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June 28, 2009
hellish health care, great food, and other updates
It's difficult to find food around here at night. Always difficult, I guess, to find food in business districts (in my case, south of Dupont Circle in Foggy Botton area) when the people that typically walk those streets are out of sight, tucked under their suburban comforters. But I found an interesting place. It's called Nooshi - oodles noodles and sushi - a great Southeast Asian fusion restaurant. I had a veg hot pot (cellophane noodles, napa, scallions, onions, carrots and tofu) for $8.95 plus tax, along with a coconut drink for $1.25 plus tax. (No, I'm not advertizing for this company...although I might consider it.)
I am currently reading a book called Modern International Law: An introduction to the law of nations by Wolfe. It's a total rip-off, as you can see from the Amazon.com price of $81.27 - and for a measly 198 pager! Are you kidding me? Fortunately, this was the most expensive book I purchased for the class I'm taking at Georgetown, Just War Theory, and I got away with paying about $50 for it. The class, despite its right-wing tendencies, is a great one. In fact, it's a welcome change. And it's always fun when such volatile issues, in a class of four, explode. The combination of the class, which is only for the month of June, along with my full-time internship has kept me quite busy. Well, as Chaucer said, "Idle hands are the devil's tools."
Along with the rest of the interns, thousands of union workers, doctors and nurses, and victims of our health care system (and, later, my brother) I rallied for the insertion of the public option into the forthcoming - and critical - health care bill. I attended a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce committee, which will play a crucial role in crafting the end product. We'll see how it turns out. Krugman, who has been writing fervently on the topic, offers a good analysis and defense of the "public option." And what is the public option right now? Your guess is as good as mine.
Speaking of food, my family was in town a few days ago and we went to a great restaurant, Nora. Afterward, we ended up getting into an argument with an HMO lobbyist about "the public option" and the Canadian system in a quiet, dark street of the Dupont Circle Historic District. (The industry overheard our conversation, I suppose, and beamed her in.)
Posted by dmbenn at June 28, 2009 10:29 PM