Maddow

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Word. Rachel Maddow is unquestionably the finest interviewer on cable TV, and quite possibly on TV in general. Here she is above politely yet mercilessly exposing Rand Paul's nutty side, potentially opening up the KY Senate race in the process. She's done some great work in terms of straight journalism as well.

This is interesting, I think, because it illustrates how her skills far outstrip her job, and yet she's likely to be passed over for numerous promotions because she's a avowed liberal feminist, and therefore not as "serious" as others. MSNBC may be claiming a liberal news format (curious considering their longest show is headed by a conservative, former Republican congressman), but frankly FOX News is the only place in news television where you can get ahead without playing a faux centrist lickspittle.

And of course Coates is right, Palin knows better than to go within 200 feet of The Rachel Maddow Show, but Palin doesn't do any non-sympathetic interviews anymore. Still, what I wouldn't give for five minutes of Sarah Palin on Maddow!

interactive budget simulator

Pretty cool little gizmo here. Very helpful in showing people what would have to be done to make real cuts in the deficit, which is nice, though I'm not happy with the lack of some options. You can gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, for instance, but there is no option to take a chainsaw to the military budget.

I suppose in that way it reflects contemporary American politics.

Overall, it's actually pretty easy for a Nazi Socialist Trotskyite like me who thinks Americans are coddled when it comes to tax burden.

Utopian

Right off the heels of my giving Peter Beinart rare kudos, he says:

I'm not asking Israel to be Utopian... I'm not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.

Yeah, I mean let's not go all crazy, wild-eyed liberal on this thing, right? No one's saying Israel can't have a permanent ethnic underclass or systematic discrimination of religious minorities. I mean, look, sure we may be pro-civil rights, but we're not ideologues!

what goes around comes around

This proposition has a very interesting dynamic to it that I think Leonhart missed. As we all know, the reason coke has decreased in price while good foods have more significantly more expensive over the last 30 years is because of the switch from sugar to high fructose corn syrup and the attendant massive federal corn subsidy. Coke is cheaper because it's steadily gotten cheaper to make.

Consider, too, that counties and municipalities have been getting shat on from a fiscal standpoint by the federal government (and state governments, as well) since the Bush years. They've been getting less help and more underfunded and unfunded mandates as irresponsible presidents, congressmen, and governors pass tax cuts and restrict funding, effectively pushing the tax burden down to municipalities.

A city government like DC taxing the f**k out of a product that benefits from heavy federal subsidies is a clever way to reclaim some of that lost tax revenue. On the other hand, it's unlikely that Coca Cola will eat that cost rather than just passing it on to the customer, so what really ends up happening is taxpayers continue to pay twice for the same product while no longer getting the benefit of lower prices that is the raison d'etre for the subsidy.

supposedly huge GOP wave year

and yet the Republicans keep losing. I'm honestly getting confused now. The narrative I've been assuming since '08 was that the GOP would have a big midterm as the non-incumbent party, mistake historical precedent for a silent far right majority, and then let the teabaggers drive their party straight into an electoral meat grinder in 2012, from which eventually will emerge a chastened, kinder, more centrist GOP a la the Tory model in Britain. I've never really been convinced that they would be flipping the House, but I was expecting pretty serious gains.

And yet special election after special election rolls around, several in seats currently held by the Dems but packed to the gills with blue collar, conservative voters, precisely the type of district that's supposed to deliver all these new Republican congressmen, and the GOP candidate widely expected to win flops. In this particular case, the final count was a bigger Democratic blowout than even the most optimistic polls.

There's been an excuse for most of the others. Doug Hoffman's vote got split. Tedisco got really close and Obama won that district, anyway. Florida's 19th was super Dem-leaning, as were CA-10 and CA-32.

How do you spin losing a special election in a district that John McCain won where the last incumbent congressman was notoriously corrupt, where President Obama's approval rating is 35%, where only 30% of voters approve of healthcare reform, where Nancy Pelosi is extremely unpopular, and the Republican candidate had a $308,000 to $73,000 cash advantage?

