Month: August 2009

Vanity Fair did it first:

Michael Crowley looks at the landscape in Iraq and wonders if sectarian chaos will cause Obama to stay longer than the SOFA deadline of December 31, 2011:

It's hard to say for sure. During the campaign, he was tonally emphatic about ending America's commitment there. But he has always allowed for revisions based on the judgment of his commanders. It's awfully hard to imagine that surge architect David Petraeus would be willing to watch his gains there disappear in a maelstrom of car bombs and sectarian assassinations. If Petraeus says we need to maintain a substantial troop committment, will Obama defy him?

Michael Cohen demurs:

You know it's been a while since I studied civil/military relations but President Barack Obama acts in defiance of no man or woman in uniform. They follow his orders – seeing as he is commander-in-chief and all. I don't mean to pick on Crowley but this slip is indicative of an ongoing erosion in civil/military relations.

In 2004, you had General Petraeus wading into domestic politics by writing an op-ed supportive of President Bush's policy in Iraq on the eve of the general election; you had Bush and Senator McCain basically saying that decision-making about troop levels would be made by Petraeus, as opposed to his civilian bosses. Right now in Afghanistan we're seeing a ramping up of a counter-insurgency mission that stands in sharp contrast to President Obama's statement on Af/Pak policy in March. And in perhaps the most underreported example, you had Jim Jones statement that no more troops would be going to Afghanistan undermined a mere ten days later by leaks from Gen. McChrystal that more troop requests were on the way. Granted these are somewhat disparate examples, but they point to the far more public role that military leaders are playing in national security debates – and often at the expense of civilian leadership.

A series. More here.

A cautionary tale:

From 1975 to 1986, Anthony Edward Dokoupil distributed at least 50 tons of Colombian and Mexican [marijuana] north of the Mason-Dixon line. At his peak in 1986, my father led a team that smuggled some 17 tons of Colombian pot on sailboats from the Caribbean—enough to get every college kid in America stoned. He says he raked in around $2.5 million altogether – $6 million today. Today, [Anthony Dekoupil] is a 62-year-old pensioner who still uses crack occasionally, a man who blew his riches on hookers and hotel rooms, hit my mother, slept under bridges, and bottomed out so completely that he was actually grateful when the U.S. marshals finally came calling.

A secular humanist take on same-sex marriage.

Wikipedia says:

Hypernova is an Iranian indie-rock band based in Tehran. Like many other Iranian rock bands, the group was formed in the wake of president Khatami's relaxed stance on cultural policies in Iran in the late 1990s. […P]laying rock music is dubbed as illegal and may lead to arrest, large fines, and even a public flogging, following Ahmadinejad's ban of all Western music from state-run airwaves in December 2005 in a reversal of reforms made under his more liberal predecessor.

When the band was asked why their songs are in English as opposed to Farsi, they said that the Persian (Farsi) is a really poetic and harmonious language, but not one well-suited to the harsh and really energetic rock sound.

EW.com wrote:

Hypernova blends the gothic sensibilities of Editors and Interpol with the hipster dance-pep of Franz Ferdinand, and the band's deep-voiced lead singer Raam recalls Ian Curtis of Joy Division. (Side note: Raam's a badass name, but it's not his real one. In fact, each member of the group abbreviates their name to avoid harmful/unwanted attention in their home city, Tehran.)

While none of their music is available on iTunes, a fair chunk of the band's 2008 debut, Through the Chaos, can be streamed on MySpace.

Wired interviewed Hypernova last fall. Money quote:

It’s not easy getting visas to the United States when you’re from the Axis of Evil.

And Reuters has a great video profile, after the jump:

The Japanese are developing robots that can run, pitch, hit and dribble. (Click through for cool demonstrations.)

The revolution is not over, as this brilliant piece of reporting in the NYT helps show. Meanwhile, U2 is on board:

"Consider this remarkable statistic. In 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Democrats (or at least white Carter voters) — likewise, in 2008, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas, in 1980, just 9 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Obama voters last year. Thus, Carter went down to a landslide defeat, whereas Obama defeated John McCain by a healthy margin," – Nate Silver. Tom Edsall's must-read take on these implications is here.

