freedom fighter

The Liar Strikes Again!
By: Steve Benen on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/30/the-serial-exaggerator-strikes-again/

Rudy Giuliani, whose record for jaw-dropping exaggerations is unmatched,
apparently just can't help himself.

OK, Rudy Giuliani has just released an ad claiming that the survival rate
from prostate cancer is much higher in America than in Britain, thus
supposedly proving the failure of socialized medicine.

The problem is that his claim is just plain FALSE. In fact, mortality rates
from prostate cancer are almost the same in America and Britain.

So, will this get as much attention as, say, the Edwards haircut or the
Hillary laugh? Will it get any coverage at all? Bear in mind that health
care is a central domestic issue of this election - and Rudy has just showed
that he doesn't know a thing about it.

A Washington Post reporter recently suggested political reporters will get
around to scrutinizing Giuliani's whoppers at some point in the future. Now
seems like a perfectly good time, doesn't it?

-------------------------
AMERICA'S MARTINET: The DANGEROUS Candidacy of Rudy Giuliani

The mass media sometimes calls him "America's mayor." Critics label him a
dangerous fascist. Whether he's the alleged hero who "took charge" on
September 11, 2001, or the frightening face of a new American Reich, it
appears Rudolph Giuliani will carry George W. Bush's torch into the 2008
presidential election.

When Giuliani emerged from the toxic dust of the World Trade Center the
national media caught a quick case of amnesia, preferring the iconic image
of a "hero" over reality. They quickly forgot Giuliani's dismal tenure in
mayoral office, his life-costing failures to address the threat of
terrorism, and his sorry performance on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Before picking up the "hero" moniker, Giuliani was commonly referred to in
the city he governed as a despotic fascist and a mean-spirited thug. These
accusations didn't just come from civil libertarians either. Former New
York Mayor Ed Koch likened Giuliani to former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet. According to Koch, Giuliani "uses the levers of power to punish
any critic." Koch went on to explain, "He doesn't have that right - that's
why the First Amendment is so important." Yes, and by the end of 2002 the
courts had found Giuliani in violation of that constitutional pillar of
American freedom twenty-seven times!

More than 35 successful lawsuits were brought against Giuliani and his
administration for blocking free speech. In his book Speaking Freely, First
Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said Giuliani had an "insistence on doing the
one thing that the First Amendment most clearly forbids:
using the power of government to restrict or punish speech critical of
government itself."

Giuliani's disdain for freedom of speech is best exemplified by the case of
Robert Lederman, an artist that drew caricatures of Giuliani as a dictator
and depicted his policies as transforming New York into a police state.
Lederman was ARRESTED FORTY-ONE TIMES during Giuliani's reign, not by street
cops but police brass under Giuliani's orders, for displaying his art at
political demonstrations and on the streets of New York. All were false
arrests, as Lederman was never convicted of a crime.

In a similar fashion and again in brazen violation of the First Amendment,
Giuliani ordered paid adverti*****ts for New York Magazine removed from
public buses because the ads touted the magazine as "possibly the only good
thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for." Giuliani's response to
criticism thus often proves it was highly justified.

According to the New York Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post, now
New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer went on record in October 1998,
saying, "the current Mayor thinks he's a dictator, and does not have
sufficient respect not only for other branches of government, but also for
the citizenry and its opportunities to speak out and be heard."

Spitzer's statements, like Lederman's false arrests, stemmed from Giuliani's
totalitarian "zero tolerance" policies, which he claimed would improve the
"quality of life" in New York by punishing trivial violations such as
jaywalking, drinking in public, marijuana possession, and panhandling, and
even non-violations such as Lederman's persistent expressions of free
speech. Under this policy, New Yorkers were handcuffed and dragged off to
jail for peacefully drinking beer on their front stoops - the New York City
equivalent of hanging out on the porch. Marijuana possession arrests
increased by well over 4,000 percent. Arrests were even made for such
things as riding a bike without a bell on it and sitting on milk crates on
the sidewalk.

Giuliani's courtship of rogue police officers and seduction of the NYPD to
become his personal Gestapo began in September 1992, when he addressed an
angry rally of cops protesting then-mayor Dinkins's proposal for a civilian
board to review police misconduct.

