Today is a writing/reporting day for me, meaning I’ll be clattering keys and making calls, but not in the service of you, dear blog readers. But fear not — I have something else for you to take a look at.

It’s my friend Ron French’s long-awaited (by some of us, anyway) Detroit News project on how health care costs are strangling General Motors. But wait, wait, there’s a bigger picture here, and this is it:

Because of its aging work force and army of retirees, GM has reached a health care crisis before the rest of the country. But GM’s battle with the health care beast may well be a preview of what America will be facing in coming years.

If health care costs are driving one of the most powerful companies in the world deep into financial difficulty, how bad will the health care crisis be for the rest of us?

Every American who pays attention knows that one reason the auto companies want to meet with President Bush is to sell him on a vision of nationalized health care. Here’s a figure, for example, that people in Detroit know by heart:

The price tag of every vehicle GM builds in the United States includes about $1,525 just for the medical care of the nearly 1.1 million Americans the automaker insures. Toyota’s health care tab for each vehicle it builds in Japan is $97; it’s $400 to $425 in the United States.

(Before you wonder why Toyota can do it for $425 vs. $1,525 for GM, I can tell you it’s because Toyota has only been building cars in the U.S. for a short time, relative to GM, and doesn’t yet have the army of retirees and aging workforce that GM does.)

Some of you know about my steady-gig editing job, which I do as well as freelance writing. At night, I farm news for a single corporate client whose business is health care. In addition, I’ve spent a lot of August and September writing stories about health care, some of which haven’t run yet. Both jobs leave me believing we have entered the age of miracles, real miracles. One of the people I interviewed, for a story in October’s Hour Detroit (on newsstands now — buy two, tell your friends), had minimally invasive cardiac bypass surgery, using a robotic surgical tool; his doctor sat in another room staring into a monitor, operating tiny instruments introduced not through a gaping wound in his chest, but through five holes, each the diameter of a pencil. Another doc, an oncologist, talked about the amazing advances in biotech-engineered chemotherapy drugs, resulting in therapy that’s less debilitating and more effective. Some of his patients used to choose death over chemo, and now some don’t even lose their hair.

“And a course of chemo drugs used to cost $500,” he said. “Now it’s more like $50,000.”

I’m so stupid (how stupid am I?), I’m so stupid I thought health care would be the No. 1 issue the last presidential election, after the war. Instead, it was whether John Kerry spent Christmas in Cambodia in 1969.

Well, don’t want to get off on a rant here. Ron’s a great writer, and it’s a zippy read. There are several sidebars, all of which can be accessed from the the main DetNews page.

What is this lovely mixed grill we have? We have:

Yesterday the Kronk, tomorrow your grandma’s grave: Scrap-metal thieves target grave markers.

The best/worst thing about the internet is, it makes you care about the fates of strangers’ cats. Alas, Waffles didn’t make it. Damn Chows. Damn stupid Chow owners.

And finally, a recipe. This was sent to me from someone who attributes it to her “Michigan cousins.” If you believe, as I do, that recipes are a form of anthropology, well, many things about Michigan will reveal themselves to you in just a few short lines. So enjoy…

Caramel apple salad

1 cup sugar
1 tbs. flour
1 heaping tbs. cornstarch
4 tsp vinegar
2 eggs
1 – 20 oz can crushed pineapple (or tidbits)

5-6 cubed Granny Smith apples
1 cup chopped Snickers candy bars or crushed Heath candy bars or peanuts
1 – 8 oz carton Cool Whip

Cool Whip — the secret weapon of every Midwestern cook’s larder.

On Wednesday mornings before I knock off my night-shift editing work, one of the last things I do is check the Metro Times and Jack Lessenberry’s column, so I can go to bed in the proper frame of mind — suicidal.

Jack is not a crepehanger, only a realist:

Last week the leadership of Ford Motor Co. went before the cameras. Remember those gloomy forecasts last January? Well, they were too optimistic.

