JustOneMinute

Traditional Happy New Year Open Thread

Have a great evening!  Drink responsibly, drive responsibly, but don't do both.  Hmm...

Good Luck To Rush Limbaugh

Rush embarks on a deep undercover penetration of Ground Zero of the Birther theory.  I hope he is otherwise fine.

And a Happy New Year to all.  I am driving off into the Noreaster, so I may be incommunicado for a while.

Looking For A Picture On A Blank Screen

Maureen Dowd is waiting for Obama to show signs of a pulse but, per Shelby Steele, she is missing the point of His Obamacy.  Over to Ms. Dowd:

Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs. But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned.

On Tuesday, Obama stepped up to the microphone to admit what Janet Napolitano (who learned nothing from an earlier Janet named Reno) had first tried to deny: that there had been “a systemic failure” and a “catastrophic breach of security.”

But in a mystifying moment that was not technically or emotionally reassuring, there was no live video and it looked as though the Obama operation was flying by the seat of its pants.

Given that every utterance of the president is usually televised, it was a throwback to radio days — just at the moment we sought reassurance that our security has finally caught up to “Total Recall.”

Looking to Obama for leadership is like looking in the mirror, which in Ms. Dowd's case may not be such a great idea.  Over to Mr. Steele:

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency.

...

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.

The nature of this emptiness becomes clear in the contrast between him and Ronald Reagan. Reagan reached the White House through a great deal of what is called "individuating"—that is he took principled positions throughout his long career that jeopardized his popularity, and in so doing he came to know who he was as a man and what he truly believed.

He became Ronald Reagan through dissent, not conformity. And when he was finally elected president, it was because America at last wanted the vision that he had evolved over a lifetime of challenging conventional wisdom. By the time Reagan became president, he had fought his way to a remarkable certainty about who he was, what he believed, and where he wanted to lead the nation.

Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the presidency could not have been more different. There seems to have been very little individuation, no real argument with conventional wisdom, and no willingness to jeopardize popularity for principle. To the contrary, he has come forward in American politics by emptying himself of strong convictions, by rejecting principled stands as "ideological," and by promising to deliver us from the "tired" culture-war debates of the past. He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus implying that being nothing is better than being something. He tries to make a politics out of emptiness itself.

But then Mr. Obama always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and yes, Tiger Woods have all been superb bargainers, eliciting almost reverential support among whites for all that they were not—not angry or militant, not political, not using their moral authority as blacks to exact a wage from white guilt.

Mr. Steele offered a similar argument back in March of 2008 and used Obama's own words against him:

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Reaching back three years to December 2006 we can find even more on Obama as a self-described "blank screen":

Obama is humble in all the right places. Before a thousand swooning fans in New Hampshire, he says, Evita-like: "This isn't about me. This is about you." One gets the impression from his public appearances and book, "The Audacity of Hope," that he doesn't even get a haircut without first consulting his wife.

What Obama really thinks should be done about health care and the terrorist threat remain secrets that his book does not unlock. His two years in the Senate certainly haven't revealed any bold policy ideas.

This leave-them-guessing strategy slips out in the book's prologue. "I serve as a blank screen," Obama writes, "on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." He notifies readers that "my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete." It takes some doing for a politician to write a 364-page book, his second volume, and skate past all controversy.

In Mr. Steele's telling the whole "No Drama Obama" routine was born of necessity.

If You Build It They Will Come - For Treatment

David Leonhardt of the Times discusses overinvestment in health care.

Tyler Cowen sketched out some doable heath reforms in mid-November but let's reprise them.

Obama For President!

A mere eleven months after taking office Obama promises to bring hope and change to the national security apparatus:

HONOLULU — President Obama was told Tuesday about more missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a flight to the United States, leading the president to declare that there had been a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security apparatus.
...

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Mr. Obama said.

He said he had ordered government agencies to give him a preliminary report on Thursday about what happened and added that he would “insist on accountability at every level,” although he did not elaborate.

...

The president’s withering assessment of the government’s performance could reshape the intensifying political debate over the thwarted terrorist attack. Instead of defending the system, Mr. Obama sided with critics who complained that it did not work and positioned himself as a reformer who will fix it.

Obama didn't actually blame Bush.  But he wanted to!

We've achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorist attacks.  But it's becoming clear that the system that has been in place for years now is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and the knowledge we have.

It's "becoming clear" that we have a problem with the system that has "been in place for years"?  No kidding.  And what bright light thought that the system was finished, rather than an evolving work in progress?

Grrr.  Well, rather than beat our collective heads against the wall, let's acknowledge the obvious - we have a President who is much more interested in reforming America than he is in protecting it.  So let's work with that!  Since Obama only wants to focus on health care reform, here is my suggestion for enhancing the health of all Americans - let's have a government plan to prevent airplanes from getting blown up over our cities.  Maybe we could call it the "public safety" option.  Just a thought.

PILING ON: Cheney goes animal on Obama, but the point I would hammer is made by Peter King:

Rep. Peter King of New York, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Intelligence committee, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show: “I think that the administration has made a mistake by treating this terrorist as a common criminal, by putting him into the criminal-justice system. I wish they had put him into a military tribunal so we could get as much intelligence and information out of him as we could.”

I understand that President Obama and Attorney General Holder need to boost their self-esteem by imagining that they have bravely ended the Bush era abuses and regained the respect of the world but honestly - are we really letting this Nigerian terrorist lawyer up and refuse to chat with our intel services? 

Right, then, here is my second suggestion for health care reform - help prevent Americans from getting blown up by allowing our military and intelligence services to question enemy non-combatants without awarding them the legal protections available to American citizens.  These terrorists are arguably not even entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, but whatever - send this guy to Gitmo II and let the military interrogators talk to him in compliance with the Army Field Manual.  Or, go Cheney on him.  But not interrogating him at all until his lawyer cuts a deal is daft.

Maybe the House can amend the Senate health care bill to incorporate these ideas.

Sissies And Men At Yale

A bit of F. Scott Fitzgerald proved too much for Yale, which has banned a Harvard-bashing t-shirt created for The Game:

The [Freshman Class Council] has decided to change the design of its shirts after the original design, which was submitted by students and voted on by the freshman class, sparked outcry from members within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. …

The original design, which won out over five other entries, displayed an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote in the front — “I think of all Harvard men as sissies” — in bold white letters. The back of the long-sleeved, navy blue T-shirt said “WE AGREE” in capital letters, with “The Game 2009” scrawled in script underneath it.

If they are interested in reaching back to the classics, I wonder if the Harvards would be able to get away with a t-shirt reading "I Know You Are But What Am I?"

