Month: February 2014

Chart Of The Day

Obamacare Coverage

Jonathan Cohn puts Obamacare’s partial coverage of the uninsured in perspective:

Liberals settled on something like Obamacare, which they realize will reach only about half of the uninsured for now, because they had literally spent decades trying to do something more ambitious—only to fail, thanks in no small part to conservative opposition. And while conservatives like to say they have better ideas for reforming health care, their proposals inevitably result in many fewer people getting coverage—or those getting coverage getting significantly less financial protection.

Recent Dish on who Obamacare does and doesn’t cover here.

Correction Of The Day

“An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated [that Christie chief spokesman Michael] Drewniak referred to the Port Authority’s executive director as a “piece of crap.” While Drewniak did call him a “piece of excrement,” it was David Wildstein who referred to the executive director as a “piece of crap,”” – The Star-Ledger.

Why A Gay NFL Player Matters

This chart from Derek Thompson helps explain why Michael Sam coming out is so significant:

NFL Audience

Marc Tracy wonders who will draft Sam:

If you are an optimist … you believe that the 32 NFL franchises will be making their decision on Sam the same way they would any other player: analyzing his merits (his college play, his “measurables” at the upcoming combine, what their research says about his character) and then deciding how good a “system fit” he is for their rosters and defensive schemes. “I think that sports, at its best and purest, acts as a meritocracy,” NFL historian Michael MacCambridge emailed me Sunday night. “And what we’re seeing is simply another chapter in the realization that if someone can help you win, it doesn’t matter if that person is black or white… and ultimately, it won’t matter if the person is straight or gay.” …

“Much is made about football’s macho culture,” MacCambridge argued, “but you also have to remember that virtually every player in the NFL spent at least three years on a college campus, with the accompanying socialization and exposure to different lifestyles.” He added, “That heterogeneous college experience tends to supply people with lessons about diversity and tolerance, whether they’re conscious of it or not.”

Earlier thoughts from readers here. Nancy Goldstein tries to understand the squeamishness of NFL executives:

So what’s up with the tut-tutting from the NFL’s front office? It may be that the big difference between their panic and the NCAA College Football’s maturity is money—particularly the big money that corporate sponsors and advertisers bring to the NFL and don’t bring to the NCAA. When an anonymous official in Sports Illustrated says, “the league isn’t ready for this,” it’s likely code for “We’re afraid that having an openly gay player on board means that ticket sales will drop, or male viewers will be turned off, or that Bud Light and Marriott and Pepsi and GMC won’t want to pay top dollar to advertise with us.” In short, members of the NFL’s front office may be afraid that Sam will compromise their brand.

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman dismisses such concerns:

Really? Seriously? It has now been years — not weeks, not months, years — since gay men and lesbian women have openly laid down their lives for our nation in combat. And you, Mr. NFL executive who does not even have the slightest whiff of moral courage to even use your name, say that America is not ready for gay NFL players? Really? You think that the nation is cool with gay men dying in combat, in service to our nation, in desperate distant places, but you don’t think the country is cool with them playing in your game?

Are you on crack?

Kavitha Davidson joins the conversation:

As we saw with Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson and baseball’s integration, management might be reluctant to progress, but eventually somebody will stop spitting in its face to open up a new pool of talent. Sam doesn’t need to be a Hall of Famer; he just needs to attract the eye of a team in need of a solid tackler and to work on translating his game from college to the pros. In the past decades, the conversation around homosexual athletes has shifted from whether gays can play sports in the first place to the slightly more palatable question of whether gays can be accepted in sports. Sam and his predecessors have already addressed the former — he just needs management to give him a chance to prove that the latter is no longer an issue.

Scott Shackford’s bottom line:

[A]ll eyes are on Sam because this is the final doorway in America for cultural acceptance. It marks the end of certain silly ideas about how masculinity informs sexuality that have had lasting impacts on the psyches of straights and gays alike for decades. It’s a huge deal, though the impact may not be fully grasped except in retrospect years from now.

Earlier Dish on Sam here and here.

Catholics, Contraceptives, And Their Church

A Univision poll (pdf) of 12,000 Catholics in 12 countries found that big majorities reject the logic of Humanae Vitae:

Screen Shot 2014-02-11 at 12.31.13 PM

The contraceptive question stands out to me. On other issues, there is a more equal division in the pews, or more support for the hierarchy’s position (two-thirds oppose civil marriage equality, for example), or huge differences between the developing and the developed world. But on contraception, massive majorities in Europe and Latin America and the US oppose the Vatican’s position.

