2parse/blog

Rachel Zoll, under the headline, “Pelosi gets unwanted lesson in Catholic theology” concludes with this scolding that seems directed only to the Democrats:

It is a complex discussion. The Rev. Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, has some advice for candidates who seek to join the debate: Stick to politics - and support programs that truly help reduce the number of abortions.

“It is a big mistake,” Reese said, “for politicians to talk theology.”

What I find amusing about this whole conclusion to Zoll’s article is that it makes exactly the point that Obama and Pelosi were trying to make. Obama said that deciding when human life begins was “above his pay grade” and Pelosi said that the issue was complicaed. They both wanted to avoided theological discussions. Now, Rev. Reese is scolding them for talking about theology - which is, clearly, exactly what both wanted to avoid - and is exactly what many on the right are explicitly trying to do.

[Image by greekchickie licensed under Creative Commons.]

Watching the Democratic Convention a few minutes behind real time (thanks DVR) and without having read or heard the instant post-speech analysis - I have to say, Bill Clinton gave exactly the speech Obama needed. And his performance tonight reminded me of why this man is the only Democrat to have been elected president twice since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Hillary Clinton’s speech last night was good - though it was clearly not directed at me. She hit her notes, and demonstrated how much she had improved her public speaking skills in the past few years. Bill Clinton today, though, managed to play to multiple audiences simultaneously - those disappointed in him for not supporting Obama; those who supported Hillary; those who had doubts about Obama; and those wavering on the line between McCain and Obama.

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Katie Couric interviewed Michael Dukakis today - the man who lost the 1988 presidential race to George H. W. Bush. The quote that makes the interview worth watching is from the very end:

Look, I owe the American people an apology. If I had beaten the old man you’d of never heard of the kid and you wouldn’t be in this mess. So it’s all my fault and I feel that very, very strongly.

H/t Jason Zengerle.

After listing the tremendous strategic blunders of the Bush administration’s neoconservative approach to national security and foreign policy, Andrew Sullivan concludes:

Insofar as neoconservatives do not understand this, and cannot understand this, they are a clear and present danger to the security of the West. Their unwillingness to understand how the US might be perceived in the world, how a hegemon needs to exhibit more humility and dexterity to maintain its power, makes them - and McCain - extremely dangerous stewards of American foreign policy in an era of global terror. They are diplomatically and strategically autistic.

McCain’s response to the calamities of the past eight years has been to compound them all.

I haven’t written about this issue before because it is not an issue on which I have strong feelings.

But reading George Weigel in Newsweek explaining that Democrats were ignoring science and theology when discussing abortion, and reading Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard explaining the Catholic Church’s consistency in understanding human life as beginning at conception - it’s pretty clear that neither of them has either the patience to understand or the honesty to write anything but hack opinion pieces on this issue.

The fudging is a subtle one - but one of enormous consequence.

When I watched Nancy Pelosi on Meet the Press, I realized that she had made a mistake:

REP. PELOSI:  I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time.  And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.  And Senator - St. Augustine said at three months.  We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.  Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child - first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester.  There’s very clear distinctions.  This isn’t about abortion on demand, it’s about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and - to - that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god.  And so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins.  As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who’ve decided…

MR. BROKAW:  The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it…

REP. PELOSI:  I understand that.

MR. BROKAW:  …begins at the point of conception.

REP. PELOSI:  I understand.  And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that.  So again, over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy.  But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions.  And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions.  That’s why we have this fight in Congress over contraception.  My Republican colleagues do not support contraception.  If you want to reduce the number of abortions, and we all do, we must - it would behoove you to support family planning and, and contraception, you would think.  But that is not the case.  So we have to take - you know, we have to handle this as respectfully - this is sacred ground. We have to handle it very respectfully and not politicize it, as it has been - and I’m not saying Rick Warren did, because I don’t think he did, but others will try to.

