While the overall budget savings from this freeze is expected to be small, the WH thinking is that if the voters see that Obama is willing to deal in this way with the deficit, the public will be more open to cutting Medicare and Social Security.

So, apparently, the WH hopes that if they can fool the country into believing that they are tackling the deficit by enacting a freeze and cuts that may well hurt some people without actually making a real dent in the deficit, that the voters will then support the destruction of the two most popular and successful government programs we have.

A Democratic president determined to destroy Medicare and SS. I never thought I'd see the day.

It's a sad day for America.

I'm getting really tired of Democrats trying to out Republican Republicans.

...The fight is between Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five New York hospitals, including Beth Israel Medical Center and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, both major teaching hospitals, and UnitedHealthcare...:

UnitedHealthcare's demand that the hospitals notify the insurance company within 24 hours after a patient's admission. If a hospital failed to do so, UnitedHealthcare would cut its reimbursements for the patient by half.

UnitedHealthcare says the proposed rule is meant to improve the quality of care and cut costs by allowing insurance case managers to jump in right away. The hospitals say that having their reimbursement cut in half is too much to pay for a clerical error, and that the revenue drain would ultimately hurt their patients.

And THIS writer is very close to writing off O and all other Ds in 2012, to boot.

Ron Paul even looks better than the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue we all got conned into voting for in 2008.

If your benefits from the "compromise" -- or protections from exploitation -- can't be explicitly laid out up front, chances are they're not going to occur when the sun goes down and you're not around. (The voters still have muscle: uncast votes for 2010/12.)

1. Example one: Wall St. bailouts. They've experienced huge profits but not resulted in jobs. (Those would occur down the road, dunno, futurish o'clock or around then.) Bailout recipients just celebrated a banner year for bonuses and are "quietly" spending their lucre like bandits avoiding prosecution. Obama has asked the recipients of his largess to return, voluntarily, at least some of the public's lunch money or do more to fix the economy they broke.

2. Example two: Enough has been written here and elsewhere showing cui bono from health care/insurance reform and, more importantly, when. As I understand it from discussions here and elsewhere, insurers are up front and immediately being guaranteed protections for their bottom line, but those public protections are to occur down the line and outside public view. Meanwhile, Obama immediately sticks a political feather in his cap for "leadership" on a gutted bill. Congress critters immediately get to pretend they bipartisanly cumbaya'd forth a bill, any bill.

Facts on the ground: The more that "progress" marches on, the more flagrantly women are targeted for abuse. This rotten habit has become so acceptable as to imbue the flogger with a shimmering aura of moral loftiness for answering to some Higher Power for doing so.

Whatever happened to old fashioned self-flagellation? Even the perfunctory self-loathing a-la Jon Stewart for his fair-and-balanced attacks on "Liberals" -- B00by-having ones far outnumbering the schlonged and Obama hardly ever -- don't cut it here.

Since the Constitution has been riotously amended outside of due process anyway, I thought it was high time to attach a Jill of Rights and live by it until persecutors currently threatening women's lives by the millions show legal standing.

I'd use the S.C.U.M. Manifesto (The Society for Cutting Up Men) as a rough draft.

Participants in Jill can clean up the language in reconciliation.

I say contrived only because any semblance to a bona fide resurgence in the housing market and Wall Street indexes was ephemeral, designed to lull investors back into the markets for their next "haircut".

Side effects continue to plague patients like me. Now, as the FDA investigates, one expert admits, "We screwed up" (Lasik's blurry vision By Abby Ellin, Salon.com, Jan 25, 2010)

I'm still considering it but am surgery-phobic. Also, I grew so enamored of my prescription swim goggles for protecting my eyes during workspace refurb that I began wearing them all the time and kind of want to roll with that.

It is already better than it was before surgery, so that is good. I don't need glasses for driving,  outdoor activities (I think I could ski fine now, whereas the last time I went I had some trouble - squinting a lot down the hill), or going to movies or concerts, or watching TV,  that kind of stuff. Need them for computer and reading, but I'm used to that.