Clinton Proposes Health Care Plan:

Sen. Clinton argues that health insurance premiums be capped at 10 percent of the median family income of $58,526. (See The New York Times story.) For those of you challenged by fractions and percentages, that's $5,852.60 per year, or more than most people currently pay who have employers contributing to health care premiums. But it should be less than what most people and their employers would pay next year.

This just in:

Al Gore turns 60. Wait, this guy is younger than me, and I ain't been on Saturday Night Live yet! Life is sooooo unfair!

Economics Is Not a Science:

Want proof? Read the Times "Business" section as Diana Henriques reports on the inexplicable difference in prices for corn and soybeans:

A futures contract that calls for delivery of wheat in July may trade for more or less for each bushel than today’s cash market price. But as each day goes by, its price should move a bit closer to that day’s cash price. And on expiration day, when the bushels of wheat covered by that futures contract are due for delivery, their price should very nearly match the price in the cash market, allowing for a little market friction or major delivery disruptions like Hurricane Katrina.

But on dozens of occasions since early 2006, the futures contracts for corn, wheat and soybeans have expired at a price that was much higher than that day’s cash price for those grains.

Nothing in the market place seems to be making sense anymore.

Olympics and Politics:

The thing about the Olympics is that everybody is supposed to put away their swords and spears and play games for a few weeks, regardless of how much they might hate each other. That worked pretty well back in the 1890s when the Olympic games, after a few thousand years, were re-instituted. You remember that time, when the sun never set on the British Empire.

Back in the 1930s, the world put its differences aside to compete on the fields of play in Nazi Germany, where a fellow named Hitler tried to politicize the games, but that didn't quite work the way he planned it.

Following a postponement so that the world could fight the biggest war it had ever faced, even the Cold War couldn't stop the Olympics from taking place. But leave it to a democrat to cause problems, when in 1980 Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the games in protest over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. (You've probably heard of that place.) Then just to show he could play tit for tat, the Russian Premiere called for an eastern block boycott of the 1984 games.

Now a new call for a boycott is being voiced over Chinese involvement in Tibet, Africa and other places. We'll have to see how this plays out. NPR carries a debate between a proponent of the boycott and someone who is opposed.

Do you remember where you were:

When the news about Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania occurred? Today is the 29th anniversary of the worst commercial nuclear accident in U. S. history.

What he said: "We'll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers." — George W. Bush, Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 27, 2001. (Now who could disagree with that?)