JustOneMinute

Hillary Risking Life, Limb, Chelsea, And Sheryl Crow

More Hillarity - Ms. Clinton tells the world about her harrowing experiences as First Lady, but neither Dean Barnett nor the Captain are buying.

(Clinton argued) she risked her life on White House missions in the 1990s, including a hair-raising flight into Bosnia that ended in a "corkscrew" landing and a sprint off the tarmac to dodge snipers.

"I don't remember anyone offering me tea," she quipped. (Aaah, the gallows humor of the remarkably brave!)

The dictum around the Oval Office in the '90s, she added, was: "If a place was too dangerous, too poor or too small, send the first lady."

It turns out that Clinton wasn't quite flying solo into harm's way that day.

She was, in fact, leading a goodwill entourage that included baggy-pants funnyman Sinbad, singer Sheryl Crow and Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, then 15, according to an account of the March 1995 trip in her autobiography "Living History."

Dean asks the tough questions:

What does it say about Hillary that, by her own (admittedly fanciful) telling, she knowingly put her daughter in harm's way, taking a special Mom-and-daughter (and Sinbad) trip to a place that was “too dangerous?”

Captain Ed digs up some NY Times coverage that somehow overlooked the various dangers to which Ms. Clinton exposed herself and Chelsea.  To that let me add this Reuters account (found in a Free Republic post speculating about then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's possible assassination in April 1996) as well as some on-the-spot photos from a soldier who was there.

My guess - if Bill was willing to whack Ron Brown in Bosnia just a few weeks later, Hillary had to be feeling vulnerable; Chelsea and Sheryl Crow were there as protection.

Somewhat more seriously, there is this from Reuters:

Mrs. Clinton flew to Bosnia from Germany with the two entertainers on a huge C-17 Air Force cargo jet, becoming the first U.S. first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to visit an area of conflict independently of her commander-in-chief husband. Her visit was much more extensive than the one President Clinton made in January. Because of poor weather and security concerns he never got any further than 500 yards from the Tuzla airstrip.

So Bill Clinton flew in two months earlier and security was poor; Ms. Clinton may well have been briefed that this was a hazardous trip.  So why take Chelsea?  I am out of answers.

From the Times coverage it appears that her greatest threat was from disgruntled American soldiers.

MORE:  Sweetness and Light provides Hillary's account from her book, "Living Clown Show History".   

Also, the Times covered President Clinton's visit to Tuzla on Jan 14, 1996:

It took Mr. Clinton two tries today to make it into Tuzla, the headquarters of the American forces, who will eventually number 20,000 of the 60,000 NATO peacekeepers.

Early this morning, the C-17 military transport plane carrying Mr. Clinton, his aides and a bipartisan Congressional delegation was diverted because of fog to the next stop on his itinerary -- an American staging base in Taszar, Hungary. Despite this delay of several hours, the President's entourage was upbeat.

...

Mr. Clinton's trip was marked by heavy security. His precise itinerary was closely held, and Secret Service sharpshooters followed him in Tuzla, where he stayed inside the grounds of the airfield, seeing nothing of the war's effects on the town. A senior official in his entourage said the President's visit had "more logistical, security and weather variables" than he had ever encountered before.

Mr. Clinton took off from Tuzla about two and a half hours after his arrival as fog rolled in, advised by the Secret Service to leave before dark.

The Times also covered the situation as experienced by the troops:

Encircled By Peril, G.I.'s Stay Nonchalant

...To tell you the truth, I feel pretty safe right here," he said, his head poking from the turret of the Bradley fighting vehicle he commands. "As long as there is this much ammo all around me, I don't think they'd be dropping too many mortar rounds," he said, sounding certain that the Serbs would not risk destroying their ammunition to fire at the 22 American soldiers on this lookout point [which was south of Tuzla].

...

Capt. Hugo Jackson, the commander of Charlie Company, is waiting in quiet fury for the delivery of 400 rolls of concertina wire. Now, empty fence posts ring the camp, a breach in security he hopes the Serbs do not wish to take advantage of.

Near dusk on Thursday, a shot rang out from over a hill, and the soldiers fixing a generator looked up but did not duck: They assumed it was simply another shot fired in the air, as common here as men strolling the streets with loaded AK-47's.

"Don't worry, I caught it!" yelled Sgt. Robert Chandler, the First Sergeant.   

Sergeant Chandler, at 37 what the military calls an "old soldier," worries the men have adjusted perhaps too well, given the visible dangers all around. Many soldiers in this rural pocket of grazing sheep and crowing roosters, which was spared the ravages of war, find it difficult to imagine any threat to their lives.

"I'm trying to get them scareder," Sergeant Chandler said.

He succeeded with Hillary.
 

 

Happy New Year

Happy new year all.  Although gift suggestions are not exactly timely just, Guitar Hero II has been a big hit in our household recently - I get booed off the stage during my attempt at the "Free Bird" solo but I rock the house for Cheap Trick's "Surrender" and play some sweet guitar on "Message In A Bottle", so it's all good.  Keep it in mind if you are stuck for a hostess gift (or maybe not).

Anyway, let me eschew this advice and rock out the old with what looks like a Guitar Hero parody, but is not.

Beldar Is With Fred

The Beldar endorsement is in.  I completely agree with this:

Moreover, I'm not, and have never been, among those who thought that a Democratic win in 2008 is inevitable. To the contrary, notwithstanding Dubya's low polling numbers, I'm convinced that the GOP's chances are at least as good as his were in 2000 or 2004, and that every single one of the potential Democratic nominees is eminently beatable. Indeed, depending on intervening events, some of them may turn out to be beatable in a landslide; and I'm convinced that whether it's Hillary, Obama, or Edwards, the Dems are going to feel serious buyers' remorse on the day after their nominee is finally decided.

To which I will add - the Republicans could lose this in a landslide, too.

Where's The Lefty Traffic? (I Blame Dick Cheney)

Dick Cheney is as much to blame as General Petraeus for the baffling decline in lefty internet traffic noted at the DKos and flagged by Jim Gerhaghty, Mickey Kaus.and the InstaPundit.  No, seriously - my thought d'annee is that the Libby trial in February/March of 2007 created a disproportionate spike in lefty traffic, so that part of what looks like a decline is really a return to something like normalcy.  [I also blame the Sulzbergers in a LIGHTBULB below.]

Some background: a diarist at DKos noted that the traffic there peaked in August 2007 [five years of Kos traffic here].  I did a quick survey of lefty traffic at Atrios, Firedoglake [which came to fame on the Plame caper in 2005], MY DD, and Crooks and Liars; for comparison, I glanced at the traffic at righty sites Powerline, InstaPundit, and Michelle Malkin.  Obviously, specific sites may have gotten a boost from a redesign (IIRC, that would be Firedoglake and Ms. Malkin), but the general pattern is clear - the big lefty sites cited above peaked in April (Atrios, MY DD, C&L) or February (Firedoglake); the righty sites peaked in October (Instapundit, Ms. Malkin) or March (Powerline) but have been much less volatile.  This will be a great chart if it comes out properly, but what are the odds? [Here's how real men do it.  OK, or women, too.] [We aren't this good, but Cboldt is; that is his updated chart]:

Monthly Traffic in Millions

                    Peak        June      Dec
Atrios           Apr 3.5 MM    2.6 MM    2.2 MM
Firedoglake      Feb 2.9 MM    1.9 MM    1.9 MM
Crooks & Liars   Apr 6.2 MM    4.6 MM    4.0 MM
MY DD            Apr  .9 MM     .6 MM     .6 MM
   
Powerline        Mar 1.8 MM    1.6 MM    1.5 MM
InstaPundit      Oct 6.5 MM    5.5 MM    6.2 MM
Ms. Malkin       Oct 4.8 MM    3.6 MM    4.1 MM
   
JustOneMinute    Feb 600 K     150 K     110 K

As a bonus, here is a righty site closely associated with the Plame case which has now lapsed back into well-deserved obscurity:

JustOneMinute     Peak Feb 600 K; June 150 K; Dec 110 K

Now, no fair asking me what prompted the traffic surge on the right in October.  The Petraeus report was in September, so I welcome suggestions for the October surge, particularly of the head-slappingly obvious sort.

And lest we forget - Happy New Year's Eve.

LIGHTBULB!  The NY Times broke down the Times Select wall in September 2007 and surged as a result.  That had to re-direct more lefty traffic than right, yes?

MORE:  Kos has posted his monthly traffic over five years and here is one for the "Go Figure" file - he shows pretty much steady month by month growth to 2004.  However - the 2004 peak is October (OK, we'll guess run-up to the Nov election); the 2005 peak is also October (Run-up to the off-season election?  No way.); the 2006 peak is October, presumably due to the election; and the 2007 peak is also October.

Hmm - maybe it is not that October traffic is high in the off-years, it is that Thanksgiving and the year-end holidays depress November and December traffic.  That would explain the Oct 2007 peak for the righty sites as well.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

If I am still dark and all you are getting are these time-delayed open threads, that really calls into question whether my kid's new lap top has great wi-fi connectivity.

Extending The Tradition...

Still dark...

Hillary - Experience The Inexperience

Pat Healy of the Times (cross-posted at MSNBC?!?) ponders Hillary's "experience".

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

The Times Wastes Ink On Steroids

The Times delivers a laugher by professors of sociology and statistics on the impact of steroids in baseball:

More Juice, Less Punch

By JONATHAN R. COLE and STEPHEN M. STIGLER

Published: December 22, 2007

FOR those of us who love baseball, this has been a hard time. The Mitchell report named many players past and present it said used steroids and human growth hormone, and the news media had a field day focusing on the lying, the cheating and the betrayal of the game and its fans. Yet no one has asked a fundamental question: Do performance-enhancing drugs improve performance in professional baseball?

No one has asked whether steroids help baseball players?  My goodness we must all be stupid - back in 1976 people were asking whether the East German swimmers were stronger because of steroids; in 1988 people wondered whether Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson was faster because of steroids.  Yet in all the hoopla following the McGwire-Sosa home run duel in 1998 and the Bonds reprise a few years later, no one thought to ask the fundamental question of whether steroids might produce a faster, stronger, more productive baseball player?  Please.

