He might make for a good Popdose Interview in the Current Events section…

BTW: I tried to post in the comments section before and I think my comment was relegated to WP limbo because Disqus wasn't available when I posted.

As for the demographics of it all — duh. We've known this for at least 25 years. To use those demographics as an excuse to “doom” Social Security and Medicare, instead of fix them, is pure ideological blindness, the heir to the failed Republican attempts to stop Social Security in 1935, to stop Medicare in 1965, and to begin privatizing in 2005. You may succeed this time, at least in part, by dumbing-down the debate (and there's no other phrase for what you're doing, no matter how many talking-points links you toss around) and by scaring the bejeezus out of people.

I guarantee you haven't improved the country by manipulating those millions of Americans who spend years gaining perspective on the bankruptcy (financial and moral) of the current healthcare system, finally vote for people who want to do something about it, and then lose their minds when your side starts tossing around bullshit bogeymen like “death panels” and “rationing” (which, as Annie notes, happens at least as much under our private system as it does in countries with national health care).

I honestly don't understand how a person who has no health coverage himself, as you noted under Annie's last column, can be so much more concerned about the decrepitude of the “legislative and regulatory apparatus” (which your conservative friends drove into the ditch) than you are about your own needs and–just as important–those of others who are in your position or have things even harder. How's the free market working for you lately? Once again, your argument is, “See? We Republicans spent 14 years proving that government doesn't work, through our own incompetence and corruption. Why give anybody else's ideas a chance?”

If healthcare reform goes down to defeat this year, and you remain unable to afford insurance that might improve your life and help you maintain the nest egg of which you wrote, you may have to start listing “ideological purity” as part of your pre-existing condition.

He might make for a good Popdose Interview in the Current Events section…

BTW: I tried to post in the comments section before and I think my comment was relegated to WP limbo because Disqus wasn't available when I posted.

He might make for a good Popdose Interview in the Current Events section…

BTW: I tried to post in the comments section before and I think my comment was relegated to WP limbo because Disqus wasn't available when I posted.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/23/INDR19B11F.DTL

It’s an op-ed piece, so it’s kind of vague, but he might make a good Popdose Interview for the Current Events section.

As for the demographics of it all — duh. We've known this for at least 25 years. To use those demographics as an excuse to “doom” Social Security and Medicare, instead of fix them, is pure ideological blindness, the heir to the failed Republican attempts to stop Social Security in 1935, to stop Medicare in 1965, and to begin privatizing in 2005. You may succeed this time, at least in part, by dumbing-down the debate (and there's no other phrase for what you're doing, no matter how many talking-points links you toss around) and by scaring the bejeezus out of people.

I guarantee you haven't improved the country by manipulating those millions of Americans who spend years gaining perspective on the bankruptcy (financial and moral) of the current healthcare system, finally vote for people who want to do something about it, and then lose their minds when your side starts tossing around bullshit bogeymen like “death panels” and “rationing” (which, as Annie notes, happens at least as much under our private system as it does in countries with national health care).

I honestly don't understand how a person who has no health coverage himself, as you noted under Annie's last column, can be so much more concerned about the decrepitude of the “legislative and regulatory apparatus” (which your conservative friends drove into the ditch) than you are about your own needs and–just as important–those of others who are in your position or have things even harder. How's the free market working for you lately? Once again, your argument is, “See? We Republicans spent 14 years proving that government doesn't work, through our own incompetence and corruption. Why give anybody else's ideas a chance?”

If healthcare reform goes down to defeat this year, and you remain unable to afford insurance that might improve your life and help you maintain the nest egg of which you wrote, you may have to start listing “ideological purity” as part of your pre-existing condition.