Port au Prince shaken to dust by an earthquake that measured 7 on the Richter Scale yesterday.

The powerful menacing Negro stare.

Yes, exactly: upon zooming in President Obama looks 400 times more uppity. Oh, not that Glenn is calling him uppity! Because Glenn never explicitly calls people the things he calls people: he always always quotes a reader or links to someone else saying the thing he is not personally explicitly saying. Always.

via Isn’t This Picture of Obama and Biden… Interesting? – Barack Obama – Gawker.

Watch your wallet Biden!

This explains how community rating works to control premium creep and relate cost to the people’s ability to afford it

Remarkably, in virtually all other industrialized nations, this issue is hardly ever raised. Community rating there has long been widely accepted and is unlikely to be abandoned in the foreseeable future.

The health systems of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany are frequently cited as potential models for a reformed American health system. All three countries offer their citizens a wide choice of health insurers — none of which is a government-run health plan. Yet in all three countries full community rating is de rigueur.

Swiss citizens, for example, are required to purchase insurance coverage for a comprehensive health-benefit package from a large menu of private health insurance companies that compete for customers on the basis of the premium they charge for that coverage.

Profits cannot be earned on insurance for the basic package. Premiums do vary among competing insurers, but for a given insurer they can vary only by the deductible and coinsurance rates of the different policies. Neither the individual’s health status nor age affects the premium charged the individual by a given insurer. Health insurers ending up with an older or sicker enrolled risk pool then receive compensation from a risk-equalization fund.

Similarly, Dutch citizens are required to purchase insurance coverage for a comprehensive benefit package from a menu of private for-profit or not-for-profit insurers.

via How the World Balances Health Care Risk – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com.

This is another concept not explained to the voting public, but it seems like it is a key component of controlling cost.

A small announcement in EW’s Calendar last week stated: “National Socialist Movement: An insider’s view of America’s radical right.” Pacifica Forum, a free-speech group known for its anti-Zionist bias, was sponsoring the event at the UO.

My naive assumption was that we’d be hearing from a former National Socialist Movement (NSM) member who’d had a change of heart. That notion was quickly dispelled when Jimmy Marr, attired in full Scottish regalia, began reading a section of Torah detailing how Jews became “the Chosen People.” His conclusion: “What does that make the rest of us? Slaves to the Jews!”

Among two dozen attendees, it became apparent that at least six were NSM devotees. The giveaway moment was when Marr concluded his introduction by inviting all to join him in a “Sieg heil!” A half dozen arms were raised to chests and thrust high — “Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg HEIL!”

A lone voice in back called out, “I strongly object!” The rest sat in stunned silence.

We were shown video footage from an NSM demonstration in Phoenix, Ariz., against illegal immigration. Police stood between brown-shirted “troops” and anti-fascist protestors. NSM speakers in the film took turns spouting their doctrine and haranguing opponents, bellowing epithets that were returned in kind.

via Eugene Weekly : Commentary : 12.17.09.

And yet DHS Secretary Napolitano apologized for a security assessment conducted under the Bush Administration that correctly identified these groups as a problem and disillusioned veterans as a subset of their recruiting focus.

Update: Democracy Now reports on the rise of (surprise) Right Wing Militias.

The big banks already underpaid the FDIC for 10 years. The idiotic “our interest from previous fees can pay the insurance premiums” fee vacation from 1996-2006. They owe money and interest to the FDIC for years they took off from paying FDIC dues, even without considering exorbitant bonuses. Congress enabled this risky practice aka allowing banks to under pay for an insurance product for about a decade.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. advanced a proposal Tuesday to penalize banks for risky compensation practices, despite public opposition from other federal banking regulators.

The FDIC, which collects fees from all banks to repay depositors in failed banks, is considering a plan to impose higher fees on banks with compensation practices that the agency regards as encouraging reckless pursuit of short-term profits without sufficient regard for the risk of long-term losses.

The agency’s board voted Tuesday by a narrow 3 to 2 margin to seek public comment on a preliminary version of the proposal, the first step in a process likely to take at least a year.

via FDIC advances plan to penalize banks for risky practices – washingtonpost.com.

Dangerous securities practices were being devised that increased risk and necessitated some reevaluation of how the FDIC, Fed, SEC and Treasury insured, regulated, evaluated and funded our financial institutions. This along with some sort of progressive risky, big bank tax structure proposed by the President would help to fund the deficit shortfalls and help the US Government deal with the tons of bad debt it has taken on from the big banks to clean their private balance sheets (think Fannie, Freddie, Treasury).

