Fox v. Obama

Ok, I tried and tired and I could not get the embed to work. So take the time to jump over to the Daily Show and get a run down on What The Fox is going on between Fox and the White House.


Quick take

1) Fox Reporters - Report on Asinine story
2) Fox Analyst - Get outrage make hysterical comments
3) Fox Reporters - Report "Some" are outraged and saying ...

Take a moment and take a look

Respect Dignity

The first time since 2001 when the war in Afghanistan started a US President receives the fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base.

Remember up until this year no photo's were allowed to be taken of this ceremony.

Lieberman's a What?

Last Friday I wrote that Lieberman was going to be the "real Wild card".

Reports are coming out that he has stated he will vote to fillibuster the Health Care Reform Bill as it currently stands. Referencing that he wants no publicloption what so ever.

It appears this may have been the fight the White House wanted to avoid if the reports are to be believed. This is my guess on how this plays out. If Lieberman votes for the fillibuster he may well have two or three conservative Democrats follow suit, if he falls in line so will they. The concern I have re: Lieberman is the Democrats have limited leverage on him. It appears to limited to his commitee chairmanship. The other Democrats are still beholden to the party in some fashion. Lieberman lost the parties nomination and had to run as an Independant.

This is but one more wrinkle to watch.

Here are my comments regarding Lieberman last November read them and judge for yourself.

Speaking of Triggers, I think it is time for Obama to pull it

I have tried to maintain an even keel in following and participating in the Health Care Debate. Never trying to get too excited or too disappointed. That has served me well as this has been a long drawn out debate. It has had it's ups back in June, it's downs in August, and a slow steady rise through September and October.

There has been a lot of pressure on behalf of progressive Health Care Reform. Many of my freinds on the left of me have been dis-spirited by the lack of Obama's taking the debate by the throat. I have continued to cut him some slack, preferring to look at the outcome as much as the process. As we get closer and closer to voting on the floors of Congress, reform is inching it's way along in an acceptable position.

A mere two weeks ago discussing this issue I shared my opinion with a number of fellow Obama volunteers that it was too early to be disappointed by his side line approach. After all it was his speech to Congress in September that put a floor under the falling polls and sparked the resurrection of the debate in a more progressive fashion.

I was pleased to hear that the pressure on Reid to include a Public Option in the Senate bill was successfull. Once it is in it will be almost impossible to strip it out. In the end what whatever finally comes out of the Senate will be the closest proximity to what the final bill will look like. I have always believed that Obama would wait till Democrats got the ball down to the Red Zone and then would join in the battle to help push the ball across the end zone. He has was successful in staying sufficiently above the fray to not allow himself to be overly identified with any specific piece of legislation. This would allow him to take possession of whatever the final product was and run it into the end zone.

That is why the reporting that at first the "White House" pushed back against Reid including the Opt-out Public Option instead of the Triggered Option is so very disappointing. TPM has a report discussing the relationship between Reid and the "White House" in getting the bill passed.

Now in my wildest dreams,
I suspected that Obama was allowing Reid to get to left of the White House as Reid was losing support from the Liberals and is going to need their help in his election next year. This would allow Obama then to stand in the middle and say this is the bill that Congress has come up with and now that we are here we need to get it passed.

You can imagine the disappointment when Chuck Todd of NBC reports a quote such as

White House Tells Reid 'Don't Come Crying to Us When You Need That Last Vote'

I'll continue to maintain my even keel going into the home stretch of this debate as it is far from over. Constantly reminding myself that the final product is much more important than the process. That being said President Obama could be find himself having to do some searious making up to all of us who jumped into the fray last fall.

Coming full circle Chuck Todd has issued statements walking back from the quote about don't come crying to me. It appears this was supposed to have been his own clarification and not a direct quote. That makes a large difference. This eipisode is just a reminder of the importance of taking this whole debate in stride.

Unbelievable

An impressive talent by any measure, take a look.



Watch CBS News Videos Online

Superfreak contd.

Two more post from Brad Delong on the Superfreakonomics controversy. One is an interview with one of the scientist that the authors interviewed extensively and applied a few of his quotes out of context and the second is a general scolding of their reaction to all the criticism. Again I think they may have gotten too cute for their own good. I have no idea what their true beliefs are. What I have sensed from this debate is they or their publisher was hoping to stir up some sales by playing with the Climate Change deniers.

One doesn't have to be in the publishing business to realize how well conservative books sell. Glen Beck, Bill O' Reilly, Michelle Malkin. This may have been an attempt to flirt with this book buying crowd while still appealing to the crowd that bought all those Freakonomics books, which there is a good chance wasn't the same crowd. They are now getting called out for getting too close to the line. My first hint was the Title / Subtitle

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (Hardcover)

Shocking isn't, well that is what is supposed to do Sex, Politics, Murder.

