Where the Public Option is the Only Option

One of the curious things about the healthcare debate in America is how little attention has been paid to healthcare systems in other countries. You might have thought we would be hearing about how public healthcare functions in Canada and Europe. That, after all, is what we will be moving toward if the Democrats get their way. In fact, such attention is scrupulously absent from the debate, at least on the Democratic side. Conservatives have tried to bring it up, mostly without success.

Maybe that's because the story of healthcare in Europe is a very mixed bag. In the Mother Country, it's a scandal. From the London Times:

An immediate investigation to uncover the true extent of death rates across the NHS has been ordered by the Health Secretary after scandals at two hospital trusts.

Amid claims that patients are dying due to poor care in at least 27 hospitals around the country, Andy Burnham said that patient safety was paramount and must take precedence above all else.

His comments come after the head of a foundation trust in Colchester, Essex, was sacked over concerns about high death rates, leadership and waiting times.

Failings in patient care had previously been linked to the deaths of between 70 and 400 patients at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Foundation Trust, also in Essex.

Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph, is brutally clever about the NHS's brutality:

One of Labour's great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

It is a further achievement of our monitoring, regulating culture that even the monitors and the regulators don't seem to have a clue how bad things are – or they certainly didn't in Basildon. This exposes one of the great pretences of the NHS: that it is there first and foremost for the benefit of patients. It isn't. It exists these days mostly for the benefit of various trade unionists who are fully paid-up members of the Brown clientele, and who earn good money as petty bureaucrats trying to "manage" things that, if they need to be managed at all, could be far better done by fewer people in much more efficient systems.

It's not just the English government, let alone the English people, who might want to know how bad the NHS really is. Our Congress seems determined to turn the entire American healthcare system over to the HHS. Is Health and Human Services really prepared to control a sixth of the U.S. economy? Will HHS be more attentive to patients and less solicitous of public employee unions than Britain's NHS?

One thing we know about the House and Senate healthcare bills: protecting lawyers and health worker unions comes first. That might matter if, ten years of so down the road, you find yourself in a hospital bed.

Something to be Thankful For

"Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell

Hat tip to Powerline

Happy Birthday to the Origin of the Species

One hundred and fifty years ago this week, Charles Darwin's magnum opus was published in England. It was certainly one of the most important works of science ever written. If one listed the competition, it would include the seminal works by Copernicus, Newton, and of course the papers of the young Einstein. All of those concerned physics. Perhaps Watson and Crick's work on DNA would compare.

But judged by its impact not only on science but on world culture as well, The Origin of the Species is second to none. Darwin did not think up the idea of evolution. That idea was familiar enough by his time. Darwin addressed two closely related and fundamental questions about living organisms: why is there such an astounding diversity among the many species, and how did the various organisms come to be so admirably adapted to their environments? What he did in his book was to make "one long argument," and a compelling one, about the mechanism underlying both the diversity and the design of living things.

The mechanism that shapes and maintains the forms of the various species is natural selection. If an organism inherits a physical structure and a range of behaviors that promote successful reproduction (what we call inclusive fitness), then the factors of inheritance responsible for those traits (what we call genes) will be well represented in future generations. If the organism's traits inhibit successful reproduction, then to that degree its genes will be less well represented. That's the whole idea.

It is an astoundingly powerful idea. The environments within which the various organisms do their business are very diverse and frequently change. The factors of inheritance also change, due to random mutations. As the many organisms fill the various environmental niches, the organisms diverge from one another in form and segregate themselves into distinct species. Thus Darwin's idea explains the diversity of life. As minute variations in traits, the shape of a wing or the size of a brain, prove better or worse in terms of inclusive fitness, so the organisms come to be meticulously designed for their various environments. Thus the Darwinian idea explains adaptation.

It is both the curse of Darwinism and a source of its enormous strength that it came along just as Western intellectual culture was slipping out of the grip of Biblical religion. Whatever you think about modern secular culture, Darwinism was not responsible for it. It was well advanced by the time his book was published. But secularists would increasingly seize on Darwinism as an argument against natural theology (the attempt to prove the existence of God by reference to natural and logical facts). Accordingly, those of traditional faith came to see Darwin as an enemy.

Darwinism remains controversial to this day because so many people of faith see it as inconsistent with the idea of Divine creation. This is a great mistake. In understanding the mechanisms of evolution Darwinism is no more inconsistent with Genesis than the sciences of astronomy or chemistry. Yet only Darwinism is seen as a problem.

Darwinism has become controversial recently on a very different issue. Many modern social scientists, especially on the political left, are deeply committed to the idea that all human behavior is determined by learning and so is "socially constructed." Modern Darwinian biology is showing that many human behaviors are deeply influenced by inherited factors, shaped by natural selection.

Here, Darwinism reinforces the conservative side of the argument. Conservatives, both religious and secular, see human beings as dangerous by nature. Darwinism tends to confirm this. I have written as much in the book I recently edited: Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question.

Anyone who writes a book probably would like to think that a century later everyone will still be talking about it. By that standard, The Origin of the Species was a spectacular success. Happy Birthday to the Origin.

