We were the only non-communist (or soon-to-be communist) country left with an infrastructure. And when an infrastructure works the wise polis focuses on maintenance and not on plow-it-under-and-build-anew approaches.

Downside: wrecked economies get to build with state-of-the-art technologies, while those not-so-wrecked muddle through. (This is why Japan and France have bullet trains, and England and the U.S. do not. Of course, neither does the former USSR or did the pre-capitalist PRC. Some things simply can't be done unless people can actually make money doing it.)

But the United States HAS the state-of-the-art health care already. That's why top Canadian politicians come to the U.S. for heart surgery. (Canada having decided years ago that what was good for the Queen was good for her, I guess; now they pay the long-term cost.) And if you were really screwed before Obamacare, we had Medicaid, which is why visits to the emergency room have been so damned expensive.

The irony is of course that our current economy is so bad that fracking (translation: throwing 3000 pages of legislation at something) a sixth of it could really lead to a Great Depression scenario. But then again, one should never let a crisis go to waste, and if the political situation is dire, hell, one can always create a crisis.

Good luck, everyone. We'll need it.

The president said he understands the sergeant who arrested Gates is an "outstanding police officer." But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

Come to think of it, why does somebody who should be worrying about national health care and defense policy need to be yapping about a domestic disturbance call in the greater frickin' Boston area? Especially when said yapping will predictably distract from the things that are, you know, important to said yapper.

Except maybe somebody's in over his head and can't keep straight what's important and what isn't.

Wow.

We went at 11:30. I figured that was safely in a quiet period, before a lunch rush but well after people would be at work.

The line was still 40 minutes long.

The kids handled it well. Hunter was in one of our umbrella strollers, and Aden was riding high in our new Kelty carrier. I think they did handle it well because the mood on the line was very upbeat. I heard a dad with a kid in a stroller behind me talking on his cell phone about it, and he said he was cautiously optimistic about Obama winning.

I hope he's typical, if Obama happens to lose. Otherwise, a lot of people are going to be extremely angry if we end up with another 2000 scenario, where Obama wins the popular vote and loses the Electoral College.

I hadn't really thought that possible until today. And I still think it's unlikely; I think McCain has to win Pennsylvania to have a shot, and if my neighborhood is typical of black urban turnout, then metro Philly is going to swamp the central and western part of the state.

But if McCain manages to win, I can see how a big Blue Coasts turnout could easily give Obama a comfortable popular vote margin.

That would be serious icksville.

As much as Obama worries me, if he wins the popular vote, I hope like hell he wins the Electoral College as well.

“Big-L” (as in the party) Libertarians seem to attract an uncomfortable mixture of conspiracy theorists, isolationists and pacifists. The Libertarian Party is the political equivalent of a Star Trek convention

That's unfair. To Star Trek conventions.

Not a problem!

Here's what you do:

1. Randomize the first list.
2. Randomize the second list.
3. Pair up items in the two lists.
4. Randomly match debit card numbers from the previously established accounts to the new names-and-addresses.
5. Write a routine that will post donations (all of which need to be under $200) to the Obama campaign's website, which conveniently doesn't bother validating the cardholder's identity.
6. Repeat as necessary.

Now the really brilliant thing about this scam is how many firewalls there are between Obama and the original source of funds. Obama's own fraud auditors (ineffective as they may be) still have no real reason to suspect any kind of coordinated dollar-dump. The card companies see nothing but small, cash-based transactions from an issuing partner. Even the Bank or Banks could claim that the agencies setting up the account looked legitimate; Banks aren't in the business of turning away high-volume depositors.

And since there's a definite whiff of Chicago in this scenario, the geek who writes the code can be dealt with.

This is not a far-fetched scheme. If I could think of it, David Axelrod could think of it. And I'm pretty sure it would work.

Change we can believe in. Yeah.

Well, the House of Representatives today showed that it's not an either/or proposition.

Well, some did, but two-thirds didn't.

But the Democrats, well, a lot of them (95) understood quite well that a lot of Americans are pretty pissed that 700 billion of their tax dollars were going to bail out guys who took morning choppers (and I don't mean the Harley-Davidson kind) to work. So they said, "count me out."

But bottom line, Republicans are supposed to be the smart ones; the Conservative position is to avoid the Great Depression of '08.

(Pelosi didn't cover herself in glory by trying to score partisan points pre-vote either. See? Stupid and evil, but that's neither here nor there.)

Republicans who think they're going to get a break by blaming the failure to pass on Democrats (who really do control the House of Representative, no matter what impression Speaker Pelosi seems to be trying to make) is also stupid; Republicans are always blamed when the average Joe takes a hit in an economic downturn (thanks, Frankie D! You too, Herbie H!) Never mind who's bright idea it was to subsidize mortgages for people who shouldn't have them. A Republican President was on-watch when the music stopped, and we're about to elect a Community Organizer for ACORN, and you Republicans are going to have to live with that for at least four years, and get another New Deal in the bargain.

How's that working for the Reagan-worshiping two-thirds of you?