The Groupthink Inside Your Head

Glenn linked to this Wired article about how the brain minimizes cognitive dissonance by ignoring information that clashes with our preconceptions and passed along a reader comment that it explained ClimateGate.  Indeed.  It also explains the missing WMD in Iraq, the Dems undying belief in the efficacy of the minimum wage, why HuffPo readers tilt left (and JOM readers tilt right), and why Met fans will take hope from the Jason Bay signing.  In a nutshell, people (including scientists) want affirmation, not information.  Neuroscience is discovering how the brain is hard-wired to provide it.

For more on neuroscience, and for assistance in finding your inner David Brooks, check out this interview at The Browser with Brooksie his bad self:

So in your efforts to answer the question Heckman poses (about human capital and income inequality), you ended up reading books about neuroscience proper?

Right. And I started with the easy ones. One very accessible one, but by a guy who is very serious, is a book called The Happiness Hypothesis. It’s by Jonathan Haidt, who is a psychologist at the University of Virginia.

People seem to absolutely rave about this book. One online reviewer says: “This is my all-time favourite book. It contains the most practical advice for daily living I have ever seen.” And a lot of them seem to be like that: “The most entertaining, interesting, educational book I have ever read,” etc. etc. So what does it reveal about the working of our minds?

Haidt uses the metaphor of a boy and an elephant. He says our minds are structured like a boy riding an elephant, and the boy is the conscious reasoning part, the cortex-based brain. And it can see very far, and make certain steering decisions. But most of the work is done by the elephant, which is the unconscious part of the brain. His work is to try to explain what the elephant is doing.

Great metaphor except that the boy is well aware that his control is less than total and that he has to work within the context of the elephant's training and disposition; I don't think every person has that same self-awareness.

Brooks promoted The Browser and Arts and Letters Daily in his recent column.

Not A Headline Obama Wants

From the WaPo:

Obama addresses airline security in low-key fashion

Nothing about the energy and commitment he showed hustling back from the beach to read his press release to the nation, without even enough time to tie his necktie?

If You've Lost Bob Herbert

Boring Bob Herbert attacks the Senate healthcare plan, explaining that medical inflation will turn the "Cadillac tax" on premium healthcare plans into the "Chevrolet tax" in just a few years.

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care.

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do.

...

The tax on health benefits is being sold to the public dishonestly as something that will affect only the rich, and it makes a mockery of President Obama’s repeated pledge that if you like the health coverage you have now, you can keep it.

Those who believe this is a good idea should at least have the courage to be straight about it with the American people.

"Be straight about it"?  I deplore the insinuation that gay people are disingenuous.  What sort of homophobic copy editors are working at the Times, anyway?

It Depends On The Meaning Of "Isolated"

President Obama is taking fire for this passage in his perfunctory address in which he described the UnderBomber as "isolated":

Finally, the American people should remain vigilant, but also be confident. Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans. This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

Here is Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media:

Nor did he address the issue that the administration carefully seems to want to avoid: that Abdulmutallab did not act alone, and is a part of a conspiracy involving al-Qaeda directed out of Yemen. ...

Yet later in his statement, President Obama, while pledging to “use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us,” continued to say that the quick action taken on the plane to disable the potentially dangerous bomb from detonating showed “that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.” (my emphasis)

This time we were lucky, and despite the bravery of the Dutch citizen who spontaneously and courageously rose to the occasion, his action showed nothing of the sort claimed by the President. Moreover, referring to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as only an “isolated extremist” reveals that even as all the facts are being disclosed and we have clarity that this was anything but the action of a man acting alone, the president persists in pretending otherwise.

And Jennifer Rubin of Commentary:

In his remarkably unenthusiastic and perfunctory appearance yesterday (couldn’t he at least have shaved or put on a tie?), Obama uttered this line: “This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.” Huh? Is he really an isolated extremist? (An extremist what, by the way? The word the president dares not speak except in praise: “Islamic.”) An avalanche of news reports suggests that the bomber has some connection to al-Qaeda.

...So why is the president spouting the “isolated extremist” line? Well, it fits nicely with the criminal-justice model upon which the president is fixated — lone suspect, read him his rights, try him in civilian court, etc. But does this line bear any resemblance to reality? Increasingly, Obama’s utterances seem divorced from facts readily available to the public. The public must be wondering what the president is talking about and why he keeps saying things that just aren’t so.

Hey, I am always up for an Obama-bashing, but I am going to defy neuroscience and take an alternative view - in other parts of his speech Obama makes it perfectly clear that the bomber was part of a larger group, so by "isolated" he was being quite literal, assuring us that a few energetic passengers can subdue one terrorist.

Let's roll the excerpts from the transcript:

A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.

"Accountable" probably was the result of some head-scratching amongst the writers.  If one of the plotters surrenders or is captured, he will probably get a full trial, full legal rights, and be politely questioned until his attorney asks his detainers to stop.  On the other hand, until he is in our custody we may just whack him with a Predator drone in the desert.  Just don't say "Dead or alive".

Third, I've directed my national security team to keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country. We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt, but those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will more -- do more than simply strengthen our defenses. We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland.

That suggests that the bomber had support.  However, in the next passage the bomber is strangely solitary:

This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

It's a bit of a puzzle.  I don't think the typical alert and courageous citizen is planning to fly to Afghanistan and attack Al Qaeda head on without enlisting first.  Then again, on aircraft or here in "the homeland" we are more likely to encounter terrorists is small groups where they might be described as "isolated" from their support network.

I'll agree that "isolated" was a poor word choice but Obama certainly communicated the notion that this bomber was part of a larger group.

AN ARMY OF SPECTATORS:  Obama needs to deliver his inspiring talk about an alert and courageous citizenry to Eugene Robinson, who offered this howler:

When Abdulmutallab allegedly set his lap on fire, there were no air marshals on board to handle the situation. I realize it is not possible to provide an armed federal escort for every flight. But whatever algorithm officials use to determine which flights get marshals evidently needs improvement.

I can picture the meeting now:

"Gee, our whiz-bang Terrorist Profiler Algorithm, which scrupulously avoids any ethnic or religious inputs, predicts that this next flight is likely to be chock-a-block with wanna-be bombers. Lesser minds would merely screen these terror candidates carefully and keep them off the plane but my genius plan is to put a guy with a gun on the plane.  Then, if passengers smell smoke and start scuffling with self-immolating passengers, a stranger can come running down the aisle from thirty rows forward, brandishing a weapon and exhorting everyone to remain calm.  That's the ticket!

