Fire Hydrant of Freedom

"Xcel Energy...saw home-energy use drop 3% in the period from August through September, "the first time in 40 years I've seen a decline in sales" to homes... doesn't think foreclosures are responsible for the trend."

I wonder why not.  50% of home sales are 'bank mediated'.  Aren't most foreclosure homes empty?

Nonetheless, we need real increases in power and grid capabilities if we are thinking of plugging in a major part of the transportation sector within a couple of years.  Doesn't a nuclear plant take 10 years to build?  (Obama thinks we should "look into it...") I don't see how anyone can make strategic plans with all this uncertainty and with the direction of the economy dependent on government indecision.

Of course he is right, but given that this electorate has chosen the furthest left liberal and Pelosi-Reid supermajorities over the furthest center of conservatives by a clear margin, right in the face of stagnation/collapse, perhaps this serious proposal for pro-growth policies should be moved to the good humor thread. 

BBG, I saw that report also of the false temp data, thanks for posting here.  All these scientific posts could just as well go into media issues for the lack of coverage elsewhere.  Here's another one: The manufacture of solar panels releases a deadly greenhouse gas and causes global warming!

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=electronics-industry-contributes-new-greenhouse-gas

Electronics Industry Changes the Climate with New Greenhouse Gas
An effort to be more environmentally friendly when making semiconductors may have real climate-changing consequences

By Prachi Patel-Predd

MISSING GREENHOUSE GAS: The manufacture of LCD panels like those pictured here is contributing an unknown amount of a greenhouse gas 17,000 times better than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.

Emissions of a greenhouse gas that has 17,000 times the planet-warming capacity of carbon dioxide are at least four times higher than had been previously estimated. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is used mainly by the semiconductor industry to clean the chambers in which silicon chips are made. The industry had in the past estimated that most of the gas was expended during the cleaning process and only about 2 percent escaped into the air. But the first-ever measurements of nitrogen trifluoride levels in the atmosphere, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters show that emissions could be as high as 16 percent.

The results might not have immediate repercussions—nitrogen trifluoride currently adds 0.04 percent of the global warming effect created by carbon dioxide emitted from sources such as coal-burning power plants and cars. More and more gas will be needed, however, as flat-panel LCD televisions become standard in American living rooms and the fledgling thin-film solar cell industry takes off; nitrogen trifluoride is used as a cleaning agent in the manufacture of both.

The production of the gas is nearly doubling every year, says Michael Prather, atmospheric chemist at University of California, Irvine, who had predicted earlier this year that emissions would likely exceed the industry's claim that only 2 percent of the gas is released into the atmosphere.

Despite its potential consequences, the gas is not regulated and electronics companies are not required to keep a record of how much they use or emit. "Nobody really knows how much [nitrogen trifluoride] is used…we don't know how much is being produced and also don't [know if the emissions rate] is correct," says Ray Weiss, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, who led the new work.

Emissions numbers conflict depending on whom you ask. The semiconductor industry started to use nitrogen trifluoride as a greener alternative for cleaning chipmaking equipment in the late 1980s. Making integrated circuits involves depositing layers of materials such as semiconductors and metals on a silicon wafer. These materials also stick to chamber walls. So after each layer is deposited, nitrogen fluoride is pumped into the chamber and is split to release highly reactive fluorine atoms that clean the walls. Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., based in Allentown, Pa., which manufactures a third of the world's nitrogen trifluoride, claims that most of the gas is utilized during the process and what is leftover is trapped and destroyed in a special waste system.

But conditions in a silicon chip–fabrication facility are anyone's guess due to the lack of regulation or regulatory oversight, Prather says. The waste systems might be designed to destroy 97 percent of the gas, but that is under perfect conditions. "Most [semiconductor manufacturers] don't achieve that because they're hurrying in production," he says. The gas tanks themselves might leak or be mishandled during transport and disposal. Besides, manufacturers might not even be using control measures. "There is a whole chain of events, so I don’t think two to three percent [emission] is real."

Weiss's study lends proof to Prather's worries. The concentration of nitrogen trifluoride in the atmosphere is about 0.5 part per trillion, making it very hard to measure. Weiss had to distill, heat and pass the air samples over adsorbents to remove gases such as carbon dioxide and krypton that could foul the extremely sensitive detector. He found that about 563 metric tons of nitrogen trifluoride was emitted in 2006. From his measurements, he calculates that the emissions have already increased to 620 metric tons in 2008, which is about 16 percent of the 4,000 metric tons that Prather estimates will be produced and used this year.

The emissions will escalate as nitrogen trifluoride's use increases. Although a chipmaking chamber is about the size of a refrigerator, those used to make LCD panels are the size of a van, says Steve Pilgrim, global marketing manager at Munich, Germany–based The Linde Group, a nitrogen trifluoride producer. Meanwhile, thousands of megawatts worth of thin-film solar cells are in the manufacturing pipeline. "For every megawatt of solar panel capacity, you'll need a ton of NF3 for cleaning the equipment," Pilgrim says.

Air Products claims that worldwide production of nitrogen trifluoride has reached 7,300 metric tons. The company is now building a 500-metric ton plant that will take the company's capacity to about 2,400 tons next year.

Some companies are solving the problem by adopting alternatives to nitrogen trifluoride. Toshiba Matsushita Display, Samsung and LG have installed systems that generate fluorine on-site at some of their LCD and semiconductor facilities. The system, made by Linde, splits hydrogen fluoride into fluorine. That takes less energy than splitting nitrogen fluoride and there is no global warming risk, Pilgrim says. However, the system does need upfront costs that smaller LCD manufacturers might not want to bear. Any accidental release of fluorine could also be an issue: Fluorine is a toxic and corrosive gas and, at high concentrations, can retard plant growth and damage teeth and bones.

