JustOneMinute

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Some big think from Bono at the Times.

Call Off The Corndogs

The Cornhusker Kickback that bought Senator Ben Nelson's 60th vote on health care is in the news and causing confusion.  From Politico:

Under the terms of a deal Nelson cut with Senate leaders to secure his crucial vote for the health care package, Nebraska would be exempted from having to pay for the coverage of its new Medicaid enrollees—leaving the federal government to pick up the tab. The deal is expected to cost the federal government $100 million over the next 10 years.

...

“Senator Nelson insisted that he had not asked for the Cornhusker Kickback to be placed in the U.S. Senate version of the health care bill to secure his vote. Senator Nelson told the attorney general that it was simply a ‘marker’ placed in the U.S. Senate version of the bill and assured the attorney general that it would be ‘fixed,’ says the memo.

The document goes on to say: “Senator Nelson said it would be ‘fixed’ by extending the Cornhusker Kickback (100% federal payment) on Medicaid to every state.”

That seems to be consistent with what Nelson said on the Senate floor and in a chat with Michael Gerson of the WaPo.  However, as noted by Scott Johnson of Powerine, if the real intention is that every state can opt out of the Medicaid mandate, then the CBO score for the bill is even more wildly optimistic than we imagined.

As an alternative reality check, here is the Times description of the Cornhusker Kickback from Dec 22:

The health care bill greatly expands Medicaid, and states would have to pick up some of the cost starting in 2017.

However, under a late change, Nebraska would be exempted, and the federal government would pick up the entire cost for certain people who become eligible for Medicaid there.

Republicans have criticized the Nebraska provision as the “Cornhusker kickback,” but Mr. Nelson pushed back.

“It’s not a special deal,” Mr. Nelson said. “It’s a fair deal. Some people said I was getting money for Nebraska. That’s wrong. I was just getting rid of an underfunded federal mandate. There’s nothing sleazy about it. I cracked the door open for other states.”

"Cracked the door open"?  Either other states are exempted in the bill or they are not.  Here is the Times from Dec 20:

Nebraska, with help from Mr. Nelson, won a particularly generous arrangement under which the federal government would indefinitely pay the full cost of covering certain low-income people added to the Medicaid rolls under the bill.

Republicans derided this provision as the “Cornhusker kickback.” And they said it was typical of the favors Democrats had given to Mr. Nelson and a handful of other senators.

“You’ve got to compliment Ben Nelson for playing ‘The Price is Right,’ ” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina. “He negotiated a Medicaid agreement for Nebraska that puts the federal government on the hook forever. Not for six years, not for 10 years. This isn’t the Louisiana Purchase; this is the Nebraska windfall.”

What, other Senators don't understand the bill either, and have failed to realize this is a windfall for all?  Please.  Either the CBO score is awry and this bill will blow up the deficit or Nelson is offering Reid a refund.  Either way I bet the voters of Nebraska won't be happy.

That "Racist" Shoe Shine Photo - Don't Give Me A Heart Attack

Patterico and Glenn pick up on an allegeldy right wing, racist photoshop effort depicting Barack Obama shining Sarah Palin's shoes.  Paterico notes that the photo was recently circulated by a registered Democrat, which leads to a bit of headscratching as to motive.

Patterico closes with a question - is the photo racist?  Personally, I am from the "there are no small roles, only small actors" school - if someone is putting a sincere effort into an honest job, then the job is not demeaning, regardless of its social status.  On the other hand, there are certainly some racial overtones of servitude to the shoe shine imagery.  Maybe that could be solved with a follow-up photo of Sarah cleaning Barrack's clock.

When in doubt, I turn to Wikipedia, which is reliably leftish and unlikely to cheerlead for my Neanderthal right-wing views.  And whom do we find among famous shoeshine boys of history?  The Godfather of Soul, James Brown.  But more to the point, we find the Godfather of Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh himself.  Hmm, Rod Blagojevich also appears on the list, so maybe this Barack image is more offensive than I realized.