Ed Kilgore piles on Ross for calling Texas as economic "model citizen." A reader writes:

I have a personal story to add to this debate as it regards Texas vs. California health care for the uninsured. Seven years ago I was a starving student in law school in California without insurance and was visiting my brother in Dallas, Texas over summer break. While there, I tripped over one of his miniature chihuahuas and landed smack down, face first, on his concrete patio floor. It looked like I busted by entire face. We went to the local emergency room (can't remember which hospital). I don't even think I saw a doctor, just a nurse practitioner. Nothing wrong with that, of course, until I got the bill. The NP simply put a liquid bandage on my upper lip (no X-ray even) and sent me on my way. A month later, I received a bill for over $1,000.

Recently I was laid off from my job, and couldn't afford the $450 per month Cobra payment to continue my health insurance. Last month, I had this weird abscess in my buttocks that hurt like hell (it felt like I had broken my tail bone).

First I went to Urgent Care, per my sister's advice, which, without insurance, costs $100 per visit. I was told that maybe I had a cyst, but the doctor couldn't see any visible sign of it, so gave me a prescription of antibiotics and pain pills and told me to come back in a few days. Well, a few days later, the pain had become unbearable and I went back to Urgent Care. The doctor said she still couldn't see anything and that I would need a CT scan to locate the abscess and to have it drained at the hospital. Since I didn't have insurance, she recommended I go to the ER at county hospital, which for me was Olive View/UCLA in Sylmar, CA.

I can't tell you how that affected me. I just started crying. I couldn't stand the thought of going to "county hospital". But, I had no real choice, unless I wanted a huge medical bill (and assuming anyone would even see me without health insurance).

So, ER at County is like ER at any major metropolitan hospital: crowded as hell. But screening happened right away (no more than 15 minutes waiting), and I was deemed to need immediate attention. Once admitted, I had fantastic care. The cost of this visit? $125 (includes the CT Scan). Had to go back for surgery to drain the abscess. Cost for that? $125. Five weeks of physical therapy. Cost for that? $125. And I received phone calls weekly from the ER to see how I am. Now that I've been discharged from PT, they want me to have a follow up CT Scan just to ensure everything's ok. Again, cost for that will be $125. It's a flat rate that covers everything.

So, $1,000 to put a liquid bandage on my upper lip vs. $500 for 2 CT Scans, 2 ER visits, surgery and 5 weeks of physical therapy. That's Texas vs. California for the uninsured.

Another reader writes:

I'm really not sure what we can specifically point to one thing that's unique about Texas that has made its economy boom lately. So this is purely anecdotal.

I went to high school in Dallas, received my BA from the University of Texas at Austin, and have worked at the Texas Legislative Council since February. (Incidentally, I lived in Orange County from kindergarten through junior high.) My father's company moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas because it is more or less in the middle of the country . Now they are closer to everything (whereas before, getting to Chicago, NYC, and other places was a bigger deal, the DFW airport can get you most place in the US in under 4 hours I'd imagine). It is also cheaper. The considerable low cost of living lures a lot of companies here, which might be one reason why soo many major corporations are headquartered in Dallas. (It kind of reminds me of multinational corporations moving their businesses to third world countries).

Given the low costs, companies can pay families to move out to Texas (just like my family). In fact, at the high school I went to, I can honestly say there were only a few dozen kids who had grown up in Dallas their entire lives (or even most of it). Almost everyone moved in from somewhere because their parent's company had relocated. This, I think, is important. I remember moving to Texas from CA and everyone telling us how low the taxes were here mainly because there is no income tax. But, as my parents always remind me, property taxes are no joke here. So I don't think it's the taxes as much as it's everything else: land is cheap, goods and services are cheap, whereas everything in CA is considerably more expensive.