american exceptionalism

whenever i read articles like this one about what we can learn from the dutch health care system, it reminds me of how strange the american health reform effort is. no matter what the article says, we're not going to adopt the dutch system. we're not going to adopt any other country's system. instead, we're going to make up our own system. which is odd because there are a whole bunch of universal health care systems in the world with actual track records. some of them have been around for a while--germany's is 125 years old. the old ones have all been revised and tinkered with over the years, improving the system, patching loopholes, et cetera along the way. they all have problems, but there's also a lot of literature analyzing those problems and suggesting how each system could further improve.

potentially the u.s. could benefit from the rest of the world's experience. there's a wealth of data out there about a lot of different health care systems. we could copy the stuff that works and leave out the stuff that doesn't. but instead we're going to reinvent the wheel. don't get me wrong, that will still be an improvement. but it also means that we might just end up making the same mistakes that other countries made and then fixed years ago.

it's probably too late to go another route on health care reform at this point. the basic plan seems to be shaping up and almost certainly will pass in one form or another.

there's this phrase people sometimes use in the u.s.: "the laboratory of the states." the idea is that our federal system, with 50 autonomous state governments each passing their own legislative solutions to problems, helps improve the legislative outcomes as a whole. states keep an eye on one another and copy the ideas that work and discard those that don't. sometimes really successful ideas are copied on the federal level. i wonder if that phenomenon doesn't deter the u.s. from looking outward for its legislative inspiration. the current federal health reform effort is basically modeled after the mitt romney's massachusetts health reform plan. it's hardly as successful in achieving universality or bringing down costs as most foreign health systems. but dammit, it's ours. so that's the way we must go.

what if they found uatu?

william safire's death inspired the gawker to post a speech safire wrote when he was nixon's speechwriter. the speech was supposed to be delivered in the event that neil armstrong and buzz aldrin were unable to return from the moon. of course, that didn't happen and the speech was never delivered.

which makes me wonder how many other speeches there are out there for things that never happened. why only write a speech for the armstrong and aldrin stuck on the moon scenario? what about if they decided there was only enough fuel for one of them to get back? or what if michael collins (the third apollo 11 astronaut) crashed into the moon instead of staying in orbit? or what if the spacecraft missed the moon entirely?

and are these speeches for remote possibilities only written for space missions? did kennedy's speech writers cook up alternate endings to the cuban missile crisis? isn't there enough stuff that actually happens to keep the speechwriters busy? i would imagine that safire could have written that page and a half speech on the fly if armstrong and aldrin had gotten themselves stranded. if they were stuck, there would be nothing but time.

fun with random comparisons

more americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option. except from what i've seen, you can get the public to say they support or oppose a public option depending on how you word the question. media matters is using the NYT/CBS poll which, i think had a fair wording. ("Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private insurance plans?") so the 65% for/26% against i consider to be fair.

on the other hand, it's kind of crazy that only 34% of americans believe there are flying objects which are not identified. i'm looking out the window right now. i see at least two flying things and i can't tell what they are.

pleading the tenth

i wonder when the folks claiming that national level health reform violates the tenth amendment will realize that the same argument would block any national level tort reform.

i'm guessing never.

do it for the wigsphere

let me second yglesias' question about the desirability of hosting the olympics.

it's kind of like what i wrote years ago about hosting political conventions. well, not exactly. conventions always seem to be money-losers for the host city. some recent olympics have actually made money. and, as yglesias says, the olympics at least come with infrastructure improvements, albeit improvements designed to move people to venues that may be empty when the games leave.

we are other people to everyone else

sometimes i wonder if politicians and people who write about politics understand the concept that other people who live in other countries have a different perspective on things. i personally do not feel at all threatened by the israeli nuclear arsenal, but i understand why many of israel's neighbors would. and i understand why the existence of that arsenal provides a rather large incentive for those neighbors to get their own nukes to deter the israelis. it's not irrational. from where they sit, it makes perfect sense. it's really remarkable to me how many things i've read written by people who don't understand that rather basic point.

