Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Fred Barnes (February 2010): The Health Care Bill Is Dead:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is the new king of Capitol Hill.  His skill in keeping 40 Republicans united against Democratic health care reform was masterful, and it wasn’t easy.  A number of Republican senators are drawn to co-sponsoring or at least voting for Democratic bills.  Not this time. By keeping his minority together, McConnell put enormous pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.... On health care, it meant he had to make unseemly deals with a host of senators, most egregiously in the Medicaid payoff to Nebraska to appease Senator Ben Nelson. Reid got the votes, but the deals were political poison.... The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection. Brown ran to be the 41st vote for filibuster and now he is just that. Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite Brown, but they won’t fly...

Jeet Heer:

Obama, Hitler, and Commentary Magazine « sans everything: In his 1979 memoir Breaking Ranks, Norman Podhoretz, then the editor of Commentary magazine, told the story of his political shift from left-liberalism to neo-conservatism. A key reason for his political rethinking, Podhoretz asserts, was the intemperate attacks on legitimate political leaders by the New Left and its fellow travelers. As an example, we’re told about an argument Podhoretz had with his old friend Jason Epstein, the book publisher and eminence grise behind the New York Review of Books.

“Certainly I was not afraid of Jason,” Podhoretz recalled. “I never hesitated to cut him off when he began making outrageous statements about others, and once I even made a drunken public scene in a restaurant when he compared the United States to Nazi Germany and Lyndon Johnson to Hitler. This comparison was later to become a commonplace of radical talk, but I had never heard it made before, and it so infuriated me that I literally roared in response. He taken aback and so was I…”

Yesterday on the Commentary blog Jennifer Rubin, a regular writer for the magazine, described the worries that many militant Israeli nationalists in America (“the AIPAC crowd”) have about President Obama. Commentary is of course the house journal of the AIPAC crowd so her account was quite sympathetic. She tells the following anecdote:

An elderly couple from Florida were agitated by recent events. The wife explained she that had fled Nazi Germany as a child for Shanghai. “There are parallels,” she said. “This is depressing. It’s scary.”  She said that she had argued with her liberal friends during the campaign about Obama’s associations with anti-Israel figures. “My mother always said where there is smoke, there is fire,” she explained, then added wearily, “They didn’t listen.” …That’s just a sampling, but it gives you a sense of the angst. This is not a crowd that is celebrating. They are worried. Very worried.”

There is much that can be said about these two passages. A few thoughts:

1. One problem with defining neo-conservatism is that it is not a fixed, static thing but an ideological formation that is always evolving in response to a changing world. In 1979, the members of the Podhoretz circle were still largely members of the Democratic Party, supporters of Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Neo-conservatives at that time positioned themselves as centrists, heirs to the tradition of liberal anti-communism and opponents of all forms of extremism whether on the left or right. By 2010, almost all the neo-conservatives are now part of the Republican Party, and indeed closely allied to extreme right wing of the Republican Party (they have more in common with Sarah Palin than with Olympia Snowe).

2. I don’t want to belabor the obvious, but there is something really wrong with people who think its wrong to compare LBJ to Hitler but are willing to casually repeat the idea that there are “parallels” between the Führer and Obama. The analogy is wrong in both cases but there is a different kind of error at work in the two cases. Whatever his virtues, and they were many, LBJ launched an unnecessary war in Vietnam, a brutal  adventure that cost the lives of more than 50,000 Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese. To compare him to Hitler is to engage in gross and obscene hyperbole, but the hyperbole is at least rooted in a genuine revulsion against war and agression. But look at Obama: whatever his faults, he’s trying to wind down two wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq) in a prudential manner; he’s also trying to extend health care insurance to millions who are not currently covered in the United States; and like every other American president since the late 1960s, he is opposed to the Israeli policy of building settlements in the occupied territories. Like a large chunk of the population of Israel, Obama believes that Israel cannot survive as a Jewish democracy if it keeps building settlements. That’s why some in “the AIPAC crowd” think Obama is comparable to Hitler. In effect, they believe that anyone who works for a political settlement between Israelis and Palestinians is comparable to Hitler. There’s a special kind of craziness at work here…

3. Finally, I want to say something about Commentary magazine itself. I’ve read the magazine for a long time, perhaps too long,  going on 30 years now. The magazine has a distinguished history. It’s list of contributors include: Hannah Arendt, Robert Alter, Paul Auster, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Leslie Fiedler, Nathan Glazer, Paul Goodman, Clement Greenberg, Michael Harrington, Joseph Heller, Richard Hofstadter, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, F.R. Leavis, John Lukacs, Scott McConnell, Dwight MacDonald, Norman Mailer, Thomas Mann, George Orwell, Philip Roth, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.; Leo Strauss, Lionel Trilling, John Updike, among many others. That’s a very strong list of writers. But of course, many of them are dead and gone. And of the living, many have broken with Commentary. Aside from Robert Alter, is there a single first-rate writer still associated with Commentary? These days the magazine publishes Jonah Goldberg and Jennifer Rubin. The decline and fall of Commentary as a serious magazine is a story that has yet to be told. If I wrote the story, it would be told in a tone more of sorrow than of anger.

Oh boy...

Somebody who wishes me ill sends me another piece by New York University Austrian econ--no, that's not right... um... the only word I can use to describe him is "psychopath"...

Mario Rizzo:

Why am I tipping the cab driver whom I shall not see again? I tip cabdrivers very small amounts... they really don’t do anything more than drive... they don’t know where things are... there are now all sorts of surcharges... even a tax to support the inefficiently-run mass transit system that I am not taking.... I would really like to not tip.... I often do simply because drivers sometimes say nasty things to you if they don’t get a tip. It is a failing of my psychological make-up to let that bother me. Am I being selfish?... I am not being selfish any more than the driver who wants a tip. The real issue is for me: Is this the best use of my money?... You are not a bad person if you don’t tip taxi drivers much or at all. Just be prepared to tell the voice in your head that it is wrong. And don’t let any possible cab-driver annoyance spoil your day.

To be clear:

If you enter into a contract with somebody, and if have no intention of honoring the terms they believe you have agreed to you, and if you know that they are expecting consideration you have no intention of delivering--if you enter the taxicab planning to stiff them and don't say "I don't tip" before you do so--you are then:

• a liar.
• a cheat.
• a thief.

Normal human sociability--what Adam Smith called "sympathy"--makes us eager to make every act of market exchange we engage in a win-win deal. It makes us sad when our trading partner feels ripped off. To see this not as part of our humanity but as a weakness--as a "failing of my psychological make-up" is to try as hard as you can to not be a normal human being.

Instead of being a normal human being, you are then trying to turn yourself into a psychopath--someone who should be turned over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

• David Leonhardt: In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality
• Merlin Mann: Yes. Another Backup Lecture.
• John Hicks: Fireworks alternatives on trial: Acorn, Drawit, and Opacity
• The Liberal-fascist octopus has sung its swan song; or, My spectacle-disgorging debate-grinding supercollider runneth over

Jonathan Chait:

By Hook Or By Crook: One view of the politics of health care reform is that President Obama and the Democrats crafted a centrist plan based on moderate Republican principles. The GOP withdrew from serious negotiations over the program out of ideological radicalism and the political calculation that their opposition would make the bill "partisan" and therefore less popular:

Thanks to the unrewarded exertions of conservative Democrats, this healthcare plan has moderate, centrist ambitions. It is not socialism in disguise. Shame on liberal Republicans (if there are any) for failing to support it.

A second view is that Obama could have won bipartisan support, but decided against it in order to ally himself with party liberals:

Albeit in a worthy cause, Obama has broken faith with American voters. He promised post-partisan leadership. He promised to moderate the warring tribes on Capitol Hill, and strive for common-sense, centrist solutions. Then, on this epic issue, he allied himself with–in fact, subordinated himself to–liberal Democrats in Congress.

The odd thing is that both these opinions were written by Clive Crook. Indeed, they appear in the same column.

With only three paragraphs between them!

Ian Milhiser:

Think Progress: Why George Washington would disagree with the right wing about health care’s constitutionality.: Yesterday, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced that he would join a growing list of right-wing attorneys general who are suing to have health reform declared unconstitutional. According to Cuccinelli, the new law’s provisions that require individuals to carry health insurance violate the Constitution because “at no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service.” The truth, however, is that the Second Militia Act of 1792, required a significant percentage of the U.S. civilian population to purchase a long list of military equipment.... "[A] good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack...." This Act became law... in President George Washington’s first term...

A: This Missouri haberdasher was the first American to sign up for Medicare.

Q: ????

Who should be the first person to sign up for an account at an exchange when it gets rolling? Mitt Romney or John McCain

Making Light sends us to:

Alter S. Reiss: Some myths about the current healthcare bill explained. There's been a lot of talk about this lately, so I figured that I'd clear up a few common misconceptions people seem to have about the recently passed Health Care Reform bill:

Myth 1: With the passage of HCR, bears will be allowed to roam hospitals, devouring those patients too sick to hide or flee.

Status: FALSE: The ursine provisions of the health care bill remain controversial with the AMA and other organizations, but, basically, all they do is recognize that in some rural areas, particularly in the Dakotas and Alaska, bears have been acting as health care professionals for decades, and puts them into the category of other alternative health professionals, such as acupuncturists, osteopaths, and killer bees. Bear attacks may be available under some health plans, but those treatments are entirely at the discretion of the insurers.

Myth 2: MRIs are once again to be termed "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Images", and once again, a small percentage of those undergoing this procedure will gain super-powers that will allow them to perform great feats, at a cost to their humanity.

Status: FALSE: While this provision was included in earlier versions of the bill, it was dropped in the face of a strong opposition by Senator Keene and others.

Myth 3: ObamaNaziSocialismAntichristApocolpyseRevalations4:15SicSemperTyranisTaxedEnoguhAlready!

Status: That's not a myth, that's a bunch of words, some of which are misspelled.

Myth 4: A provision of the HCR bill calls to the Lord Above, to send down a dove, with beak as sharp as razors, to cut the throats of them there blokes, what sells bad beer to sailors.

Status: Partially true: While this language does exist in the current version of the bill, it is unlikely to stand judicial scrutiny, as it will probably be seen as a violation of the separation of church and state. However, this is merely echoing faith-based programs enacted by individual states. The dove attacks on campus area bars selling Rolling Rock to University of West Florida Argonauts, for instance, can only be applauded, as Rolling Rock is swill.

Myth 5: In order to pay for the mandates of this bill, President Obama has traded the treasury of the United States for a handful of magic beans.

Status: FALSE: Only one government-owned cow was traded for these beans, which have already more than earned back the initial investment. Also, since the treasury of the US currently contains less than negative fourteen trillion dollars, wouldn't you want to trade it, for just about anything?

Myth 6: The HCR bill will allow communists control of our vital bodily fluids.

Status: TRUE: Yeah, this one is totally real. But, to be fair, there aren't that many communists left, and those that there are don't actually want that many bags full of lymph and phlegm.

And the library is shut due to budget cuts.

They have imported a nice living room with Imperial Singapor- style wicker chairs and placed it on the ground floor of the BankAmerica Forum. But alas! As I am not a paying attendee I am not allowed to sit on them...

Steve Benen writes:

STARTING THE CLOCK IN THE SENATE.... This afternoon, the Senate voted 56 to 40 on the motion to proceed on the health care reconciliation bill, and with that, the clock will start on this week's debate...

We are on track. It is going to be really interesting to see what provisions of reconciliation the Republicans oppose...

What I learned:

1. "Food Stamps" is now called "SNAP."

2. If you cook food bought with SNAP with your daughter, she will be not snarky but adorable...

Every time I visit National Review I learn something new.

Today, I learned something about Victor Davis Hanson. If he were not a cyborg sent back from the future by Skynet to destroy us but were a human being who had lived through our history, he would know that the height of legislative procedural atrocity was reached not in the 19th century--but rather in Bush's first term, with the Republican passage of the budget-busting Medicare Part D.