Prather says we should now be following nitrogen trifluoride concentrations in the atmosphere closely. There needs to be pressure on the electronics industry to report emissions, he says. A good start would be including nitrogen trifluoride in the list of greenhouse gases being regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce discharges of carbon dioxide and six other greenhouse gases by assigning emission limits to countries that have ratified it. "The real issue is we're missing international reporting," he says. "We should start reporting it immediately and measuring it, and then we'll find out how important it is."

"DMcG, your solution of fair and balanced education looks suspiciously like a 'fairness doctrine' type of equation. Let each subject that is taught be examined equally from both sides, right? So who decides the equal balance? A government entity? The school board? The parents? I find a ton of problems with the state of education across the board, and d*mn if I can think of a solution."

SB, I agree with you and did NOT mean to imply a government solution.  Institutions filled with indoctrination will face the wrath of me whining on this board, not a federal balance enforcement board.  School choice is one solution.  but often the choices look a lot alike.  Entrepreneurs and capitalists don't generally go into teaching.  K-12 is largely a creature of the teacher's unions unless parents, voters, school boards or legislators speak out and they rarely do.

Schools were loaded with bias in the 1970s too but many kids grew up and voted for Reagan.  Kids eventually can smell BS it just takes some time to sort things out.  When I was in Jr. High we were told that the world would run out of natural gas in 1982.  Either we were lied to or their theory just had some holes.  I see many of these new Obama voters as conservatives of the future, just give them time to experience a few of life's real-world experiences.

Thanks BBG for that post.  I disagree slightly on the Ayers perspective.  The attack on Obama regarding Ayers was bungled in my opinion because it put the focus on terrorism instead of politics.  The implication became that maybe this Obama guy is secretly a terrorist too and that was a non-starter.  Terrorism was a symptom that Ayer's political views were not within any mainstream-acceptable spectrum, not the goal.  The questions should have been - what are Ayers political views and which of those does Barack Obama share?  If Ayers view was to reintroduce inheritance taxes at 50% instead of 45%, then I doubt that he would be blowing things up to achieve it.  But if his political view was to dismantle the free market based capitalist system as we know it then maybe he would want to blow things up.  We know Obama never shared Ayer's explosive view of how to get there, the question was  - what part of the end-of-capitalism ideal does he share?  I don't the president-elect yet knows the answer to that.

The expression 'putting the toothpaste back into the tube' applies mostly to the difficulty of ending liberal programs (IMO) but I think it applies perfectly to reimposing 'the fairness doctrine'.  I can't imagine that the most liberal of voters would now think they need to curtail the expression of dissenting views after such a big political win.  Besides, it wouldn't work unless the internet was regulated as well.  I think it would only raise their public importance if voices like Rush L. were banned from the airwaves to make room for elevator music and breaking news on the home and garden front.

Thanks for comments back.  GM: I agree about requiring victory before peace.  Also our strength is not just our arsenal but our will.  My recollection of the Iraq war is that 80-90% supported the effort when the Americans appeared to be winning easily and that nearly flipflopped when the war seemed to be going badly.  Now it is back to about 50-50 depending on how you ask the question.  I don't know why we poll the popularity of war while troops are in harm's way but the results reveal a lack of strength in our resolve that our enemies were happy to expose. 

CCP: I don't know to what extent securing borders offends how many Hispanics.  You covered the other factors that would have been my reply in the next paragraph.  I think the 2/3 that supported Obama related to the class envy / pro-working class message of the campaign.  From my point of view that means I think they were sold a false bill of goods since punishing employers doesn't grow jobs or expand middle class wealth.  Should we match their proposals or come up with a better false bill of goods.  I hope not.

Newt was on the right track earlier this cycle coming up with innovative proposals for the issues of the day.  Yhanks for those posts. I disagreed with him on cap and trade but liked most of the ideas and loved the approach.  Also, I liked the positive proposal from the recent round table post that indicated we should evaluate our needs and recruit immigrants from around the world.  Like Obama did, over the next couple of years we need to change the game, not just re-fight the same battles. (The adventure continues.)

Russia locating new missile launchers near a missile defense site?  Sounds like a problem already solved. Also sounds like George Bush proved right at least this once by history and events.  Obama (version 1.0) opposed missile defense (and favored tax increases).  Somehow he figured out to 'delay' tax increases in a challenged economy.  Maybe he will also 'delay' unilateral disarmament, especially the defensive systems, until the Soviet resurgent, KGB-run, nuclear warhead missile threat subsides. 

My solution would be to match Russia's recognition of South Ossetia with our recognition of Kaliningrad.  If they declare independence, join the EU and NATO, maybe they can keep the missiles aim them a different direction.

We should leave Ann Coulter out of this.  Like certain leftists her job is to strike a nerve, not rebuild a party.  I suggest leaving Reagan out of this too.  Admirers like me refer to Reaganomics to selectively cover only the things we liked about Reagan.  He was wrong occasionally as CCP points out.  I sincerely doubt Reagan would favor porous borders in a post-911 world.  McCain favored a form of amnesty.  Should he have bucked the right wing and reached further to the Hispanics? Politically it was a no-win either way for McCain in the campaign, not a major issue or distinction from Obama who just wants hope and change. Instead it was a symptom of the fact that he was a maverick not a leader in congress.  If his earlier proposals had been better structured, more persuasively argued and better received, maybe we would have these new residents documented and our fences built by now. CCP, aren't you on the (far) right-wing side of this one?

