Ah, this was sweet

As my daughter, who spent four years camping out at K-Ville only to see Duke go down to UNC, said last night. This victory was cathartic.

One 'nasty' rout leaves Heels at a loss for words

Poll deception

Charles Krauthammer takes on an annoying argument that the Democrats have been spouting. They keep saying that polls show that the American people like every element of their program so it really is popular. They just leave out the question of cost. When cost is added or when people are asked about the whole shebang and start thinking about how it's going to be paid for, suddenly they're not so favorable to the Democrats' plans.

Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.

Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health-care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for preexisting conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments), they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: a dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak is to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3 to 1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health-care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health-care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

Reality. What a bummer. Where is that reality-based community these days?

Cruising the Web

Here's an amazing story about how one secretary turned a $180 investment into a $7 million dollar donation to her alma mater.

Heh, heh. Pete Stark as chairman of Ways and Means was just too much for his own party. How does it feel to have your own party say that you're too abrasive and obnoxious to ascend to the post you've been hanging around for decades to get?

And another one bites the dust. Bye bye to Bill Delahunt. As the Washington Post says it's been a bad week for Democrats.

A victory for common sense and for Americans who registered their disapproval of Eric Holder's decision to try KSM in civilian courts. The Washington Post reports that the White House is going to reverse that idiotic decision. Has Eric Holder done anything right in the past 13 months?

My dream ticket for Republicans in either 2012 or 2016 would be Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan. In addition to their brave and intelligent positions on cutting spending and addressing the true fiscal problems facing our country, it turns out that they could be a dynamic duo based simply on their physiques. Who would have thought that these two rather nerdy, mild-mannered politicians would both be so buff? Remember when John Kerry and John Edwards talked about how they were the ticket with the best hair? Well, we saw what that was worth. I'll take these GOP musclemen any day.

Republican Nathan Deal agrees to delay his retirement from the House so that Nancy's whip count is back at needing 217 votes instead of the 216 votes it would have been if Deal had retired early as he'd announced.

I was busy at school yesterday so I missed the whole frisson of excitement and panic that whipped through the blogosphere yesterday after rumors surfaced that John Roberts was retiring from the Court. Here's how it all happened - one law professor told his class the rumor to illustrate a point about checking the reliability of witnesses and all the students apparently texted the news and soon it reached the internet.

A reality check for useful idiots

Here's a trio of stories that should be opening the eyes of all those do-gooders who think that their support of dictators is actually a brave stance for helping the little people.

Despite promised reforms, communist Cuba still can't produce enough food to feed people. Do all those useful idiots who fly down to Cuba and talk about how well things are run there even understand such things?

Alvaro Vargas Llosa follows up on the story of the computers and hard drives that Colombian forces recovered from their invasion of a FARC guerrilla camp. It turns out that there was massive evidence of how Venezuela was supporting these terrorists who had connections and terrorist plots in 15 countries, including Spain which is now prosecuting those terrorists. Once again, the useful idiots should be learning who these guys are that they've been embracing.

Who'd have imagined such a thing? A lot of the money collected by the well-meaning artists for Live Aid back in 1984 was siphoned off to send arms to the rebels against the genocidal army of Mengistu Haile Mariam that was responsible for so much of the famine that Live Aid was trying to ameliorate. At the time analysts said that the Ethiopian famine was a man-made event and that throwing money in there to help people would not necessarily reach the people who were starving. While much of the Live Aid money did help people, a whole lot of it went to the very people who were causing the famine in the first place.

A doctor's budget

Forbes has an interesting look at how the budget of one primary care doctor would be affected by cuts in Medicare payments that are scheduled to take place this month.

Schreiber sees 120 patients a week. About 30% of them are enrolled directly in Medicare, while another 65% have private insurance plans that peg their payments on Medicare's rates. Only 5% pay on their own.

As a result, Schreiber expects the cuts to take away $3 out of every $5 he currently earns. And, as a primary care physician, he already wasn't earning anything near the salary of a specialist.

"After the costs of my own benefits are deducted, that will leave me with the equivalent of a minimum wage job," he said.

Unless Congress acts to adjust Medicare payments without considering the impact of rising health care costs, Schreiber said he could be forced into bankruptcy or shut his practice.

Read the rest as he goes through his fixed costs per month and what he gets from each Medicare patient. If the Medicare cuts go through there is no way that he would be able to break even in a practice that sees many Medicare patients.

This is why the Congress has to fix the proposed Medicare reimbursements. This is the problem that Congress keeps shuffling along year to year without finding a permanent solution. The Democrats kept the whole issue out of their health care bill despite trumpeting how necessary it is to have a comprehensive plan that addresses this looming crisis for so many doctors. The extension that was just voted on is only for one month. What is needed is a permanent fix, but that is just so massive that politicians would rather vote for it in smaller increments than for the entire problem.