However, he does not:

Victor Davis Hanson: I suppose one could interpret the health care bill as "Pelosi's historic achievement," as the media has been insisting, but that would also mean that an unpopular President and a more unpopular Congress and a most unpopular Speaker together railroaded through an unpopular, sweeping piece of legislation without a single opposition vote, and through the sort of tawdry legislative bribery and procedural gimmicks we haven't seen since the 19th century...

Hope those people down in Palo Alto have the weaponry to deal with a fully armored hyper-alloy T-800 combat chassis. Just saying...

Identified Terminator T-800 Model Variants

Gregg:

The bill is a really bad bill for the [profits of] the finance industry...

Photo from AP Photo: House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind, accompanied by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., discusses health care legislation during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 23, 2010:

Hoisted from Comments: Aaron Brown:

Lew Rockwell Is the Hyper-Racist Contributor to Ron Paul's Newsletter: Breathes there a journalist, with sense of irony so dead, as to write:

"If Rockwell had any honor he’d come out and I say, 'I wrote this stuff'," said the source, who asked not to be named...

Someone who had better stay anonymous at the Daily Beast writes:

Is This the End of Mitt Romney?: Cheat Sheet: The Daily Beast: It is conceivable that President Obama will be able to kill off one of his biggest 2012 rivals with a single sentence: “I would like to thank Mitt Romney for coming up with ideas on which I based health-care reform.” Indeed, although Romney was frothing at the mouth on Sunday—he practically accused Obama of treason—he implemented the basic tenets of  “ObamaCare” in Massachusetts in 2004. That is, he restructured insurance markets “to remove those adverse-selection and moral-hazard problems that have broken our private insurance-based health-financing system,” as Brad DeLong puts it in The Week. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes, “If the Republicans want to make Obama's signature piece of legislation a centerpiece of their 2012 campaign (and it's hard to imagine they won't since what else will they run on?), they can't very well run a candidate who supported and passed close to an identical bill… [C]an anyone explain to me why this doesn't fatally hobble any GOP presidential campaign in 2012? And because of that make Romney close to impossible to nominate?”

The point of my article was not that Romney is down and others are up in the quest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. The point of my article was that the health-care financing policies adopted--pooling, end to preexisting condition exclusions, guaranteed issue, individual mandate--are all in the bipartisan centrist policy consensus, are the policies that health-policy experts at Brookings and the Urban Institute are now applauding and that health-policy experts at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation as well would be applauding were they not muzzled by their political masters out for an electoral edge. The point of my article was that had presidential politics turned out slightly differently in 2008 the Republicans now opposing this health care financing reform bill would be supporting it (and the left wing of the Democrats now supporting it would be opposing it).

My article was intended to make a point about policy.

But the Daily Beast cannot hear any points about policy. All it can hear are points about the horse race. And even if the Daily Beast could hear points about policy, it could not think because it has no brain.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

And here is Howard Kurtz, claiming that criticisms of the press corps are "largely a bum rap" and that the worst that can be said is that the press corps is "guilty with an explanation." Howard, I don't think the phrase "bum rap" means what you think it means.

Howard Kurtz:

Howard Kurtz: Journalism's slide into health-debate weariness: It was the story that refused to die. Sunday's last-gasp passage of President Obama's health care bill will finally liberate the journalists who have been chained to this complicated, arcane, often tedious story.... The conventional wisdom is that the press failed to educate the public... leaving much of America confused about just what it contained. That is largely a bum rap, for the media churned out endless reams of data and analysis that were available to anyone who bothered to look. As time went on, though... the substance of health care reform was overwhelmed... the plea is guilty-with-an-explanation.... With the bill's fate hanging by... procedural threads, there was no way to avoid making that the overriding story....

Trudy Lieberman... says the press coverage

has been largely incoherent to the man on the street... failed to illuminate the crucial issues, [and] quoted special interest groups and politicians without giving consumers enough information to judge if their claims were fact or fiction.

And there was no lack of journalistic shortcomings.... Journalists struggled to say... what was in health-care reform... there were multiple versions... the months and column inches we wasted on Max Baucus... a bipartisan compromise?... collapsed after many forests were sacrificed on its behalf. When the polls turned against the president's push, journalists did what they usually do.... Beat up on those whose numbers are sagging.... From there it was a short jog to the rise of political polarization, the death of bipartisanship and the erosion of Obama's influence -- legitimate undertakings that again shoved the health-care arguments to the back of the bus.

One stellar moment for the press was the refusal to perpetuate the myth of "death panels."... But such black-and-white judgments were difficult.... How many people would defy the mandate to buy insurance? How much would a tax on "Cadillac" health plans raise? Would Congress have the stomach to deeply cut Medicare? How many people would be eligible for the much-ballyhooed public option? For that matter, what exactly is the difference between a public option and state-run insurance exchanges? All this was like nailing Jell-O to the wall. As soon as a media consensus would form, it seemed, the legislation would change.... Too many stories quoted dueling experts without making a concerted, serious effort to sort out the facts.... It was sooo much easier to write another story about the latest Tiger mistress to go public....

[T]he cable news chatter broke down along ideological lines. The health-care bill was either a valiant attempt to fix a broken system but didn't go far enough (as some MSNBC hosts had it) or an unsavory attempt to shove America down the road to bankrupting socialism (as some Fox News hosts warned).... In the end, the subject may simply have been too dense for the media.... If you're a high-information person who routinely plows through 2,000-word newspaper articles, you had a reasonably good grasp of the arguments. For a busy electrician who plugs in and out of the news, the jousting and the jargon may have seemed bewildering. Once the law takes effect -- its provisions stretched out over years -- perhaps journalists can help separate rhetoric from reality. That is, if we don't lose interest and move to the next hot controversy...

