THAT'S RIGHT!!!!! for the last eight years we had watch dogs (cnn,msnbc,abc,cbs,nbc) under bush and rightly so. fox news was also a watch dog(shep, oreily, wallace, etc. ) now some of these watch dogs have turned into lap dogs of the obama administration. FROM WATCH DOGS TO LAP DOGS. why do fox news, glen, rush, hannity and others beat the abc channels, could it be they report the truth, whatever it is, good or bad, just report the news. the saliva running from the mouths of these abc channels for this administration warms my toungue. im waiting for snowe to join specter.

Lachica6"why do fox news, glen, rush, hannity and others beat the abc channels, could it be they report the truth, whatever it is, good or bad, just report the news" If all they did was report the news their numbers would be much lower, instead they add their own opinions and vitriol. In comparison Maury and Springer used to have viewers averaging at 3.5-4 million each episode. Angry loudmouths foaming away, watched and cheered by the uneducated masses.

Everyone slows down to look at a car crash - just because people are watching (I, personally, love getting my daily laugh from Glenn Beck), it doesn't mean we're all drinking the kool-aid.

Maybe that's because those of us with half a brain are reading and doing other things, rather than mindlessly watching TV.

Lots of us watch Fox for entertainment. I have a little Fox game I play first thing in the morning. I turn on its morning show and count the seconds until a snide, loaded comment is made about "Obama" (disrespectful in itself, absent prefacing with "President") or "the Democrat" this or that (illiterate, as the name of the party is "The Democratic Party"). Unless I tune in during a commercial or the news summary, I generally don't make it past 15 or twenty. If you're a member of the I-hate-Democrats Tribe, you stay tuned and your ill-informed prejudices are braced up with another dose of hot air. If you want to learn about the day's events you move on to something more solid.

And face it, for the men out there, Fox has, by far, the best-looking women on television, news or otherwise. Perhaps that's just a coincidence. (I wonder, do many men watch it with the sound off?)

rtchap2,
My "suggestion" to you is that you get a new dealer.
Clearly your current one is selling you crap.

How is 3 million viewers a lot of people out of 350 million. That's less than 3%. In addition, just because he's watched, doesn't mean they agree....

Beck & Limbaugh want to keep this separated & Divided. Then in three years,they can say that Obama couldn't bring bipartisinship to the White House and he should go......that's thier goal.

No way he's the Left's equivalent of Limbaugh. He may be obviously partisan, but he's not hateful and incendiary like Beck and Limbaugh. You may disagree with what he says, and I often do, but at least he's cogent.

Nb - moe,

Rush has 20 mil listeners. And Fox has more viwers than MSNBC & CNN combined.

As a 'lib' I am not jealous of Rush or Beck. There is not way I would allow myself to be called a 'dittohead' - sounds too much like pottyhead.

Wait, I have a great idea. People who call into Rush call themselves dittoheads; people listening to Beck for anything other than to laugh, should call themselves pottyheads.

Well, liberal Republican on the Senate Finance Committee - there are more of them in other parts of Congress.

There are darn few of them. Most have been defeated in primaries by conservatives.

You see lots of references to RINOs in these threads, and moderates are by definition RINOs these days. Pretty sad.

Sure Shes a Liberal Republican with ovaries...Something the rest of the Republicans wouldnt understand...but it means: The GUTS to take a stand against your own party when you KNOW they are WRONG.

really kemcho because it is widely known that the blue dog democrats have been one of the bigger hurdles to the obama administration. He was forced to use a bipartisan effort because he knew he didn't have enough democrat support.

Right on Chief.

AlanR2D2 the droid again amazes us with it's brilliance....

Just remember that 'droids can beat trolls any day, Baddie!

easton - Bad is not an alien, only alienating. Sadly, he suffers from rectal-cranial inversion.

again, democrats don't need one republican to pass this bill or any bill and they have nothing to show for it.... when you can't get you own party on board for such a 'great bill' people like the "forehead" shouldn't talk about others being limp dicked... shows how weak his argument is when he even has to bring up a radio host to justify how weak his president is.
maybe Easton can send 0bama a few little blue pills.

what is it that makes america great? is it capitalism? is it the proposition that we as american's can reach for something great? how about democracy? how about freedom of speech? I see these being eroded away more now then ever before in our country