It was a rowdy, often threatening, crowd. Hundreds of white off-duty cops
drank heavily (a violation for which, under Giuliani, many citizens would
later be arrested), and a few waved signs like "Dump the Washroom
Attendant," a racist reference to mayor Dinkins. Twice, Giuliani called the
Dinkins proposal "bullshit." The crowd cheered, and Giuliani was jubilant.
"Rudy was out there inciting white cops to riot," Mr. Dinkins stated.

As mayor, Giuliani's racial and ethnic biases and favoritisms were blatant.
For over a century the public use of firecrackers by the Asian-American
community for their New Years celebration, a religious and cultural
tradition, had been allowed. In 1997 though Giuliani lined Chinatown
streets with hundreds of police to suppress this, and even refused to allow
a permit for a professionally supervised display. The Christian equivalent
of this would be banning Christmas trees and decorations because they
occasionally start fires. Giuliani never relented on this. On the Jewish
festival of Purim however, when fireworks are used in the streets of Jewish
neighborhoods, the police continued to look the other way! They also
ignored bonfires set in Jewish neighborhood streets to destroy leavened
bread before Passover. Can you imagine the police response to this in any
poor, Black, Hispanic, or Asian-American community? Giuliani's lasting
legacy is that in New York fireworks are OK on Purim, but celebrate the 4th
of July with them and you can get busted. So much for "Independence" Day.

Eventually almost 70,000 citizens sued the city for such police abuses as
strip-searching suspected jaywalkers. In 1999 James Savage, president of
the New York City police union, referred to Giuliani's zero tolerance policy
as "a blueprint for a police state and tyranny." Under the guise of fighting
crime, Giuliani had thus transformed the NYPD into his own private Gestapo,
going as far as assigning two NYPD detectives, at taxpayer expense, as
round-the-clock bodyguards for his MISTRESS. This after his closing down
all the strip clubs on "moral grounds!"

Giuliani shored up control of the police department by appointing crony
Howard Safir as commissioner. Safir then made the department's Street
Crimes Unit into what New York journalist Nat Hentoff described as a "rogue
operation" that made "Dirty Harry look like Mahatma Gandhi." Fashion-wise,
the unit had a resemblance to Guatemala's notorious military death squads,
wearing "We Own the Night" t-shirts, and shirts citing Ernest Hemingway's
"There is no hunting like the hunting of man" quote - quite a variation from
standard issue uniforms!

This is the police unit that became notorious for shooting innocent African
immigrant Amadou Diallo FORTY TIMES as he reached for his wallet after being
ordered to show identification. When New Yorkers took to the streets to
protest the unjustified killing, Giuliani told the press that people were
protesting due to "their own personal inadequacies."

Hatian immigrant Abner Louima, arrested in 1997 on a minor charge, was
brutally beaten on the trip to Brooklyn's 70th precinct. There officers
took him into a bathroom where convicted rogue cop Justin Volpe sadistically
shoved a plunger handle up Louima's rectum, then forced the same object into
his mouth, breaking his teeth. Louima was hospitalized with serious
injuries, and stated that during his torture one of these sadists said to
him "This is Giuliani time!"

When Safir left, Giuliani appointed Bernard Kerik to take his place. This
is the man Giuliani also recommended to head up Homeland Security. Kerik
later pleaded guilty to accepting gifts and loans from businesses with
alleged organized crime ties while he served as police commissioner.

Some credit Giuliani's Draconian excesses with the drop in crime during his
tenure, but he just happened to be in the right place at the right time to
take credit for this. During this period crime dropped similarly
nationwide, mostly the result of changing demographics and better policing
methods.

Eventually the Giuliani-sanctioned anything-goes extremism infected other
units in the police department. When plainclothes cops asked a black man on
the street to sell them marijuana, the man, Patrick Dorismond, took offense
to being called a drug dealer and got into a scuffle with the unidentified
officers, who then SHOT HIM DEAD. Giuliani issued a knee-jerk defense of
the killer cops, telling the press that Dorismond was "no altar boy."
Salon.com pointed out that in fact he WAS an altar boy! Desperate to
justify the killing, Giuliani ordered the ILLEGAL release of Dorismond's
sealed juvenile record - for disorderly conduct! It seems that under
Giuliani, this justifies the death penalty. Giuliani's contribution to
Dorismond's funeral was a squadron of police in full riot gear, inciting
violence that would not have occurred without their unnecessary and
disrespectful presence.