Called the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, it went into effect in 2002 and was intended to control the growth of Medicare costs over time. But it has never been implemented.

Each year, under pressure from the health industry and seniors, the slated cuts have been put off for another year, until they have snowballed into a 21 percent discrepancy.

By law, unless a fix is made, the entire snowball will hit in April. It would have hit March 1.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a permanent fix, and the American Medical Association wants the Senate to pass it immediately, too.

But given the hyper sensitivity to the budget deficit right now, this fix is a politically touchy issue. It’s expensive.

No one wants to cut benefits to seniors. And doctors say such a dramatic cut could force many to close their doors.

But Medicare is a big part of the deficit problem.The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the formula fix passed by the House alone will cost taxpayers an extra $8 billion in 2010.

Over the next decade, it could add $210 billion to projected budget deficits if the Sustainable Growth Rate fix under the House bill passes.

Instead of fixing this problem, the Democrats want to take on a huge new entitlement problem. Despite their brave words, their solutions don't lower these looming crises in Medicare spending. So we stumble along with short-term fix after short-term fix while they ignore the overall problem. Check this CBO projection.

Bring it back to the scale of one doctor seeing his patients and trying to balance his books and it all comes home rather quickly.

Cruising the Web

George Will bemoans the infantilization of men.

The back-story behind Democratic Representative Eric Massa's sudden decision to retire - allegations of sexual harassment against one of his male staff members. Add in Charlie Rangel's ethical problems and some are already drawing parallels to the Republican ethical scandals that precipitated their loss of Congress in 2006. No wonder Rangel's fellow Democrats insisted that he step down of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Of course, 78-year old Pete Stark is not an improvement. That's why some House democrats are objecting to Stark taking over the committee. He's not the smoothest person, to say the least.

POLITICO reported earlier this week that officials found Stark “extremely belligerent” toward investigators from the Office of Congressional Ethics and that Stark had used a semihidden video camera to tape his interview during a probe of whether he improperly applied for a homestead tax exemption in Maryland even though his official residence is in California.

The incident is just one in a series of stranger-than-fiction episodes featuring the tart-tongued Stark.

He once accused a former Republican Ways and Means Committee colleague, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, of getting her information from “pillow talk” and called her a “whore for the insurance industry.” And he called another former committee member, Scott McInnis of Colorado, a “little fruitcake.”

He pointed his finger at Jewish members as a cause of the 1991 Gulf War.

In 2007, he accused Republicans of sending soldiers to Iraq “to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

Republicans gleefully circulated some of Stark’s top hits Wednesday — a bit of a warning shot for any Democrats who thought handing him the gavel would give them a respite from Rangel’s bad headlines.

How convenient: one of the Democratic representatives who voted against the health care bill in November is Utah's Jim Matheson. And now President Obama has just nominated the Representative's brother to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. It might be totally unrelated, but now Representative Matheson will have to decide whether he wants to risk switching his "no" vote to a "yes" and face allegations that he was bought off by his brother's nomination.

Geert Wilders' party won several local election in the Netherlands and Mark Steyn notes how the politically motivated prosecution of Wilders for supposed Islamophobia doesn't seem to be working out for the mainstream politicians there.

David Broder finds all the Washington Post praise of Rahm Emanuel at the expense of Barack Obama as both strange and in the tradition of Washington journalists thinking they can give better political advice to a president.

Loony liberal columns

Here is the looniest column of the week: a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, Stan Isaacs thinks that it's about time for President Obama to try packing the Supreme Court as FDR tried and failed to do. He wants the Democrats to add three new seats to the Court to counter the narrow conservative majority that voted to lift the ban on corporate advertising before an election in the Citizens Unitedcase. If the American people are skeptical of the procedures being used to craft and push through the Democrats' health care reforms, imagine how they'd react to an effort to pack the Supreme Court. I almost hope that some congressional Democrats try to take Isaacs up on his supremely stupid idea.

And here's the second looniest column of the week, this time courtesy of Maureen Dowd, who has been traveling through Saudi Arabia and thinks she detects an incipient renaissance in how women are treated there. In fact, she even allows herself to become the mouthpiece for a Saudi spokesman to attempt to portray Saudi society as being less hidebound by religious orthodoxy than Israel.

The Middle Eastern foreign minister was talking about enlightened “liberal” trends in his country, contrasting that with the benighted “extreme” conservative religious movement in a neighboring state.

But the wild thing was that the minister was Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia — an absolute Muslim monarchy ruling over one of the most religiously and socially intolerant places on earth — and the country he deemed too “religiously determined” and regressive was the democracy of Israel.

“We are breaking away from the shackles of the past,” the prince said, sitting in his sprawling, glinting ranch house with its stable of Arabian horses and one oversized white bunny. “We are moving in the direction of a liberal society. What is happening in Israel is the opposite; you are moving into a more religiously oriented culture and into a more religiously determined politics and to a very extreme sense of nationhood,” which was coming “to a boiling point.”