Pay No Attention to the Climate Scientists behind the Curtain

In case you hadn't noticed, the esoteric deliberations of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Orthodoxy were exposed for all the world to see when someone hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center. Now this hacking was an invasion of privacy and probably illegal, so I deplore it. But that doesn't mean I can ignore it now that it's public!

That there has been a change among the MSM of late is very interesting. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times report the story, more or less honestly. Could it be the influence of Fox News? Better get it out, before Glen Beck goes postal.

These emails tell us what prominent scientists who are campaigning to stop anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are saying to each other in private. In one juicy tidbit, a climate researcher describes how he intentionally distorts the data to hide the recent decline in global temperatures.

In other released messages, global warming alarmists discuss how they can bring pressure on peer-reviewed journals and IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) to suppress any papers or reports that contradict the orthodoxy. From the WaPo:

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Well, that's a solution to peer-reviewed research that contradicts the orthodox view: redefine "peer-review literature" so that it excludes certain inconvenient findings.

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes.

"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

This is not science. It is an established church conducting an inquisition. Many legitimate and credentialed researchers who are skeptical of AGW have complained of brutish campaigns to marginalize and exclude them. Their complaints are now confirmed beyond reasonable doubt.

Powerline today points out something even more interesting: global warming activists acknowledging to one another that they don't know at all what the climate is doing. Industrial activity in China and elsewhere emits green house gases like carbon dioxide. But it also admits other substances, some of which have the opposite effect of green house gases, and promote cooler temperatures. How does it balance out?

Sulphur dioxide, like carbon dioxide, is emitted as a result of industrial activity. Unlike carbon dioxide, it is actually a pollutant. But whereas carbon dioxide tends to warm, sulphur dioxide tends to cool, and MacCracken suggests that SO2 emissions from China and India may well be offsetting the temperature impact of CO2. The net effect of human activity, therefore, may be much closer to neutral than the alarmists have been claiming.

That's Powerline's summary of a long quote from the emails. These are the scientists at the very center of the global warming orthodoxy, and they don't know whether their own climate models are any good or not. Are we really going to suppress economic activity all over the globe, at a moment when the world is experiencing a grave economic downturn, over such as this?

I have loved science since I was ten years old. Science always faces serious threats from people who don't want to know that the world isn't what they think it is. It is clear which side of that divide the global warming alarmists are on.

Ladies, Feminists and Women of Ill Repute

Britain is making quite a fuss over Dr. Brooke Magnanti, who recently revealed herself as the infamous Belle De Jour. Magnanti as Belle ran a blog called “Diary of a London Call-Girl” that gained her a substantial following. It became a best-selling book and later a TV series.  The BBC’s Clive James observes in this article that some critics suspected that “Belle” was actually Salman Rushdie. James himself says the following:

My own guess is that she will marry a future crowned head of Europe...There is nothing this woman can't do, and you can tell by the history of her blogging. She has been blogging since blogging was invented. Fresh out of school, she blogged about restaurants. After that, by a sequence of events that will no doubt be explained to us in due course, she blogged about autopsies.

This was such great praise that I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about. Did this woman really write like Salman Rushdie? What does a woman who “can do anything” blog about? Why was Magnanti getting such positive press while many women of better repute were received so negatively? These were among the many questions in my mind as I headed over to Magnanti’s blog.

I surfed in expecting either high-brow smut (can there be such a thing?) or perhaps some sort of progressive rant about a woman’s right to prostitute herself. Instead, I found an argument against feminists that I sympathize with. Here is an excerpt:

 

Bottom line, it takes a particular kind of self-consciously middle-class gynecentric view of the world to imagine that the only physical danger men face is in a war zone. As someone who has lived in more than a few dodgy neighbourhoods - because sponging off my parents was categorically Not An Option - and been privy to the secrets and fears of my male friends, I do not think they have it easier than we of the XX-type. Different, yes. Easy, no.

Magnanti mentions that one of her friends sustained skull fractures after being jumped in a situation that she would never have had to face, because she is a girl. She ends her blog with these cutting words:

And let us not forget that the sort of men who exercise violent dominance over women do not only do that to women. But then, it must be beastly difficult to see that from the point of view of a B.A. in Women's Studies surfing broadband in your parents' spare room. Very difficult indeed.

I don’t much like prostitution. Catching the Swine Flu is more appealing to me, and I dislike the fact that women are willing to accept payment to help men betray their wives. But in my view, feminists have done more to hurt the relationship between men and women than prostitutes have.  

Feminists teach women to rail against men who advance more quickly than they do in the workplace. Women are taught to discard men who do not treat them exactly the way they want to be treated. Men must not only work to support their families, but they must also pamper women with flowers and chocolate and perform every handy-man service a woman desires. If they don’t do it, they’re jerks.

Empowered women have spoiled day to day activities too, by suing men for complimenting them and screaming at men who try to pay them respect by opening the door for them. One New York woman screamed at my brother for doing her that favor when he travelled to the state for a college debate tournament. If women treat men so badly for being respectful, how can we expect them to be anything but disrespectful?

