The fact (allegedly) that a

"...a three-sided force, churning from inside the Beltway, from Manhattan-based media and from what remains of corporate America" finds Obama lacking is the most ringing endorsment I've yet heard of the President and his administration.

Good work! Keep it up!

Felix wrote:

"Yet I have worked with Brits, for example, who despair of the quality of dental care they got in Britain. (They mention that because it's a common medical treatment, not something that only happens when you get sick or hurt)."

We have indeed got a problem with dental care in the UK right now - mainly because dentistry was one of the last hold-overs from our completely private system which existed up to 1946! There is a shortage of NHS (National Heath Service) dentists - maybe our illustrious Prime Minister will fix the problem. None the less, with a bit of searching everyone can find an NHS dentist who will do regular dental work as well as the acute stuff.

"One of the first things they do when they come here is get all sorts of dental work fixed because the British variant was so shoddy."

Well, speaking as one of 'them' all I can say is I got a really off-putting hard-sell from my US dentist. For instance he wanted to take my wisdom teeth out even though I was suffering no pain or discomfort from them. 7 years later and I still have them and still have no pain or discomfort.

"I have also heard stories of waiting lists for common procedures which are unavailable in other countries, and people who come to the US because they can pay to get it immediately."

That is no longer true. Under Queen Margaret (Thatcher), who was ideologically opposed to the concept of state health care, the waiting lists did indeed grow long. This was a tactic to try and get people to hate the NHS and support privitised medicine instead. The tactic failed, not least because of a series of documentaries about the American system of health care.

One of Tony Blair's many unsung achievements was to massively reduce the waiting lists. Over the past ten years the NHS has got a lot better for the routine non-life threatening stuff (it was always excellent at emergency and critical care).

One last point - lifestyles do have a really important effect on the health of nations. For instance British people eat more sweets (candy) per capita than anyone else on the planet. And the most effective solution to that has been putting fluoride in the drinking water - more of that goddamn socialism!

Sadly our rates of diabetes are climbing as we gradually adopt a more sedentary lifestyle and our average weight keeps rising...

Getting angry with Israel and talking tough to Israel is comparitively easy...

Getting Israel to actually respond to that pressure is extremely difficult; particularly as in Israeli culture there is no problem at all in making an agreement and then quite deliberately ignoring it.*

Sooner or later the US will be forced to back up angry words with angry deeds; specifically stopping shipments of arms to Israel, or stopping the millions of dollars in loans and 'foreign aid' Israel has long learned to accept as a divine right.

As soon as the US does this, there will be hell to pay, not so much abroad (Israel is well aware of how much it gets away with) but especially in the USA itself.

The last American president to actually have the courage (or stupidity) to stand up to Israel in a meaningful way was George Bush 1st. He reckons, not unreasonably, that the resulting hatred from the media and the loss of Jewish funding cost him his re-election. Right or wrong, it must surely have been a factor, and was certainly one lesson his idiot son took to heart.

So.... forgive me if I'm cynical about Hillary Clinton's 'anger' - sooner or later we'll find out just how much courage (or stupidity) the Senator for New York really has.

* A good example of this cavalier attitude to the law and agreements came in January. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that foreign journalists should be allowed into Gaza. The Israeli Army nodded and smiled and ignored the judgement.

I'm ashamed that my country (Britain) ever went along with this crazy 'war on terror.'

I'm ashamed that the leaders of my country didn't have the courage to reveal what the know about the torture of innocents by the United States and anyone else for that matter.

I'm ashamed that the soldiers and intellegence agents of my country were instructed not to torture themselves, but that they were present while torture was done.

I'm ashamed of what the United States and Britain, two countries that hold extremely high opinions of themselves, have done over the past eight years.

All we can hope is that some kind of legal process occurs to likes of Bush and a lapdog Prime Minister Tony Blair if only to discourage future leaders from taking the same easy popularist steps when some criminal outrage occurs.

There are just so many people living on illegal settlements that it's really quite hard to imagine how everyone could be rehoused on the Israel side of the Green Line.

We're talking of possibly 300,000 people who would need to be moved and housed.

If such a thing was to happen, I just know it'll be the long suffering American taxpayer that funds the whole exercise and there'll be tons of propoganda about the extraordinary lengths that Israel is willing to go too in order to bring peace.

Poor Americans - always paying for Israel's mistakes.

One day, the Bush era will be as embarrasing and shameful as the era of Senator Joe McCarthy.