But let me extend the list of Frequently Unasked Questions with this - do these cloistered professors have access to Google?  Unsurprisingly, the question of steroids and baseball productivity has been kicked around for years.  In fact, the Times editors provided a "No, steroids don't help" guest piece in 2004, forcefully rebutted by the Baseball Crank here.

Well.  Setting aside the improbable point that this is not terra nova, let's see what the authors have to say:

But in a complex team sport like baseball, do the drugs make a difference sufficient to be detected in the players’ performance records? An examination of the data on the players featured in the Mitchell report suggests that in most cases the drugs had either little or a negative effect.

Hmm - so players endured these health and professional risks to no benefit?  Sort of counter-intuitive, especially with the examples of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens looming over the debate.

For pitchers identified by the report, we looked at the annual earned run average for their major league careers. For hitters we examined batting averages, home runs and slugging percentages. We then compared each player’s yearly performance before and after he is accused of having started using performance-enhancing drugs. After excluding those with insufficient information for a comparison, we were left with 48 batters and 23 pitchers.

I am not a big baseball stats guy but I know enough to know that a pitchers ERA is not regarded as the state-of-the-art measure of his effectiveness.  As for hitters, what about On Base plus Slugging Percentage as the relevant measure?  What about home runs per at bat, rather than per season?

And what sort of age adjustments are we talking about here?  Was the sample of steroid users predominantly aging veterans trying to delay the inevitable decline of skills?  Did it include people (like Andy Pettite) who used steroids briefly for rehab purposes, not for the more commonly understood goal of performance enhancement?  Here we go:

For pitchers there was no net gain in performance and, indeed, some loss. Of the 23, seven showed improvement after they supposedly began taking drugs (lower E.R.A.’s), but 16 showed deterioration (higher E.R.A.’s). Over all, the E.R.A.’s rose by 0.5 earned runs per game. Roger Clemens is a case in point: a great pitcher before 1998, a great (if increasingly fragile) pitcher after he is supposed to have received treatment. But when we compared Clemens’s E.R.A. through 1997 with his E.R.A. from 1998 on, it was worse by 0.32 in the later period.

Wow - Clemens ERA was higher from age 35 on then when he was a youngster in the pre-steroids era, so steroids didn't help him.  Kidding?  How would they propose to evaluate an alternative hypothesis, to wit, that sans steroids Clemens might have been out of the league at age 38, instead of hanging on until he was 44?

Hitters didn’t fare much better. For the 48 batters we studied, the average change in home runs per year “before” and “after” was a decrease of 0.246. The average batting average decreased by 0.004. The average slugging percentage increased by 0.019 — only a marginal difference. So while some batters increased their totals, an equal number had falloffs. Most showed no consistent improvement, several showed variable performance and some may have extended the years they played at a high level, although that is a difficult question to answer.

Some players improved and some declined. But the pattern for the individuals’ averages was consistent, and the variability of players (with the exception of home run counts) was low. There is no example of a mediocre player breaking away from the middle of the pack and achieving stardom with the aid of drugs.

I will say this - the Mitchell report included a lot of unfamiliar names of wanna-bes and never-weres.  Defenders of Bonds and Clemens can point to that to argue that their guys were Hall of Famers who got a bit of a boost from steroids, not journeymen who became stars because of the juice (Don't ask about Canseco or the Giambi brothers...)

However - even if the statistics show that steroids don;t help everyone, so what?  Suppose I had a drug that, for utterly unfathomable reasons, cured the common cold instantly in 25% of the people

Happpy Birthday Vladimir

This catch of a TIME edit of the "complete" transcript of their Putin interview is hilarious - apparently Team TIME couldn't even figure out when their prospective Man of the Year was born. 

Romney And Martin Luther King

Occidental Values cuts through the fog created by Mitt Romney and emphasizes that George Romney had a long and distinguished record of supporting Martin Luther King and civil rights.

However, I can help with this:

...just using google I have found three books, here, here, and here that state that the two did march together (and that's not counting David Broder's book, written four decades ago which would be number four!)

Although he later notes the possibility that:

These historians and reporters were citing each other on a mistaken fact as to the July 23, 1963 march.

Two of the books in question cite a July 23, 1963 date; the third does not offer a date.  However, per this timeline or the NY Times archives, the Detroit march was on *June* 23, 1963.  I think we are looking at an echoed error.

Occidental Values emphasizes this, as will I:

[Romney] marched in solidarity with King in immediate response to Selma—the most defining Civil Rights episode of the era.

Here is the Times archive and blurb:

Romney Leads a Protest
March 10, 1965,
Wednesday Page 1, 297 words

Thousands of Negroes and whites demonstrated in major cities yesterday to show their sympathy with Negroes whose voter registration march in Selma, Ala., was broken up by the Alabama police Sunday.

Obviously, a march in solidarity with King won't satisfy the literalists who want a march physically with King.  But further muddying the waters - two witnesses recall something that couldn't have happened; this is from Mike Allen of The Politico:

Witnesses recall Romney-MLK march

Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.

With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

“They were hand in hand,” recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. “They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s.”

She remembered the late governor as “extremely handsome.”

Until this week, that was just a vivid memory for a sweet retiree who now lives in Pompano Beach, Fla.

...

Another witness, Ashby Richardson, 64, of Massachusetts gave the campaign a similar account.

“I’m just appalled that the news picks this stuff up and say it didn’t happen,” Richardson, now a data-collection consultant, said by phone. “The press is being disingenuous in terms of reporting what actually happened. I remember it vividly. I was only 15 or 20 feet from where both of them were.”

Puzzling.  Former Governor Swainson was at the Detroit rally as Romney's stand-in, so someone could remember Martin Luther King and "the governor" appearing together in Detroit and be roughly correct.  But Grosse Point?  Well, former Governor Williams appeared at a speech in Grosse Point with King in 1968.  But so far, no one has found the historical record that places Romney and King together at a march.

MORE:  Eric Kleefeld, writing at Talking Points Memo, leaves me at sea:

It's looking like Mitt Romney might have been judged too quickly on the Martin Luther King business. Two witnesses have now come forward to The Politico, insisting that they saw the late Gov. George Romney (R-MI) make a surprise appearance alongside King in 1963.

The campaign has also posted a collection of citations — including a contemporary account from the Detroit Free Press — attesting that it happened.

Huh?  First of all, that looks like the very same press release Jim Geraghty ran last Thursday.

And neither press release has a smoking gun press account putting Romney and King in a march; the relevant Detroit Free press cite seems to be this:

-    Detroit Free Press: "With Gov. Romney a surprise arrival and marching in the front row, more than 500 Negroes and whites staged a peaceful antidiscrimination parade up Grosse Pointe's Kercheval Avenue Saturday. ...

That is the surprise appearance in Grosse Pointe by Romney, but King was not there, nor does the Detroit Free Press clip say he was.

 

And Then Rush Went To A Commercial

Rush Limbaugh smacked Team Huckabee quite impressively but what caught me was that one of the commericals during that segment was for Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life"; that might have been jarring for fans of the Purpose Driven Candidate.

Business As Usual On The Border

The reliably thoughtful Andrew Sullivan delivers his perspective on the awful story of a Nordic would-be tourist:

A young, blonde Icelandic woman writes about her recent trip to America:

During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.

...Her treatment reads like a passage from Eastern European police states in the 1970s. Apparently, she had overstayed a visa in 1995 for three weeks. Leg chains? I guess we're lucky she wasn't hooded. This is Cheney's America, after all.

Matt Yglesias joins in:

What this woman describes is, clearly, well-beyond asking people to take off their shoes, but it's all on a continuum of panic and sheep-like submission to a culture of fear.

So, this incident from Cheney's America reads like an Eastern European country in the 70's?  Andrew has only scratched the tip of the iceberg:

Sharon McKnight, a U.S. citizen, was deported to Jamaica... after INS inspectors at the airport wrongly questioned the authenticity of her U.S. passport and dismissed as fake the birth certificate presented by her waiting relatives as proof of her birth on Long Island. Ms. McKnight, who is 35 years old but has the mental capacity of a young child, was held overnight, in shackles and handcuffs, at JFK International Airport, before being sent back to Kingston, Jamaica, where there was no one to meet her. During her time at the airport Ms. McKnight         was given nothing to eat and was not allowed to use the restroom,                 forcing her to soil herself.

...Liu Nianchun, a prominent Chinese democracy and labor rights activist who had been repeatedly tortured and arrested in China over a period of 17 years, was detained by

Ninety Percent Of Life In The Illinois Statehouse Is Just Showing Up

Obama votes "present" and the Times trembles.  What does it mean?  It means Hillary is on the attack.

The Clinton Donors

The NY Times partially cracks open the Clinton books:

Over the last decade, former President Bill Clinton has raised more than $500 million for his foundation, allowing him to build a glass-and-steel presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and burnish his image as an impresario of global philanthropy. The foundation has closely guarded the identities of its donors — including one who gave $31.3 million last year.

Now, the secrecy surrounding the William J. Clinton Foundation has become a campaign issue as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination with her husband as a prime source of strategy and star power. Some of her rivals argue that donors could use presidential foundations to circumvent campaign finance laws intended to limit political influence.

A reasonable concern; here is the Clinton reply:

Mr. Clinton himself echoed those concerns this fall when he pledged to make public future donors if Mrs. Clinton was elected president. While disclosure is not legally required, failure to do so, Mr. Clinton said, would raise “all these questions about whether people would try to win favor with her by giving money to me.”

Even so, past donors should remain private, he insisted, “unless there is some conflict of which I am aware, and there is not.”

This guy has a future in stand-up - he has personally assured himself that there are no conflicts that need to be reported, so the rest of us can relax?

As to the notion that we only need disclosure following the inauguration - imagine that Michelle Obama or Judith Nathan announced that she was setting up a foundation today to study poverty around the world and would welcome donations of cash (or flights on corporate jets) to aid her effort.  Would that bother anyone?

There are people currently buying tremendous access and maintaining a pleasant lifestyle for the prospective First Hubby.  Disclosure, please.

The Captain looks through what the Times came up with.

If I Called Myself An Investigative Reporter...