And in some ways, contraception is the core issue, as Pope Paul VI recognized in his unilateral rejection of his own commission’s recommendation on the subject. If sex can be licit without procreation, the arguments shift tectonically on a whole host of other matters. Such a change would open the question of sex as purely expressive of love rather than instrumental for procreation, of whether gay sex can be licit, of pre-marital sex, of a whole universe of possibilities – and areas for moral thinking. That’s why Paul VI shut the debate down prematurely – he saw the potential consequences.

But he didn’t succeed and the hierarchy has ever since abjectly failed to make the case for its thirteenth century version of natural law. At some point, the church will have to stop preaching this or give up credibility in the Americas and Europe in favor of Africa and the Philippines, or remain resigned to promoting a core set of morals simply ignored by the vast majority of its members.

I think they should stop preaching this and begin thinking seriously about a new sexual ethic that is actually informed by science and by the experience of countless millions of lives. It’s also striking to me that the question of married priests – which Pope Benedict XVI dismissed as inconceivable (except when it meant snagging a few reactionary Anglicans) – so evenly divides the faithful.

It’s pretty close to 50-50. Unlike contraception, it requires no deeper shift in doctrine – and could well do more to revive the church in the West than any other single reform. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit for Francis to pluck, if he has a mind to. But check out the question of women priests as well. I would have expected a solid majority against, but in fact, the church is evenly divided on that as well: 45 – 51.

As for abortion, I agree with Morrissey, who thinks the top-line numbers are misleading:

[T]he striking figure here is the low number of Catholics who think abortion should be unrestricted. If, as the question suggests, abortion was restricted to only issues of the mother’s health and rape and incest, there may be considerable support for having just those limited options available as compared to the abortion-on-demand environment which currently dominates the US. Only 10% of American Catholics, and 20% of those in Europe, favor abortion on demand.

The questions of human sexuality are rightly deemed less grave than the termination of human life.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #191

vfyw_2-8

A reader describes the scene:

High-rise condos, barren trees, snow everywhere, a run-down brick building with graffiti on it. It could be any of the North Jersey bedroom communities across the Hudson from New York. I’m going with Fort Lee because it’s been in the news so much recently.

The window is themed on a recent news story, but not Bridge-gate. Another reader:

West Berlin, Germany. The graffiti: (“stark” = strong, mighty). Neighborhood: Lubensdorf. 9th floor, Rechenberger apartments …

A Game of Thrones fan weighs in:

WINTERFELL, SEVEN KINGDOMS. Graffiti (“Stark”) gives it away, obviously.

Based on the relatively low number of entries this week, this reader wasn’t alone:

Oh my lord. How can anyone win this contest?? And then you have those damn tree branches covering that sign on top of the building!

Another:

That logo at the right looks soooo familiar, but my darned middle-aged memory won’t help identify it. So let’s call this the untouristed Basel, outside the center but near the Rhine.

Another:

The Bronx, no thonx. Although I know it intimately, I have never seen that sign on the right nor that hi-rise cantilevered structure in four parts. But to a native, it’s the first thought that comes to mind – and it seems impossible that it can be anywhere else on Earth.

Another:

Obviously, the key to this one is figuring out the logo obscured by the trees off to the right. Turns out, a LOT of companies have logos with stylized “P”s (or is that a rho?). Probably North America, far enough north for snow (so not Florida) and in a city with a lot of recent-vintage construction. The crisp blandness of the highrises screams Belltown, Seattle, to me, though I cannot pin down the exact location. Most likely because I’m wrong. But after all those P logos I just can’t bring myself to slog through Google images of “boring high rise condo buildings”.

Another gets the right country:

Well, I’m making a guess that’s a 180 from my original thoughts. At first glance it looks like my neighborhood on Chicago’s north side; the snow cover is just about right but the buildings are not 5familiar, and what is that logo on the building to the right? Perhaps another North American city, in Canada perhaps?