Deregulation hurt S&L's.  More specifically you could say that S&Ls existed only because they were propped up by government policies.  Would they exist today (No) if they were still prohibited from offering demand deposit accounts (checking, electronic transfers etc.), just updating passbooks and moving stable savings money into 30 year mortgages in the neighborhood?  S&Ls had been granted a half point interest advantage over commercial banks by federal law in exchange for staying out of the checking and payments business.  Would we have been better off in the 80s if the banks had failed instead of the S&Ls?  I don't know, but we didn't deregulate, we changed the regulations.  Back to today, did Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac fail due to deregulation?  The videos of the congressional regulation oversight committees have been posted here and they say otherwise.  All the right questions were asked by the oversight committees and all the wrong answers were given, mostly by those with their hand in the cookie jar.  Faulty regulation is not deregulation.

Deregulation and the failure of free markets keeps getting blamed for failure only in our most regulated and least free industries.  Nobody is calling for deregulation of federally insured and federally supported institutions. 

Now the first appointee from the party not blamed for the crisis comes from the board of Freddie Mac.  That is the audacity of hope.  Who can compete with that?

Moving forward, I agree with conservative principles laid down by GM, would add peace through strength, but they need to all be specifically applied to the major issues of the day.  They also need a spokesman, a podium and an enormous power of persuasion to get heard and considered in an era where nearly all the main media along with their viewers are looking the other direction.  The round table style post recently had many interesting ideas.

Conservatives and center-right people need to debate positions and issues BEFORE the election contests and find solutions and consensus.  Crafty can offer to host, lol.

JDN, You made a few points and I don't mean to oversimplify by quoting back:

"Seems a bit inconsistent to me." re. her immigration opnion...

"saying it was great to put thousands upon thousands of innocent and loyal Japanese/Americans in these prison camps." - doesn't sound like a direct quote...

And some guilt by association, some bad people link to her column. Are we holding Barack to that standard?

I have only read some of her columns.  I know she is highly respected by thoughtful conservatives that I respect such as John Hinderacker and Hugh Hewitt.  I know you said you were done with her and I hate to pile on but could you please take one more shot by linking one column of hers with an excerpt at the top that illustrates the point you are alleging - racist, sensationalist, no substance, white supremist, etc.  TIA.  Are these conservatives I mentioned haters of no substance as well??

From CCP: "there is a growing wealth disparity in the US and if the Republicans do not address this in some fashion they will continue to swim against the demographic currents and may never recover. I don't want to punish successful people... There has to be some other answer to this. Ignoring this has resulted in the Democrat tsunami in my opinion."

"There must be another way to raise the living standards of the majority of Americans who are running in place and indeed slowly slipping behind while that has not been true for the rich.. They can ignore it at their own peril."

"People I think are tired of Reagan's mantra, philosophy and ideals.  They want action.  They want results."
---

It's true that too many Americans feel like they are running in place economically.  I think the reason is because of certain runaway costs rather than low income, an important distinction IMO.  Incomes are high and growing at least until recently. Americans have a median household income of over $50,000. That might be enough to get by if not for runaway costs in certain market segments have been escalated by meddling.  Sectors like energy, housing, healthcare, college tuition and overall tax burden come to mind.  Also I notice a wealth and debt mentality - we have so much access to money we say no to almost nothing.  So we find ourselves strapped.

The point about income and wealth disparity has flaws IMO.

Most obvious is that the Census Bureau pretends to measure poverty but doesn't count non-cash subsidies which can the the bulk of the income for people in programs like section 8, food debit cards, taxpayer health care, subsidized transportation etc etc. So they constantly understate the 'wealth' of the have-nots.

Secondly, there is significant income mobility - it isn't always the same people that are rich and getting richer. Also there is a difference between wealth and income.  Some with low income have wealth and some with high incomes lack accumulations of wealth.

Another flaw is wealth disparity increases when wealth increases and we've just come through about a 24 year boom. Wealth disparity certainly DECREASED during the current collapse of real estate and other investment values.  Disparity is a contrary indicator to wealth creation. 

If Reagan mantras have been worn out lately it's from false use not because they are no longer true.  Even Reagan expanded government in compromise, like a centrist or a pragmatist.

The desire to move up economically and to achieve more personal and family financial security should push people toward pro-growth policies, not leftism, but conservatism has suffered IMO from a leadership and salesmanship gap for a long time. 

McCain keeps trying to fight redistributionism but the clearest words against class envy came from this wise author:

"You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." - God

SB post from Politico?: "...for most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy.

Joking, right??? The main media MISSED nearly all the negative stories and contradictions within the Obama campaign and picked up just a few of them belatedly.  How do they know the polls tell the story if the polls are based on what people read and see through biased coverage.  Was it published ANYWHERE in the mainstream media how much of the drivel from Biden in his debate was false - off by 2000% on his repeated Iraq-Afghanistan cost comparison. "Let me repeat that" Off By 2000%!  Or do we mostly hear that someone spent too much on new clothes for Palin. Where is Obama pounded now for LYING about campaign spending limits, a 3/4 of a BILLION DOLLAR mistake that buys the White House - mostly silence, but the NY Times ran hit piece on Mrs. McCain and another time on some alleged Sen. McCain sex scandal that never turned into anything.  Meanwhile they missed by a year what others carried on the "GOD DAMN AMERICA" pastor disaster.  Was Obama or Biden EVER called on the carpet for use of the false stat that America only has 3% of the world's oil reserves when they only count as reserves the areas where congress already allows drilling? Or that tax increases must be delayed because they will admittedly choke out growth?  If they choke out growth why are they good for us later?  There's a question not likely to be asked by Katie Couric or Charles Gibson. 

I don't know a msm-only reading liberal who even knows that Tony Rezko (convicted felon) owns the Obama's side yard or that ACORN is a leftist political group that was channeled hundreds of thousands of foundation and taxpayer funds through Obama.   I've heard maybe a hundred times, even from McCain himself, of his low finish in school, but never that the Magna Cum Laude candidate picked the bumbling Joe Biden from the bottom 11% of his class. 

