Perhaps because you can't do something as morally obvious, as admitting that Hilary lies.

Spence, she flip-flopped many times on the cause of the Benghazi attack. You chalk it all up to fog of war, and conflicting reports. That may be. But boy, isn't it interesting that in every private conversation, she seemed to admit it was terrorism, and in every public statement, she relied on the video protest theory (and therefore, the attack was spontaneous and not in any way her fault).

Now, it's possible, that every time she was about to have a private conversation, she got a report saying that it was terrorism. And then just before each scheduled public statement, those same intelligence folks said to her "look, we know we just told you it was terrorism, but forget that, now we believe it was a video protest, so we want you to go with that".

That's certainly possible. But I asked you several times for some kind of timeline (who briefed her, and when) to support that notion. And you provided zip. So it appears you are accepting her explanation without any skepticism.

How fortunate for her, that every time the intelligence community told her what the cause was, it worked out in such a way that every time she made a public statement, she was reporting that she was not to blame.

We should all be so lucky.

You sure throw out a lot of "every" for someone who can't even piece together a basic timeline on their own.

Paul S, yes, white supremcists will endorse Trump.

And Al Sharpton (who has been to the White House more times than the tour guides) will endorse Hilary. Al Sharpton has innocent blood on his hands, in at least one case his hateful, race-baiting incited a riot that led to a completely innocent Jew being stabbed to death. Google Crown Heights, Freddys Fashion Mart (where after Sharpton got the mob sufficiently crazed, someone set fire to a store rented by a Jew, I think 6 or 7 were killed).

If we are going to hold Trump responsible for everyone who endorses him, let's do the same for Obama and Hilary, correct?

Trump is an ass. But let's hold everyone to the same scrutiny. Fair enough?

The GOP is imploding and Jim's throwing the "Freddy's Fashion Mart" card.

That's the best you can respond with?

You were the one, not me, who said that her flip-flopping was not self-serving deceit, but rather, her innocently responding to conflicting intelligence. Do you deny saying that?

Sure I can. In a private call to Chelsea, and in a private call to the leader of Egypt, she said it was terrorism. In between, and certainly afte, she (and her staff) said it was a video protest.

We're 'imploding"? We control both houses of Congress, and a large majority of governorships and state legislatures. If you call that "imploding", what do you call what's happening on your side?

Yes, Freddy's Fashion Mart. I tend to be an irrational stickler about trivial little things, such as 7 innocent people (it was 7) who were burned to death, after Sharpton worked the crowd into a racist mob. I know, i know, I shouldn't obsess over such insignificant, trivial things!

Every democratic presidential candidate of our generation is forced to kneel before Sharpton and kiss his ring. That's more than sufficient evidence to tell me that somethging is terribly, horribly amiss on your side.

What does Al Sharpton have to do with any of this?

More than any of your comments.

I think the GOP was declared dead for a generation shortly after the election of Obama...... but then proceeded to dominate national and local elections

it's your whacked perspective :rollem:

You're on a roll today. Why so pithy?

Let's see... The liberals here are bashing Trump for the fact that David Duke endorsed him. My point, and it's valid, is that if Trump is to be criticized for getting Duke's endorsement, then we should criticize Obama as well. Because not only did Sharpton endorse Obama, he has been to the White House 100 times.

If Trump were to get elected, I doubt he would rely on David Duke for counsel on race relations. But that's exactly what Obama has done with the pig Sharpton.

Do you ever, and I mean ever, concede that conservatives have a valid point?

Quote Spence: "So I'm watching the republican front-runners on the stump this week. Primary campaign issues appear to be bottled water, spray tans, pathological dishonesty and hand size.

WTF is wrong with the GOP?" End quote.

There are more important "issues" being addressed in the Repub. primary than you portray. But reducing the campaign to your parody dismisses them to your version of nonsense.

Jim says you're better than that. What's wrong with you?

Sometimes I use your style.

i don't have a problem so much with the endorsement (anyone can endorse someone) as much as Trump's not disavowing it until people got on him. And then his asinine comments that he didn't know who Duke was or what white supremacy is. That either shows he is a liar or really stupid (I suspect the former).

To your point about Sharpton. He speaks out when he sees (or thinks he sees discrimination). And when he speaks, he says stupid stuff. That stupid stuff overwhelms any valid points he may have so that his message is lost. I don’t really recall he had a part of the crown heights incident but know a lot about the Tawana Brawley mess. The KKK killed 0,000s of blacks. So while not the best analogy, I can see how people can make it. I think Obama has Sharpton to the WH to pay lip service (can't wait to see comments on that one) to him and thus the Black community.

