Somedays I wonder if aliens have invaded the GOP minds turning them into Ferengi.

What exactly does this mean? "Our rights in this country are protected by our personal sense of responsibility for our own well-being."

We lose our rights if we're irresponsible? How irresponsible do we have to be?

You were irresponsible and you got fat! No diabetes treatment for you! You were irresponsible and you got sunburned! No skin cancer treatment for you! You didn't run 4 miles a day! No heart bypass for you!

Seriously, what the heck is he talking about here?

The two quotes you include in this article show what a maniac McCain has become. Does that make him a McCainiac? When did PCness have anything to say about health, nutrition, and exercise? I must have been on vacation in Alaska that day.

Can we note that nowhere in the Contingencies article does McCain mention his plan to tax you for the health insurance provided by your employer? Meaning, can we note it with an addition to the blog post?

The Obama campaign and the Democrats have to take this striaght to heart of middle America and not let up until the pol;s close on election day. By the time people go to cast their votes they need to know that a McCain adminstration would be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. People need to know their personal well-being is in peril. Obama has to hammer this so hard that McCain isn't even an option. They have to completely cripple McCain before the October assault.

Either I've gotten dim from too much sun or my expectations are too low, but I'm not getting how this second quote, about personal responsibility bla bla bla, is anything special. Sure, it's a mix of the confused, the tendentious, and the obvious, flavored with a dash of right-wing paranoid myth, but doesn't that describe pretty much any speech McCain makes? What makes this one so special?

I thought that damnable political correctness was part of the whole reason those pesky schools still carp against fatty foods, sugary snacks, unhealthy behavior, and so forth. But now political correctness got rid of all of that?

I guess it depends on whether or not his poll numbers are even or odd that day.

this election is a watershed moment that was on the horizon since the foundation of the republic. America will have a choice for president between a bafoon and a supremely intelligent candidate who happens to be African-American.

And the country will be forced to stake its future on one of its two founding principles, meritocracy or racism.

vital quality-of-life information that political correctness has expelled from our schools

What does THAT mean? Those schools that I've worked in -- as a volunteer admittedly, but in the classroom -- that were the MOST PC also had the best programs on nutrition, health and wellness. Berkeley, CA schools come to mind here.

If anything has driven health and wellness education from schools its NCLB -- when all your time is spent preparing for tests, not much time to teach people how to take care of themselves.

--

Now aside from all that? I do kinda have to agree with his assessment on health insurance. Perhaps not the best time to bring this up, but our patchwork of laws is really tiresome. As someone that has pretty extensive facetime in the doctors offices of the country -- and having moved around a fair amount -- the differences between different states is startling, and it's damn well confusing. Also, those states with cities that border other states regularly force people to pick and choose their "residency" -- whether legal or not -- based on which has the best healthcare policies.

Then again, I'm all for eliminating individual state discrepancies in a lot of areas and nationalizing standards -- and healthcare. Personally, I would think that McCain and his rightwing base wouldn't necessarily like this idea. Let's say that we set national standards that include required coverage for abortion and family planning. I can think of a few states that probably wouldn't be okay with that.

THANK YOU, tartere, I don't see the HUGE issue with the second paragraph either...perhaps if more people made the effort to live within their means it could HELP as we move forward...not saying that's the CAUSE of this debacle (more about greed and human nature to get ALL they can)...ergo a need for teaching/learning about "personal responsibility"...don't think that's a BAD THING!

" Opening up health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition,
as we have done over the last decade in banking, would
provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by
the worst excesses of state-based regulation..."

http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf

When is someone in the media going to accept the fact and report to the people that Republican ideology is not just morally bankrupt, but literally bankrupt? It doesn't work.

If the federal government had been pared down to the bathtub size these lunatics have been promoting, then the entire American economy would have crashed and burned, and there would have been no institution large enough or powerful enough to save it.

But instead of recognizing what ought to be so obvious to everyone, half the American people, and all the supply siders, are still calling for more and more and more of this madness.

Has anyone seen the latest poll out of Stanford that shows how prevalent and pervasive Racism remains?

It's just horrifying, and my guess is it's MUCH worse, because many other studies reveal that a huge segment of the population will never admit (or are even aware) their discomfort with a black candidate.

A logical question at this point IS WHO IN THE FUCK WITH ANY PULSE COULD POSSIBLY VOTE FOR McStupid ? I mean wtf ......... no equal pay for women, give more money to the rich, make more people poor, yet more tax breaks to the corporations, more of the neocon madness of the evil secretion called Bush, more deregulation of the financial industry and now the health industry, a vp candidate who is not only unqualified by believes in the Rapture, the end times, the Jews need to convert to Christianity to be saved or they ge wiped out in Hell, and a McStupid who has clearly sold his soul to the devil in order to realize his ambitions to be the President ... who is the fuck would say 'Yes, this is what I want' ............... and yet there they are, the mindless robots chanting 'sara, sara', 'usa, usa' ........ are these creatures actually human beings ? with a pulse ? my god ..........

health, nutrition, and exercise -- vital quality-of-life information that political correctness has expelled from our schools

Hawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhaw!!!!!!

