The Harper's article was great fun, thanks!

There's a link on that page to another similar letter from Philip Roth, which I also found quite enjoyable.

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/06/hbc-90003045

Great links. I especially like the animal intelligence article.

Once again though, The NYT, Dems and Krugman miss the mark where it concerns universal "care". Once again, I cannot tell, from sentence to sentence, when he's talking about "care" and when he's talking about "insurance". You can be insured and have the care not forthcoming.

It turns out (according to Jim Hightower's investigative reporting) that 2/3 of those with insurance are bankrupted anyway, when faced with an episode involving a critical care emergency.

The best bet in this country still appears to be to have a circle of people that you trust, who you can give all your assets to(including your house) - on a moment's notice... presuming your remaining mortgage can be financed with your other remaining assets... declare bankruptcy... and throw yourself on the mercy of emergency care.

Same is true where it concerns end of life care. Medicaid does not pay for assisted living expenses, and (if you're lucky) you will eventually need assisted living services. What it does pay for is indigent care, so the first thing you will need to do is become indigent.

The thing that galls me most about the discussion is how it equates a solution to our crisis as mandating insurance for everyone... and calls this universal "care". It's absolute horseshit.

The only solution, as I see it, is to eliminate the middleman - and pay for health care out of the general fund, like every other advanced nation does. Insuring additional care could be done on TOP of that (which is what rich people do everywhere), but the foundation necessarily needs to be paid through a general tax structure. This eliminates insurance claims adjusters and personnel in clinics, private offices, and cooperatives that must continually fight with the adjusters (who second-guess medical decisions)... in other words, it eliminates the administrative overhead on both sides -- the real reason our costs are so unacceptably high. (it's personnel, boobies, not the great tech we have).

Cheaper solution (as both major parties are selling us down the river, with people in the media like Krugman helping): emigrate.

I missed the faith-debate because it's not one of my issues for this campaign. As I mentioned here:

The president is elected to defend the constitution, not faith. God — if such a thing exists — presumably requires no defense, but the constitution does, as we have seen over these past 8 years of repeated assaults upon it.