Destroying? How does allowing the free enterprise system that created this country operate without fetters "destroy" the country? nobama does not have this country's best interests at heart or he wouldn't be insisting on pushing through all this political idealogue crap at a time when the country needs all it's money in the private sector revitalising the economy. We'll see how things are 16 months and then again 3.4 years from now :) Ya'll have fun with it, you're not gonna get to have it forever. We the people that are working to pay for it will continue to fire and hire at the polls till the dolts get it right, no matter what their political affiliation is....

leave God alone

Except one little problem here, the Bill that just passed the Finance committee does not contain your beloved and touted public option. As far as I can tell it only offers the prospect of higher taxes and premiums to the majority of Americans. Somebody tell me how this specific bill makes healthcare better for Americans that already have health insurance -- unless you just happen to like to pay more for things.

Grimmace: Four out of the five Congressional bills contain your hated public option. There is a good chance that it will make it into the final bill.

Since American health care is 37th in the world, and since we now pay more than twice as much per person as any other industrialized country, there is a darn good chance that the final bill will make health care better and cheaper for all Americans.

Unless Republicans and the insurance lobby manage to screw it up, which is still possible.

Hi BRB,
I lived in Germany and have a friend who practices medicine in Munich. While their system may appear sane, it does not from the perspective of practitioners. Young doctors not tied by culture have been fleeing Germany to any country that will allow them to practice. It's so bad that the FDP, a small libertarian long time also ran party that advocates health care system deregulation, just won almost 15% of the vote (a 50% increase from the last election). They are the new junior coalition partner to the right-of-center CDU in Chancellor Merkel's incoming government. (side note: the FDP party chief is the only openly gay party chief that I know of, he will be vice-chancellor and foreign minister...conservatives can come in all stripes).

Germany now has a solidly right-of-center incoming government after 11 years of the Socialist SPD (name in English is social-democratic party of Germany) in the government coalition. So you're right, they are no longer socialist. But they were.

shhhhhhhhh! mhlbauer... Never speak ill of a socialist European healthcare system around these parts. I am told by the true believers around here that everyone is treated immediately with the best of care using the latest technologies and for free!!!

Grimmace: Not free - paid for by taxes, which is more fair than requiring premium payments.

@ Utaneus
In your quest to name call "sophmoric" analysis, you completely misunderstood my point. It is not that there is not room to cut. As I said, the US system is very expensive. It is that the political fix is in such that none of these stakeholders will have to cut.

Yes, Docs are getting out. That will only accelerate as you cut their slice.

Yes, pharma costs are high. But they cut a deal already. Besides, you're wrong about advert costs being the biggest piece of their expenses, it's drug development because our approval system is so convoluted, partially driven by, you guessed it, the lawyers.

Cutting lawyers' piece would be the easiest way to improve an already screwed up system. But theirs is the most politically protected of all.

Obama promised a new day of politics. But the same interest led fix is in, same as it always has been. That's why our health system costs so much and will continue to, only more so, under the new system.

Alan,
There is no chance that it will reduce costs. You can view the costly US system as a pie baked every year. All the pieces are currently consumed by some interest: doctors, hospitals, pharma, lawyers (through med malpractice), insurance cos, government agencies, etc. Each of these has exercised its influence to ensure its slice doesn't get smaller. Unless you break one of these interests, which Obama and the Congress manifestly avoided by "bringing them into the process", you won't get cost reductions. These don't appear magically by waiving a wand.

Further, many of the arguable laudable features of the bill are designed to do 2 things: ensure health care for the most sick (no pre-conditions), and lower out-of-pocket costs for the patient (and increasing the cost to the 3rd party payer). That will encourage more health care consumption. Pure economics, you make something cheaper and more available and people will consume more of it.

Naturally the biggest pieces of the pie go to the first 3: doctors, hospitals, and pharma cos. If you reduce their slice, you will get less of them. Fewer doctors will graduate, some will leave practice, hospital bed count will fall, facilities will deteriorate, and fewer drugs will be developed to cure people. So health care will suffer. We're not going to touch lawyers, they're sacrosanct to the Democratic party. We may try to take some from the insurance companies, but that's where "the fix is in" thanks to lobbying. Besides, do you REALLY think a government bureaucracy will be more efficient at processing medical claims than a profit seeking company?? Ok, then that's why you're a socialist.

Since I studied economics this seems so obvious. But I realize not everyone is so fortunate to have toiled in the dismal science.

Hey, no problem. You get the public option, YOU pay for it. For those of us who DON'T want it, we are going to be FORCED to pay for this boondoggle.

