Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't write mortgages. That government backup you deride was their job.

Why do you assume a national health program would necessarily be a cartoon of mismanagement? It would HAVE to be more efficient than the duplicative mess of insurance companies we have now.

Federal support for small business group insurance is one of those *new* ideas you claim to be unable to see.

Creating a huge drug benefit program while forbidding its managers to bargain with Big Pharma is just the kind of brilliant conservative management that characterizes those Pentagon programs you enjoy mocking. Changing that program to allow it to leverage the size of its pool in dealing with the drug lords will knock its costs way down. That's one little change; there are many others.

Your problem is you want it all written down on a three by five in card, just like Ronnie. So you end up thinking F&F created this mess, not a bunch of hedge fund operators poisoning the well of credit with toxic derivatives. Everybody has a "moral" story that explains our current state in terms of his own values and ideology.

The difference is, I'm right and you're wrong.