Elsewhere: Universal Health Care, Regulations, and Capitalism; David Foster Wallace

• Matt Haughey argues that universal health care might be good for capitalism:
  

  Everyone I know that freelances or works a day job and wishes they could quit and follow their dreams of launching a company complains about the lack of healthcare. Whenever I used to talk about freelancing at tech conferences, the first question was always about healthcare coverage. I've heard that in places like Berlin where you don't have to worry about where your healthcare is coming from or how much it costs, up to 35% of working age adults are freelancers. It may sound crazy and anti-capitalist to consider healthcare for all, but if we flipped a switch tomorrow and everyone had health coverage I swear a million small businesses would launch overnight. I know lots of people that keep a job just to get healthcare that are wasting their creative talents because they had a cancer scare or were born with a defect or otherwise are deemed uninsurable on their own.

  
  
• In a similar vein, Yglesias points to an example of regulation improving the market.


• Via Kottke, an excerpt of a sort-of biography of David Foster Wallace, and an interview with the author of that biography.

Elsewhere

• Mark at Pseudo-Polymath asks how I can support Obama despite some disturbing religious statements he's made. It's a good question and although I replied at his place, I'll have to write a post about it.


• John Cole, former Republican, tears into his old party for going horribly, horribly wrong.


• Paul Krugman, on the other hand, argues that Bush is no departure for the GOP, but "the very model of a modern movement conservative." He does not mean that as a compliment.


• Ben Avuyah wonders if outsourcing one's moral decisions to a rabbi leads to the atrophy of "moral musculature."


• Some people are supporting Hillary just to make Rush Limbaugh's head explode.


• New blogger Orthoprax Anonymous shares about a difficult conversation with his wife regarding his shift away from the religious beliefs he held when they got married.

Elsewhere

• At Beyond Teshuva, a story of a married woman who became Orthodox while her husband remained nonobservant.
• Via DovBear, 10 Weird Religious Practices. Kaparot made the list at #4.
• Via Andrew Sullivan, the most disturbing children's book I've ever seen.

Elsewhere

1. A thread on Dov Bear about whether frum Jews have hot sex. I'm hoping it gets a lot of comments -- it's something I've been curious about, too.


2. New blogger Skeptodox has a couple of interesting posts at Safkanut:
• A review of Off the Derech, in which he complains about how many of the Orthodox pretend that everybody who leaves is practically mentally ill.
• Would we recognize our ancestors' religion?


3. Glenn Greenwald demolishes the idea that O'Hanlon and Pollack (of the much-ballyhooed Op-Ed about the surge) have been in any way liberal on the war, critical of Bush, informed, or, you know, right about anything related to Iraq in the past. There are too many posts to link to directly.
   

Chana's Post

Chana has a beautiful, wrenching post about her time in high school, how she was hurt by teachers purporting to be religious, and how she found her true Judaism in the works of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

As I wrote in the comments there, I wasn't hurt as she was, and I didn't leave for the reasons that might have caused her to leave, but it's compelling reading, a Howl against some of the idiocy in the Orthodox world.