Is a public institution in any way "owned"? It is simply a cooperative endeavor by taxpayers and voters-the public. Single payer would not be the seizure of the privately owned health insurance companies. It would simply take those private companies out of the health insurance business. They would be free to "insure" other things. If the proposal included the nationalization of hospitals and all health care provider's businesses, that would be different.
So, Chris, your simplistic labeling of Medicare as socialism makes me uncomfortable. It appears to me that you are being sucked into the Right wing's framing of the issue. Words and language matter, and the Right wing knows it.

Maybe I am just splitting hairs, but I see a clear divide between "ownership of means of production" and public institutions. Insurance being implemented by for profit, privately owned companies or by a publicly operated organization is by no means any sort of "production". Rather, it is the channeling of money from the consumer (people needing health care) to the providers (the health care industry).

No, no. Go Samuel L. Jackson on 'em:

"Motherf*cker, drop to the floor is your response to this f*cking situation? Get your mother f*cking ass up off the motherf*cking floor before I stomp you like a motherf*cking bug, motherf*cker."

And if that doesn't work, you have your purple lightsaber as a backup. ;)

And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free. ~ Sarah Palin

Silly Sarah was right about spending her sunset years telling her children what freedom was like, but that's only because her spawn keep landing in trouble with the law and in jail for drunken brawls and assaulting lots of people.

For the clueless bastards living fifty years ago under the landing lights of approaches into IAH airport, in a quiet county of exurban Houston in the next few days, it isn't going to go that smooth. Maddow just angered and outraged her audience of about 3 million not-Republicans tonight over the vote suppression tactics of Waller County.

That's just the tip of the berg, though, because it's ignited on Twitter now, and FB, and, by tomorrow, YouTube. It's just politics, of course, but for the white guys who run a sleepy little county on the banks of the Brazos, it's going to be long couple of weeks.

https://www.questia.com/library/147342/the-conscience-of-a-conservative

OTOH, I'm not sure that's even true. People who want to destroy the social safety net are motivated by SOMETHING - they believe SOMETHING. What is it they believe and how does that differ from ideology? First definition on ideology I found is: a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic theory or policy.

"Conservatives" favor a lot of policies on economic grounds (falsehoods) and went along with Blotus because he'd do what they wanted re: taxes and social safety net. Why isn't that ideological?

I agree also. The true test of ideological adherence will come with the zealots...they have their man in a robe...let's see if the rubes commit themselves to Trump as full-throatily, now all their Christmases have arrived at once.

LL&P

Agreed. Or as one columnist put it: conservatives finally tired of fighting (and losing) the usual political fights over policy, finally turned to a Mob guy - Trump - to push their preferences through.

The hit they take to their respectability is outweighed in their minds by his effectiveness, but the South and certain boroughs of New York (and New Jersey) notwithstanding, bosses don't generally do well with voters long-term, else constitutional democracy would have withered and died long ago.

'Bush was the President, but Cheney was the one calling the shots when it came to the war and it is pretty clear that he lied to Bush about what was actually going on.'

Would you consider this... The invasion of Iraq was actually a familial vendetta Bush jr decided to end on behalf of his father?

It's no secret, Bush the elder had 'very close ties' to the Hussein regime before, during and after the Iran/Iraq war. Rubbing out Saddam might have been foremost on jr's mind when his administration were casting about for another villain after UBL vanished from sight.

I simply don't buy this notion that Bush was unaware of the Iraqi ruse, I didn't buy it at the time...Trump is running the same play with Iran as we speak, his gang are arguing, against the advice of allies, that Iran is being naughty with nukes...without a shred of actual proof. It's the same play, only without all the spectre of 9/11 to fuel it. Oh...and this time, they got Netan-the-yahoo to bring the bristle board and pointers.

LL&P

Don't give him a pass. He and the rest of the top-level Administration officials that were involved knew that small-t torture, at least, was going on. Their ideological motivation was well known, too: it was perfectly embodied in the character of Jack Bauer in the television series 24 that was popular at the time, in which Kiefer Southerland, playing the spy racing the clock, repeatedly tortured bad guys to gain information that advanced the plot. The belief among the GOP faithful that the tactic worked led not only to the policy, but also to the inclusion in the movie Zero Dark Thirty of the erroneous assertion that critical information was obtained through torture that led to Osama Bin Laden - which has since been thoroughly debunked. In fact, information obtained through torture has proven to be singularly unreliable, and experts have often decried its use as both unnecessary and counterproductive.

But it's still popular with the Right because it sounds like 'getting tough' with enemies. It's a deadly and stupid form of swagger.

It's also popular with autocrats because, quite separate from its use in intelligence gathering, it's also useful for instilling fear in one's enemies. Mobsters used to sometimes stage killings to be deliberately grotesque in order to send a message to their rivals. The Soviets (and KGB in particular) did the same.

