Jolie Rouge

In 1992, Bill Clinton hit a political home run with his "Sister Souljah" moment.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah )

In 2007, Hillary Clinton suffered a reverse "Sister Souljah" strikeout. If it's not the end of her presidential aspirations, it should be.

Allow me to explain. Fifteen years ago, then-Gov. Clinton was looking to solidify his centrist credentials. An obscure quote by an obscure radical rapper provided the perfect exploitable opportunity. Interviewed by The Washington Post in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, Souljah had wondered aloud: "If Black people kill Black people every day, . . . "why not have a week and kill white people?"

Bill Clinton took to the bully pulpit at the Rainbow Coalition and denounced Sister Souljah. "If you took the words 'white' and 'black' and you reversed them," he lectured sternly, "you might think David Duke was giving that speech."

Political cheerleaders framed this as an act of political bravery - publicly repudiating an extremist racial separatist's rhetoric to demonstrate independence from minority grievance-mongers in the Democrat Party.

Sen. Clinton - whom conventional wisdom mistakenly casts as the smarter, more disciplined politician of the household - didn't learn from her hubby's Sister Souljah triumph. She turned it on its head: Instead of dissociation with racial extremists, she has chosen ingratiation.

And the results are comedy bordering on political suicide.

Strike One came last January, standing at the pulpit at the Canaan Baptist Church with racial racketeer Al Sharpton in Harlem. Affecting a strange Southern-spiced-with-street twang during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, Sen. Clinton sassed: http://linkmecca.blogspot.com/2006/0...lantation.html

"For the last five years, we've had No. Power. At. All. And that makes a big difference, because when you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I'm talkin' about."

"We"? "Plantation"? Whatchu talkin' 'bout, H-dawg?

All that was missing was an "Oh, snap!" and a talk-to-the-hand motion for pandering punctuation.

Strike Two came earlier this year in Selma, Ala. Commemorating the 1965 civil-rights march that helped roll back segregation in the South, Hillary painfully recited from an old gospel hymn: http://www.drudgeradioarchives.com/

"Aww don't feel noways tired. I've come too faarrr from where I started frum. . . . Aww could have listened all day luung." The speech was met with universal derision.

Yet, last week, with Sharpton at her side at his annual National Action Network demagogue-a-thon in New York, Hillary pulled out the black-cent again: http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...g4M2MwZjhlOWM=

"We have ta reform our government. The abuses that have gone on in the last six years - I don' think we know the half of it yet. You know, when I walk into the Oval Office in January of 2009, I'm afraid I'm gonna lift up the rug and I'm goin' to see so much stuff uh-nder thar . . . You know, what is it about us always havin' to clean up after people? . . . But this is not just going to be pickin' up socks off the floor. This is going to be cleanin' up the government."

Us always havin' to clean up after people?

Strike Three.

Still unable to control her desperately pandering tongue, Sister Hillary invoked Harriet Tubman - yes, Harriet Tubman! - to compare the travails of some malfunctioning audio equipment during a campaign speech: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/...et_tubman.html

"There may be some bumps along the road! You know this reminds me of one of my favorite American heroines, Harriet Tubman. For when she made it to freedom after having been a slave and she got to New York and she could have been so happy to just stay at home and just breathe a big sigh of relief - but she kept going back down South to bring other freed slaves to freedom. And she used to say, 'No matter what happens, keep going.' So we're going to keep going until we take back the White House!"

It is clear Hillary surrounds herself with fearful sycophants - and a neglectful (or perhaps subversively spiteful?) husband - who don't have the guts to tell her to put her awful blackface voice in a lockbox and throw away the key. Now, it may be too late.

People of every color who hear the cringe-worthy condescension of the increasingly clownish Hillary Clinton are coming to the same conclusion:

You be trippin', girl.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Hillary tries to spin her bogus black-cent. She really thinks she's good at this.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...2357-2388r.htm

Hillary defends 'talkin' Southern'
By Christina Bellantoni
April 27, 2007

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took her critics head on today, challenging them for accusing her of adopting a different accent in front of mostly black crowds.