similarly, i think most americans would agree that if some foreign politicians openly talking about overthrowing the u.s. government, those statements would be viewed as provocative. even moreso if the foreign country wasn't some piss-ant nation with a third rate military, but rather was a country that could inflict real damage to the united states. i also think that it would be blindingly obvious to most americans that such talk would not get the american people to overthrow their own government. on the contrary, if anything, those kind of threats would probably get people to rally around the american leadership. that's what happened after 9/11, when americans felt threatened by foreigners, they put aside other political differences and threw their support behind president bush, pushing his approval ratings into the 90s.

which is why this kind of talk shows a phenomenal ignorance how normal people would be expected to react in other parts of the world. plus, just as democrats rallied to president bush on 9/12, it's also completely counterproductive if you want to undermine the current iranian regime. and yet statements like senator kyl's are hardly uncommon. they just don't get treated as stupid and irresponsible as they should be.

they're not even pretending it's a real election anymore

link:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other NATO foreign ministers, meeting Friday in New York with their Afghan counterpart, reached "consensus" that Karzai would probably "continue to be president," whether through a runoff or as the legitimate winner of more than 50 percent of votes cast in disputed Aug. 20 elections, an Obama administration official said.

why should afghans believe in their government when a bunch of foreigners reach "consensus" that karzai will be the leader, notwithstanding an obviously fraudulent election?

it's quite a contrast to how these same ministers reacted to the iranian election last june.

squirrels

how do you say "boundary maven" in arabic?

the king abdullah science and technology university (KAUST), the new technical university being established by the saudi government, will have a campus that is exempt from many of the gender segregation laws that prevail in the rest of the country.

it's a strange idea. i mean, the gender segregation is based on religious law. if they really believe that's how things should be, what is the justification for the campus-wide exception? and if they don't believe that's how things should be, why are they still enforcing those rules in the rest of the country?

essentially the saudi authorities are establishing something like an eruv, which i've also always thought was a strange phenomenon for roughly the same reasons.

75-20-3

so many anniversaries on one day.

the first we're going to celebrate tonight.

this is the first time that the second is more than half my age.

and the third, well, that one's a little bit sad. at least this year. i hope later i'll see it differently.

money where our mouth is

as the economist puts it: "THE Israeli right, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, the country’s ebullient prime minister, is celebrating the end of a settlement freeze that never began."

words from the president aren't enough. the demand for a freeze has to be backed up by some penalty-- like maybe deducting israel's expenditures on settlement construction from the american aid package to that country. it's both easy and to his political benefit for netanuahu to ignore the demands of the american president, especially considering how unpopular the freeze proposal is with the members of his coalition. if you want bibi to make hard decisions, he's got to see it's in his interest to do so. and that means being willing to penalize israel for non-compliance.

of course, the penalties won't happen. i don't think any american president can do much more than take a rhetorical hard line against israel right now. changing the aid package requires an act of congress and this congress won't touch israel's package. netanyahu knows that, which is why we can expect more nose thumbings until either congress or the israeli government changes.

ASIDE: i love the "cocks a snook" thing in the economist subheading. why can't our press write like that?

(via the arabist)

wake me up when december ends

while i don't have a dramatic story to blog home about (à la bat story), it was another exciting time at the noz mansion last night. long story short: we found a squirrel at 2:30 a.m. on the second floor of our house. mrs. noz and i ran up to our storage room on the third floor to get a box to use get the squirrel out of our house, only to discover that the squirrel nest is in our storage room.

just to be clear: we didn't lose a battle. it was a tactical retreat. the storage room, for now, is squirrel territory. but we have only begun to fight! the college is calling in the same guy who brought us victory in the bat wars (apparently he's also a squirrel whisperer). we're hoping this isn't a month long ordeal like the bats were.

