Later On

A very interesting post at The Simple Dollar, which begins:

September 23, 2005

On that day, I wrote the following entry in my personal journal (edited just a bit):

Sometimes I feel like my life is completely without purpose and I’m just following some invisible pattern that someone else has put into place.

Today was a typical day. But every day is a typical day.

I woke up about 6:30 and said good bye to Sarah as she left. I watched the news for a while, got dressed, and headed off to work. I stopped at Gregory’s and ate a bagel and drank a cup of coffee while I read the paper. I drove to work. I got a few tasks done, surfed the web for a while, did a few more things. I went out to lunch at El Azteca and dropped $12 on a tasteless lunch. I sat at my desk most of the afternoon, thinking about the weekend and wishing I wasn’t a complete failure at writing. I stopped at the bookstore on the way home and bought three books. I went to the music store and got the new Basement Jaxx album that Charlie talked about. I listened to it on the way home and didn’t like it at all. I got home, tried to write a little bit while waiting for Sarah, hated everything. Deleted all of it. We went out to dinner. Now she’s watching a movie and I’m sitting here doing nothing.

I do all of these things almost every single day – but I feel like I’m going nowhere at all.

Five things really jumped out at me as I read this piece.

First, a typical day for me meant wasting a lot of money. On this “typical” day, I bought three books, a CD, and ate all of my meals out, even though I had a fully-functional kitchen at home. That’s easily $70 to $80, just wasted that day.

Second, …

Continue reading.

Joe Conason brings out the relevant facts on the Walpin firing. His article begins:

To Barack Obama’s most excitable adversaries, the firing of the Americorps inspector general that the president ordered last week is an incipient scandal, as loud and thrilling as Whitewater once was. Their fond memories of that ancient controversy (and its many sequels) were revived by the sudden dismissal of Gerald Walpin, a Bush administration appointee who has depicted himself as the victim of a political conspiracy. Insinuations and smears abound already — including an attempt by the usual suspects to drag the first lady into the mud, Hillary-style, on the basis of anonymous allegations.

The latest accusations of White House impropriety are indeed reminiscent of the Clinton wars. But before conservatives spin themselves into a grand mal frenzy, they ought to understand that the strongest parallels between  "Walpingate" and Whitewater are the palpable flimsiness of the charges and the questionable motives of the chief accuser. Unless there is much more to this story than what responsible journalists have found so far, the buzzing chatter on the right will soon subside into a disappointed murmur.

According to the wingnut version, Walpin is a heroic investigator who was ousted simply because he exposed misspending of hundreds of thousands of federal dollars by an Obama ally, namely former NBA star Kevin Johnson, who ran a nonprofit organization in Sacramento that received Americorps funding before he was elected mayor of the California state capital last fall. Walpin had to be removed on June 11, after he refused the president’s request that he resign, because the White House was trying to cover up Johnson’s wrongdoing and permit his city to receive federal stimulus money.

That simple and sinister scenario, like so many of the media descriptions of Whitewater, omits crucial facts.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m glad to see that Gates is not just rolling over on this. Nancy A. Youssef and David Lightman in McClatchy:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates Thursday said he was having "a big problem" with Congressional efforts to restore funding for the F-22, indicating that a showdown is looming between the Pentagon and Capitol Hill over the future of the one of the Air Force’s most advanced fighter jets.

Gates had proposed ending production of the F-22 Raptor and replacing it with the F-35 or Joint Strike Fighter, an unpopular decision among airmen who favor the aircraft and members of Congress from 46 states, whose districts benefit from aircraft construction.

He spoke after the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday approved $369 million for "advanced procurement" of 12 F-22s in the fiscal year starting in September.

Even some top Air Force commanders are backing the drive on Capitol Hill for hundreds more F-22s than Gates is seeking. In a June 9 letter to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Gen. John Corley, the commander of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, wrote: "In my opinion, a fleet of 187 F-22s puts execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near to mid term." …

Continue reading. It’s tough to govern the country for the benefit of the public once a substantial number of Representatives and Senators have simply been purchased by big business.

Paul Krugman points out what’s missing. From his column:

… President Obama’s speech outlining the financial plan described the underlying problem very well. Wall Street developed a “culture of irresponsibility,” the president said. Lenders didn’t hold on to their loans, but instead sold them off to be repackaged into securities, which in turn were sold to investors who didn’t understand what they were buying. “Meanwhile,” he said, “executive compensation — unmoored from long-term performance or even reality — rewarded recklessness rather than responsibility.”