Well, it might not result in utter disaster.  In my much simpler world I would exhort the airlines to revise the training of their flight crew - perhaps one or two of the crew could be specialists in "Coffee, tea, or a choke-hold and eye-gouge?".  This suggestion is no doubt fraught with political correctness issues - would the flight attendants union actually allow a burly chap with a black belt and a military background to be hired in preference to a slim woman with ten years seniority?  A toughie!

There may also a legal liability question.  An air marshal has legal authority to scuffle with passengers in the course of doing his job.  Perhaps flight crew members could be deputized, or given some sort of legal protection.  On the other hand, the flight crew subdues drunk and unruly passengers pretty routinely (presumably with legal authority to preserve good order and enforce safety rules), so perhaps the legal question is not in play.

As a practical matter, the flight crew is walking up and down the aisles interacting with the passengers throughout the flight.  They are much better positioned to observe and respond to suspicious behavior than an air marshal sitting up in business class .

The System Worked Except For The Parts That Didn't

Janet Napolitano admits that "worked" means "failed".  Among the behaviors redesignated as "non-successes":

The family of the suspect arrested in the Dec. 25 incident, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said on Monday that they had been trying to locate him for weeks, had sought help from Nigerian and American officials and would cooperate with an investigation. His father, a prominent Nigerian banker and former government official, phoned the American Embassy in Abuja in October with a warning that his son had developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen. But embassy officials did not revoke the young man’s visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010.

Instead, officials said on Sunday, they marked the file of the son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for a full investigation should he ever reapply for a visa. And when they passed the information on to Washington, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to 550,000 others with some alleged terrorist connections — but not to the no-fly list. That meant no flags were raised when he used cash to buy a ticket to the United States and boarded a plane, checking no bags.

Too bad the authorities weren't handed enough clues.  Now if only the Nutjob Bomber had posted something fishy about ObamaCare on Facebook...

When The Going Gets Tough...

I think the President is entitled to a vacation but his message management team shouldn't take one at the same time.

WHAT KIND OF PAPARAZZI ARE WE DEALING WITH?  What kind of a world are we living in that we are reduced to looking at thumbnail images that don't reveal the book the President is carrying?  Or the brand of bottled water?

Sunday Open Thread

Good morning!

Saturday Open Thread

Happy Boxing Day!

Here is the Times coverage of the Christmas greetings from Al Qaeda (or at least, a Qaeda wanna-be).

Season's Greetings

I hope you have a great holiday.

S-P-U-D, aka The "Hard Pivot"

Just like in the kids game "SPUD", Obama is running away from the health care bill.  Team Obama's plan is to move the daily health care Perils of Pauline coverage off the front page and get the boss visibly and vigorously working on something people care about.  Then if the bill collapses of its own weight, well, Obama was working on something important.

He'd Have Been Safer In Gitmo

I am scarcely a Bernie Madoff fan but 71 year olds have a hard time bouncing back from this kind of beating:

DURHAM, NC (WTVD) -- ABC11 Eyewitness News has learned that Bernie Madoff was treated for serious injuries consistent with an assault.

Sources told ABC11 the disgraced financier was treated at Duke hospital in Durham last Friday and discharged earlier this week.

He is serving a life sentence at the federal prison in Butner.

According to sources, he had facial fractures, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.

Prison officials won't confirm that. They say the 71-year-old is in the medical clinic at the prison in Butner.

Butner is a low and medium security complex described here as the "crown jewel" of the Federal prison system.

This would spark an international outcry if Madoff were a Gitmo detainee.

LATE UPDATE:  Now the report is that he fell out of bed.  Yeah, right - the bed he was sharing with Elin Nordegren, maybe.   Now Madoff is being treated for high blood pressure and dizziness.

Just to provide a glimpse of my convoluted paranoid mind - I imagine the parties (which include Madoff's attorney) would say this if it were true.  But I can also imagine they might say this if Madoff had been beaten and had agreed to help hush it up in exchange for a medically related discharge.

The Road To Gitmo

The invaluable and inexhaustible Ann Althouse tells us that President Obama "has never intended to close Guantanamo... He has only intended to appease the folks who wanted him to and to make it possible to claim that he really tried."  I disagree. 

I think Obama is in many ways a conventional liberal, which means he is all about intentions and process, rather than actual results (Just for example, raising the minimum wage is a very indirect way of helping the working poor, despite the stated intentions of the advocates of such a policy.)

So in ObamaWorld, having the intention to close Guantanamo was critical; expressing that intention was paramount; as to actually implementing it, well, c'mon, we will be judged by our intentions, right?

In ObamaWorld the thought is not father to the deed - the thought is the deed.  A stimulus bill that didn't stimulate, a health care reform that didn't reform , a surge that is a retreat in Afghanistan (or a retreat that is a surge) - hey, he meant well!  Give him a B+ for good intentions.

I don't think Obama was so cynical as to believe that Guantanamo would remain open despite his ineffectual efforts, so in that sense he intended to close it.  But mainly, Obama had (and has) every intention of staging an uplifting show titled "Closing Guantanamo".  I'll agree with Ann that whether Guantanamo actually was closed at the end of that show was not a priority.

Time will tell!  Maybe Obama, who has famously quit smoking, will finally have his last cigarette the day Gitmo is shuttered.

Don't Wait For The Movie

Iowahawk delivers "It's A Wonderful Bill".

Ideas Whose Time Have Not Yet Come

I have yet to read about a hired warrior fighting for charity, which means I have yet to see a headline profiling an Eelymosynary Mercenary.  But I can wait!

And while I wait, how about an open health care thread?  Megan McArdle is worried about the collapse of process; William Kristol thinks the process is sufficiently unpopular that the bill may yet collapse of its own absurdity.

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE:  OK, this startled me.  About half an hour after posting this I thought I would Google my new favorite phrase.  The only hits for "Eelymosynary Mercenary"?  Just One Minute and another site that picked up this post on their feed.

The Gitmo No-Go - Ongoing

It's the time of year to make New Year's resolutions we will later break.  Obama's notion of sending the Gitmo prisoners to Illinois hits a speed bump and now we are hearing about 2011:

WASHINGTON — Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.

As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.

While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.

But in interviews this week, officials estimated that it could take 8 to 10 months to install new fencing, towers, cameras and other security upgrades before any transfers take place. Such construction cannot begin until the federal government buys the prison from the State of Illinois.

The federal Bureau of Prisons does not have enough money to pay Illinois for the center, which would cost about $150 million. Several weeks ago, the White House approached the House Appropriations Committee and floated the idea of adding about $200 million for the project to the military spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year, according to administration and Congressional officials.

But Democratic leaders refused to include the politically charged measure in the legislation. When lawmakers approved the bill on Dec. 19, it contained no financing for Thomson.

