What SCHIP looks like to this foreigner, is Canadian or European style public health insurance-- ie, vastly more efficient than the for-profit US model Yes, there are problems, there always will be, but we are paying a fraction of the overhead. All you have to do is look at the billing department of any Canadian large city hospital: 3 or 4 clerks. Look at the US version-- probably more staff than there are on the floor actually treating people. To say nothing of all the staff in the insurance companies they are dickering with.

The quicker the US could move to a more rational medical system, the quicker gagagaga would find that his taxes went up a good deal less than what he is paying in premiums now. In fact, taxes may not go up all that much anyway: since there would be public insurance, all the money that employers are now paying insurer's billing departments could be paid in taxes instead, which alone would get you pretty close to affording a Canadian style system.

Incidentally, Hillary Clinton's new plan sure looks alot like her last one, making baby steps forward, and making for a vastly more complex system. One gets the sense that there really is an opportunity to make some real progress, once the dolt and his thugs are removed from the White House. It's a pity she doesn't seem to want to go for it.

I remember back in the day, I knew a secretary, Samia. She showed up every day very well turned out in fashionable mildly revealing clothes, and a whack of makeup (and a ton of scent, as Arabs tend to like). Then she got married, and not too long after that, she showed up sans scent and makeup and fashionable clothing and wearing a (rather minimal) scarf, hijab lite if you will.

"Samia," I asked her, "did your husband make you do this?"

"No" she said, "I'm just tired of being a secretary. I have a lot of training and experience, and I want to be judged on that, not on how I look." Which sounded pretty feminist to me.

Hijab can mean many different things, to different people in different circumstances. The Islamic take on it can be translated as: if you dress like a slut you can expect to be treated like a slut. One end of that is, if you really want to, go ahead you idiot; the other is, we must force you not to. Which is a pretty "Western" way of thinking, I think.

In modern Turkish history, there has been a lot of forcibly dragging unwilling people out of dark and dusty corners. Which in the long run has resulted in a very viable democracy. But now it is a viable and strong democracy, perhaps the day of forcing people into the 20th Century at gunpoint is over, and in any case a people led by Bush and assorted neocons should probably be a little shy of second guessing other countries' politics, or thinking they they have a clue about all the debates' subtexts.

Me, I don't have sufficient local understanding to really evaluate either initiative, there is a lot of contextual stuff that you really can't pick up on unless you live there.

In any case, I rather doubt that Turkish voters give much of a damn what anybody reading Salon thinks about it.

Let me see if I get this right:

Be nice to strangers and welcome them as in Matthew 25:35 and you get subjected to less security theatre searches and wiretaps and no fly list crap and general DHS bullshit? This is punishment?

All I can say, is thankyou god, there is justice.

Whoa, dude, you are living in a different universe than the rest of us. In no real world at all could that woman be called "chubby." Thanks for encouraging anorexia. And there is no way in that shot to conclude the breasts are fake either, they could just be pushed in and up a lot. And hawt? My man, you don't know hott.

On the other hand, I think the costume is kinda cute and funny, and not worth getting worked up over. Halloween these days is all about having an opportunity to exercise some bad taste, and poop on anybody that wants to get all umbraged over it.