Bill Richardson blew it. And he can go ahead and drop out of the race anytime now, the sooner the better. When asked if sexual orientation is innate or a choice, Richardson replied, "It's a choice."
By the pained look on his face, I guessed he could hear the groans from the audience.
When given another chance, Richardson did no better: "I'm not a scientist. I don't see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as human beings ... I don't like to categorize people."
That's fine Bill, but the law does like to categorize people, and you just gave the answer that translates to no rights allowed under the law!
On the same-sex marriage question, the Governor blew it again. But how was he to know the question would even be asked?
In Richardson's first attempt at a response, he sat in silence for what seemed to me to be an embarrassment of minutes. Eventually the presidential wannabe managed to respond with: "I'm not there yet."
Do tell. But you just can't expect Bill Richardson to be prepared for these surprise questions.
Ford went on to say that if he'd attended the conference, he would have told the progressive audience:
"I think you’re wrong the way you go about practicing your politics. If you’re serious about winning the war and bringing the country together, get another message and another set of tactics."
"Fox News Democrat Harold Ford goes on Fox News to attack this site and YearlyKos. This is what the DLC has been reduced to -- going on Fox News to attack Democrats and being forced to debate a guy who 'wasn't respectable 3 or 4 years ago' in a bid to justify their organization's existence."
"While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."
After notorious flip-flopper Mitt Romney called for "'a surge of support' for U.S. forces in Iraq," the GOP candidate was asked why his five sons aren't supportively surging off to Iraq.
Turns out that when you are Mitt Romney's son, driving around Iowa in a Winnebago is the equivalent of joining the army and serving in the Iraq War.
"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I'd be a great president." -- Mitt Romney
Romney said that one of his sons, Josh, is "completing a recreational vehicle tour of all 99 Iowa counties. . and 'I respect that and respect all those and the way they serve this great country.'”
When asked if she was satisfied with Romney's response to her question, Griffiths said: "Of course not. He told me the way his son shows support for our military and our nation is to buy a Winnebago and ride across Iowa and help him get elected."
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel will participate in the first Presidential LGBT Forum tonight.
If you are in LA, you can see it on teevee, otherwise, live streaming will be available at VisibleVote08.com beginning at 8pm central time. Also there will be 'watch parties' across the country.
On the questioning panel will be gay Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, awesome musician/activist/lesbian Melissa Etheridge, and Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solomonese.
The two-hour forum will be moderated by Margaret Carlson, columnist and former girlfriend of Fred Thompson! Yuck! (And I used to respect this woman.)
But here's Rachel Maddow, and she has a few things to say about the first ever gay rights presidential forum.
Rachel Maddow's Campaign Asylum: The 'Don't Say GAY' Debates:
I might get up early for this one. Watching Fox News Democrat Harold Ford writhe and moan at the hands of Kos is what I view as a wonderful way to start the day.
that the political parties would be smart to pay attention to the issues that mean the most to gay and lesbian voters,” said Tom Roth, president of Community Marketing. “We have far more at stake than the average voter and we’re therefore far more engaged in the political process.”
Indeed, the turnout results were released --- not coincidentally --- as the Democratic presidential contenders prepare to meet in Los Angeles Thursday night for the first candidate debate sponsored by gay groups and devoted to issues of particular interest to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
The forum likely will become the subject of its own debate: is the gathering a wise political move by the Democrats? The Community Marketing findings provide powerful ammunition for those arguing it is.
In raw numbers, the survey estimates that gay voters total close to 9 million. In the 2004 election, about 122 million Americans went to the polls.
Hillary has 43 percent to Obama's 23 percent. John Edwards comes in with 10 percent and Gov. Bill Richardson has 5 percent.
And on the Dark Side: Rudy Giuliani is at 28 percent, Sen. John McCain has 17 percent, uncandidate Fred Thompson crawls in with 15 percent, and Mitt Romney garners a mere 8 percent.
"For 15 years I have stood up against the right-wing machine, and I've come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I'm your girl."
