Specifically:

“Why did the President and Congress insist on reinventing the wheel when it came to health care coverage?”

Actually the healthcare reform plan was designed to keep as much of the current system of employer-paid insurance as possible.

“Weren’t there prototypes in Europe and elsewhere developed and used for more than 50 years with proven track records that could have been used as models?”

Indeed there are. And opposition from the for-profit health insurance lobby made those prototypes politically impossible in the US.

“Did the President and Congress have to terrify people who had insurance coverage in order to provide coverage for the additional 32 million Americans covered under the new law?”

The President did nothing of the kind, and neither did the Democrats in Congress. The terror is the result of smears and lies by the insurance industry, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Republican-allied Fox News.

“Couldn’t those without insurance have been attached in some way to the Medicaid rolls?”

In fact a major part of the healthcare reform plan is a tremendous expansion of Medicaid. This could have been the model for the rest of the healthcare reform except that it would have been very expensive, and would have been bitterly opposed again by the for-profit health insurance lobby.

“Why did the President and Congress sell out to the prescription drug companies and strip Medicare of the right to negotiate volume discount purchases that could have saved U.S. taxpayers more than a trillion dollars over ten years?”

This is a very good question and should be addressed to President Bush and the Republicans who were responsible for this outrage that was basically a massive subsidy to the pharmaceutical and for-profit health insurance industries. They also failed to pay for it.

“What rankles most for many, including me, is why have there been so few criminal prosecutions of those who are responsible for having brought the U.S. economy to its knees, destroyed the nation’s prosperity and caused millions of Americans to lose their homes, their jobs and a substantial portion of their retirement savings?”

It should rankle you, and it should rankle everyone here. Republican-packed courts have gutted the laws that used to make these kinds of prosecutions possible, just as they have packed the courts with judges that have made it impossible for Jonathan Pollard to challenge his sentencing and will likely make it impossible for Shalom Rubushkin to have any chance on an appeal of either of his conviction or his sentence. (Note that Judge Reade was a Bush appointee.)

Yet most commenters here tell us how the Republicans are so much better. Go figure.

Lieberman will not caucus with the Republicans because he knows he can never win a Republican primary. Connecticut Republicans had an excellent candidate for the US Senate in former Congressman Rob Simmons, who had been elected and re-elected in a very Democratic district. But he was too sane for today’s Republican party, as is Lieberman.

You knock the “tea party” (there is NO such thing as an actual organization!) for its candidates but you seem to forget there are primaries in each state where the candidates are vetted by us, the voters of that party. This year there are many people running in the general election who never would have taught they would enter politics but they found they had to run in order to change the socialist cliff this country was heading down under Obama/Pelosi/Reid and their minions.

On November 2, we have a chance to slow or even put a stop to the Obamatsunami of the last 22 months. We have a choice of voting for Obama and a continuation of failed socialism or we will place a vote for AMERICA. VOTE FOR AMERICA!!

President Obama knew when he walked in the door that he would probably lose Congress at the mid-terms. Most presidents lose seats in the mid-terms. Besides he promised more than he could possibly fulfill in 2 years so he was bound to disappoint. Therefore he did the most controversial stuff right away like healthcare, because of his veto even if he loses Congress next week it doesn’t matter they can’t revert his changes.

Lastly, there have been few criminal prosecutions in the financial crises because it it was caused more by greed and incompetence than malice and crime.

If he hadn’t made strong statements, nobody would have even heard of him, just like the other unknown Republican candidates.

I still think he has a shot, because of his universal name recognition, and because he is the only candidate who has stood up to the immoral Toeva activists.

Mr. Koch’s judgment is suspect on this issue, since he started the whole toeva revolution when he was mayor of NYC.