the squirrels in our house didn't look like the common gray squirrels that we see hopping around the yard all day. they are smaller, have bigger eyes and a white stripe on the side. there was some discussion whether they are baby squirrels, or maybe chipmunks. the other odd thing was that the squirrels in our house are clearly nocturnal while the gray squirrels in our yard clearly are not. some googling revealed that the local variety of flying squirrels are nocturnal. they're also smaller than gray squirrels and have large eyes (i guess to take in more light to see in the dark), so i think that's what they got. i also think that flying squirrels can't spell.

anyway, this further confirms that 2009 is the shittiest year ever, at least in terms of my personal life. most of this years calamities have gone unmentioned on this site. but let's just say that the year started with our car being towed and basically went downhill from there. if our secret project comes through in the next few weeks, the entire year will be redeemed. if not... well, i'm warning you 2009!

probably too early to be optimistic

is it just me, or does it suddenly seem like a health care reform bill with a public option is looking a lot more likely?

there's still a danger that we'll get a bill with a bullshit public option (i.e. one that is designed to fail, or so hobbled that it can't be a meaningful competitor to the private insurance industry). but the vibe i'm getting is a lot more positive than the one i remember just one month ago. i wonder what happened. was it the president's speech? the disasterous reception of the (public option free) baucus bill? or something else?

the noz mansion enters the 20th century

get this: i came home from arabic tonight with the urge to pee. i went upstairs to the second floor bathroom, which was dark. and then i, brace yourself, flicked a switch on the wall to make it light!

will the wonders of technology never cease?

crazy moammar

say what you will about moammar qaddafi, his speeches are original. honestly, i don't know how anyone stays awake all the way through opening speech day at the UN. if my job involved sitting in that room i'd probably look forward to moammar's, just for something different.

some of the highlights of the speech are here (i guess isratine didn't make it into the highlights list, maybe because he's floated that idea before). the one issue i really wish he had addressed is how we should spell his name.

amreeka

thanks to the philadelphia film society, mrs. noz and i went to see a preview of amreeka (imdb). the film tells the story of mona, a single mother who moves from bethlehem to rural illinois with her son fadi. there mona and fadi face several challenges, both from being a stranger in a strange land and from the anti-arab bigotry triggered by 9/11 and the iraq war.

it's a fairly good-natured movie with a "why can't we all get along?" message. the biggest problems with the film were that some of the characters, especially the bigots who serve as the film's villains, were little more than two dimensional stereotypes. there were also a few contrivances (like mona's one american friend turning out to be jewish) and some of the examples of bigotry in the film were a little over the top and didn't seem to be very realistic to me.

then again... the writer/director cherien dabis was there for a Q and A after the screening. i usually think those things are a waste of time. but this one ended up being pretty interesting. maybe that's because the film is a retelling of her own family's history, when her aunt came to the u.s. during the gulf war, moving in with dabis and her family in small town ohio. apparently in real life things happened that were even more extreme than what i thought was over-the-top and unrealistic in the film.

so what do i know? people in the majority often don't see the full extent of what minorities go through. maybe that's the case with this. and, despite its problems, it's still basically an enjoyable film. plus, as ursula lindsey points out, there haven't been many films about the arab-american experience during the war on terror. "amreeka" might not be the ideal film to address the issue, but at least it makes the effort.

don't know much about history

booman's observation reminds me of one of my pet peeves: the tendency to portray the israeli-palestinian struggle as some kind of ancient conflict. it's a surprisingly common thing to see.

there are several potential quibbles with booman's characterization. there are several difference points that can be used to date the beginning of the conflict. you could use 1947 or 1948 as booman did. or you can go back to the arab revolt in the 1930s, or the palestine riots of 1920, or to the beginning of the british mandate, or to the balfour declaration, or maybe even to the publication of der judenstaat. but that only gets you as far back as 1896.

that's still far far away from being the product of the ancient world. i'm not sure where the common notion that the conflict is much older comes from. i think it's because the I/P conflict takes place in the same place as the bible. because the setting is the same everyone assumes it must somehow relate to those ancient tales and not the twentieth century real estate dispute. that it is characterizing it as a conflict so old that it dates back to the dawn of recorded history makes it seem more complicated and less solvable than it is.

