True Blue

Because Dems Want a President Cheney?

2006-03-27T09:57:00.000-05:00

So, Republicans are claiming that if Dems take over the House, Dems will impeach the President?

Becuase, what, House Democrats would prefer a President Dick "Go F* Yourself" Cheney? The guy who's gotten everything wrong in Iraq? Five Deferment" Cheney who hides behind the troops when people say he's a doing a lousy job? Cheney who said everybody was gonna die if we didn't invade Iraq, or if we elected John Kerry? Who outs covert CIA agents for political gain, and who has failed on homeland security, incompetent and cowering before lobbyists and special interests.

Yeah, Dick Cheney sounds like just the kind of guy Democrats want in charge. Outta the frying pan...

Not my Fault, Part 212...

2006-03-23T10:35:00.000-05:00

"Listen, every war plan looks good on paper until you meet the enemy."
-- President George W. Bush (AP)

Really? George Bush, Yale history major, tells us that every war plan looks good on paper. Has he not heard of:

Swedish King Charles XII’s invasion of Russia (hmm, take a seat at the table of Europe’s power brokers, or blow it all in a half baked invasion of Poland & Russia because you’re mad at their royal families. Hard call.)
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia (Supply lines? Who needs supply lines? It’s not like the Russians are famous for a “burn and retreat” defensive strategy…)
Hitler’s invasion of Russia (Who needs winter clothing on a march to Moscow? Does Russia get cold or something?)
The Maginot Line (I mean, the Germans couldn’t possibly DRIVE AROUND IT, right?)
Verdun, Gallipoli…pretty much all of WWI
The Charge of the Light Brigade (hint: when, as your cavalry charges directly into the enemy’s artillery, the enemy starts mowing you down while saying things like, “are those guys drunk? What the hell are they thinking,” you should entertain the notion that this plan probably didn't look so good on paper, either.)
Custer’s Last Stand (Really, who cares how many Indians there are? Just attack!)
Ancient Rome’s invasion of Germany under Augustus (Sure, when the German guy starts talking about this great shortcut he knows through a dark, muddy forest that no Roman has seen before and where your military advantage will be totally neutralized, you should definitely follow him. That doesn’t sound like a trap.)
The Crusades (most notably the Children’s Crusade. Unless you think it looks good on paper.)

But none of those sound like our war plan for Iraq, right? It's not like we sent too few guys, in without body and humvee armor, and then just expected that once Saddam had fallen that Iraq would pretty much spontaneously spring into a pluralistic peaceful democracy overnight?

Sure, George. Future military strategists are going to look at Iraq and say, "Yeah, but just look at this plan! It's not like anyone would have anticipated a plan this good would go horribly awry." Because, you know, there's no such thing as a war plan that looks bad on paper and a leader who's too stupid to see it.

Lies My Op-Ed Columnist Told Me...

2006-03-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

Today, Michael Kinsley attempts a takedown of Paul Krugman and Robin Wells' brilliant piece in last week’s New York Review of Books—specifically, a takedown against single-payer.

The results are a rather sad mix of ignorance, lies, and idiocy as he suggests that the choices for healthcare reform are status quo with tweaks vs. rationing under single payer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Beginning with the idiocy, it appears that Kinsley subscribes to a view of health insurance as a bet: individuals bet on the odds that they will get sick and need $X amount of healthcare, and insurers bet the same amount of money that they will not. When people end up being sicker than the insurer expected, the insurer loses and the people win.

This totally bizarre way of looking at health insurance leads Kinsley to worry about a “problem” that no one with any sense cares about—that under single payer, some people will pay into the system and never get sick, while other people will pay into the system and be really sick. That is, single payer sets up an irrational system where if people stay healthy, they “lose” the bet, and if they get sick, they “win” the bet.

Getting cancer and needing chemotherapy is winning a bet? Perhaps I’m in the minority, but if I’d paid a tolerable amount of my salary into a health care system, never had to worry about paying medical bills for myself or my family, and then got hit and killed by a bus when I was 90, I really doubt my dying thought would be “darn it, I really got screwed because I paid into health care my whole life but never needed a triple heart bypass.”

This kind of thinking is why Kinsley agrees with Krugman that Bush’s health care savings accounts are bad but Kinsley only understands half of the argument. Kingsley correctly agrees that HSAs mistakenly focus on the pennywise spending and the issue in the healthcare system is that we’re pound foolish. But he fails to point out that they’re also a bad idea for several othe reasons, paramount among them the fact that they make health insurance really cheap for healthy people, and really expensive for people who actually need healthcare. Sadly, as we will see later, he considers this aspect a feature, not a bug.

It’s the next paragraph where he starts spinning. I don't know what's more insulting: that he's spinning, or that he's doing it so badly. Kinsley argues that Krugman and Wells are being misleading when they lay out the “complexity and administrative costs of the current fragmented [healthcare] system.” He suggests that the computer industry would look equally lousy if presented this way.

