A paper in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry earlier this year found that not only are boys who inherit a mutated MAOA variant more likely to be in a gang than those without the mutation, they are also more likely to be some of the most violent members.
Could that be the "better male bonding through violence" thing? (Not unknown to literature, as well as Leonard Bernstein, war movies, professional football and gangsta rap, i.e., For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother, nor to Poussin or Rubens when they glorified in paint what are basically gang rape stories from mythology, etc.)
]]>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125745788725531839.html
Judging this stuff by testosterone levels alone is so "old science," it seems....however, I think one can could be considered reasonable in making assumptions about the gene pool for the Pashtun tribe, being a tribe, after all, a tribe that hasn't been busy mixing with others at a feverish pace. So it's not necessarily so that I am ruining on your point with this new science suggestion. :-)
]]>Medicare Commission]]>A new panel that would be established under the Senate health care legislation. The commission, called the Independent Medicare Advisory Board, would be charged to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending." Some crtics in Congress, including some House leaders, view such a board, to be controlled by the executive branch, as encroaching on Congressional authority over Medicare.
On your thoughts on the site, I would just throw out a few thoughts directed to you in particular. You don't have to answer. They are just meant to be thought provokers for you.
Doesn't it occur to you that every day and in every way this site grows more and more towards being about and for D.C. and "the beltway" and about process and not issues? And not about what "the peanut gallery" thinks unless they are into analyzing what's going on with the latest beltway bits and process moves? It does to me.
Seems that they experienced a smashing success starting with the primary by concentrating on horserace, enjoyed it tremendously, and never looked back. Recall that in the beginning, there was a TPMCafe to experiment with all kinds of stuff, i.e., Josh set up "tables" to discuss certain things, Kate invited expats to write on stuff like the Europe vs. Islam topic, as well as the slant towards foreign policy wonkery, etc. All of those were losers to the popularity of horserace, and methinks the experimental phase is over, and it appears to me that Marshall is pretty sure now what he wants it to be and to do. And that's an audience of political junkies interested in talking about the mechanics and news of the centers of power, not to any powers that might be available.
If you look at those top ten lists of best tips and best right wing political nuts being promoted on the front page right now, I think that says something about not being that interested in serious conversation between wonky columnists and readers. I say all this only because--I know you are a journalist, and you seem to have a very strong knack for getting along quite well with most people, and making serious discussion of issues both friendly and interesting, and I think maybe you might start thinking about doing for yourself what you are looking for here, and likewise for the part of the audience that feels the same way? Because while I am no tea leaf reader, I am going to be really really surprised if more of what you'd like to see happens here, chances are it's going to be less and less, very likely it's going in the opposite direction.
Again, no need to respond.
And Happy Thanksgiving!
]]>I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.
--Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope 2006.
And I think you didn't listen. In a lot of your writings here, it seemed to this reader that you didn't listen to his policy views, you projected. You also seemed more concerned with the color of his skin (and the response to that of others, like some American Jews,) his oratorial talents, and some imagined likeness to 60's figures like RFK and MLK, than his actual published beliefs about policy and government.
Here, for one example, is Goldberg's May 2008 interview with him on Israel, (which you yourself recommended to TPM readers here,) in which he expresses strong pro-Israel sympathies, both personal and political, confirms that he believes Hamas to be a terrorist organzation, and recounts telling Ramallah youth that his and America's committment to Israel's security is" non-negotiable." In your writings here, more than once, you implied that, like later with his speech to AIPAC, he just said this type of thing for political expediency. But he warned you in that interview that his committment to Israel was more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency.
To this reader, you often seemed to be ignoring what he said and instead projecting your views on him. Just as you sometimes do with other articles you cite, you pick something out and project your own views on it, and when the reader goes to look at it, they find it doesn't say what you say it says at all.
]]>Wouldn't you say, though, that you know he is not a populist?
And that is actually getting at the point where I disagreed with you in the past. You saw equivalence with populist demagogues in some of the tactics that resulted in Obamamania, and the dangers of that in history; I didn't. (I am thinking in particular of one post where you said, almost sounding frightened, something along the lines of "what else can we expect from this monster?")
It was extremely disturbing to me only because it showed a large group still could fall for a populist demagogue, not that that was what was actually happening. It was very clear he was not one. But disturbing because so many people can still get distracted by a false bread and circuses fight with the difference in characters created out of whole cloth--i.e., Hillary v. Obama when the one was more charismatic than the other.