don't get me wrong, it's already a pretty complicated and difficult issue. all i'm saying is there's no need to warp history make it worse.

what a long strange trip it's been

five years ago this week, the first philadelphia drinking liberally was held. that's what it was called back then, "philadelphia drinking liberally" not "center city drinking liberally." at that time, it was the only one in town.

i wasn't able to make that first meeting, but i did go the next week. and have been going almost every week since then. i even kept the fires burning in those dark post-2004 election days, when it was basically just me, eligere and her mom huddled in the corner of ten stone. things got a lot better after that. i have made more friends than i can count, much less give everyone a link in this post, and that's not counting all those defunct blogs or blogless DL friends.

so tonight we're celebrating five years of liberal drunkenness. there will be cake and mithras is buying. whether you've been coming for years or this is your first time, everyone's invited:

triumph brewing company
117 chestnut street
philadelphia, PA
6 p.m. until everyone leaves.

wika-wakka

i'm not usually a defender of donald rumsfeld, but i don't know how anyone could resist trying to edit a wiki page about themselves. the entire idea of wikipedia is that the editing function is open to everybody. doesn't "everybody" include the subject of the page? sure, rumsfeld is biased when it comes to rumsfeld. but i suspect that most other people who would be contributing to that page would be too. the philosophy behind wikipedia is that while individuals are biased, the crowd will fact check itself and lead to something resembling objectivity.

i don't believe that's actually the case. but if you do believe in wiki's open source experiment, i don't see how there's anything wrong with rummy participating.

kiss of death

ahmadinejad congratulates karzai on election victory. mahmoud didn't even wait for the results to be announced in the afghan election.

(via)

FCC says it needs to stare at nipple more

how do you "further investigate" something like that? they've been investigating it for five years already. could there possibly be any other relevant information that they haven't had a chance to review yet?

i think all they're doing is watching janet jackson's nipple over and over again in slow motion. sure, the scene looked exactly the same the first million times you see it. but if you keep watching it, you start seeing other deeper truths. i'm sure that eventually that nipple will break down and start talking.

nothing but straw

this headline is spot-on. i don't understand why anyone takes straw polls at all seriously. they're not scientific, and can't be said to really measure anything. in terms of accuracy, they're somewhere around the clickable polls found on internet sites or survey's sponsored by investor business daily. they have about as good a track record too (do you remember when john mccain came in at the bottom of the 2007 iowa straw poll, dooming his chances to get the republican nomination? i didn't think so)

despite their terrible record for predicting anything, straw polls results from partisan gatherings are regularly reported as if they mean something.

talk like a pirate 'eid

l'shana tovaaaarg

AfPakwards

"AfPak" sounds much better than "PakAf." plus i think "PakAf" sounds a little too close to an ethnic slur.

quds day

why does the english-language press call the last friday of ramadan "quds day" and not "jerusalem day"? they translate the word "day" why don't they translate the first word too?

if i remember correctly when it's mentioned in the press, the other "jerusalem day" is called "jerusalem day", not "yom yerushalayim" or "yerushalayim day."

fact czeching

the american media's approach to this missile shield story is really odd. i keep seeing the administration's decision to end the program portrayed as if it is unpopular in eastern europe.

see this story for example. the article quotes alexandr vondra, "former czech deputy prime minister for european affairs and a strong supporter of the missile-defense system." note the word "former." the article doesn't mention the fact that both vondra and marek topolánek (the prime minister to whom vondra served as deputy) lost their positions because the missile defense plan was so unpopular with the czech public.

oddly, the article doesn't bother quoting the current deputy prime minister. and while it does mention jan fischer, the current prime minister of the czech republic, the article doesn't mention his position on missile defense, it just notes that he received the news in a phone call with the president. there is no quote from any politician who applauded the end of the missile defense plan, even though that is the prevailing opinion in the czech republic.

buried in the middle of the article is the sentence: "Czech politicians like Mr. Vondra supported the missile-defense program in the face of opposition from a majority of voters at home." but otherwise the overwhelming tone is that obama is taking an action that is unpopular with the czechs when that is actually far from the truth.