Lefty: maybe we should design environments where people can walk to places they want to go.

Righty: People like their cars, you commie.

Lefty: Let's have healthy meals in the schools, with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Righty: Just because you like broccoli and arugula, doesn't mean you have any business shoving it down everybody else's throat.

That's pretty much the way it's been as long as I can remember.

When does Michael Scherer write a post saying that using the Contingencies article is unfair because McCain wrote it last month.

I'm used to McCain flip-flopping, but in the same sentence? It hurts my brain.

Surely he isn't suggesting that he wants a 'big government' solution like having our schools be responsible for teaching all of that personal responsibility, vital-quality-of-life health, nutrition and exercise information. Does he want the government butting in to the family that way? (Gad, it's the first step on the slippery slope to teaching teenagers about condoms!)

No, of course not, because he's saying parents have failed in their responsibility. It is, by rights, a parental job. Then why is he complaining that 'political correctness' has expelled it from the schools? What does political correctness have to do with it anyway, since the PC thing to do would be INCLUDE it in the schools, in exactly the way a GOP candidate would oppose? As he does. Or doesn't. Or does. Or ...

Ow! Ow! Ow! I have to stop trying to follow McCain's "logic". It makes my brain bounce back and forth too much.

"would provide more choices of innovative products"

Ha-Ha. Innovative products aren't just pigs in lipstick. They are pigs wearing Chanel and Manolo Blahniks and carrying their John McBush invented Blackberries in their Louis Vuitton bag made out of some other pigs hide. Pigs is pigs.

Amazing how far out of hand things can get when scams dress up as innovations.

Crack was innovative too but nobody needed it any more than we needed the trash the boldest, "best" and brightest on Wall Street were slipping into the system to line their own pockets at the expense of anyone foolish enough to buy their con.

Wall Street is a gold plated sandbox combined with a Las Vegas casino. And despite this little hiccup in their fun, they will be vewy, vewy mad if we try to take away their buckets and shovels.

It's their world and we just pay for it.

Personal responsibility? Well, he got caught by the North Vietnamese, didn't he? Is that our fault? Has he finished off paying for that jet he crashed? Or the others before that? What a friggin' freeloader!

more and more I am confronted with one of two possibilities: either McCain is progressively senile or he is having his final revenge on the Bush Wing through a bit of reducto ad absurdem.

It would be interesting to know what it would cost McCain to obtain insurance on the open market with care and coverage equivalent to what he has now.

Kind of blows away the claim that McCain was blowing the whistle on the whole mortgage mess consuming wall street, if within the last month or two he was still hyping the now-disproven path as a model for other markets.

I just wish these greedy f***ers were a little stupider, so we didn't need to worry so much about them winning elections. You want more efficient healthcare, the world does not lack for examples. Take your pick, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Spain, England, France, Canada (about 15 others) -- they all get to live longer, healthier lives, and spend less for the privilege.

Somedays I wonder if aliens have invaded the GOP minds turning them into Ferengi.

I think even the Ferengi would think the Republicans have gone too far.

Yeah, it's a twofer -- not only does he show his ignorance of healthcare, but his use of the financial system as a model suggests a spectacular level of ignorance concerning the problems there just a month before that system teeters on collapse.

but I'm not getting how this second quote, about personal responsibility bla bla bla, is anything special

If you click on the link you get more of the quote. It ends, Any “solution” that robs us of that essential sense of ourselves is a cure far worse than the affliction it is meant to treat.

In other words, the lead up is that we have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and buy health insurance, but this last sentence begs the question - Who is proposing a solution to health care that would "rob" us of this patriotic sense of personal responsibility.

Responsibility for our own well being!!!!
Remember the sight of McCain's medical records (or part of them) for an average person to pay for that much medical care it would cost the national debt. Of course McCain does not have to pay for his care, he is well taken care of.

Things have gotten so bad for McCain that people literally cannot figure out what the f!@$# he's talking about.

Isn't it the PC crowd that always gets ridiculed by conservatives for taking junk food out of school vending machines, taking cigarette machines out of bars, encouraging the posting of nutritional information in restaurants, introducing smoking bans, etc.?

I mean, Jesus, forget the fact that McCain can't tell the SEC from the FEC or calls the SIPC the SPIC. The only acronym that is relevant to to him at this point is WTF?!?

"... by following best practices without fear of being sued."

Hey, Senator Clueless, if the doctors were following best practices they wouldn't be sued. You have been conned.

What really surprises me is that the rest of the article implicitly blames the medical establishment for the entire mess because they weren't coordinating, they were making themselves too rich, they were wasting our resources.

If I were teaching a health care economics class and someone submitted this as his final essay of the semester about health care reform, I would have to give him an F because he failed to tie any of his solutions to the problems identified, failed to clearly explain why these were the problems, and failed to make any effort to show how this would be paid for.

