1 I'm not surprised. Sounds like most lefties, whether they are talking
or writing. could have come from the DNC or Kosbat, moveon or the New
Republic.



There is nothing the leftards won't do to undercut the current admin and America.

2 Translation of Saddam's sentiments:



"You morons!  At least I buried
my atrocities and hid my heinous orders of torture in dungeons merely
watching them on closed circuit TV while I masturbated!"

3 Exactly, Oyster

4 Wierd stuff.

5 Do you seriously beleive that what he said was far from the truth?

Deconstruct it.

"the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab nation and within it our heroic people"
-Over 2500 of our troops dead and 10000 more maimed for life, and gawd knows how many thousands of Iraqis got splattered. That is a misfortune by any standard.

" including the breakdown of America’s standing and reputation"
-We have reached an unprecedented level of distrust from the world and our global reputation is in tatters. Everyone hates the US now, that is absolute truth.

"were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism,"
-The invasion of iraq was a radical manuever with extreme consequences that were not carefully thought out. That is reckless. Furthermore, Sadamm was a threat to Israel by any standard, he fired missiles into israel for christsakes. Saddam is also known to have had contacts with Palestinian terrorist groups.

It seems like you people are more interested in undermining liberal credibility than taking an honest look at the information given. So quick to condemm and so very sad.

6 Thank you, wormpaste, for confirming that the first impulse of the Left is to believe any propaganda that denigrates America.

I did deconstruct it, wormie. That's how I knew that Saddam was only repeating the increasingly treasonous liberal party line. Your political philosophy is in lockstep with one of the great monsters of our time, just as it was in lockstep with one of the great monsters of the twentieth century, Josef Stalin.

Deal with it.

7 Many leftists were fooled by Stalin, it is true. But the union movement and the Democratic Party were cleansed of those naive idiots, with the hard work of many cold war liberals like Schlesinger and Humphrey. By 1948, when Wallace left the party, both parties were united against Stalin. And the pro-stalin numbers within the Dem party had always been extremely small.

As for today--Bluto, just because PART of a 5K letter echoes PART of what liberals say, does not mean that liberals and Saddam agree. I could take passages from Islamofascist screeds, and line them up with Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or James Dobson or John Hagee and you would never be able to tell me which was the Christian and which was the Muslim. But it would still be pathetic rhetorical pettifoggery for me to take that as some AGREEMENT between them for larger points, which is what you do here.

8 Well, I suppose a broken clock really is right twice a day. Bluto finally lands one, even if it is painfully obvious.

9 Gee, jd, it's a shame that your comrade wormpaste had to completely undermine your point by agreeing with everything Saddam said. [chuckle]

Btw, how many times have you whined about folks equating the Democratic Party with the Left? If you think a significant number of Reds were purged from the Left by 1948, then you need to read up on history from that point on, especially the history of the so-called "Peace Movement" from the Sixties to the present day.

10 So, one leftist agrees with Saddam, and they all do? Moreover, what worm agreed to was those parts you excerpted. I doubt Worm agrees with Saddam beyond that. Saddam believes in a lot of things, including Baathism, dictatorship, ethno-fascism...I doubt Worm or the left agrees with it.

If you think the "left" is the same as Dems, you're wrong. If you think there are leftists in the dem party, you'd be right, but they aren't a majority, and they aren't in control. The Dems haven't run someone for president advocating national health care since 1992. Find me a leftist who doesn't think national health care is among the top domestic issues in politics.

As for the 60s: the clash between the New Left and the New Deal remnants was important, but are you saying the New Left won a clear victory? Perhaps in 72, they did, but JEC was not part of that movement. Mondale wasn't. Dukakis wasn't. Clinton surely wasn't. So what's your point? what history books should I read that would change those facts?

11 Stalinism was characterized by state terror, mass deportations and political repression, resulting in the death of millions of Soviet citizens.

Yah that really sounds like liberal ideology.

Thank you, Bluto, for confirming that the first impulse of the Right is to believe any propaganda that the Bush administration spits out.

Question authority you foolish man.

12 jd, go back and read what I wrote vis-a-vis the Left vs. the Democratic party. You may then apologize.

wormie, the Left denied Stalin's crimes for decades. One prominent Leftist, returning from a trip to the USSR said, "I have seen the future, and it works!"

It's that abject gullibility that makes you so dangerous. On a personal level, it would be best if you waited until you were out of high school to comment on a website like this. Less embarrassing for you that way.

13 jd, go back and read what I wrote vis-a-vis the Left vs. the Democratic party. You may then apologize.

wormie, the Left denied Stalin's crimes for decades. One prominent Leftist, returning from a trip to the USSR said, "I have seen the future, and it works!"

It's that abject gullibility that makes you so dangerous. On a personal level, it would be best if you waited until you were out of high school to comment on a website like this. Less embarrassing for you that way.