The New York Democrat and 2008 presidential candidate told the nearly 1,000 people packed here into a town hall forum that she rejects pundits who have nicknamed her "Southern Fried Hillary." They said after her speech in Selma, Alabama, about civil rights and after a talk last week to a black audience, "It sounded like she was talkin' Southern," Mrs. Clinton, 59, explained to the crowd.

During those speeches, she was heard dropping the "g" from some words, like "hard-workin'" and "talkin'," and even saying "y'all."

Well, Mrs. Clinton said today, taking on a grin, she lived in Arkansas a third of her life, spent another third in Illinois and the other third on the East Coast. "I think America is ready for a multilingual president," she said, to roaring laughter.

Staffers said the light touch was Mrs. Clinton's idea. "That was all her," one of her top press aides told The Washington Times. The senator opened a wide forum with the joke, then went on with her plans to give all Americans health care, to make the country safe and to get out of Iraq.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Last week, Hillary Clinton issued what she called the "Rutgers pledge" in the wake of the Don Imus firing:
http://www.courierpostonline.com/app...WS01/704210359

Despite condemning bigotry, misogyny, and disrespect, however, Hillary decided to guest-blog this week on one of the far Left's most degrading and bigoted sites. The Hillary campaign was quite proud of the appearance. Mary Ann Akers and Danny Glover report: http://beltwayblogroll.nationaljourn...ry_and_ham.php


Hamsher's blackface stunt is the tip of the iceberg. http://beltwayblogroll.nationaljourn...ry_and_ham.php

Hamsher is the woman who criticized conservative author/commentator Kate O'Beirne as "sandpaper snatch" and who snarled "The ***** is dead meat."

Hamsher's blog is the site where one unhinged regular blogger (not a commenter, mind you, but a Hamsher-approved guest blogger...like Hillary) attacked Democrat Ellen Tauscher as a "prostitute" and applauded another blogger for calling her "a bribe-taking corporate whore and **** eater who has guaranteed herself a nasty primary in 2008."

Hamsher's blog is the site where another unhinged regular blogger referred to conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham as a "****," which he later changed to "***** Troll From Hell."

What was that pledge again, Hillary? Oh, yeah:

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Clinton to offer health care plan
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago

DES MOINES, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is unveiling a sweeping health care proposal Monday that would require everyone to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.

Fulfilling a pledge to bring health care to everyone, Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan" has a price tag of about $110 billion per year. It represents her first major effort to achieve universal health coverage since 1994, when the plan she authored during her husband's first term collapsed.

The former first lady says she has learned from that experience, which almost derailed Bill Clinton's presidency and helped put Republicans in control of Congress for years to come. Aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity, cost control and consumer choice.

The centerpiece of Clinton's plan is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance — just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

"It puts the consumer in the driver's seat by offering more choices and lowering costs," Neera Tanden, Clinton's top policy adviser, told The Associated Press. "If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you're one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or don't like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get tax credits to help pay for it."

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has already laid out proposals to improve health care quality and reduce costs. She was to release her universal health care plan in Iowa, the first voting state.

With 47 million Americans currently uninsured, the Democratic presidential contenders have been united in advocating universal coverage. They have parted ways on certain specifics, including the individual mandate, which has detractors from both ends of the political spectrum.

Republican skeptics say it would be too invasive and would restrict personal freedom and choice. Liberal Democrats have expressed concern that such a mandate would be too financially burdensome for lower-income individuals and families — a concern shared by Obama, who has said individuals cannot be forced to purchase insurance until the cost of coverage is substantially reduced.

Aides said Clinton believes that an individual mandate is the only way to achieve health care for all. A key component of her plan would be a federal tax subsidy to help individuals pay for coverage.

Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage. People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers.

For individuals and families who are not covered by employers or whose employer-based coverage is inadequate, Clinton would offer expanded versions of two existing government programs: Medicare, and the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees. Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan.