Former schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, a one-time pal of Giuliani, stated:
"There's something very deeply pathological about Rudy's humanity - He was
barren, completely emotionally barren, on the issue of race." Giuliani's
vile racism has even been acknowledged by his successor, Mayor Bloomberg:
"You forget that every single decision [in the Giuliani administration],
everybody, every story, everything was always couched in terms of race" -
quoted in the November 4, 2003 Daily News from Vanity Fair magazine.

By the time his ship came in on September 11, 2001, Giuliani's approval
rating, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, had hit a Bush-like 37
percent. Hizzoner got downright weird, proposing a Taliban-style "decency
panel," operated out of his office, that would have the power to determine
what would be considered "art" in New York City. This came after the
debacle of Giuliani's failed attempt to cut public funding for the Brooklyn
Museum because he considered art on exhibit there to be offensive. He also
began having nightclubs lacking a cabaret license raided by the police for
allowing patrons to dance. And early in 2001 he ordered a city-wide ban on
pet ferrets, claiming there was something "deranged" about opponents of the
ban, and that "excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness."

In desperation to recover his plummeting popularity, Giuliani seized upon
any and every opportunity to appear the "hero." Despite demanding a
crackdown on speeding, his car and entourage were seen and reported in the
press as greatly exceeding the speed limit in racing to locations of
newsworthy events so he could appear there in front of the media cameras.

Giuliani's perhaps most criminally negligent if not malevolent pretense to
heroism came with his West Nile Virus hoax. This usually mild,
mosquito-borne disease is not contagious person to person and is far less
dangerous than common influenza, but Giuliani had the media play it up as an
impending disaster, and came on like a knight in shining armor with a
solution. His solution was far worse than the disease, and no doubt has
caused and will cause many illnesses and deaths, as did his post-9/11
assurances that the Ground Zero air was safe to breathe. He had the entire
city repeatedly sprayed from the air with Malathion, a highly toxic
insecticide, and completely disregarded the manufacturer's advised safety
precautions in doing so. Note that malicious intent is far harder to prove
in such environmental poisoning cases than when the police are ordered to
falsely arrest someone, or tacitly encouraged to brutally beat suspects or
shoot them to death.

Regarding the Ground Zero air and the many now dead or dying therefrom,
former EPA Secretary Christine Whitman has stated that she urged Ground Zero
workers to wear respirators, but that Giuliani blocked her efforts, and also
that the Giuliani administration appeared to be more concerned with its
image than the safety and speedy response of EPA employees in the wake of
the subsequent anthrax scare.

Jerome Hauer was the city's emergency management director from 1996 to 2000,
and is recognized as a leading expert on biological and chemical terrorism.
"Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now," Mr
Hauer told London's The Sunday Telegraph. "He's a control freak who
micro-manages decisions, he has a confrontational character trait and picks
fights just to score points. He's the last thing this country needs as
president." Mr Hauer also accused Mr Giuliani of failing to sort out turf
battles between the city's police and fire departments, and of appointing
inexperienced cronies to key positions.

Pet ferrets weren't the only ones to get the boot in Giuliani's New York.
Hizzoner boasted of moving people from welfare to workfare, where thousands
of people earned less than two dollars per hour replacing an equivalent
number of parks department employees whose positions were downsized. During
this period, 13,000 welfare-dependent City University students were FORCED
TO LEAVE COLLEGE and enter the menial workfare force, where less than six
percent of participants transition to real employment paying minimum wage or
more. In this we see Giuliani's cruel rewarding of riches and punishing
poverty, as if wealth and poverty were not inherently rewarding and
punishing conditions.

Mega-real estate developer Donald Trump described Giuliani as "maybe the
best [mayor] ever," obviously meaning the most profitable for him. However,
Ralph Nader called him "the oligarch's mayor." Giuliani took credit for a
high-end real estate boom while presiding over double-digit rises in
homelessness, cutting public spending on affordable housing by nearly half
and housing for the homeless by nearly three quarters.