“The religious institutions in Israel are stymieing every effort at peace,” said the prince, wearing a black-and-gold robe and tinted glasses.

Say what? How removed from reality is Maureen Dowd? Is she not aware of how Saudis treat women who stray from the strict lines of behavior dictated by severe sharia law? Jennifer Rubin helps her out by linking to this horrific post by Rachel Abrams from last year's Weekly Standard.

Saudi Arabia, modern-day: A man finds his daughter exchanging messages with a male friend on Facebook and murders her. A young woman caught sitting in a car with a man who is not her relative gets gang-raped, is then sentenced to 90 lashes (or 200, depending on which news report you read) for having appeared thus in public, and is later beaten by her brother for bringing shame on the family.

Same place, same time: The marriage of an eight-year-old girl to a 48-year-old man is upheld by a judge despite her mother's attempts to have the marriage annulled. A death-row inmate sells his 15-year-old daughter in marriage to a fellow prisoner to pay off some debts. The marriage is consummated. "It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," says Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

Is there a connection between the ability of fathers and brothers to mete out "honor" punishments--including murder--to their daughters and sisters and the ability of grown men--men in their 60s, some of them, who may well have daughters and granddaughters of their own--to marry little girls? I say what binds them are the dual impulses to demonize and dehumanize females, and I say there's no difference between the two: Kill your own daughter? It can only be possible if you see her not (or no longer) as flesh of your flesh, but rather as a creature driven by evil inclinations to transgress your moral code. Rape a little girl? It can only be possible if you dissociate from her child-ness and her humanness--and ignore her agony--and see her as, well, a creature driven by evil inclinations to enjoy your predation.

While Dowd is over in the Middle East, perhaps she could swing by Israel and see if she can find similar stories of women being lashed for the crime of having been raped or children being forced to marry men in their 60s.

What is really at stake in this year's election

Karl Rove points to what is at stake this year in November's election. While so many eyes are fixed on Washington, wondering how many seats the Republicans might pick up in Congress, there is another battle that will be fought across the nation - the battle for the state legislatures and state houses. Because this is a year ending in a zero, a year of the census which will lead to redistricting across the country. While I would personally prefer that more states had a commission plan for drawing district lines, most states leave it up to politicians who then gerrymander safe seats for their party. And Rove knows this quite well as he rehearses what a difference redistricting made after the 1990 and 2000 censuses. And after this year's census, we're going to see a shift of more seats from blue to red states. And both parties are gearing up for those battles. So it's a double misfortune for the Democratic Party that President Obama and the Capitol Hill Democrats have tarnished their brand right on the eve of this important election. And the Democrats had the misfortune to take power on the even of this economic downturn and to have done little to ameliorate the situation despite all their claims that their stimulus created or saved some jobs. People just aren't feeling it and the Democrats have all the power in Washington so they're getting the blame. It will come back to bite them this Fall and, if as Karl Rove argues, the Republicans can pick up seats in state legislatures across the country, they will do just what politicians have been doing since the founding of our country - gerrymander districts that will benefit their party. And the movement away from traditionally Democratic states to more Republican states will help them even more.

Now, that's a leader!

Mike Shedlock has the transcript of a remarkable speech that Governor Chris Christie gave New Jersey mayor. (You can watch the video here.) Christie deals with the realities that New Jersey is facing, particularly the hole it has dug for itself with promising benefits to public employees that the state treasury just can't cover. He warns them that they have to wake up and realize that they can't keep giving public employees such generous benefits because those costs are eating up the rest of the budget.

As we move forward, and we evaluate what we need to do three weeks from now in our fiscal year 2011 budget address, you all need to understand the context from which we operate.

Our citizens are already the most overtaxed in America. US mayors hear it all the time. You know that the public appetite for ever increasing taxes has reached an end.

So when we freeze $475 million in school aid, I am hearing the reverberations from school boards saying now you are just going to force us to raise taxes.

Well there is a 4% cap in place as you all know, yet school boards continue to give out raises which exceed that cap, just on salary. Not to mention the fact that most of them get no contribution towards the spiraling increase in health care benefits.

Now, we are going to reduce spending at the state level. And we are going to continue to reduce it because we have no choice but to do so. Our obligation to you is twofold. One, is to let you know that. So I'm' letting you know that.

Second to work with the legislature to give you the tools helping you to reduce spending at the municipal level. Now the pension and benefit reform package that was passed unanimously in the senate this week begins to give you some of those tools.

But it is only a beginning.

Do we need to change some of the rules of arbitration to level the playing field to allow municipalities and school boards to have a more level sense of collective bargaining?