The administration will probably not have another opportunity until Congress takes up a supplemental appropriations bill for the Afghanistan war. Lawmakers are not likely to finish that bill until late March or April.

Interesting - the Afghanistan supplemental will be a bit sticky for many Dems of the left.  Republicans aren't interested in de-funding troops in combat, but they don't like the Gitmo transfer to the States and they aren't virgins on faux-sacrificing the troops to score points.  Obama seems to have found a funding ploy that could annoy everyone.

On The Whole, They'd Rather Be In Philadelphia

Surprising:

New York Ranks Last in Happiness Rating

In this season given to tidings of comfort and joy, word has come that we New Yorkers are the sad sacks of the United States. This is something of a surprise. Sure, we complain a lot. Grumbling could qualify as the official state sport. But are we really the unhappiest of them all?

That is New York state, not just the greatest city in the world.  I think we are being dragged down by a bunch of Buffalo Bills fans.

Green On Green

California Senator Dianne Feinstein supports solar power; just not in the scenic desert where the sun is shining.  Actual legislation is not necessary - her threat to tie the proposed site up in regulatory knots has scotched some projects.

Sen. Feinstein has a not-crazy "a deal's a deal" explanation:

For Mrs. Feinstein, creation of the Mojave national monuments would make good on a promise by the government a decade ago to protect desert land donated by an environmental group that had acquired the property from the Catellus Development Corporation.

“The Catellus lands were purchased with nearly $45 million in private funds and $18 million in federal funds and donated to the federal government for the purpose of conservation, and that commitment must be upheld. Period,” Mrs. Feinstein said in a statement.

The federal government made a competing commitment in 2005, though, when President George W. Bush ordered that renewable energy production be accelerated on public lands, including the Catellus holdings. The Obama administration is trying to balance conservation demands with its goal of radically increasing solar and wind generation by identifying areas suitable for large-scale projects across the West.

The most absurd quote in the Times piece comes from the NIMBY champion, Robert Kennedy:

“This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm that invested in a solar developer called BrightSource Energy. In September, BrightSource canceled a large project in the monument area.

Maybe we could put a solar farm in Nantucket.

Go, Arnold!

The Other Arnold, The Economator Arnold Kling, gets a nice plug from David Brooks:

Over the past decades, many economists have sought to define the differences between the physical goods economy and the modern protocol economy. In 2000, Larry Summers, then the Treasury secretary, gave a speech called “The New Wealth of Nations,” laying out some principles. Leading work has been done by Douglass North of Washington University, Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern and Paul Romer of Stanford.

Their research is the subject of an important new book called “From Poverty to Prosperity,” by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz.

Kling and Schulz start off entertainingly by describing a food court. There are protocols everywhere, not only for how to make the food, but how to greet the customers, how to share common equipment like trays and tables, how to settle disputes between the stalls and enforce contracts with the management.

The success of an economy depends on its ability to invent and embrace new protocols. Kling and Schulz use North’s phrase “adaptive efficiency,” but they are really talking about how quickly a society can be infected by new ideas.

Brooks makes an assertion about the economics of promoting and protecting intellectual property that I bitterly dispute, with emphasis added:

For example, if you are making steel, it costs a medium amount to make your first piece of steel and then a significant amount for each additional piece. If, on the other hand, you are making a new drug, it costs an incredible amount to invent your first pill. But then it’s nearly free to copy it millions of times. You’re only going to invest the money to make that first pill if you can have a temporary monopoly to sell the copies. So a nation has to find a way to protect intellectual property while still encouraging the flow of ideas.

Ahhh!  Back in the day when my internet connection was working I would include some links, but - way back when, the British Navy was desperately interested in developing a method of accurately determining longitude (latitude, i.e. North/South, is pretty easy using the stars or the sun; the rotation of the earth makes East/West tricky).  The Royal Society spurred innovation by offering a prize for a workable technique, rather than providing patent or copyright protection and allowing the inventor a monopoly.

Even today examples of science competitions and prizes abound.  A similar model could be applied to drug development - the US could agree to pay some suitable amount (Half a billion?  Yikes!) for an Alzheimer's drug that met certain measures of efficacy.  Specifying performance is a lot trickier, but, as I belabored in this old post, we already employ a similar business model with the defense industry (and we know libs who hate Big Pharma love Big Defense!).

Anyway - I don't know what Kling said, but I am hoping Brooks over-simplified it [Apparently he did].

PILING ON:  TAP offers the same objection, with more links.  Hmm...

Out Of The Trenches

Neuroscience comes to pre-school:

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts.

In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed.

The teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science. In several cities, including Boston, Washington and Nashville, schools have been experimenting with new curriculums to improve math skills in preschoolers. In others, teachers have used techniques developed by brain scientists to help children overcome dyslexia.

And schools in about a dozen states have begun to use a program intended to accelerate the development of young students’ frontal lobes, improving self-control in class.

“Teaching is an ancient craft, and yet we really have had no idea how it affected the developing brain,” said Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at Harvard. “Well, that is beginning to change, and for the first time we are seeing the fields of brain science and education work together.”

I figured the article would be interesting in an "eat your broccoli" sort of way, but it was more like "eat your corn on the cob".

This Day We Fight!

A day may come when the courage of AllahPundit CK MacLeod fails, but it is not this day.  This day he fights!  As does the WSJ.

MORE:  And this day I read!  The Hot Air author was CK MacLeod.  Inshallah.

Blue On Blue, But Who?

Paul Krugman denounces the heartless, weaselly centrists who failed to rally behind this health care reform.  However, in a display of The Audacity Of Gutlessness, Krugman denies us any hot blue on blue action by failing to name names.  C'mon, even paranoids have real centrists!

Mickey puzzles this out a bit more.

I Believe It Is Sunday Morning In Our Time

Away we go.

I Believe It Is Health Reform In Our Time

Ben Nelson has Harry Reid going like sixty.  Captain Ed of Hot Air figures out Nelson's sale price, but does he compare it to Mary Landrieu's $300 million "Louisiana Purchase"?  Cmon!

I Believe It Is Carbon Emissions Control In Our Time

Obama manages to announce a climate deal at Copenhagen but the Times does not reward him with a sloppy kiss and a fawning headline.  The website has this:

Many Goals Remain Unmet in 5 Nations’ Climate Deal

The Saturday Dead Tree has more:

Nations Forge Pact On Climate; Goals Go Unmet
A "Breakthrough" Is Declared By Obama But Many Nations Remain Unhappy

Well, it beats "Copenhagen 2, Obama Nothing".

