Essential reading:

We are in complete agreement with George Soros' view as expressed in his Atlantic magazine article. Excerpts:

The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. Protection against terrorism requires precautionary measures, awareness, and intelligence gathering—all of which ultimately depend on the support of the populations among which the terrorists operate.

Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush Administration, because it invoked military might; but this is the wrong way to deal with the problem. Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are often sponsored by states.

The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy.

The terrorist threat must be seen in proper perspective. Terrorism is not new. It was an important factor in nineteenth-century Russia, and it had a great influence on the character of the czarist regime, enhancing the importance of secret police and justifying authoritarianism.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: al Qaeda is not a state power. In fact, taking the adminstration at its word, the most recent alert was triggered by the concern that al Qaeda would hijack an airliner (or two). What more proof do you need that these guys don't have any weaponry? Sure, they are a menace with truck bombs, but the Bush adminstation has been treating al Qaeda as if they had submarines and jet fighters and laser guided bombs. They don't. The core is about 2,000 guys, mostly in Afghanistan. They were not captured when there was the opportunity (immediately after September 11), and now, two years later, it will be much harder to get them - partly because of the Iraq invastion, partly because the global (and expecially Islamic) community is less likely to go along. Bush wasted an opportunity to soundly defeat al Qaeda, and as Soros points out, used September 11 to advance other agendas (Total Invormation Awareness, PATRIOT Act, bigger military budget, invading Iraq).

posted by Quiddity at 12/29/2003 12:34:00 AM

Diagramming the world (cont.):

Our latest is a logical connections map for the countries in Africa. (Click here for full size.)




Other diagrams (only 4 so far) can be found at our Top Secret website: http://threetwoone.org/diagrams

UPDATE: We corrected the spelling of Zimbabwe (thanks Josh, and added Eritrea (thanks Andrea). The diagram was originally created in about 1988 and we forgot to update it. We're working on Eurasia, and that has changed a whole lot in 15 years. It's not going to be easy (especially with oddballs like the bit of Russia that's isolated from the rest of the country.)

posted by Quiddity at 12/26/2003 05:25:00 PM

Kaus' willful ignorance:

In Kausfiles, we read:

In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray declares that McCain-Feingold "doesn't work." Why? Because a heretofore unkown [sic] group, Americans for Justice, Healthcare and Progressive Values, has run TV ads denouncing Howard Deans's lack of foreign policy experience, etc. .... Why were these ads so outrageous? a) They raised perfectly valid points. b) They weren't last-minute attacks--the election is weeks away. c) Their backers are suspected of being Gephardt-friendly, but the ads doen't [sic] seem to have been coordinated with the Gephardt campaign. And d) perhaps because of (c), the ads don't seem to have been at all effective.

But the well known outrage was this, as reported by DKos:

Just did an extensive search into the sordid career of the 'Honorable' Edward F. Feighan, President of the Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values. This is the group that ran the attack ad on Howard Dean featuring Osama bin Laden's picture.

Kaus. A disappointment. Again.

And he's a bad speller!

posted by Quiddity at 12/26/2003 12:07:00 PM

Bush in 15 words:

Calpundit has an interesting post about Blair's recent frustration in dealing with the president. In the comments section, Derelict had this to say about Bush:

... his entire life has been one continuous series of unearned honors, privileges, and financial rewards ...

A perfect summary.

posted by Quiddity at 12/23/2003 06:48:00 PM

How not to do it:

Gallop Poll Surveying American Attitudes Towards Homosexual Unions What is your general attitude towards homosexuals? NO OPINION YUCK THEY"RE DISGUSTING DON"T CARE (AS LONG AS THEY STAY IN THE CLOSET) This whole AIDS thing is really the fault of gays misbehaiving, right? NO OPINION YOU BET PROBABLY IT'S NOT ALL THEIR FAULT Should Gay Pride Day be celebrated not once a year, but on the 2nd Saturday of each month? NO OPINION NO YES, IF THE PERVERTS WANT TO, BUT NOT IN MY CITY Should gays be allowed to visit elementary schools for show-and-tell, with the topic of S/M and B/D sex play? NO OPINION HELL NO YES, IF ONLY TO PREVENT AN EXPENSIVE ACLU LAWSUIT Which is more disgusting, two men kissing in public, or butch lesbians wearing flannel shirts and work overalls? NO OPINION TWO MEN KISSING LESBIAN / FLANNEL Do you support a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage? NO OPINIONYES NO

posted by Quiddity at 12/23/2003 08:31:00 AM

Campaign 2004 violence watch:

A week ago we wrote:

..... we boldly make the following prediction:

There will be at least one major act of violence against the Democratic candidate(s) for president.

And we mean life-threatening violence. Like attempted murder.

That was because of the already red-hot rhetoric that is swirling around. And we at uggabugga got a lot of static for that prediction.

We expected the first signs of that to come from the right, but the left is also reacting to the zeitgeist. On the progressive radio program Background Briefing (heard on Los Angeles' KPFK this Sunday) a caller said of Bush: (audio link)

"Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when we really need him?"

Now most of this is just braggadocio, but we remain concerned about what may unfold in 2004.

(.wav file 1meg, will be removed after one week)

posted by Quiddity at 12/21/2003 08:09:00 PM

Dr. Krauthammer reviving a discarded practice:

Over at the Howler, there are some good observations about Charles Krauthammer inappropriately using his medical degree to "diagnose" Howard Dean. What Krauthammer has done is inexcusable, but not original. From Presidential Campaigns Paul F. Boller Jr. 1984, 1985 Third printing

Chapter Twenty-Eight
1896
McKinley, Bryan, and Free Silver

Page 176

Bryan and the Alienists

Bryan was the first presidential candidate to attract the attention of professional psychologists (or "aliensts" as they were then called). On September 27, the New York Times published an editorial entitled "Is Mr. Bryan crazy?" The Times thought he was and as proof presented a list of extravagant statements Bryan had made in the campaign. "No one," said the editors, "can look through it without feeling that these are not adaptations of intelligent reason to intelligent ends." The same issue of the Times featured a letter by "an eminent alienst" announcing that an analysis of Bryan's speeches led inescapably to the conclusion that the Democratic candidate was unbalanced and that if he won the election there would be a "a madman in the White House."

The eminent alienst's letter touched off an orgy of polemical psychologizing about Bryan. On September 29 the Times published a series of interviews with New York psychologists with the heading, "Is Mr. Bryan a Mattoid?" The next day there were more interviews and a new headline: "Paranoid or Mattoid?" Most of the psychologists interviewed regarded Bryan as mentally unfit, though they could not agree on the technical epithet: megalomania, delerium, mattoid, paranoia querulenta, querulent logorrhoea, graphomania, paranoia reformatoria. Admonished one psychologist: "We must rid our minds of the idea that Mr. Bryan is ordinarily crazy ... But I should like to examine him for a degenerate." Another professional thought paranoia was much too good for Bryan. "I do not think," he said solemnly, "that he was ever of large enough caliber to think clearly and consecutively. His mental territory is not sufficiently extensive. A sophomore at City College has a better education. To accuse him of paranoia is to flatter him, in as much as a paranoiac may have a large organization, even if perverted."

Footnote for the above is 30. In the Notes portion of the book, 30 is: Werner, Bryan, 108-109; Jones, Election of 1896, 306.

---

Chapter Forty-Five
1964
Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

Page 318

Psychopolitics

Goldwater's sanity, like Bryan's in 1896 and T.R.'s in 1912 was partisanly called into question. The magazine Fact polled 12,356 psychiatrists on the question "Is Barry Goldwater psychologically fit to be president of the United States?" Only 2,417 replied: 1,189 said "No," 657 said "Yes," and 571 said they didn't know enough about it to answer. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association dismissed Fact's poll as yellow journalism and criticized the editor for trying to pass off the personal political opinions of psychiatrists as therapeutic exercise.

Footnote for the above is 36. In the Notes portion of the book, 36 is: Faber, Road to White House, 206.

posted by Quiddity at 12/20/2003 11:24:00 AM

Where was George?

We have absolutely no evidence to support our view, but we thought we'd share some observations.

