Song for the night

David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland - "When Love Takes Over"

(Video link)

In 1999 at this hour...

I was in my hotel in South Beach, getting ready to go out with James and friends, and watching fireworks from around the world on television. This CNN montage reminded me of that night, ten years ago, when I more fully than ever appreciated the sense of the whole world being focused on one thing: welcoming in the new.

(Video link)

Funniest protest sign of 2009

My favorite from this list of the funniest protest signs of 2009:

More entertaining lists here.

Iran, Islam, and our future

Andrew Sullivan wrote today about the difficulties of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state and the challenges that the West faces as the Muslim world finds its way in the 21st century. Like him, I'm not highly optimistic. And I found some of my own thoughts echoed here:

I write this at the end of a decade that changed my politics. They changed because reality shifted. Globalization, technology and fundamentalism have reordered our post-Cold War world. The advantage lies with the asymmetrical, the nimble, the long tail, the lone actor. There is nothing the modern state can really do to stop this, and if it tries to assume the powers to have a chance, it will cease to resemble anything like the democracy or republic the Founders envisaged. We can panic and construct a Leviathan so powerful and invasive it will in the end destroy our freedoms, or we can hang in, do all we can to defuse ideological and theological tension, construct more effective means of defense and security, and outlast the Islamist wave even through what will be its many outrages and offenses.

This would be appeasement if strong military action were an effective alternative and could defeat the enemy. But if we have learned anything these past few years, it is that the mightiest military in the world cannot stop a lone fanatic eager to kill himself in order to kill countless others in a religious mission. Even if we were to transform Afghanistan, a Yemen would soon emerge. Even now after spending trillions on Iraq, we cannot stop al Qaeda returning when we leave to exploit sectarian divides.

What we need is sobriety, stoicism, vigilance and a determined defense of our values and the rule of law. We cannot save our civilization by junking it, by pre-emptive wars and torture and near-dictatorial executive power. And we cannot save it by politicizing every attack, thereby magnifying the power of one tiny terrorist with burnt balls to create havoc and division in the free world.

It's almost over

2009, that is.

(Video link)

Airport safety and American politics

After receiving a new briefing with more information about what federal agencies knew about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, President Obama has given what the New York Times described as a "withering assessment" of the government's handling of the airplane attack on Christmas day. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to exploit the event for political gain despite holding up Obama's pick to head the TSA for months:

Mr. Obama’s appearance came after another day of Republican criticism. On Tuesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee sought to inject the bombing attempt into next year’s midterm races. In a series of news releases, the committee sought to press vulnerable Democrats on whether they agreed with Ms. Napolitano’s initial assessment.

“All year long, we’ve asked the question: What is the administration’s overarching strategy to confront the terrorist threat and keep America safe?” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said in a statement Tuesday. “We haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer, and the secretary’s ‘the system worked’ response doesn’t inspire confidence.”

Democrats countered that Republicans had shown disregard for any terrorism risk by blocking the president’s nominee for head of the Transportation Security Administration and by voting this year against a measure providing $44 billion for Department of Homeland Security operations.

“They have essentially voted against and delayed providing the tools that are necessary to prevent these kinds of actions,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

They also criticized Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the intelligence committee and a leading critic of the White House, for tying the thwarted bombing to an appeal for money for his race for governor. In a letter first reported by The Grand Rapids Press, Mr. Hoekstra sought donations to help counter Democratic “efforts to weaken our security.”

A spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra’s campaign said the letter was appropriate and sought to inform potential donors of his leadership on national security issues.

Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said on Tuesday that once the Senate returned on Jan. 19, he would move quickly to overcome Republicans’ objections to the nomination of Erroll G. Southers, a former F.B.I. agent, to lead the security agency.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, has blocked the appointment, saying he was worried Mr. Southers might allow T.S.A. workers to join labor unions. “Republicans have decided to play politics with this nomination by blocking final confirmation,” Mr. Reid said.

Sad.

Exploring the filibuster

Ezra Klein has been looking at the filibuster. Here's his Sunday Washington Post column. And he recently interviewed Senator Jeff Merkley who is looking at ways to rein in use of the filibuster:

Discussions are really at the starting point. To give you a sense of some of the ideas, though, one question we're asking is how do you get two-thirds of the body to agree to change the rules when there's immediate pressure for the minority to protect themselves? Your rule changes could kick in in 6 to 8 years. Or you could have rule changes that are designed to trigger when the two sides are more or less even. So when there's a 55-45 majority, it wouldn't kick in, but it would at 52-48. Or think about with nominations. We're really paralyzing the executive branch. This may be a conversation that doesn't ripen for awhile, but each time I mention to a senator that we're doing this, they say thank goodness.

And another with Senator Tom Harkin who shares some of the history of why the Senate adopted the filibuster in the first place:

It was done to allow senators to get back to Washington. In those days, it could take a week or two for senators to get back from different states. The filibuster ensured a small group couldn't go into session before the others could get here.

Also, legislators wanted time to get word out to the populace so they could pressure their representatives. It was a means of protecting the minority who couldn't be here and getting some time for people to know what we're doing. Both of those reasons have gone by the wayside. With travel, people can get here in a few hours, and with television and radio and internet, people know very quickly whats going on here.

And a third with UCLA professor Barbara Sinclair who not only has written about the rise of the use of the filibuster over the last two decades but also describes how use of the filibuster has changed after reforms were made in the 70s:

This goes way, way back. During all those years that the Southern Democrats were blocking civil rights legislation, every Congress began with liberal Democrats trying to change the filibuster rule and not getting anywhere. You do get a change in 1975, but part of why that was possible was the big Civil Rights stuff was off the table.

Technically, the rules made cutting off debate easier, because now it only required 60 votes rather than 67. But in reality, you had to do it more often. There was less restraint. The underlying cause is that the Senate -- our whole political system, really -- changed, and opened up in many ways. There were all kinds of ways that you could become a really big player through being partially outer-directed -- aiming yourself at the media and interest groups and the like. It was less necessary to simply be on really good terms with the most senior members of the Senate.

Finally, the group People for the American Way reports that not only has use of the filibuster hit an all-time high this year, but that 89% of the time, use of the filibuster simply served as a delaying tactic. And because halting progress on one bill will likely also delay other bills, the filibuster is being used even on non-controversial legislation simply to prevent moving on to other matters. In one case--a vote to extend unemployment benefits--the filibuster was used even though the final vote was 97-0.

