Rest in Peace, Neil Alan Smith
And, though I wasn't exactly looking for a Friday morning cry, thanks to the St. Petersburg Times for telling me about him.

Every time I hear some conservative ass railing about the tyranny of the minimum wage, defending the insane wealth gap in this country, always blaming the poor for their poverty, I think of people like Neil who are all around us: men and women of quiet dignity, who do essential jobs most of us wouldn't like to do (or couldn't do), who are dependable and try to make do with what they have, who appreciate the modesty of their life and cherish its simple pleasures, who keep their troubles to themselves, and care for the troubles of their few closest friends, usually the only kind they have.  They don't ask for much and they deserve better, both in life and in death.

Deep (Freeze) Thought

Wow, if you split the Republican vote in half in Alaska, you still can't get a Democrat elected there this year. How did Begich ever win??

How Well Do You Know Religion?
Most Americans didn't do so well on this survey from the folks at the Pew Forum. Here's the results. I was 15 for 15, but got lucky. Flipped a coin for the last one. How about you?

School Improvement: What's the Answer?
If only there was a single answer, right? Every year we get new approaches that seem to yield promising results, but that ultimately don't last, or don't translate from school school. Even more importantly, we don't have much agreement on the basics, like: What's the purpose of public education? and How do we measure progress and achievement?

The truth is, if there were *one simple structural thing* that need only be implemented to create a nation full of eager, well-educated, well-adjusted high school graduates, we would have figured it out, and everyone would be doing it. As it is, even trying to learn from the apparent successes of others seems difficult.

Still, I can't resist the occasional feel-good success story of a down-and-out school that, at the very least, experiences vast improvement. Yesterday's NYTimes tells of Brockton High School in Mass. At 4,100 students, Brockton is not only the largest in the state, it's one of the largest in the nation. With a high drop-out rate, and only a quarter of students passing the statewide exams 10 years ago, teachers and administrators - motivated mostly by shame - devised a new approach: reading and writing would be emphasized in each and every class.

The committee put together a rubric to help teachers understand what good writing looks like, and began devoting faculty meetings to teaching department heads how to use it. The school’s 300 teachers were then trained in small groups.

Writing exercises took many forms, but encouraged students to think methodically. A science teacher, for example, had her students write out, step by step, how to make a sandwich, starting with opening the cupboard to fetch the peanut butter, through washing the knife once the sandwich was made. Other writing exercises, of course, were much more sophisticated.

Some teachers dragged their feet. Michael Thomas, now the district’s operations director but who led the school’s physical education department at the time, recalled that several of his teachers told him, “This is gym; we shouldn’t have to teach writing.” Mr. Thomas said he replied, “If you want to work at Brockton High, it’s your job.”

Read the whole thing. Gains sound substantial there (though they had a long way to go), and the pride taken in improvement seems to have propelled the entire school even further. Anything here that can be used by other struggling schools, or entire school systems?  Who knows.

Is Stanley Fish Right?
Today's column argues that the liberal instinct to make light of Tea Party candidates is bad politics. That has the ring of truth, which has me worried since, as you know, I'm big into ridicule.

Commentators who explain smugly that O’Donnell’s position on masturbation (that it is a selfish, solitary act) is contradicted by her Ayn Rand-like attack on collectivism, or who wax self-righteous about Paladino’s comparing Sheldon Silver to Hitler and promising to wield a baseball bat in Albany, or who laugh at Sharron Angle for being in favor of Scientology (she denies it) and against fluoridation and the Department of Education, are doing these candidates a huge favor. They are saying, in effect, these people are stupid, they’re jokes; and the implication (sometimes explicitly stated) is that anyone who takes them the least bit seriously doesn’t get the joke and is stupid, too.

Once made fun of, Stanley concludes, marginal Tea Party sympathizers are lost forever to the Democratic point of view. Instead of backing down, they just dig in.

This time, he has it 60% right. We do need to be careful. Just because I have a hard time believing that these idiots nice Republicans with which I happen to disagree are winning doesn't mean they're going away. They are, in fact, winning, after all. Our arguments against should take them seriously in that regard.

Still, what else am I supposed to do in the face of a major party candidate for US Senate who views the world as Christine O'Donnell does? I mean, when you admit to dabbling in witchcraft and set as your agenda to get all of America to stop having sex, those are the sorts of things that really are supposed to end a political career in its tracks, aren't they?

Fish's argument here is mostly a practical one: ridicule is a counter-productive political strategy. Aimed at the voters, I agree. But wasn't it a pretty big factor though in driving down Palin's numbers, ultimately defeating McCain? In general, I don't think voters want to get behind a laughing stock, and if a campaign of ridicule can brand a candidate as one (see Sue Lowden in Nevada), isn't that a decent idea? What's the right balance? If we engage O'Donnell as a serious candidate, don't we validate and make legitimate her bizarre views?

Shouldn't a protest vote this November have to feel the complete embarassing weight of the fools they would send to Washington?

"An Original Manuscript Can Only Be in One Place at One Time"
The NYTimes magazine explores a strange, depressing, riveting story - one in which the work of a masterful 20th Century author, an act of love/betrayal by his surprising best friend, the rantings of a reclusive 70-something cat enthusiast, and a bank vault in Israel all intertwine in a maze worthy of the writer's name.

While about two-thirds of the Kafka estate eventually found its way to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the remainder — believed to comprise drawings, travel diaries, letters and drafts — stayed in Brod’s possession until his death in Israel in 1968, when it passed to his secretary and presumed lover, Esther Hoffe. After Hoffe’s death in late 2007, at age 101, the National Library of Israel challenged the legality of her will, which bequeaths the materials to her two septuagenarian daughters, Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler. The library is claiming a right to the papers under the terms of Brod’s will. The case has dragged on for more than two years. If the court finds in the sisters’ favor, they will be free to follow Eva’s stated plan to sell some or all of the papers to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. They will also be free to keep whatever they don’t sell in their multiple Swiss and Israeli bank vaults and in the Tel Aviv apartment that Eva shares with an untold number of cats.
...
Etgar Keret, a best-selling Israeli short-story writer who considers Kafka to be his greatest influence, ...(says) Kafka...might be O.K. with it: “The next best thing to having your stuff burned, if you’re ambivalent, is giving it to some guy who gives it to some lady who gives it to her daughters who keep it in an apartment full of cats, right?”

Beatles Class Today

Today's topic is the album A Hard Day's Night

Question: Which songs have the strongest correlation between the music and lyrics? Which present the most conflict between the two?

What's the best song on the album?

Any takers?

Marry an Optometrist
Via Overcoming Bias, a recent study ranks occupations for their divorce rates, once other predictive factors are taken out of the equation. The top 6 divorce-prone jobs?

1. Massage Therapists
2. Bartenders
3. Dancers and Choreographers
4. Health Diagnosing Practitioners
5. Physicians and Surgeons
6. Gaming Services Workers

The bottom 6?

