JustOneMinute

Show Me The Coattails!

The Politico on Obama to some nervous Congressional Dems:

‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’

The Las Vegas Review-Journal on Harry Reid's Presidential visit:

WASHINGTON -- During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother.

...

But as Reid faces an uphill path to win re-election to a fifth Senate term, Obama's enthusiastic endorsement does not appear to have improved the Senate majority leader's standing among constituents, according to a new poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reid got no bounce from Obama's visit on Feb. 19, when the president spoke highly of him at Green Valley High School and to business leaders at CityCenter, polling indicates.

A larger percentage of voters surveyed (17 percent) said they would be less likely to vote for Reid following the president's visit than said they would be more likely to vote for him (7 percent). Seventy-five percent said Obama's visit would have no effect on how they vote.

Dems are going to carry that weight.  But he ain't heavy, he's my President.

We Are All Tea Partiers Now

Nancy Pelosi doesn't need a Weatherman to tell her which way the wind blows - she explained to Elizabeth Vargas of "This Week" that she shares views with the some of the Tea Partiers:

VARGAS: Let's talk a bit about the coming elections in November. You had recently-- and the Tea Party movement, do you think it will be a force to be reckoned with? You had said last summer that it was a faux grassroots movement. You called it the Astroturf movement.

PELOSI: In some respects it is. Uh-huh.

VARGAS: Is the Tea Party movement a force?

PELOSI: No - No what I said at the time is, that they were -- the Republican Party directs a lot of what the Tea Party does, but not everybody in the Tea Party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, Astroturf, as opposed to grassroots.

But, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as -- it just has to stop. And that's why I've fought the special interest, whether it's on energy, whether it's on health insurance, whether it's on pharmaceuticals and the rest.

VARGAS: So, common ground with many people in the Tea Party movement.

PELOSI: Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters. Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests and many Tea Partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose.

Good luck with that outreach effort, Nancy!

I Rise To Defend John McCain

John McCain is a great American, although I had my doubts about him as a Presidential prospect.  The toilers at TPM Muckrakers, on the other hand, are not so great students of recent history.  Here, they report breathlessly on John McCain appearance on Meet The Press:

Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeated his claim that he -- and the entire country -- was lied to about the TARP program in 2007.

Asked about the claim by host David Gregory, McCain was adamant. "We were all misled" by Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, McCain said.

Evan McMorris-Santoro then recycles a post by Zachary Roth which included this:

McCain Rewrites Own History On Bailout Vote

...But now, in a bid to explain his vote for the bailout, the Arizona senator is flat out rewriting history.

McCain said recently that he only voted for the $700 billion package because Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke misled him, by assuring him it would focus on the housing meltdown, rather than on Wall Street. But that appears to be directly contradicted by the record.

Unless John McCain was a psychic, he is going to be absolutely correct about this.  Paulson quite famously pulled a switcheroo, going to Congress for authority to buy up to $700 billion in toxic securities and then reversing his field two weeks later and investing directly into some big banks, including Goldman.

I am not sure what it takes to convince a lefty, but here we go:

NY Times, Sept 28 2008: Treasury Would Emerge With Vast New Powers:

During its weeklong deliberations, Congress made many changes to the Bush administration’s original proposal to bail out the financial industry, but one overarching aspect of the initial plan that remains is the vast discretion it gives to the Treasury secretary.

The draft legislation, which will be put to a House vote on Monday, gives Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his successor extraordinary power to decide how the $700 billion bailout fund is spent. For example, if he thinks it wise, he may buy not only mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, but any other financial instrument.

To be sure, the Treasury secretary’s powers have been tempered since the original Bush administration proposal, which would have given Mr. Paulson nearly unfettered control over the program. There are now two separate oversight panels involved, one composed of legislators and the other including regulatory and administration officials.

Still, Mr. Paulson can choose to buy from any financial institution that does business in the United States, or from pension funds, with wide discretion over what he will buy and how much he will pay. Under most circumstances, banks owned by foreign governments are not eligible for the money, but under some conditions, the secretary can choose to bail out foreign central banks.

NY Times, Oct 3 - Bailout Plan Wins Approval:

Supporters said the bailout was needed to prevent economic collapse; opponents said it was hasty, ill conceived and risked too much taxpayer money to help Wall Street tycoons, while providing no guarantees of success. The rescue plan allows the Treasury to buy troubled securities from financial firms in an effort to ease a deepening credit crisis that is choking off business and consumer loans, the lifeblood of the economy, and contributing to a string of bank failures.

As a bonus, here is  Paul Krugman on Sept 21 denouncing the Paulson plan as misdirected, arguing that Paulson really needs to scrap the idea of buying toxic waste and instead put the money directly into banks.  Et voila!  That is just what Paulson did, shortly after Congress approved something different.

NY Times, Oct 15 2008: Drama Behind A Banking Deal:

The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left.

...

But by 6:30, all nine chief executives had signed -- setting in motion the largest government intervention in the American banking system since the Depression and retreating from the rescue plan Mr. Paulson had fought so hard to get through Congress only two weeks earlier.

...Analysts say the United States was forced to shift policy in part because Britain and other European countries announced plans to recapitalize their banks and backstop bank lending. But unlike in Britain, the Treasury secretary presented his plan as an offer the banks could not refuse.

McCain was certainly misled, as were we all.  That doesn't mean the first policy was correct and the second one wrong, nor does it mean that McCain would not have supported Paulson's Plan B if Paulson had pitched that from the outset as the only sensible way forward.

But as a matter of historical fact, what Paulson did was quite different from what he said he would do when Congress voted him the funds.  Just as McCain said.

Al Is Back

I can't deal with Al Gore today, but Jules Crittenden can and does.

BUT IN THE COURSE OF NOT DEALING WITH HIM:  Some stray thoughts:

1.  The ReliaPundit, one of the Astute Bloggers, is confusing the stratosphere with the troposphere, and who among us has not made a similar mistake?   Tropospheric drying is scored as a big "Maybe" over here.

2.  Possibly my most startling insight of the day, and I can only hope it will come back to me...

3.  While Al rants about lack of action in Washington and Copenhagen, do consider this Reason article, which notes that China and India will never get on board, which means Al really only plans to bail water from the front of the Titanic.

And we may as well quote President LeBron on compliance with Kyoto:

“Kyoto was legally binding and everybody still fell short anyway.”

Everybody?!?  Thank heaven it wasn't Bush the Cowboy or Sarah the Moron that said that!  C'mon - Europeans have been cooking the boks like crazy and several countries, including France, Germany and the UK, have an excellent shot at achieving Kyoto compliance (which won't be settled until 2012).  Now a quick glance at the chart on p. 12 of 18  helps explain why 1990 was set as the baseline for a protocol endorsed in 1997; the US was in a recession, so our emissions were a bit below trend, and European countries had already taken steps to cut their emissions by 1997 (e.g., the UK switched to natural gas, Germany adopted the collapsed East Germany).

So Europe started with a bit of a lead, but they may still get there.

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Here we go.

More Catnip For Libs

Here we go with yet another study demonstrating that liberals are smarter, happier, better ballrom dancers, and really just the bee's knees:

(CNN) -- Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

Sexual exclusivity? Well, I never thought Bill Clinton was a committed lib anyway.

I'm a blank on his nom de guerre just now, but Nando, long time guest at Talk Left, is looking marvelous with his point that maybe libs who don't like IQ in the context of The Bell Curve shouldn't like it here.  But they will!

And do check his link to Pharyngula, where we learn that study author Kanazawa is "the Fenimore Cooper" of sociobiology.  This rebuttal of some of his earlier statistical work is quite accessible.

Just to help Kanazawa in his quest for attention let me pull this from the CNN story:

Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.

"It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere," Kanazawa said.

Hey, even paranoids have real gods, buddy!  And we all know some pretty paranoid libs.

Here is a link to the study; I am not a subscriber, so I am stuck at the door with my questions. But here we go:

As noted in the rebuttal cited above, if a researcher re-slices the data often enough, something is likely to emerge as "significant" at a 5% threshold.  How many other data possibilities were tested and found uninteresting?

Secondly, what in the world did Kanazawa do about race?  I will assert with few links that (a) there is a controversial history of blacks in America lagging on IQ tests, for whatever reason; (b) blacks are probably under-represented among atheists; and (c) based on self-identification, blacks are more likely to describe themselves as conservative than as liberal.

Not having read the paper I have no idea how my unsupported factoids might affect his result, but I think I would want to know before I sang the praises of this study.  At a guess, any such effect would not fully account for the 6-11 point differential noted here, but who knows?

[MORE:  OK, I will think out loud - suppose we have a population of 40 white atheist libs with an IQ of 100, 40 white religious conservatives with an IQ of 100, and 20 black religious conservatives with a measured IQ of 91, subject to a million caveats about whether that is a meaningful number.

The libs will have an average IQ of 100, as noted; the conservatives will have an average IQ of 97.  That is less than 6-11 point gap found in the study.  To get to a six point gap, we would need to expect that the black group had an IQ of 82.

In practice,obviously, not all the blacks will be found in one group.]

Green Jobs

We hear about "green jobs" from Sunil Sharan, who was "a director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE from 2008 to 2009" and "has worked in the clean-energy industry for a decade"  Incredibly, green jobs may have been hyped and oversold by Team Obama:

"Green jobs" have become a central underpinning of the Obama administration's rationale to promote clean energy. But how valid is the assumption that a "clean-energy" economy will generate enough jobs to mitigate today's high level of unemployment -- new jobless claims were up 22,000 this week -- and to meet the needs of future generations? A green economy would have to spout jobs in the millions to do both. The facts challenge the prevailing thinking among some policymakers and officials that green jobs are a principal reason for transforming the economy.

Mr. Sharan illustrates a simple example of job creation and destruction using "smart meters", which are part of the new smarter electrical grid:

Nearly 40 million smart meters have been deployed worldwide, mostly in Europe. Jobs created in this industry can be broadly classified into four categories: installation, manufacturing, research and development, and IT services.

First, installation: It typically takes a team of two certified electricians half an hour to replace the old, spinning meter. In one day, two people can install about 15 new meters, or about 5,000 in a year. Were a million smart meters to be installed in a year, 400 installation jobs would be created. It follows that the planned U.S. deployment of 20 million smart meters over five years, or 4 million per year, should create 1,600 installation jobs. Unless more meters are added to the annual deployment schedule, this workforce of 1,600 should cover installation needs for the next five years.

Hmm, these guys are working 7.5 hours a day six days a week - we can't be talking about AFSCME jobs here.  And Mr. Sharan has evidently not taken on board the lesson of the weatherization program - many, many jobs will be created surveying prevailing wage standards for smart meter installers across the country.

After noting that most of the smart meters will be manufactured abroad Mr. Sharan presses on with "How Green Was My Job?"

Now let's consider job losses. It takes one worker today roughly 15 minutes to read a single meter. So in a day, a meter reader can scan about 30 meters, or about 700 meters a month. Meters are typically read once a month, making it the base period to calculate meter-reading jobs. Reading a million meters every month engages about 1,400 personnel. In five years, 20 million manually read meters are expected to disappear, taking with them some 28,000 meter-reading jobs.

One might quibble - if meters are actually read once every there months (with estimated readings in between), then 28,000 meter readers are actually surveying 60 million meters per month.  Only a third of these people, or about 9,000, will become redundant if 20 million smart meters have been installed.

Still, send better quibbles!  The gist is that 1,600 installers can work diligently for five years and permanently displace multiples of that number.

In other words, instead of creating jobs, smart metering will probably result in net job destruction. This should not be surprising because the main method of making the electrical grid "smart" is by automating its functions. Automation by definition obviates the need for people.