Song of the day, movie of the day

The Pet Shop Boys' "Go West."

(Video link)

Just re-watched Summer Storm with Michael L.... after watching (and loving) Young Victoria. The latter is highly recommended. The former... well, you know if you'd like it. :-)

Iran fires on protesters

Coverage from the New York Times here and here and also The Daily Dish. At least four, and possibly closer to ten, people have been killed.

Merry Christmas... and joy to the world

Here's one of my favorites: Mahalia Jackson singing "O Holy Night." I first heard the song as a freshman in college; it was on a cassette tape of Christmas music that my mother gave me. She'd wrapped one small, daily present for the month of December up until my last day of finals. Friends would come in each evening to see me unwrap one.

Mom earned a lot of points in my dorm that month. :-)

(Video link)

I did not know that

Britain didn't fully pay back the U.S. for lend-lease support during World War II until 2006!

Why we have pets

Andrew Sullivan posted this video today of a dog playing with an ice cube, another example of the simple joy of being alive. And watching it I thought, "This is why we desire the companionship of animals."

(Video link)

I was reminded of one of my favorite passages in all the books I've read. Tereza and Tomas are two of the central characters in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. From the beginning of their relationship, Tomas has had affairs. After many years of city life, they're now living in the country with their dog, Karenin. On a walk with Karenin, Tereza finds herself wondering why her attitude towards Karenin's menstruation is so different from her attitude toward her own. And why loving Karenin was so much easier than loving Tomas. Kundera's answer is that animals were never expelled from Paradise:

Raised as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise: life in Paradise was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom....

Why is it that a dog's menstruation made her lighthearted and gay, while her own menstruation mader her squeamish? The answer seems simple to me: dogs were never expelled from Paradise. Karenin knew nothing about the duality of body and soul and had no concept of disgust. That is why Tereza felt so free and easy with him. (And that is why it is so dangerous to turn an animal into a machina animata, a cow into an automaton for the production of milk. By so doing, man cuts the thread binding him to Paradise and has nothing left to hold or comfort him on his flight through the emptiness of time....)

From this jumble of ideas came a sacrilegious thought that Tereza could not shake off: the love that tied her to Karenin was better than the love between her and Tomas. Better, not bigger. Tereza did not wish to fault either Tomas or herself; she did not wish to claim that they could love each other more. Her feeling was rather that, given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog, that oddity of human history probably unplanned by the Creator.

It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

And something else: Tereza accepted Karenin for what he was; she did not try to make him over in her image; she agreed from the outset with his dog's life, did not wish to deprive him of it, did not envy him his secret intrigues. The reason she trained him was not to transform him (as a husband tries to reform his wife and a wife her husband), but to provide him with the elementary language that enabled them to communicate and live together.

Then too: No one forced her to love Karenin; love for dogs is voluntary....

But most of all: No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Karenin surrounded Tereza and Tomas with a life based on repetition, and he expected the same from them....

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition.

Yes, happiness is the longing for repetition, Tereza said to herself.

Song for Christmas Eve

Here's a classic: Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I've long thought that Connie Francis' version was the saddest Christmas song. But Judy's version is even sadder.

(Video link)

The video is from Meet Me in St. Louis.

It passes in the Senate

The Senate has passed healthcare reform this morning at 7:16am ET on a vote of 60-39.

Passage of HR 3590 required a simple majority. Guess who provided the 50th vote in the alphabetical roll call? Former Republican Arlen Specter. :-)

The Los Angeles Times has some of the backstory including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's leadership:

"So many people find Harry Reid incomprehensible as a leader in large part because he is so unprepossessing as a public speaker," said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist. "But his virtue and his value to his caucus is his mastery of the mechanics of the Senate."

"There are Senate leaders like that who come along every few decades," he said.

Over the last two months, Reid, a slight, soft-spoken man who makes listeners strain to hear him, gambled. He pulled senators back to the table when deals fell apart. And with the clock ticking down, he prodded his colleagues to make agonizing concessions for a larger goal.

The $871-billion bill, paid for with a mix of tax hikes and Medicare cuts, would expand coverage to an estimated 31 million more people over the next decade.

We're almost there. And if, like me, you're worried about 92 yo Senator Robert Byrd's health, read this. (He was present and voted this morning.)

It's time to innovate less on Wall Street

After reading this New York Times article about how investment banks like Goldman Sachs began betting against the housing market as far back as 2006, all the while continuing to sell exotic mortgage-backed investments to their customers, it's more clear than ever that we need to put far stricter regulations on Wall Street:

While the investigations are in the early phases, authorities appear to be looking at whether securities laws or rules of fair dealing were violated by firms that created and sold these mortgage-linked debt instruments and then bet against the clients who purchased them, people briefed on the matter say.

One focus of the inquiry is whether the firms creating the securities purposely helped to select especially risky mortgage-linked assets that would be most likely to crater, setting their clients up to lose billions of dollars if the housing market imploded.

Some securities packaged by Goldman and Tricadia ended up being so vulnerable that they soured within months of being created....

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has recently been pretty outspoken about how far out of bounds Wall Street has gotten with credit default swaps and other derivatives. From a Wall Street Journal interview:

Every day I hear financial leaders saying that [huge compensation packages] are necessary and desirable, they are wonderful and they are God's work. Has there been one financial leader to stand out and say that maybe this is excessive and that maybe we should get together privately to think about some restraint?

I hear about these wonderful innovations in the financial markets, and they sure as hell need a lot of innovation. I can tell you of two—credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations—which took us right to the brink of disaster. Were they wonderful innovations that we want to create more of? ...

I made a wiseacre remark that the most important financial innovation that I have seen the past 20 years is the automatic teller machine. That really helps people and prevents visits to the bank and is a real convenience.

How many other innovations can you tell me that have been as important to the individual as the automatic teller machine, which is in fact more of a mechanical innovation than a financial one? ...

I am not sure that I said innovation in itself is a bad thing. I said that I have found very little evidence that vast amounts of innovation in financial markets in recent years have had a visible effect on the productivity of the economy. Maybe you can show me that I am wrong. All I know is that the economy was rising very nicely in the 1950s and 1960s without all of these innovations. Indeed, it was quite good in the 1980s without credit-default swaps and without securitization and without CDOs.