Glenn Murphy, Jr., the recently elected chairman of the Young Republican National Federation (also the RNC Chair for Clark County, Indiana and formerly the YRNF Secretary) has been accused of sexually assaulting a sleeping man. Immediately following the accusation, he came up with an unrelated reason to resign, and the YRNF cleansed their website of his name.
Allegedly, Murphy and another YR were drunk and crashing at Murphy's sister's house. The other man apparently awoke in the morning to find Murphy giving him a non-consensual blow job. The Clark County (Indiana) Sheriff's Department is charging Murphy with "criminal deviate conduct", a Class B felony.
The State Has an Interest in Your Underwear -- IF You Are a Woman.
Because prisoners men "don't need any help getting turned on," the good old boy State of Tennessee will regulate what women wear whenever they venture to visit prisoners, whether the women be mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, friends, ministers, journalists, attorneys, or social scientists.
It was Correction Commissioner George Little who offered the above sexist justification for regulating women's, but not men's, undergarments. "Arousing undergarments such as thong underwear and bust-enhancing "water brassieres" won't be allowed into state prisons after Aug. 1, when a newly revised set of visitation rules takes effect."
Any woman found to be wearing a thong and/or water bra will be told to go home and come back when she is dressed like a lady. Cause men can't control themselves, or so some folks keep telling us. If the problem is really so dire, one wonders why the State of Tennessee permits women visitors to even enter the prisons.
Presumably the regulation of women's undergarments applies also to women who visit women.
We've heard nothing about a ban on sexy male undergarments. Male visitors are apparently free to wear briefs and flaunt 'tight packages' all over the Tennessee State prison system.
But the most interesting question is how will the banned undergarments be detected? A few years back when I conducted a series of interviews on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, I found the pat-downs to be already more than adequately invasive.
But as of August 1, exra attention will be given to feeling women's breasts and genital areas to determine if women are wearing Tennessee State approved bras and panties. Cause prisoners 'don't need any help getting turned on,' but prison staff apparently do.
An informal survey of women who wear thongs, reveals that the number one motive is the desire to go without panty lines, but an absence of panty lines may well be a 'turn on' to Commissioner George Little.
When the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act this spring, the ambivalently pro-choice public was largely quiescent, believing, as Congress had previously ruled, that the procedure was “gruesome and inhuman,” medically unnecessary, highly controversial in the medical community and so rare as to be little missed. . .
The big problem with this, doctors say, is that, due to the unpredictability of how women’s bodies react to medical procedures, when you set out to do a legal second trimester abortion, something looking very much like a now-illegal abortion can occur. Once you dilate the cervix — something that must be done sufficiently in order to avoid tears, punctures and infection — a fetus can start to slip out. And if this happens, any witness — a family member, a nurse, anyone in the near vicinity with an ax to grind against a certain physician — can report that the ban has been breached. Bringing on stiff fines, jail time and possible civil lawsuits.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court’s majority, asserted that prosecution for accidental partial births won’t occur; there has to be “intent” for there to be a crime. But as doctors now understand it, intent could be inferred by the degree of dilation they induce in their patients. What, then, do they do? Dilate the cervix sufficiently and risk prosecution, or dilate less and risk the woman’s health? And if they dilate fully, how do they prove it wasn’t their intent to deliver an intact fetus?
This dilemma is the latest product of the awful algorithm that, in anti-choice rhetoric of the past few decades, has increasingly pitted the “interests” of the fetus against the health of the woman. It makes the true intent of the partial-birth abortion ban clear: the point is not (in the short term) to stop seemingly brutal fetal deaths, but rather to make all abortions as burdensome, as difficult and as emotionally and physically trying for women — and for doctors — as possible. Read more. . .
Hmmm, now what is Fred Thompson's position on universal health care?
.. [Jeri Kehn] spent much of her 20s biding her time in Nashville without a clear career path, living with a boyfriend whose main claim to fame was getting arrested in Red Square for unfurling a pizza-parlor banner in the last days of the Cold War. Kehn left three court judgments behind her in Nashville, one of which remains unpaid today, and a court twice garnished her wages. . .
