How to Take American Health Care From Worst to First

October 24, 2008
By BILLY BEANE, NEWT GINGRICH and JOHN KERRY, Op-Ed Contributors, The New York Times

In the past decade, baseball has experienced a data-driven information revolution. Numbers-crunchers now routinely use statistics to put better teams on the field for less money. Our overpriced, underperforming health care system needs a similar revolution.

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While McCain Looked Away, Florida Shifted

Gov. Charlie Crist, left, joined Senator John McCain on a tour of Florida this week, but their relationship is reportedly strained.

October 25, 2008
By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times

MIAMI — For Senator John McCain, it was not supposed to be this way. From a commanding lead last spring, in a state where Senator Barack Obama did not campaign in the primaries and only hired a state director in June, Mr. McCain is now locked in a neck-and-neck race for a trove of electoral votes that is vital to his hopes of victory.

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Politcal humor and wisdom: "Dancing with Stars"

The Real Plumbers of Ohio

October 20, 2008
By PAUL KRUGMAN, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times
"Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans."

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.

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In Bush Stronghold, Obama Pulls Even With McCain

October 21, 2008
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, The New York Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Lorie McCoy, 40, a flight attendant, was bustling out of a library here the other day, loaded down with books. She is worried about how an upended economy might affect the airline industry, and so she is also taking classes.

“I’m looking for a better, higher-paying job,” Ms. McCoy said. For that reason, she said, she is voting for Senator Barack Obama.
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[Blogger: The New York Times now sees just five toss-up states, including North Carolina (featured here) plus Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Florida.]

What Colin Powell said...

“I watched Mr. Obama ... during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. ...

I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. ... I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? ... What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate.

“Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me.

And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration. I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

[emphasis added]

Thanks to my friend John Coyne for making sure people read this...