I do not know if something happened that suddenly made these innovations essential for growth. In fact, we had greater speed of growth and particularly did not put the whole economy at risk of collapse. That is the main concern that I think we all need to have.

If it is really true that the world economy was on the brink of a great depression that was greatly complicated by financial problems, then we have a rather basic problem that calls for our best thinking, and structural innovation if necessary. I do not want to stop you all from innovating, but do it within a structure that will not put the entire world economy at risk.

Somehow I suspect that the financial regulation reform bill that the Senate is working on isn't going to go far enough back to the basics.

Improving the healthcare reform bill

The New York Times has some good ideas to combine the best of the House and Senate bills.

More on the new cancer screening recommendations

Dr. Robert Truog weighs in on the controversy in The New England Journal of Medicine:

Screening mammography for women in their 40s is clearly effective. The problem is that the benefit is tiny and expensive. A recent cost–benefit analysis showed that adherence to the current guidelines from the American Cancer Society costs more than $680,000 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained, as compared with a proposed alternative costing only $35,000 per QALY. Statistician Donald Berry has calculated that for a woman in her 40s, a decade’s worth of mammograms would increase her lifespan by an average of 5 days — and this survival advantage would be lost if she rode a bicycle for 15 hours without a helmet (or 50 hours with a helmet). The key issue here, however, is that these figures represent population averages. For the small number of women whose lives are saved, the difference is literally as large as that between life and death.

Unfortunately, this debate could not come at a worse time for the Obama administration and advocates of health care reform, since it highlights a necessity that most Americans want to deny. Yet critics of the Task Force recommendations and of health care reform in general are offering a false choice. The choice is not between health care rationing and some undefined alternative, since there is no alternative. Rather, the choice concerns what principles we will use to ration health care. In the United States, we have traditionally rationed health care in the same way we ration expensive cars: those who can afford to pay for them are those who can have them. The alternative currently being considered in health care reform would involve a shift to other principles, such as those rooted in considerations of fairness, efficiency, and efficacy.

Dr. Truog also contrasts mammograms with PSA screening for prostate cancer in men:

It is interesting to compare these proposed guidelines with those that have been suggested for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, another screening method for another cancer. In the case of PSA testing, a credible argument can be made that the test is often harmful for the individual patient. False positive results often lead to biopsies (which are themselves often unreliable) and then to invasive procedures such as surgery and radiotherapy that can leave patients impotent or incontinent, often to treat a prostate condition that never would have threatened their life. Mammography is different. Although abnormalities found on mammography generally necessitate additional imaging or a biopsy, the risks associated with these procedures are relatively limited.

Cool ad

Andrew Sullivan is having his readers vote on their favorite "cool ad" that he posted this year (it's one of several categories). Check this one out:

(Video link)

Song of the day

Lady Gaga, Christopher Walken, and Cartman put on their "Poker Faces." (Listen for the subliminal "cherry pie" line in the chorus that I've been talking about for six months. :-)

(Video link)

More angles on the Copenhagen climate talks

An aide to one of the delegations claims that the Chinese intentionally scuttled last week's climate conference. James Fallows comments.

MEANWHILE, Thomas Friedman writes about Denmark's own progress on cutting carbon emissions. And two researchers from the Netherlands, Gert Jan Kramer and Martin Haigh, argue that in order to head off disastrous climate changes, we need to not only focus on coming up with new technologies but also pay attention to how quickly they can be deployed on an industrial scale:

To combat climate change, the world's entire energy system needs a major overhaul before the middle of the century. But can we build new energy supplies that quickly? Some argue that with the right incentives we can see similar rates of change in the energy system as have been seen in information technology. So most of the debate focuses on how much the transition will cost and who will foot the bill. Here, we argue that cost is less important than the rate at which existing low-carbon energy technologies can be physically deployed. Because the scale of the energy system is so huge, it takes time to build the human and industrial capacity to achieve substantial deployment.

The authors of this Nature article worry that even in Shell's fairly optimistic alternative energy scenario, "Blueprints," the rollout of new energy sources won't be enough to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions that are needed:

Even with all these policies in place, the CO2 concentrations achieved in the Blueprints scenario fall short of environmental ambitions. An even tougher goal of stabilizing CO2 concentrations at 450 p.p.m. — as climate science recommends — would require a largely decarbonized energy sector by 2050. Our best chance of beating the deployment laws requires efforts on multiple fronts, as Blueprints shows, but going beyond those optimistic projections remains an even more significant challenge.

One implication of the deployment laws is that more action is required on the demand side to increase efficiency and curtail consumption. The good news is that demand-side solutions are subject to different laws. In principle, everyone in the developed world could use less energy tomorrow. The bad news is that it has proven exceedingly difficult to restrain our appetite for more energy. No climate actions are easy and none of them is quick.

AND FINALLY, when I lived in Las Vegas, one of the issues that concerned me was the bureacratic hurdles that slowed the progress of solar energy projects in the state. And while I care passionately about the environment, I think protecting the desert has to be balanced with the impacts climate change will have around the globe. So even as I understand Diane Feinstein's motivation, I'm worried about the effects of her proposed legislation that would limit solar projects in the Mojave.

Huge, peaceful crowd of Iranian protesters

Amazing video of mourners/protesters at Ayatollah Montazeri's funeral procession:

(Video link)

Power to the Iranian people.

Heartbreaking

The latest horror in the Mexican drug wars:

Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, a Special Forces sailor killed last week during the government’s most successful raid on a top drug lord in years, received a stirring, national tribute in which the secretary of the navy presented his mother with the flag that covered her son’s casket.

Then, the next day, only hours after the grieving family had finished burying him in his hometown, gunmen burst into the family’s house and sprayed the rooms with gunfire, killing his mother and three other relatives, officials said Tuesday.

Last summer I read Charles Bowden's "The Sicario: A Juárez hit man speaks" (Harper's Magazine, May 2009, subscription required). It's a shocking interview with a former hit man for one of the Mexican drug cartels. I was profoundly affected by it, and even now, scanning the article for an excerpt to include here, I have the chills. (Warning: The following contains graphic depictions of torture.)

