Political Correctness vs. National Security

The Fort Hood shooting story had quickly developed into a scandal. From the day of the shooting the U.S. Military and the FBI seemed more concerned with speculative threats to Muslim servicemen and women than they were with preventing terrorist attacks. From the LA Times:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. warned of "a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," adding that "it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."

The press followed suit by weaving a tale of a man cracked under stress, thus turning the spotlight away from the theological-political element in Hasan's carefully planned murders.

Then came the real shocker. Apparently, there were plenty of advance warnings that Nidal Malik Hasan had radical religious views and that he was in fact trying to make contact with al Qaeda. We do not yet know who may have been aware of these facts, and who failed to act or failed to warn someone who might have acted. It has been reported that some of Hasan's fellow soldiers were aware of his radicalism, but were afraid to report it lest they be accused of racism.

This is a very serious scandal. It has cost us the lives of more than a dozen men and women in uniform. Joe Liebermann was right to come out and demand Congressional investigations.

The Military is right to be concerned that one of our servicemen or women might be discriminated against because that person is Muslim. But there is something deeply wrong when Chief of Staff Casey says, over and over, that his first concern is to prevent discrimination against Muslims in the Army. That is a pathological confusion of priorities.

The Fallen At Fort Hood

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-enlargePic07.html?project=imageShell07&bigImage=wsj_HOODSub091108.jpg&h=821&w=779&title=WSJ.COM&thePubDate=20080826

Healthcare Outrage

Dr. Blanchard observes that healthcare bill that has just passed in the house is "the most radical piece of legislation since the New Deal." That in itself is worth noting, but what makes it even more interesting is the left's reaction to the bill.

One might expect the left to be happy. Yet, despite the passing of the radical changes Dr. Blanchard mentions, it is not at all satisfied. Indeed, some on the left are outraged. Taylor Marsh of the Huffington Post, for instance, accuses "Pelosi's House" of "selling women out" for passing the bill with an amendment that, according to CNN, "bans federal funds for abortion services in the public option and in the insurance `exchange' the bill would create."

CNN goes on to make a claim that I find very interesting. First it notes that the amendment was introduced by anti-abortion Democrats. Then it says this:

Its consideration was considered a big win for them and for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which used its power -- especially with conservative Democrats in swing congressional districts -- to help force other Democratic leaders to permit a vote that most of them oppose.

Really?

How is it, I wonder, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was suddenly able "help force" Democratic leaders to permit a vote most of them oppose?

I had no idea the conference held such power over the house's democratic leadership. Why has it not wielded its power to force them to do anything before?

I suspect that the bill, as amended will have a hard time making it through the senate. Unfortunately, the amendment is likely to be killed in committee. But the fight is likely to be messy and long. And even if the bill passes without the "anti-abortion" amendment, I doubt that the left will be happy. There's always something to be angry about if that's what you're looking for.

Paranormal Health Care Legislation Passes

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the most radical piece of legislation since the New Deal, a piece of legislation opposed by a majority of the American people. That takes guts, and I for one admire the Democrats on that score. How much courage it took is indicated by the close vote 220-215. One Republican voted for it, and 39 Democrats voted no. That 39 is close to the number Ms. Pelosi could afford to lose, which means that a big argument behind the scenes was who got the privilege of voting against the bill.

One might argue that popular resistance is based on ignorance, as most people have no clear idea what is in the bill. That would be true since no one has any idea what is in the bill. This is so not so much because of the gargantuan size of the legislation but because no one can know in advance how unelected bureaucrats will use the vast powers that the bill grants them.

Betsy McCaughey writing at the Wall Street Journal Online has a nice summary of some of the most interesting features of the bill. Consider this one:

Sec. 224 (p. 118) provides that 18 months after the bill becomes law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will decide what a "qualified plan" covers and how much you'll be legally required to pay for it. That's like a banker telling you to sign the loan agreement now, then filling in the interest rate and repayment terms 18 months later.

So no one knows what a "qualified plan" will be, but if this legislation or something rather like it becomes law, we are all about to buy one.

Worries about whether you can keep your existing health insurance would be beside the point under this legislation. Likewise the notion that competition can control prices, something Democrats and the President and particular like to say, is rendered moot by the House bill.

• Sec. 303 (pp. 167-168) makes it clear that, although the "qualified plan" is not yet designed, it will be of the "one size fits all" variety. The bill claims to offer choice—basic, enhanced and premium levels—but the benefits are the same. Only the co-pays and deductibles differ. You will have to enroll in the same plan, whether the government is paying for it or you and your employer are footing the bill.

Exactly who will provide you with health insurance, your employer, a private insurance company, the government, remains to be seen. Whoever it is, the package will be the same. Nor will you have the option of opting out. Anyone who does not buy insurance, or employers who do not offer it, will be penalized. There is virtually no choice or competition remaining in this plan.

This is the "government takeover of the healthcare system" that critics have warned about. Government will determine benefits and government will determine what everyone has to pay for them. Maybe that will be palatable when we finally see what it costs each family.

The House bill will also add more than a trillion dollars to the cost of government over ten years. Even if all that cost is paid for by taxes or cuts in existing outlays, it is still a cost that the economy must bear. At a time when the public and private debt are putting big strains on job creation, that might matter.

Opposition to healthcare reform and the recent revival of the Republican Party are motivated by a distrust of the growth of government and an alarm at ballooning deficits. The Democrats had better hope that those concerns are a passing fancy.

I am not going to tell you about ‘Paranormal Activity’

This is one of those films about which it is best to know nothing in advance. If complete ignorance is not feasible (one knows after all that one is going to see a movie), it were better not to know that it is both genuinely scary and altogether unfamiliar in texture. To be told in advance that a movie is eerie is a reliable recipe for disappointment, so I won't tell you that.

Instead I will tell you something about my house tonight, something that was true only after I returned from the theater. There are a lot more shadows in each room than I remember, and the sound of the dryer balls tumbling in a machine downstairs seems, dare I say it, vaguely malevolent. The fact that, no matter where I stand or in what direction I look, I can't see around corners or down darkened halls or behind me, is something that I am acutely aware at this moment. I will also tell you that, years ago, I forbade my adolescent daughter to play with an Ouija board. I am suddenly very glad that I did so. Nothing in what I have said should be taken as any indication of what you will experience should you go to see Paranormal Activity.

Since I am not going to tell you anything about this movie, I will write instead about a certain sub-genre of horror that has been popular of late: the single shaky camera film. The Blair Witch Project (a film undone by rumors of eeriness, if ever there was one) probably gave birth to the genre. It has recently been employed in two much better productions: Cloverfield, and Quarantine. In each movie, what you see on the screen is presented as a recording made on a single video camera, carried by one or more of the characters.

It is not hard to see why this device is irresistible to directors. It puts the camera and with it the viewer right into the action, producing a visceral sense of reality. At the same time, it narrows the focus of the viewer in ways that heighten a natural sense of alarm. You, the viewer, can only see what the camera is pointed at, but you constantly sense that something you desperately need to see may be going on just outside your view. In each of the three films just mentioned, the fact that the characters are filming what happens is merely incidental to the action. But what if the fact that a horror is being filmed is itself part of the horror? Something there may be that doesn't like a digital camera. Just a thought.

The shaky camera film does have its problems. It's hard to imagine that someone running like Hell from a giant monster, or zombies, or the Blair Witch, would bother to keep filming. Unless, perhaps, the obsessive filming was an expression of the very character flaw that opens the door to some unspeakable evil. That's just more idle speculation.

I have scrupulously avoided telling you anything about Paranormal Activity. I won't spoil anything now by telling you that you should see this movie. I will tell you to take a good look and listen before you leave your home for the theater. It might not seem quite the same when you return.

Herseth-Sandlin Votes No

Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin has announced that she intends to vote no on the House healthcare bill.  

Public Opposition to ObamaCare

The outcome of an election is determined by two things: how people vote and which people vote. Most voters are not independent. If they vote, they usually vote for the same party. But there can be wild swings in how much of any demographic shows up at the polls. The young voters and African American voters who supported Barack Obama didn't show up in Virginia or New Jersey in big numbers. Disgruntled Republicans who were disgruntled at home over the last two elections were disgruntled in polling booths this time round.

But the most striking fact about Tuesday's election in Virginia is what the independent vote did. In the last two elections, independent voters swung strongly in favor of Democrats. In Virginia, independents swung to Republicans by an astonishing two to one. That's what wining looks like.

Virginia was not a referendum on Obama, but it may well have been determined by the anger and frustration of Republicans and independents over the Democrats healthcare reform bills and the exploding federal deficits.

Just how unpopular is ObamaCare? Mickey Kaus notes that the "robopolls," i.e. automated polls conducted by computers, more accurately predicted the outcome of the Virginia and New Jersey races than did the polls conducted by live interviewers. Rasmussen, for example, was the most accurate of all the polls. If that can be extrapolated to issue polls, then ObamaCare is in very big trouble.

A Rasmussen poll done at the end of October shows a clear majority, 54%, opposed to the Obama/Congressional Democrat's healthcare plan vs. 42% in favor. But that's not the worst news. Only 23% of respondents "strongly favor" the Democrat's healthcare reform plan, while a whopping 44% strongly oppose it. There's your two to one ratio, not to mention your enthusiasm gap.

Another poll, by Ipsos/McClatchy shows 49% opposed to 39% in favor.

Americans are opposed to ObamaCare either by a strong plurality or a clear majority. That, coupled with the behavior of independents in Virginia and New Jersey spells real trouble for Democrats as they try to push through their healthcare plan. Of course, a moment of enlightenment may come when the final bill comes out of conference, if ever it does. On the other hand, it may be that the only way that Obama can win back independents is to start spending responsibly, in which case the Democrats are doomed.

Americans still like Barack Obama. His approval ratings remain marginally above 50%. But we have lost confidence in him in significant ways. When Gallup asked whether Obama had kept the promises he made during the campaign, the overall split was 48% yes, 48% no. But among independents, it was 53% no to 41% yes, and 56% of the independents said that that was very important to them. That may help to explain why the President's four trips to New Jersey weren't enough to make a difference.

UPDATE:  The new CNN poll is more bad news. 

From everything you have heard or read so far, do you favor or oppose Barack Obama's plan to reform
health care?

Favor            45%
Oppose         53%
No opinion     2%

Blue State Beaten and Blue Dog Democrats

First, dispense with a couple of questions beaten to a pulp by the press over the last twenty four hours.

Were the 09 elections a referendum on President Obama?

No. It is no doubt true that the Democrats would have done better if voter approval of the President's policies and those of the Democratic Congress were stronger. However, in an election, voters only get to make a limited number of choices. If an election is a referendum, it is because one of those choices involves someone or something that has been explicitly referred to the voters. President Obama wasn't on the ballot.

Do the Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey mean that the Republicans will win a big victory in 2010?

Again, no. The 09 election shows us that independents are still, well, independent, and that they can swing decisively toward the Republicans. And it shows that a serious enthusiasm gap favored the Republicans. If those circumstances repeat in 2010, then Republicans in deed will deal a bitter blow to the Democrats. But the election last night doesn't tell us whether independents will still be inclined to swing Republican, or whether the GOP will continue to enjoy the momentum.

Now: do this week's election results change political circumstances right now?

Yes, and maybe in a big way. Consider the progress of the healthcare bill. Or lack thereof. From ABC News:

Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was "absolutely confident" he'll be able to sign one by then.

"Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go," a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.

Of course the Democrats have been missing deadlines so consistently in this process that the only meaning left in the President's "absolute confidence" is that the bill absolutely won't be done when he says it will.

But this delay is more problematic than previous ones. It pushes the process over into the real election year, when Congressmen and some Senators who do not enjoy safe districts have to start really worrying. This happens just as we learn that the President cannot be relied on to bring out Democrats and attract young and independent voters as he did during the last election. If he can't save Jon Corzine in New Jersey, who can he save?

A lot of counties in Virginia and New Jersey that voted heavily for Obama voted even more heavily for McDonnell or Christie respectively. What effect might it have on a newly minted house Democrat from one of these two states who saw his own district turn deep red yesterday? It might not in encourage him or her to stand by the President or Nancy Pelosi on a health care bill that will cost a lot more than the President promised and add a great many dimes to the deficit.

The bluedogs have been a problem for reform all along.  They aren't likely to get any easier to deal with now.  Indeed, a lot of dogs might start acting bluer than they did in the past.  The path to ObamaCare got steeper when Jon Corzine conceded last night.

Gay Marriage Blocked on Maine Street?

The only good info I can get on the Maine elections comes from the excellent election page at the New York Times. The Maine state legislature, I gather, legalized same-sex marriage. Opponents got a referendum on this year's ballot: voting "yes" would repeal the law. Voting "no" would sustain the law.

Here is the current report from the NYTs page, with 64% reporting:

Yes/51.7%

No/48.3%

If those numbers hold, the people of Maine will have repealed the legalization of gay marriage.

I think this is unfortunate. I am opposed to the imposition of gay marriage by judicial fiat, as I do not believe that any valid constitutional principles require it. I am in favor of same sex marriage if it is enacted by legislatures and/or by initiative or referendum. I think it is true that, had Maine 1 been defeated, it would have been the first time that the people of a state voted to endorse a same sex marriage law.

We probably won't know until tomorrow which way the wind blew. I think the people of Maine should have confirmed the same sex marriage law. But I don't mistake my opinions for constitutional mandates. This is a question properly decided by state legislatures or by the people of a state. If the people of Maryland decide against gay marriage, that is their decision to make.

Election Analysis 10pm CT

Blanchard's Wise Predictions (and retroactively wise non-prediction)

As expected, yours truly correctly predicted the outcome of tonight's gubernatorial elections. As I said, Robert McDonnell crushed Creigh Deeds in Virginia. In American elections anything over 10 percent is considered a landslide. With 99% counted, McDonnell won almost 59% of the vote to Deeds' 41%. That is considerably better than McDonnell polled. Only Survey USA got it right, predicting an 18% margin. The rest of the polls were under 15%.

Likewise, Republican William T "Bill" Bolling beat Democrat Jody Wagner for Lt. Governor 56/44%, and Ken Cuccinelli beat Stephen Shannon 58/42.

Somewhat braver (though not all that brave, as I hedged my bet) was my prediction of a narrow victory for Chris Christie over Jon Corzine. Christie won 49/45%.

I neglected to make a prediction in New York 23, which was a good thing for me. Results are still coming in at this hour, but it looks like the Democrat Bill Owens will take the House Seat by a narrow margin over Doug Hoffman. With 77% reporting, Owens leads 49/47%.

Analysis NY23

If Owens does win NY23, that will be a sign of God's grace towards Democrats. They will want to talk all about this one. Maybe exit polling will give us a clearer picture of what happened, but it will be undeniable that the Republicans self-destructed, handing the Democrats a seat they hadn't won in a hundred years. My Spin Witch says they will talk about extremists taking over the party, and the Republican Party splitting at the seams.

But the blame for the loss has to sit with the Republican leadership that nominated Scozzafava. Without a primary to test the voter's sentiments, the party leadership has to be competent to choose a palatable nominee. They didn't have to pick a strict conservative, but surely they could have picked someone who didn't look like (and turned out to be) a Democrat in Republican clothes. Now the Democrats get another House vote, but then, that's what they would have had with Scozzafava.

Analysis Virginia

This was a really significant victory for the GOP. Barack Obama beat John McCain 53/46% in Virginia. Democrats have held the state house in 12 years. This resurgence in Virginia clearly shows that the momentum and enthusiasm has shifted dramatically, from strongly unfavorable to Republicans to strongly favorable, in the months that Obama has been President. It also means that Republicans hold the offices from which future governors and senators can easily launch their campaigns.

Why did McDonnell and company win so big? McDonnell is as conservative as they come, but he focused on the economic issues motivating his base and, just as important, motivating independents. The latter seem to have broken for the Republicans in a big way.

Analysis New Jersey

This was the really big achievement for the GOP today. New Jersey is a solidly blue state (about 2/1 Democrat/Republican in registration). Barack Obama visited the state four times at least in recent weeks, and Joe Biden campaigned there as well. No, New Jersey wasn't a "referendum on the Obama Presidency." It was a referendum on the Corzine governorship and on the government of New Jersey in general. But it was a test of the old Obama magic, and his get up and go has got up and went.

Why did Christie win? The factor that made victory possible was the deep hole that Corzine dug himself in his previous term. What made a Republican victory actual was the tremendous surge in Republican enthusiasm. In some New Jersey counties, Republican turnout was three times greater than in the last gubernatorial election. Or so I think I heard Karl Rove say. Even in New Jersey that can make a difference.

On the other hand, Corzine wouldn't have had a chance without two big advantages. One was independent Chris Daggett. If Daggett had drawn support in the double digits, Corzine would probably have survived. Under 6% (according to the numbers crunchers) and Daggett ceased to be a factor. He drew 5.5%. The other factor was Corzine's deep pockets. He has personally purchased a Senate seat and state house. He spent, I kid you not, $30 million in his attempt to win reelection. Talk about a bad investment. I think he qualifies for a Federal bailout.

Christie Beats Corzine in New Jersey

GOP takes New Jersey State House

Fox Just Called It

GOP takes Virginia State House

McDonnell 60/Deeds 40 (81% reporting)

Republicans have also won the other two top posts in Virginia, Lt. Governor and Att. General.  Early reports from New Jersey seem to favor Christie. 

See Here for a good update on New Jersey.

Lawyers, Sums, and Money 2

Another reason that ObamaCare  won't control costs is indicated by this story:

When John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, he noted "judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them." Most Americans agree, but the liberal majority on Wisconsin's Supreme Court made so many suspect calls it seemed intent on rewriting the rules.

These calls began in 2004, immediately after Justice Diane Sykes stepped down to join a federal appeals court. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle replaced her with [Louis] Butler, a former Milwaukee judge and public defender who had lost to Ms. Sykes by a 2-1 margin in a nonpartisan race in 2000. Justice Butler soon wrote the infamous decision in Thomas v. Mallet, which created a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach to product liability. Wisconsin became the only state to adopt a "collective liability" theory in lead paint cases: Whether a company actually produced the lead paint that harmed a claimant was irrelevant to its guilt or innocence.

Then came Ferdon v. Wisconsin Patients, declaring unconstitutional the state's cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases. It argued that the caps bore "no rational relationship to a legitimate government interest." That conclusion was bizarre, since the legislature had specifically passed the caps to make malpractice insurance "available and affordable," and the caps worked. In 2004, the American Medical Association judged Wisconsin to be one of only six states not in a medical malpractice crisis. Marquette University law professor Rick Esenberg concluded that under the court's reasoning in that case, "almost any law is subject to being struck down."

The people of Wisconsin voted Justice Butler off the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  President Obama has just appointed him to a Federal District Court in that state.  This is a slap in the face to the people of Wisconsin, and it shows that President Obama is not the least bit serious about controlling health care costs. 

09 Election Report 2

New Jersey:

Chris Christie has crept back into the lead, narrowly, in late polls.  One expects a lot of independent Daggett's support to break both ways.  Some polls suggest that Corzine may get more benefit.  However, it is unusual for an incumbent to get more than what his polls show.  I am still predicting a Christie victory. 