The normally canny Greg Sargent of TPMuckraker goes into the tank for Paul Krugman:

Krugman Dogged By Rumor That His Son Works For Hillary

December 19, 2007 --  5:40 PM EST //  //

Regular readers of this site will recognize that this headline is a tongue-in-cheek one, I hope. But as it happens, Krugman is being dogged by such a rumor, though it happens to be false.

Apparently this is a play on the WaPo coverage of Barack Hussein Il Jong Obama's madrassa upbringing and no, I didn't get it either.  But let's press on:

Several readers have now floated the rumor about his son and Hillary in the comments section to the post, suggesting that this is the real reason why Krugman is criticizing Obama. This explanation has also popped up elsewhere of late.

I haven't been able to reach Krugman about this. And there's startlingly little info about it online that I can find. But here's what a Boston Globe profile of him had to say on Dec. 23, 1999:

Krugman, who has no children, is married to Robin Wells, an economist hired by MIT in 1996 as part of a package deal that brought Krugman back east from Stanford. His first marriage, to Robin Bergman, a clothing designer, ended in divorce.

So, it appears that Krugman doesn't have a son and that the rumor is completely false -- unless Krugman has had a son since 1999 who is remarkably precocious and has been hired by the Hillary campaign despite being under the age of eight years old.

That's it - the only possibility is that Krugman has a precocious eight year old?  Geez, just wondering out loud here - suppose Ms. Wells has a son by a former relationship and Krugman has adopted him.  Not possible?

Or suppose that Ms. Wells has a son by a former relationship who is now working for Hillary.  Then "Krugman's son is working for Hillary" is false, but "Krugman's wife's son is working for Hillary is true - mightn't one still be entitled to wonder whether that family tie merited disclosure?

For myself, I could care less - Krugman has a long history of demonizing those with whom he disagrees, so why should Obama be any different?  But if Greg Sargent thinks this lame effort will placate the conspiracists on the left, well, they are more credulous than I imagined.  And this "denial" from Krugman is equally unimpressive because it is too specific.

The specific allegation is that Krugman has a son working for Hillary but the substance of the allegation is that Krugman has a family connection with the Hillary campaign.  For Krugman to deny that he has a son or daughter without denying the family connection to Hillary will probably only satisfy Greg Sargent; lefty conspiracists will still wonder about the possibility of a link between the Hillary campaign and Krugman's wife's kids (if any), Krugman's nieces and nephews, and so on.  But these conspiracists will be on the trail for any whiff of corruption, or nepotism, or something - people don't just have ideas and beliefs out of their own little heads, do they?

Well, those are the waters Krugman helped pollute and they are the waters in which he now swims.  Enjoy.

MORE:  The NY Times maintains a faux-interactive feature quaintly called the "Letters to the Editors", in which the editors cherry-pick a few reader replies to promote their own agenda.  And today the editors are fomenting a reader revolt over Krugman's most recent Obama-basher; a bit more cherry-picking yields the best of the best:

Paul Krugman’s Dec. 17 column, “Big Table Fantasies,” labels as “unrealistic” Senator Barack Obama’s plan of inclusiveness to address the nation’s health care finance problem. Instead, Mr. Krugman claims that the solution must exclude insurance and drug companies, because they are the cause of the problem.

...

But there is no consensus that we should move to a national one-payer health care system, or that we must eschew the benefits of technology and drug innovation to improve health care availability. So it is not clear that the politics of exclusion will produce a solution that works or is desirable.

Tim Platt

The “big table” is at the heart of our American politic, serving as a place where the arguments of the contenders can be discovered and, in some cases, exposed. Public exposure of unfair practices can in fact be a critical tactic in the battles for progressive causes envisioned by Mr. Krugman.

Laughlin Phillips

I don’t often disagree with Paul Krugman, but his belief that health care reform can be enacted without the participation of the insurance and drug industries is just, well, naïve...

Michael Wang

Paul Krugman seems to be recommending continuing the politics of polarization in health care reform. Hasn’t 15 years of this been enough?

Michael Benson

... there may be an alternative explanation for the senator’s rhetoric. Perhaps Mr. Obama is simply shrewd enough to know the kind of message he must send to get elected. And that says to me that Mr. Obama, like Roosevelt, knows plenty about politics.

David Lefer

...historically populism has failed as a unifying national platform in part because Americans tend to dislike “class warfare.” Also, policy change is most likely, and most likely to succeed, when it is incremental.

The health care industry employs huge numbers of Americans and accounts for about 15 percent of our gross domestic product. The industry has enormous power and would kill any plan it deemed antagonistic. To hope otherwise would be naïve.

We may not like the profit-based health care system that we inherited, but the best chance for change is bending not breaking. Just ask Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Zachary W. Oberfield

They did include one "pro" letter:

Power, who has it and who wants to keep it — this is the real issue. Paul Krugman is absolutely right. Every other issue flows from that. That includes the war, the economy, health care, education, immigration, you name it.

Until American voters realize this fundamental truth about why their vote should be based on who is willing to challenge entrenched interests, our nation will continue on the path to social and economic stratification.

Lucie Skadden

it's all about the tinfoil.

For Your Christmas Consideration

"When somebody's attacking your military record, you reach a boiling point"

If you are at an impasse for holiday gift ideas, let me make a suggestion - I have been loving "To Set The Record Straight" (website), a book by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler with a foreword by John O'Neill recounting the Swift Boat battles of 2004.  I daresay I followed the Swifties quite closely (and this blog gets a mention!) but I have found all sorts of interesting new details about Kerry's activities in Vietnam and after.  There is also plenty of background about the formation of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and an excellent recounting of the failure of the main stream media to quash their story.

This book ought to be a must read for journalism professors and students, and should delight anyone likely to enjoy a story of media bias or even a good Kerry-basher.  Blog coverage of the Swifties was an important part of the 2004 story and bloggers are cited extensively - Captain Ed, Hugh Hewitt and Beldar spring to mind but many others are referenced or quoted as well.  And of course Dan Rather gets a special chapter.

However, what I think is my own unique contribution to the pile-on does not seem to have been noted; the topic is Kerry's first Purple Heart, awarded based on a "skimmer op" in December 1968.  Kerry crewman Zaladonis was interviewed by Douglas Brinkley (repeatedly) and the Globe's Michael Kranish in 2003 for their research efforts, but never mentioned his role in Kerry's skimmer op.  Then, when Kerry took criticism for that medal in the spring of 2004, Zaladonis was suddenly a part of the mission and vouching for Kerry, and telling people it was the scariest night of his life.  So scary he forgot to regale reporters when they asked for any Kerry stories in 2003?  C'mon - it was his first joint task with Kerry, the first time they met, the first combat for both of them, and the scariest night of his life but he forgot to mention it in 2003?  A troubling lapse of interview technique, repeatedly, and by two researchers.

Oh, enough about me and back to the book.  Here are some links - an interview with Scott Swett; NewsMax review; Bruce Kesler's thoughts.  And the mystery quote from the top is not from John O'Neill, a fellow Swiftie, or anyone else from the army of Ghengis Khan.  It is a comedy classic from Kerry flack Stephanie Cutter.

MORE:  I picked up a relevant tidbit about the recent T Boone Pickens challenge to John Kerry.  Pickens challenged anyone to prove that the Swifties had lied about anything; he eventually limited his challenge to claims made in the Swift ads.

From the book I have learned that, in order to provide legal cover to stations running the ads, the SBVT had prepared extensive documentation backing the ads; for example, the final support package for the first ad was 65 pages of documentation and affidavits.  And back in 2004 the DNC lawyers wrote to the stations airing the ads claiming that they were lies but eventually backed down.  So Pickens probably feels like he is on comfortable ground.

ERRATA:  I knew about Kerry and Kansas City, where Scot Camil proposed a plot to assassinate US Senators - Kerry had denied all of this, then claimed he forgot.  But now I know (p. 60-1 of book) that Scot Camil claimed in an interview to have discussed a similar assassination plan well before Kansas City (probably in February of that year, before the VAW's April Dewey Canyon III protest), and, per Camil, "people like Kerry totally flipped out".  Looks like Kerry forgot more than we knew.

Two Americas

MoDo pens on Hillary and the aging woman factor and offers this:

It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country.

An obsession for whom?  Has she checked the stats on obesity and overweight in America?  One might infer that for an expanding portion of the country, "perfecting the outer shell" would refer to pie crusts or pizza.

That said, I have no doubt that in certain enclaves, such as Manhattan, and in certain industries, such as newsfolks attempting to cross into television, there is an obsession with looks.  I just have a hard time believing it is a national trend.

The Latest From Gen. Petraeus

Here is Gen. Petraeus' latest report (a 61 page .pdf) and related WSJ coverage.  And on the national reconciliation front, the WaPo has some, uhh, good news:

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month.

You aren't seeing the good news?  Here we go:

That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.

Remember, these are highly trained professional spinners - do not attempt this at home.

Sometimes A Scandal Is Just A Scandal

Mickey derides the notion that Team Hillary planted the National Enquirer's "story" about John Edwards' love child.  First, he had heard it before on the non-planted rumor mill, and secondly, Hillary needs to Keep Edwards Alive because she can not finish on top in a two-way with Obama.

Let me toss in a third reason this can't (or anyway, shouldn't) have come from Hilary's team - if, I say IF this story takes off the press will treat us to several weeks of remembrances of scandals past and the varied responses thereto.  Will it really help Hillary for the press to reprise her "Pain in our marriage" appearance on 60 Minutes with Bill in 1992?  Will it help her for the press to reprise her "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" response in 1998?  Will a national conversation about the implications of marital infidelity really give her campaign a boost?

C'mon - Obama is the winner if this story finds legs.  Doesn't mean he planted it, though.

SECOND THOUGHTS:  You want to say that Hillary as a victim has always polled well, and that  tales of infidelity fits nicely with her new likability push in a way it would not have fit with her previous "strong and experienced" push?  Hmm...  I don't love it, but I don't hate it.

THIRD THOUGHTS:  Didn't we just learn through leaks that Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle (prospective owner of the National Enquirer) were no longer best buds?  Boy, that was lucky timing!  Hmm, I see I am in the Captain's wake on this connection.

