How do we know that we are making progress? Op-eds that demonize single payer. They would not place these articles if they didn't think that they needed them.

Paul Hsieh has a fear mongering article in the Christian Science Monitor. Do we all understand why the Christian Science Monitor is not a good source on anything connected to health care?

Sedalia, Colo. - Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further "reeducation" and their communities subject to stiff fines.

Is this some nightmarish dystopia?

So the Japanese are forcing whale meat on kids, calling it "traditional foods week" in schools. Nevermind that the Japanese rejected whalemeat as too poisoned previously, or that Norway tells pregnant women to avoid it. This is what people will do for ideology: kill the endangered to poison their own children.

This is your deep thought for the day, and something to keep in mind when thinking about the Villagers.

What the hell is wrong with MEN?

Japan's health minister calls women 'birth-giving machines'

Japan's health minister described women as "birth-giving machines" in a speech on the country's falling birthrate, but later retracted the remarks, news reports said Sunday.

"The number of women between the ages of 15 and 50 is fixed. The number of birth-giving machines (and) devices is fixed, so all we can ask is that they do their best per head,

As a resident of Bush's Amurka, I have exactly no moral high ground from which to bitch about any nation taking up the projects of (re)armament or "defensive" preemptive strikes. I'm also a poor student of Japanese and Asian history. But I've been told that the "whole point" of the NK posturing is to create circumstances in which Japan can reenter the world stage as a military power by people I think would be in at least a partial position to know. Further, I'm not at all sanguine about a lot of the language and posturing coming from an increasingly frustrated and stagnant Japanese society and leadership. This is the age of the waking Chinese Dragon, and it's logical that Japan, given their history, would seek some ways in which to counter that, even if said counter is a really, really stupid idea: