The Dish

New York, New York, 8.23 pm, as the lights for the World Trade Center are tested for tomorrow's anniversary.

A reader writes:

"It's a paid-for $900 billion over ten years."

No, Andrew, it's not; and wishing it won't make it so.  Moreover, it's irrelevant so long as costs aren't contained.  Oh, but wait…

"I agree we need to come back and grapple with healthcare costs in the context of overall budgetary reform."

Can we grapple with healthcare costs, like, right now?

Can we squeeze all of the "waste, fraud, and abuse" out of Medicare first?

"But not until the economy is healthier."

Oh, I guess not.

"And is someone who worked for George W. Bush honestly blaming Obama for trillions of dollars in new debt?"

Beneath you.  Especially in light of Frum's erstwhile intellectual honesty.

This is pretty staggering news:

Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany and made clear that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

In an extraordinary frank meeting with Mr Gorbachev in Moscow in 1989 — never before fully reported — Mrs Thatcher said the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West’s interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do anything to risk the security of the Soviet Union.

Here is the newly released Soviet archive record. In it, Thatcher asks Gorbachev to stop the recording before she says this:

We are very concerned about the processes taking place in Eastern Germany. Some big changes could happen there, forced partly by the state of the society and partly by the illness of Erich Honecker. One example of this is the flight of thousands of people from the GDR to the FRG. All of this is on the surface, it is very important but even more important is something else.

The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.

In the same way, a destabilisation of Eastern Europe and breakdown of the Warsaw Pact are also not in our interests. Of course, internal changes are happening in all Eastern European countries, somewhere they are deeper than in others. However, we would prefer if those processes were entirely internal, we would not interfere in them or push the de-communisation of Eastern Europe. I can say that the President of the United States is of the same position. He sent me a telegram to Tokyo in which he asked me directly to tell you that the United States would not do anything that might put at risk the security of the Soviet Union or perceived by the Soviet society as danger. I am fulfilling his request.

This was in her final Mad Thatch period. And the underlying reason was deep distrust of Germany, doubtless fueled by her wartime youth. But what's interesting is to see Thatcher, a neocon idol, acting in such brutally realist fashion. Toryism, even Thatcherism, is not neoconservatism, is it?

(Photo: U.S. President George H. W. Bush awards former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the United States. 7 March 1991)

Outside of Congress, the party that nominated Sarah Palin is falling in line behind the man who heckled a sitting president. Here's McCain's former spokesman, and Kristol protege, Michael Goldfarb:

Joe Wilson offered the most succinct and effective Republican response to Obamacare since Sarah Palin attacked Obama's "death panels" — and, like Sarah, he did it in just two words: "You lie."

Limbaugh, the actual leader of the GOP:

So Wilson told the truth, Obama was lying, and now we're harping all over Wilson.  Wilson apologized quickly.  And Obama said, "Yeah, okay. I accept it. You know, that's nice." How fast did Obama apologize to the police officer in Cambridge?  I don't think he has yet, has he?

A reader writes:

Two points on your topics today:

 

Your reader who writes "I know someone who had both her legs amputated unnecessarily as a teenager when she had meningitis. I dare someone to say that she didn't deserve a million-dollar settlement."

This person still could have received a million dollars with the cap.

The 250k (500k, etc) is for "non-economic damages."  This is exactly what it sounds like.  Damages which cannot be quantified such as pain and suffering, punitives, and loss of consortium.  However, medical care, loss of earnings and wages, and other strictly financial limits are not included in this cap.  So, the reader's friend could indeed still receive such a settlement.

Also, on the Wilson's crumbling base story, wouldn't it be likely that 2008 was an anomaly?  Obama likely increased African-American turnout in Wilson's district in SC.  In the midterm year, without Obama bringing out this base, wouldn't it be likely that Wilson would tick back up closer to his more dominant numbers?  Sure, the guy is a douche, but he is in the right district to be a douche.

Timothy Noah looks at the history of legislative triggers:

It's almost impossible to imagine a truly hard trigger mandating the creation of a public option should the insurance companies misbehave. [Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee] points out that it will take a couple of years after the target date just to assemble the data necessary to establish whether insurers are in or out of compliance. But let's assume the insurance lobby doesn't load up the trigger with so many conditions that the trigger becomes impossible to pull. Let's also assume Congress is faced with an unambiguous requirement to create a public-option program. Such a requirement will still be extremely difficult to fulfill because—unlike the decision to write a check or not write a check—creation of a government-health-insurance program doesn't result from a simple binary calculation.

Congress can't just say, "Abracadabra, we have a public option." It will have to decide how the public option will work. In theory, the current health reform bill could spell this out in exquisite detail, using language in bills that have already cleared House and Senate committees. But in practice, it seems doubtful that today's opponents of a public option, if their opposition proves successful, will agree to allow the language enacting it provisionally into the bill. Even if they do, the simple fact will remain: If Congress doesn't want to create a public option after the trigger is pulled, no one will make it do so.

'Crazy Legs' Conti poses with cannolis after winning the eighth annual Little Italy Cannoli Eating Competition on September 10, 2009 in New York City. The competition is coinciding with the 82nd annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. 'Crazy Legs' Conti won the contest by devouring 20.5 cannolis in six minutes. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.

Curses:

Governor Palin reserves the right to refuse dinner with a winning bidder if, in her sole discretion, the winning bidder is not a suitable bidder based on her subjective standards of suitability, professionalism, background and other factors.

But this is priceless from the dinner auction's small print:

"While descriptions are believed to be accurate, neither Kompolt or its employees, agents, or contractors provide any warranties or guarantees, express or implied, as to the genuineness, authenticity, or accuracy of description, condition, or defect, if any, of the item(s) auctioned and will not be held responsible for discrepancies or inaccuracies in item descriptions provided."

If only Bill Kristol had been as honest when selling her to John McCain.

Clive Crook, who has been critical of Obama's alleged passivity on healthcare reform, loved last night's speech. Like me, he saw it as an appeal to independents.

David Frum doesn't care for this reader e-mail:

Suppose some Republican members did act supremely badly yesterday. Saddling the nation with trillions of dollars of new debt seems a roundabout way to punish them for it. Too much writing about politics takes the form of movie reviews. The script failed, the part was poorly played, I didn’t like the show. But it’s not a show. Perhaps some of the Republican opposition has been hysterical or buffoonish or in some cases manipulative and deceptive. But it is the president’s plan and this party’s bills that will or will not become law, and their failings are not diminished one whit by the deficiencies of their opponents.

Trillions of dollars of new debt? It's a paid-for $900 billion over ten years. I agree we need to come back and grapple with healthcare costs in the context of overall budgetary reform. But not until the economy is healthier. And is someone who worked for George W. Bush honestly blaming Obama for trillions of dollars in new debt?