Virginia.

This one looks to be in the bag for the Republicans, including the Governor's races and the next two highest ranking offices. 

New York 23

The Democratic narrative (hysterical-right Republicans wage civil war against moderates and hijack election) is about to be tested.  One Democratic sponsored poll has conservative Hoffman ahead of Democrat Owens by 17% (51% to 34%). That hardly seems believable, but it is a pretty large sample (1,747) done, again by a Democratic polling group (Public Policy Polling).  Another poll has Hoffman ahead by five.  Paradoxically, a more narrow win would be more impressive.  It would feed the Republican narrative that the enthusiasm and momentum are all on their side.  The way to win big national election victories is to win a lot of close races by narrow margins. 

Bicycle Barbarism En Français

My readers might not suspect it, but I am quite fond of a lot aspects of modern liberal culture. I listen to NPR with enthusiasm. My favorite Washington D.C. neighborhood is the Gay enclave around DuPont Circle. I like sushi. I also think that being able to rent a bicycle for a modest fee and peddle all over Paris sounds like a smashing idea, if ever I get to Paris. I would love to have something like that available in D.C. or maybe New Orleans.

Well, the French have such a thing, and they call it Vélib'. For a Euro a day you can rent one and ride it about, then turn it in at the nearest station. For about 43 bucks you can get a year's pass. That's the solution to global warming, and maybe burning off a few pounds of bread and fine wine.

Unfortunately, Vélib' has enemies, as the New York Times reports:

Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program's organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

Eighty percent! Theft is one thing. Vandalism is quite another. The anti-Vélib' activism is partly a result of the social decay in France. In a nation where a favorite activity of the youth, and especially of the immigrant youth, is to set cars on fire, what do you expect? But it appears that the vandalism has political backing.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, "One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars," referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib' vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.

"It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous," Mr. Marzloff said. "There is an element of negligence that means, 'We don't have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it's a huge pain, we don't have cars, and when we do, it's too expensive and too far.' "

This kind of "social revolt" shows the limits of the modern welfare state. It is difficult to see how a modern welfare state can be much more generous than that of France. Moreover, the welfare state in France has effectively locked out a lot of people, and especially immigrants, from the productive economy. And so a simple if rather expensive vehicle, meant to save the world from global warming, becomes a target of barbarians. I like a lot of liberal culture. I am just not sure it's sustainable.

The Opinion Side of the New York Times

Complaints about the "opinion side" of Fox News Channel usually mention Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly. Beck, of course, is a professional crank. He's good at, and there's obviously a market for it. O'Reilly is in fact pretty reasonable as opinion journalism goes. For all sorts of historical and functional reasons, newspapers limit editorials and commentary to a small part of their total print. But if the New York Times ran a Fox style cable news network, one can imagine that Frank Rich would be on it.

Well, here is something Rich had to say about the election in New York's District 23:

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats' prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we're seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era's equivalent to today's tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society's "ruthless prosecution" of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

Now there is a paragraph that makes Glen Beck look like a moderate. Let's consider what is happening at "this moment." When Republican leaders tapped Dede Scozzafava to run in District 23, a lot of conservatives decided that they couldn't support her. So they coalesced around Doug Hoffman, a Republican running on the Conservative Party ticket. With Hoffman running ahead of Scozzafava, her support collapsed and she has now withdrawn. Hoffman looks poised to win.

Somehow all of this seems strangely familiar. Let's see…a major member of Congress, I seem to recall he was a candidate for Vice President, is deemed insufficiently liberal by his party and they engineer his defeat in the Democratic Senate Primary. Oh, I know! It was Joe Liebermann. Of course, Joe went on to run as an independent and win.

You might think is the prerogative of voters to ignore the decisions of party leaders and go with someone they think might better represent them. But when conservatives do it, it's pathological, radical-right hysteria. I am sure that Rich loves government by the people. He just can't stand most of the people. But his next lines are priceless.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode.

Matt Welch, writing at the libertarian journal Reason, shows what an utter fool Rich is.

How do you even get to a place like that? For those of you keeping metaphorical score at home: Stalin's Great Purge (just to name his most famous one) included roughly 1,000 executions a day, over two years. The alleged Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin purge, meanwhile, has resulted...brace yourself...in a moderate Republican suspending her campaign for Congress to make way for a conservative independent. Yeah, totally the same.

What is it about the Left today that it cannot allow for the possibility of an honest opposition?

Scozzafava Drops out in New York 23

The liberal Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race for a New York House seat.  She was running third, behind Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens.  Hoffman is in fact a Republican and this increases the chance that he will hold that seat for the GOP. 

Update:  Scozzafava has endorsed Bill Owens.  Quick Spin (D): another moderate Republican driven out of the party by the radical right.  Quick Spin (R): see, we told you she wasn't really a Republican.  Analysis: Scozzafava's nomination was a mistake.  Democrats would have voted against her because she is a Republican, which is what we mean by "Democrats".  Republicans would have voted for her for the same reason.  But Scozzafava would have cut into the enthusiasm of Republicans who, being not altogether without common sense, would not have seen the sense in voting for a Republican who would mostly vote with the opposite party in Congress. 

Halloween Movie Guide

The following is an expanded version of last year's Halloween movie post.  If you are looking for something seasonal to rent or order from Netflicks, I am your man. 

The U.S. has five holidays that are really celebrated: Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Valentine's Day.  Halloween comes second in terms of store displays and yard ornaments, and, after Christmas, it is my favorite holiday.  This is due to the simple fact that I am incurably fond of the spooky story.  In case you are looking for a good Halloween movie, I have some suggestions.

The best single Halloween movie is, well, Halloween, John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece, if only on account of its subject.  It builds on the plausible and provocative idea that real monsters lurk in the subconscious mind, and is carried by master performances: Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis.  If you want something more suitable for children, try The Adams Family.  This superbly crafted homage to the old TV show is perfect for watching while munching on popcorn and distributing candy to miniature ghouls at the door. And don't forget Ghost Busters, which is also safe for the kids.  GB was a genuinely novel idea: demon fighters who approach their job as if they were plumbers.  Also, the mix of the supernatural and science fiction genres has roots in the beginnings of modern horror fiction.  You find it obviously in Frankenstein, and in Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Unfortunately, it all but falls out of almost all the vampire movies. 

If you want something classic, go back to the 1930's, when our four basic Halloween monsters saw their first moonlight.  Frankenstein (1931) ranks as the undisputed father of the modern monster story, with a number of scenes that have become cultural motifs.  And you gotta love Boris Karloff as the monster.  But Bela Lugosi as Dracula (also filmed in 1931) is an almost perfect horror film.  There is a collection out now that includes a Spanish version, filmed at night using the same script and sets, for Mexican audiences.  My kids got it for me for Christmas.  Karloff appeared a year after Frankenstein in The Mummy. The plot serves as a template for later versions of Dracula: resurrected man/demon pursues a woman who reminds him of his long lost love.  I think it's Karloff's best role.  Ten years after Frankenstein came Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man.  Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright.  The inescapable and undeserved curse sets this one apart from all the others. 

I would add one movie to this list oldies that never gets the credit it deserves: The Tingler (1959), with Vincent Price.  It represents the best work of William Castle, the Alfred Hitchcock of B movie horror.  Like Ghost Busters, this story is based on a genuinely innovative idea.  Price plays Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovers that the tingling feeling we get when afraid is caused by a creature that lives in the spine of every human being.  When we get scared, it grows.  When we scream, it shrinks back to insignificance.  Castle actually had the seats in some theaters wired to produce a mild shock during a moment when the audience is supposed to be scared, and a narrator urges them to scream in order to save themselves.  But it needs no such theatrics.  Great acting and a strong screenplay make it a true gem.   

For a few laughs, try Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein, in my view, Brook's best movie. There is more than a little sexual innuendo, but it will fly right over the heads of most young trick-or-treaters.  Not safe for children, but delicious for more mature audiences, is The Rockey Horror Picture Show.  A good rock and roll soundtrack, and a lot of young men and women with too much time on their hands, made this into one of the most successful musicals of all time.   It's a good spoof on the Frankenstein story, with a lot of B movie sci fi thrown in.  I myself had the honor of playing the criminologist for one performance when Rockey was produced at Northern.   Finally, almost any collection of The Simpsons Tree House of Horror is good for the holiday. 

If you are looking for some more undiscovered but sinister gems, rent Bubba HoTep. This happens to be my favorite movie.  A geriatric Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and a Black man who thinks he is JFK (Ozzie Davis) battle a mummy in a nursing home.  In the climax, when Ozzie Davis starts his motorized wheel chair in motion to challenge the mummy, well, I still get tears in my eyes.  If you want something with more bite, try Cat People, with marvelous work by Natassja Kinski and Malcom McDowell.  The movie is transformed into a masterpiece by Giorgio Moroder's dense electronic score, which is every bit as good as the soundtrack from Chariots of Fire.  Another good bet is Demon Knight, a tale that pushes all my buttons.  A lone warrior who carries what amounts to the blood of Christ battles to keep a legion of demons from invading the world.  Mortally wounded, he passes his mission to a teenage girl who, like Barabbas, was a thief.  That, I submit, is a story.

If you are drawn to the zombie genre, there is no substitute for George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  It is not easy to recommend any of the spin-offs, other than the remake Dawn of the Dead (2004).  But I warn you, the latter is a very dark and genuinely scary movie.  Also scary is 28 Days Later, a movie that introduced the fast zombie to the genre.  It's not a true zombie movie, as "the infected" are living human beings who have been turned into proto-zombies by a  rabies-like virus. If you want something cheap and cheesy, try Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972),  a very amateurish drama about a troop of amateur thespians who manage to wake up an army of corpses.  It is a cult classic that I just happened to have watched for the first time tonight. 