Unfortunately, the plan as released doesn’t live up to the diagnosis.

True, the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency would help control abusive lending. And the proposal that lenders be required to hold on to 5 percent of their loans, rather than selling everything off to be repackaged, would provide some incentive to lend responsibly.

But 5 percent isn’t enough to deter much risky lending, given the huge rewards to financial executives who book short-term profits. So what should be done about those rewards?

Tellingly, the administration’s executive summary of its proposals highlights “compensation practices” as a key cause of the crisis, but then fails to say anything about addressing those practices. The long-form version says more, but what it says — “Federal regulators should issue standards and guidelines to better align executive compensation practices of financial firms with long-term shareholder value” — is a description of what should happen, rather than a plan to make it happen.

Furthermore, the plan says very little of substance about reforming the rating agencies, whose willingness to give a seal of approval to dubious securities played an important role in creating the mess we’re in…

Read the whole thing. When did Democrats become so fond of fatcats and big business? Shouldn’t the reforms be put in place to protect the public (the function of government) rather than to protect the lends and their executives?

Glenn Greenwald:

The American establishment media in a nutshell:

"I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up [in the run-up to the war] and say ‘this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this,’ that we didn’t do our job. I respectfully disagree.  It’s not our role" — NBC News’ David Gregory, thereafter promoted to host Meet the Press.

"Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central.  The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

"Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy.

"It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography.  I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

"If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

"I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter – whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way" – Dan Froomkin, fired yesterday by The Washington Post.

* * * * *

The Washington Post‘s firing of Dan Froomkin reveals much about the modern establishment media.

Read the rest of this entry »

What a bunch of wimps. Greenwald:

"What’s really interesting, the president yesterday has said, he complained about FOX, and he said, I think accurately, that it is the one, only voice of opposition in the media.

And it makes us a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run, with the exception that in Hugo Chavez-land, you go after that one station with machetes. I haven’t seen any machetes around here, so I think we are at least safe for now" — oppressed victim Charles Krauthammer, Wednesday night on Fox News, decrying the persecution of conservative pundits.

This is what one finds — just from today — on the Op-Ed page of The Washington Post, which yesterday fired Dan Froomkin:

* Neocon Charles Krauthammer:   attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran

* Neocon Paul Wolfowitz:  attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran

* Establishment/CIA spokesman and war supporter David Ignatius:  demanding that Obama do more to support Freedom in Iran and refuse to negotiate with the Iranian regime

* Bush CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden:  warning that America will be in danger if CIA officials involved in torture continue to be criticized and questioned about what they did

On Monday, the Post hosted an online chat with Fox News’ Glenn Beck to promote his new book.  Today, on its so-called "Post-Partisan" Opinions page, The Post features a column from neocon Bill Kristol, attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran; a column from right-wing polemicist Kathleen Parker, attacking Obama for indifference to Freedom in Iran; and Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, attacking PBS for banning sectarian programming.  On Wednesday, it published an Op-Ed from neocon Robert Kagan accusing Obama of being "objectively" pro-Ahmedinejad (headline:  "Obama, Siding with the Regime").  The Post hosts a permanent feature with National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru, leading discussions about conservatism.  And its Editorial Page, for years, was (and still is) the loudest cheerleaders for the neoconservative prongs of Bush’s foreign policy, particularly the war in Iraq.

The Washington Post does more to advance neoconservative ideology than The Weekly Standard, the American Enterprise Institute and Commentary combined.  But Post columnist Charles Krauthammer — and so many like him — fantasize that they’re surrounded by a Liberal Media that oppresses, persecutes and silences them.  Just ponder the levels of delusion and self-pity necessary to believe that…

Continue reading.

Now they’re trying to get the US to intervene in Iran. Joe Klein of TIME:

The Washington Post’s increasingly strident op-ed page offers a double-barreled neocon assault on President Obama’s Iran position today by Charles Krauthammer and Paul Wolfowitz. And it’s interesting to see these fellows—among the smartest of the neocons—deploy the usual intellectual shortcuts in the neoconservative bag of tricks: Broad, unsupported statements of opinion posing as fact…and false historical analogies.