I am going to take a flyer here and opine that when Rush gets out of the hospital he won't be agreeing with the notion that shining shoes is a demeaning job for blacks only.

DON'T SHINE ME ON:  Horatio Alger wrote a rags-to-riches story about a shoeshine boy that eventually made it to the National Music Theater Network in 2001.  I infer that in the original story the kid was white.

The Humanity - Shellfish and Seaweed

A fascinating BoingBoing article talks about a genetic bottleneck in the development of the human race and the role of shelfish in keeping us going:

A couple hundred thousand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.

See, humans today may look pretty different from one another but, genetically speaking, there's not much diversity at all within our species. In fact, chimpanzees, which look pretty much the same from one individual to the next, are much more genetically diverse than we are. To scientists, that suggests that humans have come through a genetic bottleneck--a point where our numbers shrunk dramatically, and a relatively small population had to rebuild the species. For about 20 years, genetic anthropologists have been comparing the genes of modern human populations. Over time, they've used bigger and bigger samples, and better and better analysis, to hone in on when our bottleneck likely happened, and how many humans managed to slip through it.

Turns out, somewhere between 130,000 to 190,000 years ago, the human species was reduced to less than 1000 breeding individuals--just a few thousand people in total. Ancient, naturally driven climate change pushed our species to the brink, said Curtis Marean, Ph.D., a professor with the Institute of Human Origins and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.

What saved us? According to Marean, the answer may be "shellfish".

...Marean used climate models to pinpoint locations in Africa where human hunter-gatherers could have hunkered down during a long glacial period that dried out the continent and expanded deserts. Of the four-to-six possible locations, he focused in on an area along the coast of South Africa.

...His team eventually found a site, dating to 164,000 years ago, that shows evidence of humans eating shellfish, working with natural pigments and creating technologically sophisticated tools. He thinks this could be the remnants of the humans of the bottleneck--ancestors of everyone alive today.

Very interesting, and let me toss in this hypothesis - if these people were eating shellfish they were almost surely also eating seaweed, so one might expect seaweed to have some weird combination of nutrients that is especially beneficial.  If anyone has some personal experience and delightful recipes, please share.  

Napolitano For President

Wapo editors might want to ask whether the system is working - their own David Broder tells us that Janet Napolitano has long been one of his favorite politicians and wonders whether she will run for President some day.  No, seriously:

It came as no surprise to anyone who knows her that Napolitano handled the [attempted bombing over Detroit] and its aftermath with aplomb. In the years I have known her, she has managed every challenge that has come her way with the same calm command that she showed in this instance. If there is anyone in the administration who embodies President Obama's preference for quiet competence with "no drama," it is Janet Napolitano.

...She is being criticized for saying "the system worked," but her part of the response system did work.

The response system worked?  That is good to know, but of course we might be saying that even if the bomb had detonated and first responders had done yeoman work using snow shovels to get the bodies off the streets.  The system is working even better when it prevents attacks, not responds to them.

Her instinct was to run down the center [in her first run for governor], and she was confident enough of her positions that she did not agonize over them. What struck me most forcibly at that first meeting was her lack of guardedness. We quickly found ourselves talking as if we had known each other for years, and her comments were as candid as they were shrewd.

She soon became one of my favorite pols in either party.

Great to know.  Broder closes with the push for 2012, or maybe 2016:

The Obama Cabinet is filled with talents, but many of the stars are of an age or temperament unlikely to turn them into successor candidates. Napolitano will face many substantive tests -- not just in dealing with terrorism but in playing an important role in immigration reform -- before she is a candidate for anything. But her potential is almost unlimited.

Her potential is unlimited?  I see "Dancing With The Stars" or perhaps she will regale us from a corner perch on "The Hollywood Squares". 

I would not have thought there was enough botox in the world for Broder to write this with a straight face.  This plug in her time of need ought to earn him exclusives for the rest of life.