Interview

Stop Whining and reap what you Sow

Health Care in a Nut Shell

The Reader's Digest version.

Harry Reid is leaning toward including the Public Option with an Opt Out provision. He doesn't necessarily have 60 votes in hand but thinks he might be close. Yesterday's leak is a trial balloon to see what kind of pushback he gets from his own party. Snowe (a Republican) bit and said she could not vote for this. No other Democrats have come out so strong. The real wild card will be Joe Lieberman of Conneticut. He is an independant who plays with the Democrats. Remember Joe was John McCain's big guy last election. President Obama came in and saved his skin after the election and let him stay on as Chairman of his Committee. Could this be the payback time?

Remember a couple of days I linked a post to Fivethirtyeight.com that was suggesting the Opt Out will be the final version. Yesterday's news looks to give that assessment some weight.

Public Option Options on a Graph

Race, Religion, History - America

I recommend this article andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

POOO - Pulbic Option Opt Out

Instinctively I like the optout public option. Fivethirtyeight.com discusses why they think that is the plan gaining steam.

POOO

A little midafternoon Cocktail Entertainment

Let your Fingers doing the Talking

28,000 and Counting

That was the number of calls made to Congress in support of Health Care Reform as of 10:43 am Central time. We'll See how it goes from here. If you want to add your voice to the debate and the hundreds of thousands of calls follow the link. If anyone bothers to call, leave a comment as to what number your call was.

100,000 Calls to Congress


Drum Roll Please.

10:43 am 28,000 Calls

Noon Central Time 59,390 Calls.

At 2:43 Central Time 142,396 Calls.

6:00 PM Central 212,967 Calls

Huff Post "Congress getting Completely Crushed"

What are those rippers 0

I recently had a spike in traffic on my site due to link from a newspaper. I was looking through the traffic and discovered a browser "Rippers 0". I was unable to determine what this is and it sounded slightly ominous.

After doing a little research I become more confused and a little concerned.

Further digging and I was able to become somewhat certain of what is going on. The only reason I am blogging about it here is that there doesn't appear to be many answers out there

Here is my guess. It appears that FireFox has a video addon to its toolbar that assist in downloading and viewing video that is embedded on websites. Thus ripping the video. Anybody out there with a similiar question I hope this helps and if you are able to prove or disprove please let me know.

Keep the Freak Going

I am not completely certain as to why, however, I find the current battle over "SuperFreakonomics" to be extremely interesting. I am sure it is in part due to the fact of how fascinating I found "Freakonomics" to be and now the authors are being called out by people I have a great deal of respect for as well.

This is where it all started for me
krugman. part 1
Krugman part 2

I read this article that I wanted to add to the current discussion.
Felix Salmon takes a whack at the authors. Apprently he wrote rather critically about the book Freakonomics back at its release.

Brad Delong takes a whack at the this issue. Interestingly Paul Krugman links this article even though Delong calles Krugman's take excessive. Delong takes a more middle of the road path but comes close to finishing where Krugman and Salmon do on this question.

Brad Delong's last word. We think.

And for the Counterpoint here is the Freak's take
Anatomy of a Smear
Global Warming Denial Greatly exaggerated .

Freaks vs. Geeks

Checking the blog from my phone I noticed a great juxtaposition on the right side of the page. I respect and enjoy the work of both Paul Krugman (Nobel prize economics) and Steven Levit (Freakonomics).

It appears we have a little battle of the blogs going on over a chapter of Levitt's new book Superfreakonomics. The controversy stems from a chapter Global Cooling. The back and forth is interesting to read. I am sure it doesn't hurt the publicityfor the book launch. Take a look at the blogs to right regarding global Cooling and enjoy.

Krugman on SuperFreakonomics

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Interactive Chart of the Various Health Care Proposals

Interactive graph of the various Health reform proposals on the table.

We're No. 1 (again)

Since we are on the topic of polling, I wanted to tie in a poll to the story of Nobel Peace Prize.

I have stated my thoughts earlier on why one could make a legitimate argument for President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. As a belated piece of evidence (one that was much quoted last week ) there is a poll ranking the top 50 countries in the world as perceived by world citizenry the results are as follows


www.gfkamerica.com/
1.
United States / 2008 Germany
2.
France / 2008 France
3.
Germany / 2008 United Kingdom
4.
United Kingdom / Canada
5.
Japan / 2008 Japan
6.
Italy / 2008 Italy
7.
Canada / 2008 United States
8.
Switzerland / 2008 Switzerland
9.
Australia / 2008 Australia
10.
Spain, Sweden (tie) / 2008 Sweden

As you can see in the eyes of the world America's image has jumped back to the top in one year.

