school cafeterias: just set them on fire and be done with it

A good article from the New York Times on new attempts to tackle the issue of grossly unhealthy school lunches at the federal level. Same song, different verse: the Obama Administration proposed an ambitious bill that doesn't really go far enough but will make a difference, which the Senate promptly reduced by more than half.

Jamie Oliver, God bless him, has thrown the issue in the faces of Americans via his new reality TV show. Whether he set up the employees at the West Virginia school he's shooting the show at, or whether he's just tremendously lucky, I don't know, but you should have seen the show that aired last week. It highlighted the problems almost perfectly.

In the episode, Oliver gets an opportunity to make an alternate lunch one day for the students that will be pushed alongside the traditional fare. He makes vegetable pasta and (I believe) garlic bread. It looks great, the kids seem to like it, and just as it looks like he's scored his first coup, a school health official pulls him aside.

"This meal is not reimbursable because there aren't enough vegetables in it," she tells him. "In order for it to be reimbursable, it has to have 1 1/4 cup of vegetables. I can see right here that it doesn't."

Oliver, incredulous, looks over at the approved lunch on the other side of the bar: a cheeseburger and fries. That meal is reimbursable, she explained, because it has 1/2 cup of vegetables (the french fries!) plus the kids get "the optional salad bar" with it.

How many students can you guess were getting a salad with their burger?

I could not have scripted a better illustration of exactly what's wrong with the system. You get to see the truly foolish decision to let kids decide whether or not to get the healthy option (news flash: they never will!), and the unhealthy, overly processed crap composed of nothing but meat, fat, salt, and simple carbs given as lunch to the kids and sold as "healthy" to the parents, in this case a sad, pallid burger on a white bun with fried, salted potatoes. Bonus points for getting the bureaucrat representing the system to state explicitly, repeatedly, and with a straight face that french fries are a vegetable.

This is what America's kids are eating at least once a day (don't forget, some kids also eat breakfast at school!), five days a week for thirteen years. Other kids, meanwhile, will instead do what I did in junior high: hit the vending machines for an even less healthy alternative to cafeteria food (in my case, two Rice Crispy Treats and a Dr. Pepper). Unhealthy food in school cafeterias contributes to everything from childhood obesity and type II diabetes to drowsiness in class, behavioral problems, and poor academic performance. Over time, of course, those school lunches are ingrained in them as examples of what a lunch should look like, in many cases a meat main course, a simple carb, and two small vegetable sides, at least one of which is actually another carb.

Yet as glad as I am to see the president trying to do something about this problem, I wonder if Washington might have a harder time fixing the problem than locals would have fixing their own school and school district. This issue cuts across everything from topsy-turvy FDA dietary recommendations to inadequate school funding to the overproduction and over-subsidization of corn to the power and influence of major food companies over regulatory bodies and their growing presence in the cafeteria itself.

suburban, gated ghettos

What is striking to me about this new phenomenon is that it isn't new at all. My urban neighborhood is filled with gorgeous Victorian, Craftsman, American Foursquare, and Queen Anne homes that white people willingly abandoned in the mid-20th century for saltboxes and ranch houses a couple of miles down the road.

Peoples is strange.

gathering steam

Or, at least, hot air. I highlight this article from Media Matters because it's a great example of the Washington media focusing on the "popular fascination" with personalities that only the media themselves give a damn about.

Sarah Palin is the John and Kate Gosselin of politics. The Octomom of politics. Sarah Palin has a vanishingly small following at the end of the day, yet people watch her on TV and read about her in the papers because:

1. she's a train wreck. It's fun to hear what stupidity she has uttered and what bizarre, hypocritical position she's suddenly championing. What new and interesting way has she figured out to make herself look like an ass today?

2. the reporters themselves won't shut up about her because they think she represents some Nixonian silent majority that holds the key to the next decade of politics. You want to watch political news? You'll be hearing about Sarah Palin, whether you want to or not.

very short rant

Can I just say that I'm consistently and probably irrationally annoyed at the sudden and constant use of the term "optics" in the political sense? I'd much prefer "visuals".

that is all...

give her the agency

Give her whatever she wants. If I were king I would put Elizabeth Warren in charge of pretty much everything related to money and banking.

HCR already more popular

Remember what I said yesterday about how winning is a great deodorant? Here's the health care bill's new numbers.

the "baby killer" yeller: a Lubbock original

Which congressman shouted "baby killer!" at Bart Stupak when he voted yes on the health care bill? I had a sinking feeling when people said it came from the Texan delegation, and it was confirmed this afternoon: it was Randy Neugebauer (R-Lubbock), who is now lamely claiming it was in reference not to Stupak, but to the bill itself.

In other news, for the first time in his 10-ish-year stint as congressman, Randy Neugebauer has finally managed to distinguish himself in some way.

student loan changes pass House

Overshadowed by the health care bill is the passing of another tremendously important piece of legislation: the student loan bill. It eliminates the federal subsidies to private lenders and clears the government to lend directly to students. It's important in the sense of both cutting useless paper-pushers out of the system and adding needless subsidies of corporate profits for notoriously corrupt institutions while breaking up the parasitic relationship between lenders and colleges. Meanwhile, it also raises the Pell Grant allowance while saving $61 billion over 10 years according to the CBO.

It's an interesting and illustrative argument between Democrats and Republicans in that Republicans are trying to protect the right of private entities to collect taxpayer money without serving any real purpose. The government sets the standards for the loans, pays the fees while the student is in school, and guarantees the loans against default. The government also lends directly to students with a number of other loans, so they already have the infrastructure for lending. All the private lender does is collect free money.

optics

But while we're on the subject of the "optics" of the health care reform vote, I would like to point out that what people saw on their TVs this weekend was a black president and an Italian-American female Speaker passing this bill over the protests of mobs of white teabaggers shouting "ni66er" and "fa66ot."

On a simpler level, though, it's also worth remembering John Madden's dictum about unpopular players and coaches: winning is a great deodorant. I suspect we're going to see some movement in approval ratings over the next week or two.

Also, so much for the GOP's charge that Obama isn't doing anything. Are we going to the "too busy" or "too much change" arguments now?

Waterloo

Health care reform passes. There's a lot of obfuscation and a lot of posturing and a lot of mob mentality and groupthink about the politics of this decision, but here's David Frum, one rocksolid Republican with a lot of influence who calls it Waterloo... for the GOP.

He admits what we've all suspected and what has been maddening about the Democrats' approach, namely that the GOP decided at the very beginning to stonewall reform, to refuse any compromise, to "play for all marbles" as he put it. The GOP could have had a huge influence on this bill (they didn't as it is?), but because they opted for mere obstructionism, they failed and got nothing out of it.

There will be no repeal, even after the GOP gains in November. Frum writes:

Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage?

I'll take this a step further: this bill will never be repealed and the middle class will like it, and the failed attempt to preserve the infamous "doughnut hole" and insurance companies' right to cut you off at the critical moment will hang on the necks of the GOP like a millstone for a generation. The Democrats will be able to come back to those points again and again.

But, as I've been hitting on over and over in this debate, the politics of this don't matter as much because the policy is so important to the lives of all 300 million of us. This was the kind of thing you played all those politics for, the big play where a party and president leverage all that political capital to do all that world-changing they dreamed of doing when they first decided to enter politics. As Josh Marshall puts it, it's legislation like this that makes losing a majority worth it. Win or lose in November (or better put, lose or hold onto), the Democrats managed to pass the first major social policy legislation in 50 years.

Put another way: every majority ends eventually. The real difference is not how long they last, but which ones do something productive and which disappear with nothing to show for it. It's a lesson I'd like to see some of Bayh's agenda-less coalition (like my own mollusk of a congressman) reflect on.

