SoUA 2007 Overall

Some thoughts.

The health care change is ok. It's nice for me since I'm one of the intelligent/responsible people with my own coverage.. .tax credits on top of the HSA credit = less taxes for me. Muy bien. I'm not sure its a great idea overall. It's a start. Encouraging people to get their own coverage rather than the employers paying will eventually push the cost down. But doesn't do much in the short run. There we have to fix the overseas/generic drugs and get more people insured overall (bankrupting on credit cards is one thing, bankrupting on medical bills is bad news for the rest of us).

Social security didn't come up really. Needed to. That has to get fixed. Ireland and Australia both fixed theirs a decade ago. Galveston did a long time ago. Pork earmarks need to go (Clinton had that nifty line-item veto that the Supremes took away, about the only intelligent thing I liked about the guy). I've written that they have to be exposed and publicized, dramatically. There used to be members of Congress who specialized in this sort of thing. Now they specialize in grand robbery/treason instead.

Iraq is still touchy. And Congress is still obviously partisan. Very few things overall got both sides of the aisle up (malpractice protection of all things!). As far as Iraq goes. I'm in agreement with most of us that more fighting settles nothing. It does very little to remove the root cause of the problem. It does kill a few hardliners and make life difficult for terrorists. But it's not a plan, more like another finger in the dike. Until we refine our definition on what we are in fact fighting and fighting for, we're going to lose. Sun Tzu and Clausewitz both say that a victory depends on breaking the will of the enemy to resist. We've done nothing to break the will because we've not addressed the root source of the will. In fact in some ways, it's stronger. Kurdistan is looking nice though, not that anyone talks about it.