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   Memo: The way forward on health care reform in 2010.
 A dark legacy of the Vietnam War is creating a whole new set of problems.
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July 31, 2009
FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits: * More bloodshed in Baghdad: "Bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques around Baghdad within 45 minutes on Friday as worshipers attended prayer services, killing at least 29 people in what appeared to be a coordinated attack against followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, Iraqi officials and a Sadr aide said." * "Cash for clunkers" received a strong enough reception that it started to run out of money. The House voted today, with plenty of Republican votes, to direct an additional $2 billion into the program. * The House tackled executive salaries, too: "The House of Representatives approved legislation today that would give shareholders of companies the right to cast advisory votes on executive compensation and empower financial regulators to limit pay that they deem inappropriate. The bill, which passed 237-185, came in response to public outrage over lavish pay received by executives at Wall Street firms that took billions in emergency aid from the government." * Gen. Stanley McChrystal is bringing a new U.S. strategy to Afghanistan, but he still wants a lot more boots on the ground. * Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut announced today that he's been diagnosed with a treatable form of prostate cancer. He will stay in the Senate, will seek re-election, and is confident about a full recovery. * Congress will investigate fraudulent letters sent to lawmakers during the cap-and-trade debate. * New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo with the Quote of the Day: "When the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well. And when the banks did very poorly, they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were still paid well." * Media Matters is going after Lou Dobbs with ads -- to be aired on CNN. * House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) doesn't buy into the Birther conspiracy theory, which he blames on liberal bloggers and MSNBC. * A right-wing activist group is distributing advice to conservatives on how to disrupt public events and harass Democratic lawmakers. Stay classy, conservatives. * Peggy Noonan remembers Richard Nixon a lot differently than the rest of us. * Megan McArdle argues against national health insurance. Ezra Klein was going to respond, but had trouble: "In 1,600 words, she doesn't muster a single link to a study or argument, nor a single number that she didn't make up (what numbers do exist come in the form of thought experiments and assumptions). Megan's argument against national health insurance boils down to a visceral hatred of the government." * And finally, I thought National Review's Andy McCarthy couldn't be a bigger embarrassment. I stand corrected. Anything to add? Consider this an open thread. —Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (25)Comments
I think it's time to retire the overused phrase "Stay classy". It smacks of adolescent sarcasm. Posted by: Brock on July 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM | PERMALINKI was hoping you'd mention the fraudulent letters today. I read the story earlier on a different web site. I can only hope the Department of Justice takes notice and starts an investigation for what is clearly an illegal act. Posted by: Michael W on July 31, 2009 at 5:40 PM | PERMALINKMaybe someone with deep pockets could buy ads to counter whatever Rush is saying on a given day on whatever radio network he's on. It's the free market at work. Money is being spent and made. He's gotta love it. His listeners deserve to hear another point of view. Posted by: anonymous on July 31, 2009 at 5:56 PM | PERMALINKapproved legislation today that would give shareholders of companies the right to cast advisory votes on executive compensation BTW corporations are empowered with limited liability and artificial personhood by governments with the consent of the governed - they are wards of the public and we can basically set up whatever conditions on granting their existence we want. Conserva/tarians and those they serve, work hard to hide this little-appreciated insight from public acceptance. (Disclaimer - there are "honest" libertarians who even-handedly oppose government favors, but they'll never be invited to most tea parties etc.) Iraq: We are still paying in many ways for GWB's idiotic indulgence, and yet the scum on talk radio etc. have the dishonest temerity to keep bitching about how Obama "has already ruined this country in six short months" etc, as he tries to mop up after it being ruined after eight very long years... I think Mark Levin is even worse than Limbaugh and Beck etc. because he is so grimly deadpan, apparently no sense of humor. Posted by: Neil B ♪ on July 31, 2009 at 5:57 PM | PERMALINKA right-wing activist group is distributing advice to conservatives on how to disrupt public events I was hoping you'd mention the fraudulent letters today. Scroll down. 2:15 pm. Posted by: Mnemosyne on July 31, 2009 at 6:10 PM | PERMALINK"Peggy Noonan remembers Richard Nixon a lot differently than the rest of us." Just about everything that Loony Noonan "remembers" is a lot different than reality. Posted by: Joe Friday on July 31, 2009 at 6:26 PM | PERMALINKGen. Stanley McChrystal is bringing a new U.S. strategy to Afghanistan, but he still wants a lot more boots on the ground. I'm sure all Westmoreland needs to win the war is a few more troops.... Obviously there is not enough lobbyist money in it for Cantor to climb on the birthism wagon. Posted by: Ted76 on July 31, 2009 at 6:36 PM | PERMALINKEzra nails