Aides said Clinton will propose several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year. Edwards has vowed to completely repeal the tax cuts for high earners to pay for the cost of his plan, estimated at $90 billion-$120 billion per year, while Obama would pay for his plan in part by letting the tax cuts expire in 2010.

Clinton is also expected to stress several cost-saving measures to help pay for universal coverage. She's already recommended several such proposals, such computerized medical record-keeping and a reduction in federal overpayments to hospitals and health maintenance organizations. She would also promote wellness and disease prevention as a way to reduce costs.

Clinton is sure to court danger from the health insurance industry by proposing several industry reforms. Among other things, she would require insurance companies to provide coverage to all consumers regardless of pre-existing conditions.

The insurance industry helped kill Clinton's earlier attempt at health care reform through a multibillion-dollar media and lobbying campaign that included television ads featuring a middle-class couple named Harry and Louise fretting over having to get their insurance through a new "billion-dollar bureaucracy."

Republicans have already readied attacks on the Clinton plan. The Republican National Committee sent an e-mail to reporters Monday dubbing it "Hillarycare" and questioning why she waited months to release a plan.

While Clinton is expected to lay out a concrete vision for health care reform, she will probably steer clear of delving too deeply into policy specifics, at least for now.

Her 1994 effort was 1,300 pages long and so detailed it offered little room for any maneuvering or compromise. And after seven years in the Senate, Clinton has said she's developed a greater appreciation of the need to compromise.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/...JZcltpMQus0NUE

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Hillary's Orwellian Health Care:
Mandating Coverage = Choice
Mark Finkelstein
September 17, 2007

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-fi...overage-choice


With the health care proposal she is about to introduce, Hillary Clinton adds another spooky non sequitur to the list: Compulsory Coverage is Choice. Will the MSM take notice?

Clinton cagily calls her proposal "American Health Choices Plan." But according to this AP article, it requires everyone to carry health insurance [emphasis added]:

Note how the AP already begins to provide cover for Clinton's plan, noting that most states require auto insurance. True, but that is the result of an affirmative decision people make to drive. What's the equivalent here? Breathing?

Hillary's plan denies Americans the most fundamental choice of all: that of choosing no coverage. For millions of young, healthy people, or affluent ones who prefer not to deal with the insurance bureaucracy, that can be a very rational decision. In any case, it's their choice to make. Her spokesman claims that "if you like the plan you have, you keep it." That is simply untrue if your plan is to pay as you go.

But in Hillary's Orwellian world, forcing people to participate in a government program is choice.

Will the MSM pick up on the contradiction inherent in Hillary's plan?

Don't bet on it.


It's been said before, but if there are 10, 20, 30 million people without health insurance (pick a number), for whatever reason, that leaves 250+ million that DO have coverage. Why radically overhaul and socialize a system that works, even if imperfectly, for the vast majority?

And with auto insurance, isn't the point of mandating coverage so that you can pay if you injure or damage someone else? With healthcare, the only person at risk is yourself.

If you're comforatable assuming the risk of going uninsured or carrying only limited coverage for catastrophic illness or injury, than that should be your choice.

I cannot wait to see the details on the "mandatory" hillcare. Her assumption that I read was that health insurance costs would be lower because there would be a larger pool of insured people (mandatory) even though it would be all individually based and no more corporate involvement. That is one enormous assumption that is probably based on no research data and just wishful thinking.

I also think they're focusing too much on the effect instead of the cause. Healthcare can be costly and insurance cumbersome because of the constant threat of legal action.

If you want to bring down healthcare expenses, start with Tort reform.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Dying for Socialized Medicine?
Never Let the Law or the Facts Get in the Way of Scaring Voters

The famously disciplined candidate Senator Hillary!™ Clinton committed a rare gaffe today during the rollout of her much anticipated and ballyhooed health care initiative.

Really? People are dying while waiting to receive health care? Doesn’t the Senator know that there is a Federal law requiring stabilizing treatment for anybody presenting at a hospital regardless of their ability to pay?