But it’s Kinsley who’s being misleading when he says “even the most competitive industry can seem wasteful and inefficient when described on paper.” He never mentions that, unlike the very competitive American computer industry, the American health care system is not at all competitive globally. America spends way more to take care of fewer people, and there's no evidence we get any more for our money. If Kinsley claimed the American auto industry looked inefficient on paper but might still be really competitive, he’d be laughed at. He deserves to be laughed at here.

Kinsley further argues that although Krugman and Wells point out that healthcare spending is skewed (the 80/20 rule), other forms of insurance are like that, and that’s not what makes health insurance unique. Kinsley claims they don’t explain why health insurance should be different from any other form of insurance—why we should allow people to use it as a “subsidy” rather than as a stop-loss based on their health risk. And to give the devil his due, at a certain level he’s right. Krugman and Wells don’t explain why health insurance isn’t like car insurance. Because it’s perfectly obvious why they’re different.

Health care isn’t like car repair, so it’s not surprising that a system that works well for cars has been working very poorly for people. The economic approach that Kinsley wants us to take—winning or losing the insurance bet—is completely wrong. For most people, health insurance simply isn’t about insuring against losses. Health insurance doesn’t guarantee you will have $30,000 to fix your old car or buy a shiny new car if you accidentally smash up your old one.

That’s because health insurance is about guaranteeing access to care. Its primary value is that it’s a subsidy, not a stop-loss or a replacement for a lost investment like a house or car. Most of us aren’t billionaires and know full well that if our kid got cancer, we couldn’t afford to pay the medical bills. The reason we buy health insurance is to make sure that if our kid gets cancer, she can get chemo. Period, full stop.

Finally and perhaps most disgustingly, Kinsley brings up the bogeyman of rationing and says that Krugman and Wells “duck the issue.” But they don’t. In fact, they say what Kinsley won’t admit, that our current rationing system—rationing by health status and ability to pay—is not only immoral, but also leads to colossal inefficiencies. They say that if we had the system every other country has, we might be able to avoid rationing altogether, although they are honest enough to admit that we may still need to ration. They do put a silver lining on it by saying that we could at least ration more rationally, but they have the honesty that Kinsley lacks and admit we may not be able to get rid of rationing.

It’s Kinsley who ducks the issue of rationing by pretending it doesn’t exist today, and by implicitly advocating for a solution that would lead to more rationing by health care status. Kinsley almost casually waves away the problem of charging people higher premiums if they're more likely to get sick by saying, “[a]dverse selection is only a problem to the extent that insurance is not really insurance but rather a subsidy.”

This, of course, ignores the fact that health insurance is only necessary to the extent that it’s a subsidy. He pretends that people are choose not to buy insurance because they do not value it enough, when the real reason that most people don’t buy insurance is that the exact opposite—because they’re sick, it’s too valuable and so they can’t afford it.

And so it’s in his closing paragraphs that Kinsley becomes the most odious. He says, “If you're not as hopeful as Krugman and Wells about being able to avoid rationing, you face this question: Should people be allowed to opt out of rationing if they can afford it?...Better-off or better-insured people could be told, individually or as a group: Give up your health care subsidy and you may opt out of any rationing-type restrictions that the system imposes.”

Guess what? That’s the system we have now. No one has to buy insurance. No one has to decide to accept the subsidy. And our system is still full of rationing. Most people without health insurance aren't rich folks choosing to forego a subsidy, they're the working poor—too “rich” for Medicaid, but unable to afford insurance. There are millions of sick people who can't afford insurance, and who don’t get medical care as a result. Sure, there's a handful of irresponsible twenty-somethings in there, too. So what?

Michael Kinsley is a deceitful, desperate defender of the status quo. His “free market rulz!” ideology has blinded him to the fact that American healthcare is failing on all fronts—fairness, quality, and cost. He thinks our healthcare system mostly works great, and the way to fix what ails it is to make insurance cheaper for people when they don’t need it, and more expensive for them when they do.

Krugman and Wells say we’ve got to admit that an “every man for himself” approach has failed in healthcare, and it’s bankrupting us financially and morally. They suggest that the solution lies in abandoning ideology and instead learning from the proven success of other healthcare systems. And the first thing we need to realize is that all successful healthcare systems guarantee treatment to sick people when they need it.

What Should the Dems do about Iraq?

2006-03-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

Right now, big voices in the netroots are saying that Iraq is hopelessly screwed up, and that all that can be done is to get a new president in 2009. Democrats have to stop trying to come up with a "save Iraq" plan, because this gang will screw it up; and impeachment isn't an option because, no one wants to see President Cheney (or President Hastert or whatever).