There are two confusions in what Pelosi said. First, although she acknowledges it in the end, she at first seems to state the the Catholic Church has not decided when life starts. In the past fifty years or so, the Church did make a decision regarding this - a decision that seems to be based more on politics than theology - but that is an issue for a different day. The second confusion was when she said:

…so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins…

The problem here is that she was trying to express a perfectly reasonable and true fact - but using the loaded language of the question itself. And in doing so, she mis-spoke - although what she meant is clear to anyone with an understanding of the science of embroyolgy.

If someone asks you: “When does rose life begin?” the answer is far from clear. Is a seed a rose? It contains all the same genetic material and certainly can become a rose, given appropriate conditions. But it lacks all of the characteristics of a rose - and does not function as one. As it begins to grow, it acquires more and more characteristics ofa  rose - the roots, the stem, the thorns, the buds, the flowers, the scent. At what point does the seed become a rose? Science can explain the process. Philosophy or theology can define the terms. And while making the case against abortion, pro-lifers ask: “When does human life begin?”, a more appropriate question to guide policy-makers is “At what point does an embryo become an individual protected by the law?”

And while Weigel and Barnes correctly note that the Catholic Church has always opposed abortion - there has been debate over what constituted an abortion. By acting as if making this point demonstrates how ignorant Nancy Pelosi is, they demonstrate their own ignorance - and, just as they accuse Pelosi and Obama of doing, they dodge the question.

The true rationale behind their political attacks disguised as recitations of unquestioned science and theology is to blunt the Democratic Party’s efforts to woo Catholics and other religious groups.

While Bill Clinton did not allow Governor Bob Casey to speak at the 1992 Republican Convention because of his opinions on abortion (a slight many Catholics still remember), Barack Obama asked Senator Bob Casey, the Governor’s son, to speak at this one. This Democratic Convention was inagurated with a prayer. An unabashedly liberal prayer. And Barack Obama speaks eloquently and from personal experience about his faith - while John McCain’s only story of faith seems to have been cribbed from Chuck Colson.

The Republicans are scared - and they are willing to use religion, once again, as a wedge issue. Although they seem to have no intention of overturning Roe v. Wade (Seven of the nine justices have been nominated by Republicans after it became the official policy of the Republican Party to overturn this precedent.) - the Republicans will continue to use abortion as their primary tool to get out the vote.

What Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have acknowledged is that the issue of when a collection of cells becomes a fully-human human being is complicated - theologically and biologically. This is clear to anyone who has taken the time to thoughtfully look at this issue. The counter-attacks by the Republicans have been misleading and factually false - and while they accuse these Democrats of dodging this issue, they have yet to make their case. Their attack itself is a dodge.

Jonathan Chait to Matthew Yglesias in conversation over at Bloggingheads.tv, discussing McCain’s lack of awareness of the number of houses he owns:

Chait: It’s right at the intersection of rich, out-of-touch, and old. It’s like the perfect -

Yglesias: Right…

Chait: …it’s in the perfectly overlapped center of all these things.

Yglesias: I actually feel kind of bad…

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

Thomas Hardy, in The Hand of Ethelberta.

[Image by oxmour licensed under Creative Commons.]

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno.

I just wanted to point out this McCain joke (told around the time of Chelsea’s 18th birthday) to all the PUMAs out there who have made a big deal about Obama’s disrespect of the Clintons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Outrage is not a policy. Worry is not a policy. Indignation is not a policy. Even though outrage, worry and indignation are all appropriate in this situation, they shouldn’t be mistaken for policy and they shouldn’t be mistaken for strategy.

Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state under President Clinton, Russia specialist, and president of the Brookings Institution, commenting on the McCain campaign’s and the Bush administration’s response to the Georgia crisis.

LENO: Welcome back, Sen. McCain, for one million dollars, how many houses do you have? (Jay laughs, McCain squirms and chuckles)

MCCAIN: You know, could I just mention to you, Jay, and a moment of seriousness. I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, without—I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a kitchen table, I didn’t have a table, I didn’t have a chair. And I spent those five and a half years, because—not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

From Ben SmithJonathan Martin at Politico. H/t Andrew Sullivan - who calls McCain’s approach “A Noun, A Verb, and POW”.

