Gold, Women, & Sheep

Colbert and Stewart and a few others have noticed Fox News' and other conservative commentator's obsession with gold. You see, when people get scared or nervous, the price of gold goes up because it's a finite precious metal. Well, guess which fearmongers are also spokesman for gold (both on their shows AND on infomercials)? That's right: Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Linda Ingraham, etc. Selling fear, and making money off gold.

Of course, the Colbert Report does an impeccable job pointing out the hypocrisy. Check the video.

Lieberman: "One More Minute Please?"; Franken: "Nope, We've Had Enough of Your Solipsism"

Check this video out. Thank you, Al Franken, for standing up to my arch-nemesis.

Real Heros of Health Reform

I'll quote Ezra in full here:

Right on the heels of Joe Lieberman trying to kill the bill because it had a Medicare buy-in proposal, Howard Dean is exhorting Democrats to kill the bill because it doesn't have a Medicare buy-in proposal. Sigh.

So let this serve as an encomium to Ron Wyden, Tom Harkin, Chuck Schumer, Sherrod Brown, Chris Dodd and Jay Rockefeller, among many others. All of these senators could have been the 60th vote. All of them had issues they believe in and worked for. Chris Dodd built and passed a bill. Sherrod Brown whipped up liberal support for the public option. Chuck Schumer spent countless hours devising compromises and searching for new paths forward. Ron Wyden spent years crafting the Healthy Americans Act, getting a CBO score, pulling together co-sponsors, speaking to activists and industry groups and other legislators. Jay Rockefeller has spent decades on this issue and wasn't even invited into the Gang of Six process.

But you know what? They're all still there. Because in the end, this isn't about them, and though their states and their pet issues might benefit if they tried to make it about them, the process, and thus the result, would be endangered. I've said before that the remarkable thing isn't that Joe Lieberman acts the way he does but that so few join him. The legislative process is given a bad name by the showboats and grandstanders, but the only reason it functions at all is because the vast majority of the participants keep their role in perspective.

If this bill passes, it will not be because Lieberman was pacified. It will be because senators such as Rockefeller, Wyden, Schumer, Harkin, Brown and Dodd swallowed their pride and their passion and allowed him to be pacified. They are the heroes here, and beneath it all, their quiet determination made them the key players.

Spineless, Spiteful Joe Lieberman on how to Bite the Hand that Feeds You

Jon Cohn who, along with Ezra Klein, has been my health care go-to journalist has an excellent post describing why Joe Lieberman is acting selfishly. And it's a crying shame that a U.S. Senator - who seemingly believes in health care reform - would blatantly lie and draw an ever-moving line in the sand simply to annoy the real Democrats who have reached out to him.

there’s no evidence Lieberman believes any of these arguments against reform, and a great deal of evidence that he does not. Lieberman, by all appearances, seems to share the belief of essentially all Democrats and many non-Democrats that health care reform is a moral imperative. And his discomfort with a modest Medicare buy-in seems altogether contrived, given that he endorsed the idea of a Medicare buy-in during the 2000 presidential campaign and defended it as recently as three months ago.

To put it bluntly, the idea that Lieberman now finds the very same proposal a grave threat to the public good is simply not credible. And while I understand the rules of strategic gamesmanship, somebody who took health care reform seriously--somebody who genuinely cared about ending the misfortune that visits people without affordable medical care--simply would not have made such a strong stand, over such a tiny issue, at such a pivotal time.

The proof, I think, is in the actions of Lieberman’s adversaries. Sherrod Brown supports the public option just as passionately as Lieberman opposes it. The same goes for Jay Rockefeller. But Brown and Rockefeller have already made a series of huge concessions, because those concessions were necessary to move a bill through Congress. Last night, both men signaled they were prepared to make one last concession--to give up on the idea of a public plan altogether--because that’s what it will take to pass the law.

Brown and Rockefeller, in other words, acted to promote the greater good. I can believe some of their adversaries are doing the same. I find it hard to believe Lieberman is among them.

Redneck Christmas

"I went to church and cried. Then I got back to work."

(via Syd O) MUST READ: Enviro writer and founder of 350.org posts on the Copenhagen conference over at Climate Progress.

Doesn't Obama Sound a Lot Like Bush?

... That was my initial thought watching his 60min interview yesterday - talking the "surge" language, talking about how "hard it is" to be President, etc. But at the same time Obama seems to not be a sham when he touches on some familiar arguments. People have said the same about his West Point andparts of his Nobel acceptance speech: that Bush could have given parts of them. But why is it that I tend to believe Obama and distrust Bush when they toss out the same phrases? Am I that bias? Maybe, but I think it has to with the fact that they're not saying the same thing. Ta-Nehisi makes the point:

I'd like to pair this with something I'm hearing a lot these day. After an entire campaign season where Obama was dismissed as a far-left radical, the new meme became that he was actually firmly entrenched in the "right wing of the Democratic party." Now I'm hearing people say that Obama's speech could have been made by Bush, or some such.

There are people who think presidential politics--from a voter's perspective--is about electing someone who will do exactly what you say and enact every single one of your priorities in exactly the same manner as you would.

And then there are people who think presidential politics--from a voter's perspective--is about electing someone who shares many of your priorities, but not all of them, who may not enact them as you would, and yet whose wisdom you trust. That, for me, is the point. Barack Obama is wise. Sarah Palin is not.

In that vein, I didn't object to George Bush because he claimed that there was "evil" in the world. I objected to George Bush because there was so much evil that he didn't see, and he was awful at prosecuting the evil he did see. I objected to George Bush's foreign policy because it married a freshman's view of idealism (Big talk on human rights) with a profane, dishonest take one realism (We don't torture.) It's weak to look two presidents, see them both use the word "evil," and then conclude that they're the same.