After all that, Critz won by almost 10 points.

unreelected

Say goodnight, Arlen. The Washington incumbency racket takes one on the chin today. Arlen Specter was the worst kind of centrist, one whose position on any given bill was determined almost exclusively by political expediency, whose every move was calculated to appeal to as many voters as possible. Specter was easily cowed by Bush into voting consistently with the hard right, and cowed by primary voters into voting consistently Democratic (for a time). If his erratic voting patterns had been the product of compromise, I would understand and perhaps even applaud, but I remember all attempts to compromise with Specter during the Bush years, and they always concluded with a quick visit from the president and a sullen looking Specter voting the party line. He was utterly without principle and without backbone, not even a centrist so much as a cipher.

Good riddance.

the decay of liberal Zionism

A very good thesis here by Peter Beinart on the growing ideological gulf between American Jews of different generations, and between Orthodox/Israeli Jews and liberal Jews.

The article is also about a much bigger and scarier issue, however: the slow asphyxiation of democratic values in Israel. Major government figures in Israel believe that Israeli Arabs should have their citizenship revoked. Not for committing acts of terrorism, mind you; for simply being Arab. Huge percentages of Israelis believe Arab citizens should be barred from serving in the Knesset. And the youngest generation of Israelis is the most right wing and authoritarian of all.

love those Michiana conservatives

Mark Souder from the 3rd district (Elkhart to I think Fort Wayne), last seen introducing legislation to replace Franklin Roosevelt on the dime with Ronald Reagan, has been exposed having an affair...

wait for it...

with the woman he filmed pro-abstinence-education commercials with.

Yes, he is resigning, effective Friday. Yes, this is the same Mark Souder who just won his party's primary a couple of weeks ago.

"will enable me to be re-elected"

The most damning political ad I've seen in a while. Amazing the things Specter chooses to be candid about, since he does it so rarely.

gettin' to be that time

Grilling season again! Finally. I've got a couple of things in particular that I want to try out this summer:

Atomic Buffalo Turds

*slides coke-bottle glasses up nose* As my anthropologist friend corrected me, properly speaking these would actually be Atomic Bison Turds. Glavin.



Anywho, I experimented with these once in the winter out of the oven, sans li'l smokies. My theory that they would still be delicious was correct. I also made a batch of ABT's sans bacon, as in vegetarian. My theory that they would still be tasty was also correct. Jalapenos take on such a rich, wonderful flavor when cooked. I can only imagine what these will be like exposed to smoke.

We're planting jalapenos again this year, so hopefully there will be plenty of opportunities to experiment with different recipes.

Speaking of bison...

Bison Steak

I made grassfed steak a couple of summers ago, which is similar, and was awesome. My connect disappeared from the Elkhart Farmers' Market, unfortunately, but the bison folks are still there, so I'm going to give this a shot. I've had bison brats already, and I was impressed, so I'm optimistic.

Brisket, Texas style

This is something I've been building up to for a long time. After careful consideration, I've decided that, the first time at least, I should let the oven do much of the work. I still plan to start and finish the brisket on the grill, though. I'm not a heretic.

If all goes well, brisket + tortilla + BBQ sauce, salsa, and/or pico de gallo = 2 minutes of carnivore euphoria.

Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work

An interesting observation from Paul Krugman.

At its best, libertarianism fails to sufficiently appreciate the power producers hold over consumers (and, by extension, their government). At its worst, libertarianism is supportive of that power imbalance, and is nothing more than a philosophy of "might makes right," the cult of Ayn Rand.

putting competent people in charge

And, as a corollary to that, putting people in charge who believe in their charge. NYT:

WASHINGTON — In a burst of rule-making, federal agencies have toughened or proposed new standards to protect Americans from tainted eggs, safeguard construction workers from crane accidents, prevent injuries from baby walkers and even protect polar bears from extinction.