Today, "America's mayor" lives and breathes a 9/11 mantra. Forget the
pathetic, cruel, even sadistic details of his tenure in Gracie Mansion; he
is now portrayed as an iconic American hero
- the "leader" we needed when George W. Bush was otherwise occupied on
September 11, 2001.

But was Giuliani really a hero on that infamous day of horror?

Just like Bush, Giuliani's failing political career was rescued by the
terrorists that attacked New York and Washington on 9/11. Some believe
these terrorists had help from within the US government, and even that some
within the government itself were the terrorists. To find criminals, one
must consider who most benefited from the crime.

It is strange if not truly sinister that Giuliani stated to Peter Jennings
in an interview that on 9/11 he had prior knowledge of the World Trade
Center collapses, but subsequently he denied and continues to deny that he
said this. Here Giuliani is caught in a direct lie - you can hear it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hNmf76GUCw More do***entation can be found
at: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_giuliani.html

On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because
Giuliani, against the advice of both the police and fire departments,
decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade
Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons
of fuel, in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was despite a
1993 bombing of the WTC, proving it to be the number one terrorism target.
It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of inside a
command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this decision also put
him in front of hundreds of press cameras, sparking his image transformation
into a "hero."

While our "hero" was posing for the cameras, however, there was no
communication possible between the police department and the fire
department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the
towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers
who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the
911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay
put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the
inadequacy of the emergency services' communications equipment for many
years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also
doomed hundreds of firefighters and police that were unable to hear the
orders to evacuate the north tower.

Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire
departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when
Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in
his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him
uptown. This "heroic leadership" effectively put the fire department and
police department brass in different physical locations with no
communication possible between them.

Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn't have any idea
who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the
police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was
running the shop.

A month after the September 11 attacks, firefighters took to the streets to
protest Giuliani's decision to limit the number of uniformed firefighters
and police officers sifting through the rubble for remains, and the "scoop
and dump" haste of the cleanup. They accused the administration of rushing
the cleanup at the cost of trashing the remains of victims. [And, it is
pointed out by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, to dispose of any incriminating
evidence as quickly as possible. The steel, some claim bearing evidence of
demolition explosives, was shipped to China and quickly melted down.] At
the firefighters' demonstration Giuliani, in signature style, ordered Peter
Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, and Kevin
Gallagher, head of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, to be ARRESTED at
the protest site! A spokesperson for Gallagher told the media "The mayor
fails to realize that New York City is not a dictatorship." Gorman went a
step further, joining hordes of New Yorkers calling the mayor a "fascist" -
which brings us back to the fascistic conduct issue that dogged Giuliani
throughout his mayoral tenure.

Giuliani often answers the charge by accusing his detractors of ethnic
bias - as if "fascist" were somehow an ethnic slur against
Italian-Americans. His charge itself, however, reeks of
anti-Italian-American ethnic bias, ignoring the role New York's
Italian-American community has played in local politics - giving the city,
for example, its most revered mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia. The fascist
charges do not stem from Giuliani's ethnicity, they stem from his own
actions and statements, such as:

" - FREEDOM IS NOT A CONCEPT IN WHICH PEOPLE CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT, BE
ANYTHING THEY CAN BE. FREEDOM IS ABOUT AUTHORITY. FREEDOM IS ABOUT THE
WILLINGNESS OF EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING TO CEDE TO LAWFUL AUTHORITY A GREAT
DEAL OF DISCRETION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND HOW YOU DO IT."
- Mayor Giuliani, quoted in the New York Times, March 17, 1994.

Though sworn to uphold our Constitution, by the end of 2002 the courts had
found Giuliani in violation of the First Amendment TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES.
Mayor David Dinkins, his predecessor in office, bravely stated that Giuliani
is " - a bully, mean-spirited, and he rules through fear and intimidation."

At reason.com/blog, one finds a statement by David Weigel regarding
Giuliani:

"This is the cornerstone of his philosophy: For liberty to thrive, you need
to dramatically empower the state and the legal system. Criminals and
would-be criminals should have less freedom in order for the rest of us to
enjoy our freedoms. This is the framework he's applied to basically every
issue - "

Who, we must ask, are the "would-be criminals?" Obviously ALL OF US, as at
one time or another everyone knowingly or unknowingly commits a violation
such as jaywalking, speeding, or drinking in public. So under Giuliani's
rule we ALL have less freedom, and the priveleged "rest of us" are those
that rule over us, the "dramatically empowered" state. Does this sound like
something out of Mein Kampf?

