Innovation and Universal Healthcare

Matt is unworried; Kevin wants a study. I found some of the commenters on Matt’s blog to be on the mark. For example, Matt writes:

Ask your local pharmaceutical company executive what he’s done that competes with penicillin.

A reader replies:

ampicillin, amoxicillin, augmentin, methicillin, dicloxacillin, piperacillin, ticarcillin, cefazolin, cefipime, ceftriaxone, cefaclor, cefuroxamine, cefotetan, ceftazidime, impinem, meropenem, ertapenam….

That’s funny, actually, since my own chronic asthma and bronchitis often sometimes require aggressive anti-biotics. Penicillin doesn’t work for me, and I’m lucky to have a doctor who will prescribe stronger and newer drugs. But in England, under socialized medicine, my elderly parents have no choice on what anti-biotic they can get. None. Cheaper, you see? We’re over-medicated over here, as the busybody left insists. Another Matt reader also targets a certain naivete about what would almost certainly happen even if we get assurances that no one wil be stopped from paying for drugs out of pocket.

The Campaign To Stop Ron Paul

The right has a new line of attack: some Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans support him! Muslims supporting Republicans? The horror … Look, it seems to me that Paul needs to do better at trying to distance himself from some others on the fringes, and his campaign is still a little not-prime-time in dealing with the usual suspects. But the general line of questioning – "Are you now and have you ever been an anti-Semite?" – is offensive. As Derb points out:

Has anyone else noticed that "Ron Paul" almost rhymes with "Goebbels," if you drop the "s"? And look—it has the same number of syllables!

I see no reason why the campaign should not return any money given by neo-Nazis who are subsequently identified as such. But Jonah is right that this whole thing tells us more about Paul’s amateurism in rapid-response than anything else. It’s also a function of some neocons’ unfortunate tendency to cry anti-Semitism if anyone disagrees with them on foreign policy. Meanwhile, Wonkette offers a bipartisan "anti-Paultard" olive branch to RedState. Heh.

Face Of The Day

Turkeyjamiemcdonaldgetty

Turkeys roost indoors on a Suffolk Farm on November 14, 2007 in Stradbroke, England. A confirmed outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found on the Redgrave Park Farm in Redgrave, near Diss in Suffolk. A 3km protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone has been established around the infected premises. Following further tests, DEFRA has announced at a press conference that this particular virus does contain the highly infectious H5N1 substrain of Aviation Influenza (the fourth outbreak H5N1 in the UK this year), which in rare cases can spread to other species, including humans. By Jamie McDonald/Getty Images.

Quote For The Day II

"The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments," – Mad magazine, in a classic one-liner. A discussion of the tight relationship between low self-esteem and rampant materialism can be read here. (Hat tip: Daily Irrelevant.)

Beyond Red and Blue?

This I didn’t know:

Hedgecoth estimates 15 percent of the people walking into and volunteering at the Linn County for Obama office are Republicans or former Republicans. Electing someone who can represent and find support on both sides of the political spectrum, he said, should go a long way to ending "the political gridlock" of recent years.

Or this:

The campaign is hoping outspoken people like Blix, combined with Obama’s third-place finish in a poll of Republican caucus-goers, will convince Iowans that electability isn’t an issue for Obama.

I hadn’t heard of that poll. But it doesn’t exactly go against the grain of my Atlantic piece.

Marriage: Not Always A Good Idea

And divorce isn’t always a bad option either:

Eleven years ago I sat in a premarital counseling session with my soon to be wife Kristie. I don’t really remember much that was said except one comment made by my pastor. He said, “There is nothing in this world that you can wish upon a person that is worse than a bad marriage.” When I first heard this I thought that it was nothing more than an expedient overstatement that was relevant to the moment.  I gave my pastor “grace” since I knew this was a counseling session on marriage and it was his job to make us understand the vital importance of the decision that we were making. Yet I did think to myself, “There are a lot of things that are worse than a bad marriage. What about cancer, the death of a loved one, or paralysis?” Today, I no longer believe that my pastor made an overstatement. There is nothing worse that you can wish upon a person than a bad marriage.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier. But I do believe that no one knows loneliness like a person in a bad marriage. (Hat tip: Umblog.)

Mary Jo White On Torture

The only reasonable inference from her argument is that al Qaeda has indeed rendered the Geneva Conventions moot, and that from now on, for any procedure to be regarded as torture, the Congress must specifically ban it. And if it does not specifically ban it, it is not illegal:

Although, as a civilized people, our immediate and commendable instinct is to declare waterboarding repugnant and unlawful, that answer is not necessarily correct in all circumstances. The operative legal language (both legislative and judicial) does not explicitly bar waterboarding or any other specific technique of interrogation. Instead, it bars methods that are considered to be "torture," "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" or that "shock the conscience."

Faced with this assortment of legal standards, Mukasey can hardly be faulted for his answers. The only remedy that can provide legal clarity is legislation.

But under this "assortment" of legal standards – which are simply different ways of making the same extremely clear and fundamental point – waterboarding is clearly illegal, as it has always been illegal. It seems to me that if you want to legalize it, then explicitly legalize it. And that would require withdrawal from the Geneva Conventions and the UN Treaty on Torture. So, yes: go ahead and legislate.

Of course, the pro-torture Republicans in the Congress will never do such a thing. And the notion that the Congress has to make illegal every specific torture technique will just provide a guide for this administration and a future Giuliani administration to devise specific torture techniques that can evade specific bans. And, of course, they may not even bother to do that. White doesn’t note that this president has responded to previous Congressional attempts to ban torture by appending a signing statement to the law saying the Congress cannot impinge on his constitutional right to torture whom he wants and how he wants to. Legal clarity is beside the point when we have a president who claims he can ignore the law anyway.