Over the last year, the Obama administration has pressed forward on hundreds of new mandates, while also stepping up enforcement of rules by increasing the ranks of inspectors and imposing higher fines for violations.

A new age of regulation is well under way in Washington, a fact somewhat obscured by the high-profile debates over the health care overhaul and financial oversight system and by fresh calls for greater federal vigilance spurred by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the deaths of coal miners in West Virginia.

W. very famously let the foxes rule the henhouse for 8 years, putting people in charge of regulatory agencies who were either incompetent or who believed that government was incapable of protecting consumers without destroying the economy.

It is partly because of this extensive Bush Administration incompetence and neglect that movements like locavore-ism and homemade pet foods made headway in the aughts: people no longer felt like they could trust Kraft, Alpo, and even Earthbound Farms to provide safe products. As cool as local stuff sounds, I'm not sure I'd be buying locally made cat food, local, free range eggs and chicken, and organic, off-brand peanut butter if it weren't for e. coli and melamine.

Nice to have a president hiring people who do their jobs.

poll craziness

There are primaries coming next week in 3 Senate races, and the incumbent stands to lose in several of them (possibly all 3!). The one people are really freaking out about, though, is Joe Sestak's sudden and consistent lead over Arlen Specter in PA.

Speaking specifically of this race, I'm surprised anyone else is surprised. Specter is a truly loathsome senator, the Platonic form of the gutless, "finger in the wind" politician whose only principle is being ardently pro-reelection. He's been a Democrat for all of a year, was cowed over and over again for 8 years by George W. Bush (when he wasn't ardently supporting him!), and the way he's stepped into the party and demanded that they give him all their support just because he's an incumbent has been embarrassing.

More broadly speaking, I'm also surprised that people continue to put so much stock in election polls so far out. Seemingly static election numbers regularly go wild 2 weeks from election day because people don't start paying attention until then. This is especially true with primaries for whatever reason. Remember, for instance, that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain had a prayer of winning a month before the Iowa Caucus. In '04, Howard Dean was cruising to a blowout win just a week and half out. You just don't know until a few days before Election Day.

National Day of Prayer

Unpossible! The intarwebs told me Saddam Hussein Obama canceled it!

What's funny is that today thousands of people are going to receive the chain email in question and forward it to their friends and family, livid at the audacity of their dirty muslim president. What a country.

hung

With all but 9 seats in, the UK Parliament tally is 302 Tories to 256 Labour to 56 Lib Dems.

It takes 326 seats to form a majority, so the Tories can't do it by themselves, and Labour can't do it even with an (unlikely) Lib Dem coalition. Either Cameron and Clegg will form a Tory/Lib Dem coalition government, or the Tories will run a minority government.

In any case, the most obvious likely consequence of this election has indeed come to pass: the historically long tenure of Tony Blair's New Labour has come to an end. David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister.

Fun Fact: despite the huge increase in support, the Liberal Democrats will finish with fewer seats after this election.

UPDATE: I should clarify. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are not a natural match, and a joint government between them would be a rare sight indeed, from what I understand, much rarer than Labour/Lib Dems as those two parties are ideologically closer (and both are historic nemeses of the Tories). The Conservatives have a much more natural ally in the Irish DUP, the largest and most hardline unionist party in Ulster, but the DUP doesn't have enough seats to put the Tories over 325, either. Besides, imagine the damage that would be done to the peace process in Ireland if the DUP were allowed to form a government in the UK!

UK elections today

Big day across the pond as Britain votes in a new Tory government, with David Cameron as Prime Minister. There's no question at this point that the Conservatives will finish with substantially more seats than Labour. It's less clear whether they'll be forced to run a minority government or will be able to pair up with the Liberal Democrats* or, if they get close enough to a majority, with the DUP of Northern Ireland (the main -- and most hardline -- unionist party).

