I have begun reading The Children of Conan. The story is great. Characterization is great. The description is better than great. I was a copyeditor and copywriter in an advertising agency, and I have a few suggestions to move all of these great things forward at a faster pace with more reader involvement. Are you interested? Look for me on Facebook, Karen Moore-mrsmoore18018@msn.com. I tried to comment on the actual story, but saw no place to do so. There was also no place to comment on your post at the fan club. I tried sending you a message on Facebook but haven’t heard from you as yet. These are just such terrific ideas, they should be published and I know I can help you.

Karen

Too bad this book isn’t really a ghost story. Maybe then it would have been worth many trees losing their lives.

Firstly, using MSNBC as a source for unbiased news reporting is a little suspect; secondly, it clearly says that the people who were arrested were screaming during a session of congress; of course they were arrested. It was their intention to be arrested, and they should have been

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/12/1929527.aspx

The issue with the feds choosing winners and losers in the insurance market is that they can effectively price the insurance companies who don’t play ball with them out of business. The others will big fat cushy government contracts to pull the strings behind the scenes, with the top bureaucrats making huge piles of cash while people like you and I wait six months for treatment and tests. These aren’t talking points; they come from the actual life experiences of patients from overseas who come here to get tested and treated before they expire waiting on their national health care system to catch up.

In our system of government, the democratic republic, EVERYONE has the opportunity, based on their ability, to prosper as much as they can through the sweat of their own brows, NOT on the backs of those who through THEIR own abilities prosper more. It isn’t about luck, it isn’t about fairness, it’s about those with the wherewithal to lift themselves to a higher level having the freedom to do so without fear that the government is going to take what they’ve earned and redistribute it to someone who may not have lifted a finger to help themselves. Of course there are anecdotal examples of those without the ability to help themselves and of course there are ways and means to help them as there should be, but they can be and are dealt with on a case by case basis and the huge government machine that will have to implemented will only get in the way.

Nobody was a fan of the bailouts or the entire TARP fiasco except the people who could finally collect their bonuses, but that was an abuse of the system and we have laws setup to punish those who abuse the system. You and I will probably agree that the chances of anyone being charged with anything are about the same as Charles Barkley winning the Masters, but the point is we have the rule of law in place to prevent the abuse of power. We just need somebody willing to use it. What we don’t need is the federal government controlling the American economy and using so-called social engineering to force people to be “good”…the beauty of our uniqueness in the world is that here, we are SUPPOSED to free from coercion from ANYONE, especially the government. The “good” out number the “bad” (at least for the moment) and we Americans are the most generous people in the world. I guarantee you that if you went into your city and you found a homeless person, you could take that person to any hospital emergency room in your town and get them help, at least on a temporary basis. If decided to sponsor that person, you could help them for as long you could afford to sponsor them, but if they are of sound mind and they choose to live in the park, you can’t FORCE them to accept your help. That’s their right as an American to sleep in the park (provided the police don’t apply the rule of law and arrest them for vagrancy.) My point is if you wante3d to do that, to help that person, you could, but it is not the responsibility of the federal government to force you to, no more than its your right to force the homeless person to accept your help.

I sincerely wish I could disagree with most of your comment, but the fact is President Bush and the majority of the GOP DID spend more than they brought in, they DID pass the Patriot Act (I am one of the few conservatives who disagree with it – or will admit they do) and the way the war in Iraq was prosecuted in the beginning was obviously flawed.

I will not defend anyone on any side who with malice aforethought uses insults, threats or harassment on the blogisphere or anywhere, however neither will I defend a person like Ted Kennedy, no matter what anyone thought about him, he was NOT a good guy. I repeat, however, I do not believe that a person’s terminal disease is fair game in political debate.

Being a registered Libertarian, I want the Federal Government out of the lives of free Americans. The Constitution clearly leaves the government of the people to the people through local and state governments, limiting the federal government’s involvement ON PURPOSE. That’s the way it is supposed to run, and when the balance is right, we grow and prosper; when it’s tipped either way too far for too long, we get bloated and start voting ourselves entitlements and that obviously does not work.

When congress proposed a public option, the premiums were intended to come from individuals who signed up for a “public” version of insurance, rather than being forced to choose only from private insurers. I don’t see what the issue was with this plan. I would actually have preferred single payer, but anyone who wanted to speak on the behalf of single payer were summarily arrested and prevented from speaking at the various congressional hearings on health care reform, including doctors and nurses.

The rich do not pay their fair share of taxes. That is a fact. They have plenty of accountants that find ways for them to reduce their taxes. You mentioned that the rich pay 40% of the taxes. According to this site: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html, the top 1% owns 34.6% of the country’s wealth and the next 19% own 50.5%, summing to the top 20% owns 85% of the country’s wealth. The bottom 80% of individuals only own 15% of this country’s wealth. These figures have not changed significantly since 1983 according to the article. Pay particular attention to the chart in Table 3 and you will notice that the middle class started losing their wealth when Reagan entered the white house and it has trended downward since that time. Also, look at Figure 6, which shows the average CEO’s salary as a multiplier of the average worker’s salary. Note that it started trending significantly higher from Reagan on. The purchasing power of the bottom 80% has been decreasing for decades.

Do you really want to cry over the plight of the rich? I certainly don’t. I was no fan of the bailout of the banksters. The public intention of those bailouts was to spark lending by the banking institutions because many small businesses depended on that lending to continue operating. Well, banks took the money, but lending has not significantly increased. But they certainly found plenty of money to pay out in bonuses. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still paying for the mess the bankers made. What kind of twisted world do we live in when a good portion of the masses are protesting against the rich paying their fair share? You should take a look at tax rates over the decades. The current tax rate structure is lower for the rich than it has ever been and much lower than it was during Nixon. I think the Republicans like to practice revisionist history, but these are the facts. The rich are NOT paying their fair share. Our infrastructure is falling apart and a huge number of jobs have been shipped offshore. You might be against health care reform, but know that we are LESS competitive with our current system. Most other developed nations have health care provided for their citizens, meaning the blessed corporations don’t have to pay for it directly the way they do here — one of the reasons that one of the automakers relocated their manufacturing plant to Canada.