AS WE WORK OUR WAY THROUGH THE ALPHABET: David Brooks has a more subtle centrist rally for Napolitano in a "Hey, Stuff Happens" column.

We Don't Negotiate With Terrorists, We Rehabilitate Insurgents

The Times covers, on page 6, what looks to all the world like a hostage swap:

U.S. Transferred Detainee Before Hostage Release
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — Only hours before a British hostage was released, the American military turned over to Iraqi authorities one of the suspected leaders of a Shiite insurgent group believed to be behind the kidnapping, Iraqi officials said Thursday.

Both the Iraqi government and United States military officials in Iraq on Thursday denied that the British hostage, Peter Moore, had been freed after more than two years in captivity in exchange for the transfer of the suspected insurgent leader from American to Iraqi custody.

Timing is everything.  AllahPundit has a contemporaneous account of the 2007 incident.  Back to the Times:

On Thursday, Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said that Mr. Khazali was still in Iraqi custody and that court officials were trying to determine whether Iraqi authorities could legally continue to hold him.

“We are checking his file to see if there is anything criminal against him,” Mr. Dabbagh said. “If there is nothing, he will be released.”

Mr. Dabbagh said the transfer of Mr. Khazali had not been carried out in exchange for Mr. Moore’s release but had rather been part of a continuing attempt by the Iraqi government to get the League of the Righteous to agree to disavow violence.

“There was no trade,” Mr. Dabbagh said.

In a statement on Thursday, the American military also denied that there had been any quid pro quo.

“The United States has complied with an Iraqi government request in accordance with the U.S.-Iraqi Security Agreement and the rule of law to transfer Asa’ib al-Haq members, to include Qais al-Khazali, from U.S. custody to Iraqi custody pursuant to an Iraqi arrest warrant,” the statement said. “This has been occurring over a seven-month period.”

The American military statement said that Iraq’s efforts to rehabilitate the insurgent group depended on its taking five steps: halting attacks and renouncing violence; disavowing hostage taking; decommissioning its heavy weapons; ending its ties to foreign sources of support and training; and reintegrating into Iraqi society as a peaceful group.

That seven month process drew a concerned letter from Congress when Khazali's brother was released in June.

Rebecca Santana of the AP has a much lower credulity threshold than the Times (or better sources):

Commenting on the release of Qais al-Khazali, an Iraqi militant heading a group believed to have been holding Moore and the others, Petraeus said his release from U.S. to Iraqi custody was done according to an agreement with the Iraqi government to transfer detainees in American custody over or release them.
...

A representative of al-Khazali's group and an Iraqi member of the negotiating team that helped secure Moore's release told The Associated Press that the militant group did not release Moore until it got confirmation its leader was transferred.

Not that there was any quid pro quo.

Well. I don't want to be calling General Petraeus a liar, and I don't suppose an absolute rule of never negotiating with terrorists and insurgents is applicable in the context of the sort of murky counter-insurgency taking place in Iraq.

Let's look on the bright side - at least Eric Holder didn't try to fly Khazali back to New York for a civilian trial.

Traditional Happy New Year Open Thread

Have a great evening!  Drink responsibly, drive responsibly, but don't do both.  Hmm...

Good Luck To Rush Limbaugh

Rush embarks on a deep undercover penetration of Ground Zero of the Birther theory.  I hope he is otherwise fine.

And a Happy New Year to all.  I am driving off into the Noreaster, so I may be incommunicado for a while.

Looking For A Picture On A Blank Screen

Maureen Dowd is waiting for Obama to show signs of a pulse but, per Shelby Steele, she is missing the point of His Obamacy.  Over to Ms. Dowd:

Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs. But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned.

On Tuesday, Obama stepped up to the microphone to admit what Janet Napolitano (who learned nothing from an earlier Janet named Reno) had first tried to deny: that there had been “a systemic failure” and a “catastrophic breach of security.”