For pure incoherence, it’s hard to beat McCain answer. As a demonstration of shameless exploitation of a dark period in his life, it’s hard to beat McCain’s answer.

It’s shameless. I don’t think a parody would have been as effective at eviserating McCain’s over-reliance on his POW status.

In the past ten years, a Democratic consensus has emerged from opposing poles represented by Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, and Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton.

The consensus stems from a shared conclusion:

In the past generation, the American economy has been benefiting the vast majority of Americans less and less; and the trends that are causing this cannot be stopped.

There are many factors that have caused, worsened and continued to escalate this core problem:

• the demise of America’s manufacturing base;
• the increasing gap between the pay of CEOs and top corporate officials and the average worker;
• the way the tax code has begun to tax labor at a far higher rate than it taxes capital;
• the shrinking of organized labor;
• the increasing instability due to globalization.

All of these are the symptoms and all of these are the causes.

Our economic system is breaking - the middle class is being squeezed; we are transferring a tremendous amount of our wealth to autocracies and our rivals around the world because of our dependence on oil; budget deficits are burdening our government which now practices a nefarious for of socialism, only for the rich; globalization is creating insecurity; our society is becoming more stratified, with many traditionally class-conscious European countries becoming more socially mobile; our infrastructure is eroding.

Barack Obama’s answer to this - accepting the Democratic party consensus - is a mix of short-term and long-term measures.

• To alleviate the squeeze on the middle class as certain industries leave America looking for cheaper labor, he proposes to create jobs with infrastructure improvements and to push the development of a green energy industry.
• To aid small businesses and to reduce the instability created by the greater turnover in jobs in a globalized marketplace, he proposes a universal health care plan that combines a government plan open to all citizens, various incentives for businesses to offer coverage, and various incentives for individuals to get coverage on their own.
• With regards to taxes, he proposes tax cuts (graph) to those who need it and tax increases to those who have benefited most from our society - those making over $250,000.00.
• To prepare the next generation for the globalized marketplace, Obama proposes various improvements to education.
• Barack Obama is also the only candidate who has pledged to protect the foundation of the internet. (John McCain has recently come off the fence to support a policy that directly undermines the architecture of the internet since it began.)

For a more in-depth and reflective look at Obamanomics, check out David Leonhardt’s cover story this weekend in the New York Times Magazine.

Addition: What Obama and the Democrats have been struggling with is a way to frame this in a visceral way that can be easily understood. Here’s my proposition:

McCain and the Republicans want to give big corporations whatever they want - even if it hurts American in the long term. (Offshore drilling; telecom immunity; free trade without sensible provisions regarding labor and environmental regulation; tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy while the government needs more income; opposing the protection of the basis of the web, net neutrality, so that internet providers can make a bigger profit.)

Obama and the Democrats want corporations to do well, but at the same time, they want to protect American society from the destabilizing forces of globalization and to protect what has made America the most prosperous nation on earth - including a stable middle class and social mobility - both of which we are in danger of losing due to reckless Republican policies.

That’s the narrative - it’s not class warfare. It’s about protecting what has made America great against the forces of globalization, overly greedy corporations, and rapid change.

Read the rest of this entry »

The National Review seems to have come around to my position - that George W. Bush has made Obama’s candidacy possible:

My postulate is that George W. Bush’s presidency has been just bad enough to avoid destroying the core institutions that form the backbone of our society while creating a virtuous backlash that will strengthen these institutions in the long term. Bush has abused his power just enough, and aggravated festering issues just enough, and presided over a decline that was so sudden that he has created near ideal conditions to move the country in a positive direction.

Of course, Seth Swirsky thinks it was George W. Bush’s outstanding leadership and success which have made Americans “feel safe”.

On that, Seth Swirsky and I have differing opinions. The constant fear-mongering by the Bush administration has not made Americans feel safe. The colossal failures of the Bush’s administration’s War on Terror has not made Americans feel safer. The fact that the most significant effort to attack an American city after 9/11 was called off by Al Qaeda for unknown reasons instead of being disrupted by our national security state does not lead to confidence in the Bush administration. Of course, Swirsky write:

Of course, the Left insists that we’re no safer than we were before 9/11. But, until they come up with a number lower than zero, as in the number of attacks against us since then, that argument remains silly.