Edit - just saw on CNN a Medal of Honor ceremony honoring a Seal Team 6 member for rescuing a hostage. I'm sure you would have enjoyed watching that.

This is really good.

https://www.facebook.com/LastWeekTon...93596/?fref=nf

There you have it. He disavowed Duke's support. But Duke's vote will count anyway. Happy now.

Tell me what the Democrats do for Black people.
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"i don't have a problem so much with the endorsement (anyone can endorse someone) as much as Trump's not disavowing it until people got on him. "

That's 100% fair.

"{I don’t really recall he had a part of the crown heights incident "

A car driven by white Jews in NYC was sideswiped, pushed onto the sidewalk, where it killed a young black boy. A mob appeared to be threatening the driver of the car (who cares that he got smashed into, and that's why he ended up on the sidewalk), so he was escorted out of there. Sharpton got everyone worked up about how the Jews are out to kill the blacks, and after they were foamong at the mouth, one of them walked up to the nearest white person and stabbed them to death.

Look up the incident at Freddys.. 7 innnocent pepole burned alive.

Look, I'm not saying Sharpton is the moral equivalent of the Klan. But he's got innocent blood on his hands, stemming from racial hatred. And every single Democratic candidate feels the need to suck up to him, and Obama calls him into the White House all the time. That should be disturbing to anyone.

"I think Obama has Sharpton to the WH to pay lip service (can't wait to see comments on that one) to him and thus the Black community"

It's cowardly. You can respect blacks by inviting someone else to teh White House, anyone else. By inviting him constantky, Obama is legitimizing Sharpton. He doesn't deserve legitimacy, he deserves to ba called out for what he is. That's what leadership is.

"just saw on CNN a Medal of Honor ceremony honoring a Seal Team 6 member for rescuing a hostage. I'm sure you would have enjoyed watching that"

Thanks! I read about it this AM, I didn't know it was SEAL team 6, I knew it was a Seal. I hope th edoctor they saved goes on to live a rich, fulfilling life. One SEAL was killed in that raid. You don't hear about hand-to-hand combat every day in modern warfare...Awful stuff.

They cripple them for life, a form of cultural genocide, by destroying their desire to succeed, and getting them addicted to welfare. I htink it was Lyndon Johnson who said "if we give these 'people' (he used the n-word) some free stuff, they'll vote for us for a hundred years. "

I cannot help but wonder if Democrats do this deliberately. The evidence of cultural destruction is so overwhelming, I don't see how any well-meaning person could fail to acknowledge it, unless the cultural destruction is actually the goal.

They show some compassion for those that need a helping hand.

How is that?

What do Repub. do for Black people?

Let's see...they ended slavery...then, they ended segregation...we would prefer to see black babies being born to seeing them slaughtered by the thousands...today, they want to help black people improve themselves, rather than expecting them to merely postpone death while living on $500 a month.

Here's what I don't get. Bill Clinton is a hero to blacks. Am I the only one who remembers what he actually did? He kicked millions of them off welfare. They didn't starve, they went back to work. Which, if you are able to work, is what you need.

Paul, it looks to me, that what the Dems do, is pat blacks on the head (no matter what they do) and say "there, there, it's not your fault".

Republicans (as a group) have no problem helping blacks. The difference, is that conservatives seem to get the idea, that sometimes saying "no" is the best answer, and that tough love is still love.

Oh, the other thing that Dems do, is (1) ruin urban schools, and then (2) deny black parents the ability to choose to send their kids to schools that actually work.

Which is funny, because don't liberals pride themselves as being "pro-choice"? I'm fairly certain I heard that somewhere. Apparently, not when it comes to being able to choose a better school for their kids.

And if you think your side has a monopoly on that compassion, please look up a study called "Who Really Cares", which showed that conservatives are actually slightly more charitable than liberals, despite earning less money on average. Interesting. If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe the New York Times, not always known for having a conservative bias...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/op...stof.html?_r=0

We've discussed this many times. Take out giving to churches and the #s are very close. My largest charity is to my church.

I find this election cycle fascinating. The sheer numbers of people voting for Trump and other GOP candidates in the primaries has dwarfed the turnout numbers in the DEM primaries. Most presidential elections are won by the party who can attract most of independent voters AND in no small part, the numbers of what I call uneducated/uninformed voters. The Dems have had a monopoly on these uninformed/uneducated voters for the last two presidential elections. Trump has turned that portion of the electorate around and managed to get the vote out for the GOP.

Agreed, it's very close, even with churches. I wasn't saying that conservatives are far more generous than liberals, so your pointing out the fact about churches, in no way responds to what I said.