*From what I can tell, the Lib Dems are "liberal" in a more classical sense than we think of, a center left party that's strong on civil liberties, pro-multilateralism and pro-peace, but its current leadership is squishy on the welfare state, preferring more free-market-y solutions than Labour. Still, their manifesto sounds pretty rockin' to me. Amazing how much ideological space there is between "centre left" and "center left."

the Conedog speaks

F**k Jay.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

values

Been watching a couple of political ads in the British elections, including a pretty good one from Eddie Izzard. What I find interesting about them is that one party regularly references having "values." We Americans would generally assume it would be the Conservatives, but we would be wrong. It's Labour, the only major party in England that self-identifies as socialist.

elsewhere in the South

Buried in the swamp of news coverage about the Gulf oil spill is the situation in Nashville, where they received 1/4 of their average annual rainfall over the weekend. 28 people have died so far.

Teabonics

I weep for my country.

insurance rescissions ending next month

Politico:

The health insurance industry has decided to end its practice of cancelling claims once a patient gets sick next month, well before the new health care law would have required it, the industry’s chief spokesman said Wednesday.

"While many health plans already abide by the standards outlined in the new law, our community is committed to implementing the new standards in May 2010 to ensure that individuals and families will have greater peace of mind when purchasing coverage on their own," AHIP president and chief executive Karen Ignagni said in a letter to top House Democrats.
...
Congressional Democrats and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had pressured companies to end the practice early. The overhaul plan will ban the practice in September, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation, and subject it to a third party review.

White House health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle said the administration will be watching to ensure the industry does indeed institute the ban.

There was a lot of BS in the healthcare bill, and too many compromises were made with people who negotiated in bad faith, but at the end of the day the single worst practice in the American healthcare system is coming to an end. This is going to save lives.

what a difference a year makes

The top 2 stories at TPM right now are that McCain's ratings are at their lowest ever, and that Florida Governor Charlie Crist is planning to leave the GOP and run for Senate as an independent.

If Republicans had any sense, they'd be drafting Crist to run for president. As it stands, he's another casualty of the teabaggers' and Club for Growth's War on Moderates. McCain could be another.

Another casualty? The Hispanic vote, and in time, the state of Arizona if Kos is right. The governor's polling among Hispanics in AZ has dropped twenty six points since the infamous anti-immigration bill was signed.

protecting doctors who lie

Because apparently people still need one more reason not to live in Oklahoma.

worst worship ever

I guess this really is what it's all about.

"a dramatically effective administration"

Andrew Sullivan counts all the achievements of the Obama Administration since inauguration one and a half years ago:

An end to illegal torture of terror suspects. A beginning to a saner method of detaining, trying and convicting terror suspects.

Adept handling of the worst financial crisis and recession since the 1930s, leading to a profitable bank bailout (excluding Freddie and Fannie) and a return to growth. Check.

Salvaging of the automobile industry, which is now showing signs of life.

Passage of an ambitious stimulus package that has helped repair many crumbling parts of the US infrastructure and poured money into green industry.

The biggest social policy reform since LBJ - guaranteeing access to health insurance for all Americans.

Financial re-regulation of an out-of-control Wall Street, and the beginnings of real scrutiny (see Goldman) of the self-serving corruption at the heart of the financial industry.

Repaired relations with Russia, leading to a new START treaty, and better relations with China, leading to a revaluation of the yuan.

Joint Chiefs' endorsement of ending Don't Ask Don't Tell.

A tough re-balancing of the US position in the Middle East, away from the Likudnik-oriented jerking knees of the last eight years, and an assertion that US foreign policy should be conducted to advance the interests of the United States, not the interests of a belligerent faction in a foreign country.

The first point is very much debatable, and most of the others came with significant compromises, but this is still a pretty remarkable list of accomplishments.

bartering for healthcare

It is helpful to remember that people elect total f**king morons to high office all the time. All chicken jokes aside, the percentage of Americans who are farmers isn't exactly the highest it's ever been. What will, say, the regional manager of a mid-size paper company be using to barter for chemotherapy? What does a radiology technician barter with in this exciting new healthcare economy? To use an example befitting Lowden's home state, what does a waitress or a hotel clerk barter with? How many cardiologists would accept payment for a $100k procedure in pretty much anything other than dollars?

