Health care being the least of the United States woes at this juncture, what is Obama's stance (meaningless rhetoric)on keeping illegals away from any kind of care other than triage and stabilization, release and deportation?? This corrected, would alleviate the biggest problem with the current system-Much more concerned about the NAFTA fuckup, imminent domain flexed for the superhighway, and our language and culture on the skids from decades of systematic design, neglect, and treasonous legislation on the part of representatives worthy of death.

Discussing symptomology is fine and dandy, to a point. Watching a sucking chest wound and discussing it, does nothing for the victim's possible recovery.

I agree, Health care isn't America's #1 issue, but I definitely see it through a different lens here in Ohio. We don't really have the same sort of immigration difficulties you do. Instead, our primary NAFTA effect is that we have a large number of people being laid off as manufacturing jobs get moved to other countries. Our issue with health care here is much more about people's inability to pay for the care they need, than the care they need not being available because the system is too busy providing medical care for non-citizens.

In any case, here's Obama's stance (and possibly meaningless rhetoric) on immigration. For comparison, here's what McCain's website says about immigration. He doesn't really give specifics about what he'll do, just his assessment of what we need to think about on the issue. I've not been terribly interested in Immigration as an issue, but my own personal sense is that McCain and Obama have essentially the same plan on immigration, and McCain gets heckled by the other Republicans for that.

On NAFTA itself, this is all I'm finding at the moment, but it's probably as specific as a candidate can really be at this stage, since it involves negotiations with other countries. McCain's site is less specific still, in saying only that he "seeks to reduce barriers to trade", which I know from other sources means preserving NAFTA as is, and pushing to extend a similar agreement to Central America (CAFTA).

To the general decline of American culture, here's what Obama has to say about education, and family values. There's also this speech he gave on father's day, where he speaks about family and societal values in general.

While I'm worried about the decline of American culture, I'm not sure how much government can really do about it, beyond expanding education, trying to keep people's economic situation stable. I'd argue we also need to bring back real regulation of the media, something Obama has said he wants to do.

In any case, my post was spurred by finding two detailed, non-partisan analyses of the health care plans of the two main Presidential candidates, and I wanted to share them.