Sorry, with respect this article is late and misleading.

Krugman/NYT did several columns that do a better job showing some of the problems with Obama's plan including:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/opinion/30krugman.html?ex=1354165200&en=10c0b95600d7e5eb&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

But Krugman's columns are overly polite. Sen. Obama's original plan had a gaping hole. It basically incentivized people to NOT buy insurance, i.e. with insurance capped and pre-existing conditions banned you could go for 20 years without paying premiums, then claim coverage and get the same treatment at the same costs as people that dutifully paid their premiums.

When people finally caught on to this gaping hole (although few in the media covered it) Obama blundered in the 1:1 debate by patching the hole with FINES. That is correct; under the Obama plan if you are uninsured and make an insurance claim you will be fined to cover the unpaid premiums. So, under Obama-care, instead of a big health care bill you pay the government a big fine. Gee, that's an improvement. Not. (Interestingly, Obama used a nasty hit piece in California that claimed the Clinton plan had fines, which I don't believe it does. Great job of obfuscation by covering his error by misdirection to his opponent, almost Rove-esque.)

So, the Obama fines are clearly nonsensical, but like his non-plan for social security (the first iteration was a $1 Trillion tax hike, which presumably he didn't mean either) it will never become law, so all either plan amounts to, is a great PR, a way to undermine Sen. Clinton's position by having journalists say, "There is little difference on policy so just vote for whomever you like better," even though that simply is not accurate.e. Obama wins with his core groups by playing the media.

After suffering from the indecision by independents to select a President because, "He's a regular guy. I could have a beer with him," that worked so well we're drifting toward another cult-of-personality president that's all hat and no saddle.

Sigh.

Good article.

I understand the new Airbus claims 80 miles per passenger per gallon in standard configuration, which extrapolates to roughly 120 MPPPG in its cattle-car configuration. The latter is almost Prius-like, although a Prius has a bit of trouble going over oceans.

One issue is how many people are in a given plane. Private jets are far worse than commercial aircraft. I did an admittedly crude calculation that Google Inc.'s corporate air force, stationed on government property in Mountain View, CA, creates more pollution flying its executives around the world than a city of 250,000 causes every year. Flying a converted 747/737 carrying only 20-50 executives with bedroom suites is egregiously inefficient -- and I'd say piggishly greedy.

When a Google founder had his wedding on Richard Branson's private island and hired over a hundred private jets to fly trendies like Bono and Gore in from all over the world, that one wedding created more pollution than a typical American family creates in their entire lifetime.

But, hey, Google encourages it employes to ride bikes to work < g. >

It will be interesting if the Democratic nominee is the candidate that lost decisively in the four largest states in the country, by over one million votes, and in nine out of the 11 largest states. I wonder if that would be a first?

So far Obama has lost California (by 300,000 votes), New York (by 300,000 votes), Florida (by 400,000 votes), Michigan (a dubious ballot, admittedly, so let's call it zero), Georgia (by 350,000) and New Jersey (by 100,000), while he trails in polls in Texas, Ohio and Penn, although he is catching up and could win the last three big ones. But, still, at this point Obama has lost or trails in every large, diverse state except his home state.

I wonder if Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the demo power brokers worry about that? The early polls said a generic democratic candidate would beat the republican 70:30, but there aren't any caucuses in the general election.

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Michigan didn't have a legitimate vote, so it should be redone in some fashion. Unfortunately, that might require another of those lousy, un-democratic caucuses.

However, Florida did have a widely-supported vote with all the candidates on the ballot, and Sen. Obama had a get-out-the-vote effort, same as Clintion. The voters had plenty of opportunity to hear all the issues through the national media -- and showed up in record numbers.

You can't tell the 900,000 Democratic voters (that's nine-hundred thousand, a better than 40% margin over Obama) that supported Clinton to have a "do over". It is highly unlikely that Florida would vote differently a second time, since Clinton's strengths in Florida were middle-aged to older voters and women, two groups that dominate the demographics there, continue to support her in other states such as Ohio and Texas, and likely still would a second time in Florida. If anything, Clinton's support by Hispanics would likely increase in a second ballot. A second primary would cost the state millions, and be inconvenient to the voters, simply because Howard Dean and the state demo's had a hissy fit.

Anything that changes the Florida outcome amounts to disenfranchising the 1.8 Million Florida voters that already cast their ballots.

Can you imagine the outcome if the open vote by 1.8 Million people was over-turned by a caucus with a fraction of the participants? Any caucus would only be seen as legitimate if it mimicked the vote's outcome, anyway. This isn't a sporting contest; it is supposed to be a democratic vote; the main point is to be fair to the voters, not to the candidates.

Remember, the only reason the Florida ballot hasn't been counted so far is that national party leaders, aka Howard Dean, wanted to whip the state party leaders into shape. Internecine party power struggles shouldn't trump the voters' will. Let them duke it out in private.