Finally, if you are wondering what to order from Netflicks and you are in the mood for something very dark but culturally expanding, you might dip into some Asian horror.  Three excellent choices for All Hallows Eve are Ringu (The Ring), Ju-On (The Grudge), and The Eye.  The first two have American made versions.  Unlike most A-Horror fans, I think the American Ring is as good as the Japanese original, but avoid the English version of  The Grudge.  The Eye, from Hong Kong, is wonderfully produced and acted movie with beautiful cinematography, and it is a deeply moving story.

Happy Halloween.

Lawyers, Sums, and Money

The House healthcare bill, all 1,990 pages of it, has landed in the Republic's lap. I am guessing you could global warming back on track just by burning a few copies of it. Instead, we will burning through a lot more money. Here is one account, from NASDAC:

The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend health insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so.

Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverage to their workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.

I suppose the new definition of cheap is "under a trillion." But will this policy really be even that cheap? Republicans doubt it, but then, that is their job. From the Washington Post:

Republicans on Capitol Hill are challenging an assertion by House leaders that their new health-care package comes in under President Obama's spending limit of $900 billion over the next decade. The true cost of the measure, the GOP argues, is more than $1 trillion. A House leadership aide dismissed the charge as "GOP spin." But, in this case, the spin is essentially true.

What brings the House bill under a cool trillion is all the money that is expected to come from scofflaws who refuse to buy insurance. That, and big cuts in existing Medicare programs. That's reassuring, except that Congress will never actually make such cuts. The cost of this kind of program is always more, a lot more, than initially projected.

But you don't have to speculate. Just look at the provisions in the bill that are specifically designed to avoid cost control. Here, from Breitbart's Big Government, is one juicy morsel in the bill:

Section 2531, entitled "Medical Liability Alternatives," establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys' fees or imposes caps on damages.

Now it's one thing for Congress to refuse to enact tort reform as part of its healthcare reform. It would save $54 billion over ten years, but whoever pays for healthcare reform, it ain't going to be lawyers. It's another thing to penalize states for trying to enact tort reform on their own. This is a bit more love than trial lawyers probably deserve.

If Congress can't say no to the trial lawyers, who can they say no to? I mean, besides the insurance industry? The idea that this legislation will be cheap or affordable is sheer fantasy.

Postscript on Fox, Feinberg, and the WH

Friend and frequent interlocutor A.I. and I have been arguing about one particular battle in the White House war on Fox News. I am not sure whether it's worth fighting any more on the subject, but it does speak to the question of Fox's accuracy. I recounted the story in this post, with a video clip. Here is my paraphrase of the story as Fox News reported it.

Fox's status as a real network has been confirmed in an unambiguous way, and Fox has the Obama Administration to thank for this. This week the Administration convened the White House Pool, a rotation of five news agencies that report on daily events at the President's house. The pool was to meet with White House "Pay Czar"

Obama's people made it clear that Fox News alone was not welcome. The bureau chiefs of the other four networks met together, and made it clear that unless Fox was included, they weren't coming either. The Administration caved in the face of the unlooked for opposition.

A.I. responded with a link to Talking Points Memo DC:

TPMDC dug into it, and here's what happened.

Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).

But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who'd asked for the interview.

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on the list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

In this account, Fox's exclusion was a mere accident and the other networks weren't defending Fox, they were merely correcting an oversight. In A.I.'s interpretation, Fox was exaggerating and distorting the story to advance its own agenda.

I responded in turn with a New York Times story which, among other things, confirmed Fox's version of the story. A.I. stuck to his guns.

Well, I chanced upon another account of the story, this one by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. Kurtz is answering questions on a range of topics. Here is one exchange:

The great Fox News freeze-out: Howard, in your Sunday discussion on the White House vs. Fox News, you cited the recent incident where the White House "excluded" Fox News from an interview with the special assistant to the president dealing with executive pay at the companies getting a bailout. You presented it as a case where the administration tried to lock out Fox, yet there are other reports out there stating that the reason Fox wasn't getting an interview was because it didn't initially ask for an individual interview and the Treasury Department (not the White House) used the initial request list to determine who took part in the pool interview. The other networks "rose to Fox's defense" in large part because they knew this was standard procedure and because including Fox made sure the costs for the interview were split between five networks, not just four. The whole thing was supposedly settled in a very short period of time.

Is this true? Why didn't you mention this if it is true in your critique of the "incident?"

Howard Kurtz: I looked into it, checked with other networks, and the consensus was that the Treasury did try to exclude Fox from the round of Ken Feinberg interviews. Plus, Fox says the White House apologized for the incident. The five networks pay for a pool camera, so they have an interest - financial as well as journalistic solidarity - for not wanting any member excluded.

Kurtz account directly contradicts the TPMDC account, and confirms the version reported by Fox and the New York Times. It is possible, of course, that TPM has it right and the other three sources have it wrong. But the evidence surely leans the other way.

The truth of the matter is that, whatever biases Fox News may have, it is very careful and responsible when it comes to getting the facts right on its straight news programs. It has to be. For that reason it has been very difficult for Fox's enemies and critics to demonstrate exaggerations or distortions in its reporting. Being the only conservative leaning major network, and having lots of enemies, has its advantages.

To Surge or Not to Surge, that is the Question

The Pennsylvania Avenue Hamlet will, sooner or later, decide what his Afghanistan strategy is going to be. It seems unlikely that he will pull out altogether, so he is apparently trying to decide when he will decide whether to insert the troops that his handpicked general thinks are necessary, or, probably, insert some but not all of the requested reinforcements and announce a new strategy that makes sense of the decision.

I can't quite think of anything like this in recent history. To be sure, the President needs to make such a decision carefully. But to leave everyone hanging, month after month, while our troops are fighting and dying on Afghanistan's plains, does not inspire confidence.

The U.S. is expected to provide world leadership. Where else would it come from? The President right now is in danger of losing confidence among our allies. Here is the London Times:

It is now two months since General Stanley McCrystal, the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told President Obama that a surge of at least 40,000 troops was required for the international mission in that country to succeed. Mr Obama is not obliged to follow his recommendation, but he is obliged to do something other than sit on his own hands. "I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way," Mr Obama told the military, in a speech this week. This is not an unattractive sentiment. There is deliberation, nonetheless, and then there is dragging one's feet.

Now is not a time for a president to dither. Yesterday, a Taleban suicide squad stormed a United Nations guesthouse in Kabul, leaving six international staff dead and nine injured. The Taleban do not carry out such attacks at random. They understand well the context in which they act, and do so in order to sway a decision that they believe can be swayed.

And here is Der Spiegel:

The world has been waiting for clear words from the White House for months. Obama has had government and military analysts studying the military and political situation in the embattled Hindu Kush region since early January. He appointed Richard Holbrooke, probably the US's most effective diplomat in crisis situations, to be his special envoy to the "AfPak" region, he has replaced generals and he has deployed more troops. The answers Obama asked his experts to provide after taking office have been sitting on his desk for a long time.

There is no doubt that hardly a day passes in Europe without criticism of US policy. This has become a trans-Atlantic ritual. But despite this ritual, Europeans are still looking for one thing from the White House: leadership.

We're waiting, Mr. President.

Well, we are all waiting: Americans, Europe, our troops in the field, and the Taliban. But so far Hamlet is making lots of good speeches, but he isn't doing anything. This is looking like a pattern. It is eroding the President's respect among allies and enemies alike.

Election 09 Report

Two governor's seats will be awarded on Tuesday, in Virginia and New Jersey. An unusual amount of attention is focused on these two races. The reason is that they are the first real test of political climate change. Almost a year ago a lot of people were writing obituaries for the Republican Party. That was not completely silly. Two elections do not a realignment make, but they surely could have been the beginning of a strong and long lasting realignment toward the Democratic Party. What a difference eleven months make!

Virginia Projection

The Republican candidate in Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell, looks poised to crush the Democrat, Creigh Deeds. Less attention has been paid to the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races. Republican candidates seem likely to take both of those seats by similar margins.

Virginia Tea Leaves

Virginia has been moving left in recent elections. Democrats have held the State House for a decade, and Barack Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in 45 years. The President has been vigorously campaigning there for Deeds. A Republican sweep of the top three offices will look like a resurrection for the Virginia GOP. Republicans will spin the election as a referendum on Obama and the Democratic Congress. Democrats, and the White House in particular, have written it off as a lost cause. Their spin: Deeds ran a bad campaign and ran away from the President.

New Jersey Projection

Incumbent Jon Corzine has been trailing Republican Chris Christie for most of the year, but in some recent polls Corzine now has a small lead. If the Quinnipiac poll is right, Corzine will win by a small but comfortable margin. If Rasmussen and PPP are right, Christie will squeak out a victory. The wild card is independent candidate Chris Daggett. Daggett can't win, but he may get 10% of the vote. The question is how big his margin is and whose voters he takes. I don't know which way to call this one, but I predict a narrow victory for Christie. Why? Because if I am right I will look smart, and if I am wrong, I will be funny.

New Jersey Tea Leaves

If the Republican does win in New Jersey, that will be very hard news for the Democrats. The GOP will spin a story of shifting tides and a spendthrift President and Congress alienating their own base. Democrats will argue that Corzine did better than Deeds because he ran left and supported the President. That same Democratic spin will work a lot better and be a lot more fun if Corzine survives. Republicans will say that Corzine once again bought an election by spending a lot of his own money, which will be true. Still, he bought it fair and square.