But in a mystifying moment that was not technically or emotionally reassuring, there was no live video and it looked as though the Obama operation was flying by the seat of its pants.

Given that every utterance of the president is usually televised, it was a throwback to radio days — just at the moment we sought reassurance that our security has finally caught up to “Total Recall.”

Looking to Obama for leadership is like looking in the mirror, which in Ms. Dowd's case may not be such a great idea.  Over to Mr. Steele:

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency.

...

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.

The nature of this emptiness becomes clear in the contrast between him and Ronald Reagan. Reagan reached the White House through a great deal of what is called "individuating"—that is he took principled positions throughout his long career that jeopardized his popularity, and in so doing he came to know who he was as a man and what he truly believed.

He became Ronald Reagan through dissent, not conformity. And when he was finally elected president, it was because America at last wanted the vision that he had evolved over a lifetime of challenging conventional wisdom. By the time Reagan became president, he had fought his way to a remarkable certainty about who he was, what he believed, and where he wanted to lead the nation.

Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the presidency could not have been more different. There seems to have been very little individuation, no real argument with conventional wisdom, and no willingness to jeopardize popularity for principle. To the contrary, he has come forward in American politics by emptying himself of strong convictions, by rejecting principled stands as "ideological," and by promising to deliver us from the "tired" culture-war debates of the past. He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus implying that being nothing is better than being something. He tries to make a politics out of emptiness itself.

But then Mr. Obama always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and yes, Tiger Woods have all been superb bargainers, eliciting almost reverential support among whites for all that they were not—not angry or militant, not political, not using their moral authority as blacks to exact a wage from white guilt.

Mr. Steele offered a similar argument back in March of 2008 and used Obama's own words against him:

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Reaching back three years to December 2006 we can find even more on Obama as a self-described "blank screen":

Obama is humble in all the right places. Before a thousand swooning fans in New Hampshire, he says, Evita-like: "This isn't about me. This is about you." One gets the impression from his public appearances and book, "The Audacity of Hope," that he doesn't even get a haircut without first consulting his wife.

What Obama really thinks should be done about health care and the terrorist threat remain secrets that his book does not unlock. His two years in the Senate certainly haven't revealed any bold policy ideas.

This leave-them-guessing strategy slips out in the book's prologue. "I serve as a blank screen," Obama writes, "on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." He notifies readers that "my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete." It takes some doing for a politician to write a 364-page book, his second volume, and skate past all controversy.

In Mr. Steele's telling the whole "No Drama Obama" routine was born of necessity.

If You Build It They Will Come - For Treatment

David Leonhardt of the Times discusses overinvestment in health care.

Tyler Cowen sketched out some doable heath reforms in mid-November but let's reprise them.

Obama For President!

A mere eleven months after taking office Obama promises to bring hope and change to the national security apparatus:

HONOLULU — President Obama was told Tuesday about more missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a flight to the United States, leading the president to declare that there had been a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security apparatus.
...

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Mr. Obama said.

He said he had ordered government agencies to give him a preliminary report on Thursday about what happened and added that he would “insist on accountability at every level,” although he did not elaborate.

...

The president’s withering assessment of the government’s performance could reshape the intensifying political debate over the thwarted terrorist attack. Instead of defending the system, Mr. Obama sided with critics who complained that it did not work and positioned himself as a reformer who will fix it.

Obama didn't actually blame Bush.  But he wanted to!

We've achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorist attacks.  But it's becoming clear that the system that has been in place for years now is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and the knowledge we have.

It's "becoming clear" that we have a problem with the system that has "been in place for years"?  No kidding.  And what bright light thought that the system was finished, rather than an evolving work in progress?

Grrr.  Well, rather than beat our collective heads against the wall, let's acknowledge the obvious - we have a President who is much more interested in reforming America than he is in protecting it.  So let's work with that!  Since Obama only wants to focus on health care reform, here is my suggestion for enhancing the health of all Americans - let's have a government plan to prevent airplanes from getting blown up over our cities.  Maybe we could call it the "public safety" option.  Just a thought.