Without disagreeing with the above, I'd like to point out that there is a third option. Today, we have a President who is an idiot, surrounded by toadies who make insanely bad decisions and are utterly incompetent. Democrats need to force the President to throw out his senior leadership and replace it with sane people. We need to make him clean house and fill it with people like Brent Scowcroft--people who, while we don't agree with them on everything, aren't going to lie to gin up support for a half-baked war in a critically strategic region and then lose it.

This is what used to be done in monarchies when the king went nuts. Instead of deposing him and running the risk of totally destabilizing society, nobles surrounded him with powerful and competent leaders who would act in his name, while talking him out of or otherwise undermining his completely insane ideas.

This is the best way for the Democrats to salvage what can be salvaged over the next three years, and also to position themselves to win the next election. Dems need to let it be publicly known that they are pushing for new leadership--and actually throw out the names of a new Secretary of Defense, or a new National Security Advisor who they are hearing "buzz" about and of whom they approve. Throw out the most gravitas-laden-name that gets the most bipartisan respect (like Scowcroft), even if there's no way this is going to happen. Then, when a neocon nut is replaced, the Democrats are in a position to say, "it's an improvement, we made this improvement happen, if you want more like this, start voting for Democrats, because unified Republican leadership brought you the fiascos of Iraq, Dubai, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, and no Osama."

This is Why you Never Play the Race Card...

2006-02-24T14:47:00.000-05:00

When I was a little pup, I once heard a young operative suggest we solve a political problem by making race a factor where it wasn’t. I expected him to be shot down, but I was impressed—what a win-at-all costs, tough, cynical bastard. We were lucky to have him on our side.

And then a big dog with a long history in City politics looked down at him and said, "Never play the race card, sweetheart. Because it’ll come back and bite you in the ass."

Unlike any modern President, George Bush unhesitatingly throws down the cards that every sane politician avoids. Not just the race card, but the religion card, or the treason card, the terror card. Hell, he runs on them! But with this ports deal, I think for the first time, he and Karl Rove are seeing why sane politicians don't play these cards.

People think the danger in playing these cards is that they'll incite the masses uncontrollably. Which is true, eventually, but it's not why politicians don't play them. They think it's because people will see through the manipulation, and the blowback will be fierce. And sometimes that happens. But with the right approach, you can play this card pretty successfully. Perversely, the higher you get, the easier it is to play the card without blowback—people don’t want to believe that someone as powerful as, say, the President, could be this reckless, so they demand a very high level of proof before they will turn on him. So, playing the card isn’t the problem. The problem is that the card stays on the table.

And if you’re still in power, you will eventually have a situation where you need to do something that the card won’t let you do. If you’re governing at all responsibly, this point will come sooner rather than later. In this case, it’s come much later, when George Bush needs to, for whatever reason, turn over control of East Coast ports to UAE.

George is now potentially in the same position than his opponents were in before. He put the race and terror cards on the table when he justified the invasion of Iraq with laughably flimsy evidence of its collusion with terrorists. Cheney reinforced the racism with his talk about how Iraq was “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years.” Furthermore, the Administration’s arguments over the legal legitimacy of Guantanamo have rested on a very aggressive playing of the terror card, resting almost entirely on the assertion that anyone with possible connections to terror doesn’t have the same rights that other people do, and that it is dangerous to give them any procedural rights whatsoever.

The race and terror card is sitting on the table for Dems to pick up. Once they do, the substantive merit of the port deal is out the window. So, all George can do is try and stop his opponents from picking up that card. He'll try to frighten them—“you can’t play this card, because I’ll play the race card, too, and you’ll lose your base.” He'll falsely appeal to their sense of the greater good—“we really need this port deal for America.” He'll try to terrify them—“if you play this card, you will forever legitimize the double standards you claim to so thoroughly oppose, or you'll set off a race war!”

To date, arguments like those have stopped the Democrats from picking up any of the cards on the table. But with the port deal, all those arguments fell apart. America doesn't need the port deal, if Abu Ghraib didn’t set off a race war this certainly won’t, and after Katrina, not one member of the Democratic base is going to believe that George Bush, who don’t like black people, is going to stand up for racial justice.

But hopefully, this incident will make Congressional Dems figure out what old city pols have known for a long time. You can’t appease people who play these cards, because they will just keep playing them, for higher and higher stakes. There is only one way to beat these cards, and it’s to play them yourself. Let the other guy know that, politically, it’s mutually assured destruction.

In addition, I hope that Dems will also realize that playing these cards isn’t like losing your virginity—you can get it back. Look at Bobby Kennedy, commie-hunter turned fighter for Civil Rights.