ADDING: matthew yglesias has a chart documenting the persistent and overwhelming opposition to the missile defense system among czech citizens.

muammar qaddafi: a life in fashion

g told me about this when we met to tute. make sure to read all the captions.

"keep fucking that chicken"

the best part isn't the line, it's the look on dari alexander's face right afterwards (at 0:07). she seems to be the only one who remembers that they're still on the air.

(via rumproast)

delayed reaction

right blogistan is aflutter because michael goldfarb noticed that the obama administration is scrapping bush's missile defense plans for eastern europe.

what took them so long? the decision was in the news one month ago. and contrary to their hyperventilating about obama selling out our allies, all this does is finally bring u.s. policy in line with where public opinion has been in both poland and the czech republic for quite some time. in fact, earlier in the year opposition to the deployment of an american missile defense system caused the czech government to fall. it's not selling out our allies when we're doing what they want.

as robert farley said last month when this actually was news, the missile defense plan never made much sense. which is probably why the bright lights of the right are so committed to the idea.

baucus might have overplayed his hand

max's bullshit plan, which relied upon co-ops that were designed to be ineffective in lieu of a public plan, might end up saving the public option. by going with an obviously neutered version of the co-op idea, baucus may have ended up discrediting the co-op idea in its entirety.

had he come up with a more viable version of the co-ops, we probably would have been stuck with them in the final bill. instead, baucus' plan is being panned by everyone and by extension that may end up strengthening the hand of those who favor a public option.

UPDATE: another sign that the baucus bill has backfired.

negotiations?

what exactly was max baucus doing for the past few months? i mean, supposedly he was negotiating his fantabulous health care compromise plan with the republicans.

the idea of negotiations is that you start at point X and make concessions in exchange for votes. that's the point, getting votes, not making concessions. you find things you're willing to give on in return for securing support of the overall bill. you justify the concessions because you had to do that to get the votes you need and you decide that having a bill with the conceded ground is better than having no bill at all.

but apparently that's not what baucus was doing. he wasn't negotiating, he was simply conceding. without a quid pro quo, there's no reason for anyone on the pro-reform side to accept the concessions. this is simply the health insurance industry's bill under the guise of some grand bipartisan compromise. but the ruse can't work unless he gets at least one GOPer for cover. if we had a rational political culture the entire baucus effort would be universally viewed as a joke. unfortunately, that's not our political culture.

still sneaking into baghdad

i wonder how long it will take before it's possible for an american leader to visit iraq without it being an unannounced visit. will i live to see the day?

the iranians can do it. why can't we?

doctors overwhelmingly support reform with the public option

i'm not surprised to see that doctors support health care reform with a public option by an overwhelming 2.5 to one margin. every doctor i have talked to about the subject is strongly in favor of health reform. they're quite familiar with the health insurance industry's shenanigans.

a lot of people seem to have the impression that doctors don't want health reform. i think that's a leftover sentiment from the AMA's opposition to prior health care reform efforts. this time the organization is supporting the reform efforts, though it hasn't committed to the public option. with three-quarters of american doctors against a purely private insurance system, i wonder if the AMA might eventually give in on that as well.

six months late

it's odd that so many people are treating this week as the first anniversary of the global financial crisis. they're using the collapse of lehman brothers as the beginning. but that happened several weeks after the bailout of fannie and freddie, and those bailouts came months after the bailout of bear stearns.

i would think it's the rescue of bear stearns that would be the real indicator that this recession is something different from what we've seen in the past 70 years. i realize at the time, they thought the bailout would be a one-shot deal, once they put the bear back on its feet everything could go back to normal. but that proved to be a mistake. the moment that you realize the problem is more serious is not the same as the moment that the problem became serious.