The follow-up action at the convention was inconclusive at best:

U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S.
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

COPENHAGEN — With the swift bang of a gavel on Saturday morning, a prolonged fight between nations small and large over an international pact to limit climate risks that was forged the night before by the United States and four partners came to a somewhat murky end.

The chair of the climate treaty talks declared that the parties would “take note” of the document, named the Copenhagen Accord, leaving open the question of whether this effort to curb greenhouse gases from the world’s major emitters would gain the full support of the 193 countries bound by the original, and largely failed, 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A recent Rasmussen poll showed that the US is about as skeptical about man-made global warming as they are about Obama's health care, so Obama is on the precipice of two pre-Christmas "successes".

PILING ON:  The WaPo reports on a Gallup poll showing broad opposition to paying down our "carbon debt" to the Third World:

Most, however, oppose a widely floated proposal in which the United States and other industrialized countries would contribute $10 billion a year to help developing countries pay for reducing the amount of greenhouse gases they release. Overall, 57 percent of those polled oppose this idea; 39 percent support it. Most Republicans (74 percent) and independents (58 percent) are against this proposal, while a small majority of Democrats (54 percent) are supportive.

Geez, what's with this "Show me the money" attitude?  Can't these other countries settle for bows and apologies?

TUVALU, WE HARDLY KNEW YE:  The closing day of the Copenhagen Debacle was hot, hot hot!  Godwin's law was invoked after a death camp comparison, a Venezuelan delegate put a McDonalds Ketchup pack to creative use, and the representative from Tuvalu denounced the accord:

Tuvalu's Ian Fry, whose country is one of the most at risk from global warming, said the agreement amounted to Biblical betrayal.

"It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future," he said to applause in the chamber which sat through the night.

"Our future is not for sale. I regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document."

OK, no peeking - Tuvalu is:

(a) an African island nation in the Indian ocean, near the Maldives;

(b) an independent South American island north of the Falklands;

(c) a picturesque South Pacific atoll near Fiji;

(d) an independent island that is geographically part of the Indonesian archipelago.

The correct answer is - Nobody cares!  But if you persist in wondering, it is a cluster of atolls in the South Pacific settled by Polynesians three thousand years ago, with a current population of about 11,000.  My goodness, I have been to high school football games with more people.  I have probably been in traffic jams with more people.  Due to its geography it is at extreme risk of becoming uninhabitable if oceans rise, so the world wonders - should we spend several hundred billion dollars a year so that this backwater can remain sparsely inhabited, or should we encourage them to, dare we say it, Move On?

There may be other reasons to think we ought to spend massive sums battling global warming (or not), but a cold cost/benefit analysis would point to "Toodle loo, Tuvalu".

DON'T CRY FOR ME, VENEZUELA: 

Much of the anger was directed towards Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the conference's chairman, who was accused of overseeing a stitch-up.

Venezuela's representative Claudia Salerno Caldera said that Rasmussen was "going to endorse this coup d'etat against the United Nations".

"Those of us who wish to speak have to make a point of order by cutting our hands and drawing blood," she added, before opening a red-stained palm.

Nice flair for the dramatic.  But until we get DNA results, I say "ketchup".

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Let it snow!

Two For The Inbox

These two posts from earlier in the week deserve more time than I can give them:

The TaxProf , launching with a Greg Mankiw column, took up the question of tax cuts versus spending as a means of stimulus.

And Ross Douthat , citing Tim Carney’s book, “Obamanomics", explained why corporations don't "lean right" unless that is where they keep their wallet.

I'm On The Precipice Of Defending Obama

Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media has some fun with Obama's declaration that we are "on the precipice" of achieving health care reform:

He probably meant “threshold.” But he said “precipice.” What’s a precipice? According to my dictionary, it’s “the brink of a dangerous situation.” And that’s certainly what we have here with the Democratic proposals to “reform” (what cards these chaps are!) health care.

Innocent mistake or Freudian slip — a verbal slip that “is indicative of an unconscious belief, thought, or emotion”? I incline to the latter.

Hmm.  When in doubt on a topic like this, I turn to my trusty arbiter of All Things Lib, namely the NY Times.  Here are the snippets of "on the precipice" kicked back by their self-search function over the last twelve months.  Some suggest danger, other glory:

While My Guitar Gently Beeps “We're on the precipice of a culture shift around how the mass market experiences music,” Alex Rigopulos told me recently. ... [Works for Obama]

Much to the dismay of their fellow Republicans, the two senators from Maine have put President Obama on the precipice of winning passage of ... [Works for Kimball]

New Endowment Chairman Sees Arts as Economic Engine “And frankly,” he added, “there are some institutions on the precipice that should go over it. We might be overbuilt in some cases.” ... [Works for Kimball]

Prosecutors Drop Criminal Inquiry of Gov. Richardson and Aides ... Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham is on the precipice of the greatest municipal bankruptcy in history. There are also questions of ... [Works for Kimball]

Bed, Bath and the Great Beyond ...that inspired his very low-budget movie “Paranormal Activity,” which totters this very moment on the precipice of pop-cult sensation. ... [Works for Obama]

...Broadcast programming isn't just on the precipice of becoming less culturally significant than it was 20 years ago; it has already gone over ... [Works for Kimball]

...dramatic scene play and salty dialogue in which powerful bankers and government regulators clash on the precipice of global depression. ... [Works for Kimball}

...On the precipice of what could be a momentous season, Coach Urban Meyer succinctly described the feeling in the Gator football offices. ... [Works for Obama]

June 25: Updates on Iran's Disputed Election - The Lede Blog ... The Iranians right now are on the precipice of something great. We in America had to fight for our freedom in a similar way - rise up ... [Works for Obama]

For folks scoring at home, in this bastion of conventional liberal thought and usage the use of "on the precipice" ran 5-4 in favor of Kimball's "brink of doom" interpretation, but Obama's usage is common enough to deserve a pass.  Where is William Safire for a ruling, darn it? 

Let me try to channel him... my Inner Safire is bemoaning the cheapening of a once-portentous phrase into a mere substitute for "on the verge".  Well, unless we can find Shakespeare or Milton using the two interchangeably.

Health Bill - Brooks Nay, Krugman Yea.

In a column titled "The Hardest Call", David Brooks shares his angst before hopping off the Obama Express Distress:

The first reason to oppose this bill is that it does not fundamentally reform health care. The current system is rotten to the bone with opaque pricing and insane incentives. Consumers are insulated from the costs of their decisions and providers are punished for efficiency. Burkean gradualism is fine if you’ve got a cold. But if you’ve got cancer, you want surgery, not nasal spray.

...if this passes, we will never get back to cost control. The basic political deal was, we get to have dessert (expanding coverage) but we have to eat our spinach (cost control), too. If we eat dessert now, we’ll never come back to the spinach.

