They are, however, used as communication tools by those who conspire to do so. As are phones, emails, letters, and other such things.

We have terrorist organizations here in the US, and they need serious investigation. And some people in those organizations probably warrant arrest and confinement. Those organizations are largely on the far right, and have gone unhindered for far too long.

...to go back and look at the record of what anyone advocating our involvement in the Iranian question had to say about any other nation offering us advice on any issue or question at all. Let alone questions as fundamental as government and elections.

Something tells me there'd be a bit of inconsistency found there. Just guessing...

We are also a nation of people who look for "quick fixes" to just about everything, and this is not going to be a quick or easy fix.

It's going to start getting better, the rate of decline is already slowing perceptibly, we're just going to need a bit more patience than we have in the body politic right now.

And the 24-hour news hole does not help. Headlines are no substitute for analysis, though they are much more suited to the tastes of those with the above-mentioned short attention spans.

I'm a guy, straight but not a father, so it's all kind of abstracted for me.

The Saletan column logo, though, (just looked) is someone holding his own head away from his shoulders to look back on himself. Not a great piece of either design or draftsmanship, to be sure, but not a contorted, bent human with whatever a "hip-hand" might be, either.

The notion that "mandatory coverage" will be a solution is pushed by the insurance industry for one reason only: It is a welfare program for the insurance industry.

Universal access to health care, not "coverage" through compulsion, is what we need.

Don't believe me? Ask a Canadian or Frenchman/woman if they'd give their system up in exchange for one based on our model. Whey they're done laughing at you, they'll simply tell you "no".

It's what's for dinner!

...the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever.

Well, it certainly seems to be a popular request for people posting looking for creative services on Craigslist! Do this one for free and we'll keep you in mind for more work.

Riiiiiiiight...

Electricity or food?

High-end wild-caught fish as food, of course, not the commodity stuff. Still, if anyone thinks it stops here, dream on. We're going to run up against conflicts and shortages, first localized, then regional, then generalized and global. Food, water, we'll look back on oil shortages with a warm, fuzzy nostalgia.

Too many people chasing too few resources. Does anyone think that in 40 years or so, when there are half again as many people in the world, that things will look even this good?

...how the decline in ocean food fish stocks squares with the ongoing increase in world population. Add in rising sea levels and a diminishing supply of potable water in many areas and things begin to look...interesting, to say the least.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

We are only now beginning to see deployment and disbursement.

And anyone - anyone - who knows knows that unemployment is a trailing indicator.

After eight years of Bush-led, carefully designed failure, we are seeing deceleration in the rate of fall. Maybe even a bottom. Ramping back up will not be easy or fast.

And does no one else find it interesting in the least that those who spent all eight years of the disastrous Bush administration blaming everything from Bush and Cheney's intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to their underwear being too tight on the Clinton administration now seem to think that the very presence of President Obama means anything that goes wrong is his fault?

Why don't we call it what it really is?

Welfare for the insurance industry.

Insurance companies are not in the business of providing "care" or even "coverage" to their insureds. That, in their eyes, is the cost of doing business. That is why they deny coverage to people, even retroactively. Cost control.

Why?

Insurance companies are in the business of generating investment capital.

Without that simple truth being stated upfront, nothing of the rest of the discussion makes any sense whatsoever.

And the "insured" are simply in the way, an inconvenience. A hindrance, if you will, to the performance of their portfolios.

That term, which describes LBJ realizing that he'd lost Cronkite, and therefore Middle America, tells us most of what we need to know about how and why Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.

At his best, which was most of the time, he spoke simultaneously to and for America.

I'm only sorry that he saw how debased the art form he helped create has become.

The morons who voted in Prop 13.

Want to tell me again why borrow-and-spend is better than taxation?

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Peer review? Reproducible results?

This was Willard Romney's welfare program for the insurance industry.

Got that? Good - moving on:

Insurers are in the business of raising investment capital, not providing "coverage" - which they view as the cost of doing business.

The choice is between the government bureaucrats who may tell you your elective surgery can wait, and the private insurance bureaucrats who will certainly tell you that much like the vicar in the Monty Python "insurance sketch", no claim you make will be paid.

And now, the insurers and their cronies are launching and encouraging proto-terroristic mobs to disrupt public meetings. Wonderful thing for the credibility, that.

What was it in the old lawyer joke? With the facts on your side, pound it into the jury, with the law on your side, pound it into the judge, with neither, pound the table?