I think the evidence of ever increasing raises being given to public sector workers as a result of the arbitration system tells us that we do. [Applause From Mayors]

But you have to stand up and give the support to the legislators in this building to get them to do that. I can guarantee you this, that more pension and benefit reforms which I will consider arbitration reform to be one of them, are things that when they come to my desk, they will be signed. [Applause From Mayors]

Because we can no longer continue on a path where we say we are going to reduce spending at the state level but we are not going to give you any tools to do that at the municipal level and the school board level.

By the same token I am tired of hearing school superintendents and school board members complain that there are no other options than raising property taxes. There are other options.

You know, Marlboro, after a two year negotiation, they give a five year contract giving 4.5% annual salary increases to the teachers, with no contribution, zero contribution to health care benefits.

But I am sure there are people in Marlboro who have lost their jobs, who have had their homes foreclosed on, and who cannot keep a roof over their family's head there is something wrong.

You know, at some point there has to be parity. There has to be parity between what is happening in the real world, and what is happening in the public sector world. The money does not grow on trees outside this building or outside your municipal building. It comes from the hard working people of our communities who are suffering and are hurting right now.

Read the rest. It's an amazing speech simply because it's not often we hear such realism from political leaders. The biggest question is whether New Jersey's legislature is ready to live in the real world or if they're going to continue listening to their public employee union masters and vote taxes from the rest of New Jersey's citizens in order to fund benefits for the public sector. In a world of high unemployment and grim prospects, it's just not feasible to keep raising taxes to fund generous benefits for public employees. That might be an admirable thing to do during the fat times, but they're just buying trouble for themselves down the road. Governor Christie is showing a remarkably honest leadership. Will the rest of the New Jersey political class who have driven their state to this impasse be willing to wake up to reality?


(Link via Michelle Malkin)

Cruising the Web

Nancy Pelosi met personally with Charlie Rangel yesterday evening and he emerged telling reporters that he was still Chairman of Ways and Means. Amazing. After calls from quite a few Democrats that he step aside, she seems to be hell-bent on handing the Republicans a talking point all election season long about the new "culture of corruption" that she brought to the Washington swamp. Of course, who knows what the true story is since all sorts of media outlets are reporting different stories about whether he's going or not and who would replace him as chairman. Or maybe he's just taking a "leave of absence." Oh, come on, Nancy! Stand by your corrupt man.

The hypocrisy of politicians on Washington crying and screaming about Jim Bunning refusing unanimous consent to the extension of unemployment benefits is quite funny. As the WSJ points out, Harry Reid could have passed the bill any time he wanted to by asking for cloture. He clearly had the votes. All Bunning did was expose the emptiness of Congress and the President's pontificating about pay-go and how they firmly believe that they shouldn't pass new legislation that they haven't paid for either by cuts of tax increases. The Democrats are so proud of themselves for having reinstated pay-go after they took control. Then they proceeded to ignore it for all the spending that they've done for the stimulus and their plans for health care. Republicans have their own problems with hypocrisy since they ignored the idea of paying for programs as they went along when they were in control. But Bunning's proposal that the money for this $10 billion extension of benefits be taken out of unspent stimulus spends seems totally reasonable. But the Democrats would prefer the talking point against Bunning rather than following through on their previous pay-go rhetoric. And, by the way, contrary to media mischaracterizations, this was not a filibuster.

It sure sounds like the Supreme Court is ready to incorporate the Second Amendment after yesterday's hearing in McDonald v. Chicago. Lyle Denniston has the wrap-up at scotusblog of what went on in the hearing. And those hoping that the Court might use the "privileges and immunities clause" to do the incorporating have seen their hopes dashed with this put-down by Scalia to the lawyer, Alan Gura, making that argument.

“Why,” Scalia asked Gura, “are you asking us to overrule 140 years of prior law….unless you are bucking for a place on some law school faculty.” The Justice said the “privileges or immunities” argument was “the darling of the professorate” but wondered why Gura would “undertake that burden.” And Scalia noted that the “due process” clause — an open-ended provision that he has strongly attacked on other occasions– was available as the vehicle for incorporation, and added: “Even I have acquiesced in that.” Gura somewhat meekly said “we would be extremely happy:” if the Court used the “due process” clause to extend the Second Amendment’s reach.

Randy Barnett explains why the Supreme Court should have considered using the "privileges and immunities" clause. The justices just didn't seem to want to wade into that briar patch. Beyond my personal opinion that the Second Amendment should be incorporated along with most of the rest of the Bill of Rights, I'm just tickled pink about the timing of this case. My government classes were discussing the "privileges and immunities" clause on Monday and incorporation on Monday and Tuesday. So I could tell them that, just as we were going over which rights have not yet been incorporated, the Supreme Court was hearing a case on just that issue. I absolutely love it when current events are kind enough to parallel my curriculum.

Holman Jenkins bemoans the fact that Obama and the Democrats are ignoring the one reform that all health analysts agree is behind the rocketing costs in health care - the fact that we are stuck with a model of receiving insurance through our employers. This is an artifact from World War II when the government allowed tax benefits for companies that offered health care benefits as a way to get around wage controls. What began as a work-around-solution during wartime has become the sacred model that has been driving up costs ever since. What a reform the Democrats could have developed if they'd worked with the many Republicans who are willing to make such a change.