Summary

If Virginia goes as expected the day will belong to the Republicans. Virginia has been one of the most watched states in recent elections. Republican presidential candidates can't win without it. If Christie wins in New Jersey, it won't mean much for the long term. Republicans have no future in that state. But it will put big wind in the sails of the party nationally. If Corzine holds on, it will feed the Democratic narrative that the Party can be successful if only it holds true to its basic principles. That might be the message that saves the party, and it might be the message that wrecks it.

Chimpanzees in the Mirror

Consider this my first Halloween Post. There have been a couple of well publicized chimpanzee attacks in the U.S. in recent years. A man was mauled in an animal shelter in California by two teen age chimps, and earlier this year a woman was attacked by her friend's pet chimpanzee. Both attacks were extremely brutal, and the more recent one was fatal.

There is a very real horror story in this photograph. We see a happy family: St. James Davis, his wife, and Moe, a chimpanzee they raised from infancy. It was not Moe that attack Davis, but two other chimps in the animal shelter where Moe lived after animal control authorities decided he was too dangerous to keep in a residential neighborhood. It is pretty clear that the older of the attackers saw Davis' visit to Moe as an alliance that was a threat to his alpha status.

To anyone who knows much about them (I know a little), Chimpanzees are fascinating and frightening creatures. They are not people, and people who don't understand this sometimes come to grief for it. But they are more like us, and we like them, than either species is similar to any other.

Like us, Chimpanzees fight wars. Their sole strategy (so far observed) is to penetrate the territory of a rival group, isolate an individual, and them stomp him to death. Oh, and biting off the targets genitals (always the target is male) is a favorite moment. As forests in chimpanzee territories have been logged, chimps groups are being forced into the territory of other groups, thus increasing the incidence of war. Right now, the chimpanzees may be killing each other faster than humans are killing them.

Like us, Chimpanzees also hunt. They do so not for any real need, but more for entertainment and for political reasons. Sharing meat is one way to cement alliances with other chimps. Their favorite prey is the red colobus monkey, which they hunt in well organized teams and with rather sophisticated strategies. Advanced hunters will take advanced positions while the rest of the group funnels the fleeing monkeys toward them. The preferred target is a female with an infant. She is slower and has to keep one limb holding on to her baby. The infant is the easy meat. When they catch a monkey, they eat it alive. Here is a clip of a Chimpanzee hunt. 

Watch Chimps hunting monkeys as a team.wmv in Educational  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

But here is where the real horror comes in. Chimps in Uganda have discovered that there is a slower primate to prey upon. From the London Times:

At least eight children have died in the past seven years in Uganda and Tanzania after being taken by chimpanzees, and a further eight injured. The children were found with limbs and other parts of their bodies chewed off.

In one of the most recent attacks Jackson Alikiriza, a three-month-old baby, was snatched as he was being carried by his mother, Anet, while she harvested potatoes.

Mrs Alikiriza fled when she saw a chimp approaching, but could not outrun the animal. She said: "It grabbed my leg and I fell. Then it took my baby."

By the time help was summoned and the chimp was chased away by a man armed with a spear the baby's nose and upper lip had been eaten away. He died a week later.

This is real horror. It is typical chimpanzee behavior. We are modified chimpanzees.

I love chimpanzees. They tell us a lot about ourselves. I would like to think that their species will survive, but I don't think that it is. Stories of chimpanzees preying of human infants won't help their case.

Violence is much less common in modern civilizations than it was in any earlier period of human history. A male in any contemporary society is much less likely to die by violence than would have been true at any previous point in our past, and that is true even with all the deaths in all the modern wars combined. It gets worse the farther back you go. It might be a good thing to keep this in mind, and do whatever we can to make sure it continues. Chimpanzees provide a useful reminder.

Happy Halloween.

Clobbered News Network

The New York Times reports that CNN has hit the basement floor. Hat tip to intrepid reader George Mason.

CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – among the cable news networks with the audience that all the networks rely on for their advertising.

Individually, the CNN shows were beaten resoundingly by all the Fox News programs, but also lost to all of the MSNBC programs, including a repeat of Keith Olbermann's 8 p.m. edition of "Countdown," which beat the 10 p.m. hour of CNN's signature prime-time program, "Anderson Cooper 360."

For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 – the group that television news organizations use as their basis of success because of their advertising sales. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox News, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC, which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000.

Now that is about as bad as bad news gets for a TV network. When your "signature" prime time show gets beat by a two hour old rerun on the second place network, well… CNN's decline has been precipitous. By contrast, Fox News' dominance continues to be amazing. Fox is drawing more views than the next three networks combined.

All this calls for some explanation. The Times thoughtfully provides one:

The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time.

That would provide a little emotional comfort to CNN: we are dying because we are more virtuous. Except that it isn't true.

At 7 p.m. CNN's host, Lou Dobbs was fourth, barely beaten by Jane Velez Mitchell on HLN, 166,000 to 162,000. The big winner was Shepard Smith on Fox with 465,000 viewers. Second was Chris Matthews and "Hardball" on MSNBC, with 179,000 viewers.

Shepard Smith's show is a traditional news hour, presenting a series of stories from the day's news. Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews are "opinion-oriented" if anyone is. Dobbs, in fact, is on the other side of Glen Beck. But Shepard Smith still draws more than twice as many viewers as both shows combined.

Why do people watch cable news in prime time? They watch it because they don't want to watch what is offered on the main networks (mostly non-news programming) or the non-news content of cable. Among that news hungry crowd, Fox is cleaning up.

SDP Report

Thanks to all our readers and commenters.  We are getting well over a thousand page views a day and that is very good for a blog of this nature.  I think it has a lot to do with the quality of comments that our readers leave.  I love all of you and I welcome your participation.  I read every comment, and if I can't respond to every one, that is a sign of mortality and not a sign of lack of interest. 

The War against Fox Explained

Fox News is not only a real news network, it is the only news network that is singularly necessary in today's media environment. If you don't believe me, ask the New York Times.

I often rake the Gray Lady over the coals and for good reason. The Times has been guilty of a lot of embarrassingly partisan and irresponsible journalism. But it is not without redeeming qualities, one of which is that is it quite capable of being embarrassed.

Consider Public Editor Clark Hoyt's mea culpa for the Times' tardiness in picking up the ACORN story. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is the best paragraph, out of several describing letters to the Paper of Record:

Here's an example, from Leigh Allen of San Francisco, who said she relies on The Times to keep her informed: "I often don't hear about the latest conflict until I read a Facebook rant from an old high school friend or talk on the phone with my mother (both in conservative Orange County, Calif.). It's embarrassing not to be able to respond with facts when I hadn't even heard about the issue." Michele Cusack of Novato, Calif., said that when someone asked if she had heard the latest about Acorn, "I had to answer 'no' because I get all my news from The New York Times."

It seems to me that that last sentence is damning for the country's most famous paper: I didn't know what was going on because I read the New York Times. In fact, you wouldn't have known if you relied on the rest of the mainstream media. But you knew if you watched Fox or keep in contact with an old high school friend who watches Fox.  Anyway, at least the New York Times has concluded that it has a problem. 

It is this fact that motivated the Obama Administration's decision to go to war against Fox. Jim Rutenberg at the NYTs has this:

Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

An attempted rapprochement! However:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration's chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early.

The rest of the news networks were realizing that Fox was consistently scooping them. In other words, it wasn't Fox and its stories, exactly, that the Administration was worried about. It was that the other networks might be forced to drop the protection that they had so far provided to Obama and Company. They might start covering stories as soon as they appeared on Fox or, horrors, actually start doing such stories on their own. That is why the Administration went to war against Fox News.

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of mostly liberal columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Mr. Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation.

That is the sort of room in which Barack Obama is comfortable: one in which everyone loves him and vows to protect him. Except, I'd keep an eye on Maureen Dowd. She's unpredictable.

It is also clear from the Rutenberg article that Fox's account of the Feinberg incident was fair and balanced.

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox's television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a "pool" camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration's treatment of "one of our sister organizations."

The Administration tried to exclude Fox from the circle of "real" news networks, and the other networks, acting responsibly, defended their "sister organization."

Barack Obama set out to marginalize and neuter a network that did not report the news to his liking. Though we can now understand the strategy, it still looks stupid. The actual result was to confirm Fox's status as a legitimate news organization and, I suspect, to make it more visible and influential that ever before. Fox is not only real it is indispensible, at least if you care about a free press.

It’s a Swine of the Times

Well, the President may be dithering over Afghanistan, but he is not dithering over the H1N1 pandemic. From RealClearPolitics:

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients.

No doubt the fringe elements among the President's critics will see this as another step in the establishment of a police state. As for me, the extension of the government's powers to pay hospitals for tents more than three hundred yards away from the hospital doors is very low on my list of concerns. I am more concerned that the distance from the hospital doors makes a difference.

It's hard to blame the President for wanting to get out in front of this one, and he pretty much has to take the most authoritative medical advice he can get. But when you step back and look at this thing, it's hard to see why the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control are treating it as a global emergency.

Health authorities say more than 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children, have died from the strain of flu known as H1N1, and 46 states have widespread flu activity.

Well, that sounds pretty serious, doesn't it? But then there is this bit:

"Many millions" of Americans have had swine flu so far, according to an estimate that CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden gave Friday. The government doesn't test everyone to confirm swine flu so it doesn't have an exact count. He also said there have been more than 20,000 hospitalizations.

Well, they don't really know how many hospitalizations and deaths are from swine flu and how many are from non-swine flu, do they? Meanwhile, how do these numbers compare to the garden variety types of flu that sweep the nation every year? The CDC has this:

CDC estimated that about 36,000 people died of seasonal flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. This figure includes people dying from complications of seasonal flu. This estimate came from a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medication Association (JAMA), which looked at the 1990-91 through the 1998-99 flu seasons [10]. Statistical modeling was used to estimate how many flu-related deaths occurred among people whose underlying cause of death on their death certificate was listed as a respiratory or circulatory disease. During these years, the number of estimated deaths ranged from 17,000 to 52,000.