Did you see Gibson's interview with Obama June 4 after clinching the nomination: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5000184&page=1 "I'm curious about your feelings last night. It was an historic moment. Has it sunk in yet?" :What did she say?"  "do you say to yourself: Son of a gun, I've done this?"  "did you truly, in your gut, think that a black man could win the nomination of a major party to be president of the United States?" "Is the hardest part of all this behind you or ahead of you?" "Has the joyfulness of this hit home yet? Do you take joy from it?"...   Compare the tone with the grilling of Palin.  Maybe I just don't understand professional detachment.

Guiness: "the problem with most redistributionist schemes is that most "wealth" is based on symbols in some account somewhere."

I find that theme more helpful in understanding the mortgage meltdown than for redistribution.  In the mortgage fiasco,  a deed to a property (a piece of paper) or a claim on a deed (a line item on a piece of paper) was packaged with similar and dissimilar items. The new product at each level introduced new risk of uncertainty of product, risk, value and information that worsened the collapse.

Back to redistribution: I think redistribution has 3 main two problems:

1) Redistribution transfers take what would be investment assets away from their most productive use and gives to a consuming class not likely invest at all.  Less invested in capital assets means a lower productivity of labor, lower output and fewer new jobs created.

2) Redistribution  involves raising marginal tax rates on those most able to rearrange their economic activities - incentive to produce and reportnless income; redistribution creates a disincentive to put the resources not yet confiscated to their most productive use  -maybe you will choose to buy a south pacific island instead of investing to build a new plant requiring new jobs.

3) The free lunch mentality injures the recipient.  Look at families with multi-generational welfare and program dependency.  Everything in their lives and neighborhoods can get ripped apart including the moral structure of the family.  The importance of the father and husband - two functional parents - is replaced by (false) security from the state.  Nonproductive activities get encouraged and rewarded, expanded and prolonged for the dependent class.  JMHO.

As the economy heads downward and we look at the ending of this campaign of confusion, let's take a moment to look deeper into the 3-letter word Joe Biden calls 'j-o-b-s'.

Start by looking at the players in our economy. Most Americans don't file a federal tax return of any kind - that includes of course most children, some elderly, disabled along with people who just don't earn or only participate in the underground economy.  Of those who do file a return, more than 30% pay NO federal income tax.  Some other time let's discuss why that happened, but what a travesty.

At the 'rich' end of the spectrum we have people who make over 250,000, might someday make 250,000, plan on saving and investing 250,000 at sometime in their life, or ever plan to own or sell a capital asset.  These people are ugly, filthy, rich and should be stopped, punished and demagogued.  Not my view and I hope I didn't overstate their view - that of Obama, Biden and your favorite local class warfare baiting Democratic congressional member.

From a moral perspective, please tell me why is it okay to forcibly take extra from these people, because you can, to pay your own basic basic living expenses.  It of course isn't.

From an equal rights, equal protection and constitutional perspective, why is it ever okay for the majority to shift their share of the public expense burden over to a minority, no matter how many voters in the majority or how few they can victimize in the minority?  Does that pass YOUR test for consent of the governed???  Not for me, not even close!

What about from an efficiency standpoint in taxation or economic growth, do we really raise more money by putting higher marginal tax rates on those most able to scale down their productive activities?  Of course not.

We have learned over and over and over again that the opposite approach is what grows the economy and grows federal revenues most efficiently.  From the Kennedy tax rate cuts to the Reagan tax rate cuts to the Clinton-Gingrich capital gains tax rate cuts to the Bush tax rates cuts, what happened each time?  Federal revenues surged! (Same for state revenues.)

Now back to the current downturn, this election, the groups of Americans described above and Joe Biden's now-famous 3-letter word called jobs. Who creates jobs? Americans who don't file a return? No. The 30+% that file but pay nothing in federal income taxes? Never.  The majority of hard working, taxpaying Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and eek out a living?  Not Likely.

The new jobs come from people trying to head into that area we call rich.  Those who see a larger opportunity to grow their plumbing business, bakery or blacksmith shop to a higher revenue and income level and see a distinct possibility that the AFTER TAX likely returns are economically worth the enormous hassle, expense and unknown risks associated with adding each new employee.

This economy needs consistent new job creation in the millions.  Do we get there by spreading wealth away from the people who earned it and over to the less productive or is it more effective to allow people some fruit from their labor and to invest more of what they earned back into their own business?

The right answer is obvious from my point of view, but I truly wonder which taxpayers the Obama voters and ACORN members think are going to create new jobs that this economy so desperately needs.

--

Besides raising personal tax rates on the highest producers in the economy, Obama and the Democrats oppose and demagogue McCain's proposal to lower slightly the corporate tax rate which is now the highest in the western, developed world.  In America, successful corporations are taxed at 35%, in Taiwan it is 25%, in Hong Kong it's 16.5% and in Ireland it's 12.5%.  Even 'communist' China lowered its corpate tax rate from 33% to 25% effective just this year.  Why is it such a stretch for the Democratic mind to see that companies that have choices can and will move jobs and operations to a friendlier business climate?

If taxes weren't enough, then look at trade.  While Obama is offering to move economically backward and unilaterally re-write NAFTA (how do you unilaterally change an 'agreement'?), Canada is negotiating it's own new free trade agreement with the European Union.  Trade raises income levels and job prospects on both sides.  Bill Clinton knew that when he partnered with Gingrich and the Republicans to implement the beginning of Reagan's vision of a hemisphere-wide free trading zone, allowing economic freedom, opportunity and prosperity to flourish across borders.  But not Obama.  He comes from and caters to the protectionist, anti growth, furthest left wing of his own party.

The way I see it, it is economically unwise to follow the leadership void of the Bush administration and the excesses and incompetence of both the Republican and Reid-Pelosi-Obama congresses with an economic left turn backwards in time to anti-growth policies while our competitors across the globe have turned pro-growth.  It just doesn't make sense.  - Doug

CCP: "I just don't think simply saying we need to cut taxes is enough with BO out there preaching his lies for months with "I am cutting taxes for 90% of the folks in this country". ...The BO campaign has done a MUCH better job of responding to and countering the Repubs arguments than the other way around."