507. Optometrist
508. Clergy
509. Transit Police
510. Religious Education Directors
511. Agricultural Engineers
512. Communication Equipment Workers

Musicians, by the way, come in at 306. Post-secondary teachers, 351.

Transcript of Colbert Answering Questions
Video of his opening statement is in the post below, but some of the best moments were during questioning from the committee. Apparently nobody much believes in transcripts anymore (what happened while I was away?) Blue Wave News has transcribed the one moment when Colbert seemed to come out of character and explain to Rep. Chu why he cares so much about the issue of migrant workers. Here's a snippet:

You know, “whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers,” and these seemed like the least of my brothers, right now. A lot of people are “least brothers” right now, with the economy so hard, and I don’t want to take anyone’s hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that. But migrant workers suffer, and have no rights.

Other favorite answers include telling Rep. Smith (R-TX) that being a farm worker for a day is pretty tough:

SMITH: Is that to say it's more work than you've ever done before?

COLBERT: It's certainly harder work than this.

SMITH: Is it harder work than the comedy show?

COLBERT: Absolutely harder than punditry.

SMITH: You don't want to return to it?

COLBERT: I don't even want to watch Green Acres any more.

Then explaining to Rep. King (R-IA) that he was indeed packing, not unloading, corn.

COLBERT: I was packing corn. I was a corn-packer. I packed it; I put it in the trucks and I iced it down to keep it at 38 degrees so it wouldn't go through the process where the sugar turns into starch and we got that corn out that day. I was a corn-packer. And I know that term is offensive to some people because corn-packer is a derogartory term for a gay Iowan and I hope I didn't offend anybody.

Watch those portions of the video here.

Stephen Colbert Testifies Before Congress
From the annals of great political ideas, Colbert was invited to speak before the House Judiciary Committee, in a hearing on immigration. Here's his opening statement.

On the Bright Side
If you need a little pick-me-up, some kind of positive note about your life for this week, remember this: at least you're not Woody Allen.

WA: Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so it’s what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and it’s consistently on my mind and I’m consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining.

RL: Are you saying the humor in your films is a relief for you? Or are you sort of saying to the audience, “Here is an oasis, a couple of laughs”?

WA: I think what I’m saying is that I’m really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and that the only thing I can do is my little gift and do it the best I can, and that is about the best I can do, which is cold comfort.

RL: In Everyone Says I Love You, the character you play gets divorced, and as he and his former wife review their relationship near the end of the film, she says, “You could always make me laugh,” and your character asks very sincerely, “Why is that important?” Do you think what you do is important?

WA: No, not so much.

High Fructose Corn Syrup
Not like other sweeteners (my emph):

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true...When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Patriotism
Harry Potter-style

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

That's author JK Rowling on why she stays in Britain even though she could move elsewhere and pay a much lower tax rate.

Could this be a key difference between liberals and conservatives? Liberals can imagine themselves in trouble and needing help; conservatives can imagine themselves on easy street and not wanting to be bothered.

Who Knew?
That Victoria Jackson wasn't just playing dumb on Saturday Night Live?

Thank You Justice Stevens
I'm sure he would prefer to be known for better things, but I will always remember him for being a sane voice in the middle of the most insane, damaging action the Court ever took in his tenure. From his dissent in Bush v. Gore:

Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

I respectfully dissent.

Thank you for being my voice, Justice Stevens!

Horrifying
New Orleans police officer tells what happened when cops got word one of their colleagues had taken fire in the wake of Hurrican Katrina. The Times-Picayune, which may have become the best local paper in America after its courageous post-Katrina coverage, has more.

iPad FAQs
from reviewer David Pogue:

It always surprises me how many people are made indignant by the very thought of the iPad, as though Congress passed a law that requires you to buy one!

You’re not, as it turns out. Buying one is totally optional.

That said, the question is a little odd, because the iPad really is very different from a laptop or an iPhone. I guess people have a lot of trouble with the idea that it’s a new category, something unlike anything they’ve used before. All people can do is compare it in their heads with stuff they HAVE used before.

But I’m telling you, the multitouch screen/software makes it very, very different from a laptop, and the screen size makes it very, very different from an iPhone. It’s something entirely new. So yes, if it appeals to you, you’d have to buy it in addition to your laptop or iPhone.

(Just one note of caution: If you have children in the house, don’t let them know there’s an iPad in the premises. I have three kids, 5, 10 and 12, and the competition for time with the iPad is like a daily World War III.)

Dear Mr. President
The Washington Post tracks a letter from Monroe, MI to the White House and back.

Wrapped in Plastic
This is pretty remarkable. In Washington, D.C. a new tax on plastic bags has had a much bigger impact than expected:

The District’s 5-cent bag tax, which started in January 2010, netted approximately $150,000 during its first month of enactment. According to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue, only 3 million bags were issued in the month of January compared to 2009’s 22.5 million bags per month average, and it appears that the new law DC shoppers has been successful in altering shopping bag habits faster than was expected.

22 million down to 3 million in just one month? I have been reading about the success of little "nudges" like this in a book called, well, Nudge. Obviously we'd all like to think we'd do the right thing even without the incentive of a nickel. Would it work on me? I don't know. Currently my sadly immense plastic bag consumption can be attributed to 3 things:

1) I go to the grocery store all the time - every day in some stretches (I eat less, and more responsibly, when I don't buy a weeks' worth of food at a time) - and usually when I'm on the way home from somewhere else. So, I almost never remember to put my cloth bag in the car.

2) My newspaper subscription, which generates a bag, and sometimes two, every single day. They don't even bother trying to deliver it bagless anymore, even on perfectly clear sunny days. I love getting the paper every morning. Something about it just makes me feel good. But it's a pointless habit, right? That stuff is pretty much all online. I've been meaning to scale my subscription down to weekends, when I really have the time to read it through, and would still get the coupons and Sunday puzzles I put to good use. For some reason haven't made myself follow through yet.

3) Even though I don't remember my cloth bag often enough, I occasionally remember to put my stash of plastic in the car and take it to the recycling bin. Now that plastic bags can be recycled, it makes me feel (foolishly) less wasteful for using them in the first place.

Would a .05-cent/bag tax put me over the edge and make me call the newspaper and get better about remembering my cloth bags? I dunno. Would it help you? Or do you need help?

Good News Tuesday
1. It looks like insurance companies are backing away from a loophole which might have allowed them to ignore health reform's demand for an immediate end to denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Of course, it will depend on taking their word for it, but they now claim they will "comply" with principles laid out in Secretary Sebelius' explanation (still to come) of the bill's meaning.

The bad news on that is - if I understand correctly - they can still charge elevated premiums for children with pre-existing conditions. Discrimination of that sort will end in 2014, but they have to offer some form of coverage to children in the meantime, according to the Secretary's reading of the bill.