There will be a snowball effect. And this is not your father’s recession-based round of auto layoffs. This is forever.

I lay this out not to make you suicidal — you don’t live here, after all, at least most of you — but to underline there is but one issue in Michigan this election season. One. Uno. The big enchilada. The big E. The economy. I am willing to vote for any candidate of any party, if I think they understand that nothing is as important as this. Everything comes back to the economy, and I want to hear sensible, no-b.s. ideas about how this state, this region, can diversify its economy and find its feet again, before my house is worth the same as a crack den in Detroit. OK? Everyone understand?

So I open my web browser today, and guess what the Republican nominee is suggesting?

Intelligent design. Surprise, surprise, he’s all in favor of teaching it in public schools:

“I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory,�? DeVos told the Associated Press this week during an interview on education. “That theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.�?

We. Are. Doomed.

UPDATE: Open your mouth, lose your crummy, low-paying job: The corpse collector has been suspended. But of course. But that’s…OK. He really wants to concentrate on his career as a rapper.

I don’t have to explain to my genius readers — and certainly not to Ashley, raging defender of New Orleans — that no one really gives a crap about urban America anymore. As long as we have Broadway, as long as we have major league baseball in a downtown stadium with a nice sports bar nearby, that’ll do for most of us. Most of the U.S. lives in suburbia now anyway. Certainly the registered voters do. And you know what that means.

Certainly I do. But my suburb is cheek-to-jowl with one of the most notoriously dysfunctional cities in the United States, and let me tell you, reading my morning newspaper is rarely boring.

If you’re a boxing fan, you probably know about the Kronk gym. It’s where trainer Emanuel Steward shaped Tommy “the Hitman” Hearns, where dozens of lesser-known pugilists have trained and fought. If you saw Out of Sight, there’s a great scene with George Clooney, Ving Rhames and Don Cheadle, shot there. (Cheadle remarks on the famous thermostat setting preferred by Steward: Boiling. Keeps everything loose.) Like virtually everything else in Detroit, it’s struggling. Correction: Was struggling. Now it’s on the canvas, most likely KO’d.

What did it? A losing string of boxers? Competition from a better operation nearby? If only. No, someone stole the plumbing:

The thieves broke into the boiler room Sunday night and stole all the copper pipes, cutting off water to the gym, which forced it to close for the foreseeable future. …The rising price of copper has sparked increasing thefts of pipes, wire, even the coils in air conditioning units in Detroit and around the country. The price has more than doubled in the past year, and has been hovering around $3.50 a pound this month on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

And that, perhaps, explains another curious item, in yesterday’s paper. It was in the news digest, which is, in my experience, the place to spot news before it’s news. Everything starts small; big stories are born as tiny paragraphs:

A 24-year-old man, who police said most likely was trying to steal electrical cable, was found electrocuted in a field in southwest Detroit on Monday. …(A police spokesman) said area hospitals also have reported an increase in treating people for electrical wire burns.

The cable thefts, the story notes, are the reason for power outages in the area. Listen to the morning news, and every so often you’ll hear of a Detroit school closed “due to a power outage,” the announcer says. The power seems awfully iffy in some neighborhoods of Detroit. Now we see why.

It’s not exactly the butterfly-typhoon connection. Actually it’s a lot closer. Thieves steal infrastructure, and institutions that depend on the infrastructure collapse. The price of copper is up, and therefore children will miss school, young men will have one less opportunity to work out their aggression in a controlled, socially approved setting, thieves will die in fields trying to get a piece of the action.

And what is threatening the fabric of America? This week? I dunno. Probably gay marriage.

So the Raleigh News & Observer ran a Page One note Friday, warning their readers that they would find nudity in that day’s paper. It read:

Today’s Life, etc. section includes a photo of a famous fresco by Michelangelo that includes nudity. The headline was, “Advisory to Readers.”

Here’s the fresco:

Yup, that’s nudity, all right.