Or maybe we should just trust the banks and the molesting invisible hand of the free market.

As he said he would:

Congressional negotiators and White House officials are moving forward with plans to add the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the upcoming defense authorization bill, Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.

In Congress, members are being whipped to ensure that the votes will be there for passage, should the legislation be placed in the bill. At this juncture, aides say, the prospects look good. Meanwhile, a source close to the White House says the president has instructed the Defense Department that he believes the repeal of DADT should be placed in the authorization bill.

via DADT Repeal: Dems Move Forward With Plans.

Everyone asking for him to use executive stop orders should be more excited about this. Obama wants to do it properly. And in using a page out of the GOP book, he is attaching it to a defense authorization bill. Basically, vote against this bill because of DADT and you vote against the troops. This is a big step to ending discrimination in the armed forces and I am glad Obama is pursuing this through the legislature.

Rubio says America is the only place where “your future is not determined by where you were born”. This just ain’t true. France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark help people with teh socialist programs and what do you know, they actually really help!

And you don’t need to take my word for it either, the Economist—an outfit with right-wing views on economic matters, but that’s also international in its outlook and thus not blinded by the solipsism of the American right—has covered this in detail.

This one stat isn’t the be-all and end-all of mobility. One nice thing about the United States and social mobility is that compared to most European countries (but not Canada or Australia, or for that matter Sweden in Europe) it’s easier for foreigners to move here and make their way. Still, the facts are the facts. The ex ante level of inequality in the United States makes social mobility hard, and we’re not doing anything like the kinds of investments in child nutrition, early education, etc. that could make up for it ex post.

via Matthew Yglesias » Social Mobility in America.

As we speak, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab is being carted around in federal custody in Michigan to a court house in a regular building (namely the Theodore Levin Federal Courthouse) instead of being where he should be: locked in a force field fortified, subterranean, super power negating cell in Gitmo designed by Richard “Dick” Cheney.

Do the guards in Michigan know the minute he touches the Holy Quran to swear in at the Grand Jury trial it will re energize his fiery crotch powers and he will use his lit lap to free all of his fellow prisoners who he has turned into willing minions with Muslim Extremist Hypnosis (© Al Qaeda 1993-2010)?

We can’t handle this Super Villian in regular court. Its too dangerous. Where are my pearls? I need to clutch them.

Sullivan has been saying a 2002 Gore Administration would have pushed for a full scale Iraq war as well:

I guess my sense is that Gore opposed the Iraq war in part out of bitterness. If you look at Gore’s record – and at TNR, I was hardly unaware of it – it was full of extreme vigilance about Saddam, willingness to use military force for moral ends (as in Bosnia), and completely conventional neo-con views on the Middle East. I can absolutely see him going to war against Saddam if goaded sufficiently. Maybe he would have been persuaded by the intelligence that we didn’t actually have the goods on WMDs; maybe his hawkishness would have waned in office as it did in opposition. But knowing Gore, I stick with my point. In office, I suspect he would have been much closer to my position on invasion at the time than he was.

via Dissent Of The Day – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

A truly baffling conclusion. Does Sullivan believe that a Gore Administration would have:

• trusted intelligence that even Bush’s Secretary of State called shaky at best
• ignored Ambassador Joe Wilson’s debunking of yellow cake sales
• sought to smear and expose Valerie Plame as a CIA operative
• deemed an occupation of Iraq as trustworthy
• told us a war in Iraq would be quick and inexpensive.
• reacted more favorable to gamed national security briefings with religious quotes
• adopted a neo-con centered “Gore doctrine”
• ignored the staggering diplomatic, human and financial costs of two perpetual, unilateral military occupations in two different countries
• disregarded a nation spiraling into debt as nations do when they fight wars
• made Vice President Joe Lieberman de facto Commander in Chief

I highly doubt it. And when Sullivan says a post 9/11 Gore would have sought to attackIraq, he ignores that all these things were done by the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war being engaged at the same time and detriment to the war in Afghanistan. The TNR characterization of Gore’s public opposition to the George W. Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, in his own words on September 23, 2002.

The Course of Action: The War on Terrorism, First

To begin with – to put first things first – I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism.

via Event Archive: Al Gore – Commonwealth Club.