From The Chief:

The Chief: The Party of Ideas: One of the strategic blunders that the GOP have committed during the health care negotiations will be the abandoning of the "Republican ideas" that were included in the bill. Those idea aren't Republican ideas anymore since every last member of the GOP caucus voted against them.... The Democrats held off on the left's most radical ideas -- the public option, single-payer, etc. -- but the GOP just abandoned their most centrist ideas, left them to the Dems.... There was no policy substance to any of the Republicans speeches on the House floor tonight.... The coming weeks are going to very telling about how the GOP moves forward from this lose. Are they going to continue their misinformation campaign or complain about a mythical "constitutional crisis" or at they going to get to work pushing an agenda that solves problems? There's no indication that they will choose they latter, which means the talk radio brigade will fill the vacuum with their predictable nonsense while the Dems enjoys a brief bump in popularity and publicity.

Ezra Klein: [L]ook at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.

(1) "Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines."... To the surprise and dismay of many liberals, the Senate health-care bill included... Section 1333, which allows the formation of interstate compacts. Under this provision, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho (for instance) could agree to allow insurers based in any of those states to sell plans in all of them...

(2) "Allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do." This is the very purpose of the exchanges, as defined in Section 1312...

(3) "Give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs." Section 1302 of the Senate bill does this directly. The provision... "the Waiver for State Innovation"... gives states the power to junk the whole of the health-care plan... if they can do it better and cheaper.

(4) "End junk lawsuits." It's not entirely clear what this means, as most malpractice lawsuits actually aren't junk.... Section 6801... encourages states to develop new malpractice systems and suggests that Congress fund the most promising experiments...

And there is more:

(5) [W]hen Republicans are feeling bolder... they... take aim at... [t]he tax break for employer-sponsored insurance.... The excise tax... erases the preferential tax treatment for every dollar above its threshold...

(6) [F]inally... [t]his is a private-market plan... single-payer [is] off the table... so too is the public option... [what] liberals want most in the world has been compromised away...

Jonathan Chait:

OH, I Forgot To Mention This One | The New Republic: Ben Dolnick writes in to point me to this, from Megan McArdle, circa March 3rd:

I have never seen conservatives and liberals so divided . . . in beliefs, not values.  On the one hand, there are people like the TNR crew, and Jonathan Bernstein, Andrew's guest-blogger, who seem to think that this it's the next best thing to a done deal.  Meanwhile, all the conservatives and libertarians I know think that it's pretty much hopeless, because Pelosi can't get it through an increasingly rebellious House.  To our jaded eyes it looks as if everyone who can is looking for an excuse not to vote for a bill that is unpopular with their constituents.

The opinions on both sides seem so confident, and so incompatible, that one group of people is clearly borderline delusional.

And now we know which one.

Jane Mayer:

A curious history of the C.I.A. : The New Yorker: On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on America, another devastating terrorist plot was meant to unfold. Radical Islamists had set in motion a conspiracy to hijack seven passenger planes departing from Heathrow Airport, in London, and blow them up in midair. “Courting Disaster” (Regnery; $29.95), by Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter in the Bush Administration, begins by imagining the horror that would have resulted had the plot succeeded. He conjures fifteen hundred dead airline passengers, televised “images of debris floating in the ocean,” and gleeful jihadis issuing fresh threats: “We will rain upon you such terror and destruction that you will never know peace.”

The plot, of course, was thwarted—an outcome that has been credited to smart detective work. But Thiessen writes that there is a more important reason that his dreadful scenario never came to pass: the Central Intelligence Agency provided the United Kingdom with pivotal intelligence, using “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by the Bush Administration. According to Thiessen, British authorities were given crucial assistance by a detainee at Guantánamo Bay who spoke of “plans for the use of liquid explosive,” which can easily be made with products bought at beauty shops. Thiessen also claims that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the primary architect of the 9/11 attacks, divulged key intelligence after being waterboarded by the C.I.A. a hundred and eighty-three times. Mohammed spoke about a 1995 plot, based in the Philippines, to blow up planes with liquid explosives. Thiessen writes that, in early 2006, “an observant C.I.A. officer” informed “skeptical” British authorities that radicals under surveillance in England appeared to be pursuing a similar scheme. Thiessen’s book, whose subtitle is “How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” offers a relentless defense of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, which, according to many critics, sanctioned torture and yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit. In addition, Thiessen attacks the Obama Administration for having banned techniques such as waterboarding. “Americans could die as a result,” he writes.

Yet Thiessen is better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts. His account of the foiled Heathrow plot, for example, is “completely and utterly wrong,” according to Peter Clarke, who was the head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch in 2006. “The deduction that what was being planned was an attack against airliners was entirely based upon intelligence gathered in the U.K.,” Clarke said, adding that Thiessen’s “version of events is simply not recognized by those who were intimately involved in the airlines investigation in 2006.” Nor did Scotland Yard need to be told about the perils of terrorists using liquid explosives. The bombers who attacked London’s public-transportation system in 2005, Clarke pointed out, “used exactly the same materials.” Thiessen’s claim about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed looks equally shaky. The Bush interrogation program hardly discovered the Philippine airlines plot: in 1995, police in Manila stopped it from proceeding and, later, confiscated a computer filled with incriminating details. By 2003, when Mohammed was detained, hundreds of news reports about the plot had been published. If Mohammed provided the C.I.A. with critical new clues—details unknown to the Philippine police, or anyone else—Thiessen doesn’t supply the evidence.

Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert who is writing a history of the Bush Administration’s “war on terror,” told me that the Heathrow plot “was disrupted by a combination of British intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, and Scotland Yard.” He noted that authorities in London had “literally wired the suspects’ bomb factory for sound and video.” It was “a classic law-enforcement and intelligence success,” Bergen said, and “had nothing to do with waterboarding or with Guantánamo detainees.”

"Courting Disaster” was published soon after a terrorism scare—the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, an alleged affiliate of Al Qaeda, to blow up a Detroit-bound jet on Christmas Day—and the book has attracted a wide readership, becoming a Times best-seller. Recently, Thiessen was hired by the Washington Post as an online columnist. Neither a journalist nor a terrorism expert, he got his start as a publicist for conservative politicians, among them Jesse Helms, the late Republican senator from North Carolina. After Bush’s election in 2000, he began writing speeches for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and, eventually, became a speechwriter in the Bush White House.