But I finally identified the logo using Google search: it’s from Rostelecom, the Russian long-distance service. It would be too predictable for it to be Sochi (it probably doesn’t have snow anyway) so I’ll go with a nice Baltic town like St Petersburg. But then where are the Soviet era buildings and why the American style grafitti? Still looks a lot like Chicago.

Another is more definitive about Russia:

Moscow. I’m not watching the Sochi Olympics but I’m sure anyone who is has seen that Cyrillic letter P everywhere. It an interpretation of an ear and belongs to Rostelecom, Russia’s leading long-distance phone company. I have scoured the web for images of the buildings in the distance in Russia with no luck.

Another nails the correct city:

For several months I’ve just given up without trying (there wouldn’t be enough to go on in a given view to justify the head banging that would accompany the futile search), but this week’s view offered a couple of clues that tempted me back in:

Rostov-na-Don

A quartet of distinctive glass skyscrapers together with a sign, obscured by a tree but just legible enough to indicate it was probably Cyrillic. Thus probably Russia, but probably not Sochi, because it’s not your style to be so obvious. Anyway, a quick couple of Google image searches for similar building in Russia bore fruit: about 360 miles north of Sochi in the port city of Rostov-na-Don.

I then spent a pleasant hour or so touring the locale and nailing down the quasi-exact address, which is on Pushkinskaya (maybe 173b or nextdoor), seemingly on the campus of Ростовский базовый медицинский колледж (Rostov Medical College). It’s just southwest of the public library (the brick monolith to the left in the view), across Pushkinskaya from Rostelecom (the building with the blue sign to the right), and about a block and a half northwest of the Rostov City Towers (the glass buildings in the background). Thankfully, having won once already on contest #143, I don’t feel the need to drill any deeper to get this specific window. But it was fun to be back in the game.

Another imagines an Olympics tie-in:

I am guessing the person who sent this in was a ski jumper, injured in his warm-ups for the Sochi games and airlifted to Rostov-na-Donau for treatment. Specifically: Rostovskiy Bazovyy Meditsinskiy Kolledzh. Rostov-na-Donu, Pushkinskaya ul., 173b:

VFYW-Rostov-on-Don

I’m going to go with the fourth floor. I could not find a picture of the clinic, and it probably only has three floors.

Another Rostov-na-Don entry:

I wanted to tell you that since winning my very own VFYW book a couple years ago (back when the competition wasn’t quite as fierce), I’ve taken to posting the weekly contest photo on my Facebook wall to let my friends have a go at it. There is a small but determined group of us who tackle the contest each week, and I announce the winner, same as you, only among a smaller pool of brilliant people. One of my friends won your contest about two months ago.

Another regular player was stumped until turning on the TV:

I ignored my family all day Saturday with little to show for it, ultimately narrowing it down to Canada, England, China, Philadelphia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, or Austria. Maybe the Netherlands or South Korea, or Japan. The vast majority of companies I could find that ended in ‘-kom’ were in Eastern European countries. Then, watching the Olympics and considering how Sochi is spelled in Russian: Cyrillic alphabet. I found Rostelecom. Maniacal laugh: Rostov-on-Don, Russia. I’m going to guess the picture was taken from this window:

Rostov_lib_view

The smaller yellow building in front of it is part of a medical school, the website listing it as at 173-б (letter between A and B in the Russian alphabet). Google Maps includes the pic site as part of the college.

So after all this, Russia during the Sochi Olympics, huh?

Another hears our own maniacal laugh:

So I was expecting an easy one this week after a tough one last week. But no. You had to be especially evil and pick a view not from the obvious Sochi, but from a city just 250 miles away. The view this week comes from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, specifically the Rostov Medical College.

P_logoI identified the country fairly fast by figuring out what the sign above the building across the street said. I couldn’t read it through the trees other than P______KOM, but the logo was distinctive enough. Making a mock-up of the logo (attached), a Google image search identified it as belonging to Rostelecom, a Russian phone company. While they have offices outside of Russia, the sign was clearly written in Cyrillic, so I knew the country then.

I expected identifying the city would be easy. and I figured all I had to do was find the correct Rostelecom office building. Sochi was my first guess, but no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t Moscow, Saint Petersburg or a dozen other major cities either. So then I had to turn to other clues in the picture.

The next big clue was the graffiti on the brick building in the foreground. It clearly says STARK, which I don’t think is Russian. It is the German word for strong though. This led me to research cities in Russia with large German populations (thanks to Wikipedia), but I still couldn’t find the right one.