I doubt that the Right considers the issue settled. After all, they just installed one of the lawyers that helped to legally justify torture for the Bush administration onto the Supreme Court.

I see no nobility in that.

It’s one thing if Trump is diffusing a problem that he had just caused, but Bush is being honored 10 years after leaving office. If he has continued to support our vets all this time, then that is commendable. Bush was the President, but Cheney was the one calling the shots when it came to the war and it is pretty clear that he lied to Bush about what was actually going on. Not giving Bush a free pass on Iraq, but I don’t believe he knew we were torturing prisoners. I am guessing that he believed that there were WMD’s as Cheney had assured him, too. Cheney should be made to answer for his war crimes charges as far as I am concerned!

No, no. Go Samuel L. Jackson on 'em:

"Motherf*cker, drop to the floor is your response to this f*cking situation? Get your mother f*cking ass up off the motherf*cking floor before I stomp you like a motherf*cking bug, motherf*cker."

:}

Notice who wasn't at that ceremony? Trump. Except for the odd General, the room was filled with moderate Republicans and conservative democrats, or as Fox calls them: never Trumpers.

These are the 'lost boys' of our current political landscape. They've been threatened (see CW's post, above, it's very good, and I recommend it), belittled and generally demeaned in every manner by the Trump faithful, and some of the folks in that crowd are conduits to tons and tons of political donor money.

If they happen to believe that a Democrat like Biden is their ticket out of political limbo, why not? Worth a shot, anyway.

By that logic, Trump is working Bush's side of the street when he creates problems and then accepts acclaim for diffusing them. NAFTA, N.K, Iran, trade wars etc...

I see no nobility in that.

LL&P

So after arranging to kill and wound millions of people over a lie, Bush should be rewarded? If he did anything real to help Vets that's good, but after doing the crime he should be rewarded for trying to ameliorate the damage HE caused? Is that what atonement is?

You are making a common mistake. Blotus' coalition isn't primarily working class people or poor people - it's very much middle/upper-class white. He is LOSING the college-educated portion of the GOP, especially the college-educated women, but they voted him in originally and plenty are sticking with him.

[7] Listen: Yes, Bush and his consciousness of guilt. After creating millions of wounded vets, he felt a need to "do something" for them. Bush also felt a need to help get Kavanaugh seated, coz he's such a good guy.

Biden participating in a ceremony that HONORS GWBush for ANYTHING actually turns my stomach.

I doubt most Democrats will ever hear about it, but even so, just because I didn’t care for Bush’s presidency doesn’t mean that I should ignore the good he has done for our veterans since leaving the White House.

ObamaCare actually ended that group of “death-panels”!

The origin of 'The Mob' can be dated back 2800 years to the Athenians. It is a broad term for 'the mass' or group of people with similar intention. It's a simplistic definition of 'Mob' that restricts it to political groups or gatherings. Moreover, I'd suggest apt synonyms of 'the Mob' would be, rabble, masses and multitude, all of which can be applied to a group of people, jostling in line, vying for Boxing Day sales. A mob is simply a group of people who share a common goal (it could be just a bread line.), a vulgus not necessarily drawn into a cohesive political movement.

'Illegitimi non carborundum' is the only advice I can offer up for the politically squatting. Trump's, and indeed, the NRA's contention that universal healthcare is some kind of thin end of a wedge, inexorably tied to their egregious definition of 'socialism', is nothing short of incitement.

As I proved, beyond a doubt, democratic socialism isn't a governmental 'free-for-all' of Joe and Jane Doe's tax dollar, to be frittered on a social net. Universal healthcare in Canada doesn't cost Canadians a cent more than the equivalent service in the US costs Americans, in fact, folks in the US pay much more for a social prerogative that was so important to the framers of the US constitution, that they chose to address it in the preamble of the text.

I still don't get what the rightwing see in a vulgarian such as Trump. He's not of the sweaty-brow ilk that constitutes the bulk of his support. One has assume, the first semester at Trump University dealt exclusively with the buying and selling of snake oil.

LL&P

*I'm taking odds on Trump blaming the left and the 'deep state' while Wall St. readjusts itself over the next few weeks. 1-1

I don't think that's going to endear Joe Biden to a lot of Dems.

But people are acutely aware of the status of their medical coverage. And majorities of Americans distrust GOP on that.

Since just about half of eligible voters don't typically vote I suppose it's possible that most Dems and Independents and a bunch of non-voting people distrust GOP on healthcare, while the 25-30% of the population that is the GOP, are they same people who swallow all the socialized medicine nonsense and maybe, actually believe all we need to do is "make plans available across state lines." So those idiots may well vote for Repubs and then bitch when they lose healthcare.