These days, women who might have enjoyed receiving compliments from male co-workers often don’t get them, as men who might have given them now must be careful not to provoke lawsuits. It’s a pity, because women often have low self-esteem and compliments from the opposite sex might have helped with that. Maybe the knowledge that we can now, thanks to feminist crusaders, hold the door open for ourselves is supposed to make up for that loss. Thank you, feminists. What a victory for womankind!

Comparing feminists and prostitutes reminds me of the scene in Gone With The Wind, where Rhett Butler explains to Scarlett why he took Solace with the Madame Belle Watling. Here’s what he says:

 

If you had only let me, I could have loved you as gently and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. But I couldn’t let you know, for I knew you’d think me weak and try to use my love against me. And always—always there was Ashley. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t sit across the table from you every night, knowing you wished Ashley was sitting there in my place. And I couldn’t hold you in my arms at night and know that—well, it doesn’t matter now. I wonder, now, why it hurt. That’s what drove me to Belle. There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a woman who loves you utterly and respects you for being a fine gentleman—even if she is an illiterate whore. It soothed my vanity. You’ve never been very soothing, my dear.”

Neither have the feminists. Magnanti certainly seems to have more heart than many of them.

The NEA: Teachers First, Children Second

In a baffling act of candor, retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin explains just what kind of organization the National Education Association is. From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

The NEA is not about education; it's about power and money, period. The power depends on the money, and the money depends on the Union serving the interests of "education employees," not pupils. If that interpretation of the paragraph sounds harsh, see Mr. Chanin's next paragraph:

This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

That, I think, is about as clear as it can be. Protecting the interests of teachers is more important to the NEA than making sure that students receive a good education. The NEA will always sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former.

No one who is familiar with the NEA will be surprised to learn that this is true. I am very surprised to hear someone from the NEA actually come out and admit it.

60 Votes to Debate Healthcare Bill

From the LA Times:

Democrats and their allies formally moved their healthcare bill to the Senate floor tonight, rebuffing Republicans and ensuring that lawmakers will get a long and acrimonious debate on the overhaul of the healthcare system.

All 58 Democrats and the two independents who usually vote with them backed cloture on a motion to proceed, a needed procedural step to bring the Democratic-backed healthcare bill to the floor and open formal debate. Thirty-nine Republicans opposed the motion.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that it signals a willingness on the part of sixty Senators to see something like the current bill passed into law. That might well be true and if it is, then we are going to get a radical restructuring of the American healthcare system. Another way to look at it is that Harry Reid had to pull out all the stops just to get this procedural vote passed, and that he had not a single vote to spare. Michell Bard at the Huffington Post is in no mood yet to uncork the champagne.

The procedure for passing a bill once it comes out of committee consists of four steps. First, there is a vote to open debate. That is what passed today. Second there is the debate. During this time, Senators are allowed to offer amendments and nervous Democrats will certainly offer a lot of those. Third, a vote of cloture (a vote to end debate) must be passed by sixty votes. The Fourth step is for the Senate to actually vote the bill up or down. This requires only a majority.

The decisive step is step three. If Reid loses a single Democrat, or Joe Liebermann, then he can't get a vote on the bill. If he gets sixty votes for cloture, he can surely come up with fifty-one for passage.

But that makes the debate dynamic very complicated. Any one of the Senators who voted yes today can offer an amendment and demand its passage as a price of his or her continued support. Liebermann has said that he will vote against cloture if the public option is still in the bill at that point. It cost the United States $300 million to get the vote of Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. That's being called the "Louisiana Purchase."It is possible that some of the Senators have irreconcilable demands. One Senator might refuse to vote for cloture unless stronger anti-abortion language is added while another might refuse if such language is added.

What is really going to determine the outcome is the judgment of a number of vulnerable Democratic Senators. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is viewed as the most vulnerable.

What is rather striking right now is how consistently bad the news is regarding public support for the reform effort and for the Democrats in general. President Obama's approval rating is now below fifty in several polls. Moreover, according to Charlie Cook, the President has become "worse than radioactive" in many Democratic districts, meaning that support or association with President Obama may cost a Senator or Congressman reelection.

But a CNN poll just out spells worse news. More Americans blame the Republicans for the recession than blame the Democrats. But the allocation of blame has been steadily shifting for months from the GOP to the Dems.

"The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold the GOP exclusively responsible for the recession has been steadily falling by about two to three points per month," said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. "At that rate, only a handful of voters will blame the economy on the Republicans by the time next year's midterm elections roll around.."

So far the Democrats are behaving very courageously, or foolishly, depending on your perspective. They seem to assume that they're going to take a bath next November, and are taking their one chance to move America closer to Canada. But a vote for the Senate bill may cost some Democrats dearly come next fall.

The Right to Know v The Right to Privacy

The Aberdeen American News ran an interesting “Our Voice” column recently.

Here is an excerpt:

A judge has decided the person who donated $750,000 to an anti-abortion referendum can remain anonymous. The state should continue efforts to bring this name to light and protect the public's right to know.