2. It looks like we taxpayers will make somewhere in the neighborhood of an $8 billion gain following the temporary takeover of a significant portion of Citigroup. Stock purchased by the government at around $1.50 two years ago will be sold this week. The price currently hovers just over $4/share. More than a double is pretty good - I should have "rescued" Citi in my portfolio as well.

3. And last but not least, we are finally smashing subatomic particles. Apparently, particle physicists around the world are rejoicing. Their advanced degrees have not turned out to be worthless after all.

Health Care Reform Links
Here are video and transcript of the president's remarks at the signing ceremony this morning.

Today, I’m signing this reform bill into law on behalf of my mother, who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days.

I’m signing it for Ryan Smith, who’s here today. He runs a small business with five employees. He’s trying to do the right thing, paying half the cost of coverage for his workers. This bill will help him afford that coverage.

I’m signing it for 11-year-old Marcelas Owens, who’s also here. Marcelas lost his mom to an illness. And she didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford the care that she needed. So in her memory he has told her story across America so that no other children have to go through what his family has experienced.

I’m signing it for Natoma Canfield. Natoma had to give up her health coverage after her rates were jacked up by more than 40 percent. She was terrified that an illness would mean she’d lose the house that her parents built, so she gave up her insurance. Now she’s lying in a hospital bed, as we speak, faced with just such an illness, praying that she can somehow afford to get well without insurance. Natoma’s family is here today because Natoma can’t be.

Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) is vying with Bachmann for craziest freak in the House. His new plan is to repeal the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution.

In case you missed it, here are the President's remarks Sunday evening after health care reform passed. Here is the video.

In his post-vote column, Paul Krugman rightly chides Newt Gingrich for his celebratory political predictions about health care reform. Newt's comparison of this bill to historic civil rights legislation was one of the more disgusting, telling, and honest statements anyone made in the entire debate. And, no, I don't believe Newt's attempt at a correction.

The Washington Post has a calculator up so you can see how reform impacts you personally. It's a bit overly simplistic but gets at the basics.

The House has prepared a handy timeline (pdf) of how the different elements of the bill will unfold, from now until 2018 when the excise tax is scheduled to go into effect.

49-40, Americans like the health care reform bill.

For Teddy

Big Day
Of course, I thought we already had our big historic health care reform day when the Senate passed their bill on Christmas Eve. So, things happen, you never know. But it looks like we will get a vote today to determine once and for all the fate of health care reform. Keep your eye on C-Span if you don't want to just wake up to the news tomorrow. There will be a handful of votes. The House has to vote on the Senate bill and also on the fixes that will go to the Senate for a reconciliation vote. The final up or down tally won't come until probably 9 or 10 tonight, Eastern time. But we will know where this is going when they vote on the rule for debate, which should happen around 6.

I've tried pretty hard to understand as much as I can about the content of the bill, to help especially with convincing friends. It's tough though - complex language, conflicting reports. Some elements I'm still really unclear about. But a few sobering truths about what we've got are worth remembering, regardless of the details: 1) This reform will change reality for a minority of Americans. If you get insurance through your employer, you probably won't notice much. 2) The bulk of the substance won't go into effect for what's going to seem like a really long time. The exchanges won't be up and running until 2014. 3) One of the most powerful things this bill does will thankfully go unnoticed, helping us avert serious catastrophe, by trying to begin tackling the insane elevation in health care costs which would drive ever more Americans into bankruptcy and threaten the fiscal solvency of the government itself, if left unchecked and on its current path. Once your premium goes up 10%, it may be tough to be thankful that it didn't rise 25% instead, but this legislation may have helped save you that crisis.

Some things will happen fairly quickly after the President signs the bill. One of my favorites says that insurers will be required to allow children to stay on their parents' policies until age 26. That will go into effect 6 months after the legislation is enacted. Also, while pre-existing condition discrimination will not be ended until 2014, it will be immediately ended for coverage of children, and some provision - this is one thing I'm not clear on - will allow anyone denied coverage or kicked off for pre-existing condition in the interim to be able to buy into a pool of coverage. [UDPATE: Here's a list of things that will go into effect immediately. I had read somewhere that the age 26 provision comes 6 months later, but either way, pretty quickly.]

But at the end of the day, the details don't help in debates until we agree on an important starting point: health insurance is not just any "product." And health care is not just one more consumption category. It's an extension of nothing less than our own mortality, a human necessity almost as surely as food and water, if much less predictable in need. And as far as the fair chance to have equal opportunity in life, health care can be every bit as essential as education. Listening to Republicans and especially tea-party protesters, it sounds like they view health insurance as just another perk of life. You would think subsidies were going to help people buy a sports car or a cellphone; or that treatment for injury or illness was about the equivalent of getting your car fixed.

My view is much different. Because health care is different, it's wrong to think of it as a luxury for just some, or a mere contingency everyone should be able to address with just a little planning, saving and personal responsibility. If only it were that inexpensive to face a serious health crisis, or insurance companies were that dependable when one comes along!

In fact, of all the things government should help ensure all Americans can access equally and fairly, health care should be right near the top, alongside education as a guarantee, and something we shouldn't hesitate to fund as well as is required to get it right. This bill doesn't go that far. But if we are going to leave private insurers in place as the only avenue most Americans have to health care, we need mechanisms in place to fix the injustices in the system. And there are plenty. This reform package goes a long way toward - eventually - doing just that.

March Madness
Have the early games been good? Of the first 4 games, 2 went to OT and the other 2 were decided by a single point.

More Complicated by the Minute [UPDATED]
The good news on health care reform: Kucinich is now a yes. He made a pretty strong statement explaining his change of heart - powerful stuff that could turn him into something of a hero on the Democratic side. Maybe he's the smartest member of Congress, after all. Meetings with the President had an impact:

"I left [our previous meeting] with a real sense of compassion for our president and what he's going through," Kucinich said. "We have to be compassionate towards those who are called upon to make decisions for this nation. It's not an easy burden that he has taken up."

"One of the things that has bothered me," Kucinich added, "has been the attempt to delegitimatize his presidency. That hurts the nation when that happens. He was elected...this is a defining moment for whether or not we'll have any opportunity to move off square one on the issue of health care.... I think it's important that--we have to be very careful that the potential of President Obama's presidency not be destroyed by this debate."

The bad news: to pass under reconciliation rules, apparently the fixes to the Senate bill have to offer some kind of budgetary improvement. In other words, it's not enough that the legislation *impact* the budget, it has to reduce the deficit. So doesn't the health care reform package reduce the projected deficit? Yes! And by quite a bit. But these fixes to the Senate bill are a different story and have to reduce the deficit not as projected from where we stand today, but relative to the adjoining legislation. Under reconciliation rules of the current Senate, these sidecar provisions have to make the Senate bill *even better* for the deficit. That's a challenge, because most of the substantive fixes sought by the House will increase costs: better subsidies, delaying implementation of excise tax, etc.

