We Should Try These Fuckers.

Because we are a country founded on the rule of law. And because we shouldn't be GIANT FUCKING PUSSIES WHO CANNOT CROSS THE STREET WITHOUT WETTING OUR PANTS.

A letter to the Conservative movement.

Read this now.

We need more intellectual debate about the ideologies behind our ideologies, than we do about the ideologies themselves.

Scott Brown or Why the Dems are Going to Hell in a Handbasket.

A Political Post:

So Massachusetts voted for a Republican. Surprising, but not like: Oh my god the world is ending, exciting. The Democratic candidate said she wasn't a Red Sox fan. She was doomed to lose.

But the problem that's exposed to me at least, by this is threefold, exposed by the reaction of the Democratic party to the loss as represented via the effort to reform health care. (By the way Scott Brown's position on this was disgusting. See here.):

1) Democracy in this country is no longer rule by majority. The Democrats have a bigger majority still than anyone has had in the Senate since the 70s, but they are worried they can't get their policies through. That's because rule in this country is now by the supermajority. That's a problem.

2) The Filibuster has become an abused tool in the Senate. Which is why you need a supermajority. In the 1960s, 11% of bills that came to the floor in the Senate were threatened to be filibustered. By the 1990s that had jumped to 80%. Now I think the Filibuster is probably a useful tool within our democracy, but politics has become so partisan and so win at all cost, that it actually prevents anyone from governing the country.

3) The agenda of the opposition is neither to present new or different ideas, but to obstruct the President's agenda. Thus making it impossible for the governing party to, well, govern.

WTF?

Cianci Mulling Comeback in Rhode Island

from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

Former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci -- who served more than four years in federal prison for running a criminal enterprise out of City Hall -- says he is "taking a good look" at challenging Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), the Providence Journal reports.

Cianci "also says that a legal argument could be made to allow him to run for mayor of Providence in November, but he's not saying whether he'll test it."

O'Biden

Via Taegan Goddard's Politcal Wire:

The forthcoming book, Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, reports that McCain campaign aides had Sarah Palin refer to Joe Biden by his first name in the vice presidential debate because she had the unfortunate habit of calling him "O'Biden" when using his last name.

In fact, a Political Wire reader sends over a clip from the debate where she slipped and actually called him O'Biden.

Here's the video clip from the 2008 vice presidential debate:

Is America losing the free world?

From the Financial Times:

America is losing the free world

By Gideon Rachman

Published: January 4 2010

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.

The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies.

But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.

So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other than Brazil, South Africa and India. Symbolically, the leaders had to squeeze up to make space for the American president around the table.

There was more than symbolism at work. In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies. Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

Revealingly, both Brazilian and Chinese leaders have made the same pointed joke – likening the US to a rich man who, after gorging himself at a banquet, then invites the neighbours in for coffee and asks them to split the bill.

If climate change were an isolated example, it might be dismissed as an important but anomalous issue that is almost designed to split countries along rich-poor lines. But, in fact, if you look at Brazil, South Africa, India and Turkey – the four most important democracies in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the greater Middle East – it is clear that none of them can be counted as a reliable ally of the US, or of a broader “community of democracies”.

In the past year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has cut a lucrative oil deal with China, spoken warmly of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on his “victory” in the Iranian presidential election, while welcoming him on a state visit to Brazil.

During a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council from 2006, the South Africans routinely joined China and Russia in blocking resolutions on human rights and protecting authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Iran.

Turkey, once regarded as a crucial American ally in the cold war and then trumpeted as the only example of a secular, pro-western, Muslim democracy, is also no longer a reliable partner for the west. Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, opinion polls there have shown very high levels of anti-Americanism. The mildly Islamist AKP government has engaged with America’s regional enemies – including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran – and alarmed the Americans by taking an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel.

India’s leaders do seem to cherish the idea that they have a “special relationship” with the US. But even the Indians regularly line up against the Americans on a range of international issues, from climate change to the Doha round of trade negotiations and the pursuit of sanctions against Iran or Burma.

So what is going on? The answer is that Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India are all countries whose identities as democracies are now being balanced – or even trumped – by their identities as developing nations that are not part of the white, rich, western world. All four countries have ruling parties that see themselves as champions of social justice at home and a more equitable global order overseas. Brazil’s Workers’ party, India’s Congress party, Turkey’s AKP and South Africa’s African National Congress have all adapted to globalisation – but they all retain traces of the old suspicions of global capitalism and of the US.

