Lemkin

Well, looks like this about wraps it up for Tiger Woods:

An Orange County Utilities manager told the Sentinel today his agency likely will bill the golfer about $600 for the expenses related to repairing the fire hydrant the pro-golfer struck.

It cost about $85 to pick up the damaged hydrant. And now there’s a work-order with the county for about $450 to repair and replace the hydrant.

No doubt Tiger will be too busy working double night-shifts at Winchell’s and/or take to driving a gypsy cab in vain hope of paying off these unbelievable debts. Thank you, Orlando Sentinel, for this sort of incisive, hard-hitting reportage. Truly a service to the Western World.

And, before you start feeling sorry for Tiger, get ready to feel really sorry for Tiger:

And eventually, the county will need to replace the sod around the hydrant.

Will it never end? Will we never let this poor man up? Hasn’t he suffered enough!?! I guess not, as the putative other-lady has this to say:

Although I’ve been romantically linked to a famous baseball player, a Broadway star, a musician, and various film and television actors, I will never kiss and tell

You stay classy, Orlando Sentinel.

David Brooks, yesterday, 11/15:

[Sarah Palin is] a joke. I mean, I just can’t take her seriously. We’ve got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama’s trying to handle war. We’ve just a had guy elected Virginia governor who’s probably the model for the future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell, pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination — believe me, it’ll never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host.

David Brooks, 10/08:

It took [Sarah Palin] about 15 seconds to define her persona — the straight-talking mom from regular America — and it was immediately clear that the night would be filled with tales of soccer moms, hockey moms, Joe Sixpacks, Main Streeters, “you betchas” and “darn rights.” Somewhere in heaven Norman Rockwell is smiling.

[—and, from his NYT perch—]

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Thoughtful people are welcome to change their minds. Encouraged to do so when the facts as we may know them change. What Brooks has been up to, though, is pretty clearly peddling that particular brand of NYT horseshit to the rubes whilst, simultaneously:

at a media panel for elites at the Le Cirque in New York City, Brooks denounced her anti-intellectual candidacy as a “cancer” on the Republican Party.

This sort of thing is the root of the problem with our discourse. At least in the past, it seemed you only had hearsay to go on; you suspected as much but could never hope to pin somebody on this sort of thing. Now, though, we have transcripts and often video of these sorts of brazen acts of dishonesty almost in real-time. And yet there’s still never, ever any accounting at the end of the day. Quite the opposite. Wrong on the war? Here’s a promotion, son; right on the war: You’re fired. Try not to be so shrill.

We’ve got to start unseating these people. Lou Dobbs makes a start, but is only the first of many. Elections have consequences. That Brooks didn’t learn this once and for all back in 2000 speaks volumes. He’s still playing at it like this is all some sort of elaborate parlor game that matters not at all. It’s unforgivable.

Every now and then a statement rolls in front of your eyes that you stop and re-read, then think about, and then read again. But it’s the same information every time. Rest assured, I am not making this up:

After he finished making “True Lies,” [director James] Cameron called [Stanley] Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over. They spent a day, in the basement of Kubrick’s house in the English countryside, watching “True Lies” at Kubrick’s flatbed editing station.

I imagine some of the conversations went like this:

“Yeah, Stan, that 2001 was okay, but, man, take. a look. at this. You are goddamned right I had Schwarzenegger and Jaimie Lee Curtis kiss in front of a mushroom cloud. You are goddamned right I did that. Nobody does that but Cameron! “

I admire the man for his brass balls (read all about them in the source article in the New Yorker). Coulda been a salesman. (Tough racket.) Also for this:

Cameron was born in Canada, and grew up in a small town not far from Niagara Falls. (He revoked his application for American citizenship after Bush won the election in 2004.)

It’s a great profile. Especially since the author, Dana Goodyear, saw fit to include this gem:

As an instance of feminist iconography it perhaps leaves something to be desired.

Get away from Aliens, you bitch!

Lots of people seem to think that if we don’t get all the way to single payer (or some other abstract, personal measure of “success” in health insurance reforms) that the reform is not worth doing. I think Ezra Klein destroys that meme rather completely while noting that failure doesn’t breed more expansive second-tries; instead, it only breeds more caution on the subsequent go-round:

Truman sought single payer. His failure led to Kennedy and Johnson, who confined their ambitions to poor families and the elderly. Then came Nixon, whose reform plan was entirely based around private insurers and government regulation. He was followed by Carter, who favored an incremental, and private, approach, and Clinton, who again sought to reform the system by putting private insurers into a market that would be structured and regulated by the government. His failure birthed Obama’s much less ambitious proposal, which attempts to reform not the health-care system, but the small group and nongroup portions of the health-care system by putting a small minority of private insurance plans into a market that’s structured and regulated by the government, and closed off to most Americans.

Never get tired of talking about Nixon re: healthcare reform. Anywho, Ezra goes on:

Medicare and Medicaid began as fairly limited programs. Medicaid was pretty much limited to extremely poor children and their caregivers. Medicare didn’t cover prescription drugs, or individuals with disabilities, or home health services.

But once the programs were passed into law, they were slowly and continually improved. They became more expansive, with Medicaid growing to cover not only poor families but also poor adults, and the federal government giving states the option, and matching dollars, to include more people under the program’s umbrella. Medicare was charged with covering people with long-term disabilities, and it was eventually strengthened with a drug benefit, more preventive coverage, the option of supplementary plans and much more.

Pass something. The worst version of the Baucus bill would indisputably improve the lot of millions, millions of Americans. The main thing to focus on is keeping the outcome one that quantifiably improves the experience for many, if not most, consumers. The voters out there can accept an imperfect solution, so long as they sense they are no longer being utterly screwed by their insurance company. This will (presumably) happen the first time they make a claim, or change jobs, or (hopefully) see their premiums drop and their pay rise accordingly post-reform.