I expect Obama to be who he campaigned as. But more than that, I expect him to actually think about the world. I expect him to be curious, deliberative, and cool-headed. That's who he is. I often disagree with him. But I don't regret a thing. I don't understand these people. It's like they thought he'd go to Oslo, hand over the launch codes, and offer twenty Texas virgins in exchange for a pledge from Al'Qaeda to stop being mean to us.

Did the Maccabbes Re-Take the Temple in 8 Crazy Nights?

David Brooks tells the real story behind Hanukkah - and sadly, it has nothing to do with a lamp ... I never knew!

The VAT Tax

(via Ezra Klein) Many people think that taxes will have to go up in the future - wars, debt, health/climate reform, etc - but that raising the income tax won't be able to pick up the slack. So, be prepared to keep hearing about the value added tax (VAT) that is used in most European countries. Here's a great primer:

The value-added tax is also the darling of many economists for its bounce-a-quarter-off-its-abs efficiency. Its administrative costs to the government are generally low. It is also considered less of a drag on the economy over the long run than raising income taxes, which discourage people from saving money and thereby making capital available to businesses.

To understand why a value-added tax is considered so efficient, you have to understand how it usually works.

Imagine the production of a new dress, in three steps:

1) A fabric store sells a tailor enough silk to make one dress, at a total price of $10 before taxes;

2) The tailor sews a dress and sells it to Macy’s for $30 before taxes;

3) Macy’s then sells the dress to a shopper for $50, before taxes.

Let’s say the value-added tax is 10 percent. The government will collect some tax revenue in each step of the production process, from roll of fabric to cocktail-party scene-stealer, but each business in the chain gets credit for the tax already paid by other suppliers.

When selling the cloth to the tailor, the fabric store adds a tax of 10 percent, or $1 on the $10 of supplies the tailor purchases. The tailor pays the fabric store $11, and the store remits $1 to the government.

When the tailor sells his dress to Macy’s, he calculates the value-added tax as $3, or 10 percent of his $30 pretax price. Macy’s pays the tailor $33.

But instead of sending the full $3 to the government, the tailor gets to subtract the $1 of taxes he had already paid to the fabric store. So he sends $2 to the government.

When Macy’s sells the dress to a shopper, it adds another 10 percent, so the shopper pays $55, or $50 plus $5 in tax. That would be in addition to any state or local sales taxes consumers have to pay, depending on the locale.

Macy’s checks to see how much the previous companies in the supply chain — the fabric store and the tailor — have already paid the government in value-added taxes, and subtracts that from the $5. Macy’s ends up remitting just $2 to the government.

The government receives $5 total, or 10 percent of the final purchase price, but from three different businesses.

Although more complicated, value-added taxes are considered better than equivalent sales taxes — where the tax is levied only when the consumer buys a product — for two main reasons.

First, if a single business evades the value-added tax, the government does not lose a large portion of money, because it will collect taxes at other stages of production.

Since companies usually get credit for taxes already paid by their suppliers, companies will pressure other businesses in the production chain to prove they paid their taxes. That means the system is somewhat self-policing.

To some foes of big government, though, the efficiency of the tax is also its fatal flaw. Conservatives worry that it enables the government to raise money with such little effort that it will encourage Washington to spend even more.

On the other hand, liberals are wary of value-added taxes because they are regressive. Poor people spend a higher portion of their income buying things than the rich, meaning lower-income people would be disproportionately hurt.

Chart of the Day

(via Yglesias)

Climate-Gate in Perspective

Read this Popular Mechanic's article to see where I stand. Of course climate science is political, of course there are unethical scientists ... but put all the conspiracies in context - science is pretty damn reliable, it's transparent and peer reviewed, and gets stuff right over time.

Fox Thinks 120% of the Public Believe Scientists Fake Global Warming Data

(via Medium) Fox & Friends took a Rasmussen poll - and then combined the numbers and double counted to make it look like 120% of Americans think Scientists are bluffing. Also, last month, Fox showed a pie chart showing 193% of the public support Palin, Huckabee and Romney for the 2012 nomination.

Toon

3 Cups of Tea

(via Mayo) This story in the CSM may be the most uplifting news I've heard. The author of "3 Cups of Tea" is getting together with US leaders (civilian and military) to teach and show them how to make inroads in Afghanistan.

(Photo: author Greg Mortenson and Chair of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen)

Don't Go Green

(via Yglesias) A great column from the Ex-Dir of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network ... addressing, really, the free loader problem.

Don't spend an hour changing your light bulbs. Don't take a day to caulk your windows. Instead, pick up a phone, open a laptop, or travel to a U.S. Senate office near you and turn the tables: "What are the 10 green statutes you're working on to save the planet, Senator?"

Of course, that assumes our political institutions are capable of making change - and change drastic enough to make a difference.

It's Official: Bush and Cheney and Rummy Let Osama Go

W really "took it to the terrorists" ..... according to the new Senate Report:

“The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks,” the report says.

“On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, Bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.”

Rumsfeld’s argument at the time, the report says, was that deploying too many American troops could jeopardize the mission by creating an anti-US backlash among the local populace.

The report dismisses arguments at the time from Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney and others defending the decision and arguing that the intelligence was inconclusive about Bin Laden’s location.

“The review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.”

CBO: Health Care Reform Makes Premiums GO DOWN

MUST READ: Read this Ezra Klein post in its entirety - it does a great job of de-bunking the lies about how people will pay more for heath care under reform.

Premiums for the same policy in the individual market fall by 14 to 20 percent. But people in the individual market, who are largely low-income, will now have the opportunity to purchase better policies that cover more expenses and provide more security. That's a good thing. It's one of the reasons for health-care reform, in fact. And it is not analogous to health-care insurance becoming more expensive, any more than the fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming more expensive.