Mr Obama is seen as a huge improvement on George W. Bush – but he is still an American president. As emerging global powers and developing nations, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey may often feel they have more in common with a rising China than with the democratic US.

gideon.rachman@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/rachman

Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ef8f012-f969-11de-8085-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Obama-larity.

The Awl has come up with some very witty things to say about the White House Flicker stream. I'd check it out of I were you and I wanted to laugh. But maybe you hate humor. Whatever, I don't judge anybody for anything.



The American Enterprise Institute had a whole conference on Obama ceding cultural hegemony to Maeve Beliveau, daughter of Director of Advance Emmett Beliveau.

And this one's for CW:



“Baby… delicious, delicious Japanese baby.”

Burns Wins!

Apparently, in New York City's recent Mayoral election, which Bloomberg won by spending something like $1800 a vote (or a total of $85 million or some such,) Montgomery C. Burns won a majority of the write in candidates. Sure that just means 27 out of 299, but still. Excellent.

Obama's Purity Test

John Hodgman is awesome. I can't believe this didn't get more press...

Terrorists are not Supervillains.

Ezra Klein nailed this on the head.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not the master of magnetism

A poll today shows that New Yorkers narrowly favor trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in their city, and this is being treated as a surprise in some quarters. New York sure is brave! More baffling were the lawmakers who cowered when faced with the prospect of holding terrorists in Supermax prisons in the continental United States, as if hatred of America gave men super strength.

These guys took down a plane with box cutters. They used crude weapons to attack a far more sophisticated and effective fighting force. The most fearsome of them was captured at home, in his pajamas. It's not like we're putting Magneto on trial and need to keep him away from metal filings.

It's one thing to be afraid of terrorism. But there's no real reason to be afraid of terrorists, and as Daphne Eviatar argues, there's good reason not to look like you're afraid of terrorists:

The contrast of seeing these ordinary-looking men on trial in an orderly U.S. courtroom — where they’re accorded the right to a lawyer, the right to speak in their own defense and the right to call witnesses — could go a long way toward publicly revealing the absurdity of their cause, as well as the justice that a fair and functioning legal system can provide.

Trying these guys publicly, as well as holding them in normal prisons like common criminals, is good public relations. Being a terrorist is a more appealing prospect if the world's sole superpower appears to cower before your might than it is if you end up trapped in the American legal system, forced to submit to endless cross-examination and consultation with attorneys and other bureaucratic humiliations. Lots of people want to be super villains. But who wants to be a henchman? Being held on a fortified military island and tortured by a country that can't seem to get you to talk is a much more glorious finish than a long and dull trial that ends with you serving time in central New Jersey.

Afghanistan Strategy

Andrew Sullivan on President Obama rejecting the war options for Afghanistan: "What strikes me about this is the enormous self-confidence this reveals. Here is a young president, prepared to allow himself to be portrayed as 'weak' or 'dithering' in the slow and meticulous arrival at public policy. He is trusting the reality to help expose what we need to do. He is allowing the debate -- however messy and confusing and emotional -- to take its time and reveal the real choices in front of us. This is politically risky, of course. Those who treat politics as a contact-sport, whose insistence is on the 'game' of who wins which news cycle, or who can spin each moment in a political storm as a harbinger of whatever, will pounce and shriek and try to bounce the president into a decision. And those who believe that what matters in war is charging ahead regardless at all times will also grandstand against the president's insistence on prudence."

Budgets

From Ezra Klein:

A good, well, tweet from Chris Hayes:

Anyone notice that the pres signed a $680 BILLION defense approp bill in the midst of our debates about $90b a yr for hc?

That $680 billion, incidentally, doesn't count the cost of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

You could say a lot about this juxtaposition, but among other things, it's a reminder that there's real rhetorical power in the time frame that gets chosen for a given policy. The stimulus, for instance, was explained as a two-year cost, so it was $800 billion, rather than $400 billion a year. Health-care reform is being sold as a 10-year cost, so it's $900 billion, rather than $90 billion a year. The defense appropriation is explained in terms of single-year cost, so it's $680 billion, as opposed to the $10 trillion or so that it would cost if you took into account expected growth.