Actually, as often happens with these things, I’m wondering something else, that is, who felt the need to describe the image as “famous.” It’s certainly true, but is such a trite and tinny modifier that it’s more amusing than accurate. And yet, I can imagine the near-unconscious impulse that put it there: Already nervous about the shocking transgression of putting a 500-year-old image of Adam’s wenis in a family newspaper, the mind seeks justification. “Important?” Nah, sounds too eggheady. “Glorious?” Nope, that would be editorializing. I know, I know — “famous.” That’s the ticket. If anyone objects, we’ll just point out how famous it is. Paris Hilton is famous, after all, and that’s why we put her in the paper.

It might also have been inserted by the copy desk. There’s a wide streak of pigheaded literal-ness on the desk that would insist on the modifier, because otherwise why use the image? The story’s about how different religions depict God, so why use this one? Because it’s FAMOUS.

OK, OK. I’m jesting because if I stop I will start to throw things. (This is a throwin’-things kind of Monday; be forewarned.) And how’s this for a tin-eared engagement with the readers? From the ombudsman’s blog:

Well, we’ll find out just how sophisticated an arts community this is with reader reaction to today’s Life Etc. front page.

Oh, is that what this is? A test of sophistication? Just shut UP.

Guess what the second graf of that entry says: Displayed across the page is the famous Michelangelo fresco… Famous!

I think it’s really pretty simple, and I think Mitch Harper nailed it:

The newspaper is either filled with unworldly and unsophisticated rubes or it is a window on how the newspapers views its readers. I suspect it is the latter. The newspaper shows what disrespect it has for its readers but is also a measure of the disrespect they have for the quality of their own product.

Yup. Yup. Yup.

So, bloggage:

I was offline most of the weekend, and when I came back I found the Pope had provoked Muslims. That is, the Pope quotes from a 14th-century dialogue between two forgotten scholars, and the Religion of Peace responds with angry demonstrations, death threats, effigy-burnings, possibly the murder of a nun and other peaceful acting-out. In the Free Press a local Muslim is quoted saying, “Our religion is the most peaceful religion.” Noted.

Life imitates “The Wire” in this NYT piece on a local body collector, local being Detroit, bodies being “the ones found lying around the city.” A nice detail:

Do not judge him. A happy attitude is necessary in his profession. It keeps the mind from shattering, salts one’s sanity. Call the job dirty. Call it 14 bucks the hard way — $14 a human body, $9 an animal. He said he made $14,000 last year. He made most of it at night.

UPDATE: There’s an outstanding video version of that story on NYTimes.com, too.

Back later. Be peaceful.

God, my breath must smell like Dentu-Creme. I opened the Columbus Dispatch yesterday to the real estate section and read this:

Randy Carr didn’t bother with a home inspection before buying the century-old Victorian brick house on Neil Avenue. “I didn’t hire an inspector to find out what was wrong with the house,” Carr said. “I knew everything was wrong. The insurance company wouldn’t cover it.”

Hmm, sounds like a real wreck, I thought, reading on. (Sometimes, on Sunday morning, you need to look at the real-estate section before you move on to the news.) And then the dawning revelation: I not only know this house, I’ve been in this house, I’ve partied in this house, I’ve been impressed by this house, and whaddaya know, it was falling down all around me:

Although (former owner Corbett) Reynolds had tackled some roof repairs, exterior painting and interior remodeling, he hadn’t been able to keep up with the maintenance of a huge house.

“If the ceiling started crumbling, he would tack up a piece of plywood and paint it black or something very dark. Then he filled the room with his art. People would come in and say, ‘What a great house.’ But what they were looking at was his art.”

