Nora, updated.

Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” While this may sum up the approach of a certain kind of complacent, anti-government conservatism, the sentiment is not only politically suicidal but also unethical in a country where mass unemployment and mass foreclosures have littered the landscape with rotting houses and rotting lives. Like the New Deal Democrats, today’s Democrats need to experiment ceaselessly, trying and abandoning programs until they find some that succeed in putting Americans back to work in a productive economy.

In the past 18 months, California’s five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court.

New Hampshire residents pay the third highest health insurance premiums in the U.S. It hasn’t always been this way. The numbers are simple and stark: individual health insurance in New Hampshire costs about $5200 a year.

Well, the real Death Panels want to make sure that the disenfranchised, the poor, the people of color, and anyone else they fear remain cut off from decent health care. These Death Panels want to have health care only for those who can afford to pay, the best money can buy, if you have it. They want the health care insurance industry to turn a profit for their investors by un-enrolling persons with life-threatening “pre-existing conditions”, and limiting the care of those who they deign worthy of keeping on their rolls. Who are the real Death Panels? They are the obstructionist groups that are using doublethink to ascribe evil motives to those who are working hard for health care reform. These obstructionists are the very people who want to decide who will live and who will die by denying access to health care to ALL Americans.

I hate my iPhone too! It does everything except basic phone functions well. Try making a call or sending a text, or even just typing on the thing,” writes “Chase T.” The comment gets right to the heart of the collective annoyance: This allegedly revolutionary item, this magical gadget that promised to change our lives, fails at even the most elementary tasks.

True, fear is partly a confidence issue. A horse that trusts its rider is far less skittish. Over time, we learned to take care of each other. But nothing could keep Rusty calm around anything resembling a whip; I’m sure he had his reasons. Fear is, of course, largely a confidence issue among human beings, too. Anybody who’s watched flash mobs shouting down Senate and House members over the Obama administration’s health-insurance reforms ought to see that. For every dogmatic tough guy who’s channeling some talk-radio blowhard, there are many citizens who give every outward indication of being scared witless.