Looking at a map then, I noticed Volgograd (one of the German cities) was fairly close to Sochi, so this put me on the “Andrew is being evil” track. Looking at nearby cities, I checked out Rostov-on-Don and bingo, that’s where the Rostelecom building was. Identifying other landmarks in the view was easy after that. Across the street from Rostelecom is the Medical School. All the street views are obscured by trees, but the satellite view makes it clear where the window is. The view is just south of due east and I’m guessing it’s on the 4th floor:

vfyw_140208-1

Another gets the exact address:

Unfortunately, Street View does not provide enough information for me to certify its exact address. It looks like the yellow brick building is #173 Pushkin St. (a medical college). But the building behind it, #171, frustratingly lacks description on Google Maps. However, a search of the Cyrillic address “171 пушкинская улица Ростов-на-дону” brings up a host of residential advertisements for this location. This website says that this building has 5 floors and 40 apartments. So, I’ll guess 3rd floor. No idea about apartment number, though.

The winner this week is the only Correct Guesser (of a previous difficult contest) to guess the right floor:

Cold in the winter (snow), hot in the summer (window air conditioners).  The P sign didn’t look like the Latin alphabet, and guessing it could be Cyrillic in a nod to the Olympic Games in Russia, I Googled and found a list of companies in Russia on Wikipedia, which led to Rostelecom.  Googling Rostelecom’s regional branch office locations, I picked the southeast one in Rostov, which is close-ish to Sochi (a guess, as a nod to the Olympics, but also the southeast area would be a place with cold winters and hot summers).

The Google Map for Rostelecom in Rostov led me to the right place, confirmed the tall building and group of four in the background, but the limited Street View and abundance of trees made it difficult to narrow down the correct window where the photo was taken.  The little dormer windows on the roof next door leads me to guess 171 Pushkinskaya St, Rosotov, Russia.  Northeast side of the building.

Which floor?  Well, the Rostelecom building is 7 stories high, and the view is not as high up as that (the view doesn’t rise over tree height and the building isn’t seen over the treetops in Google Street View), but it’s higher than the 2+ story building next door with the dormers.  The gray building directly ahead has 6 floors, and the view looks to be at eye level with the fourth floor.  I’m going to guess 4th floor, third window back.

Two hours later she amended her guess:

Oh wait! I just found a photo on Panoramio of the building next door, showing a sliver of the likely window.  The building has shorter stories, so I’d like to amend my guess to a window on the 5th (top) floor.  I also think it could be the first window back from the street.

From the photo submitter:

The address the picture was taken from is 171 Pushkinskaia ulitsa. The apartment number is 20. The apartment is on the fifth (top) floor. The latitude and longitude are 47 13 36 north, 39 43 24 E.

(Archive)

The Question Rubio Won’t Answer

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He’s from the younger Latino generation but belongs to a party whose center of gravity is with the white elderly. Maybe that explains it. But let’s deconstruct his answer to the question: “Have you ever smoked pot?”:

“I’ll tell you why I never answer that question. If I tell you that I haven’t, you won’t believe me.”

‘Tis true. But if you told us you had, we’d believe you. And that is simply a function of the rank dishonesty in this debate. So why not challenge that dishonesty, simply tell the truth, grapple with the details of the argument, pro and con, and take a position informed by your own life and experience? That’s what elected representatives are supposed to do. So why are you refusing to do your job?

“And if I tell you that I did, then kids will look up to me and say, ‘well, I can smoke marijuana because look how he made it.’”

Well, duh. So – again – why the avoidance of the truth? Because you prefer propaganda to truth? Because your own life would illuminate one aspect of the debate? So for fuck’s sake, tell us if you did or didn’t. It’s not that hard. No one will be offended either way – and at least people will give you points for candor. After all, politicians have been asked that question regularly since Bill Clinton.

The last three presidents all smoked weed before they became president. And the truth is: smoking marijuana does not ruin the lives of the vast majority of those who smoke it. If you know that to be true (and it’s undeniable), why are you still dodging the question?

“I know I’m sounding like a 42-year-old dad, but here’s the problem. You can make mistakes at 17 that will be with you the rest of your life, OK? … People won’t get hired because of that stuff.”

