in the way of scrutiny.” From the press it won’t, no, but that’s why the Dems need to purchase lots of advertising time to scrutinize it. I think if the public were to hear the details, that by itself would be enough to sink McCain’s chances to win in November.
Lorita Doan, who made herself a punch line by pressuring General Services Administration employees to “help” Republican candidates, and who threatened to sanction anyone who cooperated with an investigation of her, has stepped down from her position as chief of GSA. She blames political pressure and bad grammar.
And last but not least, Tom Friedman explains why the Clinton-McCain gas tax plan is a joke.
[McCain] wants to “lure” people away from employer-based health plans by eliminating tax incentives to employers to offer those plans.
Translation: McCain wants to eliminate the burden of American businesses having to provide health insurance for their employees. And for us millions and millions of employees, he’ll chuck us out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.
Guess I’d better study up on McCain’s plan (it’d help if it had illustrations by John Tenniel, the Alice in Wonderland guy), so I can explain its insanity to everyone I know who’s planning to vote in November.
Rodham and McCain, the queen and king of Sop, have magnanimously decreed a summer gas tax ‘holiday’ – reminds me of the robber baron who used to throw brand new shiny dimes from his carriage as he rode through slum streets.
We will realize a $28 windfall. Big Oil, on the other hand, will reap billions. As demand increases – we’re driving far and wide all summer to ‘take advantage’ of the fall in pump price – Big Oil will increase gas prices accordingly. We lose, government loses, the environment loses, the infrastructure loses…Big Oil never loses.
And the queen and king of Sop? One of them just might be our next president. Revolting.
McCain says the tax holiday will help us “realize our dreams”. Dude, If my dreams hinge on an 18 cents a gallon tax holiday then I’m in worse shape than I think I am. And they accused Obama of being condescending?
Felicity.. Speaking of robber barons, Elvira Vanderbilt once hosted a party at one of her many mansions where she set up a large sand box and littered it with buried jewels and precious stones as party favors.Her party guests were given little sterling silver pails and shovels to use in their after diner hunt for the gems. And every time I clean the cat’s litter box I’m reminded that except for a few slight differences it’s like partying with a robber baron.
McCain’s health plan is a gift to the Democrats, even more than W’s campaign to privatize Social Security. It’s the height of hypocrisy that McCain, who has known only government provided health care his entire life (recall that daddy was an Admiral) knocks the same, while extolling the glories of private health insurance.
This guy is frightening every time he opens his mouth. Easy prey for the Democratic candidate, that is if they can stop embracing him.
I would like to comment on Feith’s book, which I have just finished reading. It is, as Dana Milbank points out, a blame-everyone-else-but-us rant. It is amazing what one can come up with in hindsight, but I have no doubt that Feith remembers it this way. For all of their “questioning” of their plans and actions, it never occured to them that they just might be wrong. Also, I do not believe for a moment, the accusations made by Feith against Secretary Powell and Armitage. The Secretary of State knew from the beginning that the actions of the administration towards Iraq would lead to the quagmire we find ourselves in today. I wish he and his sub-secretaries had resigned en-masse in protest of George Bush and his stupid foreign policy.
The most amusing part of the joke that is McCain’s health care “plan” (and I use the term loosely), is that he himself has made it to 71 covered by government health care his entire life.
$5,000? That’s for a month, right?
You mean, that’s for A YEAR?!
I know for a fact that my employer pays far more than $5000 a year for my health care. And my employer can negotiate larger discounts than I can because of the number of employees they cover. Not only that, but if I develop some life-threatening, inconvenient-for-the-insurance-company disease, I continue to have coverage for my medical expenses because my contract ensures that my employer must provide medical coverage. Under a private program, they can drop my coverage for any trumped-up reason and I have so little say that I might as well be a mildly annoying gnat in their ear. A gnat that will eventually die and go away if they can stall me enough.
Thanks, grandpa, but no thanks. You can take your health care proposal and have it medically inserted the next time your doctor prescribes a prostate exam.
moonbat — I think the Dems could destroy McCain on the health care issue alone. That is, if they can stop beating up each other in time to actually begin running against McCain.
There are rumors the remaining uncommitted superdelegates are moving to Obama. If they’d hurry up and declare, this circus would be over.
the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
Oh,Brother, give it up!….Maybe I should write a book..I’ll call it, Drugs and Indecision: Inside my Head at the Dawn of the Age of Aquarius.
Fieth can assign blame for the failure in Iraq to whoever he chooses,but Bush is the egotistical jerk who decided to launch the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. And we’re not even close to seeing an end to the Iraqi fiasco. Obama claims he’s going to bring home the troops, but doesn’t mention accepting defeat as a neccessary condition to accomplish any real troop withdrawl. No troops, no control…no control..defeat.
al- Zawahri is the only one who’s got it right..We’re going to be bled to death and ultimately be defeated. At 10.3 billion a month maybe we can go another 5 years before we decide to throw in the towel, but the same dynamic that defeated the British in the American colonies, the Americans in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan will bring Bush’s folly to an end.
Our only consolation is that…Freedom’s on the March!
Yearly, 750,000 people find themselves in bankruptcy because of a costly illness. Three-fourths of them had health-insurance but due to outrageous co-payments, deductibles and services not covered they’re in bankruptcy. So much for health-insurance.
Since incompetence and misdirected policies are the backbone of der chimpy’s legacy, I thought I’d point out that today is “Law Day” even though Sen Feingold is holding hearings on “the Regime of Secret Laws”.