And you thought that George W. Bush was a dangerous tyrant?

When the lessons of history are ignored, history repeats.

Compare the following to the above Giuliani "Freedom" quote:
"State authority must provide for peace and order, and peace and order in
turn must conversely make possible the existence of state authority. Within
these two poles all life must now revolve...Ideas of 'freedom,' mostly of a
misunderstood nature, inject themselves into the state conceptions of these
circles." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

And an old but relevant news story:
Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20, 1934 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of the
German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's
assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler
in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The
result was expected.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Giuliani: Nasty Man - by Edward I. Koch, former NYC mayor.

Giuliani Time (DVD) - with David Dinkins, Ron Kuby, Wayne Barrett, Rudolph
W. Giuliani, Kevin Keating.

Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 - by Wayne
Barrett and Dan Collins.

"Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend" can be viewed at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCYEEO-58I&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Erudy%2Durbanlegend%2Ecom%2F

alan meyer

Leaving aside questions about socialized medicine and about Rudi
Giuliani, I found conflicting evidence about this claim, some of
which might support Rudi G and some of which might not.

The latest figures I could get were from 2005. The US had around
295 million people, and the UK around 60 million people at that
time.

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/prostate/mortality/#source1

reports (based on UK Office for National Statistics) that 10,000
men died of prostate cancer in the UK that year. In the same
year there were about 30,000 deaths from PCa in the US (see
Wikipedia, US SEER statistics, etc.)

So the raw rates are:

UK: 10,000 / 60,000,000 = .000166
US: 30,000 / 295,000,000 = .000107

The US death rate from PCa appears to be substantially lower.

If we look at death rate compared to the number of people
diagnosed, the US fares even better because more people are
diagnosed in the US due to the fact that PCa is detected
earlier here by PSA screening - which is not as often used in
the UK.

A BBC news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2077996.stm
also claims significantly higher survival rates for breast and
colon cancer in the US as compared to the UK, and says that 58%
of British patients are diagnosed with PCa in the early stages of
the disease compared to 70% of patients in the US.

There is some World Health Organization data at:
http://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/statistics/bodgbddeathdalyestimates.xls

The latest data I found there was from 2002. It claimed that
death rates from PCa in the US and UK were 12.1 and 18.6 deaths
per thousand deaths (I think - if I understand the stats)
respectively. The numbers are expressed in different terms, but
the ratios are similar.

On the other hand, I also found a web page claiming the death
rates were the same, but I can't seem to find it again to get the
citation.

The issue is more complicated than it seems. In the UK, death
rates from PCa are very high for men aged 85 and older. It may
be that age adjusted rates look different from the population
rates. If more men die from other causes before they reach age
85 in the US than in the UK, that might bias the statistics and
make the UK rate look worse than it really is.

The WHO life expectancies at birth for the two countries in 2005
are:
(http://www.who.int/whosis/database/life_tables/
life_tables_process.cfm?path=whosis,life_tables&la nguage=english)

UK men: 76.6 years
US men: 75.3 years


But at any rate (f****ve the pun) I'm not prepared to say Rudi G
lied. At the very least, it appears that there is do***entary
support for his view - indicating that, even if it turns out he
was wrong, he may have had a reasonable belief that he was right.

Finally, although I'm a Democrat myself and am unlikely to vote
for Rudi G., I find it unconscionable for people to make public
slurs against other people's characters while hiding behind
pseudonyms. If you think that Rudi G. lied, then you should at
least have the courage to say so under your own name. Anonymous
character assassination says more to me about the character of
the writer than of the person he writes about.

Alan Meyer
(my real name)

glassman

.......way way too long for me to read...... As I suggesed, just vote for
Hillary and be done with your Rudy bashing.