• George Bush was informed Saturday afternoon that there was a good chance Saddam would be captured in a military operation later that evening.
  
  
• When the capture was announced on Sunday morning, two hours later Tony Blair came out and issued a statement.
  
  
• That same morning, journalists were wondering why it was taking the president so long to come out and talk to the nation.
  
  
• When Bush finally did appear (a little after noon), his remarks were brief, he did not interact with the press, and he didn't seem to be particulary engaged.
  
  
• However, the next morning Bush was more in control and handled questions reasonably well in a press conference.

Was Bush waiting until Saddam's identity was confirmed? That didn't stop Tony Bliar.

We get the feeling that Bush did something Saturday night. Celebrate avenging his dad's nemesis? Celebrate the occcupation's progress? And after that he was out-of-sorts and had to be prepped merely to get out there for 5 minutes on Sunday.

But he sobered up (or whatever) and was briefed and ready by the next morning.

Again, there is nothing to prove this, but we were struck by the press' comments about why Bush was taking so long to address the nation, and a review of all the events does lead to the suspicion that Bush was non compos mentis for a while.

posted by Quiddity at 12/18/2003 04:34:00 AM

Moral equivalence watch:

We read Tom Friedman's execrable column today and were struck by these words he wrote:

I believe the French president, Jacques Chirac, knows something in his heart: in the run-up to the Iraq war, George Bush and Tony Blair stretched the truth about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — but they were not alone. Mr. Chirac also stretched the truth about his willingness to join a U.N.-led coalition against Iraq if Saddam was given more time and still didn't comply with U.N. weapons inspections. I don't believe Mr. Chirac ever intended to go to war against Saddam, under any circumstances. So history will record that all three of these leaders were probably stretching the truth — but with one big difference: George Bush and Tony Blair were stretching the truth in order to risk their own political careers to get rid of a really terrible dictator. And Jacques Chirac was stretching the truth to advance his own political career by protecting a really terrible dictator.

Tom, there's a big difference between stretching the truth in order to take a country to war, and stretching the truth in other matters.

To make the point clear, let's do a rewrite of Frideman's words:

I believe the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, knows something in his heart: in the run-up to the World War II, Hitler stretched the truth about Poland's aggression against Germany - but he was not alone. Mr. Chamberlain also stretched the truth about the Munich accord bringing "peace in our time". I don't believe Mr. Chamberlain ever intended to press Poland for concessions, under any circumstances. So history will record that both of these leaders were probably stretching the truth - but with one big difference: Hitler was stretching the truth in order to risk his own political career to bring a new order to Europe. And Neville Chamberlain was stretching the truth to advance his own political career by protecting the authoritarian and stubborn Polish leadership.

posted by Quiddity at 12/18/2003 04:06:00 AM

Quick thought about the morning-after pill:

We read in the New York Times:

Opponents of the morning-after pill, including religious groups, told panel members that over-the-counter sales could encourage irresponsible sexual behavior.

But Dr. W. David Hager of the University of Kentucky, one of four committee members who voted against the motion, said he was worried about the implications for sexual behavior. Dr. Hager said Plan B would have a similar effect to the birth control pill, which he said ushered in "a new day and age for the expression of sexuality among young people."

If sexual behavior bothers the conservatives, then regulate sexual behavior, not the ancillary components related to sex. On the highways, we regulate speeding. We don't require that the car's engine sieze up at 90 MPH. Conservatives should instead:

• Consider a voucher program for sex. You get 10 vouchers each year (unless married) and turn one in each time you have sex. Penalty for a no-voucher encounter: $100.
  
  
• Or simply outlaw sex before marriage.
  
  
• Institute a Hotline so that people can report unlawful sexual activity.

That sort of thing. If conservatives really believe that letting people choose for themselves leads to "irresponsible sexual behavior", then by all means propose limiting that behavior, and shun the inefficient method of banning a morning-after pill.

posted by Quiddity at 12/17/2003 04:01:00 PM

Brooks - crap =

Howard Dean is the only guy who goes to the Beverly Hills area for a gravitas implant. He went to the St. Regis Hotel, a mile from Rodeo Drive, to deliver a major foreign policy speech, and suddenly Dr. Angry turned into the Rev. Dull and Worthy.

The guy who has been inveighing against the Iraq war as the second coming of Vietnam spent his time talking about intelligence agency coordination as if he had been suckled at the Council on Foreign Relations. The guy who just a few days ago stood next to Al Gore as the former vice president called Iraq the worst mistake in American history has suddenly turned sober.

Sure, he did get off a classic Deanism. He conceded that the capture of Saddam had made American soldiers safer, but, unwilling to venture near graciousness, he continued, "But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."

Still, the speech was respectable and serious. Coming on the same day as President Bush's hastily called news conference, it affords us the opportunity to compare the two men's approaches to the war on terror.

And indeed, there is one big difference. George Bush fundamentally sees the war on terror as a moral and ideological confrontation between the forces of democracy and the forces of tyranny. Howard Dean fundamentally sees the war on terror as a law and order issue. At the end of his press conference, Bush uttered a most un-Deanlike sentiment:

"I believe, firmly believe — and you've heard me say this a lot, and I say it a lot because I truly believe it — that freedom is the almighty God's gift to every person — every man and woman who lives in this world. That's what I believe. And the arrest of Saddam Hussein changed the equation in Iraq. Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq."

Bush believes that God has endowed all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the most important of which is liberty. Every time he is called upon to utter an unrehearsed thought, he speaks of the war on terror as a conflict between those who seek to advance liberty to realize justice, and those who oppose the advance of liberty: radical Islamists who fear religious liberty, dictators who fear political liberty and reactionaries who fear liberty for women.

Furthermore, Bush believes the U.S. has a unique role to play in this struggle to complete democracy's triumph over tyranny and so drain the swamp of terror.

Judging by his speech yesterday, Dean does not believe the U.S. has an exceptional role to play in world history. Dean did not argue that the U.S. should aggressively promote democracy in the Middle East and around the world.

Instead, he emphasized that the U.S. should strive to strengthen global institutions. He argued that the war on terror would be won when international alliances worked together to choke off funds for terrorists and enforce a global arms control regime to keep nuclear, chemical and biological materials away from terror groups.

Dean is not a modern-day Woodrow Wilson. He is not a mushy idealist who dreams of a world government. Instead, he spoke of international institutions as if they were big versions of the National Governors Association, as places where pragmatic leaders can go to leverage their own resources and solve problems.

The world Dean described is largely devoid of grand conflicts or moral, cultural and ideological divides. It is a world without passionate nationalism, a world in which Europe and the United States are not riven by any serious cultural differences, in which sensible people from around the globe would find common solutions, if only Bush weren't so unilateral.

At first, the Bush worldview seems far more airy-fairy and idealistic. The man talks about God, and good versus evil. But in reality, Dean is the more idealistic and naïve one. Bush at least recognizes the existence of intellectual and cultural conflict. He acknowledges that different value systems are incompatible.

In the world Dean describes, people, other than a few bizarre terrorists, would be working together if not for Bush. In the Dean worldview, all problems are matters of technique and negotiation.

Dean tried yesterday to show how sober and serious he could be. In fact, he has never appeared so much the dreamer, so clueless about the intellectual and cultural divides that really do confront us and with which real presidents have to grapple.  

OTHER THOUGHTS ON BROOKS: See Pandagon and Roger Ailes

posted by Quiddity at 12/16/2003 11:08:00 PM

Church & state:

In the news:

President Bush said Tuesday that he could support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

... though Bush has said he would support whatever is "legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage," he and his advisers have shied away from specifically endorsing a constitutional amendment asserting that definition.

But on Tuesday, the president waded deeper into the topic, saying state rulings such as the one in Massachusetts and a couple of other states "undermine the sanctity of marriage" and could mean that "we may need a constitutional amendment."

"I do believe in the sanctity of marriage ...

In the dictionary:

sanc·ti·ty \Sanc"ti*ty\, n.; The state or quality of being sacred or holy; holiness; saintliness; moral purity; godliness.