Senator Jim DeMint explains why it would be a terrible move for Obama to use his executive authority to designate up to 10 million acres of land from Montana to New Mexico as national monuments and thus prevent any sort of development or mining to be done on that land. The Senate just blocked an amendment that DeMint had proposed to block the President's authority to do this. Harry Reid of Nevada voted against the amendment that would have helped protect the 20% of Nevada left remaining from federal control from any further federal encroachment.

Ruth Marcus is shocked, shocked that House Democrats have been searching out ways to get around the same ethics rules that they so prided themselves on passing in 2007.

The WSJ explains why Obama's plan to use reconciliation to pass his health care bill is substantively different from other uses of reconciliation. Only Washington politicians would come up with such a jerry-rigged system.

The process was designed for items that cut spending or affect tax revenue, to meet targets in the annual budget resolution. Democrats want to convert it into a jerry-rigged amendment process: That is, reconciliation wouldn't actually be used to pass ObamaCare per se. Instead, it would be used only to muscle through substantive changes to the bill that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, without which 216 House Democrats won't vote for it. So Democrats would be writing amendments to current law that isn't in fact law at all—and can't become law without those amendments.

If they pull this off, we'll have a whole party of candidates claiming in the fall that they voted against it before they voted for it. Don't expect the voters to be snookered by such phony claims.

Marty Peretz unloads on Bill Delahunt calling him a "a slippery and portentous politician" as well as a fool. Tell us what you really think.

Charlie Cook warns Republicans that, if they take back the House, they will then be in the position of being in charge and absorbing all the anger against Washington that is providing the very wave that may sweep them into office.

Monica Crowley explains why President Obama's debt commission is a cover for raising taxes.

Dr. Mark E. Klein notes that President Obama had a virtual colonoscopy during his annual exam, but that this procedure is not covered under Medicare. All medical organizations agree that the virtual colonoscopy is just as effective as the more invasive one that anyone who has had one dreads. You don't have to drink that disgusting stuff ahead of time and suffer the painful consequences. You don't have to be sedated. You don't risk complications. More people would be willing to get a virtual one where they might delay getting the traditional one. Thus, it would save lives. But if you're dependent on Medicare you won't have that choice unless you can pay out of own your pocket. And if the Democrats have their way, we could all eventually be dependent on such decisions made by Washington bureaucrats.

Hillary Clinton irritates the British by saying they should sit down with the Argentinians to negotiate over the Falklands, but the British don't think there is anything to negotiate. This administration does seem to have a genius for ticking off what used to be our closest ally.

As the President prepares to go through with reconciliation, more doubts emerge as to whether it will be possible to get the House to approve the Senate bill which is the necessary step to the whole scenario. Karl at the Green Room points out that media stories that Nancy is winning over Democrats who voted no the first time are misleading and ignore those same representatives' own words that they're not planning to switch. Timothy Noah also is doubtful of Nancy's math.

Rahm Emanuel's fan club - the Washington Post

After the controversy that arose after Dana Milbank's column detailing that Emanuel knew better than the President and if only Obama had listened to him, everything would be going better, the Washington Post weighed in yesterday with a very long article built around the same theme. They add in a few quotes from friends and critics, but the basic message is still that Emanuel is active, brilliant, and has better political instincts than any of Obama's other advisers. They report that Emanuel is trying to have a lower profile and downplay areas of differences, but then they report on those areas of differences.

How nice for Emanuel to have his personal fan club in the capital's biggest newspaper. Though I'm not sure how excited his colleagues must feel about these two prominent pieces in the Post.

It's the new Chicago way: if the other guy pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you go to the newspapers.

Cruising the Web

Professor Phil Jones, the man at the center of the climategate email scandal, says that it is "standard operating procedure" not to release data to scientists who question and challenge his work. That's sure a different understanding of how the scientific community is supposed to work.

Mickey Kaus is going to try to get his name on the ballot to run against Barbara Boxer in the primary for the Democratic nomination for Senate. Good for him. He says that he wants to argue "against the party's dogma on several major issues" and give an opportunity for Democratic voters to register their dissent against the path that the party and Boxer have taken. He's an independent thinker who is willing to adopt positions such as support for welfare reform and skepticism of labor unions and affirmative action that are not where the party is. If he ever got into debates with Boxer, that would certainly be worth listening to. He'd certainly have the blogger vote.

Megan McArdle makes the unwelcome point that there is little that the government can do about long-term, massive unemployment. It's a sad fact that frustrates the obvious desire of politicians who want to be seen as if they're doing something, anything when people are distressed.