Count me among those fooled. I dimly recall a restored-to-Victorian-perfection house, with parlors and butler’s pantries and everything fussy fussy fussy. (A friend of mine rented the third floor, but he was friends with his landlord, and it seemed that every time I visited I’d end up walking through the main house on one errand or another.) One day I came over and the place had gone bipolar — gone were the horsehide couches and glass lamps and all the Victoriana and in its place was black. He’d painted the walls black, the ceiling black, the woodwork black (the woodwork!), and filled the room with Warhol prints lit by little spots. It was jarring, but very cool. I recall thinking, “Someday someone will have to strip that woodwork and will curse his name,” but until then, hey, it was his house and he could do what he wanted with it. Who’d have ever thought all that black was hiding water damage, the same way black pants hide a fat ass.

Corbett, the original owner, was an artist and something of a partying visionary. He owned an abandoned movie theater on the west side, which he rechristened Rudely Elegant and opened as a nightclub. Then it closed, and he went to a schedule where it would only be open one night a month, for an invitation-only theme party. I thought it had something to do with his liquor license, but after I attended the first one I think it was more about the preparation needed.

The first one was the Red Party, held in February. (Link warning: Main page is OK, subsequent photos may be NSFW or homophobes.) The space was filled with dancing bare-assed cherubs and neon hearts. Then came the White Party, the Colors Party and the most infamous of all — the Black Party, which was all about leather. I might still have the flyer for that one, which featured a nude Ohio State cheerleader in a black mask and a black rooster. (It was the Chinese Year of the Cock, which would have made it…1981.)

Needless to say, while no one made me feel unwelcome at these events, it was pretty obvious they were not aimed at my demographic, so I never stayed long. It was always worth the cover charge just to see how they’d decorated, though. Googling around, I see that Wikipedia gives Reynolds shared credit for inventing the circuit party, which the Red Party was.

The real-estate story in the Dispatch didn’t mention any of this. I guess it would have been a tangent.

So, bloggage:

As everyone knows, Peggy Noonan gets on my last goddamn nerve. Which is why I’m singling out this blue-moon rarity, a column of hers I actually like. It’s about what the 9/11 victims said when they were able to make phone calls in their final moments:

Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, “I never liked you,” or, “You hurt my feelings.” No one negotiated past grievances or said, “Vote for Smith.” Amazingly –or not–there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying “I hate them.” …This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they’d guess. And this: We’re all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won’t make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

And that seems like enough to leave you with now. Have a good day.

Why is it always the men you’d least like to see naked who most want to be that way?

…just served us…nuts. Yeah, that’s it.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well, get educated, whydontcha?

Middle age, it is so wonderful. One is able to say, “I don’t have a clue” with no trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness. One is not surprised by one’s own cluelessness, nor is one distressed by it. On some things, we Simply Don’t Know.

All this by way of saying I have no clue what’s going on in this Ramsey case thing, other than perhaps this: John Mark Karr is a dark angel sent from hell to prove that watching cable news is a total waste of time. For once, this may be a case where it pays to wait for the Time/Newsweek version. Let them sort all this crap out. But my own clueless gutcheck says this guy is your basic crazy creep, and he probably didn’t do it, although he did lots of other things he should be locked up for.

I’m glad I got to see his pictures, anyway. It’s not every day you get to gaze upon a real live pencil-neck geek. Some miscellaneous bloggage before you Jessica Fletcher types work out the case in the comments:

As usual, Dahlia Lithwick is a treasure: You have to feel sorry for John and Patsy Ramsey. They were overmatched by forces outside of their control from the get-go. If the initial police investigation in 1996 into the murder of their daughter, JonBenet, had been competent, or even minimally professional, they might not have spent the last decade under an “umbrella of suspicion.” If Patsy had been less viscerally creepy—instead of a pageant queen who seemed to be living vicariously through her tricked-out daughter—and if both parents’ demeanors had been slightly more in keeping with what we expect from the grief-stricken middle class, the Ramseys might not have lost the national media at “hello.” If only they’d recognized early on that they couldn’t outsmart, outfox, or outmaneuver that media, they might have found some peace.

Jack Shafer exonerates the media.

The WashPost’s roundup is pretty comprehensive.

Ready, set, go get ’em tigers.

