And for those who keep screaming about how the Tea Party will never let him win, and about how much influence they supposedly have in the party, well - the numbers don't really reflect that, and it remains only a good Democratic talking point for now.

When stacked up against potential GOP competitors in a Fox News poll, there is more good news for Christie. He leads eight other Republicans with a 16 percent plurality among GOP respondents. In other words, Christie's not only shaping up as the most electable Republican right now; he's also scoring points among the party faithful.

bad lighting, bad color, and poor definition, terrible composition..
to mention a few problems..

Personally, and I'm sure it's no surprise to you, I'd rather that Americans were granted genuine freedom, which would mean they had a right to profit-free healthCARE. But we have "freedom" instead. Qualified, with an asterisk. We have "freedom" in the form of a convoluted system that is part and parcel of the government's inability, due largely to corruption, to simply do the best and most efficient thing for its citizens.

I'm glad you could sign up easily and pay half for now, but I just think we should be, here's that word again, skeptical. To give a brute example, were most of us here on TL cheerleading for the Iraq war when those Hussein statues were coming down that first week? Nope, it was the right who rah-rah'd blindly.

Additionally, it seems we should be wary for no other reason than right now there does not seem to exist any public agency that could possibly ensure hundreds of millions of Americans are not being gouged, are not the victims of chicanery on the insurance industry's part, that, simply, the law is being followed by these medical conglomerates, and where it is not that timely and meaningful corrective measures are taken -- and that penalties have actual teeth, unlike, say, those doled out to finance crooks. I mean, it does seem like that would require a pretty big agency of dedicated civil servants. So...this is what concerns me, that, just like supposed financial regulations, if no adequate mechanism exists to enforce the law to any effective degree, then what happens?

We know what happens, I just don't think we want to consider it. So we don't.

If people want to get for-profit health"care", fine, let them, but those who don't want this should also have the freedom not to have profit the first thing made off of their bodies and minds. Just the way I see it. But I guess it's the price we pay for living in a nation that values money far more than it values human beings. That is the only way something like the ACA ever comes into being, or talk about, say, Social Security cuts comes from supposed democrats, or democrats use that bullsh*t right-wing term "entitlements."

messy isles