Nevermind her breezy suggestion that everyone just take that twenty thousand dollars you have just lying around and shove it in a health savings account.

We really are ruled by idiots.

Boyz-N-the-Hood

Finally saw the video. An oldie but a goodie.

why it has to be marriage, and nothing short of it

Sweet Jesus.

why 47% pay no federal income tax

In short, because of the Child Tax Credit, which is a Republican innovation. Kudos to them, I guess, because I'm all for it.

I'd also like to take this moment to post a reminder about marginal tax rates, since I'm starting to see more of this idiocy make its way into newspaper columns. About a year ago I wrote a post on the subject in light of rich idiots who were cleverly thinking up ways to make exactly $249,999 so as to dodge President Obama's tax hike on people making $250k/year.

This is a basic misunderstanding of how the income tax works. If you make $300,000, for instance, Obama's tax hike would only affect the last $50k of income that pushed you over the cap, not the entire $300k. Thus, someone who makes $250,001 will make more money than someone making $249,999. That's how progressive taxes work.

Hans Kung finds his moment

The long knives are coming out for Joseph Ratzinger, such as this public letter from liberal theologian Hans Kung published in the Irish Times. It's a good read.

A major theme in the life story of Joseph Ratzinger, one not well understood by the press (the American press in particular doesn't really have anyone who understands the crucial subtexts of Vatican actions, statements and positions) has been his personal crusade against liberalism in the Church since his tenure in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition).

Ratzinger and Hans Kung were the two youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council, and both were liberal. Ratzinger had a conversion experience that correlates very closely with his ascent up the hierarchy, after which he pursued and harassed virtually every major liberal Catholic theology in the post-war era. He toppled Hans Kung from his post at Tubingen University (after Kung went out of his way to get Ratzinger a job there!). As Archbishop of Munich, he blocked Johann Baptist Metz from teaching at the University of Munich. As Inquisitor, he suspended Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and investigated Gustavo Gutierrez multiple times. He took issue with Karl Rahner and investigated Edward Schillebeeckx. He had Uta-Ranke Heinemann, the first woman to hold the chair of Catholic Theology at the University of Munich, excommunicated.

Since he became Pope, conservative American bishops have become increasingly emboldened and overtly political, while American nuns are suddenly finding themselves and their lifestyles under widespread investigation, with the possible consequence of losing their homes and being rounded back up into convents.

It should be a cruel irony for the Church that it gets one of its most dogged and intelligent Inquisitors in years installed during the 80's and 90's, but he spends all his time chasing liberal theologians and pays no mind to the scourge of clerical pedophilia. Unfortunately, there's nothing ironic about it, as we're starting to see that pedophilia and its tacit acceptance likely has a long, quiet history in the Catholic hierarchy.

an uncanny coincidence

I present to you two completely unrelated facts:

1. the national deficit is at its highest level in history, over a trillion dollars at this point,

2. Americans' federal tax burden is the lowest it's been in 60 years.

I see no possible relationship here whatsoever. What about you?

Meanwhile, a new poll shows what every other poll ever taken on the subject has already shown: we all agree that spending needs to be cut to fix the deficit problem, but nobody actually wants to see any significant part of the budget get lower funding. Gosh, if only there were a way around this problem, some way to close the deficit without cutting hugely popular programs. Hmm, boy that's a toughy.

Andrea Gibson: "I do"

As someone who has the occasional sleepless night related to this subject, this movie reminds me that it could be worse. When that day comes, at least we'll both get to participate.