it... Megan's argument against national health insurance boils down to a visceral hatred of the government. Exactly right. This really is the crooked nail that holds up the crooked kook house. You see that same kooky thinking in the small business lady who wagged her finger at Obama and said: “I’ve never associated any government program with cost-effective or efficient.” Now think about it: Both of these rugged-individualists drove cars today that advertise airbags only because their loathsome government legislated those bags into being. Both entered buildings built to an electrical code solely because their god-damn government insisted on it. And both used the internet today because their same fucked-up government created it. And so on and on... Meanwhile in the real world: I recently changed my first name. Not one American business I contacted (and I contacted dozens) handled the change accurately. Not one! I had to contact, recontact, bitch, rebitch, and threaten. Across the board the business performance was so lame as to be embarrassing... The only entity that got it right the first time? You can have private insurance. Good luck when your call gets answered by a mumbler in India. Does anyone think that James Bradley is embarrassed by hiring Megan McArdle to be The Atlantic's pre-eminent business/economics blogger? I mean, I don't agree with everyone there all of the time, and some of the time I violently disagree, but at least their "A-List" blogger team is interesting: Sullivan for his personality (for better or worse), Fallows for China insights, Coates for the Next-Gen civil rights takes, Ambinder for his Washington Press Corps/Process insights & points-of-view, Goldberg for his Labor-Zionism. Every so often I'm exposed to an argument/point-of-view I didn't consider. But Megan McArdle? What the hell does she offer? The woman is a twit. Ole Jane Galt doesn't understand economic theory very well, just whatever pre-digested monetarism she learned as a U of C MBA student, she doesn't understand how to read or analyze quantitative data (her post on Elizabeth Warren's group regarding medical bankruptcies was embarrassing), I'm not sure what she offers other than the fact that she seems to be such an attention whore that she tolerates very aggressive criticism in her comment section, which probably drives page views. Posted by: Shine on July 31, 2009 at 7:04 PM | PERMALINK@ koreyel: I live in an area that has deregulated their electricity. I pay three times as much as I did 8 years ago for a byzantine system where the company I write a check to merely trades electricity and subcontracts the labor to another company that owns every electrical line and meter in the city. On my recent move, the city owned water company had the water on at my new apartment within a half an hour. The power company took four days to get another company to come out. Posted by: Common Sense on July 31, 2009 at 7:08 PM | PERMALINKAndrew Cuomo: "When the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well. ... .'" He'd have been far more accurate had he used the term "executives" in place of "employees". Average salaries for bank clerks and lower-level workers are actually pretty low. The compensation scale is clearly skewed toward the top in the financial services industry. Posted by: Donald from Hawaii on July 31, 2009 at 7:48 PM | PERMALINK. On birthers, Remember when Ronald Reagan closed all the insane asylums and people wondered what will become of these people? Apparently the Republican party was thinking ahead! Posted by: cld on July 31, 2009 at 8:29 PM | PERMALINKIf you don't fight you lose... A story floating around the net claims that after winning the governorship Palin said to her brother: "Whew! The hard part is over." Her brother supposedly replied: "No, the hard part is just beginning." We all know where that led don't we? Which brings me to the guy we elected... As far as I can tell the president is engaged and even enraged. I am no naive cheerleader. It is Friday contribution time...
If I can't emigrate to a non-English speaking country, someone please kill me. Posted by: Br on July 31, 2009 at 9:18 PM | PERMALINKGet this, Birthers knock it up a notch, WorldNet Daily 'proves' Barack Obama is the antichrist, http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/07/31/antichrist/index.html Posted by: cld on July 31, 2009 at 9:23 PM | PERMALINKMegan McArdle also approved of Alex Tabarrok's recent post on healthcare, the dumbest single piece on the topic that any economist has ever written (Prove me wrong on this. You can't.), where Tabarrok establishes in two short paragraphs that he has no clue about statistics, economics, public policy, or healthcare. Posted by: ogmb on August 1, 2009 at 5:24 AM | PERMALINKMcArdle is one of those glibertoons that crusty gentrifying management at formerly sensible mags like The Atlantic, think "broaden" their scope and make them sort of cool. Her piece on why she hates public health care is about as stupid as the Feldstein piece, also pretending that insurance is the health care. How dumb would a person be who thought State Farm and Maaco were the same thing? Posted by: N e i l B. on August 1, 2009 at 8:19 AM | PERMALINKHaven't read anything about this for a few years, but is Rush still the only talk show on military radio? Just when you think a bizzare op-ed on the czarist explosion might curtail Cantor, he manages to blame libruls for the Birther movement. He must be taking advice from Steele on digging holes and letting Fox write script for his teleprompter. Posted by: Bob Johnson on August 1, 2009 at 10:13 AM | PERMALINKI'd like to see a statistic showing the number of people who sold a clunker who also tea-bagged on April 15th. Posted by: Chrenson on August 1, 2009 at 10:16 AM | PERMALINKPost a comment
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