--
JK Sinrod
http://www.SinrodStudios.com
http://www.MyConeyIslandMemories.com

leonard evens

There are several factors which affect prostate cancer rates in the US
and the UK. One is that in the US, physicians took up PSA testing in a
big way in the early 90s, while in the UK and some other European
countries, this was not done. Today, even in the US, there is still
debate about whther or not routine PSA testing is justified. I think
the evidence does show it is effective, but in principle this should be
established by a randomized prospective study. There is one such study
going on now and its results may be forthcoming in a few years. That
might clarify the situation somewhat, but it is too much to expect it
will eliminate all doubts. The reason is that it is just very difficult
to conduct such studies for diseases with long time lines.

Recently, UK physicians appear to be doing more PSA testing and more
treatment of early prostate cancer, and I think there is some
statistical evidence that their survival rates are beginning to improve.
I think the same thing has happened in Sweden, where in the 80s
studies seemed to show that early treatment was not superior to watchful
waiting. That biased their attitudes against treatment. But more
recent studies have suggested the opposite, and treatment seems to be
changing with better results.

The place where Giuliani is misleading the public is in the suggestion
that this shows the US has superior medical care to that of other
developed countries. Overall health statistics do not support that
conclusion. Most of the usual criteria show the opposite. The US just
doesn't do very well in this regard, whatever the case for prostate cancer.

Of course, if you compare Giuliani's treatment for prostate cancer with
that available to an average man in the UK, I'm sure his care was
significantly better. But the care of either Giuliani or this typical
Englsihman is much better than that of any US citizen without medical
insurance. If you don't have insurance, you don't get routine PSA
tests, and if you do get prostate cancer, it most likely shows up when
it has already metastasized.

The whole discussion is also misleading in another way. The UK does in
fact have a socialized medical delivery system in that physicians are
salaried. It has not been adequately supported in recent years, and
medical care has declined. The closest US parallel is the VA system,
which has had its ups and downs, depending on how well it has been
supported and administered. VA physicians are also salaried, and the
system by and large fits the definition of a socialized medicine system.

As people repeatedly try to remind us, the US is the only advanced
nation without universal MEDICAL INSURANCE, and that is a different
matter entirely. In the other European countries, and in Canada, there
is a mixture of public and private providers of medical care, much as in
the US, but everyone is covered by insurance.

As far as the US debate is concerned, no US politician is proposing
socializing the medical system. Democrats, by and large, are proposing
making medical insurance universal, and usually by a mixture of public
and private insurance schemes. Clinton, Edwards, Obama, etc., in terms
of what they are proposing for medical insurance, would be considered
right of center in the European context.

None of the leading Republican candidates has proposed universal medical
insurance coverage. On the other hand, Romney, while he was governor of
Massachesetts, together with the state legislature, instituted such a
system, and Schwartzenegger is doing the same in California. (Romney
has since changed his tune on that subject.) I think the candidates are
reluctant to propose anything serious yet because it works better with
the Republican base to castigate Democrats as big government socialists.
But the public seems ready for universal health insurance, so it would
not be surprising if the two parties proposed solutions, which in fact
are not very far apart, in the general election.

maría

Your messages are political, US political to boot, this is a breast cancer
support group. Have you guys no respect?

As we say her in the UK can you please, PLEASE, bog off?

María

mary fisher

Well, while I sympathise with your first two sentences I'd like to point out
that we don't all say bog off in Britain. I've never said it and can't
remember anyone else saying it either.

Nor do I think it will be effective. Silence is the best put down.

Mary

leonard evens

How about comparing Giuliani's chances to those of Olmert, who has just
been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Israel has had a single payer
national health insurance system since 1995. Olmert's doctors say he
has a better than 95 percent chance of a complete cure, and his
treatment---radical prostatectomy---won't interfere significantly with
his duties, including upcoming negotiations with the Palestinians. I
doubt if Giuliani can claim to be better off.

Leonard,

You are quite correct. The issues involving the comparison of PC
rates in the US and the UK are quite complicated. An excellent
****ysis of this can be read at: http://www.factcheck.org/a_bogus_cancer_statistic.html

Ed Friedman

richbro

Holly Political Crap,

This is just a guess, but I'd say Mr. FF is bias.

Rich

elzee36

Didnt Rudy have seeds and not an RP? And I thought I read somewhere
that he didnt have an easy time after
his treatment.