Harold Ford says he's not running in the Democratic primary against Kirsten Gillibrand because it would be a divisive and help the Republicans. However, he thinks that the Democrats are doing a lot of wrong stuff and he's ticked about that and he's ticked about those Democrats who tried to muscle him out and have now succeeded. Translation: he had no chance of winning and knows it.

Meanwhile, there are stronger rumors about Mort Zuckerman making a run in the Republican primary to oppose Gillibrand.

Ross Douhat sings the praises for Mitch Daniel. He'd certainly win in a landslide among conservative pundits.

Read Gail Heriot and Peter Kirnasow on the absolutely awful Akaka bill that the House recently voted for to give Hawaii the power to set up a separate governing authority within the state for ethic Hawaiians that would have "the power to tax, to promulgate and enforce a criminal code, and to exercise eminent domain. Hawaii will in effect be two states, not one." There is no history within Hawaii for ethnic Hawaiians to have been a separate tribe and the island kingdom was, in fact, a multi-ethnic country that welcomed all immigrants. Now, over a century after it became an American territory, politicians want to create a separatist entity within the state. This is an absolutely terrible idea and would create an awful precedent of recognizing as a tribe what was never a tribe in order to confer political benefits. Our only hope is that there are 41 Senators who would vote against this atrocity.

Jeremy Marks has an intriguing essay at Pajamas Media arguing that it would not be in the party's interest to gain control of either house of Congress in 2010. The only benefit to the party's controlling the Senate would be in blocking awful nominations. It's a strange world we've come to when it would actually be in a party's benefit not to be in power on Capitol Hill.

Peter Beinart says that a photo of Charlie Rangel sleeping in the Caribbean could be the photo that sinks the House Democrats since Pelosi can't pull loose from Rangel.

Of course, we shouldn't celebrate the end of Rangel's leadership on the all-important House Ways and Means committee. The guy behind him isn't much better when it comes to ethics and is certainly no prize on his personality. When Congressional ethics investigators came to interview him, he was rude and hostile. And, it seems, not entirely truthful.

Cheers to Obama for supporting the school superintendent and school board who fired the entire staff at the low-performing Central Falls High School. The President endorsed the idea of accountability. The union is furious, but it is their own fault for refusing to approve the additional 25 minutes a day of teacher-student contact time that the school superintendent was asking them to put in with students where only 7% of the high school students were performing at grade level on math.

Victoria Toensing explains the history of granting civilian trials to terrorists and why we should not do so for KSM. He would be able to have access to all evidence gathered against him and to object to any evidence that resulted from his capture since there was no warrant and no Miranda warnings. The Supreme Court has approved military commissions. Why not use them for the man who planned 9/11?

Bret Stephens explains why Chile should be very thankful to Milton Friedman. And Anne Applebaum contrasts the situation in Haiti after their 7.0 earthquake to that of Chile after their 8.8 earthquake and, while not mentioning Milton Friedman, credits the rule of law, democracy, and economic reform for determining that the results from Chile's disaster are not as catastrophic for its people as Haiti's was.

Max Boot pays tribute to Colombia's Alvaro Uribe who turned a narco-terror state into a thriving democracy with a growing economy. Unfortunately, because he has been friendly to the United States he won't ever receive the proper respect worldwide that he should or that national platform that Hugo Chavez commands.

Talk about leaping over the shark! Dancing with the Stars has released its 2010 lineup. How many people want to see people like Buzz Aldrin, Kate Gosselin, Pam Anderson, or Shannen Dougherty dance? Ugh! And just when you thought it was safe to venture out into a world where you weren't being bombarded by pictures and story of the Gosselins? Double ugh! And I used to enjoy that show, but this is just shudder-worthy.

Cruising the Web

If the Democrats think that they will be able to recover by election time simply by having President Obama drop in and make a campaign appearance for them, they better think again. He didn't have much of an impact in Virginia, New Jersey, or Massachusetts. And he didn't make a dent in Harry Reid's numbers when he went out there to campaign a couple of weeks ago. Sure he could raise money for Reid, but then George W. Bush could do that for candidates also. As far as moving the numbers, Obama's visit was worse than a wash.

Dafydd Ab Hugh has a good analysis of why it's going to be so very difficult for the Democrats to push through using reconciliation their votes on health care. Nancy says she will have the votes even if some of her members have to lose their jobs to so vote. We'll see how many of her caucus want to jump off a cliff with her.

The press is starting to recognize that perhaps they haven't been all that good at vetting candidates before they assume office. Michael Calderone at Politico looks at how the media just shut their eyes to what was wrong with John Edwards. They might have wondered a bit more about why he didn't run for reelection in his own state - we had figured him out; it just took the rest of the country a little longer. And Michael Goodwin admits media guilt in not checking out David Paterson when he was put on the ticket with Eliot Spitzer. It was just for lieutenant governor so why care? And how much of that neglect of Paterson resulted from a disinclination to examine too closely the first black candidate for one of the two spots in the state?