In his book, Thiessen explains that he got a rare glimpse of the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program when, in 2006, he helped write a speech for President George W. Bush that acknowledged the program’s existence and offered a spirited defense of it. “This program has given us information that has saved innocent lives,” Bush declared. (My own history of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, “The Dark Side,” mentions this speech, and says that it supplanted a different version, prepared by Administration officials who disapproved of the interrogation program; Thiessen, in his book, disputes my reporting, insisting that although “many edits” were suggested by critics of abusive tactics, there was “no rival draft.”) In an effort to bolster the President’s speech, the C.I.A. arranged for Thiessen to see classified documents, and invited him to meet agency interrogators. He says that he emerged convinced of the program’s merit. While researching his book, he was granted extensive interviews with several of the program’s key architects and implementers, including Vice-President Dick Cheney; Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence; and Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director. The book, whose cover features a blurb from Cheney, has become the unofficial Bible of torture apologists.

Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff:

From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis: Newly developed long historical time series on public debt, along with modern data on external debts, allow a deeper analysis of the cycles underlying serial debt and banking crises. The evidence confirms a strong link between banking crises and sovereign default across the economic history of great many countries, advanced and emerging alike. The focus of the analysis is on three related hypotheses tested with both “world” aggregate levels and on an individual country basis. First, private debt surges are a recurring antecedent to banking crises; governments quite contribute to this stage of the borrowing boom. Second, banking crises (both domestic ones and those emanating from international financial centers) often precede or accompany sovereign debt crises. Indeed, we find they help predict them. Third, public borrowing accelerates markedly ahead of a sovereign debt crisis; governments often have “hidden debts” that far exceed the better documented levels of external debt. These hidden debts encompass domestic public debts (which prior to our data were largely undocumented).

• Andra Nill: Anti-Immigrant Leader’s Bodyguard Reportedly Assaulted Mimes Who Were Blowing ‘Hateful Whistles’ At DC Rally
• John Burns: Pope's words of remorse fall flat for abuse victims
  [The Pope] asked Catholics around the world to be ''indulgent towards sinners and pray to God to ask for forgiveness for our failings''...
• Benjamin Hale: Academic Blogs
• Betsy Markey for Congress
• Zaid Jilani: While Giving Obsessive Coverage To The Tea Parties, Media Ignored Larger Anti-War Rally
• Catholic Bishops to House of Representatives: Vote No on Health Reform Bill
• Matthew Yglesias: Rep Steve King (R-Iowa) Says Racism and Homophobia Are Okay With Him
• Simon Owens: How progressive bloggers pressured NYT public editor into addressing Acorn “pimp” hoax
• Chart: How the bill affects you - latimes.com
• Andrew Leonard: The stock market doesn't fear healthcare reform
• Henry Farrell: Since I’m getting into the habit of posting about self-refuting articles…
  This one from Megan McArdle, is a very special example. It’s the blogospheric version of one of those avant-garde mechanical sculptures that starts to tear itself apart as soon as the clockwork key is turned. It’s worth quoting in extenso so that you too can marvel at the beauty and ingenuity of the escapements.
• NASA: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010″ « Climate Progress
• Global Capitalism (1) - By Clive Crook and John B. Judis - Slate Magazine
• Absurdly Premature 2012 Watch, Vol. 12: Romney
• Why Not Replace Megan McArdle with Russell Arben Fox?

Paul Romer: Which Parts of Globalization Matter for Catch-up Growth?

Holly Yeager: Reporting from the Examining Room

Steve M.: Great Moments in Selective Outrage (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps for March 22, 2010)

James Fallows on Clive Crook's Hogwash

William Kristol: Defeating President Clinton's Health Care Proposal (From the Arcbives for March 22, 2010)

Jeff Matthews: How Not to Manage Microsoft... Like a Car Company

How Big Is the Bill? (Graph of the Day for March 22, 2010)

Ezra Klein - How big is the bill, really?

Taylor West:

Twitter / Taylor West: RT @Taniel: Reid has won t ...: RT @Taniel: Reid has won the first round: Parliamentarian rejects GOP's challenge that reconciliation fix breaks Social Security rules.

This is the Republicans' parlaimentarian...

Jeff Matthews:

Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up: How Not to Manage Microsoft…Like a Car Company: As far back as April, 2006 we here at NotMakingThisUp reported on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s refusal to spring for iPods for his children, and his insistence that they not use Google.... “No, I do not. Nor do my children.... I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.”... We likened Ballmer’s approach to that of the old car companies, thusly:

Such a blinders-on, head-in-the-sand, not-invented-here mindset has heretofore been more closely associated with Detroit, where auto executives drive only their own company’s best cars. Small wonder the bigs at GM, Ford and Chrysler failed to grasp, before it was too late, the quality and innovation that allowed Toyota and other imports to eat their collective lunch.

Little did we know that Steve Ballmer’s father once worked for Ford. That’s right. In “Forbidden Fruit: Microsoft Workers Hide Their iPhones” the weekend Wall Street Journal describes—and we are not making this up—“the perils of being an iPhone user at Microsoft”:

Kevin Turner, chief operating officer…said he discouraged Microsoft's sales force from using the iPhone... "What's good for the field is good for Redmond," Mr. Turner said, recalls one of the people who heard his comments. Mr. Ballmer took a similar stance at the meeting. He told executives that he grew up in Detroit, where his father worked for Ford Motor Co., and that his family always drove Fords, according to several people at the meeting.

Ballmer’s father, of course, was not alone. All the car companies used to feed spanking-new, smokin’-hot, top-of-the-line models to ‘the suits.’ That’s why the suits never saw the Japanese coming. And Ballmer—like father, like son, it would seem—is doing the same for Microsoft.... Seems to us that if Bill Gates is as smart as Warren Buffett thinks, and if Bill Gates really wants to see his legacy survive, he should buy Steve Ballmer an iPad and an iPhone and an iPod...

