Thanks Jeff. Just sent you a small tip. We really do appreciate you guys' work, even if we seem like whiners sometimes 
You said you welcome suggestions, so here goes.
* Go back to the optional fees in the earlier client. If they enter 0 for fee and try to make a low priority transaction, pop up the following message: "You are about to send a low priority transaction with no transaction fee. Please be aware that this transaction will take a very long time to go through, and cannot be cancelled. The transaction is considered low priority because it is such a small amount. [Button: Cancel Transaction] [Button: Enter Transaction Anyway] [Checkbox: Never Show This Message Again]" (If they check the box, then, of course, stop popping up the message and henceforth allow feeless transactions without complaint)
As a blogger, I'm eager to welcome micro-donations. Tiny tips (in the ~1cent range, or even smaller!) would absolutely revolutionize blogging. Now, as such, I am willing to accept very long confirmation times as a necessary evil. I think I speak for a lot of bloggers when I say this, and probably many merchants too. I would even accept confirmation times of an entire year! Just let my readers send the tiny tips with no fee 
One other thing. I currently have a 1BTC transaction in my history (first withdrawal from MtGox, for testing) and it has over 700 confirmations and visibly growing. It was made days ago. I'm not advocating total communism, but I think at least *some* of that work could have gone toward fee-less transactions...
RE microtransactions: this is a FAQ. It is even in satoshi's original paper and crypto postings. Bitcoin was never intended to be a useful microtransaction network. Bitcoin is not optimal for microtransactions, and probably never will be.
RE fees: the rapid increase in value caught everyone by surprise. Months ago, we were dealing with "penny flooding" on the network. Now, 0.01 BTC is a non-trivial amount.
Right now we are releasing new versions of the software as fast as possible, trying to fight the biggest fires ("triage") impacting users on the network. We know fees need work, and there are already pull requests trying to deal with this: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/289
Longer term, we want the community to participate in a discussion about how to best balance (a) rapidly changing bitcoin value with (b) protecting the network.
Right now most transactions do not require a fee, but the default client requires a fee in a few situations:
1. Transactions smaller than 0.01 BTC
2. Transactions whose byte size larger than the 27k free transaction area (very rare)
So, to answer the question "why not make it easy to ignore fees?" is really unspending is very difficult. If it's just a checkbox for users, a lot of users will uncheck it, their transactions will not get relayed or confirmed, and their coins are simply lost in limbo: never confirming, and no way[1] to recover.
Losing coins is a horrible user experience, far worse than having to pay 0.0005 BTC.
But we are open to all suggestions about transaction fees. You just have to understand the "unspend" problem in its entirety, and the support nightmare that goes along with it.
Jeff
[1] Technically, this is not really true. You can "unspend" by restoring a wallet backup or some other esoteric means, but this is not something within the reach of your average user.
You said you welcome suggestions, so here goes.* Go back to the optional fees in the earlier client. If they enter 0 for fee and try to make a low priority transaction, pop up the following message: "You are about to send a low priority transaction with no transaction fee. Please be aware that this transaction will take a very long time to go through, and cannot be cancelled. The transaction is considered low priority because it is such a small amount. [Button: Cancel Transaction] [Button: Enter Transaction Anyway] [Checkbox: Never Show This Message Again]" (If they check the box, then, of course, stop popping up the message and henceforth allow feeless transactions without complaint)
As a blogger, I'm eager to welcome micro-donations. Tiny tips (in the ~1cent range, or even smaller!) would absolutely revolutionize blogging. Now, as such, I am willing to accept very long confirmation times as a necessary evil. I think I speak for a lot of bloggers when I say this, and probably many merchants too. I would even accept confirmation times of an entire year! Just let my readers send the tiny tips with no fee
One other thing. I currently have a 1BTC transaction in my history (first withdrawal from MtGox, for testing) and it has over 700 confirmations and visibly growing. It was made days ago. I'm not advocating total communism, but I think at least *some* of that work could have gone toward fee-less transactions...
RE microtransactions: this is a FAQ. It is even in satoshi's original paper and crypto postings. Bitcoin was never intended to be a useful microtransaction network. Bitcoin is not optimal for microtransactions, and probably never will be.
RE fees: the rapid increase in value caught everyone by surprise. Months ago, we were dealing with "penny flooding" on the network. Now, 0.01 BTC is a non-trivial amount.
Right now we are releasing new versions of the software as fast as possible, trying to fight the biggest fires ("triage") impacting users on the network. We know fees need work, and there are already pull requests trying to deal with this: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/289
Longer term, we want the community to participate in a discussion about how to best balance (a) rapidly changing bitcoin value with (b) protecting the network.
Right now most transactions do not require a fee, but the default client requires a fee in a few situations:
1. Transactions smaller than 0.01 BTC
2. Transactions whose byte size larger than the 27k free transaction area (very rare)
So, to answer the question "why not make it easy to ignore fees?" is really unspending is very difficult. If it's just a checkbox for users, a lot of users will uncheck it, their transactions will not get relayed or confirmed, and their coins are simply lost in limbo: never confirming, and no way[1] to recover.
Losing coins is a horrible user experience, far worse than having to pay 0.0005 BTC.
But we are open to all suggestions about transaction fees. You just have to understand the "unspend" problem in its entirety, and the support nightmare that goes along with it.
Jeff
[1] Technically, this is not really true. You can "unspend" by restoring a wallet backup or some other esoteric means, but this is not something within the reach of your average user.