 - Very true.  Barack in his campaign is slick and slippery.  His rhetoric doesn't at all match his record.  If I were a centrist watching this only through mainstream sources I would probably join Obama and fight for hope and change.  McCain should have set up a Bill Clinton style war room from the start and he should have gone ballistic immediately over Democrats blocking reforms on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Instead voters think McCain and deregulation brought down the house.  Remarkably, most voters think they will face lower tax rates if Democrats take full control all branches of government.  The way things are going, I wish that were true .
---
CCP:"McCain either better have a great case to squash the "I am going to cut taxes for 90%", and "what has been done for the last eight years is not working" arguments in this last debate or it is definitely over."

True, he just can't undo later what was allowed to stand for so long as unchallenged fact. 

This week allegedly McCain will unveil a 'new' economic plan.  Even if he gets it perfectly right economically, he can only be perceived as a) pandering, b) desperate, c) unsteady in his leadership and d) irresponsible to the deficit and future generations.

My wish was to have an honest and consistent liberal run against an honest and consistent conservative and have them each strenuously argue their case to the people.  Instead we have confusion-economics on both sides selling to a confused electorate.
---
CCP: "Are there more small business owners than government employees, union people, and immigrants who come in a jump on the dole bandwagon (of course not all of them - but enough)?  I doubt it.  McCain is preaching to the minority.  BO is preaching to the majority.   End of story."

 - You are obviously right in terms of numbers of voters.  The counterpoint is that hurting your employer or taking down ANY major sector of our economy will hurt you and your family no matter who you are. Workers and even welfare recipients share the economy with investment capital, investors and business owners. My union friends who worked for Northwest airlines, like the GM workers in Michael Moore's movie, always had an 'us versus them', worker versus ownership attitude.  Bringing down those businesses and damaging those investments wasn't helpful to those jobs. Same goes for the current market collapse.  Someone needs to articulate win-win choices to counter the us versus them, class envy politics.  McCain hasn't done that.

There is no narrative that runs through the McCain campaign.   The economy should be America's biggest strength and whoever is the Republican nominee should be out front leading the charge.  Instead, McCain is that hoping unknown events in the next 23 days will change the subject.

I mentioned Gwen Ifill's bias annoying in the VP debate  Thanks to the American Thinker for taking the time to go ack over the questions and analyze what we all witnessed:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/gwen_ifills_vp_debate_bias.html

Gwen Ifill's VP Debate Bias
By Lee Cary
A careful reading of the questions Gwen Ifill asked during the VP debate reveals several that displayed her bias.

The revelation that PBS's Gwen Ifill plans to release a book on Barack Obama on Inauguration Day raised the suspicion that her moderator role at the VP debate might be other than objective. It was. The evidence of her bias is evident in several of her questions to the candidates. Below are a few examples.

The Forced-Choice Question

The forced-choice question aims to force an answer from a choice of options defined by the interviewer. For example, in the early stages of the Afghanistan War, the late Peter Jennings asked Pervez Musharraf, then President of Pakistan, if the United States in Afghanistan was "bombing too much or too little."

It was a classic forced-choice question designed to create one of two headlines: "Musharraf Criticizes American for Bombing Too Much," or "...Too Little."  Mr. Jennings intended to create controversy because controversy sells. Musharraf wisely dodged the question.

During the VP debate, Ifill used forced-choice questions to further her biases. Here's one:

    "As America watches these things [Congress struggling with the bailout bill] happen on Capital Hill, Senator Biden, was this the worse of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?"

Honestly now, how many sane, reasonable people see the bailout ordeal as representing the "best" of Washington?

It was a tee-up question for Biden. He said, "neither the best nor worse," but it was, he said, a reflection of the bad economic policies of "the last eight years." In other words, it was the worse of Washington on the Bush-Republican side.

What would an un-bias question in this venue sound like? How about this: As America watches theses things happen on Capital Hill, what should they reasonably expect to be the outcome, and its impact on their lives?

Here's another example of an Ifill forced-choice question:

    "Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Governor Palin. Was it the greedy lenders?  Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place? And what should you be doing about it?"

Notice the choice not on the list -- Congressionally driven Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies that forced banks to make loans to people who had no ability to repay them.

Governor Palin accepted the Ifill choices and blamed ‘predator lenders" and Wall Street "greed" and "corruption." 

The Bias-Premised Question

Ifill asked,

    "Senator Biden, how, as vice president, would you work to shrink this gap of polarization which has sprung up in Washington, which you both have spoken about here tonight."

The key twin concepts in that question are "polarization" and "sprung up." The implied bias is that during the Bush administration polarization "sprung up."

Ifill is a smart, educated women. She knows that partisan polarization has been part of Washington since the death of the man the city's named after. She also knows that when the House voted on the first version of the bailout bill, many Democrats voted against it.  The "polarization" over the bailout wasn't based on political parties. It was based on economic free-market philosophy. 

Here's another Ifill bias-premised question:

    "Governor and Senator, I want you both to respond to this. Secretaries of State Baker, Kissinger, Powell, they have all advocated some level of engagement with enemies. Do you think these former secretaries of state are wrong on that?"

This was a back-door effort to support Barak Obama's "no preconditions" statement made during his nomination campaign. Ifill's bias is that there's nothing wrong with what Obama said.

Ifill knows that, diplomatically, "some level of engagement with enemies" goes on all the time, often through back channels using third parties. The idea that we don't communicate with our enemies is a Beltway media myth.