Let’s begin:

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt — $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

That was Lieberman on FOXnews (where else?) this Sunday past. Doubtless just posturing, but let’s take him at his word: the deficit (and, by extension, the debt) is and should be held in absolute primacy to any and all other spending or policy decisions (which, of course, also have direct spending implications). Fair enough. We take that as a first principle.

The current GOP “plan” (in that it’s not even a plan so much as a policy statement) has been scored over the 10-year window as potentially resulting in a reduction of budget deficits by $68 billion while helping 3 million folks get coverage they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The plan passed by the House, on the other hand, extends coverage to 36 million currently uninsured Americans while cutting the deficit by $104 billion over the same 10-year window.

Which of those plans is more deficit neutral, Joe?

Of course, third option is do nothing. Joe himself has pushed this idea. Here’s what that looks like:

By all means, MSM, continue treating Joe Lieberman as a sober, deficits minded fellow only out for what’s best for the country. Let’s not once pause to ask him: Joe, just how does the public option contribute to the deficit?

The Atlantic and author Christopher Hitchens, trying to declare Western Civilization dead because Jon Stewart pokes fun at our political discourse (and out-polls his Serious Journalism counterparts in the “most trusted” category while doing it), goes completely off the deep end intellectually just two paragraphs in:

And if any one thing undid Governor Palin as a person who could even be considered for the vice presidency, it was the merciless guying of her manner and personality by Tina Fey.

Uh, no. If any one thing undid Governor Palin, it was her brazenly obvious lack of qualifications for that job coupled with an obvious absence of the sort of desire or drive needed to get her ready in the several months available prior to the general election (or, for that matter, her debate with Biden). Her unceasing reliance on “You Betcha!” and other equally trenchant bits of commentary in the face of any and all questions is what created, powered, and was ultimately the thing that resonated in the Tina Fey bit. Fey was simply the person most visibly pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The imitation was so effective that viewers couldn’t help but realize that there was nothing else in there but the scare quotes, nonsensical rambles, and the closing catch-phrases. Had Palin been an unquestionably qualified (but green) candidate with a similarly idiosynchratic library of quips and old-fashioned truisms, she still would have been mocked, just as any national political figure’s most obvious tics are mocked, but simultaneously would have been accepted as an otherwise serious player on the national scene, admittedly one with a folksy shtick. Big deal. Suggesting otherwise is the real infantilization of the American discourse. And Jon Stewart and his ilk aren’t the ones responsible for any of that. Makes you wonder why his “Trust” numbers are so high.

Of all the MSM tropes, this one is (perhaps) the most insane:

Resolved: Anyone who espouses a given idea must then hew to the most unforgiving and ridiculous possible interpretation of said idea or that person is a hypocrite and probably a liar.

One example: John Edwards wants to help the poor and has put his political muscle, such as it is, behind that. He also happens to live in an expensive house. MSM analysis: He is an unforgivable hypocrite who cannot care about the plight of those living in poverty.

However, Al Gore, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, is the target of more if this sort of ass-hattery than perhaps anyone else in public life, ever. The MSM has conducted a long and wide-ranging War on Gore that is as unstoppable as it is unmentionable in “polite” discourse.

Witness Diane Sawyer, hiding behind Glenn Beck to ask this question:

Once again asking Al Gore if you really want to save the planet, Al, why don’t you put down the cheeseburger and pick up the veggie burger? Time for, maybe, soy milk and tofurkey?

To which Gore (sensibly) replies:

There is a serious issue about the connection between the growing meat intensity of diets around the world and damage to the environment. And like a lot of people, I eat less meat now than I used to. I’m not a vegetarian, don’t plan to become one, but it’s a healthy choice to eat more vegetables and fruits. So it’s not a laughable issue.

Sawyer’s take-home:  “So, tofurkey for you.”

Her annual salary for this incredible analysis: between 12 and 15 million dollars. And who can possibly argue with her logic? It is not possible for an individual to be concerned about the environmental wages of industrial meat production without subsisting entirely on a flavorless mush called “rootmarm.” Any other course of action would be both utterly ridiculous and inexcusably hypocritical.

Rick Hertzberg and I agree on three out of four things:

1. The Beck-Limbaugh purification of the Republican Party will continue apace.

Populist nihilism—increasingly the default position within the G.O.P., especially on national level—still has a lot of energy left in it. As the party’s core shrinks (a process that will continue even if its share of the vote increases relative to the Democratic share), the resentful right’s stranglehold will grow stronger.

2. The Republicans will gain seats in next year’s midterm election.

The party holding the White House always loses seats in a new President’s first midterm, the only exception being the special case of 2002, the year of Bush-Rove post-9/11 electoral terrorism.

3. The right, and much of the commentariat, will discover a cause-and-effect relationship between No. 1, above, and No. 2.

They’ll figure it this way: post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Then we diverge. He offers:

4. President Obama will be reëlected.

He’ll be the safe choice. Having been elected on hope, change, and adventure, he’ll be reëlected on reassurance, stability, and … experience.

I think it’s more like:

4. If unemployment is below 10% nationally, Obama may be reelected, depending on opponent. If it’s below 8%, he will win in a landslide regardless of oponent.

It’s really as simple as that.

We’re back in agreement on the bonus Fifth Thing, which is presented more as a prayer:

5. The number of Americans who realize that more of our problems stem from structure (especially the Senate, and most especially the filibuster) than from politicians’ lack of moral fiber will reach the cusp of a tipping point.

Amen.