Month: June 2011

A fun slideshow from the Beast on couples with major height differences. I guess it has a personal touch for me.

Many readers are mad at me for not mentioning the cost control pilot schemes in the ACA, when I wrote the following in this post:

And in fairness to the GOP, until Obama actually presents an alternative to the Ryan plan for Medicare that is even faintly plausible as a real cost-cutter, or offers defense cuts to balance the fiscal equation, or proposes more serious tax hikes than his current position (the Clinton levels), he is empowering the GOP's fiscal vandalism.

I have often referred to the cost controls in the ACA and supported one of the most controversial – the mandatory power-of-attorney discussion for Medicare recipients. I just doubt they will match the scale of the problem without some more means-testing, extra taxes and a much beefed-up rationing panel.

The one thing you can say about the Ryan plan is that it does formally let the government off the hook for soaring costs. Granted, it grandfathers in all the baby boomers, and does nothing to really cut costs (and by boosting the private health insurance sector could even accelerate costs) – but it does simply put a limit on federal liability. If he actually agreed to bring taxes back to Clinton levels, you'd have a real plan for deficit control.

On the Democratic side, I just doubt that even if all the efficiency schemes, incentive programs and cost-controls work perfectly, they will never keep up with the costs of medical technology, many more seniors and far longer lives. And by the time we find that out, the debt will be crushing. Right now, we have a draconian distant cut-off from the GOP and a gradual, reformist bend-the-cost-curve strategy from the Dems. Neither, I fear, will work.

What the Dems need to do is be more upfront about cost-controls, tax increases, defense cuts and some form of rationing as the only way to keep Medicare affordable. If Americans want to keep this entitlement without drastic change to it, they need to be told up-front what it will cost to do so. Then we can have a saner, calmer, more empirical debate.

Win the nomination, that is. Mark Blumenthal looks at the polls:

Palin has a relatively large base of enthusiastic supporters. Twenty-four percent may not be enough to win a nomination, but a base that size is a strong start towards a potential victory in crucial early states like Iowa or South Carolina, where the winner may receive only 30 to 40 percent of the vote. Second, nearly three out of four Republican survey respondents remain at least open to the possibility of supporting Palin. That means her hardcore opposition is not yet large enough to pose an absolute barrier to winning over a majority of Republican primary voters.

Given her negatives, it's still unlikely. But we should not rule it out, as the Washington Village has. My own scenario for her emergence: an economy losing steam in the next eighteen months, a possibility given new and alarming life by recent economic data. If the number is going in the wrong direction on election day, Obama's in trouble. Notice too the resilience of the "wrong track" numbers. Not good for an incumbent.

Nadia El-Awady experiments while traveling in Europe:

I went to the breakfast hall and immediately felt that I was invisible. I had become accustomed to being noticed – just ever so slightly – as a woman wearing hijab in Europe. … For the first time in my traveling years, I wasn’t noticed. And I IMMEDIATELY missed the attention. I was a bit hurt, I must admit. I then tried walking around on the streets of Barcelona and did some shopping. Nothing. I was just one person amidst thousands on those streets and in those shops. Had I always been one person among thousands? Was I always this invisible?

(Hat tip: Josh Rosenau)

(Photo: Two women wearing Islamic niqab veils stand outside the French Embassy during a demonstration on April 11, 2011 in London, England. France has become the first country in Europe to ban the wearing of the veil. By Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Does this sound familiar?

The rising costs of drugs and treatments. and a growing and ageing population paint a compelling picture of why we have to modernise our health service and make it sustainable for the long term.

Without change, and despite the Government’s provision of an additional £11.5 billion in funding, the NHS will need £130 billion by 2015 – meaning a potential funding gap of nearly £20 billion a year. Fast forward to 2030, and the projections are even starker, with the number of over‑85s set to reach 3.5 million, or 5 per cent of the population. Based on these projections, the NHS would need to perform an extra two million operations.

Put simply, if things carry on unchanged, this would mean real terms health spending more than doubling to £230 billion. That is more than £7,000 a second – twice as much as we are spending today. This is something we simply cannot afford.