As I recall, smart metering does lots of other clever things, like turning off my air conditioner when my utility is running at peak output to avoid brownouts.  But it sounds like a loser of a jobs measure.

Let's have a bit more gloom from Mr. Sharan:

In other "clean-energy" sectors such as solar and wind energy, jobs are predicted to emerge in the same broad categories of installation, manufacturing, R&D and IT services, but the near-term expected levels of investment in and adoption of these renewable sources of energy mean that net job creation should top out in the tens of thousands, as opposed to the desired hundreds of thousands or more. Electric vehicles represent another promising green sector, but even if the vehicles were rolled out in substantive quantities, jobs would be created mainly in research and development and infrastructure support, and there, too, only in the hundreds or maybe even thousands. Manufacturing jobs would grow only incrementally since electric vehicle production will for the most part cannibalize that of gasoline-powered cars.

And we close with some jobs gloom from Ronald Bailey of Reason:

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dropped by the Copenhagen conference, she said of Waxman-Markey, “It’s all about the jobs.” To hear Pelosi talk, saving the planet from climate doom is incidental to making sure Americans are employed making solar panels and weatherizing houses. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a co-sponsor of an energy and climate change bill in the Senate, similarly asserted in Copenhagen, “Our bill is essentially a jobs bill.”

Showering government largess on an industry will certainly increase employment in that industry. It’s much less clear that such subsidies will produce more jobs on balance. Kerry thinks it will, claiming that when Germany enacted “strong policy mechanisms to drive investment in solar power and other renewable energy sources,” the result supposedly was employment growth: “Renewable energy usage has tripled to 16 percent, creating 1.7 million jobs. By 2020, Germany’s clean energy sector will be the biggest contributor to the nation’s economy.” 

An October 2009 study by RWI, a nonprofit German economic think tank, however, concluded that policies pushing renewable energy end up producing “job losses from crowding out of cheaper forms of conventional energy generation, indirect impacts on upstream industries, additional job losses from the drain on economic activity precipitated by higher electricity prices, private consumers’ overall loss of purchasing power due to higher electricity prices, and diverting funds from other, possibly more beneficial investment.” The report called Germany’s experience “a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.”

Iain Murry cited that study in Congressional testimony.

 

Our Current Rave

I just finished "City of Thieves ", a pageturner by David Benioff.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stand up and cheer.  Or at least, I did.  And standing up is mission-critical.

Here is an Amazon link which looks great in previews but seems to become bashful when I publish it.

I don't want to deliver any spoilers but this is from the NY Times review.

Lev, an intelligent, awkward, eternally self-doubting Jewish teenager, and Kolya, a Slavic Adonis, have been imprisoned after wartime infractions. Awaiting execution, they’re summoned by the secret police: Colonel Grechko’s daughter is getting married, and eggs are needed for the cake. It would be easier to find snow in Saudi Arabia, but if Lev and Kolya can locate a dozen they’ll get back their ration cards — and their lives. Very soon, the odd couple are dodging a husband-and-wife team of cannibals and seducing their way — well, Kolya is, at least — through the starving city.

President LeBron

Jon Chait was so in awe of Obama's commanding awesomeness that he described the healthcare summit as follows:

President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous.

Update: Good example of what I'm talking about: Lamar Alexander contradicts Obama, says that the Congressional Budget Office found that premiums would rise under the Senate's plan. Obama points out, correctly, that Alexander is just wrong.

But most the time, this is like watching Lebron James play basketball with a bunch of kids who got cut from the 7th grade basketball team. He's treating them really nice, letting his teammates take shots and allowing the other team to try to score. Nice try on that layup, Timmy, you almost got it on. But after a couple minutes I want him to just grab the ball and dunk on these clowns already.

Hmm - let's watch that dunk again on videotape!  The AP Fact Check ran the transcript and concluded that both Obama and Alexander were correct but misleading. 

James Taranto explains Chait to the rest of us:

The Great Condescender

No one holds a candle to Barack Obama when it comes to making smart liberals feel superior.

...

Chait actually makes two distinct claims about Obama: that he has a superior intellect and that he is a superior "communicator." The first claim could be true, although it is far from indisputable. But the second claim is so absurd as to be delusional.

Obama has spent the past year trying to sell Americans on ObamaCare. He has failed utterly, as Podhoretz notes. Now, maybe Chait is right that opposition to ObamaCare is a product of stupidity. Maybe ObamaCare would be popular if a majority of Americans were as brilliant as Jonathan Chait. But in a democratic republic, elections are not limited to the elect. Shockingly, half of all Americans have below-average IQs. They vote too.

By no imaginable standard can a politician be considered a great "communicator," or even an adequate one, if he is unable to persuade voters of average-or-below intelligence to back his policies.

I think maybe Mr. Taranto is being a bit unfair here.  After all, on his side Chait's Great Communicator only had the White House bully pulpit, Congressional chairman, leading academics, and NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, and the LA Times.  Sarah Palin had a Facebook page, Glenn Beck had a television show, and Rush Limbaugh had a radio show, so really - how could Obama hope to break through?

Mr. Chait leaves us with other puzzles in his defense of the Great Communicator.  I like this from the lead of his explanation of "Why You Can't Talk Discuss Health Care With The GOP":

Most of the Republicans have relied upon scripted talking points and generalized denunciations of big government and a "government takeover." Numerous Democrats in the room have explained why it's not possible to ban insurance companies from discriminating against those with preexisting conditions without also covering everybody and subsidizing those who afford it. (Short answer: people would just game the system, going without insurance until they get sick.)

Wait a second!  Mr. Chait may have forgotten, but back in the endless Democratic primaries we sat through debate after debate in which Obama argued that mandates were not necessary.  And he won both the nomination and the election!  Was Obama an idiot conservative back then, or a disingenuous liar?  And whence sprang any sort of a public mandate for these new mandates?

The Great Communicater shared his new-found philosophy about mandates at the summit:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

As of today the State of Illinois requires drivers to have third party liability in order to register their car; as a believer in regulatory creep, I doubt they had a broader requirement including collision back in the 80's, when a young man drove a beater from New York to take his job as a community organizer in Chi-town.

So what does this anecdote from the Great Communicator tells us?  Well, it might tell us he is as dumb as a bag of rocks for not understanding the difference between liability and collision insurance.

But let's give him the benefit if the doubt!  I am trying to think like a Lib here, so bear with me - the moral of the story seems to be that even Barack Obama, future editor of the Harvard Law Review and President of the United States, found simple insurance decisions utterly mystifying and had no idea what he had actually purchased. 

Now, that flies in the face of the Illinois injunction to "Understand what you are buying.  Ask for a detailed explanation in layman’s terms".  Furthermore, despite his utter confusion Obama apparently blundered to the common (and thriftier) conclusion, since no one buys collision on a junker. 

However, months later he realized that paying more for collision would have been a great idea, so history is re-written.  It is now due to ACME's rapaciousness that they are unwilling to right this wrong and write him a check.  And they laughed!  Surely Chait can hear the racial overtones there!  After the laughter died they should have explained to the college grad that he could file a third-party claim against the other driver, assuming Obama was not at fault, but that also may have been too confusing.

Well.  If even Obama can be duped by greedy insurers into saving his money and taking a sensible risk, what hope do the rest of us have?  Surely we need these new health insurance mandates to make sure both that we buy policies and that the policies we buy have everything we need, not just everything we (stupidly think we) want.

This is classic, generic Democratic paternalism - people can't be trusted to make their own decisions and they certainly should not be expected to endure the consequences of those decisions. 

Young Barack should never have been allowed to buy liability-only insurance that didn't cover damage to his junker.  Barack, Nancy and Harry will protect us from our own deplorable decision making on the health care front.

More Health Care

Megan McArdle does not think Obama moved the needle with his health care summit, but I like this:

The longer these things wear on, the more hardened opinion gets.  I never saw this moving the needle of public opinion.  Democrats have to decide if they want to ignore what the voters think, knowing that this will be an issue in the next election.  I doubt they will, but maybe they care enough to toss away the house and the senate.  After all, what's the point of winning elections if you don't get to push through your policy agenda?

Exactly!  And what's the point of buying a new Toyota if you don't put the pedal to the medal and aim for the nearest tree?

Losing the House and letting curious Republican chairmen investigate everything under the sun seems like an odd way to advance the broader Dem agenda, but I am not smart enough to be a liberal strategist.  And maybe the House is lost anyway, in which case Pelosi and Reid may as well have the ultimate lame-duck session and cram this stuff down after the election.

Clive Crook and John Dickerson note that the professorial Obama on display did not exactly paint the Republicans and their ideas so daft that they need to be ignored while the Dems railroad their bill through.

On With The Cram-Down! (Over The Cliff)

So what did people think of the health care show?  I think the Republicans did well enough to block the "No Ideas, Obstructionist" label, which leaves Harry, Nancy and Barrack with a problem. 

Do they pause briefly, then announce that having heard the Republicans ideas, some of which the President acknowledged as valuable, they are going to use reconciliation and arcane maneuvers to pass a bill favored by 25% of the recently polled?  Can they even round up enough suicidal Dems to make that work?

Do they proceed with Obama's non-existent Plan B?  Or do they just let this issue fade away and focus on jobs, jobs, jobs?

I think they have to just fade.

LUCK, INCLUDING BAD LUCK, IS THE RESIDUE OF DESIGN:  The summit was covered extensively on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.  So who won, Dems or Reps?  I didn't watch Fox to see how well Reps did; I stuck with CNN, which more or less was calling it even.  And MSNBC?  Normally they would have had their reporters in pom-poms cheering Obama's greatness, but instead they cut to Olympic coverage.

Rachel and Keith will carry Obama's water tonight, but for a few vital hours the Administration outlet was off-message.

Obama Versus Alexander

Pres. Obama and Sen Alexander contended on the question of whether individual premiums would rise under ObamaCare.  Let's cut to the Politico for their summary of the exchange:

President Barack Obama and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) engaged in the first factual argument of the health-care summit about an hour after it started.

Promoting the idea of a health-care exchange, Obama said consumers would get the benefits of lower costs, and that the Congressional Budget Office says such a concept would lower costs for people by 14 percent to 20 percent.

Addressing previous comments by Alexander, Obama said the claim that premiums would rise is "just not the case, according to the Congressional Budget Office."

Alexander interrupted Obama, saying, "The Congressional Budget Office report says that premiums will rise as a result of the Senate bill."

Obama retorted: "No, no, no, no, no. This is an example of where we've got to get our facts straight. Let me respond to what you just said. Because it's not factually accurate." He said costs for families would go down, and that the CBO says families might choose to buy better coverage that would be more expensive. "They didn't say the actual premiums would be going up," he said.

When he finished, Alexander responded. “With respect, you’re wrong,” he said. Obama replied by challenging him: "I'm pretty certain I'm not wrong. ... I promise you we'll get this settled before the day's out."

So who is right?  White House cheerleader Ezra Klein says Obama wins, but he declines to include a link to the relevant CBO report., choosing instead to mis-state their conclusion.  From Klein:

Lamar Alexander and Barack Obama just had a contentious exchange on this point, so it's worth settling the issue: Yes, the CBO found health-care reform would reduce premiums. The issue gets confused because it also found that access to subsidies would encourage people to buy more comprehensive insurance, which would mean that the value of their insurance would be higher after reform than before it.

For heaven's sake - people will be "encouraged" to buy more expensive insurance?  They will be "encouraged" in the sense that cheaper policies providing less exotic coverage will be disallowed.  Obama explained that under his plan, Americans ought to have the right to better insurance; in practice, this means that Americans ought to have the right to be forced to pay more to get more.