But the only reason people don’t get hired is because of the Prohibition we’re discussing. So this is completely circular. As is completely obvious.

The one thing that has struck me most forcefully these past few months as the marijuana debate has finally really gone mainstream is how desperately unprepared the politicians are to grapple with it, and how transparently weak the arguments of the Prohibitionists are. Rubio just confirms what we already knew. He refuses to answer relevant questions about his own life, refuses to take a stand even on a clear ballot initiative in his home state, and reverts almost instinctively to a circular argument when forced into the open. He has essentially abdicated being an elected representative because his political interests – pandering to the white elderly – require him to sustain any number of untruths. I’m sorry, but I don’t have sympathy for him. Just contempt.

How Can An All-Powerful, Benevolent God Allow Suffering?

One possible answer:

I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of 41zQwuhenYLwhom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story.

Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures.

I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and suffering.

The entire dialogue is well worth a read. It’s between Gary Gutting and Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association, and the author of Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.

Rand Paul Dusts Off The Blue Dress

David Corn covers Paul’s fixation on Bill Clinton’s indiscretions:

On Meet the Press at the end of January, Paul accused Clinton of engaging in “predatory behavior” and taking “advantage of a girl that was 20 years old.” (Lewinsky was 22 years old, when she and Clinton hooked up.) And Paul griped, “the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this.” (Paul must have slept through much of the 1990s, for the media granted nonstop coverage to the affair and the subsequent investigation and impeachment.)

These were not random remarks; it seemed Paul was waging a one-man campaign to revive an old scandal. Afterward, he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, “In my small town…we would in some ways socially shun somebody that had an inappropriate affair with someone’s daughter or with a babysitter or something like that.” Days later, Paul, during a C-SPAN interview, said that any Democrat who raised campaign money with Bill Clinton ought to return the donations because of Clinton’s dalliance with Lewinsky. In another interview, he called Clinton—who is scheduled to campaign later this month for Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky Democrat challenging GOP Senator Mitch McConnell—a repeat “sexual predator” and suggested that Hillary Clinton should return any campaign money gathered with Bill’s help.

Beinart’s take on what Rand is thinking:

Paul isn’t speaking to most Americans—he’s speaking to the Christian right.

Paul is presumably well aware that while economic conservatives loved his father, social conservatives did not. In the Iowa caucuses, for instance, Ron Paul won 28 percent among voters who said the deficit was their primary issue but only seven percent among those who said it was abortion.

For months now, Rand Paul has been trying to make inroads where his father did not. Last June, at a conference organized by former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, he put a new twist on his skepticism about foreign aid, arguing that America is funding Islamic regimes that oppress Christians. “There is a war on Christianity,” he insisted, “and your government, or more correctly, you, the taxpayer, are funding it.” Last October, he told students at the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University that “America is in a full-blown spiritual crisis.” And last week, he told the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage American Principles Project that “‘Libertarian’ … doesn’t mean ‘libertine’ … I don’t see libertarianism as, you can do whatever you want. There is a role for government, there’s a role for family, there’s a role for marriage, there’s a role for the protection of life.”

Paul’s effort to revive Lewinsky-gate is best seen as part of this effort.

Overdose Understated

In an interview with Harold Pollack, Keith Humphreys explains why drug overdoses don’t get enough attention as a public health crisis, despite being the leading cause of accidental death in the US:

HP: Why do you think it’s hard to get people galvanized around overdose?

KH: AIDS inspired incredible activism in part because it was localized in particular communities that already had a shared identity. That probably helped groups like Gay Men’s Health Crisis organize politically. People knew each other. They loved the people who were dying. There isn’t a comparable pre-existing  community of people affected by overdose. It’s spread all over. The people who are dying and their loved ones don’t necessarily know each other. Also, there are also many people — as was true of AIDS — who feel that overdose is just punishment for immoral behavior and therefore isn’t a problem at all.

Sally Satel notes that, according “to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Abuse and Health, four out of five new heroin users had previously abused painkillers.” Humphreys sees those prescription medicines as a bigger problem than heroin:

Deaths from legal prescription opioids exceed those from heroin by a factor of five. If we want a lower prevalence of heroin addiction five years from now, we should be looking upstream at policies that will combat the mis-marketing, mis-prescribing, diversion and abuse of prescription opioids.