A SIMPLER VIEW:  Burkle is a billionaire businessman who doesn't like Edwards' anti-business populism.  Even if this story is hard luck for Hillary, its worse luck for Edwards, who can counterattack with a "Vast Moneyed Interests Conspiracy" speech.  Sorry, John, "powerful forces" is taken.

Health Care

Econ writer David Leonhardt of the NY Times picks his favorite economics book of the year:

In 1967, Jack Wennberg, a young medical researcher at Johns Hopkins, moved his family to a farmhouse in northern Vermont.

Dr. Wennberg had been chosen to run a new center based at the University of Vermont that would examine medical care in the state. With a colleague, he traveled around Vermont, visiting its 16 hospitals and collecting data on how often they did various procedures.

The results turned out to be quite odd. Vermont has one of the most homogenous populations in the country — overwhelmingly white (especially in 1967), with relatively similar levels of poverty and education statewide. Yet medical practice across the state varied enormously, for all kinds of care. In Middlebury, for instance, only 7 percent of children had their tonsils removed. In Morrisville, 70 percent did.

Dr. Wennberg and some colleagues then did a survey, interviewing 4,000 people around the state, to see whether different patterns of illness could explain the variations in medical care. They couldn’t. The children of Morrisville weren’t suffering from an epidemic of tonsillitis. Instead, they happened to live in a place where a small group of doctors — just five of them — had decided to be aggressive about removing tonsils.

But here was the stunner: Vermonters who lived in towns with more aggressive care weren’t healthier. They were just getting more health care.

Dr. Wennberg would eventually move to Dartmouth and, over the last 30 years, has done versions of his Vermont study for the entire country. Again and again, he has come up with the same broad result. And that result holds the key to health care reform — how to spend less on health care while not making the population any less healthy.

Dr. Wennberg’s story forms the backbone of “Overtreated,” by Shannon Brownlee, which is my choice for the economics book of the year.

And a bit more:

“We spend between one fifth and one third of our health care dollars,” writes Ms. Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and former writer for U.S. News & World Report, “on care that does nothing to improve our health.”

Worst of all, overtreatment often causes harm, because even the safest procedures bring some risk. One study found that a group of Medicare patients admitted to high-spending hospitals were 2 to 6 percent more likely to die than a group admitted to more conservative hospitals.

Why is this happening, then?

Above all, it’s the natural outgrowth of our fee-for-service health care system. It turns doctors into pieceworkers, as Ms. Brownlee puts it, “paid for how much they do, not how well they care for their patients.” Doctors and hospitals typically depend on the volume of work for their income, and they are the gatekeepers who decide when work needs to be done. They also worry about being sued if they do too little. So they err on the side of overtreatment.

...The typical book about current affairs is better at describing problems than solutions. But there is a nice surprise at the end of “Overtreated.” (If you find yourself wishing the book had fewer anecdotes, I’d suggest you skip to the end rather than putting it down.) In plain English, Ms. Brownlee lays out an agenda for reform that is usually confined to academic journals.

Mr. Leonhardt has other suggestions here.

That Would Be "Mr. Idiot" To You...

The Minuteman gets results!  While the rest of you have been off disarming Iran and sorting out the Presidential field I have been picking nits and taking names!

In my previous post I pointed out that David Niewert has a bit of a problem keeping track of time (he thought a Daily Princetonian story that broke on Monday came out the previous Friday) but offered this tepid defense of his slack research effort:

On the other hand, when I go to the Daily Princetonian today, the site still says it is Friday, Dec 14.  My guess is that they are updating stories but not being hyper-diligent about updating their timestamps.

That prompted this comment by a Barry Caro:

As an opinion writer for the Princetonian, just an update about how our date stamps work. Our last print issue prior to winter break came out last Friday. Therefore, our webpage lists the date as that Friday. However, the individual web-only updates to the story get their own timestamps. for instance, the story fo the asault only made it into the paper on Saturday, so it is listed as "web update dec. 15". Hope that helps clear up the issue of timing, because even a cursory glance at our main page would show that the articles revealing this to be a hoax weren't published until the 17th and 18th, and only an idiot would conclude otherwise.

Hmm.  I am not well placed to argue against the notion that Mr. Niewert is an idiot, but I had not been able to figure out the timestamps either, so honor calls!  And not just honor, but my optometrist - the Daily Princetonian website really does now have the dates as bright as day above the headlines, so how did I miss it?

Let me answer a question with a question - how did the Google webcrawlers miss those datestamps, too?  I checked the Google cache and there was the old familiar page I had been staring at in puzzlement earlier on Tuesday - before and after screenshots below.

Before:

After:

That is reassuring - in the "after" I now see

WEB UPDATE - DEC. 17
Nava '09 admits to fabricating assault, threat e-mails

where before the "WEB UPDATE - DEC. 17" was missing.

I hope Mr. Caro is enjoying his break, and I assume that some other alert editor at the DP made the changes without his knowledge.  Nice to know they noticed and cared.  Nicer to know I am neither blind nor an idiot.

Now, on the off chance that I can address the underlying story, here is a round-up of reaction from the Right Coast.  And Moe Lane is laughing as hard as I am.

Because Democrats Can't Get Enough Of Bush

Bill Clinton continues to "help" Hillary:

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president — Bush's son, George W. Bush.

"Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again," Clinton said in response to a question from a supporter about what his wife's "number one priority" would be as president.

Maybe the notion that Hillary can bring two former Presidents together would be appealing in the general election.  But seriously - how many Democratic primary voters are pining for a return to the national stage of Bush 41? 

That is setting aside the obvious question of whether Bush 41 is fully on board with this "Let's Bury 43" tour.

Keep helping, Bill.

UPDATE:  OK, "41" nixes the idea:

In a statement sent to CNN Tuesday afternoon, former President Bush’s chief of staff Jean Becker said that he “wholeheartedly supports the President of the United States, including his foreign policy. He has never discussed an ‘around-the-world-mission’ with either former President Bill Clinton or Sen. Clinton, nor does he think such a mission is warranted since he is proud of the role America continues to play around the world as the beacon of hope for freedom and democracy.

“President Bush is excited about several of the excellent Republican candidates running for president, and looks forward to discussing their candidacy once the Republican nominee is determined.”

Too bad - I wanted to hear Bush 41 pledge to kick-start Kyoto.  As if.

 

With Critics Like These...

With critics like the temporally challenged David Niewert, Glenn Reynolds has nothing to fear - the latest attack relates to Glenn's coverage of the Francisco Nava assault hoax at Princeton:

Same with Glenn Reynolds, who as TRex notes fell for the hoax with a link Saturday, in which, among other things, he offers the following insights produced by the story:

I guess it's part of the growing climate of fear in America.

I wonder if this will get the kind of attention that politically-reversed assaults would get?

But even better is Reynolds' lame defense once he cottons to the hoax:

STILL MORE: Andrew Sullivan seems to regard this as an "Insta-Embarrassment." But there's no embarrassment in correcting an error as soon as you're aware of it. That's something that Andrew, and his friends at The New Republic, should have figured out already.

Erm, no, the embarrasment, Professor, lies in the fact that at the time you posted this information, the reports revealing it to be a hoax were online and readily available (the Daily Princetonian report was up at 8 p.m. Friday; yours went up at 11 p.m. Saturday, more than a full day after the hoax was reported). All you'd have needed do before weighing in with incendiary rhetoric and wild accusations about a "climate of fear" was Google his name; the story would've come right up.

Geez, I googled the story on Saturday and there was no Daily Princetonian report of a hoax.  On the other hand, when I go to the Daily Princetonian today, the site still says it is Friday, Dec 14.  My guess is that they are updating stories but not being hyper-diligent about updating their timestamps.

But Mr. Niewert does not need to take my word for it - let's look through the link he helpfully provided to TRex; reading down a bit we come to this:

The truth comes out!

PRINCETON TOWNSHIP — An alleged assault on a Princeton University student about two miles from the Ivy League campus Friday night was fabricated, police concluded after a follow-up interview of the self-described victim Monday morning.

That TRex link takes us to a story datelined Monday, Dec 17, and reports that the police determined the assault to be a hoax on Monday morning.  But darn that Glenn Reynolds for not noting that on Friday night!  What kind of a sorry Future-Pundit is he, anyway?

Or as an alternative, if actually perusing the posts to which he has linked is too much effort, Mr. Niewert could have followed the Sunday Insta-links to  Princeton resident Fausta's blog - that, and the PJM story make it pretty clear that, as of Friday, the hoax notion was unconfirmed, but developed over the weekend.

I have no doubt Mr. Niewert will promptly clarify and correct his post as appropriate, as an example of leadership by example [and he did - not quite quickly enough to spoil my fun, but let's say, quickly enough to put a slow leak in my balloon.  Geez, no stonewalling and denial?  I blame the season...]

Takeaway: Google - not for the unwary!

MORE:  The Times joins in:

A Princeton University junior who claimed to have been beaten by two men in black ski caps for his conservative views admitted on Monday that he made up the attack, according to Princeton Township police officials.

Spitzer Lawyering Up?

Via Glenn we see that Eliot Spitzer won't say whether he has hired an attorney - very interesting, since hiding behind attorneys has been taken as evidence of non-cooperation by Spitzer and the Feds in their white-collar cases.  From the Weekly Standard:

Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney general, uses the media to level charges against individuals and firms, threatens them with criminal charges that will surely bankrupt them unless they waive their constitutional right to consult with counsel in private, bullies companies into firing their accused executives, and then loses cases he is finally forced to try.

The Feds were also intent on separating a corporation from its executives under the now-passe Thompson memo.

It would be shocking to learn that Spitzer is not cooperating fully with a state investigation.

MORE:  More at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog.

Hillary On Barack Hussein Il Jong Obama

She's sorry for any confusion.

TIME Man Of The Year

As last year's honoree, it seems fitting that I play a role in passing the TIME Man of the Year baton.  My nominee - General David Petraeus, who will actually win over Al Gore when the Arctic freezes over.

But maybe Gen. Petraeus can win in a new category as a person who was most influential in forcing an issue off the front page.

BTW:  Totally stolen idea, by the way.

Hillary - Once You Get Behind The Phony Tinsel...