Well, it’s not like I didn’t suspect this would happen: I spend too much time working on a long, blustery post about the purported terror plot against the Mackinac bridge, and today it’s pretty much blown out of the water — the purported terror plot, that is, not the bridge. Which was my point. It’s not the Amish Popcorn Factory, but sorry, it wasn’t very convincing from the get-go.

This story, from yesterday’s DetNews, lays out the gist: Three Texas men with Arab names (U.S. citizens of Palestinian descent) were apprehended with a) 1,000 prepaid disposable cell phones, and; 2) pictures and video of the Mackinac Bridge. For this they were charged with “providing material support for terrorist acts and terrorism surveillance of a vulnerable target,” and held on $750,000 bond.

Their families said the men were buying the phones up here because they’re scarce in Texas, and they intended to bring them back down south and sell them at a profit. The police were tipped by a Wal-Mart employee after they scored 80 phones in one store. This all happened in the Thumb area, Tuscola County. Terry Nichols country. I guess they know their mad bombers there.

The police and prosecutor pointed out that cell phones can be used as remote detonators for explosives. Then you have your Arab names and your bridge photos. The conclusion was obvious.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I found the defendants’ explanation entirely plausible. I really do. Maybe it’s because I recently snapped several photos of the Mackinac Bridge myself. (See self-incriminating evidence, above.) More to the point, though, the Amish Popcorn factor is rearing its inconvenient head. That is, the Mackinac Bridge? WTF?

A few points to ponder:

** Palestinian terror is a fact, but one thing we know about it is, it’s usually directed against Jews. The northern lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan may be America’s most Jew-free region. I know the Jews had a diaspora, but I don’t think any made it this far. Not even Jane and Michael Stern — the area has some of the most disappointing native cuisine in this or any land.

** While the Mackinac Bridge is a great big feat of American engineering and infrastructure, the fact is, it links two areas of enormous, um, non-consequence to the world at large. At least not flashy, media-ready consequence. Timber moves through here, and raw materials for steel plants and stuff like that, but the closest Wall Street gets to this area are the lovely vacation homes on the lovely lakes. The most severely affected would be the local residents of the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula, deer hunters and other tourists.

** Also, 1,000 phones? Would that be for, what? One thousand IEDs placed along the bridge? Installation could be problematic; even in coveralls and hardhats, I’d think three swarthy Arabs would be spotted by the real work crews. When would they be detonated? Perhaps during the Bridge Walk, the annual Labor Day end-of-summer celebration, in which 50,000 locals and others take one lane of the bridge and hoof it across.

In the second-day story, this was the part that pierced me: “They were in Wisconsin and they drove to the U.P. and then down here,” (their lawyer) said. “The Mackinac Bridge was an amusement to them. On the camera there’s 50 pictures, 20 of the bridge. The rest are a deer, ducks, flowers and trees.”

Deer, ducks, flowers and trees. Three Texas guys enjoying a little break from the heat up north like millions of other tourists, snappin’ pictures. They weren’t model citizens — one was a registered sex offender — but I think it’s safe to say they weren’t al-Qaeda, either.

So you figure, they’re free now, right? I mean, once the prosecutor realized his paranoia, he let them go, correct?

Um, no. Their attorney is pushing for release today, but so far the prosecutor hasn’t said sorry-’bout-that or my-bad or anything. I’ll be looking forward to the day’s events. Maybe they can charge them with something. I suspect they will.

UPDATE: Re: Our conversation in the comments about Michigan cuisine:

It was a severe understatement to call Michigan a culinary wasteland the further north you traveled. Once on a fishing trip with Clete, Warlock had been served a bright yellow chicken gravy on a slab of gray roast beef. With the advent of the microwave ovens he suspected that many of the mom and pop operations rarely cooked, only reheated. He revered the words of an old Jewish literature professor who said the downfall of a nation could be detected in the misuse of language by its public officials, and the disintegration of its eating habits.

— from “Warlock,” Jim Harrison.