This bill was thin gruel compared to the House bills of a year ago, but the regulations on the worst insurance company abuses alone are going to save lives. Plus, many, many families who would have been bankrupted by medical bills and the loss of health coverage will not be because of this bill. Furthermore, the execrable "doughnut hole" is now a footnote in history.

Let's remember what matters, people.

changes in food prices since 1978

Notice a pattern?

the fat tax

I thought I'd post my thoughts on the idea since people are suddenly talking about it again. In my opinion, otherwise reasonable people get a little obtuse when you use the word "tax." The tax isn't about "punishment," and it's not the government trying to tell you what you can and can't eat. You can still buy cigarettes and booze!

It's about steering behavior to more healthful eating, the idea being that while people buy cokes and twinkies because they love them, the fact that they're super cheap is also part of the equation for many people. This is especially true of a lot of the stuff you find in the middle of the grocery store, the box dinners and such that feed 4 people for $1.99. So the theory goes, if the price differential between crap and produce were lessened, the balance between these foods in people's diets would also shift.

And before we get all anecdotal about all the fat people you know that will still buy twinkies, consider this: in the case of tobacco use, cigarette companies have admitted (.pdf) that higher taxes are a major curb on use among both teens and adults.

Still, if the fundamental problem is the low price of bad food compared to good food, a better idea than disincentivizing soft drinks via a new and unpopular tax would be to deal with the cause of rock-bottom coke prices in the first place: the corn subsidy. Much of the trouble with the American diet can be traced back to the overproduction of corn and soybeans, from which stem the low prices of everything from soft drinks and twinkies to french fries, boxed dinners, and ground beef. These crops are overproduced because the lion's share of farm subsidies are earmarked specifically for those growing corn and soybeans. Moreover, the subsidy is based on how much you grow, meaning farmers are encouraged to produce as much as they can even when the price of corn has bottomed out.

If the government wanted to encourage more healthful eating, the single best thing it could do would be to change corn and soybean subsidies to fresh produce subsidies.

purchasing a majority

Pegged to spend more than either the Republican or Democratic national committees in this year's midterms: the US Chamber of Commerce.

And hey, look at this line from the article:

The chamber's potential impact on the November elections was bolstered further by a recent Supreme Court decision, which allows corporations and their surrogates to spend freely on political ads for and against specific candidates right up to Election Day.

So the Republicans nominated the justices who overturned a century old law to allow big business to lobby freely... for Republicans!

I would like to point out that the 2008 election was notable for being the first that I know of where a presidential candidate refused to accept contributions from lobbyists and won. He and his party enact sweeping regulations of the banking industry, wage war on health insurance companies, and threaten to enact legislation cracking down on CO2 pollution from oil, gas, electric and auto companies. The next year a Supreme Court packed by Republicans lifts all restrictions on corporate spending. Elections have consequences, indeed.

the end of the rule of law

courtesy of John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Via OpenCongress:

One of Congress’s most notoriously hawkish duos, Sen. John McCain [R, AZ] and Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT], recently introduced legislation in response to President Obama’s decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day airplane bomber, in a criminal court. Their proposal, which they are calling the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act, would empower the U.S. military to arrest anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, who is suspected of terrorist associations and detain them indefinitely, without right to a trial.

From the legislation itself:

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.

An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3( c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

And the people eligible for such treatment:

(2) CRITERIA FOR DESIGNATION OF INDIVIDUALS AS HIGH-VALUE DETAINEES- The regulations required by this subsection shall include criteria for designating an individual as a high-value detainee based on the following:

(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the United States or upon United States citizens or United States civilian facilities abroad at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.

(B) The potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel or United States military facilities at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.

(C ) The potential intelligence value of the individual.

(D) Membership in al Qaeda or in a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda.

(E) Such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

The passage of this bill will mean the president can lock up anyone he wants for any length of time for any reason he deems sufficient. It does not matter if that person is a US citizen on US soil, or how many decades there are considered to be "hostilities," or even whether or not the person is in any way involved with terrorism.

For all of you consoling yourselves by figuring this will never survive judicial review, remember that only those people with "standing" can challenge a law in court. What this means is the ACLU can't just petition the Supremes to review any law they see fit; you can only challenge a law you have been personally punished by or will be imminently punished by. In this case, you have to have already been jailed by the military under this law to take the president to court.

Except you can't, of course, because this law explicitly denies you the right to a trial or a lawyer.

and now, for his next trick

Everybody's favorite conservative, the paragon of reasoned, thoughtful and fair debate, David Brooks, shows us how reconciliation for health care reform is like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and Islamic sectarian terrorism.

Benedict XVI implicated in cleric sex abuse scandal

So far people in the United States have heard only about the alleged male prostitution ring in the Vatican, but a second unrelated and much worse papal scandal has finally jumped the Atlantic. From The New York Times:

BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

If you really believe the archdiocese that Ratzinger was wholly ignorant of what was going on here, I have some property you might be interested in.

My suspicion is that the reason for these stories breaking out now has less to do with new scandalous behavior and more to do with the waning influence of the Catholic Church in Europe. Call me crazy, but I just don't think priests started molesting boys in the 1960's.

The Runaways

Totally want to see this.

busting idiotic budget cliches in Elkhart

My little bloggy soapbox has been directed at education idiocy the past week or so, but there's something very different going on in Elkhart. It appears that Mayor Dick Moore made crime a priority for his administration. The city government funded more squad cars, cameras, computers, and police officers, and as a result are seeing tangible improvements in their crime numbers and less tangible, but no less real or important, improvement in citizens' feeling of safety.

In other words, the mayor "threw money at the problem," and it's working.

Mishawaka cutting teachers, too

38 of them, in fact, in a district with one high school and one middle school. Mishawaka High School alone will be losing 12 teachers. Along with these cuts are 5 administrators and 11 "other jobs," and will still not cover half of the $4.7 million deficit over the next two years.

Let's see here: $1.8 million savings over 2 years in a town of 46,557 people. Pull out my trusty calculator, and according to my calculations we get a tax savings per capita of... $19.33 per person per year. Approximately $1.61 per month.

Clearly there is no alternative to massive teacher layoffs!

oscars cont.: political controversy in this year's nominees

There are several Oscar movies that delve into political/social issues in a ham-fisted manner and have caused a bit of a stir in the process: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and The Blind Side. Everyone knows about Avatar and its myriad interpretations, with people in all sorts of quarters claiming the movie as their own while conservatives blast it for being anti-American and, quoting John Podhoretz, "blitheringly stupid" (it certainly is the latter, though with respect to the former, it struck me as more broadly anti-imperialistic).

It's The Blind Side that interests me more, however. It only got a 58% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, a surprisingly low rating for a Best Picture nominee, and several of the "fresh" reviews are mixed at best. Here's an example, from the Detroit News:

It's a cute, touchy-feely crowd pleaser that wants nothing more than to wrap audiences in a warm holiday embrace. In a sense, it achieves that goal, but it is overly sentimental in a Lifetime movie kind-of-way.

The negative reviews, however, are at times truly vicious, such as one calling it "an ode to white privilege." From the NY Daily News:

Writer-director John Lee Hancock has turned Oher's remarkable life into a Hollywood fable that trades difficult truths for easy clichés.

Several use the word "cipher" to describe Michael Oher, the kid at the center of the story, and argue that the movie is little more than the sanctification of Sandra Bullock's character. They argue that the book tells a complicated story of race, class, and southern culture wherein the boy Oher is being helped, yes, but also being used, and while so many others are left to rot in west Memphis ghettos.

Again, I have to see it myself before I can make a judgment, but the evidence so far is not promising. But hey, at least it won't have jive-talking robots who can't read, right?

The Hurt Locker's issues are related more to the portrayal of American soldiers. One of the loudest voices crying foul is Paul Rieckhoff, whom I've come to respect through his vocal opposition to the Iraq War. His argument is that the protagonist, William James, is unprofessional and reckless with the welfare of the soldiers in his command and with his own life. This movie, however, got 97% from Rotten Tomatoes, all pretty stellar, so I'm more sanguine about this one (pun intended).