In 1996, the Davidson County court in Nashville ordered a $900 judgment against Kehn in a case brought by an anesthesiologist, and garnished her wages at a communications company. In 1997, the court ordered a $1,700 judgment against Kehn for unpaid medical bills at Nashville's Baptist Hospital and again ordered her pay garnished. But Kehn had left for another job, and the debt is still listed in court records as unpaid.
After all these years of feminist gains, it's still true that marriage is the most effective strategy for women to raise their economic status. You'd think Frederick of Hollywood would have paid off his wife's outstanding medical bills by now.
Two presidential elections ago, the conventional wisdom said that George W. Bush was a likable, honest fellow. But those of us who actually analyzed what he was saying about policy came to a different conclusion — namely, that he was irresponsible and deeply dishonest. His numbers didn’t add up, and in his speeches he simply lied about the content of his own proposals.
In the fifth year of the disastrous war Mr. Bush started on false pretenses, it’s clear who was right. What a candidate says about policy, not the supposedly revealing personal anecdotes political reporters love to dwell on, is the best way to judge his or her character.
So what are the current presidential candidates saying about policy, and what does it tell us about them? Well, none of the leading Republican candidates have said anything substantive about policy. . . Hillary Clinton, however, has been evasive. She conveys the impression that there’s not much difference between her policy positions and those of the other candidates — but she’s offered few specifics. In particular, unlike Mr. Edwards or Mr. Obama, she hasn’t announced a specific universal care plan, or explicitly committed herself to paying for health reform by letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire.
Seven of the eight Democratic 2008 candidates are grilled before the Yearly Kos liberal audience at the Presidential Leadership Forum.Hillary Clinton defends her policy of accepting lobbyist money . . . but it's still true that John Edwards and the progressive movement continue to push her to the left.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton faced a convention Saturday of 1,400 politically influential online activists who don't particularly like her. Yet she emerged from the presidential forum here at the Yearly Kos convention with a little more respect - if not love - from the liberal bloggers. . .
Then again, Clinton has nowhere to go but up with this crowd. She received 9 percent of the vote - narrowly nudging "No Freaking Clue" - at the last straw poll on www.dailykos.com , the 500,000-visitors-a-day blog from which the convention borrows its name. Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., won that straw poll, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was second. . .
Even more so than in the recent YouTube/CNN debate, the looser atmosphere cultivated Saturday - fueled by uninhibited cheering, jeering and standing ovations - seemed to somewhat dislodge the candidates from their usual sound-bite answers.
It was an audience that opened the proceedings by singing "Happy Birthday" to Obama, who turned 46 Saturday, booed New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for saying he'd support a balanced budget amendment, and cheered Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., for boasting how he took on Fox News commentator - and Yearly Kos basher - Bill O'Reilly last week.
On building a progressive America - with a little gloating over some of the progressive movement's liberal victories and a forecast of our "future progressive majority" by Markos . . .
The founder of Daily Kos addresses the 2007 Yearly Kos convention in Chicago, IL on August 4, 2007.
GERALD FORD spoke the truth when he called Watergate “our long national nightmare,” but even a nightmare can have its interludes of rib-splitting farce.
None were zanier than the antics of Baruch Korff, a small-town New England rabbi who became a full-time Richard Nixon sycophant as the walls closed in. Korff was ubiquitous in the press and on television, where he would lambaste Democrats and the media “lynch mob” for vilifying “the greatest president of the century.” Despite Nixon’s reflexive anti-Semitism, he returned the favor by granting the rabbi audiences and an interview that allowed the embattled president to soliloquize about how his own faith and serenity reinforced his conviction “deep inside” that everything he did was right.
Clearly we’ve reached our own Korffian moment in our latest long national nightmare. The Nixon interviewed by the rabbi sounded uncannily like the resolute leader chronicled by the conservative columnists and talk-show jocks President Bush has lately welcomed into his bunker. For his part, William Kristol even published a Korffian manifesto, “Why Bush Will Be a Winner,” in The Washington Post. It reassured us that the Bush presidency would “probably be a successful one” and that “we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome” in Iraq. A Bush flack let it be known that the president liked this piece so much that he recommended it to his White House staff.