Bush shouldn't support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He should instead, advocate the repeal of the First Amendment.


posted by Quiddity at 12/16/2003 10:39:00 PM

To our readers:

We are probably going to be blogging lightly for the next week or so. There's not much to talk about except Saddam - and we've had enough of that, thank you very much. We know the basics:

Saddam was captured by the 4th ID. He was hiding in a hole. There may be more violence in the immediate future. Or maybe less. The U.S. and the world will argue about the trial of Saddam. He had lice in his hair. Bush's approval numbers have gone up. Dean is being attacked by everybody - because the capture of Saddam makes all his arguments against the war invalid. Joe Lieberman is more hawkish than Bush, Wolfowitz, and even Perle. Rush Limbaugh now has something to talk about for months. Saddam didn't "go down fighting like a man." He drove a taxi. The trial of Saddam might take place near election time. And so on.

But do we have to endure Saddam's face on the cover of Time, all the newspapers, and even on the local morning news?

Enough already!

posted by Quiddity at 12/16/2003 02:18:00 PM

At a military theater near you:

posted by Quiddity at 12/15/2003 06:38:00 AM

Remember:



Dead men tell no tales.

posted by Quiddity at 12/14/2003 05:27:00 AM

What to watch for in 2004:

Twenty minutes into the first hour of Rush Limbaugh's program this Friday a caller was talking about how the Bush administration will make sure Haliburton won't rip off the country. Limbaugh agreed and then talked about how the ultra left wants to make a big deal about these sorts of things. Then the subject moved to the left and Dean. At which point Limbaugh said:

Bush knew that 9/11 was going to happen.

That's the rationale of the Dean campaign.

We know that political speech is protected, but are there no limits? Can Limbaugh say anything about Dean? The assertion by Limbaugh that the Dean campaign will campaign on the theme that "Bush knew" is totally false. (Yes, we're aware of Dean's comments that Bush didn't pay enough attention to warnings, but that's different from a charge that Bush knew.)

This little episode today by Limbaugh has caused us to make up our mind on a subject we've been thinking about for a while.

We've seen over the last couple of years a vicious political debate. Exhibit A is Ann Coulter's Treason. Democrats are traitors, don't you know. And then there were the ads that tied Daschle with Saddam. And so on.

It's going to get worse as the presidential race heats up. The end result will be whole bunch of people enraged at the Democrats.

So, donning our Nostradamus hat, we boldly make the following prediction:

There will be at least one major act of violence against the Democratic candidate(s) for president.

And we mean life-threatening violence. Like attempted murder.

posted by Quiddity at 12/12/2003 11:09:00 AM

Slightly old news:

We missed this essay at the time, which appeared during the Thanksgiving weekend (but were reminded of it since it appears in this week's Washington Post Weekly edition). It's by Jim Hoagland, and it's about the decades-long attack on government (and bureaucracies). Called Dissing Government, it contains these observations: (excerpts)

The relentless and prolonged assault by politicians and the public on the competence and motives of their government bureaucracies is slowly but surely undermining democracy in the Americas and Europe.

That is the provocative thesis of an important new book, "Dismantling Democratic States," just published by Princeton University Press. Professor Ezra Suleiman shows that the phenomenon of bureaucracy-bashing perfected by recent U.S. presidents of both parties is rapidly spreading into European societies that once revered "neutral" civil servants as the guarantors of the nation-state's legitimacy.

Part of the value of Suleiman's book ... is to show that this is a culmination rather than a departure from trends that have been long building and that these trends follow the spread of mass media and marketing in all societies. The problem is not just Bush.

The Princeton professor also analyzes the demoralizing effect of the repeated descriptions of government ineffectiveness voiced by Bill Clinton and Al Gore to justify their campaign to overhaul the bureaucracy ...

posted by Quiddity at 12/11/2003 08:00:00 AM

Presidential ticket:

uggabugga doesn't endorse any Democratic candidate. Our position is ABB - Anybody But Bush. However, the recent attention given to Gore's endorsement of Dean and subsequent talk about a possible Dean/Clark ticket, forces us to admit:

We would love to see Clark debate Cheney.

The 2000 debate between Cheney and Lieberman was a real downer. And for so long Cheney has been given a free ride (most notably by Tim Russert of Meet the Press). We want to see Cheney grilled.

posted by Quiddity at 12/10/2003 12:05:00 AM

Compare and contrast: (excerpts from two news stories)

THEN (6 Nov 2002)

By a wide margin, voters approved movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to spend $550 million a year on after-school programs.

Bolstered by Schwarzenegger’s fame and $1 million of his money, the measure attracted the endorsements of police chiefs, district attorneys and business leaders around the state.

The League of Women Voters and the California Federation of Teachers led the opposition, arguing that Prop. 49 would take away the Legislature’s flexibility to use taxpayer money for other needs, like health care and environmental programs.

"Of course we regret the fact that it looks like it’s winning," said Trudy Schafer, Program Director for the League of Women Voters before the final results were tallied. "But we had a goal of educating the public to the kind of danger that Prop. 49 posed for funding of certain programs."

"There is going to be a real challenge to do the budget given this mandated spending," said Schafer.

Prop. 49 is the latest in a series of state propositions to call for allocating a percentage of the state’s general fund – the budget’s largest pot of unrestricted money – for a specific purpose.

NOW (9 Dec 2003)

In what may prove a dramatic reversal of a key campaign promise, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday he is considering suspending Proposition 98, the landmark school funding guarantee.

"We're working with, you know, the education community to see how we can work together, for them to help with us this budget crisis," Schwarzenegger said during an interview on CNN that aired Tuesday.

"To maybe have a suspension or to have some relief there so we can pull out of these next two years and then pay it back, maybe," Schwarzenegger said.

Proposition 98 was passed by voters statewide in 1988. It mandates that public schools – kindergarten through 12th grade and community colleges – receive about 40 percent of the state's revenues.

What a moron.

posted by Quiddity at 12/09/2003 11:37:00 PM

There are no Republican criminals on NBC:

We watched NBC's Today show this morning and were stunned. In a two minute twelve second report on Bill Janklow's conviction for manslaughter - which contained almost a minute of the political past and future of Janklow and South Dakota

the word "Republican" was never used

Don't believe us? Listen to the (1 meg) .wav file here.

Is this a big deal? Not really, but it contradicts the claims by Bernie Goldberg that the mainstream media is quick to tar conservatives and Republicans.

(Due to storage limitations, the audio file will be deleted after a couple of weeks.)

posted by Quiddity at 12/09/2003 07:49:00 AM

Heard on the radio:

This morning on the Laura Ingraham radio show, she was discussing Howard Dean with Rich Lowrey of the National Review. They were agreeing that Al Gore is "loony left" and that Dean is also a leftist. About Dean, Rich Lowrey said: (quoting from memory, no transcript or audio available)

All those years he's been masquerading as a centrist up in Vermont.

Well, there you have it. No matter what any Democrat does, according to right-wing radio, if it looks good, it's merely a masquerade.

posted by Quiddity at 12/09/2003 07:26:00 AM

Connected:

GORE
SORE
SORT
PORT
PART
PERT
PEST
TEST
TEAT
TEAL
DEAL
DEAN

Or as animation:

NOTE: We're not particularly happy with some of the words in the chain (e.g. TEAT, PEST, SORE) but we did this in a hurry, and it's not easy to find words to make the transition between a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel word (GORE) and a consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant word (DEAN) in single-letter steps.

UPDATE: We were pretty sure this post would generate some responses, and it did. A better chain was suggested by:

Kevin GORE GONE DONE HONE HOPE HOSE LOSE LOST MOST MOAT BOAT BEAT BEAM BEAD LEAD LEAN DEAN

Phil GORE PORE PORT PERT PEAT BEAT BEAN DEAN

Michael GORE TORE TORT TOOT LOOT LOON LOAN LEAN DEAN

John (computer assisted!) GORE MORE MORN MOAN LOAN LEAN DEAN

Peter (these are dictionary words) GORE LORE LORN LARN DARN DERN DEAN

posted by Quiddity at 12/09/2003 03:38:00 AM

How much time did Russert devote to Hillary in 2004?