PILING ON: Cheney goes animal on Obama, but the point I would hammer is made by Peter King:

Rep. Peter King of New York, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Intelligence committee, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show: “I think that the administration has made a mistake by treating this terrorist as a common criminal, by putting him into the criminal-justice system. I wish they had put him into a military tribunal so we could get as much intelligence and information out of him as we could.”

I understand that President Obama and Attorney General Holder need to boost their self-esteem by imagining that they have bravely ended the Bush era abuses and regained the respect of the world but honestly - are we really letting this Nigerian terrorist lawyer up and refuse to chat with our intel services? 

Right, then, here is my second suggestion for health care reform - help prevent Americans from getting blown up by allowing our military and intelligence services to question enemy non-combatants without awarding them the legal protections available to American citizens.  These terrorists are arguably not even entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, but whatever - send this guy to Gitmo II and let the military interrogators talk to him in compliance with the Army Field Manual.  Or, go Cheney on him.  But not interrogating him at all until his lawyer cuts a deal is daft.

Maybe the House can amend the Senate health care bill to incorporate these ideas.

Sissies And Men At Yale

A bit of F. Scott Fitzgerald proved too much for Yale, which has banned a Harvard-bashing t-shirt created for The Game:

The [Freshman Class Council] has decided to change the design of its shirts after the original design, which was submitted by students and voted on by the freshman class, sparked outcry from members within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. …

The original design, which won out over five other entries, displayed an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote in the front — “I think of all Harvard men as sissies” — in bold white letters. The back of the long-sleeved, navy blue T-shirt said “WE AGREE” in capital letters, with “The Game 2009” scrawled in script underneath it.

If they are interested in reaching back to the classics, I wonder if the Harvards would be able to get away with a t-shirt reading "I Know You Are But What Am I?"

The Groupthink Inside Your Head

Glenn linked to this Wired article about how the brain minimizes cognitive dissonance by ignoring information that clashes with our preconceptions and passed along a reader comment that it explained ClimateGate.  Indeed.  It also explains the missing WMD in Iraq, the Dems undying belief in the efficacy of the minimum wage, why HuffPo readers tilt left (and JOM readers tilt right), and why Met fans will take hope from the Jason Bay signing.  In a nutshell, people (including scientists) want affirmation, not information.  Neuroscience is discovering how the brain is hard-wired to provide it.

For more on neuroscience, and for assistance in finding your inner David Brooks, check out this interview at The Browser with Brooksie his bad self:

So in your efforts to answer the question Heckman poses (about human capital and income inequality), you ended up reading books about neuroscience proper?

Right. And I started with the easy ones. One very accessible one, but by a guy who is very serious, is a book called The Happiness Hypothesis. It’s by Jonathan Haidt, who is a psychologist at the University of Virginia.

People seem to absolutely rave about this book. One online reviewer says: “This is my all-time favourite book. It contains the most practical advice for daily living I have ever seen.” And a lot of them seem to be like that: “The most entertaining, interesting, educational book I have ever read,” etc. etc. So what does it reveal about the working of our minds?

Haidt uses the metaphor of a boy and an elephant. He says our minds are structured like a boy riding an elephant, and the boy is the conscious reasoning part, the cortex-based brain. And it can see very far, and make certain steering decisions. But most of the work is done by the elephant, which is the unconscious part of the brain. His work is to try to explain what the elephant is doing.

Great metaphor except that the boy is well aware that his control is less than total and that he has to work within the context of the elephant's training and disposition; I don't think every person has that same self-awareness.

Brooks promoted The Browser and Arts and Letters Daily in his recent column.

Not A Headline Obama Wants

From the WaPo:

Obama addresses airline security in low-key fashion

Nothing about the energy and commitment he showed hustling back from the beach to read his press release to the nation, without even enough time to tie his necktie?