Peter is losing it already, just a few minutes into his interview. Peter is calling Thom a liar? Where is his counter facts that can be looked up then?

Kind of a juvenile way to debate too, just call your opponent a liar, and scream it louder and louder. I find it hard to take anything Mr Ferrara says as having any value, though I can see why the right finds him good as gold.

N

Here's a nice article on how the rich are paying less in taxes and the poor are paying more. Puts the right wing statistics in perspective.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/16/INIR1IV17F.DTL

N

re: Republican women being more attractive on those emails:

They always show Democratic females, especially older ones who don't wear any or a lot of makeup or a woman making a face, while they show professional photos of a handful of attractive conservative women who are heavily made up and posed for a photo shoot.

Anyone who gets one of those emails should respond to the sender with a request to see the Fox chicks in the morning after they wake up and before the fake hair, eyelashes and makeup are applied.

One more comment from me:

I'm Caucasian and my husband is Asian/Pacific Islander, and our son is exactly half of each. Yet when we have to choose a race on documents, what are we supposed to put? He's no more one race than another. When others fill out forms, they never put Caucasian for my son. I think it's inherently racist to assume that in order to be considered Caucasian/White you need to be 100% Caucasian because anything else taints the purity of the Whiteness.

By the way, my 11 year old son says he's half Black since my husband's skin is so brown. So we're all mixed up.

I only heard part of the discussion by the person who decried the influx foreign nurses and suggested an across the board lower level of skills. I believe that the nursing profession has the normal bell shaped curve for competence across all cultural backgrounds. If you look at one end of the curve it is easy to see significant difference from the norm. I have not seen research that supports the notion that the Midwest has faster turnaround in the critical care units. I am a 30 year + west coast RN and am familiar with the research that says higher RN staffing levels (nursing hours per patient days [hours]) results in faster patient response/recovery. California does have the highest mandated nursing ratios codified in the regulations. I reject his notion that the cultural backgrounds of the nurses imply less competent nursing skills. I don’t know if this comes from the tendency of nurses to “eat their own” the horizontal attack of peers in an oppressed group. I worked as an evaluator who investigated tragic and untoward events in hospitals and other health facilities. Nurses from all backgrounds are involved in mistakes which result in significant morbidity and mortality which are great tragedies. I do believe that cultural backgrounds can influence the way in which nurses respond to authority and seem to be less likely to assume the mantle of autonomous function and to confront authority figures; doctors, administrators. Many of the Registered Nurses of my generation with professional training have been encouraged to be more assertive and to stand up for their own professional evaluations and knowledge base. I believe that many nurses train in paternalistic institutions which expect the nurses to do what they are told. Administrators and doctors love those who do what they are told without question.

Constantly stated absurdity

When right-wingers like Peter talk about taxes they all use the same absurd argument...They refer to the IRRELEVANT side of the issue (percent of total revenues paid by the rich). Of course the number sounds large. But that actually supports OUR argument not theirs. Our argument claims that they have been receiving almost all of the wealth even though they are only one percent of the population. Therefore, EVEN IF THEIR TAX RATES ARE UNFAIRLY LOW, they contribute a large share of revenue because and only because they have taken such a large share of the wealth to begin with!

Social Security Privatization: I think it would be very intersting to have someone knowledgable in insurance, finance and economics to discuss what the world of privatized Social Security would look like. There are various options: all stocks, all insurance, annuities with no death benefit, surviver benefits, etc. The costs and benefits would vary widely. What are the possible/likely returns and expenses? What impact would there be on the market itself having trillions of extra money dumped into it? Would there be too much savings? Would it just overprice the market? Would the rich just siphon huge profits off from an over-valued market? Who insures the insurers? Do they ever go bankrupt?

Financial planners advise that you have a mixture of very safe investments and then others of increasing risks. And that you should make sure that you can survive on your safe investments only in case everything else goes to heck. Planners relied on safe, low return, boring Social Security as the firewall against disaster. Would a new, privatized, higher return Social Security serve that function?