Gore, and President Clinton were constantly monitoring Saddam, but he wasn’t advocating prioritizing a unilateral invasion of Iraq over dealing with the terrorist group Al Qaeda. The “conventional neo-con view” was built around the central tenets of the Bush Doctrine: unitary executive, unilateral preemptive war and exporting democracy through military occupation. Gore’s remarks specifically speak out against these three things. This is not a disagreement based on bitterness. He may have been sour grapes, but he was dead on with his substantive rejection of the Bush Doctrine plan for war. This is the position Sullivan was close to in 2002/2003.

The Gore is just sour grapes meme sounds like classic Bush White House messaging circa 2002. Many liberals as well as almost all conservatives ate it up. They were wrong. Gore is arguing from an executive “if I were in charge of this country” mindset. The main question Gore tried to answer “At What Cost”. TNR and Sullivan scoffed, Bolton style, at the worth of international opinion in determining our allies willingness to follow the Bush Doctrine.

But surely Gore also has an obligation to share his reasons for believing that war with Iraq will “severely damage” the war on terrorism. The argument, after all, is not self-evident: Germany, the U.S. ally most vocally opposed to attacking Iraq, has simultaneously intensified its assistance in the war on terrorism–signaling that it will take over the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. In fact, Gore provides no evidence to support his claim. And thus he fails the very evidentiary standard that he calls on Bush to meet.

via Speechless | The New Republic.

Its odd that these principled folks on the TNR editorial board and a true conservative like Sullivan all ignored the part of Gore’s speech where he outlined a key reason the war in Iraq would damage the war on terrorism. Its something a good executive would think about. Cost. Gore clearly outlined that in point four of five high key differences between the invasion of 1991 vs. Bush’s proposed invasion in 2002.

Fourth, the coalition assembled in 1991 paid all of the significant costs of the war, while this time, the American taxpayers will be asked to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on our own.

[…]

much as we manage to squander in one year’s time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits.

Gore shared a list of key reason with the TNR editors, Sullivan and anyone who would actually listen. Cost. Nothing costs a nation more money and blood than war. We were already in the middle of one war, albeit internationally supported. Gore made the simple case: if we actually go to war in Iraq, we will undergo that war on our own and may give European nations a way out of the war in Afghanistan.

What would have remained the same? Tony Blair would have supported an invasion of Iraq on the same cooked up, flimsy intelligence. He has said as much then and now, so I take him at his word. Sullivan voted Bush vs Gore on personality, he admits, while embracing a record of professional failures versus Gore’s career political record as a centrist Democratic legislator and Vice President. That’s fine. Sullivan was had. But he wasn’t had by Bush’s jocular rhetoric. He was had by his own personal bias against anything Clinton/Gore. TNR and Sullivan established a simple equation to justify thei: If a bad guy has a scent of WMD’s, we must go to war. This is a false choice.

Sullivan said that Gore’s address on 9/23/2002 speech proved Gore was just objecting out of bitterness:

[Gore] is a pure opportunist, with no consistency in his political views on foreign or domestic policy. He’ll say whatever he thinks will get him power or attention or votes. How else to explain his sudden U-turn on Iraq? Two years ago, he was demanding that “Saddam must go“. Seven months ago, he was calling for a “final reckoning” with Iraq, a state that was a “virulent threat in a class by itself.” Now, with Saddam far closer to weapons of mass destruction, Gore is happy to see Saddam stay in place.

via www.AndrewSullivan.com – Daily Dish.

When did Gore say a “final reckoning”? Before the CFR, seven months earlier with the following caveats regarding attacking Iraq.

So this time, if we resort to force, we must absolutely get it right. It must be an action set up carefully and on the basis of the most realistic concepts. Failure cannot be an option, which means that we must be prepared to go the limit. And wishful thinking based on best-case scenarios or excessively literal transfers of recent experience to different conditions would be a recipe for disaster.

But still, the question remains – what next? Is Iran under the hard-liners less of a proliferation threat than Iraq? Or less involved with terrorism? If anything, Iran is at this moment a much more dangerous challenge in each area than Iraq. Iran is flight-testing longer range rockets. Iran has loaded up at least one merchant ship with a cargo of death for Israel.

The vast majority of the Iranian people seem to disagree with the policies and actions of the small group of mullahs now in control of their military and intelligence apparatus. We have to deal with that nation’s actions as they take place. In the process, however, we should find ways to encourage the majority who obviously wish to develop a more constructive relationship with us.

via A Commentary on the War Against Terror: Our Larger Tasks – Council on Foreign Relations.