And furthermore, you can only neutralize these cards once you have the credibility from playing them. The same way that only Nixon could go to China, only people who are on the right side of the terror card can neutralize it. You can’t take it off the table until you own it. And right now, the Dems are the party that are on the wrong side of this card. They are the ones who would rather see us all dead than offend some Muslims. Dems have to prove to the public that they’re willing to offend Muslims in order to protect America. Only then will they have any ability to make rational policy without falling victim to Republican demagoguery and race-baiting.

Usually, playing a card like this demands you do something very horrible and unjust, and that innocent people suffer as a result of it. All we have to do is not sell a port to some very rich people. Let’s do it.

How to win on Illegal Domestic Spying...

2006-01-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

I am really tired of Democrats who keep arguing that, "it's the lawbreaking, stupid." You know how that conversation plays in Peoria?

--"President Bush lied to spy on Americans."
--"Yeah, but he did it to protect us. Wouldn't you break the law to save your son's life?"
--"But that's not the point. Um, it's that he didn't go to congress and let them change the law."
--"Okay, he should have gone to Congress. But I'd rather have a president who'd break the law to protect me than one who was so afraid of going to jail he'd let me die rather than break the law..."

See how this DOESN'T work for us?

Here's how to make it work for us.
--"I love that Bush is talking about how it's OK he broke the law because he takes Osama bin Laden seriously. I seem to remember 6 months after September 11, he said he wasn't worried about Osama bin Laden, but he was REALLY concerned about Iraq."
--"Yeah, but Osama bin Laden is a threat."
--"He totally is. Why the hell did Bush say he wasn't concerned about him? Man, Bush is a total screwup. I don't see why we put up with him breaking the law. He needs someone to hold him accountable."

Insanity is doing the Same Thing Again and Expecting a Different Result.

2006-01-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Can someone please explain to me how this "keep Osama bin Laden on the run" strategy will keep us safe today when it didn't keep us safe before 9/11?

June 26, 2001
U.S. Has Bin Laden 'On the Run,' Sen. Shelby Says

Council on Foreign Relations Q&A:

How did bin Laden end up back in Afghanistan?

After he left Saudi Arabia in 1991, bin Laden settled in Sudan, where he established his own businesses and set up training camps for al-Qaeda. U.S. and Saudi pressure forced him to abandon Sudan in 1996; back then, the United States sought to keep bin Laden on the run, not to capture him [emp mine]. Bin Laden fled to Afghanistan, where the Taliban offered him a base in exchange for money to fund their fighters.

Before September 11, how did America pursue bin Laden?

In several ways, including military strikes, diplomacy, legal action, and intelligence work. The United States used diplomatic pressure and the threat of U.N. sanctions to get Sudan to expel bin Laden in 1996. For several years, the CIA paid agents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan to monitor bin Laden’s movements; after the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the United States used cruise missiles to hit his Afghan bases. Also in 1998, a federal grand jury indicted bin Laden and 21 other al-Qaeda members for conspiring to kill Americans abroad; four men were convicted in May of 2001.

And, for chrissake, how long are we going to maintain this delusion? That this guy isn't a threat to us because he's "on the run?"

1/22/02
Bush: "My attitude was, once we get him running, it's just a matter of time before we bring him to justice."

3/17/02
Bush: "I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run."

2/28/2004
A top U.S. anti-terrorism official says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is on the run, amid what officials say is an intensifying hunt for fugitive members of the terror network. The U.S. official says he believes Osama bin Laden will be captured soon.

Ambassador J. Cofer Black, coordinator for the State Department counter-terrorism office, say the United States and its allies will find Osama bin Laden.

"I feel confident that it will be sooner rather than later, although I'm not going to speculate on the exact date," he said.

9/10/2004
"I don't know where he is," Powell said. "I don't know his state of health. I believe he is still alive, but I can't prove that. He clearly is in hiding and he is on the run."

5/30/05:
KING: Have we ever been close to getting bin Laden?
CHENEY: Uh...
KING: You can tell us.
CHENEY: Well, we've had him on the run, I believe.

1/20/06:
"Clearly the al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run. They're under a lot of pressure," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Commitment, Terrrorism, and Audiotapes...

2006-01-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

George Bush, one week after 9/11:

"I want justice. There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive'....I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. It said: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.' All I want and America wants [bin Laden] brought to justice. That's what we want."

George Bush, six months after 9/11:

"I am deeply concerned about Iraq. And so should the American people be concerned about Iraq. And so should people who love freedom be concerned about Iraq..."

-snip-

"I don't know where [bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him....Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

Headlines 1/19/06:
Bin Laden tape warns that new attacks on US being prepared
Bin Laden’s tape sends oil prices rocketing
Dollar climbs despite mixed data and Bin Laden tape
Security Stepped Up After Bin Laden Threat
City Fury as Osama Threatens Attacks

From the Administration that Brought you the Medicare Drug Benefit...

2006-01-19T16:01:00.000-05:00

Bush is pushing his Medical Savings Accounts again.