Is it really considered an “argument” to say:

We have not been attacked again; therefore we are safer.

There are so many assumptions behind that sentiment - many of which are specious; and there are so many alternate explanations to be proferred; and in fact, as the Bush administration and the McCain campaign have said - we will be attacked again. Doesn’t this undercut Swirsky’s point entirely?

The real point is that this is a silly statement used for political effect - and one which demonstrates how circular the Republican propaganda machine has become.

There will be ups and downs - and the path will be rocky. The Republicans will get in quite a few more good digs - and in the first two weeks of October, I will want to take this back, as the campaign hits new lows. And while over a year ago I decided that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States; and while less than a year ago, I finally realized that Barack Obama could be the next president of the United States; it was not until tonight that I realized Barack Obama would be the next President.

An excellent speech by Michelle Obama caps off a mediocre opening night of the Democratic National Convention. And somehow, in the midst of all the hubub, it struck me. I think many other people can see it, and can feel it too.

Andrew Sullivan compares and contrasts Obama and McCain in his most recent piece for The Sunday Times:

Obama is politically liberal and temperamentally conservative; McCain is temperamentally liberal and politically unpredictable. Obama is cerebral; McCain is emotional. Obama is reserved, sometimes aloof; McCain is a social gadfly and seemingly terrified of being left alone and silent. Obama wins press adoration but is not close to journalists; McCain is personal friends with hacks of all sorts. Obama makes plans and executes them with sometimes chilling discipline; McCain veers from one passion to another, winging it - and somehow pulling it off…

The difficult question Americans have to ask themselves is not who is the right man – it is who is right for now. After 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, as Russia reasserts itself, as Iran closes in on a nuclear bomb, as Pakistan threatens to crack apart and as the US economy teeters on crisis, which of these two men has the qualities needed to succeed?

If you believe the problem with America’s war on terror is that it has not been ambitious enough, or tough enough, or monumental enough, McCain is your man. If you think the United States needs to be feared more than it needs to be loved, McCain is your man. And if you think that the economic policies of the past eight years - specifically Bush’s low tax rates - are necessary for growth, McCain is the obvious choice.

The [companies] that are too big to fail may be too big to manage.

Warren Buffett in an interview with Becky Quick on CNBC, commenting on Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, and other large financial institutions.

Frank Rich in yesterday’s Times coins a new slogan for Obama’s campaign:

…[T]he unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell…Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices…

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

R.I.P., “Change We Can Believe In.” The fierce urgency of the 21st century demands Change Before It’s Too Late.

sweetafton23, also of the offbeat reddit hit, Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ on a ukulele, apparently has some of her own material.

Some sample lyrics:

The years are going by so fast - it really is bewilderin’;
and we’ll be so called ‘grownups’ and have mortgages and children.
I hope we all gain worldliness and wisdom and maturity;
but I hope most of all that MySpace falls into obscurity…

I hope our profiles all go dead, entombed in distant servers -
a monument to our youth, though lacking its observers.
Your page will be an empty shell when no one is behind it
I hope your MySpace stays forever …and i hope that your kids find it.

I hope that you forget about your MySpace;
I hope it slips completely from your mind,
and I hope it stays up long enough for the next generation to find;
and I hope that it embarrasses your children;
I hope their bratty friends all forward it around.
And I hope you forget your password so you cannot take it down…

[Image by SEIU International licensed with Creative Commons.]

In an email sent out at 3:30 am, the Barack Obama campaign announced that it had picked Joe Biden to run as Barack Obama’s Vice PResident.

Negatives:

• He’s been known to put his foot in his mouth on occasion.
• He was accused of plagiarism back in the 1980s.
• His middle name is Robinette. (Seriously, Robinette.)

Positives

• He’s been involved in American foreign policy for twenty years.
• He captured Rudy Guiliani’s essence better than anyone when he said, “Rudy Giuliani — there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.”
• He will attack McCain relentlessly.
• He’s a Catholic (and Catholics are a key swing group.)
• He’s old, with all the wisdom of being old.