Hers was a cleverly formed question, since a "no" answer to the closed-ended query (a "yes" or "no" type question) with which it ends (Do you think...?) would sustain the notion that what Obama said is consistent with, and analogous to, what the former Secretaries of State say. Ifill uses the question to establish conceptual parity without the opportunity to challenge the premise.

(Peter Jennings tied this tactic once with General Tommy Franks, and Franks made Jennings, unaccustomed to being challenged, sit up straight in his chair by saying, "Peter, I don't accept the premise of your question.")

Here's another example of a biased question.

    "Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the Constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past.  Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?"

Out of left field, Ifill interjects the man Democrats love to hate, Dick Cheney, into the debate. She attributes an unexplained and unsubstantiated interpretation of the Constitution to Cheney, and then asks Palin to defend or attack that interpretation.  (What interpretation?)

It was a question designed to trap Palin, akin to Charlie Gibson's "Bush Doctrine" question.  Palin gave a one sentence non-committal answer, and then moved away from the topic. The question gave Biden another chance to demonize Cheney, and display his strikingly faulty understanding of when the VP presides over the Senate.  He said,

    "The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress."

Say what? This notion when unchallenged by Ifill. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution reads:

    "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

    "The Senate shall choose their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States."

Cheney, and other Vice Presidents, could sit up on the platform and preside over the Senate every time it's in session, but they've other things to do.  This is Biden's "no authority" interpretation.

Here's another example of a bias-premised question from Ifill.

    "Let's come full circle. You both want to bring both sides together. You both talk about bipartisanship. Once again, we saw what happened this week in Washington. How do you change the tone, as vice president, as number two?"

Surely Ifill noticed that both support and opposition to the bailout bill was "bipartisan" in that members of both parties voted both for and against it. And surely she noticed that the most inflammatory language of that week was voiced by Speaker Pelosi when she called Republicans "unpatriotic" (but had no public name-calling for her initial 95 Democrat "no" votes). 

One last example under this category of bias-premised questions:

    "[To Biden] Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples."

This question was designed to get the attention of the conservative Republican base in order to erode Palin's favor there.  Palin noticed that and made a point of saying,

    "But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go around and round about what that actually means."

Ask yourself this question: What influence does the Vice President have on individual state marriage policies that would warrant this question in a VP debate? The answer is - none. It was all about attempting to embarrass Palin before the GOP base.

The Contrived Dichotomy Question

Listen for the contrived dichotomy buried in this convoluted question from Ifill.

    "Senator Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes. You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year. The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Governor Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured. I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Senator Biden."

Nevermind Ifill's specious citation of an unnamed, uncertified source as "some studies." (What studies?)  Note the dichotomy she creates within her question: Biden wants to tax the rich versus Palin wants to take health insurance away from the poor.   

Another tee-up for Biden. He begins his answer with,

    "Well Gwen, where I come from, it's called fairness, just simple fairness."

Conclusion

To conclude that Gwen Ifill's moderating efforts displayed through her questions were without bias requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

Her moderator performance represents another sad day for America's entrenched, and ever less objective, television journalism.

"Does everyone deserve the same level of healthcare?"

Of course that could mean does everyone deserve mediocre care or does everyone deserve the health care of royalty, free back massages, tummy tucks, costly experimental meds, you name it.  And do they deserve it to be free or paid by someone else.

To make the answer - yes - I would ask it differently, does everyone in this country deserve the right to choose and purchase health care from the same menu of choices and costs?

Does everyone deserve to live in the largest mansion?  Does everyone deserve oceanfront property? Does everyone deserve to dine in the same restaurant? Every night of the week?  No, you have to earn, save and choose the best. Or you can make other choices.  Some would rather live a block from the ocean and put the rest of the money toward something else.   Does everyone deserve admittance to the best college?  Does every golfer deserve Tiger's winnings? Does every man deserve to sleep with the planet's most beautiful woman?

We guarantee 'same' level of health care only by banning above average care. How does that make us better off?

Health Care is more equal in Europe but survival rates for the most likely ailments you could face are far worse:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/561737
"Survival was significantly higher in the United States (than Europe) for all solid tumors, except testicular, stomach, and soft-tissue cancer, the authors report. The greatest differences were seen in the major cancer sites: colon and rectum (56.2% in Europe vs 65.5% in the United States), breast (79.0% vs 90.1%), and prostate cancer (77.5% vs 99.3%),

I disagree with the good comments about Gwen Ifill. She did as well as most and as well as Tom Brokaw will do, but she annoyed me at times.  No one of recent memory matches the neutrality that Jim Lehrer projects IMO.

The comments about Palin going on without directly addressing the question are true and she explained early that she would do that.  Normally that bothers me.  Given her awareness of the bias of the moderator, the limitations of time etc. I found that to be a nicer way of handling the situation instead wasting time explaining what she didn't like about a question or answering every petty attack from the opponent. The moderator is a form of filter steering the conversation just as ABC and CBS filter by choosing which clips to play from long interviews.  90 minutes in a debate sounds like enough but the candidates had a limited time to say what they wanted to say to the voters.  Palin covered her views on tax policy, energy, health care, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel etc. very well. Also she presented a compelling case for her top of the ticket, made important distinctions between  McCain and Obama and even made telling distinctions between Biden and Obama.

In the first Pres. debate question, the most complicated economic issue of our time was brought up, then Jim Lehrer said 'you have 2 minutes'.  What a joke! If they can't adjust rules for candidates to address the crisis and bailout of the century, then the preparations and strategies for debates have to be adjusted to the format which is a time slot barely longer than a commercial.

At the end Palin hinted to 'Joe' that she would be up for more of this, presumably meaning without Gwen Ifill and the timer.  There is no way in hell that Obama will allow Biden to do that, especially since they lead at this point in the race.  For all the complaints about not enough time, not enough answers and not enough back and forth, it's too bad that political considerations trump the public's right to know.