McCain graduated 894 out of 899 in his class. He crashed 5 jet aircraft, the last one getting himself captured by NV, he is by some accused of being the smart-ass instigator of the USS Forrestal fire where 134 men died, and $72 million worth of damage done (McCain had to be airlifted from the ship allegedly because his life was in danger from the angry survivors and their rescuers.)

McCain's article referenced in the post is current. It was written with current knowledge of all the same signposts that the rest of us have been cringing over, as we waited for the other shoe to drop.

For someone in a position of power, with access to the movers and shakers of our economy, he comes up with wanting to make our healthcare coverage on par with the banking industry? After the signs of financial distress have been been building all summer long, he comes up with this???

The man is dumber than dirt. He always has been, and his long term history shows it.

And yet he now runs an ad aired during Prime Time wherein he does his macho/POW bit: "I've taken on tougher guys than this"(referring to the economic crisis). Then the words: "The Original Maverick" appear before his photo.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious.

Isn't it the PC crowd that always gets ridiculed by conservatives for taking junk food out of school vending machines, taking cigarette machines out of bars, encouraging the posting of nutritional information in restaurants, introducing smoking bans, etc.?

Of course. Parents should teach their kids not to eat junk, but as long as there is a market for it, the private sector must be allowed to exploit it, and the school system shouldn't interfere. Never mind that the same reasoning would permit crack dealers to ply their trade at recess...

I've taken on tougher guys than this

Um, all due respect, but didn't he come out of that experience a shell of his former self? His heroic narrative has to do with _enduring_ tough treatment, not defeating it.

Likely the quality of life-impairing political correctness he's wailing about is just the unwillingness of today's teachers to look the other way when guys like John ridiculed classmates for being fat. Either that or it's anti-gay dogwhistling.

In Kentucky, a state that is neither PC nor healthy, kids are taught good eating habits beginning in kindergarden. Whoever is writing stuff for McCain should get out more.

When I heard McCain say that he had taken on tougher guys, I wondered whether he has, in his head, changed the narrative of what happened so he could survive without going crazy. He makes it sound like he was Rambo, fighting his way out of ever fix instead of sitting in a cell, basically helpless. I know it's all posturing, but I still find it disturbing, as I find the whole concept of using one's POW status as a marketing device. I don't like it.

Isn't this where Dr. Strangelove comes in?

"rediscover our sense of personal responsibility to take better care of ourselves and our children"

Hell yeah! Like taking personal responsibility to not get skin cancer as a public servant and make taxpayers pay for the treatment, or maybe die after the first case so that taxpayers won't have to pay for additional new cases for skin cancer over time.

But the most precious line --"more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation" -- love it, LOVE IT! Because right now the worst excesses of state-based regulation is a $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street at its most "innovative." Really effing innovative to make my child and his as yet unborn child pay for some scheming bastard's multi-million dollar houses in the Hamptons and vacation condos and the attendant fleet of Hummers and Bentleys.

It would be impossible for fiction to create a more mendacious and malicious peckerhead than John McCain is today.

de-regulation of the financial industry is NOT the cause of our present problems.

lack of oversight of the changing industry, continually backed by democrats and opposed by republicans, IS the problem.

So how do you have "oversight" without regulation, joanne? Do we just ask everyone really really nicely to behave and hope they do it?

de-regulation of the financial industry is NOT the cause of our present problems.

lack of oversight of the changing industry, continually backed by democrats and opposed by republicans, IS the problem.

This is worthy of being put into the Official Ingsoc Newspeak Dictionary as an illustration of the concept of doublethink.

Also, blaming Democrats for the "lack of oversight" is a good illustration of the memory hole in action.

Considering the huge amount of debt the Republicans in particular have been deferring to our children and grandchildren, our descendents probably aren't goint to learn much about personal resposibility from us.

Mnemosyne: So how do you have "oversight" without regulation, joanne? Do we just ask everyone really really nicely to behave and hope they do it?

i think mccain and gramm have both said...

business could be shamed into proper behaviour...

and if you believe that i've got a bridge in alaska i can sell you

SJRSM: You enforce the regulations you have. Just because a law is on the books doesn't mean people follow it.

and how has that been going with the bush adminstration?

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - NYT 12/16/06

Congress Says DHS Oversaw $15 Billion in Failed Contracts - Wash. Post 9/17/08

Pentagon Told Guantanamo Interrogators To Trash Evidence - AP 6/8/08

Bush Dept. Of Labor Rushes To Loosen Toxin Regulations - 7/22/08

Ozone Rules Weakened at Bush's Behest - Wash. Post 3/14/08

contaminated tomatoes and

contaminated meat

contaminated dog food

tainted toys

toxic trailers

counterfeit heparin

aircraft groundings and no inspections

White House undermines EPA on cancer risks, GAO says - AP 4/28/08

Justice Officials Repeatedly Broke Law on Hiring - Wash. Post 7/28/08

Bush Admin. Releases EPA Report, Then Repudiates It - Wall Street Journal 7/12/08

but some laws are being enforced...

Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations' - NYT 4/23/08

heckofajob...