 

It is ironic that today’s abortion rights came about because proponents believed that the right to privacy was incredibly important. Indeed, in Griswold V. Connecticut,  we were assured that the right to privacy was protected by the first amendment. Here is Justice Douglas giving the opinion of the Court:

In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion.  The right of "association," like the right of belief (Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

 

So, while the constitution might not have explicitly guaranteed this pro-lifer the right to privacy, it is not hard to imagine that such a right emanated from Douglas’s penumbra.  Does the right to know now trump the right to privacy? If so, perhaps Griswold ought to be reversed.

So How’s Obama Doing?

Just some random thoughts about He Who Blessed the Waffle.

President Obama went to China. He said lots of nice things about Chinese Civilization. He spoke to a small group of Chinese students, which event was blacked out on Chinese TV. He got nothing in terms of agreements or cooperation from the Chinese.

The President hasn't decided yet when he will decide whether he is going to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. But the Conference has been declared dead in advance. The world is blaming Obama for not getting a U.S. climate change bill, as if that would have helped.

The President sold Poland and the Czech Republic to the Russians. That, at least, is how the Czechs and the Poles see it. In return he got from the Russians… well, nothing so far.

The President extended an open hand to the Iranians and got his hand spit on. The spit clicks on a Geiger counter. It might have helped if he had gotten some cooperation from the Russians and/or from the Chinese. See above.

The President hasn't decided yet when he will decide what his Afghanistan strategy is, but it will be soon. "Soon" means in the next several weeks. It remains to be seen what "several" means.

The President has decided that terrorists who target the American military will be tried in military courts, where they are more likely to be convicted. He has decided that terrorists who target American citizens will be tried in civil courts where they will get the same rights as the American citizens they blew out of their socks.

The President has insulted our British and French allies. He has also convinced Europe in general that he is not very much interested in Europe in general.

So much for foreign policy.

The President got a stimulus package passed that did wonders to stimulate government jobs. It also apparently created jobs in Congressional districts that do not exist. As for real unemployment, that stands now at about 17%, at least in Congressional districts that do exist.

The President made climate change a major part of his agenda, but no climate change bill is forthcoming. See above.

The President is planning on gargantuan deficits into the foreseeable future.

The President might yet sign health care legislation that will dramatically expand the size and power of government, and just as dramatically expand the federal deficit. See just above.

That's how he's doing.

Was the Ft. Hood Shooter an Obama Advisor?

No. An internet rumor circulating to that effect, and it landed in my email. There is an interesting footnote here, but so far as I can tell there is no evidence at all that Nidal Malik Hasan had any connection to the Obama campaign or to the Administration.

Here is the meat of the email I received:

Now we have a little insight into why Obama said to not jump to conclusions about Nidal Hasan. This man who killed and wounded the people at Fort Hood, Texas was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team.

Well, that would be a pretty sexy story if it were true. It would not of course mean that the Obama organization had any idea what kind of man Hasan was, but it would be a reason for the Administration to be particularly embarrassed by this episode.

But it isn't true, at least according to the evidence at hand. The rumor is based on this document published online by the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. The HSPI looks to be a typical think tank. They spend a lot of money getting a lot of people with credentials together to talk things over and publish reports.

No doubt the folks at HSPI hoped to have influence in the Obama Administration. The document is a report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force. I do not know what connections HSPI or their PTTF had with the Obama organization. I note that Ed Meese, Reagan Administration Attorney General, was on the Task Force. The document presents a lot of boilerplate about homeland security issues. I confess that I didn't study it closely.

But on page 29 of the list of "Task Force Even Participants" was one Nidal Hasan, of the "Uniformed Services University School of Medicine." That is indeed our man, as the GW Hatchet reports.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the HSPI, said Hasan was not affiliated with the HSPI.

"There have been a lot of erroneous stories," Cilluffo said, adding that Hasan has "no affiliation [with HSPI], was not a member of the task force, but participated in some of the meetings as an audience member."

Cilluffo said Hasan RSVP'd to these HSPI events "in his capacity as a disaster and preventative psychiatry fellow with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences" – a federal health sciences university which trains its students for "military medicine, disaster medicine and military medical readiness."

It looks like Nidal Hasan used his credentials to get a place on the HSPI proceedings. That will no doubt be of interest to the investigators in this case, and to those Congressional Committees doing their own investigations. It surely tells us something about Hasan.

But there is no scandal here. I can understand that this is a little embarrassing to HSPI, but the Institute had no reason to be suspicious of Hasan. More importantly, there is no link between Hasan and the Obama organization. The claim that Hasan was "was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team" appears to be a canard.

The Hasan Scandal Gets Deeper

The scandal behind the Fort Hood shooting keeps getting deeper. It should have been clear to the army that Nidal Malik Hasan was a security risk long before he launched his personal jihad. Christopher Hitchens summarizes some of the details in his characteristically devastating piece at Slate.

On his business card, [Hasan] described himself as "SOA" or "slave," or possibly, "soldier of Allah." Neither would be especially reassuring in this context.