So, everybody is waiting on CBO to score these fixes so Pelosi can get to the business of scheduling a vote so this can all come down this weekend. But they may be scrambling to still find ways to get the right budget number. That's why we still don't have an exact bill to know precisely what everyone's voting on. The basic structure is there, of course; but these details are important toward the process Republicans have forced us to take.

Stay tuned.

[UPDATE: CBO score is out, and it sounds good. With proposed changes, the bill reduces the deficit by $130 billion over the first 10 years and $1.3 trillion over the next 10. You can read the actual report here; Ezra Klein's giddy look at the big picture of the bill now here.]

Deem and Pass, Already
Want a primer on "deem and pass", the Republicans' newest lightning rod? Byron Tau explains here, though he spends too much space complaining about how everyone is misunderstanding; Ezra Klein follows up with some more here.

Fascinating Analysis
Nate analyzes explanations of those for and against health care reform.

Magic Monday
Via Ezra Klein, the placebo effect.

Reid to Senate Republicans: Eat It
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote a letter to Mitch McConnell explaining his intention to move forward with a reconciliation process.

60 Senators voted to pass historic reform that will make health insurance more affordable, make health insurance companies more accountable and reduce our deficit by roughly a trillion dollars. The House passed a similar bill. However, many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we’ve made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we’ve added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support. We will not. We will finish the job. We will do so by revising individual elements of the bills both Houses of Congress passed last year, and we plan to use the regular budget reconciliation process that the Republican caucus has used many times.

...There is nothing unusual or extraordinary about the use of reconciliation. As one of the most senior Senators in your caucus, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, said in explaining the use of this very same option, “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.” Similarly, as non-partisan congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein said in this Sunday’s New York Times, our proposal is “compatible with the law, Senate rules and the framers’ intent.”
...
Keep in mind that reconciliation will not exclude Republicans from the legislative process. You will continue to have an opportunity to offer amendments and change the shape of the legislation. In addition, at the end of the process, the bill can pass only if it wins a democratic, up-or-down majority vote. If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug “donut hole” for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so.

Spring Break
Blog has been behind, but ready to catch up now. Flurry of posts below. Try to keep up.

Genome-Mapping
I don't understand much in this NYTimes article about new efforts to trace the genetic source of many diseases now that we have the entire human genome mapped. I should have taken Biology in school, even though I still wonder if that would have helped - I'm pretty science-challenged.

Geneticists said the new research showed it was now possible to sequence the entire genome of a patient at reasonable cost and with sufficient accuracy to be of practical use to medical researchers. One subject’s genome cost just $50,000 to decode.

“We are finally about to turn the corner, and I suspect that in the next few years human genetics will finally begin to systematically deliver clinically meaningful findings,” said David B. Goldstein, a Duke University geneticist who has criticized the current approach to identifying genetic causes of common diseases.

What don't I understand? For one thing why does it take so long and cost so much? I guess I thought of genome-mapping as kinda like a super-comprehensive DNA test. Just need a bigger computer and there you go: Bob's your uncle. But clearly I'm way wrong. We've only managed to map 12 people ever? No wonder it hasn't yielded more information.

But add to that a couple of apparently flawed assumptions about how mutation works in common multi-gene diseases like cancer, and it sounds more and more like genetic scientists have been headed the wrong way - a slow, expensive way to boot. Hopefully those things are changing.

Education Standards (Cont'd)
In the post below, I pointed to news of proposed national standards in K-12 education. You can read a draft of the proposals here. They are organized in a progressive format with 10 core college-ready goals to be achieved by graduation. Each grade has a step along the way toward those goals. For example, here are the reading standards for kindergarten.

1. With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about details and events in a text.

2. Retell familiar stories.

3. Identify characters, settings, and key events in a story.

4. Ask questions about unknown words in a text.

5. Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).

6. Name the author and illustrator of a text and define the role of each.

7. Relate pictures and illustrations to the overall story in which they appear.

8. (Not applicable to literature)

9. Compare and contrast the adventures of characters in familiar stories.

10. Read emergent-reader literature texts with purpose and understanding.

(Notice that #8, which corresponds to the college-ready goal of "Delineate and evaluate the reasoning and rhetoric within a text, including assessing whether the evidence provided is relevant and sufficient to support the text’s claims." does not have a kindergarten equivalent.)

National Education Standards
A proposal from a panel of educators and experts is set to become (near) national standards for K-12. Their goals were to make standards higher, clearer, more organized, and more concise.

“Many states have too many expectations in their academic standards that force teachers to cover too much in a superficial way,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “We said, ‘Let’s keep these very understandable and at a number that is manageable. Let’s not put on teachers more requirements than they can deliver.’ ”

Another improvement over current state benchmarks, people involved in the initiative said, is that the proposed standards are what educators call vertically aligned, meaning that material students are to learn in early years builds a foundation for what is to come in the next grade.

“Students are asked to do progressively more challenging things, and although that may sound obvious, it’s a real breakthrough,” said Michael Cohen, an Education Department official in the Clinton administration who is president of Achieve.

Retiring?
Nothing about this video makes me think Rep. Patrick Kennedy's retirement from the House is any kind of permanent retreat from elected office. Looks more like he's poised to move back to Massachusetts and run for his dad's old Senate seat.

But also, as to his point. Yes, the press sucks.

Baby Einstein
We've been over this before here, but worth pointing out a new study showing that young children regularly shown Baby Einstein DVDs - those designed to teach common words - did no better at recognizing those words than children who had not been watching the video. In fact, those that started watching them at an earlier age did slightly worse.

Petulance and Self-Importance
Glenn Greenwald delivers the correct response to Chief Justice Roberts' silly critique of President Obama and the State of the Union.

The petulance and sense of self-importance on display here is quite something to behold...
...
Supreme Court Justices, in particular, have awesome, unrestrained power. They are guaranteed life tenure, have no authorities who can sanction them except under the most extreme circumstances, and, with the mere sweep of a pen, can radically alter the lives of huge numbers of people or even transform our political system (as five of them, including Roberts, just did, to some degree, in Citizens United). The very idea that it's terribly wrong, uncouth, and "very troubling" for the President to criticize one of their most significant judicial decisions in a speech while in their majestic presence -- not threaten them, or have them arrested, or incite violence against them, but disagree with their conclusions and call for Congressional remedies (as Art. II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution requires) -- approaches pathological levels of vanity and entitlement.

Just About Done with Howard Dean
When it comes to health care reform strategy. Pass the bill already. Not sure what he thinks he's helping.

Obama: Get it Done
If you have a regular job, so didn't get to hear the President lay it all on the line on health reform, read his remarks here. He was as forceful and fiery and on point as he has been since the debate started a year or so ago.