As an aside, looking at the reviews I think it should have been more obvious that The Hurt Locker had an edge over Avatar. As with The Blind Side, the reviews for Avatar tended to have lots of caveats, and one big one in particular: that the actual story is dim-witted and derivative. Similarly, many positive reviews of The Blind Side note the simplistic narrative and notable absence of any attempt to deal with the obvious questions prompted by the narrative and deftly probed by the book. With The Hurt Locker, however, there are few such caveats.

the Oscars

Watched it at the O'Zee's place. Was thinking about Zee's question of whether Top Gun (1986) won anything, so I looked it up. It did: it was nominated for Best Sound Effects, Sound Editing, Visual Effects, and won (of all things) Best Original Song for Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

---

At first, however, I mistakenly looked at 1987 Oscars (which took place in 1988) as opposed to the 1986 Oscars (which took place in 1987), and I found it much more interesting. What was most striking was the disconnect between the movies the Academy deemed "the best" and which ones have the most cultural currency today.

A trite point, I know, and the Oscars aren't necessarily about movies that will be timeless rather than capturing the zeitgeist, but it's a fun exercise nonetheless.

The "Best Picture" nominees that year were The Last Emperor, Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, and Moonstruck. The Last Emperor won, its last of 9 wins that year. It won in every category for which it was nominated. Other movies that figured prominently in that year's Oscars included Wall Street (for which Michael Douglas picked up "Best Actor"), Ironweed (starring perennial Oscar favorites Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, both of whom were nominated), and The Untouchables.

Of the Best Picture nominees, Fatal Attraction caused something of a scandal because it was widely thought that it was unworthy of such attention. I might have thought the same thing were I in my 30's in 1987; though I tend to root for "off-genre" movies at the Oscars, in retrospect Fatal Attraction was sickeningly chauvinistic. It is, however, far and away the most memorable of the nominees from my standpoint.

Now let's talk about some of the movies that either had only unsuccessful nominations or were wholly snubbed by the Academy that year:

• Empire of the Sun


• Raising Arizona. Holly Hunter was nominated that year, but for her role in Broadcast News


• Full Metal Jacket. Stanley Kubrick died having never won Best Director


• The Princess Bride

---

Regarding this year's ceremony, though, there were some other oddities and interesting facts worth pointing out:

1. Morgan Freeman still has never won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and only has one Supporting Nod (for Million Dollar Baby).


2. Lee Daniels (Precious) is the second African American to be nominated for Best Director -- ever. The first was John Singleton, for Boyz in the Hood.


3. This was Colin Firth's first nomination


4. This was Stanley Tucci's first nomination


5. This was Christopher Plummer's first nomination. His first movie role was in 1958


6. Sandra Bullock also "won" the Razzie for Worst Actress this year for All About Steve

My three favorite movies of the year, Star Trek, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Where the Wild Things Are, got snubbed. Star Trek won one award on four technical nominations. Fox got two nominations. Wild Things got nothing, not even a single nomination.

no, Ken Silverstein, it's not

A surprisingly obtuse post today from a normally clear-eyed Ken Silverstein:

TPM ran an item yesterday in which American Bar Association President Carolyn Lamm made an emotional plea on behalf of the principle of legal representation for all. In response “to the Liz Cheney Web ad that questions the loyalty of lawyers who have represented Guantanamo detainees,” Lamm, reported TPM, said that lawyers have an ethical obligation to “provide representation to people who otherwise would stand alone against the power and resources of the government–even to those accused of heinous crimes against this nation in the name of causes that evoke our contempt.”

Of course, Lamm also strongly believes in the principle of providing legal representation to governments who have committed well-documented heinous crimes against people who stand alone against state power — as long as they pay cash.

Take, for example, Lamm’s own work on behalf of Libya, the former Zaire and Uzbekistan. Her client in the latter case is Gulnara Karimova, bosom buddy of rock star Sting and Bill Clinton. Gulnara’s daddy, Islam, rules Uzbekistan and has a nasty habit of killing his political opponents, in one case by immersion in boiling water.

Lamm’s position is confusing, but one thing is clear: Liz Cheney is not one of her clients.

Actually, her willingness to represent or defend the representation of both Gitmo detainees and oppressive foreign governments shows that she really does believe the system works best when everyone gets fair representation, no matter who they are or how their position jives with her political agenda. What is Silverstein's accusation, that she'll defend anyone if the price is right (otherwise known as "the job description of a defense attorney")?

Change we can believe in

Being president isn't just about health care reform. It's also about running an effective administration that believes in its mission.

Suck on this, Nestle.

he may be an anti-vaccine weirdo

...but he does a mean Ronnie Reagan.

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

Jason Horowitz or your lying eyes

From the Washington Post:

Rahm Emanuel is officially a Washington caricature. He's the town's resident leviathan, a bullying, bruising White House chief of staff who is a prime target for the failings of the Obama administration.

But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.

It is a view propounded by lawmakers and early supporters of President Obama who are frustrated because they think the administration has gone for the perfect at the expense of the plausible.

Talk about f**king retarded! Does anybody believe Barack Obama's problem has been that he didn't compromise enough?

Word around the internets is that these odd pro-Rahm stories suddenly circulating are a PR move by Rahm either as tossing bombs on the way out or an attempt to strong-arm the president into caving on his agenda. What a jackass.

Onion op-ed by John Boehner

Nice.

the long history of public transportation in America

Some of you may have already noticed, but Atrios has been pulling up some very interesting information lately, specifically old (old like pre-Cold War) maps of public transportation systems in American cities. The findings are striking in how they show that, even aside from the cities known for early adoption of mass transit (San Francisco, Chicago, New York), by the 1930's and 40's most cities actually had surprisingly comprehensive systems of trains and trolleys, some of which have since diminished or disappeared.

• Seattle, 1933


• Detroit, 1941 (in reference to this news article claiming Detroit's about to get its first ever "significant transit line")


• Minneapolis, 1946

The implicit argument is that significant investment in public transit is not at all novel or un-American, but I find the maps interesting even aside from the politics of mass transit.

Just for giggles, I looked up a couple of others:
Grand Rapids, MI, 1927 (this is a proposed streetcar expansion map, but it is clear that in 1929 GR had a significant and widely used streetcar system)
Washington, DC, 1888
Dallas, TX, 1905

My argument against Tort reform via malpractice caps

A good friend of mine recently put up a pretty long facebook screed about the state of the healthcare thing, and I felt the need to respond. I addressed the entirety of it in an email to him, but since I did all this research re: tort reform specifically I thought I'd share it with the masses.

Here's the TLDR version:

• Its anti-states rights. Many states already have malpractice damage caps and all states could implement them if it suited them.
  
• It provably doesn't lower malpractice insurance premiums according to the biggest malpractice insurer.
  
• It doesn't even show a correlation between existence of malpractice caps and the price of healthcare - again, many states already have caps and the existence of those caps does not equate to lower heathcare costs.
  
• It doesn't remove the primary incentive for junk prescriptions and tests - payola. Industry spends billions each year directly influencing doctors.
  
• It gives away patients rights after they've been crippled by negligent docs, even if a jury agrees that they should have damages awarded.

Enjoy!

[Do] Tort reform.. ie the millions that are spent on protective medical practice that doctors spend on covering their ass against lawsuits.

Tort reform is interesting in just how little it would actually do to fix most of the major problems with the system and how much it would cost us as patients.

starting off-


Of course the first argument is that there's really nothing preventing the states of the union from enacting their own versions of tort law, and naturally each state handles it pretty differently. Here's a nice guide as to what the ground rules are in each state.