We watched Tim Russert interview Hillary Clinton on Meet the Press and it seemed like he was spending a fair amount of time on the Hillary-in-'04 theme. So we looked at the transcript, and here's the breakdown (by words spoken by both Russert and Clinton).



One-eighth of the interview was about Hillary in '04 - something that's not going to happen. That time could have been devoted to real issues, like the Medicare prescription drug benefit - which Sen. Clinton voted against

posted by Quiddity at 12/07/2003 08:05:00 PM

Spread the word!

This just in (NYTimes as reported on Yahoo):

Medicare Plan for Drug Costs Bars Insurance

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 Medicare beneficiaries will not be allowed to buy insurance to cover their share of prescription drug costs under the new Medicare bill to be signed on Monday by President Bush, the legislation says.

Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available.

This is one of many surprises awaiting beneficiaries, who will find big gaps in the drug benefit and might want private insurance to plug the holes just as they buy insurance to supplement Medicare coverage of doctors' services and hospital care.

Congress cited two reasons for banning the sale of Medigap drug policies. Lawmakers wanted to prevent duplication of the new Medicare benefit. They also wanted to be sure that beneficiaries would bear some of the cost.

And how!

• First of all, those with medigap insurance are bearing the cost. Insurance is about redistributing risks, not evading costs (incurred by the pool of insured).
  
  
• Second, it means it's impossible to get coverage for the no-benefit-range when drug costs are between $2,200 and $4,800. Therefore, seniors will face the possibility of paying out-of-pocket amounts up to (and occasionally beyond) $3,600.
  
  
• Third, there are some drugs that will be classified as "non reimbursable", which means if you are unlucky to need them, you will have to pay for them yourself (and these drugs cannot be covered by secondary insurance either).
  
  
• Finally, the Medicare drug plan does have an insurance aspect to it - since seniors will be paying $420 annually in premiums. As Gregg Easterbrook has written:

  ... the $420 premium pays for the $1,444 reimbursement that a senior otherwise wouldn't get ...

  But to compliment that, the 30% of seniors with drug costs under $830/yr will be paying more than if there were no drug plan at all.

PREDICTION: It's always risky to predict the future, but this Medicare bill is looking more and more like bad news for the Republicans.

ADDENDU M: Vox Populi (from the message thread on Yahoo associated with this story)

	age according to Yahoo profile
LINK	38	Seniors Screwed I thought this bill was supposed to help all seniors with the cost of prescription drugs. It seems it will cost seniors more money once they lose their gap coverage which several of my older relatives now buy. The big winners here are the drug manufacturers and large pharmacy chains. I am dumbstruck by the assertion that buying gap insurance is so that seniors bear some of the cost as the insurance they buy is not free and many cannot take on this extra burden. This is your classic money grab by the rich for the rich because they think they are the only ones who deserve money besides bush is in power and now they can steal legally.
LINK	55	Re: Seniors Screwed I agree with you 100%.That is exactly why I dropped my membership in AARP.I couldn't believe they were supporting such a horrible bill.
LINK	56	Re: Seniors Screwed I think we need to start an association that will supplant AARP and will truly represent people over 55!! Anybody willing to help get such an organization going? My e-mail address is on my profile. Write me!
LINK	52	Hey, Thanks........................ for screwing the little guy once again congress. Rich Congressmen have free health care & poor seniors are forced to choose between eating & taking their medications. Its sad, truly sad!
LINK		Re: Seniors Screwed Check out http://www.retiredamericans.org/ , which has already trashed AARP for their double-cross of senior citizens. As others have pointed out, AARP basically exists for selling seniors their own insurance policies, so anyone who thinks that they are a "senior advocacy" organization has already found out that they are anything-but. We will be cancelling our AARP membership, and have already called them to complain about their behind-closed-doors endorsement of the Republican Medicare bill. I can only hope the huge number of senior citizens votes with a vengence to throw the GOP bast*rds out of office and return them to minority party status in Congress and to defeat Dubya, who is perhaps the worst, dumbest, most partisan President in the history of the United States.
LINK		Exactly WHO did these bill benefit ....and why would a thinking person vote for it ....man, we need smarter, pac-free politicians.
LINK		BUSH invented making grandma cry! So grandma, you need some athritis medicine and can't afford it with the medicare changes and want to get insurance to cover the gap? Tough crap grandma, your boy Bush just shagged you rotten! Just look at the benefits grandma. You croak faster and your less of a burden on social security. Vote for Bush and its a vote for four more years of making your grandma cry!
LINK	28	Thanks for rushing the bill through, W You've just pissed off about every voting senior and guaranteed that you won't get reelected, saving the country another four years of government by, for, and of the highest bidder. Adios, @$$hole!
LINK		REMEMBER: BUSH & GOP WROTE THIS BILL in closed door sessions that excluded the Democrats in Congress. They did it for the benefit of the pharm-HMO-insurance industries who bribed them to do so. They did it under Bush's direct orders. Then they bribed, threatened and strong armed the bill through Congress. So seniors, focus that rage on Bush and the GOP in Nov. 2004 like they deserve. Vote the bastards out of office. Vote for Dr. Dean and a Dem Congress and you will get the medicare plan you deserve and need and already paid for. When you are looking for someone to blame for this atrocity- blame those responsible for it Bush and the GOP Congress. They don't care about you or any other American, all they care about is paying off the bribes they got in the form of "campaign contributions" from industry. Yes you definitely got screwed GOP/Bush style. Now get even.
LINK		Re: The way I see it I really get tired of people slinging the word *entitlement* around as a euphemism for welfare...this is lingo that Reagan/Bush invented to start divisiveness between the older and younger generations. The truth is Social Security, Medicare, and Disability are mandatory insurance policies that I have paid into all of my life before I became disabled..THEY ARE NOT *entitlements*! Welfare and Food Stamps are welfare and they go to about 5% of our entire population and 80% of that 5% are children. Get off the *blame the other citizen* game that the GOP has been pushing for years to gain more and more power. And remember, a vote for anyone other than a Democrat is a vote for the GOP...they enjoyed funding Nader and the Green Party in 2000 and they'll do it everytime they can to win at any cost.
LINK		Put the bastards in washington on medic Put the bastards in washington on the medicare and social secruity that I've paid for for fifty five years and you see a bunch of changes in the system. Instead they draw an outrages retirement and have a great medical system that I also paid for. Those worthless bastards never earned a clean dollar in their lives, but continue living on the dole of the hard working honest people like myself. I think it is time some BIG, major changes were made.
LINK		Get it Yet? Bush is screwing you When will all the neocons realize that Bush is screwing EVERYONE except his big money special interest friends.
LINK		This is why they snuck this bill in... in the dark of night and pushed it through with promises and threats from the repub "leadership". You just watch, there will be more bombshells as people finally are able to read this bill and see what a load of crap it is. This bill will kill seniors, pure and simple. Vote Repubs out in 2004, please, please, please. Signed by a primary care physician in California.

posted by Quiddity at 12/07/2003 12:28:00 AM

Someone suggested this:

Go to Google, type in "miserable failure" , then hit the "Feeling Lucky" button.

posted by Quiddity at 12/06/2003 04:20:00 AM

Rush Limbaugh - doing the right thing:

Yes, you read that right. Rush Limbaugh is doing exactly what we hoped he'd do. In the news:

Limbaugh Pokes Fun at Pain-Killer Probe

Yes!   Insult the authorities!

And not only that, but a couple of weeks ago Limbaugh reproduced on his website a Free Republic post that (humorously*) compared his under=$10,000 financial transactions to driving just under the speed limit (Rush's page is now behind a subscription wall, but post can be read here). You see, that means Rush was an ultra-law abider, just like someone who never speeds.

That will certainly go down well with the team looking into his money laundering.

We heartily encourage Limbaugh to continue doing this sort of thing, especially if he decides to make personal attacks part of his plan.

Go Rush!

* - at least it was supposed to be humorous

BTW, there is a pretty good short post on a Yahoo message thread tied to the "Pokes Fun" story.

Oh, and while we're at it, don't forget that Bush is reported (by Drudge) to have said, "Rush is a great American."