The Politico explains this, and rules that both sides are kinda right:

But the same CBO report also makes Obama's point that the premium increases pay for better benefits: 

Under the legislation, new nongroup policies would cover a broader scope of benefits than are projected to be covered by such policies, on average, under current law. In particular, the legislation would require all new nongroup policies to cover a specified set of “essential health benefits” ...  and would be required to match the scope of benefits provided by typical employment-based plans. As a result, new nongroup policies would cover certain services that are often not covered by nongroup policies under current law, such as maternity care, prescription drugs, and mental health and substance abuse treatment. Moreover, nongroup insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage for preexisting conditions, so premiums would have to increase to cover the resulting costs.

I wonder if healthy Mormons (to pick a tee-total group at random) really want to pay extra for substance abuse coverage.  I assume no one sets out to end up in rehab, but plenty of people can predict that they are simply not on a path heading there.

As to Obama's point that costs would drop by 14-20%, half of that comes from this:

Average premiums would be 7 percent to 10 percent lower because of a shift in the types of people obtaining coverage. Most of that change would stem from an influx of enrollees with below-average spending for health care, who would purchase coverage because of the new subsidies to be provided and the individual mandate to be imposed.

So healthy people currently opting out will be forced by mandates to enroll in a plan, thereby cutting costs for the rest of us.

Health Summit Open Thread

Away we go.  This CNN poll should cast some gloom upon the few Democrats bitterly clinging to the notion of comprehensive health care reform.

Twenty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform.

I especially like this insight:

Although the overall health care reform bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate are unpopular, many of the provisions in the existing bills are extremely popular, even among Republicans, according to a new national poll.

My anecdotal impression is that first class air travel and filet mignon are quite popular, too -  until people see the price tag.

So, will this summit be Obama's Waterloo, or his finest hour?  Stay tuned!  But if the political performance art lags, do take a moment to re-read Churchill's "Finest Hour" speech for an example of oratory, plain speaking and leadership.  And a bit if trash-talkig abut the Italian Navy.

I think his Big Finish requires a Lord of the Rings" soundtrack:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Today, its only health care.

OK, BACK IN REALITY:  As of 12:15 I have been following the discussion intermittently, but I bet the 48% are hearing what they want - Republicans are emphasizing their points of agreement, presumably them wondering why we can't get a bill.

Now Obama Points Toward The Exit

Obama is not exactly burning his ships after he lands at today's healthcare summit.  From the WSJ:

Obama Readies a Fallback Health-Care Proposal

Scaled-Down Plan Would Expand Insurance to About Half as Many People as Pending Bill Envisions

By Laura Meckler

President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health-care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.

His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made similar comments about the plausibility of a smaller plan on Tuesday.  None of this will stiffen the spine of wavering Democrats looking for a graceful retreat from the current unpopular bill.

PUSHING BACK:  The White House is furious,as is Team Reality.  Shorter Ezra Klein - there is no fallback plan, even though there is.  Oh, let him tell it:

Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you'd expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.

At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that's all this is. A vestigial document that's being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They're furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House -- not even anonymously -- raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There's no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.

He could quote White Sources but he won't?  Odd reserve for a journalist, but this may spare his sources some embarrassment when Plan B that was drawn up months ago and revised weeks ago yet doesn't exist is put forward.

PILING ON:  CNN's new poll (also Murdoch-inspired sabotage, no doubt), shows 25% of the public favors the bills on offer, 48% don't want those bills but would like to see Congress keep working towards a more sensible reform (but we daren't cal it a Plan B), and 25% want to watch curling.

Obama - Nice Guy; Let's See How He Finishes

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the Times studies Obama's leadership and finds a good talker and great listener who scares no one.  But she's scaring me!

Gentle White House Nudges Test the Power of Persuasion
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — Tempers were fraying in the White House Cabinet Room as night turned into morning on Jan. 15. President Obama had been cloistered nearly all day with House and Senate Democrats, playing “marriage counselor,” an aide said, as he coaxed, cajoled and prodded them on a health care overhaul.

As the clock neared 1 a.m., the two sides were at an impasse. Mr. Obama stood up.

“ ‘See what you guys can figure out,’ ” one participant remembers him saying, adding that the failed effort left the president mad. Another Democrat who was there, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, said Mr. Obama left “frustrated that while he was putting out ways to bridge the problem, we hadn’t reached a conclusion.”

That's her lead?  Wow, where is the get-it-done leadership here?  Instead, we have Achilles leaving to pout.

Ever since his days as a young community organizer in Chicago, Mr. Obama has held fast to the belief that by listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to get results, an approach that in Washington has often come up short.

He may hold fast to the belief, but what results (other than tremendous self-advancement) can he show for it?  Altgeld Gardens is a bit of a bust; the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama's concealed stab at education reform, was assessed as having little impact.  But he made editor of the Harvard Law Review!

Mr. Obama has not been the sort to bludgeon his party into following his lead or to intimidate reluctant legislators. And while he has often succeeded by relying on Democratic leaders in Congress to do his bidding — the House and Senate, after all, both passed versions of the health legislation last year — it is not clear whether his gentle, consensus-building style will be enough.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more toughness here or there,” said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat, who contends that if Mr. Obama had pushed the Senate harder last year, the bill would have been law by now.

Like many Democrats in Congress, she praises Mr. Obama as intellectually gifted and a generous listener. But “if you are asking me if he dominates the room,” she said, “I would have to say no.”

Nice guy.

But his defenders and some historians say that perhaps more than any modern president since Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Obama has been aggressive in trying to work his will with Congress. During his 13-month-old presidency, he has had countless one-on-one meetings with lawmakers — a technique that some scholars and strategists say evokes memories of Johnson, though their styles could hardly be more different.

“People make the L.B.J. analogy,” said John D. Podesta, who worked as chief of staff in the Clinton White House, “but the world is a lot different than it was during the 1960s. The president actually has to bring people along because they think it’s the right thing to do, because they think it’s in the interest of the country but also their own self-interest. His style is to convince people, not threaten them.”

If Johnson was a physical force — an arm around the shoulder, a full-body lean, a finger poking into the chest — Mr. Obama is an intellectual one. Members of Congress do not find him intimidating; they are more apt, said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, to view him as “a friend.” And while he shows occasional flashes of anger — “There is a sort of steel in his voice,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the House Democratic leader from Maryland — his emotions are always contained.

That is just great.  I wonder if Putin or the leaders of China find Obama even a little bit intimidating.  Oh, I take that back - I don't wonder at all.

One Of Obama's Great Achievements May Be Unraveling

Was it only two weeks ago that Joe Biden explained that Iraq was on track to become "one of the great achievements" of the Obama Administration?  Now Thomas Ricks, author of "Fiasco" and "The Gamble", warns us of the fragile stability in Iraq and the possible need for a delay in US troop withdrawals:

IRAQ’S March 7 national election, and the formation of a new government that will follow, carry huge implications for both Iraqis and American policy. It appears now that the results are unlikely to resolve key political struggles that could return the country to sectarianism and violence.

If so, President Obama may find himself later this year considering whether once again to break his campaign promises about ending the war, and to offer to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for several more years. Surprisingly, that probably is the best course for him, and for Iraqi leaders, to pursue.

The best course politically?  Yikes!  I don't even want to imagine the reaction of Obama supporters who equate peace in Iraq with an absence of US troops (No, I don't know why that means we don't have peace in Darfur...).  So, does "peace" mean "No US troops", or a stable (and democratic, bless us!) Iraq?  Biden firmly straddled this two weeks ago:

I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. 

When might Obama be obliged to announce a delay in the pace of withdrawals?

By late summer, the Obama administration could find itself in the uncomfortable position of reconsidering its vows to get out of combat in Iraq by August and to remove all troops by the end of next year. This will be politically difficult for the president, but he has shown admirable flexibility in his handling of Iraq. My impression is that the American people now wish they had never heard of Iraq, but understand just what a mess it is and are willing to give the president a surprising amount of leeway.

Late August or early September?  Like, two months from the election?  I don't see Obama making an announcement like this, unless he has a subtle political strategy that relies on every liberal in America sitting out the 2010 election.  Of course, it is a bit late for Obama to pursue his 2007 strategy, which was to lose and blame Bush.

Ricks admits to great uncertainty:

The political situation is far less certain, and I think less stable, than most Americans believe. A retired Marine colonel I know, Gary Anderson, just returned from Iraq and predicts a civil war or military coup by September. Another friend, the journalist Nir Rosen, avers that Iraq is on a long-term peaceful course. Both men know Iraq well, having spent years working there. I have not seen such a wide discrepancy in expert views since late 2005.

Ricks could be wrong about the need to leave our troops there longer.  And if Ricks is right the media won't cover it.

Bloom Boxes

Mysterious Bloom Energy has a big announcement slated for 1 PM ET, when they will unveil their new fuel cell technology.  From the NY Times:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — A Silicon Valley company is claiming a breakthrough in a decades-old quest to develop fuel cells that can supply affordable and relatively clean electricity. Google, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and other large corporations have been testing the devices, which will be formally introduced on Wednesday.

The start-up, Bloom Energy, has raised about $400 million from investors and spent nearly a decade developing a new variety of solid oxide fuel cell, considered the most efficient but most technologically challenging fuel-cell technology.

K. R. Sridhar, Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, said devices made by his company were generating electricity at a cost of 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour, using natural gas. That is lower than commercial electricity prices in some parts of the country.

“We got into this business to make affordable electricity, not fuel cells,” Mr. Sridhar said Tuesday as workers assembled stacks of fuel cells in tall, round cylinders and installed them in silver metal cubes at Bloom’s headquarters in a Silicon Valley office park.

The company has been working on the technology for eight years while saying little. The secrecy, and the prominence of the venture capitalists backing Bloom, have fueled both hype and skepticism about its efforts. Bloom is scheduled to unveil the technology Wednesday at a news conference attended by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and a member of Bloom’s board.

Business Week had some bafflegab about their technology last December; I guess I can wait a few hours for the real story, but here we go:

What is known is that the company's fuel cell technology is different from hydrogen fuel cells, which have been around for decades. For starters, Bloom's system relies primarily on oxygen rather than hydrogen. And instead of requiring expensive precious metals, the fuel cell is built from a cheap ceramic material, sand. That should allow it to be more easily mass-produced, helping cut costs and widen its potential market.

The ceramic core acts as an electrode. At high temperatures, a hydrocarbon fuel—ethanol, biodiesel, methane, or natural gas—on one side of the cell attracts oxygen ions from the other. As the ions are pulled through the solid core, the resulting electrochemical reaction creates electricity. Though the technology consumes hydrocarbons, Sridhar says, it doesn't involve carbon-releasing combustion, so it emits only about half the greenhouse gases of conventional energy sources.

Huh?  Hydrocarbons plus oxygen combine to form carbohydrates and release electricity?  Cool - done right, the Bloom Box can simultaneously produce bread and the electricity to power the toaster.  I don't remember enough high school chemistry to say this can't work, but I have my doubts as to the accuracy of this description.

However, the real devices seem to have been field tested at Google.  Time will tell.

UPDATE:  The Bloomer Energy press kit looks like it is just the thing for a J-School grad.  How does the Bloom Box work?  By making electricity!  This page and the linked video are a bit more detailed, but I am still mystified.

He Has Sounded Forth The Trumpet That Will Ever Blow Retreat

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer isn't going to stiffen the spines of wavering House Dems with this kind of talk:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says he hopes Congress can pass comprehensive health overhaul legislation like President Barack Obama wants -- but it may not be possible.

At his weekly media briefing, Hoyer said in such a scenario, doing something smaller would also be good.

A day after Obama unveiled a sweeping health bill, the comments from the Maryland Democrat amounted to an acknowledgment of reality: in a sour political environment, majority Democrats may not have the votes.