BUT when it fails (not IF, WHEN), the Democrats will be held responsible because it will be known to be a Democrat law! If you get your wish, I hope I get mine...about 40 years of GOP control of Congress.

@mlebauer
Lots of doctors are already leaving practice because of the horrible clusterfuck that private insurance has become. I personally know 2 primary care docs that have abandoned medicine - not because they're afraid of single payor insurance or universal care, or because of medicare - but because the private insurance system we have prevents good doctors from practicing good medicine. So, if you're worried about where the money should come from, and what piece of the pie should suffer (to use your sophomoric econ metaphor), I think it's a no brainer that private insurance companies are a good place to start cutting.

Second, cut spending on pharm cos. Now big pharma will argue that they need the US market to buy their drugs at the inflated costs so they can fund R&D - that is 100% bullshit. An extremely large portion of the profits they reinvest go to advertising - that's right, the Rx prices are so high because they need to tell you about new penis pills during the superbowl. We need to PROHIBIT RX ADVERTISEMENTS.

This is just two of many ways that health care reform will save our country money. We've been letting Rx and Ins co's dick us around for too long, it's time to put and end to it.

@chiefpayne
Very lame argument. Not only are you a defeatist (to borrow a word I'm sure you love to use when people don't want to fight wars) when it comes to healthcare reform, you think that as a citizen you get to choose what taxes you pay based on what services you use. When has it ever been like that? You don't pay taxes for firefighters only if you think you might have a fire, old people without children still pay taxes that go to public schools, you still fund weapons of mass destruction even if you're a pacifist. Indeed a very lame argument against public health coverage, unless you want to challenge the whole concept of taxation as we've always known it.

AlanD If you get your public option you lose Snowe.

Well part of the problem is that there really is no concrete bill at this point. But it does seem that Baucus and other so called moderate Democrats are not in favor of a public option and won't go along with this expansion of the plan -- same for Collins. So while this first hurdle is cleared there appears to be a war for the public option shaping up within the Democratic Party.

I think that a public option would have catastrophic consequences to our country and our finances, but I also think that the so called Baucus bill (without a public option) is a hodgepodge of tax increases, fees, and premium increases waiting to happen that offers little to no benefit for the vast majority of Americans. I can at least see how a public option would seem to give some benefit to many Americans, though once enacted I am sure that it will prove to be a financial albatross around the necks of our already fiscally sick country.

Indeed, so instead of bankruptcies, we will now have to pay more for our insurance premiums, more for the bureaucracy needed to prop up this boondoggle, and more for the doctors visits of those on the public option.

Well done, Democrats...you have just drafted a bill which will cost MORE than we are paying NOW for healthcare.

It would be nice if people who rant about the proposed bills would show some evidence of having read them. There was a Senator of FOX the other day saying if effect there was no bill to read, therefore could not go forward with the issue. I had no difficulty finding the text of House and Senate bills. For any Senator or Representative to go on TV, even FOX, and imply to the American people that, because there is no final bill yet, there is nothing to read, is absolute CRAP. The basic structure and many specific proposals are definately there. The markups and addendums are, I am sure, yet to come. We don't yet know how many Senators or Representatives will need airport landing strips built within 2 miles of their hunting camps, etc. I am sorry that my disgust of Congress is showing. This implication that they don't have anything to work with, that many of them are feeding to the public, is insulting to Americans. This issue is of major importance to us, we need to have BOTH Repub and Dem influence. There will be a bill signed! If the GOP continues to stay out, we will wind up with a bill passing that will be much less than to our best interest.

People trying to make history by affecting real change is farce, interesting.

The key phrase here is "Rasmussen Reports", which have a notorious right wing slant. Scott Rasmussen was on the Dubya payroll at one point.

If a completely biased poll still has it coming in a 44%, just imagine the support numbers if people weren't being spun to respond in the negative.

Rasmussen is ranked highest in accuracy by the Pew survey of poll accuracy. I recall that the NYT ran a poll on presidential approval where 60% of the respondents said they voted for Obama. Do the math yourself.

Yes just like the polls when W was elected to his second term that had Kerry the run away winner. We should listen to those polls.

AlanD I'm sure the Rasmussen poll is no good now because it makes bambi's health care bill look weak. They say there are more Democrats on this polling data then Republican's. So whats your problem?

This from the person who uses exit polls as proof.