He especially wants to know what I know about the two death houses uncovered last winter. I say one had nine bodies, the other thirty-six.

No, no, he insists, the second one had thirty-eight, two of them women.

He carefully draws me the layout of his second death house. One of the women, he notes, was killed for speaking too much. The other was a mistake. These do happen, though the bosses never admit to it.

But he keeps returning to the death house with the thirty-eight bodies. It has memories for him.

I remember standing on the quiet dirt street as the authorities made a show of digging up the dead. Half a mile away was a hospital where some machine-gunned people were taken that spring, but the killers followed and killed them in the emergency room. Shot their kinfolk in the waiting room also.

“The narcos,” he wants me to understand, “have informants in the DEA and the FBI. They work until they are useless. Then they are killed.”

As for those who inform to the FBI and DEA, they “die ugly.”

He explains.

“They were brought handcuffed behind the back to the death house where they found thirty-six bodies,” he rolls on. “A T-shirt was soaked with gasoline and put on their backs, lit, and then after a while pulled from their backs. The skin came off with it. Both men made sounds like cattle being killed. They were injected with a drug so they would not lose consciousness. Then they put alcohol on their testicles and lit them. They jumped so high—they were handcuffed and still I never saw people jump so high.”

I've avoided writing anything about this article, though I've discussed it with some friends. I didn't want to sound like I was moralizing. But after reading the article about that Mexican sailor's murdered mother, I felt compelled to write this: Americans have to wake up and face their responsibility for what's happening south of our borders. America provides the demand; Mexico offers the supply. Clearly the sicarios and their bosses bear the burden for the lives that are taken. But we in the U.S. have to face the fact that their motive is profit, and we are the customer. We are complicit in these deaths.

Another excerpt from Bowden's article here. And Democracy Now interviewed Bowden last August; it begins at the 28:30 mark.

(Video link)

Coffee and tea ward off type 2 diabetes

And it appears the more coffee you drink (caffeinated or decaf), the greater the protective effect.

Iran's Green Movement remains strong

The death of the senior cleric most critical of the Iranian regime has led to more large protests. From The Times:

Witnesses said that after yesterday’s ceremony Basij, the militia, attacked opposition supporters outside [Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali] Montazeri’s home and tore down black banners. Thousands of mourners also marched in Montazeri’s hometown of Najafabad, near the city of Isfahan.

The Green Movement appears to be emboldened and gaining momentum, and this is a week of great opportunity. The sacred month of Muharram culminates on Sunday in the emotionally charged holiday of Ashura, when Shia Muslims mourn the 7thcentury martyrdom of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson and the talk is of sacrifice.

The opposition is planning nationwide protests that day, and the fact that Ashura coincides with the seventh day since Montazeri’s death, an important date in the Shia mourning ritual, will give them greater impetus.

“Montazeri’s death could not have come at a worse time for the regime and it will rachet up the tensions considerably,” Dr Ansari said. “This has made an extremely fragile situation even worse for the Government and it will be scrambling to find a way to deal with it.”

More coverage from Juan Cole here and here.

(Video link)

The choice before us

The Wonk Room put together this graphic illustrating what we have vs. what the Senate healthcare reform bill would provide. Background and a larger image here.

One of the world's ten largest cities legalizes gay marriage

Mexico City. Muy bueno.

Our new mode of war

Michael Ventura at the Austin Chronicle has a keen sense of observation when it comes to America at war. In 2004 he wrote that "war is how civilizations make love," and his argument seemed sound to me. ("Lessons of Guernica")

In his December 4th column Ventura describes the changes in how we fight as a nation. No longer waging total war, we now seem to mire ourselves in endless conflicts:

In World War II the phrase often employed was "total war." Every walk of life participated in combat. Every citizen sacrificed for the effort. We paid for that war with higher taxes and war bonds. The objective was clear: "unconditional victory."

Now we have two mutually supporting strategies or models of war – and this has been true since at least the onset of the Vietnam conflict.

The primary, announced model is medical, as in surgery or therapy: We'll go in, heal the patient's ailment, fix what needs fixing, and leave. When we leave, everything is supposed to be better. Whatever the rhetoric, in reality victory is defined therapeutically – not winning, but solving a problem.

The underlying model, however, is very different: addiction. No matter what, and no matter the cost, we'll keep on doing what hasn't worked until it does. That is the very definition of addiction, with addiction's financial rule: If we don't have the money (and we don't), we'll beg, borrow, and become debt slaves until what can't be done is done.

They say everything goes faster now, and that's largely true of everything but war. With these co-enabling models of therapeutic and addictive war, war continues in a kind of slow motion. The objective is vague. It's often hard to tell who the enemy really is. The front line is everywhere and nowhere. We suffer far fewer casualties (partly because medical attention is better and more immediate), but war goes on and on and on.

Global Guerrillas explores this idea of limited war more fully in a post from 2006.

More negative reviews for this first decade of the 21st century

I guess I'm not alone in panning the aughts; Time Magazine calls 2000-2009 the "Decade from Hell." And the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds:

According to the poll, a combined 58% said the decade was either "awful" or "not so good," 29% said it was fair, and just 12% said it was either "good" or "great."

One more step...

The Senate has voted to end debate on its healthcare reform bill. The schedule calls for an actual vote on the bill on Thursday.

Broken promise; insurance company profits

I do have to say, one thing that has disappointed me about this road to healthcare reform is that President Obama didn't follow through on a certain campaign promise. (To be honest, I'd forgotten about it until a Republican senator spoke about it in a speech.)

Senator Obama promised the following:

"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process," Obama said at a debate in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2008.

AT THE SAME TIME, I've been watching some of the Senate speeches today before the Senate votes on healthcare reform. And I listened to Howard Dean on "Meet the Press" this morning. There's so much posturing and outright lies in some of these speeches.

There's also talk about how the current bill must be flawed since insurance company stock prices are up. I'm not a fan of these companies, and I believe fundamental healthcare reform will involve far more radical changes to the system that we have. But think of this example: if the government decided to pay for three meals a day for every homeless person in the U.S., the future revenues (and the profits) of food producers would rise, would they not? And when profits for a company are expected to rise, the market normally values the company with a higher stock price.