You get to the real tinsel.  Karl of Protein Wisdom on Hillary's charm offensive, with links to rollicking righties and laughing lefties.  Geez, the kinder, gentler Hillary... she has become the Democratic Party's cod-liver oil, lacking only the vitamins.

Abolishing The Death Penalty

Karl Rove was clever enough to get liberal activists (not so broadly interpreted to include the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the mayor of San Francisco) to force gay marriage onto the front page and into the national debate in 2004.  Is Rove still clever and powerful enough to do the same thing with the abolition of the death penalty in 2008?

New Jersey pols have defied public opinion and voted to abolish the death penalty.  Other states are considering similar moves, and here are plaintive editorial calls to action from true-blue Connecticut and maybe-not-so-blue Alabama.

I'm sure the time is right for a national conversation.  Go, Blue!

The Purpose Driven Candidate

Bryan at Hot Air is very interesting on the ascent of Mike Huckabee:

Here’s what I suspect. I can’t prove this, but I think Huckabee is getting enormous lift from one near-endorsement he earned that hardly anyone is talking about. It’s from Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California, and it appeared on Huckabee’s official website in November.

...People who don’t spend much time in church or who don’t pay much attention to trends in church settings probably aren’t familiar with too many pastors, or at least aren’t familiar with many pastors who haven’t been caught bilking their followers out of millions of dollars or been caught in some other corruption, but chances are most of you have heard of Rick Warren. He’s the author of the mega best seller The Purpose-Driven Life. He’s also clean as a whistle on the corruption front. And he’s in my opinion the single most influential Protestant pastor in America, by far, and may be the most influential pastor in the world.

Well, I don't know how anyone would "prove" any of these political theories, but here is one probably far-fetched notion - if Huckabee is being lauded in Sunday sermons across America, there ought to be spikes in his support on the Monday Rasmussen robo-polls.  IIRC, the Rasmussen polls are three day rolling averages so the effect would be muted, but someone who has acces to that data might want to take a look.

And the lead is yet another problematic Huckabee clemency.

Democrats In Disguise

The NY Times editors deplore the fact that in the tug of war between honesty and electability, Democrats have to conceal their real vision of governance from the public in order to remain electable.

But what specific topic has furrowed the brows of the Times editors today?  Could be immigration - the top Dems ran away from the Times-backed Spitzer plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens.  But it's not.

Could be gun control - Obama has shifted to the right from ten years ago and Hillary is bashing him from even further on the right.  But it's not.

Could be gay marriage, or capital punishment, or abortion on demand for thirteen year old nuns... but it's not.

No, the Times is vexed because Democrats won't come out for even higher taxes:

If there’s one issue on which Republican presidential hopefuls should feel vulnerable, it’s taxes. The Bush tax cuts, more than any other policy, are crippling the government financially.

...or Democratic candidates, in contrast, taxation is the issue that dare not speak its name. With the exception of John Edwards, none of the Democratic candidates list “taxes” under “issues” on their official Web sites. Hillary Clinton buries various tax proposals in a category labeled “Strengthening the Middle Class,” while most of Barack Obama’s tax ideas are under “Fighting Poverty.” Even the also-running candidates subsume tax issues under broad, bland headings.

A charitable explanation for the Democrats’ reticence is that not much of substance separates them on the issue of taxes. The front-runners, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama, all pledge to end the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans — generally defined as people making upwards of $200,000 or so.

All three would keep the estate tax, but with multimillion-dollar exemptions to ensure that only the wealthiest Americans pay it. They’re also in general agreement on using the tax code to funnel more money to lower-income Americans — by expanding the child-care credit, for example, or boosting the earned income credit for low-income workers or introducing new tax breaks to defray the cost of college or make it easier to save for retirement.

All of that is laudable, especially when the candidates say they would target tax breaks based on fairness and need, both of which have been largely ignored in Bush tax policy. But with the nation in dire financial straits, serious tax talk circa 2007 has to do more than serve as a way to show a candidate cares about those who are struggling to make a living.

Which brings us to the less charitable, and more likely, explanation for the Democrats’ aversion to talking candidly about taxes: They don’t want to level with the American people, for fear of being felled by a barrage of anti-tax rhetoric from Republican opponents.

...

The Democrats are not as pie in the sky as the Republicans. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would raise about $1 trillion in revenue over 10 years. Extending all the tax cuts and piling even more on top of them, as some Republicans propose, would only dig the budget hole deeper.

Still, going forward, competent governance, let alone achieving great things, will require more revenue, period.

I support the Times here - if Dems have grand tax-and-spend schemes, campaign on them them, get a mandate from the voters, and implement them.  As if.

Instead, this will be one more issue on which the Dems appear to be phony because they are.

 

Liquidity, Capital, Whatever

The NY Times front-pages a story on the coordinated central bank effort to prop up the world's financial system but can't be troubled to get a basic fact right:

A day after the Federal Reserve disappointed investors with a modest cut in interest rates, central banks in North America and Europe on Wednesday announced the most aggressive infusion of capital into the banking system since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

Anyone interested in this story knows that "capital" has a specific meaning; essentially, it is a bank's equity (see, for example, the recent coverage of the capital injections into UBS or Citigroup).  So, are the central banks buying preferred stock in the world's banks?  Of course not.

And maybe not so oddly, Times reporter Floyd Norris, who shares a byline on the story above, gets it right at his Times blog:

The combined actions of the world’s central banks on Wednesday smacks of a real fear that the world’s financial system is in trouble.

Injecting liquidity — that is lending money to banks — when short-term interest rates rise is perfectly normal in this age in which central banks target interest rates.

My guess - the Times editors dumbed down the story for their readership.  Thanks for the help, guys.

That said, people who care about this story will already know what the Fed actually announced, and that the Times editors are not fully up to speed; folks who don't care won't care about this mistake.  Odd that Mr. Norris let that error go out under his name, however.

As to the story itself, here are some thoughts from Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution:

The core innovation is that the Fed announces a quantity of funds to be auctioned, and the market sets the price.  That is in contrast to the Fed targeting the Federal Funds rate; price-quantity equivalence results do not hold when credit rationing is present.  It's like forcing a certain amount of discount window borrowing.

Floyd Norris adds this at his blog:

The Fed will lend money to banks based on almost any asset they own, even ones that are not liquid at all. That will include some of the more exotic loans and securities out there.

...How much will the Fed lend against illiquid assets?  It has a public list, already in use in discount window lending. You will note that it allows the lending of up to 85 percent of the face value of AAA-rated collateralized mortgage obligations, if there is no observable market value. There are some C.M.O.’s out there that have not yet been downgraded but that might not bring that much in a sale.

That will re-liquefy some of these assets.

MORE DETAILS:  This, from the Times story, is dubious at best:

When markets are functioning properly, banks easily and regularly borrow money from each other at rates that are only slightly higher than what the United States government, considered one of the world’s safest borrowers, pays when it issues Treasury bills. Like homeowners who borrow against the value of their property, banks borrow against the securities they own.

But with markets increasingly uncertain about the quality of banks’ holdings, lending between banks has slowed and become more expensive. Banks are also less likely to extend loans because they need to hold more capital on their books.

Banks certainly participate in the repo market, which is a form of secured lending.  But most inter-bank lending, such as in the Fed Funds or LIBOR market, is *not* formally secured against specific collateral.

If lending between banks has slowed (and who can doubt it?), it is not because the specific collateral being offered is dubious, it is because of a loss of confidence in the borrower's ability to make timely repayment to all creditors.

Waiting For George Mitchell

George Mitchell will deliver his report on steroids in baseball today with a 2 PM press conference, after which the report will be posted at MLB.com.

I already considered Roger Clemens to be a prime suspect, based on his muscular physique so unlike his lean rookie look, his mania for workouts, his professional longevity, and the astonishing resurrection of his career after he seemed to have tailed off in the mid-90's (Clemens was 40-39 from 1993 to 1996).

Today's Times coverage provides further ominous signs (cue "Jaws" soundtrack...):

The person who read the report said among those named would be the winners of Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards.

And:

The person who read the report also said that information from Brian McNamee, a former Yankees strength coach who has worked as a personal trainer for Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, had been provided to Mitchell’s investigators. It was not clear if McNamee spoke directly to the investigators, or if information he provided is in the report.

Does this tarnish several of the Yankee's titles?  Too soon to tell, and let's see what Red Sox emerge.  Or in other words, ahh, hmm, yes.  But maybe it is just a little tarnish...

MORE:  The Times pursues the Clemens angle:

As Baseball Braces for Report, Pettitte and Clemens Cited

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DUFF WILSON

A former trainer for Roger Clemens provided information about Clemens’s steroid use to investigators for former Senator George Mitchell, who will release a report Thursday on steroids in baseball, two lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

The trainer, Brian McNamee, also provided information about steroid use by pitcher Andy Pettitte and first baseman David Segui, the lawyers said. McNamee spoke to Mitchell’s investigators under pressure from federal prosecutors investigating the use of steroids in baseball.

Mitchell is to release his 304-page report, covering 20 months of investigation, Thursday afternoon. More than 50 players are named in the report, according to individuals who saw the report.

Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young award winner, had previously been suspected of steroid usage, but denied it. This report would be the first confirmation that McNamee provided testimony about Clemens.

Clemens and Pettitte helped lead the New York Yankees to one of the most dominant winning streaks in baseball. Pettitte pitched for the Yankees when they won three consecutive World Series from 1998 to 2000. In a conference call Wednesday to discuss his 2008 contract with the Yankees, Pettitte said that he was not working out with McNamee and did not know if McNamee had spoken to Mitchell’s investigators.

A tough day ahead for the Evil Empire.

STILL MORE:  I am advised in the comments that Drudge and NBC played "Now you see it, now you don't" with the following list; one infers that the press has advance copies of the Mitchell report subject to an embargo [UPDATE - the list does not match subsequent published reports, so one might infer that it was taken down because it is misleading; I am leaving it in the comments but deleting it here; The Smoking Gun has more].

CLEMENS AND THE HALL:  Troubling.  There is no specific allegation that Clemens' big season in 1997 with Toronto (21-7, Cy Young, pitching Triple Crown) was aided by steroids.  However, he partnered up with McNamee sometime after a chat around June 8-10.  On June 4

Roger Clemens pitched a four-hitter for his first complete game of the season and Shawn Green drove in two runs as the Blue Jays beat Detroit in Toronto.