I am a poll watcher

As you might be able to tell from my most recent post and a number of my earlier posts, I like to look at polls (probably way too much). My favorite resource for poll watching is Pollster.com .

They provide a great wealth of raw polling data and allow the user to filter on many different levels. One of the things I frequently do in an attempt to get what I believe to be more accurate picture of current polling is to filter out some of the polls that tend to be outside the norm and the daily tracking polls that are fair, however, they tend to overweight the results since they post numbers every day.



I was pleased to run across the following article at Pollster.com that discusses this and attempts to ascertain an accurate look at President Obama's approval trend line over the course of the last few months.

http://www.pollster.com/

Public Option more Popular than Health Care Reform and President Obama

I noticed something that didn't seem right when going over a batch of the new polling that has been released since the first of the month. I was particularly interested in how the public option was polling. I started to notice a trend it appeared the the public option was still polling rather high compared to the more generic questions of Health Care Reform and Presidential approval.


I have gone back to the three polls that I could find that had a) Presidential Approval, b) Health Care Reform Approval, and c) Public Option Approval. I came up with three polls to compare
and charted the average approval rating from the three polls

Health Care 40%
President 54%
Public Option 58%




CBS News

Ipsos / McClathcy

Quinnipiac

At first I scratched my head on this. This morning I am setting around waiting fort the Senate Finance Committee (bill with out a public option) to vote and it seem to make more and more sense. Is it as simple as the 18% disparity between approving of health care reform and approving of the public option are those of us who know reform will not work with out a robust public option?

AHIP argues for Public Option, Thank You

The easiest way I can think to break down the proposed health care reform is as follows. (this is extremely simplified)

1) Forbid Insurance companies from denying or cancelling coverage for preexisting conditions. Forbid Insurance companies from charging those who get sick more than those who are healthy.

2) Coupled with the above changes. The government will a) require large employers to provide health insurance b) requiring individuals who are not covered by large employers to buy heath insurance. (this will increase the number of customers by 40 something million helping to offset the additional cost from step 1)

3) the government will give assistance to those individuals who they deem can not afford the required insurance.

As a result we now have a system where insurance companies will have to pay out higher cost as a result of step 1) These companies will have greater incomes because they will have 40 million new customers to take premiums from.


The remaining question is if everyone in the country is required to have health insurance one way or another and there are literally only a few insurance companies to choose from what will keep the companies from raising and raising their rates like they have over the last decade?

As a matter of fact the report that the Insurance Industry just commissioned has said they will in fact raise rates by 110% if this reform is passed.

This is why a truly effective public option is required. Health Care Reform without a competitive public option is simply a hand out to the private companies that have seen their profits increase by over 400% over the last 10 years.

That Dirty Job is no trouble for the Wunder Boner.

This is a little outside of the political spectrum. However, it caught my attention this morning.

I was looking through the unintended creepiest ads over at Huffington Post.

Creepy Ads The worst of which would be great SNL Commercial parodies.





What truly caught my attention is that the voice over sounds like Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame. I am pretty sure he started his career or at least got his break as a voice over announcer. You can hear him on the Discover Channel on shows such as Deadliest Catch, Monster Garage, etc.

Peace be with all of us.

I must admit I was as surprised as anyone upon the announcement of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. I spent a good part of the time yesterday tormenting those on the right whose heads are continuing to explode.

Another good part of the day I set about to understand the decision. I have to admit I am guilty of what many / most of us are guilty of. Seeing the world from the American Perspective. Remember this is an International Peace Prize not a US Peace Prize.

For the last 8 years the United States under the leadership of George Bush has done pretty much whatever we wanted militarily. The United States had said we are going back into the business of building new types of nuclear weapons. The United States had said we will torture anyone the President / Vice President wishes. We will hold people in secret prisons as long as we desire without cause. We stated, will not talk to anyone who does not agree with us. Let us not forget the true Bush doctrine "you are either with us or against us".

Now when I tuck my son into bed at night and I close my eyes real tight none of that affects me. As a result when a new President comes into office and changes all of the above that as well does not affect me either. However, since this is an international Peace Prize I must attempt to perceive this world from someone else's perspective.

One might understand the new sense of peace that people of the world must sense when they put their children to bed at night. They now know that the World's Most Powerful country is a country that is attempting to be its neighbor not it's master. One can make a valid argument, that shift deserves recognition. I have written only half jokingly that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for "peacefully overthrowing a powerful, violent, and corrupt regime".

Two images come to mind, one is the image of the Iraqi reporter throwing a shoe at President Bush and one is of 200,000 Europeans showing up to listen to candidate Obama speak in Germany. It was only a year ago during the campaign that many, many people (myself included) were talking about the importance that President Obama would make as the new face of the world's most powerful country. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by this award after all.


I could have saved you a couple of moments by posting this video first it is definately worth a look