Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by DougJ| 38 Comments
This post is in: Media, Good News For Conservatives
I missed this: the winner of the WaPo Next Great Pundit contest is Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband. Rhee is the chancellor of the DC schools and a darling of the Post (as well as David Brooks, Joe Klein, and the rest of teachers’ union-hating punditocratic masses).
What a fresh outside-the-beltway voice this will be!
by DougJ| 47 Comments
This post is in: Assholes, Good News For Conservatives
One thing that’s quite striking in the health care debate is the lack of detailed analysis opponents are presenting in their arguments. Compare Ron Brownstein’s positive analysis of the Senate bill for example, with David Broder’s meandering, senility ramblings against it. Or this MIT economist’s favorable analysis of its impact on premiums with Krauthammer’s latest vague, error riddled column on the subject.
The anti-health care reform piece that I found most disappointing was this one, by Jeffrey S. Flier, a dean at the Harvard Medical School.
In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.
Remarkably, he doesn’t name even one of these health-care leaders or economists! And it turns out this guy also produced some kind of glibertarian nonsense opposing health care in 1994.
I understand why the WSJ published the piece: they’re right-wing sociopaths with no journalistic integrity. But I wonder if the Harvard Medical School is happy to have this kind of fact-free garbage go out under their name. And It’s remarkable the extent to which wingers are happy to abuse their positions to forward the political agenda they favor.
This post is in: Open Threads
I’m really not looking forward to this at all.
This post is in: Open Threads
Have at it.
by John Cole| 95 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
For reasons I can not explain, intermittent internet access at the casa tonight.
Star Trek = awesome
Angels and Demons = meh
Four Christmases- As far as the genre goes, good. I mean, it has the guys from Swingers, right.
Hopefully the intertrons will be fixed by tomorrow. I’ve set up qa CBS Sunday Morning thread to go auto if not.
We are affirmative on couch burns and off to bed.
This post is in: Open Threads
Doing the movie thing tonight- have Angels and Demons and Star Trek, made some pad thai for dinner that was probably the best I have ever made, and am just loving Star Trek. I don’t know how the purists reacted to the remake, but it is a lot of fun.
I love these long weekends when the only time I have to leave the house and possibly run into people is when I walk the dog.
This post is in: General Stupidity
But I have CNN on in the background and I am still seeing breathless commentary about the party crashers at the White House.
People are aware that the only thing that happened in the breach is that they were not officially invited, right? You all are aware out there that they went through intense screening on-site, went through metal detectors and everything else, and there was no chance they had a weapon on them. You are aware that if one of them had, as Peter King suggested, “grabbed a knife off a table” and lunged for POTUS, they would have been tackled by any one of the thousands of security personnel there. You are aware that they were through far more security screening than it takes to get on an airplane, and tons more than any of the hundreds of thousands of people who shook hands with Obama the last year on rope lines?
In short, you are aware that the only thing that was missing was their name on an official invite list, and it is looking like they were helped out by an Indian dignitary.
Stop acting like Osama bin Laden crashed the damned dinner with a MOAB under his trenchcoat. If this gets the Secret Service more money and resources, great, but no one was in danger and this is really just silly.