was impressive. Relaxed and self assured ,talking in a near conversational tone and clearly in full  command of his material and himself he was a real life talking and walking example of why the Republicans' ideas are irrelevant in the debate on health care.

And on most other issues.

Turning the pages of the bill , with amused sarcasm he recited case after case of things  the health care  tzar will supervise.Clearly expecting that we , like him, will be appalled that the Government will actually do something. As opposed to the deeply held conservative position that it should do nothing, merely stand by wringing its hands and hoping for the best.

Today's Times magazine describes the vastly improved results a Colorado medical practice obtains by actually telling doctors what to do. That would no doubt elecit  a chuckle from Boehner. Whose idea for controlling medical costs(and outcomes) like  his idea for controlling the banking system bears an uncanny resemblence to the(naturally) least effective treatment for prostate cancer:watchfull waiting. Otherwise known as "do nothing and hope the cancer will cure itself ".

It is Adam Smith gone mad. Make no plans, give no directions, hope for the best.

It's not how Boehner conducts his own life. He prepared for his  remarks last night. Someone had gone through the bill and selected the pages containing the dire threat that if Health Care passes, the Government will actually take an interest in what the Medical Professions is doing. He didn't just open the bill at random, he had a plan.

In case you wondered why New Orleans and the occupation of Iraq were such disasters look no further. They were the necessary consequences of a philosophy which advocates  dealing with all problems  by "watchful waiting"..

Culture came to Main Street but not escapism.

When things got complicated in the third act they also got up to date.. The Chinese interrogators  wanted information. The lovely Liu refused to tell them what they wanted.

Puccini's operatic solution: they would threaten her with torture.' We have ways of making you talk'. The Milan audience perhaps smiled indulgently. That Puccini !. An operatic solution to move the plot along.

Waterboarding , I thought but Liu beat them to the punch.

What's happened to us?  How did we get to a place where the highest levels of our government approve something that ten years ago we'd have scorned as a medeival practice or hokey theatrical plot device?  And criticism is classified  at best as a sign of almost culpable  immaturity and more likely as unpatriotic indifference to the welfare of  our troops overseas.

In years of living abroad where, frankly, things were often better run , I could still think fondly of our government as one that was fundamentally decent. Today that seems mostly to depend on which torturer is in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel

Even Puccini couldn't have dreamed up John Yoo.

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in which John Houseman , on behalf of some Wall Street firm,growled "We make money the old fashioned way. We work for it." 

The Galleon case  and more , the media's treatment of it recalls that piece of hypocricy. The old  fashioned  work that firm, and Galleon , and all of Wall Streets analysts do is obtaining corporate profit forecasts so they can recommend a buy or sell of a particular stock. That's it. The columns of statistics that typically accompany that key sentence are window dressing and treated as such by the readers.

On those few occasions when they can't obtain it directly from the company, a couple of nights spent at the bar nearest to corporate headquarters will produce it from one or another of the  50 people present that night who know it.

Every firm which issues investment advice and every reporter  who covers that activity knows that. When a Galleon case comes along the question is not :Are they guilty.?Of course they are. The question is Why was this particular case  brought ?

Obviously I don't refer to the official forecasts published under  SEC pressure. I refer to the  forecasts in which  the company actually believes. And which  guide its actions.

 Rather than try to restrict such disclolsure  the SEC should  prohibit any sanction for the disclosurers. All those influential  analysts would be freed to go into some legitimate employment as bar tenders or palm readers. . 

The columns of statistics which often accompany that key sentence are window dressing and treated as such by the readers.

Every firm which issues investment advice and every reporter  who covers that activity knows that. When a Galleon case comes along the question is not :Are they guilty.?Of course they are. The question is Why was this particular case  brought ?

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Obama slew the last one. Remember the Recession? And what people thought about his handling of it?

Here's John Authers in today's  FT

This rally ..is now arguably the biggest such turnaround in the past hundred years.

The common assumption ...was that the crisis could not end until the biggest US banks were nationalized......Many were unimpressed by the Obama administrations debut

Then the government's much derided "stress tests" .....restored confidence.