The federalist argument is of course that States should get to decide what they want and not have tort laws dictated to them by Washington, and that is the current status quo. This allows each state to set up laws according to their own unique constituencies and encourages competition between states for the most effective laws. I'll admit that I'm not much of a federalist when it comes to public safety (though I am in other areas), but I'm just pointing out that the tort reform argument runs counter to the principles of capitalists and federalists because it asks Washington to set the tort laws uniformly for all states while removing the ability of states to offer competitive legislation.




moving on-

When evaluating any potential change you have to honestly evaluate what the specific change is, and look to concrete data. Texas, for example has pretty tight medical malpractice lawsuit caps. Texas also kills a lot of people in hospitals. Texas healthcare is also not measurably less expensive than in a state like Arizona, which does not cap malpractice suits. Here's a fun map of per capita health care expenditures by state.

Relevant data (referencing links given above):

• Texas caps malpractice pain and suffering awards at $250k
• per capita cost of healthcare in Texas $1728 (in 2004, best data I could find)

• Arizona does not cap malpractice on pain and suffering awards (Constitutionally prohibited there)
• per capita cost of healthcare in Az is $1479 in 2004

• The existence of a tight malpractice cap in Texas can't keep healthcare costs below what they are in Az, which has no cap.
  

or, to look at it another way:

• DC is far and away the most expensive district in the union in which to receive healthcare: $4081 per capita in 2004
• Heathcare in DC costs almost 3x as much as it does in Arizona
  
• Neither state has malpractice caps
• Almost every other state in the union has per capita healthcare costs in between these two states.

When you look at the data, there just is no clear correlation between the existence of malpractice caps and the price of healthcare to the end user.




continuing -


The arguments roots extend to the price of malpractice insurance. IOW, if you cap malpractice awards, then the price of malpractice insurance will go down, allowing doctors to charge less to patients. The problem is that the nation's largest malpractice insurer doesn't see it that way. Here's a quote from that article (emphasis mine):

GE Medical Protective's finding was made in a regulatory filing with the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI),in a document submitted by GE to explain why the insurer planned to raise physicians' premiums 19% a mere six months after Texas enacted caps on medical malpractice awards.

In 2003, Texas lawmakers passed a $250,000 cap on non-economic damage compensation to victims of medical malpractice caps after Medical Protective and other insurers lobbied for the change.

According to the Medical Protective filing: "Non-economic damages are a small percentage of total losses paid. Capping non-economic damages will show loss savings of 1.0%."

So what percentage of that 1% of insurance premiums do we expect the doctors to give back to the patients? Now given that we can certainly have a legit conversation about the state of malpractice insurance in this country, but the argument that capping malpractice awards does much for we the patients is pretty weak according the numbers provided by the insurers.

And then there's the reason for malpractice laws in the first place. If a doctor does a procedure on you and is grossly negligent, he can accidentally cripple you. In Texas there isn't much recourse if the doc you go to relieves you of your ability to use your legs. That gives lots of crappy docs lots of reason to come practice medicine here instead of in Arizona.




last one, I promise-


The last leg of the tort reform argument is that doctors are forced to practice defensive medicine in order to avoid lawsuits. I'll not argue that this doesn't exist, but I will argue that there are better ways to address the problem than capping malpractice awards.

What are the incentives for a doc to order a questionable test on a guy?

• minesweeping for anything he may have missed (science is hard)
  
• habit (dude has chest pain, lets get an ekg)
  
• fear of lawsuits
• and of course - money

Generally the point I'm going to make is that lots and lots and lots and lots of the money that pharmaceuticals and medical equipment manufacturers make goes to docs in the form of direct marketing. This means that the megacorp like Pfizer will send a rep to talk with a doc, usually by taking him out to lunch. He'll give him some free samples as part of a "clinical trial," and will encourage the doc to prescribe that drug to his patients in the future. Then he'll set up another meeting in 2 weeks. Oh yeah, and there are 1400 of these reps, doing this exact job, for every single doctor in this country.

Here's a fun exercise - Ask a doc when was the last time he bought lunch for himself. I'll put a couple of quick numbers in context (emphasis mine):

Currently, there are approximately 100,000 pharmaceutical sales reps in the United States^[7] pursuing some 830,000 pharmaceutical prescribers. A pharmaceutical representative will often try to see a given physician every few weeks. Representatives often have a call list of about 200 physicians with 120 targets that should be visited in 1-2 week cycles.

The United States has 90,000 pharmaceutical representatives or 1 for every 6.3 physicians.^[3]

Pharmaceutical company spending on marketing far exceeds that spend on research.^[14][3] In 2004 in Canada $1.7 billion a year was spent marketing drugs to physicians and in the United States $21 billion were spent in 2002.^[4] In 2005 money spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the US was estimated at $29.9 billion with one estimate as high as $57 billion.^[3] When the US number are broken down 56% was free samples, 25% was detailing of physicians, 12.5% was direct to consumer advertising, 4% on hospital detailing, and 2% on journal ads.^[4] In the United States approximately $20 billion could be saves if generics were used instead of equivalent brand name products.^[3]

Currently, there are approximately 100,000 pharmaceutical sales reps in the United States pursuing some 120,000 pharmaceutical prescribers.^[28] The number doubled in the four years from 1999 to 2003. Drug companies spend $5 billion annually sending representatives to physician offices. Pharmaceutical companies use the service of specialized healthcare marketing research companies to perform Marketing research among Physicians and other Healthcare professionals.

What happens is that every doctor in every hospital in every state has every lunch and many dinners bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industry. They are also legally allowed to accept gifts like junkets and even cash/real estate from these entities. In return, try to walk into a hospital, make up and complain of any ailment, and walk away without a prescription for something. I'll bet you can't do it.


So what happens when we remove the fear of lawsuit incentive from docs? Well, we've left intact the biggest motivator that they have to continue with the junk tests and prescriptions - the free lunch, all while removing the ability of patients to receive the resources needed to cope with getting crippled - even if a jury of their peers deems that type of thing appropriate. Tort reformists would prefer Washington to make those decisions. The net effect is that you get what you see with the states that already have caps - no discernible effect on healthcare costs.

funny

Lol.

the new Tim Tebow

Color me deeply, deeply skeptical.

To summarize, the problem for Tebow is that, because Florida placed so much stock in his running game, they never really developed some fundamental skills a quarterback has to have in the NFL, where being a rushing quarterback is not an option. Tebow took all his snaps from the shotgun, so his footwork on the 3/5 step drop is terrible.

And then there's that throwing motion.


Quarterbacks hold the ball at chest level after the snap. With most of them, when their man is open, they pull the ball back and up behind their ear, and from there go into their forward throwing motion. Tebow drops the ball down below his waistline and winds way back and up, doing a full 360 degree motion with his elbow. What that means is that Tebow holds onto the ball much longer than his peers and (supposedly) delivers a much lazier spiral. In a league where there's only a split second window where your man is open and you have to get him the ball in the blink of an eye, an elongated throwing motion can be a killer.

Of course, a similar critique was leveled at Vince Young, and it stopped him neither from getting drafted early in the first round nor from performing relatively well as an NFL quarterback (after some fits and starts, anyway). Admittedly, Tim Tebow is probably better than Young was. Maybe Tebow will come out of this training a fully formed NFL quarterback, but my guess is he's still a pretty major project for an ambitious coach with a healthy if aging franchise quarterback.

the myth of welfare

The major justification for cutting unemployment and welfare programs in the 1990's and 2000's was to get John Q. Taxpayer out from under the collective dead weight of Reagan's welfare queens.

As we're discovering now, however, if you're intent on cutting these people out, there's really only one way to do it: cap unemployment benefits, either in terms of money or time (i.e., you only get $X worth of benefits per year or you can only draw money for X weeks every year). The problem with capping benefits, as perfectly depicted in this NYT piece, is that you throw out the baby with the bathwater. When the economy goes in the toilet (as it does every 10 to 20 years at least) the groups who are the first to lose their jobs and the last to find new ones rely on the long-term unemployment benefits that get the axe from the Reaganites. These people, however, are overwhelmingly from very groups that welfare was designed to protect in the first place: the poor, the unskilled, the old, and the sick, rather than some mythical group of lazy, yet eminently hireable able-bodied adults.