Michael Fumento points out that WHO did a very strange thing when it declared an H1N1 pandemic:

When the sacrosanct World Health Organization (WHO) made its official declaration in June, we were 11 weeks into the outbreak, and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide — the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide. And even after six months, swine flu has killed about as many people as the seasonal flu does every six days.

In order to justify the pandemic label, WHO eliminated severity (large numbers of deaths and illnesses) as a criterion.

That's also how we can have a "pandemic" when six months of epidemiological data show swine flu to be far milder than the seasonal variety. New York City statistics show it to be perhaps a 10th as lethal.

In Australia and New Zealand, flu season has ended, and almost all cases have been swine flu. Yet even without a vaccine, these countries are reporting fewer flu deaths than normal. (In New Zealand, that's just 18 confirmed deaths compared with 400 normally.) Swine flu is causing negative deaths! The best explanation is that infection with the milder strain (swine flu) is inoculating against the more severe strain (seasonal flu) it has displaced.

If Fumento's account is accurate, the reaction of public health agencies is altogether disproportionate to the threat. That matters, because we all have to trust these people to get it about right, most of the time. Crying wolf when all you are faced with one of the lesser pigs will make it all the harder to mobilize the public when and if the wolf actually shows up.

I don't know what's going on here, but I know this: the ability to rationally evaluate a health threat, which means above all to put it in context, is fundamental to an effective public health regime. Just right now it is hard to see that the CDC and WHO have such an ability.

Fox News Gets Real

When I first joined the faculty at Northern, I enjoyed the company of a couple of old school liberals. These guys were uncompromising leftists, of various degrees, but they were scrupulously respectful of people like me. I never heard them suggest that the conservative position was illegitimate.

The American left has changed. When thousands of people show up at town hall meetings or the U.S. capital to criticize their elected representatives, these aren't real people. They aren't real citizens showing up to express their opinions. They are astroturfed people! Only anti-war rallies, hostile to a Republican administration, are real.

When one cable news network is slanted to the right, instead of reflexively solicitous of a Democratic administration, this isn't a real news network! It's Fox.

The President and the left in general have every right and reason to criticize Fox News and its culture. But in claiming that Fox News isn't a real news network, they discredit themselves. Fox adheres as well or better than the other networks to the standards of responsible journalism. It is far less often embarrassed by getting the facts wrong is less prone to fall for partisan canards. It doesn't try to spike stories that depart from some party line agenda. If it is biased in one direction, it is hardly more so than the other major networks in the other direction.

But Fox's status as a real network has been confirmed in an unambiguous way, and Fox has the Obama Administration to thank for this. This week the Administration convened the White House Pool, a rotation of five news agencies that report on daily events at the President's house. The pool was to meet with White House "Pay Czar"

Obama's people made it clear that Fox News alone was not welcome. The bureau chiefs of the other four networks met together, and made it clear that unless Fox was included, they weren't coming either. The Administration caved in the face of the unlooked for opposition.

This was an unlooked for moment of backbone and professional responsibility. If Fox News is banned for not toeing the Administration line, that is a threat to all the news agencies. It's one thing to reflexively protect Obama. It is another for the Obama to lay down the law to any network, even Fox.

The Obama Administration's behavior is outrageous. The President does not get to decide how the press will behavior, or what kind of stories it will publish. This incident makes it perfectly clear that Fox News is a "real" news network. If anyone has the right to decide that question, it is the community of news networks. By that standard, Fox has been confirmed.

The confirmation came in a way that is very happy for a free republic. Democratic governments need a free and vigorous opposition. Only Fox News consistently provides that. It is a bad mark on Obama and his team and his legion of defenders that they refuse to acknowledge this.

The White House Enemies List

If you Google the coinage "Richard Milhous Obama" you get a lot of hits. President Nixon was famous for, among other things, having a enemies list. President Obama seems to have no problem with a five o'clock shadow, but he does have his own enemies list.

The health insurer Humana got on it this way:

The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.

One might have thought that even an insurance company could send a letter expressing a particular political opinion without being investigated for that.

The health insurance industry as a whole is now on it for sponsoring a report arguing that the Baucus plan would lead to increased premiums for most Americans who now have health insurance. The Administration responded to the heinous act of doing a study by threatening punitive legislation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on it for, well, being the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Fox News, however, seems to be occupying the position of enemy number one. The White House has waged a public campaign against Fox. A number of Administration officials have openly declared that Fox News isn't a real news agency. The Administration also seems to be boycotting Fox. This is less serious than the sort of legislative threats and investigations that insurers have to worry about, but it is serious nonetheless.

Fox News is biased. Its straight news programming is clearly slanted in favor of conservative positions and Republicans in general. The Fox panels are usually stacked about three to one with conservative and liberal pundits respectively. Its opinion shows, with the likes of Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Shawn Hannity, are clearly conservative shows.

That said, Fox is no more biased than the major news networks. Consider that curing the recent election campaign the New York Times ran a piece suggesting that John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist. The piece was utterly without foundation, and the Times was duly embarrassed. But the Times couldn't be bothered to investigate credible, and as it turns out, true rumors about John Edward's love child. CNN recently fact checked a Saturday Night Live routine poking fun at President Obama, for which they were justly skewered by John Stewart. The fact is that all the major networks, along with the public networks, are biased in favor of Democrats and the Left.

I am a conservative, but I have long read more left-center periodicals than conservative ones. I know what the conservative ones are going to say, and I prefer to be challenged by the sensible left (the New Republic) and occasionally even the Twilight Zone left (Harpers). But when it comes to daily TV news, I watch Fox.

The reason is simply that Fox News is more reliable. When I compare Fox reporting with that of any TV news outlet, or news magazine, or newspaper, Fox usually presents more interesting information and more points of view. More importantly, I can't think of one major story that Fox missed but the other networks picked up on. I can think of several that would never have seen the light of day had not Fox gone after them.

That, of course, is why Fox is on the President's enemies list. With Fox around, he can't count on getting away with as much. Fox runs circles around other cable news networks, and speaks to a large portion of America, including a lot of independent voters. When the President boycotts Fox, he is writing off a lot of Americans. So much for his promise to be a uniter rather than a divider.

Fiscal Madhouse 2

My friend and fond interlocutor, A.I. has this to say about my previous Fiscal Madhouse post:

If being conservative has some connection with being Republican and managing debt is supposed to be the forte of both, history doesn't bear that out. Here are the stats on public debt under Republican and Democratic administrations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms. They may just indicate Republicans have borrowed attempting to buy prosperity while Democrats have borrowed to build self-sustaining economies. I'm not sure if that is a thought or liberal regurgitation, but it will have to do for now.

I think that rather proves my point. The nation is driving toward a fiscal precipice, Thelma and Louise style, and A.I. want to argue about whose fault it is. Maybe we should figure out where the breaks are first?

Not to doubt Wikipedia, I went to the CBO. Here is an interesting chart..

This presents Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP. Now look at the two dotted lines on the right of the chart. Those are two projections of the debt into the future. Both see the public debt climbing with time. That means that no one in Congress or the White House has any plans for reducing the public debt or halting its growth up to at least 2035.

But also notice that one line is a lot more alarming than the other. If it is what happens, then public debt will approach 200% of the GDP in about 30 years.  Two hundred percent.

Now: what's the difference between the two. The lower line represents what happens if Congress keeps all the promises it is making or has made in the past to cut spending in the future. The latter shows what happens if Congress instead behaves like it has always behaved.

For example, suppose Medicare reimbursements to physicians are cut as current law requires? That, among other provisions in current law, gives you the lower line. But suppose Congress continues to wave the cuts, as it has always done in the past? That gives you the upper line.

Well, what did the Senate just do? While the Baucus plan projects the cuts that have never happened yet in order to appear fiscally sound, Senator Debbie Stabenow was busy restoring the money in a separate bill.

So you tell me which line is the realistic one. This is five kinds of crackers.  Is there any realistic way of paying this down without a major blow to American prosperity?  I doubt it.  But right now neither the Congress nor the White House are paying the slightest attention.  

A Culture of Corruption

Corruption at the top of a political party gets the lion's share of attention. If you don't believe me, ask the lion of Harlem, Charlie Rangel. Corruption at the bottom often goes undetected, but it is far more pervasive, far more debilitating institutionally, and usually has much worse consequences for a lot more ordinary people.

The recent scandal involving ACORN was an unusual case in so far as a culture of corruption was exposed in a way that made for a flamboyant story. But now comes a story of a much more concrete and bitter kind of corruption, and I am guessing, one that will get a lot less attention.

The Washington Post runs Debbie Cenziper's "Staggering Need, Striking Neglect" in its Sunday edition. It is an appalling read.

In a city ravaged by the highest rate of AIDS cases in the nation, the D.C. Health Department paid millions to nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all, even as sick people searched for care or died waiting.

More than $1 million in AIDS money went to a housing group whose ailing boarders sometimes struggled without electricity, gas or food. A supervisor said she was ordered to create records for ghost employees.

About $400,000 was paid to a nonprofit organization, launched by a man who once ran one of the District's largest cocaine rings, for a promised job-training center that has never opened.

More than $500,000 was earmarked for a housing program whose executive director had a string of convictions for theft, drugs and forgery. After the D.C. Inspector General's Office could find no evidence that he was operating an AIDS nonprofit group, the city terminated the grant but never sought repayment.

All told, the Health Department's HIV/AIDS Administration awarded more than $25 million from 2004 to 2008 to nonprofit agencies marked by questionable spending, a lack of clients, or lapses in record-keeping and care, a 10-month Washington Post investigation found. Many of the groups have since closed or are no longer providing AIDS services.