 And not only the capitalist press  but , I sort of remember, even in this  TPM  non- bastion of capitalism,Obama's selection of Geithner and Summers was greeted with muted applause.

Guess what? Obama succeeded. He didn't do what was wanted by  the Authers of the world or by a sizeable TPM contingent. But it worked.He was smart enough not to do what a lot of us wanted.To see that what he needed at that time , to deal with that problem ,was Geithner and Summers. Horses for courses.

So since he got that right, what makes us think he's not also smart enough to see that when it's time to deal with the next problem, say income inequality, he won't see that what he needs is some else?

Two months ago Dragon #2 was breathing fire according to media's health experts and political bloviators. Guess what ?. The reports of  the death of Health Care Reform seem to have been much exaggerated .Can't say the same for Dragon #2  last seen emitting tepid puffs.

And when it comes to Afghanistan what makes us think that because he knew that McChrystal was the Geithner of an anti insurgent campaign he'll fail to see that he needs a non- McChrystal for the non- anti- insurgent  campaign to which I expect/hope he's going to shift ?I forsee four scaly legs in the air and a cold droopy tail switching its last.

Hey, it's fun winning a few. Relay and enjoy it.

Not even evil.Neither was Sharon. Nor Arafat. Nor Gerry Adams.  Nor Curtis LeMay. Nor Mohammed Atta. Nor,  dare I say it, Osama Bin Laden..

They were all responsible for doing terrible things to other human beings: torturing them, incinerating them in a Birmingham pub , vaporizing a hundred thousand of them with one bomb . Or 9/11. But not because they are evil. They all thought they were doing  good; defending their own people by attacking their enemy.

We can deplore their choices. I do. Mostly.I Agreed with Hiroshima. But  to characterize them as criminals  is to adopt another  version of their own  behavior :ceasing to see them as  human beings , just cardboard characters in the long running morality play in our own heads. Enter the devil, Stage Left.  

Criticize them for faulty strategies. Or for employing means that are disproportionate to their ends.But not for being motiveless villains.

And stop clamoring for a War Crimes Tribunal. Or a Congressional hearing. Or execution. For someone who has done the same sort of cruel thing that all leaders have always done. .

Olberman's hour long comment last night (Oct 7) made all the right arguments  convincingly and with appropropriate emotion.

It must be possible to find it someplace on the net. Don't miss it.

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I wish he weren't  But he is.

What happened in Gaza and in Siderot was not a War Crime. It was  war. There are no war criminals in the IDF. Or in Hamas.Or flying the Enola Gay. Or ordering GIs in 1944 "take these prisoners back the HQ (10 miles away) and be back in 5 minutes."

Just warriors.

In wars, warriors do things like dispatching a peace mission while the fleet's en route to Pearl Harbor, Or saturation bombing of Coventry or  Dresden. Or  dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima ; firing rockets at Siderot ; bombing a UN school filled with Gaza civilians.If it kills any one on the other side , it's not a War Crime. It's war. 

And that all too definitely includes killing civilians-what else were Bomber Harris and Curtis Lemay doing in 1944.

If not absolutely  in all wars at all times, in so many you might as well say all,  military leaders have believed, correctly,that killing civilians is probably the most effective strategy, And certainly the one that best spares its own citizens. Denying that is Cant. Or invincible ignorence..

As Prince Andre argued (and Sherman practiced) ensuring the current war inflicts grievous harm on civilians is the best way to lengthen the interval  before a new generation learns for itself the same old lessorn that War is Hell.

Killing civilians only becomes a War Crime when it decreases the chance of winning like Eichman commandering Hungarian rail roads to transport Jews to the Camps.. Not when Hitler, or Roosevelt or Stalin or Arafat or Golda Meir killed any of the enemy, civilian or military. Preferably as horribly as possible. That was just  War.

:Which enemy of the free market said the following about   bankers?

o"it's only a mild exaggeration to say that European rogue traders serve relatively short jail sentences before taking to the lecture circuit

o "the return of a "business as usual" ethos in relation to bank bonuses suggests the shame gene has gone missing in the financial system

o "a possibly unique feature of the financial business is that traders are often applauded.for eviscerating their clients

o"A similar ethical deficit has been evident in the subprime.market

 o"When incentives are pushing people in a direction that is at odds with ethical behavior customers will be ripped off.

o Some central bankers, like rogue traders lack a shame gene.