But Democratic leaders have been insistent throughout the contentious, yearlong debate that comprehensive legislation is the way to go. Hoyer said that remained the preferred course. Asked if it was all or nothing he said: "We may not be able to do all."

He said, "If you can't do a whole, doing part is also good."

Let's rephrase that - 'Ill need everyone with me on this, but if you aren't with me, well, there is the exit, and that looks OK, too.'  Yeah that'll rally 'em.

Big Government Springs Into Action

The Times covers, and nearly covers up, the new Dept. of Energy Inspector General's report on the weatherization program:

Hiring Freezes Hamper Weatherization Plan
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s plan to create jobs and rein in energy costs through a steep increase in funds for weatherization of low-income homes has so far borne little fruit, with many of the biggest states meeting less than 2 percent of their goals to date, the Department of Energy’s inspector general said in a report issued Tuesday.

The inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, called the lack of progress “alarming.” Far into the nation’s winter heating season, the program for the most part has neither saved energy nor put people to work, he wrote.

“The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the department’s most ‘shovel ready’ projects has not materialized,” the report said.

Hiring freezes?

Quick action on weatherization was doomed by bureaucratic delays and by the recession itself, the inspector general’s report said, as spending cuts caused by the economic downturn forced states to trim personnel expenses.

Many states either furloughed the state employees who would administer such programs or instituted hiring freezes that prevented state offices from processing additional work — even though the federal government would have paid the additional salaries, the report found.

New York State, for example, had a goal of weatherizing 45,400 units over three years but by December had accomplished only 280, a completion rate of 0.62 percent, the report found. One reason was a hiring freeze in New York City.

Gee, the first problem cited by the Inspector General was the imposition of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements onto a weatherization program that had previously not been subjected to that.  Eventually the Times gets to that giveaway to Big Labor:

One nationwide stumbling block was a decision by Congress to require contractors on the weatherization jobs to pay prevailing wages. To determine what those salary levels were, so the Labor Department undertook a survey.

Stumbling block?  Here is the IG:

The Recovery Act required that recipients of weatherization funds pay laborers at least the prevailing wage as determined under the Davis-Bacon Act. This requirement was not previously applicable to weatherization activities, and as such, grantees lacked information on which to base wage rates. In response, the Department asked the Department of Labor (Labor) to provide necessary wage determinations for each of the geographical areas expected to receive weatherization funds. Labor then began to conduct wage surveys across the country to determine the appropriate wage for weatherization work.

Recognizing that delays would occur while the wage surveys were completed, Federal officials attempted to mitigate the effects of implementing the Davis-Bacon Act. The Secretaries of Energy and Labor issued a joint memorandum in July 2009 to grantees stating that state and local agencies should begin weatherizing homes "now" while they were waiting for the results of the surveys. The guidance recommended proceeding with weatherization efforts and adjusting salaries retroactively, if workers had been paid less than the appropriate wage rates. In many cases, however, states elected not to proceed with weatherization efforts as recommended. They were concerned with avoiding perceived administrative problems and burdens associated with retroactive adjustments to wages. Many grantees chose not to begin work until the prevailing wage rates were formally established. Even after Labor's work was complete, additional delays occurred while grantees prepared guidance for sub-recipients on how to apply the wage rates. As such, efforts to begin the work of weatherizing homes did not begin in earnest until after guidance was completed in October 2009.

Sure, it was a "stumbling block" - if people routinely stumble and lay motionless for eight months.

The Davis-Bacon pork was noted a few days back.  I said then that Obama was never going to say 'no' to Big Labor on this, however stupid the consequences.

And lest you wonder, New York's completion rate of 0.62% is not so bad - of the ten states with the highest funding, Ohio scored 21.17%, Wisconsin was second at 3.73%, and the rest ranged from 0% (Texas) to 1.63% (Florida).

This was a nationwide epic fail.

Stupak Out

House Democrat Bart Stupak hangs a "No Sale" sign on the Senate abortion language, prompting fear among the Firedogs.

Can We Set A Lefty To Catch A Lefty?

In a post titled "Another Thiessen Claim Proved False", Adam Sewer of TAP wrote on the lies and deceit of former Bush speechwriter and new WaPo contributor Marc Thiessen.  At the Plum Line, Greg Sargent joined in. 

Some background - al Qaeda hotelier Zubaydah was captured in late March 2002 and initially interrogated by FBI agent Ali Soufan and a partner, although the CIA got involved almost immediately.  On Aug 1 the infamous OLC memo approving "enhanced interrogation" was signed, and Zubaydah was waterboarded sometime thereafter.

Because of that timeline, Soufan made the claim in a famous NY Times editorial that Zubaydah was subjected only to "traditional" interrogation techniques prior to August.  Since information gleaned from Zubaydah led to the arrest of Jose Padilla in May 2002, that would imply that conventional, not enhanced techniques were responsible for that breakthrough.

Now the newly released OPR memos dealing with the genesis of the OLC opinions has picked up that theme to make a similar claim.  Let's cut to Serwer citing a new Isikoff article:

But as the Justice report points out, this was wrong. “In fact, Padilla was arrested in May 2002, not 2003. … The information ‘[leading] to the arrest of Padilla’ could not have been obtained through the authorized use of EITs.” (The use of enhanced interrogations was not authorized until Aug. 1, 2002 and Zubaydah was not waterboarded until later that month.) “ Yet Bradbury relied upon this plainly inaccurate information” in two OLC memos that contained direct citations from the CIA Effectiveness Memo about the interrogations of Zubaydah, the Justice report states.

Well.  The OPR may be leaning on the use of the word "authorized" and trying to make the claim that any enhanced techniques actually employed before the Aug 1 memo was signed were not authorized.  That may be, although I can't imagine a prosecution based on that theory in this context - one might argue that verbal assurances of a forthcoming authorization were relied upon in good faith and the approval did in fact materialize.

Regardless, Mr. Serwer heads in a different direction and concludes that Soufan's version of reality is supported by this, and that people who say Soufan is wrong are themselves wrong.  His conclusion:

This not only acts as a refutation of Thiessen's claim about Zubaydah but calls into question the effectiveness of torture in general, since it was one of the examples Steven Bradbury had used to claim that the "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" had worked.

Everyone makes mistakes, but given the centrality of these new facts to Thiessen's arguments about torture, he should acknowledge them.

Marc Thiessen responds here; I don't think this is what Mr. Serwer was hoping for.  Hey, all Thiessen has on his side is a DoJ Inspector Gneral report, a CIA Inspector General report, an earlier Isikoff article, and reports in the Times and WaPo; Serwer has an editorial from Soufan!  Who is Serwer to believe?

And fair's fair - let's give Mr. Sargent a turn:

In essence, the classified memo cited by Cheney stated that the CIA torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla in 2003. But as Isikoff reports, the newly-released docs point out that Padilla was arrested in 2002 — so torture couldn’t have secured his capture.

This also appears to vindicate claims by former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who said he obtained all the crucial info from Zubaydah through non-enhanced methods. And as Adam Serwer points out, it seems to blow a hole in former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen’s claims about Soufan and about the efficacy of waterboarding in general.

As to Soufan's credibility, we can't expect Messrs. Serwer and Sargent  to trust evil righties, or (apparently) engage in any research.  But perhaps we can burden them with reliable lefty Spencer Ackerman:

FBI Agent’s Account of Interrogations Conflicts With Report

Justice Department Account Depicts More Complicated Relationship Between FBI, Abusive Practices Than Agent

"More complicated".  I like that.

The truth, according to a 400-page Justice Department inspector general’s report, released in May 2008, is more complicated. According to the report, the FBI did frequently refuse to lend support to abusive interrogations. But FBI officials did take part in interrogations where abuse occurred, even after senior FBI officials issued orders against agents participating in detainee interrogation sessions that went beyond the FBI’s traditional non-physical style of eliciting information. And the report reveals some discrepancies from the account Soufan gave — and which he may be asked about in his testimony before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday morning.

Soufan’s account does not entirely match up with the inspector general’s, both in terms of the timeline he gave, and his participation in a subsequent interrogation that went beyond traditional FBI interrogation techniques.

And Mr. Ackerman follows the evidence.  Someday perhaps others will, too.

Bringing Sunshine From The Desert

The Dept. of Energy provides a loan guarantee to a BrightSource solar power project in the California desert:

The United States Department of Energy offered a $1.37 billion loan guarantee on Monday to a California company planning to build a large-scale solar power plant in the Southern California desert.

The loan guarantee for BrightSource Energy of Oakland, Calif., is the largest the department has given for a solar power project. BrightSource’s planned project, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is the first utility-scale solar power plant to undergo licensing in California in nearly two decades.

It would use solar thermal technology, in which mirrors concentrate sunlight to heat a fluid and generate steam. If built, it would be the largest of its kind.

Loan guarantees are not the finest example of the free market at work, but given the potential shifting of political winds as these projects go through the permitting process I don't mind seeing a Federal commitment to making it happen.  This is an accomodation to living on Shakedown Street.

Now, I know what you're thinking - wasn't Sen. Feinstein going to put the kibosh on solar power in the Mojave?  Not exactly - she was pushing a bill protecting the Catellus lands (map), which are south of the planned BrightSource site.  I can't save the Google map, but the BrightSource Ivanpah site is just off of Rt 15, north of the Mojave National Preserve and not far from the Nevada border.

Obama Is Going To Kill Your Grandfather!

The WSJ looks at the new, improved, (but still only proposed!) Obamacare:

"The President's Proposal," as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive.

We'll score that as "Undecided.  Now, on to Obama's plan to kill Granddad:

The coercive flavor that animates this exercise is best captured in the section that purports to accept the Senate's "grandfather clause" allowing people who like their current health plan to keep it. Except that "The President's Proposal adds certain consumer protections to these 'grandfathered' plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans . . . prohibits . . . mandates . . . requires . . . the President's Proposal adds new protections that prohibit . . . ban . . . and prohibit . . . The President's Proposal requires . . ." After all of these dictates, no "grandfathered" plan will exist.

Under Obamacare, if you like your current insurance, you are allowed to take a photo of the policy as a keepsake.  That's change you better start believing in.

John Tierney, Salt Denialist

John Tierney explains that the science of salt in the diet is unsettled.  I am especially intrigued by the absence of evidence of any international trend:

The salt reformers say change is possible if the food industry cuts back on all the hidden salt in its products. They want the United States to emulate Britain, where there has been an intensive campaign to pressure industry as well as consumers to use less salt. As a result, British authorities say, from 2000 to 2008 there was about a 10 percent reduction in daily salt consumption, which was measured by surveys that analyzed the amount of salt excreted in urine collected over 24 hours.

But the British report was challenged in a recent article in The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Washington University in St. Louis. The team, led by Dr. David A. McCarron, a nephrologist at Davis, criticized the British authorities for singling out surveys in 2008 and 2000 while ignoring nearly a dozen similar surveys conducted in the past two decades.

When all the surveys in Britain are considered, there has been no consistent downward trend in salt consumption in recent years, said Dr. McCarron, who has been a longtime critic of the salt reformers. (For more on him and his foes, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.) He said that the most notable feature of the data is how little variation there has been in salt consumption in Britain — and just about everywhere else, too.

Dr. McCarron and his colleagues analyzed surveys from 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed about the same amount of salt. There were a few exceptions, like tribes isolated in the Amazon and Africa, but the vast majority of people ate more salt than recommended in the current American dietary guidelines.

This graph from the linked article will be pretty cryptic out of context but it shows the lack of trend in Britain and the helpful selection of the 2000 peak as the starting point for the measurement of the salt reduction initiative.

Clear as mud, yes?

I don't know enough to find the flaws in the paper Tierney linked, but he has more here.