Gore did say that “Saddam must go”. He regretted that Saddam was not removed from power during or after Desert Storm. Gore was not happy to see Saddam stay in place. Gore even re-voiced his support for repeated bombing of Saddam’s military interests to cripple his war time capability. But to say he would have launched a full scale war while waging another war in Afghanistan is a dishonest oversimplification of his September 2002 position. Gore wasn’t opposed to aggression against Saddam, he was opposed to a full invasion and occupation of Iraq while we fought a war in Afghanistan which required an executive to build an international coalition to support comprehensive anti-terrorism strategies.

He was opposed to launching headlong into a war in the circumstances of 2002. It became increasingly evident hearing the rhetoric coming from the Bush Administration they wanted war in Iraq regardless of how dangerous Saddam really was and how important it was to keep our military and intelligence operations focused on Iraq Afghanistan.

Even as Sullivan cheers the Green Revolution today, he ignores the fact that Gore had some basic understanding of the nuanced and strained relationship between the Iranian Mullahs and its majority Shiite populace further support 2002 Gore having an understanding that there were dire consequences if we inserted the U.S. between Saddam, the Iranian Mullahs and their citizenries as the occupier of Iraq. The Bush Administration said it would be cheap and quick. Gore understood an Iraq invasion would necessarily mean more than just getting the bad guys. Bush and his Administration did not. The Bush Administration said we will win hearts and minds of Muslims throughout the world by bombing two predominantly Muslim countries.

Gore may have been bitter, but he laid out both his prerequisites for congressional approval of a full scale armed conflict with Iraq and later his case against the Bush Administrations invasion of Iraq in clear terms. He was right in standard and in opposition. It was the bitter taste from Gore’s public personality that led Sullivan and TNR to try and wash it down with a nice long drink of Crawford Cowboy Kool-Aid. They were wrong to support Iraq and were back patting each other in the middle of a massive political pro-Bush group think.

Sometimes a little bitterness is what we need.

Incentivizing initiative within the workforce is good. The Chicken McNugget was invented by a worker after all:

The President’s SAVE Award enables Federal employees from across government to submit their ideas for efficiencies and savings as part of the annual Budget process. The SAVE Award is part of the President’s commitment to a line-by-line review of the Federal budget.

via Save Award Home Page.

Unlike freezing earmarks, these types of ideas, although they seem silly are the little things that add up and cost the taxpayer tons of money. More of this please. We need to have a special SAVE award for TSA/intelligence tactics.

Harold Ford, Jr. is having money throw at him by Wall Street to run for Senate in New York.

In New York, Mr. Ford took a job as vice chairman of Merrill Lynch, where he cultivated close ties to many of the Wall Street executives who are now encouraging him to run. A telegenic politician, he has also maintained a high profile through NBC and MSNBC, which feature him as a regular political commentator.

New Yorkers are unusually welcoming to political newcomers, having elected Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Senate just two years after she moved from Arkansas and Robert F. Kennedy, a Massachusetts native, in 1964.

Mr. Ford declined to be interviewed.

Some of the donors who have urged Mr. Ford to consider a run expressed alarm as Ms. Gillibrand, who as a congresswoman represented a conservative upstate district, has abandoned some of her previous positions on issues like gun control and immigration as she prepares to run statewide. Several executives interested in a Ford candidacy said that Ms. Gillibrand’s positions echoed Mr. Schumer’s and that the state needed a second independent voice in the Senate.

via Harold Ford Weighs a Challenge to Gillibrand – NYTimes.com.

Kennedy and Clinton had national star power and connections, Mr. Ford it seems just has the connections. Right now my money’s on Kristen Gillibrand even if the folks who ruined our economy are betting their bonuses on Harold Ford, Jr. Gillibrand has been either silent about this or her response has been ignored.

If Ford, Jr. mounts a successful bid in New York state, it may just mean something important about the knee capping nature of New York Democratic politics and the dire hopes for a successful politician who happens to be black and runs for state wide office in the deep south.

Boston was never a big travel destination for me and most of my visits to this city occurred when I was playing rugby. These trips consisted of showing up, playing in a game, going to the post game drink up and then crashing at the hotel. Never learned much about anything Boston, especially the T. This video peaked my interest. (h/t The Infrastructurist)