Escalation in Afghanistan

I agree w/ Matt :

It seems I should write my official What I Think About Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan post.

Mostly the whole situation makes me want to sigh. I don’t think the kind of effort that as best I understand it we’re undertaking in Afghanistan meets any kind of plausible cost benefit test. At the same time, unlike conservatives who only invoke this principle opportunistically I do think it makes sense to pay attention to what military professionals have to say about operational aspects of defense policy. And in a major contrast to Bush’s Iraq policy, Obama’s Afghanistan policy seems to be firmly grounded in a real consensus among the relevant people about what is and isn’t workable. That’s good. It makes me think the odds of a disaster are low, and the odds of a policy that “works” are pretty good. And I think we have good reason to believe that if their operational approach doesn’t work, that everyone on the team is prepared to shift directions and try something better.

Now none of that actually makes any of this worth doing. I haven’t seen anyone even really attempt to persuade me that this policy makes sense in cost-benefit terms. And I think the reaction to David Obey’s “war tax” idea is telling—nobody seems to really think there are national interests at stake that are critical enough to be worth paying slightly higher taxes for. But if a war’s not worth paying for, how can it be worth fighting? And if we don’t pay for the war in the FY 2010 budget, we still need to pay back the loans.

New Orleans Mayoral Race

(via Yglesias) Awesome ad by James Perry - running for mayor of New Orleans.

60 Votes in the Senate?

Didn't used to be that way. Started mostly in the early 90s with the GOP.

White House Required Reading

MUST READ: This Atlantic post by Ron Brownstein was made required reading by Obama over the weekend for his staff.

When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing."

Chris Matthews Takes on a Bishop

This is classic Chris Matthews. He had Bishop Tobin on Hardball the other day, the guy who told Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) (yes, EMK's kid) that he shouldn't take communion because of his support for abortion rights. At the end of the interview Matthews lets Tobin make a few (weak) points, but at the beginning he's drilling Tobin with all the right arguments, all the while calling him "your excellency" ... it's great. Watch It.

Four Horseman

(via Syd O)

WSJ Interview with Cormac McCarthy

Here's a really great interview with Cormac McCarthy (author of All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road). Man I like the guy: smart, science, doom, hope, fatherly love. I'm going to see The Road on Thanksgiving.

Also, the director's last movie was The Proposition - so it's gotta be good.

Toon

A delicate balance.

To the Moderates Go The Spoils

(via the Rachel Maddow Show) To get Nelson to vote for cloture the Senate bill did not revoke the insurance industry's anti-trust exception ... to get Landrieu, the Senate bill includes billions of dollars for "States hit by natural disasters within the last 7 years". Not sure what Lincoln got.

Also - PLEEEZE kick Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and take his committee chairmanship. If not, Reid and Durbin better hold it over his head when a public option vote comes down the pipe.

Limits of American Power

We've got carrots...but where are the sticks:

What can the United States offer its allies? Throughout the Cold War, the answer was simple: the United States guaranteed its allies security from the Soviet Union. But this question - which seems so basic - is difficult to answer today.

...

From Tokyo to Paris - and many places in between - it is not so much the lack of American power that is the problem (it still has plenty), but rather the fact that its bargaining position is paradoxically undermined by its extraordinary role.

Read the entire, short, post.

Thinking Doesn't Translate into Climate Action

From the NYT:

The example illustrates a basic principle in social psychology: that people's attitudes do not translate into action. But most environmental activism remains centered around the assumption that changing behavior starts with changing attitudes and knowledge.

And only 35% of people think climate change is man-made! So, of course education (and stopping mis-education) is key to improving that number. But this article is good at describing how we must re-focus how we set priorities and market adoptable behavior to the general population.

Brooks Gives Obama High Marks on his First Test

David Brooks thinks, in retrospect, that Geithner et al. did a great job handling the financial meltdown.

But Yglesias isn't as thrilled with the performance.

Today in Global Warming/Peak Oil

(via Syd O and Medium) First, check this out from E&E's ClimateWire:

Last ice age froze Europe in a few months (Tuesday, November 17, 2009)

It only took six months to plunge Europe's warm climate into the last ice age, according to new research.

Previous research had suggested it took some 10 years for the slowdown of the Gulf Stream that allowed ice to spread southward and plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a deep freeze 12,800 years ago.

The new findings suggest "it would have been very sudden for those alive at the time," said William Patterson, a geological sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who carried out the research. "It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months."

To conduct the research, Patterson scraped mud deposits from a lake in western Ireland and studied each 0.5-millimeter-thick layer. The mud indicated that the temperatures had abruptly chilled, with the lake's plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months.

The finding reinforces a series of studies that suggest that the Earth's climate is highly unstable and can flip between warm and cold very quickly under the right conditions (Jonathan Leake, London Times, Nov. 15)

Second, check out this Letter to the Editor in the Guardian responding to the article they ran the other day discussing how the IEA has been overestimating oil reserves. The author has been involved in exploration and oil reserve research for years and has some great insights.

Maybe My Favorite Cartoon of All Time

Fat Women are H.O.T.T. (with 2 "T's")

...in Mauritania, West Africa. Check out this Marie Claire article on how young girls are force-fed so they get obese and covered in stretch-marks - a big turn on for Mauritania men. It's a sign of wealth in a country where many starve to death. Although the practice was dying off, recently, after an Islamic coup that pushed more traditional lifestyles, some girls are going to 3month summer camps where they are force-fed 16,000 calories a day by a headmaster who tortures and whips them if they chow down.

Tijanniya wants to become a French teacher, but Elhacen says her parents have already arranged a marriage for her. "Her job will be to make babies and be a soft, fleshy bed for her husband to lie on." To this end, she intends to fast-track Tijanniya's weight gain by serving her cups of pure animal fat. "The stomach flab should cascade, the thighs should overlap, and the neck should have thick ripples of fat," says Elhacen. The ultimate sign of beauty, however, is silvery stretch marks on the arms. "Parents will give me a bonus if a girl develops stretch marks."

