Free Association, after the Last Debate... What is it that people like about the Shrub? Everyone says he is such a likable guy. I just can't stand him, he reminds me of all the obnoxious frat boys I ever knew. Do they like Shrub's take on foreign policy? He believes that freedom is a gift by the creator to all peoples. Does anyone really believe we went to war to spread freedom? Does anyone really believe that more Iraqis would have died if we left Saddam in place? The Shrub wants us to believe we are doing God's will by warring to bring freedom. What part of the teachings of Shrub's Messiah inspired this war? Isn't it more believable that we went to war in Iraq because they have the biggest known and unknown unexploited oil reserves? I didn't hear any follow up at the debate about the disappearance of machinery and buildings and materials in Iraq which could be used to manufacture WMD. The UN inspectors and satellite photos show the disappearance of entire buildings after the war and stuff from Iraq is being sold on the black market in Holland. Kerry wants to deal with terrorism like an international crime. Which it is, only on a much more serious scale. But doesn't it seem more sensible to go after it with detectives, spies and black ops than to go into neighborhoods which may harbor terrorists with tanks and blast away? Think about it. How effective would it be if we went after organized crime by going into the lower east side and blowing up the buildings where suspected criminals hung out? Last night Shrub was pushing the medical savings account for health care . Apparently, this tax free savings account is combined with a health insurance policy with a very high deductible. So if you get the flu and call the Doctor you pay for that out of your health savings account. But if you need dialysis, the insurance kicks in. For someone like me, who rarely gets sick ( knock on wood) it sounds OK. But what if you've got a lot of little cheap health care expenses that are not covered. And if you need dialysis, will you have to pay the high deductible every time you go? I can see those health accounts won't go very far once you get a chronic condition needing constant care. And no one said why it's still OK for the VA to get medicine from Canada, now that the Shrub has officially classed it as a third world country. There were no real answers on how other things are going to get paid for. Kerry is going to raise taxes on the people earning over $200,000 yearly, and we're supposed to go to a web site and look at his plan. The Shrub, after telling us that Rubin looked at Kerry's plan said it won't work, just wants us to go to his web site. No thanks, I'll just read Krugman and the financial pages of the Times. Also, something about Shrub's demeanor seemed to indicate that Social Security may turn out to be a little bit negotiable. No one talked about the latest findings on the environment, and information about accelerated oceanic warming and heightened storm cycles. Years from now, people will look back on these debates as historic records. I wonder if they will find them willful, or shortsighted for their failure to deal with the most important issues that affected the future. Well, in the words of the Shrub, as reported by Bob Woodward, "we'll all be dead"