After the jump -- the lyrics of Steely Dan's "Change of the Guard," from their 1972 debut album, Can't Buy a Thrill:

Eminent political philosopher Dave Barry has come up with the ideal Florida solution.

Excerpt and link below the fold.

Others have diaried about Hillary's bullshit interview this morning with NPR's Steve Inskeep. If you want to ask NPR to do a followup fact-check story, here's where to submit your request:

http://www.npr.org/...

Hmmm. I have to come up with 300 characters for my diary intro. Oh -- while you're contacting NPR, tell them to stop saying stuff like the Dem nomination race is "neck and neck," like they did yesterday. Surely they can do the math, or at least read DKos where umpteen diarists have done it for us.

UPDATE: At the NPR link, click the box for "NPR Program," and other options will appear. They're self-explanatory, except possibly "please select a program" -- you want "Morning Edition."

Turn off your flamethrowers, I'm an Obama supporter. Sent him money, will probably work in a cell-phone bank this weekend. But . . .

But I read the February 26 article in the London Times online (link and excerpts below the fold), and I have to say they seem to have some actual facts for which I have not heard a satisfactory explanation.

I am hoping to hear a satisfactory explanation. I want to be reassured that there really is nothing to it.

Reassure me, below the fold. (Hmmm, that sounds like too much fun for politics. . . .)

Great omens for November!

Total Dem turnout is running way ahead of total Repub turnout in all the swing states, and -- amazingly! -- even in some southern states.

Details below the fold.

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action. . . . He [H.G. Wells] was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity.

-- George Orwell

Reflections below the fold.

Under current law, if you become disabled due to sickness or injury, you must wait 29 months before you get Medicare. This foolish policy causes much suffering.

A bill has just been introduced in both houses of Congress that would eliminate at least 24 months of this waiting period. Below the fold: an easy link to locate your Congressional reps and their contact info, and an easy cut-and-paste letter to urge them to support the Ending the Medicare Disability Waiting Period Act of 2007.

Just a short diary, linking to an interesting blog entry summarizing Obama's legislative record. Turns out, according to Obsidian Wings, that it's substantive, smart, and un-flashy. A link below the fold.

Cost is the big bugaboo that keeps the average American voter, and the average American politician, from wholeheartedly endorsing universal health care. While a consensus is emerging that the free market is a lousy tool for deciding who gets health care and who doesn't, there's no consensus on how we'd keep costs down if everybody had healthcare.

Sure, there would be significant savings as a result of more people getting preventive (cheaper) care, and thus not needing emergency care, and from catching diseases at their earlier (cheaper to treat) stages. And sure, if we went the single-payer route, there would be significant savings from eliminating insurance companies' administrative expenses that go to screening out "undesirable" applicants, denying coverage for some procedures and medications, and paying executives fat bonuses. But none of these addresses the core problem that even relatively cheap care options keep getting more expensive.

For keeping costs generally in check, I've got an idea, and it relies on the free market. More below the fold.

I'd like to look at gun control from a different angle than Kenevan McConnon in his gun control diary of today (which at this writing is up to 1200 comments!). Mr. McConnan says Dems should back off on gun control because it's bad for our political fortunes in the rural West.

I say we Democrats should back off gun control for a different reason: it's bad for the Constitution.

More below the fold.

Today's New York Times has an op-ed by a bipartisan group of former Capitol Hill denizens. They propose a five-part plan to address the deficit. Part three is a carbon tax, to be levied by a cap-and-trade system.

More below the fold.

1. Make it FASTER.

2. Include an "email this" feature.

We're going to get universal healthcare.

The tide of the Civil War turned at Gettysburg. In World War II, the tide turned in the west when Hitler failed to conquer Britain, and turned in the east when he failed to capture the Caucasus oilfields.

In the American War for Universal Healthcare, the tide turned today, when the good guys captured . . .

Wal-Mart.

Good news from the front, below the fold.

The new Democratic spending bill contains the seeds of our own Katrinas. I hate to see us failing to learn from the Republicans' mistakes.

More below the fold.

We broke it. It's our responsibility to fix it. But can we? And what's the cost of trying? More painful questioning below the fold.

LoganFerree and a gnostic have related diaries today on the article by Brink Lindsey, a honcho from the libertarian Cato Institute, in the current issue of The New Republic. (No, I do not defend every position TNR has taken in the last several years.) Lindsey seeks to advance the "libertarian Democrat" discussion that, so far as I know, was kicked off by our very own Kos.

LoganFerree and a gnostic take a broad philosophical approach. I post this separate diary to address Lindsey's policy proposals on particular issues. Basically, I think Lindsey is significantly (but not completely) on target.

Below the fold: extended quotation from the Lindsey article, a link to it, and my reactions on specific issues. And a poll! Gotta have a poll!

Andrew Sullivan's comments today on Hillary Clinton are revealing. Sullivan (contrarian, principled conservative) wants Clinton to stay out of the '08 race because . . . she would lose.

Get that: Sullivan is already rooting for the Dems in '08. At least tentatively.

From today's Virginia results, a whiff of Nader 2000.  Webb leads by about 7,000 votes. Glenda Parker, the Green candidate, got over 26,000. If we lose Virginia in a recount, and thus control of the Senate, we'll have Green Glenda (NOT the good witch) to thank.

The problem of Green spoilers, a la Nader 2000 and still perhaps Glenda 2006, is not going to go away.  Saying more loudly, "Hey people, don't vote Green" is, it strikes me, not likely to do a damn bit of good.

How to deal with this?  A proposal below the fold.