Put another way, the goal of welfare programs is to prevent homelessness and destitution. At any point in time when the economy is running short of full employment, however, benefit caps mean welfare cannot protect those in the most need of it. The choice, then, is between abiding some hireable people living off government largess on the one hand, and letting old and sick people become homeless on the other.

she won't have to worry about being called "pc"

I don't get offended by right wing shock talk much anymore. I get that 50% of it is just not "getting" something and 50% is just trying to get people to rile people up.

Sometimes, however, a slogan or image breaks through.

I actually feel pity for the girl more than anything. I'm one of those people that carries their embarrassing moments with them their entire life. I said some hateful stuff in my ignorant youth, and I still feel a twinge of humiliation anytime I'm reminded of those words, no matter if I said them all the way back in junior high. Generally speaking, though, I can at least take solace in the fact that I'm the only one who remembers them and they were never written down or videotaped.

I also think that the younger you are, the more likely you are to meet a gay person that you come to respect, or on the other hand have a good friend or beloved family member come out. Thus bigots become allies. This picture, however, is probably never going away; in fact, I'd wager that she's already identified herself with it already, on Facebook or some blog somewhere.

One day this woman is going to feel shame over this picture, and will have to live with the fact that it is forever linked to her name anytime anyone googles her.

the stimulus worked

So says David Leonhardt of the New York Times. Hard to run on "it could have been worse, trust us," but it's good to know it was the right decision.

If there's anything I hope people learn from all the discussions of economic stimulus and tax cuts and budgets, it's how connected the federal budget is to your schools, your roads, your friends' and family's and neighbors' jobs, and your local services that you rely on every day. A tremendous amount of federal taxpayer money flows down to the state and local level. Add in Medicare and Social Security, which directly benefit pretty much every person you know over 65, and we're talking about most of the federal budget.

taxes only fund waste

Mishawaka cutting twenty five teachers. In a town of fewer than 50,000 people, that's a lot!

When the local government is short $4.7 million over 2 years, this is what it cuts, not some mythical victimless "government waste." Twenty five families will be pushed into financial upheaval, with the possibility in some cases of mortgage default and bankruptcy. Classrooms will grow that much larger and the other teachers will have to pick up the slack with classes that much more difficult to manage. Students all over the school district will get that much less individual attention.

The amount of money Mishawaka residents will save per capita on average: $51 per year. About $4 a month.

ABTs

Go figure. I find the newest rage in absurd, overmeated party food right after the Superbowl.

Don't worry, locals; they'll be appearing at my house sometime this summer.

NCAA: celebration penalty may negate touchdowns next year

From AP(via Matt Hinton):

If passed, players who draw flags for taunting gestures on their way to a touchdown would have the penalty assessed from the spot of the foul, taking away the score. Penalties that occur in the end zone would continue to be assessed on the extra-point attempt, 2-point conversion try or ensuing kickoff.

The change would take effect in 2011 and on the NCAA's web site, a release said the proposal received near-unanimous support.

"Taunting and prolonged individual acts have no place in our game, and our officials have generally handled these rules well," said former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, the committee chair. "This is just another step in maintaining our game's image and reflecting the ideals of the NCAA overall."

My opinion on rules in games is that you shouldn't adopt a rule you don't intend to enforce. More specifically, you shouldn't adopt a rule if you aren't willing to change the outcome of the game over it.

In the last season or two we've seen multiple instances of celebration/taunting calls that gave the other team a chance to win after the fact, and the outcry was so intense in one case (A.J. Green's go-ahead TD against LSU) that the SEC fined one of its own refs and forced him to apologize. Imagine for a second the outcry if such of touchdown were called back outright and the other team holds on to win. Imagine that happening in the final minutes of the SEC championship or the Rose Bowl or, God forbid, the National "Championship" Game.

I get that this is a rule specifically against taunting, rather than the general endzone merriment and evil, evil ball tossing of the Jake Locker variety, but Green's infamous unsportsmanslike conduct flag was supposedly for taunting en route to the goal line. Even by the standards of college football rules, taunting is in the eye of the beholder, especially considering the trash talking and psychological warfare that likely goes on out of earshot of the microphones.

This rule is just dying to cause the NCAA more headaches.

Tim Tebow: even his ads prefer procreation

Apparently there will be a second, pre-game version of the already infamous Tebow/Focus on the Family Superbowl ad:

There's a new Super Bowl surprise from Focus on the Family: a second ad.

The evangelical group that bought ad time in the CBS game telecast will announce today that it has bought time in the pregame show to air a second ad four times.

The new ad also features star quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. It was filmed in Orlando last month at the same time as the group's controversial — though yet unseen — in-game ad.

Apparently they will both be of the "choose life" message variety that, though intended as a witty riposte from the anti-Roe crowd, has on occasion been embraced by members of the other side as a message that still preaches choice.

I'm increasingly skeptical on that point, but the heretofore detente on that message is important to point out here.

Also important to point out, however, are the implications of the Tebow ad outside of those considerations. For those who don't know the story, I'll quote his Wikipedia page:

Tebow was born on August 14, 1987 in Makati City in the Philippines, to Bob and Pam Tebow, who were serving as Christian missionaries at the time.[1][7] While pregnant, Pam suffered a life-threatening infection with a pathogenic amoeba. Because of the drugs used to rouse her from a coma and to treat her dysentery, the fetus experienced a severe placental abruption. Doctors expected a stillbirth and recommended an abortion to protect her life.[1] She carried Timothy to term, and both survived.

So Mrs. Tebow essentially undertook a significant risk to her own life to have Tim. It's moving, and of course things worked out wonderfully for her and we're all very happy for her. She's very lucky.

Nevertheless, is it really responsible to advocate for women to hold out on life-saving procedures on the off chance that they'll both survive anyway and have super-moral, Heisman-winning sons? The Tebows rolled the dice on her life to save his, and happened to win big that time, but many others wouldn't be so lucky. I wonder if Mrs. Tebow or any of the people who are using her story to push their political agendas have considered the possibility of some woman in her position acting on her advice, and instead of delivering the next Tim Tebow, dying from complications while giving birth to a stillborn baby. God does not save every woman with a placental abruption, let alone every baby.

the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, not just citizens

I'm glad to see Greenwald drop-kicking this old right wing chestnut, but I'm a little surprised that it took so long to see such an article.

The Bill of Rights applies to everyone within the jurisdiction of the American legal system. It does not matter whether they are citizens or foreign nationals because the Bill of Rights makes no such distinctions and court precedence has held as much since at least the 19th century. Greenwald pulls up a court decision where even Antonin Scalia admits as much.

Pointing out the absurdity of such a claim, Greenwald asks:

There are millions of foreign nationals inside the U.S. at all times -- not only illegally but also legally: as tourists, students, workers, Green Card holders, etc. Is there anyone who really believes that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to them? If a foreign national is arrested and accused by the U.S. Government of committing a crime, does anyone believe they can be sentenced to prison without a jury trial, denied the right to face their accusers, have their property seized without due process, be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and be denied access to counsel? Anyone who claims that the Constitution only protects American citizens, but not foreigners, would necessarily have to claim that the U.S. Government could do all of that to foreign nationals. Does anyone believe that? Would it be Constitutionally permissible to own foreigners as slaves on the ground that the protections of the Constitution -- including the Thirteenth Amendment -- apply only to Americans, not foreigners?

the Barack Obama comedy hour

Idiots. I really am amazed sometimes that Republicans ever get elected to anything. I can't believe they thought it would be a good idea to let any dipshit in the caucus lob impromptu questions -- on national TV, no less -- at the President of the United States, and only a year and change after he took John McCain to school three times in a row, to boot.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

State of the Union

What will the southern Republicans do this year, I wonder? Let's take a poll and see what y'all think:

a) show up in white robes and hoods
b) wear neckties tied in nooses
c) drop trough in the middle of the speech and defecate on the Capitol floor
d) put on fake Hitler moustaches after Obama mentions HCR
e) spit in Obama's face as he walks down the aisle and shout "you stay away from our white women!"
f) give Obama a Nazi-style extended arm salute
g) refer to the president as "Comrade Barry Hussein" all night
h) intentionally find ways to use the term "niggardly" and chuckling each time
i) wear t-shirts that say "they call it the WHITE house for a reason!"

a fool's errand

That's what it would be to draft a new bill to woo Republicans. Krugman:

So, House Democrats have a choice: do they pass the Senate bill, or do they go back to the drawing board and spend several months cobbling together a plan that’s worse in almost every dimension, generating thousands of stories about hapless Democrats — and almost surely find that Senate Republicans block the new plan, too.