Clemens (6-6), who had lost three of his previous four starts, struck out 10 and walked none as the Blue Jays ended a three-game losing streak and handed the Tigers their fourth consecutive loss.

Clemens finished 20-6, so he did not lose the rest of the way while hopped up.  One might argue that that taints that Cy Young.  From the report it is also appears that Clemens was not utterly new to steroids when he first discussed them with McNamee in 1998, and that Clemens had his own supplier, so he might well have been a user prior to his relationship with McNamee.  Since Clemens supplied the drugs and needles, McNamee's main role was to administer the injections (Clemens was squeamish, evidently) and provide expertise.

McNamee was aware of Clemen's use of steroids in the latter part of the 2000 season and the latter part of his Cy Young season in 2001 when both men were with the Yankees.  As to whether Clemens also used steroids without Mcnamee's knowledge, who can say, other than Roger, his supplier, and his shooter?

ANDY PETTITE:  Hmm - McNamee says Pettite used human growth hormone to hasten an elbow rehab while on the disabled list from April 21 to June 14 2002, but does not allege any steroid use thereafter.  That is almost legit - too bad it was not under a doctor's supervision.

Bringing It On! Republicans Debate In The Homestretch

Here is an open thread to discuss the Republican afternoon tete-a-tete slated for 2 PM ET.

You Say You Want An Evolution...

The pace of human evolution has accelerated and differentiation amongst Asian, African and European populations has increased, per Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Human evolution has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought, researchers said on Monday.

In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin.

...Many of the recent genetic changes reflect differences in the human diet brought on by agriculture, as well as resistance to epidemic diseases that became mass killers following the growth of human civilizations, the researchers said.

A quick quiz as part of our SAT prep - which of these does not belong?

For example, Africans have new genes providing resistance to malaria. In Europeans, there is a gene that makes them better able to digest milk as adults. In Asians, there is a gene that makes ear wax more dry.

Hmm.  I can see a huge survival benefit to malaria resistance in Africa, and the nutritional advantages of being able to digest cow's milk are obvious.  But what ear wax crisis afflicted our friends the East?

"The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast -- faster than any of us thought," Harpending said in a telephone interview.

"Most of the acceleration is in the last 10,000 years, basically corresponding to population growth after agriculture is invented," Hawks said in a telephone interview.

   

My strong impression is that we are talking about gene expression, not gene mutation.  For example, there were always some Europeans with the genetic ability to digest cow's milk, but that did not confer a survival advantage until cows were domesticated.

Now, here is something for James Watson and Will Saletan (with regrets here) to ponder:

Harpending said the genetic evidence shows that people worldwide have been getting less similar rather than more similar due to the relatively recent genetic changes.

Genes have evolved relatively quickly in Africa, Asia and Europe but almost all of the changes have been unique to their corner of the world. This is the case, he said, because since humans dispersed from Africa to other parts of the world about 40,000 years ago, there has not been much flow of genes between the regions.

   

Tase This

Robo-heckling and more.

Hammering The Huck

The PowerGuys pile on Huckabee and the Dumond story.  Byron York also had questions that led to more questions.

Mr. York closes as follows:

And then there is the Parole Board.  Such boards make important, life-or-death decisions.  Some of those decisions are wrong.  Granting parole to Dumond was one of them.  Does anyone even remotely suspect that there might be a bit of CYA involved in their current finger-pointing at Huckabee?  There's no doubt the Board was all over the place on the Dumond case.  In 1990, the Parole Board voted overwhelmingly to recommend that Clinton commute Dumond's sentence to time served.  At another hearing a few months later, after hearing from the victims – which it hadn't done before the first vote – Board members then split on whether Dumond should be released immediately or in a couple of years.  (Clinton declined their recommendations because the Dumond case was still on appeal at the time.)  Then, in 1994, after Tucker commuted Dumond's sentence, the Board voted 3-2 to keep Dumond in prison.  Some individual Board members have been on both sides of the issue.

None of that exonerates Huckabee.  But it should suggest to fair-minded observers that there is more to this case than some commentators suggest.

Well, if and when a former member of the Arkansas Parole Board runs for President I will keep that in mind.

MORE:  Just to cacth the temper of the times, here is a Steve Dunleavy column from 1996 - "Clinton's Biggest Crime" - making the case for clemency, as well as the Wikipedia rebuttal.

My Free Advice For The Hillary Campaign

The NY Times covers Hillary's effort in Iowa and inspires some free advice from yours truly; let's start with an excerpt:

Over the next few days, Howard Wolfson, the face of the Clinton war room, is planning to drive out here from Washington.

Enough with the "war room" metaphor.  It was cute in 1992 when the Cold War was over and the messenger was baby-faced George Stephanopoulos but this is 2007 and we are a nation truly at war, a point your team would do well to remember.  Let me try to help - if when you look around you see a bunch of political operatives manning the the phones and hitting the bricks on the mean streets of Des Moines, that is not a war; imagining otherwise is disrespectful to the heroic men and women fighting our real wars elsewhere.  Show the appropriate respect for their effort and your own by coming up with some new name ("Barack Study Group" is droll, but be sure to focus-group it).

And a P.S. to the press - stale doughnuts at 5 AM followed by a bleary-eyed bus ride to yet another stump speech is not "war" either.  Make an effort to stay reality-based.

Our next point flows from this OMG moment:

Iowa, where Mrs. Clinton and her husband do not have the advantage of having run a primary campaign, as they have in New Hampshire, is a place that has appeared to frustrate the Clinton political operation from the day she arrived here. Bill Clinton never competed in Iowa caucuses; the state was effectively conceded to Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa in 1992, and Mr. Clinton was unopposed in 1996.

...In an interview, Mrs. Clinton said she had become increasingly grounded in the ways of Iowa, though she acknowledged her concern about her campaign here.

“I always thought that Iowa would be a challenge,” she said, “and I’m personally really pleased with how far I’ve come, never having done this with Bill. I’ve really been working to understand what was necessary to run a competitive campaign.”

"Never having done this with Bill"?  The idea that you are helpless without your husband may reassure the 44% of your supporters who are backing you because of Bill but it is dismal news for the rest of us.  Newsflash - there are many challenges facing our country today that Bill neither confronted nor resolved during his tenure; you probably don't want to go around telling us you can't deal with anything that is not a reprise of the last millennium.

And a second newsflash - Barack Obama hasn't run in Iowa before either.  Do you want to be sending the message that you can't win an even race?  Doubtful.

MORE:  I am too late with my advice:

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- A new poll shows that while the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president holds a comfortable lead in New Hampshire, the Democratic race has tightened dramatically.

According to the latest WMUR/CNN poll, Hillary Clinton's 20-point lead has vanished. She now has 31 percent support, with Barack Obama in a statistical tie at 30 percent. John Edwards is third with 16 percent, and Bill Richardson has slipped slightly to 7 percent.

But help, or at least Bill, is on the way:

WASHINGTON - Bubba to the rescue!

Alarmed by his wife's slide in the polls and disarray within her backbiting campaign, a beside-himself Bill Clinton has leaped atop the barricades and is furiously plotting a cure - or coup.

"She's in big trouble and he knows it," a top Democratic operative and Hillary Clinton booster told the Daily News.

Sources familiar with the ex-President's thinking say he doesn't believe his wife's situation is desperate. But he's unhappy with her operation - once hailed as a juggernaut - and concerned she could lose the Democratic nomination without major alterations in strategy and staffing.

Excellent - more timely self-aggrandizing from Bill to sabotage Hillary.

GREAT MINDS RUN IN THE SAME CHANNEL: From Jason Zengerle of TNR:

From today's NYT article about Hillary's struggles in Iowa, this is a bit of a damning admission from the candidate, isn't it?

“I always thought that Iowa would be a challenge,” she said, “and I’m personally really pleased with how far I’ve come, never having done this with Bill. I’ve really been working to understand what was necessary to run a competitive campaign.” [Emphasis added.]

Is this what Hillary means when she talks about experience--things she watched her husband do? And if he hasn't done them before, she's basically clueless?

That's what I'm sayin'

Inclement Weather

ABC News looks at Huckabee's proclivity for pardons, which follows a similar AP story from Monday.  The granddaddy of them all is this 2004 Arkansas leader piece linked last week by Matt Drudge, which found that Huckabee pardoned more people than in the six states neighboring Arkansas combined.

NY Times Poll

The NY Times poll is out:

Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found. And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

By contrast, Democrats are happier with their field and more settled in their decisions. For all the problems Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be having holding off her rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, she remains strong nationally, the poll found. Even after what her aides acknowledge have been two of the roughest months of her candidacy, she is viewed by Democrats as a far more electable presidential nominee than either Senator Barack Obama or John Edwards.

Interesting - despite a grim debate at the end of October, Ms. Clinton is still at 68% favorable / 14% unfavorable among likely Dem primary voters, down just a bit from 72/15 in mid-October.

Staying on the favorable/unfavorable results among likely primary voters, Giuliani slipped from 48/20 to 41/28 in December; McCain dropped from 37/22 to 37/32 (maybe he should just keep quiet and stop annoying us?); and Fred Thompson swooned from 32/11 to 20/16.

Romney and Huckabee were the gainers - Romney from 28/16 to 36/16 and Huckabee from 12/9 to 30/10.

A lot of the poll results serve as an assurance that a notable fraction of poll respondents have no idea what they are talking about.  Hillary is more likely to unite the country than Obama?  C'mon, Hillary is the only major candidate who can not only speak with confidence on the Shiite/Sunni schism but sees it as a role model for the US.

And Romney is more of a straight-shooter than McCain?  Please.  Fred Thompson does well in this question (43% think he says what he believes, 23% think he panders, for a plus 20%) but the straightest shooter of all is Huck at 47/16.  Groan.

Obama's A Lib! (Shhhh...)

Hold the front page - Barack Obama is a liberal.

My cocktail party tirade about Obama includes the point that he takes a lot of undue credit for his opposition to the Iraq war in 2002 - roughly 90% of the Congressional Black Caucus also opposed the war resolution, so Obama was really nothing other than a mainstream urban black pol.  Surprise!