Read this profile of Mitch Daniels by Mona Charen and you'll see why so many conservatives hope that he will decide to run. He'd be that anti-Obama candidate. He has a substantive record of accomplishment; bases his success in governing on free-market approaches, and he is charisma-challenged. Maybe charisma will no longer be seen as necessary in a president. My major concern that I hope Daniels understands is that it is quite a different thing to enact the sorts of policies that Daniels has succeeded in enacting in Indiana than trying to get those through on a national basis.

Mark Steyn is absolutely brilliant in describing the crisis that Greece is going through. Just as the students rioting at Berkeley don't understand that a severe financial crunch demands everyone sacrifice something, the Greeks don't want to give up all their multitudinous benefits even if the country goes belly up.

We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

Read the rest. It's Steyn at his best, which is quite good indeed.

Christopher Booker summarizes why the mistakes that have been found in the Nobel-Prize winning 2007 IPCC report have not been trivial.

John Hinderaker does a great job of fisking the increasingly delusional Frank Rich. And, if you enjoy that, head on over and read Rick Moran's fisking of Al Gore's recent venture onto the editorial pages of the New York Times.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News and Linkiest has started up a new website, Self Help Quotes, of conservative quotes where you can find quotes on topics such as politics or taxes or you can search by speaker such as Reagan or Palin. Give it a look.

Nancy mangles history

Nancy Pelosi vows that she will get the votes to pass the Democrats' health care plan. We shall see. We shall see. It will be a real test of her ability to work her will on her caucus. Meanwhile, she is lying or mistating history as she tells her members that they should be willing to vote against what their constituents want.

“Our members, every one of them, wants health care,” Ms. Pelosi said. “They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare. And many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”

Well, actually no. I know that this is a popular Democratic talking point, but it's just dang wrong. Both programs passed with bipartisan support and, as Polifact reports, were quite popular at the time.

To find out, we had to turn back the clock to 1935 — the height of the Great Depression — when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, an insurance program funded through taxpayer dollars meant to support retirees. The legislation was controversial for a number of reasons, including its perceived effects on the labor market and whether its benefits favored working white men.

Nevertheless, on Aug. 8, 1935, the conference report — the final version of the bill that melds together changes made in the House and in the Senate — passed in the House 372-33, with 81 Republicans voting in support. The next day, the bill was passed in the Senate 77-6, with 16 Republicans supporting the legislation. So Social Security did pass with Republican support.

Thirty years later, a significant number of Republicans voted in favor of the Medicare bill. The House adopted the conference report on July 27, 1965, 307-116, with 70 Republicans supporting it. And on July 28, the Senate adopted the final version of the bill by a vote of 70-24, with 13 Republicans in favor of the bill. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law on July 30, 1965.

But is Dean correct that the Republicans didn't support Medicare until the end?

Donald Ritchie, the associate historian in the U.S. Senate, told us that the Republican support wasn't just a last-minute phenomenon. During the discussion of both bills, "There were always progressive Republicans and liberal Republicans, some of whom supported Roosevelt and Johnson," Ritchie said.

Johnson had the political muscle to pass Medicare because the 1964 elections ushered in 42 new Democrats to the House of Representatives, giving the party a two-thirds majority overall and a larger majority on the Ways and Means Committee, where the legislation would originate. Up until then, many members of the committee, including its Democratic chairman, Wilbur D. Mills, opposed the idea of government-funded health care. In fact, Mills proved a tough sell in 1965 until some of his own pet proposals were added to the legislation. One of those — the addition of a voluntary, supplemental health care plan — had its roots in a Republican alternative bill.

In the House, no Republicans voted for the bill until it reached the floor. It passed the Ways and Means Committee by a party-line vote of 17-8, although the panel's GOP members endorsed some of the bill's non-health care related provisions, according to the 1965 Congressional Quarterly Almanac .

Likewise, all four Republicans on the House Rules Committee — the panel that sets the boundaries of debate on all bills that come to the House floor — voted against the bill.

In the Senate, however, there was Republican support in the Finance Committee. When the panel cast its final vote, the bill passed 12-5, with four of the committee's eight Republicans supporting it. (President Barack Obama would probably love to get even that much GOP backing.)

So we find Dean is glossing over the details and exaggerating the partisan split. Both Social Security and Medicare were indeed championed by Democrats, but passed with the help of Republican votes. And while some GOP members waited until the last minute to support Medicare, it was backed by half the Republicans on the Senate committee. So we find Dean's statement False.

But what do facts matter when you're in the middle of demagoguing on an issue and you want to pretend that those popular programs were just as unpopular in their own day as the Democratic plans are today. Nope. The only question is whether Nancy is deluded or lying. Your choice.

More lessons from the laboratories of democracy

In talking about health care I've been talking about how federalism's beauty is that it allows us to observe the experimentation that is going on in the states and learn from what has worked and what has not. Health care is a beautiful opportunity for learning from those experiments. Tellingly the Democrats want to ignore those lessons. Hmmmm. I wonder why.