Noam Scheiber over at The Stump saying exactly what I’ve been saying for the past two days:

You can let the suspense build and build if you’ve got a Hillary or a Gore socked away somewhere. Possibly a Biden or a Webb (or some unorthodox pick like a general or a Republican). But you’d better not come with Jack Reed or Evan Bayh after toying with people for over a week.

Drudge reported in big headlines that Bayh was the nomine based on these bumper stickers. But now, he seems to have bought the Obama camps pushback on this and is reporting that Bayh has been informed he’s not the nominee. Once again, Drudge is focusing on Biden and the fact that no one knows for sure who the nominee is.

Over at The Plank, Jason Zengerle discusses how Steve Schmidt and friends over at the McCain campaign turned Obama’s popularity into a negative:

…you’d think that his popularity - which is something extrinsic to the candidate - would be impossible to demonize. Sure, Hillary Clinton tried, with her digs at Obama for making nice speeches before big crowds, but those attacks ultimately fell short. It wasn’t until the McCain campaign’s celebrity ad - and the repeated meme in other McCain spots of Obama standing before adoring crowds chanting his name - that Obama’s popularity came to be viewed as a sign of his own haughtiness.

This reminds me of what Rick Perlstein describes in Nixonland, as the conflict between the Orthogonians and the Franklins that Nixon used to gain political power.

Just wanted to get on record before Obama announces his pick - my money is on Hillary Clinton, although the smart money would be on Joe Biden, and the real dark horse being Al Gore ((Because Tim Kaine, Jack Reed, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelious, Chet Atkins, and the rest of the lesser lights being too boring to speculate on.) - that despite my initial strong opposition to a Vice President Hillary Clinton (as demonstrated by this and this), I’ve reconciled myself to the idea recently. If it helps Obama win, I’m certainly for it - and as Obama clearly told the Clintons, “No.” initially, I don’t think giving her the nomination now shows weakness. Rather, by including such a prominent and powerful former opponent, it demonstrates strength.

So, now I’m on record - if Obama thinks Hillary Clinton will help him win more than the other candidates, then choose Hillary.

Yes, her connections to the past may muddy his “Change” message and Bill’s sordid connections may prove to be a distraction - but overall, she has demonstrated a political strength that could help unify the party and allow her to speak to groups that Obama has not been able to effectively reach out to yet.

And she’s a fighter. We need someone to take on this new Rovian McCain.

While the title of “greatest prank ever” remains speculative, experts from the Guinness Book of World Records verified shortly before press time that Obama’s announcement likely set the world record for the longest sustained silence from a crowd of over 10,000 people, at roughly over seven minutes.

Yup. (H/t Andrew Sullivan.)

The tension Obama has created by not naming a Vice President for so long is palpable.

Drudge is running the great headline: ‘WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW?’ with a picture of a laughing Obama.

Another suggestion from two sources: Obama could announce his VP via a text at 3 am, to show he’s still awake at that time.

Right now, I gotta say, the smart money has to be on Biden or Bayh, although I’m not sure why they would create so much tension for an anti-climactic choice.

[Photo by Steven Rhodes licensed under Creative Commons.]

Corporations are considered individuals by the law. Yet they have no conscience to guilt; they have no eternal soul to damn; they have no empathy, no compassion - no emotion of any sort; they cannot be sent to prison; they can live forever; their single purpose is to make money - and they are legally obligated to make as much money as possible. Yet despite the fundamental differences between corporations and human beings, corporations have been given all of the rights of human beings. They have the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures - and all those other rights we mere humans take for granted.

Is it any wonder then that all large corporations - once they are no longer the responsibility of a single individual - begin to act as if they have no conscience or compassion - exploiting legal loopholes and damaging society at large? Insurance companies derive enormous profit from denying legitimate claims and every claim that they possibly can. Oil companies lobby and erect barriers and do anything they can to eliminate the possibility of alternative energy sources being developed. Manufacturers externalize the costs of their pollution - spewing toxic chemicals into streams and lakes and the air and the ground - and after paying some negligible penalty, the government (with the people’s money) takes responsibility for cleaning up the mess. Big lenders and bankers take unwise risks that allow them enormous profits in the short term - and the American people then pay to bail the companies out of the deficits they find themselves in.