Now, both during and after last week's summit, Republicans in Congress insisted that the only acceptable course on health care reform is to start over. But given these honest and substantial differences between the parties about the need to regulate the insurance industry and the need to help millions of middle-class families get insurance, I don't see how another year of negotiations would help.

Moreover, the insurance companies aren't starting over. They're continuing to raise premiums and deny coverage as we speak. For us to start over now could simply lead to delay that could last for another decade, or even more. The American people, and the U.S. economy, just can't wait that long. So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. (Applause.)

We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for the past year but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up or down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the Children's Health Insurance Program, that was used for COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and, by the way, for both Bush tax cuts --- all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.

I, therefore, ask leaders in both houses of Congress to finish their work and schedule a vote in the next few weeks. From now until then, I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.

Republican 2010 Strategy: Cartoon of the Day

Blame it on the Brain
A great NPR story today tries to explain why teenagers can be so messed up. They aren't just selfish and completely lacking in judgment for no reason. Their brains is muddy.

[Neuroscientist Francis] Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that "a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it."

But it's not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.

"It's the part of the brain that says: 'Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?' " Jensen says. "It's not that they don't have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they're going to access it more slowly."

That's because the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don't have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or "white matter," that adults have in this area.

I've heard versions of this info before, but this piece really puts it all together and is fairly entertaining. Give it a listen/read.

Ho Hum
Just another normal day on planet Earth

An iceberg about the size of Luxembourg that struck a glacier off Antarctica and dislodged another massive block of ice could lower the levels of oxygen in the world's oceans, Australian and French scientists said Friday.
...
The new iceberg is 48 miles long and about 24 miles wide and holds roughly the equivalent of a fifth of the world's annual total water usage, Young told The Associated Press.

Experts are concerned about the effect of the massive displacement of ice on the ice-free water next to the glacier, which is important for ocean currents.
...
"There may be regions of the world's oceans that lose oxygen, and then of course most of the life there will die," said Mario Hoppema, chemical oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.

Just to repeat, and then of course most of the life there will die... So, anything important happening today? Tiger Woods screw anyone new?

Health Care Summit
Did you watch any? What did you think? From the little bit I saw, one overriding thought: too many politicians lined up with time to talk. Could have done with panels about half the size.

Here's Pearlstein's take on the meeting. "It takes a Republican", he says, to think of some of their crap as a solution.

Shameless Self-Promotion
The church-state blog got named in this study's list of the 100 most influential blogs dealing with religion and public policy. Now, I know what you're thinking: how many of those could there really be out there comprising the competition? Is getting in the top 100 much of an accomplishment? Well, if you must know there are I think 105. But still! I really kicked the butts of those 5.

Underused Word of the Day
Cuckolded. Of course, you can find it in articles about philandering Republican lawmakers.

Scary Freaks
Some Americans just live on another planet.

Great Moments in Twitter
Common Squirrel

Hot Dogs
...might be dangerous to small children, but not (just) for the reasons you think.

Comments
The comment system has changed - not through anything I did on purpose. It looks like new comments appear at the top instead of the bottom now, which is a little annoying. Not sure what the deal is - will keep an eye out for spam, which the old system was good at avoiding.

Would I Have Liked Shutter Island as Much if Scorsese's Name Wasn't On It?
I don't know. Hard not to be appreciative of all the careful details though - from camera angles, frames and colors to the striking soundtrack. Also though, hard not to have questions about whether or not, story-wise, it really works as a film experience.

If you've seen it and want to discuss, let's take it to the comments. Warning: My comments will have spoilers! Don't read if you haven't seen.

Multiple Choice
David Cay Johnston reports on newly released 2007 tax data. Do you think he found that the wealthiest Americans:
a) saw a decrease in income and paid a slightly higher tax rate in 2007 than in 2006.
b) saw single digit percent increase in income but also paid slightly higher tax rate.
c) saw dramatic increase in income but paid a slightly higher tax rate as well.
d) experienced a dramatic increase in income and paid the lowest tax rate ever for the top bracket.

Any guesses?

Roger Ebert
A great Esquire feature. If you either love films, or want to be a great writer, have fought a life-threatening illness, or aren't entirely sure what's most important in your life, it's the must-read of the day.

Map(s) of the Day
Via Ezra Klein, the Food Environment Atlas has some fascinating new maps plotting our amounts of various food consumption and obesity rates. Want to know which areas of the country consume the most sodas? Fast food? fruits and vegetables? Check it out.

What the...
It's not just California. Got a notice in the mail that my Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance premium is going up by nearly 30%! I know I'm getting older, but sheesh...

By the way, thanks Congress!

Why?
Evan Bayh announces he's not running for re-election. Could 2010 be looking any worse for Dems? Why wait until now? Could he be on the secret John Edwards love tape too?

His reasoning seems to be:
Step 1) The Senate, one of the most essential institutions in American government, is broken and not serving the people.

Step 2) I'm outta here.

Nice leadership!

Gay vs. Homosexual
This is a real failing of mine. I think I generally use the term "gay" and rarely if ever the word "homosexual" when referring to gay rights issues or gay people or whatever. But that's probably mostly out of convenience - shorter word and all, and maybe sounds a little nicer and more conversational - not because I have thought of the h-word as a slur. But if I was paying attention I would have, and should have, noticed that it is.

CBS just found that if you ask Americans how they feel about "gay men and lesbians" serving in the military, a large majority support it. But if you ask people whether "homosexuals" should be allowed to serve in the military, support drops.
...
People simply don't like the word homosexual. And that is why the religious right uses the word every chance it gets.

Any time you hear or read someone using the word homosexual, correct them on the spot. If it's a reporter or a politician or a TV personality, send them an email or a letter. Treat it like it's a slur. Because it is.

Depending on how you ask the question, support jumps by 11-14 percentage points. How strange is that? More than a tenth of this country thinks that "gay men and lesbians" should be allowed to serve in the military, but that "homosexuals" should not.

Sadly, this is the much-revered middle America, the supposedly independent thinker that politicians are always trying to convince. They don't really think things through or have opinions on important issues beyond the most shallow reaction. They change their minds for no good reason, based on the shiniest words or attitudes they come across. And they essentially run this country, with their whims and uncertainty and unconscious biases the focus of every asshole political consultant.

Bipartisanship Deep Thought
The Senate minority is the new Senate majority. Looking forward to Democrats being back below 50 members so we can be in charge of legislation for a change.

Snow
If you're like me, you are in uncomfortable proximity to morons who have been crowing for a week or 2 about how all this snow questions global warming science. I suppose they also believe trampolines question the science of gravity. You already understand this, of course, but in case you want to hear it from an actual weather man, here's meteorologist Jeff Masters, who notes that all you need for snow are temperatures that are cold enough, and plenty of moisture in the air (my emph.):

It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow.... The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events--the ones most likely to cause flash flooding--will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow.

Trampolines confirm the theory of gravity, and heavy snowstorms do the same for global warming theory.

