By SHELDON RICHMAN

Enough dithering! President Obama says it’s time to act on healthcare. I agree.

But act how? Are we really going to be happy with the pussy-footing proposals floating around Congress? All the so-called reformers want to do is tinker with insurance regulations. But how effective would that be, considering that the insurance companies themselves support the changes?

We have taken our eyes off the ball, people. Let’s get back to first principles. Obama’s premise is that we have a right to healthcare. A right.

Who wrote the following: “We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable things’ because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.”

I read in a recent news item that Pennsylvania is celebrating 150 years of extracting crude oil from the Allegheny foothills.

The French philosopher and author Voltaire was exactly right when he said, “Common sense is not so common.” He also said, “Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.”

I’m still laughing about it. Well, kinda. It’s one of those situations that you have to laugh about to keep from crying.

Maybe your job is like Henry’s.

Maybe your job is like Sally’s.

Henry hates his job. He absolutely drags to work every day. The whole idea of work seems rather ridiculous to him. All he can think about is how small a job he has in such a huge company.

One of the great strengths of Americans is that we have historically been able to put the past behind us and move forward.

They’re all over him — swarms, flocks, flights of critics taking apart President Obama: his style, his motives, his modus operandi, assuming he has one.

Dad will be 83 at the end of this month. By anyone’s standards, that’s getting up there. Reaching such a lofty age not only poses certain problems for the senior citizen, but also for their children. Just what gift do you get someone who’s been around so long?

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let’s now decide what is and what is not inflation.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, recently paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan.

Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, embedded with Bernard’s unit, was with them when they were ambushed by Taliban forces and Bernard was mortally wounded by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade.

If you woke up this morning healthy and of sound mind, thankful for your beautiful family, grateful that you live in the greatest nation in the world, I would like to ask a favor of you.

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats.

Their health care “reform” bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that “do no harm” will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment.

It’s sometimes amazing the coincidences that can bring a person into your life. How they can be plopped down into your life, just like they’ve always belonged there.

Since there has been loud opposition to President Obama’s address to America’s students, I thought I would give them the antithesis of his speech so that they can read this to their children and deliver the exact opposite message.

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are some questions that I have received during my years of ministry and via email for this column.

The aim of the wet projectile was perfect. Down the Street Bully Brad had taken almost everything into account. I say almost because his first spitball of the school year had missed its intended target by inches. Brad Macalister’s target was, of course, the back of my head.

“War is hell,” said General William T. Sherman in 1864. The politicians speak of the honor of war and the poets speak of its glory but the soldiers and the victims know the real truth… war is hell.

On healthcare, I’m just one of the ‘mob’

My laborious page-by-page reading and opining on the 1,000-plus-page House healthcare bill has been rendered moot by events and my slow reading pace.

It’s now obvious that HR3200 is dead on arrival and likely will never get to even a vote in the House of Representatives.

What happened?

In 1919, President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, died in his sleep at age 60. Edsel Ford succeeded his father as head of Ford Motor Company. Congress established most of Grand Canyon as a National Park. The Treaty of Versailles was signed, officially ending World War I. The League of Nations was formed, and so was a Sunday morning Bible study in old College Park, Georgia.

A faded cotton sweatshirt inspired last week’s conversation - or lack of - about four great cities and their symbols. Certainly I don’t want to suggest that London and Paris are the world’s greatest municipalities or that I have the credentials to judge them. After all, my shirt is only a size 12.

Most of my adult life has been intertwined with the Kennedy family. As a freshman at American University in 1960, I stayed up late watching the election returns, as John F. Kennedy barely eked out a victory over Richard Nixon. As with most Americans my age, the decades that followed always involved one or more members of the Kennedy family, whether it was legislation, indiscretions, speeches or just curiosity.

During the 2009 legislative session, the General Assembly worked hard to balance the budget by cutting inefficient programs and wasted taxpayer dollars. It’s true that we passed a number of important measures to protect homeowners. There is one exception, however: the decision not to fund the Homeowners Tax Relief Grant (HTRG).

There were certain issues in the past, whenever they arose, when I just kept my thoughts to myself and kept going.

As an elected official who was vocal on land use and transportation issues, I was often called to speak to various groups regarding those subjects. But before speaking, I would sometimes be introduced as the mayor of a city created under a master plan, never veering from it, maintaining the original vision from start to present. It was not true.

By Robert M. Goldberg

When it comes to evaluating the claims of Democrats about rationing and how to deal with grandma, I am guided by that great philosopher, Marx. That’s Groucho, not Karl, who famously said, “Who do you believe, me or your eyes?”

One fall afternoon, I was lunching with a close friend of mine at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. A man from another table tentatively approached us and explained that he and his wife were fans of this column.

In 1996, Christ the King Church began in my living room. Within a few weeks we had outgrown the space (it doesn’t take very many people to outgrow a living room).

If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn’t control most of the Obama farmstead’s best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles — since things surely look that way.

Last weekend a great debate raged at our house. Was it over money? Although always a worthy topic for a lively debate, money wasn’t the one for last weekend.