The Senate bill is adding 30 million people to the pool of people with health insurance. It uses private insurance plans, for the most part, to achieve that. So clearly insurance companies will have higher revenues, and most likely, higher profits. It's simplistic, however, to claim that if insurance companies are benefiting from the bill that Americans are not. Just as the homeless would benefit from those three meals a day--and food producers would benefit from a larger market--the uninsured will still benefit even if insurance companies profits rise. (Ezra Klein addresses the issue of insurance company profitability here.)

Healthcare reform is just beginning. There's a lot of work to be done if we're truly going to move to a system that gives people access to healthcare without bankrupting the country and its citizens. I just hope that we have the collective will to make those changes. The difficulty in getting to the point where we are today doesn't make me very optimistic.

Krugman and Fallows on the filibuster rule

The filibuster, which requires 60 votes to end debate in the Senate, is not in the Constitution. It's simply a rule that senators voted into place. And while historically it was rarely used or threatened, its use has skyrocketed in the few years.

James Fallows and Paul Krugman weigh in.

Song of the day

I just received texts from my good, good friend and dancing buddy Bette informing me that:

• Bette had ventured out of the house
• Bette was at Fresh
• Our old friend Phil B was spinning
• Phil was playing the song that I used to call my "peeing my pants song," Mary Kiani's "I Imagine"

I was lucky enough to meet Mary in Sydney when I was there for Mardi Gras 2001. Ahhhhhh... (Here's a link to the video of her 2006 MG performance.)

(Video link)

Vicky Kennedy: vote yes on healthcare reform

Ted Kennedy's widow has an op-ed in today's Washington Post urging Congress to pass healthcare reform:

My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars -- and competing interests -- were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation's working families and of our economy as a whole.

Still, Ted knew that accomplishing reform would be difficult. If it were easy, he told me, it would have been done a long time ago. He predicted that as the Senate got closer to a vote, compromises would be necessary, coalitions would falter and many ardent supporters of reform would want to walk away. He hoped that they wouldn't do so. He knew from experience, he told me, that this kind of opportunity to enact health-care reform wouldn't arise again for a generation....

The bill before Congress will finally deliver on the urgent needs of all Americans. It would make their lives better and do so much good for this country. That, in the end, must be the test of reform. That was always the test for Ted Kennedy. He's not here to urge us not to let this chance slip through our fingers. So I humbly ask his colleagues to finish the work of his life, the work of generations, to allow the vote to go forward and to pass health-care reform now. As Ted always said, when it's finally done, the people will wonder what took so long.

"Decade of Fear"

That's how the San Francisco Chronicle is describing the first decade of the millenium.

Oregon's dead zone

A zone of low oxygen water started appearing off the Oregon coast in 2002, leaving behind swathes of seafloor devoid of life. Oregon State University researchers now believe warming coastal waters are the cause. Video and the story here.

What happened?

I am finding it hard to believe that at this time ten years ago, I was planning a trip to South Beach to welcome in the year 2000, relieved and happy that I'd escaped being on call for any Y2K problems that might arise at work. And thinking about going platinum to welcome in the new millenium (I did).

I lived in San Francisco. It was a few short months before I bought my first home. The stock market was soaring. I was in love.

A year later I was single and still missing the man who'd also been my best friend.

And a year after that America was still recovering from the collective shock of 9/11. I was looking for a new home in Portland, feeling fortunate in a bad economy to be relocated to Oregon when my company closed up shop in the Bay Area.

In these past ten years I've gone to Australia and Germany twice each, England several times, and visited The Netherlands, France, and Italy. After a ten year hiatus, I returned to Mexico for the first time in 2007 and have been back many times since then. I've had some amazing trips and unforgettable moments with friends. I've loved again. And I've lost two special family members.

After moving to Portland, I eventually returned to SF. And then moved on to Vegas. And now I'm back in Portland. I quit my job before being clear about what I was doing next, and I'm still figuring it all out as I go. The economy is bleak once again, and each downturn we've had this decade has increasingly revealed signs that America's economic problems are fundamental and not the result of a simple boom and bust cycle. We've grown used to things that are unsustainable; we've become blinded to what's real.

I find it hard to believe that the aughts are coming to an end, that 2010 is around the corner, that this is the 21st century. Like many I know, I find myself thinking: it wasn't supposed to be like this, right?

I'm still muddling through. For the most part, we all are. But the problems we're facing together grow bigger and bigger: an economy that depends on China loaning us money, a climate that is gradually shifting toward one less hospitable, a creaking infrastructure that becomes increasingly vulnerable to collapse, near gridlock in Washington. More people. Limited resources. Technological solutions that have unintended consequences.

Hope and promise still exist, but shams and illusions and stubborness are obstacles in an interconnected world that loom larger than they once did when communities--and nations--were more self-reliant. We're all in this together yet still looking out for #1.

These thoughts are not meant to be wholly pessimistic, but where we turn down a new path--and whether we can muster the will to do so--are answers that I don't have, answers that I'm not seeing anyone offer.

LAST NIGHT I watched Ben-Hur, and afterwards I went to the web to research a simple question: what is the meaning of Christ's crucifixion? In an era of Google and Wikipedia, I've grown used to finding a quick, unambiguous answer to most questions. Last night's query was not such a case. And that reminded me of my general belief about the Bible, the one that's reinforced every time I stay in a hotel and open a drawer to leaf through the copy left by the Gideons. How does John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

coexist with all of the apocalyptic fire and thunder of Revelation? How does a God who so loves the world destroy it?

My thought about the Bible is this: you can use it as a handy guide to pick and choose people to throw stones out. Or you can use it as a path to inquiry: what can I learn from these contradictions? How will I live my life? What kind of person will I be? It's an inquiry with no clear answers; with answers that mostly produce more questions. It's easier to throw stones or watch TV or vote "no." But too many stones and too much TV and too many "no's" give you a decade like the one we're now completing.

All of this was triggered by a couple of articles I've just read, one looking at President Obama's year of compromises and diminished goals (wasn't Reagan partially successful because he drew a hard line and then declared victory with whatever compromise resulted?), the other describing Tiger Woods' double-life as symbolic of so much of what's befallen us in these past ten years.

And before reading those articles I spent an evening having interesting conversations at a holiday party, mostly with people I didn't know that well. The contrast of the experience there and my thoughts at home about the wider world lead me to think that we humans are best in small groups. I haven't found a societal problem yet that hasn't been made worse by the sheer number of people on the planet.

