After thinking about it more, I believe Palin resigned to screw me over. The Drudge Retort is going to lose a lot of traffic if she leaves public life.

She basically said she was stepping down because she couldn't take all the negative publicity she is being bombarded with!

Unless there's a scandal here we don't know about, this is the second public nervous breakdown of a 2012 Republican presidential hopeful in a week.

Do Mormons practice voodoo? Mitt Romney's having a good summer.

Clearly you didn't listen to Dobbs, or Hannity, or Hewitt or NPR.

I don't listen to Hannity or Hewitt. I occasionally watch Dobbs when I exercise. He's a reactionary sumbitch. I hope his Mexican gardener pees in his pool.

rcade - why didn't you incorporate this post with this post?

I overlooked Andrea's post. Sorry about that. They're merged now.

I didn't see this one coming. Apparently, breaking the Flag Code is a lot more serious than I thought it was.

Serious policy wonk. Take from group 'A' and give to group 'B'. Make sure group 'A' outnumbers group 'B'.

Clearly you didn't listen to his show. (No knock on you -- a lot of people didn't.) Franken brought on public policy analysts and government officials and asked wonky questions about legislative programs. It was the kind of stuff people say they want the media to do, but whenever someone actually does it, they get bored.

Medicare is amazingly efficient, with relatively miniscule administrative costs.

It is. The government gets more bang for the buck, and takes care of more people better, than private insurance has done for the rest of us.

What about the driving habits? Do they not pay more for the higher risk? Would that apply to Universal Healthcare?

I'd love a system that gave me cheaper insurance rates for being pro-active about my health with exercise, a good diet and the like. I wouldn't get that discount today (I exercise regularly but need to lose weight), but that's a good incentive system for everybody.

Please show them to me so that I can fulfill your request. Please! In this country? Poor?

If you're suggesting there are no poor people in this country, that's ridiculous. As of 2005, 38 million Americans lived below the poverty line, which was $19,350 a year for a family of four. Another 38 million had times in the year when they couldn't afford food.

The fact that the same amount of money would be an affordable lifestyle in a destitute third world country is immaterial. If you have to miss meals in this country, you're poor.

She could've been drunk or otherwise affected when she put the DVD away.

She could have grabbed the wrong video file when using software to create the DVD.

This is reason number 580 not to videotape your lovemaking.

Because driving a car without auto insurance puts others at a direct risk. Living your life without health insurance only puts you at risk.

We're already paying for people without health insurance. They show up at the ER and the costs are passed on to everybody else. They also have more serious health problems because they don't see a doctor regularly, which makes the costs even higher.

Driving a car without auto insurance only puts others at financial risk. That's directly comparable to how living without health insurance costs others financially.

The only way to make health insurance work in this country -- for the people who need it, not just the healthy young people insurers want to cover -- is for it to be mandatory or for the government to offer it universally.

I didn't know Franken had graduated with honors from Harvard. I'm always amazed when someone puts that degree to work in entertainment. I know a guy who went from Harvard to writing for television. His dad wasn't pleased, from what he said, but the guy's now producing some huge hit shows.

If I had gone to Harvard, I would have used my vast power and influence to control man.

You got to love the wording "shared responsibility payments."

Yeah ... somebody on the Democratic side was trying to be Frank Luntz.

Big brother is here.

Why are people required to get auto insurance but not required to get health insurance? If health insurance was mandatory in this country and insurers had to take everybody regardless of pre-existing conditions, everybody's rates would go way down.

It also would let people quit jobs they hated which they've only stayed in to keep insurance. How much more productive would workers be if millions were doing what they wanted to do?

We've had a B-movie actor as president. Minnesota elected a former wrestler as governor, California elected the Terminator, and Congress has included Sonny Bono and Gopher from the Love Boat. The slams against Franken for being a comedian are cheap. Entertainers who can communicate well can be effective politicians.

That clown from Oklahoma has no idea who Al Franken is these days. He was a serious policy wonk on his Air America radio show and was serious on the campaign trail running for the Senate. For years before that he made USO trips overseas, winning a lot of friends among conservatives and Republicans for his commitment to the troops.

Franken can be funny, but no one is going to see him in the Senate and think he's a clown. Minnesota wouldn't have elected him if it was all a big joke for a late-night comedian.

If Republicans don't want to answer the Census, you'll get no arguments from me. It'll make you get undercounted for Congressional representation and your states will get less electoral votes, so I'm having trouble seeing the down side from my perspective.

As for me, I'm going to answer the Census early and often. I'm going to Census all night and Democratic Party every day.

According to reports from Sin Chew Daily ...

No way. Sin Chew Daily?

Looks like this completely backfired on you RCade.

The story drew hundreds of comments, was read around 4,800 times and has been talked about on a bunch of other sites. What humiliation for me!

Clearly people cared about it. Some for partisan reasons. Others because they respect the Flag Code.

Metacommentary is boring. I wrote the story because it interested me. Anyone who thinks I have more complex reasons behind my actions overestimates my ability for cunning.

Nico Pitney's question wasn't a total setup -- Obama didn't know what Iranian's question he would choose -- but I still think it's inappropriate for the White House to set up anything with reporters before presidential press conferences.

The linked blogger here is a piece of work. She calls herself "The Conservative That Liberals Hate to Love"? More like "The Conservative I've Never Heard Of Though I Read a Lot of Blogs."

I sent an email to Dennis Kneale letting him know that his on-air comment has been dumped, and two more comments like it within a two-week period will result in the loss of his privileges.

where's rcade on this story?

Speechless that a judge with Posner's credentials thinks we need more draconian copyright law to ban "paraphrasing" without permission. How can I possibly discuss how bad his idea without (a) linking to it, (b) quoting it, or (c) paraphrasing it? He's in favor of a world in which nobody can talk about what anybody else has written without their permission.

Well, maybe not speechless.

So please don't be too quick to dismiss the layman. Sometimes he is an "informed" layman.

I'm not arguing for all laymen to be dismissed. I'm arguing that when the EPA did not treat this layman the same way it treated its climate scientists, it did the right thing.

This guy can still champion his argument against global warming through channels both official and unofficial.

Also, since WWII, we've taken on the role of keeping our allies safe from our enemies.

I don't want to be the world's policeman. Do you? There's a word for countries in history that have believed they had custodianship over the entire world: hubris.

So what if he did say it. What are you doing different?

I don't know what you're looking for here, BeachBuzz. My comment was about the insanity of hoping for a terror attack in the United States to achieve a goal, whether that goal is the defeat of the other team's president or anything else.

My message to Scheuer and the neocons who say the same kind of thing: If you're [rooting for|hoping for|looking for the silver lining in] another 9/11, you've lost whatever argument you were trying to make. Thanks for playing.

Obama's ghost writer? I can't believe that's still going around.

Is that not still on their agenda?

It is, but there's a lot of fear they won't give us a public option, just more incremental BS that's packed in a 10,000-page bill written at the last second with goodies for every lobbyist within 100 miles of DC.

I agree Rcade. But how does it get paid for?

Make everybody pay and we share the risk. If the rich want better care than the government plan provides they can buy it themselves.

I'd love to take the $1,000+ a month I'm paying for crappy health care from an insurer who'd love to drop me if I get sick and pay it in taxes for universal health care.