Take Krauthammer. He boldly states this:

The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

They do? Which ones? Name one. And if that word came, what then? Would it be the same as the "word" Dwight Eisenhower sent, and later regretted, supporting the Hungarian protesters in 1956 when he had no intention of supporting them militarily? Or the "word" that George H.W. Bush sent the Iraqi Shi’ites after the first Gulf War, who then rebelled against Saddam Hussein and were slaughtered? In fact, it seemed clear to me when I was in Iran—and even more clear, given the events of the past few days—that the protesters realize that they have to do this on their own. And that an American endorsement would taint their movement, perhaps fatally.

Wolfowitz deploys an interesting historical analogy from his own past—the Reagan intervention in the Philippine elections—but it is flawed as well. For one thing, no winner had been announced when Reagan intervened, after a period of restraint, in favor of Corazon Aquino and those who voted to topple President-for-Life Ferdinand Marcos.  For another, the Philippines  were a  former  U.S. colony that remained, at that point, very much a U.S. client state.  We had military bases there.  We had real power. (Wolfowitz also doesn’t deal with the fact that there were announced results in the Iranian elections—and that Ahmadinejad might well have won without the fraud.)

Iran is quite the opposite from the Philippines…

Continue reading.

Mike Lillis in the Washington Independent:

As Congress dives head first into what has fast become a thorny debate over health care reform, the key Democrats in the discussion have insisted that all options remain on the table.

All, that is, except one.

Universal, single-payer health care — the idea that the government will cover everyone’s medical bills using taxpayer dollars — was dismissed by leading Democrats long before any details of their reform plans have been finalized. In the Senate Finance Committee, for example, a series of health reform discussions this year included input from academics, retirees, health insurers and other industry representatives, but no single-payer advocates were invited. Last month, the White House’s top health official told lawmakers that President Obama rejects the model altogether.

The dismissals have confounded supporters of the single-payer system, who contend it’s the only strategy that ensures universal access to care while minimizing expenses within a health system where costs are skyrocketing.

“Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility,” Walter Tsou, advisor to Physicians for a National Health Program, told lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee’s health subpanel. “When some congressional leaders declare that single payer is off the table, they are in effect saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Or, as the article by Michael Grunwald in TIME is titled: "More Data + Less Care = Lower Cost + Better Health". (That’s also the finding by this fascinating article I pointed out previously.) Grunwald notes:

Ezekiel Emanuel got a memorable introduction to our haphazard health-care system on his first visit to a cancer ward as a medical student. The white coats were ordering a transfusion for a teenage girl, and since shyness does not run in his family — brother Rahm is President Obama’s famously foulmouthed chief of staff, brother Ari a similarly silence-deficient Hollywood agent — he interrupted to ask why. Because she had Hodgkin’s disease and her platelets were below 20,000, the team explained. Emanuel still had questions: Was there evidence for that protocol? Don’t some hospitals wait until 10,000? Why 20,000? Because that’s what we do here, one doc replied.

Now a noted oncologist turned White House health adviser, Emanuel has spent much of his career battling the that’s-what-we-do-here mentality of American medicine. "It drives me nuts — the ignorance is overwhelming," he says. "I’m a data-driven guy. I want to see evidence." It turns out that Emanuel’s boss, budget director Peter Orszag, is also a data-driven guy, as is Orszag’s boss, the President of the United States. They’ve already stuffed $1.1 billion into the stimulus bill to jump-start "comparative effectiveness research" into which treatments work best in which situations. Now they’re pushing to overhaul the entire health-care sector by year’s end, and they’re determined to replace ignorance with evidence, to create a data-driven system, to shift one-sixth of the economy from "that’s what we do here" to "that’s what works." (Watch a video about a woman living without health insurance.)

The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country does, and studies have suggested that as much as 30% of it — perhaps $700 billion a year — may be wasted on unneeded care, mostly routine CT scans and MRIs, office visits, hospital stays, minor procedures and brand-name prescriptions that are requested by patients and ordered by doctors every day. Orszag is particularly obsessed with research by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, documenting huge regional variations in costs but virtually no variations in outcomes. For example, chronically ill patients in Los Angeles visited doctors an average of 59.2 times in the last six months of their life, vs. only 14.5 times in Ogden, Utah; they still ended up just as dead. Medicare now pays three times as much per enrollee in Miami as in Honolulu, and costs are growing twice as fast in Dallas as in San Diego. Patients in higher-spending regions get more tests, more procedures, more referrals to specialists and more time in the hospital and ICU, but the Dartmouth research has found that if anything, their outcomes are slightly worse. "We’re flying blind," says Dartmouth’s Dr. Elliott Fisher. "We’re getting quantity, not quality."

