Social Security - people seem to forget that Social Security was put in place during a time when many people could expect to receive company pensions - and yet, due to cyclical economic problems, we still had senior citizens starving. Social Security is really a form of insurance, designed to prevent this. Hopefully, today, all those people who are now in charge of their own retirement (company pensions having vanished in favor of 401(k)s), and have never really experienced a serious bear market, are now starting to realize that having that safety net is a Good Thing. No matter how shrewd an investor you think you are, if the whole economy tanks shortly before your retirement, there may simply not be time to recover.

Medicare is similarly an insurance program aimed at those same senior citizens - through some miracle of foresight (or a lucky accident) it was kept separate from Social Security, so the disproportianate increase in health care costs over the years could be handled separately from the general rise in cost of living.

The defense budget was drastically increased under Reagan for one purpose - to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Having done that, Clinton (approved by a Republican congress) started to roll those increases back - obviously doing it all at once would have been (and would still be) disastrous for the economy. The sad thing is that now, we've pushed that budget forward again - only this time, the only country it will bankrupt is ours.

BTW, I had the same feeling when I was living in Wisconsin, and we had a brief flirtation with caucuses. But then it was just caucuses, so everyone knew what was involved. My problem with the Texas system is that it was previously just a way for the party insiders (the only ones who knew about the caucus phase) to override the will of the voting public. This was clear from how totally unprepared they were for the numbers they had this year. Plus, I couldn't get there, which annoyed me even more - I felt like my vote did not really count.

Here's a serious question, after reading the linked article. Why is it that us 'ordinary' people have to provide positive identification like social security numbers and/or passports, driver's license, etc., for everything from getting a job to opening a bank account, but people who start companies apparently don't have to provide anything other than a name? How can there be any assurance that the company is paying taxes if you can't even positively identify the sole officer?

That makes as much sense as asserting that, since a person can freeze to death (cold=bad), that we should all jump in the fire (heat=good?). The best place to be is always going to be between the extremes - we just have to decide where.

And we should care, why? Barack Obama and John McCain are running for president of the United States of America. Isreal is not the 51st state, an American protectorate, or even a territorial posession. The interests of the US and Isreal may coincide at times, but they are certainly not identical.

I think they decided that it made more sense to put their energies into increasing the Democratic majority in Congress. They can, if need be, still go after the Bush/Cheney cabal after this election, and with the possibility of having a filibuster-proof Senate majority.