for sure, but it got your attention, didn't it?

Some sort of major crash is coming, that's a mathematical certainty. (Read on to find out why.) When is a sheer guess since amid the cacophony of conflicting information it's very hard to get reliable info, but I feel that 30-40 years it will be full-blown.

Why? Simple enough...If you must, ignore the trends in population growth, esp. in underdeveloped places, the coming day of peak oil (which may already have passed), the looming problem of clean water (which is largely ignored but is most important --- people can live with little or no petroleum if they have to but nothing can live without water). The point is that while capitalism bestrides the world, its motive engine is GROWTH (as Club For...). More raw materials to churn out more product (and waste), more use of high quality energy (check out what entropy means) etc. for an ever-growing market of buyers and consumers. All the while totally in denial about the inescapable fact that the world is FINITE, which means that at some point, there will be no more growth at all.(This is all besides global warming, which can only accelerate the process, particularly in regards to water. Look at California today.)

What happens to the system then?

Obviously it can't continue as it has. The alternatives will be a re-ordering of how we conduct our business in some sort of rational, agreed-upon fashion, which might mitigate the worst consequences of the change; or a rupture, a human earthquake, unplanned and catastrophic and certainly violent, with death on a scale to rival the Plagues of the Middle Ages . Given the way we are so far dealing with the present crisis, against every hope and wish I have I think the latter is more likely. Sorry about that.

My brother has been a doctor (GE) for 40 years. I have asked him many questions but the one that sticks in my mind is: where does money go, i. e. cui bono. It isn't the doctors or the hospitals The answer is very simple and intuitive: Insurance companies, drug companies, equipment makers. There is also a drain of time and money toward non-medical staff who w o tk fulltime dealing with the incredibly Byzantine maze of the insurance system. My own HR person who has been helping about 350 people including retirees (I am one) for years admits that she doesn't always really understand how it works.

Now my main source of insurance is Medicare. I'm 69 years old and i ptite of drinking too much at one point and smoking heavily (not for 17 years now) my health has generally been good. But in the last 2 years I've had more medical procedures than in the previous 20, and I have no complaints about my coverage. Not have I had to struggle with a bureaucracy, except a bit to get information. To those who raise the specter of government bureaucracy I ask: would you rather deal with a government bureaucrat whose motivation is public service (even if the execution is not always ideal) or an insurance company bureaucrat whose stated motivation is to make a profit (and who therefore has every incentive to take the premiums and deny the coverage)? You deal with a bureaucrat in any case.

I don't expect to actually see single-payer health care in my lifetime. The "ethic" of sociopathic selfishness otherwise known as free-market fundamentalism is too deeply ingrained for that. But with doctors now pushing for fairness, and a looming economic catastrophe about to upend old attitudes, I could be wrong. I fervently hope so.

And let me be free of lawyers and dentists who are too stupid to understand the concept of marginal tax rates!

they first make mad, and the madness is hubris. Why do I keep picturing Cody Jarrett on the top of the gas storage tank?

This time I read one paragraph and stopped there. I'll spend my morning with Beethoven and Bach, and feel as if I've put down my last drink (which I did in reality 20 years ago). Bye bye, Camille.

You wrote "I do think that the GOP is quickly losing ground with the current demographic trends of the country, and that it needs to reposition itself."

I would amend that to say that the GOP has for some time lost touch with the NEEDS of the country, and must do far more than "reposition" itself if it is to survive at all. It needs a complete re-evaluation of its purpose, which has become --- transparently --- to cater to the distorted priorities of the obscenely wealthy, cloaking its actions in a rhetoric of faux-populism (of the Rush Limbaugh-Fox-News-New York Post flavor, with occasional dashes of Mussolini and George Wallace) and free-market twaddle. There has to be an opposition party but one that is relevant to the realities of the day. The GOP is not it,and it's not that fanciful to them to the Whigs in say, 1854.

The biggest difference between now and then, IMHO, is in the existence of mass communication that can spread a rumor (or a fact) around the world in minutes. Back then we had a vicious, biased press (on both sides of every issue) with no pretense at objectivity, but there was no equivalent to Lou Dobbs (unbearable!) or Glenn Beck (lunatic!) that can inflame and mislead millions every night.

AS for the Rush-ster, he will lead his dittoheads into oblivion within a couple of years --- perhaps into some batshit right-wing splinter of the GOP that can make noise (especially in the comment sections of papers like WaPo) but won't affect election results except in a few districts, mostly places that will wither from the economic drought that they have brought on themselves (cf. South Carolina).