Pooky

Money is why insurers exist.

It's obvious from the article the parents couldn't really afford the child to begin with, so what the hell they are doing having a third child, when they can't even afford to take care of themselves, is beyond me.

Cool. I can dig it.
Got you down to (up to?) -10.
(from -11, that is)

With that post, I think you're just a nut case

And Israel will still get the $3bn package. New sheriff, same Middle East.

No, let's vilify the union the teachers belong to. Teachers are most certainly not scum, but their union has no compunction in making them look like it to the public eye. Just a little difference there.

The points fight is ON!

We need cheerleaders - NOW!!!!

I do this every Friday, so you can chill and listen if you're bored.
If you love Hard Rock, tune in
http://listen.nuclearfridays.com (http://38.96.148.43:5118/listen.pls)
Playlist @ http://www.nuclearfridays.com/index2.html
and yes, it's me Been doing this for almost 5 years!

But illegal is illegal...I see no point differentiating between the two.

Many doctors think we should have a national health care system, but I highly doubt you'd give them much weight in spite of them being doctors.
Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) - 17,000 physicians, and health professionals.
Our Mission: Single-Payer National Health Insurance
The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $8,160 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 46.3 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.
This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

I couldn't care less whether mandating individuals to buy health insurance is constitutional or not. It's plain wrong. Private insurance companies are an inefficiency designed into the system and to feed such an inefficiency is simply inept, until you factor in the amount of money the pharmaceutical lobby threw into backing this Bill, after cutting a deal with the White House, when it smacks of being corrupt. Private insurance companies exist for one reason and that is to make money for their shareholders. This takes money out of the healthcare system and thus is an inefficiency. Ah, but pre-existing conditions are now covered, you say. That doesn't preclude insurance companies employing legions of "healthcare claims specialists" (I'm sure you've heard the radio ads), to analyse each claim in detail and generating a denial of coverage at every opportunity. The whole existence of private insurance companies is an overhead, and therefore an inefficiency in the system. This Bill just means the government is mandating we feed it some more and that's plain wrong.

Oh, boo hoo, blame the Republicans and everything's all right with the world. Even when they do the right thing you're not satisfied. What is it with Democrats on here being really sore winners?
And then there's the reason why people are angry and it really has very little to do with the Republicans in the first place. People are angry because their representative Democracy just had an epic fail in the representation department. No-one is arguing that the majority of the electorate wanted healthcare reform. But there is a hardcore brand of deluded people who refused to acknowledge that a sturdy majority of the electorate did not want the brand of healthcare reform that the Democrats in Congress just foisted on the American people. Fully 60% of the electorate saw through the mediocre reforms being offered and into the dark heart that was the greed of the Democrats, adding pay-offs, vote buying, sweetheart deals and opt-outs to everyone who thought they could get something out of this mess, just to get the damn thing passed.
I couldn't care less whether mandating individuals to buy health insurance is constitutional or not. It's plain wrong. Private insurance companies are an inefficiency designed into the system and to feed such an inefficiency is simply inept, until you factor in the amount of money the pharmaceutical lobby threw into backing this Bill, after cutting a deal with the White House, when it smacks of being corrupt. Private insurance companies exist for one reason and that is to make money for their shareholders. This takes money out of the healthcare system and thus is an inefficiency. Ah, but pre-existing conditions are now covered, you say. That doesn't preclude insurance companies employing legions of "healthcare claims specialists" (I'm sure you've heard the radio ads), to analyse each claim in detail and generating a denial of coverage at every opportunity. The whole existence of private insurance companies is an overhead, and therefore an inefficiency in the system. This Bill just means the government is mandating we feed it some more and that's plain wrong.
This Bill could have been so much more than it is, but the Democrats couldn't see past their own grasping hands to make something worthwhile happen here. Some people are angry because they never wanted reform in the first place, some because this Bill goes 10, maybe 20% of the way it needed to go and most because they see the corrupt, vote-buying antics that gave this Bill enough votes to pass and don't like what they see in their representative government.
Come November, any chance of developing this Bill could be gone, if, as some expect, the Democrats lose heavily in the mid-terms. Because you can bet your life that the Republicans will do everything in their power to strangle as much of this Bill as they can, to hamstring President Obama when he comes up for re-election in 2012. That's what you get when you try baby steps when you needed a long jump. Incremental change wears out the American politician, as well as the American public. Face it, this is likely as far as we get with "healthcare" reform. That makes me angry, because we're stuck in the middle of nowhere and if this thing blows up, we're all screwed.
So don't sit there and pontificate that the Republicans are to blame for these threats and rag on them, even when they condemn them, as they rightly should. The threats are there because the Democrats failed to heed, or simply ignored as inconsequential, what the electorate was telling them, in voices as loud as they could make them. From what I have seen, the American electorate does not take kindly to being viewed as inconsequential.

Washington, D.C.– Today on Capitol Hill, Members of Congress announced a new caucus that will focus on putting millions of Americans back to work. Currently, 15 million Americans are unemployed, while an estimated 8 million illegal immigrants are employed.
The Reclaim American Jobs Caucus is a 40 Member, bi-partisan caucus, headed by Reps. Lamar Smith, Sue Myrick, and Gary Miller. As the national unemployment rate stubbornly hovers around 10 percent, the caucus will work to highlight the link between illegal immigration and record unemployment in the United States.
“If the immigration laws we have on the books were enforced, we could cut unemployment in half,” Rep. Smith said. “American citizens and legal immigrants should not have to compete for jobs with those here illegally”.
“We need to turn off the employment magnet that draws undocumented workers,” Rep. Myrick said. “By encouraging employers to use E-Verify and increasing worksite enforcement, we make sure that Americans and legal immigrants are able to get back to work”.
“At home in California, almost weekly I hear from my constituents that illegal immigration is exacerbating the unemployment crisis and the facts validate their concerns,” Rep. Miller said. “Although 2.2 million Californians are unemployed, nearly 1.9 million illegal immigrants are employed. This is simply unacceptable and is an affront to unemployed American and legal workers. The Reclaim American Jobs Caucus seeks to encourage the Obama administration to enforce existing immigration laws so that the unemployed have increased opportunities to go back to work.”
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/read.aspx?ID=1315

Difference is that they're bigger by multiples of whole numbers, not just percentages.
Regardless, both parties need a swift kick in the head to get them to realise that this country cannot continue in this manner.

If it's not a crime then why are illegal aliens subject to arrest, detainment, and deportation for being illegally present? Clearly your description of a minor civil infraction does not mesh with reality.

I don't share your anger.
Illegal entry is not a criminal matter. It is civil.
Rudy Guiliani, back when he was still sane, made the point well.

Which is why I'd list India as a political, economic and military "friend" of the USA, specifically when it comes to China.
The Chinese threat to the North is a very good reason for India to find as many friends as it can. India is very pragmatic when it comes to world relations, being isolated from the post-war East vs West ideological split. But China is a direct competitor/threat, so India, who traditionally counts Russia as a close trading partner, is courting the USA. And the USA is eager to become as good a "friend" as Russia.
It's a funny old world, these days.