who's next

mustang bobby posted this classic, always topical, tom lehrer song:


it's been a few years before i've heard the song. i realize it's a joke, but it's also a snapshot of what fears about nuclear proliferation looked like in 1965. what i find interesting is how inaccurate those fears turned out to be.

lehrer starts out with the four countries that had the bomb at the time he recorded the song: the US, "russia" (i.e. the USSR), france and china. (for some reason, he skipped the UK, the third country to get the bomb, after the USSR but before france). of the six countries that he projects getting the bomb next, he only gets two right: israel and south africa. plus, south africa gave up it's nuclear weapons program voluntarily before it ever tested it's device (well, maybe before). meanwhile, the other countries that did get nuclear weapons after china are largely unforeseen: india, pakistan and north korea (and that's putting aside countries like kazakhstan, ukraine and belarus that didn't exist when the song was written and who ended up giving up their nukes pretty quickly). the song is supposed to be funny, but if it were written today, you can bet that iran would be projected to get the bomb. the next best guesses would probably be egypt, syria, and brazil.

then again, forty years from now, those guesses could look just as foolish as indonesia does today.

marching out of focus

(via another matt) i read matt welch's impressions of yesterday's tea party. it's one of the more interesting accounts because he's observing the event as an outsider, but he also isn't going out of his way to be critical of the people who took part.

welch sums up by saying that he didn't really find any overarching "subtle truth" about the marchers or the movement. but in reading his account the one overarching thing i came away with is that the tea baggers are unfocused. they don't seem to have a specific agenda. there are no concrete policies they are trying to get enacted, they're just pissed off. that's pretty much the impression i got at my tea party experience last spring.

more often than not, demonstrations aren't effective at bringing about real changes. when they do work, it's because they are focused on a specific demand. that's why it was so frustrating for anti-iraq war activists when the "free mumia" and "meat is murder" crowd showed up for their demonstrations in 2003. so what exactly do the tea baggers want? it seems to me that they're all the right's equivalent of the "meat is murder" people. there's no central demand to dilute. the entire message is diluted from the get-go.

i guess they're all vaguely against obama's health care proposal. to the extent they have specific critiques of the health care plan (whether it be a position against "death panels" or a "government takeover of the health care system" or the "government paying for illegal immigrants' health care" or "government paying for abortions") the things they are against are not in the president's actual plan. that makes the protesters extremely easy to ignore. a politician who wants to vote for the bill can look at their signs and think "i'm not doing any of those things by casting a yes vote." by thriving on misinformation, the right has effectively written itself out of the health care policy debate.

do it for history

as i suggested years ago, i think the whole "czar" thing is pretty stupid. but i almost hope that obama makes this guy one.

crank call offensive

i'm actually pretty surprised this doesn't happen more often.

not that it's justified. harassing random citizens in another country, even a country hostile to your own, really doesn't accomplish anything. but given how easy it is to telephone across borders, you'd think the temptation would be irresistible among the most hotheaded citizens of any country in a conflict. so why is this the first time i've ever read about cross-border cranks?

maybe it's only happening now because international calling is getting to be so cheap? i bet israelis from the far north can get onto the lebanese cell phone network and make it a local call. (it would have worked from syria)

and the winner is...

putting aside the whole "who's gonna rake in the most cash?" question, it seems pretty clear that next year's race will be awash in money. south carolina's entire second district has only 668,668 residents.

in the end, the big winner to the "you lie" circus will be the local tv stations. ultimately that's where all this money is going.

joe wilson2

i was waiting for someone to draw the joe wilson-joe wilson comparison.

non-obligatory not-quite about 9/11 metapost

i never know what to do about holidays, or memorial days, or whatever the hell 9/11 is right now. in general, this blog doesn't note the occurrence of every important day. sometimes they come up, but only because the day is linked to something that i otherwise want to talk about. many holidays pass without any note here at all.

anyway, it's the eighth anniversary of 9/11. but you knew that already. everyone knows that already. so why do i need to post about it? especially considering that every other blogger in the universe already is. it seems pretty well covered to me. what could i possibly add?