That's just the first five paragraphs in a rather long article. But it presents a pretty good summary of what follows. Allow me to boil it down a little more: $25 million was went to organizations that were essentially fraudulent, and provided little if any benefits to the sick and needy. Meanwhile, honest and legitimate organizations have had to cut back services for lack of funding. What does that mean in human terms?

Renee Paige, 50, once threw birthday parties for her two daughters in her apartment in Southeast Washington, where she'd cook beef stew for elderly neighbors and always had bus fare for a friend. But AIDS and two bouts of pneumonia had left her weak, homeless and unable to care for herself.

She came to a community meeting in April after spending the night on a park bench in heavy rain, with no place to go. "I have AIDS," she told the group, "and I am soaking wet."

Weeks later, she died alone, on the bench, one mile from the HIV/AIDS Administration and within two miles of a dozen nonprofit groups that help people with AIDS.

That's what corruption means. It means Renee Paige died on a bench, a mile from the Office that was supposed to help her.

Cenziper lays out, in disgusting detail, the dysfunctional history of the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration. A few things stand out. One is that an awful lot of the people who ran the Administration itself and the numerous "nonprofit agencies" had no obvious qualifications other than a history of criminality. Consider the case of Debra Rowe, the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration Housing chief.

Rowe had rebuilt her life after a troubled past, like others in the city's network of AIDS workers. In 1991, when Rowe was 31, she was convicted of heroin possession and cocaine distribution, serving 15 months in prison. Months after her release, Rowe's husband, who had been convicted in a separate case of felony drug distribution, was shot and killed on U Street NW, records show.

Rowe later received a master's degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and joined the HIV/AIDS Administration in 1999. In 2004, she was promoted to run the $10 million-a-year AIDS housing program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Rowe enjoyed what the Left calls "authenticity": heroin, prison, and a master's degree. That, and five years on the job, qualified her to run a $10 million-a-year program. She ran it into the ground.

Like most cities, D.C. is monolithically Democratic. There is no Republican Party to complain about misspent millions. So it is left to the press. The WaPo did its job. But how many more such stories are waiting for the New York Times and other national newspapers?

Dunn Conundrum

Well, Glenn Beck continues to score points against Obama Administration apparatchiks, if only because the later seem to go about pointing to the big red targets on their chests. In case anyone doesn't know it, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who has taken point in one war the Obama Administration isn't conflicted about, against Fox News, said some interesting things about Mao Tse-tung. Apparently giving some kind of pep talk earlier this year, she said this:

The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before.

And this:

In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai‑shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Tse Tung said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."

Now I think it is silly to suggest that Ms. Dunn ought to resign over this. Saying something painfully stupid, especially when she didn't seem to be acting in her official capacity, is not usually a firing offense. Give enough speeches, write enough blog posts, and sooner or later you will discover that you have done it.

But it was painfully stupid. To begin with, whatever Mother Theresa and Mao were, they weren't political philosophers. I remember when George W. was asked to name his favorite political philosopher, and he named Jesus. Christ wasn't a political philosopher either. Bush didn't escape criticism, and neither should Ms. Dunn.

And it doesn't help to claim that she got the comparison from Bush 41 advisor Lee Atwater or to say, as some of her defenders have said, that a strategist for Barry Goldwater once claimed to follow Mao's guidance. It was a dumb thing for anyone on either side to do.

Mao Tse-tung was the most prolific and monstrous mass murderer in the history of prolific and monstrous mass murderers. In raw numbers, neither Hitler nor Stalin can compete. He was probably responsible for the death of almost, and perhaps more than, a hundred million people. During the "Great Leap Forward," he caused the starvation of tens of millions. His personal physician recounted that Mao would eat turtle soup and listen to glowing reports of economic progress, while just outside his window the streets were lined with corpses. During the "Cultural Revolution" he set virtually every one of his subjects against every other, creating a horror such as the world may never have known before or since.

Now it's true that Mao was effectively ambitious, and it's logically possible to admire his ambition and some of his talents apart from the fact that he was a monster. But for purposes of rhetoric, this is a very bad idea. Imagine if George W. Bush had spoken admirably of the executive efficiency and fiscal management of Francisco Franco! This just isn't the best way to go about inspiring people. Besides, it risks sending some very bad messages.

Ms. Dunn spoke the way she did because she suffers from the common blindness of the Left when it comes to "progressives" like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. But that's okay. She only the White House Communications Director.

Fiscal Madhouse Run by Inmates

The chief concern of the United States Congress for most of the past year has been whether the Federal Government should enter the insurance business. While we have been thus at loggerheads over the public option, the Federal deficit for this year alone has swelled beyond the imagination of economists. From the New York Times:

The Obama administration said Friday that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945.

The shortfall for the fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was 3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product.

Economists generally agree that annual deficits should not exceed 3 percent of the G.D.P., and that is the level President Obama had vowed to reach by the end of his first term in 2013.

Allow me to ask a couple of questions. Is there any realistic prospect that these astronomical deficits can be paid off? And if not, what then are we facing? I doubt that anyone knows the answer to either question, but that is not reassuring.

So what is Congress and the White House bending their minds and wills to? Creating a new, gargantuan, public welfare program. We were told at the outset that we had to address the healthcare system in order to get our fiscal house in order. Then we got to see what Congress actually had in mind. The House plan would add hundreds of billions to the deficit. The Senate's Baucus plan is nominally revenue neutral, but it is now clear that that is a shell game. Revenues are front loaded to make the first ten years look like a fiscal wash, but even that is a canard. Savings that balance the Baucus books are just spent in parallel bills. Cuts in Medicare that the CBO scoring includes are the kind of cuts that Congress has never been able to make in the past.

If Congress and the President were to pay attention to fiscal realities, what might they do? Tony Blankley has a thought.

Here's a thought: As shrinking the unsustainable deficit is a critical pre-requisite for a healthy economy, why not just enact the $400 billion of Medicare cuts and $400 billion of health insurance tax increases [included in the Baucus Bill] - thereby reducing the 10-year deficit by about $1 trillion (when you count reduced interest payments) - but don't provide the new entitlement benefits that were the purpose of the bill.

Helping the uninsured might be a nice notion some day, but the first priority now is to avoid permanently destroying our economic capacity - as we are rapidly doing - by the insanity of adding to entitlement programs while the dollar begins to fail and the CBO predicts we will never recover from the current debt and deficit level. So cut the 10-year deficit by that almost $1 trillion.

That's the kind of thing you might think of doing if you were concerned about

Polls show that Americans are most concerned with the economy. Healthcare reform is a very distant concern. The Democrats are all about healthcare reform, and seem to regard the economic fortunes of the Republic as a minor annoyance. What is the President's big idea just now? Since Social Security recipients aren't going to get a cost of living increase, because the cost of living hasn't increased, President Obama wants to give every old person $250. Well, what's another $14 billion among friends?

The inmates are in charge of the asylum.

The truth about medicare cuts

The Baucus Bill accounting involves big cuts in Medicare spending.  So what is Congress doing right now?  See Mickey Kaus for the grim details:

Mickey's Assignment Desk: Senate Dems quietly move a bill to countermand a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors, which will add $247 billion to the deficit over ten years. Of course, the Baucus health care reform bill achieves its famed deficit neutrality through cuts in Medicare fees, mainly to non-physicians--saving (by my reading of the CBO analysis) at least $184 billion from Medicare over the same period. Plus there is a special panel set up to recommend further cuts.

Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein might productively explain a) Why this isn't a shell game, with Dems granting Medicare increases in one bill and then taking ostentatious credit for partly-offsetting cuts in a separate bill; b) Why Congress' unwillingness to put up with the scheduled Medicare doctors' cuts this year doesn't indicate that it won't put up with scheduled cuts in future years--that, as Megan McArdle among others argues, the projected Medicare cuts in Baucus' bill simply won't happen. ...

P.S.: I'm still for health care reform, of course, even if the accounting that scores it as deficit neutral proves to be a fantasy. We make the mess now. We make it work and pay for it later. Stuff the beast!  If it turns out that to get the reform passed Dems have to resort to a shell game--with phony peas to boot--well, just keep it between us, OK?. ...

Norwegians & Russians, Prizes & Bad Policies

The Nobel Committee has been somewhat rattled by the reaction to their recent award, and has for a second time publically explained why President Obama deserved the peace prize. From the Politico:

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee defended their decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told AP, "We simply disagree that he has done nothing. He got the prize for what he has done."

Jagland cited Obama's outreach to the Muslim world and the way the president "modified" a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe as two key accomplishments.

That's two items. The first part continues a pattern that is well-established in the short history of this Administration: a confusion of sentiment with action. I have noted that, in his speech before the U.N., the President himself presented his decision to close the Guantánamo Bay prison as one of his achievements. I noted that the New York Times repeated his language in their defense of the President.

I also noted that the President had done no more than state a decision to close it. He has not in fact closed it, nor is there any indication yet of a coherent plan to close it. Maybe one will eventually materialize, but in the meantime a pious intention does not count as an achievement. To state boldly that it does, as the President and the Times both did, confuses mere words with deeds.

Something of the same is true of the President's "outreach to the Muslim world." To be sure, the President is talking nice. Perhaps his rhetoric is different from that of the previous Administration, and perhaps the fact that he is saying it, and not Bush, means a lot more. But granting that, has the President really proposed anything concrete that has promise of bring the two worlds together? It is difficult to see any real movement on any actual issue. Like the Times, the Nobel Committee can't seem to see the difference between pious words and effective actions.