The GOP is not interested in working with Democrats, only with subverting them. They've already said their strategy is obstruction, they've being using that strategy for 3 years now, and they believe they're winning with it. Why would they suddenly vote to fix healthcare now?

Reid's recent comment about Olympia Snowe's duplicity should be the lesson of the decade for Democrats. They gave her everything she asked for from weakening the mandate penalties to stripping the co-ops, the Medicare buy-in, and the opt-outs, even the public option itself, only to watch her vote to filibuster anyway.

Remember, one the GOP's main arguments against the public option was that it would be better than private insurance, and that's a bad thing:

Nevertheless, Republican senators argued that the public option would bankrupt the country and lead to a single-payer system. "Government is not a competitor. Government is a predator," said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

To the GOP, the worst thing that could happen is that something gets fixed while the Democrats are in charge.

giving up

Speaker Pelosi says she doesn't have the votes, and doesn't give any viable alternatives.

I think the Democrats have given up on healthcare reform.

It's being described in several places as "political suicide," which it is, sure. One wonders whom, exactly, Mary Landrieu is expecting will go to the polls for her (let alone donate and volunteer!) if she runs against a Republican and yet fought tooth and nail against having to make a decision on the defining Democratic project of the last 50 years. Who does she think is her base of support? Then again, of all the controversial parts of the various bills, the public option consistently polled better than anything else, and yet it the main thing conservative Democrats wanted out of the bill, so maybe that says something about the political instincts of the "waffling is conviction" crowd.

To call this "political suicide," though, misses the mark because it's still looking at politics as theater or sport, using the "horse race" rhetoric of election-year journalism that doesn't recognize the very real way that politics affects our lives. As Jon Stewart once put it, "This isn't a f**king game."

Giving up on healthcare reform isn't suicide; it's abandonment. It's abandonment of 50 million uninsured Americans, countless millions of others who are underinsured, overcharged, and one health problem away from bankruptcy. It's abandonment of everyone who's been or will be denied coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" or dropped when they get sick, and everyone victimized by the "death by spreadsheet" business model of American insurance companies. And it's abandonment of everyone who put their hopes in a new Congress, a new party, and a new president to finally make things right.

Yes, this means that Obama voters are going to stay home in November, and the blood of conservative and moderate Democrats will flow like a river down the steps of the Capitol, but the real "news" is that as many as 101,000 people will die needlessly in 2013 because Congress couldn't maneuver a health reform bill through a 59 seat majority. Which one of those massacres actually matters?

UPDATE: then again, this makes one wonder if the only bill Democrats ever stood a chance of passing was one that does more harm than good, anyway.

Science!

Fascinating.

lessons learned (hopefully)

2 interesting admissions from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the HCR negotiations:

1. Joe Lieberman really did backstab him on the Medicare buy-in, promising support and then balking at the moment of greatest leverage,

2. (and this is the big one) the months spent negotiating with Olympia Snowe were a waste of time. Reid estimates that she never had any intention of signing onto healthcare reform.

Notre Dame's 2010 Commencement Speaker: Brian Williams

Great. Maybe we'll get to hear about some of his penetrating insights, like how there's something uniquely American about not giving up, or perhaps a comment about the solid moral values of people in the Heartland. I wonder if he'll mention how courageous our men and women in uniform are or how magnificent the accomplishments of the Greatest Generation were.

I really hope he talks a little bit about taking the politics out of Washington by focusing less on Wall St. and more on Main St.

don't mess with Conando

Conan O'Brien won't do a midnight Tonight Show. Good for him. Apparently there are contractual issues in trying to go somewhere else, though.

I'm getting really sick of Jay Leno and the way NBC pushes everyone else around to make room for him and his tepid comedy. This episode reminds me of the fact that, had Johnny Carson had his way, Conan would be taking over The Tonight Show with David Letterman. Dunno how long it will last, but right now on Jay Leno's Wikipedia page, if you look under "influences" you'll see the name "Judas."

Harold Ford, Jr. running for New York senate seat

What is it about this senate seat that attracts carpetbaggers?

When people of staunch liberal and conservative persuasions talk about the "squishy center," accusing them of spinelessness, double talk, and disloyalty, they're usually talking about guys like Harold Ford. Ford spent the last 5 years on television bashing Democrats for being "extremist," at least when he wasn't burnishing his pro-life credentials or supporting gay marriage bans (now that's "Big Government"!).

Now, however, with a practically open seat in a comfortably blue state, Ford has re-emerged, suddenly socially liberal.

And for the record, ontheissues.org pegs Ford's support percentage from NARAL at 30%, not 80% as he claims. I know that must have been really hard for the lofty New York Post to verify, but there it is.

the ironic ending of Joe Rollino

Guy who lived to be 104 died yesterday in New York. Very sad.

He didn't pass away in bed, though. He was hit by a van.

ex-Gitmo prison guard reconnect with 2 former inmates using Facebook

Not your typical Guantanamo story.

nonplussed

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Do they have editors at the Washington Post?

you see what God did to us?

Some of the best commentary on the championship game. I've been a fan of Colt McCoy since his freshman year when he gave the Buckeyes a fight at the Horseshoe, and what happened to him last night, after having spent pretty much his entire life preparing for that game, is a devilishly cruel twist of fate even by sports standards. I know reporters are supposed to talk to the main players about what happened after the game, but neither Colt nor we should have been subjected to this:

Perhaps the issue of Colt's personal misery could be held off for another day, or at least you could maybe have a little tact when you pick at that fresh wound next time?

Poor kid. I choked up a little watching him struggle for words. I'm truly impressed that he could hold himself together long enough to get away from the vultures.

top tens of the decade: TV shows

What can I say? It's fun to do these things. Heather Havrilesky at Salon has a good one, though mine would not be identical.

What do I take "best" to mean here? I'm thinking a mix of entertainment value, intellectual heft, clever writing, and strong production, I suppose. I understand that Havrilesky gets a lot of entertainment out of "Survivor," and felt the need to include something from the reality TV genre, but I don't feel any such compunction about leaving out a genre if I think it's cheap, brainless filler pretty much by definition. I'm sure there are some well-crafted, entertaining game shows, too, but you won't see any on my list. You also won't see shows I haven't seen yet (sorry, Sopranos). You also won't see the two shows everyone's ga-ga over: Mad Men and 30 Rock. I like and watch them both, and 30 Rock is probably number 11 on my list. I hear the most recent season of Mad Men is the best, but I can't watch it until it comes out on video.

1. The Wire

Agreed with Heather on this one, and I'll go even further. The Wire isn't just the clear standout of the decade; I think it may be the greatest show ever. I'm not sure I've ever seen a show this smart or this coldly realistic, or have characters this detailed, or organized and executed so meticulously. The show carefully cultivates a sense of brutal realism, even pessimism, but without becoming merely cynical. The characters are not just memorable or "captivating" but alive, and we see them in their natural environment, most of them always teetering on the brink of destruction.

