Or can't afford the rising costs of company health insurance programs, or didn't qualify because their company limits them to the legal maximum number of "part time" hours so they don't have to pay benefits, etc., etc. Part of the irony here is people insisted 15% of the country "chooses" to be uninsured and inflate everyones healthcare costs when they can't afford unexpected costs passed along to others. The mandate on the public prevents them (and hospitals and private insurers) "forcing" people with insurance to eat their inflated costs. Now the same people who rejected a universal healthcare program out of hand because freeloaders would abuse it are complaining that people aren't allowed to freeload off it. The bottom line is that they can afford healthcare on their own (for now... ) and apparently don't mind an unaccountable private insurer forcing them to eat the costs of those who can't, as long as it's not an accountable GOVERNMENT doing it.

No, everyone DOESN'T have money, even a little, and that's usually the disconnect here. At least the guy I used to work for who liked to say, "If you have more than $10 in your pocket you should be a Republican, " acknowledged that didn't mean everyone should be GOP. My mom still tells the story about my father walking with a gas can to buy a quarters worth of gas to get them home. Guess what: Most of the people in that boat still need healthcare (e.g. it took a doctor to do moms C-section) and when they can't pay they either do without or you pick up the tab. Mom also tells the story of how, a couple years before that awful socialist LBJ passed Medicare, her grandfather died of a clot because he couldn't afford his blood thinning meds. I'm glad I was able to make you smile all the way up in that ivory tower though....

Taxing people with no money builds deficits because it doesn't automatically reduce government spending, just government revenue. Cutting taxes while increasing expenses does it even faster though, another big problem with the unnecessary Iraq war in defiance of international law.

I wasn't aware Saddam had fired on an airplane prior to the invasion. He did target several with radar guided SAMs--during the Clinton administration, prompting the targeted fighters to destroy the SAMs and cruise missile attacks against the rest, along with Republican criticisms that unthreatening Iraq didn't warrant that expense. Five years later nothing had changed except that they had the White House and then demanded a multi-trillion dollar invasion, all while demanding tax cuts that they're STILL demanding despite resultant deficits.

The pretext for our Iraq invasion, once the case for Saddams involvement in 911 was exposed as a lie, was that he was his violation of a UN resolution requiring WMD inspections (i.e. violated international law). Sure, the US can become one of the rogue states at whom Bush liked to waggle his finger, but you can't invade in defiance of international law on the grounds the country invaded violated international law. Well, I guess you can try if you believe in picking and choosing which democratically enacted laws you'll obey, but it's incredibly hypocritical.

The healthcare bill doesn't FORCE anyone to buy anything, period and full reverse. Neirth of us like the law. That makes it unpopular, not illegal.

Right: We were forced to subsidize an inefficient and expensive auto industry through taxes, but not to buy their products, just as we're now forced to subsidize an ineffecient and expensive healthcare industry, but not to buy their products. Both suck, but both are legal. We always come back to this, whether it's Iraq, auto subsidies, healthcare or whatever: If you like the law it's automatically legal and any judge who says otherwise is a judicial activist; if you dislike the law it's automatically unconstitutional and any amount of judicial activism against it is not only acceptable, but obligatory. That makes further discussion pointless, because whether I, the government or anyone is right or wrong is wholly dependent on whether we agree with your consistent positions, and I believe too strongly in consistent ethics to be "right" at that price.

The whole "Saddam broke international law, so we had to break international law to uphold international law" argument is so much more revealing than anything I could say. Forcing me to pay for other peoples SUVs is wrong but legal; forcing me to pay for their healthcare, illegal. Once again, watching Republicans contort arguments to try seizing the moral highground is like watching a drunken blind man play Twister in the dark.