My sympathies to you and your child. Hope you're both better soon.

I see where the confusion came from though. "Hiking the Appalachian trail" does sound a lot like "hitting Argentinian tail". They just misheard. That's all.

And yet Avedis you,as an economist, are able to overlook the stupendous administrative costs associated with the current system, checking for current coverage, monitoring co-pays, second guessing physicians. Why they even have to pay people to tell their clients their insurance coverage has been exhausted and they are therefore doomed. Shall we also mention the expansive salaries and bonuses paid to insurance company executives for not delivering health care. You cite an instance where the insurance company's self-interest in seeking a lower cost solution worked out. I bet the ratio of good outcomes to bad is nothing for them to boast about. Keep on gleening. Who knows you might find some higher truths yourself.

All of humanity's energy needs could be met if we could just harness the energy being generated by William Buckley's spinning corpse. I suspect that if he were alive he would be rendered speechless, as difficult as that is to conceive, by the inanities being published by the National Review Out-To-Lunch. This must be a variant of Gresham's law: Pseudo-intellectual crap drives out thought. I wonder where they're hoarding the good ideas?

One wonders why they bother. The protesters know they are not tools of Western imperialists. Everyone in the world knows that. Ahdeminijad's people know it's just a propaganda tool. Who is left to convince one way or another? It's kind of a formalized Kabuki dance of repression. The long term result will be the same. Repression will lead to the formation of underground movements. The authorities will repress all dissent making no distinction between peaceful groups and violent ones. This will drive the dissenters towards the violent side. Everyone with an axe to grind with Iran will have all the opportunity to mischievously intervene that they could desire. The Iranian populace will suffer. It has all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy although I doubt the Iranians would enjoy the comparison. There seems to have been a little bad blood between those cultures.

I've been trying to think of an historical instance of turning the other cheek in the kind of conflict you cite. I can think of none. It seems to be a visceral human response to terror to call for the SOB's. Very primal and seemingly inevitable. The high moral ground would appear to be an unpopulated wilderness most of the time.

Actually I quite agree with you. Both paragraphs. Completely. In a real sense acting as an honest broker pays much bigger dividends than couching self-interest in hyperbole about freedom and democracy. That being said there is a time and place for interventionism. Merely expressing opprobrium for some other country's policies and actions can be seen as unwarranted interference (and usually is by the country on the receiving end) but it must be done. Silence is assent. Sometimes boots on the ground interventionism is called for. Rwanda would not have been nearly as bad if foreign powers had intervened. Clearly the Iran situation calls for very deft handling. Which is to say: hands off. Nevertheless what is going on there is transformative as far as the US is concerned. The image of Iran as an implacable monolithic enemy is dissolving before our very eyes. The Iranians are being humanized again and calls to bomb them into dust (last week's neocon strategy) will now seem ridiculous especially when emanating from the simpletons now calling for interference in Iran. Truthfully there isn't much to choose from between Ahdeminijad and Mousavi. Their internal power struggles are of no real interest to anyone outside Iran. I think, for a change, US foreign policy is being handled very adroitly. I can't imagine what hash the Bushies would have made of this. I'm glad you bit on my embarrassingly obvious bait. Aside from clarifying your views which I had suspected I knew, it was a blatant excuse for offering my own two cents worth. Respectfully yours, Peter G

I don't think the Republicans object to "health care reform" at all. Clearly reform is what the polls are saying people want. They merely insist that the the resulting system be disastrously dysfunctional so as to be able to blame the Democrats in forthcoming election cycles.

This latest development is fully consistent with U.N. policy of doing nothing in a timely fashion. Had they acted promptly it is likely that some controversial report would have resulted and the U.N. avoids that whenever possible.

Did I forget to mention those heroes MacArthur and Patton and the Bonus Army? I did. The violent suppression of protest enjoys a long and honored history in the US as just about everywhere else.

Ohio State is a good example. The '68 Chicago Democratic convention would be another good one. The behavior of the authorities in the most recent Republican convention was hardly blameless either although mostly they just resorted to trumped up charges. There were too many cameras around to really go to town on the protesters. Is it not official US government policy that protesters are terrorists? That is what the DoD teaches does it not?

I must disagree with you about Obama's foreign policy team. I think they understand perfectly well the perils of interfering in Iran. If they wanted to interfere and cause a revolution all they would have to do is publicly and wholeheartedly support Ahdeminijad and urge him to crush the protesters. That would probably do it. On the other hand we all know that publicly endorsing the Mousavi faction and the protesters would provide all the excuse necessary to crush them. Either way they'd do nothing but generate another couple of generations of hatred of the US. Common sense would indicate the speedy acquisition of some ten foot poles and a good place to store them unused. I admit that I'm curious about this concept of non-intervention. Does that apply to the Israeli/Palestinian thing as well? Should they just stand back an let them sort it out on their own? Personally I think not.

It would be interesting to know what the breakdown of support for alternative candidates would have been had such been allowed. I imagine that many Iranian voters are actually fed up with with their Model T color options (any color so long as it's black) especially when even the illusion of choice is removed.

That looks like Lindsey Beyerstein of Majikthise third from the left front row.

I can't say I think Klein is all that wrong. The religious leadership erred deeply in their handling of the election results showing such utter disdain for the Iranian voters that it cannot fail to undermine their own authority. Their actions had more than a whiff of panic and rational panic is something of an oxymoron.

I stand corrected (well technically I'm sitting) and relieved. Apparently the time-space continuum remains intact. Regards, Peter

Steve quoting a WaPo poll? As accurate? Give me a couple moments I've got some cognitive dissonance to deal with.

There is a reason not many people use a pressure cooker anymore. The modest improvement in cooking expediency must be balanced with the catastrophic consequences of the lid blowing off. I would have thought the Mullahs had learned that lesson before they took over the kitchen.

Exactly the same thought had occurred to me even as I watched Kristol blather on. That man's grasp of history appears to be hanging by only the most tenuous of threads. How many times in the past has the US through the agency of Radio Free Europe and other such propaganda institutions urged dissenters to rise up against their oppressors only to leave them hanging in the wind figuratively and sometimes literally. The Festival of Ignorance never ends.

I noticed the big "IF" but I don't think it was necessary. The odds are very much in your favor of being right about this. Looking to the future, Mogadishu springs to mind as the most likely comparable outcome.

You have to give this man credit. Neither facts nor logic nor history nor fundamental human decency stays this buffoon from the swift completion of his appointed talk show circuit.

Indeed, at all times those weapons based on the soil of US allies were completely under US control.

Dollars to donuts this isn't the "paradise" these guys were expecting to be sent.

It is widely recognized that the US has the best health care system for millionaires in the world.

I rather wondered about that question myself Steve. I suspect that their may be a design flaw or, even more likely, a problem with material specs of the current design. Hex is wicked stuff and nickel is very expensive even now. Operational availability of their current crop of centrifuges does not appear to be high and even if their intention is to build more cascades the Iranians would be well advised to learn from their mistakes before building more.