Gingrich
Still making shit up.

Newt Gingrich explained that it was okay to mirandize "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and not Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because Reid, unlike Abdulmutallab, is a US citizen.

Only, of course, Reid is a British citizen.

Republicans have only one playbook. For the economy, it says "cut taxes for the wealthy and deregulate business"; for foreign policy, it says "paint Democrats as weak." I guess it's not so much a playbook as an index card. As we saw in the case of Dr. Koop, things that don't matter? 1) Any of the real-life consequences. 2) Facts.

Health Care Summit
Will it do any good? Any harm? No idea. But I think the invitation Obama sent to Republican leaders, to discuss health care reform on teevee, is being seriously underestimated for its potential impact. It seems to me a central moment not just in the health debate, but in Americans' understanding and expectation of the process of governing. It could do for legislating what debates now do for campaigning: turn the public eye on elected officials' ability to be serious and reasonable, knowledgable and practical.

Jon Chait says it's also clearly part of the Obama Method:

Obama uses a similar approach toward Republicans as foreign enemies like the Iranian regime: take them up on their claim to some shared goal (nuclear disarmament, health care reform), elide their preferred red herrings, engage them seriously, and then expose their disingenuousness.
...
Obama knows perfectly well that the Republicans have no serious proposals to address the main problems of the health care system and have no interest (or political room, given their crazy base) in handing him a victory of any substance. Obama is bringing them in to discuss health care so he can expose this reality.

The truth is, we can no longer depend on our mainstream media to accurately report the substance and import of what our government is up to - the good or the bad. If this works, not only will health care reform have a chance, but smart politicians may have found a way to finally and helpfully bypass media spin and sensationalism - if only for 60 minutes or so - and speak directly to the public about their ideas.

What if events like this over major issues facing America become must-watch-tv for the general public the way campaign debates are? Even if Obama ends up losing this battle, that development could be a silver lining. What both sides surely realize is: nobody has done this before. They don't *really* know how to prepare, how it will look, what they have to do to win, etc. Along with answering Republican questions last week, this really could be a game-changer in getting Americans to demand our leaders talk to each other, about important issues, in front of us.

Could that be an even more awful thing for the legislation to come from it? I can imagine that as well...but feeling optimistic today. Am I wrong? Is this a one-time thing? Disaster in the making? Much ado about nothing?

When Parties Dream
Just a thought, reviewing the news of the last couple of days, because it's brought into very clear relief how fundamentally different the 2 parties really are: Democrats dream of being in the majority so we can finally bring universal health coverage to all Americans and finally bring an end to foolish wars. Republicans dream of being in the majority so they can privatize social security and finally bring an end to Medicare and Medicaid.

Getting Obvious
If you've been following any of the particulars of the health care bill debate, you may be shocked to see details of the Republicans' "solutions". That's because out of the four main points they'd like to see included in health care reform, the current Senate bill already includes at least 3 of them. Ezra Klein has more. Republicans don't want a bill at all.

Rooting for USA
...in Olympic hockey; partly because they will be big underdogs (I think any medal would be a good outcome, given how strong Canada and Russia will be), and partly because of this.

Poster Boy for Senate Obstructionism Found
Basically, Senator Richard Shelby won't let Senators even think about doing anything until his state gets the defense pork he wants.

Now can we please demonize him the way Republicans would, and beat the living daylights out of this issue? Pretty please?

[UPDATE: Good start.]

Lunkhead of the Week
Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who falsely claims in a TV ad that Britain's National Health Service would have denied him the pacemakers, stents and artificial joints he received in the U.S. because they would have deemed him too old to treat. Just completely made up lies.

factcheck.org debunks at link above.

Dow Jones Deep Thought
Maybe somebody can tell me why I don't just have my money in a jar somewhere?

[Glass Half Full Update: At least I don't own shares of Toyota.]

SIDS
Autism may still be a mystery (see post below), but looks like researchers have made an important discovery regarding Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Vaccines and Autism Revisited
Thanks to Stevie T for sending this link:

Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the lead investigator, brought international attention to the paper by saying he thought the MMR vaccinations were to blame. The assertions chipped away at confidence in vaccination.

It later emerged that Wakefield had been taking money from a lawyer suing vaccine makers. The results of his study couldn't be replicated. Most of Wakefield's co-authors later retracted the paper's interpretation of the data. The Lancet backed away from the paper in 2004, but defended its publication on the grounds it helped "raise new ideas."

In the retraction today, the Lancet editors wrote that it became clear parts of the paper are "incorrect."

What was the last straw for the Lancet? An investigation by the U.K.'s General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, found that Wakefield had acted dishonestly and irresponsibly.

Could Have Done *This* a Year Ago
Annoying (my emphasis)

Launching a formal process to change the long-standing [Don't Ask Don't Tell] policy, the Pentagon also announced a review that will examine the effects of a policy change along with alterations in military benefits, rules and facilities that might be needed to allow gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

The review could take up to a year and will fuel concerns among advocates for gay service members that any change will be slow in coming about.

So, figuring out how to stop discriminating is as complex and will take as long as figuring out how to close Gitmo? Ridiculous. The good news is that the highest ranking military official, Admiral Mike Mullen, is on the right side. In a sign of the times, he even tweeted so:

Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do. Comes down to integrity.

I may be over-simplifying this, and a bit naive about the ways of the military, but this doesn't sound like the kind of thing that should take a year to figure out how to make work. As far as I can see, it's like this: stop firing people when you find out they're gay. Take out of the manual the part that says you will. Voila. What am I missing?

Undemocratic
Senate holds. Much more egregious even than the filibuster. Why don't Dems make more noise?

Education Reform: Is Your State Racing or Ambling?
With all the talk of deficits, health care reform, and Afghanistan, there has been precious little news on one of the largest and boldest areas of reform the Obama Administration has enacted: the "Race to the Top" education initiative. States seeking significant infusions of federal education money have only to make changes in education policy consistent with administration ideals, submit an application, and hope for the best.

What are those ideals? increased experimentation with charter schools, and test-score-driven teacher evaluation, to name a couple. If your state - like Tennessee - had tight rules limiting charter school creation, you had better change that law (we did) if you want the federal education money. If you won't base teacher evaluations on student performance, or won't spend the resources to implement comprehensive, coordinated data analysis, Secretary Duncan promises he will turn down your application. Some states like Texas have refused to play at all. Others, like apparently New Jersey and New York, might think they are getting money, but look like they may not, if Duncan lives up to his promised standards of review. Which state's application seems to look the best from the Obama Adminstration's point of view? Check out the Washington Post's (pundit contest winner) Kevin Huffman for the answer. Meanwhile, stay tuned. The NYTimes reports that President Obama is poised to unveil sweeping changes to current education law (No Child Left Behind), once Race to the Top funding is established. (via Ezra Klein)

Must-See TV
I am home early today after snow convinced me not to stick around school this afternoon, (Accumulation on deck looks like about an inch and counting!) and was immediately mesmerized by what was on my teevee: President Obama taking questions from House Republicans at their retreat. I knew he accepted their invite; didn't know he would take Q and A, and especially didn't know it was going to be live on tv. At the risk of over-hyping, it was maybe some of the most compelling stuff I've seen in quite a while, maybe even - dare I think it - a bit substantive.