He had attracted considerable attention by repeatedly using his postgraduate classes at the Uniformed Service University in Bethesda, Md., for the purpose of Islamic proselytizing, for a version of Islam that, to say the least, did not overemphasize it as a "religion of peace."

He had, in spoken and written communications, demonstrated a fascination with the love of death and the concept of suicide martyrdom (better described as suicide murder) that is the central concept of Bin Ladenism.

If none of this came to the attention of his superiors, then they weren't looking or they were ignoring what they saw.

But NPR has a report that adds a new dimension to this story. Hasan was not only a jihadist waiting for his moment to board the paradise express, he was also a dreadfully bad psychiatrist.

On May 17, 2007, Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, "Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan." More than a page long, the document warns that: "The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan's career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

"Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview," says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt's psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

If anything, that understates the matter.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

Whether the Army missed the "Slave of Allah" stuff, it did not miss the fact that Hasan was an absolute disaster as a psychiatrist. And yet they kept him, promoted him, and sent him to Fort Hood to work with men and women who deserved a lot more than a competent psychiatrist.

Whether this was a result of the military culture of sensitivity or of mere incompetence on the part of Hasan's superiors, it is something Congress should put on his schedule of hearings as soon as possible.

Chris Cillizza Nominates John Thune

Coming hard on the heels of David Brook's column on John Thune is this piece by the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:

For months -- if not years -- the Republican/conservative smart set has been looking for a fresh face on which to hang their hopes and dreams. South Dakota Sen. John Thune may be that person.

Well, he may be. With the next Presidential election three years away, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are the only big names on the board. Senator Thune has been quietly enlarging his role in the Republican Party, mostly on the basis of his defeat of former South Dakotan Tom Daschle. He is also showing up on a lot of cable TV shows, as Cillizza notes. Whether he intends to or can assemble a coalition for a national bid remains to be seen.

But wouldn't it be fun? If Thune runs for President it would prove that South Dakota is the little engine that could. It would also irritate some persons in the local blogosphere to the point of collapse. That alone would be worth a hefty campaign contribution.

I have had the pleasure of meeting both Tom Daschle and John Thune on several occasions. I liked both of them, and I thought that both deserved their status. John has certainly proved himself to be a very valuable asset to the Republican Party. I say watch this space.

Doctors, Sums, & Money

I have posted below on the billions that the Democrats are willing to spend to protect lawyers. The Washington Post raises the alarm on something else I have posted about: billions more spent to protect doctor's fees. The WaPo focuses on the right issue, as it seems to me: the Democrat's fiscal shenanigans.

HAVING PASSED a health reform bill that is, at least theoretically, paid for, the House of Representatives is poised this week to blow a quarter-trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget involving, you guessed it, health care. This is the so-called doc fix, to prevent scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians from taking effect.

A "quarter-trillion-dollar hole"! Since the new "expensive" is a cool trillion, that's a quarter expensive at least. Here's the trick: the House counted on scheduled reductions in doctor's fees as part of its cost control measures, thus making the House healthcare reform bill look less expensive. But they are about to restore the cuts in a separate bill. Mendacity, as Big Daddy says, is the rule we live by.

Don't be fooled by the incredible shrinking "cost" of the fix. The official Congressional Budget Office estimate used to be $245 billion over 10 years. Now it's $210 billion. In fact, the real hit to the budget will be closer to $300 billion. The lower CBO numbers stem primarily from the administration's move to change the rules about which physician payments are subject to the cuts. The administration proposed a regulation to exempt drugs administered in doctor's offices, such as chemotherapy, from the spending ceiling. That has the effect of making the cost of the fix look smaller, but it doesn't change the ultimate drain on the treasury: Medicare will end up paying out the same amount of money.

The House bill is a fiscal con job. Meanwhile, there is this from the WaPo:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

That is another half-expensive thing in the bill. It depends on a massive cut in Medicare spending, which is something that Congress has never had the courage to do before. They ain't gonna suddenly get starch.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

Now it is reasonable to point out, as Ezra Klein does, that Medicare costs are, sooner or later, going to be cut. But the question right now is whether the House Bill or anything likely to come out of Congress is going to be not just expensive but ruinously expensive. To make the House bill look merely expensive requires a lot of sleight of hand. We have to believe that they are going to cut Medicare substantially in the near future.

But can a Congress that can't say no to the Trial Lawyers or the American Medical Association say no to the most powerful voting bloc in America? Guess.

Your money or your life?

The recent sentencing of Former Congressman William Jefferson is notable, not only because it shows the face of government corruption, but also because it illustrates what looks to me like a growing disparity between society's willingness to punish financial offenders and its willingness to punish certain violent offenders. Jefferson will face 13 years in prison, though the justice department was seeking 33. Jefferson's crimes ranged from accepting bribes to embezzlement.

