health care

I admit that I am puzzled by the debate on health care in the US. I understand clearly why everybody needs health care. I don't understand at all why anyone needs health care insurance. Just make them all civil service employees, assign them pay rates and get on with it.

Iran

I think they won't be able to blame this one on anyone.

It's a good thing I'm not president

If Ahmadinejad had told me to stop meddling in their internal affairs, I would have replied, "Fuck you." This is only one of a long list of reasons.

Emigration Policy

It should be possible to calculate America's labor needs and extrapolate immigration requirements based on this calculation. This sounds like a task for the labor department. It would be my guess that any legitimate such calculation would show that we have plenty of high end people. Plenty of people would love to run the Bank of America. It's the low end that needs people. Why have an emotional breakdown over the fact that immigrants legal or illegal fill a real requirement?

It's true that I have been completely unable to see this issue. I want to know what the problem is before I start proposing solutions.

Iran

It's hard to know what to say about this. It strongly resembles the overthrow of the Shah, and is probably run by the same people.

It meets our ideals in a mysterious way. We once held that the power of a government derives from the consent of the governed. What happens if they rise up and say that they do not consent? Do I think this means we are required to go in and rescue them? We have no idea if either side represents anything we would be for.

I think it must mean that large portions of the country don't like what their country has become any more than they liked what the Shah made it. The impression is that extraordinary force is being used to stop entirely peaceful demonstrations. Such forceful suppression of dissent can only mean dictatorship. Why is an Islamic dictator superior to a civil dictatorship? For me it's a meaningless distinction, but it isn't my country.

It isn't my country. We did the same things here when demonstrations we didn't like filled our streets.

It reminds me of the time of the Iraq invasion when I thought seriously of emigrating to Canada. I'd like to live somewhere where the country I lived in didn't think it had to decide about every goddamn thing that went on in the world. It's just not my country.

Bowing

It certainly does look like Obama is bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia. My question is, Has he been there before? If he met the king before he was president, he may just have been doing what it did before. The president does not bow to anyone.

Terms of Use

Does anyone ever read the terms of use? I know I don't. I just assume that the terms of use of anything are whatever you say they are. I assume that if I am doing something I'm not supposed to be doing, someone who gives a shit will tell me, and I will say, "Oops. OK. I won't do that any more." I no longer have space in my brain for lawyer talk.

The terms of use for Netflix are
a. I pay you money at regular intervals.
b. You send me dvds one at a time
c. I send them back when I get around to it.
d. Whereon you send me another one.
e. I am authorized to look at them, not copy and sell them.

Why does it have to be more complicated than that?