is almost always a good way to go, except when it's not." (Bruce Lee) There is a time to be incremental, and there is a time to get real, substantive results. The 24/7 news/pundit system - of which this writer is a decent example - is interested in exploring action, rather than effecting it. Triangulation makes for better articles, not better policy.

If I bring in my Chevy Vega for an overhaul, I don't want to hear about leaving it in the shop for detailing and a paint job. I want to get the damn thing running.

Or better, if that melting glacier is not delivering water to my third-world village anymore (home of last surviving Chevy Vega dealership on the planet), I don't necessarily want to talk about buying smaller cups.

BTW, Mr. Lind is a founder of the New America Foundation, an interesting think-tank that touts its support for "big ideas". So how come we can't have some of those big boys for our BIG broken systems? I'd like a second opinion.

This is the same writer who complained in these pages, 6 weeks after the inauguration, about "Obama's Timid Liberalism". I don't quite get it.

Any list that long that does not include Mizoguchi or Satyajit Ray is a joke, and the top directors listed here would agree. Sansho the Bailiff and Ugetsu are life-affirming, transcendent works of art, as are any of the Apu Trilogy; Tarantino is empty calories at best.

Ozu for the top five too.

for posting the list of CEO incomes. Pornographic, but to the point.

in which case you may find that you don't have health insurance at all. That's a classic cause of going "naked", especially for older employees. The previous employer is required to keep you on the insurance plan for a specified time, but afterwards you're on your own. If you're over 45 or 50, there's not a chance that you don't have a "pre-existing condition". So for some it can be next to impossible to find a new plan.

I know, it happened to me.

Now how is the current system of feeding you to the insurance companies better than providing policies for everyone, in some fashion?

On a side note, Alex, why so quick to parse Obama's words? What he said was not misleading, just not as specific as you'd like. Is that news? Seems like we should pulling for a common goal, not just tring to fill up copy.

Plus, I would go so far to say that Obama is the ONLY person leading on healthcare reform (to parse your title). I doubt that Congress would be moving so quickly to draft legislation but for Obama pushing the issue. (No great health strides in 2007-2008 that I recall.)

When I was a Catholic kid, any movie that got a low grade from the (Catholic) Legion of Decency was top of our list for to see. The higher the rating (A for instance) the more likely it was twaddle, especially to pubescent minds.

God forbid a C-rated (condemned!!) movie would appear nearby, say, at the drive-in where we could sneak in. That's where I saw C-rated Blow-up in 1966. Thanks Il Papa for setting me on a road of degradation and foreign films!

BTW - 2001 is recommended by the Vatican?? Clarke and Kubrick must be chortling in their graves.

that Ms. Clinton got co-opted by the Sotomajor hearings. I'd like to see Hillary get a huge amount of acclaim for the great job she's been doing. She's terrific.

Of course it just proves that media is ALWAYS about manufactured dissent (or news opera) rather than policy. Do you think some of those hysterical Rep. Senator-divas would be quite so asinine if they hadn't all swallowed cable news cams some time ago?

from Frank Zappa, 1968:

"What's the ugliest

Part of your body?

What's the ugliest

Part of your body?

Some say your nose

Some say your toes

(I think it's your mind)"

Egg-celent.......

My much younger brother loves Eggers; I haven't tried his work - is it a generational thing? But I am deeply beholden to him for the fact of this particular book, and can't wait to read it. I know a lot of stories about Katrina, but not this one, and I applaud Mr. Eggers for returning to his journalistic roots to tell it. Great interview too. Thanks to all.

has got to be Margaret Cho. Because then she could answer every idiotic question from Mr. Lindsey Graham with,

"Are you gay?" "Are you gay??" "Are you gay!!?"

What does that have to do with Lindsey's job? Nothing, just like every one of his questions to Ms. Sotomayor. Pompous (closeted) ass.

I love Jimmy Carter. He is one man who knows how to "not go gentle into that good night." He gets better and better. What an inspiration.

I lived through Carter's administration too, and what I most remember about it is Reagan making a deal with Iran to withhold release of our hostages so he would get elected. And then Reagan proceeding to be one of the stupidest presidents we've ever had - selling the country off right and left, sending jobs streaming overseas, de-regulating everything in sight.

I do remember the Carter gas lines and credit rates, but I don't remember "darkness" per se - at least nothing as dark as the last goddamned 8 years of oil wars, million Iraqi and US troops dead, and a collapsed US economy.

But whatever.

I also remember Carter, after his term, being consistently an active voice and presence for extraordinarily right-minded causes, a champion for the poor and downtrodden, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And I remember Reagan, after his term, doing Jack.

I stand corrected.

Makes perfect sense, as Reagan was so fond of selling off chunks of the US to foreign investors at the time, making it look like prosperity. He was indeed very, very big in Japan.