Now It's Isikoff Versus Isikoff

It's Auto-Blue on Blue as Michael Isikoff of Newsweek takes on Michael Isikoff of Newsweek in an enhanced interrogation smackdown.  First, let's hear from Isikoff 2010, who has found an oddity in the new report on Bybee, Yoo and the torture opinions:

A crucial CIA memo that has been cited by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials as justifying the effectiveness of waterboarding contained “plainly inaccurate information” that undermined its conclusions,  according to Justice Department investigators. 

...But a just released report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the lawyers who approved the CIA’s interrogation program could prove awkward for Cheney and his supporters. The report provides new information about the contents of one of the never released agency memos, concluding that it significantly misstated the timing of the capture of one Al Qaeda suspect in order to make a claim that seems to have been patently false.

...

The CIA memo, called the Effectiveness Memo, was especially important because it was relied on by  Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department’s acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, to write memos in 2005 and 2007 giving the agency additional legal approvals to continue its program of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”  The memo reviewed the results of the use of EITs – which included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity – mainly against two suspects” Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the report states.  One key claim in the agency memo was that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogations of Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla.   “Abu Zubaydah provided significant information on two operatives, Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohammed, who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the Washington DC area,” the CIA memo stated, according to the OPR report. “Zubaydah’s reporting led to the arrest of Padilla on his arrival in Chicago in May 2003 [sic].”

   But as the Justice report points out, this was wrong.   “In fact, Padilla was arrested in May 2002, not 2003 … The information ‘[leading] to the arrest of Padilla’ could not have been obtained through the authorized use of EITs.” (The use of enhanced interrogations was not authorized until Aug. 1, 2002 and Zubaydah was not waterboarded until later that month.) “ Yet Bradbury relied upon this plainly inaccurate information” in two OLC memos that contained direct citations from the CIA Effectiveness Memo about the interrogations of Zubaydah, the Justice report states.

As Newsweek reported last year, the information about Padilla’s plot was actually elicited from Zubaydah during traditional interrogations in the spring of 2002 by two FBI agents, one of whom, Ali Soufan, vigorously objected when the CIA started using aggressive tactics.

I assume the OPR is emphasizing the word "authorized" above.  But wait a second!  Did Isikoff even re-read what he reported last year?  Geez, I cited it as evidence that Ali Soufan was blowing smoke.  Here we go, from Isikoff.2009, lead paragraph:

The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.

Spring of 2002.  Not August.  David Johnston of the Times reported on "early spring" start to the rough stuff in a 2006 story; the DoJ Inspector General report said the CIA took over with what FBI agents said was "border line torture" within a few days of Zubaydh's arrest (page 111.)  But let's stick with Isikoff.2009:

...As Soufan tells the story, he challenged a CIA official at the scene about the agency's legal authority to do what it was doing. "We're the United States of America, and we don't do that kind of thing," he recalls shouting at one point. But the CIA official, whom Soufan refuses to name because the agent's identity is still classified, brushed aside Soufan's concerns. He told him in April 2002 that the aggressive techniques already had gotten approval from the "highest levels" in Washington, says Soufan. The official even waved a document in front of Soufan, saying the approvals "are coming from Gonzales," a reference to Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general. (A lawyer for Gonzales declined to comment.)

Gonzales was not in DoJ and the approvals apparently preceded the paperwork from the OLC, but Isikoff.2009 was quite clear that the CIA thought they had approval from someone in authority to engage in rough stuff in April 2002.  What sort of things?  Well, not waterboarding - that came later.  More Isikoff.2009, with my emphasis:

What this document was—and what, exactly, it authorized—is unclear. Soufan notes that, at that point, there had not been any talk in his presence of waterboarding, the most extreme of the techniques. But, as he later told Justice Department investigators, Soufan considered the methods he witnessed to be "borderline torture." A CIA spokesman declined to comment on what Soufan may have been shown, but wrote in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK: "The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice wasn't the first piece of legal guidance for the [interrogation] program." "There are still gaping holes in the record," says Jameel Jaffer, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who spearheaded the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that forced the disclosure of the Justice memos. The ACLU is now suing for further disclosures.

Soufan's pretense in his famous Times op-ed was that the enhanced interrogation techniques began in August after the Aug 1 OLC memo.  That was not what he told the DoJ IG, or Isikoff.2009.

But now Isikoff.2010 wants to believe!

As to what this means for the OPR investigators and their report, who knows?  Their claim is that since there was no OLC approval prior to Aug 1, 2002, no authorized enhanced interrogations could have occurred before that date.  From that they infer that no enhanced interrogations could have occurred before that date.  Yet their own IG report contradicts that timeline.

So where are we?  Isikoff doesn't read Isikoff, the DoJ doesn't read the DoJ, but they all know enhanced interrogation can't be effective.

PILING ON:  Adam Serwer of TAPPED also wants to believe.  I was pretty sure his post would be a useful target when I saw the title: "Another Thiessen Claim Proved False."

My gloomy experience with the Tappers is that "Proved" generally means "I wish" and  "False" often means "True".  Still, I liked this from Serwer:

This not only acts as a refutation of Thiessen's claim about Zubaydah but calls into question the effectiveness of torture in general, since it was one of the examples Steven Bradbury had used to claim that the "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" had worked.

Everyone makes mistakes, but given the centrality of these new facts to Thiessen's arguments about torture, he should acknowledge them.

I am holding my breath waiting for Mr. Serwer to lead by example.

STILL MORE:  Greg Sargent couldn't even be bothered to re-read the Isikoff 2009 article to which Isikoff linked, and offers this:

In essence, the classified memo cited by Cheney stated that the CIA torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla in 2003. But as Isikoff reports, the newly-released docs point out that Padilla was arrested in 2002 — so torture couldn’t have secured his capture.

This also appears to vindicate claims by former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who said he obtained all the crucial info from Zubaydah through non-enhanced methods. And as Adam Serwer points out, it seems to blow a hole in former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen’s claims about Soufan and about the efficacy of waterboarding in general.

But here’s my question about this. Cheney’s claim that documents would prove torture worked got reams and reams of press coverage. Will the fact that we now know that one of the docs he cited was “plainly inaccurate” get even a fraction of the attention his initial claims did?

It must be a real strain to be "reality-based" - there is an awful lot of invented reality to keep track of.

Everything Obama Thought He Knew About Health Cost Control Is Wrong

The Gardiner Harris of the NY Times describes a rebuttal to an influential Dartmouth study:

For much of the past year, President Obama lavished praise on a few select hospitals like the Mayo Clinic for delivering high-quality care at low costs, but a pointed analysis published Wednesday in an influential medical journal suggests that the president’s praise may be unwarranted.

Mr. Obama received his information about the hospitals from a widely cited analysis called the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, produced by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. An article in The New Yorker magazine last year written by Dr. Atul Gawande that used the Dartmouth Atlas as its organizing principle became required reading in the White House last year.

But an analysis written in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Peter B. Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, suggests that much of the Dartmouth Atlas is flawed and that it should not be used to compare the relative efficiency of hospitals.

Good job by Mr. Harris including a link to the article.  I am ready to tell you their secret - they only studied dead people:

Atlas researchers might correctly argue that costs correlate poorly with outcomes. But poor correlation does not imply that outcomes are homogeneous, but rather that there are high-spending hospitals that use resources in a manner that improves outcomes and others that squander resources, failing to improve health. The same goes for low-spending hospitals. Figuring out which is which is the purpose of efficiency assessment, which therefore requires consideration of both costs and outcomes.

Say Hospital A and Hospital B each has a group of patients with a fatal disease. Hospital A gives each patient a $1 pill and cures half of them; Hospital B provides no treatment. An Atlas analysis would conclude that Hospital B was more efficient, since it spent less per decedent. But all the patients die at Hospital B, whereas only half of the patients do at Hospital A, where the cost per life saved is a bargain at $2. Although $1 cures are rare, changing the price or efficacy of the pill does not alter the fundamental problem with examining costs alone when cost differences are sometimes associated with outcome differences.

There is another problem:

The conceptual problem lies in the fact that in Atlas analyses all health care costs that are incurred by patients over the 2 years before their death are attributed to the hospital where they were admitted most frequently during that period. This method assumes that the hospital controls all, or at least most, patient care, even if it occurs outside the hospital or in another hospital. It thus seems to presuppose a system in which hospitals are accountable for all care — perhaps a noble long-term objective, but not a current reality.

Do read the Dartmouth reply, which includes this non-answer:

We agree with Dr. Bach that fragmentation of care — resulting in the admission of patients to multiple hospitals and nursing homes — can explain why some hospitals appear so expensive in the Dartmouth data. But patients need to know about such fragmentation. Do they really want to be cared for in a hospital–physician network where patients are bounced from one hospital to another? Furthermore, accountable care organizations are a promising approach to discouraging such poorly coordinated care.

Regardless of whether people want to be "bounced around" (I see empowered patients availing themselves of their free choice of multiple providers, but whatever), it still doesn't make sense to ding one hospital for all the costs incurred by that patient.

As to the reliance on dead people:

The Atlas sample comprises Medicare enrollees with at least one life-threatening chronic disease in their last 2 years of life. It further adjusts for the type of chronic disease and the presence of multiple diseases. As we show, appropriately risk-adjusted “look-forward” and “look-back” measures are very highly correlated.

I have to score that dispute as "beyond my pay grade".  But it is not above the pay grade of the critic who just got his paper published in a prestigious journal.

All Your Prices Are Belong To Us

If runaway costs are the problem, surely price controls are the answer!  Barack Obama, channeling his inner Dick Nixon, is set to propose Federal oversight of health insurance price hikes.

Since in the short run there are generally more consumers who can picture themselves winning from this than suppliers who will see themselves as losers, this tactic may help get Obama and the Democrats get past 2010.  I'll bet that rent controls were popular when they were adopted in New York City as a temporary measure during World War II.

The long run effects won't be helpful for the insurance industry but they will be good for advancing the interests of the Democratic Party.  A key Democratic goal of health reform (as was kicked around during the HillaryCare debacle) is to create a new middle-class entitlement.  If this plays out like Social Security it will tie the middle class to their benefactors in the Democratic Party, which will forever position itself as the party of more generous benefits paid for by Someone Else.

A price control board can advance that same goal, since the Democrats can position themselves as the champions of lower prices for all. In the not-so-long run insurer won't be able to make a reasonable profit and will exit the industry, and coverage will be scarce (but cheap!).  At that point the collapse of the private market will be offered as further evidence of the desirability of a full government take-over of health care, or at least, the adoption of a stalking-goat "public option".

Oh, well - if price controls are the answer, I guess we have to stop comparing Obama to Carter and start comparing him to Nixon.

Count Every Vote

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell ponders Dem prospects for passing health care reform by way of reconciliation and leaves us puzzling over this:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that opposition to using a maneuver to bypass filibuster rules would be bipartisan, but hedged as to whether it would be strong enough to block such a tactic.

"There'll be a lot of Democrats who will vote against it," McConnell said during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" about the controversial budget reconciliation process. "Whether there will be 11 Democrats who will vote against it is not clear."

Eleven?  I thought Scott Brown was "41"!  Since when does it take 52 votes to win in the Senate?

"It's A Reality Problem"

Charles Cook on where the Dems went awry:

Cook: I sort of reject the notion that there is a communications problem with President Obama. I think it's just fundamental, total miscalculations from the very, very beginning. Of proportions comparable to President George W. Bush's decision to go into Iraq. While Bush went, "We're going to go after Afghanistan as a reaction to 9/11," and then just pretty soon got distracted and obsessed with going into Iraq with varying rationalizations that sort of evolved over time.