Bobo marginalized, but still part of his party

I've had one or two friends lately claim that David Brooks is close to jumping ship on the GOP and joining the Democratic party. This is why that will never happen. At the end of the day, American politics are still about haves and have-nots (in both the economic and political senses). Either you believe:

1. that the world and the free market are fundamentally just, that people are where they are because they chose to be there, and that, as Dr. Phil once said, "there are no victims, only volunteers," or


2. that life isn't fair, that some people have an inside track to success and guard their privilege jealously, and that someone has to look after the weak because it sure as hell won't be profit-driven companies and bosses.

Brooks may believe in evolution and climate change, and he may have gay friends, but at the end of the day, he's just an old Tory who thinks people are rich because they're better people.

barbecuing without bigotry

(image from LOLCats, obviously)

Yesterday my better, meatless half and I went to a BBQ restaurant (I know, but I can't make it every time I want it). When we go, she has to get a potato and salad because there aren't any vegetarian entrees, and then she has to request that they leave the bacon off her salad because there also aren't any vegetarian salads. Admittedly, this is hardly just a BBQ restaurant issue, and she claims she loves the potato and cornbread muffins there, but one of the waitresses was also wearing a shirt that said "vegetarians are free... to change their ways."

I noticed this attitude on the various internet BBQ and grilling/smoking sites as well when I went looking for vegetarian modifications to ABTs, this defensiveness masquerading as apathy towards vegetarians, this total unwillingness to make even the tiniest concession to non-meat-eating guests. It's like the point of BBQing is to make some sort of puerile statement about your machismo, a middle finger to all those who would look down on your cheese-filled bacon-wrapped sausage fatty topped with mayonnaise, a bottle of Wild Turkey, and a George Thorogood CD, like vegetarians and environmentalists and your doctor.

Fuck all 'em! I do wut I want!

When did BBQ become an expression of conservative white male angst and fear? Why can't it be about making good food that everybody can enjoy?

Put another way, is it fair or polite to ask people to check their diets at the door when they come to your cookout? Do you really want the event to have this undercurrent of hostility that will make some of your guests feel unwelcome?

I approach grilling/smoking from the perspective of someone who loves all kinds of food. I've had not just mind-blowing steak, but wonderful tofu dishes. I love fajitas, pizza, and cheeseburgers as well as sushi and Szechuan vegetables and bhindi masala.

And yes, there have been cookouts where I nailed the meat dish, but the best thing that came off the grill was still the vegetable entree. Portabellas drizzled with balsamic vinagrette and studded with garlic cloves, people. They're not just for breakfast anymore!

Don't be a dick: when you make your menu, whether it's for a restaurant or a Saturday cookout, be considerate and remember that other people's diets aren't about you. People aren't refusing to eat steak or sausage because they secretly hate you and your vile capitalist ways. Yes, some people do so out of an environmentalist, ethical or anti-meat industry stance (which is fine, again, because it's not about you), but others do so because it's healthy and can help with weight issues. Some attendees may be eating kosher, halal, Hindu, or Catholic/Lutheran/Episcopalian during Lent (do you know the religious affiliations of all your guests? I often don't), while still others may have high cholesterol, lactose intolerance, digestive issues, or any number of other things. Don't make your friends choose between your food and their beliefs or health.

What you'll quickly discover is that vegetables do wonderful things when exposed to smoke and an open flame, too. There's a whole world of food out there outside the realm of meat just waiting to be explored. I recommend starting with the peppers.

Krugman's primer on the economics of climate change

A great read.

Stupak retiring

There's a lesson here. It will be misinterpreted by myopic editorials as "the Tea Party is unstoppable!," but I think most people would agree that Stupak came under so much fire because he chose to grandstand and obstruct the president's signature legislation, his own party's electoral hopes, and the dire needs of millions of Americans ... and then back off.

What's funny about his decisions during the healthcare debate is that the bill that passed the Senate never did provide any financial support for abortions. In fact, the pro-Roe crowd was generally angry because it placed extra burdens beyond the Hyde amendment on women seeking abortions. There was a joke circling the internet after Stupak's meeting with the president and his reversal that Stupak couldn't bring himself to believe that the bill didn't fund abortions because it was female senators, women's groups, and nuns telling him so. Finally they all went to the president and told him Stupak won't believe it unless it comes from a man.