“People are dying…,” is a very careless statement for a presidential candidate to make. First of all, it’s demonstrably false. Second, it takes the focus off the candidate’s initiative and puts it on the claim. Clinton doesn’t usually give her opponents this kind of opening.

Read on…


The Federal law is called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) and was passed by Congress in 1986. The American Academy of Emergency Medicine characterizes the law’s requirements this way:

EMTALA requires hospital emergency departments to provide any individual coming to their premises with a medical screening exam to determine if an emergency condition or active pregnancy labor is present. If so, the hospital must supply either stabilization prior to transferring the patient or a certification (signed by the physician) that the transfer is appropriate and meets certain conditions

The law covers everyone, whether or not they are Medicaid eligible. It also covers all hospitals that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid systems. That’s nearly every hospital. That means that no one dies while waiting to receive health care because of their ability to pay. If a hospital denies treatment due to payment issues, it risks losing its Joint Commission accreditation. The inability to provide emergency care to all was a major issue in the closing of Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles, just last month. Could Sen. Clinton really be unaware of this?

Certainly not. Clinton wants voters to focus on the emotions evoked by her image of emergency rooms filled with poor, dying patients. No such thing exists; at least not in this country. She then wants you to give up your ability to choose your doctor and the kind of care you receive, for the false “security” of the government paying the bill. What’s that Benjamin Franklin quotation the liberals are so fond of trotting out about the war?

It’s a bad trade.

If Sen. Clinton is so concerned about patients dying while waiting for care, perhaps she should propose to reform the health systems in Canada and Britain. Those countries have government run health care systems and, surprise, they have rationing and built in wait times. People really are dying while waiting for the government to care for them in those countries, not in the United States.

This is a major slip up for the vaunted Clinton message machine. This country is going to have a conversation about health care, and Sen. Clinton has poisoned the debate against her position by this descent into hyperbole. If there is a solid case to be made for universal health care in the United States, she should make it. The fact that Sen. Clinton has chosen to utilize hyperbole and appeal to emotion instead of marshalling the facts demonstrates that she has no real arguments to make.

http://www.redstate.com/stories/elec...lized_medicine

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Starlady01

All I know is that my son had health insurance and with Hillary's reform he lost it. So much for health insurance for all.
I've heard this from alot of parents.

__________________
http://www.thehungersite.com/

Jolie Rouge

Our view on fixing health care:
Bipartisan ideas emerge
Wed Sep 19, 12:21 AM ET

The fact that Hillary Clinton would even dream of introducing the major health care proposal she unveiled Monday says a lot about the state of American health care and the pressing need to fix it. The New York senator and presidential candidate still bears the scars from her 1993 debacle, when as first lady she oversaw a complex attempt to redo the U.S. health care system — only to see the effort collapse in political disaster that made her an object of ridicule and helped cost Democrats control of Congress.

Why court the same fate all over again? Easy. Things are worse now than then, and polls show voters are increasingly fed up — a tempting combination for any candidate who can find an answer, particularly a candidate who needs to erase the image of '93. Clinton is just the latest of several Democratic candidates to weigh in with ambitious proposals. After Iraq, health care is turning into one of the presidential campaign's hottest issues.

For good reason. About 47 million people are uninsured, and many get no-cost treatment at crowded emergency rooms, imposing a hidden tax of more than $1,000 a family on those of us whose insurance premiums indirectly cover the bills. Insurance premiums have almost doubled in the past six years, and health care cost inflation is unchecked. Individuals get stuck in jobs because they dare not give up work-related health insurance. As more employers drop health insurance, families are stuck paying the cost — a stunning $12,000 a year for an average family — on their own, or going without.

The problems have reached such a political pitch that states have begun to act. Massachusetts, prodded by Gov. Mitt Romney, now a GOP candidate for president, requires everyone to have insurance, with subsidies for those in need. In California, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing a similar scheme.