Watching The Detectives Watching Videotape

I love a mystery - DoJ lawyers involved in the Moussai trial told a judge they had watched videotape of CIA interogations in 2007.

Mightn't these be tapes of non-enhanced interrogations?  Or were they watching the tapes that were supposedly destroyed in 2005?

MORE:  If I had to guess, I would bet these were tapes of conventional interrogations.  So why weren't they destroyed for "security reasons" as well?  Who knows?  But the Times did note these tapes in their initial story on this:

In exchanges involving the Moussaoui case, the C.I.A. notified the United States attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., in September that it had discovered two videotapes and one audio tape that it had not previously acknowledged to the court, but made no mention of any tapes destroyed in 2005.

The acknowledgment was spelled out in a letter sent in October by federal prosecutors that amended the C.I.A.’s previous declarations involving videotapes. The letter is heavily redacted, with sentences identifying the detainees blacked out.

Signed by the United States attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the C.I.A.’s search for interrogation tapes “appears to be complete.”

LATE UPDATE: From the Dec 22 Times, last paragraphs:

Government officials have said that the videos destroyed in 2005 were the only recordings of interrogations made by C.I.A. operatives, although in September government lawyers notified a federal judge in Virginia that the agency had recently found three audio and video recordings of detainees.

Intelligence officials have said that those tapes were not made by the C.I.A., but by foreign intelligence services.

At least they worked it a bit.

Dems Should Thank Heaven For Dick Cheney

Yesterday's WaPo headlined the news that, despite their current outraged protestations, Congressional Democrats have been briefed on the CIA enhanced interrogation program since its inception in 2002 (Lots of reax at Memeorandum).

This display of outrage reprised Democratic outrage over the "revelations" of the warrantless wiretapping, when we learned that the NSA had done what they had told Congressional leaders it was doing.

So why should the Dem faithful be putting Dick Cheney near the top of the holiday greeting list?  Because it was Dick Cheney's ongoing effort to assert Executive Branch authority that kept the White House from submitting these programs for Congressional approval.

The Patriot Act passed the supine Senate with 98 votes in October 2001; retroactive civil libertarians amongst the Dems have since realized this was am outrage.

The Iraq war resolution passed the hapless Senate with 77 votes in October 2002; retroactive geniuses amongst the Dems have since regretted their helplessness.

And had Bush submitted enhanced interrogation and warrantless wiretapping for Congressional approval, they would have passed as well.  Fortunately for the Dems, that did not happen.

Libby To Drop Appeal

Libby is dropping his appeal; here is the statement from his attorney at The Corner, and thoughts from the Politico.

Let's see - Bush can pardon Libby this Christmas season, or he can let "Should Bush pardon Libby?" be asked of every candidate at every appearance from now until the election.

The Decider lives for these tough choices.

My two cents: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.  One reason to get this over with is that right now the CIA is clearly at war with the world; Bush's pardoning spin can depict Libby as a victim of a 2003 rebellion.  Now, where is that old Howard Fineman link?  And let's put Doc Drezner's contemporaneous thoughts in the mix.

Bonus Wrinkle If I Were Spinning This For Bush (if?): If Congress wants to chat with Libby they really need to set a side a few minutes to sort through Ms. Plame's varying stories about the circumstances under which Niger trip was initiated and her husband nominated.  And maybe they can even get the CIA Counsel to finally opine on her covert status, and clue us in on the latest dates for which she received credit for service abroad on her pension - how cool would that be?  In the meantime we are filing that under "As If". 

A Point To Ponder:  A Libby pardon might give Congressional Dems and their currently alienated friends at the CIA a chance to re-bond and reunite on the fantasy that the Plame outing was consequential.  Awkward, since right now the CIA seems even more miffed with posturing Dems.

MORE:  The Captain is tough on Libby and his supporters:

This will take some wind out of the sails for Libby supporters, Thompson included.

I will never lack for wind.

...His supporters claimed that the commutation was not the end Libby or they sought, but an intermediate step to keep an innocent man from the injustice of imprisonment. They raised funds for his legal costs in part to help him meet that burden of complete vindication.

Now Libby has chosen not to pursue vindication at all. A felony conviction with no prison time apparently suffices for him. Will that change of heart produce a similar shift in opinion about Libby and his conviction for obstruction and perjury? Will people see this as a tacit admission of guilt?

Good question.  I would like to rally a table pounding defense, or even a sensible answer, but I am stuck on the fact that I more or less considered Libby to be guilty of some of the specific acts with which he was charged.  My hopes for an appeal essentially rested on technicalities, such as whether Fitzgerald had proper authority to undertake this investigation, and were based on the notion that Libby was caught up in a burst of political opportunism that allied the Democrats with the CIA in a tussle against the White House.

I also think that the Fitzgerald "investigation" did not lack for dubious characters - a full accounting would have:

1. clarified whether David Gregory of NBC News got a leak (Ari Fleischer said he did, and Gregory has never denied it);

2.  clarified whether Andrea Mitchell had received a leak; she said she did, and she was reporting on the right topic with the right people, but Fitzgerald never asked her.

3.  resolved the Tim Russert puzzle.  If either David Gregory or Andrea Mitchell had received a Plame leak, Russert would have been in a bit of a jam - Russert insisted he could not have leaked to Libby because of his own ignorance of the Plame story, but also insisted that he would have been tipped if either Gregory or Mitchell had been.  However, Fitzgerald helped Russert conceal his cooperation with the FBI, Fitzgerald helped conceal the David Gregory / Ari Fleischer situation, and he helped keep Andrea Mitchell off the witness stand.

Well, that is just at NBC News; Ms. Plame was not a trial participant but she has her own uninvestigated credibility issues.

That said, I think the truth would have set Libby free, and that he lied to conceal Cheney's involvement and keep Dick on the ticket for 2004 - neither Cheney nor Libby faced any criminal penalties (prior to testifying) but the political embarrassment might have prompted Bush to annoint a Vice-Presidential successor, rather than go with the Ticker Guy.  Mission accomplished.

Grr - I will trail off here, as time does not permit...

Dignity

From the Politico:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says a swipe that Vice President Cheney took at Democratic House leaders is “beneath the dignity of his office.”

To which the Vice President replied, "Go Cheney yourself".

You Just Can't Trust The CIA

The Times tells us that CIA is not consistently forthcoming with the truth.

Who woulda guessed?

Water, bridge, I need to move on (or jump off).  The Captain covers the latest outrage.

MORE:  Not that I would necessarily believe them, but can't someone nail down the latest date for which she received credit on her pension for her service abroad?  And the last hashing of this here was Nov 15, and I doubt the battle lines have shifted much.

WHAT DID THEY KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT:  The Muckraker isn't digging the Jay and Jane Show:

But the bottom line here is that at least some Congressional leaders knew something about the tapes and something about their destruction, and didn't say anything about either. [Jane] Harman's silence is especially stunning: she co-chaired a joint Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks in 2002 that didn't receive that very pertinent information.

And in a post that might have been titled "With Democrats Like These..." Marty Lederman writes:

Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of legally dubious (at best) CIA intelligence activities, and then saying nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at which point he expresses outrage and incredulity -- but reveals nothing.

...Jane Harman also knew of the intention to destroy the tapes, and she at least "urged" the CIA in writing not to do it. (Where were her colleagues?) But when she found out the CIA had destroyed the tapes, where was Harman's press conference? Where were the congressional hearings?

This ongoing selective outrage by the Congressional overseers is ridiculous.

MAYBE IT IS NOT OBVIOUS: OK, I know sometimes I can be a bit sarcastic, but when I provide a link to Captain Ed and describe it as "the latest outrage" and the Captain appears to be outraged, it is not an absurd leap to think that maybe I am outraged as well; just for starters, I am on the same page as the Captain a lot more than I am off it, and my use of the word "outrage" can even serve as a supplemental clue.   And beyond that, the Captian links to several other irritated righties, so it is not a leap to think that maybe, since righties are irked, I am irked as well.

From the Captain:

Frankly, the timing stinks. The tapes sat unmolested in a vault for at least two years without the CIA worrying about the potential damage from a leak. The Inspector General had long since concluded that the interrogations did not break the law. However, as soon as Congress began debating the specific interrogation technique that the tapes depicted, someone decided that they represented a danger to the agents. It looks a lot more like destroying evidence than tightening security.

Hayden will spend the next few weeks explaining this to Congress. Instead, Congress should be talking with the people in charge of the CIA in 2005 to find out who gave the order to destroy the tapes, and why.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin agrees, as does Rick Moran.  James Joyner says it looks like obstruction of justice.

Clear enough?

Krugman Still Spinning On Health Care Mandates

Paul Krugman adopts a "Please, not in front of the kids" approach to his discussion of the back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the merits of their respective health care plans:

The Mandate Muddle

Imagine this: It’s the summer of 2009, and President Barack Obama is about to unveil his plan for universal health care. But his health policy experts have done the math, and they’ve concluded that the plan really needs to include a requirement that everyone have health insurance — a so-called mandate.

...But Mr. Obama knows that if he tries to include a mandate in the plan, he’ll face a barrage of misleading attacks from conservatives who oppose universal health care in any form. And he’ll have trouble responding — because he made the very same misleading attacks on Hillary Clinton and John Edwards during the race for the Democratic nomination.

...lately Mr. Obama has been stressing his differences with his rivals by attacking their plans from the right — which means that he has been giving credence to false talking points that will be used against any Democratic health care plan a couple of years from now.

Let me summarize: Obama should not criticize Hillary now because it will only help Republicans later, after Obama realizes Hillary was right and he was wrong.  My goodness - maybe he should just drop out of the race and spare his party the vexation of having to evaluate alternatives.

I do want to applaud Prof. Krugman for the candid title to his column - he really does his best to create a muddle on health care mandates.  Here we go with his list of Obama's "false" talking points:

First is the claim that a mandate is unenforceable. Mr. Obama’s advisers have seized on the widely cited statistic that 15 percent of drivers are uninsured, even though insurance is legally required.

Bah.  Neither Obama nor anyone else is claiming that mandates are not enforceable; they are noting quite pointedly that the level of compliance will depend in large part on the carrots and sticks associated with the mandate.