I've pointed out before that these are very bad for many reasons, not the least of which is that they punish the sick, they destabilize hospitals, and they help out well-off healthy people way more than anyone else.

But what you might not have realized is that George Bush is lying when he says they'll control health costs.

Everyone in the field knows that in healthcare, sick people are expensive and healthy people are cheap. Something like 80% of the money in health care is spent on just 20% of people--it's spent on things like 24-hour ventilator care and kidney transplants and cancer treatments and surgery for kids with spinal bifida and holes in their heart. This phenomenon is familiar to every insurance executive, hospital administrator, and healthcare policy person in the country. It's even got a nickname, "the 80/20 rule."

George Bush claims that the reason we're spending so much on healthcare is because people aren't personally responsible. He promises that Medical Savings accounts will make healthcare cheaper because they'll make people spend their own money instead of the insurance company's money. But that's a lie and he knows it, becuase he knows about the 80/20 rule. He knows that MSAs wan't control healthcare costs by making people spend their own money because most of the time, that money is going to be spent by insurance companies and not by individuals.

Y'all just lost the Wimmins, y'know.

2005-09-06T21:53:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, I had an interesting converstaion with two red staters. At the end of it I was convinced that Katrina would send all the married women who'd voted for Bush running back into the arms of the Democrats.

The man I spoke with was all bluster and outrage, saying that this situation was a tragedy, but people had brought it on themselves by not evacuating.

What was interesting was the woman's response. She had the look of someone who'd realized something very frightening. She was quieter, and after the bluster was done, she looked at her 8 year-old daughter and said that she lived near a nuclear power plant, just outside a big city. She said she'd been thinking about it, and she didn't know how the hell she could get her family out of there if the evacuation air-sirens went off.

This strategy of blaming the poor who didn't evacuate will lose the Republicans the married woman's vote. Especially now, since Oprah has shown them the footage of the people who stayed--the old, the poor, and all the children.

Fundamentally, women aren't like men when it comes to evacuation--we don't think strategy, we think logistics. Beucase that's our job. We're the ones who know that no matter how much time you leave, it still takes another 20 minutes beyond the time you set aside to get 3 kids packed up for the beach. We know that it's impossible to remember to bring every single thing you meant to bring, that even when you thought about it the night before and laid everything out in the living room floor, one of the kids always moves the sunblock or his towel or you forget the sandwiches in the refrigerator. We know exactly how risky it is to stake your kids' life on your remembering to bring every single thing.

Every middle-class mother hears "immediate evacuation" and "5 days in the Superdome" and thinks, "Jesus Christ, I have no idea how much water I would bring for 5 days. Is it 5 gallons? Ohmigod, where are our passports? Do I have to bring the kids' birth certificates? What about the deed to the house? Would I have time to get my mother's jewelery out of the safe deposit, or is that selfishness that's going to kill my children?"

Tell her that she's got to evacuate without a car, and she'll start shaking her head. Tell her she's gotta do it in 18 hours, Grayhound and Amtrak are shut down, it's 250 miles to get out of the hurricane's path, and she's got $200 bucks in her pocket, and every soccer mom will know with certainty what every soccer dad doesn't get--that it's impossible. Flat out impossible.

Maybe the Bush administration will succeed in keeping these facts from mothers. But I think they hear "no car" and "one day to evacuate" and they'll know the score. And they will have very little time for any politican who claims that no one could have expected people would stay. Becuase she'll know he's lying.

UPDATE: Welcome, all of youse visiting from Crooked Timber. Please check out the rest of the site (here, here, here and here are some of my favorite posts).

And do forgive the failure to update since 9/05. I was in a delayed-onset coma, brought on by eating too much paste in childhood. But I've awakened, cleared the coma-crud out of my eyes, and will soon be setting the blogosphere on fire with posts! Do enjoy.

Katrina

2005-09-06T21:24:00.000-04:00

I've always said that if I didn't live in NY, I'd live in New Orleans. These past 5 years have not been kind to either city, but I think it's pretty clear that N'awlins just won the screwed-over sweepstakes.

And, of course, the politics here are appalling. Everyone from Bush "no one expected the levees to break" to "on Tuesday, all the headlines said we'd dodged a bullet" Chertoff is lying and passing the buck. I knew that civilization could be so fragile, but I never thought in America that we would allow it to fall away so quickly and so utterly.

At the end of the day, no one was prepared for this catastrophe. Everyone should take a share of blame commesurate with their ability to affect the outcome. The poor and car-less of New Orleans who were told to evacuate at 11AM on Sunday after the buses and trains had stopped running, have little reason to apologize for failing to load up their life's possessions on their backs and literally running through the path of an oncoming hurricane in a mad dash for the Texas border.