Interestingly, the plans advanced by the Democratic contenders include key features of those Republican governors' plans.

Clinton would require all Americans to have health insurance. Liberals tend to like the idea because of its reach; conservatives who endorse it say it instills a sense of personal responsibility — no more free-riding at emergency rooms — and puts almost everyone in the insurance pool, spreading the risk and potentially cutting costs.

Another feature that has some bipartisan support is a mix of private and public insurance. Clinton was badly burned in 1993 by fear that her plan would force people who were happy with their insurance to abandon it and enter some strange new arrangement. Like the state plans, Clinton now would allow people satisfied with their coverage to keep it. Others could buy into an array of private plans or enter what Clinton says would be some yet-to-be-defined Medicare-like plan.

That is not to say that a consensus is at hand. Far from it. Republican presidential candidates rushed to criticize those ideas. Ironically, that includes Romney, who called Clinton's proposal "a European-style socialized medicine plan." He wants health care left to the states. All the Republicans favor approaches that are voluntary.

There's plenty of room for debate and, sadly, plenty of potential for demonization. But one thing seems increasingly clear: The system we have is slowly collapsing under the weight of its own cost and inefficiency. Unlike 1993, simply arguing that any alternative will be worse is not good enough.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...p1_PLS17r8B2YD



Another view:
The market is the answer
Wed Sep 19, 12:20 AM ET
By Grace-Marie Turner

Sen. Hillary Clinton's new health reform proposal promises more choice, lower costs and no new government bureaucracies. But the rhetoric doesn't match the reality.

The 10-page outline the New York Democrat released Monday is short on the sort of details that filled the 1,342-page bill she developed 14 years ago, but like that earlier proposal, this also provides countless opportunities for government micromanagement of the health sector. New bureaucracies inevitably will be required to run it, and new taxes to finance it.

The centerpiece of her plan to achieve universal health coverage would require everyone to have health insurance, and she would require businesses to pay a significant share of the costs. This "individual mandate" inevitably means that government would decide what kind of health insurance we must have, what must be covered and what penalties we will face if we don't comply.

Small businesses would get a tax credit to help pay for worker coverage, but only if they offer government-defined coverage and pay a government-determined share of the premiums. She also would expand Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program and create a new Medicare-like program. Her plan would regulate health insurers until they become little more than government-managed utilities.

To her credit, she includes an idea long-promoted by conservatives to offer refundable tax credits to help those at the lower end of the income scale afford coverage. But she misses an opportunity to allow health insurance to become portable by freeing up the tax subsidy that ties health insurance to the workplace for 175 million Americans.

The United States could be a leader in developing health insurance that is better suited to a mobile and information-savvy 21st century workforce. Allowing greater competition in the health insurance industry would lead to more affordable premiums. Giving consumers a greater incentive to shop for value would put power in the hands of doctors and patients, not government. Market-oriented reforms, coupled with assistance for those at the lower end of the economic scale, would be a far better solution.

Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization based in Alexandria, Va., that focuses on free-market ideas for health reform.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200....NscMx9cP8B2YD

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

The genius of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign
E.J. Dionne
09/18/2007


WASHINGTON — The genius of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been her skill at turning liabilities into assets and weaknesses into strengths. By putting out a detailed health care plan on Monday, Clinton embarked on this year's most daring act of political jujitsu.

Compared with Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have already issued well-reviewed proposals of their own, Clinton comes late to the health care sweepstakes. But there is a message in that, too. Her approach, she says, has been "very deliberate." That's why she offered ideas on curbing health costs and improving the quality of care before she got around to her plan to cover everyone.

She mixes self-deprecating laughter with meticulous analysis of interest-group politics to send one clear message: The Hillary Clinton of 2007 is a wiser, shrewder and more realistic politician than the first lady who tried and failed to pass her husband's health plan in 1993 and 1994 — which, because of her high-profile role, is now inevitably called "Hillarycare." In a telephone interview Monday shortly before she gave her Iowa speech, Clinton listed the tips she picked up at the Health Care School of Hard Knocks. "I learned in 1993 that people who have coverage need reassurance that they can keep their current plan," she said, noting that her new proposal offers exactly that. In her address, she repeatedly invoked the words "You choose" — with the emphasis on you — as a litany that could drive away the evil spirits of the past.