Mash-up of the day

This mash-up of "Mad World" (from one of my favorite movies, Donnie Darko) and Domo-kun (the mascot of Japan's NHK network) is really well done. Apparently it's been around awhile and was just re-mastered. If you've seen the movie, it will make more sense. And if you've didn't understand the movie, watching it twice in a row will help a lot! The Philosophy of Time Travel is the key...

(Video link)

Healthcare reform updates

It looks like there are now sixty votes in the Senate for passing healthcare reform legislation as Senator Ben Nelson has agreed to a compromise on abortion funding:

Under Mr. Reid’s amendment, states would have the authority to bar coverage for abortions by new government-approved health insurance plans.

A section of the bill titled “state opt-out of abortion coverage” explains how this would work: “A state may elect to prohibit abortion coverage in qualified health plans offered through an exchange in such state if such state enacts a law to provide for such prohibition.”

Some health plans receiving federal subsidies could offer coverage for abortion, but they could not use federal money to pay for the procedure. They would have to use money taken from premiums paid by subscribers and would have to keep it separate from federal money.

The government would subsidize premiums for many low- and moderate-income people. Under Mr. Reid’s amendment, some health plans receiving federal subsidies could offer coverage for abortion, but they could not use federal money to pay for the procedure. They would have to use money taken from premiums paid by subscribers and would have to keep it separate from federal money. State insurance commissioners would police the “segregation of funds.”

There's still a long ways to go because House Democrats have to remain onboard since the Senate bill lacks features like a public option that House members voted for. (A comparison of the bills here.)

Jon Podesta from the Center for American Progress has posted his top ten reasons for supporting the Senate bill.

And I received this email from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today:

Dear Fellow Nevadan,

This morning I released the details of the final version of the health insurance reform bill. The bill will reduce the deficit by roughly $1.4 trillion over the next 20 years – more than twice the previous estimate – due to modifications we made over the past week. We strengthen patient protections, lowered consumer costs, improved our short-and long-term economic health and protected seniors by extending the solvency of Medicare by a decade and closing the “doughnut hole.”

Every day, nearly 200 people in Nevada lose their health insurance each day and too many file bankruptcy because of health care costs. Nevadans with health insurance will see their premiums decrease by up to $1,600 per year because of this bill. I am confident that this bill will be really good for Nevadans.

Every part of this long process – from passing two carefully crafted bills in committee, to merging them into one comprehensive bill, to reaching a final consensus – has been an enormous undertaking. From the very beginning, we knew the end result had to be a bill that saves lives, saves money and saves Medicare.

We knew that we had to stabilize insurance for everyone who has it and help secure it for millions who don’t. We had to lower the cost of staying healthy and reduce the national deficit. And we had to stop insurance companies from denying health care to the sick.

The bill we proposed a few weeks ago does every one of these things – and the revisions being read right now on the Senate floor are even stronger. The newest elements:

• Create new programs to further rein in health care costs;


• Give small businesses tax credits that will immediately go into effect


• Demand even greater accountability from insurance companies


• Create more choice and competition for consumers.

All of these things will help lower costs for Americans, and will finally level the playing field between American families and insurance companies.

Some on the left think this bill doesn’t go far enough, and that it should be stopped. While I, too, strongly prefer a public option, I also believe this bill, which will make millions of Americans’ lives better, is worth supporting.

Some on the right think this bill goes too far, and that it should be stopped. To them I say that the broken system cannot and will not continue. When President Obama signs this bill into law, we will officially end the era in which insurance companies win only when patients lose.

This bill is about improving patients’ health, protecting consumers’ rights, keeping insurance companies honest, strengthening our economy, and making the hard choices necessary to do what is right.

I hope that you will read this update and visit my website for more information.

HARRY REID
United States Senator for Nevada

(Video link)

Finally, Ezra Klein has several items on his blog today including a summary of some other changes in Reid's "manager's amendment" to the current Senate legislation and a summary of the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Al Franken, Joe Lieberman, and socks

Kudos to Senator Franken for holding Joe "Windbag" Lieberman to his allotted ten minutes. And I agree with Senator McCain: there's something bad happening in the Senate, but it's not Al's objection. It's overuse of the filibuster rule by the minority party.

(Video link)

And I hadn't planned to post this because I'm sooooo sick of The Windbag, but here is Move On's sock puppet video which gives some background on Lieberman's bad faith role in advancing healthcare reform.

(Video link)

I don't fault Move On for pushing for a better healthcare reform bill, but I am opposed to anyone who wants to kill the current bill if it can't be improved. So definitely contact Congress and the White House, but ask yourself if you really want to settle for nothing when there are millions who would benefit from what's currently on the table.

Obama in action

After making progress on a pact with Russia to reduce nuclear armaments by 25%, President Obama has nudged climate talks in Copenhagen a bit closer to a deal, albeit one that falls short of what's needed:

The deal came after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Chinese protocol officers noisily protested and Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret. The intrusion led to new talks that cemented key terms of the deal, American officials said.

This old house

I just drove by the house I owned here in Portland from 2004 to 2006. I had the whole place repainted, refinished the original oak floors, replaced every light fixture, had a new custom front door built, and remodeled the kitchen and both bathrooms. And don't even ask me about all the electrical and plumbing upgrades. I thought I was going to be there for a while, lol. The house was built in 1907, and I tried to remain true to its period character while making it very livable.

The house is now for sale. I felt gratified by the flyer:

Location, Condition, Perfection!

Pristine, perfectly remodeled 1907 home with gorgeous kitchen, living and dining rooms plus open bonus/office on main floor. Three bedrooms and bath up. Room to expand in basement. Flat, private back yard and deck. Walk to restaurants, coffee and groceries. This one is a gem!

Good to know I did something right (though maybe I shouldn't have moved!).

Reducing healthcare costs

Atul Gawande has a great article in the New Yorker about how the Senate healthcare reform bill would reduce healthcare costs. Unlike expanding coverage, there's no simple solution to the cost problem, so the legislation authorizes dozens of "experiments" to find what works, just as was done a century ago when food costs were high in America and half of people worked in the agricultural sector:

There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen. Problems of the second kind, by contrast, are never solved, exactly; they are managed. Reforming the agricultural system so that it serves the country’s needs has been a process, involving millions of farmers pursuing their individual interests. This could not happen by fiat. There was no one-time fix. The same goes for reforming the health-care system so that it serves the country’s needs. No nation has escaped the cost problem: the expenditure curves have outpaced inflation around the world. Nobody has found a master switch that you can flip to make the problem go away. If we want to start solving it, we first need to recognize that there is no technical solution.