The curious triumph of RomneyCare - The Week:

It has been a long slog, since those days in the early 1990s when right-wing policy analysts proposed an individual mandate to purchase health coverage as a respectable, market-oriented, responsibility-based alternative to either government-provided health care (the nanny state) or mandated employer-provided health care (the boss state). In November, 2004, Republican Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts followed through on that conservative proposal, and in April, 2006 he signed into Massachusetts law a health reform plan based on it.

Having conquered Massachusetts, RomneyCare is now the law of the land. But how did Republican RomneyCare become Democratic ObamaCare?

True, the copy is not exact. David Frum points out all the possible reasons--valid and invalid, important and unimportant--that conservatives might be unhappy with this Obama-Pelosi-Reid version of RomneyCare. He finds six:

1. it allows illegal aliens to buy health insurance with their own money;
2. the progressive taxes imposed to finance it will only become larger and more progressive as time passes;
3. a public option may be added to the bill at some point;
4. it imposes too many costs on small businesses;
5. it doesn't impose enough cost controls;
6. it expands the dysfunctional program that is Medicaid.

But these issues are minor compared to the big nut -- the essence of the reform -- which is that the insurance market has been restructured to remove those adverse-selection and moral-hazard problems that have broken our private insurance-based health-financing system. Americans are now being asked not to shirk their responsibilities but rather to act like adults: to take on the burden, to the extent they are financially able, of making sure that when they wind up at the hospital the cost of paying for their care is not loaded onto somebody else's shoulders.

The conservative DNA of ObamaCare is hardly a secret. "The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan,” Frum wrote. “It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."

So why are none of the talking heads on your TV screen and none of the op-ed writers in your newspaper talking about how this health plan is a big victory for Mitt Romney and Republican policy analysts? Because there has been a conspiracy of silence among those working for the bill and those working against it.

Republicans working against the bill have been unwilling to say "It's RomneyCare!" because they would then face the awkward question of why they did not support it. And they were never, never, never going to vote for it. The point for the Republican legislators, you see, was to follow the Gingrich strategy: work as hard as you can to block the Democratic president’s initiatives so that the press then portrays him as a wimp. Then, Republicans could pick up seats and regain their congressional majorities -- for Americans do not like wimps and the politicians who support them. This political gambit overwhelmed all policy considerations. The Son of Man himself, coming unto the Ancient of Days and stating that this was his favorite health care financing mechanism, could not have called forth Republican votes for it in Congress.

And the Democrats? Well, the critical votes -- numbers 200-240 in the House and numbers 55-60 in the Senate--would vote for RomneyCare but not for anything more liberal and interventionist. These Democrats would not support any form of government-provided health care -- not even Medicare-for-All or Federal-Employees-Heath-Benefit-Plan-for-All. They were not on board for any plan that required businesses to pool the costs of their workers and bargain in their behalf for affordable health care. They were not even on board for a plan that allowed people to vote-with-their-feet and sign up for Medicare if they thought it was a better deal than their private insurance.

So for the Democrats, it was RomneyCare or nothing. Thus the task for Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama was to hold the Democratic right to RomneyCare while not losing the Democratic left. As long as they could say to the left, "Look, this is what we can pass: it's a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick is a lot better than our current health care financing system)," they had a chance of holding the left, especially if they could sweeten it with progressive tax and subsidy policies. But if they pointed out the intellectual origins of the plan -- oh, and by the way the guts of the plan came out of the conservative uber-think tank, the Heritage Foundation, and it was what Mitt Romney thought was good policy back in 2004 -- then the left-wing Democrats' heads would have exploded and their votes would have vanished.

Over in that alternative branch of the quantum-mechanical multiverse in which Mitt Romney was elected President in November 2008, this health care bill--with much smaller subsidies and no tax increases on the rich, and with other tweaks and modifications--passed the House of Representatives 352-83 and passed the Senate 79-20, with near-solid Republican support. Left-wing Democrats whined that it was not real reform. The David Broders and David Brookses of the world trumpeted it as an extraordinary victory for American bipartisanship.

Instead, we are here -- where a nearly identical plan appears very, very different.

We truly live in a weird world.

I did not know that you could have a circular firing squad made up of only one person:

Josh Marshall: "Unconscionable Abuse of Power": I'm really wondering whether folks like Mitt Romney, who desperately wants to run for president again, realizes that the stuff he writes at NRO will still be available for regular voters to read months and years in the future, long after the even most Republicans have emerged from the current fever swamp. Here's Mitt's description of what just happened. "America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation." Not Glenn Beck, not some Tea Partier banging on the door of a Democratic townhall.

The best headline I saw this morning--which I can no longer find on the web or in Google--was this:

MITT ROMNEY ACCUSES BARACK OBAMA OF TREASON FOR FORCING AMERICA TO ADOPT ROMNEYCARE

And Andrew Romano:

Absurdly Premature: Romney's Ridiculous Response to Obamacare - The Gaggle Blog - Newsweek.com: For a little while there, Mitt Romney was beginning to act like a humanoid. In order to position himself as the "grown-up" 2012 alternative to the rabble-rousing right wing fringe (see: Palin, Sarah), the former Massachusetts governor has spent the past few months shedding the ill-fitting, hard-core conservatism of his 2008 run and staking out reasonable positions on a number of important issues. He has admitted, for example, that the Democratic stimulus package "will accelerate" America's economic recovery. He has defended the necessity of the TARP program. He has even called global warming a "real and present danger." As the Boston Phoenix's David S. Bernstein puts it, "this latest incarnation is probably the closest we have seen to the "real" Mitt Romney — who close observers believe doesn't care much about social issues, isn't very ideological, and revels in applying management skills to large organizations to help them achieve their goals and functions." Which is why I was somewhat surprised when Romney's aggressive statement on the passage of Obamacare landed in my inbox around 10:00 am this morning.... There are two problems with [Romney's] strategy.... First, launching a divisive, impractical, PR-driven campaign to repeal health-care reform at the same time you're calling for "a new kind of politics" is just a little bit contradictory, so it only reinforces the perception that Romney is a soulless automaton willing to say anything... second, what Romney is actually saying...doesn't make any sense.... Romney expects us to believe that his preferred package of health-care fixes represented "the ultimate conservative plan" when backed by a liberal legislature, then suddenly became "an historic usurpation of the legislative process" when forced to wend its way through a more moderate body. But the difference was context, not content. Romney's maneuver is meant to distract Republican primary voters from this simple fact. But I'm guessing it won't be very effective. 