"This is not a government-run system," she went on in the interview, responding pre-emptively to the assaults she knows will come her way. "There will be no new bureaucracy, no mandatory alliances." And then came the most telling moment in the interview. At the mere mention of the word "alliances," she broke into laughter.

The "alliances" were purchasing cooperatives that constituted a genuinely innovative part of Bill Clinton's 1993 plan. But they were easy to parody as big government monstrosities. Hillary Clinton's chuckle — there seemed to be real mirth in it — says she now knows the word "alliances" is political kryptonite.

There's another message: She knows a lot more than she used to about voters and how to persuade them — and about herself. Leaders who can laugh at their own failures are usually more trustworthy than those who can't.

Again and again, Clinton went back to what she knows now that she wished she had known then. "You can have a great plan on paper, as I have learned the hard way," she says, and still fail. Individuals and interest groups will always ask, "What's in it for me?" She brings up the question herself. Gone is the moralist who might once have bridled at such a query. This time, she insists it's "a fair question in our system." And so her new plan has incentives for small businesses, special help to companies with high "legacy" costs for retired employees, and a lot of assistance for the middle class.

This time, she will coax and charm the country toward universal health coverage. Cold analysis has given way to warm persuasion.

The next phase of the campaign, now that the health plans are on the table, will not hinge on the dueling details. It will instead be a bigger argument among front-runners Clinton, Obama and Edwards over how they would govern.

Over the weekend, a campaign lieutenant argued that Obama was more likely to get health care reform passed because he has a fresh approach to Washington, an ability to bring parties together, and the tools to inspire the country. Implicit was a critique of the old Hillary, and her past failures. With Obama, the past would be the past.

Edwards is the visionary who by sheer force of commitment will shake Washington up, and has set the pace for his opponents on issues ranging from poverty to health care.

And then there is Clinton, who can say: Been there, done that, won't be fooled again.

The assumption behind her offensive on health care was nicely described by one her advisers on the eve of her speech: "In Washington, it's: 'You lost, you failed, goodbye.' In the rest of the United States, it's: 'You fail, you learn from your mistakes, and you do it right the next time.'" "It's not just about health care," said this

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6928933

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Obama cites mother's illness in new ad
By The Associated Press
33 minutes ago

Details of a television ad released Thursday by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign.

TITLE: "Mother."

LENGTH: 30 seconds.

AIRING: Iowa.

SCRIPT: Barack Obama: "My mother died of cancer at 53. In those last painful months she was more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well. I hear stories like hers every day. For twenty years Washington's talked about health care reform and reformed nothing. I've got a plan to cut costs and cover everyone. But unless we stop the bickering and the lobbyists, we'll be in the same place 20 years from now."

Signoff: "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message because to fix health care we have to fix Washington."

KEY IMAGES: A photograph of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, holding a young Barack. Then Obama appears in suit and tie seated by windows through which one can see sun-dappled trees. As he talks about hearing stories like his mother's, black and white images appear of Obama in campaign settings talking to individual voters. A legend at the bottom of the screen says:

ANALYSIS: By referring to his mother, who died in 1995, Obama seeks to personalize the debate over health care, an issue that resurfaced this week after his chief rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, unveiled her proposal. The ad's target is clearly Clinton. His complaint that Washington has talked about health care without making reforms is a reminder of the failed plan for universal care that Clinton undertook during the first two years of her husband's presidency. His mention of lobbyists is an oblique reference to his decision not to accept contributions from lobbyists while Clinton does. But though he claims to have "a plan to cut costs and cover everyone," Obama does not require everyone to have insurance. Clinton and rival John Edwards have such a requirement. Independent analysts of Obama's plan have said it would increase coverage for Americans, but would not provide universal coverage. Obama has said that by reducing the cost of coverage, everyone could afford to pay for it. His campaign says Obama would find a way to cover those who remain uninsured, but does not specify how. The campaign also points out that mandated insurance does not guarantee everyone will get it, noting for example that in states where auto insurance is required by law, a significant percentage of drivers remain uninsured.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/...q1azfw26Vh24cA

