The Stories We Tell Ourselves

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Your answer for the first question of "Take Your Brain for a Spin," page 6, July 14, was incorrect. In addition to Washington, Grant and Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson was a Major General and Zachary Taylor was a Brigadier General.

Your answer for the first question of "Take Your Brain for a Spin," page 6, July 14, was incorrect. In addition to Washington, Grant and Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson was a Major General and Zachary Taylor was a Brigadier General.

"Take Your Brain for a Spin," page 6, July 14 , Summer Double Issue: #1 B3 is the wrong answer. C5 is the answer. Besides Washington, Grant & Eisenhower, you left out General Andrew Jackson & General Zachery Taylor. Philip Fontana, Montville, New Jersey fontana14@optonline.net

Did you know that if McCain is elected you will have to pay income tax on the value of the medical insurance that your employer gives you? Worse still, he is offering a tax break for people who pay their own insurance, BUT only $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families.

Let's say you have a family of four. Your insurance policy costs would be at least $1,500-2,500 per month under a self-pay plan, which cost more than employer group plans. So, you pay $18,000 -$30,000 per year for insurance, and you get to deduct only $5,000 of that. If you paid $25,000 for you insurance, you would be out of pocket $20,000 per year. This is FAR WORSE than the current system, where if you are self employed you can deduct 100% of you medical insurance costs.

So, if you're not self employed, you would stick with your Employer's plan. Employer plans for a family of four have a value of $900-$1,500 per month totaling 10,800-$18,000 per year. Surprise! On April 15th, you owe tax on all of that as INCOME to you. Say your bracket is 25%, and the value of your Employer medical plan is $14,000. You will OWE THE IRS an additional $3,500, and that's ON TOP of whatever monthly premium you already pay to your employer for your insurance.

Many analysts say that McCain's new rules would encourage employers to stop offering health benefits. If that happened, then far fewer Americans would be insured than are insured today, because what family of four can afford $18,000-$30,000 out of pocket per year for self-pay health insurance?

Furthermore, McCain's plan does not require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions of people who self-pay their insurance. People under employer group plans have all of their pre-existing conditions covered. This is a hugely unfair aspect of the current system. Insurance companies can afford to cover the pre-existing conditions of the much larger pool of people with group insurance, but they refuse to pay the pre-existing conditions on the smaller pool of self-pay customers. They have been allowed to price gouge the self-pay customers, which is a form of market manipulation that should be illegal.

So let's say one of your kids had diabetes and you have high blood pressure, then your employer stops offering insurance. You now have to buy your own, but you and your child are INELIGIBLE due to pre-existing conditions. Oh, yeah, they will let you buy the insurance, but you can't use it for any pre-existing condition until you have paid on time every month for two years. And you know what happens at one year and 11 months? You get a letter saying your policy has been cancelled. I have many patients this has happened to.

McCain's plan SUCKS.

It does nothing to help middle class working Americans afford or obtain medical insurance. In fact, it makes the current system WORSE.

Wow, I was hoping to get some insight on the Oil part of this story that appeared in my print version. Perhaps they pulled it from the online version. It may be just as well as the article was confusing. Might I suggest that the re-write use identical metric throughout the article so that it might be easier understood. For instance, the author begins the article with US production at more than 8 million barrels per day then describes "untapped resources" in thousands of barrels per sq mile. The author goes on to describe US crude imports in thousands of barrels per year and then later in billions of barrels per year.

I guess this is a complex subject but it would help to make it clearer since it is also an important topic as well.

In the end, the author dispels the "myth" that the United States doesn't have any oil as false. Well, I think every reader knew that going in. The question is HOW MUCH oil do we have and what do we need to do to recover it?

Besides Eisenhower, Grant and Washington, perhaps you should consider the following as qualifying under the presidents as "generals or higher":

Benjamin Harrison United States Army Brigadier General
Chester A. Arthur New York State Militia Brigadier General
James Garfield United States Army Major General
Rutherford B. Hayes United States Army Major General
Andrew Johnson United States Army Brigadier General
Franklin Pierce United States Army Brigadier General
Zachary Taylor United States Army Major General
William Henry Harrison United States Army Major General
Andrew Jackson United States Army Brigadier General

Hmmm, what was the purpose of this question and answer of "3"? And don't try to use that 4-star nonsense - it eliminates Washington at least!

Lincoln and the log cabin....actually Lincoln the chronically depressed who waited, and waited and waited to fire a disaster of a commanding general. Hmmmm. Will Obama choke on the strain of dealing with Generals and the military in a time of War when he so ill-equipped that he probably will have to take a crash course on Military Protocol. Then, Mr. McCain. I do think he was brave in the Hilton, but I also believe very strongly that he suffers from a very serious case of PTSD. This guy is a loose cannon with a hair-trigger temper. Do you really, I mean really, want him carrying the football? His literary Hero, Hemingway took a big ol' Shotgun in the mouth as his way out of a sticky wicket called cancer. What will McCain really do with nukes when the stuff hits the fan? RFK said after the Cuban Missle Crisis that 8 out of 13 of the men in the Cabinet room with JFK wanted to go to war. Why was JFK so restrained? Read Profiles of Courage, not Hemingway. Please help me, this is the first election in my life where I feel that there is no way out at the polls in November. The Choice in November is Worse and Worst.

We ordinary folk seldom look to presidents and prime ministers as the ore with which we blend our inner steel, but instead look back to the kindly ones who cared enough to teach us the ways of life in quiet ways, at times with fishing gear in hand, or walking hand in hand to see a mundane thing, and if we're not so grand and fortunate to shine as royalty, we know they gave the ore, at least, to make our mettle. For this we simple folk give thanks to those who cared.

some times some peoples like to play the games of ignorant who not see the happening as blind to create a lot of chauvinism and
give legality for their chooses-
the history don???t depend on the blinds who let to us more of ignorance and human characterizing and chauvinism to destroy the the human roles even those were our fathers it???s the clear darken - if we still do it is the biggest bale

Bush in 2000 versus Gore:

"Somalia. Started off as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission, and that???s where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nation paid a price.

And so I don???t think our troops ought to be used for what???s called nation-building."

http://raford.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/bush-in-2000-no-nation-building-in-2008-nation-building-is-part-of-the-us-army-operations-manual/

New Army report on why our Iraq occupation failed so badly:

"???The military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of nation-state the United States wished to see in its place.???"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/washington/29army.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I am so confused. If a tree flip flops in the forest and no one hears it . . .

Why are we in Iraq again? Why aren't we targeting all our guns on public enemy number one - bin Ladin?

Bush, McCain and Cheney must have all the answers. They are so certain of themselves.

Must just be a communication problem that's keeping them from sharing any plausible explanation or excuse as to why after all these years Iraq remains as big a fiasco as ever.