Really? Your check's in the mail??

The National Debt is $ 9,506,695,031,863.27
The estimated population of the United States is 304,374,737
so each citizen's share of this debt is $31,233.52.

That is $31,233 for every American alive - new born, almost dead, brain dead, mentally or physically challenged, ACLU member or just 'doesn't want to work'.


Now that $31k is just the tip. If you add in the off-the-books unfunded obligations, your piece grows to something North of $204,000.

Cut waste - NOW!! Save half on gas and energy, get FREE medical care.

Let's give everyone a livable base amount (gas, water, electricity) and then charge increasing per-unit prices for additional consumption.

Currently we promote waste by charging a (relatively) high amount for the base usage and then giving discounted rates for increasing usage. The waste is, simply, stupid. But it's the only way utilities and the gov't now operate.

Same for a medical plan: everyone gets a lifetime 'uh-oh' benefit of $xxy,000 plus $x,000 in a medical account at the beginning of each year. When it's gone, it's gone - you're on your own. Of what's left, annually, the person gets 50% or can transfer the entire amount into the uh-oh fund, depending on how lucky they feel.

It makes people very responsible for using resources or shopping for their medical needs.

Health ... care? Is sanity possible?

'most any plan can provide for the health care needs of most folks.

But the 'gotchas' come in the closing acts of one's life - 80% of lifelong medical costs may be incurred in the last few years. Much of these are 'uh-oh' costs - the big, unexpected, heroic procedures that add only incrementally to one's life.

No plan can provide for everyone's uh-oh costs. They ain't that much money.

By capping each person however, the general level of uh-oh can be fairly generous as there are no $4 mil oh-my-GAWD bills lurking in the woodpile.

Oregon has done this - they rated every medical contingency, ranked, multiplied by frequency, totted up and arrived at a logical, realistic cut off point as to services that can be delivered: anyone qualifies for a broken arm repair, younger people with a longer viable life qualify for procedures (heart-lung transplant) that make no sense in an 84-year old Jewish soul in failing health.

Yeah, now let's hear it for all the poor old folks who gonna die in the de col' an' de dark. Well, for every old fart rescued from the cold and the dark, you sacrifice a dozen or twenty infants or young children with curable failings that will never be cured for a lack of funds - funds siphoned off to puff wind into whizened lungs for an additional six months.

Sure, if it's my lungs, I'll argue like hell for the operation. But I'd be incorect.

For once.

Torture? What is torture?

1.	the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.

In today's usage, the word torture is largely a propaganda term.

To a teenager, denial of the family car for Saturday nite is torture.

To Puritans, the drowning of a witch was merely a truth check.

Whether it is 'expedited interrogation', 'aided recall', or 'accelerated information retrieval', it is technically not torture without 'excruciating pain'.

Sleep deprivation, prolonged standing, exposure to cold - even waterboarding - do not rise to the level of splinters under the finger nails, plucking of eyeballs, shoulder drops, partial dismemberment and similar.

Rather than just blow bilious smoke at everything, I would look at a) what information could this enemy have and b) how likely is it that they in fact possess it.

If it is possible that they know the dates of linen changes and towel trades, the use of almost any form of assisted inquiry is an abuse and uncalled for.

If they may have the dates and codes of the next 9-11, then my only question is 'where is that damn field generator?'

Playing by the rules with those who do not play by the rules is a fool's game.

And the PC response of 'you would have America play not nice-nice?' is the kind of liberal fantasy that has no place in a world of assassins and bombers.

i.e. Your daughter is wrapped up in a bomb with a timer at an undisclosed location. You have the person responsible tied in a chair in front of you. Each time you have asked nicely for the location of your daughter, he has spit in your face.

You now:

1. Continue asking nicely
2. Threaten to put the enemy outside on a chilly night
3. Pick up his Koran and tease it with a match
4. Threaten to leave him alone in a small, dark room overnight
5. Waterboard the the s.o.b.
6. Use your sidearm to blow out one of the m.f.'s kneecaps and establish your bona fides.
   

Your daughter now has 12 minutes.

Hint: you DO NOT want to call the ACLU.