So what’s my verdict? I have to confess, I flip-flop week to week and day to day. It’s a guess. Does this put us on a path toward the real reform, or does it head us down a valley in which real reform will be less likely?

If I were a senator forced to vote today, I’d vote no. If you pass a health care bill without systemic incentives reform, you set up a political vortex in which the few good parts of the bill will get stripped out and the expensive and wasteful parts will be entrenched.

Hmmph.  The basic political deal was that Dems would create a huge new middle class entitlement.  Over the next fifty years they would then troll for votes by "fighting" for the little guy while spending other people's money on his health care.  The long term impact on innovation and the quality of care would probably be disastrous, but the next election is less than a year away, so whee-hee!

Krugman supports the bill and explains the game, if you read between the lines:

But let’s all take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago. With all its flaws, the Senate health bill would be the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, greatly improving the lives of millions. Getting this bill would be much, much better than watching health care reform fail.

...Bear in mind also the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by. Thus Social Security originally had huge gaps in coverage — and a majority of African-Americans, in particular, fell through those gaps. But it was improved over time, and it’s now the bedrock of retirement stability for the vast majority of Americans.

Brooks at least offers a bit of liberal bait in explaining the importance of cost control:

The second reason to oppose this bill is that, according to the chief actuary for Medicare, it will cause national health care spending to increase faster. Health care spending is already zooming past 17 percent of G.D.P. to 22 percent and beyond. If these pressures mount even faster, health care will squeeze out everything else, especially on the state level. We’ll shovel more money into insurance companies and you can kiss goodbye programs like expanded preschool that would have a bigger social impact.

Well, yes - if we spend all our money on health care it will crowd out other possible uses for those resources.  Meanwhile, we have a nation where something like a third of adults are obese, and we can't figure out how to reduce health costs?  It's very expensive to take care of people who won't take care of themselves, even relying on other people's money.  (On that note, the Massachusetts Medicaid success in bringing down smoking from awful to merely preposterous levels is encouraging if verified.)

Maybe They Could Devote The Weekend To Global Warming Climate Change

William Kristol thinks the health care debate scheduled for this weekend should be called on account of snow:

There's a really big snowstorm coming to D.C.tonight. It would be unsafe to ask all the staffers and Hill employees who'd be needed at the Capitol if Congress stays open all hours this weekend, as Harry Reid intends, to drive to and from work--especially since many will have to do so at night, and they won't be well-rested. So from the point of view of public safety and personal well-being, Ben Nelson can do everyone a favor, announce today he won't vote for cloture, and let everyone stay home this weekend.

Furthermore, Harry Reid is maniacally insisting on a Christmas Eve vote on a bill whose final text no one has seen yet. So from a good government point of view, Nelson can say that he feels he has to be against cloture.

There is a clear need for "End the snow job" quips.

Let's go to the National Weather Service advisory:

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 6 AM
EST SUNDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A
WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT
TONIGHT TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN
EFFECT.

* PRECIP TYPE...SNOW.

* ACCUMULATIONS...HEAVY SNOW WITH ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES
THROUGH SUNSET SATURDAY. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE...
MAINLY IN OR NEAR SOUTHERN MARYLAND. ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS
EXPECTED SATURDAY NIGHT.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BEGIN LATE FRIDAY NIGHT AND WILL CONTINUE
THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING.

* TEMPERATURES...UPPER 20S TO LOWER 30S THROUGH THE EVENT IN THE
BALTIMORE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA...MID TO UPPER 20S ACROSS
WESTERN MARYLAND.

* WINDS...10 TO 20 MPH THROUGH THE EVENT...WITH GUSTS OF 25 TO
30 MPH SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.


PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW...
SLEET...AND ICE ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO
POSSIBLE. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

Most cities would consider that to be a lot of snow.

Talk Is Cheap, Abundant, And Fuels Global Conferences

Shut up, he explained - again.  Obama went to Copenhagen and told the world "the time for talk is over".  Maybe he was exhorting the delegates to get behind a second stimulus bill?  Maybe he was handed some old notes of his health care remarks.  or perhaps Obama thought he had touched down in the Middle East. 

Bold rhetoric from a guy who has done nothing but talk his entire life.  Whatever.  The Guardian hated the speech:

Barack Obama stepped into the chaotic final hours of the Copenhagen summit today saying he was convinced the world could act "boldly and decisively" on climate change.

But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse.

Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.

He offered no further commitments on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries beyond Hillary Clinton's announcement yesterday that America would support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

He did not even press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation, which environmental organisations have been urging for months.

The president's speech followed the publication of draft text, obtained by the Guardian this morning, that reveals the enormous progress needed from world leaders in the final hours of the Copenhagen climate change summit to achieve a strong deal. The draft says countries "ought" to limit global warming to 2C, but crucially does not bind them to do so. The text, drafted by a select group of 28 leaders – including UK prime minister, Gordon Brown – in the early hours of this morning, also proposes extending negotiations for another year until the next scheduled UN meeting on climate change in Mexico City in December 2010.

I Like The Doppelblogger's Metaphor Mangler

Doppelblogger Patrick Appel explains that Andrew Sullivan's unique voice is really a three way party line and puzzles us with this:

Almost all the posts I write are naked links or excerpts, which makes Andrew a weather-vane in the gale of the larger debate.

So Andrew is a weathervane pointing whichever way the wind is blowing?  Well, sure, he supported the war in Iraq when it was cool and opposed it when that was cool, but really - shouldn't he and his minions aspire to pointing boldly towards The Truth, regardless of the prevailing breezes?

The Ace has more.  And "Doppelblogger" is all Mickey (Scroll down).

AS IF WE NEEDED FURTHER CONVINCING:  In a follow-up Mr. Appel adds this:

I'm not nearly as talented a writer as Andrew is, a fact readers ceaseless remind me of whenever I guest-blog for the Dish.

All your adverbs are belong to me.

Afghanistan - Let's Round Out The Vietnam Analogy By Fomenting A Coup

The NY Times tells us that Peter Galbraith, until recently America's Number Two man in Afghanistan, tried to bring down the Karzai government after the fraudulent election.  The reporters barely seem able to keep straight faces in pretending to report on the cover-up distancing Vice President Biden and Envoy Richard Holbrooke from their guy Galbraith.  Fortunately, Ambassador Eikenberry does not appear not in this story:

U.N. Officials Say American Offered Plan to Replace Karzai
By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

As widespread fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election was becoming clear three months ago, the No. 2 United Nations official in the country, the American Peter W. Galbraith, proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to two senior United Nations officials.