The mayor of New Orleans can be faulted for failing to do see Katrina's path more clearly and for failing to forcibly evacuate a city of 500,000 with his small band of 1,500 police.

The Governor can be cursed for failing to keep the peace with her half-staffed National Guard, and for her ludicrous crying jags and calls for prayer.

But the full measure of outrage should be reserved for those who had the most power to affect this storm's ultimate outcome--the incompetent federal government, and the Republicans who control all its branches.

From a stripped and weakened FEMA; to incompetent political appointees more focused on PR and spin than on rescue work; to budget cuts that stopped levee work for the first time in 37 years; to a president on vacation who ate cake and played guitar as New Orleans flooded; to a secretary of state who went shoe shopping; to a Secretary of Defense who went to a baseball game...there is much to answer for here.

For those of you believing in God, pray for the people of New Orleans, but pray also for the souls of those who failed them. Because this callous failure cannot go unpunished.

UPDATE: Welcome to all of youse visiting from Crooked Timber. Please look around (4 of my faves are here, here, here, and here).

And um, the site hasn't been updated since 9/05 because I was...in a coma. Yep, a delayed-onset coma brought on by eating too much paste in gradeschool. But fear not, I've cleared the coma-crud out of my eyes and will be updating regularly!

The Mysteries of Sleep

2005-06-30T14:14:00.000-04:00

So, this piece on the insomnia of baby dolphins leads me to point out something I've thought about a lot. Sleep is weird.

We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, we go crazy if we can't sleep, but we haven't got a clue why we need to sleep at all! When you look at the biological basics, we understand the functional purpose of a lot of the biggies--we know why we get hungry and eat, why we need to breathe, why we have sex...but sleep? Nobody knows .

I find this a very exciting thing. The fact that we don't understand sleep at all suggests that there is a huge breakthrough in scientific knowledge or theory to be made--something as earthshattering as quantum mechanics, or the discovery of the microscopic world. We have plenty of data points on sleep, but we simply have no understanding of the functional purpose of the phenomenon. I suspect that once we are able to understand sleep, we will also be able to understand a lot of other things--many forms of mental illness, the biology underlying emotional states and affecting social interaction, etc.

Anyway, it's nice every once in a while to look out the window and marvel at all the undiscovered country. Rock on, baby dolphins!

The CIA also believes in the Javits theory...

2005-06-22T19:42:00.000-04:00

About a month ago, I made the argument that Iraq's porous borders mean that Iraq isn't flypaper, where all the world's terrorists go in, get stuck and die--it's a convention center, where they go in, get training, and then leave to wreak havoc elsewhere.

It appears the CIA agrees that this observation is correct.

Food Police Found!

2005-06-13T22:26:00.000-04:00

This has got to be the funniest thing I've read in months. It includes the priceless quote, "Be very cautious and skeptical of door-to-door sales of meat or seafood."

Update: The AG got his conviction! Go food police, go!

And, um, who exactly ARE the food police?

2005-06-12T19:40:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it--I had to stop reading today's NY Times, because the cognitive dissonance in so many articles damn near made my head explode. Josh Marshall links to a gadflyer analysis of the flagship disgrace, an article speculating on the impact that increasing longevity may have on Social Security's solvency, an article that fails to mention even once that this is not a recent observation and Social Security has already (and always has) factored in increased longevity in its solvency projections.

But the article that made me throw down my Times in disgust was Melanie Warner's love letter to lobbyist Rick Berman. Entitled "Striking Back at the Food Police," the article details the struggle of Berman, a lone David struggling against the mighty Goliath of the Organized and Impressively Funded food nazi bridages.

Here are some interesting things I learned from this article. If one negotiated on behalf of Bethlehem Steel and campaigned against a minimum wage increase, one can be described as having "buil[t] a career working on labor issues." If a company markets unhealthy food the same way that Phillip Morris marketed tobacco, lying to the consumer about its health effects and attempting to create confusion about the evidence, the real bad guys are: "trial lawyers [who] are circling and are starting to turn food into the new tobacco." If one says something on a scientific issue that is either factually inaccurate or tangential and blatantly tendentious, one's argument will be met with the gentle retort that "these are useful points" and "many scientists question whether [this particular point] really matters," and the debate will be framed thusly: "Amid the claims and counterclaims, Mr. Berman and his opponents duke it out, taking sides on major questions about obesity..."

The gentleness of her response to Berman is striking in light of the fact that some people in the scientific community are arguing that obesity will lead to a decrease in life expectancy in the coming years.

This is like reading articles on climate change, in which the arguments of Exxon-Mobil's lobbyist are credulously parroted and the scientific community is all still up in the air about whether humans are having an impact on the climate.

Seriously, I am thinking of starting up a Flat Earth lobbying shop/think tank, becuase I think the coverage would be hilarious: "theorajones points out that Magellan's circumnavigation means little, as much of 17th century science has been discredited. 'My opponents want to go back to the era of wooden ships and candles, but we believe in progress.' Many scientists agree that the 17th Century had wooden ships and candles..."

