Erich M

9.2 Million active duty military, retired military, and their family members receive federally funded healthcare thru Tri-Care. They actually pay private doctors for health care services. Oh, the horror!!! BTW, 47% of those that receive coverage thru Tri-Care live in the Southern "red" states. Hmmm....

It seems to me mostly conservatives are opposed to the re-institution of The Fairness Doctrine. However, they scream from the mountain tops that the media is liberally biased. Wouldn't that mean that your views will now be there for the world to hear the true gospel of the conservative ideology? Am I missing something? Don't you want to have that opposition voice on those darned liberal, mainstream media outlets you've been decrying since Reagan lost part of his nose?

Focus on the Family announced this afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.

In all, Focus pumped $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into the measure to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country. The cash contributions are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.

How many poor people would this money have fed and clothed? How much school supplies would this have bought for poor children? Is denying a certain group of people the right to marry worth putting 202 families on welfare and unemployment?

McCain Campaign blogger, Michael Goldfarb: “This is not redistribution in the sense of you take money away from one guy who’s working real hard, and give it away to someone who’s not working at all.”

Sandy Parr at the Alaska Department of Revenue confirms: every resident of Alaska, even “someone who’s not working at all,” is eligible for a dividend payment — this year totaling $3,269.

And dat fine Governor dere in Alaska told the New Yorker: "And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans."

So please tell me, I'm not ranting here, "Who is spreading the wealth around?"

Notice what was missing from the commercial ad, conservatives? Attacks on John McCain. For 30 minutes, Barack Obama talked about what he thinks are the problems currently facing the country, about what he thinks he can do to help fix them, how you can help him, and why it is important to elect him. He did not spend his time telling you why you should not vote for McCain, he spent his time telling why you should vote for him. You may not agree with his ideas, but you can not argue he has them and is presenting them to the country in a clear and nonthreatening manner.

Now, for a moment, consider what the Republican 30 minute infomercial would look like this year- if I had to guess, it would be ten minutes about McCain as a POW, ten minutes of McCain saying he isn’t Bush, and then ten minutes of bulls*** smears about Ayers, Khalidi, socialism, celebrity, and maybe Rick Davis could go before the cameras and pull a tire gauge out of his a**. For sheer nostalgia, maybe the lead McCain blogger could put those table-top gamers back in their place again. All the while, McCain could pepper his speech with folksy rejoinders about earmarks. And now that we are done with a hypothetical Republican 30 minutes, how did McCain actually respond to the commercial? In case you missed it, he whined about public financing (when did that become a Republican cause) and then muttered something about Obama delaying the World Series, and even that was a lie.

There is alot of talk about offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR to help reduce the cost of fuel here in America. Firstly, actual drilliing for crude wouldn't begin until around 2018. Now prices are set on the global market, right? So let's say we get more oil offshore and in ANWR. It won't make up for all oil imported in the U.S. Why wouldn't foreign oil companies just slow production to keep prices right where they are and keep the delicate supply/demand balance at it's optimum return rate? You can drill all you want, it won't make up for all the oil the U.S. consumes and all the foreign oil companies need to do is limit production to keep the prices high. I don't see, from a business stand point, how increasing domestic supply is going to affect prices since it won't make up for all the oil we need. Why can't we just concur that this is a business and we really need to stop feeding our addiction? Our dependancy on foreign oil may be slightly diminished, however, we will still need to buy foreign oil to keep us running at our frantic pace. Oil futures are based on the international market, so somebody help me here. Why would a business propose a program to make less money? These are for profit corporations. They want to drill more to make less money? Does that make sense to anyone?

While the conservatives have gutted the welfare system for poor people-fulfilling a pledge to "end welfare as we know it"-no such top-down agenda has emerged for corporate welfare recipients. The savage demagoguery directed against imaginary "welfare queens" has never been matched with parallel denunciations of gluttonous corporate welfare kings-the DuPonts, General Motors and Bristol-Myers-Squibbs or Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Countrywide, and Bear-Stearns. Not to mention bailing out the airline industry 3 times in 3 decades.

The welfare law denies benefits even to legal immigrants in this country; corporate welfare, by contrast, is far more non-discriminating-Uncle Sam subsidizes foreign corporations as well as domestic businesses. Can you imagine the Congress deciding to extend the welfare for people program to cover poor Canadians? Maybe not, but the federal government provides millions of dollars in subsidies to Canadian mining companies every year.

Where is your outcry for this welfare system as you bash the supposed "welfare queens"? You scream about the tax and spend liberals, wanting to pay people for nothing, yet, you allow your hard earned tax dollars to bailout businesses that can't do their job right. What say you, oh, tax conscious conservatives? Do you want safe drinking water, driveable roads and a public transport system that actually works? How about public schools with roofs that don't leak? Or would you prefer to afford subsidies, bailouts, and tax loopholes for huge corporations that fail and drain the public purse that is supposed to be in place to promote our citizens welfare and well being?