This was a case where I think the White House people could see, look at the president, the White House and congressional Democrats as sort of checking the box on stimulus, but found that kind of boring, and moved on to health care and cap-and-trade. And the thing is, Democrats piled all this cotton candy and pork and junk and pet projects into it, so it discredited the stimulus package in the minds of a lot of voters and at the same time, it wasn't big enough. It was totally insufficient, yet they wanted to keep it under a trillion dollars because they didn't want to spend a lot of political capital on a really big stimulus package because they wanted to save it for cap-and-trade and health care. And so we start off with the original sin of a very imperfect and inadequate economic stimulus package and then moving off the economy almost entirely going into cap-and-trade and health care.

And then when unemployment numbers started proving to be much, much tougher and it started becoming more clear that the stimulus package hadn't worked properly, they just kept plowing ahead on health care. And this isn't a communications problem. This is a reality problem. And I think they just made some grave miscalculations and as it became more clear that they had screwed up, they just kept doubling down their bet.

And so I think, no, this is one of the biggest miscalculations that we've seen in modern political history.

John Fund has more on whether the Dems will be Cooked this fall:

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report released a new update on the 2010 elections yesterday. A full 54 Democratic seats in the House are now rated as "highly competitive," with nearly half already seeing the GOP challenger running even or ahead of the Democratic incumbent. Only six GOP-held seats are in play as possible Democratic pickups. Republicans need to win 40 seats to take back control of the House.

Nervousness in Democratic ranks will be heightened even more by Cook's finding that a total of 95 Democratic seats are potentially vulnerable -- almost two-fifths of the entire Democratic caucus.

At the Cook Report we find this summary of the new study available to subscribers:

House: National Winds Move 25 More Races Toward Republicans

February 18, 2010
House Editor David Wasserman explains why, based on an evaluation of 2009 Year End finance reports and other developments in races, we are changing our ratings in 25 districts, all to reflect enhanced GOP chances. We now rate 60 seats as having at least a reasonable chance of switching hands (seats that are Lean Republican, Lean Democratic, Toss Up, or more vulnerable), including 54 Democratic seats and just six Republican seats.

On a related note, how dead is the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill?  Pretty dead - Ronald Bailey of Reason looks past the scientific controversies and focuses on the grim political realities vis a vis the developing world.  This Oct 29, 2009 testimony from Iain Murray is pretty bleak for the cap and traders, too.

"Own The Podium" Becomes "Where's The Podium?"

Canada lags in the Olympic medal count, but at least they have free health care.  (Normally I would deplore this jingoism but that dead luger changed my mind.)

The Do-Something Congress

Byron York lauds the Do-Something Congres to rebut the latest Democrat talking point that Congress is dysfunctional, relying on a helpful White House chart.  His conclusion:

The fact is, when you hear the president and Democrats in Congress complain about not being able to get anything done, or about Washington being broken, they're talking about one thing: their inability to pass a national health care reform bill. Congress can do, and is doing, lots of things -- just not sprawling, omnibus "comprehensive" bills that are unpopular with the American people. (The same can be said for cap-and-trade legislation, now dead in the Senate.) If you put aside enormous bills that would re-order the American economy in ways the public does not want, Congress can do things just fine.

Ask A Silly Question...

Greg Sargent is thrilled to find a whiff of oxygen for Libs in the latest CNN poll:

Poll: Majority Backs Mirandizing Of Xmas Plotter And Other Terror Suspects

CNN has released a new poll with toplines showing a big majority thinks Iran has nukes.

But forget that finding. The internals are even more interesting, because they show that the public is overwhelmingly rejecting the latest argument from the Cheney wing of the GOP.

The poll finds that a big majority, 65%, supports the decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomb plotter. But it gets better. The public also thinks all terror suspects should be Mirandized as a matter of policy:

As you know, the police and FBI agents always inform suspects of their constitutional right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present during any questioning. Do you think law enforcement officials should or should not follow this practice for people who are suspected of attempting to commit an act of terrorism?

Should 56%
Should not 43%

The Cheneyites have been aggressively criticizing the Mirandizing of terror suspects in order to prove that Obama doesn’t have the right mindset to take on the terrorists and is treating them as common criminals. But the above numbers show that majorities don’t have a problem with what the Obama administration is doing on this front.

"Don't have a problem"?  The poll shows that respondents disapprove of Obama's handling of the Christmas Day bombing attempt by 47-45.

For completeness, let me just reprise CNN's other version of the question, which got 65% to agree:

As you know, after the man in that incident was turned over to the FBI, agents read him the statement of his rights, including the right to remain silent, that is read to all people who are arrested by the police or the FBI in this country. Do you think the FBI should or should not have done that?

Should 65%
Should not 33%

Now, how strong is public support for the Miranda option?  Phrasing it as a Yes/No is awfully slanted.  Let me suggest other poll possibilities:

(1) Do you think the FBI should follow standard procedures in arresting terrorists, or should they just wing it?

(a) Follow the rules

(b) Wing it

(2) Should the FBI arrest attempted terrorists using the same procedures applied to purse snatchers and drug dealers, or should they consult with intelligence officials at Homeland Security for guidance?

(a) treat them like purse snatchers

(b) consult with intelligence officials

I lack the budget to conduct the field research but I am prepared to bet that the "wing it" choice from Question 1 won't do as well as the "consult with intelligence officials" from Question 2.  But since respondents were only presented with a yes/no question, they were left to imagine alternatives themselves, and who knows what alternatives they contemplated.

FWIW, Obama himself would have chosen "Consult with intelligence officials" if asked Question 2; I infer that he would have said "No" if asked either version of the CNN question.  Here we go, from Obama chatting with Katie Couric before the Super Bowl:

"Should the practice of reading suspected terrorist their Miranda rights be reviewed?" CBS's Katie Couric asked President Obama during Sunday's Super Bowl interview.

"Absolutely," Obama answered. "Everything should be reviewed."

"It's important for us to recognize," Obama explained, "that when we're dealing with al Qaeda operatives, that they may have national security intelligence that we need, and it's important to make sure that the processes and procedures we approach with respect to these folks are not identical to the ones we would use if we were apprehending the local drug dealer."

Well, this CNN poll has convinced me that, if phrased properly, a pollster imagine support for the position abandoned by the President.  Worth knowing.

Times Reporter Zernike Is Hearing Voices

Kate Zernike of the Times demonstrates that "racial overtones" are where you want to find them.  Andrew Breitbart's "Big Journalism" has the story and the rebuttal video.

CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, in Racial Tones

By KATE ZERNIKE

How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.

In a panel appealing to conservatives under 30, Jason Mattera, author of a forthcoming book called “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation,” likened the gathering to “our Woodstock.”

“Except that unlike the last gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences and our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine,” he said, “which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.”

So now cocaine, as opposed to crack, is a black thing?  Who knew?  This is warmed over Team Obama spin from the Iowa-New Hampshire days; the Times couldn't find the subtle racial context back then.  Of course, they endorsed Hillary, and both Wild Bill Clinton and George Bush were subjected to allegations of drug use, so go figure.

As to whether cocaine was big at Woodstock, I couldn't say.  My recollection is that it went mass-market a bit later, but Casey Jones was driving his train high on cocaine a year after Woodstock, so what do I know?

And why did Mr. Mattera pick on cocaine and not pot?  Well, the point of the joke is to link Obama to Woodstock anything-goes liberal hippies and separate him from young conservatives; pot is just a bit too mainstream for that to work.  (If you especially enjoy my explanations of jokes, ask me why the chicken crossed the road.)

Ms. Zernike also found this:

He then mocked what he described, with a Chris Rock voice, as “diversity,” including, he said, college classes on “cyber feminism” and “what it means to be a feminist new black man.”

Describing the latter, he said: “Think of a crossover between RuPaul and Barney Frank.”

Come in at 2:25 on the video for the diversity segment with the "Chris Rock" voice.  I don't pick up any voice other than a Brooklyn accent, but I am not a enlightened lib.  Maybe she heard a Chris Tucker voice?  I always confuse the two.

And a bit later:

He described his book, to be published by Simon & Schuster, as an effort to create “a movement designed to capture and educate freedom-loving young people everywhere.” Offering up a slogan, he adopted the Chris Rock voice again: “Get your government off my freedom!” 

Come in at 7:20 to test your level of enlightenment; I am not hearing voices, but I a not a Times reporter.

Finally, Ms. Zernike offers this:

Can we save our generation from Obama zombies, he asked. He answered himself by borrowing the president’s campaign slogan: “Yes, my brothahs and sistahs. Yes we can!”

I would say that "my" was more like "mah".  Mattera adopted a faux Southern drawl to show his authentic country roots, just like Obama does sometimes (as Harry Reid noted).  Hillary finds her Southern drawl on occasion, too.  Or maybe Mattera was trying to get his Southern Evangelical mojo working - some of those guys are both white and conservative, or so I have read.

Is mocking Obama by adopting his phony-isms or putting on a Southern accent really invoking racial stereotypes?  What a great country.

It's great to see Breitbart taking this up.  Sure, Breitbart versus the Times is a mismatch, but I'm a Yankees fan,so I can enjoy this sort of thing.  I look forward to the eventual Times note from the editor, which will surely say something like "We stand by our reporter's fantasizing". 

FUN WITH KATE:  Jules Crittenden notes a mega-correction Ms. Zernike picked up in 2000, which jogs our memory a bit:

Kate and the Kerry joke - Patterico catches Ms. Zernike hearing voices.  Specifically, she heard Kerry say something no one else heard on the tape, thereby turning a slur on our troops into an anti-Bush joke.

Kate giving Kerry "hail" - in a 2006 reprise of the Swift Boat Wars, Ms. Zernike presented the fantasy that Kerry got his first Purple Heart in "a hail of enemy fire".  Thomas Lipscomb provided a detailed critique of the Zernike apologia; here are my thoughts on Zernike and Lipscomb.  And while on the topic of Kerry's first Purple Heart, let me return to a point made originally (and darn near exclusively) at this blog - although he was interviewed repeatedly for Brinkley's 2003 hagiography of Kerry and interviewed by Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe for their 2003 profile of Kerry, sailor William Zaladonis never mentioned he was with Kerry when he won that Purple Heart until the topic became controversial in 2004.  Atrocious interview technique, or a convenient memory?  Nobody cares! 

FWIW, Zaladonis was interviewed because he sailed on Kerry's first Swift boat a few days after the Purple Heart incident.  Apparently, seemingly obvious questions like "When did you first meet John Kerry?" or "Do you have any stories about Kerry in combat?" couldn't shake loose a story about Kerry's first medal.

Finally, in November 2008 Kate auditioned for the now-open role as "Obama Girl", telling us how cool it was that Obama was so cool.  (Remote, detached, and unempathetic have come much later, and not to Kate.)

Rounding Up The Taliban

The AllahPundit surveys the theories behind Pakistan's new commitment to rounding up the Taliban, and includes this one:

The $64,000 question remains why Pakistan is suddenly so intent in rolling these guys up. I’ve been speculating about sticks and carrots that Obama might have used to get them to cooperate, but maybe neither are the case. Maybe instead Pakistan feared that the Taliban was about to go rogue by striking a peace deal with Karzai that would have reduced Islamabad’s influence inside the country to an unacceptable degree. (Baradar is reputed to be open to negotiations.) For more on that possibility, I recommend J.E. Dyer’s post this morning in the Greenroom. If his/her theory is correct, we’ve now reached a surreal moment in which Pakistan is pursuing the Taliban for possibly being too friendly to the United States.

Hmm - if the Taliban made peace with Karzai and the Americans in Afghanistan, the Pakistan Taliban would have a free hand to battle the Pakistan government, wouldn't they?