YOU were the one who made th ecomment that democrats show compassion, implying to me, that you don't feel that conservatives share that compassion. That's demonstrably false. Unless I missed what you meant when you said this:

"They (Democrats) show some compassion for those that need a helping hand.

How is that?

What do Repub. do for Black people? "



The liberal policies that have been born out of that compassion, have been an abject disaster for blacks. Look at the urban areas that democrats have controled unilaterally for 40 years. Are they better, or worse, after 40 years of liberal rule, Paul?

If I asked you, or Spence, or Rockhound this question, how would you respond? Here's the question - please tell me what evidence there is, other than popular perception, that liberals care more about blacks than conservatives do? Seriously, how would you respond to that?

They can't Jim . It's a myth , like affordable health care .
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For government, law, to be dispensed equally, it must be dispassionate. Compassion is a fellow feeling of people for other people. Dispassionate government is not "other" in relation to a free people. It is, at least it's supposed to be in our system, The People. The government doing things for people is people doing it for themselves. That is not compassion. That is self-reliance.

True compassion, person to person, is not a guaranteed, permanent relationship. True compassion does not reduce the beneficiary to dependence.

When government acts, as it does in dictatorial or tyrannical systems, as a separate person in relation to other persons (outside the government), those other persons are no longer beneficiaries of the kindness of other persons, on whom they cannot permanently depend. Instead, they are reduced to dependents. And when government has the power to reduce the people to the status of dependents, it derives and maintains its power as a dictator or as a ruling class of people who dole out favors (contrived compassion) to those who choose to depend on it and withholds favors from those who oppose it.

I can't answer for them but the policies of the 2 parties differs greatly. The Rep. always blame the problems of blacks and the poor as being no fault of anyone but themselves and say "look at so and so. They picked themselves up from a terrrible beginning and made a success of themselves. Why can't Blacks do it". The Dems. try to help those people by funding pre-k, headstart and other social service orgs. Tough to become a success if you're going to school w/an empty stomach, dirty clothes and you haven't been read to the night before.

Studies have shown that someone raised in poverty has very little chance these days of raising out of the economic class they were born to.

I used the word compassion and you attached a link to a story about giving. Certainly you can have compassion w/o giving $ (volunteering) but a lot depends on $. People aren't going to give $ for someone else to get food stamps or fund a pre K.

Waiting for Buckman to respond. Maybe he can tell me a little about the pandering?

But medical inflation have been decreasing recently.

Maybe the Reps. will let Medicare negotiate drugs prices directly with drug manufacturer just as the insurance companies do. You're right is not affordable but that has been a many decades long issue.

New data released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that premium growth in employer-sponsored coverage remained slow in 2015, extending the recent streak of unusually slow growth. Taken together with estimates of current trends in Medicare spending released this summer, these data suggest that underlying growth in per-enrollee health care costs remains low, even as the dramatic expansion in coverage since early 2014 drives a temporary uptick in the growth of aggregate health care spending.



1. Premiums in employer-based coverage continued to grow slowly in 2015. The new Kaiser survey finds that the average premium for employer-based family coverage grew 4.2 percent in 2015. While slightly faster than the record-tying 3 percent rate recorded in 2014, this reading for 2015 continues the recent pattern of unusually slow growth; the last four years account for four of the five lowest growth rates since the survey began in 1999. The Kaiser estimates corroborate earlier estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Cost Index that showed that slow growth in employers’ health benefit costs continued into 2015, as well as results from a national survey released last week by the consulting firm Mercer, which found that employers have seen slow growth persist through 2015 and expect it to continue into 2016.

For government, law, to be dispensed equally, it must be dispassionate. Compassion is a fellow feeling of people for other people. Dispassionate government is not "other" in relation to a free people. It is, at least it's supposed to be in our system, The People. The government doing things for people is people doing it for themselves. That is not compassion. That is self-reliance.

True compassion, person to person, is not a guaranteed, permanent relationship. True compassion does not reduce the beneficiary to dependence.

When government acts, as it does in dictatorial or tyrannical systems, as a separate person in relation to other persons (outside the government), those other persons are no longer beneficiaries of the kindness of other persons, on whom they cannot permanently depend. Instead, they are reduced to dependents. And when government has the power to reduce the people to the status of dependents, it derives and maintains its power as a dictator or as a ruling class of people who dole out favors (contrived compassion) to those who choose to depend on it and withholds favors from those who oppose it.

Come on! When Hilary goes to a black precinct and she CHANGES HER DIALECT to sound more black, that's not pandering?

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Premium growth is slow because the product is worse . Look at your deductible compared to before the ACA . Your out of pocket is way up .... Unless of course you get it subsidized .