Perhaps that's why he's not in jail, just like Ken Lay. Great Americans, don't you know.

posted by Quiddity at 12/06/2003 03:48:00 AM

Republicans want to roll back the New Deal ... every vestige of it:

From the Washington Times:

GOP wants to kick FDR off the dime

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A group of Republican congressmen is campaigning to replace Franklin Delano Roosevelt's image on the dime with that of Ronald Reagan.

The Los Angeles Daily News said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., introduced the legislation to replace the Democratic architect of the New Deal from all future 10-cent coins.

About 80 lawmakers, all Republicans, have signed as co-sponsors of the Ronald Reagan Dime Act.

But the News said Republicans, perhaps anticipating a strong Democratic reaction, say they would be willing to share the dime. Souder said he'd be open to the idea of rotating images of both Roosevelt and Reagan on the coin.

If it chooses to do so, the U.S. Mint could put Reagan on a coin within months of his death. Reagan is 92 and suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

ANd from the Pasadena (CA) Star News:

... Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., has proposed the Reagan Dime Act, which according to a Souder spokesman was fueled by Republican outrage at the CBS miniseries "The Reagans.

posted by Quiddity at 12/04/2003 09:11:00 AM

Five paragraphs:

Body and Soul has an excellent post about Texas Tests and the Test-takers who Take Them. Be sure to read the 'standard' five paragraph essay. (Our favorite paragraph is the 2^nd one.)

posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2003 07:44:00 PM

Kaus relief:

There is a post in Slate's Fray (by Iron_Lungfish) about Mickey Kaus that is well worth reading. In fact, it's a Fray Editor Pick!

posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2003 10:56:00 PM

Television alert:

Scheduled for Meet the Press this Sunday, 30 November:

Mike Allen of the Washington Post, pool reporter on the President’s trip to Baghdad, discusses the surprise visit to the troops. Then David Broder, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Katty Kay, Dana Priest, William Safire and Robin Wright in a roundtable discussion.

Should be absolutely horrible.

posted by Quiddity at 11/29/2003 05:43:00 PM

Thought for the day:

If Ralph Nader wants to do something for this country, he should run for president - of the AARP.

posted by Quiddity at 11/29/2003 09:17:00 AM

The Metric System - Bah!

Calpundit has a post about the metric system and how its base units were arrived at. We've long held that the metric system has serious problems - but not for the reasons you might suspect. We wrote about it four years ago - before the days of weblogs. Here is that commentary:

What's wrong with the metric system.

While the historical trend is certainly in the direction of complete acceptance of the metric system, it still has grave defects. There are two main problems: ungainly terminology, and a poor choice of initial values. The system was introduced in 1799 in the wake of the French Revolution. It was probably part of the reaction against the old society as well as being in the spirit of 'reason', which was all part of the phenomenon known as the Age of Enlightenment. Science was finally emerging and showing it to be quite a contender as a system of thought. The impact of Newton's success in physics (in the early 1700's) on the general outlook was tremendous. The power and potential of rational thought freed men to re-inspect the world about them. As a result there was a tendency to start afresh, and construct a new politics and society without reference to tradition. The metric system was a part of that.

The problem with the metric system was that reason was allowed to trump everything else. 'Reason' became its own standard. Take the case of the meter. It was determined initially as 1/10,000,000 the distance between the pole and the equator. So what? Here we have a fetish being made over round numbers. And who cares about the distance between two locations on a particular planet? Maybe it was felt that by basing the measurement on our earth, the system would have universal appeal, as well as sort of ethical neutrality. But it was still silly to go about it that way. The standard length should have been something closer to an inch.

TERMINOLOGY:
If you like polysyllables, the metric system is for you. Consider the large number of one syllable words the English system has: inch, foot, yard, mile, ounce, pound, ton, (fluid) ounce, cup, pint, quart. But metric insists on appending a prefix to the base element; kilo-meter, centi-gram, deka-liter. Somehow this is supposed to be rational. One is taught to know the prefixes, which then can be appended to one of several bases (meter, gram, liter, watt, ampere, hertz, ...). That's why the names of metric measurements are so long. Do people really parse the words to reassure themselves that a kilometer is 1000 meters? Of course not. To burden the terminology with a naming convention that helps 5th graders understand the relationships is absurd. And anyway, most of us seem to use either milli-, centi-, or kilo- as prefixes. I have yet to read texts containing: decimeter (about 4 inches) or hectogram (about 1/4 pound) or dekaliter (about 10 quarts). So what we end up with are 2 or 3 familiar sizes, and we put two-digit numeric values ahead of them, e.g. 60 centimeters [6 syllables] (instead of 2 feet [2 syllables]).

INITIAL VALUES:
First, consider lengths. The meter was determined for strictly ideological reasons. As a result, there are no lengths that are human scaled. The centimeter is not as useful as the inch (hand scale) or foot (body scale). Next, examine standards of weight. Sorry, but the gram is just too lightweight for my taste. And liquid measurements suffer from the same problem. I'll take a cup of sugar over 225 milliliters any day.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE:
Steal the terminology from the English system, use multiples of 10 (or 2's or 5's), and have the base elements be human scaled. Tweak some relationships (like 1 pint = 2.5 cups). And keep those one-syllable names! A proposal:

Element	How defined	Present day English
LENGTH
inch	1.1 English inch	1.1 inch
foot	10 inches	.916 foot
yard	3 feet	.916 yard
rod	100 feet	1.8 rods
furlong	1000 feet	.720 furlong
mile	5000 feet	1.042 mile
WEIGHT
ounce	weight of cubic inch of water	.769 avoir.ounce
pound	10 ounces	.480 pound
invent wordA	1000 pounds	480 pounds
ton	5000 pounds	1.202 ton
VOLUME
ounce	cubic inch	.738 oz
cup	10 ounces	.960 cup
pint	2 1/2 cups (25 oz)	1.20 pint
quart	2 pints (50 oz)	1.20 quart
gallon	2 quarts (100 oz)	1.20 gallon
barrel	50 gallons	1.935 (31 gal barrel) 1.428 (42 gal barrel)
cord	1000 cubic feet	.769 cord
AREA
acre	40,000 sq. feet (200x200)	.771 acre
invent wordB	1 square furlong	7.8 hectare
sq. mile	25 million sq. feet	1.085 sq. mile

posted by Quiddity at 11/28/2003 02:54:00 PM

Who knew in advance?

We were surprised to find this in the Yahoo slideshow about Bush's Baghdad visit:

Iraqi Governing Counsel member Ahmad Chalabi sits in the audience as he awaits the arrival of President Bush (news - web sites) at Baghdad International Airport Thursday, Nov. 27, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites). Bush paid a surprise Thanksgiving day visit to American troops in Baghdad. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

It's a minor point, but did Chalabi know more about the visit than even some Secret Service agents?

UPDATE: According to Juan Cole:

It turns out that President George W. Bush did meet on Thursday with four members of the Iraqi Interim Governing Council. All 24 had been invited to a Thanksgiving Day event at the Baghdad Airport, but they were not told the nature of the event. So, only four showed up.

So maybe that explains it.

posted by Quiddity at 11/28/2003 01:38:00 AM

David Brooks would not approve:

posted by Quiddity at 11/27/2003 11:28:00 PM

Asking for it:

U.S. President George W. Bush carries a platter of turkey and fixings as he visits U.S. troops for Thanksgiving in Baghdad, Thursday, Nov 27, 2003. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, Pool - enhanced by uggabugga) BAGHDAD, Iraq - President Bush flew to Iraq under extraordinary secrecy and security Thursday to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops and thank them for "defending the American people from danger."

posted by Quiddity at 11/27/2003 05:39:00 PM

Bush performs another stunt - avoids war dead:

President Bush flew From Waco to Baghdad for a surprise visit. In case you are wondering, the distance (one-way) is 7319 miles.

How is it Bush can find time for a flashy performance, yet not be able to attend even one funeral of the war dead?

What's next? Getting aboard a submarine for a trip to the Persian Gulf? A balloon ride over Tora Bora?

Face it. Bush is merely this thing that Karl Rove has dressed up in the uniform-of-the-moment and sends out to look martial. Really, it's not too different from what they did in the era of kings and nobility. Then, total incompetents donned suits of armor and were made the subject of paintings, woodcuttings, and coins.