Bring Em On

Even before AG Holder announced that KSM and a few other Gitmo terrorists would be held for trial in NY I had thought that if I were a Senator I'd have been on the floor touting our justice system, screaming "Bring em to Supermax - we're not afraid of em ... you think we can't handle a few scheming pilots?". Along with stating the obvious (that our prisons hold way more dangerous prisoners) I think it'd bring attention and commerce to the state and be a source of pride.

Check this Colorado Pols post on the subject ... apparently IL is going to hold them for trial, and they're looking at ADX for long term imprisonment.

As for the argument that they'll get off on a technicality? No chance. Sure, they'll argue waterboarded confessions were coerced - but Holder is a prosecutor, and he must know that there is plenty of other evidence to convict so they won't have to rely on tainted evidence.

As for the argument that it'll be a circus? Sure. So was OJ.

As for the argument that the trial will become a target? Maybe, but again, do we not think the NYPD or the Nat'l Guard, etc. will be able to handle it?

The hypocricy on the right is outstanding - they decry international law, tout our legal and moral superiority, but don't think we can handle a few murderers?

UPDATE: NPR ran a story today and it's spot on.....the GOP "fears" bringing detainees to IL and Democrat Dick Durbin says (in essence) "bring em on!"

KSM: Warrior or Criminal

This Yglesias post makes an excellent distinction and argument for categorizing "terrorists" as criminals.

Alongside the various nonsensical efforts to convince people that KSM is too scary to be put in trial, the right objects to bringing him to justice on the grounds that this represents a problematic “law enforcement” approach to terrorism. I think it’s pretty clear that international terrorism has some dimensions that go well-beyond ordinary law enforcement, but if you have to put the whole thing in either the “crime” box or the “war” box, there’s a pretty strong case for erring on the side of crime.

In political terms, the right likes the war idea because it involves taking terrorism more “seriously.” But in doing so, you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves. It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. What we want to say, however, is that this sporadic commuter-killing isn’t a kind of war, it’s an act of murder. To be sure, not an ordinary murder—a mass murder—but nonetheless murder. It’s true that if al-Qaeda were something like the “blowing up train stations” arm of a major country with which we were otherwise at war, it might make the most sense to think of al-Qaeda as fitting in with spies and saboteurs; criminal adjuncts to a warrior enterprise.

After all, do we really want to send the message to the world that a self-starting spree killer like Nidal Malik Hasan is actually engaged in some kind of act of holy war? It seems to me that we don’t. A lot of people in the world are interested in glory, and willing to take serious risks with their lives for its sake. Insofar as possible, we want to drain anti-American violence of the aura of glory. And that means by-and-large treating its perpetrators like criminals.

If You're Angry About the Stupak Amendment - Here's Your Outlet

Katha Pollitt makes the right points in the Nation. A Taste:

You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

Update: Here's TPM's take on what the practical effects may be...which will be all the poor-to-middle-class women who will take part in the Exchange...and 21Million are expected to partake....the Jist:

What conclusions to draw from this? The uncertainties are substantial, but it's safe to say that, initially, a minority of women, and a minority of abortions will be impacted by the Stupak amendment. Those women will be very disproportionately poor and middle-class. And their ranks will grow as the exchanges open to larger businesses and a greater percentage of the population.

AND: an argument about what health care means to women, irrespective of the abortion debate.

IEA Has Been Lying About Oil Reserves - Things Are Worse Than They Claim

(via Syd O) Read this article from the Guardian UK. Scary.

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.

Cars Have Gotten Better In Everything Except Fuel Economy

This is why when I hear "Best fuel economy in its class" - and the commercial is referring to 20mpg - and my 10yr old car gets the same - I'm pretty discouraged about our long term prospects.

Yglesias:

From 1980 to 2004 the fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has remained stagnant despite apparent technological advances. The average fuel economy of the U.S. new passenger automobile fleet increased by less than 6.5 percent, while the average horsepower of new passenger cars increased by 80 percent, and their average curb weight increased by 12 percent. For light duty trucks, average horsepower has increased by 99 percent and average weight increased by 26 percent over this period. But there’s more to this story: in 1980, light truck sales were roughly 20 percent of total passenger vehicles sales — in 2004, they were over 51 percent.\

In Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector (NBER Working Paper No. 15162), Christopher Knittel analyzes the technological progress that has occurred since 1980 and the trade-offs that manufacturers and consumers face when choosing between fuel economy, weight, and engine power characteristics. His results suggest that if weight, horsepower, and torque were held at their 1980 levels, fuel economy for both passenger cars and light trucks could have increased by nearly 50 percent from 1980 to 2006. Instead, fuel economy actually increased by only 15 percent.

The First Marriage

A great article on the Obama's marriage in the NYT Magazine yesterday.

Arnold Says F-U to the Assembly

(via Medium) Is this a coincidence? Check out the first letter of each line.

Public Option Opt-Out

(via VH1) The word is that Harry Reid may have 60 votes to pass a health care bill that includes a public plan with an optional opt-out for states. If Reid pulls this off he'll jump up a ton of spots in my mind. Nate Silver has the reasons why this would be a great policy and political win.

Modern Man: The WORST EVER

(via Snead303) Check out this report from Reuters:

Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology" and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male."

McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue.

"If you're reading this then you -- or the male you have bought it for -- are the worst man in history.

"No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."

Delving into a wide range of source material McAllister finds evidence he believes proves that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running and jumping.

His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed, of six men chasing prey.

Rule of Unintended Consequences

Charles Duhigg has an excellent series in the NYT called "Toxic Waters" - a 3 part series on the unintended consequences of environmental legislation. Cleaner air means dirtier water, regulating CAFOs means dirtier water, coal mines mean dirtier water, and greener lawns means dirtier water.