AP closes with a question:

Exit question: If this is all a ploy by Pakistan to restore its leverage over the Taliban when negotiating with Karzai, why start rounding up lower level Al Qaeda capos? Why not just go get Mullah Omar and Bin Laden and Zawahiri and lean on them?

I can think of two reasons: first, rounding up lower level guys will surely get the message to the names at the top.  Secondly, Pakistan is collecting guys no one has ever heard of, any of whom could be rehabilitated and released down the road; if they captured Osama and brought him in for a chat they could never let him go and would probably be under irresistible pressure to turn him over to the US or the World Court.

LUCK IS THE RESIDUE OF DESIGN:  From the Times - look for underlings, find the top dog:

American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications saying militants with a possible link to the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, were meeting. Tipped off by the Americans, Pakistani counterterrorist officers took several men into custody, meeting no resistance.

Only after a careful process of identification did Pakistani and American officials realize they had captured Mullah Baradar himself, the man who had long overseen the Taliban insurgency against American, NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

New details of the raid indicate that the arrest of the No. 2 Taliban leader was not necessarily the result of a new determination by Pakistan to go after the Taliban, or a bid to improve its strategic position in the region. Rather, it may be something more prosaic: “a lucky accident,” as one American official called it. “No one knew what they were getting,” he said.

Our hands are clean on getting Baradar a lawyer:

Jostling over the prize began as soon as Mullah Baradar was identified. Officials with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy agency, limited American access to Mullah Baradar, not permitting direct questioning by Central Intelligence Agency officers until about two weeks after the raid, according to American officials who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity.

...

Bruce Riedel, an expert on Afghanistan at the Brookings Institution, who advised the Obama administration on Afghan policy early last year, said the tensions surrounding Mullah Baradar were inevitable. “The Pakistanis have a delicate problem with Baradar,” Mr. Riedel said. “If I were in their shoes, I’d be worried that he might reveal something embarrassing about relations between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani government or Inter-Services Intelligence.”

He's Back!

Tiger Who?

It Lives!

The NY Times reports on the latest iteration of health care reform:

WASHINGTON — President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday.

Democratic officials said the president’s proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

Congressional Democrats, however, have not yet seen the proposal or signed on.

I thought the problem with the reconciliation process was that only budget-related measures were eligible, which meant large parts of the health care reform (e.g., insurance reform banning coverage restrictions based on pre-existing conditions) couldn't be included without 60 supportive Senate votes.  Keith Hennesey had an excellent primer on this last summer; The Hill offered something earlier this week, and there are lots of links here.

Team Obama's governing theory seems to be that the public wants health care reform and is going to get it, good and hard.  But is a bill that neither Pelosi nor Reid have reviewed really going to move through Congress after just a week or two of debate?  Or is Congress going to pick up a new bill and talk about this all spring?  What about jobs, jobs, jobs?

STRAY THOUGHT:  As I grasp the reconciliation process, Obama and Reid can put anything they want into the bill; if one Senator raises a point of order as to whether a provision is germane to budgetary matters, it may take 60 votes to waive the point of order and keep the provision in the bill.

In which case Reid may try to put the Republicans on the spot, provision by provision.  Barring insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions may not be strictly germane, but will all 41 Republicans vote to strike this (presumably popular out of context) measure from the bill?

One obviously unpopular part of this bill is the new taxes, but they are clearly germane.  The individual mandates are, per Hennesey, administered through the tax code which makes them germane.

Well, if Obama presents his bill as the reconciliation eligible Answer, Republicans will have good reason to boycott the Health Care Summit.  Obama can try to host a televised spectacle debating an empty chair, or chairs; Republicans can counter by scheduling a same-day conference dedicated to job creation. Advantage: Reps!

Ended, but How?

Jake Tapper reports that the Pentagon is re-branding Operation Iraqi Freedom:

In a February 17, 2010, memo to the Commander of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the "requested operation name change is approved to take effect 1 September 2010, coinciding with the change of mission for U.S. forces in Iraq."

You can read the memo -- a copy of which was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen – HERE.

Gates writes that by changing the name at the same time as the change of mission -- the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. combat troops -- the US is sending "a strong signal that Operation IRAQI FREEDOM has ended and our forces are operating under a new mission."

Ok, so how did Operation Iraqi Freedom end - in victory?  I would like to think so, and I would love to hear them say so.  Maybe someone even has a stray "Mission Accomplished" banner lying about.    

RECRUITING OPPORTUNITY LOST:  "Iraqi Freedom" is being supplanted by "New Dawn".  That's their best shot?  C'mon - go with "Breaking Dawn" and recruiting centers will have teenage girls lined up around the block.  Or (more boldly), a retro "Red Dawn", as a Patrick Swayze tribute.

New Dawn.  Now yawn.

MORE:  I suspect "Operation Sheikh It (But Don't Break It)" got the consideration it deserved.  Meawhile, the name "New Dawn" is already taken:

New Dawn 118 (January-February 2010)

Who Really Runs the World?
Conspiracies, Hidden Agendas & the Plan for World Government. Andrew Marshall exposes the global power elite and the world they’re creating.

Swine Flu & Fake Epidemics
Medicalisation & the Push for Global Management. The spectre of pandemics is driving us towards a globalised medical bureaucracy, warns Jon Rappoport.

The Venus Project & the Zeitgeist Movement
Chard Currie explores an imagined world where war is outdated, there is no shortage of resources, and every human being enjoys a high standard of living.

Racing Towards Armageddon
The Plot to End the World. Best selling author Michael Baigent on the dark forces hiding in the shadows of religion pushing a perilous messianic agenda.

MUST READ: Jules Crittenden is excellent on the simultaneous but otherwise unreported re-branding of Operation Hope And Change.

My Stint As An Obama Apologist

Mickey Kaus and Andrew Malcolm have fun with Obama's "emergency" weatherization program meant to create jobs now.  Over to Mickey:

Unions vs. stimulation: The home "weatherization" jobs in the stimulus bill were subjected to Davis-Bacon wage regulations--a favorite of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department--under which federal Labor Department officials establish "prevailing wage" rates that must be paid. Why do unions like this system? Because the "prevailing wages" are determined in a way that guarantees they are usually more than the actual market wage, sometimes by large margins.  All that finagling takes a certain amount of bureaucracy, however--and time. ABC's Jonathan Karl: 

According to the GAO report, the Department of Labor spent most of last year trying to determine the prevailing wage is for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. [E.A.]

As a result, the Department of Energy apparently weatherized only 22,000 homes under the program. Another pre-existing program, which doesn't have to comply with Davis-Bacon, appears to have weatherized about 100,000 homes, if my math is right.

That's OK. It's not as if speed was important last year in terms of putting people to work. ... Oh wait, it was. [Insert now-embarrassing Obama quote here]

Well, yes, but - into the valley of pork rode the six hundred, or at least, President Bush.  George Bush fought the good fight over Davis-Bacon in order to hasten reconstruction after Katrina in the fall of 2005, back when men were men and Republicans still controlled the Congress.  Bush suspended Davis-Bacon on Sept. 9 but caved in to Democratic pressure and a mini-revolt by Republican moderates and reversed course in late October.

If Bush couldn't win this fight in 2005, should anyone have expected Obama to undertake this scuffle in 2009?

Now, the "prevailing wage" calculation for weatherization seems to have taken forever, which apparently was not the case for the Katrina area, and I don't know why that is. Is the Department of Labor having trouble figuring a prevailing wage for construction type projects when no one is hiring and everyone is laying off construction workers?  Or is weatherization a skill so subtle that other seemingly comparable wages are not helpful?  And let's note that per the GAO report (see below) the Davis-Bacon requirement was a new imposition by Team Obama, which gives it different flavor than the suspension by Bush.

Since Democrats forgot to repeal the law of Unintended Consequences when Obama was inaugurated, I can't say that a Dept of Labor meltdown over calculating prevailing wages strikes me as an utter surprise.  But I don't think it is realistic to have expected Obama to lead a charge up Davis-Bacon Hill after Bush was so soundly routed there only a few years earlier.

All that said, a day may come when Obama supporters tire of offering the "Bush did it too" defense.  But this is not that day!

FROM THE GAO:

For example, the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program became subject to the Davis-Bacon requirements for the first time after having been previously exempt from those requirements. Thus, the Department of Labor had to determine the prevailing wages for weatherization workers in each county in the United States, a task it completed on September 3, 2009. Seven out of 16 states and the District of Columbia that GAO has been reviewing said that they had waited to begin weatherizing homes until the Department of Labor had determined county-by-county prevailing wage rates for their state. States used only a small percentage of their available funds in 2009, mostly because state and local agencies needed time to develop the infrastructures required for managing the significant increase in weatherization funding and for ensuring compliance with Recovery Act requirements, including Davis-Bacon requirements. As of December 31, 2009, according to data available to the Department of Energy, about 9,100 homes had been weatherized out of a planned 593,000.

Plane Crash In Austin

Joseph Stack crashed his small plane into an IRS office building in Austin, TX.  Stack is the only confirmed fatality but one person is unaccounted for.

Here is what is almost surely his suicide note.  Stephen Spruiell wonders what political label belongs to a guy who hates organized religion, big corporations, George Bush, and especially, the IRS, but favors massive health care reform to rein in Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

I'm not finding any political contributions at the FEC site for a Joesph Andrew Stack or J A Stack of TX or CA.

MORE:  The guy was a software engineer who posted his suicide note to the internet, so eventually his "handle" will be discovered and we will peruse his musings at the Daily Kos or Huffington Post or Red State.

If I had to put him in a political box I would say that right now the 24/7 economic populism of the Tea Party probably held him more than the here today-gone tomorrow populism of Barack Obama.  But I wouldn't be surprised if Stack had a thing for the anti-corporate Nader or Kucinich back in the day, or maybe Ron Paul.

Can I just pick the box labeled "wacko"?

Insurance Across State Lines

Ezra Klein and Jon Chait explain why the Republican notion of allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines is, quoting Klein, a "terrible, no good, very bad health-care idea". 

But first, why might it be helpful?  Let's cut to this old WSJ article:

That's not how interstate insurance would work. Devon Herrick, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis who has written extensively on this subject, notes that insurance companies operating nationally would compete nationally. The reason a Kentucky plan written for an individual from New Jersey would save the New Jerseyan money is that New Jersey is highly regulated, with costly mandated benefits and guaranteed access to insurance.

Affordability would improve if consumers could escape states where each policy is loaded with mandates. "If consumers do not want expensive 'Cadillac' health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces, they could buy from insurers in a state that does not mandate such benefits," Mr. Herrick has written.

Klein helpfully explains that people are too dumb to know what their insurance actually covers, so without the helpful state regulators by their side they will inevitably by something cheap that doesn't provide the coverage they actually need.  Well, in LibWorld he may be right - Obama recently eulogized a woman who had high deductible catastrophic insurance but didn't want to address the possibility that the lump in her breast was a catastrophe (she had just put all her money into her small business).  Obama described her as having no insurance at all, which is not accurate here in reality but may be typical of LibWorld.

Chait explains that what makes health insurance work is random wealth transfers from the healthy young to the sickly "old".  No, seriously:

The young and healthy would save money because they'd find an insurance plan from a state with very limited regulation. Say, those plans would operate in a state that doesn't require insurance to cover any medical conditions that are unlikely to afflict a young, healthy 25-year-old. What happens is that the health care industry becomes like the credit card industry. Some small state realizes it can attract a lot of business its way by winning the race to the regulatory bottom.

So then, effectively, we've almost completely eliminated all regulations on health insurance. Conservatives will say that's great. And certainly the healthy 25-year-old would be better off. But, of course, the effect of those regulations was to force insurers to cover medical conditions that older or less healthy people have. As a result, all the young healthy people have split, and costs on everybody else go up. The young and healthy are paying higher rates because of these regulations. But the same regulations let the old and sick pay lower rates -- and they're the people who have the biggest trouble buying insurance as it is. Allowing interstate sale of insurance isn't just a non-solution, it's a massive anti-solution, worsening all the problems of the status quo.

