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The DM Register, and this is the honest to God truth, did a story on Gov Lug’s bureaucratic and costly scheme to tax pumpkins. Yes, that’s right, pumpkins. The Democrats have found a way to tax Halloween.Be sure to scrutinize the form the Democrats…

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Last night’s Democratic Debate in Philadelphia provided the most dialogue. Along with the YouTube Debate, this one was the best debate so far this election.

Here are my thoughts on the winners and losers of the debate…

Winners
Chris Dodd - He seemed the most presidential and stressed his leadership and experience. He successfully drew distinctions with Clinton and questioned her electability without sounding like he was on the attack. He mentioned the need for public financing of campaigns.

John Edwards - He pressed Clinton all night on her double talk on numerous issues and stayed on message. He made strong points against the culture of Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests and tied that to Clinton’s campaign. He had a great line about Hillary’s vote on Iran…

So.. to put pressure on the Bush Administration is … to vote yes on a resolution that [looked as if it] was written by the neocons? Has anyone read this thing?

So-so
Bill Richardson- He stressed his experience as a diplomat and his plan for Iraq. He probably gained points by taking the high road when he said Democrats are close to personal attacks on Clinton and we need to focus on the differences on the issues.

Joe Biden - He had the best line of the night about Rudy’s experience, but at times seemed to be in the background.

Barack Obama - He attempted to draw distinctions with Clinton, but seemed to feel uncomfortable doing so all night. Had a good line about Rocky, but stumbled through it.

Losers
Hillary Clinton - She was taking heat from Edwards, Obama, and Dodd all night on numerous issues. She really stumbled on the question about giving driver licenses to illegal immigrants and was called out on it by Edwards.

Dennis Kucinich - Made strong statements in favor of beginning impeachment procedures on Bush and Cheney and defending the constitution. However, he lost all credibility on the UFO question at the end of the debate.

During the post debate coverage, Chris Matthews, Howard Fineman, and Andrea Mitchell were amazed at Clinton’s stumble on the driver license question and how the other candidates went after her on her Iran vote. In past debates, the talking heads have always seemed to think Clinton clearly won, but not this time.

Matthews was obsessed with the UFO question and Kucinich’s response and kept bringing it up while interviewing Richardson and Biden. Matthews said the Republicans are the anti-evolution party and the Democrats are the pro-UFO party. Funny, but unfortunate that one silly question was the focus on a pretty interesting debate.

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The best line of last night’s debate was made Joe Biden, when talking about Rudy Giuliani’s experience to be President…

A sentence for Rudy Giuliani consists of “a noun, a verb and 9/11.

For proof, just look at how Rudy answered a question about aids while campaigning in Cedar Rapids over the summer.

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John Edwards has won the New Hampshire SEIU endorsement, which is big news on its own. Even more important for Edwards is that this means the 90,000 SEIU members from neighboring Massachusetts, where SEIU has also endorsed Edwards, can come to New Hampshire to help out.

SEIU didn’t endorse nationally, but state groups can help campaign in other states that have endorsed the same candidate.

This is the 12th state SEIU group to endorse Edwards, including Iowa, and includes nearly one million voters.

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Tonight we feature an hour of rebutting the first hour of the Dem debate.How silly will they get? How silly will I get? Get on board and find out. Add your two cents while you are hear.

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Today’s Tuesday with Ted will have a double feature.First, TRS and crew have been spending a lot of time on the phones and the ground lately. It appears that FDT and Huck are in the midst of substantial campaign growth here in Iowa. Last weekend’s …

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I wonder if the dog’s name is Cheney.

A hunter is recovering after he was shot in the leg at close range by his dog, who stepped on his shotgun and tripped the trigger, an official said Tuesday.

James Harris, 37, of Tama, was hit in the calf Saturday, the opening day of pheasant season, said Alan Foster, a spokesman with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

“He had surgery and is doing pretty well,” he said. “He took between 100-120 pellets in about a 4-inch circle to his calf.”

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George Lakoff, author of Don’t Think of an Elephant, wrote a piece for Salon about SCHIP called Don’t Think of a Sick Child that I just read. Lakoff makes an important point about health insurance.

Health insurance companies make their money by denying care. They maximize profit by authorizing as little care as they can get away with. That’s what all those administrative costs — as high as 30 percent — and all that paperwork are mostly about. It takes a lot of people to justify denying care.

It’s the opposite of the way the market is supposed to work: Make more money by delivering more product. The health insurance industry makes more money by delivering less product. It maximizes profits by minimizing care.

Profit-run medicine is not, and cannot be, full care. What is needed is patient- and doctor-run medicine. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is just that. Our children need care. Our doctors provide it. The government handles the transactions, period. And we pay a lot less and get a lot more, because there are virtually no administrative costs and no profits being taken by outsiders.

Profit-maximizing insurance, as opposed to doctor-provided care, forces the nation to choose among its children: who will get care and who won’t, who will suffer and who won’t, who will live and who will die.

Lakoff then explains why need programs like SCHIP…

Government in America has a sacred moral mission to protect us, its citizens. Protection means more than the military and the police. It means worker protection, consumer protection, environmental protection and Social Security. And it means health security.

President Bush warns us against “government-run” healthcare, which is anything but government run. In SCHIP, the government doesn’t deliver care, it enables it. It directs payments. Bush wants to leave the nation’s children — and the rest of us — to the mercy of profit-run healthcare. The reason we need SCHIP is that profit-run healthcare has failed.

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Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a big supporter of Sen. Russ Feingold and had hoped he had entered the Presidential race.

This story from a campaign memo emailed out by the Chris Dodd campaign caught my attention…

FEINGOLD’S ALLY ON IRAQ IS DODD

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has been a true hero in the struggle to bring an honorable end to the nightmare that is the American occupation of Iraq.

But he has not stood alone.

When the Senate has voted on questions of using the power of the purse to constrain President Bush’s war of whim, Feingold has had the support of most of the Democratic senators who are seeking the presidency. But don’t think that the front-runners, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, came willingly.

Clinton and Obama sent decidedly mixed signals early on.

Then Chris Dodd YouTubed them. Using new technologies to produce and distribute video messages that left no space for the leaders in the race to dance around the debate on forcing Bush to bring troops home from Iraq, Dodd forced Clinton and Obama to do the right thing.

Dodd, the Connecticut senator who is a long-shot contender for the party’s nod in 2008, used a YouTube video early in May to highlight his support for Feingold’s plan to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within 120 days. That video, and associated TV ads in early caucus and primary states, led Clinton and Obama, who had been wavering, to join 27 other Democrats who voted to advance Feingold’s exit strategy.

After Clinton, Obama, and Edwards failed to say if all our troops would be out of Iraq by 2013, I started to look harder at other candidates. Like Feingold, Dodd’s leadership on many important issues in the Senate has stood out.

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I’ve been hard on the nation of France over the years. But, I’ll tell you, any nation that elects leadership that will walk out of a taped 60 Minutes interview…well that nation can’t be entirely bad.

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