Not Done Yet

Jon Cohn provides his Top 10 list of things that still need improvement as the health care bill moves on.

Thanks But No Thanks

(via VH1) TNR thinks that letting Olympia Snowe vote "yes" in committee was a mistake - it gives her too much control over the rest of the process - whereas she probably would have voted for (or at least not blocked) the final bill anyway!

Toons

The Poverty Cycle and Obesity

I found this really interesting - Ezra Klein talking about the persistent relationship betweent obesity and unhealthiness and poverty.

Coates agrees [about the many daily "pleasures" available to the middle class]. His 20s were a rough period. And aside from the support of his family, "I have two words for you -- Breyer's and Entenmann's. It sounds disgusting when I write it. But that little a'la mode pick-me-up made things a little more bearable."

This reminds me of Charles Karelis's "The Persistence of Poverty." The basic argument is that the wealthy misunderstand the mental state of the poor, which leads them to make conceptual errors when creating policies to address poverty, or, in this case, obesity. Think of a bee sting, he advises. If you have a single bee sting, you'll go buy some salve to take away the pain. Now imagine three bee stings, a sprained ankle, a burn, a cut, a crick in your neck, a sore throat, and arthritis. Does the bee sting matter anymore?

Karelis argues that this is more the situation of someone in poverty. Obesity is bad, but it may be just one of many bad things. Overdue bills. A horrible part-time job. Endless commuting time on the bus. A mother with diabetes. A child running with the wrong crowd. A leaking roof. In that scenario, slowly reversing your weight gain might be a good idea, but it hardly makes a dent in the overall crumminess of the conditions. It won't replace pain with pleasure. So you do things that are surer to replace pain with pleasure, like have a delicious, filling, satisfying, salty, fatty meal. That may make your overall situation more unpleasant, but then, making that situation pleasant didn't seem like an option in the first place.

This, he would say, is fundamentally different than the situation of someone who is fundamentally happy with his life but thinks he should lose 30 pounds. For that person, those 30 pounds are the main thing standing between him and perceived happiness. It's one bee sting instead of a dozen ailments. The condition seems manageable, and so it gets managed. Conversely, if the aggregate condition does not seem manageable, people are less likely to manage any individual part, because it will not bring obvious reward -- life will still be pressuring and difficult. The things that will bring obvious reward, however, often make the underlying situation worse -- think spending, overeating and drinking. But then, that's why they call poverty a cycle, and obesity fits there, too.

The Next Glenn Beck: Alex Jones

TNR profiles a right-wing (full circle lefty) wacko from Texas named Alex Jones in the context of how the fringe conservatives are now very much a part of main-stream conservatism.

Until recently, Jones’s search for mainstream allies has been less than fruitful. During the Bush years, when the conservative movement acknowledged Jones at all, it was to mock and revile him. In March 2006, Sean Hannity ridiculed Charlie Sheen for spinning September 11 conspiracy theories on Jones’s show. In May 2007, Michelle Malkin argued that Ron Paul’s associations with Jones and the 9/11 Truth movement should disqualify him from participating in GOP primary debates. Last year, Bill O’Reilly ran outtakes from Jones’s interview with fellow Truther Willie Nelson on a segment about "the dumbest things that have been said in the past three months."

But, since Obama’s election, the ridicule has died down. On March 15, Jones released a documentary called The Obama Deception, which has been widely advertised in conservative media and viewed more than four million times on YouTube. The Obama Deception is basically a more detailed version of the dystopian scenario promoted night after night on Beck. Arguing that Obama is the front man for an oligarchy working to create a planetary totalitarian state, it is like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stripped of any reference to Jews.

Larry Summers and the Financial Crisis

Ryan Lizza profiles Larry Summers and the White House economic team in this week's New Yorker. It's long....so plan ahead.

UPDATE: Here's a good point from Yglesias on how Obama ended up enacting policies that were too timid by Romer et. al's standards because the economic advisors were policy wonks, and they offered proposals that were politically impossible.

Tax and Spend for the General Welfare

(via Snead 303) Erwin Chemerinsky has an op-ed in the LAT about how health care reform is constitutional. It's mostly a "duh" argument (but that won't stop opponents of mud-slinging). I mostly wanted to link it because Erwin is famous - conlaw his book is famous - and he is the most boring lecturer ever. ("Little two!")

Out of Chaos Comes Order

NYT reports on an interesting study in the journal of Psychological Science on how feelings of disorientation or absurdity can throw the brain off - and encourage the brain to look for patterns (meaning) in life - and therefore lead to enhanced creativity.

“We’re so motivated to get rid of that feeling that we look for meaning and coherence elsewhere,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Psychological Science. “We channel the feeling into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning.”

Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.

Keep Meddling in Afghanistan

(via Ezra) Andrew Sullivan has a good article in the Sunday Times make the point that there's no reason to choose between the McCrystal/Biden poles at a time when the strategic situation in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan is most uncertain. The best route is to continue a middle, meddling, path. He quotes Marc Lynch on this:

“Why choose between escalation or withdrawal at exactly the time when the political picture is at its least clear? Why not maintain a lousy Afghan government which doesn’t quite fall, keep the Taliban on the ropes without defeating it, cut deals where we can and try to figure out a strategy to deal with the Pakistan part, which all the smart set agrees is the real issue these days? Why not focus on applying the improved counterinsurgency tactics with available resources right now instead of focusing on more troops? If the American core objective in Afghanistan is to prevent its re-emergence as an Al-Qaeda safe haven, or to prevent the Taliban from taking Kabul, those seem to be manageable at lower troop levels.”