In Massachusetts, Governor Romney helped to institute a program very similar to the model for the Democrats' plans for the nation. And the results have not been pretty.

Last month, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick landed a neutron bomb, proposing hard price controls across almost all Massachusetts health care. State regulators already have the power to cap insurance premiums, which Mr. Patrick is activating. He also filed a bill that would give state regulators the power to review the rates of hospitals, physician groups and some specialty providers. Those that are deemed too high "shall be presumptively disapproved."

Mr. Patrick ad-libbed that he had "a whole bunch of pals here who are in the health-care field, and I saw the color drain out of their faces." Little wonder. The administered prices of Medicare and Medicaid already shift costs to private patients while below-cost reimbursement creates balance-sheet havoc among providers. Now the governor wants to import these distortions to save the state's heavily subsidized insurance program as costs explode.

It doesn't even count as an irony that former Governor Mitt Romney (like President Obama) sold this plan as a way to control spending. As with all new entitlements, the rolling cost crisis began almost immediately. For fiscal 2010 taxpayer costs are $47 million over budget, in part due to the recession, and while the $913 million Mr. Patrick requested for 2011 is a 5% increase over 2010, spending has grown on average 6.7% per year.

Meanwhile, average Massachusetts insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation. Since 2006, they've climbed at an annual rate of 30% in the individual market. Small business costs have increased by 5.8%. Per capita health spending in Massachusetts is now 27% higher than the national average, and 15% higher even after adjusting for local wages and academic research grants. The growth rate is faster too.

Now imagine those numbers on a national scale if we followed Massachusetts down its path. The mind shudders.

However, those laboratories also tell us about reforms that work. And we need to study those results. Look at Indiana which, under the leadership of my new favorite possible potential presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, added health savings accounts to their health care plans for state employees. Daniels describes today how these health savings accounts work.

In Indiana's HSA, the state deposits $2,750 per year into an account controlled by the employee, out of which he pays all his health bills. Indiana covers the premium for the plan. The intent is that participants will become more cost-conscious and careful about overpayment or overutilization.

Unused funds in the account—to date some $30 million or about $2,000 per employee and growing fast—are the worker's permanent property. For the very small number of employees (about 6% last year) who use their entire account balance, the state shares further health costs up to an out-of-pocket maximum of $8,000, after which the employee is completely protected.

Unions don't like these accounts because they'd prefer to negotiate better coverage for their members. However, regular state workers seem to love these plans with over 70% of them signing up for the accounts. Daniels describes what the result has been.

What we, and independent health-care experts at Mercer Consulting, have found is that individually owned and directed health-care coverage has a startlingly positive effect on costs for both employees and the state. What follows is a summary of our experience:

State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan will save more than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative. In the second straight year in which we've been forced to skip salary increases, workers switching to the HSA are adding thousands of dollars to their take-home pay. (Even if an employee had health issues and incurred the maximum out-of-pocket expenses, he would still be hundreds of dollars ahead.) HSA customers seem highly satisfied; only 3% have opted to switch back to the PPO.

The state is saving, too. In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment. Mercer calculates the state's total costs are being reduced by 11% solely due to the HSA option.

Most important, we are seeing significant changes in behavior, and consequently lower total costs. In 2009, for example, state workers with the HSA visited emergency rooms and physicians 67% less frequently than co-workers with traditional health care. They were much more likely to use generic drugs than those enrolled in the conventional plan, resulting in an average lower cost per prescription of $18. They were admitted to hospitals less than half as frequently as their colleagues. Differences in health status between the groups account for part of this disparity, but consumer decision-making is, we've found, also a major factor.

Overall, participants in our new plan ran up only $65 in cost for every $100 incurred by their associates under the old coverage. Are HSA participants denying themselves needed care in order to save money? The answer, as far as the state of Indiana and Mercer Consulting can find, is no. There is no evidence HSA members are any less likely to defer needed care or common-sense preventive measures such as routine physicals or mammograms.

Amazingly, given incentives, people like to save their own money and will shop around for cheaper prices. Their savings benefit both themselves and the state government. Getting beyond the third party dilemma affects costs. When you aren't paying for your health care, you don't care how much something costs. When it's your own money and you have the potential to keep that money, you start caring. And by doing so, you not only save money for yourself, but for the government also.

This is a lesson that we could be learning from and applying in national health care reforms, but the Democrats are so indebted to the unions plus they are so determined to think that people are too stupid to search around for better deals on health care that they insist on adopting their own paternalistic provisions.

Contrast the histories of health care reform in both Indiana and Massachusetts. Where would you prefer to live - in as state that is facing a fiscal meltdown or the one that has been running a surplus? Federalism allows for both choices and for other states to learn from their examples.