Later On

Igor Volsky at The Wonk Room:

Over at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher outlines 10 reasons to kill the Senate health care bill. The comprehensive list relies on the competent work of FDL’s team of health care bloggers and some of the critique is not without merit; other points are overstated. For instance, the claim that “many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use,” is a bit baffling. The newly uninsured would have access to a minimum benefits package that is far more comprehensive than the available options in the individual market. Two-thirds of these “forced” Americans would pay less for more substantive coverage, not more. And the poorest Americans would have their out-of-pocket costs capped.

Hamsher claims that the bill “allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.” This is true, but it’s a massive improvement from the status quo, which allows insurers to charge older people as much a 11 times more for equivalent coverage. The 3:1 ratio may be excessive but it also recognizes that older people use more care than younger people and permits insurers to attract younger applicants with lower rates. Finally, the argument that “the cost of medical care will continue to rise,” also misses the point. National health expenditures will naturally increase, but under the Senate bill, they will raise at a slower rate.

On the whole, Hamsher is right to argue that the Senate bill is a deeply flawed piece of legislation which, as Paul Krugman observes, “we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it.” In fact, “with few exceptions, sweeping initiatives in the U.S. system start small, are often flawed, and then are expanded, sometimes improved, sometimes not.” Medicare began as smaller program that was expanded to cover “hospice benefits, mammograms and pap smears to detect cancer, and most recently, under the Republicans, prescription drugs.”

Fixing something that’s broken is better than not having anything to fix. Buying a fixer-up home is more appealing than remaining homeless for the next 10 to 20 years. In time, you’ll be able afford to change the tile in the bathroom or fix the leaky roof patch, but for the time being you’ll have a place to sleep, eat, and keep warm. A newer house would have caused less problems, but it — like the Senate health care bill — was simply out of reach.

The top 10 list isn’t reason to kill the bill, it’s reason to improve it in the years to come. After all, the choice isn’t between passing this bill or a better bill — it’s between passing this bill or nothing at all. Seen in this context, the Senate health care bill provides an adequate foundation for transforming the system in the years to come.

Here is a graphic representation of the choice lawmakers face:

 

The US military and the Obama Administration continue the policy of providing new civilian casualties to keep terrorists motivated. Greenwald:

Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges.  First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim — anonymously — that some big, bad, notorious, "top" Al Qaeda leader "may have been" or "likely was" killed in the strike, and this constitutes a "stinging" or "devastating" blow against the Terrorist group.  These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of their "reporting" on the attack, drowning out every other issue.

As a result, and by design, there is never any debate or discussion over the propriety or wisdom of these strikes.  After all, what sane, rational, Serious person would possibly question a bombing raid or missile strike that "likely" killed a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter and struck a "devastating blow" to that group’s operating abilities?   Having the story shaped this way also ensures that there is virtually no attention paid to the resulting civilian casualties (i.e., the slaughter of innocent people); most Americans, especially journalists, have been trained to ignore such deaths as nothing more than justifiable "collateral damage," especially when a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter was killed by the bombs (besides, as Alan Dershowitz once explained, "civilians" in close enough proximity to a Top Terrorist themselves may very well bear some degree of culpability).  The adolescent We-Got-the-Bad-Guy! headline also ensures there is no attention paid to the radicalizing effect of these civilian deaths and our attacks for that country and in the region.

Yet over and over and over, it turns out that these anonymous government assertions — trumpeted by our mindless media — are completely false.  The Big Bad Guy allegedly killed in the strike ends up nowhere near the bombs and missiles.  Sometimes, the very same Big Bad Guy can be used to justify different strikes over the course of many years (we know we said we killed him four times before, but this time we’re pretty sure we got him), or he can turn up alive when it’s time to re-trumpet the Al Qaeda threat (we said before we killed him in that devastating airstrike, but actually he’s alive and more dangerous than ever!!).  Just like the "we killed 30 extremists" claim or the "we got Al Qaeda’s Number 3" boast, this is propaganda in its purest form, disseminated jointly by the U.S. Government and American media, and it happens over and over, compelling a rational person to conclude that it’s clearly intentional by both parties.