There are reasons for all this. The stimulus was going to be spent over two years. Health-care reform is being balanced in the 10-year budget window. The defense bill is a single-year appropriation. Washington's professional wonk set knows all that. But most people just hear the numbers, and they don't necessarily know that the "trillion dollar health-care bill" the GOP keeps talking about will actually cost $90 billion a year, and it will cut the deficit. Standardizing all costs to an annual cost would do a lot to help people figure this out. And explaining things in terms of the federal budget -- how much is $90 billion as a percent of what we'll spend this year? How about $680 billion? -- would do a lot to help people put it all in context.

Now I'm a strong believer in a strong national defense, (Strong!), but I have to agree the juxtaposition is astounding. If we didn't buy every new toy on DOD's wish list would we really by screwed? Couldn't we forego a few new toys for a healthier populace?

Coolest White House Ever?

It's really more of a song than it is a rap. And it would have been better with a DJ rather than a piano player, but still. This is as close as we'll probably get to my dream image of Wu-Tang performing in the White House.

Let's hope this is wrong.

A Dangerous Environment

Thomas Friedman: "I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination... Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly."

There's Always Another Side

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Sheer Incompetence.

Everyone today (well, not everyone, just politics nerds) is writing about former Bush speechwriter' Matt Latimer who has a new book out about the final days of the Bush presidency, and GQ did one of them publicity stories about it. One anecdote Ezra Klein pulls out below, that more or less sums it up:

It begins in the moments at the bottom of the financial crisis, when serious people were saying things like "the economy is about to collapse." George W. Bush needs to do something. So he does...something.

After Chris, Jonathan Horn, and I learned about the president’s $700-billion-bailout proposal and drafted the remarks announcing it to a stunned nation, Ed said the president wanted to see us in the Oval Office. The president looked relaxed and was sitting behind the Resolute desk. He felt he’d made the major decision that everyone had been asking for. That always seemed to relax him. He liked being decisive. Excuse me, boldly decisive. The president seemed to be thinking of his memoirs. “This might go in as a big decision,” he mused.

“Definitely, Mr. President,” someone else observed. “This is a large decision.”

The problem is that Bush didn't understand his own proposal. He thought it bought low to sell high. He wanted that in the speech. Instead, it bought high to recapitalize failing banks. Eventually, this is explained to him. And he replies with a line that should serve as the epitaph for his presidency. “Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

Helluva question, Georgie.

Senator Al Franken

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

From the Washington Post:

By T.R. Reid
Sunday, August 23, 2009

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.

Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.

Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," to be published Monday.

Barney Frank Gives It To A Nutcase

I'm not saying this is the correct debate we should be having on health care in this country. But it's definitely the correct response to the insanity that seems to be spewing forth. Go Barney Go.

Really, why are they here?

Via Ezra Klein:

Why Are Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano in the Obama Administration?

This is a good post from Matt Yglesias:

One could imagine a world in which instead of serving as Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack was running for the US Senate seat currently held by Chuck Grassley. Vilsack would probably lose such a race, but one reason he would probably lose such a race is that Grassley could badly undercut his campaign by reaching an agreement with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus to produce a bipartisan health care reform bill.

Similarly, if Janet Napolitano were running for senate instead of serving as Secretary of Homeland Security that might be giving John McCain some incentive to deal.

This is one of those ways in which I don't understand the appointments process. I understand that given other career options, like an appointment to a Cabinet position, Tom Vilsack might not want to run against Chuck Grassley and Janet Napolitano might not want to take a shot at John McCain. Both of them could lose, and then they're unemployed and electorally tarnished. But the thing about an appointment is that the president can make it at any time. So why not just assure Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano that if they lose their elections they will be appointed secretary of agriculture and secretary of homeland security, respectively? Maybe they still don't want to run for Senate. But maybe then the president doesn't want to appoint them at all because they clearly don't care for his agenda all that much.

On the other side, it's not as if there's some massive benefit Obama got from choosing the former governor of Arizona to be the secretary of homeland security as opposed to, say, Bill Bratton. As far as I can tell, appointing popular politicians who could mount a credible Senate campaign is pretty much all downside.