I can't help but think that if Presidents routinely held sessions like these, the country would be so much better for it - at least our politics, and maybe our policy as well. Of course, I assume that means that instead this will never happen again. Frankly, the President ran rings around them today, and on live tv, further making it unlikely question time will become an American tradition.

If you have time, you should do yourself a favor and watch. It's online now. At times, he reminded me of videos you see of President Kennedy volleying with critics.

[UPDATE: Here's the White House's video link of the event if you're having trouble with c-span.]

SOTU Thoughts
What could be more useless than a blog post about the State of the Union speech some 16+ hours after it's over? I mean, it's already been tweeted, live-blogged, insta-polled, focus-grouped, spun and re-spun, analyzed, fact-checked (even the fact-checks have been fact-checked), and deconstructed. Not only has a consensus emerged as to its quality, but I think I smell a backlash already building over the consensus view. By later today, everything we thought we knew about the speech will already be wrong, and by tomorrow, everyone will have completely forgotten about the address altogether - as if it never happened. Such is our reaction cycle, I guess. So, with absolutely nothing possibly new to offer, I nonetheless give you my random thoughts and questions, which have been rummaging around in my head since last night without bothering to turn into an actual coherent idea. In no particular order:

*When Obama lectures Congress on civility, bipartisanship, and their civic duty, I still get the distinct impression that he really does believe all the stuff he's saying. This insistence makes him a great man, and a powerful candidate but probably left him undressed as an actual President during his first year. Will he continue to govern astride this noble - but perhaps fatally flawed - belief?

*I don't remember the Supreme Court ever taking a direct challenge from the podium before. I don't know if they were uncomfortable when a majority all around them rose up to condemn the 5 who brought us Citizens United but I imagine they were.

*I wonder which will be the first President to include something like a PowerPoint presentation with the SOTU? Just a matter of time, right? I generally hate the idea, and love the straight speech, but we *are* trying to actually get across some important thoughts. A helpful chart here and there might communicate more than some people are getting from complete sentences.

*Maybe watching some of Jobs' iPad announcement is what makes me think of that.

*I wish there could be follow-up reminders in the weeks and months following the speech. It seems like a whole year before anyone reminded Americans that the majority of our huge debt was incurred during the last administration, and the part we added this year was just an effort to clean up that catastrophe. He did a great job I though laying out the story, and explaining how he's going to recover the 1 trillion this year has added. But in a week, nobody will remember that. The White House needs to say where we are over and over and over.

*Loved his full-throated defense of the American Recovery Act.

*and his reminder of the stakes of health care reform. Not sure why everyone is down on his putting it in the middle of speech. With unemployment numbers so high and every right-wing and Perotesque indie freaking out over and hammering the deficit all the sudden, it's hard for the winnable middle to be convinced that health care reform is related, much less more important. We've been talking about it for months; I don't mind not giving it top billing.

*Why do the freakout faction liberals think that if he had just said directly: "the Senate should promise to pass the fixes and the House should pass the bill"?? Why would that make it more likely to happen? I thought he was plenty forceful on the issue. Just get it done. Pass the damn bill. Audience he cares about doesn't care about process.

*He had better deliver on the don't ask don't tell promise. This year. Whatever it takes. Notice he's willing to step in and take executive action on a budget deficit commission where the Senate failed. He should be no less willing to stand up for gays and lesbians. It's not even marriage, for heaven's sake.

*Best line of the night was reminding who's in a solid majority and admonishing Dems not to "run for the hills."

*Was left wishing he had really gone after the Senate for its hold rules, keeping appointments and the confirmation process from happening when one Senator objects. He mentioned it, and I thought he was going to pound them for what is essentially the most outrageous, offensive undemocratic procedural hurdle imaginable. Much worse even than the filibuster. But for some reason he didn't press. Why?? If the American people really understood that a single Senator can put a stop to Presidential appointments - like to head Transportation Safety, which still is leaderless - with absolutely no reason and essentially anonymously, they would be outraged. Why do we not exploit this? And name names?

*Something tangible needs to happen soon to build any momentum from positive response to speech. Maybe, oh I dunno this could be a pipedream, but maybe the Senate could get around to, you know, passing something. Anything.

That's all I got. What did you think?

Getting Tired...
...of the anti-Obama liberal freak-out faction that now seems to revel in drawing every worst-possible-conclusion to his every move. When Bill Clinton did stuff like this - except for welfare reform where he got nailed as well - we praised him as a masterful politician. He would have been hailed a genius for boxing the Republicans in with a word like "freeze" after he'd already raised spending considerably his first year, left room for health reform, a second stimulus, a jobs bill, and all the spending conservatives love (military, intelligence, homeland security). Now that Obama does it, not only does he not get the benefit of the doubt, the freak-out faction is acting like he cut school lunch programs or something.

Here's the truth: what's actually "frozen" in Obama's proposal is relatively very small, and leaves room for flexible increases and decreases for individual programs within the larger umbrella. It's also essentially what he's been saying all along he would send Congress: a massive spending increase in year one to right the ship after Bush decimated domestic programs, and then a significant slowdown in spending so the deficit doesn't go nuts for the following three years. This "freeze" will cut last year's budget spending projections by a miniscule 250 billion over 10 years.

Memo to freak-out faction: Calling it a "freeze" is the White House's political calculation designed to neutralize idiot Republicans/Independents. It's smart politics at a time we could use some. Job bill, second stimulus, health reform, not affected. Education budget will still increase under his proposal, some other peripheral programs will get cut to make room. Chill.

Education and Teachers
Roger Ebert's been attending the Sundance Film Festival, and watched 2 documentaries back-to-back dealing with education. One of them was beautifully uplifting, he says; the other was painfully depressing. One was about America, the other about Kenya. Can you guess which is the downer? Warning: don't read his entry if you are averse to being woefully depressed - or in the case of some of you, possibly offended - on a Monday.

Is there anything, really, to be done?

[UPDATE: Here's the Sundance ad for the film "Waiting for Superman", the film about American education, made by Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth. What do you think of his admission about, oh, 2 1/2 mins in?]

Warning: Not Safe For Work
But only in a PG-13 kind of way.