What was the point of this article? And could someone please tell me who the hell these food police are? All I see is an industry hack and a bunch of non-profit do-gooders, scientists, and impartial government employees. You'd think a reporter would ask "hey, those food police you keep railing against, they with the 25th or what?"

Beat Your Wife to Death? $50 and Time Served!

2005-06-10T19:18:00.000-04:00

Via Bobo's world, a guy in Oklahoma who apparently beat his wife to death has been charged with "a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of $3,000 or both."

In Texas we get a story about a guy who beat the crap out of his pregnant girlfriend until she miscarried, and the focus of the article (as Amanda points out) is abortion, specifically the politics and legality of abortion. It even asks why Erica would choose to have her boyfriend beat the crap out of her instead of getting a legal abortion, and suggests the answer is that she was in denial about her pregnancy and that this is common in teen girls. Becuase apparently, the salient issue isn't the fact that we have a teenager in a violent, abusive relationship that did her such physical harm that she miscarried--no, the real issue here is abortion rights and the wacky things that crazy teenage pregnant girls do!

See, where the Oklahoma woman went wrong was in getting old and not being pregnant when she let her husband beat her to death. Becuase, you know, if he'd hurt the fetus inside her, then we'd have a crime! But without a fetus in her...she's just a worthless empty cunt, I guess.

FBI Catches Major Suspects! (don't read the fine print)

2005-06-10T07:41:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's Headline:
Father and Son Held in California are Tied to Al Quaeda Camp

Today's Headline:
Affidavit Changed in Terrorism Accusation

Ah. Our strategy in the War on Terror apcontinues to be a roundup of little fish and non-fish, with lots of triumphant press releases (and torture!) but not much in the way of actual productive investigation.

I feel safe.

So, who trained 'em to disassemble? My god, the FBI!

2005-06-01T10:10:00.000-04:00

"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd...We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble [sic] -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is." --George Bush (emphasis mine)

Plausible, yes? The enemies of America train their followers to lie and therefore we should not believe it when prisoners claim they were tortured. Ah, but then there's this:

The first public claims of U.S. torture at Guantanamo Bay were made by three Britons from Tipton, England. Shafiq Rasul, 27, and Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, both 22, were released without charge in March under pressure from the British government. In August, they and their lawyers presented a 115-page report on their treatment, likening it to the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The Britons said they were beaten, shackled in painful positions, left in extreme temperatures and forcibly injected with unknown drugs while held for more than two years. At that time, the U.S. military denied the Tipton men's allegations.

Which sort of makes me confused. I mean, if these guys were important enough to our enemies to get counter-interrogation training, then why the hell did we release them?

And perhaps more importantly, there were FBI reports of abuses that FBI agents personally witnessed at Guantanamo, as well as clear indications that there was more going on that they didn't see firsthand. Should I believe that our FBI has been infiltrated by the enemies of America who are training our agents to disassemble? And if this is true, shouldn't the president be launching an investigation? Maybe he can find someone who will give him a list of known disassemblers...

Noted Healthcare Policy Expert...Robin Cook?

2005-05-23T19:45:00.000-04:00

So Robin Cook, a novelist best known for medical thrillers in the beach-reading genre, wrote an op-ed in the Sunday NY Times on the implications of genetic testing. Coincidentally, his new book, a medical thriller about genetic testing, will be released soon.

And suddenly, non-healthcare people are asking me if I got a chance to read this "great" op-ed, and saying that it's the most persuasive argument they've heard in favor of universal health care. Others are quoting this piece and talking about the "inevitability" of universal health care. It's completely strange; "adverse selection is bad and universal pooling is the only way around it" is healthcare economics 101. Cook's piece displays no new insights and people in the field have written about the impact of genetic testing on the insurance industry a thousand times over the past 10 or 15 years.

Somehow, Robin Cook set out to promote his book but succeeded in making the pernicious effects of adverse selection obivious to the non-expert, and has even made universal healthcare more acceptable to the general public. Even more bizarrely, people seem to find it acceptable because he's argued that it's a solution to discrimination on the basis of genetic profiling--a problem that does not yet and may never exist!

So, universal healthcare to cure our current insurance crisis is bad. But to cure a problem that may or may not exist in 20 or 30 years? Good.

Next week, I'll be talking about how investing in electronic medical records will be especially useful during an alien invasion...

The Javits Theory of Terrorist Threats

2005-05-17T10:06:00.000-04:00

I was reading Brad Plumer and thinking that if foreign fighters can get in and get out of Iraq, we have a problem. Jihadi summer camp turns pissed off extremists into pissed off extremists who know how to build bombs, manage far-flung communications networks, and organize and stage attacks against civilians and the American military.