Steve Kornacki suspects that the pizza CEO will get crushed:

So far, he's had it easy — there's been no real effort from his opponents or from Republican leaders to check him. But if he sustains and builds on this level of support, there will be. Given his extremely thin resume and the fact that, as Jonathan Chait put it, "he can't even bluff his way through basic questions," most of the GOP's opinion-shaping elites probably don't want him coming anywhere near their nomination. For now, though, they're probably happy to let him have his moment.

Nate Silver continues to take Cain seriously.

(Photo by Flickr user Gage Skidmore)

Larison wonders when pundits will admit it:

At what point are we going to start acknowledging that the national and local polls are telling us that it is Pawlenty and Huntsman that are the clearly marginal candidates, and Paul, Bachmann, Cain, and even the ridiculous Gingrich are the competitive ones?

In the wake of young Hamza's martyrdom, and as Human Rights Watch levels "crimes against humanity" at Assad, the Syrian regime frees 500 detainees and issues a pardon on all political crimes committed before May 31:

Despite the concessions, violent crackdowns continued in and around the town of Rastan, near Homs, resulting in at least 20 confirmed deaths with dozens more injured, according to opposition groups. Tanks fired heavy artillery in four different places of the central town, the sources said. 

Gay Girl In Damascus:

So they try and make concessions again and buy for time. But again, it is too little, too late.

A reader writes:

I think these comments highlight the difference in attitudes between North America and much of continental Europe. The idea of commuting by bike isn't "nonsense" to the 40-50% of citizens that use bikes to get to work in cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Muenster, Groningen and so on. Their "opportunity cost" calculation leads many to realise that they could do a lot with the $5,000-$10,000 (or even more, in Europe) that they save annually on eliminating car-related costs. The average North American spends 15-20% of their time at work paying for the car that they use to get to work. Personally, I like having two months' after-tax salary not going towards paying for a car.

Regarding commuting distance and sweat, a couple of concluding comments. The average bike commute in Amsterdam is apparently 12-13 km (or roughly 8 miles). Having lived in Enschede (Holland) and Hannover (Germany), I often saw men cycling to work in suits. Sweat didn't seem to be much of a concern, maybe because they cycled at a measured cadence. On my own 20-minute one-way commute, which has a couple of hills, I don't mind getting passed by others as I maintain a pace that I know will get me to work refreshed but sans underarm sweat patches. (Here's one example of the dapper gents to be seen in Amsterdam (many more can be found at http://amsterdamize.com/).

It's easy to come up with excuses to not try something different, but I'm confident that North Americans will take up cycling to work in ever greater numbers in the coming years. Rising gas prices will play a part in that change.

(Photo of "Another dad picking up the kids after work" in Amsterdamn via Marc van Woudenberg)

Today on the Dish, Andrew likened Palin to Father Coughlin for her bizarre populism, charted the rise of Cain and unable, and couldn't understand the National Review's refusal to condemn her. Newt fizzled, Cain sizzled, and Sarah still reigned as the ultimate mean girl. Alex Massie dubbed her a very effective political troll, while she still managed to play the victim, and her full Alaskan email load was on its way.

Andrew attempted to understand the GOP's deadly game of debt chicken, and vowed to keep at what fiscal conservative even means today. Medicare couldn't last, but Americans still couldn't come to terms with that. GOP governors refused to set up healthcare exchanges, the Ryan plan stood only to get more unpopular, but the Dems still didn't offer any alternatives. The recovery slowed, we picked apart a new study on what makes for good teachers, and tried to glean the real truth about cellphones and cancer.

Syria stayed awake to the sound of gunfire, Haleh Sahabi was murdered publicly in Iran, and change came slowly to Egypt. Andrew displayed little sympathy for the settlers' ghost town of Hebron, and reasoned through Israel's dependence on US support. Andrew welcomed news of a man cured of HIV, readers rode bikes to work without sweating, and Tarantino's next movie sets its gory sights on the South.

Home news here, chart of the day here, cool ad watch here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.