Bret Stephens' Saturday Times Oped was his * falsely reporting the supposed  content of this  reference 

"Kenneth  Arrow crisply described  the biggest insanity (Stephens ' word, not Arrow's) back in December 1963 "Insurance " he wrote "removes the incentive on the part of individuals, patients, and physicians to shop around for better prices for hospitalization and surgical care."  

Arrow himself would  not have categorized  this as the" biggest insanity" in health care since he went on to state that 

 Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

back from the library ,across the icy Ft. Dix parade ground , I asked J why he wasn´t going to officer candidate school. I was.And he seemed to me  far more qualified. I´d had a good enough education at a college no one had ever heard of then or since..He´d been a star at Oberlin.  And by any standards he was a commanding  personality. I mostly sat on the floor by my bunk reading. At that point  ¨The God that failed¨ which J had in fact loaned me.

He answered. ¨I don´t know whether I can handle combat and if I fail I don´t want to be responsible for anyone other than me.¨

During the period  Orion and artappraiser discuss in their interesting   adjacent blogs something else happened.

US Unemployment %

Feb 2008    4.9

Feb 2009    8.3

Oct 2009   10.0 

Feb 2012    8.3

Feb  2015  5.5

Some unemployment level is pretty much painless. ¨Frictional¨ . People who´ve just left one job and are quite happy to take a break.

Statisticians know the number,I don´t.    But let´s say it´s at @3%.  So the swing in ¨involuntary¨ unemployment was from

1.9% in Feb 08 to

The President to the Director

¨I hope you  can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go..He

Is a good  guy¨

Take but degree ( the law*) away, untune that string  ,

and hark  what discord follows! Each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy . The bounded waters

Should lift  their bosoms higher than the shores,

And make a sop of all this solid globe.

is not just wrong , but also could  be how  we ´ll  blow it . The way we  lose the next election.

The initial clause is  the most important one . The reason to do the right thing is , it´s the right thing.  But... it is nice to win. And immensely important to  those who will be desperately damaged while this nonsense continues.

Well I 'll start it.

5 30 pm today was the start of Trump´s ceasing to be President.

Theoretically if a powerful enough group of Republican Grandees got to him this could still be cut  off at the pass.

But that would have had to happen before 5 30 and it didn´t. No rational politician /human being would have issued this afternoon´s statement that the head of the FBI had to be fired because his handling of the Hillary email matter was unfair to her. That had to have been Trump´s own invention. 

is now expected to pass  the house this week.

The devil is in the details of course, and those won´t be known until the senate acts , but I think the glass is half full.

We´ve now become a nation that believes  in  Government Health Care. Repeal without replace turned out to be a non-starter.  .  

A consequence is that from now on the health care debate won´t be about whether but   how .

At least some degree of Government responsibility will be a given. And most importantly some lives will be saved/improved as a result.

The dem lost by about  53 to 46. In Nov the rep carried this  seat by about 30 points.

...and I´m not going to yield to the gentleman from Kentucky until they drag me off the lecturn.

It was  always fundamentally undemocratic, for most of our history shifting what should have been the rights of the majority   to a self elected coterie not usually consisting of Jimmy Steward and his 95 best friends.One could claim it´s payback for Garland but when else fails try the truth:Chuck ¨called¨  McConnell who laid down  4 aces.

Nor did he achieve greatness.

But had greatness thrust upon him.

...........................................

And he ducked.

Sure , for a mixture reasons.

The Koch Brothers have wanted an outright repeal. End of story, And some of the Freedom Caucus presumably did too.  Maybe even because that´s what the Kochies wanted, 

And out of  whatever personal characteristic I want to  believe- and do- that  some Republicans are simply decent people who while marching in lock step were still   nursing a secret hope their team would fail. 

And , finally , some have the drunk the kool aid and believe the party line: That Ryancare would be an improvement. 

with music underneath the trees"

....begin some Noel Coward lyrics from ¨ Conversation Piece ¨  and end  

Men and women , superbly clad ,stroll

sip tea ,

¨and lightly discuss their monarch ...who is mad¨.

More specifically, raved for 58 hours. Sound familiar?

Like Trump. Not    ¨idiosyncratic ¨    Mad.

I don´t use these terms  casually -a family member  is institutionalized- but soon for his own sake and that

of the country Trump must be stripped of his authority.

¨While Panasonic is the world ´s largest supplier of electric vehicle batteries globally, China ´s BYD and  CATL were just behind , according to figures collated by Bernstein ,the research group...............

In 2015 in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing,South Korea ´s LG  Chem opened a battery factory. The same year Samsung SDI followed suit. opening a plant in Xian in central  China and declaring that it would "forge  its foothold in the world'ś biggest  new energy vehicle market ¨. 

             Presidential popular votes                    Elected to state assemblies                                                                   in millions

              Dem          Rep                                     Dem       Rep

2007                                                                2964       2399

2008         69.5        59.9                                      ?                                                                                  

We shouldn't import anything .

Not if we can make it here.

The things that we can make but don't,  we should  resume making here.

This obscenely rich country shouldn't  have 50,000 homeless in NYC tonight. In 2018 that should be

5,000.  And 45,000 people should be making replacements for the Toyotas we won't be buying.

That is the only way we can make America a country that is great for the working class. We can't Globalize our way to full employment. We have to import- replace our way there.

Around 9 30 pm Senator Warren, speaking  as part of the Democrat's opposition to  Sessions ,  attempted to provide relevant information about the 1986 Senate's  decision to reject him as a federal judge. After reading Senator Kennedy's  86 statement   she attempted to do the same with Coretta Scott King's 86 letter of opposition.

During the campaign I thought Trump's chances would be affected by his "Grab a little pussy"  chat.

Or by has cheerfully agreeing  to allow Ivanka to be called on national TV " a nice piece of ass".

Or by the video of him in Australia humiliating Miss Australia  for not meeting his plane.

I was right,  It probably got him elected.

It’s the way things are going to be from now on. Theoretically two minority members are supposed to be present when a senate committee forwards a Presidential cabinet nominee to the full senate.Except when they aren’t. This past week.

Supposedly it takes  60 votes to stop a filibuster.   Think a Democrats filibuster will prevent  the approval of about- -to- be Justice Gorsuch?  Along with believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.