14 Everything you say about Stalinism is true, Worm, but Americans differed greatly in the speed with which they picked that up. For example, some agreed with Lincoln Steffens, who upon traveling to the Soviet Union, had this to say: "I've seen the future and it works!" Of course, to be fair, many on the right wing of American politics were saying similar things about the Nazis and Mussolini's Black Shirts at the same time.

So Bluto has some history on his side. But to say that the liberal ideology "marched in lockstep" with Stalin is of course absolutely false. Leninists wanted to exploit the naivety of some on the left, but they knew that liberalism at its core was fundamentally incompatible with their ideology. It is typical of Bluto's style of argument to take a tiny truth, and twist it into a giant lie. I'm torn between hoping that he realizes how dumb that is, and is doing it for purely partisan reasons, or between hoping that he is that dumb, and not really that much of a Machiavellian arguer. Some of his posts lead me to think one way, others the opposite.

15 wormpaste seems a somehow appropriate name for said commenter. 

16 I finally figured it out!  jd isn't a liberal.  He WANTS to
be a liberal and labels himself as such, but everytime he gets called a
liberal he takes offense.  Else why would he constantly be at odds
with just about any conservative ideal if he wasn't simply afraid of
admitting it?  Why would he keep hanging around?



jd - come to the dark side.  It's warm and fuzzy here.  It's
not really all that dark.  The light shines bright.  There's
not all that doom and gloom you think you're supposed to feel. 
Guilt is reserved for those who actually do bad things.  Sharing
is something we do because we can; not because we feel the heavy
millstone of obligation.  Political correctness is an empty shell
of silliness.



Be free!

17 Nah Oyster, jd's just an idiot who hates his country so much that he would see it destroyed, along with those who love it. Liberals often confess, sometimes directly, others by a circuitous route, their love for tyrants and murderers, though when the light is on them they scurry like the verminous cockroaches they are, and profess their patriotism and love of justice and liberty. When there is war in our streets, they will give their full support to the enemy, and I'll hang all I can catch. Not soon enough.

18 Hi Oyster,

I have some conservative views, and some liberal ones. I used to be a Republican, voted libertarian, called myself an independent for most of the 90s, and GWB made me a fervent Democrat. I'm pro-choice, anti-Roe v. Wade. I oppose all farm subsidies, and many other bloated government programs, but support a simplified progressive tax code. I'm for national health care because I hate bureaucracy; fact: nations with nationalized health care have smaller health care bureaucracies than we do. They spend more of their money on doctors and medicine than we do. We give more money to paper pushers than they do.

I'm for a gas tax, from environmental and national security reasons--but it should be balanced with income tax cuts to be revenue neutral.

But really, the most important thing is that I hate this president's foreign policy, root and branch. It has been a disaster for our country and the world. I don't think that makes me a "liberal" and I've never called myself a liberal, here or anywhere else. Given that a solid majority of Americans now believe the Iraq war was a terrible mistake, either the majority of this country is liberal, or believing that doesn't make you one. I think the latter is true.

IM--time for the meds again. You are having your "end of civilization" fantasies in which you fight a Manichean battle for the right. Diagnosis: too many repeat viewings of terminator. Prescription: double the dose of your meds.

19 I.M., That was a work of literary art! You have a way with words that paint exquisite pictures! Muslim corpses dangling from over-passes and subhuman filth scurrying about like cockroaches! That brightened my day. I am going to stay off the meds for the rest of the day!

20 jd, that's where we part company. I'm am happy that we finally have a President that is willing to face up to the facts and won't give lip service to the apeasement tactics that are so prevalent in these times.

And far from what you think, the world is coming around. While they may still whine and complain, they're seeing that the insane people are on the other side of the globe.

I also am against national health care simply because the one we have is good if only someone will stand up to the lititgation groups and pass some serious tort reform. People like John Edwards, who nearly became our Vice-President, scare me to death. There are many and varied reasons why our heath care system has problems, and it's not because our government isn't running it. It's because our government is too busy regulating and micro-managing it. That's where the paper pushers come in.

Simplified progressive tax? Not for me, my friend. I'll be in Orlando next weekend lending my support to a TRULY revenue neutral tax bill - The Fair Tax.

I'm a very cautious pro-choicer. Very cautious.

In my opinion, being a proponent for any progressive tax and national health care put you pretty solidly in the liberal sphere. Like it or not.

21 Well, I can't argue with your identification system for ideologies. I like to think of myself as relatively iconoclastic, but health care is 13-5% of our economy, and wanting an expanded government role in that is a big deal (ag is only 2-3%, and I want to take the govt out of it because of my free market faith. If I'm inconsistent, so is almost every Repub in Congress on this except Ron Paul, a guy I have a lot of respect for!).