By contrast, the President's decision to abandon our promise to include Poland and the Czech Republic under NATO's anti-missile defenses was a real deed. It effectively undermined the confidence of these central European nations that they are really part of NATO. See Ms. Flint's post on this topic. Does that advance the cause of world peace?

Well, it might have, conceivably, if it had resulted in a change in Russian policy toward Iran. The Russians have been one of two big obstacles to effective international sanctions against Iran (the other being China). If the Russians had come around, that would have been at least some substantial progress on dissuading Iran from its nuclear ambitions.

Well, now we know how that is working out. From the New York Times:

Denting President Obama's hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear program, Russia's foreign minister [Sergey V. Lavrov] said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be "counterproductive."…

Mr. Lavrov's resistance was striking given that, just three weeks before, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that "in some cases, sanctions are inevitable." American officials had hailed that statement as a sign that Russia was finally coming around to the Obama administration's view that Iran is best handled with diplomacy backed by a credible threat of sanctions.

Now those two paragraphs alone tell the story of a foreign policy failure. The President left two young democracies feeling as though they had been betrayed and sold to the Russians. From Yahoo News:

"Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

It is clear that the Administration what it thought it was getting out of this sale. Of course, Nobel prizes are not given for advancing national interests. But did giving the Russians the gift of more leverage over Central Europe advance the cause of world peace? Did the failure to move the world toward real pressures against a nuclear Iran really earn our President a Peace Prize? That the Nobel Committee thinks so is a sign of moral rot.

Scoring the Baucus Bill

From Meagan McArdle at Atlantic:

The CBO projects $180 billion in "gross cost" of the coverage expansion--i.e., what the government will spend on Medicaid and SCHIP expansions, operating the exchanges, and subsidizing the purchase of standardized policies therein.  It turns out that about $58 billion, or just about one third of that cost, is being paid for by expecting employers to substantially lower their costs and pass through all the savings to their employees, who then pay taxes on them.

As revenue-raising mechanisms go, this is pretty indirect.  And with so many links in the chain, you can see lots of places where this could go wrong.  What if employers just cut their costs and don't raise their employees wages, because they're in a dying unionized industry?  What if they shift workers to other forms of tax-deferred compensation, like 401(k) matching or HSAs?  What if smart lawyers figure out a way to structure health plans to avoid the tax?  What if all the people who leave employer insurance for the exchange, or have their benefits cut, are low wage workers with low marginal tax rates?

Conservatives complained for a long time that, in calculating the cost of tax cuts, the CBO didn't take into account any of the dynamic effects.  If you cut taxes, people have more to spend, and spending generates economic growth and hence more taxes. 

Maybe conservatives shouldn't complain now that the CBO is suddenly in love with dynamic effects.  But why the change of heart?  The dollars going out under the Baucus bill are real dollars.  The dollars being relied upon to pay for large parts of the costs are based on rather complicated speculation.  What if, as Ms. McArdle asks, the speculations are wrong? 

The Baucus Bill

The Baucus Bill passed out of the Senate Finance Committee with one Republican vote (Olympia Snowe of Maine). Or at least an outline of the bill passed. We don't yet have legislative language. But it is clear that the Democrats are really intent on passing some kind of legislation. This is surely a temporary win for the reform side, but it raises more questions than it answers.

But the evil insurance companies, which up to now have been playing ball with the reform forces, have finally shown their color. The American Health Insurance Providers issued a report that projects rising insurance premiums for a lot of American voters. Of course they are evil, and, to be sure, motivated by interest. But the logic of the report is hard to escape.

If you are going to extend coverage to a lot of people who can't pay for it now, the money has to come from somewhere. One place a lot of cash was supposed to come from was young workers and others who can afford some insurance but choose not to purchase it. The bill had included a pretty severe set of sanctions to force them to open their wallets, and that would have been a source of revenue for private insurers. But the sanctions have been weakened to the point of ineffectiveness. Since the bill would also prohibit denying coverage to people with pre-existing illnesses, it will make sense for the recalcitrant uninsured to pay the modest penalties and keep on being uninsured. After all, if they do get sick they can pick up coverage then.

All this means that private insurers will have to cover a lot of new people with little if any new revenue. I'm no economist, but I think that means that premium costs will have to rise significantly. Of course a public option might take care of this, but that means the costs will be borne by public, and the price of the legislation will balloon. Houston, we have a problem.

Politically speaking, we now see two powerful forces arrayed against the Baucus plan. One is the insurance industry, and the other is the labor unions. They don't want their extremely generous healthcare packages, painstakingly negotiated, to be punitively taxed, as would happen under the Baucus plan.

It seems to me that a little momentum for reform has been generated, but that nothing much has been settled.

Matthew Shepard

Eleven years ago today Matthew Shepard died in a Colorado hospital. He had been robbed and fatally beaten by two men: Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. He was left wounded and tied to a fence post for eighteen hours before he was found and taken to the hospital. Because Shepard was gay, and because his homosexuality played a role in his murder, he was elevated to the status of a martyr. His martyrdom is part of contemporary gay politics, and especially of the case for hate crimes legislation.

Several years ago the ABC News show 20/20 ran a story on the Shepard case that purported to debunk the standard account. I have not seen it, but I gather that the gist was that it was not a hate crime at all but merely a bungled robbery and that drugs may have been involved.

So what was it: a hate crime, or a bungled robbery? The answer is yes. It seemed unlikely from the start that McKinney and Henderson were primarily motivated by prejudice, though their lawyers did, unwisely, employ a "gay panic" defense. The two murderous thugs were motivated by two things that motivate such people: greed, and the desire to beat the daylights out of someone.

But the fact of Shepard's homosexuality is a vital element in the story. As I understand it, they lured Sheppard out of a bar with the promise of sex. That in itself doesn't make this a hate crime. But such predators as these choose their victims carefully, if unreflectively. They are frequently attracted to victims that they believe do not enjoy the protection of society. That is why prostitutes for example, or Blacks or immigrants in some situations, are deemed to be cheap targets. "Is it really illegal," one defendant in a 19^th century murder trial asked, exasperatedly, "to kill a Chinaman?"

Paradoxically, the Shepard case makes a better argument for hate crimes legislation if you assume that McKinney and Henderson were not acting primarily out of prejudice against homosexuals. People who are prepared to assault someone out of a murderous hatred of gays, Blacks, Mexicans, women, or Republicans for that matter, are least likely to be deterred by legal sanctions. But those who consider some category of the population to be easy marks can get the message that that criteria of victim selection will cause the law to come down on them like a ton of bricks.

For that reason, I am in favor of hate crimes laws. Most conservatives are not. They tend to think that such legislation creates special rights for favored groups, as if it were worse to kill a Black lesbian than a White, heterosexual, Baptist preacher. But such legislation can easily be crafted to protect everyone. All of us are minorities according to some criteria. I don't know if there is anyone out there who has it in for short, bearded, conservative, Darwinists, but if there is, I would like them to know that I enjoy the same protection as the Matthew Shepards of the world. The point is not that I need it, I hope I don't. The point is that such a wide definition of hate crimes would appeal to a much larger constituency.

There is nothing wrong with the fact that gay activists are using the late Mr. Shepard as a martyr. That's politics. But interpreting a crime in the way that is most emotionally satisfying is not always the best way to figure out what to do about it. McKinney and Henderson probably weren't textbook homophobes. They were textbook predators. We all have to fear such appalling creatures. If Shepard's memory helps us deal with them, we all will have a reason to remember his passing.

Remembering Russ Keen

The Aberdeen American News is reporting that Russ Keen died in a traffic accident tonight. Keen was a fine writer and a fine fellow and I am both shocked and sorry. I remember him reporting on school events when I was in elementary school. He had a way of staying in the background, so at times, students barely noticed he was there. But he captured the events he covered perfectly.

He could make even the most insignificant events seem important. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my school pushed an anti-bullying campaign. The principal wanted kids who were interested to do an anti-bullying rap. Only two of us showed up and we were geeky as all get out. But Keen made us feel important and snapped our photos anyway. He made what could have been an embarrassing memory a happy one.

That is the sort of kindness and skill I will remember him for.

Rest in peace, Russ Keen. You will be missed.

Global Cooling

Paul Hudson is the "Climate Correspondent" for the BBC. The fact that such a job exists is evidence of the BBC's commitment to the climate change orthodoxy. You would think that his job would be to explain how the news, no matter what it is, confirms the theory. But that is not what he did. Perhaps he thinks his job is to accurately report the news of climate change. I will be more than mildly surprised if he is right about that. Here is what he says:

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?

So let's consider this. There has been no increase of global temperatures over the last eleven years. That's curious because anyone who follows the climate news knows that all sorts of disasters are happening right now (glaciers receding, etc.) because of global warming. But how can this be if global warming isn't exactly happening, right now?

We also note that the climate models on which the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis are based aren't accurate, over the last ten years. Man-made carbon emissions have sure enough been increasing, but clearly that has not produced warmer climates. What on earth is going on?

Hudson tells us this:

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionize the whole subject.

Well, maybe Corbyn is right. If he is, it would indeed "revolutionize the whole subject," if by "revolutionize" you mean refute the orthodoxy. It's amazing how inconvenient science can be.

It's not just Corbyn or Hudson who have doubts.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

The theory of anthropogenic global warming has not been refuted at all. We should take it seriously, and be working on plans to deal with it if indeed it reemerges as a problem. But it's not a problem right now and we can't be sure how much of a problem, if any, it will be in the future.

Only relatively wealthy nations can afford to care about the environment. Or to put it more directly, only such nations will in fact care and act about it. If we act so as to hobble our economies on the basis of slim evidence, we run the risk of discrediting science and provoking an anti-scientific backlash. If you really want to promote responsible environmental policies, you have to make sure that economic growth is restored.