Morning Coffee - 26 June 2009

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Gov. Mark Sanford went on a "trade mission" to Argentina that wasn't authorized by the U.S. government.

The Commerce Department cancelled high-level trade talks with Argentina after the country defaulted on its international debt eight years ago, but that didn't stop Sanford and the US Embassy in Argentina from setting up talks with the governor of Buenos Aires.

All this and more with your Morning Coffee.

Comments

[Alon Levy]

The pro-Chavez article you link to under Provocateurs is deeply uninformed about any Western country other than the US. The author says that, "Western medicine typically operates in a top-down fashion. Doctors treat symptoms, and often fail to evaluate the larger picture of community health issues or teach prevention." In fact European universal health care systems do engage in prevention and do look at community health. However, they do so without abolishing capitalism, which means that as far as communist apologists are concerned, they don't exist. Marx said that social democracy in the modern sense is impossible, and his descendants are indeed pretending it is.

[Eric Jaffa]

An interesting passage from the Venezuala article you linked to:
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She sent me away with my x-rays, three medications to treat my pneumonia, congestion, and fever, and made me promise to come back if my conditioned failed to improve or worsened within three days.

I walked out of the clinic with a diagnosis and treatment within twenty-five minutes of entering, without paying a dime. There was no wait, no paperwork, and no questions about my ability to pay, my nationality, or whether, as a foreigner, I was entitled to free comprehensive health care. There was no monetary value connected with my physical well-being; the care I received was not contingent upon my ability to pay. I was treated with dignity, respect, and compassion, my illness was cured and I was able to continue with my journey in Venezuela.

- Caitlin McNulty
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[Alon Levy]

So what? You get the same deal in Canada, without opposition TV stations being closed down. At least in Canada you know it's honest, rather than a way of appealing to foreign journalists. In Cuba health standards are a lot higher for foreigners than for locals, who can't complain to anyone.