Policy and Politics
tfk | January 2, 2010The Times seeks to explain "What to Expect as the T.S.A. Tightens Airport Security":
preparing for any new security measures is not straightforward. The T.S.A. has purposely been vague about what travelers will encounter, other than more police at the airport and additional layers of security.
âPassengers should be prepared for additional measures of security, but we canât say what they are,â said Lauren Gaches, a spokeswoman for the T.S.A.
This is useless. Indeed, worse than useless. Security through obscurity is often harmful. If I can't pack something on my next flight, I want to know…
tfk | December 31, 2009Happy 2010! I'm perfectly happy to put an end to the Naughties and to welcome in the 'Teens, hoping against hope for progress in the coming decade. I got to watch fireworks from the roof of my lovely new apartment building with my lovely fiancée and our lovely friends, and so far I'm feeling good about the year.
Let's see what the rest of this first day holdsâ¦
tfk | December 31, 2009This is old news, but the National Review is worried about Star Trek:
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it.
In fairness, there are many reasons why one might not like Star Trek, or TNG in particular. Maybe it's a sane explanationâ¦
Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War eraâ¦
Ah, OK. So he's objecting perhaps to the fact that Star Trek has a socialist economy, where money has been…
tfk | December 27, 2009Discovery Institute boss Bruce Chapman considers healthcare reform, and wonders Is it Constitutional?
The answer is: Yes.
This has been a simple answer to a stupid question.
FWIW, Chapman's point is slightly less stupid than one might think, focusing on a commission tasked with presenting Congress with recommendations about reforming Medicare, which commission's recommendations would be implemented unless overruled by a 2/3 vote in Congress. "[I]t seems hard to credit any legal argument," Chapman quotes a Disco. fellow writing, "that enables a current House of Congress to bar future Houses…
tfk | December 22, 2009Washington Post, 12/22/2009 â Obama rejects criticism on health-care reform legislation:
"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill." â¦
He said the Senate legislation accomplishes "95 percent" of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health…
tfk | December 21, 2009We knew that the Discovery Institute was wrong about evolution. They recently set out to prove to the world how wrong they are about global warming, having also shown how poorly they grasp the difference between weather and climate, how little they understand about tsarist Russia, about Social Security and foreign affairs, advanced medical directives, fiscal policy, and indeed about human genetics. Now Bruce Chapman, former Director of the Census for Ronald Reagan and head DJ of the Disco. 'Tute, shows how little he knows about current events:
Sen. John McCain could have been Barack Obama's…
tfk | December 21, 2009Kevin Drum reproduces the following graphic (from here via here) under the title "The Aging of Science."
The problem is that this isn't about the Aging of Science. First, most scientists don't seek NIH grants, so this would, at best, show the aging of medical research. But really, it represents an intentional and ill-considered policy at NIH of pushing for larger grants to a smaller fraction of applicants. Before you give researchers millions of dollars, they need to have encouraging results, so they need to have established research programs with solid results. So NIH funds older…
tfk | December 21, 2009Steve Benen reminds me about the GOP effort to block a defense spending bill to delay health-care reform:
Senate Republicans said Thursday that they would try to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move that several acknowledged was an effort to delay President Obama's health-care legislation. â¦
"I don't want health care," Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) said in explaining his support of a filibuster. He is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which crafted the Pentagon funding bill.
Brownback is running for Governor of Kansas next…
tfk | December 18, 2009Via Tyler Longpine, a report finds that health insurance reform would significantly reduce the number of uninsured in Kansas:
About 228,000 uninsured people in Kansas would gain coverage by 2019 under the Senate health reform bill, according to a new report by Families USA, a national group advocating for health reform. Without comprehensive reform, an additional 59,000 people in Kansas will lose health care coverage by 2019, according to the report, increasing the number of uninsured Kansans from about 338,000 to 397,000. Nationally, the number of uninsured is projected to increase to 54…
tfk | December 18, 2009Jason Rosenhouse replies to my post yesterday about health insurance. You'll recall that I took progressive opponents of the current Senate bill to task for complaining about a mandate that people buy health insurance as if we didn't have parallel examples to see how insurance mandates work. Jason objects:
For one thing, the moral case for requiring car insurance is a lot stronger than it is for health insurance. Why should you have to buy car insurance? Because other drivers need to be protected from you. Simple as that. You can do a lot of harm with a car, and there has to be some system…
tfk | December 16, 2009I don't say this often, but Atrios isn't talking sense:
I feel like those more supportive of this bill are attacking anti-mandate strawmen. The reason for thinking that without a public option or similar mandates are going to be a disaster is that without competition or sufficient affordability (due to not quite generous enough subsidies), you're forcing people to buy shitty insurance that they can't afford. Mandates aren't bad in and of themselves, but they're bad if they aren't part of a comprehensive plan which is... good!