And the author was

Dean Baker _________

Barney Frank__________

William Grieder__________

Paul Krugmann___________

Dennis Kucinich_________

Ralph Nader_____________

Bernie Sanders_______________

Al Sharpton_______________

Savanarola__________________

None of the above.______________

For the correct answer see my comment below. And be a little more tolerant of bankers. It's a dirty job but ,hey, at least they're not standing at traffic lights rubbing a dirty rag over your windshield

_

Our health system's failure creates an annual  101,000 more deaths than if we had a health system like , say, Australia.

In today's FT Nicholas Timmins (no link at the FT's request-but go to FT.com and search for Global Insight/Nicholas Timmins) quotes  a study by-among others- Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showing that for deaths under the age of 75 from diseases that are treatable  the US has the worst record among the top 19 industrialized counries. And if we performed as well as not only Australia but also France and Japan we'd have  101,000 fewer deaths per year.

And of course in many of those 19 countries-the UK for example-if you don't like the National Health Service you can go to a private physician whose rates will be much lower than those here since the NHS is not mandatory. It's a public option.holding down the rates of those private physicians.

Not an accident. Nye Bevan designed it that way - see Michael Foot's Biography of Bevan.Bevan's approach , unlike our's at present, was to produce the bill first and argue about it later.Pretty much in line with the poker mantra " You can't beat something with nothing".Faced with a clear understanding of what would happen if they sat on their hands the British medical establishment presented sensible compromises to Bevan which he took to Parliament.

And it works. It's worked for me. It's worked for various members of my family who've lived in the UK for the last 20 years.It worked least well for the first ten of those years when Margaret Thatcher attempted to destroy it by creating the long waiting lists which she then pointed to as evidence of its failings- and which have been essentially eliminated by the Blair/Brown Labour Party.But live on among the right wing here.

Robert Reich asks today , why the anger? And answers : Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

Maybe . Or maybe the Astroturfers and the broadcast demagogues are exploiting a condition rather than causing it. All societies contain a quota of the deeply unhappy  waiting for the: Day of the Locusts. Now add Joe (usually)Lunchpail, in the millions, staring at the TV , waiting for foreclosure , deeply humiliated in his own eyes  at what he sees as his failure  to support his famiily, .

Sure they're responding to Rush and Steele. If McCain were in office they'd be responding to Josh and Adriana.  They want to hate somebody and are just waiting to be told whom that is.

The solution? To accept there is no solution. For the time being. Obama has to just keep on keeping on. And we need to cease blaming him because he can't make the sun rise in the west.

He may well be a one term president. All the more reason why he;s got to get  Health Care through .Not because  otherwise he will have "wasted a crisis". But because every year, month, week,day   until we have Health Care people in their thousands  will be suffering because of its absence.

AOBTW if that means John Yoo escapes his deeply deserved disbarment, and the Drug companies get a free-er than-it-should- be ride, so be it.Every sled needs ten huskies. And  a puppy that can be thrown to the wolves.

On NPR's Talk of the Nation,today, Sekulow said the following:

o End of life care is a major contributor to US health care costs

o One of the prime objectives of the draft Health Care Bill is control of health care costs

o That draft requires physicians to provide formal end of life counselling

o And to report their results to a Government panel

o Therefore it follows that the Government will require that in end of life counselling physcians should urge an early death

This is an attorney talking? Doesn't that same logic mean that the Government will require surgeons to botch operations?A new medical standard:first do Harm. 

He went essentially  unrefuted. The host probed his assertion once and Sekulow repeated that since cost control was a major objective of the bill it must be the case that the Government will pressure physicians to speed the elderly on their way.The other guest , a physician, tried a couple of times to rebutt Sekulow , who asked not to be interrupted and  when the other guest tried again the host instead took questions.

NPR sometimes compliments itself on its "drive way moments"- when the listener stays in the car to hear the conclusion of a segment. For me this was a "drive way moment" as I shouted at the radio :"Ask Sekulow if he means that all doctors will be pressured to kill their patients".