The Right Wing Noise Machine Creeps Into the MSM

READ THIS POST by Publius on the triangle between the right-wing noise machine of crazies, the MSM refusal to cover it, and the resulting charge that the MSM is bias -- in an ACORN context.

SCOTUS Will Probably Incorporate the 2nd Amendment

SCOTUS will hear the Chicago hand-gun lawsuit. Essentially, the plaintiff argues that Chicago's handgun ban is identical to the ban struck down in Heller....but the problem is that DC is a federal enclave and therefore covered by the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment, you see, is one of the few (8th and 5th grand juries) that has not been incorporated to the states - so it doesn't apply to Chicago. So, McDonald v. Chicago will give SCOTUS the opportunity to incorporate the 2nd Amendment to the States and expand Heller's decision to cities like Chicago.

Boxer-Kerry Cap and Trade Bill

The Senate released its version of climate change legislation today. TNR has a good wrap up of how it differs from the House Bill.

Fillibuster Strategy

This is important to consider in the wake of Finance voting down two public option amendments (via Yglesias and Ezra)

A good question from Ezra Klein:

To my surprise, Schumer readily accepted that analysis. “We don’t have the 60 votes on the floor for the public option,” he agreed. “I will be the first to admit that.” He thought some smart deal making and horse-trading might get them to 60. But they weren’t there yet.

There are two questions here. The first is “60 votes for what?” Do they not have 60 votes in favor of a health-care plan that includes a public option? Or do they not have 60 votes against a filibuster of a health-care plan that includes a public option? If it’s the former, that’s okay: You only need 51. If it’s the latter, that’s a bigger problem. But I’d be interested to hear which Democrats will publicly commit to filibustering Barack Obama’s health-care reform bill. If that’s such a popular position back home, why aren’t more Democrats voicing it loudly?

And to slice the salami even thinner, consider two separate questions. One is if there’s a health care bill on the Senate floor that does not feature a public option and an amendment is brought to the floor to add one, are there 60 votes to break a filibuster and pass the amendment? Another question is whether if you brought a bill to the floor which included a public option, would Democrats filibuster the overall bill? Those are separate things. To say “I’m against such-and-such” is not equivalent to saying “I’m against any bill that includes such-and-such.” Obviously you can’t get 60 people to each get their way on each and every provision of health care. Is Blanche Lincoln so hostile to a public option that she would filibuster a massive health care package she otherwise likes just to avoid it?

Split the Baby - then Get Rid of One Half

(via Ezra) The Notre Dame economics department was apparently in a tussle back in '03 ... split between traditional economists and heterodox scholars. So, UND actually created two departments! One for the mainstream profs, and another for the heterodox profs. Well, Notre Dame just announced that they're dissolving the department of dissidents.

Seems like after the economic debacle of the past year the last thing we need to solidify neoclassical ideology in the field of economics.

Biden Flips on Afghanistan

Michael Crowley has a good, short, piece in TNR on how Joe Biden has gone from Afghani hawk to one of the administration's biggest (devil's advocate) critic on any escalation in Afghanistan.

Dr. Law and Economics: or How Richard Posner Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Keynes

Richard Posner, the uber-author and notorious law and economics 7th Circuit judge, just wrote a good piece for TNR on how he has become a Keynesian in the wake of our economic crisis. Posner is often seen as right-of-center so it's interesting to see him analyize and explain what made Keynes appealing to him. This is one of my favorite critiques of neo-classical economics ... and Posner recognizes it, and because of it is drawn to Keynes:

The dominant conception of economics today, and one that has guided my own academic work in the economics of law, is that economics is the study of rational choice. People are assumed to make rational decisions across the entire range of human choice, including but not limited to market transactions, by employing a form (usually truncated and informal) of cost-benefit analysis. The older view was that economics is the study of the economy, employing whatever assumptions seem realistic and whatever analytical methods come to hand. Keynes wanted to be realistic about decision-making rather than explore how far an economist could get by assuming that people really do base decisions on some approximation to cost-benefit analysis.

The General Theory is full of interesting psychological observations--the word "psychological" is ubiquitous--as when Keynes notes that "during a boom the popular estimation of [risk] is apt to become unusually and imprudently low," while during a bust the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurs droop. He uses such insights without trying to fit them into a model of rational decision-making.

The Placebo Response

This article in Wired on the renewed interest in researching the placebo effect is fascinating. Apparently more and more drugs have been booted out of Phase II research because they're losing to placebos - it's a worldwide phenomenon. So because it's unlikely that we're making worse drugs - it looks like people are actually responding better to placebos! So, big Pharma is looking into how it can harness the healing power of the placebo. It's very interesting.

The irony is that post-1997 when drug companies were allowed to engage in direct marketing (i.e. TV commercials for restless-leg syndrom .... "Hey, I didn't know I had RLS! I should go ask my doctor about getting that drug!") I'm sure many people have developed physical conditions based on psychological responses to advertising, and so now the new drugs Pharma developed aren't doing as well as the psychological response to the placebo treatment - a psychological ailment and psychological treatment.

There Are No GOP Moderates

EJ is on point - and hit on something Yglesias points out nearly every day - and that is this: there are zero "Moderate" Republicans in Congress (well, maybe Olympia Snowe) and therefore the term "moderate" and "centrist" have no meaning. All of the moderate GOP'ers were thrown out of office last cycle, so only "true" Republicans remain. Unfortunately Congress can be a bunch of pansies, and instead of making sure that their policies are actually smart, they'd rather cover their tush by making it "bipartisan" to spread the blame in case the effort fails (ironically, in some cases compromising on ideals makes a bill more likely to fail!). Therefore, they need "centrists" to get on board .... the problem?...you guessed it: there are no moderates left. So, all the "real" Republicans get labled "moderate" and get their ideas thrown into the mix (giving them - the minority party who lost the election and who is at odds with non-southern public opinion - a disproportionate power in negotiations) simply in the name of "bipartisanship."