In the last week alone, this pattern just asserted itself — twice — with regard to the air strikes in Yemen.  The first set of strikes, it was immediately leaked, was allegedly aimed at "the presumed leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Qaaim al-Raymi," yet it turned out he was not among the dozens of people killed, though "U.S. officials believe one of his top deputies [unnamed] may have been killed."  Then, after a second set of strikes on Thursday, it was claimed that "a Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch," and an American Muslim preacher linked to Nidal Hasan, "the man who shot dead 13 people at a U.S. army base [Anwar al-Awlaki] may also have died." 

But while ABC News had identified "the presumed leader of al Qaeda in Yemen" as "Qaaim al-Raymi" when he was the target of last week’s strikes, Reuters decided that the "top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch" were completely different people — "Nasser al-Wahayshi, the Yemeni leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and his Saudi deputy, Saeed al-Shehri" — and then excitedly announced that they "may have been killed" by this week’s air strikes.  Whoever we claim we kill is the "key leader of Al Qaeda’s operations"– and it can change from day to day.  And now, it turns out,, the "radical cleric" who reportedly spoke at length with the accused Fort Hood shooter and thus packs the most emotional punch for Americans is not dead at all, but "is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected al-Qaida hideouts."

Just watch how this obvious propaganda tactic works again and again: .…

Continue reading.

Last night I watched District 9, which I think is the best science-fiction movie I’ve seen in terms of capturing what sf was like when I first started reading it in 1953. Indeed, District 9 seems like a story right out of my intensive sf reading years (1953-57). It’s better than Bladerunner because Bladerunner lacked aliens. It’s better than the Alien franchise because the aliens are not one-shot horror-movie figures but constitute an actual alien people.

Plus it’s extremely well made and highly resonant with issues we face still. A must-see, IMHO.

I returned to Firefox, despite its ongoing cycle of 2-second pauses, because Google Chrome could not load Google Reader (!) and seemed to be having other problems as well. This morning I discovered that Chrome will load Reader fine if I use IE Tab (a Chrome extension), so I’m back to using Chrome. Very weird.

For Boxing Day, I return to the Koh-I-Noor boar brush—and note to myself that I should really try one of their badger brushes—and Woods of Windsor soap.

A good lather, though the brush is still not really broken in. But it’s coming along. Very good shave with the Fat Boy and the much-used Swedish Gillette blade it carries. And Woods was a fine aftershave for the day.

From Dan Colman’s Open Culture, always worth reading:

Timothy Egan in the NY Times:

After the last insult had been spat from the Senate floor, after final passage of a legislative attempt to do something significant in this messy democracy, a leading voice of the opposition made a public prediction:

“People will be hunting Democrats with dogs,” said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.

This was 1993, in the fragile first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, on a vote to raise taxes for the wealthiest 1.2 percent and cut them for the poor and small businesses. That budget bill passed without a single Republican vote.

What followed was the greatest period of peacetime prosperity in modern times, a budget surplus of $559 billion and a president who left office with an approval rating of 66 percent — the highest of any since World War II. But first, some Democrats were indeed hunted, particularly in the South, which has been cleansing itself of the party since the Civil Rights era.

Gramm went on to deregulate the banking industry, setting the stage for a binge of economic nihilism that nearly brought down the world economy.
That fight in 1993 is worth recalling this Christmas Eve, as the voices of the apocalypse rain down on Democrats who dare try to expand health care for their fellow Americans.

In many ways, the budget vote 16 years ago ushered in the modern era of hyper-partisanship. Right-wing talk radio hosts were just entering their steroid phase, threatening any Republican who voted for a bill that ultimately led to budget surpluses.

From then on, nobody could “respectfully disagree.” Moderates were called wussies, traitors and socialists. When Republicans gained control of everything, the fringe Democratic left took their rhetorical cues from their angry counterparts on the right. This year, things became coarser still with the “tea party” extremists, who taught Republicans in Congress how to shout “You lie!” to the president and cast aspersions on something so innocuous as a pep talk to school children.

What the Senate has done this week will not break the economy or cure all that ails a profoundly imperfect health care system. “What we are building here is not a mansion,” said Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. “It’s a starter home. But it’s got a great foundation.”

For that, it deserved at least a handful of Republican votes. Can the bill, without its public option, making reforms that many in the G.O.P. advocated in last year’s election, really be so one-sided that not one lone Republican could support it?

Read the rest of this entry »

This is so far from my own concept of Christianity.