Iraq. It's not flypaper. It's a goddam convention center. I can't see how this is a good thing, and it's yet another dangerous consequence of this administration's attachment to fairy tales of an easy victory blinding them to the critical need for postwar planning.

Well, at least we can take comfort in the fact that nobody thought we had any other choice. I mean, the Bush Administration really thought those WMDs were dangerous--more dangerous than any other country like Iran, North Koreal, Libya...oh, WAIT.

AEI disses the market!

2005-05-11T11:47:00.000-04:00

AEI slams the FDA for going direct to the consumer with drug warnings (via Kaiser Daily Health Report).

Sorry, aren't AEI the guys who think it's cool for drug companies to go direct to the consumer with drug advertising? Don't they want more "personal responsibility" in the healthcare system? By this logic, telling consumers about dangerous medications is bad because...?

Sadly, it would appear that AEI is not really committed to consumer empowerment as deeply as they're committed to preserving a healthcare system that systematically discriminates against the sick and the poor.

Weep together, people. It appears another great bastion of conservative intellectualism has been exposed as nothing more than a collection of schills, ideological pimps whoring out ideas for the powers that be.

Priorities: Kids or Frozen Embryos?

2005-05-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

In Missouri, about 100,000 parents, disabled, and elderly are being kicked off Medicaid. In Tennessee, they're looking to eliminate 300,000 people from the program and to reduce benefits for 400,000 more. Texas, where one of every five kids is uninsured, has already cut thousands from its rolls and is looking to do more. New Hampshire is looking to charge hundreds of dollars in Medicaid premiums to people who have no income at all. And Mississippi, goddam--a little bit of brinksmanship as the governor hinted he'd let the program go bust, followed by...cuts. Nationwide, the cost of insurance continues to skyrocket and more folks are uninsured.

In Washington? $10 Billion in Medicaid cuts. And $1 million in new spending for this little project:

Public Awareness Campaign on Embryo Adoption

The increasing success of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has resulted in a situation in which an infertile couple typically creates several embryos through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). During IVF treatments, couples may produce many embryos in an attempt to conceive with several being cryopreserved (frozen) for future use. If a couple conceives without using all of the stored embryos, they may choose to have the remaining unused embryos donated for adoption allowing other infertile couples the experience of pregnancy and birth. Embryo adoption is a relatively new process in which individuals who have extra frozen embryos agree to release the embryos for transfer to the uterus of another woman, either known or anonymous to the donor(s) for the purpose of the recipient(s) attempting to bear a child and be that child's parent.

Covering a kid on Medicaid costs about $1300 a year. A million dollars could have covered more than 750 poor kids. But apparently, the federal government thinks it's more important to spend taxpayer money on finding a good home for rich people's frozen embryos than on healthcare for kids. Sure hope those embryos never grow up into kids who need a vaccination or asthma medicine...

Just Asking...After Three and a Half Years,

2005-05-05T11:13:00.000-04:00

So, has anyone else noticed that Pakistan is very good at capturing al-Quaeda who try to assasinate the Pakistani president, but not so good at capturing al-Quaeda who blow up lower Manhattan and kill 5,000?

Gosh, it's enough to make one think that they're not trying that hard. On the other hand, it's only been three and a half years and we should really cut Bush some slack...I mean, he's been so very busy eliminating that other guy who ~~attacked the US~~ ~~had weapons of mass destruction~~ ~~was further along than his equally hostile neighbors in building a nuke~~ ~~posed a threat to the United states~~ once tried to blow up his daddy in Kuwait.

Looks like we and our allies have definitely got our priorities straight.

Teron Buried

2005-05-02T18:54:00.000-04:00

Teron Francis was disconnected from his ventilator Thursday and buried on Saturday.

The child had a toothache. And it killed him.

What are we going to do about it?

Maybe those Hillary-haters Have a Point

2005-05-02T18:09:00.000-04:00

"It is unconscionable to balance the budget on the backs of our most vulnerable Americans, and that is exactly what the White House and congressional Republicans have decided to do,"

-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Girlfriend got it wrong. Here's the math:

Our current spending + $100 billion in tax cuts -
$40 billion in food stamps and Medicaid cuts =
$300 million in the red

We've got a leaky ship of state awash in a sea of red ink. What's the Bush Administration do? Throw two poor skinny bastards overboard, hoping we won't notice that it didn't do the job and we're still sinking!!

The Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans ASPIRE to a budget that is balanced on the backs of our most vulnerable Americans. Pathetically, they can't even get that right. Seriously, while I can see where ruthless incompetence is dashing, we've moved one giant step closer to a system with the worst of both worlds: fiscal ruin and moral indefensibility.

Can't wait to see what happens if he gets his hands on Social Security. Yeah, that'll end well.