Compare his case to the case of Roman Polanski. Polanski, who raped an under aged girl in several different ways, might face two years in prison if he is extradited. But, OK, some celebrities have assured us that it wasn't rape-rape. So let's look at another case. James Malecin, who killed his stepson, UFC heavyweight champion Justin Eilers, was given a sentence of 6.5 to 15 years for the act. But, alright, he was drunk, so that wasn't murder-murder. So let's consider the 1994 case of Curtis Martin, who was convicted of beating a three-year-old boy to death and was given only 11-years in prison. He was released and is now suspected of killing another child. Well, now, that looks bad. But apparently the crimes of Bernie Madoff are worse, because Madoff is serving a sentence of 150 years.

I am not arguing that these cases are the norm. I know they are not, but in day to day conversations as well as in the news, I have seen more people defend Polanski than I have Madoff. So I can't help wonder which is worth more in today's society? Your money or your life?

Climate Policy Fails the Reality Test. Again.

An environmental policy can aim to achieve one or both of two things. One aim is green marketing. It can sell us things that make us feel virtuous and chic. The other is that it can at protecting the environment both for our sake and for the sake of the world itself. Just right now, the two aims are diametrically at odds with one another.

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger has a typically interesting piece of South Dakota's share of the nation's carbon emissions. Oddly, South Dakota comes out rather well while North Dakota is among the highest emitters per capita. Cory rightly points out that we get a lot of our power from "squeaky clean" hydroelectric generators. I note that such power requires dams, which had done a lot of damage to local environments. He also points out that we get a lot of power from out of state.

Cory is also a big fan of green technologies like wind power. But it is quite clear that wind power is, at present, rather bad for the environment. Studies of nations that have heavily invested in wind power show that leads to increased carbon emissions overall. It is also rather bad for the various economies. Maybe wind power will be viable at some point in the future, but right now it is a bust. That matters if, as Al Gore keeps saying, we have to do something right now. Well, at least it's sexy.

So called green technologies are often gangrene technologies when it comes to the environment and job growth. We invest in them because we prefer ideas to environmental and economic realities. Another reality that is frequently ignored in environmental policy is political reality.

Next month world leaders are meeting at Copenhagen for a "global climate conference." But they have decided in advance that there will be no "politically binding agreement" at that conference. What then are they meeting for? A lot of pious speeches, I am supposing.

At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

No wonder the world likes Obama. A conference to decide when to decide sounds like our man! But one wonders whether this process really has anything to do with protecting the environment, as opposed to pretending to care about the environment.

The best example of backward thinking I have seen is this: a bunch of models stripping as global warming heats up.

I don't know about Cory, but this makes me want to leave my car running all night.

Hugo Chavez’s Three Minute Shower

Poking fun at Hugo Chavez is like shooting a really fat fish in a pretty small barrel, but, hey, it's Sabado, so why not? Here is what life in Venezuela is like, from Newsweek:

Venezuelans are inured to a certain amount of economic dysfunction. They already suffer some of the worst traffic jams on the planet, thanks to heavily subsidized gasoline, which goes for the petropopulist price of about 17 cents per gallon. But lately the privations have become severe, due in large measure to waste and economic mismanagement. Eggs and milk are hard to find. The government is scrambling to replace medicine imported from Colombia. Despite vast domestic stores of natural gas, Venezuela must pipe in gas from Colombia because it lacks infrastructure and cash to mine its own reserves.

The droughts that drained the reservoirs of hydroelectric plants—and provoking rolling blackouts in homes and factories—recently led Chávez to scold Venezuelan "elites" for such indulgences as air conditioning, switching on the lights in the bathroom, and loitering in the shower. "Some people sing in the shower for half an hour," he reportedly admonished his ministers at a cabinet meeting. "What kind of communism is that?"

Excellent question. Here's another: what kind of government has a policy on singing in the shower? Answer: a socialist one. That's also the answer to a lot of other questions, such as 'what kind of government turns oil and gas reserves and lots of hydroelectric resources into a power shortage?

Wedged between the Andes, the Amazon rainforest, and the Caribbean, and swimming in crude oil, Venezuela ought to be an energy powerhouse. It boasts one of the largest hydroelectric power matrixes in the world. But it has been plagued by electrical failures, including a half dozen nationwide blackouts since 2007. Now homes in some rural areas are dark for four hours a day, and steel mills have had to get by with reduced electricity and water.

Drought is the immediate cause, but the real culprit is a collapse in investment in infrastructure, despite the flood of petrodollars from Venezuela's oil fields. A 2,200-megawatt power plant currently in the works would help, but the $4.6 billion plant touted to begin operation next year, won't be ready before 2014. Worse, the infrastructure failures have come as Chávez has tightened state control over the Venezuelan economy by seizing private energy and utility companies in the name of the Boliviarian cause.

All this explains why Venezuela is threatening to go to war against Colombia. The Colombians are vaguely amused. Venezuela has a toy army. Colombia has a real army. If Colombia were to really go to war against Venezuela, it would be over before Chavez finished his shower.

Nothing serious here. Just a bit of Saturday fun.