that got me curious about what i have done on 9/11 in prior years. no 9/11 post stood out in my mind. have i ever made a deal about it on this site? hey, that's why the blog gods created the archives. so i took a peek.

last year, i didn't post on 9/11. the year before that, i did do a short post, mostly about how politicized the day had become. in 2006, i told the heavily edited story of the day i had in new york city. (if you want the real story, you need to ask me in person) the year before that, i was in damascus, and it didn't come up. in 2004, i did write a 9/11 post--how 'bout that! and in 2003, on the first 9/11 after i started writing this blog, i was in khiva and brought it up only tangentially at the end.

so what does that prove? i'm not sure. probably nothing. maybe i had a point when i started looking through my archives but now that i've retrieved all those links, damned if i don't post them. it does show that i haven't been very consistent. and that i sometimes travel in september. actually, at one point i thought i would probably be traveling now. which is why my no caffeine month ends today. i am sipping my first cup of coffee in 31 days at this very moment. maybe it will help me deal with the swaying building.

not on the list

poor transnistria, the post-soviet breakaway region that's not cool enough for chavez.

hee hee! look at this country! "you are gay."

i didn't expect this from uruguay. then again, what do i know about uruguay?

prediction

representative joe wilson is about to become the newest wingnut hero.

take a moment to imagine those same right winger's reaction if a member of congress had yelled "you lie!" in one of bush's speeches to congress. there was a time, not too long ago, when a nationwide freak-out was triggered simply because a musician publicly stated that she wished she wasn't from the same state as the president. how times have changed.

of course they did...

...how else was the insurance lobby supposed to do its final edits?

ADDING: it seems that my one-liner about baucus using health industry lobbyists as editors of his health care plan is not a joke. check out the metadata. the document was created by the VP of public policy and external affairs at wellpoint.

999

happy anniversary julia. to be honest, i never thought you'd stay together this long.

qaddafi really hates switzerland

robert farley reminded me of this story from last week about how moammar qaddafi is lobbying to abolish switzerland:

Switzerland "is a world mafia and not a state", he said, adding that it was "formed of an Italian community that should return to Italy, another German community that should return to Germany, and a third French community that should return to France".

but what about the romansh community? doesn't anyone care about them?!?!?! where will they go, colonel qaddafi?

also this strikes me as an odd proposal to come from ruler of a nation that shares its official language with 21 other countries.

rescission question

rescission is such a loathsome practice, i have no idea why the pro-reformers aren't highlighting it more. if you do the math, it means that if you're insured, you have roughly a 50% chance of losing your insurance if you're ever diagnosed with a massively expensive medical condition. it's insane. it means that half of us with insurance aren't really insured against something really bad happening. there's really no way to defend the practice.

but putting that aside, the retroactive cancellation of health insurance policies raises an interesting issue: why doesn't the insurance company return all of the premiums ever paid for the individual whose policy it cancels? the logic behind rescission is that there was some flaw with the initial application and that the insurance company would not have issued the policy if it was aware of that flaw. but in the meantime, the company has received years, sometimes decades, of premiums in exchange for coverage. if the company decides it granting the policy mistake and retroactively removes coverage, shouldn't it also pay back those years of premium payments? if insurance companies make it like the coverage never happened, then a lot of premiums were paid in error.

recount

how can a recount resolve allegations of stuffed ballot boxes and fake polling places?

the problem is not that the vote wasn't counted properly. the problem is that the things counted were falsified. if you do a recount of them, you're just going to get the same result. but that doesn't make the election any more legitimate.