Thanks to TYD for alerting me. Here’s a report by Andy Greenberg in Forbes:

Take a look at the designs for what could someday be the world’s cheapest PC, and you may start to wish you were a third-grade child in Burundi.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s non-profit effort aimed at putting cheap educational laptops into the hands of developing world schoolchildren, is working on an upgrade to its so-called XO computer, once known as the "hundred-dollar laptop."

That revamped machine, known as the XO-3 and targeted for release in 2012, is still more of a pipe dream than a product. But early designs for the PC reveal a minimalist slate of touch-powered electronics that drops practically every feature of a traditional computer except its 8.5-by-11-inch screen, a scheme that would shed all of the first XO’s child-like clunkiness without losing its simple accessibility.

In Pictures: The $75 Future Computer

"I wanted to bring the One Laptop Per Child identity to life in this new form," says Yves Behar, founder of FuseProject, which designed the both the original and the XO-3. "That meant taking the visual complexity away, bringing tactility and friendliness, touch and color."

Behar says he hopes to shrink the frame around the XO-3′s display down to practically nothing, opting for a virtual keyboard instead of a physical one, and no buttons. The result, in his mock-ups, is a screen surrounded by only a thin green rubber gasket. "Nicholas [Negroponte] asked for something extremely simple and practically frameless," he says. "The media or content on the computer will be the prime visual element."

In fact, that new form factor is just the beginning of OLPC’s monstrous ambitions: It aims to make its tablet PC highly durable, all plastic, waterproof, half the thickness of an iPhone and use less than a watt of power, despite an 8-gigahertz processor. The price: an unprecedented $75…

Continue reading.

Here’s the view from my balcony (looking toward the right) as of a minute ago. Temperature is cool—a warm shirt is a good idea.

I’ve done the Nordic Track, started the laundry, and breakfast is cooking. The Wife is a late sleeper, and I’ll go over there once she’s up and about. We’re having a standing rib roast with roast potatoes and brussels sprouts, along with a celebratory bottle of champagne.

Our best holiday wishes to all who see this—enjoy the moment because the present is really all the time that you have for enjoyment.

Another great D.R. Harris lather, thanks in part to the Rooney Style 2 Finest: enough lather for a squad. The Big Grip did a fine job: perfect smoothness with not a nick. And TOBS Original No. 74 was the first good aftershave I bought, and I still have a fondness for it.

Happy holidays to all. Probably light blogging today.

Here they are, each one reviewed.

Take a look:

Most Popular Free iPhone Apps (and Posts) of 2009

Most Popular Firefox Extensions and Themes of 2009

I’m still at 8 minutes, but it’s getting easy—really just huffing and puffing in the last minute. Right now I’m thinking that I’ll add a minute a week. That would mean that  I get to 30 minutes (my goal) sometime in mid-May. That’s okay: I’m in no hurry, especially since once I’m there I just keep it up, every day.

Weight is still slow to drop, but again: no hurry. If I keep eating small meals, using the no-liquids idea, and as the exercises get longer, that will take care of itself. My focus is just to make sure those meals are good meals.

All three are worth reading:

Jonathan Chait: And the Rest Is Just Noise: Why the health care bill is the greatest social achievement of our time.

Jonathan Cohn: BREAKING: Senate Passes Reform

Ezra Klein: Winning ugly, but winning

Each is short but recognizes a significant achievement in American life. The GOP provided a unanimous "No" vote, which they are going to have to explain as people become aware of all the benefits of this bill. Of course, 30 of the 40 are already going to have to explain their "No" votes on the Franken Amendment.

Paul Steiger at ProPublica:

The headline on Tuesday’s editorial [1]in Investor’s Business Daily – “Get the Frackin’ Gas” – is both clever and on the mark. The publication gets into trouble, however, when the body of its editorial veers into mischaracterizing ProPublica’s reporting on the environmental risks that need to be dealt with to produce the huge amounts of natural gas available underground in the United States.

Our reporters, led by Abrahm Lustgarten [2], have researched and written more than 50 stories [3] on the subject over the past 18 months and are as expert on the topic as anyone in America.