As I implied in my comments to you on Rosenberg's thread, but didn't say in so many words, I think it was basically the same kind of phenomenon as JFK and Camelot. Inspiring a large number of youth and other people to celebrity style adoration with vague cultural change stuff, and not that much harm in the end result. Had JFK lived, the bloom would have been off the rose in equal measure; he was a similar centrist and, as a son of Joe and his plot to power, much more Machiavellian. (At least Audacity of Hope and Dreams of My Father were not ghostwritten tomes like Profiles in Courage), and were often self-examining.) In actuality, I think in general Americans can be proud that many Obamamaniacs are falling off the the adoration wagon so quickly, much more quickly than my mother's generation with the Kennedy's.
It is ironic, or maybe not, that the Dowd et.al. revelations are partly considering the whole Caroline Kennedy story and what happened with that. Actually, I have confidence (partly from mom, who remained fascinated with the Kennedy's, but who learned over the years to be a cynical one) that Caroline herself was trained by her mom to know well what was happening with all that, and she probably looks back on it now with bemusement now and no regrets about her role.
Juan Cole once wrote a paragraph related to the issue that I found real intriguing, in in a blog post on the July 7, 2005 London bombings:
Legislators in democratic societies who are thinking about how to respond to this problem should give serious thought to RICO-like laws that could be used to curb religious cults, which typically isolate members, indoctrinate them, manipulate them, and sometimes coerce them. Cults avoid scrutiny by harassing critics and whistleblowers, often in ways that police find it difficult to respond to. The enormous problems modern societies have had with groups like Christian Identity, the Koreishites, Aum Shinrikyo, and now al-Qaeda, suggests that current legal frameworks are inadequate to address this problem. Ex-members, victims and critics of cults need a legal basis for protection from the cults. The American Family Foundation is doing excellent work in this regard.
Youth and street gangs, and of course, organizations like the Mafia, fit this problem too. I don't like his emphasis on the word "cult" there, but I do find his thoughts that its a problem that western law has trouble with it spot on. It's the octupus or head-of-the-snake thing, just prosecuting individual acts doesn't help very much.
]]>Also, it's almost amusing in a way how so many commenters put the focus on Rahm Emmanuel, as if Obama is a clueless guy who just recommends articles to his Chief of Staff for the heck of it, and in doing so doesn't expect his Chief of Staff to express this to Staff of which he is Chief. There's almost this kind of intent to suggest Emmanuel has taken Obama captive and won't let him hire a Chief of Staff of his own choosing....
]]>Read this and the Atlantic article it's referencing: Rahm Orders Health Care Article Be Must-Read For Staffers.
If true that Obama likes it, seems to me it infers that the goal, once a bill is passed and more people are covered and there are more equal playing field rules about insurance coverage (i.e., recission, pre-existing conditions,) is to start reforming the whole system using the 800-lb. gorilla that is Medicare now and will still be a 900 lb. gorilla with lots of baby boomers signing in. (For the dense, how this works and would work: insurance companies will be saying: Medicare won't pay for this procedure or provider gambit or duplication of services or the fact that this person ended up being readmitted to the hospital because they weren't properly monitored, why do you expect us to? They do it to some extent now, but they'll be doing it a lot more once a bill where they have more even playing field rules is enacted--it will no longer be a game of altering the pool of insured for the profit.)
A bonus is reduction of the deficit in the form of reduced Medicare costs; if true that Obama liked the article and wanted staff to understand the points it makes, it is possibly even more regarding the deficit reduction points than the other issues. Progressives don't like to talk about it, but Medicare is the one actually the main one feeding the fee-for-service mess that our system has become, because it is fee-for-service without many brakes, and because it covers the end-of-life period where the most expensive technology and where the specialists go out of control with no one directing them most often.
It's not really a "death panel" for the elderly thing, it'll be using the most-expensive elderly group to initiate better, more sensible care, which will then be applied to the rest of the population through the example set. But the death panel/rationing thing is why it's not easy to sell it to the public. They are already used, Medicare protocols are often used by insurance companies now to make judgements, the goal is to get them to do it more and to have Medicare set a better example.
(Medicaid, too, I imagine Medicaid becoming a better program, not to mention a larger one, in many states once the bill is enacted and starts working.)
P.S. Where's any evidence this can work? Well more recent signs signs in Massachusetts, for one.
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