Replying to the Biden mis-speaks in the Palin-Biden debate, thanks for the short list.  May I add something else scary he said.  Bankruptcy court should write down the interest AND THE PRINCIPLE on mortgages.  Do liberals no longer believe in binding contracts between consenting adults? In his miserable legal training did they not teach him about choice of remedies.  They are supposed to get the house back or get the money.  Why else would you call it a secured loan? Personal loans that are not secured against real estate are not tax deductible.  Did everyone just lose their home interest deduction?

ACORN was mentioned by Crafty in the voter fraud discussion, but not normally named by Obama as the group where he built his career community-organizing.  This group deserves its own DB topic IMO beyond its connection to the 'Obama phenomenon'.

My awareness of ACORN started with reading the fliers they give to tenants in inner city neighborhoods espousing a philosophy let's say that is different than mine, or of freedom, property rights, or individual responsibility.

On election 2004 in south Minneapolis, I had a personal run-in with them.  They tried all but physically to drag me off a roof to register and vote (in a precinct where I don't live).  They just couldn't take no for an answer.  I was refusing to tell them whether or not I had already voted asserting that it was a private matter and they kept trying to clarify that the question was whether or not I had voted, not who I would vote for.  I kept replying that I understood the question perfectly and still considered it very much a private matter.  At the point where I should have demanded they leave, I realized I was keeping them for the rest of their blockwork for as long as they cared to obsess on me.  It became quite a scene.  Quite clearly you could tell that their organization assignment was to not take no for an answer.  They wanted 100% turnout - or better...

ACORN is also tied to the mortgage meltdown as forced 'community reinvestment' anti-capitalism is part of their mission.
---
Relevant NY Post story yesterday: "BARACK'S 'ORGANIZER' BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES"

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0

By STANLEY KURTZ

September 29, 2008

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirmative-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."

Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mort gage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.

"The Republican Party ...mass voter-registration challenges and thereby offers a powerful opportunity to suppress the vote in Democrat-leaning districts."

A challenge to my voter registration would be met swiftly with proof of identity, eligibility and residency to vote.  I don't know Macomb County, but the story also refers to Wisconsin which has been victim of massive voter fraud operations and razor thin Democratic victories.  What is cynical about attacking known fraud.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=324933  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Inquiry finds evidence of fraud in election
Cast ballots outnumber voters by 4,609

Investigators said Tuesday they found clear evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in Milwaukee, including more than 200 cases of felons voting illegally and more than 100 people who voted twice, used fake names or false addresses or voted in the name of a dead person.

Officials said charges will be filed in coming weeks, as individual cases are reviewed and more evidence is gathered.

Nonetheless, it is likely that many - perhaps most - of those who committed fraud won't face prosecution because city records are so sloppy that it will be difficult to establish cases that will stand up in court.

And even now, three months after the investigation, officials have not been able to close a gap of 7,000 votes, with more ballots cast than voters listed. Officials said the gap remains at 4,609.

I agree with Rachel regarding country of origin labeling.  From my point of view, instead of banning trade or taxing trade, content and origin in labeling either required by industry groups or government would cause informed trade which is better than restricted trade.  Even state origin or more specific yet would be helpful.  Besides food poisoning scares I know that people wanting to lessen their energy footprint prefer to buy things from closer to home.

"According to an August 2008 study published in Lancet Oncology, the renowned British medical journal, Americans have a better than five-year survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers when compared with their European and Canadian counterparts.

With breast cancer, for instance, the survival rate among American women is 83.9 percent. For women in Britain, it’s just 69.7 percent. For men with prostate cancer, the survival rate is 91.9 percent here but just 73.7 percent in France and 51.1 percent in Britain.

American men and women are more than 35 percent more likely to survive colon cancer than their British counterparts."

http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/guestcolumnists/Is_the_grass_greener_with_socialized_medicine.html
Is the grass greener with socialized medicine?

By Sally C. Pipes
Special to the Examiner | 8/23/08 7:35 PM With Democrats convinced 2008 is their year, the campaign trail is awash with promises to make universal health care a reality by the end of the next president’s first term.

The basic argument of those who support a government takeover of the health care system is familiar. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman once put it, “America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.”

Krugman’s line has been repeated so often it’s considered gospel truth in most public debates — people rarely check to see if it matches the facts. As the American humorist Josh Billings quipped, “the problem with the world ain’t ignorance, it’s the things people know that just ain’t so.”

If they did, they’d probably be surprised. Socialized health care isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Take the much-vaunted Canadian system. More than 825,000 Canadian citizens are currently on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Fifteen years ago, the average wait between a referral from a primary-care doctor to treatment by a specialist was around nine weeks. Today, that wait is over 16 weeks.

That’s almost double what doctors consider clinically reasonable. As Canadian physician Brian Day explained to The New York Times, Canada “is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”
In part, these waits are due to a doctor shortage. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 countries in doctors per thousand people.

Why so few doctors? Over the past decade, about 11 percent of physicians trained in Canadian medical schools have moved to the United States. That’s because doctors’ salaries in Canada are negotiated, set and paid for by provincial governments and held down by cost-conscious budget analysts. Today, in fact, the average Canadian doctor earns only 42 percent of what a doctor earns in the United States.

Canada also limits access to common medical technologies. When compared with other OECD countries, Canada is 13th out of 24 in access to magnetic resonance imagings, 18th of 24 in access to computed tomography scanners, and seventh of 17 in access to mammograms.

The problems plaguing Canada are characteristic of all universal health care systems.

In Britain, more than 1 million sick citizens are currently waiting for hospital admission. Another 200,000 are waiting just to get on a waiting list. Each year, Britain’s National Health Service cancels around 100,000 operations.

Britain even has a government agency explicitly tasked with limiting people’s access to prescription drugs. Euphemistically called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness, the agency determines which treatments the British health care system covers. More often than not, saving money takes priority over saving lives.

