Touting Healthcare: Give me a triple and supersize it.

I had to read this one twice. Bush is actually touting his health care reform package from the headquarters of Wendy's. Want fries with that? Want to supersize for just 49 cents? Actually it's fitting: Wendy's, home of three-fourth of a pound of greasy meat on a bun, has about as much to do with health as Bush's health care plan. Flexible spending accounts are a great idea, Shrub, if you have money left over after living a month to put into one, as most of us, thanks to your abyssmal stewardship of our economy, don't. Just as the Medicare benefit was a boon to pharmaceutical companies, this is a boon to big investment houses - the money has to go into something - and the wealthy with enough left over to self-insure. I don't know about you, but I don't fit that category. He also wants to rein in malpractice suits, approximately two percent of American healthcare costs. So, as with his budgetary priorities, he's trimming from the little end of the stick while touting tax cuts for the wealthy to increase the deficit farther.

Does he want China to foreclose on us some day?

p. s. I just read that Cheney is now claiming, in addition to being able to delay reporting of a shooting for 18 hours, the power to declassify information. Naturally, this is in conjunction with Plamegate. So now, is the fact that he declassified the information going to defend him and Scooter from the more serious crime of revealing an agent's identity? I really was surprised to learn the shooting victim's name wasn't Libby....

And someone make me believe that, as the photo in the Yahoo news article suggests, that Wendy's has a cadeuceus hanging on the wall all the time (that's that funny two-snake thingy, for you righties reading this).

Condi revealed we want to create another democracy in Iran. Thought they already had one, they just didn't vote the way we wanted. Oh, well, another Palestine. Just cut off the aid and deny it's a plot because it's all in the open. We foster democracy then attempt to destabilize it when it doesn't vote our way. Is this nation building? Even the Republicans can no longer buy the crap, the rantings of the village idiot made king are too unbelievable for even the Right to suspend their disbelief any longer. Besides, they have to get reelected. Crawford can feel secure in the knowledge that their idiot is coming home in three years.

And, given the new pictures from Abu Ghraib, can we deny that we, under Bush, have become a nation no better than our enemies? Just look at those pictures and tell me how we are living up to our words, how we can imagine ourselves as a nation as the world's shining light of freedom. I'd have expected these pictures when Saddam owned Abu Ghraib. To see them taken under our stewardship sickens me. This is not the work of a few sadistic privates. They had guidance for this. It's time to go after the leaders, not just the pawns. We deserve whatever backlash comes from the Middle Eastern world if for no other reason than to stop our holier-than-thou attitude.

And there's an Army recruiting commercial on the TV downstairs. I served long ago to serve my country. If I were faced with the same choice again, I would not serve what it has become.