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Socialized Medicine's Front Door
By Robert D. Novak

WASHINGTON - The Alice-in-Wonderland quality of legislating in Congress was typified this week. The Democratic Congress quickly passed a national health insurance bill, drafted in secret and protected from amendment, that constitutes the most important legislation of this session. While designed for a presidential veto, it is national health insurance -- through the front, not the back, door.

Democrats view it as no-lose: either landmark health care will be enacted over President George W. Bush's veto, or, if overridden, they'll have a lovely 2008 campaign issue. This outcome was previewed a week ago by Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer and Republican Whip Roy Blunt in a colloquy on the House floor. Blunt questioned the procedure under which radical expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) would be passed as a "bill that has not been debated."

No matter, Hoyer replied. It will not really be a new bill because "there will be nothing, I think, in the bill that was not in the House or Senate bills" that were passed previously. Such is the sad state of congressional procedure today.

This business as usual on Capitol Hill is worth noting because SCHIP extension covers much more than the poor children originally intended to be helped. The new bill covers families with income up to $82,000 a year, threatening to crowd out the private health industry. Only Congress could conceive making families simultaneously eligible for SCHIP to help the poor and AMT (the alternative minimum tax) to punish the rich. SCHIP was conceived in 1997 by the Republican-controlled Congress, still uneasy about defeating Hillary Clinton's health care plan four years earlier and intending to provide supplementary health insurance for poor children. When Democrats took control of Congress this year, they sought to transform a relatively modest program into a government takeover of health care. Separate bills were passed in the House and Senate months ago along party lines, but Republican senators blocked a Senate-House conference to iron out the differences.

Following the summer break, key Democrats started meeting behind closed doors -- Republicans excluded -- the weekend of Sept. 14-15, seeking a way for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to the president. The finished product was not put in Republican hands until 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 24, with the vote scheduled for 24 hours later and no chance to vote for a substitute, much less amend the bill. It extends SCHIP to families up to 400 percent of poverty ($82,000 a year) in New York, 350 percent in New Jersey and 300 percent elsewhere. States also can extend the aid to childless adults. Indeed, "children" includes anyone less than 21 years of age. "A growing body of professional literature shows that when government health insurance expands, up to 60 percent of existing private coverage is 'crowded out,'" said a Heritage Foundation report last week. The program's $35 billion expansion is supposed to be financed by a 61-cent cigarette tax increase, but financing abruptly is scheduled to fall 72 percent halfway through 2012. With private insurance probably no longer available, Congress would then have no choice but to provide additional funding.

Bush's inevitable veto will face a certain override in the Senate, where supposedly conservative Republican graybeards have defected. Orrin Hatch is in another partnership with his friend, Ted Kennedy. Chuck Grassley, ranking GOP member on the Finance Committee, again has drifted leftward. In the House, Republican Rep. Ray LaHood has worked closely with his fellow Illinoisan, House Democratic Caucus Chair- man Rahm Emanuel, to round up Republican votes for a veto override. But LaHood and his allies were silent during Wednesday's House GOP conference. Rep. Paul Ryan, the top Budget Committee Republican, declared: "This is not a back door to get socialized medicine. They went straight to the front door." A headcount showed no more than 57 Republicans prepared to override Bush -- probably 11 short of what is needed. Democrats flinched at giving Republicans a hard choice: override the veto or end the existing SCHIP program. Instead, funding is being extended by a separate bill. Nevertheless, Democrats will eagerly pummel Republicans for "voting against kids" by refusing to sanction a long step toward Hillarycare.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?