Mr. Karzai, the officials said, became incensed when he learned of the plan and was told it had been put forth by Mr. Galbraith, who had been installed in his position with the strong backing of Richard C. Holbrooke, the top American envoy to Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke had himself clashed with the Afghan president over the election.

Mr. Galbraith abruptly left the country in early September and was fired weeks later. Mr. Galbraith has said that he believes that he was forced out because he was feuding with his boss, the Norwegian Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Kabul, over how to respond to what he termed wholesale fraud in the Afghan presidential election. He accused Mr. Eide of concealing the degree of fraud benefiting Mr. Karzai.

Holbrooke claims to have known nothing about this even though one of his aides was in some of the fateful meetings:

Mr. Holbrooke said he was unaware of the idea. “And it does not reflect in any way any idea that Secretary Clinton or anyone else in the State Department would have considered,” he said.

...Mr. Galbraith and a senior United Nations official said that a staff member from Mr. Holbrooke’s office was at some of the meetings where the idea was discussed. But Mr. Galbraith says that he does not recall any communication with Mr. Holbrooke on the subject.

And no one from Biden's office knew anything even though Biden and Galbraith went way back on Iraq, as the Times (mis)reported earlier, and alludes to in this story.

Galbraith's defense is that on the continuum of "Ask Karzai to step down; Pressure him to step down; Force him to step down" he was only suggesting that he be asked and the UN officials with whom he spoke misoverestimated his aggressiveness. 

In response to questions from The New York Times, Mr. Galbraith said that he never put forth any fully fledged proposal and said that he only considered an effort to persuade Mr. Karzai to leave so that an interim government, allowed under the Constitution, could be installed in case a runoff election did not occur until May 2010.

The UN official heard it differently:

Mr. Eide, who is set to leave his job as head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan by early next year, said Mr. Galbraith’s departure from Afghanistan in early September came immediately after he rejected what he described as Mr. Galbraith’s proposal to replace Mr. Karzai and install a more Western-friendly figure.

He said he told his deputy the plan was “unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction” but also civil insurrection. It was during this conversation, Mr. Eide said, that Mr. Galbraith proposed taking a leave to the United States, and Mr. Eide accepted.

Mr. Galbraith’s proposal would begin with “a secret mission to Washington,” Mr. Eide wrote last week in a letter responding to a critical public report of his work by the International Crisis Group, a research organization.

“He told me he would first meet with Vice President Biden,” Mr. Eide wrote. “If the vice president agreed with Galbraith’s proposal they would approach President Obama with the following plan: President Karzai should be forced to resign as president.” Then a new government would be installed led by a former finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, or a former interior minister, Ali A. Jalali, both favorites of American officials.

If Mr. Galbraith was so badly misunderstood by his own boss it surely calls into question his competence as a diplomat and negotiator.

Afghanistan - Let's Round Out The Vietnam Analogy By Fomenting A Coup

The NY Times tells us that Peter Galbraith, until recently America's Number Two man in Afghanistan, tried to bring down the Karzai government after the fraudulent election.  The reporters barely seem able to keep straight faces in pretending to report on the cover-up distancing Vice President Biden and Envoy Richard Holbrooke from their guy Galbraith.  Fortunately, Ambassador Eikenberry does not appear not in this story:

U.N. Officials Say American Offered Plan to Replace Karzai
By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

As widespread fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election was becoming clear three months ago, the No. 2 United Nations official in the country, the American Peter W. Galbraith, proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to two senior United Nations officials.

Mr. Karzai, the officials said, became incensed when he learned of the plan and was told it had been put forth by Mr. Galbraith, who had been installed in his position with the strong backing of Richard C. Holbrooke, the top American envoy to Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke had himself clashed with the Afghan president over the election.

Mr. Galbraith abruptly left the country in early September and was fired weeks later. Mr. Galbraith has said that he believes that he was forced out because he was feuding with his boss, the Norwegian Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Kabul, over how to respond to what he termed wholesale fraud in the Afghan presidential election. He accused Mr. Eide of concealing the degree of fraud benefiting Mr. Karzai.

Holbrooke claims to have known nothing about this even though one of his aides was in some of the fateful meetings:

Mr. Holbrooke said he was unaware of the idea. “And it does not reflect in any way any idea that Secretary Clinton or anyone else in the State Department would have considered,” he said.

...Mr. Galbraith and a senior United Nations official said that a staff member from Mr. Holbrooke’s office was at some of the meetings where the idea was discussed. But Mr. Galbraith says that he does not recall any communication with Mr. Holbrooke on the subject.

And no one from Biden's office knew anything even though Biden and Galbraith went way back on Iraq, as the Times (mis)reported earlier, and alludes to in this story.

Galbraith's defense is that on the continuum of "Ask Karzai to step down; Pressure him to step down; Force him to step down" he was only suggesting that he be asked and the UN officials with whom he spoke misoverestimated his aggressiveness. 

In response to questions from The New York Times, Mr. Galbraith said that he never put forth any fully fledged proposal and said that he only considered an effort to persuade Mr. Karzai to leave so that an interim government, allowed under the Constitution, could be installed in case a runoff election did not occur until May 2010.

The UN official heard it differently:

Mr. Eide, who is set to leave his job as head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan by early next year, said Mr. Galbraith’s departure from Afghanistan in early September came immediately after he rejected what he described as Mr. Galbraith’s proposal to replace Mr. Karzai and install a more Western-friendly figure.

He said he told his deputy the plan was “unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction” but also civil insurrection. It was during this conversation, Mr. Eide said, that Mr. Galbraith proposed taking a leave to the United States, and Mr. Eide accepted.

Mr. Galbraith’s proposal would begin with “a secret mission to Washington,” Mr. Eide wrote last week in a letter responding to a critical public report of his work by the International Crisis Group, a research organization.

“He told me he would first meet with Vice President Biden,” Mr. Eide wrote. “If the vice president agreed with Galbraith’s proposal they would approach President Obama with the following plan: President Karzai should be forced to resign as president.” Then a new government would be installed led by a former finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, or a former interior minister, Ali A. Jalali, both favorites of American officials.

If Mr. Galbraith was so badly misunderstood by his own boss it surely calls into question his competence as a diplomat and negotiator.

Who's The Man?

The AP votes Tiger Woods the On Top Athlete of the Decade.  Top vote-getters included Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer; of that threesome, I would say Tiger clearly had the greatest impact on his sport in terms of public attention.

Health Care By August Christmas Martin Luther King Day!

Cool, health care reform has a new deadline - Nancy Pelosi hopes Obama will have a bill by the State of the Union, but a Martin Luther King deadline is much more symbolically potent.

