Month: October 2009

Jay Newton-Small says we should have a health care bill by the end of next week. The Economist takes aim at the Senate Finance Committee's bill:

The biggest problems with this imperfect bill arise from cost. It does too little to tame health inflation, as Douglas Elmendorf, head of the CBO, hinted this week. And the bill is likely to cost far more than currently advertised, because of two wheezes. One is a lethargic implementation plan, which means that the full annual cost will not kick in for a few years yet (thus making the CBO’s mandatory ten-year cost estimate misleadingly low). The second is the assumption of heroic cost savings from Medicare and big cuts in payments. Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, scoffs that “this legislation is an example of the triumph of budgeting hope over experience.”

Stuart is a very straight shooter on this. He represents the position of a conservative policy wonk in favor of real structural reform. Hence his total isolation right now.

The Washington Times insists that Jennings is a "dangerous radical" with a "bizarre sexual agenda" involving the "indoctrination of kindergarten children." And the source of his sinister scheme?

Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword to a 1998 book titled, "Queering Elementary Education." The book he endorsed was a collection of essays by different authors who supported teaching young children about homosexuality. Mr. Jennings' foreword explains why he thinks it is important to start educating children about homosexuality as early as activist-educators can get away with doing so. "Ask any elementary-school teachers you know and – if they're honest – they'll tell you they start hearing [anti-homosexual prejudice] as soon as kindergarten." And "As one third-grader put it plainly when asked by her teacher what 'gay' meant: 'I don't know. It's just a bad thing.' "As another author in the book notes: "Any grade is 'old' enough [for the proper education] because even five-year-olds are calling each other 'gay' and 'faggot.'

“What I reject is when some folks say we should go back to the past policies when it was those very same policies that got us into this mess in the first place. Another way of putting it is when, you know, I’m busy and Nancy is busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess — we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you’re not holding the mop the right way. Why don’t you grab a mop, why don’t you help clean up.  (Applause.)  You’re not mopping fast enough.  (Laughter.)  That’s a socialist mop.  (Laughter and applause.)  Grab a mop — let’s get to work,” – Barack Obama.

It’s an inspired three-word challenge to the GOP. Devastating, actually – because it both reminds people of the damage the GOP did while not seeming to dwell on the past or to score partisan points (while actually doing both).

Meep. Meep …

New York, New York, 6.30 pm

Nicholas Beaudrot prods the right:

Lately I seem to be having conversations with wonkish right-of-center types who have this-or-that idea about how to design a simpler, more efficient, and more effective policy to deal with taxation, climate change, health care, whatever. But it always stops there. No one talks about managing the transition. No one talks about convincing Mitch McConnell to back these ideas. No one talks about sixty votes. No one talks about the interest group dynamics in Washington. No one even talks about working for a decade to elect members of Congress who might be more amenable to these sorts of policies. It’s just policy in a vacuum. Which is an interesting intellectual exercise, but not a legitimate substitute for governance, an ultimately messy endeavor.

The better "conservatism" succeeds as entertainment and business, the less it succeeds at looking like a philosophy of governance. And the wider that gap grows, the longer it will take to bridge it.

It will get worse before it gets better.

(Hat tip: Ordinary Gentlemen)

HuffPo surpassed WaPo in unique visitors last month.

Pajama-world cartoonist, Chris Muir, ran a really weird cartoon last Sunday. Some are hyperventilating that it's some veiled assassination threat, which seems silly to me. It could be read as a kind of mocking parody of Beckville. But the conviction with which this rant is delivered, and the need to place it in the mouth of a black man (cartoons are wonderful things) … well, you make up your own mind. There are ways of saying things without saying them. Which, of course, is why political cartooning endures as a form. It's after the jump:

Former UN Afghanistan official Peter Galbraith throws some more cold water in this week's Time:

There is no easy solution to Afghanistan's election mess. If the ECC removes enough fraudulent votes, Karzai will fall below 50%, and there will be a second round of voting. However, the factors that caused problems on Aug. 20 — ghost polling stations, corrupt election staff and a partisan commission — are still present. Dealing with those factors will require leadership that the head of the U.N. mission has yet to demonstrate.

If Karzai emerges the winner of the rushed and incomplete audit process now under way, Afghanistan's internal peace will depend on Karzai's opponents accepting — or at least tolerating — the outcome. Karzai's main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, has said publicly that he does not believe the U.N.'s envoy is neutral. By failing to address the obvious fraud in Afghanistan's elections, the U.N. has lost credibility that is desperately needed for it to act as a postelection peacemaker.

Karzai's opponents are likely to be skeptical that the complaints process can change a fraudulent election into a good one. The Obama Administration should focus on persuading Karzai to adopt some of the opposition's program, including arrangements for genuine power-sharing by Afghanistan's diverse ethnic groups. Even so, Afghanistan's flawed elections have now become a major drag on Obama's new strategy, which just six months ago seemed to offer real hope for that war-torn land. It need not have turned out this way.

Megan unpacks the logic of the following:

It is safe to enact a program that is going to blow a 10-gauge hole in the Federal budget, because the mere fact that we can't currently afford to pay for it will force us to, um, do something.

Well, I do see the political logic of Obama getting real health insurance reform this year (making him a liberal icon) and then pivoting toward a major, Osborne-style fiscal responsibility summit before the mid-terms (making him an Independent one).

You get everyone in the health insurance tent, then you tackle the systemic fiscal crisis in a way that doesn't violate your base. If Obama has a GOP House after 2010, he can even vie with them on how to cut the long-term debt – you know, that way of his of calling the bluff on his opponents.

Win-win for the US though.