Bringing the 9/11 Terrorists Back to New York

The President is not incapable of making a decision. From USA Today:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other alleged accomplices will be moved from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay to New York City so they can stand trial just blocks away from the scene of the deadliest terrorist assaults in American history.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that he plans to seek the death penalty against all five men. He said it is important that the alleged 9/11 planners be brought to justice near the scene of the crime and in U.S. civilian courts that would be "open to the public and open to the world."

That's a decision. It's hard to see what sense it makes. KSM is the highest profile terrorist we have yet captured. We waterboarded him, and he gave up his cronies, some of whom we have since nabbed. That fact looks to make a civil prosecution rather difficult. Nothing that KSM said under duress is likely to make it into evidence. By the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, nothing that we learned as a consequence of what he said can be used in Court. Nonetheless, Attorney General Eric Holder is confident that he can get a conviction.

The Administration is justifying this move on the grounds that the American justice system is the best in the world and that this will demonstrate our rectitude to the world. Well, okay. But I see a couple of problems.

One is that a civil trial will give KSM and his legal team the opportunity to make a circus of the trial. They won't be worried about the outcome. KSM and his henchpersons are more than ready to die. Indeed, they are rather looking forward to it. They will try to use the trial to paint a picture of demonic torturers victimizing heroes of the true faith. The press in every Islamic state will publicize and exaggerate every tidbit. All the instruments of American Constitutional Law will be at their disposal.

They will also try to force the exposure of our security apparatus, in the sure knowledge that their counterparts out there are taking notes. Since President Obama has put us in the position that we must have a conviction, it will be hard to withhold information that might damage national security if it got out.

A second problem is that, in a civil trial, we cannot guarantee a conviction. Att. Gen. Holder reassures us on this score, but does that really help the argument that our system is fair? Doesn't fairness mean there is a chance that these bad guys will get off?

What if they do manage to escape conviction? I agree it is not likely. But if it happens, we will be faced with a very uncomfortable choice. We could let KSM and his cronies go. That would be unthinkable. Or we could arrest them again on some pretense and put them back in Gitmo or wherever. What would that do for the image of our justice system?

This is nuts. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a gangster, he is a war criminal. He violated the international laws of war by intentionally murdering thousands of innocent civilians. He is a mortal enemy of the United States. The way to deal with this monster is to put him before a military tribunal and then kill him.

That is how the Nuremberg Trials dealt with the surviving leaders of the Third Reich. The point wasn't to protect their rights. They had forfeited that protection. The point was to let the world know what they did and then to make sure they would not live to do it again. Another point was to let the leaders of all nations know what would happen if they behave like Nazis and end up in our custody.

The President has made a decision. He decided to risk the security of the United States and the very laws of war on the outcome of a civil trial. He had better be as lucky as he is shallow.

David Brooks Nominates John Thune for President

Okay, so this is one of those say it first just in case it happens stories. But it is something for South Dakota to take notice of. From the New York Times:

As you may or may not know, Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who beat Tom Daschle in an epic campaign five years ago. The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune's face he'd be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you'd pick Thune.

South Dakota continues to punch well above its weight in national politics.

Just When You Thought He had Decided to Decide

NPR reported this evening that the President had narrowed his list of options regarding Afghanistan to a mere handful, all of them involving the insertion of more troops. Finally a decision was forthcoming!

Not so fast. Politico reports this:

POTUS will not accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, and instead will push "for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government," AP is reporting.

Obama held his 8th Afghan meeting today, to discuss how long it would take to implement the various options for troop increases he's considering. The White House stressed that no decision has been made yet, and that the president is insistent that any new commitment will not be open-ended.

So it's back to the drawing board. Meanwhile our soldiers in Afghanistan soldier on.

A Salute to all Veterans and Heroes of the Republic.

My favorite veteran. 

Republicans Gallup Ahead of Democrats

Speaker Pelosi's healthcare bill passed in the House by 220 to 215. If three Congresspersons had switched sides, the bill would have been defeated. That is in a chamber dominated by Democrats. Of course, it may be that Pelosi had more votes than that; it's just that a lot of her troops begged to be allowed to vote no. But that in itself is a very bad sign.

Why the matter is so difficult is simple. Just right now, the Democrats are in deep doo doo with the people of these United States. One test of party strength is the so called "generic ballot." Voters are asked to say whether they will vote Republican or Democrat in the next House and Senate elections, without regard to individual candidates. As long as I can remember, the generic question always tends to overstate Democratic strength. If the Republicans poll close to Democrats on the generic question just before an election, they tend to win a net gain.

Right now, Republicans are well ahead of Democrats on the generic ballot. Rasmussen has been showing this for some time. Gallup has now confirmed it.

That is the result of five months of public attention to the healthcare reform effort. Gallup has much worse news for the Democrats.

Self-identified Democrats and Republicans predictably favor their own. But look at those numbers for self-identified independents. That is a twenty-two point gap favoring the GOP. If anything like that holds next year, the Republicans will take every seat in the country that isn't tied down. They might even pry a few safe seats up from the floor.