Thanks to Thomas Levenson and John Cole...

William Kristol (December 2, 1993):

William Kristol: Defeating President Clinton's Health Care Proposal: Faced with forceful objections in the past, the [Clinton] Administration has generally preferred to bargain and compromise with Congress.... But health care is not, in fact, just another Clinton domestic policy. And the conventional political strategies Republicans have used in the past are inadequate to the task of defeating the Clinton plan outright. That must be our goal. Simple Criticism is Insufficient... such opposition only wins concessions, not surrender.... Passage of the Clinton health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent an unprecedented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy--and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security. Its success would signal a rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy.... But the Clinton proposal is also a serious political threat to the Republican Party. Republicans must therefore clearly understand the political strategy implicit in the Clinton plan--and then adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal and defeat its partisan purpose.... If a Clinton health care plan succeeds.... It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government...

Nice to see somebody at the Atlantic calling out its bulls--- artists.

James Fallows responding to Clive Crook:

Health-Care Reform, the Morning Afte: On the politics, I mentioned last month this exchange on the House floor during "negotiations" over last year's stimulus bill, sent in by someone who was there: "GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.' Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?' GOP member:  'You know I can't vote for the bill.' Dem member:  'Then why should we put it in the bill?' I witnessed this myself."... [T]his was... how all "negotiations" over the health bill worked too... nothing... Democrats could have put in the bill that would have made voting for it more attractive to Republicans than voting against it, with the implied promise of stopping Obama himself, his Administration's other objectives, and the general momentum of the Democratic party.... Fine: that's their strategy.... I raise it now in response to a new wave of interpretive hogwash: namely, the idea that although Obama may have "won," he did so in a fashion that was polarizing, hyper-partisan, and extreme. Please. The quite open GOP strategy was that they were not going to vote for this bill. They had every right to that as a strategic choice. But they can't now claim that their bloc opposition to the bill is proof that the Democrats were too partisan. Rather, they can and will claim it, but they shouldn't be believed.

Clive Crook on RomneyCare:

A Tainted Victory: [A] tainted victory. [Scott] Brown won in Massachusetts for a reason. The Democrats had failed to make their case for this reform to the American public... the country dislikes... this particular bill... Democrats, intent on arguing among themselves, barely even tried to change its mind. People struggle to understand how extending health insurance to 32 million Americans, at a cost of a trillion dollars over ten years, can be a deficit-reducing measure.... The CBO notwithstanding, the public is right not to believe these claims.... [T]he law the Democrats just passed is unpopular... is opposed by most of the country; and it is now law. I would never have believed this possible in the United States.... Who's laughing now? And one wonders, is this trampling down of public opinion going to be habit-forming? Recall Pelosi's recent comment that once the Democrats have "kicked through this door", they can move on to the rest of their (equally unpopular) agenda.

Thanks to the unrewarded exertions of conservative Democrats, this health care plan has moderate, centrist ambitions. It is not socialism in disguise.... This law does not mean the end of the world as we know it. It does not mean "government-run health care", either....

The reform is not going to be hailed a great success before November. The order of the day will be legal challenges, political quarreling, implementation problems, and embarrassing discoveries about the bill's innards.... Obama has broken faith with American voters. He promised post-partisan leadership. He promised to moderate the warring tribes on Capitol Hill, and strive for common-sense, centrist solutions. Then, on this epic issue, he allied himself with--in fact, subordinated himself to--liberal Democrats in Congress... he has divided the country more deeply than ever. And he has pushed through a far-reaching measure that country does not want. In November we will find out what, if anything, it will cost his party and his presidency.

Steve M.:

No More Mister Nice Blog: GREAT MOMENTS IN SELECTIVE OUTRAGE

Peggy Noonan today: "Excuse me, but it is embarrassing -- really, embarrassing to our country -- that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he's having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he's been promising for a year will be passed next week. What an air of chaos this signals to the world..."

New York Times, October 4, 1983: "The White House today announced the indefinite postponement of President Reagan's planned visits next month to the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, citing the need for Mr. Reagan to be in Washington to deal with Congress on the budget and other issues..."

Holly Yeager:

Reporting from the Examining Room: The New York Times (Kevin Sack) gets credit for going where few bother, into the examining rooms of doctors who see Medicaid patients—and, more importantly, some who don’t. It’s a story that’s often told at 30,000 ft—how state budget cuts to the insurance program for the poor and disabled have led to a significant drop in the reimbursement rates for doctors who see Medicaid patients. Add to that dynamic the growth in the program that’s come with the bad economy, and the result is doctors who are opting out of the system. But the Times gets at the tale with some on-the-ground reporting (there really is no substitute) in Flint, Mich., including the harrowing ordeal faced by a cancer patient whose primary care physician could no longer see her because he had stopped taking Medicaid patients...

Paul Romer:

Which Parts of Globalization Matter for Catch-up Growth?: Economists devote too much attention to international flows of goods and services and not enough to international flows of ideas. Traditional trade flows are an imperfect substitute for flows of the underlying ideas. The simplest textbook trade model shows that a welfare-enhancing move toward freer flows of ideas should be associated with a reduction in conventional trade. The large quantitative effect from the flow of ideas is evident in the second half of the 20th century as the life expectancies in poor and rich countries began to converge. Another example comes from China, where authorities dramatically reduced accident rates by adopting rules of civil aviation that were developed in the United States. All economists, including trade economists, would be better equipped to talk about international flows of technologies and rules if they adopted a consistent vocabulary based on the concepts of nonrivalry and excludability. An analysis of the interaction between rules and technologies may help explain important puzzles such as why private firms have successfully diffused some technologies (mobile telephony) but not others (safe municipal water.)