Looking at premium changes, without considering what's covered, is very misleading. For example, if my new policy requires me to pay a huge deductible before the insurance kicks in, yet my premium doesn't change, that's still a huge rate increase to me. I'm not saying that your study is manipulating that, but you have to compare the premium charged, with how exttensive the coverage is.

And Obama didn't promise that premiums would increase at a slower pace. What he promised, is that the average family would see a $2500 annual decrease in cost.

You're right that prem. growth has slowed bc of that. Companies are pushing more of the cost of the insurance onto the ee. either through higher deductibles or making the ee pay a higher % of the costs. However, the overall costs of health care inflation (called Trend) has been decreasing. The following was from the 2nd part of what I posted.

The Kaiser estimates corroborate earlier estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Cost Index that showed that slow growth in employers’ health benefit costs continued into 2015, as well as results from a national survey released last week by the consulting firm Mercer, which found that employers have seen slow growth persist through 2015 and expect it to continue into 2016.

Healthcare costs are not decreasing, though...they are just increasing at a slower rate. The trends are positive, but they are smaller positive than they have been in the past. Which hopefully is a start.

I only read/copied the 1st of 3 pages.

http://healthleadersmedia.com/conten...t-Not-Enough##


The health spending rate is slowing. It has been slowing for a long time in a very incremental way, but we are not able to declare victory here," says the director of PwC's Health Research Institute.

PwC's projections for healthcare cost growth in 2016 provide a mixed review of cost containment.

The good news is that the projected 6.5% increase in healthcare inflation in 2016 is almost half the cost growth of 11.9% in 2007, when PwC first started making its annual projections. The bad news is that 6.5% cost growth is wildly outpacing wage growth and is unsustainable over the long run in a country that already spends close to 18% of its gross domestic product on healthcare.

To put that growth in perspective, the overall rate of inflation in the larger economy over the past year was 0%. "You can see what I would call a little bit of good news, but not enough good news to celebrate yet," Benjamin Isgur, director of PwC's Health Research Institute, said during webcast detailing the findings.

"The health spending rate is slowing. It has been slowing for a long time in a very incremental way, but we are not able to declare victory here. It is one of those things where we are winning a few battles but the overall war of health growth is still there. In fact, when we compare that to our national health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product, over these last several decades you see a larger and larger part of our economy spent on health services."


That's not necessarily a bad thing, Isgur says.

"Every economy gets to decide what they are going to spend their money on, but as it rises now past 15% of GDP, it does call into question the crowd out effect. Does that mean there are less resources to spend on things like education and transportation? The healthcare growth rate is still rising faster than general economic inflation."

PwC says the key "inflators" for healthcare cost growth in 2016 are expected to include the rising cost of specialty drugs such as Sovaldi, the Hepatitis C therapy from Gilead Sciences; and cybersecurity measures to prevent or mitigate increasingly sophisticated and aggressive large-scale breaches.

Preventive cybersecurity measures are particularly cost effective, PwC says, costing about $8 per patient record, while post-breach measures, including HIPAA fines and customer restitution, can cost about $200 per patient record.

Cost Deflators

The key "deflator" for healthcare cost growth is expected to be the "Cadillac tax" on insurance premiums that will take effect in 2019. To avoid the 40% excise tax, employers are already altering their benefits designs to increase by shifting more of the expense onto employees. The percentage of employers who are only offering high-deductible health plans has grown from 13% in 2012 to 25% in 2015.

"We are starting to see more and more employees share in the cost of their health plans," Isgur says.

Again, what they are calling "cost deflators", are thing sthat cause premiums to decrease, not things that reduce the overall cost of healthcare. If my employers swithces to a high-deductible plan, my premium will go down, but that doesn't mean my out-of-pocket expenses will go down. So what's the value in knowing that my premiums are increasing at a slower pace, but that's offset by higher deductibles or co-pays?

Look at the 2nd page of the link for other cost deflators.

and since you mention the Cadillac tax (the implementatin was delayed):

It is a tax on the most expensive insurance plans to slow people's’ use of health care. It will lesson the employer sponsored tax subsidy that the vast majority of healthcare economists think cause the overuse of healthcare. It will hit a larger and larger % of premiums over time.

Business, ees and insurers won’t like that so insurers will be forced develop ways to reduce health care costs and drive harder bargains with providers. This will also likely mean that more health care costs are shifted from premiums to out-of-pocket expenses. That should encourage lower utilization and/or lower prices too.

Sadly I agree ... will the Right blame these uninformed/uneducated voters for the last two presidential elections. when trump gets to the white house due to them or will they suddenly stop being uninformed and uneducated voters and become intelligent just because they Voted White I meant GOP???

Wait . . . Hillary is not white?