The Hall of Fire

This is a long thread, and I haven't read all of it. For which I apologize, and I will do. But here's a question I have been wresting with. Can health insurance reform be done in a way--an effective way--that doesn't involve a public option? My own preference would be for universal health insurance ...

I am very sorry for the loss of your father, freddy. It's a huge thing, losing a parent. The world isn't quite the same place, after.

Thank you all for the warm greetings. I will make a proper post soon.

Thanks, then. Is there a place to talk about cancer? It's such a scary word, but some of us have to deal. I don't want to be tiresome.

I thought I might try to get involved here again. Hope that's OK.

Health insurance is one of the many reasons I am going to be staying in the UK for the foreseeable future. If McCain/Palin get elected, I will definitely living on this side of the Pond for quite a bit longer than I had originally intended. Oh, gosh. My son--who is flying to England tomorrow for gr...

Ethel - wouldn't you love to see Sixty Minutes interview with McCains first wife? I know I would be glued to the set for that one. She is loyal to him. He took care of her financially, and she needed that, with her extensive and ongoing medical problems. She's not going to be giving negative interv...

Also, Obama is just like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. I know this because the McCain campaign tells me so. Obama has been campaigning, in part, on "a different kind of politics". I hope that doesn't mean that he'll let this kind of thing slide. McCain is very vulnerable on all kinds of...

I am not advocating that we force any other nation to do anything. If companies want to sell goods that are not made in America, then we should take appropriate action to insure the safety, health and welfare of the American people. This power is found in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution...

Without covering all your points, Ethel, as fully as they deserve: I'll respond to your manufacturing post in more detail later, if I ever get a chance to catch my breath. (Things are crazy at work.) The US still has the largest economy in the world, and a significant share of it--I do not disagree...

solicitr, your post deserves a response. I'm not a huge fan of the cut-and-paste approach, but I will attempt to address your points. Eroding home values: I do not disagree that the housing market is undergoing a much-needed correction. I lived in California most of my adult life and saw a number of...

While I have no stats in front of me, I would guess that a good chunk of that 12 million who we hear about came here over regular border checkpoints but overstayed the length they were suppose to be here. The media loves to show the night vision cameras of illegals coming across the desert from Mex...

It is something of a frustrating puzzlement that indices like consumer confidence are so far below the actual economic numbers. Of course, it's to certain parties' advantage to pretend things are terrible..... Well... I think that declining consumer confidence probably has a lot to do with eroding ...

Oh, no! Not the Nazi analogy again! And yet what can you say when confronted with this New York Times headline of December 21, 1924: "Hitler Tamed By Prison; Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria." The correspondent explains that Hitler, once a demigod for the extreme ri...

I despair of ever reading enough of this thread to properly post in it. I apologize if this is redundant and/or tiresome... Voronwe--I am sorry for the unfortunate experience your significant other had. How very unpleasant. I was glad to see the Socrates quote in this thread. Saved me from posting i...

Yes, people who have foreseeably higher health costs pay higher premiums, even if the circumstances of their illness are beyond their control. So it has always been. This isn't true of the countries that have national health insurance, though, is it? If it is, I have not heard of it. My understandi...

I find it a strange echo of the Respect thread that people who are no longer employed are therefore considered not productive or useful. It's a cultural thing, I suppose. That really wasn't my point, though I suppose it's fairly close to Jn's. My point--perhaps badly expressed--was that in a countr...

I have to admit that this whole issue of how old people are just burning up the nation's wealth is a touchy one for me. I'm a little closer to the ICU and the electric shocks than the rest of you, you see. :( Not really all that much closer than I am, and you're Canadian, so I don't see why the hid...

It is the medical industry that has fought against this most vehemently, and I don't know why, to tell you the truth. Those guys who went into geriatric care when the government started providing respirators to an entire generation at taxpayer expense, they're all driving jaguars and sailing yachts...

There I'm with you, Jny- how many millions would have been saved by one well-placed bullet at the Berlin Olympics! Ethel: a fascinating chart- but the German equivalent would look very different, since they advanced on a broad front from Leningrad to the Crimea, not a single line of march like the ...

Now, let's bring this gingerly back to Iran. Is its leadership 'rational' on our terms? It's never possible to say any such thing with certainty, but bear in mind that these people invented chess. Deterrence worked with the USSR- during all the long years of the Cold War no nukes were launched, bec...