Americans tend to assume that more is better, especially when it comes to the heroic brand of try-everything medicine we’ve watched on ER and House M.D. But overtreatment is a national scandal. It’s bad for our health: with medical errors now estimated to be our eighth leading cause of death, drugs, procedures and hospital stays can be risky (as well as painful, time-consuming and wallet-straining) even when they’re necessary. It’s also bad for the economy: health costs are bankrupting small businesses and even conglomerates like General Motors as well as millions of families. And it’s awful for the country: Medicare is on track to go broke by 2017, and our long-term budget problems are primarily health-cost problems…

Continue reading.  The solution is obvious: the nationals that use a single-payer healthcare system have better outcomes at half the per-capita cost of US healthcare. But single-payer healthcare is not being considered. Why?

Moreover, even the public option is in danger because a group of Democrats is worried that having this option would hurt insurance companies’ profits. If the public option is abandoned and some people are too poor for the private insurance companies’ plans, then when people are dying because of a lack of medical care, they can be comforted by the thought that at least insurance companies are maximizing their profits.

In the preface to the second edition of the Guide to Gourmet Shaving, I note:

Traditional wet shaving (with a double-edged blade, safety razor, shaving brush, and shaving cream or shaving soap) seems to be on the increase. Some indications:

• A constant stream of new traditional shavers joining the shaving forums for advice and instruction.
• New vendors of traditional shaving products coming on-line and enjoying success.
• New traditional safety razors being introduced (for example, the Merkur 38C and the slant version of that razor).
• The prices of vintage safety razors on eBay increasing.

Now I see another sign: the number of places you can buy blade sampler packs. First there was only one, a shaving forum member who did it as a service. Eventually, he started West Coast Shaving to sell the sampler packs, and now that site is a full shaving store. Then Razor and Brush started offering sampler packs, and though the proprietor finally had to discontinue the store because of the demands of his day profession, the torch was taken up by Shoebox Shaveshop. Connaught Shaving in the UK has been offering sampler packs for a while, and now I’ve found two more sources. The full list, as of today and so far as I know, in alphabetic order:

• BullGoose Shaving Supplies (in the US)
• Connaught Shaving (in the UK)
• Details for Men (in the US)
• Fendrihan (in Canada)
• Shoebox Shaveshop (in the US)
• West Coasting Shaving (in the US)

In my opinion, every shaver should own a tub of J.M. Fraser’s excellent shaving cream—and a bottle of Booster aftershave isn’t a bad idea either.

The Fraser’s lather is always good, and I love the light lemon fragrance. The Emperor 3 Super produced ample good lather, and the Progress shaved smoothly with the little clicking sound of stubble being cut. A very smooth shave indeed, and June Clover is one of my favorite aftershaves. What a fine shave!

I’m serious about owning J.M. Fraser’s shaving cream. You can get it at Shaving Essentials in the US and at Fendrihan in Canada.

I’m astonished. Dan Froomkin is their best columnist on the White House and politics in general. He bases his criticisms on facts and calls them as he sees them. He criticized Bush when Bush was president, and though he likes some of what Obama has done, he doesn’t like other things and doesn’t hesitate to criticize. Glenn Greenwald:

One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama — i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim.  It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post — at least according to Politico‘s Patrick Gavin — just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.

What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Calderone notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists.  At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 3 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns.  In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline:  "The Post’s Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)."  Isn’t that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the standard right-wing male — as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra’s comparison of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in America — Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are "a lot like [Hugo Chavez'] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run."  But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media. 

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan — as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.).   And that’s to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith — and the Post Editorial Page itself.  "Caracas" indeed. 

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer’s explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin’s criticisms "stupid."  And now — weeks later — Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does:  i.e., standard neoconservative pablum.  Froomkin was previously criticized for being "highly opinionated and liberal" by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point:  …

Continue reading.

Just received this email:

Today, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to eliminate all federal penalties for marijuana possession. This came only one week after he also introduced a bill to protect medical marijuana patients.

Would you please take one minute to ask your U.S. representative to support these two bills? MPP’s easy online action center makes it simple — just enter your name and contact info, and we’ll do the rest.

The Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009 would eliminate the threat of federal arrest and prison for the possession of up to 3.5 ounces of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of an ounce of marijuana — nationwide.

What’s more, last week Congressman Frank introduced the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, which would allow states to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest and jail without federal interference, as well as allow pharmacies to dispense marijuana to patients with a doctor’s recommendation. You can take action on this bill here.

MPP has worked closely with Congressman Frank’s staff in past months, helping to craft both pieces of legislation and build political support for the proposals on Capitol Hill.

Now members of Congress need to hear from their constituents who want to see it passed — that means you! It takes only a minute or two to use MPP’s online action system to send a quick note to your member of the House, so would you please send your letter right now?

Eliminate threat of federal arrest and prison for marijuana possession

Protect medical marijuana patients nationwide

Thank you so much for your help.

I just got Justin Fox’s book from the library today. He has this interesting article in TIME:

Almost every reference to the financial regulatory plan that was unveiled today by President Obama is prefaced with something along the lines of "the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s." Obama himself used such language in his speech this afternoon.

The description isn’t wrong. The Obama plans would, if enacted, amount to the biggest changes in financial regulation since the 1930s. But don’t let this make you think the Obama reforms even approach in significance and forcefulness the changes made back then. In the early days of the Roosevelt Administration, Congress set up the Securities and Exchange Commission and charged it with strictly regulating markets, split banks from investment banks with the Glass-Steagall Act, created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and enacted all manner of other game-changing financial reforms. It’s not just that the Obama reforms are less ambitious than those of the Great Depression. They’re also inspired by a very different interpretation of what went wrong. In the 1930s the overarching idea was that Wall Street had been very naughty and needed to be put in the penalty box — for good. This time the animating spirit behind the changes seems to be that regulators let a lot of things slip through the cracks, so there’s a need both to give them some new tools and exhort them to do better. (See award-winning pictures of the fallout from the financial meltdown.)

There are some perfectly good reasons for this difference in approach: In the early 1930s, Congress was confronting a failed and mostly unregulated financial system. What we have now is a financial system that has been prevented from failing by government actions, and already has regulators swarming over many, but not all, of its parts.

The result is a reform plan that’s clearly had a lot of thought put into it, and responds to many of the most obvious failings of our financial regulatory setup, but doesn’t really change …

Continue reading.

Interesting post by Dan Colman in Open Culture:

When you’re reading The New York Times and stumble upon a word you don’t know, you can highlight it and the Times will give you the definition. Naturally, the Times keeps track of the definitions it provides. So what are the most commonly looked up words? You can find the top ten below. (Get a longer list here.) So, smart readers, did you know all of them?

1. sui generis
2. solipsistic
3. louche
4. laconic
5. saturnine
6. antediluvian
7. epistemological
8. shibboleths
9. penury
10. sumptuary

You can grade your own papers.

The video is from a fascinating article in Wired. Watch the video, then read the article to understand what you’ve seen.

Marion Nestle at Food Politics:

Legislators in the new administration are working on food laws.  Here is a quick sample:

Calorie labeling: it looks like we have bipartisan support for national menu labeling.  If passed, calories will have to be disclosed on menu boards of fast food and vending machine chains throughout the country – and not just in New York City and the few states that have passed their own laws.   Lots of health organizations are backing this proposal.

Food safety: the House just passed its version of a bill that will overhaul some aspects of the present food safety system.  This bill still has a long way to go but is a hopeful sign that Congress might actually do something to fix the FDA.  What the bill does not do is deal with fixing the system.  It exempts meat, poultry, and eggs under USDA jurisdiction.

Produce safety: The new head of the FDA, Margaret Hamburg, says her agency is going to put special efforts into ensuring the safety of high-risk produce. To do that, she will need Congress to pass laws that, among other things, give the FDA the authority to order recalls and a lot more money to carry out its work.

Organics: The U.S. and Canada have agreed to coordinate their organic standards, so foods certified organic in Canada can be sold here and vice versa.  Let’s hope the most stringent standards prevail.

These are (somewhat) hopeful signs.  Let’s hope Congress manages to keep at this and tries to get it right.

First, the phrase is generally incorrect: what is proposed is socialized healthcare insurance, not socialized medicine. And second, in looking at the countries that have the benefit of a single-payer healthcare system, I envy them and can’t figure out why people oppose it.

"Long wait-times": Have you been to an emergency room in the US lately? The wait times are extremely long.