Are you laughing yet? Maybe not. No one died in Watergate.
Caption this! (Illustration: Anita Kunz. July 30, 2007. Cover. Newyorker.com. Illustration title - 'Girls Will Be Girls.')
Via BAGnewsNotes -- where there are some interesting interpretations. Including:
ceenik -- "The first interpretation (pre-title) was an echo of suppression and oppression, enabled by women, with the "american" woman caught in between oppressive women-enabled ideologies."
zatopa -- "Part of the joke is the reversal--the 2 religious uniforms allow only the eyes to show, while the modern secular outfit covers (almost) only the eyes."
The chart below is from TRIP, a national transportation group. A report (pdf) by TRIP lists the bridges on this chart as "the twenty most heavily traveled bridges in Tennessee that are considered 'deficient.'" And, damn it, one of them is right smack in my neighborhood. It is constantly being repaired. And I am not crossing it ever again.
Here is the definition of 'structurally deficient' provided by the report:
"Bridges are structurally deficient if they no longer meet their intended design capacity or were, in the past, designed for a capacity less that the state’s current legal loads."
The RNC does comedy in a truly pathetic ad. The losers at the RNC think it's so clever to call liberals'mercenaries,' and the poor whining babies are so bothered about the fact that the top Democratic presidential candidates didn't show up at the DLC in Nashville, but will be on hand at YearlyKos:
DNC Chairman Howard Dean fires up the liberal crowd at YearlyKos in Chicago . . .
Devilstower notes that old media is paying serious attention to the liberal convention: "The word "liberal" might not have seen this much ink since the time of Truman."
Devilstower has a nice wrap-up of some of the old media coverage of the liberal gathering, including this from E. J. Dionne Jr.:
The Rise of Kos -- Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan. Its core assumption is that ideological conservatives made the Republican Party their vehicle and rallied in lock step against Democrats. The party of FDR and JFK needed to find the same discipline. The key litmus tests for Kos and his many allies in the blogosphere involve not long lists of issues developed by the American Civil Liberties Union or the AFL-CIO, but loyalty in standing up against Bush and doing what's necessary to build a Democratic majority.
"Durbin, for five years president of the city's venerable Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood association, ran unopposed for the seat in Nashville's District 18."
I added this as an update to the post about the rightwing attacks on Steve Cohen -- Tennessee's ONE and ONLY flaming liberal Congressman -- but it deserves a post of its own.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen's support of the Hate Crimes bill has made him the target of seemingly every rightwing nut in the country. Memphis church parking lots were leafleted last weekend with bizarre flyers meant to provoke anti gay hysteria among Christians and meant to hurt Tennessee's ONE and ONLY liberal Congressman in next year's election.
Congressman Cohen's Washington and Memphis offices have each received some 400 calls from folks who apparently believe the lie that the Hate Crimes bill will take away First Amendment rights.
According to an editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, "Some Memphis pastors are lashing out at freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen because of a hate crimes bill he voted for in May. . . The group challenging Cohen on the issue includes Rev. LaSimba Gray of the New Sardis Baptist Church, whose role in the 9th District race last year was to assert that Cohen was not right for the district because of his skin color."
The group behind the lies has one scary website - and it looks like it comes straight out of the fiery gates of hell - but claims to represent Memphis City Churches. (Address: 111 South Highland, Suite 188, Memphis, Tennessee 38111, Telephone: (901) 362-8334 - This is in the Poplar Plaza shopping center?) The so-called 'Memphis City Church' website links to the Republican Party loving Washington based Family Research Council, the Mississippi based American Family Association and the California based Traditional Values Coalition.
Cohen said the group was seeking to influence both white and African-American preachers "that the bill will somehow quell their First Amendment rights to speak what they think about the Bible and about people's conduct. That's not true whatsoever."
The Hate Crimes bill (H.R. 1592) as passed by the House on a 237-180 vote on May 3 contains an amendment that states it will have no effect on free-speech rights, Cohen noted.
"That Crime Bill affects acts of violence, not acts of thought or speech," Cohen said. "It never has in this country's history, and it never will."
