Written by: Beck

Blogger.com seems to be working again. Looks like someone had to go in manually and kill a couple posts that never properly went through. At least someone's on the job.

In other news, Bill Frist is speaking at the moment. This fact is primarily noteworthy because he's considered to be on the short list of potential Republican candidates in 2008. His speech thus far has been fine, but not especially noteworthy. His delivery reminds me of John Kerry--his style is fine, he's convincing, he's sincere, it's not like he's monotone or anything, it's just that he doesn't engender excitement.

In other news, Frist just called for the partial privitization of social security again. This wonderful idea cannot be pushed hard enough as far as I'm concerned. The more people are given free market opportunities for investment, the more efficiently savings will accrue and the less likely the government is to bankrupt itself as it becomes swamped by the mass retirements of the baby boomer generation.

"...our abused personal injury system, the abuse of trial lawyers... and we oppose those predators. [Paraphrasing] We must stop them from twisting medical service into a medical lottery where they hit the jackpot and patients wind up paying." I agree entirely, and this is another message that needs to be told. Also, it's a highly effective criticism of John Edwards who profiteered off the suffering of poor families and exploitation of pseudo-science and the ignorance of juries.

"You can no longer be pro-patient and pro-trial lawyer... John Kerry has made his choice, he put a trial lawyer on his ticket."

Update: Frist is having entirely too much rhetorical fun, and his speech has gone on far too long. The last five minutes have been entirely a repeat of points he had already raised, phrased in new ways in an attempt to be catchy. It didn't especially work, but it still served to get his primary messages across. Namely he argues that Bush is better on health care and that despite claims to the contrary, the Bush White House hasn't banned stem cell research, they've just limited government funding on certain specific types of stem cell research, and banned nothing.