Suggestion: lets forget about who signs onto bills and whether they "reached out" or made it a "bipartisanly bad bill" ... and just enact policies ... if they work, we'll vote for you, if not - hit the road, Jack.

Missile Defense Was Wrongheaded and Obama Did the Right Thing

Read Fred Kaplan on Obama's Decision to remove anti-missile defense systems in Czeck Republic and Poland. He's on the mark. It's been my (hardly qualified) opinion for a long time that ICBM defense systems were pretty silly ... and especially a bad priority when it costs us Russia's help in containing actual threats (i.e. Iranian proliferation and the possibility of smuggling suit-cased sized bombs).

Toon

Last Piece of the Puzzle

(via Congress Daily) "Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus released his mark this morning for an $856 billion healthcare overhaul. Republicans working with Baucus to create a bipartisan package did not sign on. The mark is similar to a proposal Baucus released over the Labor Day weekend that creates a co-op system of health insurance to compete with private insurers. It also expands Medicaid to those earning 133 percent over the poverty line and mandates that individuals acquire healthcare coverage while providing tax credits to help those earning as much as 400 percent of the poverty level. One change from the earlier proposal is the addition of a medical malpractice provision expressing a "sense of the Senate" that encourages states to undertake pilot projects to improve the litigation system."

Nate Silver has a good post at 538 (Baucus' Mark Draws Enthusiastic Support from Max Baucus) And Ezra expands:

Max Baucus will release the Chairman's Mark -- the official first draft of his bill -- later today. But things are not going according to plan. He's got a bill full of the compromises meant to attract Republican support, but no Republican support. Not even Olympia Snowe, at this point, has committed to backing the bill.

Meanwhile, the framework has conceded enough to the GOP that it's also losing Democratic support, including that of Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Finance Committee's Health Care Subcommittee. And Rockefeller says that four to six Democrats on the committee feel similarly. Baucus is thus caught between a rock and a hard place. The absence of any Republican support makes it hard for him to justify his compromises. And his compromises make it hard for the Democrats on the committee to support his bill.

Ayn Rand is Screwing Up the World ... Still

MUST READ: I never got too many specifics on what Ayn Rand's philosophy was - aside from that she was influential to the supply-siders in the GOP. But this TNR piece by Jonathan Chiat reviewing a new biography on Rand is extraordinary. Personally, I realized how the Rand - Anti-Rand schism is a fight I've been debating with conservatives since before I was able to define the debate (i.e. since before today). Especially in the context of the healthcare debate - and under a progressive President - it's essential to understand why certain arguments just don't work on the Right....and it's because they're operating on a separate, Randian, world view complete with its own values, terminology, and blind faith in empirically false ideals.

Toon

Peak Everything = Collapse

(via Syd O) The Oil Drum has an excellent - comprehensive - explanation of Peak Oil theory. It's a long read but well worth it because it goes into the causes, the effects, and confronts the usual counter-points.

A Defense of Industrial Farming

There's a lot to agree with - and a lot to consider - in this piece by a Missouri farmer in the AEI journal The American. Its true that the slow food movement has been harsh on traditional farmers, and de-humanized them to an extent, and that we aren't yet in a place (and may never be) where organic farming is the primary method of farming. But the author, I think, sounds like someone who would be happy to adjust methods if they were profitable and convenient ... and that's the general purpose of the green/slow-food movement - to create a market force and integrated systems so that organic farming is a reasonable and cost-effective option to farmers. He makes good points about nitrogen content and the need for artificial fertilizer, and I don't know enough to comment on that point, but I would think that that would be a problem to tackle with further innovation - and may become intractable in its own right with peak oil/natural gas curbing nitrogen production.

How Medical Breakthroughs Happen

This post in response to Megan McCardle's post on "Why [she] Opposes National Health Care" is worth reading. One of McCardle's reasons was that "monopolies are not innovative" - and she says that Phrma, for instance, is way more productive than government run operations like the NIH. Well, Ben Domenech took issue and wrote a nice response.

GE and NewsCorp Censor Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann

This is very scary. Read Glenn Greenwald's account, but essentially GE and NewsCorp -the parent companies of Fox News and MSNBC - felt that the O'Reilly/Olbermann feud was bad for business (GE and NewsCorp's ... NOT bad for the news networks) so the agreed to censor both guys .... and lo and behold, since they put the order out both Keith and Bill have been silent.

Corporate Censorship.

I know that news organizations censor their own - and have a point of view, or a slant - but it's pretty disturbing when a parent corporation has control over news content, and even more scary when 2 parent corporations get together to stifle competing news shows.

The Primary Effect

This Nate Silver graph is cool (via Yglesias). And as Matt says, it shows why it would be a good thing for health care if Chuck Grassley had an opponent in the general election because it would push him more to the center. Instead, all he has is a wacko right-winger to pull him further to the right (and against healthcare) in the GOP primary.

Inside Girl

Robert Draper has a piece in the NYT Magazine on Obama's inside adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Lincoln's Emancipation

Chris Hitchens has a fantastic review in the Atlantic of a new 2 volume biography on Lincoln by Michael Burlingame. Read it all, but here's a choice cut:

Lincoln’s own experience of legal bondage and hard usage is very graphically told: not only did his father’s improvidence deprive him of many necessities, but it resulted in his being hired out as a menial to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water for his father’s rough and miserly neighbors. The law as it then stood made children the property of their father, so young Abraham was “hired out” only in the sense of chattel, since he was obliged to turn over his wages. From this, and from the many groans and sighs that are reported of the boy (who still struggled to keep reading, an activity feared and despised by his father, as it was by the owner of Frederick Douglass), we receive a prefiguration of the politician who declared in 1856, “I used to be a slave.” In Lincoln’s unconcealed resentment toward his male parent, we get an additional glimpse of the man who also declared, in 1858, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the Best Voice on the Gates Arrest

If you've been following the Gates arrest controversy, then you should be reading Ta-Nehisi Coates. His blog has consistently been the best, most realistic, thoughtful insight into what the implications are. I've been dissapointed with liberals on this, and shocked at the GOP response. Is it not a fact that racial profiling exists? That there are racial undercurrents that should be discussed regardless of this was a product of those undercurrents? I really feel for Crowley, I think he's in a horrible spot and I feel for the guy. But I've been bewildered with how many people are willing to write off race altogether and act like this was just regular police work.

