I so love Miss Molly.

One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts. I realize that is superficial, shallow and unbecoming to a semi-serious-minded liberal like myself, but there it is. The other is that he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to public policy.

And therein lies our thesis for the day: Politics as showbiz versus what actually happens to real people's lives as a result of stupid public policies. When 200,000 poor children get knocked off a federal health insurance program because a state decides it can't afford the one-fifth co-pay, what happens? In fact, children rarely die, because when they are finally horribly ill and burning up with fever, their parents take them to an emergency room, where they receive excellent care at a very high cost to the rest of us. In the meantime, their teeth aren't attended, and their hearing and eyesight are never checked. As a result, many of them try to function in school with tooth pain or without being able to see or hear clearly. Those little kids aren't celebrities, but they're just as real as Arnold Schwarzenegger. They have bangs and bright eyes and dreams.

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