All hail the 21^st Century King!

posted by Quiddity at 11/27/2003 04:20:00 PM

Pagans need not apply:

Went to the White House website, and saw this: Director of the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Jim Towey answered your questions in a special Thanksgiving edition of Ask the White House.

So went to that page, where we encountered this exchange:

Colby, from Centralia MO writes:
Do you feel that Pagan faith based groups should be given the same considerations as any other group that seeks aid?

Jim Towey
I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.

posted by Quiddity at 11/27/2003 12:16:00 PM

Low-hanging fruit:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) holds up a prescription bottle while talking to reporters at the Capitol, November 24.

posted by Quiddity at 11/25/2003 07:12:00 PM

Can you believe it?

Even we missed out on this information. Congratulations to our fine media for keeping everybody in the dark until after the bill was passed. From the wires: (excerpts)

Analysts: Medicare Drug Costs Will Rise

Seniors will face annual increases in premiums and deductibles - and a growing gap in coverage - for the prescription drugs they buy under the new Medicare law, budget analysts say.

For example, the $250 annual deductible at the start of the program in 2006 is projected to rise to $445 by 2013.

[In the first year of the program] after [$2,250 in drug costs], there would be no further coverage until beneficiaries' drug bills for the year reached $5,100, leaving a gap of $2,850 that they would have to pay out of their own pockets.

But after just one year, the Congressional Budget Office projects that seniors would see their $250 deductible and the $2,850 gap for which there is no coverage both jump 10 percent.

By 2013, the eighth year of the program, the deductible and the coverage gap are both projected to grow by 78 percent.

In other words, seniors would pay a $445 deductible and those with the largest drug bills would be entirely responsible for more than $5,000 in drug costs.

... the lawmakers [made the] decision to tie the cost of the program to increases in drug costs from inflation, new costly drugs coming on the market and expected increases in drug purchases ...

"The numbers inflate with the cost of the program. I think that's a good provision," said [Senator Don] Nickles, who voted against the bill.

But David Certner, an official of AARP, said: "One of our complaints has been that this benefit would become more unaffordable over time if pegged to drug costs. This bill does not do enough to hold down drug costs."

What the hell is going on? Nickles likes the provision, yet votes against the bill. Somebody from AARP is unhappy, but the organization supported the bill.

We think that accounting for inflation is important, but the focus on the drug cost inflation may make it rough for seniors. Their benefits (e.g Social Security) are usually pegged to general inflation which includes elements such as the cost of housing, energy, and so on. If drugs have a higher inflation rate - which seems likely - over time the Medicare benefit will diminish in value. There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem. One way is to keep the benefit to seniors constant by paying more as drug costs escalate, though at greater cost to the treasury. Another approach is to use market power to restrain the costs - like Wal-Mart does.

Yet the Congress decided to do neither.

posted by Quiddity at 11/25/2003 06:51:00 PM

Factoids:

Democrats (and Independents) that voted for the Medicare Prescription Bill. From the Senate website:

Baucus (D-MT)
Breaux (D-LA)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Miller (D-GA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Wyden (D-OR)

posted by Quiddity at 11/25/2003 01:56:00 PM

No big market forces here!

About the proposed Medicare prescription drug benefit, we read in the New York Times:

[The bill] relies on insurance companies and private health plans to manage the new drug benefit. They could negotiate with drug companies, but the government, with much greater purchasing power, would be forbidden to do so.

Supporters of the provision say it is necessary to prevent the government from imposing price controls that could stifle innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. Critics say the restriction would force the government and Medicare beneficiaries to spend much more for drugs than they should.

Supporters of this bill are generally Republicans and conservatives. They don't want to give an entity (in this case the government) the power to exercise its market power on the (ostensible) grounds that it hurts innovation, etc. But that's precisely what big companies like Walmart and Microsoft do. And we've never heard Republican calls for restricting those companies ability to negotiate.

posted by Quiddity at 11/24/2003 06:56:00 AM

The Kennedy connection:

On PBS' NewsHour, Mark Shields expressed a view that is fairly common at this time of the 40th anniversary of president Kennedy's death. About conspiracy theories, with which Shields doesn't believe in:

... the idea that this small troubled tormented man could do something so large and change history by doing it is just somehow, offends people's sense of rationality. I think they're looking for something deeper, something to explain the magnitude of the enormity of what this little man did.

That's our view as well. If you agree with us, consider the following assertion about 9/11:

The idea that a small group of fanatics could do something so large and change history by doing it is just somehow, offends people's sense of rationality. I think war-hawks are looking for something deeper, something to explain the magnitude of the enormity of what this group did.

Basically, we take the view that all evidence to date indicates that al Qaeda is a menace, but nothing on the scale of a state power. But people want to believe that there is something big (and in Bush's case "evil") out there, and so start swinging at figures like Saddam, who fit their own conspiracy theories.

posted by Quiddity at 11/22/2003 10:58:00 PM

Here is your sound bite:

In agreement with our analysis (below), we read in the New York Times the following:

Overall, a beneficiary would pay $3,600 of the first $5,100 of drug costs, and that does not include the premium, expected to average $35 a month, or $420 a year ...

Now the premium really is a cost for drugs, so the thing to get people to understand is this:

Under the drug plan, you pay 4 of the first 5½ thousand dollars.

posted by Quiddity at 11/22/2003 10:35:00 PM

First time, ignore the question. Second time, deny the premise:

From the joint press conference (Bush & Blair) in London:

Q: And, Mr. President, if I could ask you, with thousands on the street -- with thousands marching on the streets today here in London, a free nation, what is your conclusion as to why apparently so many free citizens fear you and even hate you?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'd say freedom is beautiful. It's a fantastic thing to come to a country where people are able to express their views.

Q Why do they hate you, Mr. President? Why do they hate you in such numbers?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I don't know that they do. All I know is that it's -- that people in Baghdad, for example, weren't allowed to do this up until recent history. They're not spending a lot of time in North Korea protesting the current leadership. Freedom is a wonderful thing, and I respect that. I fully understand people don't agree with war. But I hope they agree with peace and freedom and liberty. I hope they care deeply about the fact that when we find suffering and torture and mass graves, we weep for the citizens that are being brutalized by tyrants.

And, finally, the Prime Minister and I have a solemn duty to protect our people. And that's exactly what I intend to do as the President of the United States, protect the people of my country.

posted by Quiddity at 11/21/2003 02:27:00 AM

A new name:

Earlier this week, Nicholas Kristof wrote:

We need a name for this war. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" never rolled off the tongue, and "Iraq war" creates confusion with the 1991 war. So send in your entries by mail or e-mail.

Here's our suggestion:     Operation Blunderbuss

It neatly conveys two ideas:

• A big blast of shot - which is a centuries-earlier version of "Shock and Awe".
  
  
• The blunders that have taken place in the post-war phase (most notably the disbanding of the Iraqi army).

posted by Quiddity at 11/20/2003 05:53:00 PM

More observations on the Medicare drug benefit:

Here is a chart that shows who is paying what - as a percentage - for a range of drug costs (note: even if your costs are zero, you will be paying a base amount [the premium of $420].)



Also, the way the plan is structured, if your drug costs are less than $830/yr ($70/mo), you are paying more than you would if there were no drug plan. (In other words, only at that point do Medicare payments equal- and therefore pay back - the annual premium.)

Another question that needs to be answered is, "What's the distribution of drug costs today?" We doubt very much that there are significant numbers of people with annual drug costs over $5,000 (or $400/mo). But maybe there are. Also, what's with the region between $2,200 and $4,600 ($183/mo and $383). Do a lot of people inhabit this regiion? (If the costs fall into what's known as a normal distribution, then there will be a peak somewhere - perhaps in that range of costs.)

