Finally a good Maureen Dowd column

She usually dips into her reserve of frivolity when writing her columns, but this one by Maureen Dowd is serious and spot on. Check it out!

Assigned watching

Just kidding, of course. But if I could assign a lesson for every American interested in the healthcare deliberabtions, it would be the C-Span program Q & A from Sunday, Sept. 6. If you can spare an hour, follow this link. T. R. Reid, a journalist who has lived abroad on several occasions, has written a book on healthcare in other prosperous democracies. You may have seen his PBS Frontline program on the subject. He took his sore shoulder around the world to see how it would be addressed by various systems and discusses what he found with Brian Lamb of C-Span. I think Reid's major contribution is the observation that other countries decided that everyone had to have health care as a moral obligation and designed a program with that in mind. That isn't what we're doing, but it should be, and Obama pointed that out in his message to Congress.