I Don't Tweet
But I did just now:

Dear House, #hcr solution is simple. Pass Sen bill now, then refuse to pass anything ELSE the Sen sends until they fix it. #voila

Why are House Dems held up begging for assurances and promises from the Senate? Why would they agree to that at this point? They like their bill! It's basic negotiation/manipulation: Wait until there's something the Senate really wants, and then make your deal. Then we get a bill asap, and eventually the right incentive will come along to get 51 Senate Dems to pass some changes w/ reconciliation. Remember: reform won't go into effect for years. There's not much time to pass the bill, but there's plenty of time to fix it.

Call Your Democratic Congressperson
Pass the damn bill. Experts agree.

What More Can You Say?
I've never been so ashamed of and angry at congressional Democrats. For a group that's made such a living out of compromise and capitulation to be so unwilling now on health care reform to do the highly imperfect thing that nonetheless needs to be done is... shockingly tone deaf and incompetent. It's a weird mix of cowardice and sudden stubbornness.

When you put that together with all the chest-thumping delays we suffered - from the public option demanders and abortion complainers and budget hawks, to the triggers and opt-outs, the Liebermess and all the rest - and realize we were on the freaking goal line (both houses passed a bill for God's sake!), only to abandon the win because - to continue the analogy - our team can't agree on whether to run it in or pass it in... it's disgusting, really.

Politically it's just embarrassing, I guess, but the stakes are so high, that's too soft a word. How many people won't have insurance now, or will lose it, or go bankrupt because they're sick that may have been saved under this legislation, flawed as it may have been. And we are in this situation all because in the year 2009 Democrats couldn't come together on a deal quickly enough for Teddy to see it; and in the year 2010 - faced with that failure - the House simply decided (on the backs of the sick and the poor) that the bill we got 60 Senators to support just wasn't good enough for them?

Every House member who is a "no" right now should have to face a camera and say with a straight face that the status quo in health care is better than the Senate bill. Those are our 2 realistic choices so far as I can see. Jeebus... When do these numbnuts even think they will be in the majority again if they back down now?

Says it All
Read this letter from a Senate staffer posted by TPM.

Health Care Reform
...is on progressive Democrats in the House now, who could pass the Senate version immediately and get it to the President. Apparently they are refusing to do that, and to protect what, exactly? Their utopian plan? The unions that will take a hit from the "cadillac tax"? What else is so worth going down in flames, losing the House in November, and leaving the American people with the status quo in health care?

It's absolutely shocking to hear that the Barney Franks, Anthony Wieners and Jerrold Nadlers of the world are now the immovable objects blocking the sensible reforms we need: a mandate, subsidies for those who can't afford it, and new rules for insurance companies to protect the insured from exploitation, abandonment and bankruptcy.

They could do it right now. Tomorrow. No Senate vote required.

It's both political and governing malpractice that this wasn't done already, thanks to all the internal hand-wringing and posturing over compromises we all knew were coming. This all should have been done before Ted Kennedy even died, let alone before his replacement was elected.

Probably Won't Matter But...
It looks like a recount can be ordered by a petition of 1,000 Massachusetts voters if the spread is 1/2 of one percent or less today between Brown and Coakley.

These procedures may be used only if the margin of victory is not more than one-half percent of the votes cast for an office or question.

...The petition must first be submitted for certification of signatures to the registrars of voters in the signers' city or town, and then filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth...on the day as stated in the following table. {me: the table says 15th day after the election}

The petition must be signed by one-fourth the number of voters required to sign a state primary nomination paper for a candidate in this district, but 1,000 for the entire state.

Outrageous [UPDATED]
ABC report uncovers coded biblical messages on weaponry purchased by US Military.

[UPDATE: Military says what's the big deal? We're not changing anything.]

Unsolicited Twitter Advice
Follow Roger Ebert.

I'm Going to be Pissed
...if Democrats lose in the special election to replace Ted Kennedy, as is looking more and more possible. It would leave Democrats with 2 very unsavory options in health care reform: 1) Delay seating Republican Scott Brown (which, lets face it is what Republicans would do in the same position) until the compromise bill can pass the Senate. Along with facing a political firestorm, this strategy may not even work, should someone (Lieberman) decide it's such a bad move that he would refuse to support health reform under the circumstances; or 2) the House would have to pass a bill identical to what the Senate has already passed, so it doesn't have to go back and face a GOP filibuster, rendering all the recent compromises moot. That would still be well worth passing, but we'd miss the chance to slightly improve it that we will have otherwise.

Less importantly, it will leave us Democrats electorally depressed not just after November as I already anticipate, but all year long. Ugh.

Heard This Before
Link

Congressional negotiators and the White House have made significant headway on resolving two of the biggest differences between the House and Senate health care bills in recent days, and it looks like they're just about ready to wrap things up.

Can we get Lieberman to sign something please before we start talking about having it all done? Just sayin.

Technology
My iPod is many years old. It's black and white, click wheel with no video, it's so old. The battery has been perfect. Zero problems. I love it.

I was dismayed then when a couple weeks ago it just wouldn't boot up - gave a bad looking error message instead. Hopeful I could simply restore the software to factory settings and re-load the music, I hooked it up to the computer, but that didn't work out. It kept re-starting and stalling in a loop, telling me I needed to "restore the corrupt iPod" (I know!) but then wouldn't proceed - informing me that the "corrupt iPod" was "busy" and so couldn't be restored. Busy doing what, I thought? Just being corrupt?

For the last week or so I've tried to find a way to revive it, to bypass this loop, dreading the new iPod purchase that seemed imminent. I tried messing with iTunes settings, charging and letting die the iPod battery, whatever I could think of.

Finally, I Googled the exact error message (error 1416, as it turns out) I was getting from iTunes to see if anyone else had solved this mystery, and I landed on this Apple forum page, a discussion centering around the following advice:

I thought this was a joke, but after fiddling with it for days, i tried it, and it worked! I didn't drop it, I just held it in one hand and banged it against the palm of my other hand. I was getting error 1416 btw, with a 60GB photo ipod.

Then this:

I had the exact problem, and Idid as someone suggested, BANGED IT AGAINST MY HAND, and amazingly all my music was back, and the error message was gone.

And 3 or 4 others saying basically the same thing. So, tonight I banged the back of my corrupt, busy iPod against the palm of my hand as hard as I could, one time. Now it works beautifully.

Take 2
Stevie T suggest another post for this convo, so trying again. Post below is too long and has too many thoughts - still welcome those comments and questions though. Here, purely out of curiosity, and I promise my last Beatles post for a long while, I invite you to tell either 1) your favorite original Beatles track; or 2) your opinion about the *best* original Beatles track (should you believe in that distinction). Any explanation is of course welcome but not required for participation. Both lovers and haters of Beatles are invited.

You can do it.

If you can at least narrow down to a handful of choices, you will be ridiculed (wuss!) but your answer accepted.

(Note: I offered students the option of choosing the suite (medley) of songs on the 2nd side of Abbey Road - from "You Never Give Me Your Money" through "The End" - as a single track for purpose of the project. So, it is fair game, and would be one of my finalists for both #1 and #2)