• Maureen Dowd: Eraser Duty for Bart?

Everybody please max out on donations for Betsy Markey

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right.:

Karoli:

Immediate Benefits of HCR:

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.

Did his COBRA coverage run out yet?

Doug Holtz-Eakin, Republican adviser, faces personal health insurance woes : Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky "preexisting conditions" that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage. "A right renal autotransplant," he said, pointing to his abdomen as he described the 1990 transplant surgery he went through after one of his kidneys was damaged in an accident. "They got rid of the artery, moved my kidney and rebuilt me for the 21st century. If you look at my file, any insurance company would go, 'Hmm . . .' " Good luck....

Holtz-Eakin said he's been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain's campaign through the government's COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. "I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do," he said...

He tweets:

Twitter / Kieran Healy: Hello America! Germany say ...: Hello America! Germany says, Welcome to 1883! The UK says, Welcome to 1911! France says, Welcome to 1930!

We are now in the tunnel at the end of the tunnel--and we only get out of that tunnel if the Senate passes reconciliation. And then we go straight into yet a third tunnel...

C-SPAN Live Stream - C-SPAN:

Now let's see if anybody has a breakdown on how the swing votes voted on the rule...

Congressman Jim Cooper:

Congressman Jim Cooper: I woke up this Sunday morning, said my prayers, and finally decided that I will vote YES on health care reform. Having heard from tens of thousands of Middle Tennesseans on all sides of the issue (including the flood of messages in the last few days and hours), and having spent months studying the various bills, I know that America must improve its health care system because it is unsustainable. This legislation will make it better. Any decision of this magnitude must be made very carefully, after weighing every concern. We Nashvillians are proud of our outstanding health care community that makes us “the nation’s health care industry capital.” Given our community’s expertise, it is interesting to note that:   Every Nashville hospital strongly supports the legislation, whether it’s St. Thomas, Vanderbilt (both University and Hospital), Centennial, Meharry Medical School, Nashville General, Summit, Skyline, or Southern Hills. A majority of physicians who contacted me support the legislation and, although the Tennessee Medical Association opposes it, the TMA’s national organization, the conservative American Medical Association, supports it. A majority of local nurses support the legislation, along with the American Nurses Association. Despite media controversy regarding abortion, the Catholic Health Association, Catholics United, and groups representing 59,000 Catholic Sisters support the legislation. The largest Nashville and national senior organization, AARP, supports the legislation.   It means a lot to me that so many local people who know so much about health care agree with my decision...

Put a ring on his finger! Dress him in a fine robe and put sandals on his feet!! Slaughter the fatted calf!!! Let there be music and dancing!!!! For our brother who was dead is now alive!!!!! He who was lost now is found!!!!!!

FireDogLake Book Salon:

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Charlie Stross, The Trade of Queens: Book Six of the Merchant Princes:

Twitter / ddayen:

House is currently set to vote around 11pm EST...

Paul Krugman writes:

Done: OK, nothing is sure in this world. Intrade is still giving Obamacare a 2.2% chance of failing.... But it looks as if health reform has been achieved. There is, as always, a tunnel at the end of the tunnel: we’ll spend years if not decades fixing this thing. But kudos to all involved, with special praise for Nancy Pelosi, who is now a Speaker for the ages.

I'm not going to jinx things by talking about the tunnel at the end of the tunnel until we actually get there, at sometime late tonight...

David Frum twitters:

if HCR prevails, Republicans need an accountability moment. Jim DeMint/ Rush / Beck etc. ed us to Waterloo all right. Ours.

Note that it's a political disaster from the viewpoint of current Republican legislators: they made their moderate members stand up against the wall and vote against their better policy judgment, their constituents' well-being, and their own political viability in an attempt to get Obama portrayed by the press as a weak and powerless wimp. And they failed.

It's not a political disaster from the standpoint of moderate Republican policymakers: it's RomneyCare. It's what they would have liked to do.

Moderate Republican members of congress who want to still have a job in ten years--or who want to look either their grandchildren or St. Peter in the eye--should pivot, and vote for RomneyCare's final passage.

There is still time for them to do so.

It just makes you look really silly, really stupid, and really clueless...

James Hamilton:

Econbrowser: Why reform health care?: I find it helpful... to consider two polar extremes.... In the first case, consider a group of people, all of whom are healthy at the moment, all of whom have the same risk of needing significant assistance with medical expenditures at some point in the future, and none of whom know whether they are the one who is going to need assistance.... Such health insurance is Pareto improving.... And precisely because it is Pareto improving, private insurance markets have no difficulty delivering this kind of financial product. Now consider the opposite extreme, namely a group of people each of whom already knows with perfect certainty who is going to need medical expenditures and who is not. In this case, if the funds of the group are pooled... those receiving the funds are better off and those supplying the funds are worse off... describing such an arrangement as "insurance" is mislabeling.... [T]he more fundamental argument in favor of assisting the needy in the second example is one of compassion...

There are actually two separate issues here:

1. Does the fact that health insurance contain elements of the second greatly destroy the ability of the private health insurance market to provide the first? (Answer, yes.)
2. Do we think that we want a society that provides the second--in which people with thin wallets are not left to die on the street of treatable diseases (Answer, yes.)

Jim thinks the hard questions all circle around (2). But (1) is a very important reason to reform our health insurance system as well...

Alea jacta est. Christina Bellantoni:

White House Statement On Abortion Compromise:

Today, the President announced that he will be issuing an executive order after the passage of the health insurance reform law that will reaffirm its consistency with longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion. While the legislation as written maintains current law, the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation's restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented. The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent. The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle. The President is grateful for the tireless efforts of leaders on both sides of this issue to craft a consensus approach that allows the bill to move forward...