The companies survive - they thrive. It is the people who work for them and who are their customers - the people that are fired, and the people that get sick, and the people denied coverage. Then to top it all off - it is these same people who have to pay when companies that are too big to fail end up failing due to their own recklessness.

I don’t believe that corporations are inherently good or inherently evil - they are tools that are used for many purposes. But when we discuss economics and public policy it is essential that we acknowledge the limits of corporations. This inevitably leads to certain positions:

• If corporations, by their nature, attempt to externalize as many costs as possible - forcing problems onto the public such as pollution - then government regulation is necessary to force corporations to deal with these externalized problems.
• If corporations have no conscience or compassion, we cannot necessarily trust them to take care of us in times of need. Although random acts of kindness and charity occur more often than is sometimes acknowledged, they do not change the scope of the problem.
• If corporations do not take affirmative steps to protect public goods and institutions - such as the national infrastructure, education, political institutions, and the nature of our society - someone must. Today, corporations are radically altering our society on many fronts - and as such they are a threat to its cohesiveness - by encouraging mass immigration and sexual immorality from a conservative perspective, and by creating vast inequities between the rich and everyone else from a liberal perspective.

Liberals, progressives, and Democrats have come to a broad agreement in recent years on some general steps that need to be taken to protect our economy and our country in an increasingly globalized world. (Some deeper critiques and potential solutions from a liberal perspective can be found in William Greider’s The Soul of Capitalism.)

This includes raising the tax rates on those making over $250,000.00 a year and on corporations to the same rates as at the end of Bill Clinton’s term; focusing on developing a clean energy industry to replace traditional manufacturing; increasing funding for infrastructure maintenance and development; protecting the foundations of the internet through net neutrality; and taking various steps to reform our educational and health care systems. (A thoughtful piece in this weekend’s New York Times by David Leonhardt delves into Obama’s economic worldview.)

Health Care

The best insight into the Democratic consensus on these issues comes from the issue of health care.

Barack Obama has said that if he were to design a health care system from scratch, the system would be single-payer. At this time, however, Obama believes we need to work within the system that we have. As with most issues, what Obama proposes here is to tinker with the current system to try to reduce the problems immediately and gradually move towards a better solution. On health care, this means working with the current employer-based system - and creating incentives to reduce the number of people not covered. These incentives incude a mandate for children, tax incentives for those who seek their own health insurance, penalties for large companies that do not provide health insurance (in the form of payroll taxes), the expansion of existing programs, and support for small businesses to assist them in providing health care for their employees.

In addition to the above and more short-term solutions, Obama proposes to open up the health care plan used by members of Congress to the public - and to create a “National Health Insurance Exchange” focused on assisting people who wanted individual or family insurance plans while providing rules and guidelines for participating companies. In the long-term these two changes have the potential to remake the field of health care. If the government program is able to provide better services for less cost than it’s competitors, then if the market works as it should, more and more people will move over to the government plan - unless other health insurance companies are able to take steps to compete.

This combination of freedom of choice for citizens/customers, government regulation for companies wishing to get into a potentially lucrative market, government competition against private companies, and letting the market decide who wins in the long-term - this combination may be too clever to work. But it has far more potential than the giveaways to health insurance companies that the Republicans are proposing.

What does all of this have to do with holding a grude against the Bank of America?, you might ask. That’s coming up in Part 2.

The Obama campaign’s new ad is an unfair and personal attack on McCain and his character. It’s a cheap shot. And it’s a perfect response to John McCain’s unfair and personal (and also dishonest) attacks on Obama in recent weeks.

This is how Democrats hit back.

If this is the kind of campaign McCain wants to run, there’s a whole lot more where this came from.

You can run too…But be patient - the link is a bit slow.

(Hint - just change the values of the name in this link.)