Anyway, read Coates. And this post is good example. But read up on his earlier ones.

It's worth watching Obama's statement. I really can't begrudge him--his priority is health-care. Me, on the other hand, I'm pretty exhausted. What follows is the raw. Not much logic. Just some thoughts on how it feels.

I feel pretty stupid for going hard on this, and stupider for defending what Obama won't really defend himself. I should have left it at one post. Evidently Obama, Crowley and Gates are talking about getting a beer together. I hope they have a grand old time.

The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me.

I was thinking earlier this week about the connection between all of this and the Senate almost passing a bill which would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon in any state, as long as your home state approves. Maybe there is no line between to the two, or maybe I just haven't connected them yet.

In his book Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth Jackson talks about citizens accepting the responsibility for democracy. He's discussing red-lining, as I recall, and notes that it would be wrong to see government policy toward black neighborhoods as a shadowy conspiracy to destroy black communities. It's much darker than that. The government represents the people, and thus one must see red-lining, housing segregation, and housing covenants not as the machinations of bureaucrats, but as a manifestation of popular will. My reading on Reconstruction has led me the same way. Rutherford B. Hays did not so much fail, as the country made a choice--we'd rather kill Indians and expand, then protect citizens from terrorism.

When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that. It's not why he's there. He is there to pass health-reform--not make us post-racist, or post-police power, or post-whatever. Only the people can do that. And they don't seem particularly inclined. Here is what the election of Barack Obama says about race--white people, in general, are willing to hire a black guy for the ultimate job. That's a big step. But it isn't any more than what it says.

I hope Crowley, Gates and Obama get that beer soon. They need to pour out a little something for Shem Walker. We can't all go to Harvard.

I have been talking too much lately. I need to get back to the Civil War...

UPDATE: Also, watch this video from Morning Joe ... it defines the argument well, and just say I put myself squarely with Carlos and Harold Ford. Mike Barnacle looks ridiculous - it's not a crime to be mad at in your home. It's not a crime to be mad at a cop on your curtilige either. Trust me.

Kudos to Bush

Time has a good article on the last days of the Bush administration concerning the heavy push by Cheney to convince Bush to pardon Scooter Libby. A lot of inside legal discussions, and it makes Bush and his counsel Fred Fielding look good.

And there was a darker possibility. As a former Bush senior aide explains, "I'm sure the President and [chief of staff] Josh [Bolten] and Fred had a concern that somewhere, deep in there, there was a cover-up." It had been an article of faith among Cheney's critics that the Vice President wanted a pardon for Libby because Libby had taken the fall for him in the Fitzgerald probe. In his grand-jury testimony reviewed by TIME, Libby denied three times that Cheney had directed him to leak Plame's CIA identity in mid-2003. Though his recollection of other events in the same time frame was lucid and detailed, on at least 20 occasions, Libby could not recall details of his talks with Cheney about Plame's place of employment or questions the Vice President raised privately about Wilson's credibility. Some Bush officials wondered whether Libby was covering up for Cheney's involvement in the leak of Plame's identity.

The GOP Fightsong

Can be found here.

Obama Addresses Adults

Jon Cohn describes how Obama talked to the American people like adults last night (and with a fantastic breadth of knowledge - which, by the way, is a great change of pace after the last 8 years). Now, will it open him to attacks? Or will citizens engage in the discussion and analysis like adults.

Also - the Blue Dog Dems are finally getting a BUNCH of money pumped into their PAC from Phrma and ex-GOP big oil man Billy Tauzin.

"What's in it for me?"

David Leonardt over at the NYT has a MUST READ piece on how hard it is to explain what's wrong w/ the health care system to the public. And the difficulty shows in the recent poll numbers showing the public less excited about changes to the system. Read it all, but here's a good part:

Our health care system is engineered, deliberately or not, to resist change. The people who pay for it — you and I — often don’t realize that they’re paying for it. Money comes out of our paychecks, in withheld taxes and insurance premiums, before we ever see it. It then flows to doctors, hospitals and drug makers without our realizing that it was our money to begin with.

The doctors, hospitals and drug makers use the money to treat us, and we of course do see those treatments. If anything, we want more of them. They are supposed to make us healthy, and they appear to be free. What’s not to like?

The immediate task facing Mr. Obama — in his news conference on Wednesday night and beyond — is to explain that the health care system doesn’t really work the way it seems to. He won’t be able to put it in such blunt terms. But he will need to explain how a typical household, one that has insurance and thinks it always will, is being harmed.

The United States now devotes one-sixth of its economy to medicine. Divvy that up, and health care will cost the typical household roughly $15,000 this year, including the often-invisible contributions by employers. That is almost twice as much as two decades ago (adjusting for inflation). It’s about $6,500 more than in other rich countries, on average.

We may not be aware of this stealth $6,500 health care tax, but if you take a moment to think, it makes sense. Over the last 20 years, health costs have soared, and incomes have grown painfully slowly. The two trends are directly connected: employers had to spend more money on benefits, leaving less for raises.

In exchange for the $6,500 tax, we receive many things. We get cutting-edge research and heroic surgeries. But we also get fabulous amounts of waste — bureaucratic and medical.