The carrot is insurance subsidies for folks who can demonstrate a low enough income.  But Obama's issue is whether Hillary also has a big stick.  Here is Krugman acknowledging that point the last time he assaulted this topic:

...Mr. Obama accuses his rivals of not explaining how they would enforce mandates, and suggests that the mandate would require some kind of nasty, punitive enforcement: “Their essential argument,” he says, “is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you’ll be penalized in some way.”

As an economist the notion that incentives and penalties will affect people's behavior should hardly surprise Krugman, but let me document it anyway by citing this study on "The Likely Efficacy Of Mandates For Health Insurance":

The effectiveness of a mandate depends critically on the cost of compliance, the penalties for noncompliance, and the timely enforcement of compliance.

Thank heaven for studies.

Lets swing back to Krugman:

Anyway, why talk about car insurance rather than looking at direct evidence on how health care mandates perform? Other countries — notably Switzerland and the Netherlands — already have such mandates. And guess what? They work.

Hooray for The Netherlands, and Switzerland too.  But if we are looking at evidence, why doesn't Krugman present some evidence about the carrots and sticks on offer in the Netherlands.  This tidbit from a health care oriented blog about which I know nothing may strike Hillary backers as a politically unpalatable penalty:

Individuals have a mandate to purchase coverage (effective 1/1/06) and pay a penalty of 130% of the monthly premium if they go without coverage.

For comparison, the Massachusetts penalty for non-compliance was reported recently in the Times:

A year after Massachusetts became the only state to require that individuals have health coverage, residents face deadlines to sign up or lose their personal tax exemption, worth $219 on next year’s state income tax returns.

That is roughly $20/month, which apparently is not providing a lot of motivation.  However...

But in the second year, the fine can amount to half the cost of the least expensive policy available, probably at least $1,000.

Higher penalties produce higher compliance - go figure.

And I know we are all curious about Switzerland but so far all I have found is this:

For those who try to evade the mandate, penalties are stiff: the government can tack on fines equally 30 percent to 50 percent of the price of the insurance. Misrepresenting whether you are covered is punishable by fines and prison terms.

If I had to guess I would bet that the 30% to 50% is in addition to the cost of the insurance.  Or could it be the case that if a person not in compliance is detected they are fined but allowed to walk away without paying their way into compliance?   I don't know.

So to recap - everyone except Krugman acknowledges that higher penalties produce higher compliance; Hillary does not want to hint at the penalties she has in mind because they are likely to draw unfriendly fire; and Barack does not think Hilary should be allowed to claim her plan is "universal" unless she is willing to take the heat for the compliance components that will make it universal.

Back to Krugman's false talking points:

The second false claim is that people won’t be able to afford the insurance they’re required to have — a claim usually supported with data about how expensive insurance is. But all the Democratic plans include subsidies to lower-income families to help them pay for insurance, plus a promise to increase the subsidies if they prove insufficient.

Oh, stop - unless the insurance is free there will be people who will only be buying insurance because they are forced to, not because they want to or because they think that the subsidized price is right.  Krugman and Clinton, in their wisdom as the economy's central planners, are comfortable asserting that these people can "afford" it but what does that mean?  There are plenty of things people can "afford" if jail is the alternative. 

And whatever the level of subsidization, there will be some groups - most likely the working near-poor and the middle class - that think the insurance is not affordable relative to the alternatives, one of which would be more heavily subsidized insurance.  Of course, this is not a bug but a feature - Hillary and Bill made it clear in 1993 that their goal was use health care to create a huge new middle-class entitlement, thereby positioning the Democratic Party as the purveyor and protector of these middle-class benefits in the same way that (back in the day) the Democratic Party wooed the elderly by being generous with Social Security.  Any day now!

The Direct IV Line

Dan Bartlett displayed yet again the smooth interface between the White House communications team and the blogosphere with this Texas Monthly interview:

Q: Yeah, or what if [conservative blogger] Hugh Hewitt called?

A: That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because they do reach people who are influential.

Q: Well, they reach the president’s base.

A: That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

The National Journal rounds up the response:

Liberal bloggers are giddy and their conservative rivals are defensive over the news that the Bush White House sees conservative blogs as an extension of the Republican message machine.

Interesting.  If Bartlett means that he was able to rely on righty bloggers to post transcripts and exact quotes, thereby circumventing the MSM filter, well, yes, one would hope so.

If he means that righty bloggers were broadly sympathetic to the goals of the Administration, well, no kidding.

But if he means that the White House could expect an uncritical acceptance of their latest pronouncements, well, how did that work with Harriet Miers, just for example?  Or perhaps we can ask Mr. Bartlett to recap Bush's triumphal march through the right wing blogosphere with his signing of McCain-Feingold, or the Dubai port deal, or his recent push for immigration reform?

Oh, well - presumably this left-wing gloating is simply a manifestation of the latest Townhouse talking point.  But let's savor this moment of the pot's discovery of the kettle's color:

Conservatives do love to be told what to say. Saves them the hassle of having to think for themselves.

That comes from the Mighty Kos himself, purveyor of the biggest IV drip around - a quick glance at the Daily Kos finds among their diarists John Kerry, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and no doubt more.

I would say that could be described as regurgitating exactly what the candidate wants to say.

NO DOUBT:  The "Prominent Contributors" list at Wikipedia includes Ted Kennedy, Wesley Clark, Conyers, Boxer, Durbin, Feingold, Waxman, Carter, and John Edwards.

But Kos does not provide a house organ.  Hardly.

They Like Mike

The NY Times continues their series of candidate profiles with a long, loving look at Mike Huckabee without ever mentioning the Wayne Dumond debacle where a paroled rapist raped and killed two more women.

However, the Times is on this!  At their "Caucus" blog, that is, if not for Dead Tree readers.  Here is Kate Phillips Big Finish:

We can guarantee you that this will not go away. Mr. Huckabee will be asked and asked about the DuMond case. As he has been.

And the Times may even cover it.  But not quite yet.

As to why not, Dave Weigel explained yesterday (Huck's a lib) but here is the Times today:

Mr. Huckabee never abandoned his stances on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, but his efforts on these issues seemed more show than substance, some observers say.

“Typically in a legislative session he would put forward a primarily symbolic social issue for the session: a “choose life” license plate, for instance, Mr. Barth said. The bill would pass, social conservatives would be satisfied, and the governor would be free to do the health care and education work he was becoming increasingly passionate about.

He's a Republican that Democrats could love.

AS AN INSPIRATIONAL EXAMPLE:  Just to inspire the Times, this is an oldie but goodie example from 2004 of the sort of story that can be done:

If you're wondering how Gov. Huckabee's hundreds of clemencies compare with neighboring states, get ready for a shocker.  Huckabee leads the pack.

He has issued more commutations and pardons than all of the six neighboring  states combined.

Here are the figures for neighboring states since 1996, when Huckabee took office (and keep in mind the population of these states is nearly 20 times ours):
                >> Louisiana – 213.
                    >> Mississippi – 24.
                    >> Missouri – 79.
                    >> Oklahoma – 178.
                    >> Tennessee – 32.
                    >> Texas – 98 (in-cludes 36 inmates released because they were convicted on drug charges with planted evidence).

Total: 624 vs. Huckabee's 703.

Governors in neighboring states almost never grant killers clemency, while Huckabee has commuted the sentences of a dozen murderers.

Can't fault him for lack of compassion, but maybe his judgment could be better.

Kerry On Imus

John Kerry called in to the new Don Imus show and delivered a few chuckles as well as some thoughts about his recent back and forth with T. Boone Pickens.

First, a chuckle - per Kerry, the true mark of patriotism is "keeping faith with those who wore the uniform".  This is welcome news to the killers in the army of Ghengis Khan.

Now, back to business - the first topic Imus raised was the Pickens-Kerry dispute over the wager originally proposed by Pickens (earlier coverage with plenty of background links includes my first post, second post, and the LA Times).

Kerry argued that Pickens was weaseling away from his original proposal to pay $1 million dollars to anyone who can prove that anything the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth said about Kerry was false.  Imus was sympathetic to this view, as am I, so Pickens is losing on that PR front.

Kerry more or less said that since this sounded like easy money his intention was to send to Pickens the proof that *one* claim made by the SBVT was false and then await a check for $1 million to go to the Parlayzed Veterans fund.  That is pretty crafty by Kerry - proving just one claim is false ought to be easy, and Kerry can present this as simply trying to raise money for a good cause, rather than attempting to fully rebut the many allegations made by the SBVT.

However!  Eventually Kerry claimed he could prove that *everything* the SBVT said was false.  Bring it on!

Left unasked, and unanswered - what is Kerry waiting for?  I exhort him to send his proof on one point (if that is really all he can muster) to Thomas Lipscomb, Bruce Kesler, or Capt. Ed Morrissey.  All are familiar with the Swift Boat controversies and have street cred with the right, so if they rule for Kerry they will be believed in a way that a puff piece in the Boston Globe will not be.  One would think that this would put a lot more pressure on Pickens than Kerry will generate by dropping a package in the mail and waiting around for a response and is more likely to produce the $1 million dollar check.  Since it is for a good cause I am confident Kerry will be forthcoming with his evidence.  Sort of confident.  A little.

Finally, can someone find a producer for the Imus show?  At the conclusion of their chat Imus evidently thought he and Kerry were done but Kerry thought Imus had asked one more question (and he had).  Consequently, while Kerry rattled on about why he would not endorse a Democratic Presidential candidate right away, Imus was talking over him about the next spot; eventually, Kerry was just cut off while still speaking and we went to a commercial.  Pretty rude - do they know he he is?

LAST LAUGH:  In the context of Romney's upcoming speech on his Mormon faith Kerry talked about religion in American politics.  His insight - the most important thing is to be authentic and be who you are.  Geez, as if Romney needs lessons in authenticity from John Kerry!

COME ONE COME ALL:  Hey, that million dollar offer is not restricted to John Kerry.

Rebel Gold

The LA Times runs a fascinating "truth is stranger than fiction" story about one man's search for buried Confederate treasure (purportedly hidden to finance a second revolution - save your Dixie cups, the South will rise again).

Since they mention the upcoming Nicholas Cage flick "National Treasure: Book of Secrets", I guess that is the promotional tie-in.