Even the State of the Union deadline has a major caveat:

In the case of health care reform, Pelosi credited House Democrats with having saved Obama’s initiative after the onslaught of attacks during the August recess. And if the Senate can complete its bill this month, she will work to try to send a House-Senate compromise to the White House before the State of the Union.

If the Senate can finish a bill this month?  Is that still realistic?  I say not.

Slow Train Coming, Or Waiting For Godot?

Tom Friedman exhorts the Muslim world to undertake a reformation, and we know that will light a fire under them.  I am intrigued by the historic parallel he offers:

Only Arabs and Muslims can fight the war of ideas within Islam. We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. We defeated those ideas and the individuals, leaders and institutions that propagated them, and we did it with such ferocity that five generations later some of their offspring still have not forgiven the North.

Islam needs the same civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims — “infidels,” who do not submit to Muslim authority — but to murder Muslims as well who will not accept the most rigid Muslim lifestyle and submit to rule by a Muslim caliphate.

My thought - the Civil War didn't simply start one day.  The tension between the slave and free states had been obvious for decades (and forced a punt at the Constitutional Convention.) 

So my question - does Mr. Friedman, or anyone else, see the early signs of an Islamic reformation?  Thomas Jefferson feared an eventual civil war at the time of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 - are there any comparable precursors to an Islamic reformation?

Crisis Du Jour

If you lack for crises about which to worry I have one word for you - menhaden.  The Times sounds the trumpet in a guest op-ed.

Change We Hope No One Believed In

Dana Milbank details Obama's flip-flop in drug reimportation.  Now, I happen to think that drug reimportation is a phony feel-good measure, but I did not get elected President while campaigning in favor of it.

Was It Over When The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?

Forget it - Michelle Bachman was rolling, with a Metaphor Mangler that would make a great Christmas gift for the blogger on your list.  More Code Red coverage here.

Fire It Up!

Harry Reid rallies the Senate.  Ooops, here we go.

Linking A Carbon Dioxide Tax To Temperatures - Clever, But...

John Tierney mentioned this yesterday and Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolutions went with it:

John Tierney relays today what seems like a very sensible idea from economist Ross McKitrick, tie a carbon tax to the temperature.  If the temperature rises the tax goes up, if the temperature does not rise (as McKitrick, a climate change skeptic thinks) the tax will stay at a low level.  Temperature of the troposphere would be measured by satellite at the equator and averaged over a period of time.  (More here and a more detailed version here).

In theory, both climate change proponents and skeptics ought to agree to this proposal, but I predict the proponents will object.

Hmm, by what theory should all "skeptics" agree to this?  Let's flash back to Tierney for more details:

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.

I think that "skeptics" can be subdivided into those who think warming isn't even happening, and those who believe warming may be happening (e.g., as we move out of the Little Ice Age) but doubt whether the human contribution to that warming is significant.

That second group of skeptics will have no interest in taxing humans in response to cyclical variations in sunspots, or whatever.

Last Call At Last Chance Saloon

Obama explains to worried Senators that the history of human achievement begins and ends with him:

In a provocative argument designed to rescue his foundering health care plan, President Barack Obama will warn Senate Democrats in a White House meeting Tuesday that this is the "last chance" to pass comprehensive reform.

Obama will contend that if it fails now, no other president will attempt it, aides said.

If not even His Awesomeness of the sub-50 approval rating can get this done, well, what hope have mere mortals?

Obama should have explained that if health care isn't passed soon it never will be, because the failure of the Copenhagen talks will result in human extinction within a decade.  That would make about as much sense.

I will guess that the ashes of this bill will provide fertilizer for a modest, sensible centrist bill, which will emerge in 2011 for Obama's re-election push.

Neuropsych On A Cell Phone

The human brain processes a lot less than we realize, and has pretty low awareness of its deficiencies.  This is an interesting story based on that, with significant implications:

What Clown on a Unicycle? Studying Cellphone Distraction

How much do you miss when you’re distracted by a cellphone conversation?

Researchers at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., decided to study whether talking on a cellphone was such a distraction that people wouldn’t notice obvious events happening in the world around them. They theorized that people engrossed in a phone call had “inattentional blindness,” meaning that they looked at their surroundings as they talked, but none of it registered.

A student volunteer pedaled a unicycle around a pedestrian square; researchers surveyed passers-by to see whether they noticed him:

Among pedestrians who were listening to music or walking alone, one in three mentioned that they had just seen a clown on a unicycle. Nearly 60 percent of people who were walking with a friend mentioned the clown. But among people who had been talking on the cellphone, only 8 percent spontaneously remembered the clown.

Then the researchers followed up with a second question: “Did you see the unicycling clown?” With prompting, 71 percent of the people walking with a friend remembered the clown. The numbers were also higher for people listening to music (61 percent) and those who were walking alone (51 percent).

But among those who had been talking on a cellphone, the ability to recall seeing the clown still was startlingly low. Only 25 percent of cellphone talkers remembered seeing a clown on a unicycle, according to the report in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

“It’s a huge dropoff of awareness of the environment around them,” Dr. Hyman said. “It shows that even during as simple a task as walking, performance drops off when talking on the cellphone. They’re slower, less aware of their surroundings and weaving around more. It shows how much worse it would be if they were driving a car, which is a more complex task to manage.”

I suppose I could dispute his conclusion about driving safety: walking in a familiar spot is a low risk/low attention activity; maybe the brain registers the clown, dismisses is as a threat, and moves on.  To conclude that the brain would behave similarly during a high-risk activity like driving may be a logical leap too far.

That said, I would expect that driving on a familiar road while chatting on the cell phone could be very dangerous.  Remember - if you don't see the clown show, you many become part of the clown show.

It Is Better To Look Good Than To Feel Good

Science confirms what might have seemed like common sense:

Study: Looking young may mean living longer

...Research published online Monday in the British medical journal BMJ suggests that people who look younger than their years also live longer.

In 2001, Danish researchers conducted physical and cognitive tests on more than 1,800 pairs of twins over aged 70, as well as taking photos of their faces. Three groups of people who didn't know the twins' real ages guessed how old they were. The researchers then tracked how long the twins survived over 7 years.

The experts found that people who looked younger than their actual age were far more likely to survive, even after they adjusted for other factors like gender and environment. The bigger the difference in perceived age within any twin pair, the more likely it was that the older-looking twin died first.

They also found a possible biological explanation: people who looked younger also tended to have longer telomeres, a key DNA component that is linked to aging. People with shorter telomeres are thought to age faster. In the Danish study, the more fresh-faced people had longer telomeres.

Wisdom of the ages.