+1 for you. But to answer your question...very simply...China is seem as more of a threat across the American political spectrum. Which is really stupid. We should consider them a problematic life partner.

6/4 was not a "people's uprising for freedom and democracy". You don't understand what it was about, but that puts you into the same group as 99% of Americans, and 50% (or so) of Chinese.

I think your attacks on Google are sort of ignorant of the way the world works. This too, is a very complicated issue.

I would like to leave you with this though. There wee several "tank man" (as you called it). There was the man who stood in front of the tank. There was also the man driving the tank and the man commanding the driver. The tank crew made a decision they did not want to kill a human who happened to be foolishly standing in front of a tank. They put their humanity above their mission. So they did a very Chinese thing and tried to solve their problem with an expedient solution. They turned the tank, trying to drive around the man. Because they turned the tank, they were executed.

[I don't remember if just the driver was executed or the tank commander or both]

Unfortunately, China's problems cannot be solved by gestures and expedient solutions. These problems are systematic, culturally ingrained, and highly complex. By labeling the 6/4 student demonstration a democracy movement, you make these problems seem trite. By cursing the Western companies that do business in China, you are cursing the agents of change.

Or for that matter, does that place have any halal (or kosher) butchers?

Does the government see any issue with releasing 17 Muslim prisoners, who have been away from their families for 8+ years, onto an island with no one of the same religion, who don't speak the same language?

I do not believe they will see this a paradise...this is exile to a strange land.

And why couldn't the US send them to Turkey? At least Uighurs would understand the language there.

"Maryann represents chaotic evil, and not chaotic good."

Sp when tp Heather discover D&D?

Betzee wrote: "The woman just saw him as an American, assumed he was like the father figure in the TV shows, when instead it was someone who went abroad to escape the rat race and earn enough by teaching English to live on."

QFT. They are escapees. Often...losers. Divorces. And in one case of a guy I knew here in Suzhou, a freaky child molester pretending to be a normal guy. And they get English teaching jobs cause its easy. Many get burned out because they basically have to be entertainers. And then they look down on their students (kids who don't want to be in school at night + bored housewives) and then they get cynical. And snotty.

A friend of mine - a beautiful 30 year-old single Chinese mother - asked me for advise about her 25 year old English teacher soon-to-be husband. She just discovered he was sort of lazy and seemingly content to just be an English teacher. I told her "You know, you are with a 25 year old boy who's getting free sex with a hot woman in China, far from home. A boy who has not gone to graduate school. Someone who came here because they didn't have any direction. So you want to stay with him, you got to push him to have direction. And in pushing, you may push him away. I'm talking from experience, cause I used to be a lazy 25 year-old English teacher in China. At least I learned Chinese while here."

Note that here in China though, to me the foreign men get not-really-that-attractive girlfriends / wives. That's because they tend to meet nerdy career-oriented girls at work who speak English fluently and are interested in Foreigners...they don't meet average people very often.

I agree that bi-partisanship should not be an end in itself. I believe that a plan which passes 51-49 is fine.

However, you don't seem to grasp all the complexity involved in this issue. You can't take a system that developed in another country over 60 years and just plop it down in the United States. It will not work. Even if a plan is rammed through congress,it will not work without industry buy-in.

Here are some of the issues:

Currently doctors pay around 160K or more for their education bill. Then they work for between 40K - 60K per year during their residency. Now, if you are going to regulate the pay doctors get, you will also have to regulate the education costs they pay...or there will be no doctors. But if you do that, why would you not also regulate the costs of all education?

Regulating insurance is fine. But then there would need to be strict rules on malpractice suits. Hospitals are sued all the time, evey day. Some of these lawsuits are legitimate, some are not. Each one must go through many legal and technical evaluation processes. How will this be regulated?

England and Europe all have semi-socialist systems. They have high income tax to pay for their services. They have much better, but much more highly subsidized education systems. They do not maintain as large standing military. In short, to change health care in the US means changing many many aspects of our society. And this needs broad support from everyone, including republicans and the AMA.