What might change between now and next November? The economy might certainly be looking better, and maybe job growth will have started. But economists do not expect the latter, and it had better happen fast to make a difference. Some Democrats imagine that, once their program comes fully online, the people will like it and reward them accordingly. Even if they are right, it won't come online in time to help. In order to look a little less fiscally irresponsible, they front-loaded the fiscal gains and put off the real benefits (and costs) until much later.

What won't change is this: the Democrats will either fail to pass any significant reform, or if they do pass something significant, it will involve a dramatic expansion of government's size, powers, intrusiveness, and expense. Those are just the things that are driving independents towards the GOP. 

UPDATE

From Quinnipiac:

For the first time, Republican Rob Portman is inching ahead of the two Democrats in the 2010 race for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Also for the first time, Ohio voters disapprove 50 - 45 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, down from his 53 - 42 percent approval September 16 and 49 - 44 percent approval July 7. 

Also Republican Simons is ahead of Senator Chris Dodd by a good ten points. 

Where the Wall Was & the President Wasn’t

November 9, 1989, was the most significant historical moment since the end of the Second World War. Indeed, it is easy to argue that that was the date on which WWII really ended, as the division of Germany and the Soviet occupation of Central Europe meant that hostilities never really ceased. I would go further than that, and say that the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the close of "Modern European History." From the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) until 1989 a series of powerful states sought dominion over Europe: first France, then Germany, and finally Russia. That story, one of great tyrannies opposed by alliances led by Great Britain and later the United States, lasted more than three hundred and fifty years. Barring some unforeseen event, such as the resurgence of Russia, it ended twenty years ago.

It ended in a way that might make one believe in God's grace. No final war had to be fought. No fresh millions had to perish. A lot of keyboards have been worn down with arguments over who gets the credit. But this doesn't look to me like a difficult question. Credit has to be divided by three. First of all one has to give credit to the Eastern Block for more or less deciding to commit suicide. A massive and rather sudden loss of confidence seized all the Warsaw Pact governments, including the Soviet Union, rendering them unable to bring any of their terrible power bear even for self-preservation.

The greatest credit has to go to the peoples of East Germany, Poland, and other Middle European nations, for seizing the moment. When Hungary allowed Germans to flow through its borders to the West, and the tyrants failed to stop it, other crowds of Germans showed up at the Berlin Wall and began to manually dismantle it. Shocked security guards called their masters repeatedly, but no orders were issued. Thus did the most ordinary people, armed only with hammers, put an end to one of the most repressive and spiritually impoverished regimes.

Finally credit has to go the United States, and to Ronald Reagan in particular. No, Reagan did not destroy Leninism by calling on Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." He did it by building up American military power and so compelling the Soviets to try to match him. They couldn't, and trying broke their bank. He did it by putting American short range nuclear forces into Europe to match a similar move by the Soviets, and remaining steadfast against a fierce campaign by the Left in Europe and America to stop the West from acting. In the face of that act of will, Gorbachev backed down and found the ground sliding out from under him. Reagan's portion of the credit has also to be shared with Margret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and François Mitterrand. But the United States protected Western Europe against the Soviet threat for forty five years, and so the final victory was very much our victory.

Well, some of the heirs of Reagan's great allies, along with a representative of the losing side, gathered in Berlin this week to celebrate the moment. From the Voice of American News:

Representatives from East and West were on hand - from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish labor leader and later president, Lech Walesa, to current Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

What about Ronald Reagan's heir in the White House? Well…

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton represented the United States and President Barrack Obama made a surprise video appearance.

A surprise video appearance. This is a President who can find time to travel to Copenhagen to personally lobby the International Olympic Committee on behalf of the City of Chicago. He is going to make it to Norway to accept his Nobel Prize. As for celebrating one of the greatest victories of the greatest alliance in Western history, that wasn't on his agenda.

It is possible, of course, that the President doesn't consider 1989 to be important. A victory of free peoples, supported by great democracies, just doesn't float his boat. Unfortunately, the only more charitable interpretation of his absence is that he is merely shallow. Perhaps, as Tony Harnden put it in the London Telegraph, he didn't go to Berlin because "it wasn't enough about him." After all, he has been to Berlin.

Surprisingly enough, it's President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as "People of the World, Look at Me". This time, Der Spiegel has reported it as "Barack Too Busy".

The United States stood for a century against the world's greatest tyrannies. Our current President is uninterested in that legacy. That might matter.

Anita Dunn Steps Down

White House Communications director Anita Dunn, best known, perhaps, for her joke about admiring Mao Tse Tung, is stepping down. After Glenn Beck aired a video clip of Dunn's joke (perhaps she could have varied her tone a little to tip the audience off that she meant it as a joke), Dunn waged a war against Fox News, famously calling it a "wing of the Republican Party."

Dunn's comments may have resonated with some on the left, but I do not think they did much to help Obama appeal to those who did not already like him. Unless her replacement Dan Pfeiffer is as radical and careless as Dunn, this change may help the administration.

Political Correctness vs. National Security. Update

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.

UPDATE.

David Brooks has this:

A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.

There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors. This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion.

But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage. Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility.

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.