One of the things I thought was most interesting and alluring about the show was that the entire premise proceeded from a single, pedestrian theme, a mere cliche in pretty much any other context: "Drugs are bad for people and communities." The creators of the show, a former journalist and a former policeman, create an entire series about the city of Baltimore and how drugs are choking the life out of it, and exactly how that's happening, and exactly why that's happening, and why all the city's civic institutions are powerless to stop it.

2. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

I'm with Heather here as well. It is scary remembering what life was like when the only comedy acts attempting to deal with politics were Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. God we must have been stupid back then. Critics may point out that Colbert Report is, on the whole, funnier and a deader aim. That may be true, but The Daily Show was just bigger this decade in its aim and in its impact on politics and TV comedy and even news media. Jon Stewart filled a void so dearly longed for by so many people, and did it so completely, that he's become one of the most trusted news men in America.

Who saw that coming after watching Death to Smoochy?

3. Firefly

F you, FOX.

Joss Whedon's magnum opus was just the cleverest durn thing you ever seen. Amusing, infinitely quotable, with endearing characters and surprisingly well-conceived special effects (the silent hand cam was so good at making the effects scenes feel like actual space), Firefly was perhaps the single saddest casualty of America's taste for shitty television.

4. Deadwood

The long defunct western genre was resurrected on TV in some surprising and brilliant ways. Deadwood took the western genre and recreated it for savvier, more intellectual audiences, and even inserted Shakespearean cadences into the banter. Ian McShane's Al Swearengen may be the best executed character of the decade. Also, it had the best opening credits sequence of any show I've ever seen.

5. The Office

Anybody else notice that "that's what she said" is everywhere now?

Seriously though, this show is so much more than meets the eye. The humor is hard to crack at first because it's so uncomfortable, but underneath there's a surprising amount of heart in this show, and of depth in the characters, especially Michael Scott. A pre-emptive response to the fans of the British version: by the end of the 2nd season, Steve Carell inhabits this character more fully than Ricky Gervais, and the writing is better, to boot. The show talks about life at work in a way that is smarter than it first sounds.

6. Dexter

A show that takes everything cliche about TV in the aughts (a Miami crime procedural about a serial killer? really?) and makes something brilliant. I hate that I like this show so much.

7. Arrested Development

I've only seen the first season so far, but you can just kinda tell.

8. Battlestar Galactica

Not always the smartest dialog and not always the best acting, but the story is majestic, a real spectacle. Probably the greatest straight sci-fi TV show in history.

9. In Treatment

Minimalist television, stripped down to 3 staple characters in 2 rooms, doing nothing but having therapy sessions. Like fragments of ancient poetry, there is something about the tiny, truncated nature of the episodes and stories that sticks with you long after they're over.

The whole weight of the show rests upon the acting chops of its cast, doing entire episodes without a cut in many cases, and Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest are enthralling.

10. Big Love

It's impressive how well the writers take a group that is universally despised and makes them not just sympathetic but almost like representations of the average American. They can tug on different thematic strands to make the Henricksons appeal to different social and political subgroups at different times. See there, Bill is a church-going, true believing man of God who's unafraid to invoke the name of Jesus in public. Look there, there's Barb and Nicki being discriminated against for living an alternative lifestyle! Oh, those crazy in-laws, am I right?

an ad hominem is not a legitimate defense

I keep seeing this over and over again: the answer to the charges that Mike Leach punished a concussed player is that the player, Adam James, was lazy and entitled. Can someone explain to me how the player's lack of work ethic justifies locking him in a room for the grave offense of having a concussion? Nevertheless, sneering mockeries of James appeared on signs and t-shirts all over the broadcast of the Alamo Bowl. I even heard this argument from Mike Leach himself, which I personally find despicable.

Of course, Leach's public treatment of his players has become increasingly unprofessional in recent years, and some of those surprising tweets from early this season now seem much more telling in light of recent events. As I said yesterday, it's significant that, rather than rushing to their highly successful coach's defense, the current players that have gone public are standing by James, but it's not just that they defended James. Look at the comments they made:

Starting Center Shawn Byrnes on Leach: “He didnt understand how to deal with people. … Everyone is excited about this to be honest. … Adam James took a stand. How could punish a kid for having a concussion? What could that possibly accomplish?”

Texas Tech defensive lineman Chris Perry on Leach’s firing today and the coach’s treatment of Adam James: “I have no complaints about this decision. (Leach) put Adam in a shed like an animal. Like an animal in a cage. … That was bull. … You call the players. We practiced hard this week. We have our pep back now. We had less stress this week. You know why? Because he’s (Leach) gone.”

Texas Tech defensive back Taylor Charbonnet on Leach’s treatment of teammate Adam James: “I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t agree with it. I don’t know why Leach did that.”

What I think we're starting to see is a long deteriorating relationship between Leach and his players that boiled over this season in several very embarrassing public episodes, but has been simmering out of sight of the cameras for some time. I have a feeling this is the real story of Mike Leach's firing from Texas Tech.

LA betting on drawing an NFL team by 2011

From AP:

LOS ANGELES (AP)—The company behind a plan to lure the NFL back to Los Angeles said Tuesday the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills are the first teams it will try to relocate.

Majestic Realty Co. managing partner John Semcken said the company is still considering at least seven franchises for a new stadium some 25 miles east of Los Angeles.

They also include the San Francisco 49ers, San Diego Chargers, Minnesota Vikings, St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders.

But he said the Jaguars and the Bills are at the top of the list because they play in small markets that tamp down their earning potential and because they have little hope of building larger venues in their home regions.

I'm not a fan of any of these teams, but having watched the Oilers go to Nashville in my youth, I'm still a bit sore on the whole idea of teams switching cities, especially older, more established teams. Three of these teams have already called Los Angeles home before (the Raiders, Rams, and Chargers), but the Vikings, 49ers, and Bills have eons of history with their hometowns. They're some of the NFL's most venerable institutions.

Still, it is kind of silly for a city the size of Los Angeles not to have a team, especially when the Bay Area has two. One could argue that Los Angeles lost the Rams and Raiders because, despite hailing from a metropolitan area with a population of 12 million people, they couldn't fill the 90,000 seats in the Coliseum. However, 90k is a pretty absurd seat count for an NFL stadium (only FedEx Field in DC matches it without resorting to standing areas). Plus, for all but the last year of the LA Rams, there were 2 NFL teams dividing up the Angelino fanbase.

With all this in mind, I looked up the Harris Poll of NFL team popularity for this year. The results are interesting, especially the top 10. Only one of the top 10 teams changed metro areas in the last 35 years (the Indianapolis Colts in 1984). The spring chickens of the bunch are the San Diego Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys, both 50 years young. None of the eleven newest teams in the NFL made the top 10, while 6 of the 11 oldest teams were included.

Tommy Tuberville interviewing at Texas Tech

They'd be crazy not to take him. Crazy.

the sad truth about the "values" of college sports

The vast majority of fans will gladly call out and denigrate on national TV a 19 year old kid to protect the coach, even one accused of punishing said kid for having the temerity to be concussed.

Normally the players rally around endangered and fired coaches, as happened with Charlie Weis despite his incredibly gruff personality and disappointing performance. Our best players even tried to extort the AD into bringing Weis back by making their return for the senior year contingent on Weis' (and made good on that threat when he was fired). Yet no current players have come to Leach's defense even after producing so many winning seasons and bowl games and masterminding the most impressive run in Tech football history, even taking the Red Raiders to their first ever #2 national ranking briefly last season. They have instead rallied around the injured player, Adam James, which should be a red flag to all of us outside the bubble about who was probably in the wrong here.

Apparently not, though: as of this morning, the Team Leach contingent on Facebook has 41,000 members. The "I support all Tech players including Adam James" group has 118. The group explicitly calling James a douchenozzle and advocating buying him a pretty dress has 123.

hey! something substantive said about sports!

