I don't think either the health care industry, whether we're talking doctors or insurance companies, are opposed to universal health care. What they are opposed to is being cut out of the deal and seeing their cash cow starved and as long as they have resources with which they can fight any change that spells death to them or their investors, naturally they will spend it...and unfortunately our political system is dependent on contributions from those with money...lots of it.

As far as public health and obeisity, I suspect the author of this piece and most of the readership are unaware of recent research that runs counter to the notion that it's caused by overeating "crap" but could indeed be the result of bacterial infection by specific species of internal flora and fauna which are running the show in our metabolism..and we all don't have the same.

We are on the verge of a revolution in understanding the human metabolism and no doubt will find numerous strongly held attitudes fall, but not without a enormous amount of resistance who despise others for their habits and then blame it on a concern for public health. As hard as it is to get people to objectively look at science and integrate it into their views, it's even harder to get out dated and wrong ideas out of their heads.

I think it's a good idea for people to occasionally take a good look at their most closely held notions and turn them onto their heads. You might be surprised at just how wrong we can all be on things that we know cannot be. Our health and happiness in particular benefit when we see them with fresh perspectives and a diligent approach to understanding new discoveries in science.

I'm sure you already know this, Glenn, since you're not one of those self-absorbed types on the Right, but over there they are saying the same things about the Left. Shocking to some, I know. Everyone knows the right hand and the left hand are completely different...just try to put on the others glove and you can see how wrong they all are...oh, wait, it's not a glove, it's a mitten, but it's still just not right.

Just joking, of course.

Perhaps once we get over the idea that we must all be the same just where "I" like it, and that "we" must all be different where I don't like it; maybe then we'll see that the paradigm of right versus left is a mere shadow of reality foisted upon us, or perhaps just misunderstood as most shadows are, though we like them cuz then we can overlook the details we prefer to ignore while we simultaneously imagining the monsters that are hidden in the shadows on the other side.

For once I'd like to see some pundit with profile pull the wool off of their eyes, by revealing that our world is not a single dimension with a right and a left but rather a multidimensional world with a 3D landscape plotted out along an x and y axis and with nuances even beyond that. Of course, right and left historically had nothing to do with big government or loving one's neighbor in certain ways, but then we self-referential americans are even worse at history than we are at geography and science...but we make up for it in religious fervor, whether it's worshiping gods or ideologies.

Google up "political compass" and take the quiz.

Excellent strip..uh, comic strip I meant...geeze.

In one breath we praise the prehistoric venus for our imagining its being a reflection of veneration of the female's magical reproductive capacity and fertility and in the next we condem it as yet another example of female objectification, as if they can't be one and the same.

More astute, however was the observation that something as mundane as nice shoes could be a turn on to perverted fetishizing men (as if obscene spending on shoes by women weren't some kind of equally deranged psycho sexual expression), and consider that the most reviled of sexual perverts in our society, men who would lust after infants and adolescents, can feast on all the visual gratifiers they could desire by looking in any magazine marketted to mothers! We are truly nuts...er, crazy.

Most are aware that prohibition under any other name is often counterproductive in many ways. Human desires for drugs regardless of harm is a powerful part of our natures and ignoring that is done at ones peril of looking foolish, which considering our emerging understanding of neuroscience and its refutation of the Standard Sociological Model, is making many psychologists look like babbling idiots in the face of scientific understanding.

I hope that whatever steps are taken to reduce the harm from tobacco, just as with other harmful habits, is conducted mostly by information and guidance rather than the heavy hand of regulation and restriction. As for taxation...well, we know the bosses or organized crime are just salivating over the prospects of this just as we know that increased cost will not really reduce the use of addictive behaviors.

The issue of lobbying is tangentially related to this because the danger is not just about tabacco's harm but the harm of lobbying in a electorial/legislative process that is so dependent on expensive media heavy purchases of advertising and the implied access that contributors depend upon...and are increasingly granted in return for their support.

I'm not an "anti-big government" type, but pretending that it's somehow being "handled" by various ethics committees and whatever other kind of eyewash we're given, doesn't give me much faith in the system. I'd rather have more freedom and more transparency even if it's disgusting.