In 2008, for instance, NICE refused to approve the lung cancer drug Tarceva. Despite numerous studies showing that the drug significantly prolongs the life of cancer patients — and the unanimous endorsement of lung cancer specialists throughout the United Kingdom — NICE determined that the drug was too expensive to cover relative to its effectiveness. As of August 2008, England is one of only three countries in Western Europe that denies citizens access to Tarceva.

Britain’s behavior is typical — every European government rations drugs to save money. Eighty-five new drugs hit the U.S. market between 1998 and 2002. During that same time period, only 44 of those drugs became available in Europe.

The evidence clearly indicates that patients under socialized medicine are suffering. Why, then, do countries with government-run health care consistently outrank the United States on international quality surveys?

It’s not because the American health care system is inferior. It’s because these surveys use deeply flawed metrics that don’t reflect health care quality.

Case in point: The World Health Organization rankings of overall health system performance placed the United States 37th out of 191 countries. That’s behind not only Canada, Britain and France, but even countries like Costa Rica, Morocco and Cyprus.

Life expectancy accounted for 25 percent of a nation’s WHO ranking. But life expectancy is the function of a variety of factors. Medical care is just one of them. Just as important are a nation’s homicide rate, the number of accidents, diet trends, ethnic diversity and much more.

Another factor accounting for 25 percent of a nation’s ranking was “distribution of health,” or fairness. By this logic, treating everyone exactly the same is more important than treating people well. So long as everyone is equal — even if they’re equally miserable — a nation will do quite well in the WHO rankings.

In measuring the quality of a health care system, what really matters is how well it serves those who are sick. And it’s here that America really excels.

According to an August 2008 study published in Lancet Oncology, the renowned British medical journal, Americans have a better than five-year survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers when compared with their European and Canadian counterparts.

With breast cancer, for instance, the survival rate among American women is 83.9 percent. For women in Britain, it’s just 69.7 percent. For men with prostate cancer, the survival rate is 91.9 percent here but just 73.7 percent in France and 51.1 percent in Britain.

American men and women are more than 35 percent more likely to survive colon cancer than their British counterparts.

It’s no wonder then that foreign dignitaries living in countries with socialized health care systems routinely come to this country when they need top-flight medical treatment.

When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery in 2006, he traveled to the Cleveland Clinic — often considered America’s best hospital for cardiac care. When Canadian Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach, who had denounced a two-tier health care system for Canadians, needed breast cancer surgery herself in 2007, she headed to a California hospital and paid out of pocket.

So much for the “free” health care they could have received at home.

As for the supposed cost advantages of socialized medicine? Those are illusory, too. True, other developed nations may spend less on health care as a percentage of gross domestic product than the United States does — but so does Sudan. Without considering value, such statistical evaluations are worthless.

And one of the primary reasons health care costs more in America is that we are a wealthy country that demands the best. And, we’re investing a lot more in medical research.

The United States produces over half of the $175 billion in health care technology products purchased globally. In 2004, the federal government funded medical research to the tune of $18.4 billion. By contrast, the European Union — which has a significantly larger population than the United States — allocated funds equal to just $3.7 billion for medical research.

Between 1999 and 2005, the United States was responsible for 71 percent of the sales of new pharmaceutical drugs. The next two largest pharmaceutical markets — Japan and Germany — account for just 4 percent each.

While no one can deny that there are significant problems in the American health care system, overall it provides exceptional value. The ideologues who claim we’d be better off under socialized medicine are massively wrong. Government-run health care has proven to be heartless and uncaring — and the inferior treatments it provides come with a very steep price tag.

Rachel already started a topic that I didn't see because a keyword search of the word abortion didn't find it.  I seems we are caught up in word games.  I explained favoring choices especially better ones in most situations and I certainly support the right to reproduce assuming you have consenting parties. 

I agree with Crafty on the legal issues. After it is returned to the states we still have an abortion rights debate. I was just writing one person's opinion about right and wrong.  The legal issues and political process follow.

I didn't notice that Rachel addressed any point in my post, but fired back questions at me that I already addressed, so I guess we are working on two different topics.  I found the questions to be condescending and diversionary which is your right and your choice. I already posted that nearly all pro-life proposals offer exceptions and that 98% of abortions in America are for convenience reasons and back comes a story about an 11 year old girl in a foreign land who actually did find her way to get abortion services. 

If you are comfortable with a system where men have zero rights, where it is women not couples or humans or families that reproduce, where killing 49 million isn't one of your top ten concerns, where the fact that 48 million of those were for convenience reasons doesn't merit a mention even in reply, then I give up on looking for common ground or a beneficial exchange.
----
Quoting BBG: "...as an off brand libertarian, I'm loathe to tell women that they are bound by law to let a creature grow inside of them" and similarly Rachel wrote: "Do I have control over my body or does someone else?"

I see your points and offer this reasonable and pragmatic compromise solution:

Recognize the woman's right to remove the unwanted tissue but not the right to have it killed.  Leave viability issue in the hands of God, the survival strength of the fetus, the medics and the people who would adopt and love it.

Fair enough?

Of course Palin is minimally qualified. Obama opened the door on that.  The difference is that Obama earned where he is with 18 million votes or so and Palin started as the choice of one, but that's how that works.  I agree with Rachel that the debate of Palin should be on issues and stands that she takes and opponents should quit underestimating or trashing her. 

Exact reverse of Rachel, I want her elected because of her positions and hope that the mini-scandals and airlifted investigators don't bring her down first.  We should hammer out those issue discussions one by one on their merits  not just the stand of a VP candidate.

I stayed out of a previous debate or two like the gay marriage discussion in trying to avoid making me-too posts of comments already made, but I certainly agree with Crafty that I greatly appreciate the presence of opposing views on both sides here.