UPDATE: Our question has been answered! Thanks to reader Joe, we learn of a study by the Commonwealth Fund. On slide 40 of the pdf file, we see:

About 25% of Medicare beneficiaries pay between $2,000 and $4,500 - which nearly coincides with the $2,200 - $4,600 region where the proposed Medicare plan provides no additional drug coverage.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The New Republic Online has a good description of some of the features of the bill.

posted by Quiddity at 11/20/2003 01:51:00 AM

Visualizing the (proposed) Medicare Drug Benefit:

Using information from the New York Times and Easterblog (!), we created a chart that shows who will be paying what for prescription drugs. This chart applies to most people. Those deemed poor (income less than $12,000 and/or assets less than $6,000) will have subsidies or waived deductables or waived coverage gaps.



Easterbrook writes:

Assuming any of this can be understood, the first provision appears to mean the typical senior will pay $420 per year to receive a benefit of $1,444--75 percent of the difference between $275 and $2,200--plus catastrophic coverage for most costs over $3,600. A premium of $420 for $1,444 of reimbursement plus catastrophe protection isn't bad, considering that a high percentage of the insureds will claim benefits.

So this part of the plan, which will be what is used by the majority of middle-class reasonably-healthy seniors, is okay but not a fabulous new windfall. Once typical middle-class seniors realize what they're getting is okay but not hugely great, there is bound to be grumbling; the political expectation seems to be that drugs for seniors will become free. Some middle-class seniors will also protest that they are being charged not $420 but $695 for the $1,444 benefit--the premium plus the deductible. But the $420 premium pays for the $1,444 reimbursement that a senior otherwise wouldn't get. The first $275 the patient would be paying whether the plan existed or not.

CLARIFICATION / CORRECTION: Easterbrook writes about, "catastrophic coverage for most costs over $3,600", but that's misleading. It sounds like solid coverage when drug costs exceed $3,600. According to the Times, the Medicare plan restarts when "the beneficiary has spent a total of $3,600 out of pocket. " That event takes place when the drug costs reach $4,600 ($383/mo). Easterbrook is writing about coverage when the beneficiary's out-of-pocket payments exceed $3,600.

Our view: We're not particularly impressed with the plan. Considering the initial $420/yr premium and the $275 deductable, the program pays 40% until the costs reach $4800 - after which drugs are virtually free.

We should point out that the 40% is an average; the benefit ranges between 55% and 30% when total costs are below the $4,800 "FreePoint". In fact, the benefit gets worse (declining from 55% to 30%) as the patient gets sicker. (What's really happening is that the benefit is pegged at $1444 while costs increase, so the percentage of coverage declines as a result.)

There are several details that need to be examined. For example, will any of these figures be inflation adjusted (especially those that are used to determine who is poor)?

Our best summary of the program is that is appears to be "half a loaf" (actually, more like 40% of a loaf). And that may not be good enough. We don't know what the general situation is for seniors, but we suspect that paying up to $3,500 for drugs (premiums, deductables, patient-share) may well be beyond the budgets of those who are not poor, but not well-off either.

posted by Quiddity at 11/19/2003 09:47:00 PM

An appeal for a little help:

We think that one of the most important resources at this time is the Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count website. (URL is: http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx) It is scrupulously maintained and has detailed information you won't get anywhere else.

Do you have a PayPal account? Can you spare, say, $3.00?

Please consider giving to keep the site up and running.

Thank you.

(This appeal is our own idea. We have no connection to the website. We just happened to notice that they are asking for support.)

posted by Quiddity at 11/19/2003 08:04:00 PM

Taking Scalia seriously:

Back in May 2002, Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia had an essay published in First Things entitled God's Justice and Ours. (We think it may have originally been delivered as a speech a month earlier.) We invite readers to ponder these lines:

... the core of [St. Paul's] message is that government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God.

...

It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers ... who at least obtained their thrones in ... battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies.

So, Mr. Scalia, if Bush fails to succeed in the war in Iraq, does that mean the hand of the Almighty isn't behind the president, and that Bush - by your standard - has no moral authority?

posted by Quiddity at 11/19/2003 12:01:00 PM

This is an excellent visual representation:

Via MediaWhoresOnline Watch Watch Watch Watch * we encountered a chart created by Ed Stephan that shows the steady increase in military fatalities since the start of the Iraqi war. The original chart is good, but we decided to enlarge it - yet make it fit the screen for the 26% of our readers who have 800 pixel wide monitors (and move some of the text around a bit). Here it is:



NOTE: The chart was also featured at the onegoodmove weblog.

* IMPORTANT NOTE: We don't know what's going on, but MWOWWWW appears hijacked and is now completely purged of content. It was working this morning, but the buzz is that there has been turmoil at that blog for some time now.

posted by Quiddity at 11/19/2003 11:09:00 AM

We give up!

This is from the concluding paragraph of Nicholas D. Kristof's most recent essay in the New York Times:

We need a name for this war. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" never rolled off the tongue, and "Iraq war" creates confusion with the 1991 war. So send in your entries by mail or e-mail.

We don't know why we didn't think of that before. A new name! That's the ticket.

Our suggestion: Operation Ivy Peninsula Freedom Serpent Strike Iron Cyclone Desert Hammer Scorpion

ALSO: We took a quick look at Safire's essay as well. It was so slimy that we had to wash our hands afterwards. He writes: "Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who became Jacques Chirac's toy spitz in opposing America as well as neighbors in Europe ..." Spitz is a breed of dog. Yet somehow Safire never gets around to using the word "poodle". Imagine that.

posted by Quiddity at 11/19/2003 12:58:00 AM

Burn baby, burn!

That's our 3-word summary of the energy bill. Just burn lots of stuff. Oil, coal, ethanol, gasoline, and natural gas. (Yes, the bill also contains objectionable parts like the repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 *) There is little interest in conservation or alternate energy sources. In fact, a provision to encourage use of renewable resources was removed during the House-Senate conference. The House "GOP majority strongly favors more extensive development of domestic oil and gas resources." There you have it. This is not a forward-looking policy. Businesses are going to get tax breaks for what they already are doing. It's a complete sellout. And the president will eagerly sign the bill if it gets to him (which is something Gore wouldn't do). Thanks, Ralph.

NOTE TO SCIENTISTS: You may have to rerun your computer models on global warming. Looks like there will be plenty more CO₂ for us all to deal with.





* More on PUHCA. Repeal will lead to all sorts of mergers and consumer-unfriendly situations. From Forbes: (excerpts)

PUHCA was passed after financial turmoil hit the nascent electricity sector as huge holding companies drew on the stable finances of their regulated utility arms to invest in other, riskier businesses.

The turmoil in the 1930s pushed some 53 holding companies into bankruptcy when lenders called in loans, spurring public calls for reform in the utility industry.

To ensure reliable electricity service to consumers, PUHCA limited the geographical reach of each utility and required utilities' businesses mesh operationally.

The Act prohibited utilities from mixing non-utility operations and power generation to prevent them using revenue from their protected markets to subsidize other ventures. It also limited how much debt a utility could accumulate.

Feel better now?

ADDITIONAL NOTE: We expect much hilarity when the media discuss the repeal of PUHCA (pronounced, apparently, "Poo-huca"). Just like Dingell-Norwood was a hit with well known political comedians Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts back in 2000. Remember, if it sounds funny, you should feel free to completely ignore what it's about.

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 10:58:00 PM

Drill this into your head:

Calpundit calls Mickey Kaus out on a low blow. Kaus goes after Howard Dean with this line:

... there's a second, more troubling interpretation, which is that Dean ________

Fill in the blank with whatever you'd like to accuse Dean of. In Kaus' case it's a theory that Dean is a cunning opportunist (or worse).

Isn't that nice? When one decides to "interpret" something, there are virtually no limits where you can go. Not only that, but Kaus tltles his entry

Hello! Opposition Researchers!

What can you say but ....

Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat - Mickey Kaus is a Fox News Democrat -

If the tapestry above doesn't get to you, stare at this for 10 minutes:

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 06:18:00 PM

We thought of it first!

From Middle East Online (thanks to Counterspin for the head's up):

Bush's homemade statue to be toppled in London

CND spokeswoman says idea is to highlight how fake toppling of Saddam statue in Baghdad was on April 9.

British demonstrators angry at Anglo-American policy over Iraq said they will topple Thursday a giant homemade statue of George W. Bush in London's Trafalgar Square during a protest march against his three-day state visit.