So the youngsters just starting out ought to subsidize people who have been working and saving for thirty years because... I have no idea, but I have never claimed to be smart enough to be a liberal.  Maybe because if the rules don't change over the next thirty years some other dupe will subsidize them?  Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter was scuffling with Ted Kennedy in the Democratic primaries - has the world changed since then?  Do people still have are the steady union jobs and reliable middle management sinecures of the 70's?  Only of they work in the public sector.

Prof. Bainbridge dismisses Klein's "race to the bottom" regulatory argument as unsupported by evidence. And "Stop The ACLU" highlights this from Klein's analysis:

As it happens, the Congressional Budget Office looked at a bill along these lines back in 2005. They found that the legislation wouldn’t change the number of the uninsured and would save the federal government about $12 billion between 2007 and 2015. That is to say, it would do very little in the aggregate.

As "Stop" notes, interstate insurance isn't exclusively about saving the government money - the same CBO study asserts that consumers would save about 5% in aggregate.  Presumably that also reflects dramatic cost-shifting - if the young and healthy are saving money, someone else must be paying more.  that is automatically a bad thing to Chait and Klein, although one might expect them to be more focused on income subsidies and means-testing than on random transfers.

WHERE THE BROWN STUFF WILL HIT THE WHIRLING COOLING MECHANISM:  What if states could offer policies that explicitly offered discounts or (heaven forbid!) charged premiums based on simple markers such as Body Mass Index, percent body fat, and stress-test measures of cardiovascular fitness?  Yikes!   Now it would not just be the young and healthy that would benefit; even the middle-aged or those "old" fifty-somethings who have been hitting the gym rather than the couch could shift costs onto the shiftless. 

There are obvious "fairness" issues since some people really do have unlucky genetic predispositions.  However, should a health insurer be able to reward non-smokers?  If so, why not let them reward regular exercisers?  (Here is a life insurer linking premiums to BMI.)

And what rules might apply to the use of DNA markers?  If We The People really believe that certain genetic risks ought to be borne by society then an explicit government program to do just that would make more sense than the Chait approach of random transfers.  The advance of science is going to make health and life insurance a very tricky proposition.

ERRATA:  The WSJ gives a bum steer; they cite "A 2008 publication "Consumer Response to a National Marketplace in Individual Insurance," (Parente et al., University of Minnesota)", but you will have an easier time finding it if you search under the correct title, "Consumer Response to a National Marketplace for Individual Insurance".

This Kaiser-Permanente article was OK, too.

Ride The Strong Horse

Two more Taliban leaders arrested in Pakistan.  Let's give props to Obama's long awaited decision to commit more troops to the region:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days inside Pakistan, officials said Thursday, as American and Pakistani intelligence agents continued to press their offensive against the group’s leadership after the capture of the insurgency’s military commander last month.

...The arrests were made by Pakistani officials, the Afghans said, but it seemed probable that C.I.A. officers accompanied them, as they did in the arrest of Mr. Baradar. Pakistani officials declined to comment.

...

The arrests — all three in Pakistan — demonstrate a greater level of cooperation by Pakistan in hunting leaders of the Afghan Taliban than in the eight years of war. American officials have complained bitterly since 2001 that the Pakistanis, while claiming to be American allies and accepting American aid were simultaneously providing sanctuary and assistance to Taliban fighters and leaders who were battling the Americans across the border.

...

It is still far from clear, but senior commanders in Afghanistan say they believe that the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, led by Gens. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmed Shuja Pasha, may finally be coming around to the belief that the Taliban — in Pakistan and Afghanistan — constitute a threat to the existence of the Pakistani state.

“I believe that General Kayani and his leaders have come to the conclusion that they want us to succeed,” a senior NATO officer in Kabul said.

I doubt they would be as inclined to back American success if we were backing away from the region.

I am surprised by this next bit, but who knows?

A senior United States official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the arrest of the two shadow governors was unrelated to Mr. Baradar’s capture.

Baradar was the Taliban commander whose capture was recently reported by the Times.

MORE: Former jarhead turned NY Times reporter C. J. Chivers (bio) covers a platoon under sniper fire in Af ghanistan.

They Told Me If I Voted For McCain We Would Have A Moron As Vice President... And They Were Right!

Joe Biden, Man of the Millenium - the last millenium.

Fortunately it was not Sarah Palin who said this or NBC wold have cut away from the Olympics to cover it.

Local Weirding

Ann Althouse puzzles over Tom Friedman's rally for climate change, or what Friedman prefers to call "global weirding".

I especially like this from Friedman:

"The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever."

Some areas, like San Francisco, will get foggier; others, like San Francisco, will have less fog.  Pretty convincing stuff.

Hoops For Haiti

AllahPundit tells us that Scott Brown's daughter wants Obama to find a partner and play her and her dad in a "Hoops for Haiti" fundraiser.

Let's go to the matchups - Scott Brown is an active triathlete who played college ball at Tufts and was league MVP in high school basketball.  Obama rode the pines for a state championship team in Hawaii.  This is at best even for Team Obama,and I am straining my sense of bipartisanship to say so.

But Ayla Brown is a real problem for Obama, since she is a 6' guard for BC in the tough ACC.  No guy is going to look good guarding her; Obama needs to exert his pull as Commander-in-Chief and call up one of the young women from a service academy basketball team to help him out.  Navy is nearest; forward Kristin Bowen can light it up, Obama could go big with the Navy center, Cassie Consedine, or he could go quick with 5' 5" guard Angela Meyers.

Let's get this done.

Catastrophic Insurance Is Not Insurance At All - To Obama, Anyway

Megan McArdle is shocked by the depth of the commitment to first dollar medical coverage and makes the case for catastrophic coverage. 

And speaking of catastrophes and to the left's commitment to first dollar coverage let's flash back to Obama's recent speech to the DNC when he eulogized the nameless campaign volunteer named Melanie Shouse who was "buried" (cremated, actually) in an Obama t-shirt:

I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

In fact, Ms. Shouse had catastrophic coverage - after copays and the $5,000 deductible she would have had (by her estimate) medical bills of $8,000 to $10,000 per year.  However, she had just maxed out her credit cards to invest in her small business, so when she felt a lump in her breast in her mid-30's she felt like she couldn't afford bad news, so she skipped regular exams.

After several years, she finally got a diagnosis, qualified for Medicaid (and eventually Medicare, for disability) as a supplement for her insurance, and sought treatment.

But in Obama's telling she had no insurance at all.  And it appears that Ms. McArdle has plenty of readers who agree.

Amy Bishop

Let's have an Amy Bishop thread.

Justin Elliot of TPM Muckraker will probably drop this as soon as the Obama connection is pinned down but so far he has some useful stuff - this post links to the original State Police report from the 1986 shoting death of her brother.

Greece Overboard

My Euro prediction is that Greece is small enough that it could be allowed to fail "pour encourager les autres".  Of course, I have only a vague idea idea what a failure would look like, and I assume no European leaders are curious to find out.  Meanwhile, aid talk tied to budget cuts and tax hikes continue.

MORE:  A history of Euro-skepticism is linked here.

Biden For Mayor!

Joe Biden tells Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly how to keep NYC safe.

Maybe Biden could start with just securing Peggy Fleming.

Wanted, Dead Or Alive

Oops - one day after the WaPo ran a story (mentioned earlier) complaining that Team Obama was killing terrorists rather than capturing and interrogating them, the NY Times reports that a joint Pakistani-CIA team captured a top Taliban leader.  Excellent news, and we applaud their success.

WASHINGTON — The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

It was unclear whether he was talking, but the officials said his capture had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials. Most immediately, they hope he will provide the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader.

Has the wind shifted in Pakistan?

The participation of Pakistan’s spy service could suggest a new level of cooperation from Pakistan’s leaders, who have been ambivalent about American efforts to crush the Taliban. Increasingly, the Americans say, senior leaders in Pakistan, including the chief of its army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, have gradually come around to the view that they can no longer support the Taliban in Afghanistan — as they have quietly done for years — without endangering themselves. Indeed, American officials have speculated that Pakistani security officials could have picked up Mullah Baradar long ago.

I assume Eric Holder specifically and libs generally will focus on this detail:

The officials said that Pakistan was leading the interrogation of Mullah Baradar, but that Americans were also involved. The conditions of the questioning are unclear. In its first week in office, the Obama administration banned harsh interrogations like waterboarding by Americans, but the Pakistanis have long been known to subject prisoners to brutal questioning.

How brutal is "brutal"?  Would they exceed the guidelines of the enhanced interrogation OLC memos?  Isn't this something like rendition to a friendly torturing regime?  Or is it all made OK by the fact that an ally of ours led the capturing team, at least ostensibly?  And what American officials signed off on this?

We eagerly await the Holder investigation.

MORE:  Prof. Jacobson includes a link to this Newsweek profile.

Bye, Bye Bayh

Sen. Bayh of Indiana to retire.  The open seat should flip to the Republicans, specifically former Senator Dan Coats.

The Cook Political Report, one of the nation's leading handicappers of congressional elections, now carries 10 Democratic-held seats in its most competitive categories -- meaning that if Republicans sweep those race (and lose none of their own vulnerable seats), they will have a 51-seat majority. Cook, incidentally, moved Indiana from a lean Democratic seat to a lean Republican seat in the wake of the Bayh news.

And if the Senate goes 50-50 Joe Lieberman is back in the spotlight.

IF I WERE A DEMOCRAT HAVING TROUBLE GETTING NERVOUS ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM:

Here is a transcript of Bayh's resignation speech; his proposed agenda conspicuously omits health care reform:

My decision should not reflect adversely upon our president. I look forward to working with him during the next 11 months to get our deficit under control, get the economy moving once again, regulate Wall Street to avoid future political crises and reform education so that all of our children can fulfill their God-given potential. This is the right agenda for America.

As to Bayh's Presidential aspirations, this speech reads like a "hello" speech, not a "good-bye" speech - the resume, the moderate record, and did I mention the resume?  The idea that Democrats might actually nominate a guy with a record of accomplishment is bizarre, but 2012 is likely to be an odd year:

For almost all of my adult life, I've been privileged to serve the people of Indiana in elective office. As secretary of state, I worked to reform our election laws to ensure that every vote counts. I cast the deciding vote in the closest congressional race in the nation, for a member of the other political party, because I believed that he had legitimately won the election.

As governor, I worked with an outstanding team to balance the budget, cut taxes, leave the largest surplus in state history, create the most new jobs during any eight-year period, increase funding for schools every year, make college more affordable, and reform welfare to emphasize work.

We raised water-quality standards, created more new state parks than at any time since the 1930s and raised the penalties for violent crime.

In the Senate, I have continued to fight for the best interests of our state. I've worked with Hoosier workers and businesses large and small -- in the defense sector, the life sciences, the medical device industry, autos, steel, recreational vehicle manufacturing and many, many more -- to save and create new jobs.

Since 9/11, I've fought to make our nation safe, with a national- security policy that is both tough and smart. I've championed the cause of our soldiers, to make sure they have the equipment they need in battle and the health care they deserve when they return home.

I have often been a lonely voice for balancing the budget and restraining spending. I've worked with Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, to do the nation's business in a way that is civil and constructive.

I'm fortunate to have good friends on both sides of the aisle, something that's much too rare in Washington today. After all of these years, my passion for service to our fellow citizens is undiminished. But my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned.

I don't see how a middle-aged white moderate male can defeat Obama in the Democratic primaries, but 2012 is several political lifetimes away.