In a way, I suspect an element of truth here. My guess is that this had nothing to do with abortion policy. Stupak put his finger to the wind and guessed that this was going to be a major anti-Democratic wave election year, and he needed to get out in front of it. Grandstanding against HCR on behalf of the anti-Roe crowd gets him in the good graces of tea partiers, McCain voters, the US Chamber of Commerce (who will be doing the lion's share of PAC spending this year) and the Christian Right all at once.

Only things didn't work out like he'd hoped. He was probably told by the Speaker that he wouldn't be allowed to join the handful of red state Dems allowed to vote the other way to protect their own asses, so he recruited a bunch of other "pro-life" Democrats to his cause, hoping he could just torpedo the bill and Obama's loss would be his gain. He took a lot of the blame when HCR looked dead, and Democratic groups (and, ahem, voters) were furious.

And then he learned a hard lesson about leading an army of cowards. When it looked like the president was going to lose, they flocked to Stupak. When the conventional wisdom shifted, however, and people started talking about how, during the 1994 elections, centrist Democrats were slaughtered en masse by the GOP whether or not they supported HCR, and that passage of HCR was absolutely essential to the Democrats keeping Congress, knees all around him started shaking.

Then votes in Congress started flipping the Speaker's way, and the Stupakers became the last group left holding up HCR. They caught the angry eye of the Speaker, the White House, and the Democratic electorate at large. Rahm came knocking on their door with the message that the White House "is going to remember who stood in the way of this legislation." Democratic groups and unions start evaluating their support. Support for Stupak et al. among their own Democratic constituents started sinking.

I imagine at some point Stupak and his buddies gathered with their campaign advisors, looked at polls they had commissioned hoping that their gains among tea partiers, Christian conservatives, and Republicans were offsetting Democratic losses, and learned the ugly truth about triangulating your own party in the post-Clinton age: after so many bridges burned and so many allies spurned, Republicans said they supported Stupak et al. in larger numbers ... but still plan to vote for their Republican opponents in November.

Everyone wanted off this sinking ship, they were finished with Stupak's folly (including Stupak himself), but they needed some way to save face, and that's how the president's Executive Order came to be. It won't save them, as Stupak eventually figured out. Stupak made several serious miscalculations:

1. he badly misjudged how important his own party considered HCR


2. he relied on a cadre of cowardly, centrist congressmen to defend against the White House, congressional leadership, every Democratic/liberal interest group in America, and the vast majority of Democratic voters


3. he made a play for Republican and independent votes at the expense of Democratic ones (i.e., gave his own supporters a HUGE reason to stay home), and then tried to renege, effectively antagonizing all three groups

That last one is what gets the "centrists" every time. Research shows that most "independent" voters have amorphous, frequently changing political views, but nobody likes a waffler.

all we want: lower taxes and more services

What's so hard about that?

political compass, 2010 edition

Grims brings back the political compass test taken here a couple of times. Everyone remember this test? 2 axes, an economic X axis ranging from communist (in the purely Marxist sense) to free marketeer, and a political Y axis ranging from authoritarian to anarchist.

Here is my history:
2005: -6.50, -4.92
2007: -6.0, -5.23
this year: -6.62, -5.03

Still deeply unserious, apparently.

Facebookers, you make me proud

Not sure if you've heard about this Constance McMillen story that's making the rounds, but her douchey classmates made a Facebook group called "Constance quit yer cryin." Sounds terrible, right? Well, here's something heartening: the reaction from the Facebook community has been, er, less than positive. Check out the comments.

Great point, Reverend

Criticism of the pope's handling of child molestation cases is just like anti-semitism!

One almost wonders if these people are actually Masonic saboteurs in deep cover. It's easier to believe than that someone really thought this homily was a good way to defend the Vatican. How can a group be so tin-eared, so utterly unable to grasp the gravity of these charges against them?

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.