Berryhill said the ministers he is talking to simply don't accept Cohen's interpretation. "Even though he says that, we just don't believe it," he said. "If you get up in a pulpit now, according to the way we understand it, and if you say homosexuality is a sin, you have 'attacked homosexuality.' That's the way the ministers are interpreting this...
"I think it's incumbent on Mr. Cohen to meet with the ministers in his district and share with us his reasons for supporting this legislation," Gray said. "We'd be open to discussing that because we're not going to be silent on this until we are assured that it will not impinge upon our freedom of speech and the use of the pulpit in the proclamation of the gospel."
Cohen said he plans to do one better. He's bringing U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., an ordained Methodist minister, to Memphis to explain why he, too, voted for the bill. African-Americans, who are victims of roughly half of hate crimes, will benefit from the expansion of the jurisdiction and funding provided in it, Cohen said.
So, as I watched the cable news coverage of the bridge collapse in Minnesota last night, the first thing that came to my mind was that distressing report about how there is no money for the problem, but:
Does that sound familiar? Why, yes, it sounds like:
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.
But who has money for bridges and such when there is a war on?
The New York Times blog, Lede has lots of news about the bridge collapse including this gawdawful tidbit:
Scores of ‘Deficient’ Bridges | 9:44 AM The Department of Transportation’s 2005 judgment that the bridge was “structurally deficient” has emerged as one of the most prominent signs of a missed signal of an impending disaster. But there are many, many more bridges with that rating, according to a 2006 count by The Federal Highway Administration. Minnesota alone has 1,135 bridges on the list of “Deficient Bridges,” and other states have thousands more. Check your state against the “SD” column on this spreadsheet.
WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday that an inspection two years ago found structural deficiencies in the highway bridge that buckled during evening rush hour in Minneapolis.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability.
"This doesn't mean there was a risk of failure, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions," he said. [via]
"If we become the anti-war party, that's not beneficial to Democrats in 2008. Bill Clinton ordered our troops and worked with NATO in Bosnia. That's the kind of pro-war Democrat that we ought to be: the war that we fight wisely, the ones that we engage in wisely." (emphasis added)
The conservative Democrat was selling the virtues of "pro war Democrats" at the Democratic Leadership Council convention in Nashville. Glenn Greenwald discusses the bizarre remark which he found at Politico -- one of the few media outlets that bothered to cover the DLC meeting.
I think I've asked this question before, but what is the name of the progressive candidate who is running against Davis in 2008?
Two for One (Rudy Giuliani + Judith Giuliani) By GAIL COLLINS
This week, Rudy Giuliani is focusing on health issues, attacking Democrats’ plans to get the government more involved in covering the cost of medical care. In a campaign tour of New Hampshire town meetings, he used the word “socialism” so often that it crowded out the old nonterror-related record-holder, “Ronald Reagan.” Other frequently repeated nouns were “choice” (good) and “France” (bad). . .
Meanwhile, we can consider the disappearance of Judith Giuliani. . .
So Judith was expected to be part of the New Hampshire health care tour. But her plans seemed to have changed about the time a new Vanity Fair profile emerged, one that makes her sound like a particularly unpleasant combination of Catherine the Great and Britney Spears. The article, by Judy Bachrach, accuses her of everything from demanding a separate airplane seat for her handbag to putting her husband in harm’s way by forcing him to retrieve a bag of health bars from the hotel during a security lockdown.
But isn't the Republican control freak refreshingly honest when it comes to expressing his party's contempt for women?
The proposed Women Are Chattel law reads like the Male Supremacy glory days of the 19th century: [N]o person shall perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman without the written informed consent of the father of the fetus. . .
A pregnant woman seeking to abort her pregnancy shall provide, in writing, the identity of the father of the fetus to the person who is to perform or induce the abortion. . .
No person shall cause a man to believe that the man is the father of a fetus for the purpose of obtaining the consent required by division (B)(1) or (2) of this section, if the person knows that the man is not the father of the fetus.
