Posts from — September 2009

“What he has achieved in his 48 years is simply astounding. Consider the odds. The United States is a nation of more than 300 million citizens. Only one person is currently the Commander in Chief. That man had no fatherly guidance, is of mixed race, and had no family connections to guide him into the world of national politics. That adds up to one simple truth that every American child should be told: ‘If Barack Obama can become the President of the United States, then whatever dream you may have can happen in your life,”

–Bill O’Reilly (src)

Indeed. I still enjoy this portrayal, though:

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by”

–Karl Rove (src)

I’ve really enjoyed taking and cropping pictures for the header of this blog. I’ve added several pictures from my Summer trips (included below). I think I have enough now and it’s time to start removing some of them. You can see the whole set here… I’m considering removing 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, and 17. Any feedback on those or the new ones is always appreciated.

A train passing in Chile:

A wall in La Alhabra (Granada, Spain):

A door from La Alhambra (is this one too creepy?):

From an island in Chile:

At the science museum in Barcelona, they had this transparent cube full of ping pong balls bounding around with a strobe light or something, creating a neat effect with a long-exposure photo:

More trip-related blog posts to come…

Cheney’s statement on released CIA documents includes this sentence:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.

How clever! It sounds like he’s saying that torture worked, but in fact he’s not. He’s just saying that the people who were subjected to torture gave valuable information, something that doesn’t actually prove his case at all. In a literal sense, I think I agree with his statement here.

Also, this sentence fragment is telling:

President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute [...]

The President does not decide what the Justice Department investigates and prosecutes, the Attorney General does, exactly for reasons like this. Deciding what to investigate should be a law enforcement decision, not a political one. That is why politicization of the Justice Department is a Big Deal. Remember that? Oh, nevermind…

Mandatory listening for anyone interested in the healthcare debate:
Fresh Air’s interview with T.R. Reid. The description from NPR:
“Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care.”

You should really listen to it, but a few notes of things that struck me…

No rich country other than the US lacks universal coverage of some sort. I don’t know how this is defined: what’s the 2nd-richest country to lack universal coverage. Reid divides health care into four camps: UK-style socialist structures, Canadian-style public insurance with private doctors, German-style employer-based healthcare, and 3rd-world-country style “good luck!”. America includes all of these systems. If you have insurance through employment, you’re probably in the German system. If you’re on medicare you’re in a Canadian system. If you’re a veteran or American Indian, then you’re in a UK-style system. If you’re unemployed and uninsured, you’re in the 3rd-world-style system (though you of course have better emergency room access than most 3rd-world people). The author claims, sensibly, that a large part of the out-of-control costs that we have in the US are because we have to implement all of these separate systems. (More on cost soon)

Seriously, though, listen to the interview.. Reid is very non-ideological and does a good job of pointing out the real pros and cons of the things he experienced in each system.

Copied from Greenwald’s post, with my emphasis:

You really have essentially — except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the country — who, as Glenn Greenwald, who is a great analyst and journalist, wrote just this week: these narrow interests seem to win, determine the outcomes, no matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter who has their hands on the levers of powers, these narrow interests determine the outcomes in Washington, even when they have to run roughshod over the interests of ordinary Americans. I’m sad to say that has happened to the Democratic Party. I’d rather see Barack Obama go down fighting for vigorous strong principled public insurance, than to lose with a [corporate-dominated] bill . . . . the insurers are winning. Everyone already knows the White House has made a deal with the drug industry — promising not to import cheaper drugs from Canada and Europe – promising not to use the government to negotiate for better prices — that deal has been cut . . . There’s this fear that Barack Obama will become the Grover Cleveland of this era – Grover Cleveland was a good man, but he became a conservative Democratic President because he didn’t fight the powerful interests – people say Obama should be FDR – I’d much rather see him be Theodore Roosevelt –– Teddy Roosevelt loved to fight – … I think if Obama fought instead of really finessed it so much . . . I think it would change the atmosphere.

This economist essay on the Google Book Search settlement is a good, concise overview of the issue. Quote:

By helping to resolve the legal status of many texts subject to absurdly long copyright periods and murky ownership, it will make millions of books more accessible than ever before. Researchers from Manhattan to Mumbai will gain instant access to volumes that would otherwise languish in obscurity. Libraries will be able to offer users access to information far beyond their physical book stacks. And authors and publishers will be able to cash in on long-neglected works.

(via Google public policy blog)

This is pretty good:

That’s Miles Fisher. His certainly-NSFW American Psycho video of This Must Be The Place is quite good, too.

(via kottke)

Al Franken’s discussion with some constituents (including real skeptics) about health care is worth your time:

This is the first time I’ve heard a politician talk about health care and sound rather convincing (that includes the small amount I’ve heard from Obama).

(via boing boing, who incorrectly referred to the group as an “angry mob”, IMO)

The term “rationing” has been thrown around a lot in health care discussions. If we have government control, we’re going to have to ration, they say. They’re right, given a finite budget and resources, it’s necessary to ration what procedures can be done. But, importantly, it’s a fallacy to believe that there’s no rationing in the current system. The market is a device for allocating limited resources: it’s the rationing agent. It allocates the resources to those who can afford them, basically. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but to present the choice as “do we want rationing?” is disingenuous. The question is: what kind of rationing do we want?

Some torture defenders have made an argument that looks like “Detainees who were subjected to [torture] gave us valuable information, therefore torture works”. If you don’t think about it, this statement and conclusion make sense. A tortured detainee talking isn’t proof that it was necessary, and in most cases it was provably unnecessary, as explained by this excellent NYT editorial:

Mr. Cheney is right when he says detainees who were subject to torture and abuse gave up valuable information. But the men who did the questioning flatly dispute that it was duress that moved them to do so.

Deuce Martinez, the C.I.A. officer who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, engineer of the 9/11 mass murders, said he used traditional interrogation methods, and not the infliction of pain and panic. And, in an article on the Times Op-Ed page, Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking terrorist, denounced “the false claims” about harsh interrogations. Mr. Soufan said Mr. Zubaydah talked before he was subjected to waterboarding and other abuse. He also said that “using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”