My rant-ish response to a Right-leaning friend who asked me where I got my news. Gets a little preachy toward the end.

Most of my news comes in the form of podcasts I listen to during the day. NBC news puts their entire evening broadcast in a 22 minute video podcast that I watch while eating breakfast the next day (I'm pretty sure other news outlets do the same thing, but Brian Williams is dreamy.) BBC is a great source of world news because they don't seem to have either a left or right wing bias and they often report on stuff going on in Africa and South America that we rarely hear about on American news channels. And their reporters have British accents which are very cool and make them sound way smarter than me.
CNN, NPR, PBS (especially Bill Moyers) are others I enjoy mostly because they have commercial-free podcasts. MSNBC by their own admission is left-ish, but I find myseft agreeing quite often with Racheal Maddow and Keith Olberman. Olberman did an entire 45 minute show on health care back in November where all he talked about was the problems he had in obtaining good quality care for his dying father. What a shame it is that some Christians are against universal health care when it would do the most good for the 'least of these' in our society. Forget raising taxes to pay for it, just take 1% of the Pentagon's budget and be done with it...we don't need any more F-98 Super Falcon Marauder Stealth Flying-Monkey Drones!!! Maddow brought to light the disgusting hate speech of some American "Christian" evangelists who gave Ugandan legislators the moral permission to propose a bill that would punish homosexuals in Uganda with the death penalty, among other unbelievably stupid proposals. Maddow was also the first person I heard reporting on the anti-Christian statements by Pat Robertson of '700 Club' fame regarding the recent Haiti earthquake on January 12, 2010. Brother Pat blamed the earthquake on Haitians making a pact with the devil 250 years ago to help kick the French army out of Haiti. This is the same loser who blamed the events of Sept. 11, 2001 on gays and abortion.
Such perversions of the Gospel message by people claiming to be that same message's proponents seem to be what passes for evangelism these days. To remain silent while these false teachers (Pat Robertson, Richard Cohen, and even Rick Warren) spew their vomituous filth into gullible ears of the earnest-yet-misled is the moral equivalent of Muslim leaders watching passively as al-Qaida corrupts the teachings of Islam on a world stage. Anyone preaching hatred of any group of people anywhere is by definition NOT a Christian and therefore they do not represent my faith. It is my opinion that the men I listed above and those like them (here's looking at YOU, Fred Phelps) are liars, false teachers, and servants of ignorance and hatred and have no place in positions of leadership or authority. Therefore, I'm sure we'll be seeing them all on Fox News very soon...after all, Fox hired Sarah Palin.

Single payer? How about Massively multipayer online health care?

People here in 'Merica are upset because it is being proposed that their tax dollars be used to pay for all of our health care instead of our tax dollars being used to pay for Medicare (for the old) and Medicaid (for the poor.) The government would pay the bills if you chose the government option and that's called 'single-payer' as I understand it. I'm all for it, but there are other options not being considered.
My proposal is MMORHC...like World of Warcraft, only with +15 fun. All doctors' offices would have a webcam in them. The patient would come into the small examination room and briefly explain their health concern, like the interviews they do of people before they go on one of those court TV shows like Judge Judy. The doctor would come in, consult with the patient and list some options for care from the basic to the extremely invasive and nearly absurd. The viewing audience would vote WITH THEIR MONEY on which option the patient receives! It's brilliant! No matter which option the audience chooses, the care would be doctor-approved and already paid for. Paypal was invented for this, I tell you. This would usher in the entertain-o-surgical era, doctors would have to take acting lessons (or actors would have to take doctoring lessons...I'm not sure which would be more prevalent,) and nurses would have to put a little pep in their step to boost ratings.
There are a few problems with the idea. Privacy would be extremely curtailed and as soon as the words "300 pound tumor" were uttered by any doctor anywhere, all online voting participants would flock to that site instantly leaving less sensational patients with no audience...good luck to you if you've got the swine flu. The good news is that, with everyone in the world participating, the idea of health insurance would be obsolete, not just in the USA, but everywhere! All procedures would be paid for and people could vote more than once for some crazy, almost unnecessary procedure which would ultimately cost the patient nothing.