VB day

we can finally declare victory in the great glorious war against the bats. today, the bat whisperer confirmed that all of our unofficial roommates had moved and he plugged the remaining holes the masonry of our house. the final bat count was 72--which is actually significantly less than i thought earlier this week, but significantly more that i ever imagined when that first one scared the bejeezus out of us in our bedroom one month ago.

after surviving the war against the bees and now bats, i can only wonder what critter that starts with the letter B will invade next. birds? bobcats? bears? bunsen burners?

maybe i'll figure that out when we're in aktobe.

shamans of the GOP

via FB, josh pointed me to this post. it begins with a question that a lot of us have probably been asking:

As the tide of frothing-at-the-mouth anti-health-care-reform whack-jobs begins to recede a bit, many of us in the not-entirely-irrational community find ourselves asking questions that are, in one way or another, versions of "What the hell was that?" How, after all, could so many people have so much passionate intensity about a reform bill about which they clearly know next to nothing?

i don't completely agree with what follows from there. (isn't political analysis a kind of anthropology? plus nazi comparisons are usually a bad idea) but to the extent that robert is talking about fear-mongering more than logical debate, i think that's pretty much on target.

where we are now

it's hard to see a clearer example of the double standard in our political culture than this: van jones was forced to resign because he once may have been part of the 911 truther movement, while there are numerous members of congress who are part of the birther movement who have not faced any serious pressure to resign.

in this country right now, the crazy fringe of the left is unacceptable whereas the crazy fringe of the right is all but indistinguishable from the "mainstream" right.

gonzales cantana

i'm skipping town today, so i won't get to see the gonzales cantana (or any of the fringe festival). have fun without me!

taking woodstock

ang lee is one of a handful of directors whose films i will always try to see. not all of his films are great, but even his failures are usually interesting failures. taking woodstock, unfortunately, is in the latter category. it's not a bad film, it's just solidly okay. i'd say it's better than hulk, but worse than... um, everything else.

(though, to be fair, i haven't seen chosen. it's quite possible that "taking woodstock" is lee's third, not second, worst film)

"the entire party has been taken over by crazy people"

pretty much.

sham freeze

what a joke. bibi is approving hundreds of west bank settlement construction, just before he agrees to a six to nine month freeze. of course, those hundreds are in addition to the 2,500 construction projects that are already in the pipes. and because these construction projects generally take longer than six to nine months if you measure from the initial approval stage through completion, it effectively means there will be no halt in west bank construction, even if netanyahu institutes a nine month freeze.

of course, bibi has the power to institute a real halt if he wants. he could put all pending projects on hold as part of the freeze. but he's not interested in a real freeze. this is more about managing an american president who is surprisingly more assertive on the settlement issue than any recent president has been. which means it's up to obama to say this bullshit freeze isn't good enough. i doubt he'll do that.

backtrackin'

it looks like the bushies have been working the phones this week!

soon i'll probably see everybody reading this on the train

like JMM, there aren't many current affairs or memoir type books i'm really eager to read. unlike JMM i'm not at all interested in kennedy's either.

honestly, i don't know why anyone would ever want to read any politician's book, except for maybe historical research. i guess ted kennedy hasn't been dead long enough for me to consider him history.

infotainment without the info--again

i don't watch a lot of tv news. but do any of the cable news channels have people who aren't totally ignorant about the most basic elements of the health care system in this country?

i mean, not realizing that only people 65 and older are eligible for medicare is pretty stupid. but not understanding what medicare is after months of talking about health care when your job is to report on the news is inexcusable.

i've busted on fox news before, but as this example illustrates it's not just fox. in a rational world, people who make factual errors like this in a news program would make a correction or be fired. instead, we have a bunch of news channels that cannot be relied upon to give accurate information.

if you step back and think about it, that's really is quite astounding.

"gang of six" probably dead

hallelujah.

who came up with this "gang of ____" idea anyway? i made fun of it before, but in all seriousness, it just seems like a stupid idea to me. every two to six years the american public elects its representatives to congress. but rather than letting all of those representatives work on the most important issues of the day, they delegate that work to a small group who represents only a small fraction of the country. plus, they make sure the group is evenly split between the parties. it doesn't matter if the electorate chose to have a democratic majority, it's always got to be an even split.

it just seems like an idiotic way to draft the key elements of important legislation. plus, it's not very democratic. why would anyone think that is a good idea? (other than the minority party of course. but if they weren't elected as the majority, why should anyone other than the minority party members care?)