Republicans always say they are the ones who bring prosperity to Americans and those "tax and spend" Democrats are not good for you. Somehow, I never really bought that as I always seemed to do better financially when a Democrat was President.

Well, Michael Kinsley's Politicians Lie, Numbers Don't: And the numbers show that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans shows that my casual observation was correct. On nearly every possible economic indicator, even when lagged by one year, people have done better when a Democrat was president than when a Republican was in office. The economy grows faster. Inflation is lower. Unemployment is lower. Federal spending is lower. Even lagged a year, the Democrats do better.

How about spending? Well it is a mixed message. Spending is higher when a Democrat is in office but not for reasons the Republicans would like you to know. It is higher because Democrats spend more on defense than Republicans do. Take defense out of the budget, and they spend less. So the next time one of your Republican friends tells you that only Republicans can keep the country safe and make it more prosperous, pull a copy of this article out of your pocket. They have it backwards.

Still working? I am retired, but if you are not will you like you health plan if John McCain gets his way? My bet is you won''t. As Bob Herbert notes, his plan is a radical one that pushes people into the private insurance market or no insurance at all.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was behind a plan that moved uninsured onto the insured roles. Like Obama's plan, Romney's plan reduced the load on emergency rooms and provides most people with coverage.

For those with access to the Wall Street Journal, there is an excellent article about why Obama's plan is better. In summary since many cannot access this paid source, health care is the big issue threatening growth. Sustained growth mandates reform in this area. They note that "Sen. Obama's proposal will modernize our current system of employer- and government-provided health care, keeping what works well, and making the investments now that will lead to a more efficient medical system. He does this in five ways:"

1. Better information because his plan provides funds for a system to identify the best providers, treatments and patient management strategies."
2. Rewards providers for positive outcomes and not services so that there is a focus on care rather than procedures. (As a personal aside, the flaw here is that major academic health centers often take patients too sick to be treated with any chance of success elsewhere. This drives up the failure rate even while they have far better success saving very sick people's lives than other providers have.)
3. Allow individuals and small firms to join together to provide pooled insurance that will let insurance companies provide plans similar to what they do for large firms now. This would reduce cost by lowering administrative costs and spreading risk.
4. "Guaranteeing access to preventive services will improve health and in many cases save money." It has never made much sense to me why insurers would prefer to let you really get sick before they paid for service. Preventive services are among the most cost effective medical service available.
5. Reducing cost by an estimated $2,500 for the typical family thereby making it available to far more people.

McCain's plan does the opposite. Because it taxes coverage (e.g., roughly $12,000 per family with only a $5,000 tax credit per household) that current is not taxed, he pushes more people off insurance rolls or into less effective plans. Worse, those who are already sick would often be completely cut off from coverage when their employers dropped coverage. Unlike Obama's plan, he does nothing to stem the rising cost of care.

What is McCain thinking? Maybe like Bush, he has some rich friends who plan to profit by a plan that only helps the wealthy, like him. People are not paying attention to real issues like this. Too bad. Never forget that while the Obamas only recently paid off their college debt, McCain and his wife are so wealth he has no clue as to how many homes they own.

The US spends far more per capita than countries with comprehensive medical coverage. We must move on this issue that has been festering for about 20 years.

Talking about wealth, the market didn't tank yesterday as I feared. It recovered some. (The Dow was up 20.91 at closing.) Barclays, a British Bank, agreed to buy some of the healthy assets of Lehman Bros. I guess the new Republican motto must be, "Let's sell America and all go to the RIviera."

AIG, the big insurer, will be rescued by the Fed. AIG's collapse would have meant that investors world-wide would have been required to have reduced their own capital and restated their debt. Even may people with money market funds would have been hurt.

What will the next shoe to fall be? Some say it will be Washington Mutual, which has been rumored to be in trouble for some time. The rest of us won't go to the Riviera because we will be paying off the debt built up by the current maladmimistration whose plans are similar to McCain's.

Sarah Palin draws crowds. John McCain does not. John should remember how she has dealt with supporters in the past. She fired them when they were no longer useful to her ambition of the moment. The Republicans are worried about it too because there are some snakes in her past. Looks like the "troopergate" hearing may get put off. Five state republican lawmakers have sued to stop the hearing on the matter and McCain's people are trying to stop hearings on it. I suspect there are more smoking guns.

Poor Tucker Bounds. First he got beaten up on MSNBC by a woman. Now, he was beaten up on Fox, no less, by a woman. Sounds like John McCain at a Palin rally. Another point in this article is that McCain continues to say that Obama will "raise you taxes." As the story points out, "Perhaps technically McCain was correct -- if all of his listeners earn more than $250,000 a year."