I understand that the hosts have their hands full.Where was TOTN's support team? Why didn't they prompt the obvious question.

Oh, well. 

Since reading Paul Tough's Whatever it Takes about the Harlem Children's Zone I've wondered whether it was too good to be true. It's true.

A just published Harvard University study concludes

"At nine months old, there are no detectable cognitive differences between black and white babies . Differences emerge as early as age two, and by the time black children enter kindergarten they are lagging whites  On every subject at every grade level, there are large achievement differences between blacks and whites that continue to grow..

" Harlem Children's Zone is enormously effective at increasing the achievement of the poorest minority children. Taken at face value, the effects in middle school are enough to reverse the black-white achievement gap in mathematics and reduce it in English Language Arts. The effects in elementary school close the racial achievement gap in both subjects".

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/hcz%204.15.2009.pdf

Now recall The Shape of the River in which Bowen and Bok demolished the arguments against the educational  effectiveness of Affirmative Action not with high minded reasoning  but by looking at the numbers. 

Taken together  Whatever it Takes - buttressed by this study- and The Shape of the River   demonstrate the circularity  of the poor old Thermstroms'  arguments against educational  Affirmative Action.Having provided Blacks with inferior education because supposedly they weren't  capable of benefitting from a good education, we referenced  their inferior educational achievements  as evidence that......... they weren't capable of benefitting from a good education ..Duh.

The democrats could refute the insurance industry whine about unfair competition by agreeing the the public option operate through a quasi- public corporation a la Fanny Mae. That status would require it to earn a market rate of return which would  prevent predatory pricing as would a statuatory requirement that it actually provide insurance rather than cherry picking the best risks and then stone walling on claims..

It's worth reading Gibbon. The language is fun in itself. The narrative is full of sex and gore. And the tale shows exactly why Rome fell. And we are going to.

The similarities are uncanny. Two productive successful countries. Each large enough and so geographically situated there was no reason they could not feed and clothe themselves forever.

But Rome didn't. Gibbon shows the day it all started to go wrong. Rome was doomed once the Praetorian Guard crossed the river. It was going to take a while. Centuries. But it was going to happen. Decisions have consequences.

In our case Robert Skidelsky does it-by implication- in a current New York Review article:

"The World Financial Crisis & the American Mission".

We were doomed not by one decision but a handful taken between the elections of Ike and Nixon.  Which can be roughly summarized with the words:  Globalization, Taxes, the Pentagon. 

First, remember the country at the middle of the last century. No unemployment. A woman could actually dance in Central Park at midnight-like Fred and Ginger.  Doctors lived down the street and made house calls. The military had shrunk to its pre war size and mostly just paraded on Patriotic occasions. What's not to like?

What happened to zero unemployment? We sent the jobs to Bangalore. In a series of decisions, which will cause future historians to shake their heads in astonishment, we adopted trade policies, which meant that Joe Lunchpail in Detroit or Raleigh was competing with workers paid pennies an hour in Asia.

Apart from causing tremendous personal grief to car and clothing workers this also converted the blue-collar class from a source of government revenue to a drain on our finances. If you don't work you don't pay taxes. You collect Welfare.

Which left us dependent on the income of the white-collar class. As Skidelsky puts it "this enabled financiers and businessmen to earn huge profits". Incredibly we dealt with this dependence on upper income Americans with a series of tax reforms eliminating our progressive tax code. I remember demonstrating to my secretary in 1975 that if I paid her an extra thousand dollars the tax on it would be the same as if the State paid it to Nelson Rockefeller.

So a country which had exported the jobs which were the main stay of a taxable blue collar class."reformed " the tax code so that the white collar class equally ceased to be a source of government revenue.

But nevertheless our response like that of the Caesars was to create a Praetorian Guard. Out of out greatly impaired income we choose to fund a military budget equal to that of the rest of the world put together. And to strengthen our similarity to Augustus, Tiberius, Constantine et al we also provided a circus to divert the no longer fully employed masses: a space program

The path ahead is clear. Those whom the gods will destroy they first encourage to implement Globalization, non-progressive taxation and a consequently unaffordable Praetorian Guard.