Here is what is beyond dispute: The gas is highly desirable as a fuel, because it burns relatively cleanly and produces less greenhouse gas per unit of energy than oil or coal. There is lots of it obtainable within the U.S. using an enhanced version of an old drilling technology, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – much more than was widely supposed just a few years ago. That means using natural gas to power cars and electrical generation doesn’t require sending huge sums abroad, weakening the dollar and strengthening countries that aren’t particularly friendly to ours – Russia, Iran and Venezuela among them.

Here is a fact that some in the gas industry want to deny: There are significant risks to the water supply from producing these huge quantities of gas, but they are easily manageable with appropriate regulatory supervision. Unfortunately, the IBD editorial buys into the head-in-the-sand denial.

The editorial quotes a senator from the Oklahoma oil patch as saying there has never been a documented impact on water supplies from fracking. As former President Bill Clinton would understand, that depends on how you define “documented” and “fracking.” If you use any sort of sensible definitions, there have been well over 1,000 incidents in which spillage or leakage of fluids used in fracking have damaged water supplies.

Read the rest of this entry »

This, via Kevin Drum, is well worth the click and some thought. From the link:

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the tip of the iceberg of money paid out or set aside by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. In her book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street, Nomi Prins uncovers the hush-hush programs and crunches the hidden numbers to calculate the shocking actual size of the bailout: $14.4 trillion and counting.

(Figures current as of October 31, 2009. Click here for an explanation of the abbreviations and programs below.)

And here’s a part of the chart:

I keep this bookmarked for when I need to remind myself to do something in x minutes. Very simple and very handy.

I think politicians and pundits in the past grew accustomed to switching positions with no explanation because looking up their previous statements and positions was difficult. Thanks to the Internet, that has changed substantially, but some are slow to catch on—Rep. Henry Brown (R-SC), for example. Lee Fang at ThinkProgress:

Leading the fight to defend Christianity in the so-called “War on Christmas,” Rep. Henry Brown (R-SC) introduced congressional resolution 951, which “urges protection of the symbols and traditions of Christmas.” Despite criticism from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) against frivolous legislation, Brown has pressed forward and collected 74 GOP cosponsors. The religious meaning of Christmas is serious to Brown. In an explanation of his resolution to the Christian Broadcast Network, Brown noted that, “we’re in a troubled world,” so “we can’t lose sight of our deep faith by some how or another diminishing the value of Christmas.”

The main threat to Christmas, Brown contents, is the use of the term “happy holidays” rather than an emphasis on “Christ and Christmas.” In an interview with Fox Business last week, Brown lashed out at the use of “happy holidays”:

BROWN: We forget the real meaning of Christmas by using “happy holidays” or “joy to the seasons” or some other word rather than “Merry Christmas.” [...]

Every year, more and more people are shying away from “Merry Christmas” and using “happy holidays” or some other means of expressing this special time for us.

Watch it:

Indeed, Brown has even attempted to use his resolution as a jab against President Obama. Declaring that the Obamas’ holiday card doesn’t mention Christmas, Brown said, “I believe that sending a Christmas card without referencing a holiday and its purpose limits the Christmas celebration in favor of a more ‘politically correct’ holiday.” Brown’s fight to preserve Christmas and shun “happy holidays” has earned him the title of “patriot” from noted culture warrior Bill O’Reilly.

However, Brown’s 2008 December newsletter wished a “happy holiday” to his constituents for the “holiday season.” Although the newsletter had a link to the White House Christmas tree website, it made no other mention of Christ or Christmas. (Click here for a screenshot) And as Slate’s Chris Beam has observed, Brown didn’t introduce his resolution last year, even though President Bush’s 2008 holiday card didn’t mention Christmas either.

For an even better example, see this column by Glenn Greenwald: the editor of Reason reveals an unreasonable streak.

That’s not the Apollo Mikron I normally use. This one is a bit shorter, somewhat lighter, and uses the Merkur Progress approach: a dot on the top must match a dot on the base for the knob to center correctly on “1″ when a new blade is loaded (in this case a new Polsilver). My other Mikron lets you put the top on either way, and there are two dots at the base: you use the dot that’s above the “1″ when the top is fully tightened on the blade.

Still a great razor. I’ll have side-by-side photos next week. (On comparing the two, I realized that my regular Apollo Mikron seriously needs cleaning.)

The Tabac soap delivered its usual great lather, this time worked up by the Plisson HMW 12. The shave was very nice, and Tabac aftershave was a good finish.