Precious

I saw Precious tonight with Alejo. There were some amazing performances. And there were moments which were hard to watch. But they were hard because there are things in life that are difficult to witness.

I didn't really connect emotionally with Precious until about halfway through the movie, but in thinking about it afterwards, I realize that it was that she hadn't really expressed herself much up until that point. And there's part of the problem with empathizing with others: often we need to see who they are before we can reach out. Some people are so downtrodden that they've lost the will to open up; unfortunately, then they're even more easily ignored.

I was reminded of how I felt when I read "Still Separate, Still Unequal" in Harper's Magazine a few years ago. The article explored the issue of increasing segregation at many of our schools. My post on it here.

At the end of the movie Precious is walking down a crowded city sidewalk with her children, and I thought about how quickly and automatically I make judgments about people. And even though I've had this revelation before, I need to keep bringing myself to be present to it: you just never know what people have gone through to arrive at where they are today.

It's easy to presume to know. It's easy to give up. It's hard to remain open and to keep going.

Nate Silver's two cents on healthcare reform (and my nickel)

Nate Silver has some great posts on healthcare reform and the current brouhau over the demise of the public option. I agree with him on one major point: the public option isn't real reform. It's a Band-Aid on our existing, screwed up system. It doesn't address the underlying issues that are broken in the current system: namely that the incentives for healthcare providers are wrong. The system rewards more tests and procedures as opposed to better outcomes. The public option simply gives people an alternate way to buy into the same system. It's not a bad idea. It just doesn't get to the root of the problem.

And nothing that's being debated right now gets to the root of the problem. As far as I'm concerned, if real reform is unobtainable right now (and I believe it is), then we'll have to take what we can get. The legislation now being considered would benefit me personally. And as I've told a number of gay friends this year who've been dismayed by the lack of progress made on LGBT issues: I'm a gay man, and I didn't vote for Obama because I thought he was going to make life better for me as a gay man. But I did hope that he'd do something about healthcare, and where I am in my life right now, that'd make a lot more of a difference for me.

So speaking unapologetically from the perspective of what works for me--and for a whole lot of other people: expanding access to the current broken healthcare system and preventing insurance companies from denying coverage in a bunch of ways that have been the norm up to now is a win. It's not a win where you go to the locker room and whoop it up about kicking some ass. It's a win where you go home thinking you were damned lucky to have pulled that one off.

Killing the bill because it's not perfect isn't a victory. It's a loss. A big one.

Here are links to some of Nate's recent posts: the elevator pitch, 20 questions for those who'd oppose the bill, and why progressives are nuts to oppose the Senate bill.

Will the insanity never end?

A new start-up is working on a service that would send tweet-like "blips" out every time you use your credit card, complete with details about what you purchased.

UPDATE: I just sent a note to friends about the idiocy of this and realized I might use it if I also got blips when friends' credit cards were DECLINED. ;-)

Memo to Congressional liberals

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: HOUSE AND SENATE LIBERALS

RE: PASSING HEALTHCARE REFORM LEGISLATION

I'm one of millions of Americans who would benefit from more affordable access to healthcare. I'm also one of those people with "pre-existing conditions" who'd like the freedom to move between states (and insurers) without the fear of not being able to obtain coverage.

If healthcare reform legislation passes and becomes law but lacks a public option or an expansion of Medicare, I'll be grateful to those who voted for it and blame Joe Lieberman and the Republican Party for its flaws.

If no legislation passes, on the other hand, I'll blame YOU.

If you think killing the current bill and starting over is going to produce a better result this year or next, I respectfully submit that I think you're nuts.

It's not every day your ex runs through the Castro...

In a red Speedo. In December. So I gotta post this one. ;-)

(Video link)

Merry Christmas, James! xoxo

Good news for a lot of men I know

Coffee and beer may help prevent aggressive prostate cancer.

Did Thomas Friedman skip his Wheaties?

Or maybe I did. In any case, his column today made no sense to me.

In short, he wrote that the U.S. economy is currently facing both the Great Recession (not much credit available) and the Great Inflection (new technologies which spur innovation). And if only there was more money available, businesses could take more advantage of the new technologies to create new jobs.

But he uses this example:

“Five years ago,” said [Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq] Kathwari, “it would take about 20 hours of labor time to make a high-quality custom sofa. Now, due to our investments in technology and a smaller work force that is more highly skilled, the labor time to make this sofa is about three hours.”

Given that, it's not obvious at all that these new technologies are actually supporting job growth. Maybe it was simply a bad example... but when you only get one Sunday column, you'd think that you'd think it through a little better!

Poem for the day

I saw this over at The Daily Dish. It worked on me. Here it is:

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job's done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

by Seamus Heaney

Song of the day

Bob Seger's 1980 classic, "Against the Wind." I've loved this one for a long time... but probably not until the late 80s. In junior high and high school, I wasn't too sure about the people who liked Bob Seger...

And yes, I was crazy.

(Video link)

"Remasterized," love it. ;-)

Song for the day

"Save the Country" from Laura Nyro's 1969 album, New York Tendaberry. Now, to have seen her performing live, that would have been something... the first track on the album, "You Don't Love Me When I Cry," stops me every time I hear it.

(Video link)

The Daily Dish on Obama's Peace Prize speech

Andrew Sullivan has a great post on Obama's speech which includes these quotes from Obama:

I think God put us here with the intention that we break a sweat trying to be a little better than we were yesterday.

and Reinhold Niebuhr:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; there we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; there we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint.

Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

On peace... and war

I just watched President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. He spans the arc from "the world as it is," where war is sometimes necessary, to what nations and individuals can do to build a peace where people are not free solely of violence but also of want, a world where their fundamental rights are respected. Like a sermon, it was sobering, but it left me present to a simple but hardly easy conviction: a hope, perhaps even a belief, that things can get better.