10 actual, for real good things about sports, without all the bullshit about values and character.

HCR, quick glance

I've long been on the side that believes the restrictions on dropping coverage and pre-existing conditions probably make the current health care reform bill worth passing pretty much no matter what other crap is in it, though maybe that's partly because I've never been convinced that we'd get a public option anyway.

Howard Dean jumping off the bus makes me think twice, though.

kung fu monkeys

No, seriously. A Chinese man taught his monkeys kung fu, and they turned on him with their best moves.

And there's a picture of it.

Friday Night Lights

Thought I'd give it a shot considering all the stellar reviews it's gotten over the last several years. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it really is an outstanding show. Definitely lacking the gritty realism of a show like "The Wire," and isn't quite as intelligent, but that's an awfully high bar. It's interesting how the show painted a bland, very stereotypically "football show" portrait in the pilot, and has spent every episode since then filling in interesting details and adding color. It sketches out the small Texas town with striking clarity and honesty, letting you see right through the Broderian heartland rubbish into a place that really exists (or at least seems to).

A little personal note about it: my high school played the school the show is based on once or twice while I was there. We got smoked.

Brian Kelly is Notre Dame's new coach

Jackpot.

Kelly "on brink" of becoming next Irish coach?

Does God love us this much?

Kelly held a meeting last week about the opening with representatives of Notre Dame within days of Cincinnati's Big East championship game against Pittsburgh, the Tribune has learned.

Talks progressed well enough that the official announcement Kelly will be Charlie Weis' replacement could come as early as Friday -- anytime after Cincinnati's football banquet Thursday night.
...
ESPN.com reported "things are heating up" between Notre Dame and Kelly.

Final details over a contract remain, but the university had no plans to deviate from its traditional stance of signing new football coaches to five-year deals, a source said. Asked if Kelly would accept an official offer to coach Notre Dame, a coaching friend of Kelly's answered, "I have no doubt he'd take the job.''

Let's all hope this isn't just another coach using ND's interest to get a better contract from their home school. Brian Kelly has taken three shitty schools and made them champions. Grand Valley State is still a major Division II power, and Central Michigan has had an iron grip on the MAC since 2006, his third year. Cincinnati's the Big East champion for the second consecutive season and playing in the Sugar Bowl because of this guy, kids. Cincinnati.

And check out this nugget from his Wikipedia page:

Among the honors that UC football team has achieved in 2009 is the highest academic rating among teams in the top 10 of the current BCS standings, according to the latest Graduation Success Rates, released Wednesday by the NCAA. UC, which is fifth in the BCS standings, checked in with a 75 percent NCAA graduation rate and a 71 percent federal government rate, the only team in the BCS top 10 to surpass the 70 percent plateau in both.

If he can't right this ship, then the problem is not with coaches.

failure

Public option triggered out of existence in the Senate compromise. I really, really wish I were wrong about this.

Of course, we're all waiting to see what the CBO says about all this, even though they said the public option would save money. After all, if it isn't for wars, it's not free money!

not the punchline I was expecting

Earlier today I was in a sexual harassment workshop for work. It's exactly like the ones you see parodied on television, where you watch videos of inappropriate behavior and then are asked by the presenter to point out the obvious. We're watching this one where a hoary old professor asks his secretary to send out the "memo" he just sent her. It's already pretty humorous because of the casting choice and stilted lines. It continues:

*secretary opens email and gasps in horror*

Secretary: "Did you mean to send this to me?"

Dirty Professor: "You're supposed to laugh. It's just a joke."

*awkward pause*

Dirty Professor: "I thought you liked animals."

BOTH Clausen and Tate entering draft

Thanks, Clausen-punching irate fan! Idiot.

Seriously though, this is a serious setback, to be sure. Of the two, Tate is probably the toughest hit since no one else appears to be at his level to balance Michael Floyd, while Dayne Crist showed promise in his limited playing time, injury notwithstanding.

Still, imagine for a second what Brian Kelly could have done with Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate.

so much for BCS gate-crashing

Every year for the past 3 or 4 years there has been a great undefeated team from the non-BCS conferences that has crashed the gates of the BCS. Even more embarrassing for the BCS, these mid-major upstarts actually have a pretty good record against the BCS' elite. This year things looked to get even worse with not one, but two such revolutionaries having the audacity to go undefeated, with one of them even knocking off the eventually PAC 10 champions along the way, each one demanding the opportunity to play with the big dogs.

The BCS' answer? Turn the Fiesta Bowl, traditionally the home turf of the Big 12, into the Separate But Equal Bowl. So I guess that makes the new guiding principle of BCS bowl selection "damage control." Matt Hinton of the brilliant Dr. Saturday blog (formerly Sunday Morning Quarterback) doesn't smell any conspiracy:

It's not really that sinister: The Fiesta Bowl made the picks itself, one undefeated upstart (Cincinnati) still has its chance to make good against a powerhouse (Florida) and the only options beyond the championship game and the Gators would have been matching the Frogs and Broncos up with almost equally surprising outfits from Georgia Tech and Iowa. It's not a conspiracy; as with so often in the BCS, the setup ensures that somebody is always getting screwed.

I find it almost inconceivable that the Fiesta Bowl would willing choose both Boise St. and TCU over its birthright, Big 12 representatives Iowa. Nor would I be surprised to find that the BCS is more than confident in Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow's ability to put down the 3rd undefeated pretender.

It's shameful.

It's time for a change, ladies and gentlemen. I present to you the Wetzel plan, 2009 edition. It's a playoff of the same sort played all the other NCAA sports, including Division II football, so I don't want to hear a word about kids playing too many games. All 11 Division I conference champs + 5 at-large bids, with higher seeds getting home field advantage. The bowls can still invite people and play if they want, but they don't take part in the tournament; otherwise, home field advantage would be pointless. There are plenty of reasons to back this system as laid out by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports. If none of that convinces you, though, just take a gander at what this season would look like under the Wetzel plan:


Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? Right out of the gate in week 1 we get Iowa at Pac 10 champions Oregon, Georgia Tech on the road at Ohio State, Virginia Tech on the blue turf of Boise State, LSU crossing the Sabine river to TCU, and, hoo boy, 2 great powerhouses you never see together: Penn State at Florida.

It's already got more and better matchups than the BCS this year, and we're just on the first Saturday.

Imagine the likely week 2, and you've got the winner of Iowa-Oregon traveling down to Austin to play Colt McCoy and the Longhorns. Cincinnati gets the winner of Va Tech-Boise St. at home. A couple hundred miles south will be a likely match between the Ohio State Buckeyes and Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa.

Boise St, TCU, and Cincinnati all get legitimate shots at the Mythical National Championship (as well as East Carolina and several other smaller outfits), but TCU, the one with the highest seed, would have to get past LSU, Florida, and probably Alabama. Boise St. would have to beat Va Tech, Cincinnati and Texas.

This needs to happen. Sooner or later, it will happen. It's inevitable.

remember, kids, he's pro-life!

Rick Warren refuses to condemn a bill to make homosexuality (or even support for gay rights) a crime in Uganda, sending gays to jail for life, and executing HIV positive gays:

The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.

Unsurprisingly, the author of the bill is considered a "core member" of The Family, the Christian conservative organization on Capitol Hill. When he started catching some flak for this remark, Warren replied that, "Globally last yr 146,000 Christians were put to death last year because of their faith. No one, except Christians, said anything."

Nevermind the highly suspect and unverified nature of Warren's number, what's the lesson here from the good pastor for the kids at home?

1. that one cannot be Christian and gay at the same time;
2. that it's ok to stand by and watch evil happen, saying nothing, if your people were wronged on some previous occasion;
3. that gays can be punished for other people's crimes.

These political pastors, they really live the Word, ya know?