Tort costs, by the HIGHEST estimates, account for less than 4% of health care costs, and most see it as 1%. That's not the problem with our system, although I'd support reasonable tort reform.

If we have the greatest system, why is that our infant mortality rate is so low, the average quality of health care so much lower than, say, Sweden or Germany? Why do we spend so much more on bureaucracy than anyone? We SPEND more than any nation on earth, measured per capita, by a huge amount. But our quality is not good. Why? Because we have a mixed public/private system with the worst of both worlds. I'm a pretty smart guy and pretty healthy, but I often have trouble figuring out what is covered and what isn't. That's not an accident. Insurance companies in our system have an incentive to make their policies and forms and procedures as opaque as humanly possible, so that they will have to pay for less and less. That doesn't happen in Germany. Talk to a doctor sometime about what the billing hell is today. I don't know a doctor without 2-3 billing staffers. They spend their days figuring out 30 different companies' billing policies. That's your health care dollars at work. Me, I'd rather see that money go for, say, health care.

22 Sorry, infant mortality rate should be so "HIGH", not low.

Also, I'd support a flat tax over the current tax code, which very few liberals would do. If I had my preferences, I'd have a no-exemptions progressive tax, but a no exemptions flat tax would be better than the current one. So good luck at your conference, Oyster.

23 Infant mortality rates are so high because we have a large immigrant and minority population, jd. You will see in recent statistics that our IMRs are getting lower and rates for the countries you mention are going up because they are seeing immigration of minorities. Ours really aren't all that high.

And medical care in the socialist systems in Germany, Britain, Canada and Sweden ain't so great, as it has to be rationed. You need to be very careful what you wish for, jd, as you just might get it one day. A national health care system would create a paper bonanza that would force me to invest in International Paper Co. rather than wind generators in Texas. I'm making a lot more off the wind generators right now, so let's keep it that way.

24 Joe--I'd be inclined to agree with you, Joe, except that national health care systems, ALL of them, spend less per capita on bureaucracy, and it's not even close.

Our infant mortality rate is the 32nd lowest in the world (according to our own CIA). In the top ten are MUCH poorer nations like Malta. We do worse than the Faroe Islands and CUBA!!! Why? Cuba can barely give its people toilet paper!On life expectancy, we are 48th! Behind such poor countries as Greece and nearly every W. European country. Do you think that is unrelated to national health care? Why do you think so?

25 America's richest 10% get the best health care in the world. The next 30% probably do about as well as W. Europe, although depends on what you have, of course. But the middle 40 and the bottom 20 in particular would be better off in ANY W. European country. Any of them.

When my dad had prostate cancer, he got excellent care, better than he would have had in Britain. But let me tell you what just happened to a friend of mine. She's 27, just changed jobs from one large company to another. She had health care the whole time, was never unemployed. But her new health care had a waiting period before she was covered. Three months. She had some troubling vaginal bleeding. Not a lot, but very unusual for her. She decided to wait until she had new insurance, as it would involve switching doctors (because of the maze of our health care system, the most complex and bureaucratic in the world). Bad decision, trying to save a few hundred dollars. Turns out she has aggressive and metastasized uterine cancer. She's looking at 30-40% survival rates. Given the rapid spread of the disease, her doctor tells her that if she'd come in three months earlier, she MIGHT have had a 75% chance.

If she dies, it will be tough for me not to blame our ridiculous private/public health system. Yes, there are horror stories of those terrible national health care systems, and some of them are true. But we have lots of horror stories here. When I lived in Japan, I didn't use the health system more than once or twice, but it was such a damn breeze. I'm a pretty smart guy, but over and over in the USA, I have to spend a lot of time figuring out which doctor, which insurance, who gets what, where can I go? Haven't you had that experience?

26 Another good thing a national single payer system would immediately allow aggressive tort reform. Today, if one of the 48 million uninsured Americans trips on my driveway, they have to sue me if they want to get medical care. They have to hire a lawyer to prove I was negligent. It is literally a matter of life or death for them in some circumstances. Don't like personal injury lawyers? National health care socks them in the nose.

Massachusetts under Romney also are just starting something really important--a mandated health insurance system modeled on car insurance. Also, Vermont has guaranteed every child health insurance. Think about, as a Christian, what it means when a child doesn't have health insurance because his parents are poor. Yes, medicaid is supposed to provide for the very poorest. Medicaid is pathetic compared to European systems, in part because many doctors don't take it. But what about those who are poor, but not poor enough to qualify for medicaid? When you don't have health insurance, you don't take the kid in for checkups nearly as much. My cousin just lost his job. He has 7 kids. One of them just broke his wrist. I don't have the kind of relationship with my cousin to ask if that was a financial hardship, but if the insurance expired, you bet it was. Emergency Room care in this country is phenomenally expensive, in part because those who can pay are covering the uninsured.