The speech expresses Obama's foreign policy instincts which many are calling "realistic idealism." You can watch it here and read it here.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

(Video link)

Duh

Yesterday I asked rhetorically how long it would be before a gay man or lesbian would lead a country, and my buddy Bette correctly pointed out that it would be -9 months. In other words, February of this year:

As of February 1 of this year: Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, openly lesbian prime minister of Iceland.

Also noteworthy, Germany's new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is openly gay. He is head of Germany's Free Democratic Party, which has a libertarian platform.
:-)

Bravo, Bette. :-) More on the Sigurðardóttir story here.

They should give awards for this

Last night I had a dream that someone stole my phone, PDA (I know, I still have one that's not also a phone!), and wallet from my backpack when I was at school. The first thing I thought of when I woke up was the scene in The Goodbye Girl when Marsha Mason's character has her purse snatched, drops her groceries, and kneels on the ground in tears to pick up a box of spaghetti that's scattered across the street.

That image made a strong impression on me as a child when I saw the movie at the theater with my parents. I felt it at the time, and my remembering it upon waking today after my dream suggests that that moment was the first time I connected with someone else's feeling of violation and loss after being robbed.

Every year they hand out the Oscars for the previous year's movies. How cool would it be if they also gave out awards for the movies from thirty years ago? Certain movies have an affect on people that isn't immediately obvious. And there are movies that would never win "best" in any category considered by the Academy but, in the end, have more of an impact on the culture than anyone might have anticipated.

There are also movies that simply contain an indelible image that forever symbolizes a feeling for a person. 1977 was an amazing year in film: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Smokey and the Bandit, Annie Hall, Saturday Night Fever, The Goodbye Girl... (not to mention my own guilty pleasures like The Kentucky Fried Movie and Fun with Dick and Jane). Star Wars would seem like a shoo-in for my personal favorite. And it probably is. But I'd have to say that that scene with Marsha Mason picking up the spaghetti is probably the one that touched my soul most deeply, and someone should get a statuette for that.

Quote for the day

From John Keynes:

A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way with his fellows, so that no-one can really blame him.

Thirty-two years later

Thirty-two years after Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in California, John Perez has been selected by California Democrats to be the next state Assembly speaker. He'll be the first gay man to hold that position.

Term limits now allow a politician only three two year terms in the Assembly, so being speaker isn't what it used to be. Willie Brown, who held that position for 15 years, was a powerful man indeed.

Any bets on how long it will be before a gay man or lesbian is elected to lead a country?

(By the way, if you've never heard of Georgina Beyer's story, it's worth checking out.)

Ezra Klein on the utter insanity of...

On the one hand, saying Americans should be able to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, but on the other, being 100% opposed to creating a Canadian-like system in the U.S. so that we wouldn't have to get them from up north.

In other words, why some folks (uh... that would be Republican folks) in Washington think it's okay for Canadians to negotiate cheaper drug prices but not for Americans to do so. Sigh. Read on.

Ezra had a couple of other good posts on healthcare reform today here and here.

Wonders never cease

Turns out that the government isn't going to lose too much money on all that money it lent out over the past year:

The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42 billion of the $370 billion it has lent to ailing companies since the financial crisis began last year, with the portion lent to banks actually showing a slight profit, according to a new Treasury report.

Get that: the Feds are actually making money on the billions that were loaned to banks.

And despite the common perception (it's certainly been mine) that the Obama administration has continued to funnel money to the financial industry, it turns out that the vast majority of dollars were loaned during the last months of the Bush presidency. Since Obama's inauguration, the government has only lent a mere $7 billion from the TARP program... hundreds of billions of what was authorized was never touched.

Talk about a nice fat line of credit... let's take a trip. ;-)

How Obama reached his decision on Afghanistan

The New York Times has a long but interesting chronicle of the decision-making path President Obama took on the way to sending a big infusion of troops to Afghanistan. Good reading for a Sunday afternoon.

Road / runway / river

I wish I had a camera with me that was capable of capturing the blue atmosphere overlaying this view from the PDX airport.

Good ol' PDX

I just arrived at the Portland airport where a man is playing a grand piano in the open area just past the security checkpoint. It feels uniquely Portland... and it's a nice welcome home.

Up in the Air

I really want to see Jason Reitman's new movie with George Clooney, Up in the Air. Reitman was on Fresh Air yesterday, listen here.

A shopping center for another era

Dubai is struggling. Las Vegas and upscale retailers aren't as recession-proof as once thought. No doubt things will get better over time, but I suspect the luxury boom of the last decade is past its peak. There will always be rich people, but the strategy of selling high-end goods to the masses went too far.

With that said, the ritzy Crystals shopping center at City Center in Vegas opens today. Good luck.

Thomas Friedman's foreign policy

Thomas Friedman has a great column that describes his common sense foreign policy beliefs, all of which argue against Obama's surge in Afghanistan.

My sense is that all of the people I hear speaking in opposition to Obama's plans are making a good case for their point of view, but they're arguing the wrong case. I don't believe sending more troops to Afghanistan is about Afghanistan. It's about Pakistan. But since the President is constrained in what he can say about Pakistan (because what we're doing there upsets Pakistanis on the street, and the Pakistani military is worried about what we might do), we have this whole discussion about the merits of "nation-building" and whatnot in Afghanistan. (Again, I recommend listening to Ted Koppel's "Talk of the Nation" interview regarding this topic.)

I guess this is one good reason that the framers put the executive rather than the legislative branch in charge of foreign policy...

Why I could never be a U.S. senator

No, it's not because of the '90s.

It's because I don't think I have enough patience to put up with the kind of games that Ezra Klein describes in this post about Republican senators holding up progress on debating healthcare reform.

One more try in Afghanistan

I find myself deeply conflicted about the war in Afghanistan and Obama's plans for ending it with a better outcome than simply bringing the troops home today. Underneath all of the talk about Afghanistan, my sense is that we're staying there mainly in order to maintain pressure on the forces that would de-stabilize Pakistan. And that is, after all, the only real danger (and even then, certainly not an "existential" one): the possibility of terrorists getting there hands on one or more of Pakistan's nukes.

We can't stay there indefinitely... we can no longer afford such an expedition. Perhaps the best we can do is stay for now, double down, and re-assess in a year and a half.

Andrew Sullivan wrote a thoughtful post on the President's strategy, which ultimately can be summed up as "one more try."