The issue is that the health insurance reform bill in Congress…
tfk | December 15, 2009Kevin Drum is right. As sucky as the current Senate bill is, it's a marked improvement over the status quo ante and it gives a path to more reforms later. Failing to pass a bill (as advocated by some progressive leaders) is suicide. Democratic voters are already demoralized from all the compromise, and outright failure to deliver a key promise will leave a lot of marginal voters either ready to vote Republican, or to simply stay home and give up on politics. 2008 energized a lot of new voters, especially new Democratic voters, and failing to pass this bill, even after the loss of Medicare…
tfk | December 14, 2009The AP reports In North Carolina, Lawsuit Is Threatened Over Councilmanâs Lack of Belief in God:
Detractors of [recently elected city councilman Cecil] Bothwell⦠are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in last week, even though the stateâs antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the United States Constitution.
âThe question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me,â said Mr. Bothwell, 59, âand itâs certainly not relevant to public office.â
Raised a Presbyterian, Mr. Bothwell began questioning…
tfk | December 9, 2009Blogging has been scant here of late for two reasons. First, I've got enough going on that blogging time is limited, and I don't have a lot I need to get off my chest. Second, the world is currently utterly dominated by the stupids. The climate change treaty negotiations at Copenhagen, which should be a serious event where scientists and policymakers hash out the most important global issue of our day, is instead a circus for douchebags and privacy-invading pricks. And, you know, douchebags and privacy-invading pricks are kinda my professional bread and butter at NCSE, so it's not a…
tfk | December 6, 2009TalkingPointsMemo notes an odd simile, using the headline: Tom Friedman Compares Afghanistan To "Special Needs Baby". Friedman told Fareed Zakaria:
This is nation building. This is nation building 101 in the most fragmented country in the world. Fareed, we're talking about Afghanistan. And we're talking about America in the middle of the great recession. I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby. You know, I mean, that's really kind of what we're doing. And that's like, whoa, y'know, that terrifies me.
Friedman's error isn't what…
tfk | December 3, 2009Or it would if the Senate actually represented the American public. According to a Thomson Reuters poll:
Sixty percent of survey respondents said they believe a public option should be included in final healthcare reform legislation.
Despite overwhelming support, wankers like erstwhile healthcare reform advocate Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Susan Collins are unwilling to back a bill containing this necessary reform. If you live in Connecticut, Louisiana, Nebraska, Arkansas, or Maine, it's time to make some phone calls.
tfk | December 2, 2009Last night's speech wasn't one of Obama's greatest hits. Kevin Drum's assessment seems basically right quoting Adam Serwer's line that "It was a speech that reflected the president deciding on what is maybe the least crappy of a number of crappy options â without convincingly explaining how it would work" and adding:
There are two possible reasons for the speech being so unconvincing: either Obama doesn't know how to deliver a good speech or else Obama isn't really convinced himself. But we know the former isn't true, don't we? You can fill in the rest yourself.
The best that can be said…
tfk | December 2, 2009It's honestly hard to know what to make of Ray Comfort. First he says bananas are proof of intelligent design because of how well they fit in your hand. Then he retracts the claim, accepting that the domestic banana is, in fact, a product of extensive artificial selection. Then he backs off and insists "There isn’t any evidence that the banana has changed its shape in the last 2,000 years."
Better than that is his reply to a question about Biblical references to the Earth being fixed and immobile:
So let’s look closely at what the above verses actually say:
"He has fixed the earth firm,…
tfk | November 29, 2009A week or so ago, someone broke into a server at the University of East Anglia and made off with a range of emails and other data from the university's Climate Research Unit. This excited lots of climate change deniers, as they've long claimed that CRU had secret evidence that global warming wasn't happening, or something. Much web commentary followed, in which a supposedly "random sample" of these emails were widely distributed and dissected publicly.
My first thought on reading about this was not about climate change or the ensuing storm of BS about it. I thought of the scientists'…