Next week, expect our Misogynist of the Week to introduce legislation mandating that women cannot drive cars without permission from husbands and fathers. But we think some of the women of Ohio might want to save themselves some time and trouble by just getting permission from the one man who counts the most by naming Rep. John Adams as the 'father of all fetuses.'
No Ohio woman should be able to get an abortion without the permission of her unborn fetus' would-be father, according to a new bill. Don't know who dad is? Well, no abortion then. Dad's a rapist? Well, that's different -- just bring a copy of the police report to show the doc.
Such is the upshot of legislation introduced in the Ohio House today by Rep. John Adams, a Sidney Republican. It is the second anti-abortion bill introduced this month.
Under Adams’ proposal, a woman seeking an abortion must provide the name of the unborn fetus’ father, who then must give written consent for the procedure. Not knowing the father is no excuse and women who try and lie or doctors who perform abortions without permission of the father could be charged with “abortion fraud," a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in jail and $2,500 in fines.
The U.S. Supreme Court has found paternal consent requirements unconstitutional because they place an “undue burden” on the woman. But in the wake of a few recent appointments by President Bush, the court seems to have shifted in a more conservative direction, giving rise to speculation that a new majority may be willing to reverse its earlier decisions on such abortion restrictions.
State Rep. John Adams -- Telephone: (614) 466-1507; Fax : (614) 719-3978; Email Address: district78@ohr.state.oh.us
Dear Mr. Giuliani, For the last several weeks, we have been publicly attacked by your Republican party for traveling with filmmaker Michael Moore to Cuba, where we received free healthcare from doctors. Michael Moore, who took us to Cuba for his new documentary on the U.S. healthcare system called “SiCKO,” is now being investigated by the Bush Administration for taking us to Cuba, a trip we decided to take only after the U.S. government and healthcare system failed for the last six years to provide the support for medical treatment we needed. Our health needs have been ignored and forgotten by the very government that celebrated our sacrifice in the days after that tragedy. And now, the Bush Administration and other conservatives seem more interested in investigating our trip to Cuba than in helping us get the health care we deserve.Read more . .
Rudy Giuliani is rolling out his plan to overhaul American health care Tuesday and he's enlisting two of the Republicans' favorite boogeymen to help -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and filmmaker Michael Moore.
I don't know why Governor Bredesen doesn't understand that he is the last Democrat who needs to be talking about health care. You probably heard that Bredesen spoke on the subject of health care at the Nashville DLC convention. You can read some of the DINO's thoughts on the subject at the DLC website.
The majority of Americans not only want universal health care, they are willing to pay higher taxes for it. Yet, while the country hungers for universal health care, Bredesen is still talking about health care as "personal responsibility" -- which is Republican code for every man, woman, child, and dog for him/herself.
"It comes back to personal responsibility - we don’t have it in our power to promise everyone free health insurance without limits. But we do have it in our power to offer them access to affordable and portable health insurance, and then the choice is theirs."
Ezra Kleinsums up our DINO Governor's thoughts on health care thusly:
If you gave it to me blind, I'd tell you, with 100 percent certainty, that it is Republican rhetoric on health care. That Bredesen manages to write hundreds of words on the subject but can't bring himself to invoke any values beyond "personal responsibility" is, I think, telling.
Untold numbers of Tennesseans have suffered and died from Bredesen's massive cuts to the state's Medicaid program. If Bredesen had an ounce of humility, he would have the good sense to shut up on the subject of health care.
Instead, the Governor who criticized Medicaid by comparing it to socialism actually dared to give a speech on the subject at the DLC. Reportedly, there were no boos, only applause. And that pretty well sums up the usefulness of the DLC to the Democratic Party, to the progressive movement, and to the American people.
The so-called centrist Dems of the DLC are so out of touch with the change that is sweeping across America, that some, such as Nashville's Congressman Jim Cooper, actually imagine that Bredesen would make a viable choice as VPon the Democratic presidential ticket.
Why on earth anyone would choose Bredesen when we already have the real Lieberman waiting over there in the rightwing is beyond comprehension.
"The way in which Medicaid pays for services has more in common with a socialist economy than the common-sense economic and business principles that do such a good job allocating resources efficiently in other parts of our American life."