"Illegal immigrants would get healthcare": So? They pay taxes, why should they not benefit from tax-supported programs?

"Healthcare would be rationed": As pointed out in a recent NY Times article I blogged, "rationing" is a red herring. Healthcare in the US is rationed right now, with the poor generally cut off from healthcare. US rationing is based on income and job—not the fairest way to divvy up the resources.

Moreover, the health of the nation is a matter of the public interest. In the public interest, we do not want any large population cut off from healthcare since that population then could become a vector of disease. It’s better, in the national interest, to practice preventive medicine and to ensure that as much of the population as possible has access to medical care. The well-to-do can buy it for themselves, but the poor cannot. In the national interest, we need to make sure that no large group is cut off from medical care—just as it is in the national interest that the populace be well educated.

It’s strange how the self-pitying GOP often comments how the press is so devoted to Barack Obama. Note this story by Ali Frick in ThinkProgress:

Today, two new national polls were released, one by the New York Times and CBS, the other by the Wall Street Journal and NBC. News headlines quickly settled on a theme: The polls showed that President Obama’s policies were suddenly unpopular:

“Sticker Shock — Obama still popular; his policies, not so much” [ABC's The Note]

“Polls find rising concern with Obama on key issues” [Reuters]

“Polls Show Declining Support For Obama Decisions” [U.S. News & World Report's Political Bulletin]

“Obama’s popularity: Problems testing it” [Chicago Tribune's The Swamp]

“Is ‘Smooth Sailing’ Over for Obama?” [Washington Post]

The headlines have little to no relation to the actual data in the polls, both of which found broad approval for Obama’s foreign policy and economic agendas. From the New York Times/CBS poll:

5. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the economy? 57% approve, 35% disapprove

8. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the threat of terrorism? 57% approve, 27% disapprove

16. So far, do you think Barack Obama’s policies have made the economy better, made the economy worse or haven’t his policies had any effect on the economy yet? 32% say better, 15% say worse

And from the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll:

4b. Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing in handling the economy? 51% approve, 38% disapprove

4c. Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing in handling foreign policy? 54% approve , 36% disapprove

9. Which ONE of the following statements best describes your feelings toward Barack Obama?

Like personally and approve most policies…………… 48%
Like personally but disapprove of many policies ……27%

12. And how confident are you that Barack Obama has the right set of goals and policies to improve the economy––extremely confident, quite confident, only somewhat confident, or not at all confident?

Extremely confident………………………. 20%
Quite confident …………………………. 26%
Only somewhat confident ………………….. 24%
Not at all confident …………………….. 29%

Similarly, 68 percent agree with Obama’s view that Guantanamo detainees should be charged with a crime or released back to their home countries, as opposed to only 24 percent who think they should be detained indefinitely. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “The view that detainees should be charged with crimes or released is often depicted as the fringe ‘Far Left’ view. Like so many views that are similarly depicted, it is — in reality — the overwhelming consensus view among Americans.”

Perhaps the most bizarre headline came from USA Today’s blog, The VAL: “Poll: Obama down, cousin Cheney up.” The poll cited showed that 60 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Obama. By contrast, only 27 percent viewed Cheney favorably — while 30 percent viewed him “very negatively.”

Update: The headline to a new Pew research poll claims Obama faces "Some Policy Concerns." However, the poll finds that 61 percent approve of Obama’s job performance (including 57 percent and 52 percent approving of his handling of foreign and economic policy, respectively), while 65 percent are "optimistic" Obama’s policies will improve economic conditions.

The GOP loves to make up facts and then repeat the falsehoods endlessly in the belief that repetition will make them true.

Very interesting post, which begins:

Several days ago I argued that what made Barack Obama’s "big" speeches sound unusual was that they attempted something that among politicians is indeed rare: Not expressing our preexisting views with new clarity and edge but instead asking us to change our minds. I also said it was no accident that Obama had saved these ambitious speeches until he was in the White House, since a campaign was a time for troop-rallying rhetoric rather than asking people to think too hard.

Herewith one message in agreement and one in dissent. First, from Eric Redman, author of The Dance of Legislation (and longtime close friend of mine) who had been a devotee of Richard Neustadt‘s famous presidential-power analyses in college and eventually delivered a eulogy for Neustadt and contributed to a memorial volume about him. The turn in Obama’s rhetoric after the election, Redman says, …

Continue reading. Some good analysis.