From our post of 10 April 2003: (actually, this is a brightened version of our original image which was rather dark)



It's not in the story (above), but we heard on the radio that the statue will be toppled (more accurately, pulled down) by a pink papier-mache tank.

All in all, it should be fun.

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 01:30:00 PM

Found item:

We were recently sorting some old papers - which included newspaper clippings - and came upon an item that we'd completely forgotten about. But before getting into that, we'd like to say that we don't collect and save everything that we've read. In fact, we probably only have five clippings on politics from the last ten years. So how did we happen to save this thing? Was there some early buzz that we picked up? Certainly, this guy wasn't uppermost in our mind until 1999. Yet somehow we cut it out and put it aside.

Here are the first paragraphs of a Washington Post National Weekly Edition - for Jul 24-30, 1995

The Lone Star Takes a Shine to a Rising Son Gov. George W. Bush is establishing his credentials with a smooth first term By Sue Ann Pressley Washington Post Staff Writer AUSTIN, Tex. It was a rare moment of discord in his short, happy life as the governor of Texas: When, without warning, George W. Bush recently vetoed a guardianship bill intended to protect thousands of elderly and disabled Texans - a bill that had sailed through the legislature with scant opposition - some Democrats and other advocates quickly cried foul. Here, they said, was proof of what truly could be expected from the new Republican leader who has preached countless sermons about the lofty plane of nonpartisan politics. "While the governor was vetoing this bill," said Democratic state Rep. Elliott Naishtat of Austin, a co-sponsor of the measure, "he was signing bills that would appear to benefit wealthy people, and people or groups that can afford to retain high-powered lobbyists. I am extremely disappointed." So were the Gray Panthers, the Association of Retarded Children of Texas and officials with 30 other organizations. Bush's rationale was that the measure would burden the current state bureaucracy and that it complicated, rather than improved, an existing - but, critics say, insufficient - program. [The article goes on about Texas politics, compromise, lack of it, etc.]

Sure looks like Bush was a mean SOB from the get-go.

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 09:39:00 AM

To tell the truth:

Via Roger Ailes we read the New York Times article on Limbaugh's comeback. Here is the key excerpt you should remember:

"When you have a constituency that strong and an audience that devoted, they will forgive you anything, short of murder," Mr. Friedman [a Democratic strategist] said. "I think the cause is so important to them that they're not willing to sacrifice a leader because of his personal flaws."

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 07:40:00 AM

Reverse strategy:

From Limbaugh's first day back.

Democrats can't meet us in the arena of ideas, so they call names and make wild charges hoping something will stick. When these people talk about us, when they accuse us of bad behavior - guess what? They're telling us who they are. It's a beautiful thing, my friends. It's a new way of listening to liberals. When they start telling us what rotten SOBs we are, just remember: they're telling us who they are.

Are you confused yet?

But seriously, this is just another brick in the wall. In this case, a rubber brick that reflects criticism 100%. It's all part of the walling off of the world so that Limbaugh and his supporters can believe in anything they want to.

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 07:35:00 AM

Simplify, simplify:

From this news story:

EPA to propose easing rules for radioactive waste

President George W. Bush's administration is considering allowing low-level radioactive waste to be dumped at toxic waste sites and other facilities that currently aren't permitted to receive it.

The Environmental Protection Agency was expected to issue a notice Tuesday seeking public comments on the proposal. The notice asks the public to weigh in on whether certain levels of radioactive waste can be stored in landfills or hazardous material disposal sites.

Nuclear power companies can dispose of low-level radioactive waste at a handful of sites around the country, and about 20 sites can dispose of hazardous material.

The EPA notice says a rule change could simplify the process for getting rid of hazardous and radioactive waste for nuclear power companies and others that generate it.

We wonder - why not simplify the process further? Just dump the radioactive waste in the gutter. Then companies don't have to deal with the bother of trucking the crap to toxic waste sites, or to any waste sites whatsoever.

posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2003 07:00:00 AM

We screwed up!

In our haste converting an old diagram into a PowerPoint-like application (StarOffice's Impress) we made several errors. Misspelling, dropped connections, and connections that shouldn't be there. Our thanks to Mike and Mark for setting us straight. Click here for the full size diagram.



We'll be much more careful in the future (we have lots of diagrams to re-enter).

posted by Quiddity at 11/17/2003 11:28:00 AM

Details! Details!

We watched the Fox News Sunday round table discuss Stephen Hayes' Weekly Standard article that everybody is talking about. It's the one about what Douglas Feith sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Josh Marshall writes "I was watching Fox News Sunday this morning and saw Fred Barnes --- Executive Editor of the Standard --- go almost apoplectic about how devastating and case-closing a piece it is." Fred was certainly excited. And he kept on mentioning that the reports were full of details. Here is a transcript of the round table on the Hayes article: (emphasis added)

SNOW: Fred, let me ask you about a series of memos that were first reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard which seemed to indicate that our intelligence agencies thought there were some very strong connections or at least some coincidences that would link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Now we haven't been able to get anybody to bite on this officially, but looking at the memos it does appear that the intelligence community thought there was some pretty strong evidence that Saddam had been working with al Qaeda and for a considerable period of time.

BARNES: And your first word was right, "connections", not just coincidences. The interesting thing about this report in particular is the detail that it has of meetings between officials of Saddam Hussein's government at top officials of al Qaeda. Have met repeatedly over thirteen years from 1990 to 2003. Met in many different places, and developed, really, an operational relationship of providing sanctuary for terrorists, and training of terrorists in explosives and weapons of mass destruction and so on. Look, they say this is raw intelligence but this is raw intelligence with great details, much of it coming from the CIA. You know - I love - the press' in particular selective use of intelligence which they accuse the Bush administration of - the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now. Now - look - there are repeated meetings that went on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. It's clear that there was a strong connection.

WILLIAMS: I don't know about a strong connection, the president himself has said we haven't proven anything.

BARNES: Whoa! Whoa! He said we haven't proven

HUME: 9/11

BARNES: Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11.

WILLIAMS: And I don't think there's any proof - that meetings may have occurred - there's no proof of any kind of connection that would say "here are funds, here are troops, here's our effort to attack Americans, to create terrorism". We don't know that Fred.

BARNES: You're setting up a straw man.

WILLIAMS: But that's what I think this is. I think if there are some connections here ...

BARNES: Strong!

WILLIAMS: I think there's a big difference between the CIA memo that was released this week, the one that Bremer knew about, and that every White House official that I know says, "Yes, that's a legitimate memo", and this one that is speculative.

BARNES: No, no! Please.

WILLIAMS: Because you're trying to make a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

BARNES: Juan, you cannot call that report speculative. It is filled with details. It doesn't speculate at all. There's no speculation in there. And Juan, I wonder why would your reaction be to try and knock it down, rather than say, "Hey, there really was a strong connection between Saddam and al Qaeda".

WILLIAMS: Because I think the American people realize that after 9/11 we had to do something about Afghanistan. Had to do something about al Qaeda. The whole issue about Iraq is separate and you're trying to make it - conflate them - because what we did was take preemptive action against Iraq. Most people - I think everyone on this panel - say, "Okay we did it, we're going to stay with this president", but you don't have to create this kind of, you know, cotton candy: "Oh yes, we knew there was a connection". Sounds a lot like what happened to Jessica Lynch. All of a sudden you realize this week that the Defense Department was building her up ...

BARNES: These are hard facts. You can call it speculative. You can call it cotton candy. These are hard facts, and I'd like to see you refute any one of them!

WILLIAMS: I think the case is not to refute it. I think the case is to prove it, and it's yet to be proven.

[Note: For about a week, a .wav file of this exchange will be available here. It is 1.5 meg in size. We do this to assure our readers that the transcripts are accurate.)

Now anybody can provide raw, unsubstantiated data, replete with details. For instance:

Fred Barnes was seen wearing a blue shirt and driving a Ford Taurus at 10:32 AM on Saturday. He parked the car next to a mailbox and then, wearing a red had and carrying a wrench and screwdriver, broke